Mandy; or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Nic Cage Going Apesh*t

Movies: Mandy

Panos Cosmatos' film Mandy is definitely heavier on style than substance, but if you're ok buckling in for a trippy, ultra-violent ride, it might not matter.

Mandy takes place in 1983 in the Pacific Northwest and is heavily influenced by the imagery and music of that decade. Imagine watching Stranger Things while on a really bad LSD trip and you get the picture. The plot is pretty simple: Nic Cage is Red Miller, a blue collar man living with his artist girlfriend, Mandy Bloom (Andrea Risenborough--who you might recognize from the devastating Black Mirror episode "Crocodile") in a cozy home in the woods. A few intimate scenes--pillow talk about favorite planets--help the audience invest in Red and Mandy's relationship before Mandy catches the eye of a creepy cult leader, Jeremiah (Linus Roache), and all hell breaks loose.

*spoilers spoilers spoilers*

Before I saw this film, I thought Mandy would be *abducted* by the bad guys and Cage would go on a rampage to save her. But what actually happens is that this cult kills Mandy in a violent way and Cage goes on a revenge-fueled rampage. On the one hand, I was pissed by the "woman dies to further a man's story" trope. On the other hand, the gruesome, senseless death and the many gruesome deaths that follow contribute to the nihilism of the film, which I think was the director's intent. It also gives Nic Cage all the more reason to go apeshit.

*end spoilers*

As good as Risenborough is, this really is Nic Cage's film. He finally found a movie worthy of his signature epic freakouts. There's a scene where he uncovers a bottle of vodka hidden in a bathroom drawer and oscillates between chugging it, pouring it on his wounds, and screaming incoherently. He does this while wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt and tighty-whities--the scene is Nic Cage distilled to his very essence.

Some reviews have mentioned the "occult horror" feel of the film, and I agree. I wish the director had spent more time exploring the cult that goes after Mandy because there are a lot of unanswered questions there. But no doubt that whatever this cult's deal is, its members are influenced by something malevolent and otherworldly.

There's not much else to say about Mandy except that it's not going to be for everyone. The violence is gruesome, but in a cartoonish, Quentin Tarantino-esque way (minus the snappy banter). If you're sensitive to loud noise and garish lights, you might want to sit this one out or watch it on the small screen--it's quite intense in the theatre. But I think most people who make an effort to see Mandy probably understand what they're in for: an artistically trashy, vigilante-justice mindfuck of a film where Nic Cage screams into the void and engages in chainsaw-to-chainsaw combat. Oh, and there's randomly a tiger.

Grade: B+

Oh hai 

Three Martini Playdate

Movies: A Simple Favor

When you think of two moms getting together so their kids can have a playdate, you probably don't imagine it takes place is a severely chic home with French ye-ye pop playing in the background and martinis so stiff they could impregnate you. But that's exactly the kind of playdate Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) finds herself on with new pal Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) in director Paul Feig's effervescent neo-noir satire A Simple Favor.

Kendrick plays to her "type" --a chipper, perfectionist single mom with a vlog where she demonstrates how to sneak veggies into food kids will eat and how to make the perfect first aid kit. The regular parents at her son's kindergarten (played by a sarcastic Greek chorus comprised of Andrew Rannells, Kelly McCormack, and Aparna Nancherla--all very underused in this movie) look at her with disdain. But then, Stephanie meets Emily--a femme fatale who blithely says "fuck" in front of her five year old son, wears men's suits tailored to perfection, and has a nude portrait of herself hanging in her kitchen (a kitchen she never cooks in--that's her husband's job).

Blake Lively as Emily Nelson makes this movie. She's reminiscent of Amy Dunne in Gone Girl only she's richer, sexier, meaner, everything-er. She's a PR director for a fashion mogul, Dennis Nylon (Rupert Friend in a great cameo role), and she's married to a sexy failed author (Henry Golding, last seen in Crazy Rich Asians). She seems to have it all. Then one day, she disappears. She calls Stephanie to ask a simple favor--can she pick up her son after school that day? Stephanie agrees...but when Emily fails to show up for multiple days after that (Emily's husband is in London) and won't pick up her phone, the noir part of the film kicks in like that third martini.



My biggest criticism of A Simple Favor is that it's all over the place--but that's also part of its charm. It's funny, zany, dark, scary, tense, ridiculous, over-the-top, and light all at once, keeping the audience totally off-kilter the entire time. Clearly, Feig is going for a send-up of Gone Girl/Mommy Murder Mystery books and films. You know--all those books with "girl" or "woman" in the title and the main character is ALWAYS an alcoholic with an unreliable memory. And he mostly succeeds. That said, the first half of the movie which focuses on the odd couple pairing of Kendrick's eager-beaver June Cleaver and Lively's nihilistic bad mommy is much better than the second half, where revelation after revelation and plot twist after plot twist happen so quickly that there's no time to react to anything before the next surprise is revealed. Apparently, the book the film is based on suffers from the same issue--everything is thrown at the wall to see what will stick. I wish Feig had been willing to cut out a plot twist or three and allow the revelations to happen more leisurely, privileging atmosphere over plot. But alas.

Despite the pacing issues, A Simple Favor is definitely fun. It also has a great soundtrack (a lot of Serge Gainsbourg), references to Diabolique, and passes the ol' Bechdel Test. So while it won't win any awards, I can recommend it without reservation. Just make sure to bring a flask filled with ice cold gin and a twist of lemon to the theatre.

Grade: B

Father's Worst Nightmare

Movies: Searching

There was/still is (?) a question on the dating site OkCupid which asks users "Do you Google your date before you go out with them?" and the answers you could choose from were "Yes. Knowledge is power!" and "No. Why spoil the mystery?"

Anyone who answers "no" is, in my opinion, a fool. Or someone who doesn't care about the possibility of BEING MURDERED on a date! Or...perhaps worse...going out with a libertarian by accident. If it happened to me (the libertarian part, not the being murdered part), it can happen to you!

Searching for people on the Internet is a modern day pastime. Give me someone with a unique first name and their profession and I can find them. Give me someone's twitter and instagram handle and I now know their political persuasion and the names of their pets. And if you think it's creepy that I search for people on The Net, again, I'm just trying to stay sexy and not get murdered.

The film Searching is the first feature-length film by Aneesh Chaganty. It's a film with a gimmick that manages not to be gimmicky. The gimmick is that the film is shot from the point-of-view of smartphones, laptops, hidden camera, and news cameras. It's similar to the 2014 horror film Unfriended but, in my opinion, much more tense. It works.

John Cho (of Harold and Kumar fame) plays David Kim. Michelle La plays his 16 year old daughter, Margot. The two are still grieving the loss of their wife and mother, Pam (Sara Sohn), who passed from cancer two years before the events of the movie. Most parents would see David and Margot as enviably close--but when Margot doesn't come home from a study group one night, David begins to delve into her social media and personal life to help a missing persons investigation led by Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) and realizes that his daughter had a secret life he knew nothing about.

Searching is absolute catnip for people who love true crime podcasts and documentaries and for anyone who has ever stalked anyone else on the internet. There are some hilarious moments, such as when David asks Margot's schoolmate "what is a tumbler" when she mentions Margot posted a lot on Tumblr. There's also an inadvertent (?) moment of humor when David sees the combination of the eggplant emoji and the water spraying emoji on one of Margot's instagram posts and the music swells to denote "DANGER SOMEONE IS SPRUNG FOR YOUR DAUGHTER!!" These moments of levity are crucial since the majority of the film is so tense I would pause with my hand hovering over my popcorn for minutes at a time.

There are twists and turns aplenty, none of which I'll go into here, but for once I didn't spoil the movie for myself and I was legitimately caught off guard multiple times when the movie suggested one course of direction and then violently swerved in another.

John Cho is excellent as the distressed father who is facing the possibility of losing his daughter on top of the loss of his wife. As the days pass without word from his daughter, he passes through naiveté, to confusion, to dread, to rage, and to hopelessness. He veers from sobbing on the floor to beating the shit out of people he thinks might have something to do with his daughter's disappearance. Cho is all grown up from his days of playing the pot-smoking, overly-conscientious Harold Lee in the Harold and Kumar films and he has the forehead grooves and under-eye bags to prove it. And this isn't a slight against his looks--the actor looks lived in, a real "dad" in the sense that he is absolutely someone you feel a  sixteen year old girl would love fiercely...but also carefully keep secrets from.

Searching was a very pleasant surprise and may actually be the most purely entertaining film I've seen this year. I try to measure movies by both how "good" or "accomplished" they are, but also by how they make me feel in the moment. And while Searching may not be as "good" as some other movies that have come out this year, it definitely made me feel excited, tense, scared, delighted, and many other emotions as a watched a man uncover clues, one by one, about the secret online life of his daughter.

Grade: A-

Money Can't Buy Me Love

Movies: Crazy Rich Asians

I saw Jon M. Chu's Crazy Rich Asians with a friend who recently read the book and assured me "the book is better", so this review is not a referendum on the novel (which I haven't read). Just FYI.

There are two awesome things about Crazy Rich Asians. One is Awkwafina's performance as Peik Lin Goh, the main character's eccentric friend from college who steals the show. The other is the fact that this is the first Hollywood movie with an all-Asian cast since, I shit you not, 1993's The Joy Luck Club. And what a cast it is! Michelle Yeoh, Constance Wu...hell, even Ken Jeong has a memorable supporting role.

But to be honest, the movie itself is below this talented cast. It nearly buckles under the weight of its own pat sentimentality and rom-com cliches.

Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) is a an incredibly successful woman: an economics professor, she is the youngest faculty member at NYU. She has a close relationship with her mom, who raised her on her own. She also has a ridic hot boyfriend, Nick Young (Henry Golding) who has just asked her to travel with him to Singapore to attend his best friend's wedding. But what Rachel finds out as she and Nick are led to their private suite on the transatlantic flight is that Nick's family is rich...crazy rich.

No, like, you don't get it. CRAZY RICH. Like, these people wipe their asses with 20 dollars bills. And Nick is the golden son: heir to his family's fortune and essentially royalty in Singapore.

You might ask yourself, "wow, isn't that kind of shitty for Nick not to tell Rachel this? Like, possibly a relationship-ending offense?" and you'd be right! But then we wouldn't have the movie, right? And also, we wouldn't be able to enjoy the mildly jolty ride towards the obvious and not very realistic conclusion that love is more important than money.

Rachel has every right to be a little mad that Nick didn't tell her the reality of his family ahead of time, mainly because his mother hates her right off the bat. Michelle Yeoh is awesome as Nick's classy, cold mother who "would do anything for her son" as long as she gets to control his life. Eleanor Young is pissed that Nick has spent so much time in the States when he's promised to move back and learn the family business. Now that he's fallen in love with a scrappy Chinese-American, she fears (rightfully) that he might never move back.

Rachel also gets guff from Nick's ex, Amanda, and some miscellaneous cousins who call her a gold-digging bitch...even though she didn't even know about Nick's family's wealth. Ugh, money really does ruin everything, doesn't it?

There are some nice family members too--Cousin Oliver who is the gay "rainbow sheep of the family", Cousin Astrid whose wealth and beauty doesn't stop her husband from cheating on her, and many others, but the film doesn't really give us time to get to know these interesting characters--instead, it gives us a makeover sequence, a bachelorette/bachelor party sequence, and the actual wedding scene which, ugh, reminded me why I don't like weddings.

I really did not like the barrage of romantic comedy tropes here. The overwhelming soundtrack that tells you exactly how to feel with its swelling violins. The groomsman who tells the groom that he hopes his bride won't "take his balls" (UGH). There's even a AIRPLANE PROPOSAL. A proposal. That takes place. On an airplane. It's the biggest cliche of all rom-com cliches, and it's done without a hint of irony.

Also irony-free is the materialism porn in the movie. Look, I get that the film is called Crazy Rich Asians, but the movie just does not let up with the mansion porn and designer clothes porn and that wedding-industrial complex porn...holy shit. And it would have been ok if the plot itself had been a little meatier, but it wasn't. What's more, the film suggests that as long as one's heart is in the right place, wealth doesn't matter. But I don't agree--the level of wealth presented in the film is...well, it's inherently unethical, and there's not even a small attempt to pay lip service to the fact that many people in China live in outrageous poverty. Here's a story about people who live in "Coffin Homes" in Hong Kong.

I really struggled with this movie because I wanted to like it so bad, but it was so cliched and shallow. From what my friend told me, the book is far less cliched (no airplane proposal, for example) and spends more time with the individual family members, thus giving more depth and context to this insanely wealthy family. Crazy Rich Asians has been getting really good reviews and I'm glad that a Hollywood film with an Asian cast is making bank. If you love romantic comedies, by all means please check this film out. But from what I've heard, it sounds like the book is miles better than the film.

Grade: C+ 

Undercover Brother

Movies: BlackKklansman

Ok, first of all I have to confess that I have not seen as many Spike Lee films as I should have. A million years ago, I watched Do The Right Thing and I am way overdue for a re-watch. I saw Bamboozled (super underrated, btw) in college and Inside Man randomly with my parents. And of course, I saw BlackKklansman which I'm about the review here. So I feel like I want to make some assumptions about Spike Lee's work but can't because I'm a Spike Lee novice and I need to remedy that.

Anyhoo. BlackKklansman is the true story of Ron Stallworth, the first Black police detective in Colorado Spring, Colorado. The year is 1972 (however, the events that inspired the movie actually took place in 1979), so the country is smack in the middle of the Black Power movement. Ron is hardly a radical, but when he goes undercover see Kwame Ture (previously Stokely Carmichael, who changed his name after traveling to Africa) speak at a rally, he finds himself very attracted to Ture's message of not playing nice with the white establishment.

A while later, Ron (played beautifully by John David Washington) sees an ad in the local newspaper for the Ku Klux Klan. He calls the line and pretends to be a racist white person. After some convincing, his boss allows him and his white colleague Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver, excellent as always) to infiltrate the local Klan. Ron will connect with them over the phone and Flip will play Ron for in-person visits with Klan members. Ultimately, this puts Ron in the path of none other than David Duke (Topher Grace, who looks disturbingly similar to young David Duke)--the "Grand Wizard" of the KKK himself.

BlackKklansman is surprisingly fun and funny for a story of horrific racism. Lee makes sure to mock the Klan for the bigoted fools they are and to show how Ron used their own ignorance and assumptions against them. For example, there's a great scene where Ron is talking to Duke on the phone and Duke says that he always knows when he's talking to a Black person because of their voices and, specifically, the way they pronounce "our". BlackKklansman should be noted as the second great film of the summer to use the concept of a "white voice" as a pivotal plot point. Lee walks a fine line between giving the audience plenty to laugh at while also reminding them that the KKK has and continues to commit acts of violence and brutality.

In fact, the greatest weakness of the film is that it is a bit on the nose in how it ties the racism of the 1970s to the racism of the past few years, with David Duke making pointed comments about hoping America will be restored to its previous "greatness" and Ron laughing at the idea of a guy like David Duke ever being elected president. Har har. That said, Lee's use of footage from the "Unite the Right" Rally in Charlottesville last summer and his dedication of the film to Heather Heyer still feels like a gut-punch. As much time as we spend laughing at the racist hicks in the film, we are forced to reckon with the fact that these same hicks are responsible for not just Heyer's murder, but the murder of thousands of Black people throughout the 20th century. There is a scene where an older gentleman describes the brutal castration and lynching of a developmentally disabled Black man in the 1920s who was accused of raping a white woman. The most disturbing part of this scene is knowing that this same violence still happens today and that we're NOT better than or beyond the racist brutality of post-Civil War America, or 1920s America, or 1960s America. Basically, different decade, same bullshit.

BlackKklansman also wades into some discussion about whether Black people can disrupt racism from within racist systems. Ron's girlfriend, Patrice, is the head of the black student union and believes that the police are inherently racist. Ron disagrees and argues that a Black cop could change things from the inside. The best part of Patrice and Ron's ongoing discussion? The fact that it isn't resolved by the end of the film--the two continue to disagree (respectfully) until the end. I liked that because there was no easy answer then and there is no easy answer today.

Although I liked Do The Right Thing and Bamboozled more, BlackKklansman is worth the watch. It isn't perfect, but it's thought-provoking and entertaining. It's not particularly interested in exploring the inherent humanity of racists and bigots, the way some movies that tread similar ground do, and while I love me some deep explorations of the nature of evil, it's kind of a relief to just make fun of these assholes for once.

Grade: B-

How White of You

Movies: Sorry to Bother You

Ok, first of all, if you haven't seen Sorry to Bother You yet, stop reading this and go see it. It's better going in knowing NOTHING. For once in my dumb life I *didn't* read a billion reviews before seeing the movie and I was very happy I got to have the full experience.

***

***

***

Ok, now that you saw it--- HOLY SHIT, RIGHT?

Lakeith Stanfield, best known for his role as Darius in Atlanta and also that black dude at the party who flips out when Daniel Kaluuya takes his picture in Get Out, plays Cassius Green--a man barely scraping by in Oakland, CA and living in his uncle's (played by Terry Crews, with hair!) garage. He takes a job as a telemarketer in a soul-crushing cubicle farm and a coworker (Danny Glover) encourages him to use his "white voice" to do better at his job. Cassius' white voice isn't his own voice but "whiter", it's REALLY fucking white--David Cross supplies the voice and you know how white David Cross sounds.

Cassius' success gets the attention of management who promote him to "Power Caller", which comes with a pay raise so huge he can't refuse, as well as a private golden elevator to a penthouse at the top of the building, filled with beautiful people selling...well....they're not exactly selling discount cruise vacations to elderly people up there.

Right as Cassius' star is rising, his coworkers, lead by Squeeze (Steven Yeun), are staging a strike in order to get paid better and receive benefits. Cassius' artist girlfriend, Detroit (the always wonderful Tessa Thompson) joins their ranks while also enjoying the benefits of Cassius' newfound wealth--but their relationship is hanging by a thread because Cassius is changing by hanging out with all those power callers and using his white voice all the time. MONEY MAKES PEOPLE WORSE. I'm not being sarcastic. It just does. How many kind and authentic rich people do you know? The only rich people I know are entitled dipshits who don't believe white privilege exists.

(Yes, I know. Wealth is relative. I'm probably in the top 1% if you compare me to the rest of the entire world. I, too, am an entitled dipshit).

So anyway, the shiz really hits the fan when Cassius is invited to a party at the home of a guy named Steve Lift (played PERFECTLY by Armie Hammer) who created a company called "Worry Free" where workers sign lifetime contracts to live, work, and eat in the same building without being paid because their living expenses are covered. Yes, it's literally slave labor--though, notably, all the ads and commercials for "Worry Free" feature white people.

So Cassius goes to Steve's mansion and is forced to perform a rap song for a group of drunk and high white people ("boring cunts" as Steve refers to them) but since Cassius can't rap, he just repeats the phrase "n*gger shit n*gger shit n*gger shit" over and over to a beat and it's a hit. The white people yell it right back to him.

The whole party scene was absolutely bonkers and hilarious--reminded me of Django Unchained where they go to that debauched party at Calvin Candy's house in New Orleans.

But then, right as Steve requests a private meeting with Cassius to talk about a project that he'd be a fool to turn down, Cassius accidentally discovers what Steve is REALLY up to and...man. To say the movie takes a sharp left turn isn't accurate--the movie launches into a different plane of existence.

And that's where I'll stop with the plot synopsis. If you read all this and haven't seen the movie--GO SEE IT.

Sorry to Bother You, which is directed by rapper Boots Riley, reminded me of a lot of films that touch on similar issues. The one movie it really felt kin to is Spike Lee's Bamboozled about a black man (Damon Wayans) who creates a TV show that incorporates blackface and minstrelsy as a "fuck you" to his white boss, but it backfires and becomes a hit--netting him power and money even though he created an insanely racist product. Similarly, STBY is about what happens when a black individual achieves success by fitting in to white culture and in that process ends up fucking over other black people (and poorer people).

It also reminded me of Django Unchained with its moments of crazed debauchery and pitch black humor and, of course, Get Out, especially in the last third. Despite all these comparisons, STBY never felt derivative--it is fully its own weird and wonderful thing. Even if all the ideas didn't come together seamlessly, it is so unique and bizarre that its minor flaws are 100% forgiven.

Sorry to Bother You is many things: an Oakland fantasia, a pro-union comedy, a perverse exploration of white privilege. But it is also one thing: a movie that must be seen to be believed.

Grade: A

Frozen in Terror

TV shows, books: The Terror

Welcome to another book/show twofer review! Today I'll be reviewing Dan Simmons' epic work of historical horror The Terror as well as the AMC television show based on that book.

I first read The Terror in graduate school and though it took about 2 months to read (the novel is 700 or 900 pages depending on whether you're reading a trade or mass-market paperback) I was enraptured by it. The novel blends historical reality with fictional horror. It takes a real-life event: the John Franklin expedition of 1845 to find the Northwest Passage, which ended in the deaths of all the men from starvation and scurvy and adds a supernatural element: a monster hunting the men on the ice.

The novel has multiple perspectives: John Franklin himself, a man of great hubris who ignores the advice of his fellow Captains and Lieutenants to modify their course when it becomes clear that the ships on the expedition, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, will soon be stuck in pack ice. Additionally, we see the perspectives of Francis Crozier, Franklin's second in command and the protagonist of the story, Dr. Harry Goodsir, and various men on the ships.

What truly makes this story unique is how seamlessly Simmons weaves together the real life horrors of starvation, severe illness, the unforgiving landscape of hellish cold, cannibalism, and murder with the supernatural horrors of the mysterious "Thing on the ice" that is introduced in the first 20 pages and is not fully explained until the final 50 pages, yet keeps the reader in suspense the entire time.

The book was adapted into a ten episode series for AMC starring Ciaran Hinds as Franklin, Jared Harris (best known as one of my favorite characters from Mad Men, Lane Pryce) as Crozier, and Tobias Menzies (whom Outlander aficionados will recognize as Frank Randall/Black Jack Randall) as the third in command, James Fitzjames.

The order in which I watched/read the show/book is this:
Read The Terror in grad school
Watched the show a few months ago
Re-read the book
Re-watched the show (with closed captions)

And I'm glad I read the book and watched the show twice because the show is damned hard to follow unless you have closed captions, already know the story, or both. Think: dozens of British actors who all look the same when bundled up, have similar character names (sooooo many Johns, James, and Thomases), and all have thick accents (the first time I watched the show, I thought they were all saying "left-tenant" instead of "Lieutenant"). By re-reading the book and then immediately re-watching the show, I picked up on many things I missed in the first viewing.

This might sound like a lot of work to you so if you're at all curious, my recommendation is to watch the TV show with closed captions so you can at least follow who's who. If you're looking for a spooky good time though, the book delivers more tension and creepiness than the show does.

The show's strength lies in strong performances by Jared Harris, Tobias Menzies, and Adam Nagaitis who plays Cornelius Hickey, a scheming man who tries to undermine his superiors. Additionally, Nive Nielsen, a singer-songwriter and budding actress who is Inuk, plays Lady Silence, an "Esquimaux" woman who has a spiritual connection to the monster on the ice. Appropriately, they cast a Native person to play a Native character and she does an amazing job elevating the character above any kind of "noble savage" stereotype. In fact, Lady Silence has the power to both save and kill the white men aboard the ships. Although she is one of the few female characters on the show (which makes sense, given the time and place it is set), she is fully fleshed out and three-dimensional. The story wouldn't make sense without her.

The book and tv show are pretty niche. If you love sea-faring stories, you'll love it. If you like historical fiction and/or horror, you'll love it. Otherwise, you might find both the book and show long and tedious. Given the fact that the novel is one of the few books I've ever re-read, you can see where I land.

Grades:
The Terror, the book: A+
The Terror, the show: A