"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Iconic Acadian documentary make Phil Comeau takes aim at the Order of Jacques Cartier, i.e. La Patente (roughly, the "Gizmo") in L'ordre secret (The Secret Order), though perhaps "taking aim" is putting too fine a point on it. He's found a personal reason to investigate the organization that, from the 1920s to 1965, infiltrated many others to accumulate enough French-Canadian power to change things in Canada, and perhaps most efficiently, in New Brunswick, getting us rights and institutions of our own. And... it's a little thin for me. Not to say I knew all this stuff (I only had a vague idea), but it's kind of hard to do a thorough piece about something secret, especially when most surviving members (willing to talk) are in their 80s. To pad things out, Comeau recreates an initiation ceremony and with all due respect to the many friends and acquaintances I have in those scenes, it's interesting, but not that relevant to the conversation I WANT to have with the film. Because while the society's collapse is addressed, there's only a brief, rose-tinted look at its legacy. What I feel is missing is the creation of an Acadian elite that's still running the show at the expense of others, perhaps. The Order exists without existing. And if that's just a false impression, it needs to be investigated too. Comeau is very likable, but I would have liked this to go much further beyond the personal.
At home: What's it like to live with a criminal record? Emily the Criminal is partly about that, some of the audience's judgment probably mitigated by the fact that hers was a crime of passion, but it mixes in crushing student debt and takes swipes at such things as unpaid internships to talk about financial despair and what it might make you do. Aubrey Plaza, in a rather serious role, is great as a woman fueled by anger and who we can empathize with no matter what happens in the movie. The crux of it is that to make necessary money on the side, she gets involved in a credit card scam, which then devolves into bigger and bigger crimes. In a way, that takes in more familiar directions taken by many (if not most) crime pictures, but Emily is such a distinct character, it makes the journey worth the time. You root for her, you fear for her, you cheer for her... and you certainly wouldn't want to cross her.
Don't mistake my lack of enthusiasm for She Said with my not finding the story it wants to tell worthy or important. I do. And normally, I would be very much into a journalistic thriller starring Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan. But despite the genre and some favorite actors, the investigation into Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct and events that would make the MeToo Movement go viral is just so ordinarily told that I can't really recommend it. I was hopeful after it opened on the making of a period film - as if to say, this is as old as time, or that we were going to address outdated values - but it soon turns into "just the facts, mam" and even so, misses the mark in terms of proceduralism by showing the reporters' home lives, which have nothing or little to do with anything in the final analysis. And perhaps the subject matter is too recent and too well-known. Maybe this will shock SOMEbody, but I wasn't particularly surprised by what tidbits I ended up learning for the first time. Still, because it's a touchy subject, there's an underlying tension through most of the film, and I guess it's a marvel at all that a Hollywood film would dare expose its own sins like this. But does it go far enough? Probably not. Is it really Hollywood's story to tell?
I like Miranda July's stuff, but with Kajillionaire, I think she might finally have outquirked herself. Evan Rachel Wood plays the child of a pair of very bad con artists, raised pulling off scams, but the movie piles on eccentricities - the parents are also conspiracy nuts living off the grid, phobic about earthquakes, etc. - until the themes get lost in the shuffle on unbelievable character traits. That theme is personal connection, which Wood's character has been denied and craves, something her world of mistrust has placed out of reach. Gina Rodriguez eventually comes into it as a "real" person - the missing heart of the film, really, though she too presents possibilities that get lost in the chaos - but it's hard to buy into a potential romance between her and Wood when the latter is a collection of oddball traits. Her arc is of course to be realized by something closer to a real relationship, but she starts too far from the goal to be relatable. Which is not to say there aren't some fine moments in the film - the ending in particular is very strong - but you're asking me to believe in life-long grifters who are more gullible than their marks and who have not capacity to adapt to changing situations and if I don't buy the premise, it's very hard to buy the bit.
In Rouge, Stanley Kwan offers a luscious 1930s Hong Kong, a world of courtesans of which Fleur (Anita Mui, who I knew better from action comedies) is the crème de la crème. And suddenly - jarringly! - we're in 1987, and there she is, a ghost looking for her lover who failed to properly commit suicide with her more than 50 years before. It's a quest thankfully interspersed with more of the 1930s story, on which she is joined by a couple who use their newspaper skills to help her, all the while wondering if their love is as strong or if there's a better love than the tragic, romantic kind represented by Fleur. Fleur has many faces, and Mui is up to the challenge, in particular giving us an undead vibe in the 1980s portions. Despite the 1930s looking, on the whole, more beautiful, the present-day is really where things pick up for me, especially in the living folk's reactions. The ending is a bit elliptical, and though love seems to have an eternal quality, so perhaps does bitterness. And where love is requited, the depth of that love may not be. Or, what if Juliet was a prostitute and Romeo up to his eyeballs in opium?
As in Thunder Road, Jim Cummings directs himself as a cop who is also an emotional mess in The Wolf of Snow Hollow. The big difference is, his small skiing town is hit with brutal murders attributed to a werewolf. So there's a meltdown coming--or Cummings, as the case may be. With the lead struggling with anger issues and addiction, we're in prime cringe cinema (though perhaps not as cringe as Thunder Road), a bleak, dark comedy that's not going to be on everyone's Christmas movies list despite an intriguing mystery and some fun supporting performances from the likes of Robert Forster and Riki Lindhome. I do have some issues with the achronological editing of the early investigation - I get that Cummings was trying to create a sense of his character being overwhelmed by events, but it comes across as more confusing than anyway. What he chooses to show of the crimes also seems to play against the mystery, but it doesn't really, you'll just have to trust me on that. This isn't the werewolf movie you wanted, probably, but the theme of the monster inside each of us - through Cummings' own dangerous rage - is a good way to exploit the myth for extra meaning.
The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales is a fun Franco-Belgian production, presenting three stories within a Muppet Show-type format, starring hapless barnyard and rural animals - I guess this is what happens when the animals take over the farm (there are humans in this world, just not on this farm). The first introduces us with Duck and Rabbit, two absolute idiots who mess everything up in crazier and crazier ways as the hard-put-upon Pig tries to save them from themselves as they try to deliver a lazy stork's baby to its rightful parents. It's a good introduction to this Looney Tunes-adjacent universe. The second story, from which the film takes its name, features a Fox who seems unable to scare anyone and his attempts at raising chicks for food (well, you can imagine how that would go). The two casts come together in the final, Christmas story, though it's really back to Pig and friends, as the latter believe they've killed Santa Claus and must save Christmas by taking over his role. For my money, it's the best of the three, so it can be said each chapter is better than the last. Charming artwork, a mix of slapstick and heartwarming characterization, and look, some seasonal fare. Fun for the whole family.
So I fell into a vat of Philomela Cunk and watched all the 30-minute episodes. Diane Morgan is amazing as the world's world documentary presenter, especially in the bits where she's improvising through interviews with befuddled experts (who are apparently in on it, to a point - which is why they don't walk off - but it's nevertheless convincing). Whether it's Cunk on Britain, on Earth, or the one-offs on Shakespeare and Christmas, what I think makes Cunk so hilarious is that it doesn't just have ONE comedic tool, but rather uses them all - parody, anachronisms, flawed logic, metatext, satire (oh, and when it does satire, it's so bloody beautiful), mispronunciations, conspiracy think, improvisation, pranking, slapstick, willful misunderstanding, sight gags, vulgarity, memes, absurdism, and a general sense that Philomena, as ignorant as she is a Philistine, is working off notes written by a lazy high school student, the type the Internet likes to publish from the desk of a frustrated teacher. If one thing doesn't make you laugh, the next will. Here's to Cunk giving us her take on the whole ruddy universe.
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