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The Glam Fam

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The Weasel’s Tale

by Brandon Thomas

Filmmakers love to poke fun at themselves almost as much as they love to celebrate each other. From The Player and Barton Fink to Tropic Thunder and Hail, Caesar!, Hollywood hasn’t had much of a problem cashing in on making fun of the vain, pompous artists who make movies. These are all distinctly American examples, though.

How much differently would this kind of movie play if moved to South America?

Not much as it turns out.

Mara (Graciela Borges), her husband Pedro (Luis Brandoni), and their friends Martin (Marcos Mundstock) and Norberto (Oscar Martinez) all live in a grand house in the Argentinian countryside. At one point in the past, all of them were involved in Argentina’s luscious film industry. Mara, in particular, was an actress acclaimed not only for her prowess in front of the camera but also for her beauty. Martin, a writer, and Norberto, a director, both worked with Mara on countless films. Pedro sought to be an actor of Mara’s caliber but often had to settle for bit parts at her side.

The aging artists spend their days discussing exploits of decades past, putting on mock awards ceremonies and using a shotgun to rid the grounds of weasels. The monotony is broken up when two charming, young real estate agents show up with an attractive offer to buy the house from Mara. The men instantly smell trouble, but the agents play to Mara’s vain, fame embracing nature, and use that to their advantage.

The Weasel’s Tale plays like Sunset Boulevard meets the work of Wes Anderson, then it does Tropic Thunder. The comedy never goes as broad as it is in Stiller’s film, yet it’s never as dark as Sunset. There’s a twinkle in the eyes of the characters even when they’re cutting each other down, or plotting to murder the people trying to force them out of their home. It’s a quaint bloodlust.

The plot never becomes too unwieldy but does manage to offer some surprising twists along the way. The “mystery” of the film almost seems like an afterthought, but an afterthought that was well thought out and by design.

Director Juan Jose Campanella does a remarkable job threading the needle through such distinct tone management. There’s a sadness that hangs over the film, but not the kind that threatens to depress the audience. No, this sadness helps us find empathy for protagonists who might not necessarily deserve it.

The cast of The Weasel’s Tale is the ultimate draw. The majority of the film is spent in the company of Mara, Pedro, Martin and Norberto. And all four of them are rotten sons of bitches to varying degrees. (Well, maybe not Pedro, but guilt by association, okay?) Borges especially shines. For most of the movie, Mara never lets the veneer of her vanity crack – not even to her dear Pedro. Yet, we see instances here and there. There’s a vulnerability beneath the surface that Mara can barely contain, and Borges does a wonderful job showing that.

The Weasel’s Tale is a fantastic melding of dark comedy, noir, and satire – but one never lets either genre fully take over.

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Girls Are Better Off Dead

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Mayday

by Cat McAlpine

Life’s hard for Ana, who is sleeping in her car and doing her best serving under her abusive boss. Although the time and place aren’t specified and don’t matter, the dark and dated dance hall she caters in suggests that Ana’s gloomy life is somewhere in Eastern Europe. But she won’t stay there for long.

An act of violence shakes Ana (Grace Van Patten) from her stupor and in a dreamy mashup of Alice in Wonderland, Sucker Punch, and a hint of Sylvia Plath, Ana escapes her life by crawling through a glowing oven. On the other side, she discovers a ragtag group of girls – brutal and intoxicating Marsha (Mia Goth), hearty Gert (Soko), and sweet Bea (Havana Rose Liu). The girls play at war, picking off men from any side of an unknown eternal conflict to torture and kill. Instead of a magic tree house, they live inside the hull of an old U-Boat. Like coastal sirens, they hop on the airwaves and cry “Mayday,” leading men into storms and uncertain territory.

Nervous at the thought of killing, Ana warns, “I’ve never been in a war.”

“You’ve been in a war your whole life, you just don’t know it,” replies Marsha.

Writer/Director Karen Cinorre creates a beautiful and increasingly dark dreamscape for Ana to explore her trauma, but the dialogue is heavy-handed while the plot stays meandering and loose. The result is a contemplative romp through female rage, painted like a grim fairytale that isn’t quite sure where it’s going.

Aesthetically, the film is fantastic, and it is anchored by strong performances. Van Patten is enjoyable to watch as Ana comes into her own. Goth is terrifying and power-hungry, a believable cult leader. But Cinorre’s fever dream burns on too long and gets too caught up in its own rules of make-believe, casting off metaphor and leaving it for dead. War is a childlike fantasy playscape for the girls who feel powerless otherwise. But are they all dead? Is this a shared hallucination? Some of the players are characters from Ana’s own life while others are strangers.

One scene implies that Ana has gunned down a whole camp of men, but it shows her doing a choreographed dance with them instead. Is this an illusion inside of an illusion? Mayday doesn’t stand up to questioning, which suits the fantastical film just fine most of the time.

Ana must discover what measure of hope and rage suits her. Marsha is all rage. Bea all hope. And Gert doesn’t want to talk about it. As soon as Ana takes to killing men, she starts seeing all the ones who were kind to her before. And though their fairytale island is littered with ill-suited husbands and would-be rapists, Ana still struggles to condemn the whole kingdom of men.

Ultimately, Mayday is a fine telling of how to find our rage and how to tend to our sadness without letting go of the good the world still has to offer.

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Double Trouble

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Venom: Let There Be Carnage

by Hope Madden

An unusual note about comic book movies is that the sequel is often, perhaps usually, superior to the original. Why? Because the original can be so burdened by telling an origin story – usually one we already know.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is one such film, superior to the original not because we already knew the symbiote antihero’s origin tale, though. Rather, director Ruben Fleischer’s much-maligned 2018 blockbuster suffered from a choppy first act and uninspired direction.

With director Andy Serkis (this guy knows how to motion capture) at the helm and a streamlined writing team (Kelly Marcel is the only writer from the original film to return, this time sharing the pen with star Tom Hardy), Let There Be Carnage determines its tone and pace from the opening scene and, for better or worse, rides that through to its concluding, post-credit moments.

The tone runs far closer to horror-comedy than the original, a theme that suits the story of frenemies, one trying to keep the other from eating human brains.

Hardy returns as Eddie Brock, a one-time superstar San Francisco reporter who ran afoul of his fiancé (Michelle Williams), his news outlet and the law last go-round, but found a life partner in the flesh-hungry extra-terrestrial parasite, Venom (also voice by Hardy). They have inadvertently infected cannibal serial killer Cletus Kassidy (Woody Harrelson) with symbiote blood, and now he, too, has a little voice and big alien inside of him.

Harrelson and his slightly digitally modified eyeballs offer villainous fun — though, to be honest, Riz Ahmed’s evil genius in the previous film was not only underappreciated but superior to Harrelson’s lunatic menace.

Still, Hardy is the reason to see the film. His Eddie is put upon and weary while his Venom is boisterous and often very funny. Through the two performances, Hardy delivers the type of lived-in animosity needed to sell any odd-couple story.

Though the CGI was sharper last time, the overall aesthetic Serkis creates is far campier and Goth, which feeds the film’s spooky season vibe. Williams, in a smaller role, finds her stride, though Naomie Harris’s underwritten character is a shame.

The result is a mish-mash of messy, frenetic fun with a higher body count than you might expect. Plus a post-credits stinger worth sticking around to see.

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Manhattan Math

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Adventures of a Mathematician

by Rachel Willis

Adventures of a Mathematician, based on the memoir of the same name by Stanislav Ulam (Philippe Tłokiński), offers a fascinating look at one of the main players behind the Manhattan Project and the building of the hydrogen bomb.

Writer/director Thor Klein lacks interest in Ulam’s entire life, instead narrowing his film’s focus to the years the scientist spent in Los Alamos, Nevada, working for the U.S. Department of War. The moral and ethical dilemma of building the atomic bomb – the use of science to wield total destruction – is the heart of Klein’s film.

Aspects of Ulam’s world outside of his work are woven into the film – primarily his relationships with wife Françoise (Esther Garrel), brother Adam (Mateusz Więcławek), and best friend/fellow scientist John van Neumann (Fabian Kociecki).

The movie’s weakest component is the flatness of some of these characters, but because Klein seeks not to simply tell Ulam’s life story, the shallow characters don’t sink the effort. They still serve a purpose as they give voice to the ethical arguments inside Ulam.

In that role, Tłokińksi is flawless, bringing depth to every scene. He infuses every word, every movement with the emotion necessary to tackle such large moral quandaries.

The desolate, dusty landscape of Los Alamos plays its own role in the film – a stark reminder of what’s at stake. The film’s minimal score highlights the scientist’s inner conflict and heightens tensions as the movie draws closer to the devastating moment when the bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Adventures of a Mathematician offers no easy answers, nor is it likely to change anyone’s mind. However, it offers insight into why some of the world’s most brilliant scientists lent their skills to the creation of the deadliest weapons in world history.

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Bitter Kiwi

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Coming Home in the Dark

by Hope Madden

I have always counted myself among the major fans of Kiwi horror filmmaking. Peter Jackson may mean Middle Earth to others, but to us he is king of splatter-gore comedy, and a generation of New Zealand horror filmmakers has embraced that same sense of viscous fun.

Not James Ashcroft. Nope, making his feature debut with the road trip horror Coming Home in the Dark, the filmmaker is carving out a very different style.

Not long into Hoaggie (Erik Thomson) and Jill’s (Miriama McDowell) weekend outing with their teenage sons, two armed drifters approach. The family is miles from anywhere, and it isn’t until they all stand by and let a car pass without incident that Ashcroft lets us in on two things.

“Looking back on today’s events, I think this will be the moment you realized you should have done something.”

The moment Mandrake (Daniel Gillies, chilling) utters this sentence, Ashcroft lets you know that this story will not go well for the family. He also introduces the general theme of this film: do something while you have the chance.

Mandrake is the more talkative of the two villains, though friend Tubs (Matthias Luafutu) cuts an impressive figure. And in a style closer to that characteristic of Australian horror, Coming Home in the Dark offers a spare but unblinking span of gritty, punishing thrills.

Ashcroft, who adapted Owen Marshall’s short story for the screen along with writer Eli Kent, crafts a deceptively layered drama. The trickiest bit comes near the end, but it would be unfair to give that away.

Unfortunately, the audience has to be patient enough to wade through what feels like preachiness to get to the sucker punch. Performances are exceptional, loose ends are welcome, but with little in the way of visual panache and lots in the way of discomfort, not everyone will stick it out.

I should confess that I firmly believe terror awaits anybody who wanders out into the wilderness. I am the audience for this movie.

Maybe you are, too?

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Low-Stakes Road Games

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Hudson

by Hope Madden

I never thought I would miss mumblecore, but here you have it. Co-writer/director Sean Daniel Cunningham transports us back to that time of slight, meandering plots, awkward vulnerability, and low-stakes white people problems.

The thing is, Hudson is pretty great.

As low-key as they come, Hudson follows two estranged cousins on a brief but somewhat eventful road trip one autumn day through Upstate New York. I mean, they don’t really leave the area – they go maybe a couple of hours from home, tops. A game of putt-putt becomes one of the most major events in the adventure. It’s not an edge-of-your-seat thriller is what I’m saying, but it is laid back, sweet and lovely.

Much of that is due to a spot-on performance in the title role by David Neal Levin. Hudson is lovable, sweet and tender due to the recent death of his mother. A middle-aged man still living at home, he mostly writes haiku now, feeds his bird, maybe gets out a remote-control car. Levin’s performance never mocks or belittles the character, never makes him the butt of a joke.

Then Hudson’s cool cousin Ryan (co-writer Gregory Lay) shows up. He’s waiting to do some reshoots for his latest movie, has some time to kill, missed the funeral but wants to hang out now.

The movie sinks or swims on the lived-in relationships. It’s like we’ve dropped into these lives mid-relationship until the cousins pick up a new friend who knows how to get them where they’re going.

Sunrise (played by producer Mary Catherine Greenawalt) gives the film, if not a jolt of energy, then maybe a quiver of it. Her presence allows the writers to explore the cousins’ personas and relationships more deeply, and offers more opportunities for good-natured if not gut-busting humor.

It’s a lovely film. It looks great, performances are solid in a very mellow way, and the resolution feels like a long-coming hug from a buddy. It’s nice.

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An Unbroken Wheel

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This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection

by Cat McAlpine

In the small village of Nazareth, in the tiny Kingdom of Lesotho, a man recounts the wisdom his father once gave to him. “My son, what they call progress…It is when men point their damning finger at nature and proclaim conquest over it.” It is that poisonous progress that the people of Nazareth are fighting against in This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection, and it is a losing battle.

The film follows 80-year-old widow Mantoa. After the death of her last surviving child, she finds herself utterly alone and mired in grief. The story unfolds like a mythic, dark fairytale with beautiful vignettes and discordant music. Director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese carries us from moment to moment as Mantoa repeatedly has to contemplate her grief. Though she resigns herself to simply wait to be buried alongside her family, a new challenge arrives with a blazer and a megaphone. The village will be relocated, a dam will be built, their fields will be flooded.

What of the dead? What of Mantoa? The elderly woman convinces the village to resist the spinning wheels of progress. Together they seek to find what is left for their community in the land where their dead are buried. Twice we are reminded that Nazareth is the name that new settlers gave the land. Before that, it was always known as the Plains of Weeping.

Jerry Mofokeng delivers a reverent and deeply sad narration of Mantoa’s struggles. Using the framework of a narrator, with a different voice and perspective than Mantoa, further perpetuates the storybook feel. But this is not a happy children’s tale. This is a story about capitalism’s infinite reach. This is a story about grief, culture, and perseverance. This is a story about the dead.

Mary Twala is phenomenal in her final role as Mantoa. Her emotion is palpable even when she sits in silence. Her rage and her pain don’t slow the narrative or taint it with bitterness. Instead, Twala propels Mantoa with the depths of her grief. She is an absolute powerhouse, and the film would not succeed as well as it does without her.

And the film does succeed. It is incredibly beautiful, rich with color, light, and shadow. Every scene is a haunting painting. The cast, mixed with actors and non-actors alike, brings you to witness the erasure of a real place and real people, and you mourn with them. When Mofokeng intones that the dead buried the dead, he reflects on a village that will soon be hidden under water.

Though the people of Nazareth still live, something about them will be lost forever. They are some of the last of their kind as new roads, and new buildings, and new dams continue to creep into the quiet places of the world. Progress fills up little villages with the walking dead as ways of life are washed away.

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Manor Manners

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Lady of the Manor

by Hope Madden

Flatulence, Judy Greer and historical reenactments? I don’t think we see enough of these in independent film.

Neither do brothers Justin and Christian Long, presumably, because they have written and directed Lady of the Manor to encourage us to spend some time with all three. And since the flatulence is cinematic rather than aromatic, what’s the harm?

There is none. The film is, in a word, harmless.

Greer plays Civil War-era Lady Wadsworth. As the film opens, we see her behaving properly, sporting proper posture and manners, quarreling politely with her husband, and tumbling fatally down a flight of stairs.

The Longs intercut this scene with the audio from a true-crime program being viewed by modern-day ne’er-do-well Hannah (Melanie Lynskey). After a series of drug and alcohol-related shenanigans, the down-on-her-luck Hannah accepts a position as tour guide of Wadsworth Manor.

Hannah’s clear, almost criminal weaknesses in the areas of ladylikeness bring the ghost of Lady Wadsworth back to the manor to teach Hannah some etiquette. Or is there another reason for her spectral return?

The Longs plump up their very slight script with plenty of silliness. Justin portrays Hannah’s bashful history professor suitor Max, while Ryan Phillippe lampoons his early career roles with a funny entitled douchebag performance as Wadsworth heir, Tanner.

There’s also a fun Luis Guzmán cameo and a rare Patrick Duffy sighting.

But the film is at its best when Lynskey and Greer turn My Fair Lady into The Odd Couple. These veteran character actors riff off each other like old vaudeville partners, bringing joy to even the most superficial scenes.

There are plenty of those. Lady of the Manor often plays like an extended episode of Drunk History, only maybe not quite as funny. Everybody seems to be enjoying themselves, no one is challenged by the material, and an entirely pleasant if fairly predictable and only modestly funny time is had by all, viewers included.

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Must Be Adjacent to the Hotel California

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The Nowhere Inn

by Christie Robb

Ever wondered what a mock music documentary directed by David Lynch would feel like?

Bill Benz’s The Nowhere Inn is a hybrid of St. Vincent tour footage and a deconstruction of the concept of identity, written by real-life friends Annie Clark (St. Vincent) and Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia, Sleater-Kinney).

Ostensibly a music documentary of a St. Vincent tour put together by Annie and her best friend/director Carrie, the goal of the project is to show fans who Annie Clark really is and give Carrie a chance to dig herself out of a career rut.

Quickly, Carrie tires of Annie’s life off stage, which consists of Pilates, playing scrabble with bandmates on the bus, and searching around tour locations for farmers’ markets to purchase healthy road snacks. Carrie asks Annie to zhuzh it up a bit to make the film more interesting.

And the offended Annie delivers.

As Annie’s behind-the-scenes self merges with that of her stage persona, the film takes on a more ominous tone. It combines elements of a music video with comedy and thriller/horror. (And even amateur pornography in a fun little scene with Dakota Johnson playing an expensive lingerie-wearing fictional Dakota Johnson.) Ultimately, the movie becomes surrealist as it grapples with the nature of identity, friendship and authenticity.

The cinematography is often painterly with vibrant colors contrasted against velvety blacks. This is mixed with somewhat grainy “archival” footage, filmed St. Vincent performances, and reality TV-style confessional interview footage. The fact that we don’t get lost in all this is a win for the editing department.

Annie Clark shows an impressive acting range, from nerdy awkwardness to lonely vulnerability, aloof artist to menacing narcissist. She’s also got a sense of comedic timing that can keep up with the bone-dry Brownstein.

Although the thesis is somewhat belabored and some of the subplots don’t particularly go anywhere, The Nowhere Inn is an interesting place to find yourself.