Why do we watch movies?
In wracking times, cinema is more of a balm than ever.
Readers, this has not been an easy week.
Throughout most of the pandemic, I’ve prided myself on keeping a fairly even keel and a positive attitude. I’ve worked hard, been productive, and largely been able to remain optimistic. I’ve found that I enjoy — and am good at — working remotely, we’ve found solutions for our kids, and while I would say my family hasn’t returned to business as usual on our nights and weekends, we’ve tried to enjoy enough activities to gain some sense of normalcy.
But this week, I feel like I hit a wall on Monday morning and I’ve spent the entire last few days trying in vain to get around it. It’s not that things have gone wrong; this week has been largely unremarkable. It’s just been a sense of malaise, an exhaustion that hits as soon as I wake up. When my alarm goes off, I’ve found myself grumbling “let’s get this over with,” and I don’t know whether I’m referring to the act of getting out of bed, doing my job, or just enduring until bedtime; probably all of it. There’s a low thrum of anxiety constantly there, and I’m easily irritated at pretty much everyone (I told someone at noon on Monday that if I kept a swear jar, I would have already filled it).
We’re in a world where every constant in our lives has been disrupted. We work from home. Our kids go to school via computer or, if they go in person, enter an atmosphere unconducive to the learning and social development they need. Our usual therapies and escapes — time with family and friends, church, trips to the mall — have been taken from us. And that’s all while our nation continues to devolve into an unjust and fascist hellscape in which the president declared 200,000 dead Americans to be nobodies.
We’re stressed and exhausted because normal has been stolen from us, but I think we’re even more stressed because the longer this goes on, the more we realize that one of the worst things for us would be a return to normal. I’ll say more on this in the coming weeks, I’m sure, but this pandemic has been revelatory. I think we’ve seen just how poisonous our previous rhythms of life were to our families, our mental health, and the greater good, and the next steps we take should be to find a new way of doing things, not return to the familiar. Until then, we’re caught in this limbo with no timeline as to when we’ll emerge. I think sometimes the stress of holding it all together just has to let itself off in a week where the funk doesn’t lift.
So, in those weeks, thank God for movies, right?
I wrote last week about my hesitancy to return to movie theaters, even when they reopen. And this week, Disney made that decision a little bit easier by moving almost its entire slate of movies back as much as a year. On the one hand, that means that 2020 will be the first year since 2009 without a Marvel movie. On the other, it means my Spielberg series, which was supposed to end with West Side Story, now has a bit more time. But more than that, it means the movie industry is not going to be healing anytime soon, at least in terms of theatrical releases. Don’t get too comfortable about Warner Brothers’ dates for Wonder Woman ‘84 or Dune; my hunch is that Disney’s actions were a flare that signaled for the rest of the studios to move back big budget items. It’s going to be a long time before going back to a movie theater is a normal routine.
But is that such a bad thing?
This week, I was talking with my podcast cohost and friend, Perry, about this. And I confided that while I’ve only been to the theaters once this year, I feel like my movie viewing has been richer than ever. Part of that is because studios aren’t screening the big-budget stuff that invariably disappoints. Instead, the movies being released are mid-budget and indie films that can find an audience on streaming platforms and video on demand. I may have to wait longer than I want to see Black Widow, Fast and the Furious 9 and others, but that’s simply cleared my plate to watch some smaller movies that I would have had to ignore in order to feed the review beast. Not everything’s been great, but I’m thankful for treats like Lonely Island’s crass and funny Palm Springs or the uplifting and energetic documentary We Are Freestyle Love Supreme. And then there are things like Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which is as bleak and dark a mind-bender as you can get, but it is utterly worth a watch for intrepid movie lovers and would absolutely be lost in a theatrical release (thankfully, it was always going to be a Netflix movie).
That’s one of the reasons I think pushing back the Oscars or cancelling them outright would be sad. Yes, this year, we’re not going to get the usual award heavy-hitters or the special effects extravaganzas that walk away with tech awards. But that just opens the field to an array of films that could make up a very interesting slate of nominees. Sure, we can joke about the only option for best supporting actor being Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys for Life or Sonic the Hedgehog as a default best picture nominee. But if the Academy considered everything, including theatrical and home releases, it might be a fascinating year.
I’d legitimately be interested in seeing Margot Robbie recognized for her work in Birds of Prey, a flawed movie that is still the most fun and inventive thing I’ve seen yet from DC. What other year would Kelly Riechardt’s deliberately paced First Cow have a shot at best picture, Pete Davidson have a chance to be nominated for best actor, or Spike Lee’s incendiary Da 5 Bloods have a well-deserved shot to win the director an Oscar and also nominations for Delroy Lindo, as well as posthumous recognition for Chadwick Boseman? Would any of these films deserve or have a chance to win any other year? Most likely, no. But what a year it would make to have them as part of the conversation.
But the other reason this year’s been a good one for movie watching is that it’s been the year when movies have returned to being a respite for me, a balm after long and stressful days. I’ve watched 91 movies in 2020 so far; 71 of those have been since the pandemic began. In 2019, I watched 119 movies total. While this appears to be a normal pace, it’s worth noting that in most years, the majority of movies I watch are for weekly reviews, and the back two months are usually heavily weighted with end-of-year screeners. Over the last four years, between reviews and grad school, I really didn’t watch a ton of movies just for fun. This year, the majority of the movies I’ve watched have been films released before 2020 (often well before), and I’ve watched them simply because I want to.
It’s funny how my viewing habits have changed in the pandemic. I don’t watch a ton of TV anymore. When I do, aside from a show I reviewed this week, I tend to shy away from dramas or anything too intense because the world is just way too heavy right now. As much as I loved the pilot of Lovecraft Country, I haven’t returned to the show because right now a heavy drama about race in America is just not the type of entertainment I’m looking for. I gravitated to Cobra Kai not because it’s a masterpiece but because it was entertaining and fairly light comfort food. On any given night, I’ll pull a few classic Simpsons episodes up on Disney+ because I just want to laugh. But anything too dark or serialized, I tend to pass over these days. And I find myself turning to movies because I like the idea of something resolving in 90 minutes.
And it’s made me start thinking about why I watch movies. What is it that I’m seeking from them that makes them a go-to activity in the evenings?
Sometimes, it’s the same thing everyone wants: a bit of escape. Some of my most enjoyable viewings of this year have been movies that have no other purpose than to pull me from the world and distract me for two hours. That’s why I turned to comedies like MacGruber and What About Bob, even though I’ve seen them countless times. There’s a reason I chose to go through Steven Spielberg’s filmography; in a year like this, I think I wanted an excuse to watch E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark again. I finally got around to letting George Miller thrill me with The Road Warrior, while Jackie Chan’s Police Story left me to pick my jaw up off the ground. I’ve laughed at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with my son and Albert Brooks’ Lost in America with my wife, and I’ve watched Hamilton a few more times than is probably necessary. I watched The Fugitive for the first time in probably 20 years and found that it’s still a thrilling ride, and I had a delightful time soaking in the cinematic champagne that is Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail.
But sometimes, it’s more than that. One evening, early in the pandemic, I hit a Friday night where I was mentally and emotionally depleted. I’d spent the entire week working from early in the morning until late at night. This was while daycares and schools were still closed, so we were doing that while also trying to educate our children. The news was growing worse every day, and a thought came to me: I need to fill my beauty tank. More than escape, it had to be somewhat restorative. I pulled up Jacques Demy’s bittersweet and colorful musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and was immediately in love. As the film hit its wistful final moments, I felt the world getting a bit of its color back.
I chase those moments when I can revel in cinema’s unique ability to dazzle us with wonder. It’s why one of my favorite days of the year is when I get an afternoon alone and can kick up the sound and soak in every gorgeous frame of The Tree of Life. It’s why I make a point to reunite with Richard Linklater’s young (and then not-so-young) lovers in the Before Trilogy once a year. It’s why Grey Gardens so captivated me with its strangeness and bizarre beauty when I saw it on Criterion earlier this year, and why those final moments of Close Encounters of the Third Kind make my heart swell in a way that I’ve only felt in moments of spiritual uplift. The movies can give us beauty that not only takes us out of our world but makes us look at it differently.
But it’s not just beauty we’re chasing; it’s truth. As the world’s gotten crazier and darker this year, movies have helped me reconcile my reality. While I may be avoid darker materials on television, I’ve leaned into cinema’s ability to reckon with the harsher truths of the universe. As the protests were breaking out around the country and many of my friends seemed to just be learning about America’s long and sad history of racism and police brutality, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing was there to remind me that none of this is new. Lee’s Da 5 Bloods found new notes to add to that conversation, and Raoul Peck’s blistering documentary I Am Not Your Negro was as urgent a decleration for this time as I could have imagined. Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion was the film of the year for many who wanted to see our real-life medical nightmare played out on screen, but it was Jaws that vividly reminded me that we are are often helpless in the face of a primal enemy, and we’ll always have politicians and businessmen who want to put dollar signs ahead of lives. As we were shut in our homes for months on end, is it any wonder many of us turned to time-loop comedies, whether it was Lonely Island’s funny yet still thoughtful Palm Springs or Harold Ramis’ beloved masterpiece Groundhog Day. But rather than just capture our existential funk, both of those movies speak to our knowledge that we’re not as good as we could be, and that no matter how unchanging our circumstances are, we still have an obligation to make other people’s lives better. What is Groundhog Day but Ecclesiastes put through the ‘80s romantic comedy filter?
This year has reminded me why I love the movies. Some of you might find some resonance with that. Others might have no clue what I’m talking about. I remember walking out of a movie theater one day with my dad. We’d just seen a movie whose name I can’t remember, but I was buzzing with excitement because I’d loved it. He was more mixed. “I don’t like having to think during a movie,” he said. I couldn’t fathom it; the thinking, the processing...that’s what I love. For me, a movie that stays on the screen is a waste of time. If it doesn’t get my brain working or engage my emotions, I don’t care how dazzling it was.
I used to think my dad was watching movies wrong. But now, I think we just both appreciate different things about the form. What about you? Why do you love the movies? What have you been turning to in the pandemic? Let me know in the comments!
The Dispatch
Where you can find my work online this week.
Utopia review (BHM Pop Culture): Amazon Prime is really hoping this will be their Stranger Things, and I can see why. Based on a cult British thriller from 2013, Utopia is a sci-fi conspiracy thriller full of big twists and bonkers revelations. It moves fast enough and Gillian Flynn is savvy enough in her role as showrunner to give it a blackly comic tone that makes it watchable. But I’m also curious how viewers will respond to a show about viruses, wacko conspiracies and apocalyptic angst when we have enough of that in our real lives. I also think the graphic and often mean-spirited violence is going to turn many people off. But if you hang in there, the back few episodes generate enough momentum to keep watching.
Kajillionaire review (BHM Pop Culture): I’ll be honest that quirkiness, in the wrong hands, doesn’t work with me. It’s why it took me so long to embrace Wes Anderson; something about that twee sensibility just keeps me at a remove from the humanity of the characters. I was worried Miranda July’s latest, Kajillionaire, would do that. But this tale of a family of con artists and the way an interloper affects their dynamic, really won me over. Evan Rachel Wood is fantastic, as are Gina Rodrigurez, Debra Winger and Ricahrd Jenkins. The film’s a bit scattershot, and not everything July tries works, but it also delivers two of my favorite scenes of the year and packs an emotional punch when you least expect it.
We’re Watching Here: Viewing Charlie Kaufman: On this week’s episode of We’re Watching Here, Perry and I talk about the career of Charlie Kaufman and his divisive, mind-bending Netflix movie, I’m Thinking of Ending Things. I loved the film, but even more than that, I love talking about the strange mind that gave us Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York.
Chrisicisms
What I’m enjoying this week.
Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Graceby Gordon MacKenzie: I am not, by nature, a corporate-minded person. I’m allergic to organizations, I refuse to drink the Kool-Aid, and questioning the powers that be is much more enjoyable than blindly assenting to them. MacKenzie’s book, which a neighbor enthusiastically recommended to me, is a memoir about staying weird in the stuffy environs of the Hallmark corporation. MacKenzie, whose last title at Hallmark was the self-appointed Creative Paradox, talks about how to work outside of organizational rules and silos without going crazy, and maintaining freshness of perspective and creativity when the success of giant corporations rests on avoiding those things. It’s a fun, thought-provoking read, and will likely resonate with anyone who breaks out into hives when they hear the words Mission Statement, Synergy, and Strategic Alignment.
The Kingcast:I’ll admit that my podcast listening has gotten a bit rusty without a daily commute. I used to listen regularly when I’d take a walk until I realized it was more refreshing to go out without earbuds. But one podcast I enjoy tuning into regularly is this discussion of Stephen King novels and their adaptations. Film critics Scott Wampler and Eric Vespe have long been two of my favorites, and they get a number of great guests on to talk about King’s works and their TV/movie adaptations. It’s reignited my interest in reading King, and it’s an often very fun and insightful listen.
Patrick H. Willems’ YouTube Channel: I’m convinced the future of film criticism lives on YouTube. As much as I love the written word, I’m not sure there’s a more useful and engaging form for flm reviews and essays than on YouTube, where creators can use the medium of film to engage with it. No one is doing that better than Willems, who’s turned it into an artform in itself. Willems’ quarantine series was a lot of fun, and his sense of humor and clever editing help make his deep-dive lectures on everything from the filmography of Robert Zemeckis to a rewriting the Matrix sequels great fun. This is often how I spend my lunch hour on a rainy day.
And that brings us to the end of this week’s newsletter! Next week, I’m looking forward to talking about a political documentary that I quite enjoyed, possibly moving into the next entry in my Steven Spielberg series, and finding a fun way to work Halloween into all of October’s newsletters! If you’re enjoying, please subscribe, comment and share!