'Super Dark Times' Review: This Gruesome Teen Thriller Spurs Paranoia
Super Dark Times is a film about the darkness in suburban teens so allow me to start with a light analogy from my teen experience.
Watching movies is like boogie boarding. When you're out there you hope every wave will come perfectly shaped, suck you up, surge forward, and carry you breathless to shore. Not every wave, or film, gets there. Some smash into you clumsily, leaving you frustrated and sputtering. Most are somewhere in between, requiring some kicks and adjustments to ride their vibe just right. If you try, they'll take you somewhere worthwhile.
Super Dark Times is disorientingly hard to catch. It's the wave that looks ideal from a distance, swells beautifully, but dissipates under you at the last moment, un-crested. It leaves you drifting, dizzy, wondering what you missed. This gruesome teen thriller set in 90’s suburbia builds masterfully, but the super dark place it takes the characters doesn't feel earned. The plot begins with bad news and gets worse.
"Do you remember Daryl Harper? I got a call from his mom. Guess he never came home last night."
Another kid is missing in America. Another town corrupted. Or, as most horror stories imply, a town is unveiled as corrupt from the start, only requiring a shocking event to incite a closer look. Super Dark Times shares DNA with yarns like “It,” “Twin Peaks,” and “Stranger Things.” Boys cycle through autumn streets, spewing expletives, no matter if they’re describing a sex scene or the taste of Skittles. Those fall semester days, when the sun’s nearly set by the afternoon, are captured stunningly here. In this tale though, the teen boys at the center of the events, normcore, sweet Zach (Owen Campbell) and wired, impulsive Josh (Charlie Tahan), aren’t solving a mystery. They know precisely what happened to poor Daryl, a loud-mouthed local kid. Their knowledge of that violent moment spurs their paranoia and nauseous anxiety.
The main filmmaking quality to commend is the enveloping atmosphere. The wood-paneled rooms of 90’s suburbia, lit with ample Christmas lights, are warm without pushing into heavy nostalgia. The wintry glow and fog that overtake the film are oppressive. I found myself wishing this enormously capable creative team had swung by for an editing pass on "IT." Certain lingering looks and dream sequences are patiently eerie in a way that jumpy, jerky Hollywood scarefests rarely attempt. Director Kevin Phillips and team wield the score, editing, camerawork, and performances to make every scene pulse with dread. Even if the story bleeds out, the craft is under control.
Director Kevin Phillips and team wield the score, editing, camerawork, and performances to make every scene pulse with dread. Even if the story bleeds out, the craft is under control.
Any film with this type of plot should heed the adage: "To those whom much is given, much is expected." A missing child plot gives and gives, opening up audience vulnerabilities. Still, the double-edged sword, especially in a post-Columbine America, is that material dealing with school-age trauma demands, care. Unfortunately, certain potent material feels merely gestured towards rather than deeply considered inSuper Dark Times particularly in the frantic conclusion.
Still, third act stumbles don’t disarm this thriller’s effectiveness. The crushing tension up to that point is impeccable. To much the film’s credit, it allows its’ teen leads to be traumatized. Before Daryl’s disappearance, Zach and Josh scarf the grossest gas station snacks on dares and talk superheroes. After, they’re twitchy and plagued by nightmares. Despite this welcome care for emotional consequences, some character maneuvers become sketchy. Their actions slot into stereotypes of why teen boys act out in rage, but the details aren’t filled in. Perhaps that’s the point.
Our world is saturated with misogynistic comments and ideals of toughness for boys. This can confuse our ability to recognize who is cracking psychologically as, in retrospect, many teens display telltale concerns. Zach, Josh, and their classmates talk about which girls they’d sleep with, as though entitled to any and all of them. (Thankfully, the romantic interest amidst the mayhem (Elizabeth Cappuccino) is active and frank about her feelings to counter the objectification.) Zach and Josh also clash with guys at school, usually stopping short of trading blows. The film reminds us these casual boasts can build to vicious violence. It’s not an original point, but it remains evergreen.
One early sequence creates a masterful visual metaphor for the process of realizing something’s off. The boys notice an odd black circle on a gas station ceiling. “What do you make of that?,” one asks. “That’s always been there,” another responds. Later, the shape appears on the ceiling in Zach’s nightmares, emitting strange screams. It’s a nearly Lynchian image and expresses how the boys miss the rough edges of their own psyches. Smart visuals like this elevate the film. So, while Super Dark Times is unlikely to enter the canon of small-town horror tales, it will leave you eager for the future work of all involved. This team makes smart, involving cinematic choices across the board, even when story decisions leave the craftsmanship adrift in a senseless sea.
'Super Dark Times' is not rated. 100 minutes. Now playing at Laemmle's NoHo 7.
Game of Thrones: The Dragonglass Ceiling
Alan. Alex. Ali. Brian. Daniel. Daniel. Daniel. David. David. David. Jack. Jeremy. Matt. Mark. Michael. Miguel. Neil. Tim.
Michelle.
Those are the names of every person who has directed one or more of the 67 existing episodes of HBO’s flagship series, "Game of Thrones." While the current season centers on the war for Westeros between Queen Cersei and Queen Daenerys, few real-world women have held creative power as director. As of now, 18 men and 1 woman have taken the wheel, with Michelle MacLaren (“Breaking Bad,” “The Walking Dead”) helming 4/67, or 6%, of episodes. 2 women and 5 men can claim writing credits, though, again, women are credited writers on only 6% of episodes. For the last three seasons, no woman has been credited as a writer or director. So, why are women in power easier for the HBO leadership team to write in than invite in?
Every op-ed tackling the series should foreground and interrogate these statistics. Publications have been clambering over each other to launch perceptive takes on how the series approaches gender roles and violence. The A.V Club, among others, dove deep into the show's tendency to feature rape and assault in the storylines of female leads, even when the assaults did not occur in the sourcebooks. There have been disavowals and defenses, but I'm here neither to bury or to praise "Game of Thrones." I’ve celebrated and critiqued the series since it began, but the question of whether the show crosses the line between portraying a sexist world and exploiting that world's abuses for shock and titillation is beyond my mission here. My aim is to highlight that the makeup of the writing/directing team has not always been raised for context.
Director Michelle MacLaren. Via the Emmys site.
For all these differing appraisals of the series, one fact no one can miss is how the creaking wheel of Westorosi power has spun towards women rulers and warriors. Cersei, Daenerys, Yara, Ellaria, Olenna, Sansa, Arya, and Brienne have all vaulted to higher positions this year. Yet, as they have risen, women’s creative participation at the level of writer or director has fallen to 0%.
It's difficult to reconcile "Game of Thrones" insistence on its own progressive portrayal of female leadership with its exclusion of women in these top roles. Episodes and trailers are replete with scenes of Daenerys, Arya, Cersei, or even Lyanna Mormont firing off a speech on justice, vengeance, or breaking the status quo for women. And it’s not only characters speaking to this issue. HBO publicity and bonus content also touts “Thrones” ground-breaking on-screen roles for women.
For a recent case, look no further than season 7, episode 2's "Inside the Episode" interview segment. In it, showrunners David Benioff and D.B Weiss spotlight a war room scene in which prospective queen Daenerys Targaryen calls together four female advisors. The creators earnestly state:
"I don't think there are that many situations in television or film where you see four women sitting around a table discussing power and strategy and war. To have Emilia at one end of the table and Diana at the other...to me, that was just such a breath of fresh air. It made writing it a lot more fun."
I don't doubt that this enthusiasm was genuine, but placed in context it has an off-putting dimension. It's self-congratulatory. It fondly imagines women presiding over a table when women are only at the table as writers or directors on 12% of the series episodes. Men are credited in 100% of entries. This disparity is dishonest and regressive. I’m not calling into question that David, Dan, and the HBO team aim to value every staff member on their roster. It’s also not in doubt that people of all backgrounds are bringing it in every department, from editing to executive producing. Nevertheless, writing and directing credits matter and are highly visible. And there, when it comes to ideals vs actions, “Game of Thrones” is among TV’s greatest failures. Them's fighting words, so let's survey the television landscape to see how it illuminates, but doesn't exonerate, the hypocrisies of "Game of Thrones" production.
Natalie Dormer as 'Margaery Tyrell' in "Game of Thrones."
We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Article for: A Note on Call-Out Culture
While this article critiques public statements made by “Game of Thrones” artists, including showrunners David Benioff and D.B Weiss, the intent is by no means to suggest they are somehow solely implicated. They are not the leering villains of this piece. Their team has scripted some outrageously good television (Jaime’s bathhouse confession to Brienne and Daenerys and the Unsullied slaying the masters )… as well as laughably lazy scenes (The notorious “bad pussy” and “most beautiful woman” incidents comes to mind.) Their team has both responded thoughtfully and blundered ignorantly in interviews. Often, they’ve failed to brook discussion of the sexual violence and racial stereotypes that appear in “Thrones.” They happen to work at a studio that, of the 8 examined in an extensive 2016 Director’s Guild study (chart below), has the lowest hiring rate for women and racial minorities.
Adopting a devil’s advocate stance, I note the role of enormous production pressures that play in hiring decisions. Seeing as “Game of Thrones” is in a constant head-rush of a production schedule, it isn’t surprising that the show is mainly entrusted to proven directors from other large-scale, complex HBO productions such as “Rome” and “The Sopranos.” Many directors on “Thrones” possess a stacked HBO resume… and much of classic HBO employed very few women. However sensible this may sound to some, anyone can spot the infinite, snake eats tail, “logic” in this situation.
Scratch a millimeter deep and it’s clear this conservative thought pattern perpetuates and has always perpetuated, the problem for another decade of artists. They don’t hire women because women lack the resume? Translation: “We don’t hire women because we didn’t hire women.” Well, the next mega-hit can rattle off the same excuse. And on and on it spins.
Speaking directly to the HBO team now: Look harder. Believe in all artists more freely! Women are half of film students and a strong festival presence. My dudes, you literally just wrote an episode where Daenarys called out her new advisor Varys for supporting her megalomaniacal, man-child brother because he had the obvious qualifications for rule (read: penis) when she was the worthier contender. Can you not apply this narrative to expanding who you put faith in for leading your episodes? For real? What disaster would befall you if you hired not even 50% women to direct, but 25% instead of 6%? By all accounts, David and Dan are thoughtful writers who’ve made TV history through their dedication to burdened, medieval underdogs like Arya Stark, Tyrion Lannister, and Hodor. I doubt the absence of women is malicious or intentional. There are larger structures and histories at play. But there’s the crux of the problem. If everyone’s responsible; no one’s responsible. If everyone excuses themselves, little changes. Intentionality, consciousness, and checking of biases is everyone’s work. Otherwise, you can wind up playing par for the course in the misogynist open.
So, even if you’re inclined to give shows like “Thrones” that include few women the benefit of the doubt, even if you trust that they impartially looked for the “best person for the job”, the fact is that other top dramas and networks are picking “best people” that are less homogenous. So, let’s examine at that.
Emilia Clarke with showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff of "Game of Thrones." Via Macall B. Polay/HBO
How does “Game of Thrones” look standing amongst its peers? For comparison's sake, I've broken down the credits of 11 similarly lauded, hour-long series, primarily from cable networks.
- Rome (HBO): 0 women directed 0% of episodes
- The Sopranos(HBO): 1 woman directed 1% of episodes
- Games of Thrones (HBO): 1 woman directed 6% of episodes
- The Walking Dead (AMC): 9 women directed 16% of episodes
- The Americans (FX): 8 women directed 17% of episodes
- Six Feet Under (HBO): 6 women directed 17% of episodes
- Mad Men(AMC): 4 women directed 20% of episodes
- Breaking Bad (AMC): 3 women directed 21% of episodes
- The Leftovers (HBO): 4 women directed 50% of episodes
- Jane the Virgin (CW): 12 women directed 67% of episodes
- The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu): 4 women directed 80% of episodes
To elaborate a bit more on this wider view, the Director's Guild of America's report on the 2015-2016 season is bursting with un-fun facts. In the study of 4,000+ television episodes, they concluded only 17% were directed by women and 19% by minorities, with minority women claiming only 3% of directing credits. 81% of directors were white, 83% were male. "Game of Thrones's" 6% directing rate for women is dragging in the muck, lower even than the average, but not unique.
If you've overlooked hiring discrimination in television while following the discussion about films; you're not alone. Televisual diversity soars above mainstream film, and high-profile successes created by diverse teams and minority showrunners, such as "Jane the Virgin," "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend," "Atlanta," and "Master of None" may skew our perception of industry-wide equality. The DGA averages reveal the exceptionality of such staffs.
To further illustrate this fact, I’ve charted 15 contemporary critical and audience hits. The percentages are based on a YES/NO question. For each episode of a series I asked:
- Is there any woman on the writing/directing team?
- Is there any man on the writing/directing team?
Note: This does not factor in assistants or showrunners unless they are specifically credited on that episode.
Much like the Bechdel Test, the question lacks nuance but provides a framework. As incomplete as any single metric is, I chose this approach for its ability to contain optimism and critique. For instance, many may be surprised that nearly half of “Walking Dead” and “Better Call Saul” episodes were either written, co-written, or directed by a woman. There’s the optimism. Every fan and industry professional should know this and note it.
Rachel Bloom, creator and star of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend." Via Glamour Magazine.
Another encouraging trend in this small sample is women showrunners hiring balanced staffs. Despite controversy over series like "Jessica Jones" and ‘Queen Sugar” electing to hire all women for a season, as a rebuff to series that hire men for years on end, other acclaimed series run by women have small discrepancies. In fact, shows run by women were the only shows in my sample where men and women’s credits were even or separated by a very narrow margin. (See: “Supergirl,” “Crazy-Ex Girlfriend,” ”Orange is the New Black”). Men’s input hardly appears to be shunned by "feminazi" series calling for diversity in media. What great showrunners typically grasp is that any talented human can potentially contribute to any endeavor. Not every individual team will be a precise demographic reflection, but the overall participation rate in the industry should be pretty damn precise when hundreds or thousands of projects are considered.
On the critical side, the visual clarifies the stubborn paradigm in which women’s input is deemed optional on a given episode while men’s is nearly constant. Point being, it is exceedingly rare for 2-5 women to comprise a writing/directing team with no men, while episode credits with no women are commonplace. To rephrase the “Walking Dead” example: Only 1% of “Walking Dead” episodes” involved no men as writer/director, 53% involved no women.
Many may be inclined to dismiss such research as "identity politics" infringing on standards of merit and finding the "best person for the job". While I defend the right of individual artists to collaborate with friends and trusted colleagues on creative outings, there comes a point where specific examples must be probed to highlight the discrimination that underlies the industry. The problems with this “best person for the job” narrative are legion. One is that the notion that the hiring process is infallible. This is laughable to any human who has had a job interview and doubly silly in the arts. How ridiculous is it to suppose any series hired the best possible director? How can you pre-emptively know who will craft the best iteration of your script? Are there not hundreds, thousands, millions of valid choices in camera placement, performance style, and structure? This acts as though the “best” episode exists in the ether, waiting to be accessed by the chosen hero, and all other versions would be amateurish.
Via Yasmine Gateau/Variety
Look, we're all tired by this conversation. I’d prefer to focus on the themes and content of ”Game of Thrones,” not the details of the creators’ personal identity. However, the state of things makes that not only difficult but an abdication of critical thought and action. Yes, I'm wrung out on op-eds, crushed by call-outs, deadened by statistical analyses. Moreover, I'm numbly enraged by interviews with industry leaders. I'm tired because they ring hollow. Vague expressions of dismay are abundant, but results are scant. But I’ll keep reading and writing.
Criticism can feel like a paper airplane in the halls of power. Industry leaders take a glance, sagely agree that "we need strong female characters," declare "my little girl loved Wonder Woman" into the nearest journalists’ mic, and change nothing. They shuffle off and hope we don't examine the credits on their latest projects too closely. This is a gross simplification of the intersecting forces that cause women to vanish at high levels but the premise, really, could not be simpler.
You either believe women are less biologically and psychologically capable of creative vision, or you don't. You believe they are less equipped with the requisite intellect, interpersonal skills, work ethic, and emotional capacity to make art, or you don’t. In fact, let’s delete the qualifiers. You believe women are less. Or you don’t. If you don’t, then turn a searching eye towards any industry, any company, any government where a vast disparity exists. The Dragonglass ceiling isn't breaking. And those who tell you it is are welding on reinforcements.
'The Big Sick' Review: This Rom-Com-Dram is a Timely Commentary on Modern Love
This review previously ran on February 17th, 2017 as part of the Sundance Film Festival
This rom-com-dram goes down like a hot toddy, leaving you warm and giggly and rawly emotional in turns.
In one scene in The Big Sick, the lead character, Kumail, gets into an argument with his family, all Pakistani Muslim immigrants, at a diner. When things get heated he takes a moment to swivel his head around, repeatedly shouting to other customers that, “It’s okay, we hate terrorists! We hate terrorists!”
So yeah, The Big Sick is too good for this world, too pure. That phrase has become a Tumblr fallback for describing shapely cinnamon rolls and likable characters, but in the case of this kind-hearted, uproarious romantic comedy, it's all too apt. This rom-com-dram goes down like a hot toddy, leaving you warm and giggly and rawly emotional in turns.
The Sundance hype for The Big Sick was enormous and stood at a crossroads. On the one hand, there was the usual, ol’ hype for a delightful fest crowd-pleaser discovered and bought for a hefty sum. (In this case, The Big Sick was scooped up by Amazon for $12 million and a Summer 2017 release) On the other hand, there’s the context. In this climate, the story of a Pakistani-born comedian from a Muslim family falling for a white American grad student plays with a heightened sweetness and urgency. Like so many films these days, The Big Sick will be received in a world that can feel jarringly different to the one in which it was produced.
I sat down to this film the day after the Trump Administration unleashed their malicious, chaotic, and culturally-insensitive executive order. To be more specific, because that’s tragically necessary, I refer to the immigration order blocking Syrian refugees indefinitely, drastically constraining entry from 7 Muslim-majority countries, and delaying any refugee admittance for 120 days. This may not be the forum for a deep dive into our American nightmare. It might not be the place for the fact that lightning bolts and slippery bathtubs are an infinitely greater threat to American lives than immigrant students, doctors, and artists. Still, it’s impossible to describe how precious and joyous and needed this film felt at that moment in that Sundance theater. And though it's far from the cruelest chapter of this ban, it should be noted that the order has already fallen heavily on the arts. So, if you think film discussions should leave out current events then look no further than the team behind Iran's Oscar-nominated The Salesman, including renowned director Asghar Farhadi. They will be unable to attend the Oscar ceremony if the ban, or something in its spirit, returns. When a filmmaker whose humane dramas have captured global audiences is unable to enter America because of the “violent ideologies” he’s suspected of holding, our every value, our every aspirational hope for America, lies gasping.
In this climate, the story of a Pakistani-born comedian from a Muslim family falling for a white American grad student plays with a heightened sweetness and urgency.
So, clearly, The Big Sick is a film America needs. It offers a universally appealing, yet insightfully specific, look at finding the person with whom you belong, in a country you are trying to belong to, despite that country's tenuous welcome. As such, it would be easy to simply discuss the joy and necessity of seeing a brown man as the romantic lead in a commercial, American rom-com. And that is deeply wonderful. But of course, the power of the film comes not merely from its welcome focus on the Pakistani-American experience, but from the particular experiences of Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon.
Kumail Nanjiani ("Silicon Valley") portrays himself in the film, which is an autobiographical chronicle of his relationship with his now-wife, Emily V. Gordon (Zoe Kazan). The couple scripted the film together, and it covers their meeting, dating, breakup, and the illness that placed Emily in a coma. Much of the film takes place with Emily unconscious and Kumail getting acquainted with her stressed and fierce parents (played pitch perfect by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano), even as her chances of survival waver. Full of heaviness and light, the film has a lot of ground to cover, which explains its, unusual for a comedy, runtime of 2 hours. Despite the length and the generic elements of the film; a sudden illness, a forbidden connection, a meet the parents arc, the film never tires. It’s entirely absorbing, with a fully realized cast of characters and a lived-in world of black box theaters, homey Chicago apartments, and Pakistani parents intent on getting their son settled down with an appropriate Muslim girl.
It’s also constantly hilarious. I won’t spoil too many moments, though there are hundreds so I couldn’t make a dent if I tried. One great recurring bit involves Kumail arguing that even positive comments shouted at a comedian constitute heckling. Emily asks if her shouting “You’re great in bed!” would be unwelcome at a show. “Yes,” Kumail responds, “That would be a heckle. That would be an accurate heckle.”
I love this movie so dearly. I love it as it itself, anytime, and I love it for existing right now. I love that it gives us an intimate, open look at a love story that is both ordinary and extraordinarily eventful. I love that it has a scene where Kumail tries to test a knowing, wise-cracking Emily’s taste by insisting she watches some of his favorite B horror movies. Because when we fight for justice and equality, these images are helpful, and this normalcy is everything. To quote my favorite vampire-noir series "Angel," because I think it expresses what I want to say, this film "lives as if the world is as it should be, to show it what it can be."
'The Big Sick' is rated R for language including some sexual references. 119 minutes. Opening today at ArcLight Hollywood, The Landmark, and AMC Century City with additional cities to follow on July 14th.
'Buster's Mal Heart' Review: Rami Malek Keeps His Emotional Distance in This Indie Thriller
"Everything is controlled by sphincters, black holes to buttholes!"
So yells a televised "scientist" on a boxy, 90's T.V. set in one pivotal scene of Sarah Adina Smith's surreal sci-fi tinged drama, Buster's Mal Heart. The film tracks the journey of three seemingly different men– an exhausted working dad, an unhinged mountain outlaw, and a sailor lost at sea. All are played by Rami Malek ("Mr. Robot") and the question of their true linkage will be teased throughout the film. However, it's immediately apparent that one thing unites them: the desire to be "free". Free of what, exactly? Well, that lack of definition is exactly what makes this eerie epic quite a frustrating watch.
Our emotional entry point into Adina Smith's peculiar, perspective-shifting tale is Jonah, a world-weary hotel concierge assigned to the night shift. Jonah is out of step with society, his malaise exacerbated by his unrelenting work schedule. A devoted new father, he resents being in debt and under the thumb of larger forces, and wants better for his daughter. His wife, Marty (Kate Lyn Sheil, "House of Cards"), is ready for them to get their own place but Jonah insists they must buy a plot of land and not become shackled to renting fees for an apartment. His fixation on feeling trapped and tired is heightened by the arrival of a nameless drifter to the hotel. The on-edge man rants frantically about Y2K conspiracies and lives sans a credit card or ID.
From there, the interlocked narratives intensify. Jonah becomes increasingly convinced a world-ending event called "the inversion" is approaching and he must save his family. Buster, the mountain man, hops from unoccupied vacation home to vacation home while the police spur on a manhunt. The sailor, Jonah, faces death at sea. Yet, amidst these theoretically heightened narratives, the characters remain difficult to connect with, more allegory than man.
In Buster's Mal Heart, deeper motives and philosophies are often obscure. Rami Malek's characters can radiate kindness in one scene and seething anger in the next, but the inner reasoning and character history are full of gaps the audience must challenge themselves to fill. Malek turns in a nuanced performance, but there's an emotional distance to this film. Moments of pain and grim comedy land with a light touch that left me cold. It could be argued this subdued style, scenes that evoke uncomfortable chuckles rather than laughter and unease rather than gasps, suits the material. Malek's characters suffer from some depression over the inescapability of their fates (unending financial struggle, police pursuit, starving at sea) and the film perhaps shares their emotional deadening. Still, even if intentional, that makes for a difficult film to love.
In the end, I'm still asking: Is this film shallow and pretentious, OR is it a satire of how shallow and pretentious "rage against the machine" cultural critiques can be?
It's not an elegant metaphor, but watching Buster's Mal Heart is emotionally akin to disentangling a knotted set of headphones. It's largely aggravating but promises rewarding moments of music for the patient audience member. To circle back to the opening quote about butts, such moments of absurd comedy provide rewards and thematic richness for the attentive viewer.
The 90's milieu of televangelists, rising online conspiracies, and young men raging against the man is vivid. Adina Smith builds a world where every experience, natural or spiritual, is for sale. Rich retirees build cozy, wooden palaces in the mountains near Jonah's hotel, bringing perfect amenities to experience the sublime in capitalist style. Buster buys phone horoscopes for a dollar a minute and phone sex just to tell the woman that the end of the world is nigh. The sonic background of the film is rich with religious and business schemes aiming to fill lives with meaning, for a price. This media environment is my favorite element of the elusive film, but I can't say it's pretensions to cultural critique ever become completely coherent or focused.
In the end, I'm still asking: Is this film shallow and pretentious, OR is it a satire of how shallow and pretentious "rage against the machine" cultural critiques can be? You may want to check out Buster's Mal Heart for Rami Malek alone, or for the lovingly shot mountain vistas. And if you do, let me know what you conclude. I'm confounded, yet intrigued to see if Adina Smith's future directorial endeavors shed light on the potential substance underneath the overstuffed, jumbled ambitions of Buster's Mal Heart.
'Buster's Mal Heart' is not rated. 96 minutes. Opening this Friday at select Laemmle theaters, including Playhouse 7, Monica Film Center, and NoHo 7.
'Your Name' Review: An Affecting Body-Swapping Anime Love Story
Your Name wields its body-swap premise cannily, turning it into an expression of the aches and hopes of teenagers, and humanity.
There is no doubt that you should watch Your Name in theaters, as soon as possible. If you frequent any single film site on the internet, you know this. The international anime hit is sitting pretty at 98% critic approval Rotten Tomatoes, 95% audience approval, and has become the 4th highest grossing film of all time in Japan. The world has resoundingly recommended it. My own paltry opinion follows suit.
Your Name is my first Makoto Shinkai production, but it won’t be my last. The director notched his belt with several ambitious projects, mostly sci-fi films and romances such as 5 Centimeters Per Second and The Garden of Words, which hinged on characters held apart by duty, circumstance, distance, or fantastical space wars. Such are the trials we millennials face. He’s also responsible for a 1999 short titled She and Her Cat: Their Standing Points which I can only assume is the pinnacle of his work and, in fact, all human endeavor. Your Name carries on the interests and conceits that have defined Shinkai’s career, and its brash mix of zany body-swapping and melancholy ruminations on culture and identity may strike American audiences as peculiar. This peculiarity is exactly why Americans must watch it.
The story of Your Name follows two earnest teens, Taki, a Tokyo boy, and Mitsuha, a small town girl. On one nighttime walk with her sister, Mitsuha, anticipating the plot, shouts over the pines of her bucolic, 1,500 resident town, “I hate this town. Please make me a handsome Tokyo boy in my next life!” It might be a goofy translation, but Mitsuha’s desire is clearly related as she wanders through the town’s soft afternoon light with her high school friends, dryly noting, “No bookstore. No dentist. But two pubs for some reason.” That bit of comedy needs no translation to small-town Americana.
Not long after, Taki and Mitsuha jolt awake in each other’s bodies. Antics unspool as both mistake the event for a dream, hazily surviving the day then losing grip of the details when they swap back. They disturb norms and relationships with the recklessness of a dreamer, not realizing they’ve taken on a real body and life. We learn that if Taki could get away with squeezing his newfound boobs in bed for hours, he would. Luckily Mitsuha’s sister interrupts, as if the teens indulged in hormonal explorations all day, we wouldn’t have a film. Or, well, we’d have a different film. As reality sinks in, they communicate via diaries on arms and smartphones, setting ground rules; “No baths! No looking! Don’t spend all my money!”
... its brash mix of zany body-swapping and melancholy ruminations on culture and identity may strike American audiences as peculiar. This peculiarity is exactly why Americans must watch it.
While the above makes Your Name. sound like a bawdy teen comedy, that’s far from its only ambition. That’s Act One. It soon contains rushing adventure, aching tragedy, suspense, fantasy, cultural commentary, mystery, and gentle romance. Your Name wields its body-swap premise cannily, turning it into an expression of the aches and hopes of teenagers, and humanity. Like great fiction, like dreams, Taki and Mitsuha’s power frees them, if only momentarily, from the cage of their own experience. Their forgetfulness upon returning reflects the challenge of seeing other people, other bodies, other lifeways, as equal and real.
This dichotomy of remembering and forgetting is also expressed in the contrasts between Tokyo and Itomori, Mitsuha’s fictional hometown. Mitsuha is eager to forget Itomori, and Itomori is forgetting itself. Her accent embarrasses, her politician father urges modernization, and her Shinto ceremonial duties stifle her. Taki meanwhile is harried and short on cash, working a restaurant job to help his family, who seem ever-absent from their apartment. Neither way of life is fully condemned nor romanticized by the film, though Taki and Mitsuha each harbor glowing notions of the other lifestyle. There may be no cuter moment in cinema this year than Mitsuha visiting her dream café as Taki. She ogles poodles in sweaters for a good minute and orders the fluffiest of pastries. It is delightful and purely emotive. It’s giving me heart palpitations. Another huge credit to the film is that it rolls with Mitsuha’s desires to flirt with Taki’s female coworker, permitting her to explore while leaving her sexuality open-ended. The fluidity of identity and sexuality in this film would be unprecedented in a U.S. blockbuster, as the furor over the slightest gay presence in “Beauty and the Beast” has made freshly apparent.
It’s all too rare for foreign films to acquire a decent release in America, so take hold of this moment. Even acknowledged masterpiece Spirited Away, with Disney/Pixar’s support surging behind it, was only the 150th highest grossing film in America in 2002. Doubling the rarity of this film’s theatrical release is that it is hand-drawn, an art form American studios have abandoned. One arresting sequence, which I won’t spoil here, changes style, evoking colored pencil on a white background to enormous emotional effect.
I haven’t mentioned my questions and concerns with the film because it’s so entirely deserving of your eyes. That said, they are substantial. Deep breath now: Taki comes off as a thinly drawn “nice guy,” the plot holes are the size of a small moon, key scenes are told not shown (we don’t see any of the first day Taki spends in Mitsuha’s body), the philosophy and exposition are tritely delivered by a wise grandma sage figure, and the breast to penis joke ratio is unbalanced. I demand equality in all spheres. The film is too much stimulation, brimming with underserved scenes, relationships, and plots that even lively montages can’t fill the audience in on. Yet, none of this matters. Irresistible and elastic, it’s like a well-worn sweater that somehow holds a flattering shape. Your Name is charming and humane enough that, statistically, (recall that 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes?), you won’t mind one bit.
'Your Name' is rated PG for thematic elements, suggestive content, brief language, and smoking. 112 minutes. Now playing in select theaters, including the Laemmle's Monica Film Center, Playhouse 7, and NoHo 7.
'All This Panic' Review: A Dreamy Look at Young Women Growing up in Brooklyn
Despite its title, All This Panic isn't a frantic documentary, but a dreamy one.
As it dashes through three transformative years in the lives of seven teen girls in 79 minutes, many scenes have the feeling of a dazed reunion, wherein you catch an old friend for coffee and take stock of the recognizable and the subtly changed. The film rings of a reunion in content too, as most of the teen's hardest hits and highest highs are talked about with critical distance, rather than portrayed onscreen. Even as the girls navigate their way through high school and hair dye experiments, college and coming out, director Jenny Gage perceptively keeps the focus on small moments, when the girls reflect and recharge.
Every scene in the film feels like the aftermath of fresh pain or joy. This makes sense. With limitations in access, Gage can only get so much immediacy. She will miss first kisses and rejections, exam rooms and job interviews. Luckily, the aftermath, the coffee reunion vibe, provides fruitful fodder for a filmmaker, as experiences become stories and stories become identity. This isn't to say Gage is only getting after-the-fact footage and isn’t on the ground, on campus, on the streets with the teens. She is, and many of the scenes have the flourish and rhythm of narrative film. It helps that Gage is a seasoned fashion photographer who can place the camera just right. However, she also knows how to wield her quieter footage.
One of this intimate documentary's defining choices is following girls who are connected, whether loosely by social circles or tightly by friendship and sisterhood. At its best, the film sparks like an ensemble drama, with characters offering contrasting and complementary takes on how and when you become an adult. It’s most compelling when the girls contend over the details of a story. Whether calling a mom to a drunken party was justified, or whether bypassing college for a time was the right choice. For instance, two sisters, Ginger and Dusty, strike out at each other when little sister Dusty doubts Ginger is working on her career while living at home. The doc shows the hurtful fight, but also reveals the gentle concern for each other that defies easy expression in the vocabulary of sisterly snark.
Still, despite all of Gage's strong choices, 'All This Panic' feels like a comment, not a conversation starter.
Still, despite all of Gage's strong choices, All This Panic feels like a comment, not a conversation starter. It's commitment to young women’s voices is invigorating, but it's overshadowed by bolder projects speaking to the same concerns. Watching the film is like realizing two-thirds of your potluck guests brought chocolate chip cookies. You're not ungrateful, and they're all a welcome addition, but you long for stronger flavors. Gage's film lacks the wallop of narrative films, being too diluted between characters to fully invite you into any one life. Yet, as non-fiction, it can't reach the radical openness of similar Youtube videos. Youtube is bursting with girl's polished and pared-down vlogs, from uproarious skits to discussions of mental health, and the film's DNA closely resembles a high-end form of these. It shares the style of a young creator narrating footage of their life, but these videos tend to have a singular voice, while Gage's film ambles woozily moment to moment. None of which is a condemnation. It's an observational documentary that doesn't have the answers but thinks life is worth a big screen presentation. That’s refreshing, but not as raw or revelatory.
Gage has a knack for finding just the quotes to make the case for her unassuming documentary. Sage, one of the films socially engaged young subjects, expresses exhaustion over teen girls commodification onscreen, wanted for their appearance but not their perspective. Meanwhile, Lena, a striving college student dealing with financial struggle and unstable parents, visits a museum and gets comfort from the wealth of items that were once ordinary, now made special by surviving time. It makes her feel that even if her life's endeavors aren't notable, at least she gets to be around all of human ingenuity. It's easy to see why Gage wanted to plant her documentary debut in this too rarely respected share of human experience. Teen girls, like everyone really, are armchair, or in this case, dorm futon philosophers. They apply world-views to themselves as liberally as hair colors, waiting to find the one that seeps in and belongs to them. Anyone who's grown up will find themselves in that tentative self-making.
'All This Panic' is not rated. 79 minutes, Opening at Arena Cinelounge in Hollywood this Friday.
'Raw' Review: Campus Cannibalism Has Never Been More Cinematic
Our ‘Raw’ review was first published after the film’s premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
The first time I cooked in college, I boiled a hot dog in a pot with penne pasta. Growing up, I hadn't prepared many meals without supervision, evidently. I remember cradling my basic bowl in the corner of the study den, hoping no more "seasoned" students, who knew their food seasonings, would bear witness to my freshman shame. Raw, too, is a story about a young woman changing her diet during freshman year. And folks, campus cannibalism has never been more cinematic.
Raw, the fevered, unrelenting horror debut from first-time feature filmmaker Julia Ducournau, follows Justine, a tightly-wound freshman in veterinary school. Justine is a strict vegetarian, like her parents, and a focused student. However, when she arrives on campus, a vivid location where Ducournau imbues every leafy roadway and fluorescent hall with dread, the program doesn't deliver what she expected. Her classmates are wild. Hundreds storm the dorms in hazing rituals, booming and clanging through the industrial hallways.
The sound design, lighting, and cinematography are hyper-confident, providing stunning insight into Justine's mindset. She's overwhelmed, even repulsed, by the students eating raw meat and carousing. She rejects it all. Yet, as Justine navigates campus, she becomes curious. Her gaze lingers more and more on the bodies and relationships of other students. Justine seeks style tips from her brash older sister, trying to enter the campus culture of sensuality and freedom. She's too timid to admit it, but she wants this.
As Justine careens through freshman year, Raw shapes itself into a morbid, funny, confrontational exploration of coming of age as a young woman. The film takes classic college film scenarios, from hookups to late night food runs, and infuses them with a delirious combination of sinister horror and feminist subtext. The key character journey comes when Justine recognizes, as the kids say, that she's very thirsty. She yearns for sex, connection, and, possibly, human flesh. From her first bite of meat in a hazing ritual, she begins to come undone, or come into herself, or both depending on how you read the film. (It's totally both.)
The film takes classic college film scenarios, from hookups to late night food runs, and infuses them with a delirious combination of sinister horror and feminist subtext.
I’ll spare you the gory details, but the film gained festival notoriety for allegedly causing spells of nausea. One early scene in the cafeteria rings a sounding bell for the boundary-pushing attitude you can expect. A group of vet students discuss animal cognition, questioning whether a chimpanzee would be traumatized by sexual abuse. Justine doesn't hesitate to denounce animal abuse as harmful. But she goes a step further. Justine declares the chimp's trauma to be "just the same" as a human woman. The table reels. The students are comfortable elevating animal rights, but Justine crosses a line when she lowers the human experience.
Justine, and the film, are full of forceful, uneasy questions. She lives at a remove from people, trying to decode how to flirt, to befriend, to dress up. When her roommate has sex in their dorm, exiling her to the hall, she leans in to listen. She wants to be part of their world but remains skeptical that humans are much different than animals. She's devastated and empowered by the animalistic tendencies in herself. It’s a rich pool of double-edged metaphors.
On the one hand, there are some bonkers, game-changing scenes where Justine's desires flip the gender script. It's culturally loaded fun when Justine turns a predatory gaze at shirtless boys on the field, leery in a way that's rare for a female character. Yet, Justine doesn't want to feel empowered by violence. It frightens her and veers beyond control. Raw is many things, and it's far more than its gonzo scenes re-imagining young women as movie monsters.
Raw could also connect with many as a portrayal of addiction and mental illness, and the horror of realizing the substances and feelings others seem to handle are wreaking havoc in you. Other viewers may hone in on the surprisingly warm story about sisterly love and competition that threads through the film. Still, others might dig into the vicious send-up of the meat industry, and other abuses society hides under the thin veneer of culture. Choose your own adventure.
The greatness of Raw comes from its manifold delights. It's funny, sick, perceptive, tragic, and invigorating. It's a tender film about family legacy, a campy cannibal flick, an intimate coming of age drama, a college sexploits film, and much more. It pulses with energy and ideas, swerves through tonal shifts, but never loses sight of its lead character’s journey. Its mix of genres is irreducibly wonderful. I’m still in awe of this film. See it as soon as you can.
'Raw' is rated R for aberrant behavior, bloody and grisly images, strong sexuality, nudity, language and drug use/partying. 99 minutes. Opening at the Nuart Theater on Friday, March 10th.
'A Ghost Story' Review: A Cinematic Treasure Trove for Film Lovers
"I don't believe in the afterlife, but I do believe in ghosts."- David Lowery, director of Sundance 2017 sensation, A Ghost Story.
A white sheet. A pair of safety scissors. That's all you need to create a decidedly un-bougie ghost costume. The filmmakers behind A Ghost Story just proved it's all they need to create some of the most resonant images of Sundance 2017. (Alright, if you want to get technical about it, Casey Affleck's evocative ghost get-up (pictured above) went through many iterations and involved helmets. This isn't an exposé.) The point is, like many great films, A Ghost Story takes a familiar cultural idea that white-sheeted ghosts stay behind to resolve unfinished business, and runs with it. This film runs until its damn feet lift off the ground and its soaring self burns through the stratosphere. It's that good.
What does that mean? Its plot is best experienced with little foreknowledge, so I'll compare it to other films with a similar spirit of pushing the premise. Toy Story takes the idea that childhood toys are pivotal companions and runs with it until toys are a sincere metaphor for parenting and subsuming your ego to the quieter mission of raising someone else. Push that premise! Swiss Army Man sprints with fart jokes until they speak achingly to body shame and how cultural norms cause trauma. Make it weird! Under the Skin takes the tropes of an exotic, alien seductress on a jog, until it reaches the finish line of telling a sci-fi story about modern womanhood and the limits and necessity of empathy. Yeah! Sorry for the exclamations, but this renewing of perspective on old ideas is what storytelling is all about. Nothing is new and everything old is fair game. There’s a high level of audacity to the film. It’s silly, it’s sophisticated, and it’s soulful.
The above got a little pretentious, but all the running similes are trying to say is that A Ghost Story challenges itself. It constantly asks, what else can a ghost story say, what else can a ghost story mean? After all, ghost stories are some of the oldest, most well-trodden in the books. By now, you'd probably like to know the specifics of this one. The bare-bones are that C (Casey Affleck) and M (Rooney Mara) are a normal, affectionate couple. M is ready to move from their quiet, country home. C is not. At night, C and M lay in bed intimately, noses touching, at peace. One day, C dies in a car accident. M lives. C becomes a ghost.
"A Ghost Story" challenges itself. It constantly asks, what else can a ghost story say, what else can a ghost story mean?
The rest of the film largely follows ghost-C, as he watches M, and the world, surge onwards. M searches for new love. Various residents move into the space that was once C and M's home, oblivious to its history of loss. C lashes out with his ghostly abilities and the house earns a reputation for being haunted. All the while, C peers out of his eye holes, waiting for the chance to reclaim, just for a moment, the way it felt to be alive and seen and loved.
It's awesome. I can't wait for more people to join in the conversation on this one. This will be a treasure trove for film lovers who like to take deep dives into images and motifs. There are loads going on, including the journey of the white sheets as a prop, from its key role in C and M's marriage to its inescapability as C's ghostly shroud. Luckily, we'll all get the chance to talk these matters over– the film has been picked up by distributor A24, the intrepid company behind releasing Moonlight, Room, The Witch, The Lobster, and many more. No company is better at injecting bizarre, bold films into our cultural bloodstream, and A Ghost Story fully belongs in its catalog. So, ready yourselves for the release of a film that pushes its possibilities to infinity. And beyond.
Note: It’s unfortunate that this tag feels necessary, but filmgoers should be aware of the sexual misconduct accusations against “A Ghost Story” star, Casey Affleck. The allegations by two women in 2010 were resolved out of court and can be read about more fully in this NY Mag report. While Cinemacy has no particular insight into this specific case, or into Affleck’s potential guilt or innocence, in general, we encourage industry professionals and audiences to stand against abusive behavior when it arises in celebrity circles. Stardom is not consent. Consent is consent.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/why-the-casey-affleck-sex-harassment-allegations-wont-stick.html