Some Thoughts About Movies I’ve Seen on the Road

It took me a long time to come to the conclusion that I’ve definitively become a grumpy old man. The revelation came when I was thinking about a conversation I had way back when, during my undergrad, almost a decade ago. I was talking about a movie I didn’t like, and my friend was legitimately surprised that I had a problem with the movie. I usually was pretty lenient with my ratings, and now I know why.

Up until recently (even back then), I used to judge movies based on the quality of their cinematography. I had the advantage of seeing the blockbusters or otherwise movies with certain qualities in the theaters (and not cinemas, that’s what we call them in the real world, may the East coast be damned). They’d have that rising action at 100 minutes, techniques from Alfred Hitchcock and earlier works, scare jumps, tension builders, everything perfect. If you only see those movies, you only get the Dan Brown of movies. I’m not going to make a statement about art or Art, but I think it’s a bit like eating at Outback every day. You get a goodish quality of meal, but it’s only one certain type. You’ll have never experienced Italian cuisine, Moroccan mint tea or the wonders of vegetarian food cooked specifically for that purpose.

I think the big change when I started looking inside movies and at what they’re saying. Now, anyone who is reasonable, some sort of straw-man, may be saying duh. And I deserve that because I thought that was a bonus, an interesting thing to appreciate on top of everything else and not the other way around.

This rant came about because I saw two movies recently, A Simple Favor and Searching. As for the latter, it’s in a style that I suspect has become popular because it’s cheap, the entire movie filmed from the prospective of a computer. There’s a few times where the computer’s camera witnesses a new scene or landscape, but the majority of it is different pictures and google results on the screen. From such a dry description, it can seem the movie would be dry, but it helps them funnel the attention of the audience on specific objects. It isn’t boring, but it feels like lazy script writing.

So that’s it, now that I pay attention to such things, right? Before I was a consumer, but now it’s the output of my profession. Time to wrap this up and go home. But I’ve been noticing this for a long time, as my wife can testify. And I refuse to say that I’m the only human being (or participate in a class) that thinks alike. I think it’s coming of age. Like at 10 or 12, I started to notice that not all movies were good, and at 25 or so I began paying attention to the message of the media I consumed beyond what aimed to distract me the best . I think it took me that long because I wasn’t mature enough. Or I was stupid, or I was a late bloomer. It doesn’t matter.

Back to the Searching, you have to wonder what the point is. I did, at least. Not to give anything away, but you see most of the plot beats from the preview. The daughter disappears, it turns out that she had a bunch of different priorities, and the conclusion of the movie wasn’t what I expected. However, what did I learn? High schoolers can be superficial and fickle, good people can be taken advantage of… and? Nu? as my dad would ask.

So, A Simple Favor. It came out on Friday, and so there’s not much I want to talk about as far as plot goes. I liked most of the movie, but I came away with a weird feeling. The two main characters are both women but completely opposite. There’s the character with a career, and she’s alcoholic and capricious, while the other is a homemaker who vlogs with her cooking recipes. Now, given what looks like Gone Girl, you can guess vaguely what happens, but it’s less negative. The stay at home mom, though she initially doubts herself, learns that she’s better at pretty much everything and is able to resolve the mystery. It’s a nice and punchy film. But when I thought about it, there were two problems. The first is, well, really? I realize that at this point of career women there’s a lack of proactive STAH moms (so this might be seen in some ways as creative by renewing an older trope), but that’s really what we don’t need the glorification of this in opposition to a woman that is proactive about her career and achieving her goals. I apologize, but I’m trying hard not to give anything away, and that’s weakening my ability to make my argument.

And my other problem is similar though not a matter of gender. It’s the glorification of the individual. The protagonist resolves everything and gets the disobedient husband in line, the criminal in jail, and even shows up the police. Then she writes a best-selling book. gets a ton of followers on her vlog, and becomes a part-time detective assistant (or something, she helps resolve crime in the future) when she was on the road to financial problems before all this, her husband’s savings and life insurance policy on its way out. That’s good for her, definitely, but what’s the message here? Dawn comes when it gets darkest? Life happens in mysterious ways? Those are the best things I can get out of the movie (women should stay home is probably the worst one), but here’s the thing. A story is written, not a description of reality but a human manipulation to prove a point. Did either of these movies use their moment to say anything that’ll remain with me? No. And I hope anything I create or work on doesn’t do the same.

See you next time,

Ben