Barbie

BARBIE
2023 | Dir. Greta Gerwig | 114 Minutes

"Being a human can be pretty uncomfortable. Humans make things up like patriarchy and Barbie just to deal with how uncomfortable it is."


When Barbie suddenly experiences an existential crisis, she must leave Barbie Land and enter the real world to find the root cause of her troubling thoughts. Tagging along, Ken discovers patriarchy and returns to Barbie Land to reshape it into a world ruled by Kens. Barbie and her human allies must work together to save the other Barbies and restore Barbie Land while Barbie works out her issues.

Written and directed by Greta Gerwig, Barbie is a phenomenal film that thoroughly deconstructs Mattel's flagship fashion dolls. The narrative capitalizes on the original intent of the product as totems of girlhood aspirations, but also, on a deeper level, it recontextualizes the toys as symbols of the immortal ever-evolving nature of ideas. The inadvertent introduction of patriarchal notions into Barbie Land, an unexpected byproduct of Barbie's odyssey into the real world, serves to escalate the conflict brought on by Ken's unrequited feelings for Barbie and humorously places fragile masculinity under a microscope. However, not every idea featured in the picture works. A notable misstep is the corporate subplot featuring the all-male group of Mattel executives that doesn't quite add up to very much either comedically or thematically. All in all, for what could have been a shallow feature-length toy advertisement, Barbie contains a multitude of ideas and makes a stirring statement for female empowerment.

On a technical level, Barbie is truly marvelous. The fully-realized Barbie Land sets are a sight to behold, as are the meticulously-designed costumes for the various characters that authentically replicate actual Mattel dolls and playsets. Hilariously, Gerwig takes the opportunity to deliberately call attention to infamous poorly-received and discontinued products. The various song and dance numbers are very funny and executed with gleeful panache featuring incredibly clever songwriting and brilliant choreography. 

Margot Robbie is perfectly cast in the lead role as Stereotypical Barbie (despite what narrator Helen Mirren says in an audience-rousing one-off gag), giving an exceptionally engaging performance as the doll takes on both an emotional and metaphysical journey. Playing the dimwitted Ken to Robbie's Barbie in his funniest performance to date, Ryan Gosling makes for a superb absurd antagonist fully embodying misguided heartbreak and machismo. As frustrated everywoman Mattel employee Gloria, America Ferrera is particularly excellent, earnestly delivering one of the most entertaining but also one of the most upsettingly accurate monologues ever about being a woman. Standing out from the massive supporting cast are Ariana Greenblatt as Gloria's disaffected teenage daughter Sasha, Kate McKinnon as the wise and bizarre overplayed and worn-out Weird Barbie, Simu Liu as the charismatic rival Ken to Gosling's, Michael Cera as the awkward singular Ken friend Allan, and comedy legend Rhea Perlman as the ghost of Barbie's literal maker Ruth Handler.

Greta Gerwig's Barbie is a metatextual comedy masterpiece that both challenges and celebrates the monolithic toy line. Hilarious, touching, and delightfully weird, this film is a soul-nourishing tonal smorgasbord. Featuring a completely committed star-studded cast and spectacular production design, it's a fun and colorful nearly-perfect ride through and through that's more enlightening than preachy despite being the sort of movie that wears its progressive messages on its hot pink sleeve.


FRAGMENTS
- Barbie and Oppenheimer were released on the July 21, 2023 in the United States, creating the cultural phenomenon dubbed the "Barbenheimer" in which moviegoers opted to watch both pictures as a tonally-contrasting double feature, significantly benefitting both films financially

- Issa Rae also appears in 2024 Best Picture Academy Award Nominee American Fiction

- The Ken actors shared a group text, though Michael Cera, the one Allen, was not included naturally

- Ryan Gosling is a fan of Doctor Who and was elated when he learned co-star Ncuti Gatwa was cast as the Doctor while shooting Barbie

- Shooting on the neighboring soundstages, the cast and crew of Fast X would often visit and hang out on the Barbie Land set

- The use of Matchbox Twenty's "Push" as the song that the Kens would sing "at you" is straight-up ingenious




MCU CONNECTIONS
- Ariana Greenblatt (Gamora in Avengers: Infinity War)

- Simu Liu (Xu Shang-Chi in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings)
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Anatomie d'une chute (Anatomy of a Fall)

ANATOMIE D'UNE CHUTE (ANATOMY OF A FALL)
2023 | Dir. Justine Triet | 152 Minutes

"When we've looked everywhere and still don't understand how the thing happened, I think we have to ask why it happened."


A difficult court trial unfolds after a man plummets to his death under questionable circumstances in southeastern France. Suspected of murdering her husband, a German novelist struggles to plead her case to the French court as well as her grieving son.

Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall is an intense courtroom drama that engages its audience by meticulously providing the facts behind the death of an unhappy husband while gradually building an emotionally challenging narrative surrounding the deterioration of a marriage. As the trial continues, it becomes clear that not only is the wife on trial but her relationship with the deceased is subject to judgment as well. The narrative conceit that the key witness for both the trial and the breakdown of a marriage is a visually-impaired child is nothing short of ingenious, as justice in this case is literally blind but with intimate knowledge of the dynamic within the troubled household. By design, Triet offers no definitive answer as to whether the husband died by murder or suicide, but instead appeals to the audience to look past the inconclusive facts and discover their own emotional truth.

Masterfully written, language plays a key part in Anatomy of a Fall, leaning heavily into the film's themes surrounding communication. The narrative draws attention to the German wife and French husband's decision to speak English as a compromise in their relationship, a compromise that has failed spectacularly as illustrated in the sequence playing back a secretly recorded contentious exchange turned violent between husband and wife. This failure to communicate is symbolic of their marriage and presents itself as a major conflict for her in the French-speaking courtroom. By its final act, the picture also heavily implies the husband's failure to communicate his festering depression, as their son is tasked to draw a heartbreaking conclusion based on a cryptic conversation they once shared.

In the complex lead role, Sandra Hüller is spectacular, absolutely sympathetic through and through despite lingering doubts regarding her character's innocence. Young actor Milo Machado Graner gives an emotionally resonant stand-out performance as the legally blind son Daniel, an incredibly tough role to play. Also standing out is the Border Collie Messi who played Daniel's guide dog Snoop, delivering perhaps one of the most affecting film performances ever from a canine actor.

Anatomy of a Fall is as much about the communication breakdown between two spouses as it is about the inherent difficulty in communication between a German murder suspect and the French justice system. Driven by a brilliant screenplay and powerful performances, the picture presents the ending of a relationship put on public display in unsettling invasive detail. It's a feature that demands audience engagement, refusing to provide easy conclusions.


FRAGMENTS
- Sandra Hüller also appears in 2024 Best Picture Academy Award Nominee The Zone of Interest

- Antoine Reinartz who plays the prosecutor bears a striking resemblance to beloved American comedian Paul Scheer

- Anatomy of a Fall won the Palme d'Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, and Snoop actor Messi most deservedly won the Palm Dog Award

- It is patently ridiculous that France submitted La Passion de Dodin Bouffant (The Taste of Things) instead of this film as their entry for the 2024 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film
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American Fiction

AMERICAN FICTION
2023 | Dir. Cord Jefferson | 117 Minutes

"Whole soaring narratives about Black folks in dire circumstances who still manage to maintain their dignity before they die. I mean, I'm not saying these things aren't real, but we're also more than this."


Fed up with deeply flawed but profitable portrayals of African Americans and his own lack of recognition, opinionated English professor and struggling novelist Thelonious "Monk" Ellison writes a satirical "Black" novel under a pseudonym to amuse himself. Unexpectedly, Monk's new book is an immediate success despite his best efforts to sabotage its publication. However, as one crisis after another strikes Monk's family, he must choose between his personal sense of integrity and financial stability.

Adapted from Percival Everett's novel Erasure, Cord Jefferson's American Fiction is a razor-sharp comedy that amusingly deconstructs the rather tired and oftentimes ignorant tropes of marketable African American narratives. The picture criticizes representation in media that leans into stereotypes ranging from frustratingly worn-out to outright offensive through the perspective of a talented and outspoken main character. The most intriguing aspect of the story is that the protagonist carries his own unique personal struggles and deep-seated flaws that no broad generalization would be able to capture, and within the specific lies the genuinely relatable qualities of the character.

While American Fiction unfolds from Monk's point of view, the film decidedly does not portray him as an infallible paragon, but instead encourages the audience to question Monk's biases and to think critically for themselves. The writer's pretentiousness and petty judgmental attitude prove to be significant obstacles that he doesn't quite overcome by the time the credits roll. Monk's resentment ultimately costs him his love interest, his inherent bias towards another Black writer is directly challenged by the novelist herself in one excellent scene, he is the last in his family to discover the father he idolized was not a faithful husband, and he ultimately sells out for profit albeit reluctantly out of desperate financial need. While the story's various subplots either lack substantial closure or resolve in ways without completing conventional narrative arcs, the lack of neat and tidy resolution serves to add realism to the picture as a whole as well as reflect ongoing conversations around representation that will never be resolved completely.

In the role of Monk, Jeffrey Wright is brilliant as the frustrated intellectual making bad art on a lark, hilariously balancing charisma and snobbery. John Ortiz makes for an affable pragmatic voice of reason playing Monk's publisher Arthur. As love interest Coraline, Erika Alexander is affable and capably presents a reasonable counterpoint to Monk's resentment for general audiences. Sterling K. Brown delivers an incredibly funny scene-stealing performance as Monk's newly-divorced perpetually drug-addled brother Cliff. The supporting cast also features Tracee Ellis Ross as Monk's humorously sardonic sister Lisa and Issa Rae as the successful novelist Sintara Golden and subject of Monk's ire.

American Fiction dissects the value of flawed representation while cleverly weaving a funny, challenging, and heartbreaking yarn. Rather boldly, the film elects to not offer any measure of resolution. One could argue that its lack of closure imbues the film with invaluable authenticity.


FRAGMENTS
- Issa Rae also appears in 2024 Best Picture Academy Award Nominee Barbie

- Miriam Shor also appears in 2024 Best Picture Academy Award Nominee Maestro

- Always fun to see Keith David in a film however minor the role


007 CONNECTIONS
Jeffrey Wright (Felix Leiter in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and No Time To Die)


MCU CONNECTIONS
- Sterling K. Brown (N'Jobu in Black Panther)

- Miriam Shor (Recorder Vim in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3)

- Leslie Uggams (Blind Al in Deadpool & Wolverine)

- Keith David (Documentary Narrator in Spider-Man: Brand New Day)
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The 96th Academy Awards

My ranking of the Best Picture Oscar contenders of 2024:


* Actual Winner
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The Marvels

THE MARVELS
2023 | Dir. Nia DaCosta | 105 Minutes

"You can stand tall without standing alone."


A crisis erupts in space brought on by a vengeful Kree leader with a grudge against Carol Danvers, inadvertently cosmically entangling Carol with her estranged family friend Monica Rambeau and the heroic Captain Marvel fangirl Kamala Khan. The trio of light-based-superpower-wielding women must join forces to protect the very fabric of the universe.

More than any Marvel Studios film before it, The Marvels is bafflingly inaccessible for casual viewers while the picture as a whole only serves to tease potentially exciting overarching plot developments to come for devotees of the cinematic multiverse. As a sequel to Captain Marvel, it's surprisingly disappointing, offering frustratingly thin character development for Carol Danvers who has made seemingly very little progress to recover her lost memories since her last appearance. The plot only scratches the surface of the inherent drama behind a superpowered being capable of making horrifyingly terrible mistakes -- such as destroying an evil planet-controlling AI by committing what may be considered an intergalactic war crime in the process! Though it's understandable that the overall tone of the picture is meant to be light and fun, this plot revelation is dark and intriguing, and the film more or less handwaves it away by the time it wraps up its narrative. Conversely, The Marvels does an excellent job of furthering the ongoing story arcs of Monica Rambeau and (especially) Kamala Khan, rewarding devotees who adored the WandaVision and Ms. Marvel miniseries on which they respectively had starring roles, with Monica finally resolving her issues with Carol and Kamala learning her idol isn't totally perfect while accepting her as a friend. However, such storytelling decisions mean little to anyone who wasn't onboard for those shows, and are decidedly not an ideal fit for the structure of a complete film.

The Marvels is at times a puzzlingly flawed ride for a project with a blockbuster Marvel Studios level budget. From the shoddy editing (Kamala switches from being in street clothes to her superhero costume and inexplicably back again between spatial swaps at the start of the film) to the hit-or-miss broad humor (the middle act features a planet where the primary language is song) to the under-baked ideas (the climatic battle is intercut with a satellite evacuation by Flerken ingestion), too much of the picture just doesn't quite gel from scene to scene. However, the action set pieces are undeniably a lot of fun courtesy of the randomized swapping of the heroic trio, notably the multi-location fight scene in the first act and the three-against-one climatic battle.

Returning as Carol Danvers, Brie Larson does her best to bring emotional weight to the all-powerful but less-than-perfect Captain Marvel, her greatest challenge is evidently wrestling with a script that requires her to be flip-flop radically between funny and dramatic while offering little in the way of tangible character motivation. Completing her character arc that began in earnest on WandaVision, Teyonah Parris gives a convincingly heartfelt performance as Monica Rambeau, genuinely touching in her portrayal of a woman overcoming her resentment towards an estranged family member. The indisputable MVP of The Marvels is Iman Vellani's Kamala Khan, bringing an overabundance of infectious enthusiasm to the screen, Vellani with her natural charisma is more often than not the saving grace for scenes that don't quite work. Zawe Ashton fills the thankless role of sky beam generator antagonist Dar-Benn, a villain who is interesting and nuanced in theory but barely registers as an actual character in the grand scheme of things. Samuel L. Jackson once again returns as Nick Fury though ill-fittingly in a much more over-the-top comedic capacity than ever before. The cast also features Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, and Saagar Shaikh reprising their Ms. Marvel roles as Kamala's family in a few scene-stealing moments, and Park Seo-joon in a small part as Carol's secret singing alien prince husband.

Objectively, The Marvels is a disjointed, haphazardly structured film that is a textbook example of all of the shortcomings of the Marvel Studios machine. The picture is simply a woefully incomplete experience on its own. However, diehard fans of the mega-franchise should find the fantastic action and the sillier-than-usual hijinks amusing enough, particularly those invested in the characters established on the various ancillary miniseries -- which likely limits the intended appeal of the feature to a rather exclusive audience.


MID-CREDITS STINGER
Monica Rambeau awakens in another world, meeting a young variant of her mother and a furry blue scientist (Kelsey Grammer). The beastly genius examines Monica and deducts that she is from a parallel universe.


FRAGMENTS
- The Marvel Studios logo that opens the film primarily features footage from Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau, and Kamala Khan's past MCU appearances

- While it's neat that Laura Karpman's score features references to Kamala Khan's theme from Ms. Marvel, Pinar Toprak's theme for Carol Danvers from Captain Marvel which was also referenced in Avengers: Endgame is sorely missed

- I usually don't have any issues with MCU tonal shifts, but seeing such a dour Nick Fury on Secret Invasion (which takes place directly before this film) switch to super silly Nick Fury gives me major tonal whiplash

- Kamala's brother Aamir got married during the events of Ms. Marvel but his wife oddly does not appear in this film, and while he is presumably on the phone with her when the Khans relocate to the SABER satellite halfway through the movie, she is neither seen nor heard even during the epilogue when the Khans move into the Rambeaus' former home in New Orleans

- The cameo appearances by Valkyrie and Kate Bishop are absolutely delightful


007 CONNECTIONS
- Lashana Lynch (Nomi in No Time To Die)
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