Three Films Make A Post: Where Will You be When Disaster Strikes?

Benedetta (2021): This much lauded bit of middling nunsploitation just goes to remind me how little I think of most of the films of Paul Verhoeven. Sure, I’ll always have time for Flesh & Blood, The 4th Man and Robocop, but the rest of the director’s career is the progressive version of edgelord crap. This one is mired in the sort of conscious camp that just makes me want to punch something, mostly working its spleen on Christian iconography for the easy Christian baiting points, and showing no actual heart or imagination whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong, Verhoeven does have humungous technical chops – he’s just never using them for anything beyond being the guy at parties who is sneering at everything without ever having come by his cynicism the hard way, by actually understanding the things and people he hates. Why critics continue to lap this stuff up is beyond me.

Tenet (2020): On the other hand, I do think this – one of Christopher Nolan’s lesser reviewed films – is pretty damn great, taking a crazy idea, throwing a bunch of money at it and pretending to make a perfectly straightforward super spy blockbuster. Just that it’s one where the film’s basic tenet leads to fight and action choreography that runs counter to all the rules and regulations of the genre while at the same time trying its utmost to look as if all of this were perfectly par for the course. Which becomes particularly disorienting the more movies of this type you’ve seen and enjoyed.

The plot structure is just as palindromic as the film’s title, equally grounded in the film’s science fictional set-up, and enabling more of the philosophical and formal ambiguities most of Nolan’s films have, if you only care to look at them from the right angle.

That the film also works as a pretty fine super spy movie, if one with a rather confusing plot on first look, just adds to the particular delight I got from this movie.

The Bubble (2022): This mix of Hollywood blockbuster production satire with an ensemble including Karen Gillan and David Duchovny, and Corona pandemic comedy is apparently a rather devise movie. By all rights, I should hate this thing, what with it indulging in my least favourite genre, the film about filmmaking, and being directed by Judd Apatow, whose body of work usually makes me nearly as cranky as that of Verhoeven.

The problem is, I’m rather defenceless against a film which is in turns very funny not just as a Hollywood satire but also as one on modern times and mores, and just plain weird in a peculiarly personal way, and that’s populated by a cast who surf between modes and tones perfectly.

If I were in a nit-picky mood, I’d probably say the film could use to lose twenty minutes or so of its two hours plus running time, but then, even that feels like part of one of the film’s jokes.

In short: The Craft: Legacy (2020)

As a middle-aged guy from Germany, I’m really not part of this film’s core audience of woke teenage girls, so take what I have to say about it with a grain of salt, if you are. Having uttered that warning, I have to say that I found the film to be a frustrating experience, not because of the age and gender gap, but because of structural concerns that weaken the film decidedly.

On the one hand, Zoe Lister-Jones’s film has a much better idea of what it thinks about feminism and the life of young women today than the original The Craft (of which it turns out to be one of those weird sequels that want to work as a remake at the same time) ever had. It has a good grip on how to say it too, turning these ideas into a narrative well enough (and certainly well supported by the young lead actresses around Cailee Spaeny).

However, while doing this, the film does little to nothing to really set up the stakes for its final act, vaguely hand-waving important motivations and connections between characters in favour of the most superficial thing it can come up with, never even seeming to attempt to suggest that anyone is actually in danger of losing the fight against David Duchovny’s evil magic-stealing patriarch (or is he supposed to be an actual demon?), or even having to fight very hard. That’s not terribly helpful for the film’s metaphorical level, either, suggesting you can resolve huge societal problems in two or three minutes without anyone having to pay any price for it (dudes writing books about “hallowed masculinity” who are possibly demons really don’t count here). There’s something bloodless and bland about too much of the film too, magic never actually feeling dangerous or difficult to control, or a terribly interesting thing, frankly. Witches would have it easy if not for the easily dispatched David Duchovnys of this world, apparently, which is a nice thought, but not one that makes for a particularly gripping movie.