Tag Archives: Hope Madden

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Truth and Consequences

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Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

The latest from Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu may be uneven and frustrating at times, but do not be tardy. The first three minutes of the film, while showcasing only light, shadow and landscape, unveil the most mesmerizing opening we’ve seen in a damn long time.

And good news, it’s just an appetizer for the two and a half hours of visual delights that follow.

Crafting self-indulgence into sometimes breathtaking art, Iñárritu turns his characteristic cinematic style inward for the sorta-semi-autobiographical Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.

“If you don’t know how to fool around, you don’t deserve to be taken seriously.” So says the Iñárritu stand-in, Silverio Game (Daniel Giménez-Cacho, terrific), a journalist-turned-documentarian who yearns to show emotion rather than fact.  

Silverio’s about to be presented with a big award in L.A., which only triggers a series of introspections that attempt to reconcile an imposter complex with a need for recognition, global fame with his Mexican identity, and a general distaste for the state of his profession.

Visually, Iñárritu pulls no punches, reminding us of the fluid wonder that characterized his films from Babel to Biutiful to Birdman and The Revenant. Here those tactics conjure a dreamlike reality, simultaneously playful and bitter, ideal to reflect the reminiscences and wallowing preoccupations of an artist brooding on his accomplishments and shortcomings.

The narrative is bloated and rambling, which Silverio freely acknowledges as Iñárritu (who also co-wrote the script with frequent collaborator Nicolás Giacobone) continues indulging his self-indulgence. Giménez-Cacho finds sympathy in Silverio’s identity crisis, and it’s fascinating to feel both the push and pull of Iñárritu‘s approach. We embrace it for the shot-making but resist it while the artist tries to tell us where his artistry takes root.

The metaphors, symbolism and contradictions pile on, along with enough jaw-dropping framing to make you realize this could be in an unknown language with zero subtitles and it would still be worth seeing.

“Life is a brief series of senseless events,” Silverio tells us. Maybe. And though Bardo may not be brief and its sense can be confounding, there’s no denying its beauty.

Indulge yourself. See it on the big screen.

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Song of the Condor

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Utama

by Hope Madden

Per Quechua tradition, when a condor decides its life has lost its purpose, it flies to the top of the mountain, then closes its wings to die on the rocks below. It’s a heavy metaphor, and one that suits not only Utama’s hero Virginio (José Calcina) but perhaps the entire Quechua way of life.

Virginio and his wife Sisi (Luisa Guispe) live in the Bolivian highlands where they keep a small herd of llamas. But it’s been months since it rained. The well in the town several miles away is dry, and now Sisi has to make an even longer walk to a faraway river. Even the snow at the top of the mountain is gone.

To make matters worse, Virginio’s cough has gotten deeper and more insistent. Their grandson Clever’s (Santos Choque) unexpected visit further throws the pair’s generally calm and simple life into chaos.

In a stunning feature debut, writer/director Alejandro Loayza Grisi develops this simple premise into both an intimate tale of survival and a global allegory of time, change and destruction.

Gorgeous Bolivian panoramas tell half the tale on their own, and the filmmaker’s framing is exceptional. Unlikely heroes disappear Eastwood-like into sunsets, jauntily festooned llamas crane their necks curiously about. Each splash of color feels like an act of bravery. Cinematographer Barbara Alvarez merges joy and sorrow in every image, her execution of Grisi’s vision simultaneously serene and forbidding, but always gorgeous.

Sweetly heartbreaking performances from Guispe and Calcina deliver lived-in, enduring love that ensures the tale never tips too far toward symbol. You care deeply about what happens to these two. The authenticity of their work gives the film an almost documentary feel that only deepens its effect.

Beautiful beyond measure but never showy, deliberate, and set among elderly people of a tiny community high in the hills of Bolivia, a film like Utama feels impossible.

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Left Behind

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Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle

by Hope Madden

In 1974, Hiroo Onoda found out World War II was over and that he could return to Japan from the Philippine jungle where he’d been hiding since 1944. This is true. This happened. And it feels like such a tragic squandering of a lifetime that you almost have to cling to the absurdity of it, make it a joke.

Instead, French filmmaker Arthur Harari mines Onoda’s story to examine the more universal if romantic theme of finding meaning in your own life.

Across nearly three hours we travel with Onoda, from the drunken dishonor of his recruitment – he’d been rejected as a pilot because he was afraid to die – through the training that would make him believe in his singular mission, on to that mission and the decades of reimagining reality to create something in keeping with that mission.

Harari’s film glides easily from war story to survival tale to odd couple bromance, each shift marking a passage of time and a new reality for Onoda.

Almost immediately upon landing in the Philippines, Lubang Island fell to the Allies. Onoda, a novice intelligence officer, convinced six men to remain with him rather than surrendering, assuring the troops that their mission was to regain control of the island no matter the circumstances.

Hiroo Onoda – as portrayed in youth by Yûya Endô but in particular in mournful old age by Kanji Tsuda ­– is a mixture of sorrowful elegance rarely depicted with such humanity in a war film. The vulnerability both actors bring to the role creates a soldier worthy of empathy rather than mockery.

Onoda’s second in command, Kozuka – whether played in youth by Yûya Matsuura or in maturity by Tetsuya Chiba – becomes the bold and tender heart of the film. Passionate and foolhardy, he’s a wonderful counterpoint to Onoda’s quiet discipline. Both pairings of actors create compelling rapport, but Tsuda and Chiba are especially heartbreaking.

Eventually, of course, Onoda is found. A tourist of luxurious means (Taiga Nakano) put finding Onoda on his list of must-dos, right up there with finding a Yeti. Once found, the tourist’s flippant privilege in the face of Onoda’s unimaginable loss and confusion perfectly encapsulates the shift in cultural ideals and the sheer self-congratulatory idiocy of the 1970s. But with limited screen time, Nakano acquits his generation nicely.

Harari’s film is lovely, heartbreaking and respectful. Onoda becomes not just an anomaly, an oddity, but an image of a generation lost and a promise forgotten.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Best John Carpenter Horror Movies

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Our Christmas gift to ourselves this year is a walk through the career of horror master John Carpenter. Yes, we did want to include Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York. But we stayed strong, because we still had to sift through so many genre classics to determine which five would rise to the top.

5. The Fog (1980)

Stevie Wayne (director John Carpenter favorite, at least while they were married, Adrienne Barbeau) does an air shift from a studio in that old lighthouse out on Antonio Bay. But the fog rolling in off the bay is just too thick tonight. It’s as if she’s entirely alone in the world. Can anyone hear her? Will someone go check on her young son?

While a lot does not work in Carpenter’s pirate leper ghost story (leper pirates?!), his first theatrical release after Halloween does hit some of the right marks. The vulnerability of a radio DJ – totally isolated while simultaneously exposed – has never been more palpable than in this film.

Jamie Lee Curtis (another Carpenter favorite) joins her mom Janet Leigh and B-horror legend Tom Atkins to fill out the pool of leper pirate bait. While the film is hardly one of Carpenter’s best, his knack for framing, his voyeuristic camera, and his ability to generate scares with a meager budget are on full display.

4. They Live (1988)

More SciFi and action than horror, still John Carpenter’s vision of an elite class using tech to mollify and control the population of the US was eerily prescient. And horrifying.

At the time, though, it was just plain entertaining in a way that married Carpenter’s own iconic Escape from New York vibe with the SciFi horror miniseries of the day, V.

But mainly, it’s Rowdy Roddy Piper chewing bubble gum, and the 6 1/2 minute fight scene between Piper and undeniable badass Keith David that make this film as fun to watch today as it was when it was released.

3. In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Sutter Cane may be awfully close to Stephen King, but John Carpenter’s cosmic horror is even more preoccupied by Lovecraft. The great Sam Neill leads a fun cast in a tale of madness as created by the written world.

What if those horror novels you read became reality? What if that sketchy writer with the maybe-too-vivid imagination was not just got to his own page, but god for real? This movie tackles that ripe premise while ladling love for both of the horror novelists who made New England the creepiest section of America.

2. Halloween (1978)

No film is more responsible for the explosion of teen slashers than John Carpenter’s babysitter butchering classic.

From the creepy opening piano notes to the disappearing body ending, this low budget surprise changed everything. Carpenter develops anxiety like nobody else, and plants it right in a wholesome Midwestern neighborhood. You don’t have to go camping or take a road trip or do anything at all – the boogeyman is right there at home.

Michael Myers – that hulking, unstoppable, blank menace – is scary. Pair that with the down-to-earth charm of lead Jamie Lee Curtis, who brought a little class and talent to the genre, and add the bellowing melodrama of horror veteran Donald Pleasance, and you’ve hit all the important notes. Just add John Carpenter’s spare score to ratchet up the anxiety. Perfect.

1.  The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter’s remake of the 1951 SciFi flick The Thing from Another World concocts a thoroughly spectacular tale of icy isolation, contamination, and mutation.

A beard-tastic cast portrays a team of scientists on expedition in the Arctic who take in a dog. The dog is not a dog, though. Not really. And soon, in an isolated wasteland with barely enough interior room to hold all the facial hair, folks are getting jumpy because there’s no knowing who’s not really himself anymore.

This is an amped up body snatcher movie benefitting from some of Carpenter’s most cinema-fluent and crafty direction: wide shots when we need to see the vastness of the unruly wilds; tight shots to remind us of the close quarters with parasitic death inside.

The story remains taut, beginning to end, and there’s rarely any telling just who is and who is not infected by the last reel. You’re as baffled and confined as the scientists.

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On With the Show

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Empire of Light

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

There are certain actors – you know the ones – who seem to put out a film every year right at awards season. The people who somehow never have a straight-to-VOD indie or a summer romp, just yearly Oscar vehicles.

For at least one of these people it is a welcome return visit, year after year.

Hello, Olivia Colman.

Seriously, is there anyone who does not love her? Any filmmaker, any actor, any moviegoer? Her performances are shamelessly, giddily human, authentic to a chilling degree. Her force of nature in Sam Mendes’s ode to the cinema, Empire of Light, is no different.

Mendes’s 2019 epic 1917 showed him a master of pacing, understated emotion and visceral thrill. Back in 2012, he made an almost Shakespearean Bond film, easily the strongest in the entire franchise with Skyfall. For Empire of Light, the filmmaker ­– who also wrote the script ­ – returns to the more sentimental content of his earlier career.

Colman is Hilary, the troubled, often melancholy manager of a coastal England cinema in the very early 1980s. A wonderful supporting cast – from the kindly Toby Jones to the prickly Colin Firth, the tender Michael Ward to surprising Tom Brooke ­– surrounds Colman with sparring partners up to the challenge.

Mendes’s tale, at its heart, revels not just in the magic of the movies, but of the movie house itself. Most of the patrons seem to come to the screenings alone, looking to escape the loneliness, the mundane, or the rising tide of extremism right outside those glass doors.

And though the crowds aren’t as large as they once were, the theater still has something to offer – as does Hilary. Her dutiful existence is shaken by the younger Stephen (Ward, outstanding) joining the crew, and together they start exploring some forgotten areas of the once majestic cinema.

The metaphor isn’t subtle, and the film’s tone is overtly nostalgic, but because Colman’s character is anything but typical, Mendes punctures his own sentimentality before it can become overbearing. Gorgeous framing from the great Roger Deakins doesn’t hurt, bathing it all in a grand beauty that reinforces what power can come from that certain beam of light.

The pandemic has drawn out no shortage of filmmakers who’ve been understandably inspired to assess their life’s work. With Empire of Light, Mendes is wearing his heart on his cupholder, imploring us to value what the theater has to offer.

This film can offer the exquisite Colman and a stellar ensemble, and that’s just enough. Through them, Mendes finds impact in his sweetness, rising above the moments that seem engineered for an ad that runs right before the one telling you not to talk or text.

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And the Tissue Goes To

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Spoiler Alert

by Hope Madden

In 2017, Michael Showalter directed the best romantic comedy of the modern age, The Big Sick. So, even though the majority of his filmography feels like a near miss – The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Lovebirds, Hello My Name Is Doris – whatever he delivers, I want to open. Even an avowed tear-jerker, even the same week I see The Whale. I loved The Big Sick so much, I gladly signed up for two public displays of bawling.

And yet…

Spoiler Alert is Michael Ausiello’s (Jim Parsons) true tale of romance, loss and sitcom love. A TV Guide writer, Michael tended to look back on his tragic childhood as if it were an 80s sitcom, replete with life lessons and a laugh track.

Showalter stages these moments like they are right out of Gimme a Break or any of that era’s centrally located couch-and-hijinks programs. They stand out, not because they’re clever or funny, but because they don’t fit in a film that is otherwise a tender if traditionally structured tragedy.

The socially awkward Ausiello meets and quickly falls for gorgeous, fun-loving Kit Cowan (Ben Aldridge). This ushers us into the sweet and odd moments (Ausiello has an extreme Smurf collection) that mark the couple’s development.

Showalter works from Dan Savage and David Marshall Grant’s adaptation of Ausiello’s book. The writers have primarily done TV – a medium clearly suited to Parsons. And here’s where the film really stumbles. Spoiler Alert is, of course, not a TV show and only feels like a TV show on occasions that pull you out of an emotional moment. Rather than creating a narrative thread or even an interesting gimmick, the TV angle distracts – sometimes quite frustratingly – from what otherwise feels like a very honest and necessary look at love.

Showalter alum and all-American gem Sally Field brings needed authenticity to the film, and Aldridge often excels as the hot Oscar to Parsons’s Felix. Plus, the sometimes frank sexuality is more than welcome.

But none of it fits. The framework – Ausiello delivering his life story as if he’s recounting a favorite TV show – is distracting at best. It robs the film of its passion and guarantees the feeling of inauthenticity. It has its moments, but it never delivers any honest laughter or tears.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Violent Night, Eternal Daughter, The Inspection, A Wounded Fawn, Salvatore & More

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Violent Night, The Eternal Daughter, The Inspection, Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, Nanny, The Harbinger, Amigo, A Wounded Fawn, Hunt, Four Samosas

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Lonely in Your Nightmare

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The Harbinger

by Hope Madden

What Andy Mitton’s The Harbinger does well is remind you how desperate the early days of lockdown were. How scary. How lonely. This was especially true for anyone quarantining alone. It must have felt like the world would just go on without you. You’d be forgotten entirely.

Mavis (Emily Davis) is alone, and she is not taking to lockdown well. Her dreams are terrifying and almost unending. When Mavis falls asleep, she doesn’t wake up, sometimes for days, trapped the entire time in a horrifying nightmare. Her friend Mo (Gabby Beans) leaves the comfort and relative safety of the home she shares with her father and brother because Mavis has no one else to call.

Mitton’s film combines collective trauma with existential dread, mirroring the kind of terror that caves in on you when you don’t work, don’t leave home, and fear everything: surfaces, people, the air in your building. It’s a true nightmare, and one you can’t wake up from.

The isolation, the stench of death, it all inspired any number of horror films. Mitton animates that collective ordeal as effectively as anyone working in the genre. He marries the graphic reality of the pandemic with an internal descent, reflecting more than a society’s fear of death. What he sees is the way lockdown, hivemind, misinformation and isolation made people forget who they were.

Davis delivers a solid turn as one wearied to the point of death by quarantine, but it’s Beans’s resilient, naturalistic performance that grounds the unreality in uneasy truth. Mitton’s script sometimes relies on tropes that feel too obvious for his unusual story, and in the end, it’s an overreliance on genre mechanisms that keeps the film from really cutting free from expectations and saying something truly fresh.

But there’s no question he hits a nerve because very few changes need to be made to the reality of 2020 for it to be a nerve-wracking horror show.

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Mirror Mirror

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The Eternal Daughter

by Hope Madden

Joanna Hogg makes movies about making movies about her life. This should not be confused with making movies about her life, that would be too straightforward. What she captures is the act of creating something from the strands of her experience. But somehow, in her hands, this added layer of artifice allows for increased intimacy, or at least introspection.

Hogg’s latest follows a middle-aged filmmaker named Julie (Tilda Swinton) who, with her mother (Swinton again), revisits a grand old English manor that was once a family estate but is now a lovely if mysteriously empty inn.

Hogg draws attention to The Eternal Daughter’s movie-ness from the opening shot of headlights in rolling fog, a score reminiscent of classic British hillside horror drawing attention to itself. Here are the genre tropes, Hogg seems to say. This will be a ghost story.

The Eternal Daughter reunites the filmmaker and Swinton, who played mother opposite her own daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne, in Hogg’s The Souvenir, parts 1 and 2. Byrne’s character, a filmmaker named Julie, was a clear stand-in for Hogg. An actual mother and daughter played mother and daughter, although the daughter was simultaneously playing the film’s director as a budding film director. That’s a lot of overlapping whatnot. But it worked, partly because Julie’s relationship with her mother – perhaps reflecting Byrne’s relationship with Swinton – brimmed with tenderness.

In The Eternal Daughter, Swinton plays the Hogg stand-in as she reprises her role as Julie’s now aged mother. It sounds like a lot to keep track of, but there’s really no need. The film boils down to an opportunity to watch Tilda Swinton play multiple roles, which – as Guadagnino’s 2018 Suspiria proved – is always a good idea. Here she delivers two distinct characters, each spilling with love and bristling with disappointment for the other.

All of it sounds like a gimmick: Swinton playing two roles, Swinton playing the director, the director working out issues with her own mother in a film about a filmmaker working out issues with her mother. But none of it feels gimmicky. Rather, it all creates the space for Hogg to rework facts in order to tell difficult, universal truths.

The film’s deliberate pace and overtly reflective nature will irritate impatient moviegoers, and its plot turns are sure to disappoint true genre fans. But what Hogg’s crafted is a film that haunts, whether the specter is supernatural or not.

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Semper Fi

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The Inspection

by Hope Madden

We’ve seen it so many times, often very effectively. A sloppy recruit, someone with nothing to lose but himself, does just that during boot camp. Maybe it ends in ambivalence and horror (Full Metal Jacket), maybe it ends in heroism and an unwitting invasion of Czechoslovakia (Stripes), maybe it ends in romance (An Officer and a Gentleman).

While the story that writer/director Elegance Bratton (Pier Kids) tells with The Inspection follows those familiar beats, it’s messier, more frustrating, more honest and more human than all the others together. As it should be, since it is his own story.

Jeremy Pope delivers an astonishing, raw performance as Ellis French, a 25-year-old homeless gay Black man. His mother Inez (Gabrielle Union in the finest performance of her career) cast him out at 16. We meet Ellis on the day he enlists in the Marines.

And you thought Bill Murray was going to have a tough time.

While the steps in the screenplay are familiar – the recruit has much to escape in his day-to-day; he joins and gets to know a group of men of different backgrounds, each of whom will be tested alongside him; he comes out the other side a different man. But Ellis French’s stakes are higher, his difficulties are more dangerous, and the lessons learned along the way probably affect those around him more profoundly than they affect him.

Bratton also pulls away from audience expectation by avoiding the cliché of one-dimensional recruit characters. There’s good and bad, heroism and cowardice, in everyone on the screen. In this way Bratton allows a certain moral ambiguity to seep into the film. That gray area becomes the space for forgiveness to take shape.

What Bratton brings to this well-worn story is an idea perfectly realized by Pope. The Inspection is a showcase for the idea that resilience comes from a balance of strength and forgiveness. French finds ways to forgive what to most would be unforgivable. This is how he perseveres. It’s a beautiful, difficult lesson to learn, even for a viewer. But thanks to that resilience, we have this exceptional film.