The following post contains language
that could be triggering.
If one tries to explain why they consider the ‘fall of the Roman Empire’ docudrama Caligula great, civilians won’t get it.
Then you show it to them, and not only will they still not get it, they are unlikely to speak with you again. Caligula is an ugly movie, in technique; aesthetic; and content combined (this is the Theatrical Version I’m talking about, presently).
[cont’d]
You are forgiven for thinking “It Ends With Us” (aka. IEWU) is an ‘important’ movie, what with all the rigamarole behind its scenes. Trust me to tell you like it is, and IEWU did not end soon enough.
Lion’s share of blame is awarded to director/star Justin Baldoni, and not for the same reasons as his now-mangled future career prospects: long passages are staged & shot flatly like community theatre, with a never-ending rooftop meet-cute beheading the pacing right out of the gate; line-readings recall Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” built on plot reaction rather than action; and Blake Lively’s Lily Bloom is fitted into tight, sexy tops that certainly made me envious of her current beau Ryan Reynolds, but are a betrayal of the self-taught defences of her character on-screen.
Original author Colleen Hoover ain’t no saint neither, and IEWU’s greatest fault is its disingenuous take on domestic violence. These handful of scenes are told with an unreliable presentation, tricking the audience into wondering whether Baldoni’s toxic neurosurgeon Ryle isn’t such a bad guy… until the contemptuous slow-motion reveal in the third-act spells it out.
It’s hard to say whether IEWU would have benefitted from an unflinching eye opposed to the choppy PG-13 implications we got here instead. What’s crystal-clear, however, is both leads’ reverse dramatic-irony that would be overanalyzed in literary form (such as Ryle’s shoulder-shrugging in the climax) lands here with a thud because of the meandering cinematic handling of the core narrative. The hot & heavy courting Lily puts Ryle through is starkly contrasted to how easily triggered she is, despite his adamance of love, and neither’s behaviour is ever studied beyond its broad strokes.
This isn’t to fault Lively’s performance, which is about as good as the material will allow, but I only ever had empathy for Amy Morton’s underused Mama Bloom. Certain people in life continue to make poor choices despite being compulsively aware of the signs, but a romance centered around these otherwise well-educated, well-intentioned one-percenters who all run their own businesses is perhaps the wrong podium.
It Ends With Us is an overlong message movie that fails in its amateur, sanitized telling. Only you, the potential viewer, know whether you would have paid full price to see this in theatres. At what point can I walk out and still get a refund?
Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Keeping up with all the drama, I was expecting an oral sex scene after Lively’s lawsuit mentioned that Baldoni wanted more, only to find there wasn’t any simulated sex in the movie at all. Are you telling me that Justin wanted an oral sex scene just because? Does its feuding leads impact your impressions of the film itself? Are you like me, and the drama is the reason you decided to watch it in the first place? Let us know in the comments below!
they exit the saloon doors
one after another like a
fashion show,
or open functions on an AS400
or ants, out of woodwork
marching vertically along split trenches of bark,
their petite outlines shadowed by the street lights
of the car park.
i don’t know how much time has passed.
i wasn’t keeping track, and
i’m almost hooting ash.
when do i have to go back?
so it looks more like i’m smoking
and less like a jackass?
it’s a great excuse, to be so old-fashioned
you’d rather you lived in an era you were able
than every five minutes having to excuse yourself
from the table.
My 2007 grip & gaffing instructor Dave Gordon used the term “Golden Topping Land” (after the artificial popcorn butter) to denote a cinema audience’s suspension of disbelief, so long as nothing dumb happens in the story, or a microphone dips into the shot. It’s to “Subservience’s” credit that it had me in Golden Topping Land its whole duration, save two key points: trying to pass a black Tesla off as an electric Mustang, and Megan Fox’s lack of neck make-up.
I’m a chauvinist: there I was the morning after watching, recommending it to someone as “the Megan Fox sex-bot movie on Netflix”. Yes, Megan pretty-much shows as much of her body here that a R-rating & no-nipple clause will allow. But Subservience has more up its sleeve than mere sleeze, not the least of which its three leads: all of whom put out intense performances like they’re out to prove something.
It’s been easy to write off Megan’s acting career as ostentatious, but she does try serious work when & where the industry will allow (“Passion Play”; “Midnight in the Switchgrass”) and she presents great value to the role here, despite it being a robot, and another vessel in a filmography defined by transfixing the male gaze. Her gender-swapped body double Michele Morrone (“365 Days”) is here as well, playing Megan’s stooge, and Madeline Zima as Mike’s terminally-ill wife. Madeline shocked me since, growing up with “The Nanny,” I wasn’t prepared to see little Gracie fully grown & fully naked. She puts on a persuasive show, though, and could find work in more erotic thrillers moving forward, if that’s what she decides.
The most pronounced flaw is in the film’s otherwise-strong script, which introduces dynamic world-building that plays a passive second to the movie’s main focus, which is Megan usurping the family. A subplot about a construction crew being replaced raises valid questions about the world’s future labour force, but it doesn’t go anywhere narratively except to illustrate that Megan has murderous tendencies, when the same point is already proven in her attempts to kill Madeline.
Subservience’s on-the-nose dialogue about modern relationships is compelling enough without being overcomplicated by empty lore, or its two endings. Producers could have saved some money, too, had they just concentrated on the sex-bot in the house. That part of the movie is good, for reasons other than solely Megan, Michele, or Madeline’s smokey stares.
Poster sourced from impawards.com. I never thought I would say this, but Subservience’s broader strokes may have played better had the film been a limited series instead. What do you think? Why are the surgeons’ mouths sealed shut? What is the social structure of a society where all labour is replaced by automation? Just ‘what’ were those things on the soles of Megan’s shoes? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
Poppy Prescott gives me impure thoughts.
You’ve heard of Disney animators slipping naughty easter-eggs into their features. These were blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em moments you’d catch on repeat viewings: there was no way anything more than a few milliseconds of indiscretion could make it passed pre-2000 executives; a ratings board; test audiences; and any other stop-gaps preceding a theatrical release.
But Disney doesn’t ride today’s market solo anymore, and – speaking generally – the competition is becoming more shameless for your dollar. This isn’t to say modern family movies are inundated with sex & violence: I’m not that out of touch. But you can crack a specially-worded joke in a diplomatic way and still keep your coveted PG rating.
Case-in-point: “Despicable Me 4″‘s Poppy. As voiced by Joey King (who just headlined Netflix’s “Uglies”), Poppy is a bratty, overprivileged redhead, sporting a skirt; braces; freckles; and a lisp, and who blackmails & uses Gru… for a heist! Poppy’s age isn’t explicitly stated but I trust my ten-second Google search that labelled her 14.
King’s voice work is chipper and snotty: just how it needs to be. But Poppy doesn’t speak until three-scenes-in, after she’s already thrown Gru knowing glances that communicate, as per the plot, that she knows his secret identity. But all I saw in these lingering shots were Alicia Silverstone from “The Crush” or Drew Barrymore from “Poison Ivy”: villains from a special androcentristic subsection of 90’s erotic thrillers that revolved around psychotic, hypersexual adolescent homewreckers.
My post-secondary discipline was live-action film – not animation. The closest my practice ever got was having to re-record dialogue when a covert HVAC system went off in the background of a shot. In that case, the intention of the scene had already been established. We just did the audio again: somewhere quiet, and hopefully to the same level of emotion as the video. What I want to know then is whether DM4’s visual creatives told King about their non-verbal goals for Poppy before she recorded the dialogue, or if King found out what they did at the premiere while everyone around her made the same lewd joke about what they were seeing.
There’s no way an innocent kid in the audience is detecting a sexual undercurrent in their new Minions movie. That’s just for us mature adult credit card holders.
Poster sourced from impawards.com. If you even care at this point, the overall movie was fine: the Minions do their thing; voice-leads Steve Carell & Will Ferrell do their thing; and there’s a madcap energy that keeps the pace moving even when the comedy fell on the ears of the wrong demographic. If I had to give it a proper star rating, I’d throw it a 2 out of 5. Anything to add to the conversation? That’s what the comment box below is for!
