New Mutants and New Films. What did you see this past week?
Monday, August 31, 2020 at 5:34PM 
Everyone is wondering when it will be safe to go back to movie theaters, or, in some markets (like here in NYC), when theaters will reopen at all? Vanity Fair sent Richard Larson to his home town of Boston for a wonderfully evocative piece about returning to the movie theater... for The New Mutants of all things. That Fox movie's long troubled voyage to cinemas has been well documented on the internet and Vulture recently tried to sum it all up, if you haven't been following along.
I was an avid reader of comic books when The New Mutants first emerged (September 1982) and I gobbled that book right up...
My own interest in the movie was never high given though for three reasons.
1. The X-Men films have largely been disappointing, never really grasping what made the comic books so special
2. They ditched my favourite character, Karma, a Vietnamese girl who could possess people
3. The casting was not inspiring* but especially the white-washing of Sunspot, an Afro-Brazilian in the comics**, and the fact that Charlie Heaton, who is good on Stranger Things, looks exactly nothing like his comic book counterpart, Cannonball, a tall lanky blonde.
* With the exception of Anya Taylor-Joy, who is about as good a casting of Magik, looks-wise, as is imaginable though Magik wasn't in the first year or so of the comic books.
** Sunspot also appeared in X-Men Days of Future Past, where he was played by a Mexican actor, so basically the X-franchise keeps ignoring that he's black and that his dark skin is part of his origin story in the comic-books.
Weekend Box Office
- New Mutants $7 *new*
- Unhinged $2.6 (cumulative $8.8)
- Bill & Ted Face the Music $1 *new*
- Spongebob: Sponge on the Run $604k (cumulative $2)
- Personal History of David Copperfield $520k *new*
Are movie theaters reopening where you live? What did you see this weekend at home?
Reader Comments (17)
Here in Sydney the theatres have been open for about a month. Over the weekend we saw Tenet.
It was great viewing a 70mm print of the movie and I enjoyed the action and locations. I really wanted to love this but came out disappointed and my head spinning.
Saw "The New Mutants" **** / B-
It is being unfairly trashed by critics, who simply don't get it. First, it's the starting point of a trilogy that sadly, we will never see. Then, it analyzes five different traumas associated with childhood and coming of age, and it is a coming of age story. The selection of Cecilia Reyes as the doctor supervising them, and her power (which is the same in the comics) is no coincidence but with an allegoric purpouse. Boone ellaborates a slow-burn coming of age drama with horror touches that has been suffering obvious studio interference, but greatly pays respect to the source material.
What is more, this is a refreshing, necessary film for the superhero genre. It gets an LGTB love story front and center, that doesn't feel forced. Second, it dares to be a character piece rather than an action spectacle. Third, it DARES to actually be saying something about the pressures society pushes on children and teenager, causing them trauma too many times, both by pressure and by abuses...
Overall, despite some obvious flaws that I can't blame on the director or writting team, but on Fox, one of the most interesting superhero films in the last 20 years, and one of the better from Fox.
It's interesting to see how little film critics are actually analyzing the film. Interesting, for not saying, sad.
I consider is "normal" to be disappointed in general when a comic is adaptated to any other media.
Some time ago I read an interview with Quino, the creator of Mafalda and he said something like: You can´t do a comic of a soccer game because the elements you have don´t catch the spirit and escence of a real game, you can do an interpretation but never gonna provocate the same emotion.
And if we consider the liberties that the new creator can take about the original work the result can be totally different. When I knew that are gonna be made a series of Archie (Riverdale) I was very enthuhsiasmated but when I read the plot and how the story was developing I was like ...Whaaat?.
11 Star Wars movies, Stand and Deliver, Marie Antoinette and lesser 1938 offerings.
I re-watched Moonlight, one of my all time favourite movies. By the end I was hugging my pillow and sobbing into it. Yup, just one of those weekends.
I saw a lot of movies at Outfest, and I loved a lot, including The Capote Tapes and Monsoon.
Are some making controversy about a Brazilian actor playing a Brazilian character?
Harmodio -- yes, because the character is Afro-Brazilian in the comments. And both screen versions have ignored that he's a black character.
Did a Sirk double feature yesterday:
- "Take Me to Town" on Cinephobe.tv Hunky frontier widower-dad Sterling Hayden is set up by his 3 moppets with a chorus girl on the lam. They want a new mom!
- "Thunder on the Hill" thanks twitter for turning me on to this nun-noir. Death row inmate is stranded in a nunnery during a flood on her way to the gallows. Will Sister Claudette Colbert be able to save her before the sky clears up?
btw.. cinephobe.tv is quite a fun find. Rare to find movies playing non-stop. It's appointment viewing just like the old days. They have some goodies too.
Still not going back to the theaters here in DumbFuck USA. I stayed home as I finally finished Da 5 Bloods (great film) while I re-watched A Fish Called Wanda, Sky High, and Spike Lee's new extended cut of the Michael Jackson video "They Don't Care About Us".
NATHANIEL R "yes, because the character is Afro-Brazilian in the comments. And both screen versions have ignored that he's a black character."
Yes, but one thing is the comic and another thing is a movie. That is why it is an adaptation, in addition the character is Brazilian. And it is not that the chosen actor is blond with blue eyes.
I'm sure if the character in the comic was white and in the movie black, then nobody would say anything but it would be applauded.
But well, each person has their opinion and excuse me for my English.
re: Sunspot/Roberto da Costa in The New Mutants.
The character was never BLACK. He was colored black, but he is a son of a mixed race couple, black father and white mother, so the race is correct, the controversy is tht the skin is not "black enough" for some. I consider this... silly, specially after what Hollywood made with Nick Fury and Johnny Storm (The Human Torch). This is not the same as Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell, for example, and the controversy is... kind of ridiculous, are we going to use a color grading palette to start or stop an outrage? It is true that the character would be slightly darker but the actor is believable as a mixed race couple's son, and is brazilian. I, myself, would have liked that they chose a darker actor... but the one they chose is believable as sunspot and did a fine job, so no complaint from me.
The other controversy is that Karma, should have been there, and that she would have been removed for being LGTB. Anyone who saw the film can understand that was never the reason, but the background, difficult to explain the timeline, if a teenager is a survivor of the Vietnam war (therefore the film would have to be set in the early 80s).
Same happens with the other absences from the classic 9 line up...
Magma: they have to explain a blond roman from part of the Roman Empire existing in the deep of the Amazonas.
Warlock: they have to explain an alien species that is shape-shifting and can infect you with a virus either absorbing your energy or transforming into one of them.
Cypher: hard to explain why a kid that could translate any language (at the beginning of the run, later his powers expanded) would be locked up as "dangerous" in the facility... for that, better to keep him for Warlock's introduction in the trilogy.
Tenet - loved it, but largely because I have missed cinemas so much. It's mid tier Nolan, all the exposition heavy dialogue we've come to expect after Inception & Interstellar with some pretty clever fight choreography and action beats. I think Nolan always imagines he's being profound, but really this is a Dr. Who storyline and could probably be played a little more winkingly to the audiences for a better film.
Ava - Jessica Chastain contract killer yarn (Amazon Prime). A poor relation to the Ghost Dog/Leon type storyline. It does make you wonder if contract killers are all recovering alcoholics how they manage to hit any of their targets. Action & choreography in this were embarrassingly bad. Geena Davis has a minor role as Chastain's mother and steal every scene she's in. Can someone give her a starring role, please?
Watched the documentary OUT LOUD on Outfest’s virtual festival, which I liked. Also watched BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE for the first time which was interesting but felt very 80s/dated.
Still watching indoors in the still of the night. Or very early morning. I watched three films this week, all for the first time.
Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Alain Resnais
Mysterious woman and enigmatic man meet at a palatial non-place where mostly non-mobile people interact like statues would, only dressed in classic b&w designer clothes. Conversations flow regardless of time and space, preferring poetic words of love and betrayal to convey what they mean. But did this strange encounter even happen? Is this all a dream? Or just a narration told out of order as to throw any linearity out the window. I quite enjoyed the ambiguity because I can project my own version of the story based on feelings evoked by the ambiguous words spoken as dialogue and voice-over. The English translation is sparse and not as eloquent as the spoken French but maybe that is for the best: it is like joining people mid-conversation where you somehow absorb the emotional vibration even if the words don't quite cohere or make sense. And that organ music score is both beautiful and haunting, and yet also reminded me of childhood nightmares.
Death in Venice (1971), Luchino Visconti
I read Thomas Mann's novella in school and I almost gave up because the first chapter was gobbledygook to my teenaged brain. Back then I don't think I even understood what's going on in the story other than an older man's obsession for a much younger man. In Visconti's film version, it is interesting to watch Dirk Bogarde's Aschenbach watch the object of his desire. He is flushed with love, deriving visual pleasure from what he's seeing in Tadzio. There is also a claustrophobic insularity to the cinematic proceedings even if the settings are in the wide expanse of the outdoors: beach, public square, or outside of tall architectures. Maybe that was deliberate because the gaze of the camera is complicit with Aschenbach's scopophilia against an unsettling air of danger. There were whispered conversations among people that a plague was silently gnawing this Venetian vacation spot. Love in time of cholera. Aschenbach's infatuation with the androgynous Tadzio is probably filling the void from losing a daughter. I knew how this tale was going to end in the book but I like Visconti's decision to have a wide shot of two men walking while carrying an inert body of a man as they head to an unseen destination.
Big Business (1988), Jim Abrahams
A comedy of errors but done as a vehicle for the comedic duo of Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler playing sisters with different sensibilities who found another pair of similarly-named sisters from a different social class who turned out to be their own biological sisters. Bette Midler has the showier role and she does not seem to have a minor chord when acting the role of Sadie: everything is fortissimo even when she played the 'bumpkin' equivalent. Depending on one's mileage and fandom, you'll find Midler as either a hilarious riot or irredeemably irritating. Tomlin's subtler comedic gift is an interesting contrast to Midler's brassiness. Tomlin scored laughs through economies of scale. Yet while I was watching the film, I kept on remembering how another comedy-of-errors Noises Off which was filmed a few years later was much more fun and enjoyable. Maybe I just didn't get this one.
Theatres have been open for 2 months here and I have gone to a fair amount of classic films in that time period. I did get to see TENET last night. The plot mechanics are dizzyingly creative and a blast, but the lack of characterization and an emotional core is keeping me at a distance. Will probably see again anyway.
I saw I'm thinking of Ending Things in a very limited theatrical release over the weekend. I feel lucky to have gotten that immersive experience with that film and to have seen it! It's major - one of the most audacious and bewildering films I have ever seen. So dense, fascinating, and haunting. I've thought about it non-stop and it's a great pairing with Tenet. I cannot wait to read more writing on this!
Also I continued checking off best picture blindspots with The Greatest Show on Earth and it's obviously not a worthy best picture winner, but it was way more entertaining than expected.
@Owl, Dirk Bogarde was so robbed of a nomination for Death in Venice. Is a great performance that mirrors perfectly Visconti's vision.
Would make a great case for an almost there analysis .