Movie Reviw: Rat Film

Rat Film **** / *****

Directed by: Theo Anthony.

 

I often complain that too many documentaries use the rather boring point and shoot style – filming interviews with various talking heads, and mixing them with archival footage in a style that is basically interchangeable from doc to doc – even good ones. Once in a while though, we get something truly unique – and Theo Anthony’s Rat Film certainly qualifies on that level. The film is an 80 minute look at the rat problem in Baltimore – both historically, and in the present, and is a strange mixture of styles and tones, going from deadpan humor, to the surreal, to the tragic, and back again. The film is a tone poem that gets at something real about the city it documents. As one of the exterminators says in the film – Baltimore doesn’t have a rat problem, it has a people problem.

 

That statement, is probably the thesis of the film. Rats are inevitable when you cram this many people into this small of a space, and have rundown buildings, and garbage buildup all around. The rats are going to come. The film documents the historical way that Baltimore first dealt with the problem – including block by block maps by Kurt Richter, who mapped out everywhere rats went, to better able to deal with them. There’s also some other, strange details in the film – like the opening, where we see a rat try and escape a City of Baltimore Garbage Can – rats can jump up to 32 inches, the City’s cans are 34 inches. That rat isn’t getting out.

 

Watching Rat Film is an odd experience, as you never quite know where the film is going to go next. There are scenes literally from the rat’s point of view in the film – virtual reality simulations for example, and then Anthony will veer off to the various, creative ways the residents of the city deal with rats themselves. If they weren’t rats, you’d likely call some of what they do cruel – and maybe it is – but they all have to some way of dealing with it.

 

What emerges over time though is a portrait of this city which is forced to deal with the rat problem, mainly because of class and race issues. Eventually, everything comes back down to that, and always will unless people actually want to do something about the problem. They don’t. Rat Film is an odd film – I almost don’t know what else to say about it, because it is so strange – but it’s certainly one of the most unique docs of the year – and a film that will likely last in your mind after most docs have vanished. Seek it out.

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Movie Review: Game Night

Game Night **** / *****

Directed by: John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.

Written by: Mark Perez.

Starring: Jason Bateman (Max), Rachel McAdams (Annie), Kyle Chandler (Brooks), Sharon Horgan (Sarah), Billy Magnussen (Ryan), Lamorne Morris (Kevin), Kylie Bunbury (Michelle), Jesse Plemons (Gary), Michael C. Hall (The Bulgarian), Danny Huston (Donald Anderton), Chelsea Peretti (Glenda), Camille Chen (Dr. Chin).

 

I’m not quite sure when major studios forgot how to make great, smart, mainstream comedies aimed at adults but they basically have. Most mainstream comedies have a few laughs, but not much else, as they rely on big personalities and juvenile jokes about bodily fluids and sex to be funny, and they hardly ever are. I assumed from the previews that Game Night would be another of those movies – another film like Fist Fight or Central Intelligence or any number of other comedies that had enough jokes to fill a trailer, but not enough to sustain a movie. Boy, was I wrong. This is the best mainstream, goofy studio comedy I have seen in a long, long time.

 

The basic premise is simple – ultra-competitive married couple Max and Annie (Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams) host a weekly game night for their friends – married couple Kevin and Michelle (Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury) and charming womanizer Ryan (Billy Magnussen), who brings whatever clerk from La Senza or Forever 21 he’s currently dating. They used to invite the couple next door, but they got divorced, and the woman moved out – leaving just her creepy cop husband Gary (Jesse Plemons) behind – who longs to be re-invited back, but isn’t. Things get stranger with the return of Max’s brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) – who is more successful in almost every way than Max, the golden child, who says they should have game night at the mansion he’s renting. This will not be a regular game night though – he’s kicked it up a notch, by staging a would be kidnapping game – where he will get kidnapped, and the others have to find him. So when armed men break in, and kidnap him, the rest of them are not fazed – although, of course, it turns out to be a real kidnaping, and the three couples (this time Ryan with Sharon Horgan’s Sarah – much smarter than most of the girls he has dated) head out to try and find him, only gradually realizing what is really happening.

 

I will fully admit that the setup sounds like it would make for a silly, not all that good comedy – but the film is all about the execution here. For one thing, the film is perfectly cast – particularly Bateman and McAdams who have real chemistry together, and make an unexpectedly great comic team. For another, the screenplay by Mark Perez is actually quite smart, in pushing things past the point of ridiculousness, but still maintaining some semblance of a real world. Oddly, the film takes as its inspiration David Fincher’s underseen, under rated 1997 film The Game, including the sibling rivalry aspect between Michael Douglas and Sean Penn, and takes that aspect seriously enough that you feel it, but not so seriously that it derails the film. Credit also has to be given to director John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who do a lot more than most comedy directors – who seem happy enough to point their cameras at moving stars being goofy and leave it at that. There is a dynamic sequence as a house party that crosses Fight Club with Eyes Wide Shut, and an egg being thrown around that is hilarious, and shot in a way to give it maximum energy.

 

The film never really steps wrong – every time you think it’s going to, it comes up with a new strange way to go, a new twist that sends it off in another direction, while never losing comic momentum. The whole cast is great – each of the couples have their own comic energy that works. Special mention should be given to Rachel McAdams though, who shows once again that in another time and place (say, the 1990s) she would have become the biggest female star in the world, with her excellent comic timing and delivery, she is just endlessly great here and Jesse Plemons, who continues to be one of my favorite character actors working, and here steals the movie with his every line delivery (my favorite? “How would that be profitable for Frito Lay?”).

 

We need comedies like Game Night – as ultimately silly and inconsequential as the film is. The film is pure fun from beginning to end – and isn’t the type of comedy that makes you feel silly or stupid about for laughing afterwards. This is great studio comedy – something I thought no longer existed.

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Movie Review: Loveless

Loveless **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Written by: Oleg Negin and Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Starring: Maryana Spivak (Zhenya), Aleksey Rozin (Boris), Matvey Novikov (Alyosha), Marina Vasileva (Masha), Andris Keiss (Anton), Aleksey Fateev (Ivan), Artyom Zhigulin (Kuznetsov), Natalya Potapova (Mat Zheni), Anna Gulyarenko (Mat Mashi).

 

Loveless, the new film by Russian master Andrey Zvyagintsev (whose last film Leviathan was even better) is many things at once. It is a film that deepens as it goes along, and becomes a portrait of modernity and technology and parenting, but also of a modern Russian society that is fully of apathy. The government institutions in the film are useless and uncaring – but then again, so are the parents. The film takes place mostly in 2012 – and the annexation of Crimea, and the rising tensions with Ukraine, play out in the background – on news reports, and TV – where they go half listened to or ignored. On one side there is an increasingly intolerant religious beliefs being forced down upon people, and on another side there is status and social climbing. All of these are contributing factor when a child goes missing.

 

That child is Alyosha, and his parents Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Aleksey Rozin) are the main characters in the film. Their marriage is all but over when the film begins – they’re trying to sell their apartment, and cannot wait to move on with their lives apart from each other. She’s found an older, richer boyfriend, and wants to move up the social ladder. He’s found a younger, more docile woman, who he has already got pregnant. They argue – loudly – because neither one of them want to take Alyosha – he’d be an inconvenience to them in their new lives, and would just get in the way. Zhenya is openly cruel to her son – saying he cries all the time to strangers looking at the apartment. IF Boris talks with him at all, we don’t see it. Alyosha knows very well he’s not wanted. When he does go missing, neither of his parents notice for two days – they’re busy off in their new lives, and forget about their old one. The police are no help at all, so they reach out to a group of civilian volunteers, who conduct the investigation themselves. This involves a lot of searches of cold apartment buildings, the surrounding forest, and an abandoned Soviet facility that has fallen into disrepair.

 

When the film opens, you think that both Zhenya and Boris are monsters – and to be honest, my opinion of them didn’t really grow more favorable throughout the film. Yet, what Zvyagintsev and his actors have done is to make more human throughout the film. The film doesn’t forgive their actions – but it does show how perhaps they became the people they have become. Boris works for a tech firm, in which he will be fired if anyone discovers he has had a divorce, so he is hoping that a quick divorce, and replacement of one wife and child with another will help. Zhenya is rarely without her phone, and takes many selfies throughout the film (she is hardly alone), and is in a world in which a woman’s primary economic power is still her body – which she uses for own security with her new partner, a rich, lonely man who tags along after her. When we meet her mother (played by Natalya Potapova in a memorable one scene performance), we understand even more why she married Boris in the first place.

 

Loveless is a heavy film – it is an emotional gut punch at times, including one of the most unforgettable shots of the year, where we see just how much Alyosha knows about his parents. It doesn’t get lighter throughout the film (there is only one minor moment of humor - a conversation about a fake wife Boris has with a co-worker). The rest of the film is a document of suffering – much like Leviathan was – and how easy it is for that suffering to go unnoticed, lessons unlearned, and for people to go back to their lives. The end of the film doesn’t off much in the way of way of hope for the future, or that anyone learned from the past. It is a film that once again confirms just how good Zvyagintsev is as a filmmaker – he’s one of the best around at combining the personal and the politic – with devastating results.

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Movie Review: Mute

Mute * ½ / *****

Directed by: Duncan Jones.

Written by: Michael Robert Johnson & Duncan Jones.

Starring: Alexander Skarsgård (Leo Beiler), Paul Rudd (Cactus Bill), Justin Theroux (Duck Teddington), Seyneb Saleh (Naadirah), Gilbert Owuor (Maksim), Robert Sheehan (Luba), Nikki Lamborn (Rhonna), Noel Clarke (Stuart), Daniel Fathers (Sgt. Robert Kloskowski), Florence Kasumba (Tanya), Sam Rockwell (Sam Bell).

 

Director Duncan Jones has apparently been working on Mute since before his first film – Moon (2009) – was even an idea in his head. The film is said to be connected to that one – a spiritual sequel of sorts, set in the same universe, but with completely different characters, etc. It’s odd than that for as long as Jones has been thinking about Mute that the films feels as disjointed as it does. Jones is clearly influenced by Blade Runner – as many sci fi directors are – and it shows in the production design and costumes - although the aesthetic of this film feels a little off – too bright, not dirty enough. This is a noir story in a future setting, but neither of those things seem particularly well thought through here.

 

The film opens with our hero as a child (as many do) – as Leo (who will grow up to be Alexander Skarsgaard) gets into an accident, and his Amish parents refuse the surgery that would have given him the ability to speak. Flash forward 30 years, and he still cannot speak, and now works as a bartender in a strip club in Berlin, where he is dating a waitress, Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh). The two clearly love each other, but she’s hiding something, and then goes missing, prompting Leo to go searching for her.

 

We have a feeling from the start that somehow this is all going to connect with the other story strain Jones is setting up – between American surgeons Cactus Bill (Paul Rudd) and Duck (Justin Theroux), trying hard to be a version of Trapper John and Hawkeye from Robert Altman’s MASH. They are doctors in hiding – there is talk about Americans needing Visas, and turning those who went AWOL in, but it isn’t explained very clearly. The two are charming, but undeniably sleazy – and Cactus Bill is also clearly hiding something – perhaps having to do with his daughter, who he brings to a variety of non-appropriate locations.

 

I don’t know that Jones ever really finds the right tone for the film, and he clearly never finds the right pace for it. The film runs over two hours, but it takes almost half that time before anything actually happens in the film. Skarsgaard is not well served by the screenplay – he is actually quite good in the early scenes, where he is able to communicate how love struck with Naadirah he is simply by the look in his eyes, but he’s less successful as his character has descend into hell, like all noir heroes do, to find out what the truth. Rudd is far better as Cactus Bill, leaning in to his sleazy side, and using his natural charm to get you to like him, even as you know he’s a slime ball. Theroux’s Duck is less successful – he’s just slimy from the start, and I don’t think the revelations that come out about him – and his true motivations – do much except to leave a bad taste in your mouth, as they feel cheap and exploitive.

 

Jones, it must be said, is clearly a talented filmmaker. Moon remains one of the most interesting sci fi films of the 21^st Century – a film that grows in your mind after it ends, and keeps growing, and his mainstream debut afterwards – Source Code – is as good as studio sci fi normally gets. Here though, it almost seems like he was blinded to the stories flaws, and never really thought through how to make this story – or this world – really work. Everything feels patched together, perhaps interesting ideas in isolation, but they never really come together into anything more.

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Movie Review: Les Affames

Les affamés *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Robin Aubert.

Written by: Robin Aubert.

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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Movie Review: The Final Year

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

Directed by: Greg Barker.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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Movie Review: Black Panther

Black Panther **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Ryan Coogler.

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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