'The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs' A Review

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a western anthology film, the latest from the Coen Brothers. Six short start studded vignettes make up the film ranging from darkly comic, to darkly romantic, to just plain dark. Every section feels like a short film, the only thing connecting the pieces is the genre- western,  and as such, although beautiful and well acted, the film has little coherence and only a passing narrative satisfaction.

The Coen Brothers always have a remarkable cast and this is no exception- Liam Neeson, Tim Blake Nelson, Clancy Brown, Tom Waits, Stephen Root, Brendan Gleeson etc.- however they are all older white men(save for Zoe Kazan in a relatively thankless role). Not to say that any and all films need to have some element of diversity or inclusion but to get away with this kind of one-sided casting there has to be a reason and the quality of the work has to be high. The film is fine, kind of boring and derivative of the Coen Brothers previous work, worth a watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It is not original or interesting enough to get away with this kind of casting. The argument of "historical accuracy" officially holds no water. Narrative filmmaking is fiction therefore anything is possible. We are, and have been, saturated by the stories and performances of older white men. Take out the politics if you want the fact is diversity and inclusion makes for fresh and interesting storytelling. Don't get me wrong I love all the actors listed above but there performances and narrative impact suffer because every vignette centers around or is at least supported by one of them in such a way that they bleed together and are difficult to differentiate. The western has been a contentious genre since the beginning of it's decline from popularity and pervasiveness in the 70's. What would revitalize it, for a start, would be better more imaginative casting.

Visually, no surprise, the film is immaculate and striking. The score immersive and effective, especially paired with the actual songs in the first vignette from Nelson's singing cowboy. The problem is that ultimately the film is lazy and has no ambition. The Coen Brothers are aging and successful, the can do whatever they want with seemingly no parameters, oversight, or input and as such they can occasionally let their most lethargic ideas run slothfully wild.

A decent accompaniment to laundry folding but not much else.

Stream It.

Rancid

There is little
closer to purgatory
than the crowded
stuttering
stuffy train
during the evening
rush hour
but I discovered
there are degrees
of suffering.

The woman
appeared
relatively normal
twenty-something
Nordstrom's parka
innocuous
but she lugged with her
a neon teal and pink gym bag
which carried with it
a fetid stink.

The stench
filled the car
with such cringing force
you could not help
but ponder
it's deriving source
unwashed cloths perhaps
left fallow for years
or possibly
days old vomit
left to congeal and rot.

Dante did not
reconstruct
this particular misery
in his Divine Comedy
but I have to think
this banal woman
and her noxious sack
have some special place
for inflicting punishments
in the fiery hereafter.

'Suspiria' A Review

Suspiria is pedantic attempt at a genre picture, a remake of the 1977 cult classic. The movie opens on a Mennonite home where a woman lies dying. Cut to the frantic rain-soaked Patricia(Chloë Grace Moretz) running through the streets of 1977 Berlin to her psychologist Josef Klemperer(Tilda Swinton) to rave about the dance company of which she is a member that is run by witches. Cut to Susie(Dakota Johnson), presumably the daughter of the previously pictured dying Mennonite woman, who has come to Berlin to audition for said dance company run by Martha Graham surrogate Madame Blanc(Tilda Swinton). After a startling audition she is accepted.

Swinton, as is no surprise as she is one of our greatest living actors, is competent and compelling in both roles. She grounds the heightened and more operatic element with a realism and emotion which the story desperately needs. Unfortunately no one else in the entire ensemble takes the same approach. Their styles are a shotgun blast from bizarrely restrained minimalism to cacophonastic scenery-chewing incomprehensibility. I don't fault the actors themselves(except one) because its clear they received absolutely no direction when it came to actual performance. Moretz, typically good to great and never below charming(see The 5th Wave), puts in categorically the worst performance of her career- unhinged not as a character but as a clearly floundering and cringe-inducing actor saying lines that are ludicrous and devoid of any actual meaning. The one glaring black hole in the ensemble as far as talent is Dakota Johnson who basically replicates her Anastasia Steele role in Susie, which exceedingly peculiar given this is a completely different movie and a different character with a starkly different tone. Her portrayal is tissue-paper thin, she telegraphs naive so hard it comes across as vapid, you would expect such a clearly vacant performance on a middle school stage rather than a wide release motion picture. Unfortunately the supporting cast is filled out with interesting actors, dancers, and models who aren't given a chance to do much of anything and are constantly cut out and around in favor of the yawn-inducing Johnson.

There are a few visual flourishes most notably the evocative dream sequences. The dance pieces would be incredibly effective and elevate the movie if they weren't edited so frenetically. The camera is never aloud to sit still long enough to actually see the dance. There are so many cuts and flourishes and close ups all the meticulous(and truly impressive) choreography is almost totally wasted.

As to the themes, there are none, or maybe there are so many and they are all so lazily developed(read not at all) that it comes to the same thing. The Holocaust, the Lufthansa Flight 181 hijacking, purity, feminism, paganism etc. etc. are brought up but not explored or developed. It's as if the mere mention or implication of them paired with a disconnected albeit heightened style is suppose to suffice in place of an actual point of view or something new or of value to say.

No surprise the movie is pretentious, negligent, boring, and provides (the barest trace of) style over substance as it was directed by Luca Guadagnino perpetrator of Call Me By Your Name.

Worst of the year contender.

Don't See It.

'The Girl In The Spider's Web' A Review

The Girl In the Spider's Web is an action/thriller, a continuation/soft reboot of the Dragon Tattoo series. This installment finds the titular Girl aka Lisbeth Salender(Claire Foy) as the freelance hacker now turned freelance hacker/avenger. We open on Lisbeth mitigating some sweet justice on a corupt abusive CEO. She's then tasked with retrieving an NSA program that can access the entire world's nuclear arsenal. Her (successful) hack alerts NSA special agent Edwin Needham(LaKeith Stanfield ) who immediately departs to retrieve the program but she's also alerted an unknown crime syndicate. A high stakes game of cat-and-mouse ensues.

Certainly a more inspired casting choice than Rooney Mara, Foy does well as the beloved title character. She's not as dynamic as the originator of the role Noomi Rapace in the Swedish trilogy but she has the confidence, physical competence, and electricity that the role requires she just isn't given the material with which to soar. The issue isn't with her performance necessarily it is with the script which distills an emotionally complicated thriller into a thin James Bond wanna-be. Foy is an inspired choice, as is LaKeith Stanfield and Stephen Merchant(as the creator of the McGuffin) but the script doesn't allow these exceptional casting choices to do much beyond the rote mainstream.

The film begins with a very stylish scene, Lisbeth in white face paint literally stringing up a guilty man in his luxurious an austere high rise apartment. It's a striking compelling sequence, setting Lisbeth up as some kind of feminist Batman. But after that scene both the style and the substance dissipate quickly into predictable and relatively bland genre fair.

Stream It.

The winds of change have begun to blow

The winds of change have begun to blow
not gust or gale
but cooling breeze
a soothing balm
on a sweltering afternoon
not a clean cleansing down pour
but the promise of relief to come
for storms do not break from still stagnant skies
but must build and roll and break
before the lightening strikes
cleaving the air
and purging the land of heat and grime
not yet
the machine of history runs slow
and the race for Liberty marathon not sprint
but the winds of change have begun to blow
and the strength of the old guard withers
we need not repeat the sins of our forebears
activism followed by contented consumerism
the soul of America is at stake
and we will be the ones to decide
if She lives or if She dies
twisted by fear into the grave
or resurrected by compassion
the winds of change have begun to blow.
It is our time now.

'Bohemian Rhapsody' A Review

Bohemian Rhapsody is a biopic about the band Queen focusing on the late lead singer Freddy Mercury(Rami Malek). The film opens, as many of these do, on a late career come-back-like performance then cuts back to Mercury's youth following his life chronologically and ending on the show in the first scene. He meets two aspiring musicians while he's a baggage handler, the three pick up a bass player, and Queen after some fits and starts is born.

Malek goes for broke in his portrayal of Mercury and its mostly a success, the actor gives the performance tons of energy, tons of charm, and perhaps manages to capture a little bit of Mercury's magnetism. He clearly relishes the role and that interest and joy is contagious. The other band members provide a great foil and balance to Malek with more low-key but engaging turns. Lucy Boynton as Mercury's wife Mary has a bit more of a thankless one-dimensional role but does well with what is given her. Allen Leech as Paul Mercury's personal manager is pretty boring and unbelievable as the mustache twirling manipulative villain of the story.

The story structure is relatively rote, in the tradition of many of the musical biopics of the last fifteen years, visually the film is adequate but not particularly unique. What makes the film rise above of the expansive use of Queen's music, with an interesting and compelling choice to have Malek lip-sync and exclusively use Mercury's vocals. The other thing the film gets right is the spirit of the band, sometimes effectively but somewhat awkwardly explicitly stated in scenes. They are the outcasts, they make positive music, they try to touch people and get them together in a positive way. This message, more than anything, is what makes the film compelling. This is a message we can latch onto in our devise times- one of repeated explicit inclusivity and positivity. Is the film perfect? No. Terribly unique in form or structure? No. Periodically bogged down by manufactured drama? Yes. But at the heart of it is Malek as Mercury and the band, which mostly get along just fine, making music that people love. That's it. And that is what people respond to.

The message of the film is certainly at least a little tainted by the involvement of Bryan Singer. And as consumers of art we must grapple with the art vs. artist question, if we separate them and by how much. For me the film works despite Singer and is in no way a success of his. The film works because of the enthusiasm and chemistry of the actors, the fact that ultimately there is minimal drama and much of the film is the band and the various characters getting along, and most importantly the delightful and affirming music of Queen.

Say what you want but the infectious stomp-stomp-clap of We Will Rock You is undeniable.

See It.

'Halloween' A Review

Halloween is a slasher movie a sequel to the 1978 original. Forty years after the events of the first flick Laurie Strode(Jamie Lee Curtis) has been preparing her house, her arsenal, and her body for the return of Michael Myers, think Sarah Conner in T2. Her obsessive preparation has cost her two marriages, the estrangement of her daughter and granddaughter, as well as her mental health. On the eve of Halloween Michael Meyers is being transferred to a maximum security mental facility and subsequently escapes, free to stalk the streets of Haddonfield once again on Halloween!

Curtis puts in an authoritative, solid performance, this incarnation of Strode suffers from PTSD and has a single-minded goal: revenge. There is something incessantly satisfying about seeing Curtis as the competent gun-toting avenging angle however her performance is only periodically matched by the script which supports it. Judy Greer does a nice turn as Laurie's daughter Karen but there relationship is sped through, revealed clunkily in rapid exposition, and blown by in favor of numerous set-piece killings by the iconic villain. Laurie's granddaughter Allyson played by Andi Matichak also does well with what little she's given, but her subplot also is truncated, abridged to the point of having little to no weight. What we are here to see, and what the movie makes clear it is really only concerned about, is the Strode/Michael showdown. Which, once we get to it, is undeniably satisfying.

The score, composed by original director and composer John Carpenter, has the same eerie compulsive magnetism. There are some impressive steady elongated takes, enough visual style to be engaging, enough crowd-pleasing omages/echos of the original, but it is the theme that really disappoints. Horror as a genre, especially during its recent resurgence, flourishes on metaphor, contemporary relevance. And this incarnation of Halloween has a rich theme that it leaves mostly unexplored ie the Strode women, not only Laurie but her daughter and granddaughter, standing up to the phantom Michael Myers(standing in for, perhaps, the patriarchy). But that reading is a stretch and not fully flushed out or developed in the movie itself. It is a hopeful conclusion to draw but not an explicit one.

An entertaining holiday movie that lacks the richness or ingenuity to become a classic.

Rent It.