The Power and Powerlessness of Memory Curation: “The Fabelmans” vs. “Aftersun”

Movie poster for "The Fabelmans", one of several in an outdoor grid.

Another one from the Department of the Power of Movies. If you’ve seen it, you’ll note the horizon is on the bottom.

Much bandwidth has been devoted to the movies-about-moviemaking subgenre that feels as if it’s relatively exploded here in the later pandemic years. Filmmakers are looking back on their lives with emphases on their relationship to movies and on their upbringing, often in that order. Given the perpetually precarious state of the world, everyone with at least a rudimentary level of self-awareness is in a reflective mood nowadays. Some of their stories are like a live feed staged in their mind palace, replete with witty host repartee and snacks. Others are more like candid self-therapy sessions, surveying the damage of years past and the few clues they still have on hand to decipher What It All Meant. The results among these motion-memoirs rely on whatever footage they’ve collected that hasn’t decayed like so much neglected celluloid, and on their level of control over the final cut.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” End Credits

Two Paul Rudds facing each other in shock in Ant-Man costumes.

Wacky Scott Lang vs. Serious Scott Lang: who wins?

Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe begins! Paul Rudd returns for his fifth MCU outing and the third film in the Ant-Man trilogy! Unless they make more and it isn’t a trilogy! Which is just as well, because we’ve never had a literal, cohesive, hermetically self-contained MCU trilogy anyway. None of the first three Thor films resembles the other, the arcs of Iron Man and Captain America are incomplete without the four Avengers films, and Ant-Man’s life likewise had pivotal moments in Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Endgame. I’d love to pretend Guardians of the Galaxy will be the exception come May, but the story of Star-Lord and Gamora in Volume 3 won’t make sense without the traumatic events of Avengers: Infinity War as well as Endgame. As their multiverse presently stands, there’s been no such credible thing as a “Marvel trilogy” since Blade.

After a three-month moment of silence for us all to meditate on the fallout from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the MCU’s back with its 31st big-screen chapter, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, ostensibly directed by returning Ant-maestro Peyton Reed (he of Bring It On and the unjustly forgotten Down with Love), whose sensibilities are definitely felt in the film’s first ten minutes and its last twenty, but not nearly so much during the long, dour, draggy, perfunctory infodump and overextended Star Wars Cantina interlude between them, like an endless row of empty, pastel-graffitied boxcars separating engine and caboose.

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Twelve Angry “Women Talking”

The "Women Talking" movie poster hanging outside a theater at night next to two other posters for female-led films.

Not a lot of helpless damsels in distress out there at the theaters lately.

Sarah Polley’s Women Talking was the last of this year’s ten Best Picture nominees to see a theatrical release outside NYC, L.A., or film festivals, which don’t count as a release into the real world. Now that I’ve seen all ten, I realize it isn’t the flashiest, and it was probably the least expensive to make, but the titular discussion group is now in my Top 3 of that list, in good company with Evelyn Quan and Lydia Tár. Not that they need males vouching for them. On a related note, I imagine a film called Men Vouching would be the worst — just two hours of dudes indiscriminately giving everything two thumbs up, even movies that don’t contain Marvel or DC products. It’d still be better than 90% of all YouTube movie review channels, but not by much.

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Local Doughy Guy Confesses to Loving “The Whale”

Brendan Fraser smiling at us as Charlie from "The Whale".

Why is this man smiling?

“Brendan Fraser is back, and this time…he’s fat!

That was my first impression upon seeing the poster for Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. Despite the reports of fanatical applause at film festivals that went on for weeks and caused repetitive stress injuries in some critics’ clapping muscles, I wasn’t immediately sold. Our clues to its content were an unhappy gaze into a short distance, a packed bookshelf behind his head, and the name of the director whose last three films were Black Swan, Noah, and Mother. I’d disliked one and skipped the other two. Also, yes, to a lesser extent there was the fat concern.

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Death and the High Cost of “Living”

movie poster for "Living" showing Bill Nighy standing before a very British building in dapper suit and bowler, holding a cane and checking his watch.

John Steed like you’ve never seen him before!

Remember that time Bill Nighy was in the Pirates of the Caribbean series as the Dread Pirate Cthulhu? If you were a celebrated actor given six months to live, it wasn’t the sort of role that’d rise to the top of your bucket list unless you were desperate to provide for your loved ones, was it? Living, on the other hand, would make a more sensible parting gift to those left behind. Not that Nighy’s dying anytime soon! God forbid. I’m just saying I prefer his natural talents not be hidden behind CG seafood.

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“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”: The War on Sacklers

Nan Goldin lying down in front of a museum as a protest against the Sacklers. Fake dollar bills are stuck to her which read "OXY" instead of "ONE".

Worthless OxyContin-Bucks festoon a possum-playing Nan Goldin at an anti-Sackler protest.

One of my favorite parts of every Academy Awards season is the AMPAS-approved list of documentary recommendations (i.e., the Best Documentary Feature nominations), which for casual dabblers like me helps triage the 12,000 nonfiction productions released through streamers over the past year, at least 11,900 of which were slapped together with all the ethics and dignity of Tiger King. Sometimes I’m familiar with the subject at hand but appreciate a fresh take. Sometimes they’re an educational experience for me as relative ignoramus. And sometimes, as with the case of Laura Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, I walk unprepared into a world wildly distant from my own, and yet I come out cheering.

(Well, “walk” might be an understatement in this case: my son and I sprinted to catch the penultimate showing of this film at one of our local indie cinemas before it vanished from Indianapolis altogether. Expect it on home video in the near future, but in many locales it may be challenging to fill in its blank on your Oscar scorecard before the ceremony.)

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My Oscars Quest 2023 Quick-Start Scorecard

Michelle Yeoh looking peaceful, eyes closed, with an explosion behind her.

Michelle Yeoh descends from the heavens to accept her honors.

It’s that time again! Longtime MCC readers know this time of year is my annual Oscar Quest, during which I venture out to see all Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, regardless of whether I think I’ll like them or not, whether their politics and beliefs agree with mine or not, whether they’re good or bad for me, and whether or not my friends and family have ever heard of them. I’ve seen every Best Picture winner from Wings to CODA, and every Best Picture nominee from 1987 to the present, many of which were worth the hunt. You take the good, you take the bad, and so on.

In addition, this will be my third annual Oscars Quest Expanded Challenge, which was inspired by that darn pandemic — to see not just all the Best Picture nominees, but as many nominees as possible in all the other categories as well. When new releases were going quickly or directly to home video while theaters were shuttered, the Expanded Challenge was easier for me. I saw all but two of last year’s nominees, and am still missing eight nominees from the year before that. Someday maybe I’ll complete those sets. In the meantime, I have concerns about this year’s logistics now that theaters are back in business. I’m probably looking at far more trips away from home to reach my pointless personal goal, mood and local cinema schedules permitting.

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2022 at the Movies at My House

Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson as astronauts just standing there looking pained.

Live footage of Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson exiled off-planet as punishment for costarring in Moonfall.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in 2022 I made 18 trips to the theater to see films made that same year. Though I’ve tried to get back out there with my vaccines and my restlessness and whatnot, more often than not the motivation level still wasn’t quite where it used to be. As a sort of compromise, in the year’s back half I tried to overcompensate and catch up with 2022 through our various streaming subscriptions and a smattering of Redbox rentals. We don’t have HBO Max or Amazon Prime, but I nevertheless watched plenty by estimation, enough to present the third annual installment of the MCC tradition borne of the pandemic: a ranking of all the brand new films I saw on comfy, convenient home video in their year of release.

Whittling away any and every film with a pre-2022 release date, our living room hosted 28 films in 2022 that fit the specific parameters for this list. We’re not far away from the Oscars’ nominations announcement on January 24th, which for weeks I’ve been keeping in the back of my mind as the deadline for this listicle, so…on with the countdown!

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My 2022 at the Movies, Part 2 of 2: The Year’s Best

The Batmobile jumping through an explosion in "The Batman".

Brought to you by EXPLOSIONS! They’re good for what bores ya!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in 2022 I made 18 trips to the theater to see films made that same year. In Part 1 we ranked the Bottom 8 backwards from “Blockbuster Video clearance bin” to “groundbreaking yet ordinary”, which I realize makes little sense to anyone who lives outside my own head, but is the sort of convoluted flaw you need to expect from a hobbyist who super-likes movies, occasionally enjoys writing about them, but refuses to rate them on an ordinate scale comprising numbers, letters, stars, adjectives, or cutesy emoji.

And now, the countdown concludes with the ten most relatively awesome films I saw at a theater in 2022 that were released for general audiences in same. Onward!

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My 2022 at the Movies, Part 1 of 2: The Year’s Worst

Jared Leto as Michael Morbius holds a hand up to the camera.

Talk to the Morb.

It’s listing time again! In today’s entertainment consumption sphere, all experiences must be pitted against each other and assigned numeric values that are ultimately arbitrary to anyone except the writer themselves. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.

I saw 18 films in theaters in 2022 that were actually released in 2022, an 18.2% decrease over 2021 despite having taken more vaccines than ever, well short of my all-time high of 32 films in 2019. That number doesn’t include the seven Academy Award nominees that were officially 2021 releases, but which I saw later as part of my annual Oscar Quest. It definitely doesn’t include all the 2022 films I watched on streaming services, which will receive their own much longer two-part listicle.

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