Crimes of the Future
I was sooooo hyped for the latest David Cronenberg movie, which looked like it would be a return to form for him. Cronenberg is well known for his films which delve into body horror and the trailer for Crimes of the Future looked exactly like the weird, sick shit I'm into.
The story is takes place in a future in which humans no longer feel pain and some people start mysteriously growing new organs. Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) is a performance artist whose body is especially unusual, as he grows new organs at a very rapid rate. He and his partner, Caprice (Lea Seydoux), remove these organs as part of their live art.
Sounds really cool, right? Or, at least, really fucked up? Well, sadly, Crimes of the Future is more boring than anything else. I'm still going to give it a fairly decent rating because the *ideas* behind the movie are really interesting and the special effects and body horror elements are visually interesting, but underneath the grotesque images was a whole lotta nothing. Saul captures the interest of both the government, who require all new organs to be registered, and anti-government activists who are hoping to usher in a new wave of human evolution. Saul himself is a bit of a passive pawn caught between these two groups.
Overall, I'd only recommend Crimes of the Future to fans of Cronenberg (who are likely to see it anyway). Most other viewers will find the movie gross and/or boring.
Grade: B
***
Resurrection
*Spoiler warning for this review*
Resurrection is a difficult, enthralling roller coaster ride of a thriller. Starring Rebecca Hall, who is an incredible actress, Resurrection tells the bizarre and upsetting story of a woman whose abuser shows up years later to torment her some more.
Hall plays Margaret, a business woman and single mother who just radiates strength and steely reserve. She is the woman younger women go to for advice. She looks fierce in a perfectly tailored business suit. She looks like she does not suffer fools gladly. Everything seems to be going well for Margaret, who is about to send her daughter off to college in just a few weeks, when a man from her past shows up and destroys the safe world Margaret has created for herself.
This man, David (Tim Roth, terrifying in that soft spoken way), groomed Margaret when she was 18 and he was in his 30s. He seduced her and her parents with his charm, asked Margaret to move in with him, and then slowly began to ask more and more of Margaret--"kindnesses", he would call them. They included things like going barefoot all the time and holding stress positions for hours. When Margaret got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy, David saw that he was no longer the center of Margaret's world.
When Margaret went to the store and left Baby Benjamin with David, she returned to find the baby gone...except for two small fingers on the kitchen table. This is where it gets really bizarre: David told Margaret that he "ate the baby up" and now Ben was in his stomach. Crazed with grief, Margaret believed him and stayed under David's power to be close to Ben. But eventually, she was able to leave David.
Now, 20 years later, David is back and telling Margaret the same bizarre thing he told her years ago: that Ben is safely in his belly and aching for his mother. David also implicitly threatens Margaret's daughter and within one meeting, Margaret is back to doing the "kindnesses" David requires of her.
Although the whole "I ate the baby and now he's living in my stomach" thing is incredibly weird, it shows how abusers can manipulate their victims into disbelieving basic reality. It is shocking to see Margaret switch from a boss bitch to a woman holding stress positions in a park at 2 in the morning with just a few words from a man who looks harmless enough. Resurrection is a film about the power of grief and gaslighting. I'd be interested to hear what survivors of intimate partner violence have to sa about this movie because I could see it being offensive to some, but very accurate to others.
I have to give Resurrection a high rating because of Rebecca Hall's stellar performance and just how much I was on the edge of my seat the whole movie. It will grip you.
Grade: A-
***
Prey
I haven't seen any of the other Predator movies, but the premise of this film was very intriguing. It takes place in the Comanche Nation in 1719. The Predator is an extraterrestrial being that has advanced technology and weaponry and he comes to earth to hunt both the Comanche and the French fur trappers in the area.
A young Comanche woman, Naru (Amber Midthunder), has to prove herself as a hunter to the men of her village who don't take her seriously. She can tell there is a strange threat on the periphery of her village, but no one believes her until it's too late. Over the course of the film, she learns enough about the Predator to outsmart him at his own game, proving that she really is a great hunter.
Prey was...just ok. Other than the really unique setting (a futuristic villain, but set 300 years in the past), this is a pretty cliched action-horror movie with cheesy lines, common tropes ("You can't do X because you're a girl!"), and not a lot of character development. It was entertaining, but I think the rave reviews are less about the movie itself and more about the fact that the film cast Indigenous actors playing Indigenous characters (which is awesome!).
Grade: B-
***
The Sandman
I haven't read The Sandman comics, so I watched the Netflix series with a totally blank slate. I really enjoyed it! There is A LOT going on, but I never felt out of my depth. The first season is sort of roughly divided into two plot lines: Morpheus, aka "Dream" (Tom Sturridge, looking pouty and gothic), being held captive and losing some stuff he needs and then being set free and finding said stuff, and Morpheus hunting down a rogue nightmare, The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook, playing a really excellent villain).
I'm not going to go too much into the plot since it's too complex to explain, and you should really just watch it. I'm not usually into fantasy, but The Sandman had enough horror elements to keep me intrigued. There were also stand alone plot lines, such as a man named John Dee (David Thewlis) causing mayhem in a diner and Dream meeting a man granted the gift (or curse?) of immortality in the same pub every 100 years to catch up, that I just loved. These little tangents, side-plots, and stand alone episodes are what I enjoyed most about the show.
I'm glad I gave The Sandman a chance (my partner, who is a huge fan of the comics, encouraged me). The cinematography was lovely, the characters--even the ones who pop up for a single episode--are interesting and feel fully fleshed out, and the show was overall entertaining and enchanting. Highly recommended!
Grade: A-
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