Tag: Movie Reviews

A Daring Cinematic Feast: a review of ‘Bones and All’

It is in the merging of so many different genres – coming-of-age, horror, romance, and the road trip movie – that ‘Bones and All’ manages to find a space where its frightening premise can find solid ground. After all, this is essentially a love story about two cannibals and director Luca Guadignino treats them as ordinary and as complex as any other human being. He treats their love and their love story with just as much tenderness and care as if they weren’t troubled by the fact that they have to eat human flesh every now and then.

Based on the novel of the same name by Camille DeAngelis and from a script by David Kaiganich, ‘Bones and All’ never tries to explain our two lead characters’ dietary proclivities. There is a whole world and mythology that surrounds them but the film never makes it about them being – what our lead character later learns – what are known as “eaters.” We follow the story of Maren (played by Taylor Russell) as another incident causes her father and herself to leave town once again. As she is abandoned by her father and left with a cassette tape (the film is set in the 80s in rural America) narrating what he knows about her and “her condition,” she sets out to find her missing mother in a road trip of self-discovery and love.

Photo from ‘Bones and All’ Twitter

She meets another eater called Sully, played by Mark Rylance, and then later Timothee Chalamet’s Lee, who Maren finds attractive. Through these two interactions (and a few more as the movie progresses) Maren begins to understand what it means to be an eater and must now navigate growing up alone and different from everyone else.

Except she’s not alone, because Lee has asked her to stay and the two go cross-country to find Maren’s mom. In the dark, lonely, and scary world of being an eater, Maren and Lee find solace and comfort in each other.

Except they eat people.

Photo from ‘Bones and All’ Twitter

Beautifully shot by Arseni Khachaturan and with a dynamic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, ‘Bones and All’ manages to shift between tender moments of vulnerability and the frightening brutality of their hunger. Guadagnino is completely unafraid to present a confessional scene about eating someone as a tender and fragile moment for Lee, with Reznor and Ross’ musical score playing it as a sweet romantic moment for Lee and Maren to become more deeply bonded. There are scenes of utter tenderness where both Russell and Chalamet are drenched in blood. It’s incredible the dynamics that are going on in this movie. Guadagnino proves that love is so universal that we can relate to a young couple finding safety and comfort in each other even if they are man-eating cannibals. We even end up rooting for them somehow.

Symbolically, you could take this eater couple as a metaphor for any sort of othering: the fact that they are a mixed race couple, outliers or misfits, you can even turn it into a metaphor for queer relationships, or any sort of undesirable coupling (based on the majority) and the film can be a discussion point about the humanity that can be found between any two people who have genuinely found love. It can be a metaphor for children and teens that are abandoned by their parents who have to fend for themselves and must navigate the world alone with no real moral compass to tell them what is right or wrong.

Photo from ‘Bones and All’ Twitter

I prefer to take it exactly for what it is: it’s a love story about two people who eat people. A new race of beings, maybe an evolutionary step, who knows? And the film is the tragic love story of these young eaters, who want to build a life together despite their difference in appetite from the rest of society. It’s strange and weird and even grotesque at some point but in the way that it is shot and presented and performed, it’s just so beautiful and strangely touching and moving.

Russell, Chalamet, and Rylance all deliver such textured and nuanced work. These characters feel lived-in and never feel hokey. There are even scene-stealing moments from Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloe Sevigny.

Photo from ‘Bones and All’ Twitter

There’s so much to digest (pun intended) in ‘Bones and All.’ There are so many ways to interpret it but for some reason, I feel most comfortable taking it for face value. The sheer confidence of Guadagnino and his cast and crew to present this film without any sentimentality or camp makes it brimming with humanity that runs counter to dark and brutal imagery. It’s a cinematic feast that you can chew on for days and still find something to ruminate on and feel through.

My Rating:

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Bones and All is now showing in cinemas nationwide. Buy your tickets here.

November 23, 2022
The Emotional Impact of Cold-Hard Facts: a review of ‘She Said’

I came into the cinema without any knowledge on what She Said would be about. All I knew before coming in was that it was a movie about investigative journalism with Carey Mulligan as one of the leads, who is also gaining a lot of attention for her performance. What threw me for a loop was that the film was based on real events, and ‘She Said’ is the story of Jodi Kantor (played by Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan), the two journalists of The New York Times who investigated and published the article on Harvey Weinstein’s history of abuse and sexual misconducted that sparked the #MeToo movement back in 2017.

The film opens strong with Mulligan as Twohey and how she goes head-to-head with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump prior to the 2016 election. She breaks the story on Trump’s misconduct with women and how, despite the reports, Trump still manages to win the election and Twohey’s world starts to get tougher as she and her source receives death threats and the like.

Five months later and we then follow Kazan playing Jodi Kantor who is following up on a story that she picked up about sexual abuse and workplace harassment in Hollywood. As she begins following the threads of the story, it begins to resemble the Harvey Weinstein incident and she calls on Twohey to help her put the story together.

Photo from ‘She Said’ trailer

What is absolutely incredible about director Maria Schrader’s coverage of this story is how devoid of drama it is. Except for one scene that feels scripted and manipulative, a scene between Twohey and Kantor in the middle of the film where they ask each other if they wished they didn’t go through with this story, the rest of ‘She Said’ is just dealing with the facts of the case and the process by which the two journalists and their editorial board at The New York Times went about putting the story together.

Photo from ‘She Said’ trailer

If you remember strongly the Harvey Weinstein case, celebrities and actresses like Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Ashley Judd were names that were being tossed around this investigation. The film doesn’t shy away from this, representing the real people of this story from Trump, Paltrow, and McGowan to phone conversations with actors who sound very much like the people they are portraying and Ashley Judd, who appears on screen as herself. Part of the stripping down of the film’s dramatic flair, director Maria Schrader keeps most of the real-world stars as voices on a recording or on a telephone and minimizes their close-ups when they do show up (as they did with Ashley Judd). With very little tricky camera work, ‘She Said’ is focused entirely on the stories of these women, especially the women working behind the scenes, whose lives were destroyed by their interactions and engagements with Weinstein.

Photo from ‘She Said’ trailer

Except for one story, almost all the recounting of the acts of abuse and sexual misconduct were told by the actor portraying these women with no flashbacks or cutaways. It’s almost as if these are testimonials and we have to listen to them like a jury. Of the many performances of these testimonials, it is the ones by Jennifer Ehle as Laura Madden, and a spectacularly riveting monologue by Samantha Morton as Zelda Perkins that really shows the power of truth spoken aloud without the need of additional flourishes.

Schrader and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz (based on the book by Kantor and Twohey) go through the details of the two journalists’ challenges on being able to gather the evidence needed to publish their story. Through every step of their investigation, they uncover horrendous systems in place that protect men in power and silence women. Devoid of over-dramatizing scenes and story points, ‘She Said’ can seem clinical, antiseptic but the cold-hard facts of what is uncovered creates the drama on its own. I was sitting in the cinema wringing my hands and getting angrier with every new testimonial.

Who knew that facts alone could be so emotionally charged?

Photo from ‘She Said’ trailer

Very much like ‘Spotlight,’ this movie revels in the process of investigative journalism. It’s the process, not the emotions nor even the case itself, that ignites the energy of the film and amplifies its theme. What Schrader and Lenkiewicz does, to push the humanity just a bit without going too over-the-top, is to frame both Twohey and Kantor not just as courageous and determined journalists, but also as empathetic women and dedicated mothers as well. It’s these little details – from juggling parenthood and career and the way with which these women empathize with their subjects – that really underscore the issues of this film.

We know this story and we’ve read it in the news. We’ve seen how it ends but seeing the process of it, the details of the investigation, clearly defines our world for the misogynistic and patriarchal world that it was (and still is).

I hope more and more people get to see this film.

My Rating:

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She Said is now showing in cinemas nationwide. Buy your tickets here.

November 23, 2022
Whimsical and campy, ‘The School for Good and Evil’ subverts fairy tale narratives and ask you to question deeper

‘The School for Good and Evil’ presents itself as a fairy tale, complete with a narrator (by no less than Cate Blanchett), magic and mystical creatures, and an adventure centered on true love and friendship. It even goes as far as creating a world where fairy tales are true and that the stories are crafted in a mystical land where students are taught how to be good or evil so that they can create new stories to inspire the world.

While the film, directed by Paul Feig and co-written by Feig and David Magee (based on the book series of the same name by Soman Chainani), is filled to the brim with CGI-heavy moments of sword and sorcery and high fantasy, it also carries a tone that is whimsical, tongue-in-cheek even. It feels purposefully light-weight in its presentation, as if it doesn’t take itself too seriously, which may have been problematic if seen in the cinemas but watching it at home on Netflix gives it the right tonal atmosphere.

Photo: Netflix

After all, there’s never really any sense of danger to the film. The two protagonists, the best friends Sophie and Agatha (Sophia Anne Caruso and Sofia Wylie, respectively), live as outcasts in the village of Gavaldon. Touted as a witch, Agatha is almost attacked in an alleyway but is rescued by her best friend, who lives in a chaotic home with a stepmother who cares not for her and a father oblivious to her troubles. Reminiscent of other fairy tales like Cinderella for Sophie’s home environment or the fact that the two young girls like to frequent a bookshop that’s reminiscent of Belle in ‘Beauty and the Beast.’

When Sophie makes a wish to be a student in the School for Good and Evil, she and Agatha end up there and find themselves in quite a quandary: Sophie, who wishes to be a princess, is left at the School for Evil while Agatha, who didn’t want to go in the first place, is placed in the School for Good. The depictions of good and evil are very one-dimensional. They have uglification classes for the school of evil and, in the school for good, they have classes for beauty, which involves smiling and how to use it as a weapon.

Photo: Netflix

It is actually quite contrived if it weren’t for Agatha’s suspicion that something is amiss. Feig is not afraid to lay it all on thick, with big stars as the professors such as Charlize Theron as Lady Lesso, the dean of the School for Evil, and Kerry Washington as Professor Dovey, the dean of the School for Good. The two big stars, as well as Michelle Yeoh in a smaller role yet manages to pop in every scene she’s in, seem to understand the campy tone of the whole film. They are in on the joke and are having a lot of fun in the process and it amplifies the campy mood of ‘The School for Good and Evil’ but it also underscores Agatha’s complaints about the world.

Because as light and as frivolous as ‘The School for Good and Evil’ can be, it manages to question the morality of this world, the one-dimensional look into the binary of good and bad. In the process, it manages to serve as a sort of criticism against performative acts of goodness and questions deeper into how things are. It subverts the ideas of fairy tales and opens up doors to understanding the gray areas.

Photo: Netflix

While big stars like Theron, Washington, Yeoh, and Laurence Fishburne are having fun playing whimsical, it is Caruso and Wylie who are pushing the deeper thoughts of the story forward. Caruso is delightful as her portrayal of Sophie is one of utter belief in the ideology of the world of fairy tales while Wylie is the opposite, questioning everything and fighting against the facade of the things in front of her. Their chemistry grounds the film because it’s their friendship that is at the center of it all.

Yes, it’s light and easy and doesn’t take itself seriously. But that is what makes it enjoyable. It’s like a refreshing antithesis to the Harry Potter series and the seriousness of its later releases. It’s perfect for younger audiences and it’s not something I wouldn’t mind seeing more of in the future.

My Rating:

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The School for Good and Evil is now streaming on Netflix.

ALSO READ
‘The School for Good and Evil’: Q&A with Stars Sofia Wylie and Sophia Anne Caruso

October 24, 2022
MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Black Adam’ and a case for the superhero antihero film

I’m very tired of the antihero storylines. With the current global crises and seeing the world the way it is now – with an ongoing war in the Ukraine and populist presidents winning elections in so many countries – I feel that the antihero narrative in commercial and mainstream movies needs to take a step back as we need to somehow revitalize our sense of idealism and optimism. I would prefer to leave my thoughts on nihilism and cynicism to independent films. In these very challenging times, I don’t want to cheer for antiheroes in a big-budget blockbuster superhero movie.

This is why I was very skeptical after seeing the trailer of Black Adam. To take one of the most charismatic superstars like Dwayne Johnson and dress him up as (from the little I know about the Shazam comics) the villain Black Adam made me very resistant to seeing this film.

To my utter surprise, there’s a whole lot in ‘Black Adam’ that I really enjoyed. There are camp moments in the film – take note of a wonderful, short homage to a Spaghetti Western and the over-the-top super-heroic battles across the fictional city of Kahndaq – that are really the highlights of this movie. When the film leans into its comic book genre, the film is so enjoyable. Director Jaume Collet-Serra makes full use of long shots that helps create a feeling of scale for the sheer, immense power that the character Black Adam possesses. He also uses freeze frames, extreme close-ups, and other heavy special effects moments that for some reason remind me of Zack Snyder’s ‘300’ but done better because he doesn’t take it too seriously.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

It’s this camp aesthetic that really works in this film because the power levels of Black Adam are just through the roof. So when it makes attempts at seriousness – the relationship between a teenager named Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) and his mother Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), who awakens Black Adam from his slumber and Amon and Black Adam himself – are the weakest moments of the film. It doesn’t help that Sabongui is not the best and most engaging of actors but the characterisation of Amon runs contrary to the other aspect of the film that I really enjoyed.

Amon (and consequently the way Sabongui portrays him) feels very Americanized despite coming from Kahndaq, a fictional city of what appears to be of middle eastern origins (though the comics has Black Adam being of Egyptian origin). The film depicts Kahndaq as a city taken over by a criminal gang called The Intergang. And while the visual imagery is that of a war-torn middle eastern city, the people of Kahndaq speak English (with an accent) and Amon is very Americanized (as seen when his bag opens and you can see he grew up reading comic books of Wonder Woman and Superman).

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

While Black Adam resurfaces and begins to wreak havoc in Kahndaq, he speaks the languageof Kahndaq, that I can’t decipher, maybe Egyptian at the start but then quickly speaks in English despite having been asleep for 5000 years. There’s an underlying story of colonization and liberty that is at the undercurrent of this film. As Black Adam appears to be a global threat because of his power, members of the Justice Society fly to Kahndaq to stop him. This creates a wonderful discussion on the ideals of moral authority. Adrianna defends Black Adam, who has begun to take out the Intergang while protecting Amon, and throws back at Hawkman and Dr. Fate of the Justice Society and asks them where were they when the Intergang took their city and enslaved their people.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

The politics of this situation – is Black Adam good or bad, are his methods right or wrong (he is from a different time afterall and his ideas of justice are shaped by that), and what right does the Justice Society have to fly into whatever situation they deem is a threat but ignore other global calamities such as the taking of Kahndaq – creates a gray area that the film sort of explores (that very few other superhero films ever get to do like ‘Captain America: Winter Soldier’ and ‘Captain America: Civil War’). For these discussions alone – and not painting the Justice Society immediately as the good guys – makes ‘Black Adam’ refreshing and different and new.

Yes, he is an antihero and while the methods and morality that he uses are questionable, it is contextualized by the individual situation of Kahndaq and Black Adam’s own history. I was not expecting this at all and it made the film quite enjoyable for me. It’s not afraid to stay in the gray areas and if it leaned in more into its campy side, I think it would have balanced everything out completely.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

But for a comic book movie, I got plenty of great superhero battles (the visualization of Dr. Fate and Cyclone is just wonderful and thrilling to see on IMAX) and I got to see Dwayne Johnson evoke his charm without relying too much on dialogue. He’s using a completely different skill set here.

Don’t be bogged down by the weakness of its extended opening exposition. When Black Adam makes his first appearance, it’s all uphill from there. Enjoy the excessiveness and indulgences of the film, which is the campy aesthetic I wish it leaned into more heavily. There’s a lot to enjoy here, and most especially the mid-credit end scene. It got the most cheers and with good reason.

My Rating:

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Black Adam is now showing in cinemas nationwide. Buy your tickets here.

ALSO READ
Film Facts: 5 Things to Know About DC’s ‘Black Adam’ Movie

October 20, 2022
MOVIE REVIEW: More a manifesto than a movie, ‘Amsterdam’ struggles for cohesion despite its glorious cast

I was charmed by ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ and was totally floored by ‘American Hustle’ and so I’m very interested in David O. Russell’s work before I found out about his controversial working habits and problematic personal life. Despite what I know of David O. Russell behind the camera, when I saw the cast list for this latest film ‘Amsterdam,’ I was very much intrigued by the movie. I’d watch anything with Margot Robbie or Christian Bale and then you add Anna Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldana, and Robert De Niro to the list and it’s just too good to pass up.

The film opens with a tongue-in-cheek mention that the events of the movie “actually happened” and the story brings us to America in 1933 where we are introduced to Christian Bale’s one-eyed doctor and veteran of World War I Burt Berendsen and his best friend, lawyer and also WWI veteran Harold Woodsman, played by John David Washington. Burt lives in his clinic where he tends to the medical needs of war veterans and provides plastic surgery and prosthetics to cover their scars and wounds from battle. Burt meets with Harold to meet a client played by Taylor Swift. She wants Burt to perform an autopsy on her father, a retired general who is suspected of having been murdered instead of dying by natural causes as was reported.

Photo: 20th Century Studios

What unfolds is a grand conspiracy that touches upon fascism, racial discrimination, and big business. Kept light, at times almost dream-like, and an uneven touch of whimsy, ‘Amsterdam’ tries to draw out the mystery of the murder and the grandness of the conspiracy as much as it can while introducing an ever-expanding cast that includes Margot Robbie, as a French nurse that the two friends meet during WWI, Zoe Saldana, a forensic nurse, Rami Malek and Anna Taylor-Joy, who play a couple in high society that may help the two friends escape the trouble they have found themselves in, Andrea Riseborough, who plays Burt’s estranged wife, and Robert De Niro, who plays a retired general, whose connection to the deceased general may hold a clue to what is going on.

It’s actually hard to keep track of the film’s direction as, right at the midst of the premise opening up, we are then thrown into a flashback of WWI, the time when Burt is assigned to an all-black regiment of the US and meets Harold and then later, Margot Robbie’s Valerie. Broken by their injuries from the war, the three take a trip to Amsterdam where they live a life that is meant to evoke some idea of liberty – a place where they are not judged for how they live or love and are free from the ravages of war and the societal restrictions of 1918 America.

Photo: 20th Century Studios

And then it goes back into the present to continue on with the conspiracy while also juggling Burt’s own marital issues with his wife and her disapproving family and war veteran gala that Burt and Harold are very keen to stage and produce.

By keeping it humorous and odd, it gives all the star-studded cast so much room to really play and have fun with their roles – most especially for Robbie and Taylor-Joy, who seem to have a blast with their characters – but at the same time, none of the emotional beats of the film really end up landing where they should. The love story between Harold and Valerie doesn’t seem as intense or as inevitable as the story positions it, and the impending danger that the conspiracy is foreshadowing doesn’t provide any real sense of urgency.

Photo: 20th Century Studios

What happens is that we are flitting along to every scene and just watching the cast have a ball with their eccentric situations. When the elements of fascism start to play out, the idea of the Amsterdam scene becomes the counterpoint now to everything that fascism is against – that liberty and freedom to live and love the way you want – becomes the central theme of the film. By not taking any of it seriously, the film ends up not really saying much.

In fact, there’s a heavy use of narration from its three main cast and then a long-winded narration by Burt at the very end, there’s a feeling that ‘Amsterdam’ and its anti-fascist messages are more of the director’s manifesto than it is an actual movie with a grounded, solid story. And I use purposefully use the word “grounded” because after watching the movie, I did a little Google search and discovered from an article by the LA Times, that a journalist who did research and wrote a book about the events that are alluded to in the film said that “only 10% of what happens in this movie is based on fact.” He said everything else is fiction.

Photo: 20th Century Studios

While there are some really amusing moments in the movie, some that actually got me laughing out loud, and the spectacular performances from the star-studded cast, I ended up leaving the theater wondering what it was that I just saw and if there was anything deeper to this film than the monologue at the end that sort of spoon feeds the film’s message.

This is not the work of David O. Russell, who I have come to admire from the energy and urgency that he was able to infuse into ‘American Hustle.’ Sure, ‘Amsterdam’ is pretty to look at but that’s about it.

My Rating:

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Amsterdam is now showing in cinemas nationwide.

ALSO READ
Film Facts: 5 Things to Know About the Star-Studded ‘Amsterdam’ Movie

October 13, 2022
MOVIE REVIEW: The Surprising Non-Western Position of ‘Ticket to Paradise’

‘Ticket to Paradise’ has all the narrative beats, tone, and vibe reminiscent of an early 2000s rom-com, an area with which one of the lead stars, Julia Roberts, is a master of. In fact, if this was made in the 90s, Julia Roberts would have played the daughter and not the mom and it would completely make sense. But it’s now 2022 and Julia Roberts is now playing the mom and there’s a sort of full circle that’s happening here. ‘Ticket to Paradise,’ afterall, is a classic family, generational romantic comedy about divorced parents who fly to Bali to sabotage their daughter’s wedding.

The first thirty or forty minutes of the film was a little difficult for me to get into: we know very little about the characters except that Julia Robert’s Georgia Cotton and George Clooney’s David Cotton are divorced and hate each other. They even choose to live in different parts of America just to ensure they don’t accidentally bump into each other but still do for their daughter Lily, played by Kaitlyn Dever. After her graduation from law school, Lily and her best friend Wren (played by Billie Lourd) take a trip to Bali and 37 days later, Georgia and David are rushing to Bali to stop Lily from marrying a man she met on the island.

Photo: Universal Pictures

Within the first ten minutes, the premise of the story as written above plays out and while Georgia and David’s relationship is firmly established, we know very little about Lily. We are immediately positioned, as the audience, to think that Georgia and David’s calls for a truce just to work together to sabotage their daughter’s wedding is cute or funny. Naturally, my instincts are also against the wedding because my natural inclination is to believe another white, western girl falls in love with a Balinese man (though Maxime Bouttier, who plays Gede, is very charming) and drops her privileged life for an exotic adventure in Asia. It also doesn’t help that the constant bickering of Georgia and David highlights toxic masculine behaviour – interrupting Georgia as she speaks, claiming ownership of ideas that Georgia just mentions, etc – that despite all of Clooney’s charms, it really irks me that his character is the typical toxic man.

Photo: Universal Pictures

Everything about the premise of the first thirty minutes just speaks of Western, imperialist attitudes that had me resisting the movie from the get-go. I didn’t like David nor did I have a good impression of Lily and I was so scared that they were going to make Bali feel exotic and fetishize it; turn the culture and their customs into a joke.

But the moment the movie is in full swing, as Georgia and David begin to put their plans of sabotaging the wedding into action, I started to notice something quite surprising and refreshing. The way ‘Ticket to Paradise’ frames the Balinese culture was done with so much love and respect. Never did they make a joke out of anything that represented Balinese. In fact, as the narrative unfolds, it positions the Balinese culture as sort of superior to western ideals as represented by both Georgia and David. The concept of the tight-knit Asian family is put in full display which perfectly contrasts the lack of communication between David, Georgia, and Lily. Lily’s own decision to live in Bali stems from a need to harmonize with herself and she can do this in the island with Gede and it reflects back on David and Georgia’s own failures in their relationship, which is saddled with the pressures of western ideas of success.

Photo: Universal Pictures

There’s even a subtle touch of the use of the Balinese language. Every time Georgia and David are in a scene and people speak in Indonesian, there are no subtitles. There’s only one scene where this happens but it is used narratively to underline David’s mistake. Another scene involves Gede and his parents having a discussion about the wedding but there are no Americans in the scene and what they talk about, once again, shows off the beautiful family relationship of this Balinese family.

Photo: Universal Pictures

Never in the movie do I feel that there is a joke being made at the expense of the Asians. In fact, the movie subversively puts forward the notion that Georgia and David are the villains of the film despite its tone and genre. The bait and switch occurs because Georgia and David are played by Julia Roberts and George Clooney, both huge global superstars. Of course, coming in you’d think they were the heroes of the story. That mere fact is why I was resisting the film at the start but the moment the true nature of the movie was revealed, I began to enjoy it.

It’s a classic family romantic comedy with a lot of important things to say – about marriage and parenting and life – and it surprised me at how it positions the Balinese culture as something ideal, if not more ideal, than those of western values.

My Rating:

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Ticket to Paradise is now showing in cinemas nationwide. Buy your tickets here.

October 6, 2022
MOVIE REVIEW: ‘The Woman King’ and how it reimagines Africa’s past for a new global cinematic audience

As a person who grew up in the 80s and 90s watching Hollywood movies, there’s something magical and powerful about watching a film set in Africa, whose lead characters are African women, who command so much respect and admiration. Growing up, my idea of Africa had been shaped by the news and by Hollywood and it wasn’t until ‘Black Panther’ that I began to allow myself to think of Africa in a different light. The fact that it took producers Maria Bello, Cathy Schulman, and Viola Davis five years to get the movie greenlit by a major studio and only after the success of the MCU movie changed the way Hollywood would tell stories about Africa in a mainstream setting.

The story, about a general of an elite army of women warriors, is based on true accounts. The Agojie served as the inspiration for the women warriors the Dora Milaje of ‘Black Panther’ and were the elite forces of the king of the kingdom of Dahomey, which really existed for around 300 years. The fictional general, Nanisca (played by Viola Davis) must train a new generation of Agojie warriors while observing how the war between African kingdoms was fueled by the slave trade brought in by the Europeans. As Nanisca discusses geopolitics with her king, King Ghezo (a real-life figure and played with great charisma by John Boyega), Nawi (a new recruit and played with great depth and power by Thuso Mbedu) learns the ways of the Agojie.

Photo: Columbia Pictures

If anything, ‘The Woman King’ is a straight-up epic action film, which many critics have likened to films like ‘Gladiator’ or ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ except with black women. There is ample time spent to establish the setting of this story – West Africa in 1823 – and impressing upon us the complex relationships between Nanisca and King Ghezo and Nanisca and the Agojie, most notably her closest friend Amenza (played by Sheila Atim). Nawi befriends her other new recruits as well as the veteran warrior Izogie (played by a scene-stealing Lashana Lynch) as they prepare for war with the Oyo Empire, who has been capturing the Dahomey people to sell as slaves to the Europeans.

Photo: Columbia Pictures

There’s a good mix of story, action sequences, and just a general feast of the visual imagery of a prosperous African kingdom and a band of highly respected and feared warrior women. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it before on the big screen and I was just sitting in my seat in the movie theater transfixed to the screen and enjoying every minute of it.

The film never strays away from the issues of women – sexual assault, oppression, forced marriages – and it’s great to see the women fight back in such a ruthless and brutal manner that was so befitting of its time period. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood, who had directed ‘Old Guard,’ does an amazing job at balancing both the emotional elements of the story (that Davis, Mbedu, and Lynch have moments that can really pull at the heartstrings even if this is an action film through and through) and does splendid coverage of the battle sequences. You see the power and the speed of the movements. It’s beautiful in its ferocity.

Photo: Columbia Pictures

What it also manages to put into perspective is how the Europeans and the Americans have pit the African nations against each other by trading guns and wealth in exchange for African lives in the form of slaves. While there are historical inaccuracies depicted in the film regarding King Ghezo’s thoughts about slavery, what the film positions is that what has happened in the past was a travesty with unimaginable consequences. It resonates even until the present day as we see the sort of racial discrimination that is still happening in the US and for the mere fact that depictions of Africans like it has in the films ‘Black Panther’ and ‘The Woman King’ are very few and far between (and if there are, not as commercially available).

Photo: Columbia Pictures

Representation matters because what we see in the cinema (or on the news) really becomes our only window to imagine what the rest of the world would look like or feel like. Without films like this, we’d always think of Africa as a struggling continent that needs “the white man’s help” even though history has told us that the west came and turned the continent over its head for its resources. While ‘Black Panther’ can help us imagine what an Africa undisturbed by Western imperialism could look like, ‘The Woman King’ can help us imagine what Africa may have been like before France colonized the Dahomey kingdom in 1863.

There are no white saviours in this story. And while this is a story about slavery, it’s not finding entertainment in the victimization of the African people but celebrating their fight against it. This is Africa – and African women – put front and center and if this is the trend of the kind of movies we will have moving forward then I’m so excited to see what other films we will get to see after this.

My Rating:

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The Woman King is now showing in cinemas nationwide. Buy your tickets here.

October 6, 2022
Surprising at every turn, ‘Decision to Leave’ masterfully merges the genres of the crime thriller and romance

The way that director Park Chan-wook plays around with genre conventions in his latest movie, ‘Decision to Leave’ shows off his mastery of the medium of film. The film is equal parts a crime thriller as it is also a stunning romantic drama but is also loaded with a certain dead-pan, dry sense of humour that is filled with irony and even cynicism. With great use of brisk and flashy editing techniques that makes the 138-minute running time fly by unnoticed, stunning cinematography that plays with your head with its unusual framing and gorgeous lighting, and a script never fails to twist and turn in surprising ways, Park Chan-wook delivers another mind-blowing experience at the cinema.

While other critics have said this is not on the same level as his previous works like ‘The Handmaiden’ or ‘Oldboy’ and while I can see where they are coming from, even his lesser work is better than most filmmakers at their best.

‘Decision to Leave’ is a crime thriller about a police detective who falls in love with the widow of a man who fell off a mountain while mountain climbing. As Hae-joon (Park Hae Il), the police detective, investigates the cause of death, he begins to obsess over Seo-rae (Tang Wei), the Chinese widow of the fallen mountain climber as he discovers that she was a victim of domestic abuse and her marriage to the victim may have been one of convenience. From widow to prime suspect, Hae-joon finds himself attracted to Seo-rae, even though he’s married.

Photo: Decision to Leave trailer

At every turn, the film jumps back and forth between a murder mystery and a dark love story. Director Park Chan-wook masterfully uses match cuts and jump cuts to play with time as Hae-joon’s affections for her builds up and gets stronger through the investigation. There’s a terrific scene where the detective is watching the widow with a pair of binoculars as she is working and in a sudden cut, he is in the room with her, unseen, and is close enough to touch. Through Park’s direction, Hae-joon is present in Seo-rae’s day-to-day affairs through his imagination, or maybe it’s Seo-rae who is present in all of Hae-joon’s thoughts.

What’s interesting about this film is that, while mixing the genre of crime thriller and romance, the film never attempts to pass judgment on its characters. Yes, Hae-joon is committing some level of infidelity, though they never consummate it. In fact, his wife Jung-an (Lee Jung-hyun) is aware that they are not in love but she’s committed to the marriage nonetheless.

Photo: Decision to Leave trailer

What it paints is a picture of a policeman who is only passionate about his work – he has a wall filled with photos of the cases he has yet to solve, which may be the cause of his insomnia – and maybe that’s also the reason why he seems infatuated with Seo-rae. She’s the job. Is she a killer or is she a victim herself? And what will happen now that Seo-rae seems very much open to the affections of the detective?

As the story unfolds, we become witnesses to a dark and dangerous aspect of love – of its capacity to blur the lines between what is right and wrong and to muddle our priorities and our own well-being – and that when framed within the context of crime and murder, love leaves no space for justice. Like this movie and story beats that push it forward, love is merciless in how it makes demands from us all.

Photo: Decision to Leave trailer

The film’s tone is dark and foreboding – there’s very little joy in this love story – but it is also oddly comedic when taken as a whole. The ending is ironic, which is the natural state of the world, according to screenwriting guru Robert McKee, and it’s why I find that there’s a dark humour to this film. The way with which Seo-rae (through the wonderfully layered and nuanced performance by Tang Wei) is so resolute in her choices, her total dedication to the decisions that she makes and the way by which Park Hae-il embodies the stoic Hae-joon, where he almost seems like an involuntary agent in this farce, that I couldn’t help but smile at the end of the film. I didn’t like these characters and it was such a sordid and strange situation to dramatize but I couldn’t stop watching. The acting was impeccable, the direction was so masterful, and by the end of it, I was just swept away by all these thoughts about how merciless and demanding love can be.

It’s not as explosive as ‘The Handmaiden’ nor is it as shocking as ‘Oldboy’ but ‘Decision to Leave’ will stay in my head for a very long time.

My Rating:

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Decision to Leave is now in cinemas nationwide. Buy your tickets here.
Homestream image from the TIFF website.

September 29, 2022
Frightening by Overindulgence: a review of ‘Smile’

Everything scary about director Parker Finn’s ‘Smile’ is in excess: the camera work, the musical score, and sound design, the jump scares, the slow-burn exposition. Considering this is Finn’s directorial debut, he shows a lot of promise in his understanding of how to frame a sequence and how to create tension and to elicit dread and fear but what he now needs to learn is restraint.

‘Smile’ is about a psychiatrist, Dr. Rose Cotter, who meets a patient suffering from a paranoid delusion about a sinister entity that plays tricks on her mind and threatens her with her own death. During their first session, Rose witnesses the patient kill herself, and what she diagnosed as a paranoid delusion turns out to be very true and now this being is haunting her. In the midst of determining what’s real and what’s fantasy, Rose begins to unravel and her own past traumas return.

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

The film is long, running at almost two hours, and while there’s a lot of story to cover – Rose’s past traumas and how it has affected her present-day life, how the hauntings of this entity are affecting her relationships, the formulaic story point of her uncovering the history of this malevolent spirit – it still could have been shorter if the director, who also wrote the screenplay, didn’t draw out all the scary moments of the film.

Oftentimes, the point has been made but instead of moving further into the story, he’ll add another scary moment, as if he’s trying to reach a quota. It’s relentless and it gets exhausting at some point as it starts to feel repetitive.

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

And it’s a shame because there’s a lot of good filmmaking involved in ‘Smile.’ There’s a really good use of extreme close-ups on the face of Sosie Bacon, who plays Rose, and we get a very intimate view of her character’s unraveling. It creates a sense of claustrophobia, where, as the audience, you want the medium shot or a long shot just so that you can see the extent of the danger that she’s in. There’s a good interplay of silence and sudden loud noises, of a vibrant musical score that really amps up the tension of the scenes. If these elements were used sparingly, it would have a stronger effect on the movie as it paces us along with the narrative.

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Instead, as it keeps coming over and over again, we stop focusing on the story and just psych ourselves up for another scary moment.

Interestingly enough, the film uses trauma and mental health as the fulcrum by which the whole story operates on. While a lot of psychological thrillers or even psychological horror films used mental health as a reason for the death and destruction, in ‘Smile’ it becomes both a weapon and, maybe, a path to salvation. Discussions about mental health are always welcomed, especially when it’s done correctly, but to use it in this horror film, and in such a blatant way, somehow reduces the supernatural aspect of the film by quite a bit.

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

What makes the supernatural so scary is how mysterious and unscientific it is and can be, and by framing this creature’s motives and processes through mental health makes it feel less believable and more made up than it already is.

There are a lot of good things in the film – use of close-ups, use of crazy camera angles to show the growing deterioration of Rose’s mental health, excellent mix of quiet moments and loud scoring and sound design to amplify a mood – but all these individual elements don’t really add up to a strong horror film. It’s fun to watch with friends for a laugh but it’s not going to stay with you like other horror movies.

My Rating:

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Smile is now in cinemas nationwide. Buy your tickets here.

September 28, 2022
MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ is telling us to worry and that nothing is what it seems

From its opening scene, Don’t Worry Darling is already telling you something is wrong with this picture. And it’s a happy moment: the film begins with a wild, drunken revelry between three couples in what seems to be an image of the ideal 60s American life. They are drinking, dancing, teasing each other. They are young and beautiful and seemingly madly in love with their respective partners. In fact, our leads Alice and Jack (Florence Pugh and Harry Styles) can’t seem to get enough of each other, kissing and having sex at every opportunity. But something is off and Alice is beginning to take notice.

The filmmaking, with Olivia Wilde in the director’s chair, is visceral and luscious – from its cinematography, blocking, choice of musical score, and the performances of the majority of the cast – and gives you a building momentum of dread. Something is very wrong in this picture-perfect representation of the American dream. Every so often, there’s an earthquake and the women react almost by reflex in ensuring their drinks stay stable and nothing falls to the floor. The men leave for work in an almost synchronised exit in their shiny Cadillacs or whatever fancy car model they have in that era. The musical score of John Powell is intricate as it is eerie. Its haunting melodies are created by vocals and even rhythmic breaths, sometimes a drone sound of fuzzed bass or a sudden explosion of violent strings. It’s intrusive. It punctures the visuals and it really gets you going. Oftentimes, the score is designed so that you think it’s diegetic, that it is part of the scene and then you realise it isn’t and it adds to the atmosphere.

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Wilde does an amazing job at instilling a sense of dread and danger in every moment of ‘Don’t Worry Darling,’ subverting the whole idea of the ideal 60s concept of Americana – the white picket fences, suburbia, the glamorous 60s – but Wilde ends up showing how hollow it really was; that it is nothing more than a frightening veneer covering up something dark and twisted and horrible.

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

The narrative unfolds like a slow-burn horror film, with moments of genuine weirdness that remind you something is amiss. From the get-go, you know this film is centered around the issues of women. This time frame positions women as the support system of the men as they go through their daily work. We know this is sexist, that this world is sexist, and just like Alice, we start to question the very fabric of this world’s reality. What is this Victory Project that the men are working on? Who is Frank (played by Chris Pine), this charming figure who leads this community and everyone seems to be so enamored with? What will happen to this couple as Alice becomes more and more certain something is wrong as Jack seems to be climbing the ladder to success?

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

The feminist themes are apparent. The film explores and dramatizes the idea of control, of gaslighting, and questioning the role of women in a marriage and in society. It can feel heavy-handed as the film is centered mainly through Alice’s point-of-view and this is all that she sees but it’s interwoven so intricately into the entire concept of the movie that I don’t mind it. These are issues that are still relevant to this very day and age.

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Florence Pugh channels her character from ‘Midsommar’ and then takes it to a different level in ‘Don’t Worry Darling.’ She’s a wonderful anchor for this movie as she can make this sense of paranoia into something so palpable and it makes her reactions so believable. In a way, she plays off so well with Olivia Wilde, who plays an exuberant neighbour, someone who is completely sold into this world; and also with Gemma Chan, who plays the wife of Frank, who contrasts the two women through stillness and silence. These three women show off a range of layers in various ways that it’s great to see them work. It layers the movie wonderfully by showing off a dynamic range of women characters.

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

And for the men, it’s Chris Pine who steals the show. As mentioned above, he’s magnetic and charming, maintaining a hint of the sinister behind an easy smile while expertly delivering stirring monologues that, when you really think about it, says nothing specific or substantial at all. This adds to the mystery that the film is working towards.

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

And the big reveal is my only real gripe in ‘Don’t Worry Darling.’ Once uncovered, there’s an element of it not being equivalent to the build-up that happened. It’s a bit mundane, maybe even a little cliche. The big revelation is not as clever as it could have been. The experience that you get through only to find out that it’s that is a bit of a letdown for me. There’s so much creativity and imagination in the first hour and a half that the ending feels like they ran out of steam.

But it’s a tiny gripe since the overall experience of watching this film is so good that I can forgive the banality of its ending.

My Rating:

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Don’t Worry Darling arrives in cinemas nationwide this September 28. Buy your tickets here.

September 27, 2022