A Business of Men (1981)

A deer caught in the headlights is the perfect metaphor for Animals. Facing danger in the middle of the road, it freezes, unable to decide which way to go. For a moment, it seems almost willing to get run over rather than make a move. Ben Affleck’s latest directorial effort has the same problem. Its characters find themselves in increasingly desperate situations, but the film seems just as lost, jumping between a kidnapping thriller, a marriage drama, and political satire without figuring out how to make these elements work together. The result is a frustrating, uneven film that falls short of Affleck’s best work, particularly Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo.

At the center of the story is Mark Kimball (Ben Affleck), a progressive mayoral candidate who has built his public image around honesty and integrity. When his family is threatened, those principles become much harder to maintain. The interesting question isn’t whether Mark is a hypocrite. It’s whether he ever truly believed in the values he preached, or whether he simply never had to sacrifice anything important for them. It’s easy to talk about doing the right thing when the consequences fall on someone else. It’s considerably harder when your own family is on the line.

One of the film’s most obvious shortcomings is its treatment of women. Abby, Cecilia, and Dayle Burton may occupy very different positions in Mark’s life, yet they all end up feeling like convenient pieces in his personal puzzle. They are there to complicate his choices, expose his weaknesses, or help him find a way through the mess he has created. The problem isn’t simply that the women have limited screen time or imperfect characterization. It’s that the film rarely seems interested in who they are when Mark isn’t the one at the center of the story.

“You are all characters in a movie.” That line will surely echo in one’s head when they exit Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the latest outing from I Saw the TV Glow director Jane Schoenbrun. It’s because that line could plausibly be applied to three different sets of characters. The first, who it is literally directed to, is the characters in the film, who sort of become characters within another movie inside this movie that may or may not exist. The second, the characters in the fictional “Camp Miasma” series that serves as the impetus for the main character’s journey.

But the third set is most interesting. That third set is the audience. Just like in Schoenbrun’s previous film, the lines between fiction and reality are so effortlessly blurred that it makes the audience question its own sense of place within reality. In a literal sense, we are real. In a more meaningful sense, we are characters in a movie. Because, at the same time, reality is less real than we seem to think, and the movie is more real than we realize.

From Urban Dictionary: Based on the central character in the Eminem song of the same name, a “stan” is an overzealous maniacal fan for any celebrity or athlete.

Look, I think we can all agree Silence of the Lambs is, for all intents and purposes, a perfect movie. The film is one of (so far) only three in history to win the “Big Five” Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Dr. Hannibal Lecter became a mainstay part of pop culture history, and the film is regarded as a classic. Needless to say, attempting to one up such a massive hit (and one of my own favorite films) was a lot to ask of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal. And yet, through three intricately crafted seasons of television, Hannibal has managed to make itself into the best incarnation of a property based off of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal books.

Hannibal focuses on the titular Dr. Hannibal Lecter(Mads Mikkelsen), the high class forensic psychiatrist with a taste for human flesh, which would earn him the nickname “Hannibal the Cannibal.” Juxtaposed to Lecter’s story is that of Will Graham(Hugh Dancy), an FBI case profiler who suffers from encephalitis and a very exaggerated ability to empathize with serial killers and follow their footsteps a little too well. He’s a man who dances on the line between good and bad, and just barely holds onto the good side.

Graham is the obvious weirdo, who struggles in social interactions, and thus, most people assume he has Asperger’s syndrome, whereas he is actually struggling to contain a need to fully act on those psychopathic impulses he harbors inside from years of placing himself in murderer’s shoes. And on the other hand, Dr. Lecter exudes class and charisma, casually murdering people he finds rude and eating them (even feeding them to guests at dinner parties), and shows no obvious signs of his sadistic nature. Naturally, their two stories intertwine, and the interactions between them are nothing but fascinating. A friendship turns to a game of cat and mouse, and from there it actually evolves into a mutual respect, and from there, blossoms into a romance, over the course of the series. It was the only natural path that the show could take. And the twisted relationship is the highlight, though it is not the only great element. Let me run down what makes it so special.