Check out the entire series here.
The form of the ordeal refracts the needs of the protagonists. If a character seeks meaning in life, their ordeal may situate them as a cog in a narrative beyond their control. If a character seeks control, their ordeal may require perfection. If a character seeks perfection their ordeal may require surrender, surrender requires vulnerability, vulnerability requires violence. When a subject and an obstacle strike against each other, an entirely new being is formed.
60. The Cabin in the Woods
Metafiction creates a sense of camaraderie with the audience by calling attention to conceits, tools, and narrative frames. You get the feeling that the art is exploring itself alongside you, and that's exciting! Ultimately, though, so many self-aware works of fiction (or nonfiction) are capable of pointing out the tropes, but do not go the further step of reconstructing something worthwhile.
The Cabin in the Woods supersedes insufferable navel-gazing by keeping its priority in focus: have a hell of a lot of fun. Sure, the meta-commentary about horror tropes and why we revel in them is an astute one, but this film would not have lasted in our memories if the cardboard cutout characters weren't so charming despite themselves. That's the gambit of the movie: to demonstrate that nobody exactly fits their stereotype. Trying to jam real humans into predictable narrative patterns is the type of folly that gets your face eaten by a fish monster.
59. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Scott Pilgrim is kinetic. It's cinema that enters your body and activates your particles. It's also one of the finest models of the comic book ethos adapted to screen. Scott's trials against Ramona's seven evil exes may be a bit dated in terms of possessive boyfriend gender norms, but the vibrant, earnest enthusiasm contextualizes everything. Director Edgar Wright understands more than anyone that cinematic comedy cannot just be dudes improvising in a neutral medium shot. Comedy is so much more than saying funny things. Wright wields all aspects of cinematic language to make us giddy. Thought bubbles intrude. Gags are built on what is shown onscreen (or what isn't). Performances are larger than life cartoons designed to make maximum impact. Especially the sound is top notch, with Scott's band weaving bursts of sound through the excellent action sequences. This is how a fully realized comedy can live and breathe.
Beauty. Strength. Precision. Like all institutionalized quests for perfection, the culture of ballet is intertwined with abuse. Black Swan comes at that abuse without flinching, situating us overwhelmingly close to Natalie Portman's dancer. Matthew Libatique's cinematography blends the art and the artist in a series of ever more alarming visual flourishes. We are exhausted by the end of the psychosexual nightmare, but we cannot look away.
Midsommar is not scary in the usual way. Rather, it's scary like a bad trip. A dead-end relationship. A queasy sense that things are not going as they should. All this roiling disorientation on a gorgeous summer day with a friendly group of people adds a sense of double consciousness. The inevitability of death and destruction become intertwined with a churning need for catharsis. Midsommar is Ari Aster's work of social horror. What atrocities will we commit for the sake of the group? For the sake of the self?
Sometimes a movie succeeds so powerfully that you wish it would stop. Tilda Swinton plays the mother of a child who has never gotten along with her, a child who displays increasingly disturbing tendencies. Her husband, played by John C. Reilly, is totally incapable of seeing this truth or acting upon it. This leaves her haggard and alone in a drab world that no longer contains any spark. Kevin poses a question more dreadful than any monster or ghoul: what if you are stuck responsible for a loveless marriage and a wretched child, and none of the cold comforts of life do anything to take away the pain?
Even well into his seventies, Paul Verhoeven (director of Robocop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers) is still one of cinemas great provocateurs. This entry in his wildly international career is a French rape revenge character piece anchored by Isabelle Huppert. And I do mean anchored. Elle strays into topics far from propriety, as you could guess even from that brief description, and Huppert delivers a performance that complexifies the film to its great benefit. Verhoeven succeeds in the trickiest terrain because he understands that shocking moments must be communicated with grace and purpose. He and Huppert together* have created a thriller that explores sex-- its pleasures, its violence, the way it tendrils through every facet of our lives.
*Verhoeven relied on the lead's collaboration to construct many of the film's crucial moments.
Tarantino has come under fire for portraying race, racism, and violence so nakedly in his films. He has yet to be 'cancelled' proper though, and I think that's because he tells these stories from a position of deep passion. Django is a throwback not only to the Blaxploitation films that share its name, but to the 'liberation at all costs' tale of Jackie Brown, and the 'tweaked historical empowerment' gambit of Inglourious Basterds. Django has immense stores of charisma, carried by top notch cinematography and a trio of iconic performances. Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, and Leonardo DiCaprio create a deliciously upsetting cat and mouse game for each other. As always with Tarantino, the real story is revealed when everything breaks.
This is a fable of doubles, complements, yin and yang, told in lustrous greyscale. War is brewing, and the king is ill. Nobody knows this, however, as he has long since been replaced by a body double. The king must teach his double to fight, while the double navigates political and personal pitfalls. The story is appropriately melodramatic, but the art is found in its gorgeous visual explorations of gender. We bear witness to violence and betrayal, as the beautiful choreography elevates Shadow to the level of epic poetry.
No film better represents Nicolas Cage's late career resurgence. Cage is an artist who needs guidance from a talented director, and the best directors understand how to build their project around him. Mandy is a deranged hellscream of a revenge story. Given the mythic tenor of what befalls this mere mortal, Cage's over-the-top performance style clicks. Three components to an iconic scene: Nicolas Cage, some gaudy wallpaper, and a bottle of vodka.
In another stunning instance of how a good director can elevate an actor's work, Uncut Gems gives us an all-time great performance from the unlikeliest of places. Adam Sandler has made a career out of being the most obnoxious person in the room, and the Safdie bros. couldn't be more thrilled to weaponize that quality. Sandler's Howard Ratner traffics in jewels, thin promises, and social capital. He weasels his way through the film with utmost clarity of willpower, his life a teetering Elmer's glue tower of gambling debts and grifts. Uncut Gems is an enrapturing exploration of the death drive, our unnerving and unending quest to sabotage ourselves when it matters most.
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