Not only did I fail to feel the beat, I couldn’t even find a pulse.
But that’s me, discerning movie viewer, critic without a cause. I won’t deny that it may hold some cachet as a family-friendly offering for the tween set. For the rest of us, it’s exceedingly missable.
April (Sofia Carson) is a hometown success story, having left for stardom on the Broad Way. She didn’t find it, of course, and slinks back home, tail between her legs. Luckily the small town where she’s from is sufficiently square that their twitter feeds have sme sort of hillbilly 3 day delay (a mild scandal brews on social media). To them, she’s still Impressive April, and the (very) humble dance studio where she got her start fawns over her terse, uninterested, one-word replies to their burning questions. This they call a “master class.” But when April gets a whiff of redemption (ie, a national dance competition with a handy dandy “teacher feature” which could put her in front of a judge’s panel including a top Broadway producer), suddenly she’s interested. Sure her interest is self-serving and mostly takes the form of verbally abusing an eager if unskilled dance troupe. They’re a bunch of misfits, as dictated by the trope, with a lineup including a deaf girl, a chubby girl, a poor girl, and a boy.
As you might venture to guess, the road to nationals is predictably paved with teachable moments and personal growth for our girl April, who never quite got to likable with me, which is just fine since I also found her unwatchable. Absolutely nothing personal with any of the cast, who were dancing their little tushies off. This is merely a trite script and a small budget and a green, though not necessarily untalented, crew. Which adds up to a harmless but ultimately subpar, forgettable movie that I did not need to see.
Susanna (Amanda Seyfriend), a young, beautiful actress between jobs, and her old, rich ex-banker husband Theo (Kevin Bacon) take their daughter Ella on a picturesque little hideaway vacation in Wales. The home they rent is nestled in some truly gorgeous if isolated Welsh countryside, but the house itself is strikingly modern.
It’s on this vacation that a little girl will learn that her father was once accused of murdering his first wife. They probably thought that this is what Ella would remember of their time in Wales, but then Theo learns that Susanna is having an affair, and that little explosive piece of news grabs all the headlines. But both of these facts will be overshadowed by what comes next.
The whole family’s been having nightmares since they arrived. Nightmares that don’t always feel like nightmares. But strange things are happening during the day, too. It’s the house (is it the house?); Sean correctly identified it as a “murder house” about ten seconds after clocking it and it’s definitely giving off hostile vibes. Perhaps not your traditional haunted house (think American Psycho rather than Psycho Psycho) but it does have a peculiar knack for rearranging itself on the fly. You may have opened the door to the laundry room but you have found yourself in the basement. What’s in the basement? Nothing good, but you’ll have to walk down an ever-lengthening hallway to meet your fate.
Writer-director David Koepp delivers some effective jump scare and both Seyfriend and Bacon are convincingly paranoid and/or terrified, but something just feels off, and I don’t mean the morphing blueprint. There’s just no definitive villain, nothing concrete to fear. There’s a fair amount of tension but it doesn’t ever build to a satisfying conclusion. Koepp fucks around with time, space, the supernatural, and the existential: if you threw a punch with your eyes closed you should be able to hit something, but Koepp just never hits his mark, or defines it. He’s got a pretty bag of tricks, by which I mean he took some pretty meticulous notes while watching The Shining one night. This movie didn’t scare me and I get scared every time our furnace kicks in. Every. Time. But worse, it didn’t interest me or entertain me. A dozen loose ends don’t add up to a mystery, it means a script hit production before it had any right to, and now there’s another aimless horror movie in the world bringing the bell curve down for everyone.
7500 is the emergency code for a plane hijacking. Fasten your seatbelts, passengers. This is going to be one hell of a bumpy ride.
Tobias (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is the American copilot on a flight from Berlin to Paris. He and Michael, the captain (Carlo Kitzlinger) are going through the usual piloty pre-flight rituals: ordering their sandwiches, deciding whether they’ll wait for tardy passengers, saying the word “check” a lot, or, to changed things up, occasionally “checked.” Extremely banal shit is what I’m getting at. The fun in being a pilot is apparently in the strut through the airport. Inside the cockpit it’s mostly just paperwork and hitting the right button for autopilot.
But unluckily for Tobias and Michael, no one titles their movie 7500 and then fails to follow through with hijackers. We know it’s coming, but the waiting is agony. Right up until the improvised glass shiv comes out, Tobias and Michael are having an uneventful day at the office which just happens to be 35000 feet above ground, zipping through the clouds at approximately 900 km/hr. I’m having a worse flight than they are, but that’s because I know the title and they think it’s something like “gawd I can’t wait for the weekend.” I feel a tightness in my chest, anxiety in my breathing. And soon enough, so do they.
Emergencies are why we even bother to have pilots at all. Sort of. The autopilot can fly and land and even handle things like engine blow-outs. And arguably it would do better in situations like this. The cockpit must never be breached. The pilot knows that. He or she knows that her #1 priority in a hijacking/hostage situation is to keep the bad guys out. But there’s a difference between knowing that, training for that, and actually doing it when the hijacker has a knife to a passenger’s throat. Or, let’s say, to the flight attendant’s throat who is secretly your girlfriend/baby mama. The autopilot would have no problem obeying this rule, but human pilots are vulnerable – to fear, to compassion, basically to emotion. Which is both a feature and a bug.
So Tobias is in a pickle. A big fat pickle.
This is not Die Hard. We’re not here to have fun. This entire movie takes place in a cockpit, and very nearly in real time. You can’t actually smell the fear pooling in Tobias’s armpits, but you might think you can, and I wouldn’t blame you one bit. This film is intense. So intense I hit pause about 45 minutes in just so I could catch my breath. We are marinating in Tobias’ stress sweat and it is brutally unpleasant. But this is how Patrick Vollrath’s 7500 distinguishes itself from virtually all others in the genre. This is not about action, or heroics. We spend 90 minutes living in a terrified copilot’s shoes. It is neither glamourous nor dignified.
Such is Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s talent that he’s able to convey concern for his unseen passengers and crew – the way he blinks, the way he breathes, the way he hesitates or doesn’t. We can’t see past the cockpit door, but we think of them, and even of the people in the city down below, asleep in their beds, unaware that a terrorist plans for them to die before they wake. Beyond the opposing forces of the highjacker and the pilot, there is little else. We are meant to feel this event viscerally, painfully. It is unlikely to gain traction as a mindfulness exercise but boy oh boy does it force you to live in the moment.
I like 7500 about as much as I like flying, which is to say, not at all. This is not a movie to be “enjoyed.” But airplanes take you to a new and perhaps exotic location. They take you to places that are exciting and interesting to explore. A vacation allows you to try on a different sort of life for a while. Maybe you enjoy it, maybe you don’t, but either way, travel makes you learn things, about the world and about yourself. And sometimes you don’t have to travel any further than your couch to get there.
Ezekiel Mannings (Gary Oldman) is a very bad man. His job title is literally “crime lord” on his business cards (okay, the business cards are unseen in his wallet but I’m SURE they’re there) and he’s awaiting trial for what I’m also certain is just a small fraction of his many crimes. Or perhaps I should say he is not awaiting trial so much as the trial is waiting to hear from one key witness – Nick Murch (Amit Shah) – whom a federal task force has been protecting so he can deliver his crucial testimony, ie, he saw Ezekiel Mannings murder someone right in the head.
You don’t need to see Mannings’ business card to know he’s a bad guy: he wears an eye patch. Which is a statement. Of Evil. I’ve known a few people without a full set of eyes and they’ve never elected to go with the patch. Glass eyes look surprisingly good if you’ve got a socket that wants filling. The only eye patch I’ve ever seen in real life is the little band-aid coloured ones that kids sometimes wear to help correct a lazy eye, and those are quite adorable and definitely don’t count. I’m talking all-black, special ordered from the pirate store, cover of Evil Monthly magazine, doubling down with a goatee, eye patch.
Nor do you need to see Nick Murch’s business card to know that he’s a nerd. Probably an IT guy. He’s nervous and jittery, and his outfit has definitely not been approved by a woman. I mean, he’s got reason to be nervous and jittery. He IS about to testify against a really bad dude, and the whole case basically hinges on him as a witness. But before he can video conference in (from an unspecified European location), a courier (Olga Kurylenko) arrives at the safe house to deliver a package. Spoiler alert: it’s a bomb. A lot of people die, and someone’s even trying to kill her, but instead of fleeing for her life, she volunteers as Nick’s defacto bodyguard and personal protector. Basically, she and Nick end up fighting for their lives in an underground parking structure, and they’ll have to do it for an hour before the cops arrive (why an hour? who knows. but it’s a great little conceit to put some real-time pressure on the situation). Agent Bryant (William Moseley) and his sniper (Greg Orvis) are particularly persistent.
Is this a good movie? No. We never get a satisfying explanation for why this nameless bike courier would stick around to fight a fight that isn’t hers. Or why she’s so darn good at it; “military” hardly covers it.
The violence is…extensive. As in face caved in. As in literal terminal velocity when a body hits a brick wall so hard the skull cracks open like an egg. As in any foreign object with a somewhat pointed end will soon be lodged in someone’s body cavity. And the victim will always agonizingly pull it out, with a flourish of spurting blood. This became such an odd pattern I started chanting “pull it out!” pull it out!” and they always did, even when it was a 3 foot metal rod through the throat.
And to even out the odds, the bad guys were of course prone to soliloquizing, always pausing for one last smug speech just long enough for the heroes to once again narrowly escape certain death. The brutality was so unending that I didn’t really care which side won as long as everyone just stopped getting up. And also: what’s up with this parking garage where a gun battle to the death can be staged for over an hour and not a single person even ran to their car for a stick of gum? I’m suspicious.
Now there is some merit to a movie with mindless violence, I suppose. A time and a place for it, at any rate. But this wasn’t so much mindless as mind boggling. Turns out the eye patch was the least of my worries.
Just on the off-chance that your internet browser history is squeaky clean and filled with wholesome pinterest pies and youtube videos of puppy piles, I offer you this:
Mope (in addition to other definitions, of course) (noun)
a bottom-tier porn performer willing to do the dirtiest, most depraved work in the business
We first meet Steve Driver (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) and Tom Dong (Kelly Sry) as they sit among a bunch of men in their underwear. As soon as a light turns green the men cheer, and then start chanting “Bukaki, bukaki!” like a rallying cry, which I suppose it is, to their junk. Another definition:
Bukaki (both a verb and a noun, I think) (it’s filthy, so feel free to look away)
to gather around a woman and cum on her face as a group
The men keep up the chant as they circle around a naked woman named Treasure who is kneeling on a tarp, which should, in theory, be unnecessary, as all the men have only one target in mind. They all, more or less, hit their mark, with only Steve left in the end, still trying to get the job done. Tom offers his (moral) support, which helps push Steve over the edge, and poor Treasure’s face is indeed glazed like a donut. Tom and Steve become instant friends.
For some reason, Steve and Tom are desperate to break into the porn industry, which is why:
a) They agree to a ball-busting audition. I’ll spare you the textbook definition because it pretty much is what it seems – only remember, porn stars don’t wear Toms or ballet flats, they wear 9 inch platform heels.
b) They also agree to share a dorm and split a single salary between them.
But these boys are ambitious. They don’t want to be mopes forever, they want to be porn stars. They pitch themselves to director Rocket (David Arquette), the “auteur of porn,” as the Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker of adult entertainment. It…doesn’t work out for them. Nothing works out for them. The universe is telling them that porn fame is not in the cards for them. Tom accepts his fate, happy to fix up the studio’s subpar website, and contribute to a gang bang once in a while, but Steve is fixated, and maybe a little unstable.
The movie feels almost as amateurish as the porn scene it describes. It also fails to really justify itself as a film even though it’s an (apparently) true story. The script doesn’t generate much sympathy for these characters, who remain unlikable at best, nor does it ever quite find their humanity. This is a piece of shock cinema unlike any other, but that’s not a redeeming quality. The movie goes off the rails in the finale minutes of the film (you wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t true), making for some memorable cinema, but memorable in the way that trauma is memorable. If only you could forget it. It’s not good for the soul, and I wholly regret having undertaken it.
Like many of you, when I heard the title, I naturally assumed the movie was about this guy:
His name is Herbie but he literally answers to Handsome Devil, a name he lives and breathes every single day.
It’s quite effortless, and quite evident in his swagger. But anyway,contractually I have to eventually boomerang this runaway movie review and get back to the topic at hand: handsome devils who are not my verygoodboy Herbie.
Enter: Ned (Fionn O’Shea). He’s a teenager at boarding school, a constant target of bullies because he’s gay. And then the worst thing happens: the new kid Conor (Nicholas Galitzine), star rugby player, rooms with him. Which means all the jocks (aka bullies) now have an open invitation to hang out in his bedroom, and Ned no longer has a single safe sanctuary on the entire campus. Nor does he own enough boxy furniture to build an adequate barricade around his bed, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.
As you might guess, the proximity does eventually break down their defenses (literal and figurative), and Ned and Conor start to bond. They’re not so different after all! With the encouragement of the new English teacher (Andrew Scott), who challenges students to find their own voices, the two boys find common ground in music.
A simple message, but one we apparently still need to hear. People fear what they don’t know, but all it takes is one friendship outside your normal social circle to expand your horizons and overcome some of the invisible barriers between us. The differences between skin colour. sexual orientation, gender, etc, are superficial at best. Friendships, relationships, even just basic respect – these are based on our shared values and interests.
School is not always a safe space for queer kids (or different kids, or kids), and we’ve been telling them ‘it gets better’ for a long, long time. Which is true: it does get better. But it’s nice every once in a while to hear a story where better starts happening NOW. Queer cinema can often be a bit of a tragedy fest, and while it’s important to remember those experiences as well, it’s really nice to celebrate the victories. O’Shea and Galitzine have a wonderful, subtle chemistry, and give their characters an authenticity I know a lot of us will relate to.
Never say a dying grandma can’t milk her last breaths for all they’re worth – Evie (Marion Ross) certainly does. Recently discharged from the hospital, she’s laid up in her daughter’s home, and with granddaughter Sara (Ellen Hollman) home for Christmas too, she schemes to reconnect the estranged mother-daughter duo with the perfect Christmas list. Will it work? And will grandma still be around to see it?
Evie’s list has some fairly banal items for Sara and mom Michelle (Beth Broderick) to cross off together: bake cookies from scratch, cut down a real tree, do some work for charity. Typical stuff. Normally they’d be triggering each other left and right and tearing each other’s hair out, but with grandma’s imminent death hanging over them, their usual bickering seems trivial and they’re managing to mend the rift.
Don’t worry, don’t worry, there’s a little wiggle room in there for romance. Grandma’s hot doctor makes house calls. Dr. “call me Brandon” Reed (Aaron Hill) is, like so many men in holiday romances, almost too good to be true. He’s an attentive doctor but he’s also Mr. Fix It, working a side gig as a handyman to make spare cash for an orphanage where he spends all his free time. His only flaw is that he buys bacon flavoured butter, and let me be clear, that’s not necessarily a flaw in my book but in Sara’s, and clearly it’s not a deal breaker for her either.
A Perfect Christmas List deviates slightly from the normal formula in that its main focus is on the three generations of women, and repairing a broken relationship before it’s too late. These types of movies often espouse family values, and they always make sure the heroine has interests and friends outside of her romantic relationship, which is kind of refreshing if you think about it, and very nearly (dare I say it?) feminist. She’ll always have a best friend, or a close coworker, or a solicitous sister, or a mother she doesn’t go a day without calling, and she doesn’t drop them just because she met a man. And the holiday romance man is not only okay with that, he actually likes your mouthy best friend. He checks on your mom. He fits in seamlessly with your family. Dr. Brandon has a crush on Sara but understands that she’s making time for family right now. And when she does have a free moment, he doesn’t jump to her beck and call, he honours his commitment to the orphaned children and trusts that Sara will wait. Call it corny, call it idealistic or even unrealistic, but let’s also think about calling it GOALS.
Artemis Fowl is a series of quite beloved fantasy novels written by Eoin Colfer. If you are a fan of the books, may I suggest you put that aside right now and meet Artemis Fowl the movie as a similarly titled but only loosely based third cousin twice removed type situation.
Artemis Fowl (Ferdia Shaw) is a 12 year old genius rambling about his big old house in Ireland with only his definitely-not-a-butler manservant/bodyguard Domovoi Butler (Nonso Anozie) for company. He learns from TV that his father (Colin Farrell) has gone mysteriously missing (is that redundant? i think yes) and also, I think, that he’s behind some major art-thievery. Which is when Alfred Mr. Butler gently guides young Bruce Artemis down to the batcave secret lair and lays some truth on him: he comes from a family of criminal masterminds. He’s meant to be some sort of prodigy villain, and so donning the batsuit and sunglasses, he receives the obligatory ransom call and gets down to saving the world or maybe just his dad, I’m really not sure, this part wasn’t entirely clear to me.
Meanwhile, keeping in mind that Ireland is apparently quite magical, we’re introduced to some non-human characters such as Mulch Diggums (Josh Gad), a felonious oversized dwarf who seems like he would have bad breath, Holly Short (Lara McDonnell), who I think is a fairy, and her boss Commander Root (Judi Dench), who’s in charge of making sure magical creatures don’t mix with humans, and Juliet (Tamara Smart) who is some much younger relation of Mr. Butler’s and whose presence I never quite understood. Also various goblins, elves, trolls, Italians, and even a centaur with a sexy little canter. Most of these…beings…are technically enemies. Well, enemy is a strong word for people who don’t even know each other. Maybe “non-belligerent” is a better term for it, a term I picked up mere moments before watching this film thanks to a Spike Lee movie about the race discrimination and the Vietnam war (who knew these two movies would have so much this one thing in common!). Anyway, it’s hard to keep track of who’s on who’s side and what that side wants and why. And then there’s you know, alliances made and broken, objectives intended and abandoned, just stuff. Presumably. I don’t really know. There’s magical force fields/space-time continuums (?), dislocating jaws, and a coup against an 800 year old stickler for rules.
The movie is kind of a mess. This is a kid’s movie and I’m struggling to relay any of the plot points, and I’m frankly not even 100% convinced there were any, it may have just 90 minutes of pure pixie chaos for all I know. It hurt my brain to try to keep up, but on the other hand it wasn’t really interesting enough to pause let alone rewind.
Those who have read the book(s) will of course bring important supplemental information to the film, which will either a) make it a more pleasant, sensical viewing experience or b) make it that much more frustrating, just a big old soak in a bath of disappointment. I’m guessing it’s b but let’s not marinate in negativity. Let’s optimistically assume that you subscribed to Disney+ hoping for a child’s version of Men In Black where the aliens are now fairies and the good parts are now the suck and the idea of a sequel both frightens and confuses you.
If you wanna hear more, and you know you do: Youtube!
The Vietnam War. Yeah, we all flinch at the words. As a Canadian, I actually didn’t learn about this in school as we were “non-belligerent” (what a term!) (also, we were busy learning about our contributions in WW2, a war America remembers fondly by screaming at random Europeans “we saved your asses!” but Canadians remember as the war we joined immediately because we “thought Nazis were bad” and America ignored for two whole years because “Nazis were maybe okay” and finally joined when “something bad happened to us, on our soil.” Ahem) and I was born long enough after it that there was already a hit Broadway musical about it. But we can’t help having absorbed quite a bit about it, through pop culture of course, and by sheer proximity to our war-mongering neighbours to the south. I knew that it was a tough war because many Americans came to oppose it, which was probably the right attitude, but it meant that a lot of returning vets didn’t get the respect they deserved or the help they needed – which is an American hallmark, actually, by no means exclusive to the Vietnam war. And I knew that bad shit had happened there: we called it the My Lai Massacre; the Vietnamese call it the Son My Massacre, but either way you slice, it meant that 500 unarmedcivilians – men, women, children, babies – were slaughtered by U.S. soldiers. Women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, as were children as young as 12. When their cover-up was eventually busted, 26 soldiers were charged with criminal offenses but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr. was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was given a life sentence but served only three and a half years under house arrest. And for me, the Vietnam war was oddly muddled up with hippies and their peaceful sit-in protests and with civil rights and their peaceful marches. And historically, that’s correct. Some were putting daisies into guns for peace and others were being sent to war, and those things were happening concurrently but not equally. Young black men were being sent to Vietnam in disproportionate numbers while young white men could easily avoid it simply by attending college: Bill Clinton deferred once for college, Joe Biden and Dick Cheney each deferred 5 times. And if staying in school indefinitely wasn’t your bag, your wealth and privilege could work for you in other ways; Donald Trump avoided the draft 4 times with educational deferments but the 5th time Uncle Sam came calling he out and out dodged it – his father called in a favour from a Queens podiatrist who wrote up a false diagnosis of “bone spurs” even though he’d been found physically fit to fight just two years prior and has since said it just “healed up on its own” with no treatment necessary!
Anyway, black civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., were opposed to the war for exactly this reason. Once again, black men were being asked (well, told) to serve their country, and there weren’t any colleges or doctors writing bogus deferrals for them. They were asked to protect the freedoms of people in other countries when they still didn’t have that at home for themselves. They were called up in greater numbers of course, and were a higher proportion of combat casualties in Vietnam, and African American soldiers encountered bigots in their ranks, discrimination in the field, disadvantage when it came to promotions and decorations, and fewer services if and when they returned home. That’s a whole lot to untangle, but have no fear: Spike Lee is reaching back into the baggage of his righteous anger, and he’s not afraid to tackle these iniquities.
In Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, Norman (Chadwick Boseman), a soldier in 1970s Vietnam, tells us “War is about money. Money is about war. Every time I walk out my front door, I see cops patrolling my neighborhood like it’s some kind of police state. I can feel just how much I ain’t worth.” Spike Lee always ends up sounding prescient in his films, but his trick is simply having the temerity to acknowledge that the patterns in our shameful history march on today.
Many years later, four Vietnam vets, Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) return to Vietnam to repatriate the body of their fallen comrade and 5th Blood, Norman…and also the pile of gold they stashed along with him. Now surely worth millions of dollars, you might guess that this buried treasure is not going to bring out the best in even the most devoted of brothers in arms. Greed, guilt, nostalgia, regret – these we understand, but Paul’s motivation is particularly murky. Unabashedly sporting a MAGA hat, prone to racist outbursts, he’s convinced himself that he’s doing this for Norman’s honour. But propelled by fury, by a barely-restrained rage for the many ways he and his African American servicemen were vilified for their role in Vietnam, that pile of gold bricks starts to feel like reparations. And this recovery mission starts to feel more like one of revenge – against an enemy that Paul can no longer distinguish.
Delroy Lindo’s performance is the sun around which all the other planets orbit, and like all bright balls of fury, Paul is flirting with supernova. And for his part, Spike Lee has of course never been known for his reticence. As a director, he’s prone to flourishes, allowing Paul’s stream-of-consciousness mutterings to morph into a rousing monologue, staring down the barrel of the camera, staring us down, charging us with his passion and urgency. Lee splices the story of his 5 Bloods with real life footage – Muhammad Ali’s conscientious objections, the Kent State massacre, the Black Lives Matter movement (yes, his film is once AGAIN that prescient, he’s taking the pulse of America right from the jugular, right from its crushed windpipe, his alarm and his agitation a perfect reflection of today simply by being unafraid to hold an honest mirror up to the ugliness of yesterday). His script stresses the cyclical nature of the violence without letting anyone off the hook. Spike Lee’s strength as a filmmaker has always been his point of view, his authorial voice resonating backwards and forwards through time, the immediacy of his plea undiminished.
Da 5 Bloods is as potent as anything Spike Lee has ever done, and possibly the boldest feather in Netflix’s cap. The film is visually arresting, the aspect ratio in constant flux as we travel through time (and our four main actors embody their characters in both timelines, a choice I can only assume is deliberate since Netflix has proven willing to splash out for de-aging, perhaps a nod to these men wanting and needing to believe they are still heroic, still capable, still virile, or a symptom of having glorified the time in their heads, and wanting to recapture that now, before it’s too late). But most of all I admire Da 5 Bloods as an allegory for reparations. Not even an allegory, really, but a template what financial amends might look like and how we can begin to take the next steps forward.
Spoiler alert: it’s Pete Davidson. He’s the king of Staten Island. Supposably. You know, Pete Davidson. The young SNL cast member who told us, from experience, that you shouldn’t choose your rehab while you’re high (I believe “equine therapy” was involved), and who was briefly engaged to Ariana Grande.
Pete Davidson has obviously had his share of addictions issues. He’s suffered from depression, anxiety, PTSD, and borderline personality disorder. His mom got him through high school by bribing him with stand-up in exchange for his attendance. He smokes weed so he can perform. He smokes weed to treat his Crohn’s, a painful medical condition. He smokes weed because he likes it. And maybe he smokes weed to forget his traumatic personal connection to the most horrific day in American history: his father, a fire-fighter, died in 9/11.
The King of Staten Island, a collaboration between Pete Davidson and Judd Apatow, is a semi-autobiographical film about Davidson’s particular relationship/struggle with growing up.
“Scott” (Davidson) is a 20-something pothead who dreams of being a tattoo artist, as evidenced by some very inconsistent ink on his friends’ bodies. One of his canvasses/victims is a 9 year old boy, and you can bet that boy’s father is soon pounding on Scott’s mom’s door. Did I mention he still lives with his mom? He does. His younger sister has recently gone off to college and now his mom Margie (Marisa Tomei) is mourning her empty nest while also not actually benefiting from it because of course Scott won’t/can’t actually leave, drawing permanent stickmen on his friends’ torsos not paying particularly well/at all. But it turns out that tattooing a 9 year old boy has an upside: the boy’s angry father Ray (Bill Burr) takes Margie out on her first date in 17 years. Which, admittedly, is nicer for her than it is for Scott, who isn’t exactly keen to see his dead father replaced, isn’t a big fan Ray, and isn’t thrilled to be displaced by him.
Judd Apatow is of course the king of comedy. He’s paired up with Steve Carell (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), Seth Rogen (Knocked Up), Adam Sandler (Funny People) and Amy Schumer (Trainwreck) – comedians at the top of their game, or just cresting their fame, and Apatow’s gotten career-best performances out of all of them. It’s weird then that this collab with Davidson has set new watermarks for both juvenile humour and serious themes. Together they navigate sacrifice and childhood trauma but manage to season generously with firehouse frat-boy antics. Like most of Apatow’s films, it’s long for a comedy; the script is loose, breezy even, and Apatow gives his actors plenty of space. It’s low-key for the most part, but it hits on both fragility and hilarity with surprising ease. Pete Davidson may not be the most versatile of actors, but he’s good enough to play some version of himself, seemingly relaxed and comfortable, and hopefully somewhat cleansed by the process. Healing comes in all shapes and sizes and grief is a malleable, personal thing. Sometimes it even looks like an R-rated comedy.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES