#daniel is also toxic positivity but in less of a threatening way and more of a pure plastic way

[arolesbianism]

Decided to draw some hypothetical employee id cards for my upper floor team captains <3

[grigori77]

2018 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 3)

10.  BLACK PANTHER – remember back in 1998, when Marvel had their first real cinematic success with Blade?  It was a big deal on two fronts, not just because they’d finally made a (sort of) superhero movie to be proud of, but also because it was, technically, the first ever truly successful superhero movie starring a black protagonist (the less said about the atrocious Steel movie the better, I say).  I find it telling that it took them almost twenty years to repeat the exercise – there have been plenty of great black superheroes on-screen since Wesley Snipes rocked the fangs and black leather, especially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but they’ve always been in supporting roles to the main (so far universally WHITE) stars (the now-cancelled Luke Cage was a notable exception, but that’s on-demand TV on Netflix). All of this makes the latest feature to glide smoothly out of the MCU mould so significant – the standalone star vehicle for Civil War’s OTHER major new success story (after 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming), Prince T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) of Wakanda, finally redresses the balance … and then some. Picking up pretty much RIGHT where the third Captain America film left off, we see T’Challa return to the secretive, highly-advanced African kingdom of Wakanda to officially take up his new role as king and fully accept the mantle of protector of his people that his role as the Black Panther entails. Needless to say, just as he’s finally brought peace and unity to his homeland, an old threat reappears in the form of thuggish arms dealer and fugitive-from-Wakandan-justice Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, gleefully returning to his blissful scenery-chewing Avengers: Age of Ultron role), leading T’Challa to travel to Busan, South Korea to bring him back for judgement, but this is merely a precursor to the arrival of the TRUE threat, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), a mysterious former Special Forces assassin with a deeply personal agenda that threatens Wakanda’s future.  This marks the first major blockbuster feature for writer/director Ryan Coogler (co-penning the script with The People V. O.J. Simpson writer Joe Robert Cole), who won massive acclaim for his feature debut Fruitvale Station, but also has good form after sneaky little sleeper hit Rocky-saga spinoff Creed, so this progression ultimately just proves to be another one of those characteristic smart moves Marvel keeps making these days. Coogler’s command of the big budget, heavy-expectation material is certainly impressive, displaying impressive talent for spectacular action sequences (the Busan car chase is MAGNIFICENT, while the punishing fight sequences are as impressively staged and executed as anything we saw in the Captain America movies), wrangling the demanding visual effects work and getting the very best out of a top-notch ensemble cast of some of the finest black acting talent around.  Boseman brings more of that peerless class and charisma he showed in Civil War, but adds a humanising dose of self-doubt and vulnerability to the mix, making it even easier for us to invest in him, while Coogler’s regular collaborator, Jordan, is absolutely spell-binding, his ferociously focused, far-beyond-driven Killmonger proving to be one of the MCU’s most impressive villains to date, as well as its most sympathetic; Oscar darling Lupita Nyong’o is far more than a simple love interest as tough and resourceful Wakandan intelligence agent Nakia, The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira is a veritable force of nature as Okoye, the head of the Dora Milaje, Wakanda’s elite all-female Special Forces, Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya muddies the waters as T’Challa’s straight-talking best friend W’Kabi, and powerhouse veteran actors Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and John Kani provide integrity and gravitas as, respectively, T’Challa’s mother Ramonda, Wakandan religious leader Zuri and T’Challa’s late father T’Chaka.  Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis have joked that they’re essentially the “Tolkien white guys” of the cast, but their presence is far from cosmetic – Freeman’s return as Civil War’s bureaucratic CIA agent Everett Ross is integral to the plot and also helps provide the audience with an accessible outsider’s POV into the unique and stunning land of Wakanda, while Serkis is clearly having the time of his life … and then there are the film’s TRUE scene-stealers – Letitia Wright is a brilliant bright ray of sunlight as T’Challa’s little sister Shuri, the curator of Wakanda’s massively advanced technology and OFFICIALLY the most intelligent person in the MCU, whose towering intellect is tempered by her cheeky sense of humour and sheer adorability, while Winston Duke is a towering presence throughout the film as M’Baku, the mighty chief of the reclusive Jabari mountain tribe, despite his relatively brief screen time, his larger-than-life performance making every appearance a joy.  This has been lauded as a true landmark film for its positive depiction of African culture and presentation of a whole raft of strong black role models, and it certainly feels like a major step forward both culturally and creatively – it’s so rewarding to see a positively-charged black intellectual property enjoying the almost ridiculous amount of success this film has so far enjoyed, both critically and financially, and it’s something I hope we see far more of in the future.  Like its predecessors, this is a fantastic superhero movie, but under the surface there are some very serious, challenging questions being asked and inherently powerful themes being addressed, making for a deeper, more intellectual film than we usually receive even from a big studio that’s grown so sophisticated as Marvel. That said, this IS another major hit for the MCU, and a further example of how consistently reliable they’ve become at delivering great cinema.  Very nearly the best of the Phase 3 standalone films (that honour still belongs to Captain America: Civil War), and it was certainly a spectacular kickoff for the year’s blockbusters.

9.  BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY – I’ve been waiting for this movie for YEARS.  Even before I knew this was actually going to happen I’d been hoping it would someday – Queen were my introduction to rock music, way back when I was wee, so they’ve been one of my very favourite bands FOREVER, and Freddie Mercury is one of my idols, the definition of sheer awesomeness and pure talent in music and an inspiration in life.  Needless to say I was RIDICULOUSLY excited once this finally lurched into view, and I’m so unbelievably happy it turned out to be a proper corker of a film, I could even tentatively consider it to be my new favourite musical biopic. Sure, it plays fast-and-loose with the historical facts, but remains true to the SPIRIT of the story, and you know what they say about biographical movies and their ilk: “if it’s a choice between the truth and the legend, print the legend.”  That’s a pretty good word to describe the man at the centre of this story – Queen frontman Freddie Mercury truly was a legend in his own lifetime, and watching the tale of his rise to fame alongside fellow musical geniuses Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon is a fascinating, intoxicating and deeply affecting experience, truthful or not, making the film an emotional rollercoaster from the humble beginnings with the formation of the band, through the trials and tribulations of life on the road and in the studio, the controversies of Mercury’s personal life and the volatile personal dynamics between the group themselves, to the astonishing, show-stopping climax of their near-mythic twenty-minute performance slot at 1985’s Live Aid charity concert at Wembley Stadium.  Needless to say it takes a truly astounding performance to capture the man that I consider to be the greatest singer, showman and stage-performer of all time, but Mr Robot­ star Rami Malek was equal to the task, not so much embodying the role as genuinely channelling Mercury’s spirit, perfectly recreating his every movement, quirk and mannerism to perfection, right down to his famously precise, deliberate diction, and he even LOOKS a hell of a lot like Mercury.  Sure, he’s come under fire for merely lip-syncing when it comes to the music, but seriously, there’s no other way he could have done it – Freddie had the greatest singing voice of all time, there’s NO WAY anyone could possibly recreate it, so better he didn’t even try.  (Honestly, if he doesn’t get an Oscar for this there’s no justice in the world.)  Malek’s not the only master-mimic in the cast, either – the rest of the band are perfectly portrayed, too, by Gwilym Lee as May, X-Men: Apocalypse’s Ben Hardy as Taylor and Joe Mazzello (yup, that kid from Jurassic Park, now all grown up) as Deacon, while there are equally strong supporting turns from Sing Street’s Lucy Boynton as Mercury’s lover and lifelong friend Mary Austin, Aiden Gillen as the band’s first manager John Reid, Tom Hollander as their lawyer and eventual manager Jim “Miami” Beach, Allen Leech as the Freddie’s scheming, toxic personal manager Paul Prenter, and New Street Law star Ace Bhatti as his stoic but proud father, Bomi Bulsara.  This is an enthralling film from start to finish, and while those new to Queen will find plenty fo enjoy and entertain, this is an absolute JOY for fans and geeks who actually know their stuff, factual niggles notwithstanding; it’s also frequently laugh-out-loud HILARIOUS, the sparky, quick-fire script from The Theory of Everything and Darkest Hour writer Anthony McCarten brimming with slick one-liners, splendid put-downs and precision-crafted character observation which perfectly captures the real life banter the band were famous for.  The film had a troubled production (original director Bryan Singer was replaced late in the shoot by Dexter Fletcher after clashes of personality and other difficulties) and has come in for plenty of stick, receiving mixed reviews from some quarters, but for me this is pretty close to a perfect film, chock-full of heart, emotional heft, laughter, fun and what was, for me, the best soundtrack of 2018, positively overflowing with some of the band’s very best material, making this one of the very best times I had at the cinema all year.  They were, indeed, the champions …

8.  MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT – while Bond may remain king of the spy movie, and Jason Bourne still casts a long shadow from the darker post 9-11 age of harder, grittier espionage shenanigans, I’ve always been a BIG fan of the Mission: Impossible movies.  This love became strong indeed when JJ Abrams established a kind of unifying blueprint with the third film, and the series has gone from strength to strength since, reaching new, thrilling heights when Jack Reacher writer-director Christopher McQuarrie crafted the pretty much PERFECT Rogue Nation.  He’s the first filmmaker to return for a second gig in the big chair, but he’s a good fit – he and star Tom Cruise have already proven they work EXTREMELY well together, and McQuarrie really is one of the very best screenwriters working in Hollywood today (well respected across the board since his early days co-writing The Usual Suspects), an undeniable MASTER at both crafting consistently surprising, thoroughly involving and razor-sharp thriller plots and engineering truly JAW-DROPPING action sequences (adrenaline-fuelled chases, bruising fight scenes, intense shootouts and a breathless dash across the rooftops of London all culminate in this film’s standout sequence, a death-defying helicopter dogfight that took the prize as the year’s BEST action beat), as well as penning some wonderful, wry dialogue.  Anything beyond the very simplest synopsis would drop some criminal spoilers – I’ll simply say that Ethan Hunt is faced with his deadliest mission to date after a botched op leaves three plutonium cores in the hands of some very bad people, leading CIA honcho Erica Sloane (a typically sophisticated turn from Angela Bassett) to attach her pet assassin, August Walker (current big-screen Superman Henry Cavill), to the team to make sure it all runs smoothly – a prospect made trickier by the resurfacing of Rogue Nation’s cracking villain Solomon Lane (Sean Harris).  Tom Cruise is, of course an old hand at this sort of thing by now, but even so I don’t think he’s EVER been more impressive at the physical stuff, and he delivers equally well in the more dramatic moments, taking superspy Ethan Hunt to darker, more desperate extremes than ever before.  Cavill similarly impresses in what’s easily his meatiest role to date, initially coming across as a rough, brutal thug but revealing deeper layers of complexity and sophistication as the film progresses, while Rebecca Ferguson makes a welcome return from RN as slippery, sexy and very complex former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust, and it’s great to see Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg back as series keystones Luther Stickell and Benji Dunn, who both get stuck into the action far more than in previous outings (Benji FINALLY gets to wear a mask!); Jeremy Renner’s absence this time could disappoint, but the balance is maintained because the effortlessly suave Alec Baldwin’s new IMF Secretary Alan Hunley gets a far more substantial role this time round, while Sean Harris tears things up with brutal relish as he expands on one of the series’ strongest villains – Lane is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, a monstrous zealot with a deeply twisted but strangely relatable agenda, and method man Harris mesmerises in every scene.  McQuarrie has cut another gem here, definitely his best film to date and likewise the best in the franchise so far, and strong arguments could be made for him staying on for a third stint – this is the best shape Mission: Impossible has been in for some time, an essentially PERFECT textbook example of an action-packed spy thriller that constantly surprises and never disappoints, from the atmospheric opening to the unbearably tense climax, and if ever there was a film to threaten the supremacy of Bond, it’s this one.

7.  THE SHAPE OF WATER – one of the most important things you have to remember about my own personal mythology (by which I mean the mishmash of 40 years of influences, genre-love and pure and simple COOL SHIT that’s informed and moulded the geek I am today) is that when it comes to my fictional heroes, I have a tendency to fall in love with the monsters.  It’s a philosophy shared by one of my very favourite directors, Guillermo Del Toro, whose own love affair with the weird, the freakish and the outcast has informed so much of his spectacular work, particularly the Hellboy movies – the monster as a tragic hero, and also the women who love them despite their appearance or origins.  Del Toro’s latest feature returns to this fascinating and compelling trope in magnificent style, and the end result is his best work since what remains his VERY BEST film, 2007’s exquisite grown-up fairytale Pan’s Labyrinth.  Comparisons with that masterpiece are not only welcome but also fitting – TSOW is definitely cut from the same cloth, a frequently dream-like cinematic allegory that takes place in something resembling the real world, but is never quite part of it.  It’s a beautiful, lyrical, sensual and deeply seductive film, but there’s brooding darkness and bitter tragedy that counters the sweet, Del Toro’s rich and exotic script – co-authored with Hope Springs writer Vanessa Taylor – mining precious ore from the fairytale ideas but also deeply invested with his own overwhelming love for the Golden Age of cinema itself.  This makes for what must be his most deeply personal film to date, so it’s fitting that it finally won him his first, LONG OVERDUE Best Director Oscar. Happy Go-Lucky’s Sally Hawkins thoroughly deserves her Oscar nomination for her turn as Elisa Esposito, a mute cleaning woman working in a top secret aerospace laboratory in Baltimore at the height of the Cold War, a sweet-natured dreamer who likes movies, music and her closeted artist neighbour Giles (the incomparable Richard Jenkins, delivering a performance of real sweetness and integrity). One night she discovers a new project in the facility, a strange, almost mythic amphibious humanoid (Del Toro regular Doug Jones) who has been captured for study and eventual vivisection to help create a means for men to survive in space.  In spite of his monstrous appearance and seemingly feral nature, Elisa feels a kinship to the creature, and as she begins to earn his trust she develops stronger feeling for him – feelings which are reciprocated.  So she hatches a plan to break him out and return him to the sea, enlisting the help of Giles, her only other real friend, fellow cleaner Zelda (The Help and Hidden Figures’ Octavia Spencer, as lovably prickly and sassy as ever), and sympathetic scientist (and secret Soviet agent) Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (a typically excellent and deeply complex performance from Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Stuhlbarg) to effect a desperate escape.  The biggest obstacle in their path, however, is Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), the man in charge of security on the project – the rest of the cast are uniformly excellent, but the true, unstoppable scene-stealer here is Shannon, giving us 2018’s BEST screen villain in a man so amorally repellent, brutally focused and downright TERRIFYING it’s absolutely impossible to take your eyes off him – who has a personal hatred for the creature and would love nothing more than to kill it himself. He’s the TRUE monster of the film, Jones’ creature proving to be a noble being who, despite his (admittedly rather bloody) animal instincts, has a kind and gentle soul that mirrors Elisa’s own, which makes the seemingly bizarre love story that unfolds so easy to accept and fulfilling to witness.  This is a film of aching beauty and immense emotional power, the bittersweet and ultimately tragic romance sweeping you up in its warm embrace, resulting in the year’s most powerful and compelling fantasy, very nearly the finest work of a writer/director at the height of his considerable powers, and EASILY justifying its much-deserved Best Picture Oscar.  Love the monster? Yes indeed …

6.  DEADPOOL 2 – just as his first standalone finally banished the memory of his shameful treatment in the first X-Men Origins film, Marvel’s Merc With a Mouth had a new frustration to contend with – Wolverine riding his coattails into the R-rated superhero scene and outdoing his newfound success with the critically acclaimed and, frankly, f£$%ing AWESOME Logan.  It’s a fresh balance for him to redress, and bless him, he’s done it within the first five minutes of his own very first sequel … then again, Deadpool’s always at his best when dealing with adversity.  There’s plenty of that here – 2016’s original was a spectacular film, a true game-changer for both Marvel and the genre itself, unleashing a genuinely bankable non-PC superhero on the unsuspecting masses (and, of course, all us proper loyal fans) and earning one of their biggest hits in the process.  A sequel was inevitable, but the first film was a VERY tough act to follow – thankfully everyone involved proved equal to the task, not least the star, Ryan Reynolds, who was BORN to play former special forces operative-turned invulnerable but hideously scarred mutant antihero Wade Wilson, returning with even greater enthusiasm for the material and sheer determination to do things JUST RIGHT.  Working with returning co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, he’s suitably upped the ante while staying true to the source and doing right by the fans – the script’s another blinder, a side-splitting rib-tickler liberally peppered with copious swearing, rampant sexual and toilet humour, genuinely inspired bizarreness (a grown man with baby balls!) and an unapologetically irreverent tone nonetheless complimented by a f£$%load of heart. Original director Tim Miller jumped ship early in development, but the perfect replacement was found in the form of David Leitch, co-director of the first John Wick movie, who preceded this with a truly magnificent solo debut on summer 2017’s standout actioner Atomic Blonde.  Leitch is a perfect fit, a former stuntman with innate flair for top-notch action who also has plenty of stylistic flair and strong talents for engaging storytelling and handling a cast of strong personalities.  Reynolds is certainly one of those, again letting rip with gleeful comic abandon as Deadpool fights to overcome personal tragedy by trying to become a bona fide X-Man, at which he of course fails SPECTACULARLY, winding up in a special prison for super-powered individuals and becoming the unlikely and definitely unwilling protector of teenage mutant Russell Collins, aka Firefist (Hunt for the Wilderpeople’s Julian Dennison), who’s been targeted for assassination by time-travelling future warrior Cable (Josh Brolin) because he’s destined to become a monstrous supervillain when he grows up.  Deciding to listen to his “better” angel, Wade puts together his own superhero team in order to defeat Cable and start his own future franchise … yup, this is as much a platform to set up X-Force, the Marvel X-Verse’s next big money-maker, as it is a Deadpool sequel, but the film plays along to full comic effect, and the results are funny, explosive, blood-soaked and a magnificently anarchic joy.  Brolin is every inch the Cable we deserve, a world-weary, battered and utterly single-minded force of nature, entirely lacking a sense of humour but still managing to drive some of the film’s most side-splitting moments, while Atlanta star Zazie Beets, originally something of an outsider choice, proves similarly perfect for the role of fan favourite Domino, a wise-cracking mutant arse-kicker whose ability to manipulate luck in order to get the better of any situation makes her a kind of super-ninja; Dennison, meanwhile, is just as impressive as he was in HFTWP, turning in a performance of such irreverent charm he frequently steals the film, and the return of Stefan Kapicic and Briana Hildebrand as stoic metal-man Colossus and the world’s moodiest teen superhero, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, mean that the original X-Men get another loving (if also slightly middle-fingery) nod too.  But once again, this really is Reynolds’ movie, and he’s clearly having just as much fun as before, helping to make this the same kind of gut-busting riot the first was with his trademark twinkle, self-deprecating charm and shit-eating grin.  He’s the heart and soul of another great big fist up the backside of superhero cinema, blasting tropes with scattergun abandon but hitting every target lined up against him, and like everything else he helps make this some of the most fun I had at the pictures all year.  I honestly couldn’t think of ANYTHING that could make me piss myself laughing more than this … the future of the franchise may be up in the air until the first X-Force movie gets its time in the spotlight, but Reynolds, Leitch, Reese and Wernick are all game to return, so there’s plenty of life in the un-killable old lady yet ...

5.  BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE – my Number One thriller of 2018 is a cult classic in the making and the best work yet from Drew Goddard, co-writer/director (with Joss Whedon) of Cabin in the Woods (one of the best horror movies ever made, in my opinion) and screenwriter of Cloverfield and The Martian.  It’s an intoxicating, engrossing and somewhat unsettling experience (but in a very good way indeed), a gripping, slippery and absolutely FIENDISH suspense thriller to rival the heady best of Hitchcock or Kubrick, and, as his first completely original, personal creation, Goddard’s best opportunity to show us JUST what he’s truly capable of.  Wrapped up in multi-layered mystery and deftly paying with timelines and perspective, it artfully unveils the stories of four disparate strangers who book a night’s stay at the El Royale, a “bi-state” hotel (located on the California/Nevada border) that was once grand but, by the film’s setting of 1969, has fallen on hard times.  Each has a secret, some of which are genuinely deadly, and before the night’s through they’ll all come to light as a fateful chain of events brings them all crashing together.  Giving away any more is to invite criminal spoilers – suffice to say that it’s an unforgettable film, fully-laden with ingenious twists and consistently wrong-footing the viewer right up to the stirring, thought-provoking ending.  The small but potent ensemble cast are, to a man, absolutely perfect – Jeff Bridges delivers one of the best performances of his already illustrious career as seemingly harmless Catholic priest Father Daniel Flynn, Widows’ Cynthia Erivo makes a truly stunning impression as down-on-her-luck soul singer Darlene Sweet, John Hamm is garrulously sleazy as shifty travelling salesman Seymour Sullivan, Dakota Johnson is surly but also VERY sexy (certainly MUCH MORE than she EVER was in the 50 Shades movies) as “dirty hippy” Emily, Lewis Pullman (set to explode as the co-star of the incoming Top Gun sequel) is fantastically twitchy as the hotel’s troubled concierge Miles, and Cailee Spaeny (Pacific Rim: Uprising) delivers a creepy, haunting turn as Emily’s fundamentally broken runaway sister Rose.  The film is thoroughly and entirely stolen, however, by the arrival in the second half of Goddard’s Cabin leading man Chris Hemsworth as earthy, charismatic and darkly, dangerously seductive Charles Manson-esque cult leader Billy Lee, Thor himself thoroughly mesmerising as he swaggers into the heart of the story (particularly in a masterful moment where he cavorts, snake-hipped, to the strains of Deep Purple’s Rush in the lead-up to a brutal execution).  This is thriller-cinema at its most inspired and insidious, a flawless genre gem that’s sure to be held in high regard by connoisseurs for years to come, and an ELECTRIFYING statement of intent by one of the best creative minds working in Hollywood today.  One of 2018’s biggest and best surprises, it’s a bona fide MUST-SEE …

4.  AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR – is it possible there might be TOO MUCH coming out all at once in the Marvel Cinematic Universe right now?  What with THREE movies a year now becoming the norm, not to mention the ongoing saga of Agents of SHIELD and various other affiliated TV shows (it seems that Netflix are culling their Marvel shows but there’s still the likes of Runaways and the incoming Cloak & Dagger on other services, along with fresh, in-development stuff), could we be reaching saturation?  My head says … mmmmm … maybe … but my heart says HELL NO!  Not when those guys at Marvel have gotten so good at this job they could PROBABLY do it with their eyes closed.  That said, there were times in the run-up to this particular release that I couldn’t help wondering if, just maybe, they might have bitten off more than they could chew … thankfully, fraternal directing double act Antony and Joe Russo, putting in their THIRD MCU-helming gig after their enormous success on the second and third Captain America films, have pulled off one hell of a cinematic hat trick, presenting us with a third Avengers film that’s MORE than the equal of Joss Whedon’s offerings.  It’s also a painfully tricky film to properly review – the potential for spoilers is SO heavy I can’t say much of ANYTHING about the plot without giving away some MAJOR twists and turns (even if there’s surely hardly ANYONE who hasn’t already seen the film by now) – but I’ll try my best.  This is the film every die-hard fan has been waiting for, because the MCU’s Biggest Bad EVER, Thanos the Mad Titan (Josh Brolin), has finally come looking for those pesky Infinity Stones so he can Balance The Universe by killing half of its population and enslaving the rest, and the only ones standing in his way are the Avengers (both old and new) and the Guardians of the Galaxy, finally brought together after a decade and 18 movies.  Needless to say this is another precision-engineered product refined to near perfection, delivering on all the expected fronts – breathtaking visuals and environments, thrilling action, the now pre-requisite snarky, sassy sense of humour and TONS OF FEELS – but given the truly galactic scale of the adventure on offer this time the stakes have been raised to truly EPIC heights, so the rewards are as great as the potential pitfalls.  It’s not perfect – given the sheer size of the cast and the fact that there are THREE main storylines going on at once, it was INEVITABLE that some of our favourite characters would be handed frustratingly short shrift (or, in two notable cases, simply written out of the film altogether), while there are times when the mechanics of fate do seem to be getting stretched a little TOO far for credibility – but the niggles are largely overshadowed by the rich rewards of yet another MCU film done very well indeed. The cast (even those who drew the short straw on screen time) are all, as we’ve come to expect, excellent, the veterans – particularly Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man/Tony Stark), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/the Hulk), Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America), Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Stephen Strange), Chris Pratt (Peter Quill/Star Lord), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Bradley Cooper (Rocket Racoon), and, of course, Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man) – all falling back into their well-established roles and universally winning our hearts all over again, while two characters in particular, who have always been reduced to supporting duties until now, finally get to REALLY shine – Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen, as the Vision and Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, finally get to explore that comic-canon romance that was so prevalently teased in Civil War, with events lending their mutual character arcs particularly tragic resonance as the story progresses … and then there’s the new characters, interestingly this time ALL bad guys. The Children of Thanos (Gamora and Nebula’s adopted siblings, basically) are showcased throughout the action, although only two really make an impression here – Tom Vaughan-Lawlor is magnificently creepy as Ebony Maw, while Carrie Coon (and stuntwoman Monique Ganderton) is darkly sensual as Proxima Midnight … but of course the REAL new star here is Brolin, thoroughly inhabiting his motion capture role so Thanos GENUINELY lives up to his title as the greatest villain of the MCU, an unstoppable megalomaniac who’s nonetheless doing these monstrous things for what he perceives to be genuinely right and moral reasons, although he’s not above taking some deeply perverse pleasure from his most despicable actions. Finishing up with a painfully powerful climax that’s as shocking as it is audacious, this sets things up for an even more epic conclusion in 2019’s closer, and has already left even the most jaded viewers shell-shocked and baying for more, while the post-credits sting in particular had me drooling in anticipation for the long-awaited arrival of my own favourite Avenger, but in the meantime this is an immensely rewarding, massively entertaining and thoroughly exhausting cinematic adventure. Summer can’t come fast enough …

3.  UPGRADE – in a summer packed with sequels (many of them pretty damn awesome even so), it was a great pleasure my VERY FAVOURITE movie was something wholly original, an unaffiliated standalone that had nothing to follow or measure up to.  But Blumhouse’s best film of 2018 still had a lot riding on it – they’re a studio best known for creating bare-bones but effectively primal horror (even The Purge series is really more survival horror than dystopian thriller), so they’re not really known for branching out into science-fiction.  Going with one of their most trusted creative talents, then, was the kind of savvy move we’d expect from Jason Blum and co – Leigh Whannell is best known as the writer of the first three Saw movies (a fully-developed trilogy which I, along with several others, consider to be the series’ TRUE canon), the film phenomenon that truly kicked off the whole “torture porn” sub-genre, but he’s become one of Blumhouse’s most well-regarded writers thanks to his creation of Insidious, still one of their biggest earners.  Once again he wrote (and co-starred in) the first three films, even making his directorial debut on the third – admittedly that film wasn’t particularly spectacular, but there was nonetheless something about it, a real X-factor that definitely showed Whannell could do more than just write (and, act, of course).  Second time out he’s definitely made good on that potential promise – this is a proper f£$%ing masterpiece, not just the best thing I saw all summer but one of THE TOP movies of my cinematic year.  It’s also an interesting throwback to a once popular sci-fi trope that’s been overdue for a makeover – body horror, originally made popular by the cult-friendly likes of David Cronenberg and Paul Verhoeven, and the biggest influence on this film must to be the original Robocop.  Prometheus’ Logan Marshall-Green is an actor I’ve long considered to be criminally overlooked and underused, so I’m thrilled he finally found a role worthy of his underappreciated talents - Grey Trace, an unapologetically analogue blue-collar Joe living in an increasingly digital near future, a mechanic making his living restoring vintage muscle cars who doesn’t trust automated technology to run ANYTHING, so his life takes a particularly ironic turn when a tragic chain of events leads to his wife’s brutal murder while he’s left paralysed from the neck down.  Faced with a future dependent on computerised care-robots, he jumps at the chance offered by technological pioneer Eron Keen (Need For Speed’s Harrison Gilbertson), creator of a revolutionary biochip called STEM that, once implanted into his central nervous system, can help him regain COMPLETE control of his body, but in true body horror style things quickly take a dark and decidedly twisted turn.  STEM has a mind of its own (and a voice that only Trace can hear), and an agenda, convincing him to use newfound superhuman abilities to hunt down his wife’s killers and exact terrible, brutal vengeance upon them. There are really strong performances from the supporting cast – Gilbertson is great as a twitchy, socially awkward genius only capable of finding real connection with his technology, Get Out’s Bettie Gabriel is subtly brilliant as Detective Cortez, the cop doggedly pursuing Trace’s case and, eventually, him too, and there’s a cracking villainous turn from relative unknown Benedict Hardie as sadistic but charismatic cybernetically-enhanced contract killer Fisk – but this is very much Marhall-Green’s film; he’s an absolute revelation here, his effortlessly sympathetic hangdog demeanour dominating a fantastically nuanced and impressively physical performance that displays truly exceptional dramatic AND comedic talent.  Indeed, while it’s a VERY dark film, there’s a big streak of jet black humour shot right through it, Whannell amusing us in particularly uncomfortable ways whenever STEM takes control and wreaks appropriately inhuman havoc (it helps no end that voice-actor Simon Malden has basically turned STEM into a kind of sociopathic version of Big Hero 6’s Baymax, which is as hilariously twisted as it sounds), and he delivers in spades on the action front too, crafting the year’s most wince-inducing, downright SAVAGE fight sequences and a very exciting car chase. Altogether this is a simply astonishing achievement – at times weirdly beautiful in a scuzzy, decrepit kind of way, it’s visually arresting and fiendishly intelligent, but also, much as we’d expect from the creator of Saw and Hollywood’s PREMIER horror studio, dark, edgy and, at times, weirdly disturbing – in other words, it’s CLASSIC body horror.  Whannell is a talent I’ve been watching for a while now, and it’s SO GOOD to finally see him deliver on all that wonderful promise. Needless to say it was another runaway hit for Blumhouse, so there are already plans for a sequel, but for now I’m just happy to revel in the wonderful originality of what was the very peak of my cinematic summer …

2.  SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE – oh man, if ever there was a contender that could have ousted this year’s Number One, it’s this, it was SUCH a close-run thing.  Sure, with THREE major incarnations of Marvel’s most iconic superhero already hitting the big screen since the Millennium, we could AGAIN ask if we really need another Spider-Man “reboot”, but I must say his first ever blockbuster animated appearance leaves virtually all other versions in the dust – only Sam Raimi’s masterpiece second Spider-feature remains unbeaten, but I’ve certainly never seen another film that just totally GETS Stan Lee’s original web-slinger better than this one.  It’s directed by the motley but perfectly synced trio of Bob Perischetti (a veteran digital artist making his directorial debut here), Peter Ramsay (Rise of the Guardians) and Rodney Rothman (writer on 22 Jump Street), but the influence of producers Christopher Miller and Phil Lord (creators of The Lego Movie) is writ large across the entire film (then again, Lord did co-write the script with Rothman) – it’s a magnificent, majestic feast for the eyes, ears and soul, visually arresting and overflowing with effervescent, geeky charm and a deep, fundamental LOVE for the source material in all its varied guises.  Taking its lead from the recent Marvel comics crossover event from which the film gets its name, it revolves around an unprecedented collision of various incarnations of Spider-Man from across the varying alternate versions of Earth across the Marvel Multiverse, brought together though the dastardly machinations of criminal mastermind Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin (a typically excellent vocal turn from Liev Schreiber) and his secret supercollider.  There are two, equally brilliant, “old school” takes on the original web-slinger Peter Parker on offer here – Chris Pine impresses in his early scenes as the “perfect” version, youthful, dashing and thoroughly brilliant but never ruining it by being smug or full of himself, but the story is dominated by New Girl’s Jake Johnson as a more world-weary and self-deprecating blue-collar version, who can still do the job just as well but has never really been as comfortable a fit, and he’s all the more endearing because he’s SUCH a lovable slacker underdog.  The main “hero” of the film, however, is Dope’s Shameik Moore as Miles Morales, a teenager who’s literally JUST acquired his powers but must learn FAST if he’s to become this universe’s new Spider-Man, and he’s a perfect lead for the film, unsure of himself and struggling to bring his newfound abilities to bear, but determined to find his footing all the same.  There are other brilliant takes on the core character here – Nicolas Cage’s wonderfully overblown monochrome Spider-Man Noir is an absolute hoot, as is anthropomorphised fan-favourite Spider-Ham (voiced by popular stand-up comic John Mulaney) – and a variety of interesting, skewed twists on classic Spider-Man villains (particularly Liv, a gender-bent take on Doctor Octopus played by Bad Moms’ Kathryn Hahn), but my favourite character in this is, tellingly, also my very favourite Marvel web-slinger PERIOD – Earth-65’s Spider-Woman, aka Gwen Stacy (more commonly known as Spider Gwen), an alternative version where SHE got bit by the radioactive arachnid instead of Peter, very faithfully brought to life by a perfectly cast Hailee Steinfeld.  It may sound overblown but this is about as close to perfect as a superhero movie can get – the script is an ASTONISHING piece of work, tight as a drum with everything lined up with clockwork precision, and instead of getting bogged down in exposition it turns the whole origin story trope into a brilliant running joke that keeps getting funnier each time a new character gets introduced; it’s also INSANELY inventive and a completely unique visual experience, specifically designed to look like old school comic book art brought to vivid but intriguingly stylised life, right down to the ingenious use of word-bubbles and textured printing dots that add to the pop art feel.  This is a truly SPECTACULAR film, a gloriously appointed thrill-ride with all the adventure, excitement, humour and bountiful, powerful, heartbreaking emotional heft you could ever want from a superhero movie – this is (sorry MCU) the VERY BEST film Marvel made in 2018, and maybe one of their very best EVER.  There’s already sequel talk in the air (no surprise there, of course), and I can’t wait to see where it goes.  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give me a Spider Gwen spinoff.  I’ll be good, I swear …

1.  A QUIET PLACE – the most unique and original film of 2018 was a true masterpiece of horror cinema and, for me, one of the best scary movies I’ve seen in A VERY LONG TIME INDEED. It��s a deceptively simply high-concept thriller built around a dynamite idea, one that writer/director/star John Krasinski (co-writing with up-and-coming creative duo Bryan Woods and Scott Beck) has mined for maximum effect … Krasinski (still probably best known for the US version of The Office but now also gaining fresh traction for killer Amazon Original series Jack Ryan) and his real life wife Emily Blunt are Lee and Evelyn Abbott, a mother and father who must protect their children and find a way to survive on an isolated farm in a world which has been decimated by an inexplicable invasion/infestation/whatever of mysterious and thoroughly lethal creatures that, while blind, use their incredibly sensitive hearing to hunt and kill ANYTHING that makes a sound.  As a result, the Abbotts have had to develop an intricately ordered lifestyle in order to gather, scavenge and rebuild while remaining completely silent, a discipline soon to be threatened by Evelyn’s very advanced pregnancy … there’s a truly fiendish level of genius to the way this film has been planned out and executed, the exquisitely thought-out mechanics of the Abbotts’ daily routines, survival methods and emergency procedures proving to be works of pure, unfettered genius – from communication through sign language and slow-dancing to music on shared headphones to walking on pathways created with heaped sand and painted spots to mark floorboards that don’t squeak, playing board games with soft fruit instead of plastic pieces and signalling danger with coloured light-bulbs – while the near total absence of spoken dialogue makes the use of sound and music essential and, here, almost revolutionary, with supervising sound editors Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn becoming as important as the director himself, while composer Marco Beltrami delivers some of his finest work to date with a score of insidious subtlety and brazen power in equal measure.  The small but potent cast are all excellent – Blunt has rarely been better in a performance of impressive honesty and a lack of vanity comparable to her work on The Girl On the Train, affecting and compelling as a fierce lioness of a mother, while Krasinski radiates both strength and vulnerability as he fights tooth and nail to keep his family alive, regardless of his own survival, and their real-life chemistry is a genuine boon to their performances, bringing a winning warmth to their relationship; elsewhere, deaf actress Millicent Simmonds (Wonderstruck) effortlessly captures our hearts as troubled, rebellious daughter Regan, delivering a performance of raw, heartbreaking honesty, while Suberbicon’s Noah Jupe impresses as awkward son Marcus, cripplingly unsure of himself and awfully scared of having to grow up in this terrifying new world.  There’s great power and heart in the family dynamic, which makes us even more invested in their survival as the screws tighten in what is a SERIOUSLY scary film, an exquisitely crafted exercise in sustained tension that deserves to be remembered alongside the true greats of horror cinema.  Krasinski displays a rare level of skill as a director, his grasp of atmosphere, pace and performance hinting at great things to come in the future, definitely making him one to watch – this is an astonishing film, a true gem I’m going to cherish for a long time to come.

[theconservativebrief]

The women’s revolt at Nike has moved from the company’s corporate offices in Oregon to the federal courts.

Four women who worked in the corporate headquarters at the sports apparel company filed a class-action lawsuit at a federal court in Oregon last week, claiming that Nike violated the Equal Pay Act by engaging in systemic gender pay discrimination and ignoring rampant sexual harassment. The former employees said that women who work for the company are paid less for doing the same work as their male colleagues, receive smaller bonuses, and are less likely to get promoted, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit is the first attempt by former female employees at Nike to take legal action against the company since a New York Times investigation published in April described an abusive and demeaning work environment for women. The allegations have led to a staff shakeup and the departure of nearly a dozen top executives at Nike, and a commitment from CEO Mark Parker to revamp the company’s hiring and compensation practices.

But the lawsuit shows that some female workers aren’t satisfied with vague promises. The plaintiffs are seeking back pay for current and former female employees who believe their careers suffered from pervasive sexism at Nike’s corporate headquarters. They are following the footsteps of women who have filed lawsuits against Google and Uber over similar claims of sexism. But the Nike lawsuit goes even farther. The women are demanding court-ordered structural reform of the company’s hiring and compensation practices under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor.

If the Nike lawsuit is succeeds, it would represent a landmark moment in the push for gender equality at the world’s largest sport-footwear company.

Women working at Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, said they complained to human resources managers for years about demeaning treatment and sexual harassment. They reported male supervisors who called them vulgar names and discussed their bodies, and even one who threw his keys at a subordinate and called her a “stupid bitch.” The women said their complaints to human resources didn’t change anything.

The Times report, which included interviews with 50 current and former Nike employees, described a toxic work environment for women at Nike, a boys’ club culture that excluded them from promotions and leadership opportunities.

About 10,800 people work at Nike’s corporate headquarters.

Female employees at Nike �� alarmed over the departure last year of three high-level female executives — decided to distribute an internal survey to see if women at the company had experienced sexual harassment and other forms of gender discrimination, including pay discrimination.

On March 5, the survey ended up in Parker’s hands. Though the details of the survey have not been made public, the allegations were serious enough to trigger an internal investigation and a major shake-up in the company’s top ranks. Since then, at least 11 top male executives have left or said they were planning to leave the company, including the president of the Nike brand, Trevor Edwards, and Jayme Martin, the general manager of global categories.

A spokesperson for Nike downplayed the severity of the allegations against male executives, telling the Times that the problem did not reflect the company’s work culture — that it was limited to a small group of high-level managers who protected each other “and looked the other way.”

Women who talked to the Times spoke about their frustration with inappropriate behavior and a culture that rewarded men over women. In one instance, a female employee said she complained to HR about a work-related email from her supervisor in which he made a comment about her breasts. The supervisor was given a verbal warning, and the employee continued reporting to him.

Another woman complained that her supervisor had magazines of scantily clad women on his desk even after he was asked to remove them. She reported him to HR and was admonished for not confronting him about it first.

At least three women had also complained about one manager, Daniel Tawiah, for allegedly berating them in front of their colleagues. Tawiah was promoted to vice president in 2017 and was among the executives who left suddenly in March.

Aside from the staff shakeup, Nike said it has reviewed all of the company’s human resources practices and the internal complaint process.

“We created a mandatory manager training that reinforces the role of respect, inclusion, and accountability that will roll out to people managers globally in 2018. We also increased our investment in leadership training and accountability, our diversity and inclusion teams and programs, and all-employee focused programming and training on our culture,” according to the company’s most recent corporate sustainability report.

The New York Times credited women’s forceful demands at Nike for prompting such swift, sweeping changes that are rare in the corporate world, but it also prompted some cynicism about the company’s ability to address systemic problems.

“Why did it take an anonymous survey to make change?” Amanda Shebiel, a Nike employee who left in September after five years at the company, told the Times. “Many of my peers and I reported incidences and a culture that were uncomfortable, disturbing, threatening, unfair, gender-biased and sexist — hoping that something would change that would make us believe in Nike again.”

In light of their experiences with Nike’s leadership, it’s no surprise that some women are going to court to seek meaningful reform.

The lawsuit filed last week captures the frustration of multiple women who tried to climb the corporate ladder at Nike, which employs more than 67,000 workers in the United States and around the globe.

“At Nike, the numbers tell a story of a company where women are devalued and demeaned. For many women at Nike, the company hierarchy is an unclimbable pyramid — the more senior the job title, the smaller the percentage of women. The inequity for women at Nike starts before they do, with decisions about starting pay,” they wrote in their complaint.

One plaintiff, Kelly Cahill, is a former brand marketing director, who said she was paid $20,000 less than the salary of a male colleague who did the same work. Cahill left the company in 2017 to work for Adidas after filing several internal complaints. Another plaintiff, Sarah Johnston, worked as a business systems analyst at the company for six years, and said her career suffered after she rebuffed sexual advances from a male co-worker. Johnston quit in 2016 after filing multiple internal complaints.

In their complaint, the women question the company’s ability to police itself and reform its practices.

They pointed out that the former head of human resources sent an email to employees in 2017 saying that the company was going to review potential pay disparities between men and women at the company.

“About one month later, Mr. Ayre sent another companywide email stating that Nike had reviewed whether there was gender discrimination, that any issues that had been identified were corrected, and that there were no remaining gender discrimination issues. Absent from Mr. Ayre’s email was any data or other support for his assertions that there were no remaining gender discrimination issues,” the plaintiffs wrote in their complaint.

The lawsuit does not give details about specific pay disparities across the company, but it cites the informal survey of female employees as evidence that it remains a problem.

They also point out that women and people of color remain vastly underrepresented in the company’s top ranks, with women in only 29 percent of the company’s VP positions across the globe.

They want to take their case to a jury.

The challenges women described at Nike are hardly unique. Women have recently filed similar class-action lawsuits against some of America’s most successful companies, including pending cases against Google and Uber.

But the lawsuit against Nike seeks goes beyond others in its demands. Like the others, it demands that the company compensate women financially for reportedly harming their careers, and to stop the illegal practice of paying women less than men for doing similar work.

But plaintiffs in the Nike case want something even more specific. They want the court to force Nike “to develop and institute reliable, validated, and job-related standards for evaluating performance, determining pay, and making promotion decisions.” They also want a court-appointed monitor to make sure Nike complies with the plan, and they want Nike to offer back jobs to the women who left because of the alleged discrimination.

This kind of multipronged demand is known as a “structural reform mandate,” and it could involve a variety of reforms, such as making sure hiring managers don’t ask job candidates about their salary history (one culprit in perpetuating the gender pay gap), or it could involve implementing a leadership mentoring program for women at the company. These kinds of mandates are rare, but research shows they are far more effective in addressing workplace inequality than monetary damages alone.

A 2017 study by sociologists at Indiana University and the University of British Columbia analyzed the outcome of 500 major workplace discrimination lawsuits filed in federal court between 1996 and 2008. They found that court-mandated bias training and educational efforts were the least effective in addressing inequality. The most effective were the type of structural mandates listed in the Nike lawsuit: specific plans to promote the recruitment, hiring, and advancement of women or people of color who work at a company, together with a monitoring plan to make sure the company meets their goals.

“In short, specificity and oversight are key … and prove successful in increasing managerial diversity in the wake of litigation,” the authors wrote.

None of this means it will be easy for women to hold Nike accountable if the company did violate the law. The federal courts are hostile to workplace discrimination lawsuits, as I’ve explained. And the federal courts have generally held a narrow view of what jobs can be analyzed for illegal pay gaps under the Equal Pay Act, though a recent court ruling in California broadened the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of the law in favor of employees.

But if the Nike lawsuit is successful, the demand for structural reform at the company could become a model for other workers who want an equal opportunity to succeed.

Original Source -> Why the gender discrimination lawsuit against Nike is so significant

via The Conservative Brief

[touristguidebuzz]

Ryanair’s Pilot Drama Threatens to Undo Its Goodwill Push

Ryanair, which flies only Boeing 737s, is seeing its reputation stumble after it said it would have to cancel thousands of flights over six weeks. Ryanair

Skift Take: Just before this pilot issue broke, Skift went to Europe to speak with Ryanair's chief marketing officer about how he improved the airline's customer service. Recent events will almost certainly set Ryanair back, but we think it can recover — if only because people like cheap fares.

— Brian Sumers

On a Friday night earlier this month, Ryanair issued a vague statement telling passengers it would cancel 40 to 50 flights per day for six weeks because it didn’t have enough pilots. It didn’t immediately say which flights would be affected, nor provide advice on what travelers should do.

It was behavior passengers have come to expect from Ryanair, Europe’s leading discounter. Over more than three decades, Ryanair earned a reputation for two things: low fares and disdain for customers. Some wondered if Ryanair management cared about passengers at all.

They had reason to wonder. For years, Ryanair’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, often made outlandish comments. “Are we going to say sorry for our lack of customer service?” he once asked. “Absolutely not.” In interviews, he would ask whether Ryanair should charge for bathrooms, or if the airline might ask passengers to stand, rather than sit.

That was supposed to be the old Ryanair. During the past three years, Ryanair customers didn’t hear that stuff much from O’Leary, who instead focused his ire on governments he believed were thwarting Ryanair’s growth strategy. Meanwhile, Ryanair sought to position itself into an airline people want to fly, albeit one with bare-bones service. Passengers would no longer be treated as the enemy.

This was not about altruism. By 2013, Ryanair had alienated some potentially lucrative passenger segments, including families and business travelers, with many willing to spend a few more euros for a more pleasant experience on another airline. Even EasyJet, another no-frills airline, had a better reputation.

In earlier years, Ryanair didn’t mind passengers flying competitors, but by 2013 the carrier planned to expand to some of Europe’s biggest airports. If it wasn’t nicer, O’Leary and the airline’s board feared, big-city passengers might avoid it.

By most accounts, the strategy has worked. But now, the airline’s reputation has again taken a hit, even though the airline claims pilot-related cancelations affect fewer than 2 percent of customers and will reduce revenues by about only 25 million euros, or $30 million.

“It just confirms everyone’s worst fears,” Neil Wilson, analyst at ETX Capital, said in an interview. “You have that niggle in the back of your mind — they aren’t really there to look after you. And that’s what they are showing. It’s pretty aggressive and doesn’t suggest they are treating their customers well.”

In a conference call with analysts, O’Leary said the airline has enough pilots, blaming the issue on a quirk of their vacation schedule. More pilots than expected must take time off this fall, he said. But its pilot union argues the airline’s problems go deeper, saying Ryanair has create a toxic culture, and noting many pilots have left for competitors, including Norwegian Air.

If the airline can return its canceled flights to its schedule in six weeks, as planned, Ryanair will probably recover. And since the initial Friday night public relations misstep, Ryanair has been more proactive, contacting affected customers.

But it may take some time before some passengers will give it another chance.

“It will have a reputational impact, for which I sincerely apologize,” O’Leary said. “We fucked up here, and we need to fix it.”

Always Getting Better

By many accounts, O’Leary, who took over the airline in 1994, was the person who realized Ryanair need to change.

Ryanair was no longer an upstart. O’Leary now runs what is now Europe’s largest airline, and to keep growing — it wanted new flights in established and competitive markets like Frankfurt, Brussels, and Rome — O’Leary realized the company needed to soften its image.

In early 2014, he hired former supermarket executive Kenny Jacobs as Ryanair’s first chief marketing officer. Quickly, Jacobs released a five-year plan called Always Getting Better focused on passenger experience improvements.

The airline started assigning seats in advance, ending the free-for-all boarding system that made some passengers nervous. It works for Southwest Airlines in the United States, but at Ryanair, boarding “looked like something out of a war movie,” Jacobs said.

It also reduced bag fees, introduced a new website and mobile app, and created a program that provided families with discounts and perks, promising moms and dads they’d find bottle warmers and changing tables on board.

Ryanair even allowed passengers to bring more bags on board for free, but it changed the policy this summer, when it realized too many passengers were bringing luggage, slowing boarding times.

Meanwhile, for business travelers paying a little extra, Ryanair introduced priority boarding, premium seating, and fast-track service for security.

“They were aware they were falling behind EasyJet,” said John Strickland, a UK-based aviation consultant. “They realized they could get a piece of the action.”

More recently, Ryanair redesigned its aircraft cabins with snazzy blue seats, mood lighting, and a bright yellow stripe along the overhead bins. Jacobs even introduced sleek new uniforms for pilots and flight attendants.

“It takes a man to admit you have been wrong and change your mind,” Daniel Roeska, senior research analyst at Sanford Bernstein, told Skift. “Michael got out of Kenny’s way, and let him do a lot of stuff that Michael said previously, ‘We will never do that.'”

Refining the brand

In an interview this month in London, Jacobs said he had freedom to make the travel experience better — so long as it didn’t cost the airline too much money.

While the onboard and airport products improved, Jacobs said he spent much of his time fixing the airline’s digital strategy. He joked that when he started, Ryanair’s website looked like it belonged to Hooters, the bar and restaurant with skimpily-clad waitresses. It might take a prospective customer 25 clicks to buy a ticket, and the system didn’t save passport or credit card information for future purchases.

“Ryanair was one of those unique brands that just had the cheapest product,” Jacobs said. “Now, it had the cheapest product with a rough-around-the-edges service, and it didn’t do digital. We’ve taken away the rough edges around the service and hence more people are flying with us.”

Jacobs said families and business travelers now choose Ryanair because, at least until recently, it’s treating them better. In the past, he said, Ryanair might have assumed its customers would return no matter how shoddy the experience.

“Ryanair did take its customers too much for granted,” he said.” I think families and business travelers would have just said, ‘I’ll fly with someone else.’ We now take our customers much more seriously.”

But not too seriously. The airline’s main goal, he said, remains to transport passengers on time and in a reasonably comfortable manner.

“We listen enough to customers, but you don’t totally listen to customers, because if we did, we’d be introducing lounges and Wi-Fi and ticket prices would go up,” he said.

If passengers get off a flight and say, ‘That was OK,’ it’s enough for Jacobs, who views short-haul travel as a commodity product.

“I don’t want people to say, ‘I love Ryanair,” he said. “I don’t think anyone flying a short-haul airline in Europe would say, ‘I love the airline.’ If you’re flying London to Barcelona with Ryanair, and the plane lands in Barcelona, you might say, ‘I love Barcelona and the airline got me there on time at the lowest possible price.'”

Expanding in Europe

Ryanair sought to soften its image as the airline altered its strategy to focus on larger markets and bigger airports.

Once content to fly only to secondary airports, or airports far from the major cities they purport to serve —Stockholm Skavsta Airport is about 50 miles from downtown — Ryanair is expanding at much bigger facilities.

“They needed to go where the people are,”  Roeska said.

Ryanair is now growing at the main airport in Frankfurt, and it’s already flying to most larger European airports with only two major exceptions — London Heathrow and Paris-Charles de Gaulle.

Fares tend to be higher at larger airports, even for low-cost airlines, who may undercut legacy airlines and still make money. Big-city passengers often spend more on ancillary items, Roeska said, because they’re more likely to pay for better seats or priority boarding.

In markets like Germany, Ryanair doesn’t have to match Lufthansa’s full-service approach, but it probably had to improve to make its product bearable for more travelers, Roeska said. For the 30 years prior, Ryanair rarely flew exactly the same route as another airline.

“What they definitely did was broaden their mass-market appeal to make it compatible with a wider audience throughout Europe,” he said. “It’s becoming a real airline and less of the gung-ho low-cost carrier it used to be.”

Ryanair is considering growing further. It has said it wants to buy part of the bankrupt Italian carrier Alitalia, though it’s not clear how serious Ryanair’s bid will be. And while the airline has said it no longer wants to buy Air Berlin’s assets, it wants to continue to grow in Germany, if Air Berlin’s slots at major airports become available.

At times, O’Leary has wondered whether Ryanair should fly to the United States. That’s not expected any time soon — O’Leary has stopped talking about it — but by refining its customer service, Ryanair someday could be competitive on shorter transatlantic routes.

Short-Term Issues

There’s little doubt Ryanair erred during its recent pilot problems.

Not only did it miscalculate how many pilots it would need for its fall schedule, but it also botched how it handled the cancellations. Initially, the airline could not tell passengers which flight would be canceled, creating confusion among passengers and potential customers. It continued selling seats on flights it knew it might not operate.

Ryanair has said it will try to transfer passengers to other flights, but O’Leary has refused to pay other airlines to carry them. If Ryanair can’t fly the travelers, O’Leary said the airline will follow the law and refund customers. Some passengers may receive cash compensation under EU laws, but the airline can avoid paying most penalties if it cancels flights early enough.

Many travelers think Ryanair hasn’t gone far enough, and some have said on social media they’ll never fly Ryanair again.

But almost every major European airline stumbles occasionally. Most recently, it has been British Airways, with multiple computer outages and its ongoing labor dispute with many of its newer flight attendants. Both Lufthansa and Air France also face occasional labor issues with some employee groups, forcing them to cancel flights.

Customers tend to return to airlines after most screw-ups. They even came back to United Airlines earlier this year after security officials in Chicago violently dragged one of the carrier’s customers off a plane. United has said it expects no lasting financial damage.

At Ryanair, most customers should return, if only because it’s often cheaper than the competition.

“It’s reputational damage, but it’s not fundamentally hurtful to the company,” said Wilson, the ETX Capital analyst. “People kind of expect this from Ryanair. It just sets itself back because it’s trying to position itself as a customer-friendly airline.”

[rollinbrigittenv8]

Ryanair’s Pilot Drama Threatens to Undo Its Goodwill Push

Ryanair, which flies only Boeing 737s, is seeing its reputation stumble after it said it would have to cancel thousands of flights over six weeks. Ryanair

Skift Take: Just before this pilot issue broke, Skift went to Europe to speak with Ryanair's chief marketing officer about how he improved the airline's customer service. Recent events will almost certainly set Ryanair back, but we think it can recover — if only because people like cheap fares.

— Brian Sumers

On a Friday night earlier this month, Ryanair issued a vague statement telling passengers it would cancel 40 to 50 flights per day for six weeks because it didn’t have enough pilots. It didn’t immediately say which flights would be affected, nor provide advice on what travelers should do.

It was behavior passengers have come to expect from Ryanair, Europe’s leading discounter. Over more than three decades, Ryanair earned a reputation for two things: low fares and disdain for customers. Some wondered if Ryanair management cared about passengers at all.

They had reason to wonder. For years, Ryanair’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, often made outlandish comments. “Are we going to say sorry for our lack of customer service?” he once asked. “Absolutely not.” In interviews, he would ask whether Ryanair should charge for bathrooms, or if the airline might ask passengers to stand, rather than sit.

That was supposed to be the old Ryanair. During the past three years, Ryanair customers didn’t hear that stuff much from O’Leary, who instead focused his ire on governments he believed were thwarting Ryanair’s growth strategy. Meanwhile, Ryanair sought to position itself into an airline people want to fly, albeit one with bare-bones service. Passengers would no longer be treated as the enemy.

This was not about altruism. By 2013, Ryanair had alienated some potentially lucrative passenger segments, including families and business travelers, with many willing to spend a few more euros for a more pleasant experience on another airline. Even EasyJet, another no-frills airline, had a better reputation.

In earlier years, Ryanair didn’t mind passengers flying competitors, but by 2013 the carrier planned to expand to some of Europe’s biggest airports. If it wasn’t nicer, O’Leary and the airline’s board feared, big-city passengers might avoid it.

By most accounts, the strategy has worked. But now, the airline’s reputation has again taken a hit, even though the airline claims pilot-related cancelations affect fewer than 2 percent of customers and will reduce revenues by about only 25 million euros, or $30 million.

“It just confirms everyone’s worst fears,” Neil Wilson, analyst at ETX Capital, said in an interview. “You have that niggle in the back of your mind — they aren’t really there to look after you. And that’s what they are showing. It’s pretty aggressive and doesn’t suggest they are treating their customers well.”

In a conference call with analysts, O’Leary said the airline has enough pilots, blaming the issue on a quirk of their vacation schedule. More pilots than expected must take time off this fall, he said. But its pilot union argues the airline’s problems go deeper, saying Ryanair has create a toxic culture, and noting many pilots have left for competitors, including Norwegian Air.

If the airline can return its canceled flights to its schedule in six weeks, as planned, Ryanair will probably recover. And since the initial Friday night public relations misstep, Ryanair has been more proactive, contacting affected customers.

But it may take some time before some passengers will give it another chance.

“It will have a reputational impact, for which I sincerely apologize,” O’Leary said. “We fucked up here, and we need to fix it.”

Always Getting Better

By many accounts, O’Leary, who took over the airline in 1994, was the person who realized Ryanair need to change.

Ryanair was no longer an upstart. O’Leary now runs what is now Europe’s largest airline, and to keep growing — it wanted new flights in established and competitive markets like Frankfurt, Brussels, and Rome — O’Leary realized the company needed to soften its image.

In early 2014, he hired former supermarket executive Kenny Jacobs as Ryanair’s first chief marketing officer. Quickly, Jacobs released a five-year plan called Always Getting Better focused on passenger experience improvements.

The airline started assigning seats in advance, ending the free-for-all boarding system that made some passengers nervous. It works for Southwest Airlines in the United States, but at Ryanair, boarding “looked like something out of a war movie,” Jacobs said.

It also reduced bag fees, introduced a new website and mobile app, and created a program that provided families with discounts and perks, promising moms and dads they’d find bottle warmers and changing tables on board.

Ryanair even allowed passengers to bring more bags on board for free, but it changed the policy this summer, when it realized too many passengers were bringing luggage, slowing boarding times.

Meanwhile, for business travelers paying a little extra, Ryanair introduced priority boarding, premium seating, and fast-track service for security.

“They were aware they were falling behind EasyJet,” said John Strickland, a UK-based aviation consultant. “They realized they could get a piece of the action.”

More recently, Ryanair redesigned its aircraft cabins with snazzy blue seats, mood lighting, and a bright yellow stripe along the overhead bins. Jacobs even introduced sleek new uniforms for pilots and flight attendants.

“It takes a man to admit you have been wrong and change your mind,” Daniel Roeska, senior research analyst at Sanford Bernstein, told Skift. “Michael got out of Kenny’s way, and let him do a lot of stuff that Michael said previously, ‘We will never do that.'”

Refining the brand

In an interview this month in London, Jacobs said he had freedom to make the travel experience better — so long as it didn’t cost the airline too much money.

While the onboard and airport products improved, Jacobs said he spent much of his time fixing the airline’s digital strategy. He joked that when he started, Ryanair’s website looked like it belonged to Hooters, the bar and restaurant with skimpily-clad waitresses. It might take a prospective customer 25 clicks to buy a ticket, and the system didn’t save passport or credit card information for future purchases.

“Ryanair was one of those unique brands that just had the cheapest product,” Jacobs said. “Now, it had the cheapest product with a rough-around-the-edges service, and it didn’t do digital. We’ve taken away the rough edges around the service and hence more people are flying with us.”

Jacobs said families and business travelers now choose Ryanair because, at least until recently, it’s treating them better. In the past, he said, Ryanair might have assumed its customers would return no matter how shoddy the experience.

“Ryanair did take its customers too much for granted,” he said.” I think families and business travelers would have just said, ‘I’ll fly with someone else.’ We now take our customers much more seriously.”

But not too seriously. The airline’s main goal, he said, remains to transport passengers on time and in a reasonably comfortable manner.

“We listen enough to customers, but you don’t totally listen to customers, because if we did, we’d be introducing lounges and Wi-Fi and ticket prices would go up,” he said.

If passengers get off a flight and say, ‘That was OK,’ it’s enough for Jacobs, who views short-haul travel as a commodity product.

“I don’t want people to say, ‘I love Ryanair,” he said. “I don’t think anyone flying a short-haul airline in Europe would say, ‘I love the airline.’ If you’re flying London to Barcelona with Ryanair, and the plane lands in Barcelona, you might say, ‘I love Barcelona and the airline got me there on time at the lowest possible price.'”

Expanding in Europe

Ryanair sought to soften its image as the airline altered its strategy to focus on larger markets and bigger airports.

Once content to fly only to secondary airports, or airports far from the major cities they purport to serve —Stockholm Skavsta Airport is about 50 miles from downtown — Ryanair is expanding at much bigger facilities.

“They needed to go where the people are,”  Roeska said.

Ryanair is now growing at the main airport in Frankfurt, and it’s already flying to most larger European airports with only two major exceptions — London Heathrow and Paris-Charles de Gaulle.

Fares tend to be higher at larger airports, even for low-cost airlines, who may undercut legacy airlines and still make money. Big-city passengers often spend more on ancillary items, Roeska said, because they’re more likely to pay for better seats or priority boarding.

In markets like Germany, Ryanair doesn’t have to match Lufthansa’s full-service approach, but it probably had to improve to make its product bearable for more travelers, Roeska said. For the 30 years prior, Ryanair rarely flew exactly the same route as another airline.

“What they definitely did was broaden their mass-market appeal to make it compatible with a wider audience throughout Europe,” he said. “It’s becoming a real airline and less of the gung-ho low-cost carrier it used to be.”

Ryanair is considering growing further. It has said it wants to buy part of the bankrupt Italian carrier Alitalia, though it’s not clear how serious Ryanair’s bid will be. And while the airline has said it no longer wants to buy Air Berlin’s assets, it wants to continue to grow in Germany, if Air Berlin’s slots at major airports become available.

At times, O’Leary has wondered whether Ryanair should fly to the United States. That’s not expected any time soon — O’Leary has stopped talking about it — but by refining its customer service, Ryanair someday could be competitive on shorter transatlantic routes.

Short-Term Issues

There’s little doubt Ryanair erred during its recent pilot problems.

Not only did it miscalculate how many pilots it would need for its fall schedule, but it also botched how it handled the cancellations. Initially, the airline could not tell passengers which flight would be canceled, creating confusion among passengers and potential customers. It continued selling seats on flights it knew it might not operate.

Ryanair has said it will try to transfer passengers to other flights, but O’Leary has refused to pay other airlines to carry them. If Ryanair can’t fly the travelers, O’Leary said the airline will follow the law and refund customers. Some passengers may receive cash compensation under EU laws, but the airline can avoid paying most penalties if it cancels flights early enough.

Many travelers think Ryanair hasn’t gone far enough, and some have said on social media they’ll never fly Ryanair again.

But almost every major European airline stumbles occasionally. Most recently, it has been British Airways, with multiple computer outages and its ongoing labor dispute with many of its newer flight attendants. Both Lufthansa and Air France also face occasional labor issues with some employee groups, forcing them to cancel flights.

Customers tend to return to airlines after most screw-ups. They even came back to United Airlines earlier this year after security officials in Chicago violently dragged one of the carrier’s customers off a plane. United has said it expects no lasting financial damage.

At Ryanair, most customers should return, if only because it’s often cheaper than the competition.

“It’s reputational damage, but it’s not fundamentally hurtful to the company,” said Wilson, the ETX Capital analyst. “People kind of expect this from Ryanair. It just sets itself back because it’s trying to position itself as a customer-friendly airline.”

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(Photo: Facebook)

On April 18, a nationwide manhunt came to an end as Steve Stephens, suspected of the Facebook Live murder of 74-year-old Robert Godwin on Easter Sunday, died of a self-inflicted gun-shot wound.

According the Stephens, the rejection of love from his ex-girlfriend, Joy Lane, led to his presumably emotional breakdown and decision to take another’s life. This story unfortunately speaks to a much larger epidemic in the black community that occurs when the male ego is challenged and masculinity crosses that dangerous line of becoming toxic.

Last week, Ebony editor Britni Danielle catalogued a series of tweets and follow-up story about women who had been killed at the hands of black men due to domestic violence. The effort was to bring awareness to an epidemic that has been happening in the black community for some time, and yet rarely discussed in any meaningful way. Her tweets were met with much praise, but also backlash as some chose to victim blame the women and reduce the accountability of the black men who committed these crimes. Their defense was rooted in a desire to protect the long damaged image and perception of African-American men.

This isn’t the first time an awareness campaign has attempted to discuss the challenges and dangers black women face regarding their safety around black men.space“> Three years earlier, Danielle profiled activist and journalist Feminista Jones’ anti-street harassment campaign #YouOkSis, which often times has led to injury and even death at the hands of black men when their advances are rejected.

“The bottom line is that a lot of the ways in which men have been taught to approach women has been problematic,” Jones said. “Men are taught to believe that women are perpetually accessible to them, and it’s hard to take no for an answer.” 

Her campaign forced many men to open their eyes and even directly challenge the masculinity of others.

This event prompted scholar, activist and avid Twitter user Anthony J. Williams to start the #MasculinitySoFragile hashtag. In speaking about the hashtag, Williams said “it came from pure frustration and a sense of helplessness.”

“Following Feminista Jones on Twitter was like some awakening for me. Seeing how she was personally treated as a black woman and listening to the individual stories she brought to Twitter as a social worker helped me realize my complicity in toxic masculinities,” he added. “It’s now 2017 and her individual efforts, the organizing of black women, and my hashtag have changed the conversation but haven’t stopped men—including black men—from assaulting, stalking and killing black women because we somehow feel entitled to them.” 

He often wonders how we can work toward a solution to this eve- growing epidemic. 

Toxic masculinity, however, is not only assumed by the heterosexual man. Masculinity within the LGBTQ community shows up in many ways as to create power dynamics within the lines of sex and gender. ‘Masc’ and ‘fem’ are often directly linked to sexual positions, and used to shame those in the less so-called dominant role. Gay men often shaming trans people shows just how far the divisions are even within a marginalized population. 

Lesbians have also exhibited these characteristics when discussing ‘dom’ (dominant) and ‘butch’ in comparison to those who are considered fem. Masculinity is seen as the peak power dynamic in most communities, therefore it’s quite natural that other populations or sub-communities would adopt such structural hierarchy, essentially creating a class and power system.

To gain more insight into toxic masculinity, I spoke with psychologist and TV personality Dr. Jeffrey Gardere, Ph.D., ABPP of Farley and Associates Advanced Crisis Management Firm. “Generally speaking, toxic masculinity is in all communities and comes from misogynistic views, anger and low self-esteem; where women become targets of hate. The same is true in the African American society,” Gardere said.

“However, you need to add the wrinkle that in some cases, social inequality may add increased stress and threaten the male role expression, especially in individuals who may have pre-existing personality or other emotional challenges, resulting in anger-based views and behaviors such as toxic masculinity.” 

This definition coincides with the depiction of toxic masculinity in media, which has also long stood as a form of art imitating life at its worst intersection. The first movie that comes to mind is the critically-acclaimed classic Carmen Jones, starring Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge. In the final act of the movie Carmen, played by Dandridge, is asked to return to her lover Joe (Belafonte). When Carmen rejects this request, Joe strangles Carmen to death before being apprehended by police. 

In What’s Love Got to Do with It, which depicted the life story of Ike and Tina Turner, Turner dealt with years of abuse from her husband, most often due to jealousy of her rising fame outside of his own.  Ike Turner relied on the power dynamics of abuse to not only keep her fearful, but keep others around them from stepping in to do anything about it. 

When we look at the current trend of shows depicting how toxic masculinity usually ends in abuse or death, look no further than TV One’s Monday night lineup. The show Justice by Any Means depicts friends and families of loved ones hunting down those, mainly men, who have killed their loved ones, primarily women. Another show on the network, For My Man, explores women who are led to do heinous crimes under the power and control of the men they love. The show gives insight into how masculinity can transcend gender, and be used as a tool to manipulate and hurt others. Similarly, TV One’s For My Woman depicts men who, when challenged by their women, are driven to kill “the other man” in tangled love triangles. 

These type of shows exemplify how the media continues to profit on an issue that is destroying the black community. What happened this past weekend is the continuation of a deadly epidemic in the black community that we can no longer dismiss as “lone wolf” incidents. For many, the fear at the hands of black hetero men is much more prevalent than any other race, particularly in the case of black trans women. If we are ever going grow as a community, we must start addressing these problems head on, and not be afraid to check our egos at the door–because toxic masculinity is literally killing us.

George M. Johnson is a journalist and activist based in the Washington, D.C. area. He has written for EBONY.com, TheGrio, JET, Pride.com, Thebody.com, and The Huffington Post on topics of health, race, gender, sex, and education. Follow him on Twitter: @iamgmjohnson.

via theGrio