Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #316: The Ringer (2005).

 

Desk jockey Steve Barker (Johnny Knoxville) has just been promoted, but also has to fire his friend Stavi (Luis Avalos). He reluctantly does so but hires Stavi to work at his home, where Stavi then loses some fingers in a gardening accident. Being unable to pay Stavi's medical bills, Steve catches up with his uncle Gary (Brian Cox), himself deeply in debt from gambling, and they hatch a plan to match-fix the upcoming Special Olympics in Texas. A reluctant Steve agrees and enters the competition as the developmentally delayed Jeffy Dahmor and Gary, convinced Steve/Jeffy will win the competition in a cakewalk, bets $100 000 that defending champion Jimmy Flowers (Leonard Washington) will lose the gold medal. Despite his initial disgust at feigning an intellectual impairment, Steve goes along with it for Stavi.

With how frankly excessively PC so many of us have become now, I doubt The Ringer would've been made today but as somebody on the autism spectrum, I genuinely found it hilarious and sincerely sweet and here's why. Screenwriter Ricky Blitt and director Barry W. Blaustein clearly have no desire to attack any of the disabled characters here; instead their target is the so-called "hero" Steve, for quite passively complying with such an unethical and fraudulent scheme, and his disabled roommates are the only ones anyway who his act doesn't fool. It also subtly condemns the Special Olympics for how it can really exploit its athletes instead of promoting and celebrating them and for how easily the system can (at least apparently) be rorted. 

The film also criticises stereotypes through its disabled characters without criticising the characters themselves, and the romance between Steve and SO volunteer Lynn (Katherine Heigl) is understated and uncliched. Overall, I think The Ringer is a daring romp with a warm, loving centre that earns a spot on the dais. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #315: Anna and the Apocalypse (2017).

 

In Little Haven, Scotland, high school is almost over for Anna Shepherd (Ella Hunt) and she plans to take a gap year before university despite her widower father Tony's (Mark Benton) disapproval. Her friends also have problems: best friend John (Malcolm Cumming) secretly loves her, budding director Chris (Christopher Leveaux) is behind on an assignment and American exchange student Steph (Sarah Swire) is butting heads, thanks to her social justice reportage, with the dictatorial principal Mr. Savage (Paul Kaye). Anna's one-night stand Nick (Ben Wiggins) is also giving her grief. On the night of the school's Christmas show, in which one of the performers is Chris' girlfriend Lisa (Marli Siu), a zombie infections breaks out around town, before the next morning when Anna and John discover it's gone all over town except in the school, where they must take shelter and fight the zombie hordes off - all to numerous song-and-dance numbers in true musical form.

Anna and the Apocalypse has been likened to Shaun of the Dead meets La La Land, and that's a fairly accurate comparison. Based on a 2010 short by Ryan McHenry, who died in 2015 of osteosarcoma at age 27, director John McPhail and co-writer Alan McDonald make this festive horror musical gel, although it took me some time to really see what it was seeking to do. I initially had the feeling, after about 30 minutes, that the songs were too poppy and corny for the horror aspect (although I knew beforehand it was also a musical) and so that then make me very briefly disconnect from it. But then I realised its aims were to satirise both the musical genre for how wholesome and conservative it often is, and the horror/slasher genres for how cliched and stuffy they can be. McPhail and his cast and crew balance the combination through consistent pacing, natural choreography and visuals that are in between being grainy and extravagant.

The songs are catchy and engaging, the cast all demonstrate strong chops with both acting and singing, and the violence gradually builds to a very gruesome climax. It's maybe not as brutally honest or subversive a depiction of adolescence as I would've liked it to have been but regardless, I had fun with Anna and the Apocalypse. 8/10.

Something, Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #314: Kairos (2018).

 

Meet Danny (Chris Bunton), a young man with Down syndrome residing in a foster home. His dream is to become a professional boxer and to work towards this, he practices at his local gym with his stern but loyal trainer John (Jerome Pride). Danny gets many rounds and even a few amateur bouts under his belt before he has an accident with John that leaves Danny injured and John with second thoughts. Undeterred, however, Danny sticks to his goal and meanwhile also finds a potential romance with Ellie (Audrey O'Connor), who also has DS.

Kairos is certainly a well-meaning Aussie film, and kudos to its makers for casting a real Down syndrome performer (the engaging Chris Bunton) in the lead, but its execution really rubbed me the wrong way. Writer-director Paul Barakat insists on making John a seemingly ever-present, non-disabled crucial saviour for Danny on his quest, instead of putting Danny in the driver's seat as an independent hero. As somebody with disability (albeit not DS) I find it deeply demeaning when movies about disability have the protagonist manage to succeed only with a non-disabled character's help; to me that's not much better than when disabled people are villainised in cinema.

Barakat's bland visual style and pacing also don't help, and a couple of dream sequences revert from being incoherent to wise and back again. Plus the supporting cast can only do so much with what are quite underdeveloped characters. Despite its good intentions, Kairos is for me just another uplifting disability drama for non-disabled audiences, trying unsuccessfully to pass for a clarion call for solidarity and change. 6/10.

A shopping incident on Monday.

So I'm in Coles on Monday, standing near one of the stalls in the bakery, and unbeknownst to me, another customer (who I didn't even hear or see) notices me put something in one of my pockets and that alerts their suspicion. Then about five minutes later I've moved on to one of the aisles and the manager suddenly appears. I think he's just there to ask me if I need help finding something but I get a completely different line of questioning, about what's in my pockets. I tell him "Just my phone, wallet and car and house keys." That's when I learn this other customer reported me to him. He quickly seems to believe that I hadn't even tried to steal anything (the item I was seen putting in my pocket was my phone, after I'd pulled it out to check it) and to sense just how anxious I am now and so he apologises to me and lets me go, which I thank him for with great sincerity and relief. I then stay in the store for about ten minutes before I quietly leave.

Firstly, I should emphasise I was not, and am not, angry at all with the manager (who presumably had a lot on his plate already); he was just doing his job. Nor am I saying the customer was wrong to consult him about this. I just really resented them not first approaching me personally about it, and here's why. I can understand they might've been afraid of the consequences or overstepping their place as they had no authority there, but when I'm confronted secondhand about something, it makes me feel like I'm some unapproachable psycho. Had I been the witness, I would've slowly approached them and enquired, as impartially as possible, what they'd just put in my pocket, then apologised for prying and, whatever their answer was, then told an employee about it.

I'm really trying to empathise with them but I just can't quite shake how judged and exposed I subsequently felt; I was also angry and very confused. Now, I don't know if the other customer was suspicious of my actions because I'm 6'4 and autistic (because my condition can also affect my body language and posture), although if that was the case I guess I can and should give them the benefit of the doubt. And perhaps I should've been more careful with my phone. But despite being exonerated and very much appreciating that outcome, this incident made a supermarket visit unusually troubling for me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #313: Frog Dreaming (1986).

 

Henry Thomas (yes, the one who befriended E.T.) is Cody, an orphaned American boy living in the Australian Outback with his carer Gaza (Tony Barry). When he's not riding his railbike left, right and centre, the inventive Cody builds things in his garage. One day he learns of a local Aboriginal myth called "frog's dreaming" which is believed to be behind several strange occurrences at the fictional Devil's Knob national park where he lives. That's when Cody recruits his friends, primarily the girl he fancies, Wendy (Rachel Friend) to go on a trek to investigate everything.

Yes, sir. It's The Goonies but in the Outback with a (mostly) local cast. Everything about Frog Dreaming is painfully dated and stagnant even down to the visual effects. Director Brian Trenchard-Smith, who replaced Russell Hagg, brings no zest or humour to his interpretation of Everett De Roche's shamelessly derivative screenplay (although, in fairness, it may have given Trenchard-Smith no room to do so), which tops its genre conventions off with a portrayal of the indigenous Kurdaitcha Man archetype that thankfully would never be considered appropriate today, and has Cody frequently riding his bicycle just like Elliott much more famously did.

Thomas has virtually nothing new to do in a very thin role, Friend is wasted and almost immediately relegated to the token love interest status, and all the adult cast members look totally bored and indifferent (much like I increasingly was while watching it, funnily enough). And then come the deeply hokey effects when we learn what's behind the local disturbances. It's ironic, and unintentionally apt, how Frog Dreaming contains the word "dreaming" in its title, because it almost put in the state of dreaming. 4/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #312: My Days of Glory (2019).

 

Adrien Palatine (Vincent Lacoste) is experiencing a quite unique quarter-life crisis. He's a former child movie star but as he approaches age 30, the role offers have dried up and he's becoming, frankly, a bit of an addict. When he's not drowning his sorrows at the local pub or smoking in the street, he's scrounging around looking for a chance at an on-screen comeback, and also for off-screen love. Prosperity briefly shines on him again when he talks his way into a part in a war movie, but his self-absorbed nature soon jeopardizes both that and his efforts to find and impress his dream girl.

The 2019 French romantic dramedy My Days of Glory is quite reminiscent of (500) Days of Summer, but only in narrative intentions. Where that gem of a sleeper hit explored 21st-century relationships with almost painfully honest accuracy and threw staccato visual and musical surprises into the pot for real vibrancy and fanciness, this (and, with it being French where that was an American film, surely you'd think it would be the more artsy one) deliberately takes the visually conventional route and subsequently feels increasingly bland and boring. I also found its attempts at humour too understated, and while director Antoine de Bary and his co-screenwriter Elias Beldekkar do include a couple of slightly racy scenes, I found them to be placed too late in the story for it to rejuvenate my interest. Lacoste, who I think is almost becoming the French Michael Cera with the kind of roles I've seen him in so far, tries his best to bring nuance and variety to both Adrien and the roles Adrien himself plays, but he carries the entire movie on his shoulders and that's a cross I think most actors would've struggled to bear.

Additionally, the dramatic elements become, I think, too heavy-handed and overall, as both a romance and a coming-of-age flick, I just don't think it has enough zest and imagination narratively, and certainly not aesthetically. My Days of Glory do not, for me, mark de Bary's. 5/10.

My feelings on the Thailand massacre.

On Thursday when I heard news of the childcare centre massacre in Thailand, my heart instantly sank. I had a foreboding, ominous feeling as it was revealed in a breaking news story during the 7pm nightly bulletin I watch. For that reason I deliberately also watched that night's late news just for more details on it. I was sincerely gut-wrenched as those extra details were revealed to me. A massacre in a place for children is usually tragic enough, but here the perpetrator was also the father of one of the children who went there regularly. Then, after the encounter there that lit his fuse and the carnage that ensued, he went home and murdered his own wife and child. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ! How damaged must you be to even consider doing something that wicked?

His name was Panya Khamrab, and he was a disgraced former cop. Keyword: "disgraced." Shouldn't that have sounded alarm bells about him, suggesting he needed to be monitored somehow, or better yet, incarcerated? Had he indeed been behind bars, this massacre wouldn't have happened and a class of innocent children and their teachers would still be alive and none of their families would be grieving. My heart goes out to those families, and may the deceased all rest in peace. These massacres are clearly far from just an American problem; recently we saw that in Russia and now, sadly, it's been Thailand's turn. I don't know which country, or community, will be next, but I hope - against hope - none will.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #311: Shorts (2009).

 

In Black Falls Community in Austin, Texas, 11-year-old Toby Thompson (Jimmy Bennett) is the second child to find a rock with magical powers. Over a series of "episodes," he narratives, and participates in, the story of how this magical rock transforms his community and its townsfolk, culminating in urban mayhem as literally everybody tries to get their hands on it so it can improve their lives.

Robert Rodriguez may be most famous for his crime movies like Sin City and the El Mariachi trilogy, and indeed those kind of films were the ones he cut his teeth on, but in between them he's also made numerous family movies, like the Spy Kids trilogy and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D. (He has five children so obviously he's made all these ones primarily for them.) Now, I thought the Spy Kids sequels both sucked but overall, while I still think crime capers are his specialty Rodriguez makes family movies that are more unconventional and creative than anybody else's and this is no exception. Shorts is unabashedly wacky, intentionally ridiculous and energetic, without a trace of condescension towards children but also not too wholesome for their parents to stomach. Rodriguez has evident fun visualising this narrative but also elaborates on it just long enough for it to be somewhat coherent, his own editing and photography are both crisp and fluid and the music score is adequately strange but not bombastic.

Rodriguez also coaxes engaging performances from all his young cast and the adults all also enjoy themselves, particularly Leslie Mann as Toby's mum and James Spader as the villainous Mr. Carbon Black. I did think the novelty began to wear off near the end, but Shorts doesn't overstay its welcome. It's a refreshing, funny and bizarre family science fiction flick like only Robert Rodriguez could, or would, deliver. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #310: Inside Job (2010).

 

Most people over age 20 would probably remember the global financial crisis; I'm 34 and I know I do. It was really the first time I ever took much notice of economic matters, despite my long-standing interest in politics. I just don't find economics or especially finance very interesting. But those matters both affect all of us for better or worse, and it turns out they can be explored engagingly after all.

Against all odds, Charles Ferguson's 2010 Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winner Inside Job proves that flawlessly. But how it does that trick is perhaps even more surprising and significant than that it does the trick: it explores the GFC and the fiscal lead-up to it in five segments, beginning with the aftermath of the Great Depression through to the late 1980s recession following Black Monday and how so many major American banks and investment firms gradually acquired too much unregulated power. They were at least as much at fault as the politicians who turned a blind eye to that corruption and their own, and when these banks and firms began fraudulently charging their customers and investors, the subprime mortgage bubble was bound to burst and the GFC was inevitable when, as the film demonstrates, it could've been avoided so easily. The true root of the crisis was the crimes on Wall Street, not of the White House (although the Bush Administration's bail-out efforts tanked infamously), and how those crimes either were covered up and/or went unpunished.

But Ferguson also explores this territory with genuine panache; I suspect he knew this was a very important story but one covering what most people must find a very dull subject and so he takes a very methodical yet energetic directorial approach and simultaneously deconstructs the very complex factual material therein for viewers who mightn't be financial experts, but never patronisingly. He even also takes a rather Michael Moore-esque approach at times with the use of (relevant) pop music and extensive use of archival news footage, and a helpful narration which Matt Damon, one of the most famously politically vocal Hollywood stars, delivers with appropriate objectivity. The result is an illuminating, confident, angering, unbiased and even stylish expose of how corrupt  and fraudulent decisions and agreements made in corporate boardrooms on the other side of the world can create negative ripple effects which, just economics itself, trickle down to the rest of us and, this time, unfortunately did. 9/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #309: Electrick Children (2013).

 

Rachel McKnight (Julia Garner) has just turned 15 and is a member of a Mormon group in rural Utah so fundamentalist they're borderline Amish. One night she listens to a cassette player for the first time and hears a cover of the song "Hanging on the Telephone." Her more obedient brother Mr. Will (Liam Aiken) confiscates the player now, saying it is only to be used for God's purposes, but when Rachel then discovers she is pregnant, she believes she has conceived miraculously like the Virgin Mary, through the cassette player. Once their parents inevitably find out, Mr. Will is blamed for impregnating Rachel and asked to leave the community and Rachel is told she will entered into a shotgun marriage the next day at the insistence of her father Paul (a jarringly miscast Billy Zane). That's when she flees to Las Vegas with an initially unsuspecting Mr. Will, who's asleep in the back of the family's truck in which she drives there. Once they arrive in Vegas, Rachel is all about freedom and adventure while Mr. Will tries to make her return home before reluctantly giving in, and then they meet Clyde (Rory Culkin) and his gang of skater mates, who broaden both Rachel's and Mr. Will's horizons.

This 2013 debut from writer-director Rebecca Thomas, who herself was raised Mormon, initially shows promising signs of subversion and originality, but then increasingly indulges in tameness and a flurry of coming-of-age narrative cliches. Rachel and Mr. Will's Vegas adventures see them (involuntarily, in Mr. Will's case) explore sex and substance abuse, but themes like that don't alone make a movie daring IMO and especially not when they're depicted in such a tactful but soft-core manner. There's also very little humour here to spice it up and not enough of a contemporary music soundtrack to add energy to it. Garner gives a beautifully dignified and balance performance as Rachel and Aiken adequately makes Mr. Will the grounding, centrifugal force to her closet wild child, but Culkin really doesn't have much to do as the token unrefined love interest.

Maybe it was meant to be somewhere between wholesome and provocative, but it just didn't get that balance right and it certainly didn't feel fresh or imaginative to me. Electrick Children did not inject me with a shock. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #308: The Machinist (2004).

 

Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) is a factory machinist with such a bad case of insomnia he hasn't slept in a year, and it's left him dangerously emaciated. His appearance and behaviour are already alienating his co-workers, who turn against him fully when he's involved in an accident where one of them, Miller (Michael Ironside) gets his left arm caught in the machinery and loses it. Trevor is blamed for the accident but claims a co-worker named Ivan, who nobody else sees or even knows of, distracted him. Privately, Trevor finds romance with prostitute Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and waitress Maria (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), who works at an airport diner Trevor frequents, and he absorbs himself in classic Russian novels, but none of these refuges can solve his mounting paranoia and continued lack of sleep.

The Machinist intends to lift the veil on insomnia, and the resultant paranoia, at their most extreme, and that's territory too infrequently explored in mainstream cinema. But while Bale's commitment to his role (he lost over 28kg for it) pays off with a dynamite performance, and Scott Kosar's screenplay is empathetic and unflinching, everything else here is, I think, misjudged and even timid, and that's all because of Brad Anderson's direction. How he visualises this narrative simply feels much too static, detached and conventional for a thriller overtly about paranoia. Where a considerably more unsubtle approach would, I think, have more powerfully conveyed Trevor's mental state, the result of the approach Anderson instead took struck me as blandly suspenseless and even indifferent. It reminded me somewhat of David Fincher but mind you, I've never liked any of his movies either. Plus, Roque Banos' score is so understated it may as well not even be there.

Overall, this Machinist is very played, but I think his machine needed cogs of an entirely different kind. 6/10. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #307: Lean on Pete (2017).

 

Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer) is 15 and lives with his single father Ray (Travis Fimmel), and soon finds casual work caring for a retired racehorse named Lean on Pete, whose owner Del (Steve Buscemi) is a hot-tempered man who nonetheless sees something in Charley and takes him under his wing. When Ray is then attacked and hospitalised with life-threatening wounds, Charley insists on staying at his side but Ray implores him to instead focus on his work with Pete and Del. Then, after Ray dies and Charley learns Pete is to be taken to Mexico to be slaughtered, he clandestinely steals Pete at night and takes him to Wyoming in Del's truck to live with Charley's Aunt Margy, the only mother figure he has ever known.

I'm sorry, but between his 2015 effort 45 Years and this, could writer-director Andrew Haigh be any duller as a filmmaker? I'm starting to feel like his movies should come with a defibrillator for the viewer to jolt them into vivaciousness with. His style is not slow; it is utterly glacial and maybe even worse than that. A movie being slow-paced is fine, provided (IMO) it still have some semblance of variety and suspense, but so far I'm sensing none of either of those qualities in Haigh's work. However, in fairness, I managed to sit through all of Lean on Pete; 45 Years alienated me after 30 minutes. 

It's an adaptation of a novel by Willy Vlautin and maybe my frustrations with the languid plot are largely his responsibility instead of Haigh's, but I still think Haigh should've brought a bit more energy and, again, suspense, to how that narrative was told. Plummer makes an adequately relatable protagonist in an understated turn and Magnus Joenck's photography is lucid and precise, but those were the only pros I noticed here and James Edward Barker contributes an awfully uninspired and flat score. Overall, I wouldn't recommend you Lean on Pete because the story he's in, and how Haigh tells it, could make you nod off. 5/10.

My weekend's off to a VERY stressful start.

So yesterday afternoon I took the bus to my parents' house 30 minutes out of town, to pet-sit for them while they're having this weekend away. But then when I arrive there, I found the usually unlocked back screen door locked and I had no key; I didn't take one with me because again, that door is usually left open for me to enter the house when necessary. I opened the lock there containing spare keys, only to find neither of those were for neither screen door. I then tried calling my parents but they had no reception and by now I was already stressed, so I had to swallow my pride and call my sister, who lives a few minutes away. When she arrived and I explained everything (all of which she took with a grain of salt, as she continued to do later), she then had to drive me home and back again just so I could retrieve my other set of keys, which turned out (to my genuine confusion) to also be the wrong ones; I also tripped over on the lawn once we returned to my parents' house because I hadn't realised one of my shoelaces was undone. So then we both had no alternative, as it was now past 6pm, but to go to her house for the night, where I had dinner, watched my team the Broncos lose by 48 points and sleep on a foldout bed (although that was easily preferable to the floor). I had an anxiety attack before I finally nodded off.

Then today I woke at 6:30am, and after 8am we all went (including my brother-in-law now) back to my parents' place to double-check the lock and the keys inside it per my sister's insistence. After she and he saw those really were also the wrong keys I tried not to be too snide or snarky when I said, "See, I told you they didn't work." They both then left, with my approval, and I stayed there to at least pet-sit like I was in town all along to do, albeit for much shorter than planned, and I helped myself to a beer there because I figured, 'Damn it, I deserve one after a shake-up like this.' I then planned to catch the bus home at 11:12am but as I left the service station toilet (just across the road from the bus stop) at that minute, the bus was departing so I stayed put and tried to hail the driver when they turned around and passed me, to no avail. By then I was fucking livid, so after seeing when the next bus was and learning it was over three hours away, I tried to think for a few minutes and then realised I had to call a taxi. So I did that, and once it arrived the ride was fine and the driver was a lovely lady who played great music and undoubtedly was about to get a big windfall from my 30-minute trip. Her company was a big bright spot, but everything culminating in it was confusing, guilt-inducing, embarrassing and incredibly stressful for me. Now I'm back home, but as soon as I got here, I hunched over with relief and almost cried. Hopefully, this weekend will improve for me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #306: Sword of the Stranger (2007).

 

It's the Sengoku period in Japan, and Kotaro is an orphaned young boy living in the countryside with his pet Shiba Inu dog, constantly on the run from violent pursuers. One day while sheltering in a disused temple, Kotaro meets Nanashi, a wandering swordsman who is actually a ronin: a Samurai without a current master. Nanashi quickly comes to dislike Kotaro (and, frankly, with some justification) but then they're attacked and pup Tobimaru needs medical attention, so Nanashi then reluctantly takes Kotaro and Tobimaru with him on his travels. En route, Kotaro turns out to be a prophesied child requiring training to fulfill his destiny.

This anime Samurai road movie was almost nominated for the 2008 Best Animated Feature Oscar; keyword: almost. Personally, though, I wouldn't have even submitted it for consideration. Its animation is faultless but its narrative is one hackneyed cliche after another, with bland dialogue and numerous ignored chances for humour. Plus, I found Kotaro really quite annoying. He goes from rude and bossy to overly cute and vibrant, and that contrasting change also imbalances his character arc quite jarringly. I understand the idea of making young protagonists work for our affection but here that bridge was just a bit too far to cross.

Naoki Sato's music score is actually genuinely beautiful, and with the animation it forms a rather and crisp and fresh pastry. But the filling - the narrative - was one I found so derivative and predictable, it resulted in a very insipid pie for me. I'm afraid I think Sword of the Stranger is in dire need of sharpening. 5/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #305: The Lighthouse (2019).

 

In New England in the 1890s, Ephraim Winslow (Willem Dafoe) accepts a job as a "wickie," or a lighthouse keeper, with the island's longtime keeper Thomas Wake (Robert Pattinson) as his supervisor. Ephraim is contracted for a month, and the job entails more than just operating the controls. The lighthouse will be his home, with Wake, for the month and so in that time they will need to bond. But as the month progresses, and a massive storm seals them inside, Winslow and Wake each come to harbour very uncertain, even suspicious feelings about the other man.

This 2019 black-and-white sophomore feature from Robert Eggers, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Max, was one I was keen to see after his latest movie The Northman absolutely blew my mind, and I was correct to be interested in it. Eggers is quite obviously an art house filmmaker and he frequently incorporates German expressionistic motifs and natural atmospheres, but he seems to know those touches are (at least, I think) suitable and effective for storytelling reasons instead of aesthetic ones. He invokes those stylings merely to put viewers in the mood and mindset of the movie and its characters, and in this case that's why the expressionistic inflections (if that's the right word) work so well. Winslow and Wake are both increasingly unhinged, isolated and untrusting of each other and we won't feel any tension from the film if the specifics of their shared situation aren't driven home to us. Eggers drives this home to us with a consistently firm grip on the steering wheel.

But this effect isn't all Eggers' responsibility. His regular cinematographer Jarin Blaschke's unsettling photography was deservedly nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA, the production design is realistically intimate yet striking in details and Mark Korven contributes a chillingly minimalist score. The only flaw I noticed here was what I considered Dafoe's almost too hammy performance in one scene; by contrast Pattinson stays in control of his turn throughout. It didn't impress me quite as much as The Northman did, but The Lighthouse still stands as a disturbing, but shining beacon. 9/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #304: Being John Malkovich (1999).

 

Struggling puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) reluctantly accepts an office job to make ends meet for himself and his pet enthusiast wife Lotte (an almost unrecognisable Cameron Diaz). As a clerk his professional life is uneventful, until one day he stumbles upon something most bizarre and unexpected behind a filing cabinet: a portal that leads directly into the brain of Hollywood superstar John Malkovich (playing a fictionalised version of himself, obviously). So then, of course, he opens it and becomes John Malkovich for 15 minutes, after which time he's removed from John's brain and dumped onto the New Jersey turnpike. Craig then tells Lotte and his playful, free-spirited colleague Maxine (Catherine Keener) about the portal and, after gradually convincing them that none of what he's saying is ridiculous horseshit, they both, too, join in on the fun in becoming John Malkovich. Along the way, Lotte and Maxine get to know each other, and all three of them come to understand more about their own psychologies from having literally entered and meddled in somebody else's.

Frequent collaborators Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman have since made off-the-wall movies like 2002's Adaptation., 2020's I'm Thinking of Ending Things, 2013's Her and my personal favourite, Jonze's 2009 masterpiece Where the Wild Things Are. And it all started here for both. Being John Malkovich made Jonze, aged just 30, one of the youngest ever Best Director Oscar nominees and Kaufman was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay (they both lost to Sam Mendes and Alan Ball respectively for American Beauty). This is a proudly weird film, but its weirdness is the tolerable kind in that the premise is weird, but how it's explored is very lucidly handled and what it's meant to allegorically represent is ultimately quite relatable and profound. In other words, it's never weird just to be unique or ostentatious. Cusack does his usual shtick, but Diaz is surprisingly effect in a role that's both dramatic and comedic and Malkovich revels in playing a highly exaggerated literal version of himself, but Keener (who herself was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar; she lost to Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted), is easily the standout with an excellently layered and understated turn in a role that was probably harder than it looked. It's also sharply edited, filmed with crisp energy, and a pulsatingly effective score is ladled over it all.

Again this is certainly a postmodern brain-teaser that demands your disbelief to be suspended, but if you can do that, I think you'll find Being John Malkovich to be an engaging and rewarding filmic statement about human psychology and relationships. 9/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #303: My Mistress (2014).

 

Charlie (Harrison Gilbertson) is a lonely and sheltered 16-year-old boy on the Gold Coast reeling from the recent discovery of his father committing suicide. While then trying to find outlets to ease his grief, he meets Maggie (Emmanuelle Beart), a French housewife who just also happens to be, albeit secretly, a BDSM dominatrix. After landing work with her as a pool boy (nothing cliched about that, huh?), Charlie soon has the hots for Maggie and becomes a willing participant in her private sexual games. Meanwhile, his life outside Maggie's house is almost as dramatic but much less interesting to him.

Look, admittedly what grabbed my attention about this 2014 Aussie erotic drama was the sexual content but even with that, I found My Mistress increasingly insipid and even tame. I can only liken it to a piece of chewing gum: initially it's absolutely delicious, but from a lack of variety its flavour runs out after about 20 minutes. The BDSM scenes are discreetly handled but I just got the sense director and co-writer Stephen Lance either deliberately or was forced to water them down to avoid the movie getting an R rating, and the rest of the narrative they're in I found seriously dull and hackneyed. The lack of a music soundtrack compounded this, and there's no sense of romanticism or lushness in the cinematography either.

Beart, one of the icons of modern French cinema, seems to enjoy spicing her screen image up here as a publicly conservative yet privately wild housewife, and Gilbertson keeps the sweet innocence to a pleasant minimum, but their efforts only make somewhat of a difference. For me, My Mistress is an underwhelming and timid telling of a narrative that could've been tactful, daring and brilliant. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #302: 12 Monkeys (1995).

 

In 1996, a deadly virus decimated the Earth's population. The survivors had to take shelter underground, and a group called the Army of the Twelve Monkeys were allegedly behind the outbreak of the virus. Jump forward to 2035, and James Cole (Bruce Willis) is a prisoner in an underground compound who's chosen to travel back to 1996 with a cure to save humanity. However, he is erroneously sent back to 1990 instead, when after trying to tell authorities he is from the future to save humanity from the impending virus, psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) diagnoses him as a paranoid schizophrenic and has him sent to a mental hospital. There he meets anarchic legitimate patient Jeffrey Goines (an Oscar-nominated Brad Pitt), whose late father Dr. Leland Goines (Christopher Plummer) may have held the answer to stopping the virus. Cole now fails an escape attempt but then returns to 2035, before finally arriving in 1996. From there he kidnaps Dr. Railly and forces her to take him to Philadelphia to hopefully find the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, or a trace of Dr. Goines.

In true Terry Gilliam form, this movie is very weird; however, alongside his less mainstream works like Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, it's actually conventional, at least visually. It's far more cerebral than either of those ones, which are both visually and narratively postmodern and outlandish. I'm not sure Gilliam is as well-suited to science fiction as he is to fantasy, which tends to be more spontaneous, but kudos to him nonetheless for diversifying here and his direction patiently unravels the very technical and esoteric themes in this narrative that are very characteristically SF. Husband and wife David and Janet Peoples' notably smart and lucidly plotted screenplay, based on the 1962 French film La Jetee, meshes well with Gilliam's understanding interpretation of it, and Roger Pratt's photography and Mick Audsley's editing combine to keep everything flowing evenly. Finally, Willis, Pitt and Stowe each make their characters jump engagingly to life and collectively form a strong trio of anchors through the narrative.

I don't think it's quite good enough to have inspired a TV adaptation, nor is it as brilliant as Gilliam's previous effort, 1991's The Fisher King, but 12 Monkeys is nonetheless a refreshingly brainy mainstream science fiction thriller that demands you pay attention to its maze-like structure, and amidst this interminable real-life pandemic it may have acquired even more relevance still. 9/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #301: 3some (2009).

 

Jose (Adriana Ugarte), Marcos (Nilo Zimmerman) and Jaime (Biel Duran) are arts classmates at a Spanish university. To help Marcos with his impotence, Jaime sets him up with Jose, whose portrait Jaime has agreed to paint for their course. Once Jose and Marcos get acquainted, Jaime joins the fold and they have a menage a trois which exposes, among other more physical things, their shared and subjective dreams and feelings. Soon, however, Marcos and Jose become rather uncomfortable with the situation, and Jaime refuses to give Jose his portrait of her once he completes it, which deepens the estrangement.

This very erotic Spanish romantic drama from director Salvador Gonzalez Ruiz and writer Enrique Urbizu and based on Almudina Grandes' novel is very strongly reminiscent of Alfonso Cuaron's Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003) as a sexually-charged coming-of-age film with twenty-somethings. But while it initially has considerable spice and charm, for me it peaks (in more ways than one) about forty minutes in. I had no problem at all with the sexual content; in fact, admittedly I watched it primarily for that. But those scenes are so frank and daring yet tactful, and so stuck together in one section of the film, the rest just didn't come close to being as vivid for me. The two afore-mentioned films were more cohesive and effectively sensual for me because they spread their racy content throughout their durations with adequate gaps in between and also touched on other topics rarely explored in such films like politics and bourgeois culture. This one, meanwhile, has flavour that lasts about as long as bubblegum's for me.

The three principals have adequate chemistry together and give understated, natural and (given the content, brave) performances, but for me 3some collapses under the burden of its narrative and the misjudged rendering of that. I also thought it needed more of a soundtrack. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #300: Happy as Lazzaro (2018).

 

On rural Italian state named Inviolata, Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo) is a passive and almost simpleminded young farmhand working for the Marchioness Alfonsina De Luna (Nicholetta Braschi), who runs Inviolata in an almost feudal manner. Lazzaro dutifully obeys every order the Marchioness, her son Tancredi (Luca Chikovani) and the estate supervisor Ultimo (Sergi Lopez) give him, but it soon appears this is all an act, for Lazzaro is far more intelligent and cunning than everybody else thinks. After he clandestinely befriends Tancredi, who himself is also more rebellious than he publicly appears, Lazzaro makes a plan with Tancredi to have him kidnapped so he can finally escape his oppressive life and work on the farm and move to the big smoke.

This 2018 Cannes Film Festival entry from writer-director Alice Rohrwacher begins quite charmingly with its depiction of a relatable young protagonist in the Italian countryside and, perhaps surprisingly, it doesn't show Lazzaro and Tancredi entering a same-sex romance (just for the record here I wouldn't have found that offensive, just predictable). But then after Lazzaro's fake kidnapping is staged, I must say I found it to be increasingly very bland and even slightly monotonous. There is literally no humour here despite the narrative and its devices inviting numerous chances for some, particularly during and after Lazzaro leaves the farm, and there's also not enough music IMO to maintain a consistent energy. I realise it's a drama and that was Rohrwacher's intention, but I think this narrative would've ultimately been more vibrant and engaging as a dramedy.

Tardiolo gives a sweet performance - adequately natural, duplicitous and non-judgemental - as the not-so-simple Lazzaro, and Chikovani counters him well as the more openly anarchic Tancredi, but they keep Happy as Lazzaro only barely afloat for me. What could've - and I suspect should've - been a coming-of-age buddy story that critically contrasts the atmospheres of rural and urban Italy instead struck me, by the end, as a dully conventional and overly serious friendship adventure. 6/10. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #299: The King of Comedy (1982).

 

Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) is a delusional New York City stand-up comedian trying to get his big break. There's just one problem: he's not very good, and certainly not as good as he thinks he is. After meeting successful comedian and talk show host Jerry Langford (a hilariously deadpan Jerry Lewis), he tries repeatedly to win a guest spot on Langford's show, but Langford's secretary Cathy Long (Shelley Hack) and then Langford himself rebuff Rupert. Still undeterred, Rupert then arrives uninvited at Langford's country house, albeit partly in attempt to impress his love interest, local bartender Rita Keene (De Niro's then-wife Diahnne Abbott). When this stunt also fails, Pupkin then takes drastic measures: with fellow stalker Masha's (Sandra Bernhard) help, he kidnaps Langford and holds him at ransom until Langford finally relents and gives him a chance at stardom.

The King of Comedy was a departure for Martin Scorsese and De Niro in that it's more of, well, a comedy than any of their previous collaborations; however, a streak of underlying darkness and suspense still pervades it. What I'm saying is, it's a black comedy. Working from Paul D. Zimmerman's suitably balanced screenplay, Scorsese seems to feel refreshed in diversifying his tone here and De Niro shows glimmers of the comic skill he would later demonstrate more overtly in farces like Meet the Parents. Together, this trio also offer a stinging and a quite impassioned critique of modern society's obsession with celebrity and glamour, as well the fickleness and pitfalls of fame. In that sense, it's very easy to see why this film has grown in popularity and relevance over time despite commercially flopping when first released.

Regardless, there are plenty of genuine laughs to be had here and they're all mixed in with the darker and more serious scenes very effectively. It also evokes the atmosphere and inner workings of New York City's culture and entertainment scene (at least of the era) very strongly, as I guess you'd expect from a Scorsese picture as it's his home city. Anyhow, The King of Comedy reigns supreme. 9/10.

Where I was for all of May.

Hello again, to anybody out there who actually follows this blog. (Just for clarity I doubt anybody does, but if you actually do, thank you.) "So, Jarred, where have you been?" I hear you ask. Well, I set myself a challenge. I chose to re-watch all 33 of my #1 movies from every year of my lifetime so far, and to maintain continuity, I resisted watching any other movies in that time. That was why, until yesterday, I posted no new reviews here (or anywhere else, for that matter). Naturally, I'd seen most of the older movies in that group far more times than most of the newer ones, and due to several factors unrelated to the films themselves, I actually nodded off during a few of them and then had to resume them later from roughly where I'd fallen asleep (one of them, believe it or not, which I fell asleep during was Star Wars: The Force Awakens). That left me frustrated with myself.

It was also a good challenge in that, while I always knew beforehand what I'd be watching the next day, on certain days I had to alter my routine to fit them in, and somebody like me can become too dependent on routine. Most particularly, on the day when I was set to watch The Wolf of Wall Street, a three-hour film, I had social activities on that morning and then had to wait until after 4pm, when the female cleaner who cleans my unit, had finished her shift because I really didn't want to risk making her uncomfortable by watching a movie in which Leonardo DiCaprio snorts drugs off a naked woman's body (among other immoral acts) in her presence. Then I had to cook dinner at 7pm, the time when I usually eat it.

Anyhow, I completed that self-imposed challenge and I don't regret undertaking it. That's, however, the only unusual thing that's happened to me lately and nothing really negative has occurred recently. I've also maintained writing poetry and, come to think of it, I've found a new special outdoor place locally where I've already returned a couple of times; last time I actually composed a new poem there. So overall, recently my life has been as varied as it's been stable. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #298: Wheels on Meals (1984).

 

Cousins Thomas (Jackie Chan) and David (Yuen Biao) run a fast food van in Barcelona, but habitually have to fend street gangs off. One day while visiting David's institutionalised father, they meet Sylvia (Lola Forner), a pickpocket posing as a prostitute who immediately has them both enamoured. But after letting her stay at their apartment overnight, they wake the next morning to find she's left and taken their money with her. Then they encounter Moby (director Sammo Hung), a bumbling private eye who's also after Sylvia. The trio soon then learn Sylvia is the heir to a big fortune that a crime syndicate is trying to steal from her. Now she is kidnapped, of course, and so Thomas, David and Moby must go on a mission to rescue her and the money.

I'm a huge Chan fan and so upon learning this one starred him it provoked my interest, but I don't think it's a bright spot of his back catalogue. The fight scenes are, of course and as always, impeccable and several moments amused me, but both of those pluses are woven into what I considered a really dull and inhibited narrative. Hung (who later directed Jackie again in the far superior Mr. Nice Guy in 1997), and writers Johnny Le and Edward Tang offer a vision that's half urban crime caper, half swashbuckling adventure but both of those approaches here felt hackneyed and they never quite meshed together cohesively. For clarity I realise the narrative isn't the chief point of a martial arts movie but still, that can be very hard to ignore and here I couldn't quite because it didn't exactly charm me.

I much prefer Jackie and his movies when they're really rollicking and relentless; this one, for me, was inconsistent at best. The action delivers the goods but as I said, the storytelling negatively counters that delivery. There's also insufficient confidence in Hung's pacing and some of the music score borders on being very dated as well. Therefore, these Wheels on Meals didn't exactly have the best traction for me. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #297: Burn, Motherfucker, Burn! (2017)

 

In 1991, dashcam footage of four Los Angeles Police Department officers assaulting African-American motorist Rodney King made worldwide news; the next year, the acquittal of those officers sparked the most devastating riots in US history. Sacha Jenkins' 2017 documentary Burn, Motherfucker, Burn! explores the complicated race relations in LA in the decades leading up to the 1992 riots, beginning with the 1965 Watts riots and using the Black Lives Matter movement as a framing device for the contemporary legacy of 1992.

This documentary for US cable TV network Showtime I think gets as much right as it gets wrong. Jenkins' approach in both how he conducts the interviews and aesthetically traces the events in question is appropriately restrained and adequately objective, and it doesn't fall back on pop culture references from any of the time periods to jog our memories or to legitimise Jenkins' coverage of the events. But as it progressed, I found it lingered on numerous points for too long, certainly long after they'd been made, and that really diminished its power and emotional effect. It also has a few animated scenes that I found rather jarringly reminiscent of Brett Morgen's documentaries; I love those, but in employing that similar technique here I felt Jenkins was compromising his own directorial vision.

Overall, Jenkins' film engaged me as a cinematic history lesson, but did not rivet me as a documentary. I'm afraid for me, Burn, Motherfucker, Burn! fizzles out just before it catches fire. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #296: Biography: I Want My MTV (2019).

 

On 1 August, 1981, the Buggles' Video Killed the Radio Star beamed out onto TV screens across the US, and Music Television, the network that came to define Generation X, was born. The 2019 documentary Biography: I Want My MTV, from directors Tyler Measom and Patrick Waldrop, traces MTV's history from its difficult creation to its transformation of the music industry, then to its shift in the 1990s to scripted and reality programming.

This is a pretty superficial documentary but that's appropriate because MTV was meant all along to be superficial. It does, however, demonstrate very illuminatingly how MTV revolutionised the music industry with the increasing significance of music videos as an art form and television with, for better or worse, the advent of the reality genre and rival music networks like VH1. It also deals quite frankly with the issues of inclusivity and equality the network has faced, particularly in its early years when artists like Rick James publicly called it out for playing too few artists of colour and for how heavily women were objectified in many hard rock videos. (In fairness to them, the second video played on MTV was Pat Benatar's You Better Run.) Once the '90s rolled around, the spike in competition as well as changing cultural trends inspired MTV brass to dabble in non-music programming with the show The Real World, in whose wake shows like Beavis and Butthead, Jackass, Punk'd and (my personal favourite) Teen Wolf followed, and the documentary ends with how music consumption and music videos have gone from MTV to YouTube, suggesting that while MTV may be on the wane, it still had quite its reign as a musical and cultural behemoth.

Pop culture documentaries can be very hagiographic, but this one isn't. Measom and Waldrop evidently are passionate about their subject and its history but here they still strive to capture that history's essence honestly, as I discussed above. Their goal, with which they of course use archive footage and interviews with numerous former hosts and music artists, is ultimately to trace MTV's trajectory and reveal its cultural and artistic legacy. In doing that, they also manage to remind the viewer how impermanence works to ensure all trends and institutions come and go, but the joy and inspiration they generate, linger nonetheless. Biography: I Want My MTV does its iconic subject genuine justice.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #295: The Mafia Kills Only in Summer (2013).

 

It's 1969 in Palermo, Italy. Our hero is Arturo (Alex Bisconti as a child; writer-director Pierfrancesco Dilberto as an adult), an aspiring journalist with his heart set firmly on his beautiful classmate Flora (Ginevra Antona as a child; Claudia Gioe as an adult). His awkward efforts to woo Flora happen simultaneously with the rise of the Cosa Nostra, or the Silician Mafia, and his and the rest of Palermo's dawning awareness of them over the next two decades. 

This Italian critical darling began really so well for me, with its unusual but genuinely charming mix of The Wonder Years, Amelie, Goodfellas and Good Bye, Lenin!. The first half with child Arturo mixes the respective nostalgia and narration, romantic whimsy, mafia theme and political subtext of those four classics. But then it jumps forward to adult Arturu now working as a journalist and still in love with Flora, and I can understand and appreciate how that creative choice was taken for a narrative arc and variety but that's where the film's consistency really dropped for me. The childhood scenes are sweeter than a gelato (and you know I've made that reference because this is an Italian movie) and the adulthood ones, in fairness, abandon that for realism to show the contrasts between those life stages, but I just found the transition quite jarring and the outcome increasingly bland. I think Dilberto should've added some subtle visual or thematic connections in the latter scenes to the events in Arturo's and Flora's childhoods. Not to mention more emphasis in the cinematography, particularly, on the Mediterranean landscape nearby, and in a few scenes Roberto Forza's score I found rather intrusive. 

The cast, particularly the child ones, are delightful on-screen, too, but The Mafia Kills Only in Summer really ended up taking the wrong stylistic route for me. I give it 6/10. However, it won Best Comedy Film at the 2013 European Film Awards, former anti-Mafia magistrate Pietro Grasso called it the best film ever made about the Sicilian Mafia and it spawned an Italian TV series, so what do I know?

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #294: Hotel Artemis (2019).

 

In 2028 Los Angeles, a riot breaks out over water privatisation. Seeing an ideal chance, career criminal Sherman (Sterling K. Brown) wages a bank robbery that leaves half his crew dead and his brother Lev (Brian Tyree Henry) critically injured. Realising how much that idea backfired, Sherman, Lev and the other survivors now take refuge in the nearby Hotel Artemis, a secret local hospital that only treats criminals, run by Jean "The Nurse" Thomas (Jodie Foster, made up to appear older), who's not left the place in 22 years because of agoraphobia and grief over her son's death. Jean's rules are strict: no weapons, no non-members and no killing of other guests. As Sherman and his crew get acquainted with Thomas and vice versa, the authorities hunting Sherman down outside learn he's in the Artemis, and so now they're going in; meanwhile, on the inside Sherman finds other foes to combat.

Hotel Artemis, English writer-director Drew Pearce's feature debut, is like a futuristic version of Bad Times at the El Royale. Only, minus all the unmistakable swagger and assertiveness that partly made that film such a rollicking, suspenseful great time. In its defence there is a touch of futuristic science fiction to it, with Thomas' robot-aided surgery and 3D printing, but these elements are too brief to offer any true uniqueness and their inclusion also felt slightly jarring to me. There's just nothing immediate here to forcefully grab and hold your attention (or at least mine) and that was the fatal missing ingredient for me here.

Foster, of course, is solid as the Nurse and even wears the aging make-up very well, but her co-stars mostly go through the motions here and the supporting female roles are very derivative and one-dimensional. The action scenes are all shot (pun intended) very clearly but staged unimaginatively, and Cliff Martinez' soundtrack is no different there. Therefore, paying a visit to Hotel Artemis was harmless enough, but I won't be checking in there any time soon for a stay.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #293: Only the Animals (2019).

 

A young French woman, Evelynne Ducat (Valeria Bruni Tadeschi) has recently disappeared. A search for her can't happen yet because there are no leads, but then after a snowstorm, her car is found near the Causse Mejean plateau where a small rural community is struggling to survive. Five of its residents, all from vastly different backgrounds, immediately know they are people of interest once the search starts. But they and the authorities all don't yet know this murderous and cold saga actually began on another continent entirely. As their stories overlap, their secrets emerge as Evelynne's fate and the person responsible for that is revealed.

Only the Animals is a crime drama based on Colin Niel's French-language novel, from director Dominik Moll and writer/composer Benedikt Schiefer. It's definitely a slow-burner and so it doesn't explode with suspense or violence, but it's quite unique in how it takes the avenue of interlocking stories rather than the hardboiled potboiler one. That also gives it, for me, a pleasantly intriguing and even sensuous quality, which Moll visualises lucidly and cohesively as he jumps between stories. Schiefer's dialogue feels consistently realistic and natural, and his score is appropriately delicate. Moll also draws engaging and convincing performances from all his actors, and employs Patrick Ghiringelli's cinematography for a haunting effect.

One or two scenes may be just slightly too long, but Only the Animals nonetheless is a refreshing departure for European thrillers. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #292: Weathering with You (2019).

 

First-year high schooler Hodaka Morishima (voiced by Kotaro Diago in the original Japanese version) flees his home on the island of Kozu-shima to make a new life in Tokyo. After his ferry gets caught in a huge rainstorm, he meets a businessman named Keisue Suga (Shun Oguri) who soon gives him a part-time job at his publishing company. As Hodaka and the company begin investigating urban legends regarding Tokyo's unusually wet weather, Hodoka and Suga learn of the mythical "sunshine girl" with weather-controlling activities. But Hodoka is about to learn she exists, and he finds her in the form of Hina Amano (Nana Mori), a fellow high schooler and a McDonald's employee who gave him food just after he arrived in Tokyo and was homeless and unemployed. So now he tracks her down again and they form a strong connection, particularly after she proves her powers to him. The powers that be, however, of course won't let them be together, so they must find a way to do so.

This latest effort from anime writer-director Makoto Shinkai begins really very promisingly and engagingly, but like its predecessor Your Name (2016), it peaked about 30 minutes in for me. Again, the visuals are gorgeous and painstakingly detailed, but Shinkai's pacing is, I think, more erratic than a toddler's handwriting and I swear some of his dialogue here is so corny it makes James Cameron's sound like opera. I also don't think its narrative is nearly as thematically deep as it thinks it is (and as it arguably should be), and Japanese rock band Radwimps' score (they also scored Your Name) feels much too electronic for a film so overtly about nature and connection; I think a really organic, new-age score would've fit much better.

If you read this and you're about to watch the movie, that's my forecast for what you'll get with Weathering with You. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #291: The Emperor's Club (2002).

 

William Hundert (Kevin Kline) is a passionate classics professor at St. Benedict's Academy, an all-boys boarding school, in the 1970s. At the beginning of a new school year, his class welcomes new arrival Sedgewick Bell (Emile Hirsch), a talented but lazy and disruptive son of national Senator Hiram Bell (Harris Yulin). Professor Hundert's efforts to academically transform Sedgewick are successful but detrimental to some of his other students, particularly the quiet and neurotic Martin Blythe (Paul Dano). However, Hundert ultimately manages to nurture and unite his class before they all compete in the school's traditional "Mr. Julius Caesar" classics quiz. Then, 25 years later, Hundert is unexpectedly overlooked for the now-vacant headmaster position, but his former students have something else planned for him.

Based on Ethan Canin's 1994 short story The Palace Thief, The Emperor's Club is harmless but unremarkable. That's because despite Kline's solid lead performance and the presence of a few newbies who've since gone on to A-list Hollywood status (there's also a young Jesse Eisenberg here), this narrative makes absolutely no effort to explore ignored avenues or to bravely throw the big emotional punches. Both of those intentions are very risky, as both can make the book/film etc. seem like it's trying too hard to be respectively unconventional or powerful. (What makes all the difference is how the director treads the chosen territory.) But trying to take either of those routes and falling into the respective traps is, I think, preferable in some ways than shying away from said routes altogether. Instead, director Michael Hoffman and screenwriter Neil Tolkin take a quite stuffy approach to this school-based coming of age flick and while I had feeling at the start that this would be emotional overkill and it turns out I was wrong there, I still wasn't engaged, moved or inspired. 

It's nowhere near as awful as Mr. Holland's Opus (that was emotional overkill), but The Emperor's Club is also nowhere near as great or distinctive or groundbreaking as Dead Poets Society, Heathers or The Breakfast Club. 6/10.

On THAT slap.

Everybody saw it. Literally the entire world; the amount with TV or internet access anyhow. What the hell was Will Smith thinking - if he was thinking at all? You were at the Academy Awards, dude! The world's highest-profile awards show! Plus, you were about to mark a career peak with the Best Actor Oscar!

I don't know. But I do know what happened around me when I saw it. I was watching the show with a friend and, in the moment, I thought Will's intentions, at least, were understandable, but my friend was outraged. Personally, I still don't think he should've gone up there and hit Chris Rock, but I do think doing that was just foolish, and it has overshadowed the achievements of the other winners, namely the queer and Latino Ariana DeBose and the deaf Troy Kotsur. I also knew when it happened that it would be an instant media - news and social - whipping horse, and there I was right. Plus, what was keeping Smith from saving those feelings for his acceptance speech since he must've known he was his category's warm favourite?

Furthermore, he was laughing himself at Rock's joke that sparked it all, until he saw wife Jada's upset reaction. That was evidently what tipped the scales, but it didn't make his initial reaction any less hypocritical and then in his speech itself, he advocated for peace and harmony. Rock's joke also was sexist and body-shaming, but it was just a joke and it was meant to provoke, so by lashing out like he did, Smith gave Rock that very satisfaction. I also think somebody seated near Smith should've tried to restrain or calm him before he walked on stage; they must've known, from his yelling, how angry he was.

In fairness, Smith did apologise during his speech and, at greater length, in a statement after the show. But now, after the Academy announced an investigation into this incident and possible disciplinary action against him (including stripping him of his Oscar), he has resigned from their membership. I call that cowardly jumping before you can be pushed. I'm still prepared to give him a second chance; too many celebrities have been punished more for equal or greater sins. But Will would be very wise to avoid a repeat of this entire very public scandal.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #290: Checkered Ninja (2018).

 

In Thailand, a checkered ninja doll is produced, but after its maker (a child factory worker) is murdered and a lightning storm hits, the soul of 17th-century ninja Taiko Nakamura possesses it and it lands on a ship bound for Denmark. Once it arrives there, local drunkard Stewart Stardust (the voice of Anders Matthesen, with Michael Glenn Murphy doing the English dub) finds him and gives him to his nephew Aske (Alex in the ED, voiced by Cameron Simpson). Once the ninja defends Alex's friend John against bully Glenn (Paul Tylak in both roles), Alex realises the doll is alive and they become friends. Now Checkered Ninja recruits Alex's help in exacting his revenge on his maker's killer Phillip Eberfo (aka Eppermint; Luke Griffin), but first Alex recruits Ninja's help in winning the attention of his crush, Jessica (Ava Connolly).

This Danish animated effort, from co-directors Matthesen and Thorbjorn Christofferson and adapted from Matthesen's novel, gets as much wrong as it gets right. It's decidedly more mature in content than most other animated films (there's a lot more violence and, particularly, strong language) and the possessed ninja doll motif is fresh and subversive. But then it mixes a cheesy message about self-belief and numerous adolescent fiction cliches into it, diluting that subversion. Plus, Griffin doesn't come close to sounding like children as either Glenn or John in the dubbed version which I saw and that was very jarring for me. I also didn't find it anywhere near as shocking, with the use of swearing, as it tried to be, and the character of Sean, Alex's brother, annoyed me quite a lot.

The visuals are consistently crisp, and its heart definitely beats, but thanks to the afore-mentioned flaws, this Checkered Ninja misses out on a belt from me. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #289: March of the Penguins (2005).

 

In deepest, coldest Antarctica, flocks of penguins live, breed and co-exist with each other and a rapidly changing world. French documentary filmmaker Luc Jacquet seeks to show how this way of life is not so very different from humanity's in his 2005 film March of the Penguins, which became a surprise, but deserving, mainstream hit.

It follows one flock of these flightless Arctic birds over one year in their lives together, as they all find a mate, breed, hunt for the winter and slowly but stoically complete the titular march around their home, with Morgan Freeman, Amitabh Bachchan, Charles Berling, Jules Sitruk, Sharon Cuneta and (in the version I saw) Maryanne Slavin all narrating their collective odyssey. This is an almost punishingly slow doco, but it nonetheless captivated me the entire way because of how wise, insightful and patient it is. Jacquet, who later made the 2018 sequel March of the Penguins 2: The Next Step, clearly loves these creatures to the point of empathising with them, and in his direction and writing he never judges or even tries to explicitly explain any of their behaviours; instead the narration as it's written simply explains why they're behaving as they are in each situation, and very helpfully, how females and males behave differently to each other. That approach also serves to emphasise the film's main message: that penguins feel the same emotions and have the same values as humans. Values like connection, identity, camaraderie, romance, family. Jacquet also touches extensively on how they breed and then how their chicks come of age in their wilderness environment, fighting against all the dangers (man-made or otherwise) inherent in that.

March of the Penguins is less emotional and polemical, and far less aggressive than Blackfish (2013), and again it's very slow, but if you have the patience for it, like I did, you should find it to be a very illuminating, subtly sweet, impartially political, educational, slow-burning beauty. Oh, and did I mention it won the 2005 Best Documentary Feature Oscar, and that Jacquet and his co-producer Yves Darondeau brought plush penguins to the Academy Awards with them?

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #288: Arrowhead (2015).

 

Kye Cortland (Dan Mor) is a political prisoner trying to escape a mining colony. A rebellion recruits him one day to rescue his father from a totalitarian government and he acquiesces, but during his mission he accidentally crash-lands on a desert moon of strategic value to both warring sides. Now he must survive and find a way off the moon, with the "help" of his ship's AI, Re3f (Shaun Micallef, giving a surprisingly effective dramatic vocal performance).

This 2015 Aussie science fiction flick, which writer-director Jesse O'Brien made for just $150 000, is like The Martian meets Mad Max meets WALL-E. But it's actually based on a film school short O'Brien made in 2012 for just $600. The result is a rather suspenseless but nonetheless intriguing and confident outer-space survival movie, and certainly one in the hard science fiction tradition (think writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, whose works were notably more factually scientific than other SF writers). Indeed it's very low on action but that's the point, as our hero is a mostly lone figure in his environment anyway, and Mor plays him with just the right blend of grit, vulnerability and composed loneliness.

Samuel Baulch's photography is calmly paced and focused, his and O'Brien's editing is never flashy or too subtle, and Ryan Stevens compliments it all with a suitably earthy and ominous score. For me, Arrowhead shoots and hits its target. 8/10.

How I'm feeling now about the aforementioned incident a fortnight ago.

So it's now been a fortnight since I ran into my ex-friend who I fell out with badly after I gave her email address out without her permission. I spent about the next five days dwelling on that, but while it's still on my mind to a degree, the dwelling has ceased since last week. I'm still remorseful about it, I promise you, but not to the point of beating myself up about it. At some point, I think you need to stop doing that. Remember your errors and flaws, without letting them continually make you feel bad about yourself.

Yesterday, I had another session with one of my therapists with whom I discussed the matter (I named no names, just for the record). After painting the picture and expressing all my feelings on it, she told me, frankly but gently, I'd been conned but that I was nonetheless largely responsible. She concluded that there was probably no way of resolving this conflict, at least for now, and that I'd therefore just have to live with it.

I do believe that's correct. Either way, many of the feelings I had when I composed my previous post about the incident are ones I haven't shaken, although I am consciously trying my hardest to uphold a balanced perspective about the entire fiasco, both for clarity and more importantly out of respect for the other two parties. And my anxiety and shock about it has eased now.

Another lingering thought I have about (and which I'm adding to this post almost two months later) is that the falling out had three contributing factors and sources. I shouldn't have given the email address out, my friend who wanted it should've told me really what for, and had my ex-friend simply given my friend (even if only to shut her up) a chance to host some trivia nights like she knew my friend had wanted to do for some time, then my friend probably would've left her alone.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #287: 99 Homes (2014).

 

In Florida at the height of the GFC, Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) is a struggling contractor living with his mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and his young son Connor (Noah Lomax), until they are suddenly evicted and their house foreclosed. The man responsible for this is Rick Carver (Michael Shannon), a corrupt local real estate agent. After he lodges an unsuccessful court appeal to have the foreclosure overturned, Dennis reluctantly accepts a job offer with Carver in order to save his and his family's home. His new work consists of conducting the same evictions to other local residents that Carver just gave to the Nashes. As his contract progresses, Dennis finds Carver's attitude and tactics becoming more unsympathetic and ruthless by the day, until somebody is brutally murdered.

99 Homes was a darling of numerous film festivals in 2014 and even generated Oscar buzz, but I don't understand how. Going into it I was expecting a slow-paced drama and that's primarily what it is, which is fine, but I just the found the actual narrative, and the pacing, to be increasingly and highly monotonous. Director and co-writer Ramin Bahrani's approach here is, I think, very plodding and self-conscious where a little more assertiveness and immediacy wouldn't have hurt. It simply never grabbed me, thematically or artistically, and I was in my early 20s (roughly Dennis' age) during the GFC so I recall it well. I also think the visual approach was rather too glossy and refined for a crime drama set in suburbia.

Garfield does what he can with a somewhat stock young adult protagonist and Shannon never makes his villain too cartoonish, but the best performance is from Dern, who infuses Lynn with dignity and strength. The lack of a non-original soundtrack is a fresh touch that helps to not date the movie's focus, but I'm afraid for me those pros were in too short a supply to help it overcome the rest of the stylistic and storytelling approach applied to it. Were I at an auction for these 99 Homes, I wouldn't be among the highest bidders. 5/10.