Movie Review: Les Affames

Les affamés *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Robin Aubert.

Written by: Robin Aubert.

Starring: Marc-André Grondin (Bonin), Monia Chokri (Tania), Charlotte St-Martin (Zoé), Micheline Lanctôt (Pauline), Marie-Ginette Guay (Thérèse), Brigitte Poupart (Céline), Édouard Tremblay-Grenier (Ti-Cul), Luc Proulx (Réal), Didier Lucien (Vézina), Robert Brouillette (Paco), Martin Héroux (Demers), Patrick Hivon (Race driver).

 

I am constantly surprised by how durable the zombie genre is – how new directors find new ways of exploring the genre, and finding new notes to hit. I don’t necessarily think that Robin Aubert’s Les Affames (The Ravenous) is completely new or different, but I do think he is trying something interesting with the film that marks it as different from most of the Night of the Living Dead (or now The Walking Dead) clones out there.

 

The film takes place in the Northern Quebec countryside, and spends a long time bringing together its cast of characters. When the film opens, the zombie apocalypse has already began, and the film makes no effort to try and explain what happened or why. It also doesn’t waste any time explaining the “rules” of this particular zombie outbreak, because they are the same as every other one we’ve seen in the past 50 years – you get bit, you’re turning into a zombie, it’s only a matter of time.

 

There are a few things that make the zombies in Aubert’s film different from most. Like all right minded people out there, he knows zombies move slowly, but here they are quite the unthinking, unfeeling killing machines we have normally seen. There is something about them that remains at least somewhat human – when you kill them, they do in fact cry out in pain, which is somewhat different. They also seem to cling to some semblance of their former lives – one of the most haunting moments comes with the realization that they are building some kind of shrine out of their old belongings – chairs, toys, etc. They may no longer be “human” – but what are they?

 

Gradually we get to know the characters – including self-confessed nerd Bonin (Marc-Andre Grondin), who is somewhat lonely and regretful that he never had a family of his own in his life – aside from his mother, who is still around. There is Tania (Monia Chokri), who has found her way to this small town, clinging to her accordion – the one thing she has from her old life. The two form some sort of weird family unit along with little Zoe – an orphan who is there as well. There are more of course – a business woman realizing she has lived her life the way she was meant to, not the way she wanted, and a strange pair – an older man, and teenage boy, both of whom made the perhaps fatal flaw of not killing their turned families soon enough.

 

As with all zombie stories, Aubert is more interested in the living than the living dead – and using the genre to explore that. The characters in Les Affames are more downbeat and introspective than most. They do eventually decide to try and leave the ravaged small town countryside for the city – reckoning that the government would be active there (just one of many, small moments that imply a particular hostility between rural and urban areas in Quebec in particular – but also there in wider context as well).

 

We know where the story is going – and it doesn’t disappoint. There is plenty of bloodshed in the film, although tellingly, Aubert lets some of the more major events happen off-screen – we see what leads up to them, or the come down, but not necessarily the act itself. The end of the film, in its way, is both heartbreaking, and somewhat affirming. All is not lost yet.

 

I don’t think Les Affames truly breaks new ground in the zombie genre – but it doesn’t enough interesting stuff that it should be a zombie film on your radar. For those (like me) who eventually gave up on The Walking Dead because of its seemingly limitless nihilism, Les Affames offers something refreshingly different.

Movie Review: The Final Year

The Final Year *** / *****

Directed by: Greg Barker.

 

I cannot help but wonder if The Final Year – a well-made documentary, that follows around Barack Obama and a few members of his foreign policy team during their final year in office would be as good as it is if Hillary Clinton had won the election in 2016 – as clearly everyone in this movie thought she was going to. The film has back stage access to the likes of Secretary of State John Kerry, UN Ambassador Samantha Power and speechwriter/advisor Ben Rhodes – and occasionally Obama himself – as they go about their work, You cannot say that any of them are completely unguarded – they know a camera is there after all, and they choose their words wisely, but they all seem less scripted than when you see them at press conferences and the like. The filmmaker, Greg Barker, clearly likes all of the people he’s making the documentary about – and more importantly, agrees with them. Had Clinton won, and like-minded people took over the roles, than The Final Year may have look like nothing more than idol worship.

 

But of course, Clinton didn’t win – Donald Trump did – and so the movie, unintentionally, captures something else entirely. There are the earlier moments in the film – when everyone is so sure Trump is going to lose, where Rhodes seems almost smug about the possibility of a Trump presidency – he laughs a little. If Kerry and particularly Powers seem like idealists, Rhodes never quite does – he believes in everything he’s doing of course, but he’s more a political animal. This gets him in trouble early in the film, when a New York Magazine profile about him comes out, and publishes a few choice quotes – in particular ones where he basically calls the Washington press corps stupid. As the film progresses – particularly as it gets to election night – it’s more like watching a slow moving car crash that they didn’t see coming. In the section in the months after the election, everyone seems to be a daze – not quite believing what has happened.

 

We’ve seen this in a few documentaries now of course. I saw it in Get Me Roger Stone, about the former Trump adviser as he celebrates the victory and 11/8/16, which documented people on all sides during election day, and even in the new Gloria Allred documentary Seeing Allred. But to see it from the inside of the Obama administration (or as inside as we’re likely to see) is different.

 

Overall, the film itself is interesting in showing how this sort of diplomacy works – the hard work someone like Kerry has to do in order to negotiate all the deals he did in the last year, or how hard Powers has to fight for her causes in the face of indifference and politics, or how Rhodes has to write the speeches, knowing Obama may change them. It’s interesting to see Obama himself on those stops, and interacting with the people. The film is, in essence, showing us how all of this is supposed to work. What makes it interesting is, of course, that Trump has basically thrown all this out the window – he does whatever he wants, and chaos has reigned during his year in office – no one quite knowing what’s going to happen day-to-day. It makes the film a little more depressing than probably intended – even if you don’t agree with what Obama and his team were doing, because it at least showed them as functional people working towards a common goal. I don’t know what the hell a similar movie about Trump’s first year would look like – but it wouldn’t be this.

Movie Review: Black Panther

Black Panther **** / *****

Directed by: Ryan Coogler.

Written by: Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole based on the Marvel comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Starring: Chadwick Boseman (T'Challa / Black Panther), Michael B. Jordan (Erik Killmonger), Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Martin Freeman (Everett K. Ross), Daniel Kaluuya (W'Kabi), Andy Serkis (Ulysses Klaue / Klaw), Angela Bassett (Ramonda), Forest Whitaker (Zuri), Letitia Wright (Shuri), Winston Duke (M'Baku), Sterling K. Brown (N'Jobu), John Kani (King T'Chaka), Florence Kasumba (Ayo), David S. Lee (Limbani), Atandwa Kani (Young T'Chaka).

 

With Black Panther, director Ryan Coogler doesn’t really re-invent the Marvel movie – but he finds room inside of its structure to create something unique. The film hits the story beats you expect any superhero origin movie to, and yet it does so in new and different ways – basically because Coogler fully embraces what it is about Black Panther than makes the character, and his origins, different from the superheroes that came before. He does a better job than any director before him in this series in building a new, unique world and from making a movie that doesn’t look like all the other films. I have mentioned before that basically directors of Marvel movies act like television directors – they are brought in to make movies off a template. Coogler, more than anyone before him, ignores that template and does his own thing, even while respecting the overall universe his film is in. He doesn’t blow up the Marvel universe, as much as he expands it – and in the process, he’s made arguably the best film in the MCU so far.

 

We were introduced to Black Panther – aka T’Challa, crown Prince of the African nation of Wakanda, in Captain America: Civil War – but we really didn’t learn much about him, other than he was on a mission of vengeance to catch the man who detonated a bomb that killed his father – King T’Chaka. This film takes place in the aftermath of that death, as T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns to Wakanda to officially be crowned King. In order to do that, he has to go through rituals, which include allowing any of the members of the other tribes in Wakanda with Royal Blood, to challenge him in ritual combat – something that will arise again later in the film, with the return of Wakanda’s prodigal son – a kid from Oakland known as Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan). Killmonger instantly becomes the best villain in the MCU so far, because he’s really the first villain in the 18 films who you can look at and actually think he’s making valid points. He isn’t a power hungry madman hell-bent on world domination – at least not for his own purposes. He, reasonably, thinks that Wakanda could have helped “people who look like you” across the globe who have been oppressed forever, but instead Wakanda has sat back, and stayed out of everything. You can disagree with Killmonger’s methods – which is basically to kill anyone who doesn’t agree with him – and still think he makes a valid point. Smartly, the movie knows this, and doesn’t try to hide that fact.

 

Before the movie gets there though, it does a wonderful job at world building in terms of Wakanda – who we get our first real glimpse of here. Wakanda is a rich country (because of their wealth of Vibranium, the strongest metal on earth, that they have used to become a technological wonder), posing as a poor one, and the film’s art direction is a brilliant mixture of the futuristic and the ancient. Coogler and his collaborators have taken aspects of many African cultures and countries, and combined them to create something both recognizable and unique. This is clearly the best looking film the MCU has had to date – with amazing production design and costumes, to go along with the expected flair of visual effects, and expert cinematography by Rachel Morrison.

 

The movie could have spent its entire runtime simply on the inner workings of Wakanda itself – it certainly has more interesting characters than any other Marvel movie to date. The film has many strong, female characters (strong in multiple ways), like Nakia (Luptia Nyong’o), as T’Challa’s ex (who he is still in love with), who has sentiments similar to Killmonger’s, but a different outlook on how to achieve them. T’Challa’s little sister Shuri (Letita Wright) – my favorite character in the film other than Killmonger – who is essentially a cooler version of James Bond’s Q - and Okoye (Danai Gurira), the General of the all-female elite army, tasked with protecting Wakanda, and its king. That doesn’t even mention some of the rival tribe leaders - M'Baku (Winston Duke), who heads up the mountain tribe, who has kept their distance from Wakanda and its technology, and Daniel Kaluuya as W’Kabi, more open to Killmonger’s ideas than anyone. When Killmonger comes to Wakanda, he gets as far as he does not because he convinces every one of his ideas, but because the seeds of discourse are already there – he’s simply exploiting them.

 

By design, Boseman’s T’Challa/Black Panther is pretty much the dullest character in the film. He is conflicted, of course, because he wants to be a good man and a good king – and it’s difficult to be both. Like in Thor: Ragnorok, the film’s main conflict arises because of the beloved patriarch’s hidden sins and lies, that expose the myths of their country being noble as just that – myths. This is a thread that has run through at least some of the MCU films, and its rather daring – it’s even hinted at in the Captain America movies, that the ultimate symbol of American patriotism, no longer stands for the same things the country does – but it hasn’t gone wholly there (yet).

 

If this sounds like a lot for any one movie to handle, it is – and if I had a complaint about Black Panther, it’s that it rushes a little too much through some of it in order to get to the things that any Marvel movie needs – action scenes, car chases and a CGI generated big battle at the end. Coogler handles this better than most directors – a highlighted is a terrific fight sequence in a casino, followed by an excellent car chase – but even I have to admit that by the time the final battle introduced battle rhinos, it had gone perhaps a touch too far over-the-top.

 

Yet the movie remains satisfying until the end – giving Michael B. Jordan one of the best last lines a movie villain has ever had, which tops off one of the great performances the superhero genre has ever seen. In the span of three films – Fruitvale Station, Creed and now Black Panther, Coogler has become one of the best directors working, and shows everyone who to make huge budget movies, in the biggest franchise around, and still be personal movies. Yes, I hope he escapes franchise mode at some point – but he’s still shown everyone else exactly how this type of film should be done.

Movie Review: Early Man

Early Man *** / *****

Directed by: Nick Park.

Written by: Mark Burton and James Higginson and John O’Farrell and Nick Park.

Starring: Tom Hiddleston (Lord Nooth), Maisie Williams (Goona), Eddie Redmayne (Dug), Timothy Spall (Chief Bobnar), Miriam Margolyes (Queen Oofeefa), Richard Ayoade (Treebor), Mark Williams (Barry), Rob Brydon (Message Bird), Kayvan Novak (Dino), Johnny Vegas (Asbo), Selina Griffiths (Magma), Simon Greenall (Eemak), Gina Yashere (Gravelle), Luke Walton (Huggelgrabber).

 

For the most part, the films from British animation studio Aardman are a refreshing break from the animated films produced and aimed at kids in America. It helps that their latest, Early Man, is only their 7^th feature and they’ve been making them since 2000’s delightful Chicken Run, meaning that they don’t produce so much that we get sick of them, or that they start to feel like assembly line pieces, like so many of the even good American animated films do.

 

That’s still true of Early Man, to a certain extent, and yet something about the film felt a little off for me from Aardman – something a little warmed over. The film is still sweet and funny, delightfully goofy, with a mixture of clever sight gags, and word play that at times can be clever, and at other times so knowing silly that it makes you laugh in spite of how cheesy the joke is. As consistently enjoyable the individual moments of Early Man are however, they never really build to up to anything greater – anything all that special. The film starts off as a cave man film, and ends as a sports film, and seem to be going through the motions in both.

 

The film is about a small, rabbit hunting tribe from the Stone Age – and our hero is Dug (Eddie Redmayne), who thinks that perhaps they should try and hunt something bigger, only to be told (as countless animated heroes before) that he should be happy with things just as they are. He doesn’t get much chance of that however, when his tribes valley is invaded by a new group – led by the nitwit Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston) – of the incoming Bronze Age, who wants to mine for Bronze there. Dug ends up in their city, and sees all the wonders of Bronze, but still ants to protect his home. He ends up (in a series of events too complicated to go over) challenging Nooth’s soccer team – Real Bronze – to a match for control over the valley. He teams up with a member of the Bronze city – Goona (Maisie Williams) – never given a chance to play because she’s a girl – to teach his ragtag tribe of misfits to play against the greatest team in the world. They’ll beat them, according to Goona, because they can be a real team – Real Bronze is full of great players, but they play as individuals.

 

There is hardly a sports movie (or caveman movie) cliché the film doesn’t exploit. To be fair, most of the time, they are playing with the conventions of the genres in interesting, fun ways. The voice work is quite good – with the likes of Redmayne and Timothy Spall being delightfully, innocent dim and hilarious, and the like of Hiddleston and his ilk being so goofily arrogant that they’re hilarious. The great Rob Brydon shows up and does multiple voices – the best probably a pair of sports commentators, who deliver play-by-play of things beyond the game.

 

Early Man is consistently fun – but I don’t think it every really finds its footing. The best Aardman movies – Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, even the utterly fun Shaun the Sheep – end up being more than just the sum of its parts, and I don’t think Early Man ever really does. Aardman, of course, got its start in short films (Nick Park, who directed this film, has won four Oscars – three for Short films), and Early Man feels more like a series of ideas for shorts, strung together. The film is still fun and funny – but it’s missing a little bit of that Aardman magic – that usually makes their films something truly special.

Movie Review: The 15:17 to Paris

The 15:17 to Paris ** / ***** 

Directed by: Clint Eastwood   

Written by: Dorothy Blyskal based on the book by Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone and Jeffrey E. Stern.

Starring: Spencer Stone (Airman Spencer Stone), Anthony Sadler (Anthony Sadler), Alek Skarlatos (Specialist Alek Skarlatos), Jenna Fischer (Heidi Skarlatos), Judy Greer (Joyce Eskel), Cole Eichenberger (Young Spencer Stone), Paul-Mikél Williams (Young Anthony Sadler), Bryce Gheisar (Young Alek Skarlatos), Ray Corasani (Ayoub El-Khazzani), Thomas Lennon (School Principal), Jaleel White (Garrett Walden), Tony Hale (Gym Teacher), P.J. Byrne (Mr. Henry - Hallway Monitor).

 

It’s easy to see what drew 87 year old icon Clint Eastwood to the story of three young Americans, two of them in the armed forces, who happened to be a train from Amsterdam to Paris when a terrorist, armed with an assault rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, tried to carry out a deadly attack – only to be foiled by those three men, with the assistance of others on board the train. It is a story of everyday heroism and how violence is sometimes necessary to prevent even worse violence. But Eastwood never really finds his way into the material here, never really figures out what he’s trying to say with the film. Eastwood’s films have always been about violence – its causes and its effects, and while his films often argue violence is necessary, they also usually argue that it comes with some sort of cost. This film never gets that chance, as it climaxes with the violence, and then has a hasty reconstructed ceremony honoring the heroes, and then just ends. The attack itself is handled very well by Eastwood – most of what leads up to it is horribly awkward.

 

Part, but not all, of that awkwardness comes from the fact that Eastwood cast the real life people – Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos – to play themselves. There are directors who excel at working with non-professionals, and drawing great performances out of them – but Eastwood is not one of them (I cannot help but think that Eastwood’s famous quick shooting style of only liking one or two takes cannot help amateurs, who clearly don’t know what they’re doing). All three performances are awkward – although at a certain point, they also become somewhat charming. Perhaps it’s because the dialogue for some the pros is so brutally awful, that they don’t come across any better (poor Jenna Fischer and Judy Greer can do absolutely nothing with their roles). The film spends an absurd amount of time on the three young men in high school (middle school?) as all three of them get into trouble, but find each other as friends – and remain so, even when circumstances force them apart. This segment has a whole lot of wonderful actors – Thomas Lennon, Jaleel White, Tony Hale, P.J. Bryne – show up for a scene or two, and then disappear having not done very much.

 

The rest of the movie is about the trio as they travel through Europe – Italy, Berlin, and Amsterdam- on a collision course with that train we know they will eventually get on. Eastwood has many gifts as a director – making a casual, hangout film isn’t one of them (I would love to see behind the scenes footage of Eastwood at that club in Amsterdam though if some exists).

 

What’s most disappointing to me about The 15:17 to Paris though is how simple Eastwood makes this all seem – how straight forward. Eastwood is a conservative filmmaker to be sure, but over the years, his films have taken more pointed shots at violence, patriotism and heroism than most liberal filmmakers have. He has rarely depicted even violence as one sided (the criticism that drove me nuts about American Sniper is that Eastwood had made a career of “white hats” and “black hats” – clearly defined characters of good and evil, which make me wonder if those saying that had seen any of his films at all). His last truly great films – Flags of Our Father and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) were two sides of the same coin – showing both the American and Japanese version of that battle, the American version really questioning how America identifies and celebrate war heroes, and the Japanese side showing honor of America’s enemy. The blind spot for Eastwood here is Islamic extremism – a subject he has now tackled twice in American Sniper and The 15:17 to Paris. I didn’t mind that he didn’t have any Iraqis as real characters in American Sniper – that was a film that honed in on the perspective of a man who experienced the war through a sniper rifle, at a distance, when the enemies would have been faceless. There is no such excuse in The 15:17 to Paris – where the heroes get up close and personal with the terrorist. He is as faceless as the enemies in American Sniper – we have no idea what led him to that train or why. Eastwood, it seems, doesn’t care.

 

I really do hope that Eastwood sticks around for a while longer, and directs some more films. When he goes, he will leave a hole in Hollywood that will be impossible to fill. Having said that, it’s pretty hard to argue that The 15:17 to Paris is one of the worst films Eastwood has ever directed – a misjudged film, made a filmmaker without the skillset to pull it off. You want to admire it for all sorts of reasons, but it just isn’t very good.

Movie Review: The Ritual

The Ritual ** ½ / *****

Directed by: David Bruckner.

Written by: Joe Barton based on the novel by Adam Nevill.

Starring: Rafe Spall (Luke), Arsher Ali (Phil), Robert James-Collier (Hutch), Sam Troughton (Dom), Paul Reid (Robert).

 

Director David Bruckner is a talented filmmaker. He did my favorite segment of the horror omnibus films V/H/S (Amateur Night, about a group of horny college guys who get way more than they bargained for) and Southbound (The Accident, about a man on a remote highway looking at his cellphone, and runs over a young woman – which ends up being just the beginning of a horrible night). Both of those are stylish mini-horror films that do an expert job at building the tension, and then finally letting it out. His debut feature, The Ritual, shows some of that talent but is mainly undone by a rather lackluster script, that hits every story beat we expect it to and is essentially going through the motions of this type of horror film. Bruckner, mainly, does a fine job at directing, but there is only so much he can do with what he has to work with.

 

The film is about a group of four university friends, now in their 30s, who instead of the usual “man’s trip” to some party city, have decided to go hiking in Northern Sweden instead. In large part, this decision was made to honor a fifth friend – a man he see murdered in the opening sequence in a random convenience store robbery – a place he would not have been in if not for Luke (Rafe Spall) – who was able to hide during the robbery and escaped without a scratch. The four surviving friends are on their way back to the lodge they are staying at, when they decide to go off the defined path, and instead, to walk through the forest instead. After all, the forest is a more direct route, they can relax sooner, and one of the men, Dom (Sam Troughton), has just twisted his knee and won’t shut up about it. What can possibly go wrong in the dark, remote woods of Sweden?

 

Basically, what The Ritual wants to be is a more polished, all male version of The Blair Witch Project. For most of the movie, the horror comes from noises in the night, things hanging from or carved into trees, and a house in complete disrepair that has some weird stuff in it. As a director, Bruckner doesn’t go with the hand held camera on The Blair Witch Project, but a more polished look. He makes great use of darkness and the house, and all the trees – perhaps that’s easy, but he does a great job regardless.

 

What Bruckner cannot help is the basic plot of the movie, which builds and builds and builds towards a climax with an actual monster (which, to be honest, looks more strange than scary, and was clearly created on a budget). He can also not help the fact that other than Rafe Spall’s Luke, the other three men are ill defined and interchangeable. I do wish someone along the way questioned the need for all the flashbacks to “that night” that litter the film, since it doesn’t actually seem like it has anything to do with the plot at all.

 

I still do think that Bruckner is a talented horror film director. He got a chance to make a full feature after three omnibus segments (I have not seen The Signal – although several people have said that, like the others, his segment was the best) – and decided to take it. I think he does what he can with a script that doesn’t really work.

Movie Review: Seeing Allred

Seeing Allred ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Roberta Grossman and Sophie Sartain.

 

I firmly believe that a great documentary could – and should – be made about Gloria Allred – the famed feminist lawyer, who has spent her career fighting for Women’s rights, as well as gay rights and civil rights of all kinds. She has many detractors – on all sides – who see her as opportunistic and shrill – in it for herself, her won celebrity and money. A truly great documentary would take on those criticisms head on, allow people with all sorts of views on Allred to come forward and say what they have to say. Unfortunately, it seems like the filmmakers behind Seeing Allred – Roberta Grossman and Sophie Sartain – are more interested in presenting a purely positive portrayal of Allred. It doesn’t allow the criticisms levelled against Allred over the years (most of which is misogynistic, some of it not) to really be explored. The criticism when it does come out is either in the form of old clips and sound bites that don’t run more than a few seconds, or stated by Allred allies (who make up all the interviews in the film that aren’t of Allred herself) just so they can swat them aside the next second. I’d be more interested in seeing a documentary that faced those criticisms head on – and allowed Allred to do the same. After all, as the movie makes clear, Allred is at her best when she is fighting back, and having to make her points to people who don’t necessarily want to hear them – and she doesn’t care what you think of her. I don’t think this documentary captures her at her best.

 

What the documentary does do a decent job of is going over the highlights of Allred’s more than 40 year legal career, and a few select moments from her difficult personal life (two marriages that ended badly, a rape in Mexico, which required her to get an illegal, back alley abortion that almost killed her). The film quickly goes over some of the big – and not so big – cases in her career. She was among the first to sue the Catholic Church for sex abuse – decades before the scandal broke big. Or suing a toy store for having “Boy” and “Girl” Toy aisles. Or representing the Brown family during the O.J. Simpson trial, in order to get their side of the story out. The framing device of the movie – the one it returns to again and again – is a series of press conferences Allred holds with various women who have accused Bill Cosby of drugging and raping them.

 

The film essentially lets Allred tell her own story. Her interviews make up the backbone of the film. As in the various clips of her throughout the film, she comes across as intelligent, confident and strong. Yes, she likes the attention and the money, and knows how to get both – but if she were a man, she’d be celebrated for that, not condemned.

 

In short, I think Seeing Allred is worth seeing for those who know nothing about her, and just want a quick primer on who she is, and why she is famous. I wish the film dug in deeper, challenged Allred, her supporters and her critics with something more. What the filmmakers have essentially done is made a dull film about a woman who is anything but.