We had much fun on the set, regardless of the masks and the fire. Cat and Donovan kept things fun.
Obstacle Corpse: Behind the Scenes
Tag Archives: Cat McAlpine
H is for Hopeful
H is for Happiness
by Cat McAlpine
H is for Happiness navigates grownup tensions and trauma from the perspective of an optimistic 12 year-old named Candice (Daisy Axon). Candice’s class is given an assignment to recount their life via a narrative based on the letters of the alphabet. On the same day, a new student arrives.
“Can you keep a secret?” newcomer Douglas asks her.
“No.” Candice chirps back with cheerful honesty.
Douglas (Wesley Patten) claims he’s from another dimension, but it doesn’t faze Candice. Little bits of mystery and magical realism like this make Candice’s world deeper and more fantastical, even when the magic ends up being rooted in reality.
Brightly colored and fun, exaggerated moments make the film’s world seem vibrant and alive in a storybook kind of way. But it has its dark moments too. Candice may be hopelessly optimistic but everyone around her is miserable. Her grieving, depressed mother stays in a room deeply saturated in blue. Her father and uncle, at odds, exist in opposite landscapes. Her father works in a tiny garage office. Her rich uncle sails a picturesque sailboat on a bright blue sea.
While H is for Happiness is told through Candice’s eyes, it’s not just a watered-down children’s story. The way it unfolds is enjoyable to all ages. Instead of going for easy laughs, the film explores the frustration of trying to fix a broken family with silly hijinks that simply don’t work. The heavy dose of realism creates continued tension throughout and motivates Candice to continue exploring what her role in the world might be as she turns 13.
Director John Sheedy frames his shots with whimsy and beauty, showing adults struggling through Candice’s eyes. Bright colors are always caught just off in the corner to show how the world continues beyond the screen. Candice’s broken-spirited father is perfectly framed by pastel balloons at a fateful birthday party. Its images like these that meld nostalgic memories with the realities behind them.
Making her film debut, Axon is fantastic as Candice, showing a precocious can-do attitude will make you fall in love with her immediately. Her partner in crime, Patten, is charming and equally likable as Douglas from Another Dimension.
H is for Happiness is a beautifully crafted coming-of-age movie that teeters on the edge of childhood innocence and the next step beyond it.
Anguish for Anguish
Measure for Measure
by Cat McAlpine
In this modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s play by the same name, Measure for Measure follows a large cast of characters all tied to the same horrific event. A man high on meth goes on a racially charged shooting spree in a housing commission tower. Angelo sold him the drugs. Farouk might have sold him the gun. Claudio and Jaiwara were simply lucky enough to survive. What really connects the tenants of the dreary flats is not a single act violence, but the fact that their lives are rife with it.
Director Paul Ireland uses trauma as connective tissue, highlighting the theme with repeated showings of August Friedrich Schenck’s “Anguish.” The painting shows a ewe crying out over the body of her dead lamb, encircled by waiting crows. It is trauma, and vulnerability, like this that pushes characters together and rips them apart, with carrion birds waiting to swoop in.
The script, penned by Ireland and Damian Hill (to whom the film is dedicated), is strongest when it strays from Shakespeare. The addition of an immigrant family to the story adds dimension to the types of trauma we face and how it shapes the next generation. The love story of Ireland and Hill’s Measure for Measure is much more straightforward than Shakespeare’s. If anything, the film would’ve improved from even further deviation.
What truly carries the production are its strong performances. Hugo Weaving is great as Duke, endlessly watchable. His manic foil Angelo (Mark Leonard Winter) is also fantastic, even when the script doesn’t support him. Farouk (Fayssal Bazzi) starts as a stereotypical baddie, but Bazzi finds complicated depth in him later on. Harrison Gilbertson and Megan Smart build great chemistry together as Claudio and Jaiwara, despite a bit of a montaged love story at the start.
Measure for Measure is a worthy effort to take the endlessly classic nature of Shakespeare and frame it in a modern retelling with new resonance. Its focus on loss, vengeance, and love are undeniably relatable, while still telling a fresh story in an old frame.
Chemicals React
Chemical Hearts
by Cat McAlpine
Henry Page is a romantic. He’s also unremarkable, he muses in moody voiceover. But senior year of high school might just be the year that something interesting finally happens to him. When Grace Town transfers on the first day of class and joins the school newspaper, Henry is immediately smitten. But people are rarely the things we imagine them to be.
Richard Tanne (Southside with You) wrote and directed this adaptation of Krystal Sutherland’s novel, “Our Chemical Hearts.” Tanne’s camera haunts dusk and after-dark more often than not, with even his daytime shots heavily shadowed. He finds gorgeous lighting in an abandoned warehouse and develops a grittier finish to this YA romance that’s rare for the genre.
But no matter how often Grace (Lili Reinhart) promises she’s “fucked up,” the film doesn’t go as dark as it wants to. In the end, Chemical Hearts is about a middle-class kid pining after a broken girl. While some twists and turns make the story more interesting, the narrative is distracted by Henry (Austin Abrams) who is as he promises to be – unremarkable.
Chemical Hearts also suffers from a heavy serving of quirky character traits. Henry’s not normal, he practices the Japanese art of kintsukuroi – repairing broken pottery with gold seams. Grace stands thigh deep in a koi pond, monologuing about humanity’s fate to be briefly rearranged motes of start dust. How did the koi end up in an abandoned warehouse? Spoiler alert, we never find out.
For all its false depths, Chemical Hearts also ruminates on death, guilt, and suicide in fair measure. But the grief is twice removed and mostly mystery. Grace’s healing process is constantly measured by her capability to fully love Henry. We don’t get the opportunity to explore her growth outside of him.
Chemical Heart’s constant insistence that being a teenager is the hardest part of life will fall flat for older viewers who have already survived the gauntlet of adolescence. Meanwhile, the younger audience will likely appreciate a story that reminds them that life doesn’t always go the way you want it to.
The Beat of Your Heart
River City Drumbeat
by Cat McAlpine
Directors Marlon Johnson and Anne Flatté explore both struggle and success in their documentary following the River City Drum Corps of Louisville, KY. River City Drumbeat captures how art and culture are both necessary for the survival of a community. The film itself has natural rhythm, moving from raucous drum performances to reflections on the darker side of life as a Black American.
In an opening shot, an instructor stands in front of a gymnasium full of young children. Asking them to place their hands on their hearts, he says, “If you get really quiet and get really still and listen very quietly you can feel something beating in your chest…we are born into the world with this sound.”
The belief that we are all born with music inside us is a driving principal of RCDC, which creates an artistic outlet and cultural touchstone for children who might not otherwise be exposed to their African roots. Executive Director and Founder of River City Drum Corps Edward “Nardie” White emphasizes how important the program is to his community, especially young black men. When White was young, he was discouraged from participating in the arts and instead pushed to play basketball and football. Now, he can trace the dozens of lives he has changed with art over the last three decades.
Johnson and Flatté juxtapose vibrant shots of family and laughter with gray rolling footage of the west end of Louisville’s boarded windows and abandoned homes. White gives a tour of his old neighborhood, reminiscing about how the Black community in Louisville has grown and changed. “Our culture is going to be our savior.” He says.
Their greatest challenges? Redlining, poverty, poor education, and violence.
A huge inspiration for both White and the RCDC was White’s late wife, Zambia. Many of the Drum Corps students, current and former, reflect on the immense impact she had on them. One young man shows her photo in his bedroom, next to stickers from prospective colleges, reflecting on how good it feels good to have her watching over him. It is in small moments like these that Johnson and Flatté are able to show just how widely and deeply RCDC has impacted the community.
Zambia is finally shown in some older footage as she accepts an award. Addressing the crowd, she says, “We must give to our young people something we all wake up with…time.”
That’s the central theme of River City Drumbeat, that youth deserve the time, attention, and love their community has to offer, and that it can make a difference. As White says to the Drum Corps before a performance, “Black arts matter.”
River City Drumbeat is a hopeful and loving portrait of a community that has found power in coming together and making music. It is joyful, and sometimes sad, but always looking forward. And it may be just what you needed to watch today.
Paint it Black
The Painted Bird
by Cat McAlpine
If you paint the wings of a sparrow (or stitch a star to his jacket) the rest of the flock will no longer recognize him. The other birds will swarm and peck him until he plummets back to the earth. This is just one of the horrific lessons a young boy learns as he desperately searches for anywhere or anyone safe in war-torn Eastern Europe.
The Painted Bird is a nearly three hour long misery epic that follows this young boy, unnamed until the final shot of the film, looking for home during World War II. His parents have left him in the care of an elderly woman as they flee the Germans. But his banishment to the countryside cannot spare him from the horrors of the holocaust.
This film is hard to get through. Forty viewers walked out of its 2019 Toronto Film Festival showing. I would’ve walked out too, given the chance. The opening scene finds the young boy (Petr Kotlár) being chased through the woods. Another group of boys catch him. They rip away the small pet gripped in his arms, so quickly that it’s hard to identify, and they set it on fire. As he is beaten, the boy turns his head and watches his pet run in screaming circles until it dies. And then it gets worse.
What follows is a brutal parade of the worst humanity has to offer. Domestic abuse, graphic violence, multiple instances of animal abuse and death, rape, child abuse and rape, and more. Then the war crimes start around hour three.
The tale is an adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński ‘s 1965 novel of the same name, which made one of Time’s 100 Best Novels lists. Though lauded, the book is no less controversial, and is just as riddled with cruelty.
Directed and adapted by Václav Marhoul, the final product is beautifully shot in black and white. But the lack of color doesn’t make the rotten core of The Painted Bird any less pungent. Without color, Marhoul creates gut- wrenching scenes all the more visceral by adding textures like wet eyeballs on a dusty floor or the violent placement of a bottle that made me retch.
I won’t let it go unmentioned that while violence and depravity are the overarching themes, women have some of the worst characterizations in The Painted Bird. They are either mothers or depraved sexual deviants, or mothers of dead children who have since become sexual deviants. A few are witches.
Everyone is painted darkly, but with more male characters there are more opportunities for men to be shown in shades of gray.
The real conflict at the center of The Painted Bird is understanding how we use art to honestly bear witness to our cultural horrors. I cannot and would not recommend this film to anyone, it was too awful to watch. But you could argue that this is precisely why it must be seen.
The Painted Bird is a well-shot, well performed, and incredibly moving piece of cinema that is peppered with familiar faces (Harvey Keitel, Stellan Skarsgard, Julian Sands). You simply have to be willing to go where it wants to take you. And all of those places are dark.
Millennial Problems
Daddy Issues
by Cat McAlpine
Henrietta (Kimberley Datnow) is fumbling through life as an almost stand-up comedian in her mid-20s. She’s not very tactful, she’s definitely a mess, and she can’t address a group of people without holding a prop microphone (or pencil). Also, her dad just died.
Skyping into her father’s funeral with her one-night stand in tow seems like the tip of Henrietta’s daddy issues iceberg.
But we never learn about Henrietta’s father or her relationship with him. He leaves her his LA home, trusts her with a board position at his company, and writes her an ominous letter threatening that if she can’t turn things around, his whole life will have been wasted. Henri proceeds to drink and smoke her way through the rest of the film, bumbling about without making too many revelations or relationships.
Penned by John Cox and Amy Datnow, the story follows three different college friends as they try to figure out what they want. Henrietta is taking another stab at comedy. Alice (Alice Carroll Johnson) waffles in her relationship and tries to find a new career in the gig economy. Nolan (Tanner Rittenhouse) has taken 5 years to finish a deck project and can’t get his girlfriend to take him seriously. While all three characters build relationships with one another, they rarely connect to discuss or help with each other’s struggles. This general lack of connection and fluidity plagues the whole of Daddy Issues.
The story lacks momentum. Moments meant to be absurd or wacky stay dry, shot and edited with the same pace as the lonely and sad portions of the film. The funniest moments are often small asides that feel like improv from secondary characters.
Director Laura Holliday’s experience is mainly in shorts, as you might guess. She focuses well on small moments, like a brewing cup of tea, but loses pace in bigger scenes.
Daddy Issues spends too much time being lost in itself, and we miss most of the resolutions. Other important moments come too late in the story and feel rushed. While it skillfully captures the essence of being at a loss with what comes next, the film suffers from the same nervous halting as its protagonists.
Swan Song
The Painter and the Thief
by Cat McAlpine
Barbora Kysilkova is a hyper-realistic painter known for her large, dark pieces. But when two of her paintings are stolen from a gallery in the middle of the day, she begins an unexpected journey to reclaim the most important piece in her collection. Boldly, she asks one of thieves if she can paint him, and he nervously agrees. Though he swears he was too high to remember what happened to the paintings, Barbora cannot stop painting Karl Bertil-Nordland.
The Painter carefully teases out The Thief, but he is watching her right back. What follows is a tender exploration of the things that make us feel broken and how we absorb them into our identities.
The narrative weaving of The Painter and The Thief is what makes it a truly great documentary. Director Benjamin Ree shows you the story through two sets of eyes, both staring into the other. He shapes a beautiful give and take that relates the events based on how they were experienced rather than exactly how they happened.
In exploring the way Barbora and Karl see each other, Ree also explores how we grapple with our many faces, comparing the way we present ourselves and the way we are seen by others.
When Karl sees Barbora’s first painting of him, he is utterly transfixed by the portrait. He cannot take his eyes off of it as he stands and begins to loudly weep.
Although The Painter and The Thief takes a winding path into an incredible and unexpected friendship, it never forgets that it began as a mystery.
This documentary is so intriguing and so honest, you’ll be transfixed until the incredibly satisfying and almost unbelievable end.
Hereditary
Inheritance
by Cat McAlpine
Lauren learns of her father’s untimely death from an aggressive reporter shoving a microphone in her face. There isn’t a lot of room for privacy when you’re a part of the Monroe family. Lauren is Manhattan’s District Attorney. Her brother, William, is running for congressional reelection. The Monroes are in the news and in the spotlight.
Unfortunately, the harsher the light, the darker the shadows. When her father’s will saddles her with a cruel inheritance and a bunker full of secrets, Lauren has to explore what she’s willing to do for the family name.
Simon Pegg has above and beyond the best performance here as the villainous Morgan Warner. It’s not just his excellent dialect work (as always) that helps him disappear into the role, but his commitment creating a full, if not deranged, character. The film’s weak script and loose plot points fail to support his choices, and often leave him out to dry, making Pegg cartoonish when he’s meant to be menacing.
Lily Collins falters as Lauren because she has so little to build on. The family dynamic itself is vague and cold. Brief flashbacks reveal a tumultuous relationship with her father, but little else is done to explore Lauren’s relationships. Lauren is grappling with how she chooses to remember her father, but he’s given no redeeming characteristics and frankly, neither is she.
The rest of the cast suffers a similar fate, with characters barely introduced, underdeveloped, and quickly discarded, resulting in stiff deliveries and people you simply don’t care about. That makes it hard to buy in to a story that hinges on putting it all on the line for family.
All said, this film lacks the commitment it needs to be memorable. In an effort, maybe, to keep mainstream, Inheritance only skims the horror/thriller genres instead of really getting its hands bloody. Penned by Matthew Kennedy (his first) Inheritance works too hard at the top, and gets the pacing all wrong. While it hits a much better tempo later on, director Vaughn Stein (Terminal) piles on with some impatient cuts that make the story feel rushed.
Too little too late comes a breakneck plot twist that attempts to definitively draw a line between the good guys and the bad guys. In the dark, there are only shades of gray, but Inheritance isn’t elegant enough to navigate them. The film’s tiptoeing around the darkest inclinations of the family patriarch rob the story of its real moral dilemma and its real fun.
There is definitely fun to be had in the final 20 minutes of the film. You just have to make it that far.
I Can’t Go Out – Week of May 18
Just one movie transitioning from its theatrical release to streaming platforms, but if you’re ready to brave Target (or want to add one more thing to your cart), loads of new DVD/BluRay options are out there. Here’s a quick walk through.
Click the film title to link to the complete review.
Buffaloed
Emma (DVD)
Onward
Sonic the Hedgehog (DVD)
Brahms: The Boy II
