White Noise (2022)

Let's Face the Music and Dance

or

"That's a Little Stupid." "It's What Happens to Desperate People."

White Noise (noun) Merriam-Webster

1 : a: a heterogeneous mixture of sound waves extending over a wide frequency range

compare pink noise

b: a constant background noise

especially : one that drowns out other sounds

2 : meaningless or distracting commotion, hubbub, or chatter

 

Wikipedia page of White Noise (novel) sub-section: Analysis

"White Noise explores several themes that emerged during the mid-to-late twentieth century, e.g., rampant consumerism, media saturation, novelty academic intellectualism, underground conspiracies, the disintegration and reintegration of the family, human-made disasters, and the potentially regenerative nature of violence. The novel's style is characterized by a heterogeneity that utilizes "montages of tones, styles, and voices that have the effect of yoking together terror and wild humor as the essential tone of contemporary America."

 

One could mistake Noah Baumbach's film of White Noise as a meditation on current times with pandemics, conspiracy theories, and just plain crazy people...if the film weren't based on a Don DeLillo novel written in 1985. Funny how really good writers "get it right." Not funny how the human collective keeps making the same mistakes over and over and over (and over)...as if we were crazy or something.

The protagonists are the family of J.A.K. Gladney (Adam Driver, ubiquitously), an academic at "The College On the Hill" teaching an "Advanced Nazism" course—he's not "pro," he's "con" but does deep-dive analysis on the self-proclaimed "Thousand Year Reich" (they got that wrong, too!)—and his analyses (and those of his peers at the college) sound an awful lot like that Wikipedia "analysis" of DeLillo's novel. His wife, Babette—call her "Baba"—(Greta Gerwig)—"We're each other's fourth"—has (as a colleague notes) "important hair," and focuses on self-improvement, running the steps of the college's stadium and taking "posture classes." They have four kids from four marriages, but seem to be settling in to the chaos, despite the constant conversation, the randomness, and the clash of personalities and interests.

They are white, liberal, self-satisfied and pretentious, the latter being honed to a fine art, as Gladney's lectures on the rise of Nazism border on performance (Driver is brilliant at this) and life is good. It's so good, that any trivial subject can be analyzed and micro-scoped for nuance and monlogued over where, if done right, it can scrape raw hints of guilt and self-loathing. The inherent capacity for human beings to be fascinated by car crashes, for instance—as is lectured about by Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle) in the opening sequence. We, as a species, seem to be drawn to disaster.

 

Well, as the saying goes: "Watch Out What You Wish For." In fact, that sounds like a lecture, too.

White Noise is split into three parts, the first of which is:

1. Waves and Radiation

It serves as an introduction to the characters when times are good and we see them at their best and most convivial. Things are so good that one can be a bit jejune and deprecating about it, while feeling superior at the same time. But, things are simmering under the surface and all it will take will be some catastrophic event to test the rigor of the self-satisfied complacency of the extended nuclear family.

2. The Airborne Toxic Event

Some rando truck driver carrying explosive chemicals is reaching for his bottle of Jack Daniels, distracted just enough that he doesn't see the guard-rail come down for a crossing train—that is also carrying explosive chemicals—and plows into it, derailing it, and causing a massive explosion with a resulting cloud of burning schmutz, that causes the evacuation of nearby towns.

The Gladneys make a run for it to one of the camp-grounds stipulated as evacuation sites for the populace. But, so is everyone else, so the resulting snake of traffic keeps them in place for a much longer time than one can be complacent about. They are refugees from suburbia, displaced with as few comforts as they can carry. It's a far-cry from the comforts they are used to, with a looming chemical waste that can kill you if you're not sheltered in place. Of course, there are theories and fears and resentments that bubble up among the many strangers lumped in together without the comforts of drywall and fences.

For J.A.K.—that's "Jack"—this merely exacerbates his growing unease of death which haunts his dreams with sheeted figures in his bed that have replaced his wife and which strangle him with scarred hands, granting him no peace. And, there is the fear that the toxins have poisoned him, as well, since he left the safety of the get-away car for the 2½ minutes it took to fill it up with gas. The government officials who analyze and herd the evacuees give little comfort ("You are not to leave the facility. That means if you come up to me later and ask 'Can I leave?' the answer will still be no"). By the time, they get home, J.A.K. is starting to obsess about his 2½ exposure and seeks medical advice. But, there's something wrong with Babette, too.

3. Dylarama

Well, you've got to have some surprises, so the less said the better. But, it wraps up a lot of things that have been brewing in Parts 1 and 2, concentrating on the domestic drama tilting the seemingly self-satisfied and stable Gladney house. 

Baumbach keeps things off-center with long takes without too much directorial show-boating, but making sure everything's paced briskly and usually with a comedic punctuation at the exit. The tone is set by a lush Danny Elfman score, that, at times, evokes Randy Newman's score for Baumbach's previous film. The performances are uniformly excellent and manage to make the characters less insufferable than they could be.

I loved it, but, then I tend towards the dark, finding it cheering (and probably as I also tend to the pretentious, finding it amusing). In fact, I was quite thrilled with it, having to recommend it heartily to whoever would hear it. Probably because in the course of a film with heavy themes and dour prospects, it is so optimistic.

Don't HATE HATE HATE Me Because I Like Crash (2004)

Here's another "Best Picture" article from the archives. It's a bit different in that I was addressing the response to Crash—the 2004 film and not david Cronenberg's controversial 1996 film—and the backlash to it winning its "Best Picture" Oscar. Being as it's something I've written in the past, I made a sweep for dead links and was disturbed that writings I had sighted in this have since gone dead, particularly those by critic Jim Emerson that I addressed. I wish they were here. Emerson's a fine writer and critic and his lack of representation, particularly on the rogerebert.com site (which began at the Chicago Sun-Times website) is a crying shame (it should be noted that Ebert hailed Crash as the best film of that year, but I don't think that has anything to do with any of this, but more that the Sun-Times was clearing out articles from the defunct Ebert site to make room on their servers). Anyway, I wish there was something I could do about that, and, sadly, I can't. These articles are just not available anymore. I think that's a great loss. I did find this, though.

 

Mike Lippert of the much-read movie blog "You Talking to Me?" (MIA since 2013) is having a blog-a-thon—one of those community drum-circles, where we pound on a theme and and listen to the echoes it creates. I don't participate very often in these, but when something inspires a surge in heart-beats, I plunge in. This time, the theme is "Justify Your Shitty Taste:" find a movie that has been given short-shrift and explain why you like it—defend yourself and your contrary opinion. Well, I had a piece in the hopper that I wrote years ago to a film that has had its share of acclaim—even winning Best Picture at the Oscars—but meets with such condescending sneers every time it gets mentioned in "movie circles" that I've always felt the need to defend it—up to a point...and then I give up. There's only so many times you can hit your head against a brick wall without doing damage to your own exquisite taste (that was written with sarcasm, btw). Here, from the depths of my ignorance (and my ever-growing "Draft" pile) is my justification of Crash.

Hello, my name is James Wilson, and I like Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004).

 

(Audience response: "Hi, James Wilson")

 

It's really funny...really funny, to the point of out-loud chuckles...the extreme reactions Crash gets from its many, many detractors—there's even a web-site that compares other Best-Picture winners to whether they're "worse than Crash". When Jim Emerson mentioned it as one of his least favorite movies (he has, in the past, listed it as one of his "sociopathic barbarities")* in a recent blog post, the comments section went up in arms with lemming-like ferocity. "I HATE HATE HATE Crash!" yelled (caps indicative) one of the comments.**

I don't. I like it. With the same rictus smile that I appreciate other cynical films.  And the more extreme the reaction to it, the more I smile, because it only drives home the film's point further, and exposes it as true.

Now, some (but only some) of the hatred of Crash comes from folks who consider Crash the usurper that took the "Best Picture" Oscar from *sigh* Brokeback Mountain (as if the Oscars are ever truly the indicator of quality). Now, I didn't mind Brokeback--there was much to admire--the stunning cinematography, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana's cruel, no-holds-barred/no-feelings-spared screenplay, and Heath Ledger's performance—someone finally captured the essence of the archetypal head-strong, mumbling western dude (and the guy was Australian, fer cryin' out loud!). Plus, there was something altogether shattering about his memorial to his lost love, in lieu of grave-stone. But, there was nothing in Brokeback Mountain that hasn't been done in every sudsy straight soap of the last eighty years. Nathan Lee of the Village Voice put it far better than I: Ann Proulx's bitter post-Oscar diatribe has a lot of empty fire to it, but, c'mon, honey, you were borrowing Faulkner's pen and you know it. And for anyone who thinks gay cowboys are revolutionary, skip right over the Village People and Jon Voigt for a moment and go directly to Red River. Howard Hawks knew it. Lenny Bruce knew it. Montgomery Clift, no doubt, knew it. "Cultural watershed?" Only if you weren't paying attention.

But Crash is the better movie. Crash is the subtler movie, believe it or not. Crash deserved that Best Picture Oscar, because it pulled off a great trick: it pissed off a lot of people, only proving its point.

Let me just say one thing about Crash: It's not "about" racism.

Yes, yes, I know, racism is all over the thing, morally repugnant, down and dirty, pig-ignorant racism. From all sides, and all races. And if racism was all it was about, yeah, some of the hatred for the film might have a point, because all the movie does is say "racism exists, and there's nothing you can do about it," which doesn't make it the Feel-Good Movie of the Year. If it was only about racism, then it would truly be committing that great movie sin "exemplifying what it rails against" like, say, Rollerball that says violence is a terrible thing and then rubs your nose in it for two hours. Or an "anti-war" movie that relishes its battle sequences. If it were so, 'twas a grievous fault.

But Crash is not just about racism. Racism is a symptom in it, but it's not the "end-all, be-all." Myopia is. The denizens of Crash are all folks (with very few significant exceptions) who've got it all figured out. Entrenched in their lives, in their jobs, in their bureaucracies, they think they've seen it all and they act appropriately. We've seen their type in movies before. Like Bogart's Richard Blaine in Casablanca who "sticks (his) neck out for nobody." Or Jack Nicholson's J.J. Gittes in Chinatown,*** who when asked what he did as a cop down there replies "as little as possible." They're not people of color, they're all gray, walking around with blinders on (which is why the movie's called Crash and not, say, Clash.) They all know "the score" and so they've stopped thinking. They live their cloistered, blindered lives in the grids of L.A. in their own little boxes of assumptions and none of them will try to see beyond them. They are numb to the world, and the cultural clashes are battles over turf, amplified rhetoric and action so (as Don Cheadle—who also produced the film—playing Detective Graham Waters says in the opening line of dialogue) "they can feel something."

Except...except. Haggis has been accused of manipulation (and like, duh, all movies are manipulative, hate to break it to you) but the most egregious examples are the pretty obvious incident of the "invisible cloak." I think every viewer above a third grade education knew what was coming--the kid was going to get "whacked" with her invisible cloak, because, hey, we're all cynics, and the movie has been pretty cynical up to that point--actually the characters IN the movie have been pretty cynical. But not the kid. In an altruistic, completely naive and childlike way, the kid goes beyond what any of the adults would do and makes a sacrifice to save her father. We all assume that to her doom, and Haggis milks the anguish, and delays the inevitable reveal. The kid's not dead. Why? Because the daughter of the angry shop-keeper has also thought outside the box, and bought her old man blank cartridges. Both those individuals have gone beyond the "I stick my neck out for nobody" syndrome, and the synchronicity has pulled off a miracle, or at least, prevented a tragedy, brought on by short-sightedness.

Myopia is all over the movie--even when racism isn't. Because there's more than racism going on. It's blacks against whites, whites against blacks, cops against civilians, politicians against the cops, the bureaucrats against the trench-fighters, upper class against lower class, and the reciprocal vice-versa. Myopia is ever-present, and everybody stops thinking when they reach their assumptions...and look no further. The insurance worker thinks the guy on the line is a dead-beat, the guy on the line thinks she's a bitchy negro. They both have drawn lines in the sand and will go no further. Matt Dillon's bad cop just assumes all the minorities are scum, so he treats them accordingly. Ryan Phillippe's good cop takes the high road and assumes he'll never act like that in any given circumstances. They're both short-sighted fools. And they won't consider any other possibility. They're two sides of the same coin.

For me, Crash plays like a post-modern film-noir, where the world is crummy, people are tarnished (whether they're rich or poor), but there is no "slumming angel" (as Ross McDonald put it) to try and make things temporarily right—all the characters in Crash have that ability if they choose, if they will, and there is no hand-holding narrator or Stage Manager bringing perspective, merely the dispassionate view from on high. The good that people do are mere slats of light in an all-enveloping darkness, not unlike the the noir's traditional backdrop, the venetian blind, or as the de-focused headlights in the film's credit sequence.

Another criticism: Too many coincidences in Crash? Yep, but that's to be expected with an ensemble cast in a limited area whether it's La Ronde, or Grand Hotel, or even...the acclaimed Babel where the coincidences are hemispheres apart (those butterflies are mighty powerful!). But Crash isn't like any of these films. The one I compare it to, both in tenor and reaction is The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir's condemnation of pre-WWII French society going to its ruin in selfishness and self-involvement. French folk hated The Rules of the Game, too. In fact, riots broke out in theaters, and to try and save his investment Renoir kept cutting it and cutting it to try to assuage the angry mob. As a result, after the war when the hysteria died down, it was difficult to find an unexpurgated version of The Rules of the Game until...1958. The tyranny of the mob had done its damage and its only by the luck and a little hard work that a longer copy of this classic exists. Fortunately Crash hasn't had to go that far. Maybe people are just more passive-aggressive these days, content to HATE HATE HATE in the relative anonymity of a bogus screen-name. Maybe that's progress?

So, if I'm in a crowd of people and Crash comes up, and folks get angry about it because it's "about" racism but doesn't "do" anything about it (I suppose a cameo by Rodney King might help...?), I don't say anything. It won't do any good. Folks have already made up their minds about Crash and if I try to point out they might be wrong and consider that possibility...no, no, that won't happen. Their thoughts stop at "racism" and go no further, thus proving the movie's point all over again, and proving, once again, why it's such a good film.

Ultimately it's a tough and pointless duty to watch a film with blinders on.  It's no way to see a film, and it's no way to lead a life...as Crash, for all its flaws, so ably demonstrates.

 

Afterward (2022): If anything the last 17 years have only cemented my feeling that Crash was important and is important. I've read the criticisms—I don't agree that the whites are inspired to become better persons (I think they'll all stay racist —even Matt Dillon's story after pulling Thandiwe**** Newton out of a burning car) as a result of the movie's stories. I think after "The End" title of Crash everybody is going to continue to be racist and myopic for the same reason everybody really is racist and myopic—they don't know any better and it's easier. It's why I don't believe we're in a "post-Racial" period (as so many "glass-half-full" believers seem to think). The slew of African-American deaths at the hands of police, the resulting "Black Lives Matter" demonstrations, the resulting paranoia about and demonizing of the "Black Lives Matter" demonstrations, the emboldening of hate-groups, of white supremacists, the January 6th insurrection, the hysterical terror of some groups that whites will be a minority in the U.S. by 2045, the "faux" CRT uproar—CRT has only appeared in college-level classes and parents should be more worried about calculus being taught K-12—right on up to the recent Supreme Court hearings just goes to prove that lines are drawn and they're drawn in indelible ink. If anything we're worse. And more myopic. And bolder about being proud of it.***** The bubbles we've created around ourselves have only grown thicker with the Internet. And the only way we're going to get out of our protective bubbles is by accident. And (as Major Kong says in Dr. Strangelove) "that goes for every last one of ya, regardless of your race, color, or creed."

And I've given up on Darwin as there's no evidence that the bad die faster.

Oh. And whether I think Brokeback Mountain should have won over Crash? Nope. And I'll use the words of saloon-keeper Richard Blaine as a reason: "The problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

In fact, if it was up to me, I would have vastly preferred Munich or Good Night, and Good Luck.

* ...which is a far cry from what he wrote in 2006: "As restrictive as the rules of this cycle may be, Crash still manages to be an unusually mechanical instance of it. With numbing predictability, every positive character is revealed to have a negative side (the good, tolerant cop, played by Ryan Phillippe, commits an impulsive, racially-triggered murder), while every negative character is revealed to have his or her positive (the racist cop, played by Matt Dillon, risks his life to save a black woman trapped in a wrecked car). Just about everyone is an instinctive racist, and just about everyone is a victim of racism, who learns his or her lesson when the tables are turned. Haggis piles up the coincidences that bring his characters together without shame or the slightest restraint; he seems to feel that by emphasizing the contrivances of his plotting, he is in fact revealing a hidden pattern, a secret will, that organizes the world. Turning bad writing into a metaphysical principle is indeed an accomplishment, and one that might well deserve an award – though Best Picture of 2005 is going a bit too far." 

From this to "sociopathic barbarity" is quite the change of opinion.  The above is reasoned analysis.  The latter is just hectoring screed.  Hating Crash became easier and more comfortable, then ratcheted up to the extreme.  Now, what was Crash saying again?

Emerson does this at times—I'll be shocked if there is ever a Christopher Nolan film that he will praise, rather than merely dismiss it, and he condemned Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers (without even seeing it) merely because Haggis had a hand in the screenplay—to his credit, after actually seeing it, he praised it.  This may sound like bashing the man, but Emerson's is a great voice in film criticism, and I love reading his output, whether I agree with it or not.  His is an essential voice in the understanding of the mechanics of how film can touch the eye and the brain and move the heart.  If he ever stops writing, I will mourn that day.

** Which reminds me of the George Clooney retort to the web-site that said he was "GAY GAY GAY:" "Two GAY's, maybe, but the third's a little extreme."

*** Chinatown also makes a point of using prejudice, not just racial, but class prejudice, as a distinctive example of reactive, rather than thinking, behavior.

**** That's not a typo and, yes, you remember it as "Thandie," but she's gone back to the original Zimbabwe spelling because...hey, why not...and you can only assuage Hollywood's simplifications for so long. 

***** I read a slug the other day they there's some Republican buzz about bringing back miscegenation laws. What the hell?

Ocean's Thirteen

The Plot Thickens.... 

Oceans Eleven was an enjoyable, breezy updating of a not-very-good "Rat Pack" movie with a nicely eclectic cast from many walks of the entertainment industry. It was a lark, with no real sense of any danger or risk. It just seemed like director Steve Soderbergh and star George Clooney (partners in the production company, Section 8)were getting free rein of Vegas and dragging along a bunch of pals along with them.
Oceans Twelve, however, showed signs of fatigue. Instead of Vegas, it was filmed in Europe. The large majority of the cast was arranged to "rot in jail" for most of its running time, while Matt Damon and Julia Roberts carried the weight of the plot, storyline and ad-libbed dialogue to sometimes excruciating effect (Okay, so Roberts played Tess Ocean, the wife of George Clooney's character, and when he gets way-laid, she flies to Europe where she's recruited to pass herself off as...Julia Roberts, and hilarity ensues when *gasp* Bruce Willis "cameos in" to complicate matters!!) Not much worthwhile there, but Clooney got to write off his Lake Como estate, so I guess that's something.

So, now it's the third go-'round, the unlucky Thirteen and to "play it safe" and "cover all bets," the crew goes back to Vegas to avenge another hoodwinking of deep-pockets gang member Reuben (Elliott Gould) by another puffed-ego Vegas properties owner, one Willie Bank, played by Al Pacino on cruise control. Once again, it's a con of "Mission: Impossible" proportions involving false identities and accoutrements, loaded dice, coins and roulette balls and the use of not one, but two large tunnellers (that were used to dig the Chunnel we're told) to carry out the various schemes. While it's true you have to spend money to make money this movie takes it to new extremes. 

Along the way there are pleasant cameos by Julian Sands and Eddie Izzard (Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones' absences are explained away quickly--"it's not their fight"), Vincent Cassel (from 12) and even Exec. Producer Jerry Weintraub. Everything's in place--everybody's a wise-acre, Clooney makers a tuxedo look like casual wear, Pitt's wardrobe is still horrendous, and they even manage to work in Andy Garcia's rival casino owner in on the plot--though fortunately, they don't turn him into a suddenly reformed "good guy." 

Ellen Barkin and Matt Damon

(with the nose he wasn't allowed to wear in The Brothers Grimm)

Because Pacino's on board, there's a couple sneaky Godfather references in the dialog--one to Pacino's face, but like most of the in-jokes (right down to the last lines) they're so "inside" that they'll probably go over a large portion of heads. But despite these minute differences, it's the first movie all over again--like Return of the Jedi, the third in the "Star Wars" series and Last Crusade, in the "Indiana Jones" cycle--but as with those films, the ingredients making up Ocean's Thirteen have been left out to curdle a bit. It's fun and all, with a couple of laugh-out-loud moments involving Oprah Winfrey, and Soderbergh directed, shot and edited the thing himself, but is it too much to ask for something a bit more original? One gets the impression that if not for the perks to cast and crew, they would have done well to have left the table and cashed out a little earlier.

Flight

Written at the time of the film's touch-down...

 

Flying Inverted
or
Cracking the Whip

It's been years since Robert Zemeckis made a live-action film (the last being Cast Away, all the way back in 2000, the time being taken up with his three motion capture animated films) and this one, Flight, is an interesting choice, quite unlike anything the director has done, but falling in line with his other films about people being left up in the air about fundamental choices in their lives.  

Captain Whip Whittaker (Denzel Washington) is a pilot on cruise-control. Unfortunately, it's a path that will ultimately crash and burn. An alcoholic and coke-head, he'll do a layover with a stew (in this instance, Nadine Velazquez), get wasted, and then to get himself #1 on the runway will do a line, so he can do the "pilot walk" to the cabin—all confidence and casualness for the launching of "souls" into the wild-blue yonder.

Even before he takes off, Whip is flying. But his nonchalance and bon homie gets him through, even through a difficult take-off through low turbulence. He pushes the plane, but clears the clouds early and restores order to the flight, then settles back to cadge some booze samples, smuggle them into his orange juice and catch some sleep. He wakes up just in time for a crisis: the plane bangs, then goes into a steep dive that terrifies the passengers and crew (and me) and merely gives Whip a much needed shot of adrenaline. The only way he can take the plane from pile-driving into the ground is to bank it until he's flying upside down, then skimming the Earth until he can find a clear place to land, then cork-screw right side up and ditching for a landing.

Six people die, two on the crew.  Whittaker wakes up in the hospital with torn ligaments in his knees, lacerations around his eye and no idea how he got there.  First visitor is the pilot's union rep (Bruce Greenwood), then the NTSB who are all "just the facts" and deferential. Next is Whip's "connection" (John Goodman), a Dr. Feelgood who waltzes in (to the tune of the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil;" Whip's is "Feelin' Alright"), tells Whip he's a hero, that reporters are hunting him, and criticizes the doctors' choice in pain-killers: "Amateur night!" All Whip can think about is getting out, but it's not as simple as that. He's under investigation for the crash (his simple response is "it was a broken plane"), has been lawyered up with an attorney (Don Cheadle) who doesn't like him, thinks he's a creep, but is going to do his job, and on top of it all, Whittaker must deal with a pissed-off ex-wife and a son who doesn't know him, and has no intentions to.

In the hospital, he meets Nicole (Kelly Reilly, you'll remember her as Dr. Watson's wife in the Robert Downey, Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies), who's recovering from an overdose and not in a good way.  Whip is attracted—she's female and weak, which seem to be all that's required—and he whisks her away to his family's small farm and failed crop-dusting business in rural Georgia.  He's already ditched all the alcohol, but after a couple days, he's back in the bag, drinking himself into oblivion while Nicole goes to AA meetings.  Whip visits, too, but when things get personal, he takes off.

Washington is brilliant in all of this, showing both the pilot's strengths and pitiful weaknesses. His scenes of bleary drunkenness feel real and incomprehensible, and one watches his constant crashing after attempts to bring himself up are painful to watch. The balance of the film is Whip's cart-wheeling from sober to sloshed, his best instincts superseded by his addictions—a man in constant denial, addicted to lying (and pulling himself out of a crisis) and risk-taking as much as to the hooch. It's a rough ride to be a part of and even observe, Whittaker constantly pulling himself out of his dives, then going into another tailspin, and you just know the only time he'll level off is when he crashes.  The parallels between flight and addiction are obvious (how far can you push yourself before everything breaks and if you survive, how much further can you push?) and audiences who gripe about all the action being in the first 20 minutes, may not realize that they're watching a parallel course throughout the rest of the movie, only far more personal, and maybe (hopefully) not as relatable.  

It is a tough, emotional roller-coaster to be a part of, but everything is of a piece. At one point, Cheadle's lawyer puts it succinctly: "Death demands responsibility," and responsibility is one thing Whittaker has never known. The old Irwin Allen disaster movie posters used to scream "Who Will Survive?" The same applies here, even if the audience-grabbing disaster only occurs at the beginning, and we white-knuckle it to see who'll surface from the rubble. This is a smart, troubling, painful movie to watch. But, you can't turn away, either in horror or fascination.

Whip Whittaker's sobering flight is just the first leg on the itinerary.

Avengers: Endgame

It's (Marvel) Clobbering Time
or
"Get Back What We Lost—Keep What I Got (Would Be Nice)—And Not Die Trying"

Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) said (in Avengers: Infinity War) that he had gone forward in time to see the outcome of the Avengers' battle with Thanos and that he saw 14,000,605 outcomes in which they lost and only one in which they survived.

When Marvel announced that their Avengers: Endgame would be just over 3 hours long, I thought, "Geez, do they have to show us ALL of them? Can't we just see the one?"

It turns out the one is enough to fill those 3 hours, but along with the idea of solving the problem of Thanos' grand scheme of culling 50% of the Universe's population—which takes relatively little time—it also has to reward movie-goers who have stayed through every frame of past Marvel Studios' films (starting with Iron Man in 2008) to give them what they want. 

Fan service takes a lot of time, it turns out.

There's a lot of that. "Fan service," I mean. There's a lot of call-backs, reflections, echoes, and cameo's—lots of cameo's—from past Marvel movies that they re-visit to give you that warm feeling that you're being rewarded for your recognition and thanked for your support throughout the whole, slow dissemination of the Thanos/"Infinity Stones" storyline.

And it has been a slow dissemination. My sister needed to know what movies to see in order to follow Endgame and I replied that she needed to see the Avengers series and the Captain America movies as essential (in this order: Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Avengers: The Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, and finally The Avengers: Infinity War), but if she wanted "electives," then the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie and Dr. Strange (maybe Captain Marvel, but not really). And that is as close to spoilers as I'm going to vault. This movie, in particular, needs a bit of background to fully appreciate it.

But, I can say the movie picks up at a singular moment for one of the Avengers after the "Finger-snap Heard 'Round the Universe." The one Avenger we didn't see in Infinity War—Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has his little dust-up, and it sets him on a path of retribution and vengeance that attracts the attention of the remaining Avengers, although they stay out of it and away from him for the time being. There are other issues to take care of. Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) are marooned in space after leaving Titan following their disastrous encounter with Thanos, who is still out there...somewhere. And—lest we forget—Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) is still trapped in "the quantum realm."

And that...is all I will say about that.

I will, however say, that it goes in a completely different direction than I thought it would, thinking that Captain Marvel would play more of a role—she doesn't, but manages to be efficiently useful when the Deus' are Machina'd. Core Avengers are utilized with special emphasis on The Big Three: Downey's Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth's Thor and Chris Evans' Captain America. They are given considerably more screen-time to complete their character arcs.

And there actually are character arcs (which is why the movie ballooned to such a length). I'd groused that Infinity War was all desperate action, with little emotional resonance to it, save for the actual culling of the Universe at Thanos' left hand. Here, the emphasis is on that resonance and it gives all the actors a chance to strut their stuff rather than just furrowing their brows and assuming the position. It also separates itself from the Marvel Comic Universe by taking those characters places they just wouldn't and couldn't in the comics. I liked that.

And as good as all these performances are, I thought the acting kudo's should go to Jeremy Renner, who must serve as the audience's emotional touchstone, starting with the very first scene and to almost the very end. He is quite amazing in this.

If the movie suffers, it is from too many endings, all in the service of character, which is a worthy thing to do, especially in a superhero movie.

"Okay, how many of you have never been in space? Raise your hand."

Also, Endgame is a different Marvel movie as it is more reflective and nostalgic, looking back, rather than facing forward ("true believers") and serving as a launching point for the next one, it is a completion. For that reason, you have no need to sit through the entire end credits. There is no teaser, no preview, no dangling thread. I only wish I knew that before I sat through the entire thing.

I have quibbles—I always do. There's the "too many endings" issue, a large continuity problem, the disparate fire-power issue, a few cute lines that land with a thud (and are repeated), and Thor's hammer. I have an issue with Thor's hammer. But, that's probably just me.

"Hey, Cap, do you read me?...Cap, it's Sam, can you hear me?...On your left."

It's well-done with a lot of fine grace-notes, and a climax that is, frankly, thrilling to behold. It's quite an experience...and very, very satisfying.