Delayed Reaction: The Messenger

Premise: An Army staff sergeant finishes out his last few months before discharge by serving as a casualty notification officer.

I only made two notes while watching this:

• That's awful early for a sex scene
• This movie is punishing.

The first note is on there, because it's rare that I see boobs before I'm even finished writing down the title. The second note is the crux of the movie though. This movie is emotionally punishing. This should be obvious. It's a movie about telling family members that a loved one has died. Some premises don't need much to add stakes. This one establishes those quickly. The aspect that I hadn't considered before is that it's a race to be the first to tell the family. Remember how Kobe Bryant's family found out he had died from TMZ? The army wants to avoid that (on a much smaller scale, or course). So, even though it's not strictly life-and-death, it is, I guess clock-and-death.

There are several powerful scenes in this. They kept finding new ways to punch the audience in the gut. There's the pregnant girlfriend who legally has to wait to hear the news with the officers in the room waiting on his mother. There's the sweethearts who married in secret getting exposed by news of his death. How about the parents who find out in a store instead of at home? This movie gets those scenes very right. There will never be a documentary following people doing this around (for good reason), so this is the closest most of us will get to seeing these moments.

This fits neatly into both lead actors' strengths. Ben Foster loves character work, but when oddball characters aren't an option, he does explosive rage well too. Woody Harrelson is excellent at composed losers: guys who can put themselves together enough to look like they have all the answers even though they are bigger screw-ups than anyone else in the room.

Unfortunately, the movie can't just be a series of vignettes about officers delivering bad news to familiar actors live Steve Buscemi and Samantha Morton. It has to have a plot too, and that's where it lost me. It's been a while since I've seen a film with something new to say about PTSD. It's a lot of thousand-yard stares, blaring angry music, drinking, and standard self-destructive behavior. While I agree that PTSD is bad, depictions of it are getting tired. I hated the stuff about Foster cozying up with Morton after he was the one who delivered the news of her husband's death. The same with Harrelson relapsing. It felt like the movie was trying too hard to make an inherently interesting subject more interesting.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Hamilton

Premise: A recording of a performance of the Hamilton musical with the original cast in 2016.

I've wavered on whether or not to do a Reaction for this. I don't write these for other stage shows I watch: comedy specials and one-man shows in particular. Then again, I did cover Stop Making Sense, and how's that different from this? Ultimately, I landed on the side of writing a Reaction, because it's an event release that Disney+ is treating like a big movie release. Now, I just need to find something to say about it.

Whenever I talk about anything with an ardent fan base, I feel unqualified to say anything. I don't have any deep knowledge of Hamilton. I didn't see it live on Broadway (I saw a touring production though). I bought the soundtrack after a lot of the hype had died down. I couldn't name half the cast or tell you any other productions they've been in. I know the songs. I haven't memorized any of them. I'm a fan but not a superfan.

At least, in my head, I think in tiers of liking things. There are things that I just like. Then there are things that "are mine". Not in an exclusive way. Just because it's mine doesn't mean it can't be yours. They are things that I have personal stock in. If someone doesn't like The Leftovers or About Time, I take it personally, even though I know my identity isn't actually tied to these things. The stuff I simply like though, I'm not invested in. I like Star Trek, but if you tell me you don't, my thought is "ok, cool."

A phenomenon that gets annoying that I'm really trying to break myself of is when the fanbase of something is so ardent that I end up on the negative end just because I only like it. The Office is a great example of this. I like The Office. I saw every episode. I love the cast and writers. I think it's an important sitcom of its era. It's nowhere near being one of my favorites though. The cult of The Office is so passionate that I'll often find myself saying "It wasn't that good. Are we just going to ignore the second half of the series that was uneven-to-outright bad?" Even though I have a lot of fond memories of the show, I'm dealing with such passionate fans that the balance gets totally thrown off about what it means to be a fan.

So, back to Hamilton. I'm a fan, not a superfan. I find it easy to write about things I'm a superfan of because I love gushing about those things. It's also easy for me to write about things I'm indifferent about (even though it often comes out as more negative than I intend). It's hard for me to write about things at the Hamilton tier. Other people will have much better takes. Hell, I'm going to spend most of this Reaction defining fandom rather than talking about the show. (You should really be used to that by now though.) Given all these caveat and qualifiers, here I go.

I think Hamilton is good.

That's about all I've got. Sorry. The theatrical production is clearly a well-oiled machine by the time they do this recording. The film crew does a good job catching the right angles, knowing when to do close and wide shots, etc. I wouldn't say I felt like I was in the crowd that night, but I do feel like I watched a professionally made recording of it.

That cast is as incredible as I thought they'd be from listening to the soundtrack. It was nice to put a face to some of the actors. Specifically, Chris Jackson (George Washington) and Okieriete Onaodowan (Hercules Mulligan/James Madison) were good to finally see. Mostly, I liked the normal theater stuff of seeing what everyone brought to their interpretation of the character. I liked all the laugh lines that the soundtrack doesn't catch. It was nice to see Jonathan Groff's King George spitting with rage as he sang. I appreciate how often Lin Manuel Miranda cedes the spotlight to other characters.

I have the same issue with this that I do with the show in general. I think it drags at the end. "Burn" is a showstopper, but the rest of the songs toward the end are among my least favorites.

Overall though, this is a thoroughly enjoyable watch. Seeing it live would've of course been better, but it's nice that we have this as an alternative since we can't magically make in 2016 again (and be in New York, and have the money to afford tickets,...)

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Grey Gardens

Premise: A documentary about an eccentric mother-daughter pair living in a dilapidated estate.

Most neighborhoods have that weird house. The lawn is overgrown and poorly tended to. You never really see the person who lives there. Rumors start growing. People tend to avoid it on walking paths. I know I'm picturing a specific house in my mind. Grey Gardens is a movie for anyone who has ever looked at that house in the neighborhood and wondered "What's their deal?"

Grey Gardens is the "high society" version of this. The two women are Jackie Kennedy's aunt and cousin. The estate was in a wealthy neighborhood. Naturally, the women and the house earned a lot of attention. The state of their house is bad, although, having just watched The Wire, I'll note that it's not that different from the state of a lot of the characters on that show 30 years later, so a little perspective there. What's notable about them is how they chose to live like this, in a rotting, rodent-infested house. It would've been easy for them to live in better conditions. They had the right family name and connections.

Big and Little Edie are wacky individuals. Their lack of vanity and self-awareness are the stuff that made reality TV so successful a few decades later. It's easy to see why this movie has earned a cult following and has been adapted in so many ways. However, it felt a little exploitative to me, which is the same reason I don't watch a lot of reality TV. They are really intriguing people though. Their ability to get on each other's nerves is pretty incredible. I admire the filmmakers' attempts to stay out of the movie, but Little Edie in particular kept trying to drag them in.

This movie has been so thoroughly referenced and parodied (check out the Documentary Now! episode) that there wasn't much that was new to me watching this. Perhaps it would've been more entertaining without all that familiarity. As is, this ended up being a movie I saw more to check off a list than because I really loved it.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Lovers

Premise: A middle-aged married couple, both carrying on secret affairs, start to reconnect.

I'm mad at this movie. Or maybe I'm just mad at the marketing for the movie. I love the concept. Tracey Letts and Debra Winger are married and carrying on affairs at the same time. For whatever reason, they get a spark back in their relationship. Just the tagline "What if you were having an affair with your spouse?" is canny and clever. There aren't many movies about relationships at that age. Normally, it's about the dissolution of a marriage. This is too, but not really.

However, I was led to believe this was much more of a comedy. A lot of things are called dramedies, which can mean a wide range of tones. I was thinking this was on the "it's a comedy but with a dark edges" end of the spectrum. Instead, it's a drama with some silly moments. There isn't much that's actually funny. The actual tone of the movie is a lot less interesting to me. It's a lot easier to tell the dramatic version of this story. When any scene gets hard to crack, just have someone act devastated. It's a lot harder to find something dryly funny while not undercutting the seriousness of the moment, so I get why the movie doesn't attempt it very often. It makes for a less interesting movie though.

Still, I don't know the last time I say Debra Winger in anything and Tracy Letts rarely takes lead roles in movies. They play off each other well. I appreciate the showmanship of Letts' lies throughout the movie. I also appreciate that neither of them really seems to like their son. There's something about a character not liking their child that I find weirdly humanizing.

The movie does a lot to redeem itself by having the correct ending.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend