Tilda Swinton is a rock star.

Few serious film fans would argue with this, but in Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash, it’s literally true. Swinton plays Marianne Lane, a musician who appears to be some kind of cross between Patti Smith and David Bowie. (Can we make this happen in real life, please?) Unfortunately, she’s also suffering from severe strain on her vocal chords (a la Adele), so when we meet her, she’s enjoying a long summer of R&R on an island in the Mediterranean. (That’s how rock stars “rest,” of course.)

That also means Swinton doesn’t actually speak in A Bigger Splash, aside from a few hoarse croakings. Fans of the kooky Oscar winner will be totally unsurprised to learn that that doesn’t diminish her performance in the slightest. A Bigger Splash is a nutty piece of cinema that veers wildly between tones, from the lushly romantic to the absurdly comedic to the melodramatic to the macabre, often even within the same scene. It’s hard to know whether Guadagnino wants us to laugh at or cry with these characters, to empathize with them or look down upon them. Maybe all of this?

The story finds Marianne and her longtime lover, Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), interrupted in their Italian bliss by Marianne’s ex, Harry Hawkes (Ralph Fiennes), a loudmouth music producer whose antics sway fluidly between exhilarating and exhausting. Paul would rather not have Harry stay with them, but Marianne harbors some nostalgia for her cocaine-hazed heyday at his side, so Paul allows it. But Harry has also brought along his young, lost-lost daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson), who makes it clear with a few showy, dramatic looks early on that she intends to cause trouble.

Then again, it’s hard to be sure which of this foursome is the one we should watch out for. Truth be told, they’re all capable of being dangerous and damaging when provoked.

A Bigger Splash has indelible moments of all kinds — comedy, romance, tragedy, horror — including a Rolling Stones dance-along displaying Fiennes in fine form (and much goofier than we usually see him) and a sad denouement in which one character — ostensibly, the movie’s villain, though that’s debatable and your opinion may shift from scene to scene — receives a deserved dressing down at an airport in the rain, and then we end up feeling bad for this person anyway, despite that well-needed comeuppance. In A Bigger Splash, there are three key tensions bubbling under the surface: first, Penelope’s obvious attraction to Paul, brought to light in a slew of come-hither glances he politely deflects; second, Paul’s alcoholism, a demon he’s happily put to bed; third, Harry’s hankering for Marianne. He’s Paul’s polar opposite in so many ways — free-spirited, vibrant, and fun. Paul is the perfect kind of guy for a seen-it-all rock goddess like Marianne to settle down with, but are we sure Marianne wants to be settled down?

In a more conventional film, the way these things play out would be pretty obvious, but A Bigger Splash holds out on all of its tensions, forcing us to constantly wonder what, precisely, this movie is even primarily about, and who we should root for and against. Infidelity is a key threat, but these are unusual people, and we’re not even sure what infidelity means in these relationships. We learn that “anything goes” with Harry, who also has a thing for Paul, and Harry’s rekindled relationship with long-lost daughter is intimate, bordering on incestuous.

This is not a film about a married person dealing with the secrecy and consequences of an extramarital affair, as so many movies are, and as its set-up might have you believe. Paul and Marianne seem genuinely happy; it’s unclear exactly how these somewhat less happy intruders will shake things up, but we know that they will. Thanks to the loss of Marianne’s voice, Swinton does most of her acting with gestures and her expressive face. She’s up to the task, naturally — it’s a beautiful performance (and very well-costumed).

During its most jarring tonal shift, A Bigger Splash does eventually get around to living up to that title, and ends on a note that’s both melodramatically mournful and playfully satirical about Marianne’s fame (which is mostly incidental throughout most of the film).

At times sumptuous, as one would expect from the filmmaker behind his last Swinton collaboration, I Am Love, the cinematography is sometimes erratic to the point of feeling improvisational, stubbornly refusing to settle into any one groove. The cast is nice to look at, in and out of various states of undress, and Fiennes lets it all hang out literally and figuratively in a brazenly funny (and willfully obnoxious) performance. A Bigger Splash is not a film for those who tolerate only the steady, predictable rhythms of a studio film, but offers plenty of pleasures for those seeking a rockier, more offbeat cinematic getaway.

The same is certainly true of The Lobster, the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos, who previously brought us Alps and Dogtooth. Like those films, its premise borders on science fiction, though its execution, his aesthetic is stark and realistic, far from something like Blade Runner. (As with Guadagnino and A Bigger Splash, Lanthimos is working with internationally-known stars in English, unlike his previous works.)

The Lobster takes place in a world where all humans must be paired off with a suitable mate or turned into an animal of their choosing. The first scene — not at all relevant to the plot, but brilliant at setting the tone of this highly unusual story — has a woman carry out an act of vengeance upon a donkey we can only assume wronged her terribly in its previous human form. Then we meet David (Colin Farrell), who is checking into a hotel designed to pair loners up with a suitable mate. He has 45 days to either find a significant other, or become the titular lobster. Anyone who has ever set a romantic deadline — finding a date for Valentine’s Day, or procuring a “plus one” to a wedding — can at least sort of relate.This is the short of movie in which the actors are credited with character names such as “Bandaged Loner,” “Donkey Shooter,” and “Nosebleed Woman’s Best Friend.” Only our protagonist has a proper name. (Well, so does his brother… but his brother is now a dog.) Earlier this year, I joked that Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant played like a horror movie made by American wildlife, but The Lobster has a comparable number of animal casualties. There are plenty of dead critters in The Lobster, although a lobster is not one of them. Point being: this is not a date movie, unless it’s a date you’re hoping to break up with afterward.

Upon arriving at the hotel, guests are forced to surrender their clothing so they can all be dressed identically, and their first night is spent with one arm handcuffed behind their backs as a reminder of how much better two is than one. The Lobster is mercilessly deadpan about these bizarre customs, but of course, it only highlights the many absurdities of pairing off in the first place. In a series of morbidly funny skits, the hotel goes to great lengths to convince its guests of reasons why being a twosome is preferable to being alone (you could choke to death if you eat alone; you can more easily be raped when strolling solo). Hotel guests are also frequently rounded up on organized hunts, forced to literally shoot single people (with tranquilizers), since all singles roam the forests in constant fear of being captured and critter-fied. It’s funny, but it’s also only a slight exaggeration of the way married people view their single friends… right?

The Lobster contains a surprise in every scene. It’s impossible to predict where the story’s going. Early scenes involve David and his two “friends” (played by Ben Whishaw and John C. Reilly), all desperately seeking companionship not because they’re lonely, but because they’ll cease to be human without a mate. Marriage itself doesn’t seem to exist in this world; choosing a partner is enough. Children are “assigned” later. David has a couple of potential partners: a woman who announces her plans to commit suicide if she can’t find a lover, just after proposing casual sex, and a woman who can most kindly be described as a stone-cold bitch.

Pairings in this world are not based on love, but on arbitrary similarities (we’re both shortsighted; we’re both heartless; we both have frequent nosebleeds). If you can’t find someone you’re “compatible” with, you aren’t fit to be human. Most of the characters we meet are not hopeful about finding potential partners. They think they won’t make it. Those who do don’t become any happier. If anything, they’re just relieved.The premise of The Lobster is an absolutely absurd yet brilliant conceit. Its lampooning of societal constructs is obvious, for these are societal shackles we’re well familiar with. (It’s impossible to miss the metaphor.) The dark humor is peppered with occasional eruptions of horrific violence, and then there is a genuine romance at its center once David meets a short-sighted woman played by Rachel Weisz.The way this plays out is as quirky and unexpected as the rest of the film, but no less charming for it.

Not every plot movement in The Lobster totally works. There’s a villain of sorts (played by Léa Seydoux), who gets either too much or not enough emphasis in the film’s latter half. Her motives feel too simple for a character we spend so much time with, and it is she, rather than our lead characters, who drives the action in this story, while David all but disappears. In the last act she inflicts an act of cruelty upon someone that doesn’t seem to quite fit in the bizarre world Lanthimos has so carefully built. (It seems this section of the film should center more around the animal conceit somehow.)

Still, The Lobster is one-of-a-kind, and a welcome respite from more predictable Hollywood romances. It’s as bitter as any love story you’ve ever seen, and ends up being even more jaded about friendship than it is about romance, though there’s a hint of sweetness here and there. The Lobster is imperfect but unforgettable, just as so much of A Bigger Splash is. In ways, the two films couldn’t be more distinct — A Bigger Splash practically simmers with lurid, sexy heat, while The Lobster is stone cold in its depiction of sex, love, and death. If the summer movie season is a barbecue stuffed with the usual grilled goodies we’ve tasted before and will feel vaguely sick of after we’ve wolfed them down, Guadagnino and Lanthimos boldly offer us these spicy side dishes for a little extra kick. It’s a welcome respite.*

Where you live. Where you learn. Where you pray. Where you drink.

It’s happened again.

We ask questions like, “How could this happen?” “When does this end?” and “What can we do?” and the answers are: easily, never, and nothing, if the past is any predictor.

It’s not going to stop.

I see about 50 movies per year in a movie theater, and not once since July 20, 2012, have I done so without thinking of what happened in Aurora, Colorado. Truth be told, I don’t go very many places anymore without eyeing the nearest exit. The news has taught us there is nowhere safe in America anymore. Not your school, not your church, not your favorite place in the world.

Because I write movies, the Dark Knight shootings hit particularly close to home for me. So did what happened last night in Orlando. As I write, at least 50 people have been killed, and more than twice that injured, in the worst mass shooting in American history… for now. Until there’s a worse one, tomorrow, or the next day, or next year.

It’s not going to stop.

There have been enough shootings like this that one of them must have hit close to home for you, too — both geographically, and also in the sense that a gunman entered a place that is a lot like one you frequent and feel safe in and shot a lot of people there. You’ve been to school. You’ve been to a bar. You’ve been to the movies.

The gunman, whose name I refuse to mention here, has not robbed me of my sense of safety the next time I go out to drink in a gay bar with my friends, because other murderers have already done that. I know I’m not safe. Not anywhere in America. Not really anywhere in the world.

Columbine. Virginia Tech. Aurora. Sandy Hook. San Bernardino. Orlando. There have been enough of these things that I had to Google “mass shootings” to find a list, and think to myself: “Oh, yeah… I forgot about that one.”

When it happens these days, we have to wonder which kind of terrorist: domestic or international? ISIS, or just a good ol’ fashioned American crazy? Some combination of the two? Which brand of ignorance and hate was it that motivated some asshole to kill everyone this time? But it doesn’t really matter, does it? That’s not what you think about when someone opens fire in a crowded nightclub, just before the bullet hits you.

Yes, you. It will happen.

I think about a man getting ready for a fun night of drinking and dancing with his friends, looking in the mirror, thinking he looks pretty good tonight, unaware that these clothes will be soaked through with his own blood in a couple of hours. I think about a girl tweeting about how excited she is to see the sequel to her favorite movie, a few seconds before the lights go down, half an hour before the smoke starts filling the room. I think about myself, and what I’d do: run for the exit praying I make it? Crouch in a corner? Throw something? Or just sit there, petrified with panic? Shamefully, I have to admit: I suspect it’s that last one.

I also think about how, now, if I am killed in a mass shooting, there could be articles about how I once posted a piece about how afraid I am of being killed in a terror attack. The superstitious side of me wonders if even writing this has doomed me to such a headline. Yes, that’s right, I am terrified. And I should be. I’m a healthy man in my thirties, but a part of me thinks I won’t survive to see my forties because I live in America.

I like to think that if I’d been there, I would have had the presence of mind to throw a drink at him. Charge. Urge everyone to keep charging ‘till they knock him over and incapacitate him. But I know that I wouldn’t. I’d be too scared. If both luck and smarts found me in that critical instant, I’d run for the exit. And that’s a big “if.” I often wonder what I’d do in such a situation, and then I realize: I’d die. That’s what I would do.

He held them hostage. I can’t imagine… but I do imagine. These days, it’s all too easy to picture exactly how it would go down. We know these stories, the way our ancestors knew myths and fairy tales. Those, too, were warnings. “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running,” someone managed to post in the chaos, sensibly and smartly. But where is safe?

We respond differently to different crises, based largely on how easily we can place ourselves at the scene. I know this attack hit many friends of mine particularly hard, and that’s understandable. It hit me, too. Every massacre is a hate crime, and any bloodbath that claims fifty lives is grotesque. But the timing and location of this one are a special kind of tragedy. This one is ours.

These are the places we live. These are our homes. They are finding us there and they are killing us. To a lesser extent than the patrons of Pulse last night, we are all being held hostage in our home, in America, by people with guns. And like most hostages, we’re just sitting there, terrified, hoping and praying for rescue. What else can we do? Everybody get out of America and keep running.

Let’s think. Let’s pray. Let’s grieve. Let’s tweet. Let’s call it “tragic,” “unthinkable,” and “senseless.” Let’s tell all our friends how not to feel. Let’s tell all our enemies how not to think. Let’s glibly point out all the ironies in our politics that are far too gone to fix. Let’s push the button to post the little yellow face with the single tear running down his cheek, as if that one tear were enough. Let’s be outraged.

Or let’s not. No thoughts, no prayers. It’s mourning in America. Business as usual. It’s too late. Let’s do nothing.

“There will inevitably be some kind of fallout from this, and eventually, it will all revert back to the way things were. This tragedy, like the rest, will just be at the very back of our minds. Until the next one.” (Written on July 20, 2012, in response to the movie theater murders.)

The Second Amendment was supposed to protect us. Our forefathers didn’t prepare for mass shootings with assault rifles in the Constitution because, obviously, they didn’t imagine that this kind of thing could happen. Neither did we. We used to be shocked. Remember Columbine? That was back when we didn’t think something so horrid and fatal and final could happen and happen and happen and happen and happen and happen and happen and happen and happen and happen.

But it did happen. And does happen. And will. keep. happening.

It’s not going to stop.

Some argue that making it harder for people to buy guns won’t stop all of these mass murders. That’s probably true, but you know what? If it stops even one of them, that’s good enough for me. If it saves even one life that wouldn’t have ended with another kind of weapon, that is also still worth it. It’s not about stopping all of them, it’s about stopping any of them. How can you not want to do that?

Oh, I know. In a perfect world, you and I both would have the right to own an assault rifle and, I suppose, shoot things with it, as long as you didn’t harm anyone. But we live in a different world. Your right to own any gun you want does not trump my right to survive a night out with my friends. But it does, I guess?

Of course, the answer isn’t so simple as more bombs or less guns. There are no easy solutions, no absolutes, and I have nothing fresh or original to say about gun violence. No politician will ever seriously come out advocating to ban all guns, even if some might wish they could. But there are things we could do. Compromises we could make. That, actually, is what this country is supposed to be all about. The bad guys are the extremists. We’re supposed to be the ones who can meet in the middle, to find a solution we can all live with, instead of so many of us dying. Chances are, whoever you are, you don’t need an assault rifle. You really just don’t.

Yes, there are bombs. There are planes. There are knives. There are forks. If you want to kill, you’ll find a tool to try and do it with. But it’ll be different. It’ll be harder. The fact that there are other bad things isn’t a good reason to let this bad thing keep happening. It is insane to accept mass casualties with assault weapons just because there are potentially worse weapons out there. That’s like sinking to the bottom of the ocean because you might attract the attention of a hungry shark if you swim to shore.

But it’s not going to stop.

These are just words. I know they’re just words. I don’t expect them to do much, except express my thoughts and feelings. If you think I’m wrong, and it can stop? Good. Fight me. If you think you can do something, I hope that you do. But I don’t know what that is anymore.

As dismayed as I am by the actions of one man, and by the words and opinions of some others, I must also be encouraged by the bravery, heroism, and camaraderie that has risen from the horror. So many have the right spirit today… which is, unfortunately, not enough. Am I proud of the gay men and women who are out now, respectfully celebrating despite these sad and scary events? Absolutely. You bet I am. Am I proud to be an American? Well, that depends… on how things go from here. We have a major party candidate who is stoking the exact brand of intolerance that provokes such attacks, both here and abroad. I’ve read some dismaying comments about this tragedy already, mostly from people who support him. You want to be free to live your life with as few restrictions as possible, but for some reason, want to restrict others from doing that also? Oh, I see. That’s because you think you’re removed from it all. You think you’re safe… but you’re not. I know that deep down, most of you find it impossible to believe that what happened in Orlando could happen to you. But I don’t.

One hundred three people felt safe last night. They weren’t.

Think for yourself. You might think you’re doing that already, but are you really? Murderers don’t always come up with all that hate on their own. Someone told them who to hate, and who to kill. There is a self-proclaimed “politician” prominent in the news right now who is trying to tell us who to hate. Don’t vote for him. Don’t vote for any of these people. Extremism cannot help us. It can only hurt us further. It is a time for change and compromise, a time to question our beliefs and examine where they’re coming from. Do we need to hold on to these biases and grudges and prejudices…? No? Then let’s lose them. If you spend any time or energy trying to stop someone who is not harming anyone from living their life they want to, it probably isn’t doing any good and you should stop. Think about where you live, and what you can do to make it a place we all want to live. Or don’t. I don’t know.

Do we need assault rifles available to consumers? I mean, really, seriously need them? And is it at least possible that restricting them might save a few human lives? I have a hard time believing that anyone could seriously believe that the answer is “yes” to the first one and “no” to the second one, but I know. I know.

So it’s not going to stop.

I wasn’t able to sleep last night, because every time I closed my eyes I thought of shooting and screaming and bleeding. It’s not the first time.

It happened again.

It’ll happen again.

Where you live. Where you learn. Where you pray. Where you drink.

It’ll happen to you.

…

Everyone get out of america and keep running

I’ve seen a lot of movies. A lot of them contain some pretty shocking stuff. I don’t necessarily like gore or explicitly disturbing subject matter, but my cinematic journeys often lead me toward such material anyway. I’m more adventurous than the average moviegoer. Sometimes, I think I’ve seen it all.

After a while, one act of abhorrent violence is just like all the rest. It’s rare to encounter a scene in a movie that feels that new, that novel, truly unprecedented. The final scene of Enemy was, perhaps, the last piece of cinema to truly make me sit up in my seat and say, “What the fuck?”

Until now.

Whoever you are, whatever you’ve watched… there’s something in The Neon Demon I can pretty much guarantee you haven’t seen.

The Neon Demon is brought to us by Nicholas Winding Refn, director of the superb Drive and the noble failure Only God Forgives. Drive had a few bursts of appalling horror, including a fork in Albert Brooks’ eye and an abruptly icky end for poor Christina Hendricks. Only God Forgives was most notable for a supporting turn from Kristin Scott Thomas, cast way against type as a bitchy, blood-thirsty mama bear who likes to compare her sons’ penis sizes.

So the fact that The Neon Demon is shocking is not all that shocking by itself. We’ve seen many tales of pretty young things coming out to Hollywood, encountering soulless Angelinos who seek to corrupt our doe-eyed ingenue. These range anywhere from campy candy (Burlesque) to seriously sour grapes (Maps To The Stars). Maps To The Stars was peppered with angry ghosts, pyromania, dog-shooting, and incest — a vile concoction, to be sure, but The Neon Demon outdoes it. The Neon Demon also shares some of Mulholland Drive‘s surreal DNA. Like Collateral, it features a striking cameo from a wild animal that is probably less vicious than most of its human characters. It may not make as much of a lasting impact as these other “so L.A.” movies, but it’s not for lack of trying.

Drive‘s brutality was watered down with lovely sequences of Ryan Gosling driving around the city, falling in love with Carey Mulligan to an appealing pop soundtrack. Though surely conflicted in its affections, it ultimately played as a love letter to Los Angeles. The Neon Demon is a ransom note laced with anthrax.The sparse storyline finds fresh-off-the-bus Jesse (Elle Fanning) living in a fleabag motel in Pasadena. She’s a friendless, talentless orphan who knows only one thing: that she’s pretty. She intends to make a living off that singular asset, first posing for a blood-soaked photo shoot with a guy she met on the internet. The photographer, Dean (Karl Glusman), turns out to be the most decent guy a teenage girl ever met on Craigslist. He and Jesse end up hitting it off.

Then Jesse signs with ruthless high-powered agent Roberta Hoffman (Christina Hendricks), who assures Jesse that she’ll be a big star someday. Makeup artist Ruby (Jena Malone) is keen to befriend Jesse, though her hungry gaze is more unsettling than amiable. Through Ruby, Jesse also meets Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee), two models who are more experienced (and more conventionally “hot”) than Jesse is. They’re immediately threatened by Jesse’s fresh, youthful look, taking every opportunity they can to rip her to shreds.

Despite these hindrances, Jesse slowly but steadily gains confidence, working with the top photographers and designers in the business. Along the way, she scores some triumphs against the haters, but her meteoric rise to model stardom flags concerns in her doting suitor, who worries that Jesse will lose her innocence.Pretty standard, right? Of course, this setup sounds like a subplot from Melrose Place. It’s all very soapy in its broadest strokes, but there are ominous harbingers of darker developments ahead. Did I mention that Ruby moonlights as a makeup artist to the dead? Or how about the menacing motel manager, Hank (Keanu Reeves), who exploits Jesse’s helplessness by making her pay for damage she definitely shouldn’t have to pay for? This is a Nicholas Winding Refn film, after all, so it’s highly probable that there will be blood.

The proceedings play out almost like a satire of “young girl trying to make it in the big city” genre. Everyone Jesse meets is utterly disarmed by her perfect looks, most evident in a scene where Jesse strips down to her bra and panties in a room full of other barely-dressed models. The models are asked to do nothing but walk back and forth across the room, and to the untrained eye, there’s absolutely no difference between them. The snobby designer yawns his way through most of the auditions, but when Jesse walks, he practically gives her a standing ovation. It’s absurd, but Refn is only calling out the ridiculous trope we’ve seen so many times, in which the protagonist is constantly deemed “special,” in which she has some intangible X factor / “it” factor that makes her better than all the rest. It’s similar to that self-delusion young people have to believe in when they come to Hollywood — “I can make it, even if nobody else can!” This movie turns that trope on its head, and then severs it. The Neon Demon displays Refn’s trademark preference for style over substance, with an 80s synth-driven score by Cliff Martinez (who provided his standout services on Drive and Only God Forgives, too) and a slew of gorgeous images that really do look like they’ve been ripped out of a glossy magazine. Nearly everyone in the film comes across as a vapid, morally bankrupt narcissist, which is totally intentional, of course. The dialogue is spare and, with some notable exceptions, unmemorable. With all the dead space of silence in the film, you can practically hear your soul curdling while you watch it.

Yes, it’s that nasty.

(Spoilers ahead.)

Is that your idea of a good time? Then you may love The Neon Demon, which is curiously slow-moving for a film that eventually goes so very far over the top. In its third act, The Neon Demon maneuvers in a way that’s tricky to pull off, calling into question who this movie is really about. (The character we’re focused on at the tail end of the film is not one we pay much attention to when we meet them early on.) There is one subplot that goes absolutely nowhere and feels curiously unfinished. The Neon Demon also treads in some tired cliches and is ultimately even more sickeningly voyeuristic than the culture it lampoons. Its depiction of women overall and one particular gay character might be problematic, if The Neon Demon didn’t seem so down on the human race itself.

The Neon Demon doesn’t have anything particularly new or novel to add to the popular “Hollywood is full of selfish assholes who will eat you for breakfast” genre, but it certainly pushes it to new extremes. This is the sort of movie in which a character vomits up a human eyeball, and that’s not even the grossest or most bizarre part of the scene.

I came out The Neon Demon wishing Refn had found something a bit fresher to sink his teeth into. The film has the power to transfix from moment to moment, but its characters are thin even in comparison to the nameless stoic protagonist of Drive. (And not just because they’re models!) It doesn’t come together as well as that film did, mostly due to our apathy for Jesse, whose true nature is drawn for us in only the sketchiest of outlines (despite a solid turn from Fanning). Yes, Refn is doing his take on an archetype, but there’s so little to her character that her fate means nothing to us. The Neon Demon plays out as a battle for Jesse’s soul, in part, but there’s so little soul there that it feels like there’s nothing at stake.

When The Neon Demon finally shows its freaky fangs in the finale, the film comes together better than it seemed like it was going to, adding at least one stomach-turningly memorable gag to the ranks of Hollywood satires. But that’s not quite enough. The production is delectable as always, but the screenplay lets us down, ultimately sounding off with more bark than bite. That’s a shame in a movie that’s so determined to tear everyone in it to pieces.

*

What a relief: we don’t have to worry about Britney Spears anymore.

Britney’s had her much-publicized ups and downs — both in her personal life and her musical career, though not necessarily at the same time. (Her best album was released during the rockiest, baldest, most crotch-flashingest patch of her life, somehow.) In recent years, it seems Britney was on an upswing personally, with a highly successful Vegas residency… unfortunately coinciding with the release of what has to be her worst album, Britney Jean. Last year’s wretched collaboration with Iggy Azalea on “Pretty Girls” didn’t do much to convince us that Britney’s 2016 album, Glory, would fare much better. (Thankfully, “Pretty Girls” is nowhere to be found here.) Las Vegas is typically where we send musicians to die, and for a while, it seemed that could be Britney’s fate, too. She could happily lip sync to her old hits in a well-choreographed stage show, and her fans would be just fine with heading out to Sin City every couple years to see her do so.

So imagine my surprise when I idly previewed the tracks on iTunes, thinking: “this one’s pretty good… so is this… hmmm, interesting, maybe I’ll buy this track… and this one… maybe this one too…” Perhaps you felt the same surprise I did. As it turns out, Glory is a solid enough comeback album to convince me that Britney’s no longer in danger of spiraling off into total irrelevance, as she’s threatened to do at least a couple times before. It’s not just because the album is good… it’s everyone who made it, including Britney Spears herself, seems to be actually trying.

For no real reason, really, I decided to blog my first full listen of Britney Spears’ Glory. Here goes.

1. “Invitation”

First tracks are important. I have previously chided artists for not properly beginning their albums with a song that was clearly destined to be the album opener. No such rebuke is necessary for Ms. Spears, however. A song called “Invitation” is the perfect invite to a new album, as if Britney’s own hand is outstretched toward us, beckoning us to join her on a new sonic journey. The song is lush and low-key, easing us into what’s to come as most good albums do (rather than blow its load in the first few tracks, as albums with a lot of filler tend to do). “Invitation” absolutely makes us want to RSVP “yes” to whatever’s next.

2. “Make Me”

I was vaguely aware of this single in the past few weeks, but it didn’t “make me” terribly excited for a new Britney Spears album, mainly because I was skeptical that this might be the best Glory had to offer. This single whiffs of “Perfume” (though it is much better),in that it could have indicated desperation to find a single, any single! (In the case of Britney Jean, after “Work Bitch,” there just wasn’t one.) “Make Me” left me skeptical about what Glory had to offer, but as part of the greater whole that is this album, it’s pretty great — grown up and low key, not trying too hard, a nice indication of what’s to come in further tracks. It also gets better with age — without even knowing I really knew this song, it got stuck in my head. Subtle!

3. “Private Show”

This is the first track that immediately jumps out and announces that Glory is something a little different. The best thing about this album is that it leans into Britney’s strengths, and “Private Show” is just dripping with kitschiness and Britney’s gooey baby vocal stylings. Oddly it enough, it turns out to be genuinely sexy anyway. As the title suggests, “Private Show” signals that Britney is letting it all hang out in Glory, unafraid to show off as the goofy porn star she is. She risks seriously embarrassing herself with a faux-rap and invoking the played out “twerk,” but the catchy production keeps it simple and doesn’t let her down (another big theme for Glory). “Private Show” should be a disaster and instead ends up being a masterpiece.

4. “Man On The Moon”

One thing elevates this track above a typical album cut: “Man On The Moon” is chock full of space puns, and that’s great. We’ve got Apollo 13 references, we’re paraphrasing Neil Armstrong… we’ve got it all, people! It only took 16 years for Britney to finally correctly match her 90s movie quotes to the appropriate space imagery. (The dude who rescued the Heart of the Ocean from the bottom of the sea in “Oops I Did It Again” was an astronaut. What kind of sense does that make?) We’ve also got Britney speaking… Italian? (The internet says: French.) This is the kind of track that throws us back to early teen Britney — timeless, innocent mooning-over-you pop. (Unlike, say, “E-Mail My Heart,” which felt dated even in 1999.)

5. “Just Luv Me”

Britney says she’s going to keep it real simple in this track, and that she does. “Just Luv Me” is a sexy little number, but it’s really a rest stop before we move on to more invigorating beats.

6. “Clumsy”

Oops! “Clumsy” is one of Glory‘s immediate standouts, noteworthy for its playfulness and cutesy quirk. Here, Britney is simultaneously both the belle of the ball at a country hoedown and queen of a swanky nightclub, and that’s hard to pull off. Britney’s Avicii-like mix of 2016 EDM and a hand-clappy throwback tune is a smart direction to go in, one not many other pop divas have caught onto (yet). One of Glory‘s most startling qualities is the way that Britney embraces the limitations of her voice and just goes for it. This is maybe Britney’s first album that rarely sounds like she’s burying her shortcomings under production — she’s a grown woman now, fine being whoever she truly is, even if “who she is” is an incredibly horny toddler. For the first time in a long time, here’s real personality behind these lyrics and the way Britney delivers them. “Clumsy” joins “Private Show” (and, later, “What You Need”) as a potential train wreck that nimbly maneuvers its way around potential awkwardness, becoming indelible instead.

7. “Do You Wanna Come Over?”

A dirty, slinky beat mixes with the sound of a beer can opening, and Britney seems to believe that we’re just going to cuddle to this one? Probably my favorite Glory track upon first listen, this is Britney at her very Britney-est, and it’ll be the crime of the century if this isn’t a single. Yes, Britney, we do want to come over. We always have.

8. “Slumber Party”

Here’s a Britney song about how empowering it is for young girls to have sleepover nights to just bond, giggle, and watch their favorite chick flicks, no boys allowed. Just kidding! It’s about fucking. (I can say “fucking” because Britney herself drops an F-bomb in this one.) This is a solid enough entry in Britney’s “come hither” gallery, which is comprised of almost every song she’s ever recorded, but I was more excited by the less overt Netflix-and-chill vibe of “Do You Wanna Come Over?” (maybe just because of that beer can, though).

9. “Just Like Me”

By no means the standout track of Glory, “Just Like Me” is closer to filler than we’ve previously gotten on this album, but enjoyable in its own right, not least because it’s a break from Britney’s sex kitten hijinks, letting her try on a green eyed monster shade instead. It also gives us some guitar, not something we normally associate with Ms. Spears. “Just Like Me” emerges as one of the more mature Glory cuts, letting Britney’s voice get a little rawer than we’re used to at times (but not, unfortunately, on the chorus, which does feel a bit overproduced). Britney tracks can sometimes feel like she’s distracted, trying to get this recording done before the kids wake up from their naps. Glory isn’t like that.

10. “Love Me Down”

Uh-oh, Britney’s horny again! I’d be curious to learn what criteria Britney’s team uses to determine which tracks spell love “l-u-v” and which get the more traditional treatment. (In both cases, I’m pretty sure “love” just means “fuck.”) There’s nothing too noteworthy about “Love Me Down,” but it’s probably not the track you’re going to skip every time, either.

11. “Hard To Forget Ya”

We know Britney doesn’t do a lot of her own songwriting (and doesn’t have a credit on this one), but it’s hard not to wonder if she’s singing about Timberlake, Federline, or… uh, those Brexes that were not so hard to forget. We’ve now gotten through nearly the whole album without a proper ballad, which is terrific, as those have never been Britney’s strongest play. This wraps up the “listenable but unremarkable” back half of the album… we’ve got just one track left of the non-deluxe release.

12. “What You Need”

What’s happening? Who turned off Glory? Where’s Britney? These questions are likely to pop into your head as “What You Need” begins, as your iTunes has seemingly chosen to switch over to a sassy second-tier Broadway musical. But, nope! That’s Britney. It’s hard to imagine any previous Britney (except maybe kooky, head-shaved Britney) going for something this loopy and soulful and Disney villain-appropriate. (Seriously, this is just a notch or two away from “Poor Unfortunate Souls.”) On a track this jazz-handsy, Britney again fully risks making a complete ass of herself… and somehow, just doesn’t. “That was fun!” she declares at the end of the track. And you know what? It was!

13. “Better”

If this song sounds like it would be at home on Justin Bieber’s latest offering, that’s because Purpose and Glory share more than just pretentious, self-congratulatory titles: they share the producer BloodPop. (For one track only, in Britney’s case.) Britney’s vocals mix pretty spectacularly with BloodPop’s trademark “torturing a whole zoo full of animals” production noises, doing it even “Better” than the Biebs does.

14. “Change Your Mind (No Seas Cortes)”

We’ve heard Britney speaking French, and now we get her spouting Spanish? (At least it’s not just “Mmm Papi” this time.) I fear that Britney raising the bar like this is dangerous, because it will be sorely disappointing if she isn’t fluent in Chinese for her next album release. “Change Your Mind” is otherwise serviceable bonus track filler, but one of Glory‘s more expendable inclusions, mostly because these Spanish-tinged tracks are best left for J-Lo, Selena Gomez, or whoever can pull that off with a bit more authenticity.

15. “Liar”

Harmonica and Britney’s second F-bomb. What’s not to love? The “wild west showdown” vibe has me envisioning Britney’s body double doing some sexy silhouetted rope-twirling action in the music video we’ll never get because this is just a deluxe version track. I guess Britney will have to settle for hog-tying a shirtless male model in our collective imagination. I would’ve included this one on the standard album in lieu of “Love Me Down,” but no worries: it’s here.

16. “If I’m Dancing”

Fans of “How I Roll,” perhaps Britney’s greatest and weirdest tune, should dig this: it’s basically a spiritual sequel to that Femme Fatale standout. I’m definitely one of them. This is the one that makes you truly glad you got the deluxe version, even if it isn’t quite at the level of “How I Roll.” This one deserves better than bonus track status, and fits with the overall experimental vibe of Glory exhibited in its best tracks — but oh well!

17. “Coupure Electrique”

…And now we’ve finally, totally departed any relation to the “Baby One More Time” schoolgirl we knew so well. “Coupore Electrique” is strange and euphoric, and again, in French. Britney delivers a convincing French accent (is that Britney?)… you have to hear this one to believe it. But it’s good.

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And with that, Glory is done. Britney’s “give it a whirl” spirit carries through the whole album, giving us plenty of stuff we don’t expect to hear from Britney Spears. Glory utilizes Britney’s voice better than probably any other album ever has, and despite some brave go-for-broke moments, she completely avoids that one embarrassing cut that seems to pop up on virtually album she’s ever released. (You know which ones I mean.) For far too long, Britney has felt fussily stage managed and overly safe, but in Glory, she’s finally ready to take a chance. And it works.

The first eight tracks are a stream of virtual pop perfection, and the album closes on a bold and unexpected strong note, then gives us four terrific bonus tracks (and one that’s so-so). It’s a better as a cohesive unit than a collection of potential singles, as too many Spears albums have been. Glory lives up to its name, ranking there with In The Zone, Blackout, and Femme Fatale in the top tier of Britney Spears albums.

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Forgive me. I know it seems much too early to talk about the Oscars, but we’re getting into that time of year now. So far, 2016 has been all but entirely barren of buzzworthy performances. I have a small handful of favorites, but only one or two that are certain to make the cut on my “Not Oscars” list next year.

The new film Indignation is one of those “wait and see” films, released in spring or summer or early fall, which most people agree has some noteworthy work, but no one’s quite willing to bet on it yet. After all, we know there are bigger, flashier things in the pipeline — Tom Hanks, Viola Davis, Casey Affleck, Denzel Washington, and other familiar faces are attracting plenty of early chatter about their awards chances in forthcoming releases. Nothing in Indignation is quite striking enough to challenge them, but you never quite know how things will pan out. The film has made over $2 million in a smallish release and is playing well with critics and audiences. It’s the kind of film that just might have staying power.

Logan Lerman first popped up on many of our radars in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, though it was Ezra Miller who stole that particular show. Lerman has been a reliable player in films like Noah and Fury since, but Indignation is the film that finally announces him as an actor to be reckoned with, more than just a pleasant screen presence. Depending on how crowded this year’s Best Actor field is (and it does tend to be a crowded category), he just might find himself there.

In Indignation, Lerman is Marcus Messner, a Jewish boy from New Jersey who starts his freshman year of college at Winesburg, a small Ohio school. Marcus is one of only three Jewish boys who refuses to join the Jewish fraternity, even after a warm invitation from the fraternity’s president, Sonny (Pico Alexander). His roommates are the other two. Marcus is serious about his studies and his job at the school library, distracted by only one thing: Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon), the blonde bombshell who sits near him in one of his classes and smirks bemusedly when he challenges the professor. He asks her out, and she agrees. Neither of them have any way of knowing what fateful events this flirtation will spiral toward.

After a pleasant evening of conversation and escargot, Olivia performs oral sex on Marcus in his roommates’ car. Marcus worries that this means Olivia’s a slut, but his roommate Ron (Philip Ettinger) is more bothered by the fact that Marcus would “defile” his precious car in such a manner. This causes a rift with the roommates that eventually leads to Marcus moving out on his own. Meanwhile, Olivia notices that Marcus is avoiding her and assertively clarifies that she is not a slut. She just really liked him. Then Marcus is called into the office of Dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts), who has concerns that Marcus is having a hard time fitting in at school. Underlying Caudwell’s assertions is, perhaps, an anti-Semitic bent. At least, Marcus feels that way. The confrontation between them grows heated, setting the stage for further conflict down the line.

In a subtle way, Indignation is all about ego — intellectual ego, to be exact. Marcus is a nice boy, most of the time, but rile him up and he’s no picnic. His pride gets the better of him in interactions with the dean, but keeping his mouth shut would be immensely more beneficial. Marcus may be right that a Jewish-raised atheist shouldn’t have to keep attending Christian mass services in order to graduate; or maybe, Marcus just should’ve picked a different school. Marcus wants his freedom — American audiences are used to rooting for that. Of course, individual freedom comes at the expense of harmony in any community. The denizens of Marcus’ Orthodox hometown in New Jersey want him to be a nice kosher Jewish boy, while the faculty of Wineburg wants him attend mass and shut up about his less conventional beliefs. Marcus isn’t shy, but he is reserved. He’s a wallflower by choice. But in Indignation, it doesn’t behoove anyone to be withdrawn, or to be different, or to go against societal norms. Marcus pays a high price for his independence. 

Whether he realizes it or not, that’s what draws him to Olivia. Outwardly, she’s just like any other 1950s co-ed, but Marcus soon learns that she’s hiding antisocial tendencies of her own — she was previously hospitalized following a suicide attempt, and there are serious hints about the origins of Olivia’s pain. Olivia makes for a fascinating love interest, several degrees more complex than the love interest in virtually any other college coming-of-age tale. (Indignation isn’t a coming-of-age tale per se, but it’s dressed up like one.) She’s wiser and more mature than Marcus, but Gadon plays her the same way she’d play a much more straight-laced 50s college girl, a projection of innocence. We know Olivia is not so innocent, however, and that dissonance hints at a disturbance within her that we’re only just scratching the surface of. We want to root for Marcus and Olivia, but we can’t be sure that she isn’t so damaged that it would ruin them both. Marcus’ feelings toward Olivia are similarly contradictory. He enjoys the sexual acts they share together, then judges Olivia for initiating them. As much as Marcus hates to be lumped in with any group, he is holding Olivia to predisposed standards. Marcus is a hypocrite. Perhaps in 2016, a young man like Marcus could appreciate meeting a woman who is equally an outsider in society, possibly even moreso. But in 1951, Olivia is a dangerous anomaly, and he’s not willing to stand up for her when it counts.

The backdrop of Indignation is the Korean war, shown briefly in the beginning of the film in a sequence that feels irrelevant to what’s to come. Of course, it’s not. Marcus is fortunate to avoid the draft because he’s enrolled in college. Both his father and mother attempt to meddle in Marcus’ affairs, fearing for his safety, wanting what’s best for their only son, their pride and joy. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions… and misunderstandings… and blow jobs, according to Indignation. There is no one incident that leads to any character’s ultimate ruin in this film, adapted from the novel by Phillip Roth. Instead, a series of small choices made by well-meaning characters steers Indignation‘s outcasts toward less-than-idyllic futures. Indignation is not a particularly showy film. Much of it unfolds inside the viewer, the same way it would if we were reading the novel. While some of the plot beats are broad in theory, they always unfold in smart, unforeseen ways. We can tell in an instant that Marcus’ mother Esther (Linda Emond) won’t approve of his dating Olivia, but it’s the way she expresses this to Marcus that packs so much of a punch. Indignation is an elegant, unhurried adaptation that hits us with a wallop at the end, in a way that brought to mind Tom Ford’s marvelous A Single Man (my favorite film of 2009).

As it stands now, Indignation is poised to be one of my favorite films of 2016, and could similarly receive some awards season love in certain categories. The performances are superb from top to bottom, with Lerman, Gadon, Emond, and Letts particularly shining. Like A Single Man, this is the directorial debut of a man best known for other things (in that case, Tom Ford; here, James Schamus, Focus Features’ CEO, who also wrote the script). Indignation could be a tad too small-scale to warrant attention from the Academy, though the voting base may well identify with the story of an ambitious Jewish boy growing up in the 1950s. Though it’s too early to predict much, Indignation could slow burn all the way ’til Oscar night.

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Hold on to something! The When We Were Young podcast’s pilot episode glances back at everyone’s favorite cow-tossing summer blockbuster, Twister, to see if the windiest divorce drama of all time holds up 20 years later.

Subscribe on iTunes, etc. or listen here.

Hear us debate whether this is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s worst-ever performance, sing the praises of bovine murderess Aunt Meg, call out numerous Wizard of Oz references, and finally, come down on whether Twister belongs in “the suck zone” or if it still sends our spirits soaring like so many Pepsi-can-wearing weather sensors.

In October of 1994, three podcasters disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland.

Police were baffled by the podcasters’ vanishing… mostly because they did not yet know what a podcast was.

A year later their podcast was found.

21 more years later, it was released here.

Just in time for Halloween (and a not-so-great sequel), the When We Were Young podcast‘s second episode tackles 1999’s unlikely horror hit The Blair Witch Project! Is the ultra-low-budget thriller still as groundbreaking as it was in the pre-smartphone era, or does it deserve to be banished to the woods?

Kick your map into the creek, apologize to everyone’s moms, and follow us on this audible journey… because Becky totally knows where we’re going! Right, Becky?

Becky…?

When We Were Young is a new podcast devoted to the most beloved pop culture of our formative years (roughly, 1980-2000). Join us for a nostalgic look back to the past with a critical eye on how these movies, songs, shows, and more hold up now.

Follow us on Twitter at @WWWYshow, Facebook at @WWWYShow, email us at wwwyshow@gmail.com, and don’t forget to subscribe!

Hello, friends!

We’ve now aired three episodes of the When We Were Young podcast, which means it’s officially time to start uselessly ranking things.

That’s right — because I am a millennial (barely), I am obsessed with ranking things that are not terribly similar in any way, and chances are, you are obsessed with it, too. (Thanks, Buzzfeed!) So I am keeping a running tally of which of the movies, TV shows, albums, and other pop culture artifacts from the 80s and 90s hold up best.

Is it completely arbitrary to compare, say, Steven Spielberg’s E.T. to the 90s catalogue of Britney Spears to the entire run of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air? Of course it is! That’s what makes it such a meaningless waste of time!

RANKING 80s & 90s POP CULTURE, FROM BEST TO WORST:

1. Election

2. Twister

3. The Blair Witch Project

That’s my ranking but I’m also curious about how you would rank them. Pick your favorite in the poll below:

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My rankings list will be updated accordingly following each episode of the podcast. The poll will also be refreshed with new options as we cover them. You can vote once a week, so if your answers changes when we introduce a new topic, that’s fine!

Listen to the podcast here.

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A competent, ambitious, and some-might-say-chilly blonde who thinks she’s got this election in the bag goes up against unlikely opponents who are unqualified and uninformed, but hold an anarchic appeal to a certain deplorable fan base that’s fed up with the establishment. When the rubble is cleared, some careers will be ruined, some hearts will be broken, and one very controversial woman will rise to power, sweeping aside a few questionable tactics along the way.

Oh, and did we forget to mention the myriad sex scandals?

In our third episode, the When We Were Young podcast tackles Alexander Payne’s 1999 film Election, a high school satire that has absolutely zero relevance to anything going on in the American political system today. Listen here or subscribe here.

“When I win the presidency, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together. Lots and lots and lots of time. President and advisor. Harmonious and productive. Close and special. You… and I.”

Election was released on April 23, 1999, just a few days after the Columbine massacre, which might be the reason audience weren’t in the mood for a dark and biting high school satire. The film grossed only $14.9 million on a $25 million production budget (which seems strangely high for a low-key high school comedy), though it did sweep the Independent Spirit Awards, winning awards for its screenplay, direction, and Best Feature, and also received an Oscar nod for its script by Jim Taylor and Payne.

Here’s the range of what critics said at the time of release:

Desson Thompson, The Washington Post: “The satire of the season, a hilarious, razor-sharp indictment of the American Dream.”

Christopher Brandon, TNT RoughCut: “Dumb, dumb, dumb.”

(I question the validity of a critic working for TNT RoughCut who thinks this movie is “dumb,” but it was one of few bad reviews I could find.)Election has held up well over the years, especially for introducing Reese Witherspoon as an actress with serious dramatic and comedic chops. Prior to Election, she was one of a slew of actresses in teen films who could be forgotten in five years, but the role of Tracy Flick cemented her as a real leading lady, showing she could pick smarter-than-average material and rise to the occasion in carrying it.

I appreciated Election when I saw it on home video at the time, but I’ve come to appreciate it more and more in subsequent viewings, and especially now that we’re seeing so much of it come to life with our first serious female candidate for the nation’s highest office.

In the podcast, we discuss the complex sexual politics of the film, how it compares to our current national nightmare of an election cycle, and find ourselves divided on how much we like and admire Miss Tracy Flick (which may or may not line up pretty nicely with how we feel about Hillary Clinton). Give it a spin, and if you like what you hear, please leave us a review (5 stars would be nice!) or pledge $1 to help us defray costs of producing the show.

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It’s impossible to ignore the year 2016 when talking about Loving, a film that takes place between 1958 and 1967 and depicts the lives of the titular couple at the center of one of the Supreme Court’s landmark cases of the 20th century. So let’s talk about 2016.

Movie-wise, the year began with the “Oscars So White” controversy, which highlighted the unfortunate fact that none of the major nominees in acting categories were people of color. “Oscars So White” highlighted a very real problem that is only partially the fault of the voting body of the Academy. There were, of course, some terrific kudos-worthy performances from non-Caucasian actors including Michael B. Jordan in Creed, Oscar Isaac in Ex Machina, and Mya Taylor in Tangerine, but the reason these performances weren’t nominated has at least as much to do with star power, awards campaign budgets, and genre as it does with race, if not more. The truth is, very few Oscar-caliber films from 2015 had racially diverse casts that could even be nominated. The Academy has shown, most notably of late with 12 Years A Slave, that it will heap honors upon a more diverse film when it comes along, as long as it’s of a certain quality. That shouldn’t necessarily “excuse” the voting body for a lily-white year like 2015, but it does show that the problem has many more shades than “all those old white dudes are racist.” To nominate a more diverse slate of films for the Oscars, the Academy will have to make them first.

Then the 2016 Sundance Film Festival offered a (too) early beacon of hope in Nate Parker’s audaciously titled The Birth Of A Nation, which made headlines for the largest sale in the festival’s history, and was only half-jokingly declared the Best Picture winner 0f 2017 a whole year before the ceremony. The Birth Of A Nation was released in October with a thud, due largely to old rape allegations against the filmmaker that resurfaced with a vengeance.

What happened between January and October, you ask?

Well, 2016 happened.

Looking back at it now, the “Oscars So White” backlash feels quaint compared to the controversies that plagued the rest of this year, most of them brought from a simmer to a boil by the presidential campaign of one Donald J. Trump. This isn’t the place to rehash the year’s many traumas, but it’s hard to set the scene for a film about the Loving v. Virginia case without examining the environment in which it’s being released.

On the one hand, the Loving case was decided so long ago that it’s jarring to remember that interracial marriage was illegal in some states just 50 years ago. On the other hand, we’ve made shockingly little progress in these past 50 years if someone like Donald Trump is embraced as the mouthpiece of a disturbingly large segment of this country. In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving were arrested and jailed in their home state of Virginia for the crime of being married. (The license was granted by Washington, D.C., where interracial marriage was already legal.) The Lovings were ordered to leave the state with the understanding that if they returned together at any point over the next 25 years, they would be imprisoned. If Loving had been released just a couple years earlier, say, in 2014, we would have been able to distance ourselves and say, “Well, it’s a good thing our country’s not like that anymore!” But in 2016, thanks largely to the Republican party’s rollercoaster endorsement of Donald Trump, a straight white rich man with the audacity to suggest that the system is rigged against him, I’m afraid we have to grapple with Loving in a very different way.

Loving stars Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga as the Lovings, an American couple with the simplest of ambitions: Richard wants to provide for his family, Mildred wants to raise it. They both want to do this in the Virginia community they were raised in, where their families still reside; where they are happy. Most people, black and white, are openly accepting of the interracial relationship, though some are reluctant about the way Richard pushes the boundaries of the law by making the union official. The local law enforcement makes a show of arresting the couple more than once, making it clear that their marriage won’t be honored or welcomed by the state of Virginia. Richard and Mildred are forced to move to Washington, D.C., where they raise three children until they are contacted by Bernie Cohen (Nick Kroll), a lawyer from the ACLU who wants to represent them in a case he hopes will be taken all the way to the Supreme Court, believing the illegality of interracial unions can be repealed across the nation.

There’s little suspense in whether or not the Lovings’ series of appeals ends in success for interracial couples in America — 2016 audiences should be well aware of the results of Loving v. Virginia, even if they don’t know the case by name. (This film may change that.) Loving spends relatively little time on the court proceedings, instead focusing the bulk of its time on the loving between the Lovings themselves, and that’s a good choice. The film is directed by Jeff Nichols, who has built his career on humane dramas about the American heartland. Nichols released Midnight Special earlier this year, which failed to blend the spectacular and the mundane quite as shrewdly as Take Shelter did, but Loving shows the filmmaker bouncing back with some of his finest work to date. Both lead performances are extraordinary (my early favorites of 2016, actually), with Negga and Edgerton matching the subtlety of the script with quiet but powerful command of these characters. (Despite the grand themes, there’s really no showiness in this story.) It’s too early to say for sure, but I expect both of them to be nominated for Oscars for Loving.

I don’t want to hijack Loving‘s central focus on racial issues at a time when that is so crucial, but it is worth noting that the Loving case was instrumental in more recent marriage equality rulings regarding same-sex couples. That’s definitely a part of this film’s subtext. Some of the same people who leave the film wondering how America could ever have been so backwards to not allow interracial marriage might also fail to support marriage equality of a different form. It’s just another way in which Loving isn’t just another film about a relic injustice that shakes its head at previous generations; it is unfortunately resonant in 2016, inviting us to continue shaking our heads until this sort of prejudice is really, truly gone.

I mentioned the stillborn Birth Of A Nation earlier, a film that had the misfortune of being released in Donald Trump’s America. (A period that will, God willing, span only 2016, rather than another four years.) Parker’s failure to quell the bad buzz about his past might have happened in any year, but the fall of 2016 was a particularly bad time to be a man accused of “getting away” with sexual assault, and an even worse time to be unapologetic about it. Many critics also struggled with The Birth Of A Nation‘s historical inaccuracies, in addition to the role of women in the film itself. (Disclaimer: I neglected to see the film myself.) Perhaps it’s unfortunate that The Birth Of A Nation isn’t a more widely seen and widely talked about film, but 2016 has been such a feel-bad year, I suspect Academy voters will be more likely to nominate and award films that have a more positive vibe to them.

The Birth Of A Nation may have sputtered, but that’s not the end of the story to make the Oscars Less White next year. Fortunately, in 2016, we’ve got more than just one black beauty in the race. Loving could do very well when nominations are announced this winter, and better yet, it isn’t the only film carrying the torch for black Americans in the coming awards season. Even without the Academy’s efforts to diversify this year, it’s impossible to imagine that the 2017 Oscar lineup won’t be significantly more colorful than 2016’s. It’s been one hell of a year, yes — but come January, I do believe a number of good things will happen.

Titled after the almost-too-perfectly named couple who dared to challenge the system, Nichols’ film is a celebration of love and equality and progress, coming at a dark and dangerous moment in history when all of those things are at risk. Loving is the perfect film to remind America that we’ve come a long way, baby — released at just the right moment to prove we’ve got a long way yet to go.

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The “coming out” film has been the cornerstone of queer cinema for at least a couple of decades. For all the progress the LGB… (sorry, I’ve lost track of how many letters are supposed to be attached to that alphabet soup) movement has made in shifting from the niche to the mainstream in that time, movies about these people haven’t changed much.

On the one hand, that makes sense. As much as homosexuality has become a relative norm in more progressive Western cities across the globe, the coming out process is still a chore for many, fraught with anxiety and occasional peril. Coming of age tales about heterosexual characters are popular because so much in them feels universal; their gay cousins, the “coming out of age” tales, have a similarly broad appeal within their respective demographic.

(Let me take this moment to state for the record that I’m not a fan of the “in the closet” metaphor, nor use of the word “out” in this context — they are relics of another time that still connote shame and secrecy. It’d be best to do away with this “hiding in the closet” comparison altogether. Unfortunately, there’s not really another accessible term for it at present.)

For numerous reasons, most of the best queer cinema still seems to be made abroad — Weekend, Blue Is The Warmest Color, the films of Pedro Almodovar and Xavier Dolan. The United States has produced only a handful of great gay films, particularly ones that are celebratory of different sexual orientations rather than punishing. Last year gave us two strong American dramas featuring LGBT characters that were uplifting, for a change — Carol and Tangerine. It might be a signal that filmmakers are finally able to tell gay stories outside of the “coming out of age” norm.Let us begin with Moonlight, one of the best-reviewed films of this year (or any year), and a major success so far at the box office, with the highest per-screen average opening of 2016. Based on the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney, the story is a triptych about a boy named Chiron, checking in with him at three distinct moments in his life, and examining how his relationships evolve with a few key figures. In the first segment, Chiron is known as “Little” (played by Alex Hibbert). We meet Little as he’s running away from some bullies from school, which is no anomaly. Being picked on will, unfortunately, be a major determinant in the direction of Chiron’s life.

Chiron is rescued by Juan (Mahershala Ali), who buys him some food and gives Little a place to crash for the night, thanks to the boy’s utter silence about where he lives or who might be waiting for him. Juan’s girlfriend Teresa (Janelle Monáe) takes a special liking to the boy, and from here on, this place will serve as Little’s home away from home. The reason this is necessary is that Little’ mother Paula (Naomie Harris) is somewhere in the early stages of a crack addiction. She loves her son, but she’s beginning to love her crack a little more, and she’s ill-equipped to deal with Little’s biggest problem, which is that he’s a gay black boy growing up in a tough neighborhood of Miami. We, like Paula, sense that things are going to get a lot worse for Little before they get better.I won’t go into detail about plot specifics after this point, because the joy in watching Moonlight is in how it skirts cliches in favor of more genuine, heartfelt surprises. We check back in with Little twice more, first as a high school student who demands he be called Chiron, instead of Little, here played by Ashton Sanders in a heartbreakingly perfect performance of teenage angst. The bullying has only grown worse, along with Paula’s addiction, and Chiron is now more acutely aware of how he’s “different from other boys.” All of what I’ve just written makes Moonlight sound like a more typical, predictable film than it is; certainly, it has the trappings of any other coming of age movie, as well as any other “coming out of age” movie, but it doesn’t dwell on them or over-dramatize that. It presents Chiron’s life matter-of-factly and highlights beauty and kindness as often as pain and squalor, if not more.

In the final segment, Chiron is once again known by a new name, this time played by Trevante Rhodes. All three actors who portray Chiron are stellar, as is every actor in this film. (The Best Supporting Actor category could be filled entirely by the cast of Moonlight.) The meat of the final chapter takes place in a Miami diner, depicting Chiron’s interaction with a cook named Kevin (André Holland). That’s all I’ll say. Following the second chapter’s dramatic conclusion, the first moments of this third section had me very concerned that Moonlight was going down the wrong path and becoming the crime story that it is always threatening to be on its fringes. It doesn’t. There’s a hint of menace throughout Moonlight, and there are ways in which it strikes. But what makes it so extraordinary is how it depicts the mundane and everyday, making them universal. Gay audiences will recognize what’s gay about the movie, black audiences will identify with what’s black about it — these things are specific and precise. But none of it is compartmentalized in such a way that it feels like we’re peeking into another world. As different as so much of it is from the experiences of the audience that’s watching it, Chiron’s life is relatable and totally accessible to us, his experiences universal. It is impossible to imagine anyone watching Moonlight and not recognizing themselves in Chiron at all three stages, despite how different his life may look on the surface.

Moonlight was written and directed by Barry Jenkins. It is his second feature, and it’s an extraordinary piece of work, standing up against the very best cinema of the 21st century. It draws inevitable comparison to Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, my favorite film of 2014, mostly because of the ways it captures very specific moments and makes them feel so universal. Boyhood accomplished the amazing feat of using the same actor, growing up before our eyes over twelve years, while Moonlight recasts the role and makes more significant time-jumps along the way. But Boyhood was the tale of a straight white boy, a type we’re all incredibly familiar with seeing on the big screen. The fact that Jenkins can achieve the same effect with a gay black man is, in ways, even more impressive. For most of us, Boyhood was a movie about ordinary experiences we’re familiar with, rendered profound by the way they were captured and stitched together in cinema; Moonlight is about an experience far fewer of us are familiar with, but is equally universal anyway.Yes. I, like many reviewers, am falling into the particular pit of difficulty that is describing what’s so extraordinary about Moonlight. We don’t see enough great black films, and we don’t see enough great gay films, and we certainly don’t see enough that are both. There’s a danger in praising Moonlight that the film’s uniqueness is relegated to the surprise we feel at identifying with this impoverished black boy living in a bad neighborhood, as if we’d never before considered such a thing. And it is true that a part of what makes Moonlight so extraordinary is the way it shows us a world many of us are not privy to, and makes so much of it so relatable. But it’s more than that. Jenkins’ filmmaking is so immersive, it’s like crawling into these peoples’ skin. That’s an accomplishment outside of the film’s worthy subject matter.

For those who didn’t think Boyhood lives up to the hype (you’re wrong, but that’s an argument for another review), worry not — the comparison to Moonlight is only so apt; Moonlight doesn’t share Linklater’s frill-free observational filmmaking style, except in a couple of key scenes. Just as often, the cinematography calls attention to itself with lots of movement and colorful fantasy interludes. The filmmaking grounds us in Chiron’s point-of-view, whether he’s remembering his mother screaming at him in a particularly beautiful, heightened way, or visualizing his buddy’s bragged-about sexual conquest with a classmate. The filmmaking is attention-grabbing in appropriate moments and maturely subdued in others, which serves to keep us guessing. We never know if the next scene will be splashy or soulful, or maybe a mix of both. In every moment, Moonlight is more vibrant and alive than most movies even attempt to be.Though aspects of Boyhood certainly came to mind while I watched Moonlight, afterward there was another #1 film that lingered in my mind — Steve McQueen’s Shame, which featured Michael Fassbinder as a sex addict trying to make sense of his queasily complicated relationship with his sister. In most ways, they’re very different — Moonlight has some of the most moving and romantic sex scenes I’ve seen, and they don’t contain nudity or actual sex, while Shame‘s sex scenes are graphic and intentionally unappealing. But we are locked into Chiron’s point of view so immersively, just as we were in Brandon’s. Both men are secretive about their sexuality, for very differing reasons, and we must read their sphinx-like faces for clues as to what they’re feeling. These characters tell us next to nothing with words, but the filmmaking tells us everything.

An independent drama about a gay black man is unlikely to Oscars by the fistful, unless it’s as good as Moonlight is. Due to rapturous reception thus far, Moonlight is certainly a contender for Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, and Best Picture nominations. (Of course, it’s too early to be sure how much competition it faces, though there are a handful of equally beloved films in the pipeline.) As mentioned in my review of Loving, Oscar buzz was heaped onto The Birth Of A Nation way too early, and it seems that didn’t pan out. But in a much quieter way, Moonlight may be even more revolutionary and monumental than Nate Parker’s slave drama, and it’s not impossible to imagine it walking away with a few Academy Awards in February. Last year’s other frontrunners for Best Picture, The Revenant and The Big Short, were divisive, while just about everyone could agree that Spotlight was solid. Praise for Moonlight is even more glowing; I have a hard time imagining why anyone wouldn’t like it (though as with any well-reviewed work, there’s sure to be a backlash). I have a very different film in mind as my prediction for Best Picture, but wouldn’t it be great if two films ending in –light took Best Picture two years in a row?On the other side of the spectrum, perhaps, is Stephen Dunn’s Closet Monster, in some ways as typical a “coming out of age” story as there is. Queer cinema certainly isn’t hurting for stories about cute middle-class white boys whose fathers disapprove of their sexual orientation, nor about gay teens with crushes on a comely “is he or isn’t he?” cock tease. Closet Monster checks all the boxes of your most basic “coming out of age” tale, but it has more in common with Moonlight than it may at first appear. Both films begin with a look back at the protagonist at an impressionable young age, experiencing something that will have a profound impact on the direction his life takes. Both have genuinely romantic moments that are peppered with the protagonist’s fantasies, with the threat of violence underlying everything.

Then again, only one of these movies has a talking hamster named after Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that’s Closet Monster.

Buffy the Hamster is voiced by Isabella Rossellini, which is perhaps the most perfect voice casting possible — if it couldn’t be Sarah Michelle Gellar. (I do wonder if she was approached. I like to think she’d be up for it.) She enters young Oscar Madly’s life at a critical point, just as his parents are separating. Oscar is left with his father Peter (Aaron Abrams), who is mostly loving and attentive but also prone to explosive outbursts of anger. Then, one day, Oscar witnesses something truly grotesque, and is forever changed by the experience.

The film skips ahead roughly as far as Moonlight does between its first two chapter. As a teenager, Oscar has become an artist with a love of the macabre — notably, special effects makeup with a fantasy/horror element. (Perfect for a boy who named his hamster Buffy.) His best friend Gemma (Sofia Banzhaf) might have a little crush on him, but she isn’t deluding herself about Oscar’s attraction to guys. Peter is, though — believing Gemma is Oscar’s girlfriend and tacitly disapproving of his son’s gayer tendencies.

Oscar gets a rather butch job as a clerk at a hardware store, where he meets the handsome and enigmatic Wilder (Aliocha Schneider), who is European enough that it’s impossible to tell whether he’s gay, straight, or somewhere in the middle. By and large, the rest of the film follows a predictable path — Wilder and Oscar grow closer without any confirmation of Wilder’s sexuality; Peter is gradually clued in to Oscar’s orientation and does not take it terribly well; conflict threatens to wedge Gemma and Oscar apart.

On the other hand, though, Oscar continues to have dark fantasies about the terrible event he witnesses as a child. Violent images threaten a full embracing of his sexual identity at every turn, and we’re not sure how this will manifest with the growing external crises Oscar is facing. Buffy the hamster is along all the way to give Oscar her best rodent advice, but that may not be enough. Stephen Dunn’s writing and, in particular, his stylish direction elevate Closet Monster above most other “coming out of age” stories. The film certainly owes plenty to Dunn’s fellow Canuck, Xavier Dolan — especially Heartbeats, which features Aliocha Schneider’s very similar-looking brother in practically the same role. But Closet Monster has a darker edge than most of Dolan’s work, with a level of menace more reminiscent of Gregg Araki’s fantastic Mysterious Skin. It’s certainly an accomplished enough first feature to suggest that Stephen Dunn’s further work is something to consider.Which brings me to two other recently released films featuring gay protagonists, neither of which deals so heavily with coming out. The first (and superior of the two) is Other People, another first time feature, written and directed by Chris Kelly. Kelly is a head writer of Saturday Night Live, but Other People is a far cry from sketch comedy — the film centers on a comedy writer’s relationship with his terminally ill mother. Despite that grim premise, the film is a comedy, though a rather dark and humane one.

Other People stars Jesse Plemons as the son and Molly Shannon as the mother, both terrific. (The film may be too little-seen to garner serious Oscar buzz for Shannon, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility.) After a major setback in his screenwriting career and a breakup with his boyfriend, David moves back to Sacramento to spend time with Joanne, who has probably only a matter of months to live while losing a nasty battle with cancer. David is visibly uncomfortable around his father, Norman (Bradley Whitford), who it turns out doesn’t really approve of his son’s sexual orientation. (Like I said, it’s a common theme in such movies.)

Other People contains a handful of tremendously sad scenes, but refuses to wallow in the misery of its subject matter. Mostly, it treats Joanne’s mortality as a matter of fact and continues to examine the fraught family dynamics, which would be interesting with or without the cancer. Some of the best scenes take place between David and his buddy Gabe (John Early), the two having heart-to-hearts about the cruelties of life and silver linings. (Plus some pretty fun gay stuff.) While some of the father-son dynamic veers further into melodrama than it probably should, most of Other People is refreshingly honest and free of the usual deathbed weepiness we expect from such a movie. It’s well worth a viewing.And then there’s King Cobra, the ostensibly true story of teenage porn star Brent Corrigan’s rise to internet infamy, leading to the murder of his mentor and benefactor, Stephen, played with real nuance by Christian Slater. Slater’s performance is worthy of a better movie and one of few redeemable aspects of King Cobra, which, like Moonlight, Other People, and Closet Monster, was written and directed by a largely unknown filmmaker, Justin Kelly. Garrett Clayton stars as Corrigan, and it’s a fine performance for an underwritten role, though it’s Keegan Allen who nails the right concoction of optimism, narcissism, and flat-out stupidity these characters really should display in a soapy thriller like King Cobra. James Franco, on the other hand, is in half-cocked Spring Breakers bonkers mode as the auteur behind a rival gay porno empire. We also get brief appearances by Molly Ringwald as Stephen’s concerned sister and Alicia Silverstone as Corrigan’s concerned mother. Both do well with what they’re given, but the stunt casting is missing the point.

King Cobra skips over any opportunity for character development, portraying Corrigan as a vapid but more or less well-meaning opportunist who lucks into his porn fame. He doesn’t really do anything in this story, to the extent that we have to wonder why he’s placed at the center of it, when everyone else on screen is more fascinating. Franco’s performance is a little unhinged and, throughout, the gay sex is as unconvincing as you’re likely to see anywhere, but the unhealthy dynamic between the “bad” porn stars gives us our only nibble of anything to chew on in King Cobra. What could have been a fascinating exploration of the power dynamics and sexual politics at play in such a sex-driven culture instead jumps from idea to idea, never landing on an overarching theme. It’d be fun if Corrigan was a manipulative minx in the style of To Die For‘s Suzanne Stone, or if the film examined the psychoses of 2000-era gay porn performers the way Paul Thomas Anderson did for their straight counterparts in the 1970s in Boogie Nights. Ultimately, King Cobra can’t decide what it’s about or even who it’s about — even the sex is surprisingly sterile, more Cinemax than cinema. Despite a few promising moments and Slater’s better-than-it-needed-to-be portrayal of the murder victim, King Cobra is unfortunately toothless in all the ways that count.

And just so we don’t end on a down note, I’ll mention one final recent release that, like the others, is the work of a singular writer/director, but this time is focused exclusively on heterosexuals. (Aww.) That would be Complete Unknown from filmmaker Joshua Marston, concerning a myserious dinner guest (Rachel Weisz) who arrives at the birthday party of a man named Tom (Michael Shannon). When Tom spots Alice, it’s quickly clear that he thinks he knows her; we’ve been privy to some of Alice’s previously sketchy behavior, so we think he just might. Alice is the “plus one” of Clyde (Michael Chernus), Tom’s business partner. The birthday party sequence unfolds deliberately slowly, fleshing out the supporting characters and gradually teasing out Complete Unknown‘s true game in a way that remind me of 2014’s low-key, talky sci-fi thriller Coherence.

As it turns out, Complete Unknown isn’t a science fiction story, but in a way it could be. Its opening moments show us Weisz in a number of scenarios that don’t seem to fit together. Are these meant to all be the same woman? Is this woman a secret agent? A time traveler? We don’t know. Ultimately, Complete Unknown settles down for a more straightforward story exploring Alice’s psyche, and how other characters react to the choices she’s made in her life. Alice is an unconventional woman, living life by her own terms against the rules that have been dictated from on high — some judge her harshly for that, others are more open-minded and even curious.

Many moviegoers can probably identify with Alice’s desire to live a life untethered to the past, but few have truly lived through this kind of redefinition. In this way, Complete Unknown feels like a film made specifically for me, leaving some viewers cold. Though I don’t expect too many people to react to it the same way, I found it riveting from start to finish. It may end up as one of my personal favorites of the year.

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“I didn’t know she had a pony! How was I to know she had a pony? Who figures an immigrant’s going to have a pony? Do you know what the odds are on that? I mean, in all the pictures I saw of immigrants on boats coming into New York Harbor, I never saw one of them sitting on a pony! Why would anybody come here if they had a pony? Who leaves a country packed with ponies to come to a non-pony country? It doesn’t make sense! Am I wrong?”

Seinfeld is the most successful — and arguably the most beloved — sitcom of all time. But how do the antics of TV’s favorite self-absorbed foursome hold up today? In When We Were Young’s latest episode, we take a look back at all nine seasons of the hit 90s series to see how it stands nearly two decades after its polarizing finale. Are the show’s views on sexuality, gender, and race antiquated, or was Seinfeld ahead of its time?

And, most importantly, is Seinfeld still funny? Grab your Junior Mints, throw on your puffy shirt, and GET OUT, because we’ve got a whole lot to say about the “show about nothing.” Listen here and subscribe here, and please leave us a kind review!

Reviews of Seinfeld‘s early seasons:

Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly. “Seinfeld isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s one of the most amiable shows on the air.”

Richard Hack, The Hollywood Reporter: “What remains is a group of terrifically talented people (with Alexander and Louis-Dreyfus stand-outs) who mix but never really mesh. Seinfeld, which had a trial one-shot last year as The Seinfeld Chronicles, is slated to run for three more weeks on NBC. That should be enough.”

Seinfeld has been massively influential — there are few comedies on TV these days that weren’t in some way shaped by it. TV comedy is enjoying an era in which it feels like more characters are self-absorbed than not, and that wouldn’t have happened without the colossal success of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld’s seminal series. And yet the show doesn’t feel stale — with some exceptions, it’s as fresh as anything that’s currently airing. Seinfeld was also a pioneer in self-reference — not just the Season Four arc in which Jerry and George pitch a “show about nothing” to NBC, but also in bizarre moments like Kramer’s

Personally, my experience with Seinfeld in the late 90s revolves almost entirely around its ending. I can’t recall watching the show before the crazy hype surrounding its final season, though it’s possible I did catch it sometimes. I know I caught some of it in syndication around that time, and later, which is where I got a special affinity for stray episodes like “The Big Salad” and “The English Patient,” which aren’t necessarily fan favorites but strike my particular funny bone. Shortly before starting the podcast, I decided to revisit several of Seinfeld‘s best seasons because I was working a lot and stressed out and didn’t want to have to watch anything that required any effort. I knew Seinfeld would do the trick, and it did.

The show is at its worst when it tackles strangely dark and outlandish violence, like Kramer’s mistaken identity as a killer in the oddball Los Angeles arc, and at its best when it satirizes the most mundane aspects of human existence, like “The Airport,” which contrasts Elaine’s misery in coach with Jerry first class delights. Our episode also delves into Seinfeld‘s controversial treatment of gays and various races, which may not be super progressive but still stands above most of its peers from that era (ahem, Friends). Personally, I was surprised I didn’t find anything to get very worked up about from this Clinton-era sitcom, since the jokes are ultimately always at our central foursome’s expense. When George is desperate to show off a black friend or Jerry’s meddling gets a kindly restaurant owner deported, our sympathies lie with the guest stars rather than our self-absorbed main cast. That’s rare.On the other hand, watching Seinfeld can be a little dismaying. Here’s a show about four white people in New York City without any significant problems — and the problems they do have are generally created by themselves. Seinfeld aired between 1989 and 1998, which was a relatively peaceful and prosperous time, a handful of years before 9/11 ushered in a sobering awareness of global turmoil. In light of the recent election, it’s hard not to see Seinfeld as indicative of that era so much of America wants to return to (and make “great again”), when white people could behave boorishly and laugh off the struggles of minorities. What makes it still work is that the show doesn’t ultimately condone this behavior, given its punishing final episode. Spoiled white Americans get their comeuppance in Seinfeld, but as has been proven all too true, life doesn’t imitate art nearly as much as it should.

At least Seinfeld is still good for laughs…

When We Were Young is a new podcast devoted to the most beloved pop culture of our formative years (roughly 1980-2000). Join us for a look back to the past with a critical eye on how these movies, songs, shows, and more hold up now.

You can follow us on Twitter at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at @WWWYShow, you can Email us at wwwyshow@gmail.com, and don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes!

You can help us defray the costs of creating this show, which include purchasing movies/shows/etc to review, imbibing enough sedatives to take down an elephant, and producing & editing in-house at the MFP Studio Studio in Los Angeles CA, by donating to our Patreon.

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Since no studio executive can see into the future, it is impossible to to know if the right date has been selected to launch a film. Sure, 4th of July weekend was a pretty savvy time to release Independence Day back in 1996, and you can consider that a safe bet, but there are moments when news headlines trump Hollywood offerings that no one sees coming. The high school-set dark comedy Election had the misfortune of being released days after the Columbine massacre shocked the nation; just this year, The Birth Of A Nation was sunk by bad press surrounding Nate Parker’s rape allegations. (Because if there’s one thing Americans won’t stand for, it’s letting influential men get away with sexual assault… right?) The Birth Of A Nation might have been a massive hit if released last winter, on the heels of its Sundance breakout buzz, or maybe even this weekend, when a story of black Americans rioting against cruel and bigoted white oppressors might resonate. But that’s not how it happened.

For the next several months, at least, every film released will grapple with what’s going down in the United States right now, in some way or another. It’s nigh impossible to watch anything and not think about how it reflects the chaotic political landscape of our woebegone times.

And that’s especially true of a movie like Arrival, which feels like it was cobbled together by extraterrestrials specifically to be observed and discussed by Americans in November 2016. Like the aliens it depicts, Arrival has a critical message for the people of Earth, and it is absolutely imperative that they take it to heart. The question, then, is this:

Will anyone listen?Arrival stars Amy Adams as Louise Banks, one of the nation’s top linguists and a college professor, who we observe at the beginning of the film grieving for the teen daughter she loses to an unstoppable disease. In a chilling sequence set in a lecture hall, Louise’s students all learn of a global phenomenon at the same moment through urgently chiming cell phones, asking her to turn on the news. Twelve oblong spacecraft have arrived on Earth in seemingly random spots across the globe. Just waiting. This is, of course, reminiscent of the setup of Independence Day, but the similarities mostly end there. Arrival is more thoughtful sci-fi than we usually get, with few moments of true peril. Dr. Banks is summoned to the site of the only spacecraft on American soil by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), where she will work alongside scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to try and figure out what these foreign beings want.

Arrival is directed by Denis Villeneuve, who brought stylish menace to such films as Prisoners and the mind-bending Enemy (one of my favorite films of 2014). Last year, Villeneuve also gave us the haunting drug war drama Sicario, which it is most reminiscent of. Both films revolve around women who are very good at their jobs, but find themselves overwhelmed and out of their element, clashing with the men who outrank them (and may not be so trustworthy). Like all Villeneuve films, Arrival is a gorgeous piece of work, and if it can’t quite match Sicario‘s nerve-rattiling visuals, well, that’s because Sicario was shot by Roger Deakins. 9Don’t get me wrong — Bradford Young’s cinematography is nothing to sneeze at.) Arrival also has an unsettling soundscape orchestrated by Johann Johansson, the man behind last year’s best score, the bone-rattling war drums of Sicario. Arrival‘s score is less intense but equally unnerving, not a far cry from Mica Levi’s Under The Skin.Arrival has roots in so many sci-fi movies — most obviously, the granddaddy, 2001: A Space Odyssey. (The alien ships here are acutely monolith-like.) For its emphasis on a capable female and grounded science, Arrival can easily be compared to Contact also; more recent sci-fi like Prometheus and, especially, Interstellar will also come to mind. Arrival is a bit different for remaining earthbound — though we see quite a bit of its extraterrestrial beings, the story remains focused on humans, both the handful of characters at its centers and, moreso, humankind in general. As often happens in these kinds of films, various military powers are eager to fire some weapons at the “monsters” and see what happens; the United States president is mentioned, though not by name, which forces us to cringe at the thought of Donald Trump’s response to such an event. (My guess: a string of petulant tweets in the dead of night, followed by a hasty nuclear strike.)

Without giving anything away, ultimately, Arrival ends up being a film about communication. Its tagline could easily be “Stronger Together.” (No, there’s nothing in it that revolves around making America great again.) These extraterrestrials know that humans have a tendency to quarrel with one another, which tends to distract from more pressing global concerns. (Like, I don’t know… perhaps climate change?) If we could stop being each other’s own worst enemies, we might actually reach a higher plane of existence.

That’s a nice message, isn’t it? Given the state of the union over the past year, it feels impossible that we’ll ever get there — or, at least, I don’t welcome the apocalyptic phenomena that could force us to. Arrival packs an emotional wallop that works completely outside of its call for solidarity on Earth, but in these dark days, Arrival has landed at a time when unity is the most alien concept we can conceive of in America. Unlike Villeneuve’s past works, Arrival ends up being an optimistic film; I suppose that’s because it was made several months ago, and the people who made it couldn’t foresee America’s grim future.

This weekend sees another Amy Adams-starring drama, albeit a very different one: Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, in which Adams plays Susan, an artist who has doubts about her own talents despite her success. She’s in a flailing marriage to Hutton Morrow (Armie Hammer), who jets off to New York too often to close deals… both of the business variety and with pricey-looking hookers. Susan isn’t happy and hasn’t been, very often, except in the early days of her romance with Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal), an aspiring novelist whose talent doesn’t quite match his ambition. Then Susan hears from Edward out of the blue,  as he sends her a draft of his latest novel, titled Nocturnal Animals.

Susan begins reading the novel, which takes up roughly half of the film. The lead character is Tony, also played by Gyllenhaal, while his wife Laura is played by Amy Adams doppelganger Isla Fisher. The couple takes a road trip through West Texas with their teen daughter, encountering a trio of red necks who run them off the road, leading to a tense evening with a violent end. In the aftermath, Tony meets Bobby Andes, an old school hard-boiled police detective who cares about nothing besides seeing justice done. The book within the film is intercut with Susan’s story, both her present day marital woes and flashbacks to her courtship and eventual fallout with Edward. Susan’s story is presented mostly as melodrama, with pastiche elements reminiscent of Hitchcock and other old-fashioned entertainment.

Many high-caliber actors pop in for a single scene, including Laura Linney, Michael Sheen, Jena Malone, and Andrea Riseborough, though we also spend a lot of time watching Adams read the book, or ponder its themes and how they relate to her own failing marriages. The film’s stylish opening features a quartet of middle-aged overweight women dancing in slow motion, shamelessly displaying that full-figured full frontal nudity. Unfortunately, Nocturnal Animals doesn’t quite match the daring of Susan’s artistic work, coming across as more muted than it needs to be. It would have been nice to see how Edward’s novel interacts with her artistic spirit, maybe informing her work somehow. The final scene makes a powerful point, willfully leaving so much unresolved, but it might have been nice if we’d been given a little more to chew on first, as both of Susan’s love stories come across as fairly mundane. Though the starry cast makes for a pleasant distraction, Nocturnal Animals misses the opportunity to say more about the way art opens up our memory and emotions, at times perhaps even acts as an instrument to help us fall in and out of love. It certainly falls short of the pained nuance of Ford’s debut masterpiece, A Single Man.

The story-within-the-story fares slightly better, despite following a largely predictable revenge thriller template. If Arrival is very much a blue state story about the importance of communication and teamwork in solving global crises, Nocturnal Animals continues the cinematic tradition of upstanding, educated people being menaced by stupid sexist bigots. Yes, the trio of deplorables that senselessly terrorizes the Hastings family (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Karl Glusman, and Robert Aramayo) are definitely the very worst kind of Trump voter, taking out their economic frustrations on those they consider to be the enemy, the elite. In this kind of story, of course, communication is far from the most effective way to solve a problem. Grabbing a gun tends to be a lot more satisfying, though it doesn’t lead to a happy ending for anyone involved.

Neither Arrival nor Nocturnal Animals is overtly political, but it’s hard not to view them through the prism of America’s current disarray, with one offering hoping and solace for the future of the human race and the other exploring bitter chasms between characters who are too damaged to reconcile their differences anymore. There are several characters in Arrival, too, who would rather solve a problem by attempting to blow it up than through patience and understanding. It’d be nice to believe that smart people like Louise will triumph over the hotheads with all the badges and power, but for the moment, at least, that’s not the country we live in anymore. We’re left feeling more like Susan, realizing too little, too late, that the sins of the past can’t be undone, and maybe there’s no way to move forward together.

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“But there are no cats in America
And the streets are paved with cheese.
Oh, there are no cats in America
So set your mind at ease…”

Hey, kids! Do you like cartoon mice? Catchy songs? And lots and lots of death? If your answer to these questions is “yep, yep, yep!”, then have we got the podcast for you!

When We Were Young’s 5th episode is all about a super talented guy who created an animated mouse you know and love. No — not that guy, and not that mouse. We’re talking about that other cartoon mouse maestro, Don Bluth, a former Disney animator gone rogue whose lifelong rivalry with the Mouse House makes for one fascinating tale. He brought us such beloved rodents as Feivel and Mrs. Brisby, as well as dead dogs, dead parents and a dead Russian whose corpse is still causing mayhem — ‘cause yeah, there is a lot of death in the work of Don Bluth!

Today, November 21, is the 30^th anniversary of An American Tail. So let’s reminisce about the forgotten link between VHS tapes and fast food, ponder why so many kiddie flicks revolve around being violently orphaned, and see how old faves like The Secret Of NIMH, An American Tail, Land Before Time, All Dogs Go To Heaven, and Anastasia hold up against Disney’s 80s and 90s offerings. (Hint: the Bluth films have much more poverty and murder.)

“Tale as old as time
True as it can be
Barely even friends
Then somebody bends
Unexpectedly.

Just a little change
Small to say the least
Both a little scared
Neither one prepared
Beauty and the Beast…”

The 1990s were an innocent time where cassettes ruled and Disney pop songs were a regular fixture on the Billboard charts. The singles released during this decade earned the Mouse House multi-millions in sales and, more often than not, scored some sweet Oscar glory.

But are any of these recordings — sung by actual humans, not their cartoon counterparts — something you’d still want to listen to today?

Brace yourselves, because When We Were Young has reviewed all 13 pop singles from Disney/Pixar’s 90s theatrical releases (from 1991’s Beauty And The Beast to 1999’s Toy Story 2), taking a gander at whether these songs stand the test of time — or if they’re just old as rhyme (whatever that means). Join us as we sing with all the voices of the mountain (including Vanessa L. Williams’) and catch up on what Peabo Bryson’s been up to the last few decades.

God help the podcast! Take a listen here.

As explained in the episode, I almost exclusively listened to Disney soundtracks until about 1997, not unlike my co-hosts. However, the pop singles were rarely the tracks I spent time with, preferring the versions from the films sung by characters rather than those that charted on the radio. Is this just a product of age? It’s possible that I find most in-movie versions superior to the singles merely because I was a child upon their release, but in most cases, these songs work better in the context of the stories they’re supporting, and are less effective on their own. (The Lion King is the standout; Elton John’s recordings are pretty iconic.)

I find Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson’s “Beauty and the Beast” particularly troubling — and, yes, a little “rapey.” Part of this is just the context of the movie, which might be problematic from a gender politics standpoint (I’d need to watch it again to be sure). In a charming animated film, a song about two individuals who are “barely even friends” finding a “bittersweet and strange” connection might work just fine, but outside of it? Is “both a little scared, neither one prepared” really an aspirational romance? Is this really a “tale as old as time”? I take issue.

The overall verdict? A few of these songs are still shining, shimmering, splendid, but most fail to go the distance. The biggest surprises for me were Vanessa L. Williams’ “Colors of the Wind,” which I found surprisingly beautiful, and “Go the Distance,” which has the misfortune of being performed by Michael Bolton, but is pretty good anyway. (Even though I prefer the Ricky Martin version.) The biggest disappointment was “God Help the Outcasts,” which I remembered as being so beautiful — and it is, as sung in the movie, but is hardly done justice by Bette Midler.

Revisiting this era through Disney music was fun, particularly since it’s been a while since I watched most of these films.

Special shout-out to “Vanity,” a necessary counterpoint to Xtina’s “Reflection.”

My rankings:

1. Can You Feel the Love Tonight
2. Colors of the Wind
3. Go the Distance
4. A Whole New World
5. When She Loved Me
6. Circle of Life
7. God Help the Outcasts
8. Reflection
9. Hakuna Matata
10. You’ve Got a Friend in Me
11. Beauty and the Beast
12. You’ll Be in My Heart
13. Someday

When We Were Young is a podcast devoted to the most beloved pop culture of our formative years (roughly 1980-2000). Join us for a look back to the past with a critical eye on how these movies, songs, shows, and more hold up now.

You can help us defray the costs of creating this show, which include purchasing movies/shows/etc to review, imbibing enough sedatives to take down an elephant, and producing & editing in-house at the MFP Studio Studio in Los Angeles CA, by donating to our Patreon account, and don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes!

*

Los Angeles is a city paradoxically known for two things: its sun and its stars. Most of La La Land‘s musical moments revolve around one or the other.

For months now, the follow-up from the writer/director of Whiplash has been positioned as the front-runner for Best Picture, with plenty of precedent — 2002’s Chicago was a musical named after a populous American city; 2005’s Crash was all about the populace of Los Angeles; 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire revolved around a popular TV show; 2010’s The King’s Speech followed a monarch who needed a vocal coach in order to deliver a performance; 2011’s The Artist, 2012’s Argo, and 2014’s Birdman dealt with showbiz even more explicitly. Put all these Best Picture winners in a blender, add a dollop of Crazy Stupid Love for good measure, and you pretty much get La La Land, Oscar nominee Damien Chazelle’s third music-centric film in a row, starring Hollywood darlings Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. I don’t mean to question Chazelle’s motives in making this film, but it does kind of seem like it was concocted by a Netflix algorithm based on the members of the Academy’s viewing preferences.

Because You Watched Birdman…

The story begins with a meet cute between Mia and Sebastian on the on-ramp to a freeway. She’s a barista on the Warner Bros. lot, striving to be an actress. He’s a stubborn hipster who has taken it upon himself to save jazz, for some reason. They have a couple more chance encounters and soon fall in love, which is believable enough for two such highly attractive individuals. Sebastian inspires Mia to write herself a one-woman show to display her talents; Mia attempts some input into Sebastian’s dream of opening a jazz-themed chicken restaurant — or is that a chicken-themed jazz club? (Whatever. It’s an homage to Charlie Parker.) The two find that their career aspirations — more aptly, their “dreams” — put their relationship into jeopardy, and at different points each of them wonders whether these dreams should be abandoned in favor of a more practical life.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: and sometimes they sing about this.The splashiest musical moment in La La Land is its first, featuring a large cast of random multiethnic characters leaping out of their cars to sing the praises of the City of Angels. It’s essentially Crash: The Musical, and it’s vibrant and entertaining, though there isn’t any particular rhyme or reason to who’s singing, or when, or why, and that persists throughout the movie. I keep second guessing myself in my response to La La Land in that respect, because isn’t that true of every musical? And if so, why isn’t it a problem there, when I had such a hard hard time falling in love with La La Land?

Best Picture winner Chicago introduced the clever gimmick that fame-obsessed Roxie Hart was framing every number as a movie musical in her mind. Later musicals have often similarly given “reasons” why people burst into song. In Buffy The Vampire Slayer‘s wondrous “Once More With Feeling,” a demon possesses Sunnydale inhabitants with an uncontrollable urge to sing until they literally catch fire. These devices are handy to bridge today’s blase audience expectations with the old-fashioned notion of a movie musical, but I’m not so cynical that self-reference is the only way I can buy in, because that isn’t normally the case. I’ve never had trouble getting on board with characters bursting into song to express their feelings until I saw La La Land, in which I had no clue why characters had chosen these particular moments to sing, or to not sing. Some moments in La La Land feel song-worthy, and pass without a peep. I don’t know why… and the only conclusion I’ve been able to draw is that Chazelle doesn’t particularly know, either.I’ll venture a guess that Chazelle’s vision for La La Land is that Los Angeles is a land of dreamers, so a heightened musical reality is possible here. Do people also burst into song in Boulder City, where Emma Stone’s Mia is from? We don’t know. It would seem important to establish a contrast between Los Angeles and, you know, other places in order to sell the idea that the “La La”s in La La Land are literal and exclusive. I love the concept that Los Angeles is so sunny and out of touch with reality, people literally run around singing their hearts out. This might make more sense if it was specifically creative types who saw reality this way, but there’s no pointed contrast with people who are not singing and dancing and those who are. Which would also be fine, except that this movie musical doesn’t give other people musical numbers after that opening. Most musicals present a world where anyone can and will belt out a song to express an idea or further the story; occasionally, they frame this through a specific character’s point of view, and limit the musical numbers to certain characters or situations, as in Chicago or Dancer In The Dark. There are no such rules in La La Land.

You’d expect the gimmick in La La Land would be that when Mia and Sebastian come together, they make sweet music together. The film plays with that idea, first in a musical number that takes place in the Hollywood hills, with the city of Los Angeles glittering in the background; then, on their first date, in which they break into the Griffith Observatory, and end up literally flying. The latter is a dance number without singing, and it’s one of the La La Land moments that felt flattest to me. First, I’m confused about how much of this is real: are they literally breaking into a Los Angeles landmark with no repercussions? And why are they flying?Okay, okay. I get that this is a musical in which we have to take a lot at face value and not ask questions. Ordinarily I have no problem with that. But up until this point, La La Land has been a very grounded musical, complete with iPhones and sardonic banter and very practical real world set pieces. That’s a choice I’m on board with, if indeed it is a choice Chazelle plans on sticking with… but, no. I suppose this altered reality “in the stars” is meant to represent the characters’ soaring emotional state, but it’s a little much. And it makes me wonder why, if this sequence is so stylized, are the rest of the musical numbers so earthbound?

Then again, the problem might be less in the staging and more in the writing of the romance itself. Prior to this, Sebastian proves himself to be a total dick on three occasions. The only reason Mia has to fall for him is that he looks like Ryan Gosling. But at the end of the day, Ryan Gosling acting like a dick is still just a dick, and though this behavior is de rigueur in romantic comedies, most films counteract it quickly with some charm and charisma from the leading man. La La Land‘s strategy is to sub in an anti-gravity tryst in the starry sky, which does not alone convince me that Sebastian is not a dick, and I still don’t know enough about the rules of this musical world to understand why these two lovebirds weren’t promptly jailed for breaking and entering. A consistently heightened reality would excuse this in most musicals, but La La Land‘s vision of Los Angeles is mostly mundane. If Chazelle wanted to do a musical set in the real world, I wish he’d stick to that instead of throwing in an impossible fantasy sequence. Chazelle has already given us everything but the kitchen sink from the world of movie musicals, and then the kitchen sink goes flying through space.

Throughout the film, Chazelle wants to have his cake and eat it too, presenting Mia and Sebastian as world-weary in their dialogue and hopelessly starry-eyed in their songs. In this way, the musical numbers feel out of step with the characters, forcing them together rather than playing as logical extensions of what these characters are feeling at any given moment. The dance between them takes on an entirely different tone than the music-free scenes. Are we to believe that the songs represent the character’s inner monologues, giving us insight into the deeper wants they refuse to express? The things they can’t speak? No, not really — or, at least, not consistently. Chazelle’s vision for what the musical numbers represent is all over the map.Oddly enough, La La Land has precious few supporting characters. J.K. Simmons appears as an ever-so-slightly nicer version of his character from Whiplash, playing Sebastian’s gruff boss; Rosemarie DeWitt gets far too little screen time as Sebastian’s sister. That’s about it. No one besides Mia or Sebastian gets their own musical number, which might seem like a purposeful choice meant to represent their feelings of attraction if the movie didn’t begin in that traffic jam with stray characters singing, and Sebastian and Mia not. Mia’s roommates join her for what (almost) passes as an “I Want” song in the film’s lively second number, “Someone In The Crowd,” and then no one else sings or dances for the rest of the movie. So is this a world in which everyone sings, or not?

If the singing is meant to represent the inner monologue of Los Angeles “dreamers,” great! But then why are Gosling and Stone not singing in the upbeat opening number, “Another Day Of Sun”? Why doesn’t Gosling get a musical solo until halfway through the film? Chazelle wants the singing and dancing to represent both the inherent inner dreaminess of artists and the budding relationship between Sebastian and Mia, but those two elements are completely at odds with each other. Sebastian and Mia don’t awaken each other’s inner artist; La La Land makes the explicit point that their relationship goes against their individual goals as creatives. Chazelle seems to have inserted musical numbers in places where they seem “fun,” rather than where they make sense for storytelling. This is most evident in the film’s second act, which focuses on Chazelle’s — I mean, Sebastian’s — preoccupation with jazz, which comes off more like a hipster put-on than an organic interest for this character. As a result, most of Gosling’s musical numbers are diagetic — he’s literally playing piano and singing in the scene, which is somewhat confusing in a movie musical. This can work if the movie is framed through his vision — if we are meant to believe that we’re seeing the world as a jazzy musical because that’s the way this character sees it — but that’s not the case, because we’re with Mia in the most significant moments in the movie, and she gets the bulk of the songs. (Case in point: Mia ironically lip-syncs and dances to A Flock Of Seagulls’ “I Ran,” as performed by Sebastian’s cheesy cover band at a party; I just don’t think this kind of scene works in a movie in which people legitimately burst out singing even cheesier songs.)

Chazelle’s vision of Los Angeles trades on stale cliches and the broadest of broad jokes. (Yep, we’ve got traffic and parking tickets! What else is new?) These gags weren’t cutting edge in the 80s and 90s when movies like LA Story and The Player satirized “the biz”; here, they’re tepidly amusing at best. But aside from a handful of light jabs, La La Land isn’t a Hollywood satire — yet it doesn’t have the conviction to be wholly earnest, either. The first two musical numbers are playful and lightly comedic, though the songs don’t stick quite the way you’d hope musical numbers would. After that, La La Land abandons its commentary on Los Angeles and the entertainment industry for a long stretch to focus on jazz, of all things; not only that, it abandons its identity as a musical, which is its greatest misstep. Hopefully, you enjoyed Mia and Sebastian’s “first spark” duet, “A Lovely Night,” in the first act, because it’s the last real musical number you’ll see between them.In La La Land‘s clunkiest scenes, Sebastian mansplains jazz (“jazzsplains”?) to a clueless Mia, who thinks jazz started and ends with Kenny G. (Oy. Can you get any more basic?) Sebastian’s lectures to Mia play like Chazelle force-educating clueless white girls everywhere on why what he loves is important, and they belong nowhere near this movie. Jazz is too weirdly specific a passion for Sebastian’s character in La La Land. Mia’s desire to be an actress casts her nicely as the Everygirl (in Los Angeles, at least), but few in the audience will identify with Sebastian’s equally burning passion to serve chicken on a stick in a dimly-lit basement. To truly work as a film about dreamers, Sebastian should have been portrayed as an equally identifiable dreamer with an equally simple want — a baker, a painter, whatever — and not just an extension of Chazelle’s own musical obsessions.

Spending so much time with Sebastian and his (intentionally?) lame musical collaborations with a John Legend type (played, naturally, by John Legend) confuses the movie musical conceit, especially when the singing and dancing is wholly abandoned by the second act. There’s a long stretch of the film in which we get a grand total of zero non-diagetic musical numbers (and a whole lot of jazz). This might have worked if Gosling were replaced by a black actor, but posing a smug white dude as the lone savior of jazz in the 21st century isn’t a good look, especially when it’s up to him to “teach” the girl about why jazz is cool. (She instantly gets it when she dances in a spotlight surrounded by African-Americans, of course… it’s mercifully brief but racially tone deaf.)

For La La Land to be such a broad tale about Los Angeles stereotypes, it would help if Sebastian actually was a stereotype the way Mia is. Imagine how much cheekier La La Land could have been with Gosling playing a personal trainer, with a dream of starting his own fitness craze? It doesn’t quite work to cast Mia as a total cliche and burden Sebastian with a storyline you’d expect from a straight drama. Here, Emma Stone is starring in a musical, so she sings and dances; Ryan Gosling isn’t, and mostly doesn’t. If I’m being a bit harsh with La La Land, it’s mainly to push back against the overpraise the film is getting elsewhere. Moment by moment, I enjoyed it enough (with brief, seething hatred for some of those jazz scenes), so I understand why critics and audiences can be so entertained… if they don’t think about it much. La La Land has earnest intentions and a handful of very good scenes, particularly those that call out Mia’s doubts about her talent. (The only scenes that pass for real character depth.) Both Sebastian and Mia are paper thin characters, though Stone gives hers enough juice that we’re on board with her throughout the film. Individual moments between them play well enough, even if none quite capitalize on the chemistry the duo displayed in Crazy Stupid Love — which contained a musical moment that’s better than anything in La La Land, albeit one gleefully ripped off from Dirty Dancing. The film as a whole plays more like a great outline for a movie than one that’s been fully worked out. The details haven’t been filled in yet… and I guess they never will be.

All in all, La La Land contains only about five or six tried-and-true musical numbers, one of which is meant to be a fantasy sequence, which doesn’t quite work because it’s shot and choreographed like all the rest. It does have two legitimately great songs, the first of which is the earworm “City Of Stars,” which, unfortunately, gets overplayed throughout the film in absence of other equally memorable music. I also enjoyed “Audition,” performed by Stone in a climactic moment that’s likely to win her an Oscar for Best Actress. It won’t be entirely undeserved, but it made me wish that the movie preceding it had been as full of depth and feeling as that one moment made it seem like it was. And as many problems as I have with La La Land‘s lack of focus, Chazelle does stick the landing, more or less, arriving at a point I wish it seemed like he was making all along.

Ultimately, La La Land claims to be about the sacrifices artists make for their craft, and it ends that movie in fantastic fashion. The problem is that that’s not the film we started out with. Mia and Sebastian huff and puff a lot about their dreams, but it feels like they chose them out of a hat. We don’t know what Mia loves about acting; at one point, it seems La La Land is slyly positioning her to become a writer instead, but that’s a false start — her writing is only a means to a very generic end. Problematically, it seems Mia wants to be famous more than she wants to be an actress, and that’s what she gets. Similarly, I couldn’t buy Sebastian’s jazz club ambitions as the real logical conclusion for this character — he has barely a drop of the fiery ambition displayed by Miles Teller’s character in Whiplash, in which we fully believed this guy wanted it that badly.

On paper, you could read La La Land‘s ending as a biting takedown of this “City of Stars,” but on screen, I see no evidence that that’s what Chazelle is after. It’s a bittersweet conclusion, sure, but neither Mia and Sebastian’s relationship nor their individual aspirations have enough weight or nuance or conviction for me to care which choice they make. Is it meant to be tragic if they end up together, or tragic if they don’t? The film needed to do a little more legwork in acts one and two for us to draw that conclusion.

Alas, members of the Academy are sure to identify with Mia’s emotional “Audition,” and with the message of the film as a whole, just as they did a couple years ago with Birdman. It’s been proven that a movie about the noble sacrifices of actors can and will win Best Picture, especially when they star Emma Stone. It’s looking like that will hold true again in 2017. I’d like to believe that now, of all moments, a film like Moonlight can cut through the artifice and be rewarded for its clarity and authenticity; what better message could liberal Hollywood send to the fascist conservative folks rising to power in Washington, D.C., than crown a film about gay black men the Best Picture of the year? But the Academy is even more self-aggrandizing than it is liberal, so La La Land is about ten times more likely to sweep awards season than Moonlight.

Oh well. Here’s to the ones who dream, right?

*

She remembers how hot the sun was in Dallas, and the crowds — greater and wilder than the crowds in Mexico or in Vienna. The sun was blinding, streaming down; yet she could not put on sunglasses for she had to wave to the crowd.

And up ahead she remembers seeing a tunnel around a turn and thinking that there would be a moment of coolness under the tunnel. There was the sound of motorcycles, as always in a parade, and the occasional backfire of a motorcycle. The sound of the shot came, at that moment, like the sound of a backfire, and she remembers Connally saying, “No, no, no, no, no…”

In my Top Ten list from last year, I acknowledged that the experience of seeing a movie weighed heavily in one’s response to that movie. I loved the offbeat indie comedy Mistress America, my unlikely favorite film of the year, and I have rewatched it several times since then and loved it just as much. But I also love my memory of first seeing it, on a rainy afternoon at the Starlight Theater in Port Townsend, Washington. I love them equally: the movie and the memory.

One’s experience of seeing a film shouldn’t be the only qualifier in how one responds to that film, but art is subjective. We can’t expect experience to not be a part of loving or loathing a movie. What were we tasting, feeling, smelling at the time? How did that affect what we were seeing and hearing? In a perfect world, maybe we tune those things out, pay attention wholly to the film itself. But I don’t know that we’re capable of that. Our response to a movie depends on when we see, where we see it, how we see it, who we see it with… maybe even why we see it. All of these must factor in, at least a little.

The world is a different place than it was twenty years ago. I am a different person in it, because of what happened in the world, and what happened to me. And so I see films differently now than I would have then, even if it is the same movie. Try as we might, we can’t separate the art from the experience, and we can never know fully if it just hit us the right way in the right moment. That’s the beauty of it. So I’ll never know what I would have thought of Jackie twenty years ago, or forty years from now, or in a more sensible world where things had turned out differently in this country.

I can only imagine my response to Jackie in the alternate reality where we are awaiting the inauguration of Hillary Clinton. How interesting, I’d say, to see a movie about a First Lady brushing up against bureaucracy, carving out an important slice of history for her family from a position of little authority. Look how far we’ve come. Witness a woman who started like this, as a First Lady, just like Jackie, a subject of gossip and criticism she may or may not have deserved. A woman who lacked a certain amount of agency despite her vaunted position of power. A woman who had to smile for the cameras no matter what her husband was doing; the woman who was left to pay for his sins, and then some, and did it all with poise and grace. Look, look, at this woman, becoming the President of the United States.

But we don’t live in that world, do we?In such a world, I may have liked Jackie; I may even have loved it. We’ll never know. But in this reality — a crueler, more disappointing world — I was transfixed by it. Director Pablo Larrain is not an American; of course, he is not a psychic, either. He directed Jackie with no knowledge of what was to come in this dark, disturbing, and quite likely doomed chapter in American history. Noah Oppenheim wrote the script with blinders to the future, too. Yet, as if by magic, the two have managed to capture something that reaches through time and space and celluloid to grab us by the hearts… and stop them. That’s how I felt, watching Jackie — deeply touched, and fatally ended. There is no single better image to sum up 2016 than a First Lady covered in her husband’s blood, stalking through the White House like a zombie. Jackie is the perfect funeral dirge for America in 2016.

Jackie takes place a few days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, with brief flashbacks to his time in office and that fateful afternoon in Dallas. Natalie Portman plays the iconic Jackie, flawlessly mimicking her unique accent and mannerisms in the year’s most transcendent performance. Larrain’s film jumps nimbly, sometimes jarringly, through space and time, between Dallas and Washington and a post-assassination interview conducted by a character credited as “The Journalist,” who in real life was Theodore H. White, one of history’s most esteemed political journalists.This is the kind of framing device you’ve seen in a lot of biopics, though in Jackie, it’s barely a framing device at all, because Jackie is no biopic. It’s a tone poem, and that tone is dreary and depressed — appropriately so, for both November 1963 and December 2016. The bulk of the film depicts Jackie’s grief over her husband’s violent, horrifying death, as she struggles with how best to make funeral arrangements for the leader of the free world and copes with her sudden irrelevance in the White House. She drinks, she smokes, she cries, as you’d expect; she also decides to spin a narrative that casts her late husband as the American hero he never quite was, less to glorify the Kennedy name than to give the American people something to believe in in their darkest hour. At least, that’s what she says. Was this Jackie Kennedy’s true intent? I have no earthly idea, and neither does anyone else at this point. I believe the screen version of Ms. Kennedy when she says so, though the film trades in ambiguities and you can draw your own conclusions.

Jackie tells the Journalist to liken John’s term to King Arthur and the noble knights of the Round Table; to Camelot. In a sense, this is ridiculous iconography to attach to a modern President of the United States, especially one who infamously cheated on his wife incessantly. In Jackie, though, it plays as curiously heroic; maybe because Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, is a president we tend to hold in much lower regard, maybe because nearly any human being on the planet would be a more desirable president than the one we’re about to get. John F. Kennedy wasn’t perfect, but Jackie reminds us of an era in which the leaders of our country were worthy of respect, a time that lasted from the foundation of this country through 2016, a time that’s about to come to a screeching end. What Jackie knew in 1963 is something we have recently, tragically forgotten. The American dream can only persist if it stays alive in the collective consciousness. For this reason, Jackie knows, presidents have to be remembered as a little better than they were. For current and future leaders to strive to be their best, they and we must believe these American legends. In Jackie, we mourn JFK, but really, we mourn every president who came before and since, because all of that is being buried now — our belief that our leaders, though flawed, will have our best intentions at heart. That they will set aside ego and self-interest for the good of this nation. Jackie believes Camelot died with John, but as we watch from 2016, we feel it dying just now, all around us.

Goodbye, Camelot.

There are so many links between this story set in 1962 and the one unfurling now in 2016, so perfectly ironic that they must have been planted purposefully — except they couldn’t have been. Importantly, Jackie becomes the first First Lady to bring TV cameras into the White House, creating a new relationship between the American people and the presidency. Now, we can look at this as the beginning of the end, because in 2016, America voted to put a TV star in the White House. As Jackie shows off her opulent home for the TV viewers of the 1960s, we now feel it as the first domino falling, and hear the echo from way out here in 2016.

The 1960s felt like an apocalyptic moment in American history, due in part to several shocking assassinations and rapid cultural upheaval that bucked social norms left and right. The world was changing faster than we could reckon with it. The same thing is happening now — or maybe a very different thing. It’s too soon to tell. JFK’s assassination raised questions about Russian interference in American politics. The Cuban Missile Crisis made it feel as if nuclear war was imminent, something we’ve haven’t had to worry much about since (until now?). Kennedy began the embargo on Cuba in 1961; as if on cue, Fidel Castro died a couple weeks after this year’s election put a similar nationalist in charge of the United States. The Kennedy administration was a long time ago, but its repercussions are acutely felt in 2016, moreso than some of the administrations that came afterward.

They say history repeats itself. Let’s hope.

Even aside from its eerie connections to the war-torn 2016 political landscape, Jackie is about much more than just a First Lady mourning her man. It’s about how history is shaped; how legends are born. Jackie weeps, not just for her lost love, but for a country she believes is falling to pieces around her. (If only she knew how much worse things could get!) We easily join her in shedding those tears. We can relate. We all create our own legends in our minds, based on what we remember and how we remember it. The same is true, in a larger sense, of how our history is remembered. Had Jackie reacted differently to her husband’s death, we may have an entirely different understanding of JFK’s short but poignant reign.

Jackie unfolds as memories do, out of sequence and without logic; often, we see conversations unfold while jumping through multiple locations, but is this how they actually occurred or just how Jackie remembers them? It doesn’t matter, because I don’t think much of what occurs in Jackie’s recent past is meant to be taken literally. It’s what she remembers. It’s her history; regardless of whether it’s truly true, it’s true to her. We can pretend that some version of these events is the “real” one, but in fact, everything we know about history has been told to us, filtered through one subjective lens, or a dozen, or a hundred. That’s how history works — it happens, and then it’s shaped and reshaped. Jackie remembers the horror or her husband’s death, but also the man who lived before it. She knows he was a womanizer, but she loves him. She loved dancing with him.

She was, like so many of us, hoping things would turn out better.

Jackie passes astonishingly quickly. An hour and forty minutes felt like about half that length. I suspect there’s plenty of footage that wound up on the cutting room floor, which may be for the best, given how expertly Jackie is crafted — though I’d happily watch a three hour cut of a film like this. Produced by Darren Aronofsky, the film feels a lot like one of his movies in both style and tone. It’s a requiem for a different kind of dream. The similarities to Black Swan are most acute, as Larrain’s camera follows Portman’s Jackie through the White House, often from behind, the way it stalked Portman’s Nina in Black Swan. It’s impossible to believe that Aronofsky had no influence in this. Director of Photography Stéphane Fontaine frames so many shots so beautifully; though Moonlight gives Jackie a run for its money, I’m not sure any film from 2016 looks as gorgeous as this. Technically, the film is an A+ across the board, from the costuming to the production design and especially the distressing score by Mica Levi. For about a half a second, the strings in Jackie‘s score sound lush and hopeful, then suddenly they slide downward and everything takes a turn for the worse. It’s the perfect accompaniment for a rotting American dream.

And yet, as good as it all is, I don’t expect many audiences to connect with Jackie the way I did; it’s divisive, far from the unqualified critical darling that Moonlight deservedly is. Jackie is a strange, sad, unconventional movie; a lot of people will probably see it because the trailers and posters show Natalie Portman wearing some amazing, iconic outfits, expecting a more straightforward biopic. They’ll leave confused, bothered, and disappointed. I wouldn’t have it any other way, really; I wouldn’t want this one to be more palatable, or go down more easily. At this moment in time, I want a film that sticks in my throat, that forces us to reckon with it.If Jackie has any weakness (and I’m not sure it does), it’s found in the scenes between Crudup and Portman, which give us little context for the tenor of the relationship between this journalist and the widowed First Lady, or what precisely is going on here. Brushing up on the history behind this encounter after the fact lent them a lot more weight, though I might wish Jackie clued us in a bit more to the dynamic between the two to eliminate the guesswork. It might come off as a weak gimmick to those who don’t know. Aside from the Journalist, Jackie also makes important confessions to two other figures throughout the film: a priest, played by John Hurt, who helps her grapple with the intense emotional pain that threatens her will to live, and Bobby Kennedy, played by Peter Sarsgaard, who rages after his brother’s death. Again, what we know of the future adds crushing sadness to what plays out on screen; we know this Kennedy, too, will be shot soon enough. Seeing a very young John F. Kennedy Jr. is even more heartbreaking. You certainly can’t blame Larrain for Jackie‘s oppressively somber tone.

Caspar Phillipson plays the man himself; the resemblance is uncanny, its effect haunting. Many filmmakers would have been skittish about showing us JFK at all, but that would have been cheating in a film that’s all about Jackie’s tortured memories about life and death of the man she loves. But Larrain doesn’t give us too much JFK, either: that would have been an easy crutch to fall back on, too. Meanwhile, Beth Grant and John Carroll Lynch play the incoming First Family, the Johnsons, and Greta Gerwig portrays Jackie’s BFF Nancy, but these are brief appearances. This is Portman’s show through and through, and she plays the hell out of it. She’s almost sure to get an Oscar nomination, though the film is probably too off-putting to secure her a win, especially considering that she won already for Black Swan. But the performance will live on as one of her best, if not the best.Is Jackie a great film? Out of context, I don’t rightly know; I’ll have to see it again, and even then, I can only view it knowing what I know and feeling what I feel about what’s happened to America. And in that context, I suspect it’s a masterpiece. The themes of the film are elusive, unless you’re willing to look for them and bring some of yourself to the experience. Jackie touches upon many ideas and then quickly moves on, leaving you to think about them more, if you want to, or not. It is not a crowd-pleaser; it’s a fucking bummer. As well it should be. As any film about American politics released in 2016 should be.

If you dare to look for hope here, take comfort in Jackie’s belief that Camelot ended in 1962, that life was not worth living after that. She moved on, and so did we. America had some shining moments in the moments to come. It recovered from Kennedy’s death, and even thrived for a good portion of that time. It may have seemed like the end of everything, but it was not.

We are now asking ourselves the same questions Jackie asked then, at a moment that seems just as dark and just as dire. Maybe Kennedy’s death wasn’t the end at all; maybe it was the beginning… and now it’s finally ending. Maybe this is it.

It’s hard to be hopeful. It’s difficult not to fear the worst, when everything you know and feel suggests that the best of it is gone now. Jackie may have been wrong about that, but that doesn’t mean we are wrong. I suspect, as Jackie did then, that it’s over. But only time tells such tales.She said it is time people paid attention to the new President and the new First Lady. But she does not want them to forget John F. Kennedy or read of him only in dusty or bitter histories:

For one brief shining moment there was Camelot.

And now there’s not.

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Hello, Sidney.

Do you like scary movies?

What’s your favorite scary movie?

If you grew up in the 90s, there’s a good chance your answer to that question is Scream. In Episode 7, we plunge bone-deep into the millennial teen horror craze with the film that (re)-started it all, the meta horror-comedy written by a then-unknown Kevin Williamson and directed by shocker maestro Wes Carpenter… err, Craven. We all agree that opening scene starring an ill-fated Drew Barrymore is as iconic as they come, but does the rest of Scream hold up? And how about those sequels?

So burn some popcorn, lace up your generic black boots, and prepare to see what your insides look like, because we’re about to discuss why the Scream movies are the ultimate slut shame and bicker about which movie has the best Gale Weathers hairdo. (It’s definitely Scream 2.) Then, in an ironic “gotcha!” twist, you’ll discover that this is all just a podcast within a Stab movie within a Scream movie that Tori Spelling is listening to.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to go investigate a strange noise. We’ll be right back!

In the meantime, check out the latest episode here or get it on iTunes.

Scream

Budget: $14 million
Domestic Total Gross: $103 million
Worldwide: $173 million
Opening Weekend: $6.4 million
Release Date: December 20, 1996
Metacritic: 65

Scream has always been a favorite of mine, and as I explain in the podcast, is one of the biggest influences on my own writing. Kevin Williamson and Joss Whedon got to me at just the right moment. Though I’m not overly fond of horror in general, the ways Scream and Buffy The Vampire Slayer turned tropes inside out and blended meta humor with real teen angst and character development always hit that sweet spot for me. (I talk a lot more about my history with the late 90s teen horror craze here.)

I know Scream inside and out and have loved the series for a long time, despite its decline in the later entries, but doing the podcast was the first time I really considered the franchise as a whole, watching the movies more or less back-to-back. What came into focus overall was how much the four films are about trauma, explored through the character of Sidney Prescott, who is more integral to the Scream series than any other Final Girl I can think of — unless maybe we count the Alien series as straight-up horror. (And even then, they did eventually bump Ripley off.)

MTV has obviously tried to extend the Scream brand beyond Sidney (and even Ghostface), and though there’s plenty of meta-juice in the horror-comedy hybrid that isn’t character specific, in a way it’d be a shame to see a Scream film without Sidney because she so anchors these movies. From that very first iconic opening scene, murder matters in the Scream universe. We get to know Casey Becker for only a few minutes, but her death is brutal and terrifying, not just because of the carnage, but because we’re sorry to see her go. Rubbing salt in the wound is something you rarely see in a slasher flick — honest-to-God grief from Casey’s horrified parents, who discover their daughter gutted and hanging from a tree. Yes, it’s a gore-fest worthy of any other slasher movie, but in this one it’s actually a sad sight, too.

That sadness is echoed in the way Sidney mourns her mother, Maureen, murdered one year earlier. Sidney is in denial about her mom’s widely rumored promiscuity, “flashing her shit around town like she was Sharon Stone.” Sidney’s boyfriend Billy is semi-patiently awaiting Sidney’s readiness to “go all the way,” but Sidney won’t let herself go there yet. She’s still clinging to innocence, to a pure and unspoiled vision of her mother, unready to accept the complications and disappointments of adult life. In this way, Ghostface represents the haunting past, the truth Sidney can’t face. There’s a version of the Scream story in which there is no actual killer; Sidney is merely haunted by the “ghost” of her mother, unable to accept or forget the truth.

This is the first instance of Ghostface embodying trauma… it’s no wonder then that the boy who wants her to “open up,” so to speak, is the one who ends up being the killer. Billy wants to penetrate Sidney — sexually, and with his weapon of choice, that hunting knife. But he’s also penetrating her sense of safety, the cocoon she’s attempted to build for herself. Of course, in true Final Girl fashion, Sidney gets the upper hand, even going so far as to stick her finger in Billy’s wound near the end, essentially penetrating him right back. Sidney isn’t a virgin anymore at this point, because Scream allows its women to transcend that tired cliche. Sidney herself is guilty of perpetuating the “madonna/whore” myth, unable to see her mother outside of these dueling stereotypes and accept her for the complicated woman she is. But by the end of the movie, both Sidney and Scream itself have accepted that women aren’t just one or the other; unlike in most horror movies, the women in Scream are more than just virgin survivors or slutty chum.

Scream 2

Budget: $24 million
Domestic Total Gross: $101.4 million
Foreign Total Gross: $71 million
Worldwide: $172.4 million
Opening Weekend: $32.9 million
Release Date: December 12, 1997
Metacritic: 63

Nobody expected Scream to quite hit the zeitgeist the way it did, grossing over $100 million, which still ranks it as the #1 slasher movie of all time. Scream 2, released just under a year later, was hugely hyped, by contrast. It had a red-hot cast and all kinds of internet-fueled fandom, including a major leak of the script, which reportedly had Kevin Williamson change the identities of the killers. (For the better… the original ending was pretty senseless.)

Siskel and Ebert split on the original Scream, with Siskel giving it a thumbs down. He took a liking to the sequel, however, with both critics giving Scream 2 a solid thumbs up. I agree, of course — in many ways, I prefer Scream 2 to the first Scream, though of course the original is the more iconic and groundbreaking film. I find the character work in Scream 2 slightly superior to the original, thanks to its core cast of returning survivors, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, and Jamie Kennedy. I also think it contains some of the best thriller sequences in the series. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s terrorized sober sister at Omega Beta Zeta is a nicely played echo of the Drew Barrymore opening in Scream. (Seeing her in a previous scene as a sassy, cinema-savvy sorority girl cements her as one of the silver screen’s all-time greatest heroines, but I’m willing to admit that I’m biased on that.) The scene in which Sidney and her BFF Hallie have to shimmy past an unconscious Ghostface in a cop car is totally nerve-wracking (and not at all undermined by the fact that Williamson wrote a similar scene into I Know What You Did Last Summer, too). My personal favorite is Gale and Dewey’s chase through a college classroom, particularly when Gale watches in horror through glass as Dewey is stabbed and apparently killed (only to be revived for a second time in the film’s closing moments). It’s beautifully tragic and haunting, perhaps the best “death” scene of the entire series, outside of Drew Barrymore’s. (Catch my ode to the horror blondes who got raw deals here.)

As great as all that is, what really makes Scream 2 sing is the way it manages to elevate the first film’s meta quality. Scream brilliantly opened with a teen girl making popcorn, getting ready to watch a scary video. It immediately put us in this girl’s shoes, since that’s exactly what we’re doing. Scream 2 shows us another classic movie-watching ritual — going to the theater to enjoy being scared out of our wits in a dark room with strangers. Not only that — Heather Graham appears as an actress who lacks the chops of Drew Barrymore, playing Casey in a just-slightly-off-kilter recreation of Scream‘s now-legendary opening. It’s ironic, that the scene that worked so well in Scream could play as so flat and cliche in Stab, the movie-within-the-movie. Casey Becker’s death was haunting, and even seeing her badly portrayed by Graham reminds us of how powerful that sequence was. Yet seeing all these plastic-knife-happy college kids in the audience reminds us also how far we’ve come, how easy it is for us desensitize ourselves to violence. Scream 2 doesn’t let us forget that.

Jada Pinkett, playing Maureen Evans — another of my favorite movie heroines, if only for the fact that she reads her Entertainment Weekly and knows her shit — calls out the morbidity of watching people getting slide and diced for hijinks. Of course, the tables turn on Maureen, and soon she’s the one everyone’s watching getting stabbed to death. We see the truth dawn on the faces in that crowd, as the “fun” horror of the horror movie becomes true horror in real life. Scream is always concerned with that thin line between frightening fact and fun fiction, and it is perhaps never better explored than in this moment. Why do we like this? Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson seem to be asking. Do you really enjoy this? That’s a bold inquiry coming from a guy who made a living off of cinematic killings, and a guy who worships him. And for all involved, the answer is, disturbingly, yes. We do enjoy this.

Scream 3

Budget: $40 million
Domestic Total Gross: $89.1 million
International: $72.7 million
Opening Weekend: $34.7 million
Release Date: February 4, 2000
Metacritic: 56

The Scream movies have been blamed for real life killings, further blurring the line between what is real and just a movie. In 1999, the Columbine massacre shocked America and forever changed the ways teenaged psychopaths are framed in cinema. For a while, Hollywood got awfully skittish about mixing high school and violence, even though Scream had just kicked off a major wave of films that did just that — from The Faculty to Urban Legends to Halloween: H20 and so on and soforth, a lot of which were written by Kevin Williamson and starred a who’s who of WB stars filming during summer hiatus. By the time Scream 3 rolled around, Bob Weinstein was less enthusiastic about depicting teen horror on screen, preferring to play up the series’ comedic elements.

That’s partly why Scream 3 mostly fails at the pathos so adeptly displayed in the first movies. The other reason is that Kevin Williamson was basically the hottest writer in Hollywood at the time, and became too busy to rewrite his Scream 3 treatment according to the Weinstein’s notes. (Or maybe he just didn’t want to.) Writing duties went to Ehren Kruger, who most infamously inflicted the Transformer sequels upon us. Perhaps this is why we get a lame visit from the late Randy’s never-before-or-again-seen sister, played by Heather Matarazzo, or cameos from Jay and Silent Bob, of all people. (Carrie Fisher’s cameo is better, if equally random. Did we forget this was a horror franchise?)

We know we’re in trouble with Scream 3’s lame opening, which doesn’t kill off a hot Hollywood actress like Drew Barrymore or Jada Pinkett, instead centering on Cotton Weary and his girlfriend, Christine. Unforgivably, Scream 3 abandons the Scream staple of having iconic openings that are all about the ritual of watching horror movies. Why not begin the movie with a scene from Stab 3, since that film becomes so integral later? What if Ghostface first struck by popping up on set of the movie, killing off an actress while filming? (Particularly if it was the actress playing Sidney?) The casting of Scream 3 is also off. In contrast to the hot cast of the first two films, Scream 3 gives us Jenny McCarthy and Patrick Warburton? A lot of these actors are perfectly talented in their own right, but aside from Posey, the new characters are duds across the board, and become what other Scream movies mocked: cardboard cut-outs who exist solely to be knocked off. We’re not sorry to see them go.

Scream 3 has its pleasures, particularly Parker Posey as Jennifer Jolie, an actress playing Gale Weathers in Stab 3. This is thanks almost entirely to Posey’s performance, since the character as written is only so-so. Sidney’s trauma is also competently carried over. Scream 2 saw Sidney struggle with whether or not she could open up to another man in her life, after the epic emotional abuse Billy put her through; her inability to trust Derek gets him killed. (Though I’m sure Mickey would have killed him anyway.) Scream 3 picks up with Sidney alone and in hiding, a very sensible place for her to be after no fewer than four psychos have attempted to kill her through two separate killing sprees. She spends her time counseling women in trouble over the phone, a nice reversal of the menacing Ghostface does using that very same device. It’s like Sidney is “undoing” all the damage Ghostface has done — or at least is taking a solid go at it.

Moreso than the other Scream movies, Scream 3 is all about a haunted past. Unfortunately, Kruger decides to take this literally, having the ghost of Maureen Prescott haunt Sidney through dreams and fantasies, and possibly through the lame voice-changer used by the killer. Scream 3‘s killer turns out to be Sidney’s illegitimate half-brother, after Scream‘s mastermind was the son of the man Maureen had an affair with, and Scream 2‘s was his wife. This makes the Scream trilogy the ultimate slut-shaming, pinning dozens of murders on Maureen’s indiscretions — and making her daughter pay for them. I don’t entirely mind this aspect of the story, but in both Scream 2 and Scream 3, the unmasking of the killers is by far the weakest link, devolving into camp.

That’s true to an extent in Scream, too, except for the eerie resonance that the buddy-buddy stabbings have with real-life teen slayings, most notably Columbine. Like its creators, I don’t believe that Scream could inspire anyone to kill who wasn’t already going to, but it certainly explores the “movie-freaked” minds of people who do in an intriguing fashion. I somewhat enjoy Timothy Olyphant’s “freaky Tarantino film student” villain Mickey in Scream 2, since his motive is bonkers, but the Loomis and Maureen Prescott-connected killers always end up feeling like a reach. (Gotta love Laurie Metcalf for trying, however.) It isn’t until Scream 4 that we get another murderous motive to rival the first Scream.

The most brilliant sequence in Scream 3 has Sidney return to Woodsboro via the Stab 3 set, where she is chased by a killer in a mirror of the first movie. In this way, Sidney literally revisits the past and gets haunted all over again, literally, via another Ghostface attack, and figuratively. But it’s also another clever hall-of-mirrors effect that Scream excels at, adding a layer of Hollywood artificiality on top of a real life crime scene. It’s all aces, until Sidney’s dead mom shows up to beat us to death with a metaphor that was already working perfectly.

It’s useless to try and add a literal ghost to Scream 3, since Ghostface serves that purpose already. The masked killer and the sexy-slasher voice he uses to terrorize his victims are consistent throughout the Scream movies, even though the killers are not. Most major horror franchises have the same killer rise from the dead in each movie — Jason, Michael, Freddy, Chucky — but in Scream, its more like the spirit of horror itself infuses its victims with an urge to get meta and start stabbing. The Scream movies don’t deal with the supernatural, but you could read them that way — and, in a way, it makes them more believable. Ghostface is the embodiment of trauma, which Sidney can’t escape. It isolates her, killing off the people she loves one by one, causing her to mistrust anyone who appears in her life. Sidney is stuck with Gale Weathers because, at least, she knows Gale has been through this enough that if she was going to snap, she would’ve done it long ago. (Having any of the core Scream cast turn out to be a killer would be a massive mistake in exchange for a lame “gotcha,” one I’m very glad every movie avoided.)

Even if most actual trauma victims aren’t targeting by the same kind of tormentor over and over, they can often feel like they are, or might be. This is why I’m dismissive of those who are dismissive of the Scream series, who see it as merely shallow and jokey. Whether fully intentional or not, the Scream series, like all the greatest horror films, has a hell of a lot of subtext and speaks volumes about the things that actually scare us — like sexuality, like trust, like the past coming back to haunt us. It’s a hell of a feat for a series that is also so funny, frightening, and entertaining.

Scream 4

Budget: $40 million
Domestic Total Gross: $38.2 million
International: $59 million
Opening Weekend: $18.7 million
Release Date: April 15, 2011
Metacritic: 52

Scream 3 was a more modest hit than its predecessors. The series wasn’t revived again until 11 years later, when new blood could be injected into the premise. Unfortunately, Kevin Williamson again came into conflict with Bob Weinstein, meaning that Ehren Kruger once again put his stamp on a Scream movie. I can’t say so with certainty, but it seems pretty easy to tell which pieces of Scream 4 belong to Williamson (the good stuff) and what we can thank Kruger for. I can’t imagine Williamson penning Anthony Anderson’s “fuck Bruce Willis” line (after this character has been stabbed through the forehead), or the incessant banter about Marley Shelton’s lemon squares.

Scream 4‘s script is a significant improvement over Scream 3, particularly when you watch the deleted scenes and learn how much smarter the movie was before Bob Weinstein hacked it to pieces. Both versions begin with a double-header of Stab fake-outs that recall the brilliant meta openings of Scream and Scream 2, revamped for 2011. It’s delicious overkill. Then, the real killing in Woodsboro is serviceable, but the cut scene is infinitely better — with a teenager watching her friend get stabbed to death, rolling her eyes because she thinks it’s just another prank. It’s a brilliant exploration of how desensitized we are to violence these days, but Bob Weinstein apparently thought it wasn’t scary enough. Whatever, Bob. I go into a lot more detail about what was cut, and why it was so wrong, here.

Despite these unforgivable edits, Scream 4 more or less gets the job done, with a terrific supporting character in Hayden Panetierre’s Kirby (who, let’s hope, doesn’t actually die) and a genuinely clever twist as we reveal the identity of the killer to be Sidney’s cousin, Jill, who wants to emulate Sidney and become a celebrity victim. (The scene in which Jill injures herself is both a brilliant recall of the original Scream, and darkly funny in its extremity.) I wish the film made better use of Gale Weathers, who as portrayed by Courteney Cox in the first two films totally slays. Does Kruger just not know how to write her? One thing the Scream movies never get enough credit for is the way they depict the media as the twisted sister of Hollywood horror. Gale Weathers’ true crime reportings are just as glossy and manipulative as any slasher flick.. There are three layers in every Scream movie — the truth, the media’s take, and then the Hollywood version, each with a diminishing connection to reality. Gale’s conflict in Scream 2 — trying to stay impartial and do her job after she’s literally become the news — is a fascinating arc, but she’s basically comic relief in the next two movies. (And her hair isn’t as good, either.)

Scream 4 failed to revitalize the Scream franchise, and Scream 5 remains up in the air while the series’ name lives on on MTV, even though that show has little to do with the movies. Given that Wes Craven passed away last year, it’s probably wisest to leave it well enough alone; I don’t trust Bob Weinstein to hand the reigns to someone worthy of the Scream legacy. (Unless he hands it to me? I am available.)

I’m always amused when I recall Owen Gleiberman’s review of the first Scream in Entertainment Weekly, in which he declares, “I seriously doubt that Scream will spark a splatter-movie revival, but anyone who has ever shuddered into their popcorn at the sight of a kitchen knife dripping Karo-syrup blood will have a fine time watching Wes Craven, who has turned out almost nothing but duds since A Nightmare on Elm Street, rediscover his craft with this inspired wink at the cliches he helped invent.”

So much for foresight, right? Scream did, in fact, spark a splatter-movie revival — with a vengeance. Scream was more influential on pop culture than virtually any other movie in the 90s, revitalizing the entire horror franchise and kicking off a whole wave of teen films — not just slasher flicks, either. Almost any teen film from the late 90s owes something to Scream, as it reframed the way teenagers speak in movies and made casting these hot, young WB-ready stars bankable. Of course, Scream‘s parody, Scary Movie, set off a whole (bad) genre of its own.

As much as I’ve dug into why I love Scream here and in the podcast, I could go further and further. There are endless layers here, just as there were designed to be, when Kevin Williamson first penned a movie that was all about the way we watch and think about movies — about the ways our lives reflect them, and how they reflect us. It’s no accident that the first script I ever wrote had me inserting myself into a Scream movie — adding just one more layer of meta to the mix. I credit Scream with inspiring my first screenplay, and maybe, then, the trajectory of my whole life.

As the tagline says, “Someone has taken their love of scary movies one step too far.” I’m happy to admit that it was me.

Happy 20th Anniversary, Scream!

When We Were Young is a podcast devoted to the most beloved pop culture of our formative years (roughly 1980-2000). Join us for a look back to the past with a critical eye on how these movies, songs, shows, and more hold up now.

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In the movies, if not so much in life, 2016 has turned out to be a very good year for the ladies. While the Best Actor race is suffering from a dearth of truly exciting performances in 2016, the Best Actress race is stacked. You could fill the Best Actress category twice before you come across five male performances that have the fire and finesse displayed by the women this year. The clear frontrunners are Natalie Portman in Jackie and Emma Stone in La La Land, with Annette Bening’s work in 20th Century Women also expected to pick up a nod. That leaves two slots open to a wide swath of women, from Amy Adams in Arrival to Ruth Negga in Loving — both deserving, though perhaps not showy enough to stand out this year.

First and foremost, I’m betting on an appearance from Isabelle Huppert. French-language performances aren’t unheard of in the big race — Emmanuelle Riva was nominated for Amour, while Marion Cotillard was nominated for Two Days, One Night and won for La Vie En Rose. Huppert is a highly respected international actress giving a hell of a performance in Paul Verhoeven’s Elle, fearlessly commanding a difficult role that many actresses would be hesitant to play.

Elle‘s opening scene certainly grabs out attention, beginning the film with a startling act of sexual violence, then immediately bucking our expectations of what will happen after. Huppert’s Michèle doesn’t call the police, nor have a nervous breakdown, nor call a friend for support. She goes about her routine, remaining completely composed. It’s not that she has no reaction at all — she takes relatively small precautions against further intrusion, and eventually she does get around to talking about what’s happened. But mostly, she goes to work, sees her family, lives her life, as usual.

Gradually, we learn that this is because Michèle’s life has already been, shall we say, unconventional, so there’s nothing conventional in her response to a violent sexual crime — or anything else, really. Michèle is a fascinating character, though not necessarily a woman many will find endearing. She’s suffered a lot in her life and continues to suffer, though she does so beneath an icy, often provocative facade. A few characters voice what Michèle “should” do after being attacked in her home, probably the same things the audience would suggest. But Michèle has her reasons for not heeding this advice. On the surface, at least, Elle is most fascinated with Michèle’s relationships with the many men in her life. One of these is a masked rapist we meet in the opening scene. Neither we nor Michèle know his identity, but nearly every man in her life exhibits some behavior that makes us think: it could be him. These men include Michèle’s ex, Richard, who appears to be one of the gentler and more considerate men in her life, until we learn that the reason for their split is that he hit her; Robert, a married man Michèle is having an affair with; Patrick, Michèle’s married neighbor, whom she develops an attraction to; Kurt, an employee of Michèle’s, who undermined her authority at every turn; and Vincent, her son, who takes advantage of his mother’s money but fails to heed her advice about Josie, the emotionally unstable mother of his child. (Or, maybe, not his child.)

The canny thing about Elle is that each of these men violate Michèle in some way over the course of the movie, with varying degrees of severity. Michèle’s married paramour carelessly uses her for sex, not caring whether she’s on her period or injured as long as he gets off. Michèle’s son is merely selfish, entitled, and oblivious, though there are some red flags in his relationship with Josie that could trigger not-so-nice behavior down the line; still, given all his mother’s been through, it wouldn’t kill Vincent to consider her feelings for a change. Michèle’s neighbor Patrick enjoys subtle flirtation with her right under the nose of his religious Catholic wife. Michèle’s employees at the video game company she co-founded display misogynistic behavior. Richard has a video game idea he pesters Michèle about developing at her company, even though she frequently tells him no. And then there’s the rapist. These men all use Michèle for some form of selfish gratification; as presented in Elle, the rape is just one more violation to add to the list, not necessarily better or worse than the rest. Casting a shadow over all of this is Michèle’s father, who is spoken of more than seen, a depraved figure who violated Michèle first and most severely. (But not in the way you may think.) The consequence of his actions have darkly colored Michèle’s present life. In a way, everything that happens her is because of him.Elle is not the kind of movie to make a blanket statement about the ways men treat women, however; nor vice versa. It’s certainly not as overt as you might expect from Paul Verhoeven, director of Basic Instinct and Showgirls, which dealt with sexuality and sexual violence in ways that could never be accused of being too subtle. Elle is the anti-Showgirls, all subtext and nuance. It would be easy to portray Michèle as a mere victim of male violence coming at her from every angle, the way she’d be portrayed in a Lars Von Trier movie. But in Verhoeven’s film, Michèle is no innocent. She, too, inflicts violence — emotional violence — upon other women, specifically.Michèle’s dalliances with married men may or may not be purposeful in their aggression toward their wives; she seems to take some pleasure in the subterfuge, at the very least. Michèle is also frequently antagonistic toward her mother, who’s spending her twilight years (and her money) on young hunks and plastic surgery. (As we learn later, this woman has also been through a lot. Maybe Michèle should cut her some of the slack they both deserve.) Michèle certainly disapproves of her son’s shrill baby mama, Josie, and makes no effort to keep quiet about it. She makes a point of hunting down her ex’s new, young girlfriend, going so far as to invent a holiday party just so she can spend more time with the girl (and slip a toothpick into her meal). Michèle isn’t necessarily a cruel person, but whether intentional or not, her behavior is reckless enough to cause harm.

In a way, Elle is as much about female relationships as it is the dynamic between men and women, even if the latter bears the brunt of the dramatic weight. Despite living through far more than her share of trauma, Michèle is no ordinary victim. Most films portray victims of rape in either one of two ways: as a helpless damsel in need of rescue by an avenging (male) angel, or as a femme fatale in a rape-revenge thriller. Elle does not go very far down either path, because Michèle is no archetype. She’s a flesh-and-blood woman who enjoys sex and seduction — yes, even after being raped.

Michèle is not a different person after this act of sexual violence. Shockingly, we get the sense that nothing for her has changed at all. By the time we meet her, Michèle has faced enough adversity and trauma for one lifetime; a masked man may be able to overpower her physically, but he has little control over the emotions and mental state of a woman who has been so deeply traumatized. Elle is interested in far more than the repercussions of rape; in some ways, it is a classic whodunit mystery, but it also takes plenty of time to explore the kinds of unconventional relationships you’d only find in a French drama.In so many ways, Elle is a clever, under-the-radar drama that only occasionally veers into lurid erotic thriller territory, eschewing most of its broader trappings. Then again, the film does open on a close-up of a cat, and coming from the man who gave us Elizabeth Berkeley licking a stripper pole and Sharon Stone uncrossing her legs just so, that inescapable euphemism may not be an accident. To say that the film is about “pussy power” would be reductive; all Elle does is ask us not to make assumptions, not to put these women in any particular box. Rape has been used time and time again to render female characters either helpless or superhuman, with few options in between. Elle reminds us that a woman who has been raped is still a person with agency. She still has a life to live and choices to make. In its own shrewd way, Elle reclaims the power that (mostly male) filmmakers have stripped from women in so many movies. It’s not that Michèle’s rape has no consequence — but it doesn’t define her, either. Nor does it determine the direction this story is headed.

Elle is not an American movie, thus no coincidence with American politics can be looked at too deeply. But at a time when sexual assault against women is, well, both very much an issue and not an issue at all in this country, it is refreshing to see a film that treats rape as more than just the end-all be-all for a female character, centering on a heroine who refuses to wear the scarlet letter society would prefer to brand her with. Elle sets up most of the typical rape-revenge thriller trappings, then sends the next two hours handily avoiding them.

Without giving anything away, Elle‘s final scene is not at all what we’d expect from a movie set up like this, and I suppose there’s plenty of room for interpretation. My takeaway is that women can find solace in each other against the mad, sometimes violent world of men. Elle is a strikingly mature piece of work — and feminism — coming from a filmmaker like Verhoeven, one that should be dissected and discussed for years to come. After haunting spring’s Louder Than Bombs with her portrayal of a doomed photojournalist and secretive mother, Huppert stars in a third notable 2016 release, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things To Come. To say Things To Come is a gentler film than Verhoeven’s is practically a joke — Hansen-Løve is known for understated French dramas like last year’s Eden, and Verhoeven is known for RoboCop and Starship Troopers.

In Things To Come, Huppert is Nathalie, a philosophy teacher who finds some central relationships in her life transforming at an unexpected time. Nathalie’s anxious mother is growing increasingly unable to take care of herself, and her husband has been philandering and fallen in love. At the same time, a former pupil returns to Nathalie and challenges her ideals. Things To Come is short on plot movements, preferring to stew in the finely drawn details of Nathalie’s daily life. It’s about a woman who finds herself suddenly freer than she ever expected or even wanted to be; what she chooses to let go of, and what she keeps.

If there’s any justice in this world, Huppert will nab one of the Best Actress slots, and if we assume Stone and Portman are locks, then that’s two to split between Bening, Negga, Adams… or someone else. Of course, we can never underestimate the power of Meryl Streep, who gets nominated more often than not these days, even in films of middling quality. (Hell, she won for The Iron Lady, one of the worst films she’s ever starred in.) In Florence Foster Jenkins, Streep is once again a songbird, but unlike her turn in Mamma Mia, she sounds pretty wretched. That’s because she plays a wealthy old lady who has the cash and influence to get herself on stage, no matter how many eardrums she shatters in the process. Streep amuses in the role, and Simon Helberg steals scenes as the pained pianist who accompanies her along the way, but this may be a year in which Academy voters decide there’s too much good work out there to give Streep a cursory nod once more.

One last performer who can’t be totally discounted is Jessica Chastain in Miss Sloane, playing the titular lobbyist in John Madden’s glossy drama about the dicey issue of gun control in America. Chastain’s Elizabeth Sloane has a reputation throughout Washington for her ruthless cunning; she is approached by the leader of an NRA-like group to help guns appear “friendlier” to female voters. Sloane doesn’t take a liking to this tact, and soon is offered a position under Rodolfo Schmidt (Mark Strong), the “boutique” lobbyist playing for the other side. Sloane’s questionable ethics cause alarm for her own team, which includes Esme (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a survivor of a school shooting. It’s up to Sloane and her hard-working teammates to convince a number of congressmen to vote for a bill that would sensibly require background checks on firearms sold in the United States. Sloane and her new team go up against Sloane’s former employers, played by Sam Waterston, Allison Pill, and Michael Stuhlbarg, with the usual what-goes-up-must-come-down tension between antagonists who are constantly gaming each other. Sloane plays hardball and makes several new enemies over the course of the film’s running time, but she’s never less than fascinating to watch.

Miss Sloane is a slick studio drama of the “they don’t make ’em like that anymore” variety, with the notable twist that the prickly but brilliant Sloane is allowed to be flawed in ways that males in comparable films have been for years. Not only is she tough-as-nails and willing to break the law and betray her colleagues’ trust, but she’s also got a pill-popping addiction and partakes in the occasional discrete hunky escort on the side. Chastain plays a slightly more fleshed out version of the tenacious, workaholic CIA agent she portrayed so superbly in Zero Dark Thirty. Here, she’s a shade darker, with a glossier veneer, though at the core she’s still a woman willing to make moral compromises for the good of her country — and one who’s not afraid to stand up to the men who wish she’d behave more like a lady.

While some folks head to movies like La La Land for escapism in the dark, waning days of 2016, I prefer my escapism to be a bit more targeted, and Miss Sloane delivered in spades on that front. Many of its plot machinations are either predictable or preposterous, with a script that’s a little too didactic and pleased with itself to register as high art. (Calling it “liberal propaganda” wouldn’t be entirely unjust.) But Madden’s film hits a nice sweet spot for anyone feeling especially burned by American politics in 2016. In Miss Sloane, we watch an icy, imperfect woman go up against Washington’s most corrupt players, fighting for one of the most divisive issues in the nation. Earlier this year, Miss Sloane would have played as highly implausible; in December 2016, it’s utter fantasy, but one I welcomed eagerly. Call me crazy, but few movies lately have put such a smile on my face.

Alas, despite being as good as she’s ever been, Chastain has only the slightest of shots at an Oscar nod, given the film’s unfortunate box office performance. (For Miss Sloane‘s intended audience, watching a powerful woman fight for a liberal cause in Washington probably feels like a slap in the face right about now.) An actress with even less of a shot is Krisha Fairchild, the star of a film called Krisha, in which she plays a character named Krisha — and no, that isn’t a coincidence.

Krisha was shot in nine days in a single location, at filmmaker Trey Edward Shults’ family’s home in Texas. Most characters are played by his family members, who are non-professional actors, and the film was 30% improvised on a tiny budget. Shults stars as a major character himself.

Sound like an amateur hour recipe for disaster? Yep! Miraculously, though, Krisha is a masterful piece of filmmaking, telling the story of an addict coming home for Thanksgiving, determined to make things right with the family she’s wronged so many times. This alone is not a terribly original premise, and for a while, it’s unclear just what kind of movie Krisha is. The most predictable route would be a heartwarming dramedy in which Krisha makes her amends slowly but surely, all in time for a happy family meal to fade out on. But Krisha isn’t that movie.

Parts of Krisha are shot like a horror movie, which is perfectly appropriate for this character’s fragile state of mind (and sobriety). There are fragments of moments with all of the large supporting cast, so that we get to know them as a family just as we might if we were a surprise guest at Thanksgiving dinner. Few of the characters get much solo screen time, yet every performance feels lived in. This is largely because many of them are playing versions of themselves, but it’s amazing how good they are for non-actors. Billie Fairchild, as Krisha’s mother, has Alzheimer’s in real life and was not entirely aware that she was in a film, yet manages to tug heartstrings on multiple occasions.Krisha Fairchild, on the other hand, is a professional actress, in addition to being Shults’ aunt. In the film, she plays Trey’s biological mother, who abandoned her child to relatives while she grappled with her addiction. Her performance is riveting from moment one, and only gets better as the film unfolds. The film isn’t really a story about addiction; we get the sense that Krisha’s substance abuse is more a symptom of some larger problem. Something isn’t right, and hasn’t been for some time.

Krisha won the Audience and Grand Jury Prizes at South By Southwest and picked up several other prizes since. It is too small a film to register for the Academy, though Fairchild’s commanding performance belongs alongside Stone, Portman, Bening, and Huppert in the big race.

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Your first crush. Detention. The prom. That time your entire extended family was horrendously racist toward a foreign exchange student. In Episode 8, When We Were Young takes you back to simpler times (and a song from Simple Minds) with a Molly Ringwald teen trifecta brought to you by the legendary John Hughes.

From the panty-sniffing hijinks of Sixteen Candles to the shattering teen angst therapy of The Breakfast Club to Duckie’s heartbreaking snub in Pretty In Pink, we’ll discuss the many highs and lows of Hughes’ comedy stylings and marvel at Ringwald’s sweet but short-lived star power.

Consider this your trigger warning, because we also examine offensive cultural stereotypes, homophobia, and an explicit endorsement of date rape… and that’s just in the first movie!

Check out the latest episode here or subscribe on iTunes.

Sixteen Candles
May 4, 1984
Budget: $6.5 million
Box Office: $23.7 million
Metacritic: 61

Unlike many in my age group, I had not seen any of the films in John Hughes’ “Molly Ringwald teen trifecta” (as I like to call it) prior to doing this episode. I caught scenes from The Breakfast Club as a kid on cable TV, which is more than I can say for Sixteen Candles or Pretty In Pink.

Of course, I was well aware of who Molly Ringwald was. I felt like I had seen her in some movies, even if those were just a handful of roles in later films that played on her former star power (like Teaching Mrs. Tingle and Not Another Teen Movie). From being pop culture savvy, I also knew that there was something offensively racist (but probably overblown) in Sixteen Candles and that Molly controversially did not choose Duckie at the end of Pretty In Pink, which many fans regard as a mistake.

As it turns out, I had underestimated just how offensive a 1980s teen comedy could be — Sixteen Candles was shockingly racist for a movie released in my lifetime, mostly thanks to the gong that sounds nearly every time the Long Duk Dong character appears on screen.

We still have a ways to go when it comes to depicting all races with equality on screen, and Asian cultures still get some of the worst of it, but man oh man have things changed since 1984, at least. Many critics rightly called Sixteen Candles out at the time, so it’s not like everyone was so tone deaf at this time, but it still takes a moment to process just how bad this movie is to that poor exchange student. Nearly as problematic is the film’s shruggy endorsement of date rape; it’s also a bit stunning to hear the word “faggot” dropped so casually by characters we’re meant to like.

The Breakfast Club
February 15, 1985
Budget: $1 million
Box Office: $51.5 million ($45 million in U.S.)
Metacritic: 62

It’s a shame, because Sixteen Candles is an otherwise sensitive portrayal of teen angst. It’s a great debut for Ringwald, who commands the screen admirably for someone who really was about 16 upon its release.

The Breakfast Club holds up so much better, remaining a landmark teen movie, if not the landmark teen movie. After being cast as a likable outsider in Sixteen Candles, Ringwald gets to play “the princess” here, and she makes the character completely relatable.

The entire cast is pretty stellar — it’s hard to imagine the movie without any of these characters, or claim that one is more iconic than the other. They’re meant to represent stereotypes we know well, and then transcend them — and they do. Ringwald had maybe the toughest job, however, as the most privileged and spoiled character of the group, maybe the one who — as written — could have come off as least sympathetic. Hughes typically didn’t give popular girls much nuance in other movies, hence the bimbo types who populate the other movies discussed here. The wrong casting could have thrown this whole thing out of whack. Instead, Ringwald shines and so does the movie. It’s full of indelible moments, even if Ally Sheedy’s final makeover remains an unfortunate cop out.

Pretty in Pink
February 28, 1986
Budget: $9 million
Box Office: $40.5 million
Metacritic: 59

I enjoyed Pretty In Pink as well, particularly the friendship between Molly Ringwald and Jon Cryer, which I recognize now as emulated in so much teen fare from my youth — like Xander and Willow in Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Dawson and Joey in Dawson’s Creek. Most of the teen stuff I loved back then couldn’t exist without the trail John Hughes blazed. Buffy couldn’t break that mold if John Hughes hadn’t made it.

Unfortunately, Pretty In Pink‘s ending lets us down the same way the other two movies do. The Breakfast Club at least has four other characters we care about who don’t totally sell themselves out, but it’s kind of a shame to see Ringwald once again end up with a dreamy but generic stud. Yeah, that’s a little more realistic than the “geek gets the girl” angle we might have gotten if she chose Duckie, although “geek girl gets the hunk” is just as much a fantasy. Fortunately, Pretty In Pink has a lot less misogyny and racism than Sixteen Candles, with about the same level of highlights.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed filling in this blind spot in my viewing, and learning plenty more about Hughes and Ringwald in the process.

When We Were Young is a podcast devoted to the most beloved pop culture of our formative years (roughly 1980-2000). Join us for a look back to the past with a critical eye on how these movies, songs, shows, and more hold up now.

You can help us defray the costs of creating this show, which include purchasing movies/shows/etc to review, imbibing enough sedatives to take down an elephant, and producing & editing in-house at the MFP Studio Studio in Los Angeles CA, by donating to our Patreon account, and don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes!

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