Ian Thomas Malone

Monthly Archive: February 2023

Monday

27

February 2023

0

COMMENTS

Babylon is a beautiful self-indulgent disaster

Written by , Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

The 89th Academy Awards ceremony presented the film industry with a watershed moment that it’s only starting to fully grasp in the years since. The mistaken announcement of La La Land as the Best Picture winner over Moonlight came with plenty of understandable shock given the high-profile flub, but also plenty of understated bewilderment at the idea that a small budget film about gay people of color could triumph over an elaborate production centered on Hollywood’s favorite subject: itself. Though La La Land director Damien Chazelle took home an Oscar for Best Director for his efforts, the notion of his work falling just short of the top industry prize courses through the veins of his recent release Babylon, a film that tries way too hard to be the definitive statement on Hollywood grandeur.

Babylon follows a few different narratives that are somewhat intertwined with each other. Manny Torres (Diego Calva) works a lavish party at a studio executive’s house in 1926 Los Angeles, quickly folding an infatuation for rising star Nelle LaRoy (Margot Robbie) into his broader longing to be part of the mechanics of show business. Aging silent film star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) gives Manny his first break as an assistant. With the advent of sound quickly upending the entire industry, Manny, Nelle and Jack all confront their brave new world with varying degrees of competence and grace.

Few films open with such a declaration of their own epic stature quite like Babylon. Chazelle’s worldbuilding is absolutely delightful, with lived-in sets that capture the exquisite grandeur of the era. Keenly aware that a runtime of over three hours can’t be sustained on frantic party energy, Chazelle manages to synchronize his characters’ career fatigue with the own exhaustion his narrative evokes from the audience. Babylon is the kind of work that needs to be survived before it can be enjoyed.

A body fed nothing but sugar will eventually long for nutrition. Babylon resists the idea that its audience needs nourishment, but the high starts to wear off halfway through when it becomes abundantly clear that Chazelle has absolutely nothing unique to say about Hollywood. The absolutely gorgeous cinematography constantly dazzles, Chazelle putting forth an admirable effort to cover up his empty narrative that putters through its final ninety minutes following a predictable path.

Though Babylon is nominally an ensemble piece, Calva’s Manny carries most of the film’s emotional weight, a not-so-subtle surrogate for Chazelle himself. Robbie and Pitt are a lot of fun, if not at times a bit distracting given their leading roles in the eerily similar Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Despite its meandering nature, supporting characters Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), a talented jazz trumpeter, and Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), a lesbian cabaret singer, are given almost nothing to do besides expose the racism of the era. Adepo delivers the film’s most emotionally gut-wrenching sequence when forced to confront showbusiness’s tendency to appease bigotry rather than condemn it. The power of the scene is unfortunately undercut by Chazelle’s relative apathy toward Palmer as a three-dimensional character despite having ample opportunity to explore his character.

Babylon is an easy film to hate. Chazelle’s work is sloppy, arrogant, and self-indulgent bordering on masturbatory, but also irritatingly beautiful and hard to get out of one’s head. The ending deserves all the eye-rolls in the world, a clownish sequence that could only be executed by a director who lacked anyone around him capable of reigning his antics in. Nothing in this mess feels terribly original, yet somehow, inexplicably, it’s the kind of movie you walk out of longing for the next opportunity to watch it all again.

Chazelle delivers on the themes he superficially explored in La La Land, blowing his earlier work out of the water. There are still plenty of signs of an immature artist behind the wheel, especially in a series of scenes featuring Tobey Maguire. It feels so outlandish to say that there’s nothing else like Babylon out there, a narrative full of obvious cliches that borrows heavily from so many other better films, but the pieces of this messy epic clunkily come together to produce something magical. You may hate Babylon, but it’s impossible to forget Babylon. Chazelle may not have topped any of the classics he was riffing off of, but managed to produce an epic worthy of the name.

 

Friday

17

February 2023

0

COMMENTS

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is Marvel’s greatest embarrassment

Written by , Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

The criticism of Marvel movies possessing a paint-by-numbers feel has existed for almost as long as the MCU itself. The idea that each superhero’s journey serves as little more than an Instagram filter over the exact same formula isn’t entirely unfair, but the MCU has generally managed to make up for its lack of originality with an abundance of charm. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a depressing case study of what happens to the whole enterprise when the same song and dance starts to lose its muster.

Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is one of the few surviving Avengers who actually seems to be enjoying life after the events of Endgame. Parlaying his fame into a successful memoir, Scott seems to have finally left his past behind, though his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton, the third actress to portray the character) worries that he may have lost sight of the needs of the world around him. Whether Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), now successful CEO of the Pym Foundation, agrees is largely unclear, since most people involved with making the film seem to have forgotten that the Wasp shares equal billing with Ant-Man, generally implying a sense of lead-character status.

The film’s plot quickly is set in motion after Cassie and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), who the former now refers to as “grandpa” with absolutely zero explanation, craft a device that can communicate with the Quantum Realm, where Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) was famously trapped for thirty years. The idea that Scott too was trapped there after the events of the last Ant-Man film or that the space served as the main catalyst driving the events of Endgame is not deemed relevant to the plot. Naturally, a portal to the QR is a terrible idea, and the five find themselves sucked into a vortex, split up into two very convenient groups. Scott and Cassie get some space to work on their father/daughter bond, while Hope and her parents wander around looking for something that might resemble an interesting storyline.

Director Peyton Reed never seems terribly interested in exploring his characters as people. Unfortunately, Quantumania can’t really explore the Quantum Realm either, not with the severely limited scope of its special effects department. Marvel’s laziest cinematography reduces the Quantum Realm to a monotonous green screen that looks to be about the size of an elementary school gymnasium, forcing all the actors to stand in place for almost the experience. Seasoned cinematographer William Pope recycles the same zoomed-in shot of the characters’ upper torsos again and again, presumably to clip coupons for the visual effects department. The color palette is bland and dreary, like a child cross-contaminated their Easter egg dyes, a tedious depressing eyesore.

The performances are almost as lifeless as the CGI. Rudd, Douglas, Lilly, and newcomer Bill Murray all looked bored out of their minds, the latter as if he required a sedative to get through his scenes. If Murray agreed to shoot more than one take for any of his scenes, it certainly doesn’t come across in the final product. The jokes fall flat, with Rudd constantly betraying his complete awareness of what a disaster he’s starring in. Pfeiffer and Newton try their best to make the most of their character’s expanded roles, though their attempts to convey awe and wonder for the Quantum Realm fall flat in the incoherent narrative that moves swiftly through its 124-minute runtime, quite short by MCU standards.

Quantumania suffers under some predictable hurdles that befall most third entries. The film already has too many characters within the Ant-Man family, on top of carrying the weight of a certain iconic villain in Marvel lore. Jonathan Majors makes his proper MCU debut as Kang the Conqueror after playing an alternate-timeline variant in Loki. Kang is supposed to be the MCU’s next Thanos-level threat, already announced as the villain of the next Avengers film set for release in 2025.

Majors is always a joy to watch, but Quantumania is simply not a good outlet for his talents. Kang’s introduction is quite rushed, a reality of the film’s scattershot interests. Majors brings some depth to the lifeless experience, but his performance often serves to highlight the film’s abundant limitations. The plot grows exceedingly incoherent in the film’s third act, a narrative completely out of steam by the time Kang gets to do anything interesting. The film would have been much better off allowing secondary villain M.O.D.O.K., another iconic figure in Marvel lore, to slot in as the main antagonist, sparing Majors for a narrative that could bring some dignity to Kang as a character. It’s unclear how Marvel expects anyone to want more of Kang after this clownish endeavor.

Quantumania represents an embarrassing low point for the MCU, a soulless cash-grab that debases the very idea of cinema itself. A just world would never allow the superhero genre to recover from such an artistically bankrupt abomination. This movie just doesn’t fail to give its audience a reason to care for its narrative, it makes you wonder why you ever cared in the first place.

Monday

13

February 2023

0

COMMENTS

Tàr is a beautifully crafted, vapid commentary on cancel culture

Written by , Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews

Society has long struggled with discourse surrounding the unwieldy leviathan known as cancel culture. The term has become somewhat of a Rorschach test, its definition molded to whatever situation best suits the intentions of the party that invoked its usage. The film Tàr gender swaps the traditional mechanics of the #MeToo movement, centering a manically narcissistic female conductor at the heart of its tale of power and treachery.

Lydia Tàr (Cate Blanchett) is seated at the top of her insulated world. The first female composer of the Berlin Philharmonic, Tàr juggles an upcoming live recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with the release of her memoir, alongside the tedious nature of orchestral politics and heavy travel schedules on private jets between spacious apartments in some of the most beautiful cities of the world. Armed with a hands-on assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant) to schedule her every move, Tàr structures her entire existence on the endless validation of her own brilliance.

A former student’s suicide throws Tàr’s empire into chaos, the genius lesbian maestro’s taste for younger women a poorly kept secret across her realm. Tàr disrupts the mechanics of the orchestra by elevating a young cellist Olga (Sophie Kauer) who she’s had her eye on even as her wife and concertmaster Sharon (Nina Hoss) looks on in disapproval. The presence of her former mentor Andris Davis (Julian Glover) serves as a stark reminder of how one can go from the top of the mountain to an afterthought lost in the annals of time.

Director Todd Field presents his 158-minute narrative as if it was unfolding in real time over the course of a few days. There’s a marvelous lived-in feeling to the worldbuilding that produces ample natural tension across the slow burn. Much as cancel culture feels like the boogeyman, Field manages to bring the inner workings of #MeToo to life, a highly impressive feat of filmmaking.

The true beauty of Tár stems from the sheer vitality of Cate Blanchett to the whole production. It’s not unfair to say that the entire immaculately crafted film would fall apart without her, a towering presence that commands the whole experience. Field deserves plenty of eye-rolls for using a lesbian as his stand-in for cancel culture commentary that would feel clownish if it had a male lead, but there’s no denying that his synchronicity with Blanchett results in a breathtaking experience.

Much of Tàr’s through-line depends on a pivotal scene between Tár and one of her students in a class she was guest-teaching at Julliard. The BIPOC Gen Z student expresses apathy for the work of Bach as a white male cisgender composer, goading Tár into a fiery rebuke of cancel culture fitting for the primetime programming on Fox News. Field crafts an easy lay-up in his lazily constructed strawman bound to resonate with an audience that probably can’t name many transgender women composers of color, let alone a handful with portfolios of work comparable to the impact and legacy of one Johann Sebastian Bach.

Field does himself and his work a great intellectual disservice by reducing the Bach question to a matter of his gender identity and problematic personal life. At the heart of every academic and artistic institution on this planet lies a canon that defines their very orbit. Modern efforts to diversify the canon harness the raw power of its reality as a living, breathing entity that does not need to forever remain an exclusive club of the only people who were allowed a seat at its table, namely cisgender white men.

An average audience may understandably find it absurd that a student at an institution like Juilliard would not be familiar with Bach. You’d be hard-pressed to go into many classrooms full of Ph.D. students in English Literature who had read more than a handful of Shakespeare’s plays or Dryden’s verse, who could tell their Schopenhauer from their Hegel and certainly could name any Faulkner beyond the few that pop up as Jeopardy! questions. Anyone with half a brain can sound like a pretentious ass while gatekeeping the canon, but the sad truth is that our nation would rather highlight fluff like the assault on cisgender heterosexual white men than debate whether those same anointed few should forever center the conversation within their respected fields.

Another question that Tàr unfortunately tries to sidestep completely is the nature of the impermeability of genius. Many abusers have clung to their perceived Godlike aura to justify further bad behavior. History has shown us time and time again that the success of artistic movements or cultural institutions rarely hinges on the fortunes of singular individuals. The sun still rose the day after Harvey Weinstein’s cancellation just as it would on any other morning. Those in power would sleep better at night if you weren’t aware of that innate truth. Field is not unaware of this dynamic either, but he focuses his attention elsewhere far too often to produce any interesting conclusions on the subject.

Tàr ends up as an unfortunate mix bag, another film about cancel culture that doesn’t really take a stand on its subject material. Field’s pseudo-intellectual script betrays a spectacular exposition on power’s corrosive rot on the genius of the soul, though Blanchett remains perpetually able to pick up the pieces of his shoddy reactionary mess. The end result produces a beautiful film, albeit one that falls just shy of greatness.

Friday

10

February 2023

0

COMMENTS

Titanic Remains One of Cinema’s Crowning Spectacles

Written by , Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Few pieces of popular culture capture the zeitgeist of the 1990s quite like Titanic. From its elaborate practical sets to its sappy dialogue to the unparalleled cultural phenomenon it was able to inspire, James Cameron’s epic represents the apex of twentieth-century filmmaking while paying homage to a tragedy our collective consciousness refuses to let go of. Twenty-five years later, Titanic still stands as a truly singular moment in cinema, a feat both of physical endurance for those who struggle to sit in a theatre for three hours and the emotional intelligence required to embrace the film’s ultimate mandate and cry amongst a room full of strangers there to experience the exact same tug on their heartstrings.

The magic of the theatre requires a buy-in from the audience beyond the mere suspension of disbelief required to follow along with a narrative parsed down to exist within the restricted confines of the medium. As a film, Titanic serves two distinct masters: the historical and the interpersonal. We the audience know that the boat sinks amidst several preventable tragedies, capitalism playing the role of God in choosing which victims to spare. Any human being with half a soul could acknowledge that this senseless carnage is in fact, sad.

Cameron’s exceedingly sappy love story across the barriers of class and culture forces the audience not only to reckon with the tragedy but to invest emotionally in the depths of its sorrow. Titanic is not a documentary, but a narrative that required a force of dramatic tension that could counterbalance the weight of its inevitable climax. You need over-the-top characters to match the irony of the fate of the unsinkable ship.

Jack and Rose’s love story is bound to resonate with anyone who’s ever enjoyed the fleeting perfection of a one-night stand. Leonardo DiCaprio brings a kind of manic energy to Jack that’s designed to change a person like Rose’s life, even if everyone involved knew that their kind of love isn’t built to sustain the morning after. Both Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart manage to capture the essence of that swooning heart that got a taste of life’s purest essence, if only for a moment. Some love is only meant to last forever in memory.

Titanic is supposed to be silly, armed with a cartoonish steel baron (Billy Zane) and his equally outlandishly over-the-top valet (David Warner) to manifest the role of narrative villain in places where the iceberg’s dramatic range was far more limited. Kathy Bates grounds the silliness as the “unsinkable” Molly Brown, champion of the proletariat from her perch in first class, a fairy godmother to supply Jack with the confidence he needs to seize the means of production. Brown serves as a kind of Greek chorus through the absurdity of it all. Rose’s mother Ruth (Frances Fisher) is the living embodiment of the cruelty of man, willing to sacrifice her daughter’s happiness to keep her head above the working class.

The big screen has hardly been better-utilized than in service to Titanic’s third act. The special effects hold up marvelously all these years later, but Cameron’s mastery of practical effects has always been his bread and butter. At a time when many studios are looking to cut corners, the sight of tens of thousands of gallons of water ravaging an exquisite set never grows stale with repeat viewing. Rarely does a major blockbuster feel as grand as its budget suggests.

Cameron’s greatest strength is his unrelenting drive to amass a spectacle fitting of his source material. Titanic is a testament to a time when film tried to step outside the confines of the screen and change the very world around its walls. It’s easy to poke fun at the over-the-top nature of this epic, but the water settles around the endless debates of whether Jack could’ve fit on the door (yes) or if old Rose should have given her granddaughter the priceless jewel (also yes), one truth remains self-evident. There’s never been a cinematic experience quite like Titanic.

Wednesday

8

February 2023

0

COMMENTS

The Gender of Our Discontent

Written by , Posted in Podcast

ITM spends some time with one of her least favorite subjects, her own gender. Not quite feeling like a woman these days, Ian doesn’t really know what that means. Her gender is probably just tired, or hormonal, or hungry. Maybe all three. 

Tuesday

7

February 2023

0

COMMENTS

An Option to Ease the Burden of Playing Hogwarts Legacy in Spite of JK Rowling’s Rampant Transphobia

Written by , Posted in Pop Culture

I’ve been asked about the ethics of Hogwarts Legacy a lot lately, and wanted to give people a chance to engage with Harry Potter in a way that may ease their conscience.

People have tried workarounds to practice capitalism without benefiting J.K. Rowling. Frankly it’s impossible. However, I’d like to offer you a way out.

If you want to buy Hogwarts Legacy but feel bad about JKR’s endless transphobia and endorsements of anti-trans campaigners affiliated with the far-right and neo-Nazis, there is a solution.

I am introducing the ITM Hogwarts Tax. If you want to buy the game, you can Venmo @ianthomasmalone the full price of the game (70 dollars) or more if you would like me to speak to the Transgender High Council on your behalf so you can be adequately shamed and shunned for your actions.

This money will not go to charity. I promise only to use it on weed, alcohol, and other hedonistic vices or frivolities that will not benefit the world in any meaningful way. Charity would make you feel good about what you’ve done. The point is to feel ashamed. You’re paying me for the burden of having to acknowledge your unfettered gluttony.

I understand people may interpret this as a cash grab on my part, but I will not respect anyone who follows through with this stupidity. I will remember your name and laugh as I spend your penance on another hard kombucha. People wanted a way out of their guilt. The price cannot be painless.