Tag Archives: Adam Driver

10 Thirsty John Oliver Comments About Adam Driver That Live Rent-Free In Our Minds

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Last Week Tonight With John Oliver is HBO’s funny weekly satire of politics, news, and current events, featuring deep-dive explorations of hot topics such as net neutrality and government surveillance, interspersed with running gags and in-jokes, like Jeff The Diseased Lung In A Cowboy Hat, and Oliver’s frequent rants against “Business Daddy” AT&T, HBO’s parent company.

Beginning in February 2020, however, John Oliver started a bit that instantly had fans transfixed. Viewers were mesmerized and scandalized; Oliver, seemingly out of the blue, began referring to Adam Driver in an oddly sexual and violent manner. And he kept it up. His comments were random, unexpected, and a little like train wrecks – viewers just couldn’t look away. It was a fantastic bit of television that deserves to be shared and relived.

Adam Driver: A Rudely Large Man

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In February 2020, Oliver was in the middle of talking about India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Modi had once walked out of an Oliver interview, which Oliver compared to Driver recently walking out of a Marriage Story interview. From there, Oliver looked lustily at a photo of Driver while uttering “Step on my throat, Adam Driver, you rudely large man. Break my fingers, you brooding mountain.”

Oliver’s comments seem to suggest a sexual appreciation for Driver’s size, and that his desire would be fueled by a little light masochism. However, coming from Oliver, these comments aren’t really about pleasure, they’re about eliciting a laugh. His Driver comments, buried in the middle of a segment about Modi’s efforts to marginalize Muslims, shocked his audience with their incongruence. Oliver immediately recognized that his audience was entertained and appalled, perhaps in equal measure, and it made him want even more.

Adam Driver Fever

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In March 2020, John Oliver was already talking about the coronavirus and its worrisome spread. North American audiences were just starting to think about how it might affect them when Oliver made a hard right turn. “There’s only one infectious disease that two thirds of the world should be getting right now, and that’s Adam Driver fever. Shatter my knees, you fuckable redwood. Snap off my toes, you big, unwashed buffalo.”

Adam Driver is an unconventional heartthrob who first gained attention on Girls, playing Lena Dunham’s creepy, pervy boyfriend, but gained international notoriety when he was cast as Kylo Ren in the recent Star Wars trilogy. That movie paired Kylo’s emo-heavy anger with his bare, broad chest and a pair of strangely high pants. The width and breadth of his chest became an instant fixation.

Adam Driver: Pensive Bison

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A month later, Oliver tackled the lack of paid sick leave for people needing to quarantine after COVID-19 exposure, symptoms, or diagnosis, a serious subject he had no problem making weird. “I wouldn’t want anyone with the coronavirus serving me my next meal, unless of course that person was Adam Driver. Sneeze in my McFlurry, you pensive bison. Ravage my lungs, you relentless hillock.”

Bodily fluids aside, Driver’s the kind of man women actually want, not the kind Hollywood honchos assume they do. He’s big and he’s strong, but his masculinity includes an incontrovertible sensitive side. He’s less chiseled and less pretty than any of the Chrises; instead of being gym-toned, Driver’s strength and vitality are come by honestly, having joined the Marines after 9/11. He has an authenticity to him that’s much more alluring than other cookie-cutter leading men.

Adam Driver: Meaty Oak Tree

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By May, the audience was fully behind Oliver’s man crush, though viewers still felt it a bit jarring listening to a woman describe an uncomfortable COVID-19 test and then witnessing Oliver’s uncanny ability to turn it sexual. “Yeah, that sounds pretty unpleasant, unless of course your brain is being pulled out through your nostril by Adam Driver. Pull my heart out through my ear, you meaty oak tree. Impale my brain, you unacceptable monstrosity.”

This wasn’t the first time Driver had been compared to an oak tree. In 2019, he starred in Burn This on Broadway, opposite Keri Russell. In their review, New York Magazine described Driver variously as “immense,” “incomprehensibly large,” and “a wise old oak tree on Viagra.” Oliver is nearly 6 feet tall himself, but perhaps at 6’2, Driver would make him feel small and safe, which clearly appeals to many women as well.

John Oliver: Size Queen

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In a later segment about the WWE, a clip was shown featuring chairman Vince McMahon talking about content being “a driver in terms of stimulating interest.” Oliver’s response? “You just said ‘stimulating,’ ‘strong men,’ ‘underwear,’ and crucially, ‘driver,’ all in the same sentence, at which point everyone’s mind turned immediately to getting absolutely bone crushed by Adam Driver.”

John Oliver continues to reveal himself as a size queen, though fantasizing about being dominated by a larger partner is hardly new. Driver’s movie roles seem to encourage this, with one particular scene in Marriage Story in which his character punches a wall in frustration being a particularly fecund source.

John Oliver: Hand Fetishist?

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Expanding on his sexual wrestling fixation, Oliver demands that Driver “Chokeslam me to hell, you nasty shed. Jam your mandible claw down my throat, you irredeemable steer.”

Cheirophilia, also known as hand fetish, seems to be common among Adam Driver’s fans. His hands are, for lack of a more precise measurement, huge. Women’s preference for bigger, more dominant men is a biological construct, a product of evolution, and reinforced by cultural clichés like “tall dark and handsome.” Large men often trigger primal, even animalistic urges.

Oliver to Driver: “Beg Me To Stop”

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Once the joke had caught on, Oliver knew he either had to bring Driver on board, or let it go. He couldn’t keep viewers invested for months and fail to provide a pay-off. Behind the scenes, the show contacted Driver, but on screen, Oliver took the bull by the horns. “What of Adam Driver himself? Is he bothered by this continued sexualization? He might actually have pretty good grounds to have me reprimanded legally, to which I say: ‘Do it.’ Slap a restraining order on me, you forlorn block. Beg me to stop, you menacing obstacle.”

John Oliver’s thirst has repeatedly drawn on the fact that Adam Driver is a big, hot man. His features may be slightly irregular, but together they work so well that even a reserved, middle-aged, straight male can’t help but stan. Yes, it’s a joke, but it’s funny because it’s true, and it seems both less dirty and somehow dirtier coming from Oliver’s repressed little mouth. Oliver’s appreciation may in fact be indicative that Driver is no ordinary hunk; he is a sexual orientation unto himself.

Humanity To Driver: “Collapse On My Chest”

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In a segment about Trump’s wall, Oliver somehow finds himself comparing it to other, more conventionally attractive walls. After calling a stone wall “scorching hot” and a wooden one a “big tease,” he inevitably flashes a picture of Driver on screen, noting “This human wall? Collapse on my chest, you impenetrable barrier. Crush my ribcage, you load-bearing behemoth.”


Driver’s smoldering intensity, quiet magnetism, and conspicuous physicality very much confirm that he’s a dominant alpha, but the kind who’d ask for consent. Oliver, of course, has not only given consent freely, he seems to be writing a pretty persuasive invitation.

Adam Driver: Masculinity Minus The Toxicity

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Oliver even turned his obsession to the Supreme Court, admonishing Amy Coney Barrett’s use of the term ‘sexual preference.’ “No one chooses to be attracted to the same sex or a different sex, or Adam Driver. We all simply are. Dislocate my ankles you rusty cello. Tie my fingers in a square knot you emotionally unavailable water tower.”

Oliver is hitting on a vibe that most people find attractive in a partner: the desire to please. Driver seems like a kink-positive, generous lover, the kind who takes direction well. Adam Driver is masculinity without the toxicity.

John Oliver Thirsting Adam Driver Is A Mood

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In the last episode of the year, Oliver is once again overcome by his Adam Driver hunger, commanding him to “crush my larynx, you unwieldly boulder” when the segment is interrupted by a ringing telephone. Driver’s on the other line, seemingly exasperated. “What’s wrong with you? I don’t know you and now random people on the internet ‘stan’ us, claiming that you ‘thirsting’ over me is a ‘mood.’ I’m sick of people stopping me on the street and asking me if I’m going to punch a hole in you like a Marriage Story wall!”

Adam Driver’s hotness is a direct challenge to men everywhere, proving you don’t have to win the genetic lottery to be hot. Confidence is hot. Vulnerability is sexy. And a good sense of humor is worth its weight in gold.

Annette

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Ann (Marion Cotillard) and Henry (Adam Driver) are an odd but glamourous couple – she, a world-famous, beautiful, apple-eating opera singer, he a successful, provocative, banana-loving stand-up comedian. And yet they’re in love. The public eats up their love story, consuming the pretty pictures they see in the media.

Annette will not be for everyone, and for once that’s not me being a snob condescending to you normies who surely won’t appreciate creative cinema when you see it (though god knows I’m alarmingly comfortable being that bitch); it’s me, a snob and seasoned consumer of movies, telling you that even I found it weird and difficult to digest. First of all, it’s a musical. It’s a musical that’s not stylized as a musical. It’s a tediously descriptive musical. The song that opens the film is called So May We Start, and those are more or less all of the lyrics as well, asking in a prolonged and pedestrian way if they should start the film. I didn’t turn it off, so I guess that passed for consent, so we see them become their characters, Driver donning a long, curly wig, and ten minutes into the film, it begins. If not immediately won over, I was at least intrigued enough to keep this party going. But all subsequent songs – and there are many, they are constant – are equally plainly descriptive. Their love song: “We Love Each Other So Much.” Simon Helberg’s song about being Ann’s accompanist: “I’m an Accompanist.” Henry’s song about fatherhood skills: “I’m A Good Father.” Not a metaphor for miles. And yet, when Henry performs his comedy, there isn’t a single joke. There are only songs about the usual contents of a stand-up routine. And when Ann’s on stage at the opera, her song is about the most common components of the opera: death, and bows. The songs stand in for actual entertaining content. Are the songs themselves supposed to be entertaining? It’s hard to say for sure but it’s even harder to believe that yes, they are. Because truly, they aren’t. And I normally love a musical, even a half-baked one, and I’ve always enjoyed using 5000 words when 5 would do. But these songs, conceived by the band Sparks, are just not for me. Too avant-garde? Not avant-garde enough?

But this isn’t even the weird, or weirdest, part of the movie. Henry’s embroiled in a scandal and the couple grow apart as her star continues to rise as his career stalls and then fails. Even their newborn baby isn’t uniting them, cute as little Annette is. And by cute I mean she’s not cute at all. She’s very, very creepy. That’s a mean thing to say about a baby; good thing she’s actually a puppet. I’ve misused the word ‘actually’ in that sentence, though I do not mean to deceive you. Mostly I’m confused myself. Visually, verifiably, clearly, Annette is ‘played’ by a creepy rubber puppet who moves like a stiff rubber puppet, with unblinking glass eyes and obvious ligatures to keep her joints relatively articulated. My god is she creepy. Not quite as creepy as the wispy mustache that Henry grows, but still quite remarkably creepy. But wait – there’s more! The film never comments on the fact that Annette appears to you and I to be a puppet – they simply treat her like a real baby, as if this movie is a middle school Christmas pageant with no budget and no recently birthed siblings to play the baby Jesus. Annette’s mom and dad simply see their beautiful baby girl. However, baby Annette does have something strange about her, a gift the film lauds as unusual and extraordinary, but which doesn’t seem all that weird compared to the weirdness of the film itself. It’s like an elephant holding a press conference to tell us that a 7 year old boy is reading at a 6th grade level. That’s quite remarkable, sure, and good for the kid, but are we really just glossing over the fact that an elephant learned both English, AND the power of the media? The medium IS the message, people.

Do not let me dissuade you from watching Annette. After a debut at Cannes and a tiny theatrical run, it is now streaming on Amazon Prime, a fairly innocuous way to sample a truly original film, and while you may or may not respond to it, at least it’s not another Hollywood retread. It’s daring and risky (it pairs a pedo mustache with a douchebag fedora!) and a fun game is to keep your face neutral and simply record the spot in the film where your spouse finally buckles and says “That’s weird.” For Sean it didn’t come until 1h24m into the film, at a point so random and arbitrary that I was astounded and amused in equal portions. I wish my reaction to the film was just as balanced, but still, I was pleasantly surprised by the film’s moving end. It perhaps wasn’t totally earned, but it was a few very stirring minutes of film at the end of a 2h21m movie.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

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Honestly, I never thought this day would come. In 1983 there were rumours in the playground that George Lucas had nine chapters of Star Wars planned, but it seemed made up. None of us would have have predicted that a fourth Star Wars film would be released 16 years later, and none of us could possibly have foreseen that another 12 years after the disappointing prequels wrapped up, the third trilogy would kick off.  It’s been more than 42 years in the making, which is essentially my whole life, but at long last Star Wars’ ninth chapter has finally arrived. 

rosPicking up more or less where The Last Jedi left off, Rise of Skywalker immediately confirms that Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is back and hasn’t lost one bit of his galaxy-dominating ambition.  With a whole fleet of Star Destroyers at his command and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) at his side, the Emperor’s goal is to destroy the Resistance’s rebels once and for all.  It’s up to Rey (Daisy Ridley), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), and Finn (John Boyega) to lead the Resistance into battle against the Emperor and finally foil his dark plans, with the help of many old friends along the way.

By any objective measure, Rise of Skywalker is probably the weakest film of the final trilogy.  Clearly spawned from a checklist of items that needed to be addressed, Rise of Skywalker is exactly the sum of its parts.  Fortunately, its parts are very well-crafted and they fit together to close out the Star Wars ennealogy as well as this fanboy could have hoped.  Some of J.J. Abrams’ choices are not entirely satisfying on their own, but combined, they provide some closure, some redemption, and a whole lot of Return of the Jedi flavour.  The choice to borrow so liberally from RotJ, in particular, grants a satisfying symmetry to the whole affair.

An argument can be (and has been) made that Rise of Skywalker plays it too safe.  No doubt that is a conscious choice by Abrams and an understandable reaction to the (unfair) hate The Last Jedi received for trying to take these films to new places.  The choice to emulate the final (and weakest) movie of the original trilogy is one such safe choice, and overall, I agree that Rise of Skywalker plays it safe at every turn.  But isn’t that beside the point?

Rise of Skywalker takes us to where we’ve been and in revisiting these familiar places gives us a final showdown between good and evil where the fate of the galaxy is at stake, where lightsabers and force lightning flash while a small rebel fleet takes on impossible odds, where working together for the right cause offsets a shortage in numbers, and where good always finds a way to win.  That is the only way the Star Wars saga could have ended, and that’s exactly what Rise of Skywalker delivers.

Top 10 Star Wars Capes

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Edna Mode is a fashion designer to the stars, and by stars I mean super heroes. She is the bespeckled wonder responsible for suiting up The Incredibles and she has one golden rule: no capes. Clearly no one in a certain galaxy far, far away cares to follow this little nugget of common sense. There are capes nearly everywhere you look. Every dramatic exit is done with the flourish of a cape. So even though we can all agree they’re a stupid sartorial choice, let’s indulge ourselves with an ode to Star Wars’s sweeping capes and the people who wear them.

[By the way: did you know Sean and are watching 24 hours of Star Wars movies? What else could inspire such a post?]

10. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill): Luke is not normally prone to capes and yet this teeny tiny glimpse of one could just as easily held the #1 spot as #10. It’s part of his big reveal and proves a flair for the dramatic runs in the family.

9. Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits, Episodes I-III): as a Senator, Bail Organa indulges a certain stateliness. This guy’s got more than one cape in his closet and he doesn’t care who knows. You might start to think that the Rebel Alliance might have been more successful had they only cut all the capes – I bet you could build a death star or two for the price of their dry cleaning bill.

8. General Grievous (Episode III): I can’t help but feel that this dude wears such a suspiciously huge cape that someone should have guessed that he was hiding something underneath. In fact, I am routinely surprised and disappointed by what the so-called Force fails to pick up. Some pretty big stuff, to be honest, that even your average intuition could have detected. It doesn’t take a jedi knight to figure out that big cape = big trouble.

7. Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie, Episodes VII-VIII): I never watched any Star Wars growing up but even I couldn’t fail to pick on some of the iconic images so persistent in popular culture. I recognized storm troopers as the bad guys of Star Wars long before anyone told me they were but to be honest, as a kid I always imagined that they were robots. I wasn’t cured of this delusion until The Force Awakens, when I learned there were humans inside that molded plastic. The uniformity of their uniforms (if you’ll forgive my redundancy) spelled machine to me – perhaps being a woman I just have an innate fear of wearing the same thing as someone else (who wore it best?) and Captain Phasma feels me. It’s hard to really distinguish yourself in a suit of armour but she accessories with this somber one-shouldered garment.

6. Padme (Natalie Portman, Episodes I-III): Padme also has an awful lot of capes, even when you sort them from the similar appeal of the long jacket, the cloak, the robe, and the poncho. No matter how you slice it these folks sure like to have a piece of cloth flowing behind them, announcing arrivals and departures. Is it dangerous around all these ship engines? Definitely. Awkward in battle? Absolutely. And yet: total capetown.

5. Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn, Rogue One): I think Krennic’s capes are a direct reflection of his lack of confidence. He’s insecure, so he tries to impress people with his vestments. He certainly looks important but capes don’t make you competent.

4. Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, Episodes VI-IX): Kylo Ren is a lot like his father – petulant and temperamental with a well-developed emo side. It’s no surprise that the cape appeals to him as well. It helps a young guy who perhaps isn’t fully respected yet cut an imposing figure.

3. Boba Fett (Jeremy Bulloch, Episodes V-VI): for some reason, lots of little boys were absolutely taken with Boba Fett because of his ‘cool armour’ which is baffling to me. Boba Fett is a boring, unnoteworthy character as far as I’m concerned. But he’s got this little torn piece of canvas dangling from his shoulder, so he’s not without vanity. He may never show his face, but he wants you to know he’s an individual.

2. Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams, Episodes V-VI): this dude may be a scoundrel and a cheat but he’s charming and well-dressed and let’s face it, a bit of a scene-stealer. We learn in Solo: A Star Wars Story that the Millennium Falcon has a cape room in it, that’s how much Lando loves his capes, so it’s hard to pick just one. Plus, Williams has a knack for using them in a commanding but flashy way. He wears the cape, the cape doesn’t wear him.

  1. Darth Vader: production designer John Barry and costume designer John Mollo have my utmost admiration for having come up with perhaps THE most iconic look of the 20th, and maybe even 21st, century. Darth Vader is immediately intimidating, the cape makes him broader, more imposing, and it follows the same lines of his helmet. Darth Vader is scary as heck and in a series of films full of costumes the likes of which we’ve never seen before, his is the most memorable.

Marriage Story

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Eight minutes in and this movie’s already breaking my heart. Nicole and Charlie have just spent 8 minutes sharing the things they love most about each other, and their lists are touchingly precise. But it turns out they’re in mediation, and the exercise is meant to kick off their divorce proceedings. Nicole welches – she doesn’t want to read hers, and I sort of can’t blame her. It’s so vulnerable to admit that you once loved the person you no longer love. Fuck.

Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) is a talented actor and the star of a play directed by Charlie (Adam Driver). They share a son, Henry, and a New York City apartment but now that they’ve split, Nicole plans to return to L.A. to work in television. Charlie intends and expects to stay in New York. Though they originally swore off lawyers, agreeing to do things “amicably,” they have one asset that’s precious to them both: Henry. Fighting for custody and for coasts is important to both, so they lawyer up and get down to fighting dirty.

Interviewing lawyers, one dirtbag (Ray Liotta) asks Charlie “Does your wife do drugs or anything? Coke?” he asks, hopefully. Fuck. It’s gross. It’s gross that two people who loved each other and each care deeply for their young son can’t be civil. Civil? They are so hopelessly and desperately past civil that the word looks meaningless here on the page. And the lawyers? They’re fucking hyenas looking to devour their prey.

A Marriage Story is actually a Divorce Story. As both a child of divorce and a divorcee myself, I feel both sides of this thing so acutely that I feel as though I’ve been impaled by my own hopes and dreams. My parents’ divorce was the best thing that ever happened to us; we hated my awful father as a unit and breathed a sigh of relief when he finally left our house for the last time. My mother raised four daughters by herself. Money was tight but there was never any doubt that we were better off without him. But is there a small part of me that wondered why he never fought for custody – never even asked for visitation? A small(ish) part of me that will always wonder if there’s something fundamentally unlovable about me? Leavable about me? My first marriage ended badly, traumatically, like a death. As they do sometimes. We had no child to fight over so one day I just never saw him again and now I have no idea whether the man I once promised to love and cherish forever is dead or alive. And now I’m married to Sean and it’s wonderful and stable and safe and sexy and I hardly ever stay awake all night wondering why it’s so easy to stop loving me and if it could happen again.

Sean saw this one at TIFF (without me – I was off reviewing Jojo or Joker or somesuch) and told you he liked it nearly 3 months ago, but to me he said: it will make you cry. And of course he was right. Written and directed by Noah Baumbach, you don’t really stand a chance of remaining unmoved. Marriage Story is an insightful and well-aimed gut punch. It hit me right in the feels. But even Sean, who comes from a cozy nuclear family and is married to the most amazing woman on earth, even Sean was stirred up. Love is easy. Marriage is hard. Divorce is a goddamned hole in the heart.

The Report

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The Torture Report is based on real events as I’m sure you’ve not failed to notice. In the aftermath of 9/11, the CIA went rogue. Or went roguer. It was panicky because as the country’s central intelligence agency, it sort of had a responsibility to avert disasters such as these. And technically speaking, it knew about the specific 9/11 threat and had failed to do anything to stop it. It was embarrassed and tried to cover its embarrassment and perhaps culpability the only way it knew how: with an aggressive show of force. So it started acting both above and below the law, doing whatever it deemed necessary to get things done, but not running anything by anyone else, and not actually getting things done either.

Cut to: Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening) puts together a task force led by staffer Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) to investigate the CIA’s so-called Detention and Interrogation Program. And the thing is: the work is easy. Their guilt is dripping off each and every report he reads, and poor Jones reads literally millions of pages of documents. Jones of course finds evidence of torture, but also that the CIA then attempted to destroy evidence, subvert the law, and keep things secret from even the highest offices in the country. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the truth was that their torture techniques didn’t even work. Although they were so brutal that more than once the prisoner died while being tortured, not once (worth repeating: NOT ONCE) did their EITs result in information they didn’t already have. So either the torture was ineffective or the prisoners truly didn’t have any dirt to spill, and the CIA couldn’t tell the difference anyhow. In fact, afterward even the CIA admitted that at least a quarter of its prisoners should never have been detained in the first place – and keep in mind that people died in their custody. And that’s just what they admit to.

By ‘things’ I mean torture. They basically invented a whole new kind of torture to get information out of terror suspects and they called it ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (EITs) in order to not have to call it torture. But that’s what it was. Meanwhile, the president of the United States is strutting around telling the world that the USA does not torture prisoners, confidently saying as much because the CIA was saying that to his face while crossing their fingers behind their backs.

Adam Driver is playing a desk-sitting paper-shuffler in this, and it can be hard to make that very cinematic but the truth of his performance lays in how passionate he is about the work. After spending more than 5 years in a secure, windowless office, working nights and weekends to put this thing together, and being constantly confronted by the shady, unlawful, and shameful actions of his country, it wears on Jones. He can’t help but be emotionally invested.

The film, directed by Scott Burns, earns its tension in that despite this being his life’s work, and obviously vital knowledge, there are tonnes of people who want to bury the report. Even Senator Feinstein wavers. The CIA is not just torturing people abroad, they’e keeping secrets from their president (and openly lying wherever necessary), and spying on their own people, including on the Congress of the United States of America.

It’s kind of amazing that the film ends up feeling gripping and vital. There’s a momentum to it that really brings the subject alive and Driver injects the thing with urgency and humanity.

 

TIFF19: Marriage Story

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Marriage Story picks up long after most romances have wrapped up. Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) were once in love, but as disagreements piled up, they grew apart. Now, as the film begins, they can barely tolerate each other, and they now have to figure out how to uncouple. Of course, since Charlie and Nicole have had trouble agreeing on day-to-day things, agreeing on terms of separation is next-to-impossible.

UNB_Unit_09413_rgbMy synopsis might make the film seem dry, boring, or depressing. Marriage Story is none of those things. Certainly, it is often sad and difficult, but just as often, it is sweet and funny, and all the while, it is insightful and real.

There are many wonderful moments in Marriage Story, and the starting point for all of them is that neither Charlie nor Nicole is a bad person. Director Noah Baumbach never asks the audience to choose sides and never assigns blame for this breakdown. Charlie and Nicole are simply two people who have grown apart and who are being pulled in different directions.

Many films try to gloss over these stresses or claim that love will overcome them. But sometimes love is not enough. Marriage Story tackles that reality in a way that will ring true to anyone who has ever been in a serious relationship.

Marriage Story is one of those rare films that transcends genre. More than that, it is a film that is remarkably relatable and has something to offer for everyone. It is one of the best films of the year, and one you should watch as soon as it becomes available on Netflix on December 6. And if you have the chance to catch Marriage Story sooner (a limited theatrical release is scheduled for November), take it. It’s that good.

 

BlacKkKlansman

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Ron Stallworth is a young black man, proud to be Colorado Springs’ first African-American police officer, in 1972 (or 1979 in real life, but from these parentheses forward, please understand that though this is based on his autobiography of real events, I’ll be discussing the events in the film). He’ll be the Jackie Robinson of the PD, and like Jackie, he’s the impossibly perfect, flawless, magical black man who will need to constantly turn his cheek – not just to the racist public, but to racist colleagues as well. Life might be difficult for Ron walking the beat but he’ll never know because he’s buried in the basement records office being abused by his own fellow officers. He’s desperate to get some real police work but I bet he got more than he bargained for. When he’s partnered with a Jewish officer named Flip, the two of them together make a single perfect Klansman.

Wait, what? Yeah, true story, though it sounds like the setup of a joke with a cringe-worthy punch-line. A black guy and a Jew teamed up together, undercover, to infiltrate the KKK. Ron (John David Washington) says all the right things on the phone, all the way up to the Grand Wizard himself, David Duke (Topher Grace). Flip (Adam Driver) provides the requisite white face and trucker caps. Together nothing can stop them, except possibly guys in hooded robes.

Spike Lee directs this thing, based on Stallworth’s memoir. But the spin that Lee and the other writers bring to the movie is fantastic. While this would have been a remarkable story at any time, setting it is amidst blaxploitation movies and Nixon’s reelection 03-blackkklansman-review.w1200.h630campaign gives it a crisp edge, and the constant allusions to Trump’s eventual win, thanks in part to his KKK ties, give it a sharp one. Damn it’s smart. And also depressing. And funny. Like, really funny. And so sad. Because as astutely-observed as this stuff is, it’s astonishing and disappointing to realize that 40 years on, we haven’t made much discernible progress. White people were horrified and baffled by 45’s election, which is funny because it was obviously white people who elected him. The two kinds obviously don’t talk. But nearly every black American I’ve spoken to was not overly surprised by the result (which is a far cry from being happy about it). They knew the country’s true temperature since they live with its consequences every day. And now those things have been outed, given permission to be voiced, and suddenly 2018 is resembling 1972 is some very uncomfortable ways.

John David Washington is really great in this role. He made his movie debut at just 6 years old, playing a school kid in a movie Spike Lee made with his father, Denzel called Malcolm X…maybe you’ve heard of it? If he’s getting acting lessons at home, they’re paying off. He’s subtle and natural and the movie’s success hinges on how well he underplays events that seem so impossible. Adam Driver does well too; he knows he’s second banana, but his character undergoes an interesting arc, from “it’s just a job” to really internalizing the hated for Jews that he constantly has to endorse as part of the klan. It has to mess you up to say things against your own people, to disavow yourself from a group that is part of your essential self – we feel that every time Flip denies his religion out loud to suspicious klansman, but it’s an interesting callback to Ron’s police department interview, where he basically had to do the same. And that should give us pause. And Topher Grace gets to play David Duke because Armie Hammer’s perfect Aryan face was presumably busy playing a slave owner in some other movie.

Ron spends the movie trying to prove to himself, to his potential girlfriend, and to his superior officers, that you can work from the inside to tear something down. His lady, the president of the black student union, is a proud agitator who doesn’t believe you should belong to the system you’re trying to destroy. “Black liberation!” she shouts at him. And we clearly see his own internal struggle because on the one hand he’s a first hand witness to the system being broken, and stacked against him, but he also believes he can be an agent for change. It takes guts to be the guy on the inside. I guess after being that guy for his whole life, joining the klan maybe didn’t seem so scary.

In fact, Lee does well subtly highlight the similarities between the two groups: kops and klan. Both seemed nearly identically racist in the 70s. But what got me is that in the film, both groups refer to themselves as “family.” Very recently I was telling Sean this theory of mine that any non-family member who refers to themselves as “family” is doing it for nefarious reasons. Work “families” tend to be abusive. It means, sure they’re internal fighting. It’s fine. It’s family. In the police department it means we don’t rat on each other. If some officers are abusing their position to harass people (spoiler alert: black people!) we turn a blind eye. There are so many clever, subversive little elements that they get under your skin incredibly effectively.

And just when you’re starting to feel cutesey about all the Nazi-salute foreplay and lynching pillow talk, Lee flips the script and reminds us of our present-day truth, where we cannot hide behind our smug sense of superiority. We are not better, and there’s no better way to remind us of that than with footage from last year’s white superemacist, neo-nazi, ‘white civil rights’ rally in Charlottesville. This weekend is actually the one-year anniversary, and tensions are high. This movie will likely never reach the hearts and minds of those who could really use it, but let it be both a balm and a rallying cry for the rest of us, perhaps even an emergency flare. We need movies like this to get us through these dark days.

On Second Thought – Star Wars: The Last Jedi

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I am not a Star Wars fan. I knew about it peripherally – its symbiotic relationship with pop culture is hard to miss – but I’d never seen the movies and never cared to. But Sean has always carried a special spot in his heart for Star Wars, or for the original trilogy anyway. He was just born when the first one came out but as a little boy he was enamoured with the series, with the very concept of space cowboys, and swords made out of laser beams, and cool flying cars. And while I think he respected my stance on keeping Star Wars out of my life for the most part, he kinda sorta took advantage of me when I had massive back surgery two years ago. While I was high on pain pills, he screened all 6 movies for me, and I was ambivalent at best. I’m totally okay with these movies existing in the world and I’m  happy for anyone who takes joy from them, but they aren’t for me and never will be. But I still experienced vicarious excitement for Sean when The Force Awakens was announced. It felt like we waited forever to get our hands on that one, and it felt a little out of this world to sit in a theatre and watch that famous crawl go up the screen. Ultimately, though, Sean was disappointed by TFA. He felt it was a little too similar to a previous Star Wars film ands couldn’t quite work up the same enthusiasm for this retread. But that didn’t let us off the hook for the opening night of Rogue One. Nor for The Last Jedi, of course, and this time, Sean was a little more enthusiastic.

Warning: spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, steer away. Maybe check out Sean’s spoiler-free review instead, or my own of the original trilogy.

I was not. Enthusiastic, I mean. I don’t mean to be a wet blanket on his boyhood nostalgia, and it wasn’t as if the film was without merit. I didn’t think it was bad, I just didn’t care all that much. And at two and a half hours, it was long and felt it, and I couldn’t help but sneer at the scenes that I thought of as bloated – that extended Finn/Rose casino adventure that never went anywhere in particular.

But later, thinking about this one scene between Luke and Rey, I reconsidered. “I failed him” he says of his nephew Kylo Ren’s defection to the Dark Side. No, she says, “He failed you.” And that’s when the movie really opened up to me and I started thinking of the film in terms of theme – that theme being failure. Triumphs are easy. Heroes are only truly tested when things don’t go their way. Rose and Finn are not going to accomplish their mission but they never stop trying, they never stop believing, and that doggedness inspires hope in others. That mission was never as crucial as they believed. Vice Admiral Holdo had another plan in mind the whole time, and she orders the evacuation of her ship. But this plan fails too. The escape pods are picked off one by one and Holdo ends up sacrificing herself to save them. When she reveals to Leia that she’ll stay behind in what will amount to a suicide mission, Leia says “I can’t take any more loss” to which Holdo responds “Yes you can.” Never mind that it feels like Laura Dern is speaking for us, the audience, who have so recently lost Carrie Fisher. It’s also a tiny admission by a formidable General that her job is hard, and weighing on her heavily.

“Yes you can.” Three devastating little words that permeate even the vacuum of space. Loss doesn’t ask for permission. It must be endured. Even when you think you can’t possibly take anymore, the universe laughs, and serves you a double helping. But broken hearts still beat. Loss and life are inseparable, two sides of the same death star.

Leia looks weary in this movie. The toll of each loss is written in the slope of her tumblr_oxl4isuDq51ruu897o5_540shoulders. But her unwavering belief in the cause fuels her persistence, as a Rebel and as a Leader , a figurehead who inspires others but also a teacher who is grooming the next generation. Poe seems to be a favourite of hers, though all agree he’s a bit of a hot head who prefers the shoot-em-up approach. Poe’s whole raison d’etre this film is to learn some hard lessons. He too must fail, and learn to put the Light first and foremost, ahead of even his own ego.

And perhaps it is Luke himself who most needs to learn how to continue on in the face of failure. Having failed his nephew Ben, who then serves under Snoke as the formidable Kylo Ren, Luke is so devastated and full of self-doubt that he retreats. Not just physically, though he does completely disappear at a time when, arguably, the Rebellion needs him most. But he also retreats from the Force. He cuts himself off completely. And maybe it’s his fear that he’ll fail again that prevents him from giving Rey the help she needs. It’s certainly a side of him we hadn’t anticipated. The Hero always steps up. How is Star Wars of all things, of all franchises, suddenly subverting the very archetypes it helped define?

In the film’s last epic battle, Luke is literally fighting his own failure. Kylo Ren is the kid he couldn’t save. Despite three movies’ worth of heroics, it’s this one failure that defines him now, that shapes his legacy as man and Jedi. But more than Kylo Ren, he’s also fighting his own apathy, his own instinct to hide. Anyone can be brave when things are easy. But Luke has had to reach down to previously unplumbed depths in order to find the will to continue on. There is no light saber in the galaxy half as powerful as the sheer will it takes just to show up, to stand in the face of failure even when you fully expect to find failure again. There is power in resilience. There is strength is perseverance. Anyone can wear the hero’s mantle, but to show up cloaked in failure, ready to face the impossible, expecting to lose but willing to do it anyway? This is what we come to the movies to see and to feel. Fuck heroes. Flying is easy. Shooting (first) is easy. But showing up for people even when your own self-worth has been shattered? That’s fucking something. Writer-director Rian Johnson has single-handedly redefined everything we thought we knew, and has done it smack in the middle of a trilogy. Ballsy.

Though The Last Jedi is a direct continuation from where we left off in The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren seems to have grown up quite a bit. He’s more self-assured and he’s more powerful. But he’s still prey to his own temper, which betrays him. He should have been able to pick up on Luke’s misdirection if he hadn’t been letting his rage dictate their interaction. The truth is, temperamental as he may be, Kylo Ren is a contender now. We’ve been underestimating him, and we’re not the only ones. But does he have a fatal flaw? Certainly, Kylo Ren has failed the Light. He’s failed his parents, and his heritage. But is he also failing himself? And if the answer is yes – does he have the means to soldier on?

Now we wait for Episode IX.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

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The Meyerowitz family is fractured. Danny (Adam Sandler) is a self-described ‘extremely good parker’ with little else on the horizon. A loving dad and devoted house husband, his life is in transition now that he and his wife are separating and his only daughter is off to college. Moving in with his estranged father Harold (Dustin Hoffman) seems like an opportunity to get to know him, except it turns out that feeling’s not mutual.

Harold abandoned Danny and daughter Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) in favour of a new family when they were quite young. He’s never acted as a real father to them and even now he’s mostly only interested in what they can do for him. Not to mention the complicating factor of his alcoholic wife Maureen (Emma Thompson) who MV5BN2M5YzA2ODAtOTNmMi00MGYyLWIxYWYtY2M2NmE4ZGE1ODQ1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjAwODA4Mw@@._V1_inserts herself into cramped dynamics like she’s determined to put the Wicked back into Step Mother. Both throw out the red carpet when favoured son Matthew (Ben Stiller) makes a reluctant appearance. Harold has fostered a competitive streak between his children by different mothers but they otherwise aren’t close. So when their father’s life and career necessitate them pulling together, it’s a little awkward. Actually, it’s extremely awkward and kind of heart breaking. Because they aren’t bad people, they’ve just been starved of their father’s love and have no idea how to act like a family now that there’s no real chance that things will ever be different.

This being a Noah Baumbach work, the comedy isn’t broad, but it is damn funny. When I finished it (a Netflix original) I immediately wanted to restart it, just to catch all the amazing little asides and offhand jokes that are so casually but expertly tossed out.

Although Harold is a self-absorbed contrarian, he’s not quite despicable in the hands of Dustin Hoffman and his grizzled white beard. Adam Sandler gives a nuanced performance that’ll make you believe in him as an actor once again – and it’s been a good long while since that’s been true. Actually, there are loads of big names, some in pretty small roles, but everyone is kind of spectacular in this. Having recently had no patience for Golden Exits at the New Hampshire Film Festival, I wondered if the our film lexicon was finally full to bursting with movies about privileged white people whining about their lives. But the family dysfunction in The Meyerowitz Stories feels relatable and authentic and the characters are trying too hard to be decent people in the face of it all: I kind of loved it. It’s amazing how many years later childhood resentments and jealousies can bubble to the surface, but this is the kind of movie that makes us all feel “Same” in one way or another, and it just feels good and cathartic that we aren’t alone.