Thoughts on a Tangled Thriller

Some thoughts on The Girl in the Spider's Web (2019)

Hey, folks, can I, for a second here, recommend a bad movie to you?

When you get down to it, The Girl in the Spider's Web isn't terrible. It is an incredibly watchable, middling action-thriller, somewhere in the ballpark of a Bourne Legacy or a SWAT* or even a Jack Reacher. Thoroughly inoffensive filler**. It is the kind of James Bond-esque alsorand that I am particularly vulnerable to. And, if you're like me, and intellectually warped in this specific way, then you could have a worse time than checking out the latest addition of the Millennium series.

First of all-- the good-- it's great looking. Pedro Luque does a great job of elevating the material and giving the film a distinct look and tone.He makes Stockholm exactly as hostile and foreign as it needs to be. It's a city of bright sodium lamps and midday haze. It's one of the better noir cities that I've seen in recent memory. It's one of the reasons that this movie is as watchable as it is. It doesn't feel like a B-tier reboot at any point, because just look at it.

The real mark against the movie is that it is profoundly stupid. It won't admit it. It won't revel in it.

But even that is part of the fun. It's ludicrous in the ways that all of Hitchcock's best works are (admittedly without the Hitchcock charm which, hey, even old Al couldn't pull off every time). This is a movie where Lisbeth is doped up by a Russian mobster and then, while apparently dying, she manages to stumble onto some unnamed prescription med, smashes a bunch of pills up and then does a fat bump on the bathroom floor and then instantly recovers and goes on a car chase (while still doped to the gills with high-grade Soviet poison in her veins).

And you have to make a choice-- Am I going to go along with this act of profound silliness or am I going to watch something more reasonable like, I don't know, Michael Clayton?

Good work. Like me you chose to stick with it. Also, now Lisbeth is framed for murder for some reason, how is she going to get out of this jam?

If you, like me, are a sucker for these sorts of movies, these little thrillers that could, then you could do a hell of a lot worse than The Girl in the Spider's Web.

FURTHER OBSERVATIONS:

* In a kinder, gentler world, Lisbeth Salander would exist as a kind of R-rated anti-James Bond-- a gay female action-hero that uses her wits, exploits men, and, instead of going to meet the world, the world comes to meet her. To put an even finer point on it, I'd rather see a semi-annual Millennium-series movie than another fucking Marvel movie.

* As with the American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the guy playing the journalist (sorry, I don't remember his name) is way too good-looking to be a journalist. As much as I love Daniel Craig, he's a leading man. He's a tough guy. He is not a journalist. It's so very American to cast a handsome man as a journalist. I think that is one thing that the original Swedish films got right. In reality, a journalist character should less James Bond and more Jimmy Breslin.

* Where's Noomi Rapace? I miss her. Bring Noomi back, damnit! Also, I think I'm maybe thinking of the one chick from Head On/Game of Thrones instead of Noomi, so I'll maybe get back to you on this one. . .

* The more I think on it, the more I also realize that we don't need more stories about women who have abuse as an origin story. There isn't a terrible lot of that sort of thing on screen in this movie, fortunately. But, you can't make a Lisbeth Salander movie without grappling with the fact that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is ostensibly a rape-revenge story.

* I'm 100% that's a Jin-Roh reference in the third act.

* Nice to see villains in a different kind of bondage gear for once. I mean, we all love gimp masks, but that's been played out since at last '92.

* I am a sucker for cathartic bon fires. Dunkirk did it. Blade Runner 2049 did it. Snatch kind of had one. It's a good image. Keep it up, movies!!

FOOTNOTES:
* Both are Jeremy Renner vehicles. Weird how those are the first two movies that came to mind.

** Filler-thriller-- is that a thing?

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and a one-time private investigator. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

Yoooooooo

I'm glad to see the brave souls at Machinehead Games and Arkane Studios are finally wading into that eternal conflict, that of Jocks V. Nazis.

What is this!?

Never mind! Shut up! Just give it to me! Now!

The Mule You Know

Some Thoughts on The Mule (2018)

Art is a funny thing. I've seen a lot of good movies this past year-- both new and old. I've also seen some real clunkers. Some real shitty movies that just got my goat and really made me angry. The Mule, the latest film by famed film-maker and shitty boyfriend, Clint Eastwood, is neither of these things.

And yet, I can't stop thinking about it.

It's not good. It's not bad*. It's just inherently strange and that it isn't one thing or another is what is so exceptionally strange about it. That a man who felt so strongly about Barack Obama that he rambled at a chair in front of a live studio audience, at a time where the nation is run by a mentally-deficient sex-offending, con artist-- where the panic against Latinx people and refugees requires a big dumb wall and where children are being put in concentration camps and are dying-- you'd think that some sort of passion would be present. That there was something about this story that had to be told. That something, even something truly ugly, would slip out.

And it doesn't.

It goes on for two hours and then it just sort of ends.

It's a truly baffling picture, because at least I understand the impetus of Sully or American Sniper or, especially, Gran Torino. One would almost have to go out of their way not to cast their lots one way or the other when it comes to something as sensitive and as fraught with controversy as the border and the War on Drugs. And yet, no decision seems to be made at any point for any reason other than to make a picture.

And yes, what I'm saying is that I kind of wish that Eastwood had been a little more racist. That baring his blackened heart would have at least been art of some kind.

At 200 years old, you'd think that the only thing that could tempt Eastwood out of his crypt would be a story that he really needs to tell. One that really speaks to him. Presumably a story where he gets to say racial slurs for millions and millions of dollars. The Mule doesn't seem to be it. That the one bicentennarian on earth who doesn't have an opinion about Those People directs movies is actually more fascinating than the movie itself.

I was talking to Cruz, a friend of mine with whom I co-host A Quality Interruption, and I was explaining this movie to him, trying to make sense of it and how I felt about it and, really, I was just dropping the ball on it (as if you couldn't tell). I

He described to me a character from One-Hundred Years of Solitude**. The character is an old man who lived this full, long life-- adventure, war, romance, all that-- and now he was at the end of his life and all he did to fill his time was making aluminum fish. Once he's done making his little fish, he then melts it down and starts all over again. That seems to be what Clint Eastwood is doing. He's tinkering. He's making movies to stay busy. In its own way that's admirable. The hitch I'm having is why make this movie just to stay busy?

What is more than that-- how in all of the time of staying busy do you make a movie so listless and basic after nearly fifty years of directing your own movie?

Here are some highlights that before I go:

• This movie has Michael Pena in it. That's always a good sign. 
• Diane Wiest is in this? That's great!
• In this film, the titular mule (as played by Clint Eastwood) has not one, but two threesomes. People give Tom Cruise shit for always making sure that his romantic interest is hotter and younger that he can actually pull (lest we start wondering about things), but Eastwood is the master of this. He did the same shit twenty years ago with Blood Simple and here it's even stranger and sadder. Now, while, we all love a dirty old man, I have to wonder about the motives of Eastwood making sure that people know that grandpa can still fuck.
• In this movie Eastwood's character is a florist. I swear to god. It's literally the first scene.
• You would only have to change, like, three things, and this would just be an episode of The Simpsons where grandpa accidentally gets recruited by Los Zetas. And, actually, I'd kind of like to see that.
• Most of the movie is just an old man driving through the mid-west listening to Oldies. Honestly, if there was one actual reason a pre-Boomer lith made this movie, that might be it.

FOOTNOTE:
* We all thought abut completing that joke, but not all of us did it. Sometimes the best writing happens because of what you decide not to do.
** A book that I'm not even going to pretend that I've read.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and bakery clerk. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

A Look Back on the Year That Never Should Have Been

Now that we're in 20Bladeteen*, I figured, it was time to look back on one of the shittiest years that ever was. A lot happened this year for me-- which is to say that I didn't die during it. That would have been too much of a relief.


I haven't been on this blog in a long, long while and I figured the start of a new year was a good opportunity to come back and do some light, pointless writing.

Here are some of the stand-out moments of 2018-- the good, the bad, and the fiduciary.

My Dad Almost Died
So, this one was pretty big and it was a nice little close to 2017-- a year that we all figured would be the one for the history books. Without getting too into it, my dad had a freak medical malady and it was quickly spotted and corrected. Recovery was relatively minimal and it all worked out about as well as could be-- other than him almost dying, I mean.

He's fine now, which is nice. What it has done is made me realize, in a concrete way, that the old man could drop dead at any moment. Good blood pressure or not, it doesn't take much to take him out. Or anybody out. It can just happen. You're at work or out of the house and they die off screen and don't ever come back.

A fine beginning to a dog shit year.

Destiny 2
Hey, here's something stupid-- I got back into Destiny 2. And, hey, I like Destiny 2. Sony put it up for free on Playstation Plus and I found myself diving back into it, because-- fuck, I don't know why. It's fun to just pop it in, fuck around, shoot some fools, and then close it back up. It's fun, it's simple, and the numbers keep going up. In short: It's a good video game.

The Criterion Sale

Easily one of the least effective and cost-prohibitive ways to explore and collect movies, the Criterion Sale is like the blooming of the cherry blossoms for film dickheads like me. This year I played it fairly cool (only buying, like, seven movies), two stand-out films that I picked up on a blind buy were Tampopo-- a "ramen western"-- and Dragon Inn, a Taiwanese martial arts film from 1968. Both are delights and wonderful little surprises for completely different reasons. Fine reminders of the magic of movies.

Depression
About August this year, I hit a fucking wall. I was dead broke and had no job prospects to speak of. When you're that deep in the dumps, it's hard to do much else but putz around the house-- which is tough when that was most of what I was doing last year anyways. I haven't been that depressed since maybe college and, I've got to be honest with you, I didn't miss it.

While I know that tying my self-worth with my financial worth isn't healthy, it's something I know about myself now and something that I can rather easily fix (to a point). Regardless of the causes, depression sucks. I wouldn't recommend it.

Re-emplyoment
After a nearly year-long drought of trying to find work that wasn't beneath my dignity, I finally came to terms with the fact that I had no dignity, and decided to get back into retail-- Plus, I was broke.

I am now gainfully employed inside of one of the nation's largest Hyper-Conglomerates, which is distinctly whatever. While my high school friends are out making documentaries or working for Google or literally flying the F-35, I'm moving trays and hoping that the union has good dental.

The Podcasts
This year my news podcast, World's a Mess, hit its 100th episode, and my film podcast, A Quality Interruption, is only two episodes away from hitting its 200th. Another milestone that is that we've started collecting over ten bucks a month on our Patreon. While maybe that doesn't sound like a lot (and it isn't), it's still cool to know that there are people who give enough shit about what we're doing to give us money. I also think that we're getting better and better as time goes on.

I also appeared on my friends' podcast You Might Be Into it talking about my favorite film franchise/cinematic universe: Alien. So, check all that out if you can.


Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion
I did it. I finally damn did it. Thanks to Videotheque in South Pasadena, I finally hunted down a copy of this film and, boy howdy, was it worth the wait. It's pretty much everything you want in a sleazy Japanese genre film-- violence, boobs, impressionist lighting, over-acting, kabuki, rape, and a theme song that you might be able to get away with at karaoke. It's a trash film, but it's the kind of well-made and ill-intentioned trash that somehow manages to be a work of art despite itself. It's great. If you want one of those, it is one of those.

The Book
I have been writing a book-- in fact, I've been writing a lot in general, which is awesome. It's one of the reasons that I haven't been on here recently (and, again, I have two podcasts for that sort of a thing). It's big, it's kind of overwhelming, it's dragging on longer than I had thought, and, this time, it might actually be good? It's exciting.

2018 was not a fallow year for me creatively. Now, all I have to do is figure out a way to make some money off of this shit. . . 

Blades in the Dark
2018 marks the year that I started role-playing. After a decade and a half of dabbling with board games and table top games and flipping through D&D manuals, I finally took the leap-- Meaning that one of my friends invited me to the table.

And it was fun. It was nice to play some games and it was nice to get out of the house and talk to people like a human being (even if you're plotting imaginary murder with them).

We mostly played Blades in the Dark, which I think is my favorite of the lot. I like the world and I like the systems and I like that it's all based around failure and dealing with failure. It's a lot of fun. With the group I play with, just about every session turns into a Coen Brothers movie. I would recommend it.

Also, while on Tinder, I matched with local comedian. She asked me what I was doing on Saturday and I told her that I was going out role-playing. When she pressed me on what kind of wild fun I was getting into, I clarified that I was talking about the dice-centric kind of role-playing.

She immediately unmatched me. I don't blame her.

My Top Ten Films of the Year
Hey, here's me self-promoting once again. Here's a link to the episode of A Quality Interruption where I talk about the best new movies I saw last year.

The Pervert
While this year was a rather good year for comics (they always are), one that stood out is The Pervert from Michelle Perez and Remy Boydell. I've talked about it before, but it's really a book that's worth talking about more than once (plus it was on one of my podcasts and, according to the numbers, the odds are good you weren't listening). The Pervert is a semi-autobiographical story about a tranwoman trying to survive in Michigan (and get out of there) and their day to day life. It's got a lot of sex and as grim and depressing might be, it's also a deeply funny and human book. Pick it up-- especially if it sounds like it's out of your comfort zone.

Blood Meridan, or the Evening Redness in the West**
I read Blood Meridian for the third time. As it turns out, that book is still really good.

***

I don't know. There's probably a lot of other crap that happened to me. Either I forgot it during the marathon-length death march that was 2018 or I just don't want to share it. Maybe both. Either way, I'm glad it's out of the way. Not that starting a new calendar is actually a thing, but it's an excuse to move on, to try to become a new, better person. And that's what I'm going to do.

In this year of our Blade Runner, 2019, I'm going to try to be the best James Kislngbury that I can be. Or, I'll just fuck it up and wreck a bunch of shit and in that case, I'd still technically be correct.

FOOTNOTES:
*Lot of people out there saying "TwentyBiTeen," which is cool and all, but I don't feel like I can get away with that one, right? 

**It probably won't come as a shock that I own three copies of this book for some reason.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and bakery clerk. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

What the. . .

I rented Assassination Nation (more on that in the future) and this was one of the trailers attached to the film.




I found it incredibly striking, so I had to find out what it was about. So, I checked out its Wikipedia page.

This movie, uh, goes some places. And now I have to see it. I mean, I read the entirety of the plot and I still have to see it just to find out if any of that is real. Because, man, what a wild fucking thing.

Gimme that grit!

Give me Destroyer, already!



I mean, as much as I'm exhausted by the idea of another bad cop pushed to the edge. . . Man, I sure could go for a movie about another bad cop pushed to the edge. At least with the movie the nightmare is over in two hours. . .

And since we're here, give me that True Detective Season 3 already. I've been good. I've been kind. Just gimme that shit and let me get my heart broken already, okay? OKAY?

Back to the Outback

A Review of SWEET COUNTRY (2018)

Sweet Country is a long ride of a film and it feels like it. On the surface it appears to be a simple, by the number western, but as it creeps along, it slowly reveals a film about the pain and price of Australia's bloody past-- and indeed the bloody past of most all of western history. It’s not a film that you walk out of the theater feeling unsatisfied by. It’s a full, rich film that is also pointedly merciless and exhausting. It is a film that asks for as much as it gives.

Sweet Country tells a seemingly simple story that would fit perfectly between Shane and High Noon (or Unforgiven and The Proposition) about an Aboriginal farmer (Sam Kelly played by newcomer Hamilton Morris) wrongly accused of murder. A posse is formed and a manhunt ensues. And throughout all of this are the complicated domestic lives of people living at the edge of the dying British Empire.

It’s also a film that rides a line between traditional Westerns, revisionist Westerns, and Australian westerns (of which there are a surprising amount). As well trod as that genre (and sub-genres) is, Sweet Country stands out because it’s a film about the conflict between natives and settlers that is from the perspective of the natives (both in front of the camera and behind the camera). Not only is the story more interested about the Aboriginal people (and those that are stuck between two worlds as “half-castes”), but the camera itself seems to give them all of the best shots. And why wouldn't it be? In this world (ie: history), the best white people on offer are either abject racists, madmen, or well-meaning but complicit in the despoiling of Australia. While I can’t say that Sweet Country has a rich and bold Aboriginal voice, what I can say for certain is that it’s a movie that has a unique voice and that alone makes it worth seeing.

The stand-out among these is Warlpiri actor Hamilton Morris, who plays the runaway that the entire film centers around. Who has a face that belongs to another era—namely the golden age of Westerns. That man has a face and a carriage about him that just belongs on the big screen. And, like some of the greats of the American Western, he isn’t much for speaking. He lets everyone do the acting around him. Morris is an interesting choice to center the film around him as he very clearly isn’t a seasoned actor, he brings a verisimilitude to the picture that you don't often see in movies about native people. Hamilton Morris (what a name!) feels like a fulfillment of promise of "sensitivity" regarding native people that so many other films promise and then completely fuck up.

Sam Neill is also present doing his Sam Neill thing. I’d say more, but it’d be simpler and better for everyone if I just reminded you that Sam Neill is the best. He's great.

One of the bolder choices that Warwick Thornton makes is that Sweet Country is completely without non-diegetic music. From beginning to end, the only music you hear comes from a character. It’s

It’s funny because when I think of Australian and Westerns, I think of one of the best scored films of all time, The Proposition. 

Sweet Country is a film without distractions. Instead of making the film feel empty or lifeless, the lack of a score preserves the film’s tone. It’s a joyless world and it’s a joyless film. To add music would be to garnish it in some way that wouldn’t be true to the film.

It also leads to the only legitimate laugh in the entire picture. Again: Thank you, Sam Neill.

Another stand out feature of the film is the landscape (which is maybe the only unqualified strength of Hostiles). As full of bugs and snakes and god knows what else, Warwick Thornton (doubling as cinematographer) makes the Australian back country look like a place that you would want to visit-- or at least a place where you could stare longingly at the Abyss in peace.

It makes you pine for a world that somehow entirely gone and yet somehow still here. In that way, Sweet Country stacks up to the best films the genre has to offer. Sweet Country is a nearly joyless, nearly heartless film that fills its almost two-hour running time with a weight that matches the subject matter. It shows the Australian past as the heartless, soulless thing that it is and because of that, it isn’t something that anybody is going to be storming the gates to go and see. That only seems to make it even more vital as a work of art. Thinking on it, that’s probably the point.

James Kislingbury is a writer, a podcaster, and has never been south of the equator. You can donate to his Patreon . You can buy the book he edited here (and on eBay). You can also follow him on Twitter. Also, if you well and truly give a shit hmu on my Paypal. Want to buy me a coffee? Get at my Ko-Fi.

Be Careful What You Wish For Lesson #447

A REVIEW OF HOSTILES (2017)

Hostiles is the type of film I wanted to make in college. It’s a harsh, brutalist gaze into the American west that parlays with the complexities of violence, race, and man’s place in the universe. It’s a film that harkens back to the classics of the genre, as well as to the great works of western civilization. It’s a smart, well designed, well shot, and well scored film with some terrific performances. It’s also, ultimately, overlong and careless with its characters and its sharpest scenes are offset by mushy, needless side plots. Hostiles is a bummer, and not for the right reasons.

Basically, we should all be glad nobody is stupid enough to give me eighty million dollars to write Cormac McCarthy fanfic.

Man. This poster is pretty good.

What Hostiles gets right is a movie that feels like the American west. There’s a frisson to the film that isn't something I think that I’ve ever seen in films before. It's a film that properly understands the scope and scale of the American west, which is a concept that is as hard-boiled and overdone as any location in all of cinema. And yet, in Hostiles, the sheer size of it and how small you feel within that landscape presses down on you for every moment of the film. Hostiles is shot and lit and directed with a skill and a sensitivity to time and space that, even in its most confounding moments, always feels significant.

The main problem with the film is that it’s forty minutes too long. More specifically, it runs out of plot about an hour into the film. Hostiles sets up a scenario in the first half of the film (a man protects Indians from other Indians, with one big complication in the middle. A basic Campbellian set-up) and then, for some reason, discards that premise (off screen, no less) in favor of a completely different story (featuring well-known cowboy actor Ben Foster who I am concerned might be stuck in a time warp of some variety). It’s baffling. And it’s boring. It’s a contrivance that grinds the movie to a halt that it never quite recovers from. As much as we all love revisionist westerns, maybe it’s time to go back and steal one thing from the classic era, which is a run time that makes sense.

On the plus side: The performances are top notch. Christian Bale continues to remind us why we give a fuck about Batman and Rosamund Pike continues to be. . . Rosamund Pike—I mean, filthy and sun-burnt Rosamund Pike, but she can’t fool me.

Then you got Jesse Plemons as a feckless West Point graduate (guess what his story arc is—Close! It’s that exact thing you just thought, but duller). You also got Paul Anderson (as the character he always plays, accent and all), as well a strangely unmalignant Stephen Lang. Rounding out all of these character actors is Peter Mullan, the English Stephen Lang (which means he does more theater and could also actually kill you if he wanted to). And, finally, in a currently-playing-at-the-Laemelle-Playhouse hat trick is Timothee Chalamet [sic], who needs to give his agent a raise.

Man. This poster sucks.

Most importantly, though, Hostiles stars Wes Studi, an actor that I’ve greatly admired for years. Part of that is because, well, he’s talented. Another part of that is I am hard pressed to think of a less thankless career than Wes Studi. He’s played an Indian character in just about every western from Dances with Wolves onward—almost always as the bad guy. And as good as he is, man, that’s gotta be exhausting. Still, it’s a testament to his skill as an actor that even in a movie as unfocused as Hostiles, he still stands out. Even in worse westerns (like Dances with Wolves, one of the most profoundly shitty Best Picture winners ever), Wes Studi is a man that stands out. I mean, just look at him.

(Also, shout-out to Adam Beach. Always good to see him working—even if it’s also doing the same, thankless Indian roles time after time. Then again, what the fuck do I know? Maybe he's got a successful kombucha business and he's just doing these movies for laughs. Anything is possible.)

WAIT—STOP THE PRESSES.

HOLY SHIT.

The bearded sergeant with “melancholia” is the stoner kid from Dazed and Confused! Fuck! Holy shit! Fuck! Wooooooah! That dude is awesome! Movie is still not super great, but man, what if they got all these actors together and made something awesome? Wouldn’t that be great?

Man. . . 

Anyways. . .

Hostiles is a disappointment. As a fan of westerns, of brutal American violence, and of good films in general, Hostiles fails to stand out as any one of those things. While it is not without its moments or its charms, as a film, it is an overlong and overindulgent mess. Despite the performances, the end result is a film that meanders instead of being epic and is less episodic than it is confused. Hostiles could have been great. Hostiles should have been great. That’s the biggest bummer out of all of this. 

James Kislingbury is a writer, a podcaster, and greatly admires his scalp. You can donate to his Patreon . You can buy the book he edited here (and on eBay). You can also follow him on Twitter. Also, if you well and truly give a shit hmu on my Paypal. Want to buy me a coffee? Get at my Ko-Fi. Happy new year!

Yeah, I'm down.

. . . Down under, that is!







. . . But, seriously, this looks good. This is the type of thing I can 100% get behind. Glad that somebody somewhere out there is still making movies exclusively for me and nobody else. Not a great business model, but who am I to stop them, eh?

The Right Loudmouth for the Right Time

A REVIEW OF DARKEST HOUR (2017)

Darkest Hour, like The Last Jedi, is another entry into a univferse that, unlike Star Wars, nobody asked for. The world does not need another Winston Churchill biopic. Cinema (and TV) is littered with them and, if I may speak for the room, exactly zero people are clambering for a hagiography about a fat loudmouth in charge of the world’s most powerful country. Just a thought.

Where Darkest Hour shines is where it is most safe. Through fantastic performances, a solid script that builds one scene on top of another, and some lovely, energetic film-making from Joe Wright (Hanna, Atonement) and crew, Darkest Hour dodges most of the pitfalls of the genre (and its subject). What results is one of more likable biographical films of one of history’s “Great Men” of the past decade and a solid, respectable historical drama.

The reason Darkest Hour works is that it refuses to be a hagiography, and while it does romanticize the prime minister, it also paints a portrait of a man that is perfectly worthy of hatred and derision. Instead of asking you to respect Winston Churchill, it plays with the that tension.

On paper Churchill, is the last man that anybody should ever want to handle the UK during war time and, on the other hand, his blundering, boisterous personality and steely stubbornness is actually exactly what the UK needed. Both of these things are true. He's a barking drunk and one of the great men in all of world history. Both of these things are true and the movie rings both of these truths for all that it is worth-- and rightfully points out that few people ever even manage to be either of those things.

German not being compulsory in school, we all know how the actual narrative ends. What Joe Wright and screenwriter Anthony McCarten do is they create a drama that isn't about whether Churchill will make the right decision (for once), but why he come to these conclusions. It's a long journey to that point, with the first half feeling like setting the scene more than telling the story. Darkest Hour plays like a classical piece of music with a slow beginning and ends with a powerful crescendo. As stuffy and as white as it is, by the end, it can't be described as being boring.

The performances in this film are pitch perfect from front to back. That probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s stocked with some of the Commonwealth’s best character actors and it gives them a lot to work with, which is doubly amazing considering how 80% of this movie seems like old white dudes arguing in rooms (I would contend that sometimes it’s okay to be in the mood for that).

So, Gary Oldman is great. We all know that. I’m just putting that out there so we can move on. He dissolves into the role in the way that, well, only Gary Oldman can. I mean, you know, he’s Gary fucking Oldman.

What Oldman does right (and what Wright does right) is that they don’t just do a tribute band version of Churchill. We all know the voice and the speeches and as appealing as hearing those things is (I have an LP of Churchill speeches that I listen to ever once and a while because, damnit, they still work), often times the most interesting cover songs are the ones that play around with the melody, the tempo, or the instrumentation. (Link a bunch of cool covers here).

Again: It’s Gary Oldman. He could play Margaret Thatcher and I would buy it (not that he could make me not hate her).

The supporting actors around Oldman are equally, if less loudly, wonderful.

Kristin Scott Thomas turns out wonderully as Clementine Churchill, imbuing her role with more class and grace in the few scenes that she has in the picture. Like Gary Oldman, she's Kristen Scott Thomas. I'm not equipped to talk about what a fantastic actor she is. She just is. Just look at her.

Actually, you know what? Where's my Clementine Churchill movie? Get on that one, Hollywood.

Nobody disapproves like Stephen Dillane on Game of Thrones and that remains true in this film. He plays Chruchill's primary rival for control of Parliament and, ostensibly, the most reasonable, best-informed guy in the room, who more or less proves that just because you've got all of the facts on your side, that doesn't mean that you're right-- especially if you don't have morality on your sides. So, you know, he plays another version of Stannis Baratheon, but this time he doens't lose his head (spoilers for Game of Thrones).

Lily James also turns out a wonderful performance in a role that a lesser actor (and director and crew), would be deemed politely as “thankless.” In this film, she serves as an entry point into the film, as well as its almost sole POV from a normal human being.

Also: Shout out to my main man Ben Mendelsohn! We did it, Mendo! We feasting!

Wright et al remind us that pugnaciousness in the face of fascism isn’t fanaticism, it is survival. The film reminds us that the future of democracy lies with the people and not with the so-called ruling class. Lastly, it reminds us that flawed men can do good things and that good men can be wrong, and, maybe most importantly, that the solutions to our most obvious problems are not easy. They’re hard won. That often people must suffer in order to learn. Or, at least it alludes to all of these things. As a film, Darkest Hour seeks to embed our better angels within the biography of one of history’s Great Men.

The more I think about it, the more I think I love it. Ultimately, politics will probably dissuade a lot of people from seeing it. It will also certainly keep a lot of people from enjoying it. As much as I sympathize with these people, as much as they are not wrong, I also have to point out that this is film. This is a movie. This is a story.

Darkest Hour plays with and engages with history and story and myth in a way that I still cannot quality. It left me wanting to cry for reasons that I can’t quite pin down. It’s an imperfect story about an imperfect subject told through an imperfect medium, and at this time of night, in this time of my life, in this level of my sobriety, I am completely incapable of finding a better encapsulation of just what cinema is supposed to be.

In short, I liked Darkest Hour quite a bit. It's a solid drama, bolstered by an excellent cast and energetic directing, but more than anything, it's an old-fashioned tale about why character matters. So, perhaps the world was clamoring for another Churchill biopic, whether it knew it or not.

James Kislingbury is a writer, a podcaster, and would kill for five minutes alone with this Hitler guy. You can donate to his Patreon . You can buy the book he edited here (and on eBay). You can also follow him on Twitter. Also, if you well and truly give a shit hmu on my Paypal. Want to buy me a coffee? Get at my Ko-Fi. Happy new year!

PUT IT IN MY VEINS

I guess this is one of them new surprises. The last I heard of Sicario 2, all they had was a subtitle and a vague idea that it was going to be about Benicio Del Toro's character. I didn't even know it was happening?



And now? Now? Give me that drug war stuff. Give it to me now!