I'm Not Enjoying The Weather Or The Movies
December feels so long ago.
It’s TV season.
I know this is counterintuitive for a movie newsletter, but, damn, things are bleak at the moment for the medium we all know and (sometimes) love. I recently saw The 355, which is a female-empowerment screed and simultaneously a setback to the women’s rights movement. It’s not the leads’ fault; Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong'o and Penélope Cruz are all trying their best, but it’s ultimately an uphill battle with Simon Kinberg—a man behind such “classics” as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Dark Phoenix—at the helm.
This isn’t anything new. It’s the latest January in a yearly tradition known as “Dumpuary,” in which studios drop the properties they thought could be hits as fast as you could Google Armie Hammer’s, umm, let’s say predilections.
The man wants to eat more than Italian peaches apparently.
We still have a few leftovers from the end of 2021. For instance, West Side Story, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Tragedy of Macbeth and Parallel Mothers are all playing at a theater a few subway stops away, but in terms of new stuff to seek out, you’re better off catching up on the limited series or the once-limited series or the spin-offs of the limited series that ultimately became once-limited series that probably star Sam Elliott or a Sam Elliott type.
“What else is coming out this month?” you might ask. Well, for nationwide releases, we’ve got the fifth entry to the Scream franchise, The King’s Daughter (you can finally watch Pierce Brosnan capture a mermaid) and Redeeming Love from Universal. That last movie is “a retelling of the biblical book of Hosea set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush of 1850,” which is exactly what the people have been clamoring for. More biblical allegories featuring the Gold Rush, please and thank you.
Because I’m a masochist, I watched The 355 and I’m one lazy Sunday away from diving into the surely fruitful worlds of mermaids and Gold Rushes, but you don’t have to follow my lead.
Go watch old movies. Watch that thing you never have or have always wanted to. Over the last month or so, I’ve caught up on The Wicker Man, The Exorcist and My Neighbor Totoro. Didn’t expect that last one, did you?
Or, if things get really dark, and I hate to say this … maybe watch some television. Just don’t tell anyone I told you that.
Breaking Things
I wasn’t initially planning on doing a Breaking Things segment this week, but after watching The 355 and thinking about the spy/action genre as a whole, I feel like I must speak for the little man. It’s time we discuss how poorly the modern-day henchman is treated not just by the antagonists but also by the movies themselves.
As a 9-to-5er, I’m not saying I have it made, but things aren’t too bad on the whole. I work from a comfortable apartment thanks to a raging pandemic (go get vaccinated), I get insurance that sometimes covers things that need to be covered and I very rarely get shot a half-dozen times and thrown off of a tower in Shanghai.
The life of a henchman seems pretty shitty. You have no authority and oftentimes you’re jerked around by a piece-of-shit boss. We all have had authority figures that we would love to flip the bird to, yet most of ours don’t demand us to run Leeroy Jenkins style into our own untimely demise.
What would make me most pissed off is watching the hero dispatch my friends (and fellow ne'er-do-wellers) one by one in gruesome and torturous ways and then watching them really fret when it comes to finishing off the big bad.
Oh, now you have a conscience? I just saw you take a knife to my coworker’s thorax and pull his spleen out of his throat, but now that you see this person that once betrayed you and is currently planning to blow up the city in the sight of your gun, you’re no longer totally sure if murder is for you?
I would be (rightfully) infuriated. And do you know what? Let’s say I do survive and make it home to my wife and kids and golden retriever named Luna after watching my entire work-family slaughtered to pieces … there’s no way I, as a henchman, get any mental health care or paid time off.
It’s a terrible gig. You’d be better off going to law school.
That was quite a rant, but it needed to be said. Please read next week (and tell your fellow henchmen to subscribe). Also, watch a movie. Not TV.