Movie Review: Gemini

Gemini *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Aaron Katz.

Written by: Aaron Katz.

Starring: Lola Kirke (Jill LeBeau), Zoe Kravitz (Heather Anderson), John Cho (Detective Edward Ahn), Greta Lee (Tracy), Ricki Lake (Vanessa), Michelle Forbes (Jamie), Nelson Franklin (Greg), Reeve Carney (Devin), Jessica Parker Kennedy (Sierra), James Ransone (Stan), Todd Louiso (Keith), Marianne Rendon (Cassandra), Abraham Lim (Seo-Jin), Gabriela Flores (Andrea).

 

As ambitions go, trying to be a female version of Altman’s The Long Goodbye for the social media era is a good thing to strive for. I don’t think that Aaron Katz’s Gemini is quite able to reach the heights that it aspires to – it doesn’t quite push itself far enough – but it’s a nifty little neo-noir anyway, with an interesting lead performance by Lola Kirke, and a clear eyed view of the nature of celebrity. There is a mystery at its core, but the film doesn’t really seem all that interested in solving it (although it will) – instead focusing on an its characters as paranoid – and perhaps with good reason.

 

In the film, Kirke plays Jill, the personal assistant to Heather (Zoe Kravitz), a movie star who is sick of the whole movie star thing. She is going to back out of an upcoming movie, which because it was an indie, pretty much dooms its prospects of being made at all. She is going to meet the director of this movie at a diner – but chickens out and sends Jill in her place. He isn’t happy. Neither is Heather’s boyfriend, who literally left a message saying he was going to kill her. Heather will also anger a fan, who approaches them at the restaurant, and who’s each request escalates things more and more, and becomes more and more personal and unreasonable. There’s also a sleazy TMZ like reporter following Heather around. Heather, then, is perhaps justly paranoid, and ends up borrowing Jill’s gun. When a body is found the next day at Heather’s, there are no lack of suspects – although the cop assigned to investigate (John Cho) has his eyes on Jill herself – who unlike most people in real life, keeps ducking the cops, and trying to solve the murder herself.

 

How she goes about this is funny, in a deadpan kind of way. She dons the worst, least convincing disguise you can imagine, and goes around asking the other suspects in the case what they were doing – and somehow, she manages to miss the cops at all times. Kirke is an interesting actress – I adored her in Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America (much more than I liked the movie itself, which I think is one of his weakest), and here she does something interesting. She seems tired when the movie begins, and keeps getting more and more tired throughout. It’s a low energy performance, but it’s somehow fitting for the material. Kravitz does something similar – she’s a movie star, but she doesn’t really care about that anymore, or perhaps care about anything. She lives in a world that is all about her image – all about social media posts, where the way you appear on line is more important than anything. They also have a strange relationship with each other. They are closer to each other than anyone else – spend all their time together, and say they are friends. But are they really? After all, Heather is paying Jill to be there. The movie explores these realities a little as the movie progresses – but I don’t think it quite knows how to resolve them (there seems like a scene or two deliberately missing before the final scene in the film).

 

Written and directed by Aaron Katz, Gemini works best as a dreamlike portrait of Los Angeles, and a portrait of this social media generation – and less so as a mystery. There is a mystery at its core, and it takes some twists and turns along the way – none of them all that surprising, or I think even really trying to be. What’s a shame then is that Katz spends so much time on the plot of the movie, because he’s not really interested in – it’s more a way to get where he’s going than anything else. Still, Gemini is an odd, fascinating little movie – it’s going for something in its portrait of this generation –and he knows the footsteps he’s walking in (Robert Altman, David Lynch and a host of other LA filmmakers), but stops short of something truly special.

Movie Review: Land Ho!

Land Ho!
Directed by: Aaron Katz & Martha Stephens.
Written by: Aaron Katz & Martha Stephens.
Starring: Earl Lynn Nelson (Mitch), Paul Eenhoorn (Colin), Karrie Crouse (Ellen), Elizabeth McKee (Janet), Benjamin Kasulke (Honeymooner), Christina Jennings (Honeymooner), Alice Olivia Clarke (Nadine).

How many movies over the years have we seen about people going on vacation in an attempt to recapture some of the magic in their lives – to get away from their hectic life and learn to enjoy the simple things once again? In short, hundreds. It is one of the most well-trod storylines, in Hollywood, indie and even foreign films. Land Ho, from directors Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens, is the latest film to go over this ground – and it never really does anything new with it, even if it’s an enjoyable little film as it plays.

Mitch (Earl Lynn Nelson) is a loud mouthed, over confident horny old man – divorced, forced out of his surgeon job, distant from his children – he is now retired, has a lot of money, but nothing really to  do. Colin (Paul Eenhoorn) is his former brother-in-law – they were once married to sisters, but lost contact when Mitch got divorced from the one sister. Collins first wife died, and he is now separated from his second wife – after she drained him of his savings in an ill-advised business venture. He was retired, from a job at a bank, after a career in music didn’t work out, but now may have to go back to work. He goes to visit Mitch – who has an intriguing offer for him. Mitch has bought them two tickets for a vacation in Iceland – and even if Colin can sometimes find Mitch a little tiresome, he goes with him anyway.

The film is pretty clear cut in two – with the first half Mitch and Colin hanging around the hotel, meeting up with Mitch’s much younger cousin (Karrie Crouse) and her girlfriend (Elizabeth McKee) – and tagging along with them on a night out partying – and feeling pretty ridiculous doing so, since they are decades older than anyone else out. The second half has the pair hit the road – going to see various natural wonders around Iceland – and then meeting up with another woman (Alice Olivia Clarke) – and sharing a little tenderness along the way.

The film is obvious in many, many ways – Mitch and Colin are polar opposites, with Mitch seemingly having no filter, who says horribly inappropriate things to people (including a young married couple), and pretty much every woman he meets. If he was younger, he would be creep – but because he’s older, everyone looks at him as just a funny older man. We know, eventually, the mask Mitch is putting up is going to have to fall a little bit – that were going to have to get something a little more real from him – and we do. Colin is the exact opposite – quiet, intellectual, a little embarrassed by Mitch, but also appreciative of him – after all, he’s paying for the trip and without him, Colin would simply be at home, alone and depressed.

The film has an improvised feel too much of the dialogue – as if Katz and Stephens had no more of a goal in mind for the film than to get two actors (or personalities) together, and putting them in a beautiful location to see what would happen. And the film looks beautiful – if nothing else, the film does make you want to visit Iceland as soon as possible.

The problem with Land Ho is that it is never really funny enough to make you laugh, and not really insightful enough to have anything new to add to the well-trod path the movie is taking. It’s not really a bad film – its 95 minutes that passes really pleasantly – but at the same time I just wish there was something more here.