If anything, Undertone proves that using podcasting as the basis for a horror movie has minimal returns. While there are spooky moments, the film is a mishmash of ideas that never lead anywhere besides scary noises and shadows. Not recommended. Continue reading Undertone
A great movie doesn’t need a great premise, but it definitely helps. Such is the case with Bugonia, a science-fiction film that suggests that the CEO of a pharmaceutical company is actually an alien from another world. I’ve often wondered if CEOs were human. The way they express themselves with a steady stream of corporate jargon and self-actualization platitudes, delivered with zero passion but loads of certainty and conviction, has always given me pause. Maybe, as this movie implies, they’re aliens from another world who’ve come to Earth with malicious intent. Excuse me while I grab my tin foil hat.
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“If I could talk to the animals, just imagine it. What a neat achievement that would be!”
Those lines are from “Talk to the Animals”, the Academy Award winning song 1967 movie Doctor Dolittle. (They’re mostly spoken by Rex Harrison, but the versions by Bobby Darrin and Sammy Davis Jr. make up it.) The idea–or fantasy, if you prefer–of being able to talk to animals is one that’s intrigued mankind forever. Who wouldn’t want to talk to any of the other species living beside us? That sense of curiosity and wonder is largely absent in Hoppers, however, a likeable animated film from Pixar that uses this fanciful notion in the service of a small-scale adventure. Although the movie has its heart in the right place, and is often quite funny, it could have been much more.
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Humans are strange creatures. Instead of getting rid of what makes us miserable, we hold onto it. This is the focus of Sentimental Value, a movie about two artists, a father and his daughter, who keep what hurts them close at hand. One explanation provided is that those hurtful things inform their art. (He’s a director, while she’s a theater actor.) Revisiting their pain makes what they create more honest and true. However, it also prevents either of them from leading fulfilling lives, artistically as well as personally. The movie explores this commingling of art and trauma with a level of maturity, sensitivity and empathy that forced me to look at myself in a way that I’d avoided for, well, most of my life.
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One of the oldest cliches in cops and robbers movies is how the two groups are sides of the same coin. That they’re all angry psychopaths who don’t think twice about killing to get what they want. The only difference between them is that those on the law enforcement side wear badges, and that the criminals wear better clothes and drive nicer cars. Thankfully, Crime 101 doesn’t go in that direction. Instead, it focuses on why some people are drawn to criminality, while others retain their moral compass. It’s a movie that follows the genre formula fairly closely, but colors outside the lines just enough to keep us guessing.
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When Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” was announced over a year ago, I wondered why she included the title in quotation marks. Were they the equivalent of air quotes, implying that her take on the source material would be satirical or ironic? Unfortunately, Fennel wasn’t telling. Like everyone else, I would need to wait until the movie came out. Before I provide my answer, I want to note how this was a genius stroke on Fennell’s behalf. This minor but idiosyncratic alteration made us all curious about yet another adaptation of the well-known book. If the mark of an effective director is grabbing our attention, Fennell aced that assignment.
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No Other Choice is a tale of two movies. I enjoyed the satire and slapstick-filled first half, less so its cold and didactic second half. Overall, the movie’s dizzying style and committed performances won me over. Recommended. Continue reading No Other Choice (South Korea, Park Chan-wook)
If you talk to anyone who’s eighty years-old or older, I bet they’d have an interesting story to tell. That person would have met some interesting people, seen and done things that few others had, witnessed great change over time and experienced every emotion under the sun, only to admit they have more questions than answers. That’s Train Dreams in a nutshell, a tale of an unremarkable man who built railroads and bridges to support his family, only to find everything that mattered to him gone in an instant. While his story is uniquely his, he’s also an everyman who forces us to reckon with life as we know it.
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In The Choral, a small British town struggles to put on their annual choral program as WW1 steadily depletes their ranks. The theme of an unlikely bunch of characters overcoming adversity to accomplish something amazing is both conventional and familiar, and given the context, you would expect this movie to be very respectful and sentimental. Well, not entirely. On the one hand, what the movie says about the importance of music during dark times is very thoughtful and touching. On the other hand, the movie delivers that message in a very unexpected way. While there is no doubt the British had sex during WW1, the movie goes out of its way to show that the British were quite randy back then. In fact, the only time they’re not thinking about sex is when they’re singing.
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I like to think I’m a funny guy. That being said, I’ve never once considered going on stage on open mic night. Not only do you need to be fearless, you have to get total strangers to laugh at your jokes while they’re busy getting drunk. Maybe this is why the movie has a character everyone refers to as “Balls”. You gotta have balls to be a performer, figuratively for ladies, of course. And while the amateur stand-up comedian at the center of Is This Thing On? is both funny and ballsy, the movie isn’t the story of him becoming famous. It’s about what drove him to write his name on the call sheet to begin with.
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Detroit Cineaste 