Getting in early with the Knives

Even though it was heading to streaming in a couple of weeks, I still went and saw the new Knives Out film at the cinema the other week, and I did it for three distinct reasons:

1) Seeing movies in a theatre is rad. I love the popcorn, I love the big screen, I love making the effort.

2) I can concentrate more on what is happening on screen, because like everybody else in the world, I get easily distracted when watching anything at home. The phone goes in the pocket as soon as I'm in the theatre, and my full attention is devoted to the events of the film, which makes things a lot easier when a film has a lot of plot.

3) It's just nice to sit with a movie for a while, before everybody else in the world has seen it, and the endless hot takes begin. I can have a think about it, before the backlash, and the backlash to the backlash. Before all the endless think-pieces about What It all Means. They'll be unavoidable for a while, in news headlines and constant notifications, so it was nice to take a breath before it all kicked off. 

There are huge benefits in cutting yourself off from the wider discourse. I still see a lot of people writing off the Avatar movies because they don't leave a cultural footprint, but that's a feature, not a bug, for me, because I'll go and see some extraordinary imagery directed by one of the greatest action action of all time, and have a blast for three hours and never have to think about it again, and that sounds about right to me. 

I also just gave up all social media for a few days recently, because Quentin Tarantino said something fucking stupid in an interview, and even though Quentin Tarantino has been saying fucking stupid things in interviews for 30 years, my feeds were almost nothing but people saying how fucking stupid it was, and that they were never into his films anyway, and it was coming from everyone, including a lot of smart people who I love and respect, so I just tuned out of it altogether, just until everybody got it out of their system. (And if they were not on about that, they were pointing out that R Crumb is deeply, deeply problematic in nearly every way - no shit, Sherlock - and also that they were never into his comics anyway.)

Anyway, just to add to all the noise, I thought Wake Up Dead Man was terrific, with a mediocre mystery - the confessional scene early on gave everything away - some strong character work, and a handling of massive religious issues with a deft and deeply human approach.  

It might have taken me two weeks to come to that conclusion, but at least it's one I'm sure of now.