Dark Highways

Category: Uncategorized

  • 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