Rest in Peace Markie Post

photo by Alan Light.

 

Markie Post died earlier this week.

A native of California, she entered the entertainment industry as a researcher on game shows.  Eventually she moved up the acting chain to TV shows like The Fall Guy.

But to me, she will always be Christine Sullivan from Night Court.

Forgive this personal aside, but she was one of my first television crushes.  Post was so funny and she projected intelligence as she butted heads with Harry Anderson and John Larroquette.  For most of the series, she was a moral center, who practiced chastity while all others around did not (this did not last, but it went longer than I expected).  I remember being completely drawn in to the will-they-won't-they relationship Christine and Harry had.  I remember recording on VHS the scene in season 4 where they confess their feelings to each other and I was crushed when they did not get together.  I know it was silly to be so emotionally invested in ficitional characters like that, but I couldn't help it.  A lot of the reason I felt this way was because of Markie Post.

She was the perfect element that Night Court was missing.  For the first two seasons, they had been through several female public defenders.  But Post held on to the spot from Season 3 until the finale.  She was completely her own woman but was no afraid of being feminine.  She portrayed Christine as someone that made men want to be with and want to be better.  She made you believe that perpetual sleaze Dan Sullivan could find decency in his heart.

After the show ended, I caught her appearances here and there.  She kept working, at first in a three season comedy with John Ritter, but she never landed another gig like Night Court, which is a real shame.

John Larroquette wrote of her: "Her grace, her warmth, her intelligence, her compassion, her optimism, her empathy, her humility, her love and devotion to her family. And her flawless comic timing, her beauty, her laugh and more. We all wish she could have stayed longer but we thank the cosmos for blessing us and enriching the world with her for as long as it did."

Post was diagnosed with cancer four years ago but continued to work as much as she could.  She was married and divorced from her first husband within a year.  But she and her second husband were together for 39 years and had two daughters.

Let us pray for her family.  

We will miss her, but her performances will be with us for years to come.

Eternal rest grant unto her O Lord and perpetual light shine upon her.  

Rest in Peace, Markie Post.

Box Office Suicide - Why The Suicide Squad Bombed

 

A lot of people in the entertainment industry are scratching their heads over the bombing of The Suicide Squad.  

To give you an idea of how big of bomb it is, the original Suicide Squad made over $100 million more in its opening weekend than this new one.  That is REALLY, REALLY bad.

And yet, there were those who were predicting that this would be one of the biggest hits of the year.  Dan Murrell, who makes a game every year of predicting the summer box office, had this as his number 2 movie behind Black Widow.  And he was not alone.  The movie has an incredibly high critic and audience score and there was a gigantic media blitz.  

So what happened?

A lot of people are blaming COVID, and I think they are correct to some extent.  But even in a pre-COVID world the movie would still be a bomb that may have done a little better.

Some have blamed its simultaneous release on HBO Max.  But the movie has been viewed way less than other films like Godzilla vs. Kong on the platform.  So even for subscribers there is little interest.

Not to sound smug, but when laying out my box office predictions, I said that the analysts were wrong about this movie: it would not be a big hit.  I gave reasons why in a previous post, but I shall elaborate.

1. R-Rating

There is a reason why every Marvel movie is PG-13: they make more money.  To be sure, there are some exceptions.  It's clear that Warner Bros. was hoping that The Suicide Squad would be their Deadpool.  But Deadpool is clearly a comedy set in the X-Men universe.  But The Suicide Squad was pushed as a super hero film with comedic elements, like Guardians of the Galaxy.  The movie is geared towards this audience, but parents are not likely to take their kids to see something as mature as this.

2. Lack of Interest

As mentioned, the last Suicide Squad opened big because it had huge hype along with one of the best movie trailers I have ever seen.  But overall reaction to the film was lukewarm.  This is not a movie that has a devoted following.  On top of that, the second Harley Quinn movie Birds of Prey was a gigantic bomb (it was also the worst movie of the year).  Everything about this data indicates that you are going to get a diminishing, not increasing return on your box office.  Also, look at the lineup of characters.  If I'm a normie, the only one I recognize is Harley Quinn and that is not a big plus for the box office.

3.  Confusion

It has only been 5 years since the last Suicide Squad and the title makes it sound like a reboot or at worst a re-release.  Warner Bros. confused the hype and awareness of this movie on YouTube channels for awareness in the general public.  One of the big problems with the modern digital age is that a few people on social media can give the impression of a group larger than what actually exists.  But hype and awareness of the movie was not reaching the normies.

4. Bad Word of Mouth

This next part is anecdotal, rather than data-driven, but I think I am right.  This movie is not made of mainstream audiences.  While audience score is high, the people I know who have seen it have all said how much they didn't like it.  So why did people like Deadpool and not The Suicide Squad?  Because Deadpool, with its meta comedy and fourth-wall-breaking style lets you know that you can wink at the comedy. And (this is important), Deadpool only kills bad guys.  True, non-villains do die horrifically for laughs (see X-Force).  But Deadpool doesn't kill them directly and he saves the nicest one in the post-credits scene.  The Suicide Squad plays for laughs the deaths of innocents and the heroes.  When one of the main characters gets killed as a punchline, the message is "Hey, we don't care about our characters." And neither will the audience.

5. James Gunn: Box Office Poison

The Guardians of the Galaxy films are enormous hits, but that's because of Marvel's guiding hand.  If you look at all of his other movies he has directed, not a single one made over $10 million domestic.  James Gunn is like a sitcom actor who bombs doing stand-up: he can deliver when given strong oversight, but left on his own he is terrible.  His tastes tend towards the violent, but not in a way that is cathartic.  Instead there is a perverse reveling in morally relative carnage.  

What are your thoughts?  Why did this movie bomb so badly?

Film Review: The Dig (Netflix)

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature
Violence No Objection
Vulgarity Mature
Anti-Catholic Philosophy Objectionable

This will be brief.

I saw this movie a few months ago and was so bored and turned off by it that I completely forgot to write a review.

The movie is about the major archeological find on the property of Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan).  She hires shy archaeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes).  This is a fascinating bit of history and there is a good story buried under here (puns intended).  But director Simon Stone is so interested in his movie feeling IMPORTANT that any interest is lost in a sea of pretention.

There are several long shots with wide-angle lenses that at first feel sweeping and epic, but Stone has no idea how to use these visuals to tell the story.  The scenery is so bleak and dreary that you cannot but help get a bit drowsy.  Stone also has an annoying habit of doing the "artsy" thing where the characters have their dialogue overlaid of shots of the same characters sitting silently looking at each other.  This can be done with great effect, but it just... keeps... going...  All of this serves to take away from the only good thing about the movie: the performances.  Fiennes and Mulligan have an understated grace that is undercut by the terrible directing.

The other problem is how casually supports infidelity.  Edith and Basil have a deepening affection as Basil continues to ignore his wife (Monica Dolan).  That was annoying enough.  But the movie decides to add a completely tacked on sub plot involving newlywed Peggy (Lily James) being frustrated because her clearly gay husband (Ben Chaplin) is not interested in being physical with her.  So she sets out to cheat on him with Rory (Johnny Flynn).  All of this is set up without any real conflict over the immorality of adultery.  Instead, we are meant to relish in the finally-realized ecstasy of desire fulfilled.

It was then that I realized what this movie is: it is a Lifetime Movie Network script filmed like BBC Masterpiece Theater.

Avoid this film.

Film Flash: A Quiet Place Part II

 

 15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

Well-directed, well-acted, intelligent, tense thriller, but feels like middle season episode of Walking Dead.

Sunday Best: Ranking the DCEU Movies (Update 2021)

 With the release of The Suicide Squad, I thought that it would be a good time to evaluate the movies in the DCEU. 

It is no secret that DC struggles to have the same success as Marvel in the film.  Success leads to greater output.  And so you can see the marked distinction between DC's 10 theatrical films (and one straight to streaming) to Marvel's 24 theatrical films (and 3 streaming series).

If I were to put my finger on the basic difference between the two it is this: 

DC is director-centered

Marvel is producer-centered

DC hires directors with strong visions like Zack Snyder, Patty Jenkins, David Ayer, Cathy Yan, and James Gunn.  They give these directors great latitude to do what they want.  The problem is that when you give creative people no restraints, you will get the extremes of greatness or awfulness.  The great movies of the DCEU are some of the best super hero films ever made.  The bad ones are some of the worst.  And you cannot try to constrain the vision after-the-fact.  This leads to the muddling of the work as in the theatrical Justice League and Suicide Squad.

Marvel, on the other hand, holds tight rein of their directors.  They give them strict guidelines as to what can and cannot be in the movie.  This is so much so that often some of the action sequences will already be determined and pre-visualized even before a director is chosen.  This is why some directors like Edgar Wright and Joss Whedon drop out of big projects.  But the result is that you have a product that has mass appeal for the largest audience.

In other words, Marvel gets on base while DC swings for the fences.

Now, this is not a hard and fast rule for both companies.  Aquaman very much followed the Marvel formula and we can see in Phase 4 some experimentation with the MCU, but generally these views apply.

With that in mind, here is an updated ranking of the 11 DCEU films:

11. Birds of Prey:  And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn

In my Film Flash for The Suicide Squad, I said that it was the worst of the DCEU films.  But I had completely forgotten about Birds of Prey. 

As I wrote previously: "Birds of Prey is a failure on every single level of film-making.  This movie isn't so much a movie as it is a rant.  Nothing is fun, nothing is funny.  As a comic book critic I follow says, the movie is filled with 'LOL so random!' humor that it never actually approaches anything like real comedy.  All of this would be tolerable if we connected on any level to the characters, which we do not.  There is nothing enjoyable, likable, approachable, or sympathetic about any of them.  And while I know that movies tend to deviate from their comic counterparts, what they did with Cassandra Cain is a complete waste of a fantastic and interesting character.  

"What makes it worse is that the movie is completely and utterly smug in how it presents itself, right to the final frame of the film.  The only time the movie has life is during some of the action sequences, particularly in the jail breakout.  For a moment we get a glimpse of what a real Birds of Prey movie could be, but it quickly collapses under the weight of its own inanity."

10. The Suicide Squad

This one is still fresh in my mind and it may get better over time, but it is so morally rancid that I don't see it getting much better.  Unlike Birds of Prey, there is some real talent in the writing and directing and there are moments that are very good.  King Shark alone was entertaining enough.  But this bright bowl of nihilism never takes off the way it could.

9. Wonder Woman 1984

This is an incredibly flawed sequel, but it is one that I still enjoy.  It is bright and colorful, but often forgets that it is an action film.  I know a number of people who think this movie is awful and I really don't have an excuse for all of its mistakes.  I can say that despite its shortcoming, the movie has enough good moments for me to enjoy.

8.  Suicide Squad

This was a bold choice for this franchise's 3rd film.  And the risk almost pays off.  The premise is unlike anything in the mainstream of super hero movies beforehand.  You had charismatic performances by Will Smith and Margot Robbie.  Heck, even the perennially unwatchable Jai Courtney was amazingly fun to watch.  But the movie suffers from three things:
a. a Joker performance that, while not terrible, suffers in comparison to Nicholson and Ledger
b. a incredibly uncompelling villain
c. a moral black hole in the middle of the movie from which the film never recovers.

This movie actually improves from its original standing having watched the much worse sequel.  

7. SHAZAM!

As I wrote earlier: "SHAZAM! is primarily a comedy with big action set pieces.  Because of the highly subjective nature of comedy, enjoyment of the movie will probably vary a bit more than standard super hero films.  But the humor is broad and varied, with plenty of silly jokes and slapstick.  The main source of the film's humor is in the concept of a young, immature child with the powers of someone like Superman.  The comparison to the Tom Hanks movie Big are unavoidable and the filmmakers lean heavily into it, even making a funny visual reference to that movie during a scene in a toy store."

6. Justice League (Theatrical)

I was never someone who hated Joss Whedon's Justice League.  In fact, I saw it multiple times in the theater because I like it so much.  Whedon was given a terrible task of trying to completely change and already completed film.  As a result, the movie is very uneven.  Still, the movie is not nearly as bad as everyone claimed it to be.  But the film does suffer in comparison to Zack Snyder's original vision which we can now all see.  Of the two, this is the inferior one.

5. Aquaman

As I wrote earlier, there are two things that make this film so enjoyable:

"The first is Jason Momoa.  This man is a bonafide action movie star.  He is a charisma machine.  Like Dwayne Johnson, he connects to the audience in a simple way by letting you feel like you are in the good guy's corner and are part of his team.  His effortless charm is horribly disarming.  If that was the extent of his ability, however, Momoa would be another interchangeable movie tough guy.  But this man act.  ...

"The second is director James Wan visual direction.  Aquaman is a great action movie.  Wan knows how to film the up-close-and-personal fighting as in the movies sub rescue.  He also knows how to film a thrilling chase, as we see in the Black Manta sequence.  And he knows how to create the epic scope of an full-scale battle.  In a movie like this, the visuals must not only be dynamic, they must also be cool.  This is essential to get us to buy into these mer-men battles.  The over-the-top nature of the sequences makes it easy for the film to collapse under its own ridiculousness.  But Wan hooks you in and makes you want to see what new visual feat he has planned next.  The scope is like something out of a Peter Jackson fantasy."

4. Wonder Woman

As super hero origin stories, this is one that was done right.  While it has familiar story beats to other films that have come before it, it feels epic and iconic.  I have seen so many comic book movies, but the No Man's Land scene might be one of my favorites of all time.  Wonder Woman is a fantastic hero whose strength and femininity, courage and innocence, are all wrapped together to make a great movie.

The third act villain falls apart a bit, but the movie still holds up.  When you compare it to the sequel, you can feel how this one holds up better.  All of this is held up by Gal Gadot's charisma.

3.  Zack Snyder's Justice League

This is one of the most satisfying super hero film experiences I have had.  After years, we finally were able to see Zack Snyder complete his vision, of which we only received glimpses before.  The result is a much improved story that fills out the characters, their relationships, and the performances, and this includes what we find with the villains.  This would be higher on the list if it felt like a finale.  Instead, Snyder ended his movie with an epilogue that looks too much into an uncertain cinematic future rather than into a "Happily Ever After."


2.  Man of Steel

There are so many moments in this movie that still give me chills.  People knock on the movie for Superman not being the pillar of optimism and hope that he normally is.  But that was one of the things I loved about the movie.  Superman has to rise above the cynicism of the age that he was also raised in.  He is called to be more, to rise above.  And he does.  Even though he stumbles, he rises.

1.  Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

My love for this movie only grows and grows.  Zack Snyder fully committed to make a movie that used these iconic characters to explore deeper questions about life while still being focused on that iconography.  The movie, to my mind, is unappreciated genius.  And I am more convinced of this with each viewing.  One of the best things about Zack Snyder's Justice League is that you can see the trajectory of the characters, particularly Batman, over the course of the series.  With that, knowing that Batman v. Superman is the Dark Knight at his moral lowest, it is a pleasure to see him rise again to the hero he should be.

Thoughts?

Film Review: The Suicide Squad

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature
Violence Objectionable
Vulgarity Mature
Anti-Catholic Philosophy Objectionable

I remember when they first announced James Gunn to direct Guardians of the Galaxy.  I thought he was a terrible choice.  His previous movies of his that I had seen were gross and disturbing.  I did not think that he had the sensibilities for a super hero film.  Fortunately, I was proven wrong and Guardians became one of the best super hero films ever made.  But now I know the reason:

James Gunn was restrained.

One of the reasons that a lot of big name directors do not want to work with Marvel is because the studio had tight controls over their properties and the content of their films.  The franchise is accused of being bland because of this, but it also prevents a director from taking the series off the rails.  

Restraint can be the biggest help to creativity.  You need look no further than Jaws, where Steven Spielberg took a B-movie plot and turned it into a masterpiece because he was forced to be creative rather than explicit.  But when you remove these boundaries, you can get an indulgent mess.

And that is what we have with The Suicide Squad.

I was not a huge detractor of of David Ayer's original Suicide Squad the way many critics were.  It is not a bad movie, but it is a little bland (apparently Ayer's original version was cut up much the same way Snyder's Justice League was).  But one of the big critics of that film from others was that it did not embrace a full R-Rated vision for the characters.  And this new film goes to the extreme.

The plot involves Task Force X director Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) once again assembling imprisoned super villains for a mission in exchange for reduced sentences.  If they deviate from the plan, she explodes a bomb in their heads.  The group is once again led by Col. Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnamen) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie).  This new team also includes some new villains:

-Bloodsport (Idris Elba): essentially he is Deadshot from the first film, but with a worse relationship with his daughter

-Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior): a young and sensitive woman who controls rats

-Peacemaker (Jon Cena): a psychotic Captain America wannabe

-Polka-dot Man (David Dastmalchian): a disturbed man who shoots energy polka-dots

-King Shark (Sylvester Stallone): A dim-witted half man/half killer shark.

Together, they have to infiltrate the island nation of Corto Maltese.  After  recent coup, the new regime now has control of a potentially world-destroying threat controlled by the Thinker (Peter Capaldi).  Along the way, the cut a bloody path to their target.

The best thing about the movie are the characters and the performances.  Kinnamen is allowed a lot more personality in this film and this is Robbie's best performance as Quinn.  Elba is a gruffer replacement for Will Smith, but he does the job well.  Melchior brings some much-needed pathos to the team.  Cena plays Peacemaker without nuance like a wrestling persona, but it works.  Dastmalchian is surprisingly effective with his withdrawn, suicidal stares.  But the best is Stallone's King Shark.  He absolutely steals every moment that he is in.  He is essentially Frankenstein's monster: a deadly killer who doesn't understand what he is doing wrong.  But Stallone's delivery made me laugh more than anything in the film.

Gunn also has a strong visual style that works well for this movie.  He knows how to move a camera to create dynamic shots.  His color palates are also stunning to watch.

The problem is the execution.  Gunn writes like a teenager who is trying to shock our uptight sensibilities. with bloody violence.  Now, this could be simply an issue with my tastes.  I remember being in the theater seeing Pulp Fiction for the first time.  Everyone started laughing when Marvin got shot in the face, but I sat there horrified.  I got similar feelings from The Suicide Squad.  Allow me to illustrate:

MILD SPOILER AHEAD

In once scene, members of the team are sent to retrieve Flagg, who has been taken by soldiers in the woods.  They are ordered to make sure there are no witnesses.  What follows is an action sequence here the squad proceed to sneak up and kill a number of soldiers until they reach Flagg.  But the twist is that Flagg is fine.  He isn't captured.  He has been taken in by the nation's freedom fighters.  This realization is a punchline to the scene, meant for laughs.  But I was instead filled with disgust.  Our protagonists just murdered several people over several minutes.  Not only do they not care, but these people's lives are treated as a joke.

Throughout the movie, squad members seem to hold a line against killing children.  All well and good, but any other innocent adult is fair game.  I realize our squad have to remain villains of some kind, but I lose any reason to vote for them.

END SPOILERS

Another problem with Gunn's script is that he treats his characters as fodder.  Yes, they are meant to be expendable.  But if you treat their lives like a joke, you betray the trust the audience has.  There are some who you know are not long for this world.  And it is absolutely okay to kill of characters that you get attached to.  But if you dispatch them as a joke or a punchline, the audience feels like the director is laughing at them for caring.  The story also wastes characters that could be incredibly interesting.  Capaldi's Thinker is a generic bad-guy-scientist.  This is a shame when you see a show like The Flash that knew how to make the Thinker brilliant and terrifying.  Never once does Thinker show any kind of special ability.  I don't know why they even made him the Thinker if they never did anything with it.  

But overall, the problem is that the movie is just gross.

DC let Gunn do whatever he wanted.  The blood, guts, and gore are abundant and gratuitously over-the-top.  After a while, it became so distasteful that I continued to brace myself for the next shock.  The problem with gore and shock is that they wear off and then you are left with whatever is underneath.  But with The Suicide Squad, you have an immature script that shouts vulgarities like a teenager trying to get attention.  

And that is a real shame because this movie could have been an improvement on the original.  With a little more pressure to force Gunn to focus and be less explicit and more creative, we may have gotten a movie that could have embraced its R-Rated aesthetic while creating an action classic like John Wick.

Instead, we get a movie that is bright and pretty on the outside, but intentionally ugly on the inside.

And that is not a movie I want to see again.

Film Flash: The Suicide Squad

 

 15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

Worst DCEU movie.  Good film ruined by adolescent glee in gore and murdering innocents.