Skew

I am not pretending that Skew is a great film, or even a good film. I certainly don't like the characters. The idea behind the film is trite, at first blush. It's yet another found footage film about a story that normally wouldn't have found its way onto a camera. The characters are the usual unlikeable jerks we find in the spotted history of found footage films. The camera work's intentionally spotty with the crucial information "accidentally" finding its way into the frame. The artificiality of the genre is such that I found myself falling into the old rut. I was in "the trance".

And then ice-cold water was dumped on my head.

And then the movie ended.

What just happened??? This didn't go the way I thought it was going to go.

So, I started over. And found this, right at the front, waiting for me.

"All physical bodies are made entirely of an infinite number of ghostlike skins, one on top of another. Photography has the power to peel away the topmost of these layers. Exposure to the camera actually diminishes the self."

 And then, halfway through the film, the following monologue:

" If my parents are going to rob me of my memories then I'm going to make up my own, and I can shoot what I want, and then I can pick and choose, and I can take it home, AND I CAN PLAY WITH THE FOOTAGE. The trick that I've learned is that you just gotta keep shooting. Just let it roll. CAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU'RE GONNA GET THAT RIGHT SHOT..." (emphasis MINE)

 So, a few things were just established.

1. This tape isn't "raw". It has been manipulated.
2. There is an editor, who doesn't intend anyone else to see this film.
3. The footage is out of sequence, deliberately.
4. Something is deeply wrong with Simon.

On point the first, the footage has been manipulated. We're shown that Simon never stopped filming, with Richard going through the tapes and making fun of Simon for constantly filming. Given that the movie is 80 minutes long and that dozens of tapes were recorded. This gets all the more disconcerting one realizes that the footage from the police station was probably stolen. This means it's likely that someone added the "dead" people, the ghosts, in post. Did the dead people actually show up? You can't see them on rewind, according to the editor, and large portions of the movie have been rewound over. The movie is consistent with its own "rules", so the question now becomes how the "ghosts" wound back up on the footage. Or it could just be that the editor is making something to assuage their own guilt. Normally I wouldn't go in for such a thing, but the text of the movie openly says the filmer will go back and change the footage later.

The editor doesn't intend doesn't anyone to see this film. Richard and Eva are clearly being shown in the worst possible light they can be, with the fun/vulnerable scenes showing nasty/petty sides to both of them, while trying to show Simon in the best possible light. Simon is always the nice guy, always the goofy one, always the victim. It almost starts to resemble the natural process of memory... except this has VFX and music edited in. It's artificially made to look natural, like the genre!

The footage is most definitely out of sequence. There are interspersed cuts of the world's largest chairs, bowls, knives, and don't forget the forks! Certain scenes don't make linear sense. They'll jump back and forth between different lights, soundscapes, at the drop of a dime. The footage is pieced together to make something linear, make something that resembles a normal existence... by chopping apart a few key scenes and peppering them throughout the movie.

Now, at this point it should be obvious that, if Simon is the editor, there's something psychologically off about him. But when I say wrong, I don't mean like that, I mean there's something existentially wrong with him. His parents wouldn't take pictures of him. The movie ends with the only picture of Simon known. He has manufactured his version of terrible events and put his name and face to it. Whatever actually happened, whatever it was, Simon wanted the first picture of him to be associated with this series of horrifying events.

What kind of person would want to do that?

And that's why I can't stop thinking about this movie.

The movie asked me a question, which I find compelling.

Musings on The Witch

 

"Holiness and intelligence of soul are to be recognized from a man's eye, walk, voice, laugh, the way he spends his time and the company he keeps. Everything is transformed and reflects an inner beauty."

Pseudo-Anthony, "On the Character of Men" 

There are SPOILERS for this movie, if you haven't seen it. If you haven't seen the movie, go watch it. What I am saying assumes particular, experiential, knowledge of the movie. I am saying this in bold: I am not holding your hand any further. Watch the movie or don't read this post.

I am, by nature, an idealist. I have a strong natural bent to take whatever inner ideas I have and push them onto reality, with a will that cannot be properly understood in abstraction. On the one hand, this allows me to, once I've locked in on what can and should be done, to get it done. On the other hand, idealism is one of the greatest poisons to mental health to exist, short of being shot in the head. You cannot see the world as it is, only as it's filtered through your artificial abstractions. And this means you miss things. Obvious, obvious obvious things. Because you weren't looking to begin with! Many a situation have I botched due to thinking that the thoughts in my head were more powerful than bad finances or a mean left hook.

One of the things that I truly appreciate about Desert Father (and thus Byzantine) spirituality is the iron resolve to set aside idealism in lieu of measurable and obvious results. They don't mince around with stupid technicalities, they don't ask what you should do, they ask "Does this thing give peace and quiet to your interiority?" If the answer is yes, genuinely yes, then the rest can hang.

You know one of the first things Evagrius of Pontus, the primeval writer of the desert, advises? Don't leave people unless you absolutely must! Negative thoughts and other things have a habit of finding you when you're alone and making you far worse than you would be with people, even if they're not terribly good. The early Christians, for all their talk about the corruption and evil of the pagans, were a pretty cosmopolitan and upper-class group. They didn't mingle, but they certainly were a part of society! All this "Let's go across the ocean and find a new continent to get away with people we disagree with" is a Protestant thing and has absolutely no common ground with anything the early Church did, in any capacity. Even with the differing groups and all the bickering, nobody moved halfway across the world. The benefits of being in the general area of people outweighed the disadvantages of said people being unjust. People are worth loving, even if they can be bad.

So, what's the first thing we see in this movie? Oh, right, a father willingly allowing himself to be exiled, over "the purity of the Gospel".  Upon finding an area clearly cursed and badly off, he doubles down. Lies. Steals. Anything other than go back to the town and apologize. This is the dude who would rather steal from his bereaved wife than go back to town. It's the joke about the guy waiting for God to save him from drowning, when three boats go by offering to pick him up, in film form. 

What would a God Who is so focused on relationship and community that to call Him One is to call Him Three and the other way 'round have in common with someone who would gladly put his family into a cursed land to be rid of a town he finds offensive? What would that God, Who is Community, want to say to such a man, even if He could get that man to hear Him?

Oh, right, nothing.

This isn't a vending machine. You don't put in coins and have your vending machine god do whatever you want. You use the tools given to learn to relate, to be in harmony, not march out of the town and declare everyone else heretics. You love and cherish, and by so doing others correct themselves. So, I don't really have anything terribly nice to say to the father in this movie. 

But it gets worse. Because the father's folly is then visited upon his children. The quote at the top of the post is about what a holy man is actually like and what's important about him. It's not the thoughts in his head that's important, but the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, the way the world just... makes sense... to him. And if those things are not given to a child all they have are those most wretched of things: thought without context. It is the context of goodness that is necessary. Thought doesn't mean shit without the warmth that made it. And the father in this story doesn't have it. He passes on the chaff, without the fire that created it.

So, what happens if you fill a child's head with words that don't actually mean anything on their own, and then drop them in a cursed place? You think they're going to be able to take the words and just use them, like some sorcerer? Only the most wretched and vile of sorcerers believe in the pure efficacy of words, and many of those sorcerers walk with a cross around their neck these days! 

Wait, isn't there something in the Bible about sorcery being evil? How it's a vile thing? And how God doesn't stand to be mocked by taking His Name in vain? Oh wait!

Exodus 22:18 is really clear about it:

Sorcerers must not be allowed to live.

The footnote in the Knox Version makes it clear the word is feminine. As in witch. As in using words just for their own merits is, inherently, a receptive act of invoking a spirit. Evagrius of Pontus would sure agree with that, his book about spiritual warfare, Antirhetikous, uses "thought" and demon interchangeably. To invoke a thought with a specific emotional state is to invoke the spirit who holds that combination, to the point to where thought/feeling and spirit are functionally indistinguishable. In fact, the whole Byzantine tradition rests on this central idea: thought with mood/emotion always invokes a spirit.

And we've already covered what it looks like, invoking God. Inner coherence, radiating out in peaceful and a gently healing aura.

The other way is sorcery, spiritual theft. It is a vile, repulsive thing, practiced by Satanists, Calvinists, Traddies and Orthobros, alike. The smell is so obvious, so repulsive, so noetically vile, that only the blindest of fools would miss it.

You shouldn't teach sorcery to your children using the Name of God and expect them to be Christians. You should count your lucky stars if they just become atheists, just to get the taste of sorcery out of their mouths. That's an act of morality from a child who was crippled right at the knees, trying to get away from what's clearly evil.

No, that's not the worse option.

The worst option is if they accept this horrifying idea and then spend the rest of their lives trying to use the Scriptures, commentary, and doctrines of your church as if they were calling on the Lord God. As if these things, taken on their own, with the artificial abyss you passed onto them, are enough to answer the natural abyss within. It's not. The abysses don't care about words or sentiment or (God help us) that disgusting thing called idealism. The abysses just swallow up whatever light and warmth they can find. If your child is unlucky, supremely unlucky, they will think that that double abyss of depression and cold, leading to occasional relapses into debauchery, are the best they're going to get. When that happens, you have damned your child, congratulations. If you're lucky they'll run into something that takes them out of this world before they do something really awful.

Like, I dunno, make a deal with the devil? 

Like, I dunno, float above the corpses of their little siblings and join the ones who ripped their little bodies apart? 

Horrifying, right? But, at the end of the day, humans will always come back to power and results over "morality" and loyalty, always, and if you blinded them to such an extent where they're floating up in the air like that, relieved to finally see results...

Where do you really think you are, right now, even if you're alive?

Heaven and Hell are states of mind, after all. Death is irrelevant to whether or not you're already there.

The Marvels

Okay, I'm about to get really really harsh. And, before that I do that, I wanna say something that literally everybody I have read or watched that has criticized this movie has said, and this includes those supposedly racist conservatives:

Iman Vellani is a pure joy to watch. I have never seen someone enjoy being a superhero so much as her. I wish her all the luck with her career in the world.

This movie is pure shit. My God, it hurt to watch this one. It's not as bad as Thor: Love and Thunder, which I couldn't even get through. But it's shit. The script is dumb, a good villain is wasted, the action is boring as hell, Brie Larson needs to get out of the MCU, and obvious fanbait to keep me watching has become actively resented, and just... Marvel can you please just stop?

So, the script is dumb. Captain Marvel, who murdered billions of people, hasn't been locked up for war crimes, nor does she turn herself in for having committed one of the greatest acts of manslaughter ever recorded... like you lost me right there. Right there I'm done. Why does the rest of the universe trust her? Why the hell does she have a singing husband on a silly planet of singing people? Why is the elephant in the room not acknowledged by anyone but the villain???

Oh, Captain Marvel feels bad about it? Her poor feelings are hurt??

Tough.

People have been imprisoned for life for a lot less.

And that's not where the script keeps being stupid. Why is our villainess, Dar-Benn, a villain??? There's this completely unnecessary mustache-twirling element added to a character who frankly didn't need it. Her planet, her people, are dying. There is absolutely no reason for her to go evil to be the antagonist. Quite the opposite! She's the only one with a sane complaint in the cast! Her going "I'll steal a sun and doom another planet and put someone else through what my people have been" makes no sense at all. If she cares about her people then, on some level, Dar-Benn cares. It would have been far more interesting to see her trying to take out Captain Marvel (RIGHTFULLY), only to relent when she realized that the destroyer of her planet could restore it. A lot could have been done with Dar-Benn to make her a more potent and interesting antagonist and just the sheer lack of imagination hurts.

The action is boring. No, it's not fun. Or even moderately interesting. This movie was clearly designed for a phone-addicted audience. And that's the most effort the action is getting from me, coz clearly it doesn't deserve more.

Brie Larson can be a fantastic actress. I've seen her try. I've seen her care about projects. When Brie Larson gets going in a role she can really dial in and turn her energy way up. And that is nowhere near this role. I can't even call it a character. Modern Captain Marvel is boring as hell, and required the Iron Man level of rehabilitation that the MCU originally gave him. And she didn't get it. She's just comic book Captain Marvel, which is... um.

Okay, quiet part out loud, most of the earlier MCU projects were improvements over what's honestly crap source material. Age of Ultron as a comic book event is awful. Just awful. Civil War is when the comics made character assassination cool. Secret Invasion is just shit.

NOTICE HOW MOST OF THIS IS TIED TO BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS????

Point is.

A lot of the MCU works coz they took good basic ideas from half-wit writers (don't balk, I'm complimenting Bendis's recent stuff by calling him a half-wit) and applied actual effort to them. Are these revolutionary or even vaguely high art ideas? Absolutely not, but they were fun, and popcorn cinema is a legit way to go. But in order to do popcorn cinema right you have to get good actors who care about the source material to play the hell out of the roles, stupidly competent writers who have to scrub the shit stains off diamond-quality ideas, and directors who love the source material enough to be critical of it and know they can do better.

And Brie Larson ain't got it.

The only soul in this production who does is Iman Vellani, and God she deserves so much better than this nonsense.

Also, I'm done with these post-credit scenes. Vellani's was fun coz it's two people who clearly like the source material just riffing off each other, but the alternate universe stuff... it's not working. It's just not. This is exactly where Marvel falls flat on its face, Exiles excepted, and Marvel needs to cut it out. 

Please hire good writers and directors who truly love the source material and give Iman a story worth being so damned adorable over. Junk this phase crap, and just let us see Ms. Marvel scout out talent, have fun doing it, and go back to our fun popcorn flicks.

I know they're not going to do it.

But in my last screams of protest over a franchise that has clearly lost its soul I will not go out quietly.

Oh, there's one bright spot to this. Just one. I can see who the shills are now. Coz anyone who claims to like this trash is most definitely a shill. More and more the conservative right's critiques are looking downright prescient: the supposedly compassionate left reveals their true colors of pro-corporatist and totalitarian zombies, with the most they're able to summon being "this was fun!"...

Seriously? That's the best you can do? "It was fun" is the best you can do???

Dude, Iron Man was a lot more than fun. I'm not claiming it was the best movie ever, but it had heart. It had soul. Tony was driven to do what he thought was right, and to hell with everyone else. Everyone knew they had watched something special. The deniers were met with just raw joy. So they had to shut up. I've learned, slowly but surely, but that such joy is the key to defending controversial things. I used to argue with a lot of people about the merits of The Last Jedi. It doesn't go anywhere, coz people can find any reason to dislike something. So I just tell them that I found the movie so beautiful that it stunned me to silence. I tell them about my friend who called me in tears, because she found the whole movie deeply cathartic. That the movie had communicated something transcendent to the both of us, and it was that simple. The same with The Rise of Skywalker. I got a lot out of the movie, and part of the trick is to meet the angry with the very simple statement: "But it changed me. I'm sorry it didn't you" and to drop it from there. It's not something I'm terribly good at doing, but it is what needs to happen.

There's no joy in the defense of The Marvels. It's just an annoyed "shut up racists", said with no oomph. Coz... well... there's nothing in this movie that's actually fun! Or cathartic! Nothing! It's just hollow nonsense. Defending this movie doesn't make you a good person, or anti-racist, or anything. It just betrays a lack of depth, on your part. I mean, c'mon folks, The Marvels could have been one of those fake movies in The Boys... well that's not quite true, is it? It would have to not have poor Iman in it. 

I hope they do right by her. She should be the new face of the MCU, backed by competent writers and directors, allowed to do what Doudney Jr. did. If there was any justice here that's what would happen. But that would be way too optimistic. 

And "optimism is cowardice", as Spengler so correctly points out.

Toy Story 4

Let's get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first.

There is such a thing as woke. Okay? I don't deny it. It's Marxism in artistic form. And, contrary to what many leftists will tell you, Marxism is evil, flat out. By cutting out the person and just reducing them to where they happen to be in society you create something just utterly... well it's not art. It simply isn't. Anyone who pretends that a character like Riri Williams and Kamala Khan (from the comics, calm down!) aren't woke is lying to themselves. 

So.

Woke is real. Woke is bad. It just is. Go cry if you disagree.

Toy Story 4 ain't woke.

"But- but Bo Peep-". Bo Peep ain't woke. She's got a really unfortunate change of voice actor, yes. But she's got seven years of being on her own, after being shunted around and abandoned. Woody's loyalty to Andy, and thus to Bonnie, is unique to him. It's why the other toys follow him. We've known that for awhile now. There is no reason to think that Bo is just as loyal to a child, so it's not exactly a character change. Bo doesn't have much of a personality in the first two films and if you disagree, you're wrong. Bo's love of Woody's loyalty, one of the few things we do know about Bo from the first two films, is intact here and it's actually one of the reasons why everything works out! She clearly misses having a child to love and the movie shows that, really really openly. It's not subtle, and if you missed it you need to stop watching movies while looking at your phone.

The other big elephant in the room is that nobody saw a need for this movie. Now, to be fair, this has been the general reaction to every single Toy Story movie since the first. Now someone who is actually reasonable is going to say that Toy Story 3 should be an exception. I mean, Andy gives up Woody! It should be over! I mean, sure, in theory, but here's the dirty truth about these movies: they make more of them coz they make money off of 'em. And it has always been that way. That's not a new thing. You can either accept that or not.

I suggest you do, coz this is a really really good movie and well worth its time.

Toy Story 4 picks up a little while after Bonnie gets Woody and Co. from Andy. Woody isn't being played with, which he finds disheartening. But he's a kind soul, so he tries to help out Bonnie, even if he's not wanted. This has... consequences. A lot of consequences. Like, damn, the sheer number of consequences. This, right here, may be my favorite part of the movie: the plot never stops juking left. I was constantly being surprised, as entire characters, situations, ecosystems, are developed right on the spot. They make sense. They're coherent. They add to the world of Toy Story. And I love every step of the way. It takes a lot for me to prefer plot to characters, and here boy howdy do they weave a good plot.

That's not to say the characters are bad. This movie has an embarrassment of riches, character-wise. Bo's voice actor replacement is as unfortunate as the character is well-written. Gabby Gabby is a compelling antagonist, who gets the only redemption arc in the series so far. And even the new stuffed animals, who I would normally cringe so freaking hard at, I find charming, coz somehow Pixar got it just right. 

Ultimately, this wouldn't make a bit of difference if the movie isn't coherent, something that Pixar is well-known for. And the theme this time around is extremely coherent, even moreso than the previous entries: you have to have someone to reciprocate love with. It is not enough to love. You have to be loved back too. And it is worth getting hurt for, over and over and over and over and over again, to find someone who will share love with you. The twisty plot, the character work, it all says this one message, that love is worth it, as consistently as you can ever get.

Is Toy Story 4 a bridge too far? It certainly looks that way, popularly. Reception seems to be mixed to negative. But I think that's a shame. There's some really heartfelt and amazing stuff in this movie. I feel like a better person for having watched it. And, I mean... that's starting to feel more and more like a rarity these days? I don't know, I know that's not just me feeling it. I miss feeling that way more often about movies.

And it does here.

I'm gonna enjoy it.

You do you.

John Wick

 

I usually don't care very much for the action genre. Heck, I mostly don't care for movies anymore. But there is one movie series that so far has done absolutely no wrong, and that's the John Wick series. Two and three took a really simple story and asked "How can we play out these consequences and make it interesting?", pushing the story into wilder and wilder places as John tries harder and harder to get out, only making it all worse and worse. But it all had to start somewhere, and for my money the first is still the best of a very good bunch.

Look, y'all probably all know the story by now: man's dog is killed and his car is stolen... and it turns out he's a former Russian assassin. He also recently lost his wife,  so he was emotionally devastated to begin with. Man then burns it all down in a fit of vengeance that rivals Homer. The simplicity is unparalleled. The beauty of the story isn't how simple it is, but that it only does that. We do not attempt to get into John's psyche. We know how he's feeling, and why, there is absolutely no need to get into it any more than they do. We don't ask where he is at the end of the story psychologically, because John Wick does not care. He did what he set out to do, you know how he's doing.

The action has a purity to it that you can't fake. You know that everyone who was in this movie trained and did their utmost to make as authentic a movie as possible, because you can see all the little things that they get right. Keanu's skills as an actor have been frequently laughed at, but his physicality is undeniable. He does what he does with a casualness that can only be arrived at from years of mastery. It's really sweet to see.

The acting itself is a lot better than it has any right to be. Everyone owns the parts, everyone's into it. Maybe that helps me with Keanu's performance as well? Dunno, but I feel like they wrote the movie around his personality. And that's probably what happened and all, but I feel like they gave Keanu a range that he knew he could do, he knew it, and didn't attempt to stray even a little bit out of it. And isn't that enough? The action's amazing, you don't really need fantastic acting, even if some of these actors are clearly class talent, all on their own.

This is a movie that is no muss, no fuss. It knows what it is, has no bones about only being what it is, and goes to great lengths to do what it should as perfectly as it can. The action is perfect, the acting gets the job done, the writing doesn't reach for anything its not, and it was all wrapped up with a pretty little bow. Every once in a while someone does a job so competently it's art. John Wick is one of those movies that, in the hands of lesser mortals, would just be another movie.

It's not.

There, a no fuss no muss review for a no fuss no muss movie!

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

 

I pretty much swore off the MCU after Far From Home. That movie was the right cross in the 1-2 combo that broke my love of the overly bloated juggernaut franchise. I just… the corporate checklist became too much. I’ve dealt with it too much. I’m done with it. 

But Raimi, doing a sequel to my second favorite Phase 3 movie?

Civil War beat Dr. Strange.

Yes, it is my second favorite of Phase 3, although Ragnorak is its own good time.

I mean, I couldn’t say no.

I should have. God if only. But I didn’t.

Let’s get the stuff I liked done. Because it is here. I just… what could have been!

I adore the central message of the movie: happiness is fleeting, relationships win no matter what. I really like how they kept asking how relevant happiness is to a good life, if life can be worth it given that you’re not getting what you want. That’s a message I’m surprised got through a corporate machine designed to make you buy toys. Anytime anyone makes that point in a corporate commercial I’m gonna point it out.

I liked most of Wanda’s arc. I adored WandaVision, and  while I was surprised that corporate allowed Wanda to be the antagonist I really appreciated it. Wanda being shown as a grief-stricken addict to power was incredibly well-done… until the end. We’ll get there, but I really want to show I approached this movie on its own terms as I could. And man Elizabeth Olson really really sold it, to a degree I should have come to expect from her, but I always kick myself when I don’t. Elizabeth Olson is a woman of craft. I’m glad she’s getting work and this movie was the one to sell me on being an actual fan of Elizabeth Olson.

Yes, even over WandaVision. 

So.

Cumberbatch really does a great job with what he’s given. He’s given a bit of screen time playing multiple versions of Strange and does a good job in making them similar, but different in ways that feel organic. There’s a lot of untold stories behind those eyes, sometimes in the same scene. Cumberbatch’s talent for camp is called upon and he did a good job with material that sometimes gets genuinely terrible. But more on that later. Suffice to say that Strange’s arc of grieving the loss of Christine was poignant and I liked how they ended the arc of the movie by showing the acceptance of the protagonist of his entire life situation, pleasant and unpleasant.

What, you thought his third eye opening after truly accepting his fate was an accident?

C’mon folks.

And the cinematography? God, it’s gorgeous! There was some really imaginative stuff here, particularly the music fight, which was one of the most creative sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie, nevermind a summer blockbuster. I’d not recommend seeing it in the context of the movie itself, just watch if on YouTube… here. Just watch. You deserve to see something this cool.

This movie also stands out as being the goriest and creepiest Marvel movie. Raimi got to play, straight up, and it was great to someone actually masterful with a camera directing a Marvel movie. There’s some seriously creative camera and editing work here. I mean it!

So the stuff I like? I love. 

Unfortunately corporate got involved: garbage world building, dialogue, and selling false promises. The stuff that’s bad in this movie? Holy crap. I mean Feige, I get you have your agenda but damn.

I hate the “not technology” magic. The magical not-artillery, the not-Star Wars energy shields, the incredible not-gadgets… this is the sorta magical shit I hate in my inmost depths. I hated it in Thor: The Dark World and I hate it more here. So many creative things going on in this movie… and they resort to canons and shield generators??? I’m sorry, I know  it sounds petty… but I don’t care. I hate it. 

Wanda’s turn around at the end was pure, nonsensical bullshit. The entire movie she’s clearly addicted to power and she sees reason at any point? That’s outright stupid. I don’t see Raimi in that, although I could be wrong. Humans don’t change on a dime, not like that. Gollum trips, he doesn’t change his mind and throw the Ring in!

Yes, I really do think she’d not make it because of the anguish of the children.

I know, people suck. I’ve watched mothers do worse. Get over it folks.

Speaking of people sucking… the Illuminati was clearly meant to be fan service. It was awful. Reed Richards was dumber than a bag of rocks and got everyone killed. I’ve never disliked a group of Marvel heroes so fast in my life and I read Civil War when it came out. This wasn’t storytelling, it was grade-A Marvel schlock, the type of nonsense I’d expect from the summer crossover comics… not a big budget movie that could actually afford to pay good writers.

Y’know, NOT modern Marvel writers???

Speaking of which, what on God’s green earth was up with the dialogue? I know one writer is credited, but that is a damned lie. There’s some dialogue in here so out of place, so cringe, so stupid that it could not have been the writer. I refuse to believe it. Even the sentence structure changes, and so drastically that the one writer credit really needed to be two, with the second being: “The idiots who thought “We have her back” was a good scene.” It’s truly an embarrassment, coming at points in time where the emotional weight of the movie was genuinely being sold… until the stupid joke interrupted like a turd being passed off as a meatball in gourmet spaghetti. What a waste.

Multiverse had real potential. There’s aspects of the film that are so good, so genuine, so artful, that it makes the Marvel corporate bullshit become a genuine offense to movies. Marvel had a virtuoso on their hands and just couldn’t trust the audience enough.

I’m shocked at how bad a product it made this movie. 

What a shame!!!

The Batman is a Masterpiece

 

I've not felt anything more positive than mild irritation over the last few Marvel movies.. the ones I didn't think were just so outright stupid that I didn't even bother. Feige's vision is the very worst of the comic book franchise: just building to the next big thing, with installments that don't matter. And I don't mean as installments or even as pieces of content, although content go fuck right off. Like, there's nothing in these latest... time sinks... that I can feel is an actual spiritual statement at all. And what little I can get I hate, as it's just cynical nonsense.

But this?

This perplexed me. 

The Ave Maria? For this scene? And remixing it for the soundtrack throughout the entire damn movie? Like, you don't just do that by accident. You can't. That's as on purpose as it's going to get. The darkest moments of this movie feature the Ave Maria. Y'know, The Hail Mary: 

Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee! Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

There is some disturbing shit happening in this movie, to that prayer. And the way it's shot? It's meant to be taken in the context of that prayer.

We'll get back to that in a minute. So pin, going in.

Then there's this use of Something in the Way by Nirvana:

Underneath the bridge

Tarp has sprung a leak

And the animals I've trapped

Have all become my pets

And I'm living off of grass

And the drippings from my ceiling

It's okay to eat fish

Cause they don't have any feelings

 

Something in the way

Mmm-mmm

Something in the way, yeah

Mmm-mmm

Something in the way

Mmm-mmm

Something in the way, yeah

Mmm-mmm

Something in the way

Mmm-mmm

Something in the way, yeah

Mmm-mmm

Folks generally think this song is about Cobain's time being homeless, and his attempts to justify his existence, particularly since, as it turns out, Cobain loved fish as pets. So this is more or less a song about coping with existence as it is.

These two songs alternate, and indeed they duel through the movie. Or at least they seem to. Whenever Riddle shows up the Ave Maria plays. Whenever Batman shows up Something in the Way plays. And when Batman is going nuts right up in the Riddler's face? The Ave Maria plays. This seems to be a simple and shut case, just another director using classic Christian music to make some bold and edgy statement about the uselessness of the Christian faith and yadda yadda yadda insert some bullshit statement here.

YAWN.

Open and shut, right?

Well wait, one sec. I strive to not be an ideologically blinded person. Strive. And this movie really resonated with me, so there's something true in here. It's not my job as a Christian to return evil for evil, but good for evil. I have no doubt that someone as purposeful as Matt Reeves meant such a statement, but I hope not. The fact that it resonates means there's something different going on here, something a bit deeper, at least for me.

Let's start with the use of women in this story. It is of interest to me that Reeves not only begins with the Ave Maria but focuses on the last few minutes of the mayor, with his family. The Riddler waits to kill until the woman and child are gone. In the absence of wife and children the man dies. It's of interest that the DA dies protecting his family, begging for the mercy of God. It's also of interest that every. Single. Threat. Made. Always comes back to a mother. Namely one Martha Stark. Far from the Ave Maria being a commentary on "No good woman left" the song is being used to show just how wrong Riddler is, for trying to use something holy and good in a twisted way.

Also, notice something interesting about the ending scene here?

The mayor is an idealistic, pure woman. Or at least she appears to be, and has given me nothing but assurance that she is. The person Batman lowers into that stretcher, the one who changes those angry eyes?

It's a woman.

These women are softening the rage of Batman, whereas they sting the rage of the Riddler. So the songs don't "duel", they merge. The feminine redeems Batman, finally. He can accept his role and purpose in protecting. He becomes a true knight. 

But the Riddler’s singing the Ave Maria on the movie, you may protest! Shouting it, actually! And yes that’s correct but you know who shouts that Jesus is the Son of God in the Gospels? It’s not the apostles, who are bungling morons and traitors. It’s not Mary His Mother, whose silence is a key part of the text.

It’s the demons. They shout the truth all the time.

And Christ shuts them up every chance He gets.

Pretty clear image, ain’t it?

Batman’s silent at the end. Riddler isn’t.

It’s also of note that the first step of the Christian life, East and West, is the remembrance of death. That doesn’t mean “Things are icky”, it means “All things have a downward trajectory to despair, dissonance, and oblivion, and it’s happening to me, right now. There is one arc to the universe, DOWN. All progress is dissolution.” The remembrance of death is the realization that this world is not, has never been, and never will be home. It’s to become disgusted with your surroundings on an existential level, to wish to remove yourself from the filth, even if such attempts hasten your destruction, BECAUSE ALL PROGRESS IS ALWAYS TO DEATH.

Progress. Is. Death.

And time is progress on steroids.

The remembrance of death is considered the first gift of God. The thing He gives you so the other gifts can be given 

And when you accept it? All the way down? That this is where you’re going? And there’s nothing to be done, that you’re powerless to stop it? A strange thing happens. You are able to see people. You can see the soul behind their eyes, and something new begins to take shape. Something strong and good and wise. Something tiny and firm and sad, yet accepting and loving. Even joyful in some moments.

It looks remarkably like The Batman’s eyes at the end of the film.

And I find that absolutely inspiring.

SO...

I just found out that the Ave Maria is a funeral song. Don't look at me and judge! I never went to a Roman Catholic funeral where I heard it! And I've been Eastern Christian since 14! We don't sing the Ave Maria, we've got our own stuff and and and - 

So.

With that in mind, this movie is a lot easier to decipher. I mean, it's obviously about death. And how one reacts to it.

Yup.

Look, I like my take better, okay???

I'm allowed.

But hey, insert rant about how art has multiple interpretations possible.

Yeah.

Totally not embarrassed, at all.

Go away.

Shin Godzilla Review

 

I don’t talk about it much, but the original Godzilla really affected me as a child. Something about this unintentionally deadly monster really struck a chord with me. He wasn’t trying to destroy everything, he was just trying to live and we couldn’t let him! It was wrong that we made Godzilla, but was it wrong to kill him? Godzilla’s double victimhood hit me; he hadn’t asked to be made, and now he had to die. Something that big just shouldn’t be around. It went beyond questions of good and evil, rendering the frame utterly meaningless. 

Godzilla wasn’t bad or good. He just was.

And therefore we had to kill him. 

To say I’m disappointed by the following movies is an understatement. Godzilla is a quandary, not a hero, a critique of classic liberalism and its obvious stupidity on the face of life and death. Yea, this puts me in the grouch camp. I really couldn’t care less. Hero Godzilla is stupid.

So I was really excited when I realized that Shin Godzilla, the 2016 reboot, was being directed by Ecangelions creator, X. The Rebuilds really turned me around on X, so I figured I’d give this a shot too! Just the poster was enough; X was going for Godzilla’s original tragic roots. And that was enough for me.

What I got was a pleasant surprise: Godzilla isn’t the real monster of the movie. Oh don’t get me wrong, Godzilla is definitely disturbing. There’s something to this redesign I find… demonic isn’t the right word, but unsettling and threatening don’t really do it justice either. There’s something to Shin Godzilla’s face that is so fundamentally alien to me that I can’t help but be creeped out. The moments where he lets loose with his power are masterclasses in how to show power in a movie. I also liked how Godzilla was just as as much a victim of his biology as the humans were, having to stop and deal with his unwieldy biology.

No, the real monster is the U.S and the U.N. It’s a secret to the folks of the U.S. proper, but Japan is really just a colony of ours, in all but name. And the Japanese know it and resent it. This movie treats U.S. as a lumbering monster… that is the Japanese’s monster, protecting them from the U.N. As bad as the U.S. is the U.N. is far worse, both in the movie and in real life. No attempt is made to sugarcoat this reality; Yogucha, the protagonist, calls his country a puppet state.

And yet Japan survives because of his status as a puppet state, with the U.S. helping Japan defy the U.N. As onerous as being a colony is, Japan survived. 

It’s not bad. 

It’s not good. 

It just is.

And that’s a hard pill to swallow. 

Batman vs. Superman: Ultimate Cut

 

I can't begin to tell you how much I hate the theatrical cut of this movie. It is all wrong. All of it. There's not a frame that makes sense, not a line of dialogue that adds up, it's a nihilistic mess of a movie. Just writing about it makes me want to spit on my screen, just in pure rage. Now, yes, I've got some attachment for Batman and Superman, but just the craft of the theatrical cut is beyond awful. On a technical level it is an incoherent mess.

You may have noticed I hate this movie. 

And, let's get this out of the way, I like Man of Steel. Clark being portrayed as a person who needed to figure out how to forgive humanity for being shitheads is an incredible thing to portray. Most of the flaws people point out about the movie are overblown, at best, petty and spiteful at worst. It's not my favorite movie ever, but it's definitely a good movie, showing a Superman that I, personally, can believe would exist. My hatred of Zack Snyder's other work is probably to the amusement of all my friends, who periodically poke me, just to see the explosion of spite that results.

And then one day someone told me the Ultimate Cut was coherent. They didn't like it, but it was coherent. Turns out that the corporate morons had completely screwed up the cut.  I was asked if I wanted to watch it. 

And, to be honest, I didn't, not at the time. I still had the words from HiTop in my head: Batman does not kill. Batman is a symbol, symbols teach us how to behave. Batman is all about not repeating the action of losing his parents, all over again, by having some little boy wake up without those parents.  I wanted to believe that Batman's willpower was immaculately iron. Now, all my other ideals are totally incoherent with that. I think people are not invincible ideals, that they're barely capable of good on a good day, nevermind a bad one. The Joker is right: all it takes is one bad day.

In the intervening years my trust in the American mythology of superheroes has faded. Perpetually stuck in a corporate death grip, unable to move on and become something different, these characters are a hollow reflection of what we are: controlled by corporate interests, unable to move on. They're not human, and we don't allow ourselves to be human either. Why I hadn't connected that before, I don't know.

Afghanistan happened.

"Not our country," is a phrase I've heard tossed around. As in, actually spoken. Aloud. The world shook its head sadly and said the most damning words I've ever heard: "Well, it was inevitable."

No, it was not. Damn your ideas right to the hellhole they belong, that was not inevitable, just convenient. Not to mention cowardly.

Something broke inside me, watching the whole thing. Turns out that casual cruelty isn't just limited to fetuses and folks of minority ethnicity, a fact I've experienced far too often, but just hoped that my self-hatred could explain the seemingly boundless cruelty of humanity.

Nope. Turns out people are just cruel, as a matter of course. It's the human condition.

That weekend my family went to the zoo. I love tigers. Thank Calvin and Hobbes for that, I suppose, but man they're majestic things. And they're killers. Born killers. Made to eviscerate and terrify and stuff raw meat down their throats. "God's tenants", as per Psalm 103. A tiger knows what it is. It's a killer. It has no issue with this fact. If a tiger denied what it was it would die, as it's literally made to only eat meat. It's honest because to be honest is to live.

Staring at this magnificent picture of death, a thought began to form in my mind. I didn't quite know what it was until about an hour later, when I was sitting down at a playground with my wife. I tried to bat the thought away. I really didn't want to go where I was going, but an entire generation of people were being left to suffer under a terrorist organization. All 'cause of the red, white, and blue. Reality no longer matched my model of it. And I had to give in. Had to. 

"I can't like superheroes anymore. Because of Afghanistan."

My wife, as thoughtful and quiet as she is, let those words hang in the air a moment, as they mixed with the sounds of laughter and creaking playground equipment.

Me being anxious me, I mistook the silence. "Does that make sense? I don't know how else to explain it right now."

Those green eyes can just cut my soul to ribbons. She looked at me, and as she always seems to, saw straight into the cloud of grief. And through it. "It does."

I sat there, trying to figure out what had just happened. What I had just said, why I had just said it! And somehow I knew. It was time to watch this movie.

I thought I was ready. I was not. 

First off, folks, there is a plot to this movie. And I actually like it. Motivations are clear, the action flows from one beat to another. There's a healthy amount of inference going on, but the movie does actually set up the points to connect between.... unlike the theatrical cut. Which does not. I like having to put the pieces together myself, so long as there's something to assemble with. I mean, I do like Terrio's work in general, so it was nice to return to his plotting.

Superman's depression, as a result, makes sense. Continuously mistrusted and hated for doing the right thing will do that. And Clark needing to figure out he was going to do with his "just rewards" was a compelling hook. The movie paints Clark's deteriorating outlook as a natural progression someone would go through. Clark does his best to fight it, but there's only one rule to the universe, and that's down! By the time we get to the end Clark has been psychologically manipulated and battered.

Now we come to Batman. I'm not going to try to convince you why I like this character now. Tigers are killers, and if you don't like that go get in the enclosure and let me know what happens when mealtime comes up. Bruce has collapsed under the weight of his own failure, something repeatedly brought up, time and time ago. Only one rule to the universe, folks! Bruce is human, he's going to collapse. After twenty years, Bruce had given up. And so Lex pushes him, manipulates him, sets him up.

Yes, the Martha moment actually makes sense in the movie. Move along.

The ending of the theatrical cut was actually my favorite part of the movie. The whole movie goes bonkers, I love the turnaround from Batman after the Martha moment as it's portrayed by Affleck, Gal Gadot is always amazing to see as Wonder Woman. But Clark's arc always felt hollow. It doesn't here. Clark's last moment of trying to reach out to the best in someone else paid off. He finally got through. 

And, with Lois there, Clark realizes that she is his world, and therefore the world must be saved.

Bruce is rejuvenated. Superman sleeps in his tomb.

As I've stated before, there was a hole in my soul, where a narrative of some cultural significance should be. You can't make it up, you must receive it from others. Making up your own narrative is a fabrication of the modern era.

What did I receive from this movie? Which pretty much no one else likes?

That people are horribly flawed, and that if you keep looking at the big picture it's going to destroy you. Either you'll get addicted to changing the world and become a psycho like Lex or Batman at the beginning of this movie, (SJWs/alt-right this is your fate) or you'll drown in despair, like Superman almost did (which is what I'm trying to get out of). There is no way to fix the big picture. Too many profit off of it being wrong to be able to change it. It's just that simple. I can't change the reward system of the world, because entropy is a guarantee and one can always set themselves up to profit off it.

But if you forgive the world? Forgive it for being screwed up, irredeemably so, and find someone to love? You may have a chance. It won't be easy, because you have to give up being addicted to a cause. You have to cut yourself free of the dopamine rush, entirely, and just see the world around you.

Notice I didn't put this in "I've done it" terms. Of course I haven't. I so badly want to fix things, to get that dopamine hit, to feel important. And I've been trying to rectify that need with what this movie showed me. Why on earth should this be sufficient?

The other day I was walking to Walmart and I saw a man trying to carry some furniture out of a store. I could tell he was having a rough time. I just stopped, held the door, and then carried a few things out with him. We laughed about how bulky things were, and then moved on. When I got into Walmart I saw an aisle covered with cans. Employees were scrambling around with a panicked looks, trying to pick it all up. As I went past I bent over, grabbed a bunch of the cans, and helped them get it into their carts.

I didn't even realize what I'd done until I got home and realized I was feeling peculiarly hopeful for someone of my disposition. I just felt... light. Free. I'd seen someone who needed help and I helped, simply because that was right in front of me.

I didn't hear the dopamine scream in my head, demanding I change the world.

I saw someone. I helped. And that was it.

For once I wasn't scared of where things were going. It wasn't loud and noisy like thinking about how to save "the world", it sure wasn't sexy and glamorous.

But at that moment I believed that a man could fly.

I don't know if that's sufficient, but dopamine ain't the way to go. Especially if it does no one else any good.

Which I assure you, screaming into the echo chamber doesn't.