The Fabelmans

 

Arguably, the most important film director of the last fifty years, Steven Spielberg has created on origin story for himself. This autobiographical, but supposedly fictional story, shows us the inspirations and the learning curve that Spielberg encountered on his journey to fame and cinema excellence. The frequent theme in his movies of an absent father or parents divided, shows up in his own narrative, and at times it is inspiring while being simultaneously frustrating. Oh yeah, you get to enjoy the hypnotic effect that movies can have on you both by watching the Spielberg stand in, but also by simply being in a theater to experience this. 

Let's begin by complimenting the performers in this film. The main young actor playing the Spielberg based Sam Fabelman, is Gabriel LaBelle, and he sure looks like a doppelganger for a young Steven. Every time he has the camera in front of his face, making one of those childhood created movies, you can see the future creator of "Jaws", "Saving Private Ryan" and Jurassic Park" at work. Casting is everything for a part like this and whoever found this young man deserves a bonus. We may not have the same secure visual references for his parents, but Paul Dano as the father and Michelle Williams as the mother, are completely believable. Williams has the meatier role and she runs with it. There has been talk that she would walk away with the Academy Award if she was being promoted as a supporting actress, but that would be such a misclassification of her contribution to the film, that it would be the equivalent of saying Brando was a supporting actor in "The Godfather". Regardless of screen time, this is the central character in the film. Even the Spielberg character plays second fiddle to the mother in most of the story. Judd Hirsh arrives for one extended sequence and walks off with the picture in five minutes of screen time. Seth Rogan plays it straight as a dramatic actor, although the character has light moments, and he also is quite good. In the final moments of the film, we get one more great performance from an actor in a single scene, but I won't spoil it for you. When the identity of the actor dawns on you, you will laugh and be amazed.

For most film buffs, the key parts of the story will center around young Sammy's movies. The montage of his sisters and friend, role playing in his pre-teen and teen productions is almost enough to satisfy, but then we get extended moments in the making of his war epic, the filming of a family picnic and his film project presented at the prom, that also add to the juice that we movie fans crave. The editing, special effects and camera tricks show us that he is a great story teller, but as we see him making his film about his Mom, we get to see how he learns to put heart into his stories. Sammy (Spielberg) learns that it is not just technique that makes a movie work. The audience needs an emotional investment, and we actually see him learning that as the movie unwinds.

Things in the film get a little tricky when confronting the Jewish heritage of our hero. No doubt there were times in his life when bigots swarmed but given the experiences of his earlier schools, boy scouts and neighbors, these Aryan idiots in Northern California seem like bad guys issued by Central Casting. The fact that a cute Christian girl takes a distinct interest in him also belies the notion that anti-Semitism ruled the school.  That one of his antagonists has a moment of moral crisis after being presented as the equivalent of a Greek God at their High School in Sammy's film, is confusing. The closest explanation I could come up with in my own head was that this High School Star is being confronted by his apex moment, and it simply underlines that it is all downhill from here on. I sort of like the idea that the film of student activities will alter people's perspectives, but it was a little fuzzy how this ended up benefitting Sammy. It does end up with a pretty funny punchline however, which works because we are watching this movie when it gets delivered.

Not to give anything away, but the film ends on a promising note and a terrific scene. The brusque advice Sammy gets from a legendary film director, is quickly applied in a manner that allows the audience to laugh and see a technique at work. Director Spielberg playfully lets us in on the fact that he is still influenced by the films he saw in his youth and the lessons he was taught as a teen. The last sequence is where we get that surprise I mentioned earlier and it is a great five minutes of film. Maybe this will not rank with his great adventure films, but when the list of dramas made by Spielberg is presented, "The Fabelmans" will probably be somewhere near the top.

Devotion

 

When many people refer to a movie as "old fashioned", they are not giving it a compliment. I on the other hand find it to be one of the best recommendations for a film, if the subject matter calls for it. "Devotion" calls for a traditional telling, set as it is during the Korean war and telling a story about a time when racial equity was a long way from being realized. This is not really a movie about racial justice, but it does have that as an important component of the story, along with the real story about aviation and war. There is also a love of aviation that seems to fuel a lot of military films, see: Top Gun and Top Gun Maverick. Coincidentally, the second lead in this film was in "Maverick" and played John Glenn in "Hidden Figures".  

The lead in this film is Johnathan Majors, playing Jesse Brown, a aviator with a strong will to fly, who must overcome the self doubt promoted by the racists he has encountered his whole life. The men who flew planes between WWII and Korea, seem to be struggling with ennui, but not Brown. He makes his routine flights into adventures in technique, but he has over relied on his own vision to become the flying expert he has turned into. When he has to adapt to a new fighter, with a bigger engine and restricted eyelines, it becomes a problem for him. As he struggles to adapt, he must also learn to adapt to a friendship with a fellow pilot who doesn't fit into the experiences he has had. While he is respected by the other pilots in his squadron, he is not close to any of them, and others outside of the squad are derisive of his race and skills. Enter Glenn Powell as Tom Hudner, an Academy graduate who missed the war by a couple of months and longs to prove himself in battle. The relationship between these two real life heroes is the basis of the film.

The opening segments of the film really focus on the thrill of flight and the love of aviators for their craft. The planes and stunts seem very realistic. It was hard to tell where the practical and CGI meet. In the later battles, representing combat during the Korean conflict, it seems intuitive that the work is mostly special effects but it still looks really convincing on screen in most sequences. When the two pilots have conflict with one another, it is based on the chain of command structure that would probably go worse for Brown than anyone else, because he is the first black Naval Aviator. When Hudner acts to try and protect him in combat, it feels like an act of redemption from the earlier event, but still seems like the kind of thing a hero would do. Both men take actions that are admirable but also problematic, but we can see why they are justified in the context of the story. 

The domestic story wit Brown's stateside wife, fretting over his duties is underplayed effectively, especially in the performance of Christina Jackson. She and Majors have a real chemistry that works in convincing us of their love and the title of the movie "Devotion". There is an amusing interlude played out in Cannes, France, where it seems that race based discrimination is not unique to America. The most entertaining element of this section is the insertion of movie star Elizabeth Taylor as a character in the story. I have no idea if this event actually took place, it feels like a movie plot invention, but it was particularly satisfying as it played out. 

So we have a well told war story, with real American heroes, told against an emotional backdrop that seems believable. The social issues are in a respectful place but they are not the main point of the film. The three lead performances are also quite good, as are several of the supporting characters. The combat sequences look terrific, and everything is paced well. I can proudly say this will be on my list of favorite films at the end of the year because it moved and educated me in the way a film should. 

The Menu

 

Part social satire, part morality tale and part horror film, "The Menu" mixes it's ingredients in the right proportions to set a satisfying movie meal before you. If you think too hard about what it all means, you are probably committing some of the same offenses as one of the lead characters in this film. Be careful, you could end up in the sequel called "The Screening". If you can just sit back and savor what is in front of you, you will enjoy it so much more. Then you can digest it for hours afterwards and come up with all the right adjectives to make your own dessert.

The trailer for the film seems to suggest that this is a variation of the Hunger Games with guests being hunted down by the staff. That scenario does occur for about three minutes of the film, but it is mostly misdirection. This is a story about a group of zealots, taking out their frustrations on what they see as deserving targets, before they themselves participate in their own version of the "Heaven's Gate" event from nearly twenty five years ago. This time, the cult leader "Do" is replaced with the star Chef played by Ralph Fiennes. Chef Slowik is a lot more charismatic than the befuddled Marshall Applewhite, but he is no less deadly and utterly fierce in his convictions. There is an incident in the story to demonstrate how he feels no compunction over what he is planning, because he is taking blame for his faults as well. This scene helps set up the twist at the end because we learn that in spite of the narcissism that he is guilt of, he wants to reject the label of being "special".  A chink in the armor is revealed.

With flashes of brilliant absurdism, the conceit of an exclusive dining establishment, imposing a menu on the guests that reflect their vapidity works very well at providing opportunities for surprise. A gourmet  take down of the guests with the denial of a standard part of the meal, provokes laughter at the haughty way it is imposed and the deconstructionist baloney that lets the guests accept it. This is followed by a true reveal of how insidious the evening is going to be with a shocking swipe at mere excellence, in a ugly joke perpetuated as a lost soul dies. The nature of the cultish thought process sinks in at this point and that is where the real horror begins.

Anya Taylor-Joy as the last minute replacement on the guest list, matches words with the Chef  in an assertive manner that gets slapped down, at least until she discovers the way to a man's heart is through his choice of cuisine. Nicholas Hoult as a preening foodie who laps up all of the experience as a member of a very different cult, also provides a huge amount of amusement by his words and actions. It is the early relationship between Hoult and Taylor-Joy that makes the set up so intriguing and at first funny. In the end though, It is her manipulation of inside knowledge and her understanding of the Chef, that makes the story soar at the end.

"The Menu" has plenty of other characters but they are used for very brief bits of business. The three corporate stooges who feel entitled by their positions, each offer a moment of levity, but the story never takes any of them seriously. The same is true of the other guests. They have some chances to get a laugh out of us, or joust unsuccessfully with the staff, but in the long run they are background for the main relationship of the film. The devious menu is capped off with a dessert that mocks the gourmet spirit of the guests and celebrates the mendacity of the Chef and his crew. It will also provide you  with an hysterical visual joke to finish your meal with. "Bon appetite!"

Dead of Night

[This post is nearly a decade old. It was written for Fogs Movie Reviews as part of my "Movies I Want Everyone to See" column. This week I participated in a Podcast featuring this film ,"Pop Art" and so I am republishing this now for the first time.]

I think everybody loves the idea of sitting around a campfire, a dark living room or driving at night in the car and listening to a spooky story. We have been trying to entertain one another since the first primitive man came back from the hunt and shared his tale of the day with the rest of the tribe. I suspect that the first ghost story told was by the next guy, who in trying to one up the hunter made his story more supernatural in nature and more interesting as a result. Ghost stories and horror pull us in because they show something that we would not want to encounter in real life but don't mind living through vicariously. Movies have attempted to frighten audiences from the beginning. One of the most vivid images that people have of silent films is Max Schrek in Nosferatu walking out of the shadows and revealing the horror of a vampire. Universal Studios was built by the monsters they showed in their films. Monsters are not the only kind of horror that early film makers tried to exploit. Psychological terror is a subject of many early films. It was natural that at some point the process of telling the stories would become part of the story itself. That's where anthology films began to show up and up the ante with each succeeding tale. "Dead of Night" is maybe the first well know horror anthology and it is a "Movie I Want Everyone to See".

While not as frequent as they once were, horror anthologies continue to be made, "V/H/S" from last year being an example (and a film I have yet to see myself). All horror anthologies probably have "Dead of Night" to thank for creating a format and softening up audiences for a mixture of styles in telling the stories. This 1945 film had four different directors and a big variety of screen writers (including H.G. Wells who contributed the story that the humorous segment was based on). Each of the segments is told in a different style but all of them have a element of the supernatural to tie them together.

The film begins with the arrival of Walter Craig, an architect hired to do some renovations on a country manor,  for a weekend visit. Mr. Craig has a serious case of deja vu that is quickly explained by him as coming from his dreams. He knows the layout of the house and the names of other guests before he even walks into the house for the first time. One of the other guests is a well know psychologist and it is the way in which the doctor tries to explain Craig's dreams away that starts the interweaving story. Each guest tries to challenge the doctor's explanations by providing a story of their own that may break the rationality of the psychological explanations. Thus we get five very different stories, each with a little something to appreciate.

The first to step up is a race car driver, who is still recovering from an accident that was a near death experience. He shares a

short but chilling story of forewarning that prevented him from being in a second deadly accident. The image of a horse drawn hearse appears to him and an avuncular driver smiles in a slightly friendly but also creepy manner and tells him, "There's room for one more". If you are a fan of the "Final Destination" series, you know that death is always knocking at the door and that it can't be cheated for long. This story takes that as a premise sixty years before that series of films began. Tony Todd nods and winks in the first "Final Destination" film in almost exactly the same menacing way that the driver does in this movie, that is not a coincidence. "I'll see you later" is an echo heard sixty five years later.

The transition segments back at the country house are not always smooth or closely tied to the stories that the guests share. That awkwardness is rarely noticeable because "Dead of Night" is paced so quickly in the transition scenes that we are moved to the following story almost immediately. This film is indirectly a haunted house film and the second story makes that connection a little stronger. The youngest visitor at the house is a teenage girl. She confronts the psychologist with her own unexplainedexperience. A couple of times in my own blog, I have mentioned how ghost children seem to be a touchstone for horror films. This movie has such a story. It is not as immediately scary as the twins in "The Shining" but it has the benefit of being based on an actual murder. The resolution of the original case is said to have inspired detective fiction beginning with Sherlock Holmes. This segment also takes place at a Christmas party so if you are ever looking for another film to fit your annual Christmas list of movies, you can cheat a bit and throw this one in as a choice.

Haunted mirrors are the subject of the most intense story in the film. Horror stories are filled with examples of people seeing something in a mirror that is not there when they turn around. Mirrors are also used to give contemporary films a "boo" moment so often that it has become a cliche. In the segment here, we don't get that kind of a scare, instead we are treated to an early kind of a possession story. It is the easiest one for the doctor to explain away with his theories of how the mind works. The bit here is a melodramatic interlude and it builds the tension of the movie up pretty well. Modern audiences will see what is coming but if you look at it from the perspective of an audience in 1945, it will be a bit more of a surprise.

In the 1983 "Twilight Zone Movie", Joe Dante's segment had a supernatural twist but it was largely played for laughs. That was the case in 1945 as well with a salacious ghost story involving golf. Two best friends who have devoted their lives to golf, suddenly fall for the same woman. Between the three of them, they agree to a match that will resolve the dilemma as to who gets the girl. When the loser drowns himself in the water hazard at their club everything seems to be resolved. Of course that is not the case.  The ghost of the best friend arrives in time to haunt the upcoming wedding and honeymoon. By divine rule he must be no more than six feet from the man he is haunting and that will make the bridal suite a little uncomfortable. This section is filled with British "good show" and sportsmanship until the issue of cheating comes up. If you don't think a golfer's devotion to the sport can be funny or that a woman should be treated like a tournament prize, then this segment may not appeal to you. This was the segment that H.G. Wells contributed. It has the least consistently eery atmosphere of all sections of the film. In fact, this segment was excised  from the original American release of the movie because it was so different from the rest of the movie. I suspect it was placed in the original spot in the film to give the audience a bit of a break before launching into the darkness of the stories that finish off the movie.

The psychologist now shares his own story, one that comes close to making him accept that supernatural events can occur. The most famous segment of the film is the multiple personality thriller featuring Michael Redgrave. He plays Max Frere, the sensational ventriloquist entertaining in a posh Parisian  nightclub. An American with the same vocation tracks him down to watch his act and discovers that the dummy in the act is the one wearing Frere's face. The idea of a ventriloquist losing himself in his art is so effective that it served as the basis of not just one but two Twilight Zone episodes. Another Shakespearean 

actor will follow Redgrave's path thirty five years later when Anthony Hopkins can't make "Fats" shut up for five minutes. The psychologist is called in to consult on the case and he sees something that becomes the most complex personality issue he ever had to deal with, at least to that point in the story. The lighting of the vent dummy Hugo, and the obnoxious patter that isn't really an act are the highlights of this macabre tale.

Classic horror from the past often relies on mood rather than shock.  It was rare that any blood got spilled. That is not the case in subsequent anthologies. "The House That Dripped Blood", "Creepshow", "Tales From The Darkside" and others have put more than their fair share of crimson on the screen. They all follow a tradition however, that frightened our grandparents and great grandparents with hardly anything more than an idea.  The final "tie up" of the story, is most horrifying because of it's apparent inevitability.  Every opportunity to break out of the "stranglehold" of the story is defeated by a piece of logic that we ultimately see was a mistake. When the denouncement arrives it might seem like old hat to modern audiences but it was as fresh in 1945 as "Memento" was in 2000.  If a modern audience can have the patience required and recognize that acting styles that are older are not automatically invalid, then you are likely to enjoy adding "Dead of Night" to the list of films you saw before you died.

Richard Kirkham is a lifelong movie enthusiast from Southern California and now Texas. While embracing all genres of film making, he is especially moved to write about and share his memories of movies from his formative years, the glorious 1970s. His personal blog, featuring current film reviews as well as his Summers of the 1970s movie project, can be found at Kirkham A Movie A D

In Case you missed it above, here is the link to the Pop Art Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pop-art-episode-88-magic-dead-of-night/id1511098925?i=1000587010144

Black Panther Wakanda Forever

Faced with the loss of their charismatic and talented lead actor, the team at the Marvel Studios was faced with a crisis of huge proportions. Do they recast the part or do they find another way to proceed with one of the most important surviving character lines after the pinnacle of Endgame? I think most fans who see this will agree they made the right choice. By acknowledging the death of T'Challa and creating a new path to becoming the "Black Panther", they have cleared the way for new stories on this path while still respecting the legacy that Chadwick Boseman had helped to create. Director Ryan Coogler and his co-writer Joe Robert Cole have handled the transition gracefully. There are still issues with the film but none of those will diminish the memory we have of our original Panther star.

The movie does have an interesting perspective with a political angle that will sound familiar as we go along. Wakanda has lost it's King and his guilt ridden sister is angry at the world and herself. The Queen seems to rule with confidence but is struggling to show her daughter a way to grieve that will strengthen her rather than weaken her. There are some good action scenes that surround an attempt by other nations to obtain access to the resource vibranuim , the source of Wakanda's power. Queen Romanda, has a stronger case than Colin Powell was able to make, since they present the captured mercenaries to the U.N. in person. Her warning to the world reveals that she has a steel backbone and a sense of righteousness to go with it. Angela Bassett has the kind of dialogue in this scene that should launch a thousand memes.

It does not give away anything to say that a new power appears on the scene with some legitimate gripes about how the late King T'Challa has created a problem for their world. Namor, the ruler of the undersea kingdom of Talokan, has a spine as unbending as Romanda, and the two powers find confrontation in the ultimatum, because a moral choice has to be made. Shuri, the princess of Wakanda chooses an ethical path at first, but manipulation and deception are required to free herself and an innocent scientist from captivity, and the consequences trigger a moral crisis. The fact that Wakanda is not a colonial power per se gives them some perceived high ground in the clash between the rest of the world and Wakanda, but that position seems shaky when Talokan enters the picture and the Wakandans react the way any powerful nation must with a display of power of their own. As with many grievances between nations, there is a valid point of view on most sides, but resolving the differences requires diplomacy which is not enhanced by belligerence. Everyone gets to suffer a bit in the process.

 Vibranium has been the McGuffin in other MCU plots and that is one of the drawbacks for me. Although it makes perfect sense that it would be a continuing issue, as the power stones were for the Avenger's movies, it feels a little tired. The scientist who creates a tool for locating the resource in potential underwater locations, is of course a young student, far in advance of her own instructors and not able to realize the dangers of her own work. This is a trope of dozens of stories, and the fact that she becomes the plot driving device also seems to be a bit old. However the action scenes involving her kidnapping, second kidnapping and subsequent rescue, are all solid moments for a comic style action film.  I do have a complaint about the look of the movie. In these days of high definition, it is a regular occurrence that stories take place in the dark. More than two thirds of this film take place underwater, or at night, rendering several dim sequences that just look washed out. Apparently, this was also shot for 3D presentations and lighting for that effect frequently contributes to a less than stellar sharpness to the images. 

Namor as an antagonist is convincing and strong, with some self justifying principles. When he leads the final confrontation and the way to defeat him is basically a giant hair dryer, that power seems less intimidating. It's as if retreating to Death Valley would solve Wakanda's problems with Talokan. It was not clear to me how the lakes and rivers of Africa would give a sea based power access to a landlocked nation, but that is just comic book exposition that does not matter much. On the podcast this week, we heard an interesting perspective on the original Black Panther, and many of the issues raised by that point of view are addressed by this film. I will say however that if you think that Killmonger's solution was the appropriate one, you have given up the high moral ground and accepted the notion that "might makes right" which is the antithesis of the story. Replacing one imperial power with another is not a good solution. Shuri has to learn that lesson as well, and that is the real journey of this plot.  

Black Adam

 

The DCEU has struggled to make the same sort of impact as the MCU has managed. They have a deep bench of characters to draw on, but the folks behind the scenes have not managed to find a tone, story-line or believable connections between the characters. The Justice League movie, turned into an awkward amalgam of stories and the resurrected Snyder Cut, while having some promise , still felt bloated and not much has been done with it since. "The Flash" movie has been hobbled with the problems surrounding the star, and the only emotionally satisfying film that they produced was the surprisingly lighthearted "Shazam!". "Black Adam" is a project that Dwayne Johnson was committed to and the decision was made to separate it from it's roots in the "Shazam!" sequel and make it it's own thing.

This is a film that feels very much in the style of the "Aquaman" movie. It is a CGI heavy, action film filled with creative imagery but so much background exposition that it feels more convoluted than it really is. Teth Adam is the slave infused with the powers of the gods, who was almost immediately put into a prison for 5000 years. It takes us a while to discover the dark back story that fuels his rage and makes him a danger to the rest of the world when he is released, using the same command that brings forth "Shazam!". The imaginary history of the Kingdom of Kahndaq forms the background of an origin story which takes up a chunk of the first part of the film. No one bothers to create a backstory for the other superheroes in the film. I'm not familiar with the Justice Society of America, or the two leaders of that group that appear in this film Dr. Fate and Hawkman. I got their character pretty quickly without those introductions and then we get two additional younger characters to fill out the team that is supposed to confront this character that apparently Amanda Waller knows about before he was even revived. She seems to be in charge of the Justice Society, I guess it is the counterpart to the Suicide Squad.

I enjoyed the superheroes relationship, in large part because Pierce Brosnan and Aldis Hodge sell it pretty well. There are occasional humorous bits with the character Atom Smasher, who feels like an Ant-Man substitute. The character of Cyclone is not as interesting as her powers are, and she is underused in the film which is too bad because there is potential there that is just wasted. The non-empowered humans are only important occasionally, with Anon, the skateboarding juvenile protagonist being both charming and annoying. For every moment that we want to root for him, he has a sense of self awareness that just feels cartoonish, which doesn't quite work here. Anon's Mother and Uncle are instigators, but after saving the Uncle, his character disappears from the film for most of the rest of the story. 

Dwayne Johnson does have to carry the movie however and he succeeds well. This may be the most stoic I've seen him in a film. I don't remember his trademark arched eyebrow showing up at all, and he is stingy with his smile, using it mostly in sarcastic moments rather than in any warmth. Clearly his physique and face are the acting tools he is using in this film, and sometimes he gets a little lost in all the CGI. The goal of keeping him as an anti-hero is largely met, although the finish of the film with a threat and a challenge from Waller feels like piling on. Most of that though pays off in the mid credit sequence that is trying to tie the films together and set up a future confrontation.

Black Adm is perfectly acceptable but it does seem to be more standard than groundbreaking. I'm not sure that it is the gamechanger that Johnson and the folks in charge of the DCEU want it to be. Frankly, I'm more excited by the "Shazam!" sequel which got pushed back then I am at the prospect of a second film in this series. It will happen I am sure because even though comic book fatigue may be a real thing, they seem to be the only kinds of films with the reliability that theaters need.  

10 Year Lookback Memory Test

So I had this idea a while back, and I thought I would follow through on it, unlike so many ideas I have. I went back through the site, and picked out two films for each of the last ten years, that my memory barely contained. I was looking for movies that I recalled as enjoying and those that I did not care for, with the proviso that I have not really seen the films again since that viewing in a theater.  Without looking at what I wrote, I selected the films and designated them "Worthy" or "Worthless". 

Now it's time to look back and see if my memory has completely failed me, or if I was right all along. There are links to each of the reviews and I invite you to tell me that I have lost it, or that I should not worry too much about early onset memory loss. Have fun. 

	Worthy	Worthless
2012	Lockout	House at the End of the Street
2013	47 Ronin	Carrie Remake
2014	Begin Again	The Other Woman
2015	SPY	Taken 3
2016	Pete's Dragon	Allied
2017	A Monster Calls	Power Rangers
2018	Tag	The Predator
2019	Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark	The Dead Don't Die
2020	Becky	The Rhythm Section
2021	Copshop	Voyagers