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Coen My Way?

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Drive-Away Dolls

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Is the flattery still sincerest if you’re imitating yourself?

Because about 15 minutes into Drive-Away Dolls, the first installment of a lesbian B-movie trilogy from director/co-writer Ethan Coen and co-writer Tricia Cooke (Coen’s longtime producer/editor/wife), you can’t ignore how much this film reminds you of Coen Brothers movies.

And yes, better Coen Brothers movies.

Like The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, Barton Fink and A Serious Man, all of which get subtle and not-so-subtle nods in a twisting story of two young women and a mysterious, valuable briefcase.

Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) are queer best friends in 1999 Philadelphia. Marian is sexually conservative, and the free-spirited Jamie hopes to get her friend some action while they accept a drive-away job down to Tallahassee and hit every lesbian bar they can find.

What the girls don’t know is that the car they’ve been given has two very important items in the trunk, and it isn’t long before “The Chief” (Colman Domingo) and his two hapless henchman (Joey Slotnick, C.J. Wilson) are on their tail heading South.

The cast is indeed impressive (with appearances from Pedro Pascal, Bill Camp, Beanie Feldstein and Matt Damon), but while the film serves up a handful of LOL moments, the vast majority of the nuttiness lands with more desperation than inspiration.

It all feels so forced, except for Viswanathan, whose earnest delivery points out the artifice in Qualley’s. The Foghorn Leghorn-y of pre-millennium lesbians, Jamie’s every line draws attention to its own zaniness. It calls to mind The Ladykillers—and that’s never the Coen movie you want to make people remember.

Much of the ensemble works magic, though. Camp is particularly, dryly memorable. But this script, and the unsteady direction, suffers from high expectations. Drive-Away Dolls is fine. It’s fun enough. It’s nutty. But if Coen and Cooke weren’t awkwardly chasing their own family history, it would have been more satisfying.

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Community Organizer

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Ordinary Angels

by George Wolf

It’s understandable if Ordinary Angels seems familiar. Hilary Swank playing a tireless do-gooder in a based-on-true-events drama with a vaguely inspirational title is probably going to feel that way.

And while the film does rely on plenty of broad-brushing, it ultimately mines enough nuance to find some genuine feels, as well.

Swank plays Sharon Stevens, a hard-partying beauty salon owner in Kentucky who’s hoping one day to mend the relationship with her estranged son, Derek (Dempsey Byrk). While waiting at the grocery store checkout, a local newspaper story gives Sharon’s life new meaning.

Five year-old Michelle Schmitt (Emily Mitchell) has a rare disease and needs a liver transplant to survive. Her father Ed (Jack Reacher‘s Alan Ritchson), still hurting from his wife’s fatal battle with Wegener’s disease, is facing a mountain of medical debt while struggling to raise Michelle and her older sister Ashley (Skywalker Hughes) as a single parent.

After so much heartache, Ed admits to his mother Barbara (Nancy Travis) that he’s losing his faith. Could this hardscrabble hairdresser at their door be a Godsend? The few thousand dollars she raises from a salon fundraiser is a darn good start.

Two-time Oscar winner Swank is perfect for the role, even if the script from Kelly Fremon Craig (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret) and Meg Tilly (the veteran actress with her first feature writing credit) doesn’t provide many edges, at least early on. Sharon is all “hush my mouth” spunk, smiling through her accent as she imposes her will on multiple situations and begins to feel interchangeable with similar characters from The Blind Side to Swank’s own Conviction.

Ritchson is fine and shares sweet chemistry with the two adorable young girls, though Ed also lacks the depth to move the character beyond any number of faith-based dramas following a basic heart string-tugging playbook.

Ordinary Angels does find a unique voice in the third act, when Ed’s patience wears thin, and Sharon is finally forced to confront the life she’s really trying to save. Plus, director Jon Gunn (The Case for Christ, The Week) moves away from the formulaic to develop some respectable tension when the call for Michelle’s life-saving transplant comes during a monster snowstorm.

That really happened, and the true story here does provide an inspiring example of the good that humans are capable of. No doubt we need that right now, and Ordinary Angels manages just enough extraordinary moments to please more than the choir.

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Glad I Spent It With You

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Perfect Days

by Hope Madden

Wim Wenders is having a year. Though his epic 3D documentary Anselm somehow regrettably missed out on a Best Documentary nomination from the Academy, his unhurried slice-of-life Perfect Days caught their attention.

Nominated for Best International Film, Wenders’s lovely drama tails Hirayama (Koji Yakusho, perfection) through about two weeks in his life. Hirayama doesn’t have a lot to say, but he misses nothing in his days driving from public restroom to public restroom with Tokyo Toilet written on the back of his pristine blue jumpsuit.

Tools in rubber-gloved hand, Hirayama is meticulous as he works. He has a routine that suits him—brings him joy, even—and Wenders cycles us through that routine day after day after day. At a full two hours, Perfect Days begs your indulgence with this montage of minutely changing events.

The cumulative effect is, at first, lulling. As days pass, some small change draws attention and we try to predict a plot—will this turn into a love story, will that create financial chaos, is a tragic backstory of abuse about to come to light?

Not the goal of this movie. The film actually began as a commissioned short film meant to celebrate Tokyo’s pristine public toilets. I swear to God. It blossomed from there into a lithe, meditative character study shouldered by an impeccable Yakusho.

Though there are moments in the film that feel orchestrated—today, this happens; today, this happens—but not one breath, smile or nod of Hirayama’s head betrays the fiction. His is a mainly solitary, nearly silent life that can be surmised as a middle-aged man’s intentional creation. Hirayama has left something behind, has stripped himself of something, and what remains is what he finds vital: work where you can see a result; floor to ceiling shelves of books; a tidy and enormous collection of cassette tapes; a room full of tiny plants taking root, thanks to his tender care.

You could fit Hirayama’s dialog on less than a single page, and there are times when his silence feels forced and almost comedic. But Yakusho’s brilliantly nuanced, heartbreakingly felt performance makes up for any flaws in the film. Wenders punctuates scenes with joyously on-the-nose song choices—minus the cassette hiss—and the final few singalong minutes showcase one actor’s transcendent work.

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A Walk in the Woods

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Lovely, Dark, and Deep

by Hope Madden

What is the draw of the deep woods? Ticks? High likelihood of injury with haphazard chances of rescue? Cocaine bears?

Even the obvious reasons to steer clear of the woods can’t deter a lot of people. Writer/director Teresa Sutherland’s Lovely, Dark, and Deep links two risks that have haunted writers and creators throughout existence. Some people go crazy in the woods, and many get lost in there and never come out.

“And into the forest I must go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” John Muir said that. The “father of the National Parks” may not have predicted Sutherland’s translation.

Sutherland drops new ranger Lennon (Georgina Campbell, Barbarian) in the National Park back country, where she will spend the season mainly alone in her ranger hut. Does she know that Ranger Varney (Soren Hellerup) disappeared last season?

Likely it wouldn’t dissuade Lennon, who has a past to reconcile and some podcasts on missing people to listen to.

Campbell’s performance shifts as Lennon’s determination makes way for absolute confusion and terror. What begins as single-minded pursuit shows itself to be desperation in disguise. Willfulness gives way to horror as Lennon’s investigation turns up wooded weirdness and wickedness she did not predict.

Wide shots and drone work keep Lennon dwarfed by an increasingly claustrophobic forest, though Campbell never lets the character feel overmatched by nature. Not nature. But a disorienting woods as deep as these (it’s actually Portugal) can easily conceal a lot that is far from natural.

Sutherland’s film is a bit of a slow burn, but once it hits its stride, she throws an unsettling assortment of hellish visions at you. You don’t have to have a natural (and really healthy, I think) fear of the woods to know it’s time to get the F out of Jellystone.

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Holy Sanctimony

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God & Country

by George Wolf

When Rob Schenck was a young pastor, he was told never to prepare a sermon without consulting the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel.

Years later, Schenck learned that Kittel was also the man who gave Hitler a Christian blessing for his Final Solution.

“That was an eye opener,” Schenck admits. The point—that there is no limit to what radical Christianity can be used to justify—is what drives God & Country. And much of the film’s success comes from how it combats that fanaticism with a measured, confident deconstruction.

Director Dan Partland doesn’t insert himself into the conversation, but has no problem crafting a spirited one. Yes, he has a clear agenda, but includes enough footage from news reports, political speeches and televangelist messaging that the film’s worldview becomes the “other side” getting a chance to be heard.

Partland relies on historians, authors, and theologians to trace the rise of Christian Nationalism, it’s deviation from actual Christian teachings, the quest for power over values that earns a rebranding as “White Religious Nationalism,” and how the true believers have been convinced that America has a God-ordained role in human history.

And if democracy gets in the way? See January 6th, 2021.

The attack on the Capitol is what bookends the film, and in between, Partland actually elicits sympathy for the attackers, who have been fed a calculated diet of lies, fear and outrage. The resulting echo chamber creates an alternative reality bubble, one that was always designed to burst.

If you noticed the proudly theocratic ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court last week, you know that the threat to democracy is only becoming more dangerous. Partland makes it clear that the biggest hope is awareness, so that those led astray by the fervor (like Schenck) can experience a new awakening.

Christian Nationalism has nothing to do with Christianity. And God & Country finds a useful tone between sermonizing and condescension that can help us see that light.

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Fantastic Mr. Fox Corpse

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Stopmotion

by Hope Madden

There will be moments when you’re watching Robert Morgan’s macabre vision Stopmotion that you’ll think you see the twists as they’re coming. That’s a trick. Morgan, writing with Robin King, assumes you’ll catch the handful of common horror twists, but he knows that you won’t predict the real story unfolding.

Although you should because he’s given you every clue.

Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale) is Ella. She’d like to make her own stop-motion animated film, but instead she’s helping her mom finish hers. Ella’s domineering mother Suzanne (Stella Gonet, very stern) is a legend in the field, and she makes Ella feel as if she has no stories of her own to tell.

But when Suzanne is hospitalized, Ella determines to finish her mother’s film. Her boyfriend Tom (Tom York) sets Ella up in a run down, empty flat where she can work and he can check in on her, bring dinner and take care of her.

Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? Unless Ella really has no stories to tell, or the story she tells is too scary, even for her.

Stopmotion delivers a trippy, uncomfortable, and deeply felt tale of a struggling artist. This is a descent into madness horror of sorts, but it’s also the story of an artist coming to a realization about what scares her most. Franciosi’s turn is brittle and often internal. Ella’s insecurities float to the surface, and Franciosi’s unafraid to make the protagonist frequently unlikeable.

The dual storylines—live action and animation—are both well told, but the real pleasure is in the gruesomely tactile movie Ella is making. Her characters—wax and feather, bone and blood and ash—come to life in a lumbering, grotesque way that hints at any number of possible horrors.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s seen Morgan’s animated shorts, including “D Is for Deloused” in ABCs of Death. The animator sees the monstrous possibilities in his medium, clearly. But his feature debut balances that with an existential ugliness in Ella’s real life, and thanks to committed and nuanced performances from the whole small ensemble, both sides keep you riveted.

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Eugénie’s Feast

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The Taste of Things

by Matt Weiner

You know you’re in for a hell of a meal when the appetizer is a 15-minute cold opening that lingers on every small detail of cooking a feast to a degree that borders on pornographic.

This scene from writer and director Anh Hung Tran sets the mood—and pace—of the rest of his latest feature, The Taste of Things.

Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) prepares these elaborate meals for Dodin (Benoît Magimel), a famed gourmand and restaurateur who has relied on Eugénie’s unique blend of skill and intuition to bring his culinary visions to life.

The bright, airy kitchen where these feasts are prepared might as well be one of the film’s co-leads. Binoche is spellbinding as Eugénie, who must be played as equal parts enchanting muse and aloof lover to Dodin. It’s a delicate balance, especially in a film with Tran’s subtle direction where the emotional connection between the pair comes out as much in the physical acts of cooking food as in the dialogue.

The two seem to have forged an idyllic life together that caters to their passions. Their kitchen is an insular one—debates over French culinary giants like Caréme and Escoffier are as political as Dodin gets, even as outside the kitchen modernism is poised to upend European society and tradition.

But within this narrow setting, Tran’s light touch and genial script centers the story on Eugénie and Dodin’s love and respect for one another, and how the two intersect personally and professionally. Dodin is determined to get Eugénie to marry him, formalizing the intimacy they already share.

A drawn-out challenge to turn a paramour into a wife may sound like a lucky problem to have. But in The Taste of Things, such stakes are life and death. And why shouldn’t they be? Dodin and Eugénie’s mutual affection for one another isn’t just around cooking, but in the vanishing conviction that craft elevated to art is in itself a monumental—and rare—achievement.

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Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animation

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by Hope Madden

When I was a kid watching the Oscars, I remember always being perplexed by short film categories. How do people manage to see these shorts?

Good news, kids, it’s gotten much easier. Not only to we now have ShortsTV, but in the last several years, all the nominated shorts have been packaged by category for theatrical showings. And in the cases where the combined run times don’t reach feature length, some bonus shorts are added to the programs.

In this year’s Animation group, don’t look for a lot of silly fun. Or any, really. These animators have beautiful heartbreak in store for you. (Did Pixar not make a movie this year? Seriously, have your Kleenex handy.)

Our Uniform 7 Mins. Director: Yegane Moghaddam Iran

The lightest of the films in the category, Our Uniform delivers a tactile journey through the weight, feel and even sound of the fabric of our lives. Told from the perspective of an Iranian school girl, the film unfolds as a nonchalant conversation about the clothing she wears and how it changes depending on her age and where she is.

The animation is a delight of fabric and flow, and the story releases a sense of freedom and what that feels like.

Letter to a Pig 17 Mins. Director: Tal Kantor Israel

This haunting story, told mostly in black and white with startling uses of pink, follows the dream a school girl has as a Holocaust survivor visits her classroom to tell of a pig that saved his live.

Tal Kantor, who writes and directs, takes unexpected turns in tone. What at first feels like a heartbreaking but beautiful story of survival meeting the apathy of middle schoolers, turns to bitterness and hatred, which turns on its head as it’s translated into the dream of a child. It’s a harrowing, somber but beautiful work.

Pachyderme 11 Mins. Director: Stéphanie Clément France

This heartbreaking tale that sneaks up on you is told in lovely, fluid watercolor style animation with a lilting, melancholy delivery as a grown woman looks back at her visits to her grandparents when she was a child.

Together director Stéphanie Clément and writer Marc Rius tease one story from another, the combined tale told with the resigned distance of age by the narrator. The result is touching and lovely.

Ninety-Five Senses 13 Mins. Director: Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess USA

This is not a film I would expect from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess (working alongside his wife and directing partner, Jerusha Hess).

Tim Blake Nelson voices the protagonist of this story, an older man running through a personal tale depicting each of his senses. The delivery is cantankerous and the often quirky animation style suggests homespun wisdom. But the story the Hesses tell consistently surprises. It’s a startlingly human story of redemption, of sorts, and it pulls more tears than the others. (And that is a feat—these movies are out to destroy you!)

War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko 11 Mins. Director: Dave Mullins USA

A carrier pigeon flies through the winter sky, bombs bursting around him. A soldier clomps through snow, his boot print showing the blood beneath the snow.

A chess match unfolds that offers a birds-eye view of the idiocy of war. It’s another tear jerker, but what’s wrong with a good cry?

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Parents Who Use Drugs…

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Bleeding Love

by Christie Robb

It’s generational trauma time as real-life father and daughter Ewan and Clara McGregor play estranged family embarking on a 14-hour road trip across the American Southwest.

She thinks she’s going on a vacation. He’s taking her to rehab in the aftermath of a first OD at 20. His support now is made possible by his own sobriety journey. It’s just too bad that his rehabilitation started after his daughter’s early childhood had ended. And his rock bottom involved abandoning the family.

Directed by Emma Westenberg (Stranger’s Arms), Bleeding Love is a spare, gritty film. Quite a bit of it consists of extreme close ups of the pair, bathed in golden desert light, awkwardly attempting to rebuild a connection.

This is interspersed with the tropes you’ve come to expect from road trip movies—a breakdown, a sing-along, moments of high drama broken with comedic relief—the best of the latter coming from a sex worker (Vera Bulder) who helps the duo navigate a medical crisis.

With flashbacks to the daughter’s childhood, recalling moments of joy and pain surrounding her dad’s wacky behavior, the film will definitely give watchers of a certain age flashbacks to the large-scale anti-narcotics PSA by Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Nope. Not the frying egg. The other one.  The one with the dad finding a box of drugs in his son’s bedroom and asking the poor kid how he even knows to use them.

“You alright. I learned it from watching you!”

Bleeding Love can be a bit heavy-handed and ignores some of the realities of addiction (like the crushing hangovers) but it’s sweet and hopeful and grounded in the real-life struggles of the McGregors.