Q2 Report on the Cinema
Q2 is over, and it was our most productive quarter on the record (we only have six quarters on the record). However, for that reason, it was also a fairly thin quarter for the Cinema. I went to the movie theater twice, maybe.
Biggest Ws
The biggest W regarding the Cinema this quarter was seeing Francis Ford Coppola present Megalopolis on the Giant Screen at Dearborn’s own Henry Ford Museum. If you’re not from Michigan, you may not know that Henry Ford built his own crazy museum full of thoroughly random items that represent “American innovation”. He did, and that museum endures as a testament to how innovation is an incoherent social construct, just like America.
Speaking of incoherent: Francis Ford Coppola and Megalopolis. My compatriots and I filed into the Giant Screen screening room and I was immediately overwhelmed by the size of the Giant Screen, which obviously is on me. Wow, that Screen is Giant! Like, multi-story house-size. At that moment, I realized I was about to face a Godzilla-scale Adam Driver and fear obliterated all my senses. I fell into gibbering delirium for about 30 minutes.
When I returned to my body, it was almost time to start the film. The pre-show scroll revealed that we would be seeing Megalopolis exactly as Francis intended: that is to say, with a random live participation moment in the middle for no reason. Someone in the audience, not me, screamed out loud in pure ecstacy. Then Francis showed up.
Holy shit, he’s old. He is so old, and he did not prepare his remarks ahead of time. He went up to the lectern to introduce the movie. As he spoke, I strained to transcribe his every word to the wax cylinder of my mind and this is how I remember it:
“Hullo…Thank you for coming to see Megalopolis. Not everybody understood what I was trying to say with this moo-vee. There was a lot of misunderstanding and some confusion. I was trying to say a lot of things with this moo-vee. Maybe I didn’t say them all as well as I should have. But I tried new things! Look, there’s two doors: one is the commercial door, and the other one is my moo-vee. So at the theater please go in that door, when you’re pickin’ a moo-vee. When the moo-vee starts, just let it happen to you. And if you want to respond to the moo-vee, respond! If you want to talk back to the screen, or cry, or laugh, just do it! And if it doesn’t make sense to you, sit with it. Give it a chance. I had a lot to say.”
Then he stumped away to take a nap, so they had to cancel the post-screening Q&A. What a star.
At that point, Megalopolis started, and it was still the same Megalopolis I’d seen in theaters TWICE before. So, so, so stupid. So, so, so crazy. So, so, so incoherent. So, so, so sincere. Francis made a movie that is wondrous in its transparency and its opacity. It’s such an obvious account of what Francis thinks about all the time, put together in a way that could only make sense to a stoned old man. I love his passion for life in all its silly awfulness, even now, as he’s on his way to Small Darkness and we’re all on our way to Big Darkness.
After the film, my compatriots and I went to Dearborn’s own La Sheesh, a Middle Eastern restaurant which flies its proprietary La Sheesh flag just below the American flag on an enormous flagpole, and which shares a parking lot with a strip club sporting an oddly neo-classical facade. USA! USA! We discussed the film. Everyone felt “???” about it, with varying levels of positivity attached to that. One of our group unequivocally loved the film, and I recommended he check out Southland Tales.
In conclusion, the live participant element literally added nothing to the film. It just confused everyone in the theater. I feel so lucky to have seen Megalopolis presented thus.
Biggest Ls
The biggest cinematic L I took this quarter was getting tricked into watching Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles. At the beginning of the film, I said jokingly “Oh no, a Richard Linklater movie? I bet it’s gonna be boring!”
It was boring.
It was boring and it was flamboyantly lame. The female characters function wholly as hot/cute props. Our hero, Zac Efron (Zac Efron??), gets jealous that Orson Welles is sexually coercing Zac’s crush/coworker, and the entire structure of this conflict is Zac’s #relatable jealousy over the woman’s sleeping with Orson, and not her #relatable exploitation at the hands of her quirky-ass boss. At least the misogyny written into Megalopolis gives Aubrey Plaza a platform on which to slay incredibly hard.
I fully don’t want to watch another Richard Linklater movie. I can’t imagine the Before movies being anything but viscerally dull. I’ve said it before, and by god I’ll say it again: I’d rather see an old man schizo-posting for three hours than a middle-aged man cine-wanking for two. Megalopolis today, Megalopolis tomorrow, Megalopolis forever.
Hot Takes
My family and I finished watching Andor and, shuffling little content sheep that we are, we funneled straight into a rewatch of Rogue One. And now I know Rogue One actually isn’t great. It was better than the other Star Wars movies coming out around the same time. But it was not actually a particularly good movie. The pacing is wonky, the characters are broadly uncharismatic and thin, the tone vacillates all over the place, and Gareth Edwards has reliably little control of the film’s energy or construction. It’s a mediocre sci-fi movie and I’m not afraid to say that I think the prequels are better films. Certainly, Revenge of the Sith is.
However, I’ve become very attached to the Two Tubes character who hangs out with Forest Whitaker in Andor and Rogue One. He’s so bitchy.
Andor is a very effective TV show, so it’s fine that Rogue One exists. However, I do not believe Gareth Edwards is a good director and I’ll probably never watch Rogue One again. My young wards will be watching The Battle of Algiers before they see any Disney-owned cinema (except maybe the prequels :p).
We’ll never have another cinematic quarter where we see Francis Ford Coppola live and incoherent. Instead, in Q3, we’ll face James Gunn’s Superman and Sergei Bondarchuk’s 8-hour War & Peace. Which beautiful prince will I ask to marry me???
