It Came From the Netflix Queue

Movies: Housebound, They're Watching, Sun Choke

With time on my hands this holiday season, I've been catching up on some spoopy films in my Netflix queue. Enjoy!

***

Housebound

This delightful, unique New Zealand horror-comedy is great for scary movie lovers who enjoy a little levity with their chills and thrills. Morgana O'Reilly plays Kylie Bucknell, a young woman who has run afoul of the law one too many times and is sentenced to 8 months of house arrest at her mother's creaky old home. There, Kylie must endure such horrors as dial-up Internet, her dorky mom, Miriam, and Miriam's taciturn boyfriend, Graeme. Oh, and also the house is haunted. Or so Miriam claims.

After a few bizarre and spooky things happen (including a creepy-ass, talking teddy bear), Kylie and Miriam tell Amos, the security guard charged with making sure Kylie doesn't leave the house, about their suspicions. It turns out that Amos is an amateur ghost hunter who can't resist trying to help them figure out who--or what--is haunting the old home, which is conveniently filled with creepy passages and hallways, secret compartments, and all manner of haunted house tropes.

Housebound, directed by Gerard Johnstone, hits the sweet spot between genuinely scary and hilarious, often in the same scene (see again: creepy teddy bears being punched in the face). It also contains enough twists to keep the audience guessing about what exactly is going on in the house. Although Housebound has its share of jump scenes, it's mild enough for folks who shy away from scary movies to enjoy, similar to The Cabin in the Woods and Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.

Grade: A-

***

They're Watching

They're Watching was very disappointing to me because it had a great build up which led to a rushed, incredibly cheesy ending. In this independent horror movie, the crew of an American "house hunters" type show travels to Eastern Europe to catch up with a Becky, a woman who bought and made over a dilapidated home in rural Moldova. The village that Becky lives just outside of is famous for having burned a woman accused of witchcraft at the stake--a measly 100 years prior.

Greg, Alex, and Sarah are three young, gregarious crew members in charge of filming. They immediately alienate the locals by secretly filming inside a church during a funeral. They, along with their horrendously bitchy producer, Kate, and the Moldavian real estate agent, Vladimir (referred to as "Disco Dracula" due to his tacky outfits), visit Becky and find that she renovated it her home beautifully. But Becky is not well liked by the locals--they are suspicious of her as a single woman living alone in the woods who does not go to church.

Can you see where all this is heading?

The first 80 minutes or so of They're Watching is pretty entertaining, despite portraying the local Moldavians as backwoods "Euro hicks". There is a nice, creepy build up and some spooky foreshadowing. However, the last 15 minutes of the movie are deeply, deeply cheesy (both in tone and in special effects) to the point of embarrassment. I don't understand how the filmmakers were able to create an atmosphere of genuine tension only to blow it in the final scenes. Whatever. In any case, the last few minutes of They're Watching dropped my grade from a B to a...

Grade: C+

***

Sun Choke

Sun Choke is an incredibly weird little indie movie from newbie director Ben Cresciman. It drops the viewer right into the lives of Janie (Sarah Hagan) and Irma (veteran horror actress Barbara Crampton), who have a bizarre, codependent relationship. Irma acts as Janie's doctor, psychiatrist, and guardian. She makes green smoothies every morning for Janie and guides her through yoga poses. She also "treats" her by clanging a tuning fork near her head, causing Janie to moan in pain. Why they live like this is never fully explained. There are flashbacks peppered in, but they really give no context to Janie and Irma's situation beyond the fact that Janie experienced a trauma and Irma took over her care (Janie's father is in Tokyo indefinitely for business).


The audience is made to feel like Irma is the bad guy, treating Janie like a child and even forcing her to wear an electroshock collar when she stays out past her curfew. But we quickly realize that Janie isn't the innocent victim she appears to be. During a rare excursion beyond the confines of the posh, Los Angeles home where she lives with Irma, Janie spies a beautiful woman and quickly becomes obsessed with her: following her home, spying on her and her boyfriend having sex, and even breaking into her apartment.

To say more would be to give away too much. Sun Choke isn't a particularly good or satisfying film, but it's a strange curiosity for the bored film buff.

Grade: B-

Queen of Camelot

Movies: Jackie

Jackie, directed by Pablo Larrain, is a drama with the look and feel of a horror film. The musical score, composed by Mica Levi (who also composed the music for another haunting film, Under the Skin), invites feelings of stomach-churning dread. The cinematography is slightly grainy, giving the movie both an appropriately retro feeling but also a distinct sense that the viewer is a voyeur and is privy to moments no one should see, such as a drunk, recently widowed Jackie Kennedy trying on all the dresses in her closet and chasing pills with vodka.

Much as been made of Natalie Portman's performance as the dignified-to-a-fault first lady. Her accent, it's been said, perfectly captures Jackie's WASPy inflection. It's creepy to listen to and, to me, had moments where it sounded like Portman was doing an impression of Cartman from South Park--a sort of whiny, nasally voice. But Portman, who will surely be nominated for another Best Actress Oscar, taps into the grief-addled mind of a woman who lived for her husband and now must preserve his legacy and move forward on her own.

Jackie has a framing story--an interview Mrs. Kennedy did for Life magazine a week after JFK's death. Billy Crudup plays Theodore White, the smug interviewer who pokes at Jackie, trying to get to the "truth" while Jackie gives him what he wants--a description of the sound the bullet made when it hit John F. Kennedy's skull, for example--and then forbids him to print what she said. It's a funny little cat and mouse game that reveals both Jackie's flesh-and-blood human side and the mask she carefully wore as a public figure.

The film focuses entirely on the immediate aftermath of Kennedy's assassination. Within two hours of losing the man she loved, Jackie must watch as Lyndon Johnson (played by great character actor John Carol Lynch) is sworn in as president. She must also make decisions regarding her husband's funeral and burial--decisions that, she feels, will make or break his legacy. Portman comfortably shares the screen with Peter Sarsgaard, one of my favorite actors, who plays Bobby Kennedy--the two comfort each other and bicker over how the funeral procession should go. Should they travel by car, which is safer, or walk, which is more of a spectacle (which is what Jackie wanted)? On Jackie's insistence, they end up walking.

By narrowing the scope of the film down to about one week in Jackie Kennedy Onassis's life, Larrain is able to say more about this glamorous, incredibly intelligent woman than he could if he attempted to direct a movie about her entire life. This is a problem biopics often make--they try to show as much of a person's life as possible and thus only scratch the surface. They value breadth over depth, which is the opposite of what Larrain does with Jackie. He goes deep--deep into Jackie's personality, but also deep into her special grief. She's not just a widow; she's a widow during a time when women were expected to live for their husbands more than for themselves. What does it mean to lose the center of your world? And more: she's the widow to the president of the United States, so her every move will be carefully watched and recorded.

Jackie is most definitely not a pleasant film. It only needs to be watched once. And there are plenty of other films and books that delve into the entirety of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. But this film does an excellent job at revealing the strength, the stubbornness, and the humanity of one of America's most beloved First Ladies.

Grade: B+

Backward and In Heels

Movies: La La Land

I feel a tinge of envy when I think that director Damian Chazelle is only one year older than me and yet has directed two masterful films--Whiplash and La La Land--and one film that I can only assume is also pretty good (Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench). The man's a prodigy!

I was blown away by Whiplash, tied for my favorite movie of 2014 (with Wild), the nerve-shredding film about a fanatic drummer and his abusive teacher. La La Land is a comfy pair of pajamas compared to that film: easy on the eyes, ears, and soul.

Starring Emma Stone, who looks increasingly alien with her extremely large, wide-set eyes, and Ryan Gosling ("That Ryan Gosling is so cute" --my mom) as an aspiring actress and aspiring jazz pianist respectively, La La Land is a tribute to old school Hollywood musicals with a modern setting. Set pieces include a song and dance number during a traffic jam, a post-party soft shoe dance complete with the characters, Mia and Sebastian, teasing each other not-so-nicely (recalling the similar "I hate you, but you're cute" chemistry between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in films like Top Hat and The Gay Divorcee), and a breathtakingly beautiful dance between the lovers among the stars at the Griffith Observatory.

I really, really enjoyed La La Land although I wasn't completely blown away by it as some critics/viewers were. I will say that there were a couple scenes that really wormed their way into my cold, black heart, such as the scene where Mia and Seb hold hands for the first time--sexiest scene in a movie this year that didn't contain sex. And the final scene, which will leave audiences' hearts throbbing, took what could have been an average love story to new and different heights.

Chazelle deserves great praise for simply being able to pull off a musical--one of the most difficult and polarizing film genres, in my opinion. Musicals can so easily be terrible and even good ones are not universally liked. For example, I was left totally cold by the Oscar-winning 2002 film Chicago, but I loved the controversial Tim Burton-directed Sweeney Todd. For Chazelle to not only direct a beautiful, touching musical, but one that is as close to universally liked as a film can get (it currently has a 93 score on Meteoritic), is an amazing feat.

It's hard to say where my slight hesitation with La La Land lies--probably somewhere in the philosophical stance the film takes on what it means to "follow your dream". Sebastian dreams of opening his own jazz club where he and others can play old school jazz. But he takes a paying gig in a modern jazz band called The Messengers that mixes classic jazz sound with modern beats and auto-tuning-type stuff (forgive my lack of language to describe music). When the band becomes successful and Seb prepares to travel with them for an indefinite time period, Mia questions whether he is actually "following his dream". There was something about La La Land's uncompromising stance on what it means to have a dream and what success looks like (it must be exactly as you picture it, goddamnit!) that made me roll my eyes a bit. Although both Mia and Seb endure rocky roads to get there, they both achieve their dreams in a hilariously short period of time. I guess La La Land takes the fantasy of Hollywood the full nine yards!

There was also something that felt weird about how Seb is the one white guy in The Messengers, and yet he's presented as the only one whose heart lies with "real" jazz...a musical genre created by black people. La La Land walks a fine line between suggesting that this white guy is a more of a true, pure musician than his fellow (black) band members and trying to show that sometimes just taking a paying job and actually compromising might be a good thing (white and/or artistic and/or male people seem to have trouble with compromise sometimes). In any case, it was something that bothered me a little.

But overall, La La Land is a joy to experience, from its clever and lovely tunes to its beautiful cinematography to its three-hankie ending. Gosling and Stone have undeniable chemistry and musical chops and Chazelle is a confident and sure-handed director. It will be exciting to see what magic he creates next.

Grade: A

Tears on My Pillow: Some Stuff I Read This Year

Books: Year End Review

Appropriately for 2016, aka "The Dumpster Fire Year of Our Lord", I began and ended the year by reading books steeped in varying amounts of misery. But, you know, misery and pain aren't always bad things and frankly I'd much rather read about misery than experience it myself.

So, here is a not even close to comprehensive list of books I read this year, some miserable and tragic, others less so, but all of them worth reading. Enjoy, and may 2017 not end in a mushroom cloud of death...because I have a fucking huge "to be read" pile!

***

Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget
By Sarah Hepola

Hepola's insightful and funny memoir about her life as a black out drinker until she quit drinking at age 35 isn't a story of sadness, but one of recovery. Hepola isn't preachy or judgemental. She has a clear-eyed understanding of why many women drink. Drinking was "the gasoline of all adventure" for her, allowing her liberty from her own inhibitions.


But as the opening story of Hepola coming out of a black out in the middle of having sex with a stranger implies, the adventure isn't always so fun when you don't remember it. It takes Hepola years, including sober years that turn back into drunken years, to reckon with her drinking before she decides to quit. Again, Blackout is not a pushy morality tale in the least. Hepola's observations about why people--women especially--drink, and what happens to people when they drink (Hepola points out that when men drink they do things to the world and when women drink the world does things to them) are intelligent and worth considering, given our culture of excess.


Grade: A

***

A Little Life
By Hanya Yanagihara

I've certainly proselytized about Yanagihara's emotional face-punch of a novel enough, both in my review of it and in real life (I convinced a woman in a bookstore to buy it. I hope she doesn't hate me now). But I just can't help myself given that it's definitely the best book I read this year and one of the best books I've read in my life. A friend of mine who read it around the same time I did said he liked it but will never read it again.

And here I am, biding my time until I've forgotten it enough so that I have a somewhat similar experience to reading it the first time when I inevitably read it again.

I don't know why I loved A Little Life so much, especially given its heart-breaking content. Following the lives of four friends from their early 20s into middle-age, A Little Life focuses mostly on Jude, who endures a Biblical level of suffering his entire life. From ghastly childhood abuse to chronic pain from a grisly car accident, Jude's suffering is almost as intense as the love he is unconditionally shown by his friends and adopted parents. As Yanagihara said in an interview, "I wanted everything turned up a little too high"--she meant both the pain and the love. Perhaps the reason I latched on to A Little Life is because *my* little life is mostly on a even keel--some love, some pain. When life gets a little too safe and repetitive, some people jump out of airplanes, other people take LSD at parties, and some people--myself included--seek out art that requires us to feel something intensely.

Grade: A+



***

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
By Atul Gawande

No one wants to think about old age, illness, and dying--and that's exactly what Being Mortal seeks to remedy. Gawande's important book tells us what we already suspect to be true: that simply being alive is not enough to make life worth living. It's not quantity, but quality, that counts.

Gawande explores ways to make nursing homes less awful (let the residents have more autonomy; introduce plants and animals into the living spaces) even if it means they might be a teensy less safe. He shows how giving up on long-shot treatments for terminal disease and instead introducing hospice care actually improves patients' quality of life near the end. He urges readers to have crystal clear medical directives so that spouses and children in the throes of grief don't have to (or have permission to) make choices like pulling the plug, allowing a feeding tube to be inserted, etc when that was not the wish of the incapacitated person.

Although I initially felt alienated from this book, I'm glad I read it at my age (30) before I have to worry about some of this stuff. It's better to work on having the right mindset about end of life issues before faced with them head on.

Grade: B+



*** 

Silence
By Endo Shusaku

Shusaku's remarkable novel about Catholic missionaries in 17th century Japan is about to hit the big screen in an adaptation directed by Martin Scorsese. Who better to direct a film about the complexities of religious faith than the man who directed the controversial film The Last Temptation of Christ?

Silence is a book I would recommend to anyone and everyone who is religious, was religious, or is becoming religious. Hell, atheists should read it too! It follows the story of Father Rodrigues, a young Catholic priest who travels from Portugal to Japan to find out what happened to his mentor, Father Ferreira, who is rumored to have renounced Christianity (the practice of which is outlawed in Japan). Rodrigues encounters suffering and challenges to his faith at all turns, culminating in a situation where he is asked to symbolically deny Christ in order to end the torture of a few innocent people. Rodrigues spent his entire life believing that renouncing Christ is the worst sin you can commit...but is it wrong if doing so will save others from unimaginable suffering?

Silence is a beautiful, sincere story that explores what it means to truly be a servant of God in action, word, and soul. It is not cynical, it is not anti-religion. But it is haunting and it is definitely challenging--to both those who are religious and who are non-religious.

Grade: A+



***

The Witch and Other Tales Re-Told
By Jean Thompson

Fairy tales are ripe for reinterpretation because they are based around fears and desires we as humans share regardless of the culture or time period we live in. Thompson's collection of stories takes on classics such as "Cinderella" and "Hansel and Gretel" in novel ways. Some of the stories are funny (a guy hunts down the woman who leaves behind a sexy platform shoe after a drunken night of partying), some are dark (the overprotective father of a teen girl is haunted by an incident from his past). But nearly all the stories are compulsively readable and fascinating.











Grade: B
 


***

Mischling
By Affinity Konar

And so I ended a politically horrific year with a book about the Holocaust. Hooray! Mischling is a work of fiction about very real events: Nazi doctor Josef Mengele's experiments on twins in Auschwitz. The novel follows 12 year old twin sisters, Pearl and Stasha, as they are shuttled in cattle cars to the infamous concentration camp, separated from their mother, and delivered into the hands of "The Angel of Death": Josef Mengele.

The first half of the book is about their survival in the camp, during which they become separated. The second half is after the war is over and they are technically liberated (although still very much in danger of illness and starvation) and their struggle to find each other again. 

For a book that details some pretty horrific shit, Mischling has an air of gentleness. I think I read a review where the reviewer said it had "the lightness of a fairy tale". Just as fairy tales are meant to help children understand scary realities of life, Mischling allows the reader to confront a place and time that was literally hell on earth for millions of innocent people without falling completely into despair. The story is, ultimately, about love: the love between sisters, but also between people who suffer and don't allow their suffering to turn them into monsters.

Grade: A-

***

Some other books I read this year: 

• A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
• A ghost story with a shocking, yet inevitable ending. Grade: B 
•  Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld 
• A funny, smart modern-day retelling of Pride and Prejudice by one of my favorite authors. Grade: A 
•  It Was Me All Along by Andie Mitchel1
• A memoir about weight loss and body positivity. Not my fave. Grade: C+
• The Secret Place by Tana French
• An Irish murder mystery set in a girls' boarding school. Grade: B
• The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiScalifani 
• A coming of age story set in Depression-era North Carolina. Grade: B
• The Hand That Feeds You by AJ Rich
• A pulpy Gone Girl-esque story about a woman who discovers that her fiance is not at all who she thought he was. Grade: B-
• The Tenth of December by George Saunders
• Unique, funny, and occasionally bizarre short stories by a prolific author. Grade: B
• You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott 
• A story of a fiercely ambitious teenage gymnast that starts strong but ends weak. Grade: B-

 Happy reading in (a hopefully not terribly shitty) 2017!

Slice of Life (And Death)

Movies: Manchester by the Sea

Kenneth Lonergan only directs about one movie a decade, but when he does, boy howdy. I remember watching his 2000 film You Can Count On Me when I was 15 years old, both my pre-frontal cortex and cinematic knowledge still years away from being fully developed, and thinking "damn, this is a good movie."

Lonergan is a master at detailing relationships. From Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo as estranged siblings in You Can Count On Me to Anna Paquin and J. Cameron-Smith's emotionally tumultuous mother-daughter relationship in Margaret (a film that, speaking of tumultuous, took years to make to the big screen), to Casey Affleck's and Lucas Hedges' playful, yet distant uncle-nephew relationship in Manchester by the Sea, I have rarely seen more realistic portrayals of family dynamics. And humane portrayals, even in the dark places Lonergan's films often go.

Manchester by the Sea is a masterpiece in spite of (or because of) its modesty. It's a film both cozy and tragic. It chronicles some of the worst life experiences a person can go through as well as the mundane annoyances of forgetting where you parked.

The film opens on the day-to-day life of Lee Chandler (played by the hotter, better Affleck brother), an intelligent, if taciturn, blue collar man who does janitorial and handy-man work for a few buildings in Quincy, near Boston. He lives in a one-bedroom home and gets into random bar fights after the working day is done.

One day Lee gets a call about his brother, Joe (played in flashbacks by Kyle Chandler), who has passed away suddenly. It's not a surprise, exactly, as Joe was diagnosed with congestive heart failure years before and everyone knew his heart would give out sooner or later. What *is* a surprise to Lee is that Joe makes Lee the official guardian of Patrick, Joe's son. Patrick (played by newcomer Lucas Hedges in a fantastic performance) is a popular 16 year old with a ton of friends and lot of shit going on in his life. When Uncle Lee comes to town and starts making noise about dragging Patrick back to Quincy with him, Patrick balks.

The real reason why Lee is hesitant to just move to Manchester is revealed in a long series of flashbacks (I'll talk about them below after a spoiler warning), and it truly is something that makes it impossible for Lee to live a normal life in Manchester. Much of the film deals with what one would consider the typical aftermath of the death of a family member: figuring out funeral arrangements, getting in touch with estranged relatives--just typical adult bullshit with an added sheen of depression on top. But the central tragedy of the story haunts the film like a shadow just out of the corner of your eye.

If my description of Manchester by the Sea makes it sound 1) boring and 2) depressing, well, it is both of those things but also not. Clocking in at 137 minutes, the film is definitely slow. But, personally, I never felt bored. The naturalistic interactions and dialogue make you feel like you're eavesdropping on someone's actual life instead of watching a *movie*. So even during slow scenes, there's a sense of--I don't want to say voyeurism--just that feeling of pleasure you sometimes get when you overhear someone's conversation in public. Fascination.

And yeah, the movie is a little depressing. But it's also surprisingly funny. Lee and Patrick's adorable bickering as the two figure out how to deal with one another is especially funny. Patrick is a popular, but sensitive kid who seems years more mature than his aloof uncle. Patrick calls bullshit where he sees it and does so in a way that's surprisingly (perhaps unrealistically) polite for a 16 year old.

Another random thing I loved about Manchester by the Sea is the soundtrack. Lonergan is a fan of classical music and he uses pieces from--I shit you not--Handel's Messiah in the movie. I feel like if it were any other director on the planet, using these pieces (specifically, "Pastoral Symphony" and "He Shall Feed His Flock Like a Shepherd") would be pretentious as fuck, but Lonergan pulls it off! It really works well with cinematic scenes of the cold ocean and snowy sidewalks of Manchester. It also helps that I really love Messiah.

So, before I get to the spoiler-y section below, I'll say that Manchester by the Sea is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. It's not a movie you escape into. But it is really, really goddamn good.

Grade: A+ 

***

Spoilers below!

If you've seen the preview or the poster for Manchester by the Sea, you'll notice that Michelle Williams is one of the lead actresses. She plays Lee's ex-wife, Randi. The details of their marriage are revealed in a number of flashbacks. You first see Lee and Randi as a happy couple with three kids: two girls, one maybe 9 years old the other maybe 5 or so, and a little baby boy. Based on their modest home and youth, you figure Randi and Lee got married and started popping them out pretty young, but they seem happy despite Lee's love of having his buddies over to drink and play pool into the wee hours of the night.

After one such late-night gathering (Randi comes downstairs to tell the "pinheads" Lee is drinking with to shut the fuck up and go home--her kids are sleeping upstairs), Lee walks to the market to grab more beer and comes home to find his home engulfed in flames. Randi has been pulled to safety by firefighter...but the kids are gone. Three kids, dead, just like that.

During Lee's interview with the police, he explains that before he went on his beer run he started a fire in their fireplace. As he was walking to the market, he had a moment where he couldn't remember if he put a screen on the fireplace. He figured it was ok and kept going. That decision cost him his children. Lee is taken aback when the cops let him go. "It's not a crime to forget to put a screen on a fireplace" (I was a little surprised at this--wouldn't Lee at least be charged with involuntary manslaughter?). Lee actually seems angry at the fact that he won't be punished. Of course, he will be. The rest of his life will be punishment.

This backstory explains a number of things: Lee's quiet, boring life in Boston. Why a smart, attractive man isn't seeking more than janitorial work and bar fights. It explains why he can't move back to Manchester. Not only are the raw memories still there, he's also a pariah. He's the man who essentially killed his own kids. Randi has, in a way, moved on. She remarried and had another kid. But as a chance run-in with Lee confirms, you never truly move on from the kind of thing that ended their marriage.

This tragedy is almost Biblical in it's proportions. It actually reminds me of the novel I read and so deeply loved earlier this year, A Little Life, which chronicles tragedies so intense and baroque, they seem like something out of a dark fairytale. The author of A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara, said in an interview that she "wanted everything turned up a little too high" with regards to the violence--but also the love--in her novel. I get the feeling that Lonergan is going for a similar thing here. The loss Lee faces--at his own hands--is too much to bear. So he retreats into himself and becomes nothing. That is until he's forced to become something again--a man with responsibilities, a man who, despite everything, is really loved--or, at least, supported--by those around him.

And that, to me, is purpose of Manchester by the Sea: not to preach, not to entertain, but to reveal a slice of humanity and its most humane and most forgiving. The film ends with Lee and Patrick fishing together on the boat Joe passed down to Patrick. Life still isn't sunshine and roses, but Lee is given a real shot at redemption. Life goes on, despite the worst pain imaginable, and it's possible to not just survive, but to live for something.

As I said above, Manchester by the Sea is a really fucking good movie, and not because it's extraordinary but because it's ordinary. Not because it's epic, but because it's modest. Not because it's fantastical, but because it's real.

Grade: A+

But Is It Art?

Movie: Nocturnal Animals

Nocturnal Animals, the second film directed by Tom Ford, has many layers. Literally--it contains a movie within a movie. It's also not just about one thing. It's about failed relationships, regrets, art, violence, the fragile male ego. It's campy and it's beautiful and it's a film noir. In my view, it's an excellent film with flaws.

I'll give a basic overview here, followed by a spoiler-y deeper look at the film.

Amy Adams plays Susan Morrow, an art gallery owner living in LA with her distant husband, Hutton (Armie Hammer, the actor equivalent of a blank sheet of paper--you look at him and there's no distinctive features to grab onto). Susan is incredibly wealthy and by any measure successful, but she is unhappy. She's too smart for the fakeness of LA. She considers the art she showcases to be "junk". Her relationship with her husband is cold and bordering on hostile.

One day, a manuscript arrives at Susan's door. It's a proof of a novel titled "Nocturnal Animals", written by her first husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal), and dedicated to her. Edward includes a note suggesting the two of them meet up while he's in town.

Susan begins to read the novel and the movie within a movie begins. I won't give much away here (spoilers below), but the book is about a man who faces an incredibly violent, tragic event and seeks justice by any means. The main character in the novel is Tony (also played by Gyllenhaal). The violence and darkness of the novel shocks Susan, and we see the events of the novel interspersed with Susan's memories of Edward, the sweet man she married who dreamed of becoming a novelist but didn't seem to have the talent. It turns out that he DID have the talent, as evidenced by "Nocturnal Animals", and given Susan's not great relationship with her current husband, you can see regret and hope infuse her features and she makes plans to meet with up with Edward.

The framing story--that of present day Susan and the flashbacks of her relationship with Edward--is a good, if soap-y story. But it's the movie within a movie, the plot of "Nocturnal Animals", that is the real showstopper in this film. Whereas there is an emotional remove between the audience and Susan's poor little rich girl life, giving the frame story a cold, if interesting, feeling, emotions flood the plot of "Nocturnal Animals". The story is terrifying, thrilling, suspenseful, gripping. Some reviewers criticized the film Nocturnal Animals as a whole since is feels a little all over the place, but I actually thought the juxtaposition of the noirish, violent inner movie with the cool, campy drama of the outer movie worked well--like pairing a nice, dry cabernet with a bloody steak.

Those who want to avoid spoilers can stop reading now--and I do recommend Nocturnal Animals.

Grade: A-

***

Spoilers below!

I mentioned above that Nocturnal Animals is as much about the male ego as it is about anything else. There is a distinct parallel between Susan's relationship with Edward and the violent events Tony faces in the plot of "Nocturnal Animals". While Edward is courting Susan in their early 20s, Susan's conservative, materialistic Texan mother (played--I think--by Laura Linney) discourages Susan from marrying Edward, saying that Susan is too strong for Edward. That he is a romantic, but ultimately "weak" man. Sure enough, as the years go by, Susan becomes dissatisfied with Edward, saying that he is a dreamer who is satisfied with a simple life. Edward says "you think I'm weak, don't you?". Their relationship ends when Susan has an abortion as well as an affair with Hutton (this is the really soap opera-ish part of the movie).

In Edward's novel, "Nocturnal Animals", Tony Hastings and his wife and teen daughter are driving across west Texas when a group of hooligans run them off the road and then accuse Tony of running *them* off the road. This scene takes its time, but you know exactly where it's going. The trio of baddies, led by Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, in a ballsy role as a sociopathic redneck), start off by offering to change Tony's tire (which they themselves stuck a knife into) and then ride to the next exit to report the accident to the cops. But they insist on taking Tony's wife (played by Isla Fisher, who looks like Amy Adams) and daughter in their car and making Tony follow.

What do you think happens? Tony manages to escape, but after contacting the cops, they discover the bodies of his wife and daughter. The detective on the case, Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon in a flawless performance) gruffly relates the cause of death to Tony: his wife was bashed on the head and his daughter suffocated. A small thing I noticed in the film is that Tony is silent as Andes related the violence visited on his wife and child, until Andes adds "and they were both raped", which causes Tony to emit a sob of grief.

Tony of course could do nothing to save them. He was physically restrained by the bad guys. But he is forced to endure what is the ultimate...I don't know, pain? Humiliation? Psychic destruction?...that a man can endure: failing to protect "his women". And knowing that in addition to his wife and daughter dying, they were forcibly fucked beforehand. Tony is beyond emasculated--just as Edward was emasculated (albeit in a less intense way) by Susan, who aborted their child and left him for another man.

Tony in the novel ends up teaming up with Andes to mete out justice outside of, uh, "proper protocol". But even when the opportunity presents itself, Tony has a difficult time meting out violence. It's only during the final confrontation between Ray and Tony, where Ray tells Tony he's "too weak" to possibly kill anyone, that Tony finally is able to pull the trigger (literally).

Given the violent plot of the book "Nocturnal Animals", what is Susan supposed to think? What are we the audience supposed to think? Did Edward write this book as the ultimate "fuck you" to Susan? Is it a revenge fantasy where Ray is a stand-in for Susan? And what of the ending of the movie, where Edward agrees via email to meet Susan for dinner, only to stand her up?

Nocturnal Animals is, in some ways, about reaping what you sow. It's not so much that we're supposed to think Susan is a bitch and a terrible person for leaving Edward. Her true sin is not owning her own life. She rejects her mother's advice only to follow it and end up unhappy anyway. She denies her own talent and creativity (she originally wanted to be an artist, but ultimately became an art gallery owner--the facilitator of other peoples' dreams) and settles for a safe, wealthy life...but she is not safe at all. She looks to the men in her life to make her happy, or change to suit her needs, and this plan fails--twice. Nocturnal Animals--at least the framing story--seems to me to be a warning about not owning your shit. And the inner story is about men not confronting their weakness and figuring out how to deal with powerlessness until it's too late.

One thing I want to add: there is not a single bad performance in this entire film. From Gyllenhaal's double-role as sweet Edward and grieving Tony, to Adams' complex role as a woman who has it all and also has nothing, to Shannon's gruff, uber-badass detective, every acting job is A fuckin' plus. I'm giving the movie an A- rating because it is an excellent film with some mild flaws (I groaned at the abortion twist, and also thought the ending was a cop-out). That said, I highly recommend the film. It's beautiful, dark, thrilling, and vastly entertaining.

Grade: A-

They Come In Peace

Movies: Arrival

*Sigh* I always assume I'll enjoy Denis Villeneuve's films based on their descriptions and trailers. But when I actually watch them there's always a cold, glass wall between me and the films--not unlike the transparent wall that separates linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) from the squid-like aliens in Arrival.  

Take, for example, his 2013 film Prisoners, about a man (Hugh Jackman) who will go to any lengths, including kidnapping and torturing a mentally disabled man (Paul Dano), to find his missing daughter. Prisoners should inspire outrage, anger, fear, empathy...something. It left me cold and unimpressed.

And then his follow-up, Enemy, was even worse. Described as an "erotic thriller" (HA.) starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a man who meets another man who is exactly like him (are they twins? the same person but living on different planes of reality?), the film is neither erotic nor thrilling. The two emotions I experienced while watching it were confusion and annoyance.

I haven't seen last year's Sicario, and I heard it's really good. But I'm not champing at the bit to watch it.

And now Arrival, about mysterious black obelisks that show up at various points around the earth, hovering just above the ground, arrives in theaters. And I will admit that it's not as disappointing as Villeneuve's previous efforts--if only for it's sleek, artful cinematography--but it still didn't make me feel much beyond a vague interest.

As mentioned above, Amy Adams plays a linguist, Louise Banks, who is recruited by the US military to communicate with the alien creatures who have arrived mysteriously around the earth. Banks teams up with Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner, playing a refreshing role as a male sidekick), a mathematician, to see if they can figure out the aliens' language and ask them why they have arrived before more macho political figures decide to say "fuck it" and bomb the aliens to hell.

The scenes where Banks and Donnelly communicate with the aliens are the best in the film: the humans are sucked up into the aliens' pod, and through a glass wall they can see the creatures that look like giant squids (they name the aliens "heptapods"). The creatures communicate by spraying an inky substance that forms itself into a complex, detailed circle--almost like an entire sentence in the form of a shape:

Banks, Donnelly, and their crew eventually figure out how to "read" the aliens' ink circles and are able to ask them questions using a software that translates their questions into the heptapod language. How they do this is, perhaps mercifully, glossed over in favor of spending more time on the consequences of their (mis)communications with the aliens. When they ask "Why are you here?", the creatures respond "Give weapon to humans" and the governments around the world read this as a threat, despite Banks' insistence that the aliens might mean "tool" instead of weapon. The film turns into a race against time to clarify what the aliens' purpose is before the Chinese government uses a tank to blow the aliens right out of the sky.

Of course, there is much more to Arrival than this straightforward plot. I won't give anything away, but I'll say that I found the ending both surprising and eye roll-inducing. I wish Villeneuve had stuck to directing a sci-fi thriller instead of rubbing a bunch of MEANING in my face at the very end.


So, while Arrival is, in many aspects, a pretty solid movie--it's quite beautiful, it has an interesting plot, and it has a third act that upends the first two acts--I still came away feeling empty. As with the director's other films, I feel like I should feel something, but that cold, glass, frictionless wall is in the way. I don't think Villeneuve is a bad director, I just think he's not the director for me. Just like some people hate Wes Anderson while I practically worship him, it all comes down to how you connect (or don't) with a certain aesthetic and worldview.

I don't consider Arrival a waste of my money or time, but I also know that I'll forget it and never have any interest in watching it again.

Grade: B-