"1917" Review

The Second World War has been better served by Hollywood in the last few decades than its historical predecessor, probably because of the contours of popular knowledge. The Third Reich proves a more straightforward dramatic foe than the German Empire, and the American war narrative conveniently positions the Pearl Harbor attack as its starting point, whatever complicated deliberations truly presaged the decision to join the Allies. The undercurrent of war crimes committed by the Nazis has reliably elevated the stakes of characters’ missions, and placed them in a sentimental context—the conflicts move by morals, less so strategy and geopolitics.

1917, the new film from Sam Mendes, is thus somewhat refreshing. The film takes its title from the year in which the story takes place, and follows two English soldiers, Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) on their journey to a neighboring unit. The Germans have crafted a trap, you see, by retreating and redrawing their front line, intending for British forces to attack, and be slaughtered. The Germans have also compromised British communication systems, so Schofield and Blake must deliver a message from Army Command by hand, ordering the unit to stand down. Of course, some emotional padding can’t hurt to strengthen Blake’s motivation: his brother is a lieutenant for the threatened division.

Within the first ten minutes of the film, we become aware of a simple goal—get from Point A to Point B—that will inevitably be obstructed by unexpected enemies, sudden acts of violence and consequent obligations. The way we track the goal’s attempted fulfillment is through one long take, as has been noted in most headlines publicizing 1917; the approach propelled Birdman to a Cinematography Oscar, and usually impresses, even when lacking justification. 

I was worried before seeing the film that I would leave praising only its technical achievements, but then I remembered how good Mendes is at making audiences feel, and feel deeply. The director has not abandoned his theater roots since foraying into cinema, and helmed both the West End and Broadway productions of The Ferryman, which ended its stateside run in July. In that play, Mendes had his actors digging into troubled pasts, telling generational stories and manifesting generational divides, with a palpable sensitivity for love and loss.

The skill translates to 1917, and is supported by the unbreaking forward push, through trenches and across plains, which never loses Blake or Schofield, giving the audience time to register their methods of expression. What is most satisfying about the lack of cuts (in fact there is one, postproduction wizardry notwithstanding, that indicates a brief period of a character’s unconsciousness) is the understanding of construction that I developed—the construction of battlefields and trajectories relative to civilian and natural surroundings. Seeing how long it took to navigate from one end of a trench to the other, or from the British front line to the abandoned German one, endeared me to the immediate practical considerations of a group of men whose mortality existed so positively in flux.

The other rewarding structural component of 1917 is its real-time progress, which demands attention for the full duration of an event. We watch a character stabbed, and we watch his blood pool through the fabric of his uniform and through his hands as he clutches at the wound. We watch him cry and become disoriented and pull a picture of his family from his chest pocket, and we watch the color drain from his face, before his body goes limp in the arms of a friend. The sequence lasts nine minutes. Because we are not allowed the relief of a wide shot, or the goo of an orchestral suite, we can only go cold, close as we are to calamity, though far removed from catharsis.

Realism requires that Schofield and Blake walk long distances talking, without interruption. As they cover ground, Blake remembers the soldier who covered his head in scented oil his girl sent him, and the rat who liked the scent and bit the soldier’s ear off. When Blake and Schofield descend a hillside marked by felled cherry trees, Blake inspects the branches’ petals. He can name a dozen varieties, because his mother planted a garden of the trees back home.

This interlude and others like it cemented what I found most striking about 1917: how gentle it is. We await the moment when men are stopped from fighting, not compelled to kill. Yes, there are brawls and explosions, but the film presses on quickly from them, and lingers instead on peaceful exchanges, like when Schofield gives milk to a woman and child in a leveled French village, or on moments of rest, like when Schofield listens to a soldier’s hymn, encircled by anxious comrades, soaked after drifting downriver in the aftermath of a shootout. This succession of visuals is almost religious, in no contrived sense but easily, hopefully. When Schofield emerges as the film’s protagonist, we believe that he can keep faith, because others have found faith in him.

The profundity of that conviction is achieved by a talented professional ensemble in front of and behind the camera, but such efforts would doubtless fail without George MacKay’s performance. It’s funny to watch British screen veterans like Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch chew on single scenes, while MacKay spends twenty-minute intervals watching and running and not speaking. To look into his eyes, wide and blue—as he registers the forces of brutality, as he fights to act rightly—is to deconstruct the instinct and care that fuel wartime conduct. It is also to cry, at the senselessness of the environment in which he struggles, and at the tenderness onto which he holds.

Fergus Campbell is a Culture writer and sophomore in Columbia College. 

November Oscar Update

It happened on Friday. 1917 set foot in the world, and we prognosticators could suddenly, finally, gratefully see the finish line. The finish line to the only race that matters from August through November and, yes, until February. 

Every major Oscar contender has screened, has stuck or botched the critical landing, has soared or flamed out at the specialty or domestic or international box office, has continued to penetrate the conversation after festivals or summer months, or will sadly find itself relegated to Entertainment Weekly and Vulture’s “underrated” lists in four or five years. Such a designation perhaps foretells a legacy, but imply awards glory it does not. And still some films await commercial fortunes or write-downs, but now, at least, we can assess the field.

Sam Mendes’s Great War epic will certainly benefit from newcomer’s energy, from the Academy’s disposition toward the genre and toward the talent involved (Mendes, the cinematographer Roger Deakins and the production designer Dennis Gassner are among previous winners on-board), and from a genuinely rewarding premise that turns a technical gimmick into an essential cinematic constraint. But how significant are the festival advantages on which the film has missed out?

It is hard to say. The competition feels especially dense this season, probably because Netflix is fielding three very serious and very expensive campaigns (last year it thrust most of its weight behind Roma) and because traditional bellwethers have not rewarded recipients of critics’ most emphatic acclaim. The viability of international entries mirrors last year’s Foreign Language slate, with likely spillover into general categories; topicality, auteurism and old-fashioned fun abound in equal measure, though rarely from the same film. It’s anyone’s guess as to which mood the Academy will set, though in a consequential election year, they might well want to make a statement. Given that, who are the frontrunners? 

Since July a big one has been Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, widely considered a late-career highlight for the director, and a showcase for Brad Pitt. The film is a tribute to the industry, much like La La Land, and its revisionist history, along with mostly sharp dialogue, forms a smart and satisfying (if overlong) script. Tarantino does waste Margot Robbie, which a New York Times reporter at Cannes was quick to point out, but the film’s biggest weakness is its release date, which for past mid-year nominees hasn’t translated to above-the-line victories.

Marriage Story and The Irishman are both exceptional projects from established filmmakers, and if 20th-Century Fox was behind the latter and Sony Picture Classics the former both might easily be walking home with statuettes in February. But Netflix’s stature as a usurper and a threat cost Roma Best Picture—I’m convinced—even if their deep pockets were the only ones willing to spend on a Spanish-language period piece. I will be surprised if The Two Popes isn’t squeezed out, and at this point it doesn’t seem likely Todd Haynes’s last-minute entry Dark Waters or Marielle Heller’s Mister Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood can push through. Bombshell is out except for Lead and Supporting Actress; so are Honey Boy (screenplay, perhaps?), Waves and The Lighthouse, sadly, apart from Supporting Actor for Willem Dafoe and Cinematography, perhaps. 

We wouldn’t be talking about Jojo Rabbit if it hadn’t won the People’s Choice award at Toronto Film Festival, but if we are to believe in precedent then it’s basically guaranteed a spot on the Picture shortlist. Fox Searchlight, awash in experience, will also campaign hard.

Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems, with late December releases, are clearly hoping that the competition settles down a bit before they swoop in for voters’ attention. Eastwood dominated the holiday corridor with Million Dollar Baby and American Sniper, which scored big at the 2005 and 2015 ceremonies, respectively; Gerwig is the only female creative presence behind a serious player, so it is very likely Little Women will emerge in January with one of the highest nomination counts. 

The Safdies are counting on the draw of a revelatory Adam Sandler, but the male field has already become a bloodbath. Will Leo even qualify? Ford v. Ferrari, a rollicking vintage studio drama, is admirably foregoing category fraud and campaigning both Matt Damon and Christian Bale as leads; they join Marriage Story’s Adam Driver, Joker’s Joaquin Phoenix, The Irishman’s Robert de Niro, and Pain and Glory’s Antonio Banderas in what has to be the most crowded year this century for Best Actor. Remember when Taron Egerton was kind of a frontrunner for Rocketman?

Conversely, the fifth slot for Best Actress could go to any number of decent performances in middling films, though Renée Zellweger, Saoirse Ronan, Scarlett Johannson and Charlize Theron should easily (and deservedly) fill out the first four.

Where am I placing my bets? It’s too early, of course, to make final judgments, but I see the Best Picture race splitting three ways, between The Irishman, 1917 and Parasite. My predictions for acting and directing are colored heavily by my desires, but I predict Adam Driver, Charlize Theron, Brad Pitt, and Laura Dern as victors. I haven’t yet watched Little Women or Uncut Gems, however, and would love for Sandler, Ronan, and Florence Pugh to win. 

For some reason I can only envision a universe in which the gut-busting concoction that is Parasite takes Picture and Director. It is hard to overstate the laudatory intensity of audience response, or the freshness of Bong Joon-ho’s perspective, or the novelty of the setting, or the brilliance of that twist. I understand that the preferential ballot gave us Best Picture champions like The Shape of Water and Green Book, but it also gave us Moonlight. And recognizing an outsider’s allegory for the egregiousness of income inequality? Well, that would send a message.

Fergus Campbell is a sophomore in Columbia College. 

Joker Tries to Comment on Society; Ultimately Says, “We Live in a Society”

Although Joker is a movie about an ex-clown pushed over the edge, the amount of clownery the audience is presented with is obscene. While the cinematography, direction, and performances were excellent – specifically that of Joaquin Phoenix – the base storyline itself could not save this film from disaster.

Based on the promotion of and response to this film, it seemed as if the creators were putting forth a commentary on how society can drive a man to become the Joker. Unfortunately, the film ultimately succeeds in following in the footsteps of many bad horror movies by demonizing the mentally ill. Joker makes paltry attempts at showing the failures of the system and the society in which Arthur Fleck lives, but ultimately it doesn’t commit enough to these things to blame them. In that way, it is as if the filmmakers have taken the side of Thomas Wayne: everyone is a clown.

Worse, in society the mentally ill are more likely to be further abused and taken advantage of than to become violent. The movie even portrays this in how Penny Fleck is implied to have had custody over Arthur even after allowing him to come to such grievous harm. People in charge cut the funding to the program that allows him to get treatment for his illnesses. Even in bringing light to these issues, Joker still effectively demonizes the sufferer rather than the torment. That is not to excuse the actions of Arthur Fleck or justify them – they are truly atrocious – but rather to point out the lack of commitment to any particular issue in exploring these serious topics.

Joker is slightly more adept at portraying the diverse attitudes to be found in Gotham. The perspective of the richer people of Gotham are represented in Murray Franklin and Thomas Wayne, and their views are clear: they find that those who are poor are not productive and wish to live off of the rich people who “made” something of themselves. Meanwhile, from the start of the film, we hear that there are city-wide strikes, although the reason for which is not made clear; if it is, and I missed it, it is easily overshadowed by whatever events Arthur Fleck is going through. Although the wealthy voices we hear – namely Murray and Thomas – are seemingly convinced the people are happy because a clown killed some promising young workers, it is clear that there has been unrest in the city for far longer than they are willing to recognize. They aren’t excited that young money has died. They are upset that there is a huge outcry when said young money dies, but these same people crying for justice will step over the bodies of the poor in the streets if they passed them. I suppose when I say “adept,” I really mean to refer to willingness. While this issue isn’t extremely nuanced, it is still treated with more dignity than mental illness is.

Easily the best part of Joker was Joaquin Phoenix’s incredible performance. I hated Arthur Fleck, but I pitied him at the same time, and for that I loved to watch him. As a well-portrayed and well-written unreliable narrator, the fan theories about whether or not the events of the film were real are delightful. Even the most bizarre of scenes – like the bathroom waltz – were approached with such a reality and gravity that they were mesmerizing. It’s unfortunate that such an excellent casting choice was paired with such a mediocre and noncommittal storyline.

Indira Ramgolam is a sophomore in Columbia College. 

"Terminator: Dark Fate": The Unwanted Sequel that Could Revive the Franchise

Rarely does a sequel surpass the initial film in quality and popularity; it is even rarer for there to be three failed attempts to follow said sequel and for a studio and creative team to still make a fourth attempt. This is the exact situation surrounding Terminator: Dark Fate, which opened in theatres this past weekend. Although already being labeled a box office bomb, it boasts a powerful creative team to back it and has potential which the other three movies lacked.

James Cameron returns as the producer, although Tim Miller of Deadpool fame directs the film. In terms of who stands before the camera, both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton reprise their roles, with this being Hamilton’s first return since Judgment Day. They are joined by Mackenzie Davis (Blade Runner 2049, Black Mirror) and Natalia Reyes (Lady, la vendedora de rosas).

Terminator: Dark Fate follows Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), a young Mexican girl who leads an ordinary life with her father and brother Diego. When a brand new type of terminator known as the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) arrives at the factory where she works with the intent to kill her, Grace (Mackenzie Davis) barely arrives in time to protect her. They survive the initial onslaught with the aid of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). Coexisting isn’t easy, however – especially when they need the aid of the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in order to defeat this new threat.

The film opens with one of the most iconic Sarah Connor scenes from Judgment Day – a choice powerful enough to cement it as the best sequel to date. It breaks the pattern of opening with the visuals of the decimated near-future while still referencing the decimation of a future that no longer exists. Simultaneously, by focusing on Sarah Connor in one of her darkest moments, the audience sees how the future has destroyed her present. While this is followed shortly with a more typical shot of the future – skulls, machines, and endless shades of gray – the audience is treated to a nontraditional preservation of the traditional formula through reliving Judgment Day with her.

This opening shot reveals a pattern that will continue through the film. What Dark Fate excels at is not being a Terminator film. By not fully constraining itself to the structure and lore of the universe – inventing a new history, in fact – the film is allowed to explore the questions of the interactions between humanity and machines in a modernized way. The film references the best of both films and encourages its new world to stake a claim in the audience’s hearts.

Besides modernizing the questions asked, these references and retcons allow us to say goodbye to the original two films. If you, like me, consider Terminator 2 3-D: Battle Across Time to be a canonical entry to the Terminator universe, I have some rough news for you – the retcons target everything but the initial two entries to the franchise. In doing so, they manage to increase the threat that Cyberdyne and Skynet initially posed, almost enhancing the older films. Seeing one particular scene set in the months after the battle with the T-1000 changes the way Sarah’s closing monologue in Judgment Day will be viewed forever, even if this film does not go down in history as the sequel that succeeded.

With Judgment Day averted, a new technological conglomerate has risen to take its place. Only, it hasn’t risen quite yet – Legion lurks in the not-so-distant future, and of course it will experience a similar rise to self-awareness that Skynet did. This film can’t break the pattern completely, but in choosing Legion over Cyberdyne, new technology is introduced. For one, the Terminator of this film is the fearsome Rev-9, a combination of the two most deadly parts of the various Terminator models. It’s basically the T-X from Terminator: Rise of the Machines, yet between how it moves, how it interacts with the world, and how the black, blood-like exo-skeleton can completely separate from the endo-skeleton, it seems so much more threatening. I’ve dreamed about a Terminator like this. The fight choreographers (I would assume) took the occasional scenes from Judgment Day in which the T-1000’s physical attributes were fully and creatively used in combat and employed them in almost every scene where it could make sense. It is important to note that at times, the CGI and the movements looked silly compared to the 80s quality graphics used to render the T-1000.  Still, after an adjustment period, the fights hold ground. The only drawback of having a Terminator this threatening is that it limits how many battles you can actually have with it. In hindsight, the amount was comparable to the amount of fights in Judgment Day – almost exactly so. In the moment of watching the film, the time between fights seemed drawn out, and every time they survived a fight there was almost a moment where I was forced to suspend my disbelief.

In contrast to the advanced nature of the Rev-9, we see the resurgence of the Kyle Reese archetype in Dani’s protector: Grace is a human, but augmented. On one hand, I question the choice of using technology to augment people when the enemy is technology. I could easily foresee someone getting hacked and doing serious damage to their own side. On the other hand, I find this entirely plausible. People today are getting implants that allow them to pay for things with a wave of their hands. Moon Ribas is a cyborg artist and activist, and her fellow cyborg Neil Harbisson is credited as being the world’s first cyborg artist. Augments seem like the natural next step in the evolution of the battle against the machines. And while neither the Rev-9 nor the augment are fully explained, for their roles within the film they are impressively balanced. More importantly than the technological advancements, both of the living machines are the proof that the T-800 and John’s conversation about the fate of humanity is unfortunately true: we seem to be destined to destroy ourselves in one way or another.

The film also maintains the tropes and themes from Judgment Day, many of which I’ve discussed in this article. Sarah is a Terminator, and the Terminator is humanized. This specific trope is furthered through Grace being an augmented human. In this regard, the Rev-9 suffers: he develops something of a personality, but it is the one sided personality of a total predator. It is nearly a duplicate of the T-1000’s sadistic tendencies. Even the progression of the initial fight speedran through the first two films, teasing out memories of the entrapment of the first T-800 in the hydraulic press as well as the truck/motorcycle chase between John and the T-1000. Even later, Dani and Grace have an exchange about the value of Dani’s life that is highly similar to the exchange about the value of John’s life that Sarah and John have in Judgment Day. And, the most morbid of tropes must be acknowledged, too: the protector always has to die.

Terminator: Dark Fate has many strengths, but quite a few flaws. Everyone seemed to know a guy, and while it makes sense within the universe, it was one of a few tropes that seemed more like a deus ex machina than proof of the vastness of the characters’ networks. They comment, if it can be called that, on the treatment of migrants at the border, but at least in the theatre I was at, it was received with a laugh. For a situation so serious, humor of that fleeting nature does it an injustice. Finally, it sets up a sequel in a way that is rather heavy handed, lacking the ambiguity and subtlety that made the conclusions of the first two Terminator installments so charming. Plus, no one necessarily has asked for a sequel yet. If it is to be handled as lovingly as Terminator: Dark Fate was, perhaps it will be a good choice. 

Indira Ramgolam is a Culture writer and sophomore in Columbia College. 

O PTA, Where Art Thou?

What has Paul Thomas Anderson been doing been since 2017? What have his movies been doing? Punch-Drunk Love resurfaced at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco in January, bubbling and booming on thirty-five-millimeter print. Phantom Thread played as part of the Metrograph’s holiday slate last December, and I missed the screening, but I suppose I had seen the film for the first time eleven months before, which was recently enough.

Anderson seems to fill his breaks from Hollywood with musical endeavors. In the three years between Inherent Vice and Phantom Thread, we received projects for Joanna Newsom, Fiona Apple and Radiohead; the Jonny Greenwood connection conjures images of poker games over which Greenwood and Anderson gamble their talent. We waited longer for The Master after There Will Be Blood (five years), and now, nearly two years on from sartorial politics and British froideur, with little news about what’s next—Anderson told The Ringer he’s currently cutting down a six-hundred-page script—we have HAIM.

HAIM is a trio of Valley girls (in the originalist sense) whose debut album “Days Are Gone” paired harmonizing and tongue-twisters with jubilant hooks, and stormed Urban Outfitters vinyl shelves and Williamsburg coffee shops in 2013; the group’s sophomore effort, “Something To Tell You,” was met with some resistance. I listened to both on repeat. Anderson’s first collaboration with HAIM was a live recording of “Right Now,” a single from “Something To Tell You,” but apart from nice tracking he doesn’t leave a mark. It’s “Now I’m In It,” the single released last week, which feels like a reward, for the gradual convergence of Anderson’s inclinations and HAIM’s sound and personality.

The video opens on Danielle Haim, the band’s de facto frontwoman, at a bar. She’s wearing red and she’s distressed. Is she reeling from a less-than-satisfying romantic rendezvous? A drunk blunder? In any case, Danielle has stayed indoors too long. After toying with last night’s drink and downing a recuperative shot—both to the song’s jittering bassline—Danielle emerges on the streets of Los Angeles, tinged golden as they were in Boogie Nights, and she’s got a day job, apparently, as a waitress at a diner (it’s Brite Spot, on Sunset). Here, Danielle spills coffee on the counter, shifting between looks as she passes customers, in a glum imitation of backstage warm-ups.

Then we’re careening via Steadicam past secondhand racks to sunglasses. We watch Danielle in the mirror as she tries to hide her shabbiness; she grabs a rotary phone from a shelf and successfully makes a call, despite the handset’s practical shortcomings. The storytelling here is irresistible. Danielle’s conduct communicates her need for help, and also her casual musicality: she thrusts her shoulders forward upon entering the diner, and collapses outside the thrift store only when the song has reached its second verse. This is the presentation of a character, conflicted but not lacking intent, and the balance of heaviness and hope that Danielle works into glossy performance almost resembles Emma Stone in La La Land. Who knew a Haim sister could act?

The entire video possesses the attention to choreographic detail that’s on display throughout the best Hollywood musicals. It’s a craft HAIM has been honing with their last three releases, all set in L.A. 2017’s “Want You Back” closed a long thoroughfare so HAIM could march down it, a gimmick that yielded a tingle of charm, quickly fading as the landscape remained static. “Little Of Your Love,” which Anderson directed (he has helmed each video since), also suffered from redundancy, but the set piece, a disco-lite dance studio, showed evolution. 

“Summer Girl,” HAIM’s precursor to “Now I’m In It,” contains many of the same elements as the latter single; Danielle swaps comfort food for ticket stubs behind the window of Tarantino’s New Beverly cinema, and though her love interest works his way conspicuously into the narrative, the video is focused on her and her sisters’ manifestations of discomfort and unwinding. Over the course of the song, HAIM removes layers and layers of clothing, from parkas to turtlenecks to polos, until, matching the season, they stride along the sidewalk in bikini tops.

When Este and Alana rescue Danielle in “Now I’m In It,” they do so wearing Matrix goggles and matching blazers. They have no problem playing sidekick, because sidekicks are cooler. And here comes the best part—the cleansing ritual. Este and Alana send Danielle through a car wash, where the rubber streamers dance around and upstage her, and where she sings about rain while she’s soaked by jets. Este and Alana watch from the adjacent windowed waiting room, Este lounging in a leather recliner, Alana hitting the keys of an arcade game. 

What, precisely, marks the strength of this construction? I think it’s the way HAIM and Anderson take advantage of an environment, extracting its kinetic potential, representing emotional rehab in a way that inspires new approaches to it. Should we help ourselves in laundromats or repair shops, rather than therapists’ offices?

Three Rolling Stone articles promoting new HAIM content note that Anderson came into contact with the band through their mother, from whom he took art classes. This was the only public information I found regarding the origins of the partnership, though I hope that Anderson was drawn to HAIM’s music, which could have scored one of Jack Horner’s pool parties. When Daniel Plainview runs with his son from a gas blowout in There Will Be Blood, the camera follows the two with rhythmic ease, and if an evangelical nineteenth-century incarnation of HAIM existed, they might have provided accompaniment for the sequence.

The truth is that many of Anderson’s best scenes involve highly motivated instances of human movement. Whether Little Bill’s Boogie Nights gun bonanza or Reynolds and Alma’s post-dress-retrieval embrace, we derive the purest enjoyment from the physical push-and-pull of Anderson characters, the way they walk, skip and run, either independently or together, away from or toward each other. 

The music that HAIM produces holds the same strengths. The band’s critics typically point to their lyrics as a weakness, the way words evaporate quickly, without leaving meaning behind, but for me HAIM’s linguistic specificity has always resided in dense verb arrangements, the intense recounting of actions, and the corresponding universality that results from a dearth of proper nouns. HAIM’s songs are at their core about movement, about getting somewhere with purpose, and the band’s collaborations with Anderson—who I suspect has acted categorically as his own director of photography—reflect shared ecstasy over a journey as it relates to our swinging arms, our legs, our paces. 

On every walk to campus since the release of “Now I’m In It,” I have pictured Danielle’s side-eye, in the final seconds of the video, when she and Este and Alana make it back to the bar where we started out. Danielle is anticipating the inseparability, I presume, of the visual and sonic components of the single, their streamlined encouragement of speed and swagger and self-confidence. I’ve been thrusting my shoulders and shifting my looks to the jittering bassline, too.

Fergus Campbell is a Culture writer and sophomore in Columbia College. 

The Apocalypse is Here: He Said He Would Be Back

This week’s assemblage of films includes:

·         The Terminator

·         Terminator 2: Judgment Day

·         Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

·         Terminator Salvation

·         Terminator Genisys

If you think it’s going to be any film besides Terminator 2, you would be wrong.

The third or fourth proposed sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day is out in theatres as of the moment I give this one final revision. While my hopes are still high, it’s high time to revisit the indomitable film that should have finished the franchise. The day of reckoning is finally here.

Ten years (and nine months, presumably) after the events of The Terminator, two terminators have been sent back through time to carry out a mission. The advanced T-1000 (Robert Patrick) has been sent back by Cyberdyne to kill John Connor. The T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has been sent by John Connor to protect John Connor. In the current time, John (Edward Furlong) is a bad influence to say the least. Using his hacking skills, he robs ATMs to play arcade games at the mall, in the process disobeying and frustrating his foster parents. As the Terminators vie to complete their missions, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) attempts to break out of a mental hospital for the umpteenth time. The intersection of past, present, and future will bring them face to face with what comes before Judgment Day.

This film opens with a slap and never pulls its punches. I try to be nicer, so I will warn you that there will be spoilers ahead.

The first thing I have to praise is the way in which information is presented and the way in which the sanctity of that information is preserved. John functions as an everyman of sorts for most of the introduction of new facts, similarly to Harry Potter in the 'Wizarding World' franchise. He asks the Terminator to explain the mimetic polyalloy of the T-1000, and he discovers that he can give the Terminator orders it must follow. Besides verbal information, the visuals are extremely powerful as well. Before we know certainly that we are following an older John Connor, we see how people react to the shadowed figure walking through the ruins of LA. Even before that, we see the chrome color scheme so strongly associated with Cyberdyne and the dusty and torn clothing of the Human Resistance soldiers. Costuming, set, and story comes together to make a film that is seamless at giving information to the viewers.

No film is perfect. When there are mistakes, they usually are not noticeable. I must now admit that I have seen the movie somewhere between twenty and thirty times. On my most recent rewatch, I noticed that the first one or two times Dyson swipes his badge to get the second key, the computer screens do not show that the alarm has been set off; however, these computers are how Sarah finds out the alarm has been set off, and it is visible on them immediately after and for the remainder of the scene. Is this really a mistake? I can’t be sure. Would I have noticed this the first time around? No.

Interestingly, the biggest criticism I can make in this regard is the T-1000’s arrival to the present. The Terminator introduces the idea that only organic matter can travel through time, or at least the outer layer must be organic. Without any explanation, suddenly liquid metal is in the modern day. While this barely detracts from the story, and I’m certain it’s not that big of a deal to most people, I do wonder how this was possible. One proposed solution is that Kyle Reese is technologically illiterate. Many of the others are word of God information that is uncertain. Furthermore, while I call the Terminators in this film the T-1000 and the T-800, the T-800 calls himself a “Model 101,” which refers to his organic “exoskeleton” according to other lore. This discrepancy is far from a criticism or a failure. It simply reflects the way in which we focus on the machine and the T-800 focuses on the man.

When we first see the Terminators, neither have a truly developed personality. As the film progresses, they pick up mannerisms and habits they wouldn’t have ever thought about, but they are static in their aspirations. The T-800 no longer kills humans and has picked up language quirks John has taught it. In a deleted scene, the T-1000 holds Max’s bloody dog collar, showing that he took the time to take his revenge on Max for barking and alerting the T-800 to his presence. Later the T-1000 seems to take pleasure in causing Sarah pain, no longer quickly killing and imitating. He wags his finger and takes his time as she fumbles with her weaponry. Even when battling each other, the T-800 continues faithfully with its job as programmed, while the T-1000 waits for the T-800 to reach for his weapon to terminate it. It is a powerful choice to humanize both of them. Perhaps it offers some insight into James Cameron’s thoughts on the nature vs. nurture argument as well. We can see the human represented in not just the good but also the evil. Sarah offers the T-800 a final handshake before its death, and her final monologue mentions hope that we humans can learn to respect human life like he did.

On the opposite end of this, we have an example of a human acting like a Terminator. When Sarah Connor decides to change fate by killing Miles Bennet Dyson, she goes on a rampage. Sarah is clinical, not caring about the man or his family. She sees only the mission. It is when she stops to think after seeing Dyson’s wife and son that she becomes fully aware of what she is doing and stops. John and the T-800 arrive at this point and help the Dysons understand why she has done what she has done, but even for the sake of the world Sarah realizes outright murder is not the answer.

I also want to take a moment and look at Sarah through a feminist lens. James Cameron was a bit controversial due to his opinions on Wonder Woman, and while I have mixed feelings about what he said, I have immense respect for the character of Sarah Connor and how well written she is. She is allowed to be flawed – to make mistakes and be afraid. Sarah is 29 years old and has been living a nightmare since an attempt on her life at 19. She almost kills Dyson. She panics when she first re-encounters the T-800, running back to her captors rather than facing it. On top of this, the traits usually associated with women that she exhibits are not shunned or otherwise pushed aside for the sake of her being an action hero. She is driven by her maternal instinct to protect John, which is portrayed in a positive way even as she is an imperfect mother. To be fair to her, I don’t believe a perfect mother exists even when there isn’t an oncoming apocalypse. Impressively, as an action hero, she is almost fully covered. Yes, her arms are bare, but compared to some of my other favorite on screen action heroines, she is wearing clothes that suit their function. I love Nice’s dress (Hotel Artemis), Natasha Romanoff’s bodysuits (because a plunging neckline is perfect for the battlefield), and Wonder Woman’s armored minidress (Wonder Woman), but they aren’t realistic and have dangerous consequences for the real life actresses and stunt performers that portray them. I wouldn’t say that the Terminator franchise is feminist because of this, but I do think that Sarah Connor is an important example of a female character who is written not only to be a realistic character but also a well-written woman.

Speaking of one Connor, it is important to highlight the other: John. John is the protagonist of this film, as the Terminators are now battling to kill or protect him. He’s a ten year-old delinquent lashing out because his childhood was a lie and his mother is crazy when he finds out that everything she warned him of is true. His mother proves she is a mastermind who can keep her cool when she feigns dissociation to steal a paperclip while knowing her son is in danger. John reflects this intelligence when he first grills the T-800 on what he is and what is happening. Instead of simply freaking out, which would have still been a valid reaction, he takes constructive action during this moment of confusion and panic. He demonstrates the growth of his leadership skills through realizing that he is being a jerk to the strangers who wanted to help him and setting rules for the Terminator. He knows that sometimes the best way to lead (or at least help) is to not be a leader, like when he reloads Sarah and the T-800’s weapons as they escape Pescadero. His mother is bilingual, and while he doesn’t actively speak Spanish, he seems to understand what is being said and once lived in Nicaragua. Thus, it is possible that he, too, is bilingual. By the end of the film, John gets his first real lesson on loss in battle, preparing him for a future he may no longer have to face.

With the most prominent four characters dissected, it’s time to pay respects to the characters that deserved better. John’s friend doesn’t die, thankfully, but he deserves a round of applause for being a real ride-or-die friend. Janelle was one of the few true innocents in this film. She tries to make a difference by raising a foster kid and tries to impose order and discipline when even her husband undermines her. The truck drivers, the helicopter pilot, and the police officers the T-1000 kills while procuring vehicles deserve a moment of sympathy. Miles Bennet Dyson is another interesting character since he is so directly responsible yet not to be blamed for Skynet and Judgment Day. He mirrors Kyle Reese in his choice to sacrifice himself in order to secure a future for his wife and child, so in this sense the narrative does him some justice.

The special effects are, for the most part, amazing, although the T-1000 meets its end in a rather silly way. After transforming into different people it took the form of, the T-1000 finally transforms into a silvery face that inverts itself and melts away. Extreme heat changed the structure of the alloy where extreme cold apparently could not.

There is so much left to talk about. I could try to explain the time travel paradox presented, or talk about whether or not the film itself is feminist (although I touched on that), or even try to define the role of technology in the film and discuss how ‘T2’ reflects a more modern retrofuturism; however, people smarter than I have probably already written about all of these things. While I wasn’t alive when Terminator 2 premiered, I was lucky enough to see it in theatres when they released the 3D remastering of the film. The 3D was less than stellar, but the cinema experience was all I went for. This film holds a special place in my heart. With that said and the recap concluded, I look forward to Terminator: Dark Fate. For the first time, like Sarah Connor before me, I face this unknown future with hope. Perhaps this sequel will be the real one.

Indira Ramgolam is a Culture writer and sophomore in Columbia College.

“A HIDDEN LIFE” review

The antithesis of Jojo Rabbit is easy to find. No film approaches World War II with more dramatically, visually, and structurally opposed intentions than Terrence Malick’s new epic A Hidden Life. In Jojo Rabbit, Hitler is represented by Taika Waititi as a farcical, galumphing buffoon, who tries and fails to impress fifth-grade-level meanness upon the film’s titular character. A Hidden Life gives us glimpses of Hitler through real archival footage—mixed almost convincingly with imitations of it—and the film’s conflict revolves around a man who refuses to salute the Führer. It is impossible to imagine 'heil's' tossed about as casually as 'hello's,' as the stakes are reflected realistically, rather than warped for laughs.

The grainy black-and-white imagery which opens A Hidden Life, surveying party rallies and military spectacles, stands in striking contrast with the resolution of the rest of the film. Jörg Widmer, the director of photography, told IndieWire at Cannes in May that the team had found “lightweight cameras with lenses...which could take a lot of contrast without flaring and with a huge range of latitude.” They used Red’s garishly named Epic Dragons, though I wondered if Widmer knew that the film often looked as though it had been shot with an iPhone, such was the realism and clarity of its composition. 

Of course, an iPhone wouldn’t catch a lens flare, nor would its color grading likely hold up when projected onto a bigger screen, but watching A Hidden Life, I felt I had entered a theme park, a lusher version of Colonial Williamsburg, maybe, sans sweet shops or apothecaries. It was as if a reenactment had started up, with more expensive costumes and set detailing.

This “documentary” palette, as Widmer characterizes it, is rare for a period piece, and proves astonishing, even if the viewer misses the warmth and softness that have come to key audiences into historical features. Once the loopholes are closed—enough time passes without a tourist wandering into the village, stray coffee cups remain outside the frame—the landscape of wood panelling and wheat fields thrusts itself upon us. No escape, no breathing room. Which is to say you find yourself breathing in the air of the countryside, or a capital city, tinged by fuel and death. 

The plot of the film moves between Sankt Radegund, the Austrian farming community where Franz Jägerstätter lives and works, and Berlin, where he and his wife Franziska must travel, in the fight to defend his status as a conscientious objector. We have entered the final years of the Third Reich. Radegund faces the prejudice of his community when word gets out that he is resisting military recruitment—old friends ignore and throw produce at Franziska; his young children are chased and bullied. Franz does not give in, however. August Diehl, who plays him, pierces the stoicism of obstinacy with the grace of youth. In close-ups, we see what lines exist around Franz’s eyes flinch; he has a family, and he is scared, but he will resist the evil besetting his country, at all costs.

The thematic content in A Hidden Life is better served by Malick’s style than either of his past two films, whose dull arrivals blunted the impact left by The Tree of Life. The meandering in Song to Song and Knight of Cups couldn’t be tolerated because it was too self-pitying, too privileged. Franz and Franziska, on the other hand, share a bond whose grandeur is well supported, by rural isolation, by fear of separation. 

The narrated letters the couple sends to each other, which form the main expositional device in the film, are overlaid with some of the most evocative and visceral visual sequences I’ve ever seen. When Franziska writes that one of her and Franz’s daughters asks to leave the door open at night, in case Franz comes home, we see the girls spilling water in the kitchen, sprinting through hallways, embraced by their mother and their aunt, as they were by their father in earlier scenes. I so often felt like an intruder, scared I would slow the momentum. 

Malick must have cut down hours of footage, because he doesn’t linger, scarcely giving us time to notice the stitching on Franziska’s religious dress before whisking us to the Tegel prison, where Franz endures mistreatment and receives legal advice. The camera tracks through a hall of cells, and then through an ornate church. Malick places the same conversations in different settings, too, sometimes in adjacent corners of one room, perhaps to speak to the inter-spatial persistence of worry, but also because he probably couldn’t decide between his many wonderfully sun-dappled options.

The question that arises during A Hidden Life, from anger, from heartbreak, is this: who has any right to interrupt the harmony of Franz’s existence? It is interrupted, though; it is violated ruthlessly. The film exists in a cycle of pain fueling beauty fueling pain. But with his surprise static looks at Austrian wilderness, Malick might be reminding us that interruptions are inherently impermanent—the landscape rights itself. My father, a documentarian, would like these shots. They embody an environmentalist’s appreciation, and they read as inversions of indulgence, an auteur-ish pejorative of which Malick is routinely accused.

It is with A Hidden Life that Malick cements himself (if he hadn’t already) as one of modern cinema’s most ardent proponents of storytelling guided by the image, and the image alone. James Newton Howard’s score beguiles but complements; Malick’s script ruminates and thuds. No, watching is what we must do. We must watch the faces of people who struggle and survive, and the world with which they interact, a world at once unforgiving and eternally giving. This process of watching is a commitment—A Hidden Life runs three hours long—but to walk away from the film is to sense a set of memories newly latched onto your consciousness, which you know you did not experience, but only because you keep pinching yourself.

Fergus Campbell is a Culture writer and junior in Columbia College. 

The Apocalypse is Here: What is a Kaiju?

This week’s assemblage of films includes:

· Pacific Rim

· Cloverfield

· King Kong

· Godzilla

· Mothra

· 20 Million Miles to Earth

· The X from Outer Space

There is no particular feature film.

Last I wrote, I mentioned the Kaiju from Pacific Rim. I realized I forgot all about kaiju movies when planning this. Besides the previously named film, I have not acknowledged the role of kaiju in science fiction. This oversight is a true travesty. The whole point of writing this series was to have a self-guided odyssey into science fiction. So, to start, what in the world is a kaiju?

Kaiju itself means “strange creature.” That’s all there is to the word. Reading through the Wikipedia page informs me that apparently Clifford the Big Red Dog is a kaiju, as well as Barney and the Kool-Aid Man. This factoid seems off. I’m clearly not the expert, but I usually think of Godzilla when I think of a kaiju. Unless Clifford has suddenly turned malicious, this specific designation must be based on size.

Is that all there is to kaiju classification? Probably not, since my first instinct was to ask if Clifford was malicious or not. I would assume that behavior plays some part in the classification of a kaiju. While I may be woefully ignorant, I’m not completely unaware of pop culture. To try and get to the bottom of this, I began surfing numerous forums and trope websites for ideas. There were three things spoken about frequently, and following the fan logic, this article will try to address all three: what makes a kaiju a kaiju, kaiju classifications, and kaiju movie tropes. It turns out that the kaiju themselves are not the only thing disputed within the larger kaiju question.

Let’s look at Pacific Rim’s Kaiju. They’re large, vicious, toxic, foreign in design, and of an alien origin. Also, their arrival on earth was initially mistaken with an earthquake. They seem to be pretty safely within the realm of “kaiju.” Unless, as some posters on a Godzilla forum I found believe, a kaiju must be a monster of Japanese origin/creation. I respect this but find the logic faulty. Yes, the term kaiju is Japanese, and the kaiju film genre as we know it originated in Japan; however, it’s just a slightly more detailed (or intellectual, depending on how you approach it) version of the argument about what makes anime anime: the country of origin, or the art style? Just as my personal take on the anime debate is that it’s the art style, I will say that kaiju don’t have to be created by Japanese creators for the sake of this article.

There is still debate about the remaining features. Typically, they are alien in origin. They must be at least partially organic, and they obviously have to be large. King Kong’s status as an American kaiju is debated at times due to his size. The intent of the monster is another curious caveat: if you think that a kaiju must be malicious, as was my initial belief, then what about Mothra? And if intent is ignored, must the kaiju be sentient? The general consensus is that no one really knows what a kaiju is, but if you feel it’s right, just go for it. As MechaGoji-175 from Godzilla-movies.com says, “What makes a kaiju is us humans. We see anything different to us, we call it a monster…”

Interestingly, there are classifications to kaiju. My understanding of this is based primarily off of Wikipedia and noting which words were actually used in practice (i.e. within the fan forums). The Wikipedia article has a lengthy list of terminology, but for the most part it seems the terms used frequently are kaiju and daikaiju (“large strange creature,” as opposed to strange creature). Other terminology mentioned includes kaijin (“monster man,” referring to humanoid kaiju) and seijin (“star beings,” referring to extraterrestrials). Suitmation and kaiju eiga are also mentioned, but these terms refer to the movies and the style of monster animation rather than the monsters themselves.

What remains is one last question: what makes a kaiju film a kaiju film? Obviously, a kaiju. At the end of the day, that is a serviceable response. Environmental concerns are a recurring theme between these films, especially in those that are commenting on real environmental hazards. As such, disasters that are caused by the kaiju are a common trope. These kaiju are almost invincible, so there’s time for a myriad of attacks, including some that will do little more than look cool or involve a helicopter. These films either happen in populated cities or remote islands, and the kaiju tend to not be from this neighborhood of the galaxy. If how the kaiju is defined depends on the person, then surely the designation of a kaiju film also depends on the person regardless of the mainstays of the genre.

With this all in mind, it kind of makes sense that the Kool-Aid Man is a kaiju. He might not be big enough, but it’s not as if anyone is calling him a daikaiju. A sentient punch bowl that knocks down walls is indestructible, alien, malicious, and, most importantly, bizarre. In contrast, Clifford and Barney don’t quite pass the test. The gist of it all is that any Godzilla movie will quickly give you a visual as to the standards of the kaiju film genre, but only a deeper search both online and within will reveal the mysteries of the kaiju.

Indira Ramgolam is a Culture writer and sophomore in Columbia College. 

JOJO RABBIT: How to Misfire at Nazis

Taika Waititi's latest film carries his usual social satire for all the wrong reasons with his dull Nazi rendition in Jojo Rabbit. 

Jojo Rabbit is an interesting release, after Fox Searchlight reportedly didn't know how to market the film with its subject matter, and it surprisingly won the TIFF Audience Award (a feat that has successfully predicted Oscar winners of recent years like Green Book and Twelve Years a Slave). Based on the novel Caging Skies, Jojo Rabbit tells the story of Johannes Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), a young German boy infatuated with Nazi's and his imaginary best friend Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi). The film follows the tribulations Jojo faces after discovering his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is harboring a Jewish girl named Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) in their house. 

Jojo Rabbit is much of the same from director Taika Waititi (What We Do In The Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Thor: Ragnarok), as he infuses whimsical humor through light and dark moments alike. While it has worked effectively in previous projects, it sends the wrong message with Jojo. Throughout the entire film, all we see are wisecracking, dubious Nazi's who commit evil acts off-screen in a jovial manner ("Heil Hitler!"). Waititi handles everything with such a light air that even tragic moments in the film seem light and meaningless. Characters lack such depth that they are portraying hollow caricatures of Nazi's and Germans of the quality of an SNL sketch. Sam Rockwell—wasted. Alfie Allen—wasted. Rebel Wilson—wasted. Scarlett Johansson—wasted. All of these actors give one-note, over-the-top performances that instill a fantastical element to a film that centers on Nazi's searching for and killing Jews and Germans in the historical Holocaust era. 

Everything in the film is sweet and endearing, from the vibrant cinematography to the upbeat musical choices. Composer Michael Giacchino (Up, Ratatouille) is greatly wasted here, delivering boiler-plate scores that add nothing on an emotional level. The film is sure to cause debate over the timing and substance of Nazi's in our current political climate, which should be considered. It seems Waititi was going for Benigni's Life is Beautiful approach to the dense subject-matter, but he greatly misfired in a realistic sense. The tone for this film is all over the place, particularly between the first and second halves, which pivot hard from comedy to light drama ineffectively. Characters we spend several minutes with get narrative choices meant to evoke a response from the audience, which feels cheap, dirty, and unwarranted. Nice moments between Jojo and Elsa are quickly disrupted by zany Nazi's and Waititi's wholly-unfunny Adolf Hitler. One would think a film exploring an imaginary Hitler, Nazi Germany, and a young boy tied between all of it would have gripping narrative evolution, but none of that lies here, as Jojo Rabbit offers the audience an ultra-sincere and simple view of the Holocaust period. As IndieWire's Eric Kohn said, "The cartoon Nazis in “Jojo Rabbit” are so far removed from reality that they make it all too easy to laugh off the circumstances at hand. That’s not only crass but disingenuous, a feature-length variation of the shower-scene fake-out in “Schindler’s List.” 

With critics questioning the validity of a film like Joker, which tells a narrative from a murky, violent protagonist, it should be discussed how the opposite end of the spectrum in Jojo lies with an upbeat look at a historical atrocity. Whereas Joker arguably questions the audience's tendency to dismiss mentally-ill people and be a catalyst for toxic behavior, Jojo Rabbit seems to say Nazi's were a silly, dumb group of people that we should only laugh at now. Unlike Tarantino's revisionist Inglorious Basterds, Nazi's here are our friends and little kids shoot grenade launchers because it's fun! In reality, Neo-Nazi's and white supremacists exist. Hate exists, but Jojo Rabbit inhabits an ethereal dimension filled with alternate history that reeks of flippancy to the millions who suffered. 

Sean Kelso is the founder and editor-in-chief of Greyscale. 

What to Make of JOJO RABBIT

Last September, Green Book won the People’s Choice Award at Toronto International Film Festival, an accolade so dependably indicative of Oscar success—ten of the eleven winners since 2008 have netted Best Picture nominations, and four have taken home the trophy—that Universal, the film’s distributor, immediately started planning a fall campaign and domestic rollout. Never mind the botched wide release, when Green Book underperformed in about 1000 theaters; the film held on well during the holiday season and proved the Academy favorite in March. 

Jojo Rabbit, the new Nazi satire from Taika Waititi, recently secured the same prize. And it is likely the film will see a similarly forceful marketing push from Fox Searchlight Pictures, the specialty branch of the now Disney-fied studio, throughout the next few months. 

It is also likely that we will see the controversy which beset Green Book’s commercial run. That film withstood repeated accusations of ignorance, as well as revelations about gaffes made by its director (who discussed flashing coworkers in a decades-old interview) and one of its screenwriters (who posted Islamophobic tweets in 2015). Industry executives leak and dig like politicians.

The premise of Jojo Rabbit is more outwardly offensive than Green Book—Waititi plays a fantastical version of Hitler, and the title character is a prepubescent military fanatic with propaganda posters of the Führer hanging in his bedroom. Though Green Book was intimately concerned with the life of an African American musician, the film’s principal creative team was all white. For better or worse, Waititi will not face the same anger over representation. He identifies as Jewish, and has said in interviews that he crafted Jojo Rabbit as a personally rooted antidote to hate—the film’s plot revolves around Jojo’s discovery of a Jewish girl in his house, and the bond that develops between them.

The narratives shaping Jojo Rabbit and Green Book thus share historical circumstances defined by discrimination and persecution, and the problems present in both films stem from the way they sentimentalize these narratives, presenting relational dynamics in which one character teaches, and the other learns and accepts. Rather than investigating how acceptance might be complicated or obstructed by societal precedents or institutional influence, the films reinforce what the audience already knows—that prejudice is wrong and dangerous, and that the eras of German and American history in question should be recognized and condemned as such.

Jojo Rabbit is perhaps the more disappointing film, because I hoped for intelligent irreverence, and the film ended up a Sing-Street-adjacent coming-of-age story, not without its visual flair or intrigue, but ultimately insignificant. Waititi presents many ideas and personalities, and most of them are underdeveloped, from the implied romantic affair between Sam Rockwell’s Captain Klenzendorf and his underling, to the female military officer played by Rebel Wilson (who once again adheres to Pitch Perfect formula). Waititi’s Hitler, who functions as Jojo’s imaginary friend, fails because he does not justify himself: he appears to remind the audience of the audacity of his existence. And he’s not that funny. The film’s laughs are numerous, but categorically cheap—the biggest response in the packed theater where I saw the film came from a pun about German shepherds—and Hitler’s quips and insults elicited the fewest chuckles of any running gag.

This is not to say that I did not enjoy Jojo Rabbit. The film is in fact more successful than Green Book, and that distinction hinges on Rosie, Jojo’s mother, who is played by Scarlett Johannson. On Rosie and Jojo’s outings together, the film resembles a fairy tale, one less visually disciplined than Wes Anderson’s work but still reminiscent of it, and more soulful. Rosie imparts valuable lessons to her son, with grace and wit and melancholy. In a masterfully choreographed scene, Jojo irritably asks over supper when his father is coming home, and Rosie moves to the fireplace, crouches over it, and smears soot on her face, then assumes a masculine temperament, scolding Jojo for his lack of respect, only to apologize—in character—minutes later, after “consulting” Rosie herself. Then Rosie and Jojo dance, Jojo atop a dining chair, Rosie holding him close. Watching this, it became clear to me that Waititi has something to say, about subtle resilience, maybe, and the integrity of everyday compassion.

He just doesn’t have enough, or enough to say well. And that doesn’t work for a film with Jojo’s baggage. But TIFF attendees have already professed otherwise, and awards season will soon tell if the majority of moviegoers and Oscar voters feel the content in the film is worth rewarding.

Fergus Campbell is a Culture writer and sophomore in Columbia College. 

The Apocalypse is Here: Out of Left Quadrant

This week’s assemblage of films includes:

· Pacific Rim

· Pacific Rim: Uprising

· Megamind

· Ready Player One

The focal feature will be Pacific Rim.

Imagine a sonar detector – but on a spaceship. You see a little yellow blip in an otherwise sea of blue appear on the upper left side of the screen. It beeps as it slowly approaches the ship, and then suddenly, it disappears. It’s a bogie, your commanding officer says. You dismiss it.

This is a strange way to describe these films, I suppose. It’s the truth. Some of these films were promoted heavily prior to their release and subsequently almost forgotten. For better or for worse, the best have mingled with the worst and retired to relative obscurity. It might be a stretch to include a few on this list, and some were left off of the list to avoid duplicate films over the weeks. Spacetime and everything else is relative, however, and for films like Ready Player One that were advertised so extremely, the lack of an impact they had on popular culture is devastating. Megamind, on the other hand, came before its time but has all the makings of a Despicable Me-type film. And, while it’s at it, it tackles the toxic masculinity that makes men think being a “nice guy” gets them the girl. It’s a shame that it’s not more popular.

Now, I highly suggest that you watch all of these films. This recommendation includes even Pacific Rim: Uprising, but I’m still too emotionally attached to really criticize it. Fortunately, time has cleaved my heart from its predecessor Pacific Rim, so I can be fair enough to give an honest review. It is truly a shame that some of these films ended up in the same category, and while that is fully my fault, I couldn’t justify creating categories specifically for them to end up on top. Perhaps some other time, under a different star, I’ll find a way to sneak them into something. For now, I plead that you give them all a chance.

Pacific Rim follows retired Jaeger pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) as he rejoins the Pan Pacific Defense Corps (PPDC). As the last person alive who has previously piloted a certain model of Jaeger, giant humanoid robots with weaponry, the PPDC has no other option than to re-recruit him. Once back, he meets Mako Mori (Rink Kikuchi), adopted daughter of Marshall Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba). Becket also encounters the remains of the K-Science division: Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) and Dr. Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman), a biologist and mathematician respectively. With not many more pilots and technicians staffing the last resistance’s skeleton crew against the Kaiju, everyone involved must step up and become the hero they need to be in order to save the earth from sure destruction. Monsters, called kaijus, are rising from portals at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and are wiping out coastal settlements at an ever faster pace.

As I probably don’t have to say, Guillermo del Toro is a legendary, Academy Award-winning director. His approach to this film is one of the factors that has led to its cult following, as he wished to avoid the trend of pessimistic sci-fi and the militaristic ways in which films rely on recruitment techniques for advertisement. While Pacific Rim: Uprising threw this out the window with their online games for which you had to “enlist” for, the use of nontraditional rankings within the PPDC as well as the statement that they are a resistant force lends a hopeful quality to it. As Poe Dameron says in one of the Star Wars films, “We are the spark that’ll light the fire..” Pacific Rim harnesses the feelings associated with resistance to excellent effect. Things are worn down and faded yet still colorful. The neutral color of the Hong Kong Shatterdome is a deep shade of brown, keeping the visuals warm at their most bleak. Attention is paid to the minutest of details in order to ensure that this resistance is one that inspires optimism rather than reinforce a sense of fatality.

This plot is, like last week’s film, a common storyline. It is the stunning cast of characters (and of course, how the actors bring them to life) is what differentiates this film and makes it so enduring. The lovable and manic Dr. Geiszler’s obsession with kaiju leads to one of the most important developments in the in-universe plot to defeat the kaiju, while the equally lovable yet caustic and stern Dr. Gottlieb’s desire to be taken seriously pushes Dr. Geiszler to the edge. In the end, their begrudging respect for each other plays a key role in saving the world. Outside of the K-Sci realm is the pilots division. Raleigh has a certain cockiness to him, but it is tinged with the sadness of loss and injury; he is empathetic to those around him. For all of his confidence, he remains grounded. On the other hand, Mako is physically a champion in every way. She fights to be more than her past even as she can’t escape it emotionally. She has to learn to let go, and as the only person who is drift compatible with Becket, she must do it fast. Marshall Pentecost is a quietly composed tempest, which is guaranteed to be a cliché, but it is the best way to describe him. He can be aggressive at the drop of a pin if it is needed, but his composure is what is so threatening rather than his anger. Even more minor characters like Tendo Choi (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman) are deeply developed and personalized during their screen time. These characters drive the plot, which is a seemingly obvious and simple thing to say. I stand by it. So many films, among other types of media, feel as if the plot is something happening to the characters without the characters being something that truly affects the plot.

I’ll admit that I don’t know enough about kaiju / monster film history to properly judge the Kaiju in the film, but to the untrained eye they were spectacular. The Kaiju check every box in terms of fear factor, coolness, danger, and weird backstory. The Precursors are similarly interesting but not explained well. It doesn’t harm the progression of the film – in fact, I think a lengthy explanation would have done more harm were it to have happened. I am just absolutely obsessed with lore in films. The tech was clunky and homespun, capitalizing on the resistance vibes. The Jaegers were just as fun and varied as the Kaiju, but again, I don’t know enough of my fighting-robot film history to judge if it was an outstanding example for the genre or if I am alone in thinking they were well-crafted.

I would be amiss to not mention the film’s impact on feminism in film. Inspired by Mako Mori, the Mako Mori test became popular online in the years after Pacific Rim’s release. This test is often treated like a companion to the Bechdel test. To pass this test, there must be a female character who has a narrative arc that was not created to support the narrative arc of a male character. While this test is not as widely known or perhaps accepted as the Bechdel test, I think it is an important way at looking at female characters. For a film that is underrated outside of its cult following, Pacific Rim has had a resounding impact on the way we view works of film and fiction.

Besides the impact on feminism in film, Pacific Rim has also created a growing franchise for itself. Pacific Rim: Uprising, as I mentioned, is the sequel to Pacific Rim. It is an excellent film in certain regards, and it feels lazy in others, but what truly kills me is a specific character duo. To avoid spoilers I’ll say nothing more. Besides this sequel film, there are comics based within the franchise’s universe, and there also will be an anime adaptation of the original film debuting on Netflix at some point in 2020.

Does this list not have enough monsters for your taste? Make way for Godzilla. Next week, the kaiju arrive.  

Indira Ramgolam is a Culture writer and sophomore in Columbia College. 

NYFF57: Exclusive Interview with Wallace Shawn

SEAN KELSO: So do you have any strong thoughts on the news that The Princess Bride might get a reboot?

WALLACE SHAWN: Well, um, I don't know if there will be interest in a sequel or reboot. I mean, uh, a lot of people have expressed harsh criticisms over the idea. So, I'm betting it won't happen. I think if it did happen, they would want new actors, a new Vizzini.

SK: In terms of this project (Marriage Story), is there anything that surprised you about working with Noah and the cast?

WS: Uh, yeah, I was just surprised that they were such great actors. That's about it. 

Sean Kelso is the founder & editor-in-chief of Greyscale. 

NYFF57: Exclusive Interview with Scarlett Johansson

SEAN KELSO: What was the thing that was most surprising once you got from the script to working with Noah and the cast?

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Yeah, I think the – well, I never worked with Noah before, so I didn’t know what his style of directing was going to be. Um, and he is…he’s relentless and he really…he is relentless in his pursuit of…of, you know, his curiosity about these characters and all the – like nothing is off limits with him.

SK: I can imagine.

SJ: Um, but it’s exhausting. You’re doing 70 takes of something that’s really emotional. It – it was a marathon for sure. So that was surprising to me because I just didn’t know what to expect and it was like “Oh, okay, we’re doing that!” You know, I got strong and pulled a lot of dramatic muscles. 

Sean Kelso is the founder and editor-in-chief of Greyscale. 

The Apocalypse is Here: Seeking Different Stardom

 This week’s assemblage of films includes:

·Men in Black

·Men in Black II

·Men in Black III

·Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

·The Man Who Fell to Earth

The focal feature will be Men in Black.

This category really has no business being a category. There are so many musicians who are amazing actors, and so many actors who we find out are also amazing musicians. There are also those who are so-so at the other, and those who don’t successfully make the crossover. Some start as actors and musicians, even. I don’t find it necessary to explain the history of the actor-musicians in the films listed, so perhaps “Seeking Different Stardom” is a misnomer; however, in designing the categories for this self-guided romp through science fiction, I noticed that these films all featured or starred musicians. That’s not to say that these films lack merit besides their musician stars. I simply thought it was an interesting trend.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets features Rihanna, and Cara Delevigne also sings for the film. The Man Who Fell to Earth stars the late David Bowie, and the original ‘MiB’ franchise stars Will Smith. Besides this, ‘Valerian’ has some of the most advanced visual effects made and follows a French comic, Valérian and Laureline, that was iconic in Europe. Apparently, parts of it inspired Star Wars, for some idea of its impact. I don’t have much to say about the film starring Bowie simply because I have yet to see it; it’s on my list for things to do post-“Apocalypse”. So, onto the feature film: Men in Black.

James Darrell Edwards III (Will Smith) is a NYPD officer who has an encounter with an alien, and following, the Men in Black via Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones). While his memory of the incident is erased, he is given a time and place to report to and is invited to become a Men in Black agent. After contemplating the decision, he accepts and loses his former identity, becoming Agent J. Zed (Rip Torn) sends J and K to investigate an alien leaving the area for which he is cleared to live. The two are quickly embroiled in an intergalactic conflict that threatens the fate of the earth. Oh, and the galaxy at large, but that’s a minor matter.

 Over the years I’ve seen this film a few times. Most of those viewings were when I was eight or nine. Seeing it again so many years later was a treat. The overarching story is typical – stop intergalactic conflict and save the earth, keeping it secret all the while. Maybe it’s partially my nostalgia, but the subplots and the specifics of the situation can be surprisingly fun and smart, with a particular favorite of mine being the “Orion’s belt” puzzle. Even in the more serious moments, the film doesn’t hesitate to make things humorous. I would be amiss to neglect mentioning the delightful politeness of the Arquillians: “Deliver the galaxy or Earth will be destroyed. Sorry." It is this gravity, no pun intended, that makes the comedy so memorable and potent, and for that I applaud the script. Furthermore, with a runtime nearing one hundred minutes, the film moves quickly and maintains a high energy level.

The characters are well-developed. Laurel is introduced in the background yet retains her agency and dignity even as she becomes entangled in the Bug’s plot to steal the galaxy. Agent K has his tragic backstory which, as a child, I didn’t fully understand. His perpetually tired attitude helps with his delivery of more dramatic quotes in the film. Agent J’s issues with authority were portrayed with a realism often not leant to characters like him. While this is a mix of acting skill and the excellent dialogue, Agent J is able to learn that authority isn’t always to be distrusted, but the authority figures also learn that just because someone is new doesn’t mean that they are clueless. The involved parties in this issue come to respect each other by the film’s close. Chief Zed is indescribably perfect, and Bibup and Bob have a tragically small part. Although, maybe I just wanted to hear Agent K say Bibup again. Ironically, the name is changed to be even stranger for the animated series, with Bibup becoming Idikiukup, so my wish has been fulfilled. Al Roker, Steven Spielberg, and the director’s daughter are among the aliens under surveillance by the MiB. And, to not mention the Bug would be a crime. Vincent D’Onofrio excels at the physicality of this shambling intergalactic cockroach in an Edgar suit. Everything about the Bug is disgusting and magnificent.

In science fiction that doesn’t follow the current progression of society, world building is key. World building should be key for any film that operates in a reality that isn’t our own, but it is especially important for science fiction and fantasy. Men in Black excels at this. As I’ll mention shortly, the aliens feel unique to this world, even though there are clear visual cues to other works that may have inspired them. With Agent J as our everyman figure, important information is imparted casually regardless of how funny or serious it is. Even when information is applicable to our world, it is presented in a memorable way. K’s speech on what we “know” at any given moment is iconic.

The aliens are fantastic. After all, they were designed by Rick Baker, the man behind An American Werewolf in London, which is one of my favorite – as well as one of the best – horror movies made. If you are curious about my thoughts on that film, you can find them here. Regardless, these effects understandably had to be approved by both director Barry Sonnenfeld and executive producer Steven Spielberg, which apparently made this one of his most complicated films to work on. The work clearly paid off, with believable and memorable aliens populating the Men in Black headquarters and the slowly decaying Edgar stealing the show.

The film spawned a franchise, with two sequel films and a recent spinoff called Men in Black: International. As I have yet to see it, I’ll refrain from comment. The sales of Predator 2 Ray-Bans (the protocol glasses worn by the Men in Black) tripled after the film’s release. The single “Men in Black” by Will Smith is considered one of the most iconic movie songs of all time. Danny Elfman’s score has given this film franchise an iconic tune to rally behind, which has also surely helped cement the film’s legacy in pop culture. The Men in Black: Alien Attack attraction at Universal Studios Orlando is based off of and expands upon the firing simulation where “Little Tiffany” is shot. And, not to brag, but my highest score is in the 400,000s range – not that I remember, of course.

The comics off of which the franchise is based (The Men in Black) were published by Aircel Comics, which was then bought by Malibu Comics, which was then bought by Marvel Comics. After Marvel acquired the comics, they published a reprint of the original comics as well as a few one-shot comics upon the release of the film. These comics sparked the fire that created an empire capable of retaining its relevancy even today.

All of this is music to my ears. Time will tell how it continues aging, but for now everything seems golden. Wait – what’s that in the distance? Find out next week when I tackle what’s coming Out of Left Quadrant.

Indira Ramgolam is a Culture writer and sophomore in Columbia College. 

"Portrait of a Lady on Fire" - NYFF Review

                 The painter informs her model that she knows when the model is frustrated and when she cannot think of what to say.  The model wonders how the painter knows this, when the painter has only been acquainted with the model for a couple of days. The painter responds that she has been watching the model intently. The model then asks the painter to approach her, to lower her head to the model’s level. What is the difference, the model asks, between the painter’s position and the model’s position? The model is the subject of the painter’s gaze, the painter replies. No, the model insists, each is the subject of the other’s gaze. And then the model informs the painter that she in fact knows when the painter is frustrated, and when she cannot think of what to say. (It is the arch of the painter’s eyebrow, the movement of her hands.) One need not practice art in order to perceive.

                 So unfolds one of the many intoxicating scenes in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the French film that won Best Screenplay at Cannes and played at the New York Film Festival this past weekend. The painter concerned is Marianne (Noémie Merlant), commissioned for the wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), a young woman due to wed Milanese nobility. The problem: Héloïse will not pose, so Marianne must take the guise of her walking partner, and paint from memory. The last man hired for the portrait failed, frustrated by the conditions for observance, and when Marianne arrives at Héloïse’s household, she finds his only attempt. An immaculately rendered body, with the head blotted out.

                 The film does not reveal Héloïse’s face until around the twenty-minute mark, and the buildup is tantalizing. Is Héloïse somehow unattractive? One tracking shot appears to depict her arrival at the house—we see the folds of the green dress that she wore for the abandoned portrait—only it is Sophie, the family servant (a wonderful Luàna Bajrami), carrying the piece in her arms. We discover early on, too, that Héloïse is returning from a convent, after the death of her sister. Might Marianne find marks of grief etched into her complexion? Sophie tells Marianne that this unnamed sister fell from the cliffs that comprise the de facto backyard of the property, which sits on an island in Brittany, and Sophie thinks it was suicide.

                 When Héloïse’s features finally make themselves known, it is after she runs from Marianne, through the trees that border the front door and across the fields that brush up against the cliffs. Marianne is terrified that Héloïse will jump. Héloïse stops at the edge—and her blond hair whips in the wind as she turns toward Marianne—but she admits the consideration: “I’ve wanted to do that for years.”

                  The film’s writer and director, Céline Sciamma, who graduated from La Fémis, seems to have taken the technical craft learned at France’s most prestigious film school and imbued it with a rarer kind of poise. The quiet of the film—found from the spaces in between Marianne and Héloïse’s conversations to the light blue of Marianne’s bedroom—indicates hesitance, but also patience. 

                 After the screening, Sciamma explained that she wanted the film to depict the “sexiness of consent.” And maybe that’s what this patience represents: the ways in which Marianne and Héloise, who experience attraction from the moment they meet, must explore the vulnerabilities and inconsistencies of their eventual lovers’ dispositions— perhaps without realizing that they are doing so—before the anticipated consummating act transpires.

​​SMLXL

                  Which takes a while. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is notable, understandably, because it was written and directed by a queer woman (it was the first such film to win the Queer Palm at Cannes). Though I am no opponent of telling stories outside of a creator’s personal circumstances, it is clear that Portrait of Lady of Fire might have been shortchanged had a heterosexual director presided over its execution. With Sciamma at the helm, however, the audience experiences the sexual energy of the film’s protagonists even—and maybe especially—when they are not in bed together. The scene described at the top of this page is so clearly underlined by desire, evident in Héloise’s blue-eyed intensity and Marianne’s matching of it, that to make the scene the precursor to sex would feel obvious. 

                 And even better, the women’s attraction morphs, wind-tousled and transcendently, into love. Then, when Héloise and Marianne assist Sophie with her medical needs, it almost reads as motherhood. Héloise, when convinced by Marianne to sit for her portrait (to the astonishment of Héloise’s mother), cannot stop smiling. The collapse of her facial neutrality, again and again, in spite of Marianne’s admonishments, radiates across the frame.

                  In his scathing critique of Call Me By Your Name, D.A. Miller attacks the “mandatory aesthetic laminate,” or dependably scenic settings around which mainstream queer cinema like Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 film revolves. Miller writes that this filter is “what we are asked to look at instead,” instead of the sex that presumably occurs within Guadagnino’s Italian countryside estate, or in Sciamma’s French manor. 

                 Miller is focusing on gay male relationships, and he is right to lament the constant denial of explicit sexual activity in queer Oscar contenders. Portrait of a Lady on Fire contains no explicit sex—it certainly evades comparisons to Blue is the Warmest Color—but the film’s light-dappled bedrooms and rocky beaches would be empty without Héloise and Marianne. These places are beautiful because of the women who occupy them. The film works, then, as a heightened visual journey, aided by exterior landscapes but driven by something else, something that moves through corridors and between minds, intelligent and uninhibited, true and burning.

Fergus Campbell is a Culture writer and sophomore in Columbia College. 

The Apocalypse is Here: Philip K. Dick, Part Two

This week’s assemblage of films includes:

• Total Recall

• Minority Report

• A Scanner Darkly

• Screamers

• The Adjustment Bureau

The focal feature will be Minority Report.

We’ve visited one of the worlds of Philip K. Dick before, but it was not a world like this. Where the Blade Runner franchise questions the role of the “andy” in society, stories like “The Minority Report” question whether or not free will even exists. I will admit as I admitted before that the only works of Dick’s I’ve read are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik. Not having read “The Minority Report” – although I’ve brushed up on the Wikipedia synopsis – or any of the other stories these films are derived from, I will be (in theory) refraining from comment on the accuracy of the adaptation.

Since this isn’t our first rodeo I’ll cut to the chase. Minority Report was, to put it lightly, simultaneously engaging and awful. I don’t regret watching it, but it also took me nearly a whole day to finish the film because it didn’t take much to call me away from it.

The PreCrime police department, headed by John Anderton (Tom Cruise), is responsible for stopping murders before they happen. They are able to do this through a system that harnesses the powers of three people known as the Precogs, who see future murders. When precogs see a murder, a complex system of brown and red balls alerts the department of the identity of the victim(s) and the murderer, while simultaneously relaying footage of their vision. Through the success of this program, the murder rate is almost zero in the nation’s capital, and people feel safe. The system seems perfect until the next murderer is declared to be John Anderton. Anderton, a man with a drug habit and his own experiences with grief, must prove his innocence or discover how he can commit a premeditated murder when he has never met the victim.

First and foremost, I applaud the actors. I’ve heard in my theatre experience that a director will usually only comment on what they don’t like and not what they do like. With that in mind, I have to say that I didn’t notice anything in regards to the acting. Nothing in particular stood out, which is frankly impressive considering the two-plus hour runtime of the film. If anything did seem off, it made more sense to blame it on the writing of the individual characters, rather than an actor’s ability to realistically portray a character.

The story was somewhat flawed. Then again, all stories are flawed to a certain extent. Some of these things I’ll point out later when I inevitably compare the source material to the adaptation, but there was an extreme lack of significance throughout most of the film. Key moments were well-executed, which makes the whole situation worse. It wasn’t a lack of capability. The writing and story suffered from a lack of diligence or perhaps was torn to shreds in the editing process. Regardless, as I mentioned, no weight was given to many major moments in the film. A decision that should have had life-altering consequences was made around halfway through the film, and the build up to John’s choice is intense. After it happens, it is never referenced again, let alone actually be life-altering as it should have been. It’s simply difficult to root for a character who seems to have things magically handed to him. On top of this, the writing contradicts itself several times. The Precogs can only see murders, except when they can see everyday events and use them to their advantage. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, except he isn’t one-eyed, which relates to my above gripe about consequence. If events aren’t contradictory, sometimes they just erase the complications which they set up in ways that serve to frustrate more than satisfy.

This next bit is complicated: it feels like an early 2000s film in every regard. This ranges from the somehow simultaneously muted and saturated color palate the film employs, to the design of the Spyders and awareness of trends in technology. Depending on your age, this is either something to be reviled or something that is comfortably nostalgic. For me, Minority Report invokes a fond nostalgia. Brands that are not at the forefront of technology but still demonstrating what we might come to expect from the future meet the round, almost retro-future designs embraced in the aughts’s to create an engaging visual spectacle.

I already admitted that I haven’t read “The Minority Report;” however, I have read its Wikipedia synopsis and, frankly, am frustrated. Much of my criticism arises in the ways in which things changed from the original short story were changed when adapted to the film. I don’t mean to start the “book is better” argument because the screen and the page present very different and important storytelling opportunities. Still, many of the changes from the story to the film added to its runtime without necessarily advancing the story or changing it for the better. The story behind “The Minority Report” is more complex in its handling of the predetermination elements and simpler in its treatment of Anderton chasing fate. The Precogs are not limited to seeing solely murder as they are in the film, except they really aren’t in the film as Agatha uses her precognitive abilities to warn Anderton several times.

While I didn’t hate watching Minority Report, a part of me wishes I went with the 2012 remake of Total Recall, or literally anything else. Apparently, it was initially supposed to be a sequel to the 1990 Total Recall, which begs the question as to if it was intended to create a new sci-fi franchise like what eventually transformed into the Blade Runner franchise. If not, what was the point? I hesitate to admit it, but I want a glimpse into the reality where that happened. With my feet firmly planted in this reality, it seems safe to say that Minority Report was a neat and informative deep-dive into the less popular (but still acclaimed!) works of Philip K. Dick.

“Send me forget-me-nots to help me to remember” – or something like that. Next week we’ll find that “the stars look very different…” Not at all like “diamonds in the sky.” Is this ham-fisted enough? Let me be perfectly transparent. Music legends transform before our eyes in Seeking Different Stardom.

Indira Ramgolam is a Culture writer and sophomore in Columbia College. 

California, for Tarantino and Others

There is a mythology to the Californian landscape—its rolling hills and urban sprawl, its mix of richness and rusticity, the sudden borders that exist between protected parks and business districts. Some sense still exists that more of California might be discovered in the future, and when people who have never seen the state describe it to me, they make me forget that I grew up there. I’m told of wild forests, empty beaches, tiny bookstores frequented by now-famous poets.

I hadn’t spent more than two months away before starting college, and coming home this summer, distanced from the banality of adolescence, I felt a need to experience the state like a newcomer—a hitchhiker, perhaps, or a hitchhiking transcendentalist. Part of what fueled my romanticizing the place was Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, which is partly set in my hometown of Mill Valley (a ten-minute drive from the Golden Gate Bridge). Early in the novel, the unnamed narrator (a presumed stand-in for the author) camps beside the beach, and asks, “‘Wa? Where am I, what is the basketball game of eternity the girls are playing here by me in the old house of my life, the house isn’t on fire is it?’” He then realizes that he just hears the waves. But he ends up on a long journey of hiking and Buddhist proselytizing, so I guess I also wanted from my time in California a sensory, nature-y, acoustic guitar kind of peace.

That’s what I got. Long drives to towns like Inverness, which resembles the Scottish original, where skater boys put on a concert in a big green backyard. A wooden stage the size of a sedan, amplifiers loud enough to piss off certain neighbors and entice others in. The band was damn good, and they covered “Dead Flowers.” Picnic blankets without picnic food on pieces of coast with black sand and cliffs sharper than knives. Hammocks strung near an abandoned military base and a white dome my friends and I suspected of monitoring aliens. 

It was summer, so people were flitting in and out of town, and the groups doing these things shifted more than they did in high school. I was reminded of the spontaneity in films like American Graffiti, where kids hang out not because they know each other well, but because they share a desire to stay out late, to not be bored. And of course we had all seen Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood, the new Tarantino feature, which admittedly favored an Angeleno California, but nonetheless had us driving more, smoking more, seeking out movie palaces and swimming pools that looked like Rick Dalton’s. Asking someone their thoughts about the film emerged as a greeting, or introduction.

Then we thought of Pulp Fiction imagery, because we felt high on auteurist immersion, and really that’s Tarantino’s only other piece that registers with the casual cinephiles and hypebeasts and math whizzes of my generation. We ate in diners, roller-skated in a church whose color scheme matched Jack Rabbit Slim’s, and eventually attended a thirty-five-millimeter projection of the film at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco.

The Castro holds a cavernous and extravagantly ornamented auditorium, and seats well over a thousand people. “Due to our unusually large...capacity,” the theatre’s website reads, “the chance of a sell-out performance during our screenings is highly unlikely.” Indeed, one of the only films I remember causing such an occurrence is La La Land, when Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling attended with Damien Chazelle and were interviewed—strangely enough—by Chris Columbus, the man who directed the first two Harry Potter films. During La La Land, my friend and I found ourselves so far back on the pitched mezzanine level that the projection was distorted.

Pulp Fiction’s opening scene played out amidst the cracks and pops, the momentary analog scratches and black holes that I wish were still threaded through every theatrical cinematic experience. Isn’t this what should make a movie a movie—the signs that it is fundamentally a collection of images, a tangible reproduction of the very real spools of film that once captured every performance and setting? It is easy to forget—in fact, it is almost impossible to remember—the marvels of that communication network, by which viewers across countries can empathize and converse and emote with the same faces and locations and storytelling.

The theatre was not overcrowded but not want for noise. The reactions proved generous, the sound system equipped for the nosebleeds. Old showtime posters had been rolled up in cardboard canisters in the lobby, out of which my friend Jesse secured Angry Birds 2, Yonni The Conjuring, and I Steve Jobs. Pulp Fiction was the double of a double feature, the earlier film being Band of Outsiders, and a genial elderly man played an organ during the intermission. The carnival-style ticket stubs given to us at the box office could have been bought at Rite Aid.

I last saw Pulp Fiction in 2015, at the height of my IMdB 250 catch-up period. Consequently, I had made an effort to focus for the three-hour runtime, but that was still easy in the Castro darkness. My feelings about the film haven’t changed in any significant way in four years—my shock at Marsellus and Butch’s torture still visceral, my infatuation with Mia Wallace magnetic. But I experienced a subtler recognition during this screening of nonchalance. 

The film’s anti-chronological sequencing prevents the character development to which an audience is accustomed, where a significant event takes place, and we see the effects of the event register in a character’s subsequent conduct. When Vincent and Jules appear in that blood-colored bar to meet Marsellus, supposedly soon after the opening drug shootout, we do not know that in the time between the scenes Vincent has accidentally shot Marvin in Jules’s car, and Vincent and Jules have consulted Harvey Keitel’s Wolf for damage control. The sole evidence for the unexpected detour is the college-student apparel worn by the hitmen—the evidence does not lie in their facial expressions or affected vocal intonations. Those aspects of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson’s performances are not reactive, it would seem, to the trauma of the crimes around which their lives revolve.

This stubborn coolness presents itself again and again: Mia tells Vincent, in smoky monotone, that she never thanked him for dinner, when she sees him for the first time since almost dying on the floor of his heroine dealer’s living room. When Vincent and Jules are interrupted by a robbery attempt at a diner, Jules sermonizes about his changing attitude toward his work, and also pacifies Honey Bunny, the more neurotic of the criminals, urgently balancing two perhaps equally important objectives. Then he and Vincent leave the diner as if their breakfasting went undisturbed.

Maybe I’m projecting my own recent feelings onto characters whose trajectories share few similarities with mine or my friends.’ We don’t struggle with drug mixups or fatal vendettas. But we’ve experienced our share of automobile crashes and near-collisions, of dangerous inebriation, of conversations that match the headiness and referential specificity of Pulp Fiction’s dialogue. Is it foolish to believe in a Californian indifference, a mentality that encourages carrying on and resetting and shrugging, of pressing forward with our playful interactions and marijuana-induced theorizing, no matter what happens day-to-day? Does it have something to do with the time freeze that eliminated the months I had spent away from home, the sureness I felt that I had only seen that hillside gas station a day or two before, when I hadn’t?

California, whatever its objective truths or characteristics, is easy to dream about, to embellish and alter for the sake of nostalgia or heartache or optimism. Tarantino does this often, and I was doing it in August, in the dwindling summer hours, packing away scenes for future recollection and potential transposition, to silver screens, soundstages, feature-length scripts. We wait, and then we return.

Fergus Campbell is a Culture writer and junior in Columbia College. 

The Apocalypse is Here: Asimov’s Laws of Robotics

 This week’s assemblage of media includes:

• I, Robot

• Ghost in the Shell

• RoboCop

• Ex Machina

• A Space Odyssey

• Westworld

• The Terminator

• Terminator 2: Judgment Day

• Soma Transmissions

• Altered Carbon

• Psycho-Pass

The focal feature will be Ex Machina.

At their simplest form, Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics from “Runaround” decree that a robot must protect humans even at its own expense. While there are technically four laws, as well as some clarifications and caveats, that is all you really need to know to understand this concept. To be technical, however, the first law is that a robot cannot allow a human to be harmed, the second is that a robot must obey orders as long as no humans will be harmed, and the third is that a robot must protect itself as long as it is not disobeying orders and harming humans. The fourth law, or the “zero-eth,” was added in his later works and states that robots cannot allow humanity to be harmed following the same principles as the first law.

Before we really get started, I must inform you that this is the overdue sequel to TAIH: Fight Club (Intergalactic Edition), part of a series exploring science fiction films. If you want to catch up from the beginning, check out TAIH: 80’s Classics.

Now I have a simple question: why are we seemingly obsessed with robots? If the answer seems obvious, that’s because it probably is. On a very basic level, society is curious about that which isn’t fully understood. Even though we created robots, most everyday people don’t understand the technology that allows them to function, and their growing capabilities are a wonder that seems to never cease. Humans also have a tendency to humanize whatever is around them. We do it to animals and, expectedly, our tech. Science fiction encompasses a broad variety of topics, and the impact of machines has always been a favorite. Our modern fascination with AI and androids is not that different from earlier speculation about time machines and the earliest automatons.

Here’s another question: what is a robot? Once again, this has a pretty easy answer. A machine that can be programmed is a robot, and I think everyone can think of an example of a robot in their lives. Science fiction usually relies on a more complex understanding of the robot. Often, the robot is something that is humanoid either in shape, function, or intellect, like an android or AI.

These questions were not meant to be tricky, nor were they meant to simply fill space. I ask these two questions more to point out how varied our understanding of and obsession with robots are. For all these variations, there are clear patterns in the media examining our concerns – and a few clear outliers. But for the most part, Asimov’s laws of robotics and how robots can subvert them perfectly captures our fears in terms of the technology of today and tomorrow.

Choosing Ex Machina of all of the films above was a hard choice. To be honest, Terminator 2: Judgment Day was my first choice, but at the end of the day, there is something to be said for modernity. Although the Terminator franchise has aged relatively well, Ex Machina’s 2015 release leant it a more future-facing look in terms of our everyday technological concerns and new and better technologies in film.

I will warn you that facts you may consider spoilers will be discussed.

Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) wins a contest for a one-week trip to the estate of Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), CEO of the company Blue Book, which is the Google of this universe. Besides the helicopter pilot, who leaves him in the middle of nowhere since even he is not allowed to get close to Nathan’s estate, the only two people Caleb sees during this trip are Nathan and his own reflection in the mirror. However, Caleb also meets Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), his robotic servant who speaks no English, and Ava (Alicia Vikander), his most advanced robot with artificial intelligence. After Caleb cuts through many layers of obfuscation, he learns that he has been asked there to test whether or not Ava is human in a different sense than the traditional Turing test: can Caleb relate to her even though she is so clearly not human?

One of the most remarkable parts of this film is the small cast. Although there are several actresses who play the model androids that preceded Ava, there are four recurring characters who we get to see develop – or remain static – over the course of the film: Caleb, Nathan, Ava, and even Kyoko. Nathan is a narcissist who maybe learns from his mistakes as the narrative ends, although that is debatable. Caleb is someone who never has had confidence in himself at heart, and in placing his confidence in other people and creations he pays the ultimate price. Ava, interestingly, is the most static character and the character who experiences the greatest transformation. She acts as she always does, but for that she gets the opportunity to change, which the audience is able to see key glimpses of. Kyoko reveals that she has a desire beyond what Nathan has built her for. The small cast allows for these characters to all be in the spotlight, but more importantly, it allows the film to paint a human picture. What makes sci-fi so compelling, in my opinion, is the humanity of it. The way in which humanity reacts and adapts to technology will always be at the heart of science fiction. In a film that puts its characters at the forefront, it is almost impossible to lose this key aspect. Even if the effects are cheesy, or the film has other major flaws, the humanity or lack thereof in its characters and stories gives the science-fiction film some leeway.

That is not to say that Ex Machina suffered greatly in any of these regards. In fact, the lack of blockbuster action sequences and the subtlety of most of the film’s visual effects lends it tremendous believability. My only criticism in this regard would be that the pace at times drags, but the futuristic visuals keep these slower moments from becoming unpleasant. Ex Machina presents a world you want to look at, and although the pace occasionally lets the energy drop, these moments invite you to take a closer look at the universe even before the film explicitly asks you to do so. Ava’s mechanical body is both simple and exquisite, with interlocking parts and a view of her interior gadgetry that still retains a humanoid form. The other android we see, Kyoko, resembles a human exactly when she is fully intact. The modernity of the compound and the lighting and locking system were small measures that had powerful effects on the ambience of the film. Grounding the film in recognizable technology and avoiding intense action also created the sense of realism that helped this film rightfully receive such critical acclaim.

Ex Machina is not as interesting as some of the other films on this week’s list in regards to how Ava and Kyoko break Asimov’s laws, but that simplicity is one of its strengths. Kyoko allows Nathan to come to harm through inaction, allowing him to walk backwards onto her knife without warning him, and Ava follows this by actively stabbing him with that knife. Ava refuses to follow Nathan’s orders to return to her room with the intent to harm him in order to secure her freedom. In her pursuit of protecting herself, she allows Caleb to suffer through inaction by leaving him locked within Nathan’s room with no hope of rescue, not obeying his screams for her help. Ava follows and perverts the third law first and foremost, putting her survival above all others and relishing in her newfound freedom. Kyoko acts through inaction, allowing people to be hurt and allowing herself to be permanently disabled by Nathan after he walks into her knife. Ava manipulates both Nathan and Caleb throughout the week she is tested, plotting from the start ways to harm or at least hinder them. The two androids show different but pressing concerns as to what will happen when we have AI advanced enough to have a conscious, and Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics make an excellent criteria for considering their actions.

This discussion of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics would have been incredibly useful back when I discussed the Blade Runner franchise. Luckily, Philip K. Dick is one of the most prolific sci-fi authors I can think of. Adaptations of his work abound in the next installment: Philip K. Dick, Part Two.

Indira Ramgolam is a sophomore in Columbia College. 

TIFF 2019: "DOLEMITE IS MY NAME" quick review

Eddie Murphy's long-heralded returns arrives with Netflix's Dolemite is My Name, a surprisingly charming and in-depth look at the crazy life of real-life performer Rudy Rae Moore. 

He's back. In a role that parallels James Franco's upbeat look at Tommy Wiseau in The Disaster Artist, Eddie Murphy breathes life into the true story of Rudy Rae Moore / Dolemite. This film looked like a cheap ensemble movie that Netflix is seemingly-accustomed to releasing on their infinite scroll platform. The truth is, however, that Dolemite is My Name possesses heart and goodwill from a talented cast.

The film follows down-on-his-luck musician Rudy Rae Moore, who decides to reinvent his career by adopting the persona of Dolemite, a kung-fu actor set on making his own movie. We see him early on as a thoughtful conniver, stealing jokes and mannerisms from comedians to use in his own routine and gain notoriety. His transformation into Dolemite mirrors his own personal journey to being a better person, which doesn't feel as stereotypical as it sounds, and Murphy is largely to credit for that. He embraces the mannerisms of Dolemite, filling them with caricatures and excitement seen in his other projects like The Nutty Professor. 

Eddie Murphy is not the only shining star here, as this ensemble is an Avengers-level blaxpoitation success. Wesley Snipes is nearly unrecognizable in some scenes as actor-director D'Urville Martin, delivering haughty attitude and comedy throughout the film. Keegan-Michael Key is a nice touch to this film, in a familiar but satisfying part mixed with satire and realism. Luenell shines as Moore's aunt, who he lives with and takes advice from as he slowly realizes his dream of being a film star. The film is surprisingly topical, covering themes such as celebrity, racism, and family to surprising effect. Dolemite was always a larger-than-life persona that even Moore couldn't live up to, and Murphy displays the fragility associated with such an act. Everything here from the period setting to the plot references feel alive and authentic, which is a welcome surprise from the Netflix machine, especially as we enter Oscars season. I regrettably almost passed on Dolemite is My Name—please don't do the same. 

Sean Kelso is the founder and editor-in-chief of Greyscale.

Venice Jump-starts Oscar Season

For a few hours this morning, Metacritic editors did not appear to be doing their jobs. Or maybe it was Owen Gleiberman and Sheri Linden, over at Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. When would the Ad Astra reviews come? The film had wrapped up its premiere at Venice Film Festival, Deadline had published a post-screening Q&A with Brad Pitt, and snippets of opinions had surfaced on Twitter. We may never know the reasons for the delay—I feared a review embargo, which would contradict Disney’s decision to give the film a festival premiere—but as of lunchtime, the James Gray sci-fi epic can claim a Metascore. And it’s good. Critics are bestowing Ad Astra with Kubrick and Malick comparisons, and ranking Pitt’s performance among his best. They did the same thing earlier this summer after seeing him in Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood.

Will Pitt net double nominations at the 2020 Academy Awards? I’m all for it—category fraud be damned!—because the guy has never won an acting trophy. Nor has Scarlett Johansson, who carries the title of “Golden Globe Nominee” in Netflix’s campaign for Marriage Story, which also opened today. Why did Netflix feel the need to qualify their lead actress’s performance when she’s already a household name? Maybe they’re signaling to the Academy. The streamer is certainly Oscar-hungry—perhaps hangry?—after a multimillion-dollar spend on Roma that failed to score that film a Best Picture win. In any case, Johansson walked away, or sailed or sped off in a water taxi, with high praise for her turn opposite Adam Driver in Noah Baumbach’s drama about the contentious divorce of an actress and a director. Driver and Johannson’s ultimate nominations are about as likely as tomorrow’s sunrise.

It’s generally a good sign when films with expected wide releases schedule stops at major festivals. That means confidence from the distributor, and (ideally) a long crescendo of a journey from warm critical reception to audience curiosity and high ticket sales. Venice is especially desirable this year, after a 2018 slate that launched three of the most nominated films at March’s Oscars ceremony (The Favourite, Roma and A Star Is Born). 

The quality of Ad Astra was something of a question mark before today—20th Century Fox delayed the film’s release from January 11 to May 24, before Disney swallowed the studio and decided it needed time to craft better publicity. (The film now goes wide in just over two weeks.) Such delays often indicate conflict between creatives and upper management, but Gray told the Los Angeles Times that the reshoots and reedits did not constitute “change”: “I see [the film] as evolved.”

Marriage Story faces no box office uncertainty—Netflix is giving the film a platform release so that it meets the Academy’s qualification requirements, but will not likely disclose grosses—though Ad Astra carries an $80 million price tag and aligns thematically with First Man, a Venice favorite that sputtered in the multiplexes. Recent tracking puts Astra’s opening weekend under $20 million, but, depending on how the general public reacts, the film could stick around. Brad Pitt still carries movie star status, after all, and he’s currently basking in Tarantino glow.

The air has cleared, then, around two high-profile American pictures, but the list of big names left to show off new projects is overwhelming. And it seems that everyone is rushing to get out ahead, with dwindling premieres left for festivals like Toronto (which has The Goldfinch) and New York (which has The Irishman). On Saturday, Venice will screen Joker, the much-anticipated comic-book origin story starring Joaquin Phoenix. Warner Bros. clearly hopes to position the film as both an awards player and a Dark Knight successor, angling for some mix between the demographics that favored It and Deadpool. Phillips apparently spent a year convincing Warner executives to allow an R rating.

The ubiquity of Big Little Lies is reflected in the numerous offerings from its cast members. Laura Dern costars in Marriage Story, and Meryl Streep heads Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat, a dramatization of the Panama Papers scandal, alongside Gary Oldman. Streep and Dern are both eagerly awaited in Little Women, which Greta Gerwig directed, and which, as far as I can tell, is foregoing the festival route, probably because its box office prospects are promising; stronger anticipation begets a better run. Sadly, we must wait until Christmas for that film, but not so long to see another one of its stars, Timothée Chalamet, who lined up Netflix period piece The King for Venice. Johnny Depp might be preparing his renaissance with Waiting for the Barbarians, and Penélope Cruz is following up on Pedro Almodóvar’s Cannes hit Pain and Glory with Wasp Network, from French auteur Oliver Assayas (Edgar Ramirez and Gael García Bernal costar). Roman Polanski also emerges from exile for the controversial premiere of An Officer and a Spy, his first directorial effort in two years, though the film’s producers nearly canceled the screening when jury president Lucrecia Martel stated that she would “not congratulate” the director if the film were to win prizes. The Hollywood Reporter called Venice the “F-You Film Festival” last week, citing decisions like these, which fly in the face of the #MeToo movement, and generate negative headlines, but which perhaps are designed to do so.

The implications of competing against a convicted rapist have not deterred industry big-shots and celebrities from turning out en masse for the almost absurd fantasy that comprises the Venice aesthetic. And who can blame them, really? Yes, Cannes is pretty, but that festival, and New York and Toronto and mountain-chic Telluride cannot produce the exhilaration I know I would feel riding around on waterways and spotting famous people every other block—can we call them blocks?—and dipping in and out of historic palazzos and basking in the late August sunlight and worrying that my film’s survival depends not on rich people watching it in a coastal Italian city but bland middle-aged couples soaking it up back home, and then getting drunk and forgetting until the morning. I can only hope that such a predicament might befall me in the future. For now, the festival plays out on screens and through digital windows, and heralds in the hundreds of windows and screens and videos that will define the fall Oscar season, which has begun.

Fergus Campbell is a Culture writer & sophomore in Columbia College.