The Wonders of Wreck-It Ralph

Not much was made of the rules that Disney and PIXAR broke last year, but if you look closely enough, it’s clear that 2012 was a ground-breaking moment for the myths our brother mouse typically prescribes. ‘Brave’ and ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ are two sides of a rather elegant coin: one a revisionist fairy tale in which a take-no-prisoners princess shakes off the pressure to conform to something more ‘ladylike’, and finds she can have a pretty decent relationship with her mother, both of whom end up more human (and funkier) as a result; the other an inversion of bully stories, in which the strongman is freed to use his clumsiness for good, and discovers what might more superficially be described as his ‘feminine’ side along the way.

‘Wreck-It Ralph’, released on BluRay this week, is the tale of Ralph, doomed to be the villain in a Mario Bros.- style game, trying to break free from his bumpiness, and Vanellope, a girl with a glitch who just wants to be allowed to take part. It’s gloriously inventive – an opening sequence covers the gamut of video game nostalgia, evokes the power of 12-step programs (the computerized ‘bad guys’ keep their meetings anonymous by meeting in PacMan’s central pen – at last we know what that’s for), and even has a morose Satan giving advice on how to make peace with inner conflict. It’s visually alive – with a delicious revisualization of Grand Central station as an architectural cornerstone; and its narrative is endlessly imaginative – blending the archetypes of Donkey Kong and racing games with cookery and dress-up, and inviting both Ralph and Vanellope to participate in all of it (not to mention the love affair between a butch female soldier and the wistful Felix), this movie’s take on playing with gender is kind of revolutionary.

It’s been criticized (including by me on first viewing) for having a villain – in the form of King Candy – who may see to represent the long line of Disney ‘evil queer’ stereotypes (think of Scar in ‘The Lion King’, Kaa in ‘The Jungle Book’, and Jafar in ‘Aladdin’). But a second look at the context suggests otherwise – Candy is a more faux foppish royalty than homophobically effeminate, and the heart of this film has a macho guy baking cakes while a princess becomes something like Indiana Jones.

So it’s a film about how different is good, masculine and feminine are inventions that only serve us as far as we want them to, and most of all, the age-old notion that you’re fine just as you are. That’s not far off a military recruiting slogan of course (‘be all that you can be’ fits with how the casual militarization of childhood in video games is not ignored here, along with continuing the unfortunate tendency to deal with the bad guy by simply killing him); but ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ does a much better job of imagining a hero’s journey that’s more about becoming human than warrior. It’s a perfect companion piece to ‘Brave’, and a huge leap forward in the way Disney teaches us to imagine finding the gift within. It’s also over-the-top entertaining, deliriously funny, and the best kids’ film for adults that the Mouse has produced in years.

For Your Consideration

The best joke I heard about the Super Bowl blackout was that it might have been an extended and rather spectacular “For Your Consideration” ad for Beasts of the Southern Wild, the elegant, eloquent, and elevating film set in the Louisiana environs near the New Orleans Superdome.
That movie, to my mind the best of the nine 2013 Best Picture Oscar nominees, a group of films selected to climb the strange competitive ladder in which artists are expected to act like racehorses and producers like the colorfully-jacketed employees of the New York Stock Exchange, is a magnificent work of art. It’s magnificent because it makes something hugely universal out of a tiny story, and art because it does this with supreme craft and political meaning.

It’s the anti-Argo, an unconsciously self-congratulatory thriller that starts well, with at least a semblance of acknowledgement that the problems faced by modern Iran are partly America’s doing, yet descends into a “white savior vs brown savage” cliche that would make Dances with Wolves look like it was written by bell hooks (who, for other reasons, doesn’t like Beasts either). It should be obvious that there is so much more to Iran than angry mobs and ruthless cops, but portraying one nervous housekeeper isn’t enough to reflect the pressing need for today’s Westerners to face our complicity in a system of media and artistic representation and political belligerence that sustains the myth that Tehran’s streets are innately more primitive than those found inside the Beltway.
So my recommendation in this Oscar month is that we take note of the nine films nominated by watching the best one, and doing eight other things instead of obsessing about gold statuettes. My modest proposals follow.

Read the rest of this post at Fuller Seminary’s Reel Spirituality blog

With Gratitude for Richard Twiss

My elder, mentor and brother Richard Twiss died, aged only 58, on Saturday February 9th, after a heart attack in Washington, DC. Since I met Richard four or five years ago, I felt close to him; and it’s clear from the tributes emerging since his death this weekend that many others felt the same. I know that he loved me, that he wanted me to succeed, that he welcomed me as an immigrant into his native land. I will miss him a great deal. Of course, many others knew him better, and will memorialize him more elegantly, but I want to record some of the thoughts I’ve had since hearing of his sudden illness and death.

The first time we met, my friend Denise and I ended up sharing a tall round table with Richard in a Valley Forge, PA pub. Something in the air led us to decide to tell our best stories, our wildest versions of ourselves. I felt compelled to speak of the time I took all my clothes off in an attempt to intervene with someone who appeared to be close to a violent act, in a front yard in Santa Cruz; Richard laughed with me, the laughter of one who knows that sometimes a crazy fucked-up world requires crazy fucked-up interventions. It was the first time I had ever told that story. Richard had a way of helping you to find the better version of your story, and to live from a place of amused courage.

Next time I saw him we were in Atlanta for a public conversation on post-colonial theology, empire religion, and hearing the voices that are typically ignored. I was going through some personal difficulties at the time, and he invested time to listen and care; enough to call later to ask how things were going. Richard was realistic about personal suffering, and willing to sit in the ashes with you when you were going through it.

Following

1999 was the last great year for cinema until 2012 rolled around – and what might have been the greatest thing about it was the emergence of new/newish film-makers ready to reinvent the medium, and veterans trying to outdo them.  PT Anderson, David O Russell, Kimberly Peirce and Spike Jonze all released movies that firmly established themselves as new auteurs, ‘The Blair Witch Project’ shocked business mavens as much as audiences by showing how you could make a hundred million dollars out of a camcordered walk in the woods, and Michael Mann reinvented ‘All the President’s Men’.

Films of the Year 2012 (Part 3)

Check out part 1 and part 2 first…

16 Films of the Year, maybe best, maybe favorite, certainly the ones that inspired the most for me:

• The Grey – an honest action film about death and monsters, as if Robert Bresson had directed The Thing
• Django Unchained – which deserves more reflection than I can give on one too recent viewing, but seems to do for the Western what Inglourious Basterds did for the war film: made its tastelessness the obvious point, confronted the audience with our complicity in violence, and reimagined history from the perspective of marginalized people rather than those who typically control narratives.
• The Story of Film – hugely ambitious, quixotic, romantic and personal in the best sense, a deep history of cinema and headlines of the 20th century sociocultural landscape, and 15 hours I would love even if I wasn’t mates with the guy who made it
• The Cabin in the Woods – a film about re-enacting the myth of redemptive violence that avoids re-enacting it
• The Pirates! Band of Misfits – the single funniest night at the movies I had: the smartest comedy for kids and adults alike since Jim Henson’s heyday.
• Moonrise Kingdom – about childhood and adulthood and the life in between, symmetrical in its physical design, rough-edged in its heart
• Brave – Disney’s most pro-feminist film
• Beasts of the Southern Wild – as elevating as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and as socially valuable as Studs Terkel
• The Dark Knight Rises – a definite tragedy, confronting the audience with our own communal selfishness in demanding a perfect king
• Ruby Sparks – one of the best films I’ve seen about the creative process, the anxiety of influence, and the responsibility of power
• The Master – so much has been written that it doesn’t bear repeating here, so I’ll just note how nuanced a film that portrays its dominant figure as a manipulative monster is when it allows for the possibility that his leadership might have some positive benefits
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower – the most honest movie about high school I’ve seen
• Looper – the third film by Rian Johnson, and the latest to imagine characters who want to take the lives of others seriously; a sci-fi delight that also reaches for (and touches) moral profundity
• Holy Motors – a movie on fire with love and regret, for a partner, for people, for a city, for a country, for cinema, for life
• Cloud Atlas – as if Star Wars, The Sound of Music, Blade Runner, The China Syndrome, Maurice, The Matrix, After Life, Ikiru, the Carry On films, Planet of the Apes, and The Last Temptation of Christ decided to get together and remake themselves as one massive holiday favorite
• Seven Psychopaths – the most entertaining and thoughtful treatment yet of how to face the violence in our stories by telling a new one. And way more than that.

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Films of the Year 2012 (Part 2)

Continued from Part 1

Underrated Films of 2012:

• John Carter (more fun and alive, and taking place in a more real world than anything in pulpy sci-fi since Flash Gordon)
• The Hunger Games (surprisingly thoughtful engagement with the myth of sacrifice to absorb oppression)
• The Three Stooges (touching and hilarious – but maybe it helps to see it on a plane)
• Men in Black 3 (some may hate me for saying this, but in terms of his approach to time and visual imagery, Barry Sonenfeld has a Godardian imagination)
• Jack Reacher (whose politics are more nuanced than you’d expect)

Over-rated Films of 2012:

• Searching for Sugarman – a lovely story, but way too long, and felt a little too much of an attempt to shoe-horn a mystery trope into a narrative whose makers clearly already knew the ending before they started filming
• Arbitrage – along with Les Miserables, less than the sum of its shiny parts
• Argo – which tells about 40% of the story that deserved to be told: just once I hoped for a Hollywood treatment of Iran that would seek to do the Iranian people justice, rather than one in which a white savior rescues his own people (not an inappropriate companion piece to The Last King of Scotland, which was at least honest enough to have its hero flee Uganda and look guilty about it)
• Wreck-It Ralph – a beautiful world, with hilarious grace notes, but a derivative story and ‘evil sissy’ homo/bi/transphobic stereotype for a villain (though I’ve agreed to see it again in case I’m missing something)

Worst films of 2012:

• Man on a Ledge – offensively stupid
• This Means War – offensively boring
• Mirror Mirror – offensively psychopathic
• Rock of Ages – offensively bland
• Dark Shadows – offensively pet-projecty to the point of being of no interest to anyone not called Tim Burton
• Prometheus – lacking even the appearance of an attempt at philosophical substance or narrative coherence
• Ted – which made me laugh but whose gender politics are embarrassing
• (Thus far I’ve only been able to sustain the first hour of The Hobbit, which I found interminably boring, but that doesn’t constitute a review.  I’ll see the rest of it and report when I’ve given Bela Tarr and David Cronenberg their due.)

Second best of 2012: 

• Under African Skies
• Safety Not Guaranteed
• Killer Joe
• Robot & Frank
• Anna Karenina
• Skyfall
• A Late Quartet
• Lincoln
• Silver Linings Playbook
• Killing Them Softly
• Life of Pi

Best re-releases:

• Titanic: magnificent epic filmmaking with a pro-feminist stance
• Lawrence of Arabia – an anti-war movie about the human soul
• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp – an anti-patriotic film about the human soul

Best of the year, if only for one thing:

• The Dictator (for the speech on democracy); Prometheus (for its visual design and actionist ambition – and for being the best-worst/worst-best movie-movie out there this year)
• 360 (a monotonous and distancing film, but worth it for Anthony Hopkins’ remarkable AA contribution)
• Hope Springs (for two wonderful central performances reflecting on aging and sex)
• Flight (for a relatively honest depiction of alcoholism and the beginnings of recovery)

Part 3 later today – the 15 films of the year.  Not calling them ‘best’ or ‘favorite’, but these are the movies that I admired or loved the most.

Films of the Year 2012 (Part 1)

2012 is the new 1999, by far the richest year in US American cinema since the days in which Magnolia, The Insider, Being John Malkovich and Three Kings could be released within months of each other.

I’m not a full time critic, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to devote time to participating in this noble endeavor.  (If you want to know more of my thoughts on what critics are for, you can read ‘em here.) I’m also grateful to be in conversation with a community of wonderful writers and friends, including Mark (whose magnificent 15 hour long Story of Film is now on Netflix and iTunes), Steve (who has graciously promised to watch my favorite film of the year if I re-watch one of his), Glenn (whose blog is a delightful smorgasbord of autobiography and critical reflection), and most often my co-host at the Film Talk and close colleague and friend, Jett (from whom I learn weekly).

One note before we begin: This year I moved to a less conurbative part of the country, to coin a phrase, so I have probably seen somewhat fewer films than in previous years, and definitely fewer non-English language films; studios seem not to care enough about Western North Carolina audiences to invest much in press screenings, nor distributors enough to believe that we can read subtitles just as well here as anywhere, so I should acknowledge some films released this year that I am planning to catch up with as soon as I can:  Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Coriolanus, Miss Bala, Rampart, This is Not a Film, The Turin Horse, Monsieur Lazhar, Marley, Rust and Bone, Oslo August 31st, The Woman in the Fifth, Your Sister’s Sister, Take This Waltz, Cosmopolis, Amour, End of Watch, Dredd, Trouble with the Curve, Frankenweenie, The Paperboy, The Sessions.

Zero Dark Thirty, The Impossible, and Promised Land aren’t here yet; I’ll see This is 40 in the next couple of days.  As I see these I will adapt this post to absorb relevant changes.