Mud

Written at the time of the film's release....although I've added a couple of current addendums because this writer-director is so good and his work sought out.

Possession is 9/10 of the Law
or
Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places

The last film that Jeff Nichols wrote and directed was the very interesting, very odd, and quite layered Take Shelter.*  His latest, Mud, is part coming-of-age movie, part Southern Gothic, part classic romance and part tragedy and complete curiosity. It features a couple of great kid performances and a top-tier cast supporting them.

Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland play two tweeners living on the Mississippi River. They're a couple of restless kids who are hired help in their families, but with minimal supervision, have the freedom to sneak out at night exploring. On one of those pre-dawn excursions they motor over to an island and find a wonder—a boat nestled in a tree. Checking it out, they're in for a shock. Someone's living there. 

That someone is Mud (Matthew McConaughey) who is eking out an existence there. How he got there is a mystery. Why he's there is not. He's killed a man, who was messing with the girl he loves, and that man has a powerful family (led by Joe Don Baker). He's hiding out, waiting for word from Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), and when he hears, they'll run off together, where...well, that's a little unspecific. 

In the meantime, he uses the little go-betweeners to get food, supplies, and word out, that includes to one of Ellis' (Sheridan) neighbors, a solitary man named Tom Blankenship (Sam Shepard), who Mud labels "an assassin." Blankenship calls Mud a liar, making Ellis slightly conflicted; he's willing to do anything for Mud in his quixotic quest, out of a young man's puppy-love instincts, in part a response to the fracturing marriage of his parents (Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson) and his own interactions with "townie" girls, particularly May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant).

It's to Ellis' advantage that he and "Neckbone" (Lofland) are under the radar of everybody's notice, his parents have other concerns and Neckbone's uncle (Michael Shannon) is in his own little world, so the two boys go back and forth between mainland and island with messages and supplies, which becomes increasingly complex when Mud decides he's going to get that boat out of the tree. And when Ellis, in his come-to-the-rescue way, interferes when one of the goons keeping an eye on Juniper gets aggressive with her trying to get information about Mud's whereabouts.

Things begin to spiral out of control to a conclusion that can't come to any good, despite everyone's best and worst intentions, due to the breaking of borders between the insular natures of the players.

But, there's something else going on here that creeps like an adder through the Louisiana swamp, something to do with misogyny. Maybe it's just the timing of events—not accidental as it's all in the control of the writer-director—but all the problems seem to generate from the war between men and women. The women here—Juniper, Ellis' mom, May Pearl—have an edge of capriciousness and undependability (in the males' eyes, anyway) that derails their plans and dreams. 

The men are hardly blameless, going through their lives with their eyes wide shut, totally aware that the women in their lives may prove disastrous in the short term, while they're quixotically playing the hero or the rescuer, anyway. Everybody has some romantic view of life that is not theirs, and their pursuit of it proves their undoing. One leaves the theater with the sense of a good story well told, but with a stake through the heart in the futility of good intentions. One wants the waters of life to be smooth and transparent, but the reality of it is that it's the consistency of the movie's title.

It's a beautiful film, too. Beautifully shot by Adam Stone. 

2021 note: Nichols hasn't made a film since this one and that's a real shame. He's been working on one film, but has been hired by John Krasinski to make A Quiet Place, Part III. Well, whatever gets him back behind the camera. His work is too good not to be making something. Whatever it is, it is of worth.

* I should mention here in 2021 that he's also made a couple other film's I've loved—2016's Midnight Special and the same year, Loving.

The Notorious Bettie Page

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day. And although the film isn't trashy, the world it describes is...was...

This was originally written before Bettie Page's death in 2008.

The Notorious Bettie Page (Mary Harron, 2006) If Marilyn Monroe was the blonde goddess of sex in the 1950's, Bettie Page was her player on the other side. Marilyn was blonde, Bettie, brunette. Where Marilyn had success in Hollywood, Bettie never got beyond stag reels. Where Marilyn's sexuality was paired with a psychic pain, Bettie's was exuberant. Marilyn had booze and pills for sanctuary. Bettie had Jesus. Marilyn died fairly young. Bettie's still alive and kicking*** and getting royalties from the continuing interest in her, thanks to devotees such as artist Dave Stevens, who used her as the model for the girlfriend of "The Rocketeer." 

Both Marilyn and Bettie appeared as centerfolds within the first year of the publication of Playboy Magazine. And this has to be said--Marilyn had talent. Bettie...wasn't much of a dancer. Marilyn was the epitome of sex in Tinseltown, while Bettie worked in the squalid back-rooms of seamy pornographers, and panting "photo clubs."

Bettie's story mirrors Marilyn's: Pretty girl, growing up dirt-poor and abused, an early marriage that doesn't work out, and heading to the Big City to get into acting. There they diverge: Marilyn to fame and early death; Bettie to obscurity, long life and delayed fame. Bettie quit modeling in the 50's after she was hauled to DC to testify in Estes Kefauver's pornography hearings (she was never called in to the hearing room), and so both Marilyn and Bettie are frozen, existing in images of their prime.

Does the film by Mary Harron (who made American Psycho) explain Bettie Page and her circumstances and times? Not at all. The facts are laid out rather bare, stopping precisely at the hearings that ended Bettie's modeling days and goes no further. The closest it comes is her repeated defense for her nude modeling: "Well, I figure Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden of Eden..." Point taken, but it doesn't explain the spike heels, whips, spanking and ball-gags (The real Bettie always dismissed her bondage photos as being "silly" and paying the bills). Considering that most people only know her through her looks, Gretchen Mol does an amazing impersonation, right down to a clumsy dance in the end credits, that has just the right touch of amateur clunkiness. In fact, it's downright eerie. Still, it's nice to see this story have a happy ending. 

I think Bettie would be pleased to know that the copy I watched was from the Public Library. If that's not vindication, I don't know what is.

*** Bettie has been publicly reluctant to be photographed, preferring that people remember how she looked "in her prime." Still, an Image search for "Bettie Page" will reveal rare recent photos of her, and she looks GREAT! The woman's over 80!

Update: The "notorious" Bettie Page died December 11, 2008

The Spirit (2008)

Another of my "bad comic book movie" reviews—this time directed by a revered creator of comics adapting the work of another revered creator of comics—with disastrous results. Again, this was written at the time of the film's release, and the only thing I would amend is that the industry has gotten much better at making these "green-screen films" look more credible—although Miller's aim here was to create a deliberate comics-like stylization. Chalk it up to film-making by committee, extensive pre-production and pre-vis, actors becoming more comfortable with the "look-over-here" method of acting, and advances in both CGI technology and artistry. Still doesn't guarantee a good movie, though.

"The Spirit is Willing, but the Film is Weak..."

"The Spirit" is one of those "pure" super-hero concepts from the '40's, like Superman and Batman. Created by Will Eisner in 1940, "The Spirit" combined film-noir with masked vigilantes and "Terry and the Pirates" femme-fatales. His origins were always a little murky, but "The Spirit" was the born-again/ reincarnated/ revived corpse of policeman Denny Colt, "killed" in the line of duty. He wore a blue business suit, hat and gloves, a red tie, and (to appease editors' requests for a "super-hero") a mask.

He had no special powers other than being good in a brawl and irresistible to women. Eisner's artwork and story-telling sensibilities were innovative and is credited with being one of the great creators of comics "language" in much the same way that D. W. Griffith established film language.

One of Eisner's "disciples" and students is Frank Miller, whose ground-breaking work on Marvel's "Daredevil," and DC's "Batman" made him a super-star in the field of comics. Miller began his own series of ultra-violent neo-noir black-and-white comics under the banner "Sin City." The stories could have been a bare-bones story-board for a film, and Robert Rodriguez (with Miller as co-director) made a well-received film of a clutch of the Miller stories for his Sin City film.*

Given Miller's status as co-director (and his obvious influence in the design of the film) it was only a matter of time before he was given his own directing job, and naturally, in this super-hero season of the movies, it was going to be "The Spirit" as the subject of his debut.

Will Eisner must be trying to emerge from the grave Denny Colt-style to strangle him.

For instead of Eisner's creation, Miller has made a Frankenstein monster of a film that tries to update "The Spirit," making him an indestructible fighting machine with mysterious revivification powers, and the ability to run across telephone wires. In addition the film is...stacked...with an assortment of prominent female stars in subsidiary roles—Eva Mendes as villainess Sand Saref, Scarlett Johansson (she's uncharacteristically terrible!) as Silken Floss, assistant to "The Octopus" (we're saving him for last), Paz Vega as Plaster (of Paris), Sarah Paulson ("Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip") as Ellen Dolan, daughter of the police commissioner (Dan Lauria); all of these fine actors are capable of doing better work, but you'd never know from the lack-luster performances and awkward timing of the scenes.

It's all meant to be sexy, hip and edgy, but rather than re-create Eisner's light-hearted mix of comic and noir, it falls back on the same "camp" qualities evident in the third and worst season of the "Batman" television series, as well as Joel Schumacher's troubling "Batman" films.

Frequently you'll watch a scene with awkward staging, bad timing, knowing full-well it was done in front of a "green-screen" to put in some background that, if they'd thought about it, might have helped the lumbering quality of the foreground actors. Either Miller didn't know how to make it work, or just assumed that it would work, given his expertise with the material. 

After working in two dimensions for so long, three seems to be beyond him. As it is, it feels like lazy directing--kind of like Miller's last "Dark Knight" comic where he drew in the foreground figures and let his colorist wife, Lynn Varley, provide the backgrounds. The results look just as cheap and unprofessional in both mediums.

Now, let's save the worst for last: Most egregious of all the performances is Samuel L. Jackson as "The Spirit's" nemesis "The Octopus." Limited to shots of his gloves in the comics, Jackson is all out-front and comic-satirical in this which doesn't work, although he does manage to mine some laughs out of his material. "The Octopus" is saddled with goons, evidently cloned from Curly of "The Three Stooges." They're all morons, but disposable at a moment's notice. 

At one point, "Spirit" and "Octopus" engage in a mud-pit death-match that has all the sensibilities (and realism) of a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon—at one point "Spirit" is hit over the head with a lead pipe that comes away with a head-shaped U-indentation. Unfortunately, that's what passes for humor in this train-wreck. In fact, a train-wreck would probably pass for humor in it, too.

All in all, for all its creative advancements in "getting it all up there," the "green screen" type of film environment has managed to confound some accomplished film-makers (ie. George Lucas, Robert Rodriguez, hell, even Kerry Conran is more accomplished!) creating impressive computer wall-papers but leeching the drama right out of their movies. Instead of taking movies forward, they've taken them backwards in terms of performance and film-language. If those guys couldn't overcome the awkwardness of the rootless film with no sets, what made Miller think he could? One suspects its the same flaw that plagues so many of the cartoonist's creations: hubris.

One of Will Eisner's block-titled "splash" pages: Now that's "The Spirit"

* Well-received by everybody but me. I thought the literal translation of "Sin City" the comic to Sin City the movie showed just how much different information specificity permeates both mediums. And never the twain shall meet. Sin City (the movie) didn't work because once you fill in the 23 frames of action that Miller didn't provide in his drawings, the super-human heroics of ordinary people takes on ludicrous overtones. And, conversely, Sin City (the movie) exposed just how weak, snuff-pornish, and lunk-headed Miller's original material ("Sin City" the comic) was in the first place. There are some things the "strobed highlights" of comics and graphic novels do very well, that don't work in the movies (and vice versa). Movies based on comics have to be able to translate the four-color flash-cards that comics represent from static two dimensions to moving three-dimensions--which is why The Dark Knight for all its plot-holes, conceits and cheats manages to be a good "real-world" representation of the freak-show aspects of Gotham City.

Glass (2019)

Unsplittable
or
"I Mean, I Say 'I Made You' You Gotta Say 'You Made Me.' I Mean, How Childish Can You Get?" ("Et cetera.")

After his first brush with mainstream success, The Sixth Sense—whose word-of-mouth was so strong that it was a box-office sensation despite being released in the same Summer as Stanley Kubrick's last film and the first "Star Wars" film in 16 years—M. Night Shyamalan followed it up with an austere, no less assured contemplation on super-heroes, comic books and fanaticism. That film, Unbreakable, about a man, David Dunn (Bruce Willis), a security guard who has instincts about people he brushes up against, and soon learns (or merely stops denying) that he has strength and invulnerability after being the lone survivor of a devastating train crash.

That accident is one of many disasters engineered by one Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a comic-book aficionado and art-dealer who suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta—brittle-bone disease—that leaves him vulnerable to breakage, and so seeks his opposite—comics teach us there must be one—a being not susceptible to any injury. He finds him in David, who walks away from the train derailment without a scratch. And Elijah (or as he's been taunted throughout his life as "Mr. Glass") pursues David to fulfill his destiny.

A great movie. A "super-hero" movie without the spandex or the primary colors. But, the studio that released it (Touchstone, a division of Disney) wanted nothing to do with any mention of "superheroes"—this was the same year as the first X-Men film and superheroes in films had a tendency to start big and fizzle as properties—and promoted it, instead, as a thriller. The film didn't do as well in theaters as The Sixth Sense, but gained a cult following on video. Shyamalan moved on.

Until he had a career resurgence recently with small-budget, restricted-scope movies, the most recent being his Split, which took the kidnap victim angle of horror movies and spliced it with a psychological angle where the abductor, Kevin Wendell Crumb (played brilliantly by James McAvoy) has 23 distinct personalities...and a 24th one of extreme rage and strength. A little story about the lasting devastation of abuse, it shared Unbreakable's fascination with humans with greater potential than the rest of us "sleepers"...and it had a coda which featured the reappearance of Willis' David Dunn. It had everything but a "To Be Continued" card. 

So, there was a lot of anticipation when it was announced that Night's next film would be a combination-sequel to both Unbreakable and Split. And that's always dangerous. Fans start making their own movies in their head and anticipate—it's an inherent social downside with sequels. That movie—Glass—will not meet anybody's expectations (with the exception of bringing back the characters and the actors who portrayed them) as, after a promising start, it then ham-strings nearly all the characters involved leading to a "showdown" that nobody will be too happy with. 

But, at least it has an ending. That's rather novel these days.

It's 19 years after the events of Unbreakable (and a limited amount of time after Split). David Dunn is no longer a security guard at a University in Philadelphia. He runs a security business—and does a little "freelance patrolling" on the side. You can't be a hooded vigilante in a town without gaining a reputation, even if nobody gets a good shot of you on social media, and David has acquired many names, such as "The Tip-Toe Man" and "The Float" (ironic as David's weakness is water—everybody's weakness in Night's movies seems to be water), but the one that sticks is "The Overseer." His son Joseph (played once again by Spencer Treat Clark) helps run the store as he also serves as David's combination Alfred and Oracle, tracking events from...well, you can't call it "The Batcave" so call it "The Storeroom," because that's what it is.

After David stops a pair of "Youtubruisers" for attacking people on the street, David turns his attention to the recent abduction of four cheerleaders, who police have been searching for (Joseph also informs him that the police are also looking for him "pretty aggressively"). Joseph gives him some coordinates to search and, sure enough, David bumps (literally) into Kevin skipping down the street in his 8-year-old "Hedwig" personality and sees the girls in his mind. A little cross-checking and he frees them.

But, Kevin shows up as "The Beast" and Dunn and battle briefly before "The Overseer" gains the upper-hand by tossing both of them out a window. At which point, bright lights come up and the two are cornered by weapons-drawing police and the person of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who tells them that they must surrender or they will be killed—which is questionable as David is invulnerable and "The Beast" has proven unsusceptible to bullets. They are transported to a psychiatric facility called Raven Hill Memorial Hospital, a low-maintenance security building that for 19 years has been the residence of (Dunn! Dunn! Dunn!) one Elijah Price—"Mr. Glass." How damned convenient. 

Not that the place isn't well-prepared: Elijah has been heavily sedated during the whole time into a nearly catatonic state (Jackson does some nice eye-twitching here); Kevin is put in a cell where, should he manifest "The Beast" bright lights will flash him into one of his other personalities (the other way is by saying his full name) not unlike clicking "next" on a blog-site; David is placed in a cell that is festooned with high-pressure hoses to render him helpless (Elijah I can understand, but how does Dr. Staple know that these are the latter two's weaknesses, hmm?)

It is at this point that anyone's expectations will be derailed. Instead of creating a Shyamalaniverse version of "When Titans Clash!" (the Marvel Comics trope), it's more like "When Titans Sit and Stew." Not necessarily a bad thing; one of the charms of Unbreakable was circumventing standard comic book cliches and draining the melodrama out of them, and one must acknowledge that Glass is doing the same thing while teasing us that there will be something more.

SPOILER ALERT: There won't be. 

Staples may know more than she lets on (if her knowledge of their weaknesses wasn't clue enough), but her techniques indicate that she might not; Elijah, Kevin, and David are wheeled into a room for group counseling sessions—together?—where she tries to convince the three that their abilities are only in their minds, as "delusions of grandeur" (the immediate thought burbles up: She don't know them very well, do she?). It seems a pointless and hopeless exercise—these guys have demonstrated powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men (well, except for Elijah, since he's just crazy in a six-panel-per-page kind of way). Kevin's manifestations are well-documented, and his abilities as "The Beast" have left substantial evidence of chewed bodies, bent bars and crushed torsos. David has been leaving forensic evidence (as well as fractured skulls and rough justice) for 19 years. So, why would this "expert" try to convince them that it's all in their minds?

One can only conclude that she doesn't, and that sets up one of the moribund "twists" of the movie. What she doesn't count on, however, is Elijah's scheming mind. He's been faking his vegetative state (but not too well—he gets caught a couple times) and replacing his meds with aspirin (they don't do blood tests at this hospital?) and has in his mind a plan. To Elijah, the only thing the hospital is doing keeping the abilities walking around us secret, and it his intention to bring everyone into the light of day and expose the super-humans to the world.

For that, he needs an ally, and he turns to Kevin for the muscle behind the idea. "Time for the bad guys to team up," he tells Kevin after using his light-guards to bring out "The Beast," telling him that he will have a chance against "the strong man" kept in the cell across from him, and radio's David that he will release "The Beast" to create an unprecedented disaster at a just-opening high-rise in Philadelphia...if only David can break out of his cell.

That's where I'll stop spoiling, but the spoils are in the plot rather than in my revealing of it. It seems the big deal of the story—for all concerned—is whether "the world" should know that there are "super-heroes" among us, and whether it should be suppressed or not. Yet, David has been doing his "patrols" for over 19 years. The press is all over the story about Kevin having DID, including the existence of "The Beast." So, why the big deal? Seems like the super-powered cat is out of the bag already. This tends to make the central theme of the film that Night is going on and on about absolutely meaningless. Yet, the film keeps emphasizing the point when any perspective would show that it was already a fait accompli.

There are other things—details—that don't strike one as being credible (super-heroes are?). For example, the surviving hostage from Split, Casey (the rather alien-looking Anya Taylor-Joy) is thrown into the mix. It seems she's capable of extricating the original Kevin personality from what he refers to as "The Horde," the multitude of personalities that keep him functioning and suppress him from actively killing himself. It's only been a short time since she's escaped that nightmare—and the one that she was sent back to after the film's events—and one would think that she would be a bit reluctant to revisit and show compassion for the monster that was threatening to kill her from the previous film. But, she is used as an example of "the healing power of love and compassion" to Dr. Staples, which, after the movie is over, will make you realize it's something of a red herring, psuedo-mysticism posing as psuedo-psychiatry.

Which is all very well and good, as the story has a psuedo-climax, one that will probably piss off fans of both films. Let's just say that everybody has a weakness hidden among their strengths and they are exploited in this film that has some strengths hidden in its general weakness. For me, it left the same feeling of being snookered that the two volumes of Kill Bill did, when the four hours of katana-porn ended with a bogus lecture on the nature of Clark Kent and a poke in the chest.* Glass left me feeling less than half-empty, as it is much less than the sums of the parts of two very good movies.

* Is there an intellectual form of seppuku? Because after Kill Bill, I would have used it.

Ocean's 8

The Ego Has Landed
or
Why Does There Always Have to be an Asterisk?

So, this whole parity thing is getting complicated and a little obvious now. When men do a heist movie, they get Ocean's 11, but when women get one, they only get Ocean's 8? Really, folks, how fair is that? And they have to work even harder to get the same results, a passably entertaining little light-hearted snatch-and-grab movie, intricately plotted out and stylishly laid out to a fare-thee-well.

There are some ties to the other "Ocean's" movies—there are a couple cameos (surprisingly, current cameo-master Matt Damon isn't one of them*), and the ring-leader is the sister of the purportedly "late" Danny Ocean, Debbie (played by Sandra Bullock), and even though it's produced by the Ocean's director Steve Soderbergh, it is written (with Olivia Milch) and directed by the same guy that Soderbergh did second unit work for on The Hunger Games, Gary Ross.

Debbie, like brother Danny in Ocean's 11, talks her way into a parole from a New jersey prison (women's) and leaves with $45 dollars to her name but with a plan she's been working out for "five years, eight months, and twelve days." She makes her way to New York and, through sheer chutzpah and gall, talks her way into a swanky hotel room for the night and begins to carry out her prison-plan. She hooks up with former partner Lou (Cate Blanchett) who's been running a club and talks her into the score—to conduct a one-of-a-kind robbery at the glitzy Met Gala, and starts the recruiting process: they need a designer down on her luck—that would be Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter) who owes the IRS five million dollars; a hacker (who isn't Russian)—that would be "Nine Ball", the coolest hacker ever (Rihanna); a jewelry artist/appraiser (Mindy Kaling); a great pair of of hands (Awkwafina) and a Fixer (Sarah Paulson) and they lay out the plan—to steal the "biggest, spectacularly blingy Liz Taylor jewels", the legendary Toussaint necklace, worth over $150 million in cold, hard 2018 dollars.

They zero in on the host of the gala, Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway, clearly enjoying playing a diva with a sharp eye toward satire), manipulating her to be dressed for the gala by Weil, who suggests that she wear the thing for the night, then infiltrate the Met's security company, and embedding a spy at Vogue to get the seating arrangement for the fancy dinner.

The idea is to isolate Kluger and then rip off the necklace in the confusion. It's planned out to the second and by the inch, but even the best-laid plans have their details that complicate—like, for instance, the necklace having a fancy clasp that must be electronically triggered before it can be removed, as well as complications that might stop the gears of the plan that have to be overcome, in the best "Mission: Impossible" style.

This is a well-greased vehicle for its cast and for its intended female audience. Ocean's 11 had men (boys, really) trying to rob casinos with all the testosterone and gamesmanship associated with it. Ocean's 8 is full of opulence and fashion and glitz, the feminine equivalent of passing fancies (and, of course, all the 8 are given expensive frocks to pull off the heist).

There is the underlying satisfaction that the rich are getting soaked, but, as with the males, it's really a left-handed form of wealth distribution—the usual formula of a heist movie.

But, I kept watching Ocean's 8 and seeing how small crimes are pulled off with ease in ways that the more nefarious—or just greedy—members of the audience can take advantage of. Don't be surprised if, in the next few months, the stores you frequent really DO insist that you have the receipt when you bring in "returns" or start getting very protective of their camouflaging logo-sporting bags. Subtle corporate psychological weaknesses of the those employed in customer service are also instructionally exploited, although results may very. But, if the movie does one thing it might actually instruct folks how easy it is to gain information through Facebook. Now, that might actually do some good while doing bad.

* Well, I guess he was but his part was cut.