Zodiac (2007)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Edwards

Have I Seen It Before: Maybe? Probably not.

Did I Like It: This might represent the last sustained moment of the movies before the Marvel universe took over everything. Downey in this film is practically vibrating in anticipation of leaping beyond his troubles (and more his years as an indie/and into full-moviestardom. There’s even a measure of what he brings to Tony Stark within his portrayal of newspaperman Paul Avery. Although that’s probably a very long way for me to say that there is a certain amount of sameness in the roles Downey has picked in the last twenty years, give or take a Nolan film*.

But, I can only guess that providing what many would call the last gasp of the mainstream prestige film** probably not what Fincher set out to do.

So many post-modern thrillers/horror films think they can reckon with the violence of their genre by either cynical detachment (Scream (1996) and its various sequels and imitators) or by doubling down on an unearned earnestness (David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018)*** and its sequels), but Fincher is able to just confront the violence as it likely happened. Getting shot or stabbed is a very unpleasant fate, and I’m not entirely sure why it took until the mid-aughts to bring that element into a thriller. Even Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) tried to make it a little fun.

But what I really think about as I watch this film? They pretty much figured out that John Carroll Lynch did it, there’s a whole extra hour of stuff going on before it pretty much was clear that John Carrolll Lynch did it.

*I guess the ball’s in your court, Doomsday.

**Maybe an exaggeration, although one might have trouble figuring that out if they ever expose themselves to film discourse on the internet.

***Which I still like, and you can just deal with that. Thanks.

Donnie Darko (2001)

Director: Richard Kelly

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Duval

Have I Seen it Before: I don’t think you get through college in the early `00s without having seen it.

Did I Like It: Seeing the film nearly twenty years after my first viewing, I’m still digesting (and probably will until I soon record an episode of Beyond the Cabin in the Woods) it all, and the only thing I can confidently say as I type these words is that I’m not sure if I ever did, but I am glad I did not watch the director’s cut of the film here.

To read descriptions of that longer version online, any ounce of subtext was sucked out of the film and we are left at the end knowing precisely the why and how of the jet engine and how Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) fits into the whole mythos. 

And that would have been terrible. The film might very well be operating solely on its affectations, but the best way I can possibly observe the film through that lens is that those affectations give the film a certain charm. Removing all of the subtext makes it an exceedingly intricate time travel story.

Now far be it for me to look my nose down on an exceedingly intricate time travel story, but at a certain point if you’re having to rely on long passages from a book that doesn’t actually exist, you may have focused less on a work of cinema and veered into a powerpoint presentation. It’s not the same thing. 

But enough about what the version of the film I watched wasn’t, how did the theatrical cut hold up? It might be a film that’s singularly built for people in their twenties, and while the lilting Gary Jules cover of “Mad World” still has a haunting quality, and Donnie is never more heroic than when he calls Patrick Swayze’s preening self-help-guru-with-a-secret the Anti-Christ, the whole thing doesn’t hit like it used to. As you get older, it may very well be harder to appreciate new art. I’m just a little disappointed that art I used to enjoy is hard to hold onto.

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

Director: Jon Watts

Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jon Favreau

Have I Seen it Before: No. Even that middle-credit scene was still a breath of fresh air.

Did I Like It: Yes.

I do wonder if some of this review is actually fueled by the theater-going experience. We tried the new Cinergy facility here in Tulsa. They’re Chuck-E-Cheese for grownups milieu might work for some people, and it is encouraging that they cannibalized the auditoriums of the late, great Village 8 for their screening purposes. However, their attempts to provide the same amenity-rich experience as the Warren falls flat with a limited menu and an awkward ordering process. Also, apparently they haven’t mastered the air conditioning of these facilities. To their credit, they were aware of the climate control issue and took it upon themselves to hand out gift cards like they were after dinner mints. If I had previously known I could make fifty bucks in fifteen minutes just by staring at Samuel L. Jackson while sweating most of my body mass away, I might have made different career choices. It was a perplexingly unique movie-going experience. They have pinball machines there, so I imagine I will be back if for that reason alone.

And the immediately difficult task ahead of me is to start comparing it to other films. Is it the greatest Spider-Man movie of all time? No. Is it even the greatest Spider-Man movie released in the last twelve months? No.

This movie is really running up against some rough competition coming so soon after the awe-inspiring, adrenaline-goosing Spider-Man: Enter the Spider-Verse (2018). It even tries to dabble in some multi-verse shenanigans, but mostly as a fake out for the true plot in play*. I can’t even say that this is the greatest movie featuring the character as assayed by Tom Holland. Spider-Man Homecoming (2017) is jauntier. It’s blending of teen movie and big budget spectacle is more seamless. 

And, of course, Homecoming had Michael Keaton in it. There were reports that he would appear in this film as well. I’d like to say I don’t dock any points away from a movie for not featuring the once and future Batman, but I think that I even remotely like a film that could have featured Michael Keaton and opted not to is something of a testament to the film’s resiliency.

And that’s where it becomes clear that the comparison to other Spider-men is unfair. Should we be griping that this film isn’t quite as good as some of the greatest recent entries, or should we marvel (I see what I did there, and I’m not all that thrilled with it) that it is arguably true that the three greatest films (in no particular order) in the series are the most recent ones.

Because there is quite a lot to love here. Tom Holland is never not believable as a teen who’s in just a little bit over his head. Jake Gyllenhaal brings a manic charm to his role as Beck/Mysterio and so thoroughly plays on Peter’s unspoken need to fill the void in his life left by certain other characters, that you can’t help but hate him even more in the third act when his petulant villainy is brought to bear. On that note, it’s fairly effective as the more life-affirming wake for Tony Stark, where Avengers: Endgame (2019) felt like a gut-punch of a funeral. Zendaya accomplishes a startling task, keeping all of the brittle fun of her MJ, while still rising to the romantic comedy around her and showing vulnerability when the scenes demand. Jon Favreau shifts from the grumpy put-upon schlub of Homecoming to be the understanding grown up Peter eventually finds. Apparently the love of Marisa Tomei is the magical fuel of this series.

It’s a very sweet movie, and absolutely worth watching. I just hope they keep this up. And Gods of Asgard, please keep Venom (as played by anyone) as far away from this series as possible.

Huh.

I’m just now wondering how long Talos has been covering for Fury… Huh. That makes me re-think a lot of things.

*Or is it? Are we 100% that the J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons, you read that right) who runs the the Info Wars-esque dailybugle.net isn’t the same J. Jonah Jameson that gave Tobey Maguire such grief? Mysterio’s cover story of coming form an alternate universe is just a bit too specific to not have any truth to it. Wouldn’t Mysterio be far more interested in injecting just a little bit of truth into the large lie. Is anyone wondering how Jameson got an exclusive on Spider-Man’s identity? One wonders.