Movie Review: Approaching the Elephant

Approaching the Elephant
Directed by: Amanda Wilder.

On one hand, I agree that the traditional model of schooling doesn’t work for everyone. We have certainly seen cases of geniuses who simply cannot function in the type of “one size fits all” approach to education we typically have in North America, and perhaps we need to explore different ways of educating different children. On the other hand, the “Free School” concept that I saw in Approaching the Elephant seems like an absolute nightmare – especially for the adults who are trying to teach. I walked away from the film feeling that in order for this kind of concept to work, you need to have the right kids involved – or else the whole thing descends into chaos, and is what often seems to be going in the film. At times, I couldn’t help but think of Lord of the Flies, as children run around, sometimes without their shirts on (presumably because they don’t “feel” like wearing them). Perhaps this concept could work – there is, according the documentary, a long history stretching back more than 80 years (perhaps longer). But the school documented in this film, which is going through their first year, seems to be pure chaos – not the organized chaos they may have envisioned.

The film follows the first year of the Teddy McArdle Free School, in New Jersey – a school in the basement and surrounding areas of a church. There are not set classes in the school, and kids are free to do what they want. They want to learn woodworking, they can do that, they want to go outside and play all day, and they can do that as well. If they learn any of the “three r’s” – reading, writing and arithmetic – we certainly don’t see it during the course of the movie, although one suspects they do, even if it’s not included here. The kids are young – probably 5-8 thereabouts – and are involved in every aspect of how the school functions. There are some basic rules – basically for safety reasons – but everything else is up for debate. Any one – student or teacher – can call a meeting to discuss anything else, and the rules are made at these meetings. The theory being, I suppose, that if children feel they are given a voice in how a school runs, they will enjoy it more – and if they enjoy it more, they will learn more.

In theory, this doesn’t sound quite so bad. In practice, it is somewhat of a nightmare at times. I was surprised however, by how well it could work at different points. Lucy – a blonde, happy little girl who likes freedom, but does want some limits, is angry that Alex, the head teacher, stopped the children from jumping off storage bins into a mattress – something Lucy things he should not be allowed to do, since they didn’t vote on it – and if they don’t vote on everything, then she’s leaving (or so she says – she threatens this a lot). But Alex explains his side – first, two children are absent right now because they hurt themselves previously doing the exact same thing, so it is a safety issue. Second, the bins belong to the Church, and they have an existing rule that says that Church property can only be used for its intended purpose (and jumping off storage bins is not there purpose). Surprisingly, the panel who gets to decide (which are not the people involved) – side with Alex, even though most of them are children, and therefore you may think they would vote for their right to behave like idiots and hurt themselves. But no, they don’t. They vote for the good of their fellow students. It’s here where you can see how the school could conceivably function.

In Jiovanni however, you see how the school could go terribly wrong. Jiovanni looks like a dark haired Hanson brother (people still remember MMMbop right, or I am really daring myself here), with his long, mop of hair. He’s the one who is often going shirtless (and I think at one point, pantless). Jiovanni is a nightmare of a kid – who has been put into the exact wrong school by his parents. If ever there was a child who needed structure and guidelines, it is Jiovanni. Instead, without them, Jiovanni basically runs wild. He uses the freedom of the school to do whatever the hell he wants to do. He listens to no one, can be downright cruel to others. The staff is well meaning, but has no idea how to deal with a kid like Jiovanni. His mother, seen in just one scene, reminded me of Ned Flanders’ parents from The Simpsons – “We’ve tried nothing doc, and we’re all out of ideas”. Nothing the staff tries works – and when late in the film Alex lists the reasons why they eventually suspended him for two weeks, it takes a hell of a long time. And yet, on his first day back, he pulls the same crap. Jiovanni doesn’t care if he ruins the Free School for everyone else – he is a little narcissist, who doesn’t care what kind of attention he gets, as long as it gets some.

The movie was directed and shot by Amanda Wilder (and edited by Robert Greene – whose own film Actress, is one of docs from 2014 that I’m still waiting to see). There is no narration in the film, and no direct interviews with the people involved. Instead, like Frederick Wiseman (an obvious inspiration), she sits back and observes how this institution works. No, it isn’t an “objective” film – such a thing doesn’t really exist – but it is one that lets each audience member decide what the movie is saying about Free Schools – if anything – and what they think of them.

As a child, I never could have gone to a school like this. Throughout my primary school years I did much better in grades 3, 4 and 6 then I did in grades 2 and 5 – and I think that quite clearly I did so because by teachers in those first three grades mentioned had structured and disciplined classrooms, and ran them as such. My teachers in grade 2 and 5 were more free flowing – and loosey goosey – and I downright hated those years. I needed that structure, and thrived on it. And yet, I know full well that not everyone is the same as me – and some whose class I was in all those years had precisely the opposite feelings about their years there.

 
Which is what brings me back to the beginning – and the movie itself – in which I still believe that our one size fits all approach to teaching doesn’t help all kids – maybe a lot of them, perhaps even most of them, but not all, and we should be open to new models. Will they work? I don’t know – and neither does Alex, who runs the school, who says when asks this question “We’ll know in 20 years”.

Movie Review: It Follows

It Follows
Directed by: David Robert Mitchell.
Written by: David Robert Mitchell.
Starring: Maika Monroe (Jay Height), Keir Gilchrist (Paul), Jake Weary (Hugh / Jeff), Lili Sepe (Kelly Height), Olivia Luccardi (Yara), Daniel Zovatto (Greg Hannigan), Bailey Spry (Annie).

If you have read anything about It Follows, the terrific new horror film by David Robert Mitchell, it probably sounds like any number of other, post-John Carpenter’s Halloween, slasher movie. Yes, this is another film in which a beautiful, suburban teenage girl engages in sexual activity, and then is stalked by a killer of some sort for the rest of the film – perhaps as punishment for daring to have a sexual appetite. Carpenter (who is clearly an huge influence on this film) kind of established that premise with his 1978 original, low budget shocker – and it’s been copied ever since in all the Halloween sequels – not to mention the Friday the 13^th, Nightmare on Elm Street and seemingly hundreds of other, lesser known knock-offs. The idea has been done to death, and satirized to death (sometimes in those very sequels that are still engaging in the same plot) – and the whole thing has become a tired, horror movie cliché. Why, then, does it work so amazingly well in It Follows? Partly, it’s because of the way director Mitchell shoots the film – lots of long, unbroken shots, with a swirling camera. Part because of the way the “killer” (which takes on different forms) stalks its victims – you’ve seen “slow” killers before, but never this slow. It gets you not because of its speed, but because it seemingly cannot be killed, and will never stop coming for you. You can outrun it for a while, but eventually, it will be right there again. But mainly it’s because Mitchell does unexpected things with the group of friends he centers his movie on. Even without this killer stalking them, this group would have enough drama to fill a movie – there is more than enough hormones, lust, petty jealousies and heartbreak going through this group to keep the movie fascinating, even when Mitchell isn’t trying to scare you (which he does expertly). It’s also because of the way Mitchell portrays sex itself in the movie – there is no “slut shaming” going on in It Follows, unlike many horror films. The characters are not being “punished” for their transgressions. The movie doesn’t really paint as neither good nor bad for their young characters – rather, it portrays it as having the potential to be either of those things – and how one mistake can haunt you for the rest of your life.

The movie stars the talented Maika Monroe, from last year’s great horror movie The Guest (which not enough of you saw!) as Jay, a teenage girl out of high school, but not quite in college yet. She’s dating a new guy – slightly older, named Hugh (Jake Weary), and although they haven’t had sex yet – she knows they will soon, and is looking forward to it, in a slightly dreamy, naïve way (no, she is not a virgin – but her romantic ideals around sex still mark her as somewhat immature). Eventually, Hugh and Jay do have sex – in his car, and in the post coital period, he shocks her by knocking her out with chloroform – when she comes to, she is tied to a chair. Hugh did this not to hurt Jay – at least not more than he already has – but to tell her what to expect. He has just passed something to her – and it’s something she can only get rid of by having sex with someone else. Someone or something will follow her – it may be someone she knows, maybe not, it may appear alive, it may not – but a few things are clear: it won’t stop until it kills her and no one else can see it. And if Jay lets it kill her, then the presence will immediately go back to trying to kill Hugh again, so at best, this is a temporary reprieve that you can never truly shake.

I know this probably sounds slightly ridiculous – but believe me, it isn’t (besides, go through the basic plot of pretty much any horror movie, and they all sound ridiculous, don’t they?). As Roger Ebert never tired of saying “A movie isn’t about what it’s about – it’s about how it’s about it” (or something like that anyway). What It Follows does is take that ridiculous premise, and play off those previous horror movie clichés, to make a film that both scary and disturbing – and more so the later than the former. As Jay enlists more of her friends to try and help her, the group dynamics become clear. Paul (Keir Gilchrist) looks longingly at Jay – it’s clear he’s in love with her, and she thinks of him as little more than a friend, and although she toys with him a little, it isn’t cruelly. Greg (Daniel Zovatto) is the “cool” kid across the street – the one with the car and the cabin they can run away to and hide out. There’s also Jay’s sister (Lili Sepe) and her friend – and they all band together to “help” Jay – even if none of them really can.

The movie does deliver on the scares – for the most part. To be honest, the big horror movie climax is actually one of the weakest scenes in the movie. It tries too hard to be scary, and is undercut at least a little by the inherent ridiculousness of the killer – something that doesn’t hurt the rest of the movie, because it doesn’t have the kind of sustained, physical confrontation with it. The rest of the scare scenes in the movie work remarkably well though. This isn’t a bloody movie by any means, and neither does it rely on cheap scares. The “killer” makes George A. Romero zombies look like sprinters. What the movie does remarkably well is building a mounting sense of inescapable dread.

The movie is even more disturbing and unsettling than scary though – especially as it moves along, and its implications become clear. Yes, It Follows could very well be read as a metaphor for an STD or unwanted pregnancy – if you want it to. But I think the implications of the movie and its view of sex are far more universal, and somewhat saddening.

Movie Poster: Faults

Faults
Directed by: Riley Stearns.
Written by: Riley Stearns.
Starring: Leland Orser (Ansel), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Claire), Chris Ellis (Dad), Beth Grant (Evelyn), Jon Gries (Terry), Lance Reddick (Mick).

If you’ve watched much TV or many movies over the past two decades or so, you’ve probably seen Leland Orser dozens of times, and not really noticed. He has almost 80 acting credits over the years – appearing, mainly in small roles, in dozens of movies – large and small – and TV shows. He is the classic definition of a character actor, and looking back over his screen credits, I do find I remember him in his best work – like his one scene wonder in David Fincher’s Seven as a man forced to do a horrible thing. Or in last year’s excellent The Guest, as a patriarch who at first doesn’t trust the new houseguest, but hell, it gives him a drinking buddy, so who cares? Actors like Orser are always supposed to be in the background – coming forward for a scene or two, and then fading from memory.

In Faults, Orser finally gets his chance to be a leading man – and he makes the most of it. The movie asks a lot from Orser, whose performance veers, along with the movie, from comedy to tragedy, and everything in between. Ultimately, the movie ends up in precisely the spot I thought it would when the movie began – but the process of getting there is much different than I anticipated. And Orser, who is the center of every scene, is terrific throughout.

Orser stars as Ansel – a middle aged, pathetic shell of a man. He was once famous – he had his own TV show, and a bestselling book, both about cults – and getting people out of them. Something went wrong though – we get some, but not all, of the details throughout the movie – and now Ansel is stuck shilling his new book – that no one wants to buy – to small crowds in rundown hotel conference rooms. We first meet him arguing with the waiter and manager of a hotel restaurant about his bill – he was told (or so he says) that one meal per day would be provided for him while he was there giving his talk. The waiter and manager disagree – and the whole thing devolves into a scene that is awkward, funny and sad at the same time.

Things take a turn when he is approached by an older couple (Chris Ellis and Beth Grant) – who want Ansel to get their daughter, Claire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) out of a “cult” – known as Faults (no “The”). Ansel tries hard to put them off – but he needs the money. His “manager”, Terry (Jon Gries) wants the money he fronted Ansel, and is starting to send around some intimidating muscle in the form of Mick (Lance Reddick) to collect. He hires some goons, and they kidnap Claire for him – delivering her to a hotel room, while her parents wait in the adjoining room. Ansel sets about “breaking” Claire – who is calm and serene throughout – unless her parents are there that is.

The best scenes in the movie are probably between Orser and Winstead. Winstead has been a promising actress for years now (Death Proof, Smashed, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, etc) without every really having that big breakout role. This isn’t that role either – but Winstead plays it well. But Claire is more of a one note character than Ansel is – although Winstead starts to give her some shading as the movie progresses, and she starts to break. Or does she? From the start, I never really trusted Faults to play it straight with me – or to put it another way, for Claire to play straight with me. Ansel – yes. He may change from scene to scene, but that’s because each scene requires something else from him if he’s going to keep his head above water (if he even wants that). But from the start, there is something off about Claire. She’s too calm and serene – even for a cult member – and she seems to be broken too easily by Ansel. Does he even know what he’s doing anymore? There is a tension between them though – as both try to get the upper hand, without letting the other know that they want it that works quite well.

The rest of the overly complicated plot isn’t really necessary – accept, of course, to provide a few more characters in the film, and get it outside of that hotel room (even if that is where the movie is at its best). The film was written and directed by Riley Stearns (Winsted’s husband_ = and it’s his feature debut after a trio of shorts. It’s a more promising debut than a good one. It shows Stearns has some talent in writing dialogue and characters, and his slightly off-kilter framing works well. Faults isn’t a great movie by any means – but it’s the type of debut that makes me curious what Stearns is going to do next.

Movie Review: Chappie

Chappie
Directed by: Neill Blomkamp.
Written by: Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell.
Starrimg: Sharlto Copley (Chappie), Dev Patel (Deon Wilson), Ninja (Ninja), Yo-Landi Visser (Yolandi), Jose Pablo Cantillo (Yankie - Amerika), Hugh Jackman (Vincent Moore), Sigourney Weaver (Michelle Bradley), Brandon Auret (Hippo), Johnny Selema (Pitbull).

There are quite a few interesting ideas running through Chappie – the latest sci-fi action film from Neill Blomkamp. His debut film, District 9, was an ingenious sci-fi allegory with a simple aliens/Apartheid metaphor that worked surprisingly well. Yes, it may have been a little disappointing that Blomkamp had no way to end his film other than in an explosive of action sequences – but I enjoyed those sequences, that felt a little dirtier, grittier and more low-tech than most films of its kind – so overall, I pretty much loved District 9. His follow-up film, Elysium, may not have reached the same level – Blomkamp upped the political content in the film, but was also more ham fisted and obvious in marrying it with his sci-fi plot. Still, I admired the film because it really was trying for something more – it had ambition, and if it didn’t live up those ambitions, it’s better than not having them at all. You could say the same thing about Chappie – the film doesn’t lack for ideas, many of them interesting. And Blomkamp seems to have learned not to force his allegory on the film in such obvious fashion this time around. Unfortunately, Blomkamp fills Chappie with too many useless subplots and characters, too many ideas borrowed from other films, that the entire film feels muddled – as it’s spending a lot of time, saying nothing new. The final act is a genuine confused mess – that quite simply doesn’t work at all. Like last month’s Jupiter Ascending from the Wachowskis, I wanted to like Chappie – they are both genuinely strange movies, original, big budget sci-fi films instead of more franchise, that are both obviously their talented makers films. But both film are complete messes – so as much as I wanted to like them, I really couldn’t.

The film opens in 2016 – where in a news montage, we learn that the city of Johannesburg, South Africa have purchased a number of robot police officers to assist their human counterparts. These robot cops have had an almost positive immediate impact on the crime rate – and the weapons company who makes the robots is drawing interest from around the world. The designer, Deon Wilson (Dev Patel), is proud of his achievement – but has his goals set much higher. He wants to make a truly sentient artificially intelligent robot – and thinks he has finally cracked it. He goes to the CEO (Sigourney Weaver) to get permission to try out his new software on an old robot – that is about to be destroyed anyway. She, of course, says no. He, of course, steals the robot and does it anyway. But he has two problems – the first being that on his way home, he is carjacked by Ninja (Ninja), Yolandi (Yo-Landi Visser) and Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo) – three low rent thugs who need to make a lot of money quickly, and think the designer of the police robots can help them. They are the three that end up with the robot who will become the title character. The second problem Deon has is that his biggest rival in his company – Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) suspects something is up, and tries to prove it. He has his own police robot – but it’s a huge, monstrosity (that looks very much like Robocop’s ED 209), but is controlled by a human being. Vincent is a little bit of a religious nut – who thinks robots with a soul are dangerous – and although that’s not a bad point, Vincent is portrayed as so violent and insane, you cannot possibly agree with him.

Chappie, the character, starts with the mentality of a baby – and although gets extremely smart, extremely fast, he never loses that childhood innocence throughout the movie. He is torn between two different viewpoints of the world – Deon, who he refers to as his maker, has loftier, idealistic goals for him, but Ninja, who he calls Daddy, shows him the cruelty of the world – and how he must fight. Somewhere in between is Yolandi – Mommy, who he truly loves. Chappie is performed by Blomkamp’s favorite actor, Sharlto Copley – and it’s an interesting performance, which allows Copley a lot of opportunities to be funny, and only slightly annoying. The design of the character is a little too bland and generic – to be truly sympathetic. Sadly though, he is the only character with any sort of complexity. Everyone else is one note – and not very interesting at that. Jackman fairs the best of the human actors, ripping into his villain role – but it’s an ill-conceived character. Still, it’s better than Weaver, who is supposed to be a typical, short sighted, not overly bright CEO – and while Weaver is a great actress, she doesn’t play dumb well – she exudes too much intelligence. Ninja and Yo-Landi, members of a South African rap group, at least seem to be having fun. The worst, and most unnecessary, character is named Hippo (Brandon Auret), a psychopathic gangster, with stupid hair, who basically shouts his every line (and requires subtitles), even though he’s speaking English.

For the first hour or so, Chappie keeps hinting that perhaps it is going to go in some sort of interesting direction. There are a lot of good ideas running through Chappie – including a scene where Chappie asks his maker why he made him just so he could die – a question many people would ask of God – but like all the other interesting ideas in Chappie, the movie pretty much abandons it as soon as it’s brought up. It doesn’t have time for such things – it needs to spend a lot of time blowing crap up. That is a pattern that repeats itself throughout Chappie. Blomkamp abandons any of the original, or thought provoking ideas in the film so it can get to the blander, generic stuff you’ve seen in many other robot movies in the past – everything from the Terminator movies to Robocop, and everything in between. In many ways, Chappie is a modern day Pinocchio story – but again, Blomkamp doesn’t fully explore that idea either.

The ending of the movie is really when things fly wildly off the rails. The film rushes through a lot of plot in almost no time, and then spends a lot of time on a ridiculously ill-conceived (and illogical) action sequence involving Jackman’s killing machine. It then has a copout, emotionally manipulative ending that makes even less sense that what came before it.

I still think Blomkamp is a talented and promising director. His first film got the balance between his ideas and the action he clearly wants to merge. In Elysium, the balance skewed too far towards his ideas that were too obvious. In Chappie, he pretty much abandons his ideas to make a lot of action sequences. Hopefully he gets the balance right again. After all, there aren’t a lot of people who are even trying to balance the two. I wanted to like Chappie – but the reality is, the film simply doesn’t work.

Movie Review: The Babadook

The Babadook
Directed by: Jennifer Kent.
Written by: Jennifer Kent.
Starring: Essie Davis (Amelia), Noah Wiseman (Samuel), Daniel Henshall (Robbie), Tim Purcell (The Babadook), Hayley McElhinney (Claire), Barbara West (Mrs. Roach), Chloe Hurn (Ruby).

The best horror movies do not just scare you, but tap into some sort of primal deep-seeded fear inside of you. The Babadook, which is among the best horror movies in recent years, taps into that kind of fear – it’s a movie that will be scary to everyone, but will be downright terrifying for parents. The Babadook is classically structured, and Kent directs it with precision and skill – stripping it down to its core elements, and making a claustrophobic horror film in the Roman Polanski vein (think 1965’s Repulsion of 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby). The film is scary, without ever resorting to cheap jump scares or gore, but when it’s all over, is perhaps even more disturbing than we realize. This is a new horror movie classic.

The film stars Essie Davis (in a performance that deserves to be placed along those by Catherine Denueve’s and Mia Farrow’s in those two Polanski movies mentioned earlier) as Amelia – a tired, weary, single mother. Her husband died in a car accident taking her to the hospital to have their son. That’s Samuel (Noah Wiseman), now 6, who is more than a handful. He’s convinced that any number of monsters are under his bed, in his closet, etc. – and spends much of his time crafting crude, but effective, weapons to protect him and his mother from them. The problem is that the weapons cause damage to their small house – and when he brings them to school, it causes concern for the principal and the teacher. They think Samuel is disturbed, and needs special help – and they just may be right. If he isn’t battling monsters, he’s constantly bugging Amelia – and the pair of them are getting almost no sleep. It’s a testament to young Wiseman’s performance as Samuel that we at once feel sympathy for the clearly distressed child – and yet understand completely why he is driving his mother slowly insane.

Things go from bad to worse with the appearance of strange, new children’s book – entitled Mister Babadook. This book isn’t dark in the way of some great kid’s books – but truly, completely dark and horrifying – pretty much threatening the lives of the reader. The drawings are in black and white – they look kind of like Tim Burton drawings – and the title character is some sort of demon, with long, sharp finger nails, wild eyes and a top hat. Samuel becomes convinced that Mister Babadook is real – and is coming for them. And Amelia slowly starts to expect as much herself – she cannot seem to destroy the book, and she starts seeing flashes that may just be him. Then at some point, you start to feel that Amelia herself is the real danger here.

The movie is somewhat ambiguous as to what precisely the Babadook is – and remains so right up until the end of the movie, leaving it to the viewers to decide if he is a shared delusion or a real, malevolent presence (the movie provides enough hints to support either reading, really). What the movie does brilliantly is offer the audience a shifting perspective. In the first half of the movie, you feel sympathy for Amelia, as her son is a handful, she has a tough job, an uncaring sister, and pretty much nothing going right. Samuel really is that annoying – especially when, like Amelia, you have no way to escape from him (when she is given an afternoon off work to go take care of him, tellingly the movie shows us her walking around the mall and eating ice cream, instead of going to get him). But at a certain point, the movie switches gear a little – we stop feeling sorry of Amelia, and start fearing her – and feeling sorry for Samuel, who is now in an even bigger nightmare than even felt was possible.

The Babadook works as a straight ahead horror movie. Writer/director Jennifer Kent knows how to make an audience jump, but does so with more skill and intelligence than most do. The Babadook himself is a scary figure – seen in glimpses, flashes, shadows, but always disturbing and creepy. As the film progresses, Kent traps her two main characters in their small house – a mini-masterwork in creepy art direction, and uses off-kilter cinematography to increase the strangeness of the house. The film is a low budget, Australian horror film – but is more effective as movie with much more money to spend.

But what makes The Babadook is great is how it taps into something greater than just scaring the audience. The movie is an unsettling and disturbing appearance for far more reasons than just the scares in it. This is a portrait of parenting that calls to mind We Need to Talk About Kevin – both the book and the movie – and will be all the more chilling to parents, who will undoubtedly recognize a little of themselves in Amelia.

Movie Review: Focus

Focus
Directed by: Glenn Ficarra & John Requa.
Written by: Glenn Ficarra & John Requa.
Starring: Will Smith (Nicky), Margot Robbie (Jess), Adrian Martinez (Farhad), Gerald McRaney (Owens), Rodrigo Santoro (Garriga), BD Wong (Liyuan), Brennan Brown (Horst), Robert Taylor (McEwen), Dotan Bonen (Gordon), Griff Furst (Gareth), Stephanie Honoré (Janice).

Focus is far more entertaining than it has any real right to be. The screenplay is more than a little bit of a mess – seemingly striving for a classic three act structure, without finding a way to fuse the acts together in a way that feels natural. As the film races towards it climax, it devolves into clichés of the genre – which we know it will from the outset (when a character explains a classic con in part one, you cannot fool the audience when that con surfaces in act three). Yet, the movie is never less than entertaining and engaging on a moment by moment basis, even if the film never really comes together.

The main reason why Focus works is that it has two excellent movie star performances at its core. The fact that Will Smith is so effortlessly charming isn’t a surprise – he’s one of the last of the true movie stars, who can deliver these types of performances that are not easy, and make it look effortless. It may have been a while since Smith delivered a performance like this – his last film was After Earth, which wasted his talents as a charmer in role that required him to be boring – but he hasn’t lost it. The slightly surprising part is just how good Margot Robbie is as his protégé and eventual love interest. Robbie was brilliant in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street of course, but here she is in full movie star mode, and she pulls it off so wonderfully, that it should make her a real one. The two have instant sexual chemistry – probably because they are the two best looking people in the movie be far – and directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa crib from Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight (okay, they outright steal from it, but if you’re going to steal, steal from the best) in the way they shoot the pair of them as the verbally spar, flirt and fall for each other, even if it isn’t a good idea.

The plot of the movie is a bit of a mess. Smith is Nicky, a veteran conman and Robbie is Jess, a rookie he meets when she tries (unsuccessfully) to run a scam on him. Instead, he ends up showing her a few tricks of the trade – and when, a few days later, she shows up in New Orleans before the Super Bowl, he takes her under his wing, and into his very large crew. Unlike most movie conmen, he isn’t after one big score – but a lot of little scores. That way, he can make a lot of money, and keep the risk low. At least that is what he says in act one. In act two, hell risk everything in a series of ridiculous bets with Liyuan (B.D. Wong) and in act three, set three years later, he’ll go after that one final score, trying to con a racing magnate (Rodirgo Santoro) who has hired Nicky to con his competitors – much to the chagrin of his security man (Gerald McCraney). These are the types of scams Nicky says in the first act to avoid – but hey, the movie really has nowhere to go after act one unless it goes bigger in the latter two acts.

Like I said, as a whole, I don’t think Focus really works. It doesn’t gain momentum as it goes along – it kind of repeatedly builds, climaxes, and starts again. And yet, the individual acts work fairly well as single acts – particularly the second one, set almost entirely in one luxury box at the Super Bowl, which slowly and gradually ups the ante to insane degrees. It works because of Smith, Robbie and Wong – all of whom play off of each other wonderfully. That act two works so well is a disappointment for act three, which is far too busy, has far too many people and rushes through its complicated plot. By this point, the movie has repeatedly tried to fool us – so we no longer trust it. We just keep waiting for the movie to pull the rag out from under us (again) and when it does, it’s hardly shocking.

And yet, I liked the movie more than I probably should have. I enjoyed watching Smith and Robbie and their sexual chemistry – even if I didn’t much care for the story. Some of the supporting characters add interest, and the movie is a lot more fun than most wide release February movies are. Smith and Robbie could be the romantic pair at the heart of a great film like this – Focus isn’t that film, but it will do.

Movie Review: Bad Turn Worse

Bad Turn Worse
Directed by: Simon Hawkins & Zeke Hawkins.
Written by: Dutch Southern.
Starring: Jeremy Allen White (Bobby), Logan Huffman (B.J.), Mackenzie Davis (Sue), Mark Pellegrino (Giff), William Devane (Big Red), Jon Gries (Sheriff Shep).

If you are making a Texas-set noir, you know you are going too compared to the work of Jim Thompson – the great noir writer, who set much of his work there, among the low level criminals and regular folk who become criminals in an attempt to get out of their dead end lives. Bad Turn Worse, directed by Simon & Zeke Hawkins and written by Dutch Southern, knows they are going to be compared to Thompson – and they don’t try and hide the influence he had on their film. In the film’s first dialogue sequence, Sue (Mackenzie Davis) gives Bobby (Jeremy Allen White) one of Thompson’s books, and tells him to read it. “You’ll like it – it’s about here”, she tells him. The pair of them are in the summer between high school and college – and they cannot wait to get out. Sue is the smartest of the pair – she has outgrown this town a long time ago, and isn’t really trying to hide that anymore. Bobby is not quite as intellectually curious as Sue – but he doesn’t want to stay in town and work in the kind of dead end job that everyone he knows does. Sue’s boyfriend is Bobby’s best friend – BJ (Logan Huffman) – who is a lunk head, but is putting on a brave face knowing that his “best friend and best girl” are about to leave him behind. BJ decides that what the trio really needs is one last blowout before the pair leave him behind – and he has a wad of bills in his pocket that will pay for that weekend in Corpus Christi. Bobby and Sue don’t ask questions about where the money came from – and just go out and help him spend it. We know where BJ got it though – he has stolen it from his and Bobby’s boss, Giff (Mark Pellegrino) – a low level criminal who thinks he’s a little smarter than he really is. But what he lacks in smarts, he makes up for with meanness – returning from their weekend, BJ and Bobby find Giff kicking his Mexican employee who was supposed to guard the money. Even after Bobby – for something his friend did confesses, Giff still shoots the Mexican, who should have guarded his money better. Giff may not be overly smart – but he’s sharp enough to figure out that anything Bobby did, BJ and Sue would also be in on. And instead of killing the trio – he tells them that to make it up to him, all they have to do is rob Giff’s boss – a mobster called Big Red. According to Giff, that will be easy – but of course, nothing goes according to plan.

Bad Turn Worse is by no means a great film – but for its first hour, it is a good modern noir. It is a clever twist to set the movie in the summer between high school and college – which has been the setting for countless teen movies, of course, but never a noir like this (at least to my recollection). What’s remarkable is how easily that oft-documented time suits a noir like this. The three main characters are bored – in different ways – but basically their life is in a holding pattern. Sue knows she is going on to bigger and better things – the types of things she has read about in all of her books. She fancies herself the smartest person around – and to an extent she is, but she isn’t quite as smart as she thinks she is. Bobby is acting the part of a guy excited to leave town – but a scene late in the second act with his family (a quiet one, that happens so quickly, I almost I missed it) suggests that he is hiding more than it seems – and that part of what he is doing is putting on an act to impress Sue, which works, to a certain extent. Neither of them take BJ that seriously – but they should. He isn’t quite as dumb as he seems.

Unfortunately, Bad Turn Worse comes apart in its final act – which has one twist and turn after another, and involves multiple instances of the talking villain featuring them say things like “It was all part of the plan” – and then proceed to explain their plan, only to realize that someone else has double crossed them, and will eventually have to explain what they did. It gets to a point where in all honesty, I just stopped caring, and wanted the film to end.

But the film does work for most of its runtime – and shows real promise from the first time directors and writer. They were smart enough to try not to be overly ambitious their first time out – and basically have constructed a solid noir – with some fine performances. It may not be the most original film of the year – but it’s a fun little noir for most of its runtime.