Category: Film

What is wrong with movies these days?

Here is one bit from a longer and very interesting essay by Vicky Osterweil:

This kind of audience-condescending premise-forward literalism is not just in the narrative and scripting, it’s in the acting. The actors of Dune 2 almost all speak in that tedious whisper-growl that stands in for profundity, a vocal-style also popularized by Nolan, in Christian Bale’s portrayal of the caped crusader in 2005’s Batman Begins. I believe that if a movie features a bunch of good actors and all the performances are flat and dull, as is the case in Dune Part Two, where even Florence Pugh, Lea Seydoux and Josh Brolin lack all charisma, it is ultimately a reflection on the director (and the script), not the actors.

Worth reading the whole thing, though I think it is quite wrong about Russian constructivism in the visual arts, which is a far more diverse tradition than the author lets on.

*Dune 2*

From the get go it is far too self-consciously portentous, with nary a bit of humor to lighten it up.  It feels more like an adaptation of memes from gaming than a cinematic version of a novel, much less a living, breathing movie.  And exactly what is the moral stance we are supposed to hold on the war anyway?  I love Hans Zimmer but his score is not in the emotional service of anything meaningful.

By objective standards the visuals are quite good, but in The Age of Sora they no longer seem so creatively cutting-edge either.

The crowd mostly seemed bored, and I saw a lot of people looking at the time on their phones.  Was there any line from the movie that anyone is going to repeat?

Battery technology seems especially advanced in this world.

In terms of expressing the power of cinema, or captivating the viewer with a sense of magic, I’ll take that Robert Bresson film about the donkey any day of the week.

If you read the major reviews carefully, a lot of them feel the same way, though understandably they don’t want to crush Hollywood’s future economic prospects in the bud.

The commercial impact of Sora

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

The more clear and present danger to Hollywood is that would-be viewers might start making their own short videos rather than watching television. “Show my pet dog Fido flying to Mars and building a space colony there” is perhaps more fun than many a TV show.

Sora and comparable services will lead to a proliferation of short educational videos, internal corporate training videos, and just plain fooling around. Sora probably will be good for TikTok and other short video services. It is not hard to imagine services that splice your Sora-constructed videos into your TikTok productions. So if you’re doing BookTok, for example, maybe you put a battle reenactment in the background of your plug for your new book on the US Civil War.

Perhaps the most significant short-run use of these videos will be for advertising — especially internet advertising. Again, there is the question of how to integrate narrative, but the costs of creating new ads is likely to fall.

More advertising may sound like a mixed blessing. But ads will almost certainly be more fun and creative than they are now. Watching ads may become its own aesthetic avocation, as is already the case for Super Bowl ads. These ads also might be targeted, rather than serving a mass audience. If your internet history suggests you are interested in UAPs, for example, perhaps you will see ads with aliens telling you which soap to buy.

And to close:

At the most speculative level, the success of Sora may increase the chance that we are living in a simulation — a computer-based world created by some high-powered being, whether a deity or aliens. Is that bullish or bearish for asset prices? It depends on how you assess the responsibility and ethics of the creator. At the very least, our planet Earth simulator seems to be able to generate videos that last longer than a single minute. Beyond that, I cannot say.

There is much more at the link, interesting throughout.

My view of *Casablanca* (with spoilers, but you’ve seen it already?)

Paul Wall asks about my Casablanca comment:

“ I rewatched Casablanca lately on a large screen, and concluded that Rick was wanting Ilsa to suffer as much as possible.”

Please explain

When Rick won’t give Laszlo the letters of transit, and Laszlo asks him why, Rick says “I suggest your ask your wife.”  In essence he is forcing Laszlo to force Ilsa to confess to their earlier Paris affair in as humiliating a way as possible.  Ilsa has to tell not only of the affair, but that she promised Rick eternal fealty, and treated Rick so badly that he now would be so vindictive.

When Ilsa visits Rick in his room that one night toward the end of the movie, he “takes” her again, and gets her to fall in love with him again, or so it seems.  But is Ilsa only acting, and playing to Rick’s vanity to get the letters of transit?  You can debate that point, but either way Rick seems happy enough to sleep with her on that basis.  That is one of his ways of humiliating her again, and it enables him to be psychologically free enough to let her go in the movie’s final scene.

[Interjection: I view her recurring attachment to Rick as real, and her love for Laszlo as somewhat daughterly, and that she is self-deceiving throughout with both men.  That said, what she most loves about Rick is that she can partake in the relationship without having to be known, without having to be anybody at all.  She and Rick, as a couple in ordinary life running errands at the Five and Dime in Cleveland, probably would not do so well.  Ilsa is a woman who never has found herself and is somehow always in transition, always on the run.  It is no surprise she attaches to two men with broadly similar tendencies.]

At the movie’s end, Rick gives Ilsa back and insists she leave Casablanca with Laszlo.  What a hell their marriage is going to be.  Stuck in America, where neither has much to do, though he lives for his work.  Laszlo now knows she loved Rick more, knows she just fell for Rick again and slept with him the night before (women willing to prostitute themselves is a recurring theme in the film), and knows she has been lying to him in various ways throughout their relationship.  Ilsa knows these things too, and now knows that Laszlo knows. But what really is Laszlo’s choice or Ilsa’s choice other than to proceed?  They end up playing the roles of puppets in Rick’s little planned charade.

Rick gets to wander off with Louis (“this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”), into the Free French garrisons in the desert, facing struggles but also enjoying a true freedom, including a freedom from Ilsa because he humiliated and punished her so much, and because that punishment will be so enduring.  He had been waiting around in Casablanca to punish her, and now he really cannot punish her any more.  Life can go on.

If you recall the scene where Rick helps the young husband win at the roulette table, so his wife doesn’t have to prostitute herself to get exit visas, we know that the more sentimental side of Rick regards such prostitution as an ultimate humiliation, not as a mere transaction to be digested in Benthamite fashion and then forgotten.

A more Benthamite Rick might have been a happier and better-adjusted guy.

Henrik Karlsson asks

What is a good book or film that charts the trajectory of a profoundly healthy and transformational relationship?

Twitter link here.  Well people?  Popular romances don’t count, try to get as close to “the canon” as you can.

I found this question difficult.  GPT-4 listed a bunch of inappropriate, not actually so wholesome answers from Victorian literature, and then for a film cited Her (bravo to that actually, but still not a good answer).  A Beautiful Mind made that movie list as well.

I rewatched Casablanca lately on a large screen, and concluded that Rick was wanting Ilsa to suffer as much as possible.

Can you do better?

My Conversation with the excellent Ami Vitale

Here is the audio, visual, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary:

Ami Vitale is a renowned National Geographic photographer and documentarian with a deep commitment to wildlife conservation and environmental education. Her work, spanning over a hundred countries, includes spending a decade as a conflict photographer in places like Kosovo, Gaza, and Kashmir.

She joined Tyler to discuss why we should stay scary to pandas, whether we should bring back extinct species, the success of Kenyan wildlife management, the mental cost of a decade photographing war, what she thinks of the transition from film to digital, the ethical issues raised by Afghan Girl, the future of National Geographic, the heuristic guiding of where she’ll travel next, what she looks for in a young photographer,  her next project, and more.

Here is one excerpt:

COWEN: As you probably know, there’s a long-standing and recurring set of debates between animal welfare advocates and environmentalists. The animal welfare advocates typically have less sympathy for the predators because they, in turn, kill other animals. The environmentalists are more likely to think we should, in some way, leave nature alone as much as possible. Where do you stand on that debate?

VITALE: It depends. It’s hard to make a general sweeping statement on this because in some cases, I think that we do have to get involved. Also, the fact is, it’s humans in most cases who have really impacted the environment, and we do need to get engaged and work to restore that balance. I really fall on both sides of this. I will say, I do think that is, in some cases, what differentiates us because, as human beings, we have to kill to survive. Maybe that is where this — I feel like every story I work on has a different answer. Really, I don’t know. It depends what the situation is. Should we bring animals back to landscapes where they have not existed for millions of years? I fall in the line of no. Maybe I’m taking this in a totally different direction, but it’s really complicated, and there’s not one easy answer.

And:

COWEN: As you know, there are now social networks everywhere, for quite a while. Images everywhere, even before Midjourney. There are so many images that people are looking at. How does that change how you compose or think about photos?

VITALE: Well, it doesn’t at all. My job is to tell stories with images, and not just with images. My job as a storyteller — that has not changed. Nothing has changed in the sense of, we need more great storytellers, visual storytellers. With all of those social media, I think people are bored with just beautiful images. Or sometimes it feels like advertising, and it doesn’t captivate me.

I look for a story and image, and I am just going to continue doing what I do because I think people are hungry for it. They want to know who is really going deep on stories and who they can trust. I think that that has never gone away, and it will never go away.

I am very happy to have guests who do things that not everyone else’s guests do.

My Conversation with Rebecca F. Kuang

Here is the audio, video, and transcript, here is the episode summary:

Rebecca F. Kuang just might change the way you think about fantasy and science fiction. Known for her best-selling books Babel and The Poppy War trilogy, Kuang combines a unique blend of historical richness and imaginative storytelling. At just 27, she’s already published five novels, and her compulsion to write has not abated even as she’s pursued advanced degrees at Oxford, Cambridge, and now Yale. Her latest book, Yellowface, was one of Tyler’s favorites in 2023.

She sat down with Tyler to discuss Chinese science-fiction, which work of fantasy she hopes will still be read in fifty years, which novels use footnotes well, how she’d change book publishing, what she enjoys about book tours, what to make of which Chinese fiction is read in the West, the differences between the three volumes of The Three Body Problem, what surprised her on her recent Taiwan trip, why novels are rarely co-authored, how debate influences her writing, how she’ll balance writing fiction with her academic pursuits, where she’ll travel next, and more.

Here is one excerpt:

COWEN: Why do you think that British imperialism worked so much better in Singapore and Hong Kong than most of the rest of the world?

KUANG: What do you mean by work so much better?

COWEN: Singapore today, per capita — it’s a richer nation than the United States. It’s hard to think, “I’d rather go back and redo that whole history.” If you’re a Singaporean today, I think most of them would say, “We’ll take what we got. It was far from perfect along the way, but it worked out very well for us.” People in Sierra Leone would not say the same thing, right?

Hong Kong did much better under Britain than it had done under China. Now that it’s back in the hands of China, it seems to be doing worse again, so it seems Hong Kong was better off under imperialism.

KUANG: It’s true that there is a lot of contemporary nostalgia for the colonial era, and that would take hours and hours to unpack. I guess I would say two things. The first is that I am very hesitant to make arguments about a historical counterfactual such as, “Oh, if it were not for the British Empire, would Singapore have the economy it does today?” Or “would Hong Kong have the culture it does today?” Because we don’t really know.

Also, I think these broad comparisons of colonial history are very hard to do, as well, because the methods of extraction and the pervasiveness and techniques of colonial rule were also different from place to place. It feels like a useless comparison to say, “Oh, why has Hong Kong prospered under British rule while India hasn’t?” Et cetera.

COWEN: It seems, if anywhere we know, it’s Hong Kong. You can look at Guangzhou — it’s a fairly close comparator. Until very recently, Hong Kong was much, much richer than Guangzhou. Without the British, it would be reasonable to assume living standards in Hong Kong would’ve been about those of the rest of Southern China, right? It would be weird to think it would be some extreme outlier. None others of those happened in the rest of China. Isn’t that close to a natural experiment? Not a controlled experiment, but a pretty clear comparison?

KUANG: Maybe. Again, I’m not a historian, so I don’t have a lot to say about this. I just think it’s pretty tricky to argue that places prospered solely due to British presence when, without the British, there are lots of alternate ways things could have gone, and we just don’t know.

Interesting throughout.

2024 is already an incredible year for cinema

There is:

Poor Things

The Delinquents [Los Delincuentes], from Argentina, tragicomedy.

The Teacher’s Lounge

All of Us Strangers

Anselm 3-D

The Zone of Interest

Of course many of those came out in their respective foreign markets before 2024, but that is not the point.  Rather it seems cinema has turned a corner and is vital and original again (though not culturally central?).  The best films of 2023 list was very good as well.

*Sound of Freedom*

I enjoyed watching this somewhat controversial production.  In terms of quality, think of it as comparable to a very good made-for-TV movie. The political message, that we don’t worry enough about sex trafficking of minors is I think mostly correct, though I would not buy most of the baggage that in today’s world so often comes with that view.  The cinematography of Latin America is very good, and interestingly this movie has an easier time feeling “genuinely international” than do most Hollywood productions.  The opening scene is set in Tegulcigalpa, Honduras.  Here is some useful background on the movie.  I am happy to see a film showcasing freedom and presenting slavery as a complete negative.

What I’ve been watching

Poor Things created a visual and stylistic and historical world all of its own.  Not a perfect movie by any means, but entrancing throughout.  I took the central idea to be why (different kinds of) men are attracted to autistic women, but I do understand no one else saw it that way.

American Fiction I soured on.  I guess I don’t get enough jollies from making fun of the Wokies, because the movie didn’t add to my understanding and just made them stupid targets.  I can (and do) get that on Twitter any day.  Some people will really like this one, but I wouldn’t have minded missing it.

Anselm 3-D is excellent if you know a lot about Kiefer, various German Kriegsauseinandersetzungen, and if you want a look into art production in factory settings.  I meet all three of those standards, and then some.

Is Tom Cruise actor GOAT?

Yes says I, and here is Wikipedia for reference.  Adam Ozimek (from my email) agrees:

Rewatching Oblivion tonight and it really holds up. Cinematography and CGI that hasn’t aged at all. And Edge of Tomorrow is a sci fi classic for the ages now, made when he was 52.

Those metacritic scores on the recent Mission Impossible films and Top Gun are extraordinary for action blockbusters.

The Scientology stuff is not great for society, but the man tried to and maybe did save movie theaters. And don’t forget this: https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2021/05/11/tom-cruise-stands-his-expletive-laden-m-i-7-rant-over-covid-19/5041447001/

And no he hasn’t done a Rain Man style serious role in a while, but he’s shown plenty of range. Did you know how much of his tropic thunder character was his idea? https://youtu.be/a3fKXBNufy4?si=M4YPtGx8PJTHREB3

GOAT I say

Fair enough.  I would start with Risky Business, from 1982, which is genuinely funny and vital and which few other actor GOAT contenders can match.  A Few Good Men and Interview the Vampire I also find to his credit, all from the first decade of what is (so far) five (!) decades of being a dominant force in Hollywood.  Sadly, Jerry McGuire, like Rain Man, turns me off.

Perhaps Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut are his finest achievements?  In any case they show he has a strong presence in art house cinema as well.  Minority Report is seminal and Vanilla Sky has a McCartney song in the soundtrack.

Cruise has worked with top directors, including Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Mann and John Woo.  He makes creative decisions in his movies as well.  Cruise has won plenty of awards, has longevity and variety in his repertoire, and still is important for pulling in the gross.  He has done many of his own stunts, even at advanced ages.  He also has married three actresses — Mimi RogersNicole Kidman, and Katie Holmes.  He has dated Melissa Gilbert, Rebecca De Mornay, Patti Scialfa, and Cher, among others.

One of Cruise’s co-stars, Emily Blunt, described him as “insatiably positive.”

Is he “the last great movie star“?  As Hegel once said, the owl of Minerva flies at dusk.

Addendum:

Harrison Ford seems to be the only serious competitor?  Cary Grant is a bit too tall, wooden, and British to win, but maybe he comes in third?  Jimmy Stewart didn’t have enough dramatic range.  Clint Eastwood is amazing, but somehow too much a self-contained bubble?  Rock Hudson has degenerated into “Straussian value” in too many of his movies.  Who else?

My pick for the best movie of the year, in which I share a bill with Kevin Spacey

Tyler Cowen, economist and author of Marginal Revolutions

May December

I found May December to be the most interesting movie of the year. It examines deep questions about who envies whom, what a meaningful life consists of, what about possession is satisfying, art versus artifice, the nature of celebrity, and how hard it is to live without worrying about what other people think. The stars are Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, and the director is Todd Haynes. The plotline (these are not spoilers) is that a grown woman had sex with a male seventh-grader, was sent to prison, and later ends up marrying him and having his children. Natalie Portman plays the role of a well-known actress who comes by to learn their story, so that she may better play the woman in a movie. The biggest cinematic influence is perhaps Bergman’s Persona, as we increasingly see different ways in which the two women are parallel or “twinned” in their stories. The movie poster reflects this. The highlight is when Natalie Portman explains to a group of teenagers what it is like to do a sex scene in a movie. In an era where Hollywood is supposed to be stale, this one resets the clock.

From The Spectator, there are many other (lesser) picks as well.

2023 CWT retrospective episode

Here is the link, here is the episode summary:

On this special year-in-review episode, Tyler and producer Jeff Holmes look back on the past year in the show and more, including the most popular and underrated episodes, the origins of the show as an occasional event series, the most difficult guests to prep for, the story behind EconGOAT.AI, Tyler’s favorite podcast appearance of the year, and his evolving LLM-powered production function. They also answer listener questions and conclude with an assessment of Tyler’s top pop culture recommendations from 2013 across movies, music, and books.

And one excerpt:

COWEN: That’s a unique experience. You have a chance to do Chomsky. Maybe you don’t even want to do it, but you feel, “If I don’t do it, I’ll regret not having done it.” Just like we didn’t get to chat with Charlie Munger in time, though he’s far more, I would say, closer to truth than Chomsky is.

I thought half of Chomsky was quite good, and the other half was beyond terrible, but that’s okay. People, I think, wanted to gawk at it in some manner. They had this picture — what’s it like, Tyler talking with Chomsky? Then they get to see it and maybe recoil, but that’s what they came for, like a horror movie.

HOLMES: The engagement on the Chomsky episode was very good. Some people on MR were saying, “I turned it off. I couldn’t listen to it.” But actually, most people listened to it. It did, actually, probably better than average in terms of engagement, in terms of how much of the episode, on average, people listen to.

COWEN: How can you turn it off? What does that say about you? Were you surprised? You thought that Chomsky had become George Stigler or something? No.

Fun and interesting throughout.  If you are wondering, the most popular episode of the year, by far, was with Paul Graham.

Censorship of U.S. Movies in China

We introduce a structural econometric model to estimate the extent to which the Chinese government bans U.S. movies. According to our estimates, if a movie has characteristics similar to the median movie in our sample, then the probability is approximately 0.91 that the Chinese government will ban it. During our sample period, 1994-2019, U.S. movies comprised about 28 percent of the Chinese market and sales were about $22.6 billion. However, according to our estimates, if the Chinese government had not banned any U.S. movies, then the latter numbers would have risen to 68 percent and $45.1 billion.

As for what gets banned:

…, two factors that have very high statistical significance are: (i) whether the movie contains occult content, and (ii) whether the movie
receives an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The factors also have very high substantive significance. For instance, suppose two movies, A and B, are identical except that movie A contains occult content, while B does not. Suppose movie B’s probability of being banned is 50%. Then, according to our results, the occult content in movie A causes its probability of being banned to rise to 67%. A similar thought experiment implies that, if a movie has an R rating, then this raises its probability of being banned from 50% to 70%.

Three other factors seem to be important but come just short of reaching statistical significance. These are whether the movie contains themes related to (i) anti-communism, (ii) individualism, or (iii) Tibet. A fourth factor is similar. This is whether the actor Richard Gere
appears in the movie.

That is a new paper by XUHAO PAN, Tim Groseclose, and yours truly, forthcoming in the Journal of Cultural Economics.

Best movies of 2023

As usual, they are in the order I saw them (more or less), not ranked ordinally.  And sometimes there are reviews behind the link, sometimes by me:

Knock at the Cabin, theology all over this one.

Return to Seoul (NYT review).

John Wick 4, yup.

Polite Society

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

You Hurt My Feelings

Incredible But True

Landscape with Invisible Hand

Bottoms, lesbian best friends in high school, not what you think.

The Creator

Joan Baez: I am a Noise, you don’t have to like her music to like the movie.

Holy Spider

Dream Scenario

May December, drenched in Bergman’s Persona.  And that is my pick for the best movie of the year.

The Killer (Netflix)

Napoleon

Godzilla Minus Zero.  I haven’t even seen this one yet, but I am confident in my judgment.

Updates will be made as is appropriate.  Overall, after some big dry spells, it was a pretty amazing year for movies.  Maybe not for Hollywood, but for movies.  Moviemakers are adapting well to the new circumstances and the new economics.  There are many more recommended selections I haven’t had the chance to sample yet, and maybe after I wake up I will put my list of those in the comments section.

What did you all like?