Category: Film

Every year, a plethora of holiday films try to leave their mark and define what the spirit of the holiday season truly means. Some are more memorable than others, some ring true no matter how old the holiday novelty theme lasts. Even some this year have the potential to stand the test of time (I’m looking at you Holdovers.) But then, there are some that are so specific in their themes, so intent on what they want to say, they’re properly misdiagnosed as something else to be socially accessible. When I think of the holiday season, I think about capitalism. I think about societal segregation. I think about heightened security. I think about Jingle All the Way.

It’s another way of portraying America: Christmas’s monetary necessity has far surpassed its true value, where the privileged congratulate themselves and the unfortunate suffer. And it didn’t take me until late in my twenties to notice that no holiday film better captures that sad truth than Jingle All the Way.

Having seen it probably a good 25 times, it’s anti-police, anti-capitalist views have been subdued by its seamless, easily accessible plot: a workaholic father tries to get the hottest toy of the Christmas season, the Turbo Man action figure, for his son on Christmas eve. The plot is simple enough that it supplies an outlet to explore deeper subliminal themes.

Jingle All the Way’s views against capitalism are pointed out fairly immediately within the first ten minutes, with the opening of the film being a commercial for the Turbo Man doll a la the Power Rangers, as presumably seen through the eyes of Jamie (Jake Lloyd), Howard Langston’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) son. The sequence that follows it, however, reveals what Jamie truly wants. When Langston is late to Jamie’s karate class, we’re hinted that Jamie doesn’t ultimately want a doll, but a present father, and therefore casts his want for a leading male figure in his life in an action figure.

And yet, it’s this capitalist toy market that makes us think otherwise. American parents are so desperate to please their children through materialistic needs, that they themselves forget to be present in their lives when it truly matters. And when they don’t fulfill their wishes, they fear the worst – not only that their child’s demands aren’t met, but that they’ll grow up in resentment.

This, clearly, is represented in Sinbad’s character, Myron. Acting against Langston’s flaw of being a workaholic, Myron’s character essentially exists as a reminder of what Jamie can turn into if Langston doesn’t get him a Turbo Man doll, encapsulated in the image of Jamie pulling from a bottle of whiskey in a mailman outfit.

But in addition to its anti-capitalist values, Jingle All the Way also abides by an anti-authority, anti-police agenda. Throughout the film, Langston rallies against the police force one way or another, beginning when he’s first pulled over by a cop when rushing to Jamie’s karate class and forced to take an unnecessary breathalyzer test.

These moments further add to a detailed portrait of a man rallying against an establishment when all he’s trying to do is make his kid happy. But whereas the Turbo Man/capitalist ideals go against Langston’s flaw of being a workaholic, the police function as a way of acting against Langston’s trait of being an authority figure. Little by little, as the film progresses, he eases toward fooling the police, even going so far as to impersonate a police officer to save himself during a warehouse raid of criminal Santa Clauses.

And as the film follows this ACAB theme, Langston’s trajectory takes him into becoming the ultimate form of authority: Turbo Man himself. When Langston is suckered into donning the Turbo Man suit for a Christmas parade and somehow becomes “unrecognizable,” the authorities seem to show support for the toy, concluding with a salute by the captain before Langston reveals himself. In fact, the movie is bookended by this juxtaposing thru-line: from when we first see Langston being taken advantage of by authorities, to the authorities showing the upmost respect for Langston, or in this case, Turbo Man.

But the anti-police sentiment goes even deeper when viewed from the perspective of the minority: Myron. Whenever Myron gets into a position of power or gets what he’s after, the police swoop in to take it away, such as the few attempts he makes to achieve a Turbo Man doll. When Myron and Langston hold a radio DJ hostage during a contest to win a Turbo Man, it’s Myron, not Langston, who’s held up by the police while Langston manages to escape. This reoccurs in the end when it’s Myron, not Langston, who’s arrested for sabotaging the Christmas parade, even though Langston broke just as many laws if not more so when donning the Turbo Man suit in attempts to win a Turbo Man. Then why is it Myron, the poor mailman trying to please his son, who gets the short end of the stick? None of this, I’m sure, was by mistake.

After decades of watching this film, its true themes only became clear when I entered maturity. The film this writer sees now is not what was marketed to them in their early years: it was a simple, holiday comedy flick starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. And yet, it acts as a perfect trojan horse: a family holiday classic that preaches against the very infrastructure that birthed it. There have been other anti-holiday films since, this we know. But none have been as subversive, and as subliminal, as Jingle All the Way.

It has now been a full month since Oppenheimer hit U.S. theaters, to which the response has been rapturous if not near unanimous: Oppenheimer is our first awards worthy, earth-shattering epic so far this year. With a scale so big that it demands to be seen in theaters, it’s brought the greater moviegoing world closer to a collective consciousness in how we interpret and talk about film again.

Much has been said about Oppenheimer in the days since: it’s taken over conversations at parties, dinner tables, offices with co-workers, to which most have graduated to the side of fascination rather than critique. The organic engagement has been rewarding, and finally a project such as Oppenheimer has brought film criticism back into the spotlight of contemporary film culture. But with all the commotion surrounding it, just like the nuclear bomb itself, what’s at the center of it? We’ve gotten so caught up with its scale and immersion, what is Oppenheimer really about?

That answer ties into who Oppenheimer was as a person. Much has been said about J. Robert Oppenheimer since the film’s opening and I’m sure to the shock of many in the scientific community, Oppenheimer is now spoken in the same way we speak of Jim Morrison – he’s become more popular in the afterlife than he was during his time here on Earth. He was a womanizer, charming, charismatic in a sophisticated way, and spoke seven languages. He was often apolitical, stuck his nose up at the notion that a human has to be defined by merely one thing, held multiple fascinations, and contained multitudes.

All this, however, also makes up Oppenheimer’s fatal flaw as a protagonist: he was never able to pick one side. His eccentricities and esoteric-ness prevented him from having an ability to choose between right and wrong. He always held a firm stance against permanency. Just like quantum physics, his relation to things we’re constantly evolving and in movement. He had far too curious of a mind not to explore every creative and scientific avenue he came across.

All of this leads to a fantastically flawed individual who would eventually come into conflict with what would be the ultimate choice between right and wrong. And in turn, the film reveals its ultimate story engine: temptation.

Oppenheimer faces temptation throughout the duration of the film, first example being when he poisons his mentor’s apple, which then continues into dabbling in multiple love affairs, which then leads to the curiosity of having the power of a collapsing star in his hand. The entire film encapsulates standing on the precipice of a void the world has never seen before – politically, socially, and personally – and the consequences that follow it. What’s another way of saying that you’re tempted? “I’m considering it.”

These complexities of a man faced with a critical decision leads us to the ultra-paranoid world we live in today. Nolan has given us the ultimate “fuck around and find out” movie. After the bomb came the Cuban Missile Crisis, then Chernobyl, then 9/11, gradually determining a world where security becomes more important than one’s individual freedom.

When all these elements are wrapped into the enigma of Oppenheimer, they ultimately contextualize what it means to be American: a constant push for a manifest destiny, to constantly push the envelope and explore what we thought we couldn’t explore before. Very much like how this country was formed, we find new territory and claim it as ours.

“How could this man who saw so much be so blind?” asks Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). But Oppenheimer wasn’t blind. One could say that the entire country was blinded by the temptation of curiosity and the constant need to walk on fresh snow. That’s the American way. And with it, a legion of the world’s leading geniuses gathered in a desert and ultimately gave us the power to self-destruct ourselves. One of those scientists, Enrico Fermi, later went on to coin the Fermi paradox – the phenomenon of why humans haven’t been contacted by other intelligent beings, perhaps because they too discovered a way to self-destruct themselves before making contact outside of their planet. And out of our own human hubris, perhaps we, too, will come to have a similar fate.

Featured photo courtesy of Universal Pictures

The day we’ve all known has been coming is finally almost upon us. This Friday, July 21^st, the moviegoing world will be offered two choices – one about the start of the end of the world as we know it, and the other about impending mortality. One is about how we have come to live in the world of fear we know today, the other about the finite time we’re given on Earth. One is backed by one of the most exclusive studio deals ever made, and the other has a marketing campaign that reached far beyond the boundaries of print and advertising.

Two viral promotional endeavors. Two vastly different demographics. The two biggest movies of the year. Yes, we’re talking about Barbie and Oppenheimer. Two films that couldn’t be more disparate will forever be held in the same sentence and breath as each other, resuscitating what moviegoing has long missed: an epic, clashing summer blockbuster event.

But the phenomenon forebodes an eerie quality to it as well, as if this may be one of the last big summer cinematic events we’ll see for quite some time. As fun as these two movies clashing appear to be, that’s exactly what’s at stake: summer movie events of such sizes have become few and far between in recent years. Will one film draw success from the other? Can one steal the other’s limelight? Could that lead to one of these films being the last of their kind? Depending on the successes of either of these films, this weekend may very well determine the future of summer movies as we know it.

Where the two films will have their first standoff is with demographics. The target demographics for each of these films is nearly night and day: one for the youth, one for the historians. One for the dads, and one for the daughters. The demographics are so opposite that the public has even branded this historical cinematic event with its own name: “Barbenheimer.”

Without a doubt, there will be crossover, but the numbers will be interesting to see, and just might set a precedent for whichever film does the better business. What might the gross of each film say about the other’s core demographic? And what might that say about similar films in the future? One film’s success might cause the other to become radioactive.

But what’s also at stake is the state of originality in cinematic films. One has to look at where both of these films are coming from to assess their own uniqueness with another. Oppenheimer is a deeply controversial historical figure who’s been mythologized, bad-mouthed, and exiled – a deeply flawed human being that changed the course of history, directed by one of the most singular, cinematic filmmakers of our time. In addition to a deal with Universal at which Nolan requested to have a 90 to 120 day exclusive theatrical window for the film, Oppenheimer also employed IMAX to develop a black-and-white film stock that had never existed before.

Barbie, on the other hand, has its puppet strings controlled by a much larger corporation, Mattel, another addition to Warner Bros’ IP canon. Now that’s not to say Barbie will fall into contrived corporate pitfalls, but one can’t help but feel that the film contains the fingerprints of higher-up executives from a toy company. Like Space Jam 2, or The Flash, one can sense that it’s a film made by a committee. Who is to say that, if one film performs better than the other, then corporate American interests will become more important than cinematic originality in favor of featuring more safe-bet intellectual properties?

However, despite their differences, these two films have more in common than they appear. On paper, we merely see two differing clienteles as if they’re black and white. Yet, both have seeped into the crevices of contemporary American culture on multiple levels: countless memes around the event have circulated the internet, a myriad of fan-made “Barbenheimer” t-shirts and posters have been printed, and both promotional campaigns have stretched into the furthest depths of everyday life where even the most non-movie fans are acutely aware of the phenomenon.

And on a figurative level, the symbolism of “Barbenheimer” goes even further. Both films represent the two extreme sides of American capitalist manufacturing: the nuclear bomb and the Barbie doll – two of USA’s most coveted and prized symbols, both representing two different facets of what it means to be American. Inciting a conversation that goes beyond the stories these films tell on screen, such analytical depths have caused both films to fall into an intangible dance with each other, spurring an organic, viral groundswell of a box-office clash.

Even though both are predicted to gross enough at the box office to make their way well into the green for what could be a near-$200 million dollar weekend, this writer can’t help but feel that “Barbenheimer” is akin to the stars aligning. The two most popular, most anticipated movies of the year coming out not just in the same summer, but the same day? Ones that evoke stakes? Create talking points? Incite pivotal moments that can shift an industry? It feels like movie weekends like this don’t come around that often anymore. Gone are the summer movie seasons like 2008 which introduced us to Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Tropic Thunder, Pineapple Express and many others within mere weeks of each other; movie seasons that gave us options.

Maybe we’ve been so starved of events like this that the rip-roar around these two films premiering on the same day was inevitable. Counter-programming is nothing new when it comes to summer releases, and contrasts as bold as “Barbenheimer” used to be commonplace. So it was an audacious move, genius even, by the studios to program the two most talked about films of the year back-to-back.

What’s truly at stake here is the last desperate fart of a dying summer movie corpse. The last sliver of “summer movie season” as we know it. With the oncoming of day–and–date releases and shorter theatrical windows, the summer movie season has become somewhat of a façade, something similar to how American radio stations try to decide the “song of the summer.” Such events seem futile nowadays. Except “Barbenheimer.” “Barbenheimer” has the chance to resuscitate the worth of seeing a film in a cinema. It has the potential to get the greater public talking about film critically again beyond the internet phenomenon. It has the chance to bring cinematic events back onto the world stage and prove once again that moviegoing is still a subject of contemporary culture – it exists not only as a private obsession, but also a communal experience.

Note: This article contains donkey spoilers

In 2015, the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an article on why humans are fascinated with what they called “animal films,” or, films focusing on animals as their subjects rather than humans. It came to the conclusion that the phenomenon was attributed to the fact that, for the first time in history, a species (humans) has the ability to not only study and reflect on themselves, but to also document and research other species.

The cinema of 2022 seems to have brought that phenomenon to a heightened experience, albeit centered around an animal not so commonly focused on or documented. The donkey (Equus Asinus) seems to have taken the animal spotlight this year, particularly in films pushing for awards attention. Films such as Triangle of Sadness, Banshees of Inisherin, and EO have not just casted donkeys into the limelight, but gave them actual narrative-centric, stakes-heavy roles, even going so far as to make them protagonists in their own right.

But why now? Why this particular animal in this particular year? Well, the first thing one thinks of when they hear the word “donkey” is humor. On top of that, what donkeys also offer, or at least in these particular films, is companionship, thus making the animal great for sidekick roles that add a levity of humor (Shrek, etc.) 2021 and 2022 have had their fair share of ironic humor and wit. Comedy has become so “real” now, that what we used to joke about has now become commonplace. That’s not to say that the humor has gone, but our jokes have now become more of a reality than we previously thought.

With that in mind, no other animal embodies the levity of ironic humor quite like the donkey. Think of a donkey’s purpose: it’s indifferent, lazy, and doesn’t have much of a role on a farm aside from scaring off predators and pulling carts. Its only thought is to survive to the next day. Throughout pop culture, even stretching as far back as fairy tales and fables, the donkey has been the laughing stock of farm animals, which sadly gives it its gloomy reputation (Town Musicians of Bremen, Winnie the Pooh). But it also makes the perfect representation of ironic humor in 2022.

A donkey doesn’t make an appearance in Triangle of Sadness until about two-thirds through the film. But when it does, it’s used as a plot device in perhaps the most ruthless casting of the animal this year. When the upper echelon yacht cruise full of the rich and wealthy is shipwrecked, the affluent passengers are placed on an equal playing field with the yacht’s crew when they don’t know how to care for themselves, flipping the film’s theme of inequality upside down. Starving for food, they come across a donkey, and, well, you could guess what happens next….

The animal is definitely used in a darker comedic sense here, but why not any other animal? Would it have had the same effect had another animal been spared? The donkey tends to be the lowest on the totem pole. They’re a species that always gets the short end of the stick. And when it’s slaughtered, it’s merely a representation of irony dying, the cascading caste system that has descended upon the yacht-goers after being marooned.

But pity humor isn’t the only trait the donkey inherited this year in cinema. The animal also took on the role of companionship, with Banshees of Inisherin going so far as to cast the animal in a supporting role as Pádraic Súilleabháin’s (Colin Farrell’s) sidekick. As everyone starts to leave Padraic’s life due to his toxic trait of being stagnant with his future he begins to become more and more attached to his donkey, the only familiar face that stays behind. Where Triangle sees the donkey as pity-less humor, Banshees breathes life into the animal by casting it through the lens of loyalty. However, as Padraic pushes the ones closest to him away, he also puts the last shred of his donkey’s loyalty at risk, which ultimately dies in the end as well.

But aside from Donkeys perishing in the spotlight, the year in film has also casted them as main characters. The Jury Prize winner at this year’s Cannes film festival, EO follows a donkey that goes astray as it makes its way across Europe. It starts at a circus, where we see our donkey set free by an animal rights group and drift from one owner to the next, oblivious as to what’s carrying him each way. Along the way, he influences the outcome of a soccer match, becomes the mascot for a small town’s celebration, and is even brought into the company of Isabelle Huppert. But the most important element of this film is the stark contrast to our other two previous examples. What this film does that the other two don’t is give our donkey agency, an attempt to overcome the limitations placed upon itself, much like the preconceived notions humans already have when they hear the word “donkey.” Whereas Triangle and Banshees showed the fate of a donkey through a human lens, EO takes the POV of the animal, with the result being a surrealist, stylistic vision showing ultimately how humans interact with the animal kingdom.

Donkeys don’t tend to hold a soft spot for many people. Humans have put them to many uses over the years, including entertainment purposes. And these films go to show that they truly are at the mercy of the humans around them. People tend to argue what the most dangerous animal in the world is, when they’re blind to the fact that humans who are the most dangerous. To return to the article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in our fascination with animal films, in our ability to record and document other creatures, we in turn often forget the implications and consequences of such actions, unaware of the interruptions we cause in their ecosystems. The cinema of 2022 seems to have flipped this perspective through empathy. In showing these consequences from the POV of the animal kingdom, the year gave us a necessary view of how, in studying other species, we also inadvertently record their demise.

The Oscar nominees revealed just three weeks ago point in a direction where the Academy hasn’t really gone before. The films nominated aren’t necessarily box office darlings (not even Dune made it into the green stateside), nor are they franchises or revives (save for West Side Story). Rather, this year’s nominees revolve around subtlety to tell their stories, requiring viewers’ patience and their “dismissal” hat to be hung at the door. They aim to challenge the viewer, which is what any great film should do – test the boundaries of not only what you’re comfortable with, but also push the limits of your empathy. And perhaps this is why this year’s Oscar nominees are not necessarily quiet, but sensitive in their approach of telling their stories.

Let’s start with the first and biggest example: Drive My Car – Japan’s three-hour Oscar submission that’s an adaptation of Murakami whose opening credits don’t even appear until 50 minutes in – is this year’s Oscar favorite just behind The Power of the Dog. The film centers around a stage director (Hidetoshi Nishijima) who loses his wife and accuracy of vision and is forced to hire a driver (Tôko Miura) to transport him to and from rehearsal. At first tricked for self-importance, Drive My Car’s slow and quiet unraveling of its story of empathy thaws and rises to the surface during its lengthy run-time. Perhaps this is the function of the plot – it acts subtly and un-detectable, that its conflict only barely reveals itself. Their connection at first comes off stand-off-ish, but how the film employs the venue of a car for its subjects to be vulnerable with each other only aids the film’s empathy.

But the theme of empathy is not only a foreign affair: The Lost Daughter also maintains roots in its approach to intimate filmmaking. It’s another film whose conflict is not strictly overt, but requires patience and attention to figure out. It centers around a college professor (Olivia Colman) who’s apparently lost touch with her daughters and confronts her unsettling past when she encounters a new mother (Dakota Johnson) and her daughter. You assume her daughters are dead, or even worse, assume she’s at fault. But again, there’s only a very fine line of conflict in the film, most of which is worn and communicated via Colman’s performance. It is not one that is externalized, but internalized. The film’s story may as well have started before the beginning of the film, as that’s what’s implied: the thrusting of Colman’s character into a world she rejects is not necessarily shown, as the film forces the audience to be in Colman’s shoes in order to understand.

But perhaps the most likely film to win the top prize this year is The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion’s period piece western centering around a rugged cowboy (Benedict Cumberbatch) whose world is shaken up when his brother (Jesse Plemmons) brings home a new wife (Kirsten Dunst) and kid (Kodi Smit-Mcphee). The slow-burn conflict focuses on the empathy (or lack thereof) between Cumberbatch and Smit-McPhee. Clearly a homosexual, Smit-McPhee’s character serves to hit Cumberbatch’s vulnerable spots in the most cunning of ways, acting on his flaw of queer repression to change him over a period of time. He does so effectively, but again in such a minute way, externalized only through glances of the eyes and the softest of touches.

The inclusion of these films, and as frontrunners no less, seems to have Twitter scrambling to argue that the Academy is in fact “changing,” but maybe they’re rightfully so. Ever since 2017, the Academy has been inviting younger, more diverse members to join, and perhaps it’s only taken five years in order to see the result. The Academy has nominated “art” films before, but they’ve never been, for lack of better words, this quiet. Take a look back at the arthouse films nominated in the past twenty years. Crash was most definitely the surprise indie to win, but definitely wasn’t subtle in its message. Moonlight was definitely a step forward for the Academy, but that film was driven more by its externalization of empathy more so than subtlety. Roma was an exceptionally well-done film, but its ingenious indulgence of directorial choices and set pieces make it not very self-effacing.

This year’s Oscar nominees also fuel a fire to a debate that’s been resurfacing for a couple years – “why are movies so long nowadays?” With the inclusion of lengthy films such as Drive My Car (2 hours and 59 minutes), Nightmare Alley (2 hours and 30 minutes), and Licorice Pizza (2 hours and 13 minutes), the general public will likely begin to equate awards worthiness and critical acclaim with length. It’s almost as if a movie has to be long to get any awards recognition. But there are two sides to that argument.

The Academy tends to equate length with “seriousness,” indicating craft and skill. The shortest film to ever win best picture is Marty (1 hour and 31 minutes), but even that was an anomaly – it was a comedy, which tend to be shorter (and only four of which, arguably, have ever won best picture), with the average best picture nominee length from the past 20 years easily above the two-hour mark. But is that a necessary pre-requisite? Must a film be of a certain length to capture the attention of the academy?

The other side of the argument is that subtlety does often require patience, at least in terms of a feature length film. In order for a director to not be strictly overt and obvious in telling a story, the film almost needs to challenge the audience in that sense. It needs to bring about and require active viewership. Sure, it can be a film that actively tells you a story while the audience passively receives, but that’s exactly what it will be. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But a “smart” film, the kind that brings about a revelatory experience, requires an active audience. A film is more effective when both sides are actively participating, and the Oscar nominees this year embody that. It’s not to say so much that they are “long,” but they’re films of considerable length in order to accurately “challenge” an audience by asking for attentive viewership. One can argue that the Academy only nominates long films, but another can just as accurately say they nominate films that challenge us.

And when the length is rewarding, those are the ones that often stick with the viewer. The problem isn’t if a film is three hours. What matters is if it feels like three hours. If done effectively, if the writer has done their job, length is secondary. It’s when the narrative drifts out to sea that one starts to notice the length. Seven Samurai is three and a half hours long, but gets to and sticks with the conflict in the first minute.

But for all intents and purposes – yes, these movies are long. But they’re only long because they want to challenge you. It is the nature of filmmaking to actively challenge an audience, to force them outside of their comfort zone. It’s the sheer audacity to transcend what’s possible in film and push the limits of human empathy. Because subtlty drives this year’s Oscar nominees, then they just might be the next phase in film evolution to raise the art to a higher plane of existence.