film

Thoughts on (Fictional) Nuclear Apocalypses

/ JD Byrne / 2 Comments

I’m a child of the 1980s. By the time Ronald Reagan took office I was old enough to be aware of the wider world. That included the Cold War and the fact that there was a looming threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over our heads. That’s a lot to handle for a ten-year old.

Thankfully, I had my (decade) older brother, Todd, to put it in perspective. He assured me there was no point in worrying because there was nothing we could do about it, anyway. Beyond that, where I grew up in South Charleston, West Virginia, was a hotbed of the chemical industry and was likely a first-strike target. If the Soviets loosed the dogs of war, my brother said, we’d be vaporized in an instant, with no pain or worry about how to survive.

Once the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union fell apart the specter of superpower-led nuclear annihilation faded in the face of terror attacks and climate change. But the potential for nuclear apocalypse is still with us and fiction (in its various forms) is still trying to deal with it. What’s so utterly fascinating – or depressing – is how similarly the topic has been treated over the years.

I fell down this rabbit hole last fall, starting when I saw A House of Dynamite, the latest film from Kathryn Bigelow.

It’s about a sudden, unexpected launch of an ICBM from the Pacific which, initially, everyone figures is just another test that will eventually fall into the ocean. It doesn’t take long, however, for the math to show that it’s headed for the Midwest and, more specifically, Chicago. Over the course of three 17-minute loops we see people on various levels trying to deal. An attempted shootdown fails, leaving the president with a decision about retaliation. But against who? And how much?

Watching A House of Dynamite brings out some sickening déjà vu if you’ve consumed almost any nuclear fiction in the past. Inevitably, we hurtle toward the only response that ever seems to be an option – full retaliation, because if we don’t we might not get a chance to do it later (and the American people, what’s left of the, wouldn’t tolerate that).

A House of Dynamite feels like it’s in conversation with some earlier movies, even if only subconsciously. The one that immediately sprang to mine for me, and which I rewatched immediately afterward, was 1983’s  WarGames.

The first loop in A House of Dynamite takes place in the White House situation room, which has a wall full of monitors displaying data. The pivotal scene in WarGames takes place deep inside the mountain headquarters of NORAD, which has an even more immense wall of monitors.

Our characters are all locked in there because the computer that controls the United States’ nuclear arsenal (installed after actual humans failed to launch missiles during an exercise) tries to launch a retaliation for a Soviet attack that is, in fact, just a simulation. In order to teach the computer the error of its ways, it’s forced to play Tic-Tac-Toe against itself to discover the concept of futility. Then it switches to running through scenario after scenario for nuclear war, all of which lead to the same end – complete destruction. Disaster is averted when the computer, famously, realizes:

The tie in with A House of Dynamite, for me, is that regardless of which “variant” the computer entertains – from all-out initial attack to “minor” exchanges by smaller countries – the result is the same: everybody throws everything they have at each other. There is, it appears, only one end point to any nuclear exchange.

In that sense, the other movie I immediately thought of, Fail Safe, actually has a happy ending!

I actually read the 1962 book Fail-Safe before rewatching the 1964 movie and, I have to say, this is one of those situations where the movie greatly improves on the book. Fail-Safe, like many of these movies and books, has a great ticking clock creating dramatic tension. The book wastes too much time getting there, while the movie is much more efficient.

“There,” in this case, is a mistake involving “fail-safe points” used by the United States Air Force. American bombers would fly toward those points, waiting for a recall notice that would turn them around. Without the notice, they go on to hit their targets in the Soviet Union. Most importantly, they ignore any attempts to turn them around. Due to some kind of glitch (the book and movie differ on precisely what) one squadron doesn’t get the recall notice and heads for Moscow.

What follows is a very tense unravelling of expected behavior. Trying to stave off starting a nuclear war, the Americans help the Soviets try to shoot down the bombers, but one still makes it through. Meanwhile, a debate rages in the United States about what to make of all this and whether it could be an opportunity to strike the Soviets for real (a theory pushed in the movie by . . . Walter Matthau?!). In the end, the president comes up with a horrible bargain – once the American bombers hit Moscow, another American bomber will drop the same bombs on New York City. An eye for an eye, essentially. The movie ends in pretty chilling fashion.

But, as I said, this is actually a happy ending! Rather than falling into complete catastrophe, the higher ups in the United States and Soviet Union manage to at least limit the damage and prevent an all-out nuclear war. Regardless, the message of the book and movie are clear – we don’t have a good grasp on nuclear weapons and how they might get used by mistake and what that means for the world. I’ll add that the attempt by some to avoid responsibility for all this by blaming the machines sounds very loudly in the modern AI-besotted world.

Compare that to, say, 1964’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which shares a lot of plot scaffolding with Fail Safe (to the point there was litigation about it). Strangelove offers no hope whatsoever – not only is there nothing you, personally, can do to stop a nuclear apocalypse, the people that could do something are venal idiots that are likely to fuck things up in the end. In Strangelove’s world the only thing left to do is laugh (and crank up the Vera Lynn – anybody remember her?).

What all these works share, however, is a focus primarily on those people making the decisions. A House of Dynamite’s three loops work steadily up the chain, from information gatherers to experts to political end decision makers, but these are all still people whose jobs are to deal with the possibility of nuclear war. Given that I’m not sure what it says that, in all of them, the nuclear wars never start (or almost start) on purpose. It’s always an accident or someone else’s fault. As Men At Work sang, it’s a mistake.

That’s not the case when the focus is on regular folks dealing with the impact of a nuclear attack.

Growing up, the most famous version of that story was The Day After a 1983 made-for-TV movie (directed by Nicholas Meyer, fresh off Wrath of Kahn) that depicted a nuclear attack on the United State through the eyes of regular folks in Kansas and Missouri (what’s the hard on for nuking the American Midwest?). I don’t remember the actual movie itself, but I do remember the fallout (so to speak) from its broadcast. It hit pretty hard, even getting to Reagan.

Years later, I heard about the “British version” of that movie, called Threads. It has an epic reputation that’s on par with Magma albums or aggressive art installations. I figured this was a good time to check it out.

Threads stands in Sheffield for the American Midwest, but more importantly it depicts a population that has no plausible connection to their fate. The Americans in The Day After, theoretically, had a say in who ran the country and built up the nuclear arsenal that was unleashed. A strong theme of Threads is that the citizens of Sheffield were likely to be atomized in a conflict in which they had no part to play, aside from radioactive cannon fodder.

For that reason it’s, truthfully, the first third or so of Threads that really worked best for me. The way it portrays society starting to fray at the mere possibility of the bombs dropping (we learn, entirely from news reports, that the Soviets invaded Iran and the United States is pushing back) is entirely too realistic. Police crack down on protestors, some people just don’t want to think about it, others are obsessed. It feels very real and human. The stuff after the bombs drop, by contrast, is horrifying and depressing but also completely one note. There’s no humanity left in the aftermath, which might be realistic but feels too pessimistic even for my cynical heart. That said, had to have a lot of puppy therapy after Threads.

Even worse, maybe, in its own way, was On the Beach.

I read the 1957 book by Nevil Shute, forsaking the movie version starring (among others) Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire, which just doesn’t seem like his kind of movie. Set in Australia, it’s the story of several people – all connected to  a US naval officer and his Australian liaison – riding out a nuclear exchange and waiting for the fallout to slide far enough south that it kills them. As in some of the WarGames scenarios that flash on the screen, this war started small but bloomed into a world-engulfing conflagration. But, as with Threads, it had little if anything to do with the Australians who make up most of the cast.

The driving force of On the Beach is fatalism. This is a story of people who are waiting to die, not trying to figure out how to survive what’s coming. Nobody mentions a shelter, nobody works on how to live with fallout. The most you get is a futile submarine voyage that confirms that everybody else on the planet is dead.

And everybody is fairly stoic about it. There are various forms of denial, sure, but nobody decides to go indulge in any horrific or taboo conduct now that the end of days are on the horizon. One character (the one played by Astaire in the movie) manages to get his hands on a Ferrari F1 car and enters it in the most ghoulish motor race ever put to the page (makes 1955 at Le Mans seem tame), but that’s about it. Mostly, everybody kills themselves once the fallout starts to settle in.

So, yeah, not the most uplifting of reads. But I think it definitely captured a feeling of the time, one that people probably didn’t want to think about too much.

To round things up, a shoutout to a recent American Experience documentary, Bombshell.

Not fiction, but about fiction – specifically, the propaganda efforts around the development and deployment of the atomic bombs against Japan. Covering only up to about 1948, it shows how even from the dawn of the nuclear age there have been stories told about it, outright fictions (largely, attempting to cover up the effects of fallout after the bombing of Japan). There’s always a narrative, somewhere, that somebody has to sell.

Where does that leave us in 2026? Fuck if I know. What nuclear fiction has taught me is that we’re likely to blunder into something awful and be unable to contain it. And that for all the decades we’ve lived with these weapons, we still don’t really know what to do with them. Which is terrifying. In which case, we’re right back where I was in the 1980s listening to my brother – ain’t nothing we can really do about it and hope one hits nearby and puts us out of our misery.

2025 – My Year In Movies

/ JD Byrne / 1 Comment

Having covered the small screen from 2025, let’s talk about the big one . . .

I had a pretty good 2025 when it came to movies. My wife and I made some effort to get out to the theater to see things on the big screen more than in the past few years, which meant I actually saw some new releases when they were actually new! Of course, the in-theater experience can be a little odd sometimes, so most of what I saw last year was at home.

That included a movie that, while not near my favorite for 2025, has caused me to do a lot of thinking.  That’s the latest from Kathryn Bigelow, A House of Dynamite.

Released on Netflix, it’s the story of a sudden, unexpected nuclear missile launch from somewhere (we never learn where) that kicks the United States’ response plans into action. It plays out in real time (three times over) as the missile heads for Chicago and a response is weighed and (maybe) retaliation launched. The time-loop structure drains some of the tension as it goes around, but I like how each time worked further up the chain of command from information gatherers to strategists and decision makers (ultimately, the president). And while the cut-to-black ending didn’t bother me as much as some people, I thought the couple of coda scenes tacked on afterwards were pointless. Regardless, what this movie did was to send me deep down a rabbit hole of fiction of the nuclear apocalypse, of which I’ll have more to say later.

Several of my favorite movies of 2025 actually came out in 2024, but I only got around to watching them after the start of the year.

That’s how I wound up seeing Anora just before it won Best Picture last year. Yeah, it was that good.

The story of a stripper/hooker who gets swept into the world of the son of a rich Russian oligarch, it’s funny, bawdy, and really sweet in equal measure. Mike Madison carried the movie as the titular character (deserved her Oscar, she did). I kind of expected to be underwhelmed by this, and maybe that’s why it hit me all the harder. I wrote some more about Anora here.

I had a better idea of what to expect from A Different Man, but it still hit pretty hard, too.

It has a simple pitch: a miserably aspiring actor with a disfiguring disease undergoes an experimental therapy to cure it, only to wind up cast in a play about a man with that condition – being advised by another man with the same condition who’s getting along quite well in life. This could have gone a very saccharine “after school special” kind of way, but it didn’t, partly due to Sebastian Stan’s amazing performance. It asks questions of identity, of what the world owes us, and how to deal. Highly recommended.

A more difficult watch, definitely, but just as highly recommended is September 5.

The particular September 5 in this case comes in 1972 at the Summer Olympics in Munich when terrorists attacked the Israeli team. This is not a broad overview of the event – for that see the 1999 documentary One Day in September, which is chilling – but focuses narrowly on how ABC Sports, who were covering the games, reacted to the situation and brought the news of it to the world. It’s very technical and, ultimately, it’s about people confronted with an astounding situation and dealing with it as best they can. Has some resonance today, no?

Home is where I normally watch documentaries – new, old, or otherwise – and 2025 was no exception. A couple were pretty disturbing, while another was uplifting in a way that made its “big screen” adaptation abysmal.

Without a doubt, one of the weirdest and saddest things I saw last year was The Contestant.

A 2023 British documentary about a late 1990s Japanese reality show, it covers the fame (infamy?) of a guy known as Nasubi (meaning “eggplant,” due to the shape of his face – and, yes, that might be where the emoji comes from) who went on a show where he lived in a tiny apartment, by himself, and had to subsist entirely on winnings from magazine sweepstakes competitions. Producers threw in a little bit of food, but he was on his own for the most part. Critically, he thought this would all be edited and broadcast later – only it was shown live (some of it streaming on the nascent internet). The whole thing is a wild indictment of just what you can get people to watch on TV and the impact it might have on the people involved.

Just as sad, but for completely different reasons, was another 2025 Netflix release, The Perfect Neighbor.

It’s the story of a Florida neighborhood fully of playing kids (most of color) and the “perfect neighbor” (a racist white woman) who shot and killed their mother one night. The film is told almost entirely through body camera and dash camera footage from cops, which provides an interesting perspective (although not a completely objective one – don’t be fooled). It mostly plays out as slow motion tragedy (we know from the jump she kills somebody), but it’s really well put together and leaves you feeling like you’ve been on the corner in that neighborhood watching as things slowly simmered and then suddenly exploded.

A much happier outcome is portrayed in Next Goal Wins, a 2014 documentary about the improbable struggles of the American Samoan national soccer team.

Having been blown out by Australia 31-0 in 2001 World Cup Qualifying (a result that caused Australia to switch regions in search of more competitive games), the powers that be hired Thomas Rongen – among whose prior stops included a stretch coaching DC United (1999 Supporter’s Shield and MLS Cup winners!) – to turn things around. Which meant, maybe, winning a game during the next cycle. That happens and its as heart swelling as any game could be, but only because by that time you’re fully invested in the amateurs that make up the team (including a transgender player, highlighting Somoa’s history of more diverse views on gender identity) and Rongen himself (fighting through grief at his daughter’s death). It’s just a great story well told.

Which is more than could be said of the 2023 narrative film of the same name, starring Michael Fassbender as Rongen. I watched it by mistake (they have the same title, I rented it first) and it’s just awful, turning Rongen into a needless villain and smoothing down a lot of interesting angles. Do yourself a favor, stay away from the Hollywood version on this one.

Of course, at home is the only place I could have seen a couple of stone cold classics last year.

I didn’t even know Akira Kurosawa made a movie called High & Low until I found out last year that Spike Lee was doing a remake.

It’s the story of a wealthy businessman (who’s having issues, of course) whose son is kidnapped and he agrees to pay a ransom. Only it’s not his kid, it’s his chauffer’s taken by mistake. Will he do the right thing? That’s the first half of the movie, with the back half a tight police procedural tracking down the kidnapper. It’s wild to see Japanese cops work so selflessly, professionally, and with coordination, versus the usual rule-bending cowboys favored in American movies.

I wrote a bit about High & Low and how Lee’s joint, Highest2Lowest compare here. It’s not the masterpiece the original his, but it’s pretty good with some excellent set pieces.

The other old movie I finally got around to seeing last year was The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin’s satire of Hitler and fascism.

Can’t imagine why that felt sadly relevant in 2025 (or 2026).

All that said, I wanted to highlight a couple of great movies I’m very glad I got to see on the big screen.

The first was Sinners, the long-simmering passion project from Ryan Coogler.

This was my favorite new movie I saw in 2025. I was a little suspicious (at one point someone said it was a musical, which, no thanks?) when I first read about it and the effusive praise it got upon release just upped my natural anti-hype reflex. It lived up to it, big time. The world building was completely immersive. The scene where the song in the juke joint turns into a rhapsody across time and culture was amazing. And Michael B. Jordan brought more reality to the one-guy-playing-two-dudes thing than most.

The other great new movie I saw in theaters was Weapons.

It starts with a fabulous premise – what if, one night, all the kids in a particular elementary school class just disappear (technically they run away, but still). The movie does a good job of showing how unsettled the town gets, where blame gets put initially, and the like. The fractured timeline works pretty effectively, so much so that when it lock in for the home stretch it’s kind of disappointing (shockingly hilarious violence excepted). Still, a pretty awesome telling, for the most part. 

But, at the end of the year, it was back to the small screen to see what appears to be the current Best Picture front-runner, One Battle After Another.

This was another one that where my hype reflex kicked in, but it met the challenge, for the most part. I love Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood so I didn’t find that it reached those heights, but it’s very good. Love the way Di Caprio’s character fails his way through the movie (although he does wind up in the right place when needed), but the supporting cast is just as good (including Chase Infinity, who plays his daughter). Johnny Greenwood’s score is, of course, great. All in all if this kind of “not his best work” Paul Thomas Anderson can make that’s really saying something.

So much for sights and sounds – next week we wind things up with words.

Highs and Lows

/ JD Byrne / 2 Comments

When I found out earlier this year that a new Spike Lee Joint was on the way, I was excited. When I found out it was an adaptation of an Akira Kurosawa film – one I’d not yet seen – I was doubly thrilled. So how does Highest 2 Lowest compare to High and Low? Not as well as it might have, but I kind of think that’s the point. There will be spoilers aplenty!

It’s worth noting that both movies have their roots in a 1950s hard-boiled detective novel, King’s Ransom by Ed McBain.

No, not that McBain. “Ed McBain” was a pen name of Evan Hunter, who also wrote the book The Blackboard Jungle (on which the movie was based) and the screenplay for The Birds. King’s Ransom was part of a series of books dealing with a particular group of cops and tells the story of a wealthy magnate (named King, hence the title) who, while angling to take over his company, learns that his son has been kidnapped. The twist is that the kidnapped kid is actually his driver’s, which leads to a conflict as to whether King will pay the ransom or not.

Neither film, it turns out, is a particularly faithful adaptation of the book for a simple reason – in the book (so far as I can tell – I’ve not actually read it) King decides not to pay the ransom. The plot is entirely taken up in a will he/won’t he. As we’ll see, both movies use the ransom stuff as more of a jumping off point, although they go to entirely different places.

Both movies, though, at least use the same setup as the book. High and Low, which came out in 1963, stars Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune in the King role (since the names are basically the same in both movies I’ll refer mostly to actors’ names instead) as an executive leveraged to the hilt in an attempt to take over the shoe company he runs.

In Highest 2 Lowest, by contrast, Denzel Washington plays the aging head of a music label of which he’s trying to regain control.

He’s not in quite as much financial peril as Mifune, but the nature of his business raises bigger concerns (about, for instance, a historical driver of black culture being stripped for parts after a takeover). It’s a subtle difference, but an important one.

The relationship between mogul and driver is quite different, as well. Mifune’s relationship with his driver is purely business and plays out through rigid class distinctions. Their kids play together, but there’s never any forgetting who is the boss and who works for whom. Denzel, by contrast, has a much deeper relationship with his driver (played by Jeffery Wright), one that suggests common roots, if different life paths. The pairing of Denzel and Wright is great and Highest 2 Lowest is often best when it focuses on them, but the deepening of that relationship drains some of the suspense out of whether the ransom will eventually be paid.

Although there’s not really any doubt on that. Beyond the fact that there’s no back half of these movies without the ransom being paid, the fact is there really isn’t much of a moral argument against paying it. Practical, yes, but not moral. To have either Mifune or Denzel hold out would have ruined their characters (or made for very different movies). That said, how the decision gets made is also subtly different. Mifune never decides to “do the right thing” (so to speak) and pay the ransom, but agrees to a police scheme to pay it as part of an operation in which, he’s promised, they’ll get the money back. It’s unclear exactly why Denzel has a change of heart, although getting the money back is also mentioned by the cops he works with, too. I suspect that vagueness is intentional, but it’s a little frustrating.

Where both movies shine, in different ways, is the sequence where the ransom money is actually turned over. Both take place on trains. The kidnapper lures Mifune onto a train where he thinks the handoff will take place, only to be instructed to toss the bag with the money out a window going over a particular bridge. It’s a taut, tense sequence where it looks like everything is spiraling out of control, but actually isn’t. Denzel is likewise lured onto a train, a subway train bound for Yankee Stadium (allowing Spike Lee to indulge in some amusing Red Sox hate). It’s more sprawling than taught, but equally vibrant in a completely different way, accented with chanting Yankees fans and a chase through a Puerto Rican Day parade. Musically this is where Highest 2 Lowest is at its best, both in the propulsive jazz piano score and the sweet Latin fusion of the late Eddie Palmieri and his band (performing for the parade).

It’s here where the movies diverge greatly, leading one to ask whether “adaptation” is the right description for what Highest 2 Lowest is. Which one works better for you will probably come down to what you look for in movies.

In High and Low, once the money is dropped Mifune is almost entirely absent from the rest of the film. The focus shifts to the police who, with the kidnapped kid safely rescued, work on tracking down the kidnapper and the money. There’s some time spent with the kidnapper himself, as well, but we’re mostly with groups of cops trying to track down leads. The driver helps with one, but aside from a couple of quick check ins Mifune is absent. What proceeds is almost like a time capsule from an era were cops were dedicated and incorruptible, going above and beyond. It’s almost like a fairy tale.

Highest 2 Lowest, by contrast, slips into action movie mode. The cops here range from ineffectual to flat out racist and are more wedded to procedure than anything else. When Denzel, who we’ve been told over and over again has the best ears in the business, delivers a pretty damned good clue as to the kidnapper’s identity thanks to them, the cops shrug it off. The dedicated police procedural of Kurosawa’s film instead becomes a kind of buddy movie, with Denzel and Wright teaming up to find the kidnapper and get the money back. This allows Denzel to come face to face with the kidnapper (a rapper played by A$AP Rocky) in a cracking scene in a recording studio that has the rhythm of a rap battle. It also personalizes the motives of the kidnapper, for better or worse.

Oddly, then, both kind of come back together at the end. In High and Low Mifune, who has lost just about everything (some of the money was recovered, but not quickly enough to save his home, much less the corporate takeover), has a final confrontation with the kidnapper in prison, during which the kidnapper explains his motives. Highest 2 Lowest has a similar scene, although Denzel comes into it in a much better position, and it feels a little redundant given the prior confrontation in the recording studio. The motives are also quite different, with Mifune’s tormentor choosing him as an avatar of wealth lording it above the rest of society, while Rocky is bent out of shape at not being recognized specifically by Denzel for his musical talents. Highest 2 Lowest then ladles on a coda showing Denzel’s relaunch in life and business, a stark contrast with High and Low’s decidedly downer ending.

With all that said, does one work better than the other? Like I said, I think that it depends on what you’re looking for. In spite of their common roots, the movies are quite different and it’s unfair to judge Highest 2 Lowest against High and Low in the way you might judge a movie version of a book. They are different things getting at different ideas. And, if anything, the thing they’re least interested in are what they take from King’s Ransom.

Highest 2 Lowest has, for my money, more highs and lows than the prior film. Some scenes – the money drop and chase, Denzel’s initial confrontation with the kidnapper – are electric. Some others are a little sluggish, particularly in the first half. In fact, the critical consensus seems to be that the first half is bad, the second half good. I think that’s overly simplistic – High and Low’s first half skates by on a lot of technical mastery (framing, shot composition, etc.), which kind of overlooks how non-compelling the actual moral dilemma is. Highest 2 Lowest doesn’t get the same break. Highest 2 Lowest also offers the Denzel/Wright pairing, which is unlike anything in the other film. That said, while it does lead to some great work on screen, it also slightly undermines what tension there otherwise could be over whether the ransom is ever going to get paid.

Where High and Low shines is in its broader themes. My understanding is that some critics initially read it as an indictment of capitalism and I definitely get that. This is where Mifune’s business venture being less compelling than Denzel’s pays off because it makes his choice even more stark – he’s going to risk some poor boy’s life for shoes? Additionally, because it ends with Mifune basically stripped of everything it implies that he’s paying a price for not doing the right thing for the right reasons. High and Low also really lives up to its title, shifting from one milieu to the other halfway. Its kidnapper could have targeted any rich guy as a blow against the system.

In the end, I don’t think Highest 2 Lowest is going to supplant High and Low, but I don’t think that was its intent, either. It is, to borrow the musical terminology of the movie, a riff on a common theme. High and Low is a classic for good reason and one of the highlights of Kurosawa’s career. Highest 2 Lowest is pretty good, but I don’t think anybody will think it’s knocking any earlier Lee movies out of his top five or so. It’s definitely worth a watch.

Revisiting the Concept of a Heist

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

A few years ago I wrote a piece about “heist” stories and what they are (or should be). My concept of the heist is narrower than it is for others (including the OED) and boils down to this:

The distinction, for me at least, comes down to brute force. A robbery can be elaborate and kinetic and exciting – think the beginning of The Dark Knight – but, at the end of the day, it’s “your money or your life.” It’s simple, effective, and brutal. “Heist” conjures up something more clever, more deeply thought out. It’s about getting the object of the robbery without the violence. It’s a better, more elevated, kind of crime, if you will.

The distinction came back to mind recently when the wife and I watched Heist, a 2001 David Mamet film starting Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo, and host of others.

As you might expect, it involves thefts gone bad, but do they actually live up to my stickler’s definition of what a heist is?

There are actually two thefts in the movie, the first is more setup and the second the main event (the titular heist, one assumes). The first definitely doesn’t feel much like a heist to me. Yes, there is some subterfuge involved – the thieves drug the morning coffee of the employees of the jewelry store they’re going to hit, but that’s close to the line in terms of brute force (courts would consider the use of poison to be “violent,” in most instances). What clearly is brute force is the way they actually get in to the store – they just break down the door. Literally, it’s a forced entry. So I’d say this job is more a straight up robbery than a heist.

The second job is definitely more like it. The target is a bunch of Swiss gold on a cargo jet that’s about to leave the country. This is a heist, albeit one that doesn’t go off without a hitch. The plan is all subterfuge and distraction. The only violence involved arises because of an unexpected issue. When push comes to shove, Hackman’s character walks right in pretending to be somebody he’s not and walks out with the loot. Hell, the police response is more due to the diversionary explosion the crew uses at another part of the airport (this crew loves them some diversionary explosions) than the theft itself!

Indeed, that’s one of the neat things about the movie – there’s hardly any police presence in it. There are cops about (there’s one tense scene where a state trooper stumbles on their prep and a young hothead nearly turns it into a shootout), but there are no dogged investigators bearing down on the crew after the big score. Rather, they tear themselves apart in a series of betrayals and double-crosses. It’s too much (why care about what’s happening when it’s certain to be upended in a few minutes?), but it gets at another key element in distinguishing a heist from a garden-variety robbery – the ability to get away with the goods.

So, in the end, how heisty is Heist? Fairly heisty, I would say. The initial job is a straight up robbery, but the big set piece definitely has heist vibes. Doesn’t make it inherently more interesting than the first one, but it’s more compelling in different ways. It’s fun, which is a key to a good heist, in my opinion – even if the end result is an awful lot of dead folks.

Storytelling Is Not Lying (Or Is It?)

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

Years ago, Ricky Gervais made a movie (with his writing/directing partner Matthew Robinson) called The Invention of Lying.

Gervais starred (along with my high school classmate Jennifer Garner) as a screenwriter in a world where lying doesn’t exist. As a result, he’s limited to only writing movies about historical events since fiction does not exist. He winds up discovering how to lie, part of which is being able to write a fictional screenplay.

The movie itself is fine, but the part about fiction not being able to exist in a world without lying always stuck in my craw. Then, a few weeks ago, I saw this on Facebook:

And that sticking came back with a vengeance (although she was sharing it in a humorous way). Because, you see, the notion that fiction – storytelling – is “lying” is simple-minded bullshit.

George Constanza famously said that a lie isn’t really a lie if you believe it, but that kind of goes both ways – a lie is really only a lie if the people hearing it expect it to be true. This is most evident when you’re talking about lying in court – perjury. Any witness, before they say a word to a jury or answer a single question, either takes an oath to or affirm that they are going to tell the truth. Jurors are primed to believe them.

But the same is true for most everyday interactions. When I ask my wife how her day was I don’t expect her to lie to me, after all. We may not be completely accurate with others all the time (that’s probably beyond the capability of human brains), but, for the most part, we’re not trying to lie to others on a regular basis. There’s an expectation of truth, at the very least.

Fiction, by contrast, announces itself from the start. “This is not real,” it says, “this is made up.” Even if there are close cases on the margins (including, ironically, stories about historical events and figures), nobody would ever say that The Lord of the Rings or 2001 or what have you were anything other than made up stories designed to entertain and enlighten. They are not presented as fact.

Of course, sometimes storytellers lie as part of the fiction. Fargo famously starts with a disclaimer:

This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

Amusingly, the Coen Brothers have changed their own story over the years as to whether the story of Fargo had some basis in real events or was completely made up. Does that make the movie any more of a “lie” either way? No! It’s a work of fiction, a story being told by storytellers. We’re not supposed to take it as truth.

For a certain definition of “truth,” of course. The argument goes that fiction can often get at truths about the human experience that non-fiction can have a hard time grappling with. That’s probably correct in some instances, although I can’t speak from experience. The stories I write are, I hope, entertaining and engaging, but any brush with deeper cosmic truths is probably coincidental.

As a wise man once said:

So, yeah, writers and other storytellers do make stuff up. It’s kind of the business model (the hard part is making up stuff nobody else has come up with yet!). But that’s what people think we do, right? Nobody could ever possibly believe we’re telling the truth.

Or maybe I’m full of shit? You’ll never know!

On the Joys of Going to the Movies

/ JD Byrne / 1 Comment

I listen to several different podcasts about movies and if there’s one thing they all have in common it’s praise for the experience of seeing movies in the theater. Indeed, they exhort listeners to go out to theaters and see movies with others and enjoy the kind of communal experience you just can’t have at home, no matter how good your setup is from a technical standpoint. Recent experience suggests they might be overselling things.

A couple of weeks ago the wife and I did something we haven’t done in years – we actually went to the theater to see a real, grown-up, R-rated movie, the new Soderberg flick Black Bag, which I enthusiastically recommend.

We’ve gone to theaters in the past (less frequently since COVID hit, of course), but usually for the kind of big-screen spectacle popcorn movie that makes Scorsese itch. Those, to me, are more made for the big crowd thing than smaller movies that you have to engage with a little more. But this was the first time we’d been to see something like this in quite a while.

Things got off to an inauspicious start as there was absolutely nobody in the lobby of the theater complex (attached to the one mall in the area that remains thriving) when we arrived – no patrons, no employees. That meant we had to buy tickets via a kiosk, which went smoothly enough, although some vital information about the showing we were going to was left out (more on that in a moment).

Around the corner the concession stand was manned by a couple of young kids, but the crux of the moviegoing experience – popcorn and drinks – was all self-serve (the kids ran the registers, at least). There was a menu of other stuff that I suppose they would have made for you upon request, but we’d just had lunch so it wasn’t much of a concern. Still, we’ve not even made it into the theater yet and the experience is kind of cold and off-putting.

Our theater was at the very end of the corridor (not a problem!), which gave us the chance to walk past a handful of other theaters, some with movies playing. Some of the doors were open, others weren’t, but in either event you could hear what was going on inside pretty well. Not the best of omens for a satisfying movie experience. Next door to us the new Captain America flick was well underway.

Since we were early I took the chance to wander back up the corridor for a bathroom break. On the way back I noticed that one of the other theaters was in the middle of Anora, apparently rereleased on the back of its Best Picture Oscar win. It was during one of the louder more expletive-laden parts, so I decided to peek in and drink in a few minutes on the big screen, since we only got to see it at home. Inside there was nothing on the screen – no picture, no flickering, no nothing. But the soundtrack was going strong. I assume there was nobody in there (I was a little scared to look, frankly), but then why run the sound? It was just another odd note in a growing symphony.

As the loop of pre-movie ads gave way to previews, we noted that a couple of them used subtitles, even though the previews were all in English. My wife wondered if the movie itself would have them and I said I hoped not. Sure enough, once the opening titles were gone the subtitles popped up again. I ran back up the corridor to ask if they could be turned off (the kid at the concession stand said he didn’t know). Apparently they couldn’t, as they ran during the entire movie. It’s a minor annoyance, but a distracting one nonetheless.

It turns out that this screening was set aside as one for folks with hearing impairments and, thus, the subtitles were the point. I’ve no problem with that, but there was nothing in the ticket-buying process or the Google movie times listing that indicated this was that kind of screening. It was only afterwards, when I went to the theater’s website specifically, that I got an explanation. Had we known that ahead of time, we’d have gone to a different theater.

Three other people watched the movie with us. Two were a couple a few rows behind us (the ticket kiosk sells reserved seats, but that was pointless given the turnout). A little past halfway they started to be attacked by plastic bags (I can only suspect), given the occasional bouts of plastic crinkly noises. The other cinemagoer was a guy who came in about 20 minutes late and then left and came back three more times (always sitting in those couple of rows right in front of the screen). I’m not sure he made it all the way to the end.

Along the way there was at least one point where I could hear Sam and Red Hulk smashing it up next door. And, repeatedly, parts of the screen would go pixelized briefly in the way a streaming service does if it’s a little sluggish.

All of these are minor annoyances. None alone ruined the movie, nor did the weight of all of them together. As I said, the movie is great and worth seeing and I did it as part of a lovely afternoon out with my beloved (we even dodged the rain!). Still, if this is what the modern moviegoing experience is it doesn’t do a lot to inspire.

I don’t want to deny anyone the communal movie-going experience if that’s their thing and I realize the importance of it to the health of the industry, but I’m clearly not the one who finds the process less than thrilling these days. Black Bag, critically well received and the “kind of movie they don’t make anymore” – aimed at grownups, original, not the first in a series, an only a trim 94 minutes long – won’t even break even, it looks like. The modern theater-going experience is cold, sterile, and off-putting.

Sorry, Marty, but I’ll continue to consume most of my cinema at home on the couch with a snoozing puppy by my side.

“Anora,” the New Kings, and the Absence of Consequences

/ JD Byrne / 3 Comments

One of the bulwarks of the criminal justice system is that the prosecution has to prove someone committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt – a higher standard than those that apply in civil proceedings. One of the perversities of the criminal justice system is that courts generally will not, and in some jurisdictions are not allowed to, actually instruct jurors on what “reasonable doubt” is. It’s left to the parties to argue it out and the jurors to make the call.

Lawyers, searching for a common experience to which jurors can relate, try to analogize the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard to the kind of certainty you need to make a major life decision. Not where to go to dinner or what movie to watch, but, say, whether to buy a house or a car. The big one, of course, is whether to get married (and to whom). Even if a juror has never been married, they’re aware of what a monumental decision that is.

I was thinking about those arguments while watching Anora this past weekend.

The newly-minted Best Picture winner is about the titular Anora (Ani to her friends and customers), a stripper who embarks on a whirlwind paid-for-date/romance with Vanya, the son of a Russian oligarch. After a wild time in Vegas he proposes that they get married and they do, much to the displeasure of his parents who send their (largely ineffectual) goons to ensure that the marriage is annulled. In the end, when it comes time for Vanya to stand up to his parents and stand with his wife, he can’t do it. The interesting question is why.

The answer, I think, lies in how the film deals with class distinctions. Essentially, the characters are divided into three groups.

Vanya and his parents are the super-rich, the 1%, the “new kings.” They have “fuck you” money and an immense amount of power. They largely suffer no consequences for wrongdoing and, therefore, have little fear of doing it. This is particularly important for Vanya because, as portrayed in the movie, he’s never had to make a consequential decision in his life. Even someone who is only 21 years old, who has lived a normal life, has made decisions that had consequences, both foreseen and unforeseen.

Vanya hasn’t and, as a result, doesn’t even recognize them when they come around. So, when he proposes marriage to Ani I don’t think he’s either (1) simply lying to her in a way to make her do something useful for him or (2) a besotted dope who’s really deeply in love with this woman he’s known for a week. I think he sees the decision to get married as being as consequential as what club to go to or whether to jet off to Vegas. Whether he gets it wrong or not, he won’t really suffer any consequences. He is, quite literally, playing with house money.

The second group of characters include Toros and his brother, two of the goons who are tasked with keeping tabs on Vanya. Neither are remotely in the same class as Vanya and his parents, but they think they can have access to wealth and power if they just continue to make themselves useful. Not for nothing but when Vanya goes missing Toros’ entire motivation for finding him is to please Vanya’s parents and fix a problem. He doesn’t express any concern for this guy whose life he’s looked over for years. He doesn’t see him as a kind of son, worrying about his safety and wellbeing. So long as he finds Vanya and gets the marriage annulled all is right with his world.

The final group is Ani herself, along with another one of the goons, Igor. Only Ani doesn’t realize she’s in this group at first. She thinks she’s in one of the other two, on her way into the good life, achieving upward mobility. Igor, by contrast, knows better. He understands his spot in the hierarchy and that he’s fated to stay there. His bond with Ani comes largely from his empathy for her coming to the same realization as the movie plays out. I think the ending is her recognizing a fundamental similarity between them that she would never have had with Vanya (not for nothing is the scene in the car the only sex scene that appears to include a real connection between the people involved).

The movie, then, reflects more than a little of our current reality. Increasingly, we live in a country with an out-of-touch and untouchable moneyed elite who rarely suffer any consequences for their actions. Susan Collins famously said, during Trump’s impeachment, that she was going to vote against convicting him because he “has learned from this case” getting “a pretty big lesson.” She wasn’t wrong – he learned he faces essentially no consequences for his actions. Just like Vanya, which is why he so often says the first thing that comes to his mind without giving any real thought to what might happen after.

Sitting down to watch Anora I didn’t quite know what to expect. I certainly didn’t expect a pretty succinct analogy for this country’s current class inertia (as one report put it “wealth status is sticky” – there’s little chance you move up or down over the course of a lifetime), but that’s certainly in there. It’s definitely got more going on than the “hooker with a heart of gold” tag some detractors are given it after the Oscars. It does make you think.

What it makes me think is that sometimes the lack of consequences might be the most consequential thing of all.

2024 – My Year In Movies

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

After a week off to craft a spooky story for the NYC Midnight Short Story Competition, it’s time for the final installment of my look back at the year just past and highlight some of my favorite, or just most interesting, media I consumed (not necessarily new, but new to me). It’s time to talk about some movies  . . .

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

You remember that episode of The Pink Opaque where . . .. No, of course you don’t, but if you’re any kind of genre fan, you’ve started a conversation that way about Babylon 5 or Buffy or whatever. This movie taps into that shared obsession, with two characters bonding over their love of the fictional The Pink Opaque (long ago in the past where a printed episode guide plays a role). What spools out though goes far beyond a TV show to deal with issues of self, identity, and shared experiences. It also has some scenes that completely freaked me out in the best way (including a superlong monologue that shouldn’t work, but really does). Do I understand it on all the levels other people do? Almost certainly not. Still one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time.

Rebel Ridge (2024)

“Semi-action movie about civil asset forfeiture” is a hell of an elevator pitch. It’s down to stars Aaron Pierre and Don Johnson (you heard right) that it works so well. Pierre plays a man who comes to a small Alabama town to pay his brother’s bond – in cash. It’s seized by the cops who classify it as drug proceeds. This is a real thing. The frustrations Pierre experiences pretty well match reality, before things get thrillier the closer to the end we get. There’s some violence, but it’s doled out well and this isn’t a pure-bred action movie. Stay away if you just want to see Pierre kick ass; watch it if you want a pretty clever interrogation of a problematic practice that, somehow, manages to even make the cops pretty well rounded in the end.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

It’s hard to imagine a more somber, only-watch-it-once kind of film. A slice of life about a German family who happen to live across the wall from Auschwitz (in the titular “zone of interest”). Dad’s the commandant. The bold choice of director Jonathan Glazer is that what goes on over the wall is never directly shown, but the sound designed is punctuated with sounds of terror and cruelty that make it unmistakable. What does it say about the commandant and family that this appears to be their dream home? Nothing good, of course. A harrowing watch, but worth it one time.

Blow Out (1981)

If you ever wanted a movie that showed you how people had to edit sound recordings in the pre-digital era, this is it. John Travolta plays a sound guy for low-budget horror films who, while out one night trying to get some good sounds, accidentally records the murder of a sitting governor and presidential hopeful in a car crash. There’s a damsel in distress and a lot of leg work that goes into putting together the pieces, all of which zings with energy and down-to-earth competence. That Travolta winds up right where he started just makes it all the more perfect.

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

I’m a sucker for a courtroom drama – so how about one set in a courtroom that is so foreign to my common-law system experience that it was like science fiction? I mean, that’s not the only great thing about this movie, a clever did-she-do-it (there’s no doubt it was either her or an accident) that spends just as much time in the home where the death happens as it does in the French courtroom. Some of it – particularly the round-table out-of-sequence questioning of the defendant – is so odd that I had to do some reading afterwards to see how realistic it was (pretty accurate, within the bounds of dramatic license, or so I read). Did she do it? I’m not sure anybody knows (the lead actress, if I recall correctly, said she didn’t know!).

Some Thoughts on “The Northman”

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I really enjoyed Robert Eggers’ first two films, The Witch and The Lighthouse. They both ooze atmosphere and can get by on that alone, but they’re also seriously weird, to boot. The kind of movies you walk away from asking, “what did I just see?” So while Viking revenge fantasy isn’t necessarily high on my list of favs, I did take the chance to watch his latest, The Northman when it came along.

The Northman is the story of Amleth, a 10th-century Viking prince who sees his father killed by his uncle, who then promptly carries off his mother. Amleth vows revenge and if you think this sounds a little like Hamlet, you’re right – they both riff on the same legend. His journey involves Viking raids, mysterious seers (one of who is played by Bjork!), a witchy ally, and, eventually, a mano-a-mano battle on an active volcano (shades of Revenge of the Sith? You bet!). It’s worth a watch, even if not up to the same level as Eggers’ prior work.

I do have some thoughts . . .

Can something be too accurate?

Eggers has a reputation for exacting precision in world building, going all in an getting the details right of the world of each particular movie. Not for nothing have all three Eggers films been set in the past (in one interview he laughed at the idea of making a contemporary film). For The Northman he engaged several experts on Viking history, ritual, and the like to create a world that sure feels awfully “real,” even if does involve things like unshakable faith, sorcery, and Valkyries carrying souls to Valhalla (as detailed in this profile).

I dig the detail. The world of The Northman is so gritty and granular that it feels “real,” even if there’s a lot about it that doesn’t exactly jive with reality. But can it go to far? I found a couple of reviews (one here, for example) that suggested that Eggers and crew get so caught up in details and being “right” about all sorts of small things that maybe other important parts of movie making get lost in the shuffle.

There are parts of The Northman that seem to be there solely because Eggers (or Alexander Skarsgard, who plays Amleth and was a producer) found out some cool things about Viking lore and wanted to put them on screen. I have no objection to that, but your mileage may differ. In fact, I can’t think of anything that feels like it could have been done “better” by fudging the details of the setting (most of the dialogue is in English, to be fair), so I don’t think Eggers puts verisimilitude as the highest and only value, but it’s clearly important. The film’s flaws (Amleth is a pretty boring hero with no apparent inner life or ability to reconsider his fate) are more down to the kind of story Eggers wants to tell rather than a fault in how it’s told.

Destiny versus storytelling

As I mentioned above, the legend of Amleth was the basis for Hamlet long before The Northman, but it makes for an interesting point of comparison. As this New Yorker review explains, Eggers’ Amleth is really nothing like Shakespeare’s melancholy Dane:

In regressing to Shakespeare before Shakespeare, Eggers replaces intricate and complex poetry with thudding banalities. He voids Amleth—a muscular warrior raised in crude ways and trained in cruder ones—of any inwardness, as if in fear of rendering him effete or off-putting. Eggers’s action-film Hamlet is neither bookish nor inhibited nor speculative nor plotting with far-reaching imagination of complicated stratagems—nor witty nor, above all, endowed with a sense of humor.

In other words, Hamlet is a tragic figure you can at least sympathize with – Amleth, not so much. Again, I don’t think this is a fault in Eggers’ execution as much as it is the kind of story he’s telling and the kind of world he’s telling it in. In Amleth’s world the constraints of fate are as real and binding on him as the law of gravity. If his destiny is to take revenge on his uncle it matters not that his uncle’s already had his downfall (his kingdom was taken by another king and he was exiled) or that his mother comes clean about who Amleth’s father really was (and her role in his death). Even the promise of a normal life in Orkney with the witch and their children can’t keep him from his destiny.

That’s the problem with destiny or fate or prophecy as a storyteller. Generally, writers and readers/viewers want characters – heroes, at any rate – who have agency. Or if they don’t they at least recognize that fact and rail against it or unsuccessfully avoid their fate. Tragedy is when you can’t stop yourself from doing what you shouldn’t, not when you just shrug your shoulders and go along for the ride. That said, the idea of a life free from moral choice – if I’m fated to die on a volcano, why live a moral, upstanding life – is one worth exploring, but it’s not what Eggers was after, for better or worse.

And, yes, the actual film doesn’t match the tagline on the poster.

The berserker and the office drone

Through sheer serendipity I saw The Northman while one episode away from end (of the first season?) of Sweatpea, a British TV offering showing on Starz in the United States.

Sweatpea is about an outwardly mild and meek office drone, Rhiannon, who been bullied by various people all her life and starts working towards bloody vengeance. Her primary target is Julia, a school bully (leader of a clique, in fact) whose abuse was so bad Rhiannon was literally tearing her hair out. Julie is first and foremost on Rhiannon’s list of “people I’d like to kill,” so she kidnaps her with every intent of doing her in.

Except there’s a complication – Julia, it seems, is a victim of her own, as her fiancé is abusive to her. Rhiannon is thus confronted with a person she wants dead who is suffering through the same stuff she’s gone through – but does that make right all the abuse Julie perpetrated in the first place? I don’t know how it’s going to play out as I write this, but the contrast with Amleth is striking. If Rhiannon goes through with killing Julia it will no doubt be her choice and I doubt it will be portrayed as glorious. Certainly, she’s not going to be flown off into Valhalla. But, then again, she lives in a modern world where things like fate and destiny are only found in, well, in movies and the like.

This Vox review has an interesting take on The Northman:

I wouldn’t go so far as “great,” but Eggers’ refusal to try and tell a story that’s such a throwback at least makes for an interesting watch. Consume in a darkened room and you may wind up thinking you’re back in Iceland, with the spirits of the dead all about you.

How to Do an Info Dump

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago my wife and I watched Casablanca. I’d seen in long ago, way before I was really into movies (contrary to what my wife thinks, we’d never seen it together) and it seemed like something worth revisiting.

It’s as good as advertised, a rare example of a film of that vintage that’s not just great in the context of its times but has aged very well.

Something really struck me about one of the early scenes. A lot of the action in Casablanca takes place at Rick’s, the club run by Humphrey Bogart’s character. Our introductory scene to that place is one of the long shots (like the famous Copacabana entrance shot in Goodfellas) that lets us get the scope and feel of the place, all the while dropping in on various conversations as the cameras pass by (and getting a song from Sam).

Two of those conversations are a great example of how to get a viewer necessary information about the world we’re in without being too heavy handed about it. The movie is set in the early part of the Second World War and the city of Casablanca itself is a kind of waypoint for refugees fleeing the conflict, somewhat under Nazi control but not entirely (or at least they want it to look that way). That people are desperate is part of the fabric of the film.

In the first conversation, a well-dressed but clearly distressed woman is negotiation the sale of some diamond jewelry to a buyer. He offers her “two thousand four hundred” francs (presumably) for it, because the market is saturated with diamonds right now (presumably sold in similar circumstances). The woman clearly thinks this is too little, but as viewers we don’t really know if she’s right. After all, the piece she’s selling might have great sentimental value but be fairly common (of even a fraud). That bit of conversation leaves us hanging somewhat, partly because the camera has other places it needs to be. There’s no time for context.

We shortly get the context, anyway. The camera pans across another conversation, lingering just long enough for us to overhear a man negotiating with a smuggler to get him out of the city. The price? 15,000 francs – “in cash,” he says, more than once. Instantly we know that the woman with the jewelry is probably getting screwed on the price, but she has to sell because she’s raising money to get out of town. It’s a perverse example of supply and demand, played out over the course of a minute or so. “Info dumps” are sometimes relegated to the concerns of fantasy and sci-fi writers, but the truth is that all fiction requires the kind of world building that can lead to info dumps. Casablanca has a great example, right up front, of how to do that quickly, efficiently, and without bogging down the important part – getting to Bogey!