By: Henry J. Fromage –
This week is another one of those truly eclectic ones I struggle to tease out a theme on- a bit of something for everyone?
342. Hokum
Adam Scott gets to really flex his asshole muscles playing an abrasive author struggling with the right way to end his best-selling series while visiting a remote and reportedly haunted hotel in the Irish countryside to spread his parents’ ashes (it’s where they honeymooned, although he clearly only is sentimental for one of them, and brutally guilty for their fate). When a hotelworker goes missing after helping him, he insists on searching the locked-up honeymoon suite where he believes she went, and where it’s rumored an ancient witch is trapped and awaits anyone who enters. Irish director Damian McCarthy is starting to build quite a oeuvre of folklore-tinged, character piece horror films (his rabbit obsession gets a particularly creepy manifestation here), and while I think there are still some rough edges to hone, it’s one that’s establishing him as a must-watch voice in the genre. Three Beers.
343. Silent Friend
Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi skillfully weaves together three stories set at three distinct time periods around a German university, and all centered on the question of what plants perceive, and what they could communicate to us, if only we had a shared basis of doing so. In one story, Tony Leung is neurology professor takes a position at the university on the strength of his research into how babies perceive the world (like someone tripping on mushrooms all the time, it turns out) who gets trapped only with a German-speaking caretaker during the pandemic and starts to apply the same techniques to examine the possible perceptions of the gigantic gingko tree in the courtyard.
In another a student in the 70s falls for a housemate who’s conducting similar research, except with a geranium, which she tasks him with caring for when she goes backpacking, only for him to find a way to take her research to places even she hadn’t dreamed of. The third follows the first female student allowed into the University sometime in the mid-1800s, who finds sexism everywhere she turns but a strange kind of respite as a photographer’s assistant. The way the stories are interwoven is enchanting, and each holds interest perfectly well in its own way, although I would have preferred a bit more catharsis in two of the three. Two Beers.
344. Amrum
The title card announces this as a Hark Bohm film by Fatih Akin, reflecting that the lauded Turkish-German director took on directorial duties for Bohm’s script after his passing last year at the age of 86. This is clearly an at least somewhat autobiographical story about a young boy coming of age in the waning days of WWII on the somewhat isolated small rural island of Amrum. This isn’t a perspective often covered- that of the German civilians either ignoring reality as their government and departed menfolk’s choices come home to roost, or resisting in what ways they can and counting down the days until this hated war finally ends and takes the Nazis with it. The boy isn’t sure what side to take necessarily, but he’s an empathetic and perceptive young man, so the outcome is somewhat foreordained. Complex, yet humanistically rendered. Two Beers.
345. Suzume
A plucky schoolgirl meets a long-haired dreamboat in the road and finds out he’s some kind of sorcerer. An earthquake corresponds with some kind of otherworldly portal opening that she helps him close, but not before a smoke monster escapes. A stone idol turns into a talking cat who turns the sorcerer into a walking, talking three-legged chair. Yep, sure sounds like anime alright. This was an immensely successful one, though, following in the footsteps of director Makoto Shinkai’s breakouts Your Name and Weathering With You. It’s superbly animated, fully of apocalyptic imagery (the smoke monster manifests to do its thing in places people have long abandoned) and realistically rendered background detail as well, and the girl/chair buddy cop duo (and maybe something more?) works far better than you’d ever suppose it would. Charming and packing a surprisingly emotional punch at times. Two Beers.
346. I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not
Chevy Chase does very little to dispel his reputation as a cantankerous old fucker in this documentary about his life and career, but he reminds us here that he’s our cantankerous old fucker (and he always has been, if not old, a cantankerous fucker, which was a considerable part of his comic charm). This is both an excellent breakdown of his professional and personal ups and downs, often dictated by his comic contemporaries who clearly love him despite their acknowledgement of how much of a cad he could be. And while it doesn’t necessarily break through the Chevy Chase facade, perhaps there are cracks here and there, like when he addresses being left out of SNL‘s 50th Anniversary show. A true original, for good and ill. Two Beers.
347. Stolen: The Heist of the Century
This true crime documentary is one for lovers of coldly competent procedure, both that of the heist, the largest theft of diamonds ever in a daring cracking of Antwerp’s supposedly impenetrable Diamond Center, and then that of the investigation that eventually catches them. While the described steps taken by both parties fascinate, there’s the open question of how much prevarication our interviewees are partaking in (surprisingly to some degree on both sides). A film full of characters, indeed. Two Beers.
348. Lynden
This PBS documentary examines the rather average small town of Lyden, Washington, and in particular the experiences of Amsa Burke, an adopted Ethiopian girl growing up in a largely Conservative and overwhelmingly White community. As she enters High School and finds her voice in a time of great upheaval in the African American experience in America in particular, she finds just how open her neighbors and fellow churchgoers are to sentiments like her life mattering. It goes a bit against the grain of like-minded documentaries looking for points of connection, as this one finds precious few (not that there aren’t strong Christian voices that appear to actually take the Bible to heart in her community- but the utter blindness of many supposed followers of Jesus is sobering to witness). Three Beers.
