Weekend Preview 10-30

Box Office News 10-26-2020

Box Office News 10-19-20

Tips on renting a theater!

It's Life Jim, Pretty Much As We Know It

 "The reason that most virtual reality movies don't work is because movies ARE virtual reality." - Roger Ebert

In this pandemic world, I have made an investment in essential survival equipment: an Oculus Quest 2 stand-alone VR headset with nifty hand controllers. 

It's a step up from my Oculus Go - two virtual hands instead of one, and better movement tracking, plus improved graphics. Got it last night and instantly started looking for stuff to load into it, and spent as much time exploring those worlds before the motion sickness set in. 

There's not an awful lot out there for it yet, by the way. Oculus has built it but mostly they haven't yet come, the developers. The platform has limitations, among the worst is that you need an awful lot of set design when a player can look in any direction. Still something caught my eye.

One of the most popular apps (can't really call this a game) is Netflix. Like Netflix on your TV, or phone, the app is free but you have to have a subscription to see the movies. The difference in Oculus is when you boot up you are in a ski lodge, on a nice leather couch, with a HUGE screen in front of you. You start a movie (I took another crack at Enola Holmes, still didn't like it) and the lights dim. You're in a darker room, but you're still watching a big TV. 

I happen to have a nice couch with a coffee table in front, facing a TV, and I sat down and watched a movie for a few minutes there. It was fun and then I started getting distracted. Why can't I get up? Why can't I get off the couch during the slow parts and see what's in that loft upstairs? Maybe I could put an Espresso machine on that counter?

There are plenty of other games available where you CAN walk around. One is Google Earth, sorta, and you can bark out any address in the world and there you are, in street view. And you'll find an awful lot of opportunities to shoot at homicidal robots or play virtual tennis or chat with ten-year-olds in other nations. But the idea that one of the most popular apps is Netflix and the attraction is you can be alone in a nice lodge instead of surrounded roommates in your crappy apartment... I think Roger Ebert's grave spinning is up even higher now.

Weekend Preview 10-16-20

Go bra, go!

Box Office News

Weekend Boxoffice Preview 10.9.20

The Comey Rule: It Is What It Is

 “It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.” —Alex Delarge, A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Got through the two-part, 3.5 hour Showtime miniseries The Comey Rule in one sitting, right after watching the Vice Presidential debates, in fact.

The production is top-notch, shot anamorphic in luscious cool tones by veteran DP Elliot Davis and directed by Billy Ray, who wrote the biopics Captain Phillips and Richard Jewell. Despite  its impressive length the miniseries never flags: it moves from one political dilemma to the next (Clinton’s emails, Russian interference and kompromat, etc.) with nervous energy throughout part 1 and into Part 2, where Trump finally shows up. He’s the ultimate non-moveable object, and every character in the film ends up crashing right into him.

Brandon Gleeson as Trump. He is often
shown in the Oval Office with the sun
shining so bright behind him it flares
across the screen. The symbolism at
work here is self-explanatory.

This is the first big-budget narrative biopic about the Trump administration. (there have been dozens of documentaries.) It features Jeff Daniels as James Comey, delivering one of his trademark “Tom Hanks Light” trustworthy and calm performances. The thing is packed with A-list stars like Holly Hunter and Jonathan Banks and Michael Kelly. (The most fun portrayals: William Sadler as Michael Flynn and Joe Lo Truglio as Jeff Sessions.)

Irish actor Brendon Gleeson plays President Donald Trump, and it is a revelation. He inhabits Trump: his Queens-hatched singsong voice, orange skin, sci-fi hairdo, the sack suits. Every third line is punctuated by the wet rasp of his nostrils taking in a breath. In the universe this film sets up in Part One— munificent, hard-working, sort of WASPy people dressed in plain suits, working hard but important jobs— Trump crashes into Part Two like a space alien. I hope he gets all the Emmys.

FBI brass, watching the 2016 election results.
Michael Kelly plays Andrew McCabe.
None of them at this point know
how doomed they are.

The screenplay was adapted from James Comey’s book “A Higher Loyalty,” and as such it tends to hagiography: Comey, in many places, comes off like a solid, patriotic G-man whose only loyalties were to justice and the FBI. But there is also a counter-theme to the portrayal the miniseries does not shy away from. James Comey is shown as a government official with a fatal flaw: he has no political instincts. No gut instincts at all, really. The whole Clinton email debacle— declaring an investigation less than fortnight before the election, and calling it off three days before— was shown as a result of his self-righteousness, his dogged adherence to procedure, without any thought to political fallout.  When someone as primal and cunning as Trump enters his life the miniseries shows in sickening detail he was utterly unprepared for it. He falls back on his honesty and competence, and in the end it makes no difference at all.

One of the wonderful elements of biopics like this is how they can show the color and detail behind events we have recently seen on television or the internet. Biopics somehow make what is real even more real, just like Alex Delarge told us. Great example: the public introduction of Comey into Trump’s administration, the scene he described in his book where when Trump entered, he subconsciously backed up to the opposite side of the room. Trump calls “his” FBI director over: Comey goes frozen-faced. He gives him the trademark tugging handshake and whispers “let’s get a few pictures together.” Meanwhile Comey’s wife and daughter are watching live at home— and the wife says, “that’s his ‘oh shit’ face."

James Comey (left) and Jim Clapper (right)
riding the elevator in Trump Tower.

Contemporary biopics are usually stories filled with dread. We KNOW what is going to happen to the hapless characters introduced in Act One, so all we can do sit helplessly as history and misfortune overtake them. The list is very long: Flight 93, The Perfect Storm, Too Big to Fail (the HBO biopic about the 2008 crash, this film’s closest cousin), and both of Billy Ray’s aforementioned writing credits.

The Comey Rule is no exception. You get to relive the 2016 election and all the sickening depression that came with it. When Trump starts taking charge, all you can do is watch helplessly as career government employees try to comprehend someone like Trump, who has absolutely no care about the rules and laws and precedents everyone else relies on to keep government running smoothly. The most dread-fulled part of The Comey Rule is this spectacle of slow-motion disaster: The cool, competent bureaucrats and agency employees and lawyers who are are helpless in the face of Trump. They all know something bad is about to happen to the rule of law and the reputation of their agencies, and all they can do is look at each other and shrug.

“It is what it is” is a Trump quote about the Coronavirus, but it shows up in mob movies with regularity. It has a very specific meaning: it says a terrible thing has happened— but it HAD to happen, and there is nothing you or anybody on earth can do about it.

The 2020 election is upon us. Let us hope the outcome is a hopeful one, because The Comey Rule showed us how easy it is to watch everything go to shit and mumble “it is what it is.”

Box Office News Oct 5

Oh no, witches again