"Goodnight Mommy": Predictability Doesn't Destroy the Tension

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If a film’s big twist ending fails to deliver, does that automatically negate all the good will that led up to that twist?  That’s what I found myself asking as I watched the final moments of Austrian horror flick Goodnight Mommy.  I had guessed the movie’s big surprise ending within the first five minutes of screen time, and the film never really did a whole lot to disavow that assumption.  But that did not keep me from enjoying the film anyway.  So why is that?

Well, I think it at least partially has to do with the film’s rather novel set-up.  A pair of twins, Elias and Lukas, begin to notice that their mother has been acting strangely ever since her recent car accident.  Her face is bandaged up, her behavior is erratic and decidedly more mean-spirited than they remember, and strangest of all, she only gives Elias any food or acknowledges his presence.  The twins suspect that this woman isn’t really their mother and start to devise a plan to torture the truth out of her.

Now, I’m sure that some of you were able to guess the big twist just from that summary, especially if you are familiar with a few particular major films from around the turn of the century.  The suspicion that the mother is not who she says she is isn’t ever all that convincing, but seeing how she interacts with her children and how they interact with each other is still pretty intriguing, especially considering that their interactions with the outside world are confined to a few specific instances.  This is a slow burner to be sure, and though it has a tendency to drag on for short stretches, Goodnight Mommy seems much more interested in letting us stew over whether our suspicions of the twist ending are correct, rather than trying to shock us with a big reveal.

It’s also pretty subtle when it finally arrives at the child-torturing-parent stuff that acts as the film’s main selling point.  It’s easy to picture an American version of this film resorting to the most gaudy and over-the-top special effects to make its audience feel they’ve got their money’s worth in blood.  However, this Austrian flick is content to let the horror of the situation sit pretty much in reality, without visual extremes beyond piss-stained sheets and only-as-necessary blood.  The biggest impact is psychological, as the twins, particularly Elias, try to come to grips with harming someone they love, or at least someone they believe is impersonating someone they love.  It smacks of a child’s limited grasp of consequence, which makes the film tense not only for the situation itself, but because the twins don’t seem able to stop the train wreck of problems their actions have begun to build up to.

That said, it still feels pretty unsatisfying when the big climactic reveal at the end of the film doesn’t carry the weight it feels like it ought to.  But that shouldn’t discount the feelings the film evokes while getting there.  The twist ending is based upon a what is now a cliché, but the avenue by which it gets there is still disturbingly satisfying to watch, putting a new spin on the creepy child trope of popular horror fiction.  Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is a new classic of modern horror among the ilk of It Follows or The Babadook, it still works pretty well for what it is aiming for.  Give this one a look, particularly if you don’t mind subtitles.

"Bone Tomahawk": Talented Direction Marred By Blatant Racism

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Bone Tomahawk is pretty bizarre piece of film-making, and not in the usual way that one might think.  It isn’t so much that this film is stylistically constructed or so incredibly bad as to be baffling, but it takes on the strange task of telling a story that is functionally a Western, yet attempts to infuse a horror element in the last quarter of the film that feels tonally disparate from everything leading up to that point.  It’s a strange combination of elements that doesn’t quite gel for a number of reasons, the most glaring of which is apparent from the synopsis.

This is the story of four men who must travel across the frontier on a rescue mission.  Their town had been raided by a tribe of cannibalistic Native Americans who had abducted three of the locals as feeding stock.  The sheriff (Kurt Russell), his back-up deputy, a local Indian-killing enthusiast, and the injured husband of a taken woman make their way across the plains, necessarily finding ways to get along amidst differing viewpoints.

The obvious issue to take with this set-up is the extremely racist portrayal of indigenous peoples in this film.  It’s a play on an old savage archetype that has since passed into antiquity in respectable cinema, but the film tries to circumvent this by making the people seem inhuman in build and mannerisms, being entirely without a spoken language.  There is even a scene wherein a “respectable” Native American goes out of his way to explain that these cannibals are not representative of indigenous tribes as a whole, but this rings pretty hollow when the basic plot construction consists of four White men saving a White woman from a horde of non-White racial scary-otypes.  The attempted horror angle in the final quarter of the film not only feels tonally dissonant from the previous scenes of character building, but it also acts as a pretty transparent attempt to remove the humanity from an enemy whose inherent personhood raises incredibly problematic subtext.

And the unfortunate thing is that this film isn’t even entirely devoid of decent qualities.  The four male leads are all well-acted and have recognizable personas and characters arcs that don’t feel like shallow archetypes.  The script relies on witty banter and character tension to carry the dialogue in ways that don’t feel dissimilar to a Tarantino film.  And director S. Craig Zahler has a definite eye for extended scenes, allowing painful and uncomfortable moments to play out in their near entirety to communicate character struggles to the audience.

However, despite the talent that is clearly behind the camera, Zahler is also the writer of this inherently problematic story that, while functional structurally and entertaining at moments, is offensive by its very conception due to its use of Native Americans as an antiquated plot device, and even worse, as horror movie monsters.  It may offer platitudes and bend over backwards to assure you that that isn’t what you are watching, as it’s anachronistically progressive characters may consistently convey, but I think the film doth protest too much.  Zahler may have a future career in directing, but this is a pretty offensive first outing for someone so clearly talented.

"Queen of Earth": A Portrayal of Feminism Through Madness

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Alex Ross Perry is an interesting dark humorist of the independent cinema scene, as evidenced quite clearly by last year’s Listen Up Philip.  He was very literary sensibilities that haven’t really been popular since old Hollywood, where star power was more important than it ever would be after and the best films were remembered for their performances more than anything else.  Though humor isn’t absent from Perry’s latest endeavor, to call Queen of Earth a comedy would be somewhat a stretch, as this film is less evocative of Perry’s acerbic wit as it is of his ability to coax a brilliant performance from Elizabeth Moss, who for once lets go of the subtle nuances of her characters to delve deep into psychological peril.

Two friends, Catharine (Moss) and Ginny (Katherine Waterston), take their yearly trip to a cabin in the woods in order to escape from the stresses of their everyday lives.  The previous year, Catharine had brought along her boyfriend as Ginny was going through a difficult break-up, leaving Ginny to deal with her depression alone.  This year, Catharine has similarly lost her romantic interest, but also has lost her embezzling father to prison and thus is in a similar situation when Ginny brings along her romantic interest, Rich (Patrick Fugit).

What’s interesting about this scenario is that Catharine’s character is perhaps one of the most feminist portrayals of the madwoman trope ever put to film.  Moss’s performance is reminiscent of Ingrid Bergman’s body of work, with the same kinds of creepy infantilization and incoherent murmurs interspersed with nonsensical laughter.  However, Catherine’s madness is a metaphor for something more than pure hysteria, as she is a woman conditioned to need the support of a man in order to remain functional.  It becomes apparent that her father sheltered her from the world with wealth, thereby fostering a dependent personality that needs dominant masculinity present in order to maintain a personal identity.  Similarly, the flashbacks to her past relationship show her as completely co-dependent and in denial of such co-dependency when an embittered Ginny points it out.  Catherine may be psychologically weak, but her weakness is understandable based on her conditioning to believe that men need to define her role in life, and her inability to cope is a direct result of that male manipulation.

As fantastic as this portrayal is, though, the film is not without its faults.  There is a late scene where Catharine and Ginny throw a party for no discernable reason, and the only purpose is to stage a hackneyed everyone-attacking-me delusion for Catharine.  Furthermore, there are times when Ginny’s presence seems entirely superfluous, especially since her character exists primarily as a grounded foil for Catharine’s insanity.  Ginny is supposed to represent how Catharine could have developed had her upbringing not emotionally crippled her, but she feels irrelevant when Moss sells Catharine’s struggle so effectively.

If you’re looking for something below the radar this Oscar season, Queen of Earth is a pretty great alternative to the accolades and fanfare of the next few months.  It won’t be getting any awards, but it certainly deserves to garner a fan following.

"Carol": Finally, A Great Lesbian Romance

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For whatever reason, the film industry has never done well with lesbian romance.  Whether it is a film built explicitly on an exploitative premise (My Summer of Love) or one made with passion but with a deficiency of talent (Itty Bitty Titty Committee), lesbians just seem underrepresented with quality motion pictures even within the niche area of gay and lesbian targeted romances.  Even films with mainstream notoriety such as Blue Is The Warmest Color turn out remarkably disappointing when actually scrutinized as more than a representation of on-screen diversity.  Fortunately, Carol does not disappoint; it is a great love story that hinges entirely on the nuanced performances of its cast, particularly its two leads.

Therese (Rooney Mara) is working as a toy store clerk in 1952 when from across the store she notices a striking woman whom we will later come to know as Carol (Cate Blanchett).  The two women have obvious chemistry from the start, and minor interactions begin to build toward something more as a friendship and eventual romance blossom.  This results in Therese finding her own assertive voice and finding an undiscovered confidence through her newfound sexuality, yet Carol isn’t simply a catalyst for Therese’s development.  Carol is in the middle of a strained divorce with her husband that threatens to alienate her relationship with her young daughter if her husband can convince the court that, as a sexual deviant, she is unfit to parent.

As far as the romance itself is concerned, the portrayal is spot-on, a slow burn that feels like the natural development of a relationship.  Mara and Blanchett will deservedly be recognized as two of this year’s best actresses, as the body language they exhibit with one another is not only subtle but immediately communicative, as it well should be considering that the time period in which their characters live does not allow for open sexual flirtation with members of the same sex.  Mara in particular does an excellent job of portraying a subtle insecurity befitting of one who is finding new emotions alien to her but is scared to voice those concerns, and Blanchett is equally fascinating as a woman who has to decide between being true to herself and suppressing her identity in order to have a relationship with her child.

The portrayal of men in this film is also astoundingly complex, as Carol’s husband Harge (Kyle Chandler) and Therese’s boyfriend Richard (Jake Lacy) are far from the stock abuse caricatures they could have been in a lesser film.  Richard is the personification of the nice guy trope, the man who thinks that his careful celibate courtship of Therese will one day reward him with marriage and sexual intimacy; he doesn’t have bad intentions, but his view of women as people is certainly skewed so as to perceive them as prizes for kindness.  Similarly, Harge is completely dumbstruck by the possibility that Carol could reject his love for that of, not another man, but women, making him entirely insecure in his ability to control his life and raise his child.  Though the men of this film might be called villains for this instigation of the film’s conflicts, they aren’t one-dimensional and are sympathetic in their lack of education and context in seeing lesbian relationships as legitimate.

Even without all the extravagance of the film’s setting and the commentary on the social perception of lesbian identity, Carol would excel as a beautifully told romance, the kind that could never be emulated by the mindless portrayal of beautiful people kissing in the rain seen in any Nicholas Sparks production.  This is a story of interesting characters navigating treacherous waters together in order to find a way to make love work in a time and place that is openly hostile to them doing so, but without one single villainous entity on which to blame that hostility.  I think I’ve been using the phrase “best of the year” too often as of late (because this is an AMAZING year for movies), but this film is definitely among my favorites this year.  I just have to think long and hard about its competition to tell if it breaks into my top ten.

"Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation": Fresh and Frivolous

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Mission: Impossible holds a very unique position in the modern cinema landscape.  It is the rare franchise (only just now rivaled by the return of Mad Max) that has almost no pretentions to continuity, nor does it really seem invested in world-building, over-arching narrative, or even developing its minimal cast of returning characters.  Over the past two decades, Mission: Impossible has evolved into a test kitchen for directors wishing to get their feet wet in American action cinema, whether it be John Woo attempting to translate his Hong Kong sensibilities in part two, J.J. Abrams taking his first stab at directing for the big screen for part three, or Pixar’s Brad Bird venturing into the realms of live action for the first time in 2011’s Ghost Protocol.  Now with installment five, Rouge Nation (thankfully continuing to buck the trend of numbering this franchise that requires no homework to feel caught up with the current installment), Christopher McQuarrie takes the helm for what is another great installment in a franchise that is somehow only getting better with age.

The plots of these films are pretty damn formulaic, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t get into specifics.  Ethan Hunt (played by a gracefully aging Tom Cruise) is a secret agent for the Impossible Mission Force, a small team of secret agents tasked with taking down urgent threats to world security.  The quirk this time around is that there is now an evil group of spies known as The Syndicate, who want a technological MacGuffin for reasons because who cares, that’s not why you watch a Mission: Impossible movie.  This film, like most of the M:I franchise before it, is all about the action setpieces, and this one surely delivers.

Tom Cruise is game as ever to be the director’s punching bag, putting himself in actually dangerous situations for that ever-important take.  His character is smug and as two-dimensional as ever, but much like in Edge of Tomorrow (also co-written by McQuarrie), it’s just fun to watch Tom Cruise hurt at the whims of the script.  However, keeping with a growing trend in Hollywood, Cruise is joined by a competent female agent, played by Rebecca Ferguson.  What’s great about the inclusion of her character is that she doesn’t rely on Cruise or any other male cast member for self-definition, but is a fully realized character in her own right that kicks ass, which isn’t to say that she is terribly well developed, but only well developed as the rest of the male action figures McQuarrie positions for his setpieces.

In contrast to those who have handled the franchise before him, McQuarrie seems to lack a distinctive voice as a director in this installment, but instead remixes motifs and themes from previous entries, whether it be Woo’s operatic interpretation of the battle between dual moralities, Abram’s insistence on a personal dimension that is here realized as camaraderie between the agents, or Bird’s pulse-pounding philosophy of action scenes melting into one another to keep the tension high.  This installment easily goes down as the second best of the franchise, but only because it must live in the shadow of the non-stop frantic pacing of Ghost Protocol.  This is a frivolous summer blockbuster that doesn’t really belong on anyone’s top ten list this year, yet it knows what it is and tries to be the best version of a frivolous summer blockbuster that it can be.  This is definitely worth your time.

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens": Snooty and Goon Collaboration

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You can see my review for the biggest film event of the year over on Snooty and Goon's podcast HERE!  May the Force be with you.

"The Big Short": Documentary Through Dramatization

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The Big Short is a pretty bizarre beast of a film, but this is one of those rare instances where immense risk really pays off.  Directed and co-written by Adam McKay, whose previous feature filmography is almost exclusively Will Ferrell collaborations such as Anchorman and Step Brothers, The Big Short is an entirely different sort of comedy, founded on real world events and variations on real people.  Based on a nonfiction book by the same name, McKay focuses his lens on the financial crisis of 2007 and those who had the foresight to predict the collapse of the world economy.  It is with this film that McKay proves himself an incredibly versatile comedy director who can make pointed social commentary as well as screwball popcorn flicks.

The film is shot in pseudo-documentary style, following the experiences of five Wall Street players who, through various means and methods, were able to put together the pieces that foreshadowed the collapse of the housing market and with it the entire American banking industry.  To get into the particulars of the narrative would be an exercise in futility as it would ultimately become a lecture on economic theory and the roles those who manipulated the system played within it.  However, for what is at its core an exceedingly well-produced piece of edutainment, the film is never dull or tedious to sit through.

This is due to excellent comedic direction that is geared toward simultaneously making you laugh and making you angry at the situations being presented.  Complex banking jargon is explained in cutaway sequences of celebrities in innocuous situations explaining the shockingly simple concepts underlying the terminology, which is both silly and necessarily informative.  Meanwhile, the cast of main characters is perpetually shocked by the idiocy of those within the banking sector, whose own greed blinds them to the consequences of their manipulative lending practices.  Intermixed with the handheld, slightly out of focus shots are fourth wall-shattering asides that serve to point out exactly how fucked up a given situation is.

If the film has one major problem, it’s that some of the pieces of the story don’t feel all that interconnected.  Of the film’s four interweaving plotlines, only two ever directly interact, and even then protagonists Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling never actually share a frame together, leading me to speculate that their dialogue was spliced together in post-production.  This fragmentary approach fits decently well with the documentary aesthetic the film has going for it, but it still feels a bit odd considering that some characters never have fully realized arcs or have much of a narrative purpose beyond further demonstrating just how deep the rabbit hole of corruption goes.

But narrative isn’t really the point here.  Adam McKay is a gifted comic director who is obviously outraged at the lack of consequence the banking industry received in the fallout of the economic collapse, so he used those talents to make a film that would reach the greatest number of people: not a documentary, but a comic dramatization of the events that affected the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.  McKay has managed to make a film of people talking about stocks and bonds not only informative, but wickedly funny, and that is no small feat.  I may not count this film as one of the best of 2015, but I would certainly count it as one of the most important.  This is necessary viewing for anyone and everyone.

"The Danish Girl": Sympathy Masquerading as Empathy

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I think I need to start this review with the disclaimer that The Danish Girl could have been a much worse film than it ended up being.  I’ve been nervous about the production of this film ever since I found out that director Tom Hooper, a director notorious for making films geared specifically to pander to award season sensibilities, had cast Eddie Redmayne to star as the titular transgender woman Lili Elbe, immediately after Redmayne gained fame and infamy for his problematic portrayal of Steven Hawking in last year’s The Theory of Everything.  This raised warning bells that the film was going to be yet another vehicle designed for Redmayne to pull in nominations for portraying a disadvantaged group that would have been better served by having their own voices represented.  And that’s largely what has happened here, though I can’t really fault the film for what appear to be noble intentions in portraying the transgender experience, despite how misguided and unfortunate the portrayal turned out to be.

For those unfamiliar with the life of Lili Elbe, she was a transgender woman, formerly known as famous painter Einar Wegener, who came out in the 1920s.  As portrayed in the film, what started as a flirtatious game with her wife (portrayed with a surprising degree of complexity by Alicia Vikander) turned into a desire to dress as a woman in public and ultimately led to a discovery of transgender identity that resulted in her being one of the first to receive gender reaffirming surgery.  The film tries to treat Lili’s transition with some degree of respect, but certain pauses in dialogue feel primed at Lili’s expense, perhaps unconsciously but still present all the same as supported by the laughter of those who also attended the screening.

As for the film’s portrayal of transgender identity, it is seemingly well-intentioned but viewed through the skewed perspective of the heterosexual male gaze.  The camera lingers on the female form, fetishizing femininity through “Einar’s” eyes and carrying the unsettling implication that she embraces femininity out of an overt attraction to it, not out of any sort of self-discovery.  This is further evidenced by the camera never choosing to fetishize Lili in the same way; despite the film’s supposedly progressive attitude, it never deigns to treat Lili as a woman in her own right.

She is constantly seen as a fraudulent woman, which isn’t necessarily unrealistic as to how transgender women are treated, but the film does not go to enough lengths to establish that Lili is worthy of equal dignity to cisgender women.  The possibility that Lili suffers from mental illness is perpetually brought up throughout the film, with Lili seeing multiple doctors who all try to convince her of her insanity.  Again, not unrealistic, but Lili herself refers to “Einar” as a separate identity; considering that much of the presumably cisgender audience for this film is going to be largely ignorant of the realities of transgender experience, the conflation with mental illness is going to further spread harmful misconceptions.  This is also why Redmayne is a terrible choice to portray Lili, and I don’t mean because he is a cisgender man (which, despite being problematic, makes a certain amount of sense for how this story was told).  Redmayne is most certainly a gifted mimic, able to adopt the mannerisms and affectations of others in a purely physical sense, but as an actor he is never able to create a character beyond his bland British charm.  He was never convincing as Lili; he was Eddie Redmayne in a dress, just as he was only Eddie Redmayne in a wheelchair a year ago.

I can’t fault The Danish Girl for not being a film sympathetic to transgender issues.  However, it is by no means empathetic to those issues, by which I mean it is painfully obvious that its creation was not informed by living transgender people sharing their experiences.  This is a film shackled by the misconceptions of its director, its writing team, and its cast, and those misconceptions will be spread through the uninformed cisgender audiences who may come away from the film with sympathy for transgender people, but lack the understanding to affect change in any meaningful way.

"Minions": Blatant Brand Management

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I’ve never really understood the appeal of the Minions as the pop culture icons that they have somehow become.  Despicable Me was an alright movie, but I didn’t think that it was anything especially fantastic, and the Minions, while not the worst mascot characters in children’s movie history, didn’t strike me as particularly unique in their execution.  Maybe it’s their design, which seems to click with the public as generic enough to be easily marketable, yet elastic enough to allow for different numbers of eyes and varying body heights and widths, creating the illusion of variety without actually needing to create actual characters.  More than anything, though, Minions seem to work best as a horde of slapstick comedians, and their first solo spin-off finds itself lacking in that department.

The main problem seems to stem from the fact that the story is constrained to three minions, Kevin, Stuart, and Bob.  Filling out the roles of the leader, the goofball, and the naïve child respectively, these three aren’t particularly interesting as characters.  Their babbling dialect does not allow for much in the way of character development, so the film must rely on a constantly changing plot in order to keep a frenetic pace.  What starts as a hero’s journey to seek out a new villain to serve quickly turns into serving a villain by stealing the queen’s crown, and then takes a few turns later on that never feel organic to any sort of narrative structure but seem only to set up some uninspired animated action setpieces.  Narratively, it’s a bit of a mess.

This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the film were committed to delivering some cartoon antics, but it never seems to have enough faith in its audience to allow the Minions to do their thing without an overabundance of exposition.  One of the great things about cartoons (as already demonstrated in this year’s Shawn the Sheep Movie) is that the great variety of emotive range and slapstick invulnerability of their characters can allow for a wide range of nonverbal storytelling options.  While I was never expecting a Minions movie to be entirely speechless (due to human characters and the incessant babbling of the Minions themselves), the Minions’ strength is in their clumsiness, which the film neuters with a domineering narration track in the first few scenes and constant third-party explanation of the Minion trio’s goals and obstacles throughout the remainder.  This isn’t a film that puts much faith in the intelligence of its audience, to a point where it is pretty insulting, even for a kid flick.

Ultimately, if you had any interest in Minions, you already saw it in theaters and bought all the attendant merchandise.  Because that was the point: to act as the most blatant form of brand management.  The film skates by on lackluster presentation and storytelling, but keeps the Minions in recognizable form to remind us all that the brand still exists and will continue to exist as long as we keep buying stuff with Minion faces on it.  Franchise branding is the name of the game for children’s films, but rarely is it so lazily blatant.  If you are a fan of the Minions, my opinion doesn’t really matter.  For everyone else, you aren’t really missing anything as far as I’m concerned.

"Tangerine": Realism in Portraying Transgender Women

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As transgender issues work their way forward into the popular media and public consciousness, it’s easy to suppose how the hot topic could be exploited by would-be filmmakers wishing to make a name for themselves, hoping that audiences would mistake using trans people as props for genuine activism on behalf of an oppressed minority.  Thankfully, that’s not what has happened with Tangerine, a crazy day in the life of a couple of transgender sex workers.  This is largely due to a sense of authenticity lent to the film by the two leads actually being transgender sex workers and the film’s story apparently mirroring some of their experiences.

It is Christmas Eve, and Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) has just been released from a short jail term.  While meeting up with her best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor), she learns that her fiancée/pimp was sleeping with another woman while she was away.  Sin-Dee decides to go on a cross-town tirade to track down this woman so that she can confront her fiancée, while Alexandra tags along distributing flyers for her singing performance later that evening.

The experience of this film is rather unique in how it feels so authentic.  Shot on an iPhone with an anamorphic adapter for widescreen and at real locations in West Hollywood, the film feels devoid of the pomp and circumstance of big budget productions, instead relying on the charisma and emotion of its amateur actors to pull the weight of the storytelling.  All involved do a fantastic job, particularly the two leads whom I was shocked to learn had little to no prior acting experience.  They are naturally funny in playing caricatured self-portraits, yet when the moment calls for them to be more serious they are more than up for the task, particularly for a climax that is touching as it is appropriate for the film’s Christmas setting.

The only unfortunate thing about this film is that its already short runtime of 87 minutes feels padded with a distracting subplot.  The film continually cuts away to Razmin, an Armenian cab driver who frequently uses transgender prostitutes’ services to cope with his culture’s abhorrence with his homosexuality.  I spent most of the film trying to figure out what purpose he served in Sin-Dee’s and Alexandra’s narratives, and unfortunately there isn’t much of one.  Razmin’s brief interactions with the two women make an impact on his story, but his story ultimately has no resolution and only serves to distract from the most touching moments Sin-Dee and Alexandra share.  Perhaps director Sean S. Baker was trying to make a point by not giving Razmin any sort of proper closure, but he feels like he should have been a character in his own film, rather than be overshadowed by the infinitely more interesting leads.  That said, Razmin has his share of funny moments, so his presence isn’t a total waste of time.

Ultimately, even with the seemingly pointless Razmin subplot, Tangerine is a great movie, particularly in its natural portrayal of its transgender subjects.  The film does not shy away from knowledge that discrimination and violence against trangender individuals and sex workers are very real issues, but that is also not the main point of the film; the point is to show a day in the life of these people in a way that is human and relatable, in a way that makes us laugh and cry along with them.  Rodriguez and Taylor have shown us a glimpse of their world that I won’t be forgetting any time soon.

"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies": Dead on Arrival

In Theaters on February 5, 2016

I never finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Though I was intrigued by the concept of placing zombie tropes in a Victorian setting, I didn’t find that the novel ever found a footing beyond its titular joke, at least not in the hundred or so pages I read before getting bored.  This didn’t give me high hopes when I heard that the tortured six year production cycle of the movie adaptation had finally churned out its obligatory final product years after The Walking Dead became the only piece of zombie pop culture ephemera to retain any popularity.  And alas, the resulting film was even worse than I had expected.

See, in theory, the running juxtaposition of English high society with the brutality of braining hordes of the undead should work better in a visual medium, as there is a lot more potential for physical comedy and absurdist winks to the camera that don’t require the characters to break the fourth wall in order to explain the joke.  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies completely misses that opportunity by playing most of the Pride and Prejudice and even most of the Zombies completely straight, almost as if this was two incomplete films that were mashed together in order to somehow bring them to market.  There are exceptions, most notably in the first half hour when the lore of the film’s alternate history is being established, but the two genres remain strangely divorced for a mash-up, leaving what is ostensibly a comedic film with very few laughs or even attempts at making us laugh.

The Victorian romance of Jane Austen’s novel is more or less intact, which actually works wonders to this film’s detriment.  No one going to see this film is looking for a serious portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy; they could just see one of the many adaptations of the original novel for that.  The actors are all pretty half-hearted in their attempts as well, with a noted exception of Matt Smith as an eccentrically needy Mr. Collins, but he rather bizarrely functions as comic relief in a film that is premised on comedic action as its selling point.

The zombie action scenes are similarly half-assed, presumably out of fidelity toward keeping the film at a PG-13 rating.  Almost none of the zombie kills make their way on screen, and the ones that do are remarkably tame and bloodless.  This leads to a bizarre method of fight cinematography where we see our protagonists waving their limbs most dramatically and constantly connecting to something off-screen so that even the banal catharsis of mindless violence is denied to the audience.  And this is a shame, because even though the zombie lore of this film is actually somewhat interesting, with zombies that can seemingly articulate and speak as well as the members of high society they once were, the extent and ramifications of that lore are left largely unexplored in the hope that this film will spawn a franchise.  The mindless violence would have at least given me something fun to focus on while the film spun its wheels.

And that right there is why this film is so atrocious: it isn’t fun.  In fact, it’s really quite boring, much more boring than any film with the title Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has any right to be.  A friend that joined me for the screening joked with me that we had seen one of the worst films of 2016 before the year had even began, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I still felt that way a year from now.  This is a painfully dull film to sit through, and were it not for my commitment to these reviews I probably would have left long before the credits.  When this hits theaters in two months, do not spend your money and let this be the flop it deserves to be.

"Macbeth (2015)": Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing

Now in Theaters

Director Justin Kurzel is strangely noteworthy as a director not for what he has directed previously (which is itself nothing of note), but for what his next project is slated to be: the film adaptation of Assassin’s Creed.  To precede that film with an adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays seems more than a little bizarre, especially considering that Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard are performing in both films.  The resulting interpretation of Macbeth is simultaneously artistically boisterous and tragically pointless, a demonstration that Kurzel can portray historical violence in compelling and visually interesting ways that places the actual Shakespearean text in the back seat.

Kurzel and his fellow screenwriters take some liberties with the original play, most notably in that the battle that takes places in the moments immediately preceding the events of the play is shown in its full bloody glory with Macbeth (Fassbender) at the front and center.  This battle is, as is most of the rest of the film, visually stunning, as cinematographer Adam Arkapaw captures some of the most beautifully composed shots of the year.  However, this has the unfortunate effect of demonstrating Macbeth as a violent tyrant right from the get-go, so that his descent into madness feels more like a formality than a truly tragic evolution of his once uncorrupted character.

Both Fassbender and Cotillard do fantastic work as the Macbeths, particularly in individual scenes where they are given the full breadth of the original text to work with.  Fassbender’s decent into madness is assisted by some clever manipulation of time through editing and Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth is at once daringly manipulative of her husband and yet dumbstruck by the monster her goading has supposedly created.  Neither transformation is really given the amount of screen time necessary to feel entirely convincing, though, as the film tends to rush through the slower, more talkative parts of the play as mere formality in order to get to the more violent and emotionally tortured material.

And that is ultimately why this isn’t in the upper echelon of Shakespearean adaptations; Kurzel has placed all priority on style rather than on substance.  As gorgeous as the cinematography is, many of the scenes designed so show off these shots drag on for way too long through an abuse of slow motion that would make even Zack Snyder flinch.  Furthermore, the score of this film is an omnipresent somber dirge, mixed much too loudly so as to be distracting rather than mood-setting.  Some stylized choices work, such as the blood red filter on the climactic battle scene or the near-wordless subplot about Banquo’s son losing everything at Macbeth’s hand, but these inspired moments feel muted by the constant heavy-handed reminders that this is art cinema.  And that just makes the production feel like a disingenous self-marketing exercise for Justin Kurzel in order to prove he can handle a large-scale production like Assassin's Creed.

On the whole, I’m willing to give this movie a pass because, at its core, it’s still Macbeth and is still entertaining based on the strength of the source material and the great talent performing it.  However, I hope that some producer influence can reign in some of Justin Kurzel’s arthouse tendencies while making Assassin's Creed, because his lack of subtlety becomes quite tiresome by the end of two hours.

"The Martian": The Triumphant Return of Ridley Scott

Now In Theaters, Available on DVD and Blu-ray on January 12, 2016

By my estimation, there must be two Ridley Scotts directing in Hollywood today who, for brevity’s sake, we’ll call Alien Scott and Prometheus Scott.  Alien Scott has a deft understanding of film as a visual medium, using it to enhance his story and characters whether or not he has extensive visual effects to back him up (see: Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven).  On the other hand, Prometheus Scott is who we seem to have been stuck with for at least the past five years, using film as an excuse to stage elaborate setpieces at the expense of telling an interesting story or creating compelling characters (see: Exodus: Gods and Kings, Robin Hood).  So I was a bit wary to go see The Martian, as I could very easily see how putting Prometheus Scott anywhere near a science fiction premise could spell recipe for disaster.

Thankfully though, after much goading from my peers and after everyone on planet Earth seemingly having watched this before me, I got to see how Alien Scott proudly suppressed his lesser instincts and asserted control.  I think this is because The Martian, though a piece of science fiction, has an incredibly simple premise: what if one man were stranded alone on Mars?  The comparison has been made that this story is a combination of elements of Cast Away and Apollo 13, as we see the stresses and difficulties of being stranded alone in a hostile environment alongside a scientific exploration of a team looking to problem-solve their way to bringing their lost astronaut home.  And miraculously, that could have been an overly busy film is incredibly watchable and entertaining.

I think a lot of it comes down to excellent casting.  Matt Damon is pretty much perfect for stranded astronaut Mark Whatney, a character who could be a bland cipher if placed in the wrong hands.  Thankfully, Damon is such an effortlessly likeable actor that he brings crude humor and tragic emotion to his part while still remaining charismatically neutral enough to act as an audience surrogate as he spends most of his screentime alone.  You’re right there with Whatney, feeling his triumphs and setbacks just as he does.

The cast back on Earth and in the returning space vessel that mistakenly left Whatney for dead are equally impressive, a collection of characters so vast that it is impossible to list or even remember most of their names.  However, Scott played this smart by giving most key characters a well-recognized actor to play them, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Chastain, and Jeff Daniels to name a few.  Their characters are well-developed enough to give them distinct personalities and make them immediately recognizable, but not so well-developed that the audience is given more information than they can handle.  It’s the kind of large cast management that would make Joss Whedon blush, and I think that is the biggest contributing factor to Ridley Scott’s success with The Martian.

There’s obviously a lot more that goes into a film than its characters, but as I’ve said in other reviews, sometimes the seamlessness of direction is precisely what makes a film so great.  The script is rock solid, the story beats land perfectly on the exact emotion the audience needs to feel at a given moment, and the science-positive message of an entire world looking to save one man is simply awe-inspiring.  I know for a fact that Prometheus Scott would not have been able to direct one of the best films of the year.  But Alien Scott, the true Ridley Scott, most assuredly has.

"In the Heart of the Sea": Sinks Under Its Own Weight

In Theaters on December 11, 2015

Ron Howard is a talented director, but every person has their limits.  There is a reason that Moby Dick hasn’t been adapted for the big screen very often: beside the monumental whale attack and the single-minded drive of its protagonist, the work is a bloated piece more fascinated with whale blubber than storytelling that does not lend itself well to filming.  Howard attempted to side-step this issue by making an adaptation of the historical events that inspired Moby Dick, using a portrayal of Melville as a curious interviewer of a survivor of said events to act as a framing device for the historical narration.  However, there is just so much that Howard tries to work into his film that it collapses under its own blubberous mass, whether it be due to cuts to the film’s length or simply too many tonal and focal shifts.

The film is at its best during the Melville portions, where Melville (Ben Winshaw) interviews Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), the aged last survivor of the whale attack that destroyed the Essex in 1820.  These scenes are well-acted and carry what is closest to what the film has to a character arc as Nickerson talks his way through his trauma, but ultimately the framing device feels a bit bizarre, seeing as Nickerson’s younger self isn’t present for some key scenes that he somehow still manages to narrate.

But that is the most minimal of complaints compared to how the film rather half-heartedly goes about establishing its protagonists: first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth), the son of a landsman who has worked his way up through the ranks by sheer determination, and Captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker), the heir to a whaling dynasty that gains him the advantage of easy promotion with no practical experience.  The film sets this up early as the potential starting point for the butting of heads and the eventual putting of Pollard in his place, and though the narrative makes an effort to resolve that arc in the end, there is no character development shown to happen on screen.  The actors do very well with their survivalist monologues, but never do we see Pollard and Chase’s conflict come to a satisfying head or more than a token conclusion.

As for the whale itself, the whale attack shots are beautifully realized, but if you were expecting to see anything more extensive than what is shown in the trailer, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.  More attention is paid to the horrific carnage of whaling practices, which simultaneously feels victorious to the whaling crew and horrific in light of the savage brutality to the aquatic mammals.  It’s oddly duplicitous, which robs what little we see of the white whale attack of the pure horror that makes monsters entertaining in the first place.

In turn, the white whale get short-changed in favor of scenes of survival at sea that don’t carry as much weight as they should due to the aforementioned lack of character development for either the leading men or for the supporting crew.  Ultimately, this is a film comprised of fragments of great film ideas: a story of survivor’s guilt, a clash of hard work versus privilege, a testament of the horrors of whaling, a monster movie, and a tale of survival in the most dire of circumstances.  Ron Howard is a skilled enough director to make any of those work, perhaps even two within the same film.  However, the ambition exhibited here would be beyond most director’s abilities to compress adequately into a two hours film, and Howard is certainly not the one to surmount this obstacle.  Maybe someday a director will make an entertaining adaptation of Moby Dick, but this isn’t the film to tide you over until they do.

"Amy (2015)": Tastefully Presented Tragedy

Now Available on DVD and Blu-ray

Amy is not a story we haven’t heard before, and I don’t mean that in the sense that Amy Winehouse’s rise in fame and decline in stability is incredibly well-documented.  I mean this in the sense that we have seen artists burn out on their celebrity before, and Winehouse is an example of that tragedy in the extreme, where the death of a young artist forces us to step back and look at the psychological trauma that celebrity can inflict upon a person.  Amy is a testament to the life of a talented young woman who fell victim to her own fame, and though it isn’t the best documentary of the year, I have a hard time seeing anything else bringing home the prize at the Oscars this year.

Which isn’t to say that Amy isn’t a good film; it very much is, taking material that would have made excellent fodder in a made-for-TV exploitation special and elevating it to a touching tribute to the impact Winehouse made on the musical community.  Director Asif Kapadia clearly saw the dangers fraught in presenting this material as respectfully as possible, and therefore used a few tricks to make the story more resonant.  First, and most notably, the film has almost no face-cam interviews.  The benefit of making a film about Amy Winehouse is that there is a plethora of home movie footage and archived news reports to present a coherent narrative on Winehouse’s life, even without the use of narration.

However, the film does use narration throughout, but in the form of audio recordings with Winehouse’s friends, producers, and fellow artists.  In lieu of watching these people cry for their lost friend, we get to see Winehouse through their eyes, with their remembrances matched to potent images on-screen that depict more than the drugged-out caricature the popular media presented Winehouse as in her later years.  According to Amy, Winehouse was a goofy, everyday woman with a talented voice that led her to be exploited and for her on-going struggles with substance abuse and bulimia to go largely untreated.  The film isn’t so much interested in laying blame on any particular person (though Winehouse’s promoter and her father do not come out looking very good), but it does paint the picture that the compounded struggles of her celebrity status are what pushed Winehouse to her demise.

The Academy, mostly comprised of film celebrities, will likely give Amy the Oscar win for Best Documentary in a landslide, as Hollywood loves stories of tragic youth sacrificed upon the altar of celebrity.  Amy is quite a good film, particularly for how lewdly this subject matter could have been presented, but it isn’t quite so novel a documentary as, say, Going Clear.  As with any documentary, though, this may just be attributed to my relative ambivalence to the subject matter.  If the life of Amy Winehouse is of any interest to you, this might be one to give a shot.