Tag Archives: Hope Madden

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Eye of the Beholder

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Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

by Hope Madden

Filmmaker Nina Menkes tries to distill the effect of a century of cinema’s male gaze in her documentary Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power. Her focus is the way the language of film – particularly shot design, lighting and sound – subconsciously, insidiously inform how we see not just the film we’re watching, but everything we see everywhere.

Menkes’s doc is essentially a Ted Talk, padded here and there with talking head footage from academics, filmmakers and actors. Their conclusion? Filmmakers can’t fall back on any of the existing language of cinema because this language was developed by men for men, with men as the subject (one who acts) and women as the object (one who is acted upon) of their interest. It’s a language of power, and is used to disempower not only women, but any person or population meant to be seen as subject to the white, heterosexual patriarchy.

Intriguingly, Menkes chooses as examples mainly films universally considered masterpieces – Raging Bull, The Phantom Thread, The Hurt Locker, Do the Right Thing. Her aim is not to diminish each film on its own, but to point out that cinematic techniques that objectify women are so ingrained in filmmaking that even female filmmakers invoke them without thinking.

Menkes’s expert commentary includes Laura Mulvey, who coined the term “male gaze” in her 1973 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” The incomparable Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust) quotes Audre Lourde to explain why even Patty Jenkins and Kathryn Bigelow fall prey to the same disempowering cinematic tendencies in their films. “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

And when women do make films, in all likelihood, we do not see them. Director Eliza Hittman (Never Rarely Sometimes Always, It Felt Like Love) points to one of the many reasons we are so inundated by films awash in objectifying visuals. Men also choose which films are distributed.

The film clips she chooses are often spot on, sometimes head-scratchers. (I would argue that one Phantom Thread sequence is, in fact, an example of Paul Thomas Anderson intentionally subverting a common shot sequence to give the female power.) But more troubling is an over-reliance on her own footage.

Menkes’s brief venture into the lawsuits facing Hollywood studios is too brief. So, too, are sections about the connection between cinema’s treatment of women and Hollywood’s hiring practices, as well as global rape culture.

The arguments she raises are necessary, though. It’s important for women to see how the films we love betray us in large ways and small, and perhaps even more important for all of us to see that this is a structured, intentional device that we should notice and change.

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All In the Family

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Sam & Kate

by Hope Madden

Film right now is littered with “geezer teasers” – lowish budget action flicks with inflated cameos from aging actors who were once the world’s biggest box office draws. Bruce Willis and John Travolta have one right now. Mel Gibson has one every other week.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to see a film that casts veteran actors in challenging roles that respect the actor, their age, and the audience? Yes, it would. The proof is called Kate & Sam.

Dustin Hoffman and Sissy Spacek co-star in the indie dramedy about resilience, grief and family. Hoffman’s Bill, a boisterous widowed veteran, lives modestly with his good-natured son, Sam (Jake Hoffman, coincidentally Dustin Hoffman’s actual son).

Father and son fall, almost simultaneously, for Spacek’s Tina and her daughter, Kate (Schuyler Fisk, coincidentally Spacek’s daughter – not that you could miss it with that pointed little nose).

As much as the family ties may seem like a gimmick, the truth is that they bring unmistakable depth and rapport to the pairings. Writer/director Darren Le Gallo mines this repeatedly in large and small ways to create a believable, rich environment for pathos and love. Even small details breathe with authenticity touched lightly by nostalgia. You can imagine Bill’s recliner and afghan perhaps belonging to Le Gallo’s own father, while the stash of family photos clearly, sweetly come from the Hoffmans.

Le Gallo never condescends, mercifully. His small town is possibly hipper than most, but the way the film expresses a healthy respect for vintage materials is impressive.

Spacek is the adorable, natural presence she’s always been in a film that looks without mockery but with humor at the toll life takes on us all. She and Hoffman are, as expected, excellent. But they never outshine their kids.

Fisk’s elegant, frustrated Kate is a solid anchor for the film’s drama, but Jake Hoffman is its heartbeat. With him in the lead, Le Gallo is able to make a lot of subtle points about fathers and sons, masculinity and acceptance. Most of all, the film balances loss and resilience beautifully.

Le Gallo’s first feature delivers grace and goodwill in ways that are genuinely uncommon. It doesn’t tell a big story, but the story it tells resonates. Yes, he lucked into a dream cast, but they may have been luckier still to have him.

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Fire in the Sky

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My Father’s Dragon

by Hope Madden

Like most animation fans, I eagerly await each new Cartoon Saloon adventure. Their output is simply stunning: Wolfwalkers, The Breadwinner, Song of the Sea, The Secret of the Kells. Even Pixar doesn’t have a stronger batting average.

Nora Twomey directed two of those beauties, The Breadwinner and The Secret of the Kells (which she co-helmed with Tomm Moore). She returns to the screen with the lovely romp about a dragon with a problem and a boy who solves problems, My Father’s Dragon.

Animator Masami Hata first adapted Ruth Stiles Gannett’s beloved 1948 novel for the screen in 1997. Twomey’s update takes advantage of intricate, hand-drawn animation and an impressive voice cast to bring Elmer Elevator’s imaginative journey to life.

Elmer and his mom have left behind their small town and the little store they ran. They’re living on the leaking top floor of an apartment building in a crowded city. Neither is happy about it, even if both pretend well. Then a talking cat points Elmer toward a chance to fix everything. He just needs to save this one dragon.

Charming and endlessly good-natured, My Father’s Dragon succeeds despite its comparatively predictable nature. Go into any of the other Cartoon Saloon films and you’ll find yourself surprised with each narrative turn. My Father’s Dragon, on the other hand, feels more familiar.

If the studio’s defining uniqueness is missing from its latest ‘toon, its heart is not. Voiced by Jacob Tremblay, Elmer’s the kind of kid who’s wound too tight. He tries so hard, he breaks your heart, even when his anxiety shortens his temper. Elmer’s own personality mirrors his mother’s when the chips are down, which feels of bittersweet authenticity thanks in part to Golshifteh Farahani’s tender vocal performance as Mom.

As Boris the dragon, Gaten Matarazzo is silly and sweet with moments of raw emotion. Whoopi Goldberg, Judy Greer, Mary Kay Place, Rita Moreno, Chris O’Dowd, Alan Cumming, Diane Wiest and Ian McShane round out a uniformly excellent vocal ensemble, O’Dowd is especially impressing as McShane’s harsh second-in-command, Kwan.

My Father’s Dragon represents a new direction for the animation studio. While it’s not the unassailable success of their previous films, it’s a joyous, beautiful film.

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Altered Images

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Aftersun

by Hope Madden

When you were 11, what did you think you would be doing now?

For a lot of parents encountering this query from their own 11-year-old, a joke might ward off any painful introspection. For Aftersun’s Calum (a riveting and tender Paul Mescal), the long silence seems to echo with more than just unreached potential.

Calum and his preteen daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio, remarkable) spend a holiday together in Turkey sometime in the mid-1990s, judging from the tech, which includes Sophie’s digital8 camcorder.

While the blurry, fragmented, buzzing presence of camcorder images is a long-tired filmmaking crutch, writer/director Charlotte Wells gives it deeper purpose. The fractured, off-center but intimate footage mirrors Sophie’s fuzzy memory. The gaps in reality, and the distance between what something looks like and what’s really going express adult Sophie’s (Celia Rowlson-Hall) struggle as she looks back on the fraught relationship between her younger self and her distant father.

The film moves at a languid pace, but Wells repays your patience with a rich and melancholy experience. Like Sophia Coppola with her similar Somewhere, Wells and cinematographer Gregory Oke capture palpable longing, nostalgia and heartbreak.

Neither film structures a tidy narrative, instead trusting viewers to pay attention and piece together fragments to form a whole image. Wells also benefits from two bruised but buoyant central performances that help you see what’s not being told and feel what characters are trying to keep hidden.

Mescal’s charming, innocent, awkward father is as much the memory of a lost daughter as he is a flesh and blood man. His performance aches with authenticity, and Mescal’s chemistry with young Corio only furthers that poignant realism.

Though the loose narrative may frustrate some, as a work of remembrance, Wells’ first feature film delivers something powerful and powerfully impressive.

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Into the Void

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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

The shocking news of Chadwick Boseman’s death brought plenty of feelings. One of them was curiosity about the future. How would the Black Panther franchise – newly launched via Marvel’s most impressive feature – move forward?

Wakanda Forever does it with respect, love and reverence, in a worthy second effort that’s anchored by loss, grief and perseverance.

One year after King T’Challa’s death, Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) is wondering if the idea of a “Black Panther” is outdated and Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) is facing increased pressure to share vibranium with other world powers.

The world powers, of course, aren’t just asking. And their efforts to take are aided by a new device that can detect vibranium in the environment, which brings the powerful “Feathered Serpent God” Namor (Tenoch Huerta from The Forever Purge and Sin Nombre) out of hiding.

Vibranium is also the resource vital to his undersea world of Talukan. Namor views the detection device as a threat to his nation and demands that Ramonda and Shuri turn over the scientist responsible. If they do not, Wakanda will have a formidable new enemy.

Hannah Beachler’s production design rivals that of her Oscar-winning work in Ryan Coogler’s 2018 original. Wakanda itself is as stunning and fully realized as ever, while Namor’s undersea realm becomes a lush waterworld that puts Aquaman to shame.

But after the defiant, often furious adventure of Black Panther, the most striking aspect of Wakanda Forever is the way it embraces the void left by the loss of both T’Challa and Boseman.

Coogler, writing again with Joe Robert Cole, delivers a more contemplative film this time around. Characters wrestle with loss and power, tradition and progress, rage and mercy. The depth of the script allows Basset and Lupita Nyong’o to really shine, while Winston Duke steals many scenes with a meatier, more layered take on M’Baku.

There is room for action aplenty, equally impressive whether massive seafaring attacks or intimate one-on-one battles (much thanks to the forever badass Danai Gurira).

The introduction of young M.I.T. phenom Riri (Dominique Thorne) is a well-intentioned mirror to Shuri’s technical genius, but the thread ultimately lands as a bit light and superfluous next to the complexities being pondered here. Still, Coogler’s skill with both emotion and spectacle never allows the two-and-a-half hour plus running time to feel bloated, and the film soars highest when the rush to war plays out against a backdrop of immense, intimate grief.

Have the tissues handy for the mid-credits coda. It’s a touching toast to an absent friend, and it cements Wakanda Forever‘s beautiful commitment to looking forward with cherished memories intact.

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Digging in the Dirt

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Mandrake

by Hope Madden

I have about six different cousins named Cathy Madden, but Lynne Davison’s Mandrake is not about any of them. I hope.

Davison’s tale follows probation officer Cathy Madden (Dierdre Mullins), whose recently assigned client, Mary Laidlaw (Derbhle Crotty), has the county in a tizzy. Old “Bloody” Mary is thought to be a witch, you see, and no one’s too keen on her being let out after what she did to her husband in those woods. Twenty years wasn’t long enough.

It’s tough to do something surprising within the witch genre. These films generally fall into two categories: she’s evil and in league with Satan, or she’s misunderstood and being wronged by hateful townfolk. Davison blurs that line. Her handling of Matt Harvey’s script treads a provocative path of moral ambiguity that requires constant guesswork and generates real dread.

Connor Rotherham’s cinematography draws out the best in Vanessa O’Connor’s production design to give Bloody Mary’s environment a primal, organic and dizzying feel. Everything is draped in moss and knotted with roots. You can almost smell the rotting leaves. It’s gorgeous and dense, simultaneously lovely and terrifying.

Crotty, all wild hair and knowing eyes, blends effortlessly into this primordial world. Mullins perfectly complements that performance with her own complex take on Madden. Straightforward with no time for nonsense, the parole officer still weakens, and Mullins finds depth here. The two performers play on their opposing look and vibe not to illustrate differences but to unveil sympathies.

Mandrake never falls back on one-dimensionality. Characters are messy. They do the wrong thing, then the right thing, behave monstrously and also with kindness. The film is also mercifully light on religion, instead pitting the scientific world against something older. Whether that world and its options are more sinister is in the eye of the beholder.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Banshees of Inisherin, Armageddon Time, Enola Holmes 2 and More

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The Banshees of Inisherin, Armageddon Time, Enola Holmes 2, Something in the Dirt, The Estate, Next Exit, Communion, On the Line, Girl at the Window, Soft & Quiet, One Piece Film: Red, The Sleep Experiment

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Mourning In America

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Armageddon Time

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

One of the reasons Greta Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film Lady Bird was such a refreshing treasure was the forgiveness that followed every stupid decision made by every single character. Gerwig’s film embraces the necessity of terrible choices in adolescence and it never caves to the easy desire to blame others for teenage misery.

But Gerwig didn’t grow up a Jew in Queens in 1980, which is why James Gray’s Armageddon Time tells quite a different story. To his credit, Gray still reaches toward forgiveness. And both films are mercifully unsentimental.

Young Banks Repeta is terrific as Paul Graff, Gray’s very cute, bratty, privileged stand-in. Like every 12-year-old, Paul is oblivious to his privilege. He may even enjoy becoming the class outcast since the other student spurned by Mr. Turtletaub is fast becoming Paul’s best friend.

But Johnny’s fate and Paul’s will never really gel because Paul is being trained with love to disappear when trouble arises, which means that all eyes fall on Johnny (Jaylin Webb).

Paul’s relationship with his parents (Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, both excellent) can be funny, sassy, and heartbreaking, while his grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) can always be counted on for encouragement, well-earned advice, and a present.

The stellar ensemble infuses the film with warmth, humor and sadness. And aside from a line or two that’s a shade too obvious, there’s a feeling of authenticity here that Gray is able to nurture beyond personal memoir to a grander comment on race and class. The filmmaker may be copping to his own bargains with guilt and privilege, but he’s also highlighting the daily turns of the American wheel that push so many of us toward our dreams, and so many others further away from theirs.

Forgiveness doesn’t come easily, nor should it. Gray tosses aside the rose-colored glasses that usually tint a director’s look back. Armageddon Time doesn’t deliver any easy answers, just more opportunities to question. That’s why it works.

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Slum Lord

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Satan’s Slaves: Communion

by Hope Madden

In what may be Joko Anwar’s most assured and consistently spooky effort, Satan’s Slaves: Communion evokes effective, building horror.

Building, like a towering apartment building. It’s not an image you expect to find in horror, but it has been used to fantastic effect a number of times. Obviously, Rosemary’s Baby and The Sentinel delivered urban terror via creepy architecture. More recently, Rec and the action classic The Raid took advantage of layer upon layer of floors and doors for bloody mayhem.

Anwar blends the supernatural of the earlier films and the pandemonium of the latter with the looming presence of the structure itself, a bit like what you’ll find in Eskil Vogt’s The Innocents and Ciaran Foy’s 2012 horror, Citadel.

The mish-mash works wonders to conjure a dark, dreary, dangerous trap with supernatural evil waiting down every hall. And don’t even look in the laundry chute.

A sequel to his 2017 Satan’s Slaves (itself a riff on Norman J. Warren’s ’76 cult horror Satan’s Slave), Communion picks up in 1985, just a few years since Rini (Anwar favorite Tara Basro) and her brothers Toni (Endy Arfian) and Bondi (Nasar Annuz) lost their mother and little brother to something very sinister. Their dad moved them to this building in Jakarta, and as long as they can survive the big storm that’s coming, Rini will finally leave the nest and pursue her education.

Sure. Just don’t take the elevator.

The first Indonesian film to be shot in IMAX, Satan’s Slaves: Communion looks as grimy and shadowy as any Anwar film – as it should. He uses shadows and distance, cramped spaces and lighting to set a stage that unnerves. Both sound design and practical FX complete that picture. Yes, the ideas and even some images are pulled from other films, but the final concoction is utterly Anwar.

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Finding Pieces

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Missing (Sagasu)

by Hope Madden

Shinzô Katayama learned from the best, filling the role of Second Unit Director on Bong Joon Ho’s startling Mother. He applies much of that film’s family drama/murder mystery theme for his own thriller, Missing.

Kaede (Aoi Itô) is a little fed up looking after her father, Harada (Jirô Satô). His depression and debt have only worsened since her mother’s suicide. She’s tired of being the grown-up. So tired of it that she dismisses his plot to track down the serial killer “No Name” for the reward money. When he disappears, she wishes she’d taken him more seriously.

Missing plays in parts, and Part 1 takes on the frustration and fear of Kaede’s story. Itô convinces as the child maneuvering in an adult world, complete with the frustrations, condescension and outbursts that involves. The performance never leans toward sentiment, never asks for our sympathy, and is the more fascinating for it.

Veteran Satô has no trouble finding an empathetic approach to a character in over his head. Satô complicates this questionable but lovable father figure. Harada is never an outright simpleton, always a loving family man. But he’s very, very flawed.

We get Harada’s side of the story, too, but between the two we see a bit from the perspective of No Name (Hiroya Shimizu). After establishing a layered, tense drama, Katayama, who co-writes with Kazuhisa Kotera and Ryô Takada, pulls the tale back toward horror.

Shimizu’s oily performance glides from apathy to curiosity to insincerity to sadism with unsettling ease. You root for the separated daughter and father, clearly out of their depth, but Katayama’s vision is more complicated than that.

Katayama allows moral ambiguity to enrich the film, knocking you off balance and unsure of your alliances. Three strong performances keep you intrigued and guessing, but the filmmaker surrounds them with an assortment of oddities. No character in the film is truly flat, everyone is a surprise.

Buried in this heady mystery is a thread about justice in the face of self-interest and the surprising joy of ping pong. It’s an engrossing feature debut from a director who knows how to play you.