I read
over a few of my past Introductions to my year end reports before sitting down
to write this one – something I probably haven’t done in the past, but probably
should have. There are themes that have developed in the past decade – about
Hollywood’s increasing reliance on tent poles, on the shrinking market for
adult oriented movies, about Netflix entering the scenes, about film vs. TV,
etc. In short, it has been about film in transition – what many people would
call crisis.
I thought
of this a lot in the past few months – perhaps because of Martin Scorsese’s
comments about Marvel, which people took FAR too seriously. Is anything
Scorsese said really wrong about Marvel? I like the Marvel movies – you can
find positive reviews of pretty much all of them here if you wanted to, but he
is right that they bear little resemblance to the types of films he makes, or
loves. He calls them theme park rides, I call them assembly line products. In
my more generous moments, I compare them to a TV series with three supersized
episodes per season – they look the same, sound the same, and just further this
massively complex storyline. In my less generous moments, I compare them to
McDonalds – the audiences go to see the Marvel movies because they already know
precisely what they’re going to see before they sit down. Go to any McDonalds,
and order a Big Mac and fries, and you’ll get the exact same thing every time.
You know what it will taste like, there are no surprises, etc. That is Marvel
movies. Don’t get me wrong – sometimes we all crave a Big Mac, and want nothing
but a Big Mac. There is a reason McDonalds is hugely successful and that’s the
reason. But if you ate nothing but Big Macs all the time, it wouldn’t be good
for you.
The
problem I see is not that Marvel is making the cinematic equivalent of Big Macs
– it’s that increasingly, that is all people can see in a theater. Underlying
Scorsese’s comments was the fact that he had been trying to make The Irishman
for years – and even if DeNiro, Pacino and Pesci attached, no one other Netflix
would give him the money to do so. Scorsese wanted his film to play in theaters
– and while it played in some (which is where I first saw it) – it didn’t play
in most. The Netflix factor hurt it, of course (the chains won’t play Netflix
films) – but truth be told, how long would The Irishman played in theaters even
if it wasn’t a Netflix film – before it was shoved out for more corporate
product.
And
worse, is just how offended everyone got about what Scorsese said – as if he
was attacking their religion or something. It’s one thing to like Big Macs –
it’s another thing to insist that they are the height of cuisine. Scorsese was
called a snob – I’m sure there are some in the few who will read this that will
say the same thing about me – but he’s not wrong. I think somewhere along the
way we’ve lost the plot here a little bit. Superhero movies are great for many
audiences – for kids they are great (my daughter has been running around as
Captain Marvel since seeing the movie) – but I’m kind of sad that we’ve become
a culture where the most popular art for children is also the most popular art
for adults. Perhaps all those people who complained about adults reading Harry
Potter obsessively were onto something the rest of missed all those years ago.
What I
really say though is this – just like with McDonalds, you shouldn’t just
consume the corporate product that is released or 3,000 screen every week. If
you eat nothing but McDonalds, you’ll get sick. If you watch nothing but this
corporate product, you’ll get sick in another way. Like what you like – that’s
fine – but expand a little bit more as well. Movie culture is in trouble if all
we get is sequels and series and shared universes made by committee.
Moving on
to the films of 2019 themselves – in some ways, it makes me sad, it some ways
it offers hope. I happen to think this is the best year in films in quite some
time – perhaps even of this decade. My top two films are masterpieces by two of
my all-time favorite directors – and even if both of them feel like summations
in some sense, it also proves they still have it. And there were quite a few
younger filmmakers still emerging – and even following up great debuts (or
perhaps second films) with films that were often more ambitious, and they hold
out hope for the future. Not only that, but many of these filmmakers don’t seem
eager to jump into the corporate product – at least not yet.
And so
celebrate a year that included great films by masters like Tarantino, Scorsese,
Malick, Bong, Baumbach, Almodovar, Denis and Gray – all of whom have been
working for two decades or (much, much more). Celebrate newer voices that have
followed up great films with other great films like Aster, Peele, the Safdies,
Mitchell, Nemes, Shults, Eggers, Kent, Hogg, Perry, Heller, Gan, Talbot, Wang,
Lesage, Petzold, etc. Marvel at the fact that one of the best feature debuts of
the year was made by a veteran in his 60s. And by all means, enjoy the hell out
of Marvel, Pixar, Disney and Star Wars (all owned by the same people of course)
– just don’t act as if criticizing our corporate overlords is beyond the pale.
Now, just
a couple of housekeeping things. I do try and get this out every year before
Oscar nominations – but with the shortened season, not every post in this
series will make it. There are also a few key films I missed – none more than
Portrait of a Lady on Fire – but I didn’t really miss that, the distributer
decided to do a qualifying run, then pull it until February. I’ll see it – and
it could make a revised top 10 list for 2019 at some point. Other films I
missed were Just Mercy, Clemency, Honeyland, Varda by Agnes, La Flor, Synonyms,
Give Me Liberty, The Hottest August and I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History
as Barbarians. These are the only true 2019 films that made the top 100 of my
top 10 list survey of critics I did not see (and actually, those first two
aren’t even on that top 100). There are others – festival hits that are going
to come out really in 2020 that I did not see like Vitalina Varela, I Was at
Home But, Martin Eden, Bait and Heimat is a Space in Time, that will likely be
on more lists next year. There is also the strange case of My First Film (Live)
which is a mixture of film and performance art, which likely, I will never see,
since it requires the physical presence of the director.
