Chad Comello

Tag: movies

  • Why the Nicole Kidman AMC ad matters

    If you’ve been to a movie at AMC in the last two years, you’ve seen their now-legendary in-house commercial starring Nicole Kidman where she walks into a theater extolling the magic of movies, moviegoing, and AMC:

    It’s sincere, borderline saccharine, and immediately after its debut in September 2021 became a lightning rod for hot takes and memes and parodies—all of which I read and enjoyed.

    But a funny thing happened when I went to see a movie for the first time in a while: I realized just how true and meaningful that ad is.

    “We come to this place for magic.”

    I recently stumbled upon an old writing assignment of mine from 9th grade called This Is My Life, where we had to write a short paper focusing on important aspects of our lives. The title page told the story best, with its grid of posters from Back to the Future, Memento, Unbreakable, Saving Private Ryan, and other favorite movies showing what mattered most to me at that time. 

    That assignment happened over 20 years ago, though I loved movies long before that, traipsing through the Disney canon as a kid before venturing into more adult fare as I got older (shoutout to my dad for bringing me to Mission: Impossible at 9 years old). In middle school I discovered Back to the Future, my first and abiding cinematic love. And from there my palate kept expanding into almost every genre, era, and region. While I didn’t become a cinematographer or director as I’d planned and indicated in that assignment, I did remain obsessed with movies and continued watching and loving and writing about them ever since. 

    That includes co-founding Cinema Sugar last year as a place to celebrate the movies we love, why they matter, and how they connect us all. Watching great movies is something I’d be doing no matter what, but Cinema Sugar provides the impetus for contemplating them—and appreciating them—more deeply as we build Top 10 lists and even consider our all-time favorites.

    “That indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim.”

    All of that was stewing in my subconscious when I recently got out for a rare trip to the movie theater as an early birthday present. With a full-time job and two young kids at home, I haven’t been able to go as much as I’d like or used to before kids. The entire summer movie season had passed me by: Asteroid City, Indiana Jones, Past Lives, Barbie… all movies I would have gone to under different circumstances. 

    But at last I was going to Oppenheimer, and deeply grateful to be. I savored the short drive to the nearby AMC on a warm summer morning. After using up the last of a gift card on the ticket, I literally ran up the grand staircase to the second floor. Not because I was late, but because my body just needed to express the kinetic energy I was feeling inside. 

    I was going to a movie! I thought. It’s something I’ve never taken for granted, even during my single days or child-free phase. Going to the movies is a gift, no matter when, and that felt especially true that day as I sat down just before Nicole Kidman’s entrance.

    I knew it was coming. What I didn’t know is that this time around, this video I’d seen many times before would give me goosebumps and suddenly make me feel like I was watching it for the first time. Only now, I saw its sentiment not as cloying but profound: Movies are magical. Moviegoing is important. And all the snark about the ad betrays a tragic lack of gratitude for what it’s telling us.

    It also gave me déjà vu, because I’d seen a similar epiphany play out before on screen at the same theater.

    “Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place likе this.”

    Less than a year ago I went to see Damien Chazelle’s film Babylon, wherein Manny (Diego Calva) is a laborer in 1920s Hollywood who happens to make connections with both the ambitious ingénue Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) and aging film star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt). He uses those connections to climb the studio ranks as an assistant, producer, and eventually director.

    Over time he witnesses a lot: Nellie’s meteoric rise and fall, Jack’s slow obsolescence, an industry struggling to transition from silent movies to talkies—not to mention his own poor decisions gone terribly wrong. 

    (Spoilers ahead—skip to past the photo if you want to avoid them.)

    Decades later, we catch up with him when, long out of the business, he returns to Hollywood and visits his old studio. But it’s not until he ends up in a movie theater showing Singin’ in the Rain when memories start to resurface, the movie’s title song triggering a torrent of flashbacks to his formative times with Nellie and the industry he’d loved—both of whom didn’t quite love him back.

    We see those flashbacks intermixed with a time-jumping, fourth-wall-breaking montage of clips from a whole century of cinema. Manny would not live to see most of it, but what he and Nellie and Jack and countless others did make in their time served as the essential foundation for films to come.

    “I’ve always wanted to go on a movie set,” he’d told Nellie way back when. “I just want to be part of something bigger… Something that lasts, that means something.” Helpless before the shining silver screen, he breaks down in tears at the realization that he got what he wanted, that what he lived through had transformed into something much bigger than himself—and he was the surviving witness to it.

    “And we go somewhere we’ve never been before—not just entertained, but somehow reborn.”

    Sometimes I wonder if all this time and attention I give to movies is worth it. They’re just stories after all, a series of images that flash before my eyes for a short time and then disappear. The world is full of real people who are struggling—what good are movies to them? Dedicating my focus to moving pictures can often feel frivolous at best and morally negligent at worst. 

    There’s a scene in Back to the Future Part II when Doc discovers Marty’s plan to use 2015’s sports almanac to bet on games back in 1985. “I didn’t invent the time machine for financial gain,” Doc says:

    The intent here was to gain a clearer perception of humanity: where we’ve been, where we’re going, the pitfalls and the possibilities, the perils and the promise. Perhaps even an answer to that universal question: Why?”

    That’s why movies matter. 

    Movies are us. They show us our history and our future. They celebrate our wins and illuminate our sins. They beckon us into a reality completely different from—or exactly like—our own, and by doing so tell us more about others and ourselves than we could have discovered alone. They are something bigger than us.

    That epiphany is what made Manny weep with bittersweet awe in Babylon. It’s what has for so long drawn me to movies as constant companions on the perilous journey through life. And it’s what I chase every time I press play on a Blu-ray or sit in a dark theater, eagerly awaiting Kidman’s earnest invocation.

    So why movies?

    “Because we need that—all of us.”

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  • Somehow I interviewed Glenn Frankel

    One of the great things about running an online magazine like Cinema Sugar is that I can just decide that I want to try to interview someone, and then watch as that dream miraculously becomes reality.

    That happened recently in conjunction with Westerns Month. I remembered that I’d read two excellent books about westerns by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Glenn Frankel: The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend and High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic. So I contacted him through his website, he got back to me, and we arranged a Zoom call.

    Our resulting interview dug into his books, westerns in general, John Wayne vs. Gary Cooper, writing, and more. It was a unique thrill to chat with someone whose work I admire as a cinephile and history nerd, and I’m deeply grateful for his time and his thoughtful answers.

    I absolutely love doing these interviews and thinking up questions I hope the subject will enjoy answering. Check out the archive of interviews with actors, directors, authors, and more, including:

    • Karolyn Grimes (Zuzu in It’s A Wonderful Life)
    • Actor Peter Stormare (Fargo, Armageddon, Minority Report)
    • 80 for Brady director Kyle Brady
    • Writer/director Ron Shelton (White Men Can’t Jump, Bull Durham, Tin Cup)
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  • Media of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Reality. Riveting recreation of the arrest of whistleblower Reality Winner, played by Sydney Sweeney. This was my first encounter of Sweeney and was thoroughly impressed. Just released on (HBO) Max.

    Queer Eye season 7. A quality hang as usual.

    Ted Lasso season 3. Hard to top season 1 but have enjoyed watching this story play out. Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca

    Prey. I’ve never seen Predator so this was my first foray into the franchise. Found it to be a riveting, admirably lo-fi thriller, combining the violence of a western with the constant peril of Gravity.

    The Art and Science of Arrival by Tanya Lapointe. Gorgeous coffee-table book about Denis Villeneuve’s masterpiece.

    The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham by Ron Shelton. Got to talk with Shelton about this book and his career.

    Confess, Fletch. This was a damn fun time.

    Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. Really creative use of Fox’s memoirs, his TV and movie appearances, and reenactments to tell his life story. He’s also still funny as hell despite the effects of Parkinson’s.

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  • How ‘Hairspray’ and ‘Once’ made me love musicals

    Originally published at Cinema Sugar

    Josh, you’re in a musical. That’s how musicals work. When you’re too emotional to talk, you sing. When you’re too emotional to sing, you dance.” — Melissa, Schmigadoon

    I went through a phase as an adolescent when I didn’t get musicals. Not only that: I actively resented them. They’re cheesy and unrealistic! I reasoned. People don’t randomly burst into song and coordinated dances! There were a handful of musicals I did enjoy (Singin’ in the Rain, The Sound of Music, Newsies), but even they couldn’t escape the weight of my prejudice that they were ultimately frivolous, unserious entertainment.

    That is, until one fateful summer when two diametrically different movies accidentally teamed up to convince me otherwise.

    “I don’t know you but I want you”

    It was the summer of 2007. I was back home after my freshman year of college, working for the second year in a row as a counselor at a summer camp. It was a fun gig for that time in my life: decent cash, free meals and lodging, lots of time outside and hanging out with fellow college-aged counselors.

    I became fast friends with one of the counselors (let’s call her Kendra) as we enjoyed hanging out together and discovered mutual interests—playing music being a big one. We played together a lot that summer, with her singing and me muddling along on the guitar or piano, both of which I’d started teaching myself to play a year or two before.

    She had a boyfriend back home, and even if she didn’t I was too emotionally guarded and scared of the concept of dating to have considered making a move. But I felt a warmth and ease between us, and a platonic bond that could have been mistaken for siblinghood if it weren’t for the faint flicker of a flame beneath it.

    Earlier in the summer I’d heard great buzz about this tiny Irish movie that was sort of a musical, featuring the kind of singer-songwriter music I was really into at the time, and that was antithetical to the shiny show tunes of traditional musicals. It was playing at a small movie theater across town, so I figured it’d be worth a watch despite knowing nothing about the director or stars. I suggested to Kendra that we go see it one Saturday afternoon during our off time and she was game.

    We’d been cloistered in the camp bubble for a while, so this escape into the outside world, however brief, felt refreshing and special. And since going to the movies itself is a refreshing and special occasion, I think we both were primed for a magical experience as we arrived at the small strip-mall theater and entered the darkness of the screening room together.

    “…‘Cause this is what you’ve waited for”

    Once, directed by John Carney, is fairly easy to describe. An Irish busker (Glen Hansard) meets a young woman (Markéta Irglová) on the streets of Dublin and they grow close as they play music together, discuss their lives and bruised loves, and inspire each other as they enter new phases of life.

    But such a tidy description belies the miles-deep emotional undercurrent that runs beneath this story and propels the main characters—who remain unnamed and are credited as Guy and Girl—first towards each other and ultimately onto their individual fates.

    Should he get back with his ex-girlfriend in London? Is her floundering marriage worth repairing? That undercurrent flows to the surface not through any melodramatic speeches or contrived conflicts, but through the music they share.

    Probably because the film’s core of Carney, Hansard, and Irglová are real musicians, they manage to capture both the tedium and the thrill of creating meaningful music—and, by extension, art in general—better than almost anything I’ve seen.

    They do so by paying close attention to moments in the songwriting process that are small and specific but still significant: Haphazardly assembling snatches of melody while taking notes on your laptop. First hearing someone add harmony to your song when you’ve only ever played it solo. Finding replacement Discman batteries so you can finish writing lyrics you need. Nailing a song on the first take in the studio.

    These little euphorias add up, in real life and in the movie. And with what Guy and Girl accumulated during their time together, they were able to bestow each other things they couldn’t have imagined before meeting: she helps him record his songs and boosts his confidence for the next step, while he surprises her with a generous gift to reignite her passion for playing.

    It was goodbye in the best way, with grace and gratitude for what they meant to each other.

    “Sing your melody, I’ll sing along”

    Kendra and I emerged from the theater nearly vibrating from what we’d just experienced. I had no idea a musical could be like that. Sparse. Soulful. Closely observed and deeply felt, with a ragamuffin realism and total lack of the affectation and razzmatazz of traditional Broadway-based film adaptations. It was much more like a Dardennes movie than a musical, despite fulfilling the technical definition of the genre.

    Sure, it was bordering on twee and perhaps too appealing to self-serious emo lads like myself at the time. But that feeling of a movie being made just for me was too powerful to deny.

    As soon as we got back to camp I hopped on the piano in the empty main lodge so we could try out the songs, which still reverberated through us. We managed our own halting cover version of “Falling Slowly,” its anthemic melody climbing up and down the walls of the lodge with my tentative piano chords in pursuit.

    It didn’t occur to me at the time, but while we sang that beautiful music together, what remained unsung was how we were a kind of echo of what we’d just seen on screen. A girl and a guy (a tall, bearded, redheaded one no less) spending limited yet meaningful time together, singing tunes and sharing stories and creating memories? It was too good to be true, and yet it was.

    For a moment anyway. As in the movie, time ran out on us when camp ended and we both returned to our normal lives. But what I took with me from this Once experience was how people could come into each other’s lives and share an interlude together knowing that time would end, yet still forge ahead into the moments they had remaining and do something wonderful with them.

    That’s what music can do, and what art can do, and what grace can do if we let it.

    This summer reverie was still fresh in my mind when I returned to campus ahead of the fall semester and, just a few weeks after seeing Once, encountered another paradigm-shifting film—only this one with a little more razzle dazzle.

    “Every day’s like an open door”

    I arrived before classes started so I could attend resident assistant training, a two-week orientation for this student-leadership position. I’d applied to become an RA because I thought I’d be good at it and because being an introvert in a typically extroverted role would actually be an asset for serving the less-outgoing undergraduate residents. (The free room-and-board didn’t hurt either.)

    One evening a group of RAs went to see the new Hairspray movie. Because I was trying to push myself to get out more and socialize in this new role, I decided to tag along. And as I was still wedded to my myopic view of musicals, despite my recent Once experience, I brought my low expectations with me too.

    Based on the Broadway adaptation of John Waters’ 1988 film, Hairspray follows the relentlessly cheerful and dance-loving teenager Tracy Turnblad in early 1960s Baltimore as she joins her favorite local teen dance TV show and, with her plus-size figure and support for racial integration, helps to transform the segregated, traditionalist ways of the show and her community for the better.

    On paper this sounds potentially cloying and pat but on screen it’s anything but, honoring John Waters’ delightfully weird sensibility and humor with touches like John Travolta in drag as Tracy’s agoraphobic seamstress mother and Tracy riding a garbage truck to school through the dilapidated streets of Baltimore during the jubilant opening tune “Good Morning Baltimore.”

    But it’s the soundtrack that’s the true star. Marc Shaiman’s zesty mixture of period-specific soul, R&B, gospel, and pop tunes elevates the movie into pure, unabashed spectacle. Highlights include the R&B-infused “Run and Tell That,” the bubblegum pop of “Welcome to the 60s,” and the 10-minute finale sequence of “You Can’t Stop the Beat,” which never fails to give me chills.

    “I can hear the bells, my head is reeling”

    To say Hairspray changed my perspective is an understatement. It was like a high-wattage electric shock that flicked on a lightbulb for me, and the grainy black-and-white screen through which I’d been watching musicals before suddenly sparked into Technicolor.

    I could see things now in other musicals that I couldn’t have appreciated before, like the awe-inspiring athleticism of performers who execute complex and cardio-intensive choreography with a smile. Like the finely tuned plots that elevate story structure into an art in itself. And how a musical is, in a way, the manifestation of all the fine arts into one—dance, design, music, drama, and cinema all magically synthesized before our eyes.

    My chief objections to musicals—that they’re cheesy, unrealistic fluff—fell away like a discarded dress during a costume change. I finally saw how downright silly it was to accuse them of being cheesy when a dyed-in-the-wool musical like Hairspray was leaning so hard into campiness that it tripped over its own dance moves.

    All my mental finger-pointing did was alienate myself from what the movie wanted to do, which was to grab my clenched fist with a big smile and pull me into a raucous, liberating dance.

    (When Corny Collins, the host of the teen dance show in Hairspray played by James Marsden, was faced with the prospect of racial integration on his show, he saw his choice clearly: “You can fight it or you can rock out to it.”)

    This isn’t to say Hairspray is beyond critique, or even close to my favorite musical. The acting is often cartoonishly bad, and the story implies a simplistic path of overcoming racial discrimination while centering Tracy, a white woman, as the instigating force of integration rather than her Black peers and local community.

    Anytime a work of art speaks on important socio-political issues, even through a historical framework as Hairspray does, it risks looking outmoded or obtuse to future generations of viewers. And that’s OK—we can credit the film’s optimism and inclusive attitude while also acknowledging its limitations as a self-contained cultural artifact.

    But I wasn’t thinking about all that when I emerged from the theater with the other RAs. I was thinking about how I’d ever get those songs out of my head, and how every one of Hairspray’s horn blasts and pirouettes and bursts of color were blows against cynicism and subtlety.

    Which was, frankly, exactly what I needed.

    “It takes two, baby”

    Hairspray and Once could not be more different as movies or as musicals.

    Once is a wisp of a film, a bootstrapped production with a cinéma vérité look, unknown cast, and achingly sincere songs that obliquely supplement the simple story.

    Hairspray, on the other hand, is a big, brassy, cheeky joy explosion, with a maximalist attitude about its every aspect—acting, production design, social commentary, and the music above all.

    Seeing these movies individually made big dents in my stony resolve against the allure of musicals, but seeing them within about a month of each other shattered it altogether. If I’d just seen Once I could have downplayed it as a unique aberration that departed widely from the conventions of the genre. Not so with Hairspray, which feels like the most musically musical to ever musical.

    Having to span and make sense of that distance between them forced me to span the gaps in my own self-understanding and, above all, learn how to surrender. To say yes in spite of myself and show my prejudices who’s boss. And to trust and appreciate the essential elements of an art form instead of treating them as dealbreakers.

    The musical has been around a lot longer than me. It has a lot to say—and sing. All you need to do is listen, because you can’t stop the beat.

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  • The Church of ‘Bull Durham’

    Really enjoyed reading Ron Shelton’s The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham, which I followed up with a rewatch of Bull Durham. He has such a wry, matter-of-fact style and perspective on his careers, most notably minor-league baseball player and movie writer-director.

    Some quotes…

    On being an athlete with intellectual curiosities:

    Around this time it was becoming clear that I was living in two different worlds—the intellectual (or at least academic) world and the sports world—but it made no sense to me that they were distinct. They were dependent, connected, they fed off each other. At least I thought so.

    On sports movies:

    I’d played enough sports by then that I felt sports films got it all wrong. Their attempts to be inspirational felt cloying and false. When you actually play the game, there is little that is inspirational going on. It’s a competition; it’s physical; it’s a chance to test yourself.

    A fascinating anecdote about how a test screening of Bull Durham went great in the room but not in the test scores:

    The more highly educated the crowd, the more severely critical will be its analysis. Even—maybe especially—when the movie-watching experience is good. It’s a mistake to hand a pen and paper to professionals with multiple degrees and ask them to critique their experience. There seems to be a built-in expectation that the brain should overrule the heart, that the left side of the brain must dictate what the right side of the brain just processed—even when it contradicts that experience. The note cards were legible, neatly written, and expressed their critique in absurd detail compared to those of more working-class crowds, which tend to be of the thumbs-up, thumbs-down variety. In the heartland of emerging Silicon Valley—high-tech, the venture-capital center of the nation, with Stanford and all its tentacles of research—the audience had to deny its experience. What I thought of was: All I want is your reaction, not your fucking self-conscious notes.

    On his feelings about baseball:

    My interest in baseball isn’t analytical, romantic, or even patriotic. I like the game—it’s nuanced and difficult and physical—but it has an appealing vulgarity, an earthiness, and I’ve never quite understood the excessive lyrical prose that grows out of it. I’ve never understood the sentimentality it seems to inspire.

    On the legacy of Bull Durham:

    Perhaps Bull Durham has resonated all these years because it is about loving something more than it loves you back. It’s about reckoning. It’s about loss. It’s about men at work, trying to survive in the remote outposts of their chosen profession. It’s also about the women they fall for, and who fall for them. It cannot be dismissed that it’s also about the joy of playing a game for a living. It’s about team and connections and risk and reward. It’s about hitting the mascot with a fastball just because you want to, it’s about running and jumping and sliding around in the mud, it’s about interminable bus rides with a bunch of guys who are as lost as you are, and feeling lucky you’re on that bus. It’s romantic, and it’s supposed to be funny, and despite what most fans of the movie say, it is also about baseball.

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  • RIP Marcus Theaters policy trailer

    You know the part of movie theater previews when they show what’s basically an in-house ad for the host theater chain, along with housekeeping items like silence your phone, no talking, etc.?

    I’ve learned these are called policy trailers and that many of them are available online. I was curious if I’d be able to find the one for Marcus Theaters, which dominated my adolescent theatergoing in Madison, WI, circa 2000-2006.

    Lo and behold:

    This is burned into my being. The movie clips did get updated over time with newer movies, but in my recollection the format stood for a long time. Just like the various movie studio intros, these trailers conditioned me to know I was about to (hopefully) see something great.

    It’s one of the many theaters that COVID-19 killed, so I’ll cherish this video (like the abandoned movie posters) as another relic of a lost era.

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  • Favorite Films of 2022

    Pretty much every year I’ve done this list (since 2007), I’ve published it soon after the beginning of the year to coincide with the bevy of other year-end lists. But every year I’d end up watching more movies after publishing that would have been eligible and affected my list.

    So I realized: what’s the rush? This year I took my time and saw what I could to give myself the best chance at an accurate accounting of my favorites of the year. I didn’t see everything I wanted to, but I did my best.

    What makes my 2022 film year unique is that, according to my Letterboxd profile, I gave 4 stars (out of 5) to 18 movies, with nothing rated higher that stood out above the crowd. Maybe that says more about me than the movies themselves, but that still left me without a clear frontrunner.

    Given that unusual parity, I thought it fitting to do an unranked, alphabetical list this time—something I haven’t done since 2014. All of these movies, plus many of the honorable mentions, stuck with me for different reasons.

    On to my top 10…

    Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood

    Richard Linklater’s latest film synthesizes elements from two of his previous ones: it’s the memoiristic nostalgia of Boyhood mixed with the rotoscope animation style of A Waking Life. This is a closely observed, gently told, fantastically wrought, and personally held story that shows off Linklater’s knack for capturing the beauty of the quotidian. (Streaming on Netflix.)

    Athena

    Come for the absolutely gangbusters opening 10 minutes and stay for the tense, heart-pounding drama of Children of Men-meets-The Battle of Algiers in a French apartment complex. It’s hard to watch at times, but also has a “can’t look away” quality that makes it both deeply cinematic and compassionate at its core. (Streaming on Netflix.)

    Avatar: The Way of Water

    Much like Top Gun: Maverick, James Cameron’s long-gestating sequel offers incredible spectacle, impressive CGI, and powerful emotional beats that elevate its rather rote plot and character development into epic myth. Though, unlike Maverick, the resplendently rendered fictional world itself is the star even above the performers. Bring on the sequels!

    Babylon

    I’ve been on a slightly downward trajectory with writer-director Damien Chazelle’s filmography: high on Whiplash, mixed-to-positive on La La Land, then kinda bored with First Man. His latest on Hollywood’s bacchanalian early years is everything but boring and jolted my Chazelle Meter back upward. Also a great (unofficial) prequel/double feature with Spielberg’s cinema-obsessed The Fabelmans.

    Decision to Leave

    South Korean writer-director Park Chan-wook is back after 2016’s The Handmaiden with a riveting slow-burn whodunit featuring Park Hae-il as an insomniac detective on a murder case and Tang Wei as his prime suspect—and complicated love interest. Part Gone Girl, part Vertigo, yet fully its own creation, the film combines Park’s technical prowess with a terrifically twisty narrative and a haunting conclusion. Don’t sleep on this one.

    Emergency

    In this impressive debut feature from Carey Williams, three college roommates—two Black and one Latino—ready for a night of partying when they discover a young white girl passed-out drunk in their house. How they deal with that turns into a high-wire racial reckoning, tragicomedic social satire, and beautiful portrait of male friendship. Like Superbad meets Get Out. (Streaming on Amazon Prime.)

    The Fabelmans

    In a year full of autobiopics (Inarritu’s Bardo, Mendes’ Empire of Light, Gray’s Armageddon Time), Spielberg’s personal tale of the dark magic of moviemaking reigns supreme, and serves as a cinematic Rosetta Stone for his iconic decades-long career. It’s also the funniest Spielberg has been in a while. Michelle Williams and Paul Dano deliver top-notch performances, but it’s Gabriel LaBelle who wins the movie and our hearts with his earnest and affecting turn as the teenaged Spielberg stand-in Sammy. That kid—just like the man he represents—is going places!

    Jackass Forever

    A dirty, cringey, and gut-bustingly funny soul-cleanse. There’s just something about this crew of delightful degenerates debasing themselves for the sake of entertainment that warms my heart and makes me laugh harder than just about anything else.

    Top Gun: Maverick

    Much like Avatar: The Way of Water, this dominated the box office, saved movie theaters (according to Spielberg), and provoked couch-jumping enthusiasm among its admirers. Though, unlike The Way of Water, it did so with sheer movie-star charisma atop the spectacle. Maverick, Cruise, and movie theaters: not dead yet.

    The Wonder

    I’ve realized that I will appreciate almost any movie that has something to say about religion, and that’s the case with this adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s excellent novel starring Florence Pugh as a skeptical nurse tending to a “miracle” child in mid-19th century Ireland. (Double feature recommendation: Anne Fontaine’s 2016 film The Innocents.) (Streaming on Netflix.)

    Other movies I enjoyed:

    • The Banshees of Inisherin
    • Prey
    • Everything Everywhere All At Once
    • Turning Red
    • Emily the Criminal
    • The Northman
    • Hustle
    • Barbarian
    • Kimi
    • Glass Onion

    Non-2022 movies I watched and enjoyed:

    • Hud
    • Summer of Soul
    • Ponyo
    • The Hunt for Red October
    • Yojimbo
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  • Ratatouille

    Rewatching Ratatouille recently made me think of a line from the Guardians of the Galaxy Honest Trailer, which portrays Marvel as so dominant and drunk on its own power—and its fans so eager—that a weird movie with a trash-talking raccoon and monosyllabic tree can be a smash success. Their tongue-in-cheek name for the studio: “F— You, We’re Marvel.”

    Ratatouille is Pixar’s “F— You, We’re Pixar” moment. 

    A movie about a rat becoming a chef by controlling a human through his hair? Oscar win for Best Animated Feature. Portray the critic as a cadaverous meanie? 96% on Rotten Tomatoes.

    Touché, Pixar.  

    (Somehow Ratatouille is ranked only #7 on my Pixar rankings, which feels low. Though in my 4 year old’s unofficial Pixar rankings it’s tied for #1 with WALL-E.)

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  • The Lion King

    It’s hard for me to watch The Lion King objectively as an adult when it’s so deeply ingrained into my being, having been released when I was 7 years old and subjected to countless subsequent rewatches in our family VCR—not to mention inspiring my own adult creative endeavors.

    But rewatching it now—with my 4-year-old son next to me wide-eyed and rapt—made me appreciate just how top-notch everything in the movie is, including:

    • the epic Hans Zimmer score
    • one of the musical numbers in particular, which I ranked the best Disney song of all time
    • the balance of meta and wacky humor with deadly serious drama
    • the stunning animated vistas
    • the strangely sensual “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” sequence
    • the delicious scenery-chewing voice work of Jeremy Irons
    • Rafiki keepin’ it real and real weird (in elementary school a buddy and I would reenact the Adult Simba/Rafiki scenes over and over again because we thought they were the funniest. thing. ever.)

    Along with Moana, it’s one of the rare Disney musicals that gives me several goosebumps moments. (Though unlike most modern animated films for kids, it achieves all of this with aplomb in under 90 minutes.)

    There’s so much fascinating stuff going on about family and trauma and destiny and shame and other things that went completely over my 4 year old’s head, but reminded me why it was such a massive hit at the time and endures in its appeal to all ages.

    Two stray notes:

    • We’ve watched it on DVD and Disney+ and both versions obscure the legendary SEX/SFX conspiracy moment—the former by seeming to blur the design and the latter by cutting past it entirely. This feels like a win for the conspiracy theorists.
    • It felt wrong to have the modern, post-2006 Disney castle intro at the beginning of the Disney+ version. Use the classic version, you cowards!
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  • Jack would NOT have fit on the door in ‘Titanic’

    I’m sorry, but it’s true.

    I say that in spite of the apparently real investigation into this internet-famous debate by National Geographic and James Cameron himself:

    All the evidence you need is from the scene itself: When Jack tries to get on the door, it almost capsizes. Putting two grown, soaking-wet adults on it amidst the post-sinking chaos—especially without Jack being able to act as bodyguard—would’ve sunk it easily.

    So RIP to Chippewa Falls’ favorite son and cinema’s most famous manic pixie dream boy.

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  • Media of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood. Hilarious and insightful memoir/biography of Lockwood’s Catholic priest father and her experience living with her parents.

    Blankets by Craig Thompson. A stunning graphic novel memoir about small-town life, religion, young love, winter, and so many more things.

    The Climb. An excellent indie film told through episodic, slice-of-life sequences that add up to a deeply funny and humane portrait of male friendship.

    Jurassic Park. Amazing just how leisurely this feels compared to modern action blockbusters, with its long shots and deliberate storytelling pace. Yet still thrilling and not a wasted minute. So refreshing!

    Babylon. A great prequel to (and double feature with) The Fabelmans.

    Arrival. Masterful work from Denis Villeneuve and Amy Adams, and an excellent metaphor for the creative life.

    The Twilight World by Werner Herzog. Happened to stumble upon this bewitching creative-nonfiction novel on a Best Books of 2022 list. In my mind I read it in Herzog’s iconic voice, so that probably made it even better.

    Yojimbo. Some incredible shots sprinkled throughout this 1961 Kurosawa classic. “Whether you kill one or one hundred, you only hang once.”

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  • Barnes & Noble likes books again

    Ted Gioia on the remarkable rebound of Barnes & Noble:

    [CEO James Daunt] used the pandemic as an opportunity to “weed out the rubbish” in the stores. He asked employees in the outlets to take every book off the shelf, and re-evaluate whether it should stay. Every section of the store needed to be refreshed and made appealing. 

    As this example makes clear, Daunt started giving more power to the stores. But publishers complained bitterly. They now had to make more sales calls, and convince local bookbuyers—and that’s hard work. Even worse, when a new book doesn’t live up to expectations, the local workers see this immediately. Books are expected to appeal to readers—and just convincing a head buyer at headquarters was no longer enough.

    Daunt also refused to dumb-down the store offerings. The key challenge, he claimed was to “create an environment that’s intellectually satisfying—and not in a snobbish way, but in the sense of feeding your mind.”

    His crucial move was refusing to take promotional money from publishers in exchange for purchase commitments and prominent placement of only certain books:

    [Daunt] refused to play this game. He wanted to put the best books in the window. He wanted to display the most exciting books by the front door. Even more amazing, he let the people working in the stores make these decisions.

    This is James Daunt’s super power: He loves books. 

    “Staff are now in control of their own shops,” he explained. “Hopefully they’re enjoying their work more. They’re creating something very different in each store.”

    This cheered me to read, not only because of my interest in the success of bookstores but also because I worked at Barnes & Noble for about six months back in 2011.

    Freshly stateside after months abroad, I was nearly broke and working at a grocery store when my friend Brian let me know he’d be leaving his job in the Music & Movies section at our local B&N store and would put in a good word for me if I applied. I did so immediately and got the job, which boosted my pay (from “enough to avoid destitution” to “meager”) along with my spirits.

    It turned out to be one of the best jobs I’ve ever had, despite lasting only about six months before I got full-time work elsewhere.

    Since whoever was working in the Music & Movies section couldn’t leave it unsupervised, I would be stationed there during my shifts no matter how busy it got elsewhere in the store. Some might have found that suffocating, but as a movie lover I relished being sequestered with thousands of Blu-rays, DVDs, and CDs to browse through and organize when I wasn’t helping customers.

    Another big factor of my enjoyment of that job was the manager of the Music & Movies section, Joe. He was the most laidback of the store managers but also probably the most effective because, as my friend Brian said after I sent him the above article:

    This strategy reminds me of how Joe would run the music section. He gave us a lot of power over the music that was on the shelves and it allowed us to sell CDs when the industry was in decline. Well done, Barnes.

    I guess that’s the takeaway for Barnes and for all purveyors of the fine arts: Be like Joe.

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  • My ‘Back to the Future’ bonanza

    Well, I finally did it: I finally revealed my decades-old collection of Back to the Future memorabilia.

    With it being Sci-Fi Month at Cinema Sugar, I thought the timing was right to show-and-tell such items as:

    • A diecast 1:18 scale DeLorean
    • My handmade reproduction of Marty’s letter to Doc in Part I
    • A “Save the Clock Tower” flyer signed by Claudia Wells, aka Jennifer in Part I
    • The VHS set on which I first watched the Holy Trilogy
    • And many, many more things

    I had a blast doing this, so please watch, enjoy, and share:

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  • A COVID movie journal

    As I’ve been going through my old journals and digitizing the entries—a tedious and time-consuming process that will eventually yield a much more accessible and searchable archive—it’s been fun and enlightening to rediscover things I was thinking about at any given time.

    Like this entry from March 10, 2020:

    A few pop culture references have come to mind as the coronavirus COVID-19 marches on:

    • the general escalation of uncanny surreality in Signs, as things progress and get ever close to home
    • Arrival and its shaky coalition of countries trying to understand an opaque, unsettling presence
    • Station Eleven [the book] and the global pandemic flu that paralyzes the world and makes humanity wonder what it is
    • Idiocracy with its president so not equipped for the moment

    I hadn’t seen Contagion at that point, otherwise that would’ve been there too.

    I love how I wrote “the coronavirus COVID-19” as if I’d possibly get it confused with another global contagion sometime in the future. But hey, I’m all about clarity.

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  • My own ‘Back to the Future: The Musical’

    I finally listened to the original cast recording of Back to the Future: The Musical, which is making its Broadway debut in June 2023. I can’t say I loved every song, though the new showtuned rendition of “Power of Love” is most welcome:

    It also reminded me that years ago I started making my own musical version of the trilogy. Well, it wasn’t a musical per se—more like an anthology of songs dedicated to various secondary characters.

    Here are the more fully formed song ideas, which also have lyrics and a basic idea of the musical style:

    • “The Easy Way” — a doo-wop tune sung by Biff’s henchmen (inspired by Billy Zane’s line in this scene)
    • “I’m Jailbird Joey” — an outlaw country/blues song for Uncle Joey
    • “Raise a Glass for Red” — an Irish ballad campaign song for Mayor Red Thomas
    • “Can You Spare A Moment (For the Clocktower)” — a kind of military march for the “Save the Clocktower” woman
    • “Reese & Foley” — theme song for an ‘80s buddy cop TV show featuring the two cops who take Jennifer home in Part II

    Other potential song subjects I sketched out: Chester the bartender, Terry the mechanic, Farmer Peabody, and Principal Strickland.

    (Not) coming to a Broadway theater near you!

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  • Top 5 Christmas Movies

    Originally published at Cinema Sugar.

    1. It’s A Wonderful Life

    The once and future king of Christmas movies. I could praise a lot of things: the cinematography, the supporting cast, the dramatic depth of Jimmy Stewart’s first postwar performance. But its magic ultimately comes down to Harry’s closing line—“A toast to my big brother, George, the richest man in town.” George was rich in the end because he remembered. He remembered the barrenness of the ghostly alternate timeline where he was never born. And he remembered the meaning of family and friends and frustrating failures and small victories, all of which had accumulated into something like a wonderful life. Hot dog!

    2. The Family Stone

    The Rotten Tomatoes consensus of The Family Stone is that “this family holiday dramedy features fine performances but awkward shifts of tone.” Which, yeah: That’s why it’s so good. Maybe your experience was different, but “awkward shifts of tone” could be the definition of family—especially during the holidays. The film depicts a particular kind of cozy, Hallmark-approved, New England-flavored Christmastime while also vividly capturing what it’s like to spend extended time with the people you love but who are also most adept at driving you crazy. I know I’m in the minority on this one, but, to paraphrase Meredith Morton, I don’t care whether you like it or not!

    3. Die Hard

    True story: several years ago my wife and I were at my parents’ house for Christmas and the family was debating which movie to watch. Soon Die Hard emerged as the consensus pick. My wife hadn’t seen it and knew nothing about it, but since we told her it was a Christmas movie she was game. Turned out she definitely was not game—its brutal violence, shoeless glass-walking, and other decidedly un-cozy elements so traumatized her that she has since refused to acknowledge it as a movie worth watching, let alone a Christmas movie. To which I say: “Yippie-ki-yay, Merry Christmas!”

    4. Grumpy Old Men

    This movie’s combination of silliness, sincerity, and wondrously snowy northern Minnesota setting has kept me coming back every Christmastime. It’s schmaltzy to a fault, but also a showcase for the legendary comedic chemistry between Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, forged over decades of working together. They fully commit to their acerbic, chops-busting banter, which is the core strength of the movie. That plus Burgess Meredith absolutely slaying as Lemmon’s horny, incorrigible father.

    5. The Muppet Christmas Carol

    I took an absurd amount of time trying to decide between this and Home Alone once it occurred to me that they’re pretty much the same movie. Both feature self-involved jerks who find themselves alone near Christmas and forced to endure challenging journeys of self-discovery after an encounter with Marleys—the ghosts of former business partners for Scrooge and a mysterious elderly neighbor for Kevin. Painful developments occur (spiritual/psychological for Scrooge, physical for the Wet Bandits) before concluding with joyous Christmas Day reunions and reconciliation. I ultimately went with the Muppets because they’re the freaking Muppets.

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  • Movie trailers ruin movies

    Alissa Wilkinson preaches the truth about movie trailers:

    At best they’ll just show you stuff you probably knew anyway, or don’t need to know — who’s in the movie, what’s on the soundtrack, the basic plot setup. Maybe the look or the tone or the vibe. But trailers aren’t designed to give you a glimpse of the movie; they’re mini-movies, designed to sell tickets (or maybe subscriptions to a streamer). And they’re starting to feel increasingly divorced from their actual movies.

    This has been a hobbyhorse of mine for a while, so I was delighted to be validated by a professional movie watcher (i.e. film critic).

    I’m so serious about not watching trailers for movies I want to see that when I’m seeing a movie in the theater, I’ll close my eyes during the pre-show trailers (or just try to arrive after them). I’ll still hear them, but usually the audio and dialogue are abstracted enough from their use within the actual movie that it doesn’t spoil anything.

    There’s certainly an art to a great movie trailer, both in its construction and purpose. One I think about a lot is Little Children, a movie I still haven’t seen.

    It’s fine that most trailers aren’t high art, but it’s not fine when they spoil what they’re supposed to be promoting. Alissa:

    It’s surprising how many movie trailers just mess up the viewing experience for someone who wants to see the film. I watched both The Lost City (very funny) and Ticket to Paradise (intermittently funny) before I saw their trailers. Why, oh why, would you put all of your film’s best jokes in the trailer? Does that not telegraph immense insecurity on the studio’s part? I guess once they get you in the door, they’ve got your money?

    Her advice, which I co-sign:

    Pick a few critics, maybe three, who you like, and rely on their writing to help you decide what to watch. Or, Google a movie to see who’s in it, who directed it, who wrote it, and what their previous work is, and make a judgment based on that. Or, even better, just watch a movie with little to no idea what it is and see if it surprises you — one of the best experiences you could ever have.

    This is pretty much all I do, a recent example being The Banshees of Inishiern. A new movie reuniting the In Bruges crew of Martin McDonagh, Colin Farrell, and Brendan Gleeson? Sold. I’m in. I deliberately avoided all information about it and went in fresh. Even though I liked-it-not-loved-it, it was fully worth the experience of encountering a movie without any preconceived notions beyond an earned trust in the artists to deliver something worth seeing.

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  • 7 Hard-Boiled Lessons from Noir Films Old and New

    Originally published at Cinema Sugar.

    These are dark times. It’s tempting to feel that it’s never been darker, that the weight of our modern struggles is unprecedented. 

    But I take comfort in knowing that film noir—a genre that has existed for almost 100 years—has been there before. It’s seen some shit. To show this, I’ve picked a few timeless, hard-won lessons and two noirs that illustrate them: one classic and one modern.

    So let’s light up some cigarettes, pour a round, and stare down this cruel world together.

    1. Crime Doesn’t Pay

    The plan is always simple at the beginning. Maybe you want to knock off an old rich guy for the insurance payout (Double Indemnity) or stage a kidnapping for ransom money (Fargo). Doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to work and you’re going to pay hard—with your dignity, livelihood, or worse.

    2. Beware Who You Marry

    Do you really know your spouse? Can you ever be sure they won’t plot your grisly demise with clockwork precision, only to have the act go awry and ruin your life (Dial M for Murder) or morph into twisted mind games (Gone Girl)? Think really hard about whom you’ll commit yourself ‘til death do you part.

    3. Fame is Dangerous

    The greatest illusion of showbiz isn’t what we see on the screen but how it hides everything sacrificed to get it there. We don’t see the screenwriter of Sunset Blvd face down in a pool and shot in the back by a jealous actress, or the darkly absurd lives of aspiring actors in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The cost of a movie ticket is a lot cheaper.

    4. Sometimes the Bad Guys Win

    For every evildoer held accountable there are several more who get away with it, whether it’s an abuser engaging in real estate fraud (Chinatown) or a real-life serial killer eluding capture (Zodiac). You can drive yourself mad trying to seek justice in an unjust world.

    5. Nothing Is Real

    Go ahead, chase all the shadows you want through the tunnels of Vienna (The Third Man). Follow all the mangled clues to your mystery woman (Under the Silver Lake). In this world, what you seek isn’t always what you get. Whether that be love, justice or the cold hard, bloody truth—reality is a moving target.

    6. The Media is Manufactured

    Sometimes it really is #fakenews. The movies about righteous, crusading reporters taking down a big bad villain may win Oscars, but they usually don’t show the full story behind how the news gets made, whether it’s a journalist prolonging a crisis for personal gain (Ace in the Hole) or hunting for voyeuristic crime footage (Nightcrawler). (Mis)trust, but verify.

    7. You Can’t Escape Yourself

    Try as you might, you’ll always come back to yourself. You can work hard to project an image of normalcy to others, but your shadow self will eventually reveal itself: while you stalk a creepy motel (Psycho), attempt to solve a mystery (Memento), or otherwise attempt in vain to beat back the darkness.

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