Strange Weather (2016) A falsely progressive Lifetime movie.

 

The third movie I saw at TIFF was regrettably Strange Weather. What I thought would be a gritty rural revenge film seen from the female perspective; turned out to be a sugar coated version of a gritty rural revenge film seen from a stereotypically female perspective.

 

Strange Weather is about a woman from the South (played by Holly Hunter) who finds out her deceased son’s friend has stolen his business ideas and was involved with his murder. She decides the take things into her own hands and goes on a road trip to find out the truth behind her son’s legacy.

 

Not to be funny but the best part about Strange Weather is the near end, where it actually seems gritty, intriguing and almost experimental compared to the rest of the movie. Holly Hunter has a gun pointed at her antagonist’s head and by the way the music hits and how direct and strip down the scene is orchestrated, you have no idea whether the trigger will be pulled. That being the only interesting scene in the movie, you unfortunately have to sift through self indulgent, trace the lines scenes with faux liberal imagines intended to seem indie and hip without realizing how obvious this is. To further that, one has to put up with scenes of extended meaningless character involved dialogue, explaining the plot and quirks of its characters no one has asked for. Scenes of enjoying long drives and basking in the summer sun when a easy listening track is played right over! Yeah, in a tale about gun revenge……..Leading to scenes of white understanding where Holly Hunter stumbles upon the aftermath of a Southern flood where black families are gathering their stuff from wreckage, and Holly Hunter asks the one white couple amongst the families as to what happened, not to mention how bizarre the black extras are filmed and how none of them speak a word. Now in the Q&A at TIFF with director Katherine Dieckmann and actor Holly Hunter, Katherine said she wanted to show a white mind being enlightened seeing the reality of black families, being the ones to always suffer in Southern floods. Ms. Dieckmann, I know you had the best intentions in mind, but maybe viewing black people as “other beings” and not giving the people speaking parts isn’t the best way to go about displaying social injustice. Also, obnoxiously holding on a shot of an interracial lesbian couple kissing probably isn’t the best way to show equality if it’s obvious you’re trying to sit at the “cool kids” table.

 

Holly Hunter does a great job as expected, but unfortunately her character clearly was directed to be cartoonish as oppose someone with a death wish who is upset and determined. Now an animated Holly Hunter isn’t a bad thing but in this context made me completely for forget at times I’m watching a revenge plot.

 

Katherine Dieckmann set out nothing more than to create a stereotypical film for middle aged white housewives and wants us to believe she’s hip, liberal and socially aware, but instead reminds us of a white feminist who thinks her antics will relate to a black females outlook. If you have a brain, best to leave Strange Weather at the door.

 

• Maurice Jones

Una (2016) The film equivalent of the friend who dumps their problems onto you all at once, to the point they drain you mentally and your fingers physically can’t text them back.

The second movie I saw at TIFF Wednesday was Una, from novice film director Benedict Andrews and written by David Harrower. Benedict Andrews is originally a theatre director having Una being his first venture into films. Una is about a twenty-something female named Una (played by Rooney Mara) who decides to visit a middle-aged man from her past named Ray (played by Ben Mendelsohn) at his place of employment. The terms of the visit turns out to be gravely delicate as Ray was involved in a sexual, skeptically romantic relationship with Una, when she was thirteen.

                                                                                                                                                                                         

Una is an unfortunate misguided headache of a mess that becomes absolutely horrific with its senselessly careless execution of its subject matter.

 

Now it might be cliché and quick to say that the big problem about this movie is the theatre background of Benedict Andrews leading into directing, but sadly this is the case.  As Una starts off subtle and quietly transparent with a European aesthetic (cold opening inside a dim night club), but then immediately displays it’s misunderstanding of its own tone, by having its title sequence open with a scratchy pop song over an uncomfortable scene of a thirteen year old girl staring at the camera, sandwiched in between deliberately frigid scenes with little to no music. This immediately exposed the fact that Benedict isn’t a seasoned director, and may not himself know the tone he is trying to convey with this movie. For second I forgot he was in theatre as that title sequence came off like a music video, clashing with the demure scene to follow. As the moment comes for Una to confront Ray, things seem promising as scenes are taken seriously even with the visual metaphor of a lone women walking into the male dominated atmosphere of a warehouse workplace. This all goes out the window painfully, as the confrontation turns into a suspense thriller execution, and as Una and Ray converse as it urgently becomes a theatre play narrative and direction, camera shots to signify a character entrance and exit and dialogue beats of exposed secrets and unleashed acting beats. Unfortunately it goes beyond that though, as the writing is as obvious as all hell. The dialogue explains every detail of their relationship in a yelling motion, and displays the confrontation in a way that probably wouldn’t be allowed during anyone’s work day to spend an entire day arguing without repercussion. Benedict treats the workplace location as a theatre stage for the actors to play with which completely steals from the realism of the story, with characters running around and even having sex inside the warehouse setting………..so misguided. All this coupled with an ignorance of subplots that are way more interesting than the plot at hand, and directorial emotional shifts that are too sudden to make any sense of, makes Una laborious to watch. Worse of all, playing with material of this kind in this fashion instantly takes away from the seriousness of the subject matter, the idea that an incident like this can destroy a person’s physical and mental well being fifteen years later. A movie like this just leaves one with shock, confusion and unrest knowing there was an allowance for a movie like this to be funded and completed.

Una uses flash backs throughout the movie to explain the past of its two lead characters when Una was thirteen and when Ray was a much younger age himself. In all honesty these flash back scenes would have made a more compelling movie, about a thirteen year old girl who carries an inappropriate relationship with a fully grown man. The acting in those flash backs are way more natural and the writing is straight forward and realistic and non explosive which immediately makes for a far better movie. This movie is like if you gave high school students who just got into Gus Vant Zant movies, the project to make a serious slice of life film about statutory rape without any guidelines of tact.

Rooney Mara proves regrettably to be only effective within movies that have a reserved tone and intention, but when faced with portraying actual emotional and physical stress, she just comes of removed and beyond the material at hand. As some say Rooney Mara is a mask that you can put your own ideals upon, but unfortunately in this instance, that face is just blank. Ben Mendelsohn handles the exertion far greater but definitely doesn’t escape the amateurish out pour of the script written by David Harrower.

Before the TIFF screening the director talk to us (with Rooney Mara quietly standing next to him) about how difficult and complex the subject is to handle and how in some way you have to be careful in how you portray it. So I guess this is how tentative Benedict Andrews and David Harrower could treat the plot at hand? This is a bad movie. Forget about it.

 

• Maurice Jones

CATFIGHT (2016)

Onur Tukel grows up…………sort of…

 

After seeing Catfight at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) Saturday night, in which I was anticipating to see, I was alleviated to notice this Catfight is Onur Tukel’s turn at a proper structure of story. As oppose to taking an idea that is too small to make into a feature, and bloating it out into a concave of amateur misguided starter film making to make a full length. Onur’s past movies; Summer of Blood (2014) and Apple Sauce (2015) are usually padded out with jokes and conclude in a manner that subtracts from the point of his movies due the overdone miscalculated timing of the film itself. Now whether Onur Tukel always intended to have his films fell longer than they should be or if he’s unaware of how that fact spoils his movies, is up to debate for now as I didn’t get a chance to ask him at the Q&A Saturday, due to the fact I was sitting behind him as he was doing panel. Never the less Catfight has the over length in spades but it actually feels necessary and experimental with making the statement of the monotony and uncertain endlessness of war.

 

Catfightis a deeply sardonic satirical tale about the pointlessness of status, of two middle aged women living impossibly far apart ideologically lifestyles, who we’re good friends in college but haven’t seen each other since then. They both become examples of justification for their opposing outlooks and butts of jokes displaying their disdain of said ideals. The hidden resentment boils over however, when the two reunited unexpectedly at a fundraiser event. Veronica (played by Sandra Oh) discovers Ashley (played by Anne Heche) is now a struggling artist, working part time as a caterer for her girlfriend Lisa’s catering company (played by Alicia Silverstone) and Ashley discovers that Veronica is a strict mother/house wife. The encounter beholds both women disturbed to find out how either person resulted decades later, and avalanches into physical retaliation.

 

Onur Tukel could be known for his jovial social commentary throughout his movies, and with Catfight he takes that commentary to a more politically aggressive level, that reaches a more meaningful plateau beyond all the laughs. Onur expresses his views on social status and how a person’s venture in life can end up affecting someone else’s on the complete opposite site of the spectrum. Assumingly created based race relations. How art and politics can easily clash and therefore have a huge impact on culture. How art to a certain extent, though meant to be free and inspiring, ironically needs financial backing to reach a wide audience and to continue as a career. That though someone maybe rich and seemingly behave with condescension, they can still have empathy and love inside them, especially if they’re selfless enough to parent a child, and the juxtaposition of being an artist of meaning, yet being consumed with the process that it becomes more about the artist than the statement of the work itself. Onur also tackles his thoughts on Donald Trump, throwing in a cackling line said by a side character about a tree……”That’s Donald….he’s a dick.” Going even further, Onur really hammers in his disdain for Republicans and the idea of the war on terror. Craig Bierko (who Onur Tukel has always wanted to work with) plays a “Jimmy Fallon” type tonight show host who’s always broadcasted on North American television. He displays the daily depressing headlines of political war and then counter acts those details with a man farting in his underwear, pointing out our conditioning to laughing at the cruelest low brow humor in order to stomach and forget the reality of current civilization, though suggesting laughter maybe the best thing to have when being left out of the higher level loop. Also, Tukel displays the underlining truth that a war on terror is impossible, but that lots of North Americans just want an answer to what they’re being told and through that believe war has its place. There as well is a theme sprinkled quite often though out the movie, about the need for companionship, that when things seem distance you always have the ones you love and the ones who love you to console you no matter what we think.

 

Catfight has many moments where characters soberly stop the films stride in its tracks, to display realistic grim exact truths towards other characters, very reminiscent of the dark, removed, frigid dialogue from none other than the master of grim: Todd Solondz. Clearly his movies were a big influence on this film, even down to the strict dismal way it was filmed with certain scenes of dark clarity, which also can bring out the hilarity of the scene from the sudden way the dialogue is written; IE A hilarious scene with Alicia Silverstone at her baby shower, coldly and obnoxiously telling off a guest of hers who gave her a present that may not be so environmentally conscious.

 

Sandra Oh is at her peak in Catfight flawlessly going from pretentious, pushy and inconsiderate to frustrated, caring, respectful and lovingly determined and sentimental, definitely the anchor of the entirely film. Anne Heche is a torpedo of anxiousness, giving her all and completely sacrificing herself to her characters plight as a struggling self obsessed artist, very close to the commitment of Ms. Winona Ryder in Stranger Things (2016). Great to finally see again, Alicia Silverstone is as natural as can be as Anne Heche’s girlfriend Lisa, who is emotionally ever changing but is completely fleshed out as a character, played with lots of thought as Anne Heche’s practical centering better half. The film is then rounded out perfectly with some of the greatest amusing support roles of all time with Craig Bierko, Dylan Baker, Amy Hill and a comedic breakout performance by Ariel Kavoussi.

 

 

Catfight is a extremely poignant film of timely importance that spills the mindful contents Onur Tukel has being harboring in the past year. While being so intellectually affective and determined Onur knows when to have fun and knows who he is, a personal joke teller who has mastered his comedic craft while being deeply honest. Though the movie is awkwardly cut at some parts and some finesse could be suggested in the execution of the scenes, this is typical of Onur Tukel, who does come off as an amateur filmmaker but with Catfight is truly coming into his own by taking some tips from some greats but by being even more personal and forthright than ever. Of course all of this substance isn’t lost as the film is supported by brutally hilarious detailed fight scenes between Sandra Oh and Anne Heche, that go on purposely too long and too cartoony to take seriously but that remind us of the essence of Onur’s refreshingly comedic voice and his movie’s point of the over staying of war. Finally Onur Tukel makes a movie with a ending that doesn’t lead to exhaustion, looks professional as can be and is sure to be his breakout film.

 

Check out CATFIGHT!

 

- Maurice Jones

Viral (2016)

Whatever happened to Dimension Films? They’re great.

Viral is a 2016 horror/suspense outbreak movie put out by suspense/horror mavens, Dimension Films. And like most Dimension Films entries, especially of the 90’s. This movie involves teenagers! And in classic Kevin Williamson fashion, they are spunky, overly intelligent and self aware.

 

A mysterious outbreak sneaks into the United States, starting as a cold and ending as a zombie epidemic. The disease first seems controlled until it’s discovered online through viral videos, that there could be alien beings in the form of worms, burrowing into the skulls of humans and possessing them to infect everyone else on the planet. As the symptoms at first only seem like a standard virus, the world is slow to catch on, leaving two young sisters to be hip on the truth of the matter through Youtube conspiracy.

 

Though Viral is essentially your standard Zombie Outbreak Horror film, what makes it special is that it harkens back to the Teen Slashers of the 90’s, with a focus on the problems of the teens everyday lives, as much as a focus on the plot at hand. Like in Scream the characters are very aware of each other and the situation they’re in, responding to each other’s quirks and hang ups in an urgent expressive manner.  Viral contains the classic horror avatars, such as: The good girl, the slut, the cute guy and the fool, but all enthusiastically fleshed out and animated as characters, which in return come off more realistic and adventurous at the same time.

 

There’s a budding romance between the female lead character Emma (played by Sofia Black-D'Elia) and the male lead character Evan (played by Travis Tope) that plays sweet yet playful yet charmingly awkward, perfectly complementing the scares of the film. As those characters gradually depend on each other throughout the film, it feels earned as there is a while of time dedicated to their relationship with witty flair and back and forth emotional beats, Dimension Films can’t quit. You as well get razor sharp biting humor by Analeigh Tipton as Stacey and Machine Gun Kelly as CJ which is reminiscent of Tatum and Stu from Scream.

 

Over all Viral is exciting, cleverly spoken and creatively solitary. The movie doesn’t escalate beyond its means, making it an experience of……..“What if?”. It’s one location of an outbreak in suburbia being seeing through the eyes of teenagers, really lends to the realism throughout the movie and best of all the characters look like they should be in college instead of high school, so again bringing us back to the good ole days of 90’s suspense horror we miss so much, that were fun yet chilling yet somewhat realistic within reason. All I can say is, I hope Viral and Green Room bring back an intelligence and self aware joviality that has been missing in most modern horror. We don’t need more “window knock” frights we just need more raw wit.

 

• Maurice Jones

 

 

Café Society (2016)

                                         “A classic Woody Allen point, sardonically bittersweet”

 

It’s that time again…………..that of many special occasions we have through the year!………………..When we loyally anticipate the new Woody Allen movie of the summer!!!

Café Society stars Jesse Eisenberg as Bobby, a young New Yorker who decides to move from home to LA to make it in Hollywood. Knowing he has an uncle in the business played by Steve Carrell, Bobby instances his uncle gives him a job and through that Bobby meets his uncle’s assistant Vonnie, played by Kristen Stewart. Though Vonnie works within Hollywood, she resists the life style and prefers things on a more intimate level and as her and Bobby work together, they bond on these ideals and Bobby begins to fall for her and in return falls for him. Things get fragmented though, as Bobby becomes more and more consumed by the Hollywood business, making Vonnie’s bond with him less enchanting while all the while knowing she had something real with him from the start.

What’s intriguing about Café Society is that most of the movie from the start is an exercise in distraction. Bobby’s career trajectory, Vonnie’s identity struggle and the conquests of the side characters hold no weight and purposely so, in order for the naturally realized epiphany of the movie to strike. Café Society is structured to express its main point; man-made excitement only goes so far in the human mind, because it isn’t tangle, as it maintains survival but isn’t the venture of survival. We pay more attention to status because it’s visible but not towards emotional bond because it’s not.

Café Society leaves to say, that so much can change and improve in your life. So much can go by and flourish, but the end result, no matter how big, falls short, when the couple of moments that lead to it all, can’t be recalled. Café Society will leave you stuck in your chair, realizing it’s those moments we need the most.

This may be Woody Allen’s darkest film yet.

 

-Maurice Jones

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl4X6pFfmTI

Creep (2014)

 

                                                                          “Staring is creepy”

Mark Duplass ventures into Psychological Torture Horror in Creep, a Found Footage film about a guy named Aaron (played by the film’s director Patrick Brice) who takes a job from an anonymous Craigslist ad asking for documentary assistance. Aaron drives out to said persons house to start the day uncertain whether it’s a man, woman or child, but when he gets there things seem eerie until he is startled by Joseph (played by Mark Duplass). Joseph seems friendly and inviting, giving Aaron a bit of a reason to cautiously let his guard down, yet something still seems off but maybe it’s all in Aaron’s head.

 

What Creep does well with this type of style, is put us on edge with not knowing what’s to happen next as everything is played so naturally. At the same time we’re put to easy because nothing is taken to a ridiculous height in terms of what’s possible of what would happen realistically. The Found Footage take on this type of Horror piece makes things more fearfully ambiguous, as Aaron is carrying the camera for most of the movie making you wonder what’s happening behind him, and when he sits the camera down you really get the sense it’s just two grown strangers in a house together and really anything could happen.

 

A knock on the film is the fact that Aaron is played to be nervous the entire movie, if he was more jovial and relaxed, the paranoia would be more palpable as in a sudden realization, but Aaron is constantly on edge making the vibe of the movie one note at times instead of an emotional rollercoaster of disappointment. Another knock as with many Found Footage movies, you feel annoyed that Aaron is documenting everything he’s going through but in this film it makes the most sense than in most Found Footage films to date.

 

Creep over all allows a naturally planned out plot development to make things more realistic and therefore scarier, as it helps to put us in this scenario and question how we would handle it and contemplate it. Mark Duplass does an excellent job playing an anxious psycho who’s somewhat misunderstood and yet vibrant and modern. You feel for him, fear him and are annoyed by him at all points. Only Mark Duplass could be enthusiastic enough to portray what he puts Aaron through, with his relentless energy and antics towards a quest for connection.

 

If you have a late night and want to check something out that’s both fun and intriguingly freaky, throw Creep on and treat it like crime evidence you just found…….you won’t regret it. Creep is an impressive experiment in the Horror genre all based on emotions, comedy and one lone camera that looked like a ton of fun to make.

 

-          Maurice Jones

Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

 

“It’s all fun and games until you think about it…….so why think about it?”

 

Richard Linklater makes a conscientious film about the Jock mentality in Everybody Wants Some!!

The film begins a week before college starts in 1980 with baseball player/college freshman Jake arriving at his dorm, from there he meets his classmates/teammates whom are all on a baseball scholarship. Through the group of young athletes, Jake learns lessons about himself, baseball and the meaning of self identification.

Everybody Wants Some!! Is an analysis on the Jock perspective, Jake and his classmates are fun, charismatic young guys who love the world and what they can have in it, but they’re fun comes from conforming to mainstream culture in order to have a good time and to think about their actions means they’ll have to be isolated, that being the least popular vote in mainstream culture, especially of the 1980’s, so instead they go along with everything. Ironically though, by living for the moment one still excludes them from a large part of alternative culture that becomes more and more part of the norm as the years go by. Thinking they can pretend their way through everything uncaringly as popular culture dictates their lifestyles, which makes them the ultimate consumers through the idea of free sex and false masculinity. These guys aren’t going to change the world nor do they want to. Their indifference won’t allow them and having the best time ever and being the life of the party therefore creates the Reagan generation. While the most effective intelligent and insightful people in their lives fall to the waist side and aren’t taken seriously. They’re drowning in their own stereotype even though some of them are more conscious than they appear.

Though deep Everybody Wants Some!! Is an extremely fun film with jokes all around and very well portrayed characters and no sight of weak actors. It has the classic Linklater insight that allows things to be observed by the audience as opposed told to them. As noticed, the Jocks are the epitome of normal yet they are willing to try new things even if it’s only to get laid, but the film keeps in mind that the reason everyone else on campus strays from what the Jocks are about, is simply because of the needlessly obnoxious abusive neglectful behavior they can’t help be apart of.   

Everybody Wants Some!! Isn’t one of Richard Linklater’s most cohesive works or most original, but one can’t ignore the message here, especially his execution of it.

 

-          Maurice Jones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6raUs0CiCQ