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Movie Curiosities: Thanksgiving (2023)
November 20, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
This is a promise long overdue. I have fond memories of going out to watch Grindhouse with my college buddies on the big screen, and I weep for those who missed out when the Weinsteins chose to bury the picture. After fifteen long years of savoring the fake trailer included in the original Tarantino/Rodriguez double feature, the Grindhouse faithful finally have the full-length Thanksgiving (2023) slasher from Eli Roth.
Granted, the film is distinctly modern, without any of the retro trappings iconic to Grindhouse. And the film is nowhere near as raunchy as the original trailer. (If you’re not familiar with Grindhouse or the original fake trailer, viewer caution for that link is HEAVILY advised.) That’s not to say it’s a bad movie, and it’s certainly better than nothing, it’s just not quite the movie it should’ve been.
We lay our scene in the sleepy Massachusetts town of Plymouth, where a big box store is open on Thanksgiving to make the most of those Black Friday dollars. To make a long and ugly story short, this particular Black Friday sale turns into a bona fide massacre, with a career-ending injury to a young potential baseball superstar (Bobby, played by Jalen Thomas Brooks) and at least two fatalities. Nobody was ever arrested for the bloodshed, all the lawsuits went nowhere, and the store’s wealthy owner (Thomas Wright, played by Rick Hoffman) spent a fortune in community service to repair his damaged brand.
Cut to a year later. Though Thomas has sworn to beef up security, he’s still opening the store on Thanksgiving for a massive Black Friday blowout like the first time wasn’t a terrible fatal mistake. Naturally, this decision has been met with no small measure of controversy and antipathy. And then people connected with the initial massacre start turning up brutally slain. Hilarity ensues.
Thanksgiving (2023) is my least favorite kind of film to review because it’s just okay. It doesn’t do much of anything new or memorable, but it doesn’t make any huge missteps either. We don’t get any particularly moving or intelligent themes, and we get jack-all in terms of genre subversion. It’s just a perfectly straightforward slasher flick that hits every expected plot reveal and turning point like clockwork. If you’ve ever seen any slasher flick, you’ll know exactly what happens and exactly when it happens, down to the second.
It certainly doesn’t help that nearly every character is a stereotype only barely thick enough to serve as a napkin. With the minor exceptions of our Final Girl (Jessica, capably played by Nell Verlaque) and the resident sheriff (played with all the charm of Patrick Dempsey), everyone in the whole damn town is pathetically stupid and unsympathetic. I could believe that literally anybody would be the killer or the next victim, they’ve all got so many reasons to kill each other.
The slasher is another point against the movie. Our slasher is supposedly dressed up like town founder John Carver, though he comes out looking like somebody wanted to cash in on V for Vendetta without paying WB any royalties. There’s nothing unique about his look or his methods or his weaponry, he’s just a stock slasher.
Except for that one scene with the cat, that was nicely charming.
That said, at least the film brings us some unique kills. There are some clever chase scenes, the gore is up to Eli Roth’s typical standard — though, again, not up to the standard of the fake trailer that started all of this — and the basic premise of murders themed around Thanksgiving is delivered in a suitably gut-churning way. There’s nothing here to redefine the genre or set this film apart in any meaningful way, but it’s enough to get the job done.
There are only so many more ways I can say this, but Thanksgiving (2023) is nothing more or less than adequate. It’s nothing extraordinary, nothing new, nothing awful, nothing offensive. It’s a slasher so straightforward that it could’ve been written by AI. Which is good enough on its own merit, perhaps, but it’s a disappointment to those who waited over fifteen years to get more of the same over-the-top ridiculous gore and tits teased in the original fake trailer. Then again, maybe 100 minutes of a grindhouse slasher horror on that level that might’ve been a “careful what you wish for” kind of situation.
The movie we actually got is worth seeing for the novelty of a Thanksgiving-themed slasher, but you won’t be missing anything if you wait for home video.
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Movie Curiosities: The Killer
November 16, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
On those rare occasions when I’m asked about my influences or my favorite filmmakers, David Fincher consistently makes the short list. In terms of casting, camerawork, editing, scoring, and pure cinematic storytelling skill, Fincher consistently proves himself a master of the craft (Mank notwithstanding). This is the man who gave us Seven, which still holds up as a definitive examination on the nature and meaning of pure evil. And of course he also brought us Fight Club, which remains such an impeccable depiction of toxic masculinity that the worst of our society still see themselves reflected in it.
And now we have The Killer, in which Fincher takes us directly inside the headspace of an unnamed assassin played by Michael Fassbender. Complete with Seven screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker writing the script. Let’s fucking go.
(Side note: Because the main character is anonymous, I’ll be referring to the title character without italics and the movie itself with italics. Confusing? Better get used to it.)
The film opens with twenty unbroken minutes of voiceover dialogue in which the Killer walks us through the ins and outs of his job. As it turns out, the job involves a whole lot of boredom, waiting around for the opportune moment to strike. It also involves moving around so many times and under so many aliases that the Killer effectively has no life or identity of his own. By necessity, he sees human life as so disposable that nothing he does could lower the global birth/death ratio. And of course his job also means that he’s fundamentally incapable of keeping any friends or loved ones, lest his enemies — or even his supposed friends! — go after them as leverage against him.
The message is clear: If anyone sees this movie and wants to be the Killer or engage in his line of work (and such people undoubtedly exist, Gods help us all), they would have to be an inhuman piece of shit.
Yet this protagonist remains compelling for multiple reasons. To start with, it makes a huge difference that Fincher knows how to make this material engaging, and Fassbender is an actor with the charisma to sell anything. But more importantly, the Killer is fascinating to watch because he’s so damned good at what he does.
The Killer may have bad luck at times, but he never makes stupid mistakes. He’s intelligent, he’s careful, he’s diabolically clever, and he’s ruthlessly efficient. It’s always much more fun to watch a competent character who’s one step ahead of the audience, and that’s the Killer to a T. It certainly helps that the Killer keeps us up to speed with voiceover narration, which also helps to portray all the boring stretches in a way that isn’t boring to sit through. Wonderful.
What’s more, the Killer is incredibly good at his work in a way that brings up the general theme of security. It’s an old established rule that something can either be secure or easy to use, never both. (I work in the medical industry, I know this from experience.) So when we’re surrounded by all the conveniences of modern life, when Amazon or DoorDash can bring anything we want right to our door within hours, when we depend so much on hackable electronics, how secure are we really? What would it take for anyone in the modern world to be truly safe? What does it mean to be safe, and when is it only an illusion?
While the Killer is certainly a fascinating character to watch, it’s crucial to note that he’s not supposed to be a sympathetic character. And he’s going up against other assassins and the shitheels who hire them. So this is a film in which we get to watch unsympathetic characters beating the crap out of each other with the satisfaction of knowing that all sides deserve what’s coming to them. Except for the occasional unlucky civilian who gets stuck in the crossfire, as a helpful reminder that we’re dealing with monstrous psychopaths here.
There aren’t very many other actors of note in the cast, but I’d be remiss not to mention Tilda Swinton’s brief yet show-stopping appearance as the Expert. She’s basically the Ghost of Christmas Future for the Killer, a painful reminder that everything the Killer was ever promised was a lie. He doesn’t get to disappear, he doesn’t get to take his money and enjoy his new life in retirement, and he doesn’t ever get to live in peace. Not completely, and not for long.
I had a great time with this movie… until it started to lose me.
The voiceovers were a double-edged sword from start to finish. Yes, the voiceovers were a neat way of getting us into the character’s headspace and helping us through the job’s dull monotony. It’s also pathetically lazy storytelling, and the voiceover monologues only get more useless as the film goes on.
Anton Chigurh didn’t need voiceovers to sell himself as a stone-cold badass and let us all know about his worldviews. Just saying.
The plot is another issue. Yes, it’s entertaining to watch the Killer be incredibly good at what he does. But there comes a point when it’s no longer plausible for anyone to stop him or kill him. And that’s the point where the script loses all tension and the plot serves no purpose.
But the big problem comes right at the ending. For the life of me, I can’t make heads or tails of that ending. Everything about this story feels like the Killer is headed for a tragic ending and the story can’t be over until he’s finally dead. Though if the filmmakers wanted to subvert expectations and give the Killer a redemptive arc of some kind, that might be… well, it would be tricky, but it could work.
Instead, the filmmakers settle into a floppy kind of middle ground. Potentially worse, the Killer pulls a 180 and goes completely against all the principles he recited to us every ten minutes. This might’ve worked as the culmination of a character arc, but it’s so rushed and so contradictory that the ending fails to make a coherent point one way or another.
There’s a lot to like about The Killer. It’s worth seeing this movie just for Fassbender’s wonderful performance and Fincher’s spellbinding skill behind the camera. This movie easily could’ve been a biting satire, using the title character as a metaphor for living as an “alpha male” in a toxic cutthroat world, and it does serve that purpose nicely through most of the runtime. Alas, the film gradually loses itself further and further up its own ass until it flubs the landing entirely.
I have no problem recommending this one on Netflix, provided you already have a subscription. If you like, you can even cut out the movie fifteen minutes from the end and make up your own ending.
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Movie Curiosities: It’s a Wonderful Knife
November 15, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Yes, I know there are a lot of high-profile releases out right now. Yes, I’m fresh off hiatus and I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. But this is a slasher riff on It’s a Wonderful Life made by the director of Tragedy Girls and the writer of Freaky. No way could I pass this one up.
For It’s a Wonderful Knife, we lay our scene in the idyllic town of Angel Falls. The town’s wealthiest resident (Henry Waters, the latest in Justin Long’s ongoing “insufferable asshole” phase) is doing his best to scoop up real estate and drive out his business competitors so he can build some kind of supermall in town. Coincidentally, a masked slasher pops up out of nowhere to kill the last few residents standing in the way.
(Side note: Henry also has a dipshit brother named Buck, played by Sean Depner. I have no idea why the antagonists were named after Buck Henry, I don’t see any sign that he was connected with It’s a Wonderful Life in any way, but we’ll roll with it.)
Enter Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop), whose father (David, played by Joel McHale) works for Henry. Winnie has the grievous misfortune to watch her best friend since childhood (Cara, played by Hana Huggins) murdered right in front of her on Christmas Eve, shortly before Winnie kills the slasher right back. Even though it technically shouldn’t count as a spoiler and I’m sure you’ve already guessed who the slasher is, I won’t confirm anything here.
Cut to a year later. Understandably, Winnie hasn’t gotten over the trauma of watching her best friend get brutally slain on the same night she took someone’s life. The fact that it’s Christmas only serves to remind her of the terrible incident and sours her on the holiday entirely, in open defiance of how quickly and easily everyone else has apparently moved on. Oh, and it also doesn’t help that her college application got rejected and her boyfriend is cheating on her.
Distraught beyond hope, Winnie makes the earnest wish that she had never been born. And her wish is granted… with the side effect that she never killed the slasher. Thus our killing machine has continued their reign of terror, killing roughly 30 more people in the year since and turning Angel Falls into a hellhole. Thus Winnie has to find a way to stop the killer and restore the timeline. Hilarity ensues.
To start with the horror slasher aspect, it’s not that bad. The knife itself has a pretty sweet design, and the costume has this pure white angelic look that’s simple yet iconic. I might add that this is a slasher in the Ghostface tradition, such that our masked killer is distinctly mortal and can be injured, but keeps going through sheer force of will. I like it.
That said, it bears mentioning that the kills are few and far between. It’s not a consistently scary film, but the filmmakers are quite adept at throwing in some bloodshed at an unexpected moment right when the proceedings need an adrenaline boost. Even so, anyone who comes to this movie expecting a horror slasher might be disappointed to find that the gore is a condiment and not an entree.
Instead, the vast majority of the scarce 90-minute runtime is focused on Winnie’s character drama. In keeping with the spirit of the original holiday classic, this is very much a film about Winnie sifting through the shattered remains of a world that’s so much worse without her in it. This is very much a movie about grief, community, and the incalculable impact that any one unsuspecting life can have on the world.
My personal favorite example concerns Winnie and David. Early in the film — before the change — Winnie and her dad have a painful disagreement about how Winnie is stuck in grief and her dad isn’t helping her through it and it’s outright cruel that David is so flippant about moving on. Cut to later in the film, after the change, a year after Winnie’s brother (Jimmy, played by Aiden Howard) was murdered because his nonexistent sister wasn’t there to stop that from happening. So it is that David has been inconsolably heartbroken for a solid year, and Winnie has to try and help him move past it while also reconciling herself to the fact that she wasn’t there to save her brother. It’s a deeply heartfelt reversal that advances the themes and develops both characters in a novel and ingenious way.
The only problem is that the father is played by Joel McHale. I love Joel McHale, he’s great at what he does, but “grief-stricken father” is well outside of his wheelhouse and he doesn’t have the range to sell it.
Elsewhere, while Widdop certainly has the chops to play a passable Final Girl, her big emotional outbursts aren’t quite big enough or pained enough to really land the way they should. Oh, and let’s not forget that we’ve got Justin Long playing a two-dimensional smarmy jackass and pretty much everyone else in the supporting cast is playing a broad stereotype as well. This is unfortunately necessary, as the pattern of who gets killed and who stands to benefit from the murders would be enough to tell anyone with a functional brain cell who the killer is.
Put simply, we’ve got a plot that can only function if the characters are blithering idiots, and we’ve got character drama and themes that can only work if the characters are sympathetic and three-dimensional. It’s a tough balance, and the filmmakers can’t find a way to square that circle. The “comedy” side of the equation tends to work better, because this cast was very much built for comedy, but that doesn’t help the shrill grinding noise of all the tonal inconsistencies.
Oh, and I’d be remiss not to mention the inclusivity angle. We’ve got the openly queer Cassandra Naud in a supporting role, playing a character in a same-sex marriage, her massive facial birthmark is kept in plain view, and the film treats all of this as perfectly normal. Winnie’s aforementioned brother is gay, he gets a same-sex relationship complete with an onscreen kiss, he’s on the freaking high school football team, and everybody treats this as normal.
Then we’ve got Bernie, a possible love interest and Clarence stand-in, played by the non-binary Jess McLeod. While it’s never explicitly stated what Bernie’s deal is, she’s coded as trans or at least non-binary. And everybody else only ever calls her “Weirdo.” Though Bernie is a genuinely sweet character and she gets a delightful arc on par with Winnie’s, so there’s that.
On the one hand, this inclusivity angle feels genuinely earnest and I’m not picking up any intended antipathy. I’m sure it helps that screenwriter Kennedy himself is queer. On the other hand, the film is loaded with so many broad characters and lazy stereotypes that I can’t be sure if this really is authentic or respectful. I’m not the cis-hetero guy to make a judgment call on this, but I’d be fascinated to hear an LGBTQ+ perspective on the film. If you’ve got such an informed take, please leave a comment.
Ultimately, It’s a Wonderful Knife is one of those unfortunate cases in which all the pieces are here, but they don’t quite fit together. Blending so many genres like this is a high-risk/high-reward maneuver, and I can respect what the filmmakers were going for. They certainly got the intended themes across, I’ll give them credit for that.
The tragedy is that there are just enough brilliant and enjoyable moments in here to show what this movie could have and should have been. Such a damn shame that the filmmakers couldn’t find a more effective way to make the comedy, drama, and horror all balance out. It’s a charming little romp that might be worth a look on home video if you’re curious, but you’d be so much better off with Violent Night or Anna and the Apocalypse.
For more Movie Curiosities, check out my blog. I’m also on Facebook and BlueSky.
Movie Curiosities: Priscilla
November 14, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Last year brought us Elvis, a biopic from Baz Luhrman, whose established CV and artistic sensibilities made him uniquely qualified for the heightened musical bombast of Elvis Aaron Presley. Yet the film had a noteworthy blind spot, in that it glossed over the Elvis/Priscilla relationship and the teensy little detail that Elvis met his future wife when she was still a teenager.
So here’s Priscilla, a biopic from Sofia Coppola, an auteur uniquely qualified to tell a story about a teenage girl growing up in a gilded cage. This one was directly based on the memoirs of Priscilla Presley nee Beaulieu herself, who also contributed to the film as an executive producer.
I might add that Priscilla Presley herself has publicly supported the film, while daughter Lisa Marie Presley objected to the depiction of her father. Knowing this family, one suspects that this difference of opinion was only one facet of a much deeper and more convoluted feud in the run-up to Lisa Marie’s death ten months ago. But I digress.
On one level, I get how the Presleys have a vested financial stake in keeping Elvis’ image pristine. More importantly, I can only begin to imagine how painful it must be to air out all this dirty family laundry in public. That said, Elvis was 24 and Priscilla was 14 when they first met. That is a matter of public record. That is settled historical fact beyond dispute. It is creepy as hell. And like it or not, because Elvis Presley is arguably the most iconic and influential figure in all of pop culture history (except maybe Marilyn Monroe), we all have to find some way to deal with it.
Granted, it makes a difference that Sofia Coppola has a track record of playing fast and loose with history (live by Marie Antoinette, die by Marie Antoinette), so I get the temptation to side with Lisa Marie Presley’s assessment at first blush. Even so, it makes a huge difference that the film was based on Priscilla Presley’s contemporaneous accounts, Priscilla Presley herself was directly involved in the making of the film, and she stands by the depiction with warts and all.
Anyway, how is the movie? Well, Cailee Spaeny once again proves herself an outrageously underrated talent by playing Priscilla from age 14 to age 27. It makes a huge difference that Spaeny perfectly sells a kind of arrogant naivete, as we constantly watch Priscilla charge headlong into a situation she’s nowhere near as ready to handle as she thinks she is. That said, I’d be remiss not to mention the production design, which spends the first 45 minutes or so drenching Priscilla in pastel pinks. Together with her ponytail and her prim dresses, all she’s missing is a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses and a lollipop.
And what of Jacob Elordi as Elvis? Well, he’s no Austin Butler. But then, these are two very different depictions of Elvis as portrayed by two wildly different filmmakers. Luhrmann’s take needed a leading man, and Butler was perfect for that. Coppola needed more of a secondary lead, and Elordi fits the bill nicely.
Probably the single most important difference between the two regards “Colonel” Tom Parker. In the Luhrmann picture, Parker was a co-lead arguably even more prominent than the title character. In Priscilla, the Colonel is only mentioned in passing a handful of times. Luhrmann depicted Elvis as a tragic figure who had given up all control of his life to a huckster, while Coppola depicts Elvis as a man so obsessed with his image that he micro-manages every decision in his young girlfriend’s life.
Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between. Maybe the real Elvis felt so powerless in his own life that he was desperate to exert control anywhere he could. Or maybe he was trying to prove to his manager and his father that he wasn’t completely dependent on them to keep his house in order. We can only speculate.
Regardless, the upshot is that Elvis and Priscilla (as Coppola portrays them) are similar in that they both have a pathological need to be desired. The difference is that Elvis is an older man with otherworldly fame and wealth while Priscilla is some teenage girl he plucked from out of nowhere. There’s an tremendous, maybe even insurmountable power imbalance. This makes it all the more disturbing when Elvis tells Priscilla she can’t get a job outside of Graceland, she can’t wear that dress she likes, she’ll take whatever uppers and downers he gives her, and she’ll be available to him 24/7 or she can go back to her parents and watch the tabloids as Elvis gets himself publicly attached to some Hollywood starlet.
It bears remembering that Priscilla is now a regular feature in the tabloid gossip rags, which means she has to keep up with all the impossibly heightened and wildly sexist beauty standards of the 1960s. It also means that she has to go and be a common high school student while all her classmates are whispering behind her back and she’d rather be hanging out with the goddamn King. And of course we can’t forget the fits of jealousy as Priscilla has to read (possibly) overblown headlines about Elvis’ romantic affairs with big-name actresses while Priscilla never even gets a social life outside of Elvis’ family and hangers-on.
The point being that Priscilla went into this with no idea of what she was getting into. Because of course she had no idea what she was getting into, she’s a freaking child!!! And even if Elvis won’t cross the line of having sex with her until she’s eighteen, they do pretty much every other damn thing else. It’s bittersweet and genuinely heartbreaking to watch as Priscilla gets herself so invested in Elvis that she become solely dependent on him in every aspect of her life, from the romantic to the financial. Did Elvis have any idea what he was doing? We can only speculate, and Elordi plays him with such nuance that it could go either way. But at a time when Elvis could’ve had his pick of literally any woman on the whole goddamn planet, one has to wonder why he went with a girl who was barely out of puberty.
There are many times early on when Priscilla’s parents (mostly her mother, here played by Dagmara Dominczyk) ask why Priscilla can’t just move on past Elvis and focus on some other boy her age. On the downside, that boy wouldn’t be Elvis Presley. On the upside, at least that boy wouldn’t be goddamn Elvis Presley.
There’s a lot to like about this movie, but there’s one major complaint I keep coming back to: The pacing is outright abysmal.
The film begins roughly when Priscilla first met Elvis and it ends just after she asks him for a divorce. It’s a two-hour movie and they get married roughly 90 minutes in. That only leaves 30 minutes to cover the entire width and breadth of the Elvis/Priscilla marriage, including the birth of their child. I was genuinely interested in seeing how the power dynamic between them might’ve changed after marriage put them on a more equal footing (legally speaking, if nothing else), but the filmmakers were either unwilling or unable to go there. It certainly doesn’t help when Priscilla asks for a divorce, it feels like it should be this huge climactic moment, but there’s so little room to go into it that the whole relationship (and thus the film) goes out on a whimper instead of a bang.
Granted, the filmmakers do a fine job of rushing us through the time skips. I was particularly fond of the repetitive montages that show slight adjustments in daily routine as time passes (the different breakfasts left out for Elvis and Priscilla, for instance). Even so, a lot of that first hour is taken up by Elvis and Priscilla going through the motions of a toxic couple. They have their fun moments, Elvis gives Priscilla some token show of affection, then he (or someone acting as his proxy) acts like a domineering jerk by deciding every detail of her life for her, rinse and repeat. It gets monotonous and predictable in a way that wastes screen time instead of answering more pressing questions.
For example, I was constantly thrown off by the question of where Priscilla’s parents are in all of this. Early on in the film, Elvis is throwing up one red flag after another (“She’s mature for her age,” there’s a perennial favorite.) yet Priscilla’s parents can only put up the bare minimum of resistance before they cave entirely. Why do they keep caving over and over again? Those deliberations are consistently hand-waved away offscreen with no explanation. It does the film and the themes a disservice to keep glossing over why Priscilla’s parents kept allowing this to happen.
So, is Priscilla a good film? Well, it’s certainly worth seeing for Spaeny’s lead performance, and Elordi acquits himself admirably as well. I might add that this dimension of Elvis’ life was so irresponsibly glossed over in the higher-profile Baz Lurhmann flick that we needed another movie like this one to help set the record straight. Even so, I can’t get over the incompetent pacing that left so many questions unanswered and so many answers unquestioned. It’s an admirable depiction of an unhealthy relationship, but it feels like there’s so much room for other better movies to explore this lane. (One could make an argument for Barbie, though Women Talking might be a more pertinent example.)
We needed this movie and I’m glad it exists, but I don’t think it’s going to have much in the way of staying power when all is said and done. This is one for home video.
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Movie Curiosities: The Flash
November 13, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Hope you all had a fun autumn.
Me, I genuinely enjoyed taking a break from the blog so I could focus my time and attention on other projects. I liked that I didn’t have to bother pretending to give a shit about The Last Voyage of the Demeter. I’m glad I got to see Bottoms and Dicks: The Musical without trying to sufficiently describe what the high-flying fuck I just sat through. Watching Killers of the Flower Moon was enough of a commitment without the pressure of writing a master’s thesis about how an aging Scorsese is focused on how incremental changes snowball over time and he needs progressively longer movies to sufficiently explore that process. (see also: The Irishman)
Oh, and I ditched Twitter for obvious reasons. I’m mostly active on Facebook and BlueSky now, so give me a follow if you’re on either one. If you want a BlueSky invite code, hit me up and I’ll see what I can do.
Anyway, now the strikes are over and I’ve got two promises to keep. And it’s only fitting I should keep them both with this next review.
If ever there was a single movie to definitively prove why WGA and SAG-AFTRA needed to go on strike last summer, The Flash is it. There’s no doubt in my mind that WBD would’ve assigned an AI to write this script if they thought they could get away with it. And after a rumored 45 godforsaken writers, the end result probably wouldn’t have been any more coherent if they had. And if you want to talk about actors replaced with CGI doubles, this movie is packed with case studies on why that’s a bad fucking idea in so many ways. It’s creepy and it looks like shit at best, it’s morally and ethically abhorrent at worst.
I know I’m not saying anything new here. Only five months out from the film’s release and the horse isn’t merely dead, but dissected down to the last particle. It’s been written off as one of the most infamous and costly box-office bombs in history, Ezra Miller’s career is effectively toast (good riddance), and we’re looking ahead to the Gunn/Safran era like Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom isn’t happening at all. The movie sucks, we all know why it sucks, and we all knew perfectly damn well that this movie was going to suck before a single frame was ever shot.
But as I discussed back in May, this movie stirred up such a massive shitstorm that I needed some space before I could cover it. And any self-respecting film enthusiast simply had to cover this movie, if only because it is so awful in so many ways that it should be considered a benchmark of cinema history on par with the likes of Cutthroat Island or Heaven’s Gate.
So many people are pointing to MCU oversaturation as the nadir of comic book films and the culmination of everything awful about the current Hollywood paradigm, but no — they’re thinking of The Flash. Say what you will about the worst of the MCU’s output (except maybe “Secret Invasion”), at least it’s still a functional product. It tells a story and gets the point across. With The Flash, Zaslav and his cronies have built a failure that perfectly demonstrates how incredibly difficult it is to do what Kevin Feige and his team have made look so easy.
It’s pointless to even try and sum up the premise or plot of The Flash. What really matters is that the filmmakers used time travel shenanigans to try and cram in every possible goddamn thing they thought the audience might like. The fans and newcomers want an origin story for the Flash (Ezra Miller)? Jump back in time to show the origin. The fans didn’t like Metropolis getting leveled in Man of Steel? Let’s go back in time so the Flash can try and make those events play out differently. Hell, the whole point of loosely adapting “Flashpoint” — the comics event that was repurposed to reboot the comics into the “New 52” timeline — was to soft-reboot the Snyderverse into whatever the hell WBD/DC decided the film universe should be in post-production. And when they STILL didn’t have a viable plan in the editing phase, they brought on Gunn/Safran to start from Square Fucking One all over again. But I digress.
The point is, this whole movie is a dogpile of ideas that were thrown together in the hopes that literally anything would stick and some kind of grand vision would come together in editing. Let’s futz around with the timelines and multiversal shenanigans to pack in every last Easter Egg the corporate execs think the fans might want. Let’s throw CGI at every possible problem because we need to get a movie out the door, we don’t have the time to properly plan or storyboard everything, and COVID made reshoots impossible. Whatever the problem is, just keep throwing money at it, even though the budget will balloon to well over $200 million, there’s no way we can hire enough CGI artists to make everything look passable in a timely manner, and we don’t stand a chance in hell of making back such a massive budget. Don’t worry, it’ll get the DCEU back on track and we can recoup that money with future entries in the long run.
Never mind that the plot makes no sense. Never mind that none of the characters act or talk like relatable or sympathetic human beings. (This is apparently what happens when “more comedy” is the mandate from WBD: You get two-dimensional “comic relief” characters that wouldn’t get a TV network sitcom past the pilot episode.) Never mind that the theme of “tragedy happens, so shut up and deal with it” was so eloquently and powerfully rejected earlier this year by Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
The central thesis of the film is that “some problems have no solution.” I get that this was put into the movie to give the character some necessary pathos. I could understand this coming from Spider-Man, because his whole deal is about being made to suffer for the powers and responsibilities that he has. But the Flash — as well as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and all the rest — is supposed to be a larger-than-life character who can find or make a solution to any problem. He’s a power fantasy, built to inspire us to be something greater than we are and to never give up in the face of adversity. Making a DC superhero come to accept that he has limits betrays a total lack of understanding about DC and about superheroes in general. That’s especially true of the Flash, whose whole deal is overcoming any limit to keep moving faster.
Oh, and let’s not forget that the central reason why the Flash can’t win is because of time/space/multiverse laws acting in a totally fictional way. The writers were free to make up literally any solution they wanted. The fact that they didn’t find any solution at all betrays not only a lack of creativity, but a lack of faith in the character and the audience. (see also: The infamous neck snap in Man of Steel.)
Getting back to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, that movie is also notable for how it built a whole multiverse with sharper detail, greater clarity, and more compelling storytelling in one movie (depending on how you count) than the entirety of MCU Phase Five has done to date. By contrast, The Flash jumped the shark in a big way when these filmmakers tried to visualize different universes as giant floating orbs. Especially when the context is the multiverse imploding on itself. So, the filmmakers are showing us all these different iterations of DC like we’re supposed to cheer, but the filmmakers are also presenting them in the context of different universes annihilating each other.
Basically put, the DC fan service is at once a good thing while also being a bad thing. This is the level of thought that was put into the film as a whole.
To be clear, I’m not blaming Andy Muschietti for any of this. I know it’s typically the director’s fault for making such an unfocused and slipshod piece of work, but this is clearly a product of studio execs putting far too much pressure on this one movie that had to appeal to everyone and do all the things at once. Nobody could’ve made this into anything coherent, which is likely why so many directors came and went and washed their hands of this assignment.
Muschietti just happened to be the poor dumb schmuck who got stuck holding the bag because he was putting the finishing touches on the epic It duology down the hall at WBD. And he was appropriately rewarded with the honor of directing the Gunn/Safran iteration of Batman and Robin. Hell, given how much of an emphasis this movie about the Flash put on an entirely different hero altogether, I wouldn’t be surprised if Muschietti was secretly given this job (or secretly took the job) as an audition to direct a Batman picture.
I’ve heard it said that the reward for doing good work is getting more work. Muschietti’s reward for It was goddamn The Flash. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth.
So, is there anything in here that might’ve been salvaged? Well, I like the basic conceit of Barry Allen growing and learning more about himself by mentoring a younger version of himself. It’s a useful device for exposition regarding his powers as well. Michael Keaton is of course a delight reprising Batman. Sasha Calle’s take on Supergirl is a bit violent and broody for my taste, but she brings a powerful screen presence and I wish her all the best moving forward. But the MVP of the supporting cast is easily Maribel Verdu, who does such a stellar job playing Nora Allen that she more than holds up her end in selling the title character’s motivation.
I could respect a film that goes so big and so hard if it actually took risks. I could respect a studio gambling $200+ million on a film that had a strong and clear vision. Say what you will about the bloated and overpriced Avatar films (and I’m sure you all know I’ve said a lot), but at least James Cameron knows what movies he’s making and who he’s making them for. The Flash is not that.
The Flash is a pathetic act of flailing desperation. It’s a film crafted by studio execs who’ve lost touch with their audience, have no appreciation or understanding of what they’re adapting, and have no ideas or skills except to throw money at the problem. There’s a reason why we have apparently come to the collective agreement that Blue Beetle and Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom don’t count: Because The Flash is both the bang and the whimper that the Snyderverse deserved to go out on.
It’s a film that transparently tries to appeal to everybody and ends up appealing to nobody. It’s the epitome of a film made by people who have no idea what they want to make except money. It’s the greatest example we may ever see of studio executives demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It’s an overblown, overlong, overpriced, arrogant disaster made by people throwing good money after bad, which inevitably bombed to such an extent that the whole studio is now in jeopardy. In other words, it’s the perfect summation of everything wrong with Hollywood filmmaking in this day and age.
I’m honestly upset that we’ve so quickly forgotten The Flash. We can’t ever forget The Flash. We need to learn from this shit. We need to teach this shit in film school. We need to make this the poster child for how and why Hollywood needs to change. We need to collectively learn from this so we never repeat it.
Fuck this movie, fuck the studio execs who made this movie, and if you went to see this movie on opening weekend in spite of all glaringly obvious warnings to the contrary, then honestly, fuck you too.
For more Movie Curiosities, check out my blog. I’m also on Facebook and BlueSky.
Movie Curiosities: Taylor Swift and AMC
September 3, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Yes, my blog is still on hiatus and I’m not covering any new movies in solidarity with the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes. But no way could I possibly stay quiet about this. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: On hiatus (Support the Strike!)
August 11, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Today marks the 100th day of the ongoing WGA strike. The SAG-AFTRA strike started just under a month ago. As this historic strike continues with no signs of stopping, productions all over the world have ground to a halt, even more Hollywood labor unions are forming, studios have put many upcoming films on indefinite delay (i.e. holding them hostage), and reps for the AMPTP have refused to come back to the negotiating table.
At stake are a number of issues involving wages, credits, working conditions, and other such union mandates that haven’t been updated in the past several decades. The film and TV landscape has changed in so many ways — most especially in the streaming age — demanding new rules and protocols that the studios have flatly refused. That’s not even getting started on the advent of CGI and de-aging technology that can be used to replicate actors’ likenesses with photorealistic clarity and animation that wouldn’t have been possible 15 years ago, to say nothing of AI that could potentially be used to replace writers in the near future (if they’re not already).
The people who make our entertainment are asking for a miniscule sliver of box office revenue and some common-sense assurances regarding AI technology. In response, the studios drag their feet and let their productions go dark, potentially costing them millions more than what SAG-AFTRA and the WGA are asking for. It’s also rather telling that smaller indie companies (A24, for example) have earned waivers to continue production because they’re somehow able to afford compliance with union demands while the bigger studios are not.
Because the truth is, for the bigger studios and the billionaire assholes running them, this was never about money. This is about power. They can abide losing millions or even billions of dollars, but they can never abide anyone telling them what they can and cannot do. They must never EVER allow any rules or laws or societal notions that anyone can tell the rich and powerful what they can do.
To date (so far as I’m aware), neither the WGA nor SAG-AFTRA are calling for any boycotts. Indeed, if box office receipts plummet without clear reason to believe that it’s in solidarity with the unions, that could simply give the studios another reason to cry poverty and continue to refuse union demands. And it’s not like box office returns aren’t bewildering enough right now, as Disney tentpoles crumble with historic devastation and Sound of Freedom is getting astroturfed into one of the year’s big sleeper hits, but I digress.
The point being that until the unions say otherwise, we should all feel free to see what we like and support the films we want our artists to get back to making. If we show the studios that we want a sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, maybe that’ll give them sufficient incentive to pay their writers and actors and make the damn movie.
But then this came to my attention.
“Influencers should not accept any new work for promotion of struck companies or their content.”
I’ve always resisted the label of “influencer”. I don’t do this full-time, and I’ve never wanted to try and make a living out of this. From the outset, I’ve been open and honest about the fact that I’m entirely self-taught. I didn’t go to any kind of school for this, I’m no kind of professional. I’m not a critic — that implies some level of professionalism — I’m just a humble blogger.
Even so, if I’m not doing this to share my opinions with my readers, advising — or “influencing” them on what films may or may not be worth their time and money, then what the fuck am I doing here?
I hope that from the very outset, my communications on this blog and on social media show that I am firmly in support of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA in their actions and demands. I support the strike, and that means following their lead. As such, until such time as the AMPTP decides to get their heads out of their asses and do the bare fucking minimum to make sure their writers and actors get sustainable wages and reasonable working conditions (or at least until the unions give the all-clear to come back), I’m stepping away from the blog.
I stand in solidarity with the workers who make our entertainment. I will continue to see the movies and TV shows that interest me, and I encourage you all to keep seeing the things you enjoy seeing. I will continue posting on social media in support of the strike, and I hope to see you all there as well.
See you on the other side, gentle readers. Stay strong.
Movie Curiosities — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
August 4, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
It’s easy to forget that the absurdity was always the point. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Haunted Mansion (2023)
August 3, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
We were always getting another Haunted Mansion movie. The 2003 attempt was simply too damned embarrassing and the source material is simply too damned good. Which makes it all the more disappointing that after 20 years of anticipation — and a teased attempt from Guillermo del Toro that was always too good for this world — Haunted Mansion (2023) has already been written off as a critical and commercial flop. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Talk to Me
August 1, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Only a month ago, I lamented that possession stories and hauntings were no longer enough to pass muster in horror cinema. Ever since the 2016 election, the horrors of COVID, and racial violence gone amok, nobody’s scared of generic two-dimensional interchangeable demons anymore like we were back in the Obama years. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Cobweb
July 25, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Here’s a neat bit of counterprogramming opposite the Barbieheimer juggernaut. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Oppenheimer
July 23, 2023 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
In a recent Twitter poll, I submitted a query as to what was the single biggest mistake of Warner Bros’ 100-year history. I’ve gone on record stating that it was the Batgirl tax write-off, but there’s naturally a case to be made for the AOL merger. And of course we can’t forget Batman v. Superman, the movie that cemented WBD’s doomed plans for DC on film and directly caused the chain reaction of failure that led WBD to their current predicament. Read the rest of this entry →
