There’s a lot of streaming out there. It’s not just that there’s Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and many others. And it’s not just that they each have vast libraries, both with licensed and original programming. There’s also the matter of just about every movie you can think of being available to rent or purchase, all at your fingertips. These times of quarantine have shown us just how many entertainment choices we have within our home. And sometimes it can be pretty exhausting.
This has happened to me many times before, even in the pre-streaming days, where the options are so plentiful and widespread that it all starts to bleed into one, long, every-scrolling title. The abundance of choice taxes the brain. And then the desire to watch something, anything really, sinks. From there, TV shows sound better. Shorter, punchier, and maybe even something you’ve seen many times before.
All it takes, though, is for something really original to burst through the noise. What’s equally interesting is how both these films are, like all art, remixes of what came before. What makes them stand out is that they’re willing to take chances. They’re willing to take a perfectly serviceable, entertaining story and throw some mad brushes at it, either taking you out of it or endearing you further.
It would appear you’ve seen something like Alice Wu’s The Half Of It before. There are the familiar elements of the burgeoning high school love triangle, when Ellie (Leah Lewis) agrees to help David write love letters to a girl she maybe likes herself. You may have even seen Roxanne (with Steve Martin) – itself a play on Cyrano de Bergerac and also filmed in a small Pacific Northwest town. But Wu introduces a thematic element in her story that’s stuck with me ever since: the idea that most people are satisfied with good paintings, but that the difference between a good and a great painting is simply 5 bold strokes. At the heart of that fact is a central question: are you willing to ruin a perfectly good painting for the chance at greatness?
Wu guides us through a number of delightful conversations and inconveniences, learning about this trio of characters and their unexpected depth. Wu isn’t interested in playing with a cookie-cutter except as a form to experiment within. She draws your attention to the shapes as she sneaks in unique flavors and ingredients. Then slowly but surely, it dawns on you that this was never meant to be a love triangle at all; it was meant to be a collision of three stuck-in-neutral teens who stared greatness in the eye and decided not to blink. They learned to stay true to themselves, with messy yet perfect endings. It’s a delightful inversion of what we’ve come to expect.
Enda Loughman and Mike Ahern’s Extra Ordinary has a premise that’s designed beautifully. You take a character like Rose (Maeve Higgins), the daughter of a former paranormal doctor who, through tragic circumstances, is intent on keeping that part of her past behind her. Then you collide her with Martin Martin (Barry Ward), a single father struggling with his teenage daughter and the literal ghost of his ex-wife haunting their house and daily rituals. Martin, further pushed by his daughter, is desperate for a solution, which leads him to Rose. Throw in a wild-card satan-worshipping one-hit-wonder played by Will Forte and you have quite the batch to work with.
This is a movie full of great lines and gags, but it never loses sight of its characters, as wild and crazy as they may get. The story builds and builds, and even as you may see what’s coming, you have most certainly not seen a final act showdown quite like this one brandishes. It’s a movie full of bold strokes that somehow all work due to the conviction of its filmmakers and the actors who inhabit the story.
The Half of It and Extra Ordinary are two of the most original movies I’ve seen in all of 2020. That may seem like it’s grading it on a curve, considering our current cinema situation. But when you match it up against the endlessly-scrolling reel of streaming options, it rings true. They became the signal within the noise. These filmmakers taking such bold strokes with their own movies makes me want to take bolder strokes as a film viewer. And be all the richer for it.
