Review: Barbenheimer

Barbenheimer — The summer movie double-feature spectacle/meme event

For months, the internet has been murmuring about the simultaneous release of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Two diametrically opposed films — sugar vs substance, pink vs black and white, divine feminine energy vs stark, intellectual masculinity — both dropping on the same fateful Friday in late July. 

By mid-June, the phenomenon had a name, and #barbenheimer was heavily trending on Twitter and picked up by news outlets. People all over the world were talking about and gearing up for this pop culture explosion (pun intended, of course). It even had its own Wikipedia page.

Naturally, I made plans to take PTO and see them both on opening day — Oppenheimer at 3 p.m in 70 mm at the Plaza Theatre in Atlanta, then Barbie at Midtown Arts Cinema (a two-mile drive away) at 7 p.m. 

Let’s start with the order  

One of the things that has made #barbenheimer fun to discuss and debate is one’s preferred viewing order. I decided to go heavy and dark first, and then end the night with the fizzy, buoyant Barbie. 

I’ll admit, it’s a weird feeling to spend three hours chronicling the break-neck race to build an atomic bomb and then dive headlong into a bright pink world filled with perfect dolls, but I think it’s the best order for viewing if you don’t want to end your marathon cinema experience too morose. It’s like having a steak, then getting dessert. It’s also easier, in my opinion, to sit through a long movie first then cap it with a short little number. 

Oppenheimer, destroyer of worlds

As a caveat, I’m a Christopher Nolan fan. I admire the way he mixes the extremely serious with the dreamlike, the hard science with sentimentality (looking at you, love-exists-in-the-fourth dimension Interstellar). 

The film chronicles the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, beginning around college and following him all the way through into his old age. Cillian Murphy never once for a moment makes you believe he’s anyone other than Oppenheimer for the entire three hours. He’s incredible, and this portrayal will win an Oscar, I’m sure of it. I didn’t even think about Thomas Shelby once.

In the hands of any other director, a biopic about a physicist wouldn’t exactly be record-breaking box office fodder, but Nolan deftly makes this movie into a nail-biting thriller. Once we learn about the need for beating the Nazis to the atomic bomb, it becomes almost like a heist movie. Even Matt Damon is there, portraying the gruff engineer general tasked — along with Oppenheimer— with assembling the crew of scientists that will pull it off.

They build a town to house the scientists so they can work in seclusion in the deserts of New Mexico. The first two hours of the movie you learn about all of the interpersonal drama between the famous scientists of the day — names like Fermi, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Feynman. Ones you remember from chemistry class. 

The end of the second act leads up to the Trinity test in New Mexico, and you’re on the edge of your seat the entire time. The explosion itself is divine, triumphant, frightening, mesmerizing. It builds in silence for 40 seconds before the shock wave hits the scientists — and you — with an otherworldly wall of hell-like noise (another Nolan specialty). The light that this bomb emitted was so bright that a girl blind from birth miles away reportedly asked what the brightness was. 

In all honesty, I think the movie should have ended there. The last 40 minutes focus on the problems Oppenheimer ran into after the war. As the father of the atomic bomb, he was lauded as a hero at first, but as the reality of all the past — and future — blood on his hands sank in, he struggled with his feelings on all of it. He eventually spoke out against the creation of further weapons of mass destruction like the hydrogen bomb, and for this he was blacklisted and accused of being a communist. It’s a stark examination of the McCarthy era witch hunt mindset. But the next 50 years of the Cold War proved him right. Even though the world has yet to be destroyed by nuclear war, we came perilously close. And it still might happen. 

Unlike Barbie, Oppenheimer only has two female characters, and they’re not terribly sympathetic. I know you can’t change reality, but it still kinda stings to have both ladies simply be the love interests of Oppenheimer. The first, his communist lover Florence Pugh, who spends the majority of her few minutes on screen completely naked. The second, his wife, played by Emily Blunt, a woman who hates her children and is an alcoholic. 

Barbie, giver of hope

For my Barbie caveat, I will say that I never played with them growing up. I was a tried-and-true tomboy who loved Ninja Turtles and He-Man action figures. But Barbie is no ordinary doll movie — it’s directed by Greta Gerwig and co-written by her and her husband, Noah Baumbach. Early on the rumors leaked of it being a feminist movie, not what you’d expect. Of it being deeply funny and weird, also not what you’d expect. 

We rushed from one theater to the next, driving down Ponce de Leon avenue in Atlanta during a thunderstorm with flooded streets. I won’t lie, this added to the cinematic nature of my afternoon. 

Arriving into the lobby during the evening rush was a sea change. Pink everywhere, in every way you can imagine. Men wearing pink t-shirts. Young women decked in pink dresses and boas. I saw a group of Muslim girls wearing pink hijabs. It was fantastic! I had no idea how much people loved Barbie. And even though it’s never been my cup of tea, I was happy that people that did love it were reveling in the celebration. It’s easy for society to dismiss the things that women love when it comes to movies, so I beamed with pride that Barbie was having this moment. 

But Barbie is being simultaneously praised — and derided — as a feminist movie. 

Let’s get this straight: It is a deeply feminist movie in a way that I’ve never seen in a mainstream film, and certainly not in a way that I expected from a movie about a blonde doll. 

The plot, briefly, is this: Barbie lives in Barbieland, an idyllic place where women are supreme court justices, presidents, astronauts, and more. As the first doll to not just be a baby or a mother, Barbie showed girls that women could be anything. And it was inspiring (for a while). 

But that’s just in Barbieland. In the Real World, there’s still patriarchy and problems to be solved for gender equality. Barbie and Ken get to visit this Real World, and Ken very quickly learns that in the Real World, men are on top. 

When they return to Barbieland, he spreads the gospel of patriarchy, turning their world upside down. It takes teamwork, probing, and self-examination, but Barbie and her friends learn the power they possess deep inside themselves, and eventually all is returned to normalcy in Barbieland. 

I’m not doing the plot justice here, but the plot is secondary to the main point of the film. There’s an incredible scene in the climax of the movie where America Ferreira, playing an exhausted mom, gives a monologue about how hard it is being a woman, and all of the never-ending and impossible-to-fulfill demands placed upon them. The key message is: You are enough. 

At this scene, a big chunk of the audience I was in started crying. This message is something that many women need to hear, and Greta Gerwig gave it to them. It was awe-inspiring.

Some detractors have claimed this movie is “anti-man” and filled with “nuclear-level rage” against men. It’s not. It’s a movie made for women about being a woman and all the complexities therein. And spoiler alert: There’s not many of these films.

Barbie is enjoyable, wildly funny, and very, very smart. The movie opens with a parody of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that had the entire audience cackling. There’s a reference to Proust! A character name drops Stephen Malkmus from the band Pavement. There’s a second Kubrick reference that combines The Shining with a Barbie. 

As someone who never once desired to play with a Barbie, I’m struck by an overwhelming desire to see this movie again. I will, too.

Nerd coefficient: 9/10

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, new NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo-nominated podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley.

Movie Magic: On Appreciating Speculative Film

In this final essay installment, I turn to speculative films and the struggle of defining them, appreciating them, and their cinema legacy. 

 Movie Magic: On Appreciating Speculative Film

Even the earliest cinema was fascinated with portraying the speculative. Indeed, speculative films have developed and pushed film beyond its ability in the desire to imagine new worlds—even if the movie was too ambitious for the screen, such as Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune. Some of the greatest directors working right now focus on speculative films, such as Taika Waititi, Denis Villeneuve, Ava DuVernay, Guillermo del Toro, and Ryan Coogler to name a few. The same can be said for some of the greatest actors working on screen, whether classically-trained like Lupita Nyong’o and Patrick Stewart or careers enhanced by speculative films like Hugh Jackman and Tessa Thompson—the overall impact on the US entertainment industry cannot be underestimated. The speculative film canon has impacted the film industry from talent to special effects to pushing the art form forward, regardless of the recognition such films have received. These films are woven tightly into the tapestry of American cinema and should be recognized as an ideal form for making movie magic.

I use the term speculative because as Vivian Carol Sobchack points out, it is difficult to define what should be included in the science fiction film canon. To even limit the discussion to science fiction draws a questionable line in the sand—are Black Panther (2018) or Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) science fiction or fantasy or science fantasy? So, I turn to the catchall term for literature, speculative. Using the term speculative also includes fantasy films in the discussion, even though they receive less recognition than science fiction, particularly between 1960 to 1990. Fantasy films should not be disregarded form this discussion, whether it’s for the special effects or career building ability of The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) or the renewed interest in “monster” movies such as The Shape of Water (2017). Even when using a catch-all term such as “speculative film,” the boundaries of the canon are hard to define. Sobchack asks what makes a science fiction film and struggles to answer that question. Unlike the western film, visual aspects of a science fiction film are not consistent across movies: “One could create a list of such SF ‘objects’ as the spaceship which do indeed evoke the genre, but which are—specifically and physically—not essential to it: the New Planet, the Robot, the Laboratory, Radioactive Isotopes, and Atomic Devices” (65-66). Indeed, what constitutes a speculative film (if trying to separate speculative film from the American film canon, as is often done with speculative fiction and literary fiction) becomes increasingly difficult.

For instance, Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014), both directed by Christopher Nolan, are speculative films, but contain no similarities in terms of content or genre signifiers. Their connection is merely that the films cannot be and never have been replicated in the viewer’s reality. Yet, the American cinema’s obsession with World War I and II movies complicates this idea as that is yet another fantasy of a kind, whether it’s white washing who fought in the wars or reveling in the wholesale slaughter of Nazis, US critics love a good war movie. Indeed, film has always been about escape, as Marshall McLuhan describes: “The business of the writer or the film-maker is to transfer the reader or the viewer from one world, his own, to another, the world created by typography and film” (285). If this transfer from reality is so foundational to the film medium, then the type of film the viewer transfers to shouldn’t matter. Film automatically creates another world for the viewer, an escape from the viewer’s reality. 

One reason for undervaluing speculative films seems to be the status as “blockbusters,” films made on a hefty budget and meant to make a large profit. This budget means a large distribution and potentially more viewers for the film versus “smaller” movies that are often nominated for awards that might not be available to a wider audience and thus cannot make the same amount of profit regardless of their reception. This idea is a false dichotomy as independent or less well-known directors (to US audiences, at least) make speculative films every year, such as Bong Joon-ho directing Parasite (2019) and Snowpiercer (2013). Additionally, blockbusters are more easily dismissed as entertainment rather than art, thus separating movies that have important messages versus the latest superhero movies. Again, this undervaluing makes little sense as Black Panther (2018) had more to say about race in the US than Green Book (2018) could. Rather than dismissing a movie as entertainment because the actors wear spandex, the film should be understood for quality rather than a marketing tag.   

To that end, speculative films are important to American cinema’s canon and must be included in order to understand their impact on production, distribution, aesthetics, or consumption. From the beginning, early films were able to depict the impossible, such as in Le Voyage Dans la Lune (1902) directed by Georges Méliès. Indeed, depicting the impossible continues to motivate filmmakers, such as Christopher Nolan working with physicists to as accurately as possible visualize a black hole in Interstellar. This deep desire to actually create the impossible for the screen is one of the lasting influences of speculative film and can be seen in historical dramas, such as Titanic (1997), Gladiator (2000), or 1917 (2019). Indeed, just as Méliès depicts visiting the moon, so Stanley Kubrik depicts a journey through space complete with artificial gravity and spaceship hostesses. 

Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is not only a film canonical to American cinema in general but also to speculative film. Just as the monolith changes the perception of those who engage with it, so Kubrik’s film attempts to shift the perception of the audience through a depiction of the impossible. Sobchack summarizes the shift in perception: “Whether or not one finally accepts the mysticism of 2001’s planets, moons, and monoliths, one has to agree that we do leap forward visually into the unknown by the transformation of our perception. There, before us, in the same frames, we can see all the sun and the moon and the Earth, or all of Jupiter and its moons” (101). Indeed, Kubrik’s film revels in moments of profound alienation from previous knowledge through the use of cinematography and aesthetics. When early man becomes capable of using tools for murder, the world shifts. Similarly, when the robot HAL experiences the singularity and kills humans, another shift occurs, ultimately leading to Kubrik’s perception of the next stage of evolution, a sort of star child, or to become the unknown. While Kubrik is considered a canonical filmmaker to American cinema in general, to understand his importance to speculative film, it is perhaps easiest to analyze Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar as a response to 2001. Indeed, every major plot point responds to Kubrik’s view of humanity presented in 2001. 

Whereas Kubrik opens the film with humanity’s beginning on planet Earth, Interstellar begins with humanity’s last days on planet Earth as human-caused climate change has made the planet nearly uninhabitable. The protagonist Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) was once an excellent pilot but lost his job due to the need for farmers as much of humanity has died from starvation. Even so, Cooper believes humanity should be exploring space instead of remaining on Earth: “Well, we used to look up in the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt” (Interstellar 00:16:40-8). Cooper gets his wish when his daughter Murphy discovers a gravitational anomaly inside their house which provides coordinates for NASA’s secret headquarters. Cooper’s old professor runs an exploration program intent on finding a new home for the human race. Cooper agrees to join the mission, but there’s a cost—due to crossing through a wormhole, they are unsure if they will be able to return or how long it could take them due to the relativity of time. As this summary suggests, the film is much more idealistic than Kubrik’s 2001, but it purposefully contrasts with 2001’s nihilism. 

For example, Cooper’s motivation to save humanity stems from his desire to save his family. Kubrik’s astronauts Poole (Gary Lockwood) and Bowman (Keir Dullea) are passive and emotionless on their mission. Indeed, Nolan references the scenes where Poole and Bowman receive communication from home by including a similar visual set-up where family members can convey video messages. Whereas Poole and Bowman receive their family’s messages with no emotional response, the video messages from Cooper’s family evoke a strong emotional response, particularly after a black hole’s gravitational pull causes Cooper to “lose” over twenty years and he receives a backlog of messages, which include his son’s decision to stop sending communications. Cooper is reduced to sobs as the video messages show his son aging, the death of his first grandchild, and the birth of his second grandchild. These scenes are in stark contrast to the expressionless responses of Bowman and Poole, who seem to have more interesting relationships with the robot HAL than their families. Whereas Kubrik’s film seems to suggest that technology has replaced familial relationships, Nolan depicts the opposite: technology as a tool to help a father save his family.       

One of the most memorable characters in Kubrik’s film is HAL, who operates the spaceship “Discovery.” Indeed, Sobchack contrasts the memorable HAL to the astronauts: “In comparison to the astronauts, creating the context which emphasizes the lackluster and mechanical quality of human speech spoken by the humans, HAL—in the first part of the flight—can almost be regarded as a chatterbox, a gossip, emotional” (177). Nolan’s robots look much different than HAL but exhibit more personality than some of the astronauts. Indeed, TARS jokes about becoming robot overlords of the humans, and Cooper asks TARS for information about another astronaut’s love life. The robots are certainly memorable but unlike HAL, they do not experience the singularity and exhibit self-awareness. Rather, TARS sacrifices himself at Cooper’s order, even prompting another astronaut to say, “‘Cooper, you can’t ask TARS to do this for us,’” to which TARS responds: “‘It’s what we intended, Dr. Brand. It’s our only chance to save the people on Earth’” (Interstellar 2:14:27-43). Indeed, the role of technology ultimately supports and provides for the survival of humanity, unlike in Kubrik’s film where Sobchack argues that “although the film does not in any way deny the aesthetics of technology, it gives us in [the spaceship] ‘Discovery’ a mechanism which barely tolerates and finally rejects human existence” (70). As demonstrated by TARS dialogue, Nolan rejects the idea that the technological singularity and the self-awareness of artificial intelligence is the next stage of human evolution. Rather, robots remain tools to save humanity.    

Perhaps the strongest response to 2001 comes at the end of Interstellar. While Bowman enters the obelisk, so Cooper enters a blackhole. Bowman had no purpose in entering the obelisk, but Cooper hopes that he might be able to send information back about what happens beyond the event horizon of a black hole in order to help solve the problem of gravity and space travel. Both Bowman and Cooper have psychedelic experiences while entering their respective black spaces. Both end up trapped in strange duplications of human spaces. Bowman is stuck in some sort of bizarre living space while Cooper falls into repeated depictions of his daughter’s room. Here, the similarities end. Bowman becomes obsessed with himself as he finds different versions of himself growing older whereas Cooper becomes a “ghost” for his daughter, the true hero of the movie. 

Cooper does not meet the next phase of human evolution, but they provide the information his daughter needs in order to save the rest of humanity. Cooper’s love for his daughter is how he is able to communicate with her across time and space with the aid of evolved humanity, who is no longer bound by time: “‘Love, TARS, love. It’s just like Brand said. My connection with Murph, it is quantifiable. It’s the key!’” (Interstellar 02:30:35-42). While Nolan ends on the idea of love between a parent and child as the ultimate savior of humanity, Kubrik’s Bowman seems to evolve into a childlike form of some sort, but as the star child takes no action, the viewer is unable to guess the role of this evolution. While there are many visual comparisons between 2001 and Interstellar, Nolan rejects Kubrik’s nihilistic and emotionless depictions of humanity and instead depicts a future where familial love is as strong as gravity.

Speculative films have been part of the cinema tradition since some of the first moving pictures. Indeed, many major directors have contributed to the traditional American cinema canon and the speculative canon, such as Kubrik and Nolan. While it’s been well-documented how speculative films have pushed forward the speculative effects industry through franchises like Star Wars, Kubrik and Nolan also demonstrate how their inclusions of science was recognized for accuracy in film. The undervaluing of speculative film seems to rely more on the whims of Hollywood in American cinema than on quality. While a large blockbuster is often rejected as simply “entertainment” regardless of the quality or themes of the work, plenty of small speculative films are also disregarded, such as Prospect (2018) or Fast Color (2018). Indeed, small and large speculative films are often fascinating to watch for how they transform our reality through the magic of cinema. Perhaps more than any other genre, speculative films engage with movie magic to a degree that much of the canon cannot attain. Due to its historical precedent as a foundational part of American cinema to the development of special effects and filmmaking techniques, speculative cinema deserves to be recognized and greater appreciated as a canonical part of American film.    

Works Cited

2001: A Space Odyssey. Directed by Stanley Kubrik. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1968.

Interstellar. Directed by Christopher Nolan, Paramount Pictures, 2014.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. MIT Press, 1999.

Sobchack, Vivian Carol. The Limits of Infinity: The American Science Fiction Film 1950-75. A. S. Barnes and Co, 1980.

Phoebe Wagner is a PhD candidate at University of Nevada, Reno. When not writing or reading, she can be found kayaking at the nearest lake. Follow her at phoebe-wagner.com or on Twitter @pheebs_w.

WE RANK 'EM: Ranking Nolan

Who comes to mind when I ask you who the most controversial director working today is? Definitely Christopher Nolan, right? Oh, it's not? Well, to be honest, we didn't think so, either, until the Flock over here basically went all Civil War (I was Cap; Vance was Ant-Man) over his filmography. So we decided to make an accord over the whole business and just rank all his movies. Here they are, ranked from lowest scoring to highest:

(2002) Insomnia 4.4

I've never been a fan of Al Pacino, so I derived some schadenfreude out of seeing him thrash around, sleepless. I, however, wanted nothing more than to fall asleep and forget I ever saw this boring clod of night-soil. -Sean

Terrible remake of an excellent film. -Chloe

Not only does his star Al Pacino, i.e. the most overrated actor of a generation, but it's a crap remake of an excellent Swedish/Norwegian film. Like most remakes, this one should never have been made.  -The G

(2014) Interstellar 

Score: 4.8

I thought this movie was delightful. My quibble with the movie is the quasi supernatural stuff with Cooper and Murphy and how that resolves in the black hole / tesseract / whatever the hell that mess was. I disliked that resolution, but everything else? Wonderful. -Joe

Despite an almost visceral dislike of Matthew McConaughey's smug face, and extreme disappointment with the Soylent Green-like revelation that it's just super-evolved humans, not gods or aliens or anything, who reach through time and tesseracts to save a smirking idiot like him, the world-building is lush, and despite its way-too-long running time, the story is thrumming with tension (thanks, I think, to the excellent use of sound throughout).  -Sean

You want to talk overrated? I'll tell you what's overrated: this steaming pile of hot garbage. I saw it at the Hollywood Cineramadome on opening night, where the crowd tends to be a bit drunk and a bit rowdy. Needless to say, the cringeworthy dialogue elicited laughter on more than one occasion. That said, there might be a good 90 minute movie in this bloated, 169 minute monstrosity. Just terrible.  -The G

One of the five worst movies I have ever seen. I would give it a negative rating if I could. Boring, pretentious, and comically inept. Any smart science is lost in how stupid this movie is. -Dean

(2012) The Dark Knight Rises 

Score: 6.2

It had all the problems of Dark Knight (the all-or-nothing morality, etc.) and more: a totally gratuitous femme fatale in the underutilized Marion Cotillard, the 'reveal' of her true colors about as exciting as a mid-career M. Night Shymalan twist. Unfortunately, it also had little of interest; I was cheering for Bane. -Sean

I'm not really sure what the complaints are all about. -Joe (I'll fill you in- Dean)

(2005) Batman Begins 

Score: 6.5

I hate prolonged origin stories and that's what this film is all about. Plus the growl voice is super lame. -The G

I really enjoyed this when it came out. It was the first time I saw anybody own onscreen how psychologically screwed up Bruce Wayne is, and I dug that. -Vance

It's Batman. Origin stories are so unnecessary at this point. -Joe

(1998) Following 

Score: 6.8

I walked away from this movie thinking, "Yeah, that was good," not thinking, "Yeah, that was pretty good for spending no money except on film stock," and that's a true testament to what this film gets right. I could write an essay about how hard it is to accomplish something like this in the way Nolan & crew accomplished it, but I'll just say it's a hell of a first at-bat. -Vance

An extraordinary first effort, cinematographic gold despite the tiny budget, this put the world on notice to expect great things from Nolan. -Sean

(2010) Inception 

Score: 7.2

An OK film that I think gets remembered more for the ending than the actual movie. Great visuals and performances (bonus for basically making the US aware of Tom Hardy) -Dean

It doesn't really make sense, but it's beautiful and strange, and really, what more do we want in a good film than that? -Sean

For years, I had an ongoing Surrealist art project with a friend, so I'm a sucker for dream stuff. This was a big-budget movie that -- while not deep -- was at least thoughtful, and not based on a franchise. It's the kind of movie I wish there were many more of. -Vance

(2006) The Prestige 

Score: 7.5

Awful adaptation of a great book, knows nothing about stage magic, empty af (But David Bowie) -Chloe

One of my all-time favorite movies. Great writing, direction and performances throughout. -Dean

(2008) The Dark Knight 

Score: 7.6

An excellent superhero film, and it has a really badass score too. A bit empty, but remember--this is a superhero film. They are all empty. I loved both villains. -The G

This is about as good as a superhero movie can be, really. Of course the morality is laughably black and white, but it's got twists, it's got turns; you'll laugh, you'll cry--it was better than Cats! -Sean

I know I'm in the minority. Yes, Heath Ledger is great, but the repeated "Save one or the other" plot device bored me, and I have a kid who was the same age as Gordon's, so watching Dent hold a gun to his head for 19 hours (felt like it) was unbearable. A profoundly negative theatrical experience for me. -Vance

I love this movie- academically. It does so many thing right, and well, and Ledger is amazing. Then I re-watched it the other day, and does anyone else remember that this movie is eight hours long? No matter how good your movie is, if the audience is checking their watch with 45 minutes to go, it's too long and too overstuffed. And that is with a lot of very tight editing. -Dean

(2000) Memento 

Score: 8.4

Great idea, interesting filmwork and editing, GUY PIERCE -Chloe

A film so good it was unsettling, thanks to Nolan's technical skill: imagine this story in the hands of a more established (at that time) director! -Sean

Enjoyed this one when it came out; saw it again a few years ago and felt it mostly held up. -The G  

Those are our thoughts on Christopher Nolan's films- what are yours? Chime in!

Cult Films 101: The Corman

I swear by this mighty beard, Vance, if you don't shut up about
Dementia 13 already, the Apocalypse is coming right the f*$% now.

Welcome back to Cult Films 101, where this week's film is Dementia 13. This is a b-horror movie about some folks jockeying to inherit a fortune but instead meet untimely ends at the blade of an axe murder, and it's an example of the third main type of cult film...The Corman. Made in 1963, Dementia 13 was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Now, from 1972 to 1979, Francis Ford Coppola had about as good a run as any director has ever had, cranking out four consecutive, unassailable film classics -- The Godfather, Parts 1 & 2, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. But ten years earlier, like so, so many fimmakers of his generation, he was working for Roger Corman.

If you ask my honest opinion, I'll tell you that Dementia 13 is a good movie. It manages a not inconsiderable bit of atmosphere, has a number of memorable scenes, inventive camera work, and it clips along well enough for 70 minutes to keep you entertained. But let's be honest, the real draw here is that this was Francis Coppola's first credited directing job.

This trait is the unifying factor for The Corman category of cult movies. They could be good, bad, or indifferent, but they launched the careers of filmmakers who subsequently went on to make remarkable work. Most often, these movies will have been made under extremely tight budgets and restrictive production circumstances (often both, and for Roger Corman), and sometimes those conditions will have gotten the better of the movies and made kind of a mess of them. But we watch hoping for that flash of genius, the little recognizable spark that, with hindsight, we can point to and say "That! There's the birth of something amazing!"

"Dear Ma - I made it to Hollywood, where shirts are
optional but high socks are totally required."

At the University of Texas, my alma mater, the Harry Ransom Center contains many, many treasures. One of them is a letter a young William Faulkner wrote to his mother. It is the first piece of writing in which appears, fully formed and breathtakingly, the style that is now recognizable as William Faulkner's "voice."

When we watch films like Coppola's Dementia 13, Christopher Nolan's Following, Wes Anderson's short film Bottle Rocket, Katherine Bigelow's Near Dark, or watch a 20-year-old Jack Nicholson in The Cry Baby Killer or Crispin Glover and Sean Penn in The Beaver Trilogy, we're looking for the joy of that discovery.

And also, it makes us feel better to know that Francis Coppola started with Dementia 13 and Battle Beyond the Sun before becoming a genius. It gives us hope. Because if everybody had to crank out a Reservoir Dogs or The 400 Blows right out of the box, aspiring filmmakers everywhere would be burying their dreams under a stepping stone in the back yard as we speak.