In Laman's Terms: The Simpsons And Its Era of Lengthy Couch Gags

Even if you've never seen an episode of The Simpsons, chances are you know the lengthy opening sequence that precedes most installments of the show. The show starts in the clouds before having the camera zoom through Springfield and resting on Bart writing up a phrase on the chalkboard. The opening sequence then follows each member of the Simpsons family before concluding with everyone meeting up at the house. As they arrive in the domicile, a "couch gag" occurs. Such a gag involves the five members of the Simpsons family trying to sit down on their couch but something goes wrong. It's a lengthy kick-off to an average Simpsons episode, but this set-up has proven to be one of the most iconic elements of the program.

Believe it or not, though, for a while there, these opening sequences were even longer! For nearly a decade of the program's history, there were extremely long couch gags that ate up airtime and attempted to give the show some "viral" moments. This is...The Era of Lengthy Couch Gags!

For nearly the entire first 20 years of The Simpsons, the show rigidly adhered to its opening sequence format. Shorter versions of this opening (which included just the chalkboard and couch gags or even just the latter element) would be implemented for many installments, but there was always something preceding the proper episode. The demands of cramming all the narrative demands of a traditional Simpsons episode meant that every second counted on this program. This necessitated that couch gags be short and to the point. Occasionally, slightly longer couch gags (like one involving the family doing a chorus line dance that transitions into a big Vegas-style production) would be implemented. However, these gags (largely limited to installments from seasons 3 and 4) were done out of necessity to boost up an episode that ran short. They weren't prepared as a showcase for unique artists or as homages to other programs. Plus, there was a cap on how long they ran. The thought of these gags going on for more than 60 seconds would've been incomprehensible in the era of 1990s television.

However, in March 2007, the episode "Homerazzi" broke viewer expectations by delivering a couch gag that wasn't confined to just the house of The Simpsons. This gag followed a single-cell organism version of Homer Simpson navigating the entire process of evolution. Various Springfieldianites were rendered as dinosaurs, possums, fish, and other critters. The entire sequence culminated with Homer arriving on the couch with the rest of his family, causing Marge to inquire "what took you so long?" Running 70 seconds, the couch gag redefined the visual and length possibilities of this staple of The Simpsons. There's never been official word on why the crew behind the show suddenly decided to go in this expansive direction with the couch gag after so many years. 

One possibility, though, is The Simpsons Movie. "Homerazzi" debuted just four months before that theatrical release. Perhaps the artists and writers behind The Simpsons were getting so jazzed with the creative possibilities of making a movie that they looked to bring some of that audacity to the small screen. Whatever the reason, a new world of possibilities opened up just in time for a new decade of the show's history. The Simpsons was about to enter its 20s, not to mention the world of high-def animation. With these events on the horizon, lengthier variations on the couch gag were about to become a lot more common. The first HD episode of The Simpsons ("Take My Life, Please) featured a 47-second long couch gag that saw the titular family chasing their couch all across the world and even into outer space. The second-ever HD episode, "How the Test Was Won," would contain a similarly lengthy couch gag depicting the Simpsons family strolling through a series of iconic sitcom backdrops.

Initially, these longer-form couch gags had their uniqueness defined by their expansive scope. The Simpsons no longer just encountered strange events in their living room. Their couch gag exploits could take them to any TV show or country. However, the era of the lengthy couch gag would soon be defined by two key elements: participation by outside artists and attempts to go "viral". Both of these elements could be seen in the entire opening sequence of the 2010 episode "To Surveil With Love," which saw the denizens of Springfield lip-syncing to the Ke$ha tune "Tik Tok." Combining an incredibly popular song/person with The Simpsons was clearly a move on the part of the producers to get some extra eyeballs on the show. This was the age of "going viral" on YouTube, after all. Programs like Saturday Night Live and Jimmy Kimmel Live were already having great success in the late 2000s with standalone shorts and segments that took on another life online. The pre-episode segments of The Simpsons were ample territory for this show to create its own equivalent to "Dick in a Box" or "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck."

Having broken the seal of using the opening sequence of this show as a way to cross-promote with other artists, the couch gags began to take on a whole new lengthy life of their own. In October 2010, the episode "MoneyBART" took these possibilities to dark places by having Banksy (then at the height of his fame) draw up an opening sequence depicting sweatshop workers making Simpsons episodes, merchandise, and DVDS in deplorable conditions. Where are these workers located? Within the 20th Century Fox logo, of course! It was a really subversive piece of material that smuggled biting commentary on the conditions that produce escapist American entertainment within a mainstream sitcom episode. 

Later lengthy couch gags would bring in other guest artists to give the Simpsons world a unique visual spin, with folks ranging from Bill Plympton to Eric Goldberg to Don Hertzfeldt all delivering couch gags that could only have come from their brains. Meanwhile, in April 2013, an additional new precedent for lengthy couch gags was set when the episode "What Animated Women Want" featured a quasi-crossover with Breaking Bad. This segment opened the door for later couch gags like a 2015 segment that saw Rick and Morty (literally) crash-landing onto the Simpsons family. A pair of later couch gags would also make use of the world and animation style of Robot Chicken. Let's also not forget the season 28 premiere that featured a couch gag based on the opening to Adventure Time, complete with vocals from that show's creator, Pendelton Ward. 

These lengthy couch gags allowed The Simpsons to inhabit new visual styles and even mediums of animation (like stop-motion). These attributes lent some exciting artistic virtues to such segments. Meanwhile, FOX and the producers had to be happy with the hefty YouTube viewcounts for couch gags that attracted the Rick & Morty, Ke$ha, or Breaking Bad fanbases. Bizarrely, they were attached to episodes that were often downright forgettable. After experiencing a brief creative resurgence in the initial years after the show switched over to high-definition, The Simpsons went into a creative rut in the mid-2010s (save for episodes that were executive-produced by Matt Selman). Installments like "A Test Before Trying", "YOLO," or "Luca$" felt like the creations of writers keeping a show alive out of obligation, not creative fervor. While the couch gags suggested The Simpsons could be anything, the episodes themselves were largely lifeless.

By the end of the 2010s, the lengthier couch gags began to whittle down in presence. Occasionally more ambitious segments (like a parody of the opening of Succession or the Simpsons family members portraying Queen performing their 1985 Live Aid concert) would emerge, but the couch gags were becoming briefer again. The age of "going viral" had changed significantly in just a decade, with TikTok now being the main platform to go viral on rather than YouTube. The lengthy couch gags actually clashed with the short-form videos most popular on TikTok. This diminished their importance on a financial or exposure level. Meanwhile, it was more difficult than ever, even just in the span of a few years, to come up with concepts for eye-catching crossovers with other shows. The age of "Peak TV" meant there was more programming out there than ever before. It was hard to figure out a pop culture-defining program (like Breaking Bad, for instance) that the Simpsons family could rub shoulders with in a couch gag that would immediately make the internet go crazy. Would an Ozark-themed couch gag really set the world on fire?

There's also the simple fact that the current version of The Simpsons has bigger fish to fry. In a 2023 Vulture interview about the creative resurgence of this sitcom, showrunner Matt Selman observed that an average Simpsons episode now has as much effort put into it as the typical "Treehouse of Horror" installment. With modern Simpsons outings engaging in more unconventional narrative structures and plotlines, all the creative juice isn't just going into the couch gags. Heck, for season 34, seven episodes (to date) have eschewed the entire Simpsons opening sequence, including the couch gag! We're now living in a radically different era of Simpsons storytelling, which means the era of lengthy couch gags has been put into storage (or wherever you put old couches...a nice farm upstate?)

Love Lies Bleeding is a Grimy Treat for Chaotic Gays and Crime Movie Buffs Alike

We stare at our flesh every day. We obsess over every bump, bruise, curve, and anything else on our bodies ceaselessly. Meanwhile, we fixate over the bodies of others we’re attracted to. Their noses, their lips, their arms, they fill our lovesick imaginations with yearning. Whether it's our own fleshy vessels or somebody else's, the human body is always on one's mind in very exaggerated terms. We tend to see our own bodies as hideous while lionizing the bodies of others as aspirational or romantically desirable. Like David Cronenberg and Julia Ducournau before her, writer/director Rose Glass understands this fascination to a tee and that’s why the filmmaking of Love Lies Bleeding is so exceptional. This universal fascination, not to mention the heightened ways we all examine bodies, is filtered in creative musclebound terms throughout this deeply transfixing feature.

Taking place in New Mexico in the 1990s, Lou (Kristen Stewart) is a gym manager who finds herself deeply attracted to bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O'Brian). As we see the two lock eyes for the first time, Glass and cinematographer Ben Fordesman establish the visual motifs of Love Lies Bleeding. Close-up shots of bulging muscles fill the screen as other gym inhabitants jump rope, do lifts with their dumbbells, and push their bodies to the limits. Jackie, it turns out, wants to win a bodybuilding competition more than anything else in the world. Before we even learn this trait about the character, Glass and Fordesman plunge us into her point of view by covering the silver screen in intimate shots of muscular folks pumping iron. Pain and sweat looms large over Jackie's mind. No wonder those elements deeply inform the focus of Love Lies Bleeding's camera in its earliest scenes.

Those striking shots establish the visual norms of a rollicking dark ride of a movie that creates such incredible imagery out of a fascination with the human body. Many of those images come from Lou and Jackie's most physically intimate scenes together. The duo's initial sexual encounters are covered in bright red lighting that perfectly communicates the sense of passion they feel exploring each other's bodies. Better yet, their actions together are deeply idiosyncratic rather than derivative of other cinematic depictions of two women boning. I love the very specific examples of physical passion (like Lou nibbling on Jackie's toes) that emerge when they're lounging together. These small moments of human behavior lend such specificity to Jackie and Lou's relationship.

Of course, Love Lies Bleeding isn't just about dykes boning each other in cramped bedrooms (though that would be a fine movie too!) The script by Glass and Weronika Tofilska radiates plenty of dark tension from the get-go. Lou is running from a traumatic past stemming from her father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), while Jackie's determination to be the best bodybuilder around (aided by her increasing dependence on steroids) brings out some of her most violent tendencies. The level of torment these two have to deal with never seems to end, though for the sake of spoilers, let's leave things vague as to how that torment escalates. Put simply, Love Lies Bleeding is just a fantastically entertaining crime thriller. It does exactly what an entry into this genre should: keep you on the edge of your seat and leave viewers recoiling at the nastiness on the screen.

Fordesman's cinematography perfectly leans into the visual norms of noirs with memorable shots of darkened roads or people in black voids illuminated only by bright red lighting (a previously sensual color in Love Lies Bleeding warped into something ominous). Imagine the vibes and imagery of Blood, Simply mixed in with chaotic bursts of dark humor. The images of Love Lies Bleeding are incredibly striking and they're made all the more remarkable thanks to the assured directing of Rose Glass. She realizes the complicated tone of the proceedings with so much confidence. Love Lies Bleeding can go from genuinely sweet to erotic to unnerving to darkly comical with all the assuredness of a musclebound bodybuilder benching 200 pounds of iron. On paper, the unpredictable tone should render the feature an erratic mess. Instead, adhering to so many cinematic flavors just gives one more bang for their ticket money.

Anchoring the feature is Katy O'Brian as Jackie, who delivers the first major star-making turn in the pantheon of 2024 cinema. O'Brian subverts cinematic norms for how beefy women are "supposed" to behave by portraying Jackie with such endearing genuine affection for Lou. The way she portrays Jackie adorably asking Lou if she's coming to her bodybuilder competitions is just so darn sweet. O'Brian handles the romantic side of Jackie so well that it makes her adeptness at capturing this character's darker shades all the more impactful. Playing opposite O'Brian is Kristen Stewart, who proves especially great here with exquisitely executed comic line deliveries. Two especially hysterical moments in the third act hinge on Stewart delivering conceptually "normal" phrases (one of which consists of a solitary word) in the most bizarre scenarios. Her timing in these two line deliveries is utter perfection and demonstrates how precise Stewart is as a performer.

We're obsessed with our bodies. Chances are, if you like movies with striking visuals and unhinged lesbians like I do, you'll also be obsessed with Love Lies Bleeding. Go forth, reader, and experience what the big screen was made for: messy queer women being gay and doing crime.

Addendum: Composer Clint Mansell (a man most famous for his frequent collaborations with director Darren Aronofsky) has been a bit on autopilot in his film score assignments in recent years. I can't remember any distinctive qualities of his scores for Sharper, Mute, and In the Earth, while his orchestral work on Peacemaker (which he did with fellow composer Kevin Kiner) failed to really stand out against that show's hair metal soundtrack. However, Mansell delivers possibly his strongest work ever as a film composer with his magnificent Love Lies Bleeding score, which just oozes personality and ominous vibes. The most intense scenes of this movie are given further jolts of life thanks to Mansell's compositions, which ride a nice balance between evoking a 1980s setting without letting those influences totally define the personality of his tracks. 

Second Addendum: In Love Lies Bleeding, Anna Baryshnikov plays the lovesick and manipulative queer lady Daisy. At one point, Baryshnikov portrays a giddy Daisy sitting in a diner booth and just rapidly tapping her nails on the table. It's a burst of distinctive human behavior I'll never be able to forget, she's so good in this role.

In Laman's Terms: How Long Can Netflix Keep Up Its Oscars Pursuit?

Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos after being told Netflix will totally finally win a major Oscar at the 96th Academy Awards

Back in November 2015, Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that his greatest dream in the entertainment industry was to have an Oscar winner "thank Netflix" on stage. This comment came a month after Netflix released its first original narrative film, Beasts of No Nation. Two years later, Vanity Fair reported that Sarandos was keen on using lots and lots of Netflix money to pursue Oscars. This streamer was looking for validation in the film industry through Oscar wins, with their moves inspiring headlines like the June 2017 IndieWire piece "Netflix's Next Big Move? Hacking the Oscars" and a February 2019 New York Times piece entitled "In Bid to Conquer Oscars, Netflix Mobilizes Savvy Campaigner and Huge Budget". 

For a moment, it looked like Netflix might become the new powerhouse in the award season landscape. Studios eschewing mid-budget and adult-skewing features in the mid-2010s gave Netflix an easy in to attracting filmmakers boiling down to "we'll make the movies Warner Bros./Paramount/Disney etc. won't make anymore." This is how Netflix ended up with a 2019 award season slate anchored by new Martin Scorsese, Noah Baumbach, Mati Diop, and Fernando Meirelles movies. The COVID-19 pandemic shutting down theaters and forcing everyone to their choices for most of 2020 and 2021 suggested that Netflix might've become the master of the Oscars for the foreseeable future by default.

Cut to the 96th Academy Awards in March 2024 and Netlfix only took home one Oscar win (for Best Live-Action Short for The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) from its 17 nominations. This mirrors the situation at the 94th Academy Awards two years ago when Netflix also won a solitary Oscar (for Best Director for Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog), though that year the streamer had 27 nominations in the mix. This lack of major Oscar wins is something that begs the question...how long can Netflix keep up its costly Oscar pursuits?

Netflix scored its first Oscar nomination back at the 86th Academy Awards (recognizing the best of 2014 cinema) for The Square, a documentary hailing from Egypt told largely in Egyptian Arabic. In hindsight, this nomination is intriguing partially because this ceremony occurred the same year Netflix started releasing original narrative motion pictures. However, starting Netflix's Oscar career with a foreign-language documentary also reflected the kinds of movies and pop culture Netflix has helped to make more mainstream in the last decade. The rise in popularity of foreign-language television shows and documentaries in recent years has been widely attributed to Netflix and other streamers making those projects more accessible to the general public. It's only fitting that the presence of Netflix at the Oscars would begin with a production that fits into both of those molds.

While Netflix quickly became an Oscar fixture in the Best Documentary feature camp (it even scored two nods in that category at the 88th Academy Awards in 2017), getting into the biggest categories at the ceremony was a lot trickier. Only on Netflix's fourth go-round in the award season circuit (for the 2018-2019 season) did the streamer break into the Best Director and Best Picture categories (with Roma). Netflix hasn't lost its grip on the most high-profile Oscar categories in terms of nominations since it broke through. The streamer is now going on six consecutive years of Best Picture nominations and had a four-year Best Director nomination streak that included two wins in the category (though the streamer has been shut out of the category during the last two ceremonies). In the acting categories, Netflix has proven quite skilled at garnering nominations, with 25% of the acting nominees at the 96th Academy Awards belonging to Netflix movie performances. 

Looking over the history of Netflix's Oscar nominations, though, it's shocking how few awards the streamer has managed to actually win over the years. Netflix's spending on award season campaigning is infamous at this point, yet it hasn't yielded many big victories. There are no Best Picture winners in the Netflix library. Only one acting Oscar (for Best Supporting Actress for Laura Dern in Marriage Story) has ever been won by the streamer. Netflix has failed to secure any victories in either of the two Screenplay categories. Best Original Song, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, all these Oscars have eluded Netflix. Meanwhile, companies with way less money to spend (like A24) have been churning out modern Oscar darlings like Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Zone of Interest.

Netflix hasn't been a total bust at the Oscars (it scored seven wins at the Oscars last year across several different categories), but it's clear Netflix hasn't become a titan of the award show. The streamer's struggles to break into the Oscars are a microcosm of how Netflix's original film division just isn't nearly as successful or game-changing as its TV operation. When Netflix started dropping TV shows all at once in a binge-model format, the entire game changed. Meanwhile, Netflix's release strategy of debuting movies on its platform (after maybe two weeks of theatrical play in 30-ish theaters) with no promotion hasn't really become a widely imitated approach. On the contrary, Amazon MGM Studios and Apple TV+ are now embracing theatrical releases as a way to get on people's radar.

Netflix's eschewing of theaters may make Sarandos and other Silicon Valley types feel like "disruptors", but it's clearly hurting their movie operation on many fronts. Netflix can never be home to a big visually lavish spectacle like Dune: Part Two, nor could it ever house slow-burn arthouse hits like Parasite and Poor Things. Plopping movies of all stripes and sizes into an algorithm slush makes it impossible to find those titles or ensure they have a pop culture lifespan longer than an afternoon. This problem undoubtedly is hurting Netflix's chances at the Oscars*. The streamer has the money to get its movies on the radar of Oscar voters, as seen by the 17 nominations it secured this year. However, the company's films don't leave as much of an impact as titles like Oppenheimer or Everything Everywhere All at Once that flourish on the big screen. It's easy to see who will win in the duel between a movie you can watch on an app and a movie you can experience on an IMAX 70mm screen. Plus, Netflix's dedication to releasing as much "content" (God, I hate that word) as possible means that it's hard for individual titles to stand out. May December was one of 2023's best movies. It also could've secured more than one Oscar nod if Netflix's awards team didn't have to divvy up its attention across so many movies.

Anyone with eyes can see that Netflix's movie operation is clearly not working to a comical degree. Sarandos can brag about the supposedly "massive" viewership audience of these original titles all he wants. It doesn't mean anyone in the real world is talking or cares about Rebel Moon. Even the Nielsen viewership chart for the most-watched streaming movies of 2023 reflects this reality, with Netflix only score one slot in the top ten most-watched streaming movies of 2023. Coming in at number ten (behind nine movies that all played in normal theatrical releases first before they went to streaming) was Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, a sequel to a theatrical release film. Given the company's lack of pay transparency, infamously bad labor practices, contempt for the livelihood of movie theaters (and more importantly, all the working-class people whose paychecks depend on those locations), normalization of subpar cinematography standards, and support of transphobic comedians, it's hard not to relish Netflix's struggles both at the Oscars and in the original film space. Once again, tech bros are figuring out that they can't just buy being an artist or talented. Turns out throwing lots of money at the wall can't suddenly turn your studio into Janus Films. Who knew?

Something that fascinates me, though, is that Netflix's future may hinge less on Oscars. I'm sure Sarandos is still harboring his desire to get up on that Oscar stage someday, but Netflix's recent company changes indicate a tweak in its media priorities. Scoring a $5 billion deal to be the home for WWE Raw for ten years already had folks questioning how much money the streamer will be putting into original movies in the future. Then there was the news last week that Netflix will be airing its first-ever live boxing match (between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson). One can expect such star-studded boxing matches to factor heavily into Netflix programming in the future, which will eat away more at the company's finances. When you start seeing Jake Paul programming on Netflix, it's a clear sign that the company is moving away from the days of Atlantics.

Then there's the hiring of Dan Lin as the new head of Netflix's film division, replacing Scott Stuber. Before coming to Netflix, Stuber was one of the leaders of Universal Pictures before becoming a go-to producer at the studio behind Minions. Stuber's hiring indicated Netflix wanted to create partnerships with the sort of prolific and even award season-friendly filmmakers that Stuber always rubbed shoulders with at Universal. Lin, meanwhile, is a producer known for branded genre fare, like the Sherlock Holmes, LEGO, and It movies. Netflix clearly wants Lin to work his magic at elevating the streamer's genre movies from The Gray Man and Heart of Stone to something more resembling Lin hits like The LEGO Movie. Save for producing The Two Popes, Lin isn't well-versed in award-season titans, suggesting that his time at Netflix will be more about mainstream cinema and less about Andrew Dominik's Blonde.

Of course, Netflix may have already been shifting away from the days of Roma/All Quiet on the Western Front/The Power of the Dog long before Dan Lin got hired. As of this writing, Netflix's 2024 slate doesn't have a lot of major dramas that conceptually seem like they could be Oscar fodder beyond The Piano Lesson (the streamer's newest Noah Baumbach and Guillermo del Toro movies won't be ready until 2025). Granted, Netflix purchasing a trio of major films at the 2023 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival does suggest the streamer could eventually buy up a big 2024 Cannes or TIFF title that takes them to the 97th Academy Awards. However, for now, it does look like Netflix's future in its tormented original films division may not be just focused on securing Oscar glory. The middling viewership numbers for Netflix 2023 award season contenders like Maestro, Pain Hustlers, and Fair Play are almost certainly giving the streamer further incentive to focus its cinematic exploits.  Sorry Ted Sarandos, you'll have to wait (possibly forever) to hear someone thank Netflix in a Best Picture acceptance speech.

* Yes, CODA won the Best Picture Oscar after eschewing a traditional theatrical release. It launched in the wonky year of 2021, when theatrical release patterns were still in flux. Plus, Apple TV+ has switched over to prioritizing theatrical runs.

In Laman's Terms: The Recent Dune Reboots That Never Happened

OK, now imagine this image came from a Dune movie directed by the Taken guy and it's Alex Pettyfer and Adelaide Kane playing Paul and Chani, respectively 

Today, the modern Dune movies have become as synonymous with director Denis Villeneuve as the Dark Knight trilogy was intertwined with Christopher Nolan or Barbie is with Greta Gerwig. It’s not just that Villeneuve pulled off this adaptation that seemed impossible, but like Nolan and Gerwig, he delivered a big-budget blockbuster that also felt like it could only come from the mind of one particular auteur. In the wake of Villeneuve’s increasingly famous take on the Dune mythology in cinema, it’s easy to sometimes forget about the other filmed adaptations of Dune, like David Lynch’s 1984 movie or that Syfy miniseries at the dawn of the 21^st century.

Even beyond those two pre-2021 projects, though, Hollywood has also tried gallantly many times to turn this project into a big blockbuster. Of course, turning Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi text into a cohesive movie is not an easy task…just ask Alejandro Jodorowsky! In the 21^st century, countless studios tried their hand at turning Dune into a motion picture before Villeneuve finally cracked the code and got this production off the ground. Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya turned out to be perfect choices to anchor Dune…but how else could a modern-day Dune movie have looked? What other ambitions for a Dune feature were once set to flow into movie theaters?

The Earliest 21^st Century Stabs at “Dune” Movies

At the very end of 2007, news broke on the prospect of Dune finally riding back into movie theaters more than two decades after Lynch's Dune movie debuted. For context on how long ago this was, the FirstShowing news piece about this development begins with the writer noting that they'd rather be exploring their new HD DVD player than writing up news about a 21^st century Dune adaptation! This version of the text was supposed to be directed by Peter Berg, with the filmmaker describing himself as a massive fan of the book who planned to make a spectacularly expansive adaptation of the source material. At the time, Berg’s inaugural foray into big-budget blockbuster cinema (Hancock) was still months away from release, so it was still unclear to the general public if the man behind Friday Night Lights could handle a VFX-heavy feature.

By March 2008, Berg was officially onboard as the director and the project had a studio home: Paramount Pictures. While Universal Pictures had released the original Lynch Dune, Paramount was now eagerly holding onto Berg’s Dune as a movie that could keep up the studio’s blockbuster movie momentum. Thanks to deals and purchases it had made with outfits like Marvel Studios and DreamWorks SKG, Paramount was riding high in the late 2000s on projects like Transformers, Iron Man, and others. Paramount wanted to keep the good box office times rolling and that meant taking a chance on adapting a source material others may have found impenetrable.  By October 2009, though, Berg had departed the project due to disagreements over budget with Paramount (who wanted to keep costs under $175 million). At the time, the two candidates Paramount was most eagerly eyeballing to take over the proceedings were Neill Blomkamp and Neil Marshall, the former of whom had just helmed the lucrative Distinct 9.

In the wake of Berg’s departure came inarguably the darker period of development for a modern-day Dune reboot: the moment Pierre Morel was slated to direct the feature. Interestingly, Morel and final Dune director Denis Villeneuve are both of French ancestry (the former being purely French, the other being French-Canadian), but the two filmmakers couldn't be more different otherwise. Morel got big in the late 2000s after helming Taken, a project that not only catapulted Liam Neeson to action movie stardom but also put this EuropaCorp veteran on the radar of all Hollywood studios. Well-known for his action films that emphasize dim lighting, “gritty” realism, and sloppy editing, Morel made sense to direct Dune from a cynical studio executive perspective (“Taken made money! Dune from the Taken guy will also make money!”) It was an incoherent choice from all other perspectives.

The Demise of This Original “Dune” Movie

By the end of 2010, things were already looking slippery for this new iteration of Dune once Morel was approached to direct a proposed blockbuster movie adaptation of Ouija. This filmmaker clearly wasn’t narrowing his focus solely on Arrakis. This made it no surprise that Paramount flat-out abandoned the project by March 2011, despite spending four years trying to make a modern-day Dune blockbuster work. At the time, it was revealed that Paramount's grip on the film rights to Dune had expired and that there was initially potential interest in taking pieces of this Dune movie to another studio movie. However, the prospects for a Dune resurrection were considered bleak even back in 2011.

In hindsight, the loss of those rights can be chalked up to Paramount going through an incredibly turbulent time at the dawn of the 2010s that would spell doom for the studio for much of the ensuing decade. Though Paramount loomed large over all other studios at the domestic box office in 2011, it had alienated many of the players behind its biggest hits. Paranormal Activity 3 producer Jason Blum had a movie deal at Universal Pictures. DreamWorks SKG had moved over to Disney/Touchstone Pictures. The Mouse House had also bought up Marvel Studios, which supplied two big hits for Paramount in 2011. If Paramount circa. 2011 couldn’t keep these massive titans on the studio lot, what hope did an oddball property like Dune have of sticking around at the label?

It also didn’t help that Dune was clearly a property Paramount first got attached to in 2007 because of the biggest hits of the early 2000s. Even as late as 2007, features trying to replicate the success of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings were common. Every studio wanted to reach into the past for a beloved series of books that could be translated into a lucrative saga of blockbusters. Paramount totally saw Dune as its key to getting in on the Lord of the Rings action. By March 2011, though, Hollywood’s priorities shifted to making Twilight knock-offs (And would morph once again a year later into producing pastiches of The Hunger Games). Dune no longer fit the mold of the default blockbusters Hollywood wanted to mimic, which likely made it easy for Paramount to say goodbye to the property.

It would take nearly six years after Paramount’s Dune movie fell apart for Legendary Pictures to secure the film rights to this text and pave the road for the Villeneuve’s version of the property. In the years in between, there was nary a whisper of other potential Dune reboots, with the density of this source material likely petrifying financiers from giving this property another chance on the big screen. All that waiting around turned out to be the right move given all the acclaim that’s greeted Villeneuve’s Dune. Plus, taking things slow and steady with this property saved the world from witnessing visions of Dune from the directors of Hancock and Taken!

In Laman's Terms: Hugh Jackman's Musical Opening Is Still One of the Best Oscars Moments of the 21st Century

The opening segment of the Academy Awards is often tough to crack, but some years, it feels like the people behind this show aren’t even trying. This is particularly true in the modern world (read: 21^st-century Oscar ceremonies), where the Academy Awards often seem negatively daunted by the legacy of this show. This means that the people behind this program produce opening sequences that just seem either too derivative of the past or too quick to leap into weird mean-spirited meta-commentary. The latter phenomenon could be seen in all the cursed musical numbers from host Seth MacFarlane that kicked off the 85th Academy Awards, while the 83rd Academy Awards saw hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco strolling through famous 2010 movies like they were the second coming of Billy Crystal.

Even more restrained stabs at reimagining how the Oscars can start end up going nowhere interesting. Just look at the 93rd Academy Awards, which began with a lengthy shot of Regina King just walking through Union Station and to the program's stage. Where’s the pizzazz and imagination in all of these sequences? What material is being served up right away to the viewer that’ll keep them glued to the screen for the three-hour spectacle that is to come? Thankfully, there is one Oscar ceremony that knew how to kick things off perfectly. Hugh Jackman's hysterical opening musical number from the 81st Academy Awards in February 2009 was a thing to behold...and a masterwork in how to begin an Oscars ceremony just right!

What Was Hugh Jackman’s Oscar Opening Segment?

Given that Hugh Jackman’s famous for his exploits in the world of live musical theater, it’s no surprise that he’d kick off his gig as a live entertainer at the Academy Awards with a song-and-dance routine. In an inspired move, though, the song that kicked off the 81^st Academy Awards was informed by real-world tragedies happening outside the Kodak Theatre. The 2008 economic recession had hit America devastatingly hard in the months directly preceding this show., Jobs had been lost. Budgets were tighter than ever. Unemployment was skyrocketing. Done poorly, the 81^st Academy Awards making jokes related to this economic crisis could’ve been tone-deaf and staggeringly miscalculated.

Shockingly, though, Jackman didn’t crumble under the pressure. Instead, he was at the center of an inspired musical number that saw him putting together cardboard props and raggedy sets under a “tight budget” inspired by the recession. The result was a set-piece that wasn’t ignorant of the hardships of reality but also didn’t trivialize them. Plus, the concept of a “low-budget” Oscars opening ceremony led to ingenious visual gags (like a series of crude dolls used to represent Benjamin Button at various stages of his life) that were unlike anything else in the history of the Oscars. This wasn’t a musical ditty that felt like it was retreading past ground, this was something fresh that could only have existed circa. January 2009.

The writing of the musical number was also incredibly solid, a trick accomplished by the murderer’s row of outstanding writers assembled for this piece (including Ben Schwartz and Dan Harmon!) Many award show musical numbers are cute, but have lyrics that rarely rise above that level. Jackman’s song was actually hilarious, particularly the verse where he talks about how “I haven’t seen The Reader,” an inspired way to get around talking about such a dark movie in a bubbly musical number. Actual wit abounded in this tune on so many fronts and made it something you could hum and titter at in equal measures.

Best of all, it was a musical number that reflected a passion for the movies nominated that year. The cardboard props were meant to reflect the economic realities of early 2009, but they also reflected a ramshackle endearing love for cinema reminiscent of the “Sweded” movies in Be King Rewind or the “series finale” at the center of Brigsby Bear. When you don’t have infinite studio resources at your disposal, passion can carry a low-budget endeavor. That kind of passion came through at the opening of 81^st Academy Awards, which suggested that a love for movies would endure no matter what economic restrictions were in place. Having Jackman finish off the number by belting out passionate long notes about how he’s, in many ways, all of these Oscar-nominated movies (aren’t we all?) was a great capper to the song that conveyed so much enthusiasm for the films this program was recognizing. Compare that to the detached Jo Koy or Ricky Gervais monologues that kicked off modern Golden Globes ceremonies, for instance, and it becomes clear which of these entertainers knows how to star in an award show.

Hugh Jackman Never Returning to the Oscars is a Good Thing

Not only have future Oscars failed to deliver opening numbers equally enjoyable, but this is also, to date, the only appearance of Jackman as a host at this award show. Jackman didn’t run the goodwill generated from his 81^st Academy Awards appearance into the ground with endless further hosting gigs that tried to replicate the lightning-in-a-bottle success he got the first time around. Instead, Jackman’s Oscar hosting stint seems to have been a one-and-done affair. Some years, when the Oscars are really lacking energy, it’s easy to wish Jackman would come back and spruce things up again. However, in the grand scheme of things, it’s good that Jackman didn’t overstay his welcome or tarnish the memory of this exquisite Oscar opener.

It’s also become even easier to appreciate in hindsight how deftly Jackman and the crew behind the 81^st Academy Awards managed to reflect the inescapable brutalities of reality in the middle of a bubbly awards show. You don’t want to capsize the zippy atmosphere of the Oscars, but also, it’s foolish if you don’t acknowledge the harsh realities viewers themselves can’t escape. That’s a tough balance to walk, but subsequent Oscar ceremonies have often eschewed even trying to execute that balance! Most egregiously, the 93^rd Academy Awards presented an Oscars that acted like the world didn’t shut down because of COVID-19 13 months prior. Nobody on-camera ever wore face masks, while the Academy instituted a strict policy forbidding actors from accepting awards virtually.

In hindsight, such mandates were clearly made to just make the Oscars look “normal” for viewers and advertisers. In execution, all they did was make the Academy Awards feel creepily detached from the realities of living in the middle of a health crisis that had taken countless lives. Such gross miscalculations make the miracle of Jackman’s 81^st Academy Awards opening number all the easier to appreciate. This performer and the show’s writers didn’t run from real-world topics that could be considered “buzzkills”, they ran towards them and found inspired idiosyncratic sources of humor in the process. Leaning into “unpleasant” real-world events only made the 81^st Academy Awards opening number more entertaining, not less!

Jackman's performance is even easier to appreciate thanks to subsequent Oscar hosts, who haven't come anywhere close to his level of showmanship or sense of fun. Not everyone who’s hosted the Oscars since Jackman has been a dud, but folks like Seth MacFarlane and James Franco certainly solidified themselves as all-time bad hosts. Meanwhile, folks like Neil Patrick Harris disappointed compared to the potential they carried while someone like Jimmy Kimmel (who’s gearing up for his fourth hosting gig across eight ceremonies) is a painless presence but he's not really memorable as a host unless he’s skewering Matt Damon (a gag he carried over from his late-night show). Hugh Jackman’s work would’ve been exceptional under any circumstances, but subsequent underwhelming Oscar hosts make his virtues as an entertainer easier than ever to appreciate.

Hugh Jackman’s 83^rd Academy Awards Opener Was Truly a Golden Moment

Subsequent Oscar ceremonies have inundated audiences with snark, endless homages to past Oscar hosts, and Amy Schumer. These negative qualities have often been so unpleasant to watch that they make one yearn for the Academy Awards to ditch hosts altogether! Hugh Jackman’s work kicking off the 83^rd Academy Awards, though, showed off how good an Oscar host can be. These figures can come into this award show and get the ball rolling with lots of razzle-dazzle, wit, and an infectious love for movies that reminds us all why we tune into this ceremony year after year. The dismal track record of post-2009 Oscar hosts suggests those qualities may be sparse in modern entertainers, but at least we all got to feel them once more when Jackman belted out his opening number.

Since this 2009 Oscars stint, Jackman’s gone on to play Wolverine a further six times (a seventh is on the way with Deadpool & Wolverine), headlined movies like Bad Education, and starred in various stage and movie musicals. He’s done a lot of interesting work…but this 83^rd Academy Awards opening number may be his greatest work as a performer in show business. Not only did Jackman have the chops and great writers to execute a winning opening musical number, but that year’s bevy of Oscar-nominated films provided ample material for great visual gags. It was the perfect confluence of events that resulted in an Oscar opening number like no other…and one we’re unlikely to see replicated in effectiveness anytime soon.

Dune: Part Two Lets the Spice and Great Filmmaking Flow

Back in March and April 2020, I'd awaken in the morning and just lie there, considering the way the COVID-19 pandemic was impacting everything in the world. Being who I am, I also considered whether or not movie theaters would ever reopen and if they did, would there be wonderful films still playing in those cinematic cathedrals? Was everything just going to get sent to the Netflix algorithm black hole? Would filmmakers have any more inclinations to make big grand swings in the realm of filmmaking? Such queries left me overwhelmed under the covers in those unpredictable months. Cut to 2024 and I got to watch Dune: Part Two on a massive IMAX screen. While certainly nowhere near the best new release movie I've seen since the pandemic shut down theaters (that honor goes to Drive My Car), Dune: Part Two is one of the most reassuring post-March 2020 theatrical titles I've witnessed on the big screen. 

Visual imaginations that can only be properly rendered on a gigantic silver screen are not dead. Fresh unforgettable images and performances that belong to a new generation are being realized. The cinematic cycle is continuing on, thank goodness. Even as someone who had gripes with the original Dune movie, writer/director Denis Villeneuve has done applaud-worthy work on Dune: Part Two. With this follow-up, he's crafted an immersive blockbuster that would register as something special even if it didn't feel extra reassuring after movie theaters nearly vanished forever.

Dune: Part Two already gets a leg up on its predecessor by kicking off its runtime with immediately compelling material. The original Dune could get bogged down in too much set-up and exposition, whereas Dune: Chapter Two kicks things off with a tense sequence depicting Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet), Chani (Zendaya), Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and other Fremen fighters trying to evade newly-arriving Harkonnen soldiers. The scope of Dune: Part Two as an overall movie is massive, but here in this opening sequence, Villeneuve ingratiates audiences back into the desert world of Arakis with a compelling claustrophobic suspense sequence. Our heroes are pinned down in the desert, desperate to evade being noticed by their enemies. They're not looking to destroy a planet at this moment, they just want to survive to see another day. Cinematographer Greig Fraser and editor Joe Walker opt to capture their plight in a restrained number of frames, which really lets the tension bubble and boil.

After this gangbuster opening, Dune: Part Two gets underway with a plot concerning Paul grappling with the widespread perception among many of the native Fremen people that he could be the prophesized Chosen One figure known as Lisan al-Gaib. His grappling with the idea of embracing this mythic status in Fremen society comes as several different parties begin to descend on Arakis to exploit it for their own means. The devious Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) sends his nephew Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler) to Arakis to wipe out any possible rebellion on the planet while Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken) is keeping a close eye on this planet and its developments. Paul now has so many eyes on him. Under all that pressure, he could become a hero for the ages...or possibly something much more human...

We get a lot of big-budget movies these days thanks to studios shifting their focus almost exclusively towards tentpoles and streamers spending every penny they have to make "real" movies. Unfortuantely, this has just resulted in a glut of costly movies like The Gray Man or Argylle that leave you wondering where all the cash went. These films aim for overwhelming ecapism, but merely just remind viewers of cheap filmmaking. Denis Villeneuve and company, by contrast, have crafted with Dune: Part Two something that earns its grand scope. It harkens back to mid-20th century epics or Lord of the Rings with its transportive qualities rather than The Tomorrow War or any other modern-day tentpole schlock.

The realms on-screen are translated from Frank Herbert's text with such lived-in detail and, best of all, a welcome sense of showmanship. Villeneuve loves darker realism in his works, but he's also happy to indulge in the most preposterous elements of the Dune universe and especially the most outlandish visual possibilities of this domain. The evil Harkonnen planet alone is a wondrous sight, a gloriously monochromatic realm that asks "what if Fritz Lang had made Star Wars?" Grand touches in this space like fireworks that just shoot off what look like dark ink blots into the sky are such terrific stylized flourishes. You won't see those kinds of images in just any film and they speak to the culture of death and misery these beings have immersed themselves in.

Dune: Part Two's maximalist sensibilities extend to deeply committed performances by an outstandingly stacked ensemble cast (Javier Bardem and his comic hops are the MVP of the entire film) as well as Hans Zimmer's incredibly pronounced score. I just wanted Zimmer's orchestral compositions to wash over me, they're so entertainingly brash and brimming with personality. There's so much passion emanating off these tracks. Combining them with the striking images on-screen makes Dune: Chapter Two a welcome example of blockbuster cinema that tantilizes the eyes as well as the ears. It also makes a great case for more modern blockbuster scores that aren't afraid to take risks and make themselves noticed. No more of those Lorne Balfe or Benjamin Wallfisch scores that just fade into the backgrounds of the movies they inhabit! More scores infused with Zimmer's Dune: Part Two gusto! 

Even with all these positive attributes, there are nitpicks and qualms I have with Dune: Part Two in some respects, including some aspects of its racial politics and certain supporting characters that could've used an extra scene or two to get further fleshed out. But, as director Joel Schumacher once said, "no one pays to see under the top," and Dune: Part Two certainly is a reminder of that. This feature delivers where it coutns in conjuring up all the wondrous oversized imagery and breathtaking scope you could want from this kind of movie. I once feared movies like this would never get made or released again theatrically in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Boy was I glad I was wrong.

Kung Fu Panda 4 Lacks the Punch of its Predeccesors

We are now in the budget-conscious era of DreamWorks Animation cinema. In its days as an independent outfit, DreamWorks titles would regularly rack up budgets ranging from $145-175 million. Not every title the studio produced needed such exorbitant prices (did Mr. Peabody & Sherman or Turbo need to cost only slightly less than the first Dune installment?), so it wasn't surprising when Universal purchased the studio and began mandating much lower budgets for new DreamWorks titles. Opting for tamer budgets has inspired some lovely new visual schemes in modern DreamWorks titles like The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which have traded in uber-realism for excitingly abstract stylized imagery. Going cheaper has given more wiggle room for these projects to take visual risks.

Unfortunately, Kung Fu Panda 4 doesn't benefit from its reduced budget. The Last Wish leaned into a significantly smaller price tag than its predecessor to create a whole new visual language for Shrek installments. Kung Fu Panda 4 just tries to do a standard Kung Fu Panda adventure in way too lean confines. The end result is a movie that keeps reminding you of better more lavish installments in this franchise while also failing to justify why we're still dragging out this animated saga.

Dragon Warrior Po (Jack Black) is still a panda who fights for good, but it's time for him to take on a new role in his duties as a warrior. Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) has revealed to Po that he must choose a successor for the position for the position of the Dragon Warrior. Po has no plans to give up his status as the Dragon Warrior and he gets a great excuse to kick that can down the road once the villainous Tai Lung (Ian McShane) suddenly reappears. This isn't just the return of an old foe, though. This is the new baddie The Chameleon (Viola Davis) posing as Tai Lung as part of her evil plan to take over the world. Teaming up with experienced thief Zhen (Awkwafina), Po will need to take down this new nemesis and uncover an unexpected ally in the scheming Zhen.

There's no question that the best parts of Kung Fu Panda 4 are when director Mike Mitchell leans into unique visual flourishes that feel incredibly unique compared to the previous three Panda installments. Many flashback scenes this go-around, for instance, feature CG characters inhabiting intentionally abstract hand-drawn spaces. This motif is best exemplified by a flashback showing an adolescent Zhen growing adept as a thief. The passage of time is communicated with a spinning camera across an unbroken shot that shows the white fox engaging in all kinds of criminal behavior against different vividly colored backgrounds. It's a shot that echoes a famous scene from Hunt for the Wilderpeople, not typical Kung Fu Panda imagery!

Unfortunately, the default animation style of Kung Fu Panda 4 just opts to mimic the previous movies but with way less polish and budgetary restrictions more apparent than ever. New location Juniper City, for instance, is just a rehash of the bustling Gongmen City from Kung Fu Panda 2. Apparently only ten animals live in the Valley of Peace now while several pre-existing characters once voiced by costly celebrity voices amusingly just stand around in the background of certain scenes like massive action figures. Most disappointingly of all, the fun and zip of Kung Fu Panda fight scenes has been lost. director Jennifer Yuh Nelson's deft touch with executing lively action sequences is sorely missed. In the past, it felt like the characters in this universe were practically bursting with energy. Now, Po and friends typically have rigid movements when they're just standing around talking while their physical skirmishes are totally forgettable. Even The Chameleon's ability to shapeshift into various other animals doesn't result in exciting new possibilities for action sequences and instead allows Kung Fu Panda 4 to remind viewers of adversaries from past movies.

Returning Kung Fu Panda scribes Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger teamed up with DreamWorks Animation veteran Darren Lemke (who colloborated with Mike Mitchell on Shrek Forever After) to cook up the Kung Fu Panda 4 screenplay. Alas, this trio is also content to just regurtitate elements of past Kung Fu Panda movies by embracing a plotline about Po struggling to accept a new role of leadership that hews too closely to his personal conflict in Kung Fu Panda 3. Credit where credit is due, their script does know the necessity of slowing down for some quieter moments (even if the more vulnerable dialogue is tin-eared). Unfortunately, too many of the big action and narrative beats are generically realized this go-around. Most disappointingly, a potential subversion of the norms of how Kung Fu Panda movies end is quickly thrown away in favor of a more generic punch-heavy climax. It's a flaw that encapsulates how Kung Fu Panda 4 keeps showing audiences the ingredients for something new and then serves them a dish they've had before. 

If there's any entertainment to be found here in Kung Fu Panda 4, it's in a subplot involving Po's two fathers, goose Mr. Ping (James Hong) and panda Li Shan (Bryan Cranston), going on a quest to help their offspring. It's always when long-running franchises find glorious chemistry in unexpected chemistry pairings and the Ping/Shan shenanigans fit that bill nicely. Hong and Cranston's vocal performances mesh well together and the duo delivers the funniest moments of the entire movie with some very solid line readings. Jack Black remains as amusing as ever as Po, while franchise newcomer Ke Huy Quan is also an MVP of Kung Fu Panda 4 thanks to his delightful work as a violence-obsessed Sunda pangolin. Unfortunately, in terms of the voice cast, Awkwafina doesn't quite click as Zhen. Despite showing skills with more emotionally complex live-action performances in titles like The Farewell, Awkwafina just sounds off anytime she has to get vulnerable or serious as this character. Lines meant to lend insight into Zhen's psyche just register as hollow thanks to Awkwafina's line readings.

That problem may come down due to misdirection on the part of Mitchell, a filmmaker whose career is littered with helming family-friendly sequels (Shrek Forever After, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, the live-action segments of The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water) that struggle so hard to capture the magic of their predecessors. Whatever wit Mitchell brought to Sky High in 2005 has largely been absent from his forays into animated sequels and Kung Fu Panda 4, unfortunately, continues this trend. The problems with this follow-up go far beyond a noticeably reduced budget. Kung Fu Panda 4 doesn't sink to the nadir of DreamWorks Animation fare, but boy is it a step down from what audiences are accustomed to when it comes to the big-screen exploits of the Dragon Warrior. 

Thank God for Hundreds of Beavers

Modern comedy movies are in a rut. 2023 signaled a mini-creative resurgence for the genre between Bottoms, Joy Ride, and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (not to mention the absurdist genius of mega-hit Barbie). However, the last six or seven years of American comedies have mostly been disposable fodder filmed indifferently and written without much more effort. Just think back to movies like Tag, Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates, Daddy's Home, and countless others. Projects with unimaginative gags and camerawork cribbed from forgotten CBS sitcoms. A.A. Dowd's A.V. Club review for the lackluster Stuber astutely noted that "this is very much a 2019 studio comedy, which means that our heroes’ misadventure doubles as a self-help seminar." That pretty much sums up how modern comedy movies operate. Even something full of dog poop and boners like Strays feels obligated to dedicate lots of screentime to the lead canine explaining his character arc to his abusive owner in didactic terms.

Classic comedy movies that snuck up on you how much you were invested in the characters (like The Muppet Movie or The Princess Bride) and yukfests that are focused just on silly laughs (like Airplane! or any classic Mel Brooks comedy) are in short supply. American comedy movies are now seemingly required to follow the "Save the Cat" approach to filmmaking to a tee and be filmed with no sense of visual panache. Thank goodness then for modern great comedies like Bottoms, Barbie...and Hundreds of Beavers. Hailing from director Mike Cheslik and the realm of Northern Wisconsin, Hundreds of Beavers is the wacky homage to vintage Looney Tunes cartoons and silent cinema you never knew you needed in your life. While modern comedy movies like Anyone but You and Strays get bogged down in too much dialogue, Hundreds of Beavers is a masterful reminder of the power of pure visual comedy.

The set-up for Hundreds of Beavers concerns Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews), a former Acme Applejack employee who finds himself stranded in a frozen wasteland. This being the 19th century, it's time for Kayak to hunt some animals for food and money. All the animals around Kayak (rabbits, wolves, raccoons, and, of course, beavers) are played by humans in animal suits, though our protagonist treats them like normal woodland critters. It's the classic Elmer Fudd vs. Bugs Bunny routine set in a snowy landscape, with Kayak taking on the Fudd role as he's constantly one-upped by the animals around him. A chance to earn the hand of The Furrier (Olivia Graves) in marriage spurs Kayak to step up his game as a fur trapper, especially when it comes to slaughtering the nearby beavers.

Written by Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, the script for Hundreds of Beavers is nothing short of a miracle to behold. What at first seems like a simple translation of classic Warner Bros. cartoon dynamics into live-action keeps expanding its scope and imagination in such thrilling ways. The world Kayak inhabits has a very specific geography to it and no supporting character or animal (no matter how seemingly disposable) turns out to be superfluous. Always finding new ways to keep elements like a testy woodpecker or a cave of wolves in the story ensures Hundreds of Beavers never gets episodic in structure. Best of all, this storytelling approach inspires so many great gags. It's a delight to watch elements like Kayak's snow-people companions or the various traps our protagonist employs evolve throughout the feature. Just when you think you've seen this film do everything possible with human-sized rabbits, for instance, Hundreds of Beavers comes up with another great visual joke involving those critters.

The entire feature is also a testament to what miracles can happen with stripped-down character designs. This is a virtue I was reminded of when watching the 1914 short film Gertie the Dinosaur for the first time earlier this week. The very first animated character in the history of cinema, Gertie is adorable in her sparse design, with eyes and body language that leave so much to audience interpretation. Similarly, the intentionally simplistic animal costumes (with their permanently open eyes and occasionally discernible zippers) are so charming to watch. You can project so much into the broad body language of these animals and their faces, while any variations to their default appearance (like X's over the eyes of animals when they "die") immediately register as hysterical. Like Gertie the Dinosaur, Hundreds of Beavers shows that restraint can often be a gift, not an inhibition.

All the thought that's clearly gone into making sure these costumes work as vessels for inspired jokes speaks to how much effort informs the madcap silliness of Hundreds of Beavers. It's hard work making effective ludicrous comedy cinema, otherwise, we'd get yukfest's this good every week. Cheslik's direction of the performers, for example, demonstrates a staggeringly deep understanding of the nuances of both silent cinema acting and typical behavior of pre-1960s cartoon characters. The monochromatic color scheme of the feature is realized with terrific skill, while gags leaning on jokes going on juuuuust long enough (like a close-up shot of Kayak struggling "endlessly" to pick up a coin from a wooden surface) are expertly executed. The folks behind Hundreds of Beavers have taken a cue from vintage jokes like the rake gag on The Simpsons in understanding timing well enough to understand just when an elongated joke goes from annoying to hysterical.

There are tons of intricate details nestled within the chilly wittiness of Hundreds of Beavers that speak to what a hysterical accomplishment this movie is. However, the greatest compliment I can impart to this motion picture is that it left me cackling constantly. It's easy to become disillusioned with modern comedy movies when you watch something like You People, Vacation Friends, or Fool's Paradise. Such titles leave one wondering if this genre simply can't work anymore. These movies in the 2020s are simply destined to have garbage cinematography and scripts more interested in "proper" plot structure than jokes. But much like last year's Bottoms and Barbie, Hundreds of Beavers is a reminder that great comedy cinema can still exist. Watching Mike Cheslik and a supremely talented cast & crew execute this outlandish premise with so much care, precision, and humor is a glorious thing to behold. Modern comedy movies may be in a rut, but you wouldn't know it from watching the ingeniously ludicrous triumphs of Hundreds of Beavers.

Mini-Reviews: Bob Marley: One Love, Drive-Away Dolls, Orion and the Dark

Folks, there are quite a few new wide releases out right now, so why just limit one review to one movie? Ahead, let's dive into bite-sized reviews of three February 2023 releases (Bob Marley: One Love, Drive-Away Dolls, and Orion and the Dark) and break down whether they're worth giving a watch within the crowded pop culture landscape. First up, let's look at the latest in Hollywood's endless string of music biopics...

Bob Marley: One Love

The story of Bob Marley is brought to life in Bob Marley: One Love, a very standard music biopic coming courtesy of director Reinaldo Marcus Green. Kingsley Ben-Adir inhabits Marley while Lashana Lynch plays the musician's dear partner, Rita Marley. If there's any real critical issue with Bob Marley: One Love, it's just that it lacks much energy or narrative drive. It wants to operate like a standard narrative film (this isn't meant to be a hangout title in the vein of classic Richard Linklater productions), but it also never gives immense conflict in its story enough time to breathe or weight to feel impactful. Rita Marley has a near-death experience that ends up getting resolved in side dialogue delivered in voice-over by a doctor. Record executive disagreements over the cover of Marley's Exodus album end up having few ripple effects on the plot. Even Marley getting harassed at a British bar by a white guy just fizzles out and never goes anywhere.

As a result of these choppy narrative decisions, the story of Bob Marley: One Love lacks urgency and the characters never feel truly alive. Green's generic visual impulses as a director also make the proceedings feel extra stale (it's shocking cinematographer Robert Elswit lensed this movie,, surely the cinematographer of There Will Be Blood can do better than this?!?). If there's a saving grace, it's that Ben-Adir and Lynch are very good in the lead roles while tons of excellent Marley tunes dominate the soundtrack. Still, you can see those lead actors do even better work in other projects worthy of their talents while all those Marley songs are available on a slew of music formats. There's really not much super specific to Bob Marley: One Love that makes it a must-see.

Drive-Away Dolls

Ethan Coen embarks on his first solo directorial effort with Drive-Away Dolls, which concerns two lesbians who get in over their head in a crime snafu. Whereas Joel Coen's inaugural solo directorial effort The Tragedy of Macbeth seemed designed from the ground up to be different from "a typical Coen Brothers movie," Ethan Coen has opted for a premise that seems like a mixture of Burn After Reading, Intolerable Cruelty, and Fargo (among other Coen Brother farces). Alas, Ethan on his own can't capture the comedic magic of "you've got a pantyhose on your head." Drive-Away Dolls is really hampered by a strange script and weird pacing that makes the whole thing feel truncated from a larger, superior film. It's like audiences are watching a rapid-fire montage of a comedy movie rather than an actual film.

This leaves the proceedings feeling oddly inert, while punchlines are devoid of proper set-up and lengthy set-ups lead to no really impressive gags. Throw in some distractingly bad scene transitions and and Drive-Away Dolls (much like the dismal filmmaking in Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind) suggests Ethan Coen just lacks some necessary chops as a standalone filmmaker. Still, the proceedings are made watchable by enjoyably chaotic lesbian antics as well as committed lead performance from Margaret Qualley that finally made me understand the hype behind this leading lady. While Qualley felt a bit forgettable in Stars at Night and dreadfully miscast in Sanctuary, she's having a ball as the anchor of Drive-Away Dolls. She carries the torch from George Clooney in the pantheon of Southern dim-witted Coen Brothers protaganists while making that archetype her own. She's a hoot. Now if only the film she was headlining would stop undercutting its best attributes.

Orion and the Dark

Given that it's a DreamWorks Animation movie that dropped onto Netflix at the start of February 2024 with no fanfare, you'd be more than forgiven for not knowing that Orion and the Dark even existed. This adaptation of a famous children's book concerns Orion (Jacob Tremblay), a young boy with fears about everything, especially the dark. One night, the personification of Dark (Paul Walter Hauser) visits Orion and promises to help him get over the fears that are controlling his life. This adaptation is penned by Charlie Kaufman, the writer behind projects like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Anamolisa, and Synecdoche, New York. He's the "ideal" guy to work with a studio that produced Trolls World Tour...though, ironically, he previously worked for the studio doing uncredited rewrites on Kung Fu Panda 2!

Kaufman actually brings more of his personality to this title than you'd think, including through a narrative structure that spans a surprising amount of time and an emphasis on lead characters growing old before our very eyes. Director Sean Charmatz (making his feature-length directorial debut) doesn't bring as much distinctiveness to the visuals of Orion and the Dark, but he executes the feature with a willingness to let the tone be a tad more complicated than expected. Some of the more kid-friendly jokes here feel more obligatory than hysterical, while the story would've also benefited from a tighter scope (expanding the narrative to include personifications of various other nighttime phenomena takes some of the focus away from Orion). Still, as far as Netflix kid's movies go, Orion and the Dark is a perfectly pleasant watch.

Argylle Makes a Case For Straight People Never Directing Movies Again

"The world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life." 

That iconic line from Female Trouble ran all throughout my mind during Argylle. The latest spy movie from Matthew Vaughn embodies many traits of cis-het culture to a tee, but especially one strange thing about straight people: they can't be sincere. After all, straight comics are the ones who pioneered the "I hate my wife!" routine of stand-up comedy. Straight folks are obsessed with musicians like Imagine Dragons who never plumb deep enough emotions that their songs couldn't play in T-Mobile commercials. Straight individuals love stuff like South Park or Ricky Gervais, which promote the idea that nothing matters. There's no reason getting invested in anything. Being detached and stuffing down your emotions is cool.

Argylle embodies this phenomenon eerily well. It wants to be a love letter to spy movies, but it's idea of "love" is just name-dropping classic spy movies. To demonstrate any greater love or complicated relationship with spy movies would require vulnerability and "that's so gay, bro." Keeping it emotions close to its chest, Argylle subsequently has none of the conviction that made those espionage-laden movies work. It's too busy frantically trying to be "stupid" or "silly" or (perish the thought) "gay", like so much straight media. Who would want to see something preposterous? Outlandish schemes to save a person's life can't transpire in Argylle without super-spy Aiden (Sam Rockwell) grinding the proceedings to a halt with dialogue like "you're telling me you [insert ridiculous plan here] after five years of not holding a gun?!?" There's an emphasis on lots and lots of convoluted in-universe lore, but good luck in uncovering any sensual tension or sense of interior life to the characters. Argylle is at least quite sincere in making sure its characters constantly reach for Apple devices or talk about "FaceTime." It is an Apple TV+ Original Film after all!

You've seen the trailers for Argylle if you've been to a theater in the last few months, you know it's about author Ellie Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) discovering that the spy novels she's penned line up with real-world events. This makes her a target by an evil organization led by Ritter (Bryan Cranston). What the marketing doesn't clarify is how hilariously Argylle functions as a reflection of both Fuchs and Vaughn having such a surface-level understanding of women. Conway's personality is defined by the most rudimentary understanding of interests traditionally coded as "female". She used to be an ice-skater, she loves her cat, she gets emotional easily, at one point we see her doing yoga. I'm shocked they didn't also have her obsessed with pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks or talk wistfully about watching The Saddle Club as a youngster.

Conway's adventures don't just demonstrate old-school approaches to how women behave in movies, though. Her exploits across the globe also show that screenwriter Fuchs is determined to subvert spy movie norms by sucking all the fun elements out of this genre (sex, exotic locales, cool fight scenes) and replacing them with...lore. Characters in Argylle either stand around or sit on sunny porches delivering exposition, with the film way too enamored with didactically explaining every nook and cranny of various plot twists or character revelations. There is no confidence in the audience's intelligence, we have to have our hands held through everything. "Delightfully," such exposition dumps typically occur against terribly-realized green-screen locations. It's like Arrested Development season four all over again, as a bunch of famous people "talk" to one another against digital backdrops while clearly never ever being in the same room as the other person. There is no visual splendor to compensate for Argylle's wordy screenplay.

The visual elements are especially tedious in the action sequences, a mish-mash of punching and slashing that epitomize Vaughn's recurring problems with shooting fight scenes. Here, way too many quick cuts undercut potentially fun scenes like Aiden and (in Conway's visions) Aubrey Argylle beating up baddies on a train. The worst offender, though, is a climactic scene with such a fun premise involving a lead character sliding around on oil and slicing the necks of bad guys with a knife. A great hook for a fight scene is realized through a simulated single-take "shot" with an incredibly obvious CGI double. The digital camera spins around the room without any weight to it, which instills a weightless quality to the actions of the "humans" in the scene. There's nothing tangible in this fight scene, not the background, not the violence being enacted, not even the person slipping and sliding on the oil. It all looks like a cut-scene from one of the early Shrek movies 20 years ago. It's understandable if you've come to Argylle solely for the violence. Alas, you'll leave disappointed since the biggest fight sequences are so poorly realized in camerawork and editing. 

This emphasis on lots and lots of exposition and sterile visuals totally misunderstands why people like spy movies in the first place. Similarly, the score for Argylle is a dreadful creation and a total insult to the legacy of great spy movie scores composed by the likes of John Barry and Bernard Herrmann. The thrill of spy adventures inspired those and other musicians (like Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation composer Joe Kraemer) to concoct collections of compositions brimming with zesty fun and tangible suspense. You could feel the tingle of tension soaking through the scores of movies like North by Northwest, which helped accentuate the propulsively exciting nature of those espionage features. Composer Lorne Balfe, meanwhile, just hits all the familiar instrumental and sonic beats you'd expect from a modern American blockbuster. This score doesn't have to inhabit a spy movie, it could be found on the soundtrack for any big-budget action movie made in the last five years. Rubbing further salt in the wounds, Balfe's work, much like his score for fellow spy movie Mission: Impossible - Fallout, leans too heavily on motifs cribbed from his frequent creative partner Hans Zimmer (the Inception "bwaaam" noise shows up in a key fight scene). The heteronormative urge to be "normal" permeates the lifeless score of Argylle, which never engages in the kind of musical boldness that defined the greatest spy movie scores. At least Balfe's dreadful compositions are consistent with the cinematography and writing of the piece.

Argylle is just totally soulless material, it's devoid even of the rambunctious naughtiness of Vaughn's earlier films like Kick-Ass and the first Kingsman title. Both of those features are a mixed bag (especially the disappointingly thin Kick-Ass), but they at least have a pulse and convey the idea that they were made by human beings. Their flaws and especially juvenile sense of what "subversion" looks like have more verve than Vaughn on autopilot. The only food for thought Argylle offers is how it provides a vivid demonstration of how many cis-het people digest cinema. Movies are always in communication with the medium's past, which can lead to fascinating features that pay tribute to yesteryear while evolving the art form forward. Think of how Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese took the skeleton of The Searchers and used it to inspire Taxi Driver. For many folks today, though, classic movies are just something to be name-dropped, they're "content" to reference, not art to study and evolve from. Vaughn has a character in Argylle, after he's done duking it out with spies on a train, literally name-drop "Strangers on a Train", a cringey moment that just hits you over the head with a creative influence that's already obvious. A great Hitchcock movie is only brought up in Argylle to get a "remember that?" fan-service pop out of viewers. This is how Silicon Valley tech bros and studio executives want folks to view art, as just objects to reference, not art to preserve or cherish. Argylle is an anemic, forgettable piece of "content" as a standalone movie, but it does function well as a terrifying glimpse into warped cis-het attitudes about the world. "Sick and boring," that's Argylle to a tee.