Dark Highways

Author: S. Brady Calhoun

  • The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special

    Each year Christmas comes for us all. It comes to the straits and the squares and to broken people. Maybe especially to broken people. 

    It starts with one of the great Christmas songs of all time. Fairytale of New York. Which begins with 

    it was Christmas Eve babe
    In the drunk tank

    The lyrics get better and worse from there. It tells the story of a New York City romance in the gutter. And of a hosts of Christmas that can’t fix a broken couple. 

    The boys of the NYPD choir
    Still singing Galway Bay
    And the bells are ringing out
    For Christmas day

    In the title scene there is a new Christmas song, written just for the show. And like You are a mean one, Mr. Grinch, it’s an instant classic. 

    So right off the bat I was exceptionally happy with how things were going. If anyone is going to deliver a Christmas musical with superheroes then writer/director James Gunn is the person I would put my faith in. 

    It didn’t have to be much more than silly but it has a strong emotional core and an appealing message. 

    I wasn’t expecting to cry as much as I did. But I’m an old guy with sons and there is a bit of business in there with Yondu, and the special hits that father-son Christmas dynamic like Santa ringing a bell. 

    I love the first set of Marvel movies. I think Avengers is the first one to prove that they could really make this thing work. And when I make my lists it’s normally at the top. 

    But of all of them Guardians of the Galaxy is the one that maybe means the most to me. 

    Because it’s funny. Because it blends Marvel’s great weird comics with cinema style and Tarantino’s taste for needle drops. And because it’s about broken people. 

    We’ve had a sequel, an Infinity War, an Endgame, a cameo in a Thor movie and soon we’ll have a third movie and an ending to Gunn’s collection of science fiction superheroes. 

    But right now we got a Christmas special. It is both true to the spirit of the great classic Christmas specials and true to Marvel Comics. 

    Marvel used to do this thing called assistant editors month. There would be warnings on the covers because the stories that month were going to be exceptionally weird. 

    Weird like Aunt May and Franklin Richard’s battling Galactus. Weird like all of the Avengers being guests on the Late Show with David Letterman. 

    Weird like two of the Guardians kidnapping Kevin Bacon to bring him to Peter Quill because it’s Christmas and Peter is sad. 

    Kevin is Earth’s greatest hero, Peter says so, and after what happened to Gamora in Endgame Peter is having a tough time. 

    So his family helps him out. They help him have a great Christmas. Christmas in space, Christmas in the drunk tank. Christmas for the broken people and the fathers and sons who have trouble sometimes living with each other. 

    You hear it? The bells are ringing out on Christmas Day.

  • Vengeance

    Like Cleveland Indians baseball great Jake Taylor this movie calls its shot and then wonderfully, blissfully nails it. 

    In Major League, Taylor pretended he was going to hit it out of the park and then squeezed a bunt into a game-winning play that confounded the defense. 

    Here writer/director BJ Novak uses the lure of podcast satire and a Texas murder mystery to “Tell the story of America.”

    Not a story about America but the story of where America is today. You know, the whole, what’s happening to the country? Kind of story. 

    It’s the sort of thing that when a character in a movie says it you probably shrug. This movie suggests that telling the story of America is a joke, a fake out and that the flick will really be a bunt that still scores a game-winning run. 

    And then Novak just hits it out of the park. 

    Novak has a great arsenal and hits nearly every shot he fires.

    First, the cast playing the grieving family all burn bright. Each brings a little something to their respective roles and manages to be tough and smart. My only issue was that it is hard to separate J. Smith-Cameron from her breakout role as Geri on Succession.

    That’s not anyone’s fault it’s just the way it is when you are the main character in a show that overtakes the public consciousness. 

    Second, Novak is never willing to let himself or the script boil the people from Texas down to cliche. Or maybe they are initially stock “southern people” but the movie is unwilling to let them remain that way. Each, in their own way, is allowed to live in three dimensions.

    Meanwhile, Novak’s character is a smug New York schmuck type but he’s also willing to listen and learn. 

    Everyone here is a little more than they seem. 

    There is a moment, late in the movie, that allows the blue-state guy to yell at the red-state folks. Basically, every political grievance is hurled for a moment at the grieving family. 

    It’s ugly and most of the movie disagrees with it. But regardless of its accuracy, it’s certainly felt on both sides of the divide. 

    It may be one of the few moments that doesn’t quite work. It feels a little too much like the screenwriter working out some issues, instead of going to therapy. 

    But most of the movie consists of the Texas folks being both more charming and more intelligent than Novak’s character expects. And Novak’s character being willing to expand his horizons and accepting people for who they are. 

    Another strong weapon is a tight script that manages to be funny and compelling. 

    There’s a spectacular joke about Chekov’s gun and another about a famous movie. I’m sure you wouldn’t think either of those things would be ripe for humor but here it works. 

    The movie also sets up several mysteries, including the big murder mystery but also small mysteries/problems along the way.

    What’s the victim’s phone code? Who blew up a car? Who is moving drugs into the area? Why did the body get left where it is? 

    I don’t want to give too much away but the solutions to each of these are fun and make sense. 

    And then, after all this, Novak has a secret weapon. 

    Would you believe it’s Ashton Kutcher? Really, he’s great in this. He plays Novak’s sort of spiritual guide to Texas. A cosmic cowboy turned record producer who manages to explain not just the state but the country to our detective. 

    Kutcher ambles off with every scene he’s in and makes it look as easy as sippin’ tea on a front porch. 

    Again, the acting is universally great even if the low budget occasionally creates some small flaws.

    In some moments, it is almost like you can see the green screen. There was a shot or two that felt off in a way I can’t describe. Essentially you could at times see the seams where someone had to go back and do a reshoot. 

    Novak is probably a little too old to play a guy who is living out his Tinder years and just starting out on a writing/podcasting career. 

    Issa Rae is great in this but a lot of her section feels superfluous. 

    Thanks to Knives Out murder mysteries are once again in vogue. I have no idea how successful this was but I dearly hope Novak makes another one. 

    Send him to California this time.

    This country is strange and surprising from sea to shining sea.

    B.J. Novak learned a lot about himself — and Texas — while working on ‘Vengeance’

  • Pig

    I believe in Nic Cage.

    You guys watch Brooklyn 99? There’s this great bit about Cage where the show’s happy, yet kinda dumb, lead character is stuck with a snooty classics professor and he tries to get him to watch all the great Nic Cage movies. 

    So in order he describes the plots to Face/Off, Con Air, The Rock, and Ghost Rider. All of which are soundly rejected. 

    The punchline is that after watching all of those flicks anyway, the professor finds out that along with action silliness Cage also starred in amazing films like Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Leaving Las Vegas. 

    I think all I know about Nic Cage’s life is that he bought a dinosaur skull once and he’s related to Francis Ford Coppola. And he had some financial troubles which sent him on a spiral of appearing in just about anything where a check was offered. At least that’s what it looks like from the outside.

    But as I go back to the beginning with Cage you can see that maybe he always took jobs regardless of their merits. Maybe he just likes the work? Maybe he took the best he could of what was offered. Maybe he didn’t care. 

    Oh, didn’t Sean Penn get mad at him once? Cause of the roles he was taking? 

    Anyway, I believe in Nic Cage.

    In 1987 Cage breaks out with Moonstruck and Raising Arizona. He’s suddenly kind of a big deal. 

    But as you look at the projects for the next decade I’m not sure there’s anything there that sticks. That is as successful. 

    Is that Nic? Is that just the way it goes in Hollywood? You will recall that Halle Berry won an Oscar and her next movie, Catwoman, won all the Razzie’s that year.

    In the 90’s Nic Cage soldiered on.

    How weird and wonderful would that Tim Burton Superman movie have been? I don’t think Nic Cage as Superman would have worked. But Nic Cage as Clark Kent? As an alien pretending to be a human so he can keep his friends and family safe while he battles supervillains? That is a performance I would love to see. 

    In ‘95 you get Leaving Las Vegas and then you get three years of pretty great and deeply silly action roles: The Rock, Con Air, and Face/Off. 

    All of those are ridiculous. But they are all also action classics. I’ll watch any of those things right now on a dare. And there are plenty of movies of every stripe from that era that you couldn’t get me to watch again with a gun to my head. 

    Then he works with two of the greatest directors who have ever done the thing: DePalma and Scorsese. Sadly none of these projects are going to be mentioned in the high points of either gentleman’s career. 

    Is that Cage’s fault? Is it the directors? Was the material just not there? 

    And he follows that up with an action movie about sports car heists in which Cage plays a man called Memphis Raines. 

    I’m tempted to make fun of that name but it’s also maybe kind of perfect? If you were going to call yourself a fake name there may not be a better one than that. It even gives the fake name Nic Cage a run for its money. 

    I’ll spare you the next two decades but suffice it to say Cage goes on kind of like this. Making a mixture of action cheese and low-budget cheese and then popping up every few years with an all-timer of a movie that reminds everyone that he is an amazing actor who can pretty much do whatever he wants with his time. 

    What I’m trying to say is that Nic Cage doesn’t owe you Pig but he made it anyway and it’s amazing. 

    Everything he does here is astounding and I was shocked by how good he is in this. I tapped out on Nic Cage a while ago and only came back for Color Out of Space and Mandy. I liked them both but they are showcases for their directors and aren’t the actor-driven drama that Pig is.

    Ok so, without getting into specifics this is not the movie that the trailer leads you to believe. It is not a revenge picture about a weird man from the woods who is tracking down his stolen, truffle-hunting, pig. 

    Well, I guess it is that, but it is a whole lot more than that. 

    There is a part in this movie that requires Nic Cage to basically stare into a man’s soul, give him a speech, and upend his entire life. 

    The kind of thing that happens in the real world after years of therapy and in the movies after several scenes of build-up. It happens here in a moment. There is no way it should work. 

    I believed every second of it. I believe in Nic Cage. 

    I doubt I’ve seen enough movies this year to really handicap these things but from what I’ve seen Pig and King Richard should both get Best Actor nominations. It’s Will Smith’s year and he deserves it.1 But, let’s all save a little love for Nic Cage. 

    And as you watch this or rewatch it ask yourself what other actor could have done this. I went through the list in my head:  

    This guy wouldn’t have played him that out of shape. 

    The other guy would have balked at playing this much tragedy, with this much weakness and empathy. 

    And I can just see this one demanding that the first thing that happens when the main character comes down from the mountain is that he gets a shower, a shave, and a haircut.

    Nic Cage wears the rattiness like a coat of armor. You can practically smell him. 

    A lot of them would have passed simply because it was a shoestring budget and a 20-day shoot. Have you seen the catering at these things? Pathetic. 

    Most of the rest of them simply couldn’t pull it off. You would have never believed them. And since the whole movie hinges on the performance the whole thing would have been lost. 

    For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost. 

    But Nic Cage did it. Nic Cage can do anything.

    Footnotes
    1. HA HA I wrote this originally on Letterboxd before the Oscars.

    How ‘Pig’ Became Nicolas Cage’s Cash Cow

    The 15 Best Nicolas Cage Movies

  • Nope

    You ever been to a comic book convention? Over the years I’ve been to several and I always find them fun but frustrating. There are always these people there with tables who either never really were celebrities or were celebrities for five minutes 40 years ago. 

    And some of them, if they were connected to the right film franchise, make a living selling autographs and telling stories about their time on set. 

    It’s not that I begrudge anyone a living it’s just that I find the whole thing demeaning and depressing. 

    Also, panels with actual comic book writers and artists who created great things are often ignored while a panel with a guy or girl who played a zombie or a stormtrooper on that thing for half a minute decades ago can fill up a lecture hall. 

    Jordan Peele’s Nope is a brilliant examination of fame. What some people will do to get it and what they’ll do to keep it and what it can cost you when you won’t let it go. 

    There were two things in it that connected for me.

    At one point the alien is overhead and you can still hear the screams of people who are dying in one of the most horrific things I have ever seen in a movie. 

    It’s not horrific, so much for what you see, but for what it suggests. It’s the perfect kind of horror shot that forces you to imagine the lingering suffering of other people. 

    Anyway, as two people hide in a house and hope they won’t be killed I thought of the time I was in a newsroom while a Cat 5 Hurricane banged around outside. 

    The power had gone out and we were off the air and there were more than a few screaming and upset young people who called their relatives convinced they were going to die. 

    In order to deal with it I grabbed the only person who still had a cell phone signal and we did a Facebook live with the anchors and weather folks and basically kept working for as long as we could. 

    If you had asked me why I did that I probably would have given you a lofty answer about journalism. But the real reason was that in my mind as long as we were working I was convinced the Hurricane wouldn’t kill us.

    You can’t kill someone when they’re on the job. And if you are working you can’t spend time thinking about the life choices that led you to remain behind instead of getting out of the way and getting your family out of the way of a Cat 5 Hurricane. 

    There is a character in this movie that gets just the right amount of attention. He is a cinematographer who is the best in the world at what he does and he helps the heroes in their quest to get the perfect shot of the alien. 

    And everything about him, from the way he spoke, to his final choice to get a great shot is note-perfect. 

    He reminded me of a guy I heard about from one of my college journalism professors. The professor had been a reporter for the Miami Herald and had been in a photographer’s home and spotted a shot the man had taken in Vietnam of a group of soldiers walking through a minefield. 

    And it took a moment for my professor to realize that the photographer had walked through the minefield first in order to get a shot that would show the men’s faces. 

    “What would possibly possess you?” He asked. “To risk your life for that?”

    “The truth is worth a man’s life,” the photographer replied. 

    It’s been 20 years and I’ve never forgotten that. 

    Oliver Stone made a movie starring James Woods that was loosely based on that photographer. It’s called Salvador. It’s pretty good.

    You have never seen it. 

    Every scene in Nope builds brilliantly on its themes. Every bit of it had me thinking and questioning. 

    The keystone event in the movie is a chimpanzee ripping people apart on the set of a sitcom. These images of the animal covered in blood are terrifying. But you know what was equally disturbing? One of the stars of that show, 20 years later, her scarred face covered with a veil and accepting the applause of a small crowd when she is introduced. 

    Along with the veil she is wearing an airbrushed t-shirt that shows what she looked like when she was a child star. 

    Mr. Peele not only will kill you but he knows exactly where to twist the knife. 

    Another one of the sitcom’s stars is a young child who we meet as an adult. The adult is trading on his small brush with fame by running a dude ranch near our heroes.

    The kid survives his encounter with the dangerous animal unscathed physically but deeply scarred emotionally. And of everyone involved he should have been the one to understand the price of fame and walk away from it. That he doesn’t, and that he pursues it again with a different sort of creature that he doesn’t understand, gives us a classic horror movie trope. 

    The sinner must be punished. 

    And then there are the Haywoods. When you hire these Hollywood horse trainers you will get an entertaining story from them about how they are the great, great, great (great another great) grandchildren of the first horse trainer to appear in the first movie ever recorded.

    That story is wonderful and wonderfully delivered by Keke Palmer. That it is most likely some bullshit their father made up in order to convince white producers and directors to hire him is another twist of the knife. 

    The movie doesn’t explicitly say that the story is fake but at one point Palmer and her brother, played to laconic perfection by Daniel Kaluuya, talk about how their father started this. 

    And I thought, and he came up with a perfect story to tell white producers and white directors that they should hire him. 

    It wasn’t until after the movie was over that I fully realized that Kaluuya was playing the classic, terse, movie cowboy in this movie. 

    He’s the guy you call who gets stuff done. The guy who knows how good he is at what he does and doesn’t need to brag about it and when the time comes he will show you just how amazing he can be. 

    The movie ends with Keke celebrating because in the distance, in the mist her brother is astride his horse, alive and well. It’s a beautiful shot. 

    But as I left I thought did this movie end the way I thought it ended? 

    You will recall that in one of the greatest westerns ever made that technically Shane is still alive at the end too.

    Salavador

  • The King of Marvin Gardens

    With apologies to everyone who made this delightful and dark character study, we have to start with a scene in another movie. 

    It’s the chicken sandwich scene in Bob Rafeleon’s Five East Pieces. I saw it, in its entirety or most of its entirety on some clip show somewhere. And then tracked down the movie. 

    The scene is famous because Jack Nicholson gets to explode. And the scene is funny. But it connects because Nicholson isn’t just screaming at a waitress who won’t make a simple order, he’s screaming at society; which invents rigid, rules and demands that everyone live by them. It’s the kids of the ’60s, man, howling at their parents. 

    Anyway, Five Easy Pieces is a classic, but it’s also a shaggy bit of business. 

    When I say shaggy I mean that the scenes feel like the director set up a camera, gave the actors some points to convey, and then said, “action.” 

    Then you get Method Actors showing off their stuff. 

    In some movies, the shagginess is written that way and sometimes it really is a brilliant ad-lib from an actor or a director on set. I’m not sure it matters. Movies are a strange alchemy where you really can spin straw into gold. 

    King of Marvin Gardens is shaggy too. Except for the stunning opening.

    It’s just Nicholson, his face half hidden in darkness, telling a story about the death of his grandfather. It feels like a play and it seems written, perhaps overwritten. But you can’t turn away and it’s mesmerizing. 

    The rest of the movie takes place in the shadow of that opening monologue. The movie seems to reject the initial story and then as we go on we see that every line of that story was true. Spiritually true, emotionally true, even if the details are not fact. 

    After the monologue, we get to what I kept thinking of as the fun and games portion of the movie. 

    Again, it feels like Rafelson just sets the camera down and tells his actors to play the scene however they want and the story will take care of itself. Damn fun for the actors, maybe a struggle, at times, for those of us who expect clockwork precision from a movie script. 

    Nicholson, who is playing the insular mousy character in this flick, has a brother played by Bruce Dern. 

    His brother has a dream and a scheme involving Hawaii and casinos and money from the mob.

    Most movies might demand that we show the audience the steps as Dern either reaches or fails to reach his goal. And there are things that happen here that seem to suggest how Dern is doing on his venture. 

    But mostly, the movie is just scenes where Dern, his two girlfriends and Nicholson hang out in Atlantic City in winter. The movie isn’t very much interested in Dern’s schemes but it is fascinated with Dern himself and his impact on the women in his life and on Nicholson’s psyche. 

    I was struck at times because the characters seem to be reacting to things the audience hasn’t seen. You might think you missed something. Perhaps the explanation for some of the behavior that was left on the cutting room floor. 

    Does that hurt the flick? Nope. I was never lost and each scene works as its own small thing inside the movie. But again, those looking for a traditionally structured movie will be unmoored.

    Nicholson knows, or seems to know, that Dern will never make his dreams come true. But if there is tension in the movie at all, and there isn’t much until the end, it’s in wondering how far Nicholson will let this go. Will he ever step in? Will he fly to Hawaii with these people knowing that the only thing waiting for them there will be the same problems they have in Atlantic City?

    What’s the cost when you crush someone else’s dream? 

     You would not be surprised to learn that Dern and Nicholson were supposed to play the opposite parts but in the run-up to filming everyone decided they should switch. 

    The movie works incredibly well because of that. Nicholson normally gets to be explosive. The chicken sandwich scene is a perfect example of that. Here, all the work has to be done internally. He’s on a slow boil. 

    Dern’s having a ball being a scheming cad. The sexual revolution is put under the microscope and it’s interesting how even at this early stage Rafelson seems to come to the conclusion that it is men, not women, who have won a victory there. 
      
    Ellen Burstyn, Julie Ann Robinson, and Scatman Crothers get a little bit of business. Burstyn, in particular, shines but also gets to be the character with several emotional breakdowns or breakthroughs. 

    The climax is tense and not necessarily predictable. You can sort of see it coming but until it actually happened I wasn’t sure that the movie would actually pull the trigger. 

    I enjoyed how Crothers and Nicholson negotiate over Dern’s fate and what is owed to whom and for what. 

    After the climax there is a shot of Nicholson looking back, staring at another character. And he burns hot but he doesn’t say a word. It’s incredibly powerful and Nicholson conveys it all with half his face. Most of it is done with his eyes. 

    Later, Nicholson returns home and you see him once again telling a story, telling a part of this story. Then he has a moment with another character and apologizes for a small thing.

    He has left a door open. 

    “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to.”

    Inspiration for ‘The King of Marvin Gardens’

  • Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

    As a comic book fan since childhood, it is hard to express just how much I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Although it is occasionally shaky the MCU has done what many of us thought impossible, take a comic book universe and bring it to live-action life.

    It did this by respecting the artists and writers who built the thing and by building a fictional world that chooses to make its heroes and villains realistic, where possible, but is just as willing to throw out realism when necessary.

    So what we get is a best-of-both-worlds situation where the characters look and act right, there are consequences to their actions and the amazing visuals that look stunning on a comic page are brought to life.

    The MCU doesn’t blink at giving you a celestial, or Thanos, or Asgard. And after an early emphasis to explain away everything with science the MCU wisely pivoted to do, just what the comics do, and say that magic, gods, monsters, and a host of other things simply exist in the world and that no explanation is needed.

    It’s also a place, for me at least, full of joy and hope. Maybe the last decade or so has been great for you. I certainly wish you blessings. But for me, these have been trying times. And I got through them with my faith, my family, and, honestly, a Marvel movie a couple of times each year.

    These things are fun and I have fun every time I go to one.

    And if you were to ask me, what am I most looking forward to about the MCU I would tell you that it is an organic and changing thing. Because these are real actors who age and at times decide to move on Kevin Feige and the Marvel team face choices every few years.

    What it seems like they have chosen, and what makes it riveting, is that the heroes of this world, unlike the comics) will grow old and die and be replaced by new characters.

    Marvel sets Thanos up in Avengers and then wisely didn’t pay it off until Infinity War and Endgame 7 years later. Compare that with the fact that Batman has faced off with the Joker and the Riddler twice since the 1990s and will likely battle him again before Matt Reeves is done with the caped crusader.

    And unless the James Gunn administration changes things, Bruce Wayne will forever be about 30 and forever fighting the same three or four villains.

    Meanwhile, unless the MCU really backtracks, Tony Stark is dead, Steve Rogers’s story is probably done and I fully expect Peter Parker to be replaced by Miles Morales before the 2020s end. Here’s hoping Sony understands why that’s a great thing and plays along.

    And yet, the thing that makes me the most excited about the MCU, was what made Black Panther: Wakanda Forever a radically different experience than most Marvel movies. In the real world, the great Chadwick Boseman died from cancer. That left Ryan Coogler considering how to move a movie franchise forward without the title character. Coogler said he honestly considered not making a sequel and also leaving his career behind as well. Such was the pain he felt after losing his friend.

    What he ultimately decided was that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever would be made as a tribute to Boseman and that in the fictional world of the MCU Boseman’s character, T’Challa, will be dead as the movie opens.

    What we have then, as a viewer, is a Marvel movie that is also a wake for a beloved actor and a way for Marvel to continue moving the fictional world of Wakanda forward in its own group of movies and television shows.

    It’s heavy man. It’s a lot for any movie to carry much less a movie with superhero shenanigans that must be employed.

    T’Challa’s kid sister Shuri, played with heart and humor by Letitia Wright, essentially goes through the five stages of grief on screen. The movie introduces both Ironheart, (Dominique Thorne) a new genius with a supersuit in the Iron Man mold, and Namor, who is played by Tenoch Huerta as something more than a supervillain.

    This line, performed by the great Winston Duke as M’Baku, rang in my head all weekend: His people do not call him general or king. They call him K’uk’ulkan, the feather serpent god. Killing him will risk eternal war.

    If you want to know what kind of comic book person I am, after I cried for a while at the first Wakanda Forever trailer I spotted that Namor has wings on his ankles, just as he does in the comics. And I was both excited and nervous. Because how can a comic book concept as weird as wings on ankles look good on screen?

    If Sony or Fox had introduced Namor in the bad old days the very first thing to go would have been the ankle wings.

    But the MCU embraces comics and finds a way, most of the time, to make these things fly.

    The wings didn’t just work in Wakanda Forever they were both amazing and terrifying. They made him, in flight, seem like a rattlesnake ready to strike at any given moment. He was that serpent god.

    Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda once again shows you who she is and how wonderful she can be in any role. Danai Gurira once again steals nearly every scene with just a look.

    Anyway, this film hit its targets and managed to do much more than your average movie. There were several subplots that could have been avoided. I like seeing Martin Freeman in anything but his Everett Ross had nothing to do except set up future things.

    Most of the time I leave a Marvel movie jazzed about what I’ve seen and excited about what is to come. This time, of course, was a much different experience.

    I left the theater feeling at least some of the grief that Coogler, Wright, and Boseman’s friends and co-workers feel. This is what the filmmakers intended. It’s a stirring tribute to Boseman and it resonates with real emotion.

    Those of us who grieve know that the pain endures.

    But joy comes in the morning.

  • Dune

    It is 2023 and I am watching Dune 2. I enjoy the visual style again and am comforted that the story of Paul Atredies is completed. Every element of it comes from the book and so I am not surprised by much but the visual effects are the best we can do in the mid-2020s and the director is the best to ever hold a long shot since Stanley Kubrick or — given it’s setting — I guess I should say David Lean. 

    The spice must flow. 

    It is 1984 and David Lynch has released his version of Dune. I do not see it as I am six and no one thinks it is appropriate for me. Pulitzer Prize-winning Film Critic Roger Ebert gives it one star and calls it a ‘real mess.’ Later critics will be kinder. A friend will urge me to watch it before seeing the 2021 Dune.

    I try but give up 30 minutes or so into it. I might have lasted an hour. The last thing I remember is Baron Harkonen escaping his poisoning death again. I think of poor doomed Leto Atreides. Forever required to die and give Paul a reason for vengeance. And I think, you know, Hamlet’s father always gets the short end of the stick.

    The spice must flow. 

    It is the late 1990s and I am in High School. I read books like they are water. Few payday weekends pass without three trips: a visit to the comic book shop, then a jaunt to FYE for a CD, and then I walk down the hall of a mall —  which has not yet been destroyed by a hurricane or humanity’s need to shop at home in their underwear — to my last stop. It is a Waldenbooks where I will pick a new novel.

    I choose Frank Herbert’s Dune. 
    It moves me in a way few books do. Along with Heinlein’s, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress it quickly becomes my favorite science fiction novel.

    Sometime later I grab Dune Messiah. The second book in the series. I bounce right off it giving up 30 pages in. Sometime later a friend will tell me of Paul’s final fate. I never try to read more Dune. 

    The spice must flow.

    It is 2000 and the Sci-Fi channel releases Dune the miniseries. I find it amazing. It is faithful to the book and has stunning computer-generated graphics. The story is finally given justice in a live-action thing. I can’t wait for what else the Sci Fi channel will do with this technology and a world of great science fiction books that can be adapted. 

    They do movies about tornadoes with sharks inside them until all of what is known as cable television becomes irrelevant. The world of malls and cable television passes away.

    Dune     remains. 

    The spice must flow.

    It is the mid-1970s and Alejandro Jodorowsky is tapped to direct Dune. I am not yet born. As Dune 2021 makes its way to cinemas I will learn that there is a documentary about Jodorowsky’s attempt. I think I should see it but I never do. News reports tell me that Jodorwosky ultimately failed but that he pulled together an impressive list of imaginative artists, writers, and thinkers. One of the great comic book artists of all time, Jean “Moebius” Giraud, creates a 3000-piece storyboard. H.R. Geiger, who created the alien in Alien, is part of the team. 

    The documentary notes that the storyboards and other work by this group make the rounds in Hollywood. It argues that Star Wars, Terminator, Alien, and a host of other movie science fiction have their genesis in this failure.

    In the present this makes me think that perhaps that’s why I don’t have the religious fervor for Dune 2021 that many others experience. Perhaps I have just seen too many versions of this story in one form or another to care as much. 

    The spice must flow. 

    It is October 22, 2021, and Dune is released in theaters and on HBO Max. I watch it at home over the weekend. It is what I expected. God Tier visuals. A familiar story. Director Denis Villeneuve clearly doesn’t feel the need to explain much or engage in character-building dialogue. I think this is probably the right choice. 

    The score is as impressive as the movie. The filmmakers treat a story with giant sandworms and villains who are evil for evil’s sake as if it is Shakespeare. Or as Jadorworsky once described it, Proust.

    There is no flaw here. Nothing is wrong. It is Dune. Or at least, it is the first third of Dune. Half of Dune is still Dune. It will forever be Dune. It is as it should be. 

    Later that week a co-worker asks me what I think of Dune. 

    “Well … it’s loud,” I say. 

    We both laugh. But behind the laughter, I feel something else. Perhaps I have grown tired of Dune. Of this story. Of these people. I want to go somewhere else, I want to see a new story. Perhaps I should create one. 

    Instead, I write a long review of Dune for an app on the pocket computer that we colloquially refer to as a phone. I still use my phone to make phone calls. Those younger than me hate phone calls. Thinking of this makes me feel old. 

    It also nags at me that I never saw this Dune in IMAX. But two weeks pass and I don’t get the chance. Life gets in the way. Dune is replaced by Marvel’s The Eternals. The world moves on. 

    For the next few weeks, my coworkers and I will stop one another and say, ‘The spice must flow.’

    Sometimes we do, ‘fear is the mind-killer.’ Though none of us can get all the way through it. 

    It is 1957 and writer Frank Herbert is in Florence, Oregon. He becomes enamored of the dunes. The US Department of Agriculture is trying to use poverty grass to stabilize the area. Herbert considers the land and comes up with a story about religion, drugs, and ecology. 

    He spends five years writing and revising it. Twenty publishers reject it. It finally comes to life in 1965. It sells poorly and the editor who took a chance on it is fired. 

    Over time, it is recognized as a masterpiece. Herbert spends the rest of his life writing sequels. 

    The spice must flow.

    Roger Ebert gives Dune (1984) a 1 star review

    Syfy’s Dune Miniseries is the Most Okay Adaptation of the Book to Date

    Is Jodorowsky’s Dune the greatest film never made?

  • Mikey and Nicky

    Grimey tension. 

    I think that’s what I can tell you about Mikey and Nicky, a 1976 crime film starring Peter Falk and John Cassavettes as two gangsters who spend a long night waiting for the inevitable. 

    Written and directed by Elaine May and very much in the style of crime films from the 1970s. 

    I’d never heard of it, and a friend, knowing the kinds of things I like recommended it. 

    So let’s start where most people are going to check out: this movie looks bad. Shot in an ultra-realistic style and awash in 70s noir darkness it very much feels different from what most of us visually expect from a movie. 

    If you told me that May stole a camera and then shot the film outlaw style without getting any permits, permission, or other actors outside of her two leads I would not have been surprised. 

    That’s obviously not true as we get bit parts from great actors like M. Emmet Walsh, William Hickey, and Ned Beatty. Beatty is perfect in everything and here he gets to play the heavy. That’s always fun. 

    But this looks icky. And that’s probably a visual choice by the director but I also imagine there was not a lot of money to be spent on sets or costumes or lighting. You can see what you probably need to see. And if the sound and the visuals are a little off well let’s just chalk it up to an enthusiasm for realism. 

    The plot is simple and the emotions are complex. Nicky (Cassavetes) is in trouble. He calls his old pal Mikey (Falk) to help him out. And the two hang out together as Nicky tries to escape the mob and Mikey (spoiler) tries to set him up to get killed. 

    Cassavetes burns bright. He’s not so much a human being as he is a breathing example of nervous dread. 

    Falk is friendly and warm. Even though he has dark plans. 

    Meanwhile, IMDB claims that Falk would start shooting Columbo in the midst of the behind-the-scenes drama on this flick. And you see here the charm that would eventually lead to him becoming an iconic TV detective. 

    There isn’t any detective work here. It’s just Nicky is already stressed beyond imagining when the movie opens and Mikey trying to pretend to be a pal to an old friend. 

    They talk, they visit a graveyard, and they see their wives and Nicky’s girlfriend. What Nicky knows and doesn’t know about Mikey’s plans are part of the movie but only a small part. 

    Much of it is just wrapped up in two old friends trying to deal with each other while both of them are under the kind of pressure that turns coal into diamonds. Or in this case, just crushes you into dust.  

    An accusation in a graveyard made me cackle. 

    “You take that back!” Mikey shouts. As if it wasn’t true. 

    There’s a damning situation for both of them involving Nicky’s mistress where both men prove that they are repugnant. Even if their lives could be saved, their souls were lost years ago. 

    There are a couple of scenes late in the movie that suggest Mikey is trying to save Nicky from the hit. He leads the hitman on a chase that turns up nothing. And then in a bit of business I enjoyed, he tries to negotiate with his boss over whether or not the hitman will be allowed to wait at his home in case Nicky shows up. 

    I viewed it as Mikey trying to stave off the murder. But my friend probably called it correctly. 

    “He just doesn’t want to see it,” he said. 

    This movie is a hard one to recommend. There are few people in my life, I think, who would have the patience to get through the rough visuals or the subject matter. 

    Here are a few other flicks that probably compare: The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Mean Streets, and Killing Them Softly. 

    Another flick this reminded me of was Uncut Gems, which was a heart attack disguised as a movie. 

    Technically, this is a mob movie. But there is no glamour here, no fancy nights at the Copa or lavish weddings. 

    It’s just Mikey and Nicky living and dying in the gutter.

    Showing Off: Elaine May’s ‘Mikey And Nicky’

    In ‘Mikey and Nicky,’ Elaine May Nails a Pair of Desperate Characters

  • Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

    Maybe this is how Mr. Yankovic remembers it. 

    For a certain guy at a certain age loving ‘Weird’ Al Yankovic comes with your dad card. When I was a wee lad Michael Jackson was the biggest pop star in the world. 

    And then one day I turned on MTV and there was Yankovic dressed as a perfect parody of the King of Pop and blowing up to immense proportions while singing, “I’m fat.” 

    When you are the right age a pitch-perfect parody of a pop song with lyrics about things like Rocky Road, Star Wars, and the Amish is the funniest thing in the world. 

    I got older and moved on the other musical pursuits and Yankovic kept on truckin’. Do the same thing long enough and well enough and you become an icon and an elder statesman. 

    I hadn’t thought about Al in years but I was meeting with a computer guy one day and his phone rang. The ringtone was White and Nerdy.  

    And I thought, “Here are my people.”

    So now we have Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. It’s a feature film, that you can watch on the Roku channel for free. 

    Depending on your views on theatrical releases and the explosion of content in the streaming space this is either the best thing in the world (that someone actually made this) or the end of civilization (that it wasn’t released in theaters and also that someone actually made this). 

    Daniel Radcliffe plays Al, Rainn Wilson brings a dark edge to Dr. Demento (Al’s real-life mentor) and Evan Rachel Wood plays Madonna. 

    Every scene, no matter how ridiculous, is played perfectly straight. 

    It starts as a standard music biopic. Al’s parents hate his love of music. But a traveling salesman comes along and presents him with the opportunity to learn what the movie suggests is the most dangerous of all the musical instruments — the accordion. 

    After this, the flick seems content to roll along as a standard parody of a music biopic. It’s competing with the likes of Walk Hard The Dewey Cox Story. This is all solid work. 

    Al’s dad wants him to work with him at the factory. I laughed hard at Al, exasperated, screaming, “You won’t even tell me what you make there.”

    Because it never matters what the horrible job is, whether it is farming or factory work, it’s just an excuse for a bad life the musician must escape. 

    You get that creation scene where the musician sees something and then immediately writes a massive hit song. This one involved bologna. 

    The movie also does a fine job being a showcase of some — though far from all — of the best Yankovic parody songs. I particularly enjoyed the accordion rendition of Beat on the Brat. 

    Then there is a Hollywood pool party that is a blast from start to finish, fun in that gold-plated mansion that every music star seems to buy, and a drug trip. 

    The movie has a lot of fun dreaming up a relationship between Al and Madonna. 

    And then, just as you start to get bored with it, the movie takes a hard right turn in a different direction. 

    There is so much joy there too. How often does a movie, even a comedy, decides that it can do whatever it wants. This throws off the shackles of the formula and basically dares the audience to complain. It is similar to when the cowboys in Blazing Saddles ended up in a musical.

    Kudos to everyone involved. I was driving a day later and almost had to pull over. I was thinking about something in the movie again and it made me howl. 

    I will say that I do wish we could also have an actual Al Yankovic biography. I mean, I’m interested in peeking behind the curtain. I suspect all I would ever see is a funhouse mirror with accordions all the way down. 

    But, I suspect, an actual biopic will never happen. 

    Nothing can kill a joke like explaining it.

    The true story behind Weird: The Al Yankovic Story — here’s what really happened

    Here’s Everyone We Spotted At Dr. Demento’s Epic Pool Party In Weird: The Al Yankovic Story