The WB to release Wonder Woman in Irish cinemas

In a bold move Warner Brothers is taking advantage of the relaxing of restrictions over the Christmas period to release one of 2020’s most anticipated blockbusters – Wonder Woman 1984.

December 16th will see the release of Patty Jenkins’ sequel which fast-forwards 70 years in the immortal life of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) to a clash with two new foes; Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) and the Cheetah (Kristen Wiig); and the mysterious reappearance of her dead (for generations) lover Steve Trevor (Chris Pine). Patty Jenkins directs again from a screenplay she wrote with Geoff Johns & David Callaham, from her story with DC comics legend Johns. A world removed from the desaturated colour palette of the WWI-set original, this seems to be surfing the same cultural wave as Stranger Things and AHS: 1984. And who knows but this may be just the day-glo blast of unabashed fun and pop nostalgia that everybody needs at this particular moment in time after a relentlessly grim plague year.

Any Other Business: Part XL

As the title suggests, so forth.

The true horror is that this got made

It can be dispiriting watching all the departments on a show firing on all cylinders, save one. The opening credits theme to AHS: 1984 is so catchy it should escape the show and take on a life of its own, the costumes, sets, location shooting and special effects are all great, and, with some exceptions, the acting and directing is as good as it can be; because the one department drowning in the lake at Camp Redwood is the writers’ room. American Horror Story: 1984 can’t even commit to its own title, jumping about in and out to many other years, and even decades, and spending far too much time after the one night in 1984 the show initially seems premised on. This doesn’t dismay as much as it would if I hadn’t been forewarned; I abandoned the Hotel season for much the same tic, an inability to be consistent when a cheap shock or shlock can be had instead.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl plays as a tragically awful The Fault in Our Stars and Be Kind Rewind mash-up by Wes Anderson.

Greg (Thomas Mann) navigates high school by being super-nice to all cliques, and a member of none. He avoids the cafeteria turf wars, eating with his sole friend Earl (RJ Cyler) in the office of cool history teacher Mr McCarthy (Jon Bernthal). (You know he’s cool because he has tats and a shouted slogan ‘Respect the Research!’) But then Greg’s odd, odd mother (Connie Britton) forces him to befriend classmate Rachel (Olivia Cooke) when Rachel is diagnosed with leukaemia. Rachel’s weird mother Denise (Molly Shannon) is delighted at this development, and soon Greg’s eccentric dad (Nick Offerman) is hosting marathons for Rachel of the dreadful movies Greg and Earl have made. Greg is losing his treasured detachment, and, despite repeated protestations in his narration, Rachel is going to die; what will the emotional impact be on such a self-loathing figure?

You won’t care, because this film quickly becomes extremely grating. Set in Pittsburgh with an emotionally deadened hero who opens up under female tutelage this invites invidious comparisons with The Perks of Being a Wallflower; but Project X star Thomas Mann is no Logan Lerman, and novelist/screenwriter Jesse Andrews is no Stephen Chbosky. As for director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon who has worked on American Horror Story and Glee… This is his second feature after The Town That Dreaded Sundown. He’s not straying far from familiar settings. His whip-pans, arty tracking shots, hand-crafted animations, long-takes, narration, chapter titles, straight to camera monologues, odd perspectives, and painfully self-conscious quirkiness all play like ersatz Wes Anderson and become increasingly maddening. Having a character die of cancer doesn’t gift your movie instant profundity. Telling us twice that she’s not going to die is just annoying.

Bernthal is the only actor who escapes this farrago with dignity intact, as he has some interesting material on the nature of memory and biography to work with. Offerman is reduced to non-sequitirs and monologues akin to his workshop appearances on Conan. Shannon is creepy and disturbing as Rachel’s overly-sexualised mother, while Britton is unbelievable and bizarre as Greg’s mother pushing him into a weird gesture. Greg and Earl are ‘characterised’ by their love of Herzog, Kurosawa, and the Nouvelle Vague, which they pastiche in home-movies. The result is as infuriatingly pretentious, derivative, and mannered as the central trio in The Dreamers. So of course Greg’s former crush Madison (Katherine C Hughes) suggests making a new movie especially for Rachel. Dying is almost worthwhile if it inspires self-referential self-congratulatory cinema! This truly is Bret Easton Ellis’ nightmare conception of film-school student making films based on films, not on life; a cinematic parallel of Mannerist artists proudly painting based on Old Masters not on observed reality.

Having experienced Nico Muhly’s soundscape for the Wilton Diptych in the British National Gallery, I weep at his music being wasted trying to give Greg’s contemptible film some depth.

1/5

Suggesting Several Screen Siblings

I’ve noticed a few actors who I think would make damn good pairings as siblings, so here’re some suggestions for their team-ups and the movies.

Tom Hiddleston & Rooney Mara

Who can stand against the combined powers of Loki and Lisbeth Salander? Not many… The Avengers star Tom Hiddleston and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Rooney Mara are con artist siblings specialising in long-cons. They’re within months of pulling off the single greatest job of their career, shaking down a despotic Arabic dictator for a massive investment in a ‘revolutionary fuel research firm’, when Hiddleston falls head over heels in love with the despot’s new American liaison. Mara, however, truly despises Hiddleston’s charming new girlfriend and sets out to sabotage the romance in any way she can. Can Mara succeed in dynamiting her brother’s happiness while keeping him in the dark that she’s doing it? Can Hiddleston keep his focus long enough for the completion of the con? And is the liaison’s arrival as a massive distraction just a bit too perfectly timed to be coincidental? All will be revealed in this sophisticated Hitchcockian comedy-thriller.

Kristen Wiig & Sarah Paulson

Studio 60 and American Horror Story star Sarah Paulson is a successful but cold marketing executive. Her fabulously wealthy grand-aunt always liked Paulson’s warm-hearted slacker sister better. The slacker sister is, of course, Bridesmaids’ Kristen Wiig. The great-aunt dies, leaving behind a video message for the reading of her bizarre will. Paulson and Wiig will both inherit 700 million dollars in twenty-four months, but … Paulson will only receive her share of the inheritance if she can successfully launch her sister into an independently sustainable career of Wiig’s choice (i.e. not marketing with Paulson’s firm) within twelve months. If Paulson can’t pull it off, her share goes to Wiig; making a whopping 1.4 billion dollars for Wiig and a round 0 for Paulson. Paulson can’t tell Wiig why she’s helping her, and will be trailed by a hunky male P.I. to ensure she doesn’t. It’s an all-female Brewster’s Millions meets My Fair Lady, hilarity ensues.

Werner Herzog & Pete Townshend

Jack Reacher villain Werner Herzog buried his brother in East Germany in 1964. So it’s a shock when his daughter, trawling thru declassified archives, discovers that an empty coffin was buried. Herzog’s brother, Tommy performer Pete Townshend, was actually recruited by the Stasi, who faked his death, and, after extensive training, sent him to England as a sleeper agent. He’s been there ever since, stranded by the fall of the wall… The recently widowed Herzog travels to London with his daughter to meet Townshend’s retired but still consulting Foreign Office official. Townshend is afraid of being rumbled at the very end of his career; even as a spy without a spymaster. Gradually, however, the ice thaws as the widowed Townshend unlearns the English accented German he had perfected and prepares to tell his daughter his true identity. But has she already guessed the truth from witnessing the strange transference of identity between Townshend and Herzog?