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.