Knights and Weekends
When you go to an art museum or an art gallery, you spend hours looking at the art. You engage with it, contemplate it, think of how it was made, what the artist was trying to say, what it means to you, and so forth. I feel similarly disposed when I see artistic films that focus heavily on creating beautiful frames and images, like The Green Knight (2021). If you can spend a day in a museum, you can spend two hours looking at gigantic beautiful images projected onto the wall of a big dark room1.
In adapting Arthurian legend, The Green Knight opts for a show don’t tell approach. We aren’t told the long backstories of King Arthur, Morgan Le Fay, or Merlin (all of whom who appear in this film in some capacity) and we’re not even told the entire story of our hero, Sir Gawain (played by Dev Patel who’s been oft reported by other writers2 and by many sources close to I Liked It! as being really really hot). Instead, we’re treated to long spans of Gawain traversing the wild and encountering strange tests of his courage, honor, and virtue.
Gawain isn’t just going for a walk, he is on a quest to link up with the eponymous Green Knight (Ralph Ineson). Gawain made a bond to have a rematch of sorts with the Green Knight in one year’s time and it is almost certain Gawain will perish by this oaken warrior’s hand. The story is more complex than that however and some details are left to mystery. The world of The Green Knight is like that of a beautiful looking dream, but with similar logic.
Back to those tests of character Gawain must face. Gawain, in almost every side quest, displays his human faults. Whether it be foolishness, weakness, or cowardice, Gawain reveals himself to be, according to Patel’s co-star Ralph Ineson, a “feckless dickhead”. The only truly brave thing he does is go on this quest to face his death by The Green Knight’s hand. Most characters in the film embellish his heroics and long for stories of legends to believe in. As an unbiased witness to Gawain’s journey, you see how a venerated hero is actually more complex despite the impossibly high standard of heroics he is held to. Ultimately, it isn’t what one actually does or what their character amounts to in The Green Knight, but rather how their story will be told, so this chivalric adventure is told with supreme cinematic beauty3.
The Green Knight is in theaters now.
The Dreaming Machine
I rewatched a favorite film of mine over the past week, Paprika (2006). The techno-thriller plot involves a device that allows its users to dive into people’s dreams, but it’s being used by a criminal for mysterious reasons. If this reminds you of the 2010 Christopher Nolan sci-fi heist film Inception, then you wouldn’t be the first to make that comparison. What sets Paprika apart is that its an animated film and it takes more advantage of the fact that the film takes place inside people’s dreams.
In Inception, the dreams just look like James Bond movies and are, purposefully so, made to resemble the real world. Surrealism and fantasy very rarely enters the setting. Paprika, on the other hand, has visuals meant to evoke a sort of stream of consciousness thought. Rhyming images blend together, characters change clothes or appearance between shots, and things that simply couldn’t happen in the real world happen in Paprika. Just watch the beautiful opening credits. (Despite the slight edit at the start of the video below says, Paprika was not produced by “KickAssAnime”)
(Now, I’m not hating on Inception, I’m just using it as a comparison to emphasize just how wildly colorful and sublime Paprika is.)
Paprika was directed by Japanese animation auteur Satoshi Kon4 and, unfortunately, it was his last feature film before his death. Like all his films, it expresses a great admiration for imagination and for film (both in filmmaking and in movie-going). The film makes the connection between the idea of the movie’s sci-fi device’s ability to share dreams with the simple act of going to the movie theater. With a movie theater, you enter a dark room and, for a little while, you share emotions and a fantasy with those around you. It’s magic that you can experience the imagination of someone else with a room of, presumably, like minded individuals.
Paprika is available for streaming on The Criterion Channel and available for digital rental on most streaming services.
Stray Observations
I have been borderline OBSESSED with the trailer for Ridley Scott’s upcoming movie House of Gucci. It stars Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto (in ten pounds of transformative make-up), Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, and Salma Hayek. Based on the novel of the same name chronicling the real-life murderous details around Patrizia Reggiani and the Gucci family. It looks stylish, campy, sexy, and, most of all, fun! Ridley Scott has another film coming out this year, The Last Duel, about knights or whatever, but I’m far more excited for this true crime drama. Watch the trailer here:
My love for Japanese Breakfast has led me to seeing her perform live and in concert at St. Andrew’s Hall this week. This being my first concert post-pandemic, the show was still rife with tension. It was announced shortly before the doors opened that masks and proof of vaccination were required to enter (I had both 😎). Michelle Zauner profusely thanked the audience for following guidelines and apologized that her tour outfit looked like “a fun germ”. Still, I forgot how great live shows were and how much you get from seeing a band live. Hearing your favorite tracks played in front of you at extremely high volume in a room full of people who also love it is such a wonderful experience. By the end of the night, in what seems like tradition, my ears were blown out and my voice was hoarse. Good signs.
Watched the absolutely insane Richard Kelly directed film Southland Tales (2006). What I initially pegged as a failed attempt at a Starship Troopers-Verhoeven-esque satire, ends up being just a convoluted sci-fi cyberpunk pseudo-intellectual (un?)intentional comedy that made me scream at the television in disbelief every ten minutes. Worth sitting through the runtime just to see some truly bizarre creative decisions and some really good cheesy ones. Motivation to watch it was to see what is probably Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s best performance ever as an amnesiac Republican movie star with a nervous tic. Southland Tales is available for digital rental on most streaming services.
Speaking of Rock Johnson5, his new movie with Emily Blunt, Disney’s Jungle Cruise, recently hit theaters and Disney+. Now I have little to no interest in the film outside it being directed by Jaume Collet-Serra6, but Vulture published this delightful interview with one of their writers’ uncle who worked the Jungle Cruise theme park attraction back in the 80s. He reviews Dwayne Johnson’s pun delivery, compares and contrasts the film to the attraction, and reminisces about his time working at Walt Disney World. It’s a funny read.
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One of my biggest pet peeves is people looking at their phones at the movie theater. What a waste. You paid to have gigantic art placed in front of your eyeballs and you’re checking your Snapchat stories? Both screenings I went to had people texting and one even had someone answering their phone! Why are you even at the theater if you’re gonna act like you don’t want to be there? Sorry, this is I Liked It! not It Really Pisses Me Off!, but it’s distracting! Don’t do this.
Film critic Brianna Zigler wrote in her newsletter about the sexiness of the film and the sexiness of Dev Patel: “…it’s hard for a film to not have deeply rooted lust as part of the package deal when it stars an actor like Dev Patel, whose sex appeal is so overwhelmingly pronounced by the mere act of existing. I mean, just look at this guy! Fucking kill me!”
I have to show you all this tweet:
It’s incredible with so much seemingly factory made movies with bland aesthetics are out there when The Green Knight can be made with less than a quarter of the budget.
Other notable work of Satoshi Kon’s being Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, and Millenium Actress (all of which I highly recommend and all are available for streaming on The Criterion Channel right now). One of his greatest works, in my opinion, is Paranoia Agent, a 13 episode anime series following the mystery behind a rogue child on roller skates assaulting people with a golden baseball bat. The series gets surreal and supernatural, but addresses a multitude of social issues and psychological themes. It’s very good. It’s available for streaming on Funimation and available for digital rental on most streaming services.
Made a poll on Twitter to see if it is actually funny to refer to him as “Rock Johnson”, so, no, this is not a typo.
Mostly known for directing Liam Neeson thrillers like Unknown, Non-Stop, and The Commuter, Jaume Collet-Serra also directed a schlocky favorite of mine; The Shallows (2016). It’s a mean little shark attack movie with only one character (Blake Lively) injured and trapped in the ocean trying to fend off a big murderous hungry monster shark. It’s got some incredible imagery and gnarly violence (supported by some painful sounding sound effects). Available for digital rental on most streaming services.