We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
WANDAVISION (2021)
I'm on board to watch anything that comes our way from Marvel Studios and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, whether it's films or the new stage in the franchise, TV series on the Disney+ streaming service. But I wasn't exactly hyped when it was announced that a show would center on the magic-powered Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and her synthezoid boyfriend Vision (Paul Bettany) - who was previously killed off in Avengers: Infinity War. These weren't characters I had ever been interested in reading about in Marvel Comics, and while I liked some of the scenes they had in the movies, those scenes hadn't won me over enough to make me enthusiastic to watch a whole show about them. So I was surprised to find just how well the show worked for me.
WandaVision was the first MCU series to make its debut on Disney+, but it wasn't intended to be. The Captain America-themed The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was supposed to be the first show out of the gate, but the pandemic slowed it down enough that WandaVision was able to take the lead. And I'm glad it did. While The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was a show I was excited to see from the moment it was announced, WandaVision was more fitting to be the first MCU Disney+ series. It served as an excellent way to transition from the big screen to the small screen, because it's a TV show that plays with the idea of being a TV show.
Diving into this show without any foreknowledge could be baffling, as the first episode appears to make zero sense within the MCU. Not only is Vision somehow alive and married to Wanda, the couple enjoying domestic bliss in the New Jersey suburbs, Wanda being a housewife and Vision going off to work a desk job, but the episode is also presented as if it's a 1950s sitcom along the lines of The Dick Van Dyke Show. It's even black and white and has a laugh track, and was filmed in front of a live studio audience. In fact, the makers of this show consulted Van Dyke on how to make a classic sitcom. If only they had given him a role on the show as well! That would have been awesome, Dick Van Dyke in the MCU. As Wanda and Vision rush to put together a dinner for Vision's boss Arthur Hart (Fred Melamed) and his wife (Debra Jo Rupp), there are only hints that something isn't quite right here. Wanda and Vision can't seem to remember much about their lives before the day this show catches up to them, and there's a very strange moment at the dinner table when Mr. Hart starts choking on his food. In the end, the sitcom's credits start to roll - and then it's revealed that someone has been watching this episode with us and taking notes. Someone in a world with color. But don't get ready to receive answers yet, because the second episode sticks with the black and white classic sitcom style, with a title sequence reminiscent of Bewitched from the '60s.
The hints at something bigger and weirder continue - some things (including blood from a cut) appear in color, fellow residents of the town of Westview occasionally snap out of sitcom character, a voice comes over the radio asking Wanda "who's doing this to you?", Wanda rewinds time a couple different times to keep information from Vision - but through all of this, Wanda does her best to stick to the sitcom life of wacky shenanigans with Vision and others, like their ever-present neighbor Agnes (Kathryn Hahn). As the show moves through the decades of sitcoms, episode 3 is in color, with '70s fashion that brings to mind The Brady Bunch, and it's at the end of this episode that the scope finally expands wide enough for us to figure out what's really going on in sitcom land. While Disney+ only released the first two episodes on WandaVision's premiere night, it makes sense that the first three episodes were sent to critics before the show premiered, because the episode 3 climax is when the real hook comes in. Then episode 4 is an episode I was desperate to see by the time it arrived, because it's the one when we get some answers and finally break away from the sitcom presentation for a while. Sure, the sitcom stuff is fun and amusing, but when you know something else is coming down the line it's tough not to get anxious to get beyond it.
The first time the show exits the sitcom world is an awesome moment that I watched over and over. It happens right after Wanda has given birth to twin boys named Billy and Tommy - yes, she and Vision have somehow managed to procreate, and Wanda speeds through the pregnancy in record time. Westview resident Geraldine (Teyonah Parris) is present to witness the unexpected home birth of these kids, and when Wanda mentions that she had a brother, it triggers a memory in Geraldine. She knew Wanda had a brother. A brother who was killed by Ultron (in Avengers: Age of Ultron). And when Wanda hears that Geraldine has that information, she realizes she's an outsider who should not be in Westview. So she expels her, tossing her through a forcefield that surrounds the entire town. Lying on the ground outside the forcefield, Geraldine is surrounded by military vehicles, and as we see that government officials are outside Westview and trying to figure out what's going on in there, unable to safely get through the forcefield, "Daydream Believer" by The Monkees fills the soundtrack.
In the next episode, we get to see the perspective of the people looking into the mysterious case of the impenetrable town, and who are monitoring the TV signal that's being broadcast from Westview that shows Wanda and Vision living their sitcom life. The organization on the scene is called S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division), headed up by acting director Tyler Hayward (Josh Stramberg), a shady fellow whose true agenda isn't quite clear for a while. F.B.I. agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), introduced in Ant-Man and the Wasp, is present because someone in the witness protection program was a Westview resident - and that's something that seems to have been deemed unimportant by the writers along the way, because we never find out who that person is. Science experts have been called in, and among them is Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) from Thor and Thor: The Dark World, having received a doctorate in astrophysics since we last saw her. We also find out that Geraldine is someone we've met before, she was just turned into a sitcom character, like everyone who lives in Westview, when she passed through the forcefield. In reality, she is a S.W.O.R.D. agent and a grown up Monica Rambeau, a character introduced as a child in Captain Marvel, which was set in 1995. Over the course of the remaining episodes, as Monica works with Darcy and Jimmy to get this Westview show cancelled - and they have to work behind Hayward's back because they have differing approaches - Monica started to become one of my favorite MCU characters, as she is capable and determined, and has a likeable personality. Parris did a fantastic job in the role.
At the beginning of episode 4, we see that Monica was one of the people who was "blipped" for the period of five years between the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. We've previously seen the return of blipped characters as a triumphant moment in Endgame and as a sight gag in Spider-Man: Far from Home, and WandaVision looks at it from a different angle, showing the chaos that ensues when Monica and others return inside a hospital. We also see the confusion and heartbreak Monica suffers when she finds out her mother, Captain Marvel character Maria Rambeau, founder of S.W.O.R.D., died during the five years Monica was away.
And that leads to the fact that WandaVision is truly about characters dealing with grief. What's going on in Westview is the direct result of all the losses Wanda has suffered in her life. The loss of her parents when she was a child. The loss of her brother. The loss of Vision. The overwhelming pain she feels over all that loss has driven her to this. It's a pain Monica understands because she has lost her mother. It's a pain I understand, because I have lost a lot myself. The more the show dug into the concept of grief, the more it resonated with me - and the most popular line from the show really struck me. I've seen people make a joke of the line, but I have also seen people be deeply affected by it, so much that it has helped them deal with their own grief. It comes during a conversation we witness between Wanda and Vision late in the series, a flashback set sometime after Age of Ultron but before Captain America: Civil War. While discussing the pain Wanda feels over the loss of her loved ones, Vision says, "What is grief, if not love persevering?" It is a beautiful way to put it, and it brings tears to my eyes.
As I said, I was never really drawn to Wanda and Vision during their previous appearances in the MCU, but this show gave me a new appreciation for both of them. For the first time, I was interested in Wanda as a character, and cared about where she was coming from on an emotional level. I came to like Vision more as we see him gradually figure out that something is wrong in Westview, and take it upon himself to solve this mystery from the inside. He may not be the real Vision, but he is capable of thinking on his own, and of doing things Wanda doesn't want him to do. Olsen and Bettany both deliver incredible performances on this show. Bettany is able to show us the soul of a synthezoid, while Olsen not only handles the dramatic scenes but also proves to be a skilled comedic performer. She nails the sitcom of it all perfectly.
Another cast member who is impossible to go without mentioning is Evan Peters, who shows up for a few episodes as Wanda's brother Pietro, a.k.a. Quicksilver, whose presence is sort of like Tom Hanks' on Family Ties; he's the fun but troubled uncle. When Peters' Pietro showed up at Wanda's door, the minds of a lot of Marvel fans were completely blown, because Peters has played Quicksilver before, but he wasn't the Quicksilver who shared the screen with Wanda in Age of Ultron. That was Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Peters played Quicksilver back when the rights to the character were split between Marvel and Fox, before Marvel's owner Disney acquired Fox. His Quicksilver existed outside of the MCU, in X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix, so with him showing up on WandaVision, it looked like the door to the multiverse had just blown open and suddenly it was possible for the MCU to start merging with the Fox X-Men universe somehow... But this is a prime example of why expectations should be kept in check, because the more speculating fans did while watching WandaVision, the more chance they gave the show to let them down. You could also say that the show was setting itself up to disappoint people by doing things like casting Evan Peters and not making it a huge multiverse event. But if you just go with what's on the screen and take Peters' casting as something that's "cute" rather than momentous, it's not a big deal.
Despite getting a little impatient with the sitcom stuff, I really enjoyed WandaVision. I found it to be a fun, interesting, and emotionally engaging show that brought some fantastic entertainment into my life at a rough time during the pandemic when I really needed something to lift my spirits and brighten my mood. Eventually, it does explode into large action sequences, and Matt Shakman, who directed all nine episodes, proved to be as capable at handling that as he did the stage-bound sitcom episodes. Looking over Shakman's career, he does appear to be the perfect choice for a show like this, because he has directed episodes of some massive shows, and in his younger days he was an actor who appeared on sitcoms. His experiences in those different realms were very handy when he got the opportunity to direct WandaVision.
THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN (2016)
Four and a half years have passed since the release of writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig's first feature The Edge of Seventeen, and it's baffling to me that we haven't gotten anything written or directed by Craig since then, because she should have been flooded with job offers after this. Her script for The Edge of Seventeen is incredibly well written; clever and very amusing, while also dealing with deeply emotional subjects. Then Craig assembled a terrific cast to bring her script to life on the screen, starting with Hailee Steinfeld as lead character Nadine, a seventeen-year-old girl who is still reeling from the sudden death of her father four years earlier.
Since her dad died, Nadine has shut herself off from almost everyone - including her extremely self-absorbed mother Mona (Kyra Sedgwick) and her "perfect" brother Darian (Blake Jenner). The only person she really connects with is her best and only friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson)... and when Krista starts dating Darian, Nadine has a total meltdown. Craig wrote some great dialogue for Nadine to spout as she observes the world around her, and Steinfeld did a perfect job playing this smart, funny, troubled girl.
Upset with Krista, Nadine starts hanging out with the stunningly but endearingly awkward Erwin (Hayden Szeto). But while Erwin is clearly attracted to her, Nadine is more interested in a different guy who's actually much less interesting, Alexander Calvert as Nick. The only person Nadine feels she can turn to for advice is her aloof teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson) - a very funny character, especially since Harrelson improvised a lot of amusing lines, who would probably get fired for talking to any student other than Nadine the way he does, treating her like a "frenemy" he can joke with.
The Edge of Seventeen is a great coming-of-age dramedy that I really enjoyed when I first watched it at the beginning of May in 2017, and one which I can relate to even more now because I know some of what Nadine is going through here. Just days, if not hours, after I watched the scene in The Edge of Seventeen in which Nadine's father Tom (Eric Keenleyside) suddenly passes away, presumably of a heart attack, I was notified that the same thing had happened to my own mom. It took me years to realize the similarity between what I had just witnessed and what I experienced soon after, since I was not thinking about this movie as I dealt with the fallout of my mom's passing. But when it came up again years later, I connected the dots, and when I rewatched the movie I understood the pain Nadine is feeling. And I know the title The Edge of Seventeen comes from a Stevie Nicks song, because my mom used to listen to that song. So The Edge of Seventeen is more meaningful to me now than it was in the first half of 2017, but even without those personal connections it still holds up as a great movie.
THE CHANGELING (1980)
The Changeling gets off to an awful start, and that's not a comment on the quality of the filmmaking or storytelling. It's because it has a devastating gut punch of an opening sequence, as composer John Russell (George C. Scott) has to watch as his wife and young daughter are killed in an accident on an icy road. It's a hell of a way to get the audience unsettled immediately.
The story then jumps ahead four months, by which time John feels he needs to push himself to move on. He talks about "four months" as if that's any time at all to deal with the sort of loss he has been dealt. As part of his healing process, he's moving from New York City out to Seattle, and when he arrives in Seattle he makes the very poor decision to stay in a massive mansion that he's shown by Historical Society representative Claire Norman (Scott's real life wife Trish Van Devere). This place is way too large for one man on his own, and John would have been better off moving into a small apartment because it's not long before comes to realize that this mansion is haunted. There are loud pounding noises, a window in the house shatters outward for no apparent reason, John sees the image of a young boy drowning in the bathtub, and it becomes apparent to John that the spirit in the house is guiding him toward something. It's trying to communicate with him.
Directed by Peter Medak, The Changeling is said to be inspired by experiences playwright Russell Hunter (who provided the story) actually had while staying in a haunted mansion in Denver. William Gray and Diana Maddox fleshed Hunter's story out into a screenplay - and there is so much going on in this movie, I was surprised to see that it wasn't based on a novel. The spirit draws John and Claire into quite a complicated mystery, and honestly - even though I think The Changeling is a fantastic horror movie - there were times during their investigation into who this spirit is and what happened to them when I would feel that the movie is a bit too long (it's over 106 minutes) and too much of a slow burn.
If you have some patience with The Changeling's slow pace, it does offer the chance for the viewer to get wrapped up in a very interesting and well-crafted story. There are plenty of creepy moments, there's the obligatory séance, and there's an awesome moment where John, frustrated that the ghost is still giving him grief after everything he's done to try to solve their case, calls the spirit out as a "goddamn son of a bitch". This is how I imagine Scott would have handled a haunting in real life, he doesn't seem like a guy who would put up with ghostly shenanigans.
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