"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Wow, I feel like I could write a dozen film theory essays on Challengers! Luca Guadagnino's use of homoerotic imagery (this is essentially a study in where to place balls and bananas in the frame). The notion of playing relationships out as a sporting event. Transference in many forms, with the tennis players funnelling the sexual frustration of their partnership to a woman who appears to be the sport at its peak, and that same woman judging based on their sporting ability/philosophy alone, "playing" through them in coaching/manipulating capacity. The metronome set by the ball translating into a back and forth through time in the structure of the film... Guadagnino has an amazing talent for presenting complex relationships, and the cast is more than up for it (certainly Zenday'a personal best to date). The tennis stuff is fun to watch. Reznor's score uses the kind of driving electronic beats I love, though rarely admit to myself. There are a lot of laughs. A lot of subtext to keep engaged (one might call it SURtext given how it amusingly manifests). It doesn't resort to tired old sports tropes. Hugely entertaining.
At home: Makoto Shinkai is really paying homage to Miyazaki in Suzume, name-dropping the older director in an Easter Egg, mentioning a Gibli film in the dialog, and of course, presenting us with a fantastical world just outside the range of our perceptions that speaks to environmental concerns. And a cute cat. And lots of high-flying (falling?) action. So yes, it's more "juvenile" (or more "adventuresome", to put it kindly) than a lot of his other films, but that should be allowed. Suzume is a teenage girl who stumbles upon this hidden world when she takes an interest in a cute boy, who is almost immediately turned into her limping chair sidekick, which I think is incredibly charming. Together, they travel the country to close gates to an underworld that sends out the monstrous creature that creates Japan's earthquakes. An accumulation of abandoned places that evoke Japan's history with natural disasters (and bombings during WWII) justifies the somewhat repetitive structure (as several gates must be closed), but it might have cut one of these incidents to get us to Suzume's closure (ha! it's the world of "Closers") faster. Then again, her trek through a very helpful Japan (don't expect this level of friendliness when YOU run away from home, kids!) is a journey worth taking, if only for the beautiful animation and growing closeness between the characters. It may be a Miyazaki riff, in many ways, but the skies, the trains, the sensual asides, and the relationship dramas are notably Shinkai.
Some movies, like The August Virgin, feel like summer days. Hot, lazy, where anything goes. Taking place over two weeks in August, the film follows Eva, a woman in thirtysomething crisis, on the cusp of birthing her new self, the next phase of her life. But there's no insemination (so to speak), and she's rudderless (but not insecure, I love her confidence) and looking for direction wherever it might be found - the past, the future, spiritualism, new and old places alike. Itsaso Arana is great in the role, taking us on an introspective journey that feels incredibly naturalistic - wandering through Madrid, effortlessly making summer friends, talking about this and that, honestly confronting her lack of orientation, choosing to say yes to things, those warm nights that don't end until you see the sun rise... SUCH a summer vibe. It's therefore "a mood", so be sure to be in a lackadaisical one before you sit down to this slow-burning character study, and be rewarded.
One of my favorite subgenres is the author biopic that is made to feel like their literature (Naked Lunch, Kafka, Shakespeare in Love) and Becoming Jane would be in that mold if it truly understood what Jane Austen's books are like. Well, I'm no expert, but the movies goes for such arch melodrama in what is meant to be Austen's one love affair, a romance that really comes out of nowhere (out of history, I suppose) and which we must take on faith based on the basic romcom nuts and bolts at play (we hate each other, no we love each other) and the fact that they're played by hot young actors (both putting on an accent, which is a little annoying too). The comedy of manners her works are best known for is also present, and at its best, the film turns people into Austen characters, but it just doesn't completely commit, preferring to dive headfirst is cheesy historical romance tropes with lilting music, woodland glades, and passionate kissing. Worse, I think, is how much it makes the men sort of responsible for Austen's development as a writer, and how relatively little her writing career figures into her final decision, despite an earlier scene with another female writer foregrounding it. The editing is also noticeably pants. I'm sad to this a bad report - several of my close friends claim it as a favorite - well, check your nostalgia at the door, friends, I don't think it holds up.
Had I been able to recognize Sarah Polley on Go's poster, I would have seen it much sooner! This is a very 90s film in terms of fashions, music, spirit, and of course, the sort of structure we came to expect then from crime movies, though in this case, it inches closer to a teenage wasteland black comedy than other movies that shared in the trend, and a little less toothsome. Polley is part of a drug deal gone wrong, and her story spawns a few others that, once told, reveal a bigger fiasco still, bordering on the ridiculous. The title is a repeated meme, used in different contexts, but typically resonating with the impulsive characters' heading into more and more trouble. The twists are good bit of fun, so I won't go any farther into plot, or even character, specifics. Except to say that there are a lot of recognizable faces in the movie, many of them impossibly young, like Timothy Olyphant, Katie Holmes, Jane Krakowski, and, oh my, Melissa McCarthy in her first feature film role (she doesn't even sound like herself, was she putting on a voice, or did she get hit in the trachea later?). Anyway, a fun little Christmas (yes, Christmas!) movie.
While Sara Driver's first film, You Are Not I, owes much of its mystery and novelty to Peter Bowles' 1948 short story, the way it's framed as an unsettling ghost story is all Driver. Suzanne Fletcher (who would be Driver's protagonist again in Sleepwalk) is an escaped mental patient using the confusion of a road accident to get back home to her sister, but it takes a while before that's understood. Rather, the first act plays like she's an unnoticeable spirit sending the dead off to the afterlife. Even once we've contextualized what's really happening, the portrait of mental illness, with delusions building on delusions until she reaches a dissociative state still works as a ghost story, perhaps one more akin to possession. Made with relatively little means and many non-actors, You Are Not I nevertheless resonates and prefigures the odd, eerie (and all too few) films to come in Sara Driver's filmography.
My Companion Film of the week features THE classic Doctor Who companion in a tiny role... I am absolutely the kind of person who would watch a boring motorcycle racing movie like Silver Dream Racer just to catch 10 seconds of Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) in a rare film appearance (and she brings her usual expressiveness to the "bank teller"), but I'm only kidding about the movie being boring. I actually think it's fine, though its melodramatic moments tend to burst through its innate British naturalism. David Essex is watchable as a racer who inherits his brother's cutting edge motorcycle and then spends most of the movie looking for sponsors. Cristina Raines is very natural as the woman who loves him. Beau Bridges is in there as the shit-eating rival. And a young Clarke Peters (The Wire) is a strong presence as the comical sidekick. In terms of story, it plays like a biopic (which is not necessarily a compliment), though the "happy ending" American edit possibly undercuts that. Still some "biographical" elements seem to drop out given the lack of epilogue. Essex supplies a couple songs to the movie, but these are cheesy and on the nose. Yeah, it's... fine.
Books: I think Becky Chambers did well to leave the crew of her first novel (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet) behind in favor of ancillary characters living in the same universe in the follow-up, A Closed and Common Orbit. I loved the first book, and sequelitis might have produced diminishing returns. In fact, I loved this second book as much as I did the first. It's really two stories that dovetail together. In one, we follow an A.I. living in a human-like body, trying to find herself and coming to terms with being housed in something that feels wrong (which plays as a kind of techno body dismorphia). The other takes us back 20 years to her caretaker's youth as a 10-year-old slave clone, escaping into the scrapyards of her backwater planet and being raised the rest of the way... by an A.I. These two have a lot in common - both are someone's creation having to adjust to world that isn't their own - and Chambers volleys between the two stories to create rhythm, mystery, and substantial cliffhangers throughout. Each worldview is well rendered and idiosyncratic - the A.I. who doesn't talk about her housing as a body, the girl whose experience is limited to a regimented factory - and the characters are poignant. I've read they're now calling this "hopepunk", which is a contradiction in terms, but does describe the Wayfarers series well: The things that create alienation and dehumanization in a cyberpunk narrative are here what creates a sense of humanizing family and belonging. It's the sci-fi we need to heal our souls.
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