by Oscar O’Sullivan

Monday – Wedding Crashers and Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds

Much has been said about the death of the movie star in modern cinema – where are the names that can sell a film on their own merit, the stars who are more important than the characters they play? Much of the focus of these discussions has been on the world of action movies, where superhero characters have become the real stars and Tom Cruise stands alone as the last untouchable icon in the field. But another genre has also suffered from the collapse of stardom – the humble comedy. I’m a firm believer in the 2000s as a comedic Golden Age in American cinema – the McKay/Apatow/Phillips superbloc, the omnipresence of Will Ferrell, the Wilson/Anderson/Stiller/Baumbach collabs, the symbiotic relationship with the phenomenon of the U.S. Office and it’s creative team, the tail end of Sandler’s golden period, Nancy Meyers’ run of classics, Dreamworks reinventing animated comedy, the constant emergence and assimilation of independent comedy voices into the mainstream and so many genuine stars emerging from ensemble pieces that revisiting any comedy of that era now feels like you’re watching Avengers: Endgame. Just look at the cast of this 2005 rom-com, which today would be released directly to Amazon Prime with maybe one semi-famous lead and a dozen forgettable TV actors. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in their peak productive periods (Wilson still in the midst of his time as a Wes Anderson staple and with Cars and Night at the Museum just on the horizon, Vaughn having just settled into his niche as a comedic straight man with films like the exceptional Dodgeball after a few years of experimentation in action and horror), Rachel McAdams fresh off the one-two punch of Mean Girls and The Notebook, screen legend Christopher Walken lending some gravitas and having a laugh, a pre-Hangover Bradley Cooper playing a role quite unlike what he’d come to be known for, rounded by a bunch of solid character actors and a memorable turn from Will Ferrell – and this is one of the weaker casts of the period. Part of the reason Barbie was such a phenomenon was that it was the first major comedy in a long time to recapture that 2000s excitement of feeling like a party with all your favourite friends – not characters, but performers. Wedding Crashers is a tonne of fun, a “concept” comedy that’s carried along at the start by your familiarity with the cast – you’re willing to take a chance on this absurd premise and wade through the strange setup precisely because you trust these performers to take you somewhere interesting, which of course they do. By the end, it’s almost touching – the journey has been a success, Wilson and Vaughn have renewed your trust in them. When the two teamed up again in The Internship it wasn’t a sequel to Wedding Crashers, it was a sequel to the idea of them teaming up – that doesn’t happen any more. The idea is there with the proposed Ocean’s 11 prequel film – cash in on the success of Barbie by putting Gosling and Robbie together again – so I hope this is a sign of the landscape healing, returning to a more sustainable and exciting form (even if it does still seem to be tethered to the prison of IP). The 2000s comedy stars could (and perhaps still can in the right circumstances) sell a film on their name alone – would I have watched Wedding Crashers if it starred, let’s say, Simu Liu and Kit Harrington? No, because I don’t know them – I know the characters they’re famous for. That’s what modern actors are missing and what they need to recapture if the “Movie Star” is ever to make a glorious return. 8/10.

Documentaries can live or die by their subject matter – it’s difficult to force something to be interesting. Werner Herzog has always been one of the great documentarians precisely because he strives for an angle beyond the surface-level information. I’m not sure he quite found it here – too much time is spent marvelling over samples in labs and not enough examining the fascinating cultures around impact sites and the briefly-mentioned idea that life may have originated in space – but it’s interesting stuff at the very least. Herzog’s contradictory relationship with inserting himself into his films remains fascinating – he provides the overarching narration and isn’t afraid to offer his blunt opinions and feelings, but also remains firmly behind the camera and avoids any direct interaction with his subjects, to the point of essentially using co-director Clive Oppenheimer as a visual stand-in and mouthpiece. I can’t say I’m any more interested in space rocks than I was before, but I was far from bored – a success on the whole then.

Tuesday – I Saw the TV Glow and Earth (1930)

I Saw the TV Glow has been one of the most acclaimed films of 2024 – yet I wouldn’t be surprised if many of you reading this hadn’t heard of it. The blame for that can largely be placed on distributor A24 and their general apathy for the UK/Irish market – despite the incredible word-of-mouth campaign and viral online interest the film released here two months after the American release and I’m not sure if it played outside of Dublin at all, with Cork cinemagoers finally getting a chance to see it at one of only four showings in the Triskel earlier this week. This is why exciting, new cinematic visions struggle to break through – even the avenues specifically in place to get them seen regularly fail to deliver them to the potential audience that exists. Many who have heard of the film may have been put off of seeing it by the seeming specificity of the subject matter. On the surface, the film is a surreal horror story about teenagers trapped in a grim suburban life escaping into the fantasy of a bizarre television show that impinges more and more on their objective reality. Underlying that premise is the overt and much-discussed transgender allegory – the leads come to believe that they are living the wrong lives, that their real selves are just out of reach behind the screen, trapped and suppressed by external circumstances. The parallel with gender dysphoria and LGBTQ+ identities is obvious but that doesn’t mean straight and cisgender people won’t be able to connect to this story – everyone worries that they aren’t being the best version of themselves, projects onto fiction, struggles with life-changing decisions. To focus solely on a single reading of a film is reductive and short-sighted – just because a story is written to represent a specific experience doesn’t mean it should be written off as only for them. By avoiding this film on that basis you’d be depriving yourself of the most exciting, original horror experience of the year. The film truly moves at it’s own pace, revealing information in ways that make it unclear what the characters are truly experiencing and how literal any given moment is. There’s a certain warmth in the nostalgic presentation of 90s culture, yet the nostalgia is also used as a weapon to bludgeon and trap the protagonists. Justice Smith delivers a performance so vulnerable is verges on uncomfortable, soft and passive and utterly helpless in a way male actors rarely get to be, while Brigette Lundy-Paine is curiously affected as the traumatised tough-girl, wide-eyed and abrasive as she leads her shy friend down the rabbit hole and into the world of the “Pink Opaque”, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-styled show that provides most of the out-and-out horror in the first half. Visually surreal and with a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack, this’ll be a must-watch for any horror fan when it eventually winds up streaming somewhere. The exact type of bold original filmmaking we need more of in the mainstream. 9/10.

Soviet Cinema is one of the most fascinating movements in cinema history for one main reason – the material conditions of the productions. Most other cinematic traditions, from the French New Wave and New Hollywood to modern LGBTQ+ cinema, have been defined by struggles between art and commerce. Artists with visions are held back by the resources available to them, as filmmaking is impossible without investment – the people with the money want safety and to maximise profit, so films must be made in a certain way to both minimise cost and maximise potential wide appeal. The less they invest, the lower the risk they are taking. Soviet Cinema saw the usual conflict flipped on it’s head – as all Soviet film was state funded and there was no question of a profit being turned, filmmakers had the freedom to be as innovative, experimental and expensive as they wanted. Without the burden of profit they could take their time, invent new techniques and cinematic language, truly progress the form without worrying about how it would look to an investor or focus group. But while they were formally free, Soviet directors were far more thematically inhibited than their capitalist counterparts, as all that government funding came at a cost. All Soviet film had to be about a limited subject matter – the working class, glorious revolution, collectivisation etc. Very little allowance was made for critique or self-examination, as strict oversight from government committees ensured that the public’s film diet was strictly propaganda. That’s not to say a film like Earth (1930) is without artistic merit, far from it – the editing is way ahead of it’s time, the subtle facial acting a far cry from the stiff theatricality of contemporary Hollywood fare and the scale just as impressive as any modern blockbuster. The limitations of the story have blunted its relevance emotionally and thematically for a modern audience, but there remains something primally moving in the form and construction. 6/10.

Wednesday – The Deer Hunter

A film often accused of originating the “Oscar-Bait” formula, what has to be understood is that The Deer Hunter was a much more difficult sell than the films that earn that label today. Modern Oscar-Bait tends to approach a safe subject matter in a non-provocative manner so that critics can feel good for awarding something “progressive” while audiences won’t be put off by anything potentially discomforting. The Deer Hunter was far from a safe bet – a big budget drama that took a brutally honest approach to the Vietnam War and it’s aftermath, the entire swindle of releasing it at the very end of awards season was that an Oscars campaign would convince audiences to give it a shot despite the controversial subject matter and execution. Structurally, this is an insane film, defying narrative convention by stretching single events out to ludicrous lengths. The entire opening hour introduces us to our heroes by charting the before, during and after of a small-town wedding in loving detail. From there we hard-cut to napalm raining down on a Vietnamese village and an excruciatingly long sequence of Russian Roulette that dominates the entire middle of the film and should end with the audience almost as shaken up as the characters. The final hour is a little more episodic but still takes it’s time with seemingly inconsequential sequences – because of course nothing that occurs in a film can be without consequence, by it’s very nature it’s being shown to us for a reason. Some of the film’s thematic intentions are crystal clear – director Michael Cimino bemoans the collapse of the traditional community spirit, with the small-town home of the heroes being an Eden-esque paradise and the connections they have to each other and their home being the only thing that keeps them sane in the face of the horrors of war. Robert De Niro’s emotionally reserved Michael is able to compartmentalise his anguish and return home as almost the same man he was when he left, if perhaps a little more disillusioned. By contrast, Christopher Walken’s Nick cuts himself off from the world he once knew and refuses to come home even as Saigon falls around him – he abandons his past and thus abandons his own self, becoming a husk who can do nothing more than unflinchingly pull a trigger. Politically things are a little more up in the air – the portrayal of the Vietnamese people may not have been intentionally cruel, but it remains indefensibly callous, while the film’s relationship with genuine American patriotism never resolves into a fully clear picture. None of this can detract from the emotional depth of the performances and the grand beauty of the imagery – the wedding ceremony especially is a joy of moving pieces and arresting images. The most “out there” Best Picture winner since Midnight Cowboy, and perhaps only topped since by Silence of the Lambs or Everything Everywhere All At Once when it comes to unconventional picks for the top prize in filmmaking. 9/10.

Thursday – While We’re Young and Frances Ha

While the name Noah Baumbach may not immediately ring a bell for many, you’ve probably at least heard of his most famous film – Marriage Story, the 2019 divorce drama that earned unexpected acclaim and Oscars buzz for a Netflix release. I’m a Baumbach fanatic – Marriage Story is in my Top 40, his previous Netflix film The Meyerowitz Stories in my Top 20, and the others of his I’ve seen all threaten to break into my favourites (except for his limp debut Kicking and Screaming, which is still fascinating as a premonition of things to come). While We’re Young was the second Baumbach film I ever saw and is a solid jumping-on point for the director. It tends closer to straight comedy than his other work, the characters and their struggles rendered somewhat pathetic even in moments of despair – you’re invited to feel for them, but not with them. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play a middle-aged couple who still haven’t quite accepted that they’re getting old – Baumbach was 45 when this film released. Stiller is a documentary filmmaker who earned acclaim as a young man and has spent over a decade languishing in obscurity, not dissimilar from Baumbach’s own track record of critically-adored but barely-seen films – in Stiller, he is imagining a version of himself who doesn’t even have the respect of his peers to console his lack of financial success. Yet Baumbach can also be seen in the film’s “villain”, charming wunderkind Adam Driver. Driver and his wife Amanda Seyfried inspire Stiller and Watts to try and reclaim their youth, to mixed results and much hilarity. Driver can be seen as Baumbach’s reckoning with his own younger self – a charming and undeniably talented artist who talks a big game about artistic integrity but is ultimately lying and schmoozing his way into the industry, falsifying his documentary to create a better narrative and casually taking advantage of Stiller’s kindness to shake him down for connections and resources. Even his wife is just a stepping stone for his grand ambition, as we learn he essentially stole stories from her childhood to build his own image and make his film – I shouldn’t have to explain how this recalls Baumbach’s own split from actress Jennifer Jason Leigh a few years prior to this film. Stiller first admires Driver and his youthful passion, basking in the seeming respect the young man has for his elder and hoping to recapture his own youth through their friendship. His dawning realisation that Driver is using him forces him to confront the failings of his own young self and the reality of where he is in his life now – and how he’s taken his relationship with his wife for granted. Just as Driver uses Seyfried as a resource to be mined and discarded, Stiller is accused of having only wooed his wife to get close to her famous father and kick-start his career, an accusation he resents and which leads him to freeze her out of his work all together. As his work and one-sided feud with Driver increasingly consumes his life, the distance between him and Watts grows. Finally, he has to confront that while he’ll likely never get satisfaction for his grudges against the youth and the world, he can still be happy with what he has – if he can pull himself together enough to hang onto it, that is. 9/10.

While I was in a Baumbach mood I decided to revisit Frances Ha, his second collaboration with future wife Greta Gerwig. They had started dating in the immediate aftermath of his split from Jennifer Jason Leigh, leading to a collaboration that would elevate both of their careers to new heights. Frances Ha is a love letter from Baumbach to his new muse, a star vehicle and showcase of her charm, but it’s also a form of self-therapy for Gerwig, who co-wrote the script. Gerwig had been acting in independent and low-budget films for nearly a decade to little success, making the pivot to writing and directing full-time shortly after Frances Ha, which has been read as Gerwig reckoning with that choice. Frances is an aspiring dancer who has failed to progress beyond the level of apprentice, desperately clinging onto her position at a company that increasingly can’t justify using her for shows. While she’s not “poor-poor”, her lack of stability causes her to grow further and further alienated from her peers, who are moving on and building real grown-up lives for themselves. Much of the film follows her slapdash attempts to cling to her friendships and her supposed freedom, refusing to accept that she needs to move on from her dreams of performing and find something else to fulfil her creatively. We know now that this was the correct choice for Gerwig – three-for-three on Best Picture nominated films and with one of the biggest box office hits of the last few years under her belt. Frances Ha makes it clear that this wasn’t an easy choice – the title character has tied up so much of her own self-image in being a dancer, even if she wasn’t making money doing it, it’s an integral part of how she presents herself to others. Baumbach’s signature dialogue (a pleasing blend of realistic banter with absurd eloquence and wit) makes each episodic scene a delight to sit with, the characters more real than many people you’d meet on the street. Shooting in black-and-white was a bold choice – it certainly gives the film a distinct look, the lack of colour in Frances’ surroundings suggesting how bleak her prospects often are, as well as putting the impetus on the performances and the soundtrack to create the lively mood without relying on colour to lead the audience. Anyone who’s ever had to give up a dream will see themselves in Frances Ha and perhaps take comfort in the idea that an ending isn’t always an ending – you’ve just got to take the leap. 10/10.

Friday – The Great Dictator

The only way this can really be described is as a silent film with sound. That may seem an oxymoron, but it’s undeniably true – The Great Dictator is firmly grounded in the visual language of silent comedies with the added wrinkle of spoken dialogue. There are some moments of wit to be found in the script, though nothing that matches the immediate satisfaction of the physical humour. Charlie Chaplin moves unlike any other actor, from his waddling walk to his repertoire of pratfalls and slip-ups. His opposite but equally impressive movements as the titular dictator are clearly well-researched – despite the mocking and parodical intent of the film he has made sure to be as accurate to the real Hitler as he can, which of course only enhances the mockery. To make someone look absurd by presenting a false version of them is one thing – to present their true self as absurd is more cutting again. The film’s most beautiful and effective moment is also one of it’s most famous, that being the sequence where Chaplin-as-Hitler dances with an inflatable globe. Chaplin’s movements are elegant, the score moving, the image absurd but not outright comedic – that is the secret that makes it so effective. A screaming Hitler flinging himself about the room and cackling with glee as he campily bats about a ball would be funny and insulting, but too easy, too simple. The sequence as it exists is still grounded in the realm of the believable – Chaplin plays it as a serene moment, so calm and refined that it becomes almost chilling. It’s a private moment where the dictator is his true self, lost in a fantasy of world domination that is manifested as something playful, offhanded, mundane. A single wordless sequence evokes more meaning than the entire rest of the script, because words are futile devices – it is action that moves us. The final speech delivered directly to camera is admirable in it’s sentiment, Chaplin speaking from the heart, but it is the presentation of the speech that moves the heart and mind. In proving that the form and techniques of silent cinema still had power in the sound age, Chaplin created a film that is inevitably uneven but undoubtedly impressive, one of the must-watch films for it’s historical context alone. 8/10.

Saturday – Napoleon: The Director’s Cut

The eternal dilemma of the biopic – do you try to cram the entire story of a man’s life into a few hours and hope you can convey the important points well enough to fill in the gaps, or focus on a single episode of the subject’s story? Of course Ridley Scott would go for the former approach, the biopic as epic. Napoleon is not interested in being an education on the subject – books have been written, if you’re that interested. A great biopic doesn’t use cinema as a medium to tell the story of a man, it uses the story of the man as a medium to create cinema. Napoleon is neither lionised nor condemned by the narrative – despite his ambition and his military mind, you come away with the sense that everything he achieves happens independently of his own actions, merely buffeted by wider historical movements. His ultimate lack of agency makes all his talk of fate and destiny strangely fitting, though not in the way he thinks. Even his great romance is out of his control – despite all his love for Josephine and the lengths he goes to hold onto her, their life together is bookended by the decisions of others. There are moments in Phoenix’s performance where he appears to exist outside of himself, as if in a trance. Maybe the entire film is a commentary on the futility of telling the story of a historical figure, a man so enshrined and deified after death that he is not a man anymore but a myth – it’s as if Phoenix’s Napoleon has lived his entire life already and is only waiting for the conclusion he knows is coming. The first act with the excesses of the Revolution and Napoleon’s rise to power is the film’s most electric stretch, setting the stakes on a whirlwind tour of period sights and sounds. Once he takes control of France the narrative practically runs in place until the sudden tumbling downfall at the end – that’s not to say that nothing happens, but it does feel like nothing changes. The stagnancy is thematically intentional but does become a bit of a drag, especially since this version of the film runs over three and a half hours. I wouldn’t say this was too long, but it could have been better paced – if anything it could have used even more of Josephine’s story. All questions of story and themes aside, it’s just a fun action movie, with big bloody battle scenes and some hilarious dialogue. 8/10

Sunday – Paris, Texas

Sometimes a film looks so beautiful you wonder why they can’t all look like that. Paris, Texas paints the American landscape in colours that feel like they’ve been plucked from someone’s imagination, warm and vivid and utterly unreal. Baby-blue skies over the golden sands of the endless deserts, characters sitting in utter blackness illuminated by the red and blue lights of the city at night, gas stations and rooftop car parks bathed in an otherwordly green glow – not a single image in the film feels throwaway. The story is one of the most unique and moving in cinema – a man emerges from the wilderness with no voice or memory of who he is, just a bag of personal effects and a phone number for a man who turns out to be his brother. Harry Dean Stanton delivers an incredible performance as the mysterious amnesiac, transforming in front of our eyes over the film’s runtime. It’s like watching alzheimer’s in reverse – he begins in oblivion, gradually regaining skills and memories until he becomes a fully-formed person once again, the reveal of why he disappeared four years ago as much of a heartbreak to him as it is to the audience. Is he the same man at the end as he was before his memory-loss, or has his experience relearning everything created an all-together new man? Despite how incredible and moving the entire journey is, much of the imagery associated with this film when it comes to posters and other depictions is taken from the climactic scene. It’s not hard to see why – what happens in that booth with the one-way mirror is so quietly devastating that it almost obliterates everything that came before in your mind. The journey has led back to where it began. 10/10.