RRR: !!!

Director: S.S. Rajamouli

Writers: Vijayendra Prasad, S.S. Rajamouli

Cast: N.T. Rama Rao Jr., Ram Charan, Ajay Devgn, Alia Bhatt, Olivia Morris, Shriya Saran, Ray Stevenson, Alison Doody

Runtime: 187 mins.

2022

"American movies could never."

The refrain of our viewing party. Every time a scene of physical extremity was shot with clarity and true impact. Every time an intimate moment was played with blistering sincerity. Every time our heroes worked towards uncompromising anticolonial revolt. Every time the fun was maximized, and then maximaximized.

American movies could never. Is this true? You would have to peer back a few decades in blockbuster history to a specimen like Con Air, or Speed. Mile-a-minute insanity used to be acceptable for a big budget four quadrant movie. Desirable, even. Something poisonous has happened to the blockbuster since then. The movies are risk averse. The studios are afraid. Fun must be ironic, characters must be flawless, consequence must be forestalled, the audience's indulgent power fantasy must escape intact. Although it is not true that American blockbusters never could, perhaps it is now true that they could never.

RRR isn't a blockbuster... it's a ballbuster.

A NEW LEAF: May Flowers

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

 

Director: Elaine May
Writer: Elaine May

Cast: Walter Matthau, Elaine May, Jack Weston, George Rose, James Coco, Doris Roberts

Runtime: 102 mins.

1971

Between 1949 and 1979, fourteen feature films were directed by women. That's 0.19% of all films released. Before A New Leaf, Ida Lupino was the last woman to be given a directing contract in Hollywood, and the lion's share of her work was in the early '50s. Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, Elaine May: the only three women to be inducted into the Director's Guild of America for decades.

The irony is that May stumbled into this gig somewhat accidentally. Having found fame in an improvisational comedy duo with (soon-to-be-great filmmaker) Mike Nichols, Elaine May merely intended to adapt A New Leaf from a Jack Ritchie story and sell the script off. Her agent pulled for her to direct, for which she was paid a paltry $50,000. She resisted the studio's preference of Carol Channing for the female lead because she felt the story belonged to Walter Matthau's character and wanted the actress to 'disappear.' Instead of allowing her to select her own lead, Paramount made an ultimatum. May could star in the film if she acted for free.

A fitting backdrop for a story of slimy exploitation. Matthau plays Henry Graham, a trust fund parasite who has been blithely squandering his wealth for no reason beyond shortsightedness. It turns out being broke comes along with a neverending onslaught of unpleasantness. Graham concocts a plan to marry a wealthy woman on a brisk timetable, pay off his debts, then matter-of-factly murder her so that his lifestyle may continue. A New Leaf is a tale of the colossal effort a man will go through to maintain his behavior.

Top Ten 2021

In 2021, film limped back. Pandemic-blighted productions relearned how to bring a movie into the world. Movie theaters opened their doors one by one, except those that had been permanently shuttered. High profile releases oscillated between streaming service and big screen. The theatrical experience struggled for relevancy; the very definition of cinema shifted beneath our feet. Folks who hadn't been to the theater in a year deliberated about when it was safe enough to experience the medium in its finest form.

Yet the art perseveres, as it always does, as it ever will.

THE PRODIGAL SON: Only in Appearance

This review was requested by Arthur Robinson. Many thanks to Arthur for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon. Check out other reviews in this Martial Arts Retrospective.

Director: Sammo Hung

Writers: Sammo Hung, Barry Wong, Jing Wong

Cast: Biao Yuen, Ching-Ying Lam, Frankie Chan, Sammo Hung

Runtime: 100 mins.

1981

[Note: I watched this movie with subtitles. I peeked in at the dubbed version afterwards. I'd go so far as to say that it's so bad, it makes some of the more subtle scenes of the movie actively offensive. Sometimes it's fun to enjoy trash kung fu movie dubs, but this should be experienced in its original form if you can help it.]

Not one minute in, I had to pause the film to watch a sequence again. A camera descends into a freeze frame of a bustling restaurant. The still image then bursts into hubbub. My rewatch confirmed that the still image was actually live action: a dozen actors pack the frame, oh so still, gestures pregnant with motion. An ensemble moment of flawless craftsmanship.

Protagonist Leung Chang (Biao Yuen) is revealed with a fancy umbrella whisked away from his smirking face. He is the local kung fu street brawling legend, boasting over 300 victories. The restaurant burbles around him, including a table of stooges who mean to challenge Chang to a faceoff. They bicker amongst themselves as if deliberating which film trope to use. "Overturn a table," their leader says. "Not this table!" he is compelled to add after a henchman eagerly topples their drinks.

Already the world of the film is so rich. Director (and writer, and costar) Sammo Hung makes sure that each denizen of this restaurant is preoccupied. Whether it's how a customer eats noodles, or how they react to a brawl, every movement is distinct. Another standout blocking moment bifurcates a conversation held at another restaurant-- disembodied chopstick-holding hands pluck lobsters from the center of the frame one by one.

Hung is especially diligent at bringing small details back around. Remember the troublemaking fellows who seemed aware of their own embodied tropes? As it turns out, Chang is an unwitting fraud! His rich father has been paying off the entire village to lose. The self-aware playacting of the goons is thus doubly justified! It's like The Truman Show, but for kung fu.

Signification Overhaul

After an honorable amount of consideration, I've altered my previous rating system to be more coherent and accessible. We now follow a scale of 0-5 BLOBS. Here is what they signify:

5 - Unbridled Masterpiece

4 - Superlative

3 - Above Average

2 - Below Average

1 - Terrible

0 - Unmitigated Disaster

What does it mean to measure in BLOBS? A BLOB is malleable yet taut, singular yet infinite. You cannot pin down a BLOB, but it can pin down you. We measures movies in BLOBS because they do not fit in boxes. A BLOB is gelatinous; its center of gravity shifts. Hail the BLOB, and disrespect the BLOB, accordingly.

GOOD WILL HUNTING: Bad Won't Fishing

This review written with compliments to VideoBlobby's Twitch chat.

Director: Gus Van Sant

Writers: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck

Cast: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Robin Williams, Stellan Skarsgård, Casey Affleck, Minnie Driver

Runtime: 126 mins.

1997

The final image of Good Will Hunting is a credit lingering over an endless highway: "In memory of Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs." These defining voices of the Beat Generation died the year the film came out. The Beat Poets are stereotypically a young man's fixation, and this is a young man's movie. The Beats' writing is suffused with a palpable yearning, a lust for experience, a counterculture defiance, a tremendous and casual misogyny. Damon and Affleck continue in this tradition by smearing their hearts all over the page, messy in youthful ambition.

They tell the story of a young Bostonian janitor with a preternatural gift for mathematics, which gets discovered when he compulsively solves an unsolvable proof sitting unfinished on an MIT Math Department whiteboard. From there, Good Will (Matt Damon) is caught in a system that clashes with his every impulse as he is made ready to be an Important Math Man.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE: Metareality Materiality

Directors: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

Writers: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis

Runtime: 139 mins.

2022

everything

What does meaning mean?

Around the middle of the 20th century, the gargantuan impact of modernism was being challenged, as the 'grand narratives' were seeming more and more like an emperor without clothes. Structuralist explanations of the world and its machinations began to feel oppressive, flattening human experience into molds that never quite fit. The tyranny of meaning no longer held court. God is dead, and we stragglers struggle with the plurality of perspective, the unknowability of a quasi-infinite quantum universe. Deconstruction eradicated the clichés, traditions, and beliefs that we had held dear. Everything is relative, you see, and meaning is little more than a comfortable shawl that is bittersweet to part with.

The ramifications of this movement oscillated through every aspect of culture. Here were the early rumblings of identity politics, in which our particularity gives us a unique perspective that is not to be invalidated. Here, too, was the primacy of metafiction: art that is aware of itself as art. If meaning is broken, at least we can still mess around with the frame like a child playing dress-up with glassless glasses.

SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME - With Great Power Comes Great Franchisability

Director: Jon Watts
Writers: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers

Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei, Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, Benedict Wong, Tony Revolori, Angourie Rice, J.K. Simmons

Runtime: 148 mins.

2021

The NEW

J. J. Abrams, who has perhaps done more to influence the last decade of blockbuster cinema than anyone this side of Kevin Feige, did a particularly bad job with Star Trek: Into Darkness. That film, like this one, was the sequel of a reboot. That film, like this one, rehashes the preboot series. That film, like this one, treats the rehash like a reveal even though nobody in their right mind expected otherwise.*

*Star Trek: Into Darkness and Spider-Man: No Way Home also both feature a smug yet perturbed Benedict Cumberbatch.

There is a scene in Star Trek: Into Darkness in which the evil villain kills the father of a main character. She is grief-stricken, she weeps. Thirty seconds later, she is speedwalking down a space hallway spitting exposition. There is no evidence that she has just undergone a traumatic event, nor does her father's death impact anything in the remaining runtime. Drama is the technique of showing growth and change and choice through adversity. If something just happens in a movie and everyone forgets, we don't feel any sort of way about it. Actions hunger for consequence.

The Haunting of Hill House ep. 10 - Quilting Point

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

Other Reviews in This Series --- Assume Spoilers

Silence Lay Steadily

The finale begins with a revelation: the room behind the red door was not unattainable, after all. It is the promise of attainment. Each child spent time in the red room, each within their own personal safe space. The knockings and scrapings and hauntings were not malicious ghosts, but each other experienced through a shroud of perspectival trickery. The red room channels the power of wish fulfillment, and a space to be alone is certainly a common wish in a family of seven!

"A ghost is a wish." Trapped within their former safe space, each living Crain sibling experiences the sordid side of fantasy. The house spoonfeeds them visions of their deepest desires as it feeds. The past creeps in, and it takes a herculean effort to stay present.

The Haunting of Hill House ep. 9 - Regression

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

Other Reviews in This Series --- Assume Spoilers

Screaming Meemies

Olivia Crain (Carla Gugino) is the only character in The Haunting of Hill House who isn't double-cast. Finally, in the penultimate episode of the series, the weight of that sinks in. Olivia does not have a Then and a Now. In a show rife with literalized metaphors, this storytelling choice is a quiet blow to our psyche.

Current day Olivia is a phantom limb. She is impossible. This is foreshadowed in the opening scene, when she holds her sleeping children close to her even after her arms grow numb. She asks her husband to leave them be, so it comes as something of a shock when he removes Luke undetected from her dead grasp.

Olivia is no dearly departed saint, nor is she entirely responsible for her own collapse. She is caught in an anxiety spiral, and anxiety breeds neurosis. Is there a word for something that you make true by worrying about it? Negative actualization? Prophecy? A psychotic break? More than anything else in the world, Olivia is afraid of, well, the world, and what the world will do when it gets hooks into her children. "I'm scared. That's all there is. I'm nothing else." This is the story of a woman who would squeeze her children to death to stop them from growing. It's not because she means them harm-- her own childhood trauma has instilled in her a powerful need to prevent them from experiencing the pain she has experienced. Pain that has been dulled by her beloved children, who are small enough to fall asleep in the crook of her elbow.