'The Fallout' is the first great movie of 2022
#161: "The Fallout," "Cha Cha Real Smooth," "The Last Picture Show," "The Village"
Edition 161:
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
In this week’s newsletter: We’re taking a look at a dark horse in the Streaming Wars, Amazon Prime Video, and its surprisingly good streaming movie library. Then our usual roundup of streaming suggestions (for the first time in a while!) including a kick in the pants to go watch one of 2021’s best. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Charlie Hunnam punches Mel Gibson in the face.
The Fallout
The Fallout is a movie that begins with a school shooting. That’s a provocative, potentially triggering, and still incredibly rare phenomenon in fictional storytelling despite its seeming omnipresence on TV news programs (although I’ll continue to advocate for Mass as one of last year’s best films). Inevitably, the subject matter will ward off a certain percentage of potential viewers, and that is understandable.
Those that stick around will see the first great film of the new year.
The rest of the movie is dedicated to…you guessed it, the fallout of that event, told through the perspective of a teenage girl played in a star-making performance by Jenna Ortega (literally, now she’s a star of the Scream reboot).
This is the first feature for writer/director Megan Park, who has been working steadily as an actress for the past 15 years (and music video director for the past five). She displays a remarkably sharp writing touch, and that rare ability to blend comedy and sweetness into a story of horror and trauma.
The details of the story are incredibly specific, as they must be when dealing with an event that requires this much sensitivity in its presentation. But the remarkable thing in the writing is just how representative it feels of the Gen Z experience.
To this point, movies and TV shows have done a pretty terrible job rendering Gen Z on screen. It’s always an old person’s idea of a young person, mixed with fear of obsolescence. It’s “those crazy kids with their tweetering.”
Park, who is 35 years old and therefore technically is a millennial, captures the very nature of Gen Z life — or, now that I think about it, perhaps it’s simply a millennial’s idea of what it would be, rather than a Boomer's, and that’s why I believe it to be so accurate.
There’s a malaise I identify with Gen Z that’s somewhat hard to explain. It’s authenticity in the spirit of almost nihilism, where TikTok dances and flirtatious texting and anxiety and sexual fluidity and recreational drug use are seen as somewhat interchangeable pursuits (this attitude is taken to an extreme in a show like “Euphoria”).
Even though everything exists beyond judgement, there seems to be an underlying assumption that ‘something is wrong with me’ on a personal level. Phrases like “I feel so empty” and “I can’t feel anything” uttered in the movie work for both the specific (PTSD from the shooting) and the general.
Now, it’s a disservice to any review of this movie to get so academic, especially since it’s such an emotional cudgel. On both ends of the spectrum! The in-the-moment experience of the shooting scene is as affecting as one would imagine, but upon rewatch (I had seen this movie on a screener several months ago) I caught myself crying AGAIN at the empathetic catharsis scene near the end (as you all know I’m such an easy mark for that sentimental jackhammer). And throughout the middle, the total lack of emotional engagement from our protagonist is almost heartbreaking.
As much as this is one young woman’s journey, the movie’s true power is seen in how her relationships with others are affected by the event. Her parents and little sister are sidelined for their inability to relate, friends she was close with before grow distant while total strangers become the people she relies on. Somehow, each of these relationships gets their own brilliant resolution in the end.
It’s very rare to see a movie that improves across its runtime. Most movies hope there’s enough steam left after their premise set up to eek it out to the finish line. But the resolution scenes here are unquestionably the best parts of this movie, earned by the slow burn of struggle across the first hour-plus.
It all leads to one of the genuinely most unforgettable movie endings of the past several years. No spoilers, but suffice it to say it’s equal parts horrifying and immensely satisfying. Within seconds, the action of the movie gets yanked out of its suspension of disbelief and casted into the real world, leaving us as viewers to deal with The Fallout for ourselves. I certainly haven’t gotten over it.
Something New
Cha Cha Real Smooth (Sundance): As I mentioned on Tuesday, I’ve been fortunate to drop in on a few Sundance screenings this week. The one that impressed me the most — and you’ll definitely hear more about this movie again in a few months when it gets released wide — was the second directorial effort by 24-year-old Cooper Raiff. You might remember my rave reviews of his first movie, Sh*thouse, in 2020. The kid has serious talent, and has already attracted the attention of a producing partner for this movie in Dakota Johnson, who costars alongside Raiff and other recognizable faces in Leslie Mann, Brad Garrett and Odeya Rush.
The thought I couldn’t get out of my head was just how awesome it’s going to be when people around my age (26) start making movies. The “young” class of filmmakers now — Damian Chazelle, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele, etc. — are amazing but don’t reflect my sensibilities in the unconscious way that Raiff seems to understand (does it help that he’s a white male? of course).
This movie thrives in the low stakes environment similar to his first movie, with a premise familiar to dozens of movies dating back to (and beyond) The Graduate in 1967 — a guy finishes college and has no idea how to launch off into the adult world. In what’s becoming Raiff’s signature tone, it’s funny and sentimental and I get the sense that he’s kind of only making these movies to make his characters (and by extension himself) come off as exceptionally caring and desirable and awesome? And get to make out with Dakota Johnson? Listen, I get it. This movie is good, and we’ll revisit it when you all get a chance to watch it for yourselves. For now, just be put on notice that Raiff is going to be a force in the industry for years to come.
Something Old
The Last Picture Show (1971, Showtime or $VOD): We talked about Sidney Poitier last week, but another irreplaceable Hollywood stalwart to pass away in 2022 was Peter Bogdanovich. He’s one of the most influential filmmakers of the “New Hollywood” movement of the 1970s, and as an acolyte of Orson Welles also among the most important film historians of all time. Interestingly, very few of his movies have left a lasting footprint on modern movie culture, except for 1971’s The Last Picture Show. It’s a slice of adolescent life in a tiny town in Texas during the 1950s, on the eve of the Korean War, introducing us to the likes of Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd as well as giving us the most enduring versions of Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, and of course Ben Johnson.
I’ve recently become fascinated by the origin myths of the Boomer generation, but in contrast to George Lucas’s nostalgic fairytale American Graffiti (a 1973 movie also depicting teenage life in the 50s), Bogdanovich shows an unsparing image of a town in middle America that has little reason to exist, and neither do its citizens. They fall in and out of bed with each other in search of, I believe, meaning.
The movie was a smash sensation when it premiered in the 70s to audiences who likely still remembered or heard stories about the time period depicted, but plays today to younger audiences (like myself) almost like a museum exhibit. If a viewer is willing to view it as a cultural document as much as an entertainment product, the potential enjoyment is incredibly high.
Something to Stream
The Village (Amazon Prime): My complaints about M. Night Shyamalan’s recent work have been both brutal and well-documented. But this dystopian thriller capped off a five-year run where this guy practically walked on water (The Sixth Sense→Unbreakable→Signs→The Village), so when it came time for me to choose the plot twisty thriller for our family to watch on Christmas Eve (a tradition that began in 2017 with Get Out) I picked this claustrophobic mind bomb starring Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard, Adrien Brody, Brendan Gleeson and Jesse Eisenberg — what a cast!
Looking back now, all the things that would come to annoy about Shyamalan are there, like the wooden, inhuman dialogue and the utter ineffectiveness of these movies upon second and third viewings. But through my brother and parents I was able to rediscover the visceral uneasiness with fresh eyes, and was reminded of the thought-provoking (if a little on-the-nose) central dilemma at the heart of the story — is it better to shield oneself from the ugliness of the world entirely, or suffer through it?
Trailer Watch: Gasoline Alley
Just a quick reminder on how fickle the movie business can be….Bruce Willis and Luke Wilson are running second and third billing on an upcoming low-budget, knock-off action movie that looks trashy as hell. Yes, of course I want to see it but that’s besides the point!