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Leap of Faith

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Them That Follow

by George Wolf

When a way of life not only makes you a social outcast, but presents increasing dangers to those closest to you, what would motivate you to cling even tighter?

It’s a premise that could easily lead to vilification, so credit filmmakers Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage for taking Them That Follow in a more resonant direction. Rather than relying on lazy condescension, they want to probe the psychological politics of control.

Mara (Alice Englert) is the pastor’s daughter in a small community of snake handlers in the Appalachian mountains. Her father Lemuel (Walton Goggins) preaches strict adherence to the Word, which requires frequent tests of faith, subjugation of women and shunning the ways of the material world.

But Mara’s interest is starting to move beyond the mountain, raising the suspicions of the stern Sister Slaughter (Olivia Coleman, recent Oscar-winner for The Favourite) and sparking the curiosity of her best friend Dilly (Kaitlyn Dever).

“Who you choose, girl, chooses your whole life,” Sister Slaughter cautions Mara. And Mara will soon face choices that will alter several lives.

Them That Follow benefits from a beautifully rustic production design and an unhurried pace, building earnest layers of authenticity that mirror a sublime ensemble cast (which includes a nice dramatic turn from comic Jim Gaffigan).

Poulton and Savage are not here to mock religious beliefs, but rather to question the motives of leaders who seek control by division. Followers are belittled by proxy (“They look down on you!”) while leaders make unhealthy demands and wash their hands of culpability (“It’s God’s law, not mine”).

While the film’s concerns are especially timely now, a third act that seems rushed and overly tidy loosens the grip of Them That Follow. The tail here has more bite than the head, but the serpent still deserves respect.

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Bald & Bickering

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Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

by Hope Madden

Somewhere around its 6th installment, the Fast & Furious franchise tweaked its direction, abandoning logic and embracing ludicrous action as it jumped cars from skyscraper to skyscraper and waterskied off the back of launched torpedoes.

But things took off for real around Episode 7 when some mad genius decided to pit mountainous government operative Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) against Limey nogoodnik Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), each of them playing a self-lampooning version of themselves. Fun!

Where to go from there? How about we drop that whole car heist and espionage thing, expel Vincent Toretto and gang, bring in Idris Elba and see what happens?

And for the very first time, I was kind of looking forward to a F&F film.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw boasts more than ampersands. Internal logic? Cohesive plot? Thoughtful insights on man’s inhumanity to man?

Why, no.

Cheeky fun? Indeed!

The film indulges in the best elements of F&F (action lunacy, self-aware comedy) and dispenses with its weaknesses (schmaltz, Diesel). F&F: H&S consists primarily of fistfights, gun fights and vehicular chicanery stitched together with comic lines. Unfortunately, there is a plot, but it doesn’t get in the way too much.

A virus meant to thin the herd falls (or is injected!) into the hands of a rogue
(or is she?!!) MI6 agent. The CIA (or is it?!!!) pulls together the two old enemies for no particular reason, but Ryan Reynolds shows up in a decidedly peculiar cameo (one of several to look out for) that draws your attention away from the first of many gaping plot holes.

By this point (about 7 minutes into the film) we’ve been through three separate fight sequences, each meant to articulate the character of one of our leads: down-and-dirty badass (Hobbs), smoothly lethal sophisticate (Shaw), smart and efficient and highly contagious (Vanessa Kirby as MI6 virus thief Hattie), and Black Superman (Idris Elba, who gives himself the name, but if it fits…).

Right. Enough with plot, on to stupifyingly illogical and imaginative action. Hobbs & Shaw offers quite a spectacle.

It bogs down when it gets away from the explosions, wheelies and punches. Whether devoting excessive time to pissing contests or to dysfunctional family backstories, director David Leitch—who proved his action mettle with Atomic Blonde—too often forgets that words are not this franchise’s strongest suit.

Still, there is something compelling about watching Black Superman V Samoan Thor. I don’t know that there’s enough here for a franchise springboard, but there’s plenty for a wasted afternoon.

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Can You Keep a Secret?

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The Farewell

by George Wolf

Caught in a lie and feeling desperate?

There’s always the Homer Simpson defense (“It takes two to lie – one to lie and one to listen”), or even the George Costanza (“It’s not a lie if you believe it”).

But with The Farewell, writer/director Lulu Wang finds poignant truths in an elaborate lie, speaking the universal language of “family crazy” while crafting an engaging cultural prism.

Inspired by an episode of the This American Life podcast, The Farewell unfolds through the view of Billi (Awkwafina), a Chinese American who follows her parents back to China after the news of her grandmother Nai Nai’s terminal cancer diagnosis.

But Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao-priceless) is the only one who doesn’t know how sick she is, and the extended family has concocted a ruse about a grandson’s wedding to give everyone an excuse to come visit Nai Nai one last time.

Billi’s parents (Tzi Ma and Diana Lin) are worried she’ll end up giving the game away – and with good reason. Billi is not entirely on board for the “good lie,” and this conflict of conscience is the vessel Wang steers to expose important cultural differences while she’s getting solid laughs with all the family antics.

The lies -both big and small- pile up, all in service of the belief that one’s life is part of a whole, and thus it is Nai Nai’s family who must carry the emotional burden of her illness.

It is Awkwafina who carries the film. If you only know her as a comic presence (Ocean’s 8, Crazy Rich Asians), prepare to be wowed. As our window into this push and pull of tradition in the modern world, she makes Billi a nuanced, relatable soul.

While Wang’s script is sharp and insightful, her assured tone is even more beneficial. Even as the film feels effortlessly lived in, it never quite goes in directions you think it might. Wang doesn’t stoop to going maudlin among all the whiffs of death, infusing The Farewell with an endless charm that’s both revealing and familiar.

Funny, too. No lie.

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California Dreamin’

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Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Happy QT Day, everyone — that rare and special holiday where moviegoers love a movie made by an unabashed lover of movies. And this time, he’s made a movie about loving the movies.

It’s Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s clearest love letter to cinema both great and trashy. Spilling with nostalgia and packing more sentiment than his previous 8 films combined, Hollywood is the auteur’s most heartfelt film.

Not that it isn’t bloody. Once it hits its stride the film packs Reservoir Dogs-level brutality into a climax that’s as nervy as anything Tarantino’s ever filmed. But leading up to that, as the filmmaker asks us to look with a mixture of fondness and sadness at two lives twisting toward the inevitable, he’s actually almost sweet.

One of those lives belongs to Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a one-time TV Western leading man who’s made a couple of poor career choices and seems to be facing obsolescence. This would mean, domino-style, the obsolescence of his best friend and stunt double with a sketchy past, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).

But that’s not the second story, which instead belongs to the real life tragedy of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). Set in the LA of 1969, Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood uses the Manson family crimes (marking its 50th anniversary this August) as the thematic underpinning, a violent metaphor for the end of two eras.

Tarantino being Tarantino, though, he’ll use the movies to make everything better.

From the foot fetish (more proudly on display than ever) to the familiar faces (even one who made the cutting room floor and the credits), the hiply retro soundtrack to the inky black humor, Hollywood hides no Tarantinoism. But the film establishes a timestamp more precisely than any of his other works. And on the whole, he shows unpredicted restraint.

The film moseys through the first two acts, with long, deliberate takes full enough of pop culture as to completely immerse you in time and place. Tarantino again frames sequences with alternating levels of homage, but dials back the dialogue from his usual quick-hitting crispness to measured ruminations often thick with intention.

In strokes stylish and self-indulgent, Tarantino is bidding adieu to halcyon days of both flower power innocence and the Hollywood studio machine. Here, he’s looking back on the Manson murders as a dividing line, and again wondering what might have been.

For us QT aficionados, Hollywood may feel at first like an odd, overlong duck, but its wandering nature gives you ample time to adjust. The cast shines from top to bottom, propelling an entertaining vision of humor and blood and irony and bittersweet nostalgia.

Settle in, trust the driver and enjoy the ride.

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Cry and Laugh Again

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Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love

by Hope Madden

For fans, there is something endlessly fascinating about Leonard Cohen. Maybe it’s because, regardless of the volume of his work—songs, novels and poems—or the intimacy of his words, it’s still impossible to feel as if you know him.

In Nick Broomfield’s latest documentary, Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, it’s clear that Cohen’s longtime companion and eternal muse Marianne Ihlen felt the same way.

Ihlen inspired the Cohen classic So Long, Marianne, obviously, as well as dozens of others including Bird on a Wire. The two had one of those Sixties relationships—open but committed, tumultuous but loving, and ultimately doomed.

For eight years they lived together, on and off, along with Ihlen’s son Axel in a humble cottage on the Greek island of Hydra. An artists’ refuge of sorts, it was the kind of pre-hippie paradise where eccentrics engaged perhaps too freely in freedom.

It was there that Broomfield first met Ihlen. Their friendship and the director’s clear fondness for his subject give the film a fresh and odd intimacy.

Though his personal connection to Ihlen is an interesting inroad into this story, the doc sometimes feels like two separate and uneven pieces sewn together.

That seems partly appropriate, given that Leonard and Marianne spent increasing spans of time apart as the years wore on. And there’s no question that—for Leonard devotees, at least—the behind the scenes footage of Cohen on tour in the Sixties, commentary from his bandmates, and snippets of background intel from close friends is as engaging as it is enlightening.

Unfortunately, we lose Marianne almost entirely by Act 2. The titular character becomes a bit of a ghost, and not even one who looms large over the material in the foreground.

Of course, as the film was made posthumously (both Ihlen and Cohen died in 2016), their own insights are limited. In this way, though, Ihlen’s presence outweighs Cohen’s in that Broomfield dug up audio conversations in which she discusses the relationship.

The lack of Cohen’s own thoughts on their pairing—outside of one or two rambling, drug-riddled onstage song intros—makes its absence known.

Still, there is a melancholy beauty in the way Bloomfield’s documentary—his love letter to Marianne and Leonard—follows Cohen’s song lyrics, telling of a fractured, unconventional but nonetheless loving connection.

Indeed, it is Cohen’s final words of love to Ihlen, a note sent to her hospital room as she lay dying, filmed at her request, that illustrates that very point.

A bit disjointed but never uninteresting, Words of Love is an often compelling look at the relationship between muse and artist. For Cohen fans, it’s required viewing.

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I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of July 22

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So, there’s this great animated movie that no one saw. It probably isn’t entertaining enough for the littlest kids, but everyone else should see it. There’s also a middling action flick and a sad, sad reboot.

Click the film title for the full review.

Missing Link

Master Z: Ip Man Legacy

Hellboy

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Rocking Behind the Curtain

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Leto

by Christie Robb

Entrancing, Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto layers a variety of stylistic flourishes over the relatively simple plot—a love triangle between a rising rock star, his mentor, and the mentor’s wife.  Set in 1980s Leningrad, I was thrown off-balance from the first.

When it comes down to it, I don’t know all that much about rock and roll. I know even less about the Soviet Union.

So, it was a bit of a surprise to see OG hipsters playing a show to a crowd of fans. But then I noticed that the fans were sitting politely in their seats and that men in suits patrolled the performance hall ready to put down any display of unruly behavior—piling on a sweet-faced girl who sedately held up a small poster with a hand-drawn heart on it.

This is a country where, if you are going to play, you first have to have your lyrics analyzed for ideological appropriateness.

The rising star Viktor Tsoi (Teo Yoo) and his mentor Mike Naumenko (Roma Zver) were both real people fronting the influential bands Kino and Zoopark, respectively.  A statement contained within the credits informs that the plot was based on Naumenko’s wife Natalia’s (Irina Starshenbaum) memories. However, there is also a character credited as “sceptic” who often breaks the fourth wall to explain to the viewer that “Sadly, this did not happen.”

 Shot in moody black and white, with emotional pops of color, periodically animation creeps in to punctuate the more fraught moments. There’s also the occasional song and dance number in what is roughly a biopic—featuring covers of Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger”, and Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”

Weird, occasionally wandering, Leto, provided a glimpse into the experience of artists living in a gritty, austere world that I’ve not thought much about before, but probably will now.

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Be a Man

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The Art of Self-Defense

by Brandon Thomas

“Name?”

“Casey Davies.”

“That’s a very feminine sounding name.”

This humiliating exchange happens between Casey (Jesse Eisenberg) and Sensei (Alessandro Nivola) as Casey excitedly signs up for karate lessons. Casey suffers from a severe lack of confidence. He leads a drab, boring life. His house? Boring. His job? Boring. Even his dog is boring. No one respects Casey. His coworkers barely register his existence. The final demeaning moment is the night he’s viciously attacked while walking home from the store. Karate seems like the perfect antidote for this life of mediocrity.

Eh – not really.

Watching The Art of Self-Defense made me think of Fight Club. A lot. Fight Club overflows with masculinity. Brawny men beating each other to a pulp while waxing philosophical is the film’s bread and butter. Fincher’s movie definitely comments on the toxicity of masculinity, but it also spends a heck of a lot of time glorifying it, too.

The Art of Self Defense is interested in what it means to be a “real man.” Outside of Casey, the men in this dojo operate through sheer brute force. Violence, intimidation and blackmail are how they make their world work. Casey’s gravitational pull to these figures is a tale as old as time. Writer/director Riley Stearns isn’t interested in reveling in this world Sensei has created, he’s more interested in pushing the audience to share in Casey’s horror as he experiences it.

It’s easy to look at many of Eisenberg’s roles and lump them into the same narrow category. Yes, he plays a lot of isolated losers that stammar and shuffle around, but he also plays those roles with varying degrees of nuance. There’s a level of fear and anxiety he brings to Casey that feels different from his other loveable nerds. Casey is a rubber band about to snap at any moment, and Eisenberg does a fantastic job of keeping the audience guessing as to when that will happen.

Nivola’s Sensei has an air of false machismo to him at all times. He speaks in a low, gruff voice, and his words feel precisely selected, but fake. Nivola gets that this movie is a stark black comedy, and he completely goes for broke. He is able to walk this fine line of playing a scene straight, yet has it come off as a comedic masterstroke.

Armed with biting satire, excellent performances, and more on its mind than cheap laughs, The Art of Self Defense delivers a bold, original dark comedy. Minimal flexing involved. 


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Fright Club: Body Fluids in Horror Movies

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Viscosity! That’s the name of the game today, and it’s a messy, messy game to play.

Today we slip and slide through the sloppiest movies we could find as we count down the most inspired use of body fluids in horror. The whole mess is recorded live at Gateway Film Center, so please listen.

And don’t forget to bring a towel!

5) Don’t Breathe (2016)

Fede Alvarez’s magnificent home invasion horror made this list, beating out the projectile vomit of The Exorcist, the melting bums of Street Trash, the medical what-not of Re-Animator and the viscosity of other films. How did it do it? It was not because of volume.

It’s really just the one scene.

The one with a turkey baster.

The one with the single hair.

Ew.

4) Dead Alive (1992)

The list doesn’t exist without Peter Jackson, let’s be honest. Any old horror director can work with blood. Jackson certainly can. That party scene? The arterial spray poor Lionel Cosgrove causes with his lawnmower is truly a site to behold.

But what Jackson can do with pus and a bowl of custard? Chef’s kiss right there.

3) We Are the Flesh (2016)

Emiliano Rocha Minter loves him some taboos. No one bursts through taboos like him – well, Takashi Miike, maybe.

He also really loves body fluids. We mean all the body fluids. His 2016 social commentary swims them all. All all all.

Taboos and body fluids. Sloppy!

2) Evil Dead (2013)

Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive held the record for most blood in a film – 1000 gallons – until 2013.

It’s a record Sam Raimi’s earlier Evil Dead franchise efforts had once held, but Fede Alvarez (making his second appearance on this list!) drenched all records when he poured out 50,000 gallons of fake blood in a single scene.

Allegedly It Chapter 2 tops that, but I don’t know how you out-soak a torrential downpour of blood.

Gozu (2003)

Who’s not afraid of taboos? Well, the great and prolific Takashi Miike has no fear of body fluids, either. Hell, Ichi the Killer’s title screen is done in semen and one of Audition’s most memorable moments sees a multiple amputee eating his mistress’s vomit.

But with Gozu, Miike’s not holding back: blood, urine, semen, lactation, pus and other discharges I’m not sure how to even categorize. Gozu is an inspired, viscous mess.