What a pleasure it was seeing the Pixar movie “Luca” on a big screen on Easter Sunday, and not just because it was part of AMC Theaters’ “Fan Faves” series, which screens older (typically family) movies for $5 a ticket. “Luca” was one of the early pandemic era movies that I missed due to, well, the pandemic. Like two other Pixar movies from that period, “Soul” and “Turning Red,” its theatrical release was sacrificed so that Pixar’s parent company, Walt Disney, could send it directly to their then-new streaming service, Disney +, to lure subscribers. The movie got a one-week theatrical release at the El Capitan theater in Los Angeles to qualify for Oscars but didn’t play in any other theaters in the United States, until this year.
“Luca” is a refreshingly small-scaled and straightforward movie about friendship and acceptance, with minimal fantasy elements (save for the gimmick of having the two main characters, a couple of teenaged buddies, be sea monsters posing as humans). There are a couple of pretty mild messages (it’s good to be nice to people even if they don’t look like you—and also, friendship is important) but it’s not a Pixar movie that feels like a series of teachable moments aimed more at parents than kids. It’s modeled on Italian melodramas from the 1950s, particularly ones made by Federico Fellini (“I Vitelloni”) back when he was still making life-sized dramas about small town life and had not entered his ringmaster-impresario phase yet; it’s mostly charming and funny and low-key and sweet, all the way up to the end, which has an emotional bigness that might catch you by surprise because it comes from the slow accumulation of character details over the preceding 90 minutes.
Nevertheless, it definitely feels like a movie, not a streaming cartoon series where the voice acting and dialogue carry the story. Working from a script by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones, director Enrico Casarosa (an actual Italian, Che colpo di fortuna!) uses the wide screen like a mural painter, and actually holds shots long enough for you to admire what they contain rather than constantly cutting to the next thing. Seeing “Luca” made me wish that I could see more films that got booted from theaters prematurely in 2020 and 2021, or else never got to play them in the first place because people were staying home and streaming platforms tied to major film studios decided to try to build up a captive audience.
You might recall that Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” did play theaters during the first pandemic summer, 2020, but didn’t do very well because people were (justifiably!) scared about catching a disease and dying fast. The movie was rereleased earlier this year in IMAX format as a one-shot item and made $600,000 on 55 screens, a big enough per-screen average to qualify as a hit. Might it have continued to earn at that rate if it had been left in place, or simply re-released more widely, in other formats?
And what about the horror thriller “The Invisible Man,” one of the most mercilessly tense films I’ve seen in the past decade? It got released right before lockdown and made $144 million globally, a staggering haul for a medium-budgeted genre picture whose biggest star was Elisabeth Moss. Who knows what it would’ve made if it had been released six months earlier or two years later? I do know that, if they brought it back to theaters, I’d see it again and bring friends.
Among films that never or barely got theatrical releases, Spike Lee’s Vietnam epic “Da 5 Bloods,” about old war buddies going back to the jungle in search of buried treasure, felt huge even on a laptop screen with earbuds providing sound. I’d imagine it would feel absolutely gigantic in a decent-sized theater (it didn’t get to play very many, except as a part of Netflix’s bid for awards that the movie unfortunately didn’t get). Max Barbakow’s “Palm Springs,” a Groundhog Day”-like comedy parable starring Andy Samberg, is another one that looks and moves like a real movie and would play great in a proper setting. “Glass Onion” is another one I’d like to see return to theaters. Netflix gave it a customary perfunctory theater release and then pulled it; I saw it in a theater and thought it played great in a large format, and it was doing so well that I believe the streamer left money on the table by not allowing for a longer stay. Bring that one back, too, I say.
Two big musicals from that period, John M. Chu's film of "In the Heights" and Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story," were essentially trying to win a race with their ankles tied together. Musicals are a tough sell even without a plague. Their exhibition footprints were drastically reduced by Covid-19 fears, which dampened overall attendance and didn't produce a bona fide smash until the release of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" in December 2021 compelled viewers to return to theaters again to feel like they were part of another live-action MCU event (arguably the last really big one post-"Endgame"). I masked up and went to see both films in (sparsely attended) screenings and loved them both, especially "West Side Story," one of Spielberg's best-directed movies, which is really saying something.
There are so many films from the early pandemic period that could and possibly should return to theaters. I’ve listed a few here. What are yours?
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