The highs of HEIGHTS and lows of LUCA

Our Friday Free-For-All features two reviews of new movies

It’s Friday, June 18, and here’s where we are…

Okay, I’ll admit that I was a little sad to hear that Peter Jackson’s Get Back, his documentary about the Beatles, isn’t going to be a theatrical release anymore.

Then I read that it’s because there was just too much good stuff and he’s making a six-hour-plus three-night event out of it instead.

Peter Jackson commented, “In many respects, Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s remarkable footage captured multiple storylines. The story of friends and of individuals. It is the story of human frailties and of a divine partnership. It is a detailed account of the creative process, with the crafting of iconic songs under pressure, set amid the social climate of early 1969. But it’s not nostalgia - it’s raw, honest, and human. Over six hours, you’ll get to know The Beatles with an intimacy that you never thought possible.” 

The documentary will include, among other things, the entire rooftop concert they did at 3 Savile Row, and there’s also going to be a giant coffee-table book coming out in October that sounds equally amazing. My one real question is this: does this belong on Disney+?

I know it’s a win for them in terms of exclusive content, but does this streaming home mean we’re getting something tailored for that service? I haven’t seen the raw footage, but by the time frame we’re talking about, the Beatles weren’t exactly shy about smoking, drinking, or pot, and I don’t think they were especially G-rated in terms of the way they spoke. I definitely wasn’t expecting epic debauchery from this film, but I hope we’re going to get the exact project Jackson set out to make and not something that’s been toned down and smoothed out. The whole reason I want this kind of intimate look at the Beatles is to get something unvarnished and real, and I do worry that Disney, as a brand, is at odds with that.

Then again, Vanity Fair’s piece outlining their preview of the documentary sounds like Jackson has done something truly amazing here, and I’m not sure I need smoking or drinking or any of that as long as what we get illuminates some kind of essential truth about these events. The Beatles have passed into a sort of mythical status at this point, and there are stories that are told about them and their work that have become ossified, accepted as fact, and it sounds like this documentary will challenge those “facts” in a number of ways.

Good. I think it’s important to challenge the accepted narrative in many of these situations. People project all sorts of things onto the people who make the art that is important to them, and often as not, the ideas they project have more to do with them than with the actual artists. I call this kind of thing “corporate fan fiction,” and you see it a lot right now with grifters on YouTube who make a living telling you about non-existent drama involving Kathleen Kennedy or Kevin Feige. It’s been going on for a long time, though, and there’s nothing more toxic than people who are dead sure they know why the Beatles broke up. This new project isn’t focused on that primarily, but it’s certainly going to offer up a more rounded portrait of this particular moment between some of the most famous artists of all time, and it’s amazing that 51 years after they broke up, there is still something we can learn about them.

It is frustrating to see how they handle Disney+ overseas, incorporating all sorts of content from the larger Fox library that they would never put on the service here at home. One of the things that stinks about this particular era in streaming is that none of the studios really know what the hell they’re doing. Everything’s unstable. Companies that seemed like part of the bedrock of the industry are going through embarrassing death throes in public or merging with companies that they have no business merging with or they’re so locked into their horrifying IP-driven rush to obsolescence that they are barely releasing anything. I find the entire Warner-AT&T-Discovery saga to be depressing, a real sign of just how bad things are at every level of power. Paramount+ feels low-rent, no matter what they throw on there, and the premiere of Infinite last week did absolutely nothing to make the service feel indispensable.

While we’re talking about Disney+, let’s talk about today’s new release and the very strange decision-making around it…

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LESSER LUCA

My kids have reached an age that I think is common among many young films fans. They were raised on a steady diet of Disney films and Pixar movies and DreamWorks animation, and it was arguably during the busiest periods for all of those companies. Toshi only has vague memories of it, but he went to the WALL-E premiere, where they had a real WALL-E rolling around and he got to meet Buzz Aldrin. Those were heady days for him, and I certainly enjoyed letting the boys soak it all up. I remember his excitement each time a “Fuck You Panda” (he couldn’t quite pronounce Kung-Fu) movie came out. He and Allen both had a full and healthy education in kids movies of all stripes.

Small wonder, then, that they’re done with them for the time being.

I tried to talk them into watching Pixar’s new film Luca with me this weekend, and they had absolutely no interest in it. I showed them the trailer, and that didn’t help. My boys will still watch any Miyazaki film any time, and they are starting to get into anime more rabidly, but the last few Pixar films haven’t done anything for them, and they have apparently tapped out. I felt bad at first, but then I actually watched Luca and I have a hard time imagining my kids sitting through this one right now.

It’s safe to say this is not top-tier Pixar. It’s also hard to argue with the attitude my kids have towards these films when Disney seems so disinterested in the films that Pixar’s putting out. If their parent company doesn’t care, why should we? I liked Soul, but I can see why it did nothing for my kids. Soul deals with adult films and doesn’t feel particularly interested in entertaining younger audiences. This time around, though, that is not a problem, and this feels like the first overt “kids film” they’ve made in a while.

At first glance, Luca appears to be a hybrid of The Little Mermaid and Call Me By Your Name, and taken as a whole, the film is pretty much exactly as uneven and strange as that would imply. The mythology of the “sea monsters” in the film is very vague and strange and the rules seem to depend largely on the scene or the idea at the given moment, something I find irritating. Then again, I would care more if I enjoyed the rest of the film, and I just didn’t. Luca (Jacob Tremblay) is a sea monster child whose parents are adamant that he should stay away from the surface. See, if they climb out of the water, they apparently instantly get completely dry and turn into regular human beings, but then if they get wet at all, the part of their body that is wet instantly turns back into a sea monster. It’s clearly all set up to provide lots of slapstick opportunities as Luca and his new friend, but there’s no weight to any of it.

This is familiar storytelling territory, and there’s very little here that makes it feel special. I do like that the stakes for the story are so personal and small-scale, and I wish more films these days remembered that the world doesn’t have to be on the line to make a story engrossing. This all hinges on a bike race and whether or not someone gets to go to school, or on the wish to own a Vespa. These are small stakes in the grand scheme of things, but they are everything to these characters, and that’s all you need.

Luca can’t help his curiosity and when he makes a new friend, Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), the two of them begin to explore more and more of the world above the surface. Luca hides this from his parents, and when the truth comes out, he runs away. The two of them find the small coastal town of Portorosso, where they see an opportunity to enter a local contest so they can win enough money to buy a Vespa they can use to see the world. They become friends and teammates with Giulia (Emma Berman), a local girl who is determined to beat the long-reigning champion, Ercole (Saverio Raimondo), a bully with a pair of henchmen and a fondness for giant sandwiches.

image courtesy of Disney/Pixar

Ultimately, your reaction to Luca will depend on how charmed you are by the world created here by director Enrico Casarosa and screenwriters Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones. I read the press notes for the film, and I’m seeing a lot of critics echo the things those press notes say. “Italian Riviera.” Check. “Just like Miyazaki.” Yep. “Homage to Fellini and life in Italy.” Mmm-hmm. The thing is, I don’t think this has much to do with Miyazaki at all, and it bugs me when I see critics just echo something the studio tells you to say. Why is this like Miyazaki? Because Ponyo features a water creature who ventures onto the land? That’s a very facile similarity, and beyond that, I don’t anything here that feels thematically or stylistically like a Ghibli film. At all. The actual character designs feel more like Jimmy Neutron than My Neighbor Totoro, and the storytelling here leans into a lot of the exact kind of tropes that Gibli eschews completely.

Take the bad guy, for example. Ercole and his henchmen are obvious villains, and there’s no effort to paint them as anything else. That’s fine. Lots of films do that. But one of the things that distinguishes Miyazaki as an artist is the way he avoids making anyone a villain in anything. He avoids the typical conflicts you see in storytelling, instead telling stories where everyone’s point of view makes sense, even if they are at odds. Ercole’s a bully through most of this movie, and when it comes time for him to become a gleeful attempted murderer, the movie doesn’t hesitate.

My biggest problems have to do with the way the film feels like an outline of a film, not an actual movie. The humans all hate sea monsters right up until the split second they shouldn’t, and then it’s all fine. There’s an ease to the way everything happens that makes it all feel weightless and inconsequential. Personal stakes do not mean that everything has to feel like a shrug, but that’s what ultimately happens with Luca. It’s a little too perfunctory, a little too mechanical. Pixar’s much-vaunted story department builds things solidly, but you can pull all the right pieces in all the right places and still end up with something lifeless, and that’s Luca.

It’s perfectly fine. It’s not a bad film. But it’s not a film I would ever revisit, and it feels like it would play best to the very young. Right now, Pixar seems to be at war with itself. They either make films that feel like they barely communicate to kids at all or they over-correct and make films that feel more kid-oriented than anything else. For a company that used to walk that middle ground with a greater self-assurance than any studio in town, their work lately no longer feels particularly special. They’re just typical mainstream family fare, and while that’s not a failure, it feels like one once you’ve seen how much more they can be.

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HOW HIGH?

Last Thursday night, I loaded everyone into a car and drove them downtown without telling them where we were going.

My girlfriend’s last time in a movie theater was in February of 2020. Same thing for Toshi. Allen went with me in early March of 2020 to see The Invisible Man at the downtown Drafthouse as part of his birthday weekend. He took his friend with him, and they had a great time. That was his first time at the Drafthouse, and Toshi was definitely itching to get his turn to go. “I’ll take you sometime in the next couple of weeks,” I assured him.

Then the world closed. For the last year, Allen’s been able to expertly hold this over his brother’s head. “Boy, I can’t wait until we get to go back to the Drafthouse,” he’d say before turning to his brother to add, “I mean, you’ll get to go for the first time. Not like us.” No one twists the knife quite like a little brother, right?

As soon as we reached the parking lot for The Block and started heading up to the parking level for the Alamo, Allen recognized the garage and started poking Toshi. I thought we’d walk in like normal, but unsurprisingly, things have changed a bit thanks to COVID, and just getting into the front door of the theater was a little confusing. Once we were in, though? It felt like home right away. We made our way to the theater, ordered some drinks and some popcorn for everyone, and settled in, and by the time the lights came back up, we had all been utterly transported by the experience. It was a terrific return to theatergoing as a family, and I deeply appreciate being able to see the film that way.

Now… as a movie? I really like In The Heights, and I had a complicated reaction to it. My marriage ended in 2014, but for a decade and a half before that, I was part of a Hispanic household, surrounded by Latin American culture, immersed in it on a deep family level, and my children are still very much part of that culture and community. My own upbringing was white and Southern and very different, but I loved being welcomed into a different culture and I loved learning about it, being part of it.

One of the things that became obvious to me during that time is how separate Latin American culture still is from the mainstream, and I think it’s because it is a contemporary issue, made volatile by people who see immigration as a threat instead of one of the primary engines of this country. Latin people often become the scapegoats of these arguments, the main focus of them, and I think it’s one of the reasons racism against Hispanics is still so open and unfiltered. One of the most basic things you can do when you release a piece of media is to make it accessible, and if you’re releasing a film or a television show in 2021 and you aren’t automatically including Spanish subtitles, it’s like you’re making it clear that you do not value that portion of the audience at all. And you’d be surprised how often that’s the case. It definitely feels like whatever progress we’ve made in terms of inclusion in the mainstream, this particular community has not been a primary part of that.

It’s complicated, of course. At the end of this film, both of my sons talked to me about how it felt to see parts of their own experience up there on the screen, things they’ve never seen in a big Hollywood movie before, and how emotional it made them. At the same time, I’ve seen and read the feedback from Dominicans who felt left out of this movie, AfroCarribean audiences who feel erased from a movie set in a neighborhood where they are visible and prominent, and it underscores how hard it can be when you set your expectations on each individual film to do all of the heavy lifting for everyone. What feels wildly progressive to one person still feels like repression to someone else, and neither of them is wrong for the way they’re feeling.

I’m often frustrated by the impermanence of Los Angeles, but it seems like that’s even more exaggerated in New York, where the difference of a few decades can erase entire communities or reshape them in a way that is unrecognizable. One of the things I love about In The Heights is the way it focuses on this very small neighborhood and the various personalities that collide there. I love neighborhood movies, and there’s a rowdy sense of life spilling out of the edges of Jon Chu’s frame throughout this film.

I’m unfamiliar with the stage version, so I can’t really speak to the adaptation, but I really love the framing device the film uses, with Usnavi de la Vega telling a group of children how he ended up on the beach where he’s telling the story. There’s a game being played on us, the audience, but I like the way the reveal is eventually handled, and I think it works thematically. More than that, I think it works emotionally. This, like many of my favorite musicals, is largely a film about how something feels, and when the film is really cooking, it is transcendent. More often, though, it just sort of vibes along, and I’m equally okay with that.

image courtesy of Warner Bros

There are musicals that are driven by truly great songs, songs that work so well on their own that they cross over and become iconic even when removed from the context of the show. There are other musicals where the music is more of a constant, something you ride through the narrative. I’m not sure I could tell you the names of many of the individual songs from In The Heights after a first viewing, but I love the overall sound and energy, and there are moments that I think just crackle. The neighborhood’s lottery fantasia, “96,000,” may be the most ambitious number in the entire film, and it is extravagantly staged. “When The Sun Goes Down” is, for my money, the most powerful moment in the film, as Benny and Nina end up dancing on the side of a building. Musicals are essentially unreal, but when you push that unreality far enough, you get to something honest and true. We do not break out into song to express our feelings in our daily lives, but one of the things music does for us is give us a way to give full voice to emotion.

I was startled by the reaction my youngest son had to “Paciencia y Fe,” an extended number in which Abuela thinks about growing up in Cuba, moving to America, her ancestors, her role in the community. The entire song builds to her passing away, and it destroyed Allen. Olga Merediz gives a great performance, and she definitely made him think of Lala, his mother’s mother. His abuela is a huge part of his life, and I like that he’s grown up in a house full of Latin women. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when we lose her, and thankfully, I think we’re decades away from that happening. She was born in Peru, moved to Argentina, lived a full life there, and then came here to start again, and that wealth of life experience is something she passes along to the boys. There are particular foods and recipes and smells and ingredients that the boys are always going to associate with their home and their heritage, and I love that.

Like many musicals, the plotting here is fairly simple. Everyone’s got a single want or need or dream or desire driving them, and it’s just a question of how things are going to come together. Musicals are about performance and energy, and Anthony Ramos is a stupendous presence as Usnavi. Lin Manuel Miranda is one of those writers who has such a particular voice that you can hear him in the work even when he’s not the one performing it, and I find it impressive how much Ramos manages to make In The Heights feel like his own. This is a movie-star performance, pure charisma, and Corey Hawkins is equally comfortable as Benny. Leslie Grace and Melissa Barrera are both striking, and they’re each given room to shine at different points. I love Daphne Rubin-Vega, but I wish she and her sidekicks Carla and Cuca had been given more to do. Stephanie Beatriz is a huge thrilling shock to the system for me here since I know her only from her role as Rosa on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and this is about as far from Rosa as you can get. She’s got terrific comic chemistry with the great Dascha Polanco, but there’s not really much for them to do. They do everything they do incredibly well, and I loved seeing them, but it feels unbalanced.

The film ends strong, and as I said, I love the final reveal of how the framing device works. I definitely feel like there are narrative short-cuts here involving Jimmy Smits and his character, and I wish the film actually leaned into some of the more difficult corners of his relationships with his daughter and with Benny. I also think there are songs where the cutting is just busy, less carefully motivated than it is in the best numbers. Still, Chu shows a real ability to juggle big movie spectacle, genuine human heart, and carefully nuanced empathy, and it feels like he brought Miranda’s work to the screen as well as anyone could have. I will definitely enjoy this again at home, this time with the subtitles on so I can catch all of those hyper-fast lyrics, and I hope this film continues to find audiences even if it isn’t an immediate hit in theaters.

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AND FINALLY…

This was the launch week of The Last ‘80s Newsletter (You’ll Ever Need), and it seems like it went really well.

It’s a busy week all the way around. I recorded an appearance on Junkfood Cinema last night, I recorded a Screen Drafts appearance on Wednesday, and I’ve got a secret embargoed thing that shoots this weekend. One thing I want to make clear, though, is that Formerly Dangerous is my primary home. Yes, there’s the pending job that I recently took time to focus on, but if that moves forward, I still plan to use this as the place where I discuss that work and expand on it. This new newsletter is only once a month, and I love this outlet too much to risk burning down the community we’ve built here. I’m going to make sure you guys are getting at least two newsletters a week starting this week, and I’ve got three or four Library entries already lined up that I’ll pepper in there as well. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the new Star Wars series, either. I’ve got a good one I’ve been cooking that I’ll have ready for you soon.

It is strange to plunge back into ‘80s films after taking some time away. More than ever, these films feel like a safe place to dive into when the rest of the world is too overwhelming right now. There’s little doubt that we live in turbulent times, and it’s hard not to carry anxiety about not only my own fate, but that of my children. Sometimes it helps to spend an afternoon working on research about films from 40 years ago. I can’t escape my anxieties, but maybe I can assuage them a bit.

I appreciate all the feedback so far, and for those of you who missed the first issue, I’ll be publishing February 1980 on July 15, so there’s plenty of time to subscribe and join the fun. There’s a new Discord community that’s part of the L80sN experience, and it’s been a kick so far.

Today’s newsletter is the first freebie in a while. I’ll really only be giving away one or two of these a month, and as I said, you’ll see me back here on Tuesday with something else for you. I’ve actually got a really good one cooking for that day, and then I’m also going to have a book dropping soon that is made up of some of the work I’ve done with Rebecca Swan over the years. That’s been in the works for a little while, and it’s the first of a few volumes. It feels like there’s a lot going on right now, and as always, the best part of all of it is having you guys here to share it with.

Here’s my media diary since the last issue of the newsletter. As always, anything I particularly enjoyed is in bold.

THIS WEEK’S BOOKS: A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie; Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie; Revenge of the Nerd by Curtis Armstrong; Pronto by Elmore Leonard; Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen; Island by Richard Laymon; The Great Movies by Roger Ebert; Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

THIS WEEK’S COMICS: The Good Asian #2; Immortal Hulk Vol. 9: The Weakest One There Is; The Immortal Hulk #46, #47; Howard The Duck Vol. 1; Howard the Duck Vol. 2; The Man-Thing Vol. 1; Alien #4; Star Wars: The High Republic #5; Star Wars #14; Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters - Prelude; Werewolf By Night: The Complete Collection Vol. 1; Epic Collection: X-Men - Children of the Atom; 6 Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton #1

THIS WEEK’S PODCASTS: Doughboys - “Taco Bell 7 w/ Lorne Balfe,” “Arby’s 3 w/ Larry Fong”; High and Mighty with Jon Gabrus - “New Gigs w/ Lucia Aniello,” “LA w/ Jordan Morris,” “Fantasy Novels w/ Mike Trapp”; The Kingcast - “Michael Jackson’s Ghosts w/ James III”; Did You Get My Text? - “The Wood Nymph and the Swamp Troll”; The Boogie Monster - “The Marfa Lights,” “Moon Stuff”; MBMBaM - “HANCH”; Screen Drafts - “The Internet w/ Angie Han and Kristy Puchko,” “James Spader w/ Jen Johans & Kate Hagen,” “X-Men Super Draft w/ Darren Franich, Clay, Ryan, Adam B. Vary and Alicia Lutes”

THIS WEEK’S TV: Superman & Lois S1 E8, E9; This Time with Alan Partridge S2 E1; Hacks S1 E3 - E10; Sweet Tooth S1 E1 - E4; The Me You Don’t See S1 E1; Firefly Lane S1 E7, E8; Loki S1 E1, E2; The Mosquito Coast S1 E3; The Real World New York Homecoming S1 E5, E6; Black Monday S1 E2 - E4; After Life S1 E2; Home Economics S1 E7; Love on the Spectrum S2 E4, E5; Moonlighting S1 E4; The Handmaid’s Tale S4 E3, E4; Last Week Tonight with John Oliver S2 E14, E15; Kevin Can F**k Himself S1 E1, E2; The Underground Railroad S1 E2; Fresh Fried & Crispy S1 E2; Married at First Sight: Unmatchables S1 E1; WKRP In Cincinnati S2 E15; Dave S1 E1; Starstruck S1 E1

THIS WEEK’S GAMING: Just Cause 3; Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

THIS WEEK’S MOVIES: Jackass The Movie; Batman (1966); Profile; Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift; Guardians of the Galaxy; Fatso; American Gigolo; Hero at Large; The Lost World: Jurassic Park; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; Cruising; Fast and Furious; Saturn 3; The Fog; Cannibal Holocaust; In The Heights; Inferno; Infinite; Terror Squad; Action USA; Raiders of the Lost Ark; Superman; Luca; The Blues Brothers; Don’t Answer The Phone; Foolin’ Around; Jackass Number Two; Serenity; South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut; Batman: Mask of the Phantasm; In the Loop; Fast & Furious 6; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; Godzilla vs Kong