Favorite First Watches of November 2022
R Patz Batman, Benoit Blanc's return, and a beautiful but hollow sophomore effort plagued by gossipy behind-the-scenes drama
The year is winding down, but prestige film season is in full swing. And instead of seeing a bunch of new things, I’m seeing both Elvis and Tár again this week on the big screen for various reasons (but mostly because they’re two of my favorites of the year). I missed last month’s edition of my favorite first watches, which included Tár, but you may have heard I was both in Paris at the time and also getting engaged. There’s a LOT going on in my life right now, and I’m trying to just stay afloat lol. If you want to see my full list of Favorite First Watches from this year, as always, it is available on my Letterboxd.
I’m sorry to say but November was a real low point for first watches for me this year. I had several repeat views, but the few new-to-me movies I watched were mostly frustrating and bad—and not in the fun way. I do hesitate to use the word “bad,” because it’s such a nondescript and highly subjective term. I happen to love quite a few “bad” movies per technical qualifiers like script quality, editing, direction, acting etc. Often those movies are ultimately successful for me because the overall vibe is fun/good/entertaining, and I can see what the filmmaker may have been aiming for and still find enjoyment in the (often haphazard) results of their process. But sometimes, a film is just bad because it’s soulless, boring, derivative, cringeworthy (in an unintentional way), etc. It doesn’t let itself have fun or even go for camp. And that frustrates me, because it tends to mean the film doesn’t try to have real personality or vision as a whole.
Having really enjoyed Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut, Booksmart, I was looking forward to her sophomore effort, Don’t Worry Darling, a film she said was in part inspired by The Truman Show, the Matrix, and Inception. Then the rumors started flying: Wilde had fired original lead Shia LaBeouf and replaced him with pop star Harry Styles, Wilde and Styles were having an onset affair, star Florence Pugh was unhappy with Wilde and possibly ghost-directed a good chunk of the movie, Spitgate at Venice Film Festival…
Now, as a lover of Old Hollywood history, like Ryan Murphy, I can’t deny I love a good feud. Olivia de Havilland vs. her sister Joan Fontaine. Bette Davis vs. Joan Crawford. Jerry Lewis vs. Dean Martin. Elizabeth Taylor vs. Debbie Reynolds (even though they eventually patched things up and were good friends for the rest of their lives). The problem with Don’t Worry Darling is that the behind-the-scenes drama surrounding the making and marketing of the movie is far more interesting than the resulting film. None of that juicy, dramatic energy was put onscreen in any real—or fun—way.
Without going into too many specifics of the plot (because the film is currently available to stream on HBO Max), the movie centers on Victory, an idyllic mid-century desert community, where the men all go off each day to do mysterious work while the women drink, cook, shop, care for the children, and do any other type of gendered domestic labor. Alice Chambers (Pugh) begins to suspect something sinister is going on and the prophetic, charismatic leader (Chris Pine) is behind it. The more Alice notices, the more her husband Jack (Styles) tries to keep her quiet. And yes, there is a big twist you can see coming a mile away.
What’s frustrating about Don’t Worry Darling isn’t so much that it’s a little derivative of the Stepford Wives, Truman Show, the Matrix, etc but that it buries a much more interesting movie in simplistic girlboss feminist tropes and repetitive story beats. It simply doesn’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said before and better. The film looks gorgeous—shot by DP Matthew Libatique—but there’s a hollowness to it. Pugh, Pine, and Gemma Chan do their best to anchor the film, but ultimately it falls flat having neither real substance or high camp to keep viewers very interested through its plodding two-hour runtime. There just isn’t much of a point of view here—at least not a discernible one. And I have to wonder if that may be due to Wilde’s directorial skills or the unverified rumor that Pugh had to step in on occasion behind the camera because Wilde was too distracted by her own leading man/co-star. Either way, Don’t Worry Darling itself is disappointing. But I would bet a film about its soapy, gossipy filming and promotion would be better, or, at least, a helluva lot more fun
And now my very brief Favorite First Watches of November…
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Favorite First Watches of November 2022
The Batman (2022, dir. Reeves)
Full disclosure: I watched this on the plane back to New York from France, which was actually kind of perfect since it’s almost 3 hours long, and you need something to break up a 7 hour flight full of French people with their shoes off (seriously, French people LOVE taking their shoes off on planes! it’s wild!). Anyway, I am pretty exhausted of DC constantly going back to the well of Batman—and more specifically, the Joker—but I really dug this. It’s the first superhero movie in awhile that I’ve seen that has an actual take on the character and a real point of view from the filmmaker (Matt Reeves, who used to work on Felicity, bless!) instead of being what amounts to the studio’s vision and color palette etc.
The Batman plays like a psychological thriller neo-noir detective story rather than focusing so much on the “superhero” aspects. It’s very “vibe-y,” as one friend described it, and I’d go so far as to say that’s what makes it fly. The atmosphere informs the performances and vice versa, which creates something engaging. Cool and fun performances from John Turturro and Colin Farrell (who is having a great year), and I am oh-so-glad the Riddler (Paul Dano) was the big villain choice. Still, call me when someone finally decides to do one with Poison Ivy, who is arguably the most relevant villain for our present day era.
The Batman is currently available to stream on HBO Max.
The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022, dir. Johnson)
If Rian Johnson made one of these every year or every other year, I wouldn’t be mad. What I love about his revival of the star-packed big screen murder mysteries of yesteryear is he understands precisely what makes them so good to watch: let your actors go ham, literally, in glamorous locations. The joy of watching Knives Out and now its sequel, The Glass Onion, is seeing actors clearly having the time of their lives playing totally out-of-touch rich people. Daniel Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc and his Foghorn Leghorn accent are back, this time gayer, and on the private island of an Elon Musk-like tech billionaire named Miles Bron (played with perfect ego by Edward Norton) who’s hosting a pack of his wealthy, well-connected friends for a murder mystery weekend. The mystery is less important than the cheeky script and fun performances—notably from Kate Hudson, who I hope returns to screen more often—and that’s as it should be. I never really watched all those Agatha Christie adaptations from the 1970s or even Columbo so much for the mysteries. I just liked watching all those personalities clashing in places I can only dream of visiting.
Here’s hoping the next installment is in some ski lodge or a safari or something. I’d like to see Benoit Blanc in a safari outfit, complete with pith helmet.
The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery streams exclusively on Netflix starting December 23rd.
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