Movie Review: The Invitation

The Invitation

Directed by: Karyn Kusama.

Written by: Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi.

Starring: Logan Marshall-Green (Will), Michelle Krusiec (Gina), Aiden Lovekamp (Ty), Mike Doyle (Tommy), Jordi Vilasuso (Miguel), Marieh Delfino (Claire), Jay Larson (Ben), Tammy Blanchard (Eden), Emayatzy Corinealdi (Kira), Michiel Huisman (David), Lindsay Burdge (Sadie), John Carroll Lynch (Pruitt), Toby Huss (Dr. Joseph), Danielle Camastra (Annie), Trish Gates (Follower), Karl Yune (Choi).

 

Spoiler Warning: The Invitation is one of those movies where knowing as little as possible before watching it will enhance your pleasure while doing so. This thriller/not-quite-horror movie takes some wonderfully unexpected twists and turns, and works remarkably well from beginning to end. You should see it. But you should see it before reading any reviews, including this one. While I won’t give away the whole game here, it’s impossible to talk about the movie without giving some things away, so if you read anyway, at least I’ve warned you.

 

In the history of movies has there ever been a dinner party where everyone just comes together, has a nice time, and then go on their merry way? No, My Dinner with Andre (1981) doesn’t count – that’s not a dinner party, they go to a restaurant. It seems like every time characters in a movie go to a dinner party, it ends up with critics describing it as the “dinner party from hell”. You can add The Invitation to that list as well. You know the dinner party isn’t going to go well from the first scene when Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) tells her boyfriend Will (Logan Marshall-Green) that if he doesn’t want to go then they can just turn around and forget about it. When a character says this in a movie, you know that a) they should turn around and go home and b) they won’t. To drive the point home, the conversation is interrupted when Will runs over a coyote, and has to finish the poor creature off with a tire iron to put it out of its misery.

 

The pair soldier on anyway. The dinner party is up in the Hollywood Hills, at the spacious house owned by Will’s ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband, David (Michiel Huisman). Nobody has heard from Eden in two years – the son she and Will had died in one of those bizarre accidents that are really no one’s fault, but the parents will always blame themselves, and each other, for – and Will and Eden’s marriage couldn’t take the grief, and they’ve handled things in radically different ways since. Will has become sullen and introspective – he has basically cut out most of his friends from his life, and grown a beard that is part hipster, part lumberjack. Eden and David (who has a tragedy in his past as well), have gone to Mexico and accepted “The Invitation” by new age guru/cult leader Dr. Joseph (Toby Huss). They have invited all of Eden’s old friends over for a dinner party, under the guise of catching up and putting the past behind them, but as the film proceeds, it becomes clear it’s more of a recruitment session than anything else. There are two other additions to the old crew – the creepy Pruitt (John Carroll Lynch) who seemingly stalks around in the background, and seems calm, but perhaps isn’t, and Sadie (Lindsay Burdge) who seems like she really wants to ne a Manson girl – her supposed free loving, hippie chic not doing a very good job of disguising dark intent.

 

Or maybe, it’s just Will be paranoid. He is, after all, still not over the loss of his son – or the loss of his wife, and he is returning to the house they shared for the first time in a few years, and it’s filled with memories and regret. After all, although David and Eden’s new religion seems kind of kooky – this is L.A., and kooky new age beliefs are nothing new. And David has an explanation for everything that rubs Will the wrong way – from his seeming insistence that everyone drink the wine, or why the door is locked, with a key so no one can get out, and the presence of Choi – the one member of the group that hasn’t arrived yet. David and Eden do have a goofy smile plastered on their face throughout – but perhaps they’ve just learned to except the past and move on – something Will has been unable to do.

 

The Invitation takes some nice twists and turns throughout the film, and keeps the suspense mounting throughout. Yes, John Carroll Lynch has a variety of creepy roles throughout his filmography – and that is what he seems to specialize in now, but he’s also the same actor who played Fargo’s most normal character (as Frances McDormand’s husband), so perhaps, even after he tells a very dark story of his own, he really is a normal guy. And perhaps Sadie is harmless and the fact that Will looks at David with so much mistrust can be explained by the fact that Eden met him while Will was still married to him. Throughout most of the film, the other characters – much like the audience – go back and forth from agreeing with Will, that something is off, and thinking he’s just paranoid.

 

The film is directed by Karyn Kusama – and is easily the best film she made since her breakout Girlfight a good 15 years ago now. After a couple of failed mainstream films (Aeon Flux and Jennifer’s Body), she has mainly directed TV, but makes a case that she should get more films in the future. Her use of space in the film is wonderful – the fact that the film is confined to one house makes it sound stage bound, but it doesn’t feel like it. The cast is probably two or three people too big – really, after Will, Eden, David, Pruitt and Sadie, the rest of them kind of blend together, and we never get to know any of them in a real way.

 

Things build and build throughout The Invitation to a truly memorable final image – that will likely stay with anyone who sees the film. I don’t think The Invitation ever truly transcends its genre film trappings – it really is a genre exercise, and as though go, it’s done with skill and precision, but I don’t think the film has anything more to say beyond that. Then again, it doesn’t need to – what is does, it does amazingly well.

Movie Review: Darling

Darling

Directed by: Mickey Keating.

Written by: Mickey Keating.

Starring: Lauren Ashley Carter (Darling), Brian Morvant (The Man), Sean Young (Madame), Larry Fessenden (Officer Maneretti), Helen Rogers (The New Girl), John Speredakos (Officer Clayton), Al-Nisa Petty (Miss Hill).

 

If you’re going to steal, than you should steal from the best. That is certainly the case with Mickey Keating’s Darling – which is a film that calls to mind films like Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), among others.  Those are three of the greatest films of all time, so stealing some tricks from them is a wise move on Keating’s part – and the fact that he does so effectively, and adds a few elements of his own, make his horror film Darling a memorable one. At a fleet 78 minute runtime, Darling harkens back to the “woman goes mad” subgenre of films, that Polanski and Bergman perfected in the 1960s (and also inspired last year’s Queen of Earth directed by Alex Ross Perry), and is effectively creepy, shockingly bloody and (mostly) satisfyingly ambiguous (perhaps a touch too ambiguous, but we’re splitting hairs here). The movie works, mostly because of the wonderful, monochrome black and white look of the film, and a terrific performance by Lauren Ashley Carter as the title character.

 

Like The Shining, the film opens with a job interview to become a caretaker. Madam (Sean Young) is interviewing Darling (Carter) for the house sitting position – and explains that many think the house is haunted – and the grisly fate of their last caretaker, relishing the story perhaps a little too much, as she watches closely for Darling’s reaction. Darling is a meek, quiet, wide-eyed (literally) young woman, who doesn’t seem to have any issues with her new job, or the house’s history. Things fly off the rails fairly quickly for her however once she’s alone in the house, when she starts to hear strange noises, and becomes fascinated with a room at the end of the hall, which remains locked. Madam calls, seemingly daily, for updates and more cryptic warnings – seemingly in control of everything, although perhaps Darling knows more than she’s letting on. As her mental state starts to deteriorate further, she meets The Man (Brian Morvant), and hatches a plot to get him back to the house. Is she getting revenge on him for past sins, or is she just insane? Is the house evil, or is Darling just going insane?

 

The film has a wonderful black and white look – all the better to re-create the feel of those 1960s movies that inspired it. For the most part, the film the same feel as those films, although occasionally (particularly at the “chapter headings” – Keating allows from some flashing effects (which is why the film has an epilepsy warning at the front), and some heavy metal music, as Darling’s mind continues to erode. The house is creepy, and seems out-of-date – it’s described as being the “oldest house in New York” – and there are suggestions that perhaps the movie is not set in 2016, although I don’t think it’s ever specified.

 

The key performance in the movie is by Lauren Ashley Carter – an actress I have apparently seen before, but did not remember (I actually looked up my review of Lucky McKee’s The Woman from 2011, where Carter played the teenage daughter – and while I didn’t like that movie, I did praise her performance in it). Her performance here is tricky – she is often by herself in the house, and she doesn’t talk to herself, plus a decision was clearly made for her to keep herself more in control, without resorting to hysterics. So, she has to convey her ever worsening mental state subtly for the most part (there are a few times she overdoes it – but even they work). The film will, eventually, turn bloody and violent, and the film does end where it has been hinting it will from the first scene – but Keating and company never fully reveal their secrets. It holds quite a bit – perhaps a little bit too much really – back from the audience, who is left unsettled and spooked – more than we otherwise would if the film explained everything.

 

Darling is a very good horror movie – but it’s one for a specific type of horror film fan. This isn’t an edge of your seat film, full of blood and guts from the beginning, and jump scares throughout. It’s a more thoughtful film than that – and for me all the more effective because of it. No, it isn’t as good as the film that influenced it – then again, as mentioned, Repulsion, Persona and The Shining are three of the greatest films ever made, so that’s not really a realistic standard to hold this movie to. What it is a wonderfully effective, genuinely unsettling indie horror film that generates more scares and unease than most Hollywood horror films.

The Films of Elaine May: The Heartbreak Kid (1972)

The Heartbreak Kid (1972)

Directed by: Elaine May.

Written by: Neil Simon based on the story by Bruce Jay Friedman.

Starring: Charles Grodin (Lenny Cantrow), Cybill Shepherd (Kelly Corcoran), Jeannie Berlin (Lila Kolodny), Audra Lindley (Mrs. Corcoran), Eddie Albert (Mr. Corcoran).

 

The Heartbreak Kid is one of the best American comedies of the 1970s – and one that continues to be relevant and influential to this day. At the time, many saw it as a response to The Graduate (1967) directed by Mike Nichols, May’s former comedy partner. And in some ways, you can understand why that is, as both films center on young, Jewish men who fall for a wealthy WASP princess, and end up heading off into an uncertain future at the end. Nichols’ film is a certified classic – it ranked in the top 10 of the AFI’s top 100 List of all time in 1997, and in the top 20 in 2008 – and won Nichols a Best Director Oscar. While The Heartbreak Kid was the biggest hit – critically and commercially – of May’s too-short directing career, it hasn’t entered the canon in quite the same way as Nichols film. Yet, it should be. While The Graduate is probably a better directed film – Nichols was certainly playing with different techniques, whereas May is a little more straight forward, if I’m being honest, I think about May’s films – and its haunting final scene far more than I do about The Graduate. While I think The Graduate has aged a little bit, The Heartbreak Kid remains much more relevant. It’s brand of wince comedy – where you laugh nervously, because the scene in front of you is so painfully awkward and realistic – is more prevalent today than it was in 1972 – making this film a forerunner. The Heartbreak Kid is a masterwork – a film that gets better each time I revisit it, even if doing so is painful.

 

The film stars Charles Grodin as Lenny Cantrow – a young, Jewish man in “athletic equipment”. His girlfriend is Lila (Jeannie Berlin – May’s daughter, playing a character not unlike May’s in A New Leaf – except with the annoying level cranked up to 11). In a very brief opening segment, she refuses to sleep with him until they get married – so, of course, that’s what they do. They then pack the car up, and head on a long drive from New York to Miami for the Honeymoon. The first day feels like bliss – the newlyweds singing in the car together, having fun, having sex in the motel at night, etc. Then, each passing day, gets worse and worse – Lila continues singing the same damn song, she nags at Lenny, over-and-over again during sex, looking for reassurance. And, when she eats, she makes a complete mess of herself. In short, even before Lenny and Lila get to Miami, he is well on his way to hating her – even if she still seems like she’s in a state of blissful ignorance.

 

Things only get worse once they are in Miami. The two go sunbathing – and despite Lenny warning her, Lila doesn’t put on sunscreen, and gets a horrible sunburn. Lenny doesn’t mind that too much however – because he’s already met Kelly Corcoran (Cybill Shepherd) – a blonde, university student goddess – vacationing with her rich parents (Audra Lindley and Eddie Albert). Kelly is a flirt, and its clear to the audience from their first meeting that she enjoys toying with Lenny – seeing just how much she can get him wrapped around her little finger (completely) – and how much she can use him to anger her father (a lot).

 

This was Grodin’s breakthrough role – and in many ways, he never topped it. Here is wonderful here – whether he’s trying to win Kelly’s affection, making up one ludicrous excuse after another to get out of spending any time with Lila on their honeymoon, or trying, with complete sincerity and honesty, to win over Kelly father – who clearly, and rightly, hates his guts. It is a wonderful performance, where Grodin hardly ever shuts up (making that last moment in the film, which we’ll get to, all the more potent). Grodin is at his best here in several, painfully awkward and protracted dinner sequences – including a 12 minute a breakup scene with Lila – which always has been diving for cover, as the scene is simultaneously hilarious and painful – really, it’s one of the most painful scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie – and it’s made more so by just how clueless and happy Berlin makes Lila in that sequence right up until Lenny drops the bomb on her.

 

While Grodin is the star of the movie, the rest of the cast is nearly as good. Berlin and Albert received deserved Oscar nominations for their performances. Berlin makes Lila incredibly annoying to be sure – but there’s an undercurrent of sweet, naiveté about her as well.  She’s insecure – after all, she’s young, immature, a newlywed, and has just lost her virginity to boot. She genuinely just wants to spend with her husband – who she clearly loves – on their honeymoon, which is normal. It’s a brilliant comedic performance – and also one that breaks your heart a little bit. Eddie Albert is a deadpan gem in the film – he looks at Grodin’s Lenny with utter and complete contempt in each and every one of their interactions – even before he has any real reason to hate Lenny, he does. He’s the only character who calls Lenny out on his bullshit.

 

Then there is Shepherd’s Kelly – who to me remains an enigmatic mystery at the heart of the movie. You can argue whether or not Shepherd was a great actress in the 1970s – yet you cannot argue that two great directors – Peter Bogdanovich and Martin Scorsese – used her to presence wonderfully well as the personification of female perfection in The Last Picture Show (1971) – which punctures that perfection a little, and Taxi Driver (1976), which doesn’t. Her role in The Heartbreak Kid is seemingly very similar – the beautiful, unattainable, rich blonde, who toys with the hero – which Shepherd does quite well. What I still don’t really understand about the movie is why, in the final act, does she fall for Lenny? Up until then, it seems like she is merely jerking him around because she can – even after he shows up in Minnesota, newly divorced, for her. But she does fall for him. I’ve never been sure if this is a merely an element of the plot that needs to be there – they ending doesn’t work without it – or if it was deliberate on the part of May and screenwriter Neil Simon. Surely, she doesn’t go as far as she does merely to piss off her father, does she? Is it something deeper than that? In his review of the film, Roger Ebert said that Kelly was “in a lot of ways the most interesting character in the movie” and that “She's so inapproachably beautiful that, in a way, all she can do with men is tease and taunt them -- they're too hypnotized to treat her as if she were alive and accessible.” – Which is true of all the other men in the movie other than Lenny. Is that really all it is – that Lenny pursues her so relentlessly, and shows her devotion. Does she really “hunger for love even more than Lenny” as Ebert said? I’m honestly not sure – but every time I watch the film, I find myself watching Kelly closer and closer – trying to crack her. I’m haven’t got there yet, but it’s fascinating just the same.

 

The final scene of the movie is simple perfection. After spending the entire movie, constantly on, constantly talking, constantly scheming, Lenny has a moment of quiet by himself, humming a very particular tune we heard earlier in the film, the look on his face far from the exuberance you may expect since he has just gotten what he wanted for the entirety of the movie. When I first saw the film, I took that look to be one quiet emptiness – the moment that he realizes how he everything he wanted, and he still isn’t happy. I still think that’s part of it – or could be. But I see that look somewhat differently now – or at least more ambiguously. What the hell is Lenny thinking in that moment? We’ll never know for sure – but it is a moment that I continually come back. It is the perfect end to this brilliant film - a moment of confidence on the part of Grodin, May and Simon, who spent the entire film filling the silence, and then makes us sit with it in the end.

Thoughts on the Cannes Film Festival Line-Up

The Cannes Film Festival remains the most prestigious Film Festival in the World, and the Palme D’Or arguably cinema’s most prestigious award. Every year, their 20 film Official Competition Lineup gives us several of the year’s best films, and many others that will keep film buffs talking for a while. We’re still waiting on some of last year’s acclaimed entries – including Palme winner Dheepan by Jacques Audiard in North America (I believe that’s set for a May release) but yesterday came the announcement of the Official Lineup, so as I do every year, I offer some thoughts on the selections, and some absurd predictions on prize winners.

Films in Competition

1. Toni Erdman - Maren Ade – If you’re one of the lucky people who watched Ade’s last film, - the brilliant Everyone Else – then her long awaited for follow-up, this immediately becomes one of the most anticipated films at Cannes (it may just top the list for me). It sounds, um, weird – it’s about a father who comes to visit his daughter, believes she has lost her sense of humor, so he tells a lot of jokes. Everyone Else was brilliant – so I’m down for anything Ade does.
    
2. Julieta - Pedro Almodovar – I haven’t been a big fan of Almodovar’s recent work – I’m So Excited was horrible, and The Skin I Live In was average at best (even Broken Embraces, which I liked, is nowhere near his best). On the surface I’m cautiously optimistic about Julieta – a film that takes place in two time periods documenting one woman’s life (starring Emma Suarez and Adriana Ugarte). This is in Almodovar’s wheelhouse, so it could be his return to form, or a confirmation that his best days are behind him.
    
3. Personal Shopper - Olivier Assayas – Olivier Assayas is one of the most interesting directors in the world right now, and re-teaming with Kristen Stewart – who was so great in his Clouds of Sils Maria – has be curious, as does the fact that this is apparently a ghost story in the fashion world in Paris. I am certainly curious.
    
4. American Honey - Andrea Arnold – Andrea Arnold is a wonderful director – winning an Oscar for her great short, Wasp, winning a Cannes Jury Prizes for her feature debut, Red Road and the wonderful Fish Tank. Her last film, 2011’s Wuthering Heights, was a fascinating take on a classic novel. American Honey finally returns her to the director’s chair – in a story of hard parting among teenagers in the Midwest. At this point, Arnold has become a director I will follow anywhere – and this is certainly among my most anticipated films of the year.
    
5. The Unknown Girl - Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne – The Dardenne Brothers are Cannes Royalty – they’ve won two Palmes (for Rosetta and L’Enfant), a Grand Jury Prize (The Kid with a Bike), a screenplay Prize (The Silence of Lorna) among others. They churn out a high quality film every time, and every time it goes to Cannes, and every time it’s in the discussion for awards. This one has two Dardenne regulars – Olivier Gourmet and Jeremie Renier – in a story of doctor trying to find the identity of an anonymous woman who died. Whether or not this wins prizes, it will almost definitely be one of the most talked about films of the year in film circles.
    
6. It's Only the End of the World - Xavier Dolan – Canadian wunderkind Dolan returns with his sixth film – about a writer, played by Gaspard Ulliel, who returns to his estranged family to inform them he’s dying. The supporting cast – includes Lea Seydoux, Marion Cottillard and Vincent Cassell. As with all of Dolan’s stuff, expect many to love it, and many to hate it. This is his second film in competition – the last one, Mommy, won a Jury Prize.
    
7. Slack Bay - Bruno Dumont – French director Bruno Dumont likes to screw with his audiences – his films are almost always very violent, disturbing, sexual and provocative – sometimes in good ways, sometimes not. Slack Bay – which deals with a bourgeois family deformed by inbreeding in 1910 will almost certainly be controversial. If it wasn’t, it would be a Dumont film. He has found some favor in Cannes before – L’humanite won the Grand Jury Prizes (and Best Actor and Actress), and Flanders, so who knows?
    
8. Paterson - Jim Jarmusch – Jim Jarmusch’s newest film stars the ubiquitous Adam Driver has a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey, who is also a poet. This sounds like classic, small scale Jarmusch – and will almost certainly be a good film. He has been at Cannes many times over the years – and won the Grand Jury Prize for Broken Flowers in 2005.
    
9. Staying Vertical - Alain Guiraudie – Guiraudie is making his follow-up to the wonderful, Hitchcock-ian thriller Stranger By the Lake, and that alone makes this one I am very curious about - and since that’s about the only thing I know about it that will have to do.
    
10. Aquarius - Kleber Mendonca Filho – Mendonca Filho’s debut film, Neighboring Sounds, about an insular neighborhood afflicted by violence in Brazil, was masterful – a film that slipped through the cracks in North America, but should not have. His next film stars Sonia Braga, and apparently she can travel through time. That’s all I need to know to make this one highly anticipated to me.
     
11. From the Land of the Moon - Nicole Garcia – French actress turned filmmaker Garcia has a fine caste – Marion Cottilard and Louis Garrel top lining – in this WWII era film, about a “passionate woman” trapped in a loveless marriage who falls for another man. That sounds clichéd to be sure, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be great. Since I don’t know Garcia’s work as a director however, it isn’t among my most anticipated.
     
12. I, Daniel Blake - Ken Loach – The least surprising inclusion in the lineup is the new film from director Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty – if their new film is ready in time, it’s playing in competition at Cannes, even if there’s little doubt that his best films are behind him (it’s been downhill since the 2006 Palme winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley). Who knows, maybe this will be a return to form – and Loach has a wonderful career, so who the hell knows?
     
13. Ma'Rosa - Brillante Mendoza – Philippine filmmaker Brillante Mendoza is a fixture on the festival circuit, and almost always controversial. His films never really get released in North America – the major reason I haven’t seen his films is because they are not easy to find. This is his fourth time at Cannes – he won a Best Director Prize for Kinatay. I know nothing else about this film, so who knows what it will be.
     
14. Bacalaureat (Graduation) - Cristian Mungiu – Palme winning director for Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) returns with this movie starring Vlad Ivanov (who played the abortionist in that film, and has carved out a niche of creeps since then) that is apparently about parenting. His last film, the wonderful Beyond the Hills, won the Best Actress and Best Screenplay prize at Cannes – which makes this a formable film for Prizes – but more importantly, his talent makes this one of the most anticipated films in competition.
     
15. Loving - Jeff Nichols – While Midnight Special plays in North American theaters, Jeff Nichols’ newest film, Loving, will be debuting at Cannes. A period piece based on a real case, where an inter-racial couple (Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga) who take their case to the Supreme Court in 1967 to strike down racist, interracial marriage laws. Neither has the top billed role though – that is, of course, Nichols’ favorite Michael Shannon (although I have no idea what he’s playing). I think Nichols is one of the best directors around, so while this screams “OSCAR BAIT” –and has a November release date to back it up – I don’t much care. I cannot wait to see it.
     
16. The Handmaiden - Park Chan-Wook – Korean director Park Chan-Wook – who has won a Grand Jury Prize for Oldboy and a Jury Prize for Thirst – returns to Cannes with The Handmaiden, a period genre piece about a woman who falls in love with a thief. Park is known for his ultra-violent films, so who knows where this one will go – although stills from the film certainly look “classier” than his normal work, so who can really tell what this will turn out to be.
     
17. The Last Face - Sean Penn – Sean Penn’s first directorial effort since 2007’s Into the Wild stars Charlize Theron as an African aid worker and Javier Bardem as a doctor during a “political/social revolution” on that continent. It’s hard not to pre-judge this as yet another Hollywood film about Africa starring non-Africans, but Penn is a fine director, and the two stars are excellent, so I’ll try to remain cautiously optimistic.
     
18. Sieranevada - Cristi Puiu – The Romanian director behind The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Aurora makes the leap from Un Certain Regard to the main competition with his latest – although what the hell it is about, I have no idea – and Puiu’s own description about it being about people who escape into fiction when overwhelmed by grief doesn’t much help matters. Still Puiu is a fascinating filmmaker and those two previously mentioned films are both great – so this will be anticipated by me.
     
19. Elle - Paul Verhoeven – Count me among those who think that Verhoeven’s return to the Netherlands result in his best film – 2006’s Black Book, which is what makes this – his first proper film since then (there was the experiment Tricked – which I should probably catch up sooner or later) one that I cannot wait to see. The fact that it stats Isabelle Huppert is a bonus. The fact that it’s been described as a variation on the rape/revenge film has me intrigued (have we seen that too much? Yes – but Verhoeven is a director who is capable of doing something new with it – he’s also capable of making trash out of it, but if it’s in Cannes, will assume it isn’t that).
     
20. The Neon Demon - Nicolas Winding Refn – As someone who loved Drive and hated Only God Forgives (and am fairly neutral on Refn’s work before them), I will remain optimistic about his latest – a female lead (Elle Fanning), neon-colored, Hollywood horror film. Refn remains a gifted stylist, and perhaps The Neon Demon will show that Only God Forgives was a fluke – or that Drive was. Either way, I’m seeing this as soon as possible.

Predictions

Palme D’Or: Sieranevada - Cristi Puiu

Grand Prize of the Jury: American Honey – Andrea Arnold

Jury Prize: Toni Erdman – Maren Ade

Best Director: Paul Verhoeven, Elle

Best Actor: Gaspard Ulliel, It’s Only the End of the World

Best Actress: Emma Suarez & Adriana Ugarte, Julieta

Best Screenplay: Loving – Jeff Nichols

Making predictions about Cannes winners – based on no information, is always a little silly – but I enjoy doing it anyway. This year has me stumped though. Normally, the safest bet for the Palme win is a director who has won something at Cannes before, but not the Palme, and is seen as overdue – the last two winners, Winter Sleep by Nuri Bilge Ceylon and Dheepan by Jacques Audiard, certainly fit that mode. Here though, that list would include filmmakers like Brillante Mendoza and Bruno Dumont – who are controversial, so you wonder if that sort of consensus could form around them, Olivier Assayas, Park Chan-wook and Nicolas Winding Refn – whose filmography, or current film (in Assayas’ case) maybe too genre to win the major prize, and Jim Jarmusch, whose film seems like it could be too small and Xavier Dolan, although I wonder if he’s too young (and divisive) to win. That leaves two time Jury Prize winner Andrea Arnold – but she doesn’t quite have the same feeling as being overdue. You do have a few Palme winners in the mix as well – but with his recent output, I’m not willing to go all in for the latest from Almodovar, Ken Loach is hardly doing his best work lately, I cannot help but think that Mungiu may be too new to win a second Palme right now (although, the Dardennes did) and the Dardennes would become the first filmmakers ever to win three – which makes them unlikely. The Jury President is Mad Max’s George Miller, so perhaps being to genre won’t hurt – and he may be more willing than some to go “Hollywood” – although the American films don’t feel like Palme winners to me. So, I’m going slightly off board with by Palme pick – going with Cristi Puiu for Sieranevada – he has won a Prize in the Un Certain Regard category, and he’s certainly a great filmmaker. For the Grand Jury Prize, I’ll go with the previously mentioned Arnold – she is a great filmmaker, and the latest will probably be great. The Jury Prize to another female filmmaker – Maren Ade, whose film sounds perhaps a touch too weird to win one of the big ones, but could easily find fans on the Jury. For Best Director, I think one old timer (Miller) will reward another – Paul Verhoeven for Elle, which will likely be too violent to get more than this. For Best Actor, I’ll guess than Dolan’s talented star Gaspard Ulliel will take it for what should be a show-off role in it’s Only the End of the World. But don’t count out Romanians Vlad Ivanov for Bacalaureat or Mimi Branescu for Sieranevada or Hollywood stars Michael Shannon (or Joel Edgerton) for Loving, Adam Driver for Paterson and Javier Bardem for The Last Face. Cannes juries often love to give a duo prize for acting in the same film, so for Best Actress, I’ll guess the two stars of the Almodovar film Julieta - Emma Suarez and Adriana Ugarte. They could easily face stiff competition from Sonia Braga in Aquarius, Isabelle Huppert in Elle, Charlize Theron in The Last Face – not to mention Marion Cotillard in either It’s Only the End of the World or From the Land of the Moon (Cotillard seems to enter Cannes every year as a favorite here – although she keeps not winning it). Finally, to add a little Hollywood to the proceedings, I’ll go with Jeff Nichols winning the screenplay award for Loving.

Am I going to be wrong in my Predictions? Almost certainly (I will say, I did pick Dheepan, Carol and The Assassin to win prizes last year, and they all did – The Assassin Best Director, which I called, and Carol for best Actress – although I guessed Blanchatt, and Mara won). I wanted to predict Aquarius – such is my love for Neighboring Sounds – but couldn’t find a spot to do so. If I knew anything more about Staying Vertical, I may well have picked that for something as well. Either way, I cannot wait to start hearing the reactions for Cannes next month.

Movie Review: Everybody Wants Some!!

Everybody Wants Some !!

Directed by: Richard Linklater.

Written by: Richard Linklater.

Starring: Blake Jenner (Jake), Juston Street (Jay), Ryan Guzman (Roper), Tyler Hoechlin (McReynolds), Wyatt Russell (Willoughby), Glen Powell (Finnegan), Temple Baker (Plummer), J. Quinton Johnson (Dale), Will Brittain (Beuter), Zoey Deutch (Beverly), Sophia Taylor Ali (Beverly's Roommate), Austin Amelio (Nesbit), Tanner Kalina (Brumley), Forrest Vickery (Coma), Jonathan Breck (Coach Gordan).

 

Richard Linklater really does seem to despise the idea of plot in his films – and even by his own standards, Everybody Wants Some really is rather lackadaisical in terms of narrative momentum. The film has been described as a spiritual sequel to Linklater’s Dazed & Confused (1993) – which was about the last day of high school in 1976 for some upcoming seniors and freshmen that bleeds into a night of partying. On a recent re-watch of that film, I realized, more than when I first saw the film (when I was the age of the characters) how deep, and even melancholy, Dazed & Confused actually is – it isn’t a nostalgic look back at the “best time of our lives”, like, say George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973) – a film Dazed & Confused is often compared to – was. As Roger Ebert pointed out in his review, if you actually showed the film to its characters two decades later – which is when Linklater made the film – it would probably evoke more madness and embarrassment than anything else.

 

Everybody Wants Some certainly shares some DNA with Dazed & Confused – it’s very easy to see its main character, Jake (Blake Jenner) as a slightly older version of Jason London’s “Pink” Floyd from Dazed & Confused – as both are popular star athletes, who are still able to flow naturally from one group to another – equally at home among the jocks as he is among the stoners. The film takes place in 1980 – and instead of one night, like Dazed & Confused, it’s one weekend. Jake arrives at the baseball house he will be sharing with his new teammates on the University team – he’s a freshman pitcher, who knows no one else. Throughout the weekend, he’ll get to know his teammates, party, drink, go from disco club to country bar to punk club to everything else, meet a few different girls – a one night stand, and someone else, perhaps a little more, and finally, go to class in the films last scene.

 

Comparing the film to Dazed & Confused, Everybody Wants Some is a far lighter film – it doesn’t contain the same feeling of being stuck, and simply waiting for your life to begin that the previous film had. Whether that’s because Linklater is now a couple of decades older – and more prone to nostalgia than he used to be, or because college is just simple a more optimistic place than high school – you’re actually away from your parents, and have that freedom you crave, and you’re on a path to what you want, even if some or all of these baseball players are unlikely to ever make the majors – you at least have it in sight – is open for debate. Linklater could have – clearly – made a much darker film here – a film about toxic masculinity, or one that addresses the decades old problem of sexual assault on college campuses, particularly by star student athletes – but he has chosen to make something lighter here. Some of the guys on the team are jerks – but they are mainly harmless jerks, are ultimately everything they do – from hazing to hitting on girls – is good natured. No real attempt is made in the film to see the girls in the film – outside of Beverley (a very charming Zoey Deutch), a theater manager Jake starts to fall for – as real people. The boys treats them as sexual conquests more than anything else. The film however, also doesn’t judge the girls (or the boys for that matter) for their sexuality either. Everyone seems to know the score, and they’re all out to have fun. Simple as that.

 

There is an easy, seemingly effortless charm to Everybody Wants Some that is actually, I assume, rather hard to pull off, or else everyone else would be able to do what Linklater does, and yet few seemingly can. Linklater avoids most of the pitfalls of movies like this by avoiding the so called “big, life changing moments” – which is something he has always done. If his 2014 masterpiece Boyhood was really just a series of the “most important” moments in Mason’s life, it would have easily turned deadly dull. Instead, in that film, he lingers on more everyday moments – moments that, if we’re being honest, Mason himself just may forget later in life, but are nonetheless, the stuff life is made up of. The same is true for Everybody Wants Some – which drifts easily from one party to another, one sequence to the next. There is a nostalgia here to be sure, but it isn’t a soppy nostalgia. Linklater grounds the film in the specific time and place of these baseball players – the film is often quite funny, and at times quietly perceptive. The cast is mainly made of actors I have never seen before, or at least ones I could not immediately identify. Watching Dazed & Confused today is amusing, in part because you can play “spot the movie star” – as so many of the actors in that film went onto successful careers – and quite a few others did not (what makes it more amusing is watching Dazed & Confused, is that if you were going to guess which ones were the future stars, and which ones weren’t, you’d be wrong at least as often as you’re right). Like that film, the ensemble of Everybody Wants Some is pretty much perfect, without anyone drawing undue attention to themselves. They fit together.

 

I have a feeling Everybody Wants Some will probably grow in my mind in the coming days and weeks – a lot of Linklater’s films do that, as at first they seem like minor, low-key comedies, although they gradually reveal themselves to be more than that. Dazed & Confused was certainly like that – I liked the film when I saw it as a teenager, but never felt much a need to revisit it until this film came out. Watching it a week and a half before seeing this one was an interesting experience – it seems a lot deeper and wiser now than it did in the past. Perhaps Everybody Wants Some will reveal that sort of depth over time – it doesn’t feel like it now admittedly – it feels like minor Linklater to be honest. But so do many of his films. It’s also, I must say, somewhat refreshing that Linklater – who likely could have followed up the massive success of Boyhood with something bigger, instead decided to stick to his roots. It’s what he does best anyway.

Movie Review: Sleeping Giant

Sleeping Giant

Directed by: Andrew Cividino.

Written by: Andrew Cividino & Blain Watters & Aaron Yeger.

Starring: Jackson Martin (Adam), Reece Moffett (Riley), Nick Serino (Nate), Katelyn McKerracher (Taylor), David Disher (William / Adam's father), Kyle Bertrand (Brad), Rita Serino (Grandma), Lorraine Philp (Linda / Adam's Mother), Erika Brodzky (Marianne).

 

In many ways, Andrew Cividino’s debut film, Sleeping Giant, feels familiar. It is a coming of age drama about three teenage boys over one summer spent at Lake Superior in Northern Ontario- where seemingly innocent actions gradually spiral out of control to have tragic consequences. Cividino doesn’t try to surprise you with the dark twists in the film’s last act – they’re there right from the beginning, as a beach wrestling match between the three main characters – shy, confused Adam (Jackson Martin) and cousins Riley (Reece Moffett) and Nate (Nick Serino) ends with (a little) blood spilled. In many ways, Sleeping Giant is kind of like an anti-Stand By Me, as this is no romantic, nostalgic look back at childhood friendship. But it’s also a film the immaturity of these boys – and how the grown men in their lives aren’t any better. We see a lot of romanticizing of overgrown man-children in Hollywood movies – in Sleeping Giant we see the deeper, darker consequences of that.

 

Adam is the very shy, quiet, perhaps sexually confused only son of two rich parents. They’re vacationing in their own spacious “summer home”, and his dad, William (David Disher), tries desperately hard to be the “cool dad” – giving Adam his first beer (“Don’t tell your mother”), saying things like “Chillax”, and trying to offer advice to Adam more like a cool older brother, than a father would. Early in the film, William does something stupid, that will reverberate through the rest of the film – and certainly contributes to Adam’s action later on. Adam is friends with Riley, and to a lesser extent, Riley’s cousin Nate. It’s never quite clear if Adam is interested in Riley sexually – although there are unmistakable signs of homoeroticism throughout their interactions – but when Riley becomes involved with Taylor (Katelyn McKerracher), a girl everyone thinks Adam has a crush on, it’s unclear whether he’s more jealous of him or her (although, perhaps tellingly, he’s much crueler to her). Riley and Nate are not as well off as Adam – they’re spending the summer with their grandmother (for reasons that will eventually become clearer) – and they are certainly lower class. The pair smoke – in front of their grandmother – and spend time with Brad (Kyle Bertrand), a pot dealer who lives in a trailer, seemingly has no other friends, and whose claim to fame is that 15 years ago, he jumped off of a really high cliff (he says he’s one of only two who have done it – and the other guy is dead). Riley is pulled between the world of Adam and Taylor – seemingly longing for a more complete, nuclear family unit, and all its trappings – but Nate suffers no delusions as to where he comes from, and is prone to rages when Riley seemingly wants to abandon him for that other world. Riley is, in many ways, acting the part of whoever he is around – Adam’s dad likes him, as does Taylor, but when it’s just Adam, Nate and Riley he becomes far more like his cousin – needless eviscerating a dead seagull for instance, or saying that all he wants to do is use Taylor as a “cum dumpster” and then move on – which clearly isn’t true when the pair of them are together.

 

The film is basically about how these three teenage boys push each other to go farther and farther, even beyond what they all know is smart to do. While Adam seems like the most innocent of the three of them at first, he ends up far from that – it really is his actions that set in motion everything that comes later in the film. As indefensible as those actions are, the film also understands – and sympathizes with them – to a certain degree, and never really spells out all of Adam’s reasons for doing so. Of the three boys, Nick Serino, delivers the best performance of the three as Nate – the most outwardly aggressive, but perhaps most fragile of the three of them (there is a reason he won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor last month). His blowup while playing a board game with Adam’s family is indefensible – yet its set off my Adam’s needling and embarrassing him. It’s a riveting performance.

 

The film feels naturalistic in just the right way. The dialogue between the three boys is unpolished, but sounds more real than most dialogue we hear in movies. The movie is beautifully photographed on the shores of Lake Superior – but it’s also more than willing to push in on the darker side of that life that normally we do not see. As a director, Andrew Cividino is confident that he doesn’t need to spell everything out – that he doesn’t need to feel every moment with pointless dialogue. It is a remarkably assured directorial debut.

 

Yes, you can probably guess where Sleeping Giant is headed from fairly early on in the film – it foreshadows things a bit too heavily. But that doesn’t diminish the impact of the ending when it does come. Sleeping Giant is an exceptional debut film – marking Cividino as one Canadian director worth keeping an eye out for.

Movie Review: Hardcore Henry

Hardcore Henry

Directed by: Ilya Naishuller.

Written by: Ilya Naishuller and Will Stewart.

Starring: Sharlto Copley (Jimmy), Danila Kozlovsky (Akan), Haley Bennett (Estelle), Tim Roth (Henry's Father), Andrei Dementiev (Slick Dmitry), Svetlana Ustinova (Olga the Dominatrix), Darya Charusha (Katya the Dominatrix), Oleg Poddubnyy (Yuri).

 

Hardcore Henry is a movie that wants to pummel the audience into submission. It is pretty much 97 minutes of non-stop, video game style action – whatever little plot or ideas the film has are half formed at best, and jettisoned whenever the movie decides it’s time for the main to punch, shoot, stab or blow somebody up – which is pretty much every minute of the film. The gimmick of the film – that it’s entirely told from the first person perspective of the main character – isn’t new (the movie acknowledges this in at least one scene – where we see a poster for the 1947 film, Lady in the Lake, which did the same thing from Phillip Marlowe’s perspective), although it is a gimmick that (thankfully) isn’t used very often. The action in Hardcore Henry is loud, bloody, violent and non-stop – and also pretty much utterly incoherent. The experience really is like watching someone else play a really bad first person shooter video game for 97 minutes.

 

The title character of Hardcore Henry is a man who was supposedly killed not that long ago, but who is now awakened with no memories, by his wife Estelle (Haley Bennett) – who explains who he is, and gives attached his robotic limbs to him. Soon, her airborne lab is invaded by Akan (Danila Kozlovsky), a freaky albino madman who can move things with his mind, who wants Estelle’s research so he can build his own indestructible army of Hardcore Henry’s. Of course, Henry escapes, and he spends the rest of the movie running off on one mission after another – following directions on a GPS phone, and having Jimmy (Sharlto Copley) show up every so often to explain things to him. We see Jimmy more often than anyone else in the film – as Copley plays countless different versions of him – clones, I think, so when one drops, another takes his place.

 

If I can say nothing else well about Hardcore Henry – and I don’t think I can – it’s that the filmmakers do seem to know precisely what kind of film they want to make, and commit to it fully. The film is pretty much non-stop violence and bloodshed, stopping just long enough to explain the barebones of the plot, or in one sequence, to supply some gratuitous nudity because a movie like this requires gratuitous nudity. After seeing Copley in films like District 9, Oldboy and Chappie, I still have no idea if he’s a good actor or not, but one thing you cannot deny about him is how fully he commits to something, even if it’s going to make him look like a complete and utter idiot. He does that here to be sure – and while it’s not what I would call a good performance, it isn’t a boring one either.

 

If only I could say the same about the movie – but I can’t, because Hardcore Henry is so single minded in its aims, that the non-stop chaos and bloodshed actually becomes really boring, really quickly. It’s the same damn thing over and over again for 97 minutes. There’s only so much bloodshed can watch before it all just blends together. Other than Copley, all the performances are horrible (well, as mentioned, Copley’s may well be horrible as well – but it’s entertaining bad, which the rest are not), and while the story tries to take a few twists in the last act, it doesn’t much work – mainly because it’s so obvious.

 

The worst thing about Hardcore Henry though – what makes it the worst film I have seen in quite some time – isn’t the acting, or the story or even the gratuitous violence and nudity – I kind of expected all that. It isn’t even the nihilism on display from beginning to end, because, well, same thing – I expected that. It’s that the entire reason for the movie existing is to make a first person shooter, video game style movie, and the visuals are, for the most part, incoherent – especially in the action sequences. That’s the reason why we’re watching the movie in the first place – but everything movies so quickly, with a constant jostling camera and swish pans, that it’s really all a headache inducing blur. I have my doubts that a movie told entirely in first person perspective can be great – but I have no doubt that one can be better than Hardcore Henry.