REVIEW: The Red Turtle

10 02 2017

the-red-turtleFantastic Fest

Am I some kind of monster for not connecting with Studio Ghibli films? (Rhetorical question, don’t answer.) Obviously, I cannot deny the skillful animation and the detailed storytelling. But in regards to emotional connection, there seems to be some component I’m missing to access the depth of feeling to which others attest.

“The Red Turtle,” though not directed by the studio’s godfather, Hiyao Miyazaki, still lacks resonance for me. The nearly wordless 80-minute movie plays out like an even more pared down version of Robert Zemeckis’ “Cast Away.” A stranded protagonist takes out his anger and frustration at his situation on the titular reptile, which does not even appear in the film until about the 30-minute mark.

Director Michael Dudok De Wit crafted a highly representational film that definitely makes the case that animation is not just for kids (duh), although its fable-like simplicity makes a compelling case that the film need not be ghettoized to high-minded arthouse crowds alone. My issue lies not with the elemental aspects of “The Red Turtle;” indeed, these make for the film’s most impactful moments. Instead, it’s the thinness of the premise. De Wit’s story could easily sustain a short film. The power gets diluted as it stretches to fill feature-length. Tedium sets in between periods of appreciation – although for me, deep feeling accompanies neither of these sensations. B- / 2stars


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (February 9, 2017)

9 02 2017

wadjdaAs firm of a believer as I am in the transformative power of cinema, I do not believe any film contains some kind of magical power that can rid the world of hatred and bigotry. What they can do, however, is gently nudge the needle of individual opinion in the way empathy and humanity. The act of experiencing a narrative arc through the perspective of someone different can open new insights into a world different from our own.

I think this is especially important now when the qualities of compassion and cultural awareness feel scarce, if not entirely imperiled. As the United States flirts with cutting off connections to the Muslim world, we should know what that world looks like from something other than the limited imaginations of the mass media gatekeepers. These countries contain people like us, living their lives under entirely different circumstances but grappling with a sense of self and their place within society.

Haifaa Al Mansour’s “Wadjda,” my pick for the “F.I.L.M. of the Week,” gives us a glance into a space likely encountered by very few American viewers: a young Saudi Arabian girl. If a film’s background can attest to authenticity, then it marks the first time a Saudi female has directed a feature film. (It’s also the first feature shot entirely in Saudi Arabia.) Fittingly, Al Mansour uses the opportunity to put a plucky protagonist front and center with her titular character. Wadjda yearns to buy a bicycle but encounters both person financial difficulties and open resistance from community members that frown upon her desire to partake in a traditionally masculine activity.

Saudi Arabia, like most majority Muslim nations, abides by a patriarchal rule of order. Thus, many portrayals of women in narratives surrounding these regions treat them as silent companions or tacit witnesses. If they receive personhood in the narrative, they rarely possess agency. (To be clear, these are generalizations with plenty of exceptions. Asghar Farhadi, for starters.) Very few men populate “Wadjda,” yet their presence never seems far away. Even in spaces carved out for women, anxiety over what males might see or think pervades the atmosphere.

This environment helps explain Wadjda’s rebellious streak. She yearns for more than a private life away from the gaze of men, as her school and home provide. She wants the freedom to follow her heart and the kind impulses that spring from it, social norms and constructed boundaries be damned. We root for her free expression, not against her culture’s values – though Wadjda and Al Mansour have the real task of reconciling the two in their own lives.


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REVIEW: Our Little Sister

8 02 2017

our-little-sisterKore-Eda Hirokazu’s dramas possess a peerless delicacy in their domestic observations. He never seems to approach the material with gloves on, although the gentility takes an quiet yet conspicuous effort. The director’s “Our Little Sister,” on the other hand, feels a little more precious than his previous work.

Kore-Eda adapted the film from a manga series, “Umachi Diary,” rather than writing the screenplay from his own original idea. I’m not familiar with the source material and any obligation he might owe it. My best guess is that his one-step removal from creating the characters kept him from unlocking the same level of interiority he captured in “Like Father, Like Son” or “Still Walking.”

“Our Little Sister” has its moments of genuine, tender familial emotion. The story of three grown sisters living together who take in their recently orphaned half-sister Sachi, a hitherto unknown offspring of their late estranged father. Her presence in their life sets off soul-searching in each of the original trio and triggers the release of some pent-up resentment from their spurned mother. When Kore-Eda embraces the prickliness of their relationships, the film works. But he spends more of the film dancing around their emotions, obliquely conveying them without really expressing their potency. B- / 2stars


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REVIEW: The Lego Batman Movie

7 02 2017

Spoof movies largely do not exist American cinema anymore, or, at the very least, they do not reach a wide audience anymore. We’re about a decade removed from the heyday of the “Scary Movie” franchise and their ilk, which eventually went off the rails because they lost sight of what allows this particular style of humor to work. It’s ok to rib and roast, sure. But when they moved from playful lampooning to pointed lambasting, the jokes started feeling mean-spirited.

“The Lego Batman Movie” arrives in the wake of last year’s “Deadpool,” another superhero movie that took potshots at its own genre. The “merc with the mouth,” however, decried too many tropes that movie itself lazily embraced. Meanwhile, the latest burst of creative building block energy affectionately sends up the Nolan Batman movies and gets in a few jabs at lesser-loved outings with the Caped Crusader. The film even satirizes his macho posturing by making him struggle with waiting for food to heat up and bungling which HDMI connection he must select to watch a rom-com. And dare I say, it’s even gently – albeit with a wink – progressive.

Writer Seth Graeme-Smith, along with a plethora of other credited scribes, embrace and lean into the necessity of juvenility for their target audience. Their embrace of simplicity leads to a work that achieves two different goals for two different age groups. Adults will recognize the common skeletal structure of the modern superhero movie from the writers scaling back the narrative’s scope to child-comprehensible (and appropriate) levels. We know the dramatic beats so well that we can predict them. So does “The Lego Batman Movie,” which has an uproarious, subversive twist at every moment when we catch wise.

This laughter at recognizable, perhaps hoary elements of the superhero flick does not discredit or disparage the genre. Rather, it reaffirms their power, and that’s why sharing it with incredulous younger viewers is such fun. For many, a physical Lego Batman might be the only version of the hero they know. Will Arnett’s parodic voice work provides a gentle introduction to the darker stories that surround the vigilante antihero. Combining his pitch-perfect embodiment of Batman’s essence with the boundless imagination of the animators and storytellers makes “The Lego Batman Movie” earnest family fun. Though it sounds contradictory to say a film can function as both a genre primer and a critique, director Chris McKay pulls it off. A- / 3halfstars


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REVIEW: I Am Not Your Negro

6 02 2017

i-am-not-your-negroRaoul Peck’s “I Am Not Your Negro” is a documentary, yes, but it likely bears little resemblance to the kinds of non-fiction works you imagine. Watching the film does not feel like reading a textbook, which comes pre-loaded with conclusions drawn and lessons to learn. Instead, Peck’s work captures the sensation of reading a novel by its subject, James Baldwin. In this format, we must connect the dots ourselves and draw our own meaning.

Peck structures the film around the spine of an unfinished novel Baldwin left behind tracing the history of America through the lives of three black activists: Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. As Baldwin so succinctly and accurately states, “The story of the negro in America is the story of America.” His history charts the friction that results in a society unable to assign roles for its black members once they no longer pick the cotton. And since whites lack the imagination to see black revolutionaries, America suffers from a kind of “emotional poverty.”

To use too many of Baldwin’s words or summarize his ideas only serves to bastardize your own experience of grappling with them. Peck makes Baldwin’s prose easy to understand but never simple to digest, in part because it maintains a stubborn relevancy to our current moral malaise. From the white denial of racism to the myth of colorblindness, “I Am Not Your Negro” practically drips with modern applications. There’s an angle and a foothold for just about everyone.

Mine was Baldwin’s fascination with popular culture and how it at once plays out our national conflicts and presents a fantasy of social arrangements. Culture has a way of numbing us, blinding us from seeing our real issues and covering our racial fault lines. But at the same time, the underlying tensions can reflect the country as a whole. His analysis of cinematic heroes as white people who took vengeance into their own hands because they saw it as theirs to take is a scary perspective that will not soon leave my head when viewing classical Hollywood cinema.  B+ / 3stars


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REVIEW: Split

5 02 2017

M. Night Shyamalan makes smarter thrillers than your average Hollywood hired hand (as we’re now allowed to admit again). His latest, “Split,” showcases the director’s skill at using shot composition as a tool far scarier than the shaky cam faux-verité aesthetic plaguing the genre. Shyamalan understands that the artificial and the unnatural possess a deeply unsettling category that many filmmakers neglect to wield.

It’s a great stylistic match for this story, featuring James McAvoy as Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man with an advanced dissociative personality disorder that enables him to toggle between 23 different personas. The role serves as an obvious exhibition of McAvoy’s considerable range and technical precision; the mastery becomes quite scary when he eventually erupts in a fit of feral rage. His unpredictability makes decisions complicated for the three teenage female victims he kidnaps and imprisons, although one with a similarly dark past (Anya Taylor-Joy’s Casey) possesses a special insight that proves valuable in outsmarting his personalities.

“Split” works well when Shyamalan allows it to function as a taut captivity thriller given the unknown variable of Kevin’s ever-shifting identity. He does disrupt the forward progress of that narrative with two separate cutaway stories, however. The first, repeated asides with Kevin’s psychiatrist Dr. Fletcher (Betsy Buckley), sheds light on how he functions not as “less than” regular people but as something greater. The second, which provides background on why Casey seems equipped to handle Kevin, ultimately adds little to the film. I kept waiting for it to come full circle in a signature Shyamalan twist, but … well, without spoiling, the ending serves the filmmaker far more than it serves the film. Red herrings are fine, to be clear, but their worth is questionable when they disrupt the pace of the film to extent that this one does. B / 2halfstars


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REVIEW: War on Everyone

4 02 2017

war-on-everyone“War on Everyone” is writer/director John Michael McDonagh’s second film involving politically incorrect and raucous law enforcement agents. If this could become some kind of series … sign me up!

The beer-guzzling, coke-snorting duo of officers Terry (Alexander Skarsgård) and Bob (Michael Peña) wheel around Albuquerque framing perps and taking names. Their genius lies in getting away with the unethical deeds they so fondly commit. The stumbling blocks come from their frequent ineptitude and inflated sense of power. The team finally meets something resembling their match when they try ripping off a strip-club manager whose power extends far deeper than anticipated.

I watched the ’80s classic “48 HRS” a few months ago and have to imagine that the Skarsgård-Peña pairing has to be somewhat akin to the sensation of watching Nolte-Murphy. The two actors always match each other in self-deprecation and pithy dialogue, lighting up the screen at every opportunity. McDonagh utilizes their commitment to wonderful effect in “War on Everyone” as he toes the line on some touchy subject matter without ever overstepping the boundaries. There’s a sense in a lot of raunchy comedies these days that these lines only exist for their crossing, irregardless of who gets hurt by doing so. McDonagh makes this off-color humor work with in the parameters established for his irreverent characters, and the taboos bend without breaking. B+ / 3stars


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REVIEW: Julieta

3 02 2017

julietaPedro Almodóvar is a master of the modern melodrama, but his latest film “Julieta” falls well below the high-water mark of prior masterworks like “All About My Mother” or “Talk to Her.” The work is technically proficient, per usual, but emotionally empty. Almodóvar gives some early hints of Hitchockian style, but they all pass sadly without consummation.

This tale of a woebegone middle-aged woman, Emma Suárez’s Julieta, as she recounts the events that led her to such a sorry state lacks any sense of stakes or dramatic tension. Almodóvar adapted the film from an Alice Munro short story, so “Julieta” does not pass without commentary about the limited roles available to women in society as well as the stifling expectations placed upon them. Julieta grapples with an unfaithful husband, an ailing mother and a daughter who grows further apart from her following a misunderstood tragedy.

Almodóvar’s observations hardly count as subversive or worthy of feature-length consideration, however. Most of “Julieta” contains elements we have seen before – and better. I had been meaning to rewatch Almodóvar’s films like “Volver” and “Broken Embraces” to complement the viewing of “Julieta.” Perhaps I should have watched them instead of “Julieta.” C+ / 2stars


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (February 2, 2017)

2 02 2017

impolexAn oft-cited dictum of Karl Marx states, “History repeats itself – first as tragedy, then as farce.” There’s a pervasive sense that living through our current time is like watching the horrors of the 1930s and ’40s refracted through a funhouse mirror, albeit with the “fun” sorely missing. By accident, Alex Ross Perry’s debut feature “Impolex” seems perfectly positioned to capitalize on the moment.

The film supposedly takes inspiration from Thomas Pynchon’s postmodern classic “Gravity’s Rainbow” (I use qualifiers because I have not read the novel). Its protagonist, American soldier Tyrone (Riley O’Bryan) lugs German rockets around the forest after the end of World War II. He follows seemingly no clear path and shares episodic encounters with everyone from an escaped prisoner to a pirate and even a talking octopus. It’s an ambling journey where each step does not seem to build on or relate to each other, in part because Tyrone is extremely malleable to the message conveyed by the people he meets. He struggles mightily inside to also hold onto some vestige of his own personality amidst these encounters.

None of this makes sense. And yet, not making sense makes perfect sense. This pick for “F.I.L.M. of the Week” feels like a sketched line from the post-war existentialist dread to our present post-truth anxiety. Even if certain moments lack some spark or some scenes drag on, this thunderous 73-minute debut from Perry showcases his deep understanding of the psychological underpinnings of the film. “Impolex” marks a scrappy debut from a writer/director whose literary ambitions have informed some of the decade’s more audacious pieces of American independent cinema.


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REVIEW: Oklahoma City

1 02 2017

oklahoma-citySundance Film Festival

Barak Goodman’s “Oklahoma City” draws a line between Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and the country’s burgeoning white supremacist movement. Long before they came to prominence in the 2016 election cycle, these reactionaries sought to recast government opposition to their far-right ideology as an attack on guns and religion. Goodman cross-cuts between the carnage of the attack and the increasingly radical movement, ultimately concluding that McVeigh failed because he put a human face on attacking the government.

Did he, though?

“Oklahoma City” is effective when connecting 1995 to the decades of militant white nationalism that preceded it, yet Goodman bungles the documentary’s relevance to the present. The upbeat ending downplays their continuing, disturbing strength. Goodman did not need to put a call to action on the closing credits redirecting viewers to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate groups registry. However, some acknowledgement that Oklahoma City represents the close of the chapter rather than the end of the book seems necessary.

As documentaries like “Welcome to Leith” and our literal every day life show us, white nationalism is far from done. It’s still here and scarier than ever. Now the onus is on us to understand it and defeat its hatefulness from overtaking our pluralistic, inclusive society. B / 2halfstars

NOTE: Portions of this review ran in my coverage of the Sundance Film Festival for Movie Mezzanine.


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REVIEW: Kubo and the Two Strings

13 01 2017

It brings me no joy to make categorical distinctions like this … but I just don’t think the storytelling of Laika Entertainment is just not for me. First “Coraline,” then “ParaNorman, ” and now “Kubo and the Two Strings” have all left me grasping at straws and wanting for more. Dazzling and creative as their animation might look, the narratives and the emotions never have much of a hook.

Travis Knight’s film boasts a fairly common hero’s journey-style narrative, as the scrappy titular character goes on a search for magic armor that will fend off the evil spirits that hunt him down. Turns out, Kubo belongs to a fraught family tree where his main pursuers are actually his grandfather the Moon King (voice of Ralph Fiennes) and his aunts, the Sariatu Sisters (voice of Rooney Mara). Along the way, he must band together with allies who have been reincarnated as animals – his mother as a monkey (voice of Charlize Theron) and a beetle with a connection to Kubo’s deceased father (voice of Matthew McConaughey).

I’d rather not go too much into plot summary, which is admittedly all I have in the absence of any strong feelings one way or the other. To blather on and on about how impressive the stop-motion animation was can serve no good. These are admittedly among the hardest reviews to write: the ones where I just felt entirely neutral. Especially when everyone else seems to love it, but that’s reacting to reactions rather than the movie. Guess I’ll just continue in my position on the outside looking in at Laika love. C+ / 2stars


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (January 12, 2017)

12 01 2017

it-felt-like-loveAs anyone who has taken an introductory-level film theory class can tell you, the camera is not just an object. It is an organism (most commonly referred to as the eye) responsive to the impulses and instincts of the person who wields it. The majority of current cinema reflects a male gaze, and the emphasis on diversifying talent sadly does not seem to be taking strides – a new report released this week shows that female filmmakers lost ground in 2016.

But outside the mainstream, there are some voices and visions who need to be amplified. One such talent is writer/director Eliza Hittman, whose feature debut “It Felt Like Love” only recently came to my attention as I did research on filmmakers presenting their newest films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It’s a shame that this film got buried because Hittman’s work, my choice for the “F.I.L.M. of the Week” is nothing less than transporting. She picks us up from wherever we are and puts us in the perspective of a teenage girl, Gina Piersanti’s Lila, as she tepidly steps into her role as a sexual being.

The roughly 8o minutes of the film are devoted more to Lila’s feelings than they are to any one thing that happens to her. Hittman masters conveying a female gaze, the way girls process the pleasures and pains of looking at an object and feeling rapt with emotion. There’s a special attention to the tactility of puppy love, a need to touch constantly as a display of infatuation. Lila’s tongue lacks the language that bodies trade in so fluently, and she frequently trips trying to express herself. But as she tries to impress her female friends and woo her male peers, we don’t need those words to tell the story of her anguish and confusion. We see the world through her eyes and eventually come to share in the emotions with her.


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REVIEW: Live by Night

11 01 2017

A few years ago, some lawmakers courted controversy by hyping themselves up for a debt ceiling showdown with a scene from Ben Affleck’s “The Town.” In the clip shown, a character flatly states, “I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later. And we’re going to hurt some people.” When asked for comment, Affleck was easily able to brush it off as willful misreading; no one could accuse his film of making a pure glorification of criminal enterprise.

Yet if someone were to do a hype session with a scene from Affleck’s latest film “Live by Night” – using what scene, I have no idea – the same dodging maneuver would not be so easy. This Florida-set, Prohibition-era gangster tale feels like less of a movie and more of a fantasy realized with tens of millions of Warner Bros. dollars. Though a novel by Dennis Lehane may form its backbone, make no mistake that the only shape the film takes is the splattered vomit of its directors influences all over the screen.

One could invent an “Affleck Homage” Bingo game to liven up the experience of watching the jumbled mess. One scene might be a clear nod to Gordon Willis’ photography in “The Godfather” with heavy shadows and amber/sepia lighting. Another, a Steadicam journey through a hotel’s back corridors similar to the notorious “GoodFellas” tracking shot. But all the hat tips are masking Affleck’s true fascination in “Live by Night” – himself.

Don’t be fooled by the lack of a gratuitous shirtless shot that led to chuckles both in “The Town” and “Argo.” Affleck’s insistence on slow pushes of the camera in on his stoic face signal an obsession with the undeveloped interior life of deal-making gangster Joe Coughlin. The world around him, which involves a show of force by the KKK, proves far more interesting. Yet Affleck would rather dwell in a tormented state of displaced Boston accents, ethnic conflicts and a scenario where what we now consider to be “white people” could be victims of persecution and discrimination.

At least it’s not all bad – he pretty much gives Chris Messina, playing Coughlin’s portly henchman Dion Bartolo, free range to unleash the full range of his charm and humor. It doesn’t exactly work within the rest of “Live by Night,” but given that so little else works in the film … maybe the film should have been just all Chris Messina. C / 2stars


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REVIEW: Don’t Breathe

10 01 2017

What separates Fede Alvarez’s “Don’t Breathe” from a standard-issue horror flick? Technical proficiency, primarily. It’s hard to watch the film and not be aware of the way sound, image and camera movement are being used to produce an aura of fear and dread. But therein lies the issue with its effectiveness: I was so cognizant of the ways in which I was being manipulated that I could never fully let the atmosphere overtake me.

At this level of critical distance, it’s easy to see the film for what it is: an average heist film, a run-of-the-mill haunted house flick and a mediocre final girl narrative. Said survivor Rocky (Jane Levy) is among a band of robbers in Detroit who preys on easy targets to make some cash. It’s a classic case of doing the wrong thing for a noble reason since Rocky’s ultimate goal is to escape from a horrible family situation – her mom’s boyfriend has a swastika tattooed on his hand – with her much younger sister.

But she and her pals meet their match when they rob a blind army veteran (Stephen Lang) whose home has its fair share of surprises. Perhaps it was my loss not to experience it as intended in the dark of a theater, but “Don’t Breathe” hardly affected my respiratory system. Alvarez clearly knows what he’s doing, though he lost me somewhat by showing what he’s doing. C+ / 2stars


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REVIEW: Miss Stevens

9 01 2017

miss-stevensThere’s something about young adults staring at each other from across the chasm of their twenties that inspires odd, imbalanced and fascinating relationships. Not enough films investigate these strange connections; Julia Hart’s “Miss Stevens” joins a league that only includes Lynn Shelton’s “Laggies,” at least to my knowledge. (I’m not counting Hannah Fidell’s “A Teacher,” primarily because of the sexual dimension present there.)

I’ve seen it a bit from both sides now, as a student and as a loose authority figure of sorts while serving as an intern in youth ministry back in college. Each party wants to impress the other, obtaining their approval and then feeling connected with an age group they secretly aspire to become. They get “older,” not old; “younger,” not young.

“Miss Stevens” understands this reciprocal exchange as it plays out between its titular character Rachel Stevens, played by Lily Rabe, and her rambunctious student Billy, played by Timothée Chalamet. The script from Hart and co-writer Jordon Horowitz understands that there is something more at play in their increasingly raw, personal interactions. Rachel and Billy are old souls (they connect over the rock band America on a car ride) trapped in younger bodies, and they come to resemble inverse images of each other. While the story might not hold up towards the end, the genuine spark in their scenes never dissipates.

On a drama trip chaperoned by Rachel, a former actress herself until a politicized moment of theatrical authenticity sidelines her, she allows herself to see more of Billy than his public-facing front and blasé reputation. Though medically diagnosed with a personality disorder, he is deemed stable enough to self-medicate – a prospect that scares Rachel thoroughly. He craves opportunities to spend time with her for attention and validation, yes. But most importantly, he seeks a more mature connection than the ones he can forge with his fellow classmates on the trip. Lili Reinhart’s prim Margot is far too focused on the thespian tasks ahead for his taste, and Anthony Quintal’s openly gay Sam (who Billy fully accepts) gets fixated on the convention’s hookup culture.

I know this character, in part because I was him to some extent. Chalamet’s instincts are superb in bringing Billy to life – being smarter than the character but never letting that on while making boneheaded decisions. He resists lazy conventions of the sullen goth propagated in teen fiction, turning Billy into a beautiful set of contradictions. He’s moody, but he smiles; it’s not far-fetched to believe that he could mature into Casey Affleck, who played the adult version of his character in “Interstellar.” B / 2halfstars


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