Movie Review Glass

Glass (2019) 

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan 

Written by M. Night Shyamalan 

Starring Bruce Willis, James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor Joy, Sarah Paulson 

Release Date January 18th, 2019 

Published January 17th, 2019 

As the biggest fan on the planet of M Night Shyamalan’s Split, I had a bias in favor of Glass. I was deeply excited for this sequel to two movies that I absolutely adored in Unbreakable and Split. So, for me to say that Glass is a bizarre, cheap, sloppy mess of a movie is really saying something. I tried to like this movie, I attempted to will Glass into being a good movie. I tried to rationalize it into working as a narrative. Nothing I tried worked as my logical brain overwhelmed my fanboy instinct, forcing this admission: Glass is terrible.

Glass picks up the story of Unbreakable and Split in the wake of the revelation that the two are in the same universe. David Dunn (Bruce Willis) has been fighting evil since the day he sent Elijah Price, aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L Jackson) to prison for his terrorist acts. Using his super strength and extra-sensory perception, David has turned his attention to The Horde, the name given to the multiple personalities of Kevin (James McAvoy).

The Beast, Kevin’s most violent and dangerous alter-ego, has been feeding on those who he believes have never felt real pain. He’s murdered several more teenagers in the time since we met him in Split but finally, David Dunn, known in the media as ‘The Overseer,’ for reasons never determined, has a lead on The Horde. David has tracked Kevin's location with the help of his son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), to an empty factory in Philadelphia.

The confrontation between David and The Beast is cut short by the arrival of police and a doctor, Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson). How did the police find them? Your guess is as good as the movie’s guess, as the movie offers no notion of how the police got there. How they got there with the one doctor in the world who has created a machine that can stop the superhuman qualities of Kevin and David, even though they had no idea where or who they were, is one of many contrivances of the idiot plot of Glass.

David and Kevin are taken to a psychiatric hospital where, waiting for them, unwittingly, is Mr. Glass. It seems that Dr. Staple has a very particular specialty: people who believe they are superheroes. She believes that the three men are delusional and sets out to prove to them their seemingly superhuman abilities can be explained through science. Naturally, Elijah Price, the ultimate ‘True Believer’ won’t be easily convinced.

The trailer for Glass spoils the fact that Mr. Glass and The Horde/Kevin become a team and that David and The Beast will go head to head in the yard of the hospital. One thing the trailer doesn’t tell you is how cheap and unfocused these scenes are. The final act of Glass is reminiscent of Shyamalan’s The Village, a film where the final act completely destroys what was not a bad movie until that point. Glass is bad throughout but the final fight does manage to make things worse. 

Glass isn’t that bad headed to the third act, it's relatively watchable, and then things go completely off the rails. In his attempt to recapture past glory as the king of the ‘Twist,’ director M. Night Shyamalan packs a ludicrous number of twists into the third act of Glass. There are so many twists at the end of Glass that it becomes downright exhausting. It’s as if Shyamalan was so desperate to fool us that he hedged his bets and put in as much craziness as he could think of in order to convince us that at least one of these twists would legitimately surprise us.

I mentioned that Glass was cheap and boy howdy, for a movie that is a sequel to a pair of blockbusters, this movie looks as if it were a Sweded version of a sequel to two blockbusters. Glass has one location for the most part and while it promises a big showdown at a high profile location, that location is revealed as CGI that somehow looks like a below average matte painting. The biggest twist in Glass is how M. Night Shyamalan turned a blockbuster movie into a cheap, forgettable failure. 

The number of corners cut in the making of Glass are rather shocking. The makeup used in many scenes is below average for even a modestly budgeted movie and the costumes are shockingly low rent. The production is stunningly mediocre and reflects the fact that Shyamalan no longer carries favor of a major studio, or studio budget. The former blockbuster director is now in the strictly low rent district, working with indie outlet Blumhouse, home of cheap, shlocky horror movies. 

No one was more excited for Glass than I was. I was endlessly excited for this movie. I ignored how the trailer appeared to reveal important plot points. I ignored the cheesy lines made just for the trailer. I was completely blind to these flaws out of fealty to my love for Split and Unbreakable. Glass was going to have to fail so remarkably for me to dislike it. The failure of Glass would have to be undeniable and complete and it truly is. Glass is undeniably terrible. 

Movie Review: The Notorious Bettie Page

The Notorious Bettie Paige (2005) 

Directed by Mary Harron 

Written by Mary Herron, Guinevere Turner 

Starring Gretchen Mol, Chris Bauer, Lili Taylor, Jared Harris 

Release Date April 14th, 2006 

Published April 13th, 2006 

The life of 50's pin up queen Bettie Page was bustling and tumultuous and full of controversy. To watch the movie of Page's life, The Notorious Bettie Page, from director Mary Harron and writer Guin Turner; Page herself was entirely oblivious to her place in the world. The film features an exemplary performance from actress Gretchen Mol who evokes Page in both looks and spirit, but is so soft hearted and soft headed it's impossible to believe.

Graduating from High School in the 1940's Bettie Mae Page (Gretchen Mol) was a noted member of the debate team who missed out on class valedictorian by the slimmest of margins. After marrying her high school sweetheart and attending college to become a teacher, Bettie tired of life in Tennessee. Finding her husband to be an abusive brute and teaching far too dull, Bettie found herself in New York City where a chance encounter on the beach with an amateur photographer lead her life in an extraordinary direction.

Posing for photo clubs where she willingly posed nude for strangers; Bettie met photographer Paula Claw (Lily Taylor) and her enterprising husband Irving (Chris Bauer). The Claw's had a thriving mail order business that shipped fetish photos to collectors all around the country. Soon Bettie was wearing black leather bustiers, high heel leather boots, and being trussed in various positions for photos that would make her a fetishist icon.

On a trip to Florida Bettie met another photographer, Bunny Yeager (Sarah paulson), who would further the legend of Bettie Page with photos that eventually landed in the pages of a very young Playboy magazine. All the while Bettie remains oblivious of her celebrity and of the somewhat unsavory of the photos she was posing for.

A scene between Bettie and a photographer, John Willie (Jared Harris), in which Willie asks Bettie how god might feel about her fetish and nude photos threatens to give Bettie a moment of depth. Unfortunately her answer is the kind of answer you might expect of a naive, southern, christian girl and not the queen of the fetish photo world. Bettie's cluelessness as portrayed in The Notorious Bettie Page, true or not to the real Bettie Page, comes off so unbelievable that it could actually have been played for laughs, it's not.

This is not the result of Gretchen Mol's performance which is vibrant and sexy. This is a real career shifter for Mol who, up until now, has been an eye candy substitute for directors unable to land a Kirsten Dunst or Scarlett Johannson. Mol has, in films like The Thirteenth Floor, Rounders and  The Shape of Things, been a beautiful cipher. She failed at every turn to inhabit her characters beyond her good looks. That all changes in The Notorious Bettie Page where Mol combines sex appeal and warmth to create a fun loving, if not all that deep character. That's alright as depth is not what is asked for.

Director Mary Harron and writer Guin Turner are clearly big fans of Bettie Page. However, the hero worship leads them to basically just recreate moments in Bettie's life without coloring in the character with any kind of inner life. Could the real Bettie Page been nearly class valedictorian and a good christian and yet still be entirely clueless of the controversy her photos were creating? I find that impossible to believe as it is portrayed in The Notorious Bettie Page. 

The film is framed by scenes of Bettie waiting to testify at Senator Estes Kefauver's (David Straithairn in a cameo) juvenile delinquency hearings. It is alleged that Bettie became aware of her controversial status at these hearings and that she may have decided to give up modeling because of them. However, as posited by the movie, the hearings were almost meaningless. Bettie waited for hours and never testified. The Claw's lost their business because of the hearings and that as much as anything ended Bettie's career.

The impact of the hearings is almost nothing beyond demonstrating the foolishness of Kefauver and his ilk. A bolder dramatic decision might have followed the alleged story that Bettie took seriously what she heard in those hearings and gave up her career. Instead the film follows Bettie to her re-christening at a church and her somehow continued ignorance to her place in the world.

There is still much for the Bettie Page cult to love about The Notorious Bettie Page. Gretchen Mol gives wonderful life to the icon of Bettie Page and the filmmakers delight in recreating Bettie's most famous poses. The film is crazy sexy and yet manages to capture one photographers perfect assessment of Bettie, that even when nude, she isn't really nude. She somehow remains innocent even as she is trussed and spanked. That, no doubt is why she was and is so popular. Page remains a wondrous dichotomy.

Gretchen Mol delivers a career transforming performance in The Notorious Bettie Page. The way she brings to life Bettie Page is fabulous and fun but also entirely uncomplicated and without depth. That is not Mol's fault. Director Mary Harron and writer Guin Turner show often that they are far more interested in hero worship than they are in telling the real life story of Bettie Page.

Fun but not very interesting The Notorious Bettie Page will satisfy Bettie Page fans and fetishists, those  interested in watching recreations of her most favored poses. However, for those who want to know and understand the legend, The Notorious Bettie Page is a disappointment. The film appears to have no interest in developing Bettie Page, examining her inner life, or crafting her into a satisfying whole human being. The icon is well represented in place of the person.