Tag Archives: Rachel Willis

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Existential Mysteries and the Comedy Life

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Me, Myself, and the Void

by Rachel Willis

Suffering from a tough crowd at his standup show, Jack (Jack De Sena) is surprised when his non-comedian best friend Chris (Chris Smith) shows up to bail him out. He’s even more surprised when the crowd disappears, only to be replaced by a void resembling his own apartment in director Tim Hautekiet’s film Me, Myself, and the Void.

Right off the bat, we learn that Jack has suffered some kind of black out event. He is unclear as to why he’s on the bathroom floor. However, he quickly realizes that Chris is a figment of his imagination, here to help him unpack this mystery.

In addition to the mystery, Jack has to unpack the events leading up to his ungainly sprawl on the bathroom floor. His memory is a bit hazy in the void, but visions quickly start flooding in. This not only helps us learn more about Jack, but also about Chris, and Jack’s ex, Mia (Kelly Marie Tran).

One problem is the film’s assumption that Jack and Chris are familiar to the audience. Some may know their YouTube channel, but for those without prior experience with the duo, the familiarity doesn’t land well. It feels like a vanity project.

However, De Sena and Smith play well off each other, their banter landing like that of two men who are, in fact, best friends. This helps to engage those unfamiliar with their brand. It also works that De Sena takes lead, being the more engaging and natural of the duo.

As we uncover more of Jack’s life, the film attempts heavier material. A particularly touching moment involves Chris sharing a personal detail of his relationship – a moment that then becomes fodder for Jack’s act. It’s a glimpse into who Jack really is, as well as a nod to men’s seeming aversion to therapy.

It’s too bad the film doesn’t stay focused here. That might have given the audience something to chew on. Instead, we get a maudlin mess of a movie.

Outtakes

Not Too Tasty

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Wineville

by Rachel Willis

Right from the start, director and star Brande Roderick lets you know what kind of film you’re in for with Wineville—and it’s not a warm family reunion. Something sinister waits for Tess (Roderick) when she takes her son to settle her father’s estate, inadvertently left to her after he dies without a will.

Still living on the family vineyard is Aunt Margaret (Carolyn Hennesy) and Joe (Casey King). Joe’s presence at the vineyard is one Tess doesn’t expect, but the audience knows right away that something is amiss.

Unfortunately, the promise of the film’s opening isn’t realized during the bulk of the move. What unfolds is a mishmash of genres and tones.

Often, the film’s tone wreaks havoc on what we’re is supposed to pick up from certain scenes. Actions take on unintentional comedic undertones rather than building tension. Flashbacks are so over-the-top that their traumatic occurrences don’t carry the gravitas they should. It makes for some confused viewing.

Despite Tess’s past trauma, she isn’t the most compelling character. Her son seems to exist only to give importance to what lies ahead. Unfortunately, the characters never come to life in a way that makes you worry for them or care what happens. It probably would have been better if Tess had brought a dog along with her instead of a son (and I say this as the mother of a son).

The best part of Wineville is Joe. He’s the most compelling character, and the one who truly seems to carry the weight of the family’s traumatic past. Tess flippantly states “she’s over it” after recounting a series of horrific events and the film doesn’t do much to show that she really isn’t. On the other hand, Joe seems to have suffered less but carries the pain with him more honestly. How the past manifests in his present is the most interesting part of the story.

It’s a shame there is too much going on for the film to really hone its focus. This one leaves a lot to be desired.

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Cosmic Revenge

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The Paragon

by Rachel Willis

Dutch (Benedict Wall) is pissed off. The victim of a hit and run, he’s had nothing but bad luck since that day. When you feel like your life is falling apart, what’s a person to do?

In writer/director Michael Duignan comic oddity The Paragon, the answer is to learn how to become psychic in pursuit of revenge.

Dutch’s indignation at being hit by a car (a silver Toyota Corolla) and left for dead bleeds into the rest of his life in often hilarious ways. He obsesses over small things—like people who ride unicycles but are not in the circus—ranting to a wife who is tired of listening.

Duignan and Wall do a wonderful job making Dutch an interesting character—fun to watch, even as his bitterness dogs him. When he begins his psychic training with Lyra (Florence Noble), you’re eager to see what happens next. Noble is the perfect foil to Wall’s emotional outbursts. The film’s straight woman, she excels at playing off Wall in ways that help define each character. This is a mismatched duo if there ever was one, and it keeps the humor flowing.

The film has a lot of fun playing with Dutch’s anger and the absurdity of his quest. Throw in the oddball character Haxan (Jonny Brugh), and the movie only gets funnier. Not taking itself too seriously is what allows this weird movie to work so well.

Duignan keeps the film from flying too far off the rails. The Paragon never feels weird for weirdness’s sake. Each element fits nicely into Dutch’s unusual journey.

The part of the film that doesn’t work quite as well is the length of time spent during Dutch’s attempts to harness his psionic power. While it’s a lot of fun, it’s also time that might have been better served deepening Lyra’s character.

But this is a film that enjoys exploring the “what might have beens” of life and keeps you hooked while it does.

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Write What You Know

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Sebastian

by Rachel Willis

Sebastian is the alter-ego for Max (Ruaridh Mollica), an up-and-coming young writer in writer/director Mikko Mäkelä’s film, Sebastian.

A journalist and short story writer by day, Max spends his nights as “Sebastian,” working as an escort and researching for a novel in progress. Though writing about sex workers is apparently tired, the aspect of hustling in the digital age perks up the ears of a publisher.

The film does a good job of examining the question of how deeply writers live their own stories. Interviews with writers peppered throughout the film contradict Max’s lived experience: most of the writers insist their fiction is completely separate from their lives.

This makes it interesting when Max receives criticism for his work, especially when he’s told it’s not realistic enough or that the emotions of the character negate what others have heard. To be told his work is repetitive or unbelievable makes the criticism harder for Max to bear.

The film doesn’t always follow its own advice. Some of the scenes become repetitive. This mirrors the progress of Max’s novel, but that doesn’t make it any more interesting to watch. However, this is minor, and the film quickly shifts to widen Max’s experiences. As he delves deeper into sex work, his ability to maintain two lives–that of Max and that of Sebastian–starts to break down.

As interesting as it is to examine the realism and lived experiences of writers and their work, the film leaves several ethical dilemmas unexamined. Since Max is writing about Sebastian’s experiences, he runs the real risk of “outing” his clients, something untouched in the film. While the film has its own story to tell, it would have been interesting to show more of what’s at stake for Max’s “characters.”

On the whole, Sebastian is a well-written and well-acted look at how far a writer will go in pursuit of a good story.

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Demanding Acknowledgment

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Sugarcane

by Rachel Willis

The history of residential schools, not just in North America but around the world, is one of insidious genocide. Children stolen from their families and communities, forbidden to speak their language or practice their religion – endorsed by governments in an attempt to “kill the Indian, save the man.”

Directors Julian Brave Noisecat and Emily Kasie examine the legacy of one such Canadian school in their documentary, Sugarcane.

Noisecat has a personal connection to the St. Joseph Mission residential school, which was in operation until 1981. His father, Ed Archie Noisecat, was born there. Ed’s story, along with his mother’s, centers the film on Julian and Ed’s attempt to examine the past and the impact of St. Joseph’s, not only on the Noisecat family, but on the communities affected.

Interviews with the survivors of St. Joseph’s speak to terrible cruelty inflicted on them at the hands of priests. Documents reveal that many of those working at the school knew of the abuse but either stood aside or simply asked that offending priests be moved to another school. A nun pleads with the Church to remove a priest, as she cannot continue to “guard the children’s morality.”

The documentary delves deeply into the continued impact of the school on the community. Many of the survivors cannot talk about their experiences, others speak to their experience as if they were simply observers of the crimes committed against them.

Peppered throughout the film is archival footage of the schools. One impactful scene shows a nun presiding over dozens of young girls, kneeling beside their beds and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Another shows a priest leading his “flock” of children, painting a picture of serenity and love. It’s a deceptive picture – one made to hide the true nature of these schools.

Sugarcane is hard to watch. A content warning at the beginning of the film only prepares the viewer for some of the atrocities spoken of. The stories told speak to an almost unthinkable level of viciousness. The unfortunate truth is that too many turned a blind eye to the crimes as they happened. Only now is a reckoning occurring in which there is a level of acknowledgement to the horror to which so many children were subjected.

However, the film is not without hope. Several scenes show that the religion and language of the culture survives. Sugarcane is a crucial piece of our history, one that demands acknowledgment.

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Blame It on the Fame

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Girl You Know It’s True

by Rachel Willis

Simon Verhoeven’s biopic on Milli Vanilli’s meteoric rise and devastating fall is the subject of his latest film, Girl You Know It’s True. The film opens by stating that this is not only based on a true story but on several true stories. As much as we want our truth to be objective, we’re reminded that the retelling of events is often based on memory—a faulty, frequently contradictory, wholly subjective experience.

Of course, certain parts of the story are not in dispute. The duo that put the face to the group were Rob Pilatus (Tijan Njie) and Fab Morvan (Elan Ben Ali). Both were recruited by producer Frank Farian (Matthias Schweighöfer) after they were seen dancing by his live-in business partner, Milli (Bella Dayne).

After the initial agreement to work together, this is where the story gets interesting. Even those who know the tale will be drawn into the elaborate ruse Farian puts together – fusing vocals and performers, stealing songs from other artists to use as singles for his newest “project.”

While Farian’s role in Milli Vanilli’s story is critical, it’s Ali and Njie who tie it all together. Both embody the characters they play with naivety and enthusiasm – often in equal measure. Their deal with the devil is understandable. And anyone paying attention to music at the time is aware that while this arrangement may have been the most egregious in terms of deception, there were plenty of shady deals going around in record studios.

And while there’s no sympathy for Frank Farian, Schweighöfer does manage to imbue him with some compassion. Instead of coming across as a one-note villain, there’s a bit of humanity to the character.

The film excels at blending humor and tragedy into Rob and Fab’s story. That news reports would interrupt coverage of the United States’s war in Iraq to cover the “lip-syncing scandal” is the height of cultural absurdity. The tragedy comes in the fact that while this was a team effort, just as Rob and Fab were the faces of the group, so they were the scapegoats of its demise.

No one disputes that Rob and Fabrice were complicit in the deceit, but the price they paid seems too heavy compared to the producers, managers, and studio execs who claimed they were just as shocked by the news as everyone else. Their pockets were lined with the dollars of those fans who felt betrayed.

It’s an intriguing story that is as fascinating now as it was then.

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The Same, but Different

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Man of Reason

by Rachel Willis

Director and star Jung Woo-sung manages to craft his own take on the man with a criminal past trying to live on the straight and narrow in his film, Man of Reason.

Su-hyuk (Jung), newly released from prison after 10 years, finds much of his world has changed. What hasn’t changed is the expectation that he will resume a life of crime. However, an ultimatum from his ex-girlfriend (Lee Elijah) is all Su-hyuk needs to shun his former lifestyle.

But as we all know, walking away from a crime syndicate isn’t easy.

What follows is a predictable blend of attempted murder, fights, chases, and kidnap. Where Jung succeeds is the introduction of fun characters who enliven the action and the tension. Murderers-for-hire, Jin-ah (Park Yoo-na) and Woo-jin (Kim Nam-gil), are a hell of a lot of fun, despite their penchant for bombs and general mayhem. And despite their humorous inclusion, they still bring a measure of hostility to the film, especially Jin-ah, who is the colder and more calculating of the murderous duo.

As our silent, determined hero, Jung is fairly winning as Su-hyuk. In one of the best scenes, a car that was a gift from his former boss is used to great effect as a weapon against said boss. And while we often tread car commercial territory (frequent shots of the BMW emblem are front and center of several scenes), it doesn’t stop it from being a lot of fun to watch.

Of course, you know what will happen. Each beat unfolds in predictable measure. Whether or not you’re able to lose yourself in the movie and ignore the familiar territory depends on how much you like big action sequences. At this, Jung excels.

It helps that the actors are at their best, bringing the right level of humor, menace, and thrills. As you may also expect, a child at the center of the action raises the stakes, and little In-ba (Ryu Jian) is the perfect mix of adorable, sad, and precocious. Her dilemma is where most of the tension lies, and Ryu ably tugs at our heart strings.

While there isn’t anything new to find in Man of Reason, that doesn’t make it any less thrilling to watch.

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Lost Loot

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The Outlaws

by Rachel Willis

Who stole the loot? It’s the question at the heart of The Outlaws, co-directed and co-written by Austen Paul and Joey Palmroos (with a third writing credit going to Andres Holmes).

This movie is a mess. Is it a case of too many cooks in the kitchen—or rather, too many writers with different ideas smashed together into one movie? From the unnecessary narrator to the jumps backward and forward through time, there are a lot of moving parts in a movie with such a short runtime.

That’s not to say that none of it works. Most of the backward jumps offer a glimpse of our characters and how they ended up in the present situation. That present situation being that after a train heist, the money goes missing, and it’s crook against crook while we watch the tension build (just not very well).

But there are also unnecessary time jumps that don’t add anything to the story nor move it forward. There are also fake outs that create confusion. At one point, the narrator spends time narrating a false ending with a line something along the lines of “this is one way the story could have ended but did not.” Really?

Our primary outlaws are Wild Bill Higgins (Arthur Sylense), JT Tulsa (Dallas Hart), Boone Collins (Jonathan Peacy), and Henriette Parker (Celeste Wall). You’ll hear both their first and last names a lot just in case you forgot them in the smorgasbord of characters. Of these four main characters, Boone Collins is probably the most fun, as Peacy brings a lot of life to this outlaw. The others are a mishmash of characters you’ve seen before, and it might be for the best that their names are repeated so frequently. They’re a forgettable lot.

The film is not helped by the late arrival of Eric Roberts as Bloody Tom. He’s about as menacing as a puppy, so his presence does nothing to amplify the non-existent tension. On occasion, Sylense imbues Higgins with some genuine menace, but it’s too inconsistent to elicit any edge-of-your-seat suspense.

This is one of those films that tries hard to thrill you but sadly falls very short.

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Already Done Had Herses

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Solo

by Rachel Willis

From the very first scene, Simon (Théodore Pellerin) grabs your attention and doesn’t let go in writer/director Sophie Dupuis’s film, Solo.

Make-up artist by day and drag queen performer by night, Simon’s world is filled with glamorous costumes and stunning performances. When Olivier (Félix Maritaud) arrives on the scene as a new performer, he and Simon have an instant connection.

Rounding out Simon’s life is his sister Maude (Alice Moreault), a designer who supplies Simon’s with his stunning stage wear.

Our first hint of trouble comes with the news that Simon’s mother is returning to Quebec after a 15-year absence. Having left the family to pursue her career, this is a cause for friction between the siblings. Simon professes to understand why his mother left, but as we watch him try to reconnect, it’s clear that her desertion has left a deep, devastating impression.

Pellerin is masterful at displaying a range of emotions, easily eliciting elation or despair in the audience. From his performances on stage (of which we’re lucky to get several), to his newly developing relationship, to the friction with his mother and sister, each moment feels as natural as if you were experiencing these things for yourself.

The supporting actors are equal to Pellerin, bringing a welcome depth not only to the film but to each character. As we dive deeper into Simon and Olivier’s relationship, we start to get subtle (then not so subtle) hints that things aren’t as sunny as they first appeared. Several montage moments of both drag performances and the drug-fueled parties serve to deepen the sense of the tempestuous relationship.

The montages start to feel like one too many, but the drag performances are fun to watch. So even while they don’t always further the story, it’s hard to mind their inclusion. However, it’s also hard not to want more moments of dialogue between characters. One less montage may have allowed for this, furthering any number of meaningful character interactions.

On the whole, Dupuis’s writing is masterful. Paired with Pellerin’s stunning performance, we’re given a film that encompasses joy, devastation, and hope. Solo is a beautiful, passionate film.

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Kisses Are Hers and Hers and His

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Chestnut

by Rachel Willis

Writer/director Jac Cron offers a slice-of-summer in a young woman’s life in the skillfully written film, Chestnut.

Annie (Natalia Dyer) is on the verge of moving across the country when she meets Tyler (Rachel Keller) and Danny (Danny Ramirez) at a bar. Tyler is the first to approach, and what begins as a shared drink becomes a budding romance.

Cron’s script is a subtle take on young men and women stumbling toward their futures, one uncertain foot at a time. Danny and Tyler work shifts at a high-end restaurant, spending their nights drinking at bars or dancing in clubs. Annie is easily caught up in this world, as she struggles with her fear of the future.

Though Dyer is the core of the film, it’s the scene stealing Keller is who draws most of our focus. Tyler’s dynamic presence is tinged with the unexpected. She keeps Annie off-balance, stringing her along in a way that may feel familiar to anyone who’s faltered in a new relationship. Annie’s joy and confusion is understandable. Tyler is often unknowable.

While Keller draws us in, Dyer often leaves us floundering. Her acting veers too often toward melodrama, which doesn’t fit the tone of the film. The awkward flirtation is awkward for the wrong reasons. Instead of coming across as realistic, it feels unnatural. It’s unfortunate the camera work seems to mirror Dyer’s acting, as neither are particularly interesting.

As Danny, Ramirez is left with less to do than either Keller or Dyer. However, he imbues the character with a certain unease that suggests there is more to Tyler than Annie realizes. His own relationship with Annie comes across more naturally, more honest, helping the audience understand what draws Annie into their lives.

Additional characters pass in and out of the film, each offering more to the picture of who Annie is. There are no overt realizations or narrative moments of clarity. Something much simpler and more interesting happens as Annie’s summer comes to a close.

As a whole, the movie has some hard-to-overlook faults, but the writing is good enough that it doesn’t really matter.