Movie Review: Little Sister

Little Sister

Directed by: Zach Clark.   

Written by: Zach Clark and Melodie Sisk. 

Starring: Addison Timlin (Colleen Lunsford), Ally Sheedy (Joani Lunsford), Keith Poulson (Jacob Lunsford), Peter Hedges (Bill Lunsford), Barbara Crampton (The Reverend Mother), Kristin Slaysman (Tricia), Molly Plunk (Emily). 

 

In its own quiet way, Little Sister is a profound and perceptive film about family, politics, religion – and America in general. This is a film that at first seems like it could be another indie, Sundance wanna-be, about a dysfunctional family – and yet because everything in the film feels so genuine and low-key, it actually works. There are no big dramatic moments in the film – none are needed – and while the family has a lot of problems, none of them are really solved. They just keep going anyway – as screwed up as they are. In that way, they’re just like everyone else –who have to figure out a way to live with themselves.

 

The film is about Colleen Lunsford (Addison Timlin) – a novice nun living in Brooklyn. The film never looks down on her for her faith or mocks her for it – even when a few drunken hipsters do just that, it’s them who look like assholes, not Colleen, who treats them with kindness. She’s been estranged from her family for three years – but decides to head back home to North Carolina, after signing into her e-mail account, and seeing one from her mother Joani (Ally Sheedy) telling her that her brother, Jacob (Keith Poulson) is home – but now won’t leave the guestroom. He is an Iraq veteran, who was horribly burned – his face now nothing but a mess of scars. Collen and Jacob were once close – and she wants to help. She borrows the Reverend Mother’s car, and heads home.

 

This sounds like a typical Sundance indie, right? Young Brooklyn-ite heads home to her backwater town and is embarrassed by her old life. But it doesn’t play like that at all. The film takes place in October, 2008 – and Obama is about to become President. We see Obama/Biden signs everywhere, we hear the debates in the background – and people assume that Jacob is happy to have Obama coming into the White House (not that it will help him any).

 

The movie really is a series of small moments. How Colleen tries in vain to reach Jacob, so she reaches desperate levels – ditches her nun’s outfit, dyes her hair pink and becomes the Goth teenager she once was to try and break down the walls between them (a wonderful, comic sequences sees her dancing to a Gwar song with a blood drenched baby doll). The two slowly come together, and bond – she brings him back into the world, one slow step at a time. The incident in their past that led Colleen to flee is only kind of spelled out – and involves Joani, who along with her husband has retreated into a haze of pot smoke to deal with their problems. Eventually, Colleen and Joani will talk – both kind of admitting that the other is a disappointment to each other, but perhaps learning to deal with it. Jacob and his fiancé, Tricia (Kristen Slaysman) have to try and find a way to bridge the gap between them as well – as both have strong, conflicting and understandable feelings about what has happened to Jacob. The movie moves closer and closer to Halloween, and the minimalist style becomes stranger and more surreal.

 

The film is extremely quiet and understated. Like Clark’s last film, the Christmas drama White Reindeer, about a tragedy around the holidays that sends a woman through a downward spiral, Clark doesn’t go for big moments. In its quiet way, Little Sister paints an empathetic portrait of America through one family, simply trying its best, and failing as often as it succeeds. It’s a film that sneaks up on you – and then you find yourself thinking of days later.

Movie Review: The Childhood of a Leader

The Childhood of a Leader

Directed by: Brady Corbet.   

Written by: Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold.   

Starring: Tom Sweet (Prescott, the boy), Robert Pattinson (Charles / The Leader), Stacy Martin (The Teacher), Liam Cunningham (The Father), Bérénice Bejo (The Mother), Yolande Moreau (The Maid).  

 

American actor Brady Corbet has somehow become a go to guy for European auteurs – ranging from Michael Haneke to Olivier Assayas to Mia Hansen-Love to Ruben Ostlund to Bertrand Bonello to Lars von Trier – and with his directorial debut, The Childhood of a Leader, he certainly shows he was more inspired by them then by American filmmakers – particularly Haneke. The film takes place in 1919, as WWI has ended, and the Treaty of Versailles is being negotiated. An American diplomat (Liam Cunningham) is in France with his German wife (Berenice Bejo) and their five-year-old son (Tom Sweet). After a prologue, showing the world at war, and what is going on, we are plunged into their lives with a title card saying “Tantrum 1”. There will be two more tantrums in the film that grow increasingly serious – finally culminating in a shocking act of violence. The film, rather daringly, doesn’t try to put its events into context, or explain them away. It observes this family – and its friends, its servant and the political figures that enter their home, not quite through the lens or the young boy, but with his lack of understanding of what this all means. The title pretty much explains the epilogue of the film – like the beginning, another montage, this time showing us who that boy grew up to be.

 

As a debut film, The Childhood of a Leader is an interesting choice for Corbet – who doesn’t give himself a role in it, and hasn’t made the type of film that is going to get Hollywood knocking down his door with offers to direct something bigger. His film is brilliantly photographed by Lol Crawley, who did great work on 2015’s 45 Years and the Netflix show The OA – which I didn’t like much, but the cinematography wasn’t the problem. The cinematography keeps its distance from its characters, observing them from a quiet distance, with intruding on them. The film doesn’t really try to explain or psychoanalyze its characters – Liam Cunningham is a cold, emotionless man – a diplomat, who wants children, but doesn’t want them around. Berenice Bejo is wonderful as the mother, who wants to be a disciplinarian, but is often “too sick” to do it herself. Stacy Martin, from von Trier’s Nymphomaniac – is the teacher brought in to teach the boy – and not coincidentally, looks like his mother – although it doesn’t take the boy long to realize he’s the one in control.

 

It would be easy – and perhaps rather fun – to compare this leader to Donald Trump, and certainly as children of immense wealth and privilege, who are handed everything they wants, and become spoiled monsters a case can be made. But Corbet made the film in 2015 – it debuts at Venice that fall, and won a few prizes – although the rise of Trump style politics has been ongoing across the world in the last few years, and perhaps that is why Corbet made the film (apparently based on something Sartre wrote in the late 1930s). The film, that doesn’t spell out anything in terms of specifics, is more universal than that – this could be the childhood of any autocratic monster you want it to be.

 

I’m honestly not sure if The Childhood of a Leader really works. There really is no story to speak of, the movie being structured around three tantrums – as the young boy pushes to see just what he can get away with, and realizes it’s virtually anything. Tom Sweet gives one of the best performances you see a child give – it’s singular in its focus. The film is as well, perhaps too much so to be truly effective. And yet, The Childhood of a Leader marks a fascinating debut for Corbet – who is doing something very different than other American directors his age – and as such, is someone to watch.

Movie Review: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter ** / *****

Directed by: Paul W.S. Anderson.   

Written by: Paul W.S. Anderson.

Starring: Milla Jovovich (Alice / Alicia Marcus), Iain Glen (Dr. Isaacs), Ali Larter (Claire Redfield), Shawn Roberts (Wesker), Eoin Macken (Doc), Fraser James (Razor), Ruby Rose (Abigail), William Levy (Christian), Rola (Cobalt), Ever Anderson (Young Alicia / Red Queen), Mark Simpson (James Marcus). 

 

Most action franchises start to feel played out around their third installment – and downright dead by their fourth, if they get that far. And yet, if they keep on pushing, eventually, I think they just kind of wear you down, and all you can do is smile when another installment appears. That’s certainly happened with The Fast and the Furious franchise – which will see its eighth installment this summer, and although I think we can all admit that the series is really rather dumb, it’s also immensely entertaining – I know I’ll be there opening weekend, no matter how dumb the title is. On a smaller scale, something similar has happened with the Resident Evil franchise – now on its sixth, and supposedly final, installment over the span of 14 years. I was surprised to find out that I apparently missed the fifth installment for 2012 – I was convinced I had seen them all, if for no other reason than because I know there is a hardcore fan base for this franchise – and that some enterprising critic will make up a year-end top 10 list with 9 avant-garde films I’ve never heard of, and the latest Resident Evil movie (I say this with genuine affection, but also confusion – I don’t get the Cinemascope crowd that loves these movies, and see their director – Paul W.S. Anderson – as some sort of maverick genius). Not that it matters that I missed one – I never remember what happened in each installment anyway – and I think that maybe the best way to watch them – then even the most mundane recounting of previous installments count as plot twists.

 

This time, Alice (Milla Jovovich – the only cast member in all of the film) is out there in the wasteland of the post apocalypse, when she is contacted by the Red Queen – a computer program that basically runs the Umbrella Corporation, those corporate monsters who caused the apocalypse in the first place. The Red Queen tells Alice that Umbrella has an antidote that once airborne, will destroy the T-virus in anything it comes into contact with. But, that within 48 hours, the last human settlement will be destroyed, so she better get the antidote released by then (my major question throughout the whole movie is why it needs to be released by then, if it needs to come into contact with the T-virus, means it needs to get to that settlement by then, not released by then – something the film’s final monologue seems to address, but not really). In order to do so, Alice needs to get back to Raccoon City, and back into the Hive to get the antidote. She will encounter old foes – Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glenn) – who hasn’t been in this series since 2007, just because he was killed in that one (it turns out, that was just a clone, naturally) and allies – Claire (Ali Larter), who wasn’t in the last episode either. (as a side note, I love how this series seems to cast people from its past installments based on whoever is available at the time, and just invents reasons for them to be where Alice is – this time, Claire and Alice almost literally bump into each other, and are just like, “Hey, what’s up?”). There is, of course, a countdown clock counting down the 48 hour limit she has – and we assume she’ll release it with 1 second to go, and SPOILER ALERT we’re right (just once, I’d love to see someone have a giant countdown clock, and get it released with an hour to spare).

 

The one constant this series has had is Jovovich as Alice. She may not be the best actress in the world, but in these movies, she gives them the proper respect and weight they need. Kate Beckinsale is a better actress, sure, but when I see the Underworld movies, I always feel like she’s looking down on them – Jovovich doesn’t do that, and while her range is limited, she does the role well. Director Anderson also knows what is expected from him – and he delivers. There are a few good action sequences – although unfortunately, they’re mainly frontloaded (I enjoyed the ones where Jovovich was tied up, and used it to her advantage).

 

Listen, there have been six of these things, and in all honesty, if you’re a fan of this series, I find it hard to believe you’re not going to like this last installment – that both wraps things up if they decide this really is the end, and leaves things open, in case it isn’t (I know it’s called The Final Chapter – but we’ve seen them lie to us before in franchise movie subheadings). If you don’t like the series, it’s not like this series is all of a sudden going to become something different. And if you’re like me, and basically indifferent to the franchise, well, you’ll be indifferent again. We all know what we’re getting in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter – and that is what the film delivers.

Movie Review: A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls

Directed by: J. A. Bayona.

Written by: Patrick Ness based on his novel, from an idea by Siobhan Dowd.

Starring: Lewis MacDougall (Conor O'Malley), Sigourney Weaver (Mrs. Clayton), Felicity Jones (Elizabeth "Lizzie" Clayton), Toby Kebbell (Mr. O'Malley), Liam Neeson (The "Monster"), James Melville (Harry), Geraldine Chaplin (Head Teacher).

 

Despite the fact that A Monster Calls bombed at the Box Office, I do think this is a movie that going to stick around for a while – and be seen by future generations more than most released this year. That’s not because it’s one of the best films of the year – it isn’t – but because of the same reasons why no one went to see it in the theater – it’s an uncommon children’s film about death. Yes, that is depressing as hell – which is why no one brought their kids to see it, or went as adults –but is also the reason why, children will watch this film for years to come. It’s got a very specific base of people who are going to respond to it – children whose parents are dying. For those children, there is a lot here they are going to relate to, and perhaps even find comfort in. For most audiences, who don’t want to think about that sort of thing, I wonder how the film will play (full disclosure, my father died when I was very young – too young to remember, but I still relate too many of the feelings in the movie).

 

The film stars young Lewis MacDougall as Conor O’Malley – who is probably around 12. He is a loner – an artist and dreamer, and monster fan – whose parents are divorced. His father (Toby Kebbell) has moved to America, and started a new family, and now his mother (Felicity Jones) has cancer. The adults in his life are either not telling Conor the truth, or else he’s unwilling to hear it – his mother is not going to get better this time, as she has in the past.

 

In his dreams, Conor invents a monster out of the massive yew tree near his house – voiced by Liam Neeson (who also did motion capture work), this tree comes to life, and visits Conor – telling him that at first, the Monster will tell Conor three stories, and when that is over, Conor will have to tell the Monster his own story – his truth – which is a truth so painful Conor doesn’t want to admit it, but a truth that anyone who has watched someone die will relate to. The monster is a visual triumph for director J.A. Bayona – as are the animated sequences in the film, where the monster tells his cryptic stories that Conor doesn’t quite understand (or doesn’t want to).

 

When I read Patrick Ness’s book – he also wrote the screenplay – I was in tears. It is a powerful book, written for older children, as a way to explain death – and perhaps help them cope with it. When I watched the movie, oddly, I didn’t cry. I don’t think the movie quite taps into that same spot – that deep reservoir of emotion and regret the way the novel did. Like the previous films of his I have seen- The Orphanage and The Impossible – the film is visually impressive, but doesn’t hit as hard emotionally as it should.

 

I do believe that A Monster Calls is a film – and novel – that children who are going through something painful will relate to. It’s why it will last, because few works of art aimed at children bother to try and explain, or relate to, that pain. Child psychologists and school therapists will have copies of this, and give it to their struggling students – and it will likely help. I just wish it were a little bit better than it is.

Movie Review: The Red Turtle

The Red Turtle

Directed by: Michael Dudok de Wit.

Written by: Michael Dudok de Wit & Pascale Ferran.

 

The Red Turtle is an enchanting animated fable – a strange love story that is at turns gorgeous, ambigious and confounding. Its Dutch director, Michael Dudok de Wit has won an Oscar for Father and Daughter (2000) – but until now has worked exclusively in short films. To be honest, that shows a little bit in The Red Turtle – while the film is only 80 minutes long, it does tend to drag at times, and repeat itself. At perhaps half its length, The Red Turtle may well have been amazing. At 80 minutes, there’s a lot of things that are amazing about it – and it’s still one of the year’s most beautiful animated films – it’s just not quite the masterwork it could be.

 

The story of The Red Turtle is simple – a man becomes stranded of a desert island, and is determined to get off. He builds one raft after another and heads out to the ocean, only to have his raft be broken apart – repeatedly – by some unseen force of nature. Eventually, that unseen force will make itself known – it is the title character, a giant red turtle. Eventually that Red Turtle will transform – into a beautiful woman – and when it does, the movie morphs into something else.

 

To be honest, I’m not a 100% sure what precisely The Red Turtle is trying to say – about love, nature, death, parenthood, etc. Some of it is obvious enough for a child to grasp, but other parts seem to be confused and a little muddled. I love the choice that Dudok de Wit makes to keep the movie dialogue free – yet that does tend not to aid too much in making things clearer.

 

Yet, there is something to be said for the ambiguity of the film – how it relates nature and love, and how these two characters eventually come together, even after the man ends up doing something violent. The film paints in broad strokes in terms of its characters – they are not the most expressive faces, Dudok de Wit favoring a more European style of character animation (honestly, the characters features remind me of Tintin more than anything else) – and they are constantly dwarfed by the natural surroundings of the island itself – the mountains, the lush forest, and the raging ocean right on the edge. Visually, those are more impressive than the characters.

 

Perhaps, the film isn’t meant to be read too much into – it certainly isn’t meant to be taken literally. The film is a true international production – with the Dutch director directing getting funding from France, and Japan - it’s a pleasure to see the Studio Ghibli logo again.  Like the best films in Ghibli’s history, The Red Turtle works best as a mood piece than anything else. There are thrilling, exciting and beautiful moments – but it’s also a rather introspective film – one that allows you time to think about it as it progresses. It is a small film – but it also contains big ideas. Perhaps those ideas are too big for the filmmakers to completely grapple with in this one film – but you have to admire them for trying, and for making a beautiful, quiet, introspective film. It’s not perfect by any means, but in its own way, it works beautifully.

Movie Review: The Monster

The Monster

Directed by: Bryan Bertino.   

Written by: Bryan Bertino.

Starring: Zoe Kazan (Kathy), Ella Ballentine (Lizzy), Scott Speedman (Roy), Aaron Douglas (Jesse), Chris Webb (Monster), Christine Ebadi (Leslie Williams), Marc Hickox (John).

 

Bryan Bertino made one of the best, scariest mainstream horror films of the 21^st Century so far with 2008’s The Strangers – a film that I am heartened to see has slowly gained more respect than it got back then (I admit that I am biased in favor of films like The Strangers – home invasion horror scares me far more than ghosts, etc.). Between The Strangers and The Monster, Bertino has only directed one other film – 2014’s Mockingbird, a horror movie I have never even heard of – but I was still curious to see his latest – not only because of Bertino, but because of the presence of Zoe Kazan – one of the most interesting actresses working right now. If there is a reason to see The Monster it is Kazan – who gives an excellent, uncompromising, unflinching performance. Yet, for the most part I found The Monster to be rather obvious – both in its horror movie aspects, and in its more metaphorical ones as well. The monster of the title looks awful too – the movie is clearly done on a budget, which is fine, but when the thing that is supposed to be scaring you all movie is a bust, it’s hard to be truly scared.

 

The movie stars Kazan as Kathy – a horrible mother because she is a drug addict, who is taking her daughter, Lizzy (Ella Ballentine) to stay with her dad – perhaps permanently. They are driving along a dark, desolate stretch of road, when they hit some sort of animal. When they get out to investigate it turns out that not only did they not kill the animal, it’s now pissed. The movie flashes back and forth in time – to the troubled relationship between Kathy and Lizzy – caused by the drugs that are more important to Kathy than her daughter at the time, and the present, where they fight to save each other from the monster who threatens to destroy them both.

 

The Monster is a rather obvious metaphor for Kathy’s drug problem – and how it threatens to kill her, of course, but also her daughter – and how it’s such a huge, insurmountable obstacle, that they cannot deal with anything else. I’ve seen the movie compared to Jennifer Kent’s brilliant The Babadook – which used the title monster for a metaphor about parental anxiety – and while it’s true, both films have a similar central metaphor, The Babadook is better because it works on a surface level a lot better than The Monster does. The scenes on the dark, deserted highway are okay as far as horror movie terror goes – Bertino isn’t reinventing the wheel here in terms of execution, buts its done well. Accept for the monster itself – which I supposed is supposed to be some sort of werewolf, but truly looks sillier than anything else. The moments without the beast as far scarier than those with him. The flashback sequences are better to be sure – but they are also rather standard issue druggie parent stuff. What makes a film like say, Moonlight, work even if it goes over well-trodden grounded like the junkie parent, is how specific the film feels. By comparison, the scenes of Kathy being neglectful and high and sometimes downright cruel to her daughter in pursuit of her addiction feel generic.

 

I will say this for the film though – Zoe Kazan is committed. This isn’t the type of role I envision her in – she’s been so witty, charming, smart and funny in films like Ruby Sparks (which she also wrote) and The F Word, that that is how I picture her. But here, she is committed to playing Kathy and all of her sides – the way her addiction has overwhelmed everything in her life – how she may well like to be closer with Lizzy, but cannot figured out how to do that. It’s an excellent performance in search of a movie to match it.

 

The Monster doesn’t quite work because it all feels a little pat and predictable – and worse, generic. Horror is specific – which is why sometimes the scariest films to one person, do nothing to someone else. Generic is the enemy of horror – and unfortunately, that is what The Monster is.

Movie Review: Paterson

Paterson

Directed by: Jim Jarmusch.

Written by: Jim Jarmusch. 

Starring: Adam Driver (Paterson), Golshifteh Farahani (Laura), Nellie (Marvin), Rizwan Manji (Donny), Barry Shabaka Henley (Doc), Chasten Harmon (Marie), William Jackson Harper (Everett), Method Man (Method Man), Kara Hayward (Female Student), Jared Gilman (Male Student), Sterling Jerins (Young Poet), Johnnie Mae (Doc's Wife), Masatoshi Nagase (Japanese Poet). 

 

It’s not a coincidence that Jim Jarmusch followed-up his brilliant Only Lovers Left Alive with Paterson. Both films take place in once thriving industrial cities, no fallen on hard times – even if Jarmusch doesn’t really depict them onscreen as that bad. In Only Lovers Left Alive, Detroit becomes a dark, desolate place to be sure – but also a romantic one – the backdrop for a pair of ageless vampires to indulge themselves. Paterson is ostensibly more realistic – no vampires this time, the main character is a bus driver – but he’s still living in his own world – a regimented world, in which he thrives on routine. You could argue he’s in a rut – but he’s seems fairly content to be there.

 

The main character in Paterson is Paterson – and he’s played in one of the great performances of the year by Adam Driver. The film depicts a week in his life, where every day he gets up at the same time – he doesn’t even need an alarm clock, eats the same breakfast, walks the same route to work, where he drives the same bus route. At the end of the day, he walks home the same way, talks to his wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), who has made them dinner, and then takes their dog – Marvin – on a walk. He will tie the dog up outside a bar, where he’ll go inside and talk to Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley) about, whatever, while he drinks one beer, then he’ll walk home again – ready to do the same thing all over again. On his lunch break – or a few spare minutes here and there – he writes poetry in a small notebook. The poems depict the mundane beauty of everyday life – one inspired by matchsticks for example – that, kind of like Paterson itself, seems to be about nothing when you first hear it, but is about a lot more than that when you think about it (even if it’s hard to put into words).

 

In other hands, this movie may be about the sad, pathetic life of Paterson – and his need to break free of it and see the world (in fact, in other movies, the entirety of this film would take place in 15 minutes, before the hero went on a journey). But Paterson has already been on his journey – we see, twice, his military portrait (Driver was in the Marines himself), and perhaps he simply needs his routine because of the military. Then again, when violence is actually threatened to break out – and Driver reacts – he seems different when the threat is neutralized – somewhat disturbed. Whatever he saw in his time in the military, he doesn’t say – it’s never once mentioned – but I think it informs the rest of the movie.

 

Jarmusch has made films before about fairly quiet central characters meeting a series of eccentric characters along the way – and for a while, Paterson appears like that. Paterson likes eavesdropping on the bus – two construction workers talking about their amorous conquests (or would have been conquests, if they weren’t so tired) – or two high school kids (a delightful callback to a Wes Anderson film) discussing anarchy. Paterson’s wife, Laura, is certainly eccentric herself – bouncing from one project to the next – which Paterson indulges and encourages – and never ceasing to experiment in the kitchen. There’s Doc and his chess tournaments and martial problems, the young couple (Chasten Harmon and William Jackson Harper) going through a breakup or Method Man rapping at a laundromat, Paterson’s constantly complaining boss or the Japanese poet from the final scene. Many of these characters say a lot more in their meetings than Paterson does – yet I think the film stays focused on Paterson throughout. He isn’t a blank slate really – but he is a man who lives inside his own head. He finds comfort there – and in his routine.

 

That is ultimately what I think Paterson is about – a man who finds solace in his own head – and in his own art, which he does for himself, and himself alone. He’s made no attempt to publish his poems – he doesn’t even have any copies of them. We know, early, that something will eventually happen – and when it does, Paterson doesn’t react in anger (the closet he gets is calmly telling his dog that he doesn’t like him). He needs his sense of calm – that he discovers in his poetry – and the poetry of others – and if it doesn’t go any further, so be it. Art being done for its own reward – whether or not you choose to share it – still has value.