Kill Bill vol. 1 (2003) [Review Re-View]
Originally released October 10, 2003:
Breathtaking and stylistically amazing. That’s all there is to it. Can’t wait for part two.
Nate’s Grade: A
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
Kill Bill was a turning point in the career of one of the biggest cinematic artists of the past 30 years, and as exciting and stylish as Volume 1 proved, this is the point where Quentin Tarantino vanished within himself and became the ultimate B-movie revivalist. It only took two films for Tarantino to not just become an indie brand name but his own adjective, as Hollywood was flooded with “Tarantino-esque” imitators chasing after the man’s unique voice of snappy pop-culture soliloquies, hard-boiled dialogue, and meta-textual irony. Of course the imitators could never truly capture the full appeal of Tarantino’s movies, overvaluing the surface-level aspects (quirky characters, non-linear plots, unexpected bursts of violence) and missing the greater character depth and thematic intricacies that allow the style to accentuate the entertainment rather than solely serve as that value. 2003 was the crossroads where Tarantino switched from smaller dramas and crime thrillers about semi-recognizable and relatable people (the middle-aged romance in Jackie Brown is the most tender and sincere writing of his career) to remaking and re-packaging his favorite grindhouse exploitation movies. It was like Tarantino himself was following the path of the would-be Tarantino-esque imitators.
Kill Bill began as an idea between actress Uma Thurman and Tarantino on the set of Pulp Fiction; it even feels like a big-screen realization of the failed Fox Force Five pilot that Mia Wallace (Thurman) filmed. Thurman had the idea of the opening, a bloody and beaten woman in a wedding dress being executed only to survive her execution. The idea germinated for years and became two movies worth of material. It’s hard for me to envision Kill Bill as one whole entity because the two volumes feel so thematically distinct. The first is an homage to 1970s kung-fu movies and Eastern cultural influences whereas the second volume serves as an homage to spaghetti Westerns and Western cultural influences. I’m shocked that through the annals of numerous physical media releases at no point has someone released Kill Bill as one whole four-hour movie. It’s only ever been physically screened as such once by Tarantino, and I think the implicit admission is that, while conceived as one sprawling and gargantuan epic, the movies work better as halves that reflect and enrich one another due to that separation. As I wrote in my 2004 review of Volume 2, the first part is the “show” and the second is the “tell,” but what a show Tarantino pulls off.
There was a time where the idea of Tarantino helming an action movie felt antithetical, but he tapped every corner of his encyclopedic knowledge of genre cinema to give us one of the best action movies of all time. The centerpiece sequence pitting The Bride against the Crazy 88s, as well as the ball-and-chain-wielding schoolgirl Gogo, feels like the culmination of a lifetime of cinema geek passion. It’s viscerally exciting without getting boring over the course of twenty-something minutes because Tarantino keeps things shifting, never falling upon redundancies, as if he’s so eager to squeeze in each and every loving homage and reference point. The climax, which again feels so natural an escalation and end point for a “part one,” took eight weeks to film, and the MPAA insisted it be toned down to secure an R-rating (he turned it black and white to obscure the color of the blood, itself another indirect homage to martial arts movies of old when they played on American television). Reportedly over 450 gallons of fake blood was used during the production of both volumes, but this first edition is definitely the more gleefully over-the-top.
The revenge structure is shaped around The Bride (née Beatrix Kiddo) killing the five members of her former gang, the Deadly Viper Squad. Volume 1 only covers two members meeting their just desserts, one of which is the opening scene. That means after the first ten minutes fighting Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), we’re working the rest of the movie to the next boss fight. That’s where we get the character dynamics, the obstacles that The Bride must overcome (step one: wiggle your big toe), and the history of O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Lui) and her ascension to Japanese crime lord. With less careful filmmakers, this middle stretch might feel sluggish, but with Tarantino, it’s invigorating as the new world and its many faces connect together to create such an intriguing and engrossing larger picture. Volume 1 provides the structural bones of the story, as well as buckets of sticky viscera, whereas Volume 2 adds the meat and complexity and larger nuance. That doesn’t mean Volume 1 is lacking creativity, it’s just that it’s the half that has to perform more foundational lifting so that those character details and choices will have the larger impact they do. Volume 1 is a long straight line back to O-Ren Ishii, and the accelerating carnage is wonderful to behold.
Thurman has never been better than with her Quentin collabs. After her sudden rise in Pulp Fiction, it felt like her career stalled playing many “hot girl” roles in misfires like The Truth About Cats & Dogs, The Avengers, and of course Batman & Robin. After her Kill Bill revival, her star rose again only to once again falter from more reductive “hot girl” roles in misfires like Paycheck, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and the movie musical of The Producers. She recently came into the casting orbit of Lars von Trier, a filmmaker who never met a beautiful woman he didn’t want to punish excessively onscreen for society’s ills. Her role in 2014’s Nymphomaniac volume 1 was a memorable high point as a contemptuous woman confronting her husband’s younger lover, the titular nymphomaniac. Perhaps it was the meta-textual comment of Thurman’s cinematic type-casting, the older “hot girl” replaced by the younger, newer beauty. I’m probably just grasping for greater meaning here. Thurman and Tarantino didn’t speak for years after the conclusion of the Kill Bill series, but it wasn’t until 2018 that we found out why. That’s when the public found out about the existence of a video where Thurman was driving a car and crashed. The problem was it should have been a stunt driver but Tarantino insisted and pressured Thurman into doing the stunt, she crashed, was injured, and still suffers to this day. She says she has since forgiven Tarantino even though he and Harvey Weinstein withheld footage of the incident for years.
The music has taken on a life of its own. Much was repurposed from old movies and given new context, much like Tarantino’s overall creative mantra. The siren-blaring announcement of two foes facing each other has become its own pop-culture meme. The slow-motion walk to “Battle Without Honor or Humility” has also become pop-culture shorthand. “Twisted Nerve” is a great ringtone, and “Woo Hoo” by the Japanese surf rock girl group The 5,6,7,8s became so inescapably hummable that it eventually became the catchy theme of a wireless company.
This movie also holds a special place for me because the image that immediately comes to mind is watching my father uproariously laughing throughout the movie and rocking in his theater seat. A severed head leading to a geyser of endless blood had my father cackling like a child. By the end of the movie, I recall him turning to me, smiling ear-to-ear, and exclaiming, “Now that was a great movie!” Conversely, I also remember my college roommate falling asleep next to me as The House of Blue Leaves was bathed in (>450) gallons of (black and white) blood.
In the ensuing two decades, Tarantino has directed five other movies, published two books, been nominated for Best Director twice, won his second screenwriting Oscar, and essentially brought the tastes of the Academy to his own. He’s written three Best Supporting Actor winners (Christoph Waltz in 2009 and 2012, Brad Pitt in 2019) and become one of the most commercially reliable names, a director whose very name itself is a selling point for mainstream audiences. Even while some may bemoan that the indie provocateur might be “slumming” with his own highly polished version of B-movies, he’s dragged those same tastes to wide commercial appeal and industry acclaim. Kill Bill Volume 1 is the beginning of Tarantino tattooing ironic air quotes to his output, but when you’re this talented and passionate about movies of all kinds, even a kung-fu homage can become a cultural force and one of the best superhero origins ever (The Bride is pretty much a superhero and compared to Superman in Volume 2). Kill Bill Volume 1 is still a masterfully entertaining and bloody fun experience twenty years later.
Re-View Grade: A
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The Meg 2:The Trench (2023)
It’s Jason Statham riding a Jet ski and literally jousting giant sharks, so the fault should be on me expecting something more from The Meg 2, right? I wished there was more of this kind of gonzo schlocky action, moments like Statham kicking a guy into the mouth of a killer shark and saying, “So long, chum.” Too much of this movie is setting up an ensemble of characters that are boring and not Jason Statham, including villainous turncoats that I kept forgetting who they were. There are also small-sized dinosaurs but other characters just chase them down to shoot them. I was mostly fine with the first Meg movie as dumb fun, and this one seems to be going for the vibe of a bigger-budget Asylum/Sci-Fi Channel schlockbuster, the kind of movie with a “Sharktopus” or “Mega Shark” in its outlandish title. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t seem to accomplish even that aim. I wish the movie had been even more crazy but it feels like, for whatever misplaced idea of tone, that the filmmakers held back. Next time just have Statham psychically linked to the shark and fighting dinosaurs and own it.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Retribution (2023)
Liam Neeson has had one of the most unexpected second acts, from an esteemed dramatic thespian to Boomer action hero. The man’s natural gravitas elevated 2009’s Taken, plus the undiscovered thrill of watching Oskar Schindler karate chop goons in the neck, and ever since the Liam Neeson Action Vehicle was a 2010s Hollywood staple. He has been a downtrodden father, ex-husband, CIA agent, FBI agent, air marshal, border patrol agent, cop, ex-cop, ex-hitman, wolf-hunting marksman, snow plowman, ice road trucker, usually an alcoholic or recovering alcoholic, and always the beleaguered fighter called back reluctantly into action. But by the turn of the next decade, the Neeson Action Vehicle shifted from playing on the big screen to the small one, as the direct-to-DVD/streaming phase may likely extend to the remainder of the man’s career. He’s approaching his Geezer Teaser era (71 years old), though he has already made an appearance in an Expendables sequel, practically a subsidy for AARP action castoffs
I haven’t watched many of these latter Neeson action movies but the premise of Retribution intrigued me. Reminiscent of Speed, Neeson is Matt Turner, another beleaguered father who spends ninety percent of the movie in the confines of his car thanks to a pressure-triggered bomb that will explode if anyone exists. Unfortunately, Matt’s teen son and daughter are along for the ride in the backseat. They’re beset by antagonizing phone calls from a mysterious culprit with an escalating set of demands and orders. Can Matt save his family and maybe even his car too?
Apparently the third remake of a 2015 Spanish movie of the same name, Retribution moves along on a wholly predictable yet efficient plot as we’re introduced to supporting characters who will inevitably only serve one function. You don’t hire a famous name and then relegate them to one scene to get blown to smithereens. Likewise, there’s always an authority figure investigating the pieces who always has a supportive ear no matter the wild predicament of our hero. The kids are pretty much interchangeable as disaffected family members who will, over the course of 90 minutes of fantastic events, come to see that dad maybe cares after all and they shouldn’t be so rude to their old man. On the flip side, Matt will also come to better understand, through the intervention of a mad bomber, the importance of family he has been heretofore ignorant thereof. It’s all fairly mechanical clunky genre stuff, and if you’ve ever watched any relatively lower budget, straight-to-DVD action movie, especially the Geezer Teasers, then it’s all predictable. The viewing experience thusly comes down to finding nuggets of something memorable or different, something to hold onto unless the movie simply slips into a morass of mediocrity.
Retribution has one such moment and it just so happens to be its ending, so there will be spoilers ahead but I cannot fathom the person who would watch something like this, so formula-laden and familiar, and chafe at spoilers. Still, be warned, dear reader. It’s revealed by the end that our villain is none other than Matt’s business partner, a.k.a. The only other person that could profit off their personal bank stash who also happens to be played by a name actor (Matthew Modine, collect that paycheck). I don’t know why he personally sneaks into the backseat to threaten Matt at gunpoint when he’s been fine making threats from afar on the phone. Why the gun too when there’s already a bomb in play? Seriously, is it supposed to be surprising that Modine turns out to be our real villain, even after he fakes his own death as an elaborate fake-out? Anyway, after monologuing, Matt goes into full angry dad mode, growling a one-liner, and drives his precious car into the guardrails of a bridge, turning the car on its side. If Matt were to detach his seat belt, he would tumble into the river waters below, utilizing gravity as his savior from the potential blast radius (I suppose just forget about shrapnel or the real prospect of the car falling on top of him from the explosion). It makes for a satisfying if slightly clever (grading on a curve) comeuppance for our smarmy villain. Ending with your best moment is a sign that the filmmakers recognized what they had as a payoff. The movie literally ends seconds after, with Matt treading water, deserting any family resolution, admitting it was all just dross anyway.
What’s funny is how inconsequential the family drama is that is intended to underpin the high-stakes peril. We find out mom is talking to a divorce attorney, and this news is a bigger bomb than the one under the seas. Suddenly the squabbling children realize the love of their family, even gruff dad, and they want things to stay the same. This storyline is so underwritten, really just serving as a catalyst for the kids to shut up and stop being jerks, that it all feels like self-parody that a mad bomber terrorizing a family has helped facilitate their renewed bonds.
As a late career action vehicle for an actor getting long in the tooth, the blandly titled Retribution is a relatively forgettable thriller that asks too little of its star and its audience. There are all sorts of directions a story can go with the concept of a man being unable to leave his car, so it’s disappointing that Retribution does so little, tying events to an obvious conspiracy with few complications. Imagine the funnier version of this movie, where Matt lives the rest of his life in the car. He gets drive-thru fast food for every meal. His daughter’s wedding has to be outdoors and near an easily accessible parking lot. He begins to see the car as an extension of himself and refers to the both of them in the third person. It takes a Titane-esque twist, and he wants to become the car itself. Then, as a decrepit 101-year-old man, the car breaks down on the side of the road and he has no choice but to leave it, and he accepts his fate with open arms. Then again maybe that isn’t as funny to anyone but me. Even Neeson’s weathered gravitas can only do so much when all the movie asks of him is to stay upright and look forward.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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The Station Agent (2003) [Review Re-View]
Originally released December 5, 2003:
This is the most charming film of 2003, and Im not just saying this because I had an interview with one of its stars, Michelle Williams (Dawson’s Creek). Fnin McBride (Peter Dinklage) is a man with dwarfism. With every step he takes every look he gives, you witness the years of torture hes been through with glares and comments. Hes shut himself away from people and travels to an isolated train station to live. There he meets two other oddballs, a live-wire hot dog vendor (Bobby Cannavale) and a divorced mother (Patricia Clarkson). Together the three find a wonderful companionship and deep friendship. The moments showing the evolution of the relationship between the three are the films highlights. Its a film driven by characters but well-rounded and remarkable characters. Dinklage gives perhaps one of the coolest performances as the unforgettable Fin. Cannavale is hilarious as the loudmouth best friend that wants a human connection. Clarkson is equally impressive as yet another fragile mother (a similar role in the equally good Pieces of April). The writing and acting of The Station Agent are superb. Its an unforgettable slice of Americana brought together by three oddballs and their real friendship. You;ll leave The Station Agent abuzz in good feelings. This is a film you tell your friends about afterwards. There’s likely no shot for a dwarf to be nominated for an Oscar in our prejudiced times but Dinklage is deserving. The Station Agent is everything you could want in an excellent independent movie. It tells a tale that would normally not get told. And this is one beauty of a tale.
Nate’s Grade: A
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
Tom McCarthy didn’t invent the quirky, found family indie but he sure seems to have nearly perfected it, starting with 2003’s The Station Agent. This little gem of a movie is so subdued, so relaxed, and so gentle that it seems to adopt the very personality of its lead character, Fin (Peter Dinklage), a dwarf who just likes trains a lot and wants to live his life in solitude. He’s an unassuming man who keeps to himself as a means of survival, because almost every time he goes into public life Fin is met with stares, snickers, and harassment (the convenience store lady gets his attention to take his unsolicited picture). Very few will get to know this man beyond his superficial physical characteristics, so he retreats within himself, perhaps purposely obsessing over an antiquated hobby as a means of escape to the past. He’s a lonely man and the movie is about him finding his clan, his place in the world, by slowly lowering his defenses. It’s a simple sort of story that is lifted by the strength of its characters and its wonderful ensemble cast.
With such a taciturn main character we need a contrasting character, a much more talkative person with high energy, and this is beautifully embodied by Bobby Cannavale. He plays Joe Oramas, a coffee truck operator who exemplifies joy de vie. He’s charming, garrulous, and relentlessly upbeat, which makes for a magnificent odd couple contrast with Fin, and it allows both characters to gradually change and grow attached to one another’s mutual friendship. Finn allows himself to become more vulnerable and form bonds and Joe starts to see the world from Fin’s point of view, allowing himself to slow down and appreciate the smaller things he might have missed in his excitable and irascible activity. Dinklage’s dry understated performance is a perfect counterpoint to the churning energy emanating from a grinning Cannavale. This is a fine showcase of both actors, who would go on to win six Emmys between them in the years ahead.
The third member of this found family is Olivia, played by Patricia Clarkson, and I actually think the movie might have worked better without her character. She does provide a point of view that our two guys lack; she’s experienced significant grief over a lost child and her life is in shambles as she tries to discover what she wants from her cratering marriage to a young-er John Slattery. Clarkson is also wryly enjoyable and gets some of the best lines in the movie, so she’s not at fault here. I think it’s because I’m confused about how this character is treated, especially compared to the natural opposites-attract dynamic of Fin and Joe’s friendship. Olivia feels like a broken thing that the boys need to try and help get better, but we were already covering this with Finn’s reserve from a lifetime of feeling ostracized. The possible romance between Fin and Olivia is also awkward because there are obvious implications that she sees Fin as a replacement son, even having him sleep in her son’s old bed. At one point, in her anger, she yells at Fin that she’s not his mother, but it feels much more like she’s the one who is looking for a surrogate son, and just because Fin is a dwarf and perhaps of similar heights makes the whole thing feel uncomfortable and ill-advsied. I’m not going to refuse an added Patricia Clarkson in my movie, but upon my re-watch twenty years later, it’s hard not to feel like McCarthy didn’t have as much envisioned for this part.
McCarthy’s movie acclimates the viewer to the simple charms of its people and the small town, getting to know the various characters and their foibles and hopes, getting used to the rhythms of this life and adjusting much like Fin. There are small victories that are payoffs, like Fin finally getting a library card, or speaking in front of a school class about his affinity for trains. It works so well. McCarthy continued his found family writing with 2007’s The Visitor and 2011’s Win Win, both anchored by the emotional enormity of sad, lonely men learning to open up to companionship. There were some dips in the road but McCarthy worked his found family magic to the biggest stage with 2015’s Best Picture winner, Spotlight, which McCarthy directed and co-wrote. His only follow-up theatrical movie was 2021’s Stillwater, where an oil rig dad (Matt Damon) tries to save his daughter overseas from a very ripped-from-the-headlines scandal (Amanda Knox was very unhappy). There is also a 2020 Disney Plus movie about a kid detective and his imaginary polar bear best friend (that actually sounds adorable). I guess I figured a Best Picture Oscar on your resume, as well as a history of working within the studio system and world of indies, would have given McCarthy more work than directing a handful of episodes for 13 Reasons Why and creating Alaska Daily. I’ll always be looking for the next McCarthy project when I can.
McCarthy’s failures can be just as intriguing as his successes. The Cobbler is just such an astounding idea that it’s hard to imagine anyone thinking it would work out, with Adam Sandler as a magic shoe-maker. However, this same pessimistic mentality probably prevailed when McCarthy was trying to raise money for The Station Agent. His indie successes proved that he could take any jumble of strange characters and turn it into a functional movie. Maybe that hubris, well-earned along with his contributions to the Oscar-nominated Up script, finally caught up with 2014’s The Cobbler. I would pay good money to one day watch that un-aired footage of the original Thrones pilot, the one the producers themselves acknowledged to be deeply troubled. After retooling the show and cast, bringing in Michelle Fairley and Emilia Clarke, McCarthy departed, though is credited for helping to secure Dinklage’s involvement, and it’s impossible to think of the zeitgeist-defining excellence of the HBO series with anyone else playing the iconic role of Tyrion Lannister.
Re-evaluating The Station Agent twenty years hence, its many charms are still abundant and I appreciated how gentle and relaxed everything felt. When indie movies deal with heavy amounts of quirk and oddities, it can often be heavy-handed and abrasive, never letting the audience forget for a second just how special and strange and different the movie must be (here comes 2024’s look at Napoleon Dynamite). McCarthy’s movie almost feels like a writing exercise where he plucked three very different characters out of a hat and challenged himself to build a grounded movie built upon their unexpected friendships. It’s a movie confident to just let the characters speak for themselves. It’s more a slice-of-life glimpse at people who feel far more real than most Sundance indies built upon oddballs and quirk. I would slightly lower the grade from an A to an A minus simply because of the Olivia character. Clarkson is great but her role feels undeveloped, somewhat redundant, and a little sloppy. Still, the enjoyable performances, the observational detail, and the simple pleasures of a story well told with characters you genuinely care about are what shines through even twenty years later.
Author’s note: In my original review, I cite having interviewed Michelle Williams (yes, surprise, she plays the small-town librarian). While I was my college newspaper’s film critic from January 2002 to May 2004, I did have the opportunity to interview several actors and directors through phone cattle calls with other collegiate journalists. These names include Angelina Jolie (Tomb Raider 2), Billy Bob Thornton (Bad Santa), Kevin Smith (Jersey Girl), and the late Paul Walker (Timeline). However, my school schedule was not accommodating for the Williams interview, so I had my dormitory neighbor and friend Tim Knopp call in and ask my question. It wasn’t me. I’m coming clean after twenty years, folks. I also recall having him quote a line her character says in The Station Agent, saying Fin had “a nice chin,” and being told that she was baffled and blanking on the reference. I’m sorry, eventual multi-Oscar nominee Michelle Williams, for trying to be clever.
Re-View Grade: A-
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No One Will Save You (2023)
Brian Duffield has been an industry screenwriting phenom for years, though it took too many years for his ribald, clever, and high-concept stories to eventually find their way as finished films, or at least finished versions of his once ribald, clever, and high-concept stories. I fell in love with him as a storyteller with 2017’s The Babysitter, and that love matured into admiration and appreciation with 2020’s Spontaneous, his directorial debut, also my top movie of that year. As hyper verbal and bracing and layered as that stylish movie with major attitude was, and brilliantly so, his follow-up is a sprint in the other direction. No One Will Save You (I keep wanting to type You Will Not Survive This as its title) is a contained thriller with hardly a line of spoken dialogue as we follow Brynn (Kaitlin Dever) battle aliens. Being a nearly dialogue-free experience puts much on the immersive visual experience, and I don’t know if the movie fully sustains this, but the combined effort is solid and sneaky fun.
This is a throwback to the early 1990s invasion thriller, the heyday of The X-Files and Fire in the Sky when the little gray guys with the big black eyes became our default model for aliens. There’s an easy dread to compile when it comes to a powerful and otherworldly entity that has decided to target you, a lowly human. Duffield is able to engineer plenty of anxious moments and jump scares, allowing the scares to luxuriate by building suspense as well as the adrenaline bursts of sudden surprise (a moment with “toes” made me squirm). He makes a key creative decision early to showcase his aliens. Usually these kinds of movies are more guarded about their monsters, confining them to the shadows or at least relying upon the viewer’s imagination to fill in the blanks before pulling back and finally revealing their true form. There’s a reason that so many filmmakers follow this model, and it’s because the final reveal usually pales in comparison to whatever unseen horror the imagination can fathom. The slender creatures do make for creepy silhouettes, and there are three or four different versions of the aliens and this allows for some additional fun design discovery. A long-limbed one reminded me of a praying mantis. The chattering sound design and ominous lighting do a lot of atmospheric heavy lifting to elevate the mood. If you’re looking for a generally well-executed home invasion thriller with some gasp-inducing moments, No One Will Save You fulfills its promise. There’s a pleasing clarity to the plot mechanics, even if you are wondering why this woman doesn’t abandon her house.
There isn’t much that needs explaining, which streamlines its 90 minutes into a series of reactive responses to the home invasion, with some clues and inferences throughout for us to start to piece together why our heroine is so troubled and seems so isolated by her small-town community. It makes for a visceral, visual method of storytelling but it also limits how much information and depth we are going to encounter. Our main character is still suffused by her own guilt and lasting trauma from her past, and as the movies seem to magically allow, she’s going to be given an external struggle that might just allow her to finally exorcise and resolve a dicey internal struggle. The alien encounters don’t seem to give us better insight into who our protagonist used to be, who she is now, and the misplaced perception of the townspeople. She’s retreated inward. She’s resourceful. She uses what she has to better guard from further close encounters, but all she has are ordinary items found in an old farmhouse, not high-powered weapons and booby traps. She’s just one frightened young woman in an old house trying to do her best. By holding back, we’re only given so much with this character, so she can feel somewhat underwritten and kept archetypal, underpinned by her past mistakes and her current otherworldly dilemmas. I just don’t know if there’s enough going on with this character even with the repeated alien visitation.
Dever (Booksmart) is one of our best young actresses and an excellent choice to anchor our drama. Without the safety of words, much is required from her, and Dever provides a compelling presence even when I feel like the character is hitting her limits. Carrying an entire movie and doing so much with non-verbal acting techniques can be a weighty ask, but Dever relishes the challenge, and through her capable performance we are given a hero worth rooting for.
The movie does an acceptable job of keeping us, and her, relatively in the dark while still not making the sides too overwhelming. How can one Earth girl combat a species with such advanced technology, size, and power? Well, we don’t fully know what they want, and these little green men are still made of fleshy stuff and can still be hurt and killed like any other fleshy goo-filled life form. They may be advanced but they can still get killed, and that at least gives our heroine a chance that she shouldn’t have. The aliens’ plan is generally unknowable, and just trying to piece together a fuller picture of who they are, the different species and forms, and what their purpose might be for the town is plenty of work for the rest of us that don’t speak the space language. It’s enough of a reasonable learning curve to fill out a short movie while keeping focus on the task at hand, whether it’s hiding under the bed, running around the house, or simply trying to figure out whether going into town for help is worth the effort. I wish there was a little more deliberation on her part about whether the aliens might be preferable to her neighbors. The ending isn’t exactly ambiguous but reminds me a little of 2019’s Midsommar, where letting go of one’s personal hang ups might not be the catharsis of enlightenment it may appear to be.
No One Will Save You is a throwback sci-fi thriller that speaks to the human vulnerabilities we can all feel, being helpless against overwhelming powers, be they alien or our own guilt. It’s a fun thriller with some well-wrought sequences of suspense and jump scares. I don’t know if there’s more happening beyond the visceral appeal of the experience. The character and the situation don’t provide much in the way of larger depth and analysis, and more than a few will likely be able to guess her tragic back-story, though that’s also a credit to Duffield providing the key pieces. As a change of pace, No One Will Save You proves that Duffield is an entertaining and capable storyteller no matter what restrictions he holds himself to. I just prefer my Brain Duffield stories without any restrictions because we only have one Brian Duffield.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
As an elder millennial, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been a formative franchise for me. I grew up on the cartoon, got the toys for Christmas, died endlessly during the shockingly hard underwater stage of their Nintendo video game, and generally have a soft spot in my 80s nostalgia for the likes of Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo, plus their surrogate father, Master Splinter. Apparently Seth Rogen felt the same way, and he and his writing partner Evan Goldberg have spearheaded a new animated variation of TMNT that just so happens to also be co-written and directed by the man behind my favorite film of 2021, The Mitchells vs. The Machines. It was a recipe to guarantee my personal enjoyment, and Mutant Mayhem thusly delivered. The biggest selling point for me was how lovingly realized the “teenage” part of the title was, getting a foursome of actual adolescents to portray our heroes, and using high school experience about acceptance and fitting in as effective and even poignant parallels. I loved just hanging out with these characters, who view their surrogate dad (voied by Jackie Chan) with a mixture of love and embarrassment, and who want to be accepted by a world predisposed to finding them monstrous. Naturally, becoming crime-fighting heroes is their best method for winning over the public, with a young and aspiring journalist April O’Neil (The Bear‘s Ayo Edebiri) hoping to improve her own social standing at school by breaking the existence of these unknown mutants. The comedy is robust and layered while allowing for nice character details and moments, giving each turtle their own satisfying arc. The action is fun and inventively staged while still being thematically relevant. The vocal cast is great, and the young actors are tremendous together, sparking an enviable improvisational energy that made me smile constantly. The art style has an intentional messiness to it, like smeared colored pencil drawings, and the imperfections are themselves part of the vast visual appeal. It’s a family movie that will succeed with old fans and new, and Mutant Mayhem is the best film depiction yet of the famous heroes in a half-shell.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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The Rundown (2003) [Review Re-View]
Originally released September 26, 2003:
In the beginning of the new action comedy The Rundown, Beck (The Rock), a bounty hunter, is entering a club on a job. On his way in Arnold Schwarzenegger passes him by and says, ”Have fun.” Consider it a proverbial torch passing, because while Schwarzenegger is going to be busting the campaign trail, The Rundown establishes The Rock as the fresh and capable marquee name for all future action films. This man is a star.
Beck is offered a chance to square off all debts to mobster Billy Walker by agreeing to journey into the Brazilian jungle. His mission is to retrieve Travis (Seann William Scott), a hyperactive screw-up who happens to be Walker’s son. One Beck travels to the Amazon he runs into Hatcher (Christopher Walken) who claims to own the jungle and whatever contents dwell within. He asserts that Travis has stumbled upon a wealthy artifact in his jungle and therefore refuses Beck to leave with Travis. It’s at this point that the chase is on.
I don’t care what your little sister told you, Vin Diesel is not the next face of action, no, it’s The Rock. Despite only appearing in three movies (and he was only in The Mummy Returns for like three minutes), The Rock displays a razor-sharp sense of comedy. He’s also huge, likeable, and he can even emote well during smaller moments, not that The Rundown will stretch you as an actor. He’s also honed in excessive eyebrow arching.
Walken exists in a plane of brilliant weirdness that we simple human will never be able to co-exist upon. His Hatcher is one mean villain who exploits indigenous workers, wears his pants up to his armpits, and says he put the heart in the darkness. Walken’s hysterical tooth fairy monologue is worth the price of admission alone.
Director Peter Berg (Very Bad Things) adds a delectable cartoonish flavor to the film. His action sequences pop with exaggerated energy and zestful humor, like when Travis and Beck roll down a hill for a near minute. This is everything an action film should be: lively, funny, with keen action sequences that are low on CGI but filled with characters we care about. The Rundown is the best summer film not released during the summer.
The Rundown is an adrenalized punch of fabulous action and hilarious banter. When you’re not laughing and spilling your popcorn you’ll be sitting straight up to catch every lovely eyeful of spectacular action. It’s a terrifically entertaining and fun flick. The Rock has arrived.
Nate’s Grade: A
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
Looking back, The Rundown really was a sea change for action cinema, and it also helps that I called it all the way back in 2003, because even a little 21-year-old me could recognize what seems almost blindingly obvious over two decades of hindsight: The Rock was a born star.
The Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo in the opening scene of the movie feels even more like a passing of the baton, as Arnie was stepping out to join the world of politics and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was only beginning to get started building a movie career. “Have fun,” Schwarzenegger says in passing. The wrestling phenom had built a powerful following and had begun making the leap into mainstream features with 2002’s one-two-punch of The Mummy Returns and his spinoff, The Scorpion King (did you know there are five Scorpion King movies and the 2012 edition co-starred fellow wrestler-turned-movie star Dave Bautista? Well now you do!). His appearance in the Mummy sequel was minimal, and marred by some of the worst CGI of the new century, but his solo Scorpion King adventure wasn’t quite the launching pad Johnson’s team had hoped. It wasn’t really until his fortuitous inclusion with the re-surging Fast and Furious franchise in 2010 that Johnson finally hit superstardom. However, the same magnetic appeal that would come to define Johnson as one of the biggest and more consistent movie stars in the world can be seen so evidently in 2003’s The Rundown, an action-comedy vehicle that plays to all the man’s many strengths. He’s got an immediate presence, a trained comedian’s command of timing and inflection, a gift for slapstick and lack of vanity about being goofy, and the man is just an agile and impressive physical specimen who throws himself into the rough and tumble stunt work. In short, Johnson knows how to look cool, knows how to look tough, knows how to look silly, and knows when to change gears. He’s a generational talent. My friend Ben Bailey says Johnson should play Superman because he really is Superman hiding among us pitiably frail mortals.
The Rundown, formerly known as Helldorardo, is also an excellent launching pad for director Peter Berg, who until this time had only one other movie on his resume as a director, 1998’s relentlessly dark comedy, Very Bad Things (a film I remember “enjoying,” if that could even qualify as the correct word). This was Berg’s coming out party for the realm of bigger studio fare, and while it didn’t launch his career much like his leading man, it led to Berg’s breakout, helming 2004’s Friday Night Lights. From there, Berg has directed blockbusters (Hancock), blockbuster misfires (the unjustly maligned Battleship), and five reportedly different Mark Wahlberg action dramas from 2013-2020, though you’d be forgiven if you inadvertently confused a Spenser Confidential with a Mile 22. Berg’s docu-drama style became entrenched in 2004, though it didn’t always suit every movie equally. That’s why the movies that stand out from this default cinema verite visual style are even more remarkable for me, especially when Berg showed he can do over-the-top flashy fun violence just as good as any other big screen movie maker. His zest for the outlandish makes the movie feel like a living cartoon, but in the best way. The screen is coursing with energy but within a dedicated vision of spectacle, unlike say the mass chaos and indifference to coherency that dominates a Micheal Bay extravaganza.
Chiefly, The Rundown is just such an overwhelmingly fun experience. The actors have an infectious and combustible chemistry, bringing to mind the likes of Midnight Run and Romancing the Stone. The plot holds up well and allows for momentous action and a pleasing revolt against an exploitative villain played with panache by none other than a cranky Christopher Walken. Even while being irreverent and ridiculous, the movie still works as a story and a buddy movie, and the ending feels fulfilling and satisfying on its own terms. As I said in my 2003 review, this is everything an action movie should be. It’s exciting with engaging set pieces and outlandish stunt work but it never loses sight of its characters and their fractious screwball relationship. I love movies where the two lead characters are working against odds and constantly one-upping each other, flipping who has the upper hand. It makes for a far more unpredictable experience and ensures neither character is ever too confidently in control.
This is an excellent movie to just put on and dash away your cares for two hours. I’ve watched The Rundown probably a dozen times, introduced friends and students to it, and everyone walks away a believer. It’s got style and banter and enjoyable characters and surprises and is just one of those movies that nobody really ever talks about but deserves to be on everyone’s DVD shelf.
Re-View Grade: A
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Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
Neither hitting the high of the character-centric, good-times 80s Ambin vibes of Bumblebee, nor the bombastic excess that defines Michael Bay’s OG series, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is a new installment that flattens already well-trodden ground. It’s a mediocre action movie with big globs of CGI robots once again colliding in conflict that left me disengaged. We have more familiar Autobots in this one, including their leader Optimus Prime, and there’s a new slew of animal-themed robots, though I’m always left wondering why they choose specific builds and stick with them since it was established they can copy Earthly designs. Regardless, it’s another story about good robots and bad robots trying to beat one another to a special magical MacGuffin that may or may not destroy the universe, and it all feels a bit too same-y from the six other Transformers movies. The new characters are bland and stock, with Pete Davidson supplying our lead Transformer robot buddying up with the young man (Anthony Ramos) who turns to grand theft auto to try and pay for his little brother’s health care. To go along with our wide-eyed hero discovering this hidden war, we have a brainy sidekick (Dominique Fishback) who shares in the hyperventilating. I kept thinking about how filming these movies is just measuring out a lot of wide exterior shots and saying, “Yeah, there’s going to be a giant robot in there eventually.” Credit director Steven Caple Jr. (Creed II) for having relatively restrained editing to better orient his action and audience, which is not something we can say about Bay’s movies. The problem with Rise of the Beasts is that it’s movie number seven rather than the first, so it has no novelty and whatever differences it offers are microscopically minimal. If you’ve seen any of the other Transformers movies, you’ve seen essentially what this one has to offer, so unless you have young children who are heretofore unblemished in their cinematic knowledge of Transformers, feel free to just wait for a better movie.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Gigli (2003) [Review Re-View]
Originally released August 1, 2003:
It’s the feel-good movie of the year revolving around a lunkhead mobster (Ben Affleck) and his mentally challenged kipnapee and their attempts to covert a lesbian hitman (Jennifer Lopez) in between her yoga/horrific monologues concerning the superiority of female genitalia. Believe the hype people; Gigli is indeed as bad as they have told you. It’s not even entertainingly bad, like Bulletproof Monk, no folks; Gigli is just mundane and awful. During the entire two-hour stretch, which feels much much longer, I kept saying one thing aloud: “How could anyone making this think they were making a good movie?” Did they think audiences would find it funny that Affleck’s mother (the mother from My Big Fat Greek Wedding) shows us her big fat Greek behind? Did they really think that a mentally challenged kid (who has an affinity for gangster rap and wishes to travel to the mythical “Baywatch”) would come off as endearing? Well instead it comes across as insulting. And what else is insulting is the laugh-out-loud dialogue Lopez is forced to spit out concerning her attraction for women. I can’t think of any actress that could say the line, “I love my pussy” convincingly. And I’m sure a lot of actresses out there have true affection for it. The writing is just atrocious. And so much else fails as well. The score is a perplexing mix of upbeat jazz and inappropriate string orchestra. I don’t understand what emotions they were going for during scenes in Gigli but a full string orchestra playing music better suited for a real drama does not fit. Maybe it was for a tragedy. In that case, then it’s right on the money. You won’t see a more sloppily executed, horribly acted, painfully written, lazily directed, inept film this year. And what the hell did Christopher Walken walking in have anything to do with anything?
Nate’s Grade: F
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
Gigli. It’s a word that instantly trigger shudders and shivers, a code name for fiasco, for career-destroying miscalculations. Writer/director Martin Brest was a Hollywood heavyweight with hit adult comedies like Going in Style, Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run, and Scent of a Woman, and since the cataclysmic disaster that was Gigli in 2003, this man hasn’t directed a single thing in these twenty years. The man is still reeling from the wafting stink from this very bad movie. I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit what I dubbed the worst film of 2003, though I was not the only critic to make this distinction, but now I’m questioning why I even bothered. It’s not like this movie was somehow going to get that much better with two decades of safe distance. The amazingly miscalculated artistic decisions will still be the same, still bad. I guess it must have been primarily my own morbid curiosity, much like revisiting 2001’s Freddy Got Figured, about whether this famous flop could still live up to its reputation. Well, dear reader, allow me to put any lingering doubts to rest you may have had about Gigli. It’s still very very very bad.
I might possibly recommend watching this once in your life (depending upon how many years you are lucky to earn) for the sheer fascination; Hollywood so easily makes mediocre and boring and familiar movies that feel like pale imitators of some prior hit, but Gigli is something different in the realm of studio stinkers, a project where just about every single creative decision warranted the incredulous Tim Robinson gif response: “You sure about that? You sure about that?” Gigli feels like two tonally dissonant movies in conflict at every moment. The plot elements feel lifted from some mid-to-late 90s indie crime comedy, the likes where they would just throw together a grab-bag of ironic provocative plot elements you wouldn’t expect together. “Mobster doofus kidnaps mentally challenged kid who is obsessed with gangster rap and wants to visit the ‘Baywatch’ which he thinks is real! Romance with a lesbian! Severed thumb ruses!” The collection of strange parts feels like it’s supposed to be a madcap, wacky comedy, and yet the tonal approach is complete treacle, with a shockingly syrupy score that rises and falls throughout, trying to convince you that what you’re watching is quixotically aiming for Oscars. It is astounding if you stop and pay attention to the film score at any moment, no matter how strange, as it attempts to provide jazzy saunter to “comedy” scenes, like an ex-girlfriend showing up into an unstable situation, and then it segues to Spielbergian emotional heft, like when that same ex-girlfriend attempts to take her own life to convince Jennifer Lopez to come back. There were so many moments where my only response possible was to avert my eyes, shake my head, and wonder whether anyone at any stage had any misgivings, tried to reach out to Brest, but then shrugged and dismissed their very legitimate worries as, “Well, he made Midnight Run after all. What do I know?” You know enough that these different tonal approaches will not work.
Apparently, the movie was intended to be a straightforward mob comedy but the studio wanted the focus to shift toward a romance because of the actual romance between its stars, Lopez and Ben Affleck. Whenever actors begin a relationship after a movie or over the course of making one together, it provides another lens to review the movie, to gauge their chemistry and, if you’re so lucky and observant, able to “see” them falling in love with one another. That is nowhere to be found with Gigli. Maybe it was the shared experience of finding what they could to cling to while making this movie that nobody fully understood but committed to anyway (I guess love can be described the same way under some circumstances). Regardless, the romance between the two characters is, like all other plot elements, haphazard and spontaneous and foolhardy.
The characters are all awful and they never remotely come across like relatable or even remotely interesting people. Affleck’s Italian lunkhead Larry Gigli is just awash in early 2000s misogyny and bravado, dubbing himself the “sultan of slick, the rule of cool, the straight-first-foremost, pimp-mack, hustler, original gangster’s gangster.” Allow that macho boast to also exemplify another critical problem with the movie in that almost all the dialogue will make you cringe. There’s an entire monologue by Lopez, while she’s contorting her body in a plethora of lithe yoga positions, all about how superior the vagina is in appearance and function. What about when Lopez, as an indication that she wants to engage in heterosexual congress, utters the immortal phrase: “It’s turkey time. Gobble gobble.” Larry slams a kid’s computer on the ground and triumphantly says to suck an appendage of his, but then adds, “dot com” because the kid’s a nerd or something because he likes computers. Ho ho, the kidnapped young man insists that he be read to before going to bed, and what does Larry have at his disposal? Not books, oh no, so he’s forced to read him instructions on shampoo and toilet paper. Hilarious, right? What about when this same mentally challenged kid says, “When my penis sneezes, I say, ‘God bless you.’” The early 2000s weren’t an enlightened time with depiction of mental handicaps, and poor Justin Bartha (National Treasure, The Hangover) goes fully into the worst of these impulses, making the performance feel like a minstrel show for those with mental challenges. At least this aspect is not alone. Nothing ages well in this movie and its comedy only falls flatter and the drama is only more inexplicable twenty years later. It’s a special kind of bad so rarely achieved at this level of Hollywood.
Given that the majority of the movie consists of kidnapping a naïf, most of the movie is set in Gigli’s apartment keeping the man unseen and unheard from. This makes the movie feel for a long stretch like a glorified one-set play, with special appearances from traveling guest actors popping through for a brief moment in the spotlight. Here’s Christopher Walken dispensing with a monologue and then never being seen again. thanks for coming. Here’s Al Pacino, yelling so hard I’m surprised Lopez and Affleck didn’t need to wash the layers of spittle off. Here’s Lanie Kazan (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) who needs an insulin shot in her butt and let’s make sure we see her thong while we’re at it. These incursions of well-known actors re-explain the plot, not that it was hard to keep up with, and it all feels like stretching for time when the movie is already two hours long. The resolution, where our characters drive off into their sunny endings, lasts twenty minutes itself, which feels as long as the endings of 2003’s Return of the King. It’s a screenplay that feels like it’s holding itself on ice, content that the kooky characters butting heads and trading quips and monologues would be enough, and one that feels unsure of those same impulses, relying upon a revolving door of one-scene guests to remind us what we already know. It makes you feel simultaneously trapped with awful characters yet also in the hands of someone who doesn’t quite think you’re understanding the nuance and hilarity of the strained effort.
I’m not an automatic Affleck hater. I enjoyed his rise from the films of Kevin Smith to Hollywood leading man. I can understand the draw of working with a filmmaker like Brest, and it’s probably that same appeal that lead him to also star in 2003’s Paycheck, directed by John Woo, who like Brest never worked in Hollywood again. This was the period where Affleck’s star was on the decline, and Bennifer was dominating tabloid space, and if it weren’t for the failures we might not have ever gotten Affleck as film director, so maybe we never would have gotten The Town or Argo or Gone Baby Gone had it not been for Gigli, so there’s a silver lining for you.
Look, you already know you shouldn’t even get near Gigli and with good cause. It’s a rarity to see something this colossally bad with this level of artistic freedom to be bad, not simply having too many cooks in the kitchen but having one very wayward chef nobody felt they could interfere with. This was a runaway chef, the kind of fiasco that only comes from unchecked artistic hubris. In that regard, there may be some rubbernecking appeal here for those who can endure bad characters, bad drama, bad comedy, bad acting, and horrible depictions of human beings who never at any point sound like human beings. It’s hard to watch and two hours of your precious time. 2003 began as a rough year for movies, sporting fascinating disasters like Bulletproof Monk and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Watch those movies if you’re looking for a good-bad time. With Gigli, it’s only going to be a bad-bad time, whether it’s 2003, 2023, or any year until the sun explodes. Hey, if Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez could put this movie behind them and reunite, and even get officially married in 2022, then we can put it behind us as well.
Re-View Grade: F
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Barbie (2023)
Who would have guessed a movie based upon a ubiquitous doll that dates back to the 1950s would become not just a cultural force and reclamation project but also the biggest moviegoing event of the year, as well as the highest-grossing movie in Warner Brothers’ history, even outpacing The Boy Who Lived? In 2023, it turns out we are all, every one, a Barbie girl living in a Barbie world. I came to this experience late, wondering if writer/director Greta Gerwig’s movie could live up to the lavish hype, the fawning praise, the hilarious offenses that many fragile males have levied against it. It couldn’t possibly be that good, could it? I saw it with three generations of women in my family, something I will privilege, and I must say, it is that good. Barbie is one of the best movies of the year and a shining example of what vision and passion can do to elevate any story. There’s so many ways this movie could have just been cheap corporate slop and instead it becomes an existential yet deeply personal treatise on life and death.
In the world of Barbies, women rule and the men are just afterthoughts. In this creation myth, the Kens were meant to compliment the Barbies. We watch “Stereotypical Barbie” (Margot Robbie) go through her daily routine of fun, frivolity, and nightly dance parties with all her best gal pals (no boys, er Kens, allowed). Then one day, this blonde Barbie started walking differently, started seeing the world differently, and started wondering about dying. Was there something wrong? Her human owner, in the real world, was in trouble, so Barbie sets off on an adventure to find her human owner and save the day, with help from her boyfriend, Ken (Ryan Gosling). Except for these two, the real world is very different from what they were expecting.
It’s easy to see how this movie could have been a mediocre fish-out-of-water comedy, with Barbie clashing in our modern-day world with its modern-day views of fashion, body image, and what skinny, buxom dolls represent to generations of young impressionable children. It’s clear to see what the scrapped version could have been when Amy Schumer was attached to star. What really impressed me with Barbie, beyond its delightful and inspired production values, is how ambitious and well-realized this movie is at every turn. It could have settled for easy jokes about Barbie and Ken not fitting in, not understanding human relationships and sex, and that stuff is there and it’s quite funny, but Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach want to do so much more. This is a studio blockbuster, based upon a decades-long popular toy, that wants to do more with its platform. It aims higher, and in just about every measure, Barbie admirably succeeds. As a comedy, it had me howling with laughter, enough so that my response was providing another level of entertainment for my wife. There are jokes that are so specific, so beautifully targeted, that when they detonated, I was in awe and appreciation, (a reference to the literal definition of fascism and a Snyder Cut throwaway reference were perfectly attuned to my comedy sensibilities, thank you, Greta). As a frothy and fun fantasy, the movie has excellently crafted sets and costumes and retro visual aesthetics, making the movie a pink-accentuated sensory bombardment. But as a satire is where Barbie really becomes special.
Again, it would be easy for Barbie to learn lessons about body diversity and positivity and likely be browbeaten into what a good feminist is supposed to be, that the real world is a harder place for women than she previously thought. All of that is there, along with a consistent and entertaining critique of the faults of patriarchal society, but Barbie isn’t some reductive, man-hating screed to indoctrinate women into thinking they don’t need men (men are already very good at convincing women they don’t need men). This is a treatise on the power of inclusion and how this benefits society, both for men and for women. In Barbie Land, it’s a matriarchal society where girls rule and boys drool, but it’s a fantasy world reminiscent of a caste system, where the Kens will always be lesser afterthoughts because, well, they’re not Barbies, they’re just Kens. They are excluded in their own world. That’s why Gosling’s Ken is so excited by the real world, where the status quo is flipped, where the world is run by men, as he now sees this as an opportunity that has been denied to him. He wants to recreate his own version of the patriarchy not because he thinks women are inferior but because he just wants to be in power and respected, so he’s replicating his misguided understanding of what men in power are like, which naturally involves lots of horses. In the real world, Ken admonishes a suit-wearing corporate executive that they aren’t doing patriarchy right, to which the man winks and says, “We’re just better about hiding it.” The final act isn’t about “bringing down the patriarchy,” it’s about making a more inclusive world where people don’t have to feel marginalized and stuck and resentful.
Besides its social satire, there are other areas where Barbie goes deeper in surprising and affecting ways. There are more than a few applause-worthy moments explaining the perspective of women, particularly a monologue that is destined to be an audition piece for the rest of time, and it all works and is cutting without being too didactic. Gerwig even gets in a few jabs about corporate culture (“Are there any actual women in this boardroom?” “I’m a man with no power, does that make me a woman?”) and Mattel as an organization becomes another force of antagonism spearheaded by hapless buffoonish men (of course you get Will Ferrell to play the Mattel CEO). The biggest surprise is how emotional and deep the movie can become. There will be plenty that tear up just having a big Hollywood movie recognize their day-to-day emotional toil of being a woman in modern society. For me, the questions over what to do with the life we have flirted with some surprising existential contemplation, as Barbie is reminded at several points that death is a reality and yet would she want to move to the human world? An emotional highlight occurs when Stereotypical Barbie is speaking with the equivalent of her creator, and Billie Eilish’s tender-to-the-point-of-breaking song “What Was I Made For” lilts onto the soundtrack, and the sincerity of this sequence, topped with insert home video footage from the production cast and crew, really hit home how much more this movie is going for then bringing different dolls to life. It’s not just jokes about crotch-less creatures and weird feet, it’s about how we can live and why we do so, what inspires us. It’s a big studio summer release that flirts with the profundity and brevity of life.
There is one actor who deserves their own special recognition and that is Gosling (The Nice Guys), who so rarely gets to showcase his sharp comedy skills with the dour, serious, insular roles he gravitates to. Gosling is so committed to his role that he is operating on another plane of excellence, hitting sly jokes within jokes and selling every wonderfully stupid moment with Ken. This man isn’t afraid to look silly, he fully courts it, embraces it at every opportunity, and yet his performance doesn’t detract from Robbie but only makes them both shine brighter. He reminded me of Tommy Wiseau at points. His hilarious ballad “I’m Just Ken,” which segues into a wild West Side Story-style dance battle that is peak peacocking, is a phenomenal run of inspired silliness (the storming of the Malibu beach had me rolling), yet also connected to the character’s co-dependent arc and dissatisfaction with himself (when feeling down, just quote: “I’m just Ken, and I’m enough, and I’m great at doing stuff”). Ken has to learn to think of himself outside his combined definition with Barbie, and they both need to spend time discovering who they really are rather than who they think they’re supposed to be before considering forming attachments. I would not be surprised if Gosling earns a Best Supporting Actor nomination. It was the role he was born to play: insecure accessory doofus.
Gerwig has launched to mega-stardom with just three directing efforts (four if you count her co-directing effort in 2008 with Nights and Weekends, back in her early mumblecore breakout days). Already this woman has been nominated for Best Director, one of only seven ever, and she now owns the highest grossing movie of the year as well as in studio history. She’s proven herself with her 2017 coming-of-age semi-autobiographical Lady Bird, richly realized and achingly felt, with an established literary classic that is a foundation to generations, and had been adapted a dozen ways for the cinema, and yet she found ways to make her 2019 Little Women modern and personal, and now, on her biggest stage, being handled corporate IP that would be perfectly fine with just selling more toys, she has made a movie for the moment, something that compelled audiences back to theaters in droves, that will become a staple for a generation of film lovers. With just three movies, Gerwig has established herself in a league of her own as a director. Anyone who can turn the Barbie movie into a hilarious, poignant, and meaningful meditation on our times, on the relationships between mothers and daughters, and on life itself is a talent that deserves every creative latitude to achieve her vision. The voice and vision behind this, even to the smallest detail, is so impressive and fully committed and well developed and fabulous. Barbie is one of the best movies of the year and proof that studio blockbusters can indeed be more.
Nate’s Grade: A
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