In the pantheon of pop culture, there exist pieces where polish is the point. Where it’s less about telling a cool story as much as it’s about telling a story in a cool way. For the cultured, these works are always less than and that’s never felt like sound judgement to me. You see in this fabrication of a Frasier-esque patron of the cinematic arts, I’m building from the legion of examples available: a critic who would psahw a Shaw Brothers flick, but stand in reverence for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Don’t get me wrong, mind you. Ang Lee’s love letter to the films that he enjoyed in his youth is very much a masterpiece. It deserves all the accos it laded. But to kneel before it is to miss the virtues of the falderal you’re failing to flock to!

Alliteration aside, my simpler point is this: sometimes style over substance works wonders. 

Rather than start small and work my way up? Let’s start at the zenith of this notion: Quentin Tarantino. When left to his own devices, the man’s work is about cool before anything else. His first big picture: Reservoir Dogs. On paper? It’s as safe as a saltine. A bank robbery goes wrong, and the surviving crooks attempt to figure out where things went wrong. There’s no big twist — we find out “Mr. Orange” is an undercover cop thirty minutes in. It’s not all that shocking when we find out. But it doesn’t matter because this dog is trés cool from the jump. With matching black suits and skinny ties, color-coded cover names, and an airtight soundtrack of some of the absolute best bangers of the 70’s, the movie gracefully wags its tail for 99 minutes and saunters out as one of the coolest capers on celluloid. Follow this with Pulp Fiction? It’s the same simple crime, with 100% more Uma Thurman’s bare feet. Skip around to Kill Bill, and the pattern is intact. Tarantino knows cool (even if he’s clearly a consummate dweeb) and his films continue to be considered a masterclass of crafted dialogue, sensual cinematography, and unmatched needle drops.

All big toe wiggling aside, let’s look at a few films whose gimmicks elevate their passing grade prose and transform into something brilliant due to that adherence to style. Birdman featured a never-ending single-take (through some very crafty editing mind you) that slowly winds the audience up to its critical mass finale. Similar in that spirit was Uncut Gems — which the Safdies directed into a frenetic, kinetic, claustrophobic cacophony somehow anchored by a purposefully loathsome Adam Sandler. Remove the Sand-man or the jittery nauseous speed at which the movie moves? You get bupkis! If Birdman had slowed down? It’d fall in between the couch cushions as an art-house flop save only for its A-list cast. 

I’d be remiss then to miss The Matrix. Now, this may be up to debate; the movie certainly has multiple layers of story, but I’d argue that if you remove the slick production of the Wachowski’s cyberpunk aesthetic? You’d have a movie burying the lede needlessly for a quarter of a picture only to run circles around itself to a yawning audience. It’s impossible not to hold tight to the litany of little details built into The Matrix that ultimately make it one of the most important action films of its time. The sets themselves – both the grungry real world to the pre-apocalyptic machine-built electric human prison (you know, The Matrix…lol) are engaging. The costumes are even better, with memorable sunglasses, trenchcoats, and what would eventually be half the available styles at Hot Topic in the early aughts. And lastly: the kung-fu. The hyper stylized computer-aided, bullet-time inventing fight choreography literally changed action films thereafter. The over saturation of slow motion fights was mastered in The Matrix. And the style over the substance here is right there in green and black and white. The Wachowski’s may argue their piece was a philosophical endeavor, but the flick without the kicks is just an entry-level Philosophy survey course with Theodore Logan.

And let’s not look away from comic book inspired movies either, kiddos. No offense to angry old fart Frank Miller, but the near-perfect adaptation of his seminal Sin City collects three newsprint-thin stories and drenches them in inky cinematography, actors chewing on the scenery, and a mute Frodo throat slashing his way into the hearts and minds of those who like their orange juice pulpy. Robert Rodriguez recreated panels down to the last shadow, and in doing so, gave the comic book cinemaphiles perhaps the single most true-to-source comic book film of all time. Light on plot, but double thicc with pizzaz.

“We get it Marc. But you’re detailing a litany of drivel. Nice-looking drivel, but all of it is hollow!” sayeth my faux nemesis. And if you’re going to upturn a nose to Uncut Gems or Birdman due to their smaller audience and scope? Fine. How about a heavy hitter a little light in the loafers?

The Shining. An entire movie saturated in style… with a plot as thin as a piece of matzoh. Oy veh! Yes, Steven King’s novel is 447 pages… but Stanley Kubrick grabbed the Cliff Notes, and went to town. Writer Jack Torrence shows up at the hotel, is warned it’ll be lonely / spooky / scary, and surprise! It was. But the eerie suspense Kubrick built in his horror classic gave us more memorable shots and setups than this article could contain. At its heart, the film is a study in slow burning insanity. There’s next to no nuance (unless you think Furry-business is deep), but the two and half hours committed to celluloid are worthy of every accolade it holds in the zeitgeist. Style surpasses substance by a hedge maze and a half.

And on that note, I’ll take my flowers. Style of substance isn’t a necessity for all films; same as it’s true in all mediums. It’s simply something we should never be quick to scorn is what I’m getting at. A good gimmick is a great excuse to make something. When it does? We judge it on the merits that best align to what the intent is in the first place. Was Sin City meant to teach us morality? Hell no. Was Kill Bill much more than a love letter to Kung Fu films and anime? Not a chance, fancy pants! So, when next you hear of a flick that happens to be more about the oohs and ahs than it is the celebration of cerebral fare? Turn your brain off a bit, and enjoy the movie for what it’s trying to do.