December Keanu

08/17/19 • 78 min

In this episode, we discuss Generation Um... (2012) and Knock Knock (2015), two films from wildly different genres with common themes. In both films, Keanu plays an aging man eager to reclaim his youth opposite two younger women eager to offer themselves as solutions to his midlife crisis. Charisse L’Pree and Lani Diane Rich of Chipperish Media discuss the goals of film, gendered roles, and the deployment of rape fantasies in pop storytelling.

Trigger Warning: Discussion of rape.

Trigger Warning: Discussion of rape.

Previous Episode

Kao Keanu

In this episode, we discuss Keanu’s embrace of East Asian legends and the free will of warriors in Man of Tai Chi (2013) and 47 Ronin (2013). Despite geographic similarities, the two films are wildly different in their storytelling and authenticity: whereas the former features Keanu taking a back seat to the world of Tiger Chen in his directorial debut filmed mostly in Chinese, the latter features Keanu artificially inserted into Japanese history. However, he plays characters in both films that are narratively marked as mixed, thus engaging with his own multiracial roots, and inspiring the title of the episode: kao, or warrior in Hawaiian.

Next Episode

John Wick Keanu

In the final episode, we discuss Reeves’ newest long-term project, John Wick with three films to date, John Wick (2014), John Wick Chapter 2 (2017), John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum (2019). We explore the fetishization of violence, the complexity of forgiveness and vengeance, and the march toward absurdity that inevitably accompanies franchise films. With John Wick, Keanu proves that he is the hardest working man in show business, laying bare his kinesthetic acting methodology and his commitment to the craft.