Get Duked! Find Dark Humor and Likable Characters in the Scottish Highlands

 

The Duke of Edinburgh Award has a prestigious past. An annual award given to adolescents presenting noble characteristics, you must trek through the Scottish Highlands and work together with a group of similar-aged peers in order to receive it. The newest people to pursue this honor are a trio of troublemakers, Dean Gibson (Rian Gordon), Duncan McDonald (Lewis Gribben), and DJ Beatroot (Viraj Juneja), as well as a much more well-behaved kid named Ian Harris (Samuel Bottomley). From the start, the trio of doofuses are making this expedition difficult with their antics that involve tearing pieces off their only map. Problems only escalate when they start getting hunted by The Duke (Eddie Izzard).

Now the four students have to work together even as the bullets are flying and their lack of expertise with roughing it in the wild grows increasingly apparent. That’s the central gist of Get Duked!, a new dark comedy written and directed by Ninian Doff. In his directorial debut, Doff establishes a filmmaking style that owes quite a bit to two other dark comedy European filmmakers, Edgar Wright and Danny Boyle. The rapid-fire editing, particularly in opening montages establishing the backgrounds for the four protagonists, totally evoked the kind of super-speedy visual gags you’d find in any wright production.

Meanwhile, the camerawork and editing of scenes depicting the four leads evading The Duke has an immersive quality that channels Boyle’s work behind the camera on the original Trainspotting. If these sound like complaints, they’re really not. Wright and Boyle are great filmmakers and if you’re gonna channel other directors, why not evoke the best? Plus, Doff’s got his own unique visual touches that ensure he isn’t just leaning on directors of the past. The pulsating visual quality used to indicate when somebody is high on a drug exclusive to the Scottish Highlands is especially distinctive.

Boff’s screenplay, meanwhile, works quite nicely in juggling a dark comedy with a genuine love for the characters he’s writing. This is particularly evident with how he handles the character of Ian. Another movie would have taken the easy way out and just written the character as a whiny wet-blanket. Instead, Doff goes in a more interesting direction by establishing that Ian has got his own insecurities to deal with. These help him to gravitate towards fellow social outcasts Dean, Duncan and DJ Beatroot. When it comes to the four lead characters, Doff finds more humor in bringing them together than keeping them apart.

This upbeat approach extends to the other characters, including DJ Beatroot and his rap ambitions. The fact that his music is shown to be something that can unite people rather than just a quirky trait to be derided is a neat detail. Even dim-witted Duncan isn’t just played for laughs, there’s an endearing quality to the shallow logic he works with. Doff’s affection for his character informs the sociopolitical commentary that provides the foundation for Get Duked! Much like in the real world, there’s a rigid social hierarchy in Get Duked!. This hierarchy adversely affects lower economic classes badly that people already resign themselves to cutting up fish on a conveyor belt for their entire lives as teenagers. After all, what else is there to hope for?

This quality informs The Duke and his companions hunting down Ian and company. “We will win. We always do,” The Duke intones, in the process representing all privileged classes that see new younger generations as a threat to their world. Get Duked! isn’t groundbreaking in its social commentary but it does provide a fine core to fuel the rest of the movie. It isn’t all just empathetic characters and sociopolitical commentary in Get Duked!, though. There’s also instances of killer (sometimes literally) dark comedy in this movie that establishes Ninian Doff as a filmmaker worth keeping an eye on.

The Broken Hearts Gallery's Familiarity Undercuts Some Enjoyable Performances

Gene Siskel once opined that a question every filmmaker should ask is "Is my film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?" That rubric crossed my mind more than once watching The Broken Hearts Gallery. Lead actress Geraldine Viswanathan and the two performers playing her characters best friends, Molly Gordon and Phillipa Soo, have such fun chemistry together. Whether they're all eating food in their apartment, drunkenly talking about their taco desires or venting about their problems, they all just work well with each other. A documentary about them all having lunch together would be quite enjoyable. In fact, these three are so enjoyable that I kept wishing Broken Hearts Gallery was more of an Everybody Wants Some!!! production where it was just about people chilling together.

Unfortunately, their chemistry keeps getting interrupted by a super conventional romantic-comedy. In The Broken Hearts Gallery, Viswanathan plays Lucy Gulliver, a 25-year-old woman living in New York City that's always keeping mementos of her past romantic relationships. Her inability to move on from break-ups hits a whole new level when her relationship with Max Vora (Utkarsh Ambudkar) abruptly ends. Now distraught, Lucy eventually finds solace in an unexpected place. Her new friend Nick (Dace Montgomery) is putting together a hotel in an abandoned YMCA. In the same space, Lucy begins to curate a gallery of trinkets from her past relationships called The Broken Hearts Gallery.

Soon, the gallery begins to attract people beyond just Lucy while a spark begins to form between her and Nick. Some of the best parts of The Broken Hearts Gallery stem from its titular location. These include recurring testimonies from people about items they kept from prior relationships. It's a universal experience, the process of heartbreak. We all know the agony of getting dumped. Yet, much like snowflakes, no two heartbreaks are the same. The recurring stories from the Gallery's contributors effectively reinforce that.. Unfortunately, that same distinctiveness does not permeate the rest of writer/director Natalie Krinsky's screenplay.

Much of The Broken Hearts Gallery goes through expected romantic-comedy beats, which isn't in itself a bad thing. Plenty of great rom-com's don't reinvent the narrative wheel. The problem is Broken Heats Gallery doesn't have lively enough chemistry or comedy to compensate for the familiar storytelling.  From the moment Nick introduces himself as a guy who distances himself from other people ("Everybody just disappears, dies or dumps you" he remarks) to Viswanathan's protagonist who gets attached to everybody, you know exactly where this is all going and the film that follows doesn't deviate from that path. Much of the problems do stem from Nick. On paper, he's supposed to be a detached person. But Klinsky opts to make Mick so vaguely defined that his personality fluctuates from scene to scene. He doesn't come off withdrawn as just inconsistently written. 

It's hard to invest in Nick as a person, thus, it becomes hard to invest in his romantic journey. Said journey relies on Krinsky's dialogue-based comedy, which leans far too much on sarcastic quips. Eventually, these barbs begin to blend together.A particularly frustrating issue in the script is a decision in the third act to explain where Lucy's obsession with collecting things came from. It's a move that reminded me of the pointlessness of explaining where Han Solo's last name came from. Sometimes, characters can just be characters. They don't need origin stories for all their quirks.

Yielding much more successful results in The Broken Hearts Gallery is the character of Lucy Gulliver herself, who is brought to life by Geraldine Viswanathan. Anyone whose seen this actress in films like Blockers and Bad Education is well-aware of how talented Viswanathan is. She uses her talents quite capably here, scoring the most memorable laughs of the movie with her humorous line deliveries. What's especially admirable is her gusto in rendering Lucy's lowest points in Broken Hearts Gallery. Neither Viswanathan's performance nor Krinsky's script is afraid to show off the relatably messy behaviors we've all gone through in the wake of romantic turmoil. The edges aren't sanded off here. In the process, authenticity informs the most vulnerable moments of Broken Hearts Gallery.

And, of course, Viswanathan has such great chemistry with her co-stars Molly Gordon and Phillipa Soo. Their antics at a murder-themed birthday party for Gordon's character proves to be the highlight of the whole movie. Why couldn't we just take a cue from Gene Siskel and make a documentary about these three vibing together? Surely there would have been more innovation and fun there than in the routinely stale exhibit, er, feature The Broken Hearts Gallery.

The Broken Hearts Gallery is now playing in theaters everywhere.

The Next Generation Steal the Show In Bill & Ted Face the Music

 

Quick, name me a good comedy sequel that isn't 22 Jump Street. If you're struggling to name one, it's not because your memory is faulty. Comedy sequels just don't have that great of a track record, particularly ones made in the last decade or so. Ted 2, Horrible Bosses 2, even Anchorman 2 couldn't recapture the magic of the original Anchorman. Given the terrible track record these movies have procured, it's no surprise Bill & Ted Face the Music rises to the upper echelon of comedy sequels despite being just a pleasant distraction in its own right.

It's normal teenage ambitions for adulthood to not quite go the way we planned. But that process is a little different for Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves). They were once told they would write the song that unites the world. Flash forward to three decades after their original two movies and they're still trying to make that tune. They haven't quite hit their goal yet despite the encouragement of their daughters Theadora (Samara Weaving) and Billie (Brigette Lundie-Paine). However, their mission gets taken to a new level of importance when a visitor from the future, Kelly (Kristen Schaal), informs them they've only 77 minutes to come up with that song or else all of reality will be torn apart. The clock is ticking and now both Bill & Ted and their daughters are off on a mission to save the universe as we know it.

Like many comedy sequels, Face the Music follows storytelling territory similar to its predecessors. Bill & Ted's antics to travel to the future when they have written their famous song are relatively unique. However, Bill & Ted's daughters are basically doing their own variation on Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure's gimmick of rubbing shoulders with various historical figures. Meanwhile, a robot assassin from the future is soon sent to kill Bill & Ted, a development that should be familiar to those who saw Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. Any hopes that Face the Music would be informed by the bold weirdness that marked the refreshingly different Bogus Journey go most unfulfilled.

Also taking a step down from the previous movies is the photography of Bill & Ted Face the Music. The first two films weren't devoid of dated VFX, but for the most part, they managed to have a sharp visual style, particularly in regards to the production design of Bogus Journey. Face the Music, meanwhile, is plagued by distracting green-screen work, an issue carried over from director Dean Parisot's last project, Red 2. Fully CGI sets representing the future and Hell look like they belong in a PlayStation 2 video game. On a more upbeat note, the practical effects work, particularly the costume used for the robot assassin character, looks rock-solid.

If it sounds like I found Bill & Ted Face the Music to be most non-awesome, that's really not the case. There's still plenty to commend in here, particularly the lack of fixing what isn't broken in the screenplay by Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson. Both of them return from from the first two Bill & Ted outings and eschew any attempts to up the raunch or hipness of these movies to make them fit into the modern comedy movie landscape. Juxtaposing wholesomeness with the last people you'd ever expect to demonstrate that quality and witty dialogue remain the primary vehicles through which Bill & Ted create comedy. Those turn out to be still viable sources for laughs.

It's also a pleasure to see that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter still fit so snugly into these roles. My worries that seeing 50-year-old men behave like teenage himbo's from the 80s wouldn't work vanished a few minutes into Face the Music. These two are fun enough to watch that their personalities work at any age. Even more noteworthy is the turns delivered by Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine as the daughters of Bill & Ted. Both capture the mannerisms of their parents nicely but they also have such great comic timing in their own right. Their performances, as well as hysterical supporting work from Anthony Carrigan, scored the biggest laughs of the movie 

It's all a touch too familiar but the amiable performances and steady amount of chuckles ensure that Bill & Ted Face the Music works as a fine time-waster. It's totally more agreeable than excellent, but hey, that puts it heads and shoulders above Men in Black II, right?

Mr. SOUL! Makes It Clear Why Ellis Haizlip's TV Show SOUL! Was So Influential

As the documentary Mr. SOUL! opens, the viewer is introduced to the political zeitgeist of the late 1960s. It's a turbulent time. Protests over the rights of Black Americans are everywhere. The National Guard is called into cities not to curb race-based police brutality but to squelch protestors. And as Richard Nixon enters the White House, he does so with a perception of "the media" being a Liberal tool designed only to hurt him. Time is a flat circle. It's been fifty years yet the America Mr. SOUL! presents looks so similar to America in 2020 (save for nobody wearing masks). Luckily, something more positively enduring is about to enter the country in the form of the public broadcasting TV show SOUL!

Whereas traditional TV depictions of black people focused on poverty and suffering, SOUL! was something far more thoughtful. Debuting on the channel NET in 1968, SOUL! was a show dedicated to showcasing Black artists from all walks of life. Ballet dancers, poets, singers, child magicians, everything under the sun showed up on SOUL! as a way of reaffirming the truth that Black people can do anything. The program was hosted by Ellis Haizlip, a host who had a calm demeanor but was always looking to push the boundaries of what you could show on television. American norms said a program like SOUL! could never be popular. Haizlip was constantly saying "Just wait and see."

Directed by Melissa Haizlip, Mr. SOUL! proves to be an incredibly engaging watch. Part of that is due to how well put-together the production is. Part of it is also due to how Mr. SOUL! smartly relies on footage from original broadcasts of SOUL! We don't just hear people talk about how influential SOUL! was, we get to see it for ourselves. Watching The Last Poets perform their verses on the show, for example, perfectly captures how boundary-pushing this program was. Can you imagine a TV show even in 2020 dedicating time to any kind of poetry, let alone poetry as challenging as the works of The Last Poets? But throughout Mr. SOUL! viewers get to watch and see that SOUL! made such impossibilities a reality each week. 

Frequently, archival clips of musical, poetry, or dance performances are accompanied by modern-day interviews with the artists themselves. The likes of Ashford & Simpson reflect on how their performances on Soul! positively impacted the rest of their career. We don't just get glimpses of the past in Mr. Soul! Director Melissa Haizlip also lets us see how this TV program had major ripple effects that are still reverberating to this day. Take one woman who recounts how watching an interview between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin (wow, now there's a duo I could listen to for hours on end) inspired her to rethink what was possible for Black women to accomplish in the field of arts. 

Truth be told, just watching old clips of SOUL! segments and retrospective interviews alone would have been enough to make Mr. Soul! a great documentary for me. How can you complain about hearing insightful anecdotes from Sidney Poiter or wonderful musical performances from the likes of Stevie Wonder and Tito Puente? But Melissa Haizlip lends the last third of Mr. SOUL! an extra level of weight as tragedies befall both SOUL! as a program and Ellis Haizlip. It's a development that stings so hard because, for its five years on the air, SOUL! was like an oasis. The hardships that face Black people in the real world could be responded to here through artistic means, they were not ignored. But their actual presence was kept in the outside world. This was a space for communication, not anguish. There was enough of that on the nightly news.

Now, realities, including insistence from President Nixon to cut public funding for TV shows starring Black people, were crashing into SOUL! while Ellis Haizlip dealt with personal tragedies in his family. Mr. SOUL!'s vivid depiction of the joys of SOUL! make the struggles that led to its cancellation all the more poignant to watch. Though its lifespan wasn't long, a closing montage shows that the impact of SOUL! and the ideas it stood for go on and on. It's a beautifully edited scene that closes out the film on a heartfelt note that feels perfectly in keeping with SOUL!'s central idea of providing hopeful & varied, rather than tortured & generic, media depictions of Black people. 

One of the most frustrating things to encounter is when a movie is clearly a fan of some pop culture but it refuses to share with the viewer why it loves that pop culture so much. Think the worst moments of Ready Player One or Stranger Things. It can be like watching your friend hog a video game. You get that they like it, but you never get the chance to find out why. The opposite is the case for Mr. SOUL!, which is a prime example of how a movie can make its pop-culture fixation infectious rather than insular. Whether you're coming to this documentary a lifelong SOUL! fan or you're like me and walking in totally unaware of the show, Mr. SOUL! will make you a devotee to Ellis Haizlip and his classic TV program. Some things truly never go out of style. That includes trailblazing TV shows and documentaries as well-crafted as Mr. SOUL!

Mr. SOUL! is now playing in virtual cinema engagements. Click here for ticket information.

The Hunt Aims For Provocative But Ends Up Being Tedious

Do you ever notice how movies that generate a lot of pre-release controversies don't tend to be worth all the fuss? Remember how people lost their minds over The Da Vinci Code in 2006? I dare anyone to find somebody in 2020 who genuinely likes that movie or even remembers it. Ditto for the 2007 movie The Golden Compass. So it's true for The Hunt, which saw an avalanche of pre-release complaints for its premise surrounding Trump supporters and right-wing people being hunted for sport by wealthy people who identify as Liberals. This included a tweet from the orange-skinned fascist currently sitting in the Oval Office. The Hunt got its release delayed by six months. Ironically, it ended up debut in theaters just five days before they were shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like so many other movies that caused a pre-release tizzy, The Hunt isn't really worth all the fuss. In fact, the strangest part of The Hunt is how the whole "hunting conservatives" aspect only really factors into the first fifteen-ish minutes. The opening scene of The Hunt see's a bunch of people waking up in a field and then realizing that they've been kidnapped, dropped into a field and are now being hunted. From there, they're quickly slaughtered before we meet our protagonist, politically ambiguous Crystal Creasey (Betty Gilpin). All the story elements that caused such controversy are basically a prologue before the real story, concerning Crystal going after the people who kidnapped her, kicks in.

Political overtones seep into the project but they're mostly what you'd expect from a bunch of rich white people trying to offer commentary on the modern era of American politics. People of color are basically nonexistent. Ditto for queer people. There's a whole lot of spouting of recognizable buzzwords but no real insight into the psychology or systemic forces that inform the modern American political scene. The Hunt promotes itself as edgy fare but it's tragically conventional in too many ways. The mixture of R-rated action with political overtones makes it clear that The Hunt is channeling classic John Carpenter movies like They Live. Instead, it has all the edge of Swing Vote.

Anytime writers Nick Cuse & Damon Lindelof and director Craig Zobel try to make The Hunt into a political commentary, the movie stumbles. The only political-based gags that land are amusing jokes centering around how the Liberal hunters concern themselves with things like using racially appropriate terms while being so nonchalant on killing people. That dissonance has a level of specificity to it that the rest of the political elements of The Hunt just don't bother to have. On a more positive note, The Hunt actually does work better as an action movie, particularly when it comes to the lead character Betty Gilpin.

In Gilpin's performance, The Hunt does echo a classic Carpenter film, Escape From New York. Gilpin's Crystal is a modern-day Snake Plissken, a cunning figure who can punch their way out of any snafu and has an amusing sense of disgruntlement with everyone around them. Gilpin evokes Plissken in her performance as Crystal but she's totally able to make the character her own. In her post-GLOW movie roles, Gilpin has been tragically underserved by films like Stuber and The Grudge. How nice, then, that The Hunt not only gives Gilpin plenty to do but lets her show off her action movie chops. Nobody else in the cast really leaves an impression, but at least Gilpin delivers one heck of a lead performance.

Gilpin is also at the center of The Hunt's best scene, an extended fight scene between Crystal and the film's ultimate villain, Athena Stone (Hillary Swank). Their hand-to-hand combat makes creative use of objects lying around Stone's hunting lodge while some effective dark comedy ("No more glass!" Stone shouts after the two characters fell through a window) had me chuckling. Why wasn't The Hunt more concerned with cool R-rated action? That's clearly something it's much better at, particularly compared to its efforts at being a timely piece of political commentary.  Alas, too much of The Hunt is spent on material it handles clumsily, at best. Chalk The Hunt up as another example of a movie that caused a whole lot of pre-release fuss for nothing.

The Bold Imagery of I'm Thinking of Ending Things Will Chill You To The Bone

It was the last day of my High School's performance of Annie. I had gotten into my costume (I was playing the janitor who inadvertently helps Annie escape the orphanage) and makeup way ahead of time. With nearly two hours to go until showtime, I decided to take some time for myself. Waltzing out a back exit, I proceeded to just walk through the schools' nearly-empty parking lot. On this January evening, the silence was deafening. Cold wind wrapped around my body like a blanket. Being that this was my Senior Year of High School, I knew only four months separated me from the realm of adulthood. As I took each step, I had a chance to think about what the future had in store for me. 

Who am I? Where am I going? Am I doing enough? How do I define a valuable life? Heck, what even is the purpose of living? You don't get time to think about those kind of things when you're so busy in High School. Little did I know there would be even less time to ponder such questions when you're an adult. Though my thoughts that day were heavy, it did, in the long run, feel good to just have a moment to myself, to contemplate. Before the madness of that evening's final performance, as well as the madness of wrapping up my Senior year of High School, I got to push the pause button on life to think about things greater than myself. 

Maybe it was the constant presence of chilly weather in I'm Thinking of Ending Things. Maybe it's the introspective quality that permeates all Charlie Kaufman works. Maybe it's how Jessie Buckley's red hair reminded me of Annie's similar locks. Or maybe I'm just stretching more than Mr. Fantastic doing aerobics. But Kaufman's new film I'm Thinking of Ending Things reminded me of that cold January night, especially in regards to how I'll be thinking about it for a good long while. Ending Things concerns an unnamed woman played by Jessie Buckley, whose going up to meet the parents of her boyfriend, Jake (Jesse Plemons). As Buckley's lead character informs the viewer through voice-over at the start of the film, she's thinking of ending things. Is she referring to just this relationship or her own entire existence? 

Well, we're firmly in the world of Charlie Kaufman filmmaking, so don't expect an easy answer, or any kind of answer, to that question. Through I'm Thinking of Ending Things and past works like Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman reminds one how grand it is when films aren't beholden to strict logic. His films conjure up images that are meant to invoke specific moods or larger questions, not adhere to a set of rules on how all movies should behave. That commitment to upending norms makes for such a thrilling viewing experience. That sense of unpredictability is especially true for Ending Things, which tinges that feature with an eerie quality.

At times, Ending Things explicitly echoes horror features. A scene of Buckley's character walking downstairs to a forbidden basement is an especially key example of this. The claustrophobic framing of her going down the steps. The way Jake has built up the basement as a place you cannot and should not go to. The heavy presence of dark lighting. Jay Wadley's score taking on an unnerving musical quality. This is an explicit example of this trait that weaves its way throughout all of Ending Things. Heck, Jake's parents live on a run-down farm in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma that doesn't look all that removed from where Leatherface and his family live in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Constant reminders of mortality in Kaufman's work has always lent a sense of uneasiness to them. But with Ending Things, he takes it another step further by explicitly utilizing the visual and auditory hallmarks of horror films.

Most unsettling of all in Ending Things, though, are actually some of its most stripped-down scenes. These would concern the two lead characters sitting down to eat with Jake's parents, known simply as Mother (Toni Collette) and Father (David Thewlis). Kaufman's screenplay agonizingly captures the most awkward version of these encounters. Mother and Jake have a squabble over the word Genus while Father keeps making insulting comments about abstract paintings in front of Buckley's character, who is an artist. It's all so perfectly executed for maximum squirm-inducing effect and is bound to get one all wrapped up in anxiety. In the middle of these encounters, amusement is found in some great pieces of dark comedy. Father constantly reaffirming how he can't understand the mood of a painting unless he sees a person in the painting expressing emotions especially had me chuckling.

This dinner sequence is helped mightily by the performances of the central cast members, all of whom equip themselves well in the roles they've been handed. Collette, for example, is great at putting on a happy face while communicating an unhinged quality in her mannerisms. Despite playing a character with no name, Buckley's able to inform plenty of compelling detail into her role. Particularly impressive in her performance is how well she's able to create a world of difference between her on-screen performance and her more existential voice-over. This creates a sense of dissonance for her character out of far removed her exterior appearance is from her interior thoughts. Through this, we vividly understand just how miserable she is. Also, as a side note, it's truly stunning how Buckley creates a wholly new person from her lead character in Wild Rose. She's truly going places as an actor.

And then there's Jesse Plemons, a truly gifted performer whose been able to inhabit so many different kinds of characters in projects ranging from Fargo to Other People. However, between Breaking Bad and Game Night, he's especially talented at being the guy you call for characters who know what people should behave like but can't convey that behavior naturally. That trait is perfect for the role of Jake, a man whose car-ride conversations with Buckley's character immediately put one on edge. As Buckley notes in her voice over, Jake does seem caring and kind, but it all feels...forced. Like he's putting on a performance of a good boyfriend rather than actually being one. Plemons' casual delivery of Jake cutting off or undercutting the wishes of his partner excellently further reinforces this inauthentic quality of Jake.

Buckley and Plemons both deliver striking performances in I'm Thinking of Ending Things, ones informed by discernably human qualities that also provide the foundation for the most heightened pieces of imagery found in Ending Things. Much of these visuals make haunting use of empty spaces, including a scene set a Dairy Queen/Sunshine Creamery hybrid in the middle of a snow-covered landscape as well as recurring sequences dedicated to a janitor (Gus Boyd). This custodian is seen mopping up long-vacant hallways of a high school that serve as a perfect physical reflection of how overwhelming interior loneliness can be. With such boldly-realized visuals like these, it's no wonder I'm Thinking of Ending Things, much like that contemplative January night in my High School's parking lot, gave me so much to chew on.

Get On Up Subverts Music Biopic Norms To Make a Movie That Really Sings

I’ve never really been a fan of director Tate Taylor’s movies. From everything I’ve read and heard, he seems like a very nice guy, as indicated by how numerous actors (ranging from Octavia Spencer to Allison Janney to Luke Evans) have worked with him repeatedly. It’s also neat how he’s constantly making high-profile movies in a variety of genres starring women. Still, the likes of The Help and The Girl on the Train left me more cold than enamored. So imagine my shock that, upon watching Get On Up, I saw a liveliness in his filmmaking that I couldn’t believe. Where has this Tate Taylor been hiding and how can we get more of him?

Get On Up is a music biopic based on the life of famous singer James Brown (portrayed by Chadwick Boseman). You’d be forgiven for recoiling back at the words “music biopic”, a genre whose track record isn’t exactly exceptional. The fact that the first scene shows an elderly Brown walking towards a stage before a flashback sets in (he has to think about his entire life before he plays) had me very worried I was about to watch a paint-by-numbers entry in this genre. A subsequent scene depicting Brown pulling out a shotgun in a bank because somebody used his toiler began to assuage my concerns. This particular sequence, which is totally gonzo but hints at a lifetime of tragedy, is a much better indicator of what’s to come.

From there, we hop around various passages of Brown’s life, ditching the linear approach that most music biopics utilize. These passages include his days growing up with Aunt Honey Washington (Octavia Spencer), his ascension to fame as a singer that saw Brown breaking all the rules and Brown’s struggles to keep his friends nearby. All of these events are informed by Brown’s childhood experiences of being abandoned by his parents, including his mom Susie (Viola Davis). When you’re a kid and you have to scrape by to survive, it does something to your psychology. You begin to look out for only yourself because, heck, isn’t it hard enough to survive without worry about others?

Throughout Get On Up, we see how Brown looking out for himself informs so much of his life. Sometimes, this manifests in Brown undercutting shady business practices meant to deprive Black artists of their financial autonomy. The music industry is constantly saying what a Black artist can and can’t do. But Brown’s always been upending expectations, why wouldn’t he do the same here? Other times, it manifests in more tragic ways. His abusive and possessive attitudes against his wife, Dee-Dee (Jill Scott), reflect a cycle of toxic behavior tragically continuing on. Brown is now behaving like the very man (his own abusive father) that brought him and his mother such torment. Meanwhile, he undermines his bandmates, including longtime friend Bobby Byrd (Nelson Ellis), at every opportunity.

Many music biopics settle for being a rehash of an artist's Wikipedia page. There isn’t any real thought given to why an artist did this or how. We just know that they sang this song or wore this outfit, so the standard music biopic has them sing that song or wear that out outfit. All surface, no depth. Get On Up, meanwhile, has all the staples of Brown’s discography, but it’s also intrigued by what informed this musician. What fueled his trailblazing style? As indicated by a poignant visual that closes out a police chase, Brown’s work was informed by him always being that traumatized child who was left behind by his mom and dad. The pain of losing loved ones left such an impact on Brown that he pushed others away to avoid ever experiencing that pain again.

The screenplay by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth isn’t a perfect creation in terms of thoughtfulness. Women characters like Dee-Dee certainly could have used an extra jolt of personality. For the most part, though, the script for Get On Up works wonders into getting inside James Brown’s head. This is especially apparent in creative segments where Brown breaks the fourth-wall to explain his perspective to the audience. Sometimes, this manifests in comedic scenarios, like Brown gradually realizing his Christmas television show performance is for an entirely white audience. Other times, like an extended monologue where Brown explains how he’ll upend traditional booking practices, give you a real glimpse into the unique headspace of this musician.

That particular scene also allows lead actor Chadwick Boseman a chance to really shine. Walking between two different sets and constantly keeping his eyes locked on the viewer, Boseman relays Brown’s plan with such riveting confidence. That quality is also apparent during any sequence where Brown is on-stage performing. Boseman’s vocals and footwork aren’t just great at mimicking James Brown, they’re also thoroughly impressive in their own right! Meanwhile, the moral complexity of the character, an authentically messy portrait of someone who has survived abuse, is something Boseman handles with real grace in his performance. He’s able to portray both the abrasive and haunted sides of Brown with equal levels of conviction. You don’t find a performance this good in your average music biopic and Get On Up is most certainly a welcome unorthodox entry in the genre.

A Separation Captivates In Its Depiction of a Crumbling Family

It’s been a while since I watched a movie as good as A Separation. I’m honestly struggling to remember the last time I was this blown away by a motion picture. In the hands of writer Niloufar Banisaied and director Asghar Farhadi, the story of an Iranian couple going through the process of divorce unleashes a tidal wave of turmoil, morally complex actions and compelling drama. The most engrossing drama can also be the most intimate. You don’t need scale to make me engaged with what’s happening on-screen. Those simple yet effective truths are epitomized in every aspect of A Separation.

A Separation establishes its creative camerawork right off the bat by shooting the first scene from inside a copier. The viewer is placed inside this machine as it scans a series of passports and other important documents belonging to Simin (Leila Hatami), her husband Nadir (Peyman Moaadi) and their daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). Just look at how much is accomplished in this scene. The type of visuals we’ll be seeing throughout A Separation are established. We get introduced to our characters through the photographs and text on the copied documents. Quick glimpses of Simin hurriedly placing new documents on the copier also make it apparent that there’s a sense of urgency motivating this character.

All of this gets introduced without undercutting the quiet nature of this opening scene. It’s quietly masterful filmmaking that persist throughout the rest of A Separation. After this opening scene, we jump into Simin and Nadir sitting next to each other in front of a judge. Here, Simin is explaining her reasons for wanting a divorce. The individual personalities of our lead characters are vividly rendered in this scene, which is framed primarily through a single take. Simin wants to leave this country, Nadir wants to stay behind to take care of his Alzheimer’s-riddled father, among other reasons. The scene relies entirely on both Banisaied’s writing as well as the performances of Hatami and Moaddi. That turns out to be more than enough to carry this sequence.

Also present in this scene is a fascinating visual motif throughout A Separation. The camera captures Simin and Nadir at the same angle as the judge watching over them. It replicates the idea that we are in the same room as these characters. It’s a quietly immersive detail that heightens our connection to these characters. Also helping this achievement is Farhadi and cinematographer Mahmoud Kalari’s decision to eschew wide shots throughout the entirety of A Separation. The characters in this movie are always framed as close to the viewer, there is never a moment where the camera tries to provide distance between us and this family. They are all trapped together, so we must be too.

As the film progresses, the problems that led to Simin pursuing a divorce aren’t the only issues this family has to deal with. Nadir forcibly threw out a woman, Razieh (Sareh Bayat), who was tasked with taking care of Nadir’s father. In the process of violently removing her, Razieh had a miscarriage. Now Nadir is up on murder charges. From here, A Separation makes great use of morally complex characters to keep the viewer captivated. One moment, I’m enraged at Nadir and his behavior towards Razieh. The next moment, my heart breaks for Nadir as I watch him (in a beautifully composed single-take) wash his father and then slowly begin to break down into tears.

All the characters in A Separation have that level of heartbreaking richness to them, with Termeh’s woes being especially potent. A Separation is many things but it’s primarily the story of a daughter realizing her father is human. Termeh starts the movie idolizing Nadir. Slowly but surely, though, she begins to realize he is a much more complex person. A scene depicting Termeh asking her father about how he could have possibly been ignorant about Razieh’s pregnancy hauntingly encapsulates this. Nadir has to come clean to his daughter about being a liar, a flawed person. Suddenly, the world opens up for Termeh in the most tragic sense.

The growing sense of distance between the members of this family are visually reflected in the choice to frequently frame characters like Simin and Nadir behind panes of glass. This barrier between people reflects the emotional barriers being formed between members of this fractured family. Such barriers lead to a sense of turmoil between our three lead characters that A Separation wisely refuses to wrap up in a tidy manner. Ending on an ambiguous note regarding which of her parents Termeh wants live with, the final shot of A Separation lingers on Nadir just sitting in a chair. No matter what answer his daughter gives to the judge, nothing will be the same. Some movies stumble across the finish lines in their final scene. A Separation, by contrast, sprints across the finish line like Usain Bolt with what's practically the cinematic equivalent of a mic-drop. Farhadi has made the sight of a guy sitting in a chair drip with harrowing tragedy. What a fittingly impressive feat for the impressive feature A Separation.

In Laman's Terms: What Do Theatrical Movies Look Like Now?

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

Note: this article is not an endorsement for going out to a movie theater during the pandemic. Personally, I will not be attending a general theatrical screening until a vaccine is found. This editorial is merely an examination of domestic theatrical release trends.

And so, after months of dormancy, domestic theatrical moviegoing is back.

It's weird to say that considering the COVID-19 pandemic has been generating 30,000+ new cases on a daily basis for two months now in America. But with Tenet kicking off its advanced showings on Monday night in advance of kicking off its general theatrical release on Thursday, movies are heading back to the big screen. However, even though your local Cinemark or AMC may be playing new movies for the first time in six months, that doesn't mean theatrical moviegoing is exactly back to normal.

What will theatrical moviegoing look like for the near future? To answer the question, let's look at the schedule for upcoming release. Here's what's currently scheduled for release between now and the end of October:

Sept. 3- Tenet

Sept. 11- The Broken Hearts Gallery

Sept. 18- Infidel

Oct. 2- Wonder Woman 1984

Oct. 9- The War with Grandpa

Honest Thief

Oct. 16- Candyman

2 Hearts

Oct. 23- Death on the Nile

Connected

Oct. 30- Come Play

Fatale

Traditionally, each week will bring between two to three new theatrical releases. Clearly, this is being rectified in recognition of theaters having limited amounts of space and screenings to work with under restrictions meant to slow down the spread of COVID-19. Last September saw seven new wide releases enter the marketplace, eight if you wanna count the wide release expansion of Brittany Runs a Marathon. By contrast, only three new wide releases will drop in September 2020.

Basically, expect, for the near future, a lot fewer titles at your multiplex. That's good news for big blockbusters like Tenet and Wonder Woman, which can now play without any competition in sight for weeks. Hell, Tenet will doubtlessly top the box office for four consecutive weeks in September 2020. What else can compete with it? October 2020 will start to see a slight increase in new wide releases, but who even knows if these movies will keep those release dates. 20th Century Studios announced The King's Man was getting delayed by four months just three weeks prior to its debut. Maybe Death on the Nile and Connected get similar last-minute postponements.

Meanwhile, arthouse releases, at the moment, are totally screwed. Those movies typically start their theatrical releases in New York and Los Angeles, build up word-of-mouth there and other cities before making their way to wider releases. That kind of release isn't feasible right now given that New York and L.A. reside in states that still don't allow their movie theaters to open. To boot, the limited amount of screen space means it's more difficult than ever for scrappy indie titles to get screenings. The fact that it's basically impossible to launch in arthouse movie theatrically right now means arthouse studios have begun to alter their plans for Fall 2020 titles. 

Focus Features, for example, has shifted Miranda Otto's Kajillionaire from a conventional theatrical release to one that'll be available on PVOD just 21 days after its theatrical debut. Meanwhile, Searchlight Pictures, recognizing the difficulties facing smaller movies right now, has opted to delay Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch from its October 16 date. This would also explain why A24 hasn't scheduled release dates for films like Minari yet. How can they in the current theatrical film landscape?

For a while now, the divide between big and small films has grown in the film industry. "We have reached a point where we should accept the death of the Hollywood film for adult," Ted Hope said on IndieWire all the way back in December 2014. "Hollywood is a one-horse town." Since then, blockbusters like Avengers: Endgame keep making bigger and bigger grosses while smaller titles struggle to get made and released.* That divide will only grow in the near-future as blockbusters become basically the only thing to watch at the movie theater while arthouse movies are unable to even get theatrically released.

The good news is that this will almost certainly be rectified once a cure for COVID-19 comes around and movie theaters can return to regular release patterns. This isn't just some wishful thinking on my part. STX and especially MGM have spent the majority of 2020 scooping up mid-budget movies aimed both at adults and for theatrical release. Even Paramount Pictures, which has been selling off big tentpoles to streaming services all throughout the pandemic, actually bought up the new Lee Daniels movie, The United States v. Billie Holiday, last month and proceeded to set it up for a February 12 theatrical release.

The mid-budget and arthouse film isn't going to be killed by the pandemic. If the rejuvenated Chinese box office proves anything, it's that things that go dormant for a while can come roaring back. However, for now, there's no denying the much more restrictive theatrical landscape that serves blockbusters first does embody the worst trends in the last decade of theatrical cinema. As tentpoles become the default option in the reopened domestic theatrical landscape, let's all cross our fingers that doesn't remain the status quo once 2021 rolls around.

*= In the interest of fairness, the last four months of 2019 actually saw a renaissance for adult-skewing movies. Hustlers, Joker, Ford v. Ferrari, Little Women, Downton Abbey, 1917 and Knives Out all made over $95 million domestically while Parasite cracked $53 million. This is not meant as a "Gotcha!" thing against Ted Hope and his well-written piece. On the contrary, this should be seen as a note to major Hollywood studios that if you build appealing movies aimed at adults, moviegoers will show up to the theater! Put your marketing and budget weight behind original titles, not just familiar brand names. Remember: Universal made considerably ore money on Queen & Slim than Cats.

The First Two Bill & Ted Movies Are Charming, Funny and, Yes, Most Excellent

 

Woah, something new! I’m gonna try something different here. For the first time ever, I'll be reviewing two movies in one review. Will it work? We shall find out!

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey are downright delightful. That isn’t exactly a hot take, but in preparing the recent release of Bill & Ted Face the Music, everybody seems to be appreciating just how enjoyable these movies are. This is especially true for total newbies to the franchise like yours truly. While my 7^th grade English teacher was a big enough Bill & Ted fan to have quotes from the films plastered all over the walls (we even watched the Excellent Adventure trailer on our first day of class), up to this point, I haven’t enjoyed the most non-heinous pleasures of these features.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure introduces the titular leads (Bill is played by Alex Winter and Ted is played by Keanu Reeves) as a couple of High School airheads who need to get an A+ on their history assignment. Otherwise, they’re gonna flunk the class. Worse, Ted’s dad has plans to ship off Ted to military academy if he fails. They’ll now have to use a time-traveling telephone booth (no, not that one). Bogus Journey takes things to an extra weird level as Bill & Ted are murdered by robot doppelgangers. In a pursuit to stop the evil plot of their clones, Bill & Ted must navigate Hell, Heaven and Death (William Sadler) himself.

You could never accuse the first two Bill & Ted movies of being carbon-copies of each other. However, across the two films, they do manage to bring a delightful wholesome energy that proves so charming. Bill & Ted’s whole philosophy as a duo is “Be excellent to each other” and that’s reflected in how they manage to unite people from across history and even the cosmos in the pursuit of their goals. Billy the Kid and Socrates aren’t two historical figures you’d imagine rubbing shoulders with one another. But on a quest with Bill & Ted, they become fast friends whose antics prove a testament to the duos unifying nature as well as most amusing in their own right.

The two films also have imagination to spare, particularly Bogus Journey. This sequel frequently feels like a whole bunch of different ideas for a Bill & Ted sequel smashed into one movie. That results in something that’s messier than Excellent Adventure. However, the conviction with which Bogus Journey just throws itself into over-the-top scenarios compensates for its ramshackle nature. Does Bill & Ted’s ability as ghosts to possess living people end up mattering to the plot? Nope. It’s just a digression. But the script and especially the performers throw themselves in 110% into this concept to the point that it becomes comedically indispensable.

Helping to make the scattershot nature of Bogus Journey work is that, like its predecessor, the movie looks sharp on a technical level. Some visual effects elements haven’t aged well, sure, (like Bill’s clearly fake detached head when Ted is holding it in Bogus Journey). For the most part, though, the two films put a lot more effort into pleasing-looking costumes and period-era sets than you’d expect from such endearingly silly productions. Special props to the production design in the scenes set in various rooms of Hell in Bogus Journey. These locations make use of such warped, almost expressionistic, lines, no bed, couch or wall has a straight line. Everything looks askew and it makes for an appropriately unsettling backdrop for Bill & Ted’s hellish encounters.

Then, of course, there’s the cast of these two films, which hinges heavily on the performances of Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. Thirty years after Excellent Adventure debuted and became a sleeper hit, what more can be said about their exceptional chemistry? These two actors just get along so well with each other on-screen that you instantly buy the friendship between Bill & Ted. Both of them, particularly Reeves, also work quite nicely at comedically selling the constant bewilderment of these two characters. Reeves and Winter are surrounded by a bunch of memorable supporting performances but my personal favorite is William Sadler as Death. He’s just a riot portraying Death as a composed figure who resigns himself to being an ally to these two adolescent knuckleheads. Even Death can become a buddy in the endearing and most excellent world of Bill & Ted.

Pay a Visit to The Shop Around The Corner

Recently, I’ve had a tough time committing myself to watch anything challenging. It’s strange because, usually, I like a movie that’s grim, long and audacious enough to push my boundaries. But recently, movies on my To-Watch list like Come and See keep getting pushed off into the future. Between, well, everything happening in 2020 and all the stress of me starting Graduate School two weeks back, comfort cinema and revisiting old favorites are my new go-to modes of movie-watching. I’ll get around to darker features like Come and See soon, I promise. Hey, at least I’m watching films like The Shop Around the Corner, one of the best-made feel-good movies you can find!

The shop in the title of The Shop Around the Corner refers to a leather goods shop run by Mr. Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan). The most notable employee of this store is long-time worker Alfred Kralik (James Stewart), though also working here are the kindly Pirovitch (Felix Bressart), the duplicitous Ferencz Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut) and new employee Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan). Conflict enters into the store through Klara and Alfred failing to get off on the right foot while Mr. Matuschek has abruptly developed an unusually detached attitude towards Alfred. Oh, and there’s also the fact that Alfred realizes that the anonymous lady he’s been engaging in romantic correspondence with is none other Klara.

There’s plenty to praise in The Shop Around the Corner, but boy do I especially love how well it replicates the atmosphere of working in retail. The screenplay by Samson Raphaelson perfectly captures the awkwardness of having to walk around on eggshells around frustrated co-workers or how the most inane activites can jeopardize one’s entire social life. Just redoing a window display can cost you a chance at a big date, life-and-death stakes are embedded into such a pitiful task! The exchanges between the various employees and prospective customers are similarly ripped straight out of reality and placed into this wonderful screenplay. One particular passerby inquiring “How much is that $5 cigar box in the window?” only for Alfred to helpfully reply “$5.” before the passerby exclaims “Oh! No!” had me howling at its authenticity.

It’s also a great example of the kind of sharply written dialogue exchanges that make up Raphaelson’s script. I mean, the word choices in this movie alone are amazing. Klara and Alfred constantly trying to one-up each other with newly elaborate insulting phrases is a riot in terms of both creativity and humor. It’s hard to choose a favorite line out of so many exceptional pieces of dialogue, but I’m especially fond of Pirovitch going “Well, what else can you do in a letter?” upon being told by Alfred that he’s discussed romance “strictly in cultural terms” with his anonymous lover. Raphaelson’s screenplay is also enjoyable in how it crafts such memorable personalities for each of the employees of Matuscek’s store.

Rather than everybody save for Klara and Alfred blending into the background, everyone from Pirovitch to young delivery boy Pepi Katona (William Tracy) gets to come alive as a person. This trait is reinforced in both Ernst Lubitsch’s direction and the performances of the cast, neither of which are unafraid to embrace boldly realized personalities. Of course scheming employee Vadas walks into every scene twirling a cane with a voice dripping with deceit like he’s The Riddler. Why shouldn’t he when Joseph Schildkraut imbues the performance with such delightful scenery-chewing? Plus, an oversized antagonist like this makes the perfect foil for Jimmy Stewart, whose in classical good o’l boy mode here.

I thoroughly enjoy Stewart’s later subversions of his straight-laced star image in films like Anatomy of a Murder and Rear Window. But that kind of subversion wouldn’t have worked as well if Stewart hadn’t also been effective portraying characters like Alfred. The relatable everyman quality Stewart brought to his turns in Harvey and It’s a Wonderful Life is alive and well in The Shop Around the Corner. It serves the character of Alfred beautifully. Meanwhile, Margaret Sullivan makes for the perfect romantic counterpart to Stewart. She makes it totally believable that Klara could go toe-to-toe against Alfred while she and Stewart have such engaging chemistry even when they’re bickering in the stockroom of Matuschek’s shop.

With these kinds of lead performances, The Shop Around the Corner cements itself as not just entertaining comfort cinema but an outright great film in its own right!

Paul Verhoeven Delivers Another Great Sci-Fi Action Film With Starship Troopers

Remember when Paul Verhoeven was doing sci-fi blockbusters regularly? God, what an age that was. Verhoeven took movies about cyborg police officers and Arnold Schwarzenegger getting his ass to the moon and turned them into both effective sociopolitical commentary and thrilling action films. Brains and brawn were always around when Verhoeven was tackling sci-fi. The tradition continues with Starship Troopers. Verhoeven takes a novel of the same name penned by Robert A. Heinlein that glorifies fascism and turns it into something that’s only gotten more timely in the twenty-three years since its release.

Starship Troopers is set in the 23^rd-century. The world has been transformed into a society that places violence and military service as important above all else. That means the youth of this world grow up believing that the only way to have value is to grab a weapon and shoot up some bugs. Yes, bugs. An alien species referred to as Bugs is fighting back against colonizing humans. They’re the new enemy that the human race is dedicated to fighting against. John Rico (Casper Van Dien) would love nothing more than to go out and squish some of these bugs, proving his own value to society in the process.

He gets his chance when he joins the Army as a private. Here, he will travel to the front lines on the home planet of the Bugs. If he survives, he could become a hero! But surviving is easier said than done when fighting the Bugs. Screenwriter Edward Neumeier and director Paul Verhoeven instill the satirical nature of Starship Troopers into the journey of Johnny Rico. If you’ve seen one military action movie, you know what to expect from his character. He’s got disapproving parents. He’s got a girl he loves from back home. All he wants to do is fight for the just cause and make his country proud.

This archetype has been portrayed with a total straight-face in countless other movies. That’s not the case with Troopers. While the character of Rico never subverts expectations by deviating from his traditional personality, that’s not the point of the character. Rico is supposed to be the quintessential underdog protagonist whose dreams of service are in the name of an organization whose logo bears an eerie resemblance to the Nazi insignia. Rico is 110% sincere in his convictions but they’re still convictions in the name of a clearly fascist organization that has no regard for human life.

This is most humorously reflected in how Rico keeps getting promoted as the movie goes on simply because his superiors keep dying rather than as a comment on Rico’s talents. Further dark humor is wrung out of juxtaposing horrific actions with traditional “rah-rah” war movie aesthetics when everybody cheers over a captured alien simply being “scared”. The fact that Starship Troopers knows the beats of war movies so well, which makes its grim comedy undercutting those beats all the more amusing. Less successful is the gaggle of lead young actors tasked with playing our protagonists.

The likes of Van Dien and Dina Meyer are clearly trying to emulate the type of personalities and performances you’d see in traditional sci-fi fare. Still, these satirical performances could have stood to be more distinctive. Supporting turns from Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown fare much better in terms of balancing archetype parodies with acting that’s entertaining in its own right. As for the rest of Starship Troopers, well, it works like a charm. Especially impressive is how well the CGI for the bugs hold up more than two decades later while the practical effects used for the leader of the bugs is outright incredible. It may not match up to RoboCop or Total Recall, but Verhoeven is right on target with his sci-fi satire in Starship Troopers.

Lingua Franca Subverts Norms With Deeply Human Filmmaking

For the first time since 1974, a Summer moviegoing season was not populated with a barrage of big blockbusters. With no new Transformers, Marvel Studios or Harry Potter movies defining the Summer 2020 season, maybe we can all collectively agree to remember Summer 2020 as the summer of good indie cinema? Let the likes of Shirley, Miss Juneteenth and She Dies Tomorrow be the films we associated with this particular summer moviegoing session. Let’s also toss in Lingua Franca into that category of defining Summer 2020 cinema. The directorial debut of Isabel Sandoval, Lingua Franca would be well worth remembering no matter what season it was released in.

Sandoval also stars in Lingua Franca as Olivia, an undocumented trans-Filipino woman working in New York City in 2020. As you can imagine, everyday life for her isn’t great thanks to the constant looming presence of I.C.E. and her struggles to garner American citizenship. She makes her money working as a caretaker for an elderly woman suffering from a deteriorating mental state named Olga (Lynn Cohen), who just got some company in the form of her grandson, Alex (Lev Gorn). Across all three of these characters is a desire to be seen as a person by other people. Olga, for example, doesn’t want to receive help when she doesn’t need it while Alex is trying to maintain a job after a number of off-screen personal troubles.

Above all, though, this is Olivia’s story. It’s one that Sandoval tells with a welcome variety of filmmaking influences. The opening and closing sequence, depicting Olivia talking to her far-away mother over footage of various parts of NYV, is reminiscent of Chantal Akerman's Notes From Home. Alex, meanwhile, enters the meat factory that he works in through a tracking shot straight out of a Martin Scorsese movie. Then there’s Olivia’s sensual dream sequence where she imagines herself and Alex making love. The otherworldly nature of the visuals, as well as the use of tight close-ups of bodies in the middle of making passionate love, simultaneously evokes the works of David Lynch as well as Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Woman in the Dunes.

The way Lingua Franca evokes classic movies while creating something distinctive is emblematic of how the whole production is aware of the past while blazing new trails. This trait is also reflected in how Lingua Franca quietly subverts storytelling tropes associated with cinematic trans narratives. It’s easy to see a version of Lingua Franca where Alex is our lead character. Perhaps he's now framed as a bigot to make the morality of the story more one-dimensional. Of course, he'll be led down a redemptive arc through taught life lessons by Olivia. In this incarnation of Lingua Franca, Olivia would be exclusively defined by Alex. She’d be a passive figure, one whose entire existence was destined to end in tragedy to motivate personal growth on the part of Alex.

The actual Lingua Franca takes a more thoughtful approach to Olivia’s story, which was also penned by Sandoval. For one thing, the vast majority of the film is filtered through her perspective. Only scenes depicting Alex at his job and at a local tavern deviate from Lingua Franca being told through Olivia’s eyes. For another, even in the face of systemic forces (like I.C.E.) that constrain her, Olivia is still an active character. She’s more than capable of making her own choices, she isn’t just at the mercy of cis-gendered characters. Since the narrative doesn’t default to Olivia always experiencing the most miserable events possible, you really don’t know where she’ll take the story next.

This means Lingua Franca has a sense of tonal variety in depicting the life of a trans character that I can’t even imagine existing in something like Dallas Buyer’s Club. That’s unbelievably good in terms of subverting harmful pop culture stereotypes. However, these deft writing touches on the part of Sandoval ensures that Lingua Franca is immensely engaging as a standalone piece of art. Take a quiet scene between Olivia and her longtime friend reminiscing about their childhood together. The dialogue here, including the great phrase “We were dressed like altar boys when what we really wanted to be were nuns!”, is so gloriously specific. There’s a level of detail to their interaction that makes it feel ripped from reality.

Sandoval’s intimate camerawork is just the cherry on top of such a moving scene. By placing the audience so close to these two characters, as well as having this conversation take place in a nearly-empty locale, there’s a cozy visual quality to their interaction. That quality reinforces the sense that Olivia and her sister, though so often dehumanized in America, find essential comfort in one another’s company. Sandoval’s camerawork throughout the whole production carries a similar quality of being subdued but noteworthy. Especially impressive is the way she incorporates wider angles throughout Lingua Franca to convey a sense of detachment between characters, particularly in regard to Alex and his relatives.

It wouldn’t be inaccurate to call Lingua Franca a movie of the moment. After all, bigotry against trans individuals, people of color and immigrants (which has always existed in this country) are on the forefront of the political zeitgeist right now. Just two days ago, transphobic comments from Cissie Graham at the Republican National Convention reaffirmed prejudice festers in seats of immense power. A deeply human story like Lingua Franca certainly makes for a good balm against such hatred ripped straight from the headlines. However, the best qualities of Lingua Franca are also its most timeless.

Among those qualities is the fact that, like Carol, Tangerine and Rafiki, Lingua Franca is a movie about LGBTQIA+ people living, enduring and even thriving told through the prism of remarkable filmmaking. That’s the sort of feature that ensures we’ll be talking about Lingua Franca long after Summer 2020 has come to a close.

Lingua Franca is now streaming on Netflix.

In Laman's Terms: The Complex Twenty-Year Lifespan of The X-Men Movies

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

“Nobody had made those movies before, certainly not on the level that we were doing it,” actress Famke Janssen told Observer in a retrospective on the original X-Men movie. “The comic book adaptation hadn’t been done in this kind of grittier fashion.” Coming out in 2000, X-Men arrived at a precarious time for the comic book movie. Blade’s recent successful box office run cemented the idea that movies based on Marvel comics could work. However, there was still trepidation over the idea that audiences would come out in droves for comic book movies in the wake of Spawn, Steel and Batman & Robin.

Those three films codified comic book movies as being campy and detached from reality. The first X-Men movie, meanwhile, immediately established itself as something different by having its opening scene be a flashback set in a concentration camp in Auschwitz. Further moments of raw vulnerability (like Wolverine responding “Every time” when asked if it hurts to unfurl his adamantium claws) cemented X-Men as a different creature in the comic book movie landscape circa. 2000. That uniqueness helped to propel X-Men to a strong enough box office haul that it spawned a franchise that’s been going on for two decades.

Of course, everything must come to a close. So too must the first comic book movie franchise of the 21^st-century. This Friday’s The New Mutants is not only actually finally premiering, it also brings with it the closure of the X-Men series. Now the X-Men films will move over to Marvel Studios, where they will get some kind of reboot. The future of X-Men movies is uncertain but its past, that’s fully concrete. The twenty-year legacy of the X-Men movies is an odd one. Here is a series that found its best moments when it was pinned in a corner, working under tight budget constraints and in smaller-scale stories. I’m, of course, talking about Deadpool and Logan, two of its most recent entries.

One’s personal feelings on the films may vary, but in terms of public response, Deadpool and Logan caught fire with the public in a way most of the other X-Men movies just didn’t. All the extravagant visual effects in the world couldn’t make people interested in X-Men: Apocalypse. But, much like the opening scene of X-Men, Deadpool and Logan both offered something different from traditional superhero fare. They had the courage to stick with unique creative instincts rather than just hew to what other superhero fare had done recently. We will see how New Mutants fares as a movie, but on a conceptual basis, this horror movie is also attempting to try something new in the superhero film landscape. In its spin-off’s, the X-Men movies tended to flourish.

While Logan represents the most ambitious vestige of this saga, the principal X-Men movies have aged far worse. For one thing, the later entries in the principal X-Men saga began to get more creatively stagnant as its spin-off’s began to get more bold. Whereas Logan and The New Mutants were exploring new genres for mutant stories to inhabit, X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix were content to be knock-off’s of other popular superhero movies. Apocalypse was going for the scale and heightened nature of an Avengers movie but its heart just wasn’t into it. Dark Phoenix, meanwhile, saturated the screen in dim lighting in the hopes of securing the depth of dark and gritty superhero movies like The Dark Knight. Neither film matched the creative highs of the movies they were mimicking.

Something that’s been running throughout all of the X-Men movies is a self-conscious nature. Dating back to the days of “yellow spandex” jabs, the X-Men films have always been trepidatious about embracing the wackier aspects of their source material. Now, fidelity to the comics does not equal a good movie. Just ask last years Hellboy movie, which featured a comics-accurate Lobster Johnson in one of the most slipshod movies to grace the big screen in the last few years. However, X-Men ditched fun aspects of the comics and proceeded to replace them with generic ideas.

Even if you didn’t know the X-Men donned colorful yellow outfits in the comics, you’d likely wish they’d go fight baddies in outfits that were more interesting than disposable black outfits lifted from The Matrix. Whereas Blade in 1998 was a direct precursor to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s approach to embracing the fun details of the comics, the original X-Men now feels a relic. Blade was a glimpse of the future. X-Men, and its embarrassment of where it came from, was the past.

Worse, though, is how the creative decisions of the main X-Men movies undercut the idea of having the mutants work as stand-ins for marginalized populations (which, of course, originated in the comics). For starters, the primary X-Men films (and also the Deadpool movies) shove women off to the side while also totally ignoring characters of color. Storm, one of the most beloved and prominent characters of the X-Men comics, barely has anything to do across her six individual film appearances. Rogue starts out the first X-Men movie as an audience point-of-view character before becoming a damsel-in-distress in the climax and subsequently being a forgettable part of the sequels. To boot, neither Dark Phoenix adaptation could subvert the icky gender politics of Jean Grey going evil because she gets a hold of too much power. It didn’t help that both adaptations decided to filter this story through the perspective of a male protagonist.

The X-Men are supposed to represent the “little people” of the world so how come all of the angst in these stories revolve around cis-het white men? And then, of course, there’s the behind-the-scenes aspects of the X-Men movies that really taint the whole franchise. Out of the seven main X-Men movies, five of them were directed by either Bryan Singer or Brett Ratner. Both have been leveled with a barrage of sexual assault allegations. Such allegations include Ellen Page accusing Brett Ratner of sexual harassment on the set of X-Men: The Last Stand.  The X-Men films being adversely impacted by the actions of Singer and Ratner is one of the least important ripple effects of these accusations coming to light. However, it is still disappointing that a series that could have been used to champion the underdogs of society instead became another place for powerful white men to engage in alleged acts of seediness.

After twenty years on the silver screen, the X-Men movies leave behind a complicated creative legacy. Even the earliest films managed to birth a movie star in the form of Hugh Jackman and allowed the likes of Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan and Kelsey Grammar to deliver memorable performances. In its best installments, the X-Men spin-offs like Logan and Deadpool managed to shift perceptions of what mainstream comic book movies could be.

Unfortunately, the X-Men franchise, both on and off-screen, also serves as a microcosm of how white male perspectives get premium treatment above all others  Despite spanning two decades and twelve movies, it’s only with the upcoming New Mutants that this saga realized women could serve as lead characters in movies. Even with the era of Fox X-Men movies coming to an end, thanks to Marvel Studios, these merry mutants aren’t gonna stop showing up on the big screen anytime soon. Hopefully, future X-Men movies take cues from the boldest entries in this franchise to improve on the shortcomings of the past. Chiefly, give Storm something to do, you cowards.

An Easy Girl Is Thoughtful But Lacking In Distinctiveness

The warm summer sun glistening on the beach. The sound of waves crashing against the sand. A picnic on a hillside. These are all the wonderful staples of summer you don’t get to experience living in a Texas suburb. Then again, you don’t really get to have them if you live near the Texas coast either. Have you ever been to Galveston, Texas? The beaches there are not great, Bob. Maybe I can’t have my idyllic beach time excursion in reality. But movies like An Easy Girl can help compensate for that absence. I can live vicariously through fictious characters having the kind of warm and bubbly summer exceeding my grasp in Allen, TX.

An Easy Girl protagonist Naima (Mina Fahrid) is also feeling like she’s missing out on something in her life. She lives a studious rule-abiding life. It’s not a bad existence but she can’t help but feel like she’s missing something. When Naima’s cousin, Sofia (Zahia Dehar), arrives into town, she begins to get a taste of the life that’s so long eluded her. Sofia is the total opposite of Naima, with her regular sexual encounters, tattoos and party-all-night attitude. She’s basically Naima’s hero. Sofia loves this free-wheeling lifestyle but is it the right fit for Naima? And are the friends Sofia makes in her shenanigans the kind of friends you can really depend on?

Director Rebecca Zlotowski frames the luxurious landscapes Sofia and Naima transverse throughout An Easy Girl with the kind of picture-perfect quality you’d expect out of a postcard. The softness of the frame, the heavy presence of natural light, you just wanna hop into the frame and enjoy all the upscale antics they’re getting into. Of course, this is juxtaposed against the fact that reality intrudes upon many of their outings. A pair of dudes shout “Whores!” to Sofia and Naima after they rebuke their romantic advances at the beach. A classy dinner is home to a hostess who pokes and prods at Sofia, particularly in regards to her decision to undergo plastic surgery.

Though this world is something that Naima is enamored with, it’s also one that’s far less perfect than it would appear. By the end of An Easy Girl, even the easygoing Sofia has been revealed to be a false idol of sorts. Naima always saw Sofia as someone whose above normal human beings, as seen by Naima imagining Sofia in a mid-movie montage of shots depicting Sofia lounging on the beach make her look like a model in a beer commercial. Sofia is not like you and me. She’s something else. She takes control of her life. She’s the kind of person Naima would give anything to be.

But Sofia’s climatic insistence on just moving on from false accusations of thievery, despite Naima wanting to clear their names, annihilates Naima’s illusions of her cousin. Sofia’s sense of control only goes so far. She’d rather just plow ahead in life rather than challenge authority figures. To challenge them would inspire changes in Sofia’s life that she cannot comprehend. Better to muddle through the status quo instead. Sofia is not the larger-than-life figure in Naima’s head. She’s a person. An Easy Girl, then, is a cinematic reflection of the universal coming-of-age experience of realizing your heroes are people to.

The thoughtful exploration of this theme proves to be the most intriguing part of An Easy Girl. The rest of the movie is on the order of fine but not exactly exceptional. Little in this movie registers as bad, in fact, it’s quite well-made. But the slow pacing and muted performances ensure that An Easy Girl too often feels interchangeable with other coming-of-age dramas. A little more personality injected into Zlotowski and Teddy Lussi-Modeste’s screenplay could have taken An Easy Girl from decent to something truly special. At least it delivers a large number of glorious beaches for me to imagine myself romping through.