The Great Movie Conquest of 2022

The Great Movie Conquest of 2022 - July

This month, the focus was on fantasy epics of the 1970s and 80s, and I chose this time period and this genre as an option specifically because I was interested in the state of the genre during that time immediately preceding and following the release of Star Wars in 1977. While this type of movie is the sum and substance of films produced these days, Hollywood didn't always have the resources or experience to pull these off. A lot of fantasy epics made during this time read as inherently goofy to modern audiences. Part of this is the limited effects available at the time, part of this is just the weird tone. There are a rare few gems from this era that are kindly regarded these days (e.g. Time Bandits), but the majority of these offerings don't dare hope for much more than an ironic cult following.

So ... yes, I kind of entered into this challenge expecting a lot of junk food. I wasn't exactly ready to hand out a lot of ten-star ratings. Maybe this wasn't entirely fair of me, but I also can't imagine what kind of mindset I'd have to warp myself into in order to unironically enjoy something like Red Sonja, whose title character barely had a personality. A lot of these films ran into similar issues that gave the finished product a very paper-thin structure. What sinks most of these movies isn't the rudimentary effects, it's poor plotting or poor characters. Star Wars still floated under these conditions because the plotting was strong. In that way, they're actually held to the same standard as any other film, and so I can only feel so bad about giving them low marks.

Just so, I almost had a meaningful experience watching "Masters of the Universe," (featuring a pre-FRIENDS Courtney Cox). I was only really familiar with the "He-Man" franchise through memes, and I think I may have accidentally watched an episode with my younger cousins some twenty years ago. Despite its general incoherence, the movie was just so sincere that I couldn't bring myself to hate it.

Looking at a lot of the (mostly valid) critiques of these kinds of films, I'm reminded of complaints thrown against films like 2018's Aquaman. I think that the film has an overall tighter story than many of those films, but it still chases the flavor of the pre-Jurassic Park adventure film, and a part of that flavor is general shamelessness. In hindsight, I don't doubt that James Wan took deliberate inspiration from many films of this genre and era, especially now that I realize that Wan cast He-Man himself, Dolph Lundgren, in his movie.

Sometimes a movie's ability to move or inspire audiences surpasses its technical prowess. I'm reminded of the 1995 "Power Rangers" movie, a movie that I still gladly watch despite the clear shortcomings of the production value and writing. I think it's possible for the intellectual mind to still have meaningful engagements with these kinds of films, and for serious filmmakers to take inspiration from them.

Of the two reviews I put out this month, only one of them counted toward my challenge. The last half of Stranger Things 4, glorious as it was, didn't technically meet the conditions of the challenge. Meanwhile, Jordan Peele's Nope was an experience to remember. I've shared multiple times on this blog that I'm only a recent convert to the horror genre. Even three years ago, paying to see a big-budget horror film in the theater would have been unthinkable. Even though I've now seen a small handful of horror films on the big screen, I think I'll remember Nope as the first film to give me that flight or fight response that I've at once been chasing and dreading.

Looking outside of this month's theme, I also really responded to 2013's Labor Day. The movie tended to put the cart before the horse in some areas of narrative development, but the movie was still sincere in its presentation, and it succeeded in its ultimate goal of creating a believable romance out of an unbelievable situation.

I'll admit, while I enjoyed many of the films I hit this month (Defiance, At Eternity's Gate, Bright Eyes, etc.), I didn't find as many standouts. This far into the challenge, I can't help but wonder if that's actually because I'm not finding good movies or because I'm developing some kind of resistance to new films. That would be an unfortunate development since I'm little more than halfway through this climb.

I'm curious to revisit many of the films I'm collecting through this challenge, both in the immediate aftermath and in the years to come. I've already tried revisiting some highlights from earlier this year like Pressure Point and Belle to try to further initiate them into my reserve of favored films.

Looking forward, I apologize here and now for not polling the public for next month's theme, but I've known for a while that I wanted to dedicate part of this challenge to watching Netflix original movies, and I decided that August is going to be the lucky month.

Fear not, the polls open back up in September. I like what I did back in April theming my viewings after a specific country of world cinema. Whereas April's options were tailored for countries I was already pretty familiar with, I want to use this chapter to explore countries that I don't know as well. This month, it's down to Poland or Brazil. Cast your votes here.

Thanks for following this challenge. I hope we're all learning something.

--The Professor

Really puts into perspective what Sean Astin brought to the role, doesn't it?

July's Harvest:

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

Krull (1982)

Period of Adjustment (1962)

Peninsula (2020)

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)

Red Sonja (1985)

Defiance (2008)
On Moonlight Bay (1951)

Masters of the Universe (1987)

At Eternity's Gate (2018)

Imitation of Life (1959)

Most Dangerous Game (2020)

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)

Fences (2016)

The Last Laugh (1924)

The Dark Crystal (1982)

Sing Street (2016)
Viva Las Vegas (1964)
Labor Day (2013)

The Lord of the Rings (1978)
Nope (2022)

Wall Street (1987)

Bright Eyes (1934)
Antwone Fisher (2002)
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)
Return to Oz (1985)

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

On the Beach (1959)

A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Comments

REVIEW: You, Me & Tuscany

I've learned not to be ungrateful for movies like You, Me & Tuscany . It's the kind of picture that can be easily written off as predictable or derivative. And Kat Cairo's film definitely rides on some genre shorthand. Halle Bailey's Anna has very similar flaws to most rom-com heroines as this untethered 20-something trying to figure out how to stretch a check. And the story itself lands about where every one of these movies do. (Though, remind me, how does every Tom Cruise movie end?) After the screening concluded, one of the ladies sitting behind me even said something much like, "Yeah, that was a lot like While You Were Sleeping ." But she didn't sound smug in her assessment. Her pronouncement was more encoded with the excitement that comes with discovery--the realization that she had found something like a worthy successor. And as a fan of Sandra Bullock's second-best rom-com, I was inclined to agree with this la...

All The Ways Sunset Boulevard Has Aged Gracefully

So, stop me if you’ve heard this before: Hollywood has a dark side. Particularly in the wake of something like #MeToo or the double strikes of 2023, you can really get a sense for just how famishing, even degrading, it can be trying to make a living in Hollywood. But of course, it all goes back much further than those. One of my very first essays for this blog was a catalogue of all the ways Hollywood ravaged Judy Garland , to point to another example. Yet for all its mess, we cannot take our eyes off of Hollywood, or the people who build it. Stardom in particular becomes a popular focal point—what is it really like being on the other side of all that spotlighting? And Hollywood has naturally supplied the market with all sorts of imaginings for this as well. Thus, each generation gets its own version of A Star is Born. John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man (1952) Ty Burr wrote in his landmark work,...

Reveling in the Mixed Messages of Miss Congeniality

In book ten of Metamorphoses, Greek poet Ovid tells the tale of Pygmalion, a talented sculptor living in the height of ancient Greek society. According to the story, Pygmalion’s sculpting prowess was so impeccable that one of his pieces, a marble woman he christened Galatea, was said to be the lovelier than any woman of flesh and blood. Pygmalion was so taken by his creation that he brought her exotic gifts, kissed her marble cheeks, even prepared a luxurious bed for her. Pygmalion so pined to be loved by Galatea that he prayed to the goddess Aphrodite to allow Galatea to reciprocate his love and affection. Aphrodite was apparently in a good mood that day, so she granted Pygmalion’s wish, giving life to Galatea, whom he then wed. The story of Pygmalion is in essence the story of a man who creates his own idealized woman out of whole cloth (or more appropriately, marble), endowing her with all the traits that he finds appealing or alluring. The story also provides a m...

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Westerns Riding off into the Sunset

In both my Les Miserables and Moulin Rouge! pieces, I made some comment about the musical as the genre that receives the least love in the modern era. I stand by that, but I acknowledge there is one other genre for which you could potentially make a similar case. I am referring of course to the western film. See, musicals at least have Disney keeping them on life alert, and maybe one day we’ll get the Wicked movie Universal has been promising us for ten years [FUTURE EDIT: All good things, folks ]. But westerns don’t really have a place in the modern film world. Occasionally we’ll get films like No Country for Old Men, which use similar aesthetics and themes, but they are heavily modified from the gun-blazing-horseback-racing-wide-open-desert w esterns of old. Those died, oddly enough, around the same time musicals fell out of fashion. Professors Susan Kord and Elizabeth Krim...

The Belle Complex

As Disney fandom increasingly moves toward the mainstream, the discussions and questions that travel around the community become increasingly nuanced and diverse. Is the true color of Aurora's dress blue or pink? Is it more fun to sit in the back or the front on Big Thunder Mountain? Is the company's continued emphasis on producing content for Disney+ negatively impacting not only their output but the landscape for theatrical release as a whole? However, on two things, the fandom is eternally united. First, Gargoyles was a masterpiece in television storytelling and should have experienced a much longer run than it did. Second, Belle's prom dress in the 2017 remake was just abominable. While overwhelmingly successful at the box office, the 2017 adaptation is also a bruise for many in the Disney community. Even right out the gate, the film came under fire for a myriad of factors: the auto-tuned soundtrack, Ewan McGregor's flimsy accent, the distracting plot...

The Case for Pre-Ragnarök Thor

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has become such a fixture of pop culture that it’s difficult to imagine that the whole ordeal was actually a massive crapshoot. The biggest conceit of the MCU has been its ability to straddle a thousand different heroes—each with their own stories, casts, and universes—into one cohesive whole. It’s a balancing act like nothing that’s ever been attempted before in the hundred years of filmmaking. A lot of the brand’s success can be attributed to the way that each individual story adheres to the rules of its own specific universe. The Captain America movies serve a different purpose than the Spiderman movies, and all the movies in the Captain America trilogy have to feel like they belong together. There are, of course, questions posed by this model. In a network of films that all exist to set up other ...

Silver Linings Playbook: What are Happy Endings For Anyway?

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert gave the following words in July of 2005 at the dedication of his plaque outside the Chicago Theatre: Nights of Cabiria (1957) “For me, movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them.” Ebert had been reviewing films for coming on forty years when he gave that assessment. I haven’t been doing it for a tenth as long. I don’t know if I’ve really earned the right to pontificate in this same manner. But film ...

REVIEW: HOPPERS

In the 1950s under the threat of nuclear warfare, Hollywood premiered such exercises as The Day the Earth Stood Still or War of the Worlds where an alien power would pass judgment on humankind, holding its fate in its hands. Here in the 2020s under the shadow of such threats as climate change, Hollywood sends to be our judge ... beavers. Let me back up ... Daniel Chong's new film from Pixar Animation, Hoppers , sees Mabel (Piper Curda), a college student whose self-appointed mission is to preserve the glade where she used to find sanctuary with her now deceased grandmother. Her biggest opponent is hometown boy and beloved mayor, Jerry (Jon Hamm), who has designs to plow over the glade in order to open his new freeway--estimated to save travelers four whole minutes of commuting. Mabel gets her golden opportunity when she uncovers secret technology pioneered by her professor which allows a human to rem...

PROFESSOR'S PICKS: 5 Films I Missed in 2020

Given the peculiar nature of this year’s run of movies, neither a traditional “Best Films of 2020” nor a traditional “Most Anticipated Films of 2021” feel appropriate. Instead, I’m going to do something in between: A spotlight of movies that I was looking forward to in 2020 that have now been bumped into a 2021 release date. There are other films set to release in 2021 that I have on my radar (most of them simply premiering later in 2021 than originally planed), but here are five films that I missed this year in 2020. This installment of Professor’s Picks is partway between a memorial and a forecast. Weep with me, celebrate with me, whichever jives with your inner truth. Anyways . . . five movies long eager to graduate from my list of anticipated movies. 1. A Quiet Place: Part II March 20, 2020 April 23, 2021 September 17, 2021 May 28, 2021 Admittedly,...

REVIEW: The Running Man

A lot of people have wanted to discuss Edgar Wright's new The Running Man outing as "the remake" of the 1987 film (with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a very different Ben Richards). As for me, I find it more natural to think of it as "another adaptation of ..." Even so, my mind was also on action blockbusters of the 1980s watching this movie today. But my thoughts didn't linger so much on the Paul Michael Glaser film specifically so much as the general action scene of the day. The era of Bruce Willis and Kurt Russell and the he-men they brought to life. These machine-gun wielding, foul-mouthed anarchists who wanted to tear down the establishment fed a real need for men with a lot of directionless anger. This was, as it would turn out, the same era in which Stephen King first published The Running Man , telling the story of a down-on-his luck man who tries to rescue his wife and daughter from poverty by winning a telev...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog