What went wrong with Denzel's 'The Little Things'?
#116: "The Little Things," "The Dig," "American Psycho," "In and Of Itself"
Edition 116:
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: Denzel Washington stars alongside two other Oscar winners in The Little Things, which made me sad. I also saw Netflix’s The Dig and pass along a Hulu recommendation that left my mind totally blown. In this week’s Trailer Watch, it’s a new take on a Matrix-esque simulation story, but as a rom-com.
The Little Things
Academy Award winner Denzel Washington.
Academy Award winner Jared Leto.
Academy Award winner Rami Malek.
Those three lines define The Little Things.
When I saw them come up one after another in the trailer, I couldn’t help but laugh. Not just because Malek’s win for lip-syncing Queen songs was one of the most ridiculous Best Actor wins in history, or because of what has happened to Leto’s career since his Best Supporting Actor turn as a cross-dressing AIDS drug dealer.
I understood that those three lines were the entire reason for this movie’s existence. Writer/director John Lee Hancock supposedly wrote the screenplay for this movie back in the ‘90s (it shows, in everything from the movie’s setting to its sensibility). But it took the convergence of these actors, or more importantly, the ability to flash their credentials on the screen during the trailer, which cleared the way for Warner Brothers to get behind the project.
After seeing that trailer, anticipation was high. After all, Hancock is one of our preeminent makers of “dad movies.” The Rookie, The Alamo, The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks, The Founder, The Highwaymen. His movies are clear, straightforward and entertaining, with clear winners and losers. Slot in Denzel as the blue collar vigilante cop, Leto as creepy serial killer, Malek as the slick young detective, and it’s easy to imagine a really engaging cat-and-mouse thriller.
That’s not what you get in The Little Things. This movie is more of a psychological thought experiment, combining a 90s-era extreme earnestness with tired and at times ridiculous tropes to present a very familiar story as if it’s revelatory.
Movies are inescapably imprisoned by the moment into which they are released. One could daydream about a world in which this movie was released in the ‘90s before moviegoers were exposed to Se7en, Zodiac, and two decades of excellent crime TV shows and documentaries.
But it’s not. So the gloomy tone and self-seriousness comes off like the “Papyrus” skit from SNL (my favorite in recent years) without the release of a punchline.
It sounds so simple, but in a movie about the investigation of a serial killer, is it too much to ask for a little investigating? For all the supposed cunning of Washington and Malek’s characters, there’s very little Sherlock Holmes-style synthesizing of evidence that goes on before they fixate in on Leto, pretty much just because he looks like the embodiment of a serial killer mad lib. From there, they’re too haunted by the burden of the job to be anything other than one step behind their only suspect?
The power of the “Academy Award winner” title is sad, too, because Malek is so woefully miscast here. His natural anxious, twitchy energy (which made him so good in “Mr. Robot”) doesn’t fit as a confident young detective. In scenes with Denzel, he’s overpowered by sheer force of will.
Leto is a cartoon version of an actor. It’s never enough to inhabit a role for him, he must hang like three extra external indicators to his performance. Here he’s got long hair, sunken eyes, a massive belly, a foot-dragging gait and a zip-up workman’s onesie he never takes off. He wants you to know he’s trying really hard. And he’s really turning the dial up to 11 in a way that’s fun but belongs in an entirely different movie from the grim detectives. Naturally, he was rewarded this week with nominations to both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards (a true WTF).
Denzel is magnetic, as always, though it’s always jarring when you see him in a role where he isn’t in total control or doesn’t have all the answers. Here he’s quiet, sullen, reserved. I kept waiting for them to let the chef cook, but it never came.
Even in writing this review I am sad the movie was not successful, since it’s the exact style of movie I and many others would love to see more often. Movie stars, with a real budget, in an original story, for adults! The biggest question of the next five years is whether the Streaming Wars will enable a resurgence of movies like this without obvious awards or massive commercial appeal. It’s a topic I’m definitely going to explore more in the future. Until then, I think you can probably skip The Little Things.
Something New
The Dig (Netflix): Perhaps it’s my journalistic pretentiousness that is leading me to ask of this perfectly lovely, well-told movie…why does this exist? Why now? It’s an adaptation from a 13-year-old novel, about a 70-year-old excavation of 1500-year-old jewelry. I don’t know, maybe I’m underestimating the general interest level in Anglo-Saxon archaeology.
On the whole this is a slightly less stuffy literary adaptation, even if the back half hangs entirely on the startling introduction and unrelated romantic subplot of Lily James’ character — something that works far better in novels than on screen. Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan are as delightful as they are impressive, per usual, and create enough trust with the audience to see through to the end a movie that’s satisfying yet feels totally inessential.
Which is a funny criticism, because there are plenty of great movies with stakes lower than this one. I guess my guard is up coming out of Sundance, where the next generation of exciting storytellers can’t rub two pennies together and yet somehow this unproven 35-year-old Australian director can get Mulligan, Fiennes, James, period sets and costumes, and the ability to shoot on site in England. Then again, why am I expecting things all of a sudden to make sense?
Something Old
American Psycho (2000, Hulu): It seems pretty obvious that Jared Leto’s The Little Things performance was heavily influenced by the campy-yet-unnerving acting showcase Christian Bale gives as Wall Street banker by day, serial killer by night in this satirical thriller. The difference is this movie has something to say about its world, exposing the corporate soullessness of high stakes bankers and making us wonder if they might be as bad as he is in their own way. It’s not the very best serial killer movie — see Se7en, or Silence of the Lambs, and of course Zodiac — but I dare say it has the most creative murders in the genre, including a few truly iconic Bale moments.
Something to Stream
In and Of Itself (Hulu): Derek Delgaudio’s filmed performance is very difficult to define. It’s part magic show, part poetry reading, part one man show, part stand-up comedy. But it’s 100% mind-blowing. I can assure you that whatever your pre-conceived notions are after reading that, this 90-minute experience has so much more to offer as it explores the multiplicity of personal identity. In a weird way, it might be the most communal experience I’ve had since quarantine began almost a year ago. When it came out a few weeks ago I had planned on passing on it, and I’m so glad reader Brittnay suggested it this past week. One of the most surprising and rewarding show/movies I’ve seen in a while.
The Vanishing (Amazon Prime): I’m only putting this Gerard Butler lighthouse keeper movie here because I promised the friends I watched it with last weekend that I would. Even among the perpetually slow and brooding lighthouse subgenre (Shutter Island, The Lighthouse, The Light Between Oceans) this movie is painfully boring, with nothing new or interesting to say about the psychological toll of isolation. Of Butler’s performance, I’m reminded of Paul Rudd’s surfing lesson in Forgetting Sarah Marshall: “Do less. Do less. Don’t do anything. Well…you’ve got to do more than that.”
Trailer Watch: Bliss
Have you ever thought to yourself, “what if The Matrix was actually a romantic comedy starring Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek?” No? No one? Well, somebody did, and then for good measure threw in Bill Nye in the Science Guy.
While the premise might sound like something that would be a fun caper, this trailer suggests a more serious existential drama. It’s telling that the simulation Wilson’s character gets yanked from is a hellscape used to make people in the real world appreciate what they have, far different from two decades ago when Neo escapes the mundane existence of a corporate drone. In the intervening years, public opinion on simulation theory seems to have moved past science fiction.
It’s out on Amazon Prime today (Feb. 5), so you can either watch it for yourself or wait to hear my thoughts in next week’s newsletter. See ya then!