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Double Feature: Mute / Black Panther

This week (or month) on Double Feature we’re looking at two very different, but in some ways similar films. Firstly, Mute directed by Duncan Jones. This one follows a mute bartender in near-future Berlin, who’s girlfriend goes missing. Her disappearance prompts a desperate search that may reveal some dark secrets in the city’s underbelly. Mute was released on Netflix and currently enjoys notoriously bad reviews. The second movie on tonight’s card is Black Panther, the latest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe™ which follows T’Challa, the newly crowned king of the hidden African super-city Wakanda. T’Challa faces challenges to his power and his city, and must use his Black Panther powers to restore peace and maybe even change the world as well. This movie currently enjoys rave reviews and general adulation. As the battle between Netflix and traditional cinema (represented in this case by Marvel) rages on, this double feature will look at each movie in turn and also take a look at the broader scope of the film industry, and what we can expect out of each camp.

First up is Mute, the very soft sci-fi/noir from Duncan Jones, who is also the director of Moon, which exists in the same universe as this movie. I really enjoyed Moon with its interesting premise and excellent acting, but unfortunately Mute doesn’t quite live up to its big brother. Instead of being a straight sci-fi, Mute is more of a noir movie that flirts quite heavily with sci-fi. The main character is Leo, played by Alexander Skarsgard. He is a bartender who lost his voice at a very young age, and lives simply without the aid of technology due to his Amish background. When Leo’s girlfriend suddenly goes missing, Leo finds out she had some shady connections which lead him into the criminal underworld of near-future Berlin and into contact with Cactus Bill, played by Paul Rudd (with an amazing handlebar moustache) who is an American surgeon operating a black market hospital for Berlin’s gangs.

Its very difficult for me to understand why this movie has such terrible reviews – currently sitting at just 10% on Rotten Tomatoes and receiving scathing comments on the internet. In my opinion it’s a fundamentally decent movie. It’s neo-noir, obviously influenced to a high degree by Blade Runner. In the grimy streets of Berlin alcohol, women and cigarettes are passed around and cash flows through the backrooms. The dirty setting hosts a few great characters. Leo and his erstwhile love are played pretty straight and arent that interesting, but their story drives the plot and resolves in a way that satisfied me. The real meat and potatoes here are the other two main characters – Cactus Bill and his mate Duck. These two are AWOL US army surgeons, with Bill yearning to go home with his daughter and Duck wanting to stay and enjoy Berlin’s seedy pleasures. These two have an easy camaraderie and an obvious familiarity with danger. The contrast of their blustering bravado with Leo’s silent directness gave the movie a spark that I enjoyed throughout. The noir influence can really be seen in the characters, who all have complicated emotions and motivations that can really change your perception of them as you see more of their actions. In classic noir fashion everyone must bend their principles and no-one comes out clean. The sci-fi parts of the movie were on the subtler side, showing a future that’s perhaps ten years away. Not all that different to our own lives but with a few upgrades like in-ear phone calls, drone food delivery and ubiquitous giant touch screens. The sci-fi elements aren’t ever thrown in your face, but are kind of always there, popping up from time to time as if to remind you that this doesn’t actually take place in the 1940s.

However despite how cool these things are to me, I can see that there are some real flaws. The story isn’t anything new but rather is just transporting classic noir tropes to a fancy new setting. The plot does seem a bit fragmented at times, especially in the beginning and middle before we learn what ties the disparate storylines together. And though Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux both knock it out of the park with their performances, Skarsgard as Leo has much less to work with as the simple mute, who doesn’t really get to do anything interesting for stretches of the movie.

I give Mute a strong 7/10, its an interesting project marrying the old with the new and built with love, if not the precision and power of a big studio production. It could be because I just love the genre, but I thought the Noir stuff was used to good potential exploring the hidden depths of people and with just good enough plot progression, visual style and worldbuilding to pull it all off. It isn’t a masterpiece by any stretch and ultimately its just pulp-fiction, meant to be enjoyed and then discarded. But I did enjoy it, and though it probably wont stick around in my memory, it definitely doesn’t deserve the abuse its currently getting.

Next up is Black Panther, the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe™ movie directed by Ryan Coogler, who made the very well received Creed also starring Michael B. Jordan. Unlike most Marvel movies (see my last Double Feature on Thor Ragnarok), this movie is a standalone that doesn’t directly tie into the main series. Since they didn’t have to put in the usual silly cameos, Black Panther is able to create a style all of its own and direct the production might of Marvel in a more interesting direction. The movie features strong performances, particularly by the villains in Andy Serkis and Michael B. Jordan who each bring a kinetic energy to their roles. The lead actor Chadwick Boseman also puts in solid work as the charming and powerful T’Challa. The soundtrack was famously produced by Kendrick, and though I didn’t think it was a stunning score I definitely want to listen to it again. As I said before the economic brawn of Marvel was well used here, with the production team really having a field day with the visuals and design. The city and peoples of Wakanda are a brash amalgamation of different African tribes and styles, mixed in the same pot with ultra-modern technology and hip-hop. Bright, distinctive characters and, for a Marvel movie, pretty legible action make for a good looking film.

So given all these positives, it’s no wonder that Black Panther currently has around a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (versus Mute’s 10%). Right? Well in my own, humble opinion Black Panther is not even close to that good. I’m going to give it a 7/10, and a light seven at that. We’ll look at why it got such rave reviews later, but for now let’s see where I thought it messed up. Well, firstly the characters. Since this is a superhero movie none of them had much depth, but almost every side character felt very flat. The Marvel ‘hero-shot’ curse was in full effect, where a side character is introduced, has three minutes of screen time set up and then pays off in their big ‘hero-shot’ at the end, all while ultimately not affecting much at all. As a side note, this is basically the entirety of all Avengers movies. The soundtrack was good, but I never felt like it hit that just-right goldilocks spot for me to ever be wowed by it. The city of Wakanda had some cool elements, but a lot of how it works was just hand waved away and didn’t make any sense. The world building was all done by just telling us how advanced they are and how isolated rather than by actually showing us, which didn’t really help me to believe it. But my biggest problem was definitely the forced adherence to the Marvel Formula, bog standard three act plot. The hero’s journey is one well-traveled, and while I liked both the hero and the villain it was all very cookie-cutter, with the interesting bits coming out of the backstory and style rather than the actual events of the film.

So why the ardent praise? At this point I think I have to address the social component of Black Panther. This film features a nearly all black cast and a very black production as well. It’s almost unheard of for Hollywood to produce a big budget blockbuster with any kind of minority focus and this movie is hitting at the perfect time to ride the wave of social change to great success. To me, while it’s great for black people to see real representation on the big screen, I don’t think that this superhero movie either will make, or heralds any particular social change. I think its existence is a result of the changes that are already happening, and thus shouldn’t get any particular praise as a consequence, especially when the film sometimes feels more like its paying lip service rather than paying homage to actual black and African culture.

The problem with reviews and scores is on full display here. The standards for each movie are radically different, and the monolithic nature of the traditional film industry is skewing the results quite heavily.  The reviews for Black Panther aren’t amazing just because of some kind of political correctness virtue signaling, though that might be a factor. I think its mainly because it’s a decent Marvel movie. The reviewers know that everyone and their dog is going to see it, and since its actually decent unlike a lot of these movies, if they post a positive review then they gain a lot of credibility with the general public. Since Marvel is such an unmoving presence I think people have just learned to live with it rather than casting the same critical eye over their films than they might other productions. Conversely, Netflix suffers from what I’d consider over-critique. Netflix has embraced the r-selection method of reproduction, producing many smaller or more niche projects as opposed to Marvel’s k-selection of producing less, but more expensive and stable offspring. The many and varied children of Netflix inevitably results in a wider variance of quality, with some great and some terrible products. But the judgment of these projects doesn’t reflect the intentions. Netflix has the opportunity and the means to make weird shit, and have the people who want to enjoy it love it while not trying to cater for every audience. But critics look at these pseudo-indie movies as if they were mainstream “films” and nitpick with a fine tooth comb. Mute is a solid genre flick, but the reviewers are taking a bat to it because it isn’t perfect instead of just celebrating the diversity of choice available. I really hope that they’re able to take the same level of criticism to the next soulless Marvel Infinite Movies movie that comes out and help to get the traditional film industry back to making interesting films.

[dantereviews]

Double Feature: The Killing of a Sacred Deer / Thor: Ragnarok

Double Feature is a series where I review two movies (or TV shows etc) together. Often when I’m thinking about a particular movie, I’m comparing it to something else in my head. This is a place to get those comparisons out there and see things in a new light.

Today we’re looking at two movies, firstly The Killing of a Sacred Deer and then Thor Ragnarok. I’ve chosen these specifically because they appear to be direct opposites. TKoaSD is a movie by Yorgos Lanthimos, a director known for making strange, extremely uncomfortable but well made movies like his previous works The Lobster and Dogtooth, two movies which I enjoyed. This film makes every effort to unsettle viewers and has no pretension of trying to entertain you, at least in a traditional sense. This film is almost an anti-film when compared to Hollywood blockbusters. Which brings us to Thor Ragnarok, a completely standard Hollywood blockbuster. The third in the line of Thor movies starring the Aussie Chris Hemsworth, and about the 10 millionth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe ™. Directed by lovable New Zealander Taika Waititi, whose repertoire of odd but extremely charming comedies made me interested to see a superhero movie in a way I haven’t been in a long time. This film is exactly what it says on the tin, a fun escape with characters you know. Waititi adds some heart but ultimately its just another assembly line production.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a movie that I would call Arthouse. Its not made to entertain you with a typical structure and tone. It is specifically designed to make you anxious and uncomfortable, which in my opinion is one of the strongest human emotions. Lanthimos is a master of bringing those emotions out, which can be seen in his other movies. The Lobster and Dogtooth both have a similar eerie atmosphere created by the oddly stilted dialog, deliberate slowness of movement and the same uncanny valley story that always leads into some unknown, uncharted and unnerving direction. In this movie Colin Farrell plays a successful cardiological surgeon who has secretly befriended a teenage boy. He introduces the boy to his family, but soon after his family begins to fall mysteriously ill. If that premise sounds strange, that is only the beginning. To say any more would be a major spoiler, unlike Lanthimos’ last two films where the premise was already very strange right off the bat.

Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman as his wife, and the actors for the children and the boy, Martin, are all great. Lanthimos deliberately chooses to make the dialog hard to read and unnatural, so the actors aren’t so much ‘believable’ as the characters but rather effective at getting under your skin as a viewer. Each of them is engaging to watch and carry their parts well. Visually the film is very striking, with nice clean shots, well lit and designed sets and an inching, creeping camera that is often doing just as much work as the actors in portraying the tone of a scene. It feels like a long movie, perhaps too long at 2 hours flat given that it never really pulls back on the creepy and just entertains.

The secret to this and Lanthimos’ other films is denial of information. The odd situations are very often just what is immediately happening, without any real setup or exposition, so as a viewer you’re trying to figure out the situation as its happening, without a real audience surrogate to project onto and learn from. Its not really what I would call a rewarding experience, and while watching I wondered if it was just pretension that made me want to consume something like this. I think this is a good movie, taken as the arthouse flick that it is. You have to know going in that its gonna get weird, that its not gonna make sense. With that mindset you can go along for the ride and see something unusual and fascinating. Its magnetic in the way that you cant help but look when someone drops their bag in public – its not that you’re entertained but theres something about seeing that awkward situation that we humans are just obsessed with.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer gets a 7.5/10 from me. Its not a movie that I can say is funny or exciting or dramatic. It’s a very slow, very weird trip that most people wouldn’t enjoy. But to me its fascinating and while I think Lanthimos’ other films are more interesting and better made in the sense that they were more digestible as stories, the way this film constantly applies a growing pressure without ever punching too hard or too soft makes it worth a watch.

On the other hand, Thor Ragnarok. Ragnarok continues the story of Thor, who im sure you’re all familiar with. Basically in this movie his dad Odin dies and this releases Thor’s eeeeeevil sister Hela, the goddess of death. She banishes Thor to a faraway alien planet while she takes over Asgard. Thor is forced to fight in an arena against the Hulk while he tries to escape and save the day. Yep, it’s a superhero movie.

Its big, its dumb, there’s explosions and swords and people make jokes all the time. Aside from the characters we all already know, every character that’s introduced is basically only there for that one big payoff shot. The villain should literally be called ‘plot device’ because that’s her only defining characteristic, besides being evil. Really the good parts of this movie can be listed as follows; some of the jokes are genuinely funny, especially around the middle and start. Some of the special effects are pretty cool. There are a lot of Kiwi and Aussie actors which was cool. The middle section on the alien planet was colorful and fun. Aside from those things, there was nothing special about Thor Ragnarok.

Look, Taika Waititi did his best. The movie is genuinely funny, which is what Marvel hired him for. But he didn’t get to write it and I’m gonna take a wild guess and say a lot of the CGI action bits were mostly dictated by what the studio could do rather than his ‘vision’. Things like the early scene where Loki Is watching all the famous actors and Chris Hemsworth’s brother playing the main cast in a mini play were great to watch, and Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie character was cool enough too. But goddamn, this movie was meaningless. I enjoyed the first two thirds as a fun romp, but when it tried to turn up the tension in the third act I couldn’t help but yawn because there were no real stakes. The action was not good enough to sustain the movie, most of it was exceptionally fake CG that looked bombastic but had zero weight. Waititi’s signature character interactions and charming dialog held it together but ultimately this was just a silly side episode in the gigantic Saturday morning cartoon that is Marvel. It gets a 6/10 from me.

These two films are really oil and water. Before watching these, I was hoping to come to some kind of poignant realization that different movies offer different things, and that each are valuable in their own way. But no, it seems some things really are just trash. Thor Ragnarok is nothing. Fluff. Its tasty fluff that you can bring your kid to see, but its fluff. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is bitter and leaves a weird aftertaste, but it actually tries to do something, to make you feel a certain way and show you something new. Thor is corporate trash. Waititi generally makes small, personal movies about people who talk to other people and all the little idiosyncrasies and foibles we have and how they affect each other. Those movies like What We Do In The Shadows and Hunt For The Wilderpeople are lovable journeys through what feels like the lives of real people, even when those people are a group of centuries old vampires living in an apartment in Christchurch. Ragnarok has the trappings, but it does not have the soul of a Waititi movie. That makes me sad because I was hoping to compare the heart touching work of Waititi with the brain touching work of Lanthimos.

But TKoaSD is a real film. It really did touch my brain, making me feel a certain way just as it wanted me to. I respect Lanthimos for being able to so effectively use the medium of visual storytelling, leveraging actors, music and camera in order to manipulate the viewer. Even though I didn’t think it was the best film, it did what movies are supposed to do in my opinion: be interesting. Ragnarok was the opposite, entertaining to a fault, but never pushing the viewer in any way. It presented a sequence of bright colours, attractive people and predictable beats. I cant say this movie shouldn’t exist, since I understand a lot of people really do just want to “turn their brain off” as the saying goes. But to me its symptomatic of the fatal flaw of Marvel Studios. They aren’t making movies, they’re making comics. You know theres going to be another one next week, so why care about this one? Sacred Deer made me feel something, which I value much more than the small 1.5 score difference between the two.