By: Henry J. Fromage –
My randomized picks this week have yielded a bounty of foreign films again- my wife is just going to love this!
170. Eden Lake
This horror that feels like England’s answer to the New French Extremity films that were popular at the time (2008) stars Michael Fassbender and Kelly Reilly as a city couple who go camping at Eden Lake, only to be beset upon by the rowdy local teenagers from hell led by a very young Jack O’Connell. It’s the kind of horror film that has you yelling at the screen at every bad decision by its protagonists, but it does do a good job of escalating the teens’ willingness to take things much further than they should ever have gone. Three Beers.
171. Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar
Kristen Wiig reteams with Bridesmaids writer Annie Mumolo with this pastel-splashed comedy that feels very much indebted to Wiig’s SNL comic sensibility with it’s odd for oddness’ sake characterwork. Wiig and Mumolo play off each other like seasoned castmates, but the real revelation is an adorably dopey Jamie Dornan, who plays unrequited love interest to the Dr. Evil-esque villain of the film (also played in eybrow-less, pasty glory by Wiig) as well very much requited love interest of the two titular friends. This is just some goofy shit that feels like the good/bad old days when recurring SNL characters would get their own films just ’cause. I had my fun with it. Three Beers.
172. Space Sweepers
This is Korea’s first big space blockbuster, and, well, the world-building and special effects are up there with anything coming out of the US or China these days. The storytelling chops, unfortunately, are about what’d you’d expect from most SFX blockbusters coming out of the US or China, too, though- far more preoccupied with action sequences and cool settings than telling a story that you haven’t seen 100 times before. Four Beers.
173. Locked Down
Doug Liman and Steven Knight teamed up to film this mid-pandemic diamond heist flick, and they do make the most of as many Zoom-based celebrity cameos as they can wrangle as well as the eerily deserted streets of London mid-quarantine. This isn’t so much a Soderbergh-style caper as a dialogue and chemistry-driven “comedy of remarriage” starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor, and it is more entertaining than perhaps you’d expect it to be considering the ever-present reminders of, well, our situation. I wonder how it will age, though. Three Beers.
174. The Kid Detective
This is your under-the-radar hit of the year so far, perhaps, getting a boost from Redlettermedia in a rare “this is actually good” recommendation and popping up a few other places since its streaming debut. Adam Brody stars as a washed up former child detective haunted by the murder case he couldn’t (and probably shouldn’t have tried to) solve. Then another murder hits his desk in between all of the lost cat and missing fundraiser money cases. Feature rookie writer/director Adam Morgan strikes a very precisely calibrated tone between droll comedy, effective serial killer drama, and even a hearty dose of real pathos. Impressive as hell. Two Beers.
175. Over the Moon
Netflix’s latest original animated film comes from Glen Keane, who recently won an Oscar for the unfortunately now even more affecting Kobe Bryant short Dear Basketball after serving for years as a character animator for 30 years worth of iconic Disney characters. There’s no doubt this is lovingly animated, and locates an interesting specificity in its setting and basis in Chinese fairytales. Unfortunately, this feels a bit too templated and calculated, from those huge Disney eyes to the empathy shortcut of killing off a parent via montage (surely we can put this one to rest) to all the amorphous Pixar-like creatures on the moon to, well, it goes on and on. Four Beers.
176. David
Zach Woods of Silicon Valley fame shot this short starring Will Ferrell as a surprisingly combative therapist whose son David (Fred Hechinger) bursts in on a session with the possibly suicidal William Jackson Harper of The Good Place fame and demands he attend his high school wrestling match. That’s pretty much the whole of it, but Woods gets interesting acting from all three actors and it you get a chance to give it a watch, I’d recommend it. Three Beers.
177. OnlyFans: Selling Sexy
Hulu enticed me with a frankly ridiculous header image of this ABC News Documentary special about the OnlyFans phenomena and I had an hour to kill, so here we are. While I still can’t say I care a whit about that Bella Thorne controversy even after getting educated on it, what this doc does do is pick several interesting people using it for its original purpose- freelance sex work- and the various ways it has empowered them economically in ways they probably wouldn’t be elsewise. If OnlyFans itself doesn’t normalize the life of sex workers, surely ABC News has gotta get things closer… Three Beers.
178. The Dig
I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a weird 10-12 year old, and the reason wasn’t Indiana Jones, but rather old library books full of wondrous treasures like the Sutton Hoo- an entire Anglo-Saxon ship preserved miraculously intact in a burial site in western England. Lo and behold, Netflix has brought us a Ralph Fiennes/Carey Mulligan/Lily James/Johnny Flynn-starrer about the 1938 discovery and excavation of this spectacular find by a veteran “excavator” and a sickly landowner defying conventional wisdom. This is both a fine film from that archaeological perspective as well as a rumination on what it means to live on through history. A fine film. Two Beers.
179. Rocks
Sarah Gavron took a step back towards her earlier indie dramas with this story of a British-Nigerian girl named Rocks (an up to the task Bukky Bakray) who goes from carefree schoolgirl to a young woman asked to hold far more responsibility than anyone her age should when her mother leaves (not for the first time, it’s implied) and charges her with taking care of herself and her young brother. Gavron directs her young cast superbly, all of which feel believable and fully formed. Two Beers.
180. The Legend of Baron To’a
This New Zealand/Tongan production begins with an apology to the Tongan royal family for course language, which is a movie-watching first for me. I was hoping for more of that idiosyncratic Kiwi comedy here, and did get a bit to be fair, but this story of the citified son of wrestler/community enforcer Baron To’a coming home to clean up his rough and tumble cul-de-sac through the power of street wrestling, community solidarity, and a bit of the old ultraviolence is a bit more committed to its action. Still, entertaining enough. Three Beers.
181. Jumbo
This Belgian film has one of the more unique loglines you’re liable to hear- an amusement park employee forms a romantic relationship with Jumbo the Tilt-a-Whirl machine. Writer/director Zoe Wittock and rising star Noemi Merlant (yes, from Portrait of a Lady on Fire) play this all completely straight, with a few visually spectacular scenes of something that may be more than real, and a whole lot of different coping mechanisms from the people in her life. It’s an odd duck, very much by design, but a strangely captivating one. Three Beers.
182. Undine
German arthouse director extraordinaire Christian Petzold retains many of his typical obsessions in his latest- love’s survival in trying circumstances, the fragility of human connection in the face of displacement, Franz Rogowski. Other elements of this film are intriguingly different, however- for one, Paula Beer ably fills in for Nina Hoss (who had a good year herself), and for another, well, if you Google ‘Undine’ you’ll get a peek at just where the magical realist touches I would never have expected from Petzold come in. He just keeps growing and morphing on us, which is all the reason more to make his every film appointment viewing. Two Beers.
183. Crazy World
Wakaliwood first hit the international scene with the gloriously low-budget YouTube sensation Who Killed Captain Alex? Now the ebullient “world’s greatest director… and father” Nabwana I.G.G. is getting TIFF invitations for his enthusiastically bonkers action films, and this one is playing Alamo Drafthouse right now. The plot centers on Uganda’s Greatest Commando who goes undercover as a crazy homeless person to find out who has been kidnapping all the local kids, including his daughter. It’s not the plot you come for with these, though, but rather all the scenes where Frenchmen fire baguettes out of their coats to take down attack helicopters and overzealously violent anti-piracy police interrupt the proceedings with PSAs against movie thievery. All packed into just over an hour- you don’t find bang for your buck like this most anywhere else. Two Beers.
184. Residue
This Netflix film only hit my radar via a single off-hand mention, which just goes to show you how much buried quality content there is out there, a lot of which seems to be from creators of color (the excellent Uncorked being just one more example). Writer/director Merawi Gerima creates from what feels like a place of wounding experience, his protagonist a young aspiring filmmaker who “got out” of his DC neighborhood, only to find upon his return to live and make a documentary about the place that gentrification has come, and perhaps worse, that his old friends and neighbors consider him barely a step up from the hip white interlopers. Two Beers.
185. This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
Just when I thought there’s no way I’d see a film this year near as strikingly shot as Vitalina Varela, here I find myself with a an outrageously gorgeously lensed film with deep African roots. Here Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese writes and directs the first Lesothan film submitted in the Best International Film category and Pierre de Villiers shoots his feature debut (goddam) in this striking story of an old woman (veteran South African actress Mary Twala, commanding) who buries her husband and makes ready for her own end, only to learn that a nearby damn will flood her village and particularly its burial grounds. Let’s just say the title does eventually factor in, and it’s perfect. Two Beers.
186. Collectors
Heist films seem to be having their day in Korean popcorn cinema these days, and this 2020 release adds a bit of a twist by focusing on modern-day graverobbers, which probably shouldn’t be/actually isn’t a thing in Korea, but where there’s gold… In any case, this is a well shot as always, gratifyingly twisty heist flick with a big bad who deserves his comeuppance and a crew it’s easy to root for giving it to him. Three Beers.
187. Savage
This drama from New Zealand follows a young ne’er-do-well as he grows alongside the Savages street gang and into one of its main enforcers and second in command. Jake Ryan delivers a commanding performance, both physically (his size and face tattoos cut quite an intimidating figure) and emotionally, in how he lets his regrets and desires ripple across his face. Overall the film may be a bit too scattershot in its storytelling, but writer/director Sam Kelly still establishes a voice in his feature debut. Three Beers.
188. Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
This unwieldy-titled Hungarian drama from writer/director Lili Horvat stars the strikingly blue-eyed Natasa Stork as a neurosurgeon working in New Jersey who returns to Budapest to reunite with a fellow surgeon and Hungarian who she’s fallen in love with. The problem is, when she goes to rendezvous with him, he doesn’t show, and when she finds him later he says he has no idea who she is. Well-attuned to the tricks the human brain can play, she starts to doubt her own grip on reality… All-in-all this is a well-produced film that keeps you guessing in some interesting ways. Two Beers.
189. Two of Us
France’s submission to the Best International Film field this year stars Martine Chevallier and Barbara Sukowa as two lovers who’ve kept their relationship secret from their families for years and appear ready to take a step together into the future, until misfortune befalls one of them. This is a beautifully acted story of devotion as well as a queer story that examines the intricacies of hidden lives and trying to navigate the conflicting expectations and desires that are seem unavoidable as a result. Two Beers.
190. Sator
This low-budget yet remarkably produced horror film years in the making per writer/director/composer/etc Jordan Graham is based on his own family’s purported experience with an entity in the woods calling itself ‘Sator’. He incorporates his own grandmother, chief among them, to creepy effect, and he first (and arguably far to lengthily) creates a sense of dreadful, gloom-drenched atmosphere, then picks up the pace to a conclusion that finally earns those Hereditary comparisons. Effective, creepy shit. Three Beers.
191. Hard Ticket to Hawaii
I saw the Alamo Drafthouse pushing this slice of Grade A 80s cheese, and, considering how their adept eye has gifted us with classics like The Miami Connection, added this to my must-see list. Boy howdy does it earn its place among greats of the So Bad It’s Good genre, full of only the most purely gratuitous nudity, square-jawed man mountains barely less fawned over by the camera, a nonsensical and utterly typical War on Drugs plot, and oh yeah, multiple airborne deaths by rocket launcher and a giant stuffed snake infected by eating cancer-ridden rats that explodes out of toilets to kill. You know, all the normal hallmarks of the genre. So much recommend. Six Pack.
192. Bridgerton
While Shondaland productions aren’t normally my cup of tea, something about this new Netflix series made it an easy compromise olive branch with my wife, particularly after subjecting her to fare like the previous entry. Maybe it’s the lush costuming and production design, or the intriguingly colorblind casting of its version of Regency-era England, or maybe it’s… yep, it’s Regé-Jean Page, the dreamiest bastard to emerge in full heartthrob form since maybe Chris Hemsworth in Thor. It’s a show that applies all those production values and quippy fun to a fairly boilerplate romcom template, but with Page on board… be still my beating heart. Three Beers.
193. How To with John Wilson
It’s been far too long since we’ve had regular Nathan Fielder in our lives, and while this show is very much the unique creation of John Wilson, it bears Fielder’s imprint as a producer, and it’s no wonder why he was drawn to the material. Wilson has a similar so earnest it hurts je ne sais quoi about him, although instead of kooky business ideas, Wilson cobbles together footage of the day-to-day strangeness of living in New York into loosely connected “How To” guides on subjects like “Making the Perfect Risotto” or, my gosh, “How to Cover Your Furniture”, thanks to which I haven’t laughed so hard in such a cringe-induced manner since the good ‘ol days of Nathan for You. Two Beers.
