Movies: various
Here is what I am watching (so far) during the quarantine for COVID-19.
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Dick Johnson is Dead
This documentary by filmmaker Kirsten Johnson is lighthearted, even though it deals with one of life's heaviest subjects: death. This film was Johnson and her father's (retired psychiatrist Dr. C. Richard Johnson--Dick to his friends) way of processing his eventual death. The film is part biography and part comedy, and includes scenes of staging various ways Dick could die, such as taking a tumble down the stairs or having an air conditioner fall on his head.
In between these comical fake deaths (which usually include a hilarious stunt double), Dick and Kirsten reminisce about Kirsten's mom (Dick's wife), who had Alzheimer's and passed away years before. The film includes heartbreaking footage of Kirsten's mom not remembering her daughter's name. But the footage isn't exploitative or played for cheap sentiment--it's a true look at how Alzheimer's is like waking death, since it robs its victims of their memories.
Dick Johnson is Dead is a movie that children (adult children and older teens) should watch with their parents. It's hard to contemplate one's own death, let alone the death of someone who, if you're lucky, is someone you've loved deeply and who has loved you unconditionally your whole life. But by envisioning wacky fakes deaths--as well as imagining what heaven might be like for Dick--Kirsten Johnson makes a scary subject approachable, and even funny.
Grade: B+
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Run
Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a bizarrely popular trope in movies and films. Remember that scene with a very young Mischa Barton in The Sixth Sense where she is a little ghost girl who reveals her mother was killing her? Or more recently, the disorder, in which a caregiver purposefully hurts (usually using poison) someone in their care in order to control them and get attention and sympathy from others, played a huge role in the excellent book and TV series Sharp Objects. It's an inherently fascinating disorder since we have a difficult time wrapping our heads around the idea of a caregiver--usually a mother--purposefully harming her child, especially if they believe they are doing it out of love.
Run, starring Sarah Paulson (an amazing actress who stars in just as much soap opera trash as she does in better quality films and movies) and newcomer Kiera Allen (who actually does use a wheelchair in real life--yay for casting disabled actors!), is the latest in a tradition of movies about moms who keep their daughters sick in order to keep them close. Paulson plays Diane, a single mom who nearly loses her baby, Chloe, soon after birth. Cut to 17 years later. Chloe lives with a variety of illnesses, including paralysis of her legs and heart issues, but she is an intelligent, thriving young woman who is excited to go to college after an entire lifetime of being homeschooled by Diane. The mom and daughter seem to get along great, with a nearly Gilmore Girls level of friendship between the two. However, when Chloe inadvertently sees a bottle of pills that are meant for her, but under her mom's name, she begins to question some things. When she tries to Google the name of the pill, only to find that the internet is blocked, she becomes increasingly frantic to find out exactly what her mom is giving her. And the more she tries to figure things out, the more Diane clamps down on her freedom.
Directed by Aneesh Chaganty, who directed Searching, one of my favorite films of 2018, I expected more from Run. While entertaining, the film quickly descends into soap opera territory with revelations about Chloe and Diane's relationship that add nothing to the plot. The film is more interested in shocking us that actually exploring the very interesting dynamic at the heart of the movie. The movie uses Munchausen by proxy as a means of titillation and thrills us with how "crazy" Diane is. It also ends on a sour note that I didn't care for and didn't think was necessary.
Entertaining, for sure, but Run doesn't live up to Searching. Hopefully, Chaganty's next film with keep the thrills and leave out the over-the-top drama.
Grade: B-
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Paterson
I was expecting to like Jim Jarmusch's 2016 film about a poet bus driver named Paterson (Adam Driver) working in Paterson, New Jersey, a lot more. Reviews of this film are rapturous. While is was definitely very good, with an incredibly strong and subtle performance by Driver, I had some issues with it. Mostly about how unnatural some of the dialogue felt given that this is supposed to be a hyper-realistic film, and also the way people of color are used in relation to the main character, a white man.
Let's start with the positive: Paterson is a poetic film about the small joys of every day life. Paterson has a very set routine: he wakes up without an alarm at 6:10am, eats a small bowl of Cheerios, writes some poetry before work and at lunch, and then walks the dog and stops in for a single beer at a nearby bar every night. Paterson's wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), is in many ways his opposite: she is a homemaker who dreams big and dreams a lot. One week she wants to start a cupcake business, the next she wants to learn guitar and become a country singer. She is very creative and supportive of Paterson's poetry, urging him to copy his poems somewhere else other than his notebook (the fact that he fails to do so comes back to bite him in the ass). Paterson is just a nice movie--it's calming, it's low stakes, and it shows that it's possible to both love life and be a pretty boring person at the same time.
However, the movie does this weird thing where basically every person in Paterson's life is a person of color, and they all encourage him and/or teach him lessons. When Paterson's notebook is destroyed near the end of the film, it is a tourist from Japan--a poet himself--who gifts Paterson a new notebook and tells him "an empty page presents many possibilities". Ok, what kind of Magical PoC shit is this? While I don't think the movie was racist or trying to lean into racist stereotypes, there was just something that felt off to me about a bunch of supporting actors--the bartender, two patrons of the bar, Paterson's boss, Paterson's wife, and the Japanese man at the end--who barely have personalities of their own (other than "creative" or "lovelorn") serving to support one white man's dreams. Hell, he doesn't even take their very good advice (like to get a cell phone or to copy his poems somewhere else) most of them time.
Luckily, the film is held in Adam Driver's capable (and very large) hands. He plays the character as a mega-introvert who is never arrogant, never unkind, and just kind of a very internal, calm presence. Thank god, because one whiff of arrogance would have made this character truly awful.
Paterson is a very good movie. But does it live up to all the hype? Not in my (poetry note) book.
Grade: B
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Greener Grass
Greener Grass is a bizarre satire-comedy written and directed by Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe that takes place in a very weird suburb where weird things happen. The movie kicks off at a kid's soccer game where Lisa (Luebbe) tells Jill (DeBoer) that she "loves" Jill's new baby, prompting Jill to offer her baby to Lisa...like, to keep. Lisa accepts. It's a decision that Jill comes to regret, especially once her son, Julian, turns into a dog during a pool party. You heard that right! Meanwhile, Jill's husband Nick (Beck Bennett, in a role he was born for) is obsessed with drinking their oxygenated pool water--going so far as to create popsicles from their pool.
Greener Grass verges on horror-comedy, while not ever quite *becoming* a horror comedy. But the soundtrack leans into the creepiness of the characters and their strange little world, and certain scenes (such as when Jill removed her adult braces with a pair of pliers) are horror-lite. The best way to describe the movie would be "surreal". If you're a fan of off-kilter humor, especially if it's poking fun at American suburbia, this might just be the movie for you!
Grade: B
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The Dark and the Wicked
The Dark and the Wicked is a particularly creepy, but not particularly compelling horror movie that falls into the occult/family secrets camp (think: Hereditary). Marin Ireland and Michael Abbott Jr. play siblings Louise and Michael, who come back to the family farm to help their mother since their dad is basically in a vegetative state and nearing death. However, something isn't right with their mother either. After she..
spoilers spoilers spoilers
...commits suicide by hanging herself, the siblings begin to feel an evil presence on the farm much more acutely. They discover their mother's diary, and read that she was convinced that a demon or some kind of Satanic presence was stalking her and her husband.
The Dark and the Wicked is genuinely gruesome (a violent scene of self-harm happens near the beginning) and scary (I jumped out of my seat more than once). But it also feels like it doesn't add up to much. The people in the film are victims, full stop. There is no explanation as to why a demon wants them all dead--there is nothing in the movie to suggest bad deeds, an inherited curse, or any *reason* why they are being tormented by a supernatural entity. And there is nothing they can do to escape it, including straight up leave the farm. Michael does just that and comes to a horrific end. I guess this is what's supposed to make the movie scary, but I prefer my horror movie victims to have some degree of agency: some ability to escape or survive. Even if they don't escape or survive, the fact that they can *try* to do so is what makes a scary movie compelling. In The Dark and the Wicked all the human characters are just as much sheep as the animals they keep on the farm: powerless, as they are led to slaughter.
Grade: B
