"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Paul Feig attempts a new Simple Favor with The Housemaid (no relation to the Korean classic, rather an adaptation of what I assume is a pretty trashy novel for thirst moms), in which dead-eyed Sydney Sweeney becomes a housekeeper (with a jailbird secret) for a volatile Amanda Seyfried and soon falls for "perfect" hubby Brandon Sklenar (if perfect includes loving Richard Dawson macking on game show contestants and defending Barry Lyndon - red flags!). The behaviors are often so extreme, you have to expect some thrilling twists, and the movie delivers on that. There's the twist I fully expected, then the one I didn't, then some others that are a big stretch, but by the last half-hour, I was laughing at the absurdity, and I think Feig was, too. He makes the creepy family thriller work, but he's a comedy director first, and it shows. Seems people are obsessed with trying to figure out if Sweeney is a good actress or not, and she certainly delivers one of the worst voice-over performances since Harrison Ford fobbed one off for Blade Runner's theatrical cut, but it's hard to shine with your two or three expressions when Seyfried is RIGHT THERE blowing the doors off the suburban dream house. Had fun with it, but it's pretty ridiculous to think the book has sequels.
At home: Macon Blair has a lot of fun with The Toxic Avenger, providing a great tribute to the Troma original, and diving into the kind of humor we don't see much of anymore (Robocop on overdrive). Filled with sight gags and over the top - not to say grotesque - characters and violence, its heart nevertheless rests in Peter Dinklage - despite not physically playing Toxie (he performed it on tape and a more agile performer smothered in prosthetics reproduced it to a tee, then he looped the dialogue) - as a single stepdad (of kid horror icon Jacob Tremblay, who replaces Toxie's girlfriend Sara in the narrative). He's certainly more endearing than Melvin was. The villain is more clearly Big Pharma, and the film is a pleasant remix of the original, where fans will recognize the elements, but they're played in a different way. A lot of laughs around the living room. Outrageous and consistently amusing.
I'm going to be honest, I was never a fan of Terry Pratchett's first two Discworld novels. The characters were too dumb and he seemed to be trying very hard to do a Hitchhiker's Guide for fantasy. For me, Discworld really takes off with Equal Rites, when we abandon failed wizard Rincewind and the world's first tourist Twoflower in favor of one-off stories about other characters from across the world. The series finds its head and its heart, and goes on to be rightfully beloved. The Colour of Magic television mini-series (two 90-minute episodes covering those first two books) is therefore fruit of the poison tree, for me. Part I, especially, is a spoof of all those picaresque I devoured as a kid, but find annoying now - just silly incident after silly incident - and the breakneck pace to crunch even short-ish novels into the runtime means I never get my hooks into anything. Part II is much better because there are actual stakes, a doomsday countdown, and the duo get some fun party members (David Bradley as the old barbarian, for example). There are times where the budget strains under the weight of the effects required, and fans of the books will no doubt grumble at the changes and the resulting tone, but Pratchett evidently signed off on them since he has a cameo in the production! It's hard for me to say after all these years, but there's certainly a new attempt at referencing fantasy films, what with the cast including Jeremy Irons (D&D), Tim Curry (Legend), and several Lord of the Rings alumni (Sean Astin as Twoflower, Christopher Lee as the voice of Death - the best part of the show - and Brian Cox doing his best Ian McKellan impression as the narrator). I'm giving The Colour of Magic a middling score, but that's an average. I'd dock Part I half a star, and give it to Part II: The Light Fantastic.
I have a lot of affection for Baumbach & Gerwig's Mistress America. Lola Kirke is a young would-be writer studying at Columbia who connects with her sister-to-be Greta Gerwig who is either a cool girl about town, or a complete mess (a Gerwig specialty), depending on your shifting perspective. Immediate girl crush and they become inseparable. What follows is a crisply written intellectual farce, culminating in an fast-patter ensemble scene that would play well on a theater stage. Jasmine Cephas Jones (Hamilton) made me laugh several times as Kirke's jealous rival for the attentions of a bookish fellow student. The title belies a certain examination of the American Dream, filtered through Big City dreams where the potential is high, but small fish tend to be eaten in the big pond. And yet, just because the odds are against you, it doesn't mean you shouldn't try, and we ultimately come out of the film inspired and refreshed. Lovely.
Joachim Trier's Louder Than Bombs could be called Self-Sabotage: The Movie. In the three-year wake of conflict photographer Isabelle Reed (Isabelle Huppert)'s death, her family still hasn't properly grieved. She's a constant flashback, a ghostly presence, a mystery to be solved, and the bang that rings louder than the bombs she avoided all her life. There were the conflicts she covered, and there's the quieter, more personal, conflict at home, and for that matter, the inner conflict in each of the characters. Gabriel Byrne is the father who deserves better from his sons. Jesse Eisenberg is the new father conflicted about going down his mother's dark path. And Devin Druid is the younger son, perpetually angry and closed off. The powerful woman in their lives, though dead, casts a dense shadow over their love lives. The film does a good job of marrying theme to subject matter, which also justifies the "read" recollections peppering the narrative. I wasn't sure about this unnecessary stylistic addition, but I suppose it's meant to represent the tragedy continuing to resonate in the future.
Sporting an all-star cast of Irish and Scottish actors, Intermission interweaves several stories in a small enough town that they can be expected to affect each other. The first domino to fall and hit the others is a break-up between Cillian Murphy and Kelly Macdonald, or really, her taking up with a married man no more than six weeks later. This will eventually send Murphy off the deep end and into Intermission's mission, a screw-up caper involving a no-goodnik Colin Farrell, who has already appeared on bad cop Colm Meaney's radar. Throw in Shirley Henderson's moustache, an adult dating mixer, a local documentary crew, an evil boss, and a bus accident for good measure. There's a lot happening, but it's all connected and we quickly get a sense of a community we might as well be part of. Hopefully, we wouldn't be directly involved in events, but it's what we'd be gossiping about on our front stoops. A lot of fun.
As a colony - and as a Canadian, I relate - Australia has to celebrate what it can, and The Dish is about the country's contribution to the moon landing by way of the radio telescope that ensured we'd receive Armstrong's moonwalk live on television (among other telemetric things, but that's less exciting). As one would expect from the director of The Castle (Rob Sitch), it's largely played as a folksy comedy, but there wouldn't be a story if things hadn't almost fallen apart. We didn't realize it, but things on the ground were as fraught as they were in space (more!) and lives were equally in danger. And Sitch does give the contribution its due, not just by showing the international importance of the moon landing, but by giving his film a certain Oscar-baity sheen. Sam Neill heads the cast, for one thing, but there's also those glossy (I also want to use the epithet "cheesy") book ends. Thankfully, the meat of the story is more amusing and exciting than the opener suggests.
Shannon Plumb directs herself and her real-life family in the indie comedy Towheads, a female midlife crisis story in which she plays an overwhelmed mother of two energetic boys and wife to an absentee husband who cleverly never entirely enters into shot. She's awkward, and klutzy, and a former actress who gave it all up for a family and now (thanks to Spider-Man, believe it) finds sanctuary in alternate identities (roles) she creates for herself. But what seems like a lark to some could look like a breakdown to others. Her quest for a creative outlet takes us down a road that perhaps Plump took herself (stay through the credits for a delightful hint). Somehow hitting a midpoint between A Woman Under the Influence and Charlie Chaplin's The Kid, Plumb doesn't seem to mind making a fool of herself and despite the dark moments of depression, still shares the fun she's having making this.
Ozu's first color film, Equinox Flower, is of course on of his "when will she get married?" dramas, but in this case, one where that's not so much at issue as the who and the why. A father seems quite happy to tell other people's children he envies them for marrying for love (a new "trend" in Japan), but won't give his own daughter the same opportunity. And though Ozu has him vacillate and stumble along the way, he makes him as resistant and inflexible - as a point of stubborn pride, one feels - as long as possible, even extending the film beyond its climax to do so. So though Ozu was an aging man, this is one instance where the director seems to take the younger people's side, where I usually find him more neutral, at best empathetic to the older lot. The father is surrounded by pleasant spirits (not least of which his understanding wife) and otherwise "modern" young people. He's an island of tradition in a sea of modernity. Which is perhaps how he feels. Some lighter moments and a wry irony bring this one closer to his early comedies, but it still has some heart-swelling moments.
The disappointing thing about The Dark Glow of the Mountain is that it's been smothered with an English translation talking over everyone (the version I got to see anyway), and I couldn't hear Werner Herzog's very distinctive voice, accent and delivery. He follows two climbers who want to freestyle up a pair of Himalayan mountains, up to the bottom camp before letting them proceed. And as with every alpine documentary I've seen, there's suspense as to whether the men we see go off into the distance will ever return, suspense that won't be alleviated until we see footage from their own camcorder. It's Herzog, so even his subjects sound philosophical, and with his questions, he almost seems to be making them reconsider the attempt. If a focused mind is part of what will make you succeed, Herzog is there to undermine your confidence. As an interviewer, he's ruthless, although it never seems on purpose. Just where "art" takes him. And in that sense, he's just as "degenerate" as the climbers purport to be.
Sometimes, you'll watch a movie just because of its crazy title, even when you know it's going to be objectively terrible, and that's the case with They Call Me Macho Woman! This 80s-hair hicksploitation action flick has everything you're looking for in such a title: Wooden acting, nonsense and repetitive dialogue, confused editing, people just standing around until someone shouts "get her!" when the heroine runs off, slow-moving fight scenes where the particulars are trying hard not to hurt each other, and an unconvincing plot. Debra Sweaney plays (oof, that verb does a lot of heavy lifting here) a young widow who just wants to buy a house in the sticks, but the sticks are filled with violent, rapey drug runners who unnecessarily dress like Mad Max extras. It turns out she's pretty magically adept at killing guys like that. Badly made according to every metric, its ideas for action are nevertheless fairly original, not to say ridiculous, and it eventually gets big laughs. Fans of "bad movies" will love it, give or take the sexual assaults.
Some classic MST3K movies, regardless of comedy commentary...
Santa Claus: Mexico's additions to the Santa mythos seems to be based on what they had around the studio (he lives in an Arabian Nights palace with a children's sweatshop instead of expensive elves, for example), and asks the question "who has a more mephistophelean laugh, Santa or Satan?".
Outlaw of Gor: AKA John Carter II: The Legend of Curly's Gold, it's what the Gor franchise always needed - a truly annoying, lecherous, treacherous, dumbass sidekick to follow the hero on his newest alien planet adventure. Can't believe Jack Palance signed on for a multi-picture deal (nor can he).
Radar Secret Service: It seems radar can do anything, except make this police story at all exciting. (It was short, so MST3K also ran a driving safety film called Last Clear Chance that was brought to you by the "Don't Talk Back to Your Local Traffic Cop" Society and the Big Train lobby.)
Teenage Crime Wave: When the opening scroll tells me 25% of crimes are committed by young people and that's a problem, I have to ask about that other 75%. And when, in the opening minutes, a dirty old man picks up a teenager and another teenage girl is falsely accused and sent to juvie for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I have to wonder if those stats aren't inflated a little bit. But that's conservative "art" for ya. All it wants to do is scare you straight (if you know what I mean).
From the World Cinema Project![Pitcairn] London tour guide and humorist Julian McDonnell really wants to see the most remote island in the world, where the descendants of the Bounty's mutineers live, and Take Me To Pitcairn is his little indie documentary about his journey there. And it's a journey that's more interesting than the destination, honestly. Efforts to reach the island take up more than half the length, and the trip is so wild, what Julian finds can't possibly compete. Sometimes hairy, often amusing, historically informative, too, I quite enjoyed the ride, but wouldn't have wanted to live it!
[Cocos (Keeling) Islands] Australia’s Forgotten Islands presents a unique society, half Muslim descendants of slaves, half Australian party people, catching them at a tipping point where their Aussie overlords might turn their independence from the former colonial power into a joke. Very interesting and likeable doc, and I'm stoked that, at the tail end of my project to checkmark a film from every country and territory on the map, I'm still discovering new and fascinating societies.
[Falklands Islands, again, I think this is the third time, but someone keeps changing the meta-data on movies made there] Though accidental, it's fitting that I end my World Cinema Project - greening out every territory on the Letterboxd map - with something called The Last Post. This short "based on a true story" speaks of war crimes during the normally mocked Falklands conflict - maybe we shouldn't do that - and I wasn't expecting it to go as far as it does. Big surprise: Gael García Bernal (same year as Y Tu Mamá También) plays the Argentine soldier! Otherwise, it's a pretty simple presentation, basically a single scene (despite the add-ons) you would find in a war movie. The interest really does come from 1) an early career star, and 2) a setting not usually portrayed in film. And now that I've written my "last post" in the project, expect a wrap-up of the 11-month adventure before the end of the year. I promise!
Books: With The Longest Day of the Future, illustrator Lucas Varela reminded me of Chris Ware in both style and content. And though Human partners him with writer Diego Agrimbau, the feeling is the same (did Varela perhaps originate the story and bring Agrimbau on to script it?). This is another melancholy science-fiction tale with lots of strong cartooning and world-building. An astronaut and his robot servants crash onto Earth in the future, wanting to relaunch human civilization without all the mistakes that brought about its end in their past. But does human nature make that last proposition impossible? Our POV character is one of the robots, aghast at how the mission is turning out. Somewhat bleak and extremely violent, Human nevertheless looks very cool, kind of like a dark and adult take on The Wild Robot. Rejoice in the art, but don't expect to feel uplifted.
Spy Island is really so much a "Bermuda Triangle Mystery" as it is a spoof of all things conspiratorial set on a weird island that's half tourist trap, half superspy sanctuary. Chelsea Cain throws everything into this, plus the kitchen sink, resulting in a wild, chaotic story about man-eating mermaids, super-villain dads, and sex with 007. It's not really about the plot, which based on reviews, upset a lot of people. It's more of an anything goes comedy pulling a Naked Lunch of sorts for fans of the X-Files and other Illuminated fiction. On on that basis, it works, even if it's not entirely filling. The art by Elise McCall is pretty good and often clever, and supplemented by designer Lia Miternique who not only crashes the art with photo elements, but does much of the world building with brochures, menus, maps, cocktail recipes, and even salient props peppered through the book. I like it as an art-ifact, more than I do a story, but I'm not mad at it.
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