Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #234: Reefer Madness (1936)

In this deliberate propaganda film produced in 1936 to warn children and adolescents about drug use, Mae Coleman (Thelma White) and Jack Perry (Carleton Young) are a cohabiting couple who work as marijuana dealers. Mae wishes to stick with adult clients but over her objections, the unscrupulous Jack decides to target high schoolers to both sell to, and recruit as dealers. These kids include Bill (Kenneth Craig), Blanche (Lillian Myles) and Ralph (Dave O'Brien), who are all lured in like moths to a flame and naturally once they first try dope, they're hooked. From here their addictions make them dabble in increasingly dangerous crimes, attempt suicide, and get subjected to commitment in asylums.

Reefer Madness was made in 1936, as I said, as an exploitation film (originally with funding from a religious group, perhaps unsurprisingly, and titled Tell Your Children) meant to be shown to parents as a morality tale for their children. It flopped and then languished in obscurity until the early 1970s, when it became a midnight movie ironically among stoners and cannabis reform advocates... and there is absolutely no wonder why any of that happened. Because in its blatant sensationalism and didactic nature, it's surely one of the most unintentionally hilarious movies ever made. Increasing that is the very lazy and unconvincingly performances from the cast, many of whom were too old to play teenagers; my favourite part is when one of them goes on trial and, after being convicted to prison time, reacts to that announcement simply by collapsing slowly into his chair and whining like he's just been told to clean his room or something. I almost fell out of my own chair then.

Director Louis J. Gasnier and writers Lawrence Meade and Arthur Hoerl obviously pursued the issue of drug addiction with good, conscientious intentions, and their approach to it may be consistent with the era, but that approach has not aged well one bit, and the existence today both of greater knowledge about marijuana and its effects and of considerably more dangerous narcotics inevitably exacerbates that as the movie's key downfall. I also want to mention I saw it, after learning of it in the great documentary series Time Warp: The Greatest Cult Films of All Time, on YouTube, where one user very sharply commented about how the teens drink alcohol all through it and it never touches on how dangerous that is (this was after the Prohibition, remember). Great point, horrific movie.

Facebook vs. Australia's news outlets.

Sticking to the subject of national news for this week, and with a story that's put Australia in the global spotlight again, Facebook have blocked all (or certainly most) of our highest-profile print and broadcast news outlets. This is apparently in response to the Morrison Government's new media laws requiring social media companies to pay said outlets a cut of the revenue from articles.

I'm right on the fence here. These networks and publications do require fees and profits to help them pay their staff, and any source that aids both this and/or Australia's economy is usually something I can support. But look comparatively at both the warring factions here: neither Facebook nor the Murdoch press need to increase their wealth. Both are worth literally billions!

Nonetheless, until now Australian news companies (affiliated with anybody) could broadcast their work to a global audience thanks to Facebook. Not anymore. Yet, this blocking of them could motivate more Aussie users to look news websites and sources up for themselves (which, of course, will increase traffic away from Facebook and towards these Australian pages), and the Internet has for its full history just one news and information source. Finally, all news sources can offer mis- or disinformation, which can arguably be more hazardous than no news whatsoever.

Personal improprieties behind closed doors in Canberra's corridors of power.

The Morrison Government has hogged Australian news headlines this week for all the wrong reasons, but this time that has nothing to do with their policies. Brittany Higgins, a former staffer for Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, has emerged with claims a male colleague raped her in Reynold's Parliament House office in 2019 after a staff party. This follows a report about widespread sexual misconduct and misogyny among male Liberal Party members last year on TV's Four Corners.

I watched that report, and despite my distaste for the Liberal Party's policies (for any non-Aussies, they're the conservatives here), I found it all too convincing; there were simply too many female Liberal members prepared to speak about their treatment in it for it not to be. Therefore, while her allegations remain unsubstantiated, I believe Ms. Higgins (at least for now). Inevitably, this week has turned her life upside down and so I won't show a photo of Ms. Higgins, but whatever one's politics, we need to listen to her on these personal matters and to any other female politicians who may make similar allegations.

Now, being sincere and for balance, I want to also say it would be very naive to suggest the Liberals are the only party who are guilty of sexism and sexual misconduct. All the others who are need to clean their acts up, and all parties everywhere should use this awful story as a learning curve.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #233: Your Name (2016).

 

Mitsuha (voiced by Mone Kamishiraisa in the Japanese version) is a high school girl inhabiting the rural Japanese town of Itomori, but she's so bored there she wishes she could be a boy in Tokyo in her next life. That wish comes true much sooner than that, however, when she inexplicably and suddenly switches bodies with Tokyo student Taki (Ryunosuke Kamiki). She's a family-oriented dreamer; he's short-tempered but essentially nice. Yet if they though swapping bodies with each other was bizarre, what happens when they meet in person will puzzle them even more.

As any of my followers here (if I have any) will attest to, I can't get enough anime. But I must say, I could get enough of this slice of it. Your Name has stunning visuals but that alone never makes for a compelling movie, and writer-director Makoto Shinkai worked his visuals around what I considered a very dully cliched and predictable body-swap narrative. By halfway through its 107 minutes I'd already drifted off (although I did sit through the full film), and Japanese rock band Radwimps' annoying piano score didn't help. In fact, those two elements ruined it for me.

There are certainly worse anime movies than Your Name, but there are many better than it and how it holds 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and fifth place at Japan's all-time box office just bamboozles me. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #232: Raising Arizona (1987).

Holly Hunter and Nicolas Cage are H.I. and Edwina McDunnough, a newlywed couple in Arizona. He's a recently released ex-convict; she's the parole officer he fell in love with (and, obviously, vice versa). After moving into their own home, they try to have a child but they enter two roadblocks to that: she's infertile, and his criminal record means they can't adopt. So what's an unhappily childless couple to do? They steal one, of course. But not just any baby: one of the quintuplets belonging to local retail magnate Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson). Soon later H.I.'s former cellmate Gale and Evelle Snoats (John Goodman and William Forsythe) escape from prison and go on the run, ultimately persuading H.I. and Edwina to take them in. The two fugitive houseguests just exacerbate matters when a manhunt begins for the McDunnoughs.

Before Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and No Country for Old Men, Ethan and Joel Coen had their first hit in 1987 with this riotously funny and very offbeat crime caper. A deliberately lighthearted departure from their debut Blood Simple, the Coens clearly enjoyed unveiling their quite distinctive sense of humour for the first time and it only gets stronger as the movie progresses. The title may be Raising Arizona but the Coens end up having their protagonists raise hell more than anything else, much like the Coens themselves, who've carved their own niche out of modern American cinema. Here they've hatched a perfectly appropriate opposites-attracting romance that literally hits the road, where the energy and pacing kicks into high gear. Cage (love or hate him) is entertainingly bumbling but Hunter is the movie's heart and soul, bringing both laughs and emotion effectively to the forefront. Forsythe and especially Goodman back them up solidly also.

More pluses are regular Coens composer Carter Burwell's fittingly bluegrass-tinged score and Michael R. Miller's very precise editing. Raising Arizona certainly isn't a recommended movie if you need to learn about responsible parenting, but it certainly is one if you need to see a funny crime comedy.

My top 10 films of 2020!

I dedicate this post and this list to all the filmmakers and studios who managed to release their films last year amidst a global pandemic, and to the cinemas and streaming services that have shown them.

10-1:

In this terrific fun horror comedy, three streetwise New York City teenagers suddenly find themselves with more than just puberty and homework to contend with. When their home borough the Bronx becomes the site of a vampire invasion, they must step up and protect what (and who) they love. Oz Rodriguez' Vampires vs. the Bronx is like Attack the Block (with vampires instead of aliens) meets Dope, but it still raises the stakes (pun intended) for contemporary vampire movies and cuts a fresh impression of its own.

2020 was certainly a year many of us will rather forget, and Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, with directors Al Campbell and Alice Mathias, very bluntly remind us why in this awfully underrated satirical mockumentary that explores all its highs and lows in chronological order, with commentary from various fictitious "experts." This was surely my choice for 2020's funniest film; I'd even put it in the "so funny you have to see it twice to experience all the gags because you missed half the first time from laughing so hard" category. The entire cast also clearly shared Brooker and Jones' wish to skewer everything about last year, but stealing the show are Lisa Kudrow as a deluded Trump campaign spokesperson and Hugh Grant as a British historian working for the government. And remember: conservative voices are being silenced!

This is one definitely for the #MeToo era (which I have no problem with, JFTR). Writer-director Emerald Fennell introduces us to Cassie (Carey Mulligan), a 30-year-old medical school dropout who still lives with her parents (Jennifer Coolidge and Clancy Brown). She works at a local coffee shop but otherwise has no real direction or ambition in life; not openly, anyway. By night she leads a double life: frequenting local nightclubs and bars where she feigns drunkenness and waits for men to take her home and try to sleep with her, and then reveals her sobriety when they do. When she reconnects with young doctor Ryan (Bo Burnham) and he tells her their mutual former classmate Al (Chris Lowell), who raped Cassie's best friend Nina in college and got away with it, is getting married, she sees her chance for revenge and plots her plan. But this no ordinary revenge movie; instead of taking the tried-and-true I Spit on Your Grave route, Fennell takes us down one I found genuinely interesting and very unpredictable. It actually proves to be more of a black comedy than a drama or slasher flick, but Fennell infuses it with suspense nonetheless. Mulligan gives a firecracker turn as the duplicitous, cunning and very smart Cassie, with engaging performances surrounding her, and the design, cinematography and editing are equally striking. Oh, and you mightn't listen to Angel of the Morning or Britney Spears' Toxic in the same way after seeing this.

In this adaptation of Iain Reid's 2016 novel, Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley are Jake and a young woman known by several names, a young couple who take a road trip through the winter to visit Jake's deliberately obnoxious parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis). Even before they left, however, she was having second thoughts about their relationship, and as their trip progresses, it becomes increasingly clear to both that perhaps their relationship wasn't working out as well it seemed to be. After a filmography including Being John Malkovich, Adaptation. and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie Kaufman definitely has a reputation for weirdness and that continues here, but I'm Thinking of Ending Things is strange in its concept yet very lucid and stimulating in how that concept is explored. Therefore I found it genuinely thought-provoking and engaging throughout (although making sense of the narrative itself was still hard for me until a scene near the end). Kaufman visualises what could've been a quite dull narrative quite evocatively and even sensually in parts, and his very dialogue-heavy screenplay is appropriately erudite (the protagonists are both obsessed with literature). It's definitely not a movie for all tastes, but I found it just exquisite.

He is, of course, the first person who normally comes to mind when you think of a nature documentary: David Attenborough. For over 60 years now he has shared his boundless passion for, and knowledge of, the natural world with millions of viewers around the globe. But in 2020, he chose to share something else in the powerful documentary David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. Here Attenborough turns his focus from how nature currently is and has been, to how much it has changed over his lifetime, and remains changing, with flashbacks from his life and career interspersed. It's his "witness statement" for the future, and a very eloquent and important statement it is. Crucially, it steers clear of being propagandist or preachy, instead demonstrating consistently thorough research and objective creative choices. Particularly, the wilderness photography is absolutely mouth-watering and the score beautifully restrained. It all adds up to a stirring, aesthetically strong and very educational factual odyssey.

Now here's one I really don't understand all the negative reviews for. Chloe Grace Moretz is Maude Garrett, a US Air Force Flight Officer in World War II who is assigned a mission to transport secret documents from New Zealand to Samoa with an openly misogynistic all-male crew aboard a B-17 bomber christened the Fool's Errand. She's placed, to her annoyance, in the gun turret, and it appears to be a fairly routine flight until something unexpected and curious makes its presence felt on the bomber. It's a gremlin, and naturally it wants to get inside and feed. And despite her angst about her placement on the flight, now Maude willingly takes charge of it to save all their lives (including a hidden one most precious to her) and prove her worth and strength to her male crewmates. Director/co-writer Rosemary Liang had me truly riveted from start to finish with Shadow in the Cloud, which for me generated palpable suspense and a very logically plotted sci-fi/horror narrative. This is brought to life, too, with totally convincing visual effects, editing and sound. But surprisingly and even more resonantly, it also becomes a very blunt riposte to gender inequality in the armed forces; I should mention here that I am the proud grandson of a former member of the Australian Women's Army Service, who all deserved far more acknowledgement than they received. Anyway, Shadow in the Cloud took me on a rollercoaster ride as a creature feature and pleasantly defied my expectations with its impassioned sociological message.

I also suggest ignoring the wrap on this movie. In fact, listen up because I have a few things to say here in its defence. Firstly, at no time does it defend or celebrate the sexualisation or exploitation of young girls which it depicts. Secondly, it has been fucking crucified for covering territory which Larry Clark's and Harmony Korine's films have been given a light wrist-slap for treading considerably more perversely. The cancel culture surrounding this film is also dangerous for its debut woman of colour writer-director Maimouna Doucoure having a successful career, although had Netflix not promoted it so misleadingly and sensationally unlike its original French distributors (I've included both posters above for this reason) it probably wouldn't have twisted so many tails. Anyway, now that I've expressed all that, Cuties follows 11-year-old Amy (Fathia Youssouff), a Senegalese immigrant who lives in the Paris slums with her mother Mariam (a superb Maimouna Gueye), her Muslim aunt (Mbissine Therese Diop) and her two younger brothers. Amy is bored there, but that is until she encounters her neighbour Angelica's (Medina El Aidi-Azouni) twerking clique, the Cuties, who quickly take her aboard. Then they set their sights on participating in a local talent show, but as she's drawn deeper and deeper into their world of pre-teen sexual exposure, Amy starts to have second thoughts. Cuties is clearly a critique of the hypersexualisation of young girls primarily, and it criticises that very sharply, but it works almost as well as a study of cultural and generational clashes and the troubles of immigrant life. You can all watch it and decide for yourselves, but I considered it brave, realistic and genuinely moving and angering.

 

They're ba-ack! Pixar, one of the perennials of my annual top tens, have come close to the summit yet again with Onward. Elf brothers Barley and Ian Lightfoot (voiced by Chris Pratt and Tom Holland) live in the city of New Mushroomton with their single mum Laurel (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Their dad Wilden died of a severe illness before Ian was born, but on Ian's sixteenth birthday Laurel gives her sons three magical gifts Wilden left behind for them which they can use to cast a spell to summon him back to life for just one day. Ian completes half the spell before Barley distracts him, leaving only the bottom half of Wilden's body summoned, so now they must go in Barley's van "Guinevere" on a quest to complete the spell; meanwhile, Laurel inevitably notices her boys are missing and hits the road to rescue them with help from her friend Manticore (voiced by Octavia Spencer). Director Dan Scanlon, who sculpted this narrative from his own childhood, returns after his debut with 2013's Monsters University and the result is yet another emotional powerhouse. As the boys get closer to their shared goal their true motivations for it become more obvious, but all this is handled very tenderly and even philosophically, instead of manipulatively. That was exactly the right touch in this case, too, and of course, Scanlon and his team ensure the animation matches that quality in each scene. The vocal performances are all convincing as well, and Jeff and Mychael Danna deliver a dynamic score. Onward indeed goes upward.

Gymnastics wasn't a sport known for controversy or scandal. That was until 2015, when news broke of USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar and his decades of sexual and physical abuse of young female gymnasts, and the culture within the sport that allowed his crimes to be covered up for too long. Bonnie Cohen's and Jon Shenk's utterly devastating documentary Athlete A fearlessly lifts the lid on the investigation into Nassar and all the coaches and officials who were complicit. Alongside new interviews with key gymnasts who either endured or witnessed this abuse, like Maggie Nichols and Rachel Denhollander, Cohen and Shenk prominently feature actual footage of Nassar's police interrogations, during which you just want to be able to walk into the room, pull his chair out from under him and assault him with it. That's how (appropriately and intentionally) enraging this film is. Yet it also proves informative beyond its coverage of the Nassar saga, by simultaneously exploring the modern history of gymnastics since Nadia Comaneci's gold medal win at age 15 at the 1976 Olympics transformed the sport into one so well-known for juvenile competitors. Perhaps that's when the seed for abuse was planted, but as this film reinforces, it should certainly have never been watered. But watered it was, until it tragically became the culture of abuse and corruption that welcomed horrible people like Nassar in when they tried to enter it. Athlete A might be the only good thing that has come from that, but let's hope no more documentaries like it need to made from now on.

But indeed, my champion for 2020 in cinema is this utterly extraordinary fantasy/romance anime from Japanese directors Junichi Sato and Tomotaka Shibayama, writer Mari Okada and studios Toho Animation and Twin Engine. It tells the tale of high schooler Miyo Sasaki (the voice of Mirai Shida in the Japanese-language version), who unhappily lives with her stepmother. She is head over heels in love with classmate Kento Hinode (Natsuki Hanae), yet he not only rebuffs her every advance but openly dislikes her, to her despair. He is very fond of his pet cat Taro, an attachment Miyo is well aware of, and which she soon tries to use to her advantage. One day she meets a strange mask seller who gives her an enchanted, cat-shaped Noh mask which turns its wearer into a feline, and now, disguised as Taro, Miyo finally has (an unsuspecting) Kento's affections. But of course, this comes with a painful cost: wear the mask for too long and she will never be able to turn human again. Now, with a gradually sympathetic Kento and her family and other friends behind her, Miyo must take a precarious journey to escape the curse, deciding en route whether she really wants to be human again. This masterpiece seriously felt like it chose me to watch it: after I did, I was physically shaking for hours, and yes, I cried - buckets, honestly. It really is one of the most profound, insightful, empathetic, touching, vibrant and visually stunning films - certainly of the animated variety - I have ever seen. The animation is thoroughly refined and strikingly detailed, Miyo's and Kento's character arcs are genuinely relatable and very intelligently juxtaposed, the dialogue and plotting are very realistic and lucid respectively, the voice cast all imbue their parts with range and charisma, and Mina Kubota ties it all together even stronger still with a genuinely distinctive and affecting score. A Whisker Away might be about cats on the surface, but it carries a sentiment that can be felt in virtually any species, and it couldn't have expressed that sentiment better. Don't be surprised if this one cinematically has nine lives.