Dream Scenario
You ever have that experience where you dream about someone and they do something mean to you in the dream and then you're mad at them when you wake up even though you know they didn't actually do anything? That is this movie. Nicolas Cage plays a professor who starts randomly showing up in people's dreams. Like, everyone's dreams...to the point where he becomes a national celebrity. He starts off mostly as an observer in the dreams--just watching crazy shit happen to the dreamer and not doing anything to intervene. But then, over time, he becomes the aggressor in the dreams--violently assaulting people like a balding Freddy Krueger.
Dream Scenario is a (pun-intended) nightmare for anyone who fears social rejection, especially social rejection where you didn't actually do anything. Paul (the Nic Cage character) loses everything: his job, his wife, his friends...all because he did bad shit in people's dreams. The connection to "cancel culture" is pretty obvious, especially when Paul attempts to make an apology video that people find pathetic and self-serving. Paul ends up exiled in France even after everyone stops dreaming about him and moves on with their lives.
Dream Scenario was just ok. The premise is really, really good and Nic Cage sure is the ideal guy to play this milquetoast sad-sack. But the film just can't keep up the momentum and eventually peters out. The satire isn't quite as razor sharp as it could be and it doesn't really feel like director Kristoffer Borgli commits to a clear message, so any points the movie makes feel banal and toothless. There is one hell of a fart joke, though, if you're into that kind of thing.
Grade: B
***
Eileen
Based on the book by Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen is a film with so much promise that ultimately doesn't pay off. The film, directed by William Oldroyd, takes place in the mid-1960s in Massachusetts. Eileen Dunlop (Thomasin McKenzie) is a young woman who works at a juvenile detention facility for boys by day and takes care of her belligerent, alcoholic, ex-cop dad by night (played by Shea Wigham). Not a very glamorous life. But when a new lady psychologist, Rebecca (Anne Hathaway), is hired by the corrections facility and takes an interest in Eileen, it looks like Eileen might finally have some fun and excitement in her life.
I pretty much can't tell you anything else without going into a pivotal spoiler, so this is your warning to stop reading if you want to watch Eileen with a blank slate.
So, Rebecca invites Eileen over to her house one night and Eileen, in full-blown lesbian crush mode, accepts and even gets all dolled up for the occasion. Well, it turns out that it is not actually Rebecca's house in which they are sitting and drinking wine, but the house of the mother of one of the boys at the corrections facility. A boy who killed his father. Turns out, Rebecca asked the boy, Lee Polk, what drove him to such an extreme act (I guess the last psychologist never bothered to ask) and he confessed that his father had been raping him on a near nightly basis for a long time. So Rebecca decided to confront Lee's mother, a scuffle ensued, and whoops now Mrs. Polk is tied up and gagged in the basement.
The scene where the two women interrogate Mrs. Polk, played by the always amazing Marin Ireland, is a GREAT scene. Ireland gives a haunting monologue about being complicit in the abuse because she basically didn't know what else to do. The only problem is that the movie ends really abruptly afterward. During Mrs. Polk's confession, Eileen shoots the bitch (who wouldn't?), not killing her but seriously harming her and Eileen and Rebecca force-feed her pills to put her to sleep and then hatch a plan to kill her, get rid of the body, and go on the lam together.
And then the movie, like, just ends. Eileen drives Mrs. Polk's body to her house and Rebecca doesn't show up. She abandons Mrs. Polk in her car, which fills up with fumes (presumably killing her) and then later is seen on a bus leaving town. The end. It's a really frustrating, anti-climatic film where just as it's getting good, it's over. I'm kind of annoyed I even wrote this much about it, haha!
So, I have to give it a B because it's a good movie...there's just not enough of it. A real tease.
Grade: B
***
Out of Darkness
I saw this movie in the threatre on Superbowl Sunday, so there were maybe 6 people total in an enormous theatre. I read a review that compared this film to 2005's spelunking horror film The Descent, which is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, so of course I had to check it out. It did not live up to my hopes.
The film takes place 45,000 years ago, during the dawn of homo sapiens. A family, consisting of a father, pregnant mother, son, uncle, grandfather, and a stray woman, is looking for shelter and food. They left their previous home and have yet to find a new, safe place to settle. But things are about to get worse. They start hearing noises in the dark of night and one night, the son is taken from them by someone--or something--in the dark.
There are two interesting aspects of Out of Darkness: 1) the use of the dark to spook and disorient the audience (and I was indeed spooked) and 2) the fact that the director, Andrew Cumming, basically commissioned a new language to be invented for the characters to speak. More info about that here.
Other than those two things, the movie is pretty meh and forgettable, with a hamfisted (in my opinion) message shoved in at the very end. This movie is fine to skip unless you're a huge horror fanatic. You might enjoy it even if it's not an all-timer for you.
Grade: B-
***
Fingernails
Oh god, Fingernails was SO BORING. The film is labeled as a "science fiction romantic drama", but the film is not romantic, not dramatic, and the science fiction is kinda lame. In the world of this movie, science can tell you whether you're in love or not with a simple test that involves pulling out your fingernail! Ouch, but a worthy sacrifice to find out whether or not you're *actually* in love with your partner, right?
Anna (Jessie Buckley) lives with boyfriend Ryan (Jeremy Allen White, the only reason I watched this damn movie) and they've done the test and they're both in love....even though their relationship is clearly very dull and routine. When Anna takes a job at the Love Institute (where couples are put through a series of experiments and situations to increase love between them), she meets Amir (Riz Ahmed). LOL can you guess where this movie is going?
I'll just say straight out the gate: this movie has no gay couples whatsoever and immediately shoots down the idea that you can be in love with more than one person at the same time. So right away, you can tell this isn't a serious film and its views on how love functions are childish at best. There is no nuance to this story, no heat, no chemistry, no drama...NOTHING. I'm talking NOTHING. You know what, I originally gave the movie a "C", but imma change it to a D right now. "D" for lack of dick and lack of drama. It's shocking to me that a film with three objectively excellent actors at its center could be so dull and listless.
100% skip...Fingernails takes an intriguing premise and commits the worst possible sin with it: making it boring.
Grade: D
***
The Death of Dick Long
Oooohhhh boy. What a movie. This is another one that I can't really talk much about without giving away a pivotal spoiler... so for those who want to watch it knowing nothing (which I recommend), stop reading now and be sure to *not* watch this movie with children or your parents.
Directed by Daniel Scheinert (one half of the "Daniels" directing team that brought us Everything Everywhere All at Once), The Death of Dick Long is a black comedy that takes a ridiculous premise and treats it with total sincerity, thus causing major discomfort and shocked laughs.
Three friends, Dick, Zeke, and Earl, are in a garage band together (their signature song is a cover of Nickelback's "How You Remind Me") and after drinking one too many beers, decide to get into some trouble. Or "get weird" as Dick puts it. Later, we see Zeke and Earl dropping Dick in front of an emergency room and running away. We don't know why Dick is injured and if/how the other men are responsible.
Over the course of the next day or two, it becomes clear: the autopsy shows that Dick died of severe rectal hemorrhaging. Semen is found, but the results are "inconclusive". Also, Dick owns a horse named Comet. You put the pieces together, Sherlock.
Although Zeke and Earl (played to perfection by Michael Abbott Jr. and Andrew Hyland) didn't cause Dick's death, they try to cover it up since they would be implicated in some crimes that would likely ruin their lives. However, these two guys are the most bumbling of bumbling idiots and they screw up in every way imaginable as the walls slowly start to close in when the cops start connecting all the pieces.
The Death of Dick Long is outrageous and "funny" but in a way that is deeply uncomfortable for obvious reasons. If a black comedy in which a man is "fucked to death" by a horse sounds like something you're interested in...then saddle up, pard'ner!
Grade: B
***
Self Reliance
This cute but uneven comedy is the directorial debut of New Girl's Jake Johnson. Johnson plays Tommy, an average dude living an average life until Andy Samberg, playing himself, pulls up in a limo and offers Tommy "an adventure". Tommy says yes and is taken to a shady warehouse where some guys with vaguely Eastern European accents offer him a chance to play "the most popular reality show game on the dark web". The premise: Tommy will be hunted by random people for 30 days. If he survives, he wins a million dollars. BUT...there is a critical loophole: he can only be killed when he is by himself. If he is able to remain within "striking distance" of another human being for the full 30 days, he won't be killed and he'll win. Confident that he can exploit this loophole, Tommy takes them up on their offer...
...and then no one believes him. His family thinks he's nuts. No one is willing to stay by his side (which includes sleeping in the same bed and being in the bathroom when the other person is taking a shit) for an hour, let alone 30 days. Tommy scrambles to find a way to stay safe and resorts to paying James, a homeless man, 100 dollars a day to shadow him. Honestly, it's a pretty good deal for James who gets a warm bed and square meals for the duration of the game. But since Tommy is living at his mother's and his mom doesn't want James living there, she kicks him out.
I think where Self Reliance stumbles is when it tries to become a romantic comedy. Tommy is contacted by a woman, Maddy (Anna Kendrick), who says that she is also playing the game and the two see if they can work together to win. It was much more interesting watching Tommy basically live in homeless camps with James than getting into romantic, twee shenanigans with Maddy while the threat of immediate death looms over them.
There were aspects of Self Reliance that were genuinely thought-provoking, but like I said, it's very uneven. There was a lot of "weird for the sake of weird" stuff going on, which seemed unnecessary for a movie with a bizarre and unlikely plot in the first place. It also just wasn't as funny as I hoped it would be. If you're in the mood for a light, bizarre comedy, you could do worse than Self Reliance.
Grade: B
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