More Than One Lesson

It’s difficult not to be wary of films detailing the backstories of our favorite movies. Between the disastrous Star Wars prequel trilogy and the decision to turn the relatively short novel The Hobbit into three bloated films adding up to the length of a full day’s work, there was reason to be concerned about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Harry Potter novelist J.K. Rowling was writing the screenplay herself, it would have been hard to see it as much more than a desperate cash grab by Warner Bros. Especially when it was recently announced that there would be five films in this new series set in the Potterverse, decades before Harry was even born. It turns out that Rowling was all the reason fans needed to feel confident because this first film in the series is a complete joy to watch.

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Films about real life historical heroes are often given a pass by a certain percentage of their audience. Regardless of the quality of the movie, the mere fact that the story of a laudable figure is being told is enough for some viewers. It’s as though the film is above reproach because its subject is someone- or something- to be admired. Hacksaw Ridge will certainly have many singing its high praises because the man at the center of its story, Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), was such a great hero.

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As I write this, it is two years to the day since four students were murdered by a classmate at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Marysville, Washington. 15 years earlier, I was a junior at that school, looking around the campus on the morning of April 21, 1999. It was the day after the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. School shootings were not as commonplace as they would become but I still remember feeling that if someone really wanted to commit such a horrific act on our campus, there would be little to stop them. Tragically, 15 years later that would turn out to be true.

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When This is Spinal Tap was released in 1984, the mockumentary was a relatively novel concept. One of the film’s leads, Christopher Guest, would return to it as a director and star in 1996’s Waiting for Guffman, reassembling much of Spinal Tap’s cast. The mockumentary format has become much more prevalent in the two decades since, both in Guest’s other films (Best in Show, A Mighty Wind) and on television (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Reno! 911, and Guest’s own Family Tree, just to name a few). However, at this point, comedy in general has been highly influenced – for better or worse – by the format. Improvisational comedy, which sees actors going on tangential riffs while the camera just rolls, has become so commonplace that it’s surprising anymore to see a comedy film or TV series that doesn’t rely on it, at least to some extent.

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There’s something frustrating about a film that can’t quite decide what it wants to be. That isn’t to say that I did not enjoy Gavin O’Connor’s The Accountant, but it would have done better to either commit to being a well-made, engrossing popcorn movie or a thoughtful character study about an autistic professional killer. Instead, The Accountant attempts to be both, the result being a pretty good – though decidedly flawed – movie that could have been great had the filmmakers chosen one path and fully committed to it.

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We all had movie characters we wanted to be as children; adventures we wanted to live for ourselves and for many of us, it was the start of our lifelong love of film. Like so many other kids in the early 1980s, when Chris Strompolos of Mississippi first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, he wanted to be Indiana Jones. His friend Eric Zala loved the film with just as much enthusiasm, wanting to further understand the nuts and bolts of how it was made. What separated these 12-year old boys from the rest of us was the adventure they decided to embark on together. With storyboards Eric (who directed and played Belloq) created from memory and an audio tape smuggled in to a screening to record the film’s dialogue, the boys set out to shoot their version of Raiders over their summer vacation in 1982.

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It’s clear even before we see the faces of Toby and Tanner Howard- both wearing ski masks- that we are witnessing their first attempted bank robbery. While some of the action and dialogue that follows is funny, it’s plain that Hell or High Water isn’t a comedy. Without being told why, we know that there is something very much at stake here, conveyed by nothing more than Toby and Tanner’s eyes. The film retains that tone throughout most of its runtime, and when it changes it’s because things have changed for its characters; characters we have come to care about very much because the filmmakers do.

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During the summer movie season, many of us- even those of us who view film as art-  want nothing more than to be entertained. We want movies this time of year to be fun. Certainly we want a film about a group of convicts being cobbled together for a mission that puts their criminal skills to use for good to be fun. Unfortunately, David Ayer’s Suicide Squad commits a crime worthy of a stint in movie jail. The simple truth is it’s just dull. Considering the potential this movie had, it’s that much more of a shame.

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Over the past several months I had avoided writing or saying anything about this topic because it is absurdly hot button at this point and there seems to be no way to express an honest opinion about it without people from one side or the other jumping down your throat and trying to internet-kill you. But after speaking with a friend of mine, she encouraged me to just go ahead and share my many thoughts because, boy, do I have them. As you may have guessed I am referring to the remake of Ghostbusters.

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