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OPPENHEIMER Packs a Punch on Any Screen
Christopher Nolan’s 4K-UHD release reminds us of the potency of cinema, and the importance of physical media
With a box office take approaching a billion dollars, news of 4K/Blu-ray releases selling out nationwide, and hefty buzz going into awards season, Christopher Nolan’s latest effort is undeniably one of the cinematic success stories of 2023. Perhaps surprising given the film is at it’s core a biopic, and a meditation on the unleashing of a world changing power. Perhaps unsurprising given Nolan’s previous success with cerebral blockbusters such as Dunkirk, Interstellar, Inception, and Tenet. While there are interweaving stories and time-frames here, they all converge on the man and the moment. An enthralling look at the race against time to beat the Nazis to the A-bomb, and the aftermath of it’s detonation, as the destructive force sends shockwaves through the social and political arena, and the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The core of the film is the journey taken by Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) from his precocious days as a student of theoretical physics, through his rise in academic, and eventually his being selected by one Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. (Matt Damon) to spearhead an effort to beat the Nazi menace in the USA’s development of the world’s first atomic bomb. The effort, from 1942 to 1946, involved the recruitment of the foremost physicists and mathematicians and engineers to collaborate at the newly founded Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico. More than a research facility, this was a secure community built to house these academics, their families and support staff, for their long haul effort to crack the atom.
Nolan, ever the fan of non-linear or parallel story-lines, dips back and forth in time to flesh out other aspects of this enigmatic man and others involved in the project. Most notably two key periods. The first, centered around Oppenheimer’s secret 1954 security hearing where he was faced with efforts to discredit him. A response to his growing prominence as an outspoken force against the ongoing development of the H-bomb program. The second, focused on the 1958 confirmation hearing of Lewis Strauss’ (Robert Downey Jr.) to become President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Commerce. Strauss being a key political figure in the development of the Atomic weapon (and energy) program, and the man predominantly responsible for tearing down Oppenheimer to ensure his own ascension.
Politics and power. Hypotheses and equations. Period piece meets legal drama. Various components that could be dry, or poorly composed. In Nolan’s hands, it make for some of the most compelling, propulsive, and dynamic storytelling you’ll see this, or any year. This is not a historical drama that seeks to chronicle the horrors unleashed upon the Japanese, but instead focus on the man and the moment when Pandora’s box was opened. The film also mirrors another tale, one of a man birthing a monster, Frankenstein. Oppenheimer is the epitome of a driven scientist. Focused, detached, driven. The urgency of their success in beating the Nazis is clear, the aftermath of what they unleash only starts to sink in once it’s too late to turn back. The film also draws from the myth of Prometheus, who took fire from the Gods and gave it to mankind, forever changing their fate and ensuring his perpetual doom. Oppenheimer isn’t quite tethered to a rock and subjected to having an eagle eat his liver for eternity as punishment, but the moral and political consequence of his achievement certainly serves as a test of his character and fortitude.
It’s a masterful turn from Cillian Murphy who shoulders more than just the narrative, but the entire weight of what the film is reckoning with. A glacier like surface, especially those deep-baby blues, perpetuating this enigmatic figure. Murphy’s delivery and physicality convey the early airs of a creative force, to the later hollowed out shell of a man, quietly internalizing a sense of regret and atonement. Oppenheimer showcases a ludicrously stacked ensemble. Benny Safdie, Josh Harnett, Alden Ehrenreich, Jason Clarke, David Krumholtz, Alex Wolff, Dane DeHaan, Kenneth Branagh, Macon Blair, Matthew Modine, Tom Conti, and Olivia Thirlby, to name a notable slice of the talent involved. Matt Damon as Groves, the military man overseeing the project adds a much needed gruff charm to counter the academic edge that infuses the film, while Gary Oldman has a brief, but glorious appearance as President Truman. Robert Downey Jr will (rightly) see plenty of buzz come awards season, and it’s also worth highlighting the work of Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh as J Robert’s wife Kitty Oppenheimer, and his mistress Jean Tatlock respectively. Both crucial aspects of the film, and partners to Murphy, that help to lay out more of the flawed humanity that makes up this titular figure.
The film exudes quality in every element of its craft. The script, from Nolan, Kai Bird and Martin Sherw, is enthralling, as well as brilliantly structured. Stunning cinematography from Hoyte van Hoytema showcases superb production design, with attention to period detail. Sound design is a thunderous affair, which combined with Ludwig Göransson’s muscular score, makes for one of the most visceral experiences of the year. Nolan’s direction comes with it’s usual sense of aplomb. Oppenheimer is propulsive and relentlessly compelling, whether depicting a cross-examination in a boxy office space, or experiential sequences that dance within the atomic realm. An indelible work, that underscores the drive that comes with discovery, and the flaws deep within humanity.
The Package
Visually, Oppenheimer is a knockout. In IMAX, vibrant and visceral images were burned onto our retinas and into our minds. It all but feels like a guaranteed Oscar for Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. The home video release, while obviously lacking the scale of the movie theater, does an outstanding job at conveying the work that went into the film’s visuals and compositions. Superb detail and texture. Crisp colors enhanced by deep inky blacks. It’s a flawless transfer, and likely to become one of your new go to picks when you want to show off the image quality of your home system. Beyond the superb visuals, the release is also supported by a host of extra features that further appreciation for Nolan’s feature, as well as the talented folk that contributed to it:
- The Story of Our Time: The Making of Oppenheimer – Running over 70 minutes, this is an exhaustive dive into the making of the film. Drawing from interviews, behind the scenes footage, crew conversations, and more, it covers all areas of the production. It;s actually broken down into 7segments: Now I am Become Death, The Luminaries, The Manhattan Project, The Devil of the Details, Walking a Mile, Can You Hear the Music?, and We Can Perform This Miracle
- Innovations in Film: 65mm Black and White Film in Oppenheimer: Hoyte van Hoytema and tech crew discuss the experience of utilizing the monochrome approach taken for select sequences in the film, from technical problems during filming and processing, to integration into the whole feature
- To End All War: Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb – A historically tilted featurette that delves into the truth behind the titular figure and his involvement in the Manhattan project
- Meet the Press Q&A Panel: Oppenheimer: A panel putting together Nolan along with some of the key figures depicted in the film, whereupon they give their opinions on their portrayal, and how the events are depicted
- Trailers: Teaser, theatrical trailers, and the IMAX trailer
The Bottom Line
Going into the last few weeks of 2023, you’ll be seeing Oppenheimer crop up on plenty of year end “Best of” lists. Rightly so too. It’s a towering work, that is as compelling as it is complex and considered. Propulsive and dynamic storytelling, brought to life by one of the best ensembles you’ll see all year. Nolan himself has verbally championed the importance of physical media, and with this home video release, he backs up those claims. A superb release, and a exemplar as to the enduring importance of physical media.
Oppenheimer is available on 4K, Blu-ray, and digital, now.
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CANDY CANE LANE: Eddie Murphy Stars in a Winning Family Comedy for the Holidays
Amazon MGM Studios Now on Amazon Prime, Candy Cane Lane is a new Christmas story in which a family must work together by tangle with various critters and creeps inspired by the classic carol The 12 Days of Christmas – French hens, geese a-laying, lords a-leaping, etc – in order to collect the song’s “five gold rings” and break a curse imposed by a vengeful elf.
Eddie Murphy stars as Chris Carver, a Christmas-loving family man who loves to decorate the house, and lives on a “candy cane lane” – one of those streets where every house in the entire neighborhood gets in the spirit and competes to make the biggest, brightest, most festive decorative extravaganzas. His main concern is a friendly rivalry with Bruce (Ken Marino) across the street, whose tacky masterpieces make him the long-running champion. In his Christmas cheer he’s a little blind to the needs of his wife Carol (Tracee Ellis Ross) and three children, particularly his two older teens who are struggling with high school anxieties like academic struggles and college prep.
Amazon MGM Studios Things suddenly change for Chris when he loses his job, just days before Christmas, causing him to shift his focus to the contest’s large cash prize.
With a new no-holds-barred attitude, Chris and his youngest daughter discover a mysterious Christmas popup store full of amazing decorations, and a Victorian miniature town of Lilliputian buildings and figurines. The store’s perky proprietor Pepper (Jillian Bell) sells Chris on a gargantuan centerpiece that virtually guarantees a win, but he doesn’t read the fine print before signing the contract.
Somewhat in the spirit of It’s a Wonderful Life, the film has a fantastical element that becomes its narrative crux. If Chris doesn’t complete Pepper’s challenge of defeating all the swans-a-swimming and maids-a-milking to find the golden rings (it was all there on the receipt he signed), he’ll become a new addition to Pepper’s collection of figurines, who, we learn, are alive and willing to aid him in the quest, having all been similarly duped (figureheaded by the trio of Nick Offerman, Chris Redd, and Robin Thede).
Amazon MGM Studios With the help of the porcelain dolls, who offer much of the film’s comedic levity, the whole family bands together to break the curse and learn the meaning of Christmas. It’s full of laughs and an overall great time with a mostly adventurous tone once it gets going.
Behind the camera, the film reteams Murphy with Reginald Hudlin, who directed the star in Boomerang. Hudlin is known for his 90s heyday of hit music videos and movie favorites like House Party, The Great White Hype, and The Ladies Man, and less so for a huge volume of producing and TV work. But in recent years he has been returning to film direction, including last year’s incredible documentary Sidney, and working with the late Chadwick Boseman in Marshall.
Amazon gave the film a wide theatrical premiere, giving folks a one-night-only chance to see it on the big screen before arriving on Prime. In his introduction to the screening, Hudlin expressed his excitement at sharing the kind of Christmas movie he’s always wanted to make. The PG rated film is a bit of a departure from the director’s more adult-oriented filmography, but it’s an enjoyable family film and demonstrates his dexterity as a storyteller.
Amazon MGM Studios Like The Christmas Chronicles (Netflix) and Spirited (Apple TV+), Candy Cane Lane is a live action Christmas movie made for a streaming platform, and like those films, it has big name talent attached and makes for a fun time, but the small-screen origins may limit its audience (clearly something that Amazon considered, and to their credit tried to address with a limited theatrical event). My feeling is that it’s probably the best movie of this particular grouping, though it remains to be seen if it has perennial staying power of a holiday staple. While I don’t think it’s the next Elf, it is the best movie of its kind in quite a while, and its focus on an African-American family is both welcome and much needed in a cinematic sea of “White Christmas”.
Oh, and I lit up like a Christmas tree when I saw who plays Santa Claus.
A/V Out
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It’s still Noirvember with Kino Lorber [JOY HOUSE & 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY]
![It’s still Noirvember with Kino Lorber [JOY HOUSE & 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY]](https://i0.wp.com/cinapse.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/joy1.jpg?resize=620%2C326&ssl=1)
“You have one minute to decide the rest of your life.”
The end of November is once again here and while some may rejoice in the start of the holiday shopping season, as far as I’m concerned, it’s still noirvember. Yes, noirvember, the one month of the year where film noir is celebrated from start to finish. It’s an entire month where noirphiles can hang out in the favorite dusty gin joints and find themselves beguiled by one lethal beautiful woman after another.
It feels appropriate that I’m writing about film noir on a rainy day since so many noir tales begin in such a setting. Throughout the 30s and 40s, film noir offered up rain-soaked thrillers, tales of double-crossing capers, and an endless string of dangerous romances. Although the genre is largely considered to have been put to bed in the early 1950s (most cite Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing as the last true entry), noir did find a home in other areas of film afterwards.
Recently, Kino Lorber released two titles new to Blu-ray, 1964’s Joy House and 1996’s 2 Days in the Valley, which show that although the genre’s heyday had ended, noir itself was still very much alive.
Joy House
In Joy House, French playboy/conman Marc (Alain Delon) finds himself on the run from a group of thugs sent to kill him by the husband of the woman with whom he’s been having an affair with. Growing tired and desperate, Marc finds refuge in the home of Barbara (Lola Albright), a wealthy American woman and her niece Melinda (Jane Fonda). Barbara agrees to take Marc on as her chauffer, giving him plenty of time to lay low. But between Barbara’s demands and Melinda’s games, he soon finds himself in even graver danger than before.
After fizzling out in America, film noir traveled back overseas, and found a home in France just as the new wave was taking over the scene. Director Rene Clement directed this underrated French noir to spellbinding effect, skillfully navigating its various twists and turns. Joy House juggles two stories operating on their own before eventually weaving together seamlessly. The first is the story of a man on the run trying to stay alive that comes complete with an initial chase scene that serves as a thrilling introductory set piece. The second concerns a pair of women with a co-dependent and slightly perverse relationship who spell for doom for any man that comes their way. Watching how these two sides of Joy House influence each other and work together is a tribute to classic noir and the talents of Clement as a filmmaker.
There’s a slight weirdness from the minute Fonda and Albright enter the film that only grows stronger, pulsating with a level of risk and desire Marc is unable to resist. The eventual reveal of motives for taking Marc in is tantalizing from a noir perspective and is perhaps the strongest homage to the genre here. A former lover hiding in secret parts of the manor and a niece posing as a maid are just some of the elements that make Joy House the perfect blend of European sensibilities and noir storytelling. The movie enjoys an impressive second chase scene throughout the house in its second half before adding a couple more clever turns and culminating with a dose of full circle irony that only adds to the twistiness and perversion.
2 Days in the Valley
Writer/director John Herzfeld made his return to feature filmmaking with this dark comic thriller starring a host of recognizable names such as James Spader, Charlize Theron, Eric Stoltz, Marsha Mason, and Danny Aiello. Over the course of 48 hours in the San Fernando Valley, a series of events will force a number of people to intersect, including a suicidal filmmaker (Paul Mazursky), a volatile cop (Jeff Daniels), a nurse (Mason), a harried assistant (Glenne Headley), a hitman (Spader), and his beautiful girlfriend (Theron).
By the time the 80s came around, film noir had already ventured back to America and been given a new moniker: neo-noir. These stylish new entries contained many of the genre’s original tropes with a new 80s/90s edge. One undeniable example of this remains Herzfeld’s 2 Days in the Valley. The director’s first feature in more than a decade, the movie exists as one of the most earnest and admirable tributes to noir of the 90s. Moreover, the movie maintains a strong sense of fun throughout, taking time from the shifting alliances and gunplay for some healthy dark comedy. Aiello’s fear and hatred of dogs is a joke that never grows old and the overall sendup of the San Fernando Valley image is more humorous than one would expect.
As I mentioned before, most of the noir tropes are played, and played pretty well. Each storyline functions as its own noir tale with femme fatales and anti-heroes showing up in virtually every scene as well as a handful of lost souls who are just struggling to exist in a landscape that has done little for them. If the film suffers at all, it’s more due to the habits of 90s moviegoing audiences which looked for deeper meaning and softer characters than were typically found in the world of noir. Not all of the loose ends are tied up by the movie’s finale, but fans of noir know why that makes sense and see how such a minimal wrap up works for the genre that’s being emulated. With a beautiful Jerry Goldsmith score, a maze of colorful characters, dialogue and plot turns, Herzfeld’s film is a bona fide neo-noir gem.
Every time I write about anything noir, I can’t help but bring up the Film Noir Foundation, the non-profit organization based in San Francisco that remains the genre’s biggest champion. Through painstaking restoration efforts and Noir City, their ongoing retrospective film festival, the FNF’s continuous efforts in preserving a wide array of noir titles have done more for the genre than anyone can imagine. Thanks to the work of the foundation’s president, Eddie Muller, as well as his dedicated team, the world of noir shows no signs of fading away.
Joy House and 2 Days in the Valley are both available of Blu-Ray and DVD from Kino Lorber. For more information on how to contribute to the Film Noir Foundation, please visit https://filmnoirfoundation.org/.
2 Days in the Valley, Alain Delon, Blu-ray, Charlize Theron, Crime, Danny Aiello, Eric Stoltz, Film Noir, French Cinema, French New Wave, Home Video, James Spader, Jane Fonda, Jeff Daniels, John Herzfeld, Joy House, Kino Lorber, Lola Albright, Movies, Noirvember, Rene Clement, San Fernando Valley, Thriller -
Getting Lost in SALTBURN
“I don’t think I’ll ever go home again.”
If you notice that The Talented Mr. Ripley has been brought up more than usual in film conversations lately it’s because the people mentioning that film have seen Saltburn, writer/director Emerald Fennell’s sophomoric effort to 2020’s Promising Young Woman. The film has taken audiences by storm who have gotten lost in a tale of privilege, youth, class, and their dark sides. Because so much of film criticism today seems to consist of saying one movie is basically a reworked version of something that came before it, the Ripley/Saltburn comparisons are both plentiful and already past their sell-by date. Watching Saltburn, I found myself thinking not of Ripley, but of the works of Evelyn Waugh, specifically “Vile Bodies.” That novel told the story of the “bright young things” of the 1920s and the decadence that defined them. The novel is mentioned in the film at one point (suggesting Fennell used it as inspiration) and this seems fitting since Saltburn feels like it could have been created by Waugh with its off-center, gothic glam take on upper British culture and those desperately yearning to be a part of it.
In Saltburn, Barry Keoghan plays Oliver, an Oxford student whose working-class background makes him self-conscious around his fellow classmates, especially the wealthy and handsome Felix (Jacob Elordi). Eventually, Oliver finds himself befriending Felix, who invites him to his family’s large country estate for the summer. Upon arrival, Oliver meets Felix’s mother Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), father James (Richard E. Grant), and sister Venetia (Alison Oliver). Also staying over for the summer are family friend Pamela (Carey Mulligan) and Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), Oliver’s rival. As the summer progresses, Oliver becomes enamored with Felix and his family and soon finds it very difficult to leave Saltburn.
If there’s a single aspect that is bound to captivate audiences almost immediately, it’s the world of Saltburn, which Fennell and her team have brought to such glorious life. From the moment Oliver enters the estate, we are taken into a realm that’s right out of Luis Buñuel where our main character finds he can’t leave and eventually decides he doesn’t really want to. Time stands still in the world of Saltburn, which is interesting given that it’s already a period piece. The sprawling home is where the aristocratic and eccentric are forever interlocked. It’s where decadence and hedonism are the norm to such an extreme that at certain points the world itself leaps off the screen and threatens to pull the audience in with it. Saltburn is a surreal experience, although not in the most obvious of ways. It’s a world that traps all who enter with the intoxicating promise that within these walls lies a sort of slanted Shangri-La complete with the promise that the outside world will never find you. Saltburn allows you to get lost and spiral a bit into madness in a landscape that seeks to emulate the lifestyle of Marie Antoinette by way of a mid-2000s faded glamor. The dizzying effect of the environment proves so consuming for Oliver (or for anyone who never thought they’d get a peek into that kind of world) that eventually, the sprawling estate makes us lose our minds.
As much as the plot factors into the mechanics of Saltburn, it’s the characters that give the film its mesmerizing qualities. Saltburn as a place offers up a host of figures, any of which can be a hero, a villain, a victim, or a liar. The estate, with all of its lush and somewhat otherworldly trappings, has the ability to make the real world all but vanish, turning those who enter it into what Elton John once described as “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters.” Everyone in Saltburn remains a mystery to themselves and each other and each person becomes more intriguing in their own way as a result. The dynamics that exist between Oliver, Felix, Elspeth, and the rest of the group are just as challenging and unusual as any of them are, eventually evolving into the kind of mind games that will result in everyone’s unraveling. The absence of the outside world has left them so frozen in time that they now only exist as parodies of themselves; parodies driven by delusion and obsession and the world they’ve let swallow them up. And yet, for all their faults, everyone at Saltburn is so utterly authentic. Save for some diabolical hidden motives here and there, the people we meet in Saltburn are exactly who they present themselves to be. In the end, however, these are people who are either unable to or are refusing to acknowledge the tragedy that their lives are in Saltburn.
Fennell is not only successful at creating a host of fascinatingly tragic characters but she’s also got a knack for choosing the right people to bring them to life. Keoghan makes for the most compelling of leads, despite appearing to have the movie’s least flashiest role. Elordi succeeds at playing Felix like the most genuine out of everyone in Saltburn, giving a restrained performance that grounds the film during the times when everyone else is flying high. Grant is hysterical and pathetic, Mulligan is a delirious hoot, Oliver is tragic, and Madekwe plays his character’s agenda perfectly. It’s Pike who will surprise the most, as the somewhat manic mistress of Saltburn. Watching Pike play her character with little filter and almost no clue about the world she’s in or the life she’s living is a true marvel.
At the risk of repeating myself (which does happen on occasion), I can’t help but go back to the Waugh reference when it comes to summing up Saltburn. This is because despite being a thoroughly cinematic experience, Fennell has loaded her film with the sensibilities of many famous novelists, giving her work a real literary feel. Shades of Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and even Bret Easton Ellis exist throughout Saltburn in one form or another, reinforcing the fact that Fennell is a filmmaker of both imagination and keen observation. After the screening, I mentioned the Ellis influence to a friend of mine, who agreed and suggested that Fennell would be the ideal choice to adapt one of his novels, perhaps the long-gestating “Lunar Park.” This might sound like a stretch to some, but I for one am hard-pressed to find another filmmaker who captures the dark secretive moments that most believe are unique to them and holds their gaze the way Fennell does here. With Saltburn, she’s managed to find depth within the surface, embraced the veneer of superficiality, and allows us to revel in both the glamour and the darkness.
Barry Keoghan, Bret Easton Ellis, Carey Mulligan, Charles Dickens, Comedy, Drama, Elton John, Emerald Fennell, Evelyn Waugh, In Theaters, Jacob Elordi, Lewis Carroll, Luis Bunel, Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, Movies, Mystery, Promising Young Woman, Richard E. Grant, Rosamund Pike, Saltburn, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Thriller -
BLUE EYE SAMURAI Is A Blood-Soaked Blast
Blue Eye Samurai is a bone-smashing, limb-tearing, pulse-pounding, skull-pulverizing, eye-demolishing work of art and anyone who appreciates animation needs to sit down, fire up Netflix, and watch it right now.
And honestly, even if you are someone who has no particular affinity or affection for animation, you still owe it to yourself to sit down, fire up Netflix, and watch it right now.
Weaponizing all the creative and content freedom, while neatly sidestepping virtually every pitfall, of the streaming age Blue Eye Samurai is a primal scream of glorious revenge, as captivating in its beauty as it is stunning in its violence.
By the end of its eight-episode first season, it doesn’t so much entertain an audience as it does bludgeon them into submission under the sheer force of artistry, energy, and commitment to doing the absolute MOST at every opportunity. When the end credits rolled after the final episode, you may not know whether to applaud or collapse from exhaustion.
But either way, you’ll be demanding more.
(This article will avoid spoiling major events of the season, but if you’d like to go in completely blind, stop reading)
Created by the husband and wife team of Michael Green and Amber Noizumi, Blue Eye Samurai is set in 17th century Japan, when the country has adopted a strict policy of total disengagement from the outside world. No foreigners at all, ever.
That leaves Mizu (Maya Erskine) in a difficult spot, as her blue eyes betray that she is biracial and therefore considered little more than a demon by her countryfolk. As the show starts, Mizu is obsessively on the hunt for the four white men who previously lived in Japan, as one of the four is assuredly the bastard who sired her and condemned both Mizu and her mother to a life of misery and torment. Season 1 details Mizu’s specific pursuit of Fowler (Kenneth Branagh [yes, him]) a sadistic Irishman who continues to haunt the country that has made his existence illegal. As Mizu schemes to destroy Fowler, Fowler in turn schemes to take down the shogunate and claim Japan for himself, putting the two on a literally explosive collision course.
The path of revenge is never straight though, bringing Mizu into the orbit of a tangle of well-drawn (natch) supporting players who keep things lively from the sidelines. Ringo (Masi Oka) is a disabled cook who takes a shine to Mizu and dedicates himself to serving as her apprentice and keeping her secrets; Taigen (Darren Barnet) is a hot-headed swordsman determined to reclaim his honor in a duel against Mizu; and Akemi (Brenda Song) is Taigen’s fiancée, a princess desperate to escape the life of servitude that her gender and her station have relegated her to.
There’s more, and early on there is reason to worry that Netflix’s tradition of bloated runtimes and shapeless seasons will weigh down a show that seems like it would be best served as a lean and mean slice of unapologetic pulp. Sprawl is nothing to be ashamed of, but that doesn’t mean that what at first glance appears to be a straightforward revenge story demands several hours to tell.
But there’s no reason to worry. Rather than feeling leaden with subplots and spinning wheels, Blue Eye Samurai moves at a breathless clip. Story beats that seem like they might drag along for a season get resolved in a matter of scenes, and the chain of causality from one episode to another remains strong and clear. When Mizu gets sidetracked on an errand, it doesn’t feel like the show is wasting time to avoid arriving at the fireworks factory. Instead, every tangent and diversion serves to bring us closer to Mizu and help us to grapple with the power dynamics that define and determine people’s lives in a brutally rigid society.
“Brutal” is a word that comes up a lot while watching and describing Blue Eye Samurai. I’m not sure if there’s a name yet for the house style of animation that Netflix developed over the last few years, but it combines the lush, expressive fluidity of traditional hand drawn with the depth and dimensionality of CG animation. With some projects, this can result in animation that is overly rigid, even downright unpleasant in those cases where the neither fish now fowl approach leaves characters and backgrounds feeling flat and even auto-populated at times.
Blue Eye Samurai has no such problem.
The only thing more visually stunning than the vistas and scenery are the bloodbaths, with fight scenes reveling in sprays of painted gore that never fail to impress. There’s one gag in the first episode that left me literally breathless with both its creativity and its audacity, and the show never surrenders that savage edge even when it downshifts from that early stunning high.
The choreography and execution of the multitude of battles and brawls is impressive even by the standards of similar live-action efforts, but when you marry that design with the freedom of animation, the resulting fights take on a kinetic immediacy that live-action can’t touch. The high water mark of the first season might be episode five, “The Tale of the Ronin and the Bride”, which intercuts an episode-length one vs. many duel with flashbacks throwing Mizu’s tragic backstory into even sharper detail. The bravura finale of the episode intercuts two separate massacres into a single emotional exclamation point of ecstatic action, pure cathartic release illustrated with gallons of red ink.
Taking a familiar story and telling it in a unique way with as much artistry as can be stuffed into every single frame, Blue Eye Samurai is among the very best things that Netflix has ever produced. If there’s one downside to the first season, it’s that it is only the first season of a planned larger work and as such virtually all of its myriad narrative threads are left dangling for a later resolution. That’s not a problem as such, presuming that Netflix doesn’t pull a Netflix and kill the show without giving it even a fighting chance, but ending with an ellipses rather than a period makes Blue Eye Samurai feel somewhat unfulfilling even as it’s stuffed with riches.
Even incomplete, there’s no doubt that Blue Eye Samurai is a total triumph for animation, for the possibilities of the streaming age, and for anyone eager for a new addition to the canon of delicious revenge, served extra bloody.
Head over to Netflix and get yourself a taste.
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SCRAPPER – A Low-Key Love Letter to Messy Families
How do two people incapable of honesty of any kind face up to truths that are too terrible to admit to?
And how do you make a movie about that and keep it funny?
The answer is Scrapper, the debut film by writer/director Charlotte Regan, now available on home media including VOD and Blu-ray.
Scrapper stars newcomer Lola Campbell as Georgie, a 12-year-old girl living by herself after the recent death of her mother. Lola stays afloat with a number of petty schemes, primarily stealing people’s bikes and selling them for food money alongside her friend Ali (the very charming Alin Uzun), the only person who knows that she is living alone. Georgie is the sort of youngster who is convinced they have figured out how to manage the adult world, down to having a “Stages of Grief” checklist that she dutifully checks off. With a couple carefully dissembled half-truths (and bald-faced lies) she easily evades detection by the idiotic bureaucracies that are supposed to be in place to protect her, and continues a largely solitary life, too busy with surviving day-to-day to allow grief anywhere near her.
(I hasten to reiterate that Scrapper is an energetic comedy. A very funny one!)
Lola lives with the sort of freedom that every kid dreams of but that every adult watching will quickly recognize as unsustainable. The specific blow that knocks down this particular wobbly Jenga tower of an existence is the arrival of Lola’s never-before-seen deadbeat father, Jason (Harris Dickinson), who learned about the death of Lola’s mom and has decided to plant himself in Georgie’s life.
Regan, an accomplished director of music videos and short films making her feature length debut, demonstrates immediate skill behind the camera, Scrapper is fundamentally a duet between its two leads. The film lives and dies on whether or not Campbell and Dickinson strike fireworks off each other, as the majority of the film is simply observing their evolving dynamic as two people desperate for a connection they don’t know how to ask for amidst tragedy.
(Again: Comedy. Is Funny.)
Dickinson is in a precarious spot in his career, clearly being positioned as a new major leading man in the likes of, well, the Maleficent sequel, the Kingsman prequel, and in Where the Crawdads Sing, he’s the third of the love triangle that doesn’t live to see the end credits. He’s quite excellent in supporting roles in The Souvenir Part II and See How They Run, but the jury is still out on whether or not he can carry a movie.
In Scrapper, he’s not only excellent but impressively fearless. Jason portrays himself as an affable slacker, a pose he’s juuuuuuust charming enough to pull off most of the time. But there’s a vein of self-loathing running through him that manifests in a hair-trigger temper that gets the better of him at times. He wants to step in and be the father he should have been this whole time, but he may actually, fundamentally, just not be up to the task. Dickinson owns everything both decent and infuriating about the character, embracing even those scenes in which Jason is at his most unforgivable.
But Campbell is the major discovery of the film, with her tight ponytail and her furious eyes. At times she carries herself with an adult poise that’s so convincing you may get fooled into believing that this wisp of a blonde girl is as self-sufficient as she claims to be. Other times, the veneer cracks and all you can see is the hurting, lonely child. Campbell navigates this difficult territory beautifully, and it only serves to push Dickinson to up his own game as Jason works desperately to find a way around or through his daughter’s defenses.
At times you can feel Regan behind the camera putting a little too much spin on the ball, injecting visual flourishes and touches of stylized whimsy that don’t mesh well with the straightforward and earnest nature of the film. Scrapper struggles to decide whether it’s aiming for Mike Leigh realism or a heightened Paddington-esque world just this side of magical realism. But at other points, Regan demonstrates the absolute correct level of restraint and taste to hammer home an emotional beat without leaning on it so hard as to cross over into irritating manipulation.
These are not characters who are going to make grandiose speeches summing up their thoughts and emotions. This is not a film where one grand gesture is going to solve years’ worth of hurt and accumulated tensions. Instead, Regan as both writer and director is dialed into how powerful incremental change can be when its fought for by flawed people struggling against their own worst natures.
Scrapper is a small film, but it’s sincere and moving along with being consistently funny from first minute to last. It is exactly the kind of earnest human story we’re always asking for and complaining don’t exist anymore, and then totally ignore when someone actually makes one.
Don’t ignore Scrapper. It is quite a special little movie, and with a little luck it marks the start of a very interesting movie career for the very talented Regan.
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Ridley Scott’s NAPOLEON Prints the Legend
Historical inaccuracy is its own reward in Ridley Scott’s bitingly funny anti-epic
Images courtesy of Apple TV+. Throughout his nearly five-decade career as a director, Ridley Scott has approached his historical dramas with the same workmanlike efficiency and dazzling spectacle as his sci-fi and action epics. Whether it’s tackling true stories in Black Hawk Down and All the Money in the World or a fantastic amalgamation of real-life inspirations like The Duellists or Kingdom of Heaven, Scott hones his focus on creating the most exciting and emotionally resonant retelling of history possible. Historical accuracy naturally becomes Scott’s quickest casualty–but despite his meticulous attention to period-accurate production design, Scott makes no qualms about maintaining any sense of devotion to historical truth.
As made evident in these films, and more infamously in the press tours surrounding them, Scott openly takes a very Liberty Valance approach to period filmmaking: when a legend is more exciting than fastidious truth, shoot the legend. What’s crucial to Scott’s films–and arguably most historical epics–isn’t how accurate a film is to the events it depicts; rather, it’s the emotional truth it strives to convey. While facts may not care about our feelings, the manipulation of historical events serves as a fantastic storytelling shorthand for directors like Scott to get to the deeper, more provocative ideas that draw them to this material in the first place.
No, Napoleon Bonaparte didn’t fire cannons at the pyramids while campaigning in Egypt, and it’s debated just how many Russo-Austrian troops fell into the ice at the Battle of Austerlitz. But watching Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, a stunningly-realized biopic of the infamous French leader, these embellishments don’t just serve to exaggerate the reputation of its central character. Rather, they’re spectacles as Bonaparte might brag about them in letters back to his wife, Josephine, in addition to satisfying audiences’ expectations of a new Ridley Scott epic. It’s a wonderfully subversive act of historical revisionism, undercutting these momentous events as atrocity-laden attempts to placate one of history’s hugest egos.
We find Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) at the execution of Marie Antoinette, eager to move up in the ranks of the French Army during the Reign of Terror. His military successes against the British at Toulon solidify Bonaparte’s reputation, propelling him across the globe to Egypt and Austria–and a ruthless consolidation of power delivers Napoleon not just the hand of Josephine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby), but centralized power as Emperor of France. However, Napoleon’s failures quickly stack against his victories as Europe moves to quash the expansion of a ruler who is as eager to break the rules of war as he is to use them to his advantage. But not even the threat of exile can crush Napoleon’s ambition–or can it?
Ridley Scott’s take on Napoleon isn’t quite the cradle-to-grave biopic originally envisioned by fellow epic filmmaker Abel Gance–for one, the entirety of Gance’s 1927 5.5-hour film is condensed to roughly the first act of Scott’s own admittedly truncated 2023 epic. Playing in fits and starts when it comes to its timeline, this version of Scott’s Napoleon also bears the battle scars of ruthlessly condensing an over-four-hour film to a more theatrically-friendly 2.5 hours. However, Napoleon remains remarkably effective at its central conceit of using Napoleon’s rise and fall to cynically depict the cyclical nature of power and control.
From Antoinette’s opening execution to Napoleon’s second and final exile to St. Helena, divine rule remains as elusive as it is satisfying to the disposable world leaders who pursue it. The warring rulers of Europe, not just Napoleon, are all portrayed as ineffectual, out-of-touch children whose armies are playthings employed to secure their sense of superiority; these rulers blame those below them for their failures, yet successes are theirs alone. It’s familiar ground for Scott, having distilled the Crusades of Kingdom of Heaven to greedy squabbles masked behind ideological superiority, not to mention the comically bleak moral avalanche that is his viciously underrated The Counselor. Yet what’s so striking about Napoleon–and well-hidden from the film’s marketing–is just how absurdly funny Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa play this approach. It’s an experience that tempers Napoleon‘s epic tone with the wry satire of Armando Iannucci and even the notorious “Democracy Manifest” video, distilling breathtaking battlefield tactics to petty temper tantrums. Most of the film’s comedy comes out of this central conceit–those who are convinced of their own invincibility inevitably become blind to how they can lose everything in an instant.
Joaquin Phoenix is wonderfully dialed into the film’s tone, turning in a performance comparable to Tim Robinson in I Think You Should Leave as much as it is to Phoenix’s Joker. Here, Bonaparte is a man-child whose terrifying behavior translates to an inexplicably effective reputation on the battlefield, creating a sense of superiority that can only metastasize as he succeeds in war. While European rulers may bemoan and later rise up against Napoleon’s deadly bursts of hysteria, Phoenix and Scott suggest that the French ruler is a consequence rather than an aberration of this absurd, power-hungry world he attempts to conquer. Phoenix’s hilarious delivery to an English diplomat of “You think you’re so GREAT just because you have BOATS” isn’t just a gut-buster because of its immature blame-shifting–it’s because, deep down, there’s some bitter truth to this outlandish sentiment. To borrow from Shelley’s poem, Napoleon and his fellow rulers can’t imagine a future where people don’t look on their works and despair.
In this light, the soaring spectacle throughout Napoleon–from the Siege of Toulon to the ill-advised trek through Russia–becomes both bitingly funny and gut-churningly grim. Scores of lives are lost on the whims of the rulers commanding them, all in the name of seizing or preserving a supremacy that’s inevitably finite; the film’s bleak coda is markedly a laundry list of casualties throughout Napoleon’s rule. Scott’s epic eye for choreographed carnage takes on a welcome new dimension here, recognizing such geopolitical drama for its absurdity as much as its awe.
It’s important to note just how important Vanessa Kirby’s Josephine is to adding depth to Napoleon’s absurdity, positioned as the calculating straight man to Phoenix’s boisterous ego-in-chief. Scott has been vocal about how his longer director’s cut fleshes out Josephine’s character, and even with Napoleon’s lengthy runtime one can feel how Kirby’s presence feels drastically sidelined. Nevertheless, Josephine effectively proves to be as equally fascinating as Napoleon due to her vital perspective on power. From her introductory release from jail at the end of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, it’s clear just how much Kirby’s Josephine understands how fleeting status can be. Josephine doesn’t find power’s value in its divine superiority; rather, she knows just what it’s like to not have any power in the first place. It’s that sense of having something to lose that makes Kirby such a magnetic performer throughout her tête-à-têtes with Napoleon, matching Bonaparte’s childishness with the cold maturity he frequently imitates yet crucially lacks.
Based on Kingdom of Heaven and The Counselor alone, it’s clear just how Scott’s films can radically transform in scope and impact with their longer director’s cuts. While acknowledging the potential impact of the coming 4-hour-10-minute version, even this truncated Napoleon stands out as one of 2023’s most epic and hilariously impactful films, one unafraid to cut its larger-than-life characters down to size.
The Apple Original Film Napoleon from acclaimed director Ridley Scott will first be released exclusively in theaters worldwide, in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment, on Wednesday, November 22, before streaming globally on Apple TV+.
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EXPENDABLES 4 – Out Today on 4K UHD Blu-ray
The aging franchise is seeing diminishing returns, but remains a fun action staple
The Expendables’ fourth outing once again finds the team of mercenaries taking on a mission against impossible odds, this time taking on the mysterious “Ocelot”, a ghost from Barney’s past, in a race to stop a delivery of WMDs. I’m a fan of the series, though it admittedly peaked with the incredible second film that best delivered on the promise of having all the “old guard” of 80s action stars on board for a glorious jam session. I enjoyed the third film as well, but the series seems to be chasing diminishing returns. Still, even at their worst these are immensely enjoyable movies and one of the best modern action franchises, and putting up big budgets and playing theaters in a genre which has mostly gone to VOD.
Mainstays Barney (Sylvester Stallone), Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunner (Dolph Lundgren), and Toll Road (Randy Couture) make their return, with new cast members Megan Fox, 50 Cent, Andy Garcia, Jacob Scipio, and Levy Tran joining the squad.
If that description feels a little like deja vu, that’s because the third film already tackled the same idea of mixing in a new team of young recruits to complement the old. Bizarrely, none of those new characters that we spent the whole last movie introducing are back for this next round, which feels a little deflating, not to mention narratively odd. What happened to those guys? KIA? Quit? Defected to Barney’s better-paying competitor Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger)? Whatever the reason, the narrative fallout is that the same story framework is playing out again with a new gang of recruits.
Unfortunately the biggest and most palpable loss is that of fan favorite Terry Crews, who left the franchise in protest when producer Avi Lerner asked (threatened) Crews to drop his sexual harassment allegations against Adam Venit, leaving a vile taste in the mouths of many fans – myself included – probably not completely unrelated to this fourth film’s poor box office showing.
Despite the casting losses, there’s also a very exciting addition, that of two Asian martial arts superstars who bring immense hand to hand combat skills (based on muay thai and silat, respectively). Tony Jaa (Ong Bak, The Protector) joins forces with the Expendables as a mysterious ally, and Iko Uwais (The Raid, The Night Comes for Us) exhibits wanton cruelty as the heavy. Both get a chance to show their stuff, which is significant considering this is a franchise that had – and tragically wasted – Jet Li.
There’s some more upfront female representation this round with Megan Fox and Levy Tran joining the squad, but any goodwill this might drum up is dashed almost immediately as Fox’s character Gina (who in addition to being the team’s third-in-command is also Christmas’s girlfriend) is introduced as a psychotic raving bitch. You know, for laughs. Yeesh.
Scott Waugh (Act of Valor, Need for Speed) is in the director’s chair this time around, and I appreciate that he brings his stunt experience and a love for tactile physical action, preferring big stunts – like wild dune buggy chases and a motorcycle battle on a cargo ship – over CGI.
Unfortunately, despite a pretty huge $100M budget that afforded an enormous cargo ship deck set and tons of giant fireball explosions, the movie often looks cheap in appearance, garishly digital and overly vivid. When CG is used (often for incidental effects like background fill, flying sparks, bullet reports, and blood splatter), it looks cartoony, and composited backgrounds sometimes look unusually fake for a movie of this stature. This is a movie that tends to look good in lower light but more stagey and TV-like in daylight and other brightly lit scenes.
At the same time, I want to show a little grace in the current climate: I don’t know the specifics of this movie, but I do know that a lot of current movies were made during or following covid restrictions, and it doesn’t help that big studios like Marvel are sucking up the resources of all the top effects houses.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Stallone, the original orchestrator and handler of the franchise, seems to be taking a back seat. A plot twist puts his Barney out of commission early in the film and promotes Statham to the lead. I can certainly applaud that Sly’s a humble enough guy to essentially hand his starring vehicle over to his pal, but he’s also not credited on the script, and the big takeaway is that it feels like his signature is missing this round.
This review may be coming off as pretty negative, because I acknowledge this is a pretty flawed movie and a low point for the series. But in truth I still really have overall positive feelings about it. There’s some stellar action and some chuckles, and I like that Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais are in a big Hollywood movie that doesn’t waste their talents (“Tell that to Kanjiklub”).
Statham is a consummate action performer and deserving of his success: if there is to be a changing of the guard for this franchise, as this film seems to suggest, then he’s certainly the natural choice to take the lead.
I can totally see this becoming a silly comfort movie for casual watching, but if this series continues I’d like to see it be a little more cohesive and faithful to its original concept of being the best dad-action extravaganza packed with the top stars of the 80s and 90s: Give us the Cynthia Rothrocks, the Sigourney Weavers, the Linda Hamiltons. The entire cast of Predator. The Michaels Dudikoff, Ironside, Wong, and Biehn. Hell, I’d love to see Eddie Murphy suit up. And how has Danny Trejo never been in one of these? I think audiences would be way more invested in these films if they stuck truer to the original template.
The Package
I’m reviewing the 4K UHD release, which comes in a combo edition with Blu-ray and a QR-scannable Digital Copy insert. Lionsgate is inconsistent on VOD formats but typically includes both iTunes and Vudu options on their tentpole franchises – not so in this release, which is Vudu-only.
My copy came with a glossy slipcover, with cutaway corners per Lionsgate’s usual packaging norms (rounded on 4K releases, square on Blu-rays).
Left: Standard 4K / Right: Amazon Exclusive Edition 4K Special Features and Extras – 4K UHD and Blu-ray
Extras are on both the 4K and Blu-ray discs. This practice is something I always respect about Lionsgate, whereas most other studios relegate them to Blu-ray discs only.
Audio Commentary with Director Scott Waugh
Bigger, Bolder, Badder: The Expendables in Action (16:57) – Several producers, crew, and cast, discuss the developing the film’s action sequences and stunt work, trying to deliver a fresh experience in an established franchise. Special attention is paid to the film’s vehicular action.
More Than an Team: New Blood Meets Old Blood (19:07) – An exploration of the film’s large cast of characters, with emphasis on the newer members.
Theatrical Trailer (1:52) – A fun red band trailer that emphasizes the R rating, coming off of the third film’s unpopular choice to release as PG-13.
The Amazon exclusive edition includes additional extras:
Costuming the Expendables (11:33) – Costume Designer Neal McClean describes his method and choices for gearing up the Expendables, starting from military and tactical styles and incorporating character personalities and styles. Several cast members also join in to briefly discuss their wardrobe.
We Get the Job Done: Breaking Down the Fighting Styles (8:57)
Producer Kevin King Templeton, director Scott Waugh, and cast members describe the film’s many character-based fight styles, and incorporating martial arts.
A/V Out
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Expendables 4 – 4K UHD Blu-ray | Blu-ray | Amazon Video
Except where noted, all 16:9 screen images in this review are direct captures from the disc(s) in question with no editing applied, but may have compression or resizing inherent to file formats and Medium’s image system. All package photography was taken by the reviewer.
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THE TWILIGHT SAGA Reviewed By Someone Who Knows Nothing About THE TWILIGHT SAGA
[15th Anniversary 4K UHD Review]
Lionsgate The Twilight Saga is celebrating its 15th anniversary. In celebration, a grandiose boxed set of 4K UHD discs (the sequels are making their debut on the format here) are releasing as a Best Buy exclusive (perhaps one of the last of their kind).
In 2008 I was a 28 year old bachelor who had no reason in the world to be interested in the Twilight books and movies, which were aimed squarely at teen girls. Mind you, I bore them no ill will and always loved a book series that got young people reading. As those 15 years have passed, however, series stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have grown into some of the most revered and wildly accomplished actors of our time. And the swirling rumors of just how gonzo these vampire/werewolf love stories become in the latter entries has intrigued me. The time has come for me, a roundly middle aged husband and father who knows nothing about Twilight, to take a deep dive into this series and recount my adventures to you in written form. I’m going to write about each film as I see it, knowing little about what will happen in each successive installment.
You can read my review of the first film here. I’ll cover all of the sequels below.
There will be full spoilers throughout. Won’t you join me?
IMDb The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)
Am… am I #TeamJacob?
My whole premise here of covering The Twilight Saga 15 years after the fact is that I basically know nothing about Twilight. And that premise is largely true. But I do know that Bella (Kristen Stewart) ends up with Edward in the end, after some tension around Bella having feelings for both Vampire James Dean Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), and Six Pack Werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). So it does unfortunately kill some of the tension around all of Bella’s longing when I know who she’ll end up with. And that may very well have been a source for my frustration with New Moon. When you know Bella is going to be with Edward, the melodramatic core of New Moon feels mostly like wheel spinning.
At the beginning of the film Edward does the thing that romantic leads with hidden superpowers tend to do: He breaks up with Bella and immediately disappears forever in order to protect Bella from the evil vampires he has exposed her to now that they’ve become an item. It’s a frustrating mechanic that always seems to happen in romances like this. “I just exposed you to a whole new world full of danger, but guess I need to leave now. Bye.”
Of course, this leaves Bella vulnerable to the “real” vampires that eat people, and they’re eventually going to show up to consume Bella, because Edward is a one hundred year old idiot. Meanwhile, it is also unfortunate that Bella has very little character to speak of beyond who she is in love with. So naturally when she’s trapped in eternal longing for Edward, she runs into the arms of her old childhood friend Jacob for comfort. She even says in the film that she’s quite selfishly using Jacob for emotional support even though she knows Jacob loves her. It’s rough, and I have to say that Jacob seems to treat Bella wildly better than Edward does, and just seems like a generally more amiable and talented guy. I’m not 100% sure why, when Jacob inevitably becomes a werewolf and has to hold back this, the most obvious secret in cinema history, from Bella, he has to go shirtless at all times. Lautner looks incredible and even Bella jokes about his muscle-bound glow up from the first film to the second. But what about Jacob’s Werewolfdom requires the abs exposure? I’m unclear, though not complaining.
New Moon does begin to broaden the worldbuilding of the story significantly in its final act, introducing actual on screen wolves, bringing dimension to the vampire vs werewolf rivalry, and even traveling to Italy to meet the Volturi, Twilight’s version of the Jedi Council with ancient aristocratic vampires wearing velvet and bossing people around. Apparently they’re about the only thing in the world that can kill a vampire, and Edward is seeking them out because New Moon is a love letter to Romeo & Juliet and young, stupid people (who, again, are actually 100 years old) who will voluntarily decide to leave their partners to “protect them” and then seek to end their lives because they can’t conceive of living in a world without their 18 year old love interest. There’s some intriguing set up here that leaves me excited for the rest of the Saga, even if New Moon felt like the spinningest of wheels.
Another couple of important elements crop up here that I’ll discuss briefly. We further unpack some other super power types of dynamics that are becoming notable. Edward has a unique ability to essentially read minds. Part of his attraction to Bella is that he cannot read hers. We come to find that while Bella still has virtually no personality, she does have an “anti-power” in that Vampires can’t seem to use their unique powers on Bella. I’m sure this will become more important. Somewhat hilariously, Edward’s sister Alice (Ashley Greene) has seemingly become Bella’s best friend in this installment with little to no build up. When Edward disappears a framing device begins where Bella is writing endless letters to Alice. Over and over throughout New Moon Kristen Stewart is narrating these letters. “Dear Alice…”. I had to stop the movie to look up who Alice even was because it’s so poorly established that they’re so close. Also, Alice can kind of see the future and her twitchy and conditional visions are what precipitate this convoluted Romeo & Juliet homage where Edward somehow believes Bella is dead because of a misread vision that Alice had. It’s not executed well in the film really at all, and I’m struggling to buy Alice and Bella’s relationship.
IMDb It also must be noted that Bella is now obsessing over becoming a vampire and nightmarishly focused on getting older and not being permanently young like Edward is. This further delves into the purity culture roots of the saga and the pressures that young women face to be beautiful forever, but it reads pretty creepy here. Bella wants to be turned, but Jacob doesn’t want to curse or condemn Bella. They finally decide she can be turned after they get married. It very much feels like purity pledge negotiations and teenagers navigating “how far is too far”.
While I like New Moon significantly less than I liked Twilight, the visual effects and overall visual style of New Moon is a dramatic improvement. Even a decade and a half later, the werewolves look pretty damn cool and are effectively rendered in CGI. Also, when vampires do cool vampire shit here, it does not look like ass… which it very much did in the first film. Vampires doing super speed or even getting into fisticuffs looks dynamic. Director Chris Weitz had just come off of making The Golden Compass, so perhaps he had visual effects knowledge enough to steer this entry in the right direction.
Edward’s absolute idiocy and 100-year-old childishness in New Moon frustrated me more than I could have possibly imagined it would. On the one hand this could be bad writing, but on the other hand… at least it got a reaction out of me? Maybe lots of people ended up #TeamJacob after New Moon because of how absolutely inane Edward’s behavior and choices are here?
The only way to find out is to keep going.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
IMDb While the cast has largely remained the same (though there’s a villain recasting here in Eclipse that brings Bryce Dallas Howard into the fold) and writer Melissa Rosenberg adapted Stephanie Meyer’s novels all the way through the entire film series, the directors have switched up in each installment so far, and Eclipse brings horror director David Slade into the mix. This is interesting because, for a series about vampires and werewolves, there’s been virtually zero horror elements to The Twilight Saga until this installment.
Slade seems to have been brought in to bring some of his 30 Days Of Night sensibilities into this wildly more violent entry in the series, featuring lots of vampires hunting and eating actual people, and full on war breaking out between a pack of villainous and bloodthirsty “newborns” who’re trying to eat Bella and the Cullens and Blacks who are temporarily aligned to… save Bella because that’s all that matters in these stories?
Honestly, it’s wild. If this were The Lord Of The Rings, Bella would be the One Ring. She’s just this high school girl who is wholly unremarkable, but around whom this entire fantasy world is constructed. I think this makes for juvenile storytelling, but it also accounts for why these were so wildly successful. Teens struggle with feeling like they’re on a stage for all the world to see; that they’re the main character in life. And here’s this entire epic series tapping into ancient myths and legends and featuring ancient traditions and cultures… all of which hangs on this 18 year old who is graduating college. Every single decision Bella makes or opinion she expresses has every other character wrapt in attention. All plot motivation is about protecting Bella, sacrificing for Bella, fighting a war and setting aside ancient grudges… for Bella.
I realize that thus far I’ve barely mentioned any of the villains or antagonists in my coverage of the previous films and that’s largely because of how uninteresting they are. Real vampires who eat real people show up and try to ruin the Cullen family’s weird vibe of having a human friend and ultimately a hunter/tracker vampire gets killed by the Cullens. His girlfriend, vampiress Victoria (Howard) now wants revenge, and she’s willing to “turn” a small army of “newborns” to hunt and kill Bella. This horror component is actually kind of cool as this series was wildly in need of a big brawl after 2 straight films of pining.
I like Eclipse a fair bit more than New Moon because the Edward vs. Jacob rivalry gets a lot more juicy when they’re both present and alpha-flexing and peeing on each others’ territories. I shit you not: At one point Bella is freezing her ass off in a tent at the top of the mountains serving as bait to draw this army of bloodthirsty newborns to her. And because Edward can’t warm her up (he’s a Cold One), good old Six-Pack Jacob needs to come in and warm her up because he’s “hotter than” Edward. So you’ve got this insane confrontation, in a little tent, between our rival suitors for Bella in which these guys are trading barbs and even bonding a little bit over their endless crushing on Bella and her neverending propensity to need to be protected.
By Eclipse, Bella and Edward are constantly talking about how Bella wants to be turned and how Jacob wants to marry her, and Meyer’s purity culture vibe gets dialed up to eleven as Bella and Edward end up with a night alone together (after her hilarious Dad Charlie has attempted to have “the talk” with Bella and she blurts out that she’s a virgin still) and Edward breaks out the Old Man Steve Rogers vibes and tells Bella all about how he intends to court her and preserve her purity for their marriage. He’s still also worried that if he tries to get down, he might end up eating her.
A friend mentioned a theory that perhaps when Edward was turned, his brain capacity kind of froze as that of a 17 year old’s. I like this theory because it explains why Edward’s janky and patriarchal-feeling chivalry remains possible even though this brother should have a century’s worth of wisdom stored up in him. Edward is constantly lying to Bella and manipulating things in order to
groomprotect her and it’s kind of creepy, not to mention that he never sleeps so he just… sits there and watches Bella sleep all the time? Look, what I’m trying to say is that I’m still finding myself pretty firmly #TeamJacob, even though I know that’s not going anywhere.We close with a whole-ass war having been fought over Bella just because a bad vampire wanted revenge on her. Jacob barely survives after suffering some grueling injuries and Edward and Bella kind of just leave Jacob’s injured ass and go ahead and get officially engaged at the close. I’m excited to hear the pitter patter of little vampire feet in these final films. (Yeah, I know there’s some kind of creepy vampire baby subplot because of all the internet memes about the weird looking baby). Maybe these final chapters will draw out some personality traits and dimensionality amongst our leads? A man can dream.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1 (2011)
IMDb What. The. Actual. Fuck.
I knew this series went buck wild, but this is some unhinged shit going on here. To quote world renowned detective Benoit Blanc “It makes no damn sense… compels me though”.
First off, kids: Don’t get married when you’re 18. And if you’re GOING to get married at 18, maybe don’t marry a vampire who’s going to hilariously ravage you on your wedding night to the point of the wedding bed becoming a shattered husk. THEN maybe don’t get vampire-pregnant with a baby that’s almost certainly going to murder you from the inside out. Just some life tips from Ole Uncle Ed, kay?
Breaking Dawn Part 1 wastes no time getting Bella and Edward hitched. It’s a largely sweet wedding sequence if you just ignore that Bella graduated from high school like last weekend. And if you ignore the fake-me-out nightmare Bella has about their wedding where the posh and evil Volturi crash and preside over a bloody affair. The Volturi only show up in this dream sequence so I HAVE to imagine they’ll actually play into the final chapter more, right?!
Then there’s the honeymoon. I’m telling you, this sequence is hysterical. It’s the most chaste and prudish wedding night sex montage of all time yet simultaneously leaves the bedroom in shambles. Bella’s a changed woman thanks to being deflowered, and both Edward and Bella make sure to awkwardly verbalize how this was the best night of their lives. But because Edward is like a walking talking chastity belt he won’t have sex with Bella anymore because he bruised her. Which she’s clearly stoked about.
But all that takes a back seat when Bella quickly and somewhat miraculously becomes vampire-pregnant. Breaking Dawn Part 1 kind of dragged until it got here. Then it is like “you wanna get nuts? Come on, let’s get nuts”! Rushing home to their vampire doctor clan leader, Bella is quickly withering away, but is determined to keep the baby. The Twilight Saga feels real purity culture adjacent and kind of pro-lifey for a series about monsters and star-crossed lovers. I also must say that the best visual effects in this entire series are the “withering away” effects they utilize for the pregnant and slowly-being-internally-eaten Bella. Kristen Stewart looks HUGELY unwell and it’s wholly convincing. The best “already bitten but not yet a zombie” makeup or visual effects in any other movie don’t hold a candle to how jacked Bella looks here.
For some reason all the werewolves REALLY need to kill this abomination baby and it threatens some character development for Jacob, who may actually rise up and rebel against his alpha in a shocking and rare plot development in this series that is only somewhat Bella adjacent. Eventually there’s this bizarre coalition of Jacob and a few of his pack that have peeled off with him holed up in Vampire Mansion along with the Cullens in order to keep the wolves from murdering Bella and her baby (which… again… is happening because… the baby is some kind of ancient treaty violation? Or because it’ll need to eat people in order to grow? Or something?).
I simply wasn’t prepared for where things were going to go with Jacob’s character arc. Like… the story seems to be FIRMLY sticking with this guy whom Bella has clearly rejected and who feels increasingly pathetic in his “protection” of Bella. But, friends, let’s talk about “imprinting”. All throughout these movies Jacob keeps telling Bella about how wolves imprint on one another and it’s like this supernatural “love at first sight” kind of biological experience. I assumed all along that Jacob was implying that he HAD imprinted on Bella, which is why he’s constantly a whiny child about how much he loves Bella and how she needs to choose him, etc. Nope. Couldn’t have been more wrong.
When Bella gives birth to this child, it essentially kills her. The vampire doctors had been planning a whole thing to transition her and save her life at the end of her pregnancy, so Edward is, like, shoving a syringe full of his “venom” directly into her heart Pulp Fiction style at one point and then he’s just biting her all over her body in a sequence that’s kind of more kinky than anything else in this entire sex-obsessed tale? But it doesn’t appear to work so now there’s a dead Bella and a vampire baby that everyone hates but will also sacrifice their life for?
Jacob literally wants to kill this baby and enters the house to full on murder it after having fought off all the wolves and maybe becoming a wolf king? This grown wolf man walks into the room, locks eyes with this child, and IMPRINTS ON A BABY! Through montage and sweeping music, we watch as Stephanie Meyer and Melissa Rosenberg show us why they’ve kept Jacob around in this narrative, and it’s frankly one of the most jaw dropping plot twists I’ve ever experienced in my life. What are we doing, folks? What are we doing? I don’t know, but I am PRIMED for this final chapter. I’ve been assured it is even MORE off the chain than this story, but in my wildest dreams up high I can’t even conceive of what is in store for me.
IMDb In a final (and great) shot, the camera hovers over Bella’s EXTREMELY dead (and convincing) body, zooming ever closer in until her undead amber eyes open up to reveal the newly reborn vampire queen. Yaaaaas.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 2 (2012)
IMDb We’ve come to the end of the road. But:
Darling, don’t be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more
Friends, if you’ve read this far with me, I offer you my gratitude. I’d also like to ask: Doesn’t it feel like we’ve gotten SO far away from public high school in Forks, Washington? So very far away. Indeed, Breaking Dawn Part 2 is a full on super hero / comic book splash page that has evolved out of a supernatural teen romance story. And honestly, it’s not half bad at being a superhero story.
To be clear, the visual effects of Breaking Dawn Part 2 take a catastrophic nosedive and are notably awful throughout the film. From half vampire baby Renesmee’s entire look on screen across her many stages of development (none convincing) to the big werewolf/vampire mega battles, it seems like either a time crunch or a budget crunch rendered this ambitious finale hamstrung, visually.
But, oh… what a wild tale.
Within mere moments of the start time of this final film (rightly and justifiably broken into two parts here, which is so often a mistake in other franchises) Jacob has already let Bella know that he’s… uh… uncontrollably imprinted and in love with her infant daughter. She rightfully throws his ass out of the house and screams something about how he’s already nicknamed her Nessie, after the Loch Ness Monster, before she’s even held her own daughter. I was rolling. Stephanie Meyer and Melissa Rosenberg, you’re wrong for that.
IMDb We do get a prolonged vampire sex sequence that feels like the ultimate consummation of the purity culture through line of this saga. Finally Edward and Bella are both undead immortals who can get. it. on. with little to no risk of death or damnation. Bella asks how they’re ever going to stop fucking now, because the vampire sex is that good. Edward indicates they’ll be rather continuously fucking for at least a decade or so, but don’t worry, Meyer’s story is too packed to the gills with plot twisting shenanigans for any further fooling around.
The main narrative thrust of this final chapter does indeed have to do with the evil overlords the Volturi and their rules for vampiredom. A relative of the Cullens reports the existence of Renesmee to the Volturi and there’s some pretty cool lore about how vampire children aren’t allowed because their mental acuity freezes at their young age so when they have temper tantrums they kill entire villages. Rad. But Renesmee isn’t a vampire; she’s got a heartbeat and blood pumping through her veins. So the Cullens go global to gather a great cloud of witnesses in order to attest to Renesmee’s vitality, while the Volturi gather an army to do what they’ve always done: wipe out troublesome vampire clans and maintain power and control.
Breaking Dawn Part 2 blows up the scope of the vampire world significantly, bringing in late-entry characters played by such notable actors as Lee Pace and Rami Malek as vampires recruited to the Cullen’s side of this battle. There’s even a sick scene with The Wire and Jack Ryan’s Wendall Pierce as some kind of broker who helps vampires out of sticky legal challenges? It’s this massive world building all the way at the end of the tale that kept reminding me we were sitting in a high school classroom with these characters like a year ago. My neck and my back hurt from all this narrative whiplash.
Everything builds to a massive battle in a snowy field that, while not visually excellent, or even well choreographed in any way, still managed to have my jaw on the floor. How is this film rated PG-13 when at least a dozen vampire decapitations happen in this climax? The climax has remarkable comic book logic setting up all kinds of little petty rivalries and slights between different clans of vampires and satisfying age old rivalry after rivalry ends in someone getting a head ripped off and a body burned (the only true way to kill a vampire). It’s a big old chess game of different vampires using their different powers. The Volturi have the scenery chewing Michael Sheen as Aro (a pretty almighty vampire and head of the Volturi), as well as Dakota Fanning’s Jane, who can just inflict horrible pain using her mind. Importantly we’ve also got Bella working her new powers of projecting her “shield” to others, and of course Alice plays a key role as the vampire who can sort of see the future.
IMDb It is Alice who provides the final, absolutely INSANE, wild swing in this saga. We watch a massive, comic book battle play out on screen with many of our Cullen clan and Black pack falling in battle, lost forever. We see the Volturi defeated before our eyes and Jacob and Renesmee hauling off to live a life of safety forever disconnected from their families. We see it all… and then it turns out Alice was just showing Aro what the future held if he didn’t back down from the battle. I didn’t see this coming for even one second, so I’m not even mad about it. This gives the movie an epic, if tragic, final battle that it can then renege in order to provide a happily ever after moment for just about every major character. We know it’s happily ever after for everyone, including a grown Renesmee and Jacob, because we see a final future projection of Alice’s. In the end, Edward and Bella’s love creates unity among the vampires and werewolves and staves off the evil overlords of the vampire world as well. Truly it was all always about Bella being the center of the universe and her love being the most important thing that has ever happened.
As I’ve noted, The Twilight Saga was never made for me or anyone like me, and that is totally great. I’m so glad there are geek properties out there that exist for all different kinds of demographics. But while I was never the intended audience for Stephanie Meyers’ tale, it’s been an absolute cinematic joy to observe this cultural phenomenon 15 years after the fact and just let this whole deal wash over me. I don’t think it is objectively good storytelling, or profoundly reveals anything about our humanity or our sexuality. But it is a global phenomenon that will absolutely live forever in pop culture, so it’s very worthy of comment and consideration. It struck a deep cord with teens and young women in its time and tapped into a romantic yearning and nerdy love for monsters that lots of people resonate with. I think Bella Swan is ultimately a bland character and the handling of her teen/forever loves is pedestrian at best. But the saga swings for the fences with its insane narrative twists and turns and succeeds as a jaw-dropper par excellence in the way that pulp paperbacks often do. I have no idea if I’ll ever revisit The Twilight Saga, but I’ll never regret the journey it took me on.
And I’m Out.
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The Trolls Hit the Road in Their Third Outing, TROLLS BAND TOGETHER
Trolls Band Together, the third film in the Trolls series (not counting various shorts and specials) returns us to the world of Trolls. Not big ugly trolls of folklore (that description actually more befits their pals, another race known as the “Bergens”), but cutesy, colorful, Trolls who love to sing and dance, based on the classic toy line. Yeah, they’re basically Smurfs with big hair.
Once again returning protagonists Poppy and Branch (Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake) are back, this time for what amounts to a “getting the band back together” road movie.
Branch wistfully remembers a shrouded past that he doesn’t like to talk about, remembering this brothers, who were incidentally also a boy band known as BroZone. The band broke up when he was still a child, and in the years since he never saw his brothers again. But that changes when one of them suddenly shows up with terrible news: their brother Floyd has been kidnapped and is being held captive by a brother-sister pop duo, Velvet and Veneer, who are physically leeching his powers to achieve stardom, a process that is also slowly killing him, and it’ll take all of the brothers working together to save him. And thus Branch and Poppy, along with their pal Tiny Diamond, set off on their newest adventure.
While Branch is reconnecting with his long-lost brothers, there’s also an unexpected surprise for Poppy: She, too, has a long-lost sibling. Objectively it’s a little absurd (suddenly, siblings!) but for kids’ fare, it’s fair game as a plot, and an exploration of what it means to be family.
There’s definitely a big “boy band” component to this story, so your mileage may vary wildly based on how much you love or hate them. I can appreciate that the humor’s handled in a way that’s self-aware and self-deprecating. For example, when a list of several of BroZone’s song titles is rattled off; all of them are repetitive variations of the same formulaic phrase.
So just to lay this out clearly: I am not a fan of these Trolls movies. At all. Which I suppose begs the question, why would I want to watch and review the newest one?
The answer is simple enough: my daughter likes these movies and if you’re reading this, maybe you have kids who like them too. And on that grading scale, Trolls Band Together works. It’s frequently funny, occasionally clever, and family appropriate (unlike, say, the Trolls Holiday Special where one of the trolls flashes his dick – no, seriously). The “road movie” angle is actually a huge blessing: the Trolls’ village is populated by a ton of gratingly annoying supporting characters who thankfully get to sit this one out for the most part, sidelined here in favor of several new faces.
The film does stand out in one particular way that I want to give it credit for. It’s not as pronounced as Puss in Boots: The Last Wish or the Spider-Verse movies, but the film does make some some cool animation choices that take it up a notch. The gang drives a bus of sorts (like many of the apparatuses of this world it’s a weird living creature), which features a fast travel mode. When the nitro is activated, things kick into a trippy, Yellow Submarine-esque hand-drawn animation. It’s visually wild and a fun addition.
The other animation aspect I really dug is the world of “Mount Rageous”, the home of antagonists Velvet and Veneer. The “Rageons” who populate this world are reminiscent of vintage 1930s spaghetti-limbed cartoons, but rendered in modern fashion. I love these character designs, and that’s something I would never have expected to say about a Trolls movie.
Its premise is thin, but the Trolls’ third outing is probably the best, thanks to its animation concepts and a family-oriented story that emphasizes forgiveness and love.
– A/V Out
