Film Comments 2024: Man Bits

 

Film Comments 2024: MAN BITS

Toxic masculinity, then:

The other body horror concerned with gender, Steven Boyle’s ‘The Demon Disorder’ will in no way knock ‘The Substance’ off its perch of the moment but it boasts equally impressive effects, however briefly by comparison. The disorder is unhappy masculinity, and the demon is mental illness. Three contentious brothers must come together to battle both. With rough-edged machismo and a tone of melancholy and tragedy, and with a nod at farce (Shit! The cops are at the door!), it may have better characters than ‘The Substance’ but it’s nowhere near as memorable or striking. As enjoyably minor as it is, there is a sense it could have achieved much more.

It was up to Sean Durkin’s ‘The Iron Claw’ to really give the kicker to the fraternal tragedy. By the ending’s heartbreaker lines, Zac Efron’s performance had shown itself to be stealthily accumulating some impressive work. And when you have this kind of repeat heartbreak, it’s a pattern not a tragedy. 

A toxic scenario rather than fraternity in Isaac Ezban’s ‘Parvulos’. Three brothers trying to survive a zombie apocalypse on their own: the young actors give it all; the aesthetic is so washed out it’s often black and white; there’s some nice casual build-up, but it’s all increasingly a little bitty. You can tell it is heartfelt, which seems to make for a blindspot to its deficiencies, but it meanders along long enough for the audience to notice.  The aesthetic and the central horror of potential starvation do a lot to make this memorable, but if you’re bored of zombies this won’t change your mind.

Edward Berger’s ‘Conclave’ centred on a toxic brotherhood of priests, concerned only with infighting and the political machinations of becoming the next pope. Berger pulled back on the pyrotechnics of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ but the set design, framing and editing were no less impressive, getting out of the way of a bunch of superlative old guard actors. It was a film that accented age by allowing a lot of acting with nasal breathing on the sound design, along with a lot of small gestures and enjoyable conniving. The lockdown claustrophobia of the conclave acted as a decent metaphor for the insular nature of religious heads as they bickered over something that would define entire populations’ Faith whilst not knowing the outside world. Brilliant casting too: all Isabella Rosellini has to do is lurk with a few devastating lines up her sleeve to steal the show.

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ ‘Heretic’ tapped into a quite zeitgeisty horror of mansplaining. Great performances all round, a little genre play and never losing its suspense although very talky.

Todd Phillips’ ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ came across as a response to the toxic fanboys that his preceding ‘Joker’ attracted. You waited throughout the film for Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix – a very canny actor) to find his anarchic-terrorist, villainous, anti-hero self, but the film thwarts at every turn, leaving him just a broken man. Hell, Phillips stokes up the desire to see him let loose and teach those abusive guards a lesson. It’s the introduction of starfucker Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) that lights the touchpaper, but the prison set is paramount and I inescapable, and Fleck is trapped by his own reputation and mental health issues. When I first heard this was to be a musical, I thought the numbers were to be an extension of Joker’s unpredictable craziness, but Phillips has a different agenda, making them melancholic expressions of Fleck and Quinzel’s romantic delusion. And the end stroke only clarifies the distance between the real and superhero world for such a perpetrator in, the coda of the reality of aspiring to be such a character or in his cult. A much hated film, it seems, but it withstands post-mortem dissection. But then the original was not so interested in being what you expected either, however misinterpreted it was by some. ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ is a film that will surely grow in reputation and reconsideration over time.

When it came to straightforward action heroics and super-violence, Dev Patel’s ‘Monkey man’ mashed-up ‘John Wick’ with ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ with very enjoyable results. A little social conscience, melancholy and a style went a long way.

For more mindless excess, Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s ‘Kill’ was a riot, starting with ten minutes of cliché before getting to the train and setting things off; and then dropping the title midway and saying You thought that was brutal before? The distinguishing feature that set it apart was that this train-bound actioner delivered all its brutality whilst humanising its bad guys and dehumanising its hero, all with Bollywood sentiment distracting.

Competing for the most despondent film of the year were ‘All of Us Strangers’, and ‘I Saw the TV Glow’. Both had moods and vibes to get lost in, both overcome by their own sadness and melancholy.

With ‘All of Us Strangers’, Andrew Haigh repurposes the novel ‘The Strangers’ by Taichi Yamada (adapted previous by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s as‘The Discarnates’) to plunge deeply into one man’s isolation. Adam (Andrew Scott) is a writer, so he has lots of time to be lonely in an apartment block which is apparently occupied only by another lonely man. It’s all about unresolved grief and trauma: it would seem that Adam hasn’t truly been able to move on from losing his parents as a bullied gay child, and he spends his time between ghosts and romancing Harry (Paul Mescal). ("It's okay, it happened a long time ago." "Yeah, I don't think that matters.") Andrew Scott is the kind of actor where you can see the cogs working when he’s alone, but the interactions he has with his parents’ ghosts are excellent. Scott, Clare Foy, Jamie Bell and Mescal are all up to investing the premise with the emotional possibilities that only the fantastical can reach. It builds a lot of affecting resonance, has a lush ambience and ultimately leaves him more alone in the universe than ever. And no matter how much Frankie Goes to Hollywood might try to cover it up, there’s the feeling that cruel moves have been made with a resolution that might stick in the craw.

Jane Schoenbrun’s ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ is a similarly ruthless-melancholic portrayal of one man’s forlornness, achingly sympathetic, dressed up in neon and a killer indie rock-pop soundtrack. Like Schoenbrun’s ‘We’re All Going to the World’s Fair’, it’s been thrown in with the horror pot and yet it’s far more amorphous than that, despite having some decidedly Lynchian moments. Our protagonist Owen (Justice Smith, covering a wide range of ages) barely even starts in life, barely recognises his own repression, is adrift. As a kid, his only friend is an older girl obviously going through her own identity struggle. The film is good at the brightness, rootlessness and uncanniness of adolescence, of showing how fandom grounds you, guides you as you discover yourself. It also takes a moment to show how those things we loved as youths probably weren’t as good and poignant as remembered. In this too, there’s a tragedy as we are left with Owen incessantly apologising to an inattentive world of inane distractions. It’s a raw conclusion that speaks of truth and empathy rather than cruelty, and the accumulative effect is an unusual gut-punch. If the film works only on its own wavelength, it’s defiantly obvious that is what it wants.

Hirokazu Koreeda’s ‘Monster’ was a far less abstract evocation of troubled coming-of-age, benefitting from shuffled narrative perspectives. Koreeda is a master of empathy, of emotional minutiae, revealing and changing as it unparcels itself. If the ending seems a little overly-contrived and, yes, cruel, that is nevertheless in keeping with the far more openly weepy ambitions. Surely a result of Yûji Sakamoto’s script, for Koreeda’s own endings tend to hinge on far more subtlety, although he filters here through ambiguity. It’s almost outdated in its conclusion. It’s beautifully told, has much to reveal without histrionics and maintains Koreeda’s reputation as a major and reliable dramatist.

Sean Wang’s ‘Didi’ was a more straightforward bildungsroman, but as a tale of one boy’s baby steps to maturity, there was plenty to painfully relate to. 

Matteo Garrone’s ‘Io Capitano’ ostensibly posited a warning about the dangers of striking out on your own, even about following your dreams – its Senegalese teenagers only want to leave Dakar for the pop life of Europe and run away for a mythical Italy. But the dangers and peril of migration start more-or-less as soon as they venture out, defying the warnings of their family. It is not as heartbreaking as ‘The Golden Dream’, and indeed Garrone presentation is a little too smooth, even allowing for a little flight of fantasy, but heartbreak is not the aim of this migration drama. Rather is it centred on the resilience and maturing of our protagonist Seydou, the goal being his trials from dreaming adolescence to scarred development through the horrors of migration and a predatory adult world. It is the performance of non-profession Seydou Starr that holds the film together, fluctuation between vulnerability and growing assurance. The final shot is about his self-realisation that he can accomplish what’s necessary against the odds. Even if there are to be new trials and horrors in the machinery of Italian migration, the film says, let’s just allow him his moment.

Warwick Thornton’s ‘The New Boy’ was awash with pretty outback visuals, the kind to get lost in. The new boy (Aswan Read) is an aboriginal nine-year-old, taken to an orphanage where the native ways are being “educated” out of the other boys by a renegade but well-meaning nun. He’s quite happy acting on his own interpretation of the symbols he sees, of being an outsider. Read is as comfortably insular as Cate Blanchett is brittle and frantically improvising to keep her autonomy and the safety of the boys, even as her Faith is undermining their identity. There are even moments where her desperation complements farce. After a striking opening with some violence, a calm, sunbaked ambience set is, dissolving the throughline of mysticism and the anxiety of Faith. It makes a somewhat sudden bid for thematic exclamation and tragedy for the end – the more insidious harm caused by colonialism and religion – but it is the ethereal nature that will stay strongest in the memory.

And from people struggling with identity and growing up to a character that is fully accepting of his lot, that chooses peaceful routine. Wim Wender’s ‘Perfect Days’ is one of those films that feels decidedly minor and wholly life-affirming at the same time, the kind of low-key ambience that puts your entire existence in perspective just by advocating for tiny moments. Hirayama spends his time between cleaning impressive Tokyo toilets, listening to rock classics and smiling to himself. Kôji Yakusho as Hirayama is delicious, happy to spend the film not talking and just soaking it all in – it’s a long time before we even know if he can talk. Even when some drama disturbs this calm, there’s no trauma; there may be tears but there’s no devastation. Whatever his past – and perhaps the brief interaction with his sister implies something difficult – he has reached a place where he is consistently kind and at the edges, just as he like it. It is a film about living life rather than a story, and much like Jarmusch’s ‘Paterson’, the apparent lack of Big Drama should not be mistaken for insignificance or inconsequence. We may conjecture what brought Hirayama to this place – maybe nothing at all – but there is no doubt it is exactly where he wants to be. Magnificent music taste, too.

To men that were far more discontent:

Alexander Payne’s ‘The Holdovers’ was far more narratively conventional. As a recreation of beloved films from the Seventies, it was every bit astute as homage as a Ti West horror. Kudos to the trailer for capturing that exact spirit. So you knew what you were getting, but the performances and writing were uniformly assured – after all, you have Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph –and it proved a nice warm and comforting drama.

Cord Jefferson’s ‘American Fiction’ also housed many excellent performances – Sterling K. Browning stood out as the estranged brother – but was far more tonally unbalanced between its impressive family drama and a far broader satire on the publishing industry. The moment where Jeffrey Wright spoke to his characters as he was writing them was a highlight, but the film is never quite as inventive again.

Film comments 2024: Lady parts

 

Film comments 2024: Lady parts

For films that talked about lady parts, there was none moreso than Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘Poor Things’.  If at first it seemed dangerously close to a male fantasy of creating and maltreating a child-woman, riffing on ‘Frankenstein’ and classic picaresque, it soon became apparent that this is not a ‘Weird Science’ fantasy but more musing on nature and nurture. Ditching the unreliable narrator element of Alasdair Gray’s novel, among other aspects, it offered a romp through the picaresque – also overlong, which is a feature of the form – with a feminist slant. Although I had friends that thought Emma Stone was mostly just over-acting instead of good – which I didn’t wholly agree with – there was much to the aesthetic and execution that was undeniably great, a full feast.  

And from “Goth ‘Barbie’” to “Gore ‘Barbie’”, Coralie Fargeat’s ‘The Substance’ proved to be the essential winning shock to the year’s worthy cinema. It is true that I couldn’t help but have reservations as I had with Fargeat’s debut ‘Revenge’ – what I saw as a certain carelessness with detail that shortchanged all that was good – but there was no denying its triumph of being a crossover body-horror success with scrungy B-movie basis and A-movie gloss. 

Zelda Williams’ ‘Lisa Frankenstein’ also played with body horror and female perspective, but it was ultimately an airless warm-and-fuzzy Eighties homage rather than insightful (you’d have to go to ‘I saw the TV Glow’ for a homage with a real emotional charge).

 And body-horror was also a feature of female expression in Rose Glass’ ‘Love Lies Bleeding’, but that was just one Tokyo Drift that its erotic thriller basis took, having already integrated an ugly Ed Harris mullet, buff lesbian bodybuilding, drugs, modern American Noir and Gothic, obsession, and moments of superviolence. Its genre play and overcooked ingredients all held together successfully by pure vibe, with a finale akin to ‘The Substance’. But here, the feeling was that it got crazier and more surreal as things heated up and desperation sets in.

Certainly it was a more successful Coen-esque potboiler than Ethan Coen’s own ‘Drive-Away Dolls’, which was cartoonish to the point of diverting-without-substance. It shared a similar premise of two women in love on the wrong side of the law, and I enjoyed it more than most, sensing from the start that it wasn’t going to need much investment, but it melted away where ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ gathered more respect in retrospect.

Similarly, ‘Bottoms’ didn’t quite hit the nerve of Emma Seligman’s previously delicious ‘Shiva Baby’, however spiky it was, mostly because it ultimately turned to a more conventional mode, forsaking much of its edginess and satirisation of the high school genre to something predictable.

Like ‘The Substance’, Ozgood Perkins’ ‘Longlegs’ was another film that I felt out of step with the general consensus. It was all centred on the trauma of Agent Lee Harker (an appealingly offbeat Maika Monroe) … to a contrived degree. Brilliantly directed but upon reflection, I was unconvinced, excellent direction in my book requiring attention to details that I felt ‘Longlegs’ lacked. Even if it absorbed a full throttle Nicolas Cage performance without losing focus, there were too many non sequiturs and an underachieving finale.

As often happens, two similar genre pieces came out around the same time; this time there were a couple of nunsploitation horrors. ‘The First Omen’ proved surprisingly stylish and better than expected although it ended up petering out. Needed more convoluted death set-pieces. ‘

'Immaculate’ took the opposite approach, apparently just shrugging and deciding, “Fuck it! Let’s go bonkers for no reason for the last act.” And horror fans were sated at the outrageousness and bad taste.Looks good, swiftly jogs through its predictable beats (oh, “catacombs” you say?), has a series of knowing performances and Sydney Sweeney gives it her all, from piousness to mania. Gleefully goes through its tropes and archetypes until revealing itself to be an entertaining slice of schlock. Again, for religion, a woman’s body is the battleground and ornate ceremony is the curtain of respectability. Moving through nunsploitation, superficial jump-scare horror, a pretence of po-facedness, nightmare sequences, a little mad scientist and Final Girl action, it’s the final movement that delivers its true worth. Horror fans will be rewarded the wait and left smiling.

Ti West’s ‘MaXXXine’ ended the Pearl & Maxine trilogy with the least surprising, least satisfying instalment. ‘Pearl’ had promised something that would make this trilogy a modern horror classic, but it turned out all the dangerous stuff was already used up and the narcissism that made Maxine such a promising horror narcissist-sociopath was subsumed under an admittedly enjoyable Eighties-and-giallo recreation but an average conclusion.

Rather, it was JT Mollner’s ‘Strange Darling’ that offered up the danger. Told in six chapters but out of order, which means we get sensory and action overload up front before setting in for long two-hander flirting – “Are you a serial killer?” And then the revelations… Willa Fitzgerald is exceptional with Kyle Gallner more than her match. The 35mm thriller colour scheme, the abrasive then seductive sound design, the dialogue, the hints of something retro, all go to make this smart, fun, funny, upsetting but ultimately a hugely entertaining thrill ride with a little something to say about gender roles. Even makes room for making breakfast being a highlight.

While ‘Strange Darling’ was strictly rollercoaster genre fare and therefore one step removed from reality, a film like Elric Kane’s ‘The Dead Thing’ offered up a more a nuanced inquiry into modern feminine identity. It’s true that many didn’t think this gelled and just bored, but from the languid pace I found an interesting ghost story about the modern malaise of urban hook-up culture. Blu Hunt gives an assured turn as a woman who turns to fleeting sexual encounters to alleviate her dislocation and depression, leading to lust-motivated hauntings. Putting all-encompassing desire at the forefront of motivation gives this its quirk and the atmosphere is of a dreamy urban ambience.

Emma Benestan’s ‘Animale’ had another fascinating female character: she’s a bull runner that isn’t butch or competing with the machismo, but just trying to be a part of what she sees and wants. It's the slow burn that draws you in with Oulaya Amamra’s soft-and-tough performance riveting from the start. The measured world-building allows the etching of the community and character to soak in. If it ends up being more obvious than promised, not realising that it need not be, it is nevertheless fascinating, exhibiting a sure hand and sense of place and culture in the Carmague region bull running context. And what to do with a bull running woman, eh men?

Michael Sarnoski’s ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’, ‘Broken Bird’ and ‘Magpie’  all offered interesting female leads, if not quite wholly successful: the first replacing action with the maudlin; the second having tonal problems until reaching a decent Gothic finale; the last reaching only Get-‘em-girl! cliches. And there was plenty of Final Girl Kick Ass action from the likes of ‘Azrael’ and ‘The Bitter Taste’ , but even better were the historical revenge dramas ‘The Last Ashes’ and even Stone Age ‘Outof Darkness’ that delivered more tricksy and thoughtful contemplations on female violence.

But it was ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max saga’ that delivered the full-throttle raw and thoughtful female-led drama, despite stretching across Furiosa’s coming-of-age. In fact, that this and ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ both rage against toxic masculinity whilst delivering the very petrolhead action you came for are their exemplary achievements. 

But it was ‘Smile2’ that proved the surprise in its slippery structure, devotion to failing reality and empathic examination of celebrity. Its smarts and nuance meant it convinced me on the subject far more than ‘The Substance’: not as delirious or delightful, but there was proper meat on the bone.

But it was Pascal Plante’s ‘Red Rooms’ that felt truly dangerous. There are films where you feel you’ve gone deep in the hole, where you feel you might have been where you shouldn’t, and this is one of them. Juliette Gariépy’s performance became increasingly brilliant as the plot unfolded. Compelling, morally murky/challenging, a brilliantly structured thriller where what? and why? slides into WTF?! without ever fully answering any of that, never being quite what you think.