The Life of Chuck (2024)

 

When a piece of media really gets to me, I’m exploding with ideas before it’s finished. Inspiration strikes alongside what I’m seeing, hearing, or reading, and it’s a current of electric inspiration so powerful there’s risk in asking it to wait before it discharges. I call these “touchstones” because contact with them sends me running in other directions. It’s perhaps the highest compliment I can hurl at a book or song. It’s high praise to say a movie ignites my creative engine.

Based on a novella by Stephen King, The Life of Chuck is every bit a touchstone. It’s a film about embracing life and celebrating all of our multitudes, and it shocked me with a spark of excitement that few other recent films have. With every scene, the film excavated more and more memories and excitement, as if director Mike Flanagan had keys to the attic in my mind. The film wanders into mathematics several times, which would seem tailor-made for a creative person with a Bachelor’s in the subject, but that section fell flat for me—I don’t need a Mark Hamill monologue to see beauty there. But everywhere else cranked my gears into action: phantom beeping, street drums, dancing in the kitchen, a taller crush. It all activated something in me. It all felt deeply personal.

On his movies podcast, Will Leitch, whose excellent novel Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride makes for a great companion piece to the film, has often lauded films that make highly specific situations feel universal. It’s what he said of Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow: although the film addresses identity through an incredibly narrow lens, its underlying story about isolation, denial, and media doesn’t play like a single auteur’s singular story. The notes resonate with audiences who haven’t lived Schoenbrun’s life; we all have our video cassette totems that write messages in the air behind us. The Life of Chuck succeeds similarly, grounding everything in Chuck Krantz (Tom Huddleston), a milquetoast middle-aged accountant, but as more of his life illuminates for us, there’s exponentially more to grab onto. I’ve never dropped my bag and danced to a street musician, but I have felt the universe take me over like that. I’ve found an exhilarating affection for life not unlike Chuck’s, and I’ve been able to trace it just like he can. The “touchstone” effect owes to this filmmaking generosity that embraces one specific fellow but keeps the door open so we can climb out from his story and marvel at our own.

The script for The Life of Chuck shares its story in reverse order. In part one, the world veers toward an ecological apocalypse. Teacher Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and doctor Felicia (Karen Gillan) guide us through the chaos, including inexplicable banners congratulating a mysterious man named Chuck. In part two, 39-year-old Chuck makes a scene by spontaneously dancing in the streets. In part three, a young Chuck navigates grief en route to discovering dance and meeting his first love. Told in chronological order, the story would risk playing as rote, but the reversal, colored by magic realism and more than one mystery, lends an odd sort of inertia. We’ve finished the jigsaw puzzle, but we yearn to see the original panel cut into pieces. I’m not sure it should work, but it does because that unorthodox trajectory directly encourages us to reflect on ourselves in parallel.

Making that effect sing is the film’s phenomenal score. Composed by the Newton Brothers, the music anchoring The Life of Chuck amplifies the film’s already emotional undercurrents. For most of the movie, I would argue images become borderline unnecessary: gorgeous compositions herald the emotion, each piece skewing toward sentimentality and whimsy but resisting just enough to be stirring. Teamed with an excellent soundtrack that skews toward lively classic rock, music forms the bedrock of the storytelling on screen.

 

Unfortunately, The Life of Chuck undercuts its finest aspect with a script that leadenly underlines every wonderful beat. In a film that leans toward saccharine in spots, dialogue sounding contrived and overly clever should not surprise. Characters speak in thoughtful prose that frames everything neatly, and they invoke Walt Whitman as though no one’s ever been awed by his messaging before; this never reaches cringe territory, but it never lets me lose myself in the story, particularly toward the beginning. Worse yet is the intrusive narration that weighs down every scene it enters. I loved Nick Offerman on Parks & Rec; he’s an intelligent man and someone whose voice I respect. But his voice is a poor fit for such a mystical film; it has a blunting effect, like a sturdy block of wood, and its inherent authority robs the movie of its defining lightness. Moreover, his interjections confine The Life of Chuck to its specific story, outright interpreting wistful looks and optimistic moments for us. I wish the script had trusted its audience to find emotion in the expressive faces of a strong cast, or at least scaled Offerman’s vocal presence back to the bare minimum, letting the movie breathe its magic dust into my lungs and heart.

Because The Life of Chuck gets close to excellence. I’d heard the film described as a modern It’s a Wonderful Life, and I almost think that description does Flanagan’s movie an injustice. Don’t get me wrong; I love Jimmy Stewart’s classic Christmas tale, and see it as a perfect vehicle to convey its message that we sometimes fail to see the beauty in our lives. But The Life of Chuck zeros in on something more nuanced: all parts of our lives, especially those interstitial sequences, combine to create meaning. There’s significance in all of it, including the moments of waiting, and its purpose that only makes sense in hindsight. That is a beautiful sentiment, and it’s both what buoys Flanagan’s profound film and what that film had me buzzing about internally before the credits rolled. But The Life of Chuck doesn’t trust me to understand its message, which steals away some of the wonder it had already inspired.

The Life of Chuck is still superb. I just wish it had gotten out of its own way to be incredible.

Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

 

My family used to have a running gag about 2006’s Firewall. As legend had it, a good friend teared up at the end of that mediocre digital thriller starring Harrison Ford. Firewall wasn’t especially great and wasn’t especially cathartic, making those tears somewhat surprising.

There was no malice in the gag, by the way—the joke was on us, a family rife with emotional movie watchers. When a movie got somebody choked up, the line to regain composure was easy.

“Well, it wasn’t Firewall.”

I’ve watched roughly 1,050 since 2020, and I’ve felt some emotion during maybe half of those movies. It isn’t remarkable to feel some tingling behind my eyes. It’s part of how I watch movies.

Still, I don’t always expect it to happen. During All of Us Strangers? Of course. During Past Lives? Absolutely. During Challengers? A tad unexpected, but that ending is pretty great.

But during Fantastic Four: First Steps? During a Marvel movie with a retread plot and characters I couldn’t care less about? No way. No chance.

Ahem.

Fantastic Four: First Steps follows the titular hero team after their power-granting accident. Cerebral genius Reid (Pedro Pascal) has married Sue (Vanessa Kirby), and together they live and work with Sue’s energetic brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) and their reserved buddy Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). When a silver alien (Julie Garner) arrives to announce impending planetary destruction, the four heroes set aside inconvenient personal timing to barter with the cosmic villain behind the threat. When Galactus (Ralph Ineson) insists on a terrible sacrifice in exchange for salvation, the quartet must escape, regroup, and reason out a way to protect Earth.

Usually, I loathe comic book films with grand stakes. If Earth’s in danger, my eyes roll, my brain goes numb because I’ve seen it so often. Likewise, I resist the self-serious entries in the Marvel canon, leaning toward escapist larks that do just a little more than they have to a la Thunderbolts*. In this way, Fantastic Four: First Steps should have turned me off almost immediately. The stakes have never been bigger—Thanos took half, remember—and rarely has a story in their portfolio skewed so serious that the obligatory quips feel grossly out of place.

Yet Fantastic Four: First Steps works. It works unbelievably well.

 

And that starts with the performances. Pascal sets the tone with a portrayal of Reid that feels vulnerable. His scientist solves every problem and wins every fight, but the failed confrontation with Galactus rattles him. He becomes skittish and almost paralyzed in thought; he loses faith in his once unimpeachable ethics. There’s a great moment when he makes a press conference announcement and the reporters receive that news poorly; Pascal keeps his expression subdued, but you can see the shock on Reid’s face. He’s spoken like there was no question, like his decision was above reproach; their opposition reminds him how selfish his decision actually was. He knew that all along; he’s still shocked he lost their love enough that they’d remind him.

Kirby is an even bigger reason this works. Sue is dignified, thoughtful, and optimistic, but she’s a warm presence in a way the calculating Reid is not. As the only woman on a team of male archetypes, Sue must be the emotional center, and Kirby does so with authentic gravity. Whether Sue’s leading the charge in battle or clutched by medical distress, Kirby’s an electromagnet. It’s she who walloped me with emotion, particularly in two scenes that qualify as spoilers. If you know Kirby’s filmography, the first is incredibly moving for what might be meta-textual reasons; the second excels similarly, particularly because her heroism so closely resembles a labor of a different kind. I thought of Harry Potter here, which sounds silly until you realize what aspect it evokes. These scenes are ridiculous from a story perspective, but they stirred up the swell of emotion I spent the credits trying to tame.

Outside Pascal and Kirby, the other performances struck me as fine. Quinn’s Johnny is impetuous one moment, psychologically deft in the next, but that inconsistency is a minor hindrance. Moss-Bachrach brings lightness to the heaviest character, hinting at relatable texture, but nothing further; I’m hopeful there’s more Ben in future films. Garner gets the complete CGI treatment but wrings some feeling from it, and Ineson is a flat villain but shaded a touch darker than I expected. All bring something, but the script trains our eyes on Kirby and Pascal.

The true third star of Fantastic Four: First Steps is the production design, which immediately sets this apart from anything Marvel’s done outside of Wandavision. Instead of plopping this against a backdrop of our modern world, Fantastic Four: First Steps plays out in a retro-futuristic New York City that often looks pretty spectacular. The landmarks are there—and possibly imperiled—but the alternate world lets curving architecture like the team’s headquarters feel like a part of a recognizable ecosystem. I loved even more how the design choice informed the tech: even when machinery and vehicles do incredibly advanced things, the screens look like ancient radar with blocky pixelated numerals. Every instance lends the movie a varnish of novelty that lets me enjoy the world when the story stretches my patience. It helps, too, that the tech here looks fantastic, as do the old-school sweater uniforms sported by the heroes. Weirdly—but maybe intentionally—it tapped into some of my affection for The Incredibles, which adopted a similar conceit. Whatever the motivation, I can picture this world in a way I cannot the Marvel stories set outside Wakanda. Looking different is a precursor to the movie feeling different.

And it certainly felt different because it really got to me emotionally. My heart broke as the earnest Reid spiraled, and I felt a deep investment in everything Sue went through, but I also caught the wavelength of Johnny’s little-brother frustration and Ben’s unvoiced self-consciousness. Until a certain future villain appears mid-credits, Fantastic Four: First Steps does almost everything right.

It’s a strange world we’re living in when I’m crying at a Marvel movie and unmoved by Celine Song, but I’m not complaining. If Marvel embraced the groundedness and aesthetic freshness of this in more movies, perhaps Marvel fatigue could fade. Regardless, Fantastic Four: First Steps is among the studio’s best since Avengers: Endgame, and with the nifty Thunderbolts* from last month, a terrific sign for the near future. Sign me up for more Kirby, Pascal, and retro-futurism.

Even if their movie’s no Firewall.

Materialists (2025)

 

Since reserving my tickets one month ago for the first showing of Materialists, I’ve been managing my expectations. Celine Song’s cinematic follow-up to her Best Picture-nominated Past Lives—my favorite film of all time—could never meet my impossible expectations. Even while walking into the theater today, I whispered It’s not Past Lives to myself under my breath.

As anticipated, Materialists fails to approach its predecessor, but I found myself increasingly shocked by the film’s inability to charm me. Although the work is undeniably Song’s, as evidenced by the exquisite framing, New York setting, and pregnant pauses, Materialists is everything Past Lives was not: a sterile, shallow story with stilted, repetitive dialogue and distancing performances unable to worm its way into my heart’s borough, let alone neighborhood.

The craziest part: I suspect this was all by design.

Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a successful matchmaker in New York. While attending the wedding between two clients, she meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), a smooth and wealthy equities trader who’s immediately smitten with her, as well as John (Chris Evans), a part-time actor she once dated who’s catering for the wedding. The former courts her, showing her the luxuries her working-class wallet can only dream of, while the latter stokes memories of a relationship soured by empty savings accounts. As Harry pulls Lucy into his orbit, John keeps reappearing, throwing her love life and career into chaos. Meanwhile, after a dark incident at the service, Lucy begins to question the work she does and everything she believes about love.

Whereas Past Lives floated on Song’s romantic warmth toward all spectra of love, Materialists sinks like lead in the river. By virtue of her profession, Lucy approaches love as a commercial venture, treating it as a business defined by risk. Conversations in intimate settings become negotiations, moments of pleasure with the strapping and immaculately attired Harry confined to flitting glances and observed opulence. The script enforces this romantic remove, with line deliveries cold and intensely formal; the film lacks passion, oozing sterile corporate polish. As we glimpse a play explicitly written by Song within the story where the actors speak the same way, it’s clear this is an intentional choice, but that doesn’t diminish how off-putting it sounds.

Making matters worse is Johnson, whose every line delivery sounds as alien to me as it did in Madame Web. I know that’s ridiculous, but it’s a consistent struggle I have with her performances, and it’s exacerbated here by how deliberate it is: Lucy performs at all times in her life, posturing and pleasing wealthy clients to assure their cooperation and subscription, leaving her words as authentically human as an LLM’s. Honestly, it’s not just her—Evans struggles to render his dialogue naturally as well. He’s charming, of course, and his John is the only emotionally available vertex in our triangle, but awkwardness clings to his addresses. Only Pascal escapes unscathed; his character is in permanent woo mode while performing opposite Johnson, but there’s a warmth and curiosity Pascal exudes that Johnson never matches, and he’s simply more adept at reading those lines by Song.

 

Another struggle with Materialists comes via its plotting, which veers away from the Lucy-Harry-John triumvirate several times. Dancing around spoilers, I’ll say that I admire the gritty, realistic intrusions regarding her client Sophie (Zoe Winters), some of which cut through the shallow story like a knife, but that I call them “intrusions” points to the problem: they don’t flow organically into Lucy’s saga so much as inject a secondary concern to investigate and elicit character growth. They’re essential, but they feel wholly contrived.

No problem is larger than the film’s absence of subtlety. Past Lives won me over with its profundity despite economy: Song’s story and the expressive performances by Greta Lee, Teo Yoon, and John Magaro create a lived-in world with incredible depth, needing so few words that it stuns me. Rich thematic takeaways are abundant, with diverse and challenging messages woven together into a delicate but moving braid. Materialists, on the other hand, bleats its messaging at the audience in every conversation, inverting the deft rationing of tell and show from her previous work. I feel smart while watching Past Lives; I leave the film itching to discuss and explore. In this new entry, Song isn’t conventional, but she drops any pretense of trusting her audience. The deepest insights come from Winters’ character in the C plot, but even those are explicitly (and repeatedly) articulated.

I sound like a sourpuss, I know, but Materialists isn’t without redeeming qualities. The film looks stunning across a wide swath of locations, earning visual acclaim in high-end apartments, collaborative offices, and open barn wedding venues (that you know will feature soft outdoor string lights). The score proffers emotion that the film withholds, the costuming reinforces character and class in vital ways to this story, and Song projects perfectly framed artwork from start to finish. While this film clings to New York City more than its predecessor, we’re once again gifted fantastic park vistas and intimate shots of apartments and stoops I’d love to visit. I’ll also tip my hat to Song for taking risks, most notably the temporal shift that bookends the story proper. That move feels atonal and awkward to me, but I admire the idea behind it.

As one of the biggest fans of Song and Past Lives out there, my being down on the Materialists is inevitable. Past Lives touched me in personal ways while also telling complex, heartfelt tales about love, time, and origins simultaneously; this one carries lofty aspirations and has a lot to say about love, capitalism, and expectations, but it evokes Will Smith’s Hitch without any of the humor. It pains me to call this a step back, but Materialists is that: a romantic drama that strips away the romance and includes only low-energy sequences in hopes of warmly landing a far better—but still imperfect—conclusion. It isn’t Past Lives, and even worse, I’m not sure it’s even a good movie worthy of this many words. Like the film, that observation brings me almost no pleasure.

Save for one: there’s nowhere to go but up from here.

I look forward to watching her next film.

Past Lives (2023)

Originally published in Wildcat Weekly on May 23, 2025

For a more thorough response to Past Lives, read "See You Then" from Intensely Specific)

Have you ever wondered what your first crush is up to these days? Have you ever typed their name into Facebook or scrolled through their Instagram photos? Have you ever imagined what a life with them might have been like? It’s probably a fleeting thought, and a silly one for sure, but it’s a natural one. What if, you wonder. What if your little kid heart had been prescient? Perhaps you chuckle. Perhaps you sigh.

Part immigrant story and part pragmatic love triangle, Past Lives fictionalizes nostalgia’s gentle nudge in a film about partings and pairings. Written and directed by playwright Celine Song, the film grapples with those connections that should have long ago faded but nevertheless grip us well past their assumed expiration dates.

A quiet drama told in three parts, Past Lives follows childhood sweethearts Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) during three short intervals in their lives. In the first, Nora’s family leaves their home in Seoul to immigrate to Canada, leaving twelve-year-old Hae Sung behind. In the second, Nora and Hae Sung reconnect via Skype during college, chatting for hours about their shared youth and separate futures. In the third, a 36-year-old Hae Sung visits the happily married Nora in New York City, bubbling decades-long questions to the surface.

Because I saw Past Lives in theaters five times, have watched it at home seven more, written a 5,000+ word analysis of it, and encouraged basically every friend and family member to watch it, I struggle to frame my affection for this 2024 Best Picture nominee. It’s my favorite movie of all time, which is to say, I barely remember the experience of watching it without counting couples in Brooklyn Bridge park or ruminating on the symbolism of a stalled Skype session. With favorite movies, I try to space out my rewatches to maintain freshness, but Past Lives invites me to contemplate huge philosophical questions about life, love, and what we owe our childhood selves. I never used Skype, yet I can tell Song understands the digital world that welcomed me during high school and college; that is to say, I feel understood watching Past Lives. It’s why I’ve watched it so often across merely two years.

Since my gushing, glowing praise risks “overhyping” the movie, let me concede a few points. Song’s film is muted and tender to a fault; there’s drama and tension, but everybody’s an adult, so pivotal scenes play out without histrionics. That tempo and understatedness won’t agree with everyone. As always, your mileage may vary.

Aware though I am of those limitations, I still love it. More than anything, Past Lives is a movie about the mechanics and mysteries of what-ifs, and meditating on might-have-beens mesmerizes me. Some people move on from old feelings easily, burying their former selves far below current concerns, but others find those feelings’ fingers digging dirt away on the regular.

Past Lives resonates with the latter.

If you think it might with you, it’s available on Netflix right now. If you don’t have Netflix but want to watch, I’ll happily Venmo the $5 rental fee to the first five staff members who message me. It’s a small price to pay to share something beautiful.

*****

Speaking of our former selves’ desires, I’ve enjoyed writing about movies and sharing those reviews with you here. This was my first time writing on deadline for another person’s publication, and I had fun cosplaying as a movie critic. These all took time, but they offered me a nice release valve from everything else.

Thanks to Adam and everyone for indulging me. Have a great summer. Hopefully, I’ll have a longer form of writing to share with everyone this upcoming fall.

Tangled (2010)

Originally published in Wildcat Weekly on May 16, 2025

It’s for extra-textual reasons that the poster for Disney’s Tangled hangs in the back of HL-5. For follicle-challenged me, a movie about magical flowing locks should stoke envy, not warmth, but the story behind the rectangle I face while I teach overwhelms jealousy. I have the same poster hanging at home, too.

Because my affection is so divorced from the film, I’ve tended to overlook how excellent Tangled is. With catchy songs, a winning story, and two clever character arcs, Tangled showcases Disney at its fairytale repackaging best.

After being kidnapped as an infant, Princess Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) grows up unaware of her royal bloodlines but in possession of a rare gift: her hair has revitalizing powers. Her kidnapper, the vain Mother Gothel (Donna Summer), uses that hair to remain perpetually young while securing her access by gaslighting her “daughter” into believing she can never leave their tower home. When the strapping Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi) serendipitously ends up in her living room while evading police, the two set out to answer Rapunzel’s many questions about the dangerous world beyond her cramped home.

Disney released Tangled fifteen years ago, and that age shows. Everything looks fine from a distance, but the character models look rudimentary on a larger modern TV screen. That’s a minor issue in an otherwise gorgeous film that frames lively characters with painting-esque backdrops that evoke a fairytale world. Paired with expressive voice actors, the film overcomes its aged tech, filling the screen with vivid color and a dynamic story beat via a careening screenplay by Dan Fogelman of This Is Us fame.

Watching Tangled last week for the first time in a decade, I found myself newly enlivened by the experience. The songs really do rock, and I don’t just mean forever-favorite duet “I See the Light”; “When Will My Life Begin” and “Mother Knows Best” establish the story’s stars and stakes, while “I’ve Got a Dream” subverts stereotypes in a manner far more profound than I’d ever given it credit for.

Perhaps due to our proximity to year’s end, I realized this week that Tangled is an excellent film for graduates. Rapunzel begins her story trapped inside a small place, yearning to connect and bursting with curiosity about the larger world; by the end, she’s found a new home and family by overcoming her fear and trudging forward into the unknown. There’s a scene in the film where she struggles with her newfound freedom, oscillating between giddy glee and anxious apprehension, and I thought of my classes, many of whom bounce between blow-this-pop-stand dashing out the door and nervous gnawing over the friends and familiarity they’ll flee. Through that lens, I love Tangled for the Class of 2025: Rapunzel wants change yet also fears it. But when she takes the leap, she discovers her place in the wider world waiting beyond her walls.

It’s been a long time since I looked to the future and didn’t see a familiar loop, but I don’t envy Rapunzel any more than I do our soon-to-be graduates. I appreciate the stability that comes with staring at a poster for fourteen years and centering one’s work around the mindset it once inspired.

I hope each Wildcat walking at Golden One next week finds their place and people as Rapunzel does in Tangled, and as many of us have here at Franklin High School.

 

Your Name (2016)

Originally published in Wildcat Weekly on May 9, 2025

I first watched Your Name on a bootleg anime website. “Don’t click on any banners,” the recommender instructed me. “Play it safe.”

That first viewing felt surreal. Tipped off to the gorgeous music and production design, I was unprepared for the emotionality of a story, particularly one about star-crossed lovers that blends body-swap farce, disaster flick, and coming-of-age dramedy.

Teenagers Taki and Mitsuha each have bizarre dreams about living alternate lives. When they discover those alternate lives to be one another’s—and not random dreams—their lives entwine, but fate refuses to let them connect. When danger looms for one, each endeavors to prevent devastation and maintain the possibility of one day meeting the other.

Much like Haruki Murakami’s novels, Your Name leans into a magic realism that occasionally disorients me. Some scenes have cultural components outside my perspective, leaving me sure I’m missing something significant. But Your Name wields an urgent intensity that overwhelms my questions. When there’s no real threat, the film grips me, squeezing my heart in a vice as these teens learn about each other and themselves, but things ratchet up to eleven in the second act. There’s tense drama when two not-that-distant worlds collide and the clock ticks ever closer to tragedy.

Still, the defining feature of Your Name is its beauty and artistic craft. I’m no anime connoisseur, but I’ve watched enough to confidently declare that few look and sound like this. Night skies swell with mesmerizing color, while lake water beckons cool and nourishing; the lens flare here’s so vivid you’ll wonder whether it’s actually filmed. Every shot, whether pastoral or urban, is a masterpiece, the music keeps pace with the images, and the score by RADWIMPS incites emotion with every piano keystroke. I use several instrumental pieces from Your Name in my “If You Really Knew Me” playlist for Diamond Day—they’re that soothing, that powerful.

That all of this beautiful art would support a Quantum Leap romance between teenage protagonists would seem to be a misappropriation of resources. How many times have we watched young lovers pining? It’s a trope as old as time! But Your Name is greater than the sum of its parts because it treats the Taki-Mitsuha relationship with cosmic sincerity; yes, there’s a silly body-swap premise, but the filmmakers portray it as a grand, metaphysical tether across time and space, in a way that should be laughably ridiculous but instead pulls me onto its wavelength. Your Name presents its relationships as they feel to the young people within them: epic, all-encompassing, and life-affirming. It’s refreshing.

While you can surely find it online, the streaming service Crunchyroll has Your Name available right now. I technically own the Blu-ray, but considering I loaned it out in 2018 and haven’t seen it since, you’re on your own finding this one.

Rest assured, Your Name is worth some searching.