M. Night Shyamalan's gimmick is getting 'Old'
#138: "Old," "Woodstock 99," "Ted Lasso," "The Player," "Naomi Osaka"
Edition 138:
Hey movie lovers!
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In this week’s newsletter: I take a few more shots at one of my favorite punching bags, M. Night Shyamalan. Never been a fan. But I am a fan of the documentaries and other streaming suggestions I have lined up for your weekend! In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Will Smith makes another bid at critical legitimacy by playing Venus and Serena Williams’ father in a new biopic.
Old
(In theaters)
When you think about Hollywood’s pure auteurs, those incredibly rare few who have been given total creative control over their own projects for their entire careers, you think Tarantino, Scorcese, Anderson, maybe the Coens.
You don’t think of M. Night Shyamalan, but somehow the guy has snuck a ticket into the industry’s most exclusive club. For more than 20 years, he’s only ever made movies he’s written and directed.
Quite frankly, that privilege should be revoked, effective immediately.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Shyamalan, even when his gimmicky one-trick pony routine does work out well. His new movie, Old, isn’t so terrible it’s offensive — in this newsletter I called his last movie Glass one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen — but it does continue his trend of devolution toward making shlocky exploitation B-movies.
The premise of this movie is somewhat interesting, in a rip-a-bong-at-2-am-in-a-dorm-room sort of way. If you’ve seen the trailer you know it: a bunch of people get stuck on a beach that ages them one year every 30 minutes (or more practically, it ages them several years at very convenient points throughout the narrative).
That premise might leave you with a lot of questions. Like do you age mentally as well as physically? And why are people’s hair and fingernails not growing?
Don’t worry! The movie is entirely focused on answering these questions, and dedicates a good 70% of its dialogue to straight exposition. I literally laughed out loud at the parade of characters announcing their very specific occupations, or giving two-minute monologues about the length of time it takes for a human body to decompose or the effort it would take to swim out against the tide and around the bend.
Then again, what else are you supposed to do when the entire movie takes place in a single location? There’s nothing new to discover, no new challenges to overcome. A couple hours later and yep, we’re still on this beach and yep, we’re still aging! Let’s all get together and explain very specific aspects of how we’re aging again! Woo!
Shyamalan still shows talent behind the lens, echoes of why he was once dubbed “the next Spielberg.” He knows how to create suspense better than just about anyone. But the thrills here are cheap and joyless, mostly creative ways for each character to die off. He relies heavily on CGI to produce the creepy body horror that’s meant to sustain the narrative tension.
The thing that makes no sense to me is the genuine talent still lining up to work with him. Acting in “a Shyamalan movie” still means something, I guess. But a couple of years ago when I called upon Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis and James McAvoy to fire their agents for not getting them out of reading Shyamalan’s wooden and overwritten dialogue, I question whoever steered these actors into this project. Think about it. Eliza Scanlen just worked with Greta Gerwig in Little Women. Aaron Pierre just worked with Barry Jenkins in “The Underground Railroad.” Thomasin McKenzie is coming off JoJo Rabbit with Taika Waititi. Ken Leung was in HBO hit “Industry.”
Now they’re saying things like, “do you think all grown-ups feel like kids, or is it because yesterday we were kids?”
Ah, yes. That brings us to the “Shyamalan twist.” Honestly, the proliferation of his gimmick amongst even the most casual movie fans is impressive. His name is synonymous with twist endings, and that is clearly the thing that’s keeping him in business at this point.
I, of course, will not spoil the twist here. But I ask you this. Is a twist really a twist, is a surprise really a surprise if everyone who watches this movie knows that a surprise twist is coming?
In this particular case it seems like more of a burden, weighing down the movie as it unfolds and all audiences care about is “figuring out” what the twist will be.
I’m not ready to say Shyamalan is completely finished. Maybe he can solicit ideas from younger, fresher writers. I don’t know. Every fourth or fifth movie he surprises us with something good, enough to sustain another 5-10 years of hype cycle.
All I’m saying is the next time he pulls up to the super secret Hollywood auteur clubhouse, his name better not be on the VIP list.
Something New
Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (HBO Max): I don’t know about you all, but I had never heard of Woodstock ‘99…only the peace-and-love event thrown 30 years prior. This documentary makes it clear why the history has been buried.
Oh, you thought the Fyre Festival was bad? You have no idea. In addition to the morbid curiosity in observing one of the truly unbelievable disasters in live event history, this documentary is great because of the way it synthesizes cultural insights about the odd period in history that was the late 1990s. Why did this happen? Who is to blame? Plus, it features a handful of live musical performances that will have you literally yelling at your TV. The three-day descent into chaos builds more and more momentum, and the film does a great job of mirroring that, showing you each domino that had been lined up waiting for a moment when someone or something was ready to knock it down.
Ted Lasso, Season 2 (AppleTV+): If you’d given AppleTV+ executives 10 guesses when they launched the service, I doubt any of them would’ve figured their first breakout hit was going to be an adaptation of a commercial about a fish-out-of-water futbol coach. But Jason Sudeikis’ dose of optimism was just what everyone wanted (and needed) when it debuted last year, and became the unanimously beloved rocket ship we see today. If I had to describe the show’s style, the best comparison might be sit-coms of the ‘80s and early ‘90s (before “Friends” changed the game), when jokes always came second to a heart-warming message that left everyone feeling warm and cozy and sentimental each week. Every episode makes you believe, for 28 minutes at a time, that maybe with the right attitude we can overcome the problems in the world…until the show ends and you log on to Twitter and quickly snap out of the hypnosis.
Something Old
The Player (1992, HBO Max): A friend of mine (who is probably reading this right now) was telling me this week that he might start working at a Hollywood talent agency, going down the path to potentially become an agent. As with most things, I told him my only reference point was movies I’d seen, so I quickly recommended Swimming with Sharks, in which Kevin Spacey is an agent who tortures his assistant (metaphorically) until that assistant snaps and tortures him (literally). I recommended The Assistant, anchored by Julia Garner’s great performance as an assistant to a Harvey Weinstein-type producer.
Then I realized I’d probably scared him out of the idea entirely, until I recommended Robert Altman’s The Player, a fast-talking neo-noir that presents Hollywood as the mirage factory it is but cannot help from loving it at the same time. Tim Robbins stars as a development executive caught up in the crime of murder and the much more serious crime of developing a bad movie, bouncing between backlots and high-priced lunches to keep the various plates spinning. It’s funny and thrilling and non-stop, a gem for any fans of behind-the-scenes Hollywood dealmaking.
Something to Stream
Naomi Osaka (Netflix): It should come as a surprise to nobody that this well-timed, tell-all documentary series about one of sports’ most media-averse stars is a carefully managed “dear diary” entry rather than an objective examination. Such projects are always an exercise in measured vulnerability, but there was still much to be learned from what Osaka has chosen to reveal about herself, and how.
Osaka wouldn’t be the first young athlete to be affected by the pressures of superstardom, nor the first to expect all of its benefits while failing to comprehend its costs. When her media boycott caused a ruckus earlier this year, I had little sympathy for the highest paid female endorser in the world ($40 million last year) not being able to face the questions that come with the territory, from journalists making $40,000 per year (even if Osaka is by all accounts an incredibly kind and considerate person).
But this series left me with a different feeling — and I may be going out on a limb here so I want to emphasize this is simply my opinion — I believe Osaka simply doesn’t love tennis. The series details the way she was forced to play for eight hours a day growing up, and how much her rise to No. 1 surprised her. She clearly likes it, and likes the life it has given her, but the attention and the pressure weigh much more heavily when the passion for the sport doesn’t burn in the way it has for others in her position. If you all watch the series, let me know if you agree!
Trailer Watch: King Richard
Speaking of overbearing sports parents…we’re finally getting a movie about Richard Williams and the improbable journey of Venus and Serena Williams from Compton to grand slam championship stages.
The buzz on this movie has been going around for years, and though the initial plans seemed a little more dark and gritty, it seems pretty clear when you cast Will Smith (at this point in his career) in the lead role that you’re going for something drawn with slightly cleaner lines. I’m expecting an inspiring, triumphant story, with a legitimate Oscars campaign build around Smith (who has never won and only been nominated twice).