What *was* New (Three Months ago) - Flick Through Review
The 2020s started like a grenade through a window - the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in the 1930s was the tragically shattered glass, and COVID-19 was the rubble of a room. You can see it reflected in everything - the plasticky screens that still line office cubicles, the rising global poverty and income inequality and most noticeably in the art that has been produced over the last few years. So on January 1st 2023, I found myself in a cinema distracting myself from the looming hangover with a post-lockdown film. In fact, I visited the cinema twice in January and a third cancelled trip turned into a binge-watch of a whole Netflix mini-series. It might be April now, but these films left a little bit of an impression on me for how they started the year off with such a wobble and such a wound from what COVID and lockdown and everything else did to us. So I will now indulge myself and write about the two things that caught my attention in January: Avatar: The Way of Water and Matilda the Musical.
Avatar: The Way of Water is the sequel to Avatar (2009), and it is a film which James Cameron has developed for ten years. If you watched Way of Water and had to pick one of those statements that most described the film, you would almost definitely think it a rushed sequel to the visually stunning 2009 film that was charming and pretty. You would not guess that ten years of work went into the movie.
To avoid this Flick Through Review turning into a rambly rant about a movie I was 40% enthusiastic about, I’ll focus less on letting you know what the most successful movie of all time is, and instead talk gripes and good bits. The set-up; the evil army man who died in the last film is back except this time he is a blue man. This already kind of defeats the conversation of the first film. Not only that, it makes his death pointless. And death as a whole in this already-organised series. If anyone can be cloned, there are no real stakes.
Jake Sully, our protagonist, realises blue-bad-boy is going to come for his family and so he decides to leave behind their way of life, their friends, and everything his wife has ever known and fought for. They leave it all for the water tribe.
We get a little bit of a repeat of the first film that never really distinguishes itself enough to realise how much potential it has. The whale monster especially, and the fire reflecting off the ocean’s surface in the climax of the film, are just breathtaking visual effects that could have been used to service a captivating plot or interesting characters. But then the Sully children, or the cartoony villains start to speak and the forced humour and lazy plotting are just glaring and off-putting. The whale juice gives humans eternal youth? How does that really fit into the universe that they are creating? It is never really important. Why is Sigourney Weaver’s Na’avi daughter magical? What does that mean for the story? Her arc seemed new - a spark of life injected into the script’s nervous system. And then it never really goes anywhere or gets resolved. There was a beautiful scene with glowing jellyfish though, just as the development-starved Sully and his wife Neytiri got to look awesome in the overly long final confrontation. It’s style over substance to an obscene degree. It is setting up sequels over sorting the standalone. And it’s hard enough to make a good film; no wonder they fucked up trying to plan the next five at the same time. Shooting in underwater sets that cost more money than you or I will ever see in our lives must have been super hard in pandemic times. Relying on the CG must have helped with social distancing though.
Did you know that Matilda (1996) - the one with Danny DeVito - was actually directed by Sir Daniel DeVito himself?! I look back fondly on that film; the heart still works, the jokes are still funny and Miss Honey is still lovely. The Trunchbull is equal parts frightening and hilarious with some of her insane ranting. Matilda's powers, with her little eyebrow wiggles and finger flicks, seem so natural and believable. And the music! It's iconic - Send me on My Way, Little Bitty Pretty One and ALL the original music. It's crazy to think about the impact that the film had on me: Matilda escaped by reading books and never really felt safe or realised how different she was. Good stuff to have in your kids film!
Tim Minchin - comedian, composer and musician - also rubbed off on me pretty early on with the song about the biggest struggle to face mankind:
Imagine my amazement, then, when I discovered that Tim Minchin was writing a Matilda musical. Fast forward to 2023 and it's on the big screen, releasing onto Netflix soon. Matilda The Musical is strange and spectacular. It manages to not disappoint but to enhance the original film. Minchin even keeps some of the surreal Roald Dahl humour from the book. The music itself sounds like it could have come from an old movie musical from the golden age, and obviously also acted as a big influence on The Greatest Showman (2017) that came a few years after the stage play. Tunes like Revolting Children and Miracle are catchy and inspired, with choreography that is reminiscent of Annie (1982) or Mary Poppins (1964). The children have real character and some acting props: some standouts are Alisha Weir playing Matilda herself, Winter Jarrett-Glasspool as Amanda Thripp and Charlie Hodson as Bruce Bogtrotter. Emma Thompson is also astounding as The Trunchbull. She is iconic and horrific and hard to watch (and harder to tear your eyes away from).
The reason I wanted to write about MatildaThe Musical was something more emotional though. Miss Honey was always my favourite part of the 1996 film with her genuine care for Matilda and her subtle smirks and gentle encouragement and intelligence. She is a source of a lot of the heart in that film. So after seeing Matilda The Musical I knew I had something to say about Lashana Lynch's Miss Honey.
She is such a sympathetic character here. Lonely and isolated (*coughs in COVID, but in a not infectious way*) she is frightened and weak but summons all of her strength when she sees herself in Matilda. My House actually brought tears to my dry and hungover eyes, and gave a physical and a musical presence to lockdown in some ways. Honey is given a strange and dazzling backstory with an acrobat and an escapologist that also lends more mystery and intrigue into Matilda's powers. This feels like it's more Miss Honey's film in some way - I might be a little biased but that might be a good thing.
So my two start-of-year cinema trips were very different from each other. But they were swiftly followed by a binging of a documentary mini-series that was brand new on Netflix that has also stuck in my mind since then. So next week's Flick Through Review will be on that.
Let me know @pastadeficit if this is a little bit too long to be considered a Flick Through Review or if you enjoyed this one that's technically two! This one was a little delayed, but I wanted to make sure it was just right.
Sometimes, you have to be a little bit naughty. Go watch Matilda!