Tag Archives: Cat McAlpine

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Little Women

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Welcome to Marwen

by Cat McAlpine

Mark Hogancamp awoke from a vicious attack with no memory of his former life. He remembers, vaguely, that five men beat him to the brink of death, that they beat him because he drunkenly mentioned he liked to wear women’s shoes, and that one of his assailants had a swastika tattoo. The rest of his life has been left for Mark to piece together.

No longer able to draw as he once did (or even write his name), Mark finds a new art to work through his trauma. He models dolls after himself and women he knows. The dolls awaken in the town of Marwen every morning to fight five Nazis, again and again.

The real life story was the basis for the wonderful documentary Marwecol in 2010, inspiring director/co-writer Robert Zemeckis to craft his own narrative version,

Steve Carell does his level best as Mark, and connects with an impressive range. But he’s better than this film, and he’s better than this script.

Also occupying the town of Marwen is a mysterious Belgian witch whose obsessive grasp on Captain Hogie (Mark) is so obviously a metaphor for his addiction that she literally disappears from scenes by morphing into the pills Mark takes each morning. And yet, half way through the film, when he’s asked what real life woman the witch is based on, Mark says in wonderment “I don’t know. I don’t know where she came from.” Someone in my theatre laughed.

Welcome to Marwen’s greatest struggle is that it cannot commit to what it wants to be. Half of the film takes place with Mark’s dolls in Marwen, fully animated and pursuing comical fits of violence. The other half of the film follows Mark in real life as a lovable weirdo whose addiction to his medication and rampant PTSD don’t allow him to live far beyond the model village built in his yard.

The dissonance in the film comes from a holding back of sorts. It never gets quite as weird or fantastical as it could. The real world plot of Mark’s life is boring and predictable. The whole film feels like a concession between Zemeckis’s vision, and what he thought the audience might want to see. Instead, he ends up with something from an alternate universe Hallmark channel.

Worst of all, is the film’s bizarre commoditization of women. Mark fashions dolls from the hobby shop into sexier, more violent versions of women he knows in real life. None of these women seem upset or worried about their doll counterparts, disturbing though they are. Especially when one of the dolls is molded after his favorite porn star.

The film leads by making a joke of calling the women “dolls”, and then uses this joke to consistently refer to them as such moving forward. Twice Welcome to Marwen milks a joke out of a doll’s shirt being ripped open to expose her chest. Mark says he wears women’s shoes because he loves women so much, it helps him connect with their essence. His G. I. Alter Ego, Captain Hogie, screams in a triumphant moment, “Women are the saviors of the world!”

So. Mark can be celebrated for being brave enough to wear women’s shoes, but women’s clothing reduces them to sexualized objects.
Mark’s life seems to be defined by his failure to find a woman to love. His entire fantasy world is based on the idea that women can and will save him. The idea of women is celebrated, but women themselves are only treated as vehicles for romance or items waiting to be idealized. And there’s more. But a review should only be so long and disappointed.

Women aren’t here to fix you, or to save you. And they certainly couldn’t save Welcome to Marwen.

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Wheels Keep On Turnin’

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Mortal Engines

by Cat McAlpine

As the credits rolled, I turned to my friend  and said, with horror, “I think that would’ve been better…as a trilogy.”

What’s that? You’ve had your fill of YA Dystopian trilogies? You’re damn right.

But Mortal Engines suffers from the age-old curse of having a book’s worth of content in a single movie. And while that movie is OVER TWO HOURS LONG, it still feels overstuffed with backstories and subplots around the basic premise: large, predator cities on wheels roam the landscape consuming weaker cities.

It starts off well.

Okay. That’s a lie. It starts off with an exposition voice over providing bare minimum world-building that we get again in dialogue, not 10 minutes later.

Then, it starts off well. We’re treated to an opening high speed chase that delightfully plays like the bastard child of Howl’s Moving Castle and Mad Max: Fury Road that Mortal Engines so desperately wants to be.

Robert Sheehan is effortlessly lovable as Tom. Hera Hilmer is brooding and feral as Hester Shaw. And to the credit of both, Tom and Hester have some sputtering chemistry. There’s just nothing in the script to support a real connection between them. Which leaves Hugo Weaving to shine as he savors his villainous role, simplified though it is, as Thaddeus Valentine, .

With fun action sequences, CGI that melds almost seamlessly with the set, and a rousing score the movie is set up for success. Despite director Christian Rivers’s best efforts, ultimately the script just isn’t good. Penned by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson (who also produced) the Mortal Engines script stuffs so much context into two hours that it all but abandons real character development. And decent dialogue.

The ending of the Mortal Engines novel, the first in a series of four, is much more emotionally complicated than that of the film. The film, in fact, is painfully predictable. The more I investigate the source material (thanks Wikipedia) the more it seems the writers have sacrificed all the wrong parts of this story to make it more marketable.

Mortal Engines has a lot to say about colonialism, class struggles, capitalism, environmentalism, life after death, the will to live, and the courage to love. But it’s boiled all of its points down to catchphrases delivered in passing by characters whose names you can’t remember.

The whole b plot and an easy five supporting character could’ve been cut to give this story room to breathe. Instead, supporting characters randomly disappear to never be heard from again. An additional tragic backstory adds a full 40 minutes (give or take). These moving parts fill out a novel; they bloat a two hour adaptation.

Every time a new wonder was unveiled—an elevator made from the London Eye or a city floating among the clouds—I giggled with glee. Every time someone opened their mouths, I rolled my eyes. Mortal Engines exists in a fascinating and bizarre world, but we’re never really given the opportunity to fall in love with that world.

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Les Demoiselles d’Avignon!

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Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc

by Cat McAlpine

I do not like the works of Picasso.

I recognize that his paintings changed the course of art forever, and they are done with incredible skill and talent. I just don’t like them. They’re not my jam.

I also did not like Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc. But art isn’t always about whether you like it or not. And, unfortunately, art is almost never about me.

Jeannette is beautiful, absurd, and a true test of endurance. I’ve read that Bruno Dumont does not cast experienced actors. That much is painfully obvious from a litany of bizarre deliveries, missed high notes, and the ultimate theatre sin: I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-my-hands thigh slaps.

In harsh contrast to the period, pastoral landscape and costuming is the original soundtrack from avant-garde band Igorrr, full of electric guitar riffs that all sounded the same even twenty minutes in. The accompanying choreography, always including stomping and head banging, is as bizarre as it is uncomfortable.

After the third pitchy prayer to god by doe-eyed Lise Leplat Prudhomme, I stopped asking Jeanette to be a musical. I waited for Jeanette to simply be… whatever it wanted to be.

Hark! Deliverance! Director Dumont hits his bizarre and delightful stride when identical twins Elise and Aline Charles play Madame Gervaise simultaneously. They speak quickly and flatly, alternating between speaking in turn and in unison. “I” they chorus. They chastise Prudhomme’s Jeannette for questioning God. They are the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of eternal suffering.

Later, the Charles sisters appear as floating visions of saints. I realize that Jeanette is unfolding like a Medieval epic poem. Characters call to God, visions appear from nowhere, and the choreography mimics the exaggerated gestures of much older theatrical performances. The longer scenes drag on the more they make insane sense.

Not much happens in Jeannette. A solid 80% of the film is shot from the same angle in the same field. The characters talk in circles about eternal suffering and God’s plan for France. It gets tedious. Boring.

There’s a glimpse into the true absurdity of Dumont’s vision when we finally see into an older Jeanne’s home (played now by a righteous Jeanne Voisin, much better than her young counterpart). Jeanne’s brothers, with no lines, undulate as her father sings their work order for the day. Her uncle (a green but intriguing Nicolas Leclaire, who raps instead of singing) writhes in the corner, throwing in a few dabs for good measure.

The height of lunacy is where Dumont is most brilliant. If anything, his greatest hindrance was not going big enough. Dream on, my dear Dumont. Surely you’re doing something important for the rest of the film world. It’s just not my jam. And that’s okay.

Outtakes

I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of June 11

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Movies, movies and more movies out this week for those of us too lazy to leave the damn house. You can watch a movie that will tear your heart out, or watch an about-effing-time teen romance. Middling horror and action also await your loungy ass, so dig right in!

Loveless

Love, Simon

The Strangers: Prey at Night

Tomb Raider

For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of May 23

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Heaps of movies to veg out and watch from the couch this week. We got docs, we got historical dramas, we got cartoons, we got action flicks. We got it all, and we’ll help you sort it.

Click the film title for the full review.

Paddington 2

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

Hostiles

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool

Den of Thieves

Maze Runner: The Death Cure

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Bury Your Gold

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The China Hustle

by Cat McAlpine

Are you still upset about the 2008 housing crash? Of course you are. We all are. Ten years ago banks put the American dream up for sale and the market inevitably collapsed in on itself.

But when the American people were trying to pull themselves back up by their bootstraps, the financial industry had already moved on. To China.

Get ready to look up at the glistening spires of capitalism only to realize we’re all huddled under a house of cards.

Writer/Director Jed Rothestein weaves a thrilling, terrifying tale about the next financial disaster awaiting our country. Some of your neighbors have already lost their life savings. The current administration is actively stripping away financial regulations between the average investor and billions of dollars in fraud. Shady deals are happening now, and honestly, there’s probably nothing you can do about it.

Rothestein calls on the full spectrum of documentary devices: talking heads, voice-over narration, cartoon re-enactments, visual graphics, and more. They work for the most part, but some of the b-roll seems out of place. The most effective and evocative imagery is a series of long, sweeping drone shots of cities and factories.

Rothstein really hits his stride when short-seller Dan David tours his hometown of Flint, MI. Flint is the poster child of blue-collar suffering for white-collar crimes. The camera captures haunting images of the town that really reflect the tangible repercussions of corporate fraud.

China Hustle warns us of a new danger on the horizon. Billions of dollars are propped up in the empty shells of defunct American companies, waiting to collapse.

And then there’s the warning of a larger danger, entrenched in the very fabric of our society. No one is looking out for the American people. The SEC, the accreditation firms, the lawyers, and the bankers—they all invest in their own interests. Even the men blowing the whistle on fraudulent Chinese companies first make money off of them.

“Companies have companies’ best interests at heart.”

And that’s the real hustle.

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All Rivers End in Waterfalls

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Tomb Raider

by Cat McAlpine

Halfway through the new Tomb Raider, I thought to myself: “Well, you can’t have this kind of movie without those archetypes.” You know the ones: reluctant hero, loyal sidekick, irredeemable bad guy, henchmen with machine guns.

And then I second guessed myself, “Can you?”

That’s Tomb Raider’s most damning feature—it’s so familiar that it’s forgettable.

It’s not that Tomb Raider ISN’T fun (it is) or exciting (bike races, waterfalls, and bringing a bow to a gunfight, oh my!). It’s just that the relentless action is tired. The few connections between characters are forced or thrown away.

Alicia Vikander (Ex-Machina, The Danish Girl) gets few genuine moments to act, and she crushes it, but director Roar Uthaug seems afraid of the intimacy between Vikander and the camera. Every time she connects with a real emotion, the camera cuts away to a wide shot.

The exposition and key plot points are repeatedly spoon-fed to the audience. Lara Croft (Vikander) has to repeat each clue out loud as she discovers the answer to a riddle. Ugh.

And I’ve never seen a flashback that couldn’t be replaced with better writing. Tomb Raider has a lot of flashbacks.

“But Cat!” You say. “You’re a notorious hater. Didn’t you like anything?”

I’m so glad you asked.

When I sat down in the theatre, I wrote down a few primer questions, betraying my predictions for the film. They were these:

Is the male gaze present? Are the fight scenes realistic or stylized? Does it accurately echo the video game? How is the dialogue? Is there romance or just action? Are there other women in the film? People of color? Is there comedy? Is it predictable?

Good news: the male gaze is noticeably absent and Lara Croft is a genuine badass.

All the hand-to-hand combat feels realistic though many feats are delightfully improbable. Those improbable feats crisply reflect the basic mechanics of a video game: swinging from a hanging rope, traveling hand over hand along a railing, moving quietly through an encampment unnoticed.

There are other women and more diversity than expected, but not enough. A story that starts out vibrantly quickly narrows focus to a bunch of white people (plus sidekicks) fighting over a mystery of the Orient, while laborers (POC) who don’t speak English are gunned down for dramatic effect. #yikes

While I was glad that Lara got to kick ass without any romantic entanglements, I was genuinely disappointed that there wasn’t any real tension between her and Lu Ren (Daniel Wu, a great addition).

In summation, if someone wants to go to the movies this weekend, Tomb Raider is a fine pick. There’s a badass heroine, a handful of chuckles, and enough action to numb your brain for an hour and a half.

But it doesn’t redeem nearly as many sins of its genre as it repeats. It’s a predictable action adventure. No more, no less.

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Grist for the Emotional Mill

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Submission

by Cat McAlpine

Submission opens with the sardonic narration of an exhausted novelist/professor. His internal monologue sounds a lot like the opening to a novel but his book, we discover, isn’t being written. Ted Swenson (Stanley Tucci) is uncomfortable, unhappy, and uninspired. Then, in waltzes the first conscious student he’s had in years, Angela Argo (an incredible Addison Timlin).

Writer/director Richard Levine adapts Francie Prose’s 2000 novel Blue Angel (based on Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 film The Blue Angel, which is in turn based on Heinrich Mann’s 1905 novel Professor Unrat). Clearly, the story is not a new one. Fortunately, while the plot feels overwhelmingly predictable, the building tension is immense, largely pulled taught by the strong turns of Tucci and Timlin.

The performances, across the board, carry the film. Kyra Sedgewick is so natural on screen it’s breathtaking. She is also the only likable character, as Ted’s content and then suffering wife. Colby Minifie is delightfully nasty in her short scene as the Swensons’ daughter.

Levine does the good work of leaving breadcrumbs without pointing to them with a neon arrow. It’s hard to trust your audience (mother! being a timely example) but like a good novel, this film works because of its layers. And also because Stanley Tucci can do anything.

Surely a teacher/student affair between two narcissistic artists can’t end well, but I’ll leave the how and why to your viewing.

Honestly, I wanted a little more from Submission. I wanted to know more about the tragic death of Swenson’s father. I wanted to know why Swenson’s daughter hated him. I was desperate to know which of Angela’s somber backstories were real and which were contrived. I wanted more cause to care about the destruction of a man’s family. And shockingly, I wanted more voiceovers ripped from the pages of the resulting novels.

But I guess I’ll just have to read the book.

Submission’s inevitable resolution suggests that no matter the terrible things we do, we’re all just potential fodder for America’s next great novel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL1ftT3ANYM

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A Very Rare Sort of Bear

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Paddington 2

by Cat McAlpine

Paddington 2 paints a beautiful, pop-up love letter to London. It breaks down something like this:

Wes Anderson aesthetic + Lemony Snicket whimsy + marmalade = Paddington Bear’s latest adventure.

Sure, this is a kid’s movie. The main character is a talking bear. His greatest aspiration is to buy a rare pop-up book of London for his Aunt’s birthday. In most ways, the film is predictable. Almost rote. But there’s some sparkle there, too.

Firstly, the movie is incredibly well lit. Lighting this good has no business in a children’s film’s sequel. And yet there it is. Warm yellow homes, moody shafts of light through window panes, snowy alleyways. That light isn’t wasted either. It illuminates bright, punchy sets and colorful costumes hung on a parade of quirky characters.

The Wes Anderson inspiration shows up in bright green rooms and pastel pink prison uniforms. Director Paul King finds sweetness in even life’s most ordinary moments. Where he cannot find sweetness, in a grimy pipe or a shattered telephone box, he finds curiosity instead, playing with light and camera angles.

Following a pop-up book of London, King makes sure to hit all of London’s beloved landmarks. London is a part of Paddington’s mythology. It’s a magical kingdom full of fun and mystery. King paints the city beautifully.

Secondly, what a cast. Sally Hawkins, fresh off her incredible performance in The Shape of Water, oozes gumption. English favorites parade across the screen: Peter Capaldi, Richard Ayoade, Brendan Gleeson.

None quite as fun, though, as Hugh Grant in his role as an unhinged stage actor. As the baddie, Grant never slips into evil. Nefarious, yes, but never evil. King keeps his film silly, always, but never allows it to be hollow.

For every predictable gag there’s a genuinely funny moment, too. Good children’s films cater to their whole audience, kids and parents. Its important to screen films like these in theatres. I was reminded of this when a character passed out, face down, into a cake. The children in the audience shrieked with delight.

That’s Paddington 2’s final merit. It’s good natured. It has jokes, visual gags, and constant reminders to be kind. Paddington believes in himself, his family, and his friends. Sure, a children’s film about a talking bear isn’t destined to be profound. But it manages to be sweet all the way through, just like marmalade.

So that happened...

Face Off

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by Cat McAlpine

I have many fears.

I am afraid of heights. I am afraid of the dark. I am afraid of deep water. I am afraid I will never realize my potential, or that the car I just passed on the side of the road really did need my help, or that I’ll never get out of debt. I am afraid of how big the universe is and how small I am. The usual.

But the fear I encounter the most is my fear of small spaces.

I’m not afraid of being crushed. I’m afraid of not being able to get out of a small space, and then being probably crushed. Or suffocating.

This fear manifests in many places. On the tube in London, a crowded car would remind me that all of those hot, sweating bodies were stuffed in a tiny tin can, that was then stuffed into a cement tunnel.

Concerts are typically a non-starter. There’s nothing worse than being mocked by a glowing exit sign from the middle of a writhing crowd of bodies.

Given my litany of fears, you’d think I’d never leave the house. But I endure. And I push myself to confront my fears. I swim in lakes and cross rooms without turning on the light.

I just do it all while a very loud voice in my head screams “OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD YOU’RE GONNA DIE”.

When my friend, and local filmmaker, Michelle Hanson asked me if I’d be willing to be decapitated for her upcoming horror film, I didn’t realize I’d be confronting my greatest fear.

“A cast of my head?”

“Yeah!”

“Oh my god yes! Can I keep it?”

A few weeks before we were set to do the live face cast, (They call it this. Is there a dead face cast? Don’t tell me.) Michelle sent me a video via email. “Here’s the process. Watch this and let me know if you have any questions.”

I didn’t watch the video. I worried it might freak me out.

A few days before the cast, a friend asked me who was coming with me. I had planned to just meet Michelle there.

My friend looked nervous. “I’m NOT claustrophobic and I had to hold someone’s hand the whole time I got mine done.”

“I’m sure it will be fine” I told myself. The little voice had started to whisper “But what if you diiiieeeee?”

When I entered the prosthetics space, a small rented room lined with monster heads and spare limbs, I gave myself a few minutes to settle in. Then I dropped my bomb.

“Hey, I didn’t want to freak anybody out, but super casually I’m actually really claustrophobic.”

The room went silent as Michelle, and the two face-technicians (sure) stared at me in horror. Then there was a flurry of questions and pointers.

“Didn’t you watch the video I sent you?”

“It will probably be fine, most people are fine.”

“Let us know if you start panicking.”

“How claustrophobic?”

“It will take 30 minutes, tops.”

And then one of the technicians said something truly terrifying.

“Here’s the thing. If you freak out, its gonna take us just as long to get the thing off of you as it will to sit and wait until it’s dry. So you might as well just wait and not ruin the mold.” This man clearly had no fears.

No way out.

I tried to play it cool. I am not sure if this was successful or not. But I smiled and lightly joked as they taped a trashbag to my shoulders, glued on a bald cap, and vaselined my eyebrows.

face2

“Okay, so we’re gonna cover your face in this goo-“ I don’t remember what any of it was called now, my inner voice was screaming, “- and then we’re going to put this cast material over that. As soon as it’s dry, we’ll take it off. When we cover your nose, just take one deep breath, and then blow air out of your nose really hard, and you should be able to breathe.”

Should. Be. Able. To. Breathe.

So I played it cool up to that point. And I played it cool as the technicians smeared by face with goo the consistency of clay. They covered my ears and I realized I couldn’t really hear. They covered my forehead. And then they covered my eyes. And the thick goo started to roll down my face. As the sludge crested my cheeks I lost it.

“Okay, uh, I’m gonna need to hold someone’s hand.”

face5

I heard a distant, under water “How you doing?”

I couldn’t move above my elbows, so I simply gave a weak thumbs up. Michelle’s small hand had found me, and was giving a reassuring pat.

And then my mouth was sealed. And my cheeks. And my nose.

“Are you gonna cover the nostrils?” One technician asked.

“Uh…. No. I think I’m just going to fill in around it.” The other answered.

Still_alive

I’d been snorting out air like a wild horse, in a desperate attempt to keep clay from blocking my airway.

I realized I hadn’t asked how I was going to get out, but it was too late. I was buried alive. Every once in a while a technician would come by and tap on the cast to see if it had dried. I couldn’t hear them approach, but when they tapped on my face, it sounded like dirt thudding on the lid of a coffin.

“HELP!” the voice screamed. “I’M STILL ALIVE IN HERE.”

They told me the whole process would take about 30 minutes. I was there for an hour and a half. I didn’t ask how long I was entombed. I don’t think I want to know. But eventually, after many weak thumbs up and hundreds of nostrils-only breaths, I heard tearing.

They were cutting away my fake face.

face6

I want to say that when they peeled away the cast and goo, I was reborn. I was without fear or doubt. I had conquered claustrophobia.

But I’m sweating right now just thinking about it.

I don’t know if you can conquer a fear. Maybe you just have a string of terrifying experiences in mosh-pits and crowded elevators. Maybe you just have to find someone to hold your hand, and live to tell the tale.

That head better look fucking awesome.