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*life is disappointing* gets nominated for the nobel peace prize // THE BONE TEMPLE does everything it's supposed to do // bonus expired bovino content
My goal with this newsletter is to write about new films as they reach general release, along with seasonally appropriate commentary on other cinematic events and interests. For the fourth week in a row, I have way less to say than usual because life in Minneapolis is Pretty Weird! But movies keep coming out, and The Bone Temple is open for worship. This newsletter comes out every Friday, which this week yikes means Monday.
Life has been hectic since becoming the first Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Substacker. I’ve been responding to calls, making public appearances, and of course continuing the important works of humanitarian service that got me the nomination in the first place. In many ways, it feels like life has turned into a never-ending meeting: educators, elected officials, local organizers, journalists, podcasters . . . everyone wants a bite of your time, and part of the promotion of peace means giving it away freely to spread the word of justice.
But it also takes a toll on your daily life. Chores are out the window. Eating lunch is more or less impossible. Sleep is a no-go. So as much as I’d like to devote an additional 20 hours to maintaining this vitally important newsletter, I find myself running out of time. Movies themselves take two, sometimes three hours to watch, and when they’re constantly interrupted by atrocities, news alerts, and alarming vehicular noises - and also when the local theater keeps shutting down to protest the murder of your neighbors by the federal government - it’s hard to get in more than one a week.
So once again I’m apologizing for my lack of content. This newsletter was only ever fueled by the desire for attention and undiagnosed ADHD, and now Bruce Springsteen is writing songs about me and my hyperfocus is fucked. I’m cooking up a pretty good essay about The Testament of Ann Lee and American identity that’s going to take another week. I saw The Bone Temple and I’ve got a short review of it here. Also I made this video:
Which isn’t really relevant anymore now that this guy has been put out to pasture, but I wasted an afternoon on it and will dump it here.
I know nobody subscribes to this newsletter for updates about the vibe in Minneapolis or fascist politician mash-up content. I really would like to get back to writing about something else. I will continue to promise that I’ll be on track next week, but the busy life of a future Laureate simply cannot be predicted. Pending a normal-ish week, I’m back on Friday with nothing but movies. Until then, let’s talk about Bone Temple.
Myths start from a million different origins, but they more or less end up in the same place. Is this what A Hero with a Thousand Faces is about? I don’t know, that book seems dumb. Maybe this point is too. But nearly every myth develops a universal narrative out of something local: coyotes transformed into the originary chaos of the universe, Scandinavian volcanic activity spewing out eschatologies, a Mediterranean territorial dispute built up into the meaning of life. The myth takes something specific and turns it into everything for everyone. One reason the modern world feels so much less mythic than the ancient is because we have too many things going on to keep our stories straight. A simple phenomenon doesn’t have the space to echo out its mythic resonances to the fullest.
I think this absense of the mythic in everyday life is one reason that people love post-apocalypse stories. Some calamity eliminates all the distractions the mythmaker doesn’t want to deal with and in doing so reintroduces mythic potential to a few chosen relics. What makes a post-apocalypse story interesting isn’t the cause of the catastrophe but the nature of what it leaves behind. The V8 engine in Mad Max, The Simpsons in Mr. Burns: a Post-Electric Play, a shopping list in A Canticle for Liebowitz - all of these are less about the future and more about what a contemporary phenomenon could mean if we treated it like our ancestors treated interesting-looking rocks.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple asks us to grant that focus to the Teletubbies and Jimmy Savile. What would the world be like if all culture was founded upon two of the most demented aspects of late 20th-century British television? Probably pretty terrible, Nia DaCosta suggests, but the stories it would tell would be more or less the same as the ones we already know. I argued this six months ago when I wrote about 28 Years Later, and I think I got it pretty much right. The 28 Units of Time Later reboot isn’t a horror franchise - it’s a 21st-first-century fantasy adventure, completely with traditional themes, classical iconography, and straightforward narrative. I would love to have more to say, but Bone Temple pretty much picks up Alex Garland’s story where Danny Boyle left off and carries us right up to Act Three. If you can handle a lot of flaying, arterial damage, and schlongs, you’ll have a great time. If you can’t, the plot summary stands pretty well on its own.
Describing what to expect ruins the fun, and talking about what any of it could mean is sort of pointless. Tolkien insisted that the One Ring didn’t represent anything, and I think the same is true of the Dipsy Dance in Bone Temple. The turns in Garland’s script are so playful and straightforwardly mythic that pretty much anyone at any point in history could see this film and more or less know how they’re supposed to feel. DaCosta covers it in Y2K references and dresses it in post-apocalyptic gore, but the story shines without context. You don’t need to know what a zombie is, how zombies function in film, what 2001 looked like, what someone in a blond wig and tracksuit performing an act of “charity” called “pants off” means to the British people. You just need to know that young boys with bow skills are good, princes with bad teeth are bad, monsters with human features can change, girls with face scars will come through, and wizards, no matter what they’re up to, will always advance the plot.
It’s a wild movie, but it’s significantly more hinged than its predecesor. Off-the-wall choices abound, but they’re more alligned with pleasurable absurdity than the demented cinamtographic decisions of Part One. It would be unfair to call it campy, but DaCosta directs with more self-awareness and tropiness than Boyle. The gore is intentionally gratuitious. The references are played for coherent laughs. Even the manic camera work is comparatively dialed in, imitating the uncanny messiness of Anthony Dod Mantle’s iPhone rigs but grounded by the normal perspectives of standard-issue Arricams. If Boyle’s film soars through psychosis into the epic, DaCosta aims downward through snark to the b-movie. The beats land in just the right places to remind you that you don’t need to be scared. You’ve seen this all before. You already know the story.
This is what I expected, and I’m not particularly upset about it. Bone Temple is a tidy second act to an episodic trilogy, but it could easily have been part four or five in a never-ending serial in which Spike Hero once finds himself surrounded by a new cast of freaks who help him experience the vaguest hint of character development. I’m eager for Danny Boyle to return for the finale, but if that was put off a decade so a new director could make a comparably competent entry every six months, I’d be happy. There’s something refreshing about people seizing the opportunity to push an ordinary story to its limits. The world is a crazy place, and at its core are humans living and loving and dying, all the while transforming quotidian artifacts into the meaning of life to help them along the way. It’s the same old story again, just this time with track suits and iodine skin treatments. What more do you need?
That’s all I’ve got. I’m so so tired and I’m barely even doing anything. I love everybody out there devoting their entire days to the fight, and I implore you all to eat breakfast and get at least six hours of sleep every night. It seems like this is going to be our entire winter, and February/March is sick-getting central. We are no help to each another when we’re bedridden. Get sunlight, do some yoga, go to the dentist, drink your whole milk. *life is disappointing* is now a self-care advocacy newsletter. You matter!
I’m hoping to be back next week with a review of Brett Ratner’s glorious return to the cinema, but with all the incredible reviews by totally normal, alive humans it’s getting, it might be hard to find a theater that isn’t sold out. We’ll see.
Thanks for reading *life is disappointing.* If you found this newsletter slightly less disappointing than the rest of your life, consider liking, commenting, sending me money (thanks!) or subscribing. Subscribing will get you exactly what you get here but sent to your email inbox. I’m looking forward to finally getting to The Testament of Ann Lee soon. Go be one of the 75 people in America who’ve seen it so we can talk about it.