Wednesday Collective — Films of Excess, Black Widow, & All Your Ark Are Belong To Us

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
The Cinema of Excess
Izzy Black

This article. Dear lord, this article. Last year was a banner year for characters who rejoiced in their own excess – in Spring Breakers, The Bling Ring, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Great Gatsby, and The Counselor, just to name a few. These are movies that “speak to the false, illusory, or destructive promise of the American dream,” to quote Izzy Black.

By comparing The Wolf of Wall Street to American Psycho, Black highlights the qualities that separate the new genre of excess from satire and anti-consumerism films – a lack of judgmentalism on the part of the director, a use of formal techniques to emphasize the sensory overload of debauchery over the comfort of glamor, and the use of montage and monologue voice-over as a sort of infinite accounting by sensory barrage. She even dips into music’s recent entries in the genre – covering Kanye West, Lana Del Rey, and Lorde.

Black’s article makes so many points I’ve circled around for ages but struggled to put words to. It is an insanely well-studied and comprehensive piece. Cinephiles get reading. This is one of the best pieces of film writing we’ve seen this year.

Reviewing Black Widow
Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

I’ve made it a priority never to review a woman’s performance in a film differently than I would a man’s. There are obvious exceptions, such as when those differences are crucial to a movie’s themes, but in the case of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Scarlett Johansson could play the Captain and Chris Evans could play Black Widow and it wouldn’t make a jot of difference to the plot.

I’m not here to review a woman’s sexiness. If your eyes and your brain can’t do that much on their own, you’ve got bigger fish to fry. What Johansson is wearing ought to make as much difference to me as a critic as what Evans is. In fact, less so – his costume change gets its own scene, starring Stan Lee. Besides, I’m pretty sure Black Widow’s most notable accessories were an assault rifle and a jet plane.

So here’s where I’d take the majority of mainstream critics to task for reviewing Black Widow’s wardrobe over her function in the plot or Johansson’s excellent performance…except Gavia Baker-Whitelaw already did at The Daily Dot. I highly suggest you read her compilation and condemnation of so much of the sexist laziness and celebrity-revue-as-criticism we so regularly rail against here.

Lessons from The Wind Rises
Qina Liu

Qina Liu has a treasure trove of deep, intelligent, heartfelt reviews. She blends a broad analytical knowledge of theatre and literature with a passion and storytelling ability that gets her reviews to that next level, where they themselves become pieces of social commentary and art.

Storytelling is about giving your reader all the information they’ll need for that one perfect sentence that hits them in the gut, without ever letting them know that’s what you’re doing. Liu has that ability in spades. She does it succinctly to make a cultural point about The Wind Rises and she draws her reading of August: Osage County into a dreamlike contemplation on family and death that reflects and expands on the themes of the film itself.

I discovered her this week and already she’s leapt to the top of my list of fellow critics.

TV’s Love of Dead Women
Sarah Marshall

This is a fascinating article that picks apart the trope of that eternal, plot-driving mystery of the murdered woman. Sarah Marshall at New Republic deconstructs its use on Twin Peaks, a TV show that used that mystery to drive its first season but plummeted into ratings obscurity once her killer was found.

Marshall juxtaposes the comfort we have in publicly mourning the loss of a dead woman – even if she’s just on a TV show – against the difficulty we have in coming to terms with details of her life that don’t match our preconceptions. By doing so, she calls out a lazy cliché relied upon far too heavily in TV storytelling, and whose time has passed.

Captain America vs. The Tyranny of “Dark”
Ross Lincoln

Here’s why you should read this article: “Captain America is, at his core, someone who believes, really believes, in the potential for goodness in people, in the values America purports to represent, and in basic concepts like personal freedom, equality, and fair play. He isn’t a ‘my country, right or wrong’ kind of person, he’s a ‘my country can and should be better’ kind of person. If there’s any period from US History he embodies, it isn’t the Nixon years, it’s the New Deal.”

What Wednesday Collective Gets Wrong About Wednesdays and Collectives
Sam Adams

A few weeks ago, I foolishly clicked on an article Huffington Post blatantly ripped off of Politico. It was titled “What Noah Gets Wrong About the Bible.” I waited eight years for Huffington Post to load 765 separate ads and finally read an article in which the writer clearly demonstrated his vast and boundless ability to not know anything about the Bible. He also didn’t know how to interpret a film any way but literally, which is your last priority when going to see an Aronofsky flick like Noah, but that’s secondary.

Critic Sam Adams isn’t a big fan of this type of article. He argues that articles about the X number of things that Y gets wrong about Z should be banished to the Seventh Circle of Hell (that’s Dante, not the Bible, for those keeping score. Please don’t interpret Dante literally, you’ll hurt yourself.) Adams argues that movies and TV shows aren’t often meant to be accurate depictions of what they cover. An article about what absurdist comedy Veep gets wrong about the vice-presidency is clearly useless.

I’d suggest these types of articles aren’t particularly factual either. They’re assigned in a day. Critics need to tell their audience when they don’t know something, not pretend they do. Informational inaccuracy in movies comes in so many forms, it needs to be treated like a disease – you need to find the right specialist in every genre.

For instance, click on Huffington Post and you’ll learn that Noah never had an adopted daughter who was barren but then later had children. What deep analysis. How dare Aronofsky and Russell Crowe make something up like that! Anger, anger, pitchforks & torches.

Click on the link of someone who’s studied the material and you may learn that the orphan is drawn from Korean flood mythology and that her barrenness is an analogue for Abraham’s wife Sarah, who in the Old Testament was barren until God gifted her with Isaac, who God then demanded Abraham sacrifice. How 10,000 critics missed that Crowe’s Noah is playing Abraham the last half of Noah is beyond me, but that’s why you find the right specialist in every genre. Let me recommend a good one:

Forget about Noah, it’s time for Russian Ark
A. E. Larsen

Look at that segue. Here’s yet another stellar article from An Historian Goes to the Movies. This time, Larsen passionately implores you to see Russian Ark, an intricate movie containing 300 years of Russian history and filmed using 2,000 actors and 3 orchestras in 33 rooms across a single 96-minute take in Russia’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. I’m guilty of not having seen it myself, but I’m pretty sure I just got convinced.

Disfigurement Stigma and Under the Skin
Elizabeth Day

Day reports on her interview with Adam Pearson, an actor with disfiguring growths on his face. He discusses how his new film with Scarlett Johansson, Under the Skin, helps to isolate preconceptions we hold about those who look different from the norm.

A Whole Lotta Christian Bale: The Films of 2014, #10-1

10. The Missing Picture

March 19 — Rithy Panh tells his memoir of the Khmer Rouge massacres in 1970s Cambodia, using clay figures to fill in for the archival footage that’s missing from one of the most forgotten genocides in 20th century history. It’s an idea that sounds like a student art project gone wrong, but it’s one that in its simplicity becomes overwhelming even in a 2-minute trailer. The Missing Picture is currently up for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. You can watch that trailer here.

9. Gone Girl

October 3 — If Se7en, Zodiac, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo have proven anything, it’s that David Fincher is the greatest modern director of the movie mystery. Gillian Flynn, who wrote the bestselling novel, is handling the screenplay solo, and it’s rare for a first-time screenwriter to be given that kind of carte blanche for a major release. Rosamund Pike joins Ben Affleck, Tyler Perry, and Neil Patrick Harris in what has got to be the strangest cast Fincher’s ever lined up. This last gives me pause enough to not rank this higher, but Fincher’s track record is just too strong to keep it out of the top 10.

8. Noah

March 28 — Darren Aronofsky makes dark, disturbing films like Black Swan. His Requiem for a Dream, about the drug addictions of four New Yorkers, requires emotional recovery time after viewing. Noah is out of left field for him, though he says it’s been his dream project since youth. No one knows how accurate to Judeo-Christian interpretation his adaptation of the Biblical Flood will or won’t be. Previews make it look like he’s playing it straight. Some test screenings for religious groups resulted in criticism, some didn’t. It was enough to cause the studio and Aronofsky to fight publicly over final cut, which any Aronofsky fan could’ve predicted miles off. Let’s hope Aronofsky kept his vision intact. Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins, and Emma Watson star. You can watch the trailer in all its madcap visual glory here.

7. Inherent Vice

No date set — There Will Be Blood was a statement film that immediately took its place as one of the most important movies in America’s cinematic history. Director P.T. Anderson’s Inherent Vice, based on the Thomas Pynchon novel and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Jena Malone, earns a place based on the fact that Anderson has yet to misfire. Phoenix is already one of our best actors. Malone is overdue for recognition. They’re joined by Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, and Reese Witherspoon.

6. Exodus

December 12 — Starring Christian Bale as Moses. If that’s not event viewing, I don’t know what is. The last time director Ridley Scott ventured back in time in the Middle East, it was for the Crusade-era epic Kingdom of Heaven. The theatrical release was a gutted mess that cut out entire protagonists, and it was only in the director’s cut that the film evolved from a middling action movie into a profound contemplation on faith, moral obligations, and one’s place in the world. That director’s cut is Scott’s best film by far, and most will never see it. It’s exciting that he’s finally returning to his favorite subject matter, and with Bale, Ben Kingsley, Aaron Paul, and Sigourney Weaver on board to boot.

5. The Wind Rises

February 21 — I hit on this in my Godzilla preview, but the most important filmmaking in the post-World War 2 era was done in Japan. It was a country possessed by regret and a national shame for blindly following its fascist leaders into war, and traumatized by the dropping of two atomic bombs. Hayao Miyazaki is the director responsible for Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. His animated worlds are evocative and emotional, but in his swan song, he trades in the fantasy genre to tell the story of an idealistic dreamer, a Japanese airplane designer, whose creations are used for war. The Wind Rises is currently up for an Oscar as Best Animated Film. Watch the trailer here.

4. Lawless & Knight of Cups

No date set — Terrence Malick is one of the most enigmatic directors in history. He made only three films in 30 years, each more lauded than the last, and now he’s made four films in the last four years. Both Lawless and Knight of Cups star Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, and Natalie Portman. Knight of Cups is about a man’s celebrity and excess in Hollywood. Lawless, which will likely be retitled, is about two intersecting love triangles in the Austin, TX music scene. It’s the higher profile of the two and also stars Angela Bettis, Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, Holly Hunter, Val Kilmer, and Rooney Mara. These aren’t to be confused with Voyage of Time, which is Malick’s upcoming film about…the universe?…and was filmed in Kenya, and may not arrive this year. Heck, it’s Malick, we might not see any of these films until 2029, but chances are we’ll get the Bale pairing this year.

3. Serena

No date set — Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007. Her In a Better World won it in 2011. Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper are both nominated in acting categories this year for American Hustle. It’s Lawrence’s third nomination. She won Best Actress last year.

In Serena, Lawrence is Serena Pemberton, a depression-era Lady MacBeth to Cooper’s timber baron George. Serena is the single role I’m most excited to witness in the coming year. Based on its pedigree, if a man had directed this, it’d be on everyone’s top 10 lists. As is, it’s virtually nonexistent.

2. The Raid 2

March 28 — The usual answer to, “What is the best action movie ever made?” is Die Hard. This is wrong. The correct answer is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Well, it was. In 2011, The Raid: Redemption complicated that answer. It was an Indonesian film by a Welsh director about an ill-fated police raid, and it combined the best of martial arts, gangster, horror, and Western action movies. The action was brutal, fast, emotional, and intelligent, but the tension that gave it its context was unparalleled. It wasn’t just a superb action movie, it was a superb movie, period. The sequel looks every bit as artful and intense while broadening the scope of its story. Watch the trailer here.

1. Interstellar

November 7 — Little is known about director Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to The Dark Knight trilogy. It’s about space travel and the discovery of a wormhole. A mysterious, heartbreaking, and inspirational trailer is our only clue, yet it doesn’t give a shred of plot away. The cast is a you-pick-’em of top flight actors – Anne Hathaway, Matthew McConaughey, Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, John Lithgow. Nolan’s last standalone film was Inception, and that was worth the wait. Interstellar is the movie event of the year. Watch the trailer here. It’s worth it.