Destroy Everything You Touch

A Review of DESTROYER (2018)
Directed by Karyn Kasuma
Written by Phil Hay and Mat Manfredi
Cinematography by Julie Kirkwood
Score by Theodore Shapiro
Staring Nicole Kidman, Toby Kebbell, Tatiana Maslany, Scoot McNairy, Bradley Whitford, Toby Huss, and Sebastian Stan

Stop me if you've heard this before, but, I have a soft spot for certain kinds of movies. European technothrillers are one of them. Cops-on-the-edge are another. There is just something deeply compelling about people with a strong sense of right and wrong headed for a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour. Destroyer is definitely one of those and it's a pretty good one of those, at that.

The strength of Destroyer is that it's a film that does not want to be liked. It's characters are all assholes and they're all making obvious, if logical mistakes. It stays true to the sub-genre and doesn't ever feel the urge to make its characters have hearts of gold or secret doubts. No, they're just scared apes with shoes that are just smart enough to know that they'll be dead soon. It's a tragedy by way of a police procedural and while it isn't anything shocking or new, it is well put together

The plot of the film centers around Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman), a Los Angeles Police Department detective at the end of her tether. A body is found on the banks of the LA river and Bell, on her own accord, descends into the hell of an undercover case she worked from the beginning of her career. 

And, because we live in a post-True Detective world, her journey takes place across split times, weaving flashbacks into the narrative, showing Kidman’s Erin Bell before she was a complete waste-oid. The film bounces back and forth between young make-up and old make-up until the two narratives meet in a fairly unexpected way and, of course, Bell ends up where all bad cops in these sorts of movies end up: Exactly where she deserves.*

(It's also worth stating that in between the "beginning" of the film and the end of the film, we're treated to several botched bank robberies, lots of scenes of hangovers, and one of the saddest handjobs in all of cinema-- a point of distinction, to be sure.)

Nicole Kidman is the heart of this movie. Without her-- even with the odd bits of brilliant direction-- there is no film. As much as this movie throws wigs and dentures and weird make-up on top of her, Kidman never stops acting natural. She is believable as a bright-eyed young thing, as well as a boozed-up mom that should have been put out to pasture years ago. It's not so much intense as it is this slow motion garbage fire. It's a lot of fun to watch and it's the human heart beating at the center of what could have been an otherwise dreary bit of nihilism.**

One choice that stands out in the film is just how impervious Kidman's Bell is to cop one-liner bullshit. On multiple occasions, the older embittered Kidman character runs up against cops giving  her a ribbing and she just looks at them, as one should any time anyone tries to break your balls, with a look of confusion and contempt. It's a character choice and a script detail that I deeply connect with.

Would I say that I'm a Sebastian Stan stan? Yes, I would.

Sebastian Stan co-stars as a fellow cop/co-conspirator/lover and, as it typical with somebody juggling so many different jobs, it doesn't go great for him. It's always good to see Sebastian Stan and it's especially nice to see him acting in something that is more interesting than a house payment. I like him a lot, both in this movie and in general. I’ve liked him ever since Kings (a show that me and three other people watched). Anyways, go watch Kings.

Oh yeah, I guess he's pretty good in it. I mean, just look at him. He's great. But, also, I really just wanted to mention Kings. It was a great show and it had a lot going for it and the timing just wasn't right for it.

Man. Kings. . .

And speaking of fan favorites and True Detective, this movie has Scoot McNairy! And for once in his fucking career, he gets to play a normal guy who gets to live a normal life! I'll watch him in anything, but it's an especially nice change of pace when you're not counting down the minutes to him getting shot in the back of the head or whatever.

And, to clarify, Scoot was not in Kings, but you should still try to hunt it down anyways.***

The score from Theodore Shapiro is perfect for the film. Like the film itself, it vaccilates between these moments of well-composed beauty to ugly, droning heavy metal****. Like every great score, it both helps establish and amplify the sun-bleached horrorshow world of Destroyer.

Again, maybe I'm a sucker, but I do love me some sunbleached LA set to distorted violin strings. Or maybe it's because I'm American and I've got fuckin' taste.

Like a lot of movies, Destroyer is a movie that kind of came and went. And like a good chunk of those movies, it doesn't deserve that fate. While it isn't anything shockingly new, its stand out achievements in direction and acting elevate the picture above the usual morass of these sorts of stories-- and the sorts of movies that make all of the money these days. Destroyer is a work with a perspective and it sells its ideas with skill and with beauty-- albeit the beauty of a brush fire.

FOOTNOTES:
* And that's maybe why these movies are still tolerable: They're the only avenue in which bad cops actually get what they deserve. What a cool thing.

** On an ironic level, it's also fun to watch Nicole Kidman play "against type," meaning "what if she wasn't attractive?"

*** Seriously, watch Kings. It was only one season long and it's greatest sin was that it came out on network TV right before streaming and prestige TV blew up. It had Ian McShane and Bryan Cox on it!

**** I'm a little less hot on the droning metal part of the soundtrack. Again, as much as I'm a sucker for that sort of a thing, I do find it slightly annoying that, as a society, we all decided that traditional symphonic scores were just going to be replaced by synths being records in the next apartment over. I mean, whatever. It usually works. I shouldn't complain.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and does not smoke indoors. Must be losing his touch. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

Too Much, Too Late, Too Loud (A Kind of Review)

Some Thoughts on ASSASSINATION NATION (2018)

Written and Directed by Sam Levinson
Cinematography by Marcell Rév
Score by Ian Hultquist
Staring Abra, Odessa Young, Suki Waterhouse, and Hari Nef 

Assassination Nation is a film that wants to be Persona meets Sasori meets The Conversation. What is more is that it thinks it's all of these movies. If that sounds either intriguing or a mess to you, the answer is: Yes, yes it is.

Assassination Nation is a style in search of a story. It's a bold, strange movie that wants to tackle a hundred subjects at once and also wants to be 1980's trash horror movie-- and it wants you to take it seriously. Very seriously. It's admirable for its ambition, it is also maddening because none of it works as well as it needs to.

The gravest sin of Assassination Nation commits, style-wise is how over-written it is. I complained a week* or so ago about The Mule and how the big beats of that movie sound like a formula from Final Draft than they sound like people. Assassination Nation has a different, but related problem. The Mule is trying to write plot into peoples' mouths. This movie is trying to write agenda into peoples' mouths. It wants to shout what the point of all of this is and, oh, man, haven't I got you thinking now?

And I'm sitting there watching it, thinking, no, man, you don't. I'm here for the Female Prisoner #701 homage and you have vastly overestimated how much I care what you have to say, bro. And then it just keeps on going about What It All Means and how Current Events are Effecting The Youth. Perhaps if you don't have Twitter this might have some novelty. As a film it feels like a panicked treatise on everything that is wrong with the internet but also a letter on Sam Levinson's keyboard was broken.

The movie pulses with this sort of energy. There is nothing in this film that is at half-dosage. The acting, the direction, the lighting, the set design, the everything, is going as loud and as extreme as it possibly can. Even the quite moments in this film are a panoply of Final Cut editing tools and film school excess. This has some appeal, because at no point does the movie ever become boring. It’s a rocket exploding on the landing pad. Beautiful and loud and probably not what the builders intended.

And on the other hand, the value of Assassination Nation is that it's a sleazy exploitation movie (or a simulacrum of one, a trust fund baby wearing a Sex Pistol t-shirt), is that it's dealing with the regressive nature of the internet and the toxic personalities that it fosters. We're now living in a post-#MeToo world where the president of the United States, a game show host, won an election by convincing your brain-worm infested mee-maw that El Salvadorians were going to break into her house and make her a drug mule. It's wild out there and beyond The Purge and Riverdale there aren't a whole lot of piece of media that are dealing with this issue directly. That itself is a problem, because it also seems like most of the popular media dealing with these stories also seem to be dumber than shit (but I stand to be corrected).

If there is one redeeming quality in the movie, it's that it takes a very dim view of the internet as it stands. As much as we all love videos of capybaras in hot springs, it's also where budding young psychopaths are radicalized into the next school shooter. The internet is an untended garden and Sam Levinson seems to understand this. The internet in Assassination Nation, as in real life, is a platform in which the worst aspects of human nature are allowed to roam freely.

With that said, taking a stand against nihilism is hardly a brave or interesting point of view. Maybe it's a necessary one, but it doesn't feel like something you can hang a movie on-- or at least it's not something you can hang on this movie.

I mean, for a movie with as many Sarah-Connor-in-T2-ass sounding monologues as this movie has, it sure doesn't seem to actually say very much. Now Sarah Connor, there was a woman who had a problem with technology and could tell you what the solution was.

Assassination Nation is never quite lands. It's a film that has a lot going on, but none of it means much of anything. It's a movie that wraps itself around an issue, but ultimately has very little to say about the issue other than it exists (Hey, were you aware that the interent is a cess-pool? Me too!). It's a confused film that isn't entertaining enough to get away with it. It doesn’t seem so much ambitious as it does pretentious. Like the best internet videos, the most spectacular fails are the ones where they really go for it and I can't say that the cast and crew of this movie weren't going for it.

If only for that, Assassination Nation is a film worth watching. Maybe.

  

OTHER THOUGHTS:

• A better version of this "Too much, too now" type of film from 2018 is Sorry to Bother You-- which also happens to be my favorite movie from that year. It's a hell of a ride and, unlike Assassination Nation, all of its extraneous details and asides feel like part of a greater tapestry than stuff Boots Riley wrote into the movie.
• Notably, it objectifies male bodies in a way that I don’t know that I’ve ever seen before in film. Good for them.
• This film stars a trans woman (Hari Nef) and it never goes out of its way to stress that she is trans. She's just one of the girls and that's that. Which is cool and more movies should follow this one's example when it comes to that sort of a thing. Where it gets really cool is that, as much rampant attempted murder as this film features, at no point does feel the need to us the t-word or misgender her-- because this film might be packed with jock douchebags and general-issue psychopaths, but they're not monsters. It's admirable that even a movie that seeks to shock knows that there's a line where it stops being fun.
• This film is directed by Sam Levinson, the son of Barry Levinson, so fuck this guy.
• I can't help but feel-- and I know this is fucked up to say-- that Assassination Nation is the type of movie that Max Landis thinks he's making.
• I was just thinking about Sasori: Female Prisoner #701 and, seriously, just watch that instead and then maybe wash it down with a re-watch of Hackers. Because Sasori and Hackers are ill as fuck. 
• For that matter, also go read Assassin Nation. It's a beaut of a comic. In stores now!

No, seriously, go watch Female Prisoner #701

FOOTNOTES:

* Okay, this took me, like, four months to put out for some reason. Not sure how. Not sure why. But, hey, here we are.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and hasn't had any internet death threats lately. Must be losing his touch. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

The Definitive Ranked List of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

It's a sad state of affairs. All of these people putting out their lists on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What is the best? What is the worst? Would the Hulk show up to my funeral? These people are fools at best and rapscallions at worst. They would such precious seconds of your day for a reward as paltry as a click. They take you for a rube. They would spit on you if they saw you in the light of day.

I will do no such thing. From my fingertips, I type the truth and only the truth. The following is the definitive list-- and as far as I'm concerned the only list worth reading-- of all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films that I've seen, at least partially.

That I remember.

And, I will be honest with you, it's all kind of a blur.

So, let's get to it! And, also, no the Hulk is not showing up to your funeral!


14. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

The more I think about it, the more I think that Guardians 2 might be one of the worst movies that I've ever seen-- or half-seen, because I quit about as soon as Ego appeared. It's hard for me to think of a more aggresively loud movie than this one-- and I'm a guy that still kind of likes Fate of the Furious-- a movie where, after two-hundred hours, a man defeats a Russian sub with American muscle. No, Guardians 2 sucks because none of it matters. None of it makes sense. It's just a lot of loud, shitty nonsense, to no purpose. I mean, there's en media res and then there's this movie. I don't have time for it. Ugh.


Just a whole crew of weird looking Han Solo's being bad at their job and trying to suck their own dick and actually, that movie sounds better than Guardians 2. James Gunn, I know you don't have a lot going on right now, so give me a ring!

HONORARY MENTION: The trailer with "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac made me realize how much I really and truly love Fleetwood Mac and Rumors. What a great fucking album.

13. Captain America: Civil War (2016)

I watched thirty minutes off and on at a pizza shop once. It seemed real bad. Also, from what I remember of the trailer, it introduced what is easily the dumbest concept in all of the MCU: People running at each other over an open field to fight. What are you Scottish? Get a fucking helicopter.

12. The Incredible Hulk (2008)

This movie gets put in dead last because I literally forgot that it existed until I made this list. On the plus side, somebody gets Hulk-illness by drinking a Brazilian energy drink.


11. Dr. Strange (2016)

It's a real toss up between this one and GotG2 as to the shittiest of the Marvel movies I've seen. While Guardians 2 is the most offensive on the surface, Dr. Strange put a lot of effort into wasting what might be the best cast out of any of their films.What I can remember is that Benedict Cumberbatch (which is his name, you won't find me dipping into the gutters for that one) goes to Harry Potter Adult Night School and it all looks like a made for TV movie. At one point I almost got excited and I was almost convinced that I was dealing with a good movie and that was when our friend Dr. Strange was on location in Kathmandu. All of the shots look like they were stolen and it almost looks like somebody might be trying to make a film and then he walks onto the Syfy channel's backlot and it goes back to sucking much ass and shit. Oh and there was a bad joke about "It's the wi-fi password." Fuck you, movie.

10. Iron Man II (2010)

I can't say that I remember anything from this movie other than the fact that Mickey Rourke looks like shit and that he says "bird" in a really delightful fashion. Does anybody actually remember this film?

9. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

All I can remember is that Benecio del Toro was in this and he probably had a funny voice. Does that sound about right? Oh and Drax is fun. I like Drax. Who doesn't like Drax? He's a sincere voice in a world of smarmy dipshits popping off sarcastic remarks. It's like being back in college, but CSULB is populated solely by me and I'm in space.

Actually, since I'm here, it's worth pointing out that Chris Pratt is a creepy religious prick.

8. The Avengers (2012)

Two things stick out to me about the first Avengers movie-- I mean besides the fact that it works as well as it does (which is to say at all). The first is that this was the movie where I realized that, as a society, we all decided that we were okay with using 9/11 imagery in pop entertainment again. It was weird after all these years of Hollywood tacitly agreeing not to blow up New York again, the movie that broke the seal on that one. The second was that I went to a bar afterwards and a couple that was visiting Pasadena for a golf tournament thought that I was going to fuck the husband. Apparently that was the vibe I was giving off at the time.

7. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

I feel bad not liking this movie. Because I should like it. It's got espionage. It's got a man out of time. It's got Cold War bullshit. It's based on one of my favorite superhero arcs (written by one of my favorite writers-- Ed Brubaker). And, yet, it's the movie that broke me on Marvel movies.

Winter Soldier is the movie that made me realize that I wasn't watching movies, but that I was watching ads.

That I just paid twelve buck to be sold backpacks and bedsheets and action figures and the next movie (which won't conclude in any meaningful way, either).

And, hey, it's show business. They don't put these things out as a tax right off. All movies are there to make money. I don't even think that a guy like Jim Jarmusch became a film director so he could lose his shirt. And a lot of good movies are meant to be popular entertainment. But there's just something about these movies-- about movies like Winter Soldier-- that just don't sit right with me.

I like Star Wars. I like James Bond. Those are money-grabbing operations, too. Arguably Star Wars is even worse about its merchandise game. So why don't those franchises bother me? Why don't they feel as hollow and artless as the MCU?

What it comes down to is that I just like Star Wars and James Bond more. I can ignore the moneyman behind the curtain because they feel like real movies. They feel like a vision that somebody wanted to put onto the screen (with the exception of Solo, which is a whole other conversation). Those movies have memorable scores. Some truly exceptional performances (with a universe full of henchmen is anybody as good as Jaws? Or Oddjob. . . Okay, maybe Killmonger).

On the other hand, the MCU is safe. It's comforting. It's warm. It's art built by committee. Works created to never offend, to avoid taking risks, and to please as many cross-sections and demographics as humanly possible. Which is fine, but, if these movies were a food, they'd be a Subway sandwich. Not good, not bad, but you can't say that it wasn't filling, that it didn't do what it set out to do.

I remember when the trailer for this first came out, I felt nothing. I wondered if I was just dead inside. If something had left me. Then I watched the trailer for True Detective and I realized, no, I've actually just moved on. Not matured or got better or anything like that, just that my time with these movies, with this series, has passed. . . Which means that I then watched another five or six of them.

Plus, the Brubaker, Epting, and Breitweiser comics are just better. Go read those. Oh, also, Toby Jones as a computer Nazi was pretty fun. I'll give them that.

6. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

It's got a lot of cute jokes in it and it's highly tolerable film. The best thing I can say about it-- which is the best thing I can say about any of these movies-- is it seems like a lot of nice people, including Taika Watiti got a boatload of money for this movie. Good for them.

5. Thor (2011)

This is up that high, really? Okay. Thor is a fine movie. A good cast, well used. Oh and Destroyer was good to see.

4. Iron Man (2008)

I'm hard-pressed to say why this film is so high up here other than the fact that, at the time, it was kind of amazing that they succeeded in making this movie. That they managed to insert so much Marvel mythology into it and that it all kind of worked. Now, I bet if I went back and watched it, all of that would be old news, but at the time, it was pretty cool. Also, I directly associate this movie with Bug (2008) because Iron Man was sold out, so my girlfriend and a friend went back to her place to watch that instead. There's a second part to this story, but this is a family blog.

3. Iron Man III (2013)

I'm not sure that Iron Man III is actually a good movie, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. I know it has a lot of things wrong with it. It's too long, it's all over the place, and, like a lot of the worst James Bond movies, I feel like it has about three villains too many, but, man, when this movie

Again: None of this is really good. It's just wild-- and maybe this is the one exception to these movies being bland, but I'm not sure this movie knows why it's wild.

I mean, for god's sake, this movie ends with Iron Man and his gal Friday murdering a bunch of disabled veterans. That's it. That's the end of the movie. Somebody wrote that, approved it, filmed it, and then millions of people went "I love this, the movie where a bunch of disabled veterans were murdered brutally by an alcoholic billionaire. More of this please!"

Movies are wild, folks.

2. Black Panther (2018)

Is this really that high up here? Man, I must like these movies even less than I thought. Black Panther is fine and, in a lot of ways, it really exemplifies everything that is good about these movies and everything that is wrong about these movies-- which, I think, is the same thing.

What is good about Black Panther isn't the movie. It's good because it's a moment. It's this brief moment in time where we all decided to watch a movie about black people hanging out with black people and being black without (almost) any white people interfering or "fixing" them. And everyone liked it. And it made a shit ton of money. And it was eventually nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Black Panther means something and it was cool, even as a dumbass white nerd, to be a part of that, even as somebody watching from the outside in.

But, yeah, then there's the actual movie. The movie itself is a Marvel movie. It's full of bad CGI, terrible sound design, the action scenes are poorly laid out, and yet one more meaningless, mind-numbing action set piece that goes on for roughly six hours. Also, they expect me to believe that the CIA would aid a small African nation. Come on.

On the other hand, it has the best ensemble cast out of any of the current MCU movies (that I've seen). Everyone goes from zero to sixty. They all have their purpose and their moment and they almost all do it in the first thirty minutes of the film.

Plus, you have Killmonger, who is not only the best villain of the MCU, but one of the best villains of any action movie of the past ten years. He's great. He's played by Michael B. Jordan (who is a little too young, but sells it well) and he's well-written and well-motivated. He's justified in the way that Magneto is justified. He sells you on his insane scheme and he isn't even trying! Plus, he's got a tight look! I can't say that I would watch a Killmonger solo film, but I would be interested in one.

Also, Killmonger is a great fucking name.

Back to what this movie means in the greater pop cultural context-- Seeing black kids excited for this movie is awesome. It's not something that I can directly empathize with (as I am terminally white and movies have been made for me since forever), but it's something that I can appreciate.That black kids get to see themselves as heroes and that Africans can see themselves as the people saving the day is rad as shit. It's so simple and it's so cool and it's funny that what is ostensibly an ad for

Also, that album, that album? That album is a fucking banger. I don't know if I'll bother to see Black Panther 2, but I'll be first in line to pick up the Black Panther 2 album.

1. Captain America (2011)

The first Captain America movie is the only Marvel movie I've bothered to watch twice (and with that said, I still can't remember what the last act is or how Red Skull dies-- he does die, right?). I think this is down to the fact that Captain America is a film that is accidentally about something.

Captain America is the only movie out of all of the above that is actually about heroism. It's about a kid, Steve Rogers, choosing to do what is the right thing regardless of the personal consequences. While, yeah, it is about saving the world, he isn't doing it to save the world (because who wouldn't try and save the world if they had to?), Steve Rogers wants to save the world because it's the right thing to do.

Captain America argues that being a hero isn't about a feat of arms, nor about using your talents or your privelege to do good. It's about choosing to do the right thing even if it means getting your ass kicked-- and then choosing to do it again and again and again. And that's fucking cool to watch.

And, again, some of this is personal and maybe it's down to my perception of myself. Steve Rogers is basically my weight and height (the same as Frank Sinatra, incidentally, who was also not allowed to fight in WWII. . . allegedly) and who is rebuffed from being able to stop Nazism.

Steve Rogers just wants to fight for America and they won't let him! That's tragic and sad and it links up to a lot of men at the time who wanted to do their part, but weren't allowed to because they didn't meet the requirements. I know I'm looking back at history with rose-colored glasses, but I think I'm allowed to be nostalgic for a time when America wanted to fight Nazis instead of vote for them.

 I don't know that I would ever be as brave or as noble as Steve Rogers, but I would like to be. I would like to think that I would be willing to get the shit kicked out of me in ye old New York and I would like to think that I'd throw myself onto a grenade in order to save-- not my friends-- but a bunch of no-name hapless dickheads who simply don't deserve to get killed. And I'd like to think that I'd volunteer for an experimental hunk-juice injection.

There is a lot about this movie that is forgettable and generic (probably, but I forgot most of it), but the highs stick with me because it is a super hero movie that is more concerned with being a "hero" than with being "super."

I'll admit: I teared up during this movie. Actually, shit, I teared up at the end of Thor, too. I should move that one up.

Also, it has Hugo Weaving and I love him! Who doesn't love Hugo Weaving? He's great!

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and has never been nor will ever be a Hulk. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

Some Thoughts on the Latest Space Madness Movie

A kind of review of High Life (2019)
Directed by Claire Denis
Written by Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau
Starring Robert Pattinson, Mia Goth, Juliette Binoche, and Andre Benjamin

High Life is a dirge. That isn't to say that it's a bad film and it is certainly too rich to throwaway as being "interesting."

I think back to Gravity-- a film only similar on a surface level-- which I wrote with my hands still shaking from the experience and I am writing about High Life only having just walked out of it. In the case of Gravity I hadn't had a chance to come down off of the high of watching that movie. In the case of High Life, it is a movie that I am still digesting. That I'm not sure how I feel about it or that I'll ever really know how I feel about it.

But I doubt confusion bordering on ambivalence is what Claire Denis was going for when she set out to make this movie (a story that she had wanted to tell for going on fifteen years, apparently).

Or maybe not. I can't say that I know too much about Claire Denis (and that's on me).

That it accomplishes a consistent funereal tone might be what makes it worth while and it might be why I'd tell you to miss it entirely. It isn't a whole lot of fun.


That said, it's a film with a few stand out sequences that I probably won't stop thinking about until the day I die. There's a big one towards the beginning of the film (if you've seen it, yes, it's the one you're thinking of), but there are also a lot of little moments. Strange, flitting moments in the memories of these characters that are beautiful and haunting and are as relatable as they are alien. There is a flashback of Monte (Robert Pattinson) walking through the woods with his dog. There is Boyse (Mia Goth) living as a rail-borne tramp back on Earth. There is a completely out-of-the-blue sequence in which a guru (I think?) talks to a French student about the premise of the film. Each of these scenes are so light and so out of the blue that you can't help but feel that they must have meaning. Little brush strokes of color in the middle of all of this gloom that feel like real art. That somebody has something to say. And then you go back to Monte and his crew slowly succumbing to space madness and you know that there is something here, but you just can't say what it is.

This takes two hours. I wish I could be more definitive about how I feel about the movie. It sucked. It rocked. It was a thrill ride. Whatever. But taking something like that-- especially as of this moment-- and distilling it down to five hundred words seems. .  . Vulgar? Low? High Life has too much going on for me to treat it like that.

Like the movie, me feeling on it are a mystery, even to myself. I can't say that it's an entirely enjoyable feeling. What I can say is that it is cinema and looking around at movies these days and at the world in general, I think we could us more things like that.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and has had enough of regular old Earth madness, thank you very much. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

A Critical Update Regarding My Official Stance on the Latest Installment in the Star War Franchise

I will watch this new Star War.

Thank you for your support and understanding.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and an enemy to space fascists everywhere. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

Let's All Talk About the Big Movie Thing Part 3,568,432!

That looks like it might be pretty okay? It might even be good?

I have some hopes for this movie-- tepid hopes, tempered by the stark reality that DC seems terminally incapable of making a film that is even mildly worth a damn. I love Joaquin Phoenix and Todd Haynes Soldonz Phillips is actually an inspired choice considering that almost all of his movies are about demi-criminal dirtbags looking for a laugh-- except this time he's not trying to fool us into thinking they're actually funny.

I was going to go on to say something more about the flak that this movie has been catching online and what a big, obvious target it is, but then I remember that I was 19 once and I'm a fucking media studies major. I get it. It's an almost stastical certainty that this movie is going to suck shit and it's a good opportunity for two-thousand people to simultaneously make the comment "Why would I want to watch this when I could watch Taxi Driver/Punch Drunk Love/The King of Comedy?" (as though Scorsese and Anderson don't wear their influences on their sleeves-- also, if you're going to make the that comparison, at least have the decency to bring up You Were Never Really Here, a criminally underrated Taxi Driver-inflected film staring Phoenix from 2018-- so, come on, get it together, snobs.)

And here I am bitching about people bitching, which is kind of what I was hoping to avoid. But I've have a beer in me and I'm not a very good writer, so here we are. Fuck it.

Life is too fucking short. I hope this movie is good. Not because it would be good to see DC get a win or for there to be another "smart" blockbuster movie or to see somebody do a cover-song version of Scorcese, but because a good movie, of any variety, of any caliber is a cool thing. It's good, and it is much more interesting to dissect a good movie than a bad one.

So, while we're all popping off, throwing our scalding takes out into the ether, here's my question: What if they actually get away with it?

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.