CHUNGKING EXPRESS: Paranoia Agent

This review was requested by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Kar-Wai Wong
Writer: Kar-Wai Wong
Cast: Brigitte Lin, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Faye Wong, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Valerie Chow, Jinquan Chen
Runtime: 102 mins.
1994

Chungking Express is a movie about intimate urban encounters. The ways we brush elbows with entire universes that we will never know. The jittering pace and the frenetic energy of a busy day or an exciting night in the city, manifested by a choppy framerate that blurs pedestrian movement and turns the film's incredible fluorescent light design into sickly rainbow smears. The city is the main character, maybe the only character.

That city is Hong Kong, though it's as much about Every City as it is about the particularities of HK. The movie settles us in with some noir voiceover from our supposed protagonist, known only as Cop 663. Beat cop, lovelorn romantic, a mysterious woman of crime in a blonde wig... Chungking has all the ingredients of a tidy little thriller. Then it takes those ingredients, throws them at the wall, and does a little softshoe routine to smear them across the kitchen tiles.

THEATRE OF BLOOD: The Bard's Price

This review was requested by Brian Kapustik. Many thanks to Brian for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon. Be warned, spoilers abound.

Director: Douglas Hickox
Writers: Anthony Greville-Bell, Stanley Mann (idea), John Kohn (idea)
Cast: Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Ian Hendry, Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Robert Coote, Jack Hawkins, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Robert Morley, Dennis Price
Runtime: 104 mins.
1973 

Theatre of Blood (also stylized as Theater of Blood depending on where you look) follows the exploits of the ghost (?) of Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart. Lionheart has returned from death to mercilessly exterminate a cabal of theatre critics one by one, all because of their excoriating treatment of him in the papers. Each gloriously ironic killing follows the template of a Shakespeare play that Lionheart headlined in his final season. I present this review in ten segments, one for each of Shakespeare's works as represented in Theatre of Blood.

SCHITT'S CREEK Season 1

This review was requested by Sonja Dominguez. Many thanks to Sonja for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Episode 1 - Our Cup Runneth Over

Schitt's Creek is a story about opulence gouged. This cuts two ways. It's exciting to have a tiptop production quality show that is so explicitly about class in America. The emperors robbed of their clothing, and banished to a podunk town that they have ironic ownership of. We see the underside of the great American success story.

But you can't have your cake and eat it too. This show asks us to sympathize with a family of rich entitled white people, the exact folks who are killing the world hardest and fastest. Even more troublesome and potentially tone deaf is the pilot's insistence that this family's wealth is not being repossessed because of anything wrong they did, but because of the shady dealings of another (unseen) member of the clan. This retreat from responsibility means the show is likely aware of its central dilemma: How can we make a show about the redemption of rich monsters without making them so monstrous that the audience can no longer sympathize? Or to put it more bluntly... nobody makes millions of dollars without stepping on the necks of thousands of people.

The writers are therefore savvy to begin the show by emphasizing the gouge rather than the opulence. The first scene shows the government ransacking their mansion, which is both an economical storytelling choice and a way to shift our focus away from the inherent evil of millionaires.

This leads directly to the first joke of the show that really lands. The family learns that the government neglected to repossess one asset, the town of Schitt's Creek, which the family purchased as a joke. "You mean you actually bought that town? I thought you photoshopped the deed," the family says to the father, who responds, "Of course I bought the town! The joke was owning the town! Why would I photoshop the deed? The joke was owning the town!" This bit is both about the excesses of the rich, and about a father who takes having fun with his family seriously. It emerges nicely from Eugene Levy's performance, which I already like quite a bit. There are layers in the way he later overreacts to the weird but amicable presence of Roland Schitt (Chris Elliott), the greasy town mayor.

Not all the actors come off so well right away. The daughter Alexis Rose (Annie Murphy) is little more than a mediocre valley girl impression at this point, although she does get an absurdist scene that consists entirely of her saying "OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK." on the phone while her brother David (Dan Levy) gawks aimlessly at their new motel home.

The real highlight of the episode is its production design, especially the props. At the local diner the simple act of a waitress handing the family their enormous laminated menus completely dominates the scene. There's a gag that consists entirely of the mother Moira (Catherine O'Hara) holding a lightbulb as if it were a foreign object. And of course, her gaudy earrings that go missing and lead to this fantastic piece of dialogue: "I politely accused that girl of stealing my earrings and she turned ice cold!" I have a feeling the props design is going to be a backbone of the show, both from a design and a direction perspective. What better way to talk about the rich and the poor than showcasing the Stuff that they respectively surround themselves with?

All in all the pilot is modest, far from spectacular. That may be a smart approach, familiarizing us with the character dynamics before adding some razzle-dazzle. That focus on character means I don't yet know how the show will tackle its tricky class themes. I will be very curious to find out.

7

IN BRUGES: Sin Stooge

This review was requested by Rafael Schneider. Many thanks to Rafael for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Martin McDonagh
Writer: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clémence Poésy, Thekla Reuten, Jordan Prentice
Runtime: 107 mins.
2008

I have long wondered what to think about the very white, very male, very cis vulgarity that runs its tendrils through In Bruge's screenplay. The jokes are intentionally shocking in their casual malice. Writer/director Martin McDonagh intends protagonist Ray (Colin Farrell) to be a lovable hitman asshole with a heart of gold, which raises interesting questions: why are we in America so eager to condone and even celebrate physical violence in our media, but verbal violence is off the table? And can that verbal violence ever crack open our cultural norms in a cathartic way? Ray's brash ignorance lets him stumble into surprisingly honest conversations with people leading quite different lives. So we still wonder, does this screenplay excuse the violence of white men? Does it excoriate it? Or does it get at a truth deeper than purity politics allows-- the webs of contradiction at the heart of our culture that can only be confronted through perverse honesty? Ultimately, I don't know, but you don't get an onscreen discussion of the coming race war this raw and real unless you're willing to be offensive along the way.

Given the tone deaf treatment of race in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and the uneven meta-flailing of Seven Psychopaths, it's safe to say that McDonagh's flagrantly offensive impulses only work some of the time. In Bruges is the pinnacle of the McDonagh style on film. One of the screenplay's best tricks is that each time a character delivers an offensive or inhumane joke, the movie makes a point of weaving tragedy into the joke's callback. What once struck us as humor in ill taste takes on a surprising resonance when it leads to a real relationship, a moment of intimacy, or a horrifying misunderstanding.

McDonagh is writing about flawed people, broken murderers. Ray's attitudes about others are callous, but so are his feelings about himself. The slow reveal of the way Ray masks his own pain with childish lashing out offers a keen character study. It's also a smart foil for the warmth and soulfulness of Ray's partner in assassinry, Ken (Brendan Gleeson). This is a story about condemnation, redemption, and purgatory. It's also a riproaring comedy.

HALLOWEEN II: Boo

Check out the first review in this holiday tradition: Halloween

Director: Rick Rosenthal
Writers: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Charles Cyphers, Jeffrey Kramer, Lance Guest, Pamela Susan Shoop, Hunter von Leer, Dick Warlock
Runtime: 92 mins.
1981

By every conceivable measurement of artistic merit, Halloween II is inferior to Halloween. It feels like exactly what it is, a new director trying to fit into his predecessor's shoes. It doesn't help that the newbie is the undistinguished Rick Rosenthal, and the predecessor is the legendary John Carpenter. There is no panache in this sequel, no verve, just mimicry. This is apparent the moment the film starts, which retreads the ending of the first film using a lot of the same footage. Somehow it's much worse this time around. This sinking feeling is confirmed by an early replication of the much-lauded first-person tracking shot that so successfully grounded us in the implacable perspective of Michael Myers. Like a small child putting on their dad's oversized business coat and trundling out the door with an empty briefcase, this retread lacks any of the original's sense of purpose.

All griping about Rosenthal is more than deserved, but the real issue is the screenplay. Shockingly, this does come from Carpenter and writing partner Debra Hill. Maybe his directing was what made the first film special, or maybe Carpenter and Hill half-assed a project they didn't much care for, but their work on this film is almost a slap in the face to the legendary Halloween, a movie so influential that it pioneered the slasher genre of horror.

The first of many baffling choices is to bring back the only truly compelling character from the original, but sideline her for almost the entire runtime. Yes, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is back, and this time she's... unconscious in a hospital bed. You see, the events of the first film did a number on her, and despite her frantic objections, the doctors have put her under. Cue Michael Myers slashing a bloody path through the city until he locates his true target once more.

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES: Pangs

This review was requested by Alexis Howland. Many thanks to Alexis for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Isao Takahata
Writer: Isao Takahata
Cast: Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi
Runtime: 89 mins.
1988

Whether Grave of the Fireflies is a movie for you depends on your relationship to escapism. If you watch movies to escape grim reality, you'll want to stay far away from Grave. The film is itself interested in escapism as a subject, but this takes the form of demonstrating with full force the unflinching, brutal reality that lurks behind blessed moments of escape. To put it bluntly, this is a film that spends its entire runtime showing you two children dying of starvation in wartime Japan, and it is physically emotionally and spiritually convincing. Only you can know whether that's something you should experience.

As for me, I am always seeking movies that can make me feel anything, even if that feeling is discomfort or outright despair. Grave presents a rich and multifaceted despair, to the point that it's hard to know exactly what to say about it. Yes, the movie succeeds in exploring miserable territory, and yes, it hurts. The experience is so worthwhile because that's not all the film does; it uses its exploration of misery to pinpoint an important conundrum of the human spirit. In our times of greatest misery, we can find true expressions of love and care to anchor us.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES: Batshit

This review was requested by Don Rebel. Many thanks to Don for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer
Cast: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Matthew Modine
Runtime: 164 mins.
2012

By all accounts, Christopher Nolan was devastated by the death of Heath Ledger. It would be garish and unproductive to speculate too much about what the third and final film in Nolan's Batman trilogy would have accomplished if it weren't for this tragedy, though we can't help but wonder. The Dark Knight Rises is a movie with heart, perhaps more than any other film in Nolan's oeuvre, but it is not a film made by an artist whose heart is invested. One can imagine a culminating film with four major factions: the police, the Batman, the ideological warfare of Bane, and the anti-ideological chaos of Joker. Such a film could have lived up to the 'battle for the soul of Gotham' moniker that Rises attempts to fulfill, and such a film may have even justified the epic two hour forty-four minute runtime. This is not that film.

What we get instead is a shaggy beast that shoots for the stars and too often lands in the mud. The predominant characteristic of the narrative is confusion. Motivations are baffling, goals are incoherent and often outright hidden, entire subplots exist detached from the movie around them, and the massive rubber band ball of themes contradicts itself too many times to count. This is most apparent in the gradual unveiling of the central villain, Bane (Tom Hardy). At first Bane and his cultists gain power by working with the corrupt corporate class of Gotham, but this is meant to hide their real plan: to empower the underclass to revolt against the rich, powerful 1%ers. This plan is, in turn, a masquerade for yet another even more secreter plan to blow up the entire city with a nuclear bomb after demonstrating to the world... that people will turn violent if they are trapped and threatened with death, I guess? This plan becomes even more convoluted when it is revealed that Bane was not its architect, but rather a lapdog for the even most secretest villain, the abysmally performed Talia Al Ghul (Marion Cotillard), daughter of the late Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson), who has been disguised as a wealthy socialite, but who is actually the boss/mother/daughter figure of Bane.

INDEPENDENCE DAY: The Arse of July

This review was requested by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Roland Emmerich
Writers: Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich
Cast: Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Robert Loggia, Vivica A. Fox, Randy Quaid
Runtime: 145 mins.
1996

Independence Day, released in 1996, is the first post-9/11 movie.* A malicious Outside Threat dares to undermine our national spirit. These terrorists target recognizable monuments to demoralize the people. Meanwhile, intrepid and heroic Americans come together to fight back. It has all the ingredients of post-9/11 cinema five years before 9/11, which leads me to believe that Independence Day unconsciously functions as a blueprint for America's infamously ugly response to that national tragedy.

*There's even an onscreen countdown timer in the film that reads 9:11 at one point, for you conspiracy-minded folks out there.

This is the most famous Roland Emmerich/Dean Devlin film, and like every Roland Emmerich/Dean Devlin film, it is pretty terrible in most of the ways that count. The dialogue is empty of significance, the character arcs waffle between shabby and nonexistent, the suspense is awkwardly grafted together with countdown timers, and its premise is as basic as you can imagine. Aliens just start blowing stuff up. That's it. Independence Day does manage to succeed where it really counts for movies like this: scale and spectacle.

IT LIVES AGAIN: It's A-Living!

This review is the third in a Larry Cohen retrospective commissioned by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon. All other film reviews in this retrospective can be found here.

Director: Larry Cohen
Writer: Larry Cohen
Cast: Frederic Forrest, Kathleen Lloyd, John P. Ryan, John Marley, Andrew Duggan, Eddie Constantine
Runtime: 91 mins.
1978

When making a sequel, especially a horror sequel, the greatest hurdle is figuring out how to make it both fresh and familiar. Horror already requires a perfect storm of plot contrivance; a sequel requires contrivance to strike twice. Mystery and novelty are important currency for suspense, and their power is tremendously diminished with each new serving of the same formula. Despite all that, Larry Cohen's sequel to It's Alive played so well with its test audiences that the producers thought the crowds were full of ringers!

It Lives Again, also known as It's Alive II, also known as It's Alive 2: It Lives Again begins with another great atmospheric opening credits sequence, this one shot using Cohen's own swimming pool. We are eased into the film with a baby shower that's just wrapping up. The parents Eugene Scott (Frederic Forrest) and Jody Scott (Kathleen Lloyd) are positively glowing with good vibes, until they notice a stranger who hasn't trickled out with the rest of the crowd. The man is Frank Davis (John P. Ryan). He tells a familiar story about a mutant baby and a social system that wasn't ready to handle it. Frank's baby may have died at the hands of the police, but there are some who believe that such babies should be cared for and studied rather than exterminated at birth. Frank has reason to believe the Scotts's baby is another such mutant, and that the government is already standing by for forced infanticide.

THE OLD GUARD: Millennials

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Writer: Greg Rucka
Cast: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Harry Melling, Veronica Ngo
Runtime: 125 mins.
2020

[If you don't know anything about this movie... one of the great pleasures of the film is the reveal of the premise. I recommend it if you're looking for a solid but flawed action movie; spoilers from hereon out.]

The Old Guard is historically noteworthy: the first major blockbuster to be directed by a Black woman, and the first superhero film to explicitly portray a queer romance.* It's an embarrassment to the industry that neither happened until 2020, but that's good old white supremacist Hollywood for you.

*Give or take a throwaway gag in Deadpool 2.

The film follows four immortal mercenaries who have made it their life's work to combat evil in the world. They have fought with armies, hunted down terrorist cells, and prevented disasters under the leadership of the ancient Andromache, or as her fellow mercenaries call her, Andy (Charlize Theron). A certain FBI agent (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has learned of their existence, and is collaborating with corrupt pharmaceutical company CEO Merrick (Harry Melling) to capture the secret of immortality. The squad aren't worried about being killed thanks to their regenerative powers, but they understand that this sort of cat and mouse game inevitably leads to capture and torture. Just as the situation is getting spicy, visions of a new immortal accost their senses-- ex-marine Nile (KiKi Layne) who just survived being killed in action by an Afghani terrorist. They must convince Nile to join them on the run, or she will suffer an unenviable fate.

There's a conspicuous discordance between the two above paragraphs. Namely that the creative team on this film is extremely diverse for an action movie, yet the plot description sounds like any other white male colonizer-mindset action slugfest. The film casts an all-woman team of marines, and it portrays them as heroic warriors rather than representatives of America's violent hegemony. The film casts a renowned Black actor as an FBI agent who turns out to be one of the good FBI agents. The film villainizes the evil white CEO, but then doesn't connect his villainy to the capitalist system that created him. The film is trying to pull a fast one by serving up patriarchal white supremacist politics that hide behind a diverse coat of paint. It's the 'more female CEOs!' joke taken to its natural conclusion. This Wokewashing is arguably more nefarious because it is a way for the established order to remain structurally oppressive despite making aesthetic concessions. For that reason I don't know whether or not we should applaud these milestones. Maybe a golf clap.

BOB ROBERTS: A Politics of Enjoyment

This review was requested by Alexis Howland. Many thanks to Alexis for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Tim Robbins
Writer: Tim Robbins
Cast: Tim Robbins, Giancarlo Esposito, Alan Rickman, Ray Wise, Brian Murray, Gore Vidal, Rebecca Jenkins, Harry Lennix, David Strathairn, James Spader, Helen Hunt, Jack Black, Susan Sarandon, John Cusack, Bob Balaban, Lynne Thigpen
Runtime: 102 mins.
1992

Bob Roberts begins in montage. Renowned businessman millionaire and folk singer Robert "Bob" Roberts has launched a campaign for the senate seat of Pennsylvania. At first a heavy underdog to the incumbent Democratic Senator Brickley Paiste (Gore Vidal), he has been blazing the campaign trail with concerts and photo ops specially designed to make his opponent look like an old fuddy duddy. Roberts is attractive, charismatic, and carries a message of freedom and self-determination. His music undergirds the montage as we get caught up in the fervor. It's exciting! It's fun! It's funny! Roberts is a ridiculous figure with many ridiculous figures wrapped around his finger, and the kinetic filmmaking of the first ten minutes replicates the passion that his campaign inspires.

Then it hits a wall. Roberts is interviewed for television by Kelly Noble (Lynne Thigpen), and it is here that the movie digs in. Their exchange is buffered by thinly veiled professionalism, but it's apparent that Kelly resents being within five feet of the conservative politician. She speaks her questions through gritted teeth and ghoulish smile. He answers with faux innocence and an easygoing victim complex. Kelly probes farther than she is supposed to, but Bob handles it all with infuriating grace. The cameras stop rolling and the Roberts retinue trails behind as Kelly storms for the exit. She stops to deliver a clear message to the only Black man in Roberts' entourage. "Hey brother, they make you check your skin at the door?" "Not all Black people need to think alike," he responds, and they both seethe for a moment more before she abandons him to his duties.

This bait and switch one of the many things Bob Roberts does so well. What was once a Tim Robbins character from SNL now has an entire mockumentary film built around him, and the film makes damn sure not to make the same sophomoric, pandering mistakes about politics that SNL does. Every time we believe we're having fun with this silly man and the silly things that he says, the film hammers home the dire consequences of populist rhetoric.

RETURN TO THE 36TH CHAMBER: Kung-Farce

This review is the third in a Martial Arts Movie retrospective commissioned by Arthur Robinson. Many thanks to Arthur for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon. All other film reviews in this retrospective will be found here. The first 36th Chamber review is here.

Director: Chia-Liang Liu
Writer: Kuang Ni
Cast: Chia-Hui Liu, Lung Wei Wang, Hou Hsiao, King Chu Lee
Runtime: 99 mins.
1980

In 1973, legendary spaghetti western director Sergio Leone decided to try his hand at comedy. The result was My Name Is Nobody, which he considered to be "a Sergio Leone film directed by someone else." He conceived of the film and handed it off to his loyal disciple Tonino Valerii. It's about a man named Nobody who tries to convince his idol to take on the Wild Bunch. It's a piss-take on Leone's typical mythic melodrama, bastardizing those elements with wordplay, farce, and goofy bits. Although the strongest pieces of the movie shine, it's a bit of a failed experiment. I remember the fun meta-commentary; I also remember the endless scene based entirely around a painfully long fart joke.

Return to the 36th Chamber shares a lot with My Name Is Nobody: it is a reworking of a genre masterpiece from a genre master that blends its signature style with farce, to diminished effect. There are two key differences, the first being that The 36th Chamber of Shaolin's director and star both return for the sequel. The second difference is that Return ultimately succeeds in its project.

PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE: Let Music Set You Free

This review was requested by Brian Kapustik. Many thanks to Brian for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Brian De Palma
Writer: Brian De Palma
Cast: William Finley, Paul Williams, Jessica Harper, Gerrit Graham, George Memmoli
Runtime: 91 mins.
1974

Phantom of the Paradise is as scatterbrained as its Wikipedia genre description: 'a rock musical horror comedy film.' It begins casually enough, with an opening voiceover by none other than "The Twilight Zone" voice actor Rod Serling about the infamy of Swan (Paul Williams). This titanic music producer has a stranglehold on the industry, Serling tells us, one that he wants to enrich with his new music club, The Paradise. That monologue lasts about a minute. Then we are dumped into a whirligig of stimuli as an unseen Swan watches potential musical headliners from the balcony. Swan's current cash cow, Beach Boys throwback band The Juicy Fruits, just won't do for the Grand Opening. He needs something new.

He falls in love with the music of our protagonist Winslow (William Finley), which Winslow explains is a cantata inspired by Faust.* Trouble is, Swan needs the music, not the musician. He screws Winslow out of his intellectual property in a transparently one-sided deal that really should have been obvious to Winslow considering his obsession with Faust.

*We see snippets of Winslow's cantata throughout, as well as other music acts. The Paul Williams-produced soundtrack is exactly right for what the movie is doing.

Our first indication that we're in for something bonkers comes a few minutes in, when hired muscle and talent headhunter Philbin (George Memmoli) turns to the camera and addresses us directly-- as if we ourselves are Swan. In most films a stroke this bold this early would be a statement of intent: expect more of this style to come. Here, neither voiceover nor direct address appear in the rest of the movie because it is busy advancing every other experiment it can think of. Paradise shifts its identity every scene like a quantum particle: we can never pin down exactly where it is, and we don't know how it got there, but it never becomes anything other than itself.

UNFRIENDED: Hyperlink Theatre

This review was requested by Marcus Michelen. Many thanks to Marcus for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Levan Gabriadze
Writer: Nelson Greaves
Cast: Shelley Hennig, Moses Storm, Matthew Bohrer, Renee Olstead, Jacob Wysocki, Courtney Halverson, Heather Sossaman
Runtime: 83 mins.
2015

In the late 1800s Sigmund Freud made the revolutionary claim that hysterical symptoms are not rooted only in the physiological, but issue from trauma undergone at some point in the past. Hysteria is a social disease, and must be dealt with on psychosocial terms. These studies in hysteria would unlock his theories of repression and the unconscious mind, thus inventing the framework for an entirely new understanding of the human personality. Freud argues that human behavior is never surface level; it is shrouded from ourselves by ourselves. Our pathologies exist at the nexus of personality and patriarchy, body and politic.

Today we understand that the condition Freud's contemporaries called "hysteria" was a cobbled together mass of quackery and convenient sexism. Freud's work redefines hysteria as a pathological snag in the relationship between our conscious and unconscious mind. Trauma displaces desire, and hysterical symptoms tattletale on the parts of our mind that we don't have access to. It is the job of the analyst to circumvent a patient's denial of that trauma by closing the narrative circuit.

I am invoking Freud's work to better discuss Unfriended, which is an unprecedented work in its own right. So unprecedented that it may be the only feature film of the 21st century so far to invent an entirely novel way of telling stories. I have yet to hear a term for the medium pioneered here, so I call it Hyperlink Theatre. With one ignorable exception, the entirety of the film takes place within the interface of the protagonist's computer display. We follow Blaire (Shelley Hennig), more specifically Blaire's cursor, as she clicks around social media and talks to the floating Skype heads of her friends. No edits, and arguably no 'cinematography,' as the filmmakers cannot adjust the camera, only futz with the 'production design.'

In the year of our Lord 2020, the innovation on display here might fail to wow us. These plaguey days, theatre has made an awkward transition to a similar style of floating head Zoom storytelling out of necessity. Not to mention the meteoric rise of Twitch, a new medium that has rewired our brains so much that it makes Unfriended's unique interface seem pedestrian. At the time, though, this film came as a blistering insight.

A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION: Once Upon a Time in the Midwest

This review was requested by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Robert Altman
Writer: Garrison Keillor
Cast: Garrison Keillor, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Virginia Madsen, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Lindsay Lohan, Lily Tomlin, L.Q. Jones, Tommy Lee Jones
Runtime: 105 mins.
2006

As far as subject matter goes, your enjoyment may vary depending on how into white people singing about rhubarb you are. The down home aw shucks folksy podunk salt of the earth wisdom of the dirt vibe is not my favorite, and this movie is nearly two hours straight of it. For this is the final night of the live radio play "A Prairie Home Companion," whose theater has been bought out by A Corporation. The film more or less matches the runtime of the play, so we are constantly flitting between charming old people singing charming songs and charming old people swapping charming backstage banter. The troupe expresses their grief at the closure in a panoply of ways, while Garrison Keillor (or "GK" as the movie styles him) occupies the center of it all, stalwart and stubborn about performing his job exactly as he always does.

Like all great art, A Prairie Home Companion is about far more than its topic. You don't have to be a fan of musical cowboys telling lewd jokes about erections to appreciate art about the people who brought such a thing into existence. What's interesting about the show within the movie is the way it telescopes the personal stories of performers who have been intimately tied to the production for decades. Keillor knows that stories are about people foremost, and director Altman obliges in shaping a tricky, busy script into something successfully personal.

PALM SPRINGS: You May Kiss the Now

Director: Max Barbakow
Writer: Andy Siara
Cast: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons
Runtime: 90 mins.
2020

How do you show the passage of time onscreen? How do you shape an era, or an eon? How do you characterize the empty periods, the boring moments? How do you establish an existential weight? Films only have an hour and a half* to tell their story. They don't carry the same longevity or interiority as a novel.

*or three and a half if you're producing a contemporary blockbuster

Palm Springs makes the void of time its entire project, and it communicates that void almost entirely through implication. Nyles (Andy Samberg) has been stuck in a classic Groundhog Day-style time loop at a wedding in Palm Springs. Though he is our protagonist, our perspective character is Sarah (Cristin Milioti), sister of the bride. Nyles tries to seduce her and accidentally gets her stuck in the same time loop. There is no choice but to introduce her to the life of nihilism and dull despair that he has been living for cycles beyond count.

Palm Springs is an Andy Samberg comedy, but it's not about the goofy time loop jokes (though there are plenty good ones, like Nyles's infinitely bored sexual explorations). Instead it is a character study first and foremost, a rather subtle one that ought to cement Samberg on the long list of comedic actors with immense dramatic talent. Samberg doesn't play the buffoon here. Maybe Nyles was once a buffoon, but any antic energy has long since withered into acid irony. The luster has left Nyles's life long ago; the bare minimum is all he can muster. Even when he's navigating a perfect sequence of moves across the dance floor, or grabbing the attention of the room with a surprising speech, his eyes are hollow. There's a sense that anything he can do is always already played out.

FIVE ELEMENTS NINJAS: Elementary School

This review is the second in a Martial Arts Movie retrospective commissioned by Arthur Robinson. Many thanks to Arthur for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon. All other film reviews in this retrospective will be found here.

Director: Cheh Chang

Writers: Cheh Chang, Kuang Ni

Cast: Tien-Chi Cheng, Pei-Hsi Chen, Tien Hsiang Lung, Meng Lo, Michael Wai-Man Chan, Li Wang

Runtime: 107 mins.

1982

Here is my best effort at a Five Elements Ninjas plot summary: the film begins with a fight between an established dojo and an upstart group of criminal combatants. The established dojo wins handily. In the process they defeat a Japanese samurai, who commits seppuku in shame. Before he dies, he reveals the existence of the Five Elements Ninjas, experts in ninjutsu who use themed subterfuge techniques to best their opponents. The kung fu dojo sends groups to fight each of these squads. They are all murdered. Then, aided by the betrayal of ninja spy Senji (Pei-Hsi Chen), a ninja invasion force murders all of our characters except one. Shao Tien-Hao (Tien-Chi Cheng) escapes and finds a ninjutsu mentor. After a brief montage, he returns with his own squad to wipe out the Five Elements Ninjas and restore his fallen dojo's good name.

It's all nonsense. The plot exists as an excuse for the fight scenes. The characters, too, add nothing of value. The most fleshed out dynamic by far is between protagonist Shao Tien-Hao and Senji. Senji postures as an abused woman in order to gain entry into the martial arts school, where she betrays them by orchestrating the ninja invasion from the inside. She is secretly a proficient ninja in her own right, but she has (surprise surprise) fallen in love with Shao Tien-Hao, who is nothing but rude and officious towards her. Their entire arc together is rife with smug misogyny. If these are the most developed characters of the bunch, well, don't expect much in the way of human drama.

What Is a Puppet?

Nate Biagiotti commissioned a piece on Puppets in Film. This interview is the product of that exploration. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Taylor Cawley as Athena + The Collective in The Medusa Play. Directed by Ryan Rebel and Ang Bey. Puppet design by Jo Vito Ramírez. Find their work at jovitoramirez.net

RYAN REBEL: I'm here with my friend Jo Vito Ramírez to talk about puppets in film. Tell me about what makes you a puppet person and why you're so qualified to be here.

JO VITO RAMÍREZ: Hey, take it easy. The easiest answer is that I make and use puppets and I have for years.

RYAN: Jo is a phenomenal puppet builder, they've made puppets for my plays and many others. They're constantly adapting and learning new things, trying to make the form and content functional together. So we can think about form and content with these clips, and whether we like the puppets or not, if they work, what is puppet and what isn't.

JO: Ooh that's great, we should look up the definition.

RYAN: "A movable model of a person or animal that is used in entertainment and is typically moved either by strings controlled from above or by a hand inside it."

JO: Wow. That is too narrow! That's terrible. That's not true at all. Only an animal or person? Strings above or hand inside it? So a simple rod puppet wouldn't even exist. Like that little wormy boy in Sesame Street. That would be rod from beneath, so it wouldn't fit this definition.

RYAN: Some of these clips might blur the lines, so I'm curious what you'll think. Let's watch the first one.

THE MUMMY vs. THE MUMMY: A Guide to MUMMYfication

This critical comparison of The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy (2017) was commissioned by Carson Rebel.  Many thanks to Carson for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Stephen Sommers
Writers: Stephen Sommers, Lloyd Fonvielle, Kevin Jarre
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo, Kevin J. O'Connor
Runtime: 124 mins.
1999

Director: Alex Kurtzman
Writers: David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, Dylan Kussman, Jon Spaihts, Jenny Lumet
Cast: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson
Runtime: 110 mins.
2017

The Mummy (1999) was released by Universal to mixed positive reviews, and has since achieved a passionate cult following. The Mummy (2017) was released by Universal to near universal vitriol. This is a critical comparison of the two films. To guide the conversation we will employ the eleven steps of Mummy Creation, as articulated by this mylearning.org article.

A CHRISTMAS PRINCE: There's No Place Like a Minor European Hegemony for the Holidays

This review was requested by Maddie Brady. Many thanks to Maddie for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Alex Zamm
Writers: Karen Schaler, Nate Atkins
Cast: Rose McIver, Ben Lamb, Alice Krige, Honor Kneafsey, Sarah Douglas, Emma Louise Saunders, Theo Devaney, Daniel Fathers, Tahirah Sharif, Amy Marston, Joel McVeagh
Runtime: 92 mins.
2017

Amber (Rose McIver) is a reporter who just can't seems to get her big break. She gets an opportunity to cover the press conference of a playboy prince, which she hopes will be her big break. When she arrives she discovers no big break whatsoever, as the prince is a no-show. Instead of leaving with the rest of the press, she infiltrates government property, photographs some suits of armor, and when she is caught she conveniently steps into the identity of Princess Emily's American tutor who was expected soon but not this soon. Armed with identity fraud, she launches a campaign of reconnaissance and subterfuge, all the while falling deeply in love with the conflicted Prince Richard (Ben Lamb) in the process. This is all treated as light farce.

What kind of country is Aldovia? Who governs the people and how? The King is dead, yet the Queen's only role is to show up and deliver zingers every once in a while? Are the royalty figureheads, or is this a full-on monarchical hegemony? Is there some sort of elected Parliament that we are not given access to?

On second thought it would feel inappropriate to learn any of the political reality of this nation, because Aldovia is the stuff of pure, uncut fantasy. White, middle-class fantasy to be specific, wealthy enough to crave the touch of old money prestige, poor enough to buy into the monarchy as anything other than stuffy rituals and child sex trafficking scandals.

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE: Fangs for the Memories

This review was requested by Angela Bey. Many thanks to Angela for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Writer: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Anton Yelchin, Mia Wasikowska, Jeffrey Wright, Slimane Dazi, John Hurt
Runtime: 123 mins.
2013

Only Lovers Left Alive states its intent immediately. The needle drops on a record and the camera spins out into a lugubrious montage of two extremely stylish ethereal beings. They languish as the camera rotates above them, and the turntable pours out arabic-gothic-psychedelic rock. Nothing happens but tone and style, and this is what we should expect from the rest of the two+ hour runtime. You could call this a hang out movie, but generally hang outs imply events. By the time our characters actually get out for a low key night on the town, it feels like a dangerous cascade of activity.

This is the story of two undead beings, traversers of centuries, patrons of the arts, setters of trends, hermits, blood addicts, strung-out has-beens, powerful intellects the likes of which the world cannot acknowledge. They are wreathed in the loneliness of immortality. When Only Lovers Left Alive is at its best, it explores the psychology of how a half-millennium old vampire might experience twenty-first century culture and society. Its abnormal pacing invites us to warp and stretch our sense of time to scale. Unfortunately, this is only part of the film. The other part is a ceaseless parade of cheeky references.

BLACK NARCISSUS: Nun with the Wind

This review was requested by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Writers: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Flora Robson, Jenny Laird, Judith Furse, Kathleen Byron, Esmond Knight, Sabu, David Farrar, Jean Simmons, May Hallatt, Eddie Whaley Jr.
Runtime: 101 mins.
1947

Black Narcissus is the story of a small group of Anglican nuns who are sent to establish a convent high in the Himalayas. The structure they will occupy sits 9,000 feet above a village nestled in a fertile valley. Originally occupied by the local general's many concubines, it has been sitting empty for years save a group of monks who came and went after six months. The nuns' mission is to provide schooling and medicine to the community. The pressure is high for the newly-minted Mother Superior, the horrid-named Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), given that her promotion makes her the youngest Superior in the entire order. The pressure only mounts further when her English contact at the village, the ~sensual~ Mr. Dean (David Farrar), warns her that westerners don't take well to the rarefied conditions of the mountain's edge.

The most prominent and stunning accomplishment of the film is the Technicolor cinematography by Jack Cardiff. Black Narcissus approaches the definition of the word 'sumptuous' in a way unheard of for 1947. The "for 1947" amendment is hardly even necessary; this film is jaw-dropping by 2020 standards. One sudden cut to a brilliant field of pink flowers actually made me gasp. One can only imagine how gobsmacked an audience of the '40s would be to witness that on the big screen.

THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN: Monky Business

This review is the first in a Martial Arts Movie retrospective commissioned by Arthur Robinson. Many thanks to Arthur for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon. All other film reviews in this retrospective will be found here.

Director: Chia-Liang Liu
Writer: Kuang Ni
Cast: Chia-Hui Liu, Lieh Lo, Chia Yung Liu, Norman Chu
Runtime: 116 mins.
1978


The 36 Chambers of Praise for The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.

THE STUFF: Can't Get Enough!

This review is the second in a Larry Cohen retrospective commissioned by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon. All other film reviews in this retrospective can be found here.

Director: Larry Cohen
Writer: Larry Cohen
Cast: Michael Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, Garret Morris, Paul Sorvino, Scott Bloom, Danny Aiello, Patrick O'Neal
Runtime: 87 mins.
1985

The Stuff begins abruptly with a man stumbling upon a strange phenomenon. A thick white paste bubbles out of the ground in a rocky quarry, distinct from its snowy surroundings. The first thing he expresses is, "That tastes real good! Tasty! Sweet!" The second thing he expresses is, "You know if this stuff keeps bubbling out of the ground like this, there might be enough of it here that we could sell to people!" We never see this man again, but that minute of screentime has framed the two core tenets of The Stuff. First and foremost, the movie is about The Stuff itself, a mysteriously delicious substance that ends up being a sentient body-snatching organism. More importantly, The Stuff is about the man's second conclusion: it can be sold.

The first act of The Stuff is a sociological exploration, flitting between scenes of personal enjoyment, marketing blitz, and corporate deliberation. The film shows us how addictive The Stuff is, but we also see the corporate machinery that cements it as a fixture of as many households as possible. It plays like a pandemic movie, or a large scale disaster film.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: Animal Control

Director: Jeff Fowler
Writers: Pat Casey, Josh Miller
Cast: Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, Lee Majdoub, Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell
Runtime (lol): 99 mins.
2020

Sonic the Hedgehog may have suffered the most embarrassing CGI redesign debacle since Superman's smooth upper lip. It may be tone deaf enough to make its protagonist a white cop with a heart of gold, and it may double down on that tone deafness by giving him a fawning one-dimensional Black wife. It may triple down on its racism by having a Black child whose only role is to give Sonic his red Air Jordan-esque sneakers, and an angry Black woman whose only role is to faint, get tied up, complain, and pee herself. It may be serially incapable of following character arcs to completion. It may contain jokes that became outdated the moment they were conceived. It may have action that oscillates between unsatisfying and lame. It may ramp up to one of the least impressive versions of that now-tired trope: portal-based CGI chase climax. It may feature a protagonist that never feels like he is in the same room as the other protagonist. It may begin with a maternal owl being killed by natives for reasons I still don't understand. It may feature not one, but two scenes of Sonic the Hedgehog flossing (the dance, not the painful mouth string).

But it does have one thing. And that one thing goes great lengths to elevate this movie from "bad" to "all righty then."

Jim Carrey.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE: Burning Love

This review was requested by Tania Maatouk. Many thanks to Tania for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Céline Sciamma
Writer: Céline Sciamma
Cast: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami, Valeria Golino
Runtime: 122 mins.
2019

BLACK LEGION: Mask for Masc

This review was requested by Brian Kapustik. Many thanks to Brian for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Archie Mayo
Writers: Abem Finkel, William Wister Haines, Robert Lord
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Erin O'Brien-Moore, Ann Sheridan, Helen Flint, Dickie Jones, Henry Brandon
Runtime: 83 mins.
1937

After an ominous credit sequence buffeted by illustrations of sinister hooded figures, Black Legion settles us into the day to day life of factory worker Frank Taylor (Humphrey Bogart). We meet his wife (Erin O'Brien-Moore) and child (the surprisingly endearing Dickie Jones), his coworker and neighbor Ed (Dick Foran), Ed's prospective wife Betty (Ann Sheridan), and the floozy who is trying to steal him away from her, Pearl Danvers (Helen Flint). The opening act is lulling. We are shepherded into Frank's comfortable domestic life, the friendly community at the machine shop, and the prospect of job advancement that keeps him coming into work excited day after day.

Frank's certainty of promotion is shattered when the foreman job goes to Polish engineering whiz Joe Dombrowski (Henry Brandon). That night, crestfallen, Frank tunes into the radio with sunken eyes. He listens to a charismatic voice rabble-rousing about foreign-born immigrants invading America, stealing jobs, and threatening real Americans' way of life...

Top Ten Types of Talking Animal Movies Ranked from Least Unholy to Most Unholy

Ever since the birth of cinema, when that train came out of the tunnel and said 'choo choo', talking animals have been a common movie conceit. There have been many movies made about cows, many about bears. Most of all, there's dogs. When they speak, whatever they are, what fun it is!

Here are the 10 types of talking animal movies, ranked from least unholy to most unholy.

MOLLY'S GAME: Pokers of Being a Wallflower

This review was requested by Don Rebel. Many thanks to Don for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Aaron Sorkin
Writer: Aaron Sorkin
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Jeremy Strong, Chris O'Dowd
Runtime: 140 mins.
2017

Molly's Game begins with its best scene. While Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) spits machine gun exposition voiceover, we see her prep physically and mentally for a defining moment in her life: a shot at qualifying as an Olympic skier. Molly's patter paces the edit. She contextualizes the specifics of the circumstance, the enormity of the stakes, and the fallout of the accident that is to take place. It feels propulsive, thorough, alive.

It also feels like a bit of an apology, as if well aware that rest of the movie alternates between nondescript rooms and hallways. Molly's Game is the directorial debut for Aaron Sorkin, famous for penning political scripts with rat-a-tat dialogue. Here may be his least openly political work, a step by step recounting of Molly Bloom's rise to prominence in the high stakes underground poker scene, and then to even greater prominence as tell-all autobiographer and subject of an FBI investigation into the Russian mob. In the courtroom drama framing narrative, Molly insists upon her innocence and ignorance, though she refuses to cooperate fully when it comes to naming names.

Aw Geez: Guilt and Dread in the Coen Moral Universe

This essay on the relationship between Guilt and Dread (and the at least double circular loops they inflict upon the other and us) was commissioned by P V. I chose to explore this topic through the filmography of the Coen Bros. There will be a few spoilers throughout, so feel free to judiciously skip over sections for movies you haven't seen. Many thanks to P V for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

The problem is not that there is evil in the world, the problem is that there is good, because otherwise... who would care?

-V.M. Varga, Fargo season 3

Aw geez.

-Fargo, both the movie and the TV show, all the time, constantly

We tend to think of Guilt and Dread as simple symptoms with simple causes. If you are guilty, it means you have done something wrong. If you are feeling dread, you don't want to take responsibility for what is to come.

It's not so simple. The Coen Bros. have constructed a filmography of masterpieces exploring the endless complexities of Guilt and Dread. They use twisted genre conventions and stunning character work to show us what makes heroes, villains, and regular everyday people tick. We see characters who experience Guilt and Dread as a spiritual matter, a practical matter, a hindrance, an opportunity, and a curse; we also see how they are all deceived. For Guilt and Dread are mediators in the complex relationships between our various selves, ourselves and others, ourselves and our environments, ourselves and our trauma.

There is one universal truth in all of this: Like Jonah and the whale, the harder we try to escape ourselves, the more ensnared we become.

SCORPIO RISING: Death Drive

This review was requested by Marcus Michelen. Many thanks to Marcus for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Kenneth Anger
Writer: Ernest D. Glucksman
Cast: Bruce Byron, Ernie Allo, Frank Carifi, Steve Crandell, Johnny Dods
Runtime: 28 mins.
1963

Scorpio Rising is an experimental short film about gay Nazi bikers. There is no plot to speak of beyond whatever you can glean from a series of circumstances and impressions: a motorcycle race, an orgy, some sort of occult ritual. But first, the longest scene in the film, a relatively tranquil sequence of men working in their garages.

The shooting style in Scorpio Rising is impressionistic. I mean that in two senses of the word. The first is that the filming and editing tell their story not through temporal cause and effect like most narrative film, but by cobbling together isolated gestures and images in order to create a general impression of an environment. We don't even see our first face for a while, as the camera instead frames bodies, hands at work, tools, machinery, decoration. The effect is immersive, as if we have just wandered into a garage ourselves and are being hit with the sights and smells all at once. But I am also fascinated by the way it disappears its characters into their environment, cancelling their subjectivity and subsuming them in the ideology of their symbolic world. Director Kenneth Anger operationalizes this as an intentional commentary about the communities these men inhabit, and the way they can get lost in their mystique.

I also use impressionistic in the original sense of the word: an artistic movement heavily focused on representing the dynamic qualities of light. From the jump, Anger's lighting design* does as much to shape the space as the physical objects. The camera eagerly laps up every gleam of light that bounces off the sleek metal bodies of these fetish object vehicles. When the film turns darker and more chaotic, the lighting slips into expressionism: framing bodies with an eerie glowing halo, carving out sharp gestures from darkness, or bathing figures in flashing shocks of primary colors.

*I'm assuming the lighting design is Anger's, since he acted as cinematographer as well, and there is no credited lighting designer

BABE & OKJA: Men Are Pigs

This critical comparison of Babe and Okja was commissioned by Alexis Howland. Many thanks to Alexis for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Babe - a 1995 film directed by Chris Noonan and produced by the great George Miller about a pig who grows up in an uncommon arrangement and learns that she may have an unprecedented skill that challenges norms surrounding a pig's role on the farm.

Okja - a 2017 Netflix film by now Oscar winner Bong Joon-ho about a girl named Mija who tries to save her dear friend, a genetically engineered superpig, after the corporation who created it comes to collect.


PIGGY PROLOGUE

Pigs are fat, sweaty, and stupid. That's why we use their name as an insult for slobs. We weaponize 'pig' as a denigrating term against that most hated of genders, men, and that most hated of professions, police officer. Pigs are just about only good for the delicious meat that gets stripped from their bones. Right?

Turns out pigs are not fat; they are naturally lean when not overfed by humans. Pigs are not sweaty; they are incapable of sweating, which is why they wallow in mud to cool down. And pigs are not stupid; they are smarter than any other domesticated animal, with more training potential than even cats and dogs.

The discrepancy between the reality of pigs and our cultural consciousness of them is enormous, and it speaks to the power of culture to warp reality itself. We keep dogs and cats as pets and friends, so it is imperative that we think less of pigs as we slaughter them by the billions (!) annually. All of this appears to us to be the natural order of things, but that natural order is manufactured.

Babe and Okja are movies about pigs who are trying not to get eaten. Both films encourage us to look past common sense to find empathy for those who need it, even across species. But they are coming at this message from inverse orientations. This piece compares the humanist individualist ideology of Babe to the post-humanist communitarian ideology of Okja. The lives of animals is one of the great philosophical problems of our age, and these two films represent very different ways of looking at one aspect-- the mass killing of pigs.

FAT ALBERT: Hey Cubed

This review was requested by Angela Bey. Many thanks to Angela for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Joel Zwick
Writers: Bill Cosby, Charles Kipps
Cast: Kenan Thompson, Kyla Pratt, Dania Ramirez, Shedrack Anderson III, Aaron Frazier, Marques Houston, Alphonso McAuley, Keith Robinson, Jermaine Williams
Runtime: 93 mins.
2004

I want to get the meat of this review out of the way efficiently so I can spend time in some more abstract speculation that has been plaguing me since my viewing of Fat Albert.

Fat Albert is a mid-2000s film that brings the iconic 70's cartoon to live action. The adaptation of cartoon to live action happens quite literally: When Doris (Kyla Pratt) gets home after a hard day at school and sheds a tear onto the TV remote while she's watching reruns of Fat Albert, a portal opens up that allows Fat Albert (Kenan Thompson) and his squad to travel through the screen into our reality. Mr. Albert is dead set on helping Doris with her problems, one of which becomes dealing with this group of oversized characters until she can get them back into their program when it runs again at 2:30pm tomorrow.

IT'S ALIVE: Awry in a Manger

This review is the first in a Larry Cohen retrospective commissioned by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon. All other film reviews in this retrospective can be found here.

Director: Larry Cohen
Writer: Larry Cohen
Cast: John Ryan, Sharon Farrell, Andrew Duggan, Guy Stockwell, James Dixon
Runtime: 91 mins.
1974

After a lightly avant garde credit sequence with stentorian music over a menagerie of sweeping flashlights, It's Alive drops us into the shoes of Frank (John P. Ryan) and Lenore (Sharon Farrell) who wake in the night to discover that their baby is on its way. Absent are the excited histrionics we expect from such a moment. Frank and Lenore lackadaisically get out of bed, walk around the house a bit, calmly discuss the situation, pick out outfits, and playfully wake up their first son Chris-- all while Lenore's labor pains are increasing. The dissonance between the urgent situation and the casual atmosphere is enhanced by the sound design and editing. The score has disappeared completely, and ancillary noise is cranked up in the sound mix so that we are suffused with every footstep and rustle of fabric. The effect is one of moving through the dumb stillness of an hour too early to be called morning, aware that every noise you make will dominate the space.

We don't get the feeling that something is wrong, exactly, but that all the edges of human experience are shaved off. The family treats the birth of a child like they would the washing of dishes. The bland evenness of white suburban life is uniquely resistant to the shaggy tumults of a life lived; even trauma is subsumed into this all-encompassing sense of normalcy. Frank upholds this delusion when his son asks him about the dangers of death in childbirth. "That sort of thing used to happen, but doesn't anymore."

No surprise that the bulk of It's Alive's runtime will be dedicated to the dismantling of that sense of normalcy, and the ways that it rushes to reassert itself. You see, there is quite a complication in the birth of Frank and Lenore's new child: it is a mutant that immediately kills an entire delivery room's worth of medical professionals, then escapes into the air vents. Frank and Lenore spend the rest of the film reeling from the emotional fallout of losing their baby in this inexplicable way, as well as the social fallout of being the parents of a freak monstrosity. Meanwhile, the baby wreaks havoc out in the world as it seeks something safe and familiar.

INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED - Least Needed

This review was requested by Don Rebel. Many thanks to Don for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: M.J. Bassett
Writer: Brian Brightly
Cast: Aml Ameen, Rhea Seehorn, Roxanne McKee, Akshay Kumar
Runtime: 105 mins.
2019

The most charmingly stupid gesture in all of Inside Man: Most Wanted is setting the first scene during World War II. The literal connection is clear-- this is a hostage situation movie, and the thieves are trying to steal Nazi Gold from the New York Federal Reserve. The very same Nazi Gold from the opening scene. As for why we had to flash back 80 years to see the origin story of the Nazi Gold, well, I can only really think of one reason. The artists wanted to give us a little extra helping of action at the top. After the following scene's heist, the vast majority of the rest of the film is characters talking on the phone, then frustratedly slamming their headsets down.

There isn't much more to the plot of IM:MW. Our heroes are federal agent Dr. Brynn Stewart (Rhea Seehorn) and hostage negotiator Remy Darbonne (Aml Ameen), and they speak exclusively to criminal operative Ariella Barash (Roxanne McKee). It's perfectly simple. Brynn and Remy want to get the hostages out without casualties, Ariella is angling for safe passage. At least until the movie starts to reveal secret motivations, master plans, family ties... a bunch of overwrought soap operatics that aren't interesting enough to track.

THE PLATFORM: Panupticon

This review was requested by Brian Kapustik. Many thanks to Brian for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Writers: David Desola, Pedro Rivero
Cast: Ivan Massagué, Zorion Eguileor, Antonia San Juan, Emilio Buale, Alexandra Masangkay, Zihara Llana
Runtime: 94 mins.
2020

The Platform was, as I understand it, the first breakout streaming hit of quarantine. I take some dark pleasure in knowing that so many folks became quarantined and rushed to watch a political allegory about being trapped, complete with graphic depictions of cannibalism. And a scene where a turd is ejected from an ass directly into a face.

The story of The Platform is almost entirely contained within a peculiarly designed prison. The cells are stacked vertically. Two people to a cell, with a hole in the middle of the floor and ceiling. Every day, the titular Platform descends one floor at a time, loaded with a banquet of delicacies. Greedy for nourishment, those on the upper floors stuff their faces until the titular Platform moves on. By the time the titular Platform gets a few dozen floors down, the food is picked clean. Those on the floors below are left to starve.

BIRTH: Lover Boy

This review was requested by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Jonathan Glazer
Writers: Jean-Claude Carrière, Milo Addica, Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall
Runtime: 100 mins.
2004

Birth begins with an intrusion: a voice speaking over the opening production title cards. "Okay, let me say this. Let me say this. If I lost my wife, and the next day a little bird landed on my window sill, looked me right in the eye, and in plain English said, 'Sean, it's me, Anna, I'm back.' What can I say? I guess I'd believe her. Or I'd want to. I'd be stuck with a bird. But other than that, no, I'm a man of science, I just don't believe in that mumbo jumbo. Now that's going to have to be the last question, I need to go running before I head home." From there, a lengthy tracking shot of a man jogging down a snowy path, the camera lurking behind and above him like unseen doom. This is underscored by some absolutely gorgeous strings and woodwinds, the first hint of Alexandre Desplat's stunning compositional work throughout the film.

The man runs until his heart gives way and he quietly collapses beneath an underpass. We cut to a newborn baby, emerging from a pool of water.

The opening five minutes of Birth hand us the blueprint we need to watch the rest. Already the film is teasing out Hegelian dialectics; everything contains its antithesis, and the processes of growth and life are fueled by the irresolute contradictions that tear at us. The man of science finds comfort in mysticism. The healthy act of running brings deadly heart attack. There is laughter at a funeral. Death contains birth.

Adam's Rib: The Tokenization of Women in the Age of Identity Politics

This essay was requested by Carson Rebel. His prompt concerned the new wave of woman empowerment in film--when it is done well and when it is done awkwardly. Many thanks to Carson for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

The early days of Hollywood were filled with women in crucial creative roles. In the intervening century, women were muscled out as Hollywood became an aggressively masculine force of cultural production. The twenty-first century has seen a slow shifting in the tides. With the culture of identity politics in full swing, large studios are exploring the profit motives of better representation. The disparity is still large, but mainstream and blockbuster movies are seeing more and more women take center stage. Unfortunately, that shift comes with three significant caveats.

1. The women taking center stage are overwhelmingly able-bodied cis white women.
2. Most women written for mainstream films are either wholly generic, or stuck in a cycle of performative masculinity.
3. This wave of diverse representation onscreen seldom extends to the writers, directors, or producers who are shaping the narratives offscreen.

So it is that most of our contemporary examples of 'strong female characters' onscreen are cynically designed. This piece will explore a range of failures and successes, and expose the shallowness of liberal identity politics that avoid substantial structural commentary.