Review: Klaus

Klaus (2019): Written by Sergio Pablos, Jim Mahoney, and Zach Lewis, directed by Sergio Pablos. Starring: Jason Schwartzman, J. K. Simmons, Rashida Jones, Will Sasso, Joan Cusack, and Norm Macdonald. Running Time: 97 minutes.

Rating: 3.5/4

               The scene of holiday films has been a rather stuffed one for a long time. The canon of truly great Christmas films seems set in stone, and most new ones that come out fail to make much of an impact and are easily forgotten, if indeed anyone sees them at all. Every so often, though, one breaks through, one that finds a new angle on a tale so worked over I expected I could never be surprised again. Klaus, the directorial debut of Sergio Pablos after a long career of animating for both Disney and Dreamworks, is one such film. It's a sweet and charming alternative take on the origins of Santa Claus that just hit Netflix, and whose discovery added an extra sparkle to my holidays.

               We begin in as different a setting as any, a military-like complex for postmen, where Jesper, the lazy and wholly unambitious son of the owning family, is finally forced to take responsibility for his life when he is sent far, far north to Smeerensburg. The freezing, ice-covered town has a legendary reputation for its gloomy, despondent, and backwards atmosphere, stoked by a long-running "Hatfield/McCoy" style fued between its two main families, the Ellingboes and the Krums. He is given a clear goal of 6,000 postmarked letters to be sent within the town by year's end, otherwise he'll be stuck there and cut off from the family riches.

               His introduction to the place is as hilariously inept as you would imagine, and he soons starts to worry that he's got no chance in hell of meeting his target. His despair at ever finding a way out of the place is further stoked by the local boatman (Norm Macdonald) and schoolteacher (Rashida Jones), both of whom have long since given up ever changing the poisonous dynamics of the town. Things start to turn, though, when he decides to make one last effort and travel across the island to the home of a lonesome woodsman, the physically huge Klaus. Voiced by the ever-magnificent J. K. Simmons, he is reticent and surly, but has a clear love and passion for making children smile. After discovering that the man is a gifted craftsman of toys and has a whole warehouse filled with amazing contraptions, Jesper decides that this could be his ticket out; he begins to slowly improvise and spread tales of the magical Klaus through the children of the town, eventually convincing them to abandon bad behavior and the fights of their parents in favor of good deeds and writing letters (postmarked by Jesper personally, of course) in the hopes of getting a new toy by the next morning.

               The animation is CGI, but with a different look and texture that makes it feel fresh and unique; the images are beautiful and flowing, yet look almost like woodcuts, or hand-drawn images from an old children's book. The town starts out forbidding and gray, but color and light, as well as wind, are used to great effect in bringing the screen to life when the story needs it most. The score is equally affecting as well, though the movie could have gone without the handful of moments when a pop song comes up, as those are the parts of the film most likely to feel dated later on.

               The voice acting is a lot of fun as well, with Simmons as the clear highlight; he is a perfect voice for Santa, a voice so fitting that a) I can't believe it took this long for him to do the role, and b) I don't know if I can ever go back to another Klaus again. The take on what leads to him becoming the bringer of joy and gifts is a different angle as well, a man of true heart struggling to deal with his own past while still not losing that spark of love that makes him a truly special person. There is a backstory, but it's handled effectively without overindulging in unneeded details, and the resolution at the end of the film involving both his and Jesper's fate is (without spoiling) genuinely magical.

               If there are quips to be had, it's where the fact that this is a children's film clearly affected the narrative in a few places; the conflicts that occur between the "good" characters are set up and resolved along very typical lines, and they are moments the film could very well have done without. The heads of the respective families in the town, who have a vested interest in the miserable status quo continuing unchanged, insert themselves to provide a reason for a third-act action setpiece that, again, is well-done, but isn't anything we haven't seen before and simply isn't as interesting as the budding friendship between Klaus and Jesper.

               No matter. The film is content to be what it is, and what it is is a beautiful animated film that is here to offer us something new to enjoy over the holidays. This is one worth seeing with the whole family.

-Noah Franc

Review- Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019): Written by J. J. Abrams and Chris Terrio, directed by J. J. Abrams. Starring: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fischer, Anthony Daniels, Kelly Marie Tran, Domhnall Gleeson, Lupita Nyong'o, Richard E. Grant, Naomi Ackie, Billy Dee Williams, and Ian McDiarmid. Running Time: 142 minutes.

Rating: 2/4

               The spoilers are with me. Always.

               I suppose it figures. I first expressed my doubts that J. J. Abrams could really handle the scope of something like a Star Wars trilogy way back after the garbage fire that was Star Trek Into Darkness, but after The Force Awakens proved far better than I'd expected, those doubts were largely quited. What remained of them was then blasted out the Death Star trash compactor by The Last Jedi, easily the most emotionally challenging film in the entire Star Wars canon. I specifically wrote in my review at the time that the Star Wars franchise now felt freer from all previous baggage than ever before, truly able to break out and give us something really new.

               Sadly, the contingent of emotionally dead man-boys determined to make us regret ever inventing the word "fandom" have been relentless in trying to drag Rian Johnson's name through the muck ever since, and at least part of their whinging clearly reached the ears of Abrams, ever one to try to please. The end result, a movie that (rather unfairly) carries the expectation of wholly tying together and resolving an entire generations' worth of storytelling around the Skywalker family tries so, so very hard to please everyone, but while parts of the film do soar with the best Star Wars has to offer, it makes several very clunky missteps that will, over time, only diminish its standing.

               With the Resistance still on the run and trying to regroup and the First Order reestablishing the Empire, a surprise broadcast in the voice of the supposedly-dead Emperor Palpatine (we'll get to that plot point, don't worry) sends both sides scrambling to find a way to locate the legendary homeworld of the Sith. Kylo Ren gets there first, discovering that the Emperor is indeed, somehow, still alive (unless it's a clone we're seeing, ala the old Extended Universe, but that's beside the point). He's been rebuilding a fleet equipped with planet-destroying weapons swiped from Death Star technology, and offers it and his powers to Ren in exchange for him finally tracking down and either killing or "turning" Rey. This comes with another major story reveal about Rey's parentage, which, yes, we'll get to that too.

               Rey, meanwhile, is being trained by Leia to hone her powers at the rebels' new base of operations. The reveal that Leia actually did train as a Jedi, but willingly gave up her lightsaber after deciding it wasn't her true path, is something I found rather fitting for her character, and an acceptable answer to my gripe from TFA about Leia seemingly having done nothing with her Skywalker lineage in the intervening decades. According to Abrams, the way they worked what remaining footage of Leia had into this movie allowed them to mostly match the story they had planned for her anyway, and this is one aspect of the film that is amazingly well-done. We know they had to cheat a bit to keep Leia alive, but it works remarkably well, and allows her character an exit that fits far better than simply having her die between films or CGI-ing her in would have. Your mileage may vary, but for my money, this is as fitting a farewell to our Princess as I can imagine.

               When word reaches the Rebellion that, not only is Palpatine indeed still kicking, but also threatens the galaxy with more destructive technology, Rey, Finn, and Poe, plus Chewbacca, BB-8, and C-3P0 set out to find a special piece of Sith tech that should allow them to find the Sith homeworld. This puts them on a collision course with Ren, once again seeing out Rey with the help of the strange bond they seem to share through the Force, as well as a time crunch to assemble allies and ships before the new Sith fleet can set off to wreak havoc on the galaxy.

               The film is long and packed with action and exposition, but for the most part it flows fairly well. Abrams is a solid filmmaker and knows how to provide spectacle while still pacing things at a comfortable clip. Even his usual lens flare isn't nearly as irritating, though it IS there. John Williams' score is wondrous, as always. His music has remained the unassaibly masterful part of every single film in this franchise, a level of crowning artistic achievement on par with Howard Shore's LOTR score, or the entire discography of Joe Hisaishi. I think it would be only fair to see him take home one more Oscar for this one as a mirror to the one he took home for A New Hope, oh so many years ago.

               The cast also continues to do wonders; Ridley, Boyega, and Isaac have had as wonderful and refreshing a chemistry between them as any, and their mutual scenes will be among the moments from this new trilogy that will always stand out in my mind. Adam Driver has thoroughly established himself as one of the best young actors in the business today, having proven able to take the raw, online-troll matter of Kylo Ren and make him one of the most interesting and memorable villains in the Star Wars canon. And, while his presence in this film is problematic on so, so many levels, there are good reasons why Ian McDiarmid's sneering and endlessly hateful Palpatine has become so indelibly iconic.

               Kelly Marie Tran is excellent as well, but here we cross into the troubling parts of the film, nearly all of which have to do with storytelling and narrative decisions. Tran has gone on record about being bullied off social media after The Last Jedi by the usual Gamergate/Pepe the Frog suspects, and their insufferable whining is the only reason I can think of why Rose is given such short shrift in this film. She's there and present, but very clearly shunted off to the side, having no part in the various "quests" in the film's middle act. Even more depressing, her potential romance with Finn, which provided The Last Jedi with one of its most potent scenes, has been seemingly erased entirely. As much as I found plenty to like in this film, the erasure of Rose as someone of emotional consequence to the other main characters strikes me as nothing less than an act of deep cowardice.

               This could, perhaps, have been salvaged if the final film had fulfilled the very real promise of Finn and Poe coming out as bisexual and ending up together, something that Oscar Isaac appears to have endlessly teased as something he was very much ready for. Here, too, that is punted away, with both getting new female side characters as potential past and/or future love interests as a way for the film to canonically insist that, "NOPE, no queerness here, carry on!" Again, cowardice, plain and simple.

               And with that, let's talk about Palpatine and Rey's parentage, the two greatest signs that, for all Rian Johnson's efforts, the powers-that-be in charge of Star Wars simply can't bring themselves to actually let the past die so that something new can take its place. I can think of many scenarios where an appearance in some form of Palpatine, as another spectre of the past rearing its head, could have thematically worked in this film as a way for Rey and the Resistance to truly end the Empire once and for all. But one where he had seemingly gained literal immortality and SOMEHOW survived being tossed down an air shaft in a space station about to get blown to smithereens- the sort of DBZ-esque erasure of Death that just about never works- was not one of them. It simply stretches the imagination beyond all reason, especially since Kyle Ren would have functioned well enough as a final villain for Rey to overcome.

               Rey's parentage might be the bigger betrayal of this trilogy's potential, though. Here, too, The Last Jedi had done the series a great service by being willing to toss out any lingering fan theories about Rey being a descendant of Luke, or Obi-Wan, or whoever, because the real power of both that film and the Star Wars universe in general was its promise that greatness can come from anywhere. That simple, final scene of a cleaning boy with Force powers, gazing at the stars and dreaming of more, is precisely the sort of thing that gave Star Wars its magic in the first place, the narrative importance of the Skywalkers notwithstanding.

               But of course, Abrams and his mystery box just couldn't let that be. Instead, we get a tired and drawn-out reveal about Rey being the direct granddaughter of Palpatine himself, which, no. I won't bother trying to list the ways that makes zero storytelling sense, because I respect both myself and my readers far too much to subject us all to that. Rey is a wonderful character, and the nature of the Force allows for plenty of conflict between Light and Dark without having to tie blood lineage into it. The Force truly is universal, and not the prerogative of a few families. To reduce her to just another ancestral figure, both with the reveal of her parentage as well as her symbolically adopting the Skywalker name at the end of the film, reduces her weight and imact as a person who can offer a new, different future to her world.

               This is all so frustrating because, in spite of it all, there are still plenty of grand, magical moments in this movie. All the Star Wars films, even the bad ones, have bits in them with that spark, and there is plenty of that here. Rey connecting with all the past Jedi, their voices ringing out as she gazes through light-years' worth of stars, culminating in it being Luke's voice saying that the Force will be with her, always, is an incredibly powerful sequence, as is her final visit to Luke's old home and her gaze into the dual sunset, BB-8 at her side. Even Kyle Ren's brief "turn" back to being good, though that too had its flaws, was salvaged by him at least having to sacrifice his life to ensure Rey's survival (I swear, Kylo Ren living happily ever after would have been the one unforgiveable sin, had this movie gone there). The final ship battle has a size and scale to it that I marvel at.

               This is not one of the worst Star Wars films, but it had a clear path to being one of the great ones, and in several key ways deliberately chooses to not take that path. In a way, I find that more frustrating than the bonkers, but often still admirable, ways that Lucas' prequel trilogy fell on their faces, because there was at least a clear vision being followed that didn't care what I thought about it.

               Star Wars is so many things to so many people. I don't like everything about this new trilogy, but this is a universe big enough for us all. I have the Star Wars stuff that I love, and I choose to remember and focus on that. That includes The Last Jedi, but only time will tell if I can make my peace with The Rise of Skywalker.

-Noah Franc

Films for the Trump Years, Part 16: Ken Burns' The Vietnam War

               The US War in Afghanistan began less than a month after the September 11^th terror attacks, with initial military operations commencing on October 7^th, 2001. Though many can and do quibble over how to separate and define the war's various "phases," the conflict has continuted unabated since then, and last year it surpassed Vietnam as the longest continual military conflict in American history. Casualty estimates, obviously, vary widely according to the source, and it will likely be decades after fighting ceases before solid numbers can really be established, but the most up-to-date figures range between 170,000 and 190,000 killed thus far, including over 3,500 NATO forces (US included), 60,000 apiece from the Taliban and the Afghan government, and as many as 40,000 civilians, with countless more wounded or turned into refugees.

               Almost 16 years later, on September 17^th, PBS aired the first episode of The Vietnam War, the latest series by Ken Burns, arguably the most monumental documentarian of American history to ever live (the whole series is currently available on Netflix). With a total runtime topping 17 hours, split into 10 episodes, the show delves deep into the weeds of modern Vietnamese history and the thousand steps that, bit by bit, drew the US further into a tragic path enabled by a poisonous mix of ignorance and active obfuscation of the truth by those in power, a concerted propaganda effort that involved administrations from across the political spectrum.

               Earlier this month, on December 9^th, 2019, the Washington Post released a massive, 6-part series titled "The Afghanistan Papers." Based on a huge trove of newly-released documents, interviews, and testimonies from a huge swath of the policymakers and military figures who drove US policy in Afghanistan, up to and included Donald Rumsfeld himself, it lays bare the degree to which every facet of America's conduct of the war, up to the present day, has been built on a web of lies, ignorance, and institutional malaise on par with Vietnam. It's long been fashionable to refer to Iraq as "my generation's Vietnam," but, while that comparison remains bitterly fitting, the Afghanistan Papers make it painfully clear that Afghanistan has an equally strong claim to that uniquely American moniker.

               How lucky are we; we've so thoroughly failed as a society to learn a damn thing from our history that we are now saddled with the fallout of not just one, but two Vietnams. And, almost two decades on, neither of them are even over yet.

               Even before it ended, the Vietnam War stood as a frighteningly prescient example of what happened when the blind lead the blind, where the powerful on high are so far removed from the effects of their decisions that they are incapable of altering course, even when the magnitude of their failures becomes impossible to ignore. While the war effort continued to deteriorate, the governing institutions in Washington responded by simply locking down into systematic, pervasive patterns of deflection and denial. Those at the very top, especially Secretary of State Robert McNamara, couldn't hide the reality from themselves, but that didn't stop them from pulling every lever within reach to hide it from everyone else. Until, of course, the release of The Pentagon Papers, when the whole facade finally came crumbling down like a house of cards before a great wind.

               In a just, or at least moderately sane, society, the Afghanistan Papers would be every bit as much an earth-shattering scandal as the Pentagon Papers were. The Pentagon Papers were a seminal moment in American civic society, a breaking point that, for the first time in the modern era, pushed an especially large number of Americans (particularly White Americans) into a place of permanent distruct for the government and any related institutions of power, a fundamental attitude that continues to have ripple effects in our politics today.

               Sadly, they will not. They have already passed from the top of the Washington Posts' website and generated only limited coverage in other outlets. To a certain extent, with an active impeachment process going on and another climate conference having taken place around the same time, that is to be expected. But in other respects, it further reflects the tragic nature of the media environment we live in today, where the drumbeat of terrible news about terrible people doing awful things- which, obviously, includes Trump, but is in absolutely no way limited to him or even to the United States- is so overwhelming, so all-encompassing, that none of us have the time or strength to properly consider a single thing like this, no matter how severe and major a problem it may be.

               But the importance of such things is not entirely dependent on our attention spans, and with the increasingly global problems and conflicts that the current crisis are bound to spark, it is more essential than ever that as many of us as possible make the effort now to learn the lessons of the past that we didn't earlier. This includes the continuing military and humanitarian disasters in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, all of which mirror the many things that went wrong in Vietnam in too many ways to ignore.

               The Vietnam War was Murphy's Law in action, a cascading series of mistakes and misunderstanding and bad decisions, consistently made worse by bad faith efforts to keep as many people as possible in the dark about just how little the United States knew what it was doing in Vietnam and why. Burns' latest documentary carries many of his now legendary stylistic choices, like editing together video clips and moving photographs to draw the viewer into their stories and prevent them from feeling static or detached from us in the now. This, combined with the length of time he takes to ensure every facet of the story possible is worked in, including wide-ranging interviews with both American and Vietnamese people from every possible side of the conflict, gives this series crucial depth. To be fair, watching it requires commitment; the whole thing is long, often hard to watch, and has so many threads at once that it is very hard for the mind to wrap itself around it. Which makes it, effectively, a miniature taste of what the war itself was; a long, messy, vast thing that so many individuals ended up lost inside of forever.

               There are so many ways we can be better. There are so many ways we can do better. But we can't start with them until we find a way to end the wars we are still fighting now, so as to finally put at least a part of our history as a nation to rest. It is hard, bitter work, and I can't say I am optimistic we can pull it off. Yet, in the end, we really don't have a choice.

-Noah Franc

Previously on Films for the TrumpYears:

Part 1- Selma

Part 2- Good Night, and Good Luck

Part 3- 13^th

Part 4- Get Out

Part 5- Chasing Ice/Chasing Coral

Part 6- The Big Short

Part 7- Human Flow

Part 8- Winter's Bone/Moonlight

Part 9- Black Panther

Part 10- Arrested Development

Part 11- Bowling for Columbine

Part 12- [T]error

Part 13- Angels in America

Part 14- Do The Right Thing

Part 15- All The President's Men

Review: Frozen II

Frozen II (2019): Written by Jennifer Lee, directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck. Starring: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad, and Jonathon Groff. Running Time: 103 minutes.

Rating: 3.5/4

               Bit by bit, the new wave are Animated Disney Princess Musicals are improving. Moana remains my personal favorite, but Frozen II is able to stick to its guns in a way the first movie wasn't able to pull off; I still consider the first half of Frozen to be very near perfect, but the drop-off following the dynamite "Let It Go" sequence is pretty steep. That, plus the long-running, legendary shitiness of nearly everything in the Disney sequel canon, made me very cautious entering Frozen II, even though the trailers certainly did make it look like the studio was putting real muscle into it this time.

               Thankfully, they did, and the result is a solid improvement over the first movie in every measurable way. It's been a few years since the last story ended, and the kingdom enjoys peace. Elsa, however, is growing restless, as a strange, ethereal voice coming from the North comes to her with increasing frequency. Her agitation and worry grows until, in a stunning flight-of-fancy sequence, she accidentally unleashes four long-dormant, elemental spirits, that begin to plague Arendelle to thoroughly that the entire place soon flees to the hills.

               Elsa knows that, whatever she did, her power is what is needed to set it right, sets off to the North with Anna, Kristoff, and Olaf. Their goal is the legendary Enchanted Forest, where, according to their father, a conflict between Arendelle and an indiginous tribe called the Northuldra so incensed the spirits that the forest was sealed away behind a magical fog.

               The journey that results is, as Olaf immediately points out, destined to change them all. Answers regarding Elsa's powers and purpose, the identities of the spirits, and the reasons why Arendelle and the Northuldra went to war await, as does a series of jarring reveals about Elsa's and Anna's parents and their lineage. In the side story, Kristoff has been planning to propose to Anna for some time, but can't seem to stop tripping over himself whenever he tries, and he struggles to reconcile his feelings of love with the rocky paths life keeps throwing in their way.

               As with the first movie, Elsa's ice powers provide a lot of ways to get creative with the animation, and the results are staggering. While the first film has now aged a bit, this one is filled with one stunning visual image after another. This is the sort of film that still shows off the power of seeing things on big screens, since the sheer grandeur of some of the films best moments will never be fully captured by a television screen.

               The songs, written once again by the Lopez duo, do not include another show-stopping "Let It Go," but in leui of one, mind-bending monster hit, the soundtrack has a much more complete and thorough feel to it. One of my criticisms of the first Frozen was that, while the first half was appreciatively filled with songs, a few of them felt distinctly different from the score, and by the film's end the songs were abandoned almost entirely (except for that damn troll song, which I still refuse to re-listen to). There is one notable example here, Kristoff's primary number "Lost in the Woods," but it's such a clear parody song and works so much better as "the comedy song" than anything in the first, that I can't hold that against it.

               The rest of the tracks have a much more fluid feel to them, constantly incorporated both the melody of the disembodied voice haunting Elsa and the refrain of a lullaby the two sisters recall from their childhood, a chilling melody that holds an important clue as to where the story is going. Idina Menzel gets two belty tunes ("Into The Unknown" and "Show Yourself"), but after reflecting on it, I think my favorite might be Anna's key number, "The Next Right Thing." It's a solid song that also serves as a huge character moment at the darkest part of the film, where she has every reason to believe that she's lost everything.

               Here, too, the recurring focus on two sisters, struggling to understand and grasp their histories while still adjusting and adapting their adult relationship to each other contains levels of maturity and wisdom that not too many Disney films manage to achieve. It's so rare to say something like this about a Disney film, especially since we are right in the middle of the Desolation of Disney Live Action Remakes, but it's pleasantly refreshing.

               Kristoff and Olaf are both relegated to comedy relief, as to be expected, but here too Kristoff gets some really profound scenes: he's not an egotist, and not plagued by toxic masculinity or easily hurt by Anna always being distracted with worries about her sister. He gets two particular lines that offer a really quiet, powerful example for any boys in the audience wondering how to become decent men in the 21^st-century.

               This is a fun, enjoyable film with a lot of good, important things to say. It doesn't take any major chances, but it is beautiful to look at and pleasant to the ears. For God's sake, watch this film and not the live-action remakes. Disney's animation department still has it, and they deserve our support way more.

-Noah Franc

Review- Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019): Written by Linda Woolverton, Noah Harpster, Micah Fitzerman-Blue, directed by Joachim Ronning. Starring: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sam Riley, Ed Skrein, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Running Time: 118 minutes.

Rating: 2.5/4

               I have made no secret of my utter contempt for the entire "Disney Live-Action Remakes of Animated Classics" enterprise. The very idea of this whole concept directly feeds into longstanding American bias that anything animated is automatically "kid's stuff," i.e. "nothing to be taken seriously or treated like real art." I find this particularly sickening in light of how many of these films are specifically designed to overtake the animated originals as the versions most people see and show their kids, effectively replacing them from popular culture.

               Beyond this insidious aspect, there's also the frustrating fact that most of these remakes just aren't any good. And in nearly all cases, even in the more okay ones, the movies fail to grasp the very concept of remaking something, that being to offer a genuinely new angle on the source material. Such reimaginings of past works can and often do result in new, challenging works of art that stand on their own. Here, though, so many of these films are either nearly shot-for-shot identical to the originals (but, you know, "real," erego, "better") or pretend that they've magically "fixed" any flaws in the animated films by offering pitiful, faux-wokeness in leiu of actual artistic vision.

               There has been one, lone, solitary exception to this Dreck that has so clogged our theaters beyond what the worst Marvel movies could ever do. Ironically, said exception is the very first film released under the newfangled "Live Action Remake" banner: Maleficent, the remake of Sleeping Beauty. Featuring a jaw-dropping, perfect performance by Angelina Jolie in the titular role, Maleficent actually did take a decidedly new perspective on the original fairy tale and stood it on its head, taking one of the drier Disney classics and turning it into an aggressively subversive story of motherhood and female empowerment. Jolie was particularly upfront about making a kew moment for her character a direct metaphor for rape, and the result remains one of the most stunning and forceful moments in her entire career to date.

               Maleficent Two: Pfeiffer's Boogaloo picks up a few years after the events of the first film, which Aurora happily living alongside Maleficent as Queen of the magical Moor. Despite Jolie's wholly justified deposement of the last king, the story of her as the real villain has somehow still seeped its way into the consciousness of the humans. This has started to couple with an increasingly hostile mistrust of all magical creatures throughout the kingdom. Into this volatile mix marches Michelle Pfeiffer, dazzling as the warmongering mother of Prince Phillip. What this kingdom has to do with Sharlto Copley's kingdom from the last film is unclear; borders of states are a rather nebulous concept in this series. Sporting a literal allergy to magic and her own assistant/personal attack dog, Gerda (a scenery-chewing Jenn Murray), Pfeiffer launches a scheme to use the anticipated marriage of Phillip and Aurora to provoke a genocidal war on all the magical entities of the Moor.

               The attentive viewer will know rather quickly where this is all going, as the film never bothers to hides its cards. But that's not the point anyway; this film is content to simply wallow in its bright colors and campy production design, a relentless barrage of style that sets the film apart from its competition. Stuff like a bonkers "loudspeaker" system, or a poison-gas-spewing organ, will be dropped into play without so much as a word of warning. I wish more films had this sort of zany self-confidence.

               The designs are matched by arresting visuals and cinematography, especially in the sequences after Maleficent stumbles into an entire underworld inhabited by her own kin, so-called "Dark Faes." The introductory shots in this section are genuinely beautiful swirls of color and light.

               The sequel, like the first film, also sticks to its guns by focusing squarely on the women as the real movers and shakers of the plot; here, the men have pretty much nothing of consequence to say or do, and the best moments continute to center around Aurora and her adoptive mother, a powerful argument for true family as something born more out of choice and lived experience than of blood.

               All in all, I dig this franchise. It's big, it's bright, it's messy, it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it has a commitment to itself that most other studio features lack. This is the one live-action adaptation I'm willing to keep coming back to, if it'll have me.

-Noah Franc

Review: Parasite

Parasite (2019): Written by Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won, directed by Bong Joon-ho. Starring: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, and Park So-dan. Running Time: 132 minutes.

Rating: 4/4

               Parasite is one of those gloriously confident movies that is excellent enough in its first half, building out a powerfully solid character drama about class conflict and envy, until it flips the script on the unsuspecting viewer halfway through and goes all-out bonkers until the very end. This movie could have settled down and still been great. Instead, Bong Joon-ho and his crew went for broke and ended up creating a Goddamn masterpiece, easily one of the best films of 2019 and one that I am confident will be the center of thinkpieces for years to come.

               Much in the veign of last year's Shoplifters, which also happened to win the Palme d'Or same as this film, the Kim family lives a hand-to-mouth existence on the very edge of society, constantly scrabbling to piece together enough money and food to live. The parallels are not 100% exact, of course, but both films have a very similar vibe in the opening scenes, as we are thoroughly drawn into the world these characters inhabit and get a small feel for who each member of the family is and what they have to do to survive, as well as the sort of indignities they regularly have to stoically face down.

               At the start of the film, said survival is centered around the whole family making boxes for a local pizza service. Things start to change, slowly at first, and then all at once, when the son, Ki-woo, lands a temporary gig tutoring a rich schoolgirl. And it is not to be missed that her family is very, very rich; there are many shots dedicated to showing the size and space and excessiveness of the strange, super-modern house the girl's family, the Parks, resides in. The difference between this 21st-century palace and the filthy, bug-infested basement the Kims live in could not be more stark.

               Piece by piece, the Kims take advantage of the amusingly detached naievity of the Parks to insert themselves more and more into their lives. First the son starts tutoring the family's daughter (and they start dating to boot). Then Ki-woo pulls in his sister to teach art to the Parks' son. Then they contrive to get both the father's driver and the mother's housekeeper fired, eventually to be replaced by- you guessed it- the elder Kims. Though we are watching a devious form of identity fraud being committed, much like with the Ocean franchise there is such deft skill, such joi de vivre, in how confidently Ki-woo and his family put each piece of their plan into place, that you can't help but root for them. The Kims are just so much fun; the actors are charming, funny, empathetic, and have incredible chemistry.

               Obviously, as with all the best laid plans o' mice and men, things will not go quite as the Kims planned, but the details of when, why, and how exactly things goes tits-up I would not dare even hint at; this movie is a joy to experience cold, one of the most thrilling and gripping theatrical experiences I've had in a long time. Beyond the excellent acting, the movie boasts one of the year's best musical scores and dynamite cinematography, with a wealth of storytelling packed into the framing of every shot.

               This is, of course, a film about class and economic disparity, much like Joon-ho's also-excellent Snowpiercer, albeit with a *touch more subtelty about itself. There is hours worth of commentary in how the film uses its characterizations of and interactions between the rich and poor characters to comment on how, in a society built upon the fetishization of wealth and "success," those with less are increasingly prompted toward internalized self-loathing, rather than to question how, exactly, the social structures around them lead to circumstances where some can have so much and others so little.

               The visual metaphors get especially potent during a key sequence where, during a heavy rainstorm, the Parks' house remains warm, cozy, and dry, while the back alley where the Kim's basement apartment lies is completely flooded out. It's so bad that their toilet starts to literally spew up shit, the ultimate symbol of the refuse of the high society above them being inflicted on those below who have, in any reasonable sense, done nothing to warrant it. A moment that follows, where Ki-woo is being invited by the Parks to a fancy party while sitting in an emergency shelter- while wearing smelly, donated clothes to boot- is so perfect as to defy description.

               I find it particularly interesting to think about how it is never discussed what the rich characters actually do for a living. There is no effort to establish what, exactly, any of these people have done to earn or merit such wealth, or if it's merely inheritance. In effect, the movie's lack of interest in these details is a quiet commentary that it doesn't matter what the rish do; they have wealth, they know it, and that's all that matters. With the Kims, on the other hand, we either see directly or hear about many of the odd jobs they've all done through the years to make ends meet, from cab driving, to sports, to pizza delivery, to the military.

               There is not a single part of this entire film that was not thoroughly planned for maximum effect. Parasite lands each scene with devastating impact, creating a gripping cinematic experience that only grows in the mind the more you think about it afterwards. It is for experiences such as this that we go to the movies.

-Noah Franc

Review: Gemini Man

Gemini Man (2019): Written by David Benioff, Billy Ray, and Darren Lemke, directed by Ang Lee. Starring: Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, and Benedict Wong. Running Time: 117 minutes.

Rating: 2/4

               It sure looks like 2019 will end up as a turning point in the use of de-aging effects in movies. Attempts to cheat Father Time have always been part and parcel of the cinematic toolkit, but rapid improvements in digital technology have allowed an awful lot of big-name, big-budget films to go farther than ever before with the concept. Already we've seen the Marvel films increasingly rely on it, most notably in Captain Marvel, as well as the IT franchise, of all things. Plus, Scorcese's The Irishman is starting to make the rounds, a film that has been hyping its de-aging of Robert De Niro since pretty much the moment production was announced.

               Until that film is finally on Netflix, though, us plebes are stuck with Gemini Man, the latest from noted auteur Ang Lee. As a general rule, anyone with as varied and interesting a filmography as Lee's taking a turn at using new tech like de-aging CGI and HFR is bound to at least be interesting and memorable. Sadly, Gemini Man does not succeed at being either.

               The plot, such as it is, feels like a tired repeat of the pat several decades of spy thrillers-meet-sci fi. Will Smith is #TheBest at shooting things, until he begins to suspect he's getting too old to do the job anymore, and decides to settle in to a quiet retirement. Of course, it's not that easy (is it ever?), and a serious of double-crosses by his erstwhile employers leaves his associates dead and him on the run with another soldier, Dani (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), caught up in the crossfire. It turns out Smith is a loose end in need of un-loosening, and his former boss, Clay Varris, soon dispatches a mysterious expert assassin to eliminate him once and for all.

               If you've seen any film in a similar vein from the past three decades, you know exactly what comes next; the young up-and-comer is a clone of Will Smith that Varris had made in secret and had been raising as his own son to be an even better, more hard-hearted soldier than the "original." Soon, the race is on to connect with the clone and convince him to help the main characters instead of kill them, so as to prevent.....I don't know, military intervention in Yemen?

               Even if you've never seen another before, this entire story will still be wholly obvious if you saw even one trailer for this, because the film's marketing was patently terrible. This is one of those moves you can only see in spite of its ads, not because of them. That only goes so far as an excuse, though. There are plenty of great films that got stuck with terrible, too-revealing trailers, but as long as there is something beyond the barebones of the plot worth seeing, an audience will find it eventually.

               Gemini Man, however, has no such luck; there is nothing of substance or surprise to be found anywhere here; what you saw in the trailers, you get here. I kept waiting for something, anything, in the film to really grab me, but that moment never came. Not that the film is actively bad or incompetent; the resolution provided by the High Frame Rate gives some very beautiful shots, and the action scenes were intense and impressive as far as big-screen spectacles go. If this were not a year in which we'd gotten a John Wick entry, certain moments from this movie would have been candidates to top a Best Action Scene list.

               Unfortunately, any visual flair the film occasionally shows is immediately dampened down when the focus returns to the characters and we have to suffer through another round of painfully inane dialogue. It's like the script had, at one point, interesting and unique aspects to it, but someone took sandpaper to the thing right before shooting and ground anyway any line or phrase that would have let the characters stand apart in any way from the stock stereotypes they're based off of. There is one particular line involving cilantro that, within the conext of the film, ranks as one of the deadest line drops I can remember witnessing in a movie theater.

               The actors aren't able to save much either. Will Smith is perfectly fine- he usually is- but the character doesn't give him much room to bring his usual patented charisma into play. Apparently, he and Tom Cruise were the only two people Ang Lee said he would make the movie with, since both are longstanding action stars that, like the main character of the film, are hard-pressed to stave off the advances of Old Father Time. Fun fact- my screening of this movie was preceeded by a trailer for the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick. I assume this was the nostalgia-indulging ago booster Cruise opted for in leui of doing Gemini Man. I honestly can't say which of the two did themselves less of a favor.

               In the end, this is another of those movies that exist; they begin, they last two hours, and then they end. There is plenty of potential in the use of various HFR to create vivid, realistic imagery in film, but as with all things, the tool must be used in the proper manner to fit the story being told. Since Gemini Man never seemed to have much of a story to begin with, this wasn't the one to sell me on it.

-Noah Franc

Review: IT Chapter Two

IT Chapter Two (2019): Written by Gary Dauberman, directed by Andy Muschietti. Starring: Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, Andy Bean, and Bill Skarsgard. Running Time: 170 minutes. Based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King.

Rating: 2.5/4

**spoiler alert for the end of the movie**

               Part of what may well allow the first IT movie to endure the test of time as a good movie was the decision to chronogically split King's massive, sprawling, detail-packed story. Everything with the characters as adults and the bizarro, cosmic world-building got punted to the future so as to focus more tightly on a tale about outcast children in the town of Derry, Maine. It was the right choice; the first film might not be on par with The Shining, but it very much stands on its own as an engaging, schlocky, horror bash, carried by an absurdly amazing cast of child actors (including my dude, Finn Wolfhard). This tight focus- driven, in part, by its tight budget- helped the movie avoid getting bogged down in the more esoteric stuff from its source material.

               Now, though, the sequel is here, meaning it's time for both the adult drama, and the big, otherwordly explanation for what the hell IT even is, what it's doing here, and what can be done about, er, it. And the answers are.....not very satisfying, except perhaps to the most diehard Kingheads, if even that. There is plenty of good stuff in this movie, and some moments that are truly excellent, but ultimately it's impossible not feel the very drawn-out runtime by the time the throroughly unspecactular end of Pennywise the Clown comes about.

               In line with the book, the adults versions of the characters, after besting Pennywise as children, all move away from Derry and start there own lives, eventually forgetting nearly everything that happened to them as kids (it's suggested that this is part of Pennywise's strange, and rather ill-defined, powerset). One of them, though- Mike- stayed behind, and 27 years later he summons his friends back to the town when mysterious, gruesome murders start up again, convinced that this is their chance to finish Pennywise once and for all.

               For the most part, the adult cast works well as adult versions of the children we fell in love with in the first film. Their reinstroductions to each other after years apart is easily one of the movie's better scenes. The standout is Bill Hader (adult Finn Wolfhard), a caustic, stand-up comedian who, while plenty funny throughout the film, also gets perhaps the most emotionally impactful character arc and dramatic scenes. Sadly, they can't hold much of a candle to the child cast, and this disparity is only reinforced through a series of flashbacks scattered throughout the film that almost feel like a collection of deleted scenes from the first film, as if the director had been denied permission to make a Director's Cut and decided to squeeze it into the sequel instead.

               The flashbacks are part of why the film feels so padded, but a bigger reason for that is that the whole middle act is devoted to a split-up-the-group treasure hunt, where each person in the group has to find some sort of "artifact" from the past for the mythic ritual that, according to Mike, is the only way to kill the creature. This ritual in and of itself is a rather embarassing bit of Native American appropriation, but the film rushes through it so fast it feels like the crew was aware of this and decided to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

               Now, theoretically, these divided sequences could have worked as a series of reinforcing montages, with all of the stories culminating at once, Cloud Atlas style, but alas, we are forced to sit through them one after the other, and by the third segment the rhythm is already tired out. This draggy part could theoretically have been salvaged by a bonanza final act, but unfortunately it seems that, along with a blockbuster-sized budget ($185 million, to be exact), the filmmakers took their cues from the lesser examples of modern superhero works. The "grand conclusion" is, as a result, a bloated smorgasborg of unconvincing CGI and action beats that culminate, very awkwardly, in Pennywise being beaten by the movie's version of a Twitter pile-on. In a movie about overcoming and dealing with the effects of childhood trauma, most especially bullying, it's unavoidably tone-deaf.

               That this is how the good guys win is especially disappointing given how insanely good bill Skarsgard is as Pennywise. This sort of role that, already having an iconic performance from a great actor to its name, usually ends up as a death trap for the careers of anyone unfortunate to come along later and try and duplicate the magic (see; every Joker post-Heath Ledger). Skarsgard, however, skillfully avoids any pitfalls that would have made his Pennywise nought but a shallow imitation of Tim Curry's now-legendary absurdist take from the original miniseries. He has his own voice, his own mannerisms, his own methods for getting into his victim's heads. The scariest beats in both movies are overwhelmingly those with Pennywise as just a weird clown, not any of the huge, stunted monsters he turns into by the end. Skarsgard has some great sequences in this movie, but there are few and far between compared to the first, yet another reason why the sequel suffers in comparison.

               I am usually a defender for movies going longer and deeper and not holding themselves to an arbitrary two-hour runtime, but even I have my limits. This movie isn't bad, but it is a watch-checker, and that is especially fatal when it comes to horror. If you are a King completist, this is worth seeing eventually, but not worth rushing into a theater for.

-Noah Franc

Review: To The Stars

To The Stars (2019): Written by Shannon Bradley-Colleary, directed by Martha Stephens. Starring: Kara Hayward, Liana Liberato, Malin Akerman, Shea Whigham, Jordana Spiro, Adelaide Clemens, and Tony Hale. Running Time: 109 minutes.

Rating: 2.5/4

               It's tempting, on occasion, to give a pass to narrative flaws in a film that tackles heavy, sensitive, or even traumatic real-world issues. To say that, well, these things really do happen, so by presenting them unvarnished, the movie does the world a service regardless of other factors involved like the quality of the script, casting, or production choices. I can certainly understand the appeal of such a perspective, and I myself do not hold back when I feel a film has an importance that elevates it above its earthly flaws. However, simply recreating bits and pieces of real-world cruelty and stringing them together is not enough to tell a compelling story; if there isn't something there to glue the disparate parts together, people just aren't going to want to return to the well.

               To The Stars is the fourth directed film by Martha Stephens, based on an original screenplay by Shannon Bradley-Colleary. Filmed in crisp black-and-white, it follows the dreary, torment-filled high school life of Iris Deerborne. She doesn't fit in with the “cool crowd” at school, and there's no respite for her at home; her parents don't live together so much as they co-exist under a mutually agreed cease-fire. All that starts to change with the arrival of Maggie, a tough, brash-talking “city girl” who first appears literally out of the blue to save Iris from a fresh round of bullying from some of the football boys.

               Clearly, there's something different about Maggie, and she starts to draw Iris out of herself in a way no one else has before. They skip school, get makeovers, and each in their own ways start to push back against the rather stifling social conformity that fills the town around them. Kara Hayward and Liana Liberato are aggressively compelling in the lead roles, with a genuine chemistry that elevates all their scenes together. The film would truly fall apart without them. Hayward in particular seems to be on a remarkable trajectory; her first role was that of Suzie in Wes Anderson's masterpiece, Moonrise Kingdom, a fact that I am ashamed to say I was wholly unaware of until I checked her filmography. Not only that, I found out that she was apparently also in Manchester By The Sea, Paterson, and even Us. Even though those last three were only bit roles, that is still a uniquely impressive resume for someone still not able to legally drink; keep a sharp eye out for this one, because she is going places.

               Sadly, while I could spend many a film enjoying the precocious exploits of Iris and Maggie, the movie around them isn't quite on the same level. It's not bad, per say, just less focused; once the film moves away from the regular, everyday trials of teenage girls and more towards the general bigotry of the town, the plot turns start to feel more and more contrived, until by the end the charm that defined the first half has largely dissipated.

               The particular form of bigotry this movie tackles is homophobia; it's eventually revealed that the reason Maggie and her family suddenly moved out of “the city” to a backwater town is because of some unspoken (albeit very pointedly implied) “scandal” that made Maggie's father (a stunningly compelling Tony Hale) feel forced to uproot the family and resort to the belt to cure his daughter of her “bad deeds.” His scenes are few, and maybe it's just because I know him almost exclusively as Buster, but boy, it is an experience to see him play an Evangelical hardliner. He even has a line about drinking juice, for Christ's sake.

               Ultimately, though, the particular beats to how the homophobia plays out and affects the various characters simply feels less like an organic development of the story, and more like outside artifice forced in just to create tension. I found this especially frustrating because, well, high school sucks regardless of sexual orientation. There was already plenty of tension inherent in the interactions between the teenage characters from the start, when latent sexuality was just being hinted at. There was way more effective drama to be mined here that goes untapped in favor of far more rote narrative beats. The best scene in the entire movie is a heartbreaking nighttime conversation between Maggie and Iris that, sadly, is not built upon afterwards.

               I wish I didn't feel as critical of this film as I do. It's heart is in the right place, and the casting and cinematography are excellent. The holes are impossible to miss, but it is worth seeing, if for no other reason than to say you were on board from the beginning when Kara Hayward wins her third Oscar.

-Noah Franc

Review: Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood

Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood (2019): Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Starring: Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell, and Al Pacino. Running Time: 161 minutes.

Rating: 3/4

**spoiler alert for the entirety of the film**

               Well. That escalated quickly.

               Tarantino's latest film comes so, so very close to being the most relaxed, most meditative, and least eventful film he's ever made. For the bulk of its close-to-three-hour runtime, it is content merely being a very thorough callback to a very specific time and place in the era of "Old Hollywood," or at least "Older Hollywood." It drenches itself in period dress and a production design so minute and detailed, that it's basically guaranteed to run away screaming with the Oscar for Best Production Design next year, along with (most likely) a bevy of other awards. Scenes and montages riffing on Tarantino's usual grab-bag of cultural callbacks range from the gentle and poignant to aggressively in-your-face, and simply occur over the course of a handful of days with no clear narrative thread connecting them.

               Until, that is, the time for some very bloody historical revisionism hits at the very end, and the whole affaid explodes into an orgy of blood and violence on par with what we've come to expect from QT. Even here, though, while the sparks are viscerally impressive, they aren't on quite the same level as some of the most shocking bits from Pulp Fiction, Django, Basterds, or even The Hateful Eight. Maybe Tarantino is growing soft and uncertain with age. Or perhaps there is only so far provocative violence can go before it starts feeling increasingly unnecessary or redundant.

               OUATIH follows Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stuntmen/handyman/best friend (only friend?) Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Both are seemingly on the downside after years spent atop the Hollywood totem pole, and neither seems to be processing it well. Rick drowns himself in drink, cigarettes, and tearful pity-parties before friends and strangers alike. Cliff maintains a ceaselessly laid-back, devil-may-care attitude on the surface, but there are reasons aplenty to think it's at least partially a facade, as his own history includes a supposed fisticuffs with Bruce Lee that got him blackballed and (possibly) getting away with actual murder.

               The minuteai of what their career histories are and what, exactly, they each do on-screen to try and get their careers back on track is less important than the general world they inhabit, one that their daily lives reveal to us in bits and pieces. The comittment to recreating the general vibe and feel of Hollywood in the late 60's is nothing less than slavish, and it is indeed an impressive film in how carefully it maintains this atmosphere.

               The twist ahead, however, is set up fairly early- we know right away that Rick just so happens to live next door to Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski, in the very summer where Tate and her friends were infamously, and brutally, murdered by members of the Manson family. For those who lived through it, this was an event so culturally traumatic it is still considered by most to be THE moment that the Hollywood of the 60's, the one Tarantino dedicates this entire film to, ended for good.

               Margot Robbie continutes to shine as one of the next big film stars, suffusing Tate with a confidence and joy that radiate off the screen despite having relatively few scenes or moments of dialogue. Indeed, she is almost more of an idea, or a ghost, than an actual character. While I can understand faulting the film for this approach, I myself found her scenes remarkably effective, the highlight being a moment where she goes to the theater to see her own film and takes a clear pride in how the audience responds to her work. Sharon Tate will forever be defined in the eyes of most by the tragedy that ended her life, so, personally, I am for any effort to bring her at least partially out of Charles Manson's shadow, even though doing so completely will likely never be possible.

               The other controversial parts of the film are a bit more difficult to parse, at least for me, specifically the treatment of Bruce Lee in his one main scene and the exact nature of the violence at the end of the film. In both cases, I feel particularly ill-equipped to offer moral judgment on the film. Bruce Lee is treated as a parody of himself, and while there are signs that this portrayal is something of a fantasy spun by Cliff (we "see" his fight with Lee as a memory he revisits some years later), I won't argue with either Lee's family or any other fans who consider the scene a black mark on the film.

               And then there's the ending, which is likely to be one of the most controversial film choices of Tarantino's career. Instead of the Tate murders going down as they did in reality, the would-be attackers decide to break into Rick's house instead, after an evening Rick and Cliff spent getting (respectively) stupidly drunk and fantastically high. Even in their impaired states, though, they manage to fight off and kill each of the attackers in stupendous fashion. Sharon Tate and her friends are never murdered, Rick befriends her and her husband and possibly gets a fresh start to his career, and the glorified image of a specific past is, perhaps, allowed to endure a little longer.

               Should it have endured though? Or was it necessary for the Hollywood of the 60's to, somehow and someday, go the way of the dodo? Out of all of his movies, this might be the one that is hardest to separate from what we know of Tarantino as a person. This is clealy a deeply personal film, possible his most personal; a lot about Rick Dalton's character and his fears of being left behind, overshadowed, forgotten by a new generation could be a bit of self-reflection on Tarantino's part. Plus, while he has written some of the best and most compelling female characters of the past few decades, his relationship to and statement on sexist tropes, endangerment of women, and an unwillingness to confront the darker parts of the film industry both past and present are.....extremely mixed, to put it diplomatically. In the wake of #MeToo, it is especially hard to watch this paeon to a lost age and NOT think about all the abuse and manipulation of women and minorites that is definitely happening off-screen. I'm as ready to give an artist the benefit of the doubt as anybody, but I admit I am rather sceptical that QT has ever given much thought to this aspect of his love for this particular bygone time and place.

               There is also the fact that, once again, terrible, horrific violence is visited upon the human body, specifically female bodies, in a way that easily draws laughter and even applause from many moviegoers. Here, too, as a man, I feel I would be out of my league to try and either condemn or justify the decisions made in this part of the film. I myself didn't find it funny at all, but plenty in the theater with me sure did, and I'm pretty sure most of them were men. All I can offer is some advice to my male readers; ask the women in your life what they think, and listen to them when they answer.

               And yet, despite all of this, for all the flaws inherent in Tarantino's obsession with a gaudy past he was never actually a part of and maybe doesn't glamorize for the right reasons, there is an undeniable power in his capacity for visual storytelling and the unspoken richness the people he casts bring to their roles. And I, too, fervently wish that I had the power to reach back to specific times in history and give evil its proper comeuppance, preferably via flamethrower. As flawed and and as arguably reprehensible as his revision of the Tate murders might be, the impulse to play with the Fates in this manner is one I am all too familiar with.

               That may not be a very objective, or sound, or moral reflection on myself. But it does signify that, like Tarantino, I'm only human, in the end. And time marches on.

-Noah Franc

Producers in Focus: Leon Thomas (Renegade Cut)

               In terms of his style and delivery, I find a lot of similarities between Leon Thomas and Mike Duncan, he of the invaluable History of Rome and Revolutions podcasts. Both are more soft-spoken and quieter in their deliveries, but are cuttingly smart and deeply informative, yet carry a subdued wit about them that brings more humor to their topics than one might expect.

               Renegade Cut, Leon's primary series, has been running pretty much continuously since summer 2012. It is an overwhelmingly film-focused series, though video games and TV shows make plenty of appearances, but one that differentiates itself from your typical video-review format by often focusing on a particular topic or theme in a given film or films to expound upon. Leon Thomas has, much like Lindsay Ellis, been a primary inspiration for me to think about movies beyond mere straightforward, good/bad critiques; his perspectives are always unlike anything else I've read or seen on a given topic and are always worth the time to delve into. He's done so much, including nearly all my all-time favorite films, so picking and choosing is hard, so here are just a handful of my personal favorites;

Inception (4 Parts)

               Sadly, as of right now these videos appear to be lost to the sands of time; this four-part deep dive into the details of, arguably, Christopher Nolan's greatest film came out shortly after Renegade Cut joined Channel Awesome and back when everything was still hosted on Blip. After that site got shut down, a lot of stuff from many of the creators was lost, and it seems that these were some of the casualties. Which, for me, is a travesty, because it was precisely these videos that first got me hooked on Renegade Cut. At the time, though Nolan was already one of my favorite directors, I was yet to see someone tackle one of his films in this much detail, and it was a real eye-opener for me as to just how rich proper film criticism can be. Maybe, one day, they will be made available again.

DCEU Film and Culture Analysis (4 Parts)

               Like with MovieBob's Really That Bad on Batman v Superman, Leon Thomas undertook the immense, painful task of examining just why and how the DCEU has (so far) so thoroughly failed to take off and create a successful cinematic universe. He has born these sins on his shoulders so that we don't have to; now that this 3+ hour series of his is finished, there is no longer any need to watch any of the first wave of DC movies (except Wonder Woman, which is still great) because the important stuff is all right here, laid out for easy understanding.

Christian Martyr Complex- God's Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness

               As someone raised both liberal and Catholic, the specific ways American Christianity has been twisted to serve asinine, conservative socio-political ends is something that never fails to anger and offend me on a deeply personal level. The utter tripe that is the God's Not Dead....*sigh*....”trilogy” is one of the most cynical examples of this. As such, it was especially satisfying to me to see Leon Thomas take the time to deconstruct the utter emptiness of these films.

Amadeus- Does God Control Our Lives

               Amadeus remains my absolute favorite movie of all time, an artistic work of immense power and depth, so you bet I was pumped to see Thomas' take on its themes of God, theology, and whether or not we really can argue that we have free will.

Kingdom of Heaven

               Another personal favorite of mine, a movie that, much like Amadeus, carries a lot of spiritual resonance for me personally. Like Amadeus, the movie is filled with historical errors, but that is ultimately of lesser importance, because that isn't what the film is about; it is, rather, a critical examination of the ways religion and faith are used to serve material ends, whether or not those ends actually match the spiritual ideals being professed.

Fargo

               There are so many layers to the absurdity of one of the Coen Brothers' greatest creations, especially in how it works in critical examinations of materialism and masculinity through the actions of its characters. This is one of those films that I can never get bored watching, and neither will I ever get bored of seeing others take the film apart as well.

The 20 Best Films of the Decade (So Far)

               There's nothing like a good list, and out of all the ones he's done, Thomas' look at the (in his opinion) best films of the decade is a personal favorite of mine. This is particularly because of how, while there are certainly American films here, he really does go global, spreading the word about a whole host of films from other countries most Western moviegoers have never even heard of, let alone seen. This- the elevation of that which would otherwise go unnoticed or forgotten- is the quintessential purpose of good art criticism.

Previously on Producers in Focus:

Lindsay Ellis

Todd Nathanson (Todd in the Shadows)

Jacob Chapman

Suede

Daren Jackson (Rap Critic)

Kyle Kallgren

Weekly Manga Recap