Sat Apr 02 2016 22:10 March Film Roundup:
Roundin' up the films, roundin' up the films... oh, hi. I didn't see you there. Because I'm looking at my computer monitor, typing this paragraph. Hey, you want to hear about some movies?
- Deadpool (2016): Saw this with Sarah (now my official "Sumana doesn't want to see this movie" buddy) and liked it a lot more than I thought I would. There was a ton of violence but only one scene made me squirm in my seat. Not in a good way like The King of Comedy. Just awful, that scene. Anyway, everything else was good! The R rating really gave Deadpool room to stretch out and depict a healthy attitude towards perverted sex. A big part of my distaste for superhero movies is their PG-13 treatment of material that really needs either a G or a hard R. Good job dodging that bullet (but not any other bullet), Deadpool.
However, I'm still holding out for Zack Snyder's big-budget treatment of Ambush Bug, and the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Netflix original. Why get my hopes up only to have them pre-dashed? Take a look at this handy chart and you'll see why Ambush Bug is the best:
| Metafictionally aware | Not metafictionally aware |
|---|
| Has metafictional superpowers | Ambush Bug | Squirrel Girl |
|---|
| No metafictional superpowers | Deadpool, She-Hulk | Superman or whatever |
|---|
- Dragon Blade (2015): It happened again! A Chinese movie started out really fun and lighthearted, then took a horrifying turn, and then had a sappy tacked-on ending, without ever acknowledging the abrupt shifts in tone. The first part of this movie is really great, friendly and big-hearted, with Jackie Chan and John Cusak together-at-lasting to their (and your) hearts' content. But then... it's not great, let's leave it at that. I would put this movie alongside The Invention of Lying (2009) where the first half of the movie is incredibly fun and creative, and then, eh, turn it off and do something else. Or watch the first halves of both! Make it a double half-feature!
As is only appropriate for a movie about Roman soldiers, the inaccuracies in this movie are... legion. It makes me question the history I've learned from other Asian martial-arts films. Did a CGI whale really swallow the Korean royal seal in 14xx, as The Pirates claimed? Did that guy in The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom really have to deliver those snacks? Whom can I trust?
- The Barker (1928): From Film Forum's "It Girls" series. I would not describe this film as good, but it has some fun carnival bits. You know that I don't automatically think a newer film automatically supercedes an older film on the same topic, but Nightmare Alley (1947) is just better in every way, a much better "seedy side of the carnival" film, despite having to deal with the Hays Code. I'm not even sure this film is supposed to be seedy at all. It does have the traditional flapper floozy, but there's a twist—you'll never guess which group 11 transition metal is the primary constituent of her heart! Oh, you guessed. I suppose I could have clued you in more gradually.
The thing I found most interesting was how they did this film as a hybrid talkie. The lively carnival scenes have sound and the scenes in the carnival wagon have title cards. Did sound break upon the scene when this movie was halfway done? Were they experimenting to see how much talkie audiences could take? I don't know, and don't care enough to try to find out.
- It (1927): Now this is more like it. In fact, this is exactly like It. At first glance this movie may seem like an outdated slog. A movie based on an essay in Cosmopolitan written by a woman named Elinor Glyn? What vision does the name "Elinor Glyn" conjure up for you? Personally, I thought "Margaret Dumont as a Cardassian". When the movie started with a character picking up Cosmo and reading the essay that is the basis for the movie, and then Elinor Glyn herself showed up in the movie to talk about the essay she wrote, I was merely confirmed in this opinion. And yet, why shouldn't middle-aged 1920s society women be able to write scandalous, sexy comedies with ridiculous didactic self-inserts? Middle-aged men have been doing that for decades with much less impressive results.
It is fun, the jokes still land, and it shows exactly what it's like to be one of those girls who's always getting entangled with Bertie Wooster. Even the essay is interesting, although I maintain that adapting an essay to a feature film is a bridge too far. The concept of "It", which is generally glossed as being identical to "sex appeal", is actually closer to the very modern notion of "cool". Overall, a pleasant surprise.
Movies in the "It Girls" series I wish I'd seen, solely based on their titles: Safe In Hell (1931), Why Be Good? (1929), Loose Ankles (1930) and a supremely honest movie that's just called Dames (1934).
- The Straight Story (1999): David Lynch's proof of concept that he can make an effective film without employing any of his usual cheap tricks. Except! Apparently he can't make a film without making an actress cry and filming it. (Funny scene though.) Overall it was fine, and I'm probably not gonna like any Lynch movie more than I like this one, but not a very high recommendation from me.
- I saw a block of children's shorts at the museum during the Children's Film Festival, and most of them were forgettable but it was all worth it because at the end of the shorts was... a new A Town Called Panic animation! Yes! A Town Called Panic: Return To School (2016?), 22 minutes of non-stop stop-motion silliness! It's not on IMDB and I could find no English-language information about this film, but it exists, I saw it, and I laughed and laughed.
BTW, when researching this entry I learned that the 2009 A Town Called Panic feature film is on Amazon Prime. Here's my review; basically, I give A Town Called Panic the highest recommendation I can give a movie without implying that it has anything to say about anything.
This month the Television Spotlight shines on Drunk History, a Youtube series that made the leap to basic cable and has been going strong for long enough that I'm comfortable spotlighting it here even though there's (hopefully) many more seasons to come. Sumana has written about the uses of history in Drunk History, Hamilton, and the comics of Kate Beaton, so I'll just say that all three use anachronism to deconstruct the accepted narratives of Serious History. Drunk History treats Serious History as an inhibition to be broken down with booze, and then tries to build the wall back up with 100% literal reenactments that treat the drunken ramblings of the narrator like they're Shelby Foote talking about Gettysburg. Great stuff.
I'm pretty sure Drunk History was also the inspiration for the hilarious, Mormon-friendly Kid Snippets Youtube series, which means that even as it's still on the air it's paying back in inspiration to the indie-web-film community that spawned it.
