Spend this Halloween at 'The Exorcist' steps

Pictured: synergy 

Longtime readers of mine--if there are any--might know about my history with the 1973 horror film with The Exorcist. Short version: For more than a decade of my life, I had nightmares about the movie--and about demonic possession more generally--after first learning about it despite never having seen it. And during Halloween 2016, I decided to face my fears and watch the movie, with the following result. As I summarized here for Acculturated (RIP):

I spent the next decade of my life blocking out any demonic pop culture—especially The Exorcist—in the hope that the fear would vanish as I aged. But it did not. My Catholic upbringing and a primal anxiety about losing control of my own body are largely to blame. The nightmares subsided, but my fright lingered. Thus, at 23 years old, I finally decided to confront my fears. I would watch The Exorcist, which was filmed in Washington, D.C., the city in which I currently work and live, for Halloween. Perhaps it would end the nightmares forever, or perhaps it would continue them indefinitely. I did not know. But so resolved, I could not back down. What I found upon watching was some of what I expected, some of what I did not, and much that made confronting my fears worthwhile.

Read the whole article I wrote for Acculturated to find my elaboration of the virtues of The Exorcist. If you don't feel like doing that, well, I'll recapitulate here: Basically, it's a wildly pro-Catholic movie about the reality of evil in the world and the importance of faith in confronting it. Owing a great deal to this, and to its genuine scares and great performances, I named The Exorcist my favorite horror movie, ranking among my all-time favorites.

Having found the experience of confronting my fears around Halloween gratifying, I decided to do the same last year, in 2017, by reading the book of the same name on which The Exorcist is based. The movie proved to be a mostly faithful adaptation of the book, with most of the few changes it made benefiting the story and not harming it.*

I started the book about a week before Halloween last year. On the evening of that Halloween, I had about 30 pages left. And then I realized something: I not only lived in the same city in which the film's famous climax takes place, but could easily access that infamous set of stairs in Georgetown (recognized as a historic landmark by D.C. on Halloween 2015, and up for national recognition). And since Halloween was a cool, pleasant night, and the area around the stairs was well-lit, I could finish the book there. As a bonus, I would get to see what it's like to be at the location of one of the most famous scenes in horror on Halloween. And so my plan for Halloween 2017 came to be.

The scary thing is that the guy walking down the stairs wasn't behind me when the picture was taken. I'm kidding (or am I?)

Reaching the steps around 6:30 pm, I found a comfortable position to sit, read, and observe. First, of course, I spent about a half-hour reading the climax of The Exorcist, during which one character takes a deadly tumble from the top of the steps down. This marked a first for me: the first time I had ever read a book at the exact location of its resolution, or perhaps any part of the book at the exact location at which it is set. As a result, I was better able to visualize precisely what I was reading better than ever before, helping the text to come alive.

But finishing the book was only the beginning of my night at the steps. Not long after arriving, I saw either a priest or someone dressed as one for Halloween approaching the steps to descend them. With the book in had, I warned him to be careful. He laughed. steady stream of hesitant tourists, of varying ages, walked by the steps and searched for some sign that they were in the right place. Showing them my copy of the book, I assured them that they were. To one of these tourists, I related a trivia fact about the book: When the filmmakers were capturing the stunt of the movie's climax (for which the stairs were covered in foam), students at Georgetown with roof views of the steps charged people to watch it from their vantage points. I volunteered to take many pictures of pairs or groups of people who came by to see the steps (one of whom reciprocated for me). Most surprising: Throughout the night, a consistent group of people were just using the steps to work out. And, finally, in the climax of my evening, at the request of one pair of horror tourists, I gave a dramatic reading of the book's dramatic resolution. I did not throw myself down the stairs at the end, but I did my best in every other respect to make it seem real. All in all, a good place to spend Halloween.

My happiness should be evidence

After leaving the steps, and in the year subsequent to my evening there, I have thought a lot about why I felt the need to go there, and why so many others did as well. The Exorcist doesn't even take place on Halloween (although at least one or two scenes seem to take place on it). So why would people go there then? To confront their fears, as I did? Because The Exorcist, as a horror movie, has become so indelibly tied up in the holiday associated with the genre? Because maybe some were hoping something might happen in that famous place on that auspicious night? Probably for all of these reasons, and more.

But whatever the reason, I highly recommend checking out The Exorcist steps this Halloween. It's a fascinating cultural experience to see who shows up there, and why. A few people may just use it to work out, but most others go to it for some ineffable, spooky, quintessentially Halloween reason(s). If you have the chance, you should join them. Just be careful not to fall down the stairs.

I hear it's happened before.

*The one exception to this might have been dropping some of the obscure references that the demon Pazuzu makes to the Bible, John Milton, C.S. Lewis, and other sources.

'The Last Jedi' is better than the hate

Perhaps you've heard of this movie

When Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens came out in 2015, it brought a perhaps unprecedented level of hype and subsequent critical and commercial attention. There hadn't been a Star Wars movie in 10 years, and the last time there was one, it was the concluding chapter of the largely-loathed prequel trilogy, which also did not move forward the story last updated in 1983's Return of the Jedi.

The Force Awakens was also the first Star Wars movie to be released in what I call the "take economy," that large sector of the Internet (and other places, I guess, but mostly the Internet) powered by fans and obsessed with dissecting, reviewing, critiquing, and theorizing about pop culture. As a result, The Force Awakens generated a heretofore-unseen level of takes (some of them on this very blog). A large portion of these takes seemed critical of the movie, which I thought was mostly misguided, for reasons explained here.

The one criticism I granted some merit was that The Force Awakens seemed a bit...familiar. This critique deserves many, many qualifications. But the most important of them was that it would be impossible to judge The Force Awakens on its own merits, in isolation from the new trilogy of which it would be a part. As the first installment, it reacquainted us with the universe while also establishing the possibility for significant creativity and novelty in future installments. It would only be possible to judge The Force Awakens, then, and the new trilogy as a whole, upon its completion; too many critics were trying to judge aspects of its narrative best seen in conjunction in isolation, and in comparison with a trilogy already completed in 1983. This seemed unfair.

You may remember this movie

But with the release of Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi, we have a better sense of how to judge this new trilogy. The Last Jedi has many of the trappings of a Star Wars film: there are lightsabers, wars in stars, Force powers, etc. But in many other ways, The Last Jedi actively subverts what we've come to expect from Star Wars, introducing new characters, new themes, and new scenarios and setpieces, and taking the story in surprising new directions. It is not entirely successful at all of this, largely due to a somewhat unfocused, flabby narrative (at 2 hrs and 30 minutes long, The Last Jedi is the longest Star Wars movie), and some creative risks that do not pay off. Yet the successes in this regard definitely outweigh the failures of what ultimately remains thoroughly a Star Wars movie.

The Last Jedi begins with its first subversion: It seems to take place immediately after the end of The Force Awakens (whereas all previous Star Wars movies have at least some gap between them), with the Resistance (the reduced successor to the original trilogy's Rebellion) on the run from the First Order (the not-much-reduced successor to the original trilogy's Empire). Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley) has arrived at the hideaway of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), seeking his wisdom and his aid in the fight.

This setup seems at least somewhat redolent of The Empire Strikes Back, The Last Jedi's original trilogy equivalent. But The Last Jedi quickly takes this framework and moves it in strikingly different places. On the Resistance-First Order side of things, the Resistance, led by Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher) is in more dire straits than the Rebellion ever was, with a tiny fleet, led by brave but reckless pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), and hounded by the First Order's relentless ships. And Rey finds, in seeking the counsel of Luke, that he has essentially given up on the Jedi (whom he considers failures), the Force (from which he has cut himself off), and the Resistance (which he thinks no one can help). And Rey, the seemingly eager pupil, finds herself mysteriously connected and drawn to the tormented villain Kylo Ren, a.k.a. Ben Solo (Adam Driver), who is likewise drawn to her.

They have a history

To reveal where The Last Jedi goes with all of this would be to ruin a movie you should definitely see for yourself (and perhaps more than once; it took me two viewings to appreciate fully). But it is not a spoiler for me to reveal that the movie takes the raw materials of its plot in unexpected and subversive directions. And perhaps the most impressive direction is a narrative theme that is more mature and complex than any previous Star Wars movie: failure. Virtually every character in the movie confronts failure in some way. Their reactions to their failures determine the directions of their characters: some learn from them, others take the wrong lessons from them, and still others fail to grow at all from them, to their own detriment and folly.

It would also not be a spoiler for me to reveal that the movie does new things with the trappings of Star Wars that keep its universe interesting in a fashion I no longer considered possible. You'd think there are only so many things to do with the Force, with lightsabers, with space battles, and with the basic dynamic of good-vs-evil. But The Last Jedi does fresh things with each of these archetypes, a testament to its creative risks.

Not all of The Last Jedi's creative risks pay off, however. It is too long and somewhat disorganized, a noticeable contrast to the clean, clear, three-act structure of The Force Awakens. It is somewhat too packed with ideas, many, if not most, of which are intriguing but not all of which get full exploration. Many of its deliberate subversions of fan expectations served to keep the story surprising, but some of them seemed a bit unfair, and deserve at least some addressing in Episode IX - The Spark of Hope (or whatever it's called). The Last Jedi also does not seem to know really what to do with Finn (John Boyega), who gets a bit lost in the sprawl of its narrative.

But these flaws do not add up to a movie that deserves the hatred many seem to have given it. It is absurd to claim it is worse than any of the prequels, or that any character in it is worse than Jar Jar Binks, but many have claimed precisely this. If these and other critics, in overabundant supply in the take economy, are angry at The Last Jedi for straying from their expectations of what should have happened, or deviating from their own fan fiction or fan theories (something to which I could have related, having written some fan speculation of my own), then they are misguided. If Star Wars only conforms to preestablished expectations, then it will stop being interesting very soon, in a galaxy very, very close to us. There are criticisms to be made of the The Last Jedi, but a failure to be interesting is certainly not one of them.

'Blade Runner 2049' is up to the impossible task of following 'Blade Runner'

Will we get a sequel to this with an old Ryan Gosling in our 2049?

How do you follow up a movie like Blade Runner?

Ridley Scott's 1982 film, starring Harrison Ford as a burned-out cop (a blade runner) in a dystopian future Los Angeles tasked with hunting a group of rogue synthetic humans (known as replicants), was and remains such a singular, self-contained work. Between a production design that mixes the "used future" aesthetic of such movies as Star Wars and Scott's own Alien with the light-and-shadow dynamic of film noir, an involving soundscape that seamlessly combines a moody, synth-based score by Vangelis with in-movie audio, and a screenplay that explores themes--the meaning of humanity, the role of technology--that have only become more relevant over time...

...between all of this, Blade Runner earned a status and legacy that transcended its initial lukewarm reception and placed it among the most influential films of all time, not just of the sci-fi genre. Thus, it's not simply necessary to ask how one follows up Blade Runner, but also, why? What is left of what the original created to explore?

These were the difficult questions set before director Denis Villeneuve, staying in sci-fi after 2016's excellent Arrival, as well as screenwriters Hampton Fancher (who co-wrote the original screenplay) and Michael Green, and, for that matter, composers Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Walfisch, taking over soundtrack duties from Vangelis. And Blade Runner 2049 is their formidable answer. Returning to the world of the original Blade Runner 30 years after the events of the first film, Blade Runner 2049 justifies its existence by expanding its palette--perhaps a little too much.

Blade Runner 2049 centers on K (Ryan Gosling), an unambiguous replicant, unlike Harrison Ford's ambiguously human (?) Rick Deckard from the first movie. Like Deckard, though, K is a blade runner, a cop trained to hunt rogue replicants. One such "retirement" (the Blade Runner universe's term for executing a replicant) leaves him an intriguing clue that sets him on an investigation deep into his world, its past, and, ultimately, himself. Gosling is excellent in this role, just sympathetic and relateable enough to earn viewer investment, but also quiet and dutiful enough to remind us that he is not fully human and lacks true free will.

"Real human being/and a real hero..."

Through K's eyes, we see how dramatically the world of Blade Runner has expanded. The original film took place almost entirely within the claustrophobic, gloomy confines of its dark, neon-lit future Los Angeles. We spend plenty of time in that environment, dutifully recreated, in Blade Runner 2049. But from the opening scene to the final reel, Villeneuve (with help from cinematographer Roger Deakins) fills the screen with new ways of looking at what we think we have already seen, new angles and cuts, and new places. We see vast tracts of synthetic farmland, miles of garbage heaps, the orange, irradiated ruins of Las Vegas, the darkness of the ocean, and, in a striking Blade Runner first, the pure whiteness of snow. And it's all set to a soundtrack by Zimmer and Walfischer that draws from its predecessor while creating something new and suitably atmospheric in its own right. All of these places exist as worlds unto themselves without ever seeming out of place in the Blade Runner universe, filling in gaps implied or left by the first movie.

Modern sequels often receive criticism for hewing too closely to their predecessors. And while Blade Runner 2049 does depend heavily on its predecessor, often visually quoting or referring back to scenes, sounds, themes, and characters from it (yes, Harrison Ford returns as Deckard), this sequel defeats that critique. And it does so largely on the strength of its world-building and a faithfulness to the thematic spirit of the original that does not simply consist of (ahem) replication.

Harrison Ford, continuing his farewell tour of his most famous movie roles. 

Yet there is one defect in Blade Runner 2049: It is, in some senses, too much. The worldbuilding is great, and contributes to the film's immersive atmosphere, but can feel a bit sprawling at times. There are many talented actors in the film, in addition to Gosling and Ford, including Robin Wright, Jared Leto, and Dave Bautista. But some of them get lost in the extensive proceedings. Jared Leto's enigmatic tycoon Niander Wallace, in particular, seems like a rushed attempt to construct a profound-sounding, sinister villain. His more straightforward but equally devious analogue in Blade Runner, Eldon Tyrell, is far more compelling. And his replicant enforcer, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) is a much more intriguing and dynamic antagonist. Despite this large and talented cast, moreover, no character, hero or villain, so engages the viewer, or raises such philosophically intriguing questions, as Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty, the replicant who wanted nothing more than to defy the death sentence foisted upon him by his creator, does in Blade Runner.

Pictured: Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), aka Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film

Finally, consider its sheer length: At 163 minutes, it is nearly an hour longer than any cut of Blade Runner. Most of this additional runtime allows the story to proceed at a more relaxed, organic pace. But some of it feels like catering to a certain self-indulgence, perhaps in the belief that that was part of what made Blade Runner so special. Maybe it was, in part. But creative freedom is a tool, and, like any part of the creative process, derives its utility from how it is used. One gets the sense, from the sheer much-ness of Blade Runner 2049, that it is the product of years, if not decades, of pent-up ideas by its creators, who threw as much into the movie as they could think of.

But too much of a good thing is an easily forgivable defect. Blade Runner 2049 may be long, and it may be overstuffed. Yet by the end--and, especially, at the end, a series of scenes that certainly equals its predecessor's denouement--of its runtime, one is left not impatient for all that has occurred, but impassioned for more. Based on how this movie is doing commercially--and how it was constructed artistically--that is not likely to happen. Nor should it. For we can be happy enough to have a sequel that feels both worthy enough of the original to feel like it takes place in the same world and carries forward the same spirit and themes, and distinct enough to justify its existence. And just as the replicants of the Blade Runner universe would be happy to have their existences justified, so should we be happy that Blade Runner 2049 justified its own.

'Blade Runner' wasn't the only great sci-fi movie to come out in 1982

One of only several great movies of 1982

This weekend sees the release of Blade Runner 2049, the long-awaited (and long-delayed sequel) to 1982's Blade Runner. That Ridley Scott film, starring Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, a burned out detective in a near-future corporatist dystopian Los Angeles charged with hunting down some escaped synthetic humanoids, wasn't a huge hit at the time. But its reputation has grown over the years, and it is now widely recognized as a visual masterpiece, influencing countless subsequent media both in and outside of the sci-fi genre.

But Blade Runner wasn't the only sci-fi/fantasy film to come out in 1982. For some reason, and despite lacking a Star Wars movie, 1982 hosted a near-embarrassment of riches for the genre, with the films released succeeding critically and commercially in establishing both genres. As a result, all of these films have been returned to, in some fashion, either given long-delayed sequels, prequels, or rebooted (whether openly or not). And all of the attempts to recapture the magic of 1982 simply have not measured up. Below I recall five of my favorites, and examine why their imitators fell short.

Yes, those are Montalban's real muscles

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This is by far my favorite on the list, and one of my favorite movies of all time. Directed by Nicholas Meyer, and starring the original series cast plus original series villain Khan (Ricardo Montalban, reprising his role), the genetic superman bent on revenge, "TWOK" wraps a surprisingly profound meditation on aging, loss, and death up in a rousing sci-fi adventure. Aided by a great score by the late James Horner (his first major film work), unexpectedly mature performances by William Shatner (as Kirk) and Leonard Nimoy (as Spock), and, of course, by Montalban's dynamic Khan, TWOK revitalized a franchise that had seemingly been heading into senescence. Please, PLEASE watch it as soon as you can, but not before watching the original series episode "Space Seed" that functions as its prequel. Both are worth your time. And then, while you're at it, watch Skyfall, the 2012 James Bond movie that is a stealth remake of TWOK.

In 2013, J.J. Abrams (whom I have defended before) directed Star Trek Into Darkness, which ended up being a not-so-stealth remake of TWOK. As a summer blockbuster, STID, was better and smarter than average. If I had not been so fond of TWOK, or perhaps had never seen it, then I probably would have enjoyed STID, maybe even loved it. But TWOK ruined it for me. STID plays coy with its reveal, but then tries basically to be the same movie as TWOK once it reveals its villain as Khan (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) (with annoyingly knowing winks and nods to fans about it). But since it takes place in alternative Star Trek continuity, Kirk and Khan's history gets stripped of its context and meaning, leaving behind all the pathos and thematic weight of TWOK in the process. A much better movie would have involved the villain being Khan's second-in-command, whose goal is to resurrect his leader, a goal Kirk and co. must thwart. The only defense of J.J. that I can offer here is that he never really liked Star Trek much, and so relied on the screenplay given him (from which he still executed a good movie) that he did not fully comprehend or significantly attempt to alter. Khan is an iconic villain, but you can't just steal him from a better movie and expect him to work the same magic.

Thief. Warrior. Barbarian. King. Bodybuilder, 

Conan the Barbarian. Despite having an absurd title, a then-novice actor (Arnold Schwarzenegger, then basically unknown), and a fantasy setting derived from a pulp book series of already decades old by the time the movie came out, Conan the Barbarian just works. (Also, I know this is a fantasy film, but I like it so much I'm going to break my rule. Plus, when Oliver Stone [!] wrote an early draft of the screenplay, he set it in a post-apocalyptic reprimitivized Earth, so maybe it is actually sci-fi.) I've already sung its praises before (in hoping that it gets a sequel), so allow me to quote myself:

Don’t let the title fool you: Conan the Barbarian is a great movie that deserves a proper sequel. Combining images and themes from disparate times and places, it creates a fantastic world, vaguely familiar yet appropriately alien for an era before recorded history, with a vast untold history and mythology. 

Much like 1977’s Star Wars, Conan put its own spin on ancient storytelling archetypes: the hero’s journey, trusted companions, noble sacrifice, few against many. As Thulsa Doom, Darth Vader himself (James Earl Jones) is one of its best assets: a sort of primeval Jim Jones, who orders followers to kill their parents (and themselves) at his whim to prove the “power of the flesh” over steel. It all unfolds amidst a mélange of practical effects and fascinating ideas from writer-director Millius (a fascinating man himself), set to a rousingly old-fashioned score by the late Basil Poledouris.

I don't have much to add to this. I do have something to say, however, about subsequent entries in the Conan franchise. First, there is Conan the Destroyer, which I have seen. This movie bizarrely abandons the mythic, just-short-of-bombastic trappings of the first film, adding Wilt Chamberlain (?) as a villain and dramatically upping the comedy and slapstick. Conan (and Conan) deserved better. The recent attempted reboot, starring Jason Mamoa, I have only seen a portion of; that was enough. Drenching the proceedings in CGI and forced darkness, this new Conan coasted on well-worn clichés rather than drawing from the epic tradition of human storytelling, as did the original Conan. The creators of the property were probably hoping that "brand recognition" would allow them to get away with creative laziness, but audiences and critics alike rejected the attempt, and squandered the legacy of the original Conan in the process.

When will we get a Freddy vs. Jason-style It vs. The Thing? 

The Thing. The Thing is a disgusting movie. I mean this as a compliment for it is disgusting in the best possible way. This sci-fi horror film, directed by John Carpenter, is about an Arctic research crew who have to contend with a fearsome alien that can infect any living thing and assume its shape. Kurt Russell is the lead, but Keith David and Wilford Brimley, among others, also contribute to the frightening, paranoia-drenched, claustrophobic experience. And oh yeah, it's gross. It was the 80s, so Carpenter and his crew didn't have access to CGI. You'd think that might be limiting, but you'd be wrong. Using nothing but good old-fashioned practical effects and animatronics, The Thing produces scene after scene of nightmare fuel; in one memorable instance, an actor reacts to one of the titular creature's transformations by saying "you've gotta be fucking kidding me." See The Thing, and you'll not only agree that this is one of the most honest horror movie reactions in film history, but you'll also find yourself mouthing the words in agreement. The Thing also inspired this hilarious video, which is another point in its favor.

Which brings me to the 2011 prequel, also called The Thing. Making a prequel is always a risky bet, and this was a bet that failed--or so I'm told; I have not bothered to see this movie. The only thing that needs to be said about it, in my view, is that it replaces the 80s-style gore-and-guts practicality of the original with the sterile unrealism of CGI. Practical effects can be bad; see, e.g., Plan 9 From Outer Space (and, for that matter, CGI can be good; see, e.g., The Force Awakens or Mad Max: Fury Road, both of which used more CGI than you might think). But, at their best, practical effects do not impede creativity, but facilitate it. When you can't just turn to a computer to render something for you, you have to think pretty hard about how to make it in the real world; as a result of actually existing, in some form, that created thing can then have more of a realistic bearing in the world itself, and therefore in the film. CGI, on the other hand, at its worst, liberates the imagination, but in a way that makes the deceptions on the screen obvious, and distracts from the intended effect. What I've seen of The Thing remake suggests the latter in abundance.

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial: These days, especially with Stranger Things and It, nostalgia for a certain sense of the 80s--technology-free, biking from house to house, hanging out with your neighbors and communicating with him via walkie-talkie, walking around your small hometown, creating an entire world beyond the stifling presence of adults--is all the rage in our pop culture. This is due, in large part, to Steven Spielberg, especially but not limited to E.T. I hardly need to summarize its plot, which just about everyone knows at this point (kindly alien suddenly enters the life of a young, fatherless boy, changing everything), or point out the contrast with the vision of alien life presented by Carpenter in The Thing (consonant with Spielberg's earlier Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but clashing dramatically with his later War of the Worlds). E.T. was a box office and critical smash, cementing Spielberg as a legend, and crystallizing for those who saw it at the time and those who see it afterward the sort of gauzy 80s nostalgia so in vogue today, a kind of double recollection, one real, and one fake (with the two of them intermixing).

This is the one area in which our pop culture seems (so far) capable of competently and consistently drawing from its predecessor. Stranger Things (which I shall review soon on this blog), J.J. Abrams' Super 8, It, and other media have all profitably mined this vein of 80s nostalgia. In all cases, though, one wonders why this era seems to have such a powerful pull, whether it is truly worthy of the constant revisitation our current culture creators seem intent on giving it, or whether they are only doing so because of the fondness they hold for it as an accident of their birth, and, finally, whether the insistence upon returning to and homaging can instead lead to redundancy (as in the case of the competently made and enjoyable Super 8; sorry J.J.) and creative inhibition.

I already sang the praises of Blade Runner above, but I'll happily sing them again. Combining a moody, evocative, synthesizer-based soundtrack by Vangelis with images so unique in their presentation that we had to coin a new term ("tech noir") to describe them, and reinforcing all of that with heady meditations on what it means to be human, Blade Runner is simply incredible (but be sure to watch The Final Cut; there are many versions floating around out there).

As I wrote above, Blade Runner is getting a sequel this weekend, after 35 years. We don't know yet whether it lives up to the original, although early signs are good. But whatever happens, we will always have 1982. It was not a year of special significance; the significance of the year in film is in the lack thereof. These were just the kinds of movies being made in the early 80s. Today, we have made many attempts to try to recapture the magic--with much more mixed success. Something tells me there won't be many people trying to recapture the magic of 2017 in 2052.

'Dunkirk' thrillingly captures the reality of war

See this movie. 

The first words in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk are spoken by a young British soldier (Fionn Whitehead) who has just barely escaped the enemy gunfire that had picked off a group of his fellow soldiers one by one. Yet as the young Brit, desperate to escape the bit of French territory just across the channel from England into which invading German forces have corralled the Allies, stumbles into an Allied encampment, he is fired on once again and nearly killed. He speaks the words that save his life: "I'm English."

This concise, thrilling, and brutal opening scene is basically Dunkirk in miniature. It has the tension, the action, the true-to-life depiction of war, the desperate quest for survival, and, most important, the understated yet surely present undercurrent of English patriotism. All of these qualities appear, in one form or another, in varying combinations, for the rest of the film. Together, they make it a highlight of Nolan's impressive oeuvre (he of Inception, and The Dark Knight fame), and one of the best World War II films ever made. There are many ways to make a World War II movie, and Hollywood has basically done them all. There's the "elite squad on a mission" template (Dirty Dozen, Inglorious Basterds, A Bridge Too Far). There's the "disparate platoon on a journey" model (Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, Fury). There's the "Great Man" type (Patton, Emperor), that views the war through the eyes of a single important figure.There are other kinds, but these are the mainstays. And again, we've seen plenty of all of them.

What we haven't seen is a movie like Dunkirk. Several qualities distinguish Dunkirk immediately. There are, for example, no Americans (we weren't in the war yet, although we are alluded to when one character reads Winston Churchill's famous post-Dunkirk speech). Nor are there ever any scenes of commanding officers pointing at maps or discussing strategy in a room; the closest we get is Kenneth Branagh as an officer who, trapped like everyone else on the beach, is in just as much danger as they (and one could argue his role is even slightly extraneous to the film). Even more striking, however, is that there are no Germans. Yes, the soldiers trapped on Dunkirk's beach and sailing in its waters are bombed by, torpedoed by, and shot at by Germans, but never do we see on screen a single German face.

Pictured: definitely not a German face

And unlike virtually every movie listed above, there are very few stars in Dunkirk. World War II movies often can't resist stuffing their cast to the gills with famous actors, almost/often to the point of distraction (see, for example, the cast of A Bridge Too Far). This isn't to say Dunkirk is completely devoid of stars--we have Kenneth Branagh, recent Academy Award winner Mark Rylance, Nolan regulars Tom Hardy (yet again obscuring his face for most of the film as a pilot) and Cillian Murphy, Harry Styles (of One Direction), and Michael Caine (er, his voice). Nor is it devoid of acting talent: In his film debut, Fionn Whitehead, the closest Dunkirk has to a main character, is a highly relatable and engaging locus of sympathy; Mark Rylance embodies the stiff upper lip as the civilian Brit sailing across the channel (often steering with a Union Jack visible behind him), and the rest of the actors involved do some of their best work.

"When Hitler is ashes...then you have my permission to die."

But Dunkirk has a more collective focus; names are given only sparingly and indirectly. It cuts between three temporally and spatially distinct yet occasionally intersecting narratives: on land (the soldiers stuck on the beach), sea (an English civilian piloting his private ship across the channel to Dunkirk), and air (English pilots trying to keep their countryman safe from German planes). Some critics have questioned the necessity of this nonlinear timeline, but the scope it provides is immense, and the payoff it delivers upon climax is justly rewarding (even more so with the backing of an 80s Vangelis-style backing by Hans Zimmer). Nolan manages to convey the drama of the entire incident, in all its facets, while also giving us people whose lives and fates concern us. He has delivered on his promise to make Dunkirk an "intimate epic."

Nolan makes us care about these characters by showing how difficult mere survival is in such a situation. The British in Dunkirk have to survive sinking ships, German bombs and torpedoes, aerial dogfights, ocean water caught on fire from spilled oil, and much, much more (which Nolan illustrates with practical effects, bucking Hollywood's CGI laziness). So many moments of danger in the film rely on split-second decisions, happenstance, and fortune that we never truly know what is going to happen to any one of the characters on screen. They fight not only the enemy, but, in many cases, sheer helplessness. What can a soldier with a single rifle do against an attacking plane? What can you do if your boat is full but you see comrades treading water? It is the focus on sheer survival, and the moments of high tension (again aided by Nolan regular Hans Zimmer's score and its Shephard tones), that make Dunkirk one of the best on-screen portrayals of the pure lived reality of war that I have seen (and this 97-year-old British Dunkirk veteran agrees with me!).

Yet some have criticized Dunkirk, primarily for being boring or somehow hollow. The action depicted on screen never adds up to anything substantial, they claim, and it's difficult to connect to a cast intentionally made into more of a collective. Yet such critics totally miss the point of Dunkirk. By honing in on the more common experiences of war, Dunkirk steers away from Saving Private Ryan-style sentimentality and captures the lived reality of the conflict for the overwhelming majority of its participants, the desperate (and overwhelmingly young*) soldiers content only to survive to the next battle. Other World War II movies may have elite squads, conveniently-assembled platoons, or singular Great Men, but Dunkirk alone of World War II movies I've seen successfully conveys how an entire nation felt at war.

We see this in one of the last exchanges of the film, as--spoiler alert for a historical event that happened more than 70 years ago--two characters return to England and pass by an old man. He congratulates them for what they have done.

"We just survived," one of them scoffs. "That's good enough," the old man says in reply. As, indeed, it was. As for Dunkirk itself, it's more than good enough. See it for yourself, on the biggest screen possible, and find out why. *It seemed in appropriate for me to mention in the body of my review, but this movie, above all, made me think about how I would have fared in a situation like this. The actors playing most of the soldiers are all right around my age, as would the soldiers on the beach all those years ago. Would I have been a coward? A hero? Would I have survived? How fortunate was I to have been born in one of the only times and places in the vast stream of human history in which I am exempt from what otherwise would have been my duty as an able-bodied young adult male in virtually any other time and place? Why am I asking you these questions?

The Force is strong with 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story'

Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars...

A friend of mine once forever changed the way I think about Star Wars movies. He suggested to me that the best way to understand them is to replace every instance of "The Force" in dialogue with "the plot." He believed that the Force, whatever its pseudo-/quasi-mystical qualities, was also always a way to ensure that whatever needed to happen in the story happened, and that people and events important in the narrative got the attention their writers and creators thought they needed. Thus, to say one character is "strong with the Force" is to say that he or she is "strong with the plot." When Ben Kenobi, in A New Hope, says that "the Force is what gives a Jedi his power," he actually means that "the plot is what gives Jedi his power." When Yoda, in Empire Strikes Back, says that "my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is," he's really saying "my ally is the plot. And a powerful ally it is." And so on.*

I bring this up not to cast fundamental doubts on the soundness or enjoyability of Star Wars movies; the fact that I have an entire category dedicated to them on this blog suggests that I do, in fact, like and enjoy them. I mention it because the circumstances that have given us Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the most recent Star Wars movie, have put me in mind of this sense of compulsion and willed obligation. For, as I wrote last week, Rogue One is the first Star Wars spin-off of the property's new era under the ownership of Disney. It is a prequel, but one that does not focus on the Skywalker family,* or directly advance the story continued most recently with last year's The Force Awakens. The entire purpose of Rogue One is, in fact, to make money--oh, and also, to explain in film length the following lines from A New Hope's opening crawl:

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Rogue One, then, is not only a property willed into existence mostly by the profit motive, based on a few throwaway lines from a nearly 40-year-old movie, but also a movie with a known outcome. We know how Rogue One has to end: the Rebels will get the Death Star plans. Rogue One's very existence constrains its storytelling possibilities, as much, if not more so, than the fact that it has to make a bunch of money. From all this, you might think that Rogue One is a remarkably cynical enterprise, doomed to mediocrity for lack of risk-taking but destined for success because of its brand. Well, the latter may be true (though the prequels indicate that creative success, at least, is not guaranteed for the Star Wars brand), but, remarkably, the former is not. For Rogue One's creative constraints paradoxically free it to become one of the best entries in the Star Wars canon to date.

Despite stiff competition. 

It does not do this, however, by creating compelling characters on par with Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, or Kylo Ren. The main cast of Rogue One consists of a Dirty Dozen/Great Escape-style ragtag ensemble; most of its members, aside from one or two distinguishing traits, are forgettable (with the standouts being Donnie Yenn's Chirrut Îmwe, a blind, plot--I mean, Force-believing mystic, and K2 [Alan Tudyk], a sassy robot). Even Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the leader of this motley crew, is hardly compelling, with her character alternating unconvincingly between apathetic thief and idealistic rebel, albeit undergirded by an admittedly pathos-laden relationship with her father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen, fresh off a villainous role in Doctor Strange in November). No, the Rogue Squadron itself is mostly forgettable. As is Director Krennic (Ben Mendelssohn), the striving, not-really-all-that-evil, mid-level Imperial bureaucrat who serves as their primary antagonist**.

The movie also succeeds in spite of a story and some action scenes within that bite off a bit more than third-time director Gareth Edwards (of 2014's Godzilla reboot, on which I had some fond words here), is quite ready to chew. The narrative is relatively straightforward, and moves quickly--so quickly, in fact, that we sometimes don't realize why some things happen, or why certain characters are doing what they're doing, except that the Force and the plot demand it. And sometimes, there is simply so much going on in front of us that we can't quite follow it, though we know we're still supposed to be impressed by the ambition thereof.

Yet the genius of Rogue One is to be good enough in its execution and overall atmosphere to render these complaints minor quibbles. For while the action can at times be confusing, when it is not, it is easily the most brutal and visceral of anything we've seen in a Star Wars movie. We've never had as full an immersion in realistic, extensive, ground-based infantry combat in this universe before (though it has happened in bits and pieces). Rogue One promised to deliver on this front, and, at its best, it does exactly that (despite my concerns), even breathing new life into the classic aerial dogfights with some fresh visual and strategic approaches and innovations. And it creates, as a backdrop to that gritty combat, an appropriately nuanced view of the struggle between the Rebellion and the Empire. The Empire doesn't definitively win, and the lines are still clearly drawn, but there is a lot more violence, death, and setbacks, and there are a lot more gray areas. Rogue One proved that a Star Wars movie can still make its action and drama interesting, even if nobody has a lightsaber***.

"Excuse me, I believe you're forgetting someone..." 

The most impressive feat of Rogue One is its simultaneous fitting into and distinguishing itself from the larger Star Wars universe. Though it links itself to the movies we all already know and love many times***, it brings enough novelty into its tone, its action, its settings, and its approach to story and characters to be appreciated on its own. Where some might have seen only constraints and limitations imposed by everything it had to accomplish, and all that it could not do, the creative personnel of Rogue One saw an opportunity to create something new out of something familiar, and they seized it. While it may not rise, as a whole, to the heights of the best Star Wars, it contains plenty of individual moments, images, and general merit to earn a proper place in the franchise family. And, more important, it has proven that the Star Wars universe, now approaching its 40th anniversary, is not old and creaking, but young, vibrant, full of possibility, and may only be just beginning to be explored. May the Force--and the plot--be with us as we see where else we go in this galaxy far, far away.

*Even The Force Awakens works: It becomes The Plot Awakens, which makes perfect sense. It was the first live-action Star Wars movie of any kind in 10 years, and the first to move that universe's narrative forward in 35.
**You could also argue that Grand Moff Tarkin, played by a CGI-resurrected Peter Cushing, is also a main antagonist. But the most interesting thing about his character is that the actor who portrays him has been dead for 22 years, and Rogue One was able to return him to life in mostly convincing fashion, which means that we now have the ability to resurrect long-dead actors (I want to know how many people who didn't know he was dead thought something was off about him; I knew, and I still impressed, though it wasn't perfect). Ponder the possibilities and the ethics of this.
***Actually, somebody does have a lightsaber. It's Darth Vader. And, just as I predicted last week, he shows up and absolutely brutalizes people in terrifying fashion. It's awesome, in both senses of the word.
****Rogue One has many Easter Eggs, and ends up being almost a direct prequel to A New Hope.

Tune in, turn on, and drop out to 'Dr. Strange'

I probably should have expected a strange movie, with a title like that.

There are two major criticisms of the perpetually-unfolding, undeniably-successful 14-film (so far) franchise known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The first is that the films in this series, from 2008's Iron Man to this November's Doctor Strange, are overly formulaic. They present a competent, if unspectacular, mix of action, comedy, and relatively high (but always diffused) stakes with a standard hero's journey narrative, and maximize the whole recipe for popular consumption. The second criticism, related to the first, is that MCU movies tend to lack a strong villain (Tom Hiddleston's Loki excepted). Every MCU villain is usually either a dark mirror of the hero, some deep-voiced cosmic threat bent on mass destruction, or both.

You could say both of these things about Doctor Strange. Its basic narrative is the hero's journey of Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch, doing his best Gregory House impression), a brilliant, arrogant, sarcastic, know-it-all neurosurgeon who loses the proper use of his hands after a car accident and goes wandering to the Himalayas for answers after exhausting every other recourse, becoming a mystical defender of Earth in the process. Along the way, of course, he confronts difficulty, is humbled, and emerges from the process a better man. And he has, in Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), a(n) (ex-)love-interest; in the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) and Karl Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), two wise mentor figures; and, in Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), a megalomaniacal, dark-mirror villain (in thrall to a deep-voiced cosmic threat). So, yes, you could say it's all there.

"Call me 'formulaic' one more time..."

But that paragraph above should provide your first hints that Doctor Strange does something special within the somewhat predictable Marvel template. Just look at that cast. Cumberbatch, one of the best younger representatives of the classically-trained British school of acting working today, at first might as well be playing Robert Downey, Jr., playing Stephen Strange. By the end of the film, though, he has given his character a satisfying, credible arc, distinguishing him from Downey's Tony Stark/Iron Man. McAdams is a bit underused, but at least does a bit more than the typical movie damsel, saving Strange on at least one occasion. Swinton, who must now serve as a proxy David Bowie after the Thin White Duke's death, imbues her role with an alluring mysticism. Ejiofor puts way more soulfulness into Mordo than you'd expect for a Marvel movie, selling you on his character's interesting philosophical journey. And Mikkelsen pulls off that classic movie villain trick of acting like he's the hero of the story, making you wonder whether he has a point or two. All of these performances (and, frankly, the actors who provide them), and some I didn't mention, are almost gratuitously exquisite for a Marvel movie.

And it's not just the actors that make Doctor Strange more than just the Marvel formula. A thoroughgoing psychedelic spirit, consistent with the 60s culture origins of the original comic book character, also helps. You see it in big things, such as the (surely-Inception-inspired) manipulation of time, space, and planes of existence to make the action scenes way more interesting than they otherwise might have been, and in the various other sequences to which the word "trippy" rightly applies. Most profound is one sequence where two characters discuss their mortality while watching lightning crawl across the sky in slow-motion, a scene I'd argue qualifies as one of the most unique and affecting to appear in any Marvel movie to date.

One of the trippier scenes of the movie.

You also see it in little things, such as scoring one key scene to "Interstellar Overdrive," a song from Pink Floyd's 1967 psychedelic/space rock album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (to which I listened while writing this review, and which I highly recommend), and having Marvel legend Stan Lee read Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, a founding text of the hallucinogenic 1960s (Jim Morrison named The Doors after the book), during his requisite Marvel movie cameo. I am a sucker for psychedelia, so I may be a biased judge in this area. You can be sure that, if Doctor Strange came out in the late 60s, drug-addled college students would be packing theaters to drop acid to it (though the special effects of the movie would have been impossible until the past few years). But, my psychedelic bias aside, this stylistic choice allows Doctor Strange to do things that make it far more novel than you'd expect.

Fun fact: Doctor Strange appeared on the cover of Pink Floyd's 1968 album A Saucerful of Secrets

One of these choices--to introduce and rely heavily on time travel as a plot device--was both interesting to me as a time travel aficionado, and potentially worrisome. I don't want to say too much, since, as with Arrival, at least some of your enjoyment of the movie will likely depend on how well you think this time travel becomes part of the narrative. I will say this, though: In future movies, people may wonder why Doctor Strange doesn't just do this anytime something is too difficult. For now, however, Marvel movies continue to qualify as consistently above-average entertainment--working from a formula, to be sure, but one that seems to work, and one individual movies still seem capable of making interesting. And Doctor Strange is no exception. 

'Arrival' is the kind of movie we need more of

They're trying to figure out if it's a cookbook

It's pretty amazing that Arrival got made.

Arrival is a patient, cerebral, action-light, hard sci-fi drama. It's not based on a popular (comic) book, a video game, a toy, or any other of the pre-branded properties so in vogue in Hollywood these days, but on a patient, cerebral, action-light, hard sci-fi short story called "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang. It's helmed by an accomplished but relatively obscure director (Denis Villeneuve, of Prisoners, Sicario, and, next-up, Blade Runner 2049, a 2017 Blade Runner sequel returning Harrison Ford). It has a production budget of about $50 million, chump change by modern Hollywood major studio standards. It stars three great actors (Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker), none of whom, however, is known to be a reliable box-office draw. All this, and it somehow got a semi-wide theatrical release from Paramount Pictures, a major Hollywood studio.

And thank goodness it did. 

Arrival is about the sudden appearance on Earth of 12 gigantic, monolithic extraterrestrial craft, and Earth's attempts to figure out why they are here. The action focuses on America's efforts, spearheaded by linguist Luise Banks (Adams), theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Renner), and overseen by Colonel Weber (Whitaker). The aliens do not appear to be hostile. But Banks' team has to face a different enemy: the language barrier. It's hard enough to communicate with a human being when neither of you knows the other's language. Imagine trying to establish communication with another intelligent species, one that, it turns out, thinks in an entirely different way from you.

Especially when it could be a cookbook?

As I've said, it's a heady premise. But Arrival does great work with it. Unlike a large portion of alien-based sci-fi, there is no real horror. The dominating sentiments are, instead, mostly awe and mystery, as Banks' team goes to work trying to knock down the biggest language barrier in history. Adams' subtle portrayal of Banks gives her a confident intelligence, underscored by an emotional vulnerability that makes her character more than some kind of unflappable genius wunderkind. Her interplay and rapport with Renner's wise-cracking physicist excel as the movie's central relationship, driving the plot and intensifying credibly as the narrative advances.

Other aspects of Arrival elevate it above typical genre fare. Villeneuve belongs to that dying race of director capable of letting the camera linger and of framing a shot. The fact that camera tricks and filming choices keep the aliens themselves mostly hidden throughout the movie suggests this may have been partly for budgetary reasons, but we don't get a full shot of the half-football shaped alien ships until almost 20-30 minutes into the movie. And the payoff is worth it: The first craft we see is suspended just above a green plain, lightly draped with fog, and set against a bare sky. It's a memorable shot, one that also serves as an audacious audition for a place in the annals of iconic sci-fi imagery. Other scenes also supply worthy submissions: a hardly-novel but still-impressive playing with gravity and perspective, for example.    

The first real glimpse of  an alien ship in Arrival

I think it compares well to this iconic shot from 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example

The movie also dabbles in other thoughtful ideas, most of them proceeding from its central theme of communication: its difficulty, its breakdown, its meaning, its purpose. Some of this, unfortunately, gets swept up in a narrative that would have been content to linger for much longer than the movie we got, and some of it is made too explicit in scenes of over-exposition.

But the main flaw of Arrival, if there is one, comes from how much of the narrative is subsumed by an admittedly clever twist that comes at the end (and whose nature I shan't reveal here). Maybe I'm just too genre-savvy. But I was hoping that the movie was going somewhere other than where it went, even when I began to get a (correct) sense of its ultimate direction before the dramatic reveal. The journey to that place is still enjoyable, though--and probably even more so upon a second viewing--even if the destination left me a bit dissatisfied.    

So, yes, Arrival isn't perfect. But it's pretty good. I'd give it a positive review even if I weren't biased in favor of not only this type of movie, but also of seeing as many of this type of movie (the 2001: A  Space Odyssey, Interstellar, 10 Cloverfield Lane genre) in theaters as possible. In an age when studios and audiences alike seem to demand pre-branded, thought-lite properties, Arrival is an incredible gift, and I'm grateful for it. And if you take my advice and see it yourself, I think you'll be grateful as well.

Applause for the Waco Kid, aka Gene Wilder (1933-2016)

My local Blockbuster prominently displayed this image of the late Gene Wilder, back when Blockbuster was still a thing.

Near the end of this past August, 2016 once again proved how dangerous a year it is to be an icon of popular culture when it claimed the life of the great actor Gene Wilder. Wilder died at age 83, leaving behind an impressive body of work. Though I am a fan of some of his other work (such as 1979's fun comedic Western The Frisco Kid, in which Wilder stars as a Polish rabbi sent to America and teams up with a post-Star Wars Harrison Ford), it is most likely, however, that he'll be remembered for four films: The Producers (1968), Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein (both 1974).

Others have honored his memory much better than I am capable. Mel Brooks, who directed Wilder in The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein (Wilder had the idea for Young Frankenstein on the set of Blazing Saddles; he and Brooks wrote the screenplay together) had a heartfelt recollection of his time with Gene Wilder not long after Wilder's passing. Wilder himself gave a wonderful career retrospective on NPR 2005. John Podhoretz wondered why he never became the bigger star he deserved to be.

Wilder in Young Frankenstein

And the week after Wilder died, Warner Bros. and AMC theaters gave their own tribute in the form of a  post-celebrity-death cash-grab of which I wholly approve: They re-released Blazing Saddles into theaters for the weekend. I jumped at the opportunity to see one of my favorite comedies on the big screen, uncensored, from start-to-finish. This was a wise move. Though I've seen Blazing Saddles, many times, it is one of those movies (like, say, Airplane) so packed with jokes that you notice something new, or appreciate something old in a new way, almost every time you see it. For one, despite being a thoroughgoing parody of Westerns - once almost as popular in Hollywood as superhero movies are today - it has enough respect for the form and its conventions to - among other things - look beautiful on a big screen. In an increasingly politically-correct age, moreover, it was quite something to see a movie comfortable not just dealing with racism, but deriving humor from it, yet in a back-handedly tasteful way. It was also fun to watch in a full (!) theater with obvious fans of of the movie. Finally, for sheer meta pleasure, I don't think anything beats seeing the scene in which Hedley Lamarr settles down in a movie theater to watch the end of Blazing Saddles while I myself was in a movie theater watching the end of Blazing Saddles. It's been a while since I had that much meta in my life. 

The best part of the movie, of course, is the proto-buddy-cop friendship between Cleavon Little's Sheriff Bart and Gene Wilder's Waco Kid/Jim. Little plays Bart straight but stops just short of bringing him to a fault, and Wilder's Waco Kid is both convincingly washed-up and a credibly laconic deadshot when he needs to be. The two of them together have enough comedic chemistry to have powered a movie all on their own, but Blazing Saddles throws in one of cinema's most important fart jokes, Harvey Korman's hilariously narcissistic Hedley Lamarr, a well-meaning but mostly incompetent henchman in Slim Pickens, Mel Brooks' imbecilic governor, a horse getting punched in the face, and so many other hilarious characters and moments that it's impossible to list them all here.

Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little, having a blast in Blazing Saddles

Instead, I want to use Wilder's performance in Blazing Saddles to draw out some of his greater qualities as an actor. Probably foremost among these is what Todd VanDerWerff called his "comedic generosity." While a star in his own right, Wilder did not hog the screen; he was always more than happy to let co-stars shine and get the punchline, as he does in Blazing Saddles in spades. Here's a great example:



Less evident in Blazing Saddles, but much, much more prominent in his roles in Young Frankenstein and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was Wilder's talent for playing the man just barely keeping it all together. Yes, he could convey a quiet exterior, but he could easily hint at - and, without much prompting, ferociously display - a wellspring of hidden emotions and tensions. He could, moreover, convincingly alternate between both, often within the same scene, without seeming like a ham or a scenery-chewer. Here's probably the best example of that:



Finally, Wilder was perhaps the definitive master of the comedic pause. In the wrong hands, the comedic pause can undercut the humor of a moment meant to be funny, or draw out a joke to the point where it no longer amuses. But Wilder knew exactly how to make his pauses just as long as they needed to be; whether to provide the momentary hesitation that mirrors how the audience feels, or to highlight the awkwardness of whatever situation in which he found himself. The comedic pause is an art; Gene Wilder was its Michelangelo. Here's proof:

 
Gene Wilder's performances will live on for many years to come; his starring role in Willy Wonka alone seems already to have introduced him to an entire new generation of fans. Yet his passing reminds us ever more of 2016's stark question: What will popular culture look like after all of the icons of the Baby Boomer era pass away? Someday, we will have to find out. But, in the meantime, how about a little applause for the Waco Kid: