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Solid Choice

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The History of Concrete

by Brandon Thomas

The mundane is probably the last thing that comes to mind when I think of the world of documentaries. Documentaries are meant to be serious business that deals with serious subject matter. Well, that and the slew of celebrity-focused films being released these days. It’s a balance, I guess.

Maybe that’s what makes John Wilson’s (HBO’s How to With John Wilson) The History of Concrete so fresh and appealing. There’s not an ounce of self-seriousness in Wilson’s film, yet by the time the end credits begin to roll, you still feel like you got a peek into what drives him, what he finds beautiful, and what frightens him about our changing world. 

As someone who’d never seen an episode of Wilson’s previous work, the bait-and-switch of the film’s title is a bit of a delightful surprise. Yes, The History of Concrete isn’t really about the history of concrete. Concrete is ever-present in the film’s periphery, but the real meat comes from Wilson’s side quests, if you will. The runners who run the same lap around an NYC block for 52 days, a concrete salesman who moonlights as an actor (or is that the other way around?), and the oldest concrete road in America. These are just a few of the detours Wilson takes, and they are certainly not the strangest. 

It might sound like I’m giving Wilson too much credit for knowing exactly what this film would be about and how he was going to approach it. Fortunately, the film itself doesn’t even do this. From a long prologue where Wilson attends a seminar on writing a Hallmark movie, to various Zoom calls where the filmmaker struggles to even describe the film he wants to make to potential investors, the “fly by the seat of your pants” aspect of the first third of the film is thrilling and ultimately a necessary part of Wilson’s organic approach.

In a world where even documentaries are playing it safe, The History of Concrete is a fantastic cinematic breath of fresh air.

Uncategorized

Bless Your Heart

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The Nice Ones

by Rachel Willis

Following a recent psychiatric stay, Kate (Joelle Rae) isn’t very excited to reconnect with her friend group in writer/director Peter Sylianou’s film, The Nice Ones.

It’s easy to see why. None of Kate’s friends are very sensitive to her recent plight. They talk behind her back, share the viral video of her breakdown, and are downright obnoxious. Though I do have to give props to newcomer Jade (Daniela Norman) for calling out the inappropriateness of Kate dating her former therapist.

We don’t have to squirm long with Kate accepting her “friends’” bad behavior, as she is soon certain her closest friend Shelly (Ayvianna Snow) isn’t herself. Boyfriend Dale (Emrhys Cooper) is quick to name Kate’s psychosis, trying to reassure the group that they just need to be patient with her.

It might seem obvious where this is going, but Sylianou isn’t interested in questioning Kate’s sanity. Instead, other characters quickly cotton to the fact that Kate might be on to something.

Unfortunately, throughout the film, the stakes are low. Not only do we never get to know Kate, but it’s impossible to sympathize with most of her friends, so whether they are themselves or not never feels like that big of a deal. Dale spends most of his time gaslighting everyone, so even he becomes expendable in the viewer’s mind.

The film tries to tackle several issues—relationship dynamics, mental health, etc.—but it never settles on any kind of broader commentary. If there is a larger allegory buried in the film’s plot, it’s hard to tease out.

With unlikable characters and little to say, The Nice Ones doesn’t have much going for it.

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Amused to Death

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Digger

by George Wolf

Don’t listen to me about Digger.

Don’t listen to anyone about Digger. I’d say the odds are 50/50 that you’ll love it or hate it. But if you appreciate a positive ratio of sheer ideas per moviegoing minute, you’ll be hard pressed to beat the latest opus from Oscar-winning Mexican auteur Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

Speaking of awards, get used to seeing Tom Cruise in the upcoming nomination lists, and he most definitely earns the acclaim. Call it tour de force, over the top or whatever, but he absolutely commands the screen and this satirical epic as Digger Rockwell, a my-way-or-the-highway oil tycoon whose company has caused an environmental disaster that threatens life as we know it.

Can Digger dig us all out? And can director/co-writer Iñárritu climb out of the narrative hole he digs in the early going?

For my money, yes.

His impressive resume (including The Revenant, Birdman, Bardo, and Babel) is stacked with impeccable craftmansmanship, ambitious framing, boundary pushing visuals and increasing self-indulgence. You’ll find it all in Digger, and per usual, subtlety is not in the toolbox.

If you thought Don’t Look Up was too direct, buckle up. This message, and this coal black humor, is obvious and repetitive, layered through extreme POVs and garish sets that underscore Digger’s promise of damage control through performative storytelling. And just when the bombast threatens to bring the entire film down, Iñárritu makes a shocking pivot that is sure to make Digger one of the most divisive films in recent memory.

I’m not spoiling it, and shame on anyone that does.

Even with Cruise dominating the film, the incredibly stacked supporting cast carves out a steady stream of interesting and often larger-than-life characters. From John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller to Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons and even a Burn Gorman sighting, there is excellence evident on nearly every corner of the screen.

And by the way, choose that screen wisely. Iñárritu shot this in VistaVision, so unless you want the pillarbox view, avoid the standard widescreens.

But if you appreciate the movie theater experience, do not avoid Digger. And don’t leave halfway through, even if you’re tempted. You’ve got to see this through — including a few minutes into the credits — before you can really start mulling over what you’ve seen.

Hell, a year from now I may wish I’d given this five stars, or two. But right now, I’m glad it’s given me this much to think about.

Outtakes

Villain Diaries: Jason Voorhees

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Hi, Mom.

I know I said I didn’t want to go to camp this year. I said nobody ever talks to me. Nobody ever asks me to swim or hike, or play truth or dare, or arm wrestle. Nobody offers me an enchilada. I said I didn’t like it. I said it was boring, but what I really meant was that it was lonely. I didn’t want to have to spend the whole summer—again!—with no friends. I said nobody likes me here. I said I would miss you.

But you said, “Jason, they’re just as scared of you as you are of them! They can’t like you if they don’t know you, so just march right up to them and show them who you are. Show them what you’re made of. You might even see what they’re made of.”

You were right, Mom. As always! I love it here. I am having the best summer, just like you said I would. Thanks for always having my back. I still miss you, though! 

Jason

*by Hope Madden. Video in partnership with Mills James Productions. Voiceover by Dave Man Bjorklund. Art by Michael Anthony Carroll.

Disclaimer: Villain Diaries is a non-commercial work of fan fiction and parody. All characters, names, and elements from the film belong to their respective copyright and trademark holders. I don’t own them and I’m not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the creators, studios, or rights holders. This piece is an original creative commentary inspired by their work. It is shared for free, for entertainment and critical purposes, and earns me no money. If you’re a rights holder and have concerns, please contact me at maddwolf95@gmail.com and I’ll respond promptly.

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Now Pulp Free!

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Verity

by George Wolf

The most interesting thing about Verity is what a stupefying mess it turns out to be. Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson aren’t just stars, but producers as well. And though Michael Showalter might seem a surprising choice to direct an erotic thriller, his resume includes some big wins (The Big Sick, Wet Hot American Summer).

Where did it all go wrong? Pretty much everywhere.

Based on Colleen Hoover’s best seller, the film follows struggling novelist Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson) as she is hired to finish a book series by world renowned writer Verity Crawford (Hathaway). Crawford is incapacitated after a car accident, so her husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) invites Lowen to stay in their Vermont mansion, pour over Verity’s notes and deliver three much-anticipated books.

But Lowen finds more than notes. She finds a flash drive holding a secret manuscript that appears to be an autobiography where Verity makes some earth-shattering confessions.

Cue the thunder claps and lightning strikes, and hold any trace of a winking nod to how ridiculous this all is. Hoover’s story (adapted by Nick Antosca) seems heavily borrowed from a couple more well-plotted novels, and Showalter’s humorless tone never leans into the pulpy aspects that might have made this a fun, guilty popcorn pleasure.

Sexy moments aren’t sexy. Jump scares aren’t scary. Witty banter isn’t witty, and the three very talented stars just seem confused. That’s a bad combo, one that allows for plenty of time for us to wonder about those breakdowns in internal logic.

But honestly, there isn’t much concern with any one thinking too much. An over-reliance on voiceover narration drains the shock value from big reveals, and ends up negating those seeds of doubt the film seems to think it is planting.

This type of Neo-noir blurring of truth and fiction has resulted in some twisty fun in the theaters over the last several years. But what might have been a self-aware ride on the order of A Simple Favor or The Woman in the Window barely rises to the level of Hathaway’s own curious dud Serenity.

Too much talent, not enough pulp. Sad to say, that’s Verity.

Outtakes

Migrant Fairy Tale

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Her Will Be Done

by Hope Madden

Julia Kowalski grounds each moment of Her Will Be Done in an utterly authentic day-to-day. Every chore, every mismatched but sturdy layer of clothing, every slap of a rubber glove or boot makes you ache with Naw (Maria Wróbel) for something more than the French farm life of a Polish migrant.

But that’s 20-year-old Naw’s life, with her kind but religious father (Wojciech Skibinski) and her two rowdy brothers (Przemyslaw Przestrzelski and Kuba Dyniewicz). Naw yearns to be a veterinarian, or to do anything that gets her out of this house, this life. Even if she believes, as her father does, that she carries her mother’s curse.

The realism of Kowalski’s approach keeps you guessing: are Naw’s episodes medical? Supernatural? Just plain rage? The filmmaker mixes messages, confounds clues, and transfixes you in the mystery, mainly through Wróbel’s convincing, wide-eyed observational performance.

Wróbel’s quite wonderful, rarely speaking, communicating the entire arc of the character with her enormous, searching eyes. Thanks to the performance it’s easy to question Naw’s reality and to worry about the way she interprets the reality around her.

Naw’s life of quietly raging frustration takes quite a turn when the neighbor’s daughter (Roxane Mesquida)—scandalous for some reason Naw’s father won’t tell her—moves back home.

From this moment, Kowalski spins a folk horror rooted in misogyny, patriarchy, religion, power, and superstition. All of this as observed by the sheltered, innocent Naw. It’s like a fairy tale where the beautiful fairy finds herself somehow in Naw’s miserable world rather than vice versa, and the filmmaker mines that concept to create a kind of backward folktale.

In its best moments, Her Will Be Done conjures Marcin Wrona’s 2015 treasure Demon. At other moments, the understated realism calls Emma Benestan’s feminist horror Animale to mind. Kowalski, who writes with Simon Beaufils, complicates characters, makes them tough to predict. And yet, the bones of both reality and fairy tale dictate what must be.

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Creepy Cellmate

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Ghost in the Cell

by Hope Madden

Joko Anwar makes a lot of movies. Not all of them are worth watching, but when he hits, you can expect grimy, bloody fun. Perhaps none more unexpectedly fun than his latest, Ghost in the Cell.

We open after midnight in a sweaty Indonesian newsroom, dedicated journalist Dimas (Endy Arfian) keying in the last sentences of his most perfect story. Capitalists are illegally mining a rainforest in Borneo where dozens of strange deaths occurred.

But the story never runs, and within a scene or two, Dimas is the new guy in an awfully unpleasant Indonesian prison.

Were it not for the gruesome opening (the reason that story didn’t run), you might not recognize Anwar’s latest as a horror film until after its midpoint. Instead, the filmmaker pits a rag tag group of not-so-badnicks (one telephone scammer, one small time robber, etc.) against more serious felons and a sadistic prison force. It’s somewhat traditional action with a bit of good-natured humor tossed around.

And then, meek little do-gooder Dimas arrives. Fresh meat. Or is he?

Though the most unhinged of the inmates, Tokek (Aming Sugandhi), has made his ill intentions clear, he meets a similarly grisly fate as that newspaper publisher. Is Dimas to blame? Or did he unwittingly bring something to the prison with him?

Ghost in the Cell showcases Anwar’s knack for truly ghastly body horror with a buoyant camaraderie, proletariat zeal, and well-placed bursts of comedy. His cast is up to the tonal challenge, each one carving out a memorable character, which can be tough to do in a sea of prison bars and orange jumpsuits.

There’s almost a sweetness and definitely a sense of optimism in the humor, characterizations, and storyline. The respect the inmates show the dance instructor, and Anwar’s earnest use of dancing in the film, can’t help but make you smile—even as massive chunks of inmate slide down the gore-slimed stone walls.  

Pick-me-up seems like the wrong way to describe Ghost in the Cell, but for a movie boasting the sheer volume of carnage, the film has a good heart.

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Discontent

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The Last First: Winter K2

by George Wolf

“Whoever climbs K2 in the winter will claim the last great prize in mountaineering.”

In 2021, that mission became a deadly competition. Businesses were reeling from COVID restrictions, social media likes became a new form of currency, and an unexpected crowd gathered to earn that last first: summiting the world’s second-highest peak amid the worst conditions imaginable.

K2 — aka “The Savage Mountain” — had proved too much for all previous winter attempts. But veteran climber John Snorri Sigurjónsson and local Pakistani hero Ali Sadparas thought they could be the first, only to be met with an unexpected crowd thinking the same thing.

There was filmmaker Elia Saikaly, Nepalese legend Nims Purja and his team, extreme athlete Colin O’Brady, Italian climber Tamara Lunger and a commercial group of climbers from Seven Summit Treks. The party atmosphere at base camp deteriorated into a brutal fight for survival, and director Amir Bar-Lev deconstructs the bad decisions with reverence and determination.

The visuals are often breath taking and the quest gets jaw-droppingly tense, which is not uncommon for this type of extreme documentary that we’ve seen over the last several years. What sets Bar-Lev’s approach apart is how he balances the multiple factors lurking behind the tragic deaths of five climbers.

When the over-commercialization of summitting meets an industry struggling to survive the pandemic, social media dopamine addiction and foolish hubris, common sense caution struggles for attention. The contrasts between tourist climbers and seasoned vets, layered into the already tense caste system of the region, creates an added atmosphere of suspicion and finger-pointing once the situation turns dire.

If the time of pioneers is truly gone, The Last First: Winter K2 bids them a stark, unforgettable farewell. At times thrilling, tragic, and exasperating, it is ultimately a sad reminder of how high human folly can climb.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Heart of the Beast, Primetime, Forgotten Island & More

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This week, Hope & George review Heart of the Beast, Primetime, Forgotten Island, The Stunt Driver, The Incomer, You Had to Be There, Never After Dark, Unabomber, and Bloody Tennis.

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Catch Me If You Can

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Primetime

by Hope Madden

In 2021, Lance Oppenheim directed the wild documentary Some Kind of Heaven about Florida’s exclusive retirement community, The Villages. Beneath the blinding aqua pools, savage tans and vacant smiles, a seediness rotted away.

The director dials that tone up a notch for Primetime, the based-on-real-events feature that chronicles the rise and fall of a TV phenomenon.

 Robert Pattinson is Chris Hansen, host of NBC’s To Catch a Predator. Often, when an actor portrays a reprehensible character, the strength of the performance comes from finding the humanity at the center of the monster. And yet, Pattinson—among the most fascinating actors of a generation—chooses to do the opposite. His turn is just this side of farcical, beautifully so. Pattinson offers Hansen exactly the empathy Hansen himself possessed, and the character is so compellingly repugnant you cannot look away.

Hansen’s frantic ambition leads an already unseemly production to new lows in search of ratings. His emotional regulator and quiet puppeteer, producer Andie Bender, is played with magnificent nuance by Merritt Wever. Like the character, Wever quietly controls the film.

And for the human heartbeat, Skyler Gisondo, in a rare dramatic role, offers a tenderness that amplifies the ugliness, the garishness, of not only the true story itself but Oppenheim’s film.

To Catch a Predator was insanely popular, viewers tuning in to watch a would-be sexual predator lured into committing to a terrible decision. It brought out the ugliness in viewers, and Oppenheim’s film delivers its take on the predatory nature of the show and of the entertainment industry with the same salacious verve.

Daniel Garber’s editing mimics and mocks true crime sensationalism, almost hypnotizing you with seediness and a strange comic sensibility. That hint of humor—in Pattinson’s performance, in the way he’s lit and made up, in the editing—is what makes the film such a grotesque success.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?