The Fart Plea(se): On ‘Swiss Army Man,’ aka that ‘farting corpse movie’

What a way to describe a film. The “farting corpse movie.” As if it were a loaded genre or something. If you read any coverage regarding Swiss Army Man—directing duo Daniels properly announcing their singular, exciting voice in American cinema, Daniel Radcliffe finalizing his evolution from Harry Potter into one of our best young actors, Paul Dano pushing his vulnerable outsider archetype farther than ever before, Sundance’s divisive reception of the film, that beautiful score—you will read that phrase. The “farting corpse movie.” One article went even farther, calling it the “farting boner corpse movie.” None of these descriptions are wrong.

What do you think when you read that? It excites me, but I’m strange. Before watching a different film, the Swiss Army Man trailer played, and I sort of shared this moment with a worker at the theater. I was running late (usual) and he needed to check my ticket. “That movie—I can’t wait to see it,” he admitted, like he was sharing a guarded secret. “Oh, me too,” I said, perhaps a bit eagerly. He paused, administering a strange look, then walked away, probably to do his job.

It’s weird. Even now I’m finding it difficult to outright say I fucking love this film. In conversation, trying to convince others to see Swiss Army Man, I preface my enthusiasm with all these qualifiers: “You need to know, it’s a strange journey…” “Do you think farts are funny? You need to. Farts can be so beautiful, too…” (this was a failed pitch, obviously) “I can admit: it’s probably not for everyone but…” “It’s known as the ‘farting corpse movie,’ which is a loaded description because…”

No qualifiers: Swiss Army Man regards a hopeless loner teaching a farting corpse what it mean to be alive. When the film opens, we learn this man, Hank is his name, is trapped on a deserted island and given up hope he’ll ever be rescued. So he decides to hang himself. His first attempt fails, the rope snapping, but during his second go, he spots a figure washed ashore. Maybe a rescuer, or a friend, someone who can help. But Hank discovers the figure is a dead man, a corpse, and loses hope once again. He attempts to kill himself once more, but can’t prepare himself to commit because this corpse keeps farting. It’s a scene so dark and perverse, yet deadly hilarious. I couldn’t stop laughing that a suicide attempt failed and failed and failed because of a dead guy’s slapping flaps. The film confronts your own self-image throughout in this subverted way: Will you let yourself laugh? Are you willing to submit yourself down this fart-fueled rabbit hole? Because there will be absolutely no hand-holding on this ride. Deal with it.

And what’s more: they follow that kind of sardonic, childish humor with the most gorgeous and cinematic shot I’ve seen in movies this year. Hank approaches the corpse, now washing in the waves, and realizes he can ride this farting corpse like a jet ski and escape this wretched island (“fart-fueled” is a very purposeful adjective). He does, the camera cutting wide, water splashing every which way, the ocean shimmering with it serene blues and whites, these two filthy bodies riding into the sunset.

Oh how often we escape one prison to find ourselves trapped again. Hank and Manny, the aptly-named corpse, wash up on another shore and must find their way back to civilization. As Hank confides more and more in Manny, the corpse becomes alive. He can collect precious rain water in his gullet. Thanks to set-in rigor mortis, a snap of his fingers produces a spark to light campfires. Projectiles launch from his mouth to hunt food and access out-of-reach places. Manny can do anything. “A multi-purpose tool guy.” A Swiss Army Man.

But realizing one’s potential only qualifies but a fraction of life’s meaning. Because when Manny discovers a photo of a beautiful girl in Hank’s phone, he learns about love. Now here’s where the movie ruptures itself open; inside this screwball buddy comedy, lies a sensitive soul desperately wishing to connect with you.

Most cinema, most stories, are illusions. Sitting in a dark movie theater with other people, or home alone on your couch, it’s easy most times to give yourself over. To exist inside the greedy violence and backstabbing paranoia of The Godfather, or the postmodern and campy ADHD of anything Tarantino makes, or even the saccharine drippings and feel-good reassurances of a Nancy Meyers flick. You might have your issues, but it’s not too difficult to jump aboard.

Those directors, and the large majority of films in general, ground their worlds in the objective world we all live in. The gangsters of Goodfellas live by a code, a giant shark terrorizes our waters in Jaws, the chaotic war zones of the Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty all exist as possibilities in our world, some more so than others. The experiences may be heightened, tripped-out, and unlike anything we’ll ever personally see, but we recognize it as real.

Directing duo Daniels have zero interest in pretending. They’ve worked mostly as music video and short film directors and you’re likely familiar with their most famous work, the music video for DJ Snake and Lil John’s “Turn Down for What.” My face melted the first time I watched it. It’s so absurd: The beat causes listeners to lose control of their bodies, and as a result, they literally bring the house down. Dicks and giant knockers bounce to the beat. And it makes sense within context: That song does sort of make you go wild. If you’re at a club or rave or whatever, try not to dance, try and fight the feeling. You will lose or you will die from the crazies around you.

Daniels really like literalizing how experiences and emotions feel, as they did with the very-NSFW Joywave’s “Tongues.” Trying to describe what they do in the short-form generally either spoils or dilutes their work. With this video, you end up with some slightly patronizing derivative like the “hippie-hunter Romeo & Juliet music video.” Sure, it works. But goodness it’s so limiting to discuss art on this level.

https://vimeo.com/98653191

Now, they’re not the first directors to work in that surreal/metaphorical space. Daniels is descendants of the Spike Jonze-Michel Gondry-Charlie Kaufman triumvirate. Projects like Her, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York take place in alternate realities similar to our own with dreamlike logic and technologies. And on some level, we’re experienced with so-called grounded and realistic movies pushing metaphor and analogy on us to create meaning within a narrative. It’s no coincidence Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing happens on the “hottest day of summer” or Andy Dufresne must escape prison and crawl through “300 yards of shit” for his true freedom in Shawshank Redemption. We understand what that points toward within those stories.

So I’ll ask: What does it mean that a guy who ran away from home and wanted to kill himself must teach a dead corpse how to live and love and be happy and in the process learns those things for himself? Because what happens over the course of the film, as Hank tries to teach those Big Ideas About Life, like a parent instructing their child, is that we realize how much Hank closes himself off from the world. There’s a great moment, featured in the film’s trailer, where so no real spoilers Manny says in that deductive way children can, “You want to go home so you can have love but you ran away because nobody loves you.”

Many have felt that way—that nobody loves us—at one point in time: after a breakup, a death in the family, leaving home for the first time. And when Hank responds to Manny, teaching him proper decorum—“You can’t just say anything that comes into your head, that’s bad talking”—you start to recognize the barriers we impose on ourselves as humans. We limit our potential. The dead guy can do anything, he begins walking on his own and thinking for himself. He’s a swiss army man. But what about all of us who are alive?

It’s around this point the film dares you to consider how much the farts really matter. And you do start to wonder. Why do we treat farts like it’s the worst part of ourselves? Why do we hide such a universal experience, a bodily function we hold no control over, one that can be so goddamn funny, from the people we love most: a girlfriend, a dad, a grandmother? Trust me, I accept how fucking crazy that reads. Like, come on, it’s just a fart, dude. Not that important. Normally, I’m apt to agree, but the sorcery of this movie is that it doesn’t sound crazy after watching it. When Daniels first pitched this movie to Paul Dano, they said, We want to make a movie where the first fart makes you laugh and the last one makes you cry. Dano was in from there (I would’ve been too), and if you buy in all the way, you’re probably granting the filmmakers that wish.

The film throws these inversions and ideas at you constantly. You can’t believe some of these thoughts usually held private within your own mind are being said out loud and on screen. They’re just too, well, weird. But removed from the whims of society, and the burden of respecting others, Hank’s able to admit these things through Manny. And he realizes something we all say but never fulfill: Only you decide the definition of your life.

To teach him, Hank performs that concept for Manny: He analyzes his own life, lays bare his insecurities, and tells his captive audience stories, which are tools to demonstrate what it means to be human. Could there be a more fitting description of art is to its audience?

The illusion ends when a movie ends. The spell breaks and we must return to society and join the rest of humanity, who didn’t see what we saw, doesn’t maybe understand the possibilities out there. So too is the case for Hank and Manny when they leave their forest. A worry envelops that maybe Hank went a little insane, possibly he’s a schizophrenic. His growth remains evident, he’s now steadfast in his beliefs, but he has to answer to the normalcy of the world. The movie doesn’t cheapen its narrative by only providing the triumph of epiphany. The rest of the world doesn’t forgive your failures and mistakes just because you suddenly love your farts. But the film’s final shot knows it matters for something, even just to yourself.

Who knows why I’m so obsessed about the fart thing. That’s what this movie’s done to me. I kind of laugh every time I read or hear Swiss Army Man described as the “farting corpse movie.” Because no doubt, that’s what the movie is. Sort of proudly so, too. But you leave unsure of who was the real farting corpse: Was it Manny? Or was it Hank? Or was it perhaps the rest of us, sleepwalking through life, ashamed of everything about ourselves, including our farts, until the day we die?

(And…..cue the whoopee cushion!)

Don’t you see? Farts are just funny.

Cinéma vérité: Movies and life in 2015

I don’t think 2015 was a very good year. Few individuals might dispute that, but it seems a pretty universal feeling. A lot of bad shit happened, we talked about what that bad shit happening meant, then not much changed. Everyone just kept going.

This year wasn’t a good one personally either. No one enjoys labeling a period of their life ‘bad’ but that’s what it was. I didn’t like 2015 and I didn’t like the person I was for long stretches and I didn’t like pretending otherwise for the sake of those around me. This year was, as they say, not a good time. It was bad.

Which possibly explains my increasing trips to movie theaters. It has been my means of escape for quite some time now. Going to the movies for me is like visiting another planet where I’m not allowed to bring any baggage. Not even a carry-on. Nothing matters outside these characters and their stories and sometimes there’s popcorn.

I also happen to enjoy attending movies alone. Not always, of course. That would be a bit too depressing even for me. Movies not only transport you elsewhere, they also have the ability to place you within an altered head space. They can instill a mood that permeates your being, changes your perceptions, alters your concept of self. This may be one of those situations where I’m describing an experience that’s simply personal, but I don’t think so.

Somehow I found myself arguing with my parents over the holidays. It was about this. For some movies, I actively prefer to go alone and it’s because of this whole movies-as-drugs metaphor I’m describing. When I find myself in this haze leaving the theater, I try to make it last as long as possible. I drive without the radio or I don’t check my phone or as I did after seeing Lawrence of Arabia two months ago, I walk aimlessly. It’s not just because I like existing in that space, but also because I need time to process. Some films open up or reveal gaping holes inside me I didn’t know existed (or more accurately ignored). It’s what I call the great big forever nothing feeling. Standing at the edge of that great big forever nothing feeling can be terrifying, but it’s also healthy because it forces a type of personal confrontation that wouldn’t otherwise occur. It’d just lay dormant, quietly expanding, and eventually consume you. Then you die.

But anyways, this argument with my parents. It was more a discussion really, but it involved me explaining why I see some movies alone. We didn’t get to the great big forever nothing feeling because that’s not a normal conversation to have with your parents. Instead I came across with a bitch, don’t kill my vibe tone and my mom pointed out I try to establish control too much on things that don’t matter. Which, I kind of realized, was true.

The longer I live the more it feels like angst-ridden chaos is the default state for reality. The world does not act in a consciously beneficial way. It shits on your face at will and that’s just a random Tuesday. Not much of what you truly want happens. And if it does, it’s usually not on your schedule. Viewed with a particular lens, it begins to seem like everything outside your grasp is always out of control.

And so, the things you can control imbue a different weight after a while. I have accepted the shit-flinging chaos for the most part. I’m at peace with it. But I’m still trying to determine what small things do or don’t matter and which to exert arbitrary control over. Maybe I’ll figure it out in 2016.

Anyways, that was my roundabout way of explaining why I’m writing this again. I like watching movies and I wish I saw more than those on this list below. This is my continued processing. I’m disappointed the movies I’ve been most excited for this year—The Revenant, Anomalisia—won’t make this list of 2015 movies. One anticipated movie however did make the cut: Hateful Eight. It almost didn’t. The reason: I was waiting to see it with a friend.

So this list will do for now. I might update it later, but probably not.

45) Pitch Perfect 2

A toy brand masquerading as movie. Frustrating considering how rewatchable and joyous the original is. However, not as blatant a commercial as The Hunger Games finale was. I walked out of that theater because I didn’t want to miss SNL that night.

44) Paper Towns

I guess this is my fault pretending a movie based on John Green source material wouldn’t be cloying and preachy. I liked when that Bon Iver song played near the end; more movies should have Bon Iver songs.

43) Jupiter Ascending

Let them live long enough and your favorite artist will disappoint you eventually. This is because humans are messy and complicated and imperfect. Just like this movie was. But maybe we should stop expecting the Wachowskis to blow our minds every time.

42) Aloha

Not as bad as everyone wants you to assume it is. Not nearly good enough to defend it, though.

41) James Bond: Spectre

Somehow a Bond movie hitting rote Bond movie checkpoints from a watered-down Bond blueprint didn’t feel Bond enough.

40) Avengers: Age of Ultron

Something about alter egos surpassing the masks protecting them.

39) Trumbo

Anyone revolutionary will only be properly loved outside of their time, I guess. I liked Bryan Cranston’s capital-A acting in this. Louis C.K. did some funny Louis C.K. things. But it failed where most biopics fail: Too respectful toward its subject.

38) The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards
37) Digging for Fire

The first is an anthology film borne out of James Franco’s UCLA film class. It’s lifted by Franco recruiting actor friends to establish some notoriety to the material, but the best shorts end up coming from unknown actors. The latter is Joe Swanberg’s attempt to make his searching Robert Altman-esque roving character epic. Because Swanberg ‘goes there’ with some of his films, he has an acting troupe as weighty as Franco’s. Both these movies would’ve been better with 75% less ‘actors’ and their associative baggage, though. But I might not have been as eager to watch either otherwise.

36) Southpaw
33) A Most Violent Year

Pleasant genre films that didn’t push any boundaries. Both enjoyable enough for a one-time viewing.

35) Focus

Similar issues but with more Fresh Prince.

34) Mississippi Grind

I could watch and listen to Ben Mendelsohn ask for more Woodfords on a loop and not be bored. Same goes for Mendelsohn smoking cigarettes, limply hanging out his mouth. I could watch Ben Mendelsohn do anything is what I’m saying. I really like Ben Mendelsohn.

32) American Ultra

Meanwhile, I really don’t like Max Landis. He wrote American Ultra and Chronicle, two quite good movies, which doesn’t balance his amateur troll act. He’s the worst kind of sort of smart person: someone who utilizes it for mostly self-masturbatory means and is proud of that fact.

American Ultra suffers from its connection to Landis. And by that, the critical online crowd would never judge this movie fairly because Landis wrote it. Honestly, I’m not much better. I liked this movie better than it’s ranked. Jesse Eisenberg doing his socially anxious outcast thing, Kristen Stewart as badass secret operative, Walter Goggins playing “Laugher,” an insane guy who just laughs, Topher Grace doing a Max Landis impression. Oh, and Connie Britton, a.k.a. America’s pseudo mother, is there. Here’s what I’m trying to say: It’s a good time, but still fuck Max Landis.

30) Furious 7

I lied to my family numerous times this year. Chances are so did you. This one was small: I promised my younger brother and cousins I’d take them to see this. They were eager to watch this movie with me/through my eyes because of my unhealthy obsession with all things considered fast and furious. On the way to the theater, I summarized the ludicrous plot lines and development of bromance disguised as ‘family.’ My synopsis kept repeating the line, “Guys, family is like super important to them.” They laughed and smiled. We enjoyed ourselves.

In reality I’d seen the movie the previous week. I couldn’t wait. These movies hold a special place for me that is quite personal yet universal enough that intensive explanation isn’t required. Either you buy the disparate band of outsiders forming a family in ways more real than your bloodlines or you don’t. Either you accept Vin Diesel as measured father figure and grounded superhero or not. Either you call your friends “busters” as inside joke or…probably not because I admit it’s a weird thing we do.

I will watch this movie many more times, though I wish I’d done it with the right people instead of alone the first time.

31) Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
29) Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

We make excuses for those we love. For me that includes Tom Cruise. I wish he wasn’t a scientologist, but we don’t live in that world. What he does and doesn’t know about the insidious religion might be debatable for some. What isn’t is that he benefits from his status of symbol. He gains from others’ misery.

Art remains separate from artist, though. I think it’s good these two films exist. Scientology is a separate matter, however.

28) The Gift

More asshole Jason Bateman please. The movie’s more than that but that’s what I want.

26) The Martian

Fair warning: I’m about to be ‘that guy’ here. The snob who evinces the book was better than the movie. So if you’re not here for that, feel free to skip ahead.

Anyways, The Martian is one of my favorite books I’ve read this past year. It isn’t a virtuoso piece of Writing, but a damn good story. It smashes an uncomfortable question into your face page after page: Why do we care to survive? Why do some of us risk everything to help others survive? It’s one of those great big forever nothing questions. A thought most of us have had but few ever verbalize. Within the book’s framework, it’s the only question that matters.

This consciousness doesn’t neatly translate to the screen. Director Ridley Scott hints at it, but focuses on his stellar cast of a survival team. It focuses on the how rather than the why. It’s more informative than emotive. That said, the film contains my second-favorite shot in 2015: A setting sun over Mark Watney as he scrambles across the Martian landscape to find escape. Solemn and yet gorgeous.

25) The Intern

Robert De Niro is a wonderful chameleon. So this was my reaction when I remembered the guy playing the delight of an intern also played Don Corleone, Jake La Motta, and Travis Bickle, among others.

24) It Follows

Horror movies are best seen with others. This I hold irrefutable. I happened to see a screening of this on my old college campus, which was weird because I kept waiting for everyone to point fingers and yell in southern rebel accents, “You don’t belong ’round these parts no more, boy!” and also because no one recognized me. I like to pretend I’m more self-important than I am.

That happens to be an apt description of this movie. Not that it wasn’t fun and good, it was. It Follows just ended up regarding itself too seriously. And the rules that govern the monster seemed to shift depending on the scene. I guess we’re all a little skittish about ourselves.

23) Maps to the Stars

The story of Cersei and Jaime Lannister, except everyone’s chill about it. And they’re only chill because they’re so blind judging themselves 80 times harsher than anyone around them. And no one’s satisfied. And someone accidentally kills a dog.

Weirdest movie I saw, which means I saw a David Cronenberg film this year.

27) Dope
22) Brooklyn

What is maturation? Typically, within coming-of-age narratives it involves some grand evolution of awareness and behavior. These movies have their main characters function in that way. Yet what I love about Shameik Moore and Saoirse Ronan’s performances is their recognition. They reach a point where they understand their outsider status and embrace it, but know that isn’t enough. Because sometimes those closest to us want us to change the least. Both these films hinge upon a moment: Would you rather remain where you are, comfortable and with loved ones, or try for something more, possibly at the expense of those same loved ones? I like how both films answers the question.

Also I really enjoyed Moore’s dancing during Dope’s credits. Already ripped some of his moves.

21) Steve Jobs

Can we leave Aaron Sorkin alone yet?

19) Crimson Peak

I only see red when I remember this movie. The crimson red ore that oozes out of the ground and through the floors and slimes into walls. The fluttering red of romance between Mia Wasikowski and Tom Hiddleston. The red fluids spilling from dead bodies.

But mostly the red is Jessica Chastain. She transforms from manipulative mastermind into bloodthirsty monster entering the movie’s third act. Her performance isn’t breathtaking, it’s breath-stealing. Following a plot reveal, she absorbs every moment of attention when she’s on the screen. The moments she disappears, you edge forward, not waiting for her return but begging for it. Unhinged isn’t descriptive enough; she knocks the whole fucking doorframe down.

18) Straight Outta Compton

Ice Cube: “Yo Dre…”
Dr. Dre: “What up?”
Cube: “I got something to say.”
[“Fuck the Police” plays, crowd chants along, Bren’s brain ka-plodes]

17) Bridge of Spies

Ignore the American bravado and do-gooderness permeating this movie. Instead appreciate master Spielberg all-the-way trying on every damn scene to tell his story though the lens. Not a more motivated camera from start to finish this year.

16) Star Wars: The Force Awakens

This movie has 99 problems but stealing my nostalgic heart ain’t one. I pissed my pants when that floating text scrawled across the screen and heard bum-bum-bum-bah-BAH! I can’t wait to do it again.

15) The Big Short

A sad realization hit me watching this: I’m probably its precise target demographic. I care enough to know big banks control and exploit the American people more than I know. Basically I understand I should remain furious with big banks, yet possess zero understanding why or how or what measures these guys utilize to hurt us. So, yes, I’m the guy who needs Selena Gomez to explain bonds to him. This movie stands on its merit outside its informative properties, but um, I’m glad those were there, too. 

13) Creed

Or: Meek Mill’s real diss track to Drake.

12) Citizenfour

Cheating with release dates to include it here, I know. But the questions raised internally haven’t stopped reverberating in my head since watching this. Many more thoughts on this later.

11) Spotlight

A very, very compelling film I’d likely never choose to see again. Not a condemnation, I swear.

14) Magic Mike XXL
10) Trainwreck

Excuse me. Allow me to slip into my mansplaining pants for a second here. A bit looser and worn than I remember and hey what’s this hole doing in the crotch and…

Jokes aside, fewer movies delivered a purer good time than these two. Sex, in its hottest and loveliest and awkwardest forms, can be found right up front. They make meeting female sexual pleasuring a notion to aspire to while not preaching it. Both will be highly rewatchable.

9) World of Tomorrow

Any discussion of Don Hertzfeldt begins with recognizing him as an unheralded genius. He is. But ‘genius’ almost belies his peerless craft. His movies hit you with truths so universal you already sort of know them. But he reaches them through an emotional journey so inventive and comedic you don’t see it coming until it one-twos you with simultaneous blows to the heart and mind.

I know this sounds like an oversell of sorts for a simple animation short. Don’t take it that way. Please just watch.

8) Sicario

The prettiest paintings and ugliest truths of the year.

7) Room

So much of what’s sad about being a child doesn’t seem that way to a child. A lack of awareness inhibits any recognition of terror. Everything scary contains blurred lines and hazy figures. That ignorance isn’t exactly bliss—confusion and unanswered question might worsen situations—but it can ease the pain. Simply put, it’s easy to fool children. This applies to a concept like Santa Claus as much as it does rapists. Remove context, which children don’t possess, and meaning branches multiple insidious ways.

Room emotes this equation gracefully. The film begins with the fixed perspective of a child, almost tricking you into believing a sanguine explanation exists for why Ma and Jack live in Room. It zooms out slowly, and the wider purview allows the audience of adults to see things clearly with context and hard edges and dark characters. As the movie continues and more of the world opens to Jack beyond Room, the relationship of audience recognition and a child’s disregard for the tragedy around him stabs and twists and bleeds.

Yes, I loved Room: It never sidesteps messy explanations inherent to the story; it skirts the easy message. Too often victim narratives just ask audiences to bear witness, but Room doesn’t victimize for shock. Brie Larson’s Ma hurts her son Jack as much as she saves him. She’s given room to fall apart and put it back together. Some moments steer too heavily into earnestness (an example: Explosions in the Sky’s “First Breath After a Coma” plays when Jack witnesses the outside world for this first time), but most of it’s earned. Room’s emotional journey wasn’t just devastating, it was vicarious.

20) While We’re Young
6) Mistress America

Finding your place in the world. What a phrase as often preached as it is misunderstood. Probably due to its self-sustaining nature: The answers are just as likely to point you back to the question itself as it is any solution. I say this as a member of a generation who genuinely claims experiences of ‘quarter-life crises.’ Don’t mistake me; I’m not mocking those people. Rather I identify with them, much like I identify with the characters of Noah Bambauch’s duo of photographic films. They are pictures depicting failure as necessity, wherein you look back on this journey of finding your place, feeling like you’ve come a long way, only to realize you went the wrong way. To solve this, both main characters choose to follow larger-than-life characters they just met. And why wouldn’t they? Adam Driver’s Jamie appreciates old ‘classics’, pulls off hip fedoras, attends ayahuasca retreats and doesn’t give a shit who judges him. Greta Gerwig’s Brooke appears to live the spontaneous New Yorker life every artist dreams and says things like, “There’s no cheating when you’re 18, you should all be touching each other all the time.”

How wonderful, or perhaps alarming, it is to recognize these two are posing just like the rest of us.

5) Mad Max: Fury Road

A cinematic experience so intoxicating and thrilling I fear any subsequent viewing might spoil how perfect it exists in my mind.

4) Ex Machina

It’s all here.

3) Wild Tales

Take a conceit ripe with potential disaster—needing roadside assistance from your latest victim of road rage, discovering your spouse’s affair during your wedding reception—rip it apart, and pack its seams with explosives. The comedy of this Argentinian anthology film bubbles, then fissures until it erupts and you find yourself on the floor, slapping your neighbor, also on said floor, yelling, “Can you believe that just fucking happened?” You don’t and you do, which is why it’s so damn funny.

2) Hateful Eight

I’m still processing Quentin Tarantino’s latest. It feel like some sort of trick: You don’t want to love something so intensely vile, yet…It’s such gorgeous, egotistical, hilarious, political filmmaking. Saying much more of anything could spoil the fun. Trust: You will be hearing many, many commentaries echo across the interwebs from this movie. It seems like that was Tarantino’s intention.

But god I can’t wait to see this movie again and again.

1) Inside Out

I want to say I’m as surprised as anyone to find this movie ranked here, but I’m not. My appreciation might change and focus on other films as time moves on. That remains a possibility. But I’m at a point of my life where…

I don’t believe this movie was made for children. While the presentation wraps itself in that colorful animated sheen, its innards contain rather explicit adult content. Which is: The more time spent alive the less incentive demands a full range of sensitivity. Apathy too easily can become a default setting, out of which springs a minimum range of emotional sensory. Growing up involves testing each endpoint, though. That’s where Inside Out places its focus. How does it feel to be truly sad or angry or fearful? Can happiness remain a fixed point? What memories constitute our core foundation of personality?

Things change. A simple fact of life we wage war against each and every day. It is such a gargantuan task to live in the present, because it seems to appreciate the present requires some distance by which point it becomes the past. Melancholic attitudes ensue, perhaps attempting to re-create the past, all of which impairs our futures. Seriously contemplating one’s life throws in flux any emotional stability one might hope to grasp.

Of course that is the place I find myself as I decide how to make a living/life for myself. This is a precarious moment to be sure and many others I know are going through it too. The checkpoints have been hit, the path laid before us has been traveled. We’ve reached the terrain where no easy answers remain. Some days an overwhelming temptation presents itself: To give rule to one emotion. Fear chases you into a stable career. Anger explains why the world hasn’t granted your desires. Do anything that re-creates the highs of Joy. Disgust leads to believe you’re better than everyone else. Wallow in your Sadness. Inside Out knows this: Adult characters conceal emotional ensembles all transfigured into one range of shape. Riley’s dad has given into a life of distraction and anger; her mother one of regret and sadness. And this, Inside Out reminds us, is no way to live. In order to have a full life, one must accept and answer all their emotions.

Again, I don’t think 2015 was a very good year. All the problems of the world reduce down to this giving in of single-mindedness. We all were lacking some serious empathy. A state of fear has consumed most of my country, leading to more guns, more police killings of black lives, more tragic shootings, more being okay with all that. Disgust played a role as well. Peek around different corners of social media and encounter bigoted anger, both liberal and conservative, or possibly the joys of frivolous egotism. Sadness…well that’s the one no one demonstrates; that is not an accepted state of mind around these parts. Those Pixar geniuses know this most of all, which is why the movie ends with a literal embrace of sadness. It is okay to feel that way sometimes. It is good to feel. That was a lesson all of us, myself included, needed this year.

 

Alter Egos: On Marvel’s Avengers, Joss Whedon, and growing up

When I was a kid I wanted to be Spider-Man, though I knew I couldn’t. I didn’t live in New York for one. No way to be a webslinger in a beachtown. And two I wasn’t that into science; I’d probably fake sick out of some fateful field trip to a laboratory. The fantasy pulled me through some of the tougher days. Imagine my glee as a 10-year-old seeing it realized on a film screen.

But now, like many of you, I’ve developed some feelings regarding superhero movies. Complicated ones. I look at Comics Alliance’s comic book release schedule and a dread seeps through my limbs. Sometimes I believe it’s some optical illusion that if I only stare long enough, it might re-arrange into something different. Something, perhaps, more manageable.

I must be clear: I am not discussing ‘superhero fatigue.’ That is not what this is about. I (kind of) reject ‘superhero fatigue’ anyways. It’s a boring concept, as if people don’t want their childhood fantasies realized on a screen, as if these ideas and characters and stories aren’t dazzling fun, as if this isn’t a world that feels in need of superheroes in recent years.

But as a quasi-closet nerd*, comic book movies and their ascendancy into thing status has been weird. We went from a few franchises (X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman) into oh-shit-they’re-making-a-Suicide-Squad-movie status. The movies themselves transformed from nerd plaything to becoming this strange dependable backbone to Hollywood. We live in an entertainment ecosystem where a Captain America-related movie is a more bankable product than any Tom Cruise vehicle. The longer I live in this world the less I understand it.

*My college roommate used to make fun of me because I’d hide our video games when I brought girls home. I didn’t want to look lame. Once, I forgot and this particular girl remarked how cool my roommate’s retro game collection was. She wanted to play. We did, and my roommate had a shit-eating grin so wide I thought he might break his face forever. (In nerd terms: He looked like The Killing Joke’s Joker.) I let him have it; he earned his moment.

But right now is the tipping point for these comic book movies. You can feel it. Listen merely to the discussion, the discussion, THE DISCUSSION every time a new movie releases regarding its necessity/validity. These movies have encountered the same problems dogging mainstream comics forever: It’s pretty difficult to construct consistent narrative tension and drama within static storytelling. Stan Lee once said Marvel’s secret is the “illusion of change” but I never considered it much of a secret. You can’t kill the hero; the comic would ostensibly end. (This is saying nothing of superheroes like Superman or Wolverine who essentially can’t die.) Even if some superhero dies, everyone’s been resurrected like five thousand times so it (sort of) doesn’t matter.

Now infuse stars like Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner, it’s damn near impossible to believe for one second that any of these characters might encounter death—let alone, trying danger. I’m begging the question that’s dogged comic book writers for decades: How do you make it interesting beyond good vs. evil? And also what even is ‘good’ and ‘evil’?

I’m not sure the answer to those questions. So instead let’s discuss how the Avengers: Age of Ultron is about America.

***

This game of Marvel’s has been a long-con, dating back to Iron Man’s release in 2008. Part of me can’t believe that was seven years ago; the other part thinks it was even sooner than that. Living in a hyper-mediated, hyper-connected culture like ours has that effect.

With the aim to construct the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)*, it seems a bit strange to start with Iron Man. Captain America, the typical leader of the Avengers, makes the most sense. A symbol of blue-collar America. Iron Man, meanwhile, is a functioning alcoholic, egotistical to his own detriment, stupidly rich from war and a walking weapon constructed out of sheer desperation: how could America relate to a charact—oh.

*Note: The release of Hulk in 2003 has been retconned in the MCU despite some 11-year-old boy liking it quite well, only to realize as a 23-year-old that a) he wasn’t supposed to like it and b) it basically didn’t count.

Then comes The Incredible Hulk, gamma-radiated as an experiment to re-initiate the ‘super human’ project. Instead, Bruce Banner turns into a mobile atomic bomb, unable to control his own powers, despite desperately trying. You do not need to be a politically savvy obsessive to recognize the parallels of the 60s and how some of those sentiments might be echoed in 2008.

Eventually came Captain America, an American man of simpler times and worries, and Thor, a Norse God protecting us from foreign evils we never considered. All of this was a plan to beget the Avengers. The moment all our heroes materialized on screen together for the first time was bliss. I could barely contain myself. Unlike X-Men or the Spider-Man movies that were more using comic book stories and contextualizing them into cinema, the Avengers was comic book as movie.

I watched the premiere alone, no friends or family—I needed my dosage pure. No ‘I didn’t understand why Hawkeye wanted to hurt his friends’ or ‘It was good, but a bit long don’t cha think?’ or ‘Why do you want to stay after the credits? The movie’s over.’ I would not have any of that. Childhood me had waited too long for this.

Anyway, Avengers was fun. All my bubbling anticipation clouded any critical perception of the thing; I was just glad it existed.

Then came Marvel’s Phase 2, which had its hiccups and highlights, but I want to maintain focus here. This is about the Avengers.

These characters and movies persist as a sort of paradox for the past decade or so: Superheroes serve as one of our few ubiquitous cultural touchstones, yet they’re based on (quite) outdated ideals and attitudes. Since most these narratives are pulled from Marvel’s Golden Age, these themes and ideas from the 60s and 70s, don’t really have the most elevated thinking of race, gender identity/politics, portraits of power etc. If we time-traveled back then, I’m sure almost no one would know what a gender politic is. (But they’ll probably still know what a joint is!)

You can see it on the screen, which lacks any diversity outside of strong, white men. A note on this: It’s a low-hanging fruit, admittedly. Critics who harp on this fail to engage Marvel betting big money this would work, i.e. who knew if the public would buy into all this like it has? It was a long-shot. So Marvel Studios hedged its bets by ensuring nerds would be satisfied. And to clarify, it’s not that nerds only wanted to see strong, white men onscreen (although that’s probably part of the truth), it’s because screwing with original incarnations of these stories runs antithetical to giving the people what they want. Which is to see their childhood superheroes on a big screen. Which is to nerdgasm. Which is to ‘feel safe’ remembering a time in their lives when things were simpler. I’m not condoning it—in fact, the upcoming Marvel and DC movies that fill in these diversity holes excite me the most—but it’s an understandable move.*

*I wrote this part of the essay before Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios announced 19-year-old Tom Holland as the new Spider-Man. (Because I can’t resist: still #donald4spiderman.) We’ll finally get a Peter Parker in high school, which is exciting, but I know people wanted Miles Morales, a black Latino teen who becomes the new Spider-Man when Peter Parker dies in Ultimate Spider-Man #160. (Peter Parker was still the main Spider-Man in the non-Ultimate Marvel universe. I know. Comics are confusing.) The writing was on the wall with this one, though. Marvel Studios wanted Peter Parker because he’s pretty important to this comic book Civil War arc they’re building post-Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s disappointing Marvel continues to care more about its vision than serving underfed members of its diverse audience…but that vision has made them like billions of dollars so they’re unlikely to change. On a pretty freaking bright note, Miles Morales will be the official Spider-Man no asterisk in Marvel Comics now! It’s all part of Marvel Comics’ Secret Wars event that—very long story short—will consolidate all these different Marvel continuities into one universe. For Marvel Comics to replace Peter Parker, a.k.a. Marvel’s cash cow, with Miles Morales shows a sincere and serious commitment to diversity. Marvel Studios, not yet. But Marvel Comics probably feels secure making that type of creative risk precisely because all the money Marvel Studios prints. It’s a little more complicated than the Internet would have you believe.

So Iron Man. He’s different. He’s brash, funny, and wholly contemporary. If the America of today created real-life superheroes, they’d probably be close to Iron Man.

What they would not look like is Captain America. Cap just isn’t that cool. He’s Mr. Do-The-Right-Thing-Always, Mr. Self-Righteous. His old-mannered uncoolness becomes a through-line in Avengers: Age of Ultron because he chastises Tony’s “language.” Sigh. He’s basically your grandpa who never aged; you love and respect him, but you wouldn’t regularly hang with him for funsies.

So when you’re thinking about the Avengers, ignore ‘Captain’ America. It’s a farce. The true MCU Avenger captain is and always has been Tony Stark. He embodies some different post-9/11 American ideals: extreme techno-optimism and techno-hubris, an obsession with pre-empting attacks, staunch American Exceptionalism, an unwillingness to compromise, all covered by a shiny, cool charisma as a cultural icon. I wouldn’t call him liberal or conservative—he’s a bona fide capitalist.

***

Joss Whedon, architect of the MCU’s Avengers, has some opinions. Okay not some. Whedon has lots of opinions.

Let’s focus on one opinion of his, though. At Comic-Con 2012, a fan asked Whedon to spit his economic philosophy. Here’s what he had to say:

“Um, y’know, I was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 70s, by the people who thought John Reed and the young socialists of the 20s were some of the most idealistic people, and that socialism as a model was such a beautiful concept. And now of course it’s become a buzzword for horns and a pitchfork.

And we’re watching capitalism destroy itself, right now. And ultimately all of these systems don’t work. I tend to want to champion the working class because they are getting destroyed. I write about helplessness—helplessness in the face of the giant corporations and the enormously rich people who are very often in power giving those people more power to get even more power.

We are turning into Czarist Russia. We are creating a nation of serfs. That leads to—oddly enough—revolution and socialism, which then leads to totalitarianism. Nobody wins.

It’s really really really important that we find a system that honors both our need to achieve, and doesn’t try to take things away from us, but at the same time honors everybody’s need to have a start, to have a goal, to have a life, to have an income, to have a chance.

The fact is, these things have been taken away from us, sometimes very gradually, sometimes not so gradually, since the beginning of the Reagan era, and it’s proved to be catastrophic for so much of America.

During the writers’ strike I was furious; I remain furious. I’m not always sure what to do about it. I don’t think most of us are.

But I do know that what’s happening right now in the political arena is that we have people who are trying to create structures or preserve structures that will help the working class and the middle class, and people who are calling them socialists.

And nobody has the perfect answer. But I honestly think we are now in a political debate that is no longer Republican versus Democrat or even conservative versus liberal. It’s about people who are trying to make it work because they still remember, they still have some connection to the idea of personal dignity—and people who have gone off the reservation and believe Jesus Christ is a true American.”

Umm, what? I thought we were talking about superheroes?

***

Joss Whedon directed the first Avengers. As an arbiter of geek/nerd culture and a prime pop culture storyteller, it was a wildly heralded move. He placed some of his Whedonian tropes within it, but with the script already written and a story set up through previous movies, he was more following a gameplan. It should be mentioned the reason why Avengers remains particularly memorable is Whedon and Mark Ruffalo’s nuanced duality of Bruce Banner/Hulk. Hulk pulverizing Loki and Banner admitting “That’s my secret, Cap, I’m always angry,” are two of my favorite moments of the film.

With Avengers: Age of Ultron, Whedon directed and wrote the movie. It’s his baby through and through. So what’s it about?

It begins with our Avengers assembled, infiltrating Hydra’s compound to recover Loki’s scepter. They do cool superhero shit. Two Russian enhancements*, the Maximoff twins a.k.a. Quicksilver and Scarlet Watch, disrupt the team’s advancements a bit. While Tony Stark explores the base, finding a secret room containing Loki’s scepter, Scarlet Witch sneaks behind him.

*Mutants. That is what they are: mutants. But because Fox owns X-Men, we must call them enhancements. It’s the equivalent of someone calling tuna ‘chicken of the sea.’ Everyone knows what it really is—why lie? Then again, people like Jessica Simpson exist. Oh well.

She corrupts his mind, revealing to him a vision of his deepest fear: A future with all his superhero friends dead because he couldn’t save them. This spurs Stark to create Ultron, an A.I. that goes rogue and becomes our baddie. Chaos ensues and our heroes, for once, receive a beatdown. The team begins fighting amongst itself, but most notably Captain America vs. Iron Man. The team retreats to Clint Barton a.k.a. Hawkeye’s secret farm where his wife and two kids live to recuperate.

The film skews dark. Tony Stark seems like a paranoid junkie, desperate to prove he can right wrongs he keeps creating. Steve Rogers realizes he isn’t the leader he thinks he is. Thor retreats, terrified his prolonged Avenging has left his home world Asgaard open to an attack. Bruce Banner can’t reconcile losing his ability to control the Hulk. Clint Barton wishes the team didn’t need him, but believes his presence unifies the team. Natasha Romanoff reveals the sacrifices forced upon her to transform into an elite killing agent.

It is these moments that are my favorite in comics. When we see the struggles, the enduring cost and commitment to saving the world, yet these people choose to press on and inhabit something larger than themselves. This is what we talk about when we describe superheroes as symbols.

Audiences like this, too, though they might not recognize it. Why else would Spider-Man and Batman, the mainstream characters most tortured by their personal demons, be the world’s most popular heroes*? We love superheroes as much for their kicking ass and crime-stopping abilities as their innate humanity.

*That and their stories present an everyman, superheroes-can-be-anyone vibe to them.

But…after all that wonderful setup, the movie’s third act drops all the interesting tension and character drama as everything sort of just works out for our heroes. Tony Stark creates Vision, another superhero who’s super powerful (he can lift Thor’s hammer so you know he’s legit…I know) and the Maximoff twins join the Avengers. Together, they defeat Ultron, they save the planet, the day is won. Quicksilver dies saving Hawkeye, who Whedon toys with killing throughout the movie. (Much like Ruffalo as Hulk in the first Avengers, Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye grounds this movie, albeit for much different reasons.) Cap and Black Widow launch presumably the Secret Avengers with a new academy, Hulk disappears, Thor and Hawkeye return home, and Iron Man hangs up the suit.*

*Weird continuity error with Iron Man: Didn’t he just hang up the suit in Iron Man 3? It’s never explained why he’s back avenging at movie’s beginning or why he returns to not fighting by movie’s end. If Iron Man 3 takes place before Avengers 2, this is most confusing. (Yes, I realize how trivial a nerd concern this is.)

Oh and Thanos re-introduces himself, so we know that he’s our future villain. Overall, Avengers: Age of Ultron has better dramatic storytelling and characterization (even though it falls apart) than the first but that doesn’t top the thrilling realization of all that potential in the first Avengers. That magic probably won’t be topped in any future Marvel movie.

***

During his press run leading up to the movie’s release, Joss Whedon revealed some interesting tidbits. Like: At one point, he had a cut of the movie spanning 3 hours and 15 minutes*. Also, Marvel Studios basically placed a gun to his head, making him choose between Thor’s Infinity Gauntlet side plot (the puzzling cave scene) or the farm scene where our heroes lick their wounds. Whedon chose the farm. He’s also mentioned how filming two Avenger movies back to back while serving as the MCU architect made him tired, like supes tired.

*I really want to see this cut of the movie.

Basically, he didn’t create the film he wanted; he made the best movie possible considering numerous restrictions working within Marvel’s studio system and its master plan (I resist adding the phrase “to take our money” to the end of that sentence; I prefer not to be a cynic). And this makes me sad, because if he can’t, what hope does anyone else have? Edgar Wright, another nerd folk hero, quit Ant Man over creative differences. Michelle MacLaren, who directed many of Breaking Bad’s best episodes, has been ‘replaced’ as Wonder Woman director (different studio but still). I remain optimistic regarding Selma director Ava DuVernay helming Black Panther. I hope it works out, but it’s not a good track record.

Here’s the movie I believe Whedon wanted to make: A character-driven drama about these superheroes who lost sight of why they fight and instead spurned by fear, they created an evil more powerful than they could contain. One character in particular would have to sacrifice his ego and himself to stop it.

I’ll come out with it: I think Avengers: Age of Ultron was intended to be about the death of Iron Man. Quiksilver wasn’t supposed to die for Hawkeye, Iron Man was. And Whedon meant it as some larger allegory as he’s wont to do within his creations.

All these ideas bubble within the first two acts of the movie. I was enraptured. Then it all vanished and so did my inside feels. It was pretty disappointing.

***

I guess I’m writing about all this because I’m at a strange point of my life. I feel torn between this urge to finally ‘grow up’ and a compulsion to stay true to my younger self. And I guess these movies and the conversation surrounding them have become some barometer for me. Am I still in need of symbolic saving like I once was or is it now all some unnecessary pump of misplaced nostalgia?

It’s stuff like the outrage surrounding Black Widow’s subplot in the film that pauses me. After Bruce Banner shares his insecurities over controlling ‘the other guy’, Natasha Ramonoff opens up about her struggles as people usually do during vulnerable heart-to-hearts. She unveils that during her training they sterilized her so she’d be the ultimate killing machine, without any ‘complications’ holding her back.

I thought it was touching, demonstrating Black Widow as a stronger character than Hulk, while humanizing Natasha Romanoff who’s only appeared as a Bad Ass in the MCU. Apparently I was wrong. The Internet machine decried how such a strong heroine was reduced to a woman who only wanted to have babies. It was the dreaded male gaze once again misconstruing the female experience.

Instead of attempting to mansplain the issue, I’d rather let Salon’s Libby Hill take it: “As much as it may look on the surface like Natasha is mourning motherhood, what she’s actually mourning is her ability to choose. It’s not about children; it’s about choice. What she has lost isn’t even so much her ability to have a family (as mind-bogglingly brilliant as she is, she, of all people, could find a way to procure a baby). No, what she mourns is her ability to fantasize about that “normal” life, the world opposite the one she currently lives in.”

Most conversation surrounding the issue purposefully ignored Whedon’s feminist-leaning creations and rather blatant social liberalism. I don’t think most people even cared.

This has become my other dilemma: Are people writing about these things as a means to advance their personal agendas or was it a genuine critique of a piece of culture?

Symbols hold great importance. The stories we tell ourselves become the stories we fulfill. What’s ‘mainstream’ or ‘popular’ fills these gaps but what happens when what’s ‘mainstream’ or ‘popular’ changes week to week, sometimes hour to hour?

There’s this false equivalency between Internet outrage and effective activism. One thing social media has demonstrated is that a lot of people have had their voices denied far too long. Social media amplifies those voices, finally allowing them to have an equal say in the conversation. It’s great for those that do have something important to say.

But read the Internet and it’s clear we’re just a nation of Hulks; we’re always angry, willing to dispense it wherever, whenever. It’s like everyone’s so addicted to the beast’s power, no one cares or wants to be their rational Banner selves. And if we’re outraged all the time, important issues and stories are received with the same timbre and fervor as the dumb, dopey stuff.

One thing I fear about my generation is we don’t know what we like anymore. We don’t even know what’s important, herded in different direction depending on the day. We’re all such sheep, expressing some impassionate moral indignation whenever a story ‘blows up’ on Twitter or any other social media. It’s so transparent that some of these people only do it to fit in or show they’re not on the ‘wrong’ side of these sentimental narratives; the persons leading the charge often feel this false vindication because of it. In our race to be heard we’ve eliminated any pretense of context for an issue or a person or a story.

It plays out the same every single time and nothing significant changes as a result. We don’t even start on the path to true progress because we’re off demolishing these side trails of self-stroking superiority.

My larger fear is I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

***

“I sometimes enjoy [superhero films] because they are basic and simple and go well with popcorn. The problem is that sometimes they purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological kind of thing. And they are honestly very right wing. I always see them as killing people because they do not believe in what you believe, or they are not being who you want them to be. I hate that, and don’t respond to those characters. They have been poison, this cultural genocide, because the audience is so overexposed to plot and explosions and shit that doesn’t mean nothing about the experience of being human.”

That’s Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu last year in an interview with Deadline. Pretty strong words, huh? He had more.

“Superheroes…just the word hero bothers me. What the fuck does that mean? It’s a false, misleading conception, the superhero. Then, the way they apply violence to it, it’s absolutely right wing. If you observe the mentality of most of those films, it’s really about people who are rich, who have power, who will do the good, who will kill the bad. Philosophically, I just don’t like them.”

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised the man who directed a fantastic film lampooning Hollywood’s superhero and sequel driven engine doesn’t like superheroes. (That Birdman won a Best Picture Oscar shows you more what Hollywood wants to think of itself than anything else.) I just finished criticizing the nonstop outrage online, but Iñárritu makes me believe we’re not talking enough about this stuff. (Or rather, we’re not discussing it the right way.)

Iñárritu also mentions in the interview how “there’s a disease in not growing up.” That’s what I’m struggling with here: Does my liking superhero movies, playing video games, obsessing over sneakers hamper my humanity in some way? Or is there a difference between those actions and ‘growing up’?

Let’s get into this. This turmoil brews within me wondering what is and isn’t worth my time, because I believe it’s the only true currency in this world. So I’ve been trying to manage my media diet effectively. Often when I open an Internet browser, thirsty for information and/or entertainment, it feels like a fire hose shooting gallons of water at me; I usually just hope I retain something useful.

So my better self has become pickier, constantly checking if my actions or concerns or worries might be wasted time. But another part of me thinks: Isn’t wasting time, leisure time, fundamental to the human experience? It is. So I should indulge. But let’s plan it out. I don’t want to keep checking the Internet for news and three hours later I’m stooling in some shame spiral of wasted time spent reading Twitter and three Game of Thrones recaps and college football rumors and some YouTube, more Twitter and…

What does any of that have to do with superheroes? Well it stems from this desire for a type of ‘easy entertainment’. Because I still want some carby feel-good stuff to digest alongside the more meaty offerings. Something like a Fast and Furious movie to pair with reading Consider the Lobster and Rand Paul’s plan to blow up the tax code for example.

This carby, yummy stuff still needs some nutritional value, though. Bread has nutrients in doses, especially if you buy multigrain with nuts on the crust, ya know? And I believe something like Avengers: Age of Ultron has some value. You can’t dismiss these movies outright because they’re starring superheroes, especially when Whedon’s the architect behind it.

It means something that the villain Tony Stark, i.e. humans, created analyzes the human race and deems us so corrupted Ultron must destroy us. That is the only way to save us. Whedon is trying to tell us something, but instead the whole speech was mocked. Forget that it had echoes of Daniel Plainview proselytizing “I hate most people…there are times when I look at people and see nothing worth liking” in There Will Be Blood. People ate that shit up. Maybe because even though Plainview technically ‘wins’ he’s painted definitively as a corrupted, lonely, irredeemable man. But that can’t happen in Marvel’s world. Tony Stark must win and be a hero.

So I find myself partly agreeing with Iñárritu, but also wanting to to say fuck you, Iñárritu. I don’t for fear of sounding like Robert Downey Jr.: “I think for a man whose native tongue is Spanish to be able to put together a phrase like ‘cultural genocide’ just speaks to how bright he is.” (Downey apologized after a public backlash. Persons leading the charge often feel this false vindication…)

Anyway the point of all this: Why do we still need superheroes? Why do I still need superheroes? Probably because there are days I’m more like Plainview than I care to admit, not seeing much I like of people in the world. But not fully. I maintain this childish optimism that world can still be transformed into a better place. And I think part of that comes from all this dopey nerd stuff. Where good does defeat evil, even if it’s not in this robust, nuanced, politically correct way. Not every story needs to be so perfect, as long as we acknowledge its shortcomings.

I recognize the problems with Marvel and DC and Sony and Fox and all these superhero movies. They can be better. They should be better. The stories we tell ourselves construct the world we live in.

So I guess my answer is this: Yes I can love the things I loved as a kid. I can be that inner dork inside whenever I want. But I don’t need to rely on them like I once did, but they are there when I need some reminding. That’s somehow both freeing and melancholic. Kind of like growing up.

If not God, then what?: The many faces and appearances of ‘Ex Machina’

Ex Machina is a movie so good it has seeped into my dreams. I understand I’m a weird guy and my dreams can subsequently skew strange, but this time my subconscious disturbed awake me.

I had read a recent profile of Writer-Director Alex Garland, responsible for Ex Machina. He seemed an interesting guy to interview. My restful mind thought so, too. So I’m dreaming this scenario of interviewing the guy, going deep on human appearances and fallacies of love’s trust and trust’s love, and I leave him briefly to grab us beers. When I return, he’s erased our interview’s recordings and destroyed my notes. Everything we had built together gone. And he’s transformed into Oscar Isaac, who explained why “it had to be done.” My memory trails off from there.

Weird dream.

But it’s not an all together surprising one, considering Ex Machina. Let’s rewind.

Ex Machina follows Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson), a programmer at monolithic, Google-esque Bluebook. He wins a raffle to work exclusively with Bluebook’s creator at a remote, exotic location kept as secretive as any proper we’re-building-something-maybe-we-shouldn’t organization. Caleb meets Isaac’s Nathan Bateman (a last name I don’t believe to be coincidental), who’s quirky, urbane, and parties as hard as he works. Nathan informs Caleb what he’s been working on: true artificial intelligence.

Caleb’s job: Enact a Turing Test to qualify if Ava, Nathan’s machine, exhibits indistinguishable human behavior. Premise set, the movie falls into a fantastical rabbit hole of its own design. Ava, played by Alicia Vikander, is not a typical robot. She is sexy and curious, a creature as willing to listen and understand Caleb as she is ready to explore her emotions and thoughts. As the test sessions progress, she discloses her human desires to Caleb. She wants to go on a date with him. She does not wish to die. And, primarily, she needs to escape, to leave behind the shadows of Nathan’s cave and see the moon, the stars, the sun.

A sense of suspicion envelops Nathan. Something’s going on. He hides parts of himself and his lab to Caleb. Ava informs Caleb not to trust Nathan. Then there’s Nathan’s servant, Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), eerie-pretty and non-responsive to Nathan’s perpetual chiding and berating. Don’t worry, a phrase Nathan oft repeats, she doesn’t know English. She can’t understand us.

It seems, writing this and reading it over again, that we should root against Nathan. Loathe him. Only I don’t. Even when Caleb discovers tapes of previous A.I. creatures and Nathan’s testing of them, even when Caleb finds their lifeless bodies in Nathan’s room displayed like Tony Stark’s various Iron Man prototypes, even when he dickishly exposes Caleb’s plan to launch Ava’s escape, I find him infectiously amusing.

It’s credit to Isaac, who fills the screen any time he’s present. Nathan’s equal parts cool-jock and mad science genius like Robert Downey Jr.’s Stark, but geekier and his predilection for attention and adoration replaced by booze. More specifically, Isaac’s Nathan feels archetypal and therefore knowable/connectable, but also not derivative.

Paired with Vikander’s delightful Ava, their performances anchor Ex Machina’s more harrowing questions: What’s behind an appearance? Is human affection always selfishly motivated? Is artificial intelligence a feat worth achieving? Haunting of all: Why do we trust anyone, human or machine? Following Ex Machina’s ending, you can almost hear Tina Turner singing Caleb off, “What’s love but a secondhand emotion.”

Ex Machina as a title looks important. It seemingly hints at “deus ex machina,” a common device in Greek tragedy to resolve the plot. You might lean toward Garland toying with the literal Latin definition in his movie: God out of the machine. He puts it right in the film. Caleb calls Nathan a God early on then later, their relationship fraying, evokes J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”

And excuse me I’m about to really nerd out, but “ex” has multiple Latin definitions: as a result of, from within, on account of. Each focusing the action to the object at hand, which in this case is “machine.” Ex Machina points to an intensive question then: What comes from the machine?

It’s not God. Garland rejects the notion, loping it off his title and murdering the man who plays God in his film. What we get is more terrifying in a way: Something that resembles a human in every possible way existing as a higher life form than even us. An appearance, perfectly constructed, sprung out of a machine. So much so that no one can tell the difference between what’s real and what isn’t.*

*I hear the transparent question begged here: Isn’t this also what social media and the Internet writ large does? I’m wont to go there with this film, though.

The dark humor of Ex Machina lies with Caleb although I have slight problems with Caleb as a character. Gleeson’s nerd-guy earnest awkwardness needs some serious turning down, even though it’s supposed to belie the movie’s plot twist. He’s not clever enough to pull one on Nathan…oh my goodness, he did! Please.

But Caleb’s the person who unlocks Ava in multiple ways. He taps into her emotions, grants her access to free herself, believes in her. When it’s time for Ava to return the favor, she leaves him for rot, trapped. The one person who saw her how she viewed herself and she doesn’t even look back when he cries her name. Maybe I shouldn’t be laughing at the thought, but I can’t help myself.

I mean, was Caleb’s love truly genuine? Nathan reveals he constructed Ava to fit Caleb’s precise pornography search engine profile. In many ways, she was made for him. And how does Ava answer his adoration? She uses him to advance her position to achieve unbinding capital-F Freedom. I’d call it the most incarnate human action in the whole film.

Cinéma vérité: Explaining 2014 through films

Now that I’ve graduated college and grown up and done everything I was ‘supposed to do,’ I’m surprised at how much everyone’s lying about how they feel. I’m most disconcerted at how much I find times where I’m lying to myself.

Okay, here’s where I’m going with this: This year, I did the dreamer thing and moved from small town to big city. My landing spot: Atlanta. One activity I’ve forced myself to do is explore. I refused to squander days in a city like Atlanta sitting at home watching Netflix. (Plus, I tend to romanticize adventures.) Turns out, I’m pretty decent at picking a spot of town and discovering neat restaurants or stores or parks or all the other stuff a part of town might offer.

But every time I mentioned moving to Atlanta to a family member or friend, or that I’d been living in Atlanta a couple of months, streams of advice vomited out their mouth. They’d lived in cities, you see, and since I never have, I must be cautious about which blocks I traverse and where I ate and how I dressed and what time it was and don’t do this and don’t do that because, Bren, you’re just not that city-smart yet. You’ll learn. Like we did.

After two weeks, I (largely) ignored that mountain of fearful living bullshit and went where I wanted. But December, I visited underground Atlanta. Ever since seeing the sign “Underground Atlanta” when I first moved here, it’s a place that seemed to teem with possibilities. My favorite being some hipster hangout spot, dotted with various ‘good eats,’ and where people stood on corners smoking Black & Mild’s debating local hip hop that hadn’t buzzed outside the city yet. Exactly two of those assumptions proved correct.

Here’s the scene: Possibly because it’s early-afternoon Monday, gesturing a more barren look than normal, backdropped by a gray sky, hinting at a more foreboding feel than warranted, this backgrounds as what those various friends and family members warned as “not a safe part of town.” Excusing those reactions on the weather, I continue on.

As I walk, a couple people approach me asking for money, but I tell them, sorry I don’t have any cash. A situation done and dealt with previously. I’m a city boy now; I know how to deny help to those less fortunate when necessary. Not a snarky thing, just a survival thing. I (still) feel slightly guilty lying.

I pause outside a Jamaican joint, debating if I want a bite. Really, I’m not thinking about my stomach but about my stepmom and her Jamaican co-workers, and how a pang of missing them hits me, and wondering what they’d think — “Sir!”

Me? “Sir!” A black, larger woman jogs across four lanes of traffic toward me, repeating “Sir!” Once reaching me, “Listen, listen,” she starts. “Sir, my momma’s from the islands and my daddy raised us in New Yawk. So when I tell you this spot right here’s the best Jamaican joint in Atlanta, I know what I’m talking about.” Pan over to the menu posted on the storefront.

“Look at me. I weigh 275 pounds. I know what good eatin’ is.” A mixture of hunger, longing, and amusement convinces me. Thanking her for the advice, I step to the door. “Sir, you think you could — you know — help me out a little bit?”

“Sure,” I reply, but keeping with my rule, “I’ll buy you some food.”

We walk inside and this woman acts like she owns the place, but she earns the attitude. “Hey Randy,” she says to the Jamaican wearing a chef hat. He returns a half-smile. “Look I brought you a new customer” — then to me “Randy’s knows how to do it, I’m telling you” — and back to Randy, in a tone that unnerves me, though I try to ignore it, “aren’t you proud of me?”

We order our meals: Goat curry over rice with fried plantains for me and ox tail combo meal, side of rice and beans, for her. She excuses herself to the bathroom and I fill my drink, find a table. My meal comes before my new acquaintance finishes her business so I sit down, picking at the plantains, half-waiting, half-wondering if she’ll join. I kind of hope she will, because even though I suspect something’s being pulled here, or how much this might be an act of some sorts, I’m buying it. It’s fun.

When she exits the bathroom, she walks to the counter, grabs her meal, says a few more words to Randy, fills her fountain cup, and exits the store. Not even a glance my way. Which is fine, give without expecting anything in return and all that, but my goat curry and plantains and fixings blend together to taste at best like spicy mush.

And even though I try thinking it through and rationalizing it, I remain feeling shitty and slightly used by the experience. I’m not sure if I’m entitled to that reaction, or even if I should feel any type of way about the whole event, especially because I willingly walked into the whole thing (I mean, I basically ran headfirst into a self-made wall of expectation) but that’s where I was. This is the type of event I fear transforms people into cynics. Sometimes, in moments like this, I wish I was the kind of person that says, fuck you, and dismisses the moment, but I’m not that person. I’m just not.

Anyway, I leave and see her chatting to someone else back across the street. Pushing those irrational, reactionary thoughts out of my mind, I walk toward my car.

Sitting in the driver’s seat, responding to a few texts, a family of three appears outside my car. They had fallen on hard times, they explain, and need some money to pay rent, and I lie again, Sorry, no cash, before taking off feeling slightly more guilty and now jaded. That night, finding myself turning over the day in my head more and more, I went to see the new Hunger Games movie, a newfound response of mine. It (sort of) helped, but then Jennifer Lawrence’s character mentions Prim and my thoughts wander to the small girl who refused to meet my eyes as I lied to her parents about money.

Some days in the city are better than others.

So what I’m trying to say is that 2014 has been a strange year to process. Finishing college, graduating, sitting around doing nothing all summer following four years of nonstop motion, saying goodbye to everyone, breaking up with girlfriends but still talking to them when I know I shouldn’t, feeling lost or dissatisfied or ecstatic at various points in my “career,” growing up (whatever that means) (and trying to figure out what that means), meeting new friends, living in a new city, learning to deal with some of the troubling truths of cities (and by extent, the country), trying to keep up with everyone and failing numerous times, and all the other stuff I know people around me are going through but no one admits. And that’s to say nothing of how messy 2014 was in a national, real-world sense.

People deal with shit different ways; one of mine this year was watching movies. I’ve appreciated movies a bit, but usually as a side to reading, TV, gaming, etc. I don’t game anymore and I haven’t found TV that compelling lately, so movies filled the void. I used to swell with nameless dread seeing a movie because of its length (two and a half hours of just sitting there), but oddly that’s what comforts me now. For however long the movie plays, that’s all that matters; all other worries rendered meaningless until the movie ends.

So I’m ranking the films I’ve seen this year because writing and listing things helps me make sense of the world. The number beside each movie could change (and has changed) based on the day, but my feelings associated with them do not.

(One caveat: To make the list, a movie had to be released in 2014. Sorry, too many movies to name, but a sincere apology to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I haven’t so fully fallen for a movie since seeing Shawshank Redemption many Christmases ago.)

Hopefully we can understand each other a little more after this.

***

29) X-Men First-Class 2: The Irrelevant Subtitle No One Remembers

I hate ranking this as is. And as much as smart Internet writers have been lamenting Hollywood transforming into a franchise-churning machine, particularly when it involves characters in tights and capes, I ignored all the signs until this movie. This best describes my attitude for the past several years.

 

As a dork who actively defended that Wolverine Battles all of Japan’s Yakuza and Samurais movie, I can’t ignore how weak X-Men First Class 2 was. It aimed to jam as many characters as possible to achieve as many nerd-boners as possible with as much chaos as possible so you wouldn’t realize how tired and worthless as possible too many of these superhero movies have become.

28) Need for Speed

Long ago, I accepted I’m the precise target demographic for these type of movies. Fast cars that go vroom. Aggressively masculine, unknowable-against-their-own-desires lead characters who man-whisper banal, limited but positive worldviews. Scantily-clad women. Highly implausible action sequences. It’s my movie crack.

But Aaron Paul Vin Diesel is not. Had someone snipped around 25–30 minutes to this, it’d at least rank 10 spots higher.

27) Nonstop

Pretty sure I’d watch Liam Neeson take back taken things for hours on end. The object of desire this time — his humanity. (And a hi-jacked airplane…Iguess.)

26) Hunger Games: The Mockingjay Part 1 of a 1,000 (because let’s never risk anything and produce movies destined to churn money again and again and again and again and…instead of creating one dope ending to a trilogy, because who wants another Return of the Jedi? Fuck that.)

Can’t remember the last time I enjoyed something so thoroughly but left feeling kind of used afterwards. It probably involves sex of some sort.

25) This is Where I Leave You

I did not laugh harder at any movie all year than Adam Driver screaming “Shit! Shit! Shit!” while running late to his father’s funeral. During the matinee I attended, two older ladies turned around and amusingly laughed at me cackling uncontrollably while Driver vocally and metaphorically “Shit!”-ed on his family grieving their lost loved one.

I (kind of) wanna do this one day. (Don’t read this part. I’m telling you don’t.) It’d have to be the right person’s funeral of course. My grandfather would zombify and murder me on the spot if I did at his. Hm. Still don’t have a good answer of who. Is this too sardonic a line of thinking? Likely. (Okay, probably.) (All right, most definitely it is but death shouldn’t be as scary as we make it out to be.)

24) 22 Jump Street

When the most laugh-worthy scene of the movie is credits rolling with all the possible “sequels” directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord could make, essentially euthanizing the foundational joke about worthless Hollywood sequels the actual movie had tried — sometimes well, sometimes not — to make, and hitting that macabre note harder and funnier than the entire movie combined, it’s safe to say 22 Jump Street missed some of its shots. Enjoyed it, though.

 

23) That Awkward Moment

Movies like this perpetuate my New York fantasy: Everyone’s having sex nearly always, everyone’s got wonderful jobs they love, apartment space isn’t that bad, people walk and talk a lot, but to a non-Sorkinian tempo (thank god, that’d be so tiring), and life’s capital-A Awesome.

Can’t wait to move there.

22) Wish I Was Here

Already wrote why this is “my type of movie,” but when did it become so intellectually hip to dump on Zach Braff? Critics, Twitter ‘intelligentsia’ (lol at that term), smart people I really respect, all shit upon Braff with glee.

Other than the criticism of how he financed this movie, it’s probably because Braff, within his projects and in interviews, does seem to take himself quite seriously. I tend to believe it’s an earnestness of his art, but (I guess) I could see why people might view it otherwise. Then again, being consistently semi-serious in a non-deprecating or non-mocking or non-accusatory fashion might be the hardest quality to uphold in today’s Internet culture.

21) The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

This is not a fair ranking. I do not like placing it here. But let me explain.

Eleanor Rigby exists in three different versions: Her, Him, and Them. It’s a story of a couple once in love and who remain tightly bound to one another, but their individual lives and histories muddled that up. The film documents their relationship’s fallout and them trying to figure out what to do with each other and themselves.

But what elevates Eleanor Rigby to cool status is that each version of the film tells the story from a different side. It supposedly focuses tightly on a character and refuses to show what the other character’s experiencing. Him and Her. Then, director Ned Benson fused the Him and Her versions into a Them.

Unfortunately, I’ve only seen the Them version because the Atlanta art house theater I go to lied and said they’d be showing all three then didn’t. Remain interested and enjoyed the movie, but felt a bit cheated not experiencing the project as intended.

20) Edge of Tomorrow

I was not sober when I saw this movie. Anything but. Didn’t matter much though because as it were, Edge of Tomorrow plays like a Tom Cruise fail-compilation within the well-worn narrative of Tom Cruise saving the world except, and this significantly improves the movie, Emily Blunt’s characteractually holds the key to saving the world. And not in some tired trope of Cruise needs to protect her long enough to travel from Point A to Point B way, but vice versa. Not too hard of a movie to comprehend, which is why I liked it so much in the state I was in.

19) Under the Skin

Did you know different countries contain different catalogues on Netflix? I read that on Business Insider a while ago and the article even taught readers how to manipulate their IP address to trick Netflix into believing the user’s in a different country, thereby allowing them to access these different Netflix catalogues. I didn’t do it because I’m lazy and a slave to the machine.

Anyway, visiting Canadian family during holidays, I wanted to Netflix Canada-style (which is way better for movies than American Netflix) and I had to choose between Under the Skin or Grand Budapest Hotel. Wes Anderson slightly pisses me off as a director so I went with the movie that had Scarlet Johannsen. I did not select wrong.

18) Neighbors

More on Seth Rogen soon, I promise.

17) Foxcatcher

I don’t believe this movie was cold and dark and claustrophobic and lifeless and cruel to its most redeeming character and cynical and stilted enough. I’m not joking. It feels like Steve Carrell, Channing Tatum, and Mark Ruffalo believe they’re playing different movies or that director Bennett Miller doesn’t know where he wants Foxcatcher to take audiences. Miller attaches this removed aesthetic to his lens in the name of, oh I don’t know, objectivity? It doesn’t work.

Honestly, I’m only placing this movie 17 because I’m not sure where else to rank it and it has some awards season hype behind it. Middle-ish won’t upset anyone, right?

16) A Man Most Wanted

When Philip Seymour Hoffman died this year, friends approached me and apologized as if I had lost a dear family member.

It’s probably because I get choked up every time I see scenes like this.

Or watch wide-eyed and invigorated and usually want to scream at authority figures like this.

And because I so closely feel this.

People identify with artists because they feel like avatars to our own emotions and experiences. Some reach us more directly, others indirectly. PSH did both for me. I recently learned that he was a big fan of Piedmont Park when he lived in Atlanta shooting scenes for Hunger Games. He liked riding his bike down the trails, saying hello to people as he passed. I smiled when I read that, probably because it reinforced everything I already believed about Hoffman and I too am a big fan of Piedmont Park. Wish you were still here, man.

15) Dear White People

Director and writer Justin Simien should have either went more satirical (my choice) or more character-driven with it, but I’m glad this movie exists. Particularly in a year like 2014.

14) Ride Along

Anyone who complains about Kevin Hart vehicles really means they prefer movies that surprise them. Take Hart’s upcoming Wedding Ringer for example. You already know what that’s about; you know what will be said and what will be mocked and you will laugh. This is because Kevin Hart’s a character actor playing ‘Kevin Hart’: A guy trying to play cool, gets in over his head, has some epiphany about who he is, accepts that, and realizes people love him anyways and becomes what he’s wanted to be as a result: cool. He’s the new Adam Sandler, but not as subversive.

Ride Along’s great because Hart finally looks comfortable acting full ‘Kevin Hart.’ Add in Ice Cube slightly lampooning against the idea of old ‘Ice Cube’? Too strong.

13) Guardians of the Galaxy

…and just when I thought I was out, Marvel creates a superhero ensemble movie so joyous and heartfelt where each character has a bona fide role to play, including Vin Diesel as Groot (!!!), that I find myself maintaining hope. It’s possible we can have nice nerd things that double as mainstream culture after all.

12) Gone Girl

Here’s a creepy attraction to admit: When Rosamund Pike, drenched in blood and mischief, gestures toward Ben Affleck, asking if he’ll join her in the shower, I was quite turned on. Like, possibly more than any other moment in film this year. I couldn’t help it.

Others have sucked the proverbial bone dry with essays regarding the “Cool Girl” speech which bifurcates the two very different movies within Gone Girl. I won’t touch that, but a foggy truth encompasses that speech when it comes to what guys nowadays find so seductive. Men are dumb and can be tricked and manipulated if a woman knows specifically what that man wants. But what I found so downright enrapturing to Pike’s performance was the hyper-awareness she fused within her character following that speech. A woman who knows exactly who she is and what she wants and fights for it at all costs describes what most men want and I assume vice versa.

(Although, to be honest, Pike’s character did lose a lot of credibility when she trusted that woman who admitted to unironically liking Kreayshawn with her money. Frustrated me a little bit when Pike acted soooo surprised she got robbed. Never trust anyone who even suspects they like Kreayshawn. Ever.)

11) Nightcrawler

How Jake Gyllenhall became Hollywood’s de-facto offbeat, unhinged character actor I’m still trying to contextualize, but so he is. I almost didn’t buy Gyllenhall’s crazy-guy Lou until he began re-arranging bodies at crime scenes to capture a ‘perfect shot.’ How he meticulously poses them, lining these lifeless bodies like a director re-arranging mannequins to provide depth, sort of nonplussed me. If anything, I might characterize myself as impressed to the dedication of his craft.

I can think of at least one photojournalist friend who might (and has) done something similar, although not to Lou’s scale. Maybe that’s why this movie has stuck with me: It feels wholly realistic when it should seem anything but.

10) The Interview

My Canadian family and I rented this on Christmas and watched it on YouTube because a) we support America even though b) Sony predominately views itself as a Japanese company and c) Seth Rogen’s a Jewish Canadian so I guess d) we were supporting the idea of America* because e) nothing matters to us more than our entertainment products especially f) one that’s laugh out loud funny as this one which g) smartly satirizes North Korea, media culture, America’s international view for itself despite h) what any high-browed critics might say otherwise although i) James Franco does overextend his Skylark character’s reach a bit and j) yeah, it’s another Rogen/Franco vehicle about dude-bros with heart but k) I like their dude-bros’ earnest sincerity, especially l) considering the slim layer of sophistication Rogen and Franco play them compared to Knocked Up and Pineapple Express days and how m) most of the physical agency is granted to the North Korean characters that n) Rogen and Franco ultimately rely upon to escape or else they’d o) die, making p) a backhanded commentary that America needs to trust other countries a bit more and q) stop believing that white men in power have all the answers except r) when it comes to making foreign leaders crap their pants which s) America’s still the best at doing.

*Oddly, Canadians never call America America. If you ever have a conversation with a Canadian, they will refer to this country as “the States.” I always think of it as some unconscious meta-commentary on American identity: we view ourselves as a collection of varying individuals/most people, when asked where they’re from, will name a state not “America” or “the United States”/possibly it’s a slight quip from Canadians to delegitimize American Exceptionalism, considering their neighboring role as America’s little brother. Or maybe they would rather say two syllables (“the States”) instead of three (“America”). No idea, really

So, yeah, good movie.

 

9) Happy Christmas

Somewhere in some different dimension, I secretly hope a version of myself exists that makes movies. For too many reasons to list, the sliding doors of my life led me to discover a romantic passion for film at a young age and dream of creating likewise art of my own. In this reality, I hope Joe Swanberg never was born because his movies (along with the Duplass brothers) are the type I’d envision myself producing.

What draws me to Swanberg’s projects like Happy Christmas or something like Drinking Buddies is that he risks nearly everything with each project. (I heard on a podcast once, I believe it was a Bret Easton Ellis episode, that he’s been bankrolling most of his previous films through his own credit lines, even his own mortgage once; how insane is that!?) For nothing seemingly more than artistic merit, he recorded Happy Christmas on 35-millimeter film, which is an incredibly expensive endeavor for something so quiet like this. It does provide a living aesthetic to the movie but still. Most of his films don’t strive beyond just sitting with these broken characters who have no clue what their life should be. Some come across as self-aware, but others, like Anna Kendrick’s character in Happy Christmas, don’t realize how shitty and selfish they can be. Or if they do, it’s on a subconscious level, which they’re hiding from themselves for whatever reason or another. Seriously, the baby might be the happiest human in this movie.

Maybe I like Swanberg projects so much because for once I can look at a movie screen and see someone like myself. I enjoy that.

8) Interstellar

Boo if you thought this movie (or any movie over 120 minutes) is too long. Boo if you didn’t buy Nolan-as-told-through-McConaughey’s sappy, positive message about love’s infinite reaching possibilities. Boo if you think Christopher Nolan, director, is overrated.

Mostly, boo if you didn’t see this movie in theaters because, fuck, it was epic. And I do it mean that in every sense of the word.

7) Snowpiercer

Don’t you hate when writers quote their own tweets? Like as if it’s some lazy shorthand that can’t be simply written out? Or possibly re-written afterwards with added, possibly necessary context?

So do I.

https://twitter.com/BrenBures/status/489961581862608896

6) Lego Movie

No movie has filled me with delight like Lego Movie. And I’m counting other films I saw for the first time that didn’t release in 2014. It entered that HBO channel rotation and I’ve caught it four or five viewings at different moments, finding myself watching the whole thing again.

Full disclosure: Father-son stuff can be an emotional blindspot for me. I can’t properly judge the merit of something because my feelings floodgates overrun and gush into any critique or reaction I might have. In other words, the big “reveal” of this movie got me. It was awesome. Everything is awesome.

5) Top Five

Top Five had to be top five. Did I make some excuses and lie to myself a bit to get it here? Of course I did. I regret absolutely nothing.

I was listening to Juan Epstein at the gym and it was the episode with Chris Rock and ?uestlove on it. They were there to promote the movie (?uest served as musical director) and discuss old-school hip hop/debate various hip-hop top five’s (producer, rapper, group, etc). It was a dope episode.

Anyway, ?eust said, when he first saw the movie exclaimed, “This movie was made for me!” I found myself saying the same. Hip hop culture embedded throughout, the small scope of the film, various people arguing their top five rappers, DMX singing, Woody Allen’s more upbeat notes — he practically hits you over the head with it; Chris Rock named his character Andre Allen for Christ sake — and flourishes of Nora Ephron, and ultimately how it’s about two people rediscovering passion and love. Also, it’s damn funny. How can I not think and feel like it was made for me.

4) Birdman

Only within the past six months or so have I become acutely aware how a director’s choice of shot can influence my perception. An arc shot vs. a close up vs. smash cuts, etc. Because I’m ultimately a predictable human being, my favorite’s the long-take or one-shot. I can’t deny my awe and childish giddiness when a director nails it. My old roommate and I binged through True Detective during summer and when we got to that show’s iconic one-shot, I lost my mind. The next day, when he left for work, I re-watched the episode then immediately afterwards re-watched just the scene. Later in the week, I forced the girl I was seeing at the time to watch, devoid of any context since she’d seen none of the show, because wasn’t that just so damn cool.

So yeah, I like one-shots. And Alejandro Iñárritu filmed an entire film deceivingly as one shot with Birdman. Where he devised cuts or utilized breaks in case he needed to swap in different takes pops as obvious if you look close enough. But the fun of Birdman is allowing the magician to wow you even though a part of you knows a secret compartment hides a rabbit under the hat. Regardless, because of these extended takes not typically asked of actors and actresses, a presence embodies these performances, like they were stage actors (which is what they’re playing). Alive I would classify them. Almost surreal. Thinking about it, isn’t that what film should feel like anyways? Hyperrealistic life?

3) Inherent Vice

I have not seen this movie, but I’m assuming how I’m going to react. Paul Thomas Anderson remains my favorite working director and Joaquin Phoenix might be one of the last working people in Hollywood committed to his art over fame. (He made a mockumentary about it actually.) I would feel remiss if this movie wasn’t on this list.

(Ed. Note: I have since seen this movie. Twice. It’s ranked where it should be.)

2) Boyhood

A strange thing’s happened with this movie: Every critic likes it; no, they love it. A scant few have decried it, but these people so plainly wish to appear contrarian it comes across as it is: preposterous. If you were to poll critical opinions nationwide, Boyhood would surely beat out any other movie that’s debuted in 2014.

But nobody I know in real life has seen it, save a few film friends. To a patron who may see one (if that) movie a month, urging them to see a wandering meditation on experiencing adolescence during our increasingly unknowable technology age, where change feels constant not variable, may not exactly qualify as ‘must-see.’ I found myself describing the plot to family and friends as “well, this kid basically grows up with like iPods and stuff over about 12 years.” But that’s why Boyhood’s so fucking amazing! A swath of people committing themselves to a project like this, adding the conceptual element of time to filmmaking and acting is something never achieved or even tried. All to document, year by heartbreaking year, how it feels to lose innocence and learn how to define what you accept as your reality of the world. It’s art in every reaching, semi-annoyingly highbrow sense of the word; that’s it. But I’m worried it’ll be remembered only in a critical sphere instead of the much bigger world it so lovingly depicts.

 

1) Whiplash

So what if I’m biased? So what if I love this movie because it holds up a funhouse mirror to some combination of my high school and present self? So what if I had an instructor precisely like J.K. Simmons who’d routinely discourage kids out of some misplaced yearning for greatness? So what if I identify with Miles Teller, character and actor, too closely? So the fuck what?

Here’s Andrew Nieman (Miles Teller) who wears a naked hunger on every inch of his being, with an animalistic desperation for success feeding off Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) and his ravenous craving of being associated with importance. One symbiotically needs the other, pushing at each other’s outlines when human expectation would beg otherwise. And the camera! It doubles as an audience stand-in, or more aptly what director Damien Chazelle embodies as sort of where these two men envision the attention and power of the room is being placed. (If you’ve seen the movie, that’s why the final shot cuts where and when it does. What happens after that final shot’s irrelevant to these two.)

It’s the only movie I’ve paid to see twice this year and given the chance I’d pay a third, possibly a fourth. Nothing fully captivated me this year like Whiplash’s final scene, a masterpiece marriage between the elements of film like directing, acting, editing, sound production, and storytelling, among others. At work, at home, I’ve listened to the film’s soundtrack, which includes bits of the story. As it replays in my ears, the film’s images flicker in my mind and I feel like merely by its music, I’m experiencing Whiplash all over again. It’s the one movie that returns to me time and time again unexpectedly.

As more impressive technically, historically, artistically other movies might compare, Whiplash ultimately meant the most to me out of any movie in 2014. Complicated as the rest of the year might have been, this of all things, I see clearest.

***

I suppose I should wrap this up in some tidy way, but I’m not that interested in that. No real ending’s in sight anyways. Instead here’s the soundtrack I repeated while writing this because I’m trying to keep it too real.

https://soundcloud.com/ilovemakonnen/down-4-so-long-remix-feat-ezra-koenig-despot-red-bull-20-before-15

‘Boyhood’: Or ‘growing up’ millennial

There’s a moment from the opening scenes of Boyhood I can’t seem to get out of my head. It’s not the obvious one that serves as the movie’s poster—Mason staring skyward, completely of the moment, embodying a sense of hopeful wonder only boyhood might contain. That one’s nice, maybe the nicest scene until the movie’s end, but the moment I keep returning to in Boyhood is when Mason and his family leaves to Houston and chasing the car on his bike is Mason’s childhood best friend.

The way director Richard Linklater shoots this moment is unnerving: The camera rattles from Mason’s point of view, catching glimpses of Mason’s friend in between thickets of straw grass, but his figure never fully appears. The car speeds further and further away, but this phantom keeps tearing after Mason. Try as hard as he may, the phantom can’t catch the car—or Mason. There’s a yearning to the moment; everyone involved—Mason, Mason’ friend, Linklater, the audience—wants one visible sightline between Mason and his friend before they’ll likely never see each other again. But it doesn’t happen. Mason isn’t quite clear what he sees and emotionlessly turns and sits down. Then he fights with his sister Samantha.

When Mason stops looking for his friend, it doesn’t mean he’s not there. It feels quite the opposite; it’s like his friend never stops chasing him. Because he’s essentially transformed into a memory now, something Mason once knew, but doesn’t any longer. As hard as he tries, his recollection of this friend will be like that moment—obscure nostalgia.

I keep returning to this moment because Boyhood is a movie about memories and how we develop memories and how those memories impact us years later without us even realizing it. Watching Boyhood feels eerily similar to how our own childhoods are remembered. It’s a collection of moments, nothing continuous, that ground our experiences and character.

In a less skilled director’s hands, this movie would be a disaster. But Linklater aptly recognizes that life’s shaping influences aren’t its obvious moments, but the small, quiet ones. Mason’s (first) alcoholic stepfather Bill beating his mother and throwing a whiskey glass at him mightily impacts him, but what really fucks Mason up is that same alcoholic stepfather forcing him to shave his head without permission. (And what cheers up Mason isn’t his mother reassuring him he looks beautiful anyways and that don’t worry, son, I’ll have a talk with him when we get home; it’s some random girl passing him a note saying she like his haircut after all his classmates just laughed in his face.)

By its nature and timing, Boyhood is the most millennial movie that exists. It captures the lives of children growing up with their parents’ bad choices, as the aftermath of divorces, amidst a faster and faster-changing world. Mason and Samantha are dragged through three divorces, split visitation hours, confusing and conflicting emotions between loving their parents separately yet equally despite each parent slyly talking shit about each other, experiencing transformative life talks in greasy bowling alley bars, and these parents at times making decisions that best suit themselves instead of their children. This is all while navigating the travails of ‘growing up,’ especially ‘growing up’ with the Internet and constantly advancing technology, which presents a whole new set of existential problems to digest. (Hold that thought.)

That Mason’s parents divorce and remarry other people seems wildly appropriate to the millennial childhood. It may come across as cynical, but I’m almost more surprised when somebody tells me their parents are (happily) married instead of divorced. (Full disclosure: My parents are divorced.) I meet that statement with skepticism, wondering if their parents have a) given up or b) should be divorced or c) might in fact be (happily) married. The first two thoughts usually fade away with time*, and I stop doing that 22-year-old thing I do where I’m so sure of everyone else’s lives.

*Okay, they don’t truly ‘fade away.’ What happens is I choose to believe the evidence that supports option c) because that’s a more worthwhile existence than believing options a) or b). Which isn’t to say nobody’s parents are (happily) married anymore—damn that’s a dangerous thought—but circumstantial evidence leads me toward at least thinking about it. I wish I didn’t.

But his parents’ divorces doesn’t instill some misplaced misanthropy in Mason (or me) because that’s not where adolescent boys learn about girls or love nowadays, if ever. Mason gets invited to an abandoned house by his friend where they’re supervised by that friend’s older brother. A couple other kids come, too, including the older brother’s friends. There they drink beer and talk about girls and their sexual exploits with those girls.

I tried to explain this to a girl I love not too long ago, but this is how boys introduce themselves. Boyhood does a much better job of capturing it than I did, especially how it grounds those talks to seem less absurd than they really are. Every time I meet new guy friends or catch up with old ones, the conversation always pops up: ‘Get any pussy lately?’ It makes me wonder if some guys have sex only to brag about it to their friends afterward. And it’s not like everyone involved in these conversations believes half the shit they’re spewing—look at Mason, who not too soon after falls hopelessly for a girl who breaks his heart and displaces him into a serious funk for months. In that ‘guy talk’ moment, however, Mason embraces that boyish conversation and looks delighted and intrigued by it. It’s possible to be both.

Which is what Boyhood mostly concerns itself with: The both-ness and in-between-ness of moments and memories. It’s possible that Mason loses some things with his troubled adolescence and divorced parents, some things that might be deemed ‘normal’ or ‘essential’ to societal inclinations, but he also gains perspective and moments that others might never experience. He might be better off.

It’s not outlandish to believe millennials have experienced the most significant amount of changes during their childhoods compared to previous generations. (Cue every person older than 30 scoffing.) We’ve been through 9/11, had computers creep into every facet of our lives, learned to concern ourselves with our ‘brands,’ bought each version of the iPod, watched as America transformed itself into a largely service economy, had a black man named Barack Hussein Obama elected President of the United States, experience firsthand the dissolution of the typical nuclear family, and feel our world expand from national to global almost overnight.

With all this perpetual change, two attitudes could develop: a) encroaching numbness to the world, an existential dread that nothing matters and everything and one will perish soon enough or b) that with all this change, there’s extreme optimism to where we’re going, that everything matters and everyone has some purpose to live out.

Boyhood presents option b).  The movie ends with Mason, his roommate, his roommate’s girlfriend, and her friend Nicole eating pot brownies and hiking Big Bend National Park.

Nicole and Mason have this exchange:

Nicole: “You know how everyone’s always saying seize the moment? I don’t know, I’m kind of thinking it’s the other way around, you know, like the moment seizes us.”

Mason: “Yeah. Yeah, I know, it’s constant, the moments, it’s just — it’s like it’s always right now, you know?”

If it sounds like two kids having high-sounding thoughts, it’s because it (kind of) is. But it feels right, at least for millennials. It explains the best way to experience an ever-changing world without being swallowed by it. We’re not defined by our Boyhood but the product of it. After it, we’re whoever we want to be.

And looking back on it, boyhood wasn’t that bad; it was quite wondrous really.

The emotional beauty of ‘Wish I Was Here’ and our millennial problems

“When we were kids, my brother and I used to pretend that we were heroes. The only ones who could save the day. But maybe we’re just the regular people; the ones who get saved.” –Aidan Bloom, Wish I Was Here

“Hey Sol, do you ever wonder at what point you just got to say fuck it man? Like when you gotta stop living up here, and start living down here?” “It’s 7:30 in the morning, dawg.”–B. Rabbit and Sol, 8 mile

“So what are you doing now that you’ve graduated?” –Every adult in my life the past four months

Yesterday, my friend and Twitter personality @perrykos tweeted this at me.

@BrenBures you need to go see the Zach Braff movie because I want to know your thoughts on it

— Perry Kostidakis (@perrykos) July 28, 2014

@BrenBures it's your kind of movie

— Perry Kostidakis (@perrykos) July 28, 2014

So instead of finishing packing for Atlanta, I decided to go see it. He was right; it is my kind of movie.  As asked, here are my thoughts:

-Some movies are made for fun and to blow stuff up. Other movies are meant to capture the human condition and express some keen insight about our world. Then there’s movies like Wish I Was Here, that isn’t concerned with legacy or character conventions or Hollywood success; it’s meant to communicate emotions and moments. Let me explain: Wish I Was Here is about Aidan Bloom, a semi-allegorical Zach Braff who’s fledgling as an actor and dissatisfied with life. He swears freely in front of his children—so much that a Costco-sized Swear Jar is full of his curses—disavows his Jewish heritage, and has a stilted relationship with his brother and father. His wife Sarah (Kate Hudson) experiences sexual harassment at work where she plugs numbers into spread sheets, a shitty job necessary to pay bills and feed the family. Nobody, to start, is that happy in this movie.

-Then, Wish I Was Here changes and gains momentum when Aidan’s father’s cancer returns and this fractured extended family is forced to come together. Previously broken, they adventure down a spiritual journey to fix themselves, despite themselves. They attempt to rediscover happiness.

-There are moments in life nobody warns you about: I imagine it as some unexpected gust of wind pushes you off the cliff and you fall. Nobody warns you because they can’t—they’ve regained their feet and moved on. Either that or they’d rather forget. I have to think your father dying and giving up on your dreams is one of those moments. To be a bit personal, graduating from college is another.

-Life is funny because it feels like two contradictory thoughts about it exist in my head at all times: 1) Everybody seems to know what they’re doing or supposed to do, myself included, and that life has numerous branching paths, each with slightly varying workloads and emotional stresses, and all you have to decide is what road to travel upon. 2) Nobody knows what they’re doing. Everybody pretends and perpetually searches for some greater meaning, especially as 20-somethings. Life is a constantly-shifting terrain with no nearby cartographer and no tools to plot where you’ve been and where you’re going. You might find temporary asylum, but that construction will crumble if you stay too long. Because of this, everyone is mostly wandering.

-Dreaming is a pretty modern concept; well, dreaming awake that is. Our lives are mostly satisfied, in a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs-type of way. I sometimes fantasize what it would be like to live like 500 or a 1,000 years ago, when nothing was knowable outside of your immediate vicinity. I don’t think they worried too much about their brands or blogs or Twitter followers or fulfilling their creative, spiritual needs. That’s a pretty 21st century/millennial problem, isn’t it?

-Older generations mock millennials because this is our “BIG PROBLEM” (and they usually present it in that mocking, deprecating way): What do I do with my life? What will bring me the most satisfaction? What will make me happy? But if this is our problem, shouldn’t we deal with it? America’s Greatest Generation has led us to this point, have they not?

-All these thoughts and ideas are woven into the DNA of Wish I Was Here. Aidan Bloom’s father provides money for Aidan’s children to attend private Jewish school and insists on obsolete ideas of work and patriarchy. Everyone else in the movie outside the Blooms seem to be pretty fine with life. Sarah and Aidan ask one another “When was the happiest you’ve seen me?” in a way that indicates they’re not sure what makes them happy anymore. Aidan keeps working to jumpstart his dead-end acting career because he believes he shouldn’t give up on his dreams.

-I like a lot of moments in this movie, but one stands out: Aidan brings his children out to some red rocks formation in the Californian desert because it’s the “greatest place on earth.” He gets his kids to stand atop these rocks with him, their arms wide open looking like they’re waiting for something spiritual to strike them. Aidan admits to his children he loves this place because he had the greatest epiphany of his life here and it’s transparent he’s searching for another one. They camp here for the night, and after his children fall asleep, Aidan tends the fire, still searching. The next morning his son Tucker asks, “Did you have your epiphany, Dad?” “No,” Aidan replies.

-Little movie-nerd aside here: Shots like that one and how the sun outlines Sarah as she’s surfing near movie’s end highlight Zach Braff’s wondrous eye as a director. It feels he’s more concerned with accurately capturing these moments and emotions than creating an appealing movie for everyone (especially critics). Also, still great at producing his own cinematic soundtracks.

–Wish I Was Here might be a bit heavy- and ham-handed for some, but @perrykos knows me—I liked this movie a good bit. It hits the right tender spots and ends optimistically, but not necessarily upbeat. In the end, we’re all still wanderers with some vague notion of where we’re going, but certain knowledge of where we’ve been.

10 Reasons you should watch ‘The Master’

The Master is not an easy film: It eschews common movie narrative logic, plays with audience by flipping between reality and imagination without hint or explanation, and initially develops subplots only to never address them again throughout the film.

Yet it remains my favorite movie released in the past five years at least, if not spanning back further. I saw it twice in theaters, once at Florida State’s campus theater, and now that it’s on Netflix as of yesterday, I will proceed to watch it 20 more times.* Now, I’ll likely write a more in-depth review/analysis/praise of this movie later, but I want to give everyone a chance to watch it first. Plus, I’ll probably go long with it, so I’ll need some time. For now, I merely want to convince you to watch The Master. And since we live on the Internet where the most effective form of swaying people to think or do anything is through a list-icle, here are 10 reasons why you should be watching The Master. 

*(To the people, myself included, that complain that Netflix doesn’t have prestige films in its rotation enough–I beg you to watch this, The Immigrant, and Boyz N the Hood. Otherwise they’re gone. And I don’t want to live in a Netflix world without RICKY!!!!!!!)

1) A quick summary: It’s a story loosely based on the inception of Scientology by L. Ron Hubbard, but like the other movies made by director Paul Thomas Anderson post-Magnolia, mostly it’s about secret sects or histories of American society and dis-fractured families in post-war America and the cavernous gap that leaves in the world and within ourselves. It’s about  men seeking absolution through dubious  means and how inevitably that insidious journey will crash over them, unless they find a more honorable purpose.

2) Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Laura Dern, Christopher Evan Welch, Jillian Bell, and Jesse Plemons, a.k.a. the dude who inexplicably earned the most acting cred in Hollywood from Friday Night Lights, all perform phenomenally in this movie. The degree of commitment and flair is insane. (Phoenix reportedly hurt his back filming this because of the hunchback stance he appropriated for Freddie Quell, a character tic he found necessary to tell Quell’s story following the war.)

3) Philip Seymour Hoffman gets his own bullet point. R.I.P., big guy. Everyone else performs with flair and showmanship; Hoffman acts with uncharacteristic reserve.  His calculated coolness as Lancaster Dodd haunts and convinces that you too would join his movement. It’s a performance out of early Hollywood with its stillness.

4) Lots of sex, and nakedness, and bootlegged-boozy deviancy in this movie. That is if you’re into that sort of thing. (And since you’re likely a 20-something American if you’re reading this blog, that means you are.) Some of it’s fun and some of it’s grotesque. Speaking of which…

5) TIMID SPOILER ALERT: Did you catch that ALL-CAPS spoiler alert. Good: Amy Adam’s character gives Hoffman’s character the roughest, sandpaper-y sexual act I’ve seen on screen. (To be fair, I haven’t watched Teeth.) It was an act of power over Lancaster Dodd by his wife Peggy, and Lancaster coalesces to the submission all too familiarly. It’s awesome.

6)

Why, yes! That is Joaquin Phoenix fingering the nipple of a sand-woman with what appears to be a post-coital cigarette in hand. Glad you asked! More happens between Phoenix and mysterious sand-woman, but I fear I’ve already revealed too much.

7) There’s this shot:

8) Like that one, there will be images that will not escape your head for some weeks: Freddie Quell running across farm fields being chased by migrant workers, Lancaster Dodd and Quell trapped in opposite jail cells, Dodd and Quell escaping everything–their pasts, each other, themselves–on motorcycles, and namely the blue ocean director P. T. Anderson keeps returning to.

9) Because you’re a rebel, one who wants to fight institutions and injustices, like The Master somehow not being nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, or Best Cinematography by the Academy, and how the collective of Phoenix, Hoffman, and Adams won no Oscar’s for their performances. (Although Phoenix losing to Daniel Day-Lewis for his performance in Lincoln is permissible. Any year Day-Lewis acts in a leading role, he more than likely deserves to win.)

10) If you like any of Paul Thomas Anderson movies, you should watch this. (Except maybe if you only liked Boogie Nights. Everyone loves Boogie Nights and while a lot of sex appears, Dirk Diggler will not.) This may be, the most Paul Thomas Anderson movie Paul Thomas Anderson has ever filmed. There Will Be Blood remains more iconic, Punch-Drunk Love more digestible and playful, and Boogie Nights more fun, but The Master goes right for the mark–the human heart.