I was going to try to get out to A Wrinkle In Time this weekend until I found out it wasn’t playing at the Arclight Hollywood! It was the first indication that something was up. Arclight ALWAYS has the best movies. For them to say, “No thanks,” told you what they thought of the film’s financial prospects. Then I saw the RT score, remembered that abysmal trailer… and all of a sudden getting in my car and driving to that nightmare parking structure at the Grove sounded like the worst thing I could do with my day. It turns out I made the right choice. The film bombed.
While we’re on the topic, I don’t get the protective bubble being placed around Ava DuVernay. Why is everyone so scared to say her movie was bad? I’m reading these reviews, many of which have negative scores, yet 95% of the review is qualified by how much the reviewer loves DuVernay and loved “certain aspects” of the movie. I bet every director in Hollywood is wondering where that positivity is when their films are being reviewed.
I think three things pushed people away from this film. The first is DuVernay herself. There’s a self-importance to her presence that’s off-putting. The second is that Wrinkle promoted itself too aggressively as a “diverse female empowerment” film and, in doing so, pushed half of America away. I was not surprised to hear that the demo split for this film was an unheard of 70% female, 30% male. Finally, the film looked bad. Plain and simple. When a film looks bad, people don’t show up.
I hope Hollywood learns a lesson here. People don’t go to the movies to support messages. They go to be entertained. It seems like Wrinkle failed at that basic level.
Documentary watch! A couple of documentaries I need to comment on. One that I hated, the other that I lurrrved. The first is called Icarus. It’s the Netflix documentary about doping that won Best Doc at the Oscars. I am here to tell you that THIS IS ONE OF THE WORST FILMS I’VE EVER SEEN!!! Do NOT. EVER. SEE THIS FILM. Everything about it is scammy and weird and suspicious and manipulative.
I’m going to let you in on a secret. Always be wary of out-of-work actors making documentaries about themselves. They have zero interest in pursuing anything resembling the truth (which is the whole point of making a documentary). All they care about is promoting themselves. And you could see that right from the start with Icarus. There isn’t an honest bone in the main subject’s body. From the second the cameras are on, this guy’s looking for his close-up.
For those who don’t know anything about the doc, it’s about an American cyclist who wants to see if steroids will help him win a bike race so he hires a Russian doping specialist who lives in Russia to help him. That sounds kind of interesting until you learn that the race he’s entering isn’t the Tour De France. It isn’t even the Tour De French Toast. It’s some low-level non-professional event where it doesn’t matter if you dope or not! You could literally show up and say, “I’m on steroids” and nobody cares. And why exactly am I rooting for a cheater again?
Anyway, he meets this Russian doper who they then try and turn into a sympathetic figure. But this guy is so creepy and weird, your skin crawls every time he’s on screen. To provide some context, our star (aka “the out of work actor”) has to keep sending urine samples to the Russian to get them cleaned so they don’t test positive. On multiple occasions, it’s implied that the Russian guy has a sexual fetish with the urine. Oh, okay. Yeah. That’s what I want to see. A weird 55 year old Russian man swirling urine in a tube and staring at it sexually. Sign me up, brother.
You’re probably wondering how in the world this won an Oscar then. The answer is surprisingly simple. Nobody in the Academy watches the documentaries they vote for. They saw “Russia” in the description. They saw, “scandal,” in the description. And they voted for it based on that. I would not be surprised if not a single person who voted for this movie knew it was about cycling. Consensus: Steer clear of this movie!
Now on to a documentary that you MUST see as soon as possible. Yes it came out a couple of years ago. But it ran into so many legal snafus, it became impossible to find. Just to give you a teaser of how crazy the production of this film got, here’s what happened during a Sundance screening when a representative for the film’s subject encountered the co-director in the lobby beforehand.
The film is called Tickled. It’s about a gay New Zealand journalist who finds out, through the glories of the internet, that there’s a competitive tickling league. As in, people tie each other down and tickle each other. They have to endure as much tickling as possible to “win.” The “sport” is so bizarre that the journalist can’t help but dig deeper. And what he finds is that, strangely, this league of ticklers only includes young fit good-looking men between the ages of 16-22.
So he e-mails the league’s president, a woman, and says he’s interested in doing a story about the league. The woman instantly e-mails back and berates the journalist for being “gay” and a “faggot,” telling him that if he does a piece on the league, he’ll regret it. Keep in mind he never told this woman he was gay. So how did she find out?
The president then continues to e-mail the journalist every day with similar e-mails. This only piques the journalist’s interest more. Why was this woman so cruel in regards to his homosexuality when the sport she was funding was so… well… gay?
And thus began a deep dive into the history of this league and its mysterious president that has a shocking revelation every 10 minutes. The deeper they dig, the crazier this insane president gets, to the point where we’re certain these filmmakers are going to be spending the rest of their lives crawling out of a mountain of legal debt.
There are a couple of reasons why Tickled succeeds while Icarus fails. The first is something I always tell you guys to look out for – IRONY! Who would think that a documentary about tickling would tackle bullying, aggression, homophobia, legal threats and anger? Irony can sell a concept like nothing else. The second is that, unlike the fraud at the center of Icarus, the Tickled journalist is interested in getting to the truth. He wants to expose a man who’s used his lies and money to destroy dozens of young men over the years. You won’t believe where this one goes, guys. I’m telling you.
A few other quick reviews. I finally saw Jumanji, which I loved. I may do an article on it because they successfully went back to the 1996 screenwriting playbook to write this one and I’m curious if that winning formula was specific to this movie or if more screenwriters need to start using old school screenwriting tactics to write great scripts. I would argue this is perfect high-concept non-superhero blockbuster execution. It got EVERYTHING right.
I also saw Ladybird. This was either the best average movie I saw all year, the most average decent movie I saw all year, or the worst great movie I saw all year. What’s interesting about Ladybird is that, 10 years ago, this is a random coming-of-age indie that makes 10 bucks at the box office. In 2017, it’s a defining piece of inclusive art. There’s something to be said for timing, folks. Oh, and I saw this great little Icelandic movie on Netflix called, “The Oath.” It’s about a man whose drug-addicted daughter falls in love with a dealer. He does everything possible to get her out of his clutches but she’s so far gone that no matter what he does, she won’t leave the dealer. It’s so frustrating to watch but the movie takes some unexpected twists and turns that only a non-American movie could pull off. I really liked it.
Finally, what are these rumors about a disastrous Deadpool 2 screening?? How is this not bigger news? They’ve been forced to do reshoots with less than a month until release! What the fuhhhh???? I’ve been worried about Deadpool 2 for a couple of reasons. The first is Tim Miller leaving the project. It’s never good when a key collaborator leaves a project. Deadpool may be Ryan Reynolds’ baby. But it was Tim Miller’s movie. He’s the one who came up with that fx reel that brought that project out of development hell. On top of that, it’s hard to pull off the “breaking the fourth wall” thing two movies in a row. It’s always cute the first time around. But by definition, gimmicks don’t have staying power. I’m guessing the asides to the audience are inducing eye-rolls this time around (“Haven’t we already seen this?”). With that said, I’d be first in line to see Deadpool team up with the Avengers. That’d be so rad.
