Reaction Shots

This post was originally written back in 2016. As with other such posts, I'm not re-editing or updating them...unless something substantial in my point of view has changed. It would be churlish to dismiss “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” as a mere trifle. It’s way fun, for sure, but it’s so much more. Of course, it’s Lucas and Spielberg’s love letter to the serials of the 30s and 40s, but if it were only that, it wouldn’t have the staying power it has. That staying power doesn’t come just from the enthusiasm of two nostalgic men-children; it comes from a constellation of immense talent and I don’t think it’s too much to say, genius. The introduction of Indy isn’t melodramatic; it’s straight up iconic. Has any other modern film star been repeatedly “iconic” as Harrison Ford? Not just Indiana Jones and Han Solo, but the way he’s carried himself through his career; even later Ford seems so much better than the roles he’s been in (even, that word again, in “Indiana Jon...

During the recent past, I’ve watched for the first time and even re-watched some romcoms that I hadn’t thought much of before or had remembered fondly but couldn’t recall why or in one instance, freaking loved (“Trainwreck”).  But what comes back to me over and again is that in terms of genres, the romantic comedy is the one that lends itself to the greatest possibility of subversion and yet, is most often the most cringe-inducing within the framework of the genre (the majority of works in the field tend to be formulaic and hacky to the point of amnesia, hence, why I vaguely remember most of them.) Exceptions abound, of course, and the definition of what precisely a romantic comedy is can be fairly broad. For my purposes, a rom-com is set piece with two main protagonists who come together as a result of hopefully funny set-ups, break apart owing to miscommunication/differences in values or one farts in bed and the other doesn’t, but come back together – most of the time – owing to ...