Monthly Archives: October 2019

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Welcome to the Jungle

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Monos

by George Wolf

On a mountaintop that rests among the clouds, eight child soldiers guard an American hostage and a conscripted milk cow.

They play what games they can manufacture and train for battle under the exacting eye of The Messenger (Wilson Salazar), whose visits bring supplies, decisions on permitted sexual “partnerships” among the group, and orders from the commanding Organization on how to carry out an ambiguous mission.

While The Messenger is away, one bad decision creates a crisis with no easy solution, becoming the catalyst for Alejandro Landes’s unconventional and often gut-wrenching Spanish-language thriller.

Yes, you’ll find parallels to Lord of the Flies, even Apocalypse Now, but Landes continually upends your assumptions by tossing aside any common rulebooks on storytelling.

Just whose story is this, anyway?

The Doctora (Julianne Nicholson)? She’s the hostage with plenty of clever plans for a jungle escape, and a sympathy for some of her captors which may be used against her.

What about Bigfoot (Moises Arias, impressive as usual)? He’s got plenty of ideas on what’s best for the group, but without Messenger’s blessing as squad leader, limited power.

Wolfie, the “old man” of 15? Shy, baby-faced Rambo? Lady? Boom Boom?

Landes never gives us the chance to feel confident about anything we think we know, as the powerful score from Mica Levi (Under the Skin, Jackie) and an impeccable sound design totally immerse us in an atmosphere of often breathless tension and wanton violence.

While Monos has plenty to say about how survival instincts can affect the lines of morality, it favors spectacle over speeches. Even the gripping final shot, containing some of the film’s most direct dialog, conveys its message with minimal force, which almost always hits the hardest.

It does here. Landes, in just his second narrative feature, crafts a primal experience of alienation and survival, with a strange and savage beauty that may shake you.

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Shipwreck

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Mary

by Hope Madden

I am having a hard time figuring out Mary.

Some of my befuddlement has to do with Gary Oldman’s involvement.

Is it just me, or is there a part of everyone’s brain that says, “Wait, Gary Oldman’s in this? I will definitely watch it!”

Gary Oldman is a tremendous talent. You know what he’s not? Choosy.

Here Oldman plays David, an aging boat captain carting tourists around for a fishing company. He has big dreams, though—dreams of owning his own craft. So naturally, when a ghost ship washes ashore, he cashes in everything he owns to buy her at police action. Then he promptly loads his squabbling family and a couple of deckhands aboard and sails toward the Bermuda triangle.

Of course he does!

What exactly happens once he sets sail is a mystery David’s wife (Emily Mortimer) explains throughout the film’s running time from an interrogation room.

The police interrogation framework is very tired at this point. It’s lazy. As are dream sequences and voiceover narration. They’re cinematic crutches, ways of telling the audience what should be coming organically from the narrative.  

Director Michael Goi (Megan Is Missing) relies on these devices to explain what the action should detail, just as he falls back on ominous music to create dread or signal character development. I’m not sure this script gave him loads of options, though.

Writer Anthony Jaswinski (The Shallows) sketches characters, action and a ghost story, but clarifies very little. His script is an unfocused mess and Goi’s pacing does not help. We skip CliffsNotes style through the family’s crisis, none of it feeling authentic, before discovering the hidden facts about Mary (the ship and, presumably, the ghost) sitting in a box in the hallway.

What’s this, ship ledgers and newspaper clippings? How convenient!

At 84 minutes (including credits), Mary feels simultaneously rushed and bloated. It’s a remarkable waste of both Mortimer and Oldman’s talent and the only true mystery—left unsolved, by the way—is how it drew these actors in the first place.

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Punch Drunk

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First Love

by Hope Madden

Few directors can consistently surprise you, can show such control and create such chaos, as Takashi Miike.

Miike makes Yakuza movies, he makes samurai movies, he makes horror movies, he makes kids movies. But it’s when he makes a mashup of a couple of those that he really defies expectations.

First Love is Miike’s tenth collaboration with writer Masa Nakamura. Their shared vision takes us through one night in Tokyo with a prostitute, a boxer, a cop, a mobster who wants out, and two warring gangs.

As one wistful participant of the evening’s adventure points out, nothing’s ever simple.

Masataka Kubota (Tokyo Ghoul S) cuts a forlorn, otherworldly figure as Leo, the lonesome boxer. He fights for pay, but has no greater purpose. That actually puts him ahead of everyone else he’ll meet tonight because they all serve the wrong purpose.

As Leo stumbles headlong into an action flick in progress, Miike does what he does best. He zigs when you think he’ll zag, jukes when you expect jive. In First Love, Miike paint-by-numbers a romance film into the Jackson Pollack of a gangster shoot out.

Silly in its own way, as many of Miike’s greatest films are, First Love feels like an off-handed goodbye to the Yakuza drama. In between absurdities and viscera, the filmmaker’s tone feels pensive as characters look to their undetermined future in a profession that’s changing, even probably ending as they know it.

And then he switches to anime.

Because, honestly, if you’re willing to suspend  disbelief enough to buy these gun fights, sword fights, fist fights and hallucinations, why not a one-time transition to comic book art?

In another filmmaker’s hands, this jarring one-off nuttiness might seem contrived or off-putting, but not on Planet Miike. His profession may be shifting sand beneath some feet, but Takashi Miike flies wherever he wants to go.

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He’d Vote For You

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Mister America

by George Wolf

If you didn’t think Tim Heidecker’s Mister America had much in common with Downton Abbey, you’d be right…mostly. But like the big screen edition of that British saga, Mister America expands on a story in progress, superserving those that are already on board.

Fans of Heidecker’s antics may not be as numerous the Abbey faithful, but they may feel even more validated with this film, as he revisits a viral bit from 2017 that had him on trial for the murder of 20 people at a music festival.

Now, star and co-writer Heidecker re-connects with director Eric Notarnicola from their On Cinema and Decker TV projects for a mockumentary treatment of Heidecker’s attempt to unseat the San Bernardino DA who tried to lock him up.

If you know Heidecker for more than his higher profile roles (Us, Ant-Man & the Wasp), you know what’s coming, and you’ll be delighted. He can play it so straight, you start to wonder if some of this nuttiness is actually real.

Then, he goes into a barbershop to embrace racial profiling and propose a ban on rap music.

Sure, he’s riffing on the nature of today’s political climate, but the film often seems caught in between Borat-style bravado and Christopher Guest understatement.

Plenty of the bits land, but plenty others don’t, and those not already in on the joke may be left grasping for a narrative anchor and, much like newcomers to the Crawley saga, just plain bored.

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Don’t Pet the Animals

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Little Monsters

by Hope Madden

“Teddy McGiggles isn’t my real name.”

The fact that there is a character named Teddy McGiggles in writer/director/Aussie Abe Forsythe’s new horror gem Little Monsters—let alone that Teddy (Josh Gad) has to clarify that it is not his given name—tells you a lot about the film.

McGiggles, a beloved and boldly dressed kids’ show host, is just one of the uninfected trapped in the souvenir shop at Pleasant Valley Farm Petting Zoo (now with Mini Golf!).

Miss Caroline (Lupita Nyong’o, glorious as always) has taken her kindergarten class on a field trip. Little Felix’s (the criminally adorable Diesel La Torraca) ne’er do well Uncle Dave (Alexander England) has tagged along as a chaperone, but really he’s just crushing on Lupita.

Who isn’t?!

The petting zoo sits next door to a military testing facility, one thing eats the brains of another and suddenly Miss Caroline is hurdling zombies and convincing her class this is all a game.

Basically, Little Monsters is Cooties meets Life is Beautiful.

Even though the film is being compared to Shaun of the Dead, please go into this with your eyes open. Though it has an incredibly sweet heart and a bus load of insanely cute children, the film is definitely R rated.

Mainly because of Gad, whose character has, shall we say, some bad habits and a pretty ugly catharsis on the playground. It’s pretty funny, but a surprisingly mean kind of funny.

Still, Little Monsters is, in its own bloody, entrail-strewn way, adorable. Honestly. And so very much of that has to do with Nyong’o. Miss Caroline’s indefatigable devotion to her students is genuinely beautiful, and Nyong’o couldn’t be more convincing.

The enormously likable cast and a tight script elevate the film above its slight story and often borrowed ideas. But the pace is quick, the bowels are spilling, and I’ve never enjoyed Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off more.

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Punk History

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Desolation Center

by Rachel Willis

Director Stuart Swezey has a personal interest in telling the story of Desolation Center and the five truly unique events they coordinated in the mid-1980s. As one of the primary figures involved in the organization of these events, he has a lot of information on the subject.

And we’re lucky that Swezey decided to delve into his catalog of archival footage because there is a lot of amazing material presented in his documentary, Desolation Center. Through primary source material, interviews with the musicians and artists who performed, and event attendees, the documentary is an engaging historical look at a definitive moment in punk music history.

A brief history of the Los Angeles punk scene in the 1980s opens the film. The police department in Los Angeles was quick to break up punk shows, storming into venues and raiding the scene, interrupting shows and arresting concert goers. It was this perpetual harassment that led Swezey to the idea that they hold a show in the desert.

From the archival material, you get a sense of the intimacy of the first show. There are fewer than one hundred people in attendance, but a truly unique and awesome experience is conveyed through the existing video. From footage of the ragtag group of punk fans traveling on buses to the desert concert (which featured Minutemen and Savage Republic), the audience gets a glimpse at how monumental this was for the people who attended, performed, and organized the event.

The best part of Desolation Center is the archival photos and videos from the shows. Though the first show is small, word of mouth spreads, and the second desert show is bigger as evidenced by the footage from the second event. The second show’s line up included Berlin’s industrial band, Einstrüzende Neubauten and performing artist Mark Pauline, whose shows were astonishing if not entirely safe (at one point he attempts to blow a boulder from the side of a mountain during the show, but thankfully for those in attendance, it’s an unsuccessful endeavor).

Footage from the next three shows – which take place on a boat, back in the desert, and in a warehouse, and include bands like Sonic Youth and Meat Puppets – help the audience understand the experience. The shows are extraordinary events, and while watching the documentary, one feels lucky to be given the chance to see the astounding performances.

The interviews, at times, help the audience understand what it felt like to be a part of Desolation Center. Other times, they overinflate the experience. Swezey’s best course of action would have been to let the footage speak for itself, but his choice to include so many interviews may have been due to the film disintegrating over the years – some of the vintage film has clearly seen better days.

However, Desolation Center is a fascinating documentary and a great addition to the illustrious – and infamous – history of punk rock.

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The Man Who Laughs

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Joker

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Todd Phillips, director of the Hangover trilogy among other comedies, recently told Vanity Fair that he had to get out of comedy because woke culture made it impossible to be funny.

That sounds like a butthurt white guy nobody thinks is funny. Doesn’t that actually make him the perfect person to reimagine Joker?

Directing and co-writing with Scott Silver (The Fighter), Phillips offers an origin story that sees mental illness, childhood trauma, adult alienation and societal disregard as the ingredients that form a singular villain—a man who cannot come into his own until he embraces his inner sinister clown.

It’s a dangerous idea and a dangerous film, but that doesn’t make it a bad movie. In many respects—though not all—it is a great movie. This is partly thanks to an ambitious screenplay, Lawrence Sher’s intense cinematography, solid directorial instincts with some beautifully staged violence and constant (indeed, fanboy-esque) nods to Scorsese.

But let’s be honest, it’s mainly because Joaquin Phoenix is a god among actors. His scenes of transformation, his scenes alone, his mesmerizing command of physicality, and in particular his unerringly unnerving chemistry with other actors are haunting.

Phoenix is Arthur Fleck, (or Afleck, if you were giving points for Batman references) wannabe standup comic and put upon outcast in 1981 Gotham City. The garbage strike has everyone testy. Rich, entitled Thomas Wayne (Bruce’s dad) isn’t helping matters with his bid for the mayor’s office and his disdain for those who are struggling.

Since Phillips genuflects to both Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, it is appropriate that Robert DeNiro, with some snazzy new teeth, participates as Murray Franklin, the late night legend that Arthur and his mother (Frances Conroy) watch every night.

More than once, Phillips does not trust his audience to stay with the direction he’s taken, and it’s unfortunate. These “look what I’m doing here” scenes drag the film, but as long as you never take your eyes off Phoenix (and who could?), you’re not likely to notice.

A pivotal moment where Arthur crashes a posh screening of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times is Phillips’s less-than-subtle reminder that it has always been the clowns in this world who reflect society’s reality back to us. It’s a wise move to make this an alienated-to-the-point-of-violence white guy who takes his frustrations out not on the powerless, but on those with power, thus becoming a kind of hero himself.

Of course, the inclusion of Chaplin could also be read as a direct admission that Joker is a comment on our modern times. Superhero universe? Fanatical throngs blindly following a sociopath? Checks out.

But similar to Phillips’s approach with War Dogs three years ago, an uneven tone lessens the intended impact. Alongside the straightforward Scorsese homages are left turns into Oliver Stone territory a la Natural Born Killers. That black comedic satire is a tough nut regardless, even more so if comes in fits and starts.

Credit Phillips for a damn the torpedoes vision that’s damn near palpable, but it’s impossible to imagine this all meshing as well as it does without Phoenix. His presence is completely transfixing, always convincing you that he is here to fulfill this legendary character’s destiny.

Remember when we thought Nicholson could never be topped? Then Ledger did it. And now Phoenix makes this the darkest, most in-the-moment Joker we’ve seen.

And it’s chilling.

So, Phillips succeeded in making an anti-comedy and anti-comic book movie because bro culture totally rules and comedy is dead and that’s not a privileged cop out at all. But then, it is possible to separate art and the artist.

We all still love Rosemary’s Baby, right?

Shudder Premiere

Muted Fury

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The Furies

by Brandon Thomas

Horror and social commentary are synonymous with one another. Fifty years ago, Night of the Living Dead tapped into America’s anxiety about the Vietnam War. 1978’s Dawn of the Dead used the zombie apocalypse to attack consumerism. More recently, Jordan Peele’s Get Out looked to horror to comment on race in America. These are all top-shelf examples of horror tackling social issues. 

Of course, not everyone can be George Romero or Jordan Peele. The new Shudder exclusive, The Furies—screening as part of Australia’s Monster Fest in October before its release in Australian cinemas from November 7—is a stark example of that.

After being kidnapped right off the street, Kayla wakes up in a coffin-sized box somewhere in the Australian outback. Before she can get her bearings, she finds herself hunted by someone wearing a horrific mask. As Kayla makes her way through this hellscape of murder to find a friend, she and the other hunted girls start to succumb to their form of savagery.

The Furies starts strong with a visually impressive prologue. Director Tony D’Aquino gets everything on the screen – from production design to some top-notch gore effects. Visually, the movie is a feast. 

Content-wise?

It’s a tonally confused mess.

There’s a weak attempt at commenting on women’s treatment in horror. When these characters aren’t being hunted down by armed slashers, they’re assigned another one of these ghouls as a protector. On paper this sounds like a novel idea: “Women are either fodder or in need of protection in these movies!” Unfortunately, D’Aquino never does anything more than set those ideas up.

Complicating things more is the way these women are written as merely paper-thin caricatures. They run, scream and die. Rinse, repeat. Kayla’s journey of “discovery” has the depth of a red Solo cup. Instead of looking inward at her own darkness and allowing that to come through in the performance, the movie settles for wearing a dark hoodie and saying tough things while handling a taser.

The messy ideas continue into the movie’s overall tone. The horror elements are strong, but there are also some half-realized sci-fi threads peppered about. Instead of exploring these nuggets in any meaningful way, D’Aquino treats them like the first episode of a network series to be explored later.

Despite some impressive visual sleight of hand with excellent cinematography and practical gore effects, The Furies can’t overcome the inherent shallowness of its story and execution.