Understanding Dump-uary
No Content for Old Men
with Matt Craig
In this week's newsletter: I'll take a macro view of the movie industry to explain why a new Netflix movie stinks because of the month of its release. Then a recommendation of some much better movies to watch. And lastly in this week's "Trailer Watch," a legitimately terrifying sneak peak at an upcoming horror movie.
Word Count: 966 words
Approximate Reading Time: 6 minutes
The Last Thing He Wanted
A macro view of the movie industry in February
The first rule of the movie business, writes the legendary William Goldman in his essential book "Adventures in the Screentrade," is that nobody knows whether a movie is going to work. Nobody. For any reason. Ever.
It sure doesn't stop them from trying to guess. They have to, because often when your movie is released is just as important as its quality. For example, Booksmart came out last March (a baffling decision) to crickets when it could've been a smash with kids out of school over the summer. A Star is Born might've won Best Picture last year if it hadn't run out of steam from its early October roll out (but it also may not have done as well at the box office).
Studios think they have some things figured out. Spring is for horror, summer is for mega blockbusters, and fall/winter is for prestige fare. Fine, though it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy (drop Avengers: Endgame any month and suddenly the data says that's the hot month).
Friends and family often ask me why "all the good movies" come out across a single six-week span every year? The answer the Oscars, but it's also much more than that. Filmmakers care about the awards for sure. They care about money more. And there's an large media apparatus ramping up during awards season, hungry for content, which distributors can use to inflate the attention around their projects. Knives Out, for example, wouldn't have the firepower to take on Marvel in the summer but slingshotted off the initial awards buzz to earn over $163 million at the box office.
Then there's February. Oh, poor February. Or as some call it, Dump-uary.
The Oscars are over. The media apparatus has packed up and gone home. Casual moviegoers are either a) burned out from having gone through the gauntlet of awards movies. b) catching up on all the good awards movies, or c) saying to themselves 'wow we've gone to the movies a lot lately we need to cut back.'
This is the time when movies put out the projects they're trying to sweep under the rug. The less attention on these bombs, the better. Occasionally, they misjudge and a good one sneaks through. Game Night comes to mind from 2018, or Hail, Caesar! in 2016. For every one of those, there's a dozen clunkers.
Just look at the current box office selections. The digitally altered Sonic The Hedgehog -- which has actually been a surprise box office hit but critically skewered -- or Harrison Ford playing with a CGI dog in The Call of the Wild. Or Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, a bomb so bad they had to change the name of the movie after its opening weekend. Or Blumhouse's Fantasy Island, which literally put the indie producer's name before the literal title in the hopes that the goodwill of Jason Blum could offset the rest of whatever's going on there.
(Important caveat here: horror movies don't count in Dump-uary, because of what I said about studios thinking horror works best in spring. Let us not forget Get Out came out in February 2017. So it's safe to assume that The Invisible Man, which comes out this weekend and will be featured in next week's newsletter, was released intentionally and will be good.)
The surest sign of a Dump-uary special is if a movie looks like it's going to be good on paper. Downhill, for example, pairs two mega stars in a remake of a critical darling. If its producers thought it was good, they would've released it in October or November. Instead, February. And as I chronicled last week, it wasn't very good.
Which brings us to The Last Thing He Wanted. It's an adaptation of a Joan Didion novel starring (deep breath) Anne Hathaway and Ben Affleck and Willem Dafoe and Rosie Perez. What! Leading into its debut at Sundance, it popped up on every list I read for "the most anticipated movies of the festival." One list, which I won't name now, said it had serious Oscar aspirations.
I don't even need to tell you what the critics thought of the movie, other than to say that Netflix dropped it onto its service a few days ago, midweek, right in the heart of Dump-uary.
Unfortunately for them, because their algorithm is so good and they have such a hypnotic hold on the entirety of millennial America, people still found it. When I clicked on the movie last night, it was No. 7 on the most watch items of the day.
What they "watched" -- and I use that term loosely because I'm uncertain how many actually finished it all the way through -- was an incredibly dense piece of storytelling. Didion's writing style crams in several loaded thoughts into each sentence. Without the benefit of stopping to reread, they can be hard to comprehend. Which makes this movie very hard to follow, unless you want to pause every few seconds to break down what you just heard. The lines you do understand sound cake-y, even cheese-y, which somehow works great for Didion in print but doesn't translate well at all to the screen.
I consider myself to be a pretty savvy movie watcher, and I couldn't keep up with all the plot machinations and double switcheroos going on here. Hathaway plays a journalist who is investigating illegal gun running in Nicaragua, that much I'm confident about. Then her father (Dafoe) is a gun runner, I'm pretty sure, and Affleck is like a CIA-type government guy? I couldn't spoil this movie if I tried.
I would tell you not to watch this movie...but it's Dump-uary, and I'm not sure there are many better options.
Streaming Suggestions!
Something New
Motherless Brooklyn ($$$): I finally caught up on Ed Norton's directorial debut from late last year, and I can't believe it took so long since my favorite genre is noir. This is classic noir, with Norton playing a gumshoe suffering from Tourette syndrome and some sort of autism. It's a great set up, the cast is fantastic, and he's crammed some big ideas in there too. The plot is convoluted, in traditional noir fashion, and moment to moment the pacing can be kinda slow, but it's an interesting watch for sure.
Something Old
8 1/2 (1963): I completed last week's homework assignment, and I gotta be honest. Fellini's surreal trance-like storytelling kinda messed with me. Visually he's a master, thematically he's probably a genius, but ultimately I love stories. I love a good yarn. And the two I've seen haven't been my cup of tea.
In the Mood for Love (2000): This recommendation comes from reader (and dear friend!) Allison Sanders (s/o if you're reading this!), and I guess more accurately from Hong Kong. It's my homework for this week and now it's your homework as well. Let's do this.
Something to Stream
The Farewell (Amazon Prime): One of last year's surprise gems has finally hit a streaming service. Lulu Wong tells a semi-autobiographical tale of returning to China to be with her dying grandmother, except that in accordance with eastern traditions none of her family has told her grandmother she is sick. It's thought-provoking, emotional, and really really well executed. Awkwafina is a genuine star in the lead role. The movie got snubbed by the Oscars, and is unquestionably worth the watch for you now that it's a click away.
Trailer Watch: Candyman
I'm telling you, nobody cuts a trailer like Jordan Peele. He's not directing this joint, but he is executive producing, and this trailer scared the crap out of me. It will scare you too. Don't click if you're alone!