'The Peanut Butter Falcon' reminds you why you love movies
No Content for Old Men
with Matt Craig
In this week's newsletter: A review of the fantastic indie The Peanut Butter Falcon, a note on the potentially blasphemous HBO show "The Righteous Gemstones," and some really solid streaming recommendations for your weekend. In this week's "Trailer Watch," we'll look at what I think will be the first superhero movie ever to get nominated for Best Picture.
Word Count: 748 words
Approximate Reading Time: 3 minutes
The Peanut Butter Falcon
A Mark Twain folktale for the modern age
I started this newsletter with the goal of helping people. Seriously. How cheesy does that sound? This is a weekly email about movies, after all. It doesn't go out to many people. Fewer actually open it each week. I frequently ask myself if it's worth the effort.
But every now and then, a movie comes around like The Peanut Butter Falcon, and I remember.
I remember the feeling of reading the opening scene to Birdman in my "Introduction to Scriptwriting" class freshman year at Ball State, mind blown, realizing I'd never look at movies the same way again. I remember the fluttering feeling of each unexpected plot twist or emotional gut punch on screen that left me floored--the repeated opening/closing scene of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the climax of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl--each a reminder that movies could be art and not simply entertainment. I remember the faces and the reactions of friends and family members who I've been lucky enough to share these cinematic experiences with--like the collective WTF look from my roommates after their first viewing of The Sixth Sense, or the discussions late into the night and the following morning between family members after seeing Get Out.
It is too simplistic to say movies are powerful. No. Good movies are powerful. And this, The Peanut Butter Falcon, was a good movie. I want to share it with you.
Our titular character is a 22-year-old man with down syndrome, who dreams of escaping his state-assigned living facility to become a professional wrestler. All he has to do is make it to a wrestling school in the deep south. His journey takes him through the North Carolina keys, on a raft, joined by a hard luck swamp fisherman for adventures that could have come straight out of a Mark Twain novel.
The movie is its own kind of folktale. Heartfelt, sincere, at times profound. To be honest, it's impossible to be cynical about any aspect of it.
The phrase used by actors and director's at the film's rapturous debut at SXSW was "unapologetic joy." In 2019, the year of movies that can be better described as unapologetic cash-grabs, it's entirely refreshing.
Apparently I'm not the only one who found this story of self-discovery cathartic. Its star, Shia LaBeouf, the aforementioned hard luck swamp fisherman, got arrested during filming. You may or may not have seen the video of his public intoxication and the sexist and racist comments leveled toward his arresting officers. He walked out of jail and back onto the film set. “When we were filming, I basically hit bottom barrel, and then the next day I had to show up on our life raft with him and no irony in it,” LaBeouf said at the film's premiere at SXSW. “That’s actually what our truth was." LaBeouf has publicly apologized and says he's now sober.
There's an authenticity to his performance that reminds a viewer exactly why LaBeouf was considered one of the great young actors in the world less than a decade ago. He brings the sheer intensity of a Daniel Day Lewis to his roles, a focus that demands your attention for every second he's on screen. It's an unmistakable movie star quality, while somehow also being a disappearance into character.
Credit goes to the filmmaking team of Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz, who wrote the movie around excellent down syndrome actor Zack Gottsagen, then casted LaBeouf and the underrated Dakota Johnson, then found a way to make the swamps and hopelessness of rural poverty look downright romantic in their directorial debut.
As the movie unfolds, my largest concern was that it might settle for this facile sentimentality. It's a happy movie. How easy would it have been to bask in the pure joy of human kindness? Let the good times roll, man! But it turns out there are some twists of sad reality lying wait in Act 3, like landmines waiting to be run over. Tread lightly.
I don't want to spoil anything, as is my rule in this newsletter, so all I know to say is that you need to find a way to see this movie. It's small, in a limited number of theaters, and may need to be caught on demand in a few months. But among all the gloom and muck of both 2019 movies and, well, 2019 in general...it's worth it.
Streaming Suggestions!
Something New
The Righteous Gemstones (HBO): I'm not sure how to feel about this new Danny McBride comedy, which depicts a rich yet impious family of megachurch pastors. And when I say pastors here, I mean profiteers. If you know McBride's other work (Eastbound and Down, Vice Principals) you know to expect a fair amount of crude humor, which could be viewed as disrespectful and in some cases blasphemous. The show is clearly very anti-church, but after watching the first two episodes I think it's pretty careful not to be anti-God. It's abundantly clear that this family does not actually believe, and bad apples are a sad reality within the modern church. I don't feel any reservations about jokes at their expense. And make no mistake, the show is pretty damn funny.
Something Old
Of Mice and Men (1992): Ah yes, that book you were forced to read in English class and then irrationally hated for years because your brain associated it with homework. But this movie, starring Gary Sinese and John Malkovich, is both excellent on its own merits and instrumental in many of the themes captured in The Peanut Butter Falcon. A bandit on the run with a bigger yet mentally handicapped sidekick, a long line of misadventures, and a paradise that exists only in the sidekick's mind. There truly are no new stories, I promise.
Eagle Eye (2008): My favorite movie from the days when Shia LaBeouf was the hottest young actor in Hollywood. Amazingly, the plot about some all-seeing technology taking over an innocent person's life has only gotten more believable in the decade since this movie was released, and in fact the exact same concept is being used in a different movie this year, albeit with a more comic slant (Jexi). This is LaBeouf operating at peak movie stardom.
Something to Stream
Band of Robbers (Netflix): Longtime newsletter subscribers know this selection all-too-well, my favorite uber-hidden gem on Netflix. Now is a perfect time to bring it back around once again, because the plot is such a clear adaptation from Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." You won't recognize anyone in the cast (except maybe standup comedian Hannibal Buress), and the microbudget of the project is obvious, but trust me when I tell you this will be one of your favorite little gems too if you give it a chance.
Bad Times at the El Royale (HBO): Peering through the back catalogue of Dakota Johnson, it's hard not to feel a little bit of pity. She had repeatedly taken on ambitious, if ultimately disappointing, projects. And though her roles are often pigeon-holed into some variation on the same "mysterious sexy girl" shtick, I don't think it's a reflection on her acting ability. Case and point: the lead role in last year's Agatha Christie-eque mystery thriller that came and went without making too much noise. It deserved more, with a stellar cast (Chris Hemsworth, Jeff Bridges and Cynthia Erivo) and a clever non-linear structure that keep you guessing.
Trailer Watch: Joker
The question of everybody's mind: can a superhero movie be nominated for Best Picture? The 2008 instant classic The Dark Knight didn't get a nomination, though its popularity was enough to get the Academy to restructure the entire category, bumping its limit from five movies in the category to 10 to make room for blockbuster fare (and the corresponding ratings bump). But we're over a decade and two dozen superhero movies later and it's still no dice. Bold prediction! This entry, a grittier Joker standalone directed by acclaimed comedy director Todd Phillips (Hangover, Due Date), will be the first. Based on this trailer it looks as if this movie is drawing heavily from the Martin Scorcese classic The King of Comedy, even including a winking appearance from star Robert De Niro. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, because The King of Comedy is the one movie that I cannot sit through from start to finish (despite several attempts) because it makes me so uncomfortable. Take that for what it's worth!