"Glass Onion," "Babylon," And All The Streaming Movies To Catch Before The End Of The Year
#205: "Glass Onion," "Babylon," "Sr.," "The Big Lebowski," "Something From Tiffany's," "Christmas With The Campbells"
Edition 205:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: It’s a race to cram everything in before the end of year. A race I’m losing. But I did get to two highly anticipated year-end entries, Glass Onion and Babylon, and caught several other lesser releases on streaming. In “Trailer Watch,” our first look at Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, with an assist from Stanley Kubrick.
Glass Onion
The original Knives Out is something of a modern movie miracle. In the last five years, there have been no more than a handful of titles that can legitimately claim to be an original movie (not a sequel, remake or IP franchise), a box office smash hit, critically celebrated, universally loved and culturally significant. Think Get Out, or Parasite. Holy grail territory.
The fact there was a bidding war to turn a beautiful film into a franchise cash cow is hardly surprising, even when the enormous $450 million deal with Netflix was announced. The surprise was filmmaker Rian Johnson’s willingness to continue to write and direct the sequels, which, when combined with Netflix’s notoriously hands-off management style (to their own detriment, most of the time), all but ensured that this sequel would be a creative endeavor as much as a commercial one.
As I’ve talked about before in relation to A Quiet Place (which one could argue belongs on the holy grail pantheon), it’s almost impossible for a sequel to be as good as an original movie because of franchise building considerations. Those concerns apply here, including a total reworking of the Benoit Blanc character from quirky doofus into eccentric genius closer to the Hercule Poirot/Sherlock Holmes mold capable of carrying an ongoing series.
Glass Onion is bigger, broader and far more ridiculous than its predecessor, to the point that any serious reading of the movie will necessarily have to be harsh. However, that misses the point that millions of people who cue’d up this movie on Netflix over the holidays already figured out — this movie is incredibly fun. The wild premise and characters here are pushed to extremes for the sake of comedy, serving Johnson’s persistent and overwhelming predisposition toward irreverence when it comes to anything held sacred (anyone who watched Star Wars: The Last Jedi knows what I mean).
As such, the band of characters-turned-suspects this time around include an evil billionaire tech CEO, a “cancelled” model entrepreneur, a “men’s rights” social media influencer, and a phony politician, archetypes for whom real life comps would be obvious. No expense was spared in casting these parts — Ed Norton, Kate Hudson, Leslie Odom Jr., Janelle Monáe, and Dave Bautista make the movie feel more significant than its silliness would suggest.
This colorful band of bing bongs are long-time best friends, we’re told to believe, who gather on the billionaire’s island during the height of early Covid to blow off steam and ultimately kiss the ring.
Things go awry and it’s no spoiler to say there’s eventually a murder to be solved, but unlike the original movie the point of this story is not so much figuring out who executed the murder but rather why. It’s a somewhat disappointing detour yet does little to ruin what is a fun ride from start to finish.
The movie is dominated by franchise cornerstone Daniel Craig (my uncle Danny!), who continues to only ascend in his post-Bond life with brilliant comedic timing and remarkable chemistry with his co-stars. He’s given all the best lines and moments here, but we as the audience would not have it any other way.
If all movies must increasingly be shoved into these big, broad, IP-driven boxes, I’ll certainly cherish the zany, risk-taking energy of Johnson and Craig for as many sequels as they’re willing to produce.
Something New
Babylon (Theaters): Damien Chazelle’s last two movies (First Man and La La Land) both ranked No. 1 for me in their respective years, and if I’d been watching and ranking movies back in 2014, Whiplash would’ve likely made it a hat trick. At just 37 years old, it’s crazy to say Chazelle is already one of my favorite filmmakers of all time, but so far his sensibility has proven to really resonate with me.
That’s why I was so curious to check out his latest project — a critically derided, mis-marketed, overly long and excessively debaucherous tale following Hollywood’s transition from silent to “talkie” pictures in the late 1920s and early 30s. If that sounds incredibly similar to the plot of Singin’ In The Rain, it’s because it is, something Chazelle is keenly aware of and perhaps leaning into after many criticized La La Land for being too derivative.
Appearances from Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and at least a dozen other recognizable faces dot this three-hour epic, which portrays the movie business as a traveling circus traveling a boulevard of broken dreams. The debauchery is neither celebrated nor condemned, which could lead some to think the movie to be morally bankrupt, but Chazelle’s point seems to be that morality matters less than capturing and printing immortality on celluloid. In that way, maybe it could be considered a death knell, both for movies and film itself, since more and more movies are made digitally…and no one is watching them.
At the center of every Chazelle movie is a similar protagonist, a helpless dreamer ultimately doomed to unrequited love and tragic success, whose traits one cannot help but assume are the filmmaker’s own. Promising newcomer Diego Calva plays this version of the Chazelle Protagonist to perfection, selling the magical trance of his paramour (Robbie), his role mode (Pitt), and the entire Hollywood system that elevates him and casts him aside.
Whether or not Babylon succeeds in convincing you that something as trivial as moviemaking is worth sacrificing one’s life and/or sanity to, it provides ample entertainment and a level of filmmaking prowess that once again prove the young wunderkind to be a master of the form. In truth, one could complain that Chazelle was given too much room to flex his proverbial muscles here, cramming ideas and side plots and visual flair into a movie already bursting at the seams with it.
My only hope is that this total bomb — $6.6 million box office so far against an $80 million budget — does not suddenly remove Chazelle from the vanishingly small list of filmmakers given the golden ticket to make large scale original movies with movie stars and a sizable budget. As Babylon itself would argue, we need those to continue to exist.
Sr. (Netflix): Robert Downey Jr. opens up in a way he never has to camera before, for the sake of this documentary he produced about his father, the underground filmmaker Robert Downey Sr.. What starts as a loving tribute to an overlooked career quickly becomes a reflection on mortality and three generations of father-son relationship as Sr.’s health starts to decline, leading to some very tender and touching moments near the end. If you’re interested in mid-century arthouse cinema, or the man behind Iron Man, this Netflix doc will service both groups.
Something Old
The Big Lebowski (1998, Peacock): There’s a handful of movies that I rewatch every year (most of them can be found on the “Matt’s Personal Favs” row of The Cinephile Bucket List!). I look forward to them every time, perhaps none more than this Coen brothers classic about an LA stoner who stumbles into a conspiracy plot that is as complicated as it is meaningless.
As with a lot of the Coens’ movies, it rewards multiple rewatches with, among other things, an entire vocabulary of hilarious quotes and jokes you’ll find yourself peppering into every day conversation (but that’s just…like, my opinion, man). This year I was able to indoctrinate my parents into the ways of The Dude for the first time, and they admitted to liking it despite noting the heavy use of the F-bomb. Whether or not this movie is your style, I’d love to hear if you have any movies you rewatch every year (or more often?). Reply to this email and let me know!
Something to Stream
Something From Tiffany’s (Amazon Prime), Christmas With The Campbells ($VOD): The demand for new Christmas movies every year is ceaseless, despite the fact that we have seen practically every combination of the big city hustler returning to their quaint home town and falling in love underneath the mistletoe. Anything even slightly better than the Hallmark standards (and their Netflix cousins) is to be celebrated, and this year I found two that got me in the Christmas spirit.
Something From Tiffany’s colors well within the lines of the genre, marching its sappy plot and cheesy romance through the sights and sounds of New York City at Christmastime, a wonderland of lights, decorations, and holiday pastries baked by our heroine, played by the always-charming Zoey Deutch. When her boyfriend accidentally swaps jewelry bags with another man, she’s mistakenly given an engagement ring, only to learn that the rightful owner is her Mr. Right. The movie shines due to her chemistry with male lead Kendrick Sampson, an impossibly attractive and kind character surrounded by equally attractive cast mates who dutifully play their roles as cartoonishly great or horrible supporting players. The final profession of love speech is legitimately great, paying off every eye-roll worthy moment that comes before. This movie is exactly what you’re looking for with these types of stories.
Christmas With The Campbells is…well, not that. Brimming with the irreverent humor of its co-writer, Vince Vaughn, this holiday entry follows a girl (low budget rom-com veteran Brittany Snow) who gets broken up with right before Christmas but still decides to spend the holidays with her ex’s family. There she meets a husky outdoorsy type guy played by the very un-husky Justin Long, who shows her there’s more to life than…you get the idea. Each passing moment further blurs the line between laughing with and laughing at the movie, which is a surprisingly delightful mix. Don’t watch with your mom, like I did, if she’s not cool with a lot of sex jokes. Like, a lot.
Trailer Watch: Barbie
The thing I love most about Barbie, aside from the fact that this first trailer is a direct and purposeful rip-off of 2001: A Space Odyssey, is that the movie is slated to come out on the same day as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. If it holds serve, it officially cements Greta Gerwig’s status as not just one of the most exciting and promising new filmmakers but also a commercial force, which we should all be rooting for.