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.