Tag Archives: feminism

“The safe joy of dancing with theatre boys.” Mean Girls the Musical (2024 film)

20 January 2024

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You know you’re a certain age when films you saw in the theatre in your adult life are being remade with some regularity. I think I first felt this pang when they remade Footloose and “reimagined” The Karate Kid, but actually I had seen neither of those films in the theatre during their original runs (and even now I don’t think I’ve watched either all the way through). Carrie and Robocop appear to get remade every ten minutes, but for some reason this déjà vu feeling doesn’t quite apply to horror movies nor thrillers. Nor to cash grab live action re-dos of Disney animated films. And Endless Love I’d never seen the first time (nor wanted to), and I can barely remember seeing the remake (but apparently I did … thank heavens for this blog’s archive).

However, seeing The Color Purple last month (which I loved) hit a little too close to home. Admittedly, the original came out nearly 40 years ago, but I have clear memories of seeing it on the big screen in 1985 as well as studying it in college.

Annnnd then … Mean Girls hit cineplexes just a few weeks later, another film that became a Broadway hit musical that re-became a film. This one is messing with my temporal triangulation! The first flick, starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Lizzy Caplan, and Tim Meadows still feels like a “new” movie to me. I know it’s 20 years old … hush. So, I approached this latest iteration with some trepidation. I don’t mind remakes. In fact, I enjoy seeing what people do with a time-tested tale, contemporizing and offering new contextual commentary. I just couldn’t envision how Mean Girls could be revisited without becoming cliché.

Color me wrong. And let’s all wear pink on Wednesdays. The new film musical of Mean Girls is so fetch. Yes, they finally made fetch happen.

In great part because Tina Fey has remained the chief architect of this franchise (does it qualify as a “multiverse” now?), the 2023 Mean Girls keeps its true north around tolerance, acceptance, authenticity, and, yes, feminism. The central thesis of the original film is a) teenagers can be truly awful to each other, b) said behavior is a reflection of endemic misogyny and classism in our society, and c) human beings can be gobsmackingly shallow regardless their age. 

Mean Girls has always offered a wink and a sneer at Hollywood’s arrested development regarding high school-set coming of age stories. On its surface, Mean Girls is just as self-reverentially, um, plastic as, say, Grease or Breakfast Club or anything on The CW. But under the marabou feathers and platform sneakers, Mean Girls is a witty and dark-hearted satire on the state of our have/have-not instant gratification culture. For someone to rise, someone else must fall – why live in abundance when you can elevate yourself by ruining someone else? In this way, Mean Girls has as much Arthur Miller and Nathaniel Hawthorne in its DNA as it does Clueless or Fast Times at Ridgemont High or even Heathers (three other teen-centered flicks that get it right … Easy A and Edge of Seventeen which arrived after the first Mean Girls do so as well).

So what does the addition of wry, at times nightmarishly day-glo and surreal musical numbers add to this mélange? Quite a bit, in fact. My only quibble with the original film was what felt like tonal whiplash between Mel Brooks-level absurdity and Afterschool Special angst and back again. Perhaps unsurprisingly, wedging one teen pastiche pop ditty after another into the mix brings it all into perfect relief. 

Admittedly, the songs by Jeff Richmond (Fey’s husband) and lyricist Nell Benjamin (who also worked on the musically superior Legally Blonde the Musical … I’m sensing a pattern here) are a smidge forgettable. Less than 24 hours later, I couldn’t hum a bar of any number to save my soul. Sorry … “Revenge Party” … THAT one sticks in your head – catchy AND grating at the same time. But no one goes to Mean Girls expecting Sondheim or Rodgers & Hammerstein.

That said, the staging of each number is clever and frisky and fun. The hum drum environs of high school hallways unfold into African pride lands; science labs explode in confetti and parade floats; teen ragers freeze into chiaroscuro tableaus … all while the respective musical confessionals proceed. First time directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. and cinematographer Bill Kirstein run headlong into the delightful kitsch of musical theatre while breaking it wide open cinematically. That ain’t easy. The Hollywood box office is strewn with the corpses of other movie musicals that have tried and really, really, really failed (see: Cats … no don’t).

The cast is damn dynamite, achieving the near impossible – honoring what came before (which lives on digitally for instant streaming comparison) while enhancing and expanding. The original film was an artifact of its day – social media wasn’t the monster it is now, cell phones were still a luxury for some, and fat-shaming and light homophobia were easy punch lines. Thankfully, Fey is a sensitive progressive who knows just what to walk back and what to bring forward. There is also more nuance in what a “mean girl” even is, highlighting that we are taught by a patriarchal society to turn on each other in a mistaken bid for relevance and that true relevance comes from embracing (and loving) the awkward in us all. 

To that end, one of the best additions to the script is a final act chat between protagonist Cady Harron (a relatable and temperate Angourie Rice, channeling a teen version of Amy Adams with less vocal prowess) and queen bee Regina George (an ass-kicking star turn by Renee Rapp who could be the love child of Madonna, Adele, and Will & Grace’s Karen Walker). The two run into each other in the restroom during their high school’s “Spring Fling.” If you know the original film, basically all the bad stuff has happened at this point, Regina is in a neck brace, and Cady has won the math competition. So this scene is just, well, a conversation – a long overdue one, between two human beings who have spent the past two hours misunderstanding each other, trying to outdo each other, and scoring points against each other. For the first time, we see them communing as beautifully vulnerable humans and as the kids they are. Don’t fret. The scene isn’t maudlin, and Rapp is far too gifted to not wring a laugh out of every moment; yet, this quiet scene is an important addition to the Mean Girls canon as it demonstrates the power of true connection.

I would be remiss – asleep at the switch in fact – if I didn’t give a huge shout out to Moana’s Auli’i Cravalho as tragicomic narrator/instigator Janis ‘Imi’ike and her partner in well-intentioned crime Jaquel Spivey playing Damian Hubbard. Whereas Cady was the heart and soul of the original film, the remake takes its cue from some of Shakespeare’s best comedies and shifts that spotlight onto the more interesting second bananas. Spivey is genius with the kind of zingers only the long-bullied can muster (“the safe joy of dancing with theatre boys”), but Cravalho nearly runs away with the picture: think Vanessa Hudgens meets Janeane Garafalo, yet still entirely her own creation. Lizzy Caplan was arch perfection as Janis Ian in the original Mean Girls, and Cravalho takes it all next level. The screen lights up every time she enters the frame. She channels brilliantly how so many of us felt in high school, still discovering our sarcastic abilities to critique the artifice of it all while hurting that we weren’t simply accepted for the differences that made us freakishly perfect.

I can’t wait to see what Cravalho – and Rapp – do next. The future is queer. And beautiful.

“I read what pleases me.” The Color Purple (2023)

27 December 2023

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My assessment of The Color Purple in all of its sundry adaptations always has been first processed through the narrative structure of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book. I don’t say that to sound pretentious. The novel is structured as a series of letters to God, first by Celie and then by her sister Nettie. As such, the narrative takes on a fragmented, dreamlike, haunting, episodic quality. The story beats all come in the form of firsthand accounts that we the reader interpret cumulatively to understand the hopes and horrors of the central characters’ lives. Imagine if the Brothers Grimm had been steeped in the American miasma of misogyny and racism and told Cinderella in reverse. (I know Cinderella was written by Charles Perrault. Just roll with me here.)

I’ll be forever grateful that Professor Warren Rosenberg at my small all-male college in rural Indiana (Wabash College) made this novel required reading, along with Toni Morrison’s equally gut-punching The Bluest Eye. We then were all tasked to watch Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of The Color Purple as well. (Because I had a beautifully progressive mom we’d seen it in the theatre in 1985 when it first came out, but I gladly watched it again.) Professor Rosenberg’s assignment was for us to assess how the author’s intent shifted through the cinematic gaze and identify what was lost and what was found. I suspect that assignment is in great part why I continue to blog about movies three decades after that early 90s coursework.

But here I’ve done what so many well-meaning folks (men) do and I’ve fallen into the trap Spielberg did of making the narrative about myself. It ain’t.

That said, going back to the structure of the original novel, the reason Spielberg’s adaptation doesn’t quite work – stellar cast and production that it had – is because he couldn’t un-Spielberg himself. Spielberg was still stuck in “EVENT MOVIE” mode. The delicate, nightmarish nuance of Celie’s letters – unanswered confessions, prayers, and pleas – were lost in the sweep of an Oscar-bait film. Nonetheless, in great part without Spielberg and producer Quincy Jones, the original film might not have ever seen the light of day, given Hollywood’s general populist tendencies (stated politics aside). Regardless its flaws, the film served a crucial purpose in establishing Walker’s narrative in the public consciousness for all time. Of course, career best performances by Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey are really what lasted in the mind’s eye. And the irony that I first offered credit to two men – Spielberg and Jones – given the work’s core message of women reclaiming their agency against all odds is not lost on me.

So, this self-indulgent “look what I know” preamble aside, what does all this mean for Blitz Bazawule’s musical remake of The Color Purple? In my humble opinion, the film is the perfect distillation of the central thesis in Walker’s work – that strength comes from within and through sisterhood and that the socioeconomic deck has long been stacked against African-American women in every way possible. And, at least for me, the musical form is the best cinematic framework for the epistolary structure of Walker’s novel. Each song is staged like an unanswered prayer, a moment in time (joyous, tragic, introspective) where the characters reveal their truest perspective on the nightmarish forces at work in their lives. Bazawule, who brought a similar sensibility to Beyoncé’s Black is King, embraces the heightened theatricality of the film musical, juxtaposing hardscrabble existence and tuneful escape beautifully. (At times, I thought of Lars Von Trier’s heartbreaking Dancer in the Dark. Bjork’s character in that film endures her own series of tragedies and finds solace in music, sometimes inspired by the industrial noise around her.)

That is not to say this new adaptation is without flaws. The first act – young Celie and Nettie before they are horrifically separated – just doesn’t connect the way it should. This is a shame because it is this bond that should set the stage for all that is to come, how Celie has lost half her heart, and how important it is when her life comes full circle. The opening scenes between Halley Bailey (Nettie) and Phylicia Pearl Mpasi (Celie) are lovely, lilting even, with a dynamite new ditty in “Keep It Movin’.” However, the early scenes all feel formulaic. The stakes are not raised high enough when Celie is forced by her father to marry Mister, nor when Mister forces Nettie from his home, declaring the sisters shall never see each other again. (That’s one scene that Spielberg DOES nail, if I recall, because his biggest gift is in capturing childhood terror and innocence lost.)

Fortunately, once the adult ensemble enters the picture, the sheer force of their talent and their dynamic rights the ship. Fantasia Barrino is remarkable as Celie. This is not an easy role – Celie has learned to survive by shrinking, hiding her dreams, her hopes, her anger, and her disappointment in a God (and a family) that seemingly abandoned her. Maybe Job is a better analogue than Cinderella! Yet all the pain must remain bubbling under the surface, just beyond view. Celie is a character whose agency has been utterly stripped away, yet she still must be a compelling protagonist, not relying on audience sympathy alone. It’s not a “showy” part in that way. YET, it’s a musical. And Fantasia has a VOICE. What she builds throughout the film is indelible.

She’s aided and abetted by Danielle Brooks as Sofia and Taraji P. Henson as Shug Avery. Both characters are pivotal influences on Celie’s awakening and are such larger than life personalities that they run the risk of driving her nearly off the screen. That doesn’t happen here. Both Brooks and Henson bring love AND fireworks to their portrayals. If I were to continue my belabored Cinderella-in-reverse metaphor, consider them the antitheses of the Evil Stepsisters. Brooks lights the screen on fire with her showstopper “Hell No,” and Henson picks up that baton nicely for its musical complement “Push Da Button.” Both women (and songs) anthemically reclaim power for women in the film. Sofia has tragedy ahead while Shug does not, but by the final act the three women are arm-in-arm, celebrating the power of unity. Their number “Miss Celie’s Pants” is such a barn-burner that it nearly eclipses Celie’s 11 o’clock number “I’m Here” (but not quite). Taken together, the music fuels the film and propels this trio to empowerment through reclamation (and we gladly go along with them).

I also should highlight Colman Domingo’s performance as the villainous Mister and Corey Hawkins’ as his conflicted son Harpo. Either character could devolve into being a melodramatic foil to the plot. Both actors avoid this deftly. Don’t get me wrong, Mister’s treatment of Celie is as vile as the day is long, but as Celie finds her footing and ascends, Mister’s world crumbles. Domingo does a lovely job finding the notes of burgeoning self-awareness without ever becoming maudlin. Similarly, Hawkins does not play Harpo for crowd-pleasing comic relief. Rather, we see Harpo studying his father’s ways, ultimately rejecting them, and finding his own place in this world. If The Color Purple carries a feminist message (and I would argue that it does) then it’s crucial that the men in this world find enlightenment as well, and in this adaptation they do.

When we first meet Brooks’ Sofia, she’s proudly stepping into a bar to confront her future father-in-law. The patrons point out a sign on the wall that reads, among other things, that women are not allowed in the establishment. She deadpans in reply, “I read what pleases me.” And if there’s a message I took from this latest Color Purple it is that. Don’t let the naysayers derail you – and, oh, how they will try and seemingly succeed – but there is power in the collective. And that unanswered prayers are answered here on earth by those who truly care about us. Read what pleases YOU!

Omg!! 🥰

“When I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I just lost interest anyway.” Barbie the Movie

6 August 2023

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Kudos to Barbie helmer and co-screenwriter Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, Little Women), Hollywood’s first solo woman director (and likely NOT the last) to earn $1 billion at the international box office for a film. In just over two weeks no less.

I was reflecting on that milestone on the way home from seeing the fab film this morning. Why? What is it about this movie that has captured the zeitgeist so? Admittedly, we are all a bit weary of superheroes. We all likely feel a bit lost in this topsy turvy world. Are we all looking for a new hero? Someone not in spandex and a cape, but still reminiscent of childhood’s limitless hopes?

On the surface, that might be the initial draw. Refreshingly, Barbie is something else altogether. It’s deeply weird. And wonderful. Its scenic design alone is immersive, glorious, impeccably off-putting. An uncanny valley, warped toyetic reflection of reality. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in garish bubblegum pink. An apt metaphor for what Barbieland’s free-thinking denizens intend to inspire, yet trapped in a magic shell of real life sexist consumerism run amuck.

The fact that the subversively progressive creatives (namely Gerwig, co-screenwriter and life partner Noah Baumbach and producer and star Margot Robbie) won the day over the corporate product placement overseers (Mattel, Warner Brothers?), even openly poking fun at the latter, is a miracle. This is no slick toy commercial disguised as a major motion picture (see: any/all Transformers flicks … save arguably the sweet, goofy Bumblebee). Ironically, that does more for our adoration of – and desire to purchase – associated merch as a result.

The film juggles a ton of big ideas, mostly successfully. It is proudly feminist. And also humanist. For a movie about dolls. Body types, skin colors, ages, genders, sexualities are all deftly represented and celebrated. And a key point at the end of the film is made that extremes, even in course correction to prior imbalance, perpetuate alienation. Two wrongs never make a right.

Barbie is more surreal than it is comic, though I belly-laughed plenty and cried often at unexpected moments. Its surreality is its superpower. And that quality gives you the movie you need, not necessarily wanted.

Enough ink has been spilled about the movie’s plot – and crackerjack dialogue – that I would be veering into the mansplaining zone (which this movie has wicked fun with by the way) if I recapped here. I might simply note that if Kurt Vonnegut led a writers’ circle chat with Betty Friedan, Franz Kafka, Stanley Kubrick, Tina Fey, Mel Brooks, Samuel Beckett, and Amy Heckerling, conceptualizing what an existential crisis might look like for a Barbie doll, it would likely not even touch the absurdist vistas in this film.

In essence, Barbie comes to realize a toybox utopia isn’t reflected in real life and, in fact, can be wildly misinterpreted by the now-grown children it was intended to benefit. Her awakening shares as much with Pinocchio as it does The Feminine Mystique. Refreshingly, this is not a film centered on romance, which it might have become if placed in lesser hands. Don’t get me wrong, Ken is so deeply infatuated with Barbie he ultimately launches a mutiny from unrequited frustration. Not that THAT unbridled male egotism ever happens in life. Wink. But Barbie’s journey in the film is one of self-discovery, mining fairly deep psychological territory, including identity politics, free agency, and self-determination.

When Ken’s plot to turn Barbieland phallocentric flops spectacularly, he sobs, “When I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I just lost interest anyway.” Didn’t we all, Ken. Didn’t we all.

Yes, this may be the first billion-dollar summer blockbuster to hinge its primary plot points on matriarchy vs. patriarchy. Woot!

As for our principal players: Robbie is haunting as Barbie, spinning the character’s superhumanity inward, never stooping to camp, but layering ferocity and heartache in a truly touching portrayal. Ryan Gosling as Ken is delightfully daffy and walks a quirky high wire between guileless, mercenary, and poignantly clueless. America Ferrera is our narrative anchor, still trying to keep her head above water with the disappointments and curdled hopes that daily living outside Barbieland brings. She takes all the weirdness in stride, avoiding any overreactive cliches of “real human in cartoon situations” films. And her speech about the trials and tensions and spectacularly unfair expectations women endure kicks off the film’s conclusion with just the right level of introspective pathos. Taken together, Robbie, Gosling, and Ferrera steer this glittering super ship beautifully.

They are aided and abetted by remarkable supporting players who can – and do – carry their own movies but here seem perfectly content to be stitched into a communal crazy quilt of inclusive sensibilities: Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Mackey, Simu Liu, John Cena, Michael Cera, Will Ferrell, Helen Mirren, Rhea Perlman, and more.

Music is yet another character in the film (although my old ears wouldn’t mind if cinemas cranked DOWN the volume every once in a while). Music producer Mark Ronson and a host of pop superstars supply commentary both overt and subtle throughout the film. My hubby turned to me at one point and said, “I thought you said this wasn’t a musical.” Oops.

Yes, this film is in many ways a frolic. As expected. But it’s also something more. And surprisingly I suspect I will be thinking about Barbie for weeks to come. I also surmise this is a film that will benefit from repeated viewings, which may be the ulterior motive after all, knowing that most kids (and adults) will watch a beloved movie over and over and over. With the empowering messages woven together here, that’s a very good thing. In the end, there is no shame loving Barbie, toys, or yourself. At any age.

Yours truly as a TRULY creepy AI-generated “Ken.” You’re welcome.

“Smells like Marlboros and farts.” Planet Ant Theatre premieres Who Run the World

18 March 2018

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Originally published by EncoreMichigan

We live in fraught, absurdist political times. Kurt Vonnegut couldn’t even have anticipated how off-the-charts bonkers our reality show polarization has become. So, there is a timely, refreshing, and essential concept at the heart of Planet Ant’s latest original work Who Run the World – taking its title from the pop-feminist anthem  “Run the World (Girls)” by that ubiquitous purveyor of hard lemonade Beyoncé.

The show – written from what appears to be a series of free-wheeling improv exercises by director Lauren Bickers and her unrestrained cast Dyan Bailey, Suzan Jacokes, Esther Nevarez, Scott Sanford, Caitlyn Shea, and Sarah Wilder – is an interesting conceit. What will be the logical (and comically tragic) progression of our society by 2040 if we continue down this Red State/Blue State, feminist/antifeminist, extreme left/alt-right striated path?

Cast of Who Run the World (Photo by Scott Myers)

In the evening’s most effective and crispest moments, a series of video montages (created by Bailey, who used a similar technique in The Ringwald’s concurrently running production Merrily We Roll Along) bring the audience up-to-speed on world events from 2018 to 2040. America is rocked by a series of increasingly extreme political swings – President Oprah Winfrey succeeds President Donald Trump; she is, in turn, defeated by President Donald Trump, Jr.; he is ousted by President Ellen DeGeneres who is overtaken by Prezident Kid Rock (who didn’t even know he was running). A full out gender war erupts, centered around a network of Target stores, and eventually the women prove victorious driving unenlightened men into a series of, yes, “man caves.”

The gynocentric society, on the surface, seems practically perfect in every way: work/life balance, a presidential cabinet made up of bureaucrats dedicated to peace and culture and comfort, and omnipresent “dance breaks” set to the strains of Black Box’s “Everybody, Everybody.”

I admit my other favorite aspect of the show was the pre-show music/scene interludes, which all seemed to be emanating from my own personal iTunes collection. Any time I hear Madonna’s “Human Nature” during a performance (which has been … never … up-until-now), I’m a happy boy. “I’m not your b*tch. Don’t hang your sh*t on me.”

It’s unfortunate, then, that the actual show doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its surreal high concept. The performers–playing both the aforementioned cabinet members as well as a series of mulleted, flannel-wearing male denizens of the underground–should be commended for the ferocity and BIG energy with which they attack the material, but many scenes seem unrehearsed, perhaps even improvised on the spot, which clashes with the slick and professional nature of the video narrative. Further, the production seems to exist at three decibel levels: loud, louder, and loudest. For such an intimate space, this flattens the proceedings, giving the show an extended “skit-like” quality. When the cast is all present onstage, there is such a cacophony of voices and movement, it is at times difficult to discern exactly what is transpiring.

Dyan Bailey, Scott Sanford (Photo by Scott Myers)

There are many funny lines but they are lost as the actors’ articulation isn’t always up to snuff. Or clever quips are delivered with the blunt force of an anvil striking the audience on its collective head, losing the wry, satirical touch that would make them really zing. For example, one particular “man cave” is described as smelling like “Marlboros and farts.” The line made me chuckle, not from its actual delivery, but from its potential.

That is not to say that everyone involved doesn’t have their moments. Dyan Bailey has great fun channeling Kathleen Turner- meets-Donald Trump-meets-Ernst-Blofeld as societal matriarch Kameela Toriana (Department of Appearance and Diplomacy). There isn’t a piece of Jennifer Maiseloff’s underdeveloped scenery she won’t chew (her use of an exercise ball as her throne was particularly effective and amusing), and Bailey’s sheer force-of-hurricane-gale-will keeps the show moving apace.

Caitlyn Shea offers the closest thing to character progression in her shrinking violet-turned-Norma Rae Tracee McAllister (Director of Unpacking), who brings some nuance to the cartoon-like proceedings and revels in her character’s whiplash-inducing turns of personality.

The remaining cast members have some zippy moments, particularly when each goes to the “man cave” of Scott Sanford’s Addison Houser to explore their respective vices. There is an interesting narrative sequence to explore in these scenes if Planet Ant continues to develop the piece. These “vice visits” form a kind of Faustian compact – not dissimilar to Jack Nicholson’s increasingly menacing trips to commiserate with the spectral barkeep in The Shining – wherein the characters discover their true selves and the balance they’ve lost amidst political extremes. If the Who Run the World team works on refining those scenes, that sequence could provide much-needed narrative spark and character development to the play.

I may not be the right audience for what Planet Ant does. The full-house on opening night roared with laughter and approval, particularly as the show escalated further into Saturday Night Live territory or when actors riffed off-script due to a missed light cue or misplaced prop.

As an aside, when I bring my friend Lauren to a show, there seems to be an ironic bit of foreshadowing in our pre-show dinner conversation. I held forth at Green Space Café about how I just didn’t get “improv” and often found the humor therein a bit of a “stretch” for my linear sensibilities. As we watched Who Run the World, which I hadn’t realized was improv-based until I read the program immediately prior (shame on me), it reminded me that, at least for this viewer, I prefer a tightly rehearsed show with clear and nuanced character delineation, levels, and timing. I offer this to say that if you are a fan of improv, you might really dig Who Run the World … and I’m just a crabby fuddy duddy.

That said, I suspect there is a really sharp 45-minute piece buried somewhere in Who Run the World’s two-hour run time. With some Draconian editing, the show could be just the tonic our troubled times need. I, for one, crave a new Crucible, Children’s Hour, or, hell, Book of Mormon for this MAGA vs. #MeToo cultural dumpster fire in which we are currently living. Who Run the World ain’t it yet … but with some work, it might be.

_______________________

Lauren Crocker, Roy Sexton – opening night of Who Run the World

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

A room of her own (#OscarsSoRight?): The Post; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Lady Bird; The Shape of Water; The Darkest Hour

12 February 2018

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

I’m finally catching up with all of the Oscar-nominated films from year-end 2017. There are many culprits for this delay, chiefly among them the fact that, for some reason, many of these flicks don’t make it to the hinterlands of the Midwest until weeks after their initial release dates. My tendency toward over-commitment in daily life may also be to blame. C’est la vie. I’ve finally viewed The Post; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Lady Bird; The Shape of Water; and The Darkest Hour.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

I can safely say the Academy got so much so right this year. (I’m sure they were nervously awaiting my seal of approval. Not.)

Much (digital) ink has already been spilled on these movies, and I’m feeling a touch lazy so I won’t go into great detail about any of them. I will admit that personally only The Post and The Darkest Hour truly spoke to me, but I found all five to be thoughtfully composed with unique and arguably essential points-of-view and with timely themes, no doubt provoking many minds and healing many hearts in this rather contentious era.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

However, what resonated with me most about all five films was the strength and agency of their leading female characters. Rarely have we seen a class of Oscar-nominated films (I, Tonya included) where the bravery, wit, wisdom, and tenacity of women are so consistently celebrated and intelligently explored. Perhaps it’s the Trump effect, a cultural reclamation on behalf of Hillary, an anticipation of #MeToo and #TimesUp, or just a much-needed evolution (and growing up) in Hollywood. Who knows?

“Keep your finger out of my eye.” Tom Hanks’ Ben Bradlee to Meryl Streep’s Katherine Graham in The Post

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

In The Post, Meryl Streep gives one of her most nuanced portrayals in an already incredible catalogue of film work. Her Katherine Graham is faced with an unwinnable, dare I say, Sophie’s Choice: save her family’s paper The Washington Post from financial ruin through a tricky public offering or take on the President of the United States and risk imprisonment to honor the paper’s history of journalistic integrity by publishing the Pentagon Papers. Graham is “mansplained” up one side and down the other throughout the film. Streep’s portrayal is sensitive to the social and historical context that women were acculturated to lean on men and seek their counsel if and when they were “permitted” any decision-making authority at all. Ostensibly, Spielberg’s beautifully paced and utterly compelling movie is an allegory for our present times when we have a president who sees the Bill of Rights as less inalienable and more ignorable. However, I saw the film primarily as a powerful and subtle depiction of a woman (Graham) reclaiming her authority and driving our nation towards inexorable truth. It’s a performance for the ages, IMHO.

“You’re culpable because you joined the gang.” – Frances McDormand’s Mildred Hayes to her town minister in Three Billboards

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Speaking of performances for the ages, we then have Frances McDormand as Mildred Hayes in Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. McDormand is possibly the most cathartic and relatable actor of her generation, capable of channeling the inherent tension and internal conflict of id, ego, and superego unlike any other. Mildred may be her finest acting work, alas in a film that doesn’t quite rise to her admittedly stratospheric level. Mildred’s daughter was raped and then immolated, and, in Mildred’s frustration that the local police have been incapable of solving the horrific crime, she finds the bluntest instrument at her disposal (the titular “three billboards”) to send a crystal clear message that wouldn’t be out of place on an N.W.A. record. McDormand is haunting and funny, heartbreaking and infuriating as a woman whose voice just can’t be stifled by her small-minded small-town. I think I would have enjoyed the piece better as a one-woman show as most of the supporting cast offer more superficial readings of their respective characters. Further, a mid-film narrative twist nearly co-opts the whole enterprise in favor of Woody Harrelson’s far-less-interesting Sheriff Willoughby. Sam Rockwell (Deputy Dixon) is both hammy and poignant as a foil for and target of McDormand’s rage, and, by the time the film runs its course, the idea of a Thelma and Louise-style “road picture” with the two actors isn’t without its potential charms.

“Don’t you think they are the same thing? Love and attention?” – Lois Smith’s Sister Sarah Joan to Soairse Ronan’s Lady Bird in Lady Bird

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Lady Bird, directed by Greta Gerwig, is a loving and scruffy slice-of-life with luminous Saoirse Ronan as Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, a thoughtful and maddening and deep-feeling teen whose conscious rejection of organized religion and of conventional thinking runs afoul of her own desires to be liked and accepted and to “fit in” with her Catholic school’s “popular kid” crowd. Any human who has ever wanted to be their authentic (weird) selves but ALSO get to sit at the best lunch table in school can totally relate (which means all of us). Ronan is brilliant in the role, as is Laurie Metcalf as her worried, worrying, worrisome mother Marion whose noble wishes to protect and to provide are as alienating as they are well-intentioned. The film is a delight, but gets bogged down mid-way with a conventional (if not completely appropriate) Mean Girls-esque subplot of Lady Bird rejecting her theatre nerd friends for the loose collection of pot-smoking athletes and gum-snapping rich kids who rule the school. The film is so interesting and so believable to that point that I found the predictability of that coming-of-age narrative a bit disappointing. Nonetheless, Ronan, Metcalf, and Gerwig give eloquent voices to the frustrations and fears of women navigating a rigged system where their respective needs and desires are often pitted in opposition to one another.

“Life is but the shipwreck of our plans.” – wall calendar in The Shape of Water

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

The Shape of Water, directed with fairy tale elan by Guillermo del Toro, is like a soft core E.T.-meets-The Red Shoe Diaries. A co-worker of mine said it was more like a naughty Edward Scissorhands. I will accept that friendly amendment to my cinematic comparison. Shape of Water had my favorite cast of any of these films. Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon, Michael Stuhlbarg, Doug Jones, and Richard Jenkins are all exceptional in their own rights, let alone collected in one place, in service to a visionary fable of tolerance, compassion, and love. Yet, the film overall left me cold. Perhaps, I’m a prude, but the random bits of “sexy time” between Hawkins’ Eliza and Jones’ otherworldly “Amphibian Man” were disruptive to the gentle narrative at play. I also could have done without said Amphibian Man biting the head off one of Jenkins’ beloved cats, even if the moment is offered as an example of predatory innocence. Yuck. Regardless, Hawkins offers a brilliant and heartrending portrayal of a mute woman whose expressiveness far exceeds vocalization, and Shannon nearly steals the picture as a government official whose myopic masculinity and arrested development result in nothing but ugliness, violence, and missed opportunity.

“You are strong because you are imperfect.” – Kristin Scott Thomas’ Clementine Churchill to Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill in The Darkest Hour

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

As for Joe Wright’s The Darkest Hour, yes, it is a movie which features a gobsmacking transformation of Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill. And, yes, Oldman is altogether breathtaking in his depiction of Churchill’s genius eccentricity, shocking isolation, and dogged determination. However, the excellence of his work and of the film itself is greatly aided and abetted by the work of cast-mates Kristin Scott Thomas as Churchill’s witty, wise, and anything-but-long-suffering wife Clementine and Lily James as Churchill’s witty, wise, and anything-but-wide-eyed assistant Elizabeth Layton. The three actors bring sparkling life to Theory of Everything screenwriter Anthony McCarten’s chatty script, and, while Churchill was clearly the odd-man-out where British politicos were concerned, his ultimate success could be attributed as much to the women in his life as to his own fiercely independent spirit. These are exceptional performances in a pretty good film.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

In The Post, Streep’s Graham quotes English essayist Samuel Johnson: “A woman’s preaching is like a dog walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, and you are surprised to find it done at all.” Her point, in the context of the film, is that society has not encouraged women to speak their truths, so the act of doing so, while arguably initially inelegant, is as shocking as it is necessary. In the case of these five films, truth is delivered elegantly and compellingly, and the class of Oscar nominees this year goes a long way toward giving women, as Virginia  Woolf once implored, a “room of their own.”

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“I can only see the world as it should be.” Murder On The Orient Express (2017) AND Daddy’s Home 2

26 November 2017

8 Comments

Hollywood gets a lot of flak, much of it deserved, but the crime perpetrated by Tinseltown that may bother me the most is when a talented cast is completely squandered in servitude to a lame script and lousy direction.

The Thanksgiving movie offerings this year all have left something to be desired, but we were misfortunate enough to see two of the worst offenders back to back last night. Murder on the Orient Express and Daddy’s Home 2. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. We paid money to see these two movies in sequence. Maybe the problem is with us.

The first is an unnecessary remake of a far superior Sydney Lumet film, based on the original Hercule Poirot mystery by Agatha Christie. It is yet another self-serious, self-satisfied confectionery indulgence from director/star Kenneth Branagh, who fancies himself the poor man’s Laurence Olivier, when he, in reality, may be the poor man’s Benny Hill.

The second is an unnecessary sequel to an unnecessary broad farce, holding a far too indulgent and yuppified mirror to the mixed up sociopolitical and familial dynamics in modern middle-class America. It stars Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell as an ex-husband/father and new husband/stepfather, respectively, whose own fathers John Lithgow and Mel Gibson, also respectively, crash Christmas and demonstrate that they are as boneheaded and as consumed with unflattering male ego as their sires.

NOTE: the movie isn’t smart enough to actually do anything with that premise, and it’s too frightened of its Trump-triggered audience demographic to actually skewer these idiotic men.

Both films favor set decoration and bleak whimsy over script and character development. Orient Express pursues arch tedium over anything resembling flesh and blood characterization, fetishizing starched linens and glistening martini glasses and anthropomorphizing its titular train to the point one wonders if Branagh is simply trying to capture the imaginations of too many young adults weened on the also creepy and tedious Polar Express.

Daddy’s Home conversely, is the kind of film that seems to hold National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation as a kind of high art that could only be improved if the “Nancy Meyers’ school of filmmaking” (middle-class characters living amidst-Better Homes and Gardens residential-porn they couldn’t actually afford in real life) had installed a Sub Zero fridge in Randy Quaid’s “the-sh*tter’s-full” Winnebago. Daddy’s Home is the kind of movie where a character cuts down a cell phone tower, thinking it is a Christmas tree, and gets charged $20,000, and everyone just laughs and shrugs and says, “Now, who is going to pay for that?” This inane, unrelatable incident occurs after the cast has engaged in an interminable sequence where they decorate – top-to-bottom, inside-and-out – a vacation home they are RENTING for the holidays. Who does that? In real life, this family would be trying to figure out how to pay the credit card bills they ran up to buy presents nobody actually wants and would end up in both divorce and bankruptcy courts when slapped with a $20,000 bill for destruction of public property. Or maybe they would be in jail. Fa la la la.

Orient Express is the kind of film where all of the characters have less depth than those found in a Clue board game, but lounge around all casual-cool-dramatic in beautifully appointed train cars (which seem much larger than humanly possible) as if they are posing for a Vanity Fair cover. It is the kind of film where people spout portentous philosophy (“I can only see the world as it should be.” – Poirot) and glower at each other across petits fours. Whodunnit? Who cares?

When one film (Orient Express) offers the best Johnny Depp performance in years (not saying much … and, by the way, spoiler alert, he is the titular murder) and the other (Daddy’s Home) makes John Cena as its final act complication seem practically Oscar-worthy, something ain’t right in the mix.

NOTE: Kenneth, a mustache that covers half your face and renders your speech incomprehensible is not character development. You are no Wes Anderson. And I don’t like Wes Anderson.

NOTE: Mel, swaggering around like an aging muscle man whose tummy has become a beach ball and who believes FOXNews offers great lessons in parenting and social graces is not character development. That is just you. And we don’t like you.

To the rest of the luminaries who collected a paycheck to appear in these movies – John Lithgow, Linda Cardellini, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz, Willem DaFoe, Daisy Ridley, Leslie Odom, Jr., Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Gad, I’m looking at you – you all know better. Next time an easy payday comes along, please just say no.

Finally, I want to correct the statement with which I began this piece. The worst crime Hollywood commits is hypocrisy. Women are not disposable commodities. Violence is not comedy. Respect for each other, for our individuality, for our unique spirit is essential.

Daddy’s Home 2 is by far the bigger offender because jokes about kissing/spanking little girls or about men “just being men” in Las Vegas or about fathers hitting on the mothers of their sons’ classmates are not funny. They are gross.

Hollywood, if you want us to buy the rhetoric that you are rejecting the worst offenders in your midst, make better movies. More responsible movies. Movies that don’t joke out of both sides of their mouths where animal rights or gun control or human equality are concerned. Stop trying to cater to every demographic. That lack of moral compass is the antithesis of what these holidays are truly about.

Rant over.

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“My last chance to give you your first chance.” Cars 3

4 July 2017

6 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Let’s be honest. The only reason Cars 3 exists (other than inspiring mountains of Mattel-manufactured die cast miniatures that will mint oodles of green) is to cleanse our collective palates of the tire fire that was Cars 2, a misguided attempt to reposition NASCAR-racing protagonist Lightning McQueen (voiced with languid charm by Owen Wilson) and grating sidekick Mater (voiced with overeager anti-charm by Larry the Cable Guy) as international men of mystery. In one fell swoop, Pixar not only managed to erase our fond memories of the genial, warm, albeit predictable first film but also created outright contempt for the franchise – or at minimum a ferocious desire to never see (or hear) Mater again. (Granted, that’s all in a day’s work for Larry the Cable Guy.)

Fortunately, Cars 3 is just the course correction Lightning McQueen and pals deserved, with a welcome pit stop for Mater’s character and more emphasis on the adorable Guido and Luigi as Lightning’s sidekicks-in-waiting. The film is a competent enterprise, never quite achieving the dizzying artistry of great Pixar flicks (Wall*E, Inside Out, Up), but pulling sweetly on that tried-and-true Pixar narrative thread of legacy, mortality, and the wistful ephemera of dreams deferred. We even gets some tear-jerking posthumous appearances by the late Paul Newman’s “Fabulous” Doc Hudson, a flinty/folksy voice from beyond reminding McQueen that winning isn’t everything but the family-we-make-in-life is.

Not unlike the pains of a certain obsolescence that haunt Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, and gang throughout the Toy Story series, McQueen also endures an existential crisis in Cars 3. Don’t worry, kids, this is not Ingmar Bergman territory, more Everybody Loves Raymond-lite manopause. Race after race, McQueen finds himself at the tailpipe end of a young upstart Jackson Storm (voiced with consummate smarm by Armie Hammer) and sees all of his longtime pals leave the circuit one by one. “How do you know when to retire? The kids will tell you,” Cal Weathers observes ruefully to McQueen.

After a nearly career-ending crash, McQueen goes into rebuilding mode, working with Sterling, a new sponsor played with oily glee by Nathan Fillion, and training with a too-too exuberant coach Cruz Ramirez (a sunny Christela Alonzo). It’s all pretty dear with one safe-silly training montage after another and maybe three too many jokes about McQueen being too ancient to understand new technology, lingo, fashion, etc.

But then Cars 3 does something interesting. Arguably even subversive. In a franchise that clearly gets its bread-and-butter by appealing to audiences for whom NASCAR races are high holy days and for whom Larry the Cable Guy may be the height of wit (yes, I know this sentence makes me sound like an elitist twerp … stick with me), the filmmakers treat us to a welcome dollop (or two) of “and she persisted” feminism.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Ramirez and McQueen set off on a road trip to reclaim his racing mojo. Along the way, they encounter a force-of-nature school bus Ms. Fritter (voiced with fire and heart by queer feminist icon Lea DeLaria), who reigns supreme at a demolition derby.

It is here that McQueen experiences his first abject lesson that male pride ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

At the derby, Cruz Ramirez drives off with a trophy McQueen believes he rightfully deserves, and the two go their separate ways when Ramirez argues she has never been offered a chance to show what she is worth.

Is it still “white male privilege” when it’s in the guise of an anthropomorphized red race car?

Eventually, the pair reconcile when McQueen gets “woke” (that’s where the voice of Paul Newman comes in), and McQueen realizes the best legacy he can leave is by getting the h*ll out of Ramirez’ way in this new world. “This is my last chance to give you your first chance,” McQueen tells her, taking on the coaching mantle Doc Hudson once proudly held for McQueen. As you might expect (spoiler alert), Ramirez runs the film’s climactic race and kicks Jackson Storm’s … er … bumper.

Yes, I still have a teensy issue with the female character only getting her big break when it is offered to her by a male colleague. However, if that’s the narrative price to pay to gain an essential message that gender is irrelevant to talent and that everyone deserves their day in the sun (in the midst of a silly kids’ movie that seems chiefly designed to sell toys and backpacks), I’ll take it.

P.S. By the way, there is a lovely short preceding Cars 3. It is called LOU, and, as surreal as it sounds, the piece details how a haunted “lost and found” box breaks an ugly cycle of bullying on an elementary school playground. A welcome message for today’s America as well. Happy Fourth, y’all!

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

 

“You get to see him out in the world as a person. I never will.” 20th Century Women

22 January 2017

6 Comments

[Image Source: Wikpedia]

[Image Source: Wikpedia]

“Having your heart broken is a tremendous way to learn about the world.” – Dorothea (Annette Bening)

Given the historic events of this weekend, notably the (International) Women’s March, seeing the acclaimed new semi-autobiographical film by director Mike Mills (Beginners) seemed like an inspired, appropriate, and perhaps too-on-the-nose choice, so view it we did.

The film is really good – not so sure it’s great – but, with its marvelous cast, humane and conscientiously inclusive perspective, and immersive approach that impressively turns back the viewer’s clock to 1979, 20th Century Women is worth your attention.

Inspired by his gratitude for his own mother and sisters, Mills, who calls the film a “love letter to the women who raised him,” paints a fictionalized portrait of his own unconventional upbringing that is warm and nostalgic, critical and illusory.

Imagine Norman Rockwell spending his formative years in counter-cultural Haight-Ashbury.

In Santa Barbara, California, Dorothea (a remarkable and raw Annette Bening), abandoned by her husband, is raising son Jamie (newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann showing nary a sign of “child star” schmaltz) in a ramshackle Victorian with as much character and in as much disrepair as its inhabitants. Perhaps to make ends meet or, more likely, in an Auntie Mame-like gesture of keeping life as one never-ending banquet, Dorothea has rented rooms to a cast of characters, including potter and auto mechanic (?) William (Billy Crudup in all his shaggy, boho charm) and photographer and Talking Heads-aficionado Abbie (a luminous and heartbreaking Greta Gerwig). Rounding out this band of lovable misfits, Elle Fanning (Maleficent) plays Julie, Jamie’s childhood friend whose acts of teen rebellion are lifted straight from a “Me Decade” ABC Afterschool Special; yet, in Fanning’s capable hands, Julie’s defiance is hauntingly and, at times, comically authentic.

(NOTE: Crudup and Gerwig are on a roll, recently turning in nuanced performances as Theodore H. White and Nancy Tuckerman, respectively, in the exceptional Jackie.)

Films in 20th Century Women‘s milieu – the quirky, uber-liberal, “hippie Addams Family” residing in a sprawling but dilapidated  homestead, arguing unrealistically about existential philosophy, and experimenting with alternative realities – too often devolve into the kind of twee “coming-of-age” self-indulgence that makes my skin crawl. Yes, Grand Budapest Hotel–director Wes Anderson, I’m looking at you.  Blessedly, 20th Century Women is no Royal Tennenbaums.

Mills contextualizes his film with chronology-bending narrative (the voice-overs that relate characters’ backstories and future activities are a clever and sobering touch), rich period details (including iconic photography, music, decor, and video of the era – the characters’ varied reactions to Jimmy Carter’s “crisis of confidence speech” are particularly telling), and evocative time-lapse cinematography (including an overt reference to landmark-documentary-of-the-era Koyaanisqatsi with its still-stinging indictment of the ephemeral foolishness of mankind). If you survived the 70s, this film will speak to you on many levels.

As for the film’s feminism, it is as sly an overview as I’ve ever seen on film – as elusive and confounding as the topic can be in a United States of America that glorifies our free-will and independence while simultaneously fearing our free-will and independence. Mills’ script, aided and abetted by delicate performances all around, deftly weaves in and out of the core principle that “feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”

Bening’s Dorothea (born in 1924) is regularly labeled throughout the film has having “come from the Depression,” she herself embracing that tag, obsessed with big band music and carefully tracking her stocks in the newspaper every day. Yet, she is also attracted to the infinite possibility of this messy new world before her, approaching its ugly rock-n-roll and libertine mores with alternating fascination and revulsion. The tension Dorothea suffers as a free-agent wanting to explore this evolving society versus her role as a parent fearing its potential dark repercussions is palpable. Regarding her son, Dorothea laments to Abbie at one point, “You get to see him out in the world as a person. I never will.”

When Abbie introduces Dorothea’s son Jamie to the books Sisterhood is Powerful by Robin Morgan and Our Bodies, Ourselves by Judy Norsigian, he chooses to read a particular passage to his mother, one that highlights the marginalization and invisibility unfairly cast upon an individual due to age and gender. It is a tender moment wherein he is using another’s text to evoke understanding. Dorothea’s visceral response is even more revealing when she dismisses the gesture outright, indicating that her very personal experience on this planet cannot be reduced or codified into a few well-meaning “modern” paragraphs. Bening is understated yet devastating in this scene, a quiet storm moment exemplifying beautifully the delicate balancing act in 20th Century Women: reclaiming the voice of the individual … which is as feminist an act as one can imagine.

“She smokes Salems because they’re healthy.” – Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann)

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“And that’s how trees get planted!” Sarah Silverman at Caesars Windsor

15 January 2017

6 Comments

img_7042

[Image Source: Caesars Windsor Facebook Page]

“And that’s how trees get planted!” exclaimed comedian Sarah Silverman (last night at Caesars Windsor) at the end of a particularly funny bit about how squirrels misplace 80% of the nuts they hide every winter and how these adorable creatures’ manic, OCD, memory-challenged behavior must be an evolutionary development to ensure our lands remain appropriately forested.  The moment was less of a punchline to a joke and more of a personal epiphany that she just couldn’t NOT share with audiences far and wide. And it was priceless.

An hour-and-a-half of Silverman in person was much different than ten minutes of Silverman on a late night talk show. Coming off more like the lovechild of Rachel Maddow and Fanny Brice and less like Joan Rivers’ gross-out “mean girl” baby cousin, Silverman was delightfully and justifiably caustic yet accessibly and appropriately bewildered by a world that seems determined to dial back the clock to the Dark Ages.

Silverman is an avowed feminist (with a seemingly incongruous penchant for cocktail napkin jokes that wouldn’t have been out of place in a 1950s Moose Lodge), an ardent atheist (with a sister who has devoted her life to God as a rabbi in Jerusalem), and a fierce animal rights defender (who tells morbid jokes about whether or not she should put her dog to sleep now to save her and her pooch from a lifetime of pain). Like any successful comic, Silverman’s best material plays at the tension between affirmed values and the reality of living in a truly messed-up world.

Sarah Silverman at Caesars Windsor

Roy and John hit Caesars Windsor for Sarah Silverman

Her strongest material Saturday night eviscerated our sexist double standards, while simultaneously tromping around the very hypersexualized muck that doesn’t do anyone’s gender perceptions a darn bit of good. Her take on the absurdity of handing Barbie dolls to little girls and expecting any outcome other than “creating a generation of gold-diggers and whores” was as incisive as it was retrograde. I won’t spoil the jokes in that section; they didn’t necessarily cover any new territory (“Barbie’s feet are shaped so she can only wear high heels!”), but the delivery and the context were so sharp, so acidic, so damn funny that not one person in the Colosseum last night will ever look at a Barbie doll the same way (let alone give one as a gift). And that’s a good thing.

Surprisingly, Silverman didn’t address the current state of American politics directly, though everything she reviewed was political in one way or another. Homophobic Mike Pence and the State of Indiana got warranted derisive shout outs, and she paused once for a pointed aside, “Why isn’t Howard Stern talking about Trump? What is up with that?,” telegraphing more with what she didn’t say than what she did. (Silverman, a one-time Sanders supporter, won praise and critique for cutting through the chicanery at the 2016 Democratic National Convention by observing, “Can I say something? To the ‘Bernie or Bust’ people, you’re being ridiculous.”)

Her greatest subversions last night, however, were in marrying the personal and the political. Discussing her heritage as a Jewish woman growing up with an unfiltered father in New Hampshire, she noted that, while he had escaped the trauma of his abusive father in joyous summers spent as a camp counselor, he inadvertently tortured his own anxiety-ridden, chronically bed-wetting daughter (Sarah) by forcing her to continue the summer camp tradition in her youth.

[Image Source: Caesars Windsor Facebook Page]

[Image Source: Caesars Windsor Facebook Page]

Referencing her holier-than-thou (literally) rabbi sister, Silverman related a situation where her sister described nearly everything about an Ethiopian acquaintance Sarah would soon meet, except the fact that said friend had lost both hands in a land mine accident, something Sarah learned only when she awkwardly went to shake the woman’s … hook.

In an extensive discussion around Silverman’s own atheism and her passion for women’s reproductive rights, she referenced a benefit she performed in Texas. She crossed the street to talk to the protestors who were decrying her work, and she was met by a little girl who hissed “God hates YOU!” Silverman pondered – after telling the girl a scatalogical joke that bonded them both (ironic) – how could she fervently insist that these folks not believe in “their sky king” (her words), beyond a shadow of any doubt, without becoming as obsessively bullying as the very evangelicals she despised?

Silverman’s show was at its most effective when she was telling us stories about the contradictions in her life, noodling through making sense of it all. She seemed exhausted – that could have been the cold from which she was visibly suffering, including a handful of well-placed comic nose blows. If the cold was a bit, she should keep it. It gave you the sense of having a conversation in the living room with a world-weary friend or neighbor who saw this planet through the cracked lens it deserves. She admitted as well that she was trying out material for a new comedy special – some of it worked, some of it didn’t; some of it seemed lazy and slapdash, some of it seemed urgent and inspired; some of it meandered to a piquant conclusion, and some of it just meandered.  I, for one, enjoyed being part of her process of discovery and experimentation, but I’m weird like that.

[Todd Barry - Image Source: Caesars Windsor Facebook Page]

[Todd Barry – Image Source: Caesars Windsor Facebook Page]

As for Silverman’s opening act – Todd Barry? Well, let’s just say his smirky, dull-as-dishwater routine proved a theory I have that comedy opening acts are there chiefly to make the main show seem that much funnier. If Silverman comes to a casino near you, you are safe to spend that extra 20 minutes at the buffet or slot machine or gift shop or whatever people do in those garish places, until she finally comes onstage.

Regardless, Silverman’s gift chiefly may be in planting seeds and making you question your own perceptions of what is right and wrong in this society of ours. Much has been written in the past few months about the danger of “normalizing” aberrant behavior from our elected leaders. A true feminist has the agency to talk openly about whatever, whenever, with no apologies. Consequently, voices like Silverman’s are more essential now than ever. If there is an artist who ain’t gonna normalize anything, it’s her.

And that’s how trees get planted.

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[Image Source: Caesars Windsor Facebook Page]

[Image Source: Caesars Windsor Facebook Page]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“What’s escrow?” Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

27 May 2016

7 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

A couple of years ago, I really kinda hated the movie Neighbors with Zac Efron and Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen. I mean it got under my skin and creeped me out and gave me a stomachache because I couldn’t understand why people liked it so much. In that sense, it was probably more effective than I accepted at the time.

Yet, somehow I still found myself drawn to its sequel, the recently released Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. I had a profoundly unexpected reaction to this film, a movie that I would’ve otherwise suspected to be a completely superfluous studio money grab: I adored it. It is as crude and toxic as its predecessor, yet somehow is a perfectly redemptive bookend. Neighbors 2 is a counterpoint to its predecessor’s bromantic orgy of debauchery. It is a rowdy feminist anthem for acceptance and tolerance with a firm belief that, no matter how ugly life gets, anyone and anything can be saved (not in the religious sense but in the humanistic one).

As before, Rose Byrne is the secret weapon, her flinty worry creating comic sparks in the most absurd circumstances. Rogen does fine being Rogen, but he is aided and abetted by Byrne’s ability to be grounded and believable and cartoonish all in the same instance. You believe Byrne is a caring parent, a fretful homeowner, and a person striving for relevance in a world that can’t wait to leave us all in the dust. She’s magic.

And then there is Zac Efron. Not long ago, if you’d asked me if he could mature beyond a dreamy-eyed slab of beef into a thoughtful, nuanced actor, I would have given you a definitive “no.” How wrong I was. He is so poignant in this film, with a deft, surgically precise comic touch – the rare alchemy that can only happen when a character is played at the crossroads of disaffected heartbreak and well-intentioned vacuousness.  If Montgomery Clift and Judy Holliday had had a love child, it would be Efron’s character Teddy in this movie. He beautifully captures the nauseous yearning everyone feels with the passing of the comfortable, bohemian structure of college days. Efron’s Teddy is the little boy lost fraternity brother who had put so much of his energy and time into building superficially “timeless” bonds that he now is completely bewildered by the cruel, corrosive velocity of adulthood.

Through this lens, we are introduced to a sorority that moves in next door to Rogen and Byrne, causing no end of formulaic mischief, duplicating the narrative arc of the prior film. In this go-round, though, the story is shot through with a bold sense of millennial feminism, the kind of kids who want independence and tolerance, but don’t understand how vile their ageist, tech-obsessed lifestyles can be.

Chloe Grace Moretz is the sorority ringleader, and she is the perfect foil for Efron, who initially serves as house advisor to the girls. Moretz carries the same optimistic arrogance and uncertain certainty that Efron projected in the last film, with a sense of urgency and wrongheaded-determination that propels the film as her sorority sisters proceed to torture Rogen and Byrne. You see, the young couple are selling their cute bungalow to upgrade to a cookie cutter dream home, but have no idea that, when their current home is in “escrow,” the incoming buyers have 30 days to back out of the deal (if say, a sorority moves in next door and trashes the place). The film does such a fabulous job lightly skewering the hipster “mommy and daddy” culture, one foot stuck in their own college days and the other in a highly mortgaged plastic grave.

Dave Franco appears again as Efron’s best friend and fraternity brother, and there is a gently sweet subplot of Franco’s engagement to his longtime boyfriend, with Efron seamlessly stepping into the role of best man and abandoned confidante. There is a lovely “why is this a big deal?” to their interactions that bespeaks an American evolution that should give us all hope.

The film is plenty crass, with a boatload of cringe-worthy moments, but I found it such a loving and inclusive enterprise, as if someone had taken the blueprint from Neighbors and overlaid it with a healthy dose of Bridesmaids, that I am still smiling. I suspect my opinion will run counter to that of many fans of these sorts of films because we are living in a country that continues to see women as frightening, as something “other” to be ridiculed, demeaned, and contained. This film turns that wrongheaded notion on its head, unleashing the unapologetically jubilant female id and reminding us that we are all humans, frightened of what tomorrow may bring, attempting to enjoy whatever happiness we can today. #ImWithHer

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Zac-Efron-32Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.  My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.