Movie Review: Little Joe

Little Joe **** / *****

Directed by: Jessica Hausner.

Written by: Jessica Hausner and Geraldine Bajard.

Starring: Emily Beecham (Alice Woodard), Ben Whishaw (Chris), Kerry Fox (Bella), Kit Connor (Joe Woodard), Phenix Brossard (Ric), Leanne Best (Brittany), Andrew Rajan (Jasper), David Wilmot (Karl), Goran Kostic (Mr. Simic), Yana Yanez (Mrs. Simic), Sebastian Hulk (Ivan), Jessie Mae Alonzo (Selma), Phoebe Austen (Ella).

 

Little Joe is an unsettling horror movie that slowly, but surely, builds a sense of unease. This isn’t a horror film with any real violence or blood – not even people dying, but rather just a mounting sense of discomfort. It’s also a film that has built up some controversy for its worldview – one that seemingly suggests that chemically altering your moods – with say, anti-depressants – makes you somehow less human, less of yourself than you used to be. Personally, I think the film is a little more complicated and nuanced and ambiguous than that – but I get where those people are coming from.

 

The film stars Emily Beecham as Alice Woodard, a brilliant scientist specializing in plants. She is divorced, and raising her son Joe not by herself – her husband is involved, but he’s far away. Her latest creation is something she has called Little Joe – and it is a plant whose smell will alter your mood – essentially acting as an anti-depressant, turning your mood around. It is a major breakthrough at the company she is fairly new at – and everyone is very excited about going to the upcoming flower show with it. It just needs a little bit more testing to ensure it is safe for public. Alice has cut some corners along the way – using some virus she wasn’t supposed to, and even bringing one of the Little Joe’s home to her own house. And then, weird things start happening.

 

One of her colleagues is Bella (Kerry Fox) – and she has her own history of mental illness, serious enough that she has had to take time off in the past to deal with it. She starts the commotion when she thinks her dog – who was in the room with the hundreds of Little Joe’s is not her dog anymore. The concern grows when another colleague – Chris (Ben Whishaw) doesn’t seem to be quite himself anymore – and has become even more gung ho about Little Joe then before. Then her son – and a new girlfriend – start acting a little strange. One by one, her colleagues – even those who were once unsure of Little Joe – start to think it’s the great, and even start to think they don’t need to do all that safety testing after all. Alice starts to get a little worried herself.

 

The film was directed by Jessica Hausner, and the film may recall for some viewers Stanley Kubrick. The film does have a more cold, detached style from the cinematography, which is somehow both chilly and pastel bright, to the ever strange sound design – constantly inside your head with clanging sounds, to the performance style. In that regard, you may remember the type of performance Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos elicited from his casts prior to The Favourite. The scariest thing in the film is just the lingering shots of all this hundreds of plants – which may or may not be turning people into versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers pod people.

 

It is this aspect of the movie that has become understandably controversial. Is the film really arguing that using anti-depressants is a bad thing? That we should want to feel bad, even if we could feel good if feeling good means having to use something external to change our body chemistry? Or is the film more complicated than that – is it about the paranoia that many people who are prescribed anti-depressants feel will happen to them if they take it – and some (including myself, during my one stint on anti-depressants) feel while they are on them. The film leaves enough ambiguity in its depiction – right up until the end, which doesn’t really answer any questions, that you can grapple with it. If we ever find out that Hausner is a scientologist, or some other anti-psychiatry kook, then we’ll know – but otherwise, we may never know.

 

What I do know is that Little Joe is a tremendously unsettling movie from beginning to end. There is something about the chilly atmosphere, the brilliant performances – none more so than Beecham’s (who won the Best Actress prize at Cannes), and Hausner’s absolute control over the film that just gets under your skin, and stays there. It’s deeply unsettling movie – all the more so because it doesn’t give you the answer you want it to.

Movie Review: Jumanji: The Next Level

Jumanji: The Next Level *** / *****

Directed by: Jake Kasdan.

Written by: Jake Kasdan and Jeff Pinkner & Scott Rosenberg based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg.

Starring: Dwayne Johnson (Bravestone), Jack Black (Dr. Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon), Kevin Hart (Mouse Finbar), Karen Gillan (Ruby Roundhouse), Awkafina (Ming), Danny DeVito (Eddie), Danny Glover (Milo), Nick Jonas (Alex), Alex Wolff (Young Spencer), Morgan Turner (Young Martha), Madison Iseman (Young Bethany), Ser’Darius Blain (Young Fridge), Colin Hanks (Young Alex), Rory McCann (Jurgen the Brutal), Rhys Darby (Nigel).

 

The two new Jumanji films from the last couple of years are basically inoffensive fun – action comedies for the whole family, that you can go in and enjoy. It has also been an actors showcase for the four stars – who of course, are not playing themselves, but playing teenagers in adult bodies. The first movie had the biggest action star in the world Dwayne Johnson having to embody a nervous, un-athletic teenage boy, who has to take some time to get used to the power his new body affords him. It has Karen Gillan play an insecure teenage girl, uncomfortable in her own body, now having to play a knockout in not very much clothing, and having to get comfortable there as well. Jack Black was basically playing a bubbly teenage cheerleader. Kevin Hart probably had to stretch himself the least – while the teenager in his body was a hulking football player, frustrated to be in a small body, it still required him to basically me a motor mouthed comic relief.

 

In the new film, appropriately subtitled The Next Level, the filmmakers push this even further. There was only gender swapped character in the first film, and for the most part, people didn’t cross racial lines either. This time though, everything is swapped all over the place – and most of the actors playing the video game avatars have to inhabit two different characters throughout the course of the movie. I don’t think the movie does all that much with all this gender and racial swapping – but its interesting just the same that they are doing it.

 

I won’t bore you with how the characters get sucked back into the video game Jumanji – it’s the least interesting aspect of the film. But basically, Spencer (Alex Wolff) heads back in first – and his friends follow to try and rescue him. When they get there though, there are some surprises. Fridge, who was Kevin Hart last time, is now Jack Black. Martha is still is Karen Gillian’s body. Bethany is nowhere to be seen – and it’s a while before they find Spencer. But they are joined by two new characters – Spencer’s grandpa Eddie (Danny DeVito) and his former best friend and partner Milo (Danny Glover) have been sucked in as well – and DeVito is no Dwayne Johnson, and Glover is Kevin Hart. Eventually another new avatar – played by Awkafina – will join them.

 

What follows is more of the same. The Next Level is bigger than the first film, the missions are harder. And the actors are clearly having more fun. Johnson seems to be loving playing Danny DeVito – a man who all of sudden feels good, for the first time in a long time – no aches and pain, and more power than ever. Kevin Hart slows his delivery way down to be more like Danny Glover, and is hilarious. Jack Black has some fun too – without pushing things too far. Gillian probably has the most thankless role – she doesn’t get to stretch, and has to be the voice of reason. Newcomer Awkafina is a delight – especially in her second incarnation.

 

The film moves quickly, with a lot of humor, and a lot of action adventure style action sequences that are a lot of fun – a herd of ostriches, a pack of monkeys, a climax involving the new villain appropriately named Jurgen the Brutal. The movie is light and quick, funny and entertaining from beginning to end. They could push deeper I presume if they wanted to, but they want to keep it that light – and keep having making them. In the audience, I had fun watching it. I’ll likely forget it all by the time the third film comes out – but these films deliver exactly what they plan on – and just a little bit more.

Movie Review: 6 Underground

6 Underground * ½ / *****

Directed by: Michael Bay.

Written by: Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

Starring: Ryan Reynolds (One), Mélanie Laurent (Two), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (Three), Ben Hardy (Four), Adria Arjona (Five), Dave Franco (Six), Corey Hawkins (Seven), Lior Raz (Rovach Alimov), Payman Maadi (Murat Alimov), Yuri Kolokolnikov (Baasha Zia), Kim Kold (Daqeeq).

 

Michael Bay is a talented director. Even at his absolute worst – and he has made films I have called the worst of their respective years – he usually has a moment or two that makes your jaw drop. He can do things that few other directors can do – and even if he is one of the main reasons why we have shaky camera, rapid fire editing dominating so many action movies now (and I hate that) – he manages to do it better than most, at least most of the time. And I can always tell a Bay film from one of his imitators. This may be controversial – but I do consider him to be an auteur, although I should point out I have never really viewed that term as a qualitative term – there are people who are undeniably auteurs, who I downright loath. Bay is not one of them. I really do go into each one of his films hoping I will see something as good as The Rock, as bonkers as Bad Boys II, or just as out and out entertaining as Pain & Gain. Most of the time, I am left disappointed. And with 6 Underground, I was very, very disappointed.

 

I can bet that writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and Bay pitched the film as Fast & Furious meets Mission Impossible – because that is clearly what they’re going for here. The film stars Ryan Reynolds as One – a mysterious tech billionaire, who has faked his death, and started a covert team dedicated to making the world a better place by blowing shit up, and killing a lot of people. Two is Melanie Laurent, a badass, former CIA Agent, Three is Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, a wise-cracking hitman, Four is Ben Hardy, who is a parkour expert, Five is Adria Arjona, who I believe is a doctor, but doesn’t do much. Six is Dave Franco, the getaway driver, and Seven is Corey Hawkins, a sniper with PTSD – and yes, there is a reason why the movie is called 6 Underground, and not 7 Underground. Their mission, which they choose to except, is to overthrown the brutal dictator of the fictional Middle Eastern country of Turgistan, and install his democracy loving brother in his place.

 

Bay’s approach to Middle Eastern politics is about as blunt as hammer to the face. If you are like me, you will likely be unsettled – even offended – at scenes of the dictator gassing his own people, shot in the style of every other Michael Bay action sequence in the film. There are more of course, but Bay has essentially made an action film about Syria – and that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It would be more offensive if he, or anyone involved, seemed to take it at all seriously. But he doesn’t – it’s just another excuse to kill a lot of people.

 

And that is what happens in the film. Reynolds wisecracks his way through his lead role – probably induced by the same writers as Deadpool to take the roll, but here it all rings so hollow, so false. Really, out of all the seven people on the crew, only the great Melanie Laurent comes out unscathed – I wouldn’t say she is brilliant, but she at least seems to be playing a character, and understands who she is. The rest of them just feel like pawns for Bay to move around and shoot people before things go boom.

 

Because that is, after all, why Bay made this film. From its 20-minute opening car chase, to the climax is which I would say dozens, if not hundreds, are killed Bay doesn’t take his foot off the gas pedal for a second. It’s one, loud, thudding, incoherent action sequence after another for more than two hours. Even when the screenplay slows down for a minute – to give everyone a chance to breath – Bay doesn’t as he shoots dialogue scenes with the same incoherent flash as everything else.

 

This sort of unrelenting approach can work – just look at the brilliant Uncut Gems in theaters now, which pulls this off brilliantly – but it’s got to be anchored in something, you have to care about something, or be involved in the film in some way. That’s impossible here. It’s all just one loud bang after another, after another. I really, truly do hope that Michael Bay makes another great film at some point. I also really, truly do hope that the franchise this movie is clearly meant to start never happens.

Movie Review: Diamantino

Diamantino *** / *****

Directed by: Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt.

Written by: Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt.

Starring: Carloto Cotta (Diamantino Matamouros), Cleo Tavares (Aisha Brito), Anabela Moreira (Sonia Matamouros), Margarida Moreira (Natasha Matamouros), Carla Maciel (Dr. Lamborghini), Chico Chapas (Chico Matamouros), Hugo Santos Silva (Mouro), Joana Barrios (Minister Ferro), Filipe Vargas (Helena Guerra), Maria Leite (Lucia), Manuela Moura Guedes (Gisele).

 

There is no doubt that Diamantino is one of the weirdest movies of the year. It is a satire and a comedy, and a sports movie, and it, to be honest, just kind of goofy. It declares its intentions in its first scene where the cheerfully childlike soccer star Diamantino (Carloto Cotta) explains what it’s like for him on the field – why he’s so good – and it’s because that when he’s out there on the pitch, he sees fluffy puppies, and they help him. But then during the World Cup, those puppies stop showing up – and he humiliates himself on the field. He becomes a pariah in his native Portugal, and a laughingstock around the world. His beloved father also drops dead when he messes up – leaving him at the mercy of his greedy twin sisters. So, naturally, he decides to adopt a refugee from Africa – this turns out to be Aisha, a lesbian in her 20s, posing as teenage boy from Mozambique, in order to investigate financial irregularities in Diamantino’s accounts – of course run by his sisters. I haven’t even gotten to the cloning, or Dr. Lamborghini, or how all this leads to Portugal perhaps leaving the European Union. Or the breasts Diamantino grows – or the weird sexual vibe with Aisha. Or, but you get the picture.

 

Obviously, any movie with this much going on is going to be wildly inconsistent – and that really is the problem with Diamantino. I don’t think it ever really gels into a complete whole – or even into full satisfying segments. It seemingly pings from one thing to the next from beginning to end – and at times, you have no idea what the hell is going on or why.

 

The secret weapon to the film though is Cotta in the lead role. It’s such an odd performance – a childlike one. He plays Diamantino as someone who understands nothing of the world other than soccer. Perhaps he was designed to be a central figure like Chance the Gardener in Hal Ashby’s masterpiece Being There – an idiot, who is somehow elevated to the status of genius. But Diamantino never gets elevated – he is used by everyone precisely because he is an idiot. But he’s a likable idiot. He is surrounded by such horrible people who want to use and abuse him – people who do not care about him, and are just using him for his money, or his celebrity. Aisha is the exception – although she too starts out using him. No matter how weird the movie gets, Cotta somehow holds it together – at least as much as he can.

 

This is the debut film by writer/directors Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt. Even if, as I said, I don’t think it really comes together, I also have to say that it is so weird, and sustains that weirdness throughout, that I am curious to see what they do next. The candy colored surface of the movie is a delight, as is the lead performance. There are moments that are wonderful – and the film has it heart and head in the right place. It’s just that when a film wants to do this much, it’s hard for the filmmakers to do all of it, and still make the thing work. I admire the film as whole, enjoyed it in pieces, and wonder what the hell they will come up with next.

Movie Review: One Cut of the Dead

One Cut of the Dead *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Shin'ichirô Ueda   

Written by: Shin'ichirô Ueda Based on the play by Ryoichi Wada.

Starring: Takayuki Hamatsu (Director Higurashi), Yuzuki Akiyama (Chinatsu), Harumi Shuhama (Nao), Kazuaki Nagaya (Ko), Hiroshi Ichihara (Kasahara), Mao (Mao).

 

I feel like a broken record saying this, but at this point, if you’re going to make a zombie movie, you have to come with an original take on the genre. Truly, there hasn’t been an original take in 50 years – and everyone is now just playing in George A. Romero’s sandbox – and although some filmmakers have come up with some remarkably original takes, at this point, they are all played out. The Japanese film, One Cut from the Dead, certainly doesn’t reinvent the genre – but it is a novel take on the zombie comedy. The opening 37 minutes, all in one take, is remarkable, hilarious and daring – and even the things that don’t make a lot of sense, still work. The hour that follows that 37 minutes isn’t nearly as good – but it is still entertaining and funny, and explains all those little things that didn’t seem to make sense in the opening act. This is an extremely low budget film – and it became a huge hit in Japan – and will be a cult film for years to come. I didn’t fall head over heels for it – but I can see how some might.

 

The concept of the movie is simple – a low budget horror movie is being made at what looks to be an abandoned warehouse, but legend has it may be a site where the Japanese government used to conduct experiments. They are making a zombie movie, and the director fancies himself a David Fincher – requesting take after take, and being very hard on the cast if they don’t get things exactly right. And then, of course, the cast and crew of the zombie movie get attacked by real zombies – and after initial confusion, it becomes apparent it’s real, and there’s a lot of blood and guts, and weird maneuvers. The cinematographer is told by the director to just keep shooting – and so he does. And what we see in that opening 37 minutes is one marvelous take.

 

If the rest of the movie were up to the first 37 minutes, this would be one of the best horror films of the year – and one of the best comedies. Yes, it’s all low budget, but that’s built into the premise, and it works wonders. It is funny, fast paced and bloody – and unrelenting 37 minutes of pure B-movie bliss. You could not ask for more. But alas, the rest of the movie isn’t up to that first 37 minutes. It’s still good – just not the inspired craziness that we saw. (You may want to stop reading here – I really had no clue what the movie was about when I started watching – and I think that helped).

 

The last hour of the film is about how that first 37 minutes came to be. What we watched was supposed to be the live kick-off of something called the zombie channel – a 30 minute, single take, live movie, directed by Higurashi (who played the demanding director in the movie – but is really the nicest guy in the world). He is a hack director – whose motto is it gets done quick, and average. He has a demanding film student daughter – who wants perfection, a wife, who used to be an actress, but stopped because she got too obsessed with her roles (and yes, she ends up in the movie as well) – as well as a pretentious star as his leading man, and a pop star as his leading lady. Everything crazy in that opening 37 minutes – including why a 30-minute plan, turned into a 37-minute movie – is explained along the way.

 

The final hour of the film is fun – there is no denying that. And it is amusing to see how the sausage is made (it may even more amusing if there were cameras rolling on the making of One Cut from the Dead, but then again, perhaps that would be too meta). But it’s something we’ve seen before – an Ed Wood type, who determines that this time, he will go for broke. It is happy, silly movie.

 

But that first 37 minutes is the type of thing legends are made of. It really is inspired and director Shin'ichirô Ueda, and his cast and crew, pull it off brilliantly. That’s the reason to see the film – and that’s the reason this is likely to remain in the cult canon for a while.

The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville: Two Men in Manhattan (1959)

Two Men in Manhattan (1959) 

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville   

Written by: Jean-Pierre Melville.

Starring: Jean-Pierre Melville (Moreau), Pierre Grasset (Pierre Delmas), Christiane Eudes (Anne Fèvre-Berthier), Ginger Hall (Judith Nelson), Colette Fleury (The Secretary), Monique Hennessy (Gloria), Glenda Leigh (The Singer), Jean Darcante (Rouvier), Michèle Bailly (Bessie Reed), Paula Dehelly (Mme. Fèvre-Berthier).

 

Watching Two Men in Manhattan you get the sense that Jean-Pierre Melville make a film set in America. Melville after all loved America – he loved American gangster film, and changed his last name to Melville to honor the writer. There really isn’t much to Two Men in Manhattan except for its style – taking place all over the course of one night., it tells a simple, straight forward story in just 84 minutes. The film has great style – and that’s about it. It’s also more than enough to make it an enjoyable film – even if an undeniably minor one in Melville’s filmography.

 

The film stars Melville himself as Moreau – a French journalist living in New York, who called in when the French delegate to the U.N. goes missing. He is to find out what happened to him. He enlists Pierre Delmas (Pierre Grasset) – a photojournalist who knows all the ins and outs of New York – all the seedy places in the city. And together, the pair head out into the night to figure out what happened.

 

They talk to all the women in the diplomat’s in his life – all except (tellingly) his wife and his daughter. There is the Broadway actress, the jazz singer, the burlesque dancer, the prostitute, etc. The exteriors of the film were shot quickly by Melville on location in New York, before he returned to France to shoot the interiors. The film does indeed look great – and moves swiftly from one location to the next. It is a film that is made up of stops and asides – Melville literally stops the film completely to simply watch the jazz singer perform an entire song.

 

In terms of its theme, Two Men in Manhattan isn’t a particularly deep film – and it isn’t nearly as dark as Melville was going to become in the 1960s (or even as he was, even while smiling, in Bob le Flambeur). It’s a little odd to watch the film about two journalists take the stance it does – Delmas may be a scuzzy photographer – paparazzi before they had a term for that. And yet, while he goes too far (way too far) at times, and breaks a lot of rules, the walk back the film does go too far. His instincts – of getting the truth out there – are correct. The film is almost naïve in its view there.

 

In general, Two Men in Manhattan feels much like what it is – a quickly tribute to film noir by a French director, who admired the American directors. The style is there, but the story is simple, and the characters are barely paper thin. The film then is all style, all effortless cool by Melville, all surface. It’s fun – it’s good. And it’s good to see a film that has essentially been forgotten by a master like Melville – even if when you see it, you understand why it isn’t better known. That doesn’t mean it’s bad – most B-movies of the 1950s wish they were this good. It just isn’t quite what Melville was about to go on and do in the 1960s.

The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville: Bob La Flambeur (1956)

Bob le Flambeur (1956) 

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville.

Written by: Jean-Pierre Melville and Auguste Le Breton.

Starring: Roger Duchesne (Robert 'Bob' Montagné), Isabelle Corey (Anne), Daniel Cauchy (Paulo), Guy Decomble (Le commissaire Ledru), André Garet (Roger), Gérard Buhr (Marc), Claude Cerval (Jean - le croupier), Colette Fleury (Suzanne - la femme de Jean), René Havard (L'inspecteur Morin), Simone Paris (Yvonne), Howard Vernon (McKimmie - le commanditaire).

 

If you want to talk about what you typically think of as a Jean-Pierre Melville film, it probably all starts with Bob le Flambeur – Melville’s 1956 masterwork, in which we first start to see what Melville would excel at over the next two decades of his career. It is a film of effortless style, effortless cool, with brisk, confident storytelling that lays out a complicated plot with ease, a sly sense of humor, and a lead character who is cool, and lives by a code – even if that code can seem heartless, he stands by it.

 

That character is Bob – and his played with cool confidence by Roger Duchesne. He is a gambler, living in Monaco, where he stays up all night gambling. Everyone knows Bob – everyone loves Bob. He was convicted of a bank robbery years ago, spent some time in jail, but has given up that life now. Even the cops know and love Bob. His young protégé, Paulo (Daniel Cauchy) hangs on his every word. The young people in Monaco don’t have the same code as Bob – don’t have the same sense of respect, same idea of how things should be.

 

The plot grows increasingly complicated as it moves along. Bob is pretty much broke, down to his last few hundred thousand francs – and has no other skills other than gambling. A friend tells him that the casino has upwards of eight hundred million francs on Grand Prix day – and even if Bob gave up that life years ago, that’s a lot of money, and he could use it. He assembles a team.

 

In some ways, the film resembles something like Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11. Bob gets his crew, and they started training – walking us in the audience through their plan on step at a time. It grows more complicated however by the presence of women – they always mess things up, don’t they? Bob meets and befriends young Anne (Isabelle Corey – a teenager when they made the film, and who delivers the best performance in the film outside of Duchesne). She is on the verge of becoming a prostitute, working for Marc (Gerard Buhr) – one of those younger criminal Bob despises. He invites her to live with him – not because he’s a lecherous old man, but because he thinks he may be good for Paolo. Paolo does indeed fall in love with Anne – and does what all young men in love do, tells her things he shouldn’t. Anne isn’t an innocent either, and she turns around and tells Marc (the transition between Anne and Paolo in bed, and Anne in Marc in bed is handled well by Melville). And we already know that Marc is a police informant, so you know what that is going to mean. And even if this doesn’t mess up the plan – the inside man, a croupier, has told his wife – and she gets a little too greedy as well.

 

In Bob le Flambeur you can see why Melville was an inspirational for the French New Wave filmmakers, who would begin to make films in just a few years. Here Melville is in this film, made on a shoestring budget, shooting on the streets, with an editing style that Godard would adopt shortly. And Bob is a forerunner to those effortlessly cool protagonists of the French New Wave – like Jean-Paul Belmondo, who of course would make some films with Melville later on.

 

The ending of the film I justly famous, for the ironic way that Melville brings it all to a close – allowing Bob to be back on top, without really making him a criminal again. And yet, of course, people die because Bob – and he doesn’t seem all that bothered by it. He lived by his code after all, and they didn’t – and if they don’t, well then, perhaps they got what they deserved. There is a heartlessness to Bob that goes along with that cool – perhaps you need to be that heartless, to be that cool.