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: Total Recall (1990)

Truth be told, I’ve never been the greatest admirer of Paul Verhoeven’s US films. Sure, there are Robocop and Flesh & Blood, but even those I respect rather more than I do love them. My problem with this phase is its excessiveness, or rather, its excessiveness in exactly those aspects I least enjoy in a movie: camp so thick and aggressive it is basically weaponized, sledgehammer satire loud and shrill and aimed at all the easiest targets, usually paired with some of the old ultra-violence and the sleaze I do enjoy to just shout down anything about the films that might be subtle. The problem with this kind of excess for me is how tiresome it quickly becomes. Sure, the first half hour of Verhoeven shouting incessantly into my face is entertaining in a freakshow kind of way but afterwards my mind and attention start to wander, and after an hour, I find myself actually bored by all the noise.

Despite probably being the most controlled of Verhoeven’s film of this time, I can’t say I feel terribly differently about this adaptation of a (very) short Philip K. Dick story. For my taste, the film’s Dickian moments are drowned out by Verhoeven’s excess, the tendency to shout plot beats instead of simply hitting them, the terrible action movie one-liners Schwarzenegger spouts (like the constructed everyman he’s supposed to be, right?). There is, to be fair, a lot of imagination on screen when it comes to production design and worldbuilding, and the SF action movie meets spy conspiracy thriller plot is well enough constructed, it is just all drowned out by the soup of visual and aural noise Verhoeven builds up. That situation is of course not improved when what should be the film’s human anchor is represented by Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of an actor. Schwarzenegger’s line delivery is at its worst here, and his attempts at presenting as a human are deeply unconvincing.

The action is of course as competently realized as possible, but I can’t say I ever felt emotionally or viscerally involved (re-)watching any of it.

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