Violent Night is a perfect Christmas movie for the modern audience. It’s loud, strategically dumb (more on this later), and very, very violent.
Which is to say it’s far from a perfect movie, but a sledgehammer wielding Santa is exactly the sort of thing people will pay to see. And pay they did, because they movie did well in the box office, and already has a sequel in the making. Amid the middling cast, Santa is a perfect choice. Sure, the actor had to put on all that weight he finally dropped for the fourth season of Stanger Things, but it seems to have paid off. People want their Santa jolly and with some girth to him. Mind you, here it looks like extra padding on a muscle, enforced by the backstory of Santa being a marauder of yore in his previous life. And he doesn’t quite know how he got to be Santa or why he’s doing it. Only that he no longer enjoys it, disappointed and disillusioned by all the annoying, overprivileged and overindulged brats out there. We get that much from the opening scene where he drinks, drives, and hurls. In fact, the scene set up the movie perfectly. Moving on to a Christmas celebration at a mansion of an insanely wealthy and proportionally b*tchy matriarch and her two adult children with their families: the good son and the idiot daughter. The thing is, someone’s got the idea to hit that particular place up for all its worth while Santa gets stuck and stranded there. The thieves are comically evil, and John Leguizamo is only so believable as a man who can hold his own against this behemoth of a Santa, but since the movie is deadest on echoing one of the most famous Christmas classics of all time, complete with a precocious kid setting up traps, it doesn’t matter. The point is that Santa finds his sledgehammer and gets his groove back. It will be a very, very violent night. The strategic dumbness comes in when Santa has no idea time and again why he does what he does or how what he does works. It’s kind of clever in a way, because a. it saves the writers from having to come up with something more, and b. it creates for an interesting Santa character. Disenchanted and tired of it all but perpetuating the cycle. So, there you have it, a bombastic, ridiculous actioneer with reindeers and things. A Santa story unlike any other, saved by and large by Santa himself, played with whim and zeal and all of that by a believably tired, believably kickass, perfectly ho-ho-hoing character actor. Merry Christmas to all and to all a …violent? night 😊
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Wes Anderson has apparently surpassed being a movie writer/director and became a brand. So hip, so precocious, so very trendy that stars are lining up to work with him, and the audiences clamor in anticipation. And for what?
Not much, going by his latest, Asteroid City. A movie so crammed with potential that it disappoints viscerally. 103 minutes of technicolor brightness, witty quips, and deadpan staccato dialogue in service of … apparently reminding us how quirky Anderson is and not much more. The main question for me after watching this was, Can Wes Anderson actually do anything else other than Wes Anderson movies? Or is he so stuck in his rhythm and pattern that he can only continue to produce more of the same, until his work comes across as a caricature of itself? Much like its dialogue precisely rattled off in un-lifelike uniformity. It was cute at first. Royal Tenenbaums, for one, is an absolute classic. But now it’s all too predictable, too glibly self-satisfied to properly enjoy. Asteroid City is cutesy and dioramic and witty in that wink-wink-nudge-nudge way but ultimately as empty as the desert its set in. And don’t you want more? Okay, so how do you talk about serious subjects in this day and age and get away with it? Apparently, the answer is it go pink. Bubble gun pink!
Mattel has toyed (bum dumz) with the idea of making a Barbie movie before, but it never panned out. Largely because it’s a weird thing to make a movie out of a toy and have it be interesting. When children play with toys, they invent their own realities. But what do adults do? Adults, as it turns out, do what Greta Gerwig did. They co-write and direct a subliminally clever movie that’s all Barbie all the time, but also hits on all the modern hot topics. Specifically, it hammers on gender equality. You know, that tragically still-non-existent thing. Barbies in their Barbieland had thought they took care of the gender equality but turns out they didn’t. When one of them gains sentience/awareness of the real world and ventures into it, she gets a proper shock to the system. And then with her pretty doll eyes wide open, she sets out to reform and reeducate the rest of the Barbies and save them from the patriarchy that her man/doll/bf dragged in from the real world when he dragged along on her adventure. That’s what makes the story pop, really. Barbie alone would be tots adorbs and all that, but it’s Gosling’s toy boy with perfect muscles and no clue (or genitalia, though to hear him say it, he has “all the genitalia”) that brings in the hilarious dynamic and balances out the story. And then there are amazing production designs, choreographed dance numbers, and singing to make this into a proper crowd-pleaser. And somewhere along the way, Gerwig rather cleverly pushes the message. And it’s such a good, important one. The thing is, it is absolutely destined to fall on deaf ears. The roughly gazillion people who went to see the movie making it Barbillion dollars, by and large just wanted to be entertained. They may well be the same people who underpay their female employees for doing the same jobs or restrict women from having control over their own bodies. What they will take away from the glitzy spectacle of Barbie is … well, a glitzy spectacle. Good on Gerwig for trying. She certainly got rewarded for it, making her now likely one of the most popular and in-demand movie directors and yes, female movie directors, breaking all sorts of records, particularly for the latter category. It’s impressive, it’s important. She’s obviously immensely talented. There are so many clever bon mots and hilarious jokes in the script, if you’re paying attention. But ultimately, while Barbie the doll was revolutionary in her way and time, Barbie the movie isn’t. It’s very well made and wildly fun and perfectly cast and you should by all means check it out, but in the end, while the credits to the beautifully melancholy song by Billie Eilish (and Finneas), you may be reminded that while Barbieland can be saved rather easily, the world we live in may be well and truly f*cked. Or you may just get the song stuck in your head. After all, it’s what it was made for. “The Netflix Effect” strikes again. That’s right, people it happened. David Fincher has finally made a dud. Who’s think that was possible? The man has an impressive of a track record as they come. But either Netflix gave him enough movie to have a Fincher movie and he relaxed and dialed it in or it’s a genuine decline in quality. Only time will tell. For now, what you have is a heavily-narrated tale of an assassin whose latest kill goes wrong. As he finds himself on the receiving end of his employer’s lethal reach, he fights back. Then audience gets to follow him from one killer to the next. Yep, they are all a bunch of killers here. Most more interesting than the protagonist, who is as beige of a lead as his outfits. I mean, this isn’t a man you’d want to spent time with really and still you’re stuck for something like 120 minutes as he narrates every detail of what he’s doing, often repetitively. This is, though, he just isn’t that interesting. Or, frankly, that good at his job, hence the predicament he finds himself in in the first place. The Killer has a talented, thoroughly wasted lead. Why get an actor that’s killed, only to watch his do a stoic, emotionless face is anybody’s guess. Presumably, it looks good on paper. The movie looks great and has exactly two fun things about it: an epic, brutal fight scene and description of Tilda Swinton as a Q-tip. Because of course. The rest is time wasted waiting for the movie to get good or for Fincher to live up to his potential or something and there’s just …. Unlike Netflix’s other recent “serious movie” duds, namely May December (also reviewed on this website), this one didn’t get particularly good reviewers anywhere and will likely not be winning awards any time soon. Save yourself some time and skip this, forget it exists. Watch any other movie by the director instead. Or just some other movie. Something that doesn't go for style over substance quite so heavily. The only thing this Killer slays is time and promise. May December is exactly the kind of movie that wins awards. In essence, it strives to be great so hard that it forgets to be good.
And why wouldn’t it be great? It’s got a great director and two incredibly talented leads. It’s inspired by a wildly scandalous story. It has all the trappings of greatness and yet … The movie is a dud. Yeah, sorry. I’m sure my opinion is in a minority. The movie scored off the charts with reviewers, and I know it will get oodles of awards or at least nominations. But watching it was a drag. The last thing I’ve seen from the director was Carol. Carol was sublime. This movie was too slow-paced, too overt, every emotion exaggerated and telegraphed for the faraway seats with a hideously jarring score that belonged in a giallo movie or something from the ‘70s * (which it was, actually. The director has inexplicably chosen to recycle a 1971 soundtrack.). The plot wasn’t original either, but you knew that going in. It changed just enough facts to avoid a lawsuit, but all the tabloid basics were there. The too-young boy and a much older woman who get together despite all odds and raise a family. The course of true love and all that … Except that the movie finds them 24 years later with the youngest of their kids about to flee the nest, and the man/boy character at 36 may finally begin to analyze his life or may just be in the mood for something strange. By far the most tragic character here, he’s also the most obvious in the way he is directed, from the stilted, reticent manner of moving to speaking. Not quite an old, not quite a boy, trapped in-between by a relationship that had been his entire life. Still waters but with a restless undercurrent beneath. Throw an actress in the mix, who is doing research before shooting a movie of their life, and things get …complicated. Everyone's been praising Charles Melton's performance, and it is objectively good. But make no mistake, the show absolutely belongs to Julianne Moore. The rest are second and third fiddles to her passive aggressive manipulations and devastating pathos. A lot of Melton's performance is physical, the way he folds up and flabs up his CW-stud (he of Riverdale fame) body into a lesser than and dials his chiseled face to aloof amicability. It's a good performance and will likely advance his career to the next level of serious acting, but it doesn't seem all that Oscar-worthy. Moore, though, she blisters. Portman's holding her own, but her job is mainly to observe and mimic. And everyone seems to have gotten the same directing memo of overdoing it. This could have, should have been compelling, so the final result is a real disappointment. No matter how terrific the acting is, the movie is just so freaking “look at me, I’m a serious drama vying for awards” pretentious. I love drama, I don’t mind slow movies, but this was overindulged on both accounts. I call it “The Netflix Effect.” Netflix who’s always been quantity over quality simply doesn’t seem to care that much about what they put on screen so much as it checks enough boxes. They were probably looking for a serious respectable movie to offset the copious amounts of garbage they put out and glad to grab this one. But this isn’t about that so much as it’s about good directors who do their worst work for Netflix. Just recently David Fincher who’s never done a less than great movie had his dud, Killer, on there. It will likely continue to occur, movie business is, after all, a business. And I’m sure there is an audience out there for May December who will ooh and aah over it, because it is the sort of movie discerning taste are supposed to ooh and ahh over, but if you take a step back and observe it with a critical eye, you’ll see that for all his royal bearing, this emperor has no clothes. Warning: this review discusses the ending. Extensively. It is therefore best read after finishing the show. Watch the show first. Definitely watch the show.
Once in a while a TV show comes along that’s so good, so dangerously close to perfect that you fear for it to end. The emotional involvement gets too great, you care too much. Can the ending possibly live up to your expectations? Will it devastate? Well, in this case, yes, it will devastate. It’s probably best to know that going in. And now that you do, we can talk about the rest of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the tragically beautiful of it all. So, BBC who is no stranger to quality, went and did it. Made a show you can’t walk away from. Made a show so propulsive, so mesmerizing, so clever that it takes over your life.(And after its ends, makes everything else pale by comparison.) It started with spy novellas, randomly enough. Potential was spotted and turned into a TV show. It got smart writers. And absolutely aced with pitch perfect casting. Seriously, if somehow all the other aspects of production were flagging, the acting along with keep this ship afloat. Sandra Oh, first cast, is very good, reliably good, but it’s Jodie Comer who is a revelation here. For someone who had to have been in her early twenties to take on a role this complex and inhabit it so profoundly is absolutely stunning to behold. Yes, she got critical acclaim, awards (BAFTA, Emmy, etc.) but it’s beyond that. It’s a performance almost too consummate for TV because it’s likely difficult to suspend perfection for four seasons, but Comer managed. With aplomb. On screen, she isn’t merely charismatic, she’s magnetic. She’s a monster you love. She’s a monster Eve loves, although it is killing her. Because you see, at its source, Killing Eve is a love story. An epic one. A proper, devastating, slow-burn of an undeniable attraction between two very different people. It’s basically love at first sight that is fought against for four seasons. And like any true love, it conquers all. Every obstacle is eventually obliterated on their path to each other, because at the end of the day, you know these two people belong together even if they don’t always know it themselves. Or rather Eve doesn’t know it. Even’s the one doing most of the fighting. Because Eve is a nice, middle-aged lady with a steady job and reliable marriage who has never counted on falling in love with a bona fide psychopath. And so on and on it goes—the push and pull of it, the complicated dance around each other, the denial-tinged desire. The serpentine twists the two of them take toward each other are more twisted and convoluted than any spy shenanigans the plot engages in. Fun fact: I don’t like spy stories. At all. It did nothing to detract from my enormous enjoyment of this show. Because … Villanelle. What. A. Character. There’s never been anyone like her on screen. For all the supposed progress being made with gender roles, etc. no one shows women so good at killing, so remorseless about it. And no one definitely shows women taking such visceral pleasure in killing. She can’t help it, she’s a psychopath. But to be fair, she was trained to be one. From a difficult child with potential sociopathic tendencies to a professional assassin for an international organization dedicated to disrupting the world order was a one-way ticket for Villanelle. She is exceptional at what she does and has built a nice life for herself … and then she meets Eve. And slowly but surely her world changes. Because that’s what happens when you fall in love: you change yourself to fit inside another person’s heart. The process is the same for Eve, only more cataclysmic. Her transformation is radically more comprehensive and dramatic, at least on the surface. But here’s the problem: while BBC might dare to show women like Villanelle on TV, they are still too bound to social conventions to make her a lead. And thus, books titled Codename Villanelle turn into a TV show titled Killing Eve. Convention wins over. An infinitely more exciting and original character takes a backseat to a more pedestrian and presumably more relatable one. The audience is allowed the comfort of a plain(ish), older desk jockey with friends and a husband as opposed to a dazzling, young, anti-every-convention assassin. There is a certain logic there, but it is a travesty. Especially as Villanelle steals scene after scene, focus after focus. Eve is struggling to keep up, it’s almost unfair to her or to Sandra Oh. But the two of them manage. Their chemistry is fire. It doesn’t matter what they do to others around them or to each other, these two are on a collision course. It’s .. kind of perfect. Less perfect are the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. The switch of writers for every season creates a disparity in tone and style. There’s a very weird thing where for 2 seconds in season one Villanelle is bisexual (there’s a dude and a girl in her bed), wherein for the entirety of the show she is very obviously a lesbian, with all her past and present lovers being women. Presumably she’s bi in the books, and that was a nod, but can we get some consistency here. Not like there’s a surplus of awesome lesbian TV characters. And that’s nothing compared to the ending which has been accused of everything, from randomly cruel to homophobic, and wasn’t helped at all by the fact the writers said things like they wanted one of the characters to go back to “normal” life. You’d think someone who’s deep in it, would have a working understanding of the fact that their lives were normal. It was their normal. That was the beauty and uniqueness of it. Love rewrites your ideas of normalcy and everything else. Though apparently the show writer doesn’t. There are other logistical snafus throughout, but you forgive them, because … Villanelle. The only unforgivable thing is the ending. Because apparently these two, after everything they’ve been though, do not get a happy one. And aren’t we past it? Aren’t we done with punishing women for being “wild”? Aren’t we done driving them off the edge to their death ala Thelma and Louise? Don’t spout some writer nonsense about Villanelle not dying but transcending to the next plane. What is that garbage? She dies. She gets killed, brutally and unnecessary, just as she is finally happy, because the same sets of narrow minds that tried to make it all about Eve desire to punish a woman for her “disobedience”, for her straying off the social norms. She is deprived of a chance at a happy life and murdered for her trespasses on conventional morality. It’s the most viciously puritanical of all endings, nasty, mean, inconsiderate of the character. Or the fans. And Eve, of course, is spared, because Eve was “normal” to begin with, before getting corrupted by the evil gay amoral woman. Yay, the morality plebes rejoice. And screw it, because in the end it won’t matter. After the sting passes, Villanelle will remain the bright burning star of the show, and all the rest will fade away. The writers say Villanelle will live on in Eve? Lame. Seriously, lame. It isn’t how love works. It isn’t how people in love work. Whatever fears and reservations Eve might have had at first about being with Villanelle, she conquered them. Omni vincit amor and all that. The Eve she is at the end of the show did not want to be free of Villanelle. She is devastated by her loss. So everyone’s punished. For a show about profoundly immoral people, Killing Eve ends up brutally moralistic. And it all but ruins an otherwise spectacular show. I watch a lot of things. I read a lot of things. I can’t tell you the last time I had experienced (and make no mistake, it is an experience) such a profoundly mesmerizing, complex, and authentic relationship between two people. It isn’t just a love story. It’s THE love story. It broke my heart. I let it. I’d do it again. It’s that good. And I will never forgive BBC that ending. So yeah, how is our gender representation in media progress going? Are we still lying to ourselves and saying “swimmingly”? Because that was the most original one I’ve seen in ages, and they still screwed it up epically. The moment two female protagonists got to be their best, freest, most uninhibited, strongest, happiest selves, they were crushed. And just look at the other side of the screen. What did Hollywood do with Jodie Comer after her mesmerizing star turn? They threw her into a romcom as a romantic foil to a dazzling leading man, utilizing the classic Hollywood 15 age difference. (Yes, I am aware Eve is 22 years older than Villanelle in real life, but that’s on purpose, this crap is just vanity and standards.) Granted, Free Guy, was above average for that sort of movie, and Reynolds is well above average for a lead, but I saw that movie first and didn’t even remember Comer was in it until looking it up afterwards. I did remember her in The Last Duel, but frankly it was a rather dreary historical drama, nothing special. For someone of her talent, those are seriously underwhelming choices. Strong, tall woman? Played gay for four seasons? Why, lets present her as straight as possible, throw her in with some tall studs. And now what, Hollywood? She’s got two more movies coming out soon. Let’s hope those will allow her star to shine as brightly as it deserves. Apparently, she killed it (pun) on stage, doing a one woman show and winning top award for it on both sides of the pond. So here’s hoping she’ll get the fame and acclaim she so obviously deserves. I mean, seriously, the woman is mesmerizing to watch. Her offbeat beauty, her striking knack for accents, her mannerisms, her natural and inexhaustible charisma—it’s a rare thing. She managed to create a character (that as far as I can tell is as far from her real self as a character can be) and inhabit it so completely, you forgot it was acting. You seldom see a performance so immersive and complete, in any format. She made Villanelle real. Yeah, I’m now definitely a fan. But first and foremost, I’m a fan of Villanelle. Let’s collectively erase those horrid last few minutes from existence and reimagine the ending the characters earned and deserve. Ride off into the sunset, you wild, beautiful, murderous monsters! There are indeed many reasons you should love Benny. After all, it’s only fair—BENNY LOVES YOU.
How much does this weird teddy bear-Elmo combination loves his person? A lot. Enough to kill for. Over and over again. Horror-comedy isn’t easy. But the multitalented writer/producer/director/lead star of this production succeeds admirably. The man gets the tone just right, so that it’s wacky yet charming, murderous yet oddly adorable. The protagonist of the story, Jack, the object of Benny’s affection, is a man-child who has been stuck in comforts of arrested development for 35 years and then abruptly thrust into adulthood. Swamped by changes, he has one constant in his life, his toy teddy that’s been with him since childhood. This teddy bear aims to help its person … no matter what. And true to his rather demented appearance, he has oodles of homicidal ideas on how to help. Clever, hilarious, and all around awesome (not to mention British which elevates the jokes), this was a great random Prime video find. Check it out. And remember … Benny Loves You! I don’t think this got talked about enough. I don’t think this got the attention it deserved. And to be clear, this deserves a lot of attention.
We live in the day and age of remakes, most of which are unnecessary. Dead Ringers isn’t just a remake, it’s a reinvention. In fact, it goes so far above and beyond the limitations of Cronenberg’s original, it almost makes you forget it ever existed at all. Let’s face it—remakes are by and large a reflection of a creative stagnation. When studios have nothing new to say, they dust off the old successes and revamp them for new audiences. And every so often, you get surprised, nay, dazzled, by a marvel like this. Rachel Weisz (one of my all-time favorites and reliable excellent) has been doing such extremely interesting movies lately, which is no small task in business where it’s a struggle for a woman to remain relevant at all after a certain age. She is the mastermind and the beating heart behind this mini-series production, and while her behind-the-scenes work is obvious in brilliant choice of writers, etc., it’s difficult to think of that (or any other things for that matter) once she is on screen playing the infamous twins. It truly is a career-making performance. Yes, the technology has come a long way to make acting beside yourself seamless, but there’s more to it than that. There is an innate skill—a mastery—at bringing to life two characters so different and yet so similar, in all of their splendid disfunction. In a song, this would be “I can’t live with or without you.” Their codependency is that profound. It goes well beyond right and wrong, well beyond social conventions or even science. Every boundary is pushed as the plot careens toward its inevitable devastating ending. And as both the brazen, wild twin and the brilliant, mild one, Rachel Weisz will sock you, delight you, and break your heart over and over again. On screen, she is magnetic. No matter the line—and she is given some spectacular lines here. The production is likely too disturbing to be binge-worthy, but at the same time, it’s difficult to look away. Blood-red in dress and style, visceral and incisive, this is purely brilliant. And oh so clever, too, in what it says about the way the modern society regards and treats women: the barbaric regulations and obscene expectations. I’m not usually a fan of didactic narratives as they tend to overwhelm the plot, but Dead Ringers does it exactly right, with marvelous subtlety. There’s so much more I can say about how much I loved this, how it stayed with me long after watching, and so on, but in service of succinctness, I’ll stay with this—watch this. Do yourself a favor, watch this and be reminded of what quality entertainment ought to be like. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen in a long, long time. Recommended. Jordan Peele has done it again. Jordan Peele has made (produced to be clear, not directed) a scary movie about race. Jordan Peele has a unique biracial perspective that he has done every twist and take on during his five years in comedy as 50% of the ingenious Key and Peele duo.
But no, he hadn’t. Turns out all this time he had more to say and now he can’t stop, won’t stop going on about it. Should race be talked about? Yes, you bet. A lot. Is the conversation going to fix it? Unlikely, but it is still a conversation that needs to be had. Should it be had the way Peele does it? Well…debatable. In comedy, Peele was subtle, unbiased, he poked fun at every side of the issue, every stereotype, every cliché. In horror, Peele is serious. And serious Peele is a tediously proselytizing Peele with messages as heavy-handed as fake news on social media, albeit in good cause. And this heavy-handedness ruins every movie Peele goes near, time and again. This one he didn’t even direct; he produced it and was one of the three co-writers. And it was still tedious. The difference here is that why his two previous most famous movies were original works, this one is a remake of sorts, meaning there is already a preset standard, a certain quality to uphold, a source material to do justice to. Well, dear readers, sadly Peele doesn’t do the original justice. Nowhere near it. I’m a huge genre fan and the original is one of my all-time favorite movies. And guess what? The original was still about racism. It just wasn’t pie-shoved in your face the way Peele likes to do it. With this new and updated version, Peele decides to cover all racism in America, of all eras, making the central character a recurring one throughout time. But first…meet Anthony played by the reliably good Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Anthony is an artist, we know this right away because he wears his too-tight pants rolled up too high and a beanie on the very top of his noggin, also rolled up, even inside. Anthony, as evidenced by his art to begin with, appears to have no talent whatsoever, but has managed to finagle his way into art world all the same, owing it in no small way to his wealthy art curator girlfriend. Anthony is obnoxious, mediocre, and a sloppy drunk to boot, but he’s built like an Adonis, irresistible to women, and gets away with whatever. For a while. Anthony becomes fascinated with a certain local legend revealed to him by the local laundromat worker played by Colman Domingo. Soon, Anthony is sneaking around old, abandoned projects and playing at the mirror games one really, really ought to leave alone. Of course, those who know, do. It is made very clear throughout the movie, over and over again, but people do it anyway, because without stupid people, horror movies wouldn’t work. Anthony just does it because he’s a jerk that way. Soon there are bodies stacking up all around Anthony, gutted and hooked to death. But at least his art at last becomes interesting. Soon Anthony is toeing the dangerous line between knowing and becoming. For if the legend is to stay alive, it’ll need fresh bodies. That’s basically it. Despite having three writers and a terrific (if barely credited) source material, the movie is only just over 90 minutes and isn’t that good for any of it. Sure, there are some fun scares, some interesting visual choices, clever use of shadow puppetry, perfectly decent acting throughout, but it all gets completely overwhelmed by the weight of the “Peele message.” The end result leaves a lot to be desired. The potential is there. The movie just doesn’t get to be the frightfest it’s meant to, because it doesn’t stop preaching long enough to permit it. This review was difficult to write. It’s almost impossible to talk about race in this day and age. Unless you’re Jordan Peele. For whom it is impossible to stop or moderate. But if you take a moment to actually read and digest what I’m trying to say, I believe you’ll see that it says the following: 1.I’m a huge genre fan and a fan of Peele’s. 2.I believe race conversations are important, but they should not overwhelm their chosen medium (movie in this instance) 3.I believe Peele has a unique perspective on race (personally and generally) and I’m interested in hearing what he has to say about it and in his experience, but not the way he does it in his movies But there’s an ocean of misinterpretation between what a person writes and what people read so there… The movie got pretty low ratings, so I wasn’t the only one thinking it wasn’t up to par, but then again it tripled its budget, so in the world of money (the only world that matters in this day and age) it did well. The fans of the original might be disappointed. The thing is, there is a way to talk about race in scary movies. There really is. The Purge movies (at least the first few, I’ve not seen the latest yet) have done it. They have a great and sound internal logic. Their stab (pardon the pun) at the social structures that create the racial divisions, they take on the powers that be. Peele’s didactic is monotone, nuance-free, and instead of adding to the story, it overpowers and detracts from it. Anyway, that’s my take on the movie. If you have any thoughts, drop a comment below. Evil kids are such a good genre fodder. The juxtaposition of presumed innocence and the dark side is perfect playing field. Many directors, authors, creators of all things scary go there. With different results. Sometimes, really succeeding.
Orphan, the original, came out all the way back in 2009. And it was pretty freaking awesome. With solid cast of real actors and one creepy-ass kid and a killer twist. Now, well over a decade later, because we live in a culture that can’t leave anything well enough alone, there’s a sequel which is technically a prequel using…get this…the same actress. Now Tinseltown has long been playing fast and loose with casting kids. In fact, if you only went by what kids look like TV, you’d be shocked encountering one and learning their age in real life. Every time. For ages now, there’s bene people in their 20s playing teenagers, but with younger kids, the casting is usually closer (maybe a few years instead of a decadeplus apart), i.e. Stranger Things. Which is to say in the original Orphan, Isabelle Fuhrman was likely somewhat older than the nine-year-old Esther. But in the second movie she is well into her 20s. So it looks…what’s the polite word? Incongruous? I mean, yes, she’s somewhat young looking, and yes, the director uses all sorts of practical effects from makeup to a kid stunt and trick shooting messing with viewer’s perspective, but you CAN TELL. You really can tell. Which is to say not only do we go into this movie already knowing one of the most awesome plot twist in the last two decades of scary movies, but we are also being sold on a cheap trick that really doesn’t quite work. To the movie’s credit, it gives you a new twist. And a really fun one at that, once again turning the audience’s perception of the perfect nuclear family on its tail. And overall, it is fun, a fun quick entertaining movie. That would work so well if it was its own thing. But as a sequel/prequel it leaves a lot to be desired from a logistics perspective. Granted, movie watching presupposes a certain suspension of disbelief, but you can only push it so far. The real Esther might be an adult woman trapped in a child’s body, but the actress playing her isn’t. No movie trickery can convince you of that. Which brings us to the next question? Why didn’t they just cast a lookalike? Why did they have to try to be so cute and clever with a bizarre and impractical concept of using the original? Yes, she’s a good actress (who has apparently worked steady since…who knew) but one can only do so much against the restrictions of age even in the place (the silver screen) that has long defies such limitations. Unless you’re the real Esther…imaginary as she is. Because audiences tend to be less than discriminating and often go with entertainment value over all other considerations, the movie actually did nicely enough at the box office to warrant a sequel. Watch…they’ll do it too. Who knows how old Fuhrman will be by then, but apparently that doesn’t matter, so… The crazy thing is that this movie is cowritten by the creator of the original, who also apparently thought it was a good idea. Well, it’s probably easier than coming up with an all original one. There you go, now you know. Turn off your brain and come along for the ride. |
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