“Filling out questionnaires where I say something too revealing, stupid, or misspelled.” Society 54 features yours truly as one of their “Outlaws.”

27 July 2024

Thank you, Society 54! Honored to be one of your Outlaws! This intro tho (blushing!) … wow!

“Discover the extraordinary leadership of Roy Sexton, the driving force behind Clark Hill Law’s marketing, branding, and communications triumphs. With over 25 years of rich experience in the fields of marketing, communications, business development, and strategic planning, he’s a true mastermind. His crowning achievement? Serving as the 2023 International President of the Legal Marketing Association – LMA International. Together with his exceptional team, Roy is forging a new path in professional services marketing. Meet the man steering the ship to success.”

Read my cheeky responses to their interview here.

Roy is a highly accomplished professional with a wealth of experience in marketing, branding, communications, and business development. He has spent more than 25 years in the industry, honing his skills and expertise to become one of the most sought-after experts in his field.

Throughout his career, Roy has worked with numerous organizations across different industries, helping them develop and implement effective marketing strategies that drive growth and success. He is known for his exceptional abilities in strategic planning, identifying new opportunities for businesses to expand their reach and improve their bottom line.

Enjoy getting to know the Outlaw, Roy Sexton!

Q: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
A: Being in a particularly boisterous crowd who won’t let me finish one story.

Q: Where would you like to live?
A: Narnia, Wonderland, or Oz … my hubby would like to move one day to Portland or Seattle (but we probably should visit there first!)

Q: What is your idea of happiness?
A: Having a quiet, slightly rainy day with zero requests from anyone, my husband on the couch napping with our dogs Henry J and Hudson, and me in my chair with a big pile of comic books.

Q: Who is your real-life hero?
A: My husband is one of the most generous, selfless people I know with a deep commitment to his friends. I aspire to be more like him as I fear I’m a mile wide and an inch deep where relationships are concerned.

Q: What is your motto?
A: “Tell people what they mean to you in the moment when it will mean something to them.” – Susie Sexton … also, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

Q: What is your greatest fear?
A: Filling out questionnaires where I say something too revealing, stupid, or misspelled.

Q: To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
A: Is there a word count limit here? Talking too much, co-opting others’ stories with my own, overstaying my welcome, buying too many action figures, wearing costumes when other people simply wear clothing, eating too much fried food, wishing to rescue every homeless animal …

Q: Finish this sentence: “If I could have one super-power, it would be…”
A: To make sure people never act like smart alecks with each other, never tease each other, never act snide, and always simply support one another

Q: Who are your favorite authors or what are your favorite books?
A: Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Eugene O’Neill, Toni Morrison, Tennessee Williams, Alice Walker, Tony Kushner, Susie Duncan Sexton

Q: If you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
A: Jennifer Garner. She just seems like a deeply decent human being who doesn’t take herself too seriously but would still have wicked stories to share.

Q: What got you into working in the legal industry?
A: Serendipity. I had been in health care strategic planning and marketing for over a decade. And I’d grown tired of that bureaucracy. I threw my resume out there in 2011 and was hired by my first firm. That said, I also joined the Legal Marketing Association then as well, and that’s when I knew I’d found my calling.

Q: Your favorite musician or band?
A: Madonna. Janet. Kylie. Britney. Beyonce. Gaga. Do you really need to ask?

Q: What is your current state of mind?
A: Loopy. I think I’m generally loopy. But when I embrace it, magic happens.

Q: Your favorite virtue?
A: Decency. It takes so little to simply be decent. It takes so much more energy to act like a jerk.

Q: What would you consider your greatest achievement?
A: My relationship – 25 years strong. My professional network – 32,000 and counting on LinkedIn. And serving as the 2023 International President of the Legal Marketing Association – including singing with a drag queen in Florida at the height of their governor’s homophobia.

Q: Finish this sentence: “If I won the lottery tomorrow I would…”
A: Build the biggest animal rescue the world had ever seen.

Q: Who would you have liked to be?
A: Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling, or Hugh Jackman.

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

6 August 2023

3 Comments

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.

“Thank God you’re pretty.” Baywatch (2017 film)

28 May 2017

4 Comments

The first third of the film adaptation of TV’s Baywatch seems designed chiefly to show off how impressive Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s calves are. Admittedly, they do look like two bowling balls suspended in mid-air between his ankles and his knees. THIS remarkable feat of anatomy, however, does not a great movie make.

Directed by Seth Gordon (um … Identity Thief), the film aspires to the same pop culture meta lunacy of 21 Jump Street, Charlie’s Angels, or The Brady Bunch Movie. Unfortunately, the proceedings are saddled with a pedestrian script that is more paint-by-numbers Beverly Hills Cop III than off-the-charts self-referential foolishness. And that’s a shame, as Gordon has assembled a cast that could sell hyperbole to President Trump.

Johnson and Zac Efron are an ADORABLE comedic couple, and they deserve MUCH better material (see: Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys). Their repartee (not to mention gleaming teeth and pneumatic abs) powers through the pedestrian material (drug cartel, half-baked political shenanigans, police corruption) to keep the audience entertained well beyond all reason. These two (playing overly ambitious California lifeguards who think their jobs involve after hours police work – cute idea) deserved such a better script, for their personal training regimen alone, not to mention the wit and wisdom both bring to just about any project.

The supporting cast is a hoot too: Priyanka Chopra, preening and prancing as the underdeveloped “big bad;” Kelly Rohrbach more self-aware than required as the Pamela Anderson-comic relief; Alexandra Daddario (whose eyes could pierce concrete blocks) as Efron’s infinitely wiser love interest; Ilfenesh Hadera as The Rock’s endlessly patient lieutenant; and Jon Bass as the exuberant schlub who has somehow been asked to join their hard-bodied lifeguarding team.

Damn, but I wish they had all had a thoughtfully designed script. Hell, any script. I was entertained for 90 minutes, but I’ve completely forgotten already what plot if any existed. I remember Zac Efron’s highlighted hair and his Malibu Ken physique. I will never forget Dwayne Johnson’s megawatt smile shining beneath the tumultuous waves as he rescued one woebegone Cali beach swimmer after another. But the plot? That has already escaped my brain, even as I type.

Will you have a good time watching this cinematic Baywatch? Of course, you will. It’s the same mindless idiocy of the 1990s syndicated TV hit (David Hasselhoff even puts in yet ANOTHER unnecessary summer ’17 film appearance) with a heaping, helping of post-millennial wink-and-nod camp. I just wish the filmmakers had taken … oh, I don’t know … ten extra minutes? … to devise plot and dialogue that gave Johnson and Efron something to do with all the charisma (and biceps) that they have in spades. Would anybody like to stage Sam Shepard’s True West with two charmingly steroidal hunks? If so, I think I have your duo.

As one cast member (I can’t recall who now for the life of me) notes to Efron’s dim bulb former-Olympian character (a la Ryan Lochte), “Thank God you’re pretty.” Indeed.

_____________________

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.

“They worship everything and value nothing.” La La Land

28 December 2016

11 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Is La La Land the second (or even third or fourth) coming of the great movie musical? Not exactly. To call it a “musical” seems a bit overblown, as the flick’s songs (by newcomer Justin Hurwitz) come and go more like incomplete yet tuneful doodles as opposed to full-fledged numbers. The choreography is about two notches above a rhythmic walk down the street, and the singing … well … the singing makes Rex Harrison’s trademarked talk/sing (see My Fair Lady, Dr. Dolittle) sound like Adele at Carnegie Hall. Yet, I think that half-assed musicality is all by design on the part of director Damien Chazelle, who was responsible for Whiplash, one of my favorite films of the last ten years.

So, please, stop billing La La Land as a lush, glowing tribute to the glory years of the American movie musical. The film happily, gleefully wraps itself in all the tropes of the genre, much like The Artist (the two films are spiritual and stylistic cousins) used silent film to tell a similar narrative of ambitious if downtrodden performers navigating the despair and loneliness of love and ladder-climbing in the City of Dreams (Los Angeles). However, it ain’t a musical – at least for those of us expecting a behind-the-curtain songfest like Singin’ in the Rain or Funny Face. Much like Whiplash, it is a film with music, melodies seeping through every corner of its DNA. And that’s ok.

The genre that the film really exemplifies (a genre that isn’t really a genre except anywhere in my own head) is the movie-that-exists-solely-for-the-sake-of-a-final-act-punchline-that-brings-the-rest-of-the-film-into-stark-relief-and-makes-you-go-“oh-THAT’s-what-I’ve-been-watching-for-the-past-two-hours.” Think The Sixth Sense (or anything else by gimmicky M. Night Shyamalan). I’m pretty certain this will be the only review that compares La La Land to a movie where Bruce Willis is a ghost (20-year-old spoiler alert!).

La La Land is surprisingly and refreshingly dark, but you don’t realize that until hours after viewing. It unspools in a light, frothy homage to films like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (which also beats with a candy-colored heart of darkness). Two (literally) star-crossed lovers – Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone – find mutual affection in their shared failure, he a struggling jazz pianist of the purest and most pretentious variety and she a failing actress bouncing unsuccessfully from one insultingly mind-numbing TV-pilot audition to another. Naturally, they fall for each other. It is a musical after all; oh wait, I just said it wasn’t. Much.

As their lives spiral up and down and back again (“me here at last on the ground … you in mid-air”), the movie details the toxic effects that unshared, ill-timed success and failure can have on a relationship of creative types torn between each other and egomania. The songs, as they are (“City of Stars” being the most memorable … or at least the most hummable), are used effectively to illustrate the pointed emotional moments of Gosling and Stone’s shared lives. Imagine A Star is Born (Judy and James, not Barbra and Kris – please) structured as the dreamlike nervous breakdown of Dancer in the Dark (directed by renowned sadist Lars von Trier and scored by renowned wood nymph Bjork).

This is the point in the review where you look at the screen and say, “Dammit, Roy, stop being an obtuse show-off! Did you like this movie or not?!”

I did. Very much. And here’s why. As a musical, it’s unremarkable (I’ve driven that point into submission). As a treatise on the fleeting nature of time and love and ambition, on the hollow reward of financial success and critical acclaim, on the haunting nature of missed opportunities and second-guessing one’s life choices, La La Land is a powder keg. The first hour? I thought to myself, “This is kind of insipid. Gosling and Stone are charming as always, but they embarrass me a little bit. Why are they so awkward and unsure. Why can’t they sing? Why are they floating on the ceiling of a planetarium? Am I supposed to be moved by this? Is Rebel Without a Cause as referenced in this flick intended to be a metaphor for something?” Well, the characters are gawky as hell because, at that point in their lives and careers, they would be.

In fact, Gosling edges Stone out a bit in the film’s first half, channeling the fourth-wall-breaking sparkle he demonstrated in The Big Short, with a winning “little boy lost” cynicism. Passing a group of actors rehearsing on the Warner Brothers’ back lot where Stone works as a barista in a forgotten coffee shop, he ruefully observes of the desperate thespians, “They worship everything and value nothing.”

But, then, life hits this duo right in the solar plexus (plexi?), and La La Land gets really interesting. Their shabby chic world together experiences a few wins but even more losses. They drift. They fight. They become more sure of themselves and reluctantly admit that life must lead them away from each other. And they sing (sort of).

In defense of Stone, her big solo (in the spot of what we used to call an “11 o’clock” number like “Ladies Who Lunch” or “Rose’s Turn” that spins all the key themes into one fist-raising, anthemic exclamation point) is “Audition (The Fools Who Dream),” a full-throated yawlp that shows us, yes, she can sing, and, boy, can she act.

Then, THEN, in the film’s final moments, Chazelle hits you with a Gene Kelly-esque montage/remix/rewind/dream-dance ballet (I’ve always hated those, until this one) that puts the preceding narrative in perspective and leaves you gutted, wondering about your own life choices, what has worked, what hasn’t, and what might have been. Now, that‘s a musical. No, it isn’t. It’s something new entirely. That’s why I loved this movie.

______________________

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

“What’s good for Detroit is good for America.” The Nice Guys

23 May 2016

7 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

The Nice Guys. Imagine Boogie Nights as a frothy Abbott and Costello cinematic confection with a healthy sprinkling of The Rockford Files on top. Served with a side of Starsky & Hutch … or Bugs & Daffy.

Set in a smoggy/syphilitic 1977 Los Angeles, director/screenwriter Shane Black’s comic noir caper flick revels in just how damned ugly the Me Decade was. Film has a tendency to romanticize an era or to toy cutely with a period’s quirky extremes. Black time travels without commentary. The characters in this film aren’t living in a Smithsonian exhibit. They are simply living. Or attempting to live.

Beyond the flawless set decoration and precise costume design, Black is aided and abetted by the sparks that fly when you throw the unlikeliest of co-stars together: Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling. Glowering gravitas meets wicked whimsy.

That said, the awkwardly delicious alchemy these two titans demonstrated on the talk show circuit promoting the film isn’t as evident onscreen as one might expect. Perhaps surprisingly, Crowe ends up garnering more laughs because he is always so. darn. grounded. He’s funny simply because he’s not trying to be. Gosling indulges cartoonish impulses a few too many times, not trusting the comedy of situational contrast to do the heavy lifting. (Gosling has yet to outgrow the “isn’t it just a riot to see a handsome adult man let loose an ear-piercing community theatre shriek when he’s scared?” tic. Be careful, Ryan, for that way rests Johnny Depp’s sputtering career.)

Regardless, Crowe and Gosling are pretty freaking adorable together, and the whole enterprise plays like a pilot episode of a vintage TV-series that never got picked up. The plot is, well, kind of a meandering mess … just like a grainy 1970s TV crime drama. I kept waiting for Jaclyn Smith or Gavin MacLeod to show up as a “very special guest star.” (We do get a Lynda Carter shout out, though.) There are double- and triple-crosses aplenty as a porn actress (literally) crashes through a family’s living room, and her death starts a spiraling series of murders and other sordid shenanigans. Oh, and there is intrigue about the auto industry and catalytic converters and how in the world Kim Basinger’s character managed to have Botox before the procedure was ever invented.

Gosling, as private eye Holland March, and Crowe, as hired muscle Jackson Healy, initially find themselves at cross purposes (with Gosling’s pretty mug on the receiving end of Crowe’s brass knuckles). Grudgingly, the duo partner up as the violence mounts and their befuddlement grows. A big part of the movie’s charm is that Crowe and Gosling gleefully portray characters whose detective skills are as suspect as their collective intelligence, with Holland’s precocious daughter Holly March (portrayed by a captivating Angourie Rice) serving as a wise-beyond-her-years Nancy Drew to Gosling/Crowe’s dim bulb Hardy Boys.

Rice’s performance is dynamite with a sharp feminist subtext. As the “grown up” characters find themselves derailed by patriarchy run amuck (porn, corrupt manufacturing, prostitution, the Oil Crisis … the 70s at its worst), Rice’s Holly is clear-eyed, vigilant, incisive, defying the limitations and stereotypes society seeks to impose. “Don’t say, ‘And stuff.’ Just say there are whores here,” Gosling intones at one point, attempting to correct his daughter’s grammar and missing the misogynist irony in his declaration. The look in Rice’s eye reveals that her character does not lose the irony.

Holly is always ten steps ahead of her father and, without Holly’s continual intervention, the titular Nice Guys would still be attempting to solve the film’s mystery well into the late 1980s. Or they’d be dead.

I’m hoping this feminist dynamic is intentional on Black’s part, a storyteller whose filmography (from Lethal Weapon to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang through Iron Man 3) typically co-opts and reinvents B-movie formula, inverting its clichés as satiric critique of our baser instincts. I suspect this is by design, the film’s random (gratuitous?) naked porn stars notwithstanding.

With The Nice Guys, Black is trying to have his cake and eat it too. And he succeeds. Mostly. In a larger sense, Black is using the indulgent myopia of the 1970s as a reflection of how little we have changed as a nation. Basinger, plays a Department of Justice operative (in a bit of meta-casting, referencing her earlier – better – work in both L.A. Confidential and 8 Mile) whose definition of “justice” is protecting the (then) fat cats in the Detroit auto industry. In the final act, she delivers the film’s punch line: “What’s good for Detroit is good for America.” Even as today’s Detroit reinvents itself as a hipster paradise of urban farming, artisanal soaps, and craft cocktails, the lesson in Basinger’s remark remains prescient. An America that lives for itself and only itself will quickly find itself trapped in yesteryear’s polyester leisure suit.

______________

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.

“Adversaries in commerce” – Joy and The Big Short

28 December 2015

19 Comments

"Joyfilmposter" by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joyfilmposter.jpg#/media/File:Joyfilmposter.jpg

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

“Adversaries in commerce” is a phrase as recurrent in David O. Russell’s latest opus Joy as the falling snow from the film’s advertising materials (posters, trailers, promotional clips – see, left, over there?). The film, which offers an allegorically fictionalized take on the biography of “Miracle Mop” inventor and QVC/Home Shopping Network luminary Joy Mangano, wears a comfortable Dickensian/It’s a Wonderful Life vibe, subtly marrying the holiday-centric themes of merchandise-obsessed America, familial love as rampant dysfunction, and the ebb and flow of seasonally-induced introspection.

Joy details the trials and tribulations of its titular hero, a person with an agile and inventive mind, finding herself stymied by a motley assemblage of “adversaries” (and allies) in “commerce,” many of whom arrive in the guise of earnest or envious (or both) family members. Joy sees commercial opportunities in the mundane – a reflective, choke-free flea-collar here, a hands-free mop there – but the patriarchal world she inhabits marginalizes her gifts while simultaneously pirating her ingenuity. Tale as old as time …

Jennifer Lawrence, joining Russell for their third collaboration after her Oscar win in his Silver Linings Playbook and her nomination for his American Hustle, is utterly transfixing in her most believable turn to date. The film’s and Lawrence’s chief gift is how normal all the abnormal seems; Lawrence (and, by extension, the audience) lives Joy’s life, finding laughter and poignancy and tears where all of us find those things: family gatherings, business meetings, arguments with spouses, reading a story to our children, trying to convince a stranger to take a chance on an idea.

Some may (and will) argue with me, but this is the most feminist set of cinematic ideas to come down the pike in a while. Yes, Joy is inventing a mop, a symbol to some of domestic oppression, but, in the act of transforming its utility, she reclaims this symbol as her own. Her journey to get her thoughtfully designed functionality in the hands of other like-minded consumers becomes a hero’s quest, tilting at male-dominated windmills of finance, retail, media, manufacturing, and legal contracts. It’s not a showy role. Her turns in Silver Linings or American Hustle gave her many more cracked P.O.V. tics with which to play, but, in this film, Lawrence is all the better for Joy’s absence of quirk.

The surety with which Joy moves through life can seem nebulous at times. We are introduced to her as a little girl who empirically states that “I don’t need a prince.” That is the constant in her life, but she isn’t a volatile trail blazer either. She is a Valedictorian with a caretaker’s spirit, leveraging the strength (and madness) of the family and friends and opposition around her, quietly and calmly observing the world as it is and periodically dashing forth to change how it could be. It’s a masterful, nuanced performance.

Lawrence is aided and abetted by what is quickly becoming Russell’s version of Orson Welles’ Mercury Players, a stellar repertory supporting cast that includes Russell vets Robert DeNiro as Joy’s time-warped fiend of a father, Bradley Cooper as a slick television producer with a heart of gold, and Elisabeth Rohm as Joy’s meddlesome sibling rival, alongside newcomers Virginia Madsen as Joy’s sparkling kook of a soap opera obsessed mom, Diane Ladd as Joy’s fairy godmother/grandmother, Isabella Rossellini as DeNiro’s moneyed girlfriend and Joy’s snake-skinned benefactor, Dascha Polanco as Joy’s steadfast pal and confidante, and Edgar Ramirez as Joy’s charming ex-husband and trusted consigliere. Susan Lucci and Donna Mills even pop up in a couple of brilliantly gaga cameos.

My husband John says that his test of a good film is if it “takes him somewhere” and makes him feel as if he is there in that place and time, living the moments with the characters onscreen. I mentioned this to my parents as we were leaving the theatre, and we all agreed that, by that criteria, this is a perfect film.

"The Big Short teaser poster" by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Big_Short_teaser_poster.jpg#/media/File:The_Big_Short_teaser_poster.jpg

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Alas, we were less enamored of Joy‘s Christmas 2015 box office “adversary in commerce” The Big Short, equally an ensemble piece packed with star power but falling far short (pun intended) of Joy‘s exquisite music box pathos. The Big Short, directed by Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) from the book by Michael Lewis, fancies itself a bold hybrid of Ocean’s Eleven‘s ring-a-ding boy band swagger and Michael Moore’s progressively incendiary documentarian instincts.

Unfortunately, it’s neither. Jennifer Lawrence has more swagger in one confrontation with some misogynistic QVC middle managers, than Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Finn Wittrock, or John Magaro manage collectively against monolithic Wall Street through the entirety of The Big Short. (Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall, and Jeremy Strong as Carell’s bullpen of hedge-fund managing second bananas do have some firecracker moments, but they are few and far between.) Melissa Leo puts in a sharp appearance as a ratings agency employee who happily, if improbably, exposes the game afoot when even the guardians at the gate will play for pay.

The film attempts to explicate for us common folk the ins and outs of the housing market collapse in 2008. McKay has been on record as saying this is the most important story of our time and that his film will make crystal clear the who, what, how, and why so that any audience member will understand what transpired. Wrong.

McKay, alongside co-screenwriter Charles Randolph, has given us Wolf of Wall Street-lite, with a mess of characters messily drawn, offering the sketchiest of backgrounds. Hey, Christian Bale’s former MD Michael Burry is a financial savant. Know why? ‘Cause he wears no shoes and plays the air drums while listening to death metal in his rent-by-the-hour office. Oh, Steve Carell’s Mark Baum lost a brother to suicide so he’s all angst-ridden now, wanting to topple the very financial system that still provides his daily income … so he’s noble, but broken. Get it? Brad Pitt’s Ben Rickert gave up this seedy Wall Street live for the noble world of organic gardening – see, he’s going to make something … from the earth. And on and on.

Each character shows up like they are going to enter the road race from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World without any of the wit, the charm, or, heaven help us, the plot.

McKay does little to ground us in why we should care about any of this, other then some clunky asides that are meant to be Funny or Die! camp, randomly inserting celebrities like Margot Robbie in a bubble bath (fire your agent, Robbie!), Anthony Bourdain making fish chowder, or Selena Gomez at a roulette wheel. In that, “aren’t we in-crowd cute?” way, these Fantasy Island castaways turn to the camera, ostensibly simplify some complex economic concept (which ends up more confusing than ever), wink, and then turn back to whatever insipid task before them. It just doesn’t work. And it’s annoying. McKay seems to want it both ways: take this topic very seriously, but don’t mind while we make fun of said topic like sophomoric smart asses.

There was an interesting film here. This isn’t it. I’m not sure McKay’s politics got in the way of making a focused, coherent film, as I’m not sure after watching The Big Short what those politics might even be. Only Ryan Gosling and, to a lesser degree, Christian Bale escape unscathed.

Gosling and Bale seem like they are in another movie entirely (probably once they realized the script was an incoherent mess, they started dog paddling for any port in the storm). Gosling sparkles as the film’s narrator, embracing his fourth-wall-breaking conceit with wry, near-Shakespearean aplomb. He’s a hoot to watch. Bale is less delightful but an oddly thundering presence, a man-child thumbing his nose at a financial system (and likely a film) that ultimately doesn’t appreciate (nor deserve) his superhuman talents.

Like Joy, there was something to be said in The Big Short about a society that worships the almighty dollar above integrity, kindness, and humanity. Where Joy weaves an inspiring yet delicate fable of victory over a cruel and unkind system, The Big Short becomes mired in its own smug condescension, victim to the very machine it aims to skewer.

_________________

Enjoy these cards (handmade by my dad Don Sexton) and these photos of us enjoying the whimsical presents given by my mom Susie Sexton. We had such a wonderful holiday weekend – I hope you did too!

1075482_1101630499869874_3458523668734951867_o 10347247_1101631396536451_578452272789064074_n 10460737_1101631099869814_5795612932819823792_n 10603827_1101631383203119_8882361360287717151_o 10636580_1101630736536517_1679035790844459402_o 10644666_1101630606536530_3271507750315325249_o 12401895_1101631633203094_4161663296750666007_o Roy Card 1 Roy Card 2