The Long Anticipated (And Thoroughly Enjoyed) Return to Movie Theaters
/So, uh, I guess I’m back.
I stopped writing when my daughter was born, in part because I had so much less time to write (shocking: raising a child is hard), but I also just didn’t have a lot of passion for it. Maybe that was my general lifeforce getting sucked out. I just didn’t want to put in the same amount of effort in general, though, and the original concept for this site consumed too much of me. Even after we shifted focus and my friends and me just worked on whatever projects we wanted, the ambition of writing as much as possible eventually became too much. It’s also true that I often have writing projects that run hot for an extended period of time (sometimes many months, even years). And then it becomes a chore. And then I get that itch again. And usually I write a post something like this one.
A lot has happened since early 2019 when I last posted something here. A lot of it was bad. Some of it was good. I moved to a new city in a new state, got a new job (one that is so much more demanding than my last jobs, both good and bad). My daughter is like an actual human now, which is wild.
I went back to a movie theater a few weeks ago, the first time in 13 months. It was a surprisingly emotional experience. It was a reorienting experience. 2020 largely will feel like a black hole for a lot of people in a lot of ways, and that’s how my movie life will feel. There were a lot of awesome movies in 2020, but things became radically different since I saw Emma. in March 2020. I still watched a lot of movies (actually even more than in most years) but there was something more disposable about the act of watching a movie. I’m not a “movie theaters are sacred” kind of person while I still recognize that I don’t have the attention span to fully engage with something on the couch, even as I’m aware of this character flaw. The highs are higher when I’m connected and that only happens in the theater.
So now that I’m back in movie theaters, I thought it would be a good idea to engage myself even more. (And to peek behind the curtain, the bill is due to keep this site open, which is an obvious nudge.) I can’t make any promises to myself that I’ll keep up with this. Maybe I’ll just write about the 1-2 movies I see in a theater every week. Maybe something on streaming (as that will still be the lay of the land for film culture in 2021) will be engaging enough for fully formed thoughts. Maybe I’ll think about a podcast again. While I’m the kind of person that picks a specific form and likes to stick to it, maybe I won’t be so stringent right now.
As an aside, the biggest benefit of not going to the movie theater for over a year is that I basically didn’t watch any movie trailers. While I don’t actively avoid trailers, I just don’t care to seek them out. Not sitting in a confined space, looking at a large screen, without any other major stimuli around, they are pretty easy to avoid. My first time back in the theater was something like time travel, being greeted by In the Heights and Black Widow taking me back to March 2020. I’m not ready to be forced to memorize random 2 minutes out of a 2 hour movie quite yet. It will be nice, at least over the next few weeks, to see films without seeing any marketing whatsoever.
The three movies I’ve seen back in the theaters so far are an interesting and coincidental mix: a big studio, big budget blockbuster, a low-grade action film, and a low-key comedy. None of these three kinds of films exactly went away in 2020, but they all have a different place in modern movie culture.
Most of the big studio, big budget blockbusters were pushed from 2020, with the few obvious and notable exceptions. Disney, however, was one of the more creative and aggressive studios in working through the pandemic. Mulan was caught up in release date hell, being one of the first movies that was initially pushed at the start of the pandemic, before eventually launching the “Premiere Access” brand of Disney+. That’s one I was fine with waiting on until it eventually made its way to my regular streaming subscription. Black Widow was pushed all the way to when they can actually count on some box office returns. Pixars’ Soul was a sacrificial lamb, intended to drive up Disney+ subs over the holiday season.
The strategy for Raya and the Last Dragon went the Mulan route, which meant I skipped all the podcasts and reviews from when it was first released behind a paywall back in early March (I’m not paying $30 for a movie at home when my wife has little interest and my daughter isn’t quite ready to watch a movie from start to finish yet). The lack of big movies coming out in the time between ensured that it was still available at my local 6-screen multiplex in late April.
Disney was never a specific touchtone when I was a kid - yes, I was right in the wheelhouse during the Disney renaissance, I was just more invested in The Sandlot or Rookie of the Year at that age. When I got older, I got more into animated films for their art and broad general appeal, especially the Pixar films, and eventually as I discovered Studio Ghibli. For years my one big question for every animated film was “Does this film use the medium of animation to its fullest extent?”
Now I can’t help but engage in animated films as a father with a young daughter, a second question has emerged: “Will I be able to stand watching this a million times?” I think Raya probably passes that test, even though I’m not sure if it will be fully satisfying for my daughter until she is a bit older. I don’t mean to underestimate younger children, though I think the themes and action beats of Raya do skew a little older, and the no musical acts is a bit of a missed element (I don’t mean that as a criticism, but it is definitely an important hook when done well).
For its cultural elements, I can’t help but compare Raya and the Last Dragon most with Moana, which is probably my favorite Disney Studios (hence, non-Pixar) animated movie ever. Raya is a step behind. The adventure is both more (too?) complex and cliché. The title character doesn’t have quite as much depth in her story arc. There are more important side characters in Raya, especially with more traditional (though clever take on) villains, but aside from Sisu, voiced by Awkwafina, none of them left me with strong impressions.
Time will tell how Raya and the Last Dragon grows in my mind (and my rotation with a growing daughter). For now, it is a solid mainstream animated film, better than most, but not special in an increasingly strong medium.
The low-grade action film has been an early year staple, seeing a bit of a renaissance post-Liam Neeson run with the emergence of John Wick and a more “realistic” stunt-driven approach. Nobody combines those two approaches with the presence of comedian-turned-TV star Bob Odenkirk as the unlikely ass-kicker in a History of Violence scenario. In this post-pandemic cinemascape, it benefits from the anonymity it may have received in the early year dumping ground to be one of the more attractive films at the box office.
Overall, I’m mixed on Nobody. As someone who fell in love with Mr. Show in college, it is a delight to see Odenkirk expand in a direction that would have seemed insane twenty years ago. This only goes so far, though, especially as the film doesn’t want to use his talents to the fullest extent. I’m not asking to turn Nobody into some sort of broad comedy, but Odenkirk’s natural edginess is smoothed out with the blending in as an everyman conceit. Even as he stretches more when the action fully kicks in, the film keeps him pretty straight-faced - the action itself goes over-the-top, while supporting actors like Aleksey Serebryakov and Christopher Lloyd are the ones who get to ham it up a bit.
Perhaps Odenkirk’s gambit was to become a more legitimate action/movie star and I suppose he succeeds well enough for that. It’s just that anyone who isn’t as deeply familiar with all the aspects of his working background aren’t likely to gain much from his specific performance (unlike his work in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, which better utilizes his best talents while also allowing him to broaden them).
The other notable figure in Nobody is director Ilya Naishuller, the second-time filmmaker of Hardcore Henry. While Henry obviously has a much more dedicated style as a first-person shooter send-up, Nobody is a mature follow-up. It has much more intention than the one-note predecessor and much more interest in the greater aspects of direction, including performance and comprehensible storytelling. Hardcore Henry isn’t much more than a visual curio, even as one of the more successful video game translations to film, and Nobody is distinctive enough in its look and action to be a positive step in Naishuller’s career as a complete filmmaker. Is it at times a watered down John Wick? For sure. It sits on a weird corner of mild disappointment that still can’t be completely written off.
The third category of film I’ve seen in my foray back into theaters so far is the low-key comedy, a small-budget, more writer/character focused work that typically gets buzz at a festival before slowly building word-of-mouth in limited releases. Of the three, this type of film has actually had the most difficult place finding footing in the pandemic year of streaming. Thinking about the biggest successes of 2020, I’m not sure any would really qualify - the VOD or streaming word-of-mouth films of this size were typically more heavily dramatic (Never Rarely Sometimes Always), more artistic-focused (First Cow), or more comedy first (Palm Springs). Netflix seems more invested in comedies that appeal to younger audiences.
So the theatrical experience creeping back in may be the best environment for Nikole Beckwith’s Together Together. I really hope it excels in this landscape as one of the best films of the year so far.
Strangely enough, Together Together makes for an interesting comparison point to Nobody, as the two films engage with their respective broader genres with different success. Nobody does have moments that cleverly reflect on the new John Wick style actioner, but is overwhelmingly just another entry into the genre. On the other hand, Together Together smartly uses romantic comedy tropes while not actually being a romantic comedy.
By using genre expectations, I felt a really strange tension throughout the film. I constantly thought “Oh no, is this really going in that direction” when it was never interested in actually fulfilling the result of those expectations. Some may find this frustrating, I found it invigorating. A much worse film would have dared to explore the romantic potential of its central relationship, which undoubtedly would have been gross. I don’t know if Beckwith explicitly used romantic comedy trappings to “trick” viewers into forecasting where the narrative would go, but even if they did, it is worth the manipulation.
For the mainstream, Ed Helms is the draw, Patti Harrison is the discovery. I’m conflicted on how much I talk about how their role in the film is such a great step for gender visibility in the artform - I think it is important to point out, especially given narrative specifics, but at the same time talking about the film without focusing on the casting representation while having the knowledge of representation is the ultimate step for a more level playing field. In any case, Harrison delivers a nuanced performance, transcending the millennial self-awareness where the character could live.
Together (Together), the duo’s relationship builds organically throughout the film, from the initial awkward moments to a friendship that is so rarely explored. As a heavily character-based story, this also evolves the film from the early cringy comedic focus to something unique by the end. It really has made me realize that while I always judge a romantic film by the chemistry of the central couple, thinking of its success in terms of the romance being “real” in some way, I almost never do that with films centered on friendship. That might change after Together Together.