Sundance 2021 - Midnight Movie: Coming Home in the Dark (2021)

When a family of four go on a road trip, a run in with two familiar yet unfamiliar faces, changes their trip for the worse.

 

Coming Home in the Dark is an intense, bold, upsetting parable about coincidences, fate and upbringing, in this car invasion film like no other.

 

New Zealand Director James Ashcroft takes us on an immediately explosive, dark journey, and gives us the perfect midnight movie about one’s past carelessness involving children, and how that affects their own children years later. Hardcore to the max, Coming Home in the Dark is the best and possibly the only real car invasion film in recent memory. Having 80% of the film taking place inside of a vehicle, Coming Home in the Dark keeps you on your toes as it drives through the night of the New Zealand desert landscape, under the umbrella of shotgun rifles and unforeseen vengeance.

James Ashcroft’s debut knocks the gritty, cold midnight movie concept out of the park, while bringing us a tale of deep trauma, sorrow, regret and redemption; of the likes of director Jeremy Saulnier. As well as informing us of the real-life historic sex crimes of past educational institutions, that were meant for disenfranchised children who were abandoned by or taking from their parents.

Extremely well acted, expertly shot and absolutely unforgettable. Coming Home in the Dark will leave you as stunned as it’s characters and as sobered as it’s subject matter. 9/10.

 

 

• Maurice Jones

Pieces of a Woman (2021) Review

When Martha Weiss (played by Vanessa Kirby) and her partner Sean Carson (played by Shia LaBeouf) decide to have a home birth for their upcoming child, things take a heart wrenching turn, when their unknown midwife informs them of a complication in their baby’s breathing.

 

Pieces of a Woman is a dark, sobering tale of regret, discovery and acceptance. About anticipating the worst based on your mistakes, and trauma leading to negative mental and physical responses festering from an unexpected extreme event.

 

Director Kornél Mundruczó (White God, 2014) takes his signature style of eerie, “

in your face” observation with sparks of hope in slice of life moments, and pointedly applies it to one of his coldest and most honest films yet, that boldly exposes the lies people in committed relationships tell each other and the lies and misinterpretations people peddle to one another in any type of relationship to get along. Director Kornél Mundruczó uses a lake back drop as the month by month starting point of a year in pain and recovery in the setting of Boston, displaying the drab individual isolation of a blue collar career and a white collar career alike between Martha and her partner Sean. Using blues and whites to display each lifestyle all under a grey umbrella of numbness. Pieces of a Woman plays with the realities of consequences with choices, that once shove something under a rug, it’s bound to tear itself once again. The fear of women losing their jobs after a 9 month pregnancy, the fear of losing a false sense of masculinity, the fear of being seen as low class, the feeling of carrying a life inside you and regaining that feeling after it’s over through unconscious metaphor, dealing with an abusive spouse and antagonizing families members, how our bodies give away exactly what we’re experiencing on the inside on the outside; these are the struggles boldly exposed in Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman that are a part of the day to day struggle to cope with the failure felt with pregnancy complications for a Boston, Mass couple on the verge of destruction. All this conjured thoroughly and thoughtfully by a powerful script written by Kata Weber.

 

Vanessa Kirby does her best work yet exploring Martha’s spiral down the drain, understanding her mentally comprehending of nursing someone inside her and suddenly not at all while and that experience as a whole through continuing in her regular day to day before the pregnancy, as well as keeping up with appearance to her friends and family under the embarrassment of admitting failure and what that all could interpret, with the pressure of being under her overbearing mother’s thumb played by the unbeatable Ellen Burstyn, once again pushing the limit of acting as the most convincingly blunt, unrelenting and passive aggressive, scarily unaware mother we all know to well, and creepily so. Now the criminal elephant in the room, is Shia LaBeouf who is facing allegations of physical abuse towards his ex in real life, and it’s quite apparent in his performance as Sean Carson that he is channeling real habits in this role and that “method” is under playing his acting here, and his reality as a sick individual who needs serious help in real life. Beyond that though, classic Canadian actor Molly Parker absolutely shines as the unknown midwife, with truly poignant and effective work expressing someone who’s feet are to the fire, sick to their stomach with overwhelmed fear and grief of what frightening accusations they could face that they could not avoid if they tried.

 

Just as a shout out to the location of Quebec standing in for Boston; the Quebec winter back drop not only is a convincing Boston but services as the perfect dark overlord holding all these traumatized, beaten down individuals and the demons they are admitting to scene by painful scene. This location coupled with the film’s soundtrack doesn’t quite work as the sound track is bland, obvious and at times down right inappropriate for the subject matter; maybe incorporate a classic synth score or some abstract acoustic guitar instead of the same tired sappy song cue meant to reciprocate connection or instead of the odd inappropriate sardonic based piano score during a scene of rediscovery, but regardless, beggars can’t be choosers.

 

Pieces of a Woman is one of those classic films that embarrassingly reminds us of ourselves through its hardcore realism through acting and directing, while reminding us that we aren’t the characters on screen and that we should be thankful of that. Pieces of a Woman terrifies us but ultimate keeps things in check as we all know in the end, life goes on. 7.5/10.

 

 

• Maurice Jones 

Sundance 2021: El Planeta (2021) - Precode era meets Jurmusch meets Parasite meets Frances Ha

After a nasty divorce that depletes their finances and forces them to keep up with appearances and lie to save face; Now destitute, daughter Leonor and mother Maria will do anything to maintain the look of their former lifestyles, all the while ignoring the impeding consequences of their nefarious actions to uphold their reputations in modern day Spain.

 

Director Amalia Ulman directs and writes a fantastic, slightly absurdist, intentionally meandering black and white debut comedy, not only about keeping up with appearances but about what fear of embarrassment does to our potential. Ulman plays the daughter, Leonor, along side her actually real-life mother (Ale Ulman) playing the films mother, Maria. El Planeta makes connections between the hatred of the Royals of Spain by the people of Spain with the wealth disparities and shallow, close minded notions and gestures of wealth. One avoiding working an every day job even though they may need to, while telling people you’ve been invited to a royal event by the Royals, makes a perfect commentary on the influence royals could have on a public, confusing them into a delusional sense of self.

 

El Planeta accurately depicts the misanthropic, mundane escapades of Leonor, a person in her twenties or thirties trying or pretending to work in a glamorous field, but not being able to due to her economic reality and therefore lack of ambition to properly pursue said career, beyond saying it’s what you do it for a living, or giving potential employers the intention that you live within the means of working in a highfalutin job field such as celebrity make up design, while trying to gain free Wi-Fi from a stranger’s modem in the apartment above. Identically with the films mother character - Maria, who wears the same fur coat and shades to constantly look expensive while stealing make up, food, committing fraud and trying on dresses day after day instead of looking for work at the stores she frequents. Accompanied with a Chinese immigrant withholding their martial status to live a more fruitful quality of life, while they’re away from their immediate family in a far away country. Haphazard, dubious character development such as these are very reminiscent of films like: Frances Ha (2012), Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Parasite (2019) and Farewell Amour (2020). Where characters go from slightly deceptive to very deceptive lengths in a mundane reality, to live beyond their means and gain respect they don’t get due to their social status. With El Planenta, Amalia Ulman creates these scenarios in spades, having you question Maria and Leonor’s mental health and raise concerns for their safety, as well as ponder Leonor’s upbringing by her mother Maria and ultimately Leonor’s faith in Maria as a parent. All the while laughing at the film’s matter-of-fact, meandering, realistic dark humor, based on these character’s disturbing yet sad choices, under the axe of our cold, capitalistic planet.

 

El Planeta is definitely one of the best of Sundance 2021 and one of the best, most unique comedies of 2021, and we’ll surely see Amalia Ulman again as a comedic and poignant auteur in her own right with whatever her next projects may be, that I can’t wait to witness. El Planeta is an excellent exercise in capitalistic struggle and societal pressure, and observational, lay-about, ignorant Precode era humor, that is rarely done well while touching upon classic and modern societal everlasting struggles. An absolute must-see comedy. 10/10.

 

 

• Maurice Jones

Sundance 2021: Together Together (2021) - Apatow, But Better.

A single heterosexual male in his 40’s name Matt, (played by Ed Helms) decides to get a surrogate so he can have a baby before he reaches his fifties. When Matt chooses 26-year-old Anna (played by Patti Harrison) to give birth to his child, Matt doesn’t count on Anna’s personal struggles, his hung-ups and their budding friendship to be apart of the process.

 

Director Nikole Beckwith creates a delightfully hilarious til the end, touching and truly poignant while jokingly charming film, about platonic love and it’s the best film I saw at Sundance 2021. Together Together is the de facto Rom-Com without the intended sex or kissing scenes to acknowledge a relationship. Together Together is completely connection through circumstance and full stop. No reason for Matt and Anna to prove there is something between them sexually after scenes of intimacy, as realistically, intimacy can just be a conversation and an understanding, nothing else, and that’s okay. Nikole Beckwith decided to boldly defy and subvert late 2000 Woody Allen/Apatow/Nicole Holofcener/mumblecore influenced modern relationship films, by pushing back at mature worship, sex affair worship, and settling down worship of those films, and focusing on the comedy and genuine human bonding on a respectful, reasonable and equal level.

 

Together Together whole heartily utilizes Apatow’s style but for good, without the unnecessary raunch, pot smoking or psychedelics or verbal abuse towards women, but with the perfect improv, beautifully crisp sun coated direction, classic character growth montages and well written plotting and character development with sharp, truthful, insightful dialogue. Ultimately though, Together Together is smarter than the regular Apatow fair, as is it not orchestrated by a middle-aged white man who has worked in Hollywood for ages.

 

With its cast and script Together Together is particularly a meta commentary on the Rom-Com Apatow Comedy genre, questioning the absence of minority characters that would brighten the world of those films, as inclusion of the female perspective, confronting problematic gatekeepers such as Woody Allen; who constantly made it seem okay for older men to date teenagers and for older white men to become interesting through dating younger women in his movies; which Anna in the film intelligently touches upon in a great monologue that Patti Harrison genuinely pulls off. Directors Nikole Beckwith also classically pokes fun at Allen, by taking his style with the films hilarious opening credits with white font over a black background and taking back that style from a bummer of a person and reapplying that style to a better film perspective.

 

One could say Matt and Anna don’t get together because in Together Together because Patti Harrison (who plays Anna) is transgender in real life and maybe Ed Helms (who plays Matt) wasn’t comfortable having a sex scene with Patti Harrison or vice versa Patti Harrison wasn’t comfortable, but that’s not the point of the film, and the take back of having a transgender female playing a non-transgender female giving birth is perfect. Constantly non-transgender people have been playing transgender people in films, and Patti Harrison in this role is the progression that needs to happen in the film industry, and regardless Patti Harrison as always, is fantastic in Together Together.

 

Ed Helms does his best work in Together Together since Jeff, Who Lives At Home (2011) and The Office (2005), playing a man who realizes he’s way out of his depth and who’s out of touch with current generations and who believes in child birth as myths, though it’s his own child that a woman is holding for him. Ed helms perfectly brings his endearing goof ball style with a sense of hurt as Matt questions why he’s single and why Anna's maybe annoyed with him, which in turn happens to Anna as well. Ed Helms plays Matt so well, as in scenes where you can tell Matt is contemplating kissing Anna, but can’t cross that line even though he has grown to like her. Helms also plays it great in a scene where he’s immediately jealous of Anna being with someone, even though she’s his surrogate. And Patti Harrison is a straight up revelation, and the new female Rom-Com lead archetype. Not only being a well known excellent odd ball alt comedian in various tv shows, but taking her first turn in a Dramedy. Using her awkward bold angry comedic style to display a lovely intelligent but lonely and isolated character, who bares a child because they need the money but who also hides their pain with irate stares of annoyance and with weird and hilarious encrypted reasoning. Anna is abandoned by her parents due to her choices and economic situation, in which economics is also quite touched upon in Together Together as most Rom-Coms either don’t focus on that aspect or try to explain characters economics in the shallowest way possible. Anna lives in a shoe box apartment and works at a coffee shop as Matt is an app developer and lives in a beautiful house, and that all makes sense. Furthermore, Patti Harrison truly expresses Anna’s pain in a realistically awkward non melodramatic way while bringing Alt comedy to a character who is vastly unseen in these types of movies. Ed Helms and Patti Harrison are also accompanied by today’s best comedians in supporting roles played naturally and hilariously by Tig Notaro, Jo Firestone, Anna Konkle and Julio Torres.

 

Together Together is the new Rom-Com aesthetic through and through and will change the game, influencing comedy directors to come. Together Together asks some of the most interesting questions of our time; Does gender matter? Does intimacy have to involve sex? Are men allowed to want to be single parents? Together Together holds true to what we love in comedy, while giving us what we want in any movie. Realism and true insight. 10/10.

 

 

 

• Maurice Jones

 

Sundance 2021: How It Ends (2021)

When a thirty-something (played by Zoe Lister-Jones) wakes up on the day the world decides to end. Her inner child comes out to play, guiding her on a journey to reconnect with her parents, friends, lost loves and herself before earth’s impeding doom.

 

Remember when you and your friends made cheap bad horror movies on your parents camcorder in your neighborhood, because there was nothing better to do? Welcome to the slightly bigger budget B to C-list version of that, in the supposed comedy - How It Ends. The intentionally low budget Indie Dramedy film version of Gal Gadot’s Imagine video. Like that video, How It Ends was made during the 2020 COVID lockdown and feels it in the worst way possible. This movie’s bloated self indulgent unfunny script and reason-to-hang-out B to C-list celebrity appearances of the likes of: Fred Armisen, Bobby Lee, Olivia Wilde, Charlie Day, Pauly Shore, Helen Hunt and so forth, immediately makes the film come of like a charity movie for COVID relief or a half-assed reason to enter the 2021 Sundance film festival competition. Sadly, it’s the latter, and the only insight this movie has is to first year film students, of what not to do when making a movie with your famous friends.

 

Zoe Lister-Jones directed the fantastically hilarious, heart-felt and actually insightful film - Band-Aid (2017) and as well directed the wasted, unwatchable Craft sequel/reboot - The Craft: Legacy (2020). This all means Zoe Lister-Jones should stay away from sequel/reboots and director collaborations with Daryl Wein, ‘cause if How It Ends is the result, time can be better spent during quarantine than walking around your LA neighborhood, humble bragging to the audience that you know Olivia Wilde and Helen Hunt. Pssst....nobody cares....also nobody cares that you’re trying to make your less famous friends more famous by involvement. It’s offensive, especially during a pandemic, and just so to be entered into Sundance, in which a better, more important film could of taken your place instead.

 

Of all the pandemic films to come out so far, this is the most painstakingly despicable, as during the making of this film, actors and crew could of caught COVID during a certain party scene at the end of the movie. And there’s absolutely no effort taken in making the film entertaining in the least bit. If this is suppose be a Portlandia format of joke telling, it lacks the break by break musical interludes that jump from scene to scene in order to help jokes land. Instead, we’re left with the sound of the neighborhood streets and joke pauses, mixed supposedly sentimental scenes of self discovery that we’re suppose care about, but can’t, as we’re distracted by well off “comedians” in LA, living it up and filming their movie, while the reality of the pandemic goes on in the background for the rest of the world.

 

How It Ends is such an excuse to hang out with Pauly Shore, (and so Olivia Wilde and Zoe Lister-Jones can duel each other with their frighteningly sharp and soulless, vapid freaky light blue eyes, while finding out who can say meaningless, stale, regurgitated rich white girl trauma dialogue the fastest) that it’s main plot of the world ending holds no actual weight, and it’s most interesting premise of ones inner child being present during the apocalypse, could of been explored throughout the film with every character, but instead stays with Zoe Lister-Jones, adding no real depth due to sterile direction, predictable grade school writing and bad exhausted one take acting by the film’s inner child actor.

 

Daryl Wein could of maybe gotten a better camera to film with. Zoe Lister-Jones could of maybe not of written this film, realizing there’s nothing here to chew on or to care about. The idea that we should care about this movie that was made during COVID is CRIMINAL, hilariously criminal but still criminal. Zoe, no one cares that you visited your friends houses during COVID. No one cares you and Olivia Wilde are such good friends. We don’t care you managed to make the gang from It’s Always Sunny seem unfunny for the first time. And we definitely don’t care about any light family trauma you’ve been through as a child and then got to make a cheap film about under the painfully bright L.A. sun; staring at your painfully bright white skin and scarily piercing zombie blue eyes with smeared red lips, when everyone else had to survive the COVID pandemic in actual life threatening circumstances of struggle. Shame on you, Zoe. 1/10.

 

 

• Maurice Jones