NEAR DARK: The Children of the Night

March is Women's History Month, so let's continue last year's tradition of highlighting a weekly movie by female filmmakers. With the recent global resurgence of toxic masculinity and fascist norms, it's all the more important to seek gender parity in the director's chair. For the director is as much an embodiment of the soul of a movie as any one person can be, and the souls of men are clearly not good enough.

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Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Writers: Kathryn Bigelow, Eric Red
Cast: Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, Tim Thomserson, Joshua John Miller, Marcie Leeds
Runtime: 94 mins.
1987

Kathryn Bigelow holds an interesting place in film culture. She is arguably the most prominent female director, certainly the most mainstream. Although I am not especially familiar with her career, one obvious throughline presents itself: her films traffic in hypermasculinity. In an artistic climate that is actively hostile towards women--especially female directors--it makes sense that a woman's only path to prominence requires wading through the swamp of masculinity. This is wholly anecdotal evidence, but looking at the four movies I reviewed last March, Ida Lupino's The Hitch-Hiker was a highly masculine production, Mary Harron's American Psycho was all about toxic masculinity, and even Speed Racer trafficked in a bunch of masculine themes. The exception is A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which aggressively positioned itself as indie and alienating (and still doled out plenty of gender commentary).

It's far from surprising that women looking to make movies in the public eye are severely limited in their prospects, but we can't argue that Bigelow hasn't been making exactly the movies she's wanted to. Her films have too much verve to be obligatory. They indicate a deep fascination with hypermasculinity, one that oscillates between the straightfaced and the parodic from movie to movie.

Though in this specific instance, it is the case that Bigelow didn't actually get to make quite the movie she wanted to. As the story goes, Bigelow was seeking backing for a neo-Western, but this was the late eighties and Westerns were not en vogue. Vampire movies, on the other hand, were en vogue. Bigelow thus opted to make her project more bankable by scripting a vampire Western. Near Dark was born.

THE GREAT WALL: Of China

Director: Yimou Zhang
Writers: Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, Tony Gilroy, Max Brooks, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz
Cast: Matt Damon, Tian Jing, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe, Andy Lau, Hanyu Zhang
Runtime: 103 mins.
2017

The recent surge of conscientiousness surrounding diversity in Hollywood has done immeasurable good. Any social movement has collateral damage, however; for this issue it comes in the form of an unwillingness to watch a movie on its own terms if there are problematic surface elements. Or worse, the dismissal of films that haven't even been released.

One such dialogue cropped up around the trailer for The Great Wall, in which Matt Damon appeared to be a white dude so good at archery that he saves the entire nation of China from horrible monsters. This was decried as classic Hollywood whitewashing.

Let's put aside the somewhat simpleminded but worthwhile argument that this is a (partially) Chinese film, and director Yimou Zhang can cast the movie any damn way he pleases: maybe he sees Damon as international flavor, or wants the significant box office bump of Damon's reputation, or maybe he just thinks Damon is a good actor. There are related conversations to be had about the global supremacy of American culture, but it seems odd to point fingers at a Chinese director for whitewashing.

Anyhow, putting all that aside, the golden rule of film criticism and discussion is that you must meet a movie on its own terms. If you do so, and find those terms vile, then criticize away. But it does a cultural dialogue harm to pass judgment before seeing the work itself.

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 - Corpses Are Red, Violence Is Blue

Director: Chad Stahelski
Writer: Derek Kolstad
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ruby Rose, Common, Ian McShane, Claudia Gerini, Lance Reddick, Laurence Fishburne, Tobias Segal, John Leguizamo
Runtime: 122 mins.
2017

I never got around to reviewing John Wick, which is an awful shame because it was one of my favorite movies of 2014. I'll spend a few words on it now, namely that it featured the best choreographed action I believe I have ever seen in an American film. What's doubly astounding is that one of the few American films that belongs in the same conversation, speaking purely from a choreographic standpoint, is that other famous Keanu Reeves/Laurence Fishburne movie. And The Matrix only half counts as an American film when you take into account the considerable debt it owes to anime and wuxia.

Anyhow, in addition to being an unparalleled balletic accomplishment, John Wick also told an economical revenge story with a nice wrinkle of genre subversion. For once, the woman doesn't get fridged. John Wick's beloved wife dies, but at the hands of the cruel unfeeling universe. It is the thoughtless murder of John Wick's dog, a symbol of his lost love, that sends Wick on a murderous warpath.

Add to all that a slowly unfolding mythology centering around a shady but rules-based organization of trained assassins, and you have a special film.

It would be folly to hope for John Wick: Chapter 2 to be comparable to the first given the history of action movie sequels, or to feel fresh and exciting given the nature of sequels in general. Yet I am here to tell you that John Wick: Chapter 2 is somehow better than the first in almost every way.

Oscar Results 2017

The Oscars happened! My predictions stacked up... decently I guess? I correctly guessed 13/24, for a success ratio of 54%. Way worse than last year. But on the bright side, I had a 6/22 or 27% success rate for candidates I thought ought to have won, which is sadly higher than I expected.

Below are the results, and some discussion about each category.

Oscar Predictions 2017

Last year I decided not to do one of these posts, but then almost all my predictions were right, and you can't prove otherwise. Below I've listed the categories, candidates, who I suspect will win, and who I think ought to win out of the nominees provided. I'm way less certain about my picks this year. I'll check back with you all in a couple days to talk about how things go down.

THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE: Orphan Black

Director: Chris McKay
Writers: Seth Grahame-Smith, Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Jared Stern, John Whittington
Cast: Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Ralph Fiennes, Siri, Zach Galifianakis, Jenny Slate, Ellie Kemper, Jason Mantzoukas, Conan O'Brien, Doug Benson, Billy Dee Williams, Zoё Kravitz, Kate Micucci, Riki Lindhome, Eddie Izzard, Seth Green, Jemaine Clement, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Adam Devine, Hector Elizondo, Mariah Carey, Chris McKay
Runtime: 104 mins.
2017

The Lego Batman Movie, as well as its forefather The Lego Movie, are fundamentally postmodern in their construction. There are hundreds of definitions of modernism, and postmodernism, and the difference between them, but this washed up English major is going to try to lay out his understanding. Modernism flourished as a response to realism. The modernists realized that it was impossible to write things as they were, or as they could be, because art must always be a false construction. Artifice. So rather than pursue the unachievable ideal of accurate representation, the modernists embraced the quirks of their artistic medium. They sought to tell stories using somewhat traditional narrative structure, but with a hearty helping of formal playfulness. William Faulkner could write a chapter from the perspective of a corpse. Henry James could tell stories about ambiguity using ambiguous characters and ambiguous language. And in the great modernist tome of Ulysses, James Joyce could swap out protagonists, engage in varying levels of stream of consciousness, drown you in referentiality, and break your brain in a myriad of other ways.

RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER - Residual Evil

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Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Writer: Paul W.S. Anderson
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Iain Glen, Ali Larter, Shawn Roberts, Eoin Macken, Fraser James, Ruby Rose, William Levy, Rola, Ever Anderson
Runtime: 106 mins.
2017

So soon into 2017 and already we have a veritable lock for worst movie of the year. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter makes me furious. Not just because it's bad. All these movies are bad. Rather, the specific way in which it is bad feels like a slap in the face, especially as this is the only movie in the franchise that I had the misfortune of paying for a movie ticket to see.

First off, the Resident Evil movies have always had a bad habit of letting important storytelling moments happen offscreen between movies, but The Final Chapter takes this trend to unacceptable levels. Up until this point, the continuity of these films has been lazy and nonsensical, but in a twisted sense consistent. For whatever reason, Anderson suddenly decides to jettison all that.

The previous film ends with (spoiler alert) Alice being brought to the nation's capital to team up with Wesker (Shawn Roberts). She brings Becky (her surrogate daughter), the gun for hire Ada Wong, and a newly reformed Jill Valentine. Once she arrives, Wesker gives her back her powers and tells her that he has use for her--she is the only one who can combat the infected hoards that threaten the last pockets of humanity. Pan out to various monstrosities laying siege to (if memory serves) the Lincoln Memorial building. Or maybe it's the White House.

That's a legitimately cool set-up, and it felt like the plot was escalating appropriately towards its final installment.

Then The Final Chapter begins. DC is a desolate wasteland with a monster here or there, Alice wakes up alone, her friends and daughter are never spoken of, and we never find out what happened. Instead all we get is some tossed out, oblique reference to DC being a trap for Alice set up by Wesker (why?), and an assertion that he "pretended" to give her her powers back. For the first time in the franchise, it seems like Anderson's heart just isn't in it.

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION - Fifth Time's the Charm

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Worth noting: this is one of the best taglines I have ever seen.

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Writer: Paul W.S. Anderson
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Michelle Rodriguez, Aryana Engineer, Bingbing Li, Boris Kodjoe, Johann Urb, Oded Fehr, Shawn Roberts
Runtime: 96 mins.
2012

I actually... kind of like this one? Lest you think it anything but utter trash, I should point out that the number of dead characters who make an appearance in this movie is at least four. Five if you count the big ax guy (there are two this time). This is indeed a Paul W.S. Anderson movie through and through, sense be damned. But it might be good despite itself? Then again, I have probably developed Stockholm syndrome after being held captive by my resolve to review the entirety of this miserable franchise.

The film opens with Alice (Milla Jovovich) floating up through the water. In time, we realize that we are seeing the aftermath of the final shot of the previous film, in which a brainwashed Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) leads a fleet of battlecopters to destroy Alice and the other survivors. Except it's reversed and in slow motion. This is a neat little visual feast to kick off the proceedings. Pointless, perhaps, and ruined by Anderson's insistence on watching it in forward motion immediately afterwards, but ingratiating nonetheless. It's a neat way to slip us back into the series' gonzo mentality.

RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE - All Abored

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Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Writer: Paul W.S. Anderson
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Wentworth Miller, Kim Coates, Shawn Roberts
Runtime: 97 mins.
2010

Resident Evil: Afterlife is Paul W.S. Anderson's triumphant return to the director's chair after a two film hiatus. It sucks. Anything from Apocalypse or Extinction that one could vaguely construe as a step up for the franchise has been stricken from the record. Instead we have a narrative that doesn't progress so much as it meanders, and a cast that seems suitably bored with the wheel-spinning.

Attempts at reconstructing the plot strike me as fruitless, but we'll give it a go nonetheless. The film opens with Alice leading an army of Alices deep into an Umbrella base of operations in order to try to stamp out Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), high-ranking Umbrella member and author of much of Alice's pain. In a bombastic firefight that conveniently kills off all of Alice's clones but not Alice, she defeats Wesker only to have him escape. From there, having a bit of time on her hands, she decides to venture up to Alaska where her companions from Extinction supposedly went to find a safe haven known as Arcadia. When she gets there she finds nothing in particular, except her old friend Claire (Ali Larter) who attacks her for no reason, and also can't remember why she's there. Afterwards they wander down to... was it New York?... because of another signal. They find more survivors on the roof of a prison surrounded by zombies, so Alice lands her plane on the roof. Then they tiddlywink around for a while and argue about stuff. Also, it turns out Arcadia is a ship that is in the nearby harbor. They eventually make it over there but it's a trap, and they have to fight Wesker again in a finale that is overlit to all hell.

This is like Resident Evil's version of a road trip movie. The first half is inconceivably dull. Anderson gives Alice nothing to do but drone on in her video diary, explaining and re-explaining why she's flying where she's flying in monologues that would embarrass a fifth grade thespian. Not to mention that Afterlife has a serious problem with the core tenet of drama: cause and effect. Typically one wants to string together plot elements with either a "therefore" or a "but," yet Afterlife is a perpetual string of "and then"s. Alice does this, and then she does this, and then she goes here, and then this happens. It's like watching somebody's vacation photo slideshow.

RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION - Just Deserts

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Director: Russell Mulcahy
Writer: Paul W.S. Anderson
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Ali Larter, Iain Glen, Ashanti, Christopher Egan, Spencer Locke, Mike Epps
Runtime: 94 mins.
2007

I want to begin this post by once again pointing out the most absurd trend in the Resident Evil film series: this is the third Resident Evil film in which Milla Jovovich's Alice is introduced by waking up naked somewhere. Against all odds, Resident Evil: Extinction ups the ante on this pattern by having the film end with about twenty Alices waking up naked. Of course, there's no reason to pretend that these films are anything but pure entertainment exploitation. I just can't tell if it's comic or tragic that the series protagonist's most prominent character trait is waking up naked and confused.

I can't lay the blame for that at Extinction's feet, exactly, as the opening sequence of the film is a shot-for-shot recreation of the opening sequence of Resident Evil. One could call it homage, or perhaps deconstruction if one were feeling generous. I'll opt for the latter because it is the best sequence of the movie, capped by a legitimately unnerving shot of a trench filled with corpses of Alice, all wearing the same red dress. You see, the Umbrella Corporation is experimenting on and disposing of Alice clones in what feels like a commentary on the perceived disposability of leading actresses in Hollywood. It's a tremendous upending of previously existing iconography. Of course the rest of the movie has very little to do with it.

It does serve to showcase the ways in which Extinction is undoubtedly the best of the series thusfar. For one, this is the first Resident Evil to not look like a bat crapped it out. The recreation of the Resident Evil scenario is actually eerie in a way that it failed to be the first time around. Then the film transitions to the massive wasteland that is post-apocalyptic Earth. Of course, by the end of the movie we're so damned tired of all the sand, but at first it feels revivifying after two films of dark dankness.