#and tell me WHO is watching the andy hardy movies

[sirbogarde]

is it just me or have the last like 3 TCM summer under the stars lineups been almost identical.....no offense but maybe mix it up every once in a while!!

#and tell me WHO is watching the andy hardy movies #tcm #summer under the stars

[rosesvioletshardy]

Just Like Old Times - Frank McCullen (b.h. - Pixie)

wow i actually wrote something shocking ! but i’m sorry that i’m posting today and not yesterday like I promised. i was having trouble writing everything and such. this idea actually came from when one of my friends and i were watching Pixie together and quoted what Pixie said and i ended saying i should write something based off that line

thank you so much to andi ( @venombxby​ ) for helping with and encouraging me when writing and helping me when it came to explaining things you truly are the best and our conversations helped so much

i’m really sorry if it’s really bad i haven’t written in a long time, let alone smut in a long time so i hope you like it ???

masterlist

warnings: drinking, language, drug use mention, SMUT (18+) (please don’t read if your under 18 !!!!!), oral (both m and f receiving), riding

# of words: 2,187

---

Going to the club wasn’t necessarily the way y/n would spend the weekend or even bother to think about going, but something felt different for her and she felt the need to go after Pixie convinced her to. She didn’t really have anyone else to go with but she felt like if she went, she would find some people she knew seeing that everyone knew everyone in Sligo and how you had to be careful about everything. Pixie Hardy was the only person who would be able to convince her to go out and it didn’t matter as to what it was but seeing that she was back in town, she would go. There were only two people y/n was hoping she didn’t see and that was Frank McCullen and Harland McKenna. It’s not necessarily that she hated them, but it was something with Frank that made her always annoyed at him. Maybe it was him always bothering her for no apparent reason or the fact that he felt the need to try and sleep with every woman in town. But then again it beat sitting on the couch alone in her apartment.

“You need to go out.” Pixie told her as she saw Y/N coming out of her kitchen with a glass and bottle of wine

“I do go out, and have fun. Just don’t feel like it today” she answered back, completely lying seeing that the only time she went out was when it involved her family or work

“When was the last time you actually went out and had fun that didn’t involve your family, food, or some form of work?”

“Exactly my point. Now i didn’t come back to Sligo for us to just sit around and watch shit movies. We’re going out.”

-----

“See isn’t this fun?” Pixie asked Y/N handing her a drink while taking a sip of hers

“What’s your definition of fun? Because i’d rather not be pushed up against sweaty bodies while people are high or drunk, or both”

“You need to let loose a bit. Have a few drinks, maybe hook up with someone” she nudged at y/n smirking hoping that it’ll make her have some sort of fun

Y/N couldn’t help but glare at her when she said that and shake her head. It’s not that she didn’t want to hook up with someone it’s just that she didn’t want to hook up with someone and it would be someone she’d instantly regret it with seeing that everyone knew everyone

“Don’t look now but i think a Mr. Frank McCullen is looking at you” Pixie smirked causing her to look behind her and he looked away and back at Harland and Daniel

“What’s going on with the two of you? What happened?”

“Not sure, he’s the one to ask since it was his fault.”

“Oh I think I remember. Did it really end that bad?”

“Mmhm, clearly he doesn’t know how to keep it in his pants. Even when we were together”

“And the fact that he got really high one day and told me he had a crush on you and was using me as a rebound to get over you.” y/n finished looking down at her drink, making the two of them go silent until Pixie spoke up

“I’ve got an idea.” she said getting Y/N’s attention as she took a drink

“Dance with me” was all she said 

“What-” Y/N managed to get out before Pixie grabbed her arm and pulled her to the dance floor and begun to dance

“Listen, Frank still has feelings for you and I know you still have them for him and getting him jealous is something that might come good for the both of you, and since he used to like me, it’ll make him even more upset. Now grab my hips, and dance” she yelled over the loud music

“Are you sure this is going to work though?” y/n answered back putting her hands on Pixie’s  hips 

“I’m sure of it. And by the looks of it, Harland's telling him what’s going on. I’m going to move my hands a little lower and I want you to move your hips, and i’m going to make it look like i’m kissing your neck is that alright?” Pixie whispered in her ear

“Yeah that’s fine, just as long as he sees and gets jealous”

“Frank, man? I think you’re going to want to see this.” Harland said hitting frank’s shoulder to get him to look at the scene in front of him and stop talking to daniel

“What could possibly-” Frank starts as he sees Y/N and Pixie grinding against each other

“Shit” he finished

“Exactly. You need to do something Frank. I know you still love her and if  you’re not careful, you’re going to miss your chance of getting her back. So you might want to go over there and get her away from Pixie Hardy quickly. Who knows what could’ve happened the last time you saw her” “Don’t worry nothing’s going to happen. I know the both of them too well.” Frank smirked finishing the rest of his beer

---

“It’s working” Pixie mentioned as they moved to a corner where frank couldn’t see them

“You should’ve seen his face. I think if he clenched his jaw any tighter, he’d break his teeth and need a dentist.” she finished laughing at the thought of it

“Really? I guess it’s working then.” y/n shrugged then laughing

Pixie and y/n continued to talk, but after a few minutes went back in to continue what they were doing to continue to make Frank jealous. Frank on the other hand was back at the bar and would look back at the two women every now and then turned back to the two men he was with. Frank couldn’t help but think about where he went wrong. He knew that using her as a rebound was wrong and he should’ve gotten over Pixie the moment him and Y/N got together. He did enjoy those two years but when Pixie left, something inside him felt like he needed to let go of every memory they had together.

Y/N kept eyeing Frank every now and then to see what he was doing but she always got the same thing. Him sitting at the bar and drinking his beer. Pixie noticed and went over to wear he was and made sure that Y/N was with someone to make him more jealous

“Hello boys”

“Pixie, what are you doing here?”

“Cut the crap. now I know that you, Frank McCullen, still miss our dear Y/N and would do anything to get her back now that she’s also back.”

“Wait how long has she been back?”

“Don’t know, maybe a year? Anyways it doesn’t matter. I just wanted to come over here to tell you that you better make a move now because it looks like someone is about to get to her” she finished grabbing another drink, smirking and walking away from the two men and walking towards y/n and whispering in her ear

“I got you his attention, now’s your chance” 

Y/N continued to dance with the stranger as she could feel Frank's eyes burn into her. Smirking, she gave the stranger a kiss on his cheek, close to lips which caused Frank to set his drink down and go over to her. 

“We need to talk.” Frank yelled over the loud music and grabbed her arm. Y/N ignored him and pushed him off to set him even further

“Did you not hear me?-”

“I heard you, can’t you see i’m busy?” “Y/N-” “Mate just leave her alone.” the stranger told him as he moved her away

“You be quiet. Y/N i really need to talk to you.” Frank told her, looking dead in her eyes. She looked back at the stranger and then back at Frank as he raised his eyebrows before she looked back and apologized and went with Frank. Y/N didn’t know what would happen with him or if anything would happen before she was snapped out of her thoughts when the music was dimmed out and she and Frank were alone. There was a moment of silence and awkwardness between them as they stared at each other before she leaned in and kissed him. Frank was shocked that she did what she did but didn’t hesitate to start kissing her back.

“Let’s go to the bathroom”

---

“You know what you were doing wasn’t so nice” frank said kissing her neck as he held her against the wall as she moaned

“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have done it if we were still together.” she moaned out causing him to pull away

“Oh really, you’re still thinking about what we used to be? What I used to do to you? How easily you fell apart whenever I kissed a certain spot.” he whispered, placing small kisses over her neck as she felt herself get wet

“Are you still rooming with Harland or did you finally move out after saying it for 2 years?”

“Well, I did end up getting a place of my own and you’re welcome for that.” he tells her going back to kissing her lips 

“Then what are we still doing here in this dirty bathroom?” she whispered in his ear, pulling away from his grip and walking out as she made sure to walk in a way so he would look. 

“You fucking minx” he whispered to himself as he followed her out 

When they got out of their cab, they quickly reconnected their lips as he tried to open the door pushing her inside and closing the door. Y/N started to take off his jacket and his shirt as he took off his shoes and grabbed the zipper from the back of her dress and brushed the straps down and pushed down the dress, leaving her in her bra and underwear. They walked over to his bed, not breaking apart as he laid her down, his chain dangling over her as she ran her fingers through his hair

“You’re still wearing too many clothes” she mentioned as her hands went to his pants and began to fumble with his belt, pushing his pants down and leaving him in his underwear

“Yeah? So are you” as his hands went to the back of her to unclasp her bra

His hand wandered over her exposed chest before grabbing one of her breasts, causing her to moan. Frank continued to kiss her before pulling away and slowly went down her chest, leaving marks all over her. 

“You’re still so beautiful as I remember. I was an idiot.” he mumbled against her skin

“Yeah you were, but i guess you’re making it up for now” she managed to let out as he took her underwear off and began to tease her by running his fingers over he slit causing her to moan. 

“Already so wet for me? How long have you been this wet? Hm? Since maybe you and Pixie were dancing? Or was it the random guy you danced with? Tell me.”

“None of those. It was when I first saw you at the bar. I realized that I-” she gasped out as he pushed a finger in

“Realized what?” 

“Realized that I still have feelings for you. Oh fuck” she finished as he pushed another finger in and using his thumb to rub her clit, her back aching as he leant down and began to lick her

Letting out a mix between a moan and a groan, he continued to finger and eat her out before he took out his fingers and put them in his mouth, smirking while looking directly at her and edging her

“I forgot how good you tasted. Do you want a taste? Go on and taste on how much of a slut you are.” he whispered to her as he put his thumb near her mouth as he rubbed his thumb across her lip. Y/N took the opportunity to take his thumb and suck on it causing him to become weak enough for her to flip him over so she was on top of him and kissed him

“Remember how I used to ride you? How you held my hips, while I took control?” she whispered into his ear while one of her hands went down to palm him through his boxers, making him let out a groan

She hooked her fingers around the band of his boxers and pushed them down letting his dick free. Taking it in her hand, she began to move her hand up and down as her thumb brushed over his tip as she left small pecks over his chest before moving down and putting him in her mouth. His first instinct was to grab the sheets in a fist as she bobbed her head, sucking him while moving her hand. Taking her hair to put into a makeshift ponytail, he caressed her face as she looked up at him as he groaned, thrusting into her mouth. Her hands gripping his thighs, Y/N kept taking more of him, making her gag as she felt him in the back of her throat but it didn’t stop her until she felt him become close

“Fuck, shit. ‘M going to cum, fuck.” frank whined as she began to suck him harder before letting go

“What’d you do that for? I was close” he asked her as she came up and straddled his lap as he sat against his headboard

 “Aww, did you really think i was going to let you finish? Funny” she told him faking a upset face 

“You really haven’t changed a bit have you?” 

“No, and it looks like neither have you.” she smirked before grabbing his dick and teasing the tip of him with her entrance. She slowly slid on top of him as his first instinct was to grab her hips, tight enough to leave bruises in the shape of his hands as he groaned and looked up at the ceiling. Y/N’s first thought was to grab his jaw and point it towards her.

“Eyes forward like a good boy now.”  she whispered as he let out a groan as she sank down and traced his jawline, his lips parted as she kissed his bottom lip and pulling it

“Fuck you’re so tight. I forgot how good you felt.” he whimpered making sure that she was still secure around him

Smirking, she started to roll her hips, letting out sighs of relief and breathy moans. Circling him, he groaned out her name, his grip loosening as she clenched around him.

“Oh shit.”

Y/N began to move her hips faster, moving her head towards him and attaching their lips together as one of his hands let go of her hip and went to one of her breasts, his thrusts hitting getting sloppier and hitting her G spot, her hand leaving his shoulder so she could touch herself. 

“I’m close”

“So am I.” Frank panted out as the two were on the edge of their orgasms. Moans and groans both left their mouths, with small pants of breath escaping them. Y/N could feel the build up in her stomach as her fingers digged into Frank’s shoulder. At this point, her makeup was smudged, hair messy, and lipstick stains were visible all over his body and neck. Frank wouldn’t have thought that this would be happening again after what had happened between them and he wanted to make sure that she would feel and be treated better than the first time they were together

“Fuck, Y/N” he groaned 

Letting out a cry of his name, she came undone, both of them having the feeling of their first time together. Waves of pleasure both escaping each other as he let out one final thrust, his cum coating her walls inside of her. Her vision going white as he released inside of her. The pair sweating and heavily breathing, knowing how good it felt to be back together. Y/N fell and laid beside him on his bed he got up to go get a towel for the both of them. When he came back, he pressed the damp towel on her, cleaning the mess they both made as she let out a small whimper, before he handed her some clothes to borrow. 

“Do you think we can try again?” he asked Y/N, handing her one of his shirts. 

“Just like old times? Other than what happened?” frank finished looking into her eyes as she took the time to think before nodding

“Yeah, I think we can do it if we tried.”

#ben hardy #ben hardy imagine #ben hardy x reader #ben x reader #ben hardy x female reader #ben hardy x fem!reader #ben hardy x you #ben hardy x y/n #ben jones #ben jones x reader #ben hardy fanfic #ben hardy fanfiction #ben hardy fic #ben hardy smut #ben hardy one shot #ben hardy blurbs #ben hardy blurb #frank mccullen #frank mccullen imagine #frank mccullen x reader #roger taylor #roger taylor x reader #roger taylor imagine #pixie #pixie movie #pixie 2020 #6 underground #xmen apocalypse #warren worthington the third #warren worthington imagine

[shipskicksandgiggles]

You saying you love when mcu actors also exist in the mcu made me start thinking about Robert and Tony and like hear me out.

Robert and Tony are like the same person we already know this so imagine Tony not wanting to go to meetings and stuff so sometimes he calls up Robert to go fill in for him at meetings. Robert does it and constantly jokes with the media that his greatest role as an actor is standing in for Tony Stark. They’re like so similar that sometimes it’s even hard for those close to Tony to tell the difference between them, well for everyone except Peter.

With Peter’s enhanced senses he always knows when Robert is standing in for Tony because of the differences in their heartbeats and the way they smell. No amount of cologne or acting could fool Peter and at first this frustrates Robert who asks Peter what isn’t convincing about the way he’s portraying Tony. And Peter just explains that he can actually hear the difference in their heartbeats and Tony always has the smell of motor oil clinging to him under all his fancy cologne which Robert lacks and Robert is just like so shocked by how soft Peter’s answer is. He’s spent a lot of time hanging out around the tower to observe Tony so he can properly imitate him so he knew that Peter was a good kid and really close with Tony but this instance cemented in Robert’s heart that Peter Parker is precious and should be protected at all costs. -🌸

stop wait that's literally so sweet (but also real life RDJ and Tom Holland being friends and Robert thinking 'damn this little hero reminds me of someone' pLS-)

no but deadass it's not even the Hot Tub Time Machine reference in Endgame that solidifies the existence of MCU actors in the marvel universe. it's the Manchurian Candidate because of Anthony Mackie since he was in the 2004 production which is so funny to me for no reason, and if Anthony Mackie exists that means the Hurt Locker is a thing with, yknow, Jeremy Renner

Star Wars alone existing confirms Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Bettany, Erin Kellyman, Donald Glover, Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong'o, and Taika Waititi, not to mention ScarJo in relation to Adam Driver thanks to Marriage Story and Hayley Atwell (and presumably Dominic Cooper) since she was married to Ewan McGregor in the live action Winnie the Pooh. and honestly that list probably isn't complete but I'm laughing so hard about it (Tom Hardy and Daniel Craig both play stormtroopers btw so they're not included but it is worth noting for Venom and Chris Evan's sake)

Andy Serkis' existence would actually establish the Hobbit (with Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch) furthermore establishing BBC's Sherlock with the same two, along with other Sherlock Holmes adaptations like the one with RDJ and Jude Law

Brie Larson and Tom Hiddleston did that one movie together (Kong: Skull Island I believe), and she did the Unicorn with SLJ. Chris Hemsworth was in Star Trek with Zoey Saldana and MIB with Tessa Thompson

James Spader (the voice of Ultron) was in the Office and did the "I'm the f*cking lizard king" bit that I can recite by heart and it makes me giggle every time I watch aou

earlier I mentioned Dominic Cooper (young Howard Stark) and I think it would be funny if Steve and Bucky watched Mama Mia and were like "What the Fuck is Howard doing????"

I just. superheroes getting confused with their actors is endlessly funny to me dude given time and resources I could probably come up with enough connections to break the marvel universe apart and I'd laugh the whole time it's golden

#asks #answers #🌸anon

[marvella15]

Astaire and Rogers Rewatch Part 11: Kisses, Partnership, and Final Thoughts

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made 10 films together. That’s more than Judy Garland and Andy Hardy. More than Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Almost one-third of Astaire’s musical filmography also stars Rogers. That’s incredible by the standards of any decade. 

I’ve had a lot of thoughts throughout this rewatch and I’ve distilled some of the larger ones into this wrap-up post. So here we go.

Kisses

It felt important to talk about the kisses and distinct lack of them in their own section. As I mentioned in my Carefree post, Astaire didn’t like big romantic scenes, especially those that involved kissing. He preferred to let the romance happen in the dancing. 

But here’s the problem with that:

After he made his last RKO film with Ginger Rogers, Astaire went on to make many more musicals with other leading ladies and he kissed all of them. 

Look at 1941’s “You’ll Never Get Rich” with Rita Hayworth. Or Holiday Inn with Virginia Dale and Marjorie Reynolds (though I can’t remember if he kisses Reynolds). Or Easter Parade with Ann Miller and Judy Garland.

Through the rest of his film career, Astaire almost always kissed his leading lady. So what was the hesitancy with Ginger Rogers?

I know it seems like I’m making this all Astaire’s “fault” but… well it kind of was. It’s not like Rogers was stomping around demanding to be kissed. But she certainly wasn’t the one going off with the script with her spouse and coming back to declare for any number of reasons why she and Astaire shouldn’t kiss in the film. On the other hand, he was definitely doing that. 

If you’re in any way thinking this was a case of “oh he didn’t like Ginger so he didn’t want to kiss her” let me stop you right there. Because you’re wrong (see my Barkleys of Broadway post as well as the Final Thoughts section here). And maybe it was the opposite.

Now look, I think you could chalk this up to Astaire being shy (which he was) or his newness to the movie business (also true) or simply an unease with romance on the screen. But it feels worth mentioning, again, that he and Rogers had a previous romantic relationship. They’d dated in New York prior to her moving to Hollywood. They also absolutely made out during that time because Rogers wrote about in her autobiography. So kissing each other was familiar territory. 

I’ll just cut to the chase. Astaire had only been married for a few months when he and Rogers started making their series of films. By all accounts, he was deeply in love with his wife, whom he had spent two years pursuing. He may have felt that repeatedly kissing his ex-girlfriend on screen while also performing some undeniably sensual dance numbers wasn’t a good idea for the health of his new marriage. 

Perhaps there were even lingering feelings between him and Rogers, though it must be noted that she was also married from 1934-1940 (to Lew Ayres). And if you have feelings for someone who is not your spouse, you need to have boundaries. Or maybe it was some combo of this and/or other factors. 

In all, the Astaire/Rogers films don’t necessarily suffer from the lack of kissing between the two leads. A strange element to this discussion is the kisses we do get prior to the first “romantic” clinch in Carefree. There’s a peck on the cheek in Gay Divorcee and a comical kiss on the lips by Rogers (and it’s mainly one-sided) in Top Hat. But why not make either of those, especially the first one, an actual kiss?? 

And if comical kisses were going to be inserted anywhere, they should land in Roberta or Follow the Fleet, the two films where Astaire and Rogers have the snarkiest relationships because their characters have a history together. 

Moreover, there are glaring moments where a kiss should obviously be. Such as somewhere in Swing Time. For goodness sake, they joke about not kissing in “A Fine Romance” and then have a scene where it appears they’ve kissed off-screen. Give us the real thing! Which they did, eventually, in Carefree and it’s… pretty lackluster imo. Their kisses in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle and The Barkleys of Broadway look and feel much more heartfelt. 

So sure, the Astaire/Rogers films aren’t worse off for not having their leads kiss but they could have sometimes been improved. Shall We Dance’s plot hinges on a secret relationship between the two main characters and yet we never see them actually romantic together. That said, it’s a bit entertaining, if also kind of annoying, how often the plots in nearly every Astaire/Rogers film bend over backward to avoid showing us a kiss. 

(my gif)

Partnership

It’s undisputed that Rogers is Astaire’s greatest partner, both in terms of dance and on-screen companion. They play off each other remarkably well, with an ease that hints at their personal relationship. Astaire had spent most of his life partnered with his sister, Adele, so he had learned how to make a lady look good during a dance and put the audience’s focus on her. 

But Rogers doesn’t really need his help. She commands the screen so entirely at times that it takes pointed effort to look anywhere but her. Her ability to continue acting (and acting well) in the midst of dancing absolutely sets her apart from not only Astaire’s other dance partners but other musical stars of the day. A large part of what makes her dances with Astaire so enduring is that she sells the romance, rapture, and joy of those minutes with him. 

Katharine Hepburn quipped that Rogers gave Astaire “sex” and he gave her “class.” I think a more apt observation may be that he elevated/improved her dancing and she elevated/improved his acting. That makes sense to me since she was more experienced as an actress and he as a dancer. 

Doing this rewatch made me even more resolute that every critic who remarks on her lack of technical dancing skills is an idiot. Just look at “Isn’t it a Lovely Day.” She matches Astaire step for step and he’s not exactly going easy on her. 

Then there are the romantic duets. Let’s talk about the sexiness of those dances because look. Astaire had been partnered almost exclusively with his sister up until then. He’d had maybe maybe a handful of other partners prior to pairing up with Rogers on screen. 

There’s no question he was a talented performer and choreographer but I do find myself asking exactly when and how he learned to look at his partner so seductively. He certainly wasn’t doing that with his sister! 

Plus there’s the nature of his dances with Rogers. There is a heat between them that is especially pronounced during the Hays Code era of Hollywood. Even Flying Down to Rio, where they barely dance together, has some steamy moments. “Night and Day” in Gay Divorcee and, to a slightly lesser extent, “Cheek to Cheek” in Top Hat are very obviously dancing metaphors for sex. And Astaire and Rogers get away with it while also not diluting the meaning of the dance one single bit. 

Astaire crafted those dances himself specifically for himself and Rogers so he knew exactly what he was doing and communicating and so did she. For a guy who jumped through hoops to avoid kissing his dance partner on screen until their eighth film together, he sure put a lot of tension, sexuality, and deep romance into their dances. 

For her part, Rogers again matched him. Although I often commented about how much he smiles and gazes at her while they are dancing, she regularly did the same towards him. They injected softness and genuine affection into those dances. They were both good actors but it wasn’t always acting. 

(my gif)

Final Thoughts

Every time I watch one of their films, I discover something new. There’s so much I wish we knew but we never will, like what they’re whispering to each other those times we can see them talking during a dance. Or what rehearsals, which were apparently grueling but filled with laughter, really looked like (“I’ll Be Hard to Handle” in Roberta is the closest we’ll get). Or the many other ways Rogers fine-tuned their dances, adding elements here and there that made a marked difference. 

They held each other in very high regard and were extremely fond of one another. Michael Feinstein tells a story about meeting Astaire for the first time. Feinstein was playing piano at a party and Rogers, whom he knew, asked if he’d “met Fred.” When Feinstein replied he hadn’t, she took him over to meet her friend and former costar who shyly but sweetly listened to Feinstein fanboy over him. 

Astaire and Rogers remained good friends throughout their lives, with him sending her a very sweet note that she cherished about her performance in Kitty Foyle (for which she won an Oscar) and also gifting her with an ornate travel watch at one point (as mentioned in the “feather dress” section of my Top Hat post). She said he was one of the few men she knew who was an excellent dancer off-camera as well as on. Their affection for one another is evident in their films and it’s one of the many reasons I come back to their movies again and again. 

Thanks for joining me for this rewatch! I’ve gotten notes from a few of you and that’s been so kind and also a huge surprise. I was almost certain no one would read these posts lol

#fred astaire #ginger rogers #classic hollywood #old hollywood #fred and ginger #astaire and rogers rewatch

[writefasttalkevenfaster]

Five Times Thor Held Your Hand, and the One Time He Didn’t

Thor always loved you, and didn’t know what he would do if he couldn’t hold your hand - until he couldn’t anymore. (contains slight Endgame Spoilers)

1. 

“Are you going to go back home?” You asked him, arms crossed as you wiped your hands clean of the remnants of shawarma you had eaten, glancing at the God of Thunder.

Thor ran a hand through his hair, “I must return my brother and the tesseract to Asgard, so yes. I will be leaving tonight.”

You gave a slow nod, watching him stare up at the sky, “Do you miss your home?”

“As opposed to fighting an alien invasion my brother caused? Sure,” and you had to bite back a smile. You never thought a god could have such a good sense of humor, “but I will miss our conversations. You have a way of making things…not seem as terrible as they are.”

You felt your cheeks burn in spite of yourself, not able to meet his eyes, “And I thought you were leaving because you were getting tired of me,” and it was his turn to smile, fingers coming delicately to turn your head, his gaze locking with yours.

“I could never tire of your company, Y/N.” he said, before turning to face the stars again, and his hand dropped to your side, but not before you felt his fingers brush yours, asking for permission, and you welcomed it, spreading your fingers wide and interlocking your hand with his. It was softer than you expected, and he held tighter than you expected, palms pressed together. His warmth encompassed you, his hand sending warmth from your head to your toes. Even as you stood apart – too far – it felt almost farther than the distance of light years that would soon be between you.

But soon enough, his hand fell away, as he turned to you, a bittersweet smile on his lips, “Goodbye Thor,” you smiled, “have a safe trip back.”

“It isn’t goodbye. It’s like you midgardians say,” he held up his hand calling forth his hammer, “it’s ‘see you later.’”

2. 

“It’s been a long time,” Your voice made the God of Thunder turn his back with a grin, “’See you later’ really meant a lot later.”

“Y/N!” he walked over, hesitating, unable to decide whether he wanted to hug you, or shake your hand, and the awkwardness washed over the room, as he carefully clapped his hand on your shoulder, “it’s good to see you.”

You seemed to brush off his awkward greeting, only smiling, “And you too, Thor. We have a lot to catch up on, but I have a meeting with Fury to get to first. Make sure you catch him up on all he’s missed.”

And you left without another word, leaving Thor staring at your retreating back. And he heard someone clear his throat, finding the other Avengers staring at him with knowing smiles, “What?”

“Nothing,” Tony said with a shrug, “but I’m wondering when you’re planning on asking out Y/N, just so we know to avoid your rooms.”

Steve coughed, clearing his throat, “Tony,” he warned, before Tony held up his hands.

“Hey, they were the ones acting like they were the only ones in the room,” Tony approached Thor, clapping him on the shoulder, “A tip for next time, Sparky. If there’s a girl you like, don’t do this.”

Thor glared at him, “Are you one to give romantic advice, Stark? I may not have inhibited Earth very long, but it didn’t take very long to hear of your reputation.”

“Okay, guys,” Natasha clapped her hands together, “enough with the testosterone contest. Let’s get down to business.”

But even as they began their meeting, Thor couldn’t help but glance at the door you had left out of, and mope at the thought of you. What a fool he was.

“Penny for your thoughts?” you asked, finding him on the roof, offering him a penny before frowning, “I suppose a penny isn’t much for a god’s thoughts.”

“Our thoughts are not that valuable,” Thor chuckled, taking the penny, “especially mine.”

“Thor,” you chided, “your thoughts are important, at least to me they are.”

“Well, you would be one of the first to think that,” he sighed, walking towards the edge of the roof, “My father believes I should be the leader of Asgard. The new King. My people believe the same.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think,” he said slowly, the words slipping past his lips without another thought, a truth, one that he hadn’t admitted, not even to himself, “that I miss my mother.”

“Your mother?” your footsteps echoed against the concrete ceiling, “What happened to her?”

And Thor sighed, shaking his head, “She died, after I went back to Asgard. I couldn’t save her. I failed her.”

“Thor-“

“I should have been there. I should have saved her,” he whispered, holding his head, “I should have stayed with them. It should have been me.”

“Thor, stop,” you pried from gently from his ramblings, pulling him to your side, “you did everything you possibly could. You don’t have the powers of multiplication. You’re still one man. You can’t save everyone.”

“This was my mother, Y/N,” he said quietly, “if I couldn’t save her, what good am I to anyone else?” and you sighed, and he was unable to meet your gaze, “you’ll find that I am quite stubborn, and very difficult to beat in the art of an argument.”

“With that magic hammer of yours, I’d imagine that,” but you shook your head, gesturing outward, “what about these people? All the ones you saved, all the ones you came here to save, your people on Asgard who you protected from an attack. Your mother would be proud of you, and she wouldn’t want you to blame yourself for things you can’t control.”

Thor sniffed, feeling his eyes water, as he turned his back to you, “I don’t remember the last time I cried, it has been a while.”

“Well, even the ‘mighty’ Thor needs to cry every once in a while,” and he chuckled, as you stepped beside him, your gaze fixed ahead, “No more guilt, okay?”

His hand brushed yours again, without a thought. He was drawn to you, was the simplest way he could explain it. No other gave him such comfort, it was ease, it was warmth, it was…something else, and as you fingers interlaced with his, he smiled, he looked forward to figuring what that something is.

3.

“I needed this,” you admitted, sitting across the bar from Thor, “all the Ultron stuff,” you shook your head, “I miss when the weirdest thing in my life was your existence.”

Thor rose a brow, “I was the weirdest thing? As opposed to the super suits, assassins, and super soldier?”

“You’re a god of thunder from a different planet, with a magic hammer,” you took another swig, before setting down your drink, “I think you win the weirdness contest, at least you did before.”

“I don’t know whether to be insulted that I held the title or that I lost it,” and you laughed, covering your mouth when you attracted the gaze of several patrons for your volume.

“For that, I’m going to buy you a drink,” you slide off your chair, fingers brushing his shoulder before you left, and he watched you over his shoulder with a smile. He let out a heavy sigh, knocking back the rest of his drink, hoping it would provide him with the courage he needed to tell you his feelings. He set down his glass, was it useless to feel these things? Would be simpler to ignore them? He had never felt so hesitant with himself. He had always been so sure, but when it came to you, he couldn’t help but hesitate.

“Can you back off?” He heard your voice behind him, and he looked to see a man with his hand around your wrist, face too close to yours, as you glared back at the man. He didn’t think. He was by your side in a moment, ripping the man’s hand off you, standing in between you and him.

Arms crossed, he towered over the man, who blinked twice at him, “Hey buddy, I didn’t realize she was with you. I just wanted to buy her a drink.”

“You didn’t realize that this woman would tear you half and then some,” Thor growled, stepping forward, feeling you pull on his sleeve, before he spared a glance at you, shaking your head, “you were spared today. But let this be a lesson,” He held out his hand, summoning his hammer to his side, flying in through the propped open door, and right past the man’s face, who blanched at the glowing hammer less than an inch from his face, “lay another unwanted hand on anyone, and you will have me to answer to.”

Without another word, Thor took your hand, pulling you out of the bar, as you pulled crumpled bills from your pocket, paying off the tab, “Thor, Thor!” he didn’t stop until you both were a good distance from the bar, “Thor, stop, please.”

He released your hand, a growl rumbling from deep in his chest, “What it took not to throw that man across the bar, I don’t know how you held back.”

“I know,” you said gently, a soft hand on his shoulder, making him face you, “but I’m okay, because of you. And I think he’ll think twice with his two brain cells before he pulls that shit again.”

“Two? I think you give him too much credit,” and you laughed, contagious, as he laughed too, before he realized two of you were so close – only a breath away, and as your laughter died down, he found you staring at him, blinking, “Y/N.”

And you almost seemed to shiver, feeling his breath against your lips, “Thor, I-“ your eyes fluttered shut as he leaned closer.

“May I kiss you?” he asked, hesitant, as his hand reached for your own, and you took it, giving a silent nod, as his other hand came to rest on your cheek, tilting your head upwards to meet his. Your lips met, broke away, met again, broke away, until finally you wrapped your arms around his neck. He felt your lips move against his, and even when you both broke apart, his hand never left yours that night.

4.

“Finally sealed the deal huh?” Tony winked at Thor, looking between the two of you, sat outside Stark Tower, the sun hanging high, “don’t play dumb. I saw the two of you holding hands earlier, walking around like some Andy Hardy movie.” Again the two of you only looked stricken, as you finally folded up the newspaper you were looking at.

You gave a heavy sigh, “Tony, he was holding my hand because my aunt passed.”

Tony gave you both a onceover, raising a brow, “You’re messing with me, right?”

“No, Tony, would you like to see the death announcement?” you slammed your hands on the table, “I thought you’ve gotten better, but apparently you’re still a jackass.”

“Y/N, I’m sorry!” Tony rose, as Thor waved him off, following after you, only sparing Tony a glance.

“I truly thought you were only tiny, not petty,” shaking his head, he walked around a corner to see you grinning, holding out your hand for him.

“Do you think he’s going to have a stroke because of us one day?” you asked, as Thor took your hand, leading you down the hall to his room.

“Perhaps, but there is no way they can blame us.”

5.

“You should have went for the head,” Thanos had taunted him, before disappearing in front of him, and Thor turned to see you crumpling to the ground, on your knees. He ran. Ran amidst the chaos. Amidst the quiet before the screams. Amidst the dust that began to litter the ground instead of people, and he reached you.

“Y/N,” you gave a small smile, “Y/N, you’re going to be okay.”

You shook your head, a tear slipping from your eye, “No, I can feel it, Thor. I don’t know how to explain it. You have to let me go, Thor.”

“I-I-” No words came, only anger and frustration, but he couldn’t show you that. He needed to be strong - he needed to be stronger, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t.

“It’s not your fault,” your hand hesitantly reached to touch his cheek, and still Thor couldn’t say a thing. Words bubbled to the surface. So much he wanted to say. That he never had met another soul like yours. That he didn’t want you to go. That he wished it was him instead of you. That he loved you, and he never had loved someone as much as he had loved you. And it as if you could hear him say these things, as you shook your head again, hand falling to your side, “you don’t need to say anything, just hold my hand.”  

And so he did, taking your hand and weaving your fingers together as he had done so many times before. That night after Loki’s invasion. When you comforted him about his family. Their first kiss. First date. First morning waking beside each other. It all slipped through his fingers in that moment.

Just as you had. And now, he was left holding nothing but air.

1.

“Is it really you?” That was the first question Thor had asked upon seeing you. Five years, and it had only felt like a moment to you. You had left him for five years, and you saw what grief had done to him, untrusting and scared.

“It’s me, Thor,” you said, stepping forward, and his arms were around you in moment, “I missed you, so much.” and when he touched you, it was almost like your body realized it had been since he had held you, starved for his affection, and unable to get close enough, “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. I don’t know how I would have spent five years without you.”

“I fell into a deep depression, in which I did nothing but drink and play a surprisingly addictive game called Fortnite. Then, Stark figured out how to time travel and we reassembled the gauntlet to undo the snap.” he shrugged, leaning away to meet your gaze, “You didn’t miss much.”

“I can tell,” you said, as you pressed a kiss to his lips, breaking away for a moment to press your foreheads together. He flinched as your fingers ran over one of his injuries by accident, “are you okay?”

“As you never leave me again,”

“Never,” you agreed, “It’s shit being dead without you there. Plus, now after we get rid of Thanos, you can teach me how to play Fortnite.”

“Oh, no, you don’t want to. Noobmaster brings out a particularly...ugly side of me,” he broke away from your embrace, summoning his hammers to his side, “I am sure we will find better things to preoccupy our time with.”

You smiled, “and what things are these?”

And instead of taking your hand, he pressed a kiss to your lips, a promise for your future, one that would be shared with him, “You’ll see.”

#thor #thor odinson #thor x reader #thor imagines #thor odinson imagines #thor odinson x reader #avengers imagines #avengers #avengers endgame #avengers: endgame #thor fanfiction #chris hemsworth #thor x you #thor odinson x you

[metaphorical-love-for-a-car]

Hell to the No-- Ben Hardy x Reader (ft. Joe Mazzello.. like, a lot)

Prompt; none this time!

Warnings; slight language, specified fem! reader

Word Count; 2k

Notes; I wrote this instead of writing the essays that are due tomorrow, so I hope y’all enjoy lol ALSO IF YA WANNA BE ON THE TAG LIST FOR FICS LEMME KNOW!! 

Growing up with Joe Mazzello was... interesting, to say the least. He was the typical older brother. The two of you would constantly bicker over the simplest things, and then you two would be up to mischief together before the day was over. There was incessant teasing between the two of you. Joe was the constant ball of energy around your home, and you always struggled to keep up with him. And yes, he was constantly screaming.

When you were young, you thought he was the coolest person-- albeit you would never admit that. He achieved the childhood dream of being famous. You were always his biggest fan. If he needed help preparing for an audition, you’d give him your full attention. You always had his back, and you knew that he always had yours. 

In a way, you made your own name for yourself. You were a photographer, a quite good one at that. You were hired by many companies for high-end photo shoots. As you started to rise through the rankings, Joe helped you out a little. He would try to convince the management to hire you for whatever film or show he was working on’s promotional photographs. Sometimes it would work, and you were always grateful for his support. 

“Joey, please, you don’t have to keep doing this.” He had somehow managed to get you hired on the set of The Pacific. Joe just scoffed at your remark, looping an arm around your shoulders. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

After that, it became pretty common for you two to work together. If you hired one Mazzello, then you might as well hire the other because you’d never hear the end of it if you didn’t. Luckily for you, the same applied to Bohemian Rhapsody. You were beyond ecstatic when you got the news. The first thing you did was call Joe, practically screaming in his ear.

You were on set, discussing some photo arrangements when you heard a familiar voice call out, “Aw, there’s my little mozzarella stick!” 

“Shut it, Francis,” you quipped before apologizing to the person you were originally talking to. You spun on your heel and immediately burst out laughing. It wasn’t the first time you had seen Joe’s curly wig, but it seemed to get bigger every time you caught a glimpse of him. He was walking with three other men. You had already met Rami, as he had been friends with Joe for quite some time. The other two were unknown to you. Sure, you could remember their names, but you had yet to formally introduce yourself to them.

“Francis?” The Brian May clone looked at you curiously. Your grin widened.

“Joey’s middle name. Isn’t it adorable?” you cooed.

“Oh, mate, that’s fantastic.” The blonde clapped Joe’s shoulder before sticking out his hand in your direction. “I’m Ben.” 

“Nice to meet you, Ben. I’m (Y/N).” Realization flooded his features. He flashed you a bright smile.

“It’s about bloody time we’ve met. Joe’s talked about you nonstop!” You raised a brow at Joe, playfully jabbing his side.

“Has he? All good things, I hope.”

“Of course,” Joe scoffed.

“Perfect, now I can tell you all his embarrassing secrets” Joe gave a dramatic gasp before moving to stand toe to toe with you. You narrowed your eyes at him, and he returned the gesture. 

“You make me vomit,” he growled.

“And you’re the scum between my toes,” you said between gritted teeth. The Little Rascals was a movie that the two of you shared a love for. You were constantly quoting it. 

After a few more moments of an intense staring contest, Rami finally stepped in between the two of you, knowing full well that the two of you would’ve gone on for forever. “They said something about doing a quick photo shoot?” Your attention snapped Rami.

“Oh, yeah! Ready to get your model on, Ahkmenrah?”

“Of course, darling! I was born ready.” You laughed at his Freddie impression before rounding the boys up, giving them directions on where to stand.

You were sitting off to the side, watching them film, when you felt someone tap your shoulder. You glanced up to see Ben. “Mind if I join you?” You shook your head, scooting over so he would have plenty of room on the small bench. The two of you watched one of the directors animatedly talk to Rami. “Hey, could I take a look at some of the pictures you took?” 

“Yeah, sure!” You picked up your work bag, which held so much stuff that it would put Mary Poppins to shame. You shuffled through your belongings before finally pulling out your laptop. You had already transferred over some of the pictures, and they just needed to be edited before they would be released. “They’re not quite done yet. I’ve still got to do some touch-ups on a couple of them.” You handed the laptop to Ben and watched his expressions as he scrolled through the pictures. 

“Holy shit. You’re really good, you know that?” You snorted, rubbing your face in an attempt to hide the blush you were sure was already spreading.

“Thanks, it took a lot of practice.” Ben handed back your laptop when someone called his name, motioning him over. A small grin graced your lips when you realized there was something new on your screen. When you looked away, Ben had opened up a blank document and typed down his number. Chewing on your lip, you made a mental note to shoot him a text some time. 

It took you a little while to finally build up the confidence to text Ben. The two of you continued to talk even after your work with Bohemian Rhapsody finished. You knew that you were rapidly developing a crush on him. Not only was he good looking and an amazing actor, but he was also the sweetest person. Ben made you smile every time the two of you talked. And, God, that accent just made your knees go weak. 

You groaned when your phone started ringing. It was just barely after seven in the morning, on a Saturday no less. You reached across the nightstand to pull your phone from the charger. You sat up and narrowed your eyes at the blinding screen. Ben was calling. “Hello?” Your voice sounded more groggy than you would’ve liked.

“Sorry, love, did I wake you?” He gave a nervous laugh. “Sometimes I forget about the time differences.” You smiled, peeling yourself away from the bed.

“No, no, it’s fine. I probably needed to get up soon anyway,” you hummed. You were about to fix yourself a cup of coffee when you heard Ben mumble something then clear his throat. “You okay?”

“I’m fine!” he assured. “I was just wondering... the Oscars are coming up, and I thought I’d ask if you wanted to be my plus one?” You froze before slowly setting down your mug. 

“Like, as a date or...” you trailed off, chewing your lip nervously.

“That’s what I had in mind, yeah.” A wide smile spread across your face. 

“I’d love to.” You felt like a lovesick yearling. You practically screeched with excitement when you ended the phone call. 

A couple of days had passed when Joe called-- in the middle of the night. You weren’t too surprised to see his name displayed across your phone. He was always calling at odd hours. “Joseph Francis Mazzello the third, to what do I owe the pleasure of your call?” 

“I’ve got an offer you simply cannot refuse! You. Me. The Oscars. Boom! You’re my plus one.” You laughed.

“Sorry, Joey. I’ve got prior commitments.”

“What? Don’t tell me you’ll be working! It’ll be way more fun hanging out with me than taking candids of countless celebrities.”

“No, I’m not working. I’ve actually got a date.”

“What’s his name, address, and social security number?”

“Joe. You know better than this. I’m not giving you any information because you’ll just scare him away. Remember Andi Gilmore, who you scared so bad that his parents started homeschooling him?”

“Hey! That wasn’t my fault,” Joe grumbled.

“Whatever you say, bro, but if memory serves correctly, you went all Pat Murray on him.”

“Your memory clearly does not serve correctly.”

You spent the next couple of weeks in a mad dash, trying to find the perfect dress to wear. It needed to be something good because there would be no shortage of pictures and videos by the end of the night. Thankfully, you were able to find one that was just right for the occasion.

Ben stood on your doorstep, nervously shifting his weight. He had been smitten since he first introduced himself to you. He hadn’t been able to get you out of his mind since you left the Bohemian Rhapsody set. Sure, the two of you talked nearly every day, but it wasn’t the same as having you beside him. When you opened the door, it felt like all the air had been pulled from his lungs. A loving smile spread across his face. “Wow. You’re beautiful.” Your cheeks pinkened.

“Thanks, you don’t look too bad yourself.” He took your hand and pressed a kiss to your knuckles. Your face turned to a darker shade of red.

“Must be the luckiest man in the world if I got you to agree to go on a date with me. Shall we?” He motioned towards the car that was parked on the curb. 

Joe kept his eyes peeled for his friends. He had found Gwilym already, but he had yet to find Ben. He was watching every car to see if the blond beauty would step out. Joe’s brows furrowed when he saw you getting out of a car. He could’ve sworn you told him you were going on a date, and he was even more confused when Ben got out of the same car. Realization hit him like a pile of bricks when Joe saw Ben put an arm around your waist. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me! Him? Seriously? I thought you had higher standards, (Y/N),” Joe shouted. You rolled your eyes at him.

“Calm down, Francis. We’re going on a date, not to a drive-thru wedding in Vegas.”

You were finally able to cross ‘attending The Oscars’ off your bucket list. It was an amazing experience, and you were so proud of everyone who worked on Bohemian Rhapsody. The movie racked up the most awards of the night, a grand total of four Oscars. You couldn’t tell who cheered louder for Rami-- you, Joe, or Lucy. When all the festivities ended and everyone started to leave, you turned to Joe and Ben. “You know what I really want right now? A jumbo-sized slushie from 7/11.” Joe’s eyes widened as he loudly exclaimed his agreement. 

The three of you went to the closest 7/11. Joe wandered around the small store while you and Ben went straight to the slushie machine. You danced in place, pouring as much of the different colored liquids you could into the large cup. “How do you think that’s going to taste once they all mix together?” Ben questioned with a raised eyebrow. You shrugged, and he stuck a finger in your cup. He scooped up a glob and ate it, humming. “Not too bad.”

“Rude!” you gasped. “Shouldn’t you know better than to stick your fingers in other people’s food? I thought you were supposed to be a British Gentleman.” You wagged a finger at him, walking towards the check out counter. You felt a pair of arms wrap around your waist.

“I’m not always a perfect gentleman,” Ben flirted. You opened your mouth to reply but was interrupted by Joe’s fake, exaggerated gagging.

“Oh, hell no. You two are so disgusting. I’ve been third-wheeling all night.” You cast him a glance, only to see that he was recording a video. 

“Aw, don’t worry, Joey! You’ve still got Cardy B!” you cooed, a smirk crossing your lips. Ben snorted, and Joe replied with a smartass comment, but that got cropped out of the video.

Tag list;

@mothermercuryy

#ben hardy #ben hardy x reader #bohemian rhapsody #bohemian rapsody movie #bohemian rhapsody x reader #queen x reader #ben hardy imagine

[englishgeek82-blog]

Great Scott! Is Back to the Future the best film trilogy ever?

I was watching the Back to the Future films recently, and it dawned on me that I'd forgotten just how brilliantly enjoyable the trilogy is. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I started to wonder if it just might be the best film trilogy ever made. I know it wouldn’t be first choice for a lot of people, but I thought that nevertheless, it might be worth comparing it to some of the other standard choices to see how it measures up. The major issue of course, is how you define “best”. I’m looking at the films as a collective whole, the overall story and effect of the entire narrative. I’m not judging it on solitary acting performances, or even the depth and development of the major characters, but rather how enjoyable and convincing the story is, and how easy the films make it for the viewer to enter and accept the premise of their world. For instance, the Back to the Future trilogy is about as unrealistic as any films could ever be. But so are Lord of the Rings, Terminator, Star Wars and The Matrix. The Bourne films and the Godfather films have a more realistic feel to them, although I’m not sure anyone would really defend them as being 100% true to life if placed under oath, so let’s remember that suspension of disbelief is an important part of any film experience. But what counts is that once you are inside that world, that the films stay true to it. This is a glaring error in the Matrix trilogy, which seems to make its own rules up as it goes along. The Indiana Jones trilogy seems to suffer the same problem, with Temple of Doom really never making up its mind as to what kind of film it wants to be, and consequently ending up as not much of a film at all. Plus, of course, there’s a fourth film in that particular trilogy but I’m being polite and not mentioning it.

I’m also judging the films as a trilogy, not as single films. Die Hard is an incredibly brilliant film, but the trilogy of which it is a part is not. There’s a fourth AND fifth entry in that trilogy, but I’m being polite and not mentioning them. The same goes for The Godfather, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Matrix. I’m also not counting “unofficial trilogies”, like Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge. Plenty to recommend in all those films, and they have been lumped together by Luhrmann, but as far as I’m concerned, it simply doesn’t count. Even Kevin Smith’s films in the View Askewniverse aren’t going to be counted in this, largely because there are more than 3 of them anyway, and second of all because the films are completely different stories linked tenuously together by supporting characters and locations, which doesn’t quite cut the mustard, and so they too, do not count.

The reason they don’t count is that unofficial trilogies aren’t telling the same story, and so you can’t have sly little references to the other movies therein. One of the many things that impress me about the BTTF trilogy is the self-referential nature of the films, which is common in a lot of sequels and trilogies, but rarely as subtle as it is here. Even the way Marty crosses the road when finding himself in a new time zone by the clock tower is consistent, not to mention the supporting characters such as the Statler family’s horse/car business, and the Texaco filling station, shown in the first two films and referenced in the third. This is one of the cleverest techniques in this trilogy and makes the films feel all the more familiar and makes repeat viewings all the more rewarding.

Now, obviously I realise that when it comes to epic genius in terms of acting and directing, the films may not be up there with The Godfather. That being said, Godfather III is notably poorer than the other two, and it could be argued that it's not even thematically consistent, which I don't think you can say about BTTF. The first two Godfather films are undoubtedly cinematic masterpieces, (though on a recent viewing I was surprised at how the first one has aged) but they certainly don’t have any of the feel-good factor of the Future films. You don’t just channel surf, spot Godfather II and decide to watch it for a laugh – like so many other classics, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the Wind, to name but a few, you have to make a decision to sit down and watch it. This is all well and good, but it’s a solitary journey. It’s a rewarding one too, but you could never sit down with friends at a party and play those films and expect the humour levels in the room not to nose-dive. Al Pacino is incredible, in all three films, and Brando still sends shivers down the spine in the original, not to mention the more-than-able supporting cast who ply their trade with such style alongside them. But the story and cast of Godfather III seems completely out of kilter with the tone of the original two, and this was commented on heavily by critics. I personally think the third film has much in its corner, another fine performance by Pacino, a fitting conclusion to the epic story of Michael Corleone and Andy Garcia’s impressive turn as the young hot-headed Vincent. But there’s no denying that it stumbles through some very tenuous plot lines and is over-populated with characters that completely fail to enhance the story. Finally, Sofia Coppola, although she is not as bad as everyone says, is still bad. The Godfather is so hugely different from Back to the Future that it’s almost pointless to even hold them up under the same light, but for a trilogy that I would pick to watch when I was at a loose end and wanted cheering up, there is no doubt that I would dive for the Delorean every time.

I also know that in terms of Sci-Fi influence and impact, the films are not up there with the original Star Wars films. And the Star Wars films hold the aces in some areas too. For instance, Biff and the other Tannens are effective villains for their genre of film, but they’re more pantomime than would be allowed in a film that took itself seriously. Darth Vader, on the other hand, is a truly great villain, especially when his story is further revealed and his tragedy brought to the fore. As heroes go, Luke Skywalker certainly undergoes a more immense journey of personal development than Marty McFly, but he doesn’t have Marty’s quick wit and he’s a whiny little so-and-so, a trait that he obviously picked up from his father, if the god-forsaken and indeed critically-forsaken, and indeed audience-forsaken prequels are anything to go by. As for things that are wrong with the films, there’s very little – especially with the first two films, but by the time of Return of the Jedi, the Ewok storyline grates on even the most sympathetic fan. Once you compare the original three to the prequels, the originals look like genuine masterpieces, but then once you compare the home video my grandmother shot of my 10th birthday to the Star Wars prequels, you get the same result. And once you start to bring in the storylines of the prequels, the rule about staying true to the world that you have asked the viewer to enter goes flying out of the window like a drop-kicked Ewok. The prequels are truly three of cinema’s great horrors in my opinion, and sadly because they are prequels, their very existence adversely affects the original films. Incidentally, and strangely, even though the insinuations of incest are much greater in BTTF, and in fact both sets of films contain exactly the same amount of screen-time for blood relatives kissing each other, it’s much more unsettling in Star Wars than it is in Back to the Future.

So, we arrive at this century’s most titanic Sci-fi achievement (if you ask some people) - Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy? Batman Begins is one of my favourite films of all time, with Christian Bale’s performance so impressive that I thought I’d never see a better turn in a Batman film, until Heath Ledger’s incredible Joker burned itself into all our minds. I remember thinking  If the third Nolan/Bale film was even half as good as the two that precede it, I would find it almost impossible to pick holes in it. Fortunately, it wasn’t. I wanted to like The Dark Knight Rises, I really did – and I did like it, but it was not the conclusion to the story for which I was hoping. Bat Bale’s growl whenever he speaks (which seemed like a good character move on Bale’s part in the first film) is irritating at best by the end of two hours plus of The Dark Knight and another two hours plus of The Dark Knight Rises. Tom Hardy’s Bane is menacing in appearance, but a big softie deep down and also speaks through his (ostentatious, to put it lightly) space mask in a way that makes him sound like the Head Boy of a southern private school who is addressing his prefects via a home-made walkie-talkie. There are also plot holes so massive in both TDK and TDKR that you could quite comfortably drive a DeLorean through them. The plot hole accusation is also true of the BTTF films, but since they never took themselves too seriously anyway, you could argue that the minutiae of time travel physics don’t matter as much as the overall effect of having a really good laugh.

The Back to the Future trilogy might not be considered as impressive, visually, as the Lord of the Rings films, but if you look at the standard of visual effects against the era in which the films were made, I think there’s a fine argument to be made that BTTF was hugely impressive. The LOTR films have been received incredibly well, and have plenty to recommend them, although they're all 16 hours long and if you don't like that particular genre, you'll be asleep before you see your first hobbit. And yes, I know they won a million Oscars, but that doesn’t always equal sheer enjoyment. Titanic won Best Picture because it looked nice, but was it really the best film of that year? Here are some films that didn’t win Best Picture at the Oscars, just for fun.

Citizen Kane, 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Dr Strangelove, Bonnie & Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cabaret, The Exorcist, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Goodfellas, Dangerous Liaisons, Born on the 4th of July, My Left Foot, JFK, A Few Good Men, The Fugitive, Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, LA Confidential, Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, The Sixth Sense, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hudson Hawk. All masterpieces.

For action and adventure, it's possible that the Back To The Future films don't compare with the Indiana Jones films; although they have more than their fair share, they admittedly are not as action-oriented as the Indy films. Sadly, following the below-average-but-probably-still-better-than-Temple-of-Doom “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, that trilogy has also been unnecessarily tampered with. Even if it hadn’t been, (or if Crystal Skull had been really good), the fact remains that Temple of Doom is pretty naff compared to the other two original movies. I’m not sure any adventure film will ever rival The Last Crusade, because that film pretty much has everything you could ever want from an action movie. Nazis being crap? Check. Exotic Locations? Check. Sean Connery? Check. Harrison Ford? Check. Biblical epic-ness? Check. And finally, Alison Doody...check. So, on its own, yes I would concede that Last Crusade is a better film than any of the BTTF flicks – but only just. As a trilogy though, our survey still comes back with a big X.

For Biblical allegory, although not for mind bending “ooh, makes you think”-ness (which isn’t really a thing, I just made it up) – the films don’t compare with the Matrix trilogy, but then unlike the Matrix trilogy, the second two BTTF films aren’t redolent of the Chernobyl aftermath. The first Matrix film is a really good (not great) film, with a really good (not great) idea behind it. As a standalone piece of cinema, it must rank as an important contribution to the art. However, the sequels are so mind-bendingly awful and lost in tracts of their own self-righteousness that really the whole concept is ruined and the brilliance of the first film is lost.

Pirates of the Caribbean is probably the closest set of films in terms of the general style, some wacky characters, good old fashioned escapade fun and some funky special effects and pretty far-out plot lines. BUT, the films are long, especially the completely directionless third one. This is nothing compared to the fact that Orlando Bloom AND Keira Knightley “act” in all three films. Now, Keira Knightley is a strangely alluring actress, despite her funny mouth, and in the last decade she has proven some admirable acting chops, but here her wooden stylings are not to my tastes, and for the schoolboy crush factor, she’s certainly no Lea Thompson. As for Orlando Bloom, well, I’m really not a fan. Yes, you could argue that Jack Sparrow is a better single character than any in the BTTF films, and Johnny Depp a more accomplished actor than any of the “Future” cast, but that on its own isn’t enough to rescue it. Also, by the third film, Depp has disappeared so far up his own Black Pearl that the character doesn’t have any of its original charm anymore.

For hard hitting pace and action and gritty realism with intrigue and espionage, it definitely doesn't come close to the Bourne trilogy, and I can't really think of anything bad to say about that one. It’s different, for sure, but the Bourne trilogy actually reminds me of the BTTF films in more than one way. For instance, there’s no single performance in any of the three films that truly stands out. Brian Cox is excellent, as always, as are Joan Allen and Matt Damon, but none of them put in an Oscar-winning turn. This is a good thing, in my opinion, because the films don’t demand it. The story and action is enough. Like BTTF, the cast are brilliant in their roles, but none of them dominate the screen and take away from the rest of the film, like Heath Ledger does in The Dark Knight. When he’s not on screen, all you can think is that you wish he was. This is not the case in the Bourne films, where no single character is so crucial that you can’t live without them. The films are not made for fun, and have little humour in them, and so there is no comparison there, but they stay thematically consistent and tell a story that stays completely true to the world it inhabits. If I had to pick a fault, it would be that the non-linear style of the end of the second film and start of the third is hugely confusing, but then I could hardly deny that certain parts of the third BTTF film could have been trimmed, so let’s not get too close into criticising brilliant trilogies.

Other notable trilogies could include:

·       Die Hard (except there's 4 of them now, and the second one is rubbish)

·       Home Alone (only joking. The first two are good though.)

·       Jurassic Park (maybe if the third one had had some effort put into it by anyone associated with it, director, actors, etc)

·       Evil Dead (first one, brilliant – other two, I’m not sure)

·       Spiderman (Hmmm, the first two are superb. But any trilogy that includes that pointless “Emo Spidey” section of Spiderman 3 doesn’t deserve a place at this table. I mean, seriously, what the HELL were they thinking? It’s a bad film without that, but that absolutely nails its coffin permanently shut.)

·       Terminator (third one rubbish, and there’s a fourth one now anyway)

There are also other film trilogies of course, like High School Musical, Matrix, X-Men, Mission: Impossible, Ace Ventura (yes, they made a third), Austin Powers, Mighty Ducks, Beverly Hills Cop, Blade, The Ocean’s films, Robocop, Rush Hour, Scream, Spy Kids, Transporter, Ice Age, I Know What You Did Last Summer, etc but all of these are discounted for either being a) completely terrible or b) let down by at least one entry in the set.

So, this is obviously a gigantically subjective theme, and a very subjective blog – and I’m fine with that, and I hope that everyone has different ideas about what constitutes the perfect film trilogy. After all, all of the above is only my opinion. But, fellow film lovers, let me ask you this - if someone sat you down and said "Right, you've got to watch an entire trilogy all the way through for pure enjoyment," is there a better choice than Back to the Future?

[aion-rsa]

Venom 2: How Tom Hardy Convinced Andy Serkis to Direct The Sequel

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Andy Serkis knows his way around giving great performances via both motion capture and CG. So the idea of him directing Venom: Let There Be Carnage—the new follow-up to 2018’s Venom, which introduced Tom Hardy as both popular Marvel Comics character Eddie Brock and the alien symbiote that infests him—seems like a no-brainer on paper. After all, this is the man whose groundbreaking work as Gollum in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy showed just how far a digital character could go, even 20 years ago, in range and emotion with a human actor underneath the computerized costume. He further refined the process with his work in movies like Jackson’s King Kong (2005) where he played the title character before delivering his masterpiece as ape leader Caesar in the Planet of the Apes trilogy (2011-2017).

So when fellow British actor Tom Hardy called Serkis a few years ago about getting into the same kind of shenanigans, Serkis was intrigued.

“Tom and I have known each other for years and years, and wanted to work with each other, both as actors and as an actor-director relationship,” Serkis tells us. “In fact, just before the first Venom movie, he reached out and said, ‘Andy, look. I’m going to be playing a sort of CG character, I think. And I might be using performance capture. Can I come down to your facility, and can we experiment with stuff?’ So I said, ‘Absolutely, that would be great.’”

The experiment that Hardy spoke about never panned out, although it was a short time later that Serkis realized what project Hardy was getting into at the time. “The first [Venom] movie came out, and then I realized it must have been Venom that he was talking about,” recalls Serkis. “I thought no more of it, and thought, ‘Well, our paths will cross at some point.’”

Flash forward a few years, with Serkis now establishing himself as a director with the features Breathe (2017) and Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018), when suddenly the phone rings… and it’s Hardy again. “I got a call out of the blue from him again, saying, ‘We are very keen to throw your hat in the ring to direct the second movie. How do you feel about that?’ And I said, ‘Look, I love the first movie. Absolutely adored your performance. And I love this Venom-verse. So I’d love to talk about it.’”

Serkis continues, “It just seemed, to me, to be absolutely the perfect piece of material for us both to come together on and work. In many ways, Tom and I have a very similar sensibility in terms of character choices. Marginal, outsider, edgy characters who are somewhat larger than life, sometimes. So it felt like exactly the right thing to do.”

Venom: Let There Be Carnage picks up three years after the end of the first film, with Brock and Venom somehow coexisting, even if it means that Brock’s life (and apartment) is a source of perpetual chaos. Trying to get his journalistic career back on track, Brock scores an interview with incarcerated serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), who inadvertently tips Brock off to the location of his victims’ bodies and seals his own fate on death row—but not before he bites Brock on the hand, ingesting enough of his blood for the symbiote to transform him into the monstrous Carnage.

Soon Carnage is escaping from prison and rescuing Kasady’s incarcerated girlfriend Shriek (Naomie Harris as a mutant with a destructive scream) from the Ravencroft asylum. It doesn’t take long either for the pair to target Brock and his former fiancée, Anne (a returning Michelle Williams).

Read more

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Venom: Let There Be Carnage Review

By David Crow

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Venom: Let There Be Carnage – The Comics History of the Symbiote Rivalry

By Gavin Jasper

There is much more banter between Brock and Venom in this film, giving the proceedings the feel of a fucked-up buddy comedy or bromance in addition to the body horror already associated with the characters.

“There are multiple love stories in there,” says Serkis. “It’s not just Eddie and Venom, it’s Eddie and what’s happening to Anne, and Venom’s relationship with Anne. He wants Eddie to get back together with Anne… and obviously Shriek and Cletus, and even Cletus and Eddie have a strange bond to do with family, in a dysfunctional way. So there’s multiple threads which tie all of these characters together, which I think is real fertile ground for keeping it real. But at the same time, we let it just bounce off into all of the different areas of comedy and melodrama.”

While Eddie and Venom actually learn to get along better, and even help each other, there are in fact echoes of the split-personality conversations between Gollum and Smeagol that Serkis so magnificently personified in the LOTR trilogy.

“I feel like I do have some understanding of those kinds of characters, of course,” says Serkis. “And Tom knew my history of the sorts of things that I directed, and the sorts of characters that I’d played. So I think he felt that someone would be there who could create the right atmosphere for him to do his performance.”

Although Hardy perhaps did want Serkis behind the camera for his expertise with creating characters through motion-capture and other digital effects, the director maintains that Hardy has his own approach for inhabiting the roles of both Brock and Venom (for which Hardy provides the voice).

“Tom’s process, which is the way that he created Venom in the first movie, is awesome to watch,” marvels Serkis. “Awe-inspiring. He has his own process of recording Venom’s voice before every single scene, and then having Venom’s voice play back in an earbud in his ear, so that he could then talk over him or relate to him, or react, or vehemently oppose him… I was just there to frame that and make sure we captured that in an interesting, visceral, kind of way.”

Having now worked with Hardy on one Venom outing and noting that the actor has been “living and breathing this character, and the world of this character, for a number of years now,” Serkis must contend with a question that is surely going to come up a lot as soon as people see this movie: would he be interested in bringing the other Tom into the mix, Tom Holland, that is, and getting back behind the camera for the inevitable clash between Spider-Man and Venom?

“Who knows?” he states. “I’m not going to be a clairvoyant and imagine what might happen, because that can get me into a lot of trouble. But I do think that before we get to any sort of Spider-Man activity, if there is to be any, there’s still some really rich scenes to tap into just within the Venom-verse, on his own.” Serkis pauses before adding, “There’s so many different ways it could go, if we should be so lucky to make more after this.”

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is out in theaters starting today, Friday, Oct. 1.

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The Weekend Warrior Home Edition 7/31/20 – THE SHADOW OF VIOLENCE, SUMMERLAND, THE SECRET: DARE TO DREAM, SHE DIES TOMORROW and More!

As I started to gather what’s left of my wits for this week’s column, there seemed to be fewer movies than usual, and I was quite thankful for that. Then, a few of the movies scheduled for some sort of theatrical release this weekend were delayed and I discovered a bunch of movies I didn’t have in my release calendar to begin with, so this is a little bit of an odd weekend but still one with 8 movies reviews! I went into most of the movies this weekend without much knowledge of what they were about, probably was the best way to go into many of them, since it allowed me to be somewhat open-minded about what I was watching.

The first surprise of the week is that we’re getting another decent film from the one and only Saban Films, so maybe the VOD distributor has been using the pandemic to step up its game as well.  Directed by first-time feature director Nick Rowland, the Irish crime-drama THE SHADOW OF VIOLENCE (Saban Films), based on the book “Calm with Horses,” stars relative newcomer Cosmo Jarvis as Douglas Armstrong, known as “Arm,” the enforcer for the drug-dealing Devers family. Douglas also has a young toddler with local woman Ursula (Niamh Algar), but when his handler Dympna (Barry Keoghan) orders Arm to kill for the first time, he’s forced to rethink his career.

Much of the story revolves a member of the Devers family caught making a lurid pass at Dympha’s 16-year-old sister, leading to consequences, as Arm is sent to beat the crap out of him. For head of the family, that isn’t nearly enough and soon, Arm is ordered to kill the man. (This aspect of the story reminds me a little of Todd Field’s Little Children, particularly the Jackie Earle Haley subplot.)

As I mentioned above, I watched this film with zero expectations and was taken quite aback by how great it was, despite not having been that big a fan of Keoghan from some of his past work. On the other hand, Cosmo Jarvis, in his first major role, is absolutely outstanding, giving a performance on par with something we might see from Thomas Hardy or Matthias Schoenaerts, at least in their earlier work. Barely saying a word, Jarvis instills so many emotions into “Arm” as we see him playing with his young autistic son, Jack, trying to keep his jealousy over Ursula under control, while also being there when Dympna needs him.  Even as you think you’re watching fairly innocuous day-to-day stuff, Rowland ratchets up the tension to an amazing degree right up until a climactic moment that drives the last act.

Despite the film’s title, The Shadow of Violence isn’t just about violence, as much as it is about a man trying to figure out how to change the trajectory of his life. If you like character-based films like The Rider, this movie is definitely going to be for you. Another surprise is that the movie will be available only in theaters this Friday, rather than the typical VOD approach Saban Films generally takes, so check your local theater if it’s playing near you.

The faith-based drama THE SECRET: DARE TO DREAM (Lionsgate), starring Katie Holmes and Josh Lucas, is directed by Andy Tennant (Hitch, Sweet Home Alabama) and adapted from Rhonda Byrne’s self-help book, The Secret (which is based on a 2006 movie also called The Secret). Originally planned for a theatrical release, it’s now being released as PVOD, which seems to be the way that so many movies are going now. In it, Holmes plays Miranda Wells, a struggling widow living in New Orleans with three kids who on a stormy night meets a kind stranger (Lucas) who tries to pass on his philosophy of using positive thinking to get whatever you want in life.  

Mini-Review: I don’t usually buy into some of the faith-based movies that are released every year, but that’s mainly because I rarely get a chance to see any of them, so why bother?  I was ready to go into The Secret: Dare to Dream with a healthy amount of skepticism, because it seemed to be another movie about grand miracles… but in fact, it’s just a bland movie pimping Rhonda Byrne’s New Thought technique from her New Age-y self help book.

The idea is that positive thinking is all that it takes to get anything you want, something no less than Oprah quickly glommed onto.  While the movie doesn’t hit you over the head with such a message, and “God” is only mentioned once, it also just doesn’t seem to offer much in terms of storytelling to maintain one’s interest.

Katie Holmes does a fine job playing an amiable single mother who meets Josh Lucas’ Bray Johnson as a huge storm is about to hit New Orleans, and he seems like a nice enough fellow as he helps her replace a broken bumper (after she rear-ended him, no less) and then fixing up the house after the storm. But Bray has a secret (hence the title) and it’s in an important envelope that he hesitates to give to Miranda.

The film’s biggest problem is that there never is much in terms of stake when it comes to the drama, because Bray seems to be there to fix everything and make everything better. Miranda’s only other real relation is an awkward one with Jerry O’Connell’s long-time (presumably platonic) friend Tucker, which only gets more awkward when he surprises her by popping the question. She says “Yes” without talking to her own kids first.  The whole time while watching the film, I was expecting some sort of big Nicholas Spark level romance between Miranda and Bray, so when Tucker proposes, it throws a real spanner in the works, but only for a little while.

Incidentally, the “secret” of the title that Bray resists telling Miranda until pressured isn’t particularly groundbreaking either. I won’t ruin it. You’ll just be annoyed when it’s finally revealed.

The Secret: Dare to Dream is as generic and bland a tale you can possibly get, one that really doesn’t accomplish very much and feels more like a Lifetime movie than something particularly revelatory.

Rating: 6/10

Jessica Swale’s WW2-set SUMMERLAND (IFC Films) stars Gemma Arterton as fantasy author Alice Lamb, quietly living on the South of England in a small beachside town when she’s presented with a young London evacuee named Frank (Lucas Bond) for her to mind while his father’s at war.  Alice lives alone but many years earlier, she had a friendship with a local woman named Vera (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) that turned into something more, despite the taboo of their relationship during those times.

This was another nice surprise, and as I watched the movie, it was hard not to compare it to last week’s Radioactive, since they’re movies intended to appeal to a similar audience. This one seems to be more focused, and Arterton does a better job being likeable despite being as persnickety as Pike’s Marie Currie. Although this isn’t a biopic, it did remind me of films like Goodbye Christopher Robin and Tolkien, and possibly even Finding Neverland. (Incidentally, the Summerland of the title is a mythical place that Alice is writing about, which adds to the fairy tale angle to the film.)

As the film goes along, there’s a pretty major twist, of sorts, and it’s when the stakes in the film start to feel more dramatic as things continue to elevate into the third act. The movie actually opens in 1975 with Penelope Wilton playing the older Alice, although I’m not sure the framing sequence was particularly needed for the film to work the way Swale intended.

Summerland is generally just a nice and pleasant film that stirs the emotions and shows Swale to be a filmmaker on the rise.

Another really nice indie film that might involve a bit more searching is director Sergio Navaretta’s THE CUBAN (Brainstorm Media), written by Alessandra Piccione. It follows 19-year-old Mina (played by Ana Golja), a Canadian pre-med student who lives with her aunt, Bano (Shohreh Aghdashloo), who pushes her career in medicine, although Mina would rather be a singer. At her part-time job at a long-term care facility, Mina meets Luis (Louis Gossett Jr.), a quiet elderly patient who sits in his wheelchair never talking to anyone until Mina discovers his love for music, and the two bond over that, although Mina’s employers don’t think she’s helping Luis despite his obvious change in nature.

This was just a lovely film driven by Golja, who is just wonderful in the lead role with an equally terrific cast around her, and while it gets a little obvious, I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying this film that harks back to some of the great earlier work by Thomas McCarthy, as it follows a touching story that mixes a number of cultures in a surprisingly fluid way. It turned out to be quite a pleasant and unexpected film in the way it deals with subjects like dementia in such a unique and compelling away, especially if you enjoy Cuban music.

The Cuban already played at a couple Canadian theaters, but it will be available via Virtual Cinema and in some American theaters Friday, and you can find out where at the Official Site.

I was pretty excited to see Amy Seimetz’s new film, SHE DIES TOMORROW (NEON), since I was quite a fan of her previous film, Sun Don’t Shine. Besides having played quite a fantastic role in recent independent cinema through her varied associations, Seimetz also cast Kate Lyn Sheil, a fantastic actress, in the main role. It’s a little hard to explain the film’s plot, but essentially Sheil plays Amy, a woman convinced she’s going to die tomorrow, a feeling that starts spreading to others around her. I’m not sure if you would get this just from watching the film, because it’s pretty vague and even a little confusing about what is happening despite the high concept premise.

For the first 15 minutes or so, the camera spends the entire time watching Sheil as she cries and hugs a wall, while listening to the same opera record over and over. When her friend Jane (Jane Adams) comes over to check on her, she finds her vacuuming in a fancy dress. Amy tells her friend that she’s going to die tomorrow, and she wants to be turned into a leather jacket. Soon, after we’re watching Jane, a scientist, going down the same wormhole as Amy. That’s pretty much the running narrative, although the film opens up when we meet some of Jane’s family and friends, including Katie Aselton, Chris Messina, Tunde Adebimpe, Michelle Rodriguez and more. Soon after we meet them, they TOO are convinced that they’re going to die tomorrow. Incidentally (and spoiler!), no one actually dies in the movie. Heck, I’d hesitate even to call this a “horror” movie because it takes the idea of a pandemic that we’ve seen in movies like Bird Box, Contagion and others and sucks all the genre right out of it, but it still works as a character piece.

The thing is that the film looks great and also feels quite unique, which does make She Dies Tomorrow quite compelling, as well as a great vehicle for both Sheil and Seimetz. Even so, it’s also very much a downer and maybe not the best thing to watch if you aren’t in a good place, emotionally. You’ve been warned. It will open at select drive-ins this weekend, but it will then be available via VOD next Friday, August 7.

Next up, we have two fantastic and inspiring docs that premiered at Sundance earlier this year…

In recent years, Ron Howard has made a pretty amazing transition into respectable documentary filmmaker, and that continues with REBUILDING PARADISE (National Geographic), which takes a look at the horrible fires that struck Northern California in November 2018, literally wiping out the town of Paradise and leaving over 50,000 people homeless and killing roughly 85 people.

It’s really horrifying to see the amount of destruction caused when a spark from a faulty transmission line ignites the particularly dry forest surrounding the town of Paradise, destroying the hospital and elementary school and displacing the homeowners. This is obviously going to be a tough film to watch, not only seeing the fires actually raze the town to the ground but also watching these not particularly wealthy people having to contend with losing their homes. (It’s even tougher to watch now since you wonder how COVID may have affected the town as it’s in better shape now then it was last year.)

Using a cinema verité approach (for the first time possible?), Howard finds a small group of people to follow, including the town’s former mayor, the school superintendent, a local police officer, and others.  It’s pretty impressive how much time this doc covers, and often, you may wonder if Ron Howard was there at all times, because it seems like he would have to have been embedded with the townspeople for an entire year to get some of the footage.

As I said, this is not an easy film to watch, especially as you watch these people dealing with so much tragedy – if you’ve seen any of the docs about Sandy Hook, you might have some idea how hard this movie may be to watch for you. But it is great, since it shows Howard achieving a new level as a documentary filmmaker with a particularly powerful piece.  

Produced by Kerry Washington, THE FIGHT (Magnolia Pictures) is the latest doc from Weiner directors Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, this time joined as director by that film’s editor, Eli B. Despres. The “fight” of the title is the one between the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Trump administration that began shortly after his inauguration in 2017, his Muslim travel ban that quickly followed, and going up until mid-2019 when a lot of obvious civil rights violations were being perpetrated by the U.S. government.

This is a particularly interesting doc if you weren’t aware of how active the ACLU has been in helping to protect people’s rights on a variety of fronts. The doc covers four particular cases involving immigration, LGBTQ rights, voting rights and reproductive rights, and we watch the lawyers involved in four important cases, including a few that are taken right up to the Supreme Court. In following these four particular lawyers, the filmmakers do a great job helping the viewer understand how important the ACLU is in keeping the conservative right at bay from trying to repeal some previous laws made to protect Americans’ rights. 

Of course, this film is particularly timely since it covers a lot of dramatic changes, including the nomination of Justice Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, which ends up being ironic, since he was the judge presiding over an earlier ACLU case involving a pregnant teen immigrant who isn’t allowed to get an abortion. The movie doesn’t skirt the fact that often the ACLU is called upon to help the likes of white supremacists and potential terrorist factions, since they’re about protecting everyone’s rights. I would have loved to hear more about this, but it does cover the backlash to the ACLU after the Charlottesville protests went horribly wrong in 2017.

Be warned that there are moments in this film where the waterworks will start flowing since seeing the ACLU succeed against oppression is particularly moving. If you’ve been following the country’s shifting politics keenly and want to learn more about the ACLU, The Fight does a great job getting behind closed doors and humanizing the organization.

The Fight will be available on all digital and On Demand platforms starting Friday, and you can find out how to rent it at the Official Site.

Vinnie Jones (remember him?) stars in Scott Wiper’s crime-thriller THE BIG UGLY (Vertical) about a pair of British mobsters who travel to West Virginia to make an oil deal in order to launder money. Once there, they encounter some troubles with the locals, particularly the sadistic son of Ron Perlman’s Preston, the man with whom they’re dealing.

Sometimes, as a film critic, you wonder how a movie that has so much potential can turn into such an unmitigated disaster, but then you watch a movie like The Big Ugly, and you realize that some bad filmmakers are better at talking people into doing things than others.

That seems to be the case with this film in which Jones plays Leland, who comes to West Virginia with his boss Harris (McDowell) to make an oil deal with Ron Perlman’s Preston, only for the latter’s son “PJ” (Brandon Sklenar) causing trouble, including the potential murder of Leland’s girlfriend. Of course, one would expect to see tough guy Vinnie Jones out for revenge against the endless parade of sleaze-balls he encounters, and that may have been a better movie than what Wiper ended up making, which is all over the place in terms of tone. (It was only after I watched the film did I realize that Wiper wrote and directed the absolutely awful WWE Film, The Condemned, also starring Jones. If I only knew.)  

Jones isn’t even the worst part of the cast, in terms of the acting, because both McDowell and Perlman, two great actors, struggle through the terrible material, though Perlman generally fares better than McDowell, who doesn’t seem to be giving it his all.

There’s a whole subplot involving one of PJ’s friends/co-workers (recent Emmy nominee Nicholas Braun from  HBO’s Succession) and his relationship with a pretty local (Lenora Crichlow) that goes nowhere and adds nothing to the overall story. Once PJ is seemingly dealt with, there’s still almost 35 minutes more of movie, including a long monologue by Perlman telling a sorely wasted Bruce McGill how he met McDowell’s character. Not only does it kill any and all momentum leading up to that point, but it’s probably something that should have been part of the set-up earlier in the film.

The fact this movie is so bad is pretty much Wiper’s fault, becuase he wrote a script made up of so many ideas that never really fit together – kind of like Guy Ritchie doing a very bad Deliverance remake before deciding to turn it into a straight-up Western. Wiper then tries his hardest to salvage the movie by throwing in violence and explosions and leaning heavily on the soundtrack. (The fact that both this and the far superior The Shadow of Violence used a song from the Jam was not lost on this music enthusiast.) Regardless, The Big Ugly is a pretty detestable piece of trash that couldn’t end fast enough… and it didn’t. (It played in drive-ins and select theaters last Friday but will be available on digital and  On Demand this Friday.)

Available through Virtual Cinemas (supporting Film Forum and the Laemmle in L.A) is Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni’s documentary, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind, about the Canadian singer-songwriter who changed people’s impressions of Canadian culture, covering Lightfoots’s greatest triumphs and failures.

Film at Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema will premiere Koji Fukada’s Japanese drama A Girl Missing (Film Movement) on Friday, while New York’s Metrograph Live Screening series continues this week with Manfred Kirchheimer’s Bridge High & Stations of the Elevated starting today through Friday, and then the premiere of Nan Goldin’s Sirens (with two other shorts) starting on Friday. You can subscribe to the series for $5 a month or $50 a year.

Premiering on Disney+ this Friday is Beyoncé’s Black is King, her new visual album inspired by the lessons from The Lion King, as well as the new original Muppets series, Muppets Now. Since I haven’t seen either Lion King movie, I’m definitely looking forward more to the Muppets returning to "television.”

Launching on Netflix today is Matias Mariani’s Shine Your Eyes about a Nigerian musician who travels to Sao Paulo to look for his estranged brother and bring him back to Nigeria, as well as Sue Kim’s doc short, The Speed Cubers, set in the world of competitive Rubik cube solving and the friendly rivalry between two young “speedcubers.” Also, Season 2 of The Umbrella Academy will premiere on Netflix this Friday.

Premiering on Shudder tomorrow (Thursday, July 30) is Rob Savage’s Host, the first horror movie made during the quarantine about a group of six friends who decide to hold a séance over Zoom.

Amazon’s drive-in series continues tonight with “Movies to Inspire Your Inner Child,” playing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Hook.

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

#TheWeekendWarrior #SheDiesTomorrow #Summerland #TheCuban #Movies #Reviews #TheFight #RebuildingParadise #TheShadowOfViolence #VOD #Streaming #TheSecretDareToDream

[carot-dj]

A Dream Come True If ever a story needed to be told, this is it. In the '70's, I saw a feature piece on 60 Minutes regarding the systematic selling off of the fabled MGM Studio's backlots. It was a disturbing and ghostly story to begin with as it showed the once great studio in a decaying freefall. I'm a fan of classic Hollywood movies and I was upset by the thought that MGM was disappearing as a physical entity and would be lucky if it even existed on paper in a few years. In all probability MGM was soon to be reduced to stripmalls and subdivisions. Go to Amazon

MGM: America's Brigadoon The new book, MGM, Hollywood's Greatest Backlot, is at once a compelling social history rather than just an architectual survey of the sets, administrative buildings, and soundstages of Hollywood's greatest studio of the thirties, forties, and fifties. It truly is our Brigadoon, a city within a city within a country that made real countless myths and legends that could be experienced again and again on the celluloid screen. Brigadoon can only reappear once every hundred years, thus it's history has been short without too much social consequence, MGM not only brought to life visions of granduer it also trained generations on how on how to live an idealized life. Who hasn't watched an Andy Hardy film, Meet Me In St. Louis, or one of the Dr.Kildere entries and reflected or even measured the normality of their own families against these films? Wasn't Dad supposed to be as kind and understanding as Judge Hardy? Wasn't Mom supposed to be as wise and warm as Esther Smith's mother in St. Louis? And who hasn't, at one time or another, splashed in the rain or sung a few bars of Singin' in the Rain during a friendly down pour? There are so many moments from MGM films that have been cemented in the social consciouness. Go to Amazon

This book's big format is perfect for poring over the richly detailed photos Amazon tells me that I have now owned this book for 5 years. What a half-decade of pure pleasure I have received from this one purchase! While I am not in the habit of awarding 5 stars to anything, this is one where I can find nothing wrong with it. The few negative reviews I read were from buyers who obviously did not read the part of the title that says "backlot." Yes, this is mainly about sets and inanimate objects, and that it what the book title clearly states. A few stars are incidentally thrown into the photos. This book's big format is perfect for poring over the richly detailed photos. I suppose if I had to find some negative, it would be that I would like to see some color photographs of the later years. Certainly, the overwhelming majority will be black and white, because that is MGM's era. Go to Amazon

MGM The Cadillac of Hollywood studios! Great book. I enjoyed seeing the back lot at MGM like I never have before. I gave this book 4 stars because I felt like it ignored one of the best films MGM ever made. "The Wizard of Oz". How could "The Wizard of Oz" hardly get written about is beyond me. I have seen the sets for "The Wizard of OZ" in other books. They are a sight to behold. I just couldn't give it 5 stars for this slight by the authors. I still highly recommend this fascinating book. I really enjoyed it. Go to Amazon

Five Stars you will like this book An Amazing Tour of the Studio System's Golden Age behind the scenes Good book MGM book Excellent and I'd like to continue very old backlot pictures, I was disappointed. A great, finely written reference work

#Debbie Reynolds: 9781595800558: Amazon.com: Books

[chrismaverickdotcom]

The Logan Supremacy.... (no spoilers)

I’ve kind of gotten sidetracked away from doing movie reviews for a bit here. Sorry about that. I’m still not quite sure if anyone cares. People say they want my take, but it always feels like there’s far more people interested in my political stuff. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to write one for Split for a while (saw it a few weeks ago) and didn’t get to it. So now I’m not sure if anyone is interested anymore. Let me know.

That said, there’s a new superhero movie out. Logan. And of course I have to review that one. So here we go.

I’m kind of wondering if the post award season hard-R superhero movie spot is just going to become a thing with Fox. After last year’s Deadpool (which I liked a lot) and this year’s Logan, Fox seems to have something. Certainly something beyond what they did with Fant4stic and X-Men: Apocalypse, both of which pretty much royally sucked. I’m actually quite happy to say that with Logan, they actually had something going here.

I always try to avoid spoilers in these as best I can. Here it’s going to be quite easy because my thoughts on what made Logan work really don’t have much to do with the movie at all. It’s more about what they DIDN’T do that really works for me.

I’m actually kind of starting to hate movie franchises. It’s not just that they’re cash grabs. All movies are cash grabs. All products are cash grabs. That’s just how it works. Everyone wants to make money. And I understand that you need big tentpole films in order to make Hollywood work. And that’s the honest truth of it. For anyone who likes to say that they don’t care about these big budget extravaganzas, you need to understand that they keep Hollywood running. Without big budget superhero films, there is no La La Land or Moonlight. It’s a sharing of the wealth. That’s just the business. And movie franchises have always been a big part of that. I mean literally always. Go all the way back to the Golden Age of Hollywood. We have Casablanca, Citizen Kane and Singing in the Rain because your great grandparents sat through a shit ton of really godawful Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies and that’s not to mention Ma and Pa Kettle or Andy Hardy. Because no matter what you like to remember about the Golden Age of cinema… no matter what La La Land and Hollywood want you to believe… most of it was basically a big shit show. Just like now. In fact, in those days — Code Era Hollywood — it was even worse.

But one of the things that the franchises understood back in those days was that they weren’t TV (or maybe more accurately they weren’t radio). The Tarzan films are not high art, but they all stand alone. They are related, but only nebulously. The order of them doesn’t even really make all that much difference. So long as you saw the first one and know the origin story, you’re good to go with any of the. Frankly, if you missed the first one, you’ll basically figure shit out. White dude with the accent of a caveman, swings from vines and yells a lot. Hell, if for some reason you want to make a Tarzan movie without Johnny Weissmüller, just throw in Buster Crabbe. Who the fuck will know the difference?

And this is how franchises have always worked. After the days of movie serials (which were weekly, like TV shows), Hollywood learned that you couldn’t expect everyone to see every film in the franchise and certainly not to wait a year or two for the next installment of a story. This has been the way of franchises for movie history. Even serialized films like Star Wars didn’t require all the parts to tell the story. That’s why they were able to start with EPISODE FUCKING FOUR and most people never even noticed. James Bond is theoretically one ongoing franchise, but it doesn’t make sense in the slightest. Actors change. Events contradict each other. There’s a soft reboot for the most recent Daniel Craig films which takes them back into being prequels to most of the other ones (or a replacement in the case of the Casino Royales) but even those don’t make sense, because they retain the M (Judi Dench) that was hired in the final Pierce Bronson pictures. But it all just kind of works. Because there’s just an understanding by the viewer that continuity in the Bond Universe only matters when it does. The individual films are consistent in themselves and that is is enough. You can watch any Bond film and its fine. The others may or may not have canon that happened. It doesn’t matter. No one cares. If you’re doing a Bond marathon and you happen o hate Octopussy. Just skip it. I doesn’t matter. The same is true of Tarzan, Andy Hardy or (to a lesser extent) even Star Wars.

But somewhere along the way, this broke. Maybe it was Empire Strikes Back that broke it. Even though i remains the best Star Wars movie, it really doesn’t have a beginning or an end. It’s all middle. But it was certainly broken by he time we got to Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. Hollywood figured out that they could make us pay to see episodic TV in theaters. And frankly it kind of sucks.

Not all franchises are like that. The success of the Marvel films is that even though they’re sort of episodic, they don’t really rely on each other much. At least not really Avengers: Age of Ultron kind of did, and it’s one of the things that I really don’t like about that movie. It’s one of the big problems with Batman v. Superman. That’s not really even a movie. It’s a lot of set up for other movies that hasn’t been earned yet. What makes the Marvel films work is that when I walk out of the theater, I (usually) feel like I’ve seen a complete and conclusive story — even if it is a story that is part of a larger one. What makes a franchise not work is when each installment is more concerned with locking the viewer in for the next installment OR PREVIOUS ONES than it is with telling it’s own story.

What made Logan work is that it just didn’t give a fuck.

And it was great because of it. Like Deadpool, this is a movie that exists within the X-men universe. But only in the most superficial of ways. It matters in the same way that it matters that any Bond films related or any Tarzan films. Instead of trying to tell an X-men franchise story, James Mangold directed a simple and compelling action movie that happens to be set in the X-men world. In effect it isn’t really an X-men movie at all. It’s a Jason Bourne movie. It’s a John Wick movie. It’s Léon, The Professional, where the part of Léon will now be played by Wolverine.

And it was fucking awesome.

Ot at least it was awesome for what it was. If you like Jason Bourne style action movies, you should love this. It is the story of a reluctant hero, put into a situation which he didn’t choose, where his only way out is to kill a lot of people. REALLY a lot of people. And kill them… like a bunch. Like so much killing. Like if you’re into a movie where dead fuckers are stacking up left and right. This is the movie for you. If you don’t want to see that, you will not enjoy this. Because there is so so so so so so very much killing going on.

And I’m trying to review this for what it is. This is a franchise movie. It is not high art (which The Professional inexplicably is). It doesn’t want to be. It is trying to be the best franchise movie it can be and the best killing spree movie it can be. I am judging it on that merit. The action was fun. The killing was gory. It gives movies like Bourne and Wick a serious run for their money. At the same time, there is enough of a compelling story to gesture towards something like The Professional to make it something more than a mindless action spree. It has heart and soul in a way that most movies in this genre really don’t. There are real stakes for the character and between the killing… oh so very much killing… the film gives you a reason to care for the characters and want them to succeed. I mean, a reason beyond wanting to see them survive to kill some more.

But it didn’t rely too heavily on it’s franchiseness. What you need to know about the other X-men/Wolverine movies. Logan is a guy with claws and a healing factor. Professor Xavier is a guy with mental powers. They’re mutants. Nothing else matters. These things aren’t explained. Much like it’s never explained why Tarzan is in the jungle or talks funny after the first movie. Why does John Wick have a gun? Cuz he’s a dude with a gun. That’s who he is. Let’s move along.

Beyond that, the other movies don’t matter. Frankly, a lot of the events of the other movies are kind of contradicted by this one. And that’s fine. It just doesn’t matter. Like Bond, continuity only matters in this film when it does. And when it doesn’t, Mangold just doesn’t give a fuck. In fact, probably my least favorite part of the film are the time (relatively few times) that Mangold tries to address the ongoing X-men continuity just to keep the geeks off his back. It’s done with a bit of a wink. He lets you know that the film doesn’t really “fit” and he doesn’t care. The Wolverine character pretty much tells you that directly. It’s too much. I don’t need it and it took me out of the movie. It’s a double edged sword I guess. If he didn’t do it, there’d be a bunch of assholes on Twitter saying “but this doesn’t work, because the events of X-men: The Last Stand say this other thing. Mangold is explicitly saying “I know. I don’t care. That movie fucking sucked and this one is better. Deal with it!” And he’s right. He did make a better movie. But it would be even better still if he didn’t have to say that in the film itself. Bond films never apologize for being Bond films.

The particulars of the film are pretty good. Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart are excellent in their characters… and they should be since they’ve had 17 years of practice. Dafne Keen is also very good in the role of Laura. She’s not going to be getting Natalie Portman/Mathilda style accolades… but she was good and I hope she has a future in it. Seeing her fight as an 11 year old girl was cool, though there were some points where it was kind of obvious that she was stunt doubled or CGI’d out in a way that it isn’t as much so with Jackman and that makes her seem a little more artificial in an otherwise very gritty film. The rest of the cast is basically “okay.” I don’t feel like there is anyone else I can really rave about, but no one is offensively bad (and that’s a positive in a movie like this).

So I recommend seeing it. Especially if you’re a fan of Bourne style movies. It is an excellent entry into that genre (generally not one of my favorites) and, assuming this really is Jackman’s final time in the role as he has said, a great send off to his version of the Wolverine character. Just don’t look for much else out of the film than that. Instead, appreciate it for all he things that it doesn’t do.

And it is the best there is at what it doesn’t do… well… maybe not the best… but pretty damn good.

★★★★☆ (4 out of five stars)

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The Logan Supremacy…. (no spoilers) was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

#franchises #Hugh Jackman #James Mangold #laura #Logan #movie review #Patrick Stewart #Professor X #X-23 #X-Men (film) #X-Men Origins: Wolverine #X-Men: Apocalypse #Xmen

[thegloober]

Gareth Evans on the Brutal Violence and Practical Effects of Apostle

by Simon Abrams

October 15, 2018   |   May Contain Spoilers

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With the gory pagan horror film “Apostle,” Indonesian filmmaker Gareth Evans takes a big step away from the martial-arts genre that he put his indelible stamp on in both the “Raid” films and in “Merantau” before that. “Apostle” isn’t Evans’ first commercially released horror film: his contribution to the 2013 horror omnibus film “V/H/S 2” is widely considered to be the best in that movie. “Apostle” feels like more where that grisly short came from, though it also resembles British horror classics like “The Devils,” “Witchfinder General,” and “The Wicker Man,” all of which are acknowledged influences for Evans. In “Apostle,” Dan Stevens plays Thomas Richardson, a disillusioned atheist who travels to the secluded island of Erisden to retrieve his sister Jen from a pagan commune run by Michael Sheen’s Brother Malcolm, a desperate man who worships a mysterious Goddess. 

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RogerEbert.com spoke with Evans about how he achieved certain practical effects, why his latest film is so brutally violent, and what the film’s violence reflects about real-world toxic masculinity.

Of the your film’s acknowledged influences, “The Wicker Man” is the most irresistible for comparison’s sake, despite big differences between the two film’s lead protagonists. Your film’s protagonist, Thomas Richardson, is a very disillusioned atheist/agnostic, while in Robin Hardy’s film, the woman is very misguided by his faith. There’s that flashback to Thomas’s missionary days in Peking, but I wondered if you could talk about where Thomas comes from.

We kind of played off the idea of that Thomas’s father is devoutly religious: there’s an inscription above his fireplace about religion and suffering and things like that. So in terms of backstory: Thomas would have shouldered a lot of whatever physical abuse occurred in that house when he was a child. And he would have shielded his sister from it, so his sister was protected from that side of their upbringing, in a way. We started there with the backstory and what drew Thomas and Jen very, very close together. At every turn in Thomas’ life, he’s been met with violence. So the Peking Boxer Rebellion, when we came up with that as a flashback sequence, it was something to give us a sense of place and time, that validated my preference for this story to be told at the turn of the Victorian to the Edwardian period in England. We did some research into potentials for what could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, in terms of promises, disillusionment, loss of faith and descent into atheism.

The period is really striking. I’ve read you saying that the film takes place around 1905. Is that right?

Yeah, 1905.

You immediately place us in a different time at the beginning of the film, just using mannered language during the voiceover narration that’s taken from Jen’s letter to her father. Recording voiceover narration is so tricky, especially when it’s supposed to capture a character’s subjective point of view or emotional state. It’s even more tricky when you record somebody’s emotional state through voiceover with such mannered, period-specific language. Where did that letter and the way the characters talk come from? What was recording that voiceover like?

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The letter was probably one of the first things we wrote, so when it came to developing the concept for the film … I had the initial seed of a concept, which was a short film that I sort of half-made in 2004/05. That film started with a similar premise, with a woman leaving and the only thing remaining left behind her was an envelope with a letter and a rose petal inside. So those elements carried over into what we ended up doing with “Apostle.”

When we were developing this concept—and reconfiguring that seed of an idea into something that would be set in 1905—we started adding more and more layers to it. One of the first things they did was write that letter. That kind of set the tone, in a way, for the world and the way the characters would behave, talk, or speak. It informed the characters’ language and their world. So it was very, very early on we wrote the letter. 

In terms of the recording for it, I wish I had a better story for you other than we were in post-production doing the sound mix and we brought Ellen Reese in to do a recording of it. The beautiful thing about Ellen is that she’s such a talented actress that she managed to find, for me, exactly the right tone of internal fear but also something that felt like a little bit of resentment for the people holding her captive. It was a yearning for her safety. It was just a real interesting reading, really. But we didn’t have to do too many takes of that letter read because Ellen nailed it.

What was the name of that earlier short film?

Back then, it was called “Petals,” as in Rose Petal. It was a very, very different thing, but that was playing along the idea of Mother Nature to a degree, though not in the same level we did in “Apostle,” with the Goddess and things. It was more like: me in my early 20s trying to do a short film, thinking I could do a cool straightforward horror film in 10 minutes. It wasn’t that well developed, it was conceptual.

Was it ever released anywhere?

No, we never finished it.

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You utilize Dan Stevens’ physicality in ways few other filmmakers have. I wonder if it’s fair to say you wanted the character’s presence—and the audience’s summary understanding of who he is—to mostly come from his body language?

I think a lot of it came from Dan, to be perfectly honest. There were moments with that character where we talked a little bit about his laudanum addiction, his dependency on it, all these things that could make him weak and vulnerable. I feel like audiences will get behind a hero like that. They get behind people who are not necessarily going to power-drive their way through a situation. Dan had to feel like he was somebody who could absolutely endure and persevere through that set of circumstances, and he brought with him this incredible off-kilter performance, this off-kilter body language that made him feel quite jittery and unsettled. When that’s your POV into this universe, and that’s the guy who’s going to take you on that journey, you immediately don’t feel comfortable. You immediately feel like you’re not on solid ground. And so a lot of that came from him. 

I’ll give you an example: Dan and I talked about the idea of his slurring of speech. When we were making the film, we shot so much out of sequence that when we were jumping forward through about five or six different stages of the narrative and story order, I noticed that his slur would adapt and shift: it would sometimes be very strong or sometimes start to feel weaker. Initially, everyone’s thinking, “It’s a continuity error,” but we were looking at the margins of the script and it was like he’d beaten it out into, “This is the turning point where Thomas abandons the laudanum and starts focusing on the task at hand, and then he finds an element of sobriety and control.” At that point, his muscles and jaw start to relax and he’s able to talk, to have clearer diction then as well. So yeah, he really did put a huge amount of effort and a lot of work into it, and I think it’s a remarkable performance on his part.

It really is. You mentioned a turning point. For me, watching the film before speaking with you, the big turning point in the film comes in the scene where [hapless Erisden resident Jeremy] is tortured. I love how you visualize that change with this great POV shot where we see the sky from Jeremy’s perspective as the veins in his eye get crushed. I wonder how you achieved that effect both with the camera and those spidery red veins over the camera.

That was one of those shots where I always felt, “I don’t know if this is going to work.” I’m not a massive fan of POV shots usually. I find them to be quite distracting; they remove you from the story you’re telling. But I thought I could earn it in this instance. So in that whole sequence, when Jeremy’s being carried in towards the table, we insert one POV shot earlier in there, which is an upside-down POV shot, just so it could buy us the later POVs. Without that first shot, I think the second one would’ve felt even more distracting. In terms of the visual look of that scene, we bought ourselves the right to do that shot.

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In terms of the technical ability to do that: we had the camera mounted on kind of a tripod head that we could kind of create the sensation of a ratcheting of the camera position so it would gradually feel like it was cranking up to point to the sky. And then everything else from that was all in the hands of Andi Novianto, who has been my VFX wizard since the first film I made. I’ve used him all the way up until now. We had three different VFX companies do work on “Apostle,” and Andi did the vast majority of the shots, and that was one of his shots. The great thing about Andi is he was working remotely from Indonesia at the time, so I had to just give him these little WhatsApp messages, speak to him on the phone, and try to convey what was in my head so he could replicate that. And so it was a case of just trying to explain the veins, the crushing of the veins, the fact that the vision would be slightly cloudy and blurred. And lo and behold, we get a version of the shot that comes in from Andi and it’s absolutely spot-on and perfect for what we wanted to do.

The sequence is upsetting for a couple of reasons, especially because from the start of the scene, we see that torture table getting built, but not the people who build it. It sort of takes a village, but nobody is singled out. From what I’ve read, it seems that production designer Tom Pearce oversaw the making of that torture device. Where did the materials come from?

Yes. First of all: Tom Pearce is an absolute genius. I loved working with him on this, and I felt like he just completely got everything we were trying to do with the film. When it came to the table: I started to design things in little sketches. I did some research into the medieval capital punishment method, which was not a fun afternoon at all. [laughs] It’s pretty dark stuff. Actually, the things that are in real life are far, far, far worse than anything we could have come up with ourselves. 

Anyway, I came up with this table and the general gist of it was that all the items on there had to feel like they were organic to the village. So it’s made out of slabs of wood and wrought iron, and the vices would have been things they might have used in the construction of the houses. They would have been used for building tools. And the drill itself would have been used to carve out holes in the wood, again, in order for it to work as construction. So all of those elements, all those things that made up that heathen stand, would’ve been used to build the village, but now assembled in this way it’s to destroy a villager. So it had this nice, creepy, messed-up juxtaposition there that really spoke to us.

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The gore in this scene begins with an unblinking, head-on look at the heathen stand’s drill tip as it enters actor Bill Millner’s head. Which is striking since, historically speaking, most gore movies have to shy away from showing actual penetration. Most gore movies show you blood welling up afterwards, but they won’t show you the moment that a murder weapon gets into someone’s skin. Is it fair to say you’d consider it a cheat to cut away before the drill entered Jeremy’s skull?

I think the intent was to reverse viewers’ expectations: I actually didn’t want to show the gore for that sequence. This is one of the stark contrasts between what this film is and what the “Raid” films are. When it came to the “Raid” films, everything is adrenalized, crowd-pleasing. It’s a roller coaster. You can watch an action scene unfold and cheer at the end of it. But in “Apostle,” this sequence was designed to hurt, to not only be physically, but emotionally painful. So I wanted to show you how that device worked, how it functioned, how the mechanism works. What happens when you turn this dial, that dial, whatever. And at the moment it’s about to be used, I’m going to cut away to show the emotional reaction of the people watching it, because you have people close to Jeremy breaking down in hysterics. The sheer devastation of his death is tearing them apart. And then meanwhile, you look at the community, the villagers, and even they are horrified by what they’re experiencing and seeing because none of them wanted it to happen. But what we’re experiencing in that moment is the overthrowing of a system. It’s the installation of a dictatorship through [Brother Malcolm’s second-in-command, Quinn], and everyone’s too afraid to challenge him. Because he’s Brutus; he’s about to overthrow everything. And so in that respect, it was an opportunity to say something about the village and the people there, and not be something that dwelled on purely the violence. So I’m going to put all the violence into (pardon the pun) your head, not on the screen.

How did you achieve that practical effect for this scene? It’s a great magic trick. What materials were used and how did you choreograph, as you said, eliding and implying so much of the violence?

You mean in terms of the drill tip?

Yeah, not just in terms of the blocking of the camera, but also what materials you used for the prop skull.

We did some really, really basic tricks. We were able to do a lot with the combination of Bill’s actual head and a prosthetic head. We would just drill holes at the top of the prosthetic head using rubber drill bits. We also extended the drill bits with CGI so we could have it pierce the skin of Bill’s head. The piercing of his skin is a CG effect from Andi, who is my wizard. A lot of it is clever split screens and keeping the cameras locked so that we can combine a number of different elements to make it feel like you’ve seen everything in one shot. When Quinn does place the rose petal very, very deep inside Jeremy’s head, that’s a combination of two different shots stitched together, so to speak.

The violence in your films always has this element of hyper-realism that I haven’t really seen in other films. There’s a detail in one “Apostle” scene that’s pretty quick, where a guy gets impaled by a whole bunch of spears. The detail that struck me most: you show the guy breathing heavily after he’s been murdered. You just hear him breathing heavily for what feels like an eternity. How integral for you was that detail? And when did you add that effect to the scene, that he’s still alive and we can still hear him panting?

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Tom Pearce and I discussed how we were going to get that shot to work, and how we were going to get that effect to work. In fact, we kind of looked at … you know when you get like Snooker cues, where you can kind of screw them together? Basically we kind of worked on that as how we would do the spears going through the body. So we strapped a metal plate on actor Ross O’Hennessy’s body with lots of screw points, so we could screw in the fronts and backs of the spears to get them in the right positions, from the entry point to the exit point. Effectively, those positions were based on the game of Snooker. 

As for the idea behind that scene: I really wanted to do a slow shot that would take its time to curve around, so that we see the guy propped up by the positioning of these spears that have gone through his body. I owe a lot to Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who did “Cure.” He did a film called “Charisma,” where there’s a whole sequence where one of the characters is killed with a katana sword that gets pushed through the body slowly and comes out the back of a wicker chair. It’s done in a way that’s almost all one shot. It’s an incredible trick and I was blown away by it, but there’s a stillness to it, a stillness to that person’s death, and that’s what I wanted to achieve. I wanted to get this stillness to this would-be assassin’s death, so that when the camera comes around, it would allow us to see this guy who, even in his dying moments—even though he’s literally seconds away from fading and being no more—every ounce of him wants to put that knife into Malcolm. So when Malcolm does come close, he is still driven by his task at hand, which is to kill this so-called prophet.

There are two more scenes I wanted to single out: the meat grinder table with the cables. From start to finish, did your conception of that scene change at all, or was it exactly as you imagined it?

That was a scene that we worked through a lot in pre-production. The mangle table was probably one of the most complicated things we’ve designed in terms of choreography because unlike the more … not straightforward, but unlike hand-to-hand combat where someone’s going to punch, someone’s going to kick, someone’s going to block, someone’s going to throw … in this scene, it’s a fight between two people, but nobody is ever going to really swing a punch or throw a kick. They only come into contact with each other maybe twice during the entire scene.

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That whole sequence revolves around the table and how it functions. So before we could even do anything, we had to understand the engineering of it, the mechanics of that table. That was the challenge with that whole sequence, understanding the counterweights, what would happen with the counterweights, how they functioned and played a part of it, how does the lock-lever work. If you push it forward, then the counterweight will drop and push the hooks through the machine at a rapid rate, so it could be used to drag or pull up anything that’s too heavy. Once we sort of understood how that machine worked, that’s when we could start having fun with it, and that’s when we could start figuring, “Oh, OK, so this is the back and forth, this is the prey and the hunter and then the hunter and the prey as the tables get turned.”

Terrible use of the word tables there. But yeah, for me it was a fascinating experience and I was very fortunate that “Apostle” was my first project where I got to work with Jude Poyer, who’s a stunt coordinator who had spent a lot of his time in Hong Kong and came back to the UK to work in the industry. I’ve known of him for a really long time and we’ve become very, very good friends. We have a shared encyclopedic knowledge of Hong Kong action cinema. So he’s kind of become my action designer by choice now, and we’ve been working together lately on the next thing we’re doing. But I was so fortunate to have him and his team on board for this thing, because they really helped get under the hood of that machine and kept asking those questions so even though there were moments where I was happy enough to be like, “Oh, this just works! Let’s just do this!” They would demand that kind of understanding. They were like, “No, we have to know that this machine works. We have to know every aspect of this because the logic has to hold up.” And I’m so glad that they pushed for that, because it just made the scene a hell of a lot better.

The most harrowing scene in the movie has to the one where Thomas is trapped in that claustrophobia-inducing water canal, the one where he first meets the Goddess. Talk about some of the challenges you faced filming that scene.

Let’s just put it this way [laughs], that was nobody’s favorite day of filming. First of all, I always have to apologize to my director of photography, Matt Flannery, because he’s claustrophobic! And in everything we’ve done so far, I’ve put him in really increasingly tight spaces and nightmare situations, and this was no exception. It was a difficult environment to shoot in. We basically built a narrow canal and then we put a lid on top of it, so in a way, it was a coffin with a lot of water in it. That’s very uncomfortable for Dan, who we put in there for about a 10-11 hour day? He wasn’t in there for 11 hours, but he was in and out, in and out, shot by shot, setup by setup. 

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It’s not fun when you’re dipping yourself into water. No matter how much you try to heat it, it’s always going to feel a little bit cold. And then you go into a tent pumping heat in there, so it’s not good news. That was a day no one was looking forward to and no one wanted to go back and do again. It was hard to light, it was hard to pull focus in there, very difficult to get the shots we wanted to. But yeah, when people are watching it, they don’t really care about what we went through to make it! To work it has to be effective, so if it strikes the level of fear we hope we could with that sequence, then yes … I keep wanting to say it’s worth the suffering of that day. The truth is: everyone suffered except for me! I was pretty comfortable looking behind the monitor saying, “Yeah, let’s go again!” I always feel sort of disingenuous whenever I talk about how difficult life on set is, because for me it’s very, very comfortable!

It seems like the brutality of “Apostle” is, given the context of the story, a reflection of the male-dominated cruelty that the film criticizes. With the exception of [Jeremy’s girlfriend, Ffion] and the Goddess, most of the explicit violence happens to Thomas rather than the other women. Is that a line you didn’t want to cross, to show and exploitatively … brutalize these female characters?

Yeah. I didn’t see the point in showing violence against women. It’s been done, and to be honest, I feel like we’re past that now, or we should be in terms of that kind of exploitative angle. I’m a father raising a daughter, so that kind of stuff doesn’t really have any interest to me, you know what I mean? I don’t want to create content like that. We allude to certain things. Obviously, we don’t completely shy away from it. The film is about, to a degree, how these three men behave. It represents a little of the toxic masculinity that’s been prevailing for the last two or three years, that scares the shit out of me in terms of where we are as a society and where we are globally right now. So there’s those elements of it, and Quinn definitely represents some of that in terms of his attitudes and behavior, and his response and treatment of the women on the island. But I think you can do things about that without having to physically show that and create content that is just transgressive for the sake of being transgressive. It didn’t make sense for this film to be about that. It made more sense for it to be about Thomas’s journey, what he has to endure, and about the fact that he’s endured it in the past. It’s part of his backstory, that he survived that whole experience in Peking and came out the other end, and part of that backstory is to tell the audience, “This is what he’s capable of enduring.” It kind of informs what we can expect him to go through while he’s on this island, and what he’d be willing to put his body through, so to speak.

Based on that reading of Quinn—which is specifically what I was responding to—I wonder if it’s fair to say that you think that the violence that he and the other characters commit (and maybe even in the “Raid” films and “Merantau”) as an extension of toxic masculinity, as you put it?

It’s a combination of those things. To be honest, when it came to writing this film, what I wanted to do is make something that was an adventure-thriller-horror hybrid. I wanted to create this story, but there had to be a subtext to it. There had to be more going on than just, “Guy arrives to save someone and then here’s the roller coaster ride of it.” And at the time of writing it, it’s more like a reflective thing. I didn’t want it to be seen as a social or political message. I’m not using this film to jump on a soapbox and tell the world how I feel. It’s more just that the things that … the layers of fear and violence, whether it’s toxic masculinity and whether it’s man’s ability to corrupt and purge religion in order to further a political game: all of those things were drawn from the headlines, from newspapers, from news items, from what was going on globally, whether it was issues of toxic masculinity or these very public displays of violence and vulgarity. When you saw ISIS orchestrating these horrendous, ritualistic murders in public—it was reflective of that. It was all those things feeding into my fears, insecurities and anxieties that was feeding into the story that I was telling. So it’s kind of more on a subconscious level as opposed to it being, “Here’s what I want to say to the world,” so to speak.

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[mchenryjd]

2017 in Review

Necessarily incomplete, mostly for my personal record. I will probably regret this.

MOVIES

10.  mother!

Got to a screening late, had to sit in the third show, could barely tell what was happening and spent most of the movie staring at J. Law’s flared nostrils. An ideal viewing experience.

9.     Personal Shopper

Nothing captures the purposeful emptiness of spending time online like Kristen Stewart texting a ghost.

8.     Get Out

I kept telling my dad this movie was funny to get him to see it, not realizing he didn’t already know it was a horror movie. Afterwards, he texted me, “that was not a comedy!” Feels like that’s enough a metaphor. Daniel Kaluuya for best actor.

7.     Star Wars: The Last Jedi

A Star Wars movie about loving Star Wars movies, which means loving the epic, silly struggle between good and epic, loving the spiral staircase that is John Williams’s force theme, loving it when character always do the coolest possible thing followed by the next coolest possible thing, loving dumb furry creatures and sarcastic slimy ones, loving it when characters kiss when you want them to kiss, loving the hundred-million-dollar sandbox of it all. After the constricted dance steps of The Force Awakens and Rogue One, give me this bleeding freestyle any day.

6.     Phantom Thread

Finally, proof that everyone in a serious relationship has lost it.

5.     Call Me By Your Name

I refuse to believe that being stuck in rural Italy would be anything other than deadly boring and if my father insisted on turning everything into a lecture on classical art, I would run away. Also, there’s a contrast between the book (vague on the details of place and time, vividly specific on matters of sex) and the film (more contextually specific, sexier, but less horny than the original). Also, who am I kidding, I was moved and unsettled by the force of the thing. *Michael Stuhlbarg voice* Pray you get a chance to fall in love like this.

4.     Dunkirk

Having your tense, churning, clanking, thrumming, score transform into Elgar right when the beautiful, imperiled young heroes are reading a stirring speech (and Tom Hardy is heroically sacrificing himself in what looks like the middle of a Turner painting) is a level of craft so deft if feels like cheating, but it works.

3.     BPM

A film about a community in danger that acts as both a memorial to and rallying cry for that community. Uncompromising, accommodating, queer in the best way, BPM makes you want to cry and go dancing at the same time.

2.     Columbus

The kind of movie that makes you want to get in a car and keep driving until you find something beautiful, it has stuck and expanded in my memory ever since I saw it over the summer. Like the architecture that looms large in the setting, the plot can feel uncomfortably schematic – John Cho wants to leave and gets  stuck, Haley Lu Richardson is stuck and gets to leave. The question is how people live within, and blur the edges of, those confines. John Cho has a winning, curdled decency; Haley Lu Richardson gives the hardest kind of performance, in that she often seems unaware of her character’s own wants. I’d watch her quietly assemble dinner for hours on end.

1.     Lady Bird  

A movie that feels less plotted and more prefigured – every fight between Lady Bird has happened before, every high school landmark lumbers by with inevitability, every boy disappoints in the way you expect. What redeems all this? Paying attention, which is also love, in this movie’s pseudo-religious sense. Between Lady Bird and Marion, between Lady Bird and Julie, between Lady Bird and Sacramento. Watch people closely, as Greta Gerwig does, and they reveal glimmers of themselves (I know so little, and yet everything, about Stephen McKinley Henderson’s drama teacher from a few moments that feel perfect, in the sense of contained, past-tense completeness). It’ll all so ordinary. Fall in love with it.

Honorable mentions: Regina Hall’s speech about friendship in Girls Trip, Sally Hawkins tracing a droplet with her finger in The Shape of Water, Meryl Streep on the phone in The Post, Cara Delevingne in Valerian, Rihanna in Valerian, the part where the ghost jumped off the building in A Ghost Story, the fact that Power Rangers was surprisingly good, the soldier who gasps as Diana whips out her hair in the trenches in Wonder Woman, Ansel Elgort’s jacket in Baby Driver, whenever anyone tried to explain anything in Alien: Covenant, Elisabeth Moss in The Square, Anh Seo-hyun feeding Okja in Okja, Lois Smith being in movies, the kids eating ice cream in The Florida Project, the Game of Thrones joke in Logan Lucky, Vella Lovell in The Big Sick, and finally, most preciously, the moment in Home Again where Reese Witherspoon kissed Michael Sheen and someone in my theater shouted “she’s not feeling it!”

TELEVISION

10.  The Good Doctor

Listen, he’s a good doctor.

9.     Riverdale

They’re hot. They’re angsty. They do drugs that look like Pixy-Stix. They never seem to do homework. They love to hook-up in weird locations. They have terrible taste in karaoke songs. They love hair dye, and a well-defined eyebrow. They have really hot parents. They’re TV teens! I love it.

8.     Insecure

This is just to say that I am far too invested in Molly’s happiness as a person. I would also like to view a full season of Due North.

7.     American Vandal

From Alex Trimboli to Christa Carlyle, the best names on TV are on this show. Also the best reenactments, and somehow the most incisive take on what fuels, and results from TV’s true-crime obsession. Jimmy Tatro mumbling!

6.     Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

More shows should take the opportunity to explode in their third seasons, rocket forward at full speed, diagnose their main characters, and give Josh Groban wonderful, unexplainable cameos.

5.     Alias Grace

A show that conjured a performance for the ages out of Sarah Gadon and somehow made Zachary Levi palatable as a dramatic actor, this miracle of collaboration between Mary Harron and Sarah Polley is all the better for being binged. Down it in an afternoon, think of Grace under her black veil, daring you to disbelieve her, for years to come.

4.     Twin Peaks: The Return

A show that drove nostalgia into itself like a knife to the chest. Totally absurd. The best revival/exorcism yet on TV.

3.     Please Like Me

“Sorry about your life.” “I’m sorry about your life.” In a time when things tend to peter out, what a final season, in which everything goes to shit and then some. Maybe TV’s most prickly comedy, Please Like Me’s heart is of the “stumble along and keep going” sort and never does it test itself as much as it did with this bleak, pastel final statement.

2.     The Leftovers

Do you believe Nora Durst’s story? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I think it sounds ridiculous. Sometimes I relax in the comfortable, academic premise that it only matters that Kevin does. It’s a haunting idea, though, this image of world even emptier than The Leftovers’s own, where it’s possible to wander for untold time in darkness. Carrie Coon’s description of it is a kind of journey to the underworld – we’re there with her, maybe, and then we make it back, maybe. The trick of The Leftovers is the wound’s never fully healed.

1.     Halt and Catch Fire

The world changes. People sorta don’t.

Honorable mentions: the twist in The Good Place, the Taylor Swift demon character in Neo Yokio, Claire Foy on The Crown, Vanessa Kirby on The Crown, the stand-up in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Cristin Milioti in Black Mirror, the televised Academy Awards ceremony, the weeks when Netflix didn’t release new TV shows I had to watch, Girls’s “American Bitch,” the fact that Adam Driver is both in Girls and Star Wars, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys performances on The Americans (and life in Brooklyn), the moments in Game of Thrones that were good enough to make me stop thinking about what people would write about Game of Thrones, season 2 of The Magicians’s resistance to any sort of plot logic, Jane the Virgin’s narrator, Nicole Kidman at therapy on Big Little Lies, Reese Witherspoon’s production of Avenue Q in Big Little Lies, Alexis Bledel holding things in The Handmaid’s Tale, Maggie Gyllenhaal directing porn in The Deuce, Alison Brie’s terrible Russian accent in Glow, Maya Rudolph in Big Mouth, Cush Jumbo miming oral sex with a pen in court in The Good Fight, the calming experience of watching new episodes of Superstore and Great News on Fridays, Eden Sher in The Middle, the fake books they make up for Younger, and Rihanna livestreaming herself watching Bates Motel.

THEATER

10.  Indecent

History, identity, community all mangled together in something that’s both excavation and revivification. I’m so mad I didn’t get to see it with my mom.

9.     Mary Jane

A nightmare that goes from bad to worse, which Carrie Coon performed with the endurance of a saint.

8.     SpongeBob SquarePants

Highlights: The tap number, the Fiddler on the Roof joke, the many uses of pool noodles, David Zinn’s design in general, the arms, the volcano setpiece, the fact that somehow I kept laughing for two-and-a-half hours at something SpongeBob SquarePants. Tina Landau, you’re a hero.

7.     Hello, Dolly!

I had a wonderful viewing experience like this, in that I sat alone on an aisle next to an older gay man who turned to me right when the curtain came down on the first act and said, “man, we love Bette.” (Shout out to any and all gags involving the whale.)

6.     Groundhog Day

Proof you can dig deeper into the material you’re adapting and still find more. Sometimes, the funniest gags come out of old-fashioned repetition. Andy Karl has the Rolex-like ability to make it all speed by without revealing any of the ticks, and then wallop you in the second act.  

5.     The Glass Menagerie

A lot of unconventional ideas piled onto each other that go so far into strange territory that they loop back around to being immediate. Maybe distant to some, but enough to unsettle me. I can still smell the onstage rain.

4.     The Wolves

A sign of a good play is probably that you remain invested in the characters long after you see it, and I’m going to spend so much time worrying about all the girls on the soccer team in The Wolves for the rest of my life.

3.     The Band’s Visit

Katrina Lenk has a gorgeous voice. Tony Shalhoub is restrained to the point that he could move his baton with nanometer accuracy. The songs are transporting. But most of all, The Band’s Visit manages to capture loneliness better than nearly any musical I’ve seen. Everyone, audience included, experiences something together, and then it all, slowly, both lingers and drifts apart.

2.     A Doll’s House, Part 2

What, you think I wasn’t going to include a play with a Laurie Metcalf performance? ADHP2 is perhaps clever to a fault in its set-up, but in the right hands, it turns into something both funny and moving – a story about what it takes to become a complete person, in or outside the influence of other people. Nora’s monologue about living in silence near the end is the full of the kind of simple statements that are so hard to act, and so brilliant when done just right.

1.     The Antipodes

Both an extended meditation on what it means to run out of stories and a brutal subtweet of Los Angeles, The Antipodes is my kind of play, in that it’s mostly people talking, Josh Charles is involved and very disgruntled, and everyone eats a lot of take out.

Honorable mentions: the music in Sunday in the Park With George, the pies in Sweeney Todd, the ensemble of Come From Away, seeing Dave Malloy in The Great Comet of 1812, Alex Newell’s “Mama Will Provide” in Once on This Island, Cate Blanchet having fun in The Present, Imelda Staunton in the NTLive Follies, Michael Urie in Torch Song, Patti LuPone’s accent(s) in War Paint, Ashley Park in KPOP, and Gleb.