1941

1941

I don't talk about Steven Spielberg very often, but he's actually the first director I ever loved. I did a project on him in 6th grade, which included dressing up like him (socks with sandals and all) for the presentation portion of said project. Ever since I was 12, working on that project, I've been meaning to see Spielberg's 1941.

It's Spielberg's fourth feature film, right after the monster hits of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He admitted that 1941 was the product of arrogance after having those two hits, so he was looking to do something completely different and landed on doing a giant-budget WWII comedy.

Every critic at the time had the same complaints: there's way too many things going on in every scene, the running time is way too long, and though there's constant hijinks and gags, none of them are actually funny. They nailed it. While all of the destruction is impressive in both scope and quantity, I genuinely laughed maybe twice throughout the entire two and a half hour run time.

Spielberg's not a comedian, and though the screenplay was written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, who at the time had only done comedy films, it still isn't terribly shocking to me that Spielberg didn't churn out a brilliantly funny comedy film. However, there's some things in this movie that simply rub me the wrong way. They constantly use racial slurs for Japanese people, which may be accurate to the time, but is still deeply unpleasant to hear, especially at the rate that they use it. At one point John Candy does blackface in a "mutual" way with a black solider who has white powder on his face, which is still obviously terrible and way past the time of there being any kind of excuse for it. While I believe those issues are justified, my more arbitrary complaint is that I just don't like John Belushi. I've never found him funny or likable, and while knowing how difficult he was in real life certainly doesn't help, I've always felt like his real life scumminess reeks off of his performances.

The cast is huge and impressive, though not always memorable. John Candy barely utters a word, Dan Aykroyd plays a typical soldier, and Christopher Lee is nearly unrecognizable as a Nazi officer. Some of the performances are solid though. Slim Pickens is a lot of fun as always, and the legendary Toshiro Mifune clearly took this job very seriously because he gives it his all. Ned Beatty is also fun as a father who goes insane after a giant military weapon is parked on his front lawn.

Almost all of the gags are bizarre and feel a bit forced, but the moment I found completely insane was the very beginning where Spielberg literally parodies himself with a Jaws-periscope gag. I don't know why, but this completely blew my mind. I can't think of another director who directly spoofed their own work. Sure, there's the fence gags in each of Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy or Wes Craven's New Nightmare, but 1941 is a completely separate film from Jaws and yet this is the very first scene of the movie. I still can't get over it.

1941 is on Bill Hader's list of the 200 movies that every comedy writer should watch, which I understand since it achieved a cult status with his generation, but I would also say it's a decent lesson in what doesn't work in comedy. Having constant gags doesn't automatically make a comedy good, because all of those gags still have to actually be funny.

If you're a huge Spielberg fan and want to see all of his movies you have no choice but to see this, but for anyone else I'd say it's one you can skip.

Eighth Grade

Eighth Grade

As a fan of Bo Burnham and A24, this shot to the top of my must-see list as soon as it was announced, and boy did it not disappoint.

This could so easily have been any bland teen movie that's far too plot-based and isn't actually relatable at all. Even some movies I actually enjoy like Perks of Being a Wallflower are a bit too whimsical to feel real, but Eighth Grade cuts out all of the Hollywood falsity and instead delivers a true slice of life. It's an authentic time capsule of the absolute worst time to be a person: when bodies are changing, hormones are exploding, emotional stakes are at the absolute highest, and all of it's happening at a completely different pace for each individual within an entire school of kids. While I can only speak for myself, I imagine I'm not the only person to feel that middle school was an actual waking nightmare (clearly Bo Burnham does), but not all of it was bad, and this film makes sure to highlight both the terrible awkwardness as well as the more heartwarming moments of adolescence.

The movie is true in every detail, including the fact that Kayla (the main character, played brilliantly by Elsie Fisher) talks like a real modern teenager, not a clever quote machine. Burnham doesn't shy away from "likes" and "ums", sentences that trail off or don't even make sense, completely banal conversations, and all of the other things that kids say when they're in the midst of discovering themselves. But the real magic trick is that the "imperfect" dialogue allows the characters to say things that don't matter or don't make sense without making them seem stupid or obnoxious. They sound like real people that actually exist, but it's still very entertaining and funny because of the authenticity and the specific pieces of the eighth grade experience that Burnham chose to present.

It's very modern, to the point of kids saying "no one uses Facebook anymore" and communicate almost entirely through Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram. I grew up with MySpace and Facebook, so I at least somewhat understand this element of the movie, but it may hit generational bedrock after a certain point. Hopefully audiences won't judge the characters for being so attached to these social media outlets, and instead will maybe have a better understanding of why they have to be connected in all these different ways at all times.

For me, Kayla's relationship with her father is the most engaging part of the movie, because of how terrible Burnham allows her to be to him. She doesn't behave this way because she's a brat or a bad person, (it's made very clear that she's actually sweet and empathetic) but because she has no one else to take all of this frustration out on that she knows for sure won't leave her. It's such an important thing because I remember being the exact same way with my parents. She's afraid to stand up to other kids that are mean to her because she so desperately wants to have friends and doesn't want to stand out, but her dad is so kind and understanding that it allows her to vent her feelings at him without the fear that he'll walk out on her. It's actually very sweet, and anyone who might be frustrated by it probably doesn't remember what it was like to be thirteen.

I highly recommend this movie if you've graduated eighth grade, are currently in eighth grade, or are eventually going to be in eighth grade. It's pretty spot-on.

Sorry to Bother You

Sorry to Bother You

I'd just like to start by saying I saw this at a Regal theater (a big mainstream multiplex, as opposed to an ArcLight or any kind of indie theater). The fact that a film this wild and unique got a wide release is enough to be considered an achievement in and of itself. I'm so excited about the attention indie films have been starting to get thanks to movies like Birdman, Moonlight, and The Shape of Water winning Best Picture and Get Out in particular for reminding studios that small-budget films can make Summer blockbuster money if they're done right. Without movies like these, we'd never get something as insane as Sorry to Bother You playing right next to Incredibles 2.

This is going to be a spoiler-free review, which means I can't talk about it too much, but I'll say right now that it's not going to be for everybody, but for those of you who are willing to go on a journey to somewhere you've never gone before, this is for you.

The story starts off simply enough, Lakeith Stanfield plays a guy who needs a job, so he starts working at a telemarketing company...and that's about as much as I'm willing to say. But just from that there's already all sorts of interesting choices being made.

Everything from the costumes to the props to the sets are all so specific that they're instantly memorable. It's clear that Boots Riley had a vision for every single tiny detail and went out of his way to get absolutely all of it on the screen. The cinematography, production design, and visual effects are all totally unique and wonderful to watch. He went as far as to compose the entire soundtrack for the film himself (though that's not a stretch since Riley is a musician), so both visually and audibly the film is entirely Riley's. It's such a bizarre singular vision that I'm deeply excited to see whatever the rapper/musician/composer might do next in his filmmaking career (or whatever direction he decides to go in).

That's as detailed as I'm willing to go, but I highly recommend checking out this movie if you're into weird filmmaking and want to see something new. If you've already seen this movie and you're looking for something else like it, I highly recommend the Robert Downy Sr. film Putney Swope, which is honestly the only other movie I can think of that bears some resemblance to Sorry to Bother You (though Riley never saw it).

Whip It

Whip It

In the mid-2000's, a very specific kind of movie started to gain popularity, starting in 2004 with the now-hated Garden State, then becoming truly legitimate with the Best Screenplay Oscar-winning cultural phenomenon Juno, that are best described as "mid-2000's indie comedies." While I love a lot of these movies, like (500) Days of Summer and 50/50, they definitely all have shared tropes which make them a sub-genre. They usually take place during autumn, pack their soundtracks with a mix of classic and modern indie music, contain strong elements of romance and drama, blend clever dialogue and "awkward" humor for comedy, and are almost always coming-of age stories (even the rom-coms like (500) Days of Summer are about the main character "growing up"). In 2009, these familiar ingredients were used to make Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It.

Taking place in tiny-town Bodeen, Texas, bored, rebellious teen Ellen Page is tired of her overprotective mother sticking her in beauty pageants and decides to enter the bizarre, violent world of roller derby in Austin, Texas. If you're like me and not familiar at all with roller derby, the movie does a very good job of explaining it while still being entertaining, and it's surprisingly fun to watch considering it's just a bunch of people skating in a circle.

The film is based on a book by Shauna Cross who also wrote the screenplay, which makes sense because it feels like it was written by an author. The strongest elements are the characters, the sport, and the location, all of which are incredibly specific and detailed, like a novel. The plot, on the other hand, is very formulaic, almost as if Cross took all of these wonderful specifics she had and just plopped them into the Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey without doing anything to dress it up. It really doesn't matter though, because what's memorable and interesting about the movie are those specific elements, not the structure of the plot. The jokes don't always land either, because Cross isn't a comedy writer so her strength isn't jokes. She's an author, so the most effective humor comes from the awkward situations and the behavior of the characters instead of the quippy dialogue, which can sometimes feel a little forced. It's a lot funnier to watch Drew Barrymore beat up her fiance (who's actually super into it) than it is to hear someone make a clever reference to whatever, so if she had leaned a little more into that it could've been a much funnier film.

The cast is fantastic, with lots of underused actors giving really wonderful performances. Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern are grounded and funny as the parents, Alia Shawkat is instantly lovable as the supportive best friend, Andrew Wilson (the older brother of Owen and Luke) is so believably frustrated by these rowdy women that couldn't care less about winning that it consistently made me laugh, Drew Barrymore's character, Smashley Simpson, is so rough-and-tumble and unique that she steals the show in every scene she's in, and of course Ellen Page is always a relatable and likable protagonist. The only casting issues I have are that Landon Pigg is not charming at all (which ends up making sense, but his character would be far more effective with someone more charismatic and interesting playing him), I simply don't think Jimmy Fallon is funny (which the other characters in the movie also feel, so again, somewhat justified, but could've been more interesting with a better actor), and Kristen Wiig is solid but gets out-shined by the rest of the cast.

Barrymore did such a good job directing that it's actually a bit disappointing she didn't go on to direct more films. The acting is great, the pacing is consistent, the visuals are solid, and the stunts in the roller derby scenes are surprisingly effective. There's so much punching and falling that it's impressive Barrymore managed to keep it from feeling repetitive. Direct more things, Drew!

While the plot itself is overtly formulaic, there's so many memorable characters and moments the movie is definitely worth checking out. It's an exploration of a world that hadn't been explored before, and it's done in the funnest way possible.

Labyrinth

Labyrinth

In 1986, movies like Top Gun and Ferris Bueller's Day Off were ruling the box office. Then a little movie called Labyrinth came out and did absolutely nothing to change that.

Although Labyrinth was a huge bomb upon its release (not even making half of its budget back), it soon gathered a massive cult following, and both of these facts make perfect sense to me. It was doomed to fail at the box office because of how bizarre and ugly it is. The Muppet characters are disgusting monsters, the sets are dreary, and everything in it is off-putting and scary. These are also the reasons it's a cult hit, with the added reasons of David Bowie's cheesy performance and songs, but mainly all of the imagination and creativity that was put into this bizarre project.

Jim Henson is a visual genius. The Muppets and the sets alone have so much thought and effort put into them that it's nearly impossible not to marvel at all of it. From the pit of hands to the removable door that changes results each time, it's fantastically clever all throughout. Even just the technical logistics of it are baffling. There are shots where the frame is completely full of Muppets, so how did he hide all of those puppeteers? Is there a second floor that they're all under? That would take an insane amount of work, but I'm sure it's the kind of effort Henson was willing to go to, and also what would eventually kill him.

Oof. Sorry.

The acting style is very strange, almost as though the cast is very purposefully performing for children. Everyone speaks slowly and clearly, and they all make sure to say everything they're feeling out loud. Jennifer Connolly, as incredible of an actress as she eventually becomes, is not very good in this. In her defense: she was a child, it's not a well-written character, and all of her co-stars (including David Bowie) are Muppets. But still, she's very grating. Bowie is having a grand old time as the Goblin King though, hamming it up as much as he can with his fellow Muppet creatures, singing fairly forgettable songs (except "Dance Magic Dance" which might still be playing in my head), and sending many children unexpectedly through puberty. While the "real" actors are a little awkward, all of the Muppets are wonderfully articulate and funny, as is to be expected.

The odd acting style is largely because the story and dialogue are very simple and child-like, which is even odder when it's revealed that the brilliant Terry Jones wrote the screenplay. You'd think one of the most underrated Monty Python members might write something a bit more advanced, but if he had anything to do with the ideas for the sets or the magic then all is forgiven. The talking-down makes sense given that the movie is meant for children, but it can feel a bit too corny at times.

It makes sense that the movie bombed, it makes sense that it's become incredibly popular, and none of it makes any sense at all. While it's not my favorite work of Henson's, it very well may be the cleverest and most imaginative thing he's ever done. It's definitely worth checking out at least once, if not just for Ludo. Ludo's just so cute.

American Pie

American Pie

Even if you haven't seen American Pie, as I hadn't until very recently, you already kind of know it. It's about as simple as a teen sex comedy gets. There's a group of teens that have a pact to lose their virginities, embarrassing parents, a girl who talks a lot about band camp, and something terrible happens to a pie.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, have a wonderfully simple storytelling technique. They believe that between each beat of a story there should be a "therefore" or a "but." Meaning, there should be a reason why each thing happens in a story. Consequences. "This happens, but this happens, therefore this happens" is automatically interesting storytelling. Parker and Stone created this system because they hated movies and TV shows that would simply have "and then" between each story beat. "This happens, and then this happens, and then this happens" is a terrible story, and it's exactly how American Pie operates. Things happen just to happen. The scene with the pie happens (and never comes back), and then the foreign exchange student has an online striptease, (and never comes back), and then, and then, and then. It's bad storytelling.

Okay, to be fair, people in 1999 weren't excited for this movie because of the story. They wanted to laugh and see some sexy things happen. Unfortunately it's not very funny at all, but what's truly bizarre is that there aren't any visible attempts to even be funny. There are no jokes and hardly any zany situations, it's mainly just people kind of hanging out. It's also not particularly raunchy or wild. There's maybe two scenes with actual nudity, and other than the pie there's really not any shocking moments or creatively dirty jokes. It's pretty slow-moving and nothing that particularly interesting happens.

The characters seem far too cool (possibly because they're clearly being played by people in their mid-20s) to be believable as desperate, hormonal teenagers. They're also pretty bland and boring, with several of them being essentially the exact same character. The most "cartoony" characters are the ones that actually feel like real people (Alyson Hanigan's band geek character, Eugene Levy's awkward dad character, and Sean William Scott's horny friend character). The movie essentially focuses on the boring popular kids that don't seem to have any actual problems or discernible personalities instead of focusing on characters that would be far more fun to watch.

There's a unique pitfall that a lot of these teen movies tend to have, which is that when the main characters finally have sex at the end of the movie, it's far too romantic and perfect. High school is horribly awkward, and should always be represented as such. When movies like American Pie or The Fault in Our Stars portray high school intimacy as glamorous, it's clear that these are being written by adults that forgot how that all really went down. The modern movie that nails high school realism in every way, and is essentially just the perfected version of American Pie, is Superbad. That's a movie that shows high school as awkward all the way through, even when they're partying or having sex for the first time. The characters are specific which makes them relatable, the emotions feel genuine which makes you care about what's going to happen, and it's endlessly quotable with deeply funny and unique jokes. High school was not a cool sexy time for anyone, and if it was, those people aren't going to make for particularly interesting movies.

So, as I asked about Titanic earlier, why was this movie a phenomenon? Well, after watching the trailer, it's clear that a wild, fun, raunchy, funny time was promised, and every senior in high school ate it up. At the time, these high school seniors must've seen themselves as the flawless, sexy protagonists the movie presented to them, and then years later still have a nostalgia for that time which is why they keep making American Pie movies. It essentially took advantage of bored teenagers, which I assume it still does to this day. I think it's overrated, dated, and deserves to be hated.

You've probably already seen American Pie, but if you haven't, I'd recommend Superbad instead.

Titanic

Titanic

I KNOW.

HOW.

HOW COULD I HAVE NOT SEEN TITANIC UNTIL NOW.

Well, I never really wanted to watch it. I can remember the dual VHS edition sitting in my parents' video closet and thinking it looked boring, then seeing clips of it on TV as a teen and thinking it looked hilariously bad, and then never really needing to think about it again because it's so ingrained in popular culture that I felt like I already knew what I needed to know. However, after some positive persuasion, a very nostalgic trip to a local video store, and a spare three hours, I finally watched Titanic.

What's odd about this film is that on paper not a lot actually happens. A boy and a girl from different worlds fall in love with each other on a boat, her family disapproves, then the boat sinks. That's literally all that happens. So how does that story end up taking over three hours to tell? Mainly it's all the breathing room that James Cameron allows the movie to have, both in the Jack and Rose love story and in the massively impressive visuals. Jack and Rose have time to develop their relationship, so Jack meets Rose's family, they go to a rowdy party downstairs, they do sexy paintings, and they literally frolic around the boat being in love. Meanwhile, every action set piece is given lots of coverage and screen time to show off just how hard Cameron and his crew worked on this beast of a movie.

When it came to directing the visual aspects of Titanic, Cameron was notoriously meticulous and blunt in order to get his gigantic idea to look exactly like he wanted it to, which is why it looks so good. When it came to directing the actors and writing the screenplay, he just did a very very bad job. Everyone in this movie talks like a robot and acts like a robot. It's not quite The Room-level awkwardness, but it's still really poorly executed. The movie won 11 out of 13 Oscar nominations, but wasn't even nominated for screenplay, and the only two awards it lost were Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart for their acting nominations, which means even the Academy knew the writing and acting sucked. Jack and Rose don't have personalities beyond being young lovers, Billy Zane's character is so over-the-top evil that it's laugh-out-loud funny, and the rest of the characters are just bland and forgettable. Even the great Kathy Bates can't drag her nothing character out of the monotony of Cameron's writing. It's rough, but it's almost fascinating. It's very much what a big action movie director would think sounds like good dialogue, much like the Star Wars prequels.

While the acting and writing are the weakest elements of the film, the stunts, sets, costumes, and special effects are easily the strongest. Cameron made sure every visual aspect was historically accurate, and that ambition shows. Even the women's hats are absurdly detailed and fun to watch. Of course, the last hour with the actual boat sinking is the true visual feast, with the amazing flooded sets, advanced CGI, and stunts that still leave me wondering how they were able to accomplish them. But there's not a lot of actual emotional weight to it. There's a couple moments (such as the old couple in bed, the mother reading to her children, and the band that keeps playing) that are effective, but the large majority of the destruction feels pretty empty. It's amazing to watch, but it doesn't really hurt to watch, which is probably what it should be doing, considering this really happened. It's also worth pointing out that while the effects are great, the actual cinematography is pretty standard. Cameron was so concerned with what was in the frame that he forgot about the frame itself, so the cinematography is about as bland and forgettable as the characters in the movie.

My only other big gripe is Rose's final act before she dies, which is way more upsetting than the infamous letting-go that she does to Jack. She takes the Heart of the Ocean, a gem on her necklace that scientist Bill Paxton has spent three years of his life scouring the ocean floor to find, and she throws it back into the ocean for purely sentimental reasons. She threw away three years of a man's life for a dead person who had no personality when he was alive. Not cool.

So my big question after watching Titanic was probably the same anyone would have: Why was this movie such a phenomenon when it came out? It beat Jurassic Park as the new highest-grossing film of all time, and infected the whole world with Titanic fever. For me, it's the same reason Avatar ended up beating Titanic twelve years later: James Cameron is a great hype man. He's P.T. Barnum, a carnival barker the likes of which the world has never seen. He can pimp out a movie like no one else has the lack of shame to do, because he's not in the business of selling movies. He's in the business of selling an experience. He knows that everyone in the world has FOMO, so he advertises his movies like an event that you'd better see, otherwise you'll be missing out on what everyone's going to inevitably talk about and you'll be deeply embarrassed and ashamed of yourself for the rest of your life. Avatar 2 sounds like a surefire miss to me, but I'm sure he'll find a way to entice the world's population to crawl right back to that franchise through his Flavor Flav-level talk-up skills.

You've probably seen Titanic. If you haven't, it's worth checking out for technological and cultural reasons, but if you're looking for any sort of emotional depth or memorable characters, you won't find it here.

Trading Places

Trading Places

Directed by John Landis, starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, and considered one of the all-time classic comedies of the 1980's, it would almost be impossible for me to not like this movie.

And yet.

This is the first big screenplay by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod, the writers behind Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and Space Jam. This movie is the exact same as those movies, in that it's a big hooky premise that they technically deliver on, but don't actually do anything creative or interesting with. In Twins they're twins but they look different and that's it, in Kindergarten Cop he's a cop going undercover as a kindergarten teacher and that's it, in Space Jam Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes sell products and that's it, and in Trading Places they trade places and that's it.

The whole premise of the two bored billionaires deciding to have these men switch lives doesn't really work because it makes both of the lead characters inactive. Neither of them have actual goals outside of the predicament they're in, so it's really hard to care about either of them as people. What if Dan Aykroyd's character wanted to trade places with Eddie Murphy because he wants freedom from the boring rich world and Eddie Murphy agrees because he wants to be rich? It's simple and derivative but it at least gives them goals to achieve. Instead Eddie Murphy's character changes far too quickly into a stuffy, pissy rich man and Dan Aykroyd becomes abrasive and horrible overnight, for no reason other than to serve the forced plot. It doesn't feel like actual consequential storytelling, which explains why the third act is just insane nonsense (including Dan Aykroyd doing blackface and a man being raped by a gorilla), because the writing is lazy.

None of these characters are strong or memorable. Dan Aykroyd is a typical boring rich guy who then becomes a typical boring crazy guy. We meet Eddie Murphy's character when he's pretending to be a wounded veteran, which is horrific, and that kind of sets up his character for the rest of the movie, which is an obvious attempt at making a scrappy, lovable scam artist, but instead he's completely unlikable throughout the whole film. And in the 80's Eddie Murphy was a comedy god, so to see his comedic potential completely wasted in this is a pretty big bummer. Jamie Lee Curtis is a sex worker with no personality and the only other side character I can even remember is the butler, who's fine.

The movie gets kinda racist at a few points, some of which is justified by which character is doing it and some of which is not. When the creepy old rich guys use the n-word it's at least coming from villainous characters who would probably say that in real life, but then there's Dan Aykroyd doing blackface for absolutely no reason other than a shock-laugh and that can't possibly be justified. Murphy's character is also a pretty big stereotype, which might be a product of the times, but is still pretty cringeworthy to watch.

Admittedly I came in expecting a modern Prince and the Pauper, with Aykroyd and Murphy actively wanting to trade places with each other instead of being tricked, which is my own fault, not the movie's. However, if they had gone for that simple premise they could've had a lot more fun with the jokes and had actual consequences in the story with actually likable characters instead of whatever this ended up being.

Maybe this movie was groundbreaking at the time, but it's very dated and sleepy now, and I came in really wanting to like it.