Popcorn Kernels: Mother Of Sighs

Some quick reviews of 2018 movies I've been catching up on, now that I have to wait until discount day to pay money for them instead of just swiping MoviePass like a shopping montage in an 80's movie.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Year: 2018

Director: David Yates

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Johnny Depp
Run Time: 2 hours 14 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Newt Scamander & Co. have a series of adventures while the evil wizard Grindelwald gathers his forces, and maybe they'll do something interesting in the next one.

Now, nobody is pretending that any spinoff franchise could ever be as huge a phenomenon as Harry Potter. Even though the films in that franchise could be pretty patchy, there's no denying their huge cultural impact, pushed into the stratosphere by the world-rending book series they were based on. I'm not asking Fantastic Beasts or its mush-mouth titled sequel to be anything close to that. I am asking for it to have the slightest vestige of quality, however. Unfortunately, you can't always get what you want.

From the title on down, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a miscalculation of biblical proportions. It's visually illegible, constantly plastering plasticky CGI across its choppily edited, mud-colored frame, but that's nothing compared to how illegible the script is. Its incoherent attempts at fan service (they shoehorn in every Harry Potter figure who might conceivably have been alive at the time, but their comings and goings blend in with the sheer mass of new characters we meet who get lost in dead-end plot lines or appear without warning as if they've been here the entire time) tumble over a plot that not only forgets to include very many magical creatures, but also bungles every single lead character from the previous movie, even though it made egregiously major retcons to include two of them in the first place.

The plot gets so unnecessarily complicated that a character literally has to sit us down for ten full minutes to give a flashback-aided presentation about what the hell we've even been watching this whole time, right before a climax that introduces about a half dozen different conflicts that haven't had a scrap of setup.

Rowling can't even resist doubling down on the single worst aspect of the single film: the reveal that the Americans call Muggles No-Maj's. As in, they have no magic. I like the idea that different wizarding communities have different slang terms just like the real world, but it's probably the laziest fake word I've ever heard in a world in which fake words are literally the backbone. Enter Grindelwald, which introduces other terms like the French "non-magique" and the term "can't-spells."  Is she just trolling me at this point? By film 5 in this franchise (yeah, that's the plan, but we'll see if they get there after this trainwreck), are we going to learn that the Australian wizards call them "have-to-throw-shrimp-on-the-barbies-cuz-they-bad-at-wandz"?

Any way you slice it, it's just a mess. Everything good about the first film, which was only OK to begin with, had been left to rot. The fun frolicking with magical creatures is present in small pockets of the film, but it all feels very Looney Tunes and it actively fails to gel with the movie's bizarre choice to focus on the brewing conflict that seems to be leading to Magic World War I. And Eddie Redmayne, who was a charming presence in the first film, is giving a performance that forgets most of his quirks and tics in favor of a stern locked jaw and staring off into space. The plot never really makes a space for him (the plot is much more focused on Dumbledore - who is barely in the film - and Grindelwald - who is in far too much of the film, and spends too much time bragging that he knows something we don't, which when revealed turns out to be a very lame thing), and he's content to just be the wallpaper anyway.

There are quite a few Harry Potter movies that I don't like very much, but I never expected to hate one of these. Well, there's a first time for everything.

Rating: 2/10

Suspiria

Year: 2018
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth
Run Time: 2 hours 32 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A young woman joins a modern dance school in 1977 Germany that may or may not be definitely run by witches.

One way to put me instantly on your movie's bad side is to split it into chapters. Suspiria announces right away that it's going to have six acts, which means I'll constantly be checking in and going "we're still only on act two? Why isn't this movie over yet!" My impatience aside, Suspiria really revels in how drawn-out the whole process is. Two and a half hours of Suspiria is waaaay too much Suspiria. The original is 92 minutes long, the perfect amount of time to be completely rattled and shaken up before the film dumps you on the cold concrete.

However, horror films often can't sustain tension for much longer than that, not that this Suspiria seems particularly concerned with building tension anyway. It's another exercise in style like the previous film (to that end, I do think Guadagnino was the best choice to fill Argento's shoes), and in these elements it works pretty damn well. The set design is impressively austere and the cinematography wickedly echoes the original film by being its complete aesthetic opposite, entirely on purpose. And my favorite element here is the jagged sound design, which layers dialogue from other scenes over odd shots where it doesn't seem to belong, evoking the ethereal and odd sound dubbing of older Italian filmmaking. But where Argento's Suspiria served form at the expense of function, Guadagnino liberally ladles his style over a six-course meal of plot that makes the table groan under its weight.

The most obvious misstep here is the inclusion of the political turmoil in 1977 Germany, as if the location and time period of the original actually had a single thing to do with anything. It's a choice that paints Guadagnino into a corner and this material only ever feels clumsily shoehorned in. Less so the stuff about dealing with the lingering specter of the Holocaust, but it still intersects with the main thrust of the movie so little that you only ever feel like you're being dragged away from where the real action is.

As for this action, it does provoke a stirring of horror or two over its time. There's plenty of exquisite match cutting here that utilizes modern dance as an aggressive, muscular framework for some disgusting imagery that owes everything to precise editing and impressive visual effects. And the eventual climax of the film is a colorful orgy of terror that does make sitting through the entire thing worth it, but while you're in the middle of the sitting part, the movie really does do its best to put you right to sleep.

Rating: 5/10

Searching

Year: 2018
Director: Aneesh Chaganty
Cast: John Cho, Debra Messing, Joseph Lee
Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

A desperate father uses his computer to solve the mystery of his daughter's disappearance.

I missed Searching in theaters because of the aforementioned Great MoviePass Implosion of 2018, but I also wasn't feeling too motivated to go check it out because of a pretty petty reason. People were staring awestruck at this movie because it shows a whole story over a computer screen. As if Unfriended wasn't sitting right there, having done the exact same thing four years ago. And that wasn't even the first, because we have The Den, and presumably some other film that The Den was ripping off. Nothing is original, my friends. I'm just rankled that the discourse ignored the teenybopper horror film because that's what discourse likes to do.

And when it comes down to brass tacks, that teenybopper horror film is much more honest with its conceit. Searching is a fun movie with a gripping plot, but it's also a cheater. We cut between multiple screens (including just a straight-up TV), we get video footage of John Cho at all times because he leaves FaceTime open like a crazy person, we have actual non-diegetic music plastered over the big moments, and we get close-ups of all the important material onscreen because audiences can't be trusted to pay attention. Unfriended may be a sillier movie, but it's true to its format and I want to make sure it gets that respect.

That said, it's not like Searching is bad. On the contrary, it's a quite delightful little film. It's a muscular, pared-down thriller that - like most thrillers - stumbles a bit in its third act, but takes you on a wild roller coaster ride just the same. It also utilizes real social media and apps like Venmo, Facebook, Tumblr, and the like in a way that isn't just product placement like a Ralph Breaks the Internet, but rather a reminder that this is the fabric of what a teenager does all day. It highlights just how much of our lives are splayed out across the Internet for any enterprising viewer to piece together, and it's an excellent, chilling reminder of just how public most of our lives have become.

Unfortunately, as a two-hander between John Cho and Debra Messing, it's less than thrilling. Cho is good here, as he is pretty much anywhere, but neither quite has the presence or gravitas to sell the ridiculous twists that come swinging for the fences in the later portions of the film. But at any rate, they're absorbing enough that you do forget entirely that you're just watching a computer screen, and that's a recipe for a fun night on the couch with Redbox, even if it's not going to change your life.

Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1658
Reviews In This Series
Suspiria (Argento, 1977)
Suspiria (Guadgnino, 2018)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Yates, 2016)
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (Yates, 2018)

Popcorn Kernels: Sick Women

This set of mini reviews will cover a multitude of films I’ve seen recently about women who are under the weather, whether it’s a contagious bug, a nervous breakdown, or a psychological corkscrew.

Contagion

Year: 2011
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law
Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

A lethal viral pathogen is quickly spreading across the world and authorities scramble to find its source, discover a cure, and decide who to save first.

There’s no single more effective moment in Contagion than its opening shot: A pale Gwyneth Paltrow coughs and sniffles in an airport lounge. The title card “Day 2” appears in ominous, blood red font. This is not the beginning of our story. We don’t know how or why, but it has already begun and there is no escape until it reaches its inevitable conclusion. Now that's how you open a movie!

I’m an easy lay for viral outbreak movies. As a card-carrying germophobe, I had a knot in my stomach for nearly the entire duration of the movie. It freaked me out more than every horror movie I’ve watched this movie, combined. And while I appreciate any film that can generate a physical reaction in its audience, I am NOT an easy lay for positive reviews. And as tense as Contagion may be, it’s an astoundingly messy movie.

It’s telling that the film’s best moment is its opening shot, because once Contagion’s innumerable characters and subplots kick in, they weigh the film down like so many anchors. The broad, multi-perspective view of an epidemic is certainly an intriguing and tense approach, but the film’s overall structure suffers, narrative logistics cracking under the weight of a metric ton of stars. Contagion’s desperate attempts to weld together storylines involving Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Jude law, John Hawkes, Brian Cranston, and Elliott Gould lead to a waterlogged conclusion that haphazardly drops subplots to bail out a slowly sinking narrative. It’s the Garry Marshall’s Valentine’s Day of viral outbreak movies.

Contagion is a roller coaster; a rip-roaring thrill ride that leaves you entirely unchanged upon its completion, if a little nauseous. Its shallowness isn’t necessarily a fault, even if its relentlessly purple dialogue is (“should I call someone?” “Call everyone!”). It does have some shaky thematic throughlines about the indignities of the class system and how fear and rumor spreads just as quickly as disease, but for the most part it’s just a slick, by-the-numbers thriller. When it finally ends with a pointless explanation of the virus’s origin, it’s hard to feel like the movie has accomplished anything, but it was definitely a wild ride.

Pro-Tip: Contagion is patently NOT a date movie. Potential suitors, avoid at all costs.

Rating: 7/10

Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios

Year: 1988
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Julieta Serrano
Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

An actress jilted by her co-star boyfriend tempts to deal with her break-up while a friend on the run from the law, her lover’s ex-wife, his son, and his son’s fiancée unexpectedly arrive at her apartment.

Sergio and I were so taken with Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver that we more or less instantly followed it up with Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios/Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, a much earlier entry in his filmography that also stars the inimitable Carmen Maura (it was also the one that capsized their creative partnership, and in fact they wouldn’t work together at all until the 18-years-later Volver, but that’s neither here nor there, I suppose). Although it’s another female-led comedy with dark themes that allows its protagonist license to be venal and selfish, Mujeres could hardly be more different from Volver.

Where his 2006 effort is a confident, fantastical treatise on the beauty and wonder of life, Mujeres is an out-and-out farce of gran proportions, a wacky, door-slamming effort in the vein of classic stage works like Noises Off. There’s the obvious contributing factor that it mostly takes place in a single location once the second act kicks in, but it’s also a loony jaunt jam-packed with delightfully cartoonish characters. Once again, Almodóvar delivers an effervescent comedy that transcends language barriers with a solid undercurrent of emotion and artistry.

You see, the women in this film aren’t just on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to their over-the-top situations. They are real life women trying to get by in the face of life’s incalculable unfairness. Their struggles are palpable and their exaggerated reactions blameless. Essentially every problem they face is the result of men carelessly using them like playthings, and the entire arc of the film reflects main character Pepa’s growth into independent womanhood. Not only is it a passionate and exuberant feminist tract, it’s a god damn work of art.

There is perhaps no film scene of the entire year that matches the dreamy magnum opus of this film’s opening, played out through a retro film scene followed by Ivan – the man who caused all this trouble – providing dubbed Spanish dialogue for another movie. The eclectic collection of shots in the film within the film depict him declaring his undying love for a multitude of international women (including an American stereotype I can’t say I’ve ever come across – a baton-twirling cheerleader), followed by an outpouring of dubbed emotion over a muted film track, in which the woman silently flaps her lips in response to his declarations. It’s a genius setup that clearly implies how Ivan (and, by extent, the world) views and ignores women, as well as how trapped they find themselves by his words. It’s a powerful, beautiful piece, and it’s followed by 80 minutes of vivacious, neon farce.

It’s a stylized, wacky, sexy romp that turns a comic relief cabdriver (he’s a relief from the comedy because he’s marginally less funny than the other characters) into an exquisitely precise longform punchline. This film is women against the world, and they grab it by the horns, toss it through a plate glass window, and keep it laughing so hard it passes out. I’ve only seen two of his films so far, but Pedro Almodóvar is swiftly becoming one of my favorite directors.

Rating: 10/10

Heathers

Year: 1989
Director: Michael Lemann
Cast: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty
Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A teen girl is seduced by a new boy in town, who convinces her to murder the popular kids at her high school.

I’ve always viewed Heathers as an alternative teen classic, a late period bit of counterprogramming to the overly earnest John Hughes cycle, but I personally hadn’t seen the film since the first time I watched it, at a very young age. Given distance and a new perspective, Heathers is much better and a hell of a lot worse than I thought. Its themes have only gotten more potent and many moments are unequivocally brilliant, bleeding-edge satire, but to get to them you have to sift through a heap of late 80’s detritus.

The first act is a gauntlet to prove that you’re worthy of the film’s brilliance; a cheap, stagey spectacle of overbaked dialogue that almost certainly made a young Diablo Cody swoon. It’s a vexing half hour of hip, snappy teens spouting avant garbage about spokes in their menstrual cycle, reigned over by a truly dreadful, soul-curdling non-performance from Kim Walker as the Queen Bee Heather Chandler. But once you’ve broken through that vexing permafrost, you hit pay dirt.

Heathers is a delicious dark comedy that could only have been made in 1989 – that sweet spot in the wake of the slasher boom but pre-Columbine – and its true core of pitch-black humor activates with Heather Chandler’s death, which also conveniently rids the cast of its weakest link. After this, the film snaps like a slingshot, launching into a wry satire detailing what happens when a vapid, venal student body that is used to violently lashing out more out of a sense of stir-craziness than righting actual wrongs comes into contact with a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool psychopath. This is a society where suicide (faked or otherwise) is the great equalizer, an alternapunk wasteland of superficial nihilists who will fake true emotion if it gets them on TV, where life only gains meaning once it’s extinguished.

It’s unspeakably grim, but also uproariously funny. Watching these teen movie archetypes marching through their stages of non-grief is a hilariously biting indictment of apathetic teen culture, balanced out by the earnest Winona Ryder resisting her seduction over to the Dark Side (represented by Christian Slater, copping Urkel’s nasal whine). She is the one point of light in this world of careless parents, thin-skinned teens, and inept cops, and her dance with the Devil has surprising emotional weight. Her turning point into genuine heroine for hope comes in the film’s most brilliantly twisted moment: a guilt-stricken Ryder burns her palm with the car’s cigarette lighter and Slater grabs her hand, not to comfort her, but to use it to light his cigarette.

This detachment fuels the entire film, giving it an edgy boost that overcomes its feeble first act and shoddy production design(although I do love the blue neon light used to denote nighttime and one shot of a chase scene through the misty woods is a warped, expressionistic marvel). Eventually this delves into a patently silly climax that I recognized as goofily inferior even when I was a kid, but for the bulk of its run time, Heathers is a sharp, dynamic, demented flick that’s totally worth ritual rewatching, a proto-Fight Club for the angsty teen set.

Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1623

International Woman Of Mystery

Year: 2015

Director: Paul Feig

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Jude Law

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Is it just me, or are Apatow comedies better when he’s not actually directing them? So far, I’d say the best to come from his stable are pretty unequivocally Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids and Nick Stoller’s Neighbors. Feig’s most recent bout in the ring isn’t exactly proving me wrong. Spy, his newest Melissa McCarthy vehicle, might just be the apotheosis of everything that that collective has been working toward: a brash, fearless, and fun genre exercise that blows everything that came before it right on out of the water.

Hell, it even blows itself out of the water.

Spy tells the story of CIA agent Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy), a timid woman who squanders her potential by working behind a desk, providing navigation for the inexplicably British Agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law), on whom she has a crush the size of a moon-destroying rocket. When one of his missions is compromised by the wicked heiress Reina (Rose Byrne), the CIA discovers that she knows the identities of all their active agents. In desperation, they send Susan after her, because she’s unrecognizable.

Thus begins a heartwarming tale of a mousy pushover stepping into the spotlight to become the butt-kicking superspy she always knew she could be. Well, in time. First she must fight her way through a series of wacky hijinks, aided by her coworker and friend Nancy (Miranda Hart).

Who I recognized from this awesome Mamma Mia! parody because I’m cultured.

Spy is, to put it lightly, an experience. It’s a female-led Austin Powers that - like Bridesmaids – isn’t FOR women. It’s WITH women for EVERYONE. And there really is something for everybody here. The raunchy comedy is spliced onto a legitimate action thriller that devotes as much attention to high octane spy escapades as it does to belly laughs.

While we’re on the subject of bellies, I really have to commend this film for not using McCarthy’s weight as a punchline. She’s a remarkably talented comic actress, but previous vehicles for her like the abhorrent Identity Thief center her character and humor entirely around her weight It’s crass, it’s unfair, and it’s dreadfully boring.

In Spy, her character has her fair share of flaws, but her size isn’t even a factor in her initial lack of appeal. In fact, the only joke that could really be considered a fat joke is just a pratfall. The truly unfortunate thing is that the trailers latched onto that scene like it was a slice of toast bearing the face of the Virgin Mary, hopelessly misrepresenting the film and causing me to skip it in theaters. Hence, this egregiously late review.

But I have since rectified my mistake, and I am here to tell you that, if you haven’t seen Spy, you’re missing out. Humor is entirely subjective, of course, but the fact that both Sergio and I found Spy to be the funniest movie of the year should tell you something. We’re hardly ever on the same page.

Hell, that guy loves Winter’s Bone, which is as far from being a Brennan movie as a Rob Zombie reboot of Grease.

Spy’s humor comes from a variety of places: spy parody, McCarthy improve, Apatowian gross-out antics, and secondhand embarrassment all jockey for position. But in addition to McCarthy, who is a reliably bankable humorist, big chuckles come form two unexpected performers. First of all, Rose Byrne  - who is already well on her way to comic superstardom thanks to her being the single best element of Neighbors – is incontestably hilarious as the spoiled and evil antagonist with a heart of gold leaf. Her performance is so consistently out of left field that she always keeps you on your toes.

But the true lightning in a bottle standout of Spy is one Jason Statham, as McCarthy’s careless and vain coworker who tails her incognito as she attempts to covertly carry out her mission. He distills the essence of every Jason Statham character into one stiletto sharp caricature, blowing his typical badass bravado tremendously out of proportion. It’s a genius portrayal, a character with infinite confidence in his own abilities without actually being any help at all. He is not always served well by the Apatow-standard editing, which just lets him keep going and neglects to trim his one-liners to an appropriate amount. I call this the “quip tsunami” technique, and while hilarious at time, it’s less controlled here than in similar films. Nevertheless, Statham is a sparkling presence in an already uncontrollably fun movie.

The best thing about Spy is that, even if you utterly detest the comedy, you can tune it out and still have a one hundred percent functional spy picture. The action is ludicrous and over-the-top, but it’s not like you’ll get anything different if you shell out for Spectre. And this way you don’t have to pretend to care about Bond’s awkward, fumbling chemistry with his wallpaper love interest. It’s a win-win! Spy’s action benefits from a truly staggering budget for a comedy, which allows it to indulge in just as much globetrotting splendor as the best of the best.

With the humor of a Bridesmaids and the absurd, slightly inappropriate swashbuckling of an Octopussy, Spy is just plain a fun time at the movies. The best of the constantly improving McCarthy-Feig pictures, Spy actually gives me high hopes for the new Ghostbusters. Sleuth it out of Redbox and snag yourself a good time!

TL;DR: Spy is an excellent, female led comedy that combines Bondian thrills with uproarious comedy.
Rating: 9/10
Word Count: 941