#he literally had it written into his will that a biopic never be made of his life. like he specifically put that in his will.

[good-to-drive]

If I was crazy rich I would pay the cast and writers of Santa Clarita Diet an unacceptable amount of money to make a 2 hour movie finishing the show, and then pay Tom Holland and Paul King an unacceptable amount of money to not make a movie about Fred Astaire.

[rey-jake-therapist]

Hey. I simply wanna share my thoughts on this with someone. Not a Tolkien fan myself, I have always ignored everything Lord of the Rings related, tried to watch the movies and failed, everything seemed boring, even though I love dark fantasy, folklore, adventures and stuff. The only thing making me interested right now is the ROP portrayal of Sauron (am I a bad person? yes), so the controversy with the show also caught my attention and here's my useless take:

People of the fandom has been there for so long they literally turned “lore” into something sacred and holy. Sure, a lot of things there are inspired by Christianity (as a Christian, I quickly recognised it all after checking out the main worldbuilding points) but it's not the Bible! These books are fiction and it's nothing wrong with interpreting some events differently. Had to watch Galadriel scenes from the movies btw, and her “greatly desiring” the ring and then opposing Sauron in her dark form... makes much more sense if they previously had a personal story going on. So I see no problem here. But fans! If Tolkien himself returned from the dead and said Galadriel 1) isn't Mother Mary figure, more like Mary Magdalene 2) had loved Sauron in a twisted way and that's why she wasn't chilling with other elves in the elvish Eden those guys would never believed him and kept bitching. Ofc, they are free to do so, I just pains me.

Same happened to my favourite show, which made me evaluate a lot of things and change my life for the best, and most of “fans” hate it because it's against the idea they had it their heads for years. What's funny is that my show doesn't have any book source material, it's just a — unconventional a bit — biopic about a rock band frontman, produced and controlled in EVERY ASPECT by his best friend and soulmate. Who new him better than any of the fans. The show is brilliant and nothing like that has been done in our country before, yet 70% of what it gets is childish criticism.

So yeah, seeing ROP mistreated in a similar way makes me sad. I can't even tell my friends about the cons of this show, as most of them have already written on their blogs how awful and unworthy of anyone's time it is. Ugh, thank you for listening.

I hear you ! The most infuriating is that most of these people didn't even bother to watch the show. They just heard some YouTuber or TikToker trash the show and repeat what they hear.

I've also noticed that much of the criticism is made by haters who claim to be Tolkien fans, but who are really just fans of P Jackson's movies, and are certain that HE gave a faithful interpretation of the books while it's just... Not true ! Sauron was never described as a giant eyeball in the books, for a start, it was just the easiest way that P Jackson found to represent the fact that Sauron could see everything everywhere.

By doing so unfortunately he ripped off Sauron of everything that made him a fascinating character, and now those morons use the movie's depiction of Sauron to decide that Sauron always was a one dimensional character and completely ignore the fact that in season 1, he was in a repentance phase, hence not entirely manipulative and dishonest towards Galadriel.

And the same happens with Galadriel. The only person I know in real life watched it, but hated it saying she "can't forgive them for what they did to Galadriel", because she refuses to admit the idea that she can have been a warrior, with tendencies to be reckless and a tad immature. She wanted Cate Blanchett's Third Age Galadriel and won't have it any other way. Why ? Again because of PJ's movies. She didn't read the books ! When I told her that PJ invented the scene from the Hobbit where Galadriel faces Sauron in Dol Guldur, she was surprised but didn't care because at least it was Cate Blanchett looking beautiful and ethereal.

What is the show you mention in your ask ?

[themidnightramblers]

Meet The Midnight Ramblers Band Members (& other important people)

Mal Walker

The Ramblers’ founding member, original leader, and resident genius. Sometimes known to fans and bandmates as “Mad Mal,” he famously named the group by riffing on his favorite Muddy Waters song, “Ramblin’ Kid Blues.” Word on the street is Mal scribbled the lyrics to their first single on the newspaper wrapper for his fish ’n’ chips one lost drunken night in London. This peerless track, “Bought on the Never Never,” cribbed a sly bit of street slang, turning it into a youth anthem and the band’s debut hit. Mal was as renowned for his ability to metabolize a king’s ransom of drugs, as for his savant-like talent for mastering any instrument, from electric guitar and bass to sitar and the many esoteric percussion doo dads gathered during his frequent forays to faraway lands, including Morocco and Brazil. He was also celebrated for his stylish fitted trousers, which left little to the imagination, flared Byron-esque sleeves and dramatic headdresses — sometimes a velvet cap with a jaunty feather, sometimes a literal crown, made of flowers or gold. He will forever be equated with effortless “it boy” cool, as personified by actor Jude Law in his BAFTA-winning performance in the biopic Mad Mal. Devastatingly, Mal drowned in the swimming pool of the band’s Los Angeles rental house in August 1969, the night before the Ramblers’ celebrated free show at the Hollywood Bowl. Although the incident was ruled “death by misadventure” because of the epic mix of drugs in his blood at the time, his loyal fans have always considered it suspicious that he was left out of rehearsal that night. It has long been debated: Was he really alone in the water, and what secrets might be held in the vault by his then-wife, Anke Berben, who was also home? Such rumors were fueled by the torn-from-the-headlines book The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers, written by the band’s American chauffeur, Syd Nelson, who published his tell-all in 1970, only to overdose on heroin that year. Whatever the truth, although Mal’s flame burned far too briefly, it has never dimmed in our hearts, where his transcendent music will live on forever.

Anke Berben

A beautiful phoenix, arising from the rubble of Europe’s darkest decade, she was born in Germany after World War II. Her father died from injuries incurred at the Battle of Berlin, leaving her mother to raise her, although Anke has long claimed her identity as a self-made lone wolf. Working as a shop girl — surely the coolest, most daring, fashionable young woman then on the street, she was discovered as a model at 16. While filling her portfolio with stunning shots, she became the first woman to pose topless on the cover of an international art magazine, making her the desirable date for artists and rockers alike, including Mal, who swept her up into his glittery entourage when she attended the Ramblers’ 1968 show in Berlin. For the next eight years, Anke would be like a sixth member of the band, feeding its fashion sense, exuding influence during rehearsals, shows, and a million backstage moments. Although Mal was seeing another young woman, who was pregnant at the time of his death, Anke was his wife, and she will always be his widow. But she never slept alone for long in her gilded youth and would soon go on to form a love square within the band. Drawn close by their raw grief over Mal’s passing, she and Dante fell together and had a son, Ody (named for Odin, the God of War). While Anke was candid about her struggles with heroin, she remained a timeless beauty and style setter, and had a five-year relationship with Ramblers frontman Jack Edwards, in the ’70s. Her legend grew when she left the raucousness of rock and ’n’ roll, taking up residence on a sailboat with Ody and her final love, Fritz, picking up inspiration in their many ports of call. Having lived more than her nine lives, as a love child of the world, she gathered her influences and experiences into her jewelry line, sought after for decades by rockers and fashionistas. Known for her effortless elegance, elevated Boho fashion, and dry wit, Anke remains a cultural force in her own right.   

Dante Ashcombe

There are musicians and then there are certifiable guitar gods, one with their instrument with a level of attunement that is almost mystical — think B.B. King and Lucille, Willie Nelson and Trigger, George Harrison and Lucy, and, of course, Dante Ashcombe and his Fender Telecaster, the Duchess. Known for his unique tuning style and his ability to embellish every Ramblers song with the perfect mix of grit and finesse, all he needed was the right alchemic conditions to ignite his genius, which he found when he caught a set by Jack’s first band, the Lads. The two bonded over their passion for American blues and gender-bending fashion, forging a friendship with enough one-upmanship for each to incite the other to write, practice, and perform with greater intention and intensity, pushing their style and sound to the limits of respectability and beyond. Dante’s potential for revealing aspects of this iconic relationship, as well as his previously unrevealed insights into what happened at the band’s rental house the night Mal met his terrible end, have made Dante’s memoir eagerly anticipated. A modern-day Renaissance rocker, he has quite a story to tell. While there is no Dante without Duchess, the instrument is really just one component of his total rock persona. With his effortless pirate-captain style, Cleopatra-esque black eyeliner, and an easy laugh for all he meets, like a schoolboy on holiday, Dante created the mold in which the next four generations of rockers would hope to be forged into a player and performer with an ounce of his verve. Perhaps no moment in his life better exemplifies his bohemian supremacy than the 18 months he and Anke were pop culture’s golden couple, deeply in love and perfectly matched, forming a family and inspiring Dante’s most heartfelt songwriting. How ever much Dante has always loved to perform, and never met a party he wouldn’t crash, in later years, he would go on to keep his home life a priority, becoming known as much for being a family man as a musical mythmaker. 

Jack Edwards

What does it take to front the world’s biggest, boldest rock band for more than five decades, and to keep the songwriting, stage show, and sex appeal as fresh and fraught as on day one? The kind of peacock-feathered charisma and purely radiant star power seen only once or twice each generation. We’re talking about an Oscar Wilde. A Little Richard. A Kurt Cobain. A true original. On top of a totally matchless creativity, add in a keen eye for trend setting fashion and a level head for business, not to mention the skills of a strong leader and an astute diplomat, and the wordsmithing genius of one of the greatest street poets of the rock ’n’ roll era. A hunger for experience has led Jack to form liaisons of the sexual, romantic, and creative stripe with a who’s who of fellow musicians, artists, designers, and more than his fair share of models — adding up to eight children with six different women (and that’s just the official count), plus whispers that he was the lover of several of his generation’s hottest male rock stars. A chameleon, an enigma, he is always perfectly put together and gracious, whether leaving the club at dawn or high tea at noon, and yet, he gives away little of his true thoughts and feelings. Perhaps he chooses to save his deepest musings for his songs, which continue to be as distinctive and potent as anything he wrote when he dropped out of university, taking up with Dante and Mal with little more than a second-hand guitar, a tambourine, and a daring new vision for the blues. While Jack has been wise enough to let his legacy speak for itself, shying away from addressing rumors of friction in his creative partnership with Dante or any other inner workings of the band, he is always eager to discuss his own artistic wellspring—which he notoriously feeds by reading poetry, traveling the world, and indulging in passionate love affairs.

Mal drowned at the Midnight Rambler’s Los Angeles rental house in 1969. He was found to have Quaaludes, alcohol, marijuana, and acid in his system so many have thought he just lived too hard and died too young. But then the band’s chauffeur, Syd, alleged that there may have been foul play. 

[logicalstansadvice]

I never had a problem with him meeting Jeff and Tommy. It's part of his job. // LMAO, it's literally not though? Look at how many biopics are made without the actor actually meeting or talking to the subject. Come on now. So tired of the whole "buT iT's FoR hIs CaReEr!" argument just so he can parade around with these REAL-LIFE scumbags who have done nothing but hurt other people throughout their career/lives. It's just so ICK, I'm sorry!

Anon 2: IMO Tommy should have come off much worse in P&T....the writers pulled their punches.// Preach 🙌 He was way worse irl. He's an abuser and many other things but they didn't show the real truth. That show was so watered down and I was seriously disappointed. That press tour with the whole "this is for Pam" rhetoric was also disappointing too. But these men don't care and will always get away with their horrible behavior. Tommy's time in jail was a slap on the wrist because he's a famous white man. Sebastian did a good job but I don't agree with half of what was written by the writers or how it was produced. The Ric Flair project will be the same, he'll do a good job with what he's given and the truth won't be anywhere near what it really is in real life. Nothing we can do about it.

The beauty is that we can just skip over the film if it's not our jam - doesn’t make us bad fans.💄

[thecalmerllama]

IN ADDITION TO THIS !!!

I would very much like to make some points clear that I forgot to mention in the post above ⬆️

Firstly, the TNCD MV that generative AI was used by the Queen Production Team to create. I would like to, before I tangent off, put up a disclaimer now to say that I am Anti-AI, proudly in fact, and that I will harshly be criticising the use of it to create this video. I am a small artist, like many in the Queen Fandom; I do not generally get any sort of profit off of my work and never get commissions come through, and work tirelessly around other commitments to keep my page up and running, and to share my art with the world. Now that that is out of the way, let's get to it:

1. Clearly the actual band had no say in how this video was created, both Brian and Roger (ESPECIALLY BRIAN) are AI-antis themselves, and if you even watched the musical "We Will Rock You", co-written with Ben Elton, you will see that they have been Anti-AI for decades. Literal DECADES. Still following? Okay good.

2. Brian said on the day the video was released, that it had only just been finalised, and that basically, he had no idea what to expect; and I'm going to assume, just like the 100 million other lyric videos that The Queen Production Team has shared since being with Sony, he and Roger had zero input into the video itself. If they did, just like the "A Kind Of Magic" lyric video, Brian May's solo cover "Maybe Baby" video and if you want to go even further back, the Save Me video, you can use your critical thinking skills and realise that they wouldn't have approved the AI usage. Now I am going to get a little bit defensive of Brian here, because seemingly once again, he has become the fandom punching bag, and this always seems to happen after something goes down that the fans have a general disliking to; To being called racist for promoting saving the planet and Sir David Attenborough's instagram account, to being called egotistical by Queen fans that thought he 'painted himself as the saviour of Queen' in the band's biopic 'Bohemian Rhapsody', to most recently being the prime target of Queen fans' attacks against the use of AI in the new music video. Now of course, Brian has his flaws, all of the band have their flaws (which sincerely needs to be acknowledged by fans), but do we really think that Brian May, the man concerned with saving British wildlife and being careful as to not misgender dragonflies and hedgehogs, and bear in mind THE MAN WHO LITERALLY JUST HAD A MINI STROKE, would be the mastermind behind supporting small artists so much to put them all in a book to coincide with his album rerelease, to only then sell out and use generative AI all by himself to create a video for a song that Queen fans are seemingly not happy that the *slightest* pitch changes to Freddie's voice have been made. No? Well unfortunately many Queen fans once again seem to have put him at the heart of this, and once again, this man in getting harassed in his comment sections. And I'm not saying there's a certain genre of Queen fans that usually do this, but.... (and I would also like to add, I've genuinely seen people saying that Brian wanted the entire new mix to sound 'perfect' and that he was the reason behind the 'autotuning' on Freddie's voice and that he's basically a terrible human being for it... even though he's literally released a video saying that this new version is how the band wished it sounded at the time!)

3. Anyway, I got a little off topic, but it needed to be said. I would like to also point out that this box set is exactly like the miracle box set; we're getting demos, a remixed album, multiple takes, bbc sessions, the lot. So tell me why this one is receiving this much backlash, yet the miracle one was received with open arms. Queen fans seem to be so over critical of everything the band do, and if your 'favourite band' can do nothing to please you with everything they release.. I'm just saying, there's the door.

I know I've rambled a lot but I just needed to get these points across, I'm sick of the Queen fans in every comment section complaining about this or that, saying that they'd do it one way or another and acting like, quite frankly, self entitled little brats who think they know better than the band they're meant to be idolising. I'm just saying, it doesn't add up if all you do is complain about a band, about a member in specific (usually Brian), saying that you can do everything a thousand times better, but saying that you still speak for the queen fandom after publicly announcing that you've basically left because "it's sooooooo super toxic in there guys you have no idea!", even though it's YOU creating that atmosphere, not anyone else.

This is probably the only place I can talk like this without getting ambushed by the people who disagree, but I just need to go on a little rant because I am so tired of certain people in this community acting like the things that the band do have to revolve around them and their preferences. I'm sick of these people pitting people against each other for different opinions on the new boxest.

I literally do not care that pitch correction was used on Freddie's voices, it, to me, literally sounds no different, just a lot clearer. I do not care that the drums are harsher, I do not care that I can hear the bass too much, I do not care that the guitars take over at the end (like they were intended to), and I do not care what other people think!

Okay, I'm gonna be honest here; there are people in this fandom that hate me. They've blocked me, restricted me, called me a manipulative liar and a horrible person for calling them out on their ugly and quite frankly demeaning behaviours - from sending an angry mob after Brian May, threatening to leave the fandom because 200 likes on instagram isn't enough for certain fandom artists, reposting art after it 'only' got 400 likes, and being willing to argue with every single person in every single commen section. Not to mention the parts of the fandom that lie about Freddie's sexuality and relationships, claim Brian and Freddie (or Brian and John) hated each other, start rumours about how homophobic/transphobic/abusive the members were, shittalking people in their own side of the community and then acting like an innocent victim that deserves nothing but joy is actually abhorrent.

Now I get that I'm biased, and I may come off condescending or rude or cocky but I'm sick of it - the amount of people in this community I've looked up to, treated like best friends or older siblings only to then find out the way they have actually truly pisses me off to no end. So I'm gonna call a little psa here:

If nothing the band do is good enough for you, if you complain about every video (okay we don't have to talk about TNCD vid, it was atrocious but that's a separate paragraph), every song, every piece of merch, every event, every concert date and every choice the band make, then you are not a fan!!

If you hate one of the band members, you're not a fan.

If you hate Adam Lambert, you're not a fan.

If you think Brian is Homophobic/Transphobic/Rasict, you're not a fan.

If you think Roger is an animal abuser, you're not a fan.

If you don't respect every members privacy and mental health, you're not a fan.

If you don't respect their spouses and children, you're not a fan.

And if you do not respect the band and the community that has risen you up and made you well known, you're not a fan.

I'm done with the entitlement that people in this community have, and I know this is out of nowhere and really harsh but I'm so sick of the way people thing it's okay to act. What happened to the sense of family in this community?

"Oh I saw Queen in the 80s blah blah, they're nothing now"

"Oh no Freddie and Mary were married he never loved Jim blah blah"

"Freddie's voice didn't need pitching, blah blah, they're erasing him"

"Yeah well [...] said this so he's a bad person blah blah (without the context)"

Just shut up. I'm sorry, I hate being so mouthy, and it's gotten me in trouble before, but I just needed to rant without boring the same person I always go to to complain about.

If you have to brag, lie, overshare, over promote and scream out to call yourself a fan, I'm sorry, but you're not.

[letterboxd]

The Other Bill and Ted.

As No Man of God hits theaters and VOD following its Tribeca premiere in June, director Amber Sealey talks to Dominic Corry about her Ted Bundy two-hander and answers our Life in Film questions.

Amber Sealey has been very acknowledging of the fact that her new film is one of many to center around the horrific crimes of serial rapist and murderer Ted Bundy. As she outlined in her Tribeca Q&A with Letterboxd, one way she intended No Man of God to stick out from the pack was through the use of consciously silent background characters who represent Bundy’s voiceless victims.

The structure and source of the film also help distinguish it from other Ted Bundy movies: No Man of God is based on the recordings of FBI agent Bill Hagmaier (played in the film by Elijah Wood), who was tasked with interviewing an incarcerated Bundy in the years leading up to his execution, in order to help determine whether or not he was criminally insane, which could’ve helped to remove Bundy from death row.

With many of Bundy’s victims never officially attributed to the killer, Hagmaier also sought to draw confessions, and something resembling remorse, out of Bundy, to help bring closure to those victims’ families. As detailed in the film, much of which was taken directly from transcripts of the interviews, Bundy and Hagmaier’s relationship was complicated, and the intimacy that develops between them informs No Man of God in often uncomfortable ways.

Luke Kirby and Elijah Wood in a scene from ‘No Man of God’.

Wood (also a producer on the film) and Luke Kirby turn in career-high work as Hagmaier and Bundy, respectively, while Sealey textures the film with some of the most emotive stock-footage montage sequences this side of The Parallax View. Among positive reactions to the film, Claira Curtis, in a four-star review, writes: “Perhaps one of the most successful elements lies in Amber Sealey’s uncentering of the ‘genius’ moniker that has followed Bundy through his years of infamy.” On the pairing of Wood and Kirby in the leading roles, Connor Ashdown-Ford notes that “the chemistry between them both is so authentic it’s darn right unsettling”.

Unsettling is right. Late in the film, Sealey depicts a real-life TV interview that took place between Bundy and evangelical preacher/​author/​psychologist James Dobson (played by stalwart character actor Christian Clemonson), who uses Bundy to forward his anti-pornography agenda. Throughout this scene, the camera lingers on a young female member of the TV crew (played by an uncredited Hannah Jessup) as she silently reacts to being in Bundy’s presence. Emblematic of Sealey’s aforementioned philosophy in constructing the film, it’s a moment that appears to be having an impact on audiences, as detailed in Nolan Barth’s review: “She might have one of my favorite performances of this year? She shows us fascination, guilt, disgust and fear in like only 30 seconds of screen time. Give her an Oscar. Please.”

In an awkward incident that represents a perhaps unanticipated effect of there being so many contemporaneous movies with the same subject matter, director Joe Berlinger (Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, the Paradise Lost trilogy), who recently directed both the Zac Efron-starring scripted Ted Bundy biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile and the documentary Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, sent an email to Sealey ahead of No Man of God’s Tribeca premiere about remarks she had made while discussing how her film differentiated itself from the existing Ted Bundy movies. He felt she had accused him of glorifying Bundy. After Sealey took the exchange public, she explained to Variety that she had never singled out Berlinger’s films in any of her remarks.

In a conversation with Letterboxd, Sealey delves into her approach to No Man of God, and talks about some of her filmic inspirations.

‘No Man of God’ director Amber Sealey.

There is really effective and creepy use of stock-footage montages in this film. Sometimes you see that sort of thing at the beginning of a film, but it’s interesting that you keep going back to them after using them in the opening credits. What was the thinking in using those montages and how did you select the footage? Amber Sealey: The thinking for those was a couple things: One, we don’t leave the prison, and I wanted [the audience] to know a little bit what’s going on outside, in terms of the cultural zeitgeist, like what’s the tone of the time? What movies are popular? What books are popular? What are people wearing? I wanted to have there be a kind of cultural touchstone outside of the prison, but at the same time I wanted it to represent potentially a little bit of what was going on inside Bill’s mind. So the story of the montages as they go on, it gets a little bit more fucked up, for lack of a better word, for Bill, inside of his head.

We were originally going to shoot the crowd scenes [of protesters outside the prison] and recreate them and then because of Covid restrictions, we couldn’t do that anymore. So then I knew we were going to be using archival footage for the crowd, and I didn’t want the archival crowd footage to suddenly jump out as being so different from the rest of our film. We’re shooting on an ARRI camera, [so it’s] not going to look like a Hi-8 from the 1980s. I needed to incorporate this look, this ’80s grainy look into the rest of the movie so that it feels like it’s part and parcel of the film, part of the storytelling.

We got [the footage] in different ways. I have an old friend that I’ve known since I was like, two, he lived next door to me, and my cousin, they both had video cameras in the ’80s and would film everything. So some of that footage is old family footage of their family or friends. There’s a couple shots in there of my neighbors when I was growing up. Then some of it, we did a lot of research on [stock-imagery services] Getty and Pond5, just finding archival footage that we could use that really told the story that we wanted to tell with the montages. It was a lengthy process finding all of that footage for sure.

What was Bill Hagmaier’s involvement in the film? Bill is an executive producer on the film, so he was very involved. The transcripts of those conversations between Bill and Ted, we got from Bill. Bill gave us so much great stuff to work with—the newer FBI files that he was allowed to share with us and the recordings, and when the script was originally written it was written based off of those recordings, and the writer originally spoke to Bill and then when I came on board, I talked to him and then I changed the script, even more from conversations I had with him. He was just a resource.

Almost every [character] you see on screen, those are real people, and he hooked us up with a lot of those real people. I spoke with the prison guards and the wardens and all of that. Then he was just a resource in terms of like, I would ask him, “what color were your shoes?” “Did you carry this kind of briefcase or that kind of briefcase?” Because it was important to me that all that production-design stuff was really authentic. I liked to know, like, “what were your haircuts like then, Bill?” So he was available to talk about the emotional side of things, and then the real just humdrum kind of things. He’s just a lovely guy, he’s really supportive of me and of the film and he just wanted to be accessible as much as he could and he was. He’s a very humble, generous person.

Aleksa Palladino plays civil-rights attorney Carolyn Lieberman to Luke Kirby’s Ted Bundy.

What films did you watch, or cite as reference points in preparation for No Man of God? Literally hundreds and hundreds of movies. When I’m looking for my creative look, I just watched so many films, and a lot of old films. I’d have to go back and look at my look book to tell you all of them but I pull images from the weirdest places. But once I get past figuring out the creative look of the film, I don’t then like to watch the movies a lot because I try to really make it its own thing and I worry too much that I’ll be copycatting other artists and I want to try [to] avoid that.

What’s your favorite true-crime movie? Oh god, what was the one about the guy who like, went to the bathroom and confessed, accidentally? He forgot his mic was on? Do you remember that one?

The Jinx? Yeah. Even though it’s a documentary, I’m going to go with that.

What’s your favorite big-screen serial-killer performance? It has to be Luke Kirby. Luke Kirby as Bundy.

What was the first horror film you saw? My dad had me watch Cat People when I was nine. Does that count?

The Val Lewton one? The ’80s one.

Oh, the Paul Schrader one? Yes! The Paul Schrader one.

Nastassja Kinski in Paul Schrader’s ‘Cat People’ (1982).

When you were nine years old? Yeah. I also watched Blue Velvet when I was nine. Oh wow, thank you Dad.

What’s the most disturbing film you’ve ever seen? Most disturbing, hmm… Kids.

What film made you want to become a filmmaker? It was Michael Winterbottom’s Nine Songs. My first film was a reaction to that movie. I’m a huge Winterbottom fan. That’s a great movie, but also it advertises itself as being a real relationship and real sex and I watched it and I was like, well that’s not like any… it was like two models, you know? Their sex scenes were like a perfume ad and I was like, well that’s not what real sex looks like for real people. I made my first feature after that.

What’s your go-to comfort movie? Oh, so many, let’s think. The Proposal. I love Trainwreck. I really like rom-coms, like if I’m sick or something, I’ll watch rom-coms. Roman Holiday, stuff like that.

What’s a classic that you couldn’t get into or that you think is overrated? Umm. Star Wars. I’m trying to think, there’s something else that I just don’t like… everyone loves that singing movie. What’s that singing movie that when Moonlight won the Oscar, it got announced?

La La Land. Yeah. I was not into that.

What filmmaker living or dead do you envy/admire the most? Yorgos Lanthimos. Or Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

If you were forced to remake a classic movie, what would you remake? Grease.

Who would be in the cast of your Grease remake? Oh I don't even know but it would be much darker. It would still be a musical and still be funny, but much darker.

I would like to see that movie. I would too.

Related content

Diego’s list of films featuring the FBI

Boris1980’s list of films about serial killers

Follow Dominic on Letterboxd

‘No Man of God’ is in theaters and on VOD from August 27, 2021.

[simastysims]

SIMASTY Season 1 Episode 3 “Brystle’s Choice”

Originally posted Dec 2018 on simasty.com 

Brystle at last made a friend in the Simmington mansion when she met and bonded with Burke’s estranged son Heathen for the first time. Across town millionaire playboy Seth Dolby arrived back from living the highlife in gambling city Lucky Palms. His amorous rendezvous with DolbyDoh stewardess Minus Manners was interrupted by his uncle Cyril Dolby who convinced him that heiress Fathom Simmington wanted to get back with him. Cyril knows that his nephew has always loved Fathom and his secret plan to get inside information on business rival Burke Simmington’s company is one step closer. WindenburgSimmington lawyer ,and good friend of Burke, Andre Wayward tried to convince Burke to have Brystle sign a prenuptial agreement prior to the wedding but Burke was having known of it. Andre also presented Burke with a dossier on Brystle which Burke refused to read. Andre secretly plans to get Brystle to sign the agreement with or without Burke’s approval. Fathom reunited with her brother Heathen and the siblings reminisced about their lives together and where their long absent mother could be…And on the eve of her wedding Brystle had a meeting with former flame, and current employee of WindenburgSimmington, Mayhew Drysdale. Mayhew declared that he was still in love with her but Brystle could not bring herself to say that she didn’t love him. Now in a state of confusion Brystle must make her choice before her wedding in a few short hours…And now read on for the next exciting chapter….

Burke Simmington was in the west wing drawing room of Siloli, his mansion and family home. Preparations for the wedding were well under way and the staff, led by major-domo Joseph Flanders, were seeing to it that the day would go by without a hitch. Mrs Bummerson was preparing a gargantuan banquet, Nannette Bobbins was organising the flowers and assisting Brystle with her dress. Joseph would be taking care of every other detail and orchestrating the rest of the help at Siloli. Now that the wedding was taken care of, Burke was spending some moments contemplating the mega deal that his company, WindenburgSimmington, had just completed with the government of Shang Simla for the South Simla Sea leases. This contract would allow Burke’s tankers to pass through the waters of Shang Simla but had come at multi-million Simoleon cost. There was a lot hinging on the success of this deal, one wrong move and it could be disastrous for the company…

Burke shuddered at the thought and poured himself a drink. As he was doing that he heard the sound of soft footsteps approaching from behind. A scent of  sweet fragrant  men’s cologne filled the air. Burke knew it to be his son, Heathen.

Burke considered this for a moment. He didn’t want to be too hard on the boy. Yes he had made mistakes in the past but he had come here in an effort to reconcile. Burke softened a little and guided his son to the nearest couch.

Heathen sighed, this was not going well. It didn’t take much for his father to get so irate with him. Yes he had written a non too flattering biopic of his father a few years back but Heathen thought Burke would have forgiven, if not forgotten, him for that. It was the fallout from that character assassinating book that had resulted in Heathen departing Siloli mansion and making his own way in San Myshuno city.

A momentary silence passed between father and son before Burke spoke again.

Heathen had always suspected his father did not approve of his attraction to male Sims and this just proved it. O.k. there had been several men in and out of his life whilst living in the city but so what? Heathen was absolutely comfortable with who he was as a fabulous Sim and he would not allow himself to be hurt by his father anymore. Without shouting or getting angry Heathen spoke with gentle authority.

With that Heathen triumphantly left the room. At that moment Burke never felt so proud of his son as he did right now. No longer was he the meek and timid little boy he remembered but a strong, independent and fabulous adult.

Further down the corridor Andre Wayward had been just about to leave when he met Brystle as she arrived home form her meeting with Mayhew in the park. Andre decided to seize his chance about getting Brystle to sign the prenuptial and guided her quickly back into Burke’s study.

The money did not matter to Brystle, Burke surely knew that. So why was he getting his lawyer to force her to sign this prenup? Brystle shrugged her shoulders and signed the first screen. Andre smiled as she did this and he tapped with his well manicured fingernails each screen that came up with lines and lines of legal information. Brystle didn’t care at all. She came into Burke’s life with nothing and if she had to, she would leave with nothing too.

Fifteen minutes later they were done. Brystle gave Andre an icy stare before leaving the study and going upstairs.to her room. This had been one heck of a day.

Before dinner was served Brystle had had a change of clothes and was catching up on some alone time in one of the sitting rooms of Siloli. Her earlier meeting with Mayhew had made her realise that she was having conflicting thoughts about her feelings. She was torn between two men. One was Burke her fiancé and the love of her life. The other was Mayhew, her former lover with thighs that could crush walnuts. She always believed her feelings for Mayhew were through but seeing him again earlier in those tight shorts had gotten her all a quiver.

It was whilst having these salacious thoughts about the part of Mayhew’s body betwixt his hips and knees that Fathom strutted into the room with a smirk on her face. Brystle had been expecting this. Earlier that morning in the hallway Fathom had remarked she would be catching up with Brystle that evening. It looked like this was the time.

Fathom took the couch facing Brystle and regarded her the way a cat would a mouse.

Brystle rolled her eyes and shook her head. Fathom was being impossible as usual.

Fathom could see that Brystle was not going to listen but she continued on anyway. Her devil-may-care attitude gave her the courage in life to say things that she perhaps shouldn’t.

Fathom could see from the look on Brystle’s face that she was right. Andre had approached her to sign a prenup. She decided to move in for the kill…

There it was , murder! This was what Fathom had resorted to, claiming her father had murdered her mother and some of his other girlfriends and Brystle was furious. She knew it to be utter trash, a horror story in a last ditch attempt to frighten her off. Well Brystle was not having it and wasn’t going to hold back from telling Fathom so.

For once Fathom was lost for words. She hadn’t expected Brystle to bite back like that as normally she was too delicate and Fathom believed her to have no back bone. Would she tell her father? Fathom could not tell. Instead she gave a smirk and then left the room.

Brystle sat back and let out a sigh. Fathom was hard work but she felt she had won this battle, if not the war. Somehow she got the feeling that Fathom’s next attack would be stronger. Brystle didn’t have to wait long. Half an hour later as she was getting dressed in her evening attire for dinner Fathom barged into her room without knocking and round two commenced….

Brystle could not believe her ears! Fathom was actually prepared to buy her off. This cheap insult infuriated Brystle and she exploded in anger. Not literally of course but she had few choice words to say to her future step daughter.

By now both women were at boiling point and Fathom took a step forward jabbing her finger at her future step mother.

Brystle raised her hand as she prepared to slap Fathom across the face. She was so incensed with rage now. First she had been bribed to leave and now there were accusations that she was fake. But she took a deep breath and lowered her hand. She could not bring her self to hit Burke’s daughter despite feeling the overwhelming urge to do so. Instead she yelled at Fathom to leave.

Fathom took another step closer and with her face a snarl she hissed in Brystle’s face.

After Fathom left the bedroom, Brystle was overcome with emotion. She quickly crumpled into tears. Her sobbing filled the room and her crystal tears fell heavily to the floor.

A weary Mayhew Drysdale shut down his computer for the night and stretched his arms above his head. He had returned from his early evening rendezvous with Brystle and continued with some reports he had to write up in his role as business executive at WindenburgSimmington. Recently he had earned a huge promotion at the company, bypassing several rungs of the career ladder. Mayhew, whilst being a conscientious worker, found it incredible he had been promoted to such a high level.  But with the promotion came a tonne of more work leaving Mayhew exhausted most nights.

He left his study and checked in his sleeping daughter Mimsy. Mayhew smiled as he tucked her in for the night. She meant the world to him.

Mayhew quietly left the room and went through to the kitchen. It was late but he still felt the need for a coffee. As he was brewing it his mother, who had recently decided to move in with her son, joined him in the kitchen.

Mother Drysdale, as she liked to be called, was very protective of both her son and grand-daughter. That level of protectiveness however did not extend to her daughter-in-law. She felt Malaudia to be the wrong match for Mayhew from the very start of the marriage. Years later and after Malaudia’s multiple stays in a simitarium Mother Drysdale felt she had been right all along. The fatigue etched on her son’s face confirmed this.

Mayhew sat beside his mother at the kitchen island and sighed.

Mother Drysdale could see her son was no longer happy or in love with Malaudia. It was time to make her feelings known about the woman.

Mayhew pondered on this for a moment. Whilst he would never leave Malaudia to rot in the simitarium there was no denying that he no longer was in love with his wife. But what to do about it?

Mayhew bid his mother goodnight and went off to bed leaving the elder Sim alone with her wicked thoughts…

Burke, Brystle, Fathom and Heathen had gathered for dinner in the grand dining room of Siloli mansion. Both the Simmington siblings were in good form with Heathen laughing and joking while his sister had a mischievous glint in her eye. Brystle looked like her mind was elsewhere. Burke was happy to see everyone seated around the table for the first time.

Heathen sensed that Fathom was itching to pick on Brystle so he quickly moved to diplomatically ease the situation.

Fathom continued smirking and Heathen knew his sister was far from done. 

Burke could see his wife-to-be was visibly uncomfortable and therefore decided to reign his daughter in.  

Just then Joseph Flanders, the major-domo of Siloli, entered the dining-room and made his way over to Burke.

Joseph nodded and went to pour some of the finest nectar a Sim could by. As he passed Brystle, and being a snobby Sim, he couldn’t let an opportunity go by to subtlety test her lack of knowledge of the finer things in life.

Fathom was far from subtle though.

As Brystle made her exit Fathom seemed to delight in it.

And at this point Burke slammed his fist onto the table.

Burke got up and went after Brystle. Fathom merely shrugged her shoulders. Heathen couldn’t help but notice a sly smirk from Joseph to Fathom and he made a note of this. Outside Brystle hurried along the corridor as Burke came after her.

Brystle decided to be honest with Burke about her thoughts on Fathom.

But right now she was having serious doubts….

And so late that night as the household fell quiet, Brystle was alone in her bedroom. Burke was sleeping in a separate room as it was only proper to do so the night before the wedding. Brystle was about to go to bed when her phone rang. She recognised the number thought it wasn’t saved on her phone. It was Mayhew. She was in two minds as to whether to answer it or not but there was a voice inside her telling her she needed to hear Mayhew’s voice again. She pressed accept on the phone. At first the there was a bunch of static white noise coming through before a clicking noise and then at last she heard his voice.

It felt such a huge relief to finally admit that to Mayhew and the pair continued talking.

Unbeknownst to Brystle, there was a reason for the static noise and clicking she heard when she answered her phone. That reason was because there was someone listening in on her conversation from another room in the house…

[spidercakes]

Please carry on the au where peter is a quickly rising pop star and tony is an international music legend!!!! I'm addicted to it!

Oof, it wasn't me who started that (I just reblogged it on account of I liked it too) but I figure what the hell, I’ll write a little thing with the same premise! This is more preslash than anything, but um. Hope you like it!

*

Sometimes Peter hates the lights, the yelling, all the flashing from the cameras but he also knows that this is what he gets stuck dealing with if he wants to have a music career and hey, it could be worse. He’s seen the way some other people in the music industry get treated and he knows he’s lucky that he got a decent manager, and his family- which really only consists of May- is supportive, and so are his friends. So if he has to deal with all the lights and cameras and people he can do that for until he can safely retreat to his hotel room and crash there for awhile before doing it all over again.

Its a lot though and sometimes Peter wishes he could take a step back from the public, take time for himself but that’s impossible when your face is all over billboards. Which is probably why he finds himself at the bar to begin with and its mostly industry people here so he doesn’t need to worry about anyone riding his ass about image. Yeah, he gets it, thirteen year olds love him but it does seem weird that somehow he ended up people’s role model rather than like... literally anyone else. The fans themselves though, they’re nice, its just their parents suck sometimes.

“And here I thought you pop stars were on short leashes. Who let you out to play?” someone asks and Peter swears to god he knows that voice but there’s no way. He turns, pretty much hoping in equal parts that he’s right and wrong and when he turns out to be right he isn’t sure what he feels.

“Um. I mean, compared to you rock stars a drink really isn’t something to worry about, is it?” he asks and oh man he can’t believe he said that with that much confidence when he’s talking to Tony Stark. Tony fucking Stark, rock star legend, basically killed his career and revived it like five times. Split his band and managed to come back. Joined another and managed to rocket them into a level of fame that was even bigger than his last band. Has so many awards he probably has a room dedicated to them and only them. And that doesn’t even touch on the potential biopic Peter has heard rumors about. Ned called him at four in the morning about it because they’ve both had a crush on Tony Stark for basically as long as they’ve been alive.

Tony laughs, shaking his head. “I guess not, but pop stars tend to be all image, no substance. Kind of puts a damper on things if you ruin the image,” he points out.

Peter would like to prickle at that but he’s still in shock that Tony Stark is talking to him. “Is that what you think of my music?” he asks, raising an eyebrow and he just said that? With his mouth? Jesus Christ where is he getting this confidence?

“Not the songs that you wrote, no. But god help me if I have to hear any one of your catchy, irritating love songs on the radio, no offense,” he says.

“Be glad you don’t have to sing them,” Peter tells him because even he’s sick of them, not that he wrote them. He writes some of his stuff, but never the singles and wait, did Tony just compliment songs he wrote like he did enough research to know he wrote them? “Wait, how do you know which songs are mine?” he asks.

Tony snorts, “one, they aren’t garbage. Two, there’s real emotional substance. Sorry about your uncle,” he says, tone a little softer there and Peter sighs.

“Yeah. I had a long fight to get that on the album and people were surprised that it made charts.” Its slow, sad. Peter had written it on the anniversary of his death the year before and it made May cry.

“That doesn’t surprise me. That shit is why I avoid pop like the plague, no offense. But know I will absolutely be offended if you think rock is just as bad,” he says, lips quirking up a bit.

Peter lets out a breathy laugh. “Uh, no. I love your music, like really love your music. I’ve been listening to it for like... ever. I lost my virginity to your Man in Black album, I can’t believe I said that I’m going to go kill myself now,” he says, lifting his hand to cover his face as Tony barks out a laugh.

“Knew it had to happen at some point. Congrats on keeping your cool for that long. Believe it or not that isn’t the strangest thing I’ve had a fan say,” he says and Peter laughs.

“Oh I know, fans say some weird shit. I’ve had soccer moms say some um... not family friendly things to me in front of their children. They can get weird. I’m sorry I got weird, I hate when people get weird,” he says. Its always a little uncomfortable and he’s had to learn how to handle people being creepy at him. Liz gave him lessons given that she deals with it all the time being a beautiful woman. Peter never really thought he’d have to deal with that kind of thing but people treat celebrities different.

Tony shrugs, probably used to a lot worse than what Peter deals with. His fanbase is mostly teenagers and while they do regularly call him ‘daddy’ on Twitter it can’t be anything like Tony’s fanbase, which is like a billion times larger and consists of people from every age group and country. He doesn’t know how he’d handle that level of fame.

“So, are you actually all that wholesome shit they push or do you actually have a personality in there? Because your music, your music, suggests you aren’t really the America’s sweetheart kind of guy,” Tony says, head tilted to the side.

Peter shrugs, “I mean most of its true. Internet age makes it hard to lie when fans will literally show up at the hospital you were born at to find out what time, specifically, you were born at. But I wish I didn’t get stuck in pop music. Its not bad I guess but have you ever heard Bo Burnham’s Repeat Stuff, the comedy song he did making fun of pop? I feel that sometimes. Its all repeat stuff, repeat stuff, repeat stuff and it gets a little exhausting. That’s what I’ve got though, so,” he shrugs.

“Word of advice, Peter, if you want to do what you want to do you’re going to have to fight for it. Managers and execs will fuck your face if you let them. They want to talk market and research and song length and workable study tested formulas but that ignores all the shit that suggests people will listen to whatever the hell you hand them if they like it. If you don’t fight back you’ll get stuck in that shit forever,” Tony tells him.

“Hmm. Guess you’d know, your whole career is pretty much yelling ‘fuck it’ and doing whatever you want.” Maybe a little too much of that if he counts the long period of alcoholism and drug use but he got clean years ago and once again somehow managed to revive his career.

Tony winces, apparently thinking the same thing. “Yeah, don’t do anything I would do. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do either. There’s a grey area, operate in there,” he says and Peter laughs.

“Okay, alright. Question though, if you hate pop so much how come you came over here to talk to me?” he asks. Because he’s kind of curious and the star struck feeling is fading.

“Your hot,” Tony says bluntly and Peter almost chokes on his air supply. “Don’t look so shocked, if pop knows how to do anything they know how to pick them pretty. Besides, you’re not the worst pop artist I’ve ever heard, you actually have talent, and Quill told me you were too wholesome to give me your number,” he says, nodding across the bar to holy fuck Peter actual Quill, who is looking pretty damn shocked right now.

“Oh, I’ll give you more than my number,” he says, wincing because he totally didn’t mean to say that out loud.

Tony grins though, “I knew you weren’t as wholesome as your image made you out to be,” he says, looking amused.

“Oh come on, can you blame them? Do I look like a rock star to you?” Peter says. They both know he looks like he could be a member of One Direction and that doesn’t really jive with the rock star image. He’s just glad he didn’t get jammed into country music. He would have quit on the spot, he refuses to sing about trucks and dirt roads. At least love songs are kind of sweet.

Tony looks him up and down and Peter is pretty sure he turns red in response. “I can work with that,” he says, grinning.

*

Ned calls him in the morning screaming and he lets him get it all out before trying to calm him down. “Oh my god you met Tony Stark!” he screams. MJ and Liz appear in the background and lean forward, lurking for answers.

Peter shrugs, “I mean yeah, we met,” he says coyly.

“Don’t make me pry the details out of you Parker,” MJ tells him. “You were wearing his jacket in the picture and I’m ninety percent sure you took it in a bed. Explain yourself.”

“I maybe got a bit of a rockstar makeover,” he says, shrugging like its no big deal. It so is and he wants to gush so bad but Tony is a person, not someone to brag about so he doesn’t. He wouldn’t like it if someone did that with him but also he’s losing his shit a little on the inside.

“A rock sta- oh my god are you still with him?” MJ asks, losing composure for half a second before she pulls her cool aloof look back together again.

“Hey guys. What do you think Twitter would do if I announced a collab?” he asks, appearing behind Peter and wrapping an arm around him. Ned faints, MJ’s eyebrows shoot up, and Liz leans into the camera hard.

“I love you,” she says, wincing and then pulling away. “I can’t believe I just said that. I’m going to go die now,” she says, scurrying off.

MJ points the camera at still passed out Ned. “Pretty sure that’s what Twitter would do,” she says and Tony laughs.

“He’s still alive, right?” he asks right as Ned wakes up.

“Oh my god I had the craziest dream,” he says.

[charliejrogers]

Rocketman (Or What You Should Watch Instead of Bohemian Rhapsody)

Like everyone has said, this is the movie Bohemian Rhapsody wanted to be. In fairness, Malik's a better Freddie Mercury than Egerton is Elton John, but that's about the only thing it has over Rocketman. Besides, it’s hardly a fair comparison. Despite John’s more elaborate wardrobe (which is lovingly recreated again and again throughout the film), his mannerisms are hardly as flamboyant as Malik’s, making the role inherently less challenging. And to his credit, Egerton sings his own songs (and quite well too!).

Actually comparing Rocketman with Bohemian Rhapsody, this movie has an actual story and compelling character arc. It doesn't tip-toe around its star’s troubling amounts of drug use or around his sexuality, both of which here are vitally important to its story and character arc such that it earns its R-rating, instead of trying to sanitize matters for PG-13 profit. Some scenes make Call Me By Your Name look tame (that peach be damned!).

But the real difference is in two key aspects. The first is in its approach to the music. It’s not all just imitated concert performances. Some of the songs are staged and choreographed like a musical which move the plot forward, often to great effect (the “Honky Cat” and “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” sequences stand out). But even those songs relegated to concerts are still performed in a manner that avoids being a mere imitation. Most notably his US debut includes a magical sequence where John begins floating while leading the crowd to “Crocodile Rock” (an annoying song which this movie somehow redeemed). But whether in a concert or staged like a play, the songs are always carefully chosen so that the lyrical content reflects some aspect of the story or the characters’ moods. There's no 20-minute long, gratuitious concert recreation such as what ended Bohemian Rhapsody and its insistence on recreating almost all of Live AID.

But the second (and probably more important) key aspect is that this movie doesn't have to pretend it's about anything other than Elton John whereas Bohemian Rhapsody had to pretend it was also about the other three dudes in Queen. #ShowMeTheSachaBaronCohenCut

So, yes, the movie passes the low bar of being better than Bohemian Rhapsody, but it's not a masterpiece. It did seem like this was originally written to be a musical that was later translated to screen, and as such some theatrical devices just don't work as well. The story of John’s life is framed by his first AA meeting in the late 1970s / early 1980s, but it’s not merely a series of flashbacks. Characters from his past can appear at the AA meeting and interact with John, but the other members of the AA meeting are still silently present without response. Having the adult John hugging himself as a child  in front of his fellow AA members just doesn't work the same way on screen as it might in theater. And are we to believe that the AA crew just sat there and listened to Elton's entire life story?! Didn’t anyone else want to speak that day?! It was an odd framing device.

Furthermore, when other characters suddenly burst into song, the effect can be weird. For example, in an early scene from John's childhood, family members sing lyrics from 2001’s “I Want Love”; my ability to suspend disbelief was a little strained. I get that the movie was not firmly grounded in realism. That’s quite obvious from the start. But there was simply just too much dissonance in watching a movie how a young boy named Reginald Dwight later becomes Elton John in which that child sings a song that will be written 40 or so years later.

That inability of mine to reconcile “movie truth” with reality is probably what keeps this from being a an even better film. One of the great abilities of biopics about artists is getting to understand how the world’s great art came to be (both literally in terms of the process and their emotional underpinnings). That’s what we love about Frida, Pollock, Love & Mercy (Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys), Get On Up (James Brown), and (to hell with it) The Disaster Artist. But in Rocketman, as in reality, Elton John doesn’t write any of the words to his songs. He’s the music man. Lyrics? That’s the job of his much beloved friend and collaborator, Bernie Taupin. So there’s something inherently false in scenes, like the “Tiny Dancer” sequence, where Elton John is singing a soliloquy as if he’s speaking his inner truth, when we know that these are someone else’s words. Accordingly, the burst-out-into-song conceit works best when Bernie departs from Elton after a tense dinner while singing “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” The knowledge that these are his own words make them that much more scathing.It’s a seemingly small quibble, but one that I just couldn’t ever really shake.

And that’s a shame because this is overall a good movie that tackles a lot of important themes and issues that affect many LGBTQ+ folk. There’s cold and distant fathers, homophobia, domestic violence, mental health issues, substance abuse issues, difficulties coming out, complicated family dynamics, etc.

And yet for all that heaviness, there’s a lightness and freedom to the film. Knowing from life and from the film’s own framing device that Elton John will find a way to get it together gives us hope, even when watching his darkest moments. It’s a personal, and sometimes magical, film in a way that Bohemian Rhapsody could never be. It allows Elton John to give us a peek into his world and allows us the chance to celebrate with him that he’s still standing.

*** Stars (out of 4)

Capsule Review: This movie made “Crocodile Rock” enjoyable again.

[darlingfreddie]

☕️ bohemian rhapsody (the movie)

☕- oh god where do i begin with this awful movie hnbvghj

Bo Rhap really had the potential to be a great movie that really told Queen’s story but it was literally the opposite,, 

I think that bo rhap is just so poorly written and oh my god!! its homophobic as heck!!! how is it homophobic you might ask?? WELL

it literally had Freddie mercury, a GAY (yes i said it, G A Y) man pinning after a woman the ENTIRE movie literally up until the fuckin end. The way it overplayed and exaggerated Freddie and Mary’s relationship is unforgivable, they deadass had Freddie propose to mary in a heartfelt way as if he meant it when hi yes HELLO in reality, there are conflicting accounts about this ‘proposal’ which from my understanding wasnt even that serious and done by freddie out of feeling pressured to do so. BUT NO!!! of course bo rhap has to go make it seem like he did this because he loved her romantically. 

And just in general, the way they had freddie comment about how beautiful she was and how good in bed she was was so FUCKING WEIRD because he was in fact a gay man who was just in that relationship because of internalized homophobia and the pressure to be heterosexual and get a girlfriend. 

Also. yall. 

THE FUCKING COMING OUT SCENE WAS THE MOST DISGUSTING THING IVE EVER SEEN

the AUDACITY of bo rhap to make freddie seem like the bad guy because he was gay. The nerve of them to make Freddie’s coming out all about Mary and to try to make the audience feel bad for her after she really told him ‘your life is going to be hard because you’re gay’ just talking about this scene makes me so mad!!! 

throughout the whole movie, its this tired theme of mary being the love of freddies life who has to save him and be the only true friend to him, i fucking hate it because NONE OF THAT IS TRUE!!

MOVING ON,,,,,

the way that they portrayed the bands dynamic was awful,, from watching the movie alone you would never be able to tell the band was as close as they were in real life. and if you didnt know the band members names already, they would not be memorable at all. they mentioned johns name like twice throughout the whole movie. For a movie that was marketed as Queen and Freddies story this movie didnt show EITHER of those things. 

AND THE FACT THAT THIS MOVIE HAD THE NERVE,, THE AUDACITY TO MAKE JIM THE ‘HELP’ AT THIS MOVIE IS UNBELIEVABLE.

i know not everything in a biopic has to be factual but Gotdamn NOTHING IN THIS MOVIE IS FACTUAL especially how jim and freddie met, jim was introduced as part of the cleaning crew and was assaulted by freddie the moment we saw him like ???????? jim said he hated being seen as just ‘the help’ and this movie literally made people believe that this is how they met and this is the way it really was. I will never understand why they didnt have them meet in a gay club.

OH WAIT I REMEMBER,, GAY CLUBS ACCORDING TO BO RHAP ARE SINFUL PLACES YE A

the scene where Freddie is at a gay club is literally, dark and colored red to demonize the gay community and the gay scene at the time and the fact that they had ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST playing as they showed gay men in a time where the AIDS crisis was killing innocent people is DISGUSTING and i will never shut up about this. you might say, “they didnt mean to make it seem like that!” YES THEY FUCKING DID. Every song in bo rhap had a specific purpose and a specific reason for being shown so i know DAMN WELL they did that shit intentionally. 

LASTLY,,,,,,,

this movie literally went above and beyond to portray freddie as the biggest arrogant asshole the world has ever seen and that PISSES ME OFF!! like yes, freddie wasnt perfect and of course he could have his dick ish moments but he was good person and he was caring and kind and funny and sweet. This movie makes him out to be some sort of selfish asshole who only cares about himself and nobody else (except for mary of course). They do this on purpose, the whole scene where he dramatically breaks up the band to make his own music when hi yes hello HE WASNT THE FIRST MEMBER OF QUEEN TO HAVE A SOLO ALBUM !!! this was all done for the Dramatics and by doing so they made Freddie purposefully look like a real douche bag. 

BOTTOM LINE!!!!!!!!

I fucking hate Bo Rhap, honestly, i was so excited to see it like anyone who’s been on my blog long knows i literally pre ordered my theater tickets the moment they went on sale like i was sooooo looking forward to seeing a movie about queen. But tbh bo rhap is such a disappointment and does such a disservice to queen and especially to freddie. They portrayed him as something he was not, a selfish prick who was (unfortunately) gay and magically only romantically attracted to one woman aka the love of his life and the only one he could trust lmao bo rhap is just bad thanks for coming to my TED talk

[theliterateape]

The Cinema of 2019: A Literate Ape End-of-Year Review

By Don Hall and Brett Dworski

Editor’s Note:

With projects like Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Watchmen, The Mandalorian, and pretty much everything produced for the CW, we are smack dab in the epicenter of the Age of Fan Fiction. The films of 2019 have some nods to this trend with Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Yesterday playing hard and loose with expanding the existing iconography to tell new stories.

We enjoyed a lot of movies in 2019. While not a banner year like 1968 or 1999, the year certainly had its standouts. Here is our end of the year list of the films that impacted us the most compiled by Don Hall and Brett Dworski, both film fans and people with acceptable vision and hearing.

NOTE: These are not ranked because generally, we believe the practice of ranking films is fucking stupid. However, we do rate them from 1 to 5 Apes. Enjoy.

Apollo 11

4 Apes (DH)

There really was a time when America was great. Sure, there was still segregation and violence, the war overseas, the draft, and the host of problems faced by the country but the men and women who took up Kennedy’s challenge to get a human being on the surface of the moon elevated us all. Apollo 11 is a documentary using entirely archival footage of this historic moment when mankind exceeded itself.

Honey Boy

1 Ape (BD)

The anticipated debut of writer Shia LaBeouf is choppy and disappointing. Newcomer Noah Jupe plays child actor Otis—based on LaBeouf—whose drunken father disrupts his recent success. The film’s inconsistencies stem across the plot, casting and performances. The father, played by LaBeouf, flops between abusive asshole and tender daddy by the minute; neither is compelling. Lucas Hedges, who plays Otis as a drug-abusing teenager, looks nothing like LaBeouf or Jupe. And once things get interesting, Otis forgives his pop and tells him he’s “going to make a movie about him.” Very original, Shia. The fact that Honey Boy is based on LaBeouf’s life is intriguing, but the film is ultimately a huge letdown.

Midsommar

4 Apes (DH)

Ari Astor gives us a twisted break up story wrapped in the bloody flowered crown of a horror film set in blinding sunlight. I loved Hereditary for a million reasons. I loved Midsommar for five: Florence Pugh, the bizarre mating ritual, the fucked up mushroom visuals, old people willingly plunging to their deaths, and a dude being stuffed into the skin of a recently slaughtered bear and burned alive.

Dolemite Is My Name

3 Apes (BD)

Eddie Murphy rewinds the clock to his Raw and Delirious days in this biopic of Rudy Ray Moore, a comedian and musician behind the Blaxploitation movement of the 1970s. While wildly erratic at times, it’s also an affectionate and sobering look at the hustle of show business. It took years for Murphy to ditch his affable family-man routine, but it was worth the wait: Dolemite Is My Name cements the raunchy, cocksure comic as one of the greatest talents of all time.

Yesterday

3 Apes (DH)

I wrote about this here. Loved it.

The Lighthouse

3 Apes (BD)

Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are exhilarating in this delirious indie thriller. They play 19th century lighthouse keepers who struggle to maintain their sanity upon learning they’re stuck on an island off the coast of New England. The stunning black and white landscapes of Nova Scotia are overshadowed by Dafoe’s and Pattinson’s constant bickering, farting, masturbating, and binge drinking. The Lighthouse is bizarre, hilarious, terrifying, peculiar… and quite good. You’ll never view seagulls the same way after watching it.

Endgame

5 Apes (DH)

The culmination of nearly two dozen interconnected films all stemming from my Gen X childhood? I’ve been waiting since I read my first Avengers comic when I was ten years old for this and it did not disappoint. Packed with incredibly satisfying moments (Professor Hulk, Cap gets the Hammer, “...on your left...,” and “I... am... Iron Man”) this was the most fun three hours I could imagine that didn’t involve cheese or sex.

The Art of Self Defense

4 Apes (BD)

This deadpan and absurdist comedy highlights toxic masculinity through a ruthless karate class. Jessie Eisenberg plays Casey, a lonely, frightened accountant who enlists in the course after a mugging leaves him hospitalized. Led by a vain and puzzling instructor, the class soon absorbs Casey’s life and brainwashes him to commit barbaric acts beyond self-protection. Although clearly a blend of Fight Club and The Karate Kid, The Art of Self Defense carries an unusual rhythm that separates it from its predecessors—and displays a refreshing kind of filmmaking from newcomer Riley Streams.

Joker

4 Apes (DH)

The politics that suddenly surrounded this were nothing more than distraction. Was it a response to the humorless Woke culture? An Incel Fantasy? Who gives a fuck. It was a film that did something a lot of movies lately refuse to do—it surprised us. It also included an amazing, painful performance by Joaquin Phoenix and, like Logan before it, used the pop culture iconography of the comic book tropes and deepened them in ways that only a bold approach could.

High Life

4 Apes (BD)

Visually-stunning cinematography and a harrowing storyline carry High Life, one of the most daunting films of the year. Set in a futuristic world where death-row inmates are sent to conduct eerie experiments in outer space, High Life is as morbid as it is alluring. The movie—which was made in 2018 but not released in theaters until 2019—resembles a space version of The Shining with its isolation-leads-to-madness concept. While too edgy for some, High Life is one of the most uniquely made films in years.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

5 Apes (DH)

Tarantino’s homage to revisionist history, the plight of growing old and becoming replaceable, 1960s Hollywood, and chock full of snappy dialogue, incredible performances, and both a sense of celebration and melancholy makes this one of the best movies about movies ever made.

John Wick Chapter 3

5 Apes (DH)

With next year’s Keanu-mas when they release both John Wick 4 and the Matrix 4 movies on the same day (yes, I will participate fully) the franchise that spawned the newfound love for all things Reeves is absolutely worth noting. Full of that comic book/video game world-building, odd but sensible rituals and oaths and rules plus plenty of head-shot, bloody violence, I sat in a Las Vegas theater with a crowd and we all gasped, laughed, and applauded at the absolute action-porn that is John Wick. Yes, these films are pornography of comic book violence and Reeves is our big-dicked John Holmes.

The Painted Bird

5 Apes (BD)

Those seeking a feel good shan’t see The Painted Bird, a bloodcurdling Holocaust drama seen through the eyes of a child. Petr Kotlár gives a robust performance as a nameless boy fighting to survive the violent societal breakdown in Eastern Europe. In doing so, he experiences one nightmare after another—each worse than the former—and loses hope in human kindness along the way. The beautifully shot black-and-white landscapes are a mirage for the routine abuse the boy encounters, leaving audiences as numb to it as he is by the film’s end.

The Irishman

4 Apes (DH)

Scorsese caps a triptych of films over decades with this much slower but no less magnificent look into the Italian Mafia from the inside/out. Goodfellas is an Irish kid’s ascent and is an explosive young man’s movie. Casino is a Jewish man’s climb up in the Mob and, while still explosive, is a bit more subdued and a decidedly middle-aged man’s film. The Irishman is an old man’s view, looking back, reliving awful and magnificent moments.

Together, the three films mark a masterwork in a genius director’s canon.

Ad Astra

5 Apes (BD)

Ad Astra takes a different approach than most solar-system journeys by exploring the man behind the suit. Brad Pitt is Roy McBride, an accomplished astronaut whose dedication to space has damaged his marriage. When called upon for secret mission to Neptune, the stoic McBride finds he’s more than a government robot, and his ascent to madness results in one of Pitt’s finest performances. Supported by a wonderfully played asshole in Tommy Lee Jones, Ad Astra is as much a family drama as it is a space adventure.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

5 Apes (DH)

Sure, there were unanswered questions leftover and I really didn’t care for that kiss at the end but I loved this film from start to finish. Completing a story as massive and, in many ways, disconnected, was a tall order and I think Abrams and team did about as good a job as anyone could expect. This will be in rotation at least a couple more times in the next few weeks.

Marriage Story

5 Apes (BD)

Oscar-worthy performances from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson drive Marriage Story, a clever, poignant narrative about divorce. Noah Baumbach’s behind-the-scenes view of the crippling situation separates it from movies alike, exploring factors beyond courtroom troubles and custody battles. Marriage Story empathetically—and even comically—shows both sides of the fight, and its effect will last far beyond the screen. Get your box of tissues ready.

Alita: Battle Angel

3 Apes (DH)

Not a Manga-Boy so the inconsistencies with the story and characters didn’t bother me. I thought this was the closest to watching a dramatic video game with some cool performances and great use of camera and technology. It was also the film I saw first as a resident of Las Vegas so that counts for something at least to me.

Parasite

5 Apes (BD)

Superbly written, shot and performed, Bong Joon-ho’s account of class discrimination in Korea is an electrifying and emotional masterpiece. What begins as a lighthearted story of two families—one rich, one destitute—spirals into shocking sequences of deception. It has every element of an instant classic: witty comedy, sexual tension, thrilling violence, social themes and a stunning finale that mirrors the horrors of reality. Calling it the best movie of 2019 isn’t enough: Parasite is one of the top films of the decade and transcends the arc of modern cinema.

[regrettablewritings]

Genre Blindness, aka The Brocky Horror Picture Show (Slight Eddie Brock x Reader)

A/N: Well, this is all I’m contributing to Halloween. Have at a “scary”(ly-written) fic. Have at it, kiddies. Also, kudos to K for making a punny name for this even though she knows it and everything about it (including myself) is trash!

Everyone likes to imagine themselves as the hero of their own story, a figure in the movie that was their life. The problem for you was that at this point, you had no idea to which genre your own life belonged. The easy route would’ve been to claim it was an indie, but where was the fun in that? But considering how you’d decided to start life a new in San Francisco, it was leaning somewhere along the inspirational biopic spectrum. Your apartment sure as hell supported that theory: Small, your own personal and lease-friendly touches attempting to cover up its slipshod glory, located in a part of town that, ahem, didn’t have a Whole Foods so to speak.

Clearly, you told yourself often, I am in the rough beginnings phase. You weren’t entirely sure how much of this you actually believed, but it was better to believe that something amazing was waiting just around the corner than to completely digest your life’s current situation.

The irony here being that your life, for just a moment, was about to look less like an inspirational biopic and more like a movie about being careful or at least more specific about what one wishes for.

When you hoped for something big to be around the corner, you’d meant like winning the lottery or acquiring your dream job or catching the eye of a dazzling celebrity. Or at least find the perfect pair of jeans that were both comfy and made your ass look great. What you hadn’t hoped for (or even really been in the same realm of even considering) was that something big would literally drop right by your apartment window – coincidentally in a back corner of your building.

You hadn’t noticed that anything had fallen passed your window. Not at first. You were far too busy blowing your store-bought microwavable cupcake cool, after all. But what you couldn’t ignore were the sounds that soon followed the thing’s fast descent: The loud thud of something hitting the pavement below; the bang of disturbed trashcans; the cacophony of garbage being crushed or toppled over. To be honest, you were so used to that sort of racket coming from that alleyway (never mind that it still caused you to jolt up with a vibrant, “Whatthefuck?!”) that you would’ve been more than happy to just leave it be and carry on with your lackluster night. After all, if you stopped yourself every time you heard crackheads getting into screaming matches or cats hissing at one another or party girls puking into that alley, you’d never have enough life left over to enjoy what little you had.

You glanced at the clock: a quarter to three in the morning. Most nearby clubs were probably beginning to close up shop at around this time, it was probably just somebody drunk on overpriced drinks stumbling about.

However, it was the groan that caused you to reconsider. Of all the disputes you’d overheard coming from the backway below, you’d never heard such a miserable sound of pain come rippling up the walls the way this particular one did. Normally you would’ve kept the window shut but with your busted A/C unit, you had to regrettably resort to using the rank but free air of the outside. It was bad enough you could smell suspicious things; it was no intention of yours to also hear suspicious things. But . . . Then again, maybe you didn’t hear it. Suppose you imagined it?

As if on cue, you heard a small avalanche of glass bottles and hefty garbage bags collapse. Its end was accompanied by a small whimper. It wasn’t as loud as the groan you thought maybe hadn’t happened, but it was definitely real. And still definitely human. Crap.

Against the best of your nerves, the guilt of possibly letting a genuinely injured person suffer any more than what was necessary overruled you. You crept towards your window, nudging the sill open just enough for you to humor poking your head out of it.

“Hello?” you called down in a loud whisper. You squinted at the shadows. Aside from the familiar forms of garbage cans and the dumpster and the litter you could just imagine was already there, nothing. That is, until one of those garbage bags appeared to move. Your breath stilled in your throat, eyes widening for a brief moment before narrowing once more with double intensity. The lack of proper lighting made it difficult to officially determine it, but there was little doubt about it: There was a person down there.

“Hellooo? Is anybody down there?” you called out a bit louder. Nothing. Your heart began to thud with worry. You inhaled (both with worry and with the intention of shouting) before releasing a far louder, “HELL –”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!!” bellowed some bastard elsewhere. The sudden yelling caused you to tense up and button up. Curiously (and concerningly), still no response from below. There were two possibilities to this: Either this person, like you, was not from the area and therefore lacked the devil-may-care attitude required for snapping back at the aggressor; or they had just proved your growing dread that they might’ve been unconscious.

Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. You wobbled from foot to foot, eyes flickering about as your thoughts rushed. What should you do? Should you call 911? That would be the most sensible thing, honestly.

But . . . given that there wasn’t a Starbucks for an approximate twenty blocks from here – any help you called for likely wasn’t going to come immediately. Maybe you should just hope that they recover quickly and go about your business? You hated to admit to it, but the temptation was there.

After all, you shakily tried to reason, I’ve never really rushed in with all the other things that happened in that alley. This was true. But then again, the others never really had the double whammy of a person being in so much pain that they possibly blacked out. Or were on the brink of death. The shudder that thought caused forced you to shake your head. You were overthinking this. You had to have been; nobody else was making a fuss about this, were they? Probably because they’d already called the cops –

Oh, wait, you remembered bitterly, no Starbucks or Whole Foods or some shit. Plus, the screaming you’d received for calling out your own window did little to convince you of others’ sense of empathy. An expression of worry twisted your features as you forced yourself to go to the kitchen and retrieve a fork for your awaiting snack. Maybe if you took the actual steps to carry on with your previously planned night, you’d calm down some and things would take care themselves?

But could the person that you swore was in the alleyway do the same you wondered.

Clearly the cynicism of this corner of San Fran had not strangled you enough. You wished that it had.

You were currently seeing your life as veering more towards the horror genre. You concluded this with immense dread based on the following: You were creeping outside in the dark to investigate a strange noise on your own; you wanted to believe that you were perhaps defying it to some extent by arming yourself but alas: A skillet did not carry the same amount of threat as, say, a good cutting knife did. Which you didn’t have anyway. So yeah: You were being that bitch™.

You slowly waved your phone’s flashlight about the ground. So far, all you had been picking up were the usual suspects of grime and garbage and for that you were somewhat grateful. Maybe, if you hoped hard enough, the person would have retroactively recovered and buggered off before you’d gotten down. That would sure alleviate a whole lot of pressure weighing down on your nerves. But as the light encased the unmistakable figure of a shoe – still attached to a leg, no less – you knew no amount of hoping was going to relieve you. And as you traveled the light further along the body, taking in its current state, you were losing hope by the gallon.

You gasped shrilly as your eyes began to compute exactly what was wrong with the man: He was dead. He had to have been. From what little skin you could see (he was dressed in a rather blood-stained hoodie and even more unfortunate jeans), most of him appeared to be battered purple and blue. Some of his fingers had definitely been broken as evidenced by the unnatural angles they bended at. But, most horrifying of all, was the bone sticking out of him: Shins were not supposed to fucking do that. In fact, even the near absolute coverage of his clothing couldn’t hide from you just how mangled his body appeared to be in some places.

“Oh, God,” you gagged, jerking your head away from the scene. This was worse than a horror movie; this was real life. This shit was getting too out of hand, you’d finally decided. It didn’t matter if it would take them a while to get out here: You were calling the police right fucking now. This was a mob hit. This was a mob hit, and you fucking contaminated the crime scene with your mere presence. It was best to just make the call, give as much information as you could, and hole yourself up in your apartment until the memory of this faded from your mind – which would probably be never at this point.

You tried to make quick work of getting to the dialer of your phone (a difficult thing to do with sweaty, shaking fingers) but it was in the process of that that you heard something unlike the distant sirens and dogs barking of the late night hour: A sort of . . . whistling? No, no, a hissing. You forced yourself to glance back at the body. There was your answer: A nostril, struggling to inhale in spite of the nose’s battered state.

A wave of relief washed through you as you concluded that the figure before you, in spite of the odds, was alive. That made the situation somewhat better, but frankly only by the smallest of increments. You hovered the flashlight of your phone over the stranger’s face. It was frankly not too much better than the rest of his body with blood streaking across the flesh and purple beginning to set into it. But in spite of the cuts and bruises marring his face, he looked vaguely familiar to you. You weren’t entirely sure if those lips of his were naturally poofy or if they had just been smacked around a bit, but you could’ve sworn you’d seen lips like them somewhere on a particular.

You grimaced; that was enough of that. Time to make that call and leg it. With fingers still trembling, you returned your focus back to turning your phone screen back on.

Crack.

You froze, your breath stilling. Normally, you would have been very willing to link another noise in the alleyway with the trash that adorned it. However, this was a very specific sound. In fact, you could’ve sworn it sounded like . . . bone?

You weren’t sure of the demon that compelled you to do so, but you dared to glance at the body once more. Your gut dropped and your heart beat a painfully cold palpitation.

Hadn’t his left shoulder appeared more broken than that?

Sn-ap. This time, you saw it: The shoulder, in an almost jerking but completely unnatural movement, snapped into a more normal-looking position. In fact, if you weren’t so ensorcelled for all the wrong reasons, you might have considered it good as new.

CRACK. The loudness of the noise caused you to jump, your eyes flickering to where you believed the source of it to be. You watched in horror as the bone protruding from the man’s leg began to inch inward, crick after crack until it finally placed itself back into its rightful home. In fact, it took you a moment to realize that as it was rehousing itself, the rest of the broken limbs and features were correcting themselves as well. You barely registered the cacophony of bones snapping and flesh squealching, either because your heart was drumming a fearful beat inside your head or because your brain just forbade it to spare you. Either way, after the longest minute of your life, the body that lay before you wasn’t quite the same one you’d just found.

It was back to what you assumed was normal for it: A regular guy with no broken limbs or busted lips. Of course, there was still some blood here and there but that was the last thing you were concerned about. Though frankly, with the blizzard of thoughts whipping about your head, it was hard to decide what you should be concerned about: The body, the fact that it was just busted beyond belief mere seconds ago, the fact that it magically (albeit grotesquely) fixed itself, if you should just call the goddamn police and get the hell of out here.

Then his eyes snapped open. With that, your thoughts collected themselves in a single file line of concerns, that eye-opening thing being at the very front of it.

A loud, wet gasp flew from his lips, creating a gurgling noise in the cramped space of the alley. He jolted his body upright so fast, it was a miracle he hadn’t broken his neck in the process. The sudden movement, the sudden noise – it was all too much.

The corridor rang with a glorious pang, followed by an unceremonious plop of the man’s body returning back to the dirty concrete. He was out cold once again, though it was probably for the better: Had he been awake, he definitely would’ve been complaining about his re-broken nose.

You shuddered; the fact that “re-broken” was the proper word definitely wasn’t doing anything for your mental state. You were in the middle of debating whether or not this was even still a matter for the police (twenty Starbucksless blocks for one, the fact that you might be dealing with a demonic possession for another), when you heard it again: That sickening crack of bone, though you knew without even looking that it was his nose. Your eyes screwed themselves shut, your body flinching along with every snip and snap of the cartilage repairing itself. Even when it all went quiet, you didn’t look. Frankly, you were at a loss of what to even do at this point; the entire scenario was way more than what you’d bargained for, and there was no public protocol. At least with finding a busted body, there was some inkling of what to do. But this? You weren’t even sure what you were dealing with, much less with how to deal with it!

“Impressive.”

For the umpteenth time in the last half hour, you jolted. The fear that spiked through you had been more than enough to pop your eyes back open against your personal wishes. Normally, hearing another person’s voice in such a bizarre situation could’ve been a godsend. But this voice . . . It wasn’t human. It was deep, but also unnerving. It was carried in a rattling, almost metallic way that made its threatening cadence all the more evident. It was your fear instinct that forced you to turn towards it and source it. But even with a face to match the voice to, you still weren’t certain as to what you were seeing.

The first thing that came to mind was goop. The second was oil or ink. But the third was, “HOLY SHIT TEETH TEETH FUCKING NEEDLE TEETH WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING?!?” And as tempted as you were to say any of that, you found yourself unable to so much as emit a whimper of horror. As you stared into the large, milky eyes of the many-toothed, oily goop thing that was protruding from the man’s arm, you found yourself rightfully out of words. If this evening didn’t kill you, you had a feeling that whatever the hell this thing was would. And its creepy grin did nothing to convince you otherwise.

“That’s some swing you’ve got,” it complimented. You did not appreciate it. “But as outstanding as it is . . .” It narrowed its eyes and widened its grin menacingly, “I would greatly appreciate it if you did not use it to damage my property. It was my general understanding that vandalism is a bit of a big deal for your humans. Consider this my warning.”

Okay, yeah, no the fear was too much. You raised the skillet at an angle. The thing’s eyes widened.

“I SWEAR TO GOD, IF YOU HIT ME WITH THAT – You know what? Go ahead: I dare you. Hit me with that thing again and I will eat you.” It capitalized on that threated by giving its rows of jagged teeth a lick. Normally you might’ve wondered if such an action would be painful given the nature of its mouth, but the foulness of its tongue made you immediately discard that query. Besides, as curious as you were, you didn’t want to know what sort of deity this thing was swearing to.

You lowered the pan albeit to a shield-like position, though a part of you recognized the idiocy of it. Nightmarish ooze or no, a shield does not a kitchen skillet make. Nevertheless, the goop demon seemed pleased enough.

“Good,” it hissed. “I will admit that while I am not enthused that such a small human managed to take us down using only cooking ware, it is at least more amusing than accepting that we got our ass handed to us by a guy with a stun gun and a dog whistle.”

There were many things about that sentence to unpack but specifically, there was one that was just enough to suspend your disbelief.

“‘U-us?’” you whispered. The creature nodded in one slow, oozing gesture.

“Yes,” it confirmed. “He and I.” You regarded the man from which the glob was sourcing.

“We are . . . one, I suppose you could say,” the creature explained. Your eyes drifted back upward to meet with the whites of its own. Your breath shuttered about your throat. You dared to continue.

“Who . . . Who are you?”

You never thought the thing’s smile could grow any further. But as its oily face drew back to reveal even more pointed teeth, you were proven wrong. You didn’t feel as nervous, though. It was almost as if you were beginning to forget how to be in all your curiosity.

“Us?” it smiled, eyes narrowing once more with delight.

“We . . .” It raised up with pride, “are Venom.”

Venom. So the thing had a name. At least that question was answered. Unfortunately, the satisfaction of that didn’t appear in your features so much as they remained as neutral as they could for the moment. From the look of bemusement beginning to leak into Venom’s oily countenance, you gathered that this wasn’t the effect he had been looking for from you.

“It’s a lot more effective when we speak in unison,” Venom glowered, nodding his “head” toward his unconscious partner. You sights once again flickered to the poor bastard and you winced.

“Oooohhh,” you groaned quietly. “S-sorry?” You almost wanted to smack yourself with the frying pan for that. Why the hell were you apologizing? To validate this thing’s stolen thunder? Hell no!

“Apology not accepted,” Venom muttered. You could practically hear the pout in his tone, a fact which almost disturbed you. It was then that you heard a low groan emit from the man. At this, Venom turned himself entirely towards his human.

“Seems he’s coming around. Finally.” Venom swiveled back to you. “Do not hit us again. I can still eat you, even when he’s awake.” With that threat, he began to slink back into the body. For a moment, it was like ink was seeping into the human’s sweatshirt. But it disappeared just as quickly, signifying that Venom had, like the bones before him, returned back from whence he came. It was as if thick ink had splattered across the man’s clothing before disappearing all together.

Ordinarily you would have transfixed on that sort of thing but after everything else that had come before it (and in a span of about ten minutes at most), it was practically matter-of-fact by comparison. Therefore, you weren’t startled this time when the man woke up once more, sharply inhaling as though the air were finally being allowed back into his lungs. His eyes bulged against greying lids, flickering everywhere they could before landing on you. And then the skillet you were still holding. You could practically see the moment he remembered what you’d done.

It hurt Eddie’s lungs to breathe; apparently V hadn’t gotten around to fixing minor internal discomfort. Still, that didn’t stop him from taking a sharp intake of air as he felt himself being shot back into the realm of consciousness. But as a stinging sensation resonated within him, he regretted it. The only thing he could do in that moment of shock was wait it out; he did his usual method of taking in his surroundings, trying to recollect what all had happened when –

Aw, fuck, he cursed inside. There was another person present. He was beginning to wonder how much you had seen when his eyes happened to register that you were holding something: A skillet. Immediately, the memories of moments before began to flood back into the forefront of his mind. He woke up, you jolted, bang, he was back in the blackness.

It was therefore understandable for him to assume the worst and act on instinct – by scrambling upright and trying (and failing) to move away from you. Even with healed limbs, his body was sore but it didn’t stop him from raising an arm in defense.

“Whoawhoawhoa –” he slurred, blanking out your objections against his assumptions.

“Calm down,” he suddenly heard resonating inside his skull. “She won’t try anything. I made sure of that.”

What, what? It was enough to make Eddie pause. The hell did that mean!?

Brows furrowed, he lowered his arm. “Did . . . Are you okay?” he asked

Your face wrinkled incredulously. “E-excuse me?!” you demanded. “Am I okay!? What the hell about you?!”

“Well, I just thought –”

“You show up in a goddamn alleyway, looking like a Halloween horror show prop, you fucking heal, get panged, you have a – a thing, and you ask me if I’m o-fucking-kay?!” you screeched. With every addition to your list you made, the man grimaced. Though at that last part, that seemed to change: Less cringing, more realization.

“Wait . . . You –”

“KEEP IT FUCKING DOWN OUT THERE, FUCK!!” The sudden roaring from seven stories up the apartment building silenced the both of you. It was punctuated by a window slamming shut. The two of you remained silent, the only noise left being the distant sounds of the city and your labored breaths. You sat there, staring at one another, both clearly wanting to speak but being uncertain of what exactly to say amongst the array of possibilities. But for Eddie, there was at least one that he desperately needed to know before anything else.

“So, you uh . . . You saw him?” he asked.

“She just said she did,” Venom stated bluntly.

“Yes,” you confirmed in a low mutter. Eddie nodded, casting his eyes to the side. To alleviate the growing awkwardness, he raised a hand to the back of his head and scratched at an itch that wasn’t even there.

“Ah,” he offered plainly. He pursed his lips. “So, uh . . . What exactly did he do . . . Y’know, to keep you from bashing my brains out again?”

“. . . He said he’d eat me.”

“Still might,” Eddie heard. In spite of this, he forced an unconvincing smile of assurance.

“No, he won’t. He’s just bluffing,” Eddie insisted.

“Yes, I could.”

“We have a deal going on where we only . . .” He searched for the right word. Considering all the crap he’d put you through, no matter how unintentional, there was just nothing soft enough to lighten the blow. “We only deal with bad people, let’s just put it that way.”

That honestly wasn’t the most reassuring thing, but you had no choice but to take it. Still, your morbid curiosity wasn’t about to let it rest.

“Is it a . . . a demon?” You weren’t expecting a sensible answer, much less an honest one. But you needed something to grasp on to. Something to confirm, once and for all, that this wasn’t a shared hallucination of some kind.

The brunet shook his head.

“Nah,” he stated. “More like a paras –” He paused. He said, “An alien.” The beat he’d created for himself gave you all the reason to doubt his claim. However, in the lighted projected from your phone, you could see those eyes of his. Through all the exhaustion they held, there was honesty present in them. They told you, pleaded with you to trust his words.

And you did.

And that was when it hit you: the sudden realization of where you knew that face from. You almost wanted to sock yourself in the face for not recognizing him before – after all, how many men had lips like those?

“Holy shit,” you said mindlessly. “You’re Eddie Brock, aren’t you?”

Eddie tensed. Should he lie? He could totally lie, right? He’d been working on his career-destroying bluntness over the last few months, surely he could at least bend the truth a little into a direction that didn’t convince you he was Eddie Brock, take-down investigative journalist.

“. . . Nnnnnnooooooo?” He slurred. Fuck. He began to wonder if he had enough money to bribe you into silence.

“We could always eat her,” Venom offered. Immediately, Eddie was broken out of one panicked thought process into another.

“No!” he hissed to himself. “We are not going to eat her!” (Your eyes widened as your grip on your nearly forgotten cooking ware tightened.)

“Fine!” Venom scowled. His voice then returned, though with a hint of suggestion. “Maybe we could . . . ‘eat’ her in that other way, then. The non-sustenance-gaining but still plenty satisfying way –”

“NO!” Eddie snapped. He could practically feel the symbiote within shrugging.

“It’s a good method of keeping silence in my opinion. Won’t know unless we try.”

“Please. Just shut the fuck up,” Eddie hissed through clenched teeth.

“I, I promise I won’t tell,” you stammered insistently. You raised the pan back up as a mock shield, both to pathetically attempt protection but also to hide bits of your worrying appearance. “It’s just . . . Well, you’re some guy my college roommate got me into; she used to stream your stuff all the time, I used to watch your crap for essays and – Shit, no, I don’t mean crap, I mean –”

“Nah, nah, some of that was crap. You ever see the one about the rats at Cawthon Pizza Kitchen?”

You grinned wearily. “Only every time I consider ordering pizza.”

A beat of silence followed. Well, on your end it was silent. For Eddie, he could hear his alien parasite snickering.

“Ask her if she saw the outtake where you thought a rat scurried across your foot and you screamed like a pussy!”

Okay, enough was enough. Without warning, Eddie began to shove himself up off the dirty ground. You followed suit.

“Okay, not to cut this short or anything – it’s been a blast, almost literally, but, uh . . .” He fruitlessly brushed off his clothes. He paused, as if cut short.

“No,” he said sternly. After another moment of him not speaking, he repeated himself. “I said ‘no.’” You began to worry your lip. Considering what had been said previously whenever Eddie did this, you had every reason to feel concern.

“You’re not . . . gonna eat me, are you?” you wondered. Immediately Eddie switched his attention back to you.

“Nonono,” he raised his hands in defense. “Not you, you have our word, it’s just –” He bit a corner of his full lip. “Okay, the long and the short is that we’re kind of ridiculously hungry right now, and the bastard’s saying you owe us.”

“Oh!” You pursed your lips. “That’s, um . . .”

The man waved it off. “Don’t worry about it. Just point me in the direction of the nearest convenience store or whatever and we’ll be gone like the wind outta your hair.” He added a smile to the end of his sentence. You were happy to return it – at first. But the way he flinched as it spread caught your eye. You once again took notice of the small scratches and blemishes that still marked up his face, even after Venom’s apparent handy work. It was silly, but you couldn’t help the feelings they instilled in you. Sure, you hadn’t been the one to put them (well, most of them) there, but that didn’t negate the fact that you had smacked him hard enough to break a bone.

“No,” you found yourself interjecting. If you weren’t possessed by enough guilt to be steadfast on the matter, you would have appeared just as confused as Eddie did upon your interruption. You went on, “I mean, I don’t have much on me but, like . . . I got one of those cheap microwavable cupcakes. You can have it, if you want, I mean. I feel like I owe you for clocking you.”

“Oooohhh. Eddie, I like her,” purred Venom.

You didn’t hear that, of course, but Eddie sure did. And something inside him was a bit concerned that that was his cause for quirking a grin at you, rather than the thought of actually eating something.

Epilogue:

For whatever reason, the gravity of the situation didn’t entirely hit you at its full depth until long after the two of you trekked up the stairs to your abode. Nor did it occur when Eddie (or perhaps it was Venom, given the ferocity with which he ate) attacked the consolation cupcake. It actually hit you after Eddie’s departure (though not before him expressing his thanks and a lighthearted if awkward inclusion of “maybe seeing you around”).

You had just taken an alien-possessed Eddie Brock into your apartment and fed him a cupcake to make up for the fact that you’d broken his nose with the skillet you used to cook your eggs. It was the sort of strangeness only heard about in stories from the web or on the silver screen. Granted, most stories and movies would have chided at you for wandering outside at night and then bringing somebody you didn’t even know back to your place. The fact that he was also a host to a carnivorous, insatiable ink thing stood only to worsen the effect.

But as you finally lay down in the wee hours of the morning, there was nothing you could do about it. What was done was done. Things would never be quite the same after this night. The story had changed lanes, the script revised to reflect something less like the boring biopic you’d initially imagined, and deep down knew you were probably never going to get back so long as Eddie and Venom existed in your life. Though as you fell asleep, you deliriously decided it wasn’t something you minded.

In hindsight, you would see this as the rough beginnings phase of the odd couple story your life actually wound up being.

[tudorscharlot]

Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer/Dexter Fletcher, 2018)

31 Halloweens of October #34

(An important note about the following tirade: I know that this film was written by Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan and that it was directed by Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher. But it is obvious from the course of its labored, years-long development and from the final product itself that this film was made in strict accordance with the views of Brian May and Roger Taylor. And I hold them ultimately responsible for the film that was made.)   This is the most deeply offensive film I've seen in years (probably since I saw Nymphomaniac: Vol. II). The music of Queen is so important to me on an emotional level and on a fundamental, worldview level that it would be fair to describe my devotion to it as religious. And I know I'm not alone on planet earth in feeling that way. Fuck this movie and everyone responsible for it forever. Do not go and see this. Don't give them your money and don't give them any sense of validation that what they've done is acceptable. (After seeing the cringe-inducing trailer, I vowed to never give this film a cent of my money. But then I was unexpectedly given a free ticket to see it. I went to see Suspiria for the second time in 24 hours with my best friend, but the theater it was showing in was having technical problems. The theater manager gave us tickets to a later showing of Suspiria and offered us free passes to anything that was playing right then, as well as free concessions. Even though I was now essentially being paid to see this film, I still only reluctantly accepted the situation.) It feels like a cheap shot to come at this movie over the chronological inaccuracies. The last thing I ever want to be is one of those "ACTUALLY..." guys who misses the poetic forest for the literal trees. I don't think it's critically important in a non-documentary, narrative film to be 100% accurate on dry, historical details, especially when it benefits the narrative structure to make slight revisions and combinations of events. Liberties taken in service of the spirit of the larger truth are fine by me. But the extremity of what they did in this film is egregious, lazy, and ultimately just confusing. So yes, I am going to go there, right now. The vocal version of "Seven Seas of Rhye" was not recorded during the sessions for Queen. "Another One Bites the Dust" was recorded three years after "We Will Rock You". Freddie Mercury did not release his first solo album until four years after Roger Taylor released his first solo album and one year after Roger released his second solo album (which goes some way toward debunking the notion that the band viewed Freddie's solo projects as a betrayal). Freddie did not return from an extended period of isolation in Munich and beg the band to perform at Live Aid. Queen just had completed the massive, nearly year-long world tour for The Works less than two months before their appearance at Live Aid - it had not been years since they played onstage together. The band did not decide to start sharing all writing credits equally until they recorded The Miracle three years and two albums after Live Aid. And, as far as is publicly known, Freddie Mercury did not find out that he was HIV-positive until 1986 or 1987. (And this is all off the top of my head.)

None of this should matter, but it does matter. Because the moment that Brian May and Roger Taylor slapped their names on this thing as executive producers, the nature of the project and its relationship to the Queen oeuvre changed. What is this movie, and who is it for? Queen is one of the biggest bands ever, but I would still argue that a biopic about Freddie Mercury ought to be aimed primarily at people already familiar with him and Queen and the music they made. It should be for the fans, and the filmmakers should assume a certain basic level of familiarity with their story among viewers. And in that case, they should know that having all of these historical inaccuracies is only going to irritate devotees like me who have a deeper-than-Wikipedia knowledge of the subject matter. And, whether or not these inaccuracies irritate me, I'd certainly expect them to irritate the two men who lived these experiences and who exercised serious executive control over this movie from start to finish. Why would Brian and Roger sign off on such an error-riddled version of their own story? I mentioned Wikipedia up there, and I've read at least one review that snarkily described this film as an adaptation of the Wikipedia entry for Queen. I think that even that is giving it too much credit. This film is like an adaptation of a Buzzfeed "25 Things You Might Not Know About Queen" list (with an emphasis on the factual inaccuracies those lists always have). Bohemian Rhapsody is clearly not intended as a thoughtful love-letter to serious fans of Queen. So does that mean it is aimed at the widest common denominator - a promotional item designed and deployed to attract record-buyers (or Spotify-streamers) unfamiliar with the band? And to stoke nostalgia among extant fans who may then be enticed to buy whatever new reconfiguration of Queen's Greatest Hits is being released along with this film? On the one hand, yes, obviously. I'll never fault living artists (or the estates of deceased artists) for working to keep their valuable bodies of work alive in the public consciousness and available to new generations of potential fans. But there are tasteful, thoughtful, discerning ways to do this (see the recent John Lennon Imagine boxed set or Queen's own Made in Heaven album). Careful and caring artists or estates share archival or celebratory releases that add substance. Greedy people who've lost the plot completely offer up crass, sloppy, tasteless cash grabs. And that's what this goddamned movie is. And what virtually everything Brian May and Roger Taylor have done in the name of Queen over the last two decades has been. I say "greedy" and "cash grab," but I don't think this is just about money. It's also more abstract. There's an idea and an image of Queen that is very real for them and for me and for so many people in the world, and it is precious. But Queen is in the past. Queen as we know them and want them ended when Freddie Mercury left us. It's not right and it's not fair, but what was can never be again. No matter how many Queen + whatever asshole tours or holograms or biopics are shoved at us. On the other hand, though, this film is a far more dangerous thing than just a promotional cash grab. It is a piece of propaganda. When Brian May and Roger Taylor made themselves executive producers of this film, it became canon. Which confers on this film and its creators a much higher level of responsibility with regards to the legacy of Queen. And every person who made this film failed to be honest or faithful to Freddie and the idea of Queen. It's shameful. Even if Brian and Roger set out to share an honest but loving account of the story of Freddie and Queen, such an endeavor is impossible in their hands. It is impossible for two members of a four-person group to present their own version of events and group dynamics to the world as though it were an official and objective record of what happened and get it right. Even free of conscious, questionable intentions, they are too close to be objective. But I do not believe they are free of conscious, questionable intentions. This film never disputes Freddie Mercury's genius talents as a performer or songwriter. And it is generous in its portrayal of his kindness, sweetness, and wit. But it also presents him as a pill-popping sexual deviant whose pursuit of a solo career in the 1980s was an ego-driven affront to the unity of Queen, rather than the healthy and fairly standard outlet for expression that any artist a decade in with a massively successful band tends to engage in (see also: Roger Taylor, for fuck's sake). And it also presents him as the only real source of discord in the band. This is all in striking contrast to the presentation of Brian and Roger as blandly stable family men dedicated wholly to the vision of Queen. (There are a couple of winking references to Roger cheating on his wife, but these references lack the weight of similar events in Freddie's story.) An important side-note: It should also be mentioned that John Deacon is presented as basically a non-entity whose only contribution is to frequently make silly faces that are eerily like Andy Samberg mugging (seriously, find a still or clip of this actor in this movie - it's fucked up). In real life, John Deacon more or less permanently parted ways with Brian May and Roger Taylor in the late 1990s. It has been widely assumed (he may even have said so at some point) that this was because he didn't like the way they were handling the legacy of the band. Fast-forward to 2018 and this film's portrayal of John seems to be grinding a major axe of butt-hurt at him. It's so fucking petty. But back to Freddie. What do we know about Freddie Mercury, the private citizen? We know he was extremely private and largely refused to ever discuss his personal life with the press. That doesn't mean that it's strictly off-limits and inappropriate to discuss his private life in a film about him now. There are private things about Freddie (both personal and professional) that the surviving members of Queen definitely knew. Jim Hutton and others have shared personal things about Freddie over the years since his death, as well. I believe it's okay to respectfully reveal private details in the service of telling a great artist's story. The problem here is that Brian and Roger have shot any credibility they had as reliable or unbiased sources. If they can't even get the decade and order in which two of their biggest hits were recorded - if accurately representing something as verifiable and relevant to the development of their work as that isn't important for this film, why should and how can we believe anything this films tells us that can't be verified beyond "the executive producers say it happened"? If major events in their recording and performing career can be juggled around willy-nilly to fit the desired narrative arc, how we can trust that the same wild liberties aren’t being taken with unverifiable closed-door meetings and private arguments? I'm SURE that Freddie Mercury was sometimes flamboyantly egotistical in the studio and backstage. But I'm equally sure that every other member of Queen was just as egotistical, just as often. They never would have accomplished the things they accomplished if there weren't huge amounts of ego and ambition and personal investment between them. But I do not buy that this film accurately represents Freddie's temperament, his ego, or his behavior in many of the specific situations it reenacts. It doesn’t get his style. Watch any video of Freddie performing or being interviewed - this film doesn't get him at all. I'm not queer and I'm not Parsi, but the way this film handles Freddie's relationship with his ethnicity, with his family, and with his sexuality feels pretty boilerplate and cliched. It doesn't strike me that any particularly negative stereotypes are being indulged, but it does feel like a lot of simplistic movie tropes are employed to quickly dispense with these matters. I am glad that so much attention is given to Freddie's relationship with Mary Austin, but it nonetheless feels tonally wrong. I think that their relationship was beautiful and I don't think this movie quite gets it. And sure, what the fuck do I know? Very little. But I know they were lifelong companions in ways that went far beyond sex, and that she was the love of his life. And I know that I can't trust that the two guys who were there are representing it truthfully now. I'd rather take Freddie's word for it. And UGH. What the ever-loving fuck is up with Rami Malek's prosthetic bucked teeth in this movie? Let's get something straight: Freddie Mercury was a physically beautiful man. My god, he was. It is an obnoxious insult to have some guy prancing around like fucking Nosferatu playing at being Freddie Mercury. No serious actor would need fake teeth to play this role, and no serious filmmaker would ever even consider such a thing. All this heavy, meta shit aside, this is also just a bad movie on the most basic level. It is so bloated with unnecessary show-off shots, rock and roll biopic cliches, embarrassing dialogue, and one-dimensional performances that even hearing some of my favorite music ever at high volumes in a movie theater couldn't transport me. Some serious acting talent was assembled here, and some of the cast do an admirable job with what they were given, but this movie has no heart. Bohemian Rhapsody makes Freddie Mercury a caricature. It tries not to, and it really is mostly a very flattering caricature. But it's a reduction that fails terribly in its mission to show us who Freddie Mercury was. Freddie Mercury deserves infinitely better than this film. This film should not have been made. If they had gotten everything perfectly right, it would still be a pointless and distasteful exercise. Go watch any video of Freddie Mercury performing or just talking and the emptiness of this film becomes instantly clear. (Note: I’ve tagged this film with my October horror film viewing because this film is horrible.)

[minaminokyoko]

Deadpool 2: A Spoilertastic Review

One thing I've noticed over the years is that there's nothing like it when someone busts their ass to make a movie happen, defying all odds, and pours their sweat, blood, tears (and in Deadpool's case, probably other fluids we don't want to know about) into a film, and it turns out to reward them spectacularly. Deadpool was one of those movies. They fought for years to get that movie made after the disgraceful ruination of the character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and they did him justice beyond words. It was magnificently done. It damn near beat Jesus, for fuck's sake. Actual Jesus.

And that's why I think that I don't like the sequel as much.

I've seen this happen many times: a sleeper hit or an unexpected smash hit blockbuster exceeds all expectations and then puts out a sequel. Well, unfortunately, sometimes success can ruin your party. Success, accolades, and the second highest grossing Rated R film of all time had an influence on how Deadpool 2 turned out, if you ask me. When you're not starving for it, then it means that sometimes punchlines don't land as hard, writing is not as tight, and scenes aren't as memorable. When you're already fat and happy, sometimes your motivation to make the best thing ever is just servicable at best.

I think Deadpool 2 is an enjoyable movie, but I think it didn't want it as badly as the first movie did because it was already fat, happy, and satisfied from the first film. Thus, I think they didn't try as hard to make it the best movie possible. It's still a good movie, but it can't compete with the first film by any stretch, and I'll explain why. Naturally, spoiler alert.

Overall Grade: B-/C+

Pros:

-Deadpool himself is still funny, even if the change in tone puts a damper on a lot of the enjoyment.

-Domino shines like a freaking diamond. I already like Zazie Beetz from what I saw of her in FX's show Atlanta, so I was jazzed when they announced her for the role. She still blew my expectations out of the water. I had never seen her do a physical role before, and she absolutely sold me. I'd love to see her in sequels and I sure as hell would watch a spin off of her with other female heroes should the Deadpool franchise get to borrow some X-Men in what I pray will someday be a collaborative effort between Fox and Marvel Studios. She's fantastic. She's the black girl magic the world needs to know about, and I'm so happy studios are coming around realizing black women are a massive untapped source of awesome in superhero films. For the longest time, Storm was all we had and she was weaksauce due to poor writing, but we've slowly been seeing more inclusion with the women of Black Panther and Valkyrie from Ragnarok and now Domino. Keep 'em coming, superhero movies. Black women deserve to conquer the genre and usher in other women of color alongside them.

-The X-Men pulling the door shut gag was top notch. Kudos. Even though it raises some seriously weird questions timeline-wise, I howled. That was brilliantly addressed, especially since it's so painfully obvious in the first movie that Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead were all Fox's stingy ass wanted to spare for poor Mr. Pool.

-Dupinder is still fucking adorable and precious and I'm glad he got his moment of glory.

-The Juggernaut getting a second shot was absolutely fantastic. I was trying to guess who it would be and then I saw that helmet and I might as well have done a fucking T-Rex roar in my seat the theater. Juggernaut was done right. He was everything I dreamt he would be ever since that disappointing appearance in X-Men 3. Don't get me wrong--Vinnie Jones had the right attitude, but making him just regular size guy defeats the whole purpose of why he's so unstoppable and terrifying. He literally ripped Deadpool in half. That was awesome, as was his grudge match with Colossus. I loved them going toe to toe with each other. It was staged extremely well. Aside from Domino, Juggernaut vs. Colossus was by far my favorite part of the film.

-Minor point, but I loved Deadpool's reaction to Yukio. He seemed genuinely charmed by her and vice versa and it was fucking adorable.

-The second post credits scene is exactly as good as the hype made it out to be. Oh God. Deadpool shooting Barakapool several times was just...I mean, it was the cherry on top of the sundae. It was so satisfying, as was the joke about shooting himself before he could star in Green Lantern. I love that Ryan Reynolds was so self aware that he severely fucked up his career from pretty much 2011 until 2016 when he finally got Deadpool made. He knew this movie was the only way he'd ever get himself out of that ditch in his career and I think it was a worthy redemption for sure. I also am so relieved they undid Vanessa's death, because that's the second biggest con I have for this movie as you'll see below.

-The Logan reference had me in stitches. It was so wrong, but so damn funny.

-The "blink and you'll miss it" Brad Pitt cameo. Fuck, that was amazing and surprising, thank you.

-The other "blink and you'll miss it" Alan Tudyk cameo. Holy shit, does Disney really like this man. I am so happy to see Wash getting some really great roles over the years. He's doing great.

Cons:

-Stuffing Vanessa in the Fridge. Alright, so technically I shouldn't put this in here because Deadpool fixes it in the end credits, but it pisses me off that they even attempted this stupid fucking trope. I am tired of dead girlfriends and dead wives used for Mangst. Fucking. Stop. It. Women are just as valid as men as characters. Stop killing them just to make the hero turn Super Saiyan. It's possible to still motivate the male motherfuckers without killing the girl and putting them on a revenge spree or depression spiral. It's lazy writing and all of Hollywood needs to move on from this tired ass trope. Vanessa was extremely charming, funny, and likable in the first Deadpool movie and Morena Baccarin is and has always been so wonderful to enjoy on screen in her dramatic and comedic work. I am so pissed off they Fridged her to only be in five minutes of the fucking movie. They shouldn't have even bothered putting her in the damned credits because she was only there for such a short period. If she didn't have time to film the movie, fine, just find another excuse that she's not there. Morena deserved better, dammit.

-Changing the tone of the film franchise from a screwball comedy to an action "movie" with jokes in it. This is the biggest reason I didn't like this movie as much as the first Deadpool movie. The first Deadpool movie is arguably a parody of superhero films. It takes most of the tropes and pokes fun at them in a really great way, but it also still manages to be a legit, streamlined revenge love story. It strikes the exact tone we'd all been craving ever since we heard the Deadpool movie would be greenlit. So why the fuck is the sequel written like an X-Men movie, but with more jokes? I hate the serious tone. I hate Wade moping over Vanessa, I hate the whole "family" bullshit that is spoken with a straightface somehow despite being almost as unearned as that hideous one in Suicide Squad, I hate Cable moping over his dead family, and I hate the "you're not my friend" bullshit between Wade and the incredibly annoying fat kid whose name I refuse to learn because he irritated me so much. Why did they play it all straightfaced? Why was I expected to see a "real story" in a Deadpool movie? The entire reason I like this franchise and haven't seen an X-Men film (not counting Logan) in years is because the X-Men franchise has completely played itself out. It's substandard acting, substandard writing, it doesn't adapt the comics the way it should, and it's just repetitive. All the movies since First Class are the same. The prequel babies are finally going to just end the charade with Dark Phoenix and I think most of the world is relieved because they have nothing creative or new to offer any longer. Deadpool 2 reeks of that same kind of lame writing and execution. There was no reason to switch the format. I pray to God they go back to formula in X-Force or Deadpool 3. I hate this change with a passion.

-The fat kid is annoying as hell. There, I said it. Fight me if you must. He had no sense of self preservation and the movie didn't go into enough detail to make me care about him in spite of how teeth-grindingly stupid and obnoxious he was. He was written like a twelve year old boy writing fanfiction about himself and Deadpool becoming best buds and fighting crime together. No. No, stop that right now. I don't want any part of it. I get the "he's just a kid" thing but the kid is an asshole and even if he's somehow justified, he's a pain in the ass to watch from start to finish. I also think the kid needs some acting lessons, but that's not entirely his fault. I think he probably just wasn't directed all that well, so I can let that slide, but I did notice it during the film.

-I don't care about Cable. Cable and Deadpool are righteous as fuck in the comics. In this movie? No. This is why I was against Josh Brolin being cast. He has no chemistry with Ryan Reynolds. I get that Cable is the Straight Man to Deadpool's Kooky Man, but they don't gel together at all. I never sensed any bonding even though they are setting it up for franchise reasons. He's just not interesting and he plays the role as blandly as he does all his boring ass biopics and other bland roles. Brolin worked much better as Thanos than he did Cable. Thanos had weight and was threatening and even though his reasoning was utter bullshit, at least he was convicted. Brolin's Cable just felt like some stock stoic character thrown in there as the minor antagonist. I still would have much preferred Liam Neeson or Ron Perlman, and yes, I understand both of them are getting up there in years, but we've seen older actors still kick ass and be in shape, so I think they could have done it if they were offered the part. Brolin is still one of the most drab actors I've ever seen and he just doesn't pull the role off, imo.

-The bait and switch with the X-Force team. This is a minor note for me, as I don't have a background with these characters so it's more for people who know these characters elsewhere and were expecting an awesome team up movie but that's not what they got. Are the gruesome deaths kind of funny? Yeah, sure, but it's kind of rude to advertise them that way and they're not in the movie. I just frown on it. It's not a dealbreaker. It was just disappointing in the same way that the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 was disappointing. I expected more and I got a farce instead.

-I don't know if it's for legal reasons, but it drives me crazy that we still didn't get a Wolverine cameo from Hugh Jackman. I mean, we finally got Deadpool--the real one--and I just want him and Ryan to share the screen again because even though Origins was trash, they were magical together.

-Deadpool's last "death" went on way too long. I was checking my watch. They really should have pulled the trigger on that gag. It was exhausting and not very funny to begin with.

-Negasonic Teenage Warhead getting reduced to an extra pissed me off. She was so great in the first movie and she doesn't get to do anything here and it irks the hell out of me.

-Aside from The Juggernaut vs. Colossus, the fight scenes weren't nearly as creative, cinematic, or memorable as the first film. I've already forgotten everything except the JvC fight and the convoy rescue scene. That's a bummer for me.

-The movie just isn't as funny as the first film. It's not the same kind of tight writing with excellent punchlines and ridiculous phrases that made me remember them. It's been a few days and I don't recall any insults or lines that stuck with me. I'll likely be seeing it again for Memorial Day weekend, but I still don't expect I'll remember much from it.

-Nitpick: God, I still want to push T.J. Miller off a bridge. He is not funny and never has been.

-Nitpick: WHY HAS NO ONE MADE A FIREFLY JOKE ABOUT MORENA BACCARIN AFTER TWO FUCKING DEADPOOL MOVIES?! COME ON. DEADPOOL IS ALL ABOUT NERD REFERENCES. GODDAMMIT MENTION FIREFLY YOU FUCKS. (But to be fair, this could also be because Fox is the reason we only got one season and so maybe they were forbidden from doing it. Still. That pisses me the hell off. Especially since Ryan Reynolds and Nathan Fillion (1) have both played the Green Lantern and (2) were on a sitcom with each other for years. Inexcusable.)

I'm sorry it sounds like I'm shitting on the movie. Really, it's enjoyable. I just think that maybe the first movie set the bar so high I can't help but feel frustrated by the sequel not trying as hard. Based on the online reactions, I'm on my own so...take that as you will, friends. Kyo out.

[tocinephile]

Ada’s Top 20 Films of the 2010′s

2010 seems long ago. It was the year when Netflix, previously a mail order DVD rental operation, launched its streaming service and changed our TV/movie consumption forever. Originally known for old favourites and terrible in-house productions, Netflix and its competitors such as Amazon Studios have gone on to become award season contenders in just a few short years. The functions of film festivals and movie theatres have shifted due to streaming services’ enormous effects. This decade also saw the warp up of some beloved sagas and series on the big screen - from Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy to Harry Potter (more on those later!) Then there was an entire Star Wars Trilogy and end to a saga, which, love or hate it, was something many of us have been literally waiting our whole lives for. Throw in some Marvel at every turn, and an assuring expanse into the exploration of LGBTQ+ subjects, toss out Harvey Weinstein, and I think you have a reasonably accurate summation of film in the 2010′s. Something else close to my heart that unfortunately also fell to the wayside this past decade is Hong Kong cinema.  Once famed for slick neo noir style action with an eye-popping blend of gun play and kung fu, the genre has died to a trickle as the Chinese film industry evolves. Without (much) further pre-amble, here is a list of my top 20 films of the 2010′s, chosen based on personal preference, and what I perceive to be cultural/technological/cinematic significance, presented in no definitive order...

The Social Network (2010) I talk about the things that were different at the start of the decade, and Facebook was certainly one of them. Although still a top contender in the social media minefield, at the beginning of the decade Facebook was king. From the cinema perspective, this was also a David Fincher directed, and Aaron Sorkin written film.  These credentials aside, the film was additionally recognized for its editing, soundtrack, and transforming Jesse Eisenberg from the “poor man’s Michael Cera” (and what is Michael Cera doing these days again??) to a formidable dramatic talent. Altogether was a way to immortalize Mark Zuckerberg on screen eh? Inception (2010) Brace yourselves, I will tell you now that the 2010′s was the decade of Christopher Nolan for me. I didn’t realize until I compiled this list, that starting with this mind-bending thriller, every film he made this decade is right up there for me. Aside from its story, the stunning visuals, and pacing, Inception was cleverly tied together to give me one of the most unforgettable movie going experiences this decade. The Artist (2011) The best kind of homage here, and reminder that story and performance are what make up a good film. Is this an Art House film? Sure, but the story transcends even words, it’s a celebration, and a love story not just between two characters but to cinema itself.

Hugo (2011)

And speaking of celebration of cinema, does anyone really do it better than Martin Scorsese? In this case, an homage to a forefather of motion picture wrapped in the ultimate feel good family film. Seeing Melies’ films within a film, the automatons, and the blend of history and fantasy, make you believe. When asked to name a good family film, I often name this one. Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011) The final film of the series and also my favourite chapter. Deathly Hallows is a good example where the 2-parter turns out to be a good idea rather than a mere cash grab (as in the case Twilight).  It set a precedent showcasing the benefits of a longer story format that is enhancing for the story. Also, the Battle of Hogwarts, how do you get enough? Amiright? Super 8 (2011) 2011 was really the year of terrific family films. J.J. Abram’s Super 8 was no exception.  It was through Super 8 that I was introduced to Abram’s sense of adventure and wonder through his characters.  This was also Steven Spielberg produced adding to its positive attributes. When Abrams made Star Wars: The Force Awakens later in the decade, I was thrilled he was at the helm based on my love for Super 8. Moonrise Kingdom (2012) A different family film by Wes Anderson, and also one of the most endearing love stories told on the big screen this year. His follow up The Grand Budapest Hotel was also a contender for my best of the decade list but ultimately the unconventional young couple in Moonrise Kingdom versus the flagrantly over the top romantic gestures in Grand Budapest helped me make my choice.  Still, both are visually spectacular. The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Christopher Nolan film #2 and the close out to the best Batman trilogy. While a certain level of campiness has come to be associated with preceding Batman offerings, Nolan and Christian Bale did something different and in turn won over a lot of new audiences for the superhero genre.  While you can’t turn these days without bumping into a Marvel, etc. production, I think the quality of superhero films was raised leaps and bounds this decade and much of it in thanks to Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy which began in the decade before. Dallas Buyers Club (2013) Oscar accolades (and Jennifer Garner) aside, Dallas Buyers Club by Canadian filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallee told a important story and told it well. It also brought Vallee’s work to a larger scale audience than any of his previous projects, giving him the attention he so very much deserves. From set design to story to acting, I truly believe this was one of the best films of the decade.

The Theory of Everything (2014) I may be partial to biopics but there’s no denying the venerability of Stephen Hawking, and Stephen Hawking as portrayed by Eddie Redmayne... well, there are no words! Boyhood (2014) When I first began compiling this list, Boyhood was one of the first few films to come to mind. Aside from being directed by one of my favourite filmmakers Richard Linklater (who was also featured in my 2000′s list with Before Sunset - which I argue is still the best of the trilogy) it was also a very ambitious undertaking as a filmmaker.  It’s my hope that the significance of Boyhood isn’t diminished in the age of digital aging/de-aging technologies, to do something like this organically is a labour of love. To commit to a project that spends 12 years in production is firstly insanity, but then to have a finished product that ties so seamlessly together in a tale of family, life, and love. Who knows if this will ever be done again? Interstellar (2014) Christopher Nolan film #3. I’m not as into movies about space and time travel as I was as a teenager/young adult, so I’m of the belief that while I still watch a fair amount of them, fewer and fewer truly stand out. When it came to explore this decade’s offerings, Interstellar and First Man were the only two even worth mentioning to me.  The latter was more traditionally biopic-ish, though well told, and I maintain has the best soundtrack of 2018. Interstellar on the other hand had other thought-provoking layers (as I have come to expect from Nolan). What We Do in the Shadows (2014) And now for something completely different! What would life be like if Taika Waititi didn't make films? Mankind has been telling stories since the beginning of time so it’s understandingly hard to come up with truly original stories after thousands of years, and yet... Taika Waititi does it!  Seriously though , What We Do In the Shadows was the single funniest film I’ve watched this decade. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) If What We Do in the Shadows was the funniest movie of the decade, then Mad Max: Fury Road had to be hands down the most intense, non-stop, adrenaline rush thriller. Again, I watch a lot of this stuff and find myself largely disillusioned or unimpressed with most of what’s out there.  Sure, I love the Avengers movies, and I’m always up for gratuitous violence but so few of these films will make me stop everything that I’m doing and stay rooted on the spot for the entire film - which I can recall distinctly is what happened when I put on this film on in early 2016. The Hateful Eight (2015) Westerns aren’t my cup of tea, but it’s common knowledge that Quentin Tarantino certainly is. When it came time to choose a QT film for my list, and we all know that’s exactly how I went about it.  Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood was never even a contender, it was between Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, overall I appreciated the simple (but elaborate!) set up of a cast of questionable characters in a cabin that kept me entranced for near 3 hours just listening to them talk. Straight Outta Compton (2015) Ok, there’s a clear nostalgia factor in play here, but Straight Outta Compton was also straight up good storytelling, coupled with a badass soundtrack. I didn’t give it much thought until later, but there’s also a certain level of accessibility in the storytelling, it was a film that was made for a wide audience without sparking disdain from dedicated members of the rap/hip hop community (not much significant backlash that I'm aware anyway... As someone who’s been devoted to certain subcultures, I can vouch this is entirely a possibility.)

Blue Jay (2016) Who has no idea what film this is? Hint: go watch it on Netflix. In the 2000′s I included Conversations with Other Women in my top 20 list, I feel like Blue Jay is my 2010′s equivalent.  Not that I was looking for an equivalent but I have an appreciation for unforgettable stories about the undeniable attraction between two people who have previously had a failed relationship with each other. It's Sarah Paulson and Mark Duplass on screen the entire time, and it's completely engrossing.  Not an easy feat, not appreciated by many, but glorious to me. Call Me By Your Name (2017) This is my Ghost World of the 2010′s, not because the content is at all alike, but because it’s the only movie I watched repeatedly, and the only book in history that I’ve read twice in a single month. Some stories just touch you, this one did. Factor in the brilliant performances, the exquisite writing, beautiful settings, music, and every intricacy that together made up the whole film.  I only wish I had more pretty words to give it a proper description but I will never come close to what Andre Aciman and James Ivory and Luca Guadagnino put on screen. Dunkirk (2017) Christopher Nolan film #4. Dunkirk was the first film I thought of when I started to make this list.  It seemed so obvious. While I said I wasn’t ranking these Top 20 films of the decade, if hard pressed, I would put Dunkirk at the top. Not merely a good historical drama, this was a technical achievement. There’s a lot of articles out there about how a special plane was refitted to house the camera, you can read those online. What I think needs to be mentioned more often is astounding sound mixing and design in Dunkirk.  It’s so good, and I’ve been privileged to see it in 70MM and in Imax that I’m hesitant to watch it in my home with my dinky home theatre now. When they update the history of film textbooks, they’d better be adding Dunkirk. The Irishman (2019) Ok, so maybe this isn’t Marty’s best.  Maybe it’s a slight rehashing of his best work. (But his best is so good, the rehashing is still miles beyond the rest!) But to me, it’s Martin Scorsese embracing the evolution of storytelling in film, the formats in which it's presented, and how he’s going to adapt it in his favour.  What you have here is an excessive piece of work that would likely not ever have been made in the last 50 years due to cost, impracticality, audience appreciation, what have you.  However, in an unexpected turn, longer formats have come back into favour, and found a new platform in which to present themselves (ie. streaming servies like Netflix) So here he is, and here is The Irishman. There you have it movie lovers, more or less my top 20 films for the 2010's. Here is an abbreviated recap:

The Social Network - dir. David Fincher (2010)

Inception - dir. Christopher Nolan (2010)

The Artist - dir. Michel Hazanavicius (2011)

Hugo - dir. Martin Scorsese (2011)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 - dir. David Yates (2011)

Super 8 - dir. J.J. Abrams (2011)

Moonrise Kingdom - dir. Wes Anderson (2012)

The Dark Knight Rises - dir. Christopher Nolan (2012)

Dallas Buyers Club - dir. Jean-Marc Vallee (2013)

The Theory of Everything - dir. James Marsh (2014)

Boyhood - dir. Richard Linklater (2014)

Interstellar - dir. Christopher Nolan (2014)

What We Do in the Shadows - dir. Taika Waititi (2014)

Mad Max: Fury Road - dir. George Miller (2015)

The Hateful Eight - dir. Quentin Tarantino (2015)

Straight Outta Compton - dir. F. Gary Gray (2015)

Blue Jay - dir. Alex Lehmann (2016)

Call Me By Your Name - dir. Luca Guadagnino (2017)

Dunkirk - dir. Christopher Nolan (2017)

The Irishman - dir. Martin Scorsese (2019)

Just missing the list was The Favourite - dir. Yorgos Lanthimos (2018). I actually miscounted my movies during the first draft of this list and originally had this to say about The Favourite when I'd mistakenly thought it'd made the list:

The Favourite (2018) This is the only film on the list that's not here because of its story.  It’s not a bad story, but plot alone wouldn’t put The Favourite amongst my favourites. (Also a part of me has yet to forgive Yorgos Lanthimos for making me endure Dogtooth) What makes The Favourite stand out is that it’s genre-bending, it’s like an absurd period piece for lack of a better description, and it’s awesome. Also the camera work including those panning shots with an extreme wide angle lens combined with the elaborate costume design really makes the film pop visually in a most wonderfully unconventional way.

Other films that didn't wind up making the cut:

The Town (2010)

Last Night (2010)

Rare Exports (Finland 2010)

Django Unchained (2012)

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

Captain Phillips (2013)

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)

The Danish Girl (2015)

Get Out (2017)

The Shape of Water (2017)

The Hate U Give (2018)

And two others I'd like to mention are:

1. Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), which is an affecting film but admittedly will never be my cup of tea.  Doesn't mean it's not great. And,

2. Eden (France 2014) a personal favourite that I had not even considered for one of the 20 best films of the decade, but delightfully it showed up on a Vulture article about the best films of the decade in 47th place (coincidentally the writer's initials are also A.W. and this is what they had to say...)

There you have it, my decade in film summed up. I look forward to sharing many more film experiences and thoughts with you in the years to come. Our annual January challenge "30 Films in 31 Days" commences for another year starting tomorrow, and I hope to be able to follow shortly after with my top films of 2019. Happy movie-going and happy new year!

[movieswithkevin27]

Concussion

Like a plain piece of white bread, Concussion is alright. It would be better if it were toasted. Butter would be a nice touch. Maybe even some jelly. Heck, some meat or cheese in between and the white bread could be transformed into a greatly delectable sandwich. Unfortunately, the toaster is busted, the butter expired, you ran out of jelly last week, and the meat and cheese were on the shopping list but you entirely forgot to pick them up. Thus, you are stuck with just this plain piece of white bread. It will get you through the meal, but it is rather boring, predictable, and presents a similar element - the white bread - to many better experiences eating white bread. However, with nothing to accompany this piece of white bread, it just has those echoes of greatness rather than actually achieving it at all. Concussion is exactly this, plus if that white bread had an African accent and cloyingly grabbed your arm trying to get you to understand what it was preaching about.

With echoes of The Insider - hell, the film mentions how the NFL is similar to the tobacco industry repeatedly - but without any of the tension, Peter Landesman's Concussion explores the work of Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) in exposing the dirty secret of the NFL. It is a worthy subject and one that could be great in right hands. Unfortunately, Landesman only has left hands so that ship seems to have sailed. Detailing his research, solemn findings, and the eventual rejection of that information by the NFL, Concussion happens both too slowly and too quickly to truly make an impact. In essence, the film's pacing drags terribly. This is a slow, methodical film that deals with a very technical subject in a dreadfully uninteresting way. Will Smith is passionate in the lead role, but off-putting and unengaging as the self-righteous Omalu, who constantly gives off any air of superiority. Stodgily going through his research and fight with the NFL, Concussion is never thrilling or gripping. It seems to just go through the motions and beats of a great film like The Insider without any of the heart or understanding of what made that film work so well. Instead, it just goes beat-by-beat without ever hooking in the audience or making them truly care about what it is talking about. It, instead, operates like a lecture about CTE and what happened to Omalu in the aftermath of his article being published about the topic. As a narrative work, it is just not that interesting and lacks any of the requisite passion, as such it just happens.

A lot of this lack of intrigue, tension, or passion, ties into how the film goes too fast. The pacing is slow, but the narrative progression is rather rapid. In one scene, Dr. Cyril Wecht (Albert Brooks) urges Dr. Omalu to get a girlfriend. Just a few scenes later, he is handed a woman to house by his Church. He then gets married just a bit later. With his research, things do happen more methodically, but when the NFL rejects the presentation by Dr. Omalu's co-worker Dr. Bailes (Alec Baldwin), it seems as though the research has hit a brick wall. Fortunately, two scenes later, another poor sap dies and Dr. Omalu can get his big celebratory moment when his research is finally accepted. In essence, there is no triumph or sense of the film having earned its emotional send-off. It never builds the anticipation of seeing him victorious or positions it as too much of a struggle. Instead, the film's over-dramatic and showy approach to the film renders it dramatically inert, barreling towards a cliche celebratory speech with powerful words delivered to a body of men who do want to hear him speak. We know Dr. Omalu will be successful - even if unfamiliar with the story itself - because the film clearly positions him as a crusader for truth and the argues him to be the very essence of what makes America great. In this, the film is almost merciful in not beating around the bush and pretending that he may not be successful. Yet, this lack of doubt that feels akin to inevitability is often what robs Concussion of any intrigue or of being too compelling. It is a film that so desperately wants to cross the finish line and let its hero into the victory circle, it skims through the troubles he faces and instead opts to focus on the victory which is terribly dull.

Tragically, even the pushback received by Dr. Omalu is either factually inaccurate or forced, demonstrating that perhaps the film was actually better off for focusing on his successes, even if unearned due to lack of tension. Showing the arrest of Dr. Wecht, a verbal attack by Dave Duerson (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaye), his wife Prema Mutiso (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) being followed by a suspicious car, and then her later miscarriage, the film misconstrues facts to create tension but then immediately drops the topic. Wecht's arrest is framed as being because of Omalu's paper, which was not actually published until three months after Wecht's arrest by the FBI. This, of course, ignores the film's apparent argument that the FBI works at the behest of the NFL. The verbal attack by Duerson similarly never happened (according to his family and, hell, the director did not even deny this, instead opting to say that the film is "accurate in spirit"), but is tossed in to show the angry push back from the NFL but, to avoid libel or defamation, is assigned to a dead man. His wife being followed is a concern, but again, is the FBI really working for the NFL? Even if it was not the FBI, the issue is once more dropped quite rapidly and solved by them moving, so was she not actually followed? If it was the NFL, I imagine they could get to him in San Joaquin County as readily as they could in Pittsburgh. Similarly, the miscarriage is framed as being as a by-product of this occurrence and the harassment she and Bennet have received. The NFL may be wicked, but the film seemingly could not stop at blaming them for the deaths of many ex-football players. Instead, it had to double down and say that they kill babies too. The factual accuracy of all of these struggles is certainly less than stellar, but even then, the film could make these lies work if it followed up on them. Instead, Landesman includes each in just one scene and then drops the topic, seemingly forgetting it ever occurred. This is very much why the film feels rushed and why its celebratory ending feels unearned. Yes, these brief plights are included, but are so rushed through that they feel out-of-place instead of a building moment of tension or a display of the fight Dr. Omalu is in with the NFL.

One of Concussion's biggest faults, however, is the characterization of its lead. Concussion seems wholly unwilling to paint its hero in a good light. I appreciate that the film does not want to view him with rose-colored glasses, but it seemed a bit too eager to critique its hero. While showing him to be a brilliant and passionate man, the film showed him to be self-righteous, self-centered, and egotistical. It shows him as viewing this research and his fight as being one undertaken by himself against the NFL. He disregards the help others give him, takes for granted their friendship and assistance, and then pats himself on the back at the end. Dr. Bennet Omalu is shown as being a man who cannot help but make the situation about himself, his journey to America as an immigrant, and his fight to carve out respect for himself in America. It is a worthy journey, but one that is given far too much dialogue and attention compared to very real issues he is dealing with in his work. Yes, Concussion is a biopic in part, but it is too often a film that will see audiences reject its central figure due to his deeply negative character flaws because, aside from his self-righteous fight against the NFL, it offers very few positive traits about the man to allow the audience to be sympathetic to his cause.

The film's script also leaves much to be desired, with it seeming to favor grandiose and over-dramatic speeches over authentic conversation and emotion. Even conversations between Dr. Omalu and his wife are somehow transformed into platforms for Omalu to explain his theories on life, America, and science. No moment can just be a moment, but is instead turned into a statement about any bit of injustice Omalu feels in his quest to be heard. This melodramatic and preachy speech often culminates in literal speeches with Dr. Omalu begging people to just hear him out and listen to the science behind his argument. Though not helped by Will Smith, the writing often leaves him out to dry by trying to shove these forced speeches into his mouth that practically begs the audience to feel emotion and to feel indignant about how he is being treated. Smith's delivery is poor, but the writing is so sappy and cloying that it is nearly impossible for any actor to make it sound authentic and not wholly written. This script is one that turns real life drama into melodrama with a horrifying manipulative end result.

A stiff, uninvolving, and unfortunately dull exercise in how to not make an investigate thriller, Peter Landesman's Concussion has all of the beats of investigative thrillers, biopics, and sports movies, but none of the power, resonance, or intrigue. Instead, it is just the skeleton of a good film, lacking any of the heart and spirit to make it good in its own right. With a shaky, over-dramatic, and forced performance from Will Smith anchoring the film, Concussion falls flat and leaves a worthy story still searching for a worthy presentation.