Favorite Scene Friday! Moonlight: Chiron's Revenge

More February, more Oscars appreciation! Jacob from Panned Review takes a look at a nominee for this year's Best Picture Oscar - Moonlight.

“I ain’t no boy,” Chiron says at the police station, as he ices his bruised face, which has just been smashed by Kevin, a guy whom Chiron thought was his closest friend. Chiron’s physical pain is nothing compared to the feeling of betrayal, and this is a particularly cruel treachery. But betrayal seems to be the only consistent factor in Chiron’s relationships. Chiron feels betrayed by his drug-addicted mother, by Juan, a kindly, gentle father figure who happens to be a drug dealer, and now by Kevin: they kissed on the beach once, and the kiss went further, a moment of intense passion, an unexpected urge between them, one bound to generate confused feelings, guilt, and shame, in a world that is militantly homophobic. Betrayal has tainted every relationship in Chiron’s life (with the exception of Teresa, Juan’s wife, played by the fabulous Janelle Monáe, whom readers may recognize as one of the three stars of Hidden Figures), rendering them as ineffectual as saltwater to a parched mouth.

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Moonlight was, for me, the most moving film I saw last year. Although I loved La La Land, which has become trendy to hate on, Moonlight deserves to win the Best Picture Oscar (I’m not sure it has a chance, especially against a popular favorite that’s an adorable, Hollywood-obsessed confection.) Where La La Land feels clever and charming and happily content with its own nostalgic view of a particularly sun-dappled world, Moonlight feels deeply urgent and lyrical and honest about a world where the sun doesn’t bring warmth so much as blood-boiling heat.

In its story of a young black boy becoming a man, Moonlight casts three different actors to play Chiron, in three different stages of his life: as a young boy, called “Little” (Alex Hibbert), as a teenager struggling to come to terms with his sexuality, the only time when he’s referred to by his given name (and played by Ashton Sanders), and as a grown man, now called “Black” (played by Trevante Rhodes). Somehow, these three actors have created a seamless vision of Chiron, guided by the knowing instincts of writer-director Barry Jenkins.

The scene I want to bring into focus involves Kevin’s betrayal of Chiron. It’s really the only scene in which Chiron acts out because of his anger. Being both black and gay is a particularly difficult battle to fight for Chiron, who’s already endured enough torment when a high school bully pits Kevin against him, urging Kevin to “knock his faggot-ass down.” These are boys playing at manhood, questioning their own vulnerabilities, their own insecurities, which they see as signs that they are not men. Insecurities like these must be purged, by violence. And so, out of fear and hatred of himself, Kevin strikes Chiron, in a modern-day Judas kiss.

Chiron’s anger wells up inside him. He’s used to keeping quiet, he’s learned the value of not stirring things up. But while keeping control of his anger worked for him as a child, it is no longer enough, or he is no longer able to control it. But it’s not Kevin who receives Chiron’s fury, but the instigating bully. Is Chiron sparing Kevin? Cutting him some slack? Or maybe, does Chiron realize that Kevin has in a sense already punished himself in the act of betrayal? Regardless, when Chiron returns to school, he coolly walks into a classroom and smashes a chair over the head of the boy that goaded Kevin into hitting him. In that moment, the consequences of attacking the unsuspecting punk matter little; the feeling of vindication acts like a mantra that cannot be ignored; there’s something intoxicating about this revenge, both for Chiron and the viewer.

Moonlight is an intoxicating film, after all. And this scene encapsulates the complexities at work here. Moonlight explores the world from a very particular angle, and in so doing, offers us something very true: We cannot expect to survive in our own heads forever. Sooner or later, we crave human connection. Chiron, having bottled up so much, walks around with very thick armor (as I’ve already mentioned, he has good reason to be so guarded). Yet the feelings and the thoughts and the workings of his mind are palpable, as powerful as thunderclouds. There’s a tempest inside him, but there is also tenderness and love and compassion, too.

Moonlight is a gracious movie, one that deeply feels for its protagonist without offering him up as some object of pity. Instead, the film offers Chiron a moment of grace: In the third act, when “Black” appears, just as quiet and guarded as ever, but now physically tougher, harder, more in control, Kevin re-enters his life; the bad blood between them has dissipated, and what’s left is a lingering memory of that night on the beach. Moonlight wonders what might have been, had Chiron’s life been less fraught with hopelessness; but it also finds hope anyway; it isn’t too late for him to carve out some kind of happiness, some kind of life for himself.

What's your favorite scene from Moonlight?

Who do you think will take home the Best Actor prize at this year's ceremony?

Favorite Scene Friday! Night of the Comet

Next up in our Escape-athon 2017 celebration: an FSF from guest writer Jacob Lusk from Panned Review!

It seems fitting today to invoke a post-apocalyptic movie, albeit one of the most non-threatening post-apocalyptic movies ever made. Night of the Comet (1984) is a sci-fi-comedy about two teenage sisters from the Valley, Reggie (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Samantha (Kelli Maroney), who appear to be the sole survivors after a comet strikes Earth right around Christmas. Since the film takes place in Los Angeles, Night of the Comet captures the already other-worldly feeling of spending your holiday season in a warm climate, where the Christmas carols and decorations feel completely incongruous (a feeling I’m accustomed to as a native Floridian). In one scene, Reggie is riding a motorcycle through downtown L.A. the morning after the comet, still unaware of the fatal change that has taken place; she stops at a red light, next to a Mercedes, inside which the radio croons “Jingle Bells”, only with no driver in the car to listen to it.

Wikipedia

This complicated comet only pushes life further into the extreme. While there are a few survivors who, like Reggie and Sam, seem totally fine (including Hector, a handsome, resourceful guy—played by Robert Beltran—who happens into their lives unexpectedly), almost everyone else has been reduced to an orange dust. (Think Trump, if he were a Kool-Aid mix.) Others, meanwhile, have been turned into “freaked-out zombies,” slowly dissolving into the Trump dust, but in the meantime, doing the usual work of zombies. There’s also a cadre of malicious scientists (headed by Geoffrey Lewis and Mary Woronov) trying to find a serum that will cure people who’ve been “partially exposed.” Essentially, everything you could possibly want from a movie of this kind.

So while Night of the Comet isn’t much more than a cherry-picked mélange of every memorable sci-fi and horror film of the 1950s and '60s, it does offer its share of delightful surprises, namely the fact that much of the movie revolves around these two girls, Reggie and Sam. It’s rare that a horror/sci-fi picture cares about two women hanging out, but the genre in the '80s was surprisingly open to such possibilities, given that so many films from that period revolved around teenagers just hanging out. The difference is that, unlike movies such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High and even Valley Girl, which feels like Comet’s spiritual cinema-sister, Night of the Comet hinges on the bond between Reggie and Sam, and their ability to survive in this Twilight Zone-esque new reality, rather than on a budding romance. (Although there is a budding romance, and it’s somehow both hipply modern, in that Hector is Hispanic and Reggie is white, and also strangely conventional, because they wind up turning into a banal married couple, adopting two surviving kids into the bargain.)

The scene I’ll briefly describe involves a shootout between the girls and a handful of angry zombie stock-boys at a downtown shopping mall. (These zombies, unlike those in the George Romero world, talk and move like regular people; they function more like homicidal maniacs with sunken eyes and pale skin.) Reggie and Sam have broken into a department store, trying on bad '80s outfit after bad '80s outfit, while a knockoff version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” plays from a nearby boombox. But the stock-boys are pissed that Reggie and Sam would dare steal merch from their store, even in a world with “nobody, I mean no-body!” (to quote Reggie) to enforce the old rules. (These stock-boys have taken on a sense of capitalistic ownership that feels completely apropos, both then and now.)

Earlier, we see Reggie and Sam familiarizing themselves with machine guns they’ve somehow managed to get hold of (their dad was in the Marines and taught them how to shoot). So this gunfight is between equals, and Reggie proves smart and fearless, while Samantha is cheeky and impulsive: the right combination for any duo. Reggie dodges sprays of bullets and fires back with the confidence of a double agent (dressed in a snazzy black leather dress). And while the scene is exciting and tense, it also seems to be perpetually sloughing off the reality of its world, lost in a teenage haze of deluded euphoria.

The director, Thom Eberhardt, never takes the apocalypse too seriously. And why should he? Post-apocalyptic movies are usually so dismal, another reason I find the fluffy, playful tone of Night of the Comet totally endearing. This movie fills me with a warm, glowy nostalgia, and if I survive the end of the world, I’d like to join up with these two plucky, smart women. (Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney, if you are reading this, I’m totally down for some “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” karaoke.)



*Editor's note: As the above video states, that's the entire movie. We've got it set to start at the beginning of the scene and it ends around 1:01:14. Feel free to keep watching, however! :)

Favorite Scene Friday! The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2

Our final Halloween horror themed FSF this season was written by Jacob Lusk of pannedreview.com! Follow him on Twitter at @PannedReview!

Like its predecessor, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) is an acquired taste. This movie is bonkers, but that’s kind of the point: nobody goes to see a film called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre expecting a nice, quiet, tasteful experience. And even though Part 2 falls apart in the second act—where we suffer along with heroine Caroline Williams at the hands of Leatherface and his brothers—the movie boasts several genuinely scary and effective scenes. People, myself included, have for too long maligned this movie as inferior. I’m hoping they’ll give TCM 2 a second look.

Gabz

One of the best scenes of the movie is when we meet Chop Top, the brother who was off fighting in Vietnam during the events of the first movie. He replaces “The Hitchhiker,” the screwy wiry guy picked up by the ill-fated hippies in Part 1. William Moseley’s performance as Chop Top is other-worldly. (Moseley was cast because the director, Tobe Hooper, had been impressed by him in a short film titled “The Texas Chainsaw Manicure,” in which he imitated the Hitchhiker.) Chop Top is a sight to behold with his pale grey skin, his purple-tinted sunglasses, a Sonny Bono wig, and those red-brownish, blood-stained teeth, the teeth of a real psycho. He acts like a transplanted hippie, or more like a sociopath who’s studied hippies in order to imitate them: “Music is my life,” he coos to the terrified DJ “Stretch” (Williams), as if to impress her; while Chop Top prattles on about Iron Butterfly and other musical interests, he’s constantly scratching the metal plate in his head with the end of a coat hanger, which he heats with a handy Zippo lighter: the charge gets him off, apparently. Then, when Stretch tells him to get the hell out of the radio station (because, who wouldn’t be scared by this weirdo), he spells the exit sign out loud, like a 35-year-old child on Sesame Street: “E-X-I-T. Exit!” This is the result of sending a developmentally arrested man off to war, although he probably didn’t stand a chance even without Vietnam, what with that family of his.

Chop Top is an unforgettable horror movie creation, and a prototype for Michael Keaton’s performance in Beetlejuice. But while Beetlejuice is delightfully anarchic, Chop Top is genuinely terrifying. He’s an all-American product: a damaged male, drafted into Vietnam like every other lower-class kid of his generation, and then returned to a society in which, as a white man, he has total dominion, even if the world he controls is small and invisible to everyone else. It’s this idea of the extreme edges of a free society, where people can get away with plenty if they’re invisible enough, that I find so fascinating about these movies.

Although Chop Top’s appearance is the highlight of this scene, it’s also punctuated by a terrific scare. Leatherface appears, unexpectedly, chainsaw-ready, from a dark room; the conversation has been so dragged out between Stretch and Chop Top, and we’re so fundamentally creeped out by him, that we forget there’s another maniac, and this one has a buzz saw in his hands. Stretch is then chased through the radio station, and eventually trapped by Leatherface.

The setting also deserves mentioning: this scene unfolds in a small radio station in the Dallas-Forth Worth area. When it opens, we hear a song called “Mind Warp,” by the Lords of the New Church, as the DJ Stretch investigates a strange noise (that old ruse).

“Mind Warp” has an ominous sound to it: the background vocals are a sort of droning , cultish chant, and there’s a low-key, humming, electric riff that keeps repeating, filling us with dread as Stretch turns corners and opens doors, behind any one of which could be her doom.

Caroline Williams, it should be noted, makes a terrific scream queen in this movie, and this is the first scene in which she gets to show us what she’s made of as a horror movie heroine. Williams screams like a pro, but more importantly, she’s fierce and incredibly game throughout the movie, as she’s chased by Leatherface and tied to a chair and forced to wear another character’s face as a mask and all kinds of other atrocities that are de rigueur in a Texas Chainsaw film: it’s not every actor who can endure one of them.

Favorite Scene Friday! Carrie (1976)

This week's FSF was written by Jacob Lusk of pannedreview.com! Follow him on Twitter at @PannedReview!

Perhaps there is no American filmmaker more controversial than Brian De Palma. Depending on whom you ask, De Palma is either a connoisseur or a hack, a director whose love of Hitchcock inspired some of the most lurid, vervy thrillers of the 1970s, or some of the most derivative. Say what you will about him, but Brian De Palma knows how to tell a story visually, a skill that often feels lost on young directors today.

IMDb

Carrie (based on the novel by Stephen King) remains the most urgent and affecting of De Palma’s shockers, perhaps because its story of the high school ugly duckling—who can move objects with her mind—feels so rooted in reality. There will always be Carries—lost and vulnerable souls whose experience of the outside world is openly hostile and cruel, who keep everything bottled inside, slowly molding their repression into a weapon of mass destruction.

The scene in which Carrie murders the whole prom is unforgettably awful and terrifying. But the scene leading up to that one, in which we witness the mean girls’ plot to sabotage Carrie being carried out—is maybe the most visually elegant, tense, complex sequence in the whole movie. I particularly love this scene because, without a single word of dialogue, so much happens, and so much is revealed.

Carrie and her date, Tommy (William Katt), have just been announced as the prom queen and king. They glide, dreamlike, toward the stage as the crowd cheers, and Carrie, once an outcast, becomes Cinderella, gleaming in her white dress like a fresh lily. Meanwhile, Sue, Tommy’s girlfriend (Amy Irving) watches from a distance, glowing with satisfaction: She fixed them up in the hope that it will help improve Carrie’s social life; it’s partly out of guilt, since Sue was one of the girls who mercilessly teased Carrie earlier in the film.

In this scene, the music by Pino Donaggio keeps vacillating: the strings go from soft and creamy-sentimental to ominous and dreadful, suggesting Bernard Herrmann’s death violins in Psycho. The camera, operating as Sue’s eyes (and thus, ours), spies a rope connected to a bucket high above everyone, and then follows the rope all the way down under the risers of the stage, where we see the silhouettes of Chris (Nancy Allen) and Billy (John Travolta). Chris, the meanest of the mean girls, hates Carrie, and she’s hungry to humiliate her on a grand scale.

Each time the film switches to a different point-of-view, the music changes: First to Carrie and Tommy, drinking in the crowd’s applause; then back to Sue, who has by now noticed the bucket haphazardly resting on one of the rafters, perhaps thirty feet above Carrie’s head. Back to Chris and Billy: Chris slaps Billy in the face for goofing off as he gives the rope a little tug; Sue approaches the stage to peak behind the paper decorations that conceal Chris and Billy; the teacher Miss Collins, Carrie’s only defender throughout the film, sees Sue and assumes she’s up to no good; Miss Collins approaches Sue; they exchange words; Carrie beams; Chris licks her lips like a shark, and tugs on the rope again; Miss Collins ejects Sue from the cafeteria; Chris pulls down hard on the rope. And down comes the bucket of blood, dousing Carrie from head to toe.

Cinderella vanishes. Enter Medusa.

What's your favorite scene from Carrie?

Review: Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

This review was written by local Jacksonville film writer Jacob Lusk! Check out his site at pannedreview.com and follow him on Twitter at @PannedReview!

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates proves that you don’t need an original plot to create great comedy. All you need are the right people working together, in front of and behind the camera. Written by Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O’Brien, the creators of 2014’s Neighbors, Mike and Dave easily emerges as one of the best comedies of the summer, possibly of the year, with its breezy yet bonkers style, which stems from the energy of its delectable ensemble cast.

IMDb

And what a dream of a cast. Zac Efron has emerged as a true movie star. He’s like some Greek demigod, both a boy-next-door and an untouchable force, distilling wit, charm, pathos, and lunacy with apparent ease; Adam DeVine, who’s emerging as a noteworthy comic force in the movies, combines the manic energy of the Road Runner and the drunken wit of a Bugs Bunny dissipated by years of gaming and partying. They’re paired with Anna Kendrick, an actress who tempers her pixie-princess vibe with wit and intelligence, and Aubrey Plaza, whose droll, deadpan mannerisms deflect and complement the fizzy raw energy of the other three. This is the stuff of great formula comedies. You don’t need a complicated plot so much as actors who can dream up crazy antics that propel the movie forward and simultaneously develop their characters into real human beings, albeit movie comedy versions of real human beings.

The film is about two brothers who have a habit of ruining family gatherings on a grand scale. (We see flashbacks of a Fourth-of-July celebration going up in flames, of a wedding where their grandpa suffers a heart attack and falls face-first into the cake, etc.) The boys’ younger sister is getting married in Hawaii, and their parents (played by Stephen Root and Stephanie Faracy) present Mike and Dave with an ultimatum: find nice girls to accompany them to the wedding (and keep them in check), or don’t come at all. There’s much rigmarole as Mike and Dave search for girls who will fit this admittedly unusual bill, including a guest appearance on Wendy Williams and countless cringey meetings with women (and a few guys) all vying for an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii. (This little seed of the movie is based on a true story.)

The writers and Jake Szymanski, making his feature directing debut (he’s worked previously on Saturday Night Live among other shows), have concocted a modern-day screwball comedy of sorts: A misfit group of weirdos gathered at a luxurious resort for continued hijinks. The only thing missing is a subplot about their being on the lam, pursued by the mob. Mike and Dave even plays a little of the mistaken identity game, because Alice and Tatiana are only pretending to be good girls. In reality they’re as screwed up as the guys. Both of them live in a state of perpetual adolescence: Tatiana is a hot mess, although she’s better able to deal with her insanity than Alice, who was jilted by her fiancé, right at the middle of their nuptials. Now Alice watches the video of their doomed wedding on her phone over and over again. This trip represents both a form of therapy and masochism for her.

With Mike and Dave, finally we have a movie in which it’s not just the guys who are adult children. It’s all four of the main characters, equally stuck in the throes of arrested development. They come from stable, prosperous upbringings that provided too many options and not enough urgency in their lives to make difficult (read: adult) choices. But unlike so many similar-minded comedies of late, Mike and Dave revels in its characters’ bold, often ribald immaturity. It tacks on a jokey lesson about growing up, at the end, only the lesson itself is the joke. We’re not meant to treat these characters as real people, even though they become increasingly human, expanded far beyond their clichés. Because the film doesn’t care about giving us some dumb message, it remains true to the essence of all great screwball comedies, where character reform was rarely the point. What mattered instead was having a ball, and looking terrific, and who cares if the necklace is stolen? It’s a beaut! Did Barbara Stanwyck have a good time conning hapless and rich Peter Fonda in The Lady Eve? You bet. And did she change at the end? Nope. Did Myrna Loy and William Powell of The Thin Man films enjoy drinking too much at their hotels and letting their mysteries sort of solve themselves? By all means. The mysteries got solved, didn’t they? Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates embraces a similar kind of anarchy. It's a stick of dynamite, and I loved every minute of it.

With Sugar Lyn Beard, Sam Richardson, Alice Wetterlund, Lavell Crawford, Mary Holland, and Kumail Nanjiani, as a massage therapist who gives the bride a particularly erotic working over.