The Prophecy Skull Bong | Review: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

The reason to be apprehensive about sequels, spinoffs, and reboots pierces deeper than simply “is it going to be good, is it going to honor the original?” Spinoffs, whether they’re prequels, sequels, or something else entirely, are often nothing more than a carrot on the end of a short stick for lazy writers. The best spinoffs harmonize with their original counterpart; the worst desperately try to sing off key as loudly as possible.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a disorienting cacophony of destructive interference. At times it tries to hit the same wavelength as the original Harry Potter stories, but it’s so mismatched in tone and execution that it can barely convey what it’s even supposed to be about. On that note, it’s so absent of self-awareness that it’s not entirely clear that it even knows what it’s supposed to be about. While the first Fantastic Beasts film was debatably unnecessary, it was mostly harmless and original enough to stay interesting after eight movies of one of the most wildly entertaining fantasy stories in the last century. Crimes of Grindelwald, on the other hand, is a movie bulldozing through the chaos of an incoherent plot. It doesn’t even seem as if J.K. Rowling handed Warner Brothers a first draft, but rather a disorganized notebook of furiously brainstormed ideas. Writing for BuzzFeed, Alanna Bennett describes the experience of watching Crimes of Grindelwald best by likening it to the awkward, embarrassed feeling of accidentally locking eyes with a pooping dog.

The true crime of Grindelwald is Rowling’s apparent insistence on writing one of the worst Harry Potter fanfics out there. Rowling, one of the most famously deliberate authors alive when it comes to details and consistency, has clearly stopped giving a single shit about her stories making any sense. It’s not worth it to list all the plot holes, non-sequiturs, fan-service-y character inclusions, and insultingly dumb subplots simply because I don’t have the time to write that review. But will the real J.K. Rowling please stand up?

I call Crimes of Grindelwald bad fan-fiction because it treats itself with the same brazen disregard for, well, the basic principles of story writing that plenty of middle schoolers eschew when carelessly spilling their wildest fantasies about their favorite characters all over Tumblr. Crimes of Grindelwald doesn’t even try to cover up its problems with bullshit (which should be pretty goddamn easy when your protagonist’s whole motivation is finding as many magical animals as possible). Much worse, Rowling seems to think using all that bullshit somehow adds to the story.

Crimes of Grindelwald starts with the bullshit early. Credence (Ezra Miller), who was very publicly and dramatically zapped to a billion flakes at the end of the last film, is confoundingly working in one piece as a cleaning boy for a magical touring freak show in France (as one does, I guess). Despite the entire first film establishing him as one of the most powerful sexually magically repressed wizards on earth, he recruits the help of Nagini (Claudia Kim), a hyper-Orientalized Indonesian woman who is cursed to eventually turn into Voldemort’s right-hand snake, in order to escape. Aside from her shapeshifting curse, Nagini’s remarkable traits include liking Credence, saying very little, and being one of the few persons of color killed off in this movie. Gellert Grindelwald, played by Johnny Depp with a Hitler Youth haircut and looking (as my good friend KD said) like an extra from Django Unchained, is on the hunt for Credence for a completely unexplained reason that we must assume has something to do with Grindelwald’s raison d'être: molding a world in which the superior wizard race rules above the ignorant muggles.

"HA HA HA BETCHA NEVER HEARD THAT BEFORE, FUCKERS!"

This whole re-hashed theme culminates in an absolutely fucking insane scene in which Grindelwald, preaching at a rally of his followers, takes a hit of his prophetic skull bong and blows its smoke in the air to reveal that wizards must intervene to stop, among other World War Two tragedies, the Holocaust through… *checks notes* …their racial superiority.

Coming soon to a Spencer's near you

Let’s throw on the brakes right there. J.K. Rowling literally spent a second of her life having the thought “the wizards in my made-up world could have stopped the Holocaust and my audience needs to know.” What the actual fuck? Two or three generations of people the world over fell in love with a story about a wizard school so that 21 years later she could posit that her made up parallel world of wizards and witches could have stopped the very real murder of millions of Jews. Why on earth J.K. Rowling decided this would be okay is beyond me, particularly when public sympathy toward ethno-nationalist sentiments is at its highest in Europe and the United States since the end of the Second World War. “Problematic” is an entirely overused and inadequate adjective to apply here but Rowling’s implication has left me grasping for other words.

It’s also one of the most asinine crutches a writer can use: wouldn’t it be so clever if I shoehorned entirely unrelated historical events into my story? This is up there with Liberally Dumping Thesaurus Entries on Your Manuscript on the list of hallmarks of an unimaginative writer. It does not make the story any smarter and, in this case, it’s completely unnecessary when the time period of the story has been thoroughly established and the moral struggle of this spinoff is a redundant retelling of the fundamental conflict of the original Harry Potter story. But Crimes of Grindelwald just can’t stop with the Holocaust: Rowling also embellishes an already bloated ad-hoc cradle-swap subplot by setting it on a sinking ocean liner, almost surely the Titanic.

"Gosh, Jack, if only there was a witch nearby to cast an engorgio spell on this door!"

It's also worth considering the casting for this film. Jude Law, playing a young Albus Dumbledore, is a highlight of this movie. His performance, invoking Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore without mimicking it, elevates the film a couple inches higher than it deserves. Nearly every other major casting decision misses its mark, though. I won’t delve into the Johnny Depp casting controversy because the public outcry against the decision to keep him has said all I would say anyway. Why Rowling feels the need to keeping stepping on rakes in Depp’s defense is beyond me. She hardly wrote Grindelwald with enough unique style and personality as a villain to justify specifically needing Depp for the role. In another entirely avoidable casting mistake, there is simply no good reason why Nagini, played by South Korean actress Claudia Kim, needs to be specifically identified as an Indonesian woman. How did this disconnect even make it past the table read? Nagini is a fictional character that literally nobody but Rowling knew used to be a human being before this movie was released. Rowling could have just made Nagini a South Korean character and nobody would’ve been the wiser. Or better yet, don’t mention where Nagini is from because it makes no difference! And on the note of making no difference, Newt Scamander is a waste of Eddie Redmayne. His shy, quirky character worked just well enough in the first Fantastic Beasts film to be engaging and endearing as the story’s moral rudder, but those same traits lock him out of character development in this film while more dynamic players take center stage. Early in the film, Dumbledore tells Scamander that he admires him because he doesn’t seek power and only wants to do what’s right. Sound familiar? Rowling has written that character before and knows how to make a compelling protagonist out of it, but she isn’t doing it with Scamander in the Fantastic Beasts series

Crimes of Grindelwald isn’t terrible because of its jersey-knit plot or its uninspired reuse of the original wizards-as-greater-than-muggles ideological conflict. It’s a mess because Rowling has given up writing and focused on explaining. Rowling is not a terrible writer: seven Harry Potter books stand as a testament to that, despite whatever relatively minor flaws they have. However, I can’t think of any good reason why we have Crimes of Grindelwald. It exhibits none of the key characteristics of Rowling’s original books: their exacting attention to detail and consistency, their discipline for staying out of the trap of explaining past and current events, and their thematic quality. Rowling, who famously spent years privately building her unique world of wizards and witches in near-Tolkien levels of detail, has stooped to the level of cheap historical revisionism. The magic which gave hundreds of millions of children a role model for parsing right and wrong, for dealing with grief and bullying, which convinced them they’d too one day get a letter by owl, is left behind. Newt Scamander spends weeks refusing to take sides when Harry Potter stood and fought. Crimes of Grindelwald is everything the Harry Potter stories deliberately refused to be. J.K. Rowling has nothing left to say.

He's a Maneater | [Spoiler] Review - Venom

You know wh-

Nope, let me start over.

Okay. Every now and then, a movie comes along that’s unlike any other. A movie that makes you question the images your brain is producing as they flash across the screen. A film that makes you ask aloud, “How did you get here?” Movies like The Book of Henry or Unforgettable or King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Movies that defy all notion of craftsmanship and business sense. One that five years from now, you’ll chuckle as you recall, ‘Oh, yeah, they made that shit!’

Anyway, we are Venom.

Venom is a movie so paper-thin, I can’t even make fun of Justice League anymore. I mean, I can but I’d feel bad about it. At least with Justice League they were attempting to make an actual movie. Venom is not, a “movie” so much as it is a demo reel. An actual movie is like a three-course meal with each Act serving as equally important parts to the viewers nutrition. Here, the First Act is an appetizer, the Second Act is the entrée, and the Third Act and epilogue is the dessert that the hostess throws at you on the way out the door because it’s ten minutes to closing time, you rat bastard!

The opening stanza is average if non-offensive as we are introduced to our main character Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), an investigative journalist and his lawyer girlfriend Annie Weying (Michelle Williams). Eddie is given an assignment to interview inventor/entrepreneur Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), but when he digs up info on the Life Foundation’s shady practices, he overplays his hand and gets both him and Annie canned from their respective jobs.

Now unemployed, Eddie gets hired by Dr. Dora Skirth (Jenny Slate) to investigate her boss and blow the whistle on his dangerous human experiments. Before he can, he comes into contact with the symbiote parasite and begins his transformation into the entity known as Venom. And here is the point that we part ways with anything resembling good sense.

First off, Venom doesn’t come into the movie until over halfway. We see his goop, we hear his voice, but we don’t see Venom proper in all his glory until the tail-end of the second act. This is extra egregious when you realize that the film clocks in at a shade under 95 minutes. The First Act is done before you find your seat. The Second Act has a solid chase sequence and gets creative with how it uses Eddie and Venom’s “connection” but with such a tight runtime, there’s never any time to absorb (lol) what happens. Like a runner doing suicides in an empty stadium. Don’t bother finding your breath now. We’re not stopping ‘til it’s over.

This movie has been described elsewhere as the ‘Best superhero movie from 2004’ and maaaaan… The only thing missing is the lingo and the nu-metal soundtrack. If you listen closely, you may just hear the ghost of Norman Osbourne wailing about getting you next time. The final battle and ending sequence are entry-level, back to when we were still figuring out how to make super-powered people fight on-screen. If you enjoy watching two CG blobs tumble around in the dark- Damn, that would have been a better movie, too.

I say “too” because there are flashes here and there of what this movie could have been. Tom Hardy elevates whatever he touches and the best scenes in this movie are the ones where he is acting alone, simulating the creeping influence of Venom. He noted in an interview that Sony removed some of his favorite scenes to shoot, and it shows in little moments like Venom calling Eddie a “pussy” for refusing to launch himself out of a 50-story spire. Hardy takes it upon himself to improvise greatly, making Venom the straight man and Eddie Brock a neurotic goof who’s literally along for the ride. If the movie is watchable at all, it’s because of his heavy lifting.

I also really like Michelle Williams as Annie. We get a bit of fanservice as she takes the form of She-Venom near the climax. Outside of that, I was pleasantly surprised how respectful the movie was to her character. She didn’t reduce Eddie to an object of resentment and even after saving his life, she wasn’t falling over herself to get him back. She broke up with him and for now will keep it that way. I also really like her new boyfriend – a doctor named Dan Lewis (Reid Scott). A nice guy, who genuinely tries to help Eddie when things take a dark turn for him. There’s no tension whatsoever between him and Eddie and you would expect that after this adventure they would be acquaintances at the very least.

Then we have Dr. Skirth who does get the treatment one would expect for a female ancillary character. She shows up early on as one of three speaking role scientists at the Life Foundation (lol) and only shows up later to get Eddie into the lab to contract the Venom. So, in a way, she’s a much better wingman than scientist. That isn’t even the worst part, though. Thanks in part to Eddie’s dumbassery, her boss becomes aware that she is responsible for the security breach and orders her to reveal the intruder’s identity. She does and is immediately executed via alien parasite.

2008 has ruined movie villains for the rest of time. Riz Ahmed plays Carlton Drake – a photocopy of a caricature of an SNL Elon Musk impression. Unlike Steve Lift in Sorry to Bother You – a man who was clearly a sociopath but clearly affable and charismatic enough to warrant his swell of corporate support – Carlton Drake is a charisma vacuum and a total creep on top of that. No one would continue working for this guy, let alone let him run a space company. Even Elon got kicked out of his big boss chair in real life. You have to play with the duality at least a little bit. You can not say, “You can trust me loyal employee,” and then literally ten seconds later say, “Please kill my trusted employee.” Sony owes Jenny Slate an apology. I don’t know how long it took to film her maybe 15 minutes of screen time, but I’m certain it was too long.

Ready for Ze Tweest now? I didn’t hate this movie.

Like Justice League it tried really hard to make me despise it. It was really close. Then Eddie asks Venom why he decided to stay behind and help. Verbatim, he says: “It was you, Eddie.” And I threw my hands up, because how could I ever hate a movie for making that choice?

"I know you want it like I do, EDDIE."

It was the right choice. I just wish I could give it credit; I can’t, because of the numerous, many times where it made the very wrong choice. Not one drop of blood in a Venom movie? After Deadpool made a million-billion dollars? Por? Que?

I would never tell anyone (let alone you, faithful readers) to spend a dime on this movie. I did, because I see everything, and I knew what I was walking into. It’s absolutely worth streaming two months from now at whatever holiday party you like. It’s short, never boring, and super loud – perfect for a party-type setting. Even if it’s just you and your partner, you’ll have fun picking apart this movie and lamenting what could have been.

Venom has already made oodles of dough despite this. So, when Jared Leto’s Morbius flick comes out and is an absolute poo-poo platter…well, lol…you can put the blame on me.

2 Stars out of 5

Callin' Out Names | Review - BlacKkKlansman

The greatest trick the Devil ever played was convincing America that all the country’s problems have been caused by one very awful man. If you are wondering, yes: I am saying what it sounds like I’m saying. Neoliberalism is the Devil.

BlacKkKlansman is at the cinema. The latest Spike Lee Joint based on the fo’ real fo’ real story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the first Black officer to integrate the Colorado Springs Police Department. As a rookie, he toils for a time fetching records for his colleagues before taking initiative and requesting a transfer to plainclothes detective work. He gets his wish and is even given his own investigation to lead. The investigation? Infiltrate the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and determine their true motives. LOL

Helping him as the white face in front of the H-white voice is veteran detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) who tries to get himself initiated in the local chapter. Adjacent to that, Ron is given an assignment from the chief of his precinct to perform his own infiltration. The Black Student Union of Colorado College has been getting cozy with various Black liberation groups and Ron is tasked with getting to the bottom of it while pursuing a relationship with the union’s president, a student named Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier).

If Sorry to Bother You was a genre film disguised in social commentary, BlacKkKlansman is social commentary disguised in Blaxploitation. Not an outrageous thought. It is a Spike Lee Joint, after all. He’s right at home with the atmosphere and imagery of the 70’s and the vernacular therein. That vernacular becomes as important as the people who use it. Ron in particular goes back and forth – internally and externally – on his use of “proper speak” while in the job and what that means for his identity as both an African-American and Black Cop.

Flip, the dramatized version of him anyway, is Jewish-American as a way for Spike Lee to add “skin in the game” as the OG Stallworth would say. A big reason the Klan - oh! Sorry, the Organization. The reason they’ve lasted this long is because good-meaning people like Flip choose to ignore blatant bigotry, usually because they believe they won’t be affected. (i.e.: The Klan hates Jews, sure, but I’m not a Jew really. And even if I was, they’ll almost certainly go after you Spooks, first.)

On top of that, is the always messy, never easy, discourse of a Black American’s role in society and their duty to their people or if there should be such a thing. Patrice, a Black Liberationist, is dating Ron, and undercover cop. Not only is he an undercover cop, he was working undercover the night they met, sent by his boss to spy on her and their guest speaker. Immediately after the rally, Patrice is sexually assaulted by Officer Landers (Frederick Weller), a colleague of Ron’s, who has pulled them over for no reason - how familiar. One can understand why Ron is hesitant to disclose his J-O-B to his new girlfriend that only refers to policemen – yes, even Black policemen – as Pigs. “But wait!” you exclaim. “Detective Stallworth is the hero of this story. Surely Patrice realizes this and comes around to his side in the end!”

Well...sorta

Here we get to have our discussion about generalizations. How they shape our surroundings. How they influence our daily lives. My writing mate Lunchbox – a brilliant lad and my best friend – asked the most important question we should ask about movies like this. Can we accept criticism of our society (or ourselves) if it isn’t inherently funny? Django Unchained says no.  Both Blade Runner flicks say yes. Sorry to Bother You says maybe. Here now, BlacKkKlansman says yes again.

There are funny moments in this movie. There are entertaining scenes throughout, but this is not that kind of movie. As the man says, “Ain’t a damn thing funny!” It’s no secret how the KKK is portrayed in media at-large: bumbling, idiotic, mealy-mouthed fools. How easy it is to forget they are indeed classified as a gang and, by some agencies, a terrorist organization. Spike Lee and producer Jordan Peele won’t let you forget this for the whole movie. The Klansmen are sinister at best, diabolical at worst, unpleasant always.

Flip at one point dismisses their Anti-Semitic rhetoric claiming that the investigation isn’t personal for him. Ron himself scoffs at the idea that someone as vile as Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) would ever be elected to public office in the United States. (He was, yo!)

Look.

A major theme of this movie is complicity and how it is NO BUENO. You don’t have to be racist to be complicit. You just have to be ignorant. Not dumb, oh no. Ignorant, as in, unaware and without context. Full disclosure: I am Black, and my friend is white. When I make statements like the ones at the beginning of this review, I don’t have to explain myself because of course not every Caucasian person is a racist pile. Just like not every Black person wants to kill Whitey.

There are cops that are good. There are cops that are bad. What matters is that there are good cops unwilling to do anything about the bad cops they see every day. It’s a Brotherhood, an Organization – a Klan if you will. If you are offended by that characterization…GOOD. It should offend you, that the current system is so hopelessly broken. Even if there were only one ‘Bad Apple’ at each precinct, it won’t make a difference if a) No one is willing to course correct and b) the culture these officers train in keeps producing so-called ‘Bad Apples.’

Is Patrice in the right, then, for blowing off Ron once she [SPOILERS] (inevitably) discovers his true profession? She’s certainly right to be upset about the lying. That’s never cool, and it was very unprofessional to engage in a romantic relationship with a mark. There is something to be said, though, about his proclamation that there’s more than one way to fight for your people.

Now comes the portion of every KD review where I let the Nerd Flag fly. Bruce Wayne (Batman) and Dick Grayson (Nightwing) are two vigilante heroes with very different methods. In Gotham, Batman has bypassed the Justice System entirely, eliminating crime literally with his bare hands. In Bludhaven, Nightwing also fights crime in a mask, but also with a badge. He gets a day job as a beat cop to try and change the culture from the inside.

Back in Colorado Springs, Patrice says politics and the Liberation are a lifetime gig. Ron disagrees. Who is right and wrong depends mostly on your point of view. Grayson, unlike his mentor, would like to enjoy all his ligaments in his old age. Ron Stallworth wants to fight the good fight, but he doesn’t want to fight forever. At the least, he hopes he doesn’t have to fight forever. Whether or not that’s possible is a question for another day, I think.

The proper question for today is what makes a “good soldier” and who gets to decide. As I’ve aged, I’ve noticed the same thing Brother Malcolm did in his travels: that civil disobedience has largely become performative. On top of that, I came to my own conclusion. Increasingly, this fight has become a place of privilege. It’s much easier for a college student or a wealthy, famous person to ‘Occupy’ or ‘Resist’ for example. People like my mother who are raising two teenagers and working full time can only vote when the polls open. These people won’t go viral for that, of course, nor do they want to. They are no less informed. They only wish to lead happy lives.

The bulk of the criticism I’ve seen regarding BlacKkKlansman references the film’s heavy-handedness, doing so as a mark down. Personally, I also like my films to be subversive. BUT! In this case, when the idea is to show you people exactly why White Nationalists are an issue TODAY, I’m honestly not sure what else can be done besides throw it in your face. Let me tell you folk a story.

AS. I. WAS. DRIVING. HOME. FROM. THIS. MOVIE.

I saw a pickup truck go by. An old F-150. See them everywhere, right? Well. This F-150 had a frosted decal covering its entire rear window. You’d better believe the Ol’ Rebel Flag was displayed for the whole world to see. And the vanity plates? A ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ themed background. A war cry used during our nation’s fight for independence, appropriated by a sham organization to callback to a war in which their ancestors were LOSERS.

I don’t know the person driving this truck. I don’t want to. It’s possible they truly believe they aren’t racist. Maybe they see themselves as honoring a culture and heritage that doesn’t exist from a period of history that never happened. That’s cool and I couldn’t care less. I will explain why ONE LAST TIME before I get back to critiquing this movie.

I know it’s not fair and I know it sucks and you folks might not be racist, but you must face facts! Your history (such as it were), your imagery, your kinship was co-opted by a terrorist organization that is indeed racist! Don’t fly the flag, don’t buy the plates, get a new haircut. Do what you gotta do, but you can’t be that anymore! The President is little more than the most famous symptom of a disease that has only now been diagnosed. This is all we’ve been saying for [checks notes] four hundred years (Kanye, how ya doin’?) and now finally our Caucasian friends have stopped being uncomfortable and offended long enough to listen.

(Johnny Manziel has returned to football before Colin Kaepernick, by the way. What a shock!)

John David Washington has a breakout performance as the man behind the best-seller. Laura Harrier is good as his foil on the opposite side of the tape. Adam Driver turns in yet another excellent performance in a young career full of them. Now everyone who didn’t see Star Wars knows that he’s the best guy working today.

BlacKkKlansman is ten minutes too long, including one scene that would have been better served as a stinger or deleted. The subplots are resolved well enough for what they are and the characters are developed as well as you could in a movie where history is the star of the show. This is both a timely movie and a timeless one, on par but not better than the seminal classic Do the Right Thing.

4.5 Stars out of 5

If rendering the footage of ‘Unite the Right’ from Charlottesville, Summer 2017 into the Final Act is exploitative then that’s too bad. We’ve tried for years being clever about this. If your feelings are hurt or your artistic disposition is compromised, oh well! It wasn’t a revolutionary creative decision by any means, but it worked. Message received: this Shit is Real, and it is Right Now.

I knew in 2016 it was possible for someone like the “National Director” to be elected, because everyone on that ballot was prejudiced. I’m sorry. Not subtle enough? Let’s try this. You don’t use the term “super predators” and then change your mind.

Ooh! How about this?

Barack is not coming back. Bernie will never run again. Hillary does not want to be your friend.

But I will.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

The Chris Farley Show: Fred Rogers | Review: Won't You Be My Neighbor

I never watched Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood as a child but I had a great phone conversation last week with a friend who enjoys watching it now while high as an adult. I’ll paraphrase a lot here, but “it’s just so reaffirming,” he said. “Like he would basically do this ‘How It’s Made’ segment every once in a while and you would watch Mister Rogers narrate how a factory makes, like, crayons or something. And the entire time he isn’t trying to explain how the crayons are made or to be smarter than you. He’s just going ‘my, my, my, look at all those crayons. Think about all the drawings that will be made with those crayons! What would you draw?’ and you’re just thinking ‘oh my god you’re so right! Those are a lot of crayons!’”

I can’t help but feel that listening to recounted episodes of stoned Mister Rogers viewing imparted the spirit of the late Rogers’ work on me more than Won’t You Be My Neighbor. It’s a perfectly fine film but I left the theater thinking I’d just paid twelve dollars to watch a documentary that should’ve been on Netflix. While Won’t You Be My Neighbor generally outlines the life of Fred Rogers and the evolution of his children’s show, it’s not a biographical documentary more so than a series of interviews narrating a somewhat disorganized quilt of hand-picked vignettes of the show’s more impactful episodes and periods in Rogers’ life.

Because it’s not truly biographical, Won’t You Be My Neighbor meanders wistfully from topic to topic. That meandering nature can be a bit disorienting for someone wondering where the film is going and it's largely responsible for the fact that the film doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s like a much more chill version of Chris Farley’s interview skits on Saturday Night Live, as if to say “Hey guys, remember when Mister Rogers did that segment about assassination after Bobby was shot? Yeah… wasn’t that revolutionary? …Hey and also what about that time Eddie Murphy did the Mister Robinson skit… wasn’t that mean? Yeah….” Won’t You Be My Neighbor is mostly a Greatest Hits compilation of some of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood more famous moments without really exploring how they were so impactful outside of juxtaposing them with the appropriate historical context and, more importantly, why they’re still relevant today.

Like some of the interviewees featured in the film, my showing was full of people who grew up with Mister Rogers and who sniffled and sobbed during some of the more emotional scenes. Won’t You Be My Neighbor, to its credit, spends a great deal of screen time focusing on Rogers’ fixation with ensuring his messages were designed and presented in creative ways that would connect with audiences of all ages on deeply personal levels. While the point of Won’t You Be My Neighbor isn’t to beat Rogers himself at his own game, I didn't get that sort of personal connection with the film and it left me with only a marginally better sense of what made Rogers the man that he was.

Considering director Morgan Neville’s past work and his unique knack for delving into the personalities and the interpersonal dynamics of his real-life subjects (20 Feet From Stardom and Best of Enemies are notable examples) it’s strange that this film puts forward relatively little effort to make Rogers relatable. Won’t You Be My Neighbor makes half-hearted suggestions about Rogers’ own motivations in life rather than asking how Rogers’ own life experiences shaped the man America watched on TV and how that affected the lives of so many children who watched his shows. Why did he go out of his way to include people of all races, abilities, etc. on television? “I dunno, maybe because he was bullied for his weight when he was young?” Why did he tell a gay cast member he had to hide his identity in public? “Maybe because homosexuality wasn’t widely accepted, right?” What does all this mean for us today, what with the obvious parallels between what’s happening now and what was happening in Rogers’ time? “No answer.”

That Won't You Be My Neighbor specifically doesn't attempt to explain everything about its subject might be refreshing in the documentary field. Explainumentaries are a tired trope in documentary film in much the same way origin stories are for the superhero genre. I won't give Won't You Be My Neighbor credit for this, though, because it simply replaces explanation with nostalgia. It's an odd storytelling choice that leaves a lot on the table. Neville was probably right to leave the explanations up to viewers, but Fred Rogers' immense contributions to American culture in general and the effects he had on so many now-grown children individually shouldn't be left out, either (and they probably would've made a better movie). All stories, even biographies, need key points, conclusions, or morals that readers and viewers can take away. Won't You Be My Neighbor provides few of them.

Make no mistake that Won’t You Be My Neighbor is the highest-grossing biographical documentary in history likely because of the time in which it’s premiering. Nostalgia alone can’t explain the mass appeal of this film; people want a feel-good reminder of what it was like to have a wholesome, fatherly voice of moral reason present to assuage your most instinctive worries and fears with a soothing voice wrapped in a tasteful sweater. If that’s what you’re going to the theater for (and let’s be honest, we should all need that right now), Won’t You Be My Neighbor more than delivers.

I write this fully realizing, as I said at the beginning, that I didn’t grow up with Mister Rogers. I’d probably feel differently if I had. In the sniffles in the theater and in the voice of my friend on the phone I heard that same feeling that I get when I think about my Mister Rogers, Bill Watterson. Won’t You Be My Neighbor is a reassuring portrait of a great man, but its presentation resembles a summary of a painting in a textbook that you can buy in a gift shop of a museum just around the corner from where the painting itself hangs.

Murder Murder Murder Kill Kill Kill | Review: Sorry To Bother You

Sorry To Bother You is probably going to be the weirdest movie you see this year unless the Warner siblings decide to get freaky with Aquaman. But don’t let weirdness discourage you. Sorry To Bother You is one of those rare films in which a writer says “you know what, fuck it, I’m going all-in on this batshit idea,” intertwines it with more jokes that only work in the confines of its own crazy world than you can notice on the first try, and packs it with stingingly relevant commentary… and it works. Sorry To Bother You reminds you why filmmaking is such a fabulously versatile art form and why we go to theaters.

More than anything, Sorry To Bother You is a surrealist criticism of, well, a whole lot of things. Art. Racial inequality. Labor relations. But mostly it’s on top of our uniquely American (and in this case, Californian) form of Machiavellian zombie capitalism. Honestly, I don’t even like describing what this movie is about because it makes it sound preachy. And if Sorry To Bother You is anything, it’s not preachy. Sorry To Bother You is, I’m sure, getting a lot of comparisons to Idiocracy and Get Out right now, but it stands entirely on its own and doesn’t resemble any other satirical film or social commentary I’ve ever seen. If anything, writer and director Boots Riley’s probably the closest we’ve got to Johnathan Swift writing screenplays. And even that’s not a great comparison because Sorry To Bother You, at least for me, blurs the line between hyperbolic satire and reality because its plot is, frankly, so damned believable right now.

Lakeith Stanfield, playing our protagonist, Cassius Green, perfectly shepherds us down that blurred line. While he’s not exactly the story’s voice of reason—that role belongs to Detroit (Tessa Thompson), Cassius’s authentic-as-hell girlfriend and an artist who’s setting up her exhibitions when she’s not twirling promotional signs on the streets of Oakland—he’s faced with impossible choice after impossible choice, chewing over the same ethical dilemmas we would (and are) in the same situations. From taking a lowly job as a telemarketer at RegalView because he won’t sign a lifetime labor contract with the Amazon du jour WorryFree company to crossing his friends’ picket line because he can’t afford not to take a promotion, Cassius is constantly faced with the need to ignore his own moral compass in order to make practical decisions in situations largely forced upon him by those with greater power. Contrasted with Detroit, who speaks her mind both verbally and through enormous statement earrings and refuses to let the weight of poverty harsh her vibe, it’s clear from the start that Sorry To Bother You is all about plumbing the depths of economic decision-making when nearly all the possible outcomes are stacked in favor of the people forcing you into the decision in the first place.

That’s where Steve Lift, played by Armie Hammer, comes in. Lift (real quick: what a great fucking name for this character) is a mix of Jeff Bezos, Elizabeth Holmes, and Travis Kalanick whose brainchild, WorryFree, is a company that guarantees people work and prison-style housing for life in the form of a slavery contract, whose labor he sells to other companies. Lift is the embodiment of the parasitic, soulless, and morally vacant “innovators” currently sucking the Bay Area and Seattle dry.

Once Cassius reaches “Power Caller” status after his coworker Langston (Danny Glover) teaches him how to make sales using his white voice, Cassius is invited to take a break from selling weapons in RegalView’s penthouse office to attend one of Lift’s infamous parties (think Justin Timberlake’s club scene as Sean Parker in The Social Network mixed with the orgy in Eyes Wide Shut). Impressed with Cassius, Lift takes him into his office to make a modest proposal.

This is where the twist happens. I don’t have a spoiler section below and I won’t talk about the details of the twist here at all because you ought to see it yourself. But I will say that when I saw it, I had about a quarter second of “OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCKKGFHDHDFSHHJDSA” before my heart rate returned to normal and I quickly realized “wait, no, okay, this is totally something that’s already happening at Jeff Bezos’s house.” And this is why I don’t want to compare Sorry To Bother You to Idiocracy or Get Out: the satire in Sorry To Bother You isn’t a joke about how bad things could get or a social commentary that relies on somewhat fantastic plot devices, it’s really only a slight exaggeration of shit that’s happened before or is happening right now. My personal favorite scene in the movie is when Cassius goes on the hit show "I Got the S#*@ Kicked Out of Me!" to get beaten and literally covered in shit in exchange for airtime to reveal the larger implications of Lift’s proposal to the public, only for people to immediately cheer Lift while Congressmen stand beside him as he rings the bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

My only complaints about Sorry To Bother You are that some of the jokes fell flat and Detroit starts out as a token girlfriend character. It’s clear that Riley spent a lot of time thinking about this concept and the movie is packed with jokes, slights, and self-references of all sizes but not all of them stick the landing tonally or in the context of their scenes. Detroit blossoms into the story’s strongest character but at first there isn’t much indication that she’ll be anything other than an encouraging companion for the male protagonist other than knowing it would be really unlike Tessa Thompson to take that sort of role. Luckily, that turns out to be true.

I’ll finish by saying that Sorry To Bother You is an interesting example of how we in the United States handle self-reflection in the movie theater. Sorry To Bother You is an absolute trip down a rabbit hole. And a lot of our satire is like that: we tend to chastise ourselves at the movies by broadly poking fun at our problems. We laugh and point and say “that’s so true” and maybe go out for ice cream afterward. Sorry To Bother You says a lot about the moral rot of our particular economic setup and how our complacency toward that equates to complicity. This isn’t to say that nobody outside the U.S. makes satirical films at all, but our self-reflective movies, more often than not, are comedies or hold back on the criticism just enough not to offend audiences too much. I’ve spent most of this review purposefully not comparing this film to others, but after you’ve seen Sorry To Bother You I’d recommend watching Loveless, a Russian film by Andrey Zvyagintsev that was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film award at the Oscars earlier this year. The two aren’t directly comparable—Loveless is, in part, a scathing statement on life in Russia and acceptance of, if not participation in, the erosion of basic human values in modern Russian society—but in certain respects both films self-reflect on common issues in drastically different ways. Sorry To Bother You makes its points through surrealist comedy while Loveless uses a dark family drama. I won’t opine either way but see both and ask yourself if a film like Loveless could work here, a place where hilariously weird satires like Sorry To Bother You do. Can we handle criticism at the movies if it’s not funny?

This Is The Game We Play | [Spoiler] Review - Sorry to Bother You

As the string of company names that funded this movie flashes across the screen, there comes a line of text that reads, ‘A Significant Production.’ This, friends, is an incredible understatement. Sorry to Bother You is a working-class comedy set firmly in this era of history, when wage disparity has seldom been more severe. It’s a genre film disguised by social commentary, sometimes unclear, but always fun.

The movie opens in Oakland, California where Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) has been given a job at RegalView as a telemarketer. Good news for him, as he and his fiancée Detroit (Tessa Thompson) are living in his uncle’s garage with several dollars collectively to their name. Cash struggles at his new job until he is given advice by a veteran of the call center, Langston (Danny Glover), to make himself as friendly and non-threatening as possible. How? By using his “White Voice” of course. This voice (dubbed over by David Cross) is more than just a simple inflection; Cash turns himself into another person entirely as he’s physically dropped, desk and all, into his clients’ homes and elsewhere.

Cash is a natural at the White Voice. He’s so good that he’s landed himself a promotion in a few short months. His character is tested, however, as his fellow workers attempt to organize a union in the call center to receive a fair cut of company revenue. Cash joins them at first, but his family’s need for financial reprieve and his own poverty, makes the decision a hard one to make. A difficult position made more difficult by the fact that RegalView is owned by WorryFree: a company that provides food and housing to its workers in exchange for a lifetime labor contract.

This film made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival, so even when I didn’t know what was in it, I knew what it was about. Outlets have compared it to last year’s Oscar-winner (the best horror feature in a decade) Get Out. This movie, Sorry to Bother You is thematically comparable in…one scene? Aesthetically, which is what matters here, the two couldn’t be more different. I described this movie to someone as one part Do the Right Thing, and one part “Teddy Perkins” of Atlanta fame.

The “Teddy Perkins” episode is eerily similar in the way it progresses. It starts with a character coming across an offbeat scenario that is unsettling but not immediately harmful. The situation craters, of course, but we’re never given the impression that it’s time to jet until it’s far too late. The movie hints at this early with Cash’s physical displacement during his calls, then makes the full turn into the absurd in the Third Act, as we peek into the life and mind of Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), the CEO of WorryFree.

Steve himself is worry free, with a closet full of sarongs and more money than he can spend. He is a charismatic Tech Bro abomination, clearly the antagonist, but hardly a villain. In a particularly tense exchange with Cash, he attempts to diffuse the situation by claiming that he isn’t evil. For the most part, he’s right; at least, he genuinely believes he isn’t evil. He does evil things. He’s ruthless in his business strategy. Yet, he actually believes normal people want a [REDACTED] and would sign away their life for [REDACTED]. Sociopaths do only what they know must be done.

This is one of the few places I’d tweak this movie that I otherwise enjoyed greatly. The proposition Cash is given, so late into the game, is so ludicrous and twisted and evil (rightfully so, for a satire), it dampens the heat that had been building steadily throughout the entire sequence in Steve’s mansion.

The second strike for example is an excellent scene because it presents the action of Cash crossing the picket line in pure economic terms instead of merely racial ones. His uncle Sergio was prepared to sign himself into slavery to save his family’s house. Cash takes the job as a Power Caller because he simply has to. His best friend Sal (Jermaine Fowler) says, “Sorry about your Uncle, but…” except there is no but. The “but” is that a man and his wife and kids are out on the street. Selling out was a dubious decision but, in this case at least, it was the adult one.

It would mean more for Cash’s character in the later moment with Steve Lift to be given a choice that trends closer to his actual wants and desires. On that note, it would help if his indecision wasn’t seemingly triggered mainly by his desire to get back together with his activist girlfriend. Detroit begins the movie as the token supportive girlfriend but comes into her own as the film goes on as a loud voice of reason in the midst of utter chaos. Steven Yeun, one of the best young guys working right now, is in my opinion under-utilized as Squeeze, the initial organizer. He gets the most out of very short windows of screen time but bounces back-and-forth from fiery community organizer to pseudo-woke thirst boy at several points.

No one human being needs the amount of money Cash is offered by Steve. That may as well be the thesis of this entire movie: a super-liberal, socialist war cry. If that’s not your jam, you’ve been warned. Writer-Director Boots Riley leaves no wiggle room to misinterpret his message. The hoarders of wealth must pay their due and not a cent less.

The best movies are the ones that elicit a reaction: a real reaction in the cinema. Nightcrawler to this day is one of the best movies I’ve seen in theaters. Not because it was the best movie I’ve seen, but because there was a tangible, emotional reaction from the people in the screening. Raw and visceral not unlike the movie itself. Sorry to Bother You held that same power and that alone makes it one of the best of the year.

The humor is uneven here. Most of it works well. Other times it falls flat, or goes on too long. The script could use a punch up but is still quite strong. We are at an age finally where more than one Black writer at a time can tell the story they’ve always meant to tell and do so creatively unimpeded. People are hungry for these stories that seem to, at long last, be getting the financial backing they need to be seen. We’ll be talking about this movie for a long time yet. It’s sometimes confusing, but never boring, which is what a good film should aspire to.

4 Stars out of 5

The hook of this movie – the secret behind WorryFree’s massive success and Steve Lift’s extravagant wealth – is slave labor. People working endless hours for little pay in inhumane conditions. Sound familiar? Humans have their limits of course, so Steve concocts a plan to increase production by harvesting a warehouse full of mutated horse-human hybrids called Equisapiens. Think of the Replicants of Blade Runner fame.

When Cash goes public with this information, Steve Lift is hailed as a genius. His company’s stock skyrockets and he becomes even more wealthy than he was before. It’s a slick little piece of commentary on how complacent society is with even the most horrific circumstances so long as our daily lives aren’t intruded.

The movie ends with a shot of Cassius in the beginning stages of mutation, having earlier on ingested an activator he was led to believe was cocaine. This is top tier, expert-level dark comedy. It’s a twist ripped straight from a Grimm Fairy Tale or an episode of The Twilight Zone that makes me wonder who the movie is for. The mid-credits stinger where Cash and a band of Equisapiens storm Steve Lift’s gated house (“Sorry to bother you…”) is a literal interpretation of the ‘Eat the Rich’ bumper sticker. Ending the movie with the shot of Cash closing the garage door on the new version of his old life would have been cool, as it depicts a realistic conclusion to this surreal experience.

Steve gets away with slavery, but, the call center gets its union started. Everyone gets paid their due, and Cash gets to start his life with Detroit proper. Episodes of The Boondocks always ended this way: a return to the status quo, with a slightly improved situation and little to no comeuppance for the supposed Bad Guy. Just like real life! The movie isn’t quite set in real life, though, and the route Boots Riley chose is more memorable, so it works just as well.

Stray Thoughts:

- I wanted to see more of Kate Berlant’s middle management character, Diana. The shot in which she makes her exit from the story suggests they had more footage of her. She’s an improv comic and it showed. A charming, energetic performance.

- Armie Hammer is better than he’s given credit for and it’s good he’s found a role that shows that.

- A mangled rhino’s head sits above Steve’s fireplace as a trophy. Poaching, not baseball, is the Rich Caucasian’s favorite pastime.

- Power Callers at RegalView make arms deals. The movie should be longer if only to pick that thread further. Including pointing out the United States and their habit of lending rocket launchers to insurgents abroad.

- One of Cash’s first sales using his White Voice is to a young professional living in downtown Oakland who buys several pieces of expensive furniture. We see him again later. He’s still in downtown Oakland, but he’s living in his car instead of a loft. Brilliant sight gag.

- I’d like to see Donald Glover take a red pen to the second half of this movie and see just how far he takes it.

- The scene in Steve's mansion where Cash is pressured to "rap" in front of the party guests brings to mind the five year period where every party I attended played "Cupid's Shuffle" and every person in attendance looked to me to get the dance started. Nevermind the instructions are in the song. Allow me to jive for you, fellow kids.

If You Know You Know | Review - Incredibles 2

Fourteen years is a mighty long time. It’s especially a long wait between one movie and its follow-up. Imagine my delight, as I settled in to watch Incredibles 2, to see a short video prepared by the movie’s main cast, both apologizing for the heavy delay and thanking the fans for their continued interest in the year 2018. I wouldn’t have thought to do it, but it makes perfect sense. People don’t go to the cinemas like they used to, and that goes extra for sequels. It’s a lot to live up to, even for a studio as legendary as Pixar Animation. With expectations so high, it only makes sense to do one thing – continue the Story.

The Story as we left it saw the defeat of supervillain and would-be sidekick Syndrome. Incredibles 2 picks up seconds after the previous film’s ending, as the Parr Family engages in battle with the Underminer. No spoilers here, as it happens in the first ten minutes, but if your initial impression of this bad guy was of him being a sight gag or punchline, surprise! It turns out the Underminer is extremely capable. Even though The Incredibles - with help from Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) - manage to disable his massive drill with no casualties, they are still detained immediately after the fight because…oh, yeah.

There’s been no time skip in the Incredibles Universe and vigilante superheroes are still very illegal. This on top of the damage to the town leads Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) and Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) to once again take up their civilian identities as Helen and Bob, along with their children: Violet (Sarah Vowell), Dash (Huck Milner) and Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile).

Incredibles was a movie extremely deft at depicting our average everyday problems in an entertaining way. Bob was out of a job, but secretly supported his family by getting back into shape and going on covert black ops superhero missions. The secret is out now, and the Parrs are again unemployed. Supers need to eat, too, so both parents mull the option of finding a day job. That is, before they are approached by a fast-talking CEO named Winston (Bob Odenkirk) along with his business partner and sister, Evelyn (Catherine Keener).

These are two new, interesting characters with a crazy idea: Make America Super Again. No, not like that. They want to change the laws against Supers by changing public perception, and they want to do that with the best hero of them all! Elastigirl.

Here is where the Story really starts. The movie hits you first with the obvious Mr. Mom tropes that come with the former breadwinner being sidelined, but this is a Brad Bird feature and there are levels. On Bob’s end: how does he juggle the needs of his three young kids, while supporting his wife and dealing with his latent insecurities after failing early on? On Helen’s end: how does she rectify engaging in very public illegal activity for the benefit of her family after telling them repeatedly that the Age of Supers was done?

That family dynamic is part of why the first installment of this series is so beloved. It was warm and tense and tender and volatile but, above all, it was real. As realistic a family unit as we’d seen in any feature, animated or not. Violet is entering adolescence, with all the pitfalls that brings. Dash is advancing into a higher grade and more difficult course work, struggling to keep pace (lol).

Jack-Jack gets his own paragraph; not just because he’s that good in the movie. Despite being a baby with no actual words spoken, he is a very dynamic character. His powers manifest in very odd ways. If he isn’t phasing through walls, he’s lighting himself on fire; if he isn’t using the Shadow Clone Jutsu, he’s teleporting; if he isn’t walking through another dimension, he’s transforming into a monster. There is plenty of subtext throughout this movie. A lot of it, Brad Bird couldn’t get too far into because The Mouse was watching, but as someone on the Spectrum, I do appreciate the development of Jack-Jack in this movie.

Jack-Jack was developed much better than his two older siblings. It might have been by design, or maybe they ran out of real estate in what is a pretty quick movie. Either way, it limited Dash and Violet – two characters that featured heavily in The Incredibles – to reacting to the plot as opposed to moving it along. They just didn’t have anything to do until the Final Act of the movie, when they help resolve the conflict.

Another critique on that note: the antagonist didn’t exactly pull their weight. Screenslaver wasn’t as lame as Evil Vision from Solo. Mark up for that, I guess. But yet again, we see my pet peeve of villains in film who just…do shit. I understand that in the realm of fiction, and even outside it, people react to things in extreme ways, which leads them to hurt the group of people that most reminds them of their pain. A good villain can do this, but they still need proper motive. Screenslaver’s motive threatens to fall apart if you think about it too long. And the big reveal of who is really behind the evil scheme? The only way you miss it is if you go to the bathroom for…I don’t know, thirty minutes?

This didn’t ruin the movie, of course. This is a film made with children in mind. Which, to be fair, made Helen and Evelyn’s two abrupt libertarian debates even more jarring than they would be in a more mature feature. In a movie that is otherwise perfectly paced, we literally stop cold for these conversations. I am, of course, a fan of constructive interaction between female characters on screen (there are several examples here) but Brad Bird, please. These kids don’t know about the free market or gig economy, and they don’t care. Tell the story.

Because when he does tell the Story, it’s excellent. Brad Bird is an amazing action director. Every sequence with Elastigirl is incredibly creative in both the use of her pliable abilities and the environments around her. She looks like a big deal, as do the other heroes, returning and new.

Part of why I love animation lies in the fact that Incredibles 2 even exists. For most other movies, a lay-off of fourteen years would be enough to scrap any plans of a sequel. People get older, people move on, schedules get full. It’s almost not worth the effort. In the world of animation, there is no such problem. If you can coordinate everyone’s Rolodex, you can pick up, quite literally, where you left off, no matter if it’s four months or fourteen years between productions. It’s not quite better than The Incredibles. With over a decade to wait though, this is an achievement and may well be remembered as a classic.

4 Stars out of 5