Suspiria (2018)

Set to the back drop of a German 1977 hijacking crisis, Suspiria 2018 already pushes its self apart from the original Suspiria and sets a tone of sisterhood, the frustration and conformity and influence of dance, true love, parental influence, possession, ageism, loss and political tyranny. All stirring into a horror film more shocking and grotesque than the original, but just as chillingly beautiful. 

Suspiria 2018 maybe written by multiple people and feel that way, but it definitely makes sense of things the original Suspiria never bothered to; Aiming for a satisfying conclusion by tying loose ends, expanding the world and giving purpose to the protagonist in a meaningfully way, which departs this version from the slasher aesthetic of the 1977 film.

Suspiria 2018 sometimes comes off as a vignette of disturbing images and abstract ideas, but overall is pulled in by a focused narrative that sets out to give positioning for all its themes in a realistic setting; Such as a school of dark magic being hidden in plain sight under the shroud of tyranny, rebellion and terrorism. And though Luca Guadagnino is no horror master as of yet, he certainly proves that in order to recreate horror you need to understand horror’s main ingredient: The unknown. And with that you can expand on one’s fears the further you sway from their core beliefs. The film unlike the original, also doesn’t pin considered female archetypes (such as witches) against each other but rather chooses to mold its meaning into something brighter while brilliantly fighting back at the shaming of the patriarchy. 

This film is also very much a reimagining of a child disowning their family to become something more from an abusive home life and mother. And also makes commentary on how real-life horrors of terrorism and war, can cast a shadow over spiritual tyranny that we never notice or believe, but as well that our own real-life horrors will always surpass made up horror, but we eventually become detached from it, as it happens so often around our lives. 

In Suspiria 1977, dance is a back drop for the story but in Suspiria 2018 dance is the absolutely meaning of the film. Displaying dance as a way to hide pain, malice and sinister ideals. As well as being a tool for conformity and ritual intent, in that the perfection of a dance move can lead to a greater cause. Furthermore, the films dance costuming is hypnotic, creatively, bold and beautiful on its simplicity; extending to the grotesque FX make up of the films climax. 

The grey snowy Russian fascist palette of Suspiria location allows for dread and tension to form and ultimately lays based for an impactful and freakishly unexpected climax for the eyes to feast on. The film uses a lot of slow-motion techniques that may seem cheesy and ill-advised, but that add to the European context of the film and oddly bring a sense of sorrow, wonder and contemplation to key scenes; molding the strangeness of the film’s witchy atmosphere.

Thom Yorke’s score isn’t at all the classic catchy 1977 Suspiria theme, but as in the original, it truly molds and adapts to the 2018 version and relays more meaning, maturity and mystery just as the movie itself portrays.

One would of thought Dakota Johnson as the main lead would spoil a Suspiria remake but she does an appropriately understated performance that’s creepy enough for the movies climaxing point and Mia Goth rightfully does an excellent playing completely present and “normal”, allowing for a frighteningly vacant transition as the movie spirals out of control and into the depths of horror. Tilda Swinton goes above and beyond in three roles, playing Madame Blanc, a timid witch with glasses, and an old man in a totally immersive performance and make up, playing an old man who’s sad and contemplative, to a shy wannabe witch with a secret and to a woman who’s as brutal as she is motherly, as Madame Blanc.

 

The Suspiria remake gives you the same shocking experience as the original always in intended but in a more fully realized way. It is dark, dreary, dull and patient, while all the while tense, vibrantly striking, atmospheric, mature, gorgeous, confusing and most of all frightening. All this contains the ingredients for a horror reimagining that stands on its own for a new generation’s mind to be blown, but at the same time is a horror remake that’s surprisingly hopeful just as the original; While allowing the dark to coexist with the light, and telling the classic story of the old moving aside for the young. 9/10.

• Maurice Jones

mid90s (2018)

Jonah Hill bares his past with his film debut Mid90s, about a kid named Stevie who comes of age in the mid 90s through skateboarding culture. A sobering look at boyhood in the 90s to now, that we may have forgotten in a direct way since the movie Kids. 

Mid90s is a bold debut for a comedic actor of mainstream acclaim, but is also a clear love letter to 90’s indie cinema of other bold directors such as Todd Solondz, in which the beginning of the film features a very Todd Solondz-esque silent awkward dinner scene, and the films direction is as grainy looking and confrontation as the 1995 film classic Kids from director Harmony Korine. Mid90s also plays like a silent movie at times with the accompanied Trent Reznor score, absorbing the atmosphere and following the wonder of it’s main protagonist Stevie.

Mid90s is a very accurate depiction of the skateboarding hip hop culture of the 90s, 2000s and now of tough rude confusing pact like behaviour, and the start of the Ritalin craze in the 90’s of parents trying to control their kids, and disaffected youth self harming to get by. But unlike Kids, which shows how horrific skate culture can be, Mid90s shows how redeeming and caring skateboard culture can be, in the midst of toxicity and subtly touching upon the cultural appropriation within the hip hop scene and skate scene amongst non-black people/teenagers using the N-word. With that the film shows where the toxicity comes from within music and the kids home lives.

 Jonah Hill perfectly shoots Mid90s as an old 90s independent film to the likes of Kids even with a cameo from Harmony Korine, and like Kids, accurately reminiscent of stark realistic truth telling yelling matches between family members that mark the temperature of their relationships. With scenes that feel extremely weird and quirky as directing choices but after the fact are affectively poignant and truth to life.

Na-kel Smith as Ray steals the show. Ray becomes the anchor of the group and to Stevie, the more Stevie starts to sink into the depravity of boyhood. 

Steven Suljic does an excellent job at playing a hopefully very polite sheltered 13-year old who transitions into pretending to be an angry resentful rude selfish teenager who is just trying to belong and have a place for himself but who comes back to his real life self when but into serious/ adult situations he never expected to confront in his young life. Stevie’s morals start to fray the more he tries to fit in with a group, who appear to be careless, and who only respect disrespectful disconnected attitudes, based on societies social interpretations of teenage hood. 

The satisfying part of Mid90s is every character gets their due to the point where it feels like it’s their movie each side character starts off like a caricature but through out the film become increasingly painfully real and full dimensional as points of the movie affect them just as much as it affects the lead character. The films plot targets everyone in Mid90s and therefore helps us take every character seriously, but Jonah Hill knows enough to know that in order for this world to feel realistic we don’t need closure to every conflict that’s opened between to characters or that’s brought up from a character, we just need to know it’s there and like life, we hope things work out.

The score by Trent Reznor is exactly what it needs to be and naturally depicts the translation from kid to teenager, along with the soundtrack of punk and 90s hip hop with bad brains misfits will tang and kiss from a rise from seal playing in a restaurant marking the timeline of 95-96 but not making it beholden to any timeline really even with constantly playing of Super NES. 

Negatives towards the film is the use of drugs and alcohol not being affecting enough on the lead child character’s mind during his first-time use, he never passes out or throws up once, but has never had a drink in his life, and at times the movie is pretty paint by numbers in its structure and intent. The film blatantly wants you to feel a certain thing in some scenes with certain lines and music together, but ultimately the film completely works making an affective point about friendship and unconditional love.

What’s amazing about mid90s is with all the vulgar behaviour of the teens and the serious realistic moments and points of the movie, Mid90s shows is how funny the kids naturally are and allows that to be the comedy of the film making mid90s an extremely funny film and reminding some of us of our hilarious high school middle school days skateboarding at the back of the school, too the point where you feel like you’re hanging out with these dudes in person while watching the film. One wonders if many of the scenes are improvised by these first-time teen actors, or if it’s just Jonah hills comedic chops and past experiences giving to the smooth comedic transitions of the film. 

Mid90s pays much respect to the lifestyle, business and craft of skateboarding very well without becoming a skateboarding movie. And connects skateboarding world’s roots to film making in a very personal way. Jonah hill very much captures the scoop of a generation born in the mid 80s and growing up in the mid 90s, a time without cellphones, a time with SNES, N64, some of the best hip hop, and a slack state of mind, just trying to belong and looking up to anyone who will show you something you’ve never seen or heard before. 9/10. 

-         Maurice Jones

The Foxy Merkins (2013) - A hilarious light indie comedy about a subject matter that doesn’t get many movies made about it................Lesbian prostitutes.

The Foxy Merkins mixes satirical comedy with real life accounts of the trials and tribulations of prostitution in the lesbian world.   

Margaret played by Lisa Haas, is an extremely awkward homeless drifter trying to deep her toe into the world of prostitution. Struggling to get the hang of things, she runs into Jo played by Jackie Monahan, a well seasoned prostitute who decides to show Margaret the ropes in return for her friendship. Things get increasingly hilarious as Margaret learns the pitfalls and triumphs of the prostitution world as well as the past of her mentor.

Director Madeleine Oinek tells an absurdly clever yet sometimes touching story about female friendship and female neglect. The Foxy Merkins’ fun plot with Lisa Haas’ painfully awkward comedic style, and Jackie Monahan’s matter of fact delivery, presented with Madeleine Oinek’s deliberately stationary direction takes a direct approach displaying an interestingly bleak yet humorous indie film. Madeleine Oinek splices interviews with real life lesbian prostitutes within the film giving the viewer real accounts of the movies subject matter and responsibly shining a light on the struggle of female prostitution within the lesbian world away from the comedic intention of the film. 

Though The Foxy Merkins is meant to be funny, it has a lot of heart and ultimately doesn’t leave  it’s characters and it’s subject matter like a two dimensional skit, there’s lots of insight to be had, as well as laughs. 6/10. 

- Maurice Jones 

The KinderGarten Teacher (2018)

Sara Colangelo’s The KinderGarten Teacher is one of those rare films where actor intent, writing intent and directing intent all come together as they should and create something with a message beyond as solid than anything one is expecting when they watch this film.

The Kindergarten Teacher is about Lisa Spinelli played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, a kindergarten teacher recently intrigued by poetry and who frequently attends a poetry night class. One day she unexpectedly finds out one of her child students has a knack for creating impactful insightful poetry, which takes Lisa in a irresponsible direction, way beyond anyone’s expectations. 

The Kindergarten Teacher is the most interestingly uncomfortable character study to come out this year and/or to be released on Netflix. Maggie Gyllenhaal does possibly her best performance, portraying a self-centered delusional white female, who through white privilege believes she knows best when it comes to her brown Kindergarten students poetry skills. The films point propels Lisa to convince her young students brown family and everyone around her that her students a genius, while all the while making herself look good and unfortunately, kidnaping a child’s innocence. As the story progresses, Lisa becomes increasingly creepily and ironically narcissistic, and just as you feel sympathy towards Lisa, she does something to detour your perception of her. 

The Kindergarten Teacher is a fine experiment in tone and story progression, and no matter what is perceived by the end of the film, one thing automatically comes to mind.........neglect. 9/10.

• Maurice Jones 

Hold The Dark (2018) (mini review)

Hold The Dark furthers Jeremy Saulnier’s brutally violent yet realistic “matter of fact” style, while being Jeremy’s most nuanced film so far. With an extremely focused narrative, filled with retrospection, regret, redemption and paralyzing fear, Hold The Dark leaves you helpless by the end but as well, relieved. 9/10.

- Maurice Jones

YouTube Hidden Gems #1 - Old Enough (1984)

                                  

As some may know, you can sometimes find hidden film gems deep in the transferred crevasses of YouTube. Old hidden movies that people have forgotten were good, and that leads us to such a film as Marisa Silver’s Old Enough from 1984. Starring a child Alyssa Milano, a wonderfully enigmatic Rainbow Harvest and a blissfully wise Sarah Boyd.

Old Enough is about 7th grader Lonnie (played by Sarah Boyd), child to upper class New York parents with her younger sister Diane. Lonnie is on track of being a straight A student, piano prodigy and summer camp visitor, until that all takes backseat when she suddenly meets Karen, an older teenager with a Bronx attitude and a lower income up bringing, who soon teaches Lonnie the ways of a shoplifting, style minded lifestyle but all the while giving Lonnie the education she didn’t know she needed, giving her notice of class struggle, culture, debauchery, child abuse, her own surroundings, trouble with boys, appreciation of her own parents and a summer impossible to forget. 

From the opening credits and on, Marisa Silver does with Old Enough what some of the best 70’s movies have done in terms of style over the decade, by allowing observation and music to co exist, creating an intimate visual narrative to the story and inevitably pulling us closer to Lonnie’s perspective and her relationship with Karen when things get more intense between them. Not only that, but the funky minimalist Casio synth score really gives way to the feeling of a child’s coming of age and a teenagers journey through awkward yet youthful discovery in the streets and buildings of a 1980’s NYC.

The dynamics of Lonnie and Karen’s relationship really come through in Sarah Boyd’s unstated but therefore natural acting choices, really sell the awkwardness of being age 12 and trying to look up to an older kid who you know is steering you in wrong direction, due to their own insecurities. With the writing Sarah Boyd creates a character who’s reserved yet all the while, cool, calm and collected ironically in contrast of Rainbow Harvest, very much creating an interesting dynamic. The character of Karen played brashly and earnestly by the great Rainbow Harvest, is portrayed as if Rainbow really put her real life self and experiences into the role giving off the attitude of Karen yet the vulnerable deep down that comes out in Karen when she’s challenged, making Karen completely redeemable knowing that at the end of the day Karen will do the right thing underneath that tough exterior. 

Old Enough is one of those great 80’s films that kids and adults can both find something sweet and as well profound by the end of the film, without being pandered to or put off from. Take some time out and check out Old Enough on the YouTubes and have an experience like back in the day. 

-        Maurice Jones

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AQj4cFO0AIk&t=2488s

First Reformed (2018)

First Reformed is the new film by Paul Schrader (screenwriter of Taxi Driver), about an increasingly disillusioned sickly reverend played by Ethan Hawke, who is asked by a pregnant wife played by Amanda Seyfried, to talk her politically minded husband she suspects is suicidal. As the reverend’s encounters with the husband become more intense, the reverend’s ideologies begin to parallel the husband’s own. All colliding with the 250th anniversary of the reverend’s church.

First Reformed is a genuinely haunting and dread ridden film that once again explores the aspects of isolation coinciding with mental health problems under the gaze of realistic political worry. And these themes intertwined with themes of the male obsession towards conventionally beautiful women, white privilege and revenge, all found in Schrader’s classic 1976 film Taxi Driver, but still so relevant today. First Reformed also newly intently tackles the balancing of religion and reality. What happens when you apply religion to the realistic business affairs of a church and to the undoing of the planet within climate change and societies place on the earth. As well as the injustices to one another, in which how does one “keep it all together” when the problems seem to be increasingly stacked - how could one not “lose their head” and want to exact something extreme to make a strong point when their backs are mentally against the wall within the world’s truly daunting, truly real problems we all face. That our increasing fear of our planet would understandingly push us into the comfort of obsessive love.

One reviewing the flaws of First Reformed would say it’s themes are too "on the nose" but when realizing the intense reality, the film is portraying, it’s not on the nose. It’s eerily exact.

Portraying these poignantly important messages in First Reformed comes a very focused and unrelenting performance by Ethan Hawke, who sells the dishevelling of the reverend so logically yet instantly without ever subverting the character as a whole. And a surprise performance by Cedric the Entertainer, as Ethan Hawke’s fellow reverend, in a extremely natural and uncompromising role that plays to Ethan Hawke’s crisis of character.

Paul Schrader’s direction with the films subject matter instantly leads a upsetting grime tone to the film and even ironically which adds to the films unease. Stagnant straight forward shots conveying the story and a cold intent accompanied with a chilling bare bones atmospheric score and the irony of church hymns. And like Taxi Driver, Schrader allows the characters surroundings to eerily tell the story.

First Reformed is one of Paul Schrader’s best films, and my favourite so far of 2018, and with the trend of social horror in the ether, First Reformed is definitely a contender for the years best horror film.

- Maurice Jones