'Barbie' Makes Me Believe In The Movies Again
#234: "Barbie," "They Cloned Tyrone," "Philadelphia," "The Florida Project"
Edition 234:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: The movie event of the year, and maybe the most important one in the past several — hi Barbie! Plus a surprisingly awesome Netflix movie The Cloned Tyrone and some movies I watched on the back of an airplane seat. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” we return to the world of Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot.
Barbie
It’s pretty hard to overstate how big of a deal Barbie is, using the biggest box office opening weekend of the entire year as merely a starting point for an inescapable cultural behemoth whose candy-colored aesthetic has painted the entire commercial world pink.
Ordinarily, in cases where the best story to tell about a movie is its marketing effort, where there’s over 100 product tie-ins and where a corporation is so visible within the actual on-screen story, I’d be running for the hills. The track record in this newsletter for movies that gross $500 million in their first 7-day period, a feat Barbie has now amazingly accomplished, speaks for itself. It’s not great.
The fact that I’m championing the Barbie movie is an absolute testament to filmmaker Greta Gerwig, who with this accomplishment has not just transcended from indie darling to one of the most powerful people in Hollywood overnight, she’s practically transfigured into the savior of the entire industry.
Thanks to her (and to a lesser extent Christopher Nolan), movies are once again enjoying a moment in the center of the cultural spotlight. And unlike previous silver screen behemoths — Avengers: Endgame in 2019 and Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015 come to mind — this one feels distinctly cinematic.
We’d reached a point where my spirit felt broken. Everything felt corporate over creative, whether it be Marvel or Nintendo to movies about products like Tetris, Hot Cheetos, Air Jordans, Blackberrys, Beanie Babies, Pinball. Anything else with blockbuster ambitions — Mission: Impossible 7, Indiana Jones 5, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, John Wick 4 — may not have been corporate but felt like the same movie (or videogame) over and over.
And yet somehow Barbie — a giant blockbuster about an inanimate Mattel doll — is cinema. Yes, it’s also brand management and naked promotion and corporate masturbation but somehow, unbelievably, Gerwig has found a way to make those elements subservient to her true creative vision. She actually made a movie that feels specifically hers, including choices that are bold and by design are not meant to appeal to the largest possible audience. In the year of our Lord 2023, I’m not sure I believed that was still possible.
The hordes of people convinced by the marketing blitz to flock to the theater this week, most of them dressed in hot pink, will instead encounter a somewhat bizarre movie about the human condition. Margot Robbie stars as “stereotypical Barbie,” who essentially wakes up one day red-pilled (The Matrix influence is real) by unfamiliar thoughts of her own death. She leaves Barbieland for the Real World to get rid of her cellulite (that’s not a joke), accompanied by her boyfriend Ken, played hilariously by Ryan Gosling.
From that premise alone, you can tell this movie is … weird. It’s hilariously absurd, in the best way. Don’t worry, it’s still a pure popcorn movie, because all Gerwig projects are defined by their sugary-sweet interior. No matter how quirky and acidic (that’s Baumbach) they might appear, there will always be a heartfelt monologue and a vulnerable revelation to leave you hopeful about people’s good nature.
There’s so much I want to say about the actual substance of the movie, which is a densely referenced and keenly observed social commentary as much as it is a story. The role of women in modern culture is under the microscope, leading to the ridiculous “controversy” about the movie’s feminist agenda, which it has insomuch as it gives women a platform to air out their grievances, sure, but the movie also cares (a lot, I would say) about the life of male characters like Ken…and Alan (a hilarious Michael Cera).
The movie certainly benefits from the culture’s eagerness to promote a GIRL POWER message, but I promise you it’s a whole lot deeper than simply “girls rule boys drool.”
Plus, from a technical standpoint, Gerwig displays a masterful vision for the artificiality of Barbieland. So many visuals from this movie are already iconic. The writing — split between her and her husband Noah Baumbach, a star filmmaker in his own right — is sharp, surprising and legitimately funny. These elements also set the movie apart from the drab, gray, CGI-laden blockbuster standard.
I really don’t even care that I didn’t personally love the movie, because it represents everything I hope for. I know I’m not a Barbie superfan and of course I’m not the target audience for a movie meant to empower young women, but I’m so deliriously excited that a piece of cinema was trojan horsed into what has immediately become a cultural touchstone.
Barbie is now a part of “the canon,” and everyone I know is having conversations about it, and those conversations will have to grapple with the types of things that real movies we love in this newsletter grapple with. Think about how much better that is than last year’s smash movie hit Top Gun: Maverick, a movie so sterile it didn’t even want to identify who “the bad guys” were. When people had conversations about that movie, all they basically said was “it was cool” or “Tom Cruise is crazy.” Now people are talking about the patriarchy.
Recency bias may be plaguing my mind, but I think it’s entirely realistic that a success like this could elevate the entire movie year. It makes it feel bigger, more important. It feels like people care again. What does that mean for this year’s Oscars? What lessons will be taken from this and applied to future projects? At the moment, I’m feeling incredibly hopeful. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to say that. Thanks Barbie.
Something New
They Cloned Tyrone (Netflix): There might not be a movie all year that has surprised me more with its quality than this racial satire from first time feature director Juel Taylor. Given that it was a Netflix original, and a comedy at that, my expectations were on the floor, despite the headline talents of Jamie Foxx, John Boyega and Teyonah Parris (Netflix money can be quite convincing).
Instead, this is a very sharp story about a pimp (Foxx) a drug dealer (Boyega) and a prostitute (Parris) who stumble upon a a Get Out-style conspiracy where white people are running experiments on the black folks in the hood (as the title might suggest). The movie is carried by a real Friday-style comedic energy, a very knowing and laugh-at-yourself take on hood culture, while also making some pretty insightful observations about who profits and really pulls the strings (namely, white-owned brands marketing to stereotypes).
As the mystery unfolds, this movie is able to balance that tone with absurdity, action and adventure that pay off the initial setup and consistently surprise a viewer as to the direction it could go at any moment. I think Taylor deserves a ton of credit for having a clear vision, since we know Netflix’s reputation for half-baked crap, and his visual aesthetic promises more interesting work in the future. Can’t believe I’m saying this but this is clearly a top 10 movie of the year for me right now. Check it out.
Something Old
Philadelphia (1993, Amazon Prime…or United Airlines): I need to give a quick shoutout to United Airlines, which apparently just bought like 200 new jets all equipped with seat-back screens and a surprisingly FANTASTIC movie library. On there I found Oscar winners, small little indie movies, and tons of less-obvious selections that I’ve highlighted before in my newsletter and even on my Cinephile Bucket List. I ended up watching a total of seven movies, six I’d never seen before but would’ve definitely wanted to see even if I was home sitting on my couch.
Anyway, one of those movies was this heavyweight courtroom drama starring Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks, the latter of which won an Oscar for portraying an attorney who is fired from his firm for having AIDS. At the helm is Johnathan Demme (who also directed The Silence of the Lambs and The Manchurian Candidate), who tees up his two titanic stars for several show-stopping monologues, and even though some of the language around homophobia will feel very dated and rough to modern ears, the heart of the story is actually quite moving. This was in the peak of the ‘90s courtroom movie moment, and is among the very best of them.
Something to Stream
The Florida Project (Showtime): Director Sean Baker made his name by shooting Tangerine entirely on an iPhone, telling the kind of semi-true stories about under-privileged communities that one might associate with Chloé Zhao (The Rider, Nomadland). This story takes aim with beautiful 35mm film at the motel communities around Disney World, where welfare-dependent locals feed off the fourth level scraps of tourism.
The movie is told almost entirely through the perspective of a young girl, who roams around independently and finds happiness in each day’s diversions while her young mother alternates between doing odd jobs for money and then blowing that money by making bad decisions. It’s slice of life until it develops into more of a heightened tragedy, but the whole thing is told with such a kind and innocent touch such that it becomes really sentimental in its heartbreak. The movie is slow and doesn’t easily reveal its hand, opting to lure a viewer into its trap over time but by the end you’re totally engrossed. I very much enjoyed it.
Trailer Watch: A Haunting In Venice
Murder on the Orient Express was a big hit, Death on the Nile was a big miss. Now writer/director/star Kenneth Branagh is going for the Agatha Christie trilogy with this Italy-set murder mystery ensemble. The way these casts have gotten slightly less and less star-studded may tell you something about the waining merits of the franchise, in stark contrast to the supernova that is Knives Out, for instance, but still any movie with Michelle Yeoh, Tina Fey, Jamie Dornan, and Kelly Reilly orbiting around Branagh’s mustached detective is nothing to sneeze at. I’ll admit I’m a little more cautious than optimistic this time around, but this trailer gives me enough interesting things to want to go see this in September.