Bohemian Rhapsody

I want you to imagine the film "Jaws", but instead of it being called "Jaws", it will be called 'The Theme To Jaws", and in this version the shark doesn't actually eat anybody, but is emotionally fragile, sexually confused and starts a band with Roy Schnieder, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw on drums. Is this how I felt about the Movie Bohemian Rhapsody? No. That is my idea for a Jaws remake. 

Bohemian Rhapsody, however, is a Hallmark version of a band that couldn't handle being portrayed as anything less than superficially clever and winds up accidentally treating homosexuality as a faustian decent. The cast grows younger in every scene as their lead, one of the greatest voices of all time, has the air repeatedly taken out of him. The performances are pitch perfect, which is why the valley's between the music feel so wide; who pays to see a well to do band sit on a couch?

But, back to the "Theme To Jaws". I want you all to keep yourselves alive as I take this crazy little thing called a film treatment and put a film studio under pressure because we will rock you with it in these days of our lives so that I may find somebody to love, preferable a fat bottom girl. Don't stop me now.

The Lion King (Remake)

The Laser Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) projects a linear line of protons so straight that it can detect the distance between the sun to the nearest neighboring star within the width of a single human hair.  These straight lines of pristine consistency run over a 4 kilometer path so well ordered that it will be disturbed by things that had happened in the universe over 1.5 billion years ago in space time.  However, even LIGO is less linear than the plot of The Lion King, a movie so straight forward it's technically impossible to know when you are observing it or a commercial for it.  Scientists refer to this phenomenon as "The Simba Hypothesis", a follow up to Schrodinger's Cat, where the protagonist some how never seems to be in either conflict or at rest.  There are statements made towards the context, but these words carry the emotional weight and depth of an applause bar going off for the audience to be reminded that they are still in that funny limbo between a nature documentary and a coke commercial.  Its the type of inter-character dialogue that would upset Tommy Wiseau's sensibilities, and until Pumba shows up there is a nagging feeling in your head about how the film was working better when it didn't feature any of the leading characters and David Attenborough was secretly prattling off made-up facts of the Serengeti in the back of your mind....which leads us to our final observation: What do you call taking credit for directing a film that's already been directed?  A "Favreau".

Toy Story 4

The HBO series Chernobyl and the the film Toy Story 4 are cruel brothers only separated in theater by a color palette.  In Toy Story 4 we watch the fall of childhood kingdom after childhood kingdom until the child's bedroom is nothing more than the Afghanistan of toy empires.  Woody, an emotionally sick creature, has lost any concept of moral truth as he continuously shovels the bodies of his fellow toys against the dam of chance, all  to preserve the one lie to a single child.  It's like the equal opposite of proving Santa isn't real by dragging a mall Santa from behind a car until a single boot remains.  Does Woody care about his sharp toll against reality?  Is that really a question you should be asking someone trying to convince the world that not even he exists?  The one toy we ever witness "born" into this world is immediately overcome with a compulsion to throw itself away, quite possibly the most sensible act in the entire franchise.  It's amazing what our money makes us witness too.  Staring Tom Hanks as Anatoly Dyatlov, Jared Harris as Buzz Lightyear and Carl Weathers as Combat Carl, one of the hundreds of thousands of toys who lost their lives in play time.  Communism doesn't work, Pixar!

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

There's a whole bunch of dualities to Once Upon A Time, but the only thing I'll add is that film is a pressure cooker of two competing, violent expectations:  The Sharon Tate murder and Quentin Tarantino, himself.  Inglorious Bastards taught us that he was above history, but he is not above blood....and everyone in the audience is a lion watching Margot Robbie play a lamb not knowing it's having its bestess, most happiest, final day on this earth.  Kudos to Mikey Madison for almost running away with the entire movie in the final 15 minutes and to Lena Dunham who is unrecognizable as herself.

Ad Astra

Ad Astra, the long awaited sequel to Armageddon, is a movie with a very clear message about space: there is nothing out there and there is no reason to go. It stars Brad Pitt who is either a little boy sad that his balloon went to Neptune, or the aspect of death; to know his fake name on his bizarre adventure is to guarantee your unmarked space grave

Its dysphoria doesn’t end there as it holds all the grandeur of the cosmos to task by leap frogging from fallout shelter to fallout shelter for fear of loose canisters filled with poison, moon pirates and DHL. It's a reminder that the question was never "could" we fill the space between the moon and Mars with deadly Mandrills, but "should" we fill the space between the moon and Mars with deadly Mandrills. 

Finally, this joyless space rendition of “Death Of A Salesman” finds it’s Willy Loman in Tommy Lee Jones, a sad clown murdering those alive around him in search of life.  The entire journey is relentless, accomplishing the film equivalent of being shown the 75 of the 76 days it took to reach him. What went on in that missing day we will never know.  It is the mystery of cinema and hopefully something left for the next chapter; an illustrated look at screws turning.  

But in the end, the film achieves some sense of inner peace when Pitt blows up Willy, Neptune, and half the outer solar system in an effort to bang Liv Tyler once more.  May we never see that terrible place again. The only open disservice it fails to give us is the year all this takes place. I would have loved to have known that Applebees had reach the moon in 2002, and we are still decades behind designing inter-solar travel that is less inspired than the line for Space Mountain.   Your psych exam is over. #spacegrave