Climax:
A kinder, gentler film from Gaspar No--
No, that's not right.
A less self-impressed, less aggressive film from--
No, not that.
A well-scripted, carefully acted--
Oh, god no!
Uhh... a shorter film from Gaspar Noe? With one fantastic dance sequence at the beginning?
Yeah, we'll stick with that one.
One does wish that Noe would find different ways of using his talents in ways that don't go for the kind of smug provocation he made his name on, and while it is somewhat appreciated that, by and large, his worst tendencies are curbed in terms of depiction, this still winds up as an unpleasant experience that's not always intentional. Professional dancers round out the cast beyond Sofia Boutella, though beyond the dancing itself, you will absolutely not care about any of them outside of what their scene calls for, and pairing Noe's approach to directing actors with decidedly non-professional ones yields the expected dire results, particularly in a ghastly wall-to-wall sequence of dialogue where everyone boasts about either past sexual conquests or what they're about to do others in the room once the party dies down. The chatter dies for the most part after that, beyond accusations of who could have possibly been the one who spiked the sangria with an especially bad batch of LSD, but with Noe possessing no interest in any kind of mystery as to who (the final shot does probably reveal who it was all along, for all it matters), he hopes that watching these people lose their minds as they sink further and further into acts of a depraved nature, both violent and sexual, filming them with his trademark style, which does include an impressively long take as bad becomes worse and worse becomes apocalyptic, is enough to keep one's interest. That Noe is such a skilled technician makes it all the more unfortunate that his interests seem irrevocably stuck inside the pages of an angst-ridden 12-year-old's notebook that they doodle in during detention, as one wonders what he might do with literally anything else for material.
The Power of Glove:
::looks at cover::
Me: Oh god, here comes some trendy pandering to millennial hipsters that will try to tell you that The Wizard is a secretly good movie and not a 90-minute
video game ad.
Documentary: Actually, here's a glimpse into the history of a failed product that wound up having its origins in both the hopes of creating a new kind of electronic musical instrument, as well as having a massively important role in the early days of VR development. And then, we gathered just about everyone that worked on the Power Glove project itself in and around Mattel, as we go through a painstakingly crafted history of the product from its pitch meeting, to the R&D headaches when it turned out they couldn't get it working as fast as it needed to in order to provide a properly responsive experience in the time-frame that they had to make it in and not having games built for it available at is launch, to the tense 11th hour back-and-forth with Nintendo who threatened to pull their seal of quality with tens of thousands of units waiting to ship out to stores and the mad dash to appease their demands. Throughout all this, we wind up doing a proper contextualization of the impact it had on pop culture while also exploring the strange yet exciting underground movement that it spawned, from hobbyist VR hacking to digital music creation and beyond, drawing an important correlation for where the future of current VR development needs to go in order to go to the next level of interactivity. Best of all: we got the director of The Wizard to talk about how and why it got into the film and even he thinks it was a 90-minute video game ad!
Me: Well, shit. That's a pretty damn good documentary! Could have done without all the boring Triforce stuff, as a guy famous for being a big nerd that wears the Glove as a fashion statement isn't remotely as compelling as the rest of the content, but you covered so many bases that I didn't even know existed that you did the impossible and made something rather notable from the seemingly least deserving subject matter.
1917:
An art house video game movie? Though based on no property out there, this film nevertheless bears out a lot of striking similarities to the way many of them progress these days, aided by the one-shot (well, OK, two-shot, but it still counts) approach that the cinematography employs, coming across like the most gorgeous third-person shooter in existence. This isn't an inherently bad thing, but the film does quickly run into the issue where the plotting gets obvious and even repetitive to a fault, a fact not helped out by the immersion-breaking choice to trot out as many British actors as they possibly can fit into the "checkpoint" sections that catch the breath of our heroes before embarking on the next perilous stage of their journey. It shows something of a lack of confidence in that the story of these two men, both played rather fine by George MacKay and Dean Charles-Chapman, that they need to be bolstered by star power, but I suppose such are the demands of big budget prestige pictures.
Sam Mendes does give the film a striking affectation that goes beyond the technical feat that he and cinematographer Roger Deakins attempt with the illusion of a long-take picture, in that its surprisingly less action-packed than the ads make it seem, focusing instead on the proximity of danger rather than the spectacle of armed combat. Not that there isn't a lot of tension as a result, but rather than doing it through complete chaos, the tighter focus on the dangers of traversal when hopelessly outgunned make for an engaging experience that boasts an unconventional delight while delivering on the kind of thrills that one would want from the subject matter. Mendes remains a somewhat elusive filmmaker for me in terms of what he wants out of the art he makes, which can give the films he makes a chilly edge to them that can sometimes call too much attention to his prowess as a technician, yet I do feel he does a fair job here with the kind of armor-chipping that goes on in terms of the character growth that helps to earn its dedication in the final title card and puts a solid perspective on what we just witnessed.
Did it need to be a single-shot approach? It's certainly a hell of a hook for a film to have, and despite the rough edges it can have in covering up the seams of the stitching that was necessary to string the sequences together, but it can have the unintended effect of making the savvier film-goer try to guess at where the transitions are being made. A fair bit of that phenomena can happen here, particularly in the second half of the film that amps up amount of action going on, at least relative to its first half. Yet there is a control to this that doesn't immediately call as much attention to itself that it's happening, a refreshing amount of calm and even quiet that makes one forget about the achievement and focus more on what's actually happening in front of you. It doesn't necessarily justify the tactic, but it does make the smart decision to not make it the only thing worth talking about, especially with the move away from guns going off every other scene in all directions. If not a complete success, it is something that's at least refreshing to see come out of Hollywood at this price range: a big budget war picture that does take the time to stop and smell the roses before getting back to the business at hand. A fine film when all is said and done, and though I can wish that it was even better, it's an admirable effort that does leave a positive impression and certainly does make a good argument for how important a big screen can be in telling a story.
Aniara:
Part 1 of a day I'd like to call Ridley's Depressing Space Adventures.
What to do when you have an idea for an ambitious science-fiction film, and very limited resources with which to be able to pull it off? Certainly, the Swedish film industry has little access to the kind of money that Hollywood can throw at a problem like that, but the line between good and great filmmaking is often defined by what one is able to pull off when such luxuries aren't available. It sometimes is as simple as having a great idea, a passion for bringing it to life and, occasionally, a very willing shopping center that's down for what you're setting out to do here. Low-budget thriftiness thrives on being able to visually explain why something looks like a mall in space while not drowning the rest of the narrative with unnecessary exposition, which is a credit to this film that it's able to handle that aspect quite cleverly throughout its duration. And, well, what better facility with which to relate this tale of existential apocalypse, as the clinical visual makeup winds up as a valuable asset as the years go on for our unfortunate space travelers who find themselves wildly off course following an debris catastrophe and virtually no hope of ever going home. Suddenly, the simple comforts turn into a prison of banality, or a sarcophagus, as one astute supporting character and, eventually, title card puts it, even when the deterioration begins to set in and the fading hope begins to physically manifest itself. Light viewing, this most certainly is not, as it's not only committed to the impending oblivion of the situation but makes one hell of a final statement on the matter in its closing images, yet throughout, there is the sense that even with all the evaporating hope for the crew and cargo of the Aniara itself that there is a genuine beauty to the whole process, finding a kind of peace and tranquility once the constraints of conventional society finally crumble away and all that's left is the close company of those that remain. One could imagine where they might have been able to do more elaborate visuals for the CG that is used, or being able to better convey some moments that clearly could not happen on camera as a result of the low budget, but when your ideas are this big and this rich, and when you're able to convey them with a sense of humanity that even at its most desperate moment can't quite eliminate entirely, you realize that you wound up with quite the remarkable tale, told rather well and landing with a tremendous impact.
High Life:
Part 2 of a day I'd like to call Ridley's Depressing Space Adventures.
The premise behind this film is certainly an intriguing one, as one wonders just how a single father copes with raising his infant child in the deep recesses of space while having to keep everything shipshape aboard the vessel that they're traveling on. There's a potential for an intriguing mystery as to why they're on there in the first place, all the while wondering just how things will shake out for them in the end. We don't get quite that here, as the initial scenes involving Monte caring for Willow while in the midst of his daily routine soon give way to the bulk of the film being in a kind of flashback to the events that got at least him there in the first place. A wild idea is sprung forth, that being death row inmates being used for deep space experiments, getting even more strange with the focus of the experiments here revolving around fetal development in the far reaches of the galaxy. It's a lot of material for one film, to say the least, yet for as daringly horny the film gets in those bits, I found myself often longing to return to the more straightforward drama between father and daughter, as the interplay between the other inmates grates often with the flimsy dialogue and the lack of depth that they're afforded. For a stacked cast as this film boasts, they deserved more than what they get here, even if they serve as a distraction more often than not. This isn't to say that there aren't some striking moments contained in that part of the plot, and they are certainly soaked in a great many bodily fluids at that, but the lack of tension as a result of how the film starts out makes the ultimate fate for each of those players rather uninteresting in the long run. When it does stick to the father/daughter dynamic, one does admire the tricky elements that could have stumped a worse actor than Robert Pattinson, who does rather well with the material throughout as Monte, juggling parental responsibilities while having to hold it all together with the knowledge that the mission at hand wasn't exactly designed as a return trip. Throughout, one admires the production design and certainly the boldness with which it depicts many events, as its hard to believe that this played in any theaters with just how crazy things can get, but I couldn't help but feel that there was a tighter and more resonant film in there, rather than the half-a-one that we wound up getting.
