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Review: ‘Radioactive,’ starring Rosamund Pike, Sam Riley and Anya Taylor-Joy

July 26, 2020

by Carla Hay

Rosamund Pike in “Radioactive” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios)

Directed by Marjane Satrapi

Culture Representation: Taking place in France (and briefly in Poland) from 1878 to 1934, the biographical drama “Radioactive” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Asians and black people) representing the middle-class in telling the story of scientist Marie Curie.

Culture Clash: Curie battled against sexism and xenophobia, and she was at the center of a scandal when her affair with a married man went public.

Culture Audience: “Radioactive” will appeal primarily to people who like biopics about scientists or women who break through in male-dominated professions, with an emphasis on melodrama over substance.

Rosamund Pike and Sam Riley in “Radioactive” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios)

Watching a biographical movie about a scientist, even if the scientist is a world-famous pioneer, might not appeal to a lot of people. And it’s a greater challenge when the story is set more than a century ago. But perhaps to ward off any potential viewer boredom, the filmmakers of the Marie Curie biopic “Radioactive” made the movie as if it’s a both a music video (with lots of flashy, quick-cutting editing) and a melodrama (with plenty of soap opera-type dialogue and over-acting). It’s an overcompensation that ultimately sinks this movie, which had the potential to be a fascinating, award-worthy film, but instead ended up as an unevenly toned misfire.

It’s clear that “Radioactive” was intended to be an “Oscar bait” movie, considering that it was partially financed by Working Title, a British production company that has won several Academy Awards for its films, including 2017’s “Darkest Hour,” 2014’s “The Theory of Everything” and 2012’s “Les Misérables.” “Radioactive” cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle won an Oscar for 2008’s “Slumdog Millionaire.” And several Oscar nominees were involved in making the film, including star Rosamund Pike (who plays Marie Curie); director Marjane Satrapi (“Persepolis”); and producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner.

However, all that talent still doesn’t make “Radioactive” an Oscar-worthy film. Jack Thorne (who has done work mostly in British television) wrote the screenplay as an adaptation from Lauren Redniss’ graphic novel “Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout.” And that’s exactly what the movie looks like on screen: a movie version of a graphic novel.

Scenes that would have benefited from richly witty conversations and glorious, lingering camera shots are instead served with basic, simplistic dialogue and whiplash-like editing that cuts a scene like boxy panels in a graphic novel. Pike certainly gives it her all in this performance, but she’s hemmed in by the hokey screenplay that portrays Marie Curie as less like a brilliant scientist and more like a whiny and egotistical shrew.

The movie begins in Paris in 1934, the year that Marie died of Aplastic anemia from exposure to radiation, at the age of 66. Marie is being rushed to a hospital, and while she’s lying on a gurney, she starts having flashbacks of her life. Those flashbacks are the majority of this story.

The flashbacks begin in Paris in 1893, when an unmarried Marie (whose maiden name was Skłodowska) was the only female scientist working in the University of Paris industrial laboratory of Professor Gabriel Lippmann (played by Simon Russell Beale). Marie, a native of Poland who moved to Paris for her university studies, had changed her first name from Maria to Marie, in order to better fit in with French citizens. In 1893, she had earned a degree in physics and was enrolled in a graduate program while working at Lippmann’s lab. (She would eventually earn a doctorate, supervised by Lippmann, in 1903.)

The movie doesn’t waste time in trumpeting its intent to show Marie as a feisty feminist who constantly has to battle sexism and misogyny. The first flashback scene is of Marie storming into a room where Lippmann and his all-male team of colleagues are seated. She angrily demands to know why her lab equipment has been moved again.

Lippmann tells Marie that it’s because her lab equipment takes up too much space. When she mentions that some of her male colleagues have lab equipment that takes up even more space than her equipment does, Lippmann tells her that she’s been fired. When she protests her dismissal, Lippmann tells her that if she doesn’t like it, she can start her own lab. Marie replies dejectedly that she doesn’t have the funds.

Meanwhile, Marie and a handsome stranger see each other on a street and make small talk. She sees this stranger again while they happen to be attending the same dance performance. They find themselves standing right next to each other, as they watch a female dancer twirling around in a white flowing costume, like she’s auditioning for a Cirque du Soleil show in a future century. This is the “meet cute” moment, because he is a scientist/professor whose name is Pierre Curie (played by Sam Riley), and he confesses to Marie that he’s been admiring her from afar.

Pierre tells Marie that he already knows her name and who she is because (1) “You’re one of only 23 female scientists with the department; (2) I’ve heard about your run-ins with Professor Lippmann; and (3) I read your paper on the magnetic properties of steel. It contains some exceptional science.” Of course, Marie is flattered by his compliment and gives Pierre a compliment too: “I have read your paper on crystallization, which I enjoyed very much.”

In real life, Pierre and Marie were introduced by a mutual friend, but that might have been too boring for the filmmakers, so they invented this scene to make Marie and Pierre’s “meet cute” scene seem more romantic, since the dance performance is filmed to make everything look more fantastically beautiful. At the time that Marie and Pierre met, he was an instructor at the City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution. But Pierre had his own up-and-down relationship with the University of Paris (which was his alma mater too), so Pierre and Marie bond over being “misunderstood” by the university, and they connect over their mutual love of science.

Pierre offers Marie a room to work in his lab. She politely declines, and then she changes her mind after he invites her to look at the work space. Marie firmly tells Pierre that she will not be his mistress, in case he thinks that she’s supposed to repay him by letting him have sex with her. Pierre says that it isn’t his intention, but he does tell her with that certain look in his eye: “I have an instinct about you.”

Of course, since most people watching this movie already know that Marie and Pierre ended up falling in love and getting married, this part of the relationship is shown very quickly. The next thing you know, after a few scenes of Marie and Pierre working together, he proposes (in the most soap opera-ish way possible), they’re married and then expecting their first child.

“Radioactive” does not show much of Marie’s life before she moved to Paris, except for flashbacks of her as a child (played by Harriet Turnbull) having grief-filled moments visiting her terminally ill mother (played by Georgina Rich) in a hospital. (Marie’s mother Bronisława died of tuberculosis when Marie was 10 years old.) According to the movie, this trauma led to Marie’s lifelong fear of being in a hospital. This fear is portrayed in the movie as full-blown panic attacks whenever Marie is asked to go to a hospital and ends up refusing to go.

The only other link to Marie’s Polish past that’s portrayed in the movie is Marie’s sister Bronisława, also known as Bronia (played by Sian Brooke), who was older than Marie by two years and was Marie’s closest female confidant. Bronia doesn’t do much in this movie except give calm and supportive advice when Marie inevitably has to rant or complain about something. (And she gets angry a lot in this movie.)

It’s clear that the filmmakers didn’t want “Radioactive” to be a movie that’s “too smart” for the general public, so Marie and Pierre’s scientific work is explained and depicted in the simplest of terms. When the couple gets a lab in Versailles, France, they discover and present two new elements: polonium and radium. Marie also coins the term “radioactivity.”

Marie and Pierre get widespread acclaim, while viewers of this movie have to sit through a lot of cringeworthy dialogue, with Marie and Pierre saying things like, “We have changed science forever” and “I can feel our work glowing out. I can feel it changing the world.” And if these “change the world” proclamations weren’t enough, “Radioactive” has several moments that cut into the story to actually show examples how the Curies’ discoveries were used in the future.

There’s the scene of a Japanese father and son experiencing the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. There’s the scene of an atomic bomb being tested in Nevada in 1961, complete with a model house being bombed and life-sized dolls melting inside. There’s the scene of Russian workers rushing in a panic during the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

Of course, when two spouses work together, there are bound to be conflicts and ego clashes. In 1903, Marie, Pierre and Henri Becquerel were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. Marie’s name was added only after Pierre insisted on it because of her crucial contributions to their discoveries. And so, Marie made history by becoming the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize in science.

However, because she was a woman, Marie was not allowed to give a speech at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm. Pierre says in the movie that Marie could have attended the ceremony, but she declined because she had recently given birth. This is a factual error in the movie, because Pierre and Marie were awarded the Nobel Prize in December 1903. They had two daughters: Irène (born in 1897) and Ève (born in 1904). Ève was born in December 1904, a full year after that Nobel Prize ceremony.

And in the movie, it’s shown that Marie gets very angry with Pierre for deciding to go to the ceremony without her. Did she really expect him to stay at home with her and not go to the ceremony to accept this prestigious award on behalf of both of them? Yes, according to this movie.

Even though Pierre effusively gave praise and credit to Marie in his Nobel Prize speech, that’s still not enough for Marie. When Pierre gets home, she rips into him, as if he committed a major betrayal. As far as Marie is concerned, she did more work than Pierre did, and therefore she deserves more recognition and praise than he gets.

And she cruelly tells Pierre that she will always be smarter than he is. “You stole my brilliance!” she shrieks at him during one of their quarrels over him attending the Nobel Prize ceremony without her. We’ll never know if Marie ever uttered those words to Pierre, but the movie definitely portrays Pierre as a long-suffering husband who has to put up with a mean-spirited wife who has a massive ego.

No one is expecting Marie Curie to be put on a pedestal and look like a saint. But one of the problems with “Radioactive” is that it doesn’t really show Marie being a lot more brilliant than her husband, to justify all the arrogance she has in the movie. The movie shows them working side-by-side as, more or less, equal partners.

And all the temper tantrums that Marie has in “Radioactive” make her look unprofessional to the point where the movie undermines any respect that the filmmakers might have intended for this pioneering scientist. To make matters worse, “Radioactive” continues down the soap opera route when it shows Marie’s life after Pierre tragically died in a carriage accident in 1906.

Marie is understandably devastated by this loss. The movie portrays Marie as someone who was so overcome with grief over Pierre’s death that she began to have hallucinations/visions of seeing him. You get the feeling that the filmmakers would’ve gone as far as Marie consulting a psychic to talk to Pierre from the dead, but that wouldn’t be very scientific, would it?

Instead, there’s a scene where Marie has a breakdown with a photographer, because in Marie’s distraught state of mind, she thinks that there can be a photo conjured up of the spirit of her husband. “Please let me see my husband again!” she shouts numerous times in this over-the-top scene. It looks like a series of retakes from a soap opera.

Two close friends of Marie and Pierre Curie are a married couple named Paul Langevin (played by Anuerin Barnard) and Jeanne Langevin (played by Katherine Parkinson), who are seen earlier in the movie having a pleasant couples dinner with Marie and Pierre. But after Pierre dies, Marie and Paul end up having an affair, and he moves in with her.

The way that the affair is portrayed in the movie, Marie tells Paul that she isn’t in love with him, but he’s clearly in love with her. Marie is obviously using Paul as a way to cope with her grief. And the film makes this abundantly clear when it shows Marie waking up next to Paul and initially hallucinating that Pierre is in his place.

Marie also doesn’t seem too concerned about how this infidelity relationship is affecting her two young children. When Irène and Ève see that their mother has a new man in her bed, and they go in her bedroom to try to talk to her, she asks them if they are hungry. When they say no, she then coldly dismisses them and tells them that if they’re not hungry, then they need to leave her alone.

Of course, the affair causes a major scandal when it’s made public. In the movie, Paul’s wife Jeanne tells Marie that she hired a private investigator and leaked information about the affair to the press. Marie is then the target of intense bullying by strangers, who yell ethnic insults at her about her Polish heritage and tell to go back to Poland.

And so, by the time Marie won her second Nobel Prize (this time for chemistry) in 1911, there was a lot of controversy over her getting the prize because of the scandal in her personal life. People not only protested that she was attending the ceremony but also that she received the prize in the first place. (The movie doesn’t really address the hypocrisy of people never protesting over the untold number of male Nobel Prize winners who openly committed adultery.) Marie was allowed to give a speech at that Nobel Prize ceremony, but the scandal and controversy really tainted what could have been a completely triumphant moment.

Irène is shown as a young woman (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) who would also become a scientist, but the young-adult Irène doesn’t have enough screen time in the movie to get a good sense of what kind of mentorship she got from her mother. It’s yet another missed opportunity in a movie that is more concerned about showing Marie being self-absorbed in her own achievements and the recognition that she thinks she deserved.

Marie Curie remains the only woman to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. But all of her accomplishments and intellectual prowess are devalued by the way “Radioactive” reduces her story to a melodrama. The movie frames her major life events as results of a relationship with whichever man she was sleeping with at the time.

If you were to believe what’s in this movie, Marie saw her first Nobel Prize not as an achievement that she could proudly share with her husband but as a weapon to use against him out of spite, just because other people didn’t want her to give an acceptance speech at the ceremony. That is one of the lasting impressions of Marie Curie that “Radioactive” wants to give, but surely her legacy deserves better.

Prime Video premiered “Radioactive” on July 24, 2020.

Review: ‘My Spy,’ starring Dave Bautista, Chloe Coleman, Kristen Schaal and Ken Jeong

June 26, 2020

by Carla Hay

“My Spy”

Directed by Peter Segal

Culture Representation: Taking place in Chicago and Virginia, the action comedy “My Spy” has a racially diverse cast of characters (Asian, African American, white and Latino) representing the middle-class and criminal underworld.

Culture Clash: A bumbling CIA operative is “blackmailed” by a 9-year-old girl to teach her how to become a spy.

Culture Audience: “My Spy” will appeal mostly to people who like dumb, cartoonishly violent comedies that are entirely predictable.

Chloe Coleman, Parisa Fitz-Henley and Dave Bautista in “My Spy” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios)

“My Spy” (directed by Peter Segal) is one of those comedies that people know will be mindless from beginning to end. There’s hardly anything funny to be found in the movie’s trailer, which is an indication of how bad the movie is if the trailer can’t even highlight any good scenes. But what might really disappoint people is how boring this action comedy really is. Dave Bautista (the movie’s “tough guy” title character) is outshone in many scenes by his co-stars, including Chloe Coleman and Parisa Fitz-Henley, who play the daughter and mother who inevitably warm this dimwitted lug’s heart.

“My Spy” was written by brothers Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber, a screenwriting duo whose previous credits include 2018’s “The Meg” and 2012’s “Battleship.” In other words, their specialty seems to be writing dumb action movies. But a dumb action movie can be entertaining if there’s plenty of action. “My Spy” falls very short of that expectation, as the movie’s pace gets dragged down when the main character starts dating a single mom and starts acting like a domesticated stepfather.

In “My Spy,” Bautista plays lovable dolt Jason “JJ” Jones, a CIA operative who keeps messing up his missions. JJ (who’s an ex-Special Forces agent) does it in the film’s opening scene, which takes place at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukraine. There’s a big fight sequence that ends with explosions, the bad guys defeated, and JJ in possession of a plutonium pit that has the power to save or destroy the world. (Don’t they all, in movies like this?)

JJ drives off in his Jeep, listening to Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time,” as he basks in his victory. When he arrives at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, he is greeted with a standing ovation by his co-workers. But JJ’s glory is short-lived when he’s informed by his boss David Kim (played by Ken Jeong, playing yet another in his long list of “cranky” characters) that there were actually two plutonium pits, and one of the bad guys named Azar Ahmad (played by Ali Hassan), who got away at the nuclear power plant, has the other plutonium pit.

Meanwhile, David tells his team about an elusive criminal named Victor Marquez (played by Greg Bryk), an illegal arms trader who has recently been dealing in nuclear arms. Victor is so ruthless that he murdered his brother David because they were feuding with each other. Victor is believed to be working with a terrorist named Hasan (played by Basel Daoud), and the CIA thinks that the plutonium pit will find its way to Victor, who will probably sell it to Hasan.

JJ is excited about being assigned the mission to track down Victor. But his hopes are dashed because his boss David is fed up with JJ’s bungling and doesn’t want to give JJ a chance to correct his mistakes. David humiliates JJ in a group meeting by giving this coveted Victor Marquez assignment to JJ’s colleague Christina (played by Nicola Correia-Damude), and assigns JJ to “demotion” surveillance duty in Chicago. (It’s the equivalent of a homicide cop being assigned to traffic duty.)

JJ won’t be alone for this grunt work. His partner is Roberta “Bobbi” Ulf (played by Kristen Schaal, playing yet another goofy-but-nice character), who is very by-the-book. In other words, she’s more responsible than JJ. Bobbi and JJ go to Chicago, where (to JJ’s disappointment), they find out that they have to spy on a widow named Kate (played by Fitz-Henley) and her precocious 9-year-old daughter Sophie (played by Coleman), who live in a modest apartment.

JJ and Bobbie, who are doing surveillance duty in a nearby apartment on the same floor, are puzzled over why they have the boring task of spying on this innocent mother and daughter. However, it’s pretty obvious to viewers that Kate (who’s an emergency-room nurse) and Sophie aren’t just random characters in this story, especially when it’s revealed that they recently moved to Chicago to start a new life after Sophie’s father died.

Sophie is smart but she’s an outcast at school. One day, Sophie finds some of the surveillance equipment in her apartment and discovers that JJ and Bobbi are CIA agents who are responsible for the spying. And Sophie has the evidence on video that she recorded on her phone.

JJ and Bobbi are terrified that this kid will blow their cover, so they let Sophie “blackmail” them. She tells them that she won’t release the video if JJ will teach her how to be a spy. It’s clear within the first few minutes of JJ and Sophie’s interaction with each other that what Sophie really wants is a father figure and a protector, since she’s lonely and having a hard time making friends at school.

The action comes to a screeching halt when long stretches of the movie consist of JJ hanging out with Sophie, and JJ and Kate developing a romance. Bobbi disapproves of this breach of protocol, but she’s more afraid of being exposed as a spy by Sophie than whatever ethics policies that JJ is breaking. Of course, this movie is so stupid that it wants viewers to believe that even though JJ is considered to be an untrustworthy screw-up by his boss, no one from the CIA bothered to check up on JJ in Chicago.

Therefore, when JJ hangs out with Sophie or Kate in public, he’s not exactly “undercover.” Although Fitz-Henley and Coleman have convincing chemistry together as mother and daughter, the “romance” chemistry between Fitz-Henley and Bautista isn’t very convincing. Coleman’s Sophie is both charming and bratty, but the movie’s script is so poorly written that the character barely rises above the generic “smart aleck” kid that’s been seen in many other movies.

And since JJ is supposed to be “tough on the outside and tender on the inside,” he’s socially awkward when it comes to dating. It just so happens there are two apartment neighbors in the building who come to JJ’s rescue to help him with grooming, wardrobe and romance advice: gay live-in boyfriends Carlos (played by Devere Rogers) and Todd (played by Noah Dalton Danby). A running joke in the film is that Carlos is the sassy motormouth, while Todd is the type who doesn’t like to talk. Todd literally does nothing but grunt in the movie, but this gag gets old very quickly.

The action scenes in “My Spy” are also cringeworthy, especially those involving explosions. Characters walk too close to explosions, which look like cheap visual effects. In real life, these people would be knocked down or severely burned if they walked that close to an explosion, not to mention the damage to their lungs from inhaling all that noxious smoke.

STX Entertainment was originally going to release “My Spy” in theaters, but the company dumped the movie by selling it to Amazon Prime Video. It’s easy to see why this dud isn’t worth the price of a movie ticket. With long spans of the film bogged down in the would-be “stepdad” subplot, “My Spy” fails to deliver a suspense-filled action story. In that regard, the movie is very much like JJ—a lot of witless talk with a lot of bungling along the way.

Amazon Prime Video premiered “My Spy” on June 26, 2020.

Review: ‘7500,’ starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Omid Memar, Murathan Muslu and Aylin Tezel

June 18, 2020

by Carla Hay

“7500”

Directed by Patrick Vollrath

English, German and Turkish with subtitles

Culture Representation: The drama “7500,” depicting an airplane flight from Berlin to Paris, has a cast of white and Middle Eastern characters representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: The flight is taken hostage by violent terrorists.

Culture Audience: “7500” will appeal mostly to people who like suspenseful thrillers.

Omid Memar in “7500” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios)

The dramatic film “7500” is the type of “hijacked plane” movie that is utterly formulaic and predictable, but the film does such a terrific job at maintaining a suspenseful edge that it’s somewhat easy to forgive the film’s obvious flaws. A good performance from leading actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt also makes the movie worth seeing.

Directed by Patrick Vollrath, who co-write the original screenplay with Senad Halilbasic, “7500” doesn’t delay its action-filled scenes, which start within the first 15 minutes of the film. Before that happens, there’s a little backstory presented about the movie’s main character Tobias Ellis (played by Gordon-Levitt), the mild-mannered American co-pilot of a German commercial jet plane that’s on a night flight from Berlin to Paris.

Tobias, who is 31, has been a pilot for about 10 years. His live-in girlfriend Gökce (played by Aylin Tezel), who is of Turkish-German heritage, is the mother of their 2-year-old son. Gökce is also a flight attendant who happens to be on the same flight as Tobias. Before the flight takes off, Gökce visits the cockpit to tell Tobias the bad news that they weren’t chosen for a bid on a new home that was their first choice, since the place was near a kindergarten that they want their son to attend.

Tobias is optimistic that something will work out, but Gökce is more panicked about it because they’re running out of time to find a new place to live. As Tobias tells the plane captain Michael Lutzmann (played by Carlo Kitzlinger), he and Gökce eventually plan to get married. Tobias also tells Michael that he and Gökce have been able to keep things professional while they’ve been working together.

There’s a slight delay to the plane’s takeoff because two college-age passengers (played by Max Schimmel Pfennig and Anna Suk) have checked in their luggage but have not yet boarded the plane. When the late-arriving passengers are on board, the plane (which has about 85 passengers) takes off smoothly.

Not long after the takeoff, the terrorists attack. There are four of them who are featured in the story: Kinan (played by Marathan Muslu), who appears to be the hijackers’ leader; Vedat (played by Omid Memar), an 18-year-old who follows orders; Kalkan (played by Passar Hariky), another henchman; and Daniel (played by Paul Wollin), a white German who has become a radical Islamic terrorist.

During the attack, some of the terrorists have stormed into the cockpit, and a big fight ensues. The terrorists are using broken glass as knives and have stabbed Michael and Tobias. Michael is severely wounded, but Tobias has been able to defend himself by knocking out Kinan with a fire extinguisher. Tobias is able to fight off further attacks by pushing the terrorists out of the cockpit door and locking it behind him.

Vedat, Kalkan and Daniel, who are locked out of the cockpit, continue to terrorize the passengers and try to break their way back into the cockpit. The situation escalates as Daniel (who is the most vicious one in the group) threatens to take lives if Tobias doesn’t open the cockpit door.

Tobias has been able to call for help to air traffic control, which is in communication with him during the pandemonium. (The movie’s title comes from the 7500 air traffic control code for a hijacking.) Tobias tells the authorities that he plans to make an emergency landing in Hanover. He also makes this announcement over the intercom to help calm down the passengers.

Meanwhile, Tobias is trapped in the cockpit with an unconscious terrorist, a plane captain who might be dying and the terrible burden of knowing that not opening the cockpit door could mean that innocent people could be killed. Tobias can see some of what’s going on outside the cockpit through a video monitor. The terrorists communicate with him by using the cockpit phone placed outside the door, which they keep battering in an attempt to gain access. And later in the movie, as if things weren’t stressful enough, it predictably starts to rain heavily while the plane is still in the air.

Tobias is written as someone who manages to keep a fairly level head during all of this stress and trauma, to the point where some viewers might think that his reactions are initially too calm for all the violence going around him. But an explanation for that is perhaps Tobias is just in shock. He definitely has some big emotional moments later in the film.

In the production notes for “7500,” Vollrath explains that he wanted to make the Tobias character the opposite of an action hero and more relatable to the average person. In other words, if this were a movie starring Bruce Willis or Liam Neeson, the main character would definitely make different choices.

Although many things that happen in “7500” are easy to predict, the movie is different from other “hijacked plane” films because almost everything in the movie takes place in the cockpit, not the passenger area. The production notes for “7500” mention that the filmmakers purchased a decommissioned Airbus A320 plane and made it into the “7500” film set. That authenticity makes a difference, since nothing about the film’s production design looks like a replica of a plane.

Tobias is undoubtedly the main character of “7500,” but it would have been a little better to get more of a backstory from the other characters, particularly one of the attackers who gets the most screen time. The movie makes some subtle references about immigration, but all of their backgrounds are mysteries.

As for Tobias, very little is known about him either. For example, viewers don’t find out how he ended up living in Germany or even why he wanted to become a pilot. The focus of the movie is “fight for your life in the moment.” As the debut feature film from Vollrath, “7500” is far from a masterpiece, but it shows that this filmmaker has knack for telling a simple story that hits a lot of the right notes for crowd-pleasing suspense.

Prime Video premiered “7500” on June 18, 2020.

Review: ‘The Vast of Night,’ starring Sierra McCormick, Jake Horowitz, Gail Cronauer and Bruce Davis

May 29, 2020

by Carla Hay

“The Vast of Night”

Directed by Andrew Patterson

Culture Representation: Taking place in the 1950s in fictional Cayuga, New Mexico, the sci-fi drama “The Vast of Night” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with one African American) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: Two young people unexpectedly find out about mysterious UFO occurrences that appear to involve massive government conspiracies and cover-ups.

Culture Audience: “The Vast of Night” will appeal mostly to people who like movies that explore issues about life in outer space and what the U.S. government knows about it.

Sierra McCormick in “The Vast of Night” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios)

People who don’t know anything about “The Vast of Night” before seeing this sci-fi drama will get some pretty obvious clues within the first 20 minutes of this slow-burn-to-intensity film that’s clearly been inspired by “The Twilight Zone.” Taking place in the 1950s, the movie is set entirely during one night in the fictional city of Cayuga, New Mexico, where some of the people have reported unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the sky during a night with a full moon.

There have also been some strange interruptions in the electrical lighting in certain buildings. “The Vast of Night”—directed by Andrew Patterson and written by James Montague and Craig W. Sanger—takes a while to get the action going, but the last third of the film is worth sticking around for, as the movie deliberately builds up to a suspenseful pace.

The city of Cayuga in this movie at first appears to be the type of tranquil, middle-class suburb where the majority of the city residents will turn up for a Cayuga High School basketball game as a major social event. That’s what is going on in the beginning of the film, as viewers are introduced to Everett Sloan (played by Jake Horowitz), a radio DJ who goes by the on-air name “The Maverick” when he works at the local station.

Everett, who appears to be in his late teens or early 20s, has in his possession a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder, which was a fancy new technology invention at the time. He’s making the rounds at the school’s gym during the pre-game practice to test out the recorder, which he plans to use to record the basketball game. Everett interviews people in the gym because he’s an aspiring investigative news journalist, but there’s also a sense that he wants to show off this recorder too.

Everett’s activity is briefly interrupted when he’s asked to help out some school administrators who have reported an electrical power problem in the room where the generators are stored. Apparently, the lights have been blinking off and on in certain parts of the school, and they don’t want any of these problems during the basketball game.

When Everett arrives, he finds out that there was an identity mix-up, and they wanted to send for a guy named Emmett (the school’s electrician), not Everett. The administrators mention that the electrical glitches are probably because of a small animal, such as a mouse or squirrel. As the movie continues, it seems like the only purpose of this scene is to establish that the town is having some unexplained electrical problems.

One of the people whom Everett encounters when he’s showing off his tape recorder is 16-year-old Fay Crocker (played by Sierra McCormick), who’s fascinated and a little intimidated by this new technology. Fay and Everett aren’t close friends, and he treats her like an older brother who doesn’t want his younger sister tagging along. But tag along she does, as Sierra and Everett make their way into the school’s parking lot, where several families are in their cars, waiting to be let in for the basketball game. Everett goes from car to car to further test his new tape recorder.

Although the dialogue in “The Vast of Night” is spoken with a rapid-fire pace (in the manner that many American sci-fi/thriller films did back in the 1950s), the story unfolds in a leisurely manner in the beginning of the film. Not much happens in the first third of the movie, in order to create an atmosphere that this is supposed to be just a regular night in Cayuga, where the biggest thing going on is the basketball game.

Sierra and Everett aren’t staying at the basketball game because they have to work elsewhere. Everett is headed to the radio station, where he has a live broadcast for his music/talk show. Sierra is scheduled to work a shift alone as the city’s telephone switchboard operator.

Before they walk to their respective workplaces, Sierra and Everett have a lively discussion about some of the future technology that’s she’s read about in magazines like Modern Mechanics. She tells Everett that by the year 2000, there will be vacuum-tube transportation that can travel at incredible speed; phones that will look like tiny TVs; and lifelong telephone numbers as IDs that will be assigned to babies at birth, with the numbers disconnected upon death. Everett tells Sierra: “I believe the train tubes in the highways, but the tiny TV phones—that’s cuckoo.” (It’s the screenwriters’ obvious inside joke, since smartphones now exist.)

As soon as Sierra begins her switchboard operator shift, a few strange things start happening. She gets a call where all she hears is a repeated clicking-echo type of noise and nothing else. Then another call comes in, with a terrified woman saying that there appears to be a tornado coming toward her. A barking dog can be heard in the background, and then the caller is suddenly disconnected.

A concerned Sierra then calls a neighbor named Ethel to check on Sierra’s pre-school-age sister Ethel and the babysitter Maddie, who are both home alone at Sierra’s house. Sierra has been listening to Everett’s radio show while she works. She hears the strange clicking sound at the beginning of the show’s news broadcast, so she calls Everett to ask him if he heard this strange noise too.

Everett didn’t hear it, but Sierra hooks him up to the phone line where he can hear it, and he records the noise. They both decide that Everett should play the noise on the air and ask listeners to call in and say if they recognize what this mysterious sound is.

A retired military man who identifies himself by the name Billy (played by Bruce Davis, in a voice role only) then calls in, and begins to tell a story live on the air. This story takes Everett and Sierra down a path of trying to uncover a mystery. Everett also gets a call from an elderly shut-in named Mabel Blanche (played by Gail Cronauer), who also has some information that’s part of the mystery, as the movie accelerates to a breakneck speed with a heart-pounding conclusion.

“The Vast of Night” uses a visual device of framing the story as if it’s an episode of a fictional show called “Paradox Theater” (an obvious nod to “The Twilight Zone”), by having some scenes open with the action playing out on a tiny, 1950s-style black-and-white TV. The movie’s cinematography by Miguel Ioann Littin Menz is infused with a lot of sepia tones that were common in movies of the 1950s, when color technology in films was still fairly new. And “The Vast of Night” also takes an unconventional approach by having the screen go completely dark during some suspenseful moments (one “blackout” scene lasts for about five minutes), which might give the viewers the impression that something is wrong with the screen or the movie’s playback.

Avid sci-fi fans will also notice some Easter eggs in “The Vast of Night,” such as Cayuga is the name of “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling’s Cayuga Productions. And the radio station that Everett works at is WOTW, which is an acronym for “War of the Worlds,” even though radio and TV stations west of the Mississippi River are supposed to have call letters that start with the letter K.

The only real flaw of “The Vast of Night” (and it’s a fairly minor one) is that the movie never really feels like it takes place in New Mexico, because “The Vast of Night” was actually filmed in Texas with a cast of mostly Texans and Oklahomans who keep their heavy Southern accents in the film. It’s kind of distracting for the cast to have the wrong accents, but this discrepancy in regional accents doesn’t take away too much from this engaging story. “The Vast of Night” might not be completely original in its subject matter, and the acting is good (not great), but the way the story is told with some unique touches should please die-hard sci-fi fans.

Prime Video premiered “The Vast of Night” on May 29, 2020.

Review: ‘Selah and the Spades,’ starring Lovie Simone, Celeste O’Connor and Jharrel Jerome

April 17, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Selah and the Spades”

Directed by Tayarisha Poe

Culture Representation: Taking place at an elite co-ed boarding high school in Pennsylvania, the grim drama “Selah and the Spades” has a racially diverse cast of characters (African American and white) who represent the upper-class.

Culture Clash: The rebellious teenagers at the school have intense social rivalries, as they try to hide their law-breaking activities from adults.

Culture Audience: “Selah and the Spades” will appeal mostly to people who like movies about teenagers behaving badly, but most of the characters’ personalities are shallow and underwritten.

Lovie Simone in “Selah and the Spades” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios)

“Selah and the Spades” is about a group of privileged and rebellious teenagers who weren’t even born when the 1988 dark comedy film “Heathers” was first released, but the basic concept of “Selah and the Spades” draws a lot from the “Heathers” template, without the winning charm of “Heathers.” The idea is the same: A new “outsider” girl enrolls in a high school and finds herself being accepted into the “cool kids” clique at the top of the school’s social ladder, led by a stuck-up “queen bee.” The “new girl” is a quirky, creative type, while the “queen bee” is cold and power-hungry.

One of the main differences between the two movies is that “Heathers” told the story from the perspective of the new girl, while “Selah and the Spades” (the first feature film written and directed by Tayarisha Poe) tells the story from the perspective of the queen bee. Unfortunately, for “Selah and the Spades,” the movie is as humorless and pretentious as its central character. The other main difference between the two movies is that “Heathers” took place in a predominantly white public high school (with people of different social classes), while “Selah and the Spades” takes place at an elite, racially diverse boarding school where the members of the school’s most powerful clique all happen to be African American.

“Selah and the Spades” exists in a world where, unrealistically, race is never mentioned or addressed. It might seem like writer/director Poe did something different or edgy by creating a world where African American students rule the social hierarchy at an elite boarding school, but these African Americans are also the school’s drug dealers, which puts them in the same ghetto mindset and criminal category that numerous other movies and TV shows have put African Americans. In other words, Poe might have changed the setting to a boarding school, but making the central characters drug-dealing African Americans is completely unoriginal and panders to negative stereotypes.

“Selah and the Spades” takes place during the spring season at the fictional Haldwell School for Boarding and Day Students, located in an unnamed U.S. city in Pennsylvania. (The movie was actually filmed in Massachusetts.) An unseen teenage narrator (voiced by Jessie Cannizzaro) explains the social structure of the school’s vice-motivated “underground rebels,” which consists of five factions.

The Spades, who are at the tope of the heap, are led by 17-year-old high-school senior Selah Summers (played by Lovie Simone) and her right-hand guy Maxxie Ayoade (played by Jharrel Jerome, the Emmy-winning star of Netflix’s “When They See Us”), who are the aforementioned drug dealers.
The Seed, a group of former teacher’s pets who’ve gone rogue and engage in cheating, is led by Tarit Toll Perelstein (played by Henry Hunter Hall).
The Skins, whose specialty is gambling, are led by Amber Bolfo (played by Francesca Noel).
The Prefects, who make the school’s administration “blissfully unaware” of these students’ illegal activities, are led by Thomas Richard Thomas III, also known as Two Tom (played by Evan Roe).
The Bobbies, who throw illegal parties, are led by Roberta “Bobby” Pellegrino (played by Anna Mulvoy Ten).

These five factions (which total about 20 students) have outdoor meetings at a school picnic table, where Selah (pronounced “sell-ah,” perhaps a play on words, since she’s a drug seller) leads the meetings with a haughty, imperious manner. There’s constant friction between Selah and Bobby, who is the only other faction leader to question Selah’s authority. It makes sense that these two faction leaders would butt heads, since The Bobbies are in charge of the parties, which need the drugs that The Spades provide.

There are only two adult characters with significant speaking roles in “Selah and the Spades,” and they both represent despised authority figures in Selah’s life.

The first is Selah’s demanding mother, Maybelle Summers (played by Gina Torres), the only person in the story who can make Selah feel powerless. Maybelle is the type of parent who, when Selah tells her that she scored a 93 out of 100 percent on a recent test, will ask what happened with the other 7 percent instead of congratulating her daughter on the high score. Maybelle also berates Selah by saying, “You’re starting to sound like your father,” when Selah makes excuses for why she didn’t score 100 on the test. (Selah’s father or stepfather is briefly shown kissing Maybelle goodbye before he heads off to work, and the movie doesn’t show any interaction between him and Selah.)

Maybelle is also the type of domineering parent who already has Selah’s future planned for her after graduation (a prestigious university, of course), but Selah drops hints that she might want to take a gap year or might not want to go to college at all. When Selah tries to tell her mother that she isn’t really interested in college, Maybelle quickly dismisses the idea and never asks what Selah really wants to do with her life. It’s the time of year where Selah has to decide which university to attend, and she’s been secretly delaying her response to the top school of her mother’s choice. Her mother finds out anyway that Selah hasn’t responded, and, not surprisingly, she’s livid about it.

The irony of Selah’s tense relationship with her mother is that the unpleasant characteristics that Selah dislikes about her mother are the same characteristics that Selah has when she’s around her peers. Selah and her mother are both bossy control freaks who use emotional manipulation, bullying and fear to get people to do what they want. They also don’t like having their plans disrupted, and they have a hard time accepting that people might not always want to go along with their plans.

The other adult authority figure in Selah’s life is Headmaster Banton (played by Jesse Williams), who is generally clueless about what goes on in the school’s “underground” factions. He usually finds out about student shenanigans after the fact. Headmaster Banton ends up cancelling the junior/senior prom because of the student unruliness. In response, the five factions decide to have their own off-campus party, which leads to a series of events that test the limits of some of the movie’s characters.

Before the party happens, there’s a scene in the movie that shows the mischievous side of the five factions, who vote on what what to do for their senior prank. They all decide that their prank, which they plan to do after school hours, will have something to do with water. The prank turns out to be filling hundreds of identical small tumbler glasses with water dyed blue, green and purple, and setting the glasses on all the steps of a long and winding staircase inside a school building.

It’s eye-catching, but it’s not a particularly creative prank. Headmaster Banton arrives with a colleague the next day and finds the stairs can’t be climbed because it’s filled with the water glasses. Apparently, this elite boarding school is too cheap to pay for on-campus night security, which would’ve caught these pranksters in the act.

As for the new girl, she’s Paloma Davis (played by Celeste O’Connor), who’s a sophomore when she enrolls in Haldwell. Paloma (just like Winona Ryder’s Veronica Sawyer character in “Heathers”) starts off as introverted and shy, but then changes after being accepted by the top clique of the “cool kids.” Paloma has an interest in photography, since she’s constantly taking photos of students on her professional camera. She’s in awe of the older kids in the “five factions.” Paloma is thrilled when Selah starts to pay attention to her, and eventually the two girls start to spend more time together.

Paloma is the only non-senior classmate who was invited to the “water prank.” Curiously, Paloma was openly taking pictures of the students during the prank, which is an odd plot hole to the movie, considering that Selah is the type of paranoid control freak who wouldn’t allow someone to have evidence of who caused the prank.

As explained by the unseen narrator in the beginning of the film, Selah will soon graduate, so she’s looking for someone to continue her “legacy” and take over The Spades after she’s gone. Paloma seems like an ideal candidate for Selah to mentor. But unlike Selah, who is selfish and vindictive, Paloma is compassionate toward her fellow students. And she doesn’t always follow Selah’s commands. For example, Selah wants Paloma to take her side in Selah’s feud against Bobby, but Paloma is reluctant to pick a side and has no problem hanging out with Bobby.

Meanwhile, other insecurities fray the bonds of The Spades. Maxxie starts to become jealous that Selah and Paloma have become close, and he fears being replaced as Selah’s most-trusted right-hand person. Selah identifies as asexual and privately tells Paloma that she has no interest in dating. So it’s not much of a surprise that petty Selah becomes envious that Maxxie has become romantically involved with an attractive fellow student named Nuri (played by Nekhebet Juch). Maxxie and Nuri’s romance has distracted Maxxie from all the attention that he used to give Selah.

Like many toxic leaders, Selah is also quick to cruelly punish people she considers to be “disloyal.” There’s an insidious side to her, as it’s made clear to viewers that Selah doesn’t hesitate to have people beat up if they “snitch” or fall behind on their drug debts. There’s also something that happened during her sophomore year that is mentioned several times in the movie as being disruptive to The Spades but a turning point in Selah’s leadership. The full details of what happened are revealed in the movie.

“Selah and the Spades” uses Selah’s controlling mother to explain why Selah is such a deeply unhappy person. It’s this movie’s attempt to make Selah more sympathetic (with the predictable scenes of Selah crying after being bullied by her mother), but it’s not to enough to explain why Selah (who also has an awful personality) has become the “queen bee” of the “cool kids.”

Selah is an empty shell of a person. Antiheroes who become leaders usually have some kind of charisma that attracts people to them. However, Selah has no charisma or any particular talent. If she has any passions or ambitions, they’re not shown in the movie. And she doesn’t appear to be the richest student in the school, so it’s not adequately explained in the movie why people would want to blindly follow her.

It is not unrealistic that the teenage characters in the movie talk like they’re 10 years older than the ages of their characters (such as when they use a phrase like “pray tell”), because these are supposed to be well-educated teenagers. The problem is that even though the movie tries to make Selah look like she’s wise beyond her years, in actuality, she has the emotional intelligence of a slug.

There’s also a preachy part in the movie where the Selah character, in the middle of cheerleader practice, stops and talks directly to the camera to go off on a rant about how people want to control the bodies of 17-year-old girls, who should have the right to say, do and dress however they want without being judged sexually. This is the only time that the Selah character “breaks the fourth wall” and talks directly to the audience.

It’s a very pretentious and misguided part of the film, not just because “breaking the fourth wall” doesn’t fit with the rest of the movie, but also because this attempt to make Selah look like an enlightened feminist falls very flat. At the point in the movie where Selah goes off on this rant, viewers already know she’s a self-entitled brat who’s also a drug dealer. It’s a little hard to take her preaching seriously, considering how morally bankrupt and hateful she is.

As the loathsome Selah, Simone does an adequate job at portraying someone who is supposed to be written as a complicated person, but she’s really transparent and fairly two-dimensional. The real discovery is O’Connor, who goes through a metamorphosis as Paloma, and gives by far the best performance in the movie.

Unfortunately, most of the characters, except for Selah and Paloma, are written as vague sketches. The movie could’ve been more interesting if it showed more of the personalities of the other faction leaders, so viewers can get an idea of the social dynamics that caused Selah to rise to the leadership position.

It’s not about Selah being likeable. It’s about her being fascinating enough to explain why she’s the “queen bee” of the school’s social hierarchy. Because “Selah and the Spades” takes the misstep of having a central character with such a dead personality (which leads to a lot of dull and predictable scenes), this movie that is clearly inspired by “Heathers” won’t ever be considered a cult classic like “Heathers.”

Prime Video premiered “Selah and the Spades” on April 17, 2020.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival pilot episode review: ‘The Boys’

May 1, 2019

by Carla Hay

“The Boys”

Pilot episode/Season 1, Episode 1

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 29, 2019.

Prime Video’s “The Boys” series couldn’t have come at a better time, when superhero movies have been dominating the box office, and the lead characters in the movies have legions of devoted fans around the world. “The Boys,” based on the graphic-novel series of the same name, explores what it would be like to live in a world where over-worshipped superheroes abuse their fame and power. Based on the pilot episode of “The Boys” that had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, Prime Video could have its first big superhero-themed hit.

The main protagonists of “The Boys” aren’t even superheroes. They’re mere mortals who want to expose the corrupt superheroes because of personal vendettas they have against them. Hughie Campbell (played by Jack Quaid) is a mild-mannered employee of an independent electronics store in New York City. It’s the type of store that’s rapidly disappearing in a retail economy that’s killed Radio Shack. Hughie seems to have a safe and predictable life. He and his girlfriend Robin (played by Jess Salgueiro) are very much in love, and although Hughie’s job doesn’t pay too well, it’s enough for him to get by comfortably, even if he still has to live with his single father (played by Simon Pegg).

Hughie’s world turns into a nightmare when his girlfriend is killed right in front of him in a freak accident. It’s because a lightning-speed superhero named A-Train (played by Jessie T. Usher) literally runs right through her while chasing a robber, and that leads to Robin’s gruesome death. A-Train runs so fast (just like DC Comics’ The Flash) that he didn’t even notice that he killed someone until he sees the bloody aftermath, and he makes a quick excuse that he has to leave in order to keep chasing after the robber.

A devastated Hughie tries to get justice from Vought International, the mega-corporation that manages and secretly covers up for the world’s top superheroes, including an elite group called The Seven. (The Seven is written as an obvious satire of DC Comics’ supergroup Justice League.) Vought is run by Madelyn Stillwell (played by Elizabeth Shue), a ruthless executive who puts on a façade of doing what’s best for the world, while hiding superheroes’ dirty secrets. Vought offers Hughie a $45,000 settlement to not sue over Robin’s death, but he refuses. A-Train gives a half-hearted public apology, but Hughie is not convinced the apology is sincere. Hughie isn’t so mild-mannered anymore. He’s heartbroken, bitter, and out for revenge. He just doesn’t know what to do about it yet.

Meanwhile, in Des Moines, Iowa, a naïve young woman named Annie January (played by Erin Moriarty) is training to become a superhero, much like a girl would train for an event that’s a combination of an athletic competition and a beauty pageant. She’s hoping she’ll be the chosen one to replace Lamplighter, one of the superheroes who is retiring from The Seven. What happens to this young superhero will set in motion much of the action for the rest of the series. She joins The Seven under the new identity Starlight, a character clearly inspired by Supergirl.

Not long after Starlight joins The Seven, Hughie unexpectedly meets Billy Butcher (played by Karl Urban), a no-nonsense badass who crashes into Hughie’s store. Billy says that he’s part of a secret vigilante group called The Boys, whose goal is to hold law-breaking superheroes accountable for their misdeeds. Hughie wants in on the action, but Billy wants Hughie to prove himself first.

Billy tells Hughie that all of the superheroes are corrupt except Homelander (played by Antony Starr), the leader of The Seven, an alpha-male, patriotic type who has the superhero ability to fly, just like Superman. But is Homelander really a good guy or has Billy been fooled into thinking he is?

Other characters from The Seven that are introduced in this pilot episode include The Deep (played by Chace Crawford), an Aquaman-type heartthrob who’s secretly a creep abusing his power through sexual harassment; Black Noir (played by Nathan Mitchell), a mysterious silent type; Translucent (played by Alex Hassell), who can make himself invisible, similar to the DC Comics character Negative Man, and uses this ability to be a perverted Peeping Tom; and Queen Maeve (played by Dominique McElligott), a tough-but-tender alpha female, similar to Wonder Woman, who shows signs that she’s not as committed to The Seven’s corrupt ways as the rest of the group.

Translucent is not in “The Boys” comic books, so his storyline in the TV series is the least-easiest to predict. Advance teaser footage of “The Boys” shows Translucent imprisoned in a cage. The Prime Video series also has some other differences from “The Boys” comic books (which were created by writer Garth Ennis and illustrator Darick Robertson), but that spoiler information won’t be included here.

Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Ori Marmur, Ken F. Levin and Jason Netter are among the executive producers of “The Boys.” They previously adapted a popular graphic-novel series to television with AMC’s “Preacher.” Other executive producers of “The Boys” are Eric Kripke (“Supernatural”), Neal H. Moritz (“The Fast and the Furious” franchise) and Pavun Shetty (CBS’s “S.W.A.T.”).

Based on the pilot episode of “The Boys,” this series is going full-throttle with sex, drugs, adult language and violence. Now that Prime Video has canceled the superhero comedy series “The Tick” (which didn’t really click with audiences, after two seasons), “The Boys” can step in and fill that superhero series void with a rip-roaring abandon that’s a satirical kick in the face to superheroes who are too popular for their own good.

Prime Video will premiere the first season of “The Boys” on July 26, 2019.

2018 Cannes Film Festival: Inside the festival’s controversial restrictions on streaming services and selfies

March 26, 2018

by Carla Hay

Dustin Hoffman, director Noah Baumbach, Emma Thompson, Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler at the Cannes Film Festival premiere of “The Meyerowitz Stories” at Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France, on May 21, 2017. (Photo by Mike Marsland/WireImage for Netflix)

The annual Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, is one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals, but Cannes Film officials have made two controversial decisions that could potentially alienate large segments of festival attendees and movie fans. First, movies that are from streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu or Amazon will no longer be eligible for awards at the Cannes Film Festival, such as the Palme D’or (the top prize), Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, etc. However, films from streaming services (and TV networks such as HBO) can still have screenings and premieres at Cannes. The second change, which is even more alienating to movie fans, is that the festival has now banned “selfies” from being taken on the red carpet. The changes go into effect for the 71st edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which takes place from May 8 to May 9, 2018.

In an exclusive interview with French magazine Le Film Français that was published on March 23, 2018, Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Fremaux explained that these changes have mostly to do with adhering to French laws which state that a movie that was originally released theatrically cannot be available for streaming in France until 36 months after the theatrical release. If streaming services such as Netflix release any of their movies in cinemas, it’s typically on the same day or within two weeks of the day it premieres on the streaming service. The new Cannes policy now requires that all films eligible for competition at the Cannes Film Festival must be available for release in French theaters, and the theatrical release of the movie must be before any release on TV or on streaming services. Since Netflix and other streaming services do not have business models that allow them to wait three years to stream their content in France in order to get a theatrical release in France, that leaves Netflix and other streaming services out of the loop to compete for awards at the Cannes Film Festival.

The United States and many other countries do not have laws mandating a three-year delay between when a movie is released in theaters and when it can be made available for streaming, which is why many critics of this Cannes policy think that the policy is out-of-touch and detrimental to a film festival that should pride itself on being a truly international event. However, those who agree with the Cannes policy believe that the festival has a right to support French cinema laws and preserve the specialness of a theatrical release.

Byung Heebong, Giancarlo Esposito, Steven Yeun, Tilda Swinton, Ahn Seo-Hyun, Bong Joon-Ho, Paul Dano, Lily Collins, Jake Gyllenhaal and Devon Bostic at the Cannes Film Festival premiere of “Okja” at Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France, on May 19, 2017. (Photo by Mike Marsland/WireImage for Netflix)

In 2017, the Netflix films “Okja” and “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Both films had a limited release in U.S. theaters, as did Netflix’s period drama “Mudbound” and sports documentary “Icarus,” which did not premiere at Cannes, but were nominated for Academy Awards because they met Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences requirements of being released in at least one U.S. cinema for a minimum of one week. (“Icarus” won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, the first Academy Award won for a Netflix film.)

It will continue to be a complicated debate over whether or not a movie from a television network or a streaming service should be eligible for the same awards as movies that were first released in theaters, considering that Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services have become major presences at film festivals to acquire movies that have already been made and need distribution—as opposed to movies that were specifically made for the streaming services. For example, “Mudbound” and “Icarus” were two of several films that Netflix acquired after the movies premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Sofia Coppola and Nicole Kidman at the Cannes Film Festival premiere of “The Beguiled” in Cannes, France, on May 24, 2017. (Photo courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival)

As for the ban on taking selfies on the red carpet, Fremaux told Le Film Français why Cannes officials made the decision: “At the top of the red carpet, the pettiness and the hold up caused by the untimely disorder created by taking selfies hurts the quality of the climbing of the steps … And it does the same to the festival as a whole.”

What’s bizarre about this ban is that while taking selfies are prohibited on the red carpet, autograph signing is apparently still allowed. Even if barriers were set up on the red carpet that would put a larger distance between celebrities and fans, there are still some celebrities and other people on the red carpet who will want to go over to fans and let them take pictures and get autographs. (And it could be argued that signing autographs take about the same time, if not more time, than taking selfies.)

Most people would agree that fan interaction is one of the main reasons why red-carpet premieres are exciting to attendees. The success of these types of events are largely dependent on the number of cheering fans who show up, and the fans are usually there to get photos and/or try to get autographs. So unless the Cannes Film Festival is planning to take away fans’ cell phones and cameras and push celebrities away who want to take photos with fans, this “no selfies on the red carpet” policy will be hard to enforce and probably won’t last.