Movie Review: Bliss

Bliss * ½ / *****

Directed by: Joe Begos.

Written by: Joe Begos.

Starring: Dora Madison (Dezzy), Tru Collins (Courtney), Rhys Wakefield (Ronnie), Jeremy Gardner (Clive), Graham Skipper (Hadrian), Chris McKenna (David), Rachel Avery (Nikki St. Jean), Mark Beltzman (Lance), George Wendt (Pops), Abraham Benrubi (Abe), Jesse Merlin (Dante). 

 

It's never fun to be the sober person trapped with a bunch of drunk or high people. You can tell what they are doing is crazy or stupid, you can tell what they sound like, but you’re never going to break through to them. Bliss is a film that basically emulates that experience for 80 minutes. I think it wants to be an overwhelming, anxiety inducing, relentless thriller like Uncut Gems – but it ends up being a tired provocation full of stale ideas put together with the subtly of a sledgehammer to the face. I admired the lead performance by Dora Madison – she gives it her all and then some – but there is little I find more boring than a film trying so hard to be edgy.

 

In the film, Madison stars as Dezzy – a celebrated artist in L.A. who has done some album covers, and gotten written about, but still cannot quite make ends meet. She has an upcoming show – and the money has run out, and she cannot seem to finish what is supposed to be the centerpiece of her show. She ends up going to her drug dealer and scoring something called Bliss – which she takes, and sends her on a crazy, sex fueled trip with her friend Courtney (Tru Collins) and her sometime boyfriend. As one night turns to another, she keeps getting high, and she starts thirsting for more – but this time not just sex and drugs, but blood. Every night, she heads out into the lurid world on L.A. – here shot in bright reds, and saturated greens, for her sex, drug and violence fueled evenings that get increasingly lurid. She then returns home to do more work on her supposed masterpiece.

 

When this type of movie works, it can be an overwhelming experience. I do think of Uncut Gems – but also Gaspar Noe’s Climax or last year’s Mandy – films that can overwhelm your senses, and even the parts of your brain that require logic. But Bliss never reaches those heights. Perhaps it’s because its message seems to be some combination of Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction – his vampire as drug addicts film – with some flimsy messaging about artists being vampires themselves in their work. And it’s certainly because writer/director Joe Begos thinks that all the sex and gore he puts on screen makes the film edgy and daring – even if there is nothing behind those images. He wants to be provocative, but doesn’t have any provocative ideas.

 

So what we’re stuck with is an 80-minute trip through hell which is basically just dull and boring. Yes, Madison gives it her all – I’d love to see her in another movie where she had a character to play. But other than that, there really is nothing in Bliss worth talking about.

Movie Review: Knives and Skin

Knives and Skin ** / *****                                                                                  

Directed by: Jennifer Reeder.

Written by: Jennifer Reeder.

Starring: Kate Arrington (Renee Darlington), Marika Engelhardt (Lisa Harper), Tim Hopper (Dan Kitzmiller), Grace Smith (Joanna Kitzmiller), Alex Moss (Aaron), Audrey Francis (Lynn Kitzmiller), Tony Fitzpatrick (Principal Markum), James Vincent Meredith (Doug Darlington), Raven Whitley (Carolyn Harper), Ty Olwin (Andy Kitzmiller), Robert T. Cunningham (Jesse Darlington), Marilyn Dodds Frank (Gramma Miriam Kitzmiller), Genevieve Venjohnson (Bridey Kurtich), Ireon Roach (Charlotte Kurtich), Kayla Carter (Laurel Darlington), Aurora Real de Asua (April Martinez), Jalen Gilbert (Jason Kendrick), Haley Bolithon (Afra Siddiqui), Grace Etzkorn (Candice), Emma Ladji (Colleen). 

 

From its opening moments, it is clear that Knives and Skin has been made by a filmmaker who has seen Twin Peaks, and is trying to put their own twist on it. That is precisely what Jennifer Reeder is attempting here – making a movie about a missing (dead) girl, and its effects on her small town in the wake of that disappearance. She focuses mostly on the high school she went to – where she didn’t seem to have many friends – and then slowly moves outwards into the lives of the parents, teachers, etc. The film mostly looks and sounds great – but is dramatically inert, and the surreal touches ring hollow. It feels like it was a film with a message, that didn’t figure out how to deliver that message in an interesting way.

 

The opening scene for the movie sets the tone. It is the night that Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) is to go missing – but she doesn’t know that yet. She’s with Andy (Ty Olwin) in the middle of nowhere, because he thinks they’re going to have sex. When she changes her mind though, he strands her there in her band uniform – without her glasses or phone. She doesn’t make it home. From there, we cycle through the people in her orbit – her mother Lisa (Marika Engelhardt), delivering the best, weirdest performance in the movie as she is unable to come to grips with her missing daughter, and goes in dangerous directions, particularly because she’s a teacher at the school. Andy’s sister Joanna (Grace Smith), has a few interesting side plots – involving selling her mother’s panties to the principal, and then flirting with a new teacher, until it becomes clear that he is taking things way too seriously. In Andy, the principal and the teacher, we have three generations of bad men – all sexualizing teenage girls in ways that see them just as objects. Bad teenagers become bad men, I guess being the message.

 

It just doesn’t ring that true though. The film often pauses for strange, acapella renditions of 1980s pop songs by the teenagers – either in choir, or by themselves, delivered in emotionless monotone. Is the message here that they don’t understand the songs – they being from a different generation – or that they are too emotionally stunted to enjoy anything? The parents are just as stunted however – in different ways – trapped in loveless marriages, and emotionless affairs, etc.

 

The film seemingly wants to be a feminist take on Lynch’s Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet – an admirable goal to be sure. But Reeder never reaches Lynch’s depths – his weirdness, and the surreal touches, comes out of something emotionally real – and hers seem borrowed, from Lynch and others. There is promise here – the film does look good, and there are moments that work, and the ambitions of the film are admirable. It just adds up to a lot of nothing.

Movie Review: Spies in Disguise

Spies in Disguise *** / *****

Directed by: Nick Bruno and Troy Quane.

Written by: Brad Copeland and Lloyd Taylor.

Starring: Will Smith (Lance Sterling), Tom Holland (Walter Beckett), Rashida Jones (Marcy Kappel), Ben Mendelsohn (Killian), Reba McEntire (Joy Jenkins), Rachel Brosnahan (Wendy Beckett), Karen Gillan (Eyes), DJ Khaled (Ears), Masi Oka (Kimura), Carla Jimenez (Geraldine).

 

One could accuse the new animated children’s film, Spies in Disguise, of being hypocritical. It is, after all, a children’s film that lectures against the use of violence, while still being an action packed adventure film with a lot of violence – because, of course, the hero has to be someone capable of kicking butt in order for his decision to take a less violent approach mean more. But for me, I appreciated the message of the film that is aimed at children who we always tell to “use your words” – after they’ve smacked their sister in the face for stealing their M&M’s. It’s at least slightly more interesting than another film telling kids to be themselves, and always be kind, etc. No, sometimes, there are bad guys out there – or at least people you aren’t going to get along with. But there is another way of dealing with them than killing their entire family – which I’m pretty sure is what the hero of Spies in Disguise did before the movie begins.

 

The movie is an animated film from Blue Sky – still probably best known for Ice Age, and milking Ice Age to death with sequel after sequel after most of their other films didn’t do quite as well. Normally, they aren’t quite as good as Dreamworks, who of course aren’t as good as Pixar, but what their films lack in writing, they make up for in garish colors – colors that seem to be designed to distract children from the lack of story or character, and to completely blind their parents. In short, for the most part, they are bland and interchangeable with most other animation churned out by Hollywood that isn’t Pixar.

 

Spies in Disguise is one of their best though. It is a fast movie action, spy thriller that begins with a sad little boy – Walter – saying goodbye to his police officer mother (this being a kid’s movie, you can guess what will happen to her). He is a genius, who creates many inventions, all designed to help spies and cops – without hurting their enemies – and he grows up to join the Agency in their weapons department. He is the exact opposite of Lance Sterling (Will Smith) an ultra-cool spy, who likes to work alone, and in a style of smash and grab – he destroys everything in his path, and doesn’t care. Through a series of events too complicated to explain though, Lance and Walter end up having to team up when the Agency thinks Lance has turned against them – and he seeks out Walter who said he had a way to make someone invisible. It turns out Walter was speaking metaphorically invisible – in that his new invention can turn someone into a pigeon. It is so new however that he hasn’t figured out how to change one back yet. Anyway, the two of them – meek Walter, and Lance as a pigeon, go on a globetrotting adventure to find the real bad guy – Killian (Ben Mendelsohn) – who has stolen some very advanced, very violent technology, and plans on using it against the agency itself.

 

The movie moves so quickly, and glides along on the charming voice work by Will Smith and Tom Holland as the unlikely duo at its heart, that its only gradually that the obvious message becomes that way. Smith and Holland are clearly two of the most likable stars in Hollywood – even when you cannot see their faces – that you root for them. And Mendelsohn’s contributions shouldn’t be overlooked either, He is excellent as the bad guy whenever he plays them – but he is especially good at playing the wounded bad guy – the bad guy who still may be bad, but has a legitimate point, and legitimate wounds that turned him that way. That is eventually what we get from him.

 

The animation is mostly typical of Blue Sky – cartoony and bright and fast moving, but at least not as garish as usual, and not quite as headache inducing. The action sequences are well handled – especially when they get more inventive when they add in Walter’s weird gadgets, and the film turns more slapsticky and comic. The film does get a little dark at times – when you realize the implications of what Killian is saying for instance – but most glides along at a brisk pace.

 

In short, Spies in Disguise is a fun little kid’s movie – with a little bit of a different – and welcome – message, even if it’s also more than a little hypocritical in how it delivers that message, and how Lance remains a hero even when we realize what he has done. Complex this film is not – but as a fun distraction for kids, that won’t be painful for adults, it delivers.

Movie Review: For Sama

For Sama **** / *****

Directed by: Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts.

 

There have been many documentaries about Syria in the last few years – from ones that try to give an overall overview of the conflict – the history of it, etc. to those that concentrate on just one small part of it. Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts’ For Sama is perhaps the most extraordinary of them all – a personal film that documents the day-to-day life on the ground in the last days of Aleppo, all from the camera Waad’s own camera as she documents herself, her fellow revolutionaries, including her doctor husband, and her fellow citizens, who live horribly traumatic day-to-day lives, where the threat of death is always there, and yet they push on still. The film gets its title for Waad’s daughter – she is making this film for her in order to explain to her one day why she and her husband, Hamza, felt they had to stay – even after Sama was born. In a way, she may be trying to explain it to herself – she doesn’t always seem so sure, and by the end, she has left as well. The result is this intimate documentary.

 

All the footage we see in For Sama was shot by Waad herself – the voiceover we hear is hers as well. She captures heartbreaking footage – footage of mother’s moments after the death of their children, brothers carrying the lifeless body of another brother, stillborn babies be brought back, etc. This film can be as dramatic as any other you will see this year – as emotionally traumatizing as well.

 

She also captures the grim everyday – the streets that are basically now just rubble. The nightly routine of the hospital staff gathering in the “safest room in the building” as another airstrike is going on. Mothers who continue to live there, and continue to try and make the lives of their children if not happy, at least somewhat normal.

 

In voiceover, we hear her try and justify staying. All this started out with so much promise – the Arab Spring seemed to give people like her hope that things could change, even in Syria. When the Assad regime started murdering its own civilians, they thought that sooner or later someone would do something about it – the world doesn’t let this kind of thing happen anymore, do they?

 

Apparently, we do – and For Sama is a document of just what the cost was. If you still don’t know the history here, Cries from Syria probably gives you a better overview than For Sama, which assumes some general knowledge. But this is a film that should be required viewing. We have done almost nothing for the Syrian people in the West – perhaps the very least we can do is watch a film like For Sama, if only to realize what it is we have turned away from.

Movie Review: Black Mother

Black Mother *** / *****

Directed by: Khalik Allah.

 

Kahlik Allah’s Black Mother is a film to admire, to ponder, to take in in snippets, and wonder how they fit into the whole. It’s a film that I cannot say is entertaining, or even that I liked it all that much, but it’s one that inspired some deep thought about its subjects in a way that a more traditional film would. Allah’s subject is Jamaica, and the 77-minute film is basically one in which Allah allows various people to talk to the camera about Jamaica – it’s past, it’s present, its future, without editorializing. There’s no music, no voice overs, no real talking heads. It is a documentary – but not in the way most people thing of them. It’s a fascinating film – one that resembles an art installation perhaps more than a traditional film.

 

The film is given a loose structure by returning time and again to a pregnant woman, so that each trimester represents something new. The film shows a lot of underbelly of Jamaica – the side tourists don’t see – and returns again and again to street prostitutes – who have many problems with pimps, etc. It also recounts the history of slavery in the country – how Christianity started there because of slavery, but how they have morphed into something else entirely. The film doesn’t shy away from the darkness – but you could not accuse of it being poverty porn.

div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">  

Allah’s strategy here is more complex than it seems. It really is a collage effect he is going for – a mixture of images, and voices, that converge to make up something larger than the sum of its parts. Allah doesn’t give much context for what he shows us – the context comes through the film itself, and what it brings. No one is explaining anything to do – while at the same time, a lot is explained.

 

Black Mother is the type of film that I admire more than I actually like. It takes great precision and planning on Allah’s part to put something like this together in the way he puts it all together. In doing so, he offers perhaps a deeper portrait of Jamaica than another filmmaker could do. That doesn’t necessarily mean the film is entertaining to watch – it requires close attention, a willingness to be confused, and puts pieces together, etc. There are some who will think the film is a masterpiece – some who probably won’t make it through it at all. I’m kind of right in the middle.

The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville: Army of Shadows (1969)

Army of Shadows (1969) 

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville.

Written by: Jean-Pierre Melville based on the novel by Joseph Kessel.

Starring: Lino Ventura (Philippe Gerbier), Paul Meurisse (Luc Jardie), Jean-Pierre Cassel (Jean François Jardie), Simone Signoret (Mathilde), Claude Mann (Claude Ullmann dit 'Le Masque'), Paul Crauchet (Felix Lepercq), Christian Barbier (Guillaume Vermersch dit 'Le Bison'), Serge Reggiani (The hairdresser), André Dewavrin (Colonel Passy), Alain Dekok (Legrain), Alain Mottet (Commander of the camp), Alain Libolt (Paul Dounat), Jean-Marie Robain (Baron de Ferte Talloire).

 

Army of Shadows is perhaps the film that best exemplifies the very different reactions that director Jean-Pierre Melville received during his life, and what happened when his work was rediscovered in the years after he died. Army of Shadows was barely seen in 1969 – it was denounced in France as being right-wing Gaullist, and retrograde, and never made it out of the country. When the film was restored and released into American theaters for the first time in 2006, it was rightly hailed as the masterpiece that it is. Like much of Melville, the timing was off for him to get the credit he deserved during his life – but at least we can correct that now.

 

The film is about the French Resistance during WWII, something Melville knew all too well because he was a part of it. This is not a film of excitement and action, raids and spy craft however – it has some of all of that of course, but the bulk of its runtime is made up of the tense everyday experiences that members of the resistance lived through – knowing the whole time they were likely to die, but doing it all anyway. They were anonymous and secretive – brothers don’t even know that they are both a member of the same group – and being arrested probably meant death – but it could also mean betrayal, and you were never quite sure who to trust. Melville basically turns the film into an unbearably intent two-and-a-half hour waiting game – when what everyone is waiting for is death.

 

The main character here is Phillippe Gerbier – played by Lino Ventura, who had been great in Melville’s Le Deuxième Souffle three years prior. Like all great Melville leads, Gerbier is a man of few words, who are defined by his actions more than anything else, and played in a calm, almost flat style that Melville preferred – you will never see someone overact in a Melville film. He has been arrested when the film opens, taken from one anonymous room by German guards after another – he knows in one of these rooms, he will be killed eventually – and he devises a crude and simple escape – he literally just runs when given the chance. The whole film may be summarized in the scene where after his escape, he ducks into a barbershop for a shave. This is suspicious of course – it’s night time, you almost wonder why the barber is even open. The two men barely say a word, and when he goes to leave, the barber gives him a different overcoat. Both men know what this was, but don’t say a word about it.

 

There is a plot in Army of Shadows – but not much of one. The Germans are barely seen in the film, and whatever the resistance is doing on a day-to-day basis is not something that Melville really dives into. The film is more about just the day-to-day will or survival – that winning means surviving another day, even though you know you will not win forever. When Gerbier is arrested again, he and others are led into a yard, where the Germans tell them all that they will be given a chance to run – make it to the wall first and you’ll be killed with the next group of prisoners, instead of this one. Gerbier isn’t sure if he should even run – if he should give them the satisfaction of running. But of course he runs. They all run.

 

Eventually more characters start to emerge. Melville favorite Paul Meurisse as the head of the resistance – at least this small chapter. The great Simone Signoret as Mathilde, the only woman in the group, and held in such high regard by everyone that they speak of her almost reverently. The closing scenes in the film hurt then, because we know that as much as they were all prepared for death – and how what they do is necessary – how much it still hurts to have to do it.

 

In many ways, Army of Shadows is an odd film for Melville – it’s one of the only films he made that you could describe as political at all, although I’m not sure it really is. Calling the film right wing and Gaullist as it was at the time seems odd – the film hard exposes political thought at all. What it is about, really, is what many Melville films are about when you strip away the genre trapping – existential dread. The feeling that death is around the corner, and you cannot stop it, may not even want to. The feeling of never being sure who you can trust, as soon or later, someone is bound to betray you – if you don’t betray them first. Melville makes you sit in that tension for the entire runtime – he doesn’t let his characters, or his audience, ever get relief from that tension. The film is, quite simply, a masterpiece.

The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville: Le Samourai (1967)

Le Samouraï (1967) 

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville.

Written by: Jean-Pierre Melville and Georges Pellegrin.

Starring: Alain Delon (Jef Costello), François Périer (Le Commissaire), Nathalie Delon (Jane Lagrange), Cathy Rosier (La pianist), Jacques Leroy (L'homme de la passerelle), Michel Boisrond (Wiener), Robert Favart (Le barman), Jean-Pierre Posier (Olivier Rey).

 

In many ways, Le Samourai is Jean-Pierre Melville at his most stripped down. Gone are the complicated plots and schemes in films like Bob La Flambeur, Le Doulos or Le Deuxième Souffle in what really is a simple story of a doomed hired killer who is effortlessly cool, and who seems like the coldest bastard you could ever meet, and yet suggests that perhaps there are some hidden depths to him. He could survive if he wanted to – at least for a while – but he is so rigid in his routines, that he cannot, does not want to. It is the film that defines Alain Delon’s effortless cool – that would be an inspiration to John Woo and Quentin Tarantino and Michael Mann, and many others. The surface of the movie is perfect and cool and cold – but there are depths here.

 

We basically learn everything we need to know about Delon’s Jef Costello in the opening frames of the movie. We see him lying on the bed of his flat smoking. It’s a simple flat – one room, there are no decorations on the wall, no sign of a personality anywhere – except perhaps the sparrow he keeps in a cage. The two are a matched pair – they are trapped. Costello is a hired killer, and we see him methodically go about his latest job – stealing a car with a giant ring of keys, taking the car to a garage as spare as his room, where a mechanic replaces the license plates with barely a word spoken. The job goes off without a hitch – Costello calmly and coldly executes a nightclub manager. The only problem is that when they round up dozens of suspects, Costello is one of them. It doesn’t matter that he has a double alibi – his girlfriend (played by Delon’s then wife, Nathalie) and then a group of men he gambled with at a club later. The police still suspect him. And that doesn’t sit well with those who hired Jef to pull off the job. For the rest of the movie, Jef has to dodge his employers and the police. And he shows as little emotion as he did at the beginning of the film – he never panics.

 

Le Samourai is defined by its cold, cool style – that is in every aspect of production, from the brilliant cinematography, then never rushes, and is full of cool colors, to Delon’s performance. Delon barely speaks in the film – certainly not near the beginning – and like many a Melville character, is defined purely on his actions. He is a man of constant routine and professionalism. It’s amusing when the cops place a listening device in his room – in a wonderful sequence that goes on for minutes without a word being spoken, just the tweeting of the sparrow, who gets agitated. Jef finds the device easily, almost as soon as he walks in the door, but even if he didn’t, what would the police actually learn? He barely speaks, and has no visitors.

 

Delon is, of course, ridiculously attractive – with those features, and those eyes – and the film spends some time on his relationship with two women – his “girlfriend” Jane (Nathalie Delon) – who loves him, won’t even give him up when she’s threatened with the vice squad by the cops, and the piano player at the club (Cathy Rosier) who also backs him up with the cops. As the noose tightens around Jef’s neck, he eventually will see both women one last time. He is cold with Jane – trying to let her down gently I suppose, and then in the unforgettable final scene goes to see the Pianist. He’s been in this club before – to perform the hit – but this time, he checks his coat. He won’t need it again, he knows. Just like he doesn’t react when his mechanic friend tells him this is the last time he’ll help him. He won’t need that either.

 

What does the final revelation of Le Samourai mean? I know what it means in terms of plot – that Jef wasn’t really planning on doing anything, and he knows this is the end. But it suggests something about Jef’s character that is somehow deeper than he have seen up to this point – suggests that there is something to Jef that we didn’t notice before. It’s a haunting ending – and a perfect one.

 

In many ways, Le Samourai is a simple film. It’s easy to follow the plot, and the film has many sequences that pass by wordlessly. It is as fatalistic as any film ever made – by Melville, or anyone else. It is the perfect vehicle for Delon – and a perfect film for Melville. It brings together his influences, from American gangster movies, to the French New Wave, to Japanese films – but it is undeniably Melville’s. After years of struggle for Melville – not knowing his place, not belonging anywhere, he creates this film – a perfect film – that can last as the definitive example of why Melville was a master.