SIFF 2015 Capsule Reviews: UNEXPECTED, H., CUB, CIRCLE, BLIND

May 28, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Blind, Circle, Cub, H., SIFF 2015, Unexpected Leave a comment

As in year’s past, the time for the infamous SIFF capsule review has come. Though this year has been notable slower than last – in which I took in 40 films for SIFF’s 40th Anniversary – the slate of films has generally been stronger – likely due to my more selective palette this year. As is protocol, these brief reviews must only span 75 words. For those liking their review with a heavy dose of brevity, this is your goldmine. Be sure to check www.siff.net to find showings of those must-see movies and be sure to drop me a line on any of your favorites. For now though, let us review.

UNEXPECTED

U.S.A., d. Kris Swanberg

Unexpected, a title that applies to the central character’s pregnancy just as much as her friendship that develops with her young, underprivileged student, is a social think piece that couches racial issues in with ultrasounds and baby showers. Cobie Smulders whittles a human character – based largely on writer/director Kris Swanberg – that rings emotional bells even if the film somewhat fails to truly subvert the white savior platitudes its trying so hard to turn on its belly. (C)

H.

U.S.A., d. Rania Attieh, Daniel Garcia

A city descends into confusion and ultimately madness when a meteor strikes (or does it?) Two Helens of Troy (Troy, New York that is) each dealing with “motherhood”, succumb to the influence this meteor’s coming holds over their town. Those with a taste for Damon Lindelof‘s “The Leftovers” will find a similar platter of unsettling mystical design – with discomforting visual cues, invasive musical stylings, and a mysterious black horse – but H. also pays homage to the work of David Lynch and Lars von Trier, making it an easy recommendation for fans of surrealist cinema. (B)

CUB

Belgium, d. Jonas Govaerts

A troop of eager cub scouts embark to a haunted wood where they find bobby traps and a feral kid in an antler mask waiting to turn their wooded stay into a gory holiday. The requisite kills are satisfyingly outweighed by a brutal character metamorphosis that takes its sweet time to unfold. Housed in an all-encompassing fog of darkness, a fair measure of bleak masochism pairs with the film’s Biblical cynicism, making Cub a cross between Hostel and The Boy, a downtrodden shocker sure to whet the appetite of horror fan’s blackest tastes. (B-)

CIRCLE

U.S.A., d. Aaron Hann, Mario Miscione

Once you get past the rather obtuse sci-fi-cum-psycoliogical-thriller setup in which a round-robin of people vote for who’s to die next, Circle has some half-decent philosophical positioning to offer. It attempts to be a sci-fi offshoot of 12 Angry Men in breaking down prejudices in a one location environ made lively by votes, alliances and paranoia per a good “Survivor” season and matched with a suspect robotic Russian Roulette MacGuffin. The script can be decent enough but is undone by an abundance of telegraphed overacting, fool-hardy plot resolutions and an underwhelming head-scratcher of an ending. (C-)

BLIND

Norway, d. Eskil Vogt

A wonder of a film that could only exist outside the confines of American cinema, Blind is this year’s Borgman; a deliciously hypnagogic venture into twisted fantasies and sexual figments. Blind plays out the story of Ingrid, played beautifully by the near-albino Ellen Dorrit Petersen, a woman who’s imagination paves the way for an invented affair narrative that we’re never meant to take literally. Rather, Blind‘s esoteric playful fiddling with reality is what makes it so strangely awe-inspiring. A must see. (B+)

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Out in Theaters: ALOHA

May 28, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Alec Baldwin, Aloha, Bradley Cooper, Cameron Crowe, Danny McBride, Emma Stone, John Krasinski, Out in Theaters, Rachel McAdams, Reviews Leave a comment

Cameron Crowe‘s Aloha is one hot saccharine sweet mess; a jumbled collage of love connections, island spirituality and fluffy, flawed emotional beauty that gave me all the feels, despite its occasionally glaring issues. It’s one of those features where one could curmudgeonly sit around and pick apart at its thatch of problems like a hot-breathed seamstress but you’d ultimately be missing the point. Aloha isn’t guided by substantive reality so much as by a dramaturgical sense of magical realism. Mixed in with the hopeful lyricism of the greatest rom-com ballads and imbued with a dulled barb of cynicism, Aloha is a visceral, passionate triumph even in the bright light of its freewheeling, sometimes nonsensical spirit. Read More

Out in Theaters: POLTERGEIST

May 22, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Gil Kenan, Jane Adams, Jared Harris, Kennedi Clements, Out in Theaters, Poltergeist, Reviews, Rosemarie DeWitt, Sam Raimi, Sam Rockwell 2 Comments

When a film foregoes the press screening circuit, only to play for a slim number of us amidst a general public promo screening just two hours before it opens its doors to the rest of the movie-going community, you enter with an expectation of a product hauntingly bad. Take Hercules for example, which screened under similar circumstances last year before landing at number five on my worst movies of the year segment. Just one month later, As Above/So Below (which was also largely critically derided) proved this model wrong by delivering an edgy horror throwback that I simply adored. Again at the Thursday night 6 o’clock showing. So going into Poltergeist, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and with low critical ratings – as of writing this, it stands at a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes and 48 on Metacritic – the writing was on the wall, thusly establishing the low expectations that allowed me to sit back and let this somewhat cruise-controlled remake take me on an enjoyable – if not great – horror thrill ride. Read More

Out in Theaters: GOOD KILL

May 22, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Andrew Niccol, Bruce Greenwood, Ethan Hawke, Good Kill, January Jones, Out in Theaters, Reviews Leave a comment

Andrew Niccol, director of good films like Gattaca and god-awful ones like The Host (2013), puts us in the shoes of the “enemy” throughout Good Kill. By hoisting his camera skywards to capture aerial views of a deserty Americana suburban sprawl, he draws aesthetic parallels to the dusty spread of Middle Eastern hovels his characters are occupied bombing and blasting. By directing our attention to these blatant visual comparisons between the slates of inconspicuous Vegas neighborhoods and the tactical POV of high-flying drones drifting above unsuspected, Niccol’s invades our sense of docility, in a somewhat subtle attempt to plant us in harm’s way and daring to jolt us into action and ultimately caring.

In this capacity, his film is a quiet triumph. So too is Ethan Hawke’s low-broiling performance as a war pilot grounded for reasons unknown and forced to instead pilot drones from an air-conditioned cubicle like a pimply teenager with a rumblepack joystick. His reticent desperation unfurls two-fold: at work with prodding pleas to his commanding officer (Bruce Greenwood) to be return to a real fighter jet and at home where his day job (worked during the graveyard shift) of “engaging hostiles” stands in sharp contract to swilling PBR and grilling porterhouses on a Kenmore 4 top.

The film capitalizes on this brand of muted shock-value; the cold, hard cavalier nature of these drone strikes prove as gut-churning as the unsettlingly high number of strikes each pilot is asked to carry out daily; but it sometimes leaves the blood wanting more stirring. Quite simply: strong visual cues, performances served with gusto and a solid moral foundation do not a perpetually enjoyable movie make.

Niccol’s charge to churn the position of drone pilot into a harrowing, supremely unenviable position is an uphill battle but one he engages full-throttle. On the one hand, these drone pilots are perceived as militant sissies, sitting out the real battles where honor is won and lives are risked. Though Hawke’s Major Thomas Egan finds his post undesirable, it’s not for lack of action. In fact, these drone pilots appear to engage the enemy continuously. How the kill count statistics for actual pilots versus drone pilots break down I don’t know but Good Kill would lead us to believe that the drone pilots trigger finger is nothing short of a biblical harbinger of death, ten thousand miles away. They collect belt notches by the dozen and then zip off to another strike point. All on one tank of gas.

This gets us into post-traumatic stress, which Egan is forced to content with throughout the picture. His PTSD is exacerbated when the CIA take charge of their command post to execute undocumented tactical strikes that put innocent women and children into the crosshairs and don’t hesitate to issue a kill order. In all senses, the disembodied talking heads painstakingly demand the loss of civilian life. Over and over again. Cue Die Antwoord; “Kill, kill, kill!” Niccol’s is unflinching in his portrait of government intelligence indifference, painting the faceless American commanders as nothing short of bloodthirsty war pigs. At times his irreverence to US command structure seems over-the-top but taken in the context of Rick Rowley’s Dirty Wars, his excess seems hardly exaggerated, rather it’s an illuminating necessary evil.

Taking us into these dark shadows, Niccol’s attempts to parse right from wrong with almost too much force, leaving very little grey in between. The sad truth of the matter is that the Middle East is a palette of greys and his ethical absolutism can come across a touch obtuse. Similarly, Egan’s home life rubs against a thing of caricature and though Hawke dedicates himself to his character’s crumbling, the alcoholism and self-destructive tendencies are cinematic redundancies of the cliched war-battered men returning home from battle. Had Hawke had a better counterpoint to bounce off of than January Jones – who always underwhelms – his frustration and eagerness to desert his family might have held a more palpable bite. As it stands, her nagging is just that and without the requisite depth to really spearhead our undivided investment in their familial struggles. When the end comes around the corner, our character makes a decision completely outside the realm of expectation and it falls short exactly because of our detachment from the nuclear unit that is Hawke & Jones.

Ultimately, Niccol’s has made a film that probes cinematic rocks previously left unturned and does so in fairly compelling manner. Most of the time. He unearths the occasional scene dripping with tension but also allows a sluggish breeze of non-movement to creep in now and again. If only he knew, the film thrives in the quietest of moments; when Egan questions why they still wear flight suits; when his drone block smokes cigarettes and hold dopey Ooh Rah philosophy seminars. Niccol’s effort is commendable – as is his longing to make a war drama that’s both timely and brimming with cause – but the bits and bops don’t always come together smoothly, a pang of shortcoming felt especially in the big dramatic family moments.

C+

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Out in Theaters: TOMORROWLAND

May 20, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Brad Bird, Britt Robertson, Damon Lindelof, George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Out in Theaters, Raffey Cassidy, Reviews, Tomorrowland 2 Comments

Damon Lindelof is a dreamer. He cut his teeth writing cheap cop shows and second-tier medical dramas before embarking on the project that would define his career: Lost, network television’s most ambitious serial to ever exist. Though many jumped ship as later seasons got ballsier and whackier, those willing to afford Lindelof and Co. credit found a breed of nerdy, emotionally-driven internal logic just able to justify a spare polar bear here and there. Its raw sentimental baggage overtook the logical bumps in the road. Pathos trumped logos. Converting that distinctly Lindelof style to feature film has proved problematic. This is Lindelof’s flaw and why Tomorrowland fails: we don’t care nearly enough about the characters present to overlook the glaring litany of internal logic issues growing throughout the film like its many glimmering wheat fields. In short, the movie is very, very dumb. Read More

Weekly Review 79: MAUDE, MOTHER, MONTAGE, PITCH, FED

May 18, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged Fed Up, Harold and Maude, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, Mother, Pitch Perfect, Reviews, Weekly Review Leave a comment

Weekly Review is a place where I, your Silver Screen Riot editor in chief Matt Oakes, recap the week, providing a coverage overview of the past 7 days as well as shorter review segments on previously releases films or new releases I caught at home (usually by studio-distributed screeners).

It’s been a minute since our last visit, time well spent in New York City and the Seattle sunshine. Although summer is officially underway here, so too is the Seattle International Film Festival. And though I’ve ratcheted down my attendance from year’s past, I’ve still spent plenty a shiny afternoon in a dark theater or pinky-extended hotel room talking to directors, actors and even a (*gasp*) composer. SIFF being what it is, I’m sitting on reviews of Love & Mercy, Me, Earl and the Dying Girl, Unexpected, Mr. Holmes and the excellent demon horror The Hallow.

In wide release, I took down the supremely received Mad Max: Fury Road – I’ll direct you to Chris’ review for full thoughts on the matter – in addition to the surprisingly gleeful Pitch Perfect 2. At home, I’ve still made time to catch up with the original Mad Max trilogy – which I podcasted about over at InSession Film – swallow some Bong Joon-ho for Mother’s Day and feed my mind with a pair of documentaries. All this installment and more on Weekly Review.

HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971)

The birds and the bees dispatch from a thicket of old lady hair in this classic emo-rock, counter-culture cult classic. Harold – a depressive teen with an overbearing and yet frightfully distant maternal figure – dreams up inventive ways to feign suicide until he encounters a car-jackin’, booze-swillin’ inconspicuous grandma with no reservations and no speed limits. I’ve a fondness for Harold and Maude curated by years of frequent revisits and though delightful and insightful, it does pale in comparison to contemporary cumming-of-age tale The Graduate. Not that one ought to compare the two necessarily but for some reason I can just never help it. Cat Stevens soundtrack is unabashedly perfect though. (B+)

MOTHER (2009)

Bong Joon-ho’s fourth feature is predictably excellent, layered with energy and mystery and filled with a type of genre-defying narrative looseness that allows it to go just about anywhere at any time and exist as so many things at once. Mother tells the tale of a mom’s desperate search to redeem her slow-witted son who’s been framed for a murder she’s convinced he didn’t commit. Like Joon-ho’s earlier Memories of Murder, the film depicts the two sides of South Korean law as one and the same. The police force is dubious at best and, more likely than naught, riddled with corruption. Familiarity with his earlier work casts Mother in even more vivid, surrealistically satirical light, regardless of how humorless its core intentions remain. And this is Joon-ho’s greatest asset – he doesn’t force himself to choose one side or the other. He can have his great black comedy alongside cripplingly potent dramatic movements. From a distance, his filmography looks divided between crime sagas and genre films but for those actually looking, his chief concern remains human partaking in the inhumane and Mother is a damn fine example of that. And it has one of the best endings to a movie since Darren Aronofsky‘s Pi. (A-)

PITCH PERFECT (2012)

A cheery, pitchy retelling of that ever-recylced high school underdog story, Pitch Perfect imagines a world in which listening to acapella isn’t tantamount to torture. A punky Anna Kendrick plays a reclusive wanna-be DJ who joins up with the spunky Bellas, who’ve recently fallen from their high horse via a public puking incident. When the comedy works, it tends to be side-splitting – particularly when Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins are firing off their verbal guns – casting a growing, glowing cloud over the admittedly dumb trappings of what should be such a cliched slice of cinema. An impromptu sing-off battle just needs a spoonful of sardonic commentary to make the medicine go down smoothly and Pitch Perfect finds a good mix of the two in its formula. It’s not mixed by a perfect chemist, but Jason Moore does well enough. (B-)

KURT COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK (2015)

I’ll give credit to filmmaker Brett Morgen for defying expectation with Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. Rather than dish the cold hards on Cobain’s dour rise to stardom, he points his camera into the man’s interworking by showcasing his unrestricted access to Cobain’s personal journal entries, pieces of artwork and stunningly animated accounts of Kurt’s young life. The result is about as unsettling and tragic as one would imagine – with xylophone covers of Nirvana tracks adding further laters to the haunting atmosphere – and features a trove of previously unreleased home video footage that will be sure to make the hardest of fans squeal. All evidence points to a man teetering on a dangerous edge for his whole life, primed for the white light with both barrels cocked. And though Morgen offers up the broad strokes of Kurt’s hellish plot through life, I’m not sure that doodles and scribblings really help me understand who the man inside the music actually is. And for that, I left feeling a little unfulfilled. Especially when the asking price is over two hours. (C+)

FED UP (2014)

As I posted on Twitter after viewing, Fed Up ought to be required viewing for all Americans who eat food. Find yourself included in that group? Then yes, this includes you. Almost more importantly, this is a documentary that should be force fed to politicians, in addition to school principals. Targeting the obesity epidemic in our country (and, to lesser degree, around the world) Fed Up (which can also be interpreted as F-ed Up) tells the story of how our food became, well, “food” and how our declining health has gone hand-in-hand with this government-approved transformation. Fed Up provides disturbing data points as well as heartbreaking testimonials from real live chubby kids, posing the question, “If a foreign party were targeting our children and profiteering off their declining health, wouldn’t we declare war on them?” And yet, we allow the food industry to wage war on children through distressingly ubiquitous ad campaigns paired with their addictive, misleading products. The doc is eye-opening and haunting but still provides feasible solutions that we as a nation should, and must, strive for. It’s available on Netflix and should be shared aggressively. (A)

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Out in Theaters: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

May 15, 2015 by Chris Bunker Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Charlize Theron, Fury Road, George Miller, Hugh Keas-Byrne, Nicholas Hoult, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Riley Keough, Tom Hardy 3 Comments

It has been a long, long time since I’ve put together one of these, but damn is it good to be back. That’s likely what Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller had on his mind his first day on set for one of the most impressive action films in the past decade. I can only marvel at what Miller has achieved with his latest film, mouth agape and eyes fully dilated. Fury Road was one of the wildest rides I have ever had the honor to take. Read More

Out in Theaters: PITCH PERFECT 2

May 14, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Anna Kendrick, David Cross, Elizabeth Banks, Hailee Steinfeld, John Michael Higgins, Kay Cannon, Keegan-Michael Key, Out in Theaters, Pitch Perfect 2, Rebel Wilson, Reviews 1 Comment

Your enjoyment of Pitch Perfect 2 will be directly correlated to your willingness to endure acapella puns. That is, it’s only acappealing to some. Still with me? Let’s continue. In so much as this Pitch Perfect silliness could be confused with the cloying high school sugar rush that is Glee, the two share poppy musical stylings but are dished up with distinctly different flavors: irritating and irreverent. I’ll let you suss out which is which. Read More

Out in Theaters: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

May 7, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Carey Mulligan, Far From the Madding Crowd, Juno Temple, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Thomas Vinterberg, Tom Sturridge Leave a comment

A nobleman, a commoner and a soldier walk into a bar. There sits a property-owning, curly mopped brunette beauty. Which man does she choose to marry? Such is the premise of Thomas Vinterberg’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic 1874 romance novel; a 512-page amorous yarn, turned into a dramaturgical 107-page script, turned into a 119-minute film. In simplifying the story, good sense is tangled in expedited character arcs and though less plodding than many coattail and gown costume dramas, Far From the Madding Crowd is at best a handsomely photographed venture back in time and at worst a perfunctory, sloppily told bore.

As hot as an exposed ankle in 1870, Bathsheba (Carey Mulligan) is a feminist champion amongst old-fashion cods. Her free-wheeling ways are as accented as Beast’s Belle, which we see manifested in her willingness to hop in the slop and give lambs a good spanking to get a move on. “My lord, but what about your dress?” When she shoots down marriage proposal numero dos, you can almost hear the townswomen tittering, “Can you believe she didn’t marry that man?” Titter, titter.

But let’s back up in time. Before Bathsheba becomes a certified landowner and town-wide hot topic, she was naught but a lowly farm girl, her only holdings being her education and her sharp wit. Neighbor farmer Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), upon retrieving her red scarf from the woods – Oh! Red! In June! How scandalous! – wastes little time in trying to secure a marriage. It’s your average “boy meets girl, boy proposes to girl, boy’s dog chase his sheep off cliff, boy loses farm, girl inherits farm, boy works at farm” saga.

English costume romances such as these thrive on their performances and none here disappoint. Mulligan offers up some of her finest work – a nuanced and lively portrait of a woman ahead of her time. Her inner workings are like a skeleton watch; her eyebrows flock hither and thither with each dutifully charged enunciation; her faint smile is a beguiling jewel. And magical though her work may be, it doesn’t prove enough to camouflage the bigger issues at play.

Take for instance Bathsheba’s romance with Mr. Oak – who might I say looks confusingly like a hot Charlie Kelly. Schoenaerts displays fierce subtly in his quiet, complacent role as Mr. Oak and in his own right is excellent as well but his chemistry with Mulligan is cursory at best. Considering that the weight of the film rests squarely on our investment in Mr. Oak and Bathsheba’s brewing romance, the fact that their entanglement is barely lukewarm makes everything else feel a touch soggy, soiled and businesslike. They have kind of a Luke ‘n’ Leia thing going on where you dread having to watch them kiss. For a romance, that’s a pretty huge problem.

Furthermore, they’re both kind of boring characters who like each other because the other one is equally boring. Everyone’s drinkin’ and dancin’ at the wedding? Best tend to heaps of hay!

No matter how fancifully dressed up it is – and believe me, from costumes to sets to cinematography, Far From the Madding Crowd is an appropriately distinguished visual feast – it cannot escape the Hollywood romance formula wherein we’re supposed to root for the centerpiece love story because they’re the sexy stars of the film and the sexy stars of the film are supposed to do it by the end. There’s certainly consolidation points earned for its free-spirited feminist lead – in addition to Mulligan’s apt performance – but that’s not enough of a cover job to disguise its disappointingly flat – and sometimes seriously head-scratching – narrative turns.

The most pronounced of which comes in the form of the character Sergeant Troy (Tom Sturridge) and his perplexing motivations. They prove particularly problematic in that his arc only makes sense if we regard him as a madman. His steadfast abandonment of former love Fanny Robbin (Juno Temple) works in and of itself but not in the context of his later developments with Bathsheba. Relationships like this may thrive on the page with much more time and care dedicated to them but on the screen, they just don’t make much sense at all old boy.

Vinterburg delivered a picture of staggering depth with The Hunt and unfortunately his vibrantly nuanced tendencies have all but disappeared here, like a children hiding beneath his mother’s dress. Though there’s much to like in Far From the Madding Crowd – especially Michael Sheen, props to Michael Sheen – there’s little to love.

C+

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Out in Theaters: LOVE & MERCY

May 6, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Atticus Ross, Bill Camp, Bill Pohlad, Brian Wilson, Elizabeth Banks, Jake Abel, John Cusack, Love & Mercy, Michael Alan Lerner, Oren Moverman, Paul Dano

Film originally seen at Seattle International Film Festival ’15.

It’s no mystery that Brian Wilson was a tortured soul. Look no further than single “Heroes and Villains”, originally released on 1967’s Smiley Smile, and peel back the oily layer of Wilson’s lyrical metaphors to glance into the depths of his tortured soul. In the tune’s restless battlescape, cowboys and indians facing off in a dust-blown shanty town stood in for the forces of “good” and “evil” he saw himself trapped between. A perennial internal tug-of-war born from his turbulent upbringing and inbred insecurity. Psychedelics informed much of Wilson’s Pet Sounds/Smile era – and would later lead to a misdiagnosis that was almost the end of the pop genius – and allowed Wilson the power to probe the darkest corners of his painful past with bright melodies and rich orchestral arrangements. Similarly, Love & Mercy is dark and tender – like a good chunk of turkey – journey into deeper meaning; a filmic psychoanalysis of a man balancing on piano wire at the height of his fame and fortune. Read More