Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve got plenty more thoughts on a variety of movies for you all today, opening with even more exploration of Hayao Miyazaki’s early films. I also continued to deeply wound myself through repeated exposure to the filmography of Hirokazu Kore-eda, and even watched through Greg Daniels’ much-maligned new Netflix production. There’s a lot of media to cover and I’m sure you all have busy Wednesdays to get back to, so let’s not waste any more time, as we run down more of film and television’s bounteous treasures in another Week in Review!
This week I continued my hapless rampage through Hayao Miyazaki’s early films, starting with the exhilarating Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I’d seen bits and pieces of Laputa before, but to be honest, I think anyone embedded in the anime community has – the film is an absurd bounty of beautifully animated character moments and exciting action highlights, meaning any given fifteen seconds of it has likely become a popular online gif.
Collectively, Laputa stands as perhaps the most high-energy Miyazaki film I’ve seen, leaping from one adventure setpiece to another with barely a moment of downtime, coming off much like an animated rollercoaster, or even a videogame. Sky Pirates Attack leads directly into High-Speed Train Chase, which in turn leads into Navigating the Mines, etc etc. It’s a charming and beautiful film, and brimming with neat mechanical ideas, but its deference towards momentum over all else meant I never really got attached to its cast or world. But if you’re looking for pure adventure, Laputa is about as single-minded as they come.
In contrast, My Neighbor Totoro offered basically everything that Laputa was lacking, and joined Kiki’s Delivery Service in demonstrating Miyazaki’s remarkable talent for celebrating everyday life as it is lived. I am inherently weak to stories set in the Japanese countryside, and Totoro is one of the most beautiful I’ve seen, while also the most focused on actually celebrating the simple realities of moving to and living in a country house. There were sequences of Totoro that reminded me strongly of Wolf Children (one of my favorite films), and scenes that felt unparalleled in how they captured the wonder of exploring a new and alluring backyard as a young child.
And while Totoro isn’t strictly narrative-driven, it still articulates a variety of poignant truths, sometimes even without words. The sequence of the two sisters waiting for their tardy father at the bus stop felt like a particular highlight: Satsuki’s determination to bring an umbrella to her father felt like a direct reflection of her fears regarding her mother, and as the minutes drew on, her bravery in acting as Mei’s surrogate mother became ever more clear. Totoro himself stands as a clean embodiment of the weird, sometimes scary, but also exhilarating joy of playing in the forest; all in all, Totoro’s emotional reach is actually facilitated by its narrative minimalism, with its gorgeous evocation of their woodland home and careful dramatic restraint resulting in one of Miyazaki’s strongest films.
After having my heart destroyed by Shoplifters, I decided to continue my journey through Hirokazu Kore-eda’s filmography with After the Storm, a film centered on a formerly promising novelist named Ryota attempting to reconnect with his son and ex-wife. As someone who’s so far spent his own professional life trying and failing to make any sort of money through writing, After the Storm rang painfully true to my experience, right down to Ryota’s “I apologize for being such a disappointment of a son” to his mother. Haunted by the specter of his father’s failure, Ryota hopes to be a better father to his own son – but the distance between where he is and wants to be haunts him, and ultimately, most of what he can share with his son seems inherited from his own memories of his father.
After the Storm wasn’t as visually transcendent or dramatically ambitious as Shoplifters, but it was still a terrific film, full of the naturalistic performances and painfully believable human bonds that seem to be his signatures. Kore-eda’s work bears the fatigue of living too long and earning too little, but still doing your best to love the people around you. Researching him more, it was no surprise to me that he considers his works to be inspired by Ken Loach – while he has a visual brilliance all his own, both Shoplifters and After the Storm are in large part about how, in spite of our desperate efforts to be kind to each other, the economic conditions of our lives will grind down our charity, and often tear us apart entirely. Kore-eda is swiftly becoming one of my favorite filmmakers, and I’m eager to explore more of his work.
My housemate also threw on Air Force One this week while I was playing Persona, meaning I basically got the gist of that one as well. In terms of its actual merits, Air Force One is a deeply mediocre action-thriller, with Gary Oldman’s frankly unnecessarily good performance as the villain providing the only real artistic highlight. However, in terms of its worldview, ho boy!
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a wildly jingoistic film, from its ferocious determination to Kill All Bad Guys Everywhere, to its constant swooning over President Harrison Ford assuming more and more executive power, and making more and more selfish decisions to placate his ego and sense of “honor.” Air Force One might be the most gleefully republican film I’ve ever seen, offering a world where terrorists commit terror because they’re Evil People, government bureaucrats dither because they are Weak and Cowardly, and our war hero president beats up the bad guys because he is Courageous and Strong.
Harrison Ford’s “power” is constantly expressed in terms of his complete lack of respect for all other elected officials, or his ferocity in terms of murdering the bad guys – things the film constantly framed as heroic or patriotic (complete with constant waving American flags), but which I could only view with slowly escalating horror. I wasn’t actually offended or anything (bad art certainly has a right to exist), but it was kinda strange to watch a movie that essentially felt like an ode to Donald Trump’s self-image.
Finally, stepping outside of the film sphere, my house also screened the newly-arrived first season of Space Force, starring Steve Carell as the general heading up America’s Space Force, and John Malkovich as his long-suffering science team lead. Reviews were pretty harsh on Space Force, and I think I can understand why – to be honest, the show isn’t very funny. Actually laugh-out-loud gags only arrive maybe once every couple episodes, and generally, the show hits a tone closer to mild amusement.
Fortunately, I have a secret weapon: I don’t actually think most American comedies are funny in the first place. While Space Force’s actual number of jokes is quite low, its hit rate is quite high – and in contrast, while a primetime American sitcom is likely to offer five jokes a minute, I’m probably not going to laugh at any of them, because they tend to be simplistic gags I’ve seen a million times before. And because Space Force is not occupying itself with constant mediocre gags, it is free to focus on other things – like developing a convincing, genuinely charming rapport across its main cast, or actually progressing its central narrative and key relationships.
Space Force actually felt a bit closer to slice of life than American television is generally comfortable going, with its payoffs frequently coming in the form of “aw, they’re coming to understand each other a little better,” rather than a comedic punchline. As someone who finds most comedies lazily written and uninteresting, but really appreciates a strong character rapport, seeing two actors as talented as Carell and Malkovich bond over ten episodes was actually a very rewarding experience. The show is mostly just kind of awkward until its relationships are established, but if it somehow earns a season two, I’ll probably be there to watch it.
