The Pics
Barbenheimer
- In my (cinephilic) opinion, Barbenheimer was the best thing to happen to the movie industry in years - and also the most misunderstood. It was such a joyful throwback to the days when summer blockbusters were a unifying cultural experience in a tangible, corporeal way. This wasn't just an internet phenomenon - Barbenheimer plans came up in pretty much every July and August conversations that my wife and I had when we went out with friends. On the day we watched the movies, we spent the day in downtown Austin, and everywhere we went out to eat, we overheard Barbenheimer conversations at most of the other tables. And of course, that's to say nothing of the actual experience of seeing the sea of pink in the theaters. It was the kind of communal experience that a been a casualty of the technological advances in the entertainment industry.
- When it was first announced that Barbie and Oppenheimer would be released on the same day, I made plans with my wife to go to the movies that Friday and flip a coin to see which movie we got to see. Later, I thought I was streets ahead when I thought to just plan a whole day out of seeing both movies. My bubble burst when I went to an Oscars party last year, and one of the other guests mentioned his double-feature plan unprompted. That's when I knew this was going to be a touchstone moment in pop culture.
- So, how exactly did Barbie + Oppenheimer become Barbenheimer? A lot of the focus was on the juxtaposition between the visual style and tone of the two films. I saw suggestions should schedule more "his and hers" paired releases. This would be a mistake - the best part about Barbenheimer was the fact that it was organic, and any attempt to try to reverse engineer that energy is destined to end in disappointment.. Some people attributed it to Barbie's unprecedented marketing campaign, but to me that felt more reactive than proactive; it seemed like the studio started pouring money into marketing only after they realized what they had brewing. Here's the real lesson that the industry should (but won't) take away from Barbenheimer: audiences don't want a parade of IP Zombies and labyrinthine franchises. We want challenging, thought-provoking films from visionary directors who are given carte blanche to bring their passion projects to life. The fact that we were getting not one, but two such films in the same
yearday felt unthinkable a year ago; hopefully it's not a blip. - The reason why I have always admired and cherished Christopher Nolan is that he manages to produce movies that are equal parts entertaining and intellectual, and he makes them from within the major studio system. He hoodwinks executives into greenlighting smart movies, like a sort of Trojan horse. It felt like Greta Gerwig was doing the same thing when she snagged the job of directing Barbie, and she pretty much confirmed as much in her Rolling Stone interview. Barbenheimer weekend felt like a passing of the torch.
Oppenheimer
- Inception is Nolan's best movie, but Oppenheimer is his magnum opus, if that makes sense.
- The test detonation scene was one of the most thrilling experiences I have ever had in a movie theater. I was literally on the edge of my seat - not metaphorically, literally. I briefly forgot that I was holding a cocktail glass; when I regained consciousness I realized that I was squeezing it a little too tightly for comfort. The decision to cut temporarily cut the sound was a stroke of genius. For a moment, Nolan gives you permission to appreciate the beauty and spectacle of such a miraculous achievement. And then...he brings back the explosions, to remind of of the horror that has just been unleashed on mankind.
- Newton's third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The first law of Oppenheimer is that every action yields a progressively stronger chain reaction. Oppenheimer's PhD thesis was about chain reactions. The hydrogen bomb was completed by figuring out how to create a big enough chain reaction. But the true legacy of the atom bomb was the chain reaction that was nuclear proliferation. When science takes a step forward, human nature takes us an opposite, but hardly equal, two steps back.
- The movie has gotten a lot of pushback for how it writes its female characters. I think this kind of scrutiny is warranted given Nolan's history. I agree with the criticisms of Florence Pugh's character, but not the ones for Emily Blunt's character. I don't find it incongruous at all that Kitty could be an alcoholic mess at home while still effortlessly swatting away questions in a hostile interrogation session. Being an open communist in that time was truly dangerous, and I find it completely plausible that Kitty would have spent decades meticulously rehearsing answers to those kinds of questions as a means of self-preservation. Also, while it would've been great to give her more to do, I love that Emily Blunt got to deliver the best and most important line of the whole movie.
Barbie
- The actual message of the movie is pretty much feminism 101, for people who need feminism 101. America Ferrera's big speech was basically a restatement of chapter 2 of Tina Fey's autobiography. The true genius of the Barbie movie is that it packaged its message in way that's palatable for mainstream audiences and studio executives that aren't fluent in early 2010's Buzzfeed and HuffPo.
- Barbie, like all of Greta Gerwig's movies, is exceptionally well-edited. It's easy to take that for granted.
- In theory, America Ferrera's big speech shouldn't have worked as well as it did. Its effectiveness relies empathy for the character that is assumed rather than earned; none of what the character was describing had actually been explicitly dramatized on screen. And yet...it worked. It produced one of the most enthusiastic and palpable audience reactions that I've ever seen in a theater. That speaks to just how well the script manages to identify the most universal experiences of womanhood.
- I wasn't particularly blown away by Ryan Gosling's scene-stealing performance - and neither was anybody else who has been paying attention to his career. He already proved himself to be a comedic dynamo in Crazy, Stupid Love and The Nice Guys, and this isn't even the first time he's played a downtrodden man hopelessly in love with a doll. This performance wasn't a revelation - it was a continuation.
- For awhile I was trying to figure out the last time a movie had dominated the zeitgeist the way Barbie did this summer. The answer that I arrived at: Black Panther in 2018. I soon realized that Greta Gerwig and Ryan Coogler started their careers with eerily similar trajectories: a deeply personal indie darling (Fruitvale Station/Lady Bird), an inspired retelling of a classic American tale (Creed/Little Women), and then a blockbuster about a beloved fictional character created by, about, and for people from one of society's historically marginalized groups (Black Panther/Barbie), one that spoke deeply to but also transcended its target audience. I have no idea where I'm going with this, other than that I think the parallels are neat, and I can't wait to see where Gerwig's career goes from here.
- Greta Gerwig must have been binging Sex Education when she cast this movie. I wish they had thrown in some meta humor about Emma Mackey being Margot Robbie's doppleganger (my wife actually thought that Margot was playing two different barbies). And maybe cast Samara Weaving for good measure.
- I was a huge Judy Blume fan growing up - but not because of this book; it was by way of the Fudge series. That said, I was well aware of the existence of her most famous work. When I saw that it was becoming a movie, and that it was directed by Kelly Fremon Craig (I really liked Edge of Seventeen), I was in.
- My wife and I couldn't stop laughing. On one hand it feels tragic so see the characters not just rushing, but competing, to "achieve" the most physically burdensome checkpoints of female puberty. On the other hand, how do you not chuckle at the absurdity and shortsightedness of youth?
- I think the scene that hit me the hardest was the montage of everyone getting ready for the party. One of the moms was heating some sort of rod on the stove as a makeshift curling iron (or maybe it was a straightener? IDK). Moms are the most resourceful people on the planet.
- George Harrison is the best Beatle. Don't @ me.
- When we walked out my wife told me it was her favorite Rachel McAdams performance. I still like prefer Mean Girls - the more time passes, the more impressed I am with how far she went against type just for that role. However, I will say that this is the most Rachel McAdams performance to date. Empathetic, understanding, intuitive, warm, and effortlessly relatable.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
- This is the best movie ever made about artificial intelligence. I thought so when I saw it, and I still feel that way months later. No movie does a better job of exploring what actually makes AI scary.
- It feels like most of the handwringing about AI focuses on the raw power of AI. It's always treated like just another weapon, one that's more powerful than its predecessors, but still something wielded and constrained by humans. The allure of this framework is that it means we just need human checks and balances to control how AI is used and/or to keep it out of the wrong hands. Unfortunately, what actually makes AI scary its ability to circumvent and transcend human control entirely - something you can't say about any other weapons (not even Oppenheimer's bomb).
- Think about how we first meet The Entity. It's tasked with spying on a ship. The Entity makes the autonomous decision to sink it (thus killing the crew members) instead. Why? It simply made the rational, and mathematically correct calculation, that sabotage would optimize its target function even better than simple reconnaissance. The problem isn't that it stopped following its instructions - the problem is that it followed its instructions too well, all the way to their logical conclusion.
- What makes the entity such a daunting and compelling villain in this movie? 1. It's slippery and nebulous. Nobody can really explain how it works or why it makes the decisions it does. 2. Everyone (foolishly) thinks that they can be the one to tame the beast and harness it for their own ambition 3. It doesn't care about the rules of human warfare; it operates according to its own uncompromising (binary) code. It's the perfect metaphor for the problems that exist with real AI systems.
- So how do you defeat The Entity? You need someone who is slippery; someone who everyone thinks they can control; and someone who doesn't play by the rules, but instead operates according to his own uncompromising (moral) code. You need Ethan Hunt. What a perfect foil for AI.
- This movie reminded me a little bit of The Fellowship of The Ring, in that Ethan and his team are the only ones who are incorruptible enough to resist the siren song.
The Holdovers: Christmas Casablanca. If you know, you know.
The picks
I think Nolan gets that elusive Best Director win, while Poor Things sweeps through the rest of the awards.
Random rankings
For the fourth year in a row I didn't watch enough movies to make a top ten list for 2024. At this point I might as well make a random movie ranking its own annual sub-tradition. That honestly seems more fun anyways. This year, here's my personal ranking of the films of Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig:
- Inception
- Little Women
- Oppenheimer
- Dunkirk
- The Dark Knight
- Barbie
- Memento
- Interstellar
- Lady Bird
- The Prestige
