Review by Sean Boelman
The Forum section at Berlinale is always a showcase for some of the most formally intriguing films on the festival circuit, and Miryam Charles’s This House is definitely quite engaging. And while it is definitely interesting from a stylistic standpoint, it suffers from a lot of issues common to directorial debuts.
The film follows a family still reeling ten years after the mysterious death of a teenager, initially suspected to be a suicide but later deemed to be something else. On paper, this sounds like this is going to be some sort of procedural drama, but it’s really something much more meditative and somber. There is a very loose nature to Charles’s narrative, and that both works for and against the film. On one hand, it feels like we are experiencing the very visceral emotions of these characters, but it can also be somewhat hard to follow at times because of its threadbare yet surrealist approach. It also feels like the film doesn’t explore its themes with as much depth as it could have. There is some praise to be had here for the film having some subtlety, but when that subtlety approaches unintentional ambiguity, it becomes a problem. The script of the film makes an attempt to be poetic, but it doesn’t always amount to substance.
That said, the film does an excellent job with its character development. It surprisingly gets us invested into this mother-daughter relationship in a way that is very compelling. Given that the film is a journey through these characters’ emotions, it makes sense that the character development is one of the main successes, because that’s what makes it resonate.
Nadine Jean and Schelby Jean-Baptiste do an exceptional job in their roles. They are performances that feel very authentic and lived-in, selling every bit of the emotion in the story. Jean-Baptiste gives the more unorthodox of the two performances, with an emphasis on the more abstract elements of expression. The area in which the film impresses the most is its visual style. Charles shows a great command of the craft, also serving as one of the directors of photography of the film. And while the film is very minimalistic in its execution, the imagery that Charles creates is so powerful that it overcomes its limitations. This House isn’t as fully-developed as it needed to be in order to be entirely successful, but the potential that Charles shows in it as a director is astounding. It’s one of those films that works better as a testament to its creator’s talents than as a self-contained work in its own right. This House screened at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival. Rating: 3.5/5
0 Comments
Review by Sean Boelman
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is one of the best surrealist filmmakers, and so it was an interesting prospect to see how he would handle such a real, grounded topic as the COVID-19 pandemic. And while enough of Jeunet’s characteristic absurdity is there for Bigbug to be charming, its satire is too flat for it to have much of an impact.
The movie follows a group of suburbanites who are stuck together when they are locked in when a robot uprising occurs. It attempts to be something like The Terminator by way of Jean-Paul Sartre, and there are certainly some great bits here that are sure to stick with fans of the filmmaker, it often ends up feeling like too much of a missed opportunity. Part of the film's issue is that it goes through so many narrative and tonal shifts over the course of its runtime. At first, it’s a farcical chamber piece following a bunch of people as they discuss politics, then it turns into more of a thriller with a darkly comedic edge. Both work well enough on their own but don’t entirely come together. Another issue that the movie has is that the themes aren’t the most clear. Somehow the film is both heavy-handed and unfocused, which isn’t the greatest combination. The commentary on the ridiculousness of human society is funny, but it’s almost low-hanging fruit. And the stuff about the relationship that people have with technology is surprisingly underdeveloped.
The character development also has its ups and downs. Although everyone in the main ensemble is pretty likable, they also aren’t all that memorable. The movie attempts to utilize romantic subplots to get us invested in the dynamic that exists between all of them, but it’s not as compelling as the writers seem to think it is.
All of the actors seem to have gotten the memo to be over-the-top and ridiculous. Everyone in the cast gets some pretty funny moments, but it is François Levantal who shines the most. As the maniacal android judge, jury, and executioner, Levantal gives a performance that both recalls some of the genre’s more prominent examples and feels distinctive enough on its own. The film shares a lot of the stylistic elements characteristic of Jeunet’s work, albeit on a much more restrained scale. The few CGI effects definitely aren’t the best, but the parts that impress are those which use the production design and color quite well. There are also a few sequences that take the satire to the extreme, and those are some of the most stylistically interesting in the movie. Bigbug definitely doesn’t stand up to some of Jeunet’s more iconic work, but it’s still an entertaining watch. In other hands, this definitely could have gone wrong very easily, but what we got is charmingly quirky enough to be worth a stream. Bigbug is now streaming on Netflix. Rating: 3.5/5
Review by Dan Skip Allen
Coming-of-age films can come in many different shapes and sizes. This year there have been three great foreign films dealing with coming of age stories: The Hand of God from Paolo Sorrentino, The Worst Person in the World starring Renate Reinsve, and Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom. All three have been nominated for the Best International Feature Academy Award this year.
A young man in Bhutan, who lives with his overbearing grandmother, is going to school to be a teacher. He dreams of being a singer, but he has to fulfill his commitment as a teacher first. He is dispatched to a far-off land in the mountains within Bhutan called Lunana to teach a group of children. These children are in dire need of education, and their village brings out the proverbial red carpet for young Ugyen (Sherab Dorji). He is a huge influence on this town and the children within it, but like any young man his age, he is turned off by the entire situation he was thrust into, including the classroom and lack of supplies he needs to do his job. Like any teacher these days, he needs to improvise and make do with what he has and that's just what he does. The children start to accept him as their teacher and he starts to enjoy being a part of this community.
While he's teaching the children math, English and music, he also learns from them the ways of their people. He meets a young woman and develops a relationship with her. All good coming-of-age films have a good relationship angle in them. This film is no different from the rest in that regard. His skill of singing helps him bridge the gap between the young woman, the children, and the townspeople. This was a nice touch on the script.
The writer/director Pawo Choyning Dorji takes a world and its people within this world and uses familiar tropes of coming-of-age films to craft a uniquely original film. The story about a young man trying to find his place in the world isn't anything new, but from the perspective of the people of Bhutan, it works very well. The young actor who plays the lead character is very good in the role. The young woman, children, and townspeople come across as very authentic. The filmmaking throughout was very good as well. Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom kept me engaged throughout and had a great message of a man coming of age who needed some direction in his life. The script is very strong in that regard. I can see why this film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature. People should go seek out this film. It's worth your time and effort to find it. I was very glad I saw it. Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom is now available on VOD. Rating: 4.5/5
Review by Dan Skip Allen
Films about traumatic events can vary from deaths in car crashes or illnesses or other reasons. How these films differ is how the people within said film deals with the traumatic event. In the case of Here Before, it's a child that has passed on, but it's not depicted in the film why or how this has happened. All it depicts is how the mother of the child deals with this loss.
Laura (Andrea Riseborough, Possession) is a mother who lives in Northern Ireland with her husband and son. She has also lost a child named Josie. When a family moves in next door to her, she sees the little neighbor girl Megan (Niamh Dornan) has an uncanny resemblance to her lost daughter. She starts to befriend the little girl and this, in turn, starts to worry the mother of the young girl Marie (Eileen O'Higgins). She doesn't know if she is seeing things or if this little girl next door is real. Andrea Riseborough is an established actress with quite a few credits to her name. She's done various kinds of films in her career from sports biopics like Battle of the Sexes to crazy wild horror movies such as Mandy. She gives a very solid performance in this film. The trauma she deals with as a character is on par with the best performance of her career in Possession. She had a hard time dealing with this entire situation. It's not easy for her family or the family next door either. Nobody can figure out what is going on.
The writer/director of the film, Stacey Gregg, creates an atmosphere of disorientation following a concerned woman who doesn't know which way is up. This story has so many implications on the hereafter as well as childhood as a whole. What this woman is putting her family through isn't very nice and not fair at all. Not having dealt with the death of a child before, I can't put myself in her shoes, but I can understand it. The filmmaker makes that happen with the script and acting performance she gets from Riseborough.
Here Before deals with sensitive subject matter. How the writer/director gets these subjects to be depicted on screen is quite a feat. She creates drama from ominous music and quick editing. These tools lend themselves to the story perfectly. Riseborough and the other actors in the cast sell every moment of dread and confusion that is going on in the film. This is a disturbing look at trauma and loss. Here Before is now in theaters and hits VOD on February 15. Rating: 4/5
Review by Camden Ferrell
Tall Girl 2 is a sequel to the 2019 Netflix original film. It features the original cast and is helmed by director Emily Ting whose most recent movie was the 2019 comedy Go Back to China. This new movie doesn’t do much to improve on its poorly made predecessor, but it does try and take itself a little more seriously this time around.
After the events of the first movie, Jodi is now feeling confident in her school despite being abnormally tall. She is admired and popular, and she is now dating her childhood best friend. However, after she gets the lead role in the school play, she experiences new insecurities as she continues to navigate relationships with her friends and family. One of the few improvements of this sequel is that the premise goes beyond Jodi being upset about her height, and this has the potential to be great with the right script and execution. Unfortunately, the writing is almost identical in quality to the first movie. It’s full of awkward and unnatural dialogue that doesn’t reveal much about its characters. The plot is by the numbers, and there’s no unpredictability or subversion at all. It doesn’t do anything new with its plot structure, and it’s beat by beat similar to countless other movies.
As mentioned before, the original cast returns to reprise their roles. While the leading ensemble consisting of Ava Michelle, Griffin Gluck, and Sabrina Carpenter wasn’t great in the original, like most other things in this movie, the quality stays consistent. These actors have very little chemistry and don’t seem particularly invested in the story they are trying to tell.
One of the key differences with this movie is it tries to be more serious and earnest in its themes and story. This is seen in how it cheekily jabs at the first movie’s premise early on. However, this brief self-awareness doesn’t absolve it of committing the same mistakes as the original. It has real teen problems, but it doesn’t know how to work with those issues to create a compelling story or message. Tall Girl 2 is a movie that will appeal to fans of the original and not much else. It feels very similar in style and quality to its predecessor, failing to improve on many of the movie’s shortcomings the first time around. Most will find this to be an unnecessary sequel that is more or less an unpleasing way to spend an hour and a half this Valentine’s weekend. Tall Girl 2 is streaming on Netflix February 11. Rating: 1.5/5
Review by Dan Skip Allen
The Sky Is Everywhere is the latest young adult novel turned into a film. It's based on the book of the same name from author Jandy Nelson that came out back in 2010. This time around Apple TV+ gets into the young adult game. It's vastly different from a lot of other young adult novels turned big-budget films.
Lennon Walker (Grace Kaufman) is a seventeen-year-old high school student who lives in northern California. She lives with her grandmother and her sister, Bailey, until a tragedy happens and her life is turned upside down. She has to navigate a world where she has to live without her best friend and someone she loves. She tries to forget by getting involved with a boy from school Joe Fontaine (Jacques Colimon), and her family Big (Jason Segel) and Gram (Cherry Jones) who console her during a tough time. Nelson also wrote the screenplay, so she obviously has a handle on these characters, specifically Lennie, the protagonist. She goes through various phases of trauma dealing with her loss. Tucked away among the redwoods, the world she lives in is filled with beautiful colors all around her. She has a life of music and art that defines her and they are expressed very vividly throughout the film. The film is so beautiful to look at from beginning to end. The director Josephine Decker, not a big-name director, has directed a few projects in her past. The biggest name is Shirley starring Elizabeth Moss. She seems to have a grasp on the material from looking at all the various tools she uses to tell this story. Visual effects are used sometimes to express the main character's emotions. Text on the screen allows the viewer to see messages she's writing to different people. Decker has the experience to get across through all the various tools the story she's trying to tell. Working hand in hand with the writer Nelson, they do a very good job of adapting this novel to the screen
The film has a couple of subplots that run throughout it as well as the main character's arc. The subplots are woven nicely throughout the film. They aren't shoehorned in. Everything that the main character deals with is very realistic to what a real teenager would be going through. All the extraordinary things are just wrapping paper on the present that is this story and the main character. A lot of young adult novels turned into movies can be a bit melodramatic, but this one isn't. It's more authentic and character-driven. As an audience member watching this, I was completely invested in this young woman and what she is going through.
The film has various supporting characters which all add depth and continuity to the main story of the film. The entire cast does a great job supporting Kaufman's character. Kaufman is primarily known as a television actress, but this is a breakout role for and she has an upcoming role in Resurrection, a film that recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2022. She is an actress to be watched very closely in the months to come. Her star is on the rise for sure. The Sky Is Everywhere isn't your average young adult novel turned feature film. It has a style all its own. The author and filmmaker both have a grasp on this material. The result is a colorful artistic piece of cinema that defines a genre. It takes tropes that we already know and turns them into something beautiful. With a breakout performance by Kaufman and supporting performances by many others, this film works for all audiences, even an old grizzled film critic like me. The Sky Is Everywhere hits Apple TV+ on February 11. Rating: 4/5
Review by Camden Ferrell
Kat Coiro has been busy for the last few years, directing episodes of some of the most popular shows on television and even directing the upcoming She-Hulk series for Marvel. However, 2022 also brings us her first feature film in almost a decade. Marry Me is a new romantic comedy film based on Bobby Crosby’s graphic novel of the same name. While it’s nowhere near as poor as its faulty premise suggests, it still doesn’t have the chemistry needed to make its story work.
Kat and Bastian are global superstars and a musical power couple. They are promoting their new song, building up to a public wedding for an audience of millions. However, an unexpected event causes Kat to call off the wedding at the last second and impulsively marry a stranger named Charlie, a mild-mannered single dad and math teacher. Admittedly, this premise is farfetched and doesn’t initially seem to have a lot of potential. A weak premise can still be turned into a great movie with the proper writers. Unfortunately, John Rogers and Harper Dill’s screenplay doesn’t do much to improve on the premise. The dialogue is cheesy throughout, and it often lacks the laughs and charm that are necessary to carry a movie like this one. It’s far too predictable, so it needs to bring more to the table to impress audience’s who have seen this story done countless times before.
The acting is easily the best part of the movie, but it still misses the mark a little too often. The movie is led by Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. They both are known to be talented, and while they have a few cute moments together, they both seem to phone it in for this film. They’re joined by a supporting cast consisting of Sarah Silverman, Maluma, and John Bradley. All of these actors don’t do anything to elevate their scenes, and they are forgettable at best.
One of the things to note about this movie is that nothing about it is actively unpleasant, but the movie doesn’t give you much reason to care about its characters or its stakes. This ultimately feels like a passionless project that is mostly a ploy to promote Lopez and Maluma’s music. Even in that case, there is only one really good song in this movie, but everything else is passable at best. Marry Me isn’t the sweet and charming romance one would hope from a movie coming out Valentine’s weekend, but it’s the one we got anyway. Fans of rom-coms and the musicians involved might find something to enjoy in this joyless story, but most others will find themselves underwhelmed by the same overplayed romance tropes in a nearly two-hour movie. Marry Me is in theaters and streaming on Peacock February 11. Rating: 2.5/5
Review by Sean Boelman
Shonda Rhimes is one of the biggest television producers in the industry, so much so that pretty much anything she touches is sure to be a smash hit. Inventing Anna is sure to set the internet ablaze like every other Shondaland outing, even if people will be watching and talking about it for all the wrong reasons.
The series follows a journalist who investigates the story of a German immigrant who sets out to become a socialite in New York by charming the hearts of high society members and stealing their money. It’s based on a true story, but obviously has the Shonda Rhimes touch, playing out in a sensationalized way that feels more like How to Get Away With Murder than a drama inspired by real-life crime. Without a doubt the worst thing about this show is its pacing. There is no reason for this series to be nine episodes long, and for almost all of those episodes to be over an hour. It’s a trashy, melodramatic mess that goes on an unnecessary amount of tangents, and yet… it’s the type of thing you can’t stop watching. The show attempts to make the protagonist into some sort of anti-hero but absolutely fails in doing so. She’s not a likable character, and the attempts to make her endearingly flawed are futile since she’s written in such an annoying, selfish way. The best that the film is ever able to do is elicit a slight bit of pity.
The co-lead of the series doesn’t fare much better. There is a pregnancy subplot, seemingly used to make the audience feel more of a connection to the character, but it doesn’t make her feel any more human. Instead, she serves the plot of the series, only functioning to ask the questions that give the backstory and exposition.
It’s a shame that the performances here are so terrible, because the cast is actually quite talented. Julia Garner plays the lead role in a way that is so annoying that any charm the character may have had is lost on the audience. And the accent she does is atrocious, even sometimes laughable. There is at least something resembling style here, but it is so wildly inconsistent that it is frustrating. There are some glimpses of interesting things happening, but it’s only a few scenes an episode. The finale is actually the most intriguing part of the series from an artistic standpoint, but the ambitious moments stick out like a sore thumb. Inventing Anna is truly atrocious in pretty much every way, but it’s the type of bad show that you can’t help but hate watch. It’s like a massive pile-up that keeps racking up more and more carnage, it’s impossible not to stare at it in awe and bewilderment. Inventing Anna hits Netflix on February 11. All nine episodes reviewed. Rating: 2/5
Review by Sean Boelman
In February while nearing Valentine’s Day, studios and streamers release a slew of romantic comedies to capitalize on the fact that love is in the air this time of year. The Jenny Slate and Charlie Day-starring I Want You Back is significantly better than a majority of the genre’s output for years, with a fantastically funny script and a cast with extraordinarily good chemistry.
The film follows two people who, after having recently broken up with their respective partners, team up in an attempt to sabotage their exes’ new relationships. It’s a high-concept rom-com the likes of which we have seen many times before, but Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger’s script is witty and tongue-in-cheek enough to feel refreshing nevertheless. It’s also an extremely well-paced movie, which is surprising given the fact that the runtime nears two hours. Aptaker and Berger use parallel storytelling very nicely, and even though it may not be the most intricate use of the narrative device, it makes even the most conventional of the scenes in the film feel funny and suspenseful. There are some great comedic bits in the movie. Orley really knows how to use his stars’ strengths to achieve the best possible results, directing them in a way that takes the somewhat standard beats and making them hilarious. It has some laugh-out-loud moments that are really wholesome, and others that are a bit on the edgier side.
One of the biggest successes in the film is getting the audience to be invested in almost every aspect of the web of relationships. Although there is one character who is significantly less likable than the rest, that seems to be the intention, and the rest of the characters are extremely charming.
The cast of the movie is also consistently good. Although some of the more comedic-leaning moments are Charlie Day doing his usual schtick, he also gets to do something a lot more grounded for part of the film. Jenny Slate, on the other hand, isn’t really doing her usual at all. And Scott Eastwood is better than he’s ever been, playing the sweet-hearted handsome guy. The movie has a very threadbare style, but that can be expected of a mainstream romantic comedy. However, that doesn’t mean that the film is lacking in energy. The soundtrack does a great job of incorporating catchy tunes in a way that keeps the mood light and has the viewer having fun. There is an ineffable charm to I Want You Back, the simply delightful nature of the movie being just what the season calls for. It’s reminiscent of Friends with Benefits and Forgetting Sarah Marshall in the way that it is so tongue-in-cheek, and it earns its spot among those modern classics. I Want You Back hits Prime Video on February 11. Rating: 5/5
Review by Sean Boelman
After supposedly retiring from film and making a comeback, Steven Soderbergh has had one of the most robust outputs of any filmmaker working today, even if it mostly doesn’t match the quality of his early filmography. Unfortunately, Kimi may be his worst movie ever, a derivative thriller that feels more like a paranoid rant than an intriguing satire.
The film follows a tech worker who discovers evidence of a crime while analyzing audio files as part of her job. It feels like a pretty blatant rip-off of Blow Out (itself a rip-off of Blow-Up, albeit a very good one) with the technology in the story being updated for the sake of forcing the movie to feel modern and timely. There is a very clear anti-capitalist message here, but David Koepp’s script is nowhere as intelligent or insightful as it thinks it is. The Alexa stand-in lends its name to the film, but if that isn’t obvious enough, it is the flagship product of a massive tech company based in Seattle. And while it is nice to see a movie targeting the megacorporation, this is embarrassingly generic in its storytelling. The pacing of the film is all over the place too. With a runtime of less than ninety minutes, one would think that it would have to be lean storytelling, but the first half dawdles and the second half turns into disorienting madness. And we know that Soderbergh is able to direct suspense quite well, so why this is such a massive failure is beyond explanation.
Of all the filmmakers in the world, Soderbergh seemed like the one best-fit to make a movie during the pandemic. After all, even before the forced restrictions, he shot Unsane and High Flying Bird on iPhone, and they were both quite impressive. This is just bad, and he somehow created no suspense whatsoever, even during the most action-packed moments.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the movie is that the characters lack motivation. The film makes sure to emphasize the fact that the protagonist is agoraphobic, but then several of her actions just don’t make any sense. And the antagonists are outright cartoonish, some of the most ridiculously bad for the sake of it characters in recent memory. The point that Koepp is trying to make here is compelling, but the way it is done makes him seem like a kooky old man. This could have been an acting showcase for the exceptionally talented Zoë Kravitz, if only because she is the only person on screen for a majority of the runtime, but her performance here is awful. It’s probably due to no fault of her own, but she takes everything to the extreme in a way that is actively dislikable. Devin Ratray is also here… for reasons, I guess? Coming from any other filmmaker, Kimi would be unforgivable, but as a dark spot on Soderbergh’s filmography, it’s just massively disappointing. It’s an unimaginative, overly overt mess, and an absolute waste of its director’s talents. Kimi streams on HBO Max beginning February 10. Rating: 1/5 |
Archives
May 2024
Authors
All
|