"Accomplishments"
In theaters: I have never not been entertained by a Scream movie, and that doesn't change with 2022's requel. Even though we see all the old familiar faces, Melissa Barrera (In the Heights) is well set-up to be the next Sidney Prescott (with a twist), and like Scream 4, the meta-commentary is of the moment. What's it like to be a horror fan today, plus a take-down of fan culture that extends beyond the horror genre. This Scream recharges the franchise by consistently commenting on what it is doing and how it fits in tropes and techniques used in other revivals, and the humor lands well, definitely a lot of giggles. It's not quite as strong with dramatic delivery, I admit. Scream movies are also meant to be crazy whodunits, and I think this one works pretty logically (there's one decision I question, but it has nothing to do with the mystery). So I think Wes Craven, who is very much eulogized in this, would have been happy with it. It definitely has the vibe of the previous films, while also modernizing the formula, giving the legacy characters a lot to do, but still building a memorable new cast for whatever sequels they want to include in this new cycle.
At home: Structurally, the The Book of Boba Fett is rather wonky - we spend a lot of time in flashbacks and 2 of the 7 chapters are actually Mandalorian episodes (so fans of that show, take note, they're actually important to the character's journey) - but I don't think that's the show's biggest problem. No, its biggest problem is Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett. Clone stuff seemed to require his casting (damn you, prequels) and well, there's not much of a performance there. I can't quite connect this Bona Fett with the one in the original films. It doesn't really help that Ming-Na Wen's character is so serious because I know she can be much more fun than this. Problems aside, I did enjoy this series however. It's a good mix of the western and crime genres, and does advance Fett's story by making him learn the value of community in post-Sarlacc pit flashbacks (I really like the deep dive into Tusken Raider culture), then try to apply it on post-Jabba Tattooine. The show is otherwise mostly concerned with assembling a cast of characters AROUND him (with some success) so they can participate in an action-packed finale (Robert Rodriguez directs). I don't know much about the expanded universe, so to me, Boba Fett was largely a blank slate. It's good to hang a little something on that armor.
As a three-decade veteran improv player and teacher, I certainly have thoughts about Murderville, but not entirely positive ones. The concept is amusing enough. In each of the six episodes, Will Arnett plays a deadpan police detective (very much a Will Arnett character) who takes on a new partner played by a celebrity guest star who then helps him solve a murder. But the guest-star hasn't seen the script and must improvise their way through the story. So it's sort of a hybrid between Who's Line Is It Anyway and murder mystery games. Fine. My beef is that it's TOO scripted, with situations and even lines forced on the guest regardless of what they might want to do. Much of the comedy derives from what I call improv traps, i.e. situations that force the guest to make a fool of themselves. I get that this is how the production is ensuring that the one-take episode is entertaining no matter what, but it means a lot of fooling around rather than building towards something. The formula is pretty much always the same. The guest is interviewed by Arnett's Terry Seattle and seem to have essentially been told to be themselves rather than a character. Then the murder is explained and there are invariably three suspects to interview, leading to a reveal that owes more to reality TV than Agatha Christie's drawing rooms. Many of the sequences are overtly based on silly improv games (which I personally find hack) like "sell a product" or "lines out of a hat" (in this case, Terry whispering in your ear). I find that disappointing. Maybe some guests needed more structure - none of the six are necessarily known for improv - but I felt it quashed the potential of those who were more adept at plot construction (like Marshawn Lynch and Sharon Stone who would be my star players if I coached these guys are a team) as they jumped through hoops designed to make them the butt of the joke. If it had been me in there, I would have WRECKED THINGS UP and really forced the regular cast to PLAY. I thought Ken Jeong was going to be that spoiler, but he corpsed through the whole thing and let it play out. They obviously have to keep it loose just in case, but I could see the railroad tracks under each episode pretty clearly. If Arnett is good at one thing, it's setting you up to set him up, and while that can be fun, it's not good improv.
Based on the video game based on the (irritating) party game, Werewolves Within is an amusing horror comedy in large part thanks to the fun central characters, too nice of a forest ranger Sam Richardson, and manic pixie postal worker Milana Vayntrub (who I hope they call back for Squirrel Girl when the MCU gets back to that). They are relative newcomers in a snowbound little town when there's a sudden rash of werewolf attacks... maybe. Like the game, it's really much more about paranoia and mob mentality, and the movie vibes to that energy. So much so that I think it would have been a stronger film - if not a better adaptation of the source material - if there had been no werewolves in the classic sense at all! So it's fun, but it has a fear of commitment. It lays down a possible thematic foundation, but it can't be sustained. It calls itself a whodunit, but it's more of a whogetsitnext, its fast pace didn't give me time to process the clues. And its feminist one-liners feel like an afterthought.
/2011: Sometimes, it takes a village, and that village is Le Havre. An older man finds a refugee boy, just escaped from a freight container and, always the anti-authoritarian, he decides to help him rejoin his family rather than turn hi over to the immigration people. Sweet without being saccharine, the film soon has other people in the harbor town lend help, sometimes secretly, sometimes overtly, and we might find ourselves in a moral universe that agrees with these actions. These kinds of stories may seem idealistic, but I rather think they show it's really not that difficult to the right thing. Maybe it's because Le Havre is on the same coast as Cherbourg, but the colorful cinematography reminded me of Demy's Umbrellas. Maybe France's northern towns are just that colorful, I don't know. Maybe they're like fishing towns here in Atlantic Canada, where houses are painted with left-over boat paint. Or maybe I just want to believe I live in a moral universe too.
Paired Short: David Lowery's Pioneer is minimalist to be sure, but it seems to tell the whole history of America, and its mysteries are either a portrait of unconditional love, extremely sinister, or both. Richer than a lot of full-length features.
2012: There's an element of time travel in Beyond the Hills. We're in current-day Romania, but the Orthodox monastery on the hill is sitting in the Middle Ages, though even in the city, a lot of people seem to believe in old superstitions. Cognitive dissonance achieved. The "troubled" Alina is the outsider, only there to (she thinks) rescue her best friend / sister / more? Volchita from the clutches of what to modern eyes is a cult, and things take a tragic turn inspired by true events. Director Cristian Mungiu is on a high wire. By making Volchita (Cosmina Stratan is amazing in this role, which is all about her face) our POV character, we almost have to agree with the religious perspective the film offers. At the same time, and this is perhaps my own bias, the priest is struggling with justifying the strict tenets of his religion, struggling with staying in POWER. A indictment of this kind of religion? Of religion's hold on his own country? Yes, but also of society at large, whose indifference makes despair, cults, etc. possible. We leave this stark and frigid world (man, the actors must have been FREEZING) on an ambiguous and ambivalent note that makes me think even more highly of the film.
Paired Short: The Black Balloon is like if the Safdie Brothers decided to remake The Red Balloon for adults, and it came out really depressing.
2013: According to The Rocket, in a certain Lao village, when twins are born, one of them is blessed, the other is cursed. When the village is displaced by a dam project, the surviving brother of a pair might prove he's the latter. He has certain technological gifts, but they're hardly useful in his world. What follows is a charming adventure - the two little kids are very engaging, especially the little girl - that frowns at a public policy that's rather common in Asia, looks gorgeous, and though the journey must of course go where it goes, it's nonetheless told with notes that, thanks to cultural difference, have a different ring to them than our own family films do. I say "family film", but for more mature kids to watch with their parents, which might go without saying (subtitles), but there is death, misery, and the odd decapitated animal head. Sensitive family members might need a comforting word. But well worth the trip to the other side of the world.
Paired Short: In Coda, a soul escapes momentarily from Death, but it shows Death isn't such a bad sort. Beautiful and surreal, I love this poignant little film's animation style too.
2014: Boyhood came out in 2014, so I guess that's why they chose to call "Bande de filles" (Girl Gang) "Girlhood" in English... Anyway, I thought the opening sequence was brilliant. Girls playing American football (they do that in France?!) and loudly leaving the stadium, and suddenly becoming quiet as soon as a boy is glimpsed on the steps leading to a housing estate. It makes a strong statement. Even these tough, assertive young women have limited options in the so-called real world. Among them is Marième (the very engaging Karidja Touré), a teenage girl who isn't doing well in school and though I dearly love her relationship with her younger sisters, her family life is hardly any better thanks to a gangbanging older brother. She falls in with the wrong crowd, safety and strength in numbers, cannot imagine any other option, and so it goes. Except, I don't think director Céline Sciamma judges Marième and her new friends that way. People aren't just one thing, and the movie respects that. Its psychology, like its plotting and dialog, is naturalistic and invites gray zones. It's quite a nice portrait (or several, as we follow Marième further) of young womanhood in a world of little means. And whatever choices she makes, I think we can respect them. Bonus points for one of the great musical sequences in all of filmhood.
Paired Short: I always like Niki Lindroth Von Bahr's shorts, even if Bath House doesn't feel as rich in terms of subtext. Just a nice sad comedy.
2015: What would my tour of the Criterion Channel through the years be without a documentary on a great figure of film? Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words does what it says on the tin, using diaries, letters, home movies, and archival material to tell her story, but a little more too, thanks to the participation of her four children and a couple of co-stars. It's not very much about her career, except in broad strokes, though I was happy to see Autumn Sonata getting a little more attention, since I could now see how it seemed to mirror her absence in her own family units. And that's how this touching, intimate documentary works its magic. Not by expressly telling, but by juxtaposing history, memory, voice and image so the audience can come to its own conclusions. It's impossible to truly KNOW another person, but this is as close as we'll get with Bergman, one of my favorite stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. She was, above all, and for good or ill, a free spirit, who went where her heart led her and left joy in her wake.
Paired Short: The great Richard E. Grant lends his voice to 2015's Teeth, a secretly relatable impression of losing teeth that turns into a less relatable (I hope!) nightmare.
2016: Like his Cure, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Creepy is an intriguing thriller where despondent people surrender themselves to the will of a charismatic, and possibly so does the detective (in this case, ex-detective) trying to stop him. On the one hand, the lead is investigating the disappearance of a whole family years before. On the other, his wife tries to befriend their new neighbor who is either a socially awkward creep or something worse. It's a structure that comes with a problem built in. Either these two stories are connected and it feels like a whopping big coincidence, or they're not and you're disappointed by the red herring, unless you do a very good job of keeping the truth ambiguous. Kurosawa builds a lot of suspense this way, but eventually shocks by taking us inside the neighbor's house with a whole act to spare. I'm not sure that works, not do I subscribe to his psychological thesis. So I'm unsure here, but I wasn't completely convinced by Cure either.
Paired Short: The Polish short Pussy is not about cats (well, most of the time), but it IS NSFW, surreal, feminist fun. The animation style is crude, but I like the color treatment, and in any case, it's well-suited to the story.
Role-playing: Somewhere at the confluence of Star Wars, Terminator 2 and a Cyberman episode of Doctor Who, our GURPS Space session this week had space station action and a dangerous A.I. about to "convert" everyone, first and foremost our boy Ace's near-fiancée. Though I'd instituted Cinematic Points for this leg of the Shiftworld campaign, I felt the players hadn't taken advantage of them to date, so I forcefully encouraged it (by flooding points back at them when they described something cool, and also my warrior race NPC had an unlimited supply and it showed). Result? Some excellent action movie scenes, the first and possibly best of which involving an escaping freighter getting its wings bent by our boy Willie Jay so that its ass dragged down and fried a couple of goons before crashing into the side of the cargo bay door, disrupting the air field and sending Ace and the warrior towards space just as one was tackling the other in parkour mid-air. By the end of the scenario, Paradise Station (and our girl Simone) had been saved, Ace's minor enemy Greasy Gill was destroyed (much like his brother Oily Pete before - enter their angry dad, Dirty Dick), and how did this whole thing start again? Oh yeah, a mysterious woman claiming to know the orphans' dead parents showed up and got put in a coma by the evil A.I. What was she going to reveal? The cliffhanger: She wakes up, ready to talk!
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