SELMA: An Impressive Movement

Director: Ava DuVernay
Writer: Paul Webb
Cast: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Wendell Pierce, Common, Tom Wilkinson, Oprah Winfrey, Tim Roth
Runtime: 128 mins.
2014

I saw Selma a few weeks ago and tried to start a write-up, but nothing materialized. Then the Oscar nominations happened. Among the many reasons to be annoyed, perhaps the most pressing is the absence of Selma from all but a very few categories. No nods to Bradford Young for cinematography, no nods to Ava DuVernay for direction, not even a nod to David Oyelowo for what is clearly one of the most chameleonic performances of the year. I won't take any time now to complain about the Academy. Instead, watch this video interview with DuVernay in which she perfectly characterizes the issue in a matter of minutes.

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/27/selma_director_ava_duvernay_on_hollywoods

In my reviews I typically like to dig into the minutiae of my positive and negative feelings toward a film, and connect that to a discussion of the quality, or at least the success of a film. Does the movie accomplish what it sets for itself to accomplish? Does it hinder itself, or trip over its own feet in any way? Criticism is a hard conversation for many reasons, foremost among them being the need to approach a work on its own merits, rather than what you as a subjective viewer want to see. Then there's the semantics of whether a film being good means it is important, or entertaining, or challenging, or airtight, or inspired, and so on. The simple and endlessly complex answer is: It just depends.

WE ARE THE BEST!: It's the Best

In which three young girls kick ass and take names--ideologically.

Director: Lukas Moodysson
Writer: Lukas Moodysson
Cast: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne
Runtime: 102 mins.
2014

Normally going into these things I have a structure outlined in my head, and I work through the review beat by beat. I don't have that for We Are the Best! I think, in the spirit of punk, I'll bang this one out as I go along.

We Are the Best! follows two thirteen year old girls in 1980's Sweden as they sort of fumble around from day to day, hating what they hate and loving what they love, until they happen into this idea that they should really just start their own punk band--despite having no previous musical experience. Once they recruit an unlikely third member--a young Christian girl who has years of experience on the guitar--the band starts becoming something and taking on a central importance in their lives. Meanwhile they deal with drama and trauma surrounding school, parents, and especially love interests.

More than all that, this movie is about the spirit of PUNK. And the spirit of GIRLS. And the spirit of GIRLS doing PUNK.

But more than THAT this movie is about those girls--as people.

I'm going to reiterate because that is the most important thing I can say about this movie, as it is 2014 and this sort of thing is still a revolutionary concept in cinema:

We Are the Best! treats children as though they are people. We Are the Best! treats girls as though they are people. These are two of the most egregiously uncommon achievements of contemporary film, and two reasons why We Are the Best! has to be considered one of the most incredible things to be released in 2014.

The Great BOJACK HORSEMAN Experiment

Disclaimer: I have since finished watching Bojack Horseman, and it is one of the best shows on television. I am leaving this post up as a monument to drunken hubris.

Long ago I watched the first episode of Bojack Horseman in an airport. I was so viscerally displeased that I immediately swore the show off and launched into a series of theories about the problems with Netflix's original content model.

A month or so later, a good friend of mine was texting me in the midst of his marathon session of watching the show. He agreed wholeheartedly that the show was very bad, but he found his experience of marathoning the show all at once inexplicably engaging, and he recommended that I do the same.

Now it is many more months later, and I finally have.

What follows is the live journal of my experience watching the entirety of Bojack Horseman, transposed from a notebook to the world wide web without any alterations. Just pretend you can see the handwriting degenerate as time passes.

This blog post is brought to you by Admiral Nelson's Spiced Rum.

WHIPLASH: Crack That Whip

In which the protagonist's task is more challenging than getting pictures of Spider-Man.

Director: Damien Chazelle
Writer: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Miles Teller, J. K. Simmons, Paul Reiser, Melissa Benoist
107 mins.
2014

When you're young, movies have a direct line into your soul. They're like a flu shot--sometimes shocking, sometimes painful, inserting themselves into your body and altering your nervous system. Whether a child enjoys a movie or hates it is not necessarily beholden to quality or craft. Sometimes the things that make or break viewing experiences for kids can be a familiar image, or a character who talks a certain way, or the fact that the main character has a cat. This is why children can so easily watch movies with a sense of wonder, or a sense of terror, or a sense of unlimited empathy. It's also why children sometimes attach themselves to complete dreck.

As we stuff more and more movies into our craw, that sense of wonder gets calloused. We grow harder to please. We recognize obvious sentiment as obvious sentiment; tropes and cliches finally register as we see them for the seventh or twentieth time. We acquire expectations. We watch movies with our third eye open and wary. We criticize.

I just now made up that opaque reference to a third eye so let me try to explain it. One eye open picks out colors and shapes. Two eyes open situate those shapes in three-dimensional space. It would make sense that having a third eye open would situate physical objects in a greater contextual fabric, a fourth dimension if you will. That which is seen becomes important within the tapestry of time--it becomes historical, cultural, social. That third eye is our critical awareness, our consciousness of meanings and implications.

All of this speculation is totally irrelevant to Whiplash, because all I want to say about it is this:

Self-therapy: 2014 in Review

Other Years in Review

Welcome to the cusp of 2015.

This was a banner year for me. I wrote my thesis, I graduated college, I worked a summer at Haverford, I spent a couple weeks in Minnesota, I slummed around, I got a job, I moved to Philadelphia. It's been one of those watershed years in which your life on December 31 looks nothing like it did on January 1.

Of course, 2014 was also the first year of Post-Credit Coda! One year ago today I was in a dire mood, so I made this blog and posted this post because I couldn't muster up the willpower to do anything else. That has grown into something of a hidden theme on this blog. I spent a decent portion of this year stressed, depressed, or suffering from severe writer's block. Oftentimes I would turn here as a sort of self-therapy; when there was nothing else in the world I could think to write about, I could always write about movies. It was my recourse, my outlet. MY SALVATION.

I may be giving the wrong impression. When a new Post-Credit Coda post pops up, you shouldn't be thinking, "Oh no! I do hope he's alright, the poor sweet dear." I come here just as often, if not more often, because I am excited about something. Sometimes movies electrify me in a way few things can, and I love sharing that energy with others.

MOCKINGJAY - PART 1: Rebels and Rubbles

In which it takes me two hours to figure out how to upload a sound file to Blogger.

Director: Francis Lawrence
Writers: Peter Craig, Danny Strong
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Sam Claflin, Natalie Dormer, Mahershala Ali, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci, Jena Malone
Runtime: 123 mins.
2014

For this winter's biggest cinematic event, the continuation of the massively successful Hunger Games franchise, Post-Credit Coda is releasing its first audio review! Click below to hear me discuss Mockingjay - Part 1 with my two esteemed guest stars, Brandon and Carson Rebel. (Hopefully it works; you might have trouble on mobile devices. I apologize for the sound quality, I did the best I could with zero microphones.)

WARNING: Spoilers are discussed for Mockingjay - Part 1, though if you ask me it doesn't matter that much for this movie. Nothing beyond the scope of Part 1 was discussed.

My reviews for movies mentioned in the discussion:

Top Ten 2013 (Catching Fire)
Edge of Tomorrow
Godzilla

2.5 / 5  BLOBS

TOP TEN 2013

It's the end of the year, and you all know what that means. Time for the top ten movies released not this year but the previous year! I am nothing if not timely.

I've been meaning to write this list for a long time now, but I couldn't bring myself to do it earlier because I had missed out on many of 2013's critical new releases. Even still, I haven't seen a bunch of potential contenders like:

The Conjuring, The Wind Rises, Blue Jasmine, Captain Phillips, 12 Years a Slave, The Counselor, Dallas Buyers Club, Blackfish, The Bling Ring, Spring Breakers, etc.

I have an assortment of excuses for this negligence. The first Post-Credit Coda post being published on December 31 of 2013, 2014 was my first year of writing about movies. Seeing new releases in 2013 had not been a priority for my college self. But I've finally watched my way through forty movies from 2013, enough material for a hearty if not comprehensive top ten.

Looking over my list, I can't help but call 2013 disappointing. Shame on you, 2013. Summer blockbuster season felt like a dry spell and the Oscars didn't blow me away. Despite this, picking ten movies proved a bit confounding. That's why lists are fun! Time warps impressions, and self-imposed limits force you to confront what you find valuable in your favorite and not-so-favorite films. Not every movie can be a big fat winner. Some movies are big fat losers. With that in mind...

TOP TEN 2012

[This post was originally composed for my personal blog, The Name Is Rebel. I am replicating it here for posterity's sake. As you might guess, the list would look a little different if I had written it today--but no alterations were made!]

In my time, some have called me a Movie Buff.  Some have called me a No You're Not A Movie Buff.  Regardless, I love movies.  They're one of my three favorite forms of media (novels and video games probably fill the other slots).  I live on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.  As such, I'm pleased to have viewed twenty-one films so far that were released in the good year 2012.  Of these, I present to you my top ten.  Unlike my Top 10 Books of the Year list, these are not culled from all the movies I have seen this year, but all the movies I've seen that were released in 2012.  I have no idea what all the movies I watched this year are.

So, without further ado... some preliminaries.

NIGHTCRAWLER: It's a Game Where They Crawl Around in the Night Like Worms

In which Jake Gyllenhaal finally makes his X-Men debut.

Director: Dan Gilroy
Writer: Dan Gilroy
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton
Runtime: 117 mins.
2014

The brilliant feat of Nightcrawler is that it manages to be scathingly political without ever emphasizing that that's what it has on its mind. I tend to be suspicious of art that brands itself as "political" because it's often obvious... on the nose... self-important. At any rate, I've found that every work of art is political in its own way, consciously or no, and the most effective art is frequently covert or subtle when it comes to that affiliation.

Nightcrawler is a savage takedown of capitalism and news journalism, without pretending to be anything more or less than a crackling thriller. Maybe movies like these are the most politically important, since the plot and premise are enough to get them greenlit by the studios, and the themes and motifs are enough to make the audience question established moneymaking systems like the studios that approved them. It's a neat trick, one that I noticed recently in The Lego Movie, of all things.

The catalyst for all the action that unfolds is Lewis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal): sociopath, fence-stealer, smooth talker, professional miscreant. The lurid fluorescent setting of Los Angeles does not surround Lewis Bloom--Lewis Bloom penetrates Los Angeles. Nothing happens outside of his desire for it to happen, a desire that is at once monstrous and coolly efficient. The machine of his will encounters resistance, to be sure; the world does not bend to accommodate Lewis, nor does Lewis bend to accommodate the world. He reaches out and forcibly twists the world into the shape of his choosing. He is a god to those around him, and this god in turn prays to the sacred altar of the television.

INTERSTELLAR: A Galaxy Far Near Away

In which LOVE was the universal constant ALL ALONG.

Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Bill Irwin, John Lithgow, Wes Bentley, David Gyasi, Casey Affleck, Josh Stewart, Topher Grace, Mackenzie Foy, and a secret
Runtime: 169 mins.
2014

Director Christopher Nolan has been something of a hot button issue lately. Ever since the cultural zeitgeist that was The Dark Knight released to rave reviews and ravenous ticket sales, Nolan has had a legion of devoted fanboys. I use that term particularly: I here consider fanboyism the state of devoting oneself to a cultural property to the point of ignoring and/or actively seeking to debunk that property's flaws. Not every Nolan fan is a fanboy, though he certainly has plenty--to the point of alienating many of those on the fence about his work. Understandably so. When you try to have a conversation about the quirky blemishes of a director's craft, only to be stonewalled with denials and insults again and again, I can see how you might sour on the director in question.

Thus a party of so-called anti-Nolanites has arisen, critical of Nolan's work, but more critical of the culture surrounding it. Meanwhile the Nolanites fire back with increased vitriol, and the fence-sitters shake their heads, possibly falling off the fence due to vertigo. The talking point at the center of all this hooplah has, of course, been Interstellar.