Films for the Trump Years: Selma

            Welcome to the first entry in my new ongoing series, Films for the Trump Years, where, for as long as is needed, I will regularly examine one or a set of films that are in some manner important or relevant to the social, political, and cultural struggles humanity now faces, both in the US in opposing the Trump administration, and across the world in general. 

            I’ve decided to begin as simply and as obviously as I can; with Avu DuVernay’s masterful (and shamefully under-recognized) Selma, one of the best dramatizations of the Civil Rights Movement and the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ever made, and one of my top movies of2014.   

            In ways almost too numerous to count, the African-American Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s is the most immediate, pressing, and obvious historical example for the type of problems we are facing and what sort of civic engagement is needed now.  It’s the piece of our history most directly connected to current crises in our politics and society- the efforts of groups like the SCLC and SNCC led to, among other things, the Voting Rights Act.  The same Voting Rights Act that, after decades of campaigning by conservative lawyers, finally received a body blow to its integrity in the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, which severely scaled back the law’s capacity to support suits against discriminatory voting laws.  And, surprise surprise, in the years since this decision, the foundational right to vote has once again come under sustained, nationwide assault, culminating in the President himself asserting (falsely) that “millions of illegal votes” were cast in the 2016 election, which will invariably be used to justify further restrictive measures on this most basic of democratic rights. 

            The organizations behind the Civil Rights Movement and the tactics they refined through wave after wave of painful (and often deadly) trial-and-error also became a format that directly inspired later organized pushes for LGBTQ rights, gender equality, and many others; in fact, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, another major achievement of this era, included a (at the time) largely unnoticed addendum banning discrimination on not just race, but sex as well, which became one of the legal foundations for the expanding fights for women’s rights just a few years later.  

            It’s also the forbear of Black Lives Matter, the foundation of which has been the need to highlight how so many of the exact same racial questions and issues raised by MLK and his contemporaries over half a century ago remain, in ways large and small, overwhelmingly unresolved, white protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.   

            Perhaps the saddest part of how viscerally relevant this era remains is that it, too, is an example of a time when the branches, power, and mechanisms of the federal government were in the control of peoples and parties more than willing to use them for anti-democratic ends.  The FBI relentlessly targeted African-American activists for illegal surveillance and blackmail, deliberately seeking to undermine or stop people like MLK from gaining the ear of the President and Congress.  Yet despite this, these fighters created enough sustained civic action that, in the face of all this inertia in the opposite direction, the government was eventually forced to respond appropriately, and this too can be an example and inspiration to us today. 

            Even though we are now faced with the blatant racism of Trump and many of his worst enablers, like Representative Steve King of Iowa and Attorney General Jeff “It’sPainful To Be Called Racist” Sessions (who, by the way, has already indicated he will pull back on federal efforts to fight civil rights violations in court), this is not so wholly different from what the Civil Rights movement faced, and today we have many more tools at our disposable to push back against their efforts than existed back then. 

            So where does Selma come in to all this?  Aside from being a great movie in its own right, superbly directed and brimming with amazing performances (especially David Oyelowo’s MLK), it is packed with moments, scenes, and snippets of dialogue that perfectly capture or represent the history its depicting and highlight why this story is still relevant today. 

            The scene featuring the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson is a prime example of how unjustified police killings of blacks have never not been a constant hazard of simply being black in America; what we are suddenly capturing and witnessing on camera in the past few years may seem “new” or “shocking” to whites, but African-Americans have known for centuries how cheaply and easily their lives can be sacrificed for trivial (or non-existent) reasons. 

            Government surveillance and blackmail efforts are highlighted in a scene where Coretta reveals to Martin that she’s received recordings of him having sex with other women, accompanied by death threats.  This reminds us that, like BLM activists today, MLK and his colleagues were seen as a threat to “how things are,” a bunch of agitators and thugs bent on creating a false narrative of nonexistent grievance.  And just like back then, such accusations today are wholesale lies meant to avoid the hard questions racial activism seeks to raise. 

            At the same time, this moment also provides us with a reminder that MLK, like all of the historical figures our culture likes to worship as something higher than human, was in fact a man like us, with his own weaknesses, flaws, biases, and shortcomings.  Much of the cultural rhetoric around Obama, or Bernie Sanders, or even Trump shows how dearly so many of us still want a political savior, someone just perfect with just the right ideas who, once in power, will magically fix all we see as wrong in the world.  This is a fatal fallacy.  We can’t expect sainthood to fix things- only we can do that, while bringing all our failings in tow, no matter contradictory or painful they may be. 

            To do that, we need constant organizations and tireless engagement with the systems we live in, even when we are fighting against their worst aspects.  It ultimately wasn’t his moments of soaring rhetoric that led to actual, legislative achievement- it was years of endless work holding drives, scheduling marches, and getting people’s names on lists.  This strategic aspect, as opposed to relying on high-minded ideals to inspire, lies at the core of Selma. 

            Above all else, though, one of the most important reasons to watch this movie and recall this part of our history is that it reminds us of just how much past generations have paid to earn the right to vote.  Far beyond the petty frustrations of taking a day out of a busy schedule to cast a ballot, people have (and around the world today, continue) to give everything, up to and including their lives, to win this most basic of freedoms. 

            And when we bear this in mind, how dare we not cherish and utilize that right to vote wherever and whenever possible?  Whether or not we find the particular candidates “principled” or “exciting” or “entertaining” enough, whether or not we like every single item on a party’s platform, whether or not we find a ballot initiative sexy or cool, how can we justify staying at home and disengaging when others have shed their blood just to be able TO engage with our government? 

            There are many books/movies/documentaries that powerfully capture this part of our history and highlight what it can teach us today (if you have the time, I particularly recommend Taylor Branch’s seminal trilogy America in the King years).  Selma is only the first of these I am featuring here, and it almost certainly won’t be the last, but it’s as good a starting point as any. 

            The Resistance continues. 

-Noah Franc 

Review: Tiger Girl

Tiger Girl (2017): Written and directed by Jakob Lass.  Starring: Ella Rumpf, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Enno Trebs, and Orce Feldschau.  Running Time: 90 minutes. 

Rating: 3/4

            The German film scene has never been anywhere near as prolific as the more dominant industries in the US, Great Britain, India, Japan, or others, so it’s been an enjoyable relief to see a relative flurry of interesting works come out in recent years, from the brilliantly old-school Pheonix, to the internationally lauded Toni Erdmann, to more avant-garde, experimental flicks like Victoria and The Nightmare.  Tiger Girl, directed by Jakob Lass, firmly belongs in the latter category, a mish-mash of various styles and genres that, thankfully, succeeds far more often than it fails. 

            In another universe, this film would play out as the origin story for a comic-book-style tag team of female anti-heroes who take it on themselves to wreck whatever havoc they desire on the nightlife of  Berlin; Vanilla, an aspiring police officer/security guard who just can’t seem to cut it in her chosen line of work; Tiger, a wild, mysterious woman who is maybe stalking Vanilla, is maybe her guardian angel, or is maybe just one of those chance encounters that later proves seminal in one’s life.  Cue an upside-down shot of a baseball bat rolling across a grimy subway station floor to Vanilla’s feet, and we’re off to the races. 

            Whichever way it happened, they’ve found each other, and with Tiger’s utter fearlessness and Vanilla’s ability through her job to access official security outfits, with which they are basically permitted to go wherever they please, they just might be unstoppable.  There’s no real purpose to their wanderings and their random crimes, ranging from the truly petty (breaking a box of abandoned china) to actually pretty serious (battery and sexual assault on random, unsuspecting innocents).  There’s no greater scheme to steal from the rich and give to the poor.  They discover that they can get away with all of this, so they do it, simple as that.   

            I suppose the film could have played with the fact that the uniforms they wear allow them to get away with so much simply because most can’t bring themselves to say no to a person in uniform as some sort of broad takedown of our blind cultural trust for officials.  But that would require real work, and if there’s one thing Vanilla and Tiger can’t abide, its work.  Why bother, when whatever they could want is ripe for the taking?  The entire film is like the very concept of nihilism distilled into its purest form, where nothing matters and anything goes, set to rapidly edited, partially-improvised arthouse stylization. 

            Some of the more stunning moments in the film are when the entire movie shifts gears and becomes a surprisingly kickass action movie.  It’s no John Wick (what is?) but there is a remarkable smoothness and dynamism to the choreography of Vanilla and Tiger taking out a group of assailants in a subway station.  For my money, the movie’s high point is when the two randomly decide to pick on the curator of a modern art exhibit, who, quite out of the blue, turns out to be a fairly decent martial-artist herself (because, really, why not?). 

            Thankfully, there is no attempt to craft a backstory for either character, especially for Tiger, whom Ella Rumpf fills with an infectious charisma that turns her into the center of every shot she’s in.  This is one of those performances that define a film by giving birth to a character so wholly unique, that they can’t quite be compared to anything else.  It would have been all too easy to coagulate something or other about Tiger being abused as a girl or having her heart broken by a lawman as a go-to explanation for her virulent anti-socialism, but the creators of this film made a smart choice in simply letting Tiger be Tiger, in all her strange, oddball, possibly psychotic glory. 

            Sadly, Tiger alone isn’t enough to salvage some of the film’s lesser elements.  She has two friends caught up in a drug-dealing ring that are by far the movie’s weakest link.  Nothing about them is original or interesting, and every scene with them only serves to drag the film down from the potent highs it achieves at its best.  There’s simply too big a distance between them and the bizarre escapade montages of Tiger and Vanilla strutting around the city at night, pulling increasingly bizarre stunts, to ignore. 

            Though it is a touch too disjointed because of this, and does drag a bit too often, when Tiger Girl hits its stride, it doesn’t just fly, it soars.  It is by no means an easy viewing experience- anyone with an acute discomfort for ceaseless rudeness or wanton, unpublished public vandalism should tread carefully- but like much of its contemporaries on the current German film scene, Tiger Girl is certainly Something Else, and that alone makes it worth our consideration. 

-Noah Franc 

The (Lack Of) Problems with One Piece

            You’ve seen me take to this site to rant about my issues with Naruto.  You’ve seen me vent about the spectacular decline of Bleach.  But while those two former juggernauts each had their moment in the sun, faded, and then concluded, one of the former Big Three, One Piece, still remains a core part of Weekly Shonen Jump. 

            Created by Eiichiro Oda and running largely without break since 1997, currently at 861 manga chapters and 783 anime episodes (as of this writing), One Piece is not only still running, it has no apparent end in sight.  But unlike its erstwhile competitors, there is a strong argument to be made that One Piece has not only retained a consistent quality over the decades, but that it’s actually gotten better and more interesting as it’s gotten longer. 

            It would be easy to simply credit this to the fact that Oda is an utterly insane creative genius, and that much is certainly true; if he weren’t, he wouldn’t be able to artistically thrive as much as he does in an industry designed to utterly break manga artists both mentally and physically.  But as tempting as it might be to write off the phenomenon that is One Piece as a singular success too unique to be understood, doing so ultimately undercuts the artistic strengths that have allowed it hold up better than most other long-form stories, be they manga, comics, TV shows, or whatever.  It is insanely hard to create something this good for this long, but it’s not impossible to do, and it’s not impossible to grasp the whys and hows. 

            So let’s take a moment to consider this remarkable work; why has One Piece, as opposed to Bleach and Naruto, managed to get better, and not deteriorate, with age? 

1. The art style has remained consistent since Chapter One. 

            It's par for the course that the longer a series is, the higher the chance there will be a noticeable shift in the tone or style of the art by the end.  Sometimes this can have little effect on the overall quality of a manga, but in others it can end up being fairly detrimental.  Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece all started out with an exaggerated, rough-hewn look typical of most early chapters of a Shonen battle manga.  Each one showcased the particular skills or talents of the respective artist, gave the manga its own unique visual feel, and was a key part in each of them taking off and becoming the cultural juggernauts they are today. 

            They also allowed for a flexibility in what expressions the characters could make- the more detailed or serious or dramatic moments were beautifully crafted, but also switched effortlessly to more exaggerated or distorted figures in the sillier moments, and both could sit side-by-side on the page and still look like they were part of the same world.  Eventually, though, Bleach and Naruto began to slowly shift after about a few hundred chapters, taking on a more solid-looking style.  It looked more serious and “mature,” with harder lines, so it worked fine for the more serious moments of the story, but it no longer had the same flexibility as before.  The result was that whenever later chapters tried to shift back to more comic moments or throwbacks to running gags, it only broke flow and served to remind the reader just how much the feel of the series had changed over time. 

            One Piece, on the other hand, still has the same zany style is started out with, creating a world where characters can literally cry rivers, contort their faces in every conceivable way, and look deadly serious, and still feel like they are all happening in the same universe.  There’s a whole other article to be written about how fluid Oda makes the sizes and shapes of the people inhabiting this world.  It allows the series to constantly feel fresh and try out new designs, because the looseness of the style means anything really can happen, no matter how bizarrely insane the designs get.   

            And while we’re on the topic of art, style, and layout…

2. Every chapter is packed, with no empty pages or wasted space

            This is much more of a knock on Bleach than it is on Naruto, because by the end Kubo became notorious for padding out every single chapter with swaths of empty black or white shapes (sometimes whole pages of it).  This lead to an insane number of wasted chapters, where the story progressed at a snail’s pace, or circled around on itself and went nowhere, or where literally nothing happened, because there wasn’t any space left to allow anything TO happen. 

            There is none of that shit in One Piece.  The “worst” One Piece chapters are perhaps a bit boring, or forgettable, or too jumbled to make sense, but will almost always have at least one cool visual or decent joke, because each one is packed to the gills.  Not a single panel is left to rot.  And that’s key, because it means that even when something in the series doesn’t work, the passion and effort are always on full display, something that Bleach conspicuously lacked long before its ignominious end.  

            Speaking of space…

3. Pagetime between the main characters is (fairly) well-balanced. 

            One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto all have huge, sprawling casts with a staggering variety of characters and personas filling their worlds.  Maintaining the right balance between main and secondary characters in such large universes is extremely difficult, and while both started out very strong in this regard, there came a point where both Kubo and Kishimoto were clearly unable (or unwilling, or uninterested) in trying to even out the narrative focus between core characters (*cough* Chad, *hackhack* Sakura), with many popular secondary characters falling by the wayside as well. 

            One Piece does a vastly more solid job of making sure every member of the crew gets a few moments to shine in each arc, even when some play a more important role in one storyline than others.  Sure, there are nitpicks to be had that some characters go way too long without a cool fight or big story moment, and for narrative reasons some of the crew members will drop out of sight for a bit- nothing in this list is meant to argue One Piece is a paragon of perfection- but given how easy it is to fall short in this particular area, it is remarkably impressive how well Oda has handled this juggling act across several decades of publishing. 

4. The rules of the universe allow wiggle-room for superpowers without generating contradictions

            One of my biggest beefs with both Naruto and Bleach, by the end, was that, as each series went on, previously established in-universe rules for how superpowers worked (and, especially, what their drawbacks or costs were) were bent more and more, and eventually broken entirely.  This was clearly done in order to bring in different types of powers, allowing for other kinds of action, and to gradually up the stakes until literally all existence was in danger.  All of which are theoretically fine.  But by tossing out the limits that had previously served to ground the series, the creators ended up depriving what should have been cataclysmic and awe-inspiring finales of any tension.  Villains eventually had the power to do anything that let them survive that extra chapter, because….just, because.  More and more of the good guys morphed from interesting characters with unique and nuanced powers and styles into Goku Clones.  And after a few arcs of the same, that shtick just gets boring. 

            One Piece has never suffered from this problem, because outside of establishing the different types and degrees of powers that could be achieved, it never placed too much of an emphasis on strict laws regarding powers, because that was never the focus; the focus was enjoying Luffy’s wacky pirate adventures.  This, plus the ingenious use of the Devil Fruit concept, means that like with character design, One Piece has always felt like a universe where literally anything is possible and will happen sooner or later, and Oda has been able to introduce new powers and concepts with each arc without ever feeling like the series is breaking its own rules. 

            Continuing with the topic of story arcs….

5. Each arc is coherently structured and paced, and the stakes are always personal

            There have been tons of hints about the larger world and history of One Piece dropped here and there throughout its run.  And Luffy’s ultimate goal- finding “One Piece” and becoming the Pirate King- involve so many huge obstacles that there’s a lot of ways the story could build into a truly global conflict by the end.  But up to this point, even in the more significant story arcs like the recent Dressrosa Arc, the primary motivations for Luffy and/or whichever character has center-stage are always clear, focused, and often deeply personal. 

            What this does is make it possible to follow along and enjoy each step of the journey without needing to be obsessed with the larger story.  For the most part, you still don’t really need to have read ALL of One Piece to just jump right in to more recent arcs and enjoy the series for what it is. 

            Take the Marineford Arc, easily the largest and grandest spectacle of the entire series, which featured some of the most important narrative developments of the entire manga.  For all the scope on display, to a degree that to this day still boggles my mind, and for all the politics driving the actions of the Marines, Whitebeard, and others, Luffy remains the central character of the arc, and his only concern is to save his brother Ace.  He doesn’t care about Blackbeard.  He isn’t afraid to challenge either Whitebeard or Sengoku.  He just wants to save his brother. 

            The recent Dressrosa Arc was basically a dressed-up fighting competition, again with a very specific goal for our lead character- winning the fight in order to get back Ace’s Devil Fruit from Doflamingo.  In the current arc, the focus for our heroes is rescuing Sanji after his capture by one of the Four Emperors.  Like with the need to abide by in-universe fighting rules, this grounds the series enough that when it wants to get serious, it can, but it doesn’t have to keep upping the superpower stakes to make each new arc worth following- it just has to give us at least one compelling emotional reason to stick around and see what happens. 

            That being said….

6. The world-building (so far) has been superb

            ….Oda has also successfully combined the smaller stakes of each arc with some truly phenomenal world-building, the importance and strength of which has only started to become apparent since the Time Skip. 

            After the first several hundred chapters, there wasn’t much of a larger narrative to One Piece to speak of- a few hints about the Marines, the World Government, Celestial Dragons, and a secret history of the world were dropped here and there, but it was only in the run-up to the Marineford Arc that the trickle started to increase to a flash flood, and by the time the series went on break for the Time Skip, there were enough puzzle pieces in place to allow for some really intriguing speculation on how the larger One Piece universe operates.    

            Compare this to Detective Conan, another massive and long-running manga/anime franchise, where the broader story has not advanced or altered in any meaningful way since it first started.  Every time I consider this, I am blown away by how carefully Oda has crafted the larger bits of the picture in his story, usually by working in a few new pieces in the gaps between major story arcs by cutting away from the main cast for a week or two.  It’s such a remarkably careful job that I honestly can’t tell if he’s had all this planned out in his head from the beginning, or if he’s only recently started to consciously give a direction to the bigger plot devices of the franchise. 

            Either way, Oda has provided us with a textbook example of how long-form storytelling can be used to craft the sort of detailed universes that a much shorter book, film, or show can never create. 

            This leads me to my final point, which is….

7. The series doesn’t overextend itself by trying to be something other than what it is. 

           

            One Piece is a gag manga in an action-adventure setting about a group of silly, eclectic misfits and the hijinks they get into on the high seas. 

            And really, that’s it.  Yes, there is a larger, fascinating drama playing out regarding the Celestial Dragons, the Shichibukai, the Emperors, the World Government, the Revolutionary Army, and the Marines.  Yes, there are some great, emotional character arcs that have given the series some of its best moments.  Yes, the artwork is unique; the story arcs are almost always precise, and very well-constructed; the in-universe rules are fluid, but still easy to understand and follow.  All of this is a key part of the franchise’s enduring success.  But more than anything else, what has allowed One Piece to endure and thrive in a way its competitors couldn’t is that it’s never pretended to be something it isn’t.  Oda doesn’t punch above his ability. 

            One Piece, in a nutshell, has never sought to be more than the silly-as-hell gag manga that it is, and thanks to this loose attitude, when it does go big or emotional, those moments shine all the more.  They feel earned, and rarely repetitive or hammered-in.  And around those moments, the manga has never stopped being hilarious, clever, witty, and just plain fun to experience each week, so even if the larger story was panning out to be formulaic shit, the series would (I believe) still hold up remarkably well.  The fact that the larger story IS really good and interesting and well-crafted is just the icing on the cake. 

            Compare that to Bleach and Naruto; both, by the end, were literally promising the world in their final acts, with literal “end of life itself” stakes, and in both cases that proved to be a task beyond what Kubo and Kishimoto were capable of as writers and artists.  The stories grew, sure, but a breaking point was eventually reached, and neither series could ultimately recover from that. 

            Now of course, Oda could still fuck all this up.  He could still jump the shark in a thousand different ways.  Nothing is certain in our world.  But so far, at least, he has consistently managed to provide a truly joyful experience week after week that has, in so many ways, been a defining work in the Shonen Action genre. 

            And again, I am in no way suggesting that One Piece should be considered the Greatest Manga Ever, or anything close to the sort.  Are there better manga out there?  Tons.  Ones that are more daring, take more chances, tell deeper stories, reach greater artistic heights?  Absolutely. 

            And even within its respective cultural niche, One Piece certainly has flaws; Oda barely tries to differentiate the story’s women beyond Nami and Robin, and his boobs/”sexy battle wear” can be just as bad as Kubo’s; many of the intended emotional parts can go overboard and fall off into outright silliness (like the bloody monologue the Sunny got as it was burned at sea); the arcs are extremely formulaic, with a very precise pacing that is rarely deviated from; and yes, he probably isn’t building to some deep, meaningful, artistic statement about life and the human condition. 

            But even lower-brow art done to perfection is still art worth experiencing, remembering, and celebrating.  And One Piece is one of the greatest examples of this kind of story and this kind of manga in existence.  It deserves all the accolades it has gotten, and I sincerely hope it doesn’t end anytime soon.  So please Oda; take care of yourself.  We need your sense of humor in the world more than ever. 

-Noah Franc 

Films for the Trump Years- An Introduction

            In times like these, with right-wing populism, partisanship, and anti-intellectualism on the rise throughout the West, it is more important than ever that we utilize our art to push forward with the work of building a better future for ourselves and for our children.  It is classic modus operandi for aspiring autocrats to crack down on artistic expression and dissent, because they know that it provides one of the most fertile grounds imaginable for expanding the human consciousness, and there is nothing more terrifying to those who would rather turn back the clock to an imaginary, more “glorious” past. 

            We’ve already seen the first salvos of this in the United States, where Trump is resolutely following the heels of the Putins, Erdogans, and Politburos of the world by recommending eliminating federal funding for the arts, while egging on the long-running right-wing conspiracy theory that the liberal Hollywood “elite” seek to push an extreme progressive agenda on “real Americans,” and that this must be stopped at all costs. 

            Everywhere we turn, there is fear, anger, hatred, and ignorance.  And yet, I feel excited and encouraged by the opportunities these trying times present to us.  We’ve been down these dark roads before, and on many an occasion people have risen admirably to the challenges they faced.  One of our greatest collective traditions is to use our storytelling crafts to light candles within the darkness that, together, can paint a path forward for us when it at first seems there is none.  

            We are each now called upon to do our part, and as a historian who loves cinema, I intend to do mine by spreading the word about just a few of the great films that can provide us comfort, inspiration, and ideas, or provoke us to think deeply about a side of the human experience we hadn’t considered before.  The time for small thinking is long gone.  Let’s embrace with abandon our pasts and our arts, and let our imaginations run wild with the possibilities proffered to us by Fate. 

            With this, I am pleased to formally announce the start of a new long-running series on this blog; Films for the Trump Years.  In each installment (I am currently planning one a month, unless circumstances compel me to do more or less), I will look at one or a handful of movies- many historically-based, but also some fictional- that I feel have something to offer to our current cultural dialogue and reflect on why I recommend taking the time to see them.   

            I already have an extensive list of movies I plan to include, but recommendations and suggestions are welcome at any time, as there are obviously whole worlds of movies I haven’t yet seen, and by the end of this I’d like this list to be as expansive as possible. 

            That said, I have already settled on my first film, Avu DuVernay’s marvelous Selma, and should be up by the end of the month.  Until then, stay strong, hold fast to truth, and never stop fighting. 

            May we all live long, and prosper. 

-Noah Franc 

Review: Life

Life (2017): Written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, directed by Daniel Espinosa.  Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare, and Olga Dihovichnaya.  Running Time: 103 minutes. 

Rating: 2.5/4

            Life, a new entry in the monster-horror-in-space genre by Daniel Espinosa, has a title and a trailer that hints at an at least somewhat-poetic exploration of the nature of life itself, how radically different life from another world could be for us, and what inherent dangers there could be in establishing first contact.  This, at first, made it sound like it could succeed as a spiritual sister to last year’s superb Arrival.  Alas, it does not. 

            The film opens with the team stationed in the ISS preparing to receive a probe returning from Mars.  Once received, they begin to examine tiny samples of soil from the planet, searching for incontrovertible signs of life beyond Earth.  They find it rather quickly, a single-celled organism that begins to grow and develop rapidly once they find the right atmospheric gases to “activate” it.  Dubbing it “Calvin,” they watch as it quickly grows from a single cell into a small, amoeba-like creature with arm-like appendages.  At first assuming it to be harmless, things start to go south very, very fast when the creature attacks the lead scientist studying it, escapes from its cage, kills a crew member, and soon has them facing the ultimate survival dilemma; if they escape the station and return to Earth in order to preserve their own lives, they risk the creature jumping on board and potentially risking all life on the planet.  If they stay to keep it contained, their lives are effectively forfeit. 

            It’s about as solid a setup as you can get for this sort of intended pulse-pounder, and to its credit, this is a solidly-made film (for the most part).  There is some excellent cinematography, especially in the beginning, where the camera floats and drifts and even flips upside down alongside the crew in zero gravity.  The score is functional, if a bit by-the-numbers, and the editing and pacing fit the sort of tone the film is going for. 

            Sadly, it all starts to come to pieces by the end.  The script is barebones to a fault, hinting at a larger story about some sort of Committee (and we know none of the background of the probe and samples and why now of all times they anticipated finding life from Mars).  Keeping the audience in the dark about the larger picture is perfectly fine when handled well, but the meat of the main story isn’t enough to carry itself, and the tidbits from the larger story we get almost feel like they could have made a more interesting movie. 

            Much of the shortcomings in the horror aspect of the film come down to the resident monster.  Calvin is certainly an intriguing, octopus-esque design, but there are too many odd occasions where the point of view switches to “Calvin Vision” to show what the monster sees, and at a certain point in its development it gets what is definitely a face of some sort.  Part of the thrill of seeing this sort of threat from an alien life form lies in the mystery of what it is and what it can do; keeping the design ambiguous and unlike anything from Earth, as well as having us be as ignorant as the crew as to Calvin’s whereabouts, would have done much to keep the film afloat. 

            What rescues much of film from itself are the performances- the characterizations of each crew member are as skeletal as the narrative, but they commit enough to their performances to *almost* make up for it.  In the case of the lead scientist, Ariyon Bakare actually manages to create the only real emotional arc in the entire film, which involves the film’s best bit of visual storytelling. 

            Life is by no means a bad film- in many aspects and in many scenes it’s quite good- but there’s ultimately nothing here that hasn’t been done before in other, better movies, so unless you are an obsessive completist for this particular horror sub-genre, I would probably recommend saving your money for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. 

-Noah Franc 

A Circus, A Camera, and Ryan Gosling: How Joko and Klaas Punked the Golden Camera

            It has not even been a month since the Flub to End All Flubs at the Oscars last month, when the presenters for Best Picture were given the wrong card, read it in spite of their confusion, and for a moment everyone thought La La Land, the assumed favorite, had indeed won, until it was revealed halfway through the acceptance speeches that, in fact, the winner was the indie-underdog everyone had wanted to win, Moonlight.  It was awkward, painful, terrifying, and spectacularly funny all at once, creating enough genuine TV drama to last an age. 

            Normally (read; in a non-Trump world) this sort of event would carry a glow about it for weeks afterwards.  But, since we are no longer in a world where rules of any sort apply, barely 8 days went by before another major awards show fell victim to their own missteps, leading to another spectacular fail on live TV that also, funnily enough, centered around La La Land.  It hath been deemed…Gosling Gate.   

            Every year it goes by almost entirely unnoticed in the English-speaking world, but for Germans, the Goldene Kamera (Golden Camera) is basically the Oscars meets the Golden Globes.  For German-speaking media it is THE awards event that wraps up each year in film and TV.  As is the nature of these things, it’s usually about as exciting as the Oscars, with about as many surprised up its sleeve.  But this year, with the Oscars seemingly ready to run away with the title of Best Live Error of the year, two German comedians decided to one-up them (and everyone else). 

            Let’s start by going through the moment as it occurred. 

            It was Saturday, March 4^th, in the Messe in Hamburg, where the Goldene Kamera was being broadcast live by ZDF, one of the core TV channels in Germany.  Hosted by Steven Gätjen, things kicked off at 8:15 and went fairly normally at first.  Then, about 1 hour 45 minutes into the program, Gätjen transitioned into presenting the award for Best International Film, announcing that it would be going to La La Land.  A montage from the film followed- Gätjen even allowed himself a joke at the Academy’s expense, saying he could present the award “without an envelope, and you can all cheer for more than 8 seconds”- and after informing everyone that the Director and Producer of the film could not attend the show to accept the award, they had been able to arrange for Ryan Gosling to accept the award in their stead. 

            And with that, the screen behind him on the stage opened, and out of the backstage shadows stepped…..not Ryan Gosling.  The person- whoever it was- walked up, shook the moderator’s hand (you can see his surprise, and even hear him say “interesting…”, in the video below), took the trophy, and proclaimed himself- in terrible English- to be Ryan Gosling, and that he wished to dedicate this award to Joko and Klaas.  After which he promptly turned around and hurried himself off the stage.  The moderator made a banal joke about how they’d just gotten a sample of the best of German satire.  The Germans in the audience had about the same expression on their faces they’d have had if the man, instead of speaking, had simply let rip a minute-long belch into the microphone.  Meanwhile the foreigners in attendance, particularly Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell, just looked utterly lost, as if they suddenly realized they were a long, long way from home, with no way back.   

            Clearly, something had gone very, very wrong.  But what, exactly?  Who was that man pretending to be Ryan Gosling, and who the hell are Joko and Klaas? 

            That second part is easier to answer, so let’s start with that.  Largely unknown outside of Germany but widely known within, Joko and Klaas are the comedy duo behind the popular sketch comedy show Circus HalliGalli (which has been on-air since 2013), where all sorts of celebrity guests appear to take part in their antics.  They’ve long held a reputation for iconoclastic button-pushing, like one hot-potato game they play where the loser has to post something in terribly poor taste on their Twitter page (and aren’t allowed to hint at it being a joke).  But until now, their impish pranks have usually been fairly limited in scope, like dressing the most well-known Rom-Com actor in Germany in Santa getup and setting him loose on the unsuspecting customers of the Berlin Christmas Market. 

            This, though, was something bigger.  Thankfully, my job of explaining what they did at the Goldene Kamera and why has already been done for me; during the next aired episode of Circus HalliGalli, they featured a two-part mini-documentary documenting how that non-Ryan Gosling made it to the stage and why he dedicated a Goldene Kamera to them.  And it’s…..well…..just watch (these videos come with English subtitles). 

            Hooooooooly shit.  There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s break down the ways this plan SHOULD have failed miserably, but didn’t, and what it reveals about not just the Goldene Kamera, but ritzy awards shows in general:

            First, a dozen people succeeded in convincing the producers of a major awards show that they represented a company (that didn’t exist) and a huge Hollywood star (they’d never met)….and only because no one apparently ever tried to check within the industry if the company in question actually existed. 

            Second, these same people sought cover by making fantastically arrogant demands to ensure no one blew their cover before or during the show….and not once did they receive any pushback on a single one of them. 

            At the show itself, partially through luck and partially due to their list of demands, the double was able to effectively run the gauntlet of an entire arena’s worth of backstage staff and security, where one long glance could have been enough to end the game right there…..and no one, even one of the main producers of the show sitting directly behind the stage, ever took that glance. 

            Then, much like the Oscars flub the week before, once the lights were up the error was revealed almost instantly….but in the heat of the moment, the on-stage presenter either didn’t realize what was happening, assumed it was planned, or was just plain confused for enough precious seconds to allow the double to take the trophy, at which point it was effectively too late to do anything. 

            The double and his team then managed to re-run the gauntlet again and get out of there, prize and all….because apparently no one was ready to alert security at any level to apprehend someone just booking it out of the building with a trophy in their hand. 

            Finally, and this is perhaps the most damming (or hilarious, or depressing, depending on your point of view); by just hinting at the possibility of having an A-List Hollywood superstar take the stage at their show, Joko and Klaas got the higher-ups to select La La Land as the winner of a major award that, had they not pulled this stunt, may very well have gone to another movie entirely. 

            That last one is probably the most disturbing part out of all of this.  The technical and logistical systems of setting up bigtime TV shows and bringing in guests always have flaws, ones that remain invisible until they are finally noticed and exploited, at which point they are usually closed for good.  It’s safe to say a trick of this exact nature will never be possible at the Goldene Kamera again, and this particular stunt couldn’t succeed at something as endlessly scripted and re-scripted as the Oscars.   

            But the fact remains that, across the world, the events and organizations that claim to represent the “best” of mankind’s artistic output really just act as rubber stamps for what a select group of non-artists deem to be “the best.”  And a head manager deciding arbitrarily to give a film a trophy by fiat simply because they could land a big name on their stage for 45 seconds is a particularly pungent example of that, making the blatant nakedness of it as revealed by this prank all the more disheartening. 

            And of course this is by no means limited to Germany.  That the Oscars are endlessly (often pathetically) political has been a running joke for a long time now, and both the Academy and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (which select the Golden Globe winners) are constantly belittled for effectively selling their votes to the highest bidder- estimates on the total amount spent by various studios competing for Oscars regularly run into the hundreds of millions, with one expert estimating about $10 million to be the usual cost of winning Best Picture BBC. 

            Is that sort of nonsense really any different than what happened at the Goldene Kamera?  I doubt it, and honestly, it may be quite a bit worse from an ethics standpoint. 

            The hard truth is that, while regular celebration of human achievement is in principle a good and noble and necessary thing, the specific laurels we have conditioned ourselves to treat as the most meaningful are often given out in ways that are overwhelmingly arbitrary, unfair, and not at all connected to trying to identify the “best” in anything, film or otherwise. 

            And yet, for all the weight and real-world influences that awards shows do have- like convincing a studio to finance Movie A over Movie B solely based on what they think will bring in a rack of shiny, golden men- does any of this really matter?  Most Germans don’t seem to really care about #Goslinggate that much.  The media company in charge of the event certainly has its tie in a knot over the whole affair- they very quickly announced their intention to sue to get the trophy back.  But most others, at worst, think it was a hilarious egg on the show’s face, perhaps done in poor taste, and leave it at that. 

            Internationally it seems to have made even less of a splash; Ryan Gosling, to my knowledge, has so far said nothing about the whole fiasco, and for all I know may not be aware it even happened.  That said, the award is, in fact, currently listed on the Wikipedia page for accolades won by thefilm, so it IS still, at least at the moment, official. 

            I will leave it to you to draw what conclusions you want from this.  As for myself, I clearly still need to work on reminding myself that logic and sanity no longer exist in the world, and for all the crazy imaginings I can conjure for the next few years, they obviously still aren’t nutty enough, because reality is still finding ways to outpace me. 

-Noah Franc 

Review: Logan

Logan (2017): Written by Scott Frank, James Mangold, and Michael Green, directed by James Mangold.  Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Richard Grant, Boyd Holbrook, and Stephen Merchant.  Running Time: 137 minutes. 

Rating: 3.5/4

            One of the easiest ways to make someone my (fairly young) age feel vastly older than our years is to remind them that it was nearly 20 years ago when Hugh Jackman first hit the big screen as the Wolverine in the very first X-Men movie.  In time this casting proved to be every bit as pitch-perfect as Patrick Stewart’s and Ian McKellan’s as Professor X and Magneto.  And since that moment, one of the running gags surrounding the franchise and its comically zig-zaggy fortunes has been the remarkable lengths to which each and every entry into the current canon has gone to include at least a cameo of Jackson, if not outright starring him. 

            His presence has certainly defined this phase of the X-Men world every bit as much as the character has, in turn, defined Jackson’s career, but alas, even the Marvel film universe can’t avoid the ravages of time, and we truly have reached the point where Jackman is simply too old to keep doing this shit.  Which means that this dark, grim, tightly-focused, and slightly-meta drama about facing up to aging and disappointment in a bleak, possibly hopeless dystopian future really is it; Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart have come out for their final curtain call in roles that have defined them in the eyes of an entire generation of film goers.  And in a particularly poignant twist, it might just be the best X-Men movie they’ve ever done. 

            It’s 2029, and for reasons unknown, most of the old mutants have died and it’s been years since new ones were born, so everyone simply assumes they were a freak occurrence going the way of the Dodo.  Logan, clearly aging and dying in spite of the fact that his powers *should* make that impossible, scrapes by as a limo-driver-for-hire in Texas.  Most of his earnings go towards procuring medicines for Xavier, holed up across the border in Mexico with an albino caretaker.  Xavier is also rapidly dying, suffering from seizures that amplify his mental powers in frightening ways and make him a legitimate danger to everyone within a certain radius. 

            As far as Logan is concerned, they are the last of their kind, and fated to remain so, so he may as well try to make their passing as non-destructive as possible until Xavier is gone and he can blow his brains out with an adamantium bullet he’s been saving for just such an occasion.  This all goes up in smoke pretty quickly though, as a Mexican nurse brings them Laura, a young girl who possesses Logan’s power set (infinite regeneration, claws, and a vicious fighting style), begging their protection from the hired hit men of an unnamed corporate entity (led by a fantastic Boyd Holbrook as the film’s main antagonist) seeking to kill her. 

            In typical gruffly resigned manner, Logan takes the girl and Xavier North, seeking a location that may or may not be where the last of the mutants are gathering, including other children like Laura.  To say that they are seeking hope or some sort of salvation for the clear failure of what the X-Men should have been would be saying a bit too much, because this movie is not a pick-me-up, nor does it try to offer much hope.  It runs hard on themes of loss and failure haunting someone knowing they are near the end and that everything they did in their life may very well have been for nought.  Jackman’s Logan always hailed from the bitter side of pessimism, but even Xavier, famed eternal optimist, has been brought low emotionally by his failures and the ravages of his illnesses. 

            This is one of those comic book movies that almost isn’t a comic book movie- most of the dramatic weight and meaning to what Logan and Xavier say and do comes not from anything explicit on the film’s part, but rather from the assumed collective knowledge on our part that we are seeing the conclusion of a two-decade-long film partnership in its final chapter.  It’s an extremely rare set of circumstances to surround a movie like this, giving it a heft it otherwise wouldn’t have had, and often raising the film above its (admittedly fairly small) flaws. 

            And it certainly isn’t a perfect film- there are a few story shifts regarding the bad guys, what they do, and what they want that don’t entirely add up- but it commits so fully to its road-trip-dystopia atmosphere that it has a unique feel and character lacking in nearly every other recent entry into the comic book superhero genre.  It’s the first hard ‘R’ film to show us what people facing claws like that really would look like afterwards, but given how easily the movie could have banked on that to sell itself and excluded all else, like Fury Road it goes the needed extra step to ensure that every bit of fighting or action (and one very solid car chase) feels necessary to either the story or the development of a particular character. 

            While Jackman and Stewart give two of their best film performances ever, superhero movie or otherwise, we already knew they were awesome.  I suspect the truly lasting impact of this film will revolve around the revelation that is Dafne Keen as Laura.  Silent for nearly the entire film, she steals every shot she’s in it with her presence.  It’s easily a star-making turn for the actress and one that SHOULD guarantee a central part of her character in any future X-Men franchise.  It’s also rather depressing that a film featuring gifted children of color/minorities like the bilingual, Spanish Keen fleeing not to, but THROUGH the United States to reach safety from forces seeking to destroy them feels far more topical than it was probably meant to be when first conceived. 

            Logan might or might not go on to redefine what we expect superhero movies to be, but regardless of what comes next in the X-Men universe, if indeed anything does come next, it’s a powerful little film that does refreshing justice to the abilities of its cast and is definitely a must-see for anyone who grew up with this particular version of the X-Men.  With both this and John Wick 2 hitting theaters this early, the gauntlet has very much been thrown down for all other action movies set to come out in 2017, so to those next in line I say; your move. 

-Noah Franc