The Hateful Eight

I realised something as I sat down to write this review, something that has yet to happen once in the fast-approaching three years since I started Tenouttaten: I had no idea what to fucking write about The Hateful Eight. This realisation was swiftly followed by another creeping thought: this is the first Quentin Tarantino film I've critiqued. And from there, the moments of clarity continued to surge into my brain, as I began to think about my experience watching The Hateful Eight compared to Tarantino's seven (or eight, or nine) other films prior. When the credits for The Hateful Eight rolled, to roughly five minutes following, I was speechless. I knew that I loved it, but I also knew that it had burrowed into me, and I knew that I wouldn't stop thinking about it for a long, long time. The problem was, I had no idea how to collate those thoughts. It was strangely liberating; for once, I wasn't the self-aggrandising boffin who had all the answers but actually has very few answers. I was a tear-filled, gaping-eyed child at the foot of art. This is not dissimilar to how I've walked away from Tarantino's other films - I always leave the cinema in complete awe that his self-assured mash-ups of European expressionist cinema, American/Australian exploitation cinema, and Italian westerns are universally recognised as highbrow entertainment - but there was something else that The Hateful Eight left me with. It's kind of incredible that, after a career approaching 30 years, in which every one of his films has been hyper violent and exploitative to some degree, that I can assuredly say that this is his bleakest, meanest, cruelest, most viciously awful film to date. I think it's the closest he'll come, given that he's said himself that he only has two left in the bag, to making a horror film. And I mean horror in the true sense of the word: this film is fucking horrific. In his prior films, even the lowest of the scum-suck pool had a hint of charisma, or showed a shred of humanity that made their actions slightly more tolerable. In The Hateful Eight, characters that even show a sliver of such stupid sentimentality are punished for it, generally within seconds. If a character shows decency, it's only to disarm or befuddle so that the knife goes into the back all the more easy. Now, while watching awful people do awful things to each other can be entertaining in its own right, that doesn't exactly make it difficult to discuss. Where The Hateful Eight really digs its claws into your fucking eyeballs is that there is a socially political agenda behind all of it. The Hateful Eight continues Tarantino's series of historical revisionist films, but unlike Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, the purpose of The Hateful Eight is not to utilise a fantasy setting to offer up catharsis or triumph during a time of historical oppression. No, the purpose of The Hateful Eight is to utilise a fantasy setting to shine a great big spotlight into the heart of every person sitting in the audience; to prove to you that just because you cheered when Django blew up Candyland, doesn't mean you're not still a fucking racist.

The Hateful Eight takes place after the Civil War. Slavery has been abolished, and African Americans can now live safely and peacefully in their homes. Except that they can't. The Hateful Eight begins with a bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), negotiating to ride in a wagon currently housing fellow bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell), and prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). As Marquis approaches the wagon, John Ruth's pistol comes out the window. John Ruth tells Marquis to stand where he can see him, following that by addressing him as "black fella." Already, we're being presented with the notion that just because something has been declared illegal, that does not automatically eliminate the desire or even the ability for people to continue to do it. When John Ruth realises that he knows Marquis, he sings a different tune, and introduces him to Daisy, letting her know that, to Daisy, Marquis should be known as Major Warren. Without blinking, Daisy says, "Howdy, nigger." She is not met with horror. She is not met with condemnation. Marquis stays silent, and John Ruth laughs uproariously, and says, "Don't you know darkies don't like being called nigger no more? They find it offensive." "I've been called worse," Daisy replies. Legally, slavery is over. Shouldn't it be that with it disappears the signifier of black people's oppression? No. Why the fuck would it? Criminalising something doesn't eliminate the culturally-ingrained desire in people to continue being criminals. This is explored further when the wagon happens upon the maybe-maybe-not new sheriff of the county they're travelling to, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). Chris Mannix is a Lost Causer, a sect of the Confederates that took their loss of the Civil War, and turned it into a noble defeat of a set of heroic values, to continue to uphold nobly, like a true American. And what does Mannix receive for continuing to be a filthy fucking racist? Why, a promotion of course! If we are to believe that he is indeed the new sheriff of Red Rock, then this is communicating that racism didn't die, it just got layered into bureaucracy. While they're travelling together, Marquis and Mannix begin to engage in an argument over their actions during the war. Mannix begins to layer uncertainty towards Marquis, detailing a brave escape he made burning down a Confederate camp he was interred at before adding the caveat that among the casualties of the fire were more Northerners than Southerners. Marquis had murdered his white brothers. Some hero. Marquis fires back at the actions of the Lost Causers; that in spite of, you know, black people not being property anymore, they were still doing their fair share of wanton slaughter for no reason other than not caring that Lincoln said, "Hey, hey. Stop it." That's when Goggins reveals the true intent behind his racism. "When niggers are scared, that's when white folks are safe."

It would seem then that, like Django Unchained, Major Marquis Warren is our moral center; the vessel through which we contrast all of this hateful, utterly repugnant shit, right? Well, hold onto that thought. In this carriage, Marquis has a supporter. In spite of referring to him as black fella, darkie and, occasionally, nigger, John Ruth feels like he and Marquis share a bond that transcends race. They're both bounty hunters, and they're both good at what they do. But they also share a bond that is reliant on race. You see, Major Marquis Warren has a letter from Abraham Lincoln, written to him during the war, where he and the President were pen pals. John Ruth has read this letter, and in the stage coach, asks to read it again. We don't hear the contents of the letter, but at the end, he says, "Ole Mary Todd's calling, so I guess it's time for bed." Looking up at Marquis, tears in his eyes, he smiles at his friend and says, "Ole Mary Todd...that gets me." Marquis smiles back. "That gets me, too." Now, this is before Mannix has joined their party. Later, when Marquis, John Ruth, Daisy, and Mannix have arrived at Minnie's Haberdashery, to wait out a blizzard, and are in the company of Bob (Demian Bachir), Oswaldo Mowbray (Tim Roth), Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), they sit at the table for dinner. Mannix, along with the rest of the room, is now aware that Marquis supposedly has a letter from President Lincoln. Mannix presses the notion of the idea, breaking down the clarifying reality of it into the smallest of minutiae, before exploding into laughter, at the idea that a black man, dishonorably discharged from the military, no less, could have a letter from the President of the United States. This whole time, we watch the reactions of Mannix's interrogation on two faces: Marquis's and John Ruth's. Marquis is mad, but he also knows he's in a room full of people that wouldn't think twice to react twice as violently to a black man acting grumpy. So, he lets it go. Until we focus on John Ruth, and we see the other shoe drop in his head. You see, John Ruth was under the impression that the bond he and Marquis shared absolved him to some degree of the hateful prejudice surrounding him in the world. He's not about to cry for black civil liberties, but he appreciates the novelty of having one that he's "cool with." He asks Marquis is the letter if fake, and Marquis seizes his opportunity to walk away with some dignity. He laughs and says that of course it's fake, before asking if he hurt John Ruth's feelings. John Ruth displays genuine hurt on his face, and says, "As a matter of fact, you did." It's sad, but not in a way that makes you pity John Ruth. It's sad in how pathetic it is. Marquis elaborates by saying that if it were not for that letter, he would be frozen in the blizzard. It was the creation of that letter that allowed him to get by relatively openly in a white society. Echoing Mannix's earlier sentiment, and further highlighting the ouroboros, Marquis says, "The only time black folks are safe, is when white folks is disarmed. And this letter had the desired effect of disarming white folks." This damages John Ruth, to the point that he lets his guard down, and we see that his one black friend proving he wasn't racist was nothing but a paper-thin barrier torn to shreds at the first instance of a black man treating him wrong. "So I guess it's true what they say about you people. You can't believe a fuckin' word that comes outta your mouths." Poor Major Marquis Warren can't catch a break, right? Well, good thing this is Quentin's Revisionist Hour, where Marquis will heroically thwart oppression and ride into the sunset, because, like Django, he's our moral center in a sea of injustice, right? Dead fucking wrong. Marquis is a product of this society, like every other motherfucker in this world, and Marquis is a piece of shit, like every other motherfucker in this world. Now that his security blanket, the Lincoln letter, is gone, Marquis gains the courage to reveal who he truly is. Actually, let me rephrase that: who the society around him made him. Seemingly displaying an act of human decency amongst the cavalcade of hatred, he gets a bowl of soup and offers it to the General Sandy Smithers, sitting by the fire because he refused to eat at the same table as a black man. He asks if he can sit with him, and they start to, respectfully, share war stories. It seems like Marquis is trying to ground himself after the aforementioned revelation, to show that he can stand above it all with dignity. Truly, he was just looking for the clarifying detail that Sandy Smither's son is who Marquis thought he was, at which point he puts a pistol on the table beside Smithers, gets up, walks across the room, and painfully, excruciatingly, details the story of how he murdered Chester Charles Smithers. But he didn't just murder him. No, that would be too easy for the son of General Sandy Smithers, the Bloody Nigger Killer of Baton Rouge. Marquis marched Chester Charles Smither through the snow, naked, until all he could beg for was a blanket. For warmth. Major Marquis Warren offered warmth in the form of his erect penis in Chester Charles Smither's mouth, with the promise of a blanket after. But like the letter, there was no blanket. There was only a scared, frozen white boy sucking on a black man's dick, receiving a bullet to the head for his service. Sandy Smithers grabs the pistol, rises to his feet, Marquis shoots him down, and we're left wondering what the fuck to think. How the fuck to feel.

So, The Hateful Eight is complicated. That's because it's supposed to be. Like I mentioned previously, this is not triumphant fantasy. This is high-concept reality. Though the film takes place in the late 1800s, its rhetoric hits right now. We knew about The Hateful Eight quite a while ago, and it might surprise you to learn that in the original draft of the screenplay, Abraham Lincoln's letter was real. During the timespan between it being real and it being fake, Ferguson, Missouri happened, among others. I don't think it's too insane a leap to see a connection between the two. Over the last year and change, we have slowly become more and more aware that, try as we might to believe we are a progressive society getting better every day, and that slavery and the racism that came with it is nothing but an ugly, though healed, scar on human history, long past, the reality is that things are no better. If anything, it's more insidious. Few are openly racist, and therefore honest. Racism, and crimes as a result of it, are hidden in bureaucracy and procedure, in such a way that it allows the white police chief to hop on the news and say that the poor, unarmed black kid bleeding out in the street was a criminal who was treated accordingly and with due process by the officer of the law who's back at home high-fiving his family for getting a pension package for his hard work, along with commendations for the killer headshot on a nigger. To go back to the film, are you starting to see the connection? Remember how Mannix got the sheriff's job? It's through this lens of historical revisionism that Tarantino is able to cut even more cleanly, and viciously, to the truth of the matter. Racism is not dead, it's thriving. It's legal again. But, come on, we know this is wrong, right? We know this is utterly fucking despicable. But what are we to do? How in the hell are we supposed to fix this deeply ingrained cultural perspective that's older than we are and will likely outlive us all? Well, The Hateful Eight has an answer: we just need to find ourselves a new nigger. By the end of the film, Marquis and Mannix aren't just working together, they're almost friends. In a final shot (along with the whole film) that beautifully references the literal and tonal implications of John Carpenter's The Thing, Marquis and Mannix await their deaths in each other's welcome company now that they've slayed the monster. The monster, you ask? It's Daisy Domergue, hanging from a rope in front of them. Because if there's one thing that crackers and niggers can agree on, it's that the only thing worse than a cracker or a nigger is a bitch. Daisy's crimes go mostly unmentioned, but you can be damn sure it doesn't even approach the atrocities that both of these men have committed in their time. But this isn't personal, it's cultural. We're fixing racism here. When human beings have spent their whole lives defying logic and rational thought in order to ruthlessly oppress a group known as different, the only way to end that oppression is to find another group. Hell, consider the film's opening shot: for three minutes, the camera slowly pulls out from an extreme close-up of a wood-carved Jesus on the cross, the only landmark in the vast, open landscape; a testament to this country's dedication to prejudicial persecution. Jesus was a lone snake oil salesman, who was unique in that his snake oil was really just a set of philosophical values designed to improve humanity, who was deemed different, inferior, and deserving of death. Jesus was alone. Jesus was the original nigger. This same communication of the dangers of biological isolation is on the wall as soon as everyone's holed up in Minnie's Haberdashery. John Ruth, Mannix, and every other swinging dick debate endlessly over what they should be referring to each other as, but nobody bats an eyelid at calling Daisy a bitch or a tramp, or Marquis a nigger. Consider the population of the room, as well: you've got six white men, one black man, and one woman. Daisy and Marquis are isolated in this room, and Daisy relies on the support network of her gang, identities concealed, to be there for her should her biology compromise her safety. When they're all gone, what more does she have left? She attempts to bargain with Mannix to murder Marquis and collect bounties on the gang members whose faces are still intact and let Daisy go free. The reason Mannix refuses - what turns Daisy into the new qualifier to subject to savage intolerance - seems almost trivial in the light of not only this night, but all of history. Daisy didn't warn Mannix that the coffee he almost drank was poisoned. And, with that, she was doomed.

Earlier in the film, Oswaldo Mowbray is explaining the difference between justice and frontier justice through the lens of his occupation as a hangman to Daisy, a scene that gains an extra layer on second viewing knowing that he is, in fact, a member of her gang. He puts forth one scenario, in which Daisy is brought to Red Rock, tried for her crimes, found guilty, and hanged in the town square by an executioner, and labels it justice. He then puts forth another scenario, in which civilians, potentially friends or family of the dead, hang Daisy themselves, and labels it frontier justice. He acknowledges that frontier justice, while cathartic, is in danger of not being justice, for the person hanging from the rope may not deserve to be there. The difference, he posits, is himself, the hangman. "The man who pulls the lever that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man. And that dispassion is the very essence of justice. For justice delivered without dispassion, is always in danger of not being justice." Fast-forward to the end of the film. Oswaldo Mowbray is dead. Daisy Domergue is hanged by Major Marquis Warren and maybe-maybe-not Sheriff Chris Mannix. No trial. No town square. She is strung up from the rafters of Minnie's Haberdashery by a rope, tied to a bed post. It's frontier justice. Is it also justice? Who the fuck cares? Was slavery justice? Who the fuck cares? Was Ferguson, Missouri justice? Who the fuck cares? In that moment, right there, pick whichever one you want, it was just a bitch or a nigger getting what was coming to them. Outside, the law can call it whatever it wants to. The Hateful Eight puts forth that justice has never been dispassionate, and by turn, has never truly been justice. It's only ever been a lie to cover the ugly, black, cancerous truth: white people like oppression because it keeps them strong. But deep down, they know that it isn't right, so they need to layer lie upon lie upon lie, to cover the reality and turn it into something greater. To turn it into an ideal. To then claim that it is, indeed, justice, and racism is, indeed, over. We see the lie grow in The Hateful Eight. Marquis and Mannix deliver frontier justice to Daisy, and as her lifeless body swings, two hateful eyes planted dead on her executioners, Mannix asks if he can read Marquis's fake letter from the President. Marquis obliges, and we finally hear its full contents. Fake Lincoln calls Marquis his friend, and a credit to his race, and hopes their paths will cross again. Reaching the line about Ole Mary Todd, Mannix gets caught, the same way John Ruth did. "That's a nice touch," Mannix says. "Yeah...thanks," Marquis replies. For a second, you genuinely think that they may believe their own bullshit. Then Mannix crumples the note and throws it away. Ah, you see, what he meant was that it's a nice touch to keep up the lie. To put a band-aid over the wound that has already festered, rotten to the core. They've just turned the bitch into the new nigger, and yet they hold Mary Todd up as some ideal figurehead. Mary Todd was a bitch in the same way Daisy Domergue was, but the idea of Mary Todd, the idea of the Lincoln Letter, well, that might just be enough to keep dipshits believing. The Hateful Eight is a tough film to swallow. It is looking for the people that enjoyed Django Unchained but thought that an unarmed black kid running from the police clearly had something to hide, and is delivering them a venom-dripped condemnation that they're probably too stupid to realise, because try as he might, Tarantino just can't not be entertaining. The Hateful Eight is that really perfect sort of film, that encourages discussion through being a shitload of fun. He doesn't want the world to end up this way, and neither should you. But this is too big of a problem to be fixed by one person, regardless of their power or platform. No Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King, or Rosa Parks, or Richard Pryor, or Bill Clinton, or Spike Lee, or Barack Obama, or Kanye West, or Quentin Tarantino is going to be able to fix this on their own. Everybody needs to take responsibility. Everybody needs to admit accountability. Laugh in The Hateful Eight when a character says 'nigger' for humourous effect, but don't walk away without thinking about why you laughed. Black lives matter, and it's time we all stopped thinking that cheering on a black man for murdering his white oppressors gets us off the hook. As Donald Glover so perfectly put it, "You're not not racist 'cos The Wire's in your Netflix queue."

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I originally intended to start this review with, "Breathe out. It's okay. The Force Awakens is good." Unfortunately, real life got in the way and now that this is finally out there, I'm assuming even the people who only had the slightest inkling towards catching it has already done so, and you already know. Breathe out. It's okay. The Force Awakens is good. So, instead, I'm going to give you a brief history on my experiences with this franchise. I've never really cared about Star Wars. Actually, let me rephrase that: I've never really cared about Star Wars as much as you do. I have no active dislike of the franchise - as a child, I actually thought The Phantom Menace was really fun, which is something I still attest to this day, though to a slightly more measured capacity - but it's never really been more than...present...to me. Perhaps it's because the franchise was long out when I was born, and so I wasn't swept up in the cultural heyday when people actually liked the new films that bore the name, or perhaps it just simply wasn't entirely for me. Either way, I think this mindset prepared me perfectly to walk away from The Force Awakens on my first viewing understanding it completely. This film is nothing short of a small miracle. It holds strong reverence for what came before it (everything, mind you, including the ones you hate), while also never losing sight of the new trail it must blaze. It understands the characters so deeply that it allows them to organically take a back seat to the new blood. It subtly breaks just about every rule when it comes to inclusivity in major motion pictures. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I've never really cared about Star Wars. I still don't. But boy oh boy, do I respect the ever-loving shit out of this movie.

First up, let's return to the word I mentioned earlier: characters. These are important - we know that, right? In many ways, characters are your primary source of emotional connection in a film. Your film can live and even thrive without a plot if you've got good characters. It worked with the original trilogy. As far as plots go, they're really not up to the standard of many of their contemporaries, but they have character. It's kind of okay that Boba Fett gets accidentally knocked into a Sarlacc Pit, because every other time we've seen him, he's either looking effortlessly cool or being told by Darth Fucking Vader not to disintegrate anybody. When he falls over, it feels like an unfortunate circumstance that happened to a cool character. J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Arndt got this. They knew how important it was, above all else, to have solid characterisation, especially because they were unable to entirely rely upon the fan's preexisting knowledge when all of these new folk were coming in to play. They also knew that they couldn't spend the duration of the film wheel-spinning through introductions. What we learned of these newbies, we had to learn fast, and every moment with them had to be a banger. So, let's go through the bangers. The film begins with a slaughter of civilians on a desert planet by what is left of The Empire, now going by the name First Order. Amongst the carnage, a ship lands, and out of it emerges our new Darth Vader, now going by the name Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). The first thing I noticed is how much Kylo Ren walked like a, well, like a human. Darth Vader's movement was regularly obfuscated by his cape, making him almost seem like a gliding, ethereal force (heh). This was magnified by the deliberateness of his steps; if he didn't have to walk, he wasn't going to. Kylo Ren's cape is thinner, and flows behind him, making his movement available to see in plain sight, serving to highlight how mystic he does not appear to be. He approaches the captured Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), and we're introduced to our new Han Solo type. Kylo Ren, face covered with a mask not too dissimilar to his former, stares at Poe, saying nothing. Eventually, Poe says glibly, "Who talks first? You talk first? I talk first?" Kylo Ren begins to speak, for the first time, and his voice, like his former, is obscured through a filter. "I'm sorry," Poe cuts him off, "but it's very hard to understand you with that thing." This guy is staring down the new Darth Vader and cracking wise. This guy's got some fucking stones! But, more than that, he's resisting the new evil. Amongst the sea of slaughter around him, he's showing that he's not afraid of the group demanding that he show fear. Don't forget about Kylo Ren just yet, now; we will be coming back to him. Poe is taken back aboard the First Order's ship, where he meets Finn (John Boyega), a Stormtrooper who faced the reality of his employer down on that planet and is having a change of heart. He sneaks Poe to a safe space, removes his helmet, and says he's getting Poe out of here. "Why are you helping me?" Poe asks. "Because it's the right thing to do," Finn replies. There's a pause. "...you need a pilot, don't you?" says Poe. "...I need a pilot," says Finn, and we're introduced to our new Han Solo type. They sneak into the hangar, steal a Tie-Fighter and get the fuck out of there with only a couple of hiccups. Amongst the shouts and whoops, Finn says, "It's good to meet you, Poe." "Good to meet you too, Finn!" Poe shouts back. Boom. Besties. They're soon attacked, the ship crashes, and Finn can't find Poe, believing him to be dead. A full hour later, they reunite by chance at the Rebel Base, and it's the potency of the lightning-fast characterisation that makes us believe that these two are genuinely happy to see each other again. They hug, and smile, and laugh, and get serious in the space of seconds, and we believe all of it.

Now, characterisation in this film is so important, I could spend this entire review on it, but there's more to cover, so I'm going to do my best to integrate, lest I swallow reality and start my book called The Force Awakens Did It Good. You may be aware of this already, but there appears to be a disconnect between the creators and the merchandisers when it comes to the reality that girls like cool shit too. Like all of the superhero films before it, a lot of the merchandise for The Force Awakens isn't including their new Jedi, and kind of their new protagonist, because she's a woman. Now, this is fucking stupid, and I'm not about to say that it isn't, but I think, in this situation, we're looking at it from the wrong angle. This is not because Hasbro has already made efforts to rectify the problem, because including a token for your shitty board game doesn't make up for one damn thing, and it's not because I think there are bigger problems to discuss. It's that when it comes to identifying inclusivity, or lack thereof, there is only so much progress that can be made by crying foul. I know that revolutions are never started by the quiet, and I'm not about to say that we shouldn't shout from the rooftops when we're pissed, but consider the fact that this is maybe the biggest fucking movie ever, and so little of the discourse is reflecting just how many rules of standard Hollywood film representation it breaks. Let's run the list: The film's main character, and seemingly only new Jedi, is Rey (Daisy Ridley), a woman. Beside her, also arguably the film's main character, is Finn, a black man. Beside them is Poe Dameron, a Guatemalan. Against them is Kylo Ren, whose heritage includes English, German, Dutch, Irish, and Scottish. Beside Kylo Ren is General Hux (Domnhall Gleeson), an Irishman playing an Englishman. Pause there; our two main antagonists are Europeans that aren't Russian or German, and they aren't black. Also, helping our heroes are an old woman (Carrie Fisher), two old men (Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill), a giant hairy monster (Peter Mayhew), and two robots. The fact that the film doesn't highlight the race or age of any of these characters, nor does it go to a single length to hide their skin tones or age, for a major motion picture, is fucking astounding, and to continue to cry foul of elements somewhat helpless to other organisations does a disservice to everything the film gets right. But, seeing as positivity doesn't negate the shittiness entirely, lets chip away at it a bit more by highlighting how fucking good Rey is. When Finn first sees her, she's about to get attacked by some thugs. In the time it takes him to race over to her, knight in shining armour, she's already taken care of her would-be oppressors, and we're introduced to our new Han Solo type. When the First Order bears down on them, Finn grabs Rey's hand to lead her to safety. "Why are you holding my hand?" she says. Later, he tries to grab it again. "I know how to run! Stop holding my hand!" Gradually, bit by bit, Rey asserts to Finn that she's plenty capable on her own, a sentiment that is capitalised when it's Finn that needs rescuing from her. Later, when she's captured by Kylo Ren, Finn, Han Solo and Chewbacca launch a stupid-as-all-shit rescue mission that also might stop the First Order. As Finn panics about the odds they're up against, and the fact that she needs them, Han taps him on the shoulder and points out that not only does Rey not need them, but they might need her, communicated visually through the window as Rey tests out her new force abilities to scale a wall. When they are eventually reunited, Rey is overjoyed that Finn came for her, not because she needed to be rescued, but because someone cared enough about her to come looking. It's an emotional rescue, not a physical one, and the strength of that cannot be overstated.

Now, on to the bad stuff, where I point out that it's actually really good stuff. There's been a lot of criticism leveled at this film. Most people can agree that the new characters are shit hot, because that's an objective observation, but beneath that, many can't get past the fact that this film is beat-by-beat kind of a remake of A New Hope. "Lazy filmmaking!" they cry, without pausing to consider that this laziness might actually be intentional; without pausing to consider that maybe it's actually really brave. Yes, this is beat-by-beat kind of a remake of A New Hope, with smatterings of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi for good measure, but that's the point. Consider the world's narrative surrounding this plot: everyone in this universe loves Star Wars as much as you do. Actually, let me rephrase that: everyone in this universe loves what Star Wars used to be as much as you do. Rey plays around in the shell of a downed AT-AT wearing a Rebel pilot's helmet, a handmade stuffed doll Luke Skywalker sitting on her shelf at home. When she meets Han Solo, she's starstruck. "You're THE Han Solo?" she asks. I know that's not what you're mad about, though. You're mad about another Death Star, aren't you? But not just another Death Star, a bigger Death Star, that can kill more than one planet, at the same time! Well, consider the idea that, if you're willing to accept and celebrate that our heroes are in love with the old days, that the villains might just be too. Let's frame this around Kylo Ren, as I firmly believe he's the key to learning to stop worrying and love the J.J. I told you we'd be back. Let's start by acknowledging that his story in this film is how Anakin Skywalker's descent into The Dark Side should have gone. Before his helmet came off, I was already thinking that he behaved like a shitty teenager. His walking was the first clue, then came some of his strange turns-of-phrase, where he almost seemed...snotty, then comes his lightsaber temper tantrum when he doesn't get his way. The writing is almost on the wall before he takes his helmet off, and you see that there's nothing wrong with his face. He's actually quite beautiful. Darth Vader wore the helmet because it was the only thing that kept him not dead. So why is Kylo Ren all dressed up? Because he doesn't want to evoke Darth Vader, he wants to be Darth Vader. More, we come to understand that his indignant behaviour stems from his knowledge that he is not, and may never be, even a shred of the figure that his grandfather was. Oh yeah, he's Han and Leia's kid as well, and a former student of Luke Skywalker. The guilt-tripping as he started to shift from the light to the dark probably contributed to his feelings of being misunderstood, and also probably acted as fuel for him to prove everybody wrong. And, here's the thing: Kylo Ren is an idiot, because he's just a kid, but he is dangerous. Throughout the entire film, Han Solo drops hint upon hint that, given the chance, he's going to confront his son. Our understanding of Han Solo, such as it is, might lead us to believe that this confrontation would involve Han fighting to his last breath to bring his son back to the light. But this is not the Han Solo that we knew. We should have known our Star Wars better; the victory of the big conflicts pale in comparison to the systematic generational losses that our heroes suffer through. A war is nothing when held against the fact that the parents keep fucking up for their children. But not this time. As The First Order begins to charge Starkiller (the new Death Star), sucking the light out of the sun, Han Solo confronts Kylo Ren on a bridge not too dissimilar to another iconic father/son bonding sesh. "BEN," Han bellows, the implications of his son's name ringing in our heads as they approach each other. Ben Solo refuses to acknowledge the man in front of him as his father, but as Han continues to press, layers begin to peel away, and Ben acknowledges that, try as he might, he still feels the pull of The Light. He knows what he has to do in order to fulfill his destiny, but he can't do it alone. "Will you help me?" Ben asks. "Yes," Han replies. "Anything." It's testament to how rock-solid this writing is that, framed differently, this scene could play as Ben pleading for his father to pull him away from The Dark Side; to be good again. But to do so would be to defy that this series has always been about generational failures, and this film is all about letting go of the past. Han's not about to let Ben down again. Seeing his son in pain, he helps the only way that he can. As Starkiller is ready to fire, having sucked out the last of the sun's light, leaving only the dark, Ben fires up his lightsaber, illuminating the room in reds and blacks, and plunges it into his father's chest. As they share a final look, Ben is horrified but sure of what he's done. Han Solo is tired, but in one final gesture, he raises his hand, strokes his son's cheek, and falls off the bridge. As he dies, the staunch refusal of these characters to let go of the past dies with him. It's not an accident that our protagonists are there to see him die, nor is it an excuse for Chewie to win the MVP award for being the only character in the film to successfully shoot Kylo Ren, though as a quick aside, holy shit do our writers get it. The only thing that transcends the force, Light and Dark, is love; Chewie's pain at seeing his best friend perish is more powerful than anything this universe could throw, and holy shit is it heartbreaking to watch. No, our new protagonists and our new antagonist are there for this moment because it's here that they learn that this actually is a brave new world, and they will not be able to look back for answers anymore. Like it or not, they have to take charge. Yes, a Death Star but bigger was a dumb idea, but I guarantee you that at the next corporate board meeting, Kylo Ren's going to have a new pitch. This filters through to the audience as well; Abrams and Co. have proven that they have it within them to make the Star Wars that you loved. Now, you have to trust them when they say they want to take you somewhere new.

  
I swear that one day I'll stop, but watching The Force Awakens, I couldn't help but think about Jurassic World, and how much The Force Awakens is everything that Jurassic World is not. In the Jurassic World version of The Force Awakens, Han would introduce himself only to have Rey react not in wonder and admiration, but with a, "Who? You're old!" It does worry me that Colin Trevorrow is taking the reigns of Episode IX, but given the fact that Disney/Marvel is very much a producer-based house that know what they want and seek directors that will do what they say, as opposed to Steven Spielberg's reputation as a producer, which is to throw money at it and say, "Who gives a fuck? I know I'll make it back", leaves me feeling that it may be okay. Colin Trevorrow's not a bad director, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't know that his film hates its audience. That film's issues stem from cultural problems, not auteur problems, which is why it's so heartening to see a film like The Force Awakens, a film which is certainly more design by committee than others is a film that not just respects its audience, but loves it. Abrams and Co. love you, but more than that, they love Star Wars. They love everything that it was, everything that it is, and everything that it can be. That last one is the important one; while the film does tread the line of being self-referential to the point of being derivative, it does so for a reason, which is to ease you into accepting the new things that are in store. Even better, they demonstrate that these new things will not come at the sacrifice of the emotional components that cause you to love Star Wars so much. This wonderfully diverse group has genuine affection for each other, that, while developed quickly, is not dishonest. It's earned. Is it a film without faults? Of course not. Emperor Snoke is the antagonist not yet mentioned, who is yet another boring J.J. Abrams CGI-monster with dead eyes. Having said that, we see Snoke for all of two minutes, and he's played by Andy Serkis. Who am I to judge before seeing the payoff? There's also the fact that though there are now finally two women in a Star Wars film, their only two interactions are a hug and a one-sided conversation where Leia says to Rey, "May the Force be with you." Emotionally affecting as these moments are, it is a bit disappointing that these characters, who have a shitload to talk about, one having just lost her husband, the other having just lost her father figure, both sharing in The Force, aren't given the 30 seconds it would take to have a fucking conversation. Having said that, this probably isn't the last time these two characters will be in a room, and it is a small fucking miracle that there is finally more than one woman in a Star Wars film. Who am I to judge before seeing the payoff? And that there is the last point I want to leave you with. A lot of people are hanging their hats regarding the future of Star Wars on this film alone, when Disney has been planning from the beginning for not just three new films, but an entire extended universe. There's a plan here. If you haven't received your answer, or you're unhappy with where something ended, consider the fact that you've only received the first fraction of the plan. Abrams and Co.'s job with The Force Awakens was to prove that a good Star Wars movie can still be made. Their greatest achievement was not getting greedy. Breathe out. It's okay. The Force Awakens is good, nothing more, nothing less. And that's nothing short of a miracle.

The Big Short

Finance is difficult to understand. That's not me offering up an opinion, and that's not intended to be a subjective statement. Finance is deliberately difficult to understand. If it weren't engineered to be difficult to understand, we'd all be crack investors living high and large. No, finance is a language developed by the greedy to make the common person feel stupid and stay poor. All the better to keep bleeding that sweet, sweet money. This is a point made very early on in The Big Short: you're an idiot, and that's okay. Nobody expects any more of you, and The Big Short, while it won't hold your hand, also won't talk down to you. But, see, here's the thing: what happens in The Big Short is actually quite simple. A group of freaks (I say that endearingly) who speak in numbers predict that the housing market is in danger of imminent collapse in spite of looking quite healthy. This is due to the humongous increase in approved subprime loans that carry high risk and are seeing fewer and fewer return payments. Taking the opportunity to fuck the banks over for once, these number freaks invest big, big money that they don't have into betting against the housing market, something the banks are more than happy to jump on board with because, remember, everything looks gravy right now. Eventually, they come to realise that the scope and scale of this fraudulent activity on American citizens stretches so far that not only will the housing market collapse, but so will the entire economy. Not only that, but they're not sticking it to the banks at all; the banks know they're about to go under, and they're ready to bail themselves out with poor people's tax dollars. The economy collapses, the number freaks successfully get rich and unsuccessfully fuck the banks over, leaving them miserable, and the banks aren't brought to answer for a single one of their crimes. Ask me if I described that correctly. Go on, ask me. I'm serious. 
"Did you describe that correctly?"
I don't fucking know! I'm not good with numbers, and this shit doesn't make any fucking sense. There is an incredible scene early on in the film where Christian Bale's character, Michael Burry, has just bet somewhere in the range of a billion dollars on the housing market collapsing about two years from now. His hedge fund company has assets totaling around $550 million, and paying premiums of roughly $100 million a month, that gives him about six months of being rich and claiming to be right before being broke and claiming to be right. Understandably, his top investors are pretty sweaty about this. In a confrontation that is heated only on one side, Burry's top investors, one of them his mentor, claim that he has to be joking. Burry, wearing a tattered surf t-shirt, khaki shorts and no shoes, one glass eye drifting aimlessly, mouth half curled as if he's on the verge of understanding a joke we haven't heard yet, quietly says, and I paraphrase and call on earlier scenes, "I don't know how to joke. I don't know how to be funny. Every time I try to complement someone, it somehow comes out like an insult ("That's a nice haircut. Did you do it yourself?"). All I know, is numbers. And I know I'm right." His mentor isn't swayed by his quiet, puppy dog self-disparagement. "Give me my fucking money, you motherfucker." Burry slowly spins his office chair to turn his back to his visitors, trying to communicate to them in the only way he knows how that they can fuck right off. "No," he replies. Burry continually struggles to communicate the reality of this situation to everyone he speaks to, which interestingly is reflected on the whole of The Big Short itself. Remember, finance is difficult to understand, but as it's the central conceit of the film, writer/director Adam McKay certainly goes to lengths to help you understand. Or does he? Throughout the film's duration, I kept changing my mind on whether he was trying to break the nuts and bolts of this concept into digestible pieces of only the necessary information, or whether he was trying to prove that it doesn't matter how you dress up an impenetrable concept, because it will always be impenetrable. Every now and then, he'll pause the film to have celebrities jump in and break down some of the lingo for you. The first is Margot Robbie, sipping champagne whilst taking a bubble bath, as she explains to you what a subprime loan is. It's funny, but I didn't finish the scene understanding any more about housing loans or the housing market in general than when I went in, because Robbie continued to use the convoluted dialogue every other character had been using up until that point. In another example, however, Selena Gomez uses a game of blackjack to describe what a synthetic collateralised debt obligation is, and the far-reaching financial implications that it holds. Ah, now we have something analogous! This is something that's been reframed around my cultural background; something that I can digest. Could I deliver a lecture on the difference between a CDO and a synthetic CDO? Ask me. Come on, ask me.
"Could you deliver a lecture on the difference between a CDO and a synthetic CDO?"
Of course I fucking couldn't! Selena Gomez could be framing it through fucking UNO and it would still be too complicated for me to wrap my head around. But, what I do have now is some context, and some framing, to apply to the situation at hand. I know, based on my understanding of the word 'fraud', and my understanding that a lot of hired-out money to multiple people that cannot pay it back does not hold good prospects, that this is a situation that, as someone who has identified in my life as lower-middle class, is something I should be mad about. But if I'm to keep having this discussion, I need to be able to talk some of the language. Gomez helped me out. Robbie just shouted jargon at me and told me to fuck off. It leaves me wondering what Adam McKay's intent was with The Big Short. Take another film about money, for instance. Though its ultimate intent is to be a case study on the nature of addiction in general, The Wolf of Wall Street has a lot of complicated financial trickery to cover so that you understand how Jordan Belfort got so much fuck you money. And yet, when it comes time for him to be breaking it down for you, he cuts it off midway to acknowledge that you're probably not following, and that's okay, because the most important thing to know is that what he was doing was not legal in the slightest. I appreciate that sentiment, in spite of the fact that I felt my intelligence to be slightly insulted, because The Wolf of Wall Street was being respectfully upfront. The Big Short seems slightly more schizophrenic in its intent. When it calls me an idiot, I can't necessarily disagree, but I also often feel like it hasn't given me the shot to prove otherwise. However, in saying that, perhaps the film did give me every chance. Perhaps I didn't pay enough attention, because I, like most other people, glaze over when intentionally murky numbers and dialogue come into play. And perhaps that's the movie's greatest point. Yes, finance is difficult to understand, but that's because it was made to be that way. If you accept that, you're accepting that you will continue to be fucked over however and whenever your bank pleases. But, and I know this is hard because finance is not only difficult to understand, but boring as fuck, if you acknowledge that it's important, and you pay attention, which I know you have the power to do, you can start to learn, and you can continue to learn, and you can start having discussions, and you can be wrong, and you can learn why you were wrong, and you can learn how to not be wrong the next time, and you can continue to build and amass and develop until, suddenly, you know as much as the banks do. And though they may have the power, you may have the ability to take some of that power away. Not all of it, but just think about how much you could take if everyone had this knowledge. I mean, if we want to get really idealistic, we could bring the banks and the big corps to their knees. We could start a revolution. It has to start somewhere, right? We could stop liking Facebook posts and thinking that's somehow making a change, and start acting. We could find the banks' weaknesses and exploit them, together. We could ensure that there is no tax money to swipe from the poor to bail them out this time. We could make them answer. We could make them pay. We could do this. We really could. But, then again, finance is really difficult to understand. So, what am I saying? The Big Short is an excellent film that raises a tremendous problem only to conclude that there's really nothing we can do about it because we're just too dumb. And, offended as that may leave me, I can't exactly say that's wrong.

Sisters

Were it not for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Sisters would not be a good movie. But Sisters has Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, so it's a good movie. Not only do they elevate the material, they define it. These two are solid proof that not only can women be funny, they can be funnier than most. It's a privilege to live in a world where millions of dollars are thrown into a production that essentially equates to two friends goofing around and doing on camera what they'd be doing with their day anyway, in such a way that I feel like a part of the gang. Also, Diane Wiest uses the word 'cuntingly'. So there's that.

The Revenant

The grand, cosmic joke of Kanye West is that he knows exactly what you think of him, and he knows exactly what you're going to think of him after he steps into the spotlight again. That's the joke. Unlike Shia LaBeouf, this is true post-structuralist performance art, in that Kanye isn't interested in hearing your criticisms of him because he already covered that before the track/award show appearance/shoe happened. How can your criticism land when your thunder has been stolen? Of course, artistic self-awareness isn't worth anything if it isn't in service of some level of rhetoric, but scratch just slightly below the surface of Kanye's most recent musical efforts, and you'll find a man expressing his fears of being a father in the only way he knows how, because try as he might, he's kind of known by everybody. It's okay if you don't like him, but the joke's on you if you don't understand him. I didn't talk about it in my review for Birdman, but to me, the anchor of the film comes when Michael Keaton passes by a man on the street shouting a speech from Macbeth. "It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," he bellows, before turning to Keaton and asking, "Too much?" Birdman is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but it knows that it is, and it's more than upfront with you about that. More so, it's all in service of discussing the lengths an artist sometimes goes to for their craft, and whether or not that's a good thing. It's okay if you don't like Birdman, but the joke's on you if you don't understand it. Or, at least, that's what I thought before I saw The Revenant, a film that is the worst kind of bad, in that it left me questioning whether Alejandro G. Inarritu really did know what he was communicating with Birdman, or if, like the titular character, he too is nothing more than an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Birdman is a film that is loud and dumb for an artistic purpose. The Revenant is a film that is just loud and dumb. During its 150 minute duration, I lost count of how many times I wanted to jump behind the camera, place my hand on Inarritu's shoulder and say, "I get it, dude. I get it. You're very, very good at making a technically brilliant visual, and we're all super proud of you, but could you please get out of your self-aggrandised sphincter and make a fucking movie?" The general public had made up its mind about The Revenant before it had come out. Inarritu and Leonardo DiCaprio had done the press junket rounds, happily declaring that the film's ridiculously tough and gruelling shoot sent them over-time and over-budget in service of artistic vision, like a creator had never done that for their creation before. It's the movies, guys, they're all fucking hard to make. Oh, did Leo actually bite into a buffalo's liver, and actually threw it up immediately? Who gives a fuck? Never mind the fact that beyond you saying so, we don't know if that's true, did you even consider the fact that a grizzled mountain man vomiting up buffalo liver is powerfully uncharacteristic of a grizzled mountain man? Of course not, because you were too preoccupied with reveling in the fact that you managed to make an actor vomit for realsies to consider whether it had any artistic worth in your film. It opens with a long, drawn out attack on American colonialists by Native Americans, in which the camera, for the most part, doesn't cut. It's horrifically violent, and entirely unsympathetic, and for all of the wrong reasons, it reminded me of the opening of Saving Private Ryan. The difference between Saving Private Ryan and The Revenant is that Saving Private Ryan is using uncompromising technical brilliance to reflect how ridiculously fucking horrifying this conflict was, whereas The Revenant is using technical brilliance to reflect how ridiculously fucking brilliant Inarritu is. The camera refuses to stay still at any moment, because it's so desperate for your astonished approval that it can't waste a single second without demonstrating to you how amazing it is that the things they're pulling off were actually pulled off. Never mind the fact that it doesn't matter if you only filmed in natural light on digital because digital will make any lighting look fine, and never mind that the fact that you filmed on digital meant that all manner of post-production touch-ups would have been done to eliminate any inconsistencies or just-straight-up-shitty-bits, because look look look, the camera just ducked because Leo swung towards it, and then he nearly got hit in the head by a Native American, and now we're following the Native American on his horse until he gets shot and falls off, and we fall off with him, and oh look, let's go see what's happening over here whilst every character played by an actor with a name you might recognise is completely safe in spite of the fact that everyone around them is dying because they're exactly where they're supposed to be to continue this hollowed out husk that's masquerading as a narrative! It's an example of this film's staunch adherence to dazzling you with practical effects blended seamlessly with digital (except for the animals), powerfully heightened violence and viscera, and actors truly committed to screaming, shouting, spitting and snarling loud enough that you forget that this is all in the service of jack shit. Leo is mauled by a bear for a five-minute scene that exists for no reason other than to be the film's reason for Leo having a tough time for the rest of it. Such technically artistic devotion is poured into every scene that it numbs you to the possibility of actually being amazed. For me, the most self-congratulatory moment happened when the camera got closer and closer to Leo's face as he lay on the ground, face contorted into a comical rage, snot and blood and drool matted to his scraggly beard, as he breathed fast and ragged. When it feels like the camera can't get any closer, Leo's breath begins to fog up the lens (digitally, not literally, mind you), until it has entirely obfuscated our vision. It's a hell of a shot that means absolutely nothing. And that's where the problem lies. Remember, I've sung the praises of films that want to dazzle you with the real before. But also remember, earlier in this review I stated that your method is your own to define so long as there is a statement behind it. In that regard, The Revenant almost seems like it's making fun of its arthouse contemporaries by entirely neglecting its rhetoric unless Leo is having one of his multiple fever dreams that continually throw bricks at your head labeled, "What This All Means". In one particular stinker, he recalls a conversation he had with his Native American wife before she was murdered by French colonialists. She says that to know the strength of a tree, you look not at the treetops, but at the roots. "Yes," I replied. "Leo's a tree. He won't die because his roots are strong. I get it." Leo then finds himself standing in the middle of nowhere, inside of a demolished church. His dead Native American son, murdered by Tom Hardy and therefore the motivation for Leo to not die so he may murder him right back, appears and they embrace, until Leo blinks and finds his son has been replaced by a tree. "Yes," I replied. "His son is also a tree. He lives on in Leo, the other tree. I get it." Ah, but look again, and you will see that this tree has grown in the centre of the church. "Oh my god, yes," I replied. "God is a tree. God is the one true tree. I fucking get it." It gets worse, though. Either out of fear that the general audience wouldn't be able to keep up, or to once again point and laugh at the pretentious intellectuals who want to find meaning in a gross torture porn, the film ends with Leo literally stating the film's theme to you. After a so-fucking-long-and-outrageously-violent-that-it-becomes-funny fight scene between Leo and Hardy, Leo is choking Hardy to death. Hardy says something along the lines of, "You came all this way just for revenge? Well, enjoy it. Nothing you do will ever bring your boy back." Yeah duh, Hardy, but that's when Leo looks up and sees the Native Americans who have been tracking him from the film's beginning. "Revenge is in God's hands...not mine," Leo says, and pushes Hardy into the water, down river, where the Native Americans scalp him, cross the river, and leave Leo be. Hoo boy, not only has the film spent the majority of its duration being relatively respectful towards Native Americans before trotting out the old "noble savage" trope, and not only are we expected to believe that a group of people whose lives involve tracking took this long to find someone in the fucking snow, but we're also supposed to be amazed by these two lines of dialogue, in spite of the fact that they're revelations that anyone with half a brain could surmise within the first 30 minutes, or that anyone could know from watching any tepid, midday-movie revenge flick. Excess is the true killer. This film's unrelenting technical prowess numbs you to all of its shocks, which makes its cookie-cutter approach to narrative and symbolism all the more hard to accept. Sound and fury with nothing beneath truly does signify nothing. The Revenant is hard, cold, cruel, fake, and lame. The score was good, though.

Spectre

I did something silly recently. Film Crit Hulk wrote a book on the James Bond movies, and I read it. That's not the silly thing; he's an incredible writer and I become a better human being every time I read his work. The silly thing is that I was so pumped on James Bond afterwards, the good and the bad, that I borrowed the boxset of all of them that I'd bought for my Dad one Christmas and spent the next couple of months watching all of them. My conclusion? Most of them are fine. Now, when I say fine, I'm neglecting all of the gender and racial issues deeply entrenched in their existence, partly because you can't judge a film's societal norms based on the societal norms of today, but mostly because that's too much of a topic for an analysis of just one. No, the films are fine, in that very few of them are what I would categorise as great, or even good. Most of them are just fine. They excel in practical stunt work, they mostly respect your intelligence, and even the really bad ones usually have a rad new song to boogie down to (I'm old, fuck you). That kind of changed in 2006 when Martin Campbell kind-of-but-not-really rebooted the franchise with Casino Royale (he kind-of-but-not-really rebooted the franchise with Goldeneye, too). Here was a film that was the antithesis of the few that came before it, especially Die Another Day. It opens with Daniel Craig as Bond beating the ever loving shit out of some poor fucker in a bathroom before drowning him in a sink, a far cry from the slick shots from afar Pierce Brosnan made look so easy. Here was a Bond who wasn't afraid to get angry, or laugh maniacally, or fucking cry when something bad happened to someone he cared about. It also sought to provide context for him being the "sexist, misogynist dinosaur...relic of the Cold War" that Judi Dench once so beautifully described. Its reason wasn't exactly the most sophisticated - Bond fell deeply in love with a woman who betrayed him, mostly for money, therefore he now hates women - but, y'know, baby steps. And you can't help but grimace, not grin in glee, when Bond quips to M at the end of the film that, "The job's done. The bitch is dead." This was a much-needed new step for the character that each subsequent film has attempted to dismantle or flat-out redefine all over again. Quantum of Solace was a series of setpieces that was a clunky attempt at climaxing Casino Royale's brilliant anti-climax and delivering to you the Bond of old. Skyfall was an utterly gorgeous film that concluded that a Bond that has feelings is for pussies, capitalising on this by having him quip that a woman who died holding a glass of scotch was a waste of the alcohol, having a woman who was his equal in combat at the beginning conclude that a secretary's life is more her thing after accidentally shooting Bond, and having Judi Dench bite the bullet to be replaced by cold, unfeeling Ralph Fiennes. Once again, it wanted to deliver to you the Bond of old, but this time, it wasn't a gradual shift towards it, but almost an apology for having the gall to think it could ever be different. Skyfall is the really ugly one, the one that capitalises all of the things that make James Bond hard to stomach. But they were fine. They had qualities that made them enjoyable, until now. Now, we have Spectre; a film that is not gorgeous, but bland and beige, all the better to crystalise and accentuate how monumentally it fucks everything good that came before it.

We're going to cover everything, but let's start with some specifics. One of the things that Casino Royale excelled at was subtle character beats that gave Bond and his counterparts layers of depth that didn't sacrifice or betray their legacy. When Bond finds Vesper shaking in the shower because the blood won't come off her hands, having just murdered someone trying to kill them, Bond sits down beside her and sucks on her fingers. It's a bit too sexual for the moment, but if you look past the literal, you see this sexist, misogynist dinosaur attempting to communicate to someone who he genuinely cares for that the death she caused was not her fault, but his. The blood is his to be responsible for. Fast-forward to the end of the film, where Vesper makes the decision to let herself drown in the elevator of a building crumbling into the waters of Venice to save Bond the pain of her living out the betrayal. As he tears at the iron bars of the elevator like a wild animal, she calms him by taking his hand and putting it against her mouth. Her blood is not on his hands. Not once are words used for these sequences, because they are not needed. An audience can rely on what they're seeing to infer what it means, so long as the camera is in the right place, of course. So, Spectre. There's a scene in Spectre so traditionally Bond-y. James is strapped into a chair, the Bond Villain (Christoph Waltz) sits across from him monologuing, and the Bond Girl (Lea Seydoux) sits off to the side, stripped of agency (truly stripped in this instance; she's a trained combatant who sits entirely unrestrained in an office chair within walking distance of both men, and won't get up and do anything because...woman?). The Bond Villain mentions a moment earlier in the film, where the Bond Henchman (Dave Bautista) used his steel thumbnails (you read that right) to gouge out the eyes of someone who was bad at their job. He says that in the moment between being eyeless and being dead, though the person was still alive, there was nobody inside their head. It's an interesting sentiment, and he asks if Bond noticed. Now, the way storytelling traditionally works, and certainly the case with James Bond being masculine power fantasies, James Bond is us. What he sees, we see. The camera does most of the heavy lifting for us here. What the camera sees, James Bond sees, and we see. Rewind to the scene in question. Did James Bond see this? No, he didn't. The camera wasn't interested in the man, but in the act, leaving focus not on the victim, but the perpetrator. There isn't even a moment devoted to Bond quietly reflecting on the act; he just casually continues looking stoic. What we have here is a collection of decent ideas with no clue towards how to execute them in meaningful ways. Just before this thoughtful rumination on existence and life, Bond and the Bond Girl receive their trademark moment of quiet/going along with the Bond Villain's power play as they are shown to their hotel rooms inside of the Bond Villain's lair. As Bond wanders the room carefully, he notices a framed picture on the mantlepiece of him and his adoptive father and brother. As the Bond Girl wanders her room carefully, she too notices a framed picture of her and her father. These are clearly tied to whatever power play the Bond Villain is engaging in, but never once are they ever brought up again. How displeased Chekov would be. But perhaps the worst of these moments, the one that really stings, comes when Bond is starting to cotton on to the idea that all of the past three film's events might be connected (yep). Tearing apart a secret hideout full of intelligence, he comes across a VHS tape labeled "Vesper - Interrogation", and he stops. Daniel Craig really solidly underplays this moment, as you watch the slightest hint of love, pain, and sorrow creep across his face (remember, Bond was never privy to this moment in Casino Royale, something he acknowledged tore him up inside), before the Bond Girl asks what he's found, he snaps out of it, replies, "Nothing", and tosses the tape violently onto the pile. The problem does not lie with the moment alone. The moment is fine - beautiful, even. The problem lies with the fact that the film sees no reason to make a thematic return to this ever again.

One of the main reasons why Spectre is so godawful at thematically concluding on the interesting things it raises is because it's so preoccupied with reminding you of what came before it. I can say this with some level of authority, given how recently I watched all of the previous films: this is far and away the most self-referential Bond film to date. Now, here's the dangerous game of being self-referential: it has to also have contextual relevance with the scene in question. Has to. If it does have contextual relevance, then one of two things happen:

1. The audience member doesn't know what you're talking about, but it's a subtle reference that doesn't affect their ability to enjoy the film.

2. The audience member does know what you're talking about, and it's a subtle reference that reminds them of why they love the franchise in a way that also complements this new experience.

Inversely, if it doesn't have contextual relevance, then one of two things happen:

1. The audience member doesn't know what you're talking about, and as a result, it's clumsiness affects their ability to enjoy the film.

2. The audience member does know what you're talking about, and as a result, it's clumsiness affects their ability to enjoy the film.
You can probably hazard a guess as to where Spectre falls on this spectrum, and I don't need to go into exhaustive detail on every ham-fisted hark back on a better film, especially when you can read it here, but also especially when there's one that trumps them all. Speculation went wild when the title of the film was announced, as SPECTRE is well-known as the shady organisation behind pretty much all of Bond's exploits in the early films, helmed by Ernst Stavro Blofeld. When Christoph Waltz was announced as the villain, yet again, speculation flew around the internet, because surely that means, given the fact that the Broccoli estate had regained the rights to the character and organisation, that he will be playing Bond's former nemesis. Suspiciously defensive in its rhetoric, the filmmakers were all too quick to remind you that his character's name was Franz Oberhauser, nothing more. Remember Star Trek Into Darkness? Remember everyone watching Benedict Cumberbatch's reveal in the trailer? Remember everyone collectively responding, "So...he's Khan, right?", only to be told, "Uh, no...he's clearly credited as John Harrison, doofus."? Remember watching Star Trek Into Darkness, spending 50% of the film wondering how long it's going to take for the reveal to come, into the point of exhaustion? Remember when Cumberbatch bellows, "I...am...KHAN!", and remember how you reacted? Returning to my above criteria, you may have reacted in one of these two ways:
1. You had no idea who Khan was beforehand, and therefore you don't understand why so much time and weight is being devoted to this character having another name, because as far as you can see (and you are right), it has nothing to do with the overall narrative.
2. You did have an idea of who Khan was beforehand, and therefore you knew that Benedict Cumberbatch was Khan, and you couldn't understand why the film would spend so much time trying to tell you otherwise, because as far as you can see (and you are right), it has nothing to do with the overall narrative.
Fan-service exists because fans do want to be serviced, but they want it in a way that doesn't distract or detract from the experience at hand. J.J. Abrams himself admitted that keeping Khan a mystery was a bad move. Why in the fuck then does Spectre walk down the exact same path? In a lot of ways, it winds up being a dumber delivery of the trope, because it takes two-thirds of the film for the reveal to come on the heels of an all-too-obviously signposted subplot that directly tells you without ever saying the words that Christoph Waltz's character is Bond's foster brother. So, given the fact that he's also obviously Blofeld, you spend two-thirds of the film waiting for it to catch up to you. Unless you don't know who Blofeld is, in which case the amount of time devoted to Christoph Waltz monologuing that he died in the avalanche that also killed Bond's foster father and has been reborn as Blofeld, coupled with Bond's response, "Catchy name", leaves you entirely in the dark, confused by the clumsiness.

How this feeds into the ugly cycle of attempting to set a new table by treading old ground is that the film spends so much time believing it's playing with your expectations on Blofeld that it has no time to actually establish him as Bond's arch-nemesis. That's not to say that the pieces aren't placed on the board, because they are, but they aren't moved at all. Let's go through them. Blofeld is Bond's foster brother, as mentioned. When Bond's parents died, he was sent to live with the Oberhausers, and because Papa Oberhauser spent a bit more time with the kid whose birth parents had just, y'know, fucking ceased to be, little Franz was overcome with jealousy at the analogous 'cuckoo' who had landed in their nest and was pushing the eggs out. Franz's response? To push the eggs out first. He caused the avalanche that killed his father, and 'killed' himself, because if he can't have his dad, then no-one can. Is the film then about Bond coming to terms with his troubled upbringing and seeming character trait to utterly annihilate the lives of anyone he comes in contact with, through the lens of this person who has devoted their lives to annihilating his right back? No, the two characters barely acknowledge their prior history. When Blofeld has an opportunity towards the film's end, believing his nemesis to be dead, he doesn't say something tonally resonant like, "Farewell, brother." He says, "Goodbye, James Bond," like he's nothing more than this week's secret agent trying to fuck up the fun. The film also doesn't have time to delve any deeper into their relationship, because it's too busy detailing how, after the avalanche, Blofeld presumably laid low for a solid decade or three waiting, building SPECTRE, biding his time helming a shadowy megacorp that has the money to literally steal bodies of water until he can comfortably shift that wealth towards ruining the life of the orphan who, it would seem, stole his. Yes, that's right, Blofeld and SPECTRE, have been behind it all. Everything that has happened from Casino Royale to now, has happened underneath the guidance and funding of Blofeld and his cronies. "You've come across me so many times, yet you never saw me," Blofeld muses at a point where the film still thinks it's playing coy with his identity. Yes, you're right, Blofeld, I never saw you, because what you're saying doesn't make a fucking lick of sense. Putting aside the fact that the central conflicts in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall are relatively unrelated and unique, there was some world-ending shit in them; some stuff that, should the villains have been successful, would have kind of put a pin in Blofeld's plan to be the one to put Bond in the ground. Did he know that Bond would prevail? Did he engineer the scenarios so that it would be impossible for Bond to lose? Who fucking cares? When Blofeld describes himself to Bond as "the author of all [his] pain", the only aspect that this provides emotional resonance for is the idea that Blofeld engineered the death of those that Bond cared for, and even then, that's a bold insult to everyone involved in those deaths, none so much as the victims. And the reason I'm sticking on this for so long is because the film does not. Like being Bond's brother, the film has no time to develop the idea that Blofeld was behind the previous films beyond having Christoph Waltz state that he was behind with as much gravitas as he can lend in the 90 seconds he has to devote to it. Towards the film's end, Bond marches through the ruins of MI6, set up as a budget Scaramanga-esque funhouse reminding him of all the deaths he was directly or indirectly responsible for, before coming across Blofeld behind a pane of glass. Sporting a fresh scar down his face (because he's Blofeld, see? Do we have your approval yet?), Bond taunts his new look. The two trade barbs for a short while before the film remembers that they have one of the greatest character actors working right now in their film and gives Christoph Waltz something to do. He stares into Bond's eyes, with a look of pure hatred, before breaking into a fit of giggles and exclaiming through the laughter, "Oh, I've really put you through it, haven't I?" No, not really, Blofeld. You've only said that you have. Because, you see, this isn't all that Spectre is trying to accomplish. It also wants to, as I mentioned at the start of this paragraph, put a cap in setting the table for the new Bond so that the adventures following have a well-established tone and identity. A noble mission, were it not for the fact that this had already been done. Casino Royale set a really nice table for a dinner party, before Quantum of Solace blew through wanting to chuck a few extra useless pieces of cutlery on everything, followed by Skyfall concluding that this table is far too touchy-feely and too damn respectful of women. Each concluded with the notion that this, now, finally, is the Bond that will carry us forward. Spectre seeks to do the exact same, staying the track of Skyfall not just in wanting to excise as much gravitas to the character, but also in walking the exact same narrative throughline. Let's do a thought experiment. I'm going to elevator pitch you a film, you tell me if it's for Skyfall or Spectre:
Right, so this new hotshot of the British government thinks that Bond is old news, trumped by the age of information. He's a figure of significant power, meaning Bond is going to have to come up with a way to contend with him that doesn't involve bullets. But, wait! On top of that, he also has to deal with the sins of the past, as a shadowy character holding a dark secret has emerged, threatening to destroy the life of Bond and everyone he holds dear. To confront this demon, Bond is going to have to go back to the one place he'd thought he'd left behind forever: home.
How did you go? Don't bother telling me your answer, because you're right. Broadly speaking, Skyfall and Spectre are the exact same film, seeking to serve the exact same purpose. You could put forth the argument that, in a way, all of the films prior to Casino Royale are technically the same, but at least they had the respect to be vague about whether or not they were occurring within any kind of canon. Spectre desperately wants to wow you with its notion that a single entity was behind the near 10 years that came before it, but can't be bothered respecting your intelligence enough to think it through.

None of this matters though if the action setpieces are super rad and it all looks great, though, right? Well, bad news there, champ. As I briefly alluded to earlier in this piece, the film is beige. I mean that literally; every modicum of colour has been drained out digitally, leaving you with a monochromatic mess of a movie. The film opens in Mexico during the Day of the Dead festival, one of the most colourful world events we've got. I challenge you to cite me one colour that popped during that segment. Even from a technical standpoint, this setpiece is underwhelming. In spite of it maybe seeming like the first few minutes, in which Bond and an unnamed woman wander through the streets, into a hotel, up an elevator shaft, into a hotel room, where Bond exits through the window onto a rooftop to gain a vantage point for his target, were achieved in a single take, to me the edits were all too obvious. Not that this would usually be a problem - if anything, this is CGI used the way it's supposed to be - but it serves to highlight just how ultimately uninteresting and disengaging this all is. The worst of it comes when Bond ends up chasing his target into a helicopter, which results in a wrestling match between him and the pilot above a gigantic crowd of innocent people. The helicopter swirls and backflips, maneuvers achieved practically, and you'd imagine that the camera would pull back as far as possible in these moments to offer a sense of scale and space in relation to what lies below, right? Nah, get as many close-ups of the chopper as you can, that's what the people want! Ugh. It boggles the mind that, following Roger Deakin's absolutely stellar work on Skyfall, that the response wasn't to at least stick a little to his blueprint of offering different colours and cinematography for each setpiece, but to bring in Hoyte Van Hoytema (whose work on Let the Right One In, her, and Interstellar is thoroughly interesting to look at) to do the exact opposite. It makes sense to want to do something different. It makes no sense to actively work to be uninteresting. In spite of the overt, unnecessary references to From Russia with Love, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Octopussy, the fight scene on the train winds up being the only setpiece in the film that is compelling, because it seeks to achieve something that is artistic. Prior to it, Bond and the Bond Girl are having a drink and flirting playfully. The music swells and soars with them, getting more emotionally drunk on them with every quip and retort. As it crescendos, Bond notices in the reflection of the cocktail shaker the Bond Henchman approaching, too fast for the music to adapt. So when he arrives at the table and kicks it up into Bond and Bond Girl's face, all the score can do is stop. It's a damn good dramatic beat, made all the more resonant as the sound effects of each punch, kick, swipe, stab, and crash is turned up louder than at any other point in the film. Here, unlike the rest of the film, in treading worn ground, it seeks to shake it up, to offer a different angle or interpretation of it. Putting aside the fact that it further reduces Bond Girl's agency by making her the character the Bond Henchman slaps around to emphasise his villainy in spite of her spoken ability to be able to handle herself in a fight, it's this one shining moment of brilliance that makes the rest of the film all the more disappointing. They understand their craft here, so why not everywhere else? Fuck, it features the biggest practical explosion in a film to date, and the scene is rendered hokey and unbelievable because its supreme lack of understanding of spatial awareness places Bond and the Bond Girl in front of the blast, the fucked up field of view obfuscating the carnage and rendering it fake.

In spite of how it may seem, I don't enjoy being this negative on a film. I especially don't enjoy being this negative on a film that belongs to a franchise that, in spite of its problems, I genuinely have an affection for. So, I feel compelled to conclude this piece by getting positive. Does this film do anything well? Yes, of course it does. A lot of people worked on it, and they did a good job, my pointless harping on theming and rhetoric be damned. Film criticism often attributes everything, good or bad, to a director, something I'm just as guilty of as anyone else, but sourcing behind the scenes footage of big productions like this demonstrate just how much hard, relatively thankless, work goes into it, and those people should be commended. Something else the film nails is the music. Thomas Newman delivers far and away the most interesting score for a Bond film yet, that ducks and weaves amongst familiar themes whilst carving interesting new ground, along with Sam Smith's utterly gorgeous and haunting theme song. As far as performances go, Daniel Craig continues to carve out a unique persona of the character, in spite of the numerous narrative beats that attempt to undermine that, Lea Seydoux brings a crazy good intensity to her character when she isn't a plot device to be thrown around or put under the spell of Bond's magic dick, Christoph Waltz puts his all into his role even if he's given nothing to do with it, and in spite of the fact that he could never replace Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes is an unbelievably good actor, and pretty much steals all of the film's laughs, of which, mercifully, there are quite a few. I think that summation of performance highlights Spectre's biggest problem, however, and that is that it is, like most that came before it, fine. It only seems worse because it's fresh, and because of the quality of its direct predecessors. These aren't new issues to the Bond series, however, and in a lot of ways, Spectre sits comfortably amongst the more reviled Roger Moore entries. But even those, as I've mentioned, aren't the worst that cinema has to offer. They do the job, they just don't transcend it. So why does Spectre hurt this much? Because, for a while, we'd moved past this. Casino Royale and, to a lesser degree, Skyfall, had proved that Bond films can have the depth and artistic sophistication of many of its contemporaries, without sacrificing the ingredients that make them what they are. They proved that nostalgia, when restrained, can contribute to something new, something positive. So it's a shame to see Spectre so assuredly jump three steps backwards into idiotic fan-service that nobody asked for and bullshit retconning that spits in the face of what came before it. If a 4,500 word essay isn't enough to communicate it, allow me to conclude with this: Spectre is a lot of things, but more than anything else, it is fine. And there's nothing sadder than that.