Holy Crap!* The Gulf Between the Sexes

 

GORGE (C-minus) - I rolled my eyes so much that it was difficult to keep focused on how embarrassed I was for Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller as they were toting guns, doing battle with alien life forms and, of course, falling in love.

 

It's also hard to write a quick synopsis with a straight face. You see, they are expert sharp-shooters, with hundreds of kills between them and the requisite guilt that piles up on the soft shoulders of these earnest millennials who are good people deep down, because they care about their dad (her) or write poetry (him), and they're cute. Teller is American Levi, and Taylor-Joy is the Russian Drasa, and they are each on a secret mission to guard opposite sides of a grand abyss that, below a layer of fog, hides deformed superhuman creatures down at the proverbial gates of hell. The critters like to scamper up the sides of the gorge, but darn it if Levi and Drasa don't pick off every one of them (sometimes just in the nick of time!). The critters, conveniently, don't scamper up the sides and try to escape during times when it's convenient for the plot -- like when Levi and Drasa have a forbidden sexy date together or drop down into the pit to do a little battle with the devil's spawn.

You can't go five minutes in this two-plus-hour technicolor yawn of a movie without enduring an absolutely implausible tick in the plot. Sigourney Weaver plays a bad-ass intelligence commander who oversees the American side of the divide, and it's hilarious to watch Weaver's much younger stand-in run for her life when all hell breaks loose at the climax. Taylor-Joy, who can't weigh much more than 92 pounds here, effortlessly wields automatic weapons that are half her size while never missing her target. Teller struggles to prove once again that he's not a lightweight himself, by spitting his lines with a bitter world-weariness and later soaping up in the shower. Right off the start, Levi would know not to engage with the other side under threat of certain personal extinction, but doggone it, the heart wants what it wants, right?

Drasa and Levi can not only read each other's cue-card-size notes across the foggy gorge, but they can often hear incidental sounds from that distance. (The ears are as sharp as the eyes!) When all hell breaks loose, nothing goes wrong for our intrepid couple -- computers improbably spring to life; a long-dormant Jeep rumbles into action at the touch of two wires (and runs great!); the pair have an unerring sense of direction, even without GPS; explosions barely mess their hair let alone separate their bodies from their limbs; and little Drasa gets dragged at 40 mph, banging her head on a fallen tree trunk along the way, and she's none worse for the wear. And, as in every movie, the bad guys (things) conveniently like to attack one at a time, so that the hero can fend them off in succession. Some things haven't changed since I watched "Batman" on TV as a child.

There is a germ of a clever idea here. Whatever is going on down below is the unintended result of a post-WWII pact among the victors, a misguided act of hubris that told Robert Oppenheimer "Hold my beer." Levi and Drasa are on one-year assignments, cut off from the rest of the world, under strict orders not to engage with the other side. (But how could they not when a cute gal is acting all flirty and is packing a hipster collection of 45-rpm records.)

Pulp director Scott Derrickson and journeyman writer Zach Dean regurgitate plot points gleaned from binge-watching every action film and horror movie they could get their hands on. They create a somewhat interesting mucky underworld, and their budget allowed for unlimited explosions. They lucked out in getting two of the hotter young actors to agree to play some combination of Maverick, Indiana Jones, Wonder Woman and American Sniper. Taylor-Joy rocks a mild Russian accent that isn't too silly. Teller broods like a child doing an imitation of Robert Mitchum or Steve McQueen.

But the idea that these two relative soft targets could even think of racing through the bowels of hell to save humanity is just too absurd to take as seriously as we are doing right now. I've seen Roadrunner cartoons where Wile E. Coyote performs more believable stunts than Levi does here. They'll greenlight anything these days to provide content to Apple TV, especially when it is needed for Valentine's Day.

* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here.

BONUS TRACK

The schizophrenic soundtrack includes a jolt of "Blitzkrieg Bop" from the Ramones, a Bach suite, and a part-rap version of Bob Dylan's "(All Along the) Watchtower." The most on-the-nose choice is "Spitting Off the Edge of the World" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Perfume Genius:

R.I.P, Gene Hackman

 

News broke today of the death of Santa Fe's Gene Hackman. He was 95 and had been retired the past 20 years.

We reviewed three of his films in recent years. His comedy chops were at their peak in "The Royal Tenenbaums" from 2001 (see below). He made his bones with the gritty classic "The French Connection" in 1971. But treat yourself to the obscure release from a couple of years later, "Scarecrow," the shaggy-dog story that teamed him with Al Pacino. It is streaming on Turner Classic Movies.

We will take an opportunity in the coming weeks to catch up on Hackman's catalog. That will include Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" (1974), a touchstone we've never seen.

BONUS TRACK

"That's the last time you put a knife in me, hear me?!"

Nevertheless, She Persisted

 

I'M STILL HERE (A-minus) - It was a heavy weekend. There was a memorial service for a colleague and friend who died in November. And then there was Walter Salles' paean to perseverance, a drama drenched in Brazil's military dictatorship of the early 1970s, "I'm Still Here." 

 

It is an emotionally challenging movie, but it is full of heart and humanity. Based on a true story, it follows Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) and her five children after her husband, Rubens (Selton Mello), a former congressman in the days before a military coup six years earlier, is snatched by government thugs, never to return. It is Torres' movie from beginning to end, a performance so intense and moving that you often ache for both her and her character.

Salles ("The Motorcycle Diaries") grounds this is an authentic family life in a seaside neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. The Paiva household buzzes with activity -- kids, a housekeeper, a dog and numerous friends, parties filled with food and fun. Record needles drop on vinyl, a 16 mm camera shudders as it captures memories, photographs from these happy days pile up. I was transported to the '70s watching the kids come and go, often barefoot on their way to or from the beach or a street soccer match. The first half hour is a master class in narrative table-setting, as Rubens and Eunice provide a family sanctuary that we know will be invaded and forever changed.

Meanwhile, street scenes and news reports cast a pall over the charmed life the family leads. The parents send their oldest daughter Veroca (Valentina Herszage) to London with friends going into exile, and Eunice and Rubens hunker down, knowing that Rubens is a target. We are aware that he is surreptitiously volunteering as a drop-source for communications among the resistance. Not only does he get escorted out of this happy home, but a day or two later so do Eunice and another daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski). Few horror movies can match the banality of evil imposed on Eunice for two weeks in a small cell, subjected to the inquisitions of apparatchiks, finding only a sliver of humanity in the occasional apologies of a sympathetic but powerless guard.

The film then becomes a tale of bravery and endurance. Eunice will get unofficial word of Rubens' death, but she will pick and choose how she confides in each child, eventually uprooting them from that tainted dwelling and moving them to Sao Paulo. Eunice stays active in the resistance network, keeping Rubens' story alive. In a memorable scene, when posing the kids for a news photographer, she resists the journalists' request to appear stoic, and she insists that the kids smile for the photo, and they happily oblige. That bravado in the face of tyranny will become a rallying cry that will echo through the years as the family's rallying cries. Torres, throughout, is never short of riveting.

Salles jumps ahead 25 years, to the mid-'90s, when the democratic government, in its reconciliation phase, finally provides Eunice, now a lawyer and activist in her own right, with Rubens' death certificate. She is accompanied by her son, Marcello (Antonio Saboia as an adult; Guilherme Silveira as a spunky child), whose real-life memoirs formed the basis for the movie. The film then transitions to Eunice's late-in-life work; another jump, to 2014, will find her infirm and wracked by Alzheimer's, as her children and grandchildren carry on the tradition of joyful gatherings.

The film embarks on a journey that goes from heart-warming to heart-pounding to heart-breaking. It is a profound rumination on the determination of individuals in the face of authoritarianism, and you can't help but feel uneasy watching it in an era in which 20th-century fascism is returning to fashion. The only criticism is that Salles overstays his welcome here. He doesn't need the 18 minutes beyond the two-hour mark. It's as if he wasn't confident enough to end it in an earlier era and perhaps he was being too faithful to Marcello's memoirs. The scenes with subsequent generations lack the spark of 1970-71, and there are too many interchangeable characters by that point, dragging down the narrative. A quick flash-forward is all that was needed, and the diminishing returns are the only barrier between Salles and a masterpiece.

BONUS TRACKS

Salles' characters bask in the pop music of the day, and while there are understandable nods in dialogue to the Beatles in the wake of their breakup, he resists the lure of obvious needle-drops and instead celebrates some catchy Brazilian hits of the era. Here is "E Preciso Dar Um Jeito, Meu Amigo" by Erasmo Carlos:

 

Caetano Veloso is name-checked in the film along with John Lennon by Veroca, who is besotted with London. Here is "Baby" by Os Mutantes":

 

Tom Ze with "Jimmy, Renda-se":

 

And a rollicking Tex-Mex-style number, "A Festa Do Santo Reis" by Tim Maia:

More Than Just Friends

 

MATT & MARA (B+) - Mara, a creative-writing adjunct professor, is discombobulated throughout this indie endeavor, and it is to Deragh Campbell's credit that the character can hold your interest in that state for 80 minutes. She is numb to her husband and toddler, and she is being hounded by an old friend, whose passive-aggressive antics push her buttons.

 

Matt (Matt Johnson) is Mara's pal from grad school. He reminds her -- by pointing out that he really shouldn't remind her -- that he's a published author and she is not. It has apparently been years since Matt has graced her presence in Toronto, but their deep platonic connection has never waned. As her husband forsakes her for an album his band is recording, Mara will be vulnerable to Matt's goofy charms. The question is, will they cross a line during a road trip to a conference that Mara is presenting at across the border in New York.

Johnson is one of our favorites, both in front of and behind the camera, most recently in "Operation Avalanche" and "BlackBerry." He has a rubbery face and impeccable timing, with an improvisational ease. Campbell here does everything with her face, especially her eyes, suggesting a deer-in-the-headlights daze from everything life is throwing at her, whether it is her marriage or her students or a general numbness over her career. She has a delicate voice but a determination to push through whatever phase this is in her life.

Writer-director Kazik Radwanski (who also used Campbell in "Anne at 13,000 Ft.") chronicles every tic and furrowed brow of Mara, and he lets his two stars vamp and bicker. There are a couple of deep conversations -- at one point Matt offers his philosophy of existence by saying, "I'm letting my imagination reach right to the level of my own stupidity which makes it my reality" -- but he also keeps it loose, like with a scene in which a barrista rudely drives them out of a coffee shop at closing time or when the two practice smiling at strangers on the street. This is smart neo-Mumblecore, propelled by two talented leads.

SLOW (B) - This offbeat character study out of Lithuania explores the lifestyle of the asexual. It's a laconic slice-of-life that manages to wring joy and pathos out of a tender love story.

Dance teacher Elena (Greta Grineviciute) has a meet-cute at her studio with Dovydas (Kestutis Cicenas) a sign-language interpreter, and after a few hangouts he drops the A-bomb on her: He has no interest in sexual relations with another person. After getting over the initial shock (it's not a joke, Elena immediately learns), Elena booty-calls an ex, but the sex is so underwhelming that she returns to Dovydas and agrees to explore a relationship full of kissing and cuddling but no serious rounding of third base. 

Writer-director Marija Kavtaradze takes a low-key approach and refuses to sensationalize the topic. The narrative unfolds steadily, as the couple rewrite the rules of a romantic relationship. The highs are not too high and the lows are not too low. The actors are attractive but average-looking, with regular-sized personalities. Grineviciute captures the quiet torture of a woman who has finally found a suitable partner and true love but cannot close the deal in a way that suits her physical needs.

BONUS TRACKS

"Slow" has a pop/techno soundtrack that features a couple of songs from Sweden's Irya Gmeyner, including "Dancing in the Park":

 

And "Electric," from Gmeyner and Martin Hederos:

 

And from the movie's climax, April Snow (Gmeyner's alter-ego) with "We Fucked It Up":

R.I.P., David Lynch, Part 1: In Utero

 We will be doing a multi-part tribute to David Lynch, who died January 15 at 78. Our biggest debt to him, though, will always be non-cinematic: his alt-weekly comic strip The Angriest Dog in the World, from the 1980s.

BLUE VELVET (1986) (B+) - David Lynch found his storytelling sweet spot -- call it psycho-comic nostalgic noir -- with a major breakthrough that would provide the template for his next two decades in film and television. From the opening scene -- flowers, a white picket fence, friendly firemen passing by on the fire truck -- Lynch announces that he is either celebrating or skewering a sclerotic vision of bygone American values. His camera immediately digs down beneath the surface of a groomed suburban lawn and then spends the next two hours wallowing in the underbelly of a culture gone to seed.

 

Kyle MacLachlan emerges from Lynch's "Dune" bomb of 1984 and leads the cast as a wide-eyed but overly curious squeaky-clean college boy Jeffrey, who plays junior detective and noses around the adult world of quirky intrigue, sparked by the discovery of a human ear. He hides in the closet of morose lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and learns that her husband and son are being held captive by creepy Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), whose oedipal kinks beset Dorothy. Frank heads up a crime syndicate best described as art-school Batman villainy, replete with giggling henchmen.  

Lynch is tipping his hand at a world that would blossom into his TV series "Twin Peaks." There is the northwest burg of Lumberton (where the AM radio station marks the bottom half of the hour with the sound of a falling tree); we get gruesome crimes and sexual perversion in small-town America; and there is always Dean Stockwell lip-syncing Roy Orbison's "In dreams" into a vintage industrial drop light.

Lynch has a ball inserting Jeffrey into a love triangle between Rossellini's masochistic submissive Dorothy and a teenage Laura Dern's straight-arrow girl-next-door, Sandy, for whom Jeffrey is the buttoned-up bad-boy alternative to her lunkheaded jock boyfriend. This all works not only as avant-garde absurdism but also as a tightly wound crime mystery. MacLachlan plays it straight down the middle while Hopper, huffing from an oxygen mask whenever he gets his jollies, is just bat-shit bonkers. This is a perfect bookend with the "Twin Peaks" run, before Lynch would get more bold and experimental at the turn of the millennium.

ERASERHEAD (1977) (B-minus) - You had to be there. And back then, most people didn't want to go anywhere near there. A years-in-the-making film school project improbably saw the light of day, although it made its bones as one of the original '70s midnight movies, first in Los Angeles and then across the country when it became a cult favorite

Revisit it now, and it's tough to see this as much more than an interesting novelty, a signpost along the road to David Lynch's origin story. It was shot on a shoestring budget, strung out over years, edited on the fly -- more of a provocation than a cohesive narrative. It is trapped in the uncanny valley between experimental cinema and B-movies. 

At least it is a first crack in the window into Lynch's brain. He apparently was obsessed with urban decay and serious fears of parenthood (or of abortion?). This is ostensibly the story of a couple torn apart by the birth of a deformed child -- one that is not much evolved from its sperm-shaped origins and resembles the creature from "Alien." Jack Nance plays the father, Henry, who lamely tries to care for it (a sight gag involving a vaporizer made me laugh out loud) but who is tortured not only by the being's presence but also by the fever dreams he pivots to, mostly involving a vaudevillian woman singing to him from the radiator in his apartment. 

Lynch's touches can be inspired. The apartment is decorated with plants, but they are scrawny sticks that jut from a pile of dirt, sans flowerpot. When the wife goes to retrieve her suitcase from under the bed, she tugs and tugs, and Lynch holds the joke so long that the Three Stooges would nod in admiration. Henry is dressed in the classic nerd outfit of the day, with a pile of hair that might make you think it inspired the title -- until the story spins off into German fairy-tale gloom to provide the true reason for the title. Nance, always with a worried brow, comes across as Babe Ruth with a bellyache.

This is all assembled with bargain-basement special effects and a churning score of ominous industrial sounds. You might be tempted to fast-forward through some of these painfully long takes. It's like a film-school study assignment you wish you could skip but know you shouldn't

***

If you can access the two-disc Criterion release of "Eraserhead," the extras are worth it -- there are multiple previous short films by Lynch and several short documentaries (across decades) discussing the making of the "Eraserhead," a fascinating dive into the L.A. film scene during the American New Wave era.

BONUS TRACKS

"Blue Velvet's" gritty soundtrack offers up Bobby Vinton's original title track, a few hip entries from Chris Isaak, and the introduction of Angelo Badalamenti to the Lynch oeuvre. We'll pluck out the easy boogie of Bill Doggett with "Honky Tonk":

New to the Queue

 Wait, where were we ... ?

Walter Salles' period piece about a woman standing up to the Brazilian government that disappeared her husband, "I'm Still Here."

We'll probably regret this, but we're willing to take a chance on the bloody AI GF dark comedy "Companion."

Our gal Renate Reinsve ("The Worst Person in the World," "A Different Man") stars in a suspense film sparked by a parent-teacher conference, "Armand."

A surrealist comedy, linking Tehran and Winnepeg, "Universal Language."

That '90s Uplift: Bad Girls

 

GIRLS TOWN (1996) (B+) - Three young actresses give lived-in performances in this indie gem about high school seniors in Queens coping with the suicide of their close friend as the school year comes to an end. Lili Taylor is the big name, but she is matched by Bruklin Harris and Anna Grace, whose careers would be short-lived.

Taylor is Patti, a goombah-accented teen mom; Harris is straight-talking Angela; and Grace is cynical Emma. They have a close bond with melancholy Nikki (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor from "King Richard" and "Origin"), whose pill overdose will evoke an unusual reaction from the other three, who analyze the emotional tendons of their relationships with each other and act out by committing petty crimes (involving retribution against exes). 

All three share writing credit, and their workshopping and ad-libbing give the narrative a chatty authenticity. This feels like a true slice of life, a sly, angular take on the way in which a young person might cope with their first brush with death. The girls have favorite hangouts -- a ballfield dugout, a corner deli, the school bathroom -- and their baggy grunge duds. They also have a rapport that allows them to call each other out on their shit. Some of the best dialogue comes from brief one-on-ones with boys, with the girls confident enough to hold their own against their inferior rivals. One includes Michael Imperioli (Christopher on "The Sopranos"), who woos Patti, who is still beset by her baby-daddy (John Ventimiglia, Artie from "The Sopranos").

Taylor was pushing 30 by the time this came out, and one of the boys makes a meta reference to how old Patti looks. (The balding Ventimiglia was over 30 at the time.) Her accent -- borrowed a bit from Rosie Perez -- takes a bit of getting used to, but she pushes deep into her character and wins you over. Harris comes off as an intense Robin Givens, as Angela has few fucks to give. Grace, as Emma, does some heavy lifting emotionally. They are a potent team.

For a story that leans hard into sexual assault -- whether real or perceived, depending on each girl's point of view -- the overall vibe comes across as serious yet loose and life-affirming. The actresses' contributions are girded by a soundtrack Greek chorus by heavy hitters of the era -- Queen Latifah, P.J. Harvey, Luscious Jackson, Neneh Cherry and Salt-N-Pepa.  Director Jim McKay was coming off a series of R.E.M. videos and would go on to a solid career in TV. Here, he takes a documentary-like approach, shooting on the grimy streets of Queens in all their graffitied glory. 

You can't stream this anywhere, so look for a local screening of this restored document from the mid-'90s.

BONUS TRACKS

The loopy Luscious Jackson, live on "120 Minutes," with "Strongman":

 

Neneh Cherry, from 1992, "Somedays":

 

 

P.J. Harvey with the deep cut "Maniac":

 

 

And the melancholy anchor for the movie's climax, Queen Latifah touting "U.N.I.T.Y":

That '70s Drift - Asylum Seekers

 

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975) (A) - An overcast Sunday afternoon was the perfect circumstance to duck into the Guild Cinema to watch Jack Nicholson at the top of his game, leading one of the great ensemble films of all time. 

 

Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauben adapt Ken Kesey's 1962 novel, and Milos Forman herds cats behind the camera in one of cinema's most deft blends of comedy and horror among the patients at a mental facility in Oregon. The production shifts the narrative point of view from stoic Chief Bromden to wise-cracking Randall McMurphy (Nicholson), who finagles a spot at the psychiatric facility to put off a prison term over his latest violent act that broke the law. (As he puts it, "I fight and fuck too much.")

McMurphy figures that, while he's gaming the system, he will vindicate the rights of the men who are suffering under the iron rule of mean Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). Kesey's story mines humor from the band of crazies without mocking them. And the story only gradually darkens, as it becomes apparent that the grip of the authorities will always be able to strangle any rebellion, no matter how organized or passionate. 

Nicholson and Fletcher were the Ali and Frazier of big-screen rivals, Nicholson with his arched eyebrow and rubber face, and Fletcher with that stony expression that haunts to this day. Around them are talented character actors, some who would become well known -- like  Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd (in his film debut) -- and others with vaguely familiar faces, such as Sydney Lassick (as Cheswick), William Redfield (Harding), Vincent Schiavelli (Fredrickson), Scatman Crothers (Turkle the guard) and Brad Dourif, also in his debut, in the critical role of stuttering young Billy Bibbit. Will Sampson towers over the proceedings, both literally and figuratively, as Chief, the true hero of the film. 

But it all revolves around Nicholson's reckless bad-boy McMurphy, who at times literally upends the ward with his riotously funny antics and blunt talk. He not only challenges authority but also corrupts his weaker co-horts, roping them into poker games, rowdy TV watching and a blowout Christmas party that leads to the horrific climactic events that will forever nag a viewer's psyche. 

Shifting that point of view from Chief to a generic omniscient one might upset purists, but it broadens the appeal -- perhaps the ultimate example of the key difference between books and movies. It just would not have worked nearly as well to trap us in one character's mind. Retooled, the story exudes confidence and becomes fundamentally entertaining. McMurphy's aphorisms are too numerous to replay here. (Of his goal in breaking Nurse Ratched, he proclaims, "In one week, I can put a bug so far up her ass she don't know whether to shit or wind her wristwatch.") When he leads the men in the pantomime of pretending to watch the World Series on the blank TV, or breaks them out for an illicit fishing trip, there is a palpable thrum of joy and rebellion among the giddy inmates. 

Meanwhile, Chief will break your heart as he finally opens up about his upbringing, referencing his alcoholic father and noting that "when he put the bottle up to his mouth, he didn't suck out of it, it sucked out of him." And throughout, Nurse Ratched's psychological browbeating of her charges is subtle, like the banality of evil, culminating in that shocking climax. 

There probably has never been a film quite like "Cuckoo's Nest," either before or after it. Fifty years after its release (and more than 60 years after its setting), its chilling message still seems sadly relevant. Go ahead and fight the system -- see how that works out for you.