Fuck Bird Box.

But, like, actually though.

Bird Box is a genuinely offensive movie on multiple levels. The most significant, one that’s been hit on by other, smarter people, is the fact that this movie about evil wind that makes people commit suicide demonizes the mentally ill. It’s not a joke; in Bird Box, mentally ill people are dangerous monsters who must be avoided if not killed.

In Bird Box, only people who are already quoteunquote crazy (as in, have been or should be committed) can look into the wind and see something beautiful instead of death-inducing. Everyone else needs to cover up the windows and wear blindfolds and whatever. But because the wind, being wind, can’t actually do anything, it needs the “crazy” people to do its dirty work.

And that’s awful.

I am of the general opinion that if something is going to be awful, then it must at least be good. I sort of touched on that in my last video on Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, but it is part of this broader conversation about cultural acceptability that we are all having right now.

One that, I think, often misses what really matters – not what is said, but how and why it’s said. This is Central to the comedy debate in particular, but that’s a whole other thing.

In the case of Bird Box, there is some potential for leniency because I think it’s fair to assume that the creative team behind Bird Box wasn’t actively working to demonize the mentally ill in their spooky wind movie. But why give leeway if they’ve got nothing else to say?

At its core, Bird Box is a story about motherhood. It flashes between the apocalypse itself, during which Sandra Bullock is unhappily pregnant, and years later, when she’s unhappily warding two children: Boy and Girl. After hearing of a safe place on the radio, she and the children get in a canoe, blindfolded, and head down river.

But if The Babadook is a serial killer’s diary, Bird Box is a phone book.

On the river, it’s just them. In the apocalypse, a rag tag group of immediately recognizable strangers – John Malkovich, Trevante Rhodes, BD Wong, Machine Gun Kelly, etc. – adds a whole bunch of nothing. The fact that they aren’t on the river, which you know before you even know they exist, means that things aren’t gonna work out.

In a better movie, that could mean something. Annihilation tells you minutes in what happens to Leena’s squad, but that fits in with its broader themes of self-destruction. It’s not a film about survival – in fact, it’s the opposite. But Bird Box is about survival, so knowing who makes it to the boat is just a spoiler.

An irritating one, because every time you’re with the ensemble, you’re just anticipating their demises. Eagerly, because every single actor is given material far below them – including the rap devil himself. The interpersonal drama is, to put it lightly, worthless.

And it just pads that runtime.

I initially missed the first 20 minutes because my family doesn’t like watching movies with me – can’t imagine why – and still thought it was 20 minutes too long. Going back just made it feel 40 minutes too long.

But somehow none of that is the most frustrating thing about Bird Box. No, where it truly goes off the rails is in its flailing attempts at horror. This is because Bird Box never commits to the thing that makes it scary: claustrophobia.

These characters are locked in a house, windows boarded; they are trapped. They know that something is out there but they don’t really know what. But the house is too big to feel the confinement. If someone is mad at someone else in the big house, they can just go elsewhere. Big important things can happen without anyone else knowing about it. Except you. You know everything.

Every time the camera (and therefore the audience) is stuck with the characters, it feels right. But inevitably it pulls back to reveal, what exactly? The car scene early on is a perfect example. A handful of characters are in a car; they have newspapered up the windows and are navigating using a clever combination of GPS and the car’s collision detection systems. This is cool.

Outside, bad things are happening. So when you’re in there with them, and everything is shaking and the collision detection warnings are going crazy, you’re on the edge of your seat… but then it cuts to outside, where there is nothing but wind. Ugh.

Last week, I saw Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men for the first time in a decade. I had written most of the above already, but the thing that I’m talking about was so perfectly crystalized there. It’s not fair for an infinite number of reasons to compare these two movies, but Children of Men uses a limited perspective so gosh darn brilliantly that I can’t help doing so. Because Children of Men succeeds by keeping you in one place at all times. You are never more aware of what is going on than Theo. In a car, the camera sits there with him. You’re always tense.

The closest Bird Box gets to that is a moment on the river when in the fog she hears the voice of someone telling her that it’s okay and she can take off the blindfold. This time, she’s actually in danger, and neither she nor you know where that danger is. She pulls out a gun and fires into the nothingness, and there is real tension – before the poorly staged payoff. For a few brief moments is the promise of a much better, if still fundamentally bad, movie.

But so what, right? People make bad movies all the time – much more often than they make good ones. Bird Box should just be a blip, like so many other things. But it wasn’t. It was the biggest goshdamn thing in the entire world. It’s still a big enough deal that I don’t feel that weird coming in and complaining about it a full three weeks after release. And it is infuriating. Because the reason that it blew up is not because it’s good but because Netflix decided it was the Next Big Thing. It’s Bright but burning so much brighter. Netflix has incredible market penetration and marketing and the things it decides are worthy of being a phenomena are an insult to the genuinely amazing films that they have on the service. For gosh’s sake, ROMA is a Netflix exclusive but you didn’t see any viral memes about house cleaning or familial abandonment.

• 

• 

So #relatable

Netflix’s ability to drive the cultural conversation is slightly alarming, because they have never been a real content curator, and as they pump out original series week after week, burying everything under the weight of a handful of typically star-studded productions that they feel represents… something.

And it’s nice that Bird Box, like Bright, is not part of an established franchise. It may be a literary adaptation, but so was the best movie of last year; but that isn’t enough. There are so many original stories on Netflix, and if it wasn’t for Netflix trying to convince me I should, this particularly one would have never even hit my queue, let alone my actual TV. Bird Box does things that a dozen movies have already done better, including several from the same freaking year. But if A Quiet Place is an uncommonly good busking violinist, Bird Box is a man fistfighting a Christmas tree.

And you know what? I’m not even going to explain that one.

Three Point Zero out of Ten

1. You don’t forget Salò
2. You can’t forget Salò
3. You shouldn’t forget Salò

These truths are self-evident from the content of Pasolini’s final film as well as the context in which it was made, and now the context in which it is being played.

I have seen Salò three times. I think. The first is burned indelibly in my memory as much for its horrors as for the Pad Thai I was eating at the time.

I believe there was a second in that same living room, this one without Pad Thai – or any other kind of food. I remember being prepared for what was to come.

This time, there was popcorn. And I was ready – as ready as you can be, anyhow.

I hemmed and hawed over the decision to buy a ticket to the 35mm screening at the Metrograph in New York City – the death of Moviepass previously marked the end of my visits to that theater, asking people I knew and even a Facebook group I take part in if it was worth doing. Part of it was a matter of timing: I wanted to finally see Alfonso Cuaron’s ROMA, which was playing in 70mm further uptown during overlapping times, and I definitely didn’t want to see ROMA first. But a late-night ROMA screening was added, and based on the absolutely nothing I knew about it, I thought maybe it would be a nice pallet cleanser.

And while I wouldn’t go that far, I will say that it makes for a more appropriate double feature than I had expected. It’s also amazing and will likely be remembered as one of the best films of the decade.

Right. Salò.

The word “Awful” historically has two meanings, and Salò fits both. It is awful in the modern sense of the term in that it is absolutely horrific. When the credits rolled, a man sitting next to me said, “That was disgusting.”

It is awful in the archaic sense that it inspires awe. That same man then said, “I don’t think this is even parody” (more on that in a bit. “I think that just, like, happened. Or happens.” There is nothing quite like Salò, a statement that shall remain true, I think, in perpetuity. The absolute horrors depicted here are the typical purview of films far less interested in, say, exploring the impact of fascistic power upon an unsuspecting and undeserving population, than they are in just making you regret your life decisions. They shock for the sake of shock, whether their creators would cop to that or not.

But in the work of the Marquis De Sade, whose 120 Days of Sodom Salò loosely adapts, Pasolini saw what he called “The choreography of fascism.” And that perfectly encapsulates the film that he made. Every single movement in Salo drives towards the central thesis, simply enough: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It would not be unfair to consider Salò a bit pompous, being that in its opening credits it lists an “Essential Bibliography” of writers and philosophers whose work could serve to illuminate its intentions further. And I can understand how someone might see that and think that Pasolini was just obfuscating his desire to direct some disgusting imagery under the guise of philosophy and intellectualism. But there is a reason that Salò is in the hallowed Criterion Collection and, say, Cannibal Holocaust and A Serbian Film are not.

Cannibal Holocaust is a fairly significant film, being really the progenitor of the found footage genre and using some of the same marketing tactics that The Blair Witch Project would exploit nearly two decades later; it also has a very clear “meaning,” one that is made explicit in the final moments of the film – ya know, for those who were too distracted by the actual animal murder to notice. But that rings hollow because of the content itself – see: actual animal murder.  

Likewise for A Serbian Film, the writer for which I am, bizarrely enough, Facebook friends with. It doesn’t have a particular historical significance like the others, but it has seen a similarly extreme reaction. And… justifiably so. While it can be seen as a direct descendent of Salò’s psycho-sexual politics, A Serbian Film works very hard to make sure that it is the most brutal version of its theme that it can be. And, like Cannibal Holocaust, revels in that brutality. It is a horror film first and a message movie… eventually… maybe.

Salò isn’t that. Salò’s horror feels almost incidental. These scenes are often brief, and the camera is dispassionate – matter of fact. It doesn’t bask in the carnage or linger just a little bit too long. Much more time is given to segments where atrocities are described by “The Storytellers,” women all dolled up and so joyfully detailing traumatic experiences from their youths as a way to sexually charge the atmosphere. It’s disturbing, to be sure, but the worst of it is described for the audience rather than depicted. And it’s honestly not as dour as one might expect. Seeing it this time, there was one actual moment of laughter in the theater and a few more that came close – including two puns that I imagine worked better said aloud than as subtitles.

It is not a light film by any stretch of the imagination, but it is also so much less dark than it could be considering what it is. When the man next to me said to his companion “It’s not parody, etc.” I assume he was attempting to sound Very Smart. Unfortunately, he was clearly confusing parody for satire, but he is right to see it as some type of comedy of horrors.

The set, as recounted in the genuinely fascinating short documentary that accompanies the Criterion release, was an unexpectedly fun place to be. People were laughing and enjoying themselves, particular during the most horrible scenes. But in retrospect, it actually feels right that they would be. Sometimes the only response to atrocity is levity. And when you are depicting the greatest atrocities, laughter is the only way to cope.

And so we return to the context for that depiction. The decision to transplant the Marquis De Sade’s France-set story to the final days of the Mussolini Fascist government was Pasolini’s. He directed the film at a time where he saw a society rushing back towards fascism. His brutal murder, committed before the film even released, seems to indicate that he wasn’t wrong. His work, then, is a reality that he understood but also one that he believed was about more than just his own time – a reality that spans decades: The 1940s. The 1970s. The 2010s.

Watching Salò in 2019 adds a new layer of unnerving. It feels like the kind of thing that could never happen while also being the kind of thing that has definitely actually happened and that may well be happening right now. Whatever the conspiracy theorists involved in Pizzagate imagined was going on in the nonexistent basement of that DC restaurant, it may well have borne some resemblance to this film.

The experience of watching Salò in a theater on an aging 35mm print is radically different from seeing Criterion’s Blu Ray restoration in the comfort of one’s living room. The damage to that print adds a layer of artifice, and the size of the screen makes the fact that the dialogue is ADR’d poorly far, far more apparent. The seams in the film itself become clearer on the big screen. This, combined with the horrendous seats in the Metrograph (I switched positions at least 15 times over the two hours) results in a viewing experience that is almost entirely outside of the film itself. You never really get “immersed.” And I think that may be the best way to see it.

For one: It’s easier to watch. Being outside of it, the most disgusting scenes are slightly more tolerable. But really, it’s because in that context, Salò becomes a series of questions that you as the viewer are constantly forced to ask about how and why and who and what – none with clear or necessarily “good” answers. It becomes a two-hour mind game. And after the credits roll? Well, you’re still playing it, because it stays in your head. Forever.

I first saw Salò during a period in my life when I was trying to see everything on those lists of Most Shocking Films of all time. Your Cannibal Holocausts and August Undergrounds and the like. Amidst them, Salò stuck out as something entirely unique and not for people who just want to see the most depraved imagery every committed to celluloid. It contains some of that, sure, but if that’s what you’re after, you’ll leave disappointed if not outright frustrated. You must have more than a strong constitution. You must want to engage with the ideas that Salo puts forth, to think about its metaphors and philosophies.

Maybe even read that bibliography.

Seven Point Five out of Ten

Aggretsuko is basically designed for me – a sentiment I have seen repeated by many others but still feels true on a personal level. The name portmanteau’s Aggressive Retsuko.

The titular Retsuko is a red panda salarywoman who has the deep dark secret: when she gets mad about the irritations and injustices of her existence, she goes Hard at a karaoke bar, death metaling it up – the coolest kind of venting I can think of. Sometimes, you just want to scream. Well, she does it to blast beats and sick licks.

You do not have to like death metal to like Aggretsuko, and indeed the type of death metal that Retsuko karaokes is not my preferred sort of death metal – melodic death metal, but it’s fine in the short bursts, and the lyrics are all tied into those frustrations. Ultimately, it’s fun.

Plus, these death vocals are performed by Raracho, Aggretsuko’s pseudonymed creator, who writes and directs each episode. Which is great.

So, this show has a lot of things going for it for a person who likes the same things that I like and thus should be subscribed to this channel. It’s got metal; it’s got anime – which I have fallen off from since my younger days but still enjoy; and it’s got red pandas.

I love red pandas. They are favorite animal, which results in periods of me attaching photos of them to actual work emails that I send to people with whom I actually work in a real office setting.

My daily grind in an office is likely part of where Aggretsuko’s relatability comes in, because this is a show about a woman in her 20s who is trying to figure it all out. Each short episode focuses on one or several widely-felt frustrations: the struggle of keeping a major part of yourself secret, the difficulty of finding adult friends, the aforementioned daily grind, etc.

And it really gets at the heart of each of them. Despite the silly exterior, Aggretsuko genuinely understands why life is frustrating. They’re hardly new observations, but I’ve never seen them presented like this. With the visual language of a Japanese children’s cartoon, the underlying message has a way of sneaking up on you. You are laughing along and then suddenly you see yourself in a cute but unhappy red panda or one of her animal co-workers and you begin to second-guess every decision you’ve ever made and oh gosh what are you doing with your life, Alec, to quote metallica sometimes the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way and how far down this tunnel are you going to go before you realize that you…

Um. Anyway.

While season 2 of Aggretsuko is set to release sometime in the next year, Netflix saw fit to grace us with another holiday special – a thing they seem to do a whole heckuva lot, but I’m not complaining. We Wish You a Metal Christmas is, indeed, Christmas themed, both released and taking place in the couple of days leading up to Christmas and then culminating on Christmas Eve, which is the day that this video is going up; so in sync. In this episode, Retsuko is being taught by her young doe colleague how to be an Instagram girl. How to frame that food and contort that face to make the best Content, the stuff that will get random people on the internet to SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON.

Her obsession with it, trying to understand the tricks with lighting and positioning, is something all of us think about when taking photos or videos. If you were to look through my Instagram feed, you wouldn’t see any people or foodstuffs, but every photo that is up there is one of at least a half dozen attempts – one of them the 40somethingth version of the same shot. Because if I am going to put something up – there, here, anywhere, I may as well do it properly, right? How else could I convince people to SMASH THAT SUBSCRIBE BUTTON.

But where it hits a bit close to home is in a conversation between two of Retsuko’s colleagues about the inevitable result of this pursuit of likes. It gets pretty dark, but what is deemed the start of the spiral is something that I think a lot of younger people would cop to: traveling to another place – in this case, a new prefecture – for the sole purpose of hitting up a trendy spot with some instagrammable eats. This is something I struggle with on a fundamental level, and I imagine I’m not alone there.

I talked a bit about it in my first video, but for a few years, I used an app called 1 Second Everyday, where at some point each day I would grab a second of video of a thing I was doing; at the end of the year, you have six minutes that are your life. And I felt compelled to do something every single day so that at the end of the year, people wouldn’t think my life was boring. And that meant doing new things or going to new places or meeting new people. My particular use of Tinder in 2016 was at least partially driven by this driving need for neweness

And I am glad I did it for the time that I did, because it helped me get out of my apartment and into the world. And because I made a concerted effort to do more than just get The One Second. I tried to enjoy the things that I was doing, despite the depressing motivation for having done them.

Because there is nothing wrong with going to a trendy café in a different city, even if you really just want to take a picture. The problem becomes when you do that without enjoying it. When you end up with your friends and refuse to eat noodle soup because it’s not photo-worthy enough for your holiday pic.

You can’t do that. You can’t let that impulse control your life and your happiness and your self-worth – even though it’s so easy to do. But you need to be okay with being in that moment, with getting the soup even if it isn’t photo worthy, because it’s delicious and you’re with your friends.

Aggretsuko gets it. It knows how complicated all of this stuff is to navigate. And it uses adorable animals and anime styling to give you another way to think about your own frustrations. In a way that you can laugh with and headbang with.

Eight Point Seven out of Ten

GRIS is an indie puzzle-ish platformer. I love indie puzzle-ish platformers. It’s on the Nintendo Switch. I love my Switch, and with the recent release of Super Smash Bros, I am putting in a whole lot more hours on this thing than I have in a while. It really is an amazing system, but it’s one that I have rarely used in docked mode. I’ve played a few hours of Zelda, Mario, etc. on my TV, but most of the time, even at home, I do it handheld.

But GRIS changed this. Excepting a couple minutes I spent to prove the point, I played the entire four-or-so-hour experience on my TV. Because this game, though it is on the Switch, isn’t made for the Switch. It would be just as at home – probably moreso – on a PS4 or Xbox One where it could run at higher framerates and resolutions and maybe a little bit of HDR in there for good measure. It’s not a game to play on the go. It’s one to sit with and contemplate.

Let me back up: you should buy GRIS. It is both fascinating and very good. I am not going to be showing much footage from it because any given image is a spoiler. This is especially true as the nature of the game’s milestones becomes clear: you are returning color to a world of gray. Anyways, with each color you add, the world becomes even more beautiful. I paused so many times in awe of GRIS’s imagery. I would spend at least $55 for a coffee table book of moments from the game. I may spend more than that getting fine art prints of screen caps to hang on my wall.

So I’ll show a bit, when it is absolutely necessary to illustrate the point, but the less you see before you play, the more I think you will get from each new moment. And, like, just buy it.

The presentation of the GRIS’s imagery is fascinating, because the camera itself is fascinating – performing this high-wire balancing act of practicality and cinema.

Though locked firmly at a 90-degree angle from your face, its placement in space is constantly changing along all three axes. At times, you are the center of at tention; it swoops in to be there right beside you. This is when it would be most appropriate to play in the Switch’s portable mode, though you still wouldn’t want to.

More typically, you remain at the center but the attention is elsewhere, as the camera has pulled back to reveal more of the world itself – those sparse, beautifully rendered lines and, eventually, their subtle but distinct colorations. You take it all in. This is the cinematic.

Or you are not at the center at all. The level design stands at the forefront as you are tasked with a puzzle that takes up a space many, many, many times your size. And you must see the entirety of the thing in order to understand it. This is the practical. It is also when portable mode becomes effectively useless. Even on a TV of relatively substantial size, you are tiny. On at least two occasions, I found myself lost on the screen and needed to move the analog stick a bit to find the black blob of motion. The camera moves smoothly in and out, never actually “cutting,” which can feel in turn epic and exhausting, depending on how dynamic it feels like being at a given moment.

But the important fact imparted by the constant expand&contract is that you will always see everything that you need to see in a given moment – sometimes more but never less. This is pleasantly reassuring.

Play is simple. Stick or pad moves. B jumps. A… breathes. Eventually, Y does something too. X remains unused. They do what you ask of them when you ask it. Here and there something might not respond exactly as you might like – mostly in water – but those moments are fleeting. On the lovely Switch Pro controller, which is basically a requirement since, again, TV, everything feels quite nice.  

At first glance, GRIS probably appears a little bit like a 2D Journey with a drained color pallete, but let’s return to my alternate title, because I think it’s akin to something a bit more recent. Celeste, which was released earlier this year on a bunch of platforms including the Switch, is a wonderful, brutal little 2D platformer. It tells the story of Madeline, who climbs a mountain to face her own inner demons – those demons also being herself. Madeline’s anxiety and fears manifest themselves in increasing torturous ways. It is not subtle, but it is both effective and wonderful. It’s a unique subject matter for a game in general and particularly a game of its sort. It’s a game in which you will die hundreds or thousands of times climbing up the mountain.

Now, remove the spikes. And beneath that, you find GRIS.

It’s not just that GRIS lacks overt danger or an actual fail state; it’s that GRIS is told in images rather than words. You know that the unnamed girl you are controlling is dealing with the fallout of something, and you help her to come to terms with that and put the pieces back together, but the question of what, exactly, has broken is open.

And it’s one on which you can project your own damage. Celeste tells you what Madeline is feeling, and perhaps you feel it vicariously through her. GRIS tells you nothing beyond the fact that you press A and she takes a breath. But the breath is short, clearly intended to be something more. And so you think about that. You don’t intentionally press A very often, but when you do, it gives you pause. And you think about it some more. And you wonder what she is trying to do and then you try to figure it out. Is it really just taking a breath? Does she want to talk? I called it the Press A to Emote button for a while, because it seemed almost like she was trying to cry. In fact, the first time I pressed the A button, she collapsed. This before she’d even picked up the ability to jump.

And you fill in the gaps with the pains that you know. The times that you were unable to do anything but take a short breath. This girl doesn’t have a name or a voice but she is struggling to cope with something. And even if you are never able to explicitly understand what it is, you feel that pain that she is feeling and you have to help her. You want to help her.

Because you have felt it too.

Eight Point Nine out of Ten

Back in August, the New York Times ran a story film called “After a Director Dies, Friends Finish His Life’s Work: A Zombie Musical.” That musical was/is Anna and the Apocalypse. The circumstances surrounding it are quite sad, but the fact that the late Ryan McHenry was able to have his work finished – and finished this well – is something kind of like inspiring. I recommend the read.

So, yes, Anna and the Apocalypse is a musical. In the Broadway (or… I guess, West End) sense of the term. Imagine Shaun of the Dead but starring high school theater kids, and you’re 80% of the way there. This is a British movie about a zombie outbreak wherein a bunch of teenagers burst into song when the narrative feels it’s appropriate.

See this clip, which lacks zombies but will give you a pretty good sense of what’s going on. It’s pulled straight from the movie but has had lyrics overlaid on it because I guess they didn’t feel like there was enough going on onscreen. They’re distracting, but you get it.

Having been a theater kid myself in high school – you can find videos of me acting back then here on YouTube, which I don’t recommend – I have a particular affinity for this type of thing. And in general I love me a good musical. And on that level alone, Anna and the Apocalypse is a success. The songs are catchy as hell, so much so that I went home and immediately queued them up on Spotify and was already singing along with No Such Thing As a Hollywood Ending.

But the music isn’t just catchy; it’s narratively necessary, pushing along the story and allowing the characters to really express themselves in a way that your average archetype typically cannot. There is only one song of 12 that doesn’t work. It’s called “Human Voice,” and it’s a pretty good song taken on its own… Unfortunately, it has absolutely nothing to do with the scene in which it’s placed or even, to be honest, the movie itself.

Being a screed against the digitization of modern communication, it doesn’t really work to have a bunch of people singing about wanting to hear an actual human voice when they’re literally locked in a room with other people all while having phones without service. And technology in general plays basically no role in the film. There is no scene where someone is on their phone and then gets eaten and it’s all technology’s fault and etc. So… to what end? Human Voice comes off like a rant on the part of a lyricist who wanted to get something off of his chest by putting it into the actors’. It’s irrelevant and its irrelevance is distracting … but it’s also only four minutes long and is, again, performed well. Obviously, I am still thinking about it, but it doesn’t detract too greatly from the film in general.

Fifteen minutes in, a couple sitting a few seats over from me got up and left. At two different points in the movie, a Chatty Cathy to my back left got up as well; her companion certainly seemed to enjoy it, though, laughing almost as often/hard as I did. I can only assume that this was a failing on their part to understand what they were in for and also a general inability to enjoy things that are good on their own merits. Musicals are great, y’all. Full stop. And this is the best movie musical since I don’t know when.

I’m curious how it would work on a stage. I think it could definitely be adapted, the kind of thing that would play Off… or maybe Off-Off-Broadway. It’s already inspired a book – the first chapter of which is available online, and I’m seriously considering checking out the rest.

If this were 2012, I think Anna and the Apocalypse would be my favorite movie of all time. The fact that it isn’t now makes me actually feel old.

Happy birthday, grandpa.

I say 2012 specifically because that’s the year that Joseph Khan’s Detention hit theaters for precisely one week, presumably to capitalize on the lead performance by Josh Hutcherson coinciding with his ascent to the cultural consciousness with The Hunger Games. I saw it at a press screening on a whim because I had to be in the area for an unrelated thing, and I was blown the heck away. A time-travelling sci-fi/slasher/romantic comedy/coming-of-age drama from the guy who made basically every good music video ever (and would go on to make Taylor Swift’s video worthy of sensation). I saw it only a couple of years out of high school, and it felt so true to the emotions of my experience, even if I couldn’t relate to… well, any of the specifics.

It has been my favorite movie ever since, and each of my ten or so watches has just solidified that fact. Since then, movies like Girl, Asleep and The Edge of Seventeen have threatened its place, but not really any movies that aren’t coming-of-age tales about teenagers. I relate to them in a way I try not to dwell on.

Or, at least, I did.

I felt the seeds of change a little earlier this year, actually, while watching Eighth Grade. I loved that movie – four stars for sure – but I found myself on Kayla’s father’s side rather than his daughter’s. There are only a handful of quote-unquote adults in Anna and the Apocalypse, all of whom exist largely to crush the dreams of the younger generation. As such, I didn’t particularly relate to them… but I also didn’t connect with the, uh, youths in the way I expected I would, or the way I know I would have a few years back.

I guess I’m just little too far removed from these archetypes. McHenry originally pitched it as High School Musical but Troy Gets Eaten by Zombies, and everyone is about as surface level as you would might expect hearing that. I didn’t really think about that much in years past. I guess I do now.

That isn’t to say I was entirely outside Anna and the Apocalypse or didn’t feel anything during it. Quite the opposite. I felt a lot of things. I was thrilled, excited, tense, and delighted. I literally cried at least one actual tear during a particularly emotional moment, and my girlfriend cried three separate times.

That’s because this film fundamentally works. It’s a modern day Christmas Carol but with more red and less message. It is a film that aspires to be exactly the thing that it is, and it is a triumph in that. Seeing it, this truly unique little thing, in a theater is an unexpected joy, because it’s exactly the kind of movie you never see in a theater. It’s the kind of thing that you only hear about in retrospect, like on a blog or in a Youtube video. Or that shows up as a recommendation in whatever streaming service feed it ultimately winds up in. And you check it out on a whim, and you’re like, “Whoa. That was amazing.”

I knew Anna and the Apocalypse was coming. I have five Facebook friends in common with director John McPhail, at least one of whom has been raving about the film all year. So I’ve been looking forward to it for quite some time. But even so, I successfully avoided knowing anything concrete beyond the premise. I avoided trailers and spoilers, and I’m glad to have done so, because it still felt like I was making a discovery. That I got to do so on the big screen made it feel even more special.

But I look forward to seeing it on a small screen to. As soon as it hits Blu-ray, I’ll be adding Anna and the Apocalypse to my collection. And an annual viewing to my Christmas tradition.

Eight Point Three out of Ten

For many years, my go-to travel method when visiting family for the holidays was the Peter Pan bus. I was never really a fan, but it was affordable. Since getting a day job, I have largely made the switch over to Amtrak. Which has been a general quality of life improvement on those trips.

But don’t let that fool you, because while that statement is definitive, it’s also relative as heck.

One of the worst mornings of my life for reasons not relevant to this review took place in Tokyo early last year. The bad part of it ended with me on the Nozomi Shinkansen, the fastest bullet train in Japan and thus anywhere. Looking out the window, even in my horrendously bad state, was a thrilling experience. Watching Japan zoom by like that was amazing, and the ride was as smooth as Alien Ant Farm’s criminals. Truly a travel experience unlike any I had had before. To then come back to America and jump on an Amtrak train was more than a little disheartening.

Here, I think of trains as The Least Bad Option rather than the actual Best. Cars don’t give you any freedom of movement but give you unlimited freedom to just pull over and stop being in them at any point. Buses typically have a little more space and you don’t have to drive them, but you’re limited by schedules. The smoothness of both rides is outside of their control, entirely at the whims of American infrastructure and other drivers. Are the roads alright? Is there hella traffic? Probably not and almost certainly yes, respectively; during holiday weekends, even moreso. Traveling in or out of New York City, inevitably. The seemingly endless stop and start of those wheeled vehicles is exhausting. And I hate it. Throw in their cramped nature, and it’s something I avoid whenever possible. Though, sometimes I really just can’t afford the nicer option.

This past weekend being Thanksgiving, I traveled. One way, I took Amtrak from the hellhole that is New York Penn Station, seen here at something resembling capacity. It was a pretty easy trip, all things considered, and I got to sit in my favorite spot – more on that in a bit.

The other way, I took a bus, having waited a little bit too long to buy the tickets.  That… wasn’t great. A supposedly three and a half hour trip was a full hour longer; and I hated it.

My real problem with wheeled vehicles is the bouncing. It’s something that you rarely do on a train, because if somehow you started bouncing, it would likely mean the train had left the track and you would die and the last thing you would be talking about was the fact that you felt a little up and down. Even when they’re a little rougher, as Amtrak trains are vs. those in European or Asian countries, the result is mostly swaying. Side to side is fine – certainly, Ariana Grande seems to have no problem with it. Up and down is less so.

Plus, train cars are a bit more open, especially in my preferred spot: the café car. I’m always a little surprised that more people don’t go for that – only three of the few dozen times I’ve taken Amtrak have I not been able to get a seat. There’s more room, since you can typically sit just one person per side of the booth, and the shorter seat backs and typical lack of overhead storage leave a lot more empty space. I can get up and walk without bumping into people. Without adjustable seats, I can write this review without worrying about some guy in front of me jacking the seat back and warping my laptop screen. I have written many reviews in the café car of Amtrak’s Northeast Regional. (I tried rewriting on the bus… but that didn’t work out super.)

The regional slower and therefore cheaper than the fancier Acela. But really, the Acela seems to be faster mostly as a consequence of taking fewer stops and not because the train itself is better. The regional is a little rougher, but neither that nor the better seats and slightly shorter trips really justify the added expense for someone who isn’t particularly wealthy and only takes the train every few months – i.e. me. If it was a frequent occurrence that I could expense to a business, I get it. But for a middle-class schmuck like myself, the regional is generally fine.

Timeliness in general is something of a concern. I have found that Amtrak trains are typically ten-to-fifteen minutes late over the course of a three-hour-thirty-ish trip. Sometimes, they’re entirely on time. Others… not so much. Once, we sat motionless for a full hour because some rando was on the tracks and refused to leave. I was in the café car watching Gravity Falls; so it was fine, except it meant I got home at 1 AM, which wasn’t my favorite. That one also wasn’t their fault. The other ones, well, they definitely were.

But I get less frustrated by long train rides than I do long bus rides or car rides. The fact that I could get up and walk a bit helps. Certainly there’s a lot more length to a train; even just a trip to the bathroom at the other end of a car is more than you could ever really do on a bus. And have you ever been in a bus bathroom? Or tried to use one in New York City traffic? Good golly.

But it can’t be divorced from the reality of Amtrak. It’s the best of bad options, but that doesn’t even make it “good,” let alone great. The prices are high, especially when compared to other countries that do it better, and the trains are… fine. But no one writes home about their experience on Amtrak, because it’s never anything special. I’m fortunate to live in an area that is serviced and reasonably well by it; in most parts of the country, that isn’t the case. The US just doesn’t put the money behind the rail system that it would need to to make it a truly competitive and compelling experience.

Which is sad, because trains are awesome.

Just not these trains.

Six-Point-Six out of Ten

So… this is, arguably, a conflict of interest, because I am credited with many, many things in Reel, from co-writer/director to editor and actor, but many years ago (literally, primary production took place in 2014), I decided that if it ever played in a film festival, I would review it. Somewhere, somehow.

And then it was accepted into the Urban Action Showcase International Action Film Festival. So, here we are.

Because it’s ridiculous that I should not be able to review my own movie. In fact, I don’t think there is anyone on Earth more qualified to do so than the guy who has seen it dozens and dozens times across its various iterations, as I edited it over the course of three and a half years.

It’s a much better movie now than it was in 2015. I had seen it on screens ranging from 5” to 8’, each making for a radically different experience. And now I’ve seen it proper big as part of a AUSIAFF shorts block. Which was exciting.  About three minutes into said block, I turned to JD, who plays and also was the main fight choreographer, and said, “Life Lesson: 90% of short films are terrible.” On this, that whiny baby commenter boy and I agree. In that block, one was infuriatingly bad, two were incomprehensible and also not good, one felt like a rough cut for something that could have been fine, and then there was Reel.

Gerard Chamberlain, with whom I share several credits, was somewhat frustrated by the lack of quality around Reel. “It made me feel less special.”

Me too.

So, it was nice when a couple of days ago, I received an email letting me know that Reel was selected as a Finalist in whatever category it was nominated in. We may not have won, but we’re a step up from the bottom.

Having seen it all those ways, I was disappointed by my reaction to seeing it big. I had gone into the festival expecting to love a short that I had always liked, but I came out feeling a little cool on the whole thing. I liked it… but not as much as I usually had.

Much of that, I think, comes down to the budget in context with the competition. Even if our film was the “best,” it was also clearly the cheapest. The others had larger casts, more locations, CGI, etc. Taken on its own, watched on a laptop or a 50something-inch television or even an 8-foot projection screen, you aren’t as aware of the limitations. I think Reel is a genuinely good looking movie, one that is shot well and certainly looks more expensive than it was, but it wasn’t expensive. And that shows too.

And it probably shows to me more than to most. I have a particular level of insight into the film and its somewhat unsteady production. I can see what was and what is right from the opening moment. Reel has an opening credits sequence. For forty-five seconds, you hear the voice of star/co-writer/co-director Gerard Chamberlain as he gets increasingly frustrated with having to set up both the premise and the stakes of the following fifteen minutes. This happens over black punctuated by White Text. This bothers me. Anything under 16 minutes shouldn’t have opening credits. And certainly not this credits sequence.

But at least you know what’s going on.

The first several cuts of Reel were intentionally opaque. There was this Grand Overarching Meta Narrative, and in fact this opening sequence replaces an entire scene shot at the Rocket to Venus bar in Baltimore. There were other characters and more story, including a couple of things that get called back later that are no longer call backs. None of that story actually ultimately mattered in the sense that the first time any character outright said what we were all fighting about was more than five minutes into a then twenty-minute movie; that part is still in there, but it’s no longer a weird dumb reveal that was a result of our refusal to have that exposited into unrelated dialogue. Now, it’s a reminder of the stakes, which is a good thing to have in narratives.

But even more than that, the fight in the scene was bad. For a movie that lives and dies by the quality of its action, that was unacceptable. No one would keep watching. They’d be right not to.

So it went.

And the movie is better for it. Even if I don’t like those opening credits.

Reel is effectively a series of fight scenes. There are three, the final of which takes up a full quarter of the run time. We had the goal of making the best Baltimore-based martial arts short film – with no clear sense of our competition – and may well win by default. For specific stylistic inspiration, we looked largely to The Raid, a film that is infinitely better than this one. The only action cinema I watched in the week leading up to our main production was the meth lab fight, which is just straight up perfect.

Like many non-Hollywood action movies, Reel lets the fights speak for themselves. Each fighter uses a different style of martial art, each based on one that the actor had experience with, and the camera steps back to let them do the thing they were trained to do. The camera is rarely closer than a medium, and few shots are under a few seconds in length – with the longer ones closer to a minute than not. At no point is there ever a cut on the strike. We shot with a constantly moving camera and exactly zero coverage. We moved from fight segment to fight segment, doing each at least a half dozen times until we had gotten it right. We had no choice. If the choreography and performances weren’t up to snuff, the whole thing would have fallen apart, and we would have had nowhere to hide.

So it’s good that the fights worked. Ya know, after that cut one.

I have found that most people share my opinion that the final fight is the best of the film; it is the longest, the most technically impressive, and just a really cool sequence to watch. It is about a third of the way into it that Reel still grabs me and doesn’t let go until the credits roll.

But there are certain people who don’t feel that way, who prefer the first fight, and it’s worth unpacking why.

Every fight has to tell a self-contained story. Each is about overcoming the odds, something that must be presented in actions before words. For the latter two fights, this is purely the case; the broader narrative, such that it is, essentially stops while people trade blows.

That first fight, with the producer (full disclosure, me), deemphasizes the action story. It more concerned with the characters than the moves they’re making.

Neither of these approaches is inherently better than the other, but Reel benefits from having both. Being the actual introduction to our protagonist, it is critical that this first fight establishes his character. Afterwards? Again, it’s under 16 minutes. At some point, you just need to worry about the punching in this movie whose logo is a fist going through a film reel.

The constant push forward, game-like in a sense, results in a short film that feels even shorter. There are a couple of minutes here and there to catch your breath, but it’s Go Go Go enough that you can just get swept up in it, helped greatly by an original soundtrack by Chase Hawley and Riley Smith that works brilliantly within the movie but is also just really good and something I enjoy listening to. (One of the songs is my ringtone.) It’s never boring, never giving you a reason to turn away or pull out your phone. By the time you really stop to think about it, it’s over. And you think, “Yeah, that was fun.”

And ultimately that is what matters in the end. That is what we learned in the final cut. We had all these ideas for what everything meant and would mean; we tried for literal years to make them work. But the movie that we actually shot was something different than we understood. Eventually, we accepted it. And we made something that I can be and am proud of.

Seven-Point-One out of Ten.

Look, Anthony Jeselnik is controversial. I mentioned to a friend what show I was going to, and he said, “Is he the one who tweeted, ‘Other than that, how was the movie?’ after Aurora?” And I said “Yep” and he said “I love that guy.” But he is a very different kind of controversial than the comedians who, say, whine about the PC police or whatever. Those people tend to toe the line, see what they can get away with. And look, I don’t think that there are topics that should be fundamentally out of bounds for comedians, but saying awful things and then calling them “comedy” doesn’t somehow inoculate you from criticism. Clearly felt racism under the veneer of a joke is still just racism.

Anthony Jeselnik’s comedy doesn’t work like that. He spends his entire hour so far past the line that the questions you ask are different. The over-the-topness of ALL of it is The Point, where casual-ish misogyny (more on that in a bit) is mixed with an extended riff promoting murder suicides. Putting them together, having the line always in the rearview mirror, means that the idea that you might hit your wife is seen as just as sick as intentionally dropping a baby. And they are just as sick as each other! All. Of. It. Is. Bad.

The clearest evidence of The Joke is in the moments where Jeselnik the character begins to brag about his brilliance and how good he is at writing and structuring jokes. In past specials, he has taken to explaining what makes so good. He didn’t do that here, but he definitely spoke down on people who didn’t put two and two together. But all of this braggadocio is played for laughs. Regardless of whether he believes the things he says about himself – he does and should, because he is very good at writing jokes – he welcomes you laughing at him for it. He’s laughing at himself too. Because that’s what it’s all about.

But some people don’t get the joke. Three years ago, I was staying in a Hostel in Prague. I had just found out about Anthony Jeselnik and was listening to his stuff on whatever music service I used back then. Another guy in the four-person room was from Canada. He was rich as heck and really kind of gross in the way he talked about women. But I needed some company being alone in a new country and… whatever, I hung out with a douchebag for a day. Sue me.

Anyways, I played him some Anthony Jeselnik, and that was when I realized that this kind of comedy really is a mirror. Because he was laughing at something he found relatable. I was laughing at something that was objectively terrible. His identifying with what is overtly lampooning humanity’s terrible impulses is unnerving at best. That reaction I found more disconcerting than his offer to show me nudes he had been requesting from women on Snapchat.

So, the experience of seeing (or even enjoying) him requires a little bit of introspection. First, you need to know why you’re laughing. Are you laughing because it’s ridiculous or because you’re awful? And then, you have to ask: When every single joke is too far, what does it say about You if you only laugh sometimes? Every joke is just as expertly written and performed as every other one, so to laugh at some and say “Oh gosh! How dare you!” at others speaks to an unfortunate cognitive dissonance. All. Of. It. Is. Bad.

And yet.

Fire in the Maternity Ward is probably the tamest special yet. One of the reasons I wanted to see this enough to buy a front-row-mezzanine ticket was because I wanted to know what 2018 had done to his comedy. Would he double down on the most problematic stuff, as some – again, wah wah wah PC police – or would he change his targets? And it is distinctly the latter. He doesn’t complain about political correctness. Only once does he talk about the fact that he’s now in a position where maybe he shouldn’t make racist jokes; lesser comedians might have used that to set up a series of racial jokes as a Screw You to The Man or whatever. Someone only vaguely familiar with Jeselnik’s work might expect the same of him. But that isn’t what he does. Because, quite honestly, he’s better than that.

And indeed, much (key word) of the overt and ridiculous misogyny, racism, etc. that was so prevalent in his earlier work is missing from this special. But it doesn’t feel neutered. The jokes remain transgressive as heck – and, as ever, much of the comedy is targeted at children – but some topics just aren’t as funny in 2018. At one point, he tells a story about a white supremacist sending him fan mail. The punch line is fake, but the setup is probably true. And even if it’s not, he’s certainly had the thought, and that thought has had an impact.

What makes seeing Jeselnik different from just hearing his words is watching him soak it all in. He is very deliberate in everything. The steps he takes on stage are as purposeful as the pauses before his punchlines. Seeing him revel in the discomfort of the audience and also enjoy the material that he has crafted – he actually broke into laughter twice before starting a joke, which I hadn’t seen before – gives you a very different impression of who he is than an audio album.

So I’m glad this will be coming to Netflix, that people will get to see his face even more clearly than I could in my excellent seats. His comedy isn’t for everyone. It may not even be for most people. Indeed, a handful of folks walked out during the show, I guess somehow unaware of what they were in for. But if it is your thing, and for the right reasons, then you can’t go wrong with a Fire in the Maternity Ward.

Eight Point Three out of Ten

In college, I had multiple wrist surgeries that didn’t quite heal the way they should have. This means that holding bulky things for extended periods is genuinely painful. The shift towards increasingly large and heavy phones might be great for some, but it’s not for me. (I maintain that there has never been a phone more perfect in the hand than the original Moto X.)
The Pixel 2 had a fairly small screen with ridiculous bezels. Put up against the engineering marvel that was the Samsung Galaxy S8, my previous daily driver, it looked downright ancient. The XL version, by contrast, was… fine. But it was too freaking big.

The Pixel 3 looks like a smaller Pixel 2 XL. It’s fine. It doesn’t have any kind of notch, and it particularly doesn’t have the ludicrous notch that plagues the XL version this generation. I like the clean look of the screen, with rounded corners that fit Google’s new bubbly OS aesthetic.

I remember being excited that my Droid X all the way back in 2010 would be getting Android 2.2 Froyo. I have used every single version of the operating system since; it’s amazing how far it’s come.

The Pixel 3 launched with Android Pie, version 9, which I like well enough but am not going to delve into it because it doesn’t really matter and other people have already done it better. What matters is that the Pixel 3 runs it beautifully. I’ve never had such a smooth Android experience. I replaced the stock launcher with Action Launcher, which makes much better use of gestures than Android itself, those required on Google’s latest hardware. That is dumb. Action Launcher is great. Five stars.

It’s a cliche that the best camera is the one you have with you, something that must be true because of how words work, but there are two radically different lessons you could take from it:

1) Don’t worry too much about what you’re shooting with

2) Make sure you’ve always got a good camera on you

Since we here on The Week I Review believe that authorial intent is irrelevant, I’m going to focus on the latter as it pertains to the Pixel 3.
But first, a brief digression: My XT-2 replaced a Fujifilm X100T rangefinder. I loved that camera, which came with me to three continents, for the photos it took and the colors it had in those sweet sweet jpegs. Its small body meant I could just throw it into my bag and not think too hard about it.

But the video was terrible. So I traded up. And while I’m very happy with most of the XT-2, I miss the smallness and the inconspicuousness of the X100T.

But even that has nothing on a phone, which is even more inconspicuous and also infinitely accessible.

And while the Pixel 3 certainly isn’t versatile or straight up fun to shoot with as those Fuji cameras, I finally feel like my phone can act as a more-than-capable backup for when the bulk of a bigger body just isn’t practical. For stills, anyway.

Unlike many of its contemporaries, the Pixel 3 flips the sensor count to two front and one rear. In lieu of a rear “telephoto” that’s so common, there’s an additional wider-angle selfie cam, undoubtedly great for all those group shots I would take if I, ya know, had groups of friends to take them with.
But software is the new hardware. The Pixel does not have a top-tier camera because it has the best sensor or optics; it has the best software. The processing capabilities on display with all of Google’s phones take images that any flagship phone could take and bring them to the next level. All of these really involve taking a number of photos and merging them together with algorithms that ??? until Profit. HDR+ is the typical tech that is on everything, and it gives very good dynamic range to image – though it can be a little too aggressive at times for my taste.

That missing second rear lens? Ostensibly obsolete in the face of Google’s SUPER RES ZOOM, which uses the motions in your hand to simulate an existing sensor technology called pixel shifting, merging multiple photos taken slightly apart from each other to increase overall image resolution before performing the zoom. It’s unequivocally better than a regular digital implementation, but whether it is a genuine replacement for a second camera is another matter and not one I feel compelled to litigate.

The most notable is Night Sight, a genuinely mind boggling technology that let you take photos in the dark that just… stop being dark. As I record this, it’s not officially released, but a downloadable version of it is accessible nonetheless, and I felt compelled to try it before doing this. It lives up to the hype. I assume it’s the opposite of SmartHDR+, taking a ton of slightly overexposed photos and cleaning them up, but I don’t know. It’s probably just magic.

Concerns that the images would become too much like the daytime and negatively impact desired composition can be put to rest; you have the same ability to alter the exposure that you always do, so Night Sight can result in better image quality in the darkness with the same apparent exposure. Full stop: It’s amazing.

Also of note, because there I have seen some confusion about this point: none of the cameras on the Pixel 3 have optical image stabilization. Instead, they have very good digital stabilization that, again, relates to the higher quality of their software relative to the competition. I’m shocked that I believe even think it, but the Pixel 3 just doesn’t need OIS. Even when using Night Shift, which requires at least a full second while the phone collects light, any little jitters your hands might do in that time don’t result in any apparent blurriness in the image.

Unfortunately, the video capabilities don’t support all of these wonderful features. Which makes sense. All of that processing of multiple shots just to get one good image? It takes time. Heck, a Night Sight photo can take another 30 seconds or so to finish processing after you’ve gone off to other things before it actually becomes that amazing incredible thing.

So… that won’t work at 24-plus frames per second. Instead, you’re left with the capabilities of the sensor, and the flaws in it are glaring.

What’s odd about it, and where I fell into a trap with the first go, is that on the screen of the Pixel 3, it honestly looks fine – pretty good, even. It’s only when I brought it into Premiere that my eyes basically started to bleed.
The problem is partially one of dynamic range and also of the limitations of camera apps on Android. If you want to take photos, you can do all kinds of specific controls; but if you want more control over your video, you’re pretty much out of luck. You can bring down the exposure, and that’s basically it. But it’s also harder to realize when the exposure is totally out of whack. If I press record and then turn the phone around to record me with the rear lens, I’ve got no indication until it’s too late that it didn’t work out properly. 

An unfortunate side effect of the Pixel 3’s smaller size is that it has a smaller battery to match. This is a problem plaguing the industry – if you want a battery, get a big screen. I would gladly take a thicker phone with a smaller screen, but that’s just not a thing that exists outside of, like, Sony’s Compact line. The battery life isn’t terrible – it’s better than my S8 was – but if I follow my typical, probably above average media consumption habits, then I don’t make it until the time I would otherwise plug it in for the night. This is a shame.

Speaking of the S8, one of the big draws for me last time I was in phone acquisition mode was that it had retained it’s headphone jack in the face of overwhelming, uh, courage, on the part of its competition. At the time, I used exclusively wired headphones, and the prospect of dongle life, particularly given my many consecutive hours of media that probably ultimately requires mid-day charging, was enough to keep me away. Now, I primarily use a pair of Bluetooth headphones, so the calculus is different. To Google’s credit, both USB Type-C headphones and a short 3.5mm dongle are included. I largely stopped wearing earbuds a couple years ago because a doctor told me to, but The Verge speaks highly of these, so their inclusion isn’t nothing.

Not of particular consequence but something I care about is the implementation of the digital well-being functionality intended to make us look at our phones less. Though it’s still in beta, it still offers some built in app timers and limiters as well as, most significantly for me, a grayscale button built right into the quick settings panel.

It’s been shown – evidence in the description – that the vibrant colors of a smartphone play a large factor in their “addictiveness,” so a way to make people stare at them less is to drain that color away. Then, when I’m not watching a video or taking a photo, I keep them off, and it really does make a difference. Turning them back on is kind of startling, actually; and sometimes I keep it off even when videos play. It’s not like this kind of thing wasn’t possible before, but the added convenience of it being built into the system right alongside the toggles for Wi-Fi, Airplane Mode, etc. is something I really appreciate.

And it really does make me want to stare at my phone less. And also go back to shooting photos in Black and White.

It’s this kind of thing that makes Google’s offering stand out in ways small and large. Some of this stuff will come to other phones, but they’ll always be on Google’s first. And some things Google is just going to keep to themselves, at least for the foreseeable future. Those sorts of little life conveniences go a long way towards justifying the thing’s cost.

To kind of little life convenience goes a long way towards justifying the thing’s cost.

The Pixel 3 starts at $800, a full $150 more than its predecessor, and the lack of expandable storage means that the 64GB version just isn’t going to cut it for most people. We’re now, sadly, in the era of the $1000 flagship, and while the Pixel 3 isn’t quite there, its more sizable sibling is; these phones are being put up against the new iPhones and Galaxy Ss and Notes and etc. And sure, they’re not as immediately impressive as any of those, but I don’t have any buyer’s remorse. I like the Pixel 3. It’s smooth as heck, has a pretty swell imaging system, and is the only Android phone released in 2018 guaranteed to be getting timely updates in 2020. And that counts for a lot.

Eight-Point-Two out of Ten

Not every IMAX Experience is the same. There are the actual IMAX theaters, with their screens the size of buildings with a unique, atypically tall aspect ratio. Then, there are the so-called LIEMAX theaters, which have nice, big screens, but they’re basically just better regular theater screens; they cannot show a full IMAX 70mm print in all its vertically intended glory. There are further between IMAX Digital and IMAX Laser projections, but that’s beyond the scope of this discussion. Point is: I saw First Man on a proper IMAX screen, the way it was ostensibly intended to be seen.

And now, a slight digression:

I have met First Man’s director, Damien Chazelle, at an after-party following the New York Film Festival premiere of his first film, Whiplash. I was talking about how much I liked the movie to someone else, and he said, “Oh, that guy over there? Hold on.” And then he brought me over. Damien was sitting on a couch talking to two other people and I then interrupted to tell him that his movie was fucking amazing. I asked if I could have a hug and he obliged. He asked my name, and I said it was Alec and he said his was Damien and I said I know, your movie was fucking amazing. Then I walked away.

(Nailed it!)

I found him on Facebook later; I wanted to send him my glowing review of the film, since I’ve found that first-time directors are excited by that kind of thing. We Facebook Messengered briefly. He was very, very nice. He told me to hit him up if I was ever in LA. He has since become an Academy-Award Winning Director. I did not do that on my recent trip. (SNAP)

But this is all to say that I really, really like Damien Chazelle. And he has shown talent enough already that I’ll follow him anywhere. Even the moon.

First Man is a very good film. It’s well-written, well-paced, and well-acted. I know nothing about Niel Armstrong, and this movie will serve as all I’ll ever learn about him; it did not instill in me a fascination with the man, but it invested me in his story for just under two and a half hours. Whether the depiction is “accurate” or not, it felt real. He felt human, like someone who existed outside of the confines of the theater screen. And the world is beautifully rendered, totally nailing the 60s aesthetic – or so believes someone who did not live through that era – and using some of the most effective CGI I’ve ever seen; with a couple of as brief exceptions, I couldn’t see the seams even when I looked for them. I have some quibbles with the camerawork, but we’ll get into those later.

The hard right, genre-wise, that Chazelle took after the widely beloved La La Land is exactly what he needed to do to prove his versatility at this point in his career. Go from the 3ish million dollar indie drama in Whiplash to the 30ish million movie musical in La La Land to now the 60ish million space biopic First Man does so in spades.

One of the perks of the step up in budget was that Chazelle and co could afford to use IMAX 70mm film cameras for the climactic scene on the moon. There’s something mildly frustrating about its prevalence in the marketing, since the sequence doesn’t come until the last half hour or so, but it’s also not like a biopic about Niel Armstrong wasn’t going to have these scenes, so this wasn’t some big twist to be hidden.

Prior to IMAX screenings of Mission Impossible Fallout (4.5 stars), they showed a clip from First Man as well a brief montage of on-moon imagery utilizing the full glory of the screen. So, I knew what to expect on two fronts: the gorgeousness of those epic moon shots and also the shakiness of what would precede it.

Six and a half years ago (oh my gosh…) I wrote about how the first Hunger Games film, which I greatly enjoyed, revealed flaws in the IMAX Experience. The camera moves constantly and intensely. Afterwards, my head hurt. And from that point on, I decided not to take it for granted that the IMAX version of a film would be superior.

First Man complicates this, because the exception has been, of course, films that actually used IMAX cameras. Checking the Wikipedia list of studio films partially shot using in IMAX 70mm – the largest movie film format by a significant margin, I’ve only missed two: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Star Trek Into Darkness.

Of the other nine, I think it’s worth noting that hardcore shakycam is a rarity. Seen in the large format, there is only the benefit of the added screen real estate with none of the exhausting downside. First Man isn’t that. The first fifteen to twenty minutes of First Man would be exhausting on a decently sized television. In IMAX, it’s pain-inducing. Any time a ship is doing anything, the camera goes all over the place, particularly in closeups. It definitely succeeds in making you feel like a part of the moment, as the rumbling of the rocket would, one assume, feel like that. But the sheer scale of it will probably make some folks queasy. And it’s not just during the actiony sequences; two characters talking can still look like something from a Bourne film, and though you do get acclimated to it, you never stop being aware of it.

But what about the IMAX itself? Having seen some of it, I knew what to expect but that didn’t make me any less excited to see it again. I have long believed that there is nothing more well suited to such an expansive image than the grandeur of space. Of the Christopher Nolan films with IMAX footage, I believe that Interstellar uses it best because The IMAX Experience is so tied to understanding the enormity of what the characters are doing. Space exploration is a crazy thing. It’s one of the craziest things humanity has ever done, and certainly one of the most impressive. Most of us will never get to experience that; we must do so vicariously: 2001: A Space Oddysey, Gravity, Interstellar. These are films where big is not just better but is vital.

First Man lacks some of this vitality because so little of it takes place in space, and even less is shot in IMAX. Only the moon walk is. *But* the rapid transition from one format to the other is a truly spectacular moment in cinema; someone in the audience literally shouted “WHOA” as it happened, and understandably so. Going back to this concept of enormity, the moment that changes everything is the one where Armstrong leaves the pod. As you’re reminded throughout, the Russians have beat the Americans to every other major milestone; only the moon remains out of reach. So the simple act of going into space, as much as I would have loved to see in full, doesn’t carry nearly the weight that the grand walk does.

And oh so grand. Released footage showing that first step cropped to match the rest of the film shows only a part of that crucial, incredible moment. In the full glory of a four story IMAX theater, you see it all. And it’s like nothing else. Truly, it feels out of this world.

Eight Point Six out of Ten