OSCARS 2022: Ascension (2021)

What a documentary is seems straight-forward enough. It is a non-fiction motion picture, right? A movie devoted to telling real stories and documenting real events. Yet, like any genre, the documentary contains a number of complex subcategories within it. Some documentaries are largely made up of interviews, subjects reflecting on things that have happened to them. Others are acts of video journalism, thrusting the filmmaker right into history as it happens. And then there's the “observational documentary.” These dismiss largely with narration and framing devices, instead focusing on simply pointing the cameras at every day events as they unfold. If interview documentaries seek to educate us about specific topics, and journalistic documentaries seek to inform us about current issues, the goal of observational documentaries is enlighten us on normal life. Among this year's Documentary Oscars nomination, “Ascension” fills the observational niche. 

“Ascension's” subject is life in modern China. It seeks to document people pursuing the Chinese dream. According to the official plot synopsis, the Chinese populace do this through “productivity and innovation.” The productivity is mostly shown through us via extensive footage of people in manufacturing jobs, assembling any number of every day products that will be shipped out to places all over the word. The innovation side of this equation is largely depicted by companies that seek to educate people about various fields, usually by learning to use the internet to their advantage. (Such as a seminar that teaches corporate executives how to create viral videos.)

“Ascension” seeks to understand something essential about the Chinese national identity. We know all about the American Dream, about striving to have a home, a family, and a successful business. In contrast, the Chinese dream seems to be to become cooperative, productive members of society. Factory workers are encouraged to meet quotas and make the most of their time. We see people at some sort of corporate training event, dressed in soldiers fatigues. As various CEOs are introduced, they all clap each time in the exact same pattern, like a machine. In-training butlers are told they will be sacrificing their own lives for their jobs. Even in classes where people are seemingly training to be social media stars, fitting in is encouraged. An announcement, in broken English, at a Chinese mega-mall tells people to be “enlightened citizens.” Americans are always told to be individuals, even when society demands otherwise. China at least seems upfront about wanting to rear conformists. 

In the film's last third, it especially begins to focus on the idea of Chinese values contrasting with American ones. People at a fancy dinner talk about the differences in life in the East versus the West. This follows a conversation about how drinking glasses are designed differently in Europe, to accommodate wider Anglo faces. Execs at a company seminar discuss project earnings in China and how they stand against their American rivals. Yet certain values seem consistent, no matter where on the planet you are. “Ascension” takes us through the societal ladder, beginning with lowly factory workers, going to people in niche training programs, and ending with the rich. As leaders of industry drink and party, we see the products those factory workers made behind them. Someone worked all day to make those products and some other people get to celebrate the gains. The sweepers, maids, and groundskeepers toil around the relaxing rich. In both America and China, it seems the lower echelons of society are always at the service of the higher-ups.

Mostly, I liked “Ascension” for the frequently surreal or memorable sights it captures on camera. One of the factories director Jessica Kingdon's cameras visited manufactures life-sized sex dolls. Seeing petite, Chinese women assembling these naked, exaggerated forms of Western feminine sexuality is definitely an unusual sight. Especially once a foreman tells a worker to re-sculpt a doll's genitalia. A seminar on business etiquette soon degrades into a conversation about the ins-and-outs of hugging. A training camp for bodyguards and cops is especially cruel, a sloppy trainee being forced to do push-ups while, later, the guys are commanded to pummel each other. A visits to a water park produces the film's most impressive visuals, as riders on rafts travel down colorful tube systems.

Jessica Kingdon is half-Chinese herself, the daughter of a Jewish father and a Chinese mother. The film's title is taken from a line in a poem her maternal grandfather wrote. I don't know how much time Kingdon has spent in China, versus here in the U.S. But one suspects that “Ascension” was at least partially born out of her noting the similarities and differences between the two cultures that form her joint heritage. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. The idea for the film arose out of Kingdon wanting to explore the cycle of production, consumption, and waste. She says the movie is about capitalism. However you interpret it, “Ascension” is a pretty fascinating and interesting watch. [7/10]

OSCARS 2022: The 2022 Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films

Affairs of the Art (2021)

“Affairs of the Art” is narrated by a boisterous middle-age woman named Beryl and purports to be about her budding artistic endeavors. Instead, she frequently digresses about the various obsessions of people in her family. Such as her sister Beverly who, as a child, had a number of disturbing fixations. Such as insects, dead animals, decay, pickling, mummification, Vladimir Lenin, taxidermy, and Trigger the horse. She also talks about her teenage son who, as a boy, dotted on an injured pigeon he rescued. After the bird was killed by a neighbor's cat, he concocted an elaborate revenge which began a lifelong obsession with complex machinery. Beryl attempts to talk about her art career but often gets distracted by the topic of her sex life. Finally, some advice from her successful sister convinces her to pursue her hobby full-time.

“Affairs of the Art” comes to us from director animator Joanna Quinn and is something of a sequel to her 1987 short, “Girls Night Out.” Quinn seems to delight in contrasting her cutesy character designs – chubby old women and wide-eyed moppets – with as many grotesque images as possible. A dead mouse and a quickly rotting human corpse are depicted in loving close-ups. At one point, the decapitated head of a pigeon is thrust right towards the audience. Nudity, especially of older and overweight bodies, is also a reoccurring motif. Beryl and her husband often get nude, stretching their flabby bodies in all sorts of ways. This fascination with exaggerated decay, of the living and the dead, extends to a story which strays on many surreal asides. My favorite is young Beverly's fantasy of meeting the mummified Lenin and soaring over Moscow with him. 

It's a very odd little film. As is usually the case with the weird shit that gets nominated in this category, I'm assuming the animation is what caught the Academy's attention. And there's no doubt that “Affairs of the Art” looks incredible. There's a sketchy, painterly quality to the artwork. The characters move in fluid fashion and everything is extra detailed. While the subjects here are the kind of things you probably don't want to look at it, they are lovingly rendered. Perhaps beautifully drawing ugly shit and bringing it to life is Quinn's obsession. Menna Trussler's manic voice work as Beryl is also interesting, even if it threatens to become annoying as the short meanders on its way to the point. [6/10]

Beast (2021)

This Chilean short follows an unassuming looking middle-age woman through a typical week in her life. She bakes, has vivid nightmares/hallucinations, and displays a disturbing relationship with her dog. Once a week, she goes to an isolated building, creeps down to the basement, and tortures and murders the women kept there. Eventually, it seems her paranoia and fantasies catch up with her. If you're wondering why this short is so unnervingly vivid, that's because it's based on a true story: Ingrid Olderock was a professional torturer for Augusto Pinochet – the dictator who ruled over Chile from 1973 to 1990 – who specialized in tormenting other women.

“Beast” obviously deals with disturbing subject matter. The short actually shows a considerable amount of restraint in depicting the horrors Oderock carried out. (I'd recommended reading about the atrocities of Pinochet's reign if you ever want to loose some more faith in humanity.) Fittingly, “Beast” creates quite an unsettling mood. Its sound design and music are excellent, getting under your skin. It takes the viewer inside Ingrid Olderock's mind, showing a series of creepy nightmares and daydreams she has. The film never quite humanizes this terrible person – she remains stoic and unfeeling throughout – but does suggest that the cavalcade of terrors she wrought weighed on her to some degree. 

Adding to this disquieting mood is the presentation. “Beast's” character designs look like creepy porcelain dolls, with unmoving faces. When brought to life with jerky stop-motion animation, the results is quite spooky. The short implies utilizes surreal sights – like an enormous bullet slowly moving through a house or faceless figures – and lots of judicial edits to imply the greater horrors it's about. It's an effectively disturbing film, designed to bring attention to these criminal acts. Considering there's almost no information about Olderock on the English language web – most of the articles about her relate to this film – I'd say that goal has been achieved. [7/10]

BoxBallet (2020)

“BoxBallet” concerns two very different figures crossing paths. A brutish boxer and a graceful ballet dancer live in the same apartment building, initially unaware of each other. That changes after he retrieves her cat from a tree. The two begin an odd friendship and a budding romance, as she tries to introduce him to the joys of the more peaceful things in life and he charms her with gifts like a giant bag of sugar. The two begin to rub off on each other, allowing them to stand-up to the bullies in their lives: A handsy instructor at the ballet academy and a rival boxer with a more powerful punch.

The first thing you notice about “BoxBallet” are its likably exaggerated character designs. The ballet dancer is rail thin, her design not being much more than a series of straight-lines. The boxer is utterly grotesque, made totally of swollen lumps and sagging sinew with a noticeably crooked nose. All the character designs have that amusingly ugly angle to them. The second thing you notice about “BoxBallet” is how fluid much of the movement is here. The opening scene of the dancer racing from the theater to the subway train, a moment where a referee is sent spinning around the boxing ring by a stray punch, or the dancer's attempts to teach her new friend roller-skating all have an amazing sense of detailed movement to them. This pairs well with a soundtrack that blends classical music, ambient noise, and New Wave pop. 

It looks good and it's an amusing watch too. The oddball sense of humor here really appeals to me, as this hideous boxer has a soft side which manifests itself in sweetly awkward ways. While it's easy enough to predict where it's going, this one balances its quirky humor and sentimental heart with some nicely demented animation. [7/10]

Robin Robin (2021)

While the rest of the nominated films in this category were clearly meant to stand-alone as short films, “Robin Robin” was obviously designed to be a television Christmas special. The titular character is a young robin that has been adopted by a group of mice. She's been raised as a mouse and, until very recently, believed herself to be one. After her family has an unsuccessful attempt to steal some food from a human house, she sets out on her own to enter the home. Along the way, she meets a magpie who tells her of the “wishing star” atop the human's Christmas tree. He claims that, if one grabs that star, they'll have their heart's greatest desire. Robin decides to steal the star so she can wish to become a real mouse.

“Robin Robin” is a co-production between Netflix and Aardman, that beloved purveyor of British stop-motion whimsy. Like Aardman's best films, there's a wonderful tactile aspect to the animation here. The adorable characters are wonderfully fuzzy, like old vinyl dolls. The environments are beautifully detailed, looking like fantastically realized deserts. (This is especially apparent in the Christmas feast glimpsed in the final scene.) Everyone moves fantastically and smoothly. 

As you'd expect from Aardman, it's an extremely cute production with just enough oddball humor to give it some grit. There are several musical numbers, none of which are that memorable. However, the voice cast – which includes Richard E. Grant as the magpie and Gillian Anderson as the house cat antagonist – are naturally hugely entertaining. There's some blink-and-miss-it gags here that made me chuckle, like the magpie munching on the bugs that assist him during his song. Or the one little mouse pooing a little after being frightened. It has a sweet moral about how family is something you find, not something you're born into. While not really about Christmas, the holiday trappings add some nice seasoning. Overall, “Robin Robin” is delightful. [7/10]

The Windshield Wiper (2021)

The last of this year's crop of animated shorts, “The Windshield Wiper,” asks the same question that Haddaway asked all those years ago: What is love? This theme is explored over a series of scenarios. A man sits in a bar, smokes a cigarette, and listen to men and women complain about their dating lives. A man and a naked woman sit on a beach, smoking and not talking. A pair of tattooed hipsters shop for milk in a grocery store, right next to each other, ignoring one another and scrolling a dating app. A Japanese girl stands on the corner of a tall building and considers throwing herself off. A man stands in the rain, holding a ragged bouquet of roses, and ringing a doorbell. And so on. 

“The Windshield Wiper” ranks among this year's most pretentious Oscar nominees. Some of its images are laughably conceited. Such as the aforementioned tattooed hipsters, seemingly perfect for one another, who don't even notice they're standing next to each other because they are so absorbed in their cellphones. Or another moment, where a text conversation between two people – one clearly more invested in this relationship than the other – is displayed over an image of a satellite. Ya know, there's almost something profound there, how relationships are formed and people are connected across these invisible webs of data. Yet it just comes off as “phone bad” in the hands of a film as chronically high on its own farts as this one.

That smug attitude becomes increasingly obvious as this fifteen minute short winds down, with a montage of people loving and being together over a song that bluntly sums up the theme before concluding with a pithy – and meaningless – answer to the initial question. I can only hope that “The Windshield Wiper” got nominated because it's animation is interesting and not because of its faux-profundity. The CGI images are highly stylized, the color palette washed-out, and the cartoony but recognizably human figures often depicted from unexpected angles. It looks cool but is a puffed-up bit of nothingness otherwise. [5/10]

OSCARS 2022: Drive My Car (2021)

It seems like “Parasite” really might have been a game changer. The first non-English language film to win Best Picture seems to have opened Academy voters’ eyes to Asian cinema. This year, another Eastern film would surprisingly break through with the voters. “Drive My Car” was widely expected to earn a Best International Picture nomination. It surprisingly grabbed a Best Picture, a Best Director, and a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination as well. It is the first time a Japanese film has been nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Ryusuke Hamaguchi is only the third Japanese man to be nominated for Best Director, joining a small club previously occupied only by Akita Kurosawa and Hiroshi Teshigehara. Regardless of whether the film wins anything next month, it’s already made history. 

Yūsuke Kafuku is an acclaimed stage actor and director, famous for putting on multilingual productions of the Russian classic. His wife, Oto, is a screenwriter who shares her ideas with him after sex. She also helps him practice his lines by recording them on cassette, which he listens to during long drives. Despite their love, he discovers Oto is having an affair. She unexpectedly dies of a brain embolism shortly afterwards, wrecking Kafuku’s ability to focus on his work. Two years later, he takes a job at a university, helping workshop a multilingual production of “Uncle Vanya.” The school insists he is giving a driver, in the form of the very quiet Watari. As the production goes on, Kafuku will grow closer to his driver, his cast, and come to struggle with the past. 

Each and every one of us carries around some degree of grief. We all grapple with unfinished business, with a lack of closure from someone who meant something dear to us. “Drive My Car” is all about this uncertain, heavy feeling. Yūsuke still listens to the recording of his late wife in the car, long after she has passed. He still blames himself for her death. This is far from the only grief in his life, as he lost a daughter when she was only four years old. When he meets Watari, he soon discovers they have this in common. Her abusive and mentally ill mother died in a landslide when she was a young girl. The complicated feelings around this incident informs everything she's done in her life since then. It's fitting that so much of “Drive My Car” is concerned with driving and travel. This is a story all about the weight of the past and slowly, but surely, learning to move on from it. 

As much as the death of his wife wounds him still, Yūsuke is also conflicted over the memory of her infidelity. The two of them had such an intimate relationship, rooted in sexuality and creativity, that it seems impossible that there was things about her he didn't know. Yet, a stunning monologue from half-way through the movie argues, we can never really know everything about some one. This links to the premise of the multilingual plays Yūsuke organizes. The actors are all telling the same story but none of them are speaking the same language. Japanese, Cantonese, English, and Korean Sign Language are all used to perform the material. They only have an idea of what everyone else is saying. This connects with a later moment, when the theater troupe are rehearsing out in the park and two of the actors share a special moment, their backs to the rest of the group. We all have secrets and, no matter how close we may be to our lovers or family, they only have a small percentage of everything we are. 

If it wasn't obvious, “Drive My Car” left me in a real contemplative, thoughtful mood. That's the kind of effect a movie like this has on you. Unfolding over a lofty three hour runtime, the film slowly draws you in with its meditative pacing. The title credits aren't even dropped on you until the forty minute mark, to give you an idea of how deliberately paced out things are here. Yet, as slow as “Drive My Car” is, it never comes off as boring. As you watch the actors workshop go about their business, or far-off images of Watari's car driving through the countryside, you are lulled into a thoughtful, comfortable place. There's something serene about this motion picture, its patient approach and frequently lovely cinematography allowing you to slowly warm up to the melancholy – but ultimately peaceful – emotions its story summons.

The performances also match this insightful atmosphere. Hideotoshi Nishijima is quiet throughout long stretches of “Drive My Car.” The only time he ever raises his voice is when he's on-stage, acting. Throughout most of the movie, he is thoroughly used to living with his grief. He's been left numb by it, the miles he's traveled with it plain on his face. When he starts to crack up, that's when you know things have gotten really serious. If Nishijima's  Yūsuke is barely functioning under the strain of his pain, Tōko Miura has been rendered almost catatonic by it. Watching her layers of muted protection slowly slip away, revealing the wounded child within, is another touching process. Park Yu-rim also gives an extraordinary performance as Lee Yoo-na, a mute actress who communicates via sign language. Her poetic hand gestures during the penultimate scene is the perfect emotional climax for this story.

One must also shout-out the red two-door Saab 900 that is driven all throughout the movie. Rarely has an automobile done as much heavy-lifting as this one has. “Drive My Car's” intimidating run time and meditative pace will not be to everyone's taste. Yet I found the film to be totally compelling all throughout. I'm glad to see that something like this, obviously a bit outside the comfort zone of your stereotypical Academy voter, has its chance at the top category of the night. “Drive My Car” is touching, quietly funny, and grapples with some of the biggest questions we can ask about life. [8/10]

OSCARS 2022: Dune (2021)

In 2020, I finally decided to do a David Lynch retrospective for this blog. That meant watching his divisive adaptation of “Dune,” Frank Herbert’s groundbreaking science fiction novel. Since I always heard Lynch’s film was famously convoluted, I figured it would help to read the book first. The fact that I muddled through eight hundred pages of sci-fi gobbledygook just to flesh out a review should show you my commitment to this blog. Anyway, Lynch’s film is a cult classic now but was a flop in the eighties. It was but one in a long line of mostly failed attempts to bring Herbert’s book to life. In 2016, Legendary Pictures acquired the rights to “Dune” and quickly secured acclaimed filmmaker Denis Villeneuve to direct. Villeneuve promised to make the definitive “Dune,” to the point of splitting the adaptation in two and developing several multimedia spin-offs. Defying the odds, Villeneuve not only managed to get his “Dune” made but also made the film a commercial and critical success. The sci-if epic has been further validated with ten Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. 

Villeneuve’s film covers the first half of Herbert’s book. As with all versions of “Dune,” the story revolves around the desert planet of Arrakis, home to enormous sandworms and a mind-expanding drug known as spice. He who controls the spice controls the universe, they say. The noble Atreides house — led by Duke Leto and his son, Paul — have recently been granted control of Arakis. This has really pissed off the wicked Harkonnen house, who have controlled Arrakis for generations. They hatch a plan to kill the Atreides and reclaim the planet. Paul and his mother are soon left on the inhospitable world to die. Paul must gain the trust of the Freman, the fierce desert-dwelling locals, if he is to survive and face down his grand destiny to be a ruler and a messiah. 

Herbert’s book is, to say the least, dense. His prose is thick, his dialogue is atrocious, and his characters are archetypal. The literary “Dune” is so buried in world-building that it includes over a hundred pages of appendices, to flesh out the fictional universe’s history, environment, and glossary. To be frank: “Dune” is some Deep Nerd Shit and that’s why filmmakers have struggled for decades to make an accessible, commercial film out of it. To his credit, Villeneuve manages to humanize and streamline much of Herbert’s creation. He includes new scenes between Paul and his mentors — his father, his mother, battle instructors Duncan Idaho — to strength their relationships and deepen their personalities. Duke Leto is given a bigger role and his ethical strength is emphasized. A weird incest subtext is inserted between Paul and his mom, to add some flavor. As much of the exposition, which the book is absolutely drowning in, as possible is conveyed visually. The film even inserts some laidback humor, something the stiflingly dry novel was definitely lacking.

The cast also deserves some credit for further humanizing Herbert’s thinly sketched characters. Timothee Chalamet was, perhaps, born to play Paul Atreides. He invests the angsty budding savior with some pathos and personality. Oscar Isaac and Rebecca Ferguson don’t really have much chemistry together but you at least believe them as loving parents, as well as a noble leader and a mystic. You really can’t undersell the charisma of Jason Momoa, who grants a tiring noble warrior cliché like Duncan Idaho with humor and personality. The same can be said of a surly Josh Brolin or an empathetic Sharon Duncan-Brewster, who enliven characters like Gurney Henrik and Dr. Kynes. The bad guys are given a lot less to work with but Dave Bautista and Stellan Skarsgård, buried under extensive make-up, are intimidating if nothing else. Javier Bardem and Zendaya were cast essentially with the promise that they would have more to do in the sequel, though both still give it their all. 

It’s easy to see why Villeneuve would get the chance to make “Dune.” His previous films, “Arrival” and “Blade Runner 2049,” showed his ability to create stunning sci-if imagery. The best thing about Herbert’s book is the detailed world it creates, which Villeneuve’s film honors. The images of bizarrely shaped space ships floating through the either are impressive. The production design, from the inventive costumes and sets down to the weapons, is immersive. This is most apparent during the glimpses we get at the bizarre Harkonen home world. (During which Villeneuve indulges his giant spider fetish.) The movie presents a captivating world that is both strangely familiar and totally alien. Villeneuve even manages to take the goofiest parts of Herbert’s world, everybody wearing personal forcefields and a persuasive magic Voice, and make compelling action sequences out of them. And my favorite thing about “Dune,” those giant worms that create and destroy in equal measure, are given the proper amount of respect. 

But, at the end of the day, it’s still “Dune.” And “Dune” is fucking ponderous, man. The villainous Harkonens are never developed beyond cartoonish evildoers, totally self-interested and visually grotesque. (At least the Baron isn’t a depraved homosexual anymore.) The plot is still concerned with a bunch of bloated — some literally bloated — space nobles attempting to consolidate power and betray each other. The proceedings are still weighed down by mythic subplots about an arcane order of witches and Paul’s engineered destiny to begin a jihad. Much time is devoted to various elaborate ecological or societal or magic rituals, such as the strange ways of the Freman. Goofy bullshit words like “Bene-Gesserit” or “thumper” or “Kwisatz Haderach” are still thrown around freely. As when Herbert wrote it, and when David Lynch previously filmed it, nobody stopped to consider how ridiculous a poison gas spewing false tooth looks on-screen. I know there are people out there deeply invested in this stuff but I can’t get over how incredibly dorky it is. 

Maybe my biggest problem with Villeneuve’s “Dune” is that it literally does not have an ending. There’s a time jump in Herbert’s book that would’ve been an ideal place to cleave an adaptation in two. Instead, Villeneuve’s movie ends at a much earlier point, when Paul and Jessica are first accepted by the Freman. That’s about halfway through the book but it’s also barely after the end of the first act. That makes “Dune” feel like an extended effort in world building, that takes its time to establish the beginning of a story that is not yet finished. When the opening credits reveal this as “Dune: Part One,” it means it. Which makes rating this as a movie difficult, since it won’t truly be complete until part two comes out in 2023. When combined with a frequently slow, overly reverent pacing, I was left with a deeply unsatisfied feeling as the credits started to roll. 

At least we’re going to actually see that ending. If “Dune” had failed to connect with general audiences, this would be an even more frustrating experience. Luckily for Duneheads the world over, the movie was a hit. I can’t really consider myself a part of this fandom. (Though I’ll go to my grave remembering what nonsensical phrases like “Stilgar of the Freman” means, because of the way my brain is wired.) That undoubtedly influences my opinion on the film. “Dune” is deeply Not My Kind of Thing, so some elements that people loved — like Hans Zimmer’s bombastic score — strike me as deeply unappealing. I guess it’s good that big, weird sci-fi like this got a chance to shine and proved to be commercially viable. Ultimately, I respect the incredible craft that went into the making of “Dune: Part One” but can only enjoy it intermittently. [6/10]

OSCARS 2022: Flee (2021)

There’s an interesting trend among the Oscar nominations that I don’t think is getting much attention. The Academy seems to have woken up to the fact that documentaries are actual movies. Two years ago, "Honeyland" would make history as the first documentary nominated in another category. Namely, in Best International Feature. This would happen again last year, when "Collective" would place in both categories. And now, this year, a film called "Flee" has pulled off an even rarer hat trick. It's nominated for Best Doc, International Feature, and Animated Feature. This may be due to some rule change somewhere I missed but it is interesting to see Academy voters realize documentaries deserve consideration across all the categories. 

"Flee" tells the story of Amin Nawabi, who relates his life experiences to filmmaker and friend Jonas Poher Rasmussen. He grew up in Afghanistan, amid a war between the mujahideen rebels and the Soviet-backed communist government. (Which unpersoned his father when he was young.) After the withdraw of Soviet support in the late eighties, he would flee with his mother and sisters to Russia, where his older brother lived. Constantly harassed by the police in the U.S.S.R., his family would make several botched, traumatic attempts to sneak into a less hostile country. Eventually, Amin would end up in Denmark by himself, living under an assumed identity and forbidden from contacting his family. It would begin a long journey to forgive himself for his choices, reconnect with his family, and become comfortable with his own sexuality. 

"Flee" skirts the line between documentary and docudrama. The film is made up of a mix of Amin directly telling his story to Rasmussen and dramatic re-enactments of his experiences. (All of which is animated but we'll talk about that more in a minute.) It's an approach that gives us a clear understanding of a major element of Amin's young life: He spent most of his adolescence on the run. His family escaped Afghanistan, then spend years trying to escape the Soviet Union. He didn't finally make it into a stable country until he denied the existence of his family, the one thing that remained constant throughout his chaotic life. Of course, that was traumatic for him. "Flee's" mixture gives the viewer a clear understanding of the refugee experience. The most effecting moment being a recollection of a time news crews reported in the squalor they lived in without helping any. 

Of course, there's a question "Flee's" presentation raises: Why was this animated? It seems to me that a lot of the animation in the film was drawn over live action footage, which the final scene seemingly confirms. The animation is best utilized when depicting the blurry nature of Amin's memories. At times, the illustrations become more abstract, sketchy human-like figures moving through empty landscapes. Or a Croatian soldier's masked face morphing into an exaggerated maw. If you want to read into it more, the use of animation could also represent Amin's disassociation from his own past. Yet it strikes me as mostly a stylistic choice, to render realistic events with realistic animation. 

"Flee" is at its most humanistic when examining Amin's inner life, as a homosexual man growing up in various repressive states. He realized he was gay at six years old, after developing a crush on Jean-Claude Van Damme. (Probably the only time the action star has been mentioned in an Oscar-nominated movie.) He kept his desires and orientation a secret all throughout his youth, limiting it to meaningful glances at other men or fleeting near-touches with boys his own age. It comes to a head during the film's most touching moment, when Amin finally comes out to his family. This plays out in a nicely unexpected fashion. The film handles its protagonist's love life with a meaningful tenderness. 

My only real criticism of "Flee" is that I wish it used its animation a little more expressively. If you could tell the same story more or less in live action, you have wonder why that choice was made. Still, this is more nitpick than anything else. "Flee" is a sometimes harrowing, frequently powerful examination of a difficult life that ultimately has something like a happy ending. It's neat to see that a genre hybrid like this would go so far at the Oscars. Considering its nomination across three specialized categories, I feel like the film has to win one of those awards, and it wouldn't be totally undeserved either. [7/10]

OSCARS 2022: CODA (2021)

We don't normally associate the term "remake" with quality. Usually, we movie nerds think of remakes as easy cash-ins that besmirch the legacy of the film they're attached to. But this is not always the case. In fact, in the year of our lord 2022, the Academy has nominated three remakes for Best Picture, the most prestigious achievement in Hollywood. Of this unexpected trio, "CODA" is the most low-key. I didn't even know it was a remake until doing the research for this review. I don't know how many people are aware of "La Famille Belier," the 2014 French feature it is inspired by. Yet, like all the remakes nominated at the Oscars this year, some important elements distinguish this remake from its original. "La Famille Belier" cast hearing actors as deaf characters while "CODA" uses deaf actors in all the accompanying parts. 

Sixteen year old Ruby is the youngest member of the Rossi family. Her father Frank, mother Jackie, and brother Leo are all deaf. As the sole hearing person in her family, Ruby often acts as the sign language interpreter for her parents. This becomes especially important as Frank, a fisherman, attempts to launch a co-share with the other disgruntled fishermen in the area. Yet Ruby has her own aspirations. She dreams of becoming a singer. After joining her school choir, she meets a teacher willing to tutor and push her towards achieving this goal. Soon, she's pulled between what's best for her and what's best for her family.

"CODA" tackles a challenge a lot of young people go through during this point in her life. Ruby wants to forge her own life but feels compelled to help her family out, to support the people who have supported her all these years. That's all a part of growing up. Yet this familiar path is compounded as Ruby's role as the titular child of deaf adults. Her parents really do need her. This is made abundantly clear during a scene where the coastguard tracks down Frank's boat, as Ruby isn't around to hear the radio or messages. The role she serves in her family isn't just emotional but practical, as she's the bridge that connects them with the hearing world. This makes the choice she has to make, that all teenagers have to make, and her parents' ability to accept this choice, much more difficult. It's a compelling story to tell.

I like Ruby a lot. Watching her come into her own, overcoming her nervousness and learning to embrace her talent for music, is nice. The relationship she forges with her eccentric and energetic music teacher, Mr. Villalobos, is entertaining. The specific ways he breaks through her insecurities and teaches her to believe in herself are fine. So is the budding romance she shares with Miles, her duet partner. Yet none of this stuff is anything we haven't seen play out in a hundred other coming-of-age movies. "CODA" executes its material well, with charm and humor, but this portion of the film is not its most interesting.

Unsurprisingly, "CODA" is most compelling when taking the audience inside the deaf experience. We see the struggles and prejudice the Rossi family face every day, trying to make people understand them or dealing with ignorance. The film's most effective scene takes place at Rudy's song recital, taking us inside Frank's head and experiencing the silence he lives with all the time. Yet “CODA” isn't just a pity-inducing special interest story. It's a film that also seeks to humanize deaf people. Ruby's parents are very in love and very attracted to each other, sharing an enthusiastic sex life. Frank has a ribald sense of humor, that he often shows. Leo is proud and tough, not beyond bar room brawls and hooking up with cute bartenders. These are complicated people, with multifaceted personalities, and that's the kind of depiction that everyone deserves. 

The cast here is quite capable. Emilia Jones is fantastic as Ruby. Disguising her natural English accent with a convincing Massachusetts one, Jones is the kind of teen heroine the audience is happy to follow on her journey. She's got attitude, a sarcastic wit, but she's vulnerable too. And there's no denying that the girl can sing her heart out. Eugenio Derbez gets the showiest performance, as the enthusiastic music teacher who has to break through his student's insecurities to reach them. Of course, the film is a special display for deaf actors, who rarely get a chance to show off. Troy Kotsur, as Frank, has such a distinctive style to himself that he proves immediately compelling. Daniel Durant makes himself very clear as Leo. And, of course, Marlee Matlin is here, playing a mother who has a lot of doubts but always loves her kids. “CODA” makes a case for American Sign Language as an art form onto itself, a rhythmic dance of the hands that allows people to express themselves. 

I have no doubt that “CODA” will be a big deal for the people in the deaf communities. It's the kind of representation on-screen that deaf people are rarely granted. It's also a standard crowd-pleaser in a lot of ways, with a number of moments that pull at your heartstrings. Those moments are earned and I found myself really enjoying “CODA.” It doesn't reinvent the wheel but functions well throughout its whole run time, while also providing exposure for a talented group that is often left out of the cultural conversation. That, I think, makes “CODA” more important than it is good, though I've got no regrets about watching it either. [7/10]

Director Report Card: Paul Thomas Anderson (2021)

9. Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson's films aren't exactly a stranger to controversy. The frank and explicit depiction of the seventies porn industry in "Boogie Nights" attracted some sideway glances at the time. As did the subplot in "Magnolia" depicting misogynistic, pick-up-artist seminars. But it's not like anyone was outraged by the content of "Punch-Drunk Love" or "Inherent Vice." Yet Anderson's most recent film has, surprisingly, been his most hotly debated. Not because "Licorice Pizza," a nostalgic hang-out movie loosely inspired by Anderson's own adolescence, is especially graphic or inflammatory. It's because the film revolves around a quasi-romance between a teenage boy and a twenty-five year old woman. This seems like a pretty silly thing to get upset about to me but, now that I've seen the film, I can say it is. Because this film is a lot more than just that. 

Gary Valentine is an unusually ambitious fifteen year old boy, growing up in the San Fernando Valley in the early 1970s. While she’s working as a photography assistant at his high school, he meets Alana Kane, a twenty-five year old woman from a large Jewish family. Gary is immediately smitten with Alana and attempts to seduce her. The two form an odd friendship after Gary, who has had a little success as a child actor, asks Alana to accompany him to New York. After returning to the Valley, Gary and Alana start a waterbed business together. This leads them on a number of misadventures together, their different perspectives on the world leading them to get closer and further apart. 

Paul Thomas Anderson grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Anderson would take this love for his childhood home and combine it with the memories of former child actor and producer Gary Goetzman to create “Licorice Pizza.” Fitting this backstory, the film is a largely episodic but extremely specific recollection of life in this place and this time. The early seventies fashions, fads, and styles are painstakingly replicates. The interiors of the homes are characterized by mustard yellow wallpaper, wood paneling, and teal phones. High-waisted pants, mini-skirts, garishly colored buttoned-up shirts are the fashion of the day. The cars are all very specific models. Real people and places, like the Cock O’ the Tail restaurant or city councilman candidate Joel Wachs, weave in and out of the story. I never lived through the seventies but “Licorice Pizza” sure made me feel like I was there. 

And it’s not just the superficial details of the time period that Anderson faithfully recreates. The 1973 gas crisis is an important plot point and the politics of the day are referenced many times. Yet, more than anything else, the film transports the viewing because of how it looks. Anderson and D.P. Michael Bauman shot the movie on 35mm film while utilizing older camera lens. This creates a film with a deeper, grittier visual texture to it that matches the way actual movies made in 1973 looked. You see this in the way the actors look too. The teens have actual acne. They have blemishes, their hair curly and skin sticky from the California heat. Great pain was taken to recreate not just the look but also the feel of Anderson’s childhood.

As eager as I am to call “Licorice Pizza” a movie about the early seventies, it is best described as a coming-of-age story about two young people at very different points in their lives. Gary Valentine is an irrepressibly horny fifteen year old boy. He thinks about girls and sex all the time. This might be why he’s eager to grow up, pursuing business opportunities that hover uncomfortably between real self-made jobs and get-rich-quick con schemes. Alana Kane, meanwhile, is in her twenties, unemployed and still living at home. She is still easily charmed by handsome, older men smiling at her. She gets high too often and spends most of her days just hanging out. She’s self-aware enough to ask if it’s weird that she spends so much time with teenagers, but is still desperately trying to find her own place in the world. Here we have a romance between an incredibly immature boy who wants the freedom and power of adulthood and a young woman trying to hold onto the carefree days of her early youth.

The film is definitely aware of the problems that are created between Gary and Alana because of their differences in age. (Making the outrage over the gap in their relationship all the more ridiculous.) And it’s not like the two are ever really dating throughout the movie. Gary thinks Alana is hot and obtainable. Alana is intrigued by the ambitious boy and gets sucked up in his elaborate swindles. Yet she pursues other guys, frequently more outwardly charming or mature men, making Gary feel jealous and impotent. Sometimes, she’ll even intentionally do this shit to make him jealous, showing her own immaturity. They have a flirtatious relationship characterized as much by trivial bickering and petty resentment as mutual curiosity. Any middle ground they find between their different life goals is destined to be short lived. To say “Licorice Pizza” supports the idea of women in their twenties dating teenage boys deliberately ignores that the film repeatedly shows why these two are ultimately not a good fit for each other.

Starring as Gary Valentine, is Cooper Hoffman, the son of Anderson's late frequent collaborator Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Cooper shows an easy-going and natural charm that makes it hard to believe this is his first ever movie role. But it's hard not to be charmed by a character like Gary Valentine. He's sleazy, perpetually attempting to get sexual favors from any attractive female around him, and sometimes tricking people into helping him. Yet you can't help but be impressed by a young kid who is able to pull off semi-legitimate businesses, seemingly overnight finding the money to open a waterbed store or a pinball arcade. When he sees opportunity, he eagerly leaps at it. No matter how much of a youthful swindler Gary comes off as, he's also just a vulnerable kid who sometimes can barely conceal his hurt feelings. He's extraordinary and totally typical in equal measure, a relatable mixture that Hoffman beautifully pulls off. 

Another relative non-actor was cast in the other lead role of the film. Since 2017, Paul Thomas Anderson has directed nine music videos for the indie pop group Haim. The Haim sisters also grew up in the San Fernando Valley, which allowed them to forge a friendship with Anderson. So it's unsurprising that all of the sisters, along with their mom and dad, would end up in “Licorice Pizza.” Alana Haim, the youngest of the three, stars as Alana. Much like Cooper Hoffman, she also looks like a real person, with imperfect skin and what is described in the film as a “very Jewish nose.” She gives a similarly naturalistic performance, playing an impulsive but conflicted young woman that generates a relaxed, low-key type of sexiness. It's easy to see why Gary would be immediately captivated by her, as she radiates with both an accessible girl-next-door energy and a quirky charm all her own.

Alana, and the movie around her, is also acutely aware of the sexual politics of the 1970s. All throughout the film, Alana catches the attention of various men. Gary is immediately crushed on her. His more traditionally handsome co-star Lance flirts with her the minute he sees her. After trying out acting on her own, Alana meets movie star Jack Holden – based on William Holden – and he's quickly interested in her. Late in the movie, an unhinged Jon Peters aggressively hits on her and touches her. Sometimes, Alana appreciates this attention. She's charmed by Holden and Lance. Sometimes, it disgusts her, as Peters and Gary's repeated request for a hand job do. Each time, Alana finds her actual thoughts and feelings being ignored by men who see her as a means to an end. Holden never remembers her real name and discards her the minute he no longer needs a young woman to hold. Alana is frequently frustrated by Gary's inconsiderate treatment of her. After developing a crush on Joel Wachs, she soon learns he just wants her to be his beard. She's tired of always being a prop in a man's story, instead of being treated like a real human being with a complicated personality. This represents the seventies as a time when sexuality freedom was trumpeted but often at the expense of women's actual feelings. Even the other women in the movie, like a female casting agent, see Alana as something she's not, as merely a reflection of her own experiences.

“Licorice Pizza” is a movie that has a lot on its mind but that doesn't keep it from being frequently hilarious. The episodic story structure allows for a number of encounters with the colorful, bizarre figures you meet on the fringe of the entertainment industry. Such as Alana's day-long fling with Jack Holden, played by a nearly unrecognizable Sean Penn, a movie star so enamored of his own persona that he frequently can't seem to tell the difference between his real life and his fictional roles. This sequence – which also features Tom Waits as a foppish movie director – escalates to a ridiculously dangerous stunt involving a motorcycle, a golf course, and a pile of burning chairs. The real scene-stealer in the film is Bradley Cooper as an utterly unhinged, probably completely coked-up Jon Peters. Peters rampages through the center of the film, his insane acts creating lots of laughs while also seeming genuinely dangerous. Cooper unfurls reams of rapid-fire dialogue and swaggers with a crazed machismo that truly must be seen to be believed. (And seems to be a barely exaggerated portrayal of a larger-than-life figure.)

Stand-out performances like these are paired with some stunning filmmaking. The lengthy Peters episode also includes an incredible sequence where Alana steers a huge truck, totally out of gas, down a steep hill and through traffic that could easily compete with the excitement found in any of last year's best action movies. Anderson includes a number of reoccurring visuals that obliquely illustrates the film's themes. The first are repeated shots of characters reflected in glass or a mirror, often separated from someone by some sort of barrier. Such as when Alana and Gary get a DJ to read an ad for their waterbed store or when Gary gets briefly arrested by cops for no reason at all. This seems represents the adolescent desire to connect, to touch, another person but being held back by other forces. The other visual trademark of the film are repeated tracking shots of people running to someone else, overflowing with youthful energy as they race to be with someone they care about.

If the visuals go a long way to cementing how “Licorice Pizza” thinks and feels, it's soundtrack takes things all the way. Anderson largely scores the film with radio hits and deep cuts from the time and place. The irreverent inhabitants of a Teen Fair – which include the Adam West Batmobile and a cameo of John C. McGinley as Herman Munster – are matched with Sonny and Cher's “But You're Mine,” another irreverent icon of then-contemporary pop culture. The jungle movie drumming of Chico Hamilton's “Blue Sands” provides an uneasy energy to the scene where Gary is arrested. Bowie's elegiac and sweeping “Life on Mars?” provides the right touch to the end of one of Gary's schemes as he moves towards another. While the thumping rock swagger of the Door's “Peace Frog” energizes an earlier moment of people simply packing up. The songs are so vital to the film that there's barely any room for Jonny Greenwood's score, though he does chime in with a beautiful and simple piece of piano-driven music just when the movie's emotions need it.

Despite the prominent role music plays in the movie, the record store that lends the film its title never actually appears. Anderson chose the title because of its nostalgic association. And because its a better title than working title “Soggy Bottom,” the name of Gary's waterbed company that is derided by Alana in-film as being terrible. Ultimately, “Licorice Pizza” is another triumph from one of America's most consistently great filmmakers. Hilarious, touching, beautifully constructed and performed and with enough ambiguity to keep people talking about it forever, it's a wonderfully entertainment love letter to a bygone time and place. [Grade: A] 

OSCARS 2022: King Richard (2021)

During my middle school years, there was a very brief attempt on my behalf to get invested in tennis. I even bought a racket and bounce a ball around a court with my dad once or twice. This was mostly a desperate attempt to get my then-tubby ass out from in front of the computer. It didn’t work, as I never really cared about the rules of the game and have mediocre hand-eye coordination. I have no idea if the incredible popularity of the Williams sisters had anything to do with my decision to try out the Wimbledon hobby. I was certainly aware of the sisters, as they are definitely the most popular tennis players of my youth. Now, Venus and Serena have gotten the Oscar biopic… Kinda because “King Richard” is actually about Richard Williams, their father who orchestrated the sisters’ rise to tennis stardom. 

Beginning in the late eighties, Richard Williams is a security guard trying to raise five daughters in poor, troubled community of Compton, California. Richard decided when Venus and Serena were young that they would become tennis stars. He trains them non-stop in the sport and attempts to convince high-ranking coaches to take them on. Eventually, after many failures, he talks Paul Cohen, the top coach in the sport, into training the girls. The family struggles to foster the sisters' incredible skill and talent, while dealing with economic difficulties and the pressures of the demanding tennis world... But mostly Richard's insistence on micro-managing every aspect of Venus and Serena's lives and careers. 

In many ways, "King Richard" is exactly the kind of Oscar Bait-y biopic you think it is. The Williams sisters' story – of growing up poor, surviving adversity, and overcoming incredible odds to become the top athletes in their field – fits the inspirational sports story formula perfectly. The movie tells this true tale in compelling fashion. There's a lot of juicy storytelling here, in moments where Richard can only choose one of his daughters to be mentored by Cohen. Or when an impressive sponsorship deal comes their way and the family has to decide what to do. Richard's insistence on keeping the girls out of the junior leagues, having them go from training and straight into the pros, provides most of the dramatic tension in the second half. These scenarios are all written well and the audience gets invested in seeing how they'll play out.

Richard's methods are extreme and I wish the film built more ambiguity around that. His unorthodox way of teaching his daughters to be humble – nearly abandoning them at a corner store – results in an argument with his wife. Early on, he's beaten by a local thug and nearly retaliates with violence. He often argues with coaches and agents, intentionally rubbing people the wrong way or making outrageous demands. His control freak tendencies are frustrating to Venus, who is eager to prove her worth. No matter how contrarian his process is, the movie is always on Richard's side. Because, obviously, it worked. Both Venus and Serena became the biggest tennis players in the world. We wouldn't be watching this movie otherwise! Yet I do wish the film focused a little more on the times Richard Williams pushed too far, discarded his daughters' feelings, or made an ass of himself. That would've added a little more depth to the film.

Mostly, "King Richard" is the kind of Oscar movie designed to be a vehicle for a big star, giving a big performance. And that is certainly true of Will Smith here. He adopts Williams' distinctive Louisiana accent. He gets several showy moments designed to be Oscar clips, such as a heated argument with his wife about his previous relationship. Or a stirring monologue to his daughter about his own father. Smith is genuinely good, never overplays it, and sometimes seems more invested in Richard's complexities than the movie around him. Aunjanue Ellis – as Brandy Williams, the girls' mother – and Jon Bernthal – Rick Macci, the sisters' hotheaded coach – are also very good. Ellis does great when playing off Smith and Bernthal's part allows for a lot of likable eccentricities. 

"King Richard" was directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, whose other work – which includes "Joe Bell," another inspirational dad-centric movie – I'm not familiar with. Green acquits himself with the material well. It helps that tennis is a pretty visually dynamic sport. This is most obvious during the film's climax, Venus' star making match against Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, who was one of the top players in the game at the time. The camera gets right in with the ball as he's hit back and forth, making for a fairly exciting sequence to watch. "King Richard" is still too long and Green includes a couple of obvious needle drops. Overall though, it's a good-looking and well executed motion picture. 

Do I think it deserved to be nominated for six Academy Awards? Smith and Ellis both do fine work, so they certainly earned their nominations. I wouldn't have given a Best Picture slot, and certainly not a Best Original Screenplay or Editing vote, to it. I guess, even in this day and age, the Academy still can't resist a stirring, fact-based story about people rising out of nothing and reaching greatness. The film even ends with the required archive footage of the real people, while that nominated Beyoncé song plays. (Which I liked a little better in the context of the film.) It May meet the standard definition of Oscar bait but "King Richard" is still a decent movie. I don't regret watching it. [7/10]

OSCARS 2022: Don't Look Up (2021)

In a past, you've seen actors best known for comedy get Oscar attention by radically changing directions and pursuing drama. It's a technique at least as old as Red Buttons in “Sayonara.” While it's not always a guaranteed win, such a bold act is frequently rewarded with at least a nomination. In recent years, we've seen a similar phenomenon with comedy directors. Peter Farrelly did “Green Book,” Jay Roach did “Trumbo” and “Bombshell,” Todd Phillips did “Joker.” Of course, the quality of these films have been hotly debated and that's certainly true with Adam McKay's “serious” movies. Were “The Big Short” and “Vice” vital, satirical post-mortems of our troubled times or just painfully smarmy? The debate continues with McKay's latest, “Don't Look Up,” a star-studded parable about climate change that has earned some raves and plenty of scorn from people who found it unbearably smug. This clearly didn't bother the Academy too much, who nominated it in four categories including Best Picture. I guess it's my turn to weigh in.

Astronomy P.h.D. candidate Kate Dibiasky discovers a new comet in the night sky. The celebration is quickly cut short when her professor, Dr. Mindy, realizes the comet is on a direct collision course with Earth. The scientists rush to inform the government of this incoming extinction level event. President Orlean, her administration mired in scandals, is surprisingly apathetic about the comet and swear Mindy and Dibiasky to secrecy. The two instead attempt to alert the public through the media but the effects aren’t as expected. As it becomes increasingly clear that a comet strike is still imminent, big business interferes with the government’s attempts to save the world and misinformation and debate grips the public. Meanwhile, Mindy and Kate continue to do what they can to protect humanity. 

“Don’t Look Up” is a in-no-way subtle allegory about climate change. A giant comet rocketing towards Earth is a threat to all of society and our entire species. Yet the issue is immediately politicized. The government ignores it, searching for results that favor their partisan outlook, until it becomes politically advantageous to discuss it. Big business directly derails attempts to stop it, because they value making money more than human lives. The media doesn’t give the story its due diligence, focusing on celebrity gossip. Large swathes of the public refuse to believe the comet is even real, until the threat becomes visible to the naked eye. Of course, like all allegories, the reading starts to fall apart if you think about it too hard. Climate change has been going on for decades, the comet is a new threat. Climate change effects poorer social strata more, while the comet means the death of every human on Earth. But the point stands. “Don’t Look Up’s” target is obvious. Allegory really only works if it can convey new understanding to people. “Don’t Look Up” is so thuddingly obvious, that this seems unlikely to happen. 

Furthermore, the film’s satire is frequently muddled. The exact political party President Orlean belongs to is never stated. This is a real half-assed attempt at both-sides-ism as she’s obviously based on Trump. Nepotism runs wild in her cabinet, as her son is her chief of staff. Her administration is constantly rocked by tabloid-like sex scandals. Eventually, she holds populist rallies and reduces her position to an easily parroted catchphrase. The parallels to real-life big business figures is also confused. Mark Rylance plays a tech mogul who hopes to mine the comet for valuable minerals before destroying it. A billionaire businessman cluelessly meddling in galactic affairs is presumably inspired by Elon Musk. Yet Rylance’s character, a soft spoken and ambiguously neuro-divergent cellphone inventor with a barely-hidden cruel side and an affinity for turtleneck sweaters, is clearly based on Steve Jobs. What point is there to make about climate change by mixing these two very different figures together? It’s that kind of jumbled writing that ultimately makes “Don’t Look Up’s” satire barbless. This is, after all, a movie about how people are too preoccupied with celebrity culture to care about the end of the world that is itself filled with celebrities.

If you did a search through negative reviews of Adam McKay’s recent movies, the word “smug” would probably appear more than any other. “Don’t Look Up” is, admittedly, less obnoxiously self-congratulatory than “The Big Short” and “Vice.” It never breaks the fourth wall to directly call the audience stupid and explain the situation using simple words. There’s generally less of the self-satisfied gags and showy editing that made “Vice” so unbearable. (Though still enough to earn a nomination for Most Best Editing.) Yet the film is still talking down to the viewer in the shallow way it parodies celebrity culture and social media. Such as in a groan-worthy gag where Chris Evans appears to offer a completely useless bipartisan statement. Or the way many characters are portrayed as idiots glued to their cellphones. Yet, like all things that are smug, the film is also utterly convinced of its own self-importance. This is presumably why a farcical subplot about Arianna Grande and Kid Chudi, playing thinly veiled versions of themselves, stops for a way-too-long musical number that was desperate for a Best Song nomination. “Way-too-long” describes the whole movie, as the viewer’s patience definitely runs out before the two hours and twenty three minutes run time is over.

Satire is a tricky thing to do, as it has to be both pointed and funny. I’ve already described how “Don’t Look Up” is ineffective as social commentary. But is it at least funny? Sometimes. Running gags about the CIA pulling bags over people’s heads, or a general who charges for free snacks, made me laugh. Jennifer Lawrence, who seems more hit than miss in comedy, actually got most of the laughs as the perpetually annoyed Kate. Timothee Chalamet is also pretty amusing as the seemingly inebriated but utterly sincere teen she romances. Yet a lot of “Don't Look Up” is both too broad and too demoralizingly accurate. Meryl Streep’s President is a low-brow cartoon character. Jonah Hill as the president’s son, constantly throwing mean-spirited insults around, is painfully unfunny. Ron Perlman’s appearance as a racist old-school military hero seems unnecessary. The last six years have been so improbably surreal that an exaggerated satire like this can mostly just copy reality, which depresses me more than it makes me laugh. 

Ultimately, the element I found most compelling about “Don't Look Up” seems to be the subplot many have deemed least essential. When introduced, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Professor Mindy is an overly scientific astrophysicist and an utterly mundane family man. Initially terrified to go in-front of the cameras, Mindy proves surprisingly popular with the public. He’s swept up in this newfound fame, arguing with trolls on Twitter, appearing on “Sesame Street,” and beginning a strictly superficial affair with Cate Blanchette’s newscaster. He even becomes the face of a for-profit public campaign to calm people. (The phone number for which, in one of the film’s best and driest gags, leads to a real life phone sex line.) By the time he’s working with the obviously corrupt administration, to help the cellphone company mine the comet, it looks like he’s loosing his soul. Mindy eventually has a moment of clarity, cathartically screaming at the globe on television, and re-centering himself. This makes the film’s final moments, when the protagonists gather around friends and family in a world utterly in crisis, kind of touching. Leo is good too. It’s nice that he can still play an everyman, even at his level of stardom. 

If “Don’t Look Up” wakes people up to the realities of climate change, I guess that’ll make it worth it. The film was apparently a huge hit for Netflix, so I guess it’s connecting with a large audience. Yet I can’t say it worked for me. Weighed down by the lofty position of its own pompousness, the film lacks insight as satire. Though some gags work, its black humor is all over the place. The cast is a seriously mixed bag. I didn’t totally hate it. But, frankly, I’d rather spend two-and-a-half hours being close to my loved ones, in defiance of our own world-ending apocalypses, than watch this again. [5/10]