'Cryptozoo' Review: These Hand-Drawn Fantasy Creatures Delight
Our ‘Cryptozoo’ review was first published after the film’s premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
Treat yourself to a deep toke of your preferred strain of cannabis, and settle in for writer/director Dash Shaw's animated film Cryptozoo, a counter-culture-minded fantasy-adventure about the existence of imaginary creatures. It also speaks on humans' varying efforts of safeguarding and domesticating endangered species and understanding the "other" in the hopes of conceiving a utopian world.
With its child-like, trippy visuals, it's easy to feel like you're catching a contact high from just watching the film. It's simply rendered; the flat, 2-D hand-drawn animation of pencil lines and blotty ink, along with its stop-motion fluidity, feels as if the doodles from the corner of a stoned high schooler's notebook came to life in vivid wonder.
Cryptozoo doesn't so much require an active effort to follow along with, story-wise, and instead opts to slow you down. Its glacially-moving pace feels like a nice drift into a lazy, spellbinding daydream.
You'll first need to know what "cryptids" are, which the film explains as animals whose existence is unknown or doubted (which, if you're unaware, are rooted in cultural folklore and mythology). Lauren Gray (Lake Bell) is an activist who frees cryptids from black market opportunists. When the US government sets its sights on capturing the Baku–a cryptid that can suck out dreams–for weaponizing its powers to "wipe out the dreams of the counter culture," Lauren teams up with Medusa-humanoid Phoebe (Angeliki Papoulia) to save the creature and their world (because "without dreams, there is no future").
Cartoonish and yet beautifully textured, Dash Shaw (My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea) and Jane Samborski (Cryptozoo's animation director) pair wonderfully in bringing a balanced mix of limitless imagination. They also give millennial-minded reverence for counter-culture graphic art of the 60s, which extends to the idealism of the time that is at the heart of this film as well. They're both earnestly-minded artists with pure-hearted love for these imaginary creatures, and it's obvious that this film shouldn't be written off as just a "trippy movie."
Shaw explores our flawed human logic of the "Cryptozoo," which Lauren calls a "sanctuary to preserve the animals" – but it's as much that as it is a Seaworld-esque amusement park. The themes of domestication, preservation, exploitation, and control pop up as well. And it's all staged against the evil, controlling US government, whose demonization is both infantile as it is accurate (swap out "cryptids" with indigenous people and it's a story about our history of dominating other cultures).
Highly inventive and imaginative, Cryptozoo is a playful fantasy adventure with altruistic ideas of man's relationship with the natural world and animal liberation. Dash Shaw proves that a child's eye and mind is the best way to see magic and understand oppression and letting things be free. Take a trip to Cryptozoo and into a world that imagines how a more ideal way of life can be lived.
'Annette' is the Most Absurdly Odd Rock Opera You'll See All Year
It's best to know before watching Annette that it was not originally intended to be a film. Rather, it was conceived to be performed as a live musical production. With an original story and music written by art pop band Sparks, Annette defies some conventions, and sticks to others.
How Sparks Wrote Annette.
Ron and Russell Mael have made brilliantly catchy music over the entirety of their very long career. However, it's not been without also defiantly distancing themselves from commercial compromise. This has been to the point that true mainstream success has eluded them. In fact, Edgar Wright made the rock doc The Sparks Brothers earlier this year as an ode to their unsung greatness.
Always interested in charting new waters rather than playing into expectations explains why Annette came into existence as a musical at all (initially, Russell would play the lead role and Ron the supporting male role). That is, until the duo met director Leos Carax when he used one of their songs for his film Holy Motors. And what happened next is–eight years later–Carax would take their story and bring it to the big screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_EaNpL16SU&ab_channel=AmazonPrimeVideo
So... what's Annette about?
With all of this in mind, it should be no surprise to find that Annette is exactly what you would expect a rock opera from Sparks to feel like. It's a wonderfully strange and self-aware circus that's as infectiously catchy as it is bizarrely confounding. But for as much fun as it is, its pop music makeup is also the thing that makes it unable to be profound or deep in any real way. But I'd recommend managing those expectations and going into this film headstrong anyways. It's still one of the most mind-blowing films of the year.
Beyond its memorably wacky songs and story, the unquestionable stand-out in the film is Adam Driver. As tormented comedian Henry McHenry, Driver makes the character his own. Wild slapstick comedic scenes range to the more nuanced and commanding ones. Marion Cotillard and Simon Helberg also star in the film. Cotillard matches Driver's commitment and star power as the opera singer Ann. But one of the faults of the film is that it underwrites the rest of the characters in the service of Driver. And yet, its perhaps because he was attached to the film since Leos Carax saw him in Girls eight years ago.
A satiric, confounding experience.
And then of course, we need to mention the nature of baby Annette herself. Her hilariously marionette-like characterization as an actual wooden puppet is the film's silliest and un-serious depiction. This further pokes fun at the charade of the whole thing. And yet, there's still a soft and gentle beauty in Annette's presence. This counters Henry's forgone depravity, but fails to reach a real emotional impact.
There are themes of art and love and life and death interwoven throughout Annette but you'll have a much more enjoyable time if, instead of looking for an experience that will leave you emotionally floored, you give yourself over to a strange world that is sure to leave you in awe, for better or worse.
5 Things to Know Before You See 'Annette'
The new film Annette is without a doubt, one of the year's strangest and simultaneously transfixing films that you can see this year. This slightly more-than demented rock opera–starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard–shows the perils of fame with such bewildering vision that you might want to know a few things about it before going in. Here's a few things to know before seeing the film (now playing in select theaters and available to stream on Amazon Prime this Friday).
Related: ‘Annette’ Review: The Most Absurdly Odd Rock Opera You’ll See All Year
Annette was not originally conceived as a film.
The band Sparks, who wrote the story and music, originally conceived it to be performed live (with Russell Mael performing Adam Drivers' role and Ron Mael playing Simon Helberg's part). The piece was being readied to release and tour when the Maels met director Leos Carax at Cannes Film Festival (after he put a Sparks song on the soundtrack of his film Holy Motors) and decided to turn the idea into a film.
The main influence was The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
Sparks has shared that they were inspired to write a musical in the same way that Jacques Demy's musical is "sung-through" in a sort of spoken/sung manner. Sparks has specifically noted that the opening scene in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, at the mechanic shop, perfectly sets the tone for the style of the film to follow.
Annette took over 8 years to make.
Annette was in development for so long that at different points, both Rooney Mara and Michelle Williams were attached to play the lead female role (which eventually went to Marion Cotillard). Adam Driver was attached to star from the beginning (when Leos Carax first saw the actor in HBO's Girls) and remained with the film over the entirety of development.
Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard sang live on set (including during simulated oral sex).
Cotillard revealed how Leos Carax requested that she and Driver sing live, and what challenges that brought: "It added to the complexity of the set: we found ourselves singing in very complicated positions, doing back-crawling or mimicking cunnilingus; acrobatic positions that technically modify your song [the way you sing]."
Simon Helberg became a French citizen to get the role.
Simon Helberg was so eager to get the part that he became a French citizen and learned French, as the production needed more EU citizens in the cast to get EU funding. It turned out to be unnecessary as Marion Cotillard was cast in the role previously given to Rooney Mara and Michelle Williams.
'Annette' is now playing in select theaters and available to stream on Amazon Prime this Friday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_EaNpL16SU&ab_channel=AmazonPrimeVideo
'John and the Hole' Review: Trapping Your Childhood
It would be understandable to ask, much as I did while being led down the absurd path that John and the Hole leads its audience, where is the bottom of this movie? To what depths will this playfully sadistic film go?
In broad terms, John and the Hole is a film about a child who rebels against his family. The more specific, spoiler-filled description is that it's a film about a young boy who–for reasons that are at first unknown–drugs and drops his father, mother, and sister into a bunker on the family's property, leaving them trapped while he is left to preside above.
It's an absurd premise that rests upon a dark inclination, and it would be understandable to assume that the film would take an utterly depraved descent into the horrific from there. But audiences should feel comfortable in knowing that in director Pascual Sisto's world, trapping one's family is just a necessary formality so that a child can explore what it means to be an adult, and beyond that, freedom.
John and the Hole is a black comedy that feels like if Yorgos Lanthimos directed a version of Home Alone, or if Lynne Ramsay's wicked We Need To Talk About Kevin wanted to let a little air out of itself. Sisto's filmmaking–cold and clinical, yet clean and pristine (and opts to shoot 4:3 aspect ratio, whose black letterboxing traps the whole story in a proverbial hole)–feels more like an exercise to capture tone and mood, but its pitch-black tone cradles its odd fable, which explores the nature of childhood and the resigned feeling of being helpless and dependent on adults, and needing them and not understanding why.
These are the thoughts that occupy our titular character, John (Charlie Shotwell, Captain Fantastic), an intellectually gifted yet odd kid. He's proficient at tennis and piano and knows the square root of 225 (even though he "doesn't know" how he knows). But he's trapped in his head, unable to communicate a confusion that comes from not understanding the outside, grown-up world. His family extends their love and non-threatening warmness to his sweet, silent self. That's why it's a total left-turn when his family wakes up one morning to find themselves trapped at the bottom of a bunker with no way out.
Sisto plays with denying the audience the reason why John's trapped his family at the bottom of a hole, but we soon find that it's more innocent than it is sadistic; he's not getting pleasure in torturing them. He checks in on his family (Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Ehle, and Taissa Farmiga) occasionally, it's just that he wants to do fun kid things, like play with his drone, eat fast food, and play video games with his friend (who he picks up joyriding the family car).
With such a wild concept, John and the Hole could so easily fall apart into the ridiculous at any moment. But Sisto provides an airtight framework that feels in control of its absurd logic and vision every step of the way while remaining playful and sidestepping expectations to be a mostly innocent exploration. And, without giving anything further away, there's a narrative framing device that's revealed past the film's initial introduction that establishes another layer to the film and shows that maybe he's trapping his family out of misplaced fear so that they can never leave him.
Selected to play at Cannes Film Festival, John and the Hole is a confident, visionary, and daring exercise in tonal filmmaking, as well as a provocative exploration of childhood and adulthood. Sisto leaves much of the film open to interpretation, so the audience can make a lot of its own meaning. In that sense, there's much to consider while going farther and farther down into the void.
This review originally ran as part of our 2021 Sundance Film Festival coverage.
'Nine Days' Review: Souls Prepare For Life in Spiritually Conceptual Film
If you were a soul waiting to be born, how would you prepare to live? This is the question that the new film Nine Days asks (In LA and NY theaters this Friday, expanding nationwide on August 6th). A highly conceptual film that’s both spiritual and sci-fi, the film is ultimately more rewarding for the cerebrally-stirring questions that it attempts to pose to the audience rather than it being an exciting watch that's as entertaining in the moment.
Nine Days begins quite ambiguously. A large-framed yet mysteriously quiet man, Will (Winston Duke), observing a wall of old televisions through antique glasses–each stacked on top of the other to make for a wall of screens–each playing through life moments from first-person POVs.
We soon learn why he pores over these life moments: (somehow) Will is directly responsible for choosing the souls that will begin a life on Earth, a gatekeeper or god-figure, however you choose to see it. And so, over nine days' time, we see Will interview a collection of characters, asking them all a variety of life-affirming questions with a searing intensity that gives the film its conceptual identity.
Nine Days has a very interesting premise, but the film–directed by Edson Oda–doesn’t give Will anything for us to invest in. Zazie Beetz is underutilized as Emma, a character interviewing for life on Earth, whose countered-openness and positivity challenges the cynically over-stoic Will into rethinking who should be granted life.
While the film is too slow-paced and loose for a great watching experience, Nine Days should be rewarded for being a daring and original film.
This review originally ran on October 20, 2020 during the 2020 AFI Film Festival.
‘Nine Days’ is being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. In LA and NY theaters this Friday, expanding nationwide on August 6th.
'Settlers' Review: When We Colonize Space, We'll Bring Our Flaws Too
With this week's news of Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos becoming the first American public citizens to enter orbit, the reality of humans colonizing space is becoming more and more a reality. But what exactly will that future look like? What obstacles will the first people who live on Mars endure, and what flaws will we bring with them? One such vision comes in the new sci-fi film from IFC Midnight, Settlers (in theaters today), which feels surprisingly less fictitious and more inevitably real of what may be to come.
Settlers tells the story of mankind’s earliest people on the Martian frontier. Reza (Jonny Lee Miller), Ilsa (Sofia Boutella), and Remmy (Brooklynn Prince) are a tight-knit family of three living on a compound in Mars. It's clear that they love each other, showing concern for each other's safety at every moment, and soon enough it's clear why: when masked intruders arrive brandishing weapons and disrupting the family unit, their dynamic is destroyed. The trespasser's message becomes clear soon enough: who is the real intruder amongst them? And who is actually trespassing on whose land?
For a sci-fi film taking place on Mars, writer and director Wyatt Rockefeller gives Settlers a realistic setting (not always easy to do on a tight budget). Its vast, red-skied desert landscape makes for a grounded and believable depiction of Mars. To this end, Settlers smartly focuses its story on the human elements at the heart of the story (even breaking the film into chapters focusing on each of the main characters). The central struggle here is both of settlers and indigenous people trying to co-exist with each other, along with trying to survive while bringing their fatal human flaws (and corruptions) with them. Settlers ends up entering much darker terrain than I had anticipated, which makes the film even more substantial and worthy of a watch. There's a funny BB-8-like robot named Steve that's around for some light-hearted fun, but Settlers is at its best when it stays intimate with its characters.
The film's biggest names, Sofia Boutella (Climax) and Brooklynn Prince (The Florida Project), establish the heart of the film early on as mother and daughter, giving a strong central core to the film. Boutella's protective resolve as young Remmy's mother is strong, and Prince is tasked with delivering a strong emotionally intricate performance beyond her years, which she does. When Settlers advances forward in time, it's Ismael Cruz Córdova as Jerry, a native intruder, who lives long enough to see an older Remmy (Nell Tiger Free) and attempt to live alongside her. Nell Tiger Free continues the film's suspenseful and adventurous tone while ending up being the one to take the story to a new chapter.
Settlers works as more than just another sci-fi film and successfully poses questions that we should currently consider as a society, across all of humanity. It's a worthy depiction of humanity's inevitable future, and warns of the human struggles that will continue to endure if we don't learn from our intrinsic corruptions. It certainly makes me think that Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos should consider and share their thoughts on the ethical questions surrounding colonization before we settle onto these new frontiers.
Distributed by IFC Films, now playing in theaters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeCcJCy0HzM&ab_channel=IFCFilms
July Preview: 6 Films We're Looking Forward to Watching This Month
As heat waves keep things sizzling outside, so too does this month's hot new titles, which we've rounded up in our July preview. Enjoy some indoor air conditioning and catch up on these highly anticipated films, both in theaters and streaming, from your living room. In our July preview, we include some films whose original releases were delayed due to the pandemic, as well as all-new releases.
We're ready to settle in with a cold beverage and watch everything in this month's July preview–are you?
No Sudden Move
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GRDLX3a-IE&ab_channel=HBOMax
What it’s about: A group of criminals are brought together under mysterious circumstances and have to work together to uncover what's really going on when their simple job goes completely sideways.
Why we’re looking forward to it: After making Let Them All Talk for HBO Max, Steven Soderbergh is back with another film for the streaming service. Not only is he returning to his heist roots (with an amazing all-star cast to boot), but he's taking things back to 1950s era noir, which is a time period we cannot wait to see his vision of.
‘No Sudden Move’ opens in select theaters and is available on HBO Max starting Thursday, July 1st.
Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
https://youtu.be/slFiJpAxZyQ
What it’s about: Summer Of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is a feature documentary about the legendary 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival which celebrated African American music and culture, and promoted Black pride and unity.
Why we’re looking forward to it: I first saw this film make its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, and it was rightfully awarded the Festival Winner Documentary. Director Questlove knows that music is always accompanied by stories, and the stories here–along with never-before-seen archival footage–makes this one of the most powerful films of the year so far.
'Summer Of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)' opens in select theaters and is available on Hulu starting Friday, July 2nd.
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
https://youtu.be/ihEEjwRlghQ
What it’s about: A documentary about Anthony Bourdain and his career as a chef, writer and host, revered and renowned for his authentic approach to food, culture and travel.
Why we’re looking forward to it: Seeing Anthony Bourdain’s extraordinary life brought to the big screen by Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom) is sure to warm the hearts of his beloved fans, as well as inspire audiences.
‘Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain’ opens in select theaters on Friday, July 16th.
Ailey
https://youtu.be/PHcM4HJEgs4
What it’s about: An immersive portrait of dance pioneer Alvin Ailey, told through his own words and a new dance inspired by his life.
Why we’re looking forward to it: A documentary about a black man who changed the world with choreography and dance. I wasn't previously familiar with Alvin Ailey but after watching the trailer, I realize that is going to have to change.
‘Ailey' opens in select theaters and is available on Digital and VOD Platforms starting Friday, July 23rd.
Settlers
https://youtu.be/jeCcJCy0HzM
What it’s about: Mankind's earliest settlers on the Martian frontier do what they must to survive the cosmic elements and each other.
Why we’re looking forward to it: This futuristic sci-fi film with Sofia Boutella and The Florida Projects's Brooklynn Prince looks like it will be an entertaining thrill ride that will also combine humanity and connection.
‘Settlers’ opens in select theaters and is available on Digital and VOD Platforms starting Friday, July 23rd.
The Green Knight
https://youtu.be/sS6ksY8xWCY
What it’s about: A fantasy re-telling of the medieval story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Why we’re looking forward to it: The Green Knight was originally supposed to come out last year, so the fact that it's finally getting its proper theatrical release now is beyond exciting. Director David Lowery's incredible vision and Dev Patel deserve it.
‘The Green Knight’ opens in select theaters and is available on Digital and VOD Platforms starting Friday, July 30th.
'The Sparks Brothers' Review: Edgar Wright Fanboys Hard For Sparks
This review originally ran as part of our Sundance Film Festival 2021 coverage.
Spanning every bit of two hours and twenty minutes, it's clear that Edgar Wright feels indebted to both educate, as well as attempt to make audiences appreciate, art-pop duo Sparks–the most influential band that you've never heard of–in his first documentary, The Sparks Brothers.
An unabashed pop music fan himself (whose own films' perfectly-placed jukebox needle drops have attributed to his own film geek following), Wright makes it his mission to not only tell the story of the Mael brothers–Ron and Russell, whose band "Sparks" not only spans over five decades in which the pair made 25 studio albums and 500 songs–but capture their undefinable creative identity, and show how real commercial success would evade them over their entire career while they refused to compromise their vision.
But Wright the established filmmaker is up for the job, telling Sparks' story with an inspired assortment of zany and diverse animation styles whose tongue in cheek humor mix with the band's own ironical detachments. By intercutting these animations with an array of interviews from the music and entertainment world–including Beck, Mike Meyers, Jason Schwartzman and Flea (as well as Wright himself), who all profess their love for Sparks–it's a wealth of riches to tell Sparks' story.
To understand Sparks is to understand the Mael brothers: born in Santa Monica, California (already confusing, as most everyone thought they were a British band), there's Ron (the "older" one) and Russell (the "cute" one), who were raised on a diet of Hollywood and cinema by their late father (who passed away before the boys were teens). It was this level of theatricality and cinema that would inspire the band aesthetically, and would later influence them philosophically through the appreciation of French new wave film, in which the brothers' self-awareness would rally them to churn against the mainstream of pop music that they'd would eventually operate in.
Of course, Ron and Russell themselves are present in this doc, too. So too do they want a part in constructing this (their) story, as their authorship has always been integral to their presentation. What I found interesting about The Sparks Brothers is that, while the Mael brothers were clearly all-too gleeful playing pop-provocateurs throughout their career (Ron famously sported a sort-of Hitler moustache, which he would say curiously never got mistaken for Chaplin), it's clear that they were in some small part motivated by a desire to break into the mainstream, to be more famous than they were, or to a more simple degree, "be understood."
One of the most surprising and telling reveals is when, after the album of their first band, "Halfnelson," didn't sell well, it was their manager at the time who advised them to change their name to what would become Sparks (as they were told they looked like the Marx Brothers). While Sparks would (and should) be the last band in the world to be accused of having motivations to work to fulfill audiences reactions (which they never did, to be clear), it is telling that a constant need to work against rejection fueled them to achieve pinnacles of creative accomplishments that, who knows, might not have happened otherwise.
Sparks' prolific output would be for our collective cultural benefit, as Ron (the songwriter) and Russell (the voice) would create some of the most genre-defining music of the '60s, '70s and '80s, which would go on to predate electronic synth music like New Order and Pet Shop Boys. So even if you're not aware of Sparks' music (which you likely aren't), or don't entirely "get" their music (which mass audiences clearly didn't–hence this doc), The Sparks Brothers is a fantastically abounding story about creative artists who were unafraid to chart forward, to re-define themselves, to change up the formula and evolve to new places, which is a rare but necessary thing for artists to do today. Sparks wanted to stay true to their selves and never compromise on their unique vision. So they chose to be the best band that you've never heard of–until now.