Everyone's Gone to the Movies
Plus a conversation with Joseph Schafer & Langdon Hickman about Iron Maiden
Second time’s the charm. Despite running into some technical difficulties following from a power outage in Seattle, the latest episode of Lamniformes Radio features a conversation with Joseph Schafer and Langdon Hickman of the Mining Metal column at Consequence of Sound about Iron Maiden. If you’ve wondered why I’ve been bringing up Iron Maiden so frequently in this newsletter, first of all nice to meet you, here’s why. Both Schafer and Hickman have been on Lamniformes Radio before, and of course Schafer is my cohost on The Human Instrumentality Podcast. Having them back on to talk about one of the Greatest Metal Bands Ever was a blast. Hope you dig it!
Last week I wrote about my feelings both good and bad regarding the reemergence of live music. This week I’d like to attempt the same for my return to movie theaters.
I’m no film critic, and I’m even less of a film journalist, but I’ve been watching the movie business’s handwringing over the rise of streaming with piqued interest for the last few years. Seeing the collective angst over Netflix cutting out the middle man and dropping their awards-baiting original films directly into people’s homes sparks in me something like cross-medium solidarity. A future where live concerts are replaced by entirely by live-streamed shows is a long shot at this point, unless something catastrophic happens to the world’s alcohol supply, but a movie theater-less future where films go straight to On-Demand still feels very much in the cards. Even now after movie theaters have re-opened it doesn’t look like the toothpaste has any interest in getting back in the tube. Warner Bros, Amazon, Netflix, and Disney seem happy to “meet people where they are” even as filmmakers themselves tear their hair out over audiences watching their work on sub-ideal setups.
Going to see a new movie in theaters has gone from the default way to keep up with the medium to a conscious choice. Oddly enough this has put new movies on an even playing field with older ones both at home and in theaters. When a much hyped new release screams across the top of my Netflix browser it quickly has to compete with every other movie in my watch list. Similarly, I’d wager that the kind of person who still goes to see new movies in theaters has more in common with the kind of person that goes to see 70mm prints of of, say, Lawrence of Arabia than they do the person that fires up the latest MCU gruel at home.
Given this anachronistic set up, and given how few new movies I saw at all this year, this wrap up will include both current releases and the older movies that I saw in theaters.
State Funeral
Gotta say, when I fantasized about going back to the big screen after months of watching movies on my piddling laptop screen I envisioned something big, loud, and dumb greeting me when the lights went down. Maybe that new Godzilla vs Kong or something like that. Instead I joined some friends to watch a bone-dry documentary of archival footage of the Soviet Union following the death of Joseph Stalin. The footage is presented with no voiceover or editorializing until the final moment of the film, instead leaving you to make your own conclusions about what you’re seeing. The movie bombards you with speech after speech from heads of state pumping up the legend of Stalin’s greatness. Seemingly endless citizens stream by Stalin’s coffin, often casting sideways glances to the camera. Brass bands play Chopin’s funeral march on loop. This all begins to wear you down, through sheer repetition you might find yourself buying some of the bullshit, which makes the final title card’s flat recitation of Stalin’s body count all the more sobering. This might not sound like the kind of thing that you need to see in theaters, but having no access to a pause button or my phone heightened the psychological claustrophobia.
The Big Sleep
I caught this one on a whim on the same day that I saw Frank Meadows live at The Tradesmen. I thought of it as a pseudo-homework assignment. I’m a huge fan of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice as well as the Thomas Pynchon novel that its adapted from. Inherent Vice is basically a stoned hippie-fied version1 of the L.A. noir, of which The Big Sleep is a notable classic. So to further my appreciation of Vice I figured I should get acquainted with its predecessor. More homework should be this fun. The Big Sleep is a blast. Everyone’s either flirting with and/or double crossing everyone else. I couldn’t begin to tell you what the web of plot lines that keep the movie humming add up to, but I enjoyed every minute of the experience.
The Green Knight
Over the last few years I’ve noticed a lot of people snarking about the perceived house style of the independent film production company A24. Over the last decade A24 have become synonymous with heartfelt dramas and stylish “elevated” horror films like The Witch and Hereditary. I’ve enjoyed a plurality of of A24 movies, but taken as a whole their body of work does start to blur into what Venkatesh Rao would call "premium mediocre.” You know, an aggressively normal person’s idea of a weird movie or, if you’ll excuse the swipe at a low-hanging fruit, a 24 year-olds first exposure to non-mainstream film making. Obviously this is an oversimplification, but when I first saw the trailer for The Green Knight I worried that it would confirm the “all style no substance” reputation that has started to stick to A24.
Well I had no reason to worry, this movie rules. A tragedy of youthful hubris set in motion by a misunderstanding. Our hero Gawain doesn’t quite understand the latitude granted to him by the rules of the Green Knight’s game and accidentally sets himself up for certain death. Gawain continues to to misinterpret and misread just about every person he runs across, constantly doing and saying the wrong thing, pushed forward only by his commitment towards keeping his promise and thereby maintaining his honor. It’s a grim film, a travelogue through a world of mist and mystery. Plus it’s got a cute lil fox buddy, what more could you want?
Titane
First I’d like to apologize to the employees of Nitehawk, who had to deal with my dumb ass waltzing right to my seat before they had officially opened the doors to the theater and then had to deliver me a meal during one of the most appetite ruining movies I’ve ever seen. Titane is disgusting. There’s a scene early on that made me nearly throw up my breakfast the next morning, and that scene was only the movie’s warm up act. I doubt that I would have made it through it in one sitting if I hadn’t seen it in theaters. The grossness however is not the point here. It comes with the territory of making a movie about the messiness of the human body and its malleability. I don’t have the range, so to speak, to tackle the movie’s take on gender and I’ve heard compelling arguments from people for whom it both did and did not work, so instead I’ll wimp out and say that I’m grateful for Titane’s ability to start messy conversations.
The Last Duel
Former Lamniformes Radio guest Preston Wollner invited me to see this and told me when we arrived that the theater that I was the only person he knew that would even consider going with him. I understood immediately what he meant. The vibes ahead of this one were uniformly bad. A 84 y/o male director making a medieval #MeToo movie with the Good Will Hunting guys seemed like a recipe for disaster. Still, it’s Ridley Scott we’re talking about here, it was at least worth a shot. Good news! It wasn’t a disaster! It was really good!
The obvious comparison is Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, since this movie retells the same events from three different perspectives. The big difference is that this movie makes no attempt to hide what it considers to be the “real” truth. What I like about this approach is that allows the two duelists’ stories to show us how the characters see themselves without muddling up consequences of their actions. It also lets the duel itself stand alone as a kick ass action scene.
I’m not sure if it’s the kind of movie that you need to see in theaters, I bet that I would have enjoyed it just as much if I’d watched it at home. However, seeing it in theaters did lead to a very surreal “only in new york” minor celeb sighting when, while I was waiting for Preston to get back from the bathroom after the movie none other than Action Button’s Tim Rogers walked out of the theater wearing his trademark Buzz Rickson flight jacket. Literally the last thing that I had done before leaving the house to go to the theater was watch a segment of Rogers’ 10-hour long “Cyberpunk 2077” review. I was so surprised that all I could muster was a head nod when he passed me. I’m honestly embarrassed at how star struck I was, but the experience of seeing the exact person that you spent 10 non-consecutive hours watching on your laptop walk right past you is one that I don’t have the words to describe. Anyway, I hope he liked the movie and if you haven’t watched Action Button, you should do that.
Dune
I already spent an entire newsletter talking about my feelings about this movie. So instead I’ll use this blurb as an excuse to talk about one of the essential parts of the theater experience: trailers. I am not one of those people that say things like “the trailers are even better than the movies” because trailers are ads, not art. I do not care about getting to the theater early to catch the trailers and I do not go out of my way to watch trailers for movies that I plan on seeing anyway. All of us have had movies wildly misrepresented, or even worse spoiled front to back, to us by trailers. But, in the same way that I’ve learned to read too deeply into the banners on the MTA, I will gladly overanalyze trailers if I must endure them. Of the trailers that played before Dune, I only remember three:
The Matrix: Resurrections - This falls squarely into the camp of movies that I do not need to see a trailer for. You could literally show me just the title card set to the iconic french horn motif and I would be all in. The original The Matrix is deeply formative to my conception of what qualifies as cool. I’ve come around on The Matrix: Reloaded as a sequel that builds on the philosophical groundwork laid down by the original, and while I’m not a fan of Revelations, even that movie’s flaws can’t dissuade me from seeing where Lana Wachowski takes the story next. I love that this trailer is flirting with fourth wall breaking meta-textual stuff. If this movie is even half as spicy as this trailer suggests then I will be one happy clam. And if I don’t like, well that just increases the chances of me coming around to it a decade later. Sign me up immediately.
Spiderman: No Way Home - Yikes. I’ve been on a Marvel movie detox since seeing Civil War in theaters, so I was not prepared for how deeply strange their dialogue sounds to the uninitiated. The jokey “Wheadon-speak” style makes this movie seem deeply ashamed of its premise. Everyone cracking jokes about how preposterous all of the fantastical elements of their world doesn’t make the characters sound more relatable, it makes them sound like sociopaths completely detached from the world they live in. The product of a cynical and myopic mind. No thank you.
Moonfall - LMAO hell yes. Roland Emmerich, never change you beautiful bastard. This looks like the exact kind of thought killing spectacle that I wanted to re-enter theaters to see. Plot? Characters? Themes? Who cares? All you need to know is that the moon is falling. I love it.
La Strada
I joined my parents to see this one at the Film Forum. My Dad had apparently seen it on TV many years ago and wanted to see it in a more film friendly setting. I had my mind blown halfway across Brooklyn by 8 1⁄2 when I rewatched it last year, so I figured I should give more Fellini a shot. I liked it, but I wasn’t bowled over by it. It’s a very watchable movie, full of gorgeous cinematography and some of the most fascinating faces ever put on camera, but it hasn’t yet synthesized into anything substantial for me. Who knows though, maybe I just need to rewatch it after a few years.
Thank you for reading, and extra special thanks to those that have signed up as paid subscribers. It means a lot. Due to a lapse in my attention it looks like the subscription plan that I planned on setting was too low for Substack so it defaulted to something that honestly seems way too high to me. I’ve adjusted the price to the minimum and I’d be happy to reimburse you the difference. I’m still workshopping exactly what bonuses paid readers will get. If you have suggestions I am all ears. See you next week!
The Cabbages podcast did a great job analyzing the movie as part of the long history of stoner comedies.