Doc Review- Challenger: The Final Flight

To have it told in pop-culture today, one could easily get the impression that my generation all watched the Challenger disaster together in real time in school and were all simultaneously traumatized. It’s easy to see how that narrative would get traction when trying to boil a historical event down to the least common denominator for a nation. But that’s not how I think about that day. 

The SuperWinner award goes to:

 

So first, to recap and briefly summarize, Superhero movies in the 21st century are a mixture of sci-fi, pro-wrestling (with each character getting their own theme music playing whenever they make an appearance) and an attempt to make modern American mythology in a Greco/Roman vein.  The epilogue to the Justice League Snyder cut (the last feature film with the reimagined Superman) now hints that if there is to be a sequel, that....well look for yourself:

Superhero 1st Runner Up

 

To learn about Wonder Woman while I was growing up and not reading comic books, I had to rely on a campy TV show (starring Linda Carter), or the Superfriends cartoon on Saturday morning. To be fair, this is all I had to get to know anything about Batman during the same time period. She didn’t get a major movie in the early 80s that made a splash like Superman did. 

Right or wrong, I viewed her as a character similar to Superman in many ways, but provided girls a hero of their own. Both characters wore similar colors and had similar power sets, but WW also had some unique things to distinguish her from being another Supergirl. 

Superhero Awards 2nd runner up

 Character development matters here. I’m not a comic book fan looking to see a silver screen version of what I spend all of my spare time reading about. Think of me, movie maker people, as the person who isn’t a sure thing to buy a ticket even if I hate your movie. I’m the person who wants to see an interesting character and come to root for them to go to another level, and rise to a unique challenge that I can relate to. 

Superhero Rant: This is my edgy Director's Cut Version of the Previous Post (and an Easter Egg for sci-fi)

This one is coming in a little hot, and is rated only for mature audiences.

Superhero movies are looooong. And now, you can’t just watch one version, each one has a director's cut that adds at least an hour more. And what does the extra time get you? For each 1 part of character development you get 10 parts additional big booms. 

Language warning. If you don’t like raw honest profanity, stop reading here.

Superhero Awards

Can we try an interactive approach....a sort of thought experiment if you will? Take a listen to the music embedded in the video below.  I’ll wait.

Why does the world need a superhero?

Part 1: Why does a superhero need us?

We better not need one too much....for most of our problems we're going to have to rely on our faith and ourselves, with a little help from our family and friends to get through it.  And occasionally, we get an assist from an angel....some inexplicable help that showed up at a time when there was little hope.  That's the relationship that we can also have with a superhero at the movies.  

A Word About Professional Wrestling

There is no shortage of good programming about professional wrestling.  That seems a little ironic because the actual programming that professional wrestling puts out is not meant to be taken seriously.  Very serious things happen to professional wrestlers, but it only gets formally communicated to the audience if it serves the story....and there are many parts of that story that are not at all serious.  The line between fiction and reality is very blurred and so there are times when something goes horribly wrong that the audience thinks it's part of the show.  And there are times when you're told something horrible has happened, and you might even witness it happening, and it is all scripted.  In many ways, it served as a prototype for how politics looks today.  Kayfabe is the part of wrestling that is only supposed to be discussed backstage.  The audience isn't supposed to be in on anything that is kayfabe.  There is a lot of kayfabe in politics where you'll find that people who behave like mortal enemies on television are actually working together behind the scenes, but they have to sell their hatred of the other party to their home constituency.  I'm going to spend a few paragraphs pointing out how pro-wrestling isn't really any different than anything else that is respected in society, and try to explore the reason why it doesn't get any respect...at least not the typical kind.

Doc Review - Crime Scene: Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel

 A few years ago, pre-corona, I was away from home on what we then referred to as a business trip.  That was this thing where people left their homes and offices to conduct their work in another location.  I did it so often back then that I rarely got excited about it anymore.  There were airports, security lines, shuttles and trams, rental cars, uber rides, hotels to check into and all sorts of other things that often left little time beyond work to explore much.  And now I miss it terribly.  I don't remember which trip I was on, where exactly I was, or what portion of the wait part of the hurry-up-and-wait cycle of air travel I was in when I began reading an article about L.A.'s most notorious hotel.  I can't find the article anymore.  Thanks to the documentary I'm reviewing, a Google search using the keywords I'm looking for yields literally a hay field.  That's ok.  Finding it isn't critical to this review.  

Doc Review- Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests

As I mentioned in the previous post, Persona is on my mind for 3 reasons:

1) the subject matter is a topic that I've had sincere interest in for over 20 years

2) the movie had an emotional impact on me that was deeply personal

3) it is not what I would consider a good movie, or a good use of the documentary format to deliver the kind of impact that it had so much potential to have.  

I stumbled on Persona while surfing for something to watch

I Do Love a Good Documentary, So Let's Talk About Them!

I firmly believe that the best way to tell a story that needs to be told is through a well done documentary.  If done right, the viewer leaves with not only a much better understanding of something they were at best only casually familiar with, but also an insatiable appetite to learn more about it.  Some of the greatest docs tell stories that are stranger than fiction...or put another way, if the story they told were instead a work of fiction, nobody would believe it could actually happen.  But they can also be good when you find out there is a whole other side to something you thought you knew.  

Rather than spend time narrowing it down to a short list and doing a deep dive on the top three,

An addendum to the Biopic

We're back!  The year of Covid crawls to a close with a light at the end of the tunnel looking to be coming from somewhere around April 2021.  In the meantime, this is the first year since 1917 that Ohio State and Michigan will not play and we also have cynical power hungry politicians and their sycophants trying to make stupid people angry enough to give them their money because something something need money to stop a steal something something.  Some day there will be a documentary about these times, which will be followed with controversy about how accurately it depicted the situation, what facts are portrayed and the truthfulness of those facts, and most importantly whether or not blame is assigned to the correct people or if blame is even assigned at all.  It will probably be created and produced in another country if what is left of ours is no longer turning out quality entertainment for the hungry masses.  That's why our movie review mission is so important here at the Big Empty!!!  Future anthro-frickin-pology baby!!!!  The US wasn't always a cesspool of conspiracy, stupidity, and a population that was interested in only knowing enough to be dangerous and not one bit more.  We're here to make sure your great grandchildren know it.  Forward we go to the day when humanity figures out exactly when and where it all went wrong.  My money is on the cancellation of The Game.

Now, on to business. 

The Biopic Winner Is........

Well that last review was radiant eh?  Sorry.  I'll see myself out.

But first, an honorable mention and a winner.  Then I'll see myself out.

For honorable mention, I was very pleasantly surprised last December when I watched a movie called The Two Popes.  It had a limited theatrical release in November of 2019, but made a bigger splash on Netflix when it debuted there the following month.  I'm convinced that Anthony Hopkins can make a discussion about the scientific principles behind the speed that paint dries interesting and compelling to watch.  As someone who is not a born Catholic, the process that brought me to this movie was very organic.  I'm still not a Roman Catholic, but there was a time when I lived about 500 steps from one of the most vibrant church communities I've ever known.  It was a small Roman Catholic parish.  There was no marble.  No elaborate statues.  No paintings on the ceiling.  The frame was wooden, the siding was aluminum, the walls were plaster, and the heart was massive.  The church was rural, far away from urban centers.  It stood in a community where less than 500 people live, less than half of them practicing Catholics.  Yet the church was filled to its 200+ capacity every week.  People traveled from other towns where they had a Catholic church of their own to attend Mass here.  There were many reasons for this, but at the core, one of the most often cited reasons was the sense of community that people felt here that didn't exist at their larger more expensive and elaborate churches.

I grew up practicing my faith in protestant churches with aging membership that were trying to find a way to stop the children and grandchildren of their membership from leaving their home church.  Some searched desperately for answers.  Christian rock bands were started.  Youth groups were started.  Contemporary services were started.  Some of this succeeded.  Most of it didn't.  St. James Catholic Church did not have this problem.  Then in 2005, the Toledo Diocese decided to close dozens of churches due to a shortage of priests.  From my perspective, a shortage of priests was a temporary problem, a shortage of active membership was a potentially fatal one.  If I could see this, why couldn't the church leaders in Toledo see that?  At this time, Pope John Paul II passed away, and he was replaced with Pope Benedict who was even less sympathetic to my point of view.  My view that the Catholic Church was being led by an out of touch hierarchy that had lost vision was cemented at this point.  I stopped listening to church leadership and didn't grant them an ounce of credibility.  Our church family continued without formal recognition from the Toledo Diocese, and without my interest in what the hierarchy would say or do.

The Two Popes is the story of what happened in the most confidential parts of the hierarchy that I had been ignoring since 2005.  It is fascinating discussion, invigorating debate, and deep deep soul searching that suggest I was wrong, very wrong in my conclusion that the Catholic hierarchy lacks self awareness.  I'll post a preview, but I really do suggest setting aside some time to just watch and ponder what took place between Pope Benedict and his successor Pope Francis prior to their transition.

__________________

Now for the shining moment you've all been waiting way too long for...so long you forgot what you were waiting for.

I'm finally back to work to deliver a Biopic category!

I just noticed that I began this project nearly a year ago...April 5th 2019 to be exact.  And, it has been ~9 months since I told you I'd be back soon to cover the biopic category.  Since that time, we've seen Halloween, the season where I wanted to cover the Horror category, come and go.  We've given thanks, watched the Buckeyes crush the Wolverines (again), celebrated Christmas, watched me turn a year older, rang in the New Year, watched me rant about the people who make and enforce the rules in a game played by college students that I take too seriously, and gone into seclusion to avoid the spread of the novel Coronavirus.

You'd think that would be a lot of time to come up with material.  But you would be wrong.  I haven't thought much about my pet movie project.  It's been one thing after another.  But now, we all have a lot more time to tap into our creative side between hand washing, hydrating, remote conference calls, and figuring out how to acquire toilet paper and bread.

So, with that, I bring you my first Gen X Movie review of 2020.

The Biopic! But first, a little (actually a lot of) context.

It's been a while and I've got some catching up to do.  I'm sitting at a picnic table at my campsite on a cool sunny day.  I've got nowhere to go and nothing to do except snack and day drink, so this is the best opportunity I'm going to get to pick this back up.  In my last post, I said I was going to tackle comedy next, and I will some day, but I've been putting a lot more thought into biopics lately.  Comedy is something that deserves my full attention to do it justice.

Before I just list the best, I really want to talk about what bothers me about this genre.  It can be very formulaic and is oh so prone to making shit up to enhance a story that may not stand on its own two feet otherwise.  The formula I think of goes like this:

And the Drama Category winner is.....

Our winner could also be categorized as a biopic, however it is sufficiently speculative about things that are unknown, and downright revisionist in other areas.  I'm going to look like a hypocrite here because I've already panned a few movies for taking a true story and blurring the lines between fact and fiction.  Our winner however, makes no claims to being historically accurate and makes it clear that that isn't the point.  It takes two historical figures and uses their story as a backdrop to sympathetically explore the depths of human jealousy and how personal rivalry separates humanity from God.  One character's twisted sense of piety ultimately sets him up for a life so steeped in sin, that he is oblivious to the fact that he has damned himself to a life in hell while still living on earth.  It's like taking the story of the Prodigal Son, but never allowing the older dutiful son to reconcile with his father, and seeing how that plays out over the long haul.  If ever there were a tragedy of our modern world worth putting to the big screen, it is the all too unfortunate truth that humans cause themselves so much unnecessary suffering simply by never trying to become any good at forgiveness and accepting that they are worthy of being forgiven.  Our winner puts it all out there right in front of us to see this tragic human flaw.

So without further ado, the Big Empty Gen X Drama Movie Award (patent pending) goes to:

Drama: First Runner Up

So I’m getting behind schedule and part of the reason is that this particular category is harder to cover. Drama movies require a little more analysis to do them justice, and it is also difficult to find good clips. These movies are more fiercely protected by our capitalist overlords so while every scene that I want may have been posted at one time on YouTube, there is a good chance it has been taken down due to a violation of rules about posting licensed material by someone who didn’t have proper authorization.

Drama Continued

With a few honorable mentions now named and discussed, I'll move on now to the finalists and winner.  For me, a drama movie is meant to serve the purpose of giving us a look at ourselves from an angle or through a particular lens, allowing us a view we would not normally have.  If done very well, it will compel us to consider or reconsider certain truths that we as individuals have established for ourselves.  The drama film can be used as a tool to exhibit what is inspiring, discouraging, beautiful, ugly and all things in between about humanity.  But when it's a good drama (in the way Big Empty defines good), it won't be spoon fed or obvious.  Which brings me to my second runner up:

We tackle the Drama from a Gen X perspective

So with one complete category behind us, we charge forward to explore what's good in the world of drama.  As previously mentioned, the selections here will come from a crowded field.  The challenge here is that the drama movie is the sandbox that Oscar talk plays in.  I need to be upfront that every movie is on a level playing field in this project.  Just because a film had a run that included a star studded red carpet evening where people in Versace cried about how much it meant to them to be involved in it before carrying a gold statue stage left gives it no extra points here.  It is noted that the deciders of who receives those statues don't care what we here at the Big Empty think and the feeling is pretty much mutual.  The Academy is ultimately a political entity as much or more than it is a judge of quality.  Put another way, it is an institutional gathering for the sole purpose of congratulating and celebrating the institution.  That doesn't mean they always get it wrong, but it definitely doesn't mean they always get it right either; and when they do get it right, they took a very different path to get there from the one I would take.  To represent the folks like me and what we think, the only voice we have is our $$$.  So we here take it seriously that if the institutional insider opinion and ticket sales are really the only measure of what's good, that we need to bring something important to the narrative to make this a useful exercise.

Phew, well that was a mouthful of a preface. 

Sports Movies continued

Before I tackle the big kahuna of sports movies, I want to give a heartfelt shout out to Remember the Titans (2000) as my Honorable Mention.  It was really tough to leave it out.  Based on the true story of Herman Boone's uphill battle to integrate a high school football team in Virginia in 1971, the film conspicuously telegraphs that we'll be gathering round the screen for a sermon about racism.  This will either immediately turn people on, or turn them off.  There's a thing about the 'Hollywood tackles racism' thread that gives off a "this will make white people feel good about themselves while doing nothing for black people" vibe.  To do this well, you want to make sure your movie isn't this:

There's a reason that's funny.