Michael May's Blog, page 46

Zorro: The Chronicles (2015)

Who's in it?: Johnny Yong Bosch (Akira, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) as the voice of Zorro.

What's it about?: Re-imaging of the Zorro legend with Zorro as a teenager.

How is it?: After watching so much Zorro for this project, the stories in this French-produced animated series felt very familiar. The evil captain has the typical tactics for oppressing the people of Los Angeles and Zorro uses his customary methods of fighting back. I only watched a few episodes before feeling like I had a good handle on what the show has to offer.
There are some new elements though and things it does well. Don Diego is a teenager in this version, as are his allies. He still has a mute servant named Bernardo (who also pretends to be deaf, as in the original Disney show and some other versions), but they're more like best friends than employer and employee. And like the 1997 cartoon, there's also a female ally.
In this one, her name is Ines and she's Diego's sister. And unlike 1997's Isabella, Ines doesn't have to figure out Zorro's secret identity, because Diego lets her in on it pretty much as soon as he creates the Zorro persona. I like her and Bernardo both, but the show's still called Zorro and he gets all the best stuff to do.
The animation is fine. Characters don't always move naturally, but the faces are pretty expressive. What the art does super well though is character design and backgrounds. The costumes are all highly textured and detailed, with Zorro's being especially cool with kind of gold-brown piping and accents as well as cool, scarlet highlights on his collar, sash, and cape. 
And someone spent a lot of time on the environments that the characters move around in. Every scene has a great sense of geography with wide shots that establish where everything is and the camera freely moving around to show where everyone is in relation to each other. That's especially helpful in big action pieces set around a fort or house or a remote location out in the country. Even if I'm not wild about the stories in Zorro: The Chronicles, I'd love to play a video game set in this world.
Rating: Three out of five rooftop leaps.

Introducing the AfterLUNCH Podcast | Elevator Pitches and Studio Notes

A couple of years ago, when the Nerd Lunch fellas started talking about being fatigued with the responsibility of putting out a weekly show, I pitched them an idea to help relieve some of that burden. I volunteered to coordinate and edit an episode every month made up of just members of the Nerd Lunch Fourth Chair Army. It's a large group of around a hundred people, many of whom were already my friends and people I've recorded with.

It turned out that the Nerd Lunch crew already had ideas for filling up a couple of weeks in the month with other material that wasn't Nerd Lunch Prime (as it came to be called). But there were still those odd months with five Tuesdays, so I created Fourth Chair Army Invasion to fill in those fifth Tuesday holes.

Every other podcast that I've helped create has been focused on a narrow topic: Western films, Tarzan movies, Christmas movies, Thundarr the Barbarian, etc. Even Mystery Movie Night has a structured movie-review format even though we talk about a wide variety of movies. What I loved about Invasion was that it opened the doors wide to talk about anything. I'd never managed a general-interest podcast before and it was super fun. So when one of those other weeks in the Nerd Lunch schedule became open, I was invited to turn Invasion into a monthly show and I jumped at it.

A little over a year ago, Nerd Lunch announced that it was going to be ending. There were a lot of moving pieces around that decision, so no one knew at the time exactly what it meant for Invasion, but I knew that I wanted to continue doing some kind of all-purpose podcast with a lot of variety. Maybe that would be my own, completely independent, new show. Maybe it would be more closely tied to the Nerd Lunch legacy. But either way, I was going to do it.

As the last year of Nerd Lunch went on, plans solidified and conversations were had and we all decided that it would be cool if the new show was actually on the Nerd Lunch feed. That would let the existing Nerd Lunch episodes stay archived in the same place, while also hopefully bringing some of the Nerd Lunch listeners to the new show. I tossed around a few different name suggestions, but it was Paxton Holley who came up with the AfterLUNCH name. I love that it's descriptive, but also self-deprecating in being adapted from a crappy sitcom spinoff. Legendary Fourth Chair Army member Mike Westfall created an awesome AfterLUNCH logo and we were off to the races.

So now the first episode of the all-new AfterLUNCH podcast is here. Pax himself pitched the idea for the episode in which he, Adam Pope, Shawn Robare, and I each try to sell an idea for a movie, TV show, or product, then modify that idea based on notes from the other panelists. It's a weird and funny episode; the perfect way to kick off the new show.

Pretty in Pink: The TV Series | Freshman Year: Sixteen Candles

I think it would be fun to name the various seasons of my hypothetical Pretty in Pink TV series after the John Hughes movies that inspire them. So since the first season takes place over the school year starting in Fall of 1983 and ending in Summer 1984, which is when the movie Sixteen Candles was released, Season One is called "Sixteen Candles." And it'll focus a lot on the events of that movie.
As I've already outlined, one of the main characters is Andie Walsh (Sophia Lillis), a 15-year-old sophomore at Shermer High School. She’ll turn 16 over the course of the season, but so will a lot of the rest of her class, including Samantha Baker (Lulu Wilson). Hence the title of the season.
Andie's best friend is Duckie Dale (Hayden Summerall), another sophomore who clearly has a crush on Andie, but she pretends not to notice, because he's her friend and she doesn't want to hurt his feelings. Andie's attention is all on a freshman named Keith Nelson (Jacob Tremblay) in her mixed-grade biology class. They'll eventually get together and date briefly over the season, which of course creates tension for Duckie. But it's also hard on Keith’s best friend, another freshman girl named Watts (Mckenna Grace).
Keith is a good guy and tries to be an attentive boyfriend, but Andie eventually learns that he's still nursing a childhood crush on another freshman named Amanda Jones (Austyn Johnson) from Keith's neighborhood. Andie's patient about it at first, but eventually she'll get tired and break things off with Keith, much to the delight of Duckie and Watts.
Sadly for Keith, Amanda is into another freshman named Hardy Jenns (Julian Grey), but Hardy is a rich kid and doesn't notice working-class Amanda. So while things aren't going anywhere between Amanda and Keith, nothing's happening for her and Hardy either.
Andie and Duckie have classes with Sam Baker and some kids jokes that Andie and Sam are twins, even though they don’t run around in the same circles and only superficially resemble each other. Kids can be weird. So while Andie and Sam's paths cross every once in a while, Sam is dealing with her own stuff, supported by her best friend Randy (Dafne Keen).
A big part of what Sam is dealing with is her crush on popular senior Jake Ryan (Emjay Anthony). Jake already has a rich and popular girlfriend named Caroline (Storm Reid), so Sam's dream about dating Jake doesn't seem very realistic. Of course, as the season progresses, Sam will accidentally reveal her feelings for Jake through a sex quiz that she intends to give to Randy, but Jake unintentionally intercepts. Jake starts having some issues with the super shallow Caroline and takes an interest in Sam. This all leads to the season finale in which Jake finally approaches and kisses Sam the day after her birthday.
Jake's rich friends form the popular clique at Shermer High. He and his fellow seniors are at the top of the group, but right behind them are juniors Claire Standish (Sadie Sink) and Andrew Clark (Oaklee Pendergast) and sophomores Steff (Sunny Suljic) and Blane (Nicolas Bechtel). 
Hardy Jenns may only be a freshman, but I've decided that he's Jake's cousin, so he's more accepted by the upperclassmen than a freshman normally would be. And Hardy has another freshman friend named Ian (Robert Downey Jr in the movie Weird Science) who's sort of a supercool, but jerky New Wave god that all the upperclassmen girls are into.
While dealing with her Jake drama, Sam will also have to handle a freshman nerd named Farmer Ted (Ian Chen). He’s creepy at first, but he mellows out as the season goes on and becomes her friend. And Ted's an important guy because he introduces us to the various nerdy characters at Shermer.
In addition to Ted's best friends Bryce and Cliff, there are freshmen Gary and Wyatt (from Weird Science) as well of course as Ferris Bueller (Caleb Brown) and Cameron Frye (Cooper Dodson). There's also a sophomore named Brian Johnson (Noah Jupe) who hangs out with the younger students because he doesn't have any friends his own age.
One final clique is the Freaks, but they're mostly on the edges of the other stories this season. There's Duncan (Bryson Robinson), a funny, but rough kid who keeps hitting on Watts. And he sometimes hangs out in the smoking area with a junior named John Bender (Elisha Henig). 
And while she's not really accepted by any clique, we'll also keep seeing this girl named Allison Reynolds (Farrah Mackenzie) who has no friends. She probably doesn't even have speaking lines all season long, but she'll become a major character in a couple of years.
Next Time: Sophomore Year.

Little Women (1949)

Who's in it?: June Allyson (The Three Musketeers), Janet Leigh (Holiday Affair, Psycho), Elizabeth Taylor (Jane Eyre, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Margaret O'Brien (Jane Eyre, The Secret Garden), Peter Lawford (The Picture of Dorian Gray), Mary Astor (Don Q Son of Zorro, The Maltese Falcon), and C Aubrey Smith (Tarzan the Ape Man, Rebecca).

What's it about?: A lavish, Technicolor remake of the 1933 version.

How is it?: Because it's based on the same script as the '33 version, the '49 Little Women makes the same cuts to Alcott's novel (no Amy burning Jo's book, for example) and finishes on the exact same note. June Allyson even seems to be borrowing some of her line delivery from Katharine Hepburn as Jo (including a bona fide "reaaallly I do"). 
But Mervyn LeRoy's '49 version improves on the previous one in a lot of ways. It's beautiful, to start with. It's got extravagant and highly detailed sets as well as gorgeous matte paintings and backdrops. And it looks glorious in Technicolor. It's an epic production.
But Allyson is also much more natural in the role of Jo than Hepburn was and the rest of the cast is just as good. I grew up associating Janet Leigh with Psycho, but have been watching more of her early work lately (Holiday Affair with Robert Mitchum being a special favorite) and she's a beautiful, wonderful Meg. Margaret O'Brien is a sweet and sympathetic Beth, showing that she has some range from her brattier character in Meet Me in St Louis. 
Casting 12-year-old O'Brien as Beth though makes it tough to cast Amy, who's supposed to be the youngest sister. LeRoy went with 17-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, a strange choice in some ways, but also very good in others. She's clearly playing younger than 17, but there's no universe in which she's younger than O'Brien's Beth. It works just fine though if you throw out fidelity to the novel and just imagine that Beth is the youngest sister. 
In the novel, Amy is beautiful to the point of being spoiled about it and Taylor brings that out of the character perfectly. But while she ends up being a fine choice to play Amy, the script takes out so much of her relationships with Jo and Laurie (Peter Lawford) that I never warm up to her like I do in the book. 
Mary Astor is a wonderful Marmee. I wouldn't want to choose between her and Laura Dern from Greta Gerwig's adaptation, but Astor is almost exactly what I imagine when I read the novel: kind and wise and wanting nothing so much as to see her daughters grow into healthy, moral, and happy people.
Special points as well to C Aubrey Smith as Laurie's grandfather. If the script gave him more, he'd be up there with Chris Cooper in terms of heart-breaking likability. Though I oddly didn't enjoy his Mr Laurence as much as I did Henry Stephenson's in 1933. The difference is in the directors, I think. In '33, George Cukor paid attention to some subtle touches that really emphasized the deep relationship between Mr Laurence and Beth. Smith's version is super lovable, but LeRoy leans too heavily on that and doesn't give us much else.
Finally, Rossano Brazzi (The Italian Job) is a much less creepy professor than Paul Lukas was in '33, mostly because he's a lot closer in age to Jo. He still calls her "my little friend," but he gets away with it.
Rating: Four out of five letters from Father.

Hellbent for Letterbox | Jane Got a Gun (2015)

Pax and I watch Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, and Joel Edgerton in Gavin O'Connor's film about a woman defending her home from a gang of ruthless killers.

Pax also talks about Yul Brynner and George Segal in Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964), while I watch more Zorro and read the collected webcomic High Moon by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis.




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Greystoked | Tarzan's Magic Fountain (1949)

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Noel and I watch the last Tarzan movie of the 1940s, in which Johnny Weissmuller has been replaced as the ape man by Lex Barker. We discuss Barker's alarming post-Tarzan behavior and how knowing that affects viewing his work, including Tarzan's Magic Fountain. And we also bid farewell to Brenda Joyce in her last appearance as Jane.
In the episode, we also mention a publicity photo in which Sol Lesser took a picture of his new Tarzan with the original movie Tarzan, Elmo Lincoln, who had a tiny role in Magic Fountain. Here's the photo that Noel found.

Zorro and Son (1983)

Who's in it?: Henry Darrow (Filmation's The New Adventures of Zorro, the '90s Zorro TV series), Paul Regina (Frank Nitti on the '90s Untouchables TV series), and Gregory Sierra (Sanford and Son, Barney Miller).

What's it about?: Disney makes a half-hour Zorro sitcom while still including some swashbuckling adventure elements.

How is it?: I wasn't going to include Zorro and Son in this project, frankly because Zorro as a sitcom sounded ridiculous. But after talking about the Filmation cartoon and The Family Channel's version, it seemed a shame not to at least check out Henry Darrow's other stab at Zorro. I did, and I'm surprised that I actually liked it.
It wasn't a big hit and only lasted five episodes before being cancelled by CBS. All five episodes are currently available on YouTube though, complete with the announcer asking you to stay tuned for Square Pegs and Magnum pi over the closing credits. I get why it didn't catch on. It's a weird combination of the adventure of the classic Disney series from the '50s and a situation comedy complete with laugh track.
But the jokes are only forgettable at worst, and often either not half bad (a friar is arrested for "selling wine before its time" and Zorro's nickname as "the Curse of Capistrano" is mistaken for a digestive condition) or actually made me laugh out loud (often involving a recurring gag around people being strung up in chains, but not too upset about it, or even just the way Darrow and Sierra deliver lines). 
The premise is that when Zorro misses a jump from a balcony to a chandelier, his faithful servant Bernardo (played by Bill Dana as neither deaf nor mute) is concerned that Zorro is getting too old to continue fighting for justice. So Bernardo sends for Diego's son Carlos (Paul Regina) to come home from college and take over the family business. Carlos agrees, but Diego isn't ready to give up his job, so unlike other versions that make Zorro into a legacy hero, this series now has two Zorros running around. 
Gregory Sierra plays the villainous Commandante Paco Pico who controls the village. And Richard Beauchamp (who played a recurring character on the TV show Hunter) is Pico's sergeant. Sgt Sepulveda is different from the traditional Gonzalezes and Garcias in that he's not overweight or even especially bumbling, but he's still very funny as a foil for the commandante. 
Probably my favorite gag in the whole show is when Commandante Pico orders Sepulveda to play Good Cop to Pico's Bad Cop with a prisoner. Sepulveda doesn't understand, so Pico explains that his job is to cozy up to the prisoner and make him think that Sepulveda is his friend. Sepulveda of course takes it too far and begins insulting the commandante as a way to ingratiate himself to the prisoner. 
The weekly adventures aren't meant to be that funny. The plots could have fit into a straightforward Zorro series pretty easily. For example, in "A Fistful of Pesos," someone else commits crimes while dressed as Zorro, undermining the community's trust in their hero. That's something that's been done in pretty much every TV version I've watched. Other episodes deal with a character's potentially learning one of the Zorros' secret identities. And since Disney produced Zorro and Son, they were even able to reuse the theme song from the '50s, modified slightly so that it refers to two Zorros instead of one (eg "The foxes so cunning and free; they make the sign of the Z.") 
So while I think that the combination of humor and adventure works, Zorro and Son is neither hilarious enough nor thrilling enough to be compelling or memorable as anything other than a weird experiment that I'm glad I got to watch.
Rating: Three out of five dad jokes.

Mystery Movie Night | This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Maximum Overdrive (1986), and Mystery Men (1999)

Dave, David, Erik, Evan, and I muse about metal, machines, and metahumans and the mysterious matter that melds them together.
00:02:12 - Review of This Is Spinal Tap 
00:19:28 - Review of Maximum Overdrive 
00:31:01 - Review of Mystery Men
00:45:59 - Guessing the Connection

Pretty in Pink: The TV Series | Freshman Year Cast

Combining the six John Hughes teen movies into a single, hypothetical TV series is challenging for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest hurdles is figuring out how to balance all of those characters. In a world where the cast of The Breakfast Club is interacting with the casts of Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles and all the others, it's easy to get overwhelmed.
So I decided that for each season of the show, we would focus primarily on eight characters. That's a good number for an ensemble cast. It won't necessarily be the same eight characters getting the attention each season, so that'll help keep the show interesting. And of course there will be a ton of recognizable supporting characters interacting with the main cast, some of whom will become main cast members in future seasons.
But here's my main cast for Season 1:
I already mentioned in an earlier post that the main character will be Andie Walsh from Pretty in Pink and that she'd be played by Sophia Lillis (It, Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, Gretel & Hansel). I'm not starting the series with her as a freshman though. The concept of the show is that it covers all six movies in the same four year period in which they were released. The first John Hughes teen film was Sixteen Candles and it came out in 1984, so the series starts in 1984. The movie Pretty in Pink came out in 1986 and Andie was a senior in it, which means that she would have been a sophomore during the events of Sixteen Candles. 
[This post is going to be very image-heavy, so I'm putting the rest of it behind a break.]We do have some freshmen this year, though, starting with Anthony Michael Hall's Farmer Ted character from Sixteen Candles. I'm not going to include Gedde Watanabe's Long Duk Dong character in my series for obvious reasons, but I thought it would be cool to diversify the cast by casting Ted with Ian Chen from Fresh Off the Boat and Shazam!. He's the right age and his role as Eugene in Shazam! makes me think he's perfect for the geeky, but confident kid with a big crush on Samantha Baker.

A couple of other freshmen main characters are Keith Nelson and his best friend Watts, both from the movie Some Kind of Wonderful. If Some Kind of Wonderful wasn't such a generic title, I would've named this series that instead of Pretty in Pink, because it's Keith and Watts that we'll actually be following from freshman to senior year. They were played by Eric Stoltz and Mary Stuart Masterson in the movie, but I've cast them with Jacob Tremblay (Room, Wonder, Good Boys, Doctor Sleep) and Mckenna Grace (The Haunting of Hill House, Troop Zero, and also the child version of the main characters in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Captain Marvel). Keith is a fairly serious, emotionally real character and Tremblay is an excellent actor who can bring those qualities. 

Grace is cute and pixie-like, but if you've seen her work, she's also tough and badass; perfect for Watts.

That brings us to our sophomore main characters. There's Andie of course, and also her best friend Philip F "Duckie" Dale who was played by Jon Cryer in the film. My version is singer / internet celebrity Hayden Summerall. He hasn't done a ton of acting, but he's got Duckie's nerdy cool vibe nailed.

Then back to Sixteen Candles again, we have to cast Samantha "Sam" Baker and her best friend Randy. I forget if I mentioned this in another post, but I had to think about how to handle the fact that Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall both played multiple characters in the Shermerverse. That won't work when you put all these characters together, so Andie, Sam, and Claire (from Breakfast Club) will all be played by different people. For Sam, it's going to be Lulu Wilson from The Haunting of Hill House and more recently, the best episode of Picard.

Randy's not a super memorable character in Sixteen Candles, but Sam needs a confidante with everything that's going to happen to her this year, so it's important that Randy be a big character. And I'm giving her a big little actor: Dafne Keen, aka Laura from Logan.

We don't have any juniors as main characters this season, but there will be one major senior character and that's Sam's crush, Jake Ryan, played by Emjay Anthony (Chef, Krampus, Bad Moms).

So that's our main ensemble cast for the first season, but there are also a lot of supporting characters to think about, some of whom will be promoted to main cast as the series continues.
Farmer Ted has a couple of best friends in Sixteen Candles: Bryce and Cliff. Bryce is memorable for being played by John Cusack, but I don't really care who plays these two in the TV show. Someone call Central Casting and get me a couple of nerds. 
I also don't really care about who plays Gary and Wyatt, the main characters from Weird Science. That's the most outlandish movie of the six Shermer films and fits least well with the others, so while I'm absolutely not ignoring it, I'm going to downplay it. More on that in a future post, but it's not important to me to cast Gary and Wyatt. Their adventures will mostly happen in the background. Likewise their nemesis Ian, played by Robert Downey Jr in the movie. He'll be a character in the show, but I don't care who plays him.
We do need to cast freshmen Ferris Bueller and Cameron Frye though. I'm taking a gamble on Ferris by casting Caleb Brown from the movie Mother's Day. He hasn't done a lot of acting outside of some guest spots on TV shows, but he's got a great look: sort of a curly-headed John Cusack. He looks cool, confident, and relatable. 

Cameron will be played by Cooper Dodson from American Horror Story and Fear the Walking Dead. He's got a super cute, overly serious look that'll be perfect for Cameron.

And then we have some other freshmen characters from Some Kind of Wonderful, starting with Amanda Jones, who was played by Lea Thompson in the film. The TV version will be played by Austyn Johnson from The Greatest Showman.

Amanda is in love with fellow freshman Hardy Jenns, played by Craig Sheffer in the movie. Our version will be played by Julian Grey from the Western miniseries Godless.

Our last freshman supporting character is Duncan, who'll become a punk skinhead and befriend Keith by senior year. That character in Some Kind of Wonderful made me a fan of Elias Koteas. Our version will be played by Bryson Robinson from the web series Mani. He looks just as oddly cool and likable as Koteas was. 

For our sophomore supporting characters, we have a couple from Breakfast Club and a couple from Pretty in Pink.
Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall in Breakfast Club) will be played by Noah Jupe from A Quiet Place and Ford v Ferrari.

Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy in the movie) is barely going to be in this season, but she'll be important later. Our version is played by Farrah Mackenzie from Logan Lucky.

Then from Pretty in Pink we have Steff (originally James Spader) and Blane (Andrew McCarthy). Our Blane will be Nicolas Bechtel from Stuck in the Middle and General Hospital.

And our Steff will be Sunny Suljic, who had a smaller role in The House with a Clock in Its Walls, but was also the lead in Jonah Hill's directorial debut, Mid90s.

Rounding out the Breakfast Club characters are juniors John Bender (originally Judd Nelson), Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald), and Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez). Our Bender will be played by Elisha Henig from the TV shows American Vandal, The Sinner, and Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet.

I'm sure excited about casting Claire with Sadie Sink from Stranger Things.

And our Andrew will be Oaklee Pendergast from The Woman in Black 2 and, more recently, the British sitcom Home.

And one last supporting cast member, a senior: Jake Ryan's girlfriend Caroline from Sixteen Candles. I think it would be fun to cast her with one of my favorite young actors, Storm Reid from A Wrinkle in Time and this year's Invisible Man remake.

Whew! That was a lot. Next time, I'll outline the first season story line and talk about how all of these characters connect with each other.

Walk Invisible: The Brontë Sisters (2016)

Who's in it?: Jonathan Pryce (Tomorrow Never Dies, Pirates of the Caribbean) plays the Brontë dad. I wasn't familiar with the other actors, but they're all amazing.

What's it about?: As Branwell Brontë slides into alcoholism and depression, his father and sisters grow concerned about the financial future of the family once Father dies. That's when oldest sister Charlotte starts thinking about publishing.

How is it?: I'm not normally crazy about biopics, but really wanted to see more about the Brontë siblings after reading Glass Town and Infernal Angria. It's possible to make a good biopic though, usually by focusing on one, crucial part of the subject's life and using it to summarize what the film wants to say about the person. I hoped To Walk Invisible (or just Walk Invisible, as it's sometimes called) would do that. And it does.
It opens with some cool shots of the Brontë children on the verge of inventing their Glass Town/Angria/Gondal world, but the film isn't about that. The childhood world they created says something about their creative spirits. And there's also some early mention of how addictive that world became, especially to Charlotte (Finn Atkins), as explored a lot in the Glass Town graphic novel. But To Walk Invisible is less concerned about the creative spirit itself than about what the siblings do with it.
In Branwell's (Adam Nagaitis) case, the answer is, "Not much." He attempts a trip to London to sell himself as an artist, but becomes overwhelmed by the idea and chickens out on the way there. Instead, he spends the time - and all of his money - getting drunk in a village along the road. (Infernal Angria relates this event, too.) Branwell's cowardice and other moral shortcomings send him into a spiral, which spells trouble for the rest of the family. 
They're not particularly concerned about scandal. They're not wealthy or well-placed enough for that to be an issue. The problem is that Patrick Brontë, the family's patriarch, is an elderly, Anglican priest who owns no land nor the parish house that the family lives in. When he dies, according to English law and custom of the day, it will be Branwell's responsibility to support the sisters financially. But Branwell is both unwilling and unable to do that. Which sends eldest daughter Charlotte scrambling for ideas about how the sisters can support themselves.
I won't outline the whole story, but the short of it is that Emily (Chloe Pirrie) needs some convincing about Charlotte's publishing scheme while Anne (Charlie Murphy) is pretty game for it. Emily is angry and resentful about Branwell and the situation he's created, but she's not crazy about sharing her poetry, which is extremely personal to her. And that's a problem because Charlotte's plan is to publish a book of poetry written by all three sisters, but with Emily's as the foundation, because she's the best at it and there's no book without her. If the poetry collection is even moderately successful, Charlotte hopes to parlay it into a book deal where each sister can write her own novels.
So the film is a commentary on gender issues, but it's also about unconditional love (as the family tries to figure out the best way to help Branwell) and various commercial and personal motivations for creating art. The Walk Invisible title comes from Charlotte's plan to use masculine pseudonyms so that the authors' true gender is undetectable and so not an issue for publishers or readers. And I love Emily's suggestion (or maybe it's Anne's, I forget, but it sounds like an Emily idea) to make the gender of the pen-names ambiguous, but masculine-sounding. So Charlotte, Emily, and Anne become Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.  
This all leads to my favorite moment of the film when Charlotte and Anne have to travel to London and reveal their true selves to their publisher in order to correct a misunderstanding with potentially catastrophic repercussions. I don't want to spoil it, but it's so good.
As is the rest of the film. It's all expertly crafted from the story and the acting to the photography and art design and a closing sequence that seems like it should be nothing, but is extremely emotional and powerful considering all that's come before. 
Rating: Five out of five badass author sisters