10 Pieces of Content I Loved, Liked (or Loathed)
Sam writes about 10 things from the pop culture world that thrilled, tickled, transported, touched, or, perhaps, triggered him — November & December 2022 Edition (it's the holidays, gimme a break!)
(1) BABYLON!
Below is a short text exchange between my friend Bret and me about the film Babylon:
Damien Chazelle’s (Whiplash, La La Land, First Man) decadent and depraved study of 1920s Hollywood at the dawn of films with sound (“talkies”) invokes reactions like Bret’s for a number of reasons. Oh, and it’s also the best thing I’ve seen this year.
There is no shortage of “big” director moments: a dozen showy whip-pans, one-ers, rapid push-ins, and sweeping crane shots — it’s as if Chazelle wanted the audience to say, “holy shit, this dude can DIRECT direct!” And I’ll be damned if that’s not the takeaway. Chazelle looked at Scorsese’s Goodfellas and PTA’s Boogie Nights and said, “hold my high-gravity IPA, mothafuckaz, and WATCH THIS SHIT!” Crucially, these big moments serve the excess theme of the story and inform the characters, which is what I feel has been missed (or more likely ignored) in the criticism of the film.
Speaking of excess —
(2) Margot Robbie in Babylon!
Margot Robbie deserves special praise and her very own section! Playing the fictional firecracker up-and-coming silent film star Nellie LaRoy (based in part on real life figure Clara Bow), Robbie is completely and utterly fearless, and one of the truly great actors working today. Like the slobbering suckers LaRoy seduces throughout the film for her own career ambitions, my lower jaw unhinged as she slithered in and out of the frame. There are not enough superlatives to describe her performance, but I’ll try: EXPLOSIVE, ELECTRIC, EXHILARATING, EXHAUSTING.
By way of example, in the moment LaRoy finally gets her big break early in the film, the director asks her to cry on command. LaRoy convincingly dials up the waterworks. “CUT!” says the director. “Can you do it again, but with less tears?” Robbie glances over: “sure, ya want one tear or two?” After locking the scene, the director, in awe of LaRoy’s performance asks, “how do you do that? Just tear up at the snap of a finger, over and over, like it’s nothing at all?” Nellie looks at her. Takes the question in. Thinks. Then shrugs. And, as though it’s truly no big deal -- “I just think of home.”
LET’S. FUCKING. GO!
(3) The unexplainably bad reviews of Babylon!
Babylon receiving similar reviews to Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker is fucking preposterous and objectively wrong1. The critics seem to have colluded to shit on this effort as “too much excess.” In 20 years when it receives a critical reassessment, I’ll be itching to proclaim that I was on the right side of history.
FYI, Rotten Tomatoes is an often flawed tool and not a definitive measure of quality. The platform is just one way to gather information about a film or TV show and should be used along with other sources. Read reviews and watch a film or TV show with an open mind, which is what the critics should have done when screening Babylon.
(4) Tom Cruise dying for all of our sins.
With a crazed grin and comically manic demeanor, Thomas Cruise seeks only to thrill us by performing increasingly dangerous stunts and risking death on a daily basis while on set. And we thank him for it.
For Tom so loved the world that he gave us the Mission Impossible films. In the name of Ethan Hunt, Maverick, and Jack Reacher… amen.
(5) Crimes of the Future
Written and directed by the self-crowned king of sickos David Cronenberg, I found Crimes of the Future to be as torturous as its surgical subject matter in all the worst ways. Reducing a plot about mutated humans who no longer feel pain into a boring and plodding affair is, in itself, an astounding achievement. “Surgery is the new sex,” says Kristen Stewart, the only interesting part of the movie. Well, sex is the new slumber, because I was meticulously inspecting the inside of my eyelids by the third act.
I acknowledge that taste and whether something is “good” is mostly subjective, but I objectively can’t understand why anyone would recommend COTF. I am reminded of the kids that promulgated a band’s shitty album (e.g., Metallica’s Saint Anger), but when challenged about the quality of the album, they would retort, “you just don’t get it, this is actually their best album — it’s experimental.” This movie is experimental in that the shots are flat and the sets look like Tommy Wiseau consulted on their construction. Just watch The Brood, Scanners, or The Fly again and save your mind from the self-mutilation on the screen.
(6) Atlanta, Season 4
Atlanta is marked by bombastic and absurdist set pieces, and season 4 does not disappoint in that way, but the quiet moments are the scenes that have since stuck with me, particularly the following two examples (both featuring Donald Glover’s character Earn):
Earn, while in therapy, finally reveals what happened at Princeton and why he was expelled. The show does not unnecessarily linger on or treat this as some sort of big reveal, opting, instead, for a quieter scene. Glover gifts us with a very personal moment, and he really has something to say about men and our general refusal to better (or even acknowledge) our mental health (or lack thereof).
Earn, when taking Van and Lottie on a camping trip, seems ill-equipped as an outdoorsman (buying a tent that is ten sizes too large and therefore difficult to heat with body temps), but the episode takes on a wistful tone as Earn tries to convince Van to join him in a career move to LA. For the first half of the episode, director Hiro Murai seems content to just show this young family enjoying the sights and sounds of the forest around them. The episode concludes in the tent, as Earn tearfully explains that Van just isn’t “Lottie’s mom,” but is also the woman he loves.
Glover’s stunning performance in both of these scenes is understated, but viewers can sense sadness. Earn is a character that we’ve come to learn was sexually assaulted by a trusted family member as a child. As a result of trauma (and life in general), Earn is guarded and does not easily trust. Most of his emotions throughout the show’s run manifest as annoyance with Alfred and Darius’s hijinks.
Earn’s goal in the show has been to escape poverty, and he’s now on top of the world. As Paper Boi’s manager, he’s finally achieved money and success, but what he actually seeks is (1) a cathartic resolution of the tragedies in his life; (2) and his family. At the end of these two scenes, he now has both.
It’s really high-level stuff, and I feel like Glover hasn’t received his proper due for his performance — a perfect blend of comedy and drama in his own private mix-tape.
(7) Glass Onion
The world’s best detective Benoit Blanc is back in another Knives Out mystery from Rian Johnson! This edition takes place on a private island in Greece and lampoons an obscenely rich tech bro Miles Bron played by Edward Norton (doing a veiled Elon Musk satire) and his menagerie of privileged friends who have each benefitted from their relationship — the murderous shenanigans ensue faster than you can say “motive”!
I went to a fairly packed screening of Glass Onion before it hit Netflix, and not surprisingly, I had a blast! Kathy Kennedy during the rollout of The Last Jedi said, “Rian moves a camera as well as Steven Spielberg.” This level of praise and comparison to the patron saint of filmmaking is borderline sacrilegious, and maybe Kennedy incepted me, but Johnson is so intentional about his framing and blocking that I’ve started to believe. Take, for example:
Much has been written about Johnson’s lucrative deal with Netflix for at least two Knives Out installments (for 450M! — my dude’s as rich as Miles Bron!!!), and he clearly has fun channeling his inner Agatha Christie, but I think I’m ready for Johnson to conclude this phase and move towards another original story.
Lastly, there are two lines from Glass Onion that have since stuck with me. The first is Ed Norton strumming the chords to “Under the Bridge” on “Paul McCartney’s acoustic guitar” (Paul being left-handed would never have written a song on a righty set-up, the first subtle clue that Miles is an idiot) remarking, “AK and Flea get all the credit but Frusciante really is the heart of the Chili Peppers.” If you know, you know, but now I’m worried that I’m a tech bro idiot because I sincerely echo Miles’s sentiments. The second is from Blanc delivered to Birdie Jay (played by a still gorgeous Kate Hudson), who is a self-purported “Twitter truth teller” but in reality simply tweets derogatory and hateful things (e.g., didn’t know “Jewy” referred to Jews, she just thought it meant “cheap”). Blanc takes a quiet moment with Birdie to dispense a nugget:
“Are you calling me dangerous??” replies Birdie, totally oblivious to the wisdom. Show, don’t tell — Johnson’s knives remain razor sharp.
(8) White Noise
Somehow, Don DeLillo’s 1985 satirical novel about consumerism and the family unit the face of natural disaster escaped me. White Noise seems so deep in my wheelhouse that I must have simply ignored the paperback sitting on my dresser.
Nevertheless, during the rollout of Baumbach’s film adaptation, the common pop culture public refrain was, “how is he going to do this?” Many fans of the book claimed the text as unfilmable.
They weren’t wrong, but Baumbach’s adaptation, while flawed, remains as razor sharp as DeLillo’s original vision. Baumbach—a frequent sucker of the east coast elite teat—is well-suited to lampoon academia. Central protagonists J.A.K. Gladley & his wife Babette speak to each other like they are lecturing at your local community college, but you never wonder why they’re talking like that. Their precocious brood of step and biological children are even more guilty of intellectualism. The “Airborne Toxic Event” (f/k/a the feathery plume and black billowing cloud in a bit of circular slapstick dialogue that made me lol2) that kicks the story into gear and our characters into chaotic quarantine is entirely absurd, but also we just emerged3 from a global pandemic in real life, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I’m as long winded as a Gladley lecture on Nazism, and it took me a few paragraphs to get to a recommendation: yes, this is indeed a film worth watching, if anything for the LCD Soundsystem closing credit song (accompanied by a choreographed supermarket musical), written and recorded for the film.
(9) Why does everyone in a Noah Baumbach film talk like Noah Baumbach? And why do I enjoy it?
Noah Baumbach’s greatest written line, in my opinion, is: “Well, I haven’t ‘been to Prague’ been to Prague…” spoken by liberal arts amateur philosopher and privileged graduate douche Grover in Baumbach’s debut film Kicking & Screaming. His characters’ dialogue is marked by cross-talk, overt emotions, and guarded characters, but all of the words unmistakably sound like Noah Baumbach.
Baumbach is certainly not the only culprit. Tarantino has been routinely criticized for having everyone from a comic book salesman to a bank robber to a hitman to an escaped slave talk with a level of panache, wit, and unmatched pop culture acumen rivaling QT himself.
In screenwriting generally, the goal is to write characters that are different, have different experiences, and, as a result, speak differently. But some writers get away with breaking tradition — typically the ones that win Oscars, so maybe I’m overthinking.
(10) The Cocaine Bear Trailer
So the Snakes on a Plane Cocaine Bear trailer dropped and it’s predictably absurd. For you drug-addled mammal neophytes, here is the plot summary:
After a 500-pound black bear consumes a significant amount of cocaine and embarks on a drug-fueled rampage, an eccentric gathering of cops, criminals, tourists, and teenagers assemble in a Georgia forest.
This movie looks, in the parlance of our times, like it will totally fuckin’ rip. Let’s ride, fellas.
I will take literally any opportunity to shit on this film, which is the worst thing I’ve ever seen and should, by itself, blacklist JJ Abrams from Hollywood.
Also, “Your Dad wants credit for fording the creek” as the family station wagon floats down the water made me lol.
The pandemic will never truly be “over,” but at some point, we will acknowledge some sort of conclusion.