Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #257: Goat (2016).

 

In this adaptation of Brad Land's memoir, 19-year-old Brad (Ben Schnetzer) enrols in a college to straighten his life out after a vicious summer assault. His elder brother Brett (Nick Jonas) is already a well-established sophomore and tells Brad about his fraternity, which lures the desperate-to-belong Brad in with promises of acceptance, protection and friendship. But of course, not much sooner than Brad signs his membership form does he see what it actually delivers for its members: a toxic initiation process involving numerous public and increasingly dangerous, compromising hazing rituals and stunts. It's absolutely not like campfires at Scout camps. As the process progresses, Brad becomes ever more reluctant, trepidatious and disillusioned about the fraternity, with his and Brett's relationship deteriorating as a result and the fraternity having to face consequences of its own.

Goat is another movie I don't quite know how I feel about, but I do know it proved quite thought-provoking for me and not only because of its content. To my knowledge fraternities and sororities don't exist in Australian tertiary education institutions (my alma mater certainly lacks them) although the extracurricular cultures of ours have similar drawbacks, and so it offered me quite a more unflinching peek into their damaging activities and policies than I've seen before, as opposed to the ones in US TV teen dramas and certain other films. However, while I was engaged and concerned throughout, it didn't move me as perhaps it was meant to. Andrew Neel's direction feels emotionally detached at times, although he cleverly avoided any unconventional visual touches to reflect how these fraternities and sororities are frequently more conservative and exclusive than they claim to be, and the script he co-wrote with David Gordon Green and Mike Roberts maintains a natural and frank dialogue tone and plots the central character arcs lucidly. Schnetzer fills Brad's shoes convincingly in a smartly understated turn and Jake Picking brings sincerity to the antagonistic fraternity leader Dixon, although Jonas tries just a tad too hard as Brett. Goat has its issues, but it's definitely stimulating and I think the point is this: hazing in fraternities and sororities causes great damage, but you can survive it and Brad Land is among the lucky ones who did.

Behaving violently when you're on the spectrum.

 None of what I say in this post will be popular. But for better or worse, all of it is the truth.

I frequently look back through my old Facebook posts. In one from last year I made defending Greta Thunberg, a friend of mine who dislikes her said something very basic but, in hindsight, accurate: "not all people with ASDs are nice people." Unfortunately, many notable people on the spectrum besides Thunberg have more than vindicated that statement.

Next month in Australia will see the release of Nitram, a film about Martin Bryant's life before he committed the Port Arthur massacre in 1996; Bryant was later diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Unsurprisingly the film has already generated much controversy here, including online petitions to have its production stopped. Bryant was not the first autistic person to commit mass murder and he certainly wasn't the last. Among the others in this long "honour" roll; Sandy Hook Elementary School murderer Adam Lanza; white supremacist Samuel Woodward, who killed Jewish and openly gay teenager Blaze Bernstein in 2018; Andrew Lackey, who was executed for murdering WWII veteran Charles Newman in 2005; Nicholas Godejohn, who killed his then-girlfriend Gypsy Rose Blanchard's mother Dee Dee in 2015; Peter Mangs, who committed the 2009-10 shootings in Malmo, Sweden; William Freund, who killed three people including himself in Aliso Viejo, California in 2005; 2018 Capitol Gazette massacre perpetrator Jarrod Ramos; 2019 University of North Carolina shooter Trystan Terrell; Patrick Crusius, who killed 23 Latinos in El Paso, Texas in 2019; and Elliott Rodger, who committed the 2014 Isla Vista slayings and almost as infamously made a viral video manifesto. In recent years it has also come to light that Hans Asperger himself worked with Nazi Germany's eugenics program.

They all are/were horrible human beings, but they were all on the spectrum nonetheless. That in no way even excuses their crimes, let alone redeems them of those, but it is a fact I believe must be remembered. Nonetheless. biology plants the seed for violent and hateful behaviour; society waters that seed. And it waters that seed especially in people perceived as abnormal because they are too often excluded, discriminated against, or feared. Autistic people are not all violent or bigoted and some of never even become either of those. But many of us do (as just as many neurotypicals do, let us not forget or deny), and that is our sociology's fault as much as theirs. It will never stop until everybody treats people who are different in whatever form completely as equals.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #256: Mid90s (2018).

 

As the title suggests, the year is 1996. 12-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic) lives in Palms, LA with his mother Dabney (Katherine Waterston) and his abusive elder brother Ian (Lucas Hedges). One day when he cycles past a skateboard shop he's never seen before, Stevie's immediately enamoured with skating and so wants to give it a try. After trading with Ian for a board, Stevie returns to the shop where local teen skater Ray (Na-Kel Smith) befriends him and lets him join a group consisting of other tearaway young skaters including one named Fuckshit (Olan Prenatt), which says it all. Naturally it isn't long until Sunny begins having second thoughts about this crowd when their fun times turn increasingly dangerous.

This debut for Jonah Hill as writer-director, based presumably on his own adolescence, is nothing game-changing at all (although it mightn't have needed to be anyway), but it's an honest, compassionate and natural recreation of its era and of growing up. Hill wisely goes easy on the nostalgic touches (there's not actually that much of a period soundtrack or many overt cultural references for a start) and instead focuses more as the movie progresses on the ramifications these characters' reckless choices have for them. But that element of it isn't treated didactically or judgmentally either, which would've been hypocritical of somebody like Hill given many of the movies he's starred in. Instead he simply tells this tale like an updated and more mature version of Stand by Me: these boys drink and smoke drugs alongside their activities on the roads. Hill also uses Stevie as not just his avatar but also a vessel through which to explain why he and his friends make those choices: they're all trying to flee something. Newcomer Suljic makes for an expressive and relatable hero, carrying his amount of the film confidently, and his co-stars all hold their own alongside him. There's also beautifully focused photography by Christopher Blauvelt and unshowy editing from Nick Houy. There are more great directorial efforts on the way from Hill if Mid90s is any indication.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #255: Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017).

 

In this feature animation debut from Japan's Studio Ponoc, based on Mary Stewart's 1971 novel The Little Broomstick, eleven-year-old Mary Smith (the voice of Ruby Barnhill in the English-language version) moves to the countryside to live with her great-aunt Charlotte (Lynda Baron). Local paperboy Peter (Louis Ashbourne Serkis; Andy's son) is also found there and his good-humoured mocking of Mary's red hair and clumsiness masks his obvious crush on her. His pet cats then lead Mary to some strange, glowing flowers which a local gardener then tells her possess magical powers that witches are said to covet. Then after the flower's bulbs come to life, they summon a broomstick for Mary to ride and now she's a witch-in-training.

Yes, I'm serious. This film's narrative truly is that cliched and hackneyed. I hated this movie. It's fantasy at its most unimaginative, and that's not it's only downfall. There's also an anthropomorphised mouse sidekick named Flanagan (Ewen Bremner) who's depicted as an offensive Irish stereotype (I'm of Irish descent), Mary and Peter feel the entire time like retreads of the damsel in distress and farm boy archetype, the animation style is in no way distinctive, it wastes every opportunity it had for some humour, and Jim Broadbent gives an irritating vocal performance as a mad scientist at Mary's witchcraft school. After his 2014 masterpiece When Marnie Was There (which he made for Studio Ghibli), I thought Mary and the Witch's Flower was a complete buzzkill for director Hiromasa Yonebashi. Better luck next time to him and his new studio, Ponoc.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #254: Son-Rise: A Miracle of Love (1979).

 

When Raun Kaufman was born, he appeared to be a perfectly regular, healthy baby until around his first birthday. That was when he began exhibiting symptoms of what we now know as "classic" autism. But through round-the-clock support and therapy from his parents, Samahria and Barry, he seemed to recover from it. The 1979 TV docudrama Son-Rise: A Miracle of Love, adapted from Barry's book of the same title, recounts the Kaufmans' efforts to adjust to their son's diagnosis and then to help him with it.

While I have some reservations about its message encouraging curing autism, I found this to be a remarkably compassionate, accurate and honest examination of autism for its time and in any case, the neurodiversity movements and widespread public awareness of the autism spectrum were both decades away. I do think this film should be viewed, as a depiction of autism, within the context of its era, but regardless, as it stands it's also a valuable document of public and artistic attitudes towards autistics in the late 1970s. I'd also suspect it generated some awareness of the spectrum then, too.

Director Glenn Jordan gets strong performances from James Farentino and particularly Kathryn Harrold as the Kaufmans (who were ne-named Bears and Suzy for the movie), with twins Casey and Michael Adams sharing the part of Raun. The production values here are unremarkable but they were never the point here. That was to recreate a hopeful, inspiring true story of one family proving a diagnosis is not a destiny.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #253: Isle of Dogs (2018).

 

In the fictional Japanese city of Megasaki, a canine influenza outbreak has occurred. Mayor Kenji Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura) therefore decrees that all dogs are to be deported to nearby Trash Island, despite the mayor's political rival Professor Watanabe's (Akira Ito) insistence that he is about to find a cure. The first pooch dumped there is Spots (Liev Schreiber), whose owner is none other than Mayor Kobayashi's ten-year-old nephew and ward, Atari (Koyu Rankin). A quiet but adventurous boy, missing his pet, Atari now wastes no time in going away to find and rescue Spots, hijacking an aircraft to Trash Island, now known as "Isle of Dogs," where he meets and acquires the help of stray Chief (Bryan Cranston) and his pack.

This is a genuinely oddball film, but that's precisely what to expect from writer-director Wes Anderson. Nominated for the 2018 Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score Oscars, it's a stop-motion science fiction comedy and I don't quite know how I feel about it, if I'm completely honest, but it's undoubtedly original and unmistakable. I do know I don't think it's nearly as enjoyable as his live-action films Rushmore (1998) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), but it's totally different to both those narratively, aesthetically and technically anyway. There's a real exactness and precision to how Anderson directs this tale and the humour in his screenplay is almost exclusively deadpan and very dry (another trademark of his work), with the visuals flowing very consistently from scene to scene with thorough attention to detail. And the voice cast (which also includes Harvey Keitel, Frances McDormand, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, Ken Watanabe, Greta Gerwig, F. Murray Abraham and even Yoko Ono) all provide fun and natural vocal turns. Alexandre Desplat's score also warranted its Oscar nod.

But as I said before, all things considered, I don't quite know what I think of Isle of Dogs, mainly because I'm still trying to identify exactly what its overall objectives are. However, I certainly do not hate it. I don't even dislike it.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #252: Growing Up Smith (2017).

 

In the present day, Indian-American Smith reflects on his adolescent experiences as a young immigrant (Roni Akurati) after his family moved to America in 1979. There, his parents' (Poorna Jagannathan and Shoba Narayan) traditional Indian values conflicted with his growing affection for American trends of the time like KFC (even though his family are all vegetarians), Star Wars, and especially disco and Saturday Night Fever. The girl who catches his eye and heart is Amy (Brighton Sharbino) and even while the times change, she never quite leaves his thoughts. To complete Smith's education in all things American, Amy's outdoorsman father Butch (Jason Lee) introduces him to hunting.

Growing Up Smith begins charmingly with its loving homages to aforementioned '70s pop culture hallmarks and its effort to establish a fish-out-of-water coming-of-age narrative. But then it insists on changing course into such familiar and wholesome territory that it becomes bogged down in tired cliches. It really did feel to me exactly like a feature-length episode of The Wonder Years (a show I adore, by the way) except with an immigrant family. It has the voice-over narration from adult Smith and everything! Working from the screenplay by Anjul Nigam, Paul Quinn and Gregory Scott Houghton, Australian director Frank Lotito's approach here just shows no zest or empathy for me. Aesthetically it also lacks any fitting cultural touches like mystical visuals or sitar music; I realise those are both stereotypically Indian themselves but I think they could've been employed to literally clash with the Western ones that were included, to emphasise Smith's of-two-worlds situation more pointedly. Instead, the approach here taken struck me as uninspired and hackneyed, with bland jokes to boot. Oh, and the soundtrack consists of covers of Bee Gees hits. That was probably because the small budget limited which versions they could afford the rights to, but I suspect the band would be happy the originals couldn't be used.

Overall, this was a harmless and lightweight but fatally cliched and unfunny return to very familiar territory. 5/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #251: Be Kind Rewind (2008).

 

In Passaic, New Jersey, Mike (Mos Def) holds the fort at the struggling video rental store "Be Kind Rewind," while his employer Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) is on leave. Fletcher has given Mike a message to not let the clumsy and unhinged Jerry (Jack Black) into the store, but Mike misinterpreted that message. After then trying to deactivate a nearby power substation because he thinks it's melting his brain, Jerry receives an electrical shock which renders him magnetised before he enters the store and inadvertently erases all its tapes. Now, of course, the customers (including Mia Farrow as one) start to complain about the tapes they've hired, so Mike and Jerry hatch a plan: with no budget or additional help, they will reshoot every single movie in the store and hope nobody notices. Well, the customers do notice, but these homemade remakes prove unexpectedly popular, if not exactly legal.

After making the Oscar-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and music videos for everybody from Paul McCartney to Kraftwerk, Michel Gondry definitely has a reputation for nonconformity and variety and both those qualities are overflowing in the delightful Be Kind Rewind. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as the store houses literally hundreds of titles, the films referenced and recreated here go from everything to Driving Miss Daisy to RoboCop to The Lion King and, in my favourite recreation (or "swedes" as they're called in the film), 2001: A Space Odyssey. But there's more to enjoy than just the laughs from those re-shoots. Be Kind Rewind also makes a lucid statement on film industry changes that remain unfolding now, and on where and how creativity and inspiration start.

This was evidently Gondry's attempt to salute cinema and some of its most iconic and influential modern entries while also turning them all on their heads. His enthusiastic, indeed almost anarchic insistence on doing that proved contagious for me, and he realised it with a fabulous dadaist vibe and appropriately easy-going performances. Above all, though, it's a celebration of filmmaking itself. Be Kind Rewind is (almost) too good to return.