The Devil Wears Disney

A short time before I heard they were making this I remember talking about how the 1961 Cruella de Vil was so whitetrash—chainsmoking, haggard, skinny, boozy, raspy voiced. And about just how messed up it is that she wants to make a coat out of all those dogs. Why does she want to kill them all? How many does it even take to make the coat? What a great villain. Maybe the best Disney villain?

Cruella (2021, Craig Gillespie) is a punk fashion-war crime comedy. Cruella is so lively, energetic, and impassioned throughout that it makes it imperative to retire the phrase “over the top,” when considering it. Cruella is punk. There’s a difference. 

     Our story begins in London in the early ‘60s and technically in addition to punk, there’s also a glam influence (by way of Cruella’s Velvet Goldmine pal more later). What’s so great about the prologue that introduces us to this kid punker is we get a Disney movie not only approving of a child who hates school and gets expelled for persistent misbehavior but casting her as a hero while doing so. The whole movie even rewards grown up Cruella for cleverly devising criminal endeavors to achieve her goals—petty theft, forgery, vandalism, grand larceny. Cruella captures how fun it is to be young and punk.

     The British Invasion soundtrack gives momentum to the excitement, but there’s also some storybook fairytale origin myth musicboxsymphonic original score passages that pull the empathy strings we need to root for this loveable misfit. Oh how perfect this role is to let Emma Stone fully display her range: from subtle awkward facial expressions and bumbling, meek ragamuffin, to powerful, strutting, iron-fisted dominatrix. And unlike the cartoon, Stone’s face isn’t sharp and angular. It’s round, soft and delicate.

     There’s a seamless unmotivated establishing tracking shot of Liberty that rushes through a bustling crowd through an interior maze finding Cruella scrubbing the floor in the loo that’s all done in one take (or so it seems), which is pretty cool. And similarly striking from a technical aspect is the guerrilla fashion show montage—probably highlight of the movie, seriously, goosebumbs.

     Cruella as a comedy mostly hits hardest with its hero’s insolent wit, and disdainful insults—when she smacks that box of Cocoa Krispies off the table, what pitch perfect timing and execution. But the actor who plays HORACE got the most laughs from me. I’d only seen this dude in Richard Jewell (2019, Clint Eastwood), and the tone in that movie was so serious I never felt like I could laugh at him. (Also rare instance where Eastwood cast an “unknown” in a lead I think.) But in Cruella he’s basically cast as the same type as far as his ineptitude and sincerity chemistry goes, yet it’s finally okay to laugh at him. Something about that guy kills me.

     Another scene worth mentioning in regard to the Lubitsch touch working by way of Cruella’s sophisticated wit is at the end. When she’s at the fountain, visiting the ghost, and she’s giving her monologue, Cruella concludes it beginning with a line that starts out with: “Must dash…” Then after another scene, when Cruella is back, she’s got a moustache. I mean for real, wow. Love it.

 

In conclusion, the hero’s goal is to best her adversary—a heartless, cold, homicidal megalomaniac. And we love her for it. Yeah I know the bit with the rat served on a covered dish comes from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962, Robert Aldrich), but I gotta exploit this loose connection to an advert from the director I believe brought punk into cinema better than any other:

 

Prediction: 2022 Oscar for Best Costume Design 

5/27/2021 AMC Madison Yards 8

Atlanta, GA

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Do all movies have a plot?

Here’s a test: when you’re watching a movie if you were to ask yourself, “what is this about?” would you be able to answer? Almost every single movie’s job is to give the viewer a plot to follow, which then reaches its climax, and ultimately is resolved. Nearly every movie is about what happens in terms of plot.
     When you think of weird, baffling movies, which come to mind? Is there a director you can name who you’d associate with making movies that could be described as weird? David Lynch? Charlie Kaufman? Terrence Malick?

I. Movies with No Plot

The first film I can think of without a plot is L’Avventura (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni). It starts off about a young woman who goes missing on a boating trip, and then follows those close to her as they search for her. For a little while at least. And then they stop looking. And the young woman is forgotten. The rest of the movie isn’t about anything resembling a plot. Nevertheless, L'Avventura is cohesive and calculated down to every last detail. By the time it's over, you get what it's trying to say. 

     Then there’s Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Alain Resnais). The whole thing takes place in this resort. And as far as plot goes, you never know whether what anyone’s talking about is meaningful in any way to you as a viewer. It’s fun. It’s like trying to put together a puzzle, but the pieces don’t fit together. Last Year at Marienbad is an island. There’s never been anything else like it. It draws you in. It feels like a movie. It is a movie. But from the first few minutes onwards, there’s never any exposition or plot that builds into anything. It never gives you anything resembling a plot, I love it so—maybe the most stylishly chic movie ever made.

     Playtime (1967, Jacques Tati) doesn't have a plot. And I'm not sure whether that befits its comedy or sense of modern calamity better, but probably both. In Playtime, there's always a tendency for the characters to wander off and get lost, which always makes it fresh and preserves its spontaneity. Also owing to its playfulness is its lack of dialogue from the main character. Playtime might also be the best title for a movie without a plot.

     I've only seen Mirror (1975, Andrei Tarkovsky) a couple of times over the years and I humbly admit I don't even know what it's about but I do know it does't have a plot. But it's Tarkovsky, so y'know rain dripping inside dilapidated houses? But seriously I can't wait to see it again. 

     What many of these examples have in common is their innate cinematic qualities—textures, senses, setting. They convey so much that they don’t need a plot. Gummo (1997, Harmony Korine) is another example of these rarest of occurrences. Gummo might also bear the strongest signs of a kind of anarchist approach to narrative conventions. It’s too inspired to conform to a plot structure. Gummo is the most stylishly garbage movie ever made.

     Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch) exists as an improvisational experiment in exploring pure cinema. I made the mistake of reading as many interpretations as I could find about the meanings of Lost Highway (1997, Lynch) and Mulholland Dr. (2001, Lynch) to compare against my own ideas. So unfortunately, for me, Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr. have plots. But not Inland Empire. I’ll never know what happened to NIKKI GRACE. And I’m blissfully thankful not to. In a way I’d be happy if Lynch never made another movie because his filmography would be bookended by his two most purely cinematic films.

 

II. Movies with an Underdeveloped Plot

Another test to determine the plot of movie is to ask: what was the story about? Almost always a story is constructed based on a causal effect, and progresses raising the stakes of the goal/obstacle pursued by the central protagonist. Ever watch a movie and feel like there wasn’t the payoff you were expecting? Either the movie sucks or, the filmmaker wants you to experience something more challenging (and sometimes more rewarding).

     When Weekend (1967, Jean-Luc Godard) heralded the end of cinema, its claim is interesting to ponder in the context of it coinciding with Godard’s break with plot-driven filmmaking. And while for the most part Godard has spent the rest of his career making political or autobiographical or essay films, there was that 80s period where he returned to narrative films, yet managed to stay as non-conformist as ever.

     In MASH (1970, Robert Altman) the war’s already well under way when its story begins, and keeps going on after the end of the movie. Do they ever even mention which war it is? MASH doesn’t care because it’s too cool. A recalcitrant attitude is what MASH is about, and Altman ingeniously structures its narrative to embody this by disobeying the orders of established plot conventions. HAWKEYE and TRAPPER don’t pursue any objectives. (It could be said that their one goal is to subvert authority, but I’m only speaking in terms of plot.) 

     Next he follows up with Brewster McCloud (1970, Altman). As the narrative engine gets moving it’s not at all clear what the film is about. What we get are assorted bird references of several varieties. But why? It doesn’t matter. If it does, this movie’s not for you. At the climax of the film, when the suspect is apprehended, the narrative disintegrates. Because Altman doesn’t care about solving the crime, which would be conforming to a conventional narrative structure. Again it’s as though Altman wants to be able to make a film without a plot. 

     The dark side to Altman’s fun anti-authoritarian riffs is Michael Haneke’s austere manipulation of narrative forms to subvert our genre and character expectations subtly, in pursuit of an underlying, universally human message. Or in the case of Funny Games (2007, Haneke) to critique our relationship to and perception of a specific type of genre’s narrative devices as means of exploitation that capitalize on its audience's hunger for sadistic plot-points (yeah I said 2007). But that’s Haneke’s thing. The Piano Teacher (2001) seems like it’s gonna be about this spinster who has the hots for her young pupil and them having a steamy affair right? In Time of the Wolf (2003) do we get to find out how the world ended or what becomes of the survivors? Will we find out in Caché (2005) who’s been sending the tapes and why? Haneke has this beautiful way of making the question of “what is this about?” simultaneously elusive and enlightening.

 

III. Movies with a Deliberately Mysterious Plot

     What about movies like Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman) or Images (1972, Altman)? Lumping unreliable narrator and identity swaps together, it’s best to separate these from questions about plot. I mean yeah the narrator technically falls under the category of plot, but these are usually stories told conventionally with said twist built in.

 

IV. Conclusion

In McKee’s book on screenwriting, in the section he categorizes their different types, he claims that all movies have a plot. This post is an attempt to see if I were able to refute that claim. 

     Warhol’s entire staggering cinematic output, his pre-Morrissey 16mm films of the ‘60s eschew plot, but they’re basically avant-garde reality TV shot with a fixed camera. And I know I must sound lazy by not delving into the whole 60s experimental scene like Kuchar, Brakhage, Benning and those types, but I don’t consider their work “movies.” And I know there are also several of those movies where it's mostly just two people talking, but why bother?

Dregs's Mousetrap

By no means do I have any kind of background that qualifies me to write about rap music. But I have been listening to a lot of it for the past few years now. And I know what I like. That might be enough?
     Here I will share some of my favorite releases, limited specifically to Atlanta rappers, within a period roughly ranging from the past 8 years, organized by artist:

 

 

21 Savage

21 Savage is my favorite Atlanta rapper because everything he’s put out since Savage Mode (2016) in their own right are all formidable, consistently and thoroughly well-executed achievements I’ve yet to get tired of: Issa Album (2017), Without Warning (2017), and I Am > I Was (2018). His style of vocals is so minimal he practically speaks his verses. And his unyielding trademark habit of interspersing “21,” “straight up,” “oh god,” and “pussy,” 

on his tracks kills me.     

     But Savage Mode II (2020) so far has been the most exciting. With its cover reminiscent of mid-90s No Limit, and narrated by Morgan Freeman, it feels like 21’s best yet. If I were to single out any particular aspect of 21 Savage’s subject matter, it’s the subject of gunplay.

 

Future

For me Future will always be the most important Atlanta rapper. His 2014 mixtape, Monster remains the most strikingly inspired, auspicious, and untouchable. It’s mean, unapologetic, gritty, and overly-confident. It’s wonderful. Future is also the Atlanta rapper I’ve probably spent the most time listening to and where it all started for me. Beast Mode (2015), 56 Nights (2015), DS2 (2015), Evol (2016), and Future (2016) are for me, his prime—an insane run of indefatigable quality output. 

     Although odd as it may seem, I gotta single out the Purple Reign (2016) mixtape for its brooding, melancholy, singularity of tone. It stands out to me as his Moon Pix.

 

Young Thug

Thugga’s reign from the mixtapes Barter 6 (2015), Slime Season (2015), Slime Season 2 (2015), I’m Up (2016), and Slime Season 3 (2016) are what did it for me. Everything he’s ever done sounds ahead of its time. But it’s this run I find most satisfying. Thugga’s vocals sound weird in the best possible sense of the word. His voice sounds weird, he does weird things with it, and his beats surround him in a world of his own individual style. He can also make raunchy into poetry.

     Slime Seson 2 is what I’d select as my desert island mixtape from Young Thug, but after I thought I’d lost interest in him, the album So Much Fun (2019) finally came out and restored all of my faith in his talent. I can’t wait for more.

 

Lil Baby

Entering the '20s, Lil Baby would appear to have the broadest appeal among the Atlanta rappers. His unique voice, so easily identifiable, first caught my attention by way of Harder Than Hard (2017), Too Hard (2017), Harder Than Ever (2018), and Street Gossip (2018). I always thought he sounded autotuned but cool. Was he ever autotuned or is that just the way his voice sounds? I don’t even know anymore. 

     Now maybe it’s because I’m out of touch with the media, I don’t know, but it seemed like overnight when My Turn (2020) came out Lil Baby blew up way beyond I’d had any idea he’d gotten. My Turn also works for me as an album that I can listen to for way longer than his earlier stuff. Y’know, that phase when you’ve listened to a new album for so many times and you finally move on? My Turn never expired for me. It was also big to me because last summer I heard it bompin from the streets almost every other day.

 

To summarize: 21 Savage, Future, Young Thug, and Lil Baby for me would be, as Sarris would say, the Pantheon.

 

Playboi Carti

If I thought Young Thug was odd, Playboi Carti caused me to become enamored with a style of vocals that at times I still question whether or not is absurdly stupid or abstractly sublime. With only three releases so far, which I’ve indulged heavily in each of, I can’t really compare any qualitative significances between them. Playboi Carti (2017) and Die Lit (2018) boast his signature bubbly, babytalk-laden ebullience. And while sometimes I’m not sure what Playboi Carti does can be called rap, I consider him as someone who has the courage to ignore the traditional forms in favor of pursuing his own modes of expression above all else. So, yes, rap.

     Whole Lotta Red (2020) kinda shies away from the babytalk, obviously. But I’m still happy to see where he’s going with his sound. I gotta respect however he chooses to experiment at this point.

 

Young Nudy

The Slime Ball mixtapes and Nudy Land (2017) take a casual non-urgent approach to horrorcore. That’s what I like about Nudy: he doesn’t seem to have anything to prove. Or at times it almost seems like he doesn’t really have a strong work ethic—in a cool way. His talents are elsewhere. He’s clever, funny, and dark. But aren’t all of the rappers I’ve mentioned? Young Nudy’s street. He’s like buying local. Sometimes you just wanna groove on something that sets the mellow.

     Sli’merre (2019) is my go to lately because of Pi’erre Bourne (who also supplies Playboi Carti’s early beats among others). That’s not to say Anyways (2020) is any less than what I’ve come to expect from Nudy nor that I’m anything but hyped for Dr. Ev4l (2021).

 

Lil Yachty

Can a rapper be hard and goofy? The Lil Boat (2016) mixtape was impossible to resist. Yachty’s heavy autotuned crooning over illegal Nintendo samples and narratives split between Lil Yachty and his alter ego Lil Boat make for a fun and innocently fresh voyage.

     Then Lil Boat 2 (2018) came later and was such a contrast to that first mixtape one wonders why it was titled as having anything to do with its predecessor. Lil Boat 2 isn’t playful, it’s a shoving match. And where is Darnell Boat? From among the Yachty’s output, I couldn’t choose between Lil Boat or Lil Boat 2 because together they’re both all I could ask or want from him.

 

Bankroll Fresh

Ah Bankroll takes me back to the gangsta rap I’d dreamed of discovering when I was a kid. Bankroll is so hood he almost makes everyone else come off as rap cap. Life of a Hot Boy (2015) and Life of a Hot Boy 2: Real Trapper (2015) feel like they came from back in the 20^th century when rap still felt dangerous. In fact his style is so abrasive I can only handle it for so long before I need a break. But I need Bankroll Fresh, to be inspired by and reminded of his sheer audacity. There’s something underground about his music too. It’s something to be shared and discovered.

The Dead Don't Die

Earlier this year we got to see Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021, Zack Snyder). And if I can find joy in watching 4 hours of a superhero movie that I’d already seen in a different form previously; and if I can still be a fan of Watchmen (2009, Snyder) this long after its theatrical release (having doubted my high opinion of it would last), I feel assured in my optimism for what comes next from him.

     But what do I expect from him? Foremost, there’s the abundance of 120fps (or higher) shots. Something about the way it’s incorporated into his aesthetic and the way he uses it still captivates me. And beyond that there’s a sense of mourning. But is trauma becoming overused in genre films lately? Not for me, if done right.

Army of the Dead (2021, Snyder) may combine too many disparate genre ingredients for its own good. Or maybe not? I’m also thinking about my own initial unfledged negative reaction to seeing The Dead Don’t Die (2019, Jim Jarmusch) in the theater. After subsequent viewings it’s earned a cult status and I can rewatch it to death.

     Army of the Dead is a heist movie, but with zombies. But it’s also an action movie. But it’s also, as we find out in the second act so I must be vague to avoid spoilers, a Frazetta fantasy adventure. Whatever it is, it’s aim is to spare no expense and, to reference its Vegas setting: raise the stakes as high as possible. Unlike other Snyder films I’m thinking of, Army of the Dead feels like a B movie. (Which, to clarify, I don’t use the term B movie despairingly, if done well.) Also, unlike other of Snyder’s films, it doesn’t ever come off as pretentious, or aspires the level of prestige he seems accustomed to.

 

     The shots aren’t composed in the overly stylized, impressive, visual manner Snyder’s known for either. Army of the Dead looks rough. Gritty. I’m not talking late 90s von Trier/Barry Ackroyd or Cloverfield, but you know, newsreel/TV footage looking. Yet there is all the slow-motion you’ve come to expect, don’t worry. I don’t know if it’s cause this is Netflix, or because he serves as his own DP, or a combination of the two, but the Justice League Snyder Cut this is not.

 

     And disappointingly, unlike Dawn of the Dead (2004, Snyder), the characters don’t really feel fleshed out. But speaking of Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, his depiction of security guards as sleazeball power-crazed lechers is preserved for canon’s sake.

 

     So in closing, Army of the Dead is fun, and really cool. First time I can think of where Bautista is the lead and I’m happy to see it. For an R rated as fuck genre treat, it seems cultworthy and not overly bloated due to its 2 and a half hour runtime. And in regards to the zombie tiger: I don’t care enough to actually fact check that Siegfried or Roy was actually mauled to death by one or not, but when that thing attacks I was mega creeped out and horrified by the significance of its occurrence in real life. But okay, in closing-closing, the narrative is especially well constructed when it comes to audience expectations and what happens to the characters.

 

5/16/2021 Cinemark Tinseltown 17

Fayetteville, GA

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I want to play a game

Somewhere in the back of my mind I’d always thought of the Saw films as a trashy ripoff of Se7en. As if there were a pitch meeting where someone said, “What if we got to see what happens to the victims as they were gruesomely tortured instead of arriving on the scene after the fact?”

     This summer the Saw franchise returns with the reboot, Saw IX. And no, although it doesn’t play out during a constant downpour of rain, it reminded me of Se7en for a different reason: it plays out as a straight police procedural.

Spiral (2021, Darren Lynn Bousman) cobbles from only the finest narrative mechanisms found in the entries preceding it. And it manages to build a lean, fresh working model that packs a wallop of a punch.

     Around Saw III (2006, Bousman), the plotlines get messy. It begins with the parallel plotlines—with the twist that sometimes it’s revealed that various narratives occurred earlier or later in time than we were led to presume. Which, okay yeah, can be a lot of fun too though. Specifically, I’m thinking of Saw III with JEFF, the alcoholic dad who lost his kid, wandering through Jigsaw’s labyrinth; and amid so many other arcs and characters we kind of forget about him. Then at the end of Saw IV (2007, Bousman), when STROM finally finds the room he thinks the other cops are in, he walks in on Jeff and holy crap that’s so cool! I was like huh? You think all that stuff happened long ago and Jigsaw’s dead, but Strom walks in on Jeff? Amazing.

     Okay, back to Spiral. Its narrative starts with a clean slate. All of the characters are new. And there aren’t any concurrent subplots with characters in their own arcs. Spiral is about ZEKE (Chris Rock) and no one else. Mmm, there are a few flashbacks, but with the desaturated pallet they’re easy to follow and identify where they fit the chronology—the cheap fake mustaches on Samuel L. Jackson and Rock’s lame goatee are maybe a little unnecessary but I appreciate the respect to clarity.

     

     In closing, my favorite new touch is the Jigsaw voice. (Or I should say the voice of the antagonist, because in Spiral, they avoid playing that old game of bringing JOHN KRAMER back.) The new antagonist voice is like really creepy because it’s so artificial non-human sounding. I wish I could better describe it, but my point is I find it genuinely unsettling, unlike Tobin Bell’s voice which has become overused to the point of caricature.

 

5/15/2021 AMC Madison Yards 8

Atlanta, GA

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