Two of my favorite shows on TV recently wrapped their latest seasons. Well, technically Stranger Things has not yet wrapped season four, but the seven episodes that Netflix dropped in-advance of two more in July is close enough to constitute a season to help me make my point. Barry, meanwhile, actually did air its season three finale this past Sunday. While you may not think those two shows have very much in-common, there is one thing that links them: Their willingness to evolve when the situation demands it.
Spoiler Warning for Stranger Things Season 4 Part 1 and Barry Season 3
I’ll start with Stranger Things. The first three season of the show was, at its core, a show about kids. Unless you want to get super dark, shows (and stories in-general) about kids has a limit to how much true danger the kids find themselves in. Sure, some adults and ancillary teenagers have gotten killed on Stranger Things, but that’s different than having your primary characters – who happen to be children – suffering such a fate.
Now, the season three finale featured the death of a more central character than any of the previous episodes. Billy Hargrove, wicked stepbrother to Max Mayfield, had been possessed by the Mind Flayer and essentially fed it a bunch of people to turn it into a giant fleshy semi-kaiju. But, in the end, he managed to break his mind free, and died saving the life of Eleven. In some way, this signaled a turning point with the showrunners saying “No one is truly safe anymore.”
With a nearly two-year break between seasons three and four, the kids have grown into full-blown teens. Suffice to say, Teen Horror plays by different rules than Kids Horror. The Duffer Brother realized this, and drove season four straight into The Horror Zone. The new villain, Vecna, has a horrifying origin, and even more horrifying manner of claiming his victims – something between Freddy Krueger and Sadako/Samar from Ringu/The Ring. Max, who I mentioned earlier, landed right in Vecna’s crosshairs and needed the power of Kate Bush to escape. But my point is that, due to the need to escalate threats and endanger its now-teenage primary characters, the show evolved into something that can better utilize all the tools at its disposal.
For its first two seasons, Barry was a dark comedy about a hitman trying to leave the killing business behind while building a life for himself as a Hollywood actor. Or, at the very least, a guy taking an acting class and not killing people. It managed to sustain this even after the titular character murdered his old army buddy, and Detective Janice Moss who also happened to be the love of his acting teacher/idol’s Gene Cousineau’s life in order to keep the sins of his past a secret. But, again, the prior season hit a turning point that there was no turning back from.
By the end of season two, Barry Berkman had become obsessed with finding and murdering his former handler (and twisted father figure) Monroe Fuchs. This led Barry to a monastery where three separate gangs have met and called a truce, including the Chechens – who Barry helped train at the behest of his friend(?) NoHo Hank. But, with his bloodlust at a boil, Barry charged into the monastery and single-handedly wiped out almost every single person inside. Fuchs (who’s probably really more of a twisted uncle figure than twisted father figure now that I think about it) managed to escape, but the damage from unleashing his inner killing machine had nonetheless doomed Barry.
To their credit, Bill Hader and the creative team realized that it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for Barry to go back to his acting class. Especially since Fuchs had told Cousineau that Barry was the one who murdered Janice. So, the show had to evolve, and it did so by having Barry re-commit to his unfortunate true calling as a killer-for-hire. This broke Barry in ways that he wasn’t already broken in (and he was already very broken) and the tone of the show shifted to reflect that. Season Three was probably the least funny (thought there were certainly still some laugh out loud scenes), and yet it may have been the best top-to-bottom season yet. In fact, I have a hard time remembering any single season of a show besides Breaking Bad that maintained such an intensity and persistent sense of dread throughout. On top of that, the events of the season three finale set the stage to evolve once again in season four, and I, personally, cannot wait to see what it becomes next.
Many shows that start out strong allow themselves to stagnate in the mire of status quo. Considering how much content is demanding our attention from networks and streamers in this modern Darwinist landscape of television, Stranger Things and Barry have wisely evolved to survive.
I can’t say for sure that I created the term “Uht-Head” but I haven’t heard it before, so I’ll stake a claim to it until proven otherwise. It’s what I call fans of Netflix’s The Last Kingdom, which just wrapped up its five season run a few weeks ago.
Spoiler Warning For The Last Kingdom
Trying to summarize the events that occur through five seasons, and nearly fifty episodes, of The Last Kingdom would be a fool’s errand. The show ran at an accelerated pace that would put the final two seasons of Game Of Thrones to shame for its entire run. There were advantages to this – as every scene mattered just as much as every other scene. But there were also disadvantages to this – it repeated some plots points more than it needed to as it plowed through storylines, and thorough character development was awful hard to come by.
To be honest, Game Of Thrones is not the best comparison for The Last Kingdom. Despite its ancient realm setting, political gamesmanship, and large scale battles, the truth is that The Last Kingdom has more in common with Netflix’s other series Narcos. Both are based on true stories, though are not dogmatic to the actual events as they essentially take the Wikipedia version of history and use it as their setting. Another good comp would be something like Justified or Reacher, where one single character is the center of all things. This character is smarter than all the others, a better fighter than all the others, and well-liked by everyone other than the villains.
One might find that to be eye-rolling, but The Last Kingdom takes place in a time and place where horrific events regularly occur and – when they do – you’ll be happy to have Uhtred Son Of Uhtred as your guide through these troubling times. What you need to know about Uhtred is that he was born a nobleman in what will someday be known as Northern England. His ancestral home, and fortress, of Bebbanburg is raided by Danes (proto-vikings) when he is a child. Uhtred is taken by the Danes, who take a liking to him, and decide to raise him as one of their own.
When he reaches adulthood, he goes on a raid, but ends up getting sidetracked for about thirty years or so due to some promises he makes to King Alfred who offers him an eventual shot at re-taking Bebbanburg in-return. Despite a bit of an love / hate thing with Alfred, Uhtred becomes an essential member of the king’s conquest to unite all the kingdoms of the land under the banner of Wessex. Knowing how Danes think, and fight, allow Uhtred to provide advantages on the battle field. It also provides the gateway to Uhtred simply being more badass than everyone else residing on the planet at the time.
Of course, Uhtred is also a super-likable dude and all-around great hang. Which is how he ends up working to unite the kingdoms with Alfred, Alfred’s eventual son and heir Edward, and Edward’s eventual bastard son (therefore not his heir) Aethelstan. In fact, King Edward so trusts Uhtred that when he has a second son born from a more desirable marriage (at least according to Edward’s mother) putting Aethelstan’s life in-danger, he sends the boy to be raised by Uhtred away from Wessex.
By the end of the final season, we see Aethelstan as a teenager who is nearly as good in a fight, smart in a strategy session, and beloved by his peers as his adopted father figure himself. In the series finale, Uhtred and his squad retake Bebbanburg, and Aethelstan chooses to stick with him rather than returning to Wessex with his biological father. Chalk up two another win for Uhtred.
To touch on the aforementioned Uhtred’s Squad briefly – They are men and women that Uhtred encounters in a variety of ways. Some had engaged him in a battle of wits. Some had fought against him on the battlefield. His best friend, Finan, met him when they were both sold into slavery for an episode or two. In the end, they all realized how awesome Uhtred was, and decided to dedicate their lives to living – and fighting – alongside him. It’s a fun group, too. If you’re a fan of found family narratives, this whole aspect should hit your sweet spot.
It’s not all fun and games, mind you. As I mentioned earlier, there are some truly horrific acts of violence against men, women, and children. Uhtred, himself, loses more than one wife and more than one child through the run of the series. If he, as a character and actor (shout out to Alexander Dreymon), were not as capable and charismatic as he is, The Last Kingdom would be a truly bleak viewing experience.
One thing that began as pet peeve for me, before I said “hell with it” and just committed to the ride, is the passage of time. By extension, the aging (or lack thereof) of the characters would be a bit disconcerting. This is mainly because, while the story takes place over the course of three-ish decades, characters do not visibly age once they reach adulthood. Uhtred and his squad are good examples of this, as is Alfred’s wife Aelswith. But, once you accept that characters like Edward and his sister Aethelflaed starting as children and aging into adulthood over the course of the series, while Uhtred and Aelswith appear to remain the same age, you’ll be able to settle in for an entertaining experience.
I have left so much out of this post because, frankly, there’s just no way I could even remember all the events and fit them into anything smaller than an encyclopedia. Bottom Line is that there is a lot more to The Last Kingdom, and a great many more characters who are important to the storylines. But all of that will come in good time as long as you sit back and accept that the most important thing of all is that everybody loves Uhtred, and damned if he’s not out there earning that love.
Despite season five being the last season of the show, there is a movie coming to Netflix in the near-future called Seven Kings Must Die that is intended to truly wrap everything up. You’d better believe I’ll be there streaming that sucker the day it drops. After all, an Uht-Head’s gonna Uht-Head.
SPOILER WARNING – This blog post contains massive spoilers for Netflix’s Fear Street Trilogy (1994, 1978, 1666)
I was fifteen-years-old in 1994, and I loved horror movies. I still do, but back then I was still in the process of discovering the classics and mainstays. I believe I had already seen most of the Friday The 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street, and Halloween films. While I was still a year or two away from going back further to things like Universal Horror classics, and Hammer Horror franchises. It was around this time (1996) that the first Scream movie took it upon itself to deconstruct elements from a very specific type of horror movie: The slasher flick.
It was actually Scream that made me go back and find the deeper catalogue of slasher flicks like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Prom Night, The Burning, Sleepaway Camp, Terror Train, The Funhouse, Madman, and the like. Scream then begat a era of similar movies that featured teenagers in some half-winking, slashery situations such as I Know What You Did Last Summer, Disturbing Behavior, Urban Legends and, of course, numerous Scream sequels. But it was only a few years after Scream when I lost interest in slasher flicks, and that was due in large part to the fact that I was no longer a teenager myself. As such, I wasn’t really finding the lives (or deaths) of the characters especially relatable. So, I went off and expanded my horror movie palate in different directions.
But Netflix was very clever in their approach to casting out the widest possible net for their Fear Street Trilogy. Yes, the core characters are teenagers in-peril. But they are teenagers in the year 1994, and then in the year 1978, and then way back in 1666. Much like Netflix’s other retro hit Stranger Things before it, Fear Street ropes in viewers from my generation with nostalgia, while also appealing to the current crop of teenage viewers with teenage character who aren’t so very different than they are – even with 20+ years of history between them. However, unlike Stranger Things, Fear Street is very much R-Rated horror. Fortunately, for teenagers of today, no one is carding them on the way into the theater (give or take a Parental Lock Password). Personally, having been a teenager in the 90’s, while also watching slasher films of the 80’s and 70’s, Fear Street managed to double-hook me in.
But here’s where things get more interesting – The first entry, Fear Street: 1994, opens with a famous young actress being murdered in a mall by a masked killer. Which was very Scream of them. But, rather than playing the long game of “who is the killer and when will they strike next” the killer is immediately unmasked and shot by the local sheriff. So, Scream basically plays out in the first ten minutes of the movie.
Through the rest of FS: 1994, more killer are revealed. And these killers are very much supernatural in-nature. This first film lays out some details about a supposed curse over the town of Shadyside placed on it by a witch named Sarah Fier, wherein a person is possessed every decade or so, and goes on a killing spree. We are introduced some previous killers with effectively creepy character designs who were possessed in prior decades, as they rise from their graves. More specifically – they rise from a giant, gooey, black heart that resides in a cave beneath the town to kill anyone who sees a vision of Sarah Fier. In this case, the unfortunate target is Sam, who had the lousy luck to bleed in the wrong place, which triggered a connection to Sarah Fier.
The evil is seemingly defeated by the end of FS: 1994, at the very gory cost of the primary heroines’ friends’ lives. But then there’s a hook at the end: Sam becomes possessed in much the same way as the killer from the beginning of the movie, leaving her girlfriend Deena, and Deena’s brother Henry, to try and save her soul. It’s a cliffhanger much like you’d have seen in almost every Friday The 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloween, or any other slasher franchise. Happily, I only had to wait for a week – rather than a year or two – to see the next installment.
This was another part of the brilliance of Netflix’s release strategy. The same sort of near-instant gratification they offer by dropping entire seasons of TV shows at one time is emulated, only with movies. The story arc of Deena, the possessed Sam, and Henry actually forms a framing device around the next two movies. Yet another clever trick used by Writer/Director Leigh Janiak, and her creative team, to ensure viewers stay invested through all three movies.
Fear Street: 1978 begins in 1994, with our protagonists tracking down Ziggy, who was the lone survivor of the previous Shadyside massacre at Camp Nightwing back in 1978. This then launches us back to the year 1978, where we see how that all played out. Ziggy, the local “weird girl” formed a very sweet bond on the last day of camp with popular boy (and future sheriff) Nick Goode just before all hell broke loose, ending with Ziggy’s sister (and many other campers and counselors) being slaughtered by another counselor after he is possessed.
FS: 1978 might be my favorite of the three films, since it doesn’t really need to do the heavy expositional lifting of FS: 1994 or handle the job of wrapping everything up like FS: 1666. It’s honestly the most straightforward installment, and it has the emotional advantage of offering a tragic ending of Ziggy watching her sister being murdered, while her sister watches Ziggy being stabbed and believing that she failed to save her. But Ziggy does survive. Well, technically, she’s brought back to life by Nick Goode performing CPR.
But that brings us back to 1994, where Deena and Henry ask a grown-up Ziggy where to find Sarah Fier’s severed hand. They had found Fier’s body back in FS: 1994 but, according to the legend, they needed to bury the hand with the body to end the curse. So, they retrieve the hand, and Deena goes to bury it with the body. But, much like Sam before her, Deena gets a nosebleed from being too close to Fier’s remains. Unlike Sam, Deena’s mind is actually swept all the way back to 1666, when the curse is said to have begun.
Fear Street: 1666 actually only spends about half of its runtime in 1666, where Deena sees the town as it was when it was still just a colonial village. The kicker is that she’s seeing it all through Sarah Fier’s eyes. The time spent is 1666 moves quickly to the point where horrors are unleashed upon the village due to someone’s deal with the devil. The films uses the cast from the previous two installments to fill out the roles of the villagers. In an ironic twist, the actors who play characters that survived the previous films are killed, while the actors who play characters killed in the previous films survive. It caps of with the first possessed killer slaughtering a chapel full of children, and cutting out their eyes (as well as his own) before he is killed by Sheriff Goode’s ancestor Solomon.
This being 1666, a witch hunt is promptly launched. Sarah and her secret beloved Hannah are accused by the town asshole after he was spurned by Hannah. Hannah is captured, but Sarah makes a run for it. She hides out at Solomon Goode’s home, as he’s always been kind to her, only to discover that Solomon is the one who cast a curse on the village in order to attain power. Sarah is recaptured by the lynch mob, and hanged from a tree after she promises Solomon that she will expose his evils one day. That day, as it turns out happens in 1994.
When we get back to 1994, Deena shares her new knowledge with Ziggy and Henry, that the Goode family has continued this deal with the devil for more than 300 years. Every decade or so, the eldest son of the family allows a townsperson to become possessed, and go on a killing spree. This casts every interaction between Ziggy and Nick from FS: 1978 into a very interesting new light. If there’s one complaint that I have about the Fear Street Trilogy, it’s that the emotional payoff between the adult version of Ziggy and Nick is never really explored. At any rate, the key to ending the curse is to kill Sheriff Goode. Now, Nick’s brother is the mayor of neighboring Sunnyvale, so killing Nick doesn’t really end the bloodline. But, considering Nick is the one who cast the curse in both 1978 and 1994, I guess that offers as much explanation as we’re going to get.
In the end, we’re brought back to the mall, where the undead previous killers attack again. But our heroes manage to survive using some interesting tricks they picked up in FS: 1994. Deena chases Sheriff Goode into the tunnels beneath the mall, which are the same tunnels that were formed way back when Solomon first made the deal, and cast the curse. A chase ensues that ends with Deena stabbing Sheriff Good through the eye, thus killing him and ending the curse. The giant, gooey, black heart in the caves shrinks down to nothing. The killers in the mall disintegrate. And Sam is freed from the possession.
If we hadn’t been given a proper conclusion at the end of this trilogy, I’m sure my opinion would have soured on it. Happily, that was not the case. I’ve never read any Fear Street books, or frankly any R.L. Stine at all. By the time those came along, I was already reading the likes of Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, and Dean Koontz. I’m sure this means that I missed some Easter Eggs throughout. But it also means that I can recommend the Netflix Fear Street Trilogy to anyone, even if they are also unfamiliar with the source material.
All the installments are highly entertaining, with barely an ounce of fat on them. So check them out now or, perhaps even better, add them to your list for Halloween season viewing. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a new teen slasher flick, and I’m very happy to have now found three of them. Fifteen-year-old me would absolutely approve.
A lot has already been written about the new Netflix show Stranger Things, so I’m not really going to take too deep a general dive into it here. Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the overall strong writing, directing, musical score, set design and performances.
This show features a number of teen, and pre-teen, actors and not one of them annoyed me. In fact, I’d say each of their performances holds up nicely against some of the better actors of any age you’ll find out there. Millie Bobby Brown – who plays the enigmatically gifted Eleven – and Finn Wolfhard – playing classically geeky and goodhearted kid Mike – deserve special mention for carrying much of the burden for bringing the viewer back to that age where the world really started changing for them en route to young adulthood.
Stranger Things
On the grown-up side of things, Winona Ryder gives a very nice performance as grieving mother Joyce, who spends much of the season bordering on insanity until she’s proven right. While David Harbour – who plays Chief Hopper – imbues the character with the sort of 1970’s-1980’s era of wry but steady masculinity defined by roles like Roy Scheider as Sheriff Martin Brody, or Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.
What I’m more interested in here is taking a personalized look at the influences that inspired creators/show runners The Duffer Brothers, as they are many of the same things that influenced my tastes and own creative endeavors.
But let me first take a quick moment to applaud Netflix for taking a chance on show for such a specific audience, even though it has rather surprisingly found its way to much larger audience. But it reminds you of why Netflix exists, and was so successful, in the first place: taking chances on shows like this one.
Here’s the basic plot, as told from a child of the 80’s like myself (be warned, there will be some spoilers below):
Imagine E.T. but, instead of an alien, the kids find and bond with the girl from Firestarter or Carrie. Together, they’re searching for their missing friend in a similar end-of-the-innocence quest to the one in Stand By Me (of course the kid they’re looking for in Stand By Me is already known to be dead, while the kid in Stranger Things may not be). Either way, the boy’s been taken by a monster not unlike Pennywise The Demonic Dancing Clown from Stephen King’s IT.
Honestly, there is a lot more Stephen King spin present in this show than has been explored in some other reviews. Hell, even the main titles font from the opening credits looks like the vintage cover to a Stephen King novel.
Meanwhile, the teens are dealing with a sort of A Nightmare On Elm Street situation as this same monster presents itself as something that seems to be able to defy the laws of nature and bend reality to its will. This is not far from the truth, as there is some heavy extra-dimensional action happening a la H.P. Lovecraft stories like From Beyond or Dreams In The Witch House.
Lastly, there’s the adult characters’ story arc. This one gets a bit of the short shrift, though that’s clearly by design as The Duffer Brothers know where their bread is buttered here. Still, Winona Ryder gets to lose her mind over a lost loved one like Karen Allen in John Carpenter’s uncharacteristically sensitive Starman. And the other primary adult character, David Harbour’s police chief, ends up having to deal with your classic secret government cover-up prior to he and Ryder confronting the facehuggers from Alien and the shark from Jaws.
That all may make it sound very derivative but, seriously, everything is derivative. It’s just a matter of where you derive from, and how well you adapt it to your purposes. In the case of Stranger Things, they’re pulling from some of my old favorite things and shaping them into one of my new favorite things.
Now, my enjoyment of this show is actually due to more than just it hitting my nostalgic sweet spot. Stranger Things hits the emotional punching bag pretty hard too. It took me across the spectrum from the first tugging of love on my youthful heartstrings in the Mike & Eleven relationship, all the way to spending half of the season finale choked up for reasons I would not have understood until more recent years thanks to revelatory scenes from Chief Hopper’s past. And you better believe it takes a lot to get me choked up.
I do want to make one last mention of the fantastically retro, atmospheric synth-heavy musical score comes right out of John Carpenter’s best work. This is not a surprise, as it was composed by the same people who did a similarly awesome score for The Guest. The songs they licensed and used at key points in the show are amazingly on-point as well.
Speaking of The Guest – that film, as well as films like It Follows, Super 8, and Midnight Special, are kindred spirits in tone and theme to Stranger Things even though none were actually set in the 1980’s. Regardless, I can only hope this means we’re on the cusp of a whole new cinematic movement, as long as it gives us more gems like the ones mentioned above.
Oh and, by the way, in case I didn’t make it clear you should DEFINITELY watch Stranger Things. Believe me, you can burn through those 8 episodes this weekend. In fact, you’ll have a hard time not doing so once you start.
Deadpool just became the highest grossing R rated film of all time, which is awesome, but I’m not here to discuss Deadpool specifically. Rather, what I’m here to discuss is what that film’s success means for the future of film in a more general sense.
The boxes checked off by Deadpool are comic book adaptation, action movie, and comedy film. It would be faulty logic to try and delineate which of these flavors were the biggest reason for it’s record breaking success, as the combination of all three is clearly what led to it. What I’m more interested in is which of those genres will benefit the most from Deadpool’s big win.
We’ll start with comic book movies, as brand recognition certainly factors into box office success. But you can’t really make any more money bringing DC and Marvel characters to life than they already are. These films have made billions of dollars and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Also, let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that Deadpool was the first ever successful R-rated comic book adaptation. The three Blade moves were all rated R and – while only the first two were actually good movies – they all turned a profit. Kick-Ass was also received well enough by critics and audiences to warrant an admittedly inferior sequel. The Punisher (2004) and Punisher: War Zone (2008) were not especially profitable, but they were both enjoyable enough to sit down and watch whenever they come on TV some evening or weekend afternoon.
While James Gunn’s Super was very good, it was also an original property, so it may not entirely qualify for this list. But last year’s Kingsman: The Secret Service was a highly entertaining and well-reviewed R-rated comic adaptation. In fact, Kingsman itself did strong enough business to get a sequel greenlit. What I’m ultimately saying is that, even though the money Deadpool made was unprecedented for an R-rated comic book movie, the R rating itself was not.
Comedies with an R rating never really went away. You can track back even just the past 10 years to the films of Judd Apatow and Paul Feig to see that. The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Trainwreck, Bridesmaids, The Heat, and Spy all made money hand over fist and have strong reviews across the board on Rotten Tomatoes. However, those last two movies lead me to what I believe will be the real genre winner here: action movies.
Yes, The Heat and Spy were billed more as comedies than as action movies. But they are really just a slight shift in ingredient measures away from films like 48 Hrs, Lethal Weapon, and Die Hard. Action films used to proudly hoist their R rating before theaters began to crack down on underage viewers buying tickets to those movies. This is why memorable and fun 80’s and 90’s vehicles like the ones listed above, along with movies like Cobra, Predator, Bloodsport, Out For Justice, Con Air, and Face/Off (and numerous more that I could fill out a whole other blog post with) were replaced by a bunch of fairly toothless PG-13 movies.
It doesn’t seem like the general admission crackdown is going away anytime soon (I might write a post about how the overly Puritan mindset of the American public at-large is doing a disservice to entertainers and those they wish to entertain at a later date) but as long as you can make an R-rated action movie that parents and their tween or teen kids are interested in, then we could see a real Renaissance.
There have been some very good non-comic book “restricted” action movies that have come out just in the past year or two. A few that spring immediately to mind are The Guest, Blue Ruin, John Wick, and The Purge: Anarchy. None of these films carried anything approaching even the relatively low $58 million budget of Deadpool, and none of them had anywhere near the full court marketing press as that movie, but I found them all just as enjoyable.
There is still a market for “adult” oriented action, you can tell just by looking at some of the biggest television hits of the recent past. Game Of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones were/are all excellent shows that bring in millions of viewers each week. Every one of those shows is much closer to an R rating than a PG-13 rating and, in fact, three of them are comic book properties. I can also guarantee that nearly half the viewers for these shows are under the age of 18.
You don’t need to be over 18 to want to see this sort of content but, if you are, then you’re not allowed to go to the movie theater and buy a ticket for it. Odds are that 99.8% of them suffer no mental trauma by watching these shows, this I say from personal experience, but now we’re moving back towards that Puritan values problem I mentioned earlier. My point is that, as long as the product is good, and as long as it is advertised and available enough, films of this nature will be successful.
My theory will get its first real test at the end of May when The Nice Guys opens. Shane Black’s last movie was Iron Man 3, so I suppose it brings a little secondhand comic book brand recognition. But he’s more well known for directing and co-writing great R-rated action films like the aforementioned Lethal Weapon and, one of my favorite action-comedies of the last 16 years, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Yes, there are some big stars in The Nice Guys. But this is not the sort of Oscar bait that most R-rated star vehicles are these days. In fact, it looks a lot more like a fun, old school romp in the spirit of something like Deadpool.
Obviously, I’m not banking on this as the be-all, end-all, since most of The Nice Guys was filmed before Deadpool was even ramping up its massive marketing campaign. But it bears watching trends over the next few years, and I’m personally hoping we get more of those vintage style action movies that I remember from when I was technically too young to watch them, but watched the hell out of them anyway.
It would be a nice break from the 21st century assembly line of sterile, overly polite versions we’ve been force fed. After all, the famous line does not go “Yippee Ki-yay, Jerkface!” it goes “Yippee Ki-yay, Motherfucker!”
A few weeks ago my three month old was only sleeping about an hour at a time – he’s since gotten much better. But this led me and my wife to watch a recently released three hour long movie that shall remain nameless in three or four separate segments and, honestly, it felt like a much better way to watch it than siting down for it all at once.
Historically, epic movies with a massive sprawling tale to tell tended to run about three hours. See movies like Gone With The Wind, The Ten Commandments, or Lawrence Of Arabia. But these films came out at a time when films were still competing with live theater, so two hours, followed by an intermission, followed by another hour was by and large acceptable.
Those times have long since passed. Films are more popular, more accessible and certainly more affordable than live theater. So it’s time they broke from that mold. But I’m willing to forgive a Braveheart here, a Heat there, or even the occasional Gladiator over yonder.
What bothers me is why so many contemporary movies are running up around the three hour mark, for seemingly no other reason other than the director’s ego demands you spend half your day staring at his creation.
Now, I look at the most guilty culprits and it’s easy to understand why this type of bloat is allowed. Martin Scorsese has been making great films forever, Quentin Taratino is one of the last guys can can legitimately claim the title auteur, Michael Bay’s terrible movies make a billion dollars every year, and Christopher Nolan is probably the most successful filmmaker (combining critical and commercial success) of the 21st century.
That being said, The Wolf Of Wall Street was a good hour too long. It was basically a series of events, several of which could have been excised without hurting the film in the least. But him making us watch these awful people do awful things for three hours is just an awful way to treat your audience.
Most of The Hateful Eight’s runtime takes place in a single location with maybe ten characters. How the hell do you allow that picture to explode up to three hours? I mean this is the same guy who made the same kind of movie in Reservoir Dogs more than twenty years ago, and he did it then in just over 90 minutes.
He had the right idea about ten years ago, though, when he released Kill Bill in two volumes that ran about two hours a piece. Why, then, did he decide that he would rather have his viewers slog through the whole damn thing in one sitting?
And, come one, is there anyone out there who doesn’t think Django Unchained should have ended with that first big shootout in Candie Land? I don’t recall anyone calling out for an extra monologue, Tarantino’s terrible South African accent and a second – smaller – shoot out in Candie Land. Do you?
There’s not really anything I can say about Michael Bay’s monstrously bloated, increasingly lackluster filmography that hasn’t been said before. But I would like to point out that he’s made four Transformers movies, the first of which was two and a half hours long, and each proceeding sequel was five minutes longer than the previous one.
At this rate, the next one will run all of four hours, and it will still only have about 45 minutes of giant transforming robots punching each other.
Every film Christopher Nolan makes is more critically acclaimed and makes higher box office grosses than the one before it. However, he seems to think that the way to keep that going to to make each movie longer. The Dark Knight Rises was 2 hours and 45 minutes long. I love me some Batman, but come on!
Interstellar had some really strong and interesting central ideas, along with great visuals, but it did not need to spend an hour driving around the future dustbowl with astronaut farmer Matthew McConaughey before he decides to take off into space in order to save humanity. That entire first act could have been summed up in a five minute flashback segment halfway through the movie.
The truth is that no studio is going to force edits upon these guys, at least not until one of them stumbles and puts out a three and a half hour critically reviled box office bomb. But these are smart guys, they should be able to figure out how to edit themselves to maximize a solid two hours, give or take.
My solution, revealed to me by hourly baby cries, is not really an appealing one for these filmmakers or their studios. The reason being that these films do make upwards of a billion dollars each.
Oddly enough, I really don’t have a problem sitting for three hours of a TV show on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or HBOGo. I’ve realized that this is mainly because I know I don’t need to since each episode will end in a place for a natural break. But, again, while TV may offer a legitimate artistic outlet for guys who want to film something that lasts for six hours, it will never rake in the box office millions.
To that I’ll say that I’m very happy my boy is sleeping pretty much through the night now. But I’ll keep utilizing the lesson he taught me, and watch these big fat bloaters in nice bite sized treats.
Pablo Escobar was a drug trafficker, mass murderer and terrorist. Which, of course, means that he happens to make for very entertaining television.
Netflix unveiled their new show Narcos a few weeks ago, and it may have been the purest example of what the streaming service can offer that cable and network TV cannot. The first thing they did, because they must have read my suggestion to do so, is cut the episode order to 10. There is not an ounce of fat on this show or, in other words, this is the pure, uncut stuff.
They also condense several years worth of history into this 10 episodes, rather than try to milk it for a larger episode count. This does mean that the storytelling isn’t quite as rich and dense as something like The Wire, but it does a better job of delivering the goods in a tight, streamlined manner. In some ways, Narcos is like a Wikipedia hole come to life. You look up Pablo Escobar, which leads you to his life, his crimes, his pursuers and his ultimate downfall.
The first episode begins with a title card explaining Magical Realism, which doesn’t really make much sense because Gabriel Garcia Marquez this ain’t. I have to assume that they are referring to the way that events that likely took weeks or months of research in reality, happen because a third person happens to be in the room who says “Hey, isn’t that So-and-So?” on the show. Not that I’m complaining, but it would take someone more scholarly than myself to tell you whether or not Narcos is a legitimate example of Magical Realism. What I can tell you is that I really enjoyed this show.
I’m probably going to tread on some spoiler territory below, so consider yourself warned.
The first thing worth mentioning is Wagner Moura, who portrays Escobar. It’s a killer part and he effectively kills it. It seems that the showrunners and the actor all realize that Escobar was an evil man who deserves no sympathy from the viewers. So, rather that going after sympathy, they go after motivations. Escobar does most of the monstrous things that he does to ensure the growth and survival of his empire, however, he also sees himself as unfairly persecuted and disrespected. We, the viewers, see that there’s nothing unfair about it, but Moura does a fantastic job of showing us things from Escobar’s perspective. Again, this does not elicit sympathy, but it does show us the why of the character.
All of the performances are – at the very least – solid, but the others that absolutely need to be touched upon are Boyd Holbrook and Pedro Pascal (late of getting his head exploded as Prince Oberyn on Game of Thrones) as the DEA agents tasked with bringing Escobar to justice. Holbrook’s Steven Murphy is the audience surrogate, looped into the situation in Colombia at the same time as we are. He also provides voice over narration that is just informative enough while remaining brief, which keeps it from becoming overbearing. Pascal plays Javier Pena, who’s already embedded in the drug war culture at the start of the series, and so is both Murphy’s guide as well as out own. The pair play well off each other and, while they don’t have quite the same depths to plunge as Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in True Detective, they are more proactive and less philosophically brooding.
There are some tropes that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen this sort of story played out before. Corruption rots the core of society as cops, military and politicos are mostly crooked, Meanwhile, the politicians who take on Escobar tend to end up like the drummers in Spinal Tap.
A few more thing worth mentioning without running on too long, is that Narcos is filmed in Colombia, rather than Canada or California, so it doesn’t look like any other show on TV. A deal breaker for some may be that a good half of the show’s dialogue is in Spanish. Odds are this was done so that Netflix can continue it’s endeavors of international conquest, but it also makes sense to me since this show takes place in Colombia where most of the people you meet will not be speaking English.
The only quibble I have is that the show ran at a rate that had me believing they’d wrap the story up in episode 10, so I was a little disappointed that they did not. Still, another season of Narcos is certainly not a bad thing. All in all, I’d recommend giving it a look to most people who like full throttle storytelling loaded up for their binging pleasure. Narcos is much like the mountain of cocaine on Tony Montana’s desk at the end of Scarface, so feel free to overindulge.
