Gratitude

It’s November, the month of gratitude when we reflect on the good things in our lives, the things we’re thankful to have. So I decided I’d take this show to articulate a few things in the world of movies and movie making that I’m especially grateful for. 

I’m thankful to have co-taught a class about cinematography at Delta College this semester. All of my experience with film is in the appreciation and explication of it. I can tell you what a film means or how a particular shot or sequence conveys a message. But spending a semester working with the photographer and filmmaker Mike Randolph teaching students about shot composition, lighting, how to slate a shot, how to construct storyboards and a hundred other things has been both an education and a joy for me. My additional understanding about what it takes to make a two-minute student short film has dramatically increased my respect and appreciation for anyone who takes the time, effort, and resources to create a film of any kind.

I’m grateful for my local movie theater in Midland and the hard-working kids behind the counter who ring me up, get me my tickets, and ply me with popcorn and soda with politeness and efficiency. I always get my butter-like substance halfway down in the bucket as well as on top, and they’re always happy to get me a refill when I need it. These nice, clean-cut kids remind me of earlier, more innocent days, and they make my moviegoing experience pleasant every time I go.

I’m grateful for the Harvey Weinstein abuse scandal. Of course, I’m not grateful that some disgusting toad took advantage of the less powerful around him. On the contrary. What I’m grateful for is that this seems to be a time when someone can finally tell what happened and they will be believed. I’m grateful that the culture of Hollywood, at least for this moment, seems to have its ear tilted toward victims rather than powerful predators. I’m not naïve. Hollywood has a long, lecherous history and a culture that deeply ingrained doesn’t just change. But hopefully because of what is happening right now, there will be fewer victims in general and when there is abuse there will be more accountability.

I’m thankful for local screening series in the area that give viewers a chance to experience great films in cool spaces. Monster Movies put on by the Friends of the Historic Masonic Temple in Bay City and the Saginaw Silver Screen Movie series at the Temple Theater are both wonderful opportunities to experience classics on a big screen in a beautiful space. I believe movies are meant to be communal and are best when shared. Sure, watching something on your laptop on your couch is okay, but going out and laughing or crying with others makes a movie better.

In case it doesn’t go without saying, I’m grateful for this show. It gives me a good reason to make time in my schedule to watch, think about, and write about movies, which are some of my favorite things to do. The staff members at Q90.1 are smart, funny, people who are really good at what they do, and I enjoy coming in once a week and pretending like I’m one of the cool kids with them. I particularly appreciate the listeners who have reached out either in person or through email or social media to say they enjoy the show. People like Amy Hoeruf, Lisa Kelly, Dee Dee Waxman, Paul Finn, and Daniel Segura help me to know that my little weekly show isn’t just disappearing into the ether every Friday. My student Hannah Bauer doesn’t listen to my show but apparently her dad is its biggest fan and his favorite movie is Red Dawn. And I’m grateful to know that.

I’m also grateful for the holiday movie season that’s coming up and Christmas break from work. Lots of free hours and lots of movies to fill those hours is something to be thankful for indeed.

Thor: Ragnarok

It’s interesting to watch something as lucrative and culturally far-reaching as the Marvel movie shared universe evolve. In the near decade since the first Iron Man movie proved that comic book-based films could be successful (wildly successful, in fact), the entertainment juggernaut has tweaked and evolved as each film has come out. Standalone movies like Iron Man did well but team-up films like The Avengers did better. So standalone movies became backdoor team-up movies. Serious-minded films like Captain America: Winter Soldier did well, but funny ones like Guardians of the Galaxy did better. So franchises that started out very serious and even dark, like Thor, have evolved and started to include punchlines, pratfalls, and absurdism. So what we have now is Thor: Ragnarok, the latest model in Marvel’s effort to create the perfect money-making machine. And so far, it’s going pretty well. Ragnarok is Marvel’s 17^th film in a row to open at number one, clearing a tidy 121 million dollars last weekend.

 Rather than the glossy Shakespeare lite of the first film or the darker, much more boring mythology of the second one, the third Thor film goes full Guardians of the Galaxy, embracing color, childish bickering, and a winking “Isn’t this funny” tone throughout. And generally, the film is better for it. Thor as a character isn’t that interesting and never really has been. And the long, flowing hair, Viking accoutrements, and family of gods and demigods have always been a bit of a hard sell. But now, thanks to the direction of Taika Waititi and his team of screenwriters led by Eric Pearson, Thor becomes a winking, smirking blowhard whose heart is in the right place but whose brain is sometimes a little on the slower side. The opening sequence with Thor dangling from a chain before Sutur, a fiery Satanic figure destined to destroy Thor’s homeland, is actually really funny. Any time Surtur really starts monologuing, he’s interrupted by Thor inadvertently turning his back on him as the chain he’s dangling from keeps twisting him around. It’s absurd and knowing and pretty funny. Not something that would have happened in the first two iterations of this character but it’s an approach that I suspect will be used pretty frequently going forward.

As I mentioned, Ragnarok is also a team-up movie. So it’s really Thor and Hulk’s outer space adventures. As the trailers made obvious, Thor and Hulk face off in an arena and pound the crud out of each other. The trials of Bruce Banner and his monstrous, green alter ego are almost as important in the film as Thor’s own. So Marvel finally found a way to make a successful Hulk movie – and that was to not make a Hulk movie at all and to just let him ride the cape tails of someone else. In this case, it works. Hulk provides some of the films funniest lines and situations, again, many of which were given away in numerous trailers.

Kate Blanchett makes for a more entertaining and memorable villain than Marvel movies usually get, and the production design is a really lovely tribute to the great Jack Kirby, the artist who designed so much of what we see in this shared universe these days. Kirby was the creator or co-creator of Thor, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Agent Carter, the Inhumans, and a raft of others. His sense of design was so distinct and influential, it’s a real treat to see it get the big budget treatment it receives here.

Even though it features the end of the world (kind of) and gods and monsters clashing, Thor: Ragnarok feels pretty lightweight. That’s not necessarily a criticism. There’s enough heaviness in the world right now, and sometimes a funny movie featuring a god of thunder plowing into an army of zombie soldiers to the tune of Led Zepplin’s “Immigrant Song” is exactly the thing you need.

Don’t doubt that Marvel Studios knows it too.