Out in Theaters: INTERSTELLAR

November 4, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Anne Hathaway, Casey Affleck, Christopher Nolan, Hans Zimmer, Interstellar, Jessica Chastain, Jonathan Nolan, Mackenzie Foy, Matthew McConaughey, Out in Theaters, Reviews 1 Comment

Don’t be fooled, Interstellar is no blockbuster. Nor is it the critical darling think piece so many expected it to be. It seems crafted to engulf the minds of the critical community in nit-picky debates about minute details; destined to conjure up various theories and interpretations (a la Inception) but I don’t see that happening. For all its loopholes, space travel and time relativity, it’s relatively straightforward. Almost shockingly so. That’s not to say that it doesn’t aim for something more; for something meant to transcend your usual theatrical experience. Christopher Nolan reaches for the stars. He comes up short.

There’s no battles, no aliens, no ticking time bomb. Interstellar‘s a film about blackness and bleakness; dust storms and global scarcity; destiny and family. A gun doesn’t once appear on the screen. There’s not even really a villain so much as an antagonist with a competing view of the greater good and a finer tuned sense of self-preservation. The villain is in a sense time itself. And Planet Earth. And dust.

At a critical juncture, Matthew McConaughey‘s Cooper convinces Anne Hathaway‘s Amelia that time is a precious resource. With a nearly three hour running time and a bulk of scenes this guy deems unnecessary, Nolan tends towards squandering said resource. Establishing shots are at first spent on Earth; Cooper’s a retired NASA pilot and now a farmer. His children Murph (Mackenzie Foy, later Jessica Chastain) and Tom (Timothée Chalamet, later Casey Affleck) have only known a world of ashes and dust. Crops around the world have become infected and extinct. Corn is the last consumable vestige of survival on Earth and its kernelly goodness is fast fading. But as time bends onward, the whole scarcity act is swallowed up by the impending doom of super blustery dust storms; the harbinger of phlegmy coughs; humankind’s asthmatic nemesis. The corn supply isn’t quite in top shape but there’s apparently enough to go around to serve meals of corn fritters, corn on the cob and corn bread. The classic corn triple play.

When a gravitational anomaly sends Cooper and Murph to a top secret NASA base, Cooper is recruited to man a mission into the intergalactic unknown in hopes of discovering new resources and, ultimately, salvation for humankind. About as little time is spent on the logistical rationale behind Cooper showing up and shipping off within what seems like a matter of days as it is on Professor Brand’s (Michael Caine) uncompromising over-reliance on this has-been pilot. It makes about as much sense as Rambo showing up on the White House’s doorstep and being asked to lead the president (who in this case is obviously 1997 Harrison Ford) to the front lines of an ISIS mass beheading assault. I mean it’d be cool and all but what?

Utterly enraptured by the poetry of Dylan Thomas, Brand is all about doing things the “ungentle” way. He’s so Thomas-esque, the man is basically rage against the machine. So after one (1) meeting with ol’ Cooper, Brand’s got him strapped into a (must have been) multi-billion dollar top-secret aircraft set on a world-saving mission. Because anything that’s roughly as logical as Armageddon is apparently good to go for screenwriter bros Christopher and Jonathan Nolan.

And this comes down to the main issue of Interstellar: the Nolan Bro’s screenplay. For a usually straight-laced, sober duo, their scribemanship here has a prevailing feeling of being one bong rip too deep. It’s hard – if not entirely impossible – to defend some of the Nolans’ more hokey moments – the “love connection” speech, obviously telegraphed dialogue, the debatable “fifth dimension” scene, that ending… – and it all winds up feeling like a mixture of trying too hard and not trying hard enough. It’s at once Nolan’s most shamelessly sentimental film, but also his most emotionally honest. Only when it tips into a wholly saccharine realm, it turns entirely unbecoming. Once those thematically iffy moments bind themselves to the finale and become inextricably germane to the larger themes at play, Interstellar shows itself for being a half-baked, if fully beautiful, failed experiment in synthesizing the inimitable success of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

That’s because Interstellar is an exercise in blue balls. It keeps getting so close to giving us what we wants and then shies away at the last moment; revealing a much less sexy underbelly as it goes. It’s an intimate human voyage through time and space, beset with little to no set pieces and made picture perfect with a massive budget and technical wizards hammering out intergalactic spacescapes the likes of none other. The pieces are all right; the whole just doesn’t come together as it should. You can almost smell its desire to be something more. The sting of it letting you down is palpable as it closes up shop and that’s partially what makes it the laudable misfire it is.

Seeing the film in one of seventy-one 70mm IMAX screening around the world imbued me with a great sense of privilege until I saw the actual picture. On Earth, it’s dusty. Grainy. Sometimes inexplicably unfocused. In space, it’s unreal. Otherworldly. Wormholes have never looked so sexy. The one hour of full-blown, in-your-face, pants-pissin’ IMAX shots does come around to save the day – justifying the costly asking price – though Hans Zimmer‘s theater-rumbling score often crosses the threshold into full blown audio assault if experienced in the large-picture, super-duper loud format. His low throbbing Gothic bass notes declare all out war on your eardrums as they crescendo and decrescendo. Turned down a notch lower, it’s one of the finest aspects of the film (a film that is more often than not a visual treat.) But like candy, the FX-heavy landscape doesn’t nourish a greater sense of thought-provoking reflection so much as sheer awe; nonetheless, it’s a thing to enjoy in all its savory nutritionlessness.

Nolan swings for the rafters and ends up splicing it just at the perfect angle where you can’t quite tell if it’s gonna be a home run or a foul ball. You hang in anticipation. And right at that moment of truth – in that prevailing reverent silence – the ball disappears into a wormhole. It’s hard to confirm whether Nolan’s latest is really an instance of Casey at Bat or, like 2001, his sci-fi opus will take years to fully digest, appreciate and understand. But I would tend towards the later not being the case. It is just heady and barely open-ended enough to stomach an argument for the other side. Though I’d have to likely also be offered corn bread.

The success and/or failure of Interstellar is hard to quantify. It’s grand and self-aggrandizing. It’s often more numb than it is smart. It’s a visual feast to behold with the emotional stakes to match. The talent both in front of and behind the camera (visual effects teams in particular) is rapturous and almost entirely engrossing. Though the “who’s who” of talent doesn’t ever pretend that Interstellar is a true actor’s film, McConaughey has a few scene where he dusts off his Oscar and lets it all hang out. When he does, hearts will break. But like a kid who ate too much candy and puked on a Picasso, Interstellar is only truly beautiful once you wipe all the muck off.

One thing seems certain: this will likely be the last time the studio system cuts Nolan a blank check to do with as he will. His directorial carte blanche will expire when it inevitably disappoints at the international box office. His license to kill will all but be revoked. It’s almost tragic but, time being a flat circle and all, it’s also inevitable. If only the Nolans bros had let Rust Cohle free to wax on time and stuff when they do decide to unleash their philosophical digressions. Apparently that’s just too much to ask.

With Interstellar, Nolan rages against the dying of the light, but like a theater minor without the proper know-how, he rages just a little too hard.

C+

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Weekly Review 61: HORNS, ABCS, BEGIN, CANNIBAL, SNOW

October 31, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged Begin Again, Cannibal Holocaust, Horns, Reviews, Snow on Tha Bluff, The ABCs of Death, Weekly Review

Halloween is upon us (and by the time you’re reading this, will have already passed) so the time for horror is taking its spot in the rear view. Sayonara! Nevertheless, I popped on a slew of horrors at home, including a double Nosferatu showing; both the 1922 original and the “what if this was how it was made?” docu-fictionalization Shadow of the Vampire. No Halloween is complete without the obligatory Evil Dead 2 watch, so the wonderful caws and coos of Bruce Campbell graced my household as I turned a pumpkin into Nosferatu. This week had only one (!!!) screening, a rare thing in this rat-racing line of work but thankfully it was one for the books, Nightcrawler. Easily among my favorite of the year, Nightcrawler showcases Jake Gyllenhaal in a role that deserves all the awards. Hopefully he actually gets nommed on. At home, I had the chance to watch one of the worst movies of the entire year, which we’ll get to in just a wee moment. So strap in and let’s Weekly Reviews.

HORNS (2014)

You pretty much just need to learn the name of the lead character of Horns – Ignatius Perrish – to understand the egotistical, sloppy dreck that is this film shit show. Laughably dumb all the way through, Horns is a wildly ill-conceived movie that doesn’t apparently understand what movies are and how they function. Overtly reaching for metaphors and widely missing over and over again, Horns is one long, confused religious parable about who knows what; a masterpiece of allegorical shittiness, a master’s class on how not to make a movie. Daniel Radcliffe gives it his all as a shifty man on trial in the court of public opinion for allegedly murdering his girlfriend but the abortion of a screenplay leaves him very little room to act in any convincing manner or emote without making us want to laugh. All in all, I’ll chalk this one up to a director way, way in over their head, a screenplay dripping with no-no’s and actors confused into thinking that their onscreen work was important and not just a joke, which is all this ghastly film ultimately is. (F)

THE ABCS OF DEATH (2012)

A freakish collection of short entries to the time-honored horror genre, The ABCs of Death is anthology filmmaking epitomized. The good and the bad come mixed, with some absolutely dreadful entries – F for Fart (coming from Japan, naturally) – stirred up with some rather smart and effective ones – D for Dogfight is von Trier-lite, L for Libido is monstrously unsettling, N for Nupitals is worth a laugh, and X for XXL might just be the best of the bunch. Filmmakers at the forefront of the genre like Adam Wingard, Ti West, Ben Wheatley and the always unsettling Srdjan Spasojevic make appearances against newcomers like cartoonist Kaare Andrews and claymation man Lee Hardcastle. There’s segments that’ll have you hanging your head in your hands in disbelief and those that will ramp up the energy and inject enough life to keep at the two-plus hour engagement. Calling it a mixed effort is really the only way to sum it up but, for me personally, there’s enough to enjoy to make the venture somewhat worthwhile. (C+)

BEGIN AGAIN (2014)

Feel good gobbledygook caked in flaky melodrama, Begin Again is essentially an American remake of Once – from the same director – with a little less music, bigger cast names and a larger production budget. It’s fluffy and light and airy, the cinematic equivalent of popcorn, and just about as nourishing. There isn’t much to dislike, so long as you’re willing to swallow hokey, whimsy and the miracle of TRUE LOVE! It sounds as though I hated this film (I didn’t) but I can’t deny the soapiness had me smiling in places. Stupid soapy smiles. HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME SMILE SOAPY SMILES JOHN CARNEY?! Mark Ruffalo is as charming as always as a drunken, down-on-his-luck record guy, Keira Knightley is as effortlessly rapturous as ever as his songwriting savior, and even “rockstar” Adam Levine is tolerable as clean-cut d-bag heartbreaker. It’s just that the combination feels as inorganic, staged and slick as a Maroon 5 song. (C-)

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980)

An effectively horrifying descent into the green inferno, Cannibal Holocaust is a film that’s difficult to recommend on any rational level, and equally as hard to “enjoy,” but it’s an avante garde film who’s unblinking devotion to its contrarian cause I can’t help but respect. It also basically gave birth to the found footage subgenre – later popularized with Blair Witch. Cannibal Holocaust follows a group of sinful documentarians who enter the Amazon to track down some of the last remaining vestiges of untouched civilization in two warring cannibalistic tribes: the Ya̧nomamö and the Shamatari. The violence is shaking and brutally graphic, with accusations at the time of release that actual local tribesmen and women were murdered onscreen. The footage is so convincing, it took a three year examination to prove otherwise. While the film was later vindicated, Ruggero Deodato off the hook for murder and bans on the flick largely lifted, the absolutely stomach-churning cruelty to animals on-screen was never in doubt: it is all staggeringly real. Turtles are flayed, monkeys decapitated, a lemur cruelly stabbed to death. Any animal lover will close their eyes (I did) but their squeals still pierce your mind. At least now I understand the need for PETA. While Cannibal Holocaust enters the realm of film I would hesitate to recommend to even the most seasoned of stomach, it’s nonetheless an extremely well made and entirely thought-provoking film. (B-)

SNOW ON THA BLUFF (2011)

What did I just watch? How much of it is reality, how much is fiction? These are the kinds of questions Snow on Tha Bluff will inspire. The film starts jarringly when a hustler (Curtis Snow) bamboozles a trio of privileged college students, duping them into thinking he’ll sell them “two eight balls and ten rolls” and then robbing them at gunpoint. He snatches the co-ed’s camera and decides to let it roll on to capture his life dealing in Atlanta. The film doesn’t let up from there. Drive by’s, robberies, slinging drugs and the cold-blooded murder of “characters” – clearly stand-ins for real life people – make up just a part of this fascinating look into a cultural on the brink of collapse. Filmed guerrilla style, it’s almost impossible to parse out what is real and what is artifice and you’re left with the sinking feeling that even if nothing is real in the sense we’re thinking of, this is as close to reality as we’re gonna get. After the film’s release, Snow was arrested of charges depicted on camera, if that gives you any sense of the reality of the flick. It’s all one big tragic mess, a peek into a civilization rotting from the inside out. The thug life is as much a cause of self-perpetuation as it is of societal construction and we’re there to witness the cycle first-hand. A scene where Snow splices up crack rocks with a razor blade as his four year old plays with a balloon nearby, detailing how he experienced this exact same scene when he was a child, is perhaps the most real moment of the film. There’s no doubt Snow is a shaken man. Snow on Tha Bluff is that rare piece of cinema that – while occasionally willing to descent to moments that feel operatic and stagey, even in all its lo-fi presentation – is most effective at getting the cogs to churn in your mind, leaving you racing with questions that spill out into the real world. (B-)

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Out in Theaters: NIGHTCRAWLER

October 30, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Best of 2014, Bill Paxton, Dan Gilroy, Jake Gyllenhaal, James Newton Howard, Nightcrawler, Out in Theaters, Rene Russo, Reviews, Riz Ahmed

With a name as innocuous as Louis Bloom, you wouldn’t initially suspect the lead character of Nightcrawler to be so dangerous. But the virulent Lou is the kind of guy who dissolves into shadows; who feeds vampirically in the darkness. He’s not a villain so much as a force of nature. Silent but deadly. His politeness is alarming, starkly juxtaposed by the edgy vibration of his piercing, bulbous eyes. His word choice; precise as a bone saw. His demeanor; direct but detached. Like a drone. He’s a bug-eyed Terminator sans the metallic endoskeleton; a top-knotted Patrick Bateman without the 401K. In the role, Jake Gyllenhaal is angelic. He’s equally demonic. He’s perfect mopping up uncomfortable silences, guttural laughs and wry grins like a janitor in a milking cow factory.

Caught in the high beams of a night patrolman, Lou materializes from the shadows like an apparition. A ghoulish grin masking his face. He notes his trespassing is accidental. He also notes the pricy hunk of watch adorning the wrist of the Paul Blart eying him with petulant suspicion. The next scene, it’s Lou wearing the watch.

Throughout the film, Lou’s facial expressions percolate with a kind of serpentine other-worldliness. As if his tongue could dart from his mouth at any moment to nip at the night air. It doesn’t. He remains squarely within the realm of the human. No matter how inhumane he is. A testament to Dan Gilroy‘s narrow degree of restraint and Gyllenhaal’s tightrope-walking ability.

When we meet Lou, he’s a drifter; fencing fences and manhole covers. Begging for jobs with an armory of interview-friendly terminology and all the manicured motions of a “respectable” human being. At a car crash, he yanks his beatermobile to the shoulder to observe its burny grotesqueries and runs into Joe Loder, a TV news freelancer who roams the nights to capture domestic implosions on film. Loder (Bill Paxton) says the job is hell. The next scene, Lou has camera in tow, hunting down the next suburban calamity. It isn’t long before he’s whipping up his own crime scenes and hiring a slacky intern (Riz Ahmed).

In his junker motorcade of journalistic un-tegrity, Lou rips a hole through the banality of the LA night, hunting down the next big tragedy like a slobbering machine, manipulating it when need be and selling it off to the news producer running the graveyard shift, Nina (Rene Russo). Camcorders are his business cards. Bloody car crashes his boardrooms. Murdered families, the money shot coup de grâce to end a good night on.

Nina knows the business is blood sport. Local news is nothing but modern day gladiatorial work. She’s titillated by promises of gory plane crashes. B&E’s are her bee’s knees. She wets herself over triple homicides. Russo holds the performance together by the skin of her teeth, refusing to reveal weakness behind that modernized beehive and liberal thrashing of makeup. As the tension mounts between Lou and Nina, a new dynamic takes shape: one that’s uproariously creepy and carnally delicious. Watching Lou sic Nina is watching the hungry wolf lick his chops before he preys.

Piggybacking on my earlier Patrick Bateman comparison, Nightcrawler deals in a similar brand of corporate black humor as American Psycho, taking aim at the blanket sensationalization of news and, to a lesser degree, our woeful economic state. It’s wickedly funny in a deadpan, threatening kind of way – like Nick Nolte – with Gyllenhaal’s knockout performance informing the laughs like a conductor with a rosewood baton. He is the slaughterer of the lamb, we the vultures come to pick the bones. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll eat up the meaty sarcasm like roast beef on Christmas.

To see the transformation of the shmuck with the Wall Street name from lowly drifter to certifiable media mogul is enough reason to see the film, even though it drags along some basic fixer-uppers that stick out uncomfortably. James Newton Howard‘s score – the man responsible for music-ing such clunkers as Maleficent, Parkland, After Earth, Snow White and the Huntsman, Green Lantern, The Green Hornet, The Tourist and more – often feels out of place, as if it were teleported in from an entirely different movie from an entirely different genre. Howard was scoring a straight thriller as we watched a brutally dark comedy unfold. It’s never in junction with the piece so much as it detracts from it with blast after blast of heavy-handed straightforwardness and a tonal lack of understanding the subtle transformations of character. Were Trent Reznor or Cliff Martinez behind the music, it would have stood out that much more.

Further, the film lacks an entirely solid starting and finishing point. The meat in between is so tender, so perfect, but it kind of drifts in and drifts out without the slap in the face that I both wanted and expected. Come on, punch me. I can handle it. But I guess it makes metaphorical sense for a movie of this nature to creep in and creep out without warning. If not for those few minor miscalculations, Nightcrawler could have driven itself into a sheer state of perfection.

A nightcrawler, not to be confused with the blue Russian teleport from the X-Men comics, is a bottom feeder. A succubus. A drive by job with a camera. They find you in your weakest moments – battered, bloodied and broken – and display it for the world to see. There’s no scruples in the line of work; no lines. It’s a brawl. A exploitative, invasive, harrowing brawl. And the public eats it up like pigs at the stye. They feed on it like vampires. They need it. The supply and demand chain is self-fulfilling. The watchers become the watched. Karma’s a bitch. Nightcrawler finds its target audience like a lumpy tumor, poking it and prodding it with the precision of a surgeon. It’s often equally as brilliant. Lou likes to say that if you’re seeing him, it’s the worst day of your life. Quite the opposite can be said about this film.

A

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Weekly Review 60: BLIZZARD, STRETCH

October 24, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged Reviews, Stretch, Weekly Review, White Bird in a Blizzard 2 Comments

Taking a break from the horror to settle into some 2014 On Demand fare, I looked to make up some ground with a couple new limited release arrivals. Seeing that I did a lot of what is colloquially known as raging this weekend, I didn’t quite get as many down as I had anticipated but with a packed week of screenings, there was no shortage of films to be had. After a public reading from Chuck Palahniuk on Monday (something I would highly recommend), I settled into screenings of the action packed but one-note John Wick followed up by the pitiful Ouija (which also landed with a thud with audiences, who rewarded it a lowly “C” CinemaScore) and unleashed reviews for what may be the year’s best, Birdman, the limited release but worthy of seeking out, The Heart Machine as well as local Seattleite Lynn Shelton‘s ultimately disappointing Laggies. Chris also piped in with his thoughts on the morally confused Dear White People, a film whose heart is in the right place but the execution is just a wide miss. So, all-in-all, a very busy week and time for some Weekly Reviews.

WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD (2014)

Gregg Araki delivers this somber piece of caged domesticity in odd fashion. First off, the piece introduces us to its central conundrum: Kat’s (Shailene Woodley) mom has gone missing. The tension is slow played, the disappearance surprisingly never suspect. But then again, Eve she was always a bit of a drinker, always a bit of a loosey goosey. She’d saunter around the house in provocative lingerie when Kat’s boyfriend would visit. Always with a glass of wine in hand. She was a minx trying to prove her worth through her sexuality, a role that Eva Green has come to embody again and again. And like always, Green absolutely owns it. When she up and disappears, Kat assumes she just picked up and left while others in town suspect more devious misdeeds. Throughout the film, there’s an awkward amount of sexuality energy in the young Kat that’s unleashed upon those that she encounters -as if she herself is growing into her cougarish mother – a metamorphosis from child to sexual being. But her budding sexual symbolism ends up seeming just as weird and unsexy as barely sprouting boobs. White Bird in a Blizzard packs a potent ending and a trio of fine performances but I’m still not convinced that there’s not a superior cut to the picture lying around somewhere, one that would actually piece all the disparate parts together into a more satisfying whole. (C+)

STRETCH (2014)

A bonkers, adrenaline-fueled, nonstop shit show, Stretch has no intention to play it safe. It features gun fights, cocaine baggies, wanksters, hookers, butt plugs (plural) and Jason Mantzoukas. Patrick Wilson plays a down-on-his-luck limo driver who’s up to his eyes in debt with a local mob syndicate claiming they need payment by the end of the night. This lands Stretch (which is both his nickname and the kind of vehicle he drives) in the outlandish arms of client Roger Karos. Karos, played brilliantly by Chris Pine, is an eccentric Richard Branson-meets-Russell Brand billionaire type. Pine’s nonsensical mumbling and shining eyes make him just as much of a pirate as Jack Sparrow and his performance is off-the-walls and absolutely hilarious. To see Pine outside of his regular wheelhouse is to see him thrive. Joe Carnagan broke the mold when he made Stretch and it would of been a thing of beauty to behold in theaters (I’m guessing the multiple butt plugs deemed it theater unfriendly?) and though everything’s a little quirky, a lot oddball and totally full of shit, it’s the kind of shit I’m willing to eat up. With a smile on my face no less. (B)

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Out in Theaters: DEAR WHITE PEOPLE

October 24, 2014 by Chris Bunker Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Dear White People, Justin Simien, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tessa Thompson, Tyler James Williams 1 Comment

My acting career started in a weird place. I played an aggressive racist in a yet-to-be-released film, Father Africa. It was an uncomfortable experience to say the least: calling an African-American “Mufasa” isn’t the most valiant way to get on-screen attention. But, I was a good racist. Great, even. They kept asking me: “Are you an asshole in real life?” Father Africa will likely be my only IMDb film credit until I start making my own. There’s something about bigoted soliloquies that unsettles. Somehow, I can sympathize with all the poor actors in Dear White People.

Hear Fighting People. Fear White People. Leer At White People. Jeer at White People. Sheer Spite People. Queer White People. Hate White People. All could have served as titles for director/screenwriter Justin Simien’s controversial first IMDb entry. Dear White People is a ‘be-yourself’ film in which no one acts like themselves.

The title is conveniently the first thing said in the film. Tessa Thompson hosts a college radio show at a fictitious Ivy-esque institution, “Winchester University.” She’s Samantha White, a mulatto civil rights activist who’s got a hateful bent against the white folk on campus. Her “Dear White People” segment involves various imperatives: stop doing this, stop saying that, stop being here. They’re not suggestions, they’re threats.

Though the story follows four main characters — two of which are ambiguous and pretty much useless to the plot as a whole — she’s the main figure here. Samantha becomes president of Parker-Armstrong (the all-black residential house at Winchester) after her modern Black Panther-esque stance gains favor among her peers. Racial tensions at Winchester have sparked various fights and vitriol is everywhere. Two sides emerge: black and white. Unfortunately, there’s not much gray area in between.

Simien’s film is a satire that inspires more gasps than laughs. The jokes are there, but the comfort isn’t. No one in this film is quite likable, almost everyone’s a full-blown racist and Dear White People is shameless in its depiction of modern-day bigotry. The film’s premise was inspired by a myriad of sorority and fraternity parties with hatefully offensive themes. So, pressure is constantly escalating until the whole thing explodes: the film’s crucial event is an “African-American” themed party hosted by white people in blackface obviously referencing events like those at the University of Florida in 2012.

Everyone acting in this movie must’ve had a very difficult time reconciling their words and actions. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my own skin, so out-of-touch with something I’ve seen on-screen. Simien’s objective is good, but his journey isn’t. White people, gay and straight alike, are slimy, petulant and morally disgusting. The African-Americans in the film are victims of constant, blatant prejudice and discrimination. Unfortunately, they too spray racism back at their offenders in retaliation. This is fictional depiction of real-life tragedy, and it’s just hard to bear.

Tyler James Williams is the lone bright spot in this darkness. He’s Lionel, a gay black kid who loves to write and doesn’t fit in anywhere. He’s too kind-hearted, gentle and intermediate among these type-A a-holes. Really, he’s the only character I felt was real, the only one I could relate to, the only one who wasn’t afraid to be himself. He’s berated by everyone for his sexuality and skin-color. At the end he’s struggling to bring everyone together.

Williams is soft-spoken but his performance in this movie is as loud as his massive afro. He’s stuck in the middle of an argument that refuses to include him. His sexuality ostracizes him from the African-American community, and his skin color from the whites. He responds by writing, getting his word out there the only way people might hear it. He grounds the film as it risks ballooning into chaos. As such, he’s a welcome sweet to the surrounding sour. I found myself wishing the film were just about him rather than the loud mouths that drown him out.

Dear White People is an important film. Simien deserves credit for taking this challenge head-on. Maybe his movie wasn’t a good one, but it asked the right questions and called for legitimate answers. Racism is real and it’s still everywhere. Dear White People sprays it like a fire hose. Unfortunately, it’s just as narrow.

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Out in Theaters: THE HEART MACHINE

October 23, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged John Gallagher Jr., Kate Lyn Sheil, Out in Theaters, Reviews, SXSW, SXSW 2014, The Heart Machine, Zachary Wigon

Would you fall in love in the wild, wild west of romance that is online dating? What if you believe that your betrothed were living in a foreign country only to discover that they are instead a mere stone’s throw away? Would you get jealous? Angry? Violent? Director and writer Zachary Wigon provides his surreptitious take on the ‘romance as app’ generation in what can only be described as a wry, 21st century romantic thriller in the superb The Heart Machine.

Virginia and Cody live in a world where people, and by extension potential lovers, are available at the press of a button. It’s how they found each other in the first place. Exactly which medium connects the two starred-crossed lovers isn’t important. It’s some ChatRoulette/Match.com hybrid where interests are complimented, and people are summed up in bite-sized, infographic widgets. Everyone becomes a Buzzfeed list. On paper, Cody and Virginia are a perfect match, another successful e-copulation born of algorithms and personality profiling. The ying fills in the yang, the yang fills in the ying.

In their very first Skype conversation, things appear to be going well. Their laughs are easy and genuine, their chemistry awash in the emotional distancing and persona creation that only the internet allows. Through the peephole of their computer cameras, they seem to cook up something of a fondness for each other. In the moment of signing off though, Virginia pulls a rabbit from her hat, revealing that she’s living abroad in Germany and won’t return for six months. Not to Cody’s knowledge, she’s totally lying. It’s an instinctual move on Virgina’s behalf, distancing herself from potential emotional attachment, a helpless response to likely adoration. To him, her strange behavior that surrounds this geographical farce should have been a tell-tale sign to back off, but that’s only what we can expect from an emotionally cognizant and mentally furnished partner.

But you can smell the stink of desperation off Cody, a dopey but genial type played to ambiguous perfection by John Gallagher Jr. From the first scene, he’s suspicious of Virginia’s tall tale but has so little going on in his life that he can’t help but get snagged by in its rabbit hole. Gallagher is great as the discerning cuckold, cryptic in his intent and often impossible to get a read on. His is the kind of smiley face that could be hiding a cold blooded serial killer.

No matter his intention, Cody never comes off as the irascible type, even when what becomes a full-blown investigation drives himself towards the deep end. There’s moments where we don’t know if when they finally meet he’s going to hug Virginia or stab her and the not knowing is most of the fun. Instead of confronting her about it (like a normal person would), Cody escapes into a fantasy of himself, letting this new persona of a ragged sleuth take the wheel. As an outdated, wannabe noir detective, he’s inefficient but tenacious. He’s the J.J. Gittes of Brooklyn. But his femme fatale may be the end of him.

Virginia (Kate Lyn Sheil) is a salacious soul, a libertine of the new sexual frontier who uses her iPhone like a map to genital gold. Letting it guide her to new and uncharted carnal encounters like a treasure hunter, she comes across as cold and heartless. But while Wigon originally only wrote her as a small part to Cody’s larger quest, her final place in the film is much more substantial and rounded. A lascivious side is accented by her bookwormish other half; the art enthusiast and glory hole hussy all wrapped into one complicated young enchantress. Wigon may pass judgement on her at first, but goes on to attempt to truly understand her. The Heart Machine is not Wigon’s damnation of feminine guile so much as Shiel giving a masterclass on it.

Since the inception of apps literally designed to track down horny people in the closest possible vicinity, the world of relationships increasingly invokes a compartmentalization of love and sex. To have the two worlds wrapped in one risks too much, it dangles too much to lose. To Virginia, sex is a physical act, love the pick me up after your shotgun lover doesn’t want to cuddle. The Heart Machine is about world’s colliding, about the harlot losing her mask and the beau his sanity. It’s a bittersweet game of cat and mouse that brings a much needed 21st century update to the romance thriller and will keep you on the edge of your seat and thoroughly entrenched in the characters. While the internet makes promises of covert encounters, anonymity only works when you keep your circles separate. The question is: Are you secret, are you safe?

B+

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Out in Theaters: OUIJA

October 23, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Douglas Smith, Juliet Snowden, Lin Shaye, Olivia Cooke, Oujia, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Stiles White 1 Comment

Movies based on board games come packed with expectations of shittiness. Hasbro teamed up with Universal just a few years back for the monumentally floppish Battleship. Even with Peter Berg at the helm and a budget that ballooned over 200 million dollars, tanking critical response and disinterested audiences sunk Battleship. The lackies at the Hasbro Studios (which I still can’t believe actually exists) returned to the drawing board to scheme up their next monstrosity. To my, and many like me’s, chagrin, the Has-bros made a smart move. They decided to proceed with a no-name cast, micro-budgeted horror adaptation, because the horror audience en masse isn’t known for being the discerning bunch and so might as well stick it to ’em. The result is Oujia, a puked up mess of uninspired drivel. Read More

Out in Theaters: LAGGIES

October 22, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Chloe Grace Moretz, Jeff Garlin, Keira Knightley, Laggies, Lynn Shelton, Mark Webber, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sam Rockwell 1 Comment

Take thematic elements of Joe Swanberg‘s Happy Christmas, distill it down, add paint-by-numbers rom-com structure, weed out the elements that distinguish mumblecore as such and replace the winning Anna Kendrick with the accent-jostling Keira Knightley and you have Laggies, a competently told but widely borrowed tale of arrested adolescence.

Knightley is Megan, a wanderer of the pathetic breed. In the years since her high school prom – which the movie unexplainably opens on – her besties have become more mannered, her boyfriend Anthony (Mark Webber) more tame. With her sign-spinning job, dependence on others, total lack of direction and joyless “drifting through life” attitude, Megan is the short end of the stick.

On the night of her best friend’s wedding, she discovers her father (Jeff Garlin) cheating on her mother and flees from the scene of the crime to encounter Annika (Chloe Grace Moretz), a young, fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants teen-rager who asks if she’ll buy her and her underaged posse some brewskis. Shortly thereafter, Anthony proposes to Megan, sending her into an existential spiral that lands her back in the company of the teenaged Annika and her suave, divorcee father Craig (Sam Rockwell).

As a film rummaging through underdeveloped ethos and aimless reckonings, Laggies seems like a freshman effort rather than the work of a seasoned pro. A marked improvement over director Lynn Shelton‘s last project, the wholeheartedly flat Touchy Feely, Laggies can’t help but feel like a director moving in the wrong director. After all, when everything is finally unpacked, there are no revelations we couldn’t see coming from minute 35, no statement that needed to explode out from the film.

All the asinine elements with which Shelton plays with have been done before and to greater effect. Look no further than the work of contemporary and mumblecore comrade Joe Swanberg to get not just one but many examples of this exact story done, quite frankly, far better. Both this year’s Happy Christmas and last year’s Drinking Buddies are perfect diagrams of how to make this brand of indie film. If Swanberg is dishing up fillets, Shelton seems content serving beef chuck. It’s the difference between medium rare and well done. Often less is more.

Having said that, one of the things that most annoys me about the film is how tidy everything is. In a film about chaos and confusion, characters on the brink of breaking down and frozen with fear of commitment, by the end of the film, have recovered miraculously. Shelton has put a nice little bow on everything as if to deem it appropriate viewing for a mom and her teenage daughter. It’s a scramble of odds and ends that shouldn’t fit so neatly together but ultimately do. The storybook ending is boring. Life is a mess. Real humans don’t get resolution. These are the platitudes that the mumblecore movement were founded on. To revert back to the stepping stones of the uninspired linear dramedy is to miss the point of the genre. It sounds harsh but I hate to see the potential squandered.

In the acting department, most of the crew is doing fine work. Knightley scrubs some of the char off her namesake that she’s earned with her most recent effort, offering a loafer of a character who, at the very least, comes with a few extra layers attached. Even if her perpetual indecisiveness is more noxious than pitiable, it’s nice to see Knightley changing up her game and bringing something wholly new to the table. Her accent coach must have retired though as her on-again-off-again accent flubs are nearly as noticeable here as they were in grizzly Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

Standing aside her, Sam Rockwell, as always, is a gift. And yet, again, his character seemed like a bit of a wasted opportunity on all fronts. I would have liked to see more to him; more comedy, more tragedy, more everything. If Laggies were from Sam Rockwell’s character’s perspective, it would have been twice as good. And not-so-little Chloe Grace Moretz holds her own as well, showcasing a skill for understatement that was sorely missing in her last endeavor, If I Stay.

From a purely narcissistic angle, I appreciated the drizzly Seattle setting, which opened the doors to some of the finer establishments in the Emerald City, establishments that I have otherwise not stepped within. Steeped in the nonchalance of a Pacific Northwest rain shower, Laggies has a throbbing sense of place to it, one of the finer components in a film that really needs that kind of specificity. Though Benjamin Gibbard‘s musical score is entirely forgettable, other resident Benjamin, Bejamin Kasulke‘s subtle cinematography accomplishes its goal of keeping the characters in the forefront and the atmosphere appropriately Seattle. And though there are bits to like here and there, Laggies is a movie sorely missing a point.

C

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Out in Theaters: BIRDMAN

October 22, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Alejandro González Iñárritu, Amy Ryan, Antonio Sanchez, Birdman, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Michael Keaton, Naomi Watts, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Zach Galifianakis 2 Comments

Unlike quite anything else, Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s Birdman is a surrealist commentary on 21st century franchise culture, absolutely pumped full of energy, wit and scintillating satire. A massively relevant take on modernity, Iñárritu’s restless film comes dressed up as black comedy but resonates wholeheartedly with the slobbish zeitgeist du jour. Truth, it seems, can come masked in all sorts of outfits. Read More

Out in Theaters: JOHN WICK

October 22, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Alfie Allen, Bridget Moynahan, Chad Stahelski, David Leitch, John Leguizamo, John Wick, Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Willem Dafoe

Shoot first and ask questions later is the mantra of Keanu Reeves‘ latest starring vehicle, a film that rotates around the question of “Who is John Wick?” and eventually “What is he capable of?” Going in blind to its main plot details will likely result in a better experience as the first act coyly plays with the idea of slowly unveiling who exactly this John Wick character is. First time directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski clearly had a lot of fun with the eventual reveal of the character and his past and, especially if you skip the trailers, you most likely will too.

Having just lost his wife (Bridget Moynahan), John (Reeves) is a vortex funnel of emotion. Conversations with him are as brusque as they are chilly. Telephone calls with John consist of grunts, one word utterances and silences. Condolences are met with the emotional sensitivity of a grandfather clock. You insert a coin and watch it disappear. The only sign of life comes when an unbelievably adorable Beagle puppy is dropped at his doorstep with a note from his now deceased wife. The puppy, she envisions, is John’s invitation to move on and find life anew. Even with the pup sliding around his hardwood floors, John’s still remarkably dead-faced, but might just be starting to soften. When a pair of Russian gangsters tries to intimidate him into selling them his classic car, we see a whole new side of John. He’s sassy in a delectably murderous kind of way. And he speaks Russian. And he’s no one’s bitch.

When the trio of gangsters, lead by mob boss son Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), reappear under cover of darkness to smash up his home, kill his puppy (“the horror…the horror…”) and steal his 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle, John winds up on the receiving end of a kicking session the likes of Riverdance. Bruised and bloody, he stares the death of hope right in its bloody, puppy visage. Even in this hazy, intentionally vague introduction to the stable of characters, we sense something violently carnal to John Wick just as we can smell the privileged cowardice steaming from Allen’s Iosef. Thinking themselves victorious, the thiefs slink off into the night. What the trio of goons hadn’t planned on was Wick retaliating, a miscalculation that becomes their blood-soaked fate.

Trying to replace VIN numbers and nab new tags, Iosef is clued into exactly who he’s messed with with a hard punch in the face. Even criminal mechanic Aurielo (John Leguizamo) won’t touch the stolen vehicle and in a move of unchecked candor, whops the little mafiosa in the schnoz for picking on the wrong guy. Iosef spouts, “My dad’s gonna do this,” and, “My dad’s gonna do that,” but even Aurielo’s smart enough to know that his top dog pops will understand his punchy reaction. When daddy Vigo (Michael Nyqvist) puts in the perfunctory check up call, all Aurielo needs to say to justify his physical gesture is to drop the news. “Your boy killed John Wick’s dog.” All Vigo can muster is an understanding, “Oh.” Cue all out war.

Once the wick is lit (pun, unfortunately, intended), the candle of vengeance burns for the entirety of the film. Action beats rage from one vantage point to another, making way for some well-timed comic beats and introducing us to a slew of characters who either share John’s former profession and or are played solely for dark colored comedy. One such example is Lance Reddick (Lost) who plays a polite, indistinctly African concierge who welcomes a recovering John with open arms. His concierge recommendation – doctors, bourbon and a telling dinner – represent the brand of deadpan comic relief John Wick offers, with much of its comic beats resting on Reddick’s narrow shoulders. The balance between balls-to-the-wall action and black comedy is often spot on and when Wick isn’t unloading clips on clips into the faces of bad guys, it simmers down to a tasty stew of remorseless, lethal laughs; a trigger-happy comedy of errors.

When John is squeezing the trigger though, the film is an absolute firecracker. Formerly working as stunt coordinators, Leitch and Stahelski have a preternatural sense of how to frame the action and move it along like a ballet. Capturing a sense of articulate entropy, they are painterly in their splooshes of blood and whirlwind of bullets. Everything is choreographed to the T and even Keanu’s wooden acting disappears when he’s a playing a one-man army, single-handedly leaving behind a body count that piles up higher than any other action flick this year. When he’s meant to emote though, yes, Keanu does still resemble Balsa wood. Thankfully, John Wick knows its strength and its weaknesses and there is very little room left for actual reflection, a fact that is both a gift and a curse to the production as a whole.

John Wick eventually admits that it is in fact just the straight-forward actioner you’ve hoped it would transcend – with an ending you could forecast from 30 minutes in – but the sheer amount of adrenaline, relentless violence and smooth gunman skills help significantly to make up for its lack of an actual soul. This being the case, John Wick is a movie that dudes – be they of the male or action junkie femme variety – will have a lot of fun with but won’t find much else to talk about aside from its ceaseless violence and well-timed dark comedy.

B-

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