'September 5' Is Competence Porn
#301: "September 5," "Carry-On," "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," "Children of Men"
Edition 301:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: A really good docudrama that is stuck in the middle ground of movie relevance, and a solid B-movie that a million people will see because it’s on Netflix around the holidays. Then re-plugging my favorite Christmas-adjacent movie and one of the best movies of the 21st century. In this week’s trailer watch, the successor to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
September 5
For anyone who lives in the middle of the country, I’m hoping you can help me fact-check a statement I heard on a podcast this week that sent a chill down my spine: “Being a movie fan is turning into a coastal hobby.”
That’s tough to hear and yet increasingly hard to argue. Every year, when I go to visit my parents for the holidays in North Carolina, I have to try to cram in as many movies as I can before I go because I know once I get there, none of the year-end movies I want to see will be available at the only movie theater in town.
That’s not just a small town issue. During the week of Moana 2, Wicked and Gladiator II, 75% of all movie showings in the country were one of those three movies (those three BCEs, I mean).
The decline in habitual movie-going is a catch-22. Adults are going to stop going to the movies if every time they look up what’s showing they never see anything that’s interesting for them, and theaters are going to program whatever movies make the most money, which are BCEs.
Arthouse movies like Anora or The Brutalist will really only be seen on the big screen (where they can be maximally effective) in places like Los Angeles or New York. But at least there’s some name recognition provided by the long and well-covered awards season.
The real culprits of the current system are movies like September 5. It’s a pure genre movie, a plot-plot-plot thriller from start to finish, and although it’s hanging around the periphery of the awards conversation, it’s not the type of movie that is usually celebrated by awards bodies or seen by general audiences. Good luck finding a screening at your local theater.
It’s just a shame to me that movies of this caliber are mostly relegated to on-demand and streaming for the majority of people. It’s inherently cinematic – just ask Steven Spielberg, who made his own movie Munich about the 1972 Olympic hostage crisis and its aftermath.
This version of events is told exclusively from the perspective of the ABC television crew covering the events as they unfolded just a few hundred yards away from their studio. Unlike other TV news movies — Network, Broadcast News, heck even Morning Glory (Anchorman doesn’t count but wow I’m realizing the hit rate on these is extremely high) — this movie doesn’t try to fold in any side plots. It’s told almost like a documentary.
Lately, a new term has come into vogue to describe the appeal of movies and shows like this one: “Competence porn.” It’s just incredibly satisfying to watch people deal with a very stressful and high stakes situation with an incredible amount of skill and poise.
That’s doubly true about broadcast production. A million things are happening every minute, and all of the producers, technicians and journalists working in tandem to essentially maintain the high wire act at any given time is astonishing.
The cast is made up of entirely of value-add character actors, the type of guys who you are always excited to see pop up in a movie you’re watching. Peter Sarsgaard absolutely on fire this year after “Presumed Innocent,” John Magaro (Past Lives, First Cow) and Ben Chaplin (The Thin Red Line) can play the entire movie on their faces, and have to, since the story doesn’t slow down for any exposition or back story.
Undergirding all this non-stop action is the fundamental question of journalism — does observing and reporting actually make the world a better place? There’s no clear answer, but I’d say the movie is pretty critical of the role of media in events like these.
Either way, it’s an absolutely stunning rendering of one of the most dramatic days in modern television history. This is exactly the “upper middle brow” kind of movie I will always champion in this newsletter. Go see every single one of these, if you can find it in theaters or seek it out as soon as it comes to streaming.
Something New
Carry-On (Netflix): Anything can be a Christmas movie if you throw a carol into the opening credits and sprinkle some trees and tinsel around the set dressing. The rest of this movie premise would’ve worked on any other day just as well — a TSA agent gets threatened by a terrorist to let a bag through airport security otherwise they will kill his pregnant girlfriend (who also happens to work in the airport). It’s like Eagle Eye meets Speed, if I’m being generous, boosted by the fact that the menacing voice on the other end of the line is Jason Bateman, who has proven a couple times in his career that he can really effectively play against his everyman, funny guy persona.
I’m less convinced about the talent or at least range of Taron Edgerton, who plays the TSA hero, not quite naïve enough to get us to buy into the “this could be anyone” setup before he turns into a superhero in the second half.
Still, this movie successfully stretches out its premise into an exciting cat-and-mouse thriller that decently entertains all the way to its ridiculous conclusion. I said recently that Netflix is leaning more into B-movie offerings (and probably should!), but as long as they’re star-studded and as considered as this one I have zero problem with it. I could watch one of these per week.
Something Old
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005, **20 years old in a few days!**): It’s annual tradition in this newsletter to throw in a recommendation each Christmas for this Shane Black action comedy starring Robert Downey Jr. as a small time thief who gets caught up in a noir murder mystery. It’s my favorite Christmas movie (or, ehem, Christas-adjacent movie), with enough holiday-themed bells and whistles to make me not feel guilty about that distinction.
I’m super happy that The Nice Guys, a sort of spiritual sequel also written and directed by Black, has become a beloved streaming favorite over the years, but if you like that crime/comedy hybrid then you should definitely go back to the original. The writing is so sharp, and the performances are amazing, not just from Downey but also Val Kilmer and Michell Monaghan. There’s no reason why this isn’t one you could rewatch every year! ‘Tis the season!
Something To Stream
Children of Men (Amazon Prime): Ignoring the fact that my friend Collin told me this was an “old” movie (“almost 20 years!” he said), I was on the hunt for something to screen on my new projector that could show off its cinematic potential. And after rewatching this Alfonso Cuaron classic, I think it could make a case for being among the most beautifully shot movies of all time (cinematographer Chivo Lubezki probably has a couple candidates on that list, like The Revanant and The Tree of Life). And as my ageist friend above pointed out, in contrast to the epic movies of today, everything in this movie feels real and tactile.
People who watch this for the first time in 2024 will inevitably notice how similar the plot of this movie is to “The Last of Us,” both the HBO show and the videogame it was based on (this movie came first, so they are copycats). It’s a dystopian 2027, and the world has fallen into chaos and panic due to the fact that a new baby has not been born in 19 years. Clive Owen plays a world-weary operator hired to escort a woman out of London. I won’t spoil any more other than to say this belong among the best movies of the 21st century, and it’s almost criminal that it doesn’t have a bigger reputation. If you haven’t seen it you’re in for a treat.
Trailer Watch: Superman
My stance on trailers is well-worn at this point, and I’m inclined to wag my finger at any “teaser” trailer that’s two-and-a-half minutes long – again, if it were up to me trailers would be no longer that one minute and you could only have one of them per movie. But aha, maybe you caught my logical non-sequitur. Because James Gunn’s Superman is not a movie! It’s a BCE!
Under the BCE rules, I have to say that this trailer is pretty much best case scenario. Could it possibly be…real stakes? Real drama?!
And I’ll even go another step further and say that this movie, which is relaunching the “new” DC cinematic universe under Gunn’s leadership, is probably making the folks over at Marvel very very nervous. Fandom in the MCU is weakened, if not totally abandoned in many cases, and it’s easy to see how people could find something familiar yet fresh with DC. (Dreams that the superhero era as a whole would decline and fade away may be on hold for another few years…)