Movie Reaction: Pearl

Formula: X – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

 

I loved X. Ti West is one of my favorite working horror filmmakers. Mia Goth is great in her dual roles in the film. But, I was worried about Peral. The film was made almost on a whim and in secret after production wrapped for X. It’s a big shift in tone from X. X was a grisly slasher in the vein of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Pearl, on the other hand, is the style of The Wizard of Oz and the story of Psycho put in a grindhouse blender. With the limited cast, budget, and time, I had real concerns about if they’d be able to pull that off. It sounded like more of an experiment than a film. The kind of thing that would pop up as a short film in the extras on the X Blu-ray. When I realized that Pearl would be even longer than X, I really got concerned. The end result is a movie that’s less consistent than X but has some incredible highs.

 

Pearl is a prequel that tells the original of Pearl, the only woman who, with her husband, kills the young people on their farm in X. In Peral, she’s played again by Mia Goth, but not under old age makeup. Pearl’s husband is gone fighting World War 2, so Pearl is left behind living with her disapproving mother and sick father. Pearl dreams of living a bigger life. Similar to Goth’s Maxine in X, Pearl wants to be a star. The problem is, she has these violent impulses, and eventually they become too powerful to hold back. So she kills some people. That’s pretty much the movie. It’s thin. Deliberately so.

 

Really, the whole film is an acting showcase for Mia Goth who is phenomenal. I’ve had my doubts about Goth before. I thought she was miscast in Mayday. She often pops up just to be weird. I was pleasantly surprised by how relatively normal she was in Emma, and X deployed her well. Pearl is just about perfect for her. She’s a weird person who desperately wants to be normal. That’s ideal Goth. A lot has been said already about her 9-minute monologue in the film and I’d add to the chorus of praise for that. She absolutely deserves to be in the Oscar discussion for this movie. It won’t happen because horror movies don’t get that kind of consideration easily and A24 will already be putting their efforts toward Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All At Once. So be it.

 

The rest of the cast is fine. They very much are there to support Goth. They all play outsized, cinematic characters, and it’s fun to see how Goth’s Pearl blows them all away still. It’s like playing a game a chicken with an insane person. No matter how hard anyone else leans into their stock character, Goth leans in harder.

 

Pearl needs X more than X needs Pearl, but I’m loving the decision to give us both and a third movie next year to make this into a saga.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Barbarian

Formula: The Strangers + [Redacted]

 

There’s a school of thought in statistical analysis I’ve heard that roughly says, “As soon as you find a way to measure something, it becomes useless”. I’m sure that’s a butchering of the concept, but the idea is that if people are aware that they are being judged by something, that will impact how they do it. It’s the same idea as when an actor starts thinking about what they should do with their hands in a scene. Becoming aware of something calls attention to it.

That’s what makes talking about horror so difficult sometimes: especially a movie like Barbarian. The ideal way to go into Barbarian is knowing that it’s a horror movie and nothing else. By me saying that though, you then are immediately on the lookout for things. If I say you should know nothing about it, that means there’s something you could know that would ruin it. That means there must be a twist. Now, instead of watching the movie wondering what happens next, you are watching it waiting for the big thing you aren’t supposed to know about to happen. It’s a maddening problem. I remember having a similar problem with the movie Shadow in the Cloud. I really enjoyed that movie entirely because I had no idea how bonkers it would be. But the second that I say that it’s bonkers, anyone going to see the movie because of my recommendation goes into it in a totally different mindset than I did.

 

Let me back up then and say that Barbarian is a good horror movie. It’s best to go in without knowing too much about it. That’s not because it depends on twists. It really doesn’t. It’s just way more fun to see what kind of movie it is in real time. From here, I’m going to continue without any concern about spoiling the fun.

 

It’s ironic how much Barbarian has been sold as a mystery, given that it’s a pretty straightforward movie. There’s a house where a serial killer lived. He dug a tunnel system in his basement where he kept and tortured his victims until, through inbreeding of the victims, he made a monster. The mystery of the movie is in how all gets that revealed. It begins with a woman (Georgina Campbell) renting an AirBnb on a dark and stormy night. It turns out the property was double-booked, and a man (Bill Skarsgard) is already in the house. That’s where the playfulness of the movie begins. There are a half dozen horror movie premises built into the first 20-30 minutes. It calls out several of them. Casting Skarsgard – Pennywise himself – as a charming stranger is begging the audience to jump to conclusions. His character even calls it out like a modern-day Wes Craven character. Then we get the weird stirrings as Campbell and Skarsgard sleep. Then we get the reveal that the rest of the neighborhood is in ruins. Then we get the secret room in the basement. Then we get the room in the basement with the camcorder. Then we get the other secret room in the basement. Then we get the tunnels, and the cages, and the nursing videos, and finally the monster. This movie is so good at one-upping itself. It’s kind of like if that scene in Cabin in the Woods when they are in the basement unwittingly choosing their horror movie scenario wasn’t played for laughs.

 

And as soon as we get a glimpse of what the movie really is, it switches to Justin Long in a #MeToo story that doesn’t feel at all related. I loved how jarring that was. It gave the movie an anthology feel. My complaint about a lot of horror is that it’s too long. It’s hard to sustain scares. It’s hard to keep escalating. By cutting to Long then a flashback about the original owner’s origin, Barbarian never has to sit on things too long. The longer I think about it, the more I love this screenplay. It even gets to be pretty funny in the Justin Long segment without puncturing the tension in the rest of the film.

 

I really can’t find a bad thing to say about Barbarian. Between Jordan Peele’s success in the genre and Barbarian’s writer/director, Zach Cregger, coming from a sketch comedy background, I’m ready to welcome any funny person to give their serious horror movie take. It’s yielding strong results. Once the “mystery box” aspect of Barbarian goes away, I’ll be curious how it will be discussed. I think this will play marvelously on rewatch, although I wonder if it will get wrongly slotted as a twist movie; similar to how The Sixth Sense actually holds up really well but many talk about it like the big twist was what was good about it. Barbarian is not just a good secret.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Phobias

Premise: A horror anthology with 5 loosely connected stories about unconventional phobias.

 

I feel like I make new excuses every week about why I’m not doing a film justice writing about it. The real answer is that I need to drop this maniacal commitment to writing something about every single movie I see. My Phobias excuse is pretty decent though. I watched it after an exhausting Disney World week, then before I’d written anything, I came down with COVID. After a week of that, I can’t say I retained as much about Phobias as I’d like.

 

That’s a shame too, because Phobias is a really solid horror anthology. 5 stories with a sixth linking narrative. A hair under 90 minutes. A nice variety of filmmakers. Surprisingly recognizable cast. These are all good things. Best of all, Phobias succeeds where a lot of horror anthologies fail for me. There’s a consistency of tone. There isn’t “the funny one” or “the one that’s too cool to be sincere”. It actually feels like the producers went into this with some oversight over the assorted directors, and the result is something that is a satisfying whole yet offers variety. Another cool facet I noticed afterwards is that it is casually female dominated. 3 of the 5 segments are directed by women and the cast has gender parity if not female dominance. That doesn’t make it better or worse, really. I just like that it can be done without having to be built into the pitch like an XX.

 

The main thing the movie lacks is a stand-out segment. I do treat horror anthologies as samplers to decide of full dishes. I found many of my favorite horror filmmakers of the last decade from V/H/S. While Phobias offers several decent stories, none made me stop and ask “who the hell made that?” Vehophobia has a nice twist. I appreciate how Hoplophobia found horror in realism. Atelophobia adds some gnarly body horror to the mix. There’s nothing in Phobias to make me recommend against it. I just wish it had that thing to really excite me.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Let’s Scare Jessica to Death

Premise: A woman, recently released from a mental hospital, moves out to the country with her husband where she starts to experience unsettling events.

 

I feel like there was a portion of the 70s when no one had any idea what horror was. There was obviously the satanic throughline of Rosemary’s Baby to The Exorcist to The Omen, but then there was this low budget side that was more scattered. I think it peaked with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre then Halloween, which gave cheap horror more of a repeatable formula. But there was a period where we got movies like Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, which only barely make sense.

 

I’m still not entirely sure what this movie is about. I’m ok with that. It actually adds to the movie. Similar to how I think Suspiria only barely holds together as a story yet I love it. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is more of a mood horror movie, right down to the title. “Let’s Scare Jessica to Death” isn’t all that accurate for the movie, but it is evocative. It’s an id of a title. I love how often horror is just a couple sickos doing what they think would be cool then figuring out if it works as a movie later. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is like that: a bunch of incomplete thoughts that work well together in the end.

 

I like the part about Jessica recently leaving a mental hospital. They don’t make too big of a point of it, but it colors how much I trust her POV the whole time. The voice she keeps hearing is nice and haunting. Everything about the town and Emily is off just enough to be unsettling. I really love when horror isn’t following an obvious formula, and this was an era when it didn’t feel like there was a playbook that all horror was adhering to.

 

It’s not the scariest movie in the world. The acting leaves something to be desired. It’s pretty restrained for a lot of the run. I liked it though. Horror before there were too many rules.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Manhunter

Premise: Have you seen Red Dragon?

To me, Manhunter is a movie rendered unwatchable because of what followed. It’s the first film adaptation of one of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lector books. It was followed by one of the best movies of the 1990s with one of the most iconic performances of all time. Then that was matched by one of the best TV shows of the 2010s. And in between were numerous sequels and remakes that diluted the brand. I’m seeing Manhunter after all those other adaptations, and it wasn’t a favorable situation for it.

 

The movie is OK. Michael Mann directed, so it’s got more style than it has any right to have. The synth-y soundtrack makes this feel more like the Miami Vice take on the Hannibal Lector books. The biggest problem with the movie though is that William Petersen isn’t my Will Graham. Brian Cox and Dennis Farina are my third favorite version of their characters. I’ve been spoiled on this story. I appreciate seeing Mann’s initial attempt at the material. It’s interesting to see how the depiction of it has evolved in the last 4 decades. However, all Manhunter did for me is make me want to rewatch the Hannibal TV series and Silence of the Lambs.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Cleopatra

Premise: The story of the famous Egyptian queen.

 

There’s no way to briefly talk about every notable thing about Cleopatra. It’s among the most infamous film productions ever for its extreme cost. Sure, even adjusted for inflation in pales in comparison to some of the blockbusters made today, but in the 1960s, there was nothing like it. Just 7 years before, The Ten Commandments was the most expensive film ever made. It cost $13 million. In 1963, Cleopatra cost $31 million. That’s huge. It’s not unique. We went from $60 million for Total Recall to $200 million for Titanic in just 7 years too. And Titanic did go onto being the highest grossing movie of all time for over a decade. It’s still quite an escalation though. And Cleopatra sure does look expensive. Those sets are massive. The number of extras is incredible. Some of that naval warfare is intricate. This absolutely felt like I was watching a movie made on an epic scale.

 

But there is a reason why the film is mostly known for its expense and extravagance, not its quality. This movie is 4 hours long. As grandiose as it is, it felt more like a studio showing off than a film that needed the grandeur. And, of course, there’s Elizabeth Taylor playing Cleopatra. I’d attack Hollywood of 1963 for the whitewashing except Exodus: Gods and Kings was still doing it in 2014. Taylor is fine in the performance. It’s a movie star performance – Taylor as Cleopatra rather than Cleopatra played by Taylor. Most of my issue was with the length. I didn’t get much out of the movie. As often happens with these epics, it’s a good 2-hour movie stretched into 4. There wasn’t enough of a compounding effect with the length to justify it. This is definitely on the lower end of those 50s and 60s epics for me.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: 7 Days

Premise: After an awkward first date, two Indian-Americans get stuck together in COVID quarantine for a week.

 

COVID-19 is going to be my new 2008 WGA strike. The tail of discrete impacts of the WGA strike has fascinated me for over a decade. I love piecing together what film productions were rushed to have a script ready before the strike. I love tracking the trajectory of TV shows that thrived or wilted because of the halt. There’s this weird pop culture hole that can be felt in so many ways. COVID is going to be like that too. Obviously there are the people who died from it and the world shutting down for a while. That trickles down to the theatrical disruption and the acceleration of the streaming shift. And from that is the shift in how films actually get made. And that’s where 7 Days comes in.

 

It turns out, COVID is too good of a premise for filmmakers to resist. It makes sense. It’s a truly worldwide event that drastically affected how people lived their lives. For indie filmmakers in particular it’s especially appealing. Minimal cast. Minimal locations. Believable high-concept scenario. Think about it. In 2019, how hard would it be to create a scenario where two people are stuck in a house together for a week? Half the movie would be spent setting up how the car broke and the cell phone died and there’s a convention in town and any number of other excuses. Instead, a movie like 7 Days just has to say COVID and that’s it.

 

7 Days had me early and lost me late. I’m a huge Geraldine Viswanathan fan and have liked Karan Soni in a number of things too. The odd couple-pairing is great. I love the specificity of the Indian-American experience with the characters negotiating a balance between the old ways and modern times. I don’t think Viswanathan and Soni make any sense as a couple – great friend chemistry, not romantic – but I can accept the movie going in the RomCom direction. The movie lost me as soon as Viswanathan got COVID. It was an extra complication the movie really didn’t need. More importantly, it took Viswanathan out of the film for most of the third act. By simple math, when a movie is a two-hander and you take away one of the hands, the film suffers significantly.

 

The film really doesn’t know how to broach the COVID discussion. It doesn’t know how scared the characters should be. It can’t quite capture how little anyone knew. It has to battle with hindsight, and, knowing what we know now, Viswanathan getting severe COVID feels like a stretch. There just weren’t that many mid-20s people getting hit that bad. Obviously, Koni’s character doesn’t know that she’ll be fine. In my mind though, I’m just thinking “give her a couple days and some hydration and she’ll be 100% fine”. Given that COVID was just an excuse for the forced housemates premise, I don’t know why they needed to add actual COVID to the movie.

As a RomCom, 7 Days is fine. As a hang-out comedy, 7 Days is pretty good. As a COVID movie, 7 Days has a lot of problems. In balance, I still liked the movie, but there’s a huge chunk of the movie that’s a complete waste of time.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Possessor

Premise: An assassin who takes over other people’s bodies has a breakdown due to carrying too many consciousnesses in her.

 

Humans are complex organisms. Nature plays a part in who we become, but nurture factors in big too. I have similarities to my parents, but I’m markedly different than them. We don’t share a lot of interests. Our worldviews are pretty different. But I’ve never had someone tell me that I’m just like either of them. It’s like that for a lot of parents and children.

 

Did anyone ever tell Brandon Cronenberg that he didn’t have to be just like his dad? It’s weird that Possessor really is a David Cronenberg movie if David Cronenberg was born in the 80s. It’s weird to me when filmmakers have family members who are really similar to them. It makes much more sense to me when it’s a Sophia Coppola. Her father is a great filmmaker. She’s a great filmmaker. They make completely different kinds of films though. What’s going on with Brandon Cronenberg? Is he really just like his dad or did he think he had to go in this direction?

 

I got distracted with these thoughts while watching Possessor, which I did like. It’s a weird-ass movie. The cast is stellar. Andrea Riseborough is an actress I’ve seen in many movies but I never know what to expect from her. She has crazy range. In this, she’s great at playing on the edge of a complete breakdown the whole time. This is the kind of movie Chris Abbott loves. He could easily be a RomCom kind of actor. He’s got the charm, but he’s got that Ryan Gosling bug where he’s most comfortable when he’s playing characters with a little dirt on them.

 

Brandon clearly has his father’s knack for body horror and trippy visuals. It’s not my preferred flavor of horror*, I’ll admit. I’ve never been that enamored with his father’s stuff either. I could barely get through Crimes of the Future earlier this year. Possessor is a lot of style. Brandon Cronenberg has an eye for striking visuals that make you want to look away as much as you want to look at. It’s confidently made with a great cast. That makes up for a slight distaste of the style of it.

 

*This is a sect of horror that I have trouble with the definition. Possessor is called horror everywhere I check, however Under the Skin is horror in some places (ex. IMDB) but only SciFi in others (ex. Wikipedia). The only difference I can really find is the level of imagery. Under the Skin keeps most of the worst stuff off screen whereas Possessor shows every bit of violence and weird images. Seems arbitrary to me, but whatever.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Quick Reaction: Mister Roberts

Oops. I went on vacation before writing this. Now, a week later, most of the movie escapes me. That’s probably because it wasn’t a super remarkable movie. This is basically Stalag 17 on a boat. Both are male dominated casts with WWII settings based on plays that mixed comedy and drama. Mister Roberts has some impressive names attached. Henry Fonda, James Cagney, and Jack Lemmon among others starring. John Ford co-directing. I didn’t care for how much the movie felt like it was based on a play. They didn’t try that hard to adapt it for the screen. I guess they went to a few locations in and around the boat, but that’s about it. I can get behind Jack Lemmon winning the Oscar for his role (as long as I don’t check who he beat that year). It’s funny to me to compare this version of going stir crazy during war with something like Jarhead. We’ve come a long way I suppose.

 

I didn’t care for the ending of this movie; finding out that Mister Roberts had died. I totally see how it works in a play. Jarring tone shifts work better on stage for whatever reason. In this film, it felt forced.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Movie Reaction: Three Thousand Years of Longing

Formula: Good Luck to You, Leo Grande * Aladdin

 

Nothing was going to be Mad Max: Fury Road. That movie is a miracle. It came after 20 years of George Miller making family films which was preceded by 10 years of him making adult-skewing Hollywood films. There is no equivalent to that kind of thunderous pivot and return to form. However, if you throw that movie out of the timeline, Three Thousand Years of Longing is the exact movie I’d expect from George Miller. It’s an adult fairy tale with striking visuals, a pair of strong lead performances, and a sometimes peculiar, drifting story. That’s his non-Mad Max career in nutshell.

 

At first, this film sure sounds like a COVID production. It’s the story of a professor of folklore (Tilda Swinton) who unleashes a Djinn (Idris Elba) in her hotel room from a bottle she bought on a trip to Istanbul. The Djinn proceeds to tell her the story of how he came to be trapped in that bottle. That sounds like it’s going to be two characters talking in a hotel room: very COVID. And it’s true, the film was set to start filming in March 2020 originally before getting COVID delayed. It is a massively more expansive movie that your average COVID production though. The film brings to life centuries of the Djinn’s tales with incredible creativity. I was captivated throughout much of this portion of the movie, which was the majority of it. It’s led me to believe that George Miller would be an excellent person to have telling stories around a campfire.

 

When the Djinn isn’t telling his story though, the movie struggles. Swinton has three wishes to use. There’s a back and forth with the Djinn where she believes he’s a trickster or that this is a Monkey’s Paw situation. That discussion just isn’t very interesting. There are few things harder for me to watch than a weird movie that’s asking Tilda Swinton to be the normal one. She can do normal. She won her Oscar for normal. But it a movie like Three Thousand Years of Longing, it’s like driving a Ferrari and keeping it in first gear. My biggest issue with the movie is that when the Djinn finishes telling his tale, the movie screeches to a halt and still has 20-ish minutes left. That’s when it turns into a magical romance between the professor and the Djinn. Early in the film, Swinton gives a presentation about how the more that science explains things, the less room in the world there is for folklore. The film then literalizes it by having technology literally chip away at the Djinn. It’s an interesting idea, but it’s tonally from another movie and lacks the expanse and lush production of the tales of the Djinn’s past. Had the movie ended soon after the Djinn finishes telling his story, I would’ve left the theater in a haze, eager to get wrapped up in the story again. As is, the film gave me 20 minutes to come back down to earth and turn The Fall into The Time Traveler’s Wife. It’s a nice enough end, but it let way too much of the power of the film dissipate.

 

While I think I’ll come to appreciate the final act of the film more in time, it will always be a let down from the early parts of the film. Swinton and Elba are very good in the film. Elba is very good at downplaying the role. He knows he’s a Djinn. To him, there’s nothing special about it.

Yet that doesn’t step on the story itself. The writing for the film doesn’t often match the visuals. This definitely feels like a passion project, and I think Miller has earned another one of those.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Bad and the Beautiful

Premise: A director, writer, and actress explain to a studio head why they refuse to work with a specific producer again.

 

I really should like this movie more. It’s designed to appeal to me: basically Citizen Kane but about movie-making. The cast is stellar. Vincente Minelli directing. These are all big plusses. It didn’t do much for me though and I think I’ve figured out why.

 

This came out in 1952, two years after Sunset Blvd. and All About Eve: two of the most scathing takes on the film industry (and theater community). The Bad and the Beautiful really feels like a studio trying to reverse-engineer those successes. It’s got the flashback mystery of Sunset Blvd. It’s got the discontent despite success of All About Eve. I know all of these were major studio films, but The Bad and the Beautiful is the only one that doesn’t feel like it’s getting away with something. Sunset and Eve both feel like they snuck through; like the studios didn’t realize how negatively the films were portraying the industry until they were released. B&B on the other hand, is ultimately a movie about how the studio is always right and knows better than the creatives. Think about it. A producer – clearly acting as a stand in for any studio chief – brings in an actress, director, and writer who are being difficult. They go on to tell their stories, all ending with the producer explaining how they were actually better for what happened. After he goes on to prove how they are wrong and they still refuse to take the job, it ends with them overhearing a description of the project and getting intrigued.

 

Huh. That’s fun. I went into this Reaction with no idea what I was going to write about this movie and stumbled into a full explanation of why I didn’t like it that I didn’t have going in.

 

The performances themselves are good. I like Kirk Douglas leading the movie but only as a character in flashbacks. I would’ve preferred if they left him a little more of a mystery like in Citizen Kane. The film looks slick. It won Art Direction, Cinematography, and Costume Design Oscars, which feels right.

 

I got to this movie because I have a giant spreadsheet of movies to watch and points get added top films for awards, cast, recommendations, etc. I’ve noticed a trend for the films with the most points. There are three types. 1) Classic foreign films that I haven’t seen because I suck and don’t get to foreign films often enough. 2) Horror movies with high recommendations. 3) Films that were big for awards the year they came out but don’t age greatly. The Bad and the Beautiful is the platonic ideal for type 3. It was a hit that earned a lot of awards at the time (although curiously, not Best Picture or Best Director Oscar nominations). It was what a good movie was supposed to be then although it quickly moves to being something people forget about. Like The Revanent. Remember when that led Oscar nominations and made a lot of money?

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Bliss

Premise: A doped up artist get turned into a vampire and become unable to distinguish her drug impulses from her vampire impulses.

 

This movie is a lot. Certainly more than I expected when I decided to watch a horror movie with that cute girl from Friday Night Lights (Dora Madison) and Norm from Cheers (George Wendt). It turns out, this movie is much more like watching an 80-minute-cut of the “Smack My Bitch Up” video. The film is a classic case of “does the second half make up for the first half?” Once Madison become a vampire and the film is basically told in a haze, it is confident and decently fun. The director really got into all that.

 

Several of the building blocks early on I had trouble with. The dialogue is just awful. It all sounds improvised by actors not trained in improve and the only direction was to use “fuck” as a filler word a lot. Don’t get me wrong. I love swearing. “Fuck” is a great word, but it’s used in this as a way for characters to remind you they are edgy and not as a natural part of their speech. Dora Madison is also not who I would cast for this. Her character, Dezzy, needs to be someone who looks about 10 years older. Madison was 29ish when this was made and she has a young face. Dezzy is supposed to be a hardened LA Artist who is well-known, and Madison just doesn’t look worn enough. And she can’t pull off that awful dialogue convincingly yet. Looking at her recent filmography, I get the sense that she’d like to do more horror. I hope she does, because I could see her aging into it pretty well. A late 30s Dezzy played by Madison I could be into, but in 2019 it really just feels like they cast the youngest actress who was willing to get naked and bloody a bunch.

 

For me, the delirium of the film wasn’t quite engaging enough to overcome the performing, casting, and dialogue problems. Others’ mileage may vary. It looks pretty decent for what was surely a small budget. The striking visuals certainly make me curious to check out the director again.

 

Side Rant: I know it’s hard to have an artist be good at something in a movie, because if the art was that good, why would it just be in this movie. A songwriter won’t give their best stuff for someone in a movie to sing. A stand-up comedian won’t give their best stuff to a character to do in a movie. The worst of these is a painter painting something for a movie… What I’m trying to say is, Dezzy’s painting isn’t very good. When a film puts this much into the artist painting their masterpiece, I’m really OK if they just pull the move where they never show the painting and only show people reacting to the painting.

 

Random Observation: Dora Madison and George Wendt made two horror movies that came out in 2019. Is that a crazy coincidence or is there a story there? Did someone who worked on one movie recruit people on set for the second movie or something?

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: In the Company of Men

Premise: Two men make a pact to start dating the same woman, get her to fall for them, then dump her at the same time because…I don’t know – men’s rights?

 

Holy shit. For years I’ve heard about this movie as part of the legend of Aaron Eckhart. I was first introduced to Eckhart in Thank You For Smoking: the dark comedy that relies on his ability to say the worst things and remain likable. I then saw him move to roles like Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight that painted him as the ultimate golden boy turned corrupt. But, any time I’ve heard a podcast or reviewer talk about Eckhart, it always comes back to that time he played a monster in In the Company of Men.

 

Having finally seen In the Company of Men, I get it. I get how this performance could color one’s opinion of Eckhart forever. My stance on Eckhart since seeing Thank You For Smoking has been some version of “thank god he’s on our side”. He’s so charming in that film that he makes what should be a villain into someone you can’t help but root for. Like, you want all the bad things possible to happen to the people around him but for him to somehow come out unscathed. In the Company of Men is the opposite. Eckhart is pure evil but at a whim, he can trick you into liking him. I went into this knowing he is an irredeemable character and I still got caught a couple times thinking he’d made a turn. It’s a masterful performance. I don’t know how else to put it. And I don’t know how many actors could actually pull it off. Sometimes I wonder why Eckhart’s career has been so humdrum overall. He had the mid-00s run and he’s never stopped working, but it feels like he’s often playing below his talent level. I’m starting to wonder if that’s a somewhat conscious choice. He knows he has this ability to play awful people and charm you into liking them if he wants too, but maybe that takes a lot out of him. I mean, after doing In the Company of Men, I’d certainly want to spend the rest of my career in RomComs and action movies, proving I’m actually a nice guy and a hero. Is Eckhart’s career like finding out you are a really great hitman but not wanting the emotional torment of killing people?

 

Is it fair to question if this movie is actually a black comedy? There’s not much that’s actually funny about this movie. I didn’t find myself laughing and saying “I shouldn’t be laughing about that”. I think sometimes a black comedy gets labelled that way simply because calling it a drama would be too bleak. It’s kind of like how satire is often labelled as comedy even though that isn’t always right. In the Company of Men is a dark movie that happens in well-lit rooms. It’s a satire of men who feel wronged by life despite the fact that they are winning at life. The only thing funny about it is describing the intent of the movie. I’ll laugh about the movie in hindsight, because the men in the film are so pathetic. But, watching the movie, there’s nothing to laugh at.

 

This feels like a movie that I’ll only need to see once. I appreciate what it’s doing. I technically liked the movie. I just have no desire to be around people who are that shitty without any kind of comic release. Then again, Aaron Eckhart is so good in it.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend