Probably my harshest review of 2020

"Enola Holmes," "The Devil All The Time," "Ratched," "An American in Paris," and "The Social Dilemma"

No Content for Old Men

with Matt Craig

Hey movie lovers!

As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!

In this week's newsletter: I'll tell you about a lot of stuff I watched and really did not like. Maybe you've seen these movies and shows floating around the Netflix Top 10 this week and wondered if they were worth your time: The Devil All the Time, starring Spider-Man Tom Holland; Enola Holmes, starring Stranger Things' Millie Bobby Brown; and Ratched, starring Sarah "Always Stuck in a Bad Movie" Paulson. Plus, an old school antidote to those quarantine blues, and a mandatory documentary about social media. Sound the alarm.

Word Count: 983 words
Reading time: 5 minutes

Enola Holmes

It's been a while since I've aggressively disliked a movie this much.

That isn't to say Enola Holmes is "bad," from the standpoint of competence. It's perfectly fine and fun, in a Dave and Busters "See isn't this fun? This is fun right! Aren't you having fun!?" sort of way, appealing to kids and the ever-increasing adult contingent who want to crawl back into the cradle. Nor do I feel some duty to protect the high brow literary standard of Sherlock Holmes. After all, Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories were the popular pulpy mass entertainment of their time, so much so that Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock numerous times in the original run so he could write more "serious" history books.

I guess my problem stems from the person in center frame. Young starlets have been a staple of the movie industry since its inception, but never before has one held so much power over a production. The movie is not just crafted for 16-year-old Millie Bobby Brown, it was crafted by her as a promotional device. Seriously, MBB was an actual producer calling all the shots on a multi-million dollar movie here. I wish I was kidding! I'm not! She found the story and shepherded it through financing and production and on to Netflix. By her quotes in interviews and my own (somewhat cynical) analysis, I honestly believe the motivation behind that work was the way the period costumes and one-liners would look on her Instagram profile.

I've written extensively about the increasingly blurred lines between the silver screen and the Instagram feed (see: @TheRock vs. Hobbs and Shaw), but this movie takes that synergy to its logical and shameless extreme. MBB's "Enola" Holmes breaks the fourth wall and stares right down the camera constantly, in much the same way one would take an iPhone selfie video of oneself, accompanied by Gen-Z self-assessment narration that's only a half-step removed from "hey guys welcome back to my channel."

Every positive review of this movie will call it "charming," and one assessment I saw brazenly trumpets the party line by saying the movie "will be loved by Brown's fans and will surely make her many more new ones." I mean I'd hope so, considering storytelling is sacrificed for promotion at every possible turn, adding up to a movie that's so much more fixated on MBB's precociousness than creating any room for its retrofit neo-feminist storyline (which feels in place once again only to prop up MBB's bonafides).

I just don't think MBB deserves so much power. Frankly, I don't think she's a good actor. She's still young, and I'm sure she's a lovely person so none of this is a personal attack, but if she's going to show up in a star vehicle this hefty then she merits legitimate criticism.

She acts in much the same way your young relative might act on the stage in a middle school play. Sad is SAD and happy is HAPPY and cry is CRY, with no attempt at fully realizing character. I realize that no movie star can fully disappear into the characters they portray, but MBB (and The Rock) make absolutely no attempt to be anyone other than their celebrity selves. Which is all the same, because their celebrity is the thing selling the movie. Or at least, a certain kind of popcorn movie. I'd be shocked if MBB ever worked with a true auteur director.

It's only appropriate then that MBB is acting across from Henry Cavil, whom I've previously called a human special effect...and an Abercrombie & Fitch mannequin with a pulse. In playing the most clever detective who ever lived, Cavil decides to do...exactly what he always does. He barely talks, he barely moves his face, he barely does anything aside from filling the frame with his enormous muscles and perfect face. Sherlock Holmes, a character interesting enough for dozens of high quality adaptations, has been neutered here. He basically serves his purpose as an Imaginative Property (IP) checkbox by the time the opening credits roll.

Sam Clafin's Mycroft Holmes is a one-note caricature serving as obligatory antagonist, Helena Bonham Carter is unfairly trapped in flashbacks, and Louis Partridge is literally just every 17-year-old airhead thirst trap on Tik Tok.

The funny thing is that if a bunch of you all watch this movie this week, I already know I'm going to get a handful of emails from people who enjoyed watching it. It hits enough pleasure sensors to lull someone into its "charm" (always charm). The whole thing is kinda like seeing a Claude Monet painting that's been recreated by a child with her little watercolor box set.

My advice? If you're in the mood, use your Netflix to flip over to any episode of BBC's "Sherlock" limited series. You'll thank me later.

The Devil All the Time

If we're accepting the proposition that every single entertainment property has to be based on some sort of pre-existing IP with an established audience, then it makes some kind of sense why adaptations of ambitious, best-selling literature could be the most fruitful source material. At least, on paper.

What last year's The Goldfinch -- one of Hollywood's most comprehensive disasters in the last decade -- and now this movie have taught us is that the hypothesis was flat wrong. Multi-layered novelistic storytelling spanning decades always gets lost in translation, and worse, the bleak fatalism of these stories yields a joyless slog. In print, these stories feel profound. On screen, they feel pointless.

If there's a point to The Devil All the Time, I certainly didn't pick up on it. Two hours of rape, murder, suicide, prostitution, heresy and bitterness amount to the conclusion that, "well, that's life." Abundant narration retains its book style, which further detaches the audience from the immediacy of the moment. And though I'm rarely one to say "this should've been a TV series," the confines of a single movie didn't allow enough space to make us care about the wide cast of characters, who seem to be connected only by their misery.

If there's one thing these disastrous novel adaptations are good for, it's attracting a star-studded cast. Tom Holland is trying his very best to fight back against his Spider-Man persona here, and he's charming as can be, but has a hard time shedding his internal joyous energy to play a young man broken and hopeless. He's surrounded by excellent performances. Bill Skarsgard and Haley Bennett make for excellent post-war parents until they meet their demise, Robert Pattinson is a little too good as an evil revivalist, Jason Clarke and Harry Melling are creepy as hell, and Riley Keough's conflicted prostitute/murder associate is quite frankly the most interesting character in the whole story.

Again, the movie not bad. I actually think it's really well made. I'll be interested to see what this young director does next. The movie is just very ill-conceived, and doesn't allow for any joy or fun to keep a viewer invested across it's very long run time. I'd probably recommend it even less than Enola Holmes. Which, as you just found out, is saying something.

Streaming Suggestions!

Something New

Ratched (Netflix): As if we needed a quintessential example of the overwhelming power of established IP in Hollywood, here comes an origin story mini-series about a supporting character from a movie that came out in the 1970s! How many people scrolling through Netflix this weekend have even seen "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?" Doesn't that defeat the purpose of imaginative property in the first place? (Netflix, of course, has that movie available to stream right next to this show, because if there's one thing more prevalent than IP right now it's synergy.) Whatever. "American Horror Story" showrunner Ryan Murphy and star Sarah Paulson teamed back up to make another season of that show under a new banner. It trades all of the heart of the original 70s classic for cheap thrills. I was never an AHS fan, so I found this to be a bit of a tough hang. Still, every time I got on Netflix in the past week it was at No. 1 in the Top 10, so clearly some of you all are into it.

Something Old

An American in Paris (1951): Sometimes on a Friday night, after a week of wildfires and earthquakes and RBG dying and other general decay of our country/planet, the man you really need on your screen is Gene Kelley. So last weekend I sat down and watched Singin in the Rain and An American in Paris back to back, giving me my fill of singing, dancing, smiling and swooning. I should note that Kelley seems like he was a terror to work with behind-the-scenes, and the plot of this movie is kinda problematic in 2020, but none of that can take away from the fact that when you sit down to watch either of these gems, you feel a little happier inside. Lawd knows we need some of that these days.

Something to Stream

The Social Dilemma (Netflix): Every single person with any social media accounts should be required to watch this documentary. Stylistically I kinda hate it (the theme of the week), but the substance of the content here is gold. I swear, if I see one more documentary start with interview subjects walking into a room and sitting down, then a slate and a "say your name," I might throw my TV out the window. The little recreation mini-movie is pathetic, though on that front I do sympathize with the utter lack of interesting footage to show over discussions of data and coding. Basically, this project should've been a podcast. A GREAT one. The variety and prominence of voices they got to talk for this story is impressive, and the information they provide is unbelievable. It's basically a proverbial "red pill" on all things social media. When the credits rolled, I deleted two social apps off my phone, seriously considered deleting the rest, and walked away convinced that there would be a civil war in this country within my lifetime. If that doesn't intrigue you enough to flip this on tonight, I don't know what will.

Trailer Watch: A Rainy Day in New York

You don't need me to tell you that Woody Allen is a complicated figure in the modern movie landscape. I hesitated to include the trailer for his latest movie here at all. But I did so only to highlight that Timothee Chalamet -- at just 24 years old -- has already played a starring role in movies by directors Luca Guadagnino, Greta Gerwig, Woody Allen, Wes Anderson AND Denis Villneuve! Plus a smaller role with Christopher Nolan! I call him "this generation's Leo DiCaprio" because he has the rare ability to be both the best actor and the biggest star in the world simultaneously, but even I am shocked but just how quickly he achieved that status. This particular entry will be fascinating because it's something Chalamet has never shown before (and really neither has DiCaprio)...can he do comedy?