Lamb (2021)

I’ve listened to 77 episodes of the Grierson & Leitch movies podcast this summer while walking which is staggering in its volume: I’m averaging more than one per day. At the same time, it’s also staggering in how little progress into their catalog that translates to, since Sunday will deliver their 326th episode. Listening to these two men discussing movies daily, though, means that I know the show’s rhythms but also its vernacular: it’s hard not to catch some patterns across 200+ movies worth of conversation. And, as one might expect, their diction and perspective has informed mine. I find myself thinking about what I’m watching with much the same language that Tim and Will use. 

One such phrase of theirs that has grafted itself onto my film viewing voice is “on my wavelength”. When a film is out there but they still find themselves following it where it goes, they are “on its wavelength”; when there’s something about a production that never settles with them, they “never got on its wavelength”. I‘ve internalized this term as a way to convey whether or not the film “worked” or engaged them in a way that let them enjoy the experience in spite of components that didn’t quite work or story threads that didn’t quite land. Sharing a movie’s wavelength is like vibrating at its same frequency: the result is melodious and pleasing, not dissonant and jarring. 

If you’ve read this far and suddenly been struck by the presence of two paragraphs about podcast colloquialisms and not a single mention of the A24 psychological horror(ish) fable of a film Lamb I’m purportedly here to review, then congratulations on breaking my not-so-subtle code. I’m not dying to review Lamb because I never got on its wavelength. Curiosity during the first half hour of its runtime gave way to counting down the minutes until it would end as even its most cryptic moments produced a shrug. I am watching fewer movies now in fear of having to forfeit 45 minutes to reviewing movies that didn’t work for me. So yes, you caught me: two paragraphs about vocabulary are two less about Lamb. 

Set on an Icelandic farm in the foggy shadows of a mountain range, Lamb follows a childless couple, Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guōnason). Saying almost nothing, the pair tend to their animals, struggle with an uncooperative tractor, and eat small meals. They share a routine—a monotonous one to be sure, but a routine nonetheless. One morning, though, that routine gets interrupted when they birth a lamb. They did this twice the day before without a second thought, but this time their eyes go wide. Soon this lamb is wrapped snug in a blanket and sleeping in a crib by their bed. A warmth enters their home with this change, at least until Ingvar’s brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) arrives and takes an immediate dislike to the creature, throwing a wrench into the idyllic lifestyle. 

If you’re like me, the inherent mysteries probably sell you the most on Lamb’s concept. What is the creature? Why have Maria and Ingvar made special room in their lives for it? Where did it come from? Where will its presence lead them? These are all good questions, all of which the film eventually addresses and answers. En route to those answers, though, is a lot of strange nothing. Once we get our bearings with the special lamb, the film just…proceeds. We return to routine. The film appears to be building toward something, but without any urgency. 

I normally avoid reading about a film before reviewing it—I want my reaction and takeaways to be authentic—but with Lamb I was so not with it that I flipped through a handful of takes. One called this entire operation “minimalist” and that definitely nails the aesthetic. Action and dialogue are sparse; the plot boils down to “unique lamb and troubled brother-in-law appear”. Everything looks great, with the vast landscape conveying a sense of scale that prodded me and the visual effects around the titular creature are so impressively realistic that I too shrugged and adopted it into the film’s reality, but I filled up on those pieces early and just wanted something to happen. Something explosive preferably, but I would have taken something minor but dramatic instead. 

But Lamb is allergic to drama and addicted to understatement. I’ve liked a great many films that adopt this approach, but here nothing worked for me. Forced into giving a reason, I imagine some of my response is extratextual—I just wasn’t in the right mood for a minimalist film like Lamb last night—but I also wonder if I wasn’t responding to the way the film seemed to tease the audience about its central mysteries. At one point, Ingvar talks about scientific principles of time travel; the film leaves a cryptic scene of television visible on the edge of the screen another time, feeds a steady diet of religiously evocative imagery throughout, and has heavy breathing from an unseen source once and dense, all-encompassing fog floating in from what might well be an alien world during another. Each of these moments stoked the flames of curiosity for me, a curiosity that needed to sustain me through the meticulously crafted but intentionally unexciting rest. 

But the juice is never worth the squeeze for me in Lamb. The ending is pretty unambiguous (not to mention as close to explosive as this gets), and yet I desired no followup. I felt no compulsion to rewind back and inspect scenes anew. Unlike Nope last week where I couldn’t wait to piece together thematic ties between the assorted parts, I held the remote in my hand, my finger excited to finally press the off button. I was a sixth period class on a Friday afternoon when the teacher solicits questions. No thank you, sir, please just let me inch closer to this whole thing being over with for awhile. 

I did not enjoy Lamb but I’m not prepared to dismiss it as a bad film. With a piece like this, I suspect the cryptic minimalism and matter-of-fact treatment of the aforementioned lamb are less bugs than features for many fans. I’d have pegged myself as someone in the wheelhouse of this movie but that’s not the way it struck me last night. My favorite part was when it ended. But this is well-made, it stays on tone, and it presents some interesting ideas in a unique package. That wasn’t enough to hook me last night but that’s how things go sometimes. I will always loathe Guardians of the Galaxy 2 for reasons that have nothing to do with the movie itself; maybe Lamb is just another entry on the list of films that I watched at the wrong times. 

All I will say in summary is this: Lamb just wasn’t on my wavelength.

Nope (2022)

I’m of two minds when it comes to “horror” films. One part of me feels like the best horror leaves the theater with you; like stepping on a piece of chewed gum, it gets into the crevices of your brain and it’s tough to fully remove it, the mind tricked into a jumpy state of unease because of fictional fear from the screen. The other part of me, though, prefers horror where the tension and dread ooze from the screen and into an audience fearing vicariously through the actors in the film…but, when the credits roll, that fear vanishes completely. One is a haunt that stalks future nightmares; the other is a rollercoaster of temporary terror. 

Jordan Peele creates horror of the second kind. Within the theater, I feel the dread and menace and suspense; when I leave the theater, though, I stop glancing over my shoulder. His films aren’t like Hereditary where I pull the sheets tighter and try not to look at the shadows in the corners of the room or swallow hard when I turn out the lights. Still, the experience of a Peele film does not end when the lights come on and his name crosses the screen because there is intellectual puzzling still to come. What was he saying about the world? What did that situation represent thematically? Why did those characters behave that why and what can we take from their decisions? 

His latest production, Nope, is less pure horror than sci-fi/horror but the effect is the same. My heart pounded during the movie; my brain took up the mantle right afterward as it tried to make intellectual sense out of his crafting. Hell: during Nope, I’d maybe even say both happened simultaneously as a part of me kept trying to sort of how the disparate pieces all fit together. No matter, though: Nope is a blast that picks at flying saucer tropes in a heart-pounding way that plays brilliantly on a large screen but yet always in a grounded way as well. 

OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) trains horses for Hollywood productions on his family’s ranch. His father (Keith David) runs a well-regarded operation, allowing OJ to serve as a general ranch hand, but a freak accident forces OJ and his brash sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) to take over. Times are hard, though, forcing the siblings to sell multiple horses to the nearby tourist trap run by a former child star, Jupe Park (Steven Yeun), best known for his starring role on a sitcom that ended when his chimpanzee co-star violently attacked cast members. OJ hates this—he wants to buy back his father’s animals, not sell them off—but they have no choice. 

Things turn, though, when OJ and Keke spot a UFO above the ranch. Just as their great-great grandfather was the first man captured on film, they aim to be the first to capture extraterrestrials on film. An alien-obsessed clerk at Fry’s named Angel (Brandon Peres) joins them in setting up cameras and traps to lure the UFO out, but Jupe also has plans to capitalize on the situation. When things turn deadly, the three still refuse to give up and must set in motion an intricate plan not just to record the UFO but also survive. 

Nope looks pretty great from start to finish. Set amid sprawling hills in Southern California, the scale of everything feels pitch perfect. This is a place where a UFO could appear while evading wide detection, for one, but there’s also something barren and dried out and dying about the place that sets the mood for the film as well. The camera work here is engaging, using majestically centered shots that feel cinematic but are always slightly askew, the extra tilt or twist lending uneasiness and tension to the story. The CGI is less perfect, particularly with Gordy the chimp and a few late, close shots of the UFO, but neither hampers the film at all. Every sequence is visually inventive and cleverly framed to make the movie feel large, sweeping, and epic in scale even when the stakes are low. (The now-defunct Fry’s electronics store will never be rendered more generously.)

Behind the dynamic look of Nope is a carefully constructed script in which everything present is there for a reason. No random item or bizarre scene here is without purpose from start to finish; given time, the place for each will emerge. Even the hokey Jupiter’s Claim, with its large balloons and fake wells and too-good-for-this-place arena, is a masterpiece of cinematic problem-solving. It’s hard not to admire that attention to detail (and how so many of these clever adornments splash color against the dead hills. 

Performance-wise, the cast really fits together. Kaluuya was fantastic here in an understated performance; his OJ is calm and patient but also gritty and resourceful.  We see that, when the winds swirl and alien things appear, everyone screams while Kaluuya appears scared but somehow unflappable as well, making OJ both heroic and impossibly human. For her part, Palmer brings the kinetic energy that Kaluuya resists, talking at a hundred miles a minute and always dancing and moving and shaking; they are perfect counterpoints as leads. Yeun plays Jupe as a bit slimy and myopic, maybe even arrogant, but the character’s traumatic back story and the actor’s easy likability give Jupe additional depth. (I’ll give a shout out to Jacob Kim who plays Jupe as a child for a convincing depiction of mortal fear in his one scene.) And Peres skates close to being in a different film than everyone else—Angel yammers about Ancient Aliens and seems about 25% too goofy for the tone here—but he finds his way and eventually settles in as part of the team rather than forced comic relief. On that note, Nope is a film with jokes, not a comedy, and Angel’s role is the only one that left me uncertain about that fact. On the flip side, there are moments that lean into audience expectations in great ways that underline that Nope isn’t truly horror either, and those head fakes are delights as moments where Peele can show off his authorial command.  

By the end, some larger themes develop, although there’s so much there that it took me awhile to chew things down. Nope explores animals, particularly the way we use them and attempt to tame them but so often resist understanding them or respecting their unknowability. The quest for the perfect shot or the perfect show and leveraging something terrifying for attention and fame comes up repeatedly in the film, particularly with Em and Jupe, and the film points to this and endorses the idea of hard, intentional work toward success rather than capitalizing on something, a conflict that exists on the micro level two between the Haywoods. It’s difficult to tackle these big ideas without either sounding incredibly vague or veering into spoilers, so I’ll leave things at that.

Peele’s movies are interesting films that do things I haven’t seen before and they always feel bigger, grander, and more resonant than the canvases they paint on. Even when the pieces don’t all line up, like in Us, or they feel maybe a tad bloated, which I fear happens a bit in Nope, they never cease to be entertaining and thought-provoking as well as exceedingly well-made and visually original. I will always aim to see his creations on day one so that I can soak them in and chew on them myself before any other voices can pollute my thoughts. Nope is a success, though, a thrill to watch and a joy to dissect, and I look forward to watching it again soon. 

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)

On Saturday night, I finished reading Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens; on Sunday afternoon I watched the recently-released movie version. I’m pretty sure that I’ve never read a book and watched its cinematic adaptation in such close proximity before and I’ll admit that the arrangement led me to scrutinize the latter far more than normal throughout its runtime. Part of that scrutiny (mental note-taking, thinking about construction, constantly reflecting about its effect on me) came from the movie not working for me, though, as well. That it didn’t wasn’t exactly a surprise, but I really tried to dig into what exactly made this feel like a mediocre film. 

First, for context, the story: the Clark family lives in the marshes of North Carolina. The youngest daughter Kya (Jojo Regina) lives a precarious life there with an abusive father (Garrett Dillahunt) and both money and food tight among five children. When Kya’s mother leaves, her siblings slowly follow, eventually leaving the youngest alone with her father. That works for awhile and the two bond…until he too leaves and Kya is left to fend for herself. She is illiterate and unable to afford food, but she’s a resilient, resourceful kid and makes deals with the kindly grocers Jumpin’ and Mabel (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt) on the wharf and slowly carves out a niche. 

Those who know the book or movie might quibble with my summary as I have indeed omitted a huge chunk of Where the Crawdads Sing. I’m beginning here, though, because this is the part of the film that really works. This section builds up the world around Kya that this story needs. We see an at first idyllic home torn apart by a violent alcoholic, we see a town of snooty locals who treat Kya like a rodent, and we meet the few good people who care for this little girl.

And we get to see the marsh, which is often a breath-taking, dynamic setting. Like a meadow of ocean, nature is the star here and the film highlights this with sweeping grand shots over the physical living world Kya explores. Where the Crawdads Sing never works better than when it revels in the glorious landscape—and soundscape, which music often gives way to—and lets the audience share in the beautiful world separate from the ugly one that shuns her. 

My favorite parts of the novel were Kya scraping by, learning the marsh, coexisting uneasily with her father, and figuring things out without real guidance, and Regina captures this section with a splendid performance for such a young on-screen presence. She captures the wild swings of emotion—terror, despondency, awe—that fit a kid learning to be a person while perpetually alone. 

Of course, this story isn’t just about a kid fending for herself: this is a series of interwoven tales from Kya’s entire life. There’s a love triangle teenage Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) finds herself caught in between the sweet aspiring biologist Taye (Taylor John Smith) who teaches her to read and the haughty, manipulative Chase (Harris Dickinson) who starred at quarterback in high school and now runs his father’s auto parts store. And then there’s the situation that frames the film version: Chase has been (possibly) murdered and Kya has been arrested for the crime. Only the kindly retired lawyer Tom (David Straithern) stands between her and the death penalty. 

With so much going on, the novel maintains a strong balance between the past and present, never dwelling in one time period for too long while the two stories slowly converge. The film struggles more with this, letting things drag through rote courtroom scenes that lack inertia and resemble similar  sequences done far better elsewhere. The mellow trial is surely more realistic than its explosive cinematic peers, but that doesn’t make it great viewing. The legal aspects also steal away the film’s greatest asset—stunning visuals of nature—which further left me frustrated by them. 

That said, the murder case was a rare opportunity for us to see Edgar-Jones really capture Kya’s aloofness. Sketching on a notepad or gazing out the window, fully disengaged from the trial: this is the solitary naturalist Kya was in the novel, a shy enigma conditioned to avoid people. But this is a rarity on screen: too often the film pushes against that characterization. At one point, Kya sits on a beach amid strangers drawing—the film leverages it as a meet-cute of sorts with Chase—but a consistently-written Kya, the definition of isolated and antisocial, would never have done that. Combine this inexplicable spot with moments where Kya’s language and intensity become incongruous and the script’s struggle to really lock in its central character becomes clear. 

But that struggle points toward issues that predate this adaptation: one** of my biggest frustrations from the novel contributes to this problem: Kya is hilariously overpowered. This is a character who faces a litany of obstacles—poverty, abuse, illiteracy, prejudice, isolation, heartbreak, and later both sexual assault and rape—but who also becomes the world’s most profitable naturalist as well as an artist, anonymous poet, and author with a lucrative publishing contract who is capable of solving every problem she encounters. Kya is cunning but naïve; she is rugged but empathetic. Don’t get me wrong: it’s difficult not to cheer for a little girl who claws out of such a hole to achieve success and a secure life, but it’s just a lot—and Kya often becomes exactly what the story needs her to be in a given moment while still being all those other things too. That can work in a novel format (although I might submit it doesn’t quite get there) but, even after excising a few skills and traits from the cinematic equivalent, the film still has to throw a ton at the screen to capture the superhero that is Kya. Edgar-Jones hits many of these notes—she embodies undaunted resolve as well here as she did in Under the Banner of Heaven—but Kya is a bit of everything to everyone which ratchets up the difficulty. Characters often have to spew out compliments and exposition just to keep her borderline omnipotence on screen, and I got the sense Edgar-Jones couldn’t convey a character defined by limitless ability and a personality of contradictions all at once. 

**The other major frustration was the condescending portraits of Jumpin’ and Mabel, the black couple who provide for Kya and run a successful business in the south before the Civil Rights movement. The film fixes some of that issue, including multiple instances of explicit prejudice toward them—rather than just Kya—that the novel omits despite its third-person omniscient narration, which is a nice nod to a fact that all the pity for the marsh girl repeatedly overlooked. 

The result is a film that feels…hokey, strange as that is to say. There were times where this plays like a Hallmark original movie, albeit one with impeccable production values and a strong cast. I can’t quite pinpoint the precise reason why—I suspect the stilted dialogue in the script, much of it directly from the novel, shoulders a lot of the blame—but I undeniably felt it. Likewise, it multiple times becomes a so-called “bodice ripper” where inordinate time is spent painstakingly removing shirts and blouses which…fine, these are all attractive people. But it did leave me wondering if I had miscalculated the primacy of Kya’s romantic entanglements in the book and story. Those scenes felt out of a different, kitschier movie than the serene, almost pastoral story that encompasses most of this one. 

At its best, Where the Crawdads Sing is a juicy drama about an abandoned but resourceful child buoyed by gorgeous scenic shots and sounds that bring a vibrant world to life. It centers things on a story with a bit of everything and a rising star, Edgar-Jones, and crosses its fingers that those elements can paper over an awkward script. It doesn’t, though, and at its worst, the movie plays as soapy and corny, never bad but also often too tiresome, derivative, and inconsistent to be more than good. I don’t blame the filmmakers—I got the sense while reading that the novel wasn’t going to translate well—but I’ve gotta call it like I see it. This is a highly faithful adaptation of a popular novel that just can’t puzzle out the messy source material. 

Granted, the audience at my Sunday afternoon showing (including my mom) would disagree with me. They were buzzing as it wrapped up. But, for me, Where the Crawdads Sing is middling entertainment that looks great but lacks what it needs to be anything greater than that.

KIMI (2022)

Years ago, I received an Amazon Echo Dot as a gift. I didn’t—and still don’t—have an Alexa because the notion of a perpetually-listening device bothers me. It goes without saying, then, that I have never opened the Dot’s box. 

It also goes without saying, then, that I would be drawn to KIMI, the Steven Soderbergh film released exclusively on HBO Max earlier this year. In the film, Angela (Zoë Kravitz) works for the Amygdala corporation, listening to recordings from their Alexa-like Kimi device and fixing errors. Angela works remotely in post-pandemic Seattle because she suffers from agoraphobia but, when Angela overhears an apparent murder by two contract killers on a Kimi, she must venture outside her apartment to report the crime she heard through her company. But escaping that journey unscathed becomes a challenge in itself because what she overheard was not just any crime.

If that premise sounds both a bit pulpy and of-the-moment, you would be correct. KIMI taps into the very fear that leaves me leery of Alexa; that someone might be listening is disconcerting. But there’s more paranoia-stoking tech tricks in here than just an eavesdropping speaker. There are creepy powerful hackers, devices activated and tracked from other continents, and deep profiles of users at the fingertips of the bad guys. If you get the willies when your phone pops up an ad for something you were just talking about, expect some shivers. 

But KIMI is not some Black Mirror-esque cautionary tale. This is a rush of adrenaline that looks and plays slick and had me screaming and cheering at the TV throughout its second half. There are moments that evoke great sci-fi cinema, but also some extended set pieces that conjure far lighter films with names I’ll omit to avoid spoilers. (You’ll know one when you see it.)

The sum of these intriguing parts fails without a dynamic human center, though, which Kravitz ensures is never in question. In the first half, we get a portrait of a brilliant but trapped woman. She bounces between work, calls from her concerned mother, and therapy appointments via Zoom. Saving the whys for later, we focus on how her agoraphobia stifles her: she makes and breaks plans with a man across the street (Byron Bowers), she refuses medical attention for a painful abscessed tooth, and she disappoints her support system (as well as herself) over and over again. Angela is never weak but we can see she feels weak, ready to move on but unable to make that move. Kravitz captures all of that with a palette of wistful intensity from an expressive face. 

When Angela is thrust into the world, though, Kravitz’s performance elevates even higher. She captures a walking manner I know well while fully masked with her eyes forward and shoulders made as narrow as possible while taking short quick steps. Angela embodies that post-COVID discomfort with other people and a world of invisible assailants perfectly. But then, while later on the run, Kravitz also hits the right notes for that same fearful person forced to flee with kinetic flailing and stumbling leaps but determination underneath muted terror all the way. She absolutely carries KIMI forward into a good movie rather than merely a cool concept with some bad tech baddies. 

Speaking of the bad guys, they lack Angela’s depth and nuance, to say the least. These are bad guys straight out of a John Hughes comedy. We’ve got the jeering henchmen—one tall and one short—the sinister hacker in his mother’s basement, even a villainous profit-driven corporation. The most interesting antagonist might well be the HR officer (Rita Wilson); in a so-real-it-stings turn, she offers a string of performative niceties and empty platitudes that convey how aggressively little she cares about Angela and the crime victim. There’s nothing gray here in any of them; these guys are each unequivocally terrible. This could be a flaw in a weaker movie but here it works: there’s no wasted energy adding dimensions to the enemy. This is Angela’s story; they are merely obstacles in it. I will confess I did struggle with Jaime Camil as the leader of the heavies—I have never wanted bad things to happen to Rogelio de la Vega before—but even he becomes a generic afterthought to Kravitz in short order. 

I’m running long here so let me touch on a few quick hits. There’s a great scene involving a protest that plays as aspirational in the same way the train scene in Darkest Hour does, but I bought this one in spite of the other turning me into a cynic. Despite exploding with action in the second half to the point that it’s almost a different movie, Soderbergh nails the ending even though he indulges in an 80s freeze frame finish. For such a convoluted set-up, KIMI wastes no time even though it shows rather than tells almost to a fault. The result is ninety excellent minutes of tense fun that fit snugly together. More than anything, though, I love that a story like this doesn’t settle for unredeemable vilification of technology; a lesser film might have ended with an Office Space-style clubbing of a Kimi device rather than letting that same worrying tech play a role in the resolution. 

There’s a ton of good here, and I had a great time watching KIMI and seeing Kravitz shine. But I cannot sell it any better than this: when I am alternately yelling profanity at the TV and whooping out loud for almost an hour of a movie’s run time, there’s no denying that the movie I’m watching works. Kimi works.

Supervolcano (2005)

Among my least favorite films of 2022 was Don’t Look Up, the smug but unfocused disaster film that received an inexplicable Best Picture nomination. Despite being someone who would theoretically agree with a lot of its message, I loathed Don’t Look Up, wishing it had been a smarter satire rather than the sneering mess that merely insisted it was smart while wasting a terrific ensemble cast. 

I thought a lot about Don’t Look Up while watching Supervolcano, the 2005 Canadien TV movie that opens with the ludicrous proclamation that what follows is a “true story that hasn’t happened yet.” That statement struck me as a warning to expect an irreverent take on global disasters. I buckled up for “so bad it’s almost fun” filmmaking on the level of the Sharknado franchise that SyFy coasted on for years.

But this, it turns out, was a false alarm. Supervolcano is self-serious to a fault, a cautionary tale told with a grim earnestness that belies its low production values and dated effects to warn the viewing public about the dangers of underestimating nature’s fury and withholding the truth from the public. The points the movie makes are underlined so hard that the paper tears but it makes a commendable effort to be instructive and scientifically-grounded. Watching in 720p via YouTube should have been a trying experience, particularly with its bloated two-hour runtime, but, unlike Don’t Look Up, Supervolcano is focused and clear in its messaging and didn’t leave me rolling my eyes or shaking my head. 

Supervolcano opens ominously on a grainy video of geologist Rick Lieberman (Michael Riley). Unshaven and coated by thick ash, he has thoughts to share about the disastrous super eruption at Yellowstone that has leveled the western United States. How did they reach that point? Unfortunately Rick knows: it was both his dismissal and his refusal to stand up to authorities that allowed the cataclysmic volcanic activity to kill millions of Americans. The rest of the film lets follows the events leading up to this disaster as well as some of the aftermath.

Much more happens in Supervolcano than my meager summary conveys, but I’ll stop there because, if you’ve seen more than one disaster movie, you’ll already know the drill. All your favorite characters are here! We’ve got the arrogant scientist set to be humbled, the inquisitive reporter certain somebody’s lying, the stodgy bureaucrat insistent that profits and calm reign supreme, the undeveloped family forced to flee to safety, the newcomer who conveniently needs every scenario explained to them, and the distinctive coworkers with just enough personality to feel a twinge of sadness when they die before a commercial break. 

Likewise: all your favorite scenes are here too! The tense command room slowly encroached upon by nature. The vehicle racing away from an early strike with huge CGI elements chasing them down. The multigenerational escape that aims to imbue some sentimentality. News story after news story certifying the danger. You don’t need to be a Roland Emmerich scholar to find the biggest components here familiar. 

Derivative though its action is, Supervolcano makes some nifty adjustments to their presentation that work. Mostly (but not exclusively) presented as a documentary, the film frequently cuts to mock interviews with cast members discussing the science or significance of a particular occurrence. Films like this that aim for some semblance of realism often require characters to talk at the screen to explain things and, while Supervolcano definitely has that too, I liked the documentary framing device because it allowed those word vomit scenes to feel less contrived. Along those lines, the movie also weaves in archival footage from other real-life disasters that enhance even the most far-fetched moments with a dash of realism. Like those interviews, these clips lend an authentic feel to what is otherwise undeniably a TV movie. 

Not everything about this documentary framing works though. While the film mostly sticks to that device, at times it wanders away and focuses tightly on Rick or another character caught in a situation that couldn’t possibly have been filmed under that guise. Nevertheless, those scenes are filmed with the same crude handheld cameras as ones meant to be “real” within the film. At its best I barely noticed, but many times that bobbing camera work removed any semblance of a cinematic feel to the proceedings. (Say what you will about Emmerich’s opus but his stuff always looks professional.)

Nevertheless, one can’t deny the effort to take this “Yellowstone killed us all!” premise seriously. I mentioned the underlining and that occurs throughout the production. The script, the style, the cinematography, even the foreboding but peppy score—all tell the viewer exactly how to feel in every single scene. There is a determined effort not to let any viewer miss any statement or warning here, not unlike an emergency alert siren. 

And, as a credit to the team behind Supervolcano, what they caution against is meaningful. Although plot armor protects Rick from an ultimate reckoning, the script never lets him off the hook for dismissing the dangers posed by Yellowstone. When he refuses to counter an “everything is fine” claim at a press conference, we are told this is wrong; his character laments his cowardice openly too. The pesky reporter isn’t treated as a nuisance due for grisly comeuppance but as an inquisitive voice of reason who knows something is up. Major characters die; realistic-sounding science fills every scene. I don’t know if the statistics they cite are bunk—this is a “true story”, after all—but there’s an authentic feel to even the hokiest moments. I appreciate the lengths this team went to to make their messages about taking precautions seriously, standing up to power, and cooperatively rising to meet even the most terrifying occasion carry some meaning. 

Look, Supervolcano is as blunt as the flat side of a 2x4, heavy handed in every way and allergic of subtlety. There’s barely any depth to characters—even Riley’s Rick who receives the most screen time—the graphics and effects are dated, and the “true story” it tells is laughable (unless I too am falling into the trap Rick did). But there’s a clear vision here and a determination to treat the subject with dignity and earnest effort and I appreciate that. The focus and consistency go a long way toward elevating this from a joke TV movie I was challenged to review on a lark. Supervolcano has its flaws—a lot of them—but there are tons of good ideas in here and I didn’t even hate watching it. It could be worse: instead of watching this, I could be smothered to death by a layer of ash from a supervolcano that we should have been warned about. Hell, it could honestly be even worse: 

I could be watching Don’t Look Up. 

First Cow (2019)

I probably ought not to have turned on First Cow last night. I was cleaning up in my kitchen while waiting for dinner to arrive—hooray for discovering an unused DoorDash giftcard!—so my attention was anything but rapt. I so worried that my attention was minimal that I outright stopped the film near its midpoint to consider restarting later. This is one of those movies stripped so bare that silent scenes of barely discernible figures in the dark carry real weight; they have to. I wanted to do justice to this film that had received such praise on the podcast I listen to and had to consider a reboot. But I eventually turned the film back on and I’m glad I did because, with twenty minutes, I was so tense and absorbed that I had to remind myself to breathe. 

First Cow sneaks up on you. Its story is simple: two men in the 1820s meet under odd circumstances. Cookie (John Magaro) is traveling with a demanding band of trappers not thrilled with the paltry meals he provides; King-Lu (Orion Lee) has just escaped an angry mob and needs help to evade them. Cookie doesn’t have to help—King-Lu doesn’t even really expect him to—but when he does a friendship is born that leads them into lucrative business together selling sweet biscuits to the residents at the fort. 

This brings a financial windfall that has King-Lu dreaming about them both escaping west to San Francisco, but there is a catch: their recipe only works thanks to the precious milk they steal each night from the area’s first cow. As profits and demand increase, so does the risk to both men. And yet they continue to push forward with increasingly ambitious plans.

If that summary sounds thrilling, I apologize; this isn’t that kind of movie. First Cow is a quiet film of whispered conversations and grounded performances. Yes, there is an extended sequence that had me holding both my breath and my fork in the air, but mostly this is two misfit men growing into rhythm with one another and developing a shared (if possibly misplaced) optimism. There’s nothing showy anywhere: Magaro and Lee have a clear chemistry together but in an unstated way. We see it in their comfort together; we see it as they keep pushing forward despite how precarious every success is. 

In the discussion I listened to about the film, that relationship was at the center. The primary question was: what is the nature of their bond? In a way, I wonder if that question misses the point though: King-Lu and Cookie feel tethered together but not in some expressed way. I called it “companionship” in my notes and that feels apt; I’d buy other interpretations as well. All that matters, though, is that a gentle kindness offered to a stranger blooms into hope for two loners beaten down by a harsh world. Whatever the nature of their connection, the bond is strong enough to get both looking forward rather than at the dirt floor under their feet. 

Helping things along is a plucking, elegiac score that sounds both uplifting g and mournful at the same time. Its character left me with the same impression that childhood stories like My Girl and Bridge to Terabithia carry where we revel in the joys of friendship but can’t hide from those somber notes betraying the golden glow’s mortality. I would submit that the film makes clear how things will end for our protagonists during the first five minutes, but it is a testament to that score, the cast, and the overall direction by Kelly Reichardt that we feel the same misplaced optimism for the characters alongside them. 

I have few bones to pick with First Cow while fully acknowledging that it isn’t for everyone. That stripped down nature from the early going runs the risk of disengaging; in particular for me was the challenge of extended sequences in the dark that I struggled to make out on a television in a lit room. With so little being said (and my hands busy), I struggled to stay focused at the open and really soak in everything the film had to offer. But that’s really it and, in a movie theater, that would not have been an issue. 

Despite my rough start with First Cow, a definite magic appeared during its runtime. I knew where the story would end but still willed it forward. I knew the men’s optimism was tragically misguided but still found myself entirely on board. And I knew that the most special moments were the quiet conversations between two character actors and genuine condolences offered to a cow under cover of night and yet I delighted in them. 

In some ways, it evoked memories of reading Of Mice and Men in the car while picking up my brother from the dorms one weekend. I was just reading along for awhile before suddenly finding myself invested in the central relationship and ending the story in unexpected tears. 

First Cow is a far gentler story with more subdued characters than Steinbeck’s novel presents for sure. But if that experience doesn’t parallel my trajectory through First Cow, nothing else will. 

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

It’s been five years since Thor: Ragnarok. Friends had convinced me to go sight unseen and I sat down expecting a mostly-serious movie with large scale battles befitting the titular Ragnarok. That it turned out to be a goofy buddy comedy with stylish flair and awesome music blew me away. It almost single-handedly made me excited about the MCU again after struggling with Ultron.

That explains why, after waiting for the Doctor Strange sequel to arrive on Disney+, I was seated for the earliest possible showing of Thor: Love and Thunder. This was one I was excited about that promised the silliness and panache that could elevate yet another Marvel movie. And, although this entry lacks the consistent tone and laugh-a-minute frenetics of Ragnarok, I had a good enough time with this latest film to overlook its flaws.

To describe Thor: Love and Thunder is to describe two very different movies. On the one hand we have plucky Thor (Chris Hemsworth), still psychologically recuperating from the events of Infinity War and Endgame and traveling with the Guardians of the Galaxy out in space. When someone attacks New Asgard, he returns home to fight alongside King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson)…but also Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) who has managed to wield Thor’s fractured hammer, Mjolnir, and is doing hero work while cosplaying as her ex. The two hit it off again and set out with Valkyrie and Korg (Taika Waititi) to petition the universe’s gods for help in a story that maintains the cheer, humor, and genre fluidity of Ragnarok. 

They need help to take on Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) who is, ahem, butchering gods left and right. But Gorr’s villainy is not uninspected: the film actually opens with an extended sequence detailing the tragic Job-like origins that lead him to wielding the Necro Sword and cutting down immortal beings. I appreciate that background info—especially in a film that skates by without other origins thanks to prior films—but Bale’s film is entirely separate from Hemsworth’s, Portman’s, and Thompson’s. Unlike Cate Blanchett’s Hela in Ragnarok who went campy in her menace to match the vibe of the overall film, Bale is self-serious and hissing in a Gollum-esque turn. While Thor’s scenes thrill in glitter and pizazz, Gorr drains color from the screen in every scene he touches. 

This is surely intentional, setting the film on a collision course toward an inevitable battle between those opposing forces and films, but I’ll admit it can be jarring to jerk around between tones so frequently. Even when the Thor story meets somber moments, it still maintains a lightness; Gorr, though, delivers pure gravity in those other scenes. At its worst, watching Love and Thunder felt like dancing between air conditioning and oppressive heat: it’s ultimately fine but it definitely can leave a bit of a headache in its wake. 

The positive of that dual-movie setup, though, is that Love and Thunder soars visually no matter which you’re watching. Gorr’s scenes are desolate, dusty, and harrowing; there’s an undercurrent of horror when the gangly gray Bale shows up in the shadows with his haunting dead eyes and summons nightmare fodder in monochromatic grays. But the best sequences appear in the other half: these are epic music videos with kinetic battles between silhouettes set against flashes of color with iconic metal ballads driving them forward, their every shot feeling original and inventive. The story here is good enough but the movie could have been a nothing burger and still coasted to engagement as a visual and aural feast. 

But the story—Thor’s half, at least—is a win as well. Thor has similar beats to previous movies (charming, a bit self-aggrandizing, but we’ll-meaning and heart-felt), so a lot has to ride on the audience buying into the renewed romance angle…and Hemsworth really sells it. While Portman has a glimmer in her eye and an energy I don’t recall from her previous two MCU entries, it’s Hemsworth who makes this story of gods a human story. His Thor is still wounded, cocksure on the outside but uncertain and afraid of letting himself be hurt again even though he is gaga over Jane from the first moment he sees her in battle armor. There’s more here but, to avoid spoilers, I’ll just say that this provides a great reminder of how wonderful Hemsworth actually is on screen, with far more range and charm than I’d submit his arrogant immortal character deserves to posses. If Ragnarok was the MCU’s buddy comedy in the MCU, Love and Thunder is its rom-com and it works. 

There’s not enough for Thompson to do here, which is a shame: her Valkyrie is a rich character with personality and relatable problems (addiction, job dissatisfaction, trust issues) and Thompson is a blast in basically everything, but the script devotes so much attention to Jane and Gorr that we get only brief hints of the charismatic lead Val could be. On the flip side, the film acts as though director Waititi’s Grog is the funniest character in history and, while he definitely has moments, his jokes more often struck me as one-note or fail to land and his narratorial voice felt poorly-chosen if not entirely unnecessary.

Love and Thunder also suffers from the frequent Marvel problem with stakes. Early on, I was ready to credit the film for resisting the temptation to let the known universe hang in the balance. Gorr’s conflict was with gods and he kidnaps some children—these are smaller conflicts than the usual films submit. But in a blink partway through we’re traveling to elaborate god tribunals that seem plucked directly from a Star Warsprequel and racing to wish-granting ancients and, whoops, my bad EVERYTHING IS AT STAKE. It’s not bad, particularly with such pathos from multiple characters at so many junctures, but this is otherwise a film about intimate, personal drama born from ill-fated love; every time the stakes grew bloated, some of that authentic emotion chipped away. Not all of it, mind you—I teared up in three places—but enough to deflate some of the better storytelling.

On the whole, Thor: Love and Thunder suffers the most from comparisons to Ragnarok. This new entry is less funny than its predecessor, swings violently between tones, and offers 33% too much whimsy than I needed (although your mileage with screaming goats, a dozen cameos, and talking to weapons may vary). Ultimately, though, I enjoyed it a lot. I found real grounded emotion in Thor and Jane’s relationship story, numerous action sequences had me grinning, and the music was familiar but so grandiosely matched by the visuals that I couldn’t look away. Far less consistent than Ragnarok it is, but Love and Thunder firmly lands among the better stuff the MCU has to offer. I could and would watch it again, and I look forward to doing so.  

Saint Maud (2019)

Conviction is a terrifying thing in Saint Maud, the 2019 horror film built around faith, redemption, and self-flagellation. In a svelte sub-ninety minute runtime, Saint Maud spins a multi-layered horror film without ever committing to either realism or the fantastic, adding depth to a story that, if played in only one direction, could easily have felt familiar rather than engaging and original. 

Maud (Morfyyd Clark) has left her hospital job to become an in-home carer. Assigned to Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a former dancer of some acclaim, the devoutly religious Maud resolves to save her cancer-stricken patient—not from inevitable and fast-approaching death but damnation. Amanda humors her early on, but soon Maud becomes overbearing, pushing out Amanda’s lover Carol (Lily Frazer) while aiming to strengthen her own bond at the urging of the spirit she communicates with. But Amanda disagrees and their inevitable conflict boils over, forcing Maud to regroup and decide whether she will let go of her role as Amanda’s savior or surrender to the increasingly present spirit push to act.

A common criticism in many films is that one performer is acting in a different film than everyone else, and that statement is abundantly true of Clark as Maud. Maud is demure, she speaks with a anachronistic accent, she regards technology as sin and other people as sinners; Clark plays her as a devout Puritan dropped into the present day, hissing at phones and pleasures with intense, haunted eyes. Every other character is human; Clark leads Maud off into her own austere world of crosses and discipline. But this is not a criticism of Clark: Maud’s remove from the world casts shadows over everything because she so resists reality. Others recognize that something is off about Maud but, because she keeps to herself, says so little, and apparently means well—particularly in her role as a caregiver which she is thorough in and devoted to—people set aside alarms bells and think “hyper religious” rather than “dangerous zealot”. Clark is a master of what I’ll call absent presence here: Maud stands in the room or participated in the conversation but always from a separate plane barely aware of the others’.

But we are privy to Maud outside her caregiver role and know something is up. We see her self-harm in numerous ways, we catch flashbacks to something traumatic, and we see blood in unexpected places, always spiraling and dripping. The camera work and lighting help as well: Maud is shot from ominous twisted angles as though she can’t be properly framed and she always catches strange lighting that could be nothing but seems like something eerie when she is convulsing soon after. We never know what is real and what is in her head, but we know something is askew and that it does not bode well for either Maud or Amanda. 

Where Maud inhabits her own world, Amanda is given depth by Ehle. Never quite buying into Maud’s earnest rituals but resisting cruelty, Ehle has a knowing look of sad bemusement: she finds her caregiver to be insufferable but knows that she cannot push her away. Maud is good for her and takes care of her; she can tolerate the exchange as her body fails. But when the few pleasures in her life are pulled away—her liquor, Carol, even smoking—Ehle lets Amanda falter, with her unseen smirks becoming acerbic comments and scolding. To die with class is impressive, but to die with bitter righteous anger is understandable: we see both in a way that reflects investment from the script. Amanda could have been an object in Maud’s story but she never is allowed to be merely that. 

With only 80 minutes or so to tell its story, Saint Maud’s careful construction precludes the film from feeling rushed. The middle third juggles the most stuff—a skirmish, Maud’s self-questioning, new revelations—but even then there is an impressive concision: we get exactly as much of each scene that we need to raise questions and swallow hard but not a second more. We meet a few other characters whose minimal lines are always sufficient to fill out our profile of Maud and lead us to the film’s conclusion. 

And damn what a conclusion. I’ll resist spoilers, even though I would love to get into the ending because, in some ways, I feel like the film answers every question it begs…but that the answers it gives can still be held up to interpretation? I say this because, as the credits rolled, I felt convinced of one truth but, hours later, I suddenly feel certain of the opposite. Faith is a tricky subject to tackle, especially in a horror movie, but I think Saint Maud manages to address the subject well.

This is all to say: Saint Maud is an impressive creation. It says a lot without wasting words, it both leans into and skirts alongside the horror genre, and it rides two strong (but extremely different) performances into something haunting and richly ambiguous without leaving too many loose threads. Whether you fear the decay of the human body, the human soul, or the human mind, there’s something dread-inducing here to twist your stomach and get the film never overstays its welcome. That’s a win in my book. 

The History of the Downward Spiral (2022)

My favorite episode of BoJack Horseman is “Free Churro” and no other is even close. Quite famously, “Free Churro” consists of BoJack (Will Arnett) giving a eulogy for effectively the entire episode’s runtime. After a short opening scene, there are no other characters or voices: it’s just BoJack talking about his grief and wrestling with his history with the character who died.

I was about to make dinner when that episode automatically started playing on Netflix. I continued what I was doing for a few minutes until I, without premeditated thought, set everything down and took a seat on the couch to watch and listen. Everything BoJack says is hyper-specific to himself and his relationship with the deceased, but I felt like I was reliving every funeral and loss of my life along with his words. The character’s emotion and my emotion became synced. I was entranced by every word of “Free Churro” as it amplified feelings from my own life. 

That experience is the closest parallel I can offer to the experience of watching The History of the Downward Spiral in which YouTube creator and historian EmpLemon chronicles his personal history on the platform en route to reaching one million subscribers. Having watched nearly every video on his channel across the last two years, I knew the rough beats of his story, with the major chapters he identifies lining up well with the conception I drew out of watching his work. But, just like with “Free Churro”, there was something hypnotic and moving about listening to that story told in raw, honest terms by the man himself and, just as with BoJack Horseman’s finest episode, I reached a point where I simply surrendered, pulled out my chair, and sat down to watch and listen. 

The film podcast I listen to says over and over that creating something ultra specific allows it to become universal and, counterintuitive though that is, there was something universal in The History of the Downward Spiral that magnetized my own experiences with his. EmpLemon seemed to only jokingly refer to this as a movie, but a 99-minute video with a clear arc and story produced thoughtfully sounds like a documentary film to me—and damn was it a good one that didn’t even aspire to be. 

Describing the film would amount to me summarizing his summary which is weird but here’s the gist. EmpLemon began as a kid remixing TV shows and Pixar movies into YTP (YouTube Poop) but his success and early monetization opportunity led him to a hostile community and vocal, unforgiving audience. Still in high school, he posted an explosive response to the negativity and torched his own channel, losing 99% of his viewership. But that culling led to reinvention that included some early missteps but that, over time, brought Emp back into the spotlight as a video essayist whose work allowed him to pursue the rewarding work and career he‘d wanted all along. 

Although framed as a therapy session, make no mistake: 95% of The History of the Downward Spiral is static shots of Emp talking while bathed in his classic green Simpsons glow. Nevertheless, that device creates a strange feeling of intimacy: it’s as though the viewer is smuggled into someone else’s reflection. Even though the stories he tells are not new to me, hearing them again but spoken by the person rather than a disembodied narrator feels different. Without a face, there exists a wall; this video removes that wall. 

The reflection does not spare any subject. There’s an extended meditation about his incident with the channel Behind the Meme that showcases both a defiance and a matured perspective; it’s a situation in which he fully reiterates that he meant what he said but that he also wishes the outcome had been different from. There’s a discussion about embracing power and influence built around his piece on the problematic but innovative early YouTube personality Leafy as well as frank criticisms about YouTube itself and how often its inconsistency has threatened creators’ artistic goals. Emp often notes the continued presence of a chip on his shoulder over particular situations and that comes through unambiguously—there are flare-ups where his former anger burns on-screen—but he adds extra context to those tough situations and, in the process, lends authenticity to the emotions he explored in the original works. 

Emp shares numerous powerful insights throughout the piece as well. While known as a meticulous researcher, one opinion really stood out from his revisiting his “Frying Nemo” series that pushed him out of YTP. “It’s too much mentally to deal with,” Emp says while addressing his previous focus on feedback and comments. “I don’t think that the human mind was designed to deal with this many people talking to you.” Although his point is focused around the creator-audience dynamic, I find wider truth present. As a teacher, I am constantly told to seek feedback and listen to everything my students, my colleagues, my administrators, my district, education experts, researchers, books, and the union offer in order to craft instruction and perform my duties. While this is a far cry from thousands of commenters criticizing Emp for artistic projects he created for free in the early era, it taps into that overwhelming sensation of being bombarded by demands and ideas from others who don’t see my extensive, invested process behind each decision or strategy. There’s no pleasing everyone, a fact Emp eventually accepts by refusing to peruse the comments…and yet there is a built-in expectation that one strives to please everyone. I admit to feeling almost relieved to hear that because I too have come to realize that too much feedback, especially from the wrong sources at the wrong times, erodes what might be sub-optimal but still successful and, most importantly, enjoyable. It’s strange to think of but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard this sentiment expressed before, let alone with such clear concision.

The other insight that stood out to me relates to the titular downward spiral, a visual and metaphorical representation of Emp’s own mind-space after an explosive rebuke of his audience years ago. His “therapist” (Rusty Cage) asks Emp directly if he still feels like he is on a downward spiral; although he holds in his hands his one million subscriber plaque, a seeming testament to ascension, he hesitates. 

“Based on my experiences on YouTube, and just how close I was at some many points to the edge of control, I’m of the philosophy that it can all just go away in an instant…I think I’ll always have that fear.”

That honesty speaks to me. After years of struggling to gain traction, that he has finally “beaten the game” is rewarding but not pixie dust. It doesn’t magically vanquish the awareness of how fragile everything is. There isn’t a plateau to be reached after which everything else is smooth sailing and eternal happiness. He even acknowledges that reaching the greatest heights means stumbling can lead to a more painful fall. And I think this might be why Emp’s “film” speaks so powerfully to me: he acknowledges how all of his life and work—bad and good—have led him to this moment of overwhelming success, but laments that reaching success does not erase the scars and echoes of what it took to arrive.

I listen to a lot of people talk on YouTube but few do I value as much as EmpLemon. I’ve not liked everything that he’s made but I have enjoyed and learned something from most of it. And yet this film brought all of that together and left me really admiring the man himself, for his work, of course, but also for the person he became creating it. I love stories of people and I enjoyed getting EmpLemon’s deep probing analysis on a subject he knows better than anyone else: himself.