Category Archives: Film

Saturday Matinee: Downsizing

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Let’s Get Small: Reckoning with “Downsizing”

“Look, you don’t understand. There was shrinkage!”

By Noah Gittell

Source: Good Eye

In his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, essayist Chuck Klosterman wrote an essay defending the 2001 Cameron Crowe film Vanilla Sky from its reputation as a creative failure. Specifically, he honed in on critic Owen Gleiberman’s D+ review in Entertainment Weekly that accused the film of being little more than “a cracked hall of mirrors taped together by a What is reality? cryogenics plot.” Nonplussed, Klosterman pointed out that all the best films of this era—from The Matrix and Fight Club to eXistenZ and Mulholland Drive asked that same question about the nature of our reality. Klosterman argued that it was “the only relevant question for contemporary filmmakers.”

I bring this up to defend Downsizing, which is not a great film but deserves kudos for doing what Vanilla Sky did in the early ‘00s. Downsizing asks the only relevant question for filmmakers of its era: What should we do now that the world is ending? It asks this question all the way through, although its beginnings—the first third, basically—feels more like a broad comedy, which may have thrown some viewers. The film’s shifts in tone reminds me a bit of Zero Effect, one of my all-time favorites, which also presented itself as a wacky comedy before slowly transforming into something more profound. I have a theory that people—maybe critics in particular—don’t like movies that sell themselves as one thing and then become something else. It makes them feel manipulated or something. 

I was up for it with Downsizing because if you look closely, it’s about the end of the world from the beginning. The film stars Matt Damon as Paul Safranek, an occupational therapist struggling to get his head above financial water. He and his wife (Kristen Wiig) accept a radical new solution: they will shrink themselves and head off to live in Leisureland, a community for the small where their scant savings will allow them to live like millionaires for the rest of their lives. 

It turns out to be a real bait-and-switch, for Paul and for us. His wife leaves him just before the procedure, leaving Paul small and alone. After fighting depression for a year or so, he eventually gets caught up in the life of Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a Vietnamese dissident who was a brief cause celebre after shrinking herself to escape political persecution and is now cleaning tiny houses for a living in Leisureland. 

Despite the economic framing, Downsizing is pretty goofy up until this point, with a lot of sight gags built around objects that are not the size we’re used to seeing them. Still, there are hints of the thoughtfulness to come. The shrinking process is initially sold as a way to cut down on human consumption and save humanity from the ravages of climate change, but director Alexander Payne slips in some well-meaning commentary on how environmentalism is co-opted.  Most people shrink themselves out of self-interest, using their duty to the planet as cover. When Paul reconnects with an old friend who has gotten small and asks him if it feels good to save the environment, the friend replies, “Downsizing is about saving yourself.”

It’s a neat summary of the problems of the film, which is ostensibly about saving the planet but is ultimately more committed to the journey of its average, White middle-class protagonist. When Paul meets Ngoc Lan, he discovers the dark underbelly of Leisureland: the projects on the wrong side of the tracks (okay, in this case, a tunnel), where she and an entire class of unseen, underrepresented workers live. Paul is horrified by their living conditions, and finds himself compelled to help her feed, bandage, and generally care for them out of the goodness of his heart. When he learns of an opportunity to visit the original small colony in Norway—and be included in their plan to start a new colony underground while waiting out the impacts of climate change—he must decide between being part of the privileged future or staying behind to help those afflicted in the present.

I’ve noticed that most people who have seen Downsizing seem to get fed up in this final third. Paul and Ngoc Lan travel to Norway with his debauched neighbors (a perfectly cast Christoph Waltz and Udo Kier), where the film completes its transition from broad comedy to meditation on the morality of Armageddon. Paul justifies his choice to be part of the future in selfish terms: ”Why didn’t I become a doctor? Why did I downsize? Why did my wife abandon me? So I could wind up here at exactly the time to go into that tunnel! I finally have the chance to do something that matters.” In the end—SPOILER ALERT—he stays on the surface, marries Ngoc Lan, and spends his downsized downtime helping the indigent.

I have no issue with the film’s transformation, and I admire its willingness to ask, as Klosterman puts it, the only relevant question of our time. It reminds me of the best moment in the political career of Andrew Yang, who, when asked at a Democratic presidential debate for his approach to climate change, gave a startlingly clear-eyed answer. Other candidates talked about the need to listen to climate scientists, transitioning to green energy, and, if they were feeling bold that day, a carbon tax. Yang looked right at the camera, and said something like (I’m paraphrasing), “I would allocate $40 billion to move every American family to high ground.” His honesty hit me like a load of bricks, and for a minute there, I thought we finally had a politician who would tell the truth. The bloom came off his rose pretty soon after that, but at least he didn’t deny reality, and neither does Downsizing. It should be commended for that.

It just chooses a poor lens through which to explore the issue.  The film’s problems run along two intertwining tracks: creative and political. First, there’s something unseemly about Payne exploring these themes through a middle-class White protagonist. Watching Downsizing, you can’t help but wish Ngoc Lan were the main character, and Paul was just a sweet White guy she picked up along the way. Hong Chau gives a miraculous performance as the resolute activist. Yes, she uses a comically exaggerated Vietnamese accent that threatens to offend sensitive viewers, but her increasingly soulful performance overwhelms the stereotype. Was all this on purpose—the offense and the redemption? I tend to think so. Payne is telling this story for privileged White viewers, and he hopes that her transformation from, um, housecleaner into fully-formed human being will transform them into caring about those they would otherwise ignore.

Maybe it will, but I can’t help but feel he’d have a better shot at doing that if his main character weren’t the most boring person on the planet. I get the appeal of an Everyman in this type of story, but Paul Safranek does not need to be this bland. His backstory is compelling enough: He was going to be a doctor, but his mom got sick, so he moved back to his hometown to take care of her and became an occupational therapist instead. His mom died, and he married a seemingly sweet lady who inexplicably left him in the lurch. This series of events would produce an interesting person, or at least a recognizable personality, certainly more than the human blob that Payne, his co-writer Jim Taylor, and Matt Damon come up with here. On the page, Paul is torn between altruism and self-interest, but that conflict never comes to life on the screen. There’s no self-deprecation, black humor, frustration, or anger. It’s a bland performance by an actor who is capable of much more.

Downsizing still gets points for trying. Damon could have given a better performance, but the broader problem of centering a boring White man in this story was not really fixable. An FX-driven moral parable about the end of humanity would never be made without a movie star at its center, and certainly not for its reported $68 million budget—it’s kind of a miracle it got made even with one. And outside of Denzel Washington and Will Smith, there were no non-White movie stars at this time who guaranteed a  certain box-office haul. Put simply, it always had to be Damon or someone like him, which means that Downsizing probably did the best it could under the circumstances. If you want to make a movie that reckons seriously with Armageddon, you’re gonna have to work with the devil to do it.

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Watch Downsizing on Kanopy here:https://www.kanopy.com/en/kcls/video/13159250

Saturday Matinee: Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy

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By Matt

Source: Review All Monsters

Stumbling into something new while seeking out material for this site is always an exciting experience—and nothing demands my attention like the phrase “weird Yugoslav-Czechoslovak Science Fiction movie from the early eighties.” Visitors From the Arkana Galaxy (sometimes referred to by the more nondescript title Visitors from the Galaxy) is definitely a weird one, and has only found wide distribution in English-speaking countries in the last year thanks to Deaf Crocodile Films—its combination of unvarnished eighties European settings and borderline surrealist storytelling makes for the kind of cult-ready object that modern boutique film distributors regularly gift to us. Shifting between exaggerated reality and extreme fantasy, Visitors has something of a satirical edge, and combined with its bizarre visuals, you can really tell that director Dušan Vukotić comes from an animation background (the movie was partially produced by prominent Croatian animation studio Zagreb Film.) To further invite attention—my attention in particular—there is a prominent monster element that was designed and partially animated by stop motion animation master Jan Svankmajer before he gave us such classics as Alice and Little Otik.

Opening with a blur of space age imagery and an enrapturing wash of seventies Sci-Fi synth by Tomislav Simović, the kind of music that embodies the style’s simultaneously unnerving and soothing qualities, the dreamy sensory experience shifts to the earthbound, where we meet aspiring Sci-Fi writer Robert Novak (Žarko Potočnjak), who can evidently only begin to craft his literary opus by putting on a space helmet and speaking passages into his voice recorder. In what turns out to be a story about the struggle of seeking one’s artistic dreams, Robert’s writing is interrupted by his neighbours—which includes a fellow artist, the aspiring journalistic photographer Toni (Ljubiša Samardžić), and his mother—and his girlfriend Biba (Lucié Žulova), who thinks he’s spending too much time with his fictional characters and not enough with the real people in his vicinity. There’s a bit of nuance to this depiction of an artist’s life: Robert’s need for escape is established not just through the people hectoring him while he writes (although he’s clearly also suffering from writer’s block as well), but from the scenes where we see his unfulfilling job at the front desk of a hotel, badgered by his boss and swarmed by the tourists that flock to his city. At the same time, Biba does have a point about his growing disconnect, and she is also shown to have her own issues (living in an apartment with her own set of annoying neighbours and an overprotective older sister), providing enough depth of detail to prevent her from just being a hectoring girlfriend. I do think she is allowed some hectoring, though, when his android creations from the planet Tugador in the Arkana galaxy—Andra (Ksenija Prohaska) and the child-like Ulu (Jasminka Alic) and Targo (Rene Bitorajac)—appear in the real world and, among other things, briefly transform her into a small cube.

Robert’s creations first contact him through his recorder, bringing him to a small island off the coast near his hotel job to find them. That first encounter is so disturbing to him that afterwards he visits a psychiatrist, and in conversation reveals that he possibly possesses the mental power of tellurgy, creating physical objects with his mind. This explanation ends up being as weird as the aliens: Robert tells a story of how, as an infant, he materialized working breasts on his single father in order to be fed. That establishes the way in which the aliens could become real, and soon Robert returns to the island with Biba just to have proof that he is not going insane, and both witness Andra experimenting on the island’s lone security guard by removing his heart, followed by all the business with the cube.

You can probably tell that there would need to be a very careful handling of tone to keep this series of baffling events from going off the rails, and to its benefit, Visitors finds that balance, mostly by varying the comedy. Sometimes, the humour comes from normal people somewhat realistically reacting to unbelievable events, while other times both the “normal” people and the Sci-Fi elements are equally absurd. The latter is frequently deployed with every human character other than Robert and Biba, who are regularly portrayed as cartoonish buffoons who react to the alien presence with numerous bizarre assumptions—for example, when all the tourists at the hotel decide to track down the extraterrestrial trio on the island, one woman convinces the rest that only way to show the aliens that they “have nothing to hide” is to take off their clothes, leading to moments of very European comedy where it’s just a crowd of stark naked people walking around a cave.

For the most part, Andra just wants to hang around with Robert in order to learn about human emotions—eventually she shows up in his apartment and begins vacuuming the floor with her arm (one of the more whimsical moments of Svankmajer stop motion)—and that inevitably causes problems for Biba, especially after she walks in on them touching each other, making the background erupt into orgasmic green static. From the beginning, it’s not hard to figure out why Robert thought up Andra in the first place, and any concern he has with his creations mucking up his real life is pretty quickly put aside when the benefits make themselves clear. Robert and Biba fight over this, but neither is truly made out to be totally in the wrong.

If anyone comes close to being an antagonist in this story, it’s Targo, an aryan-looking little cretin who apparently took exception to Robert’s decision earlier in the movie to remove him from his novel and replace him with a monster named Mumu, at the behest of his book seller friend who tells him that readers want scary stuff (the author they keep bringing up as a point of comparison has the amusing name “Hover Decklerd”, who I don’t think is real?) So, for the rest of the movie, when he isn’t chasing after people in his spherical blue space vehicle, Targo is finding opportunities to summon his monstrous replacement to terrorize people—it starts out in the form of a small toy, because Robert had the idea that the monster should be “some insane toy” (an idea dismissed by his friend for being too cutesy I guess), and then grows into a person wearing perhaps the most indescribable monster costume you’ll likely see. It is abstract art come to life, like a fusion of HR Giger and the expressionist movie posters from Europe that you see posted online from time to time, unique and disgusting in such a way that the fact that it’s an old school person in a monster costume simply doesn’t register. While this obviously means that Mumu is not purely a creature of Svankmajer’s nightmarish animation like Little Otik, he does provide suitably horrific flourishes for certain shots, like a pair of eyeballs that pop out of its pectorals. For something that is obviously not a big budget affair, its combination of somewhat tongue-in-cheek cheesy Sci-Fi visual effects and genuinely imaginative ones matches the tone of the movie, and can even be held up as something that feels genuinely otherworldly at times.

The monster makes only fleeting appearances throughout the movie, giving us a chance to look at its bizarre design but never long enough to see it actually do anything, but it gets to be front-and-centre in the climax, where Targo’s machinations lead it to break into a wedding party in Biba’s apartment. This is a very long sequence of escalating destruction and borderline horror moments that are intentionally undercut with gags—a man has his head torn off, and another’s head is flattened into a rubber dummy, but both treat it more like an inconvenience. The implication throughout this extended monster rampage sequence is that Mumu is not actually violent in nature—at first, it seems more interested in using its fleshy proboscis to sniff flowers—and that is probably the way Robert himself imagined it. However, as it is attacked by the terrified onlookers, it either defensively or even accidentally maims and kills them in response, the result of its strange alien anatomy (it burns down a room with flamethrower breath just so it can dislodge a fork in its throat.) The guests at the party argue over whether to shoot the creature or try to make peaceful contact with it, neither approach getting them anywhere—in attempting to make friendly gesture, the psychiatrist from earlier in the movie has his hand chomped off by a toothy stomach-mouth in a moment that presages a certain famous horror effect in John Carpenter’s The Thing, released not long after this. The whole sequence, while offering the exact kind of violence and thrills that Robert was encouraged to put into his novel, is actually more a comedy of errors.

The shifting, borderline contradictory nature of those moments brings us back to the way this movie handles Robert’s creativity. What little we hear of his novel seems mightily cliched—aliens coming to Earth to learn deeper truths from our primitive civilization (that beings like Targo view with disdain) is certainly not award-winning material, and even the idea that a man disappointed by life would imagine a beautiful robot woman that dutifully loves him shows Robert to be pretty basic. But even though he willingly tries to change his story to match the tastes of mainstream readers, there’s a naive purity to his imagination, a desire to explore a universe full of interesting and well-meaning beings. In his vision of reality, it makes sense that the monster would not be as nasty as it appears, and that there would be hyper-convenient time-rewinding power that allows them to undo all the horrific damage his tellurgy might have accidentally caused. Robert is someone who uses his imagination to make something that is nicer than what he has, and it’s no surprise that the movie ends with him going back to the Arkana galaxy with his alien creations—giving halfhearted promises to Biba that he might come back at some point—finally finding a place where he can live out the fantasies he’s been crafting. Abandoning everything and everyone to live out his fantasy is not a choice that necessarily reflects well on him, but in that way it accurately reflects both the positive and negative aspects of spending so much time in your own head.

Watch Visitors From the Arkana Galaxy on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/kcls/video/13957909

Saturday Matinee: The Animal Kingdom

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By Monica Castillo

Source: RogerEbert.com

Another day, another traffic jam. A father, François (Romain Duris), chides his son Émile (Paul Kircher) for feeding the family dog potato chips. He tells his son to stay away from them as well since they’re probably not very good for him, and Émile rolls his eyes as any 16-years-old would. They argue. Émile gets out of their car in defiance since the traffic is at a standstill. Suddenly, an ambulance stuck in the opposite lane of traffic starts to wobble and out bursts a bird-like man. He escapes, and the son and the father run back to their car in shock. “Strange days!” a neighboring driver responds. It is an understatement.

In Thomas Cailley’s striking sci-fi fantasy “The Animal Kingdom,” the birdman is a sign of things to come. In this present-day world, some humans have started to genetically mutate into other species, morphing into winged, reptilian, beastly hybrids that the larger non-mutated society have decided to ostracize, keeping them in hospitals or zoo-like centers away from the rest of the population, even their loved ones, for the potential risk that they can hurt someone with their outsized claws, fangs, and wings.

This was the case for Émile’s mother, Lana, who is shown only briefly at first in the hospital with fur growing around her eyes. Soon, there are other creature sightings in the background and in the forest. This is their new normal. Running parallel to these fantastic beasts are problems of everyday life – of a son challenging his father’s authority, François starting a new job, and Émile struggling to fit into his new school. Then, Émile starts to have problems riding his bike, his mannerisms are changing beyond his control, his back feels different, and soon, fur and claws appear. He is also mutating. 

“The Animal Kingdom” moves swiftly between its characters’ everyday problems and the story’s fantastical elements in a magical realist way that quickly captivates its viewer. Cailley, who co-wrote the film with Pauline Munier, uses the creatures as a metaphor for how the world responds to health crises. Because they are not understood and feared, they are locked away from the rest of this society, which recalls how some countries isolated the first wave of HIV/AIDS patients in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. In the movie, characters spoke of other countries adapting to live side-by-side with the humanoid creatures and showed how politicized the issue became among Émile’s classmates and François’ boss, which mirrored the discussion around how other countries handled the recent COVID-19 epidemic and how politicized the discourse around public health and safety became around the issue. That life still continued during these “strange days” of masking, testing, periods of isolation, and family tragedy for some only makes “The Animal Kingdom” all the more relevant. 

There’s so much to cope with that Émile nursing a crush on a fellow classmate and sparks forming between François and a disaffected cop named Julia (Adèle Exarchopoulos) only occasionally registers next to the mortification of mutating (another metaphor for coming-of-age) and grieving. It’s difficult to move on from something when you’re still going through it, even if it is in a setting as idyllic as the way Cailley’s brother and cinematographer David Cailley captures the sun-soaked French countryside and untamed forests. As a tired dad just trying to do the best for his son, Duris does an impeccable job carrying his character’s weariness of these events opposite Kircher, who meticulously embodies his character’s adolescent anxiety and animal impulses.

“The Animal Kingdom” is indeed a strange beast. Like “X-Men” minus the superpowers, it’s an analogy about the way people are ostracized for differences beyond their control. It’s a premise that could have suffered with bad CGI effects, but we see just enough of chimeras that blend feathers, scales, and fur onto human skin to understand what’s happening, to empathize with both the person mutating and the fear of the people around them trying desperately to return to normalcy. There is no going back, these “strange days” are the new normal. Dad still argues with his son for feeding chips to their Australian Shepherd while he lights up another cigarette, on and on it goes. The movie is effective in its ability to make us emphasize for the hunted “others” as well as observe how humanity becomes the very thing it fears: monstrous in its attempt to restore law and order. Life is complicated like that, and yet it continues to find a way forward.

Watch The Animal Kingdom on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/kcls/video/15487571

Saturday Matinee: Black Dynamite 

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By Ben Travers

Source: PopMatters

Satire, when done well, can be a scathing critique on any number of issues. It can be as loose and fun as in Airplane, or as sharp and thought provoking as Dr. Strangelove. At its worst, to put it bluntly, are most of the movies by the Wayans brothers and their inspirations. Scary Movie 2, 3, and 4 are lazy imitations of satire. They dumb it down to the point where its bite is toothless.

As is the case with most humor, though, the line between scathing and toothless is thin and hard to pin down. Based on only a few jokes or scenes, it’s easy to be thrown off the right path and led down one of betrayal. So after viewing the theatrical trailer for Black Dynamite, one may not know what they’re in for over the next 90-minutes. Sure, there are some good lines. When Black Dynamite responds to a query with a stone-faced utterance of “I am smiling,” it will have you doubling over.

Then he kicks a man through a wall and Arsenio Hall shows up. Now what? Well, let me settle things for you. Black Dynamite isn’t exactly a scathing critique or a vital social commentary, but more of an homage to the best of the blaxploitation genre. Director Scott Sanders throws everything one could hope for into the picture and more.

Sanders and co-screenwriters Michael Jai White (who also plays Black Dynamite) and Byron Minns wisely gear their story to augment the frivolous tone. Set (of course) in the ’70s ghetto, our tale follows Black Dynamite as he tracks down his brother’s killer and tries to clean up the streets. Perhaps coincidentally (but probably not), he also keeps running into thugs somehow connected to a malt liquer company. Could it be a front for an illegal drug trade or a shady company with a less than legal agenda? You better believe it. The search for the truth leads Black Dynamite to a tropical locale, a group of Kung-fu masters, and even the White House.

There are more important aspects here than just some silly plot, though. My favorite send-ups of the blaxploitation genre are the multiple technical goofs thrown in throughout the film. During an important speech early in the film, Black Dynamite looks up in annoyance at a boom mic poking him in the head. Instead of stopping the take, he just keeps pushing through his speech. After all, any professional conscience of his film’s budget would do the same.

Later in the film, there are some jump cuts where it’s clear they messed up mid-shoot and had to splice together two similar shots. All of these “miscues” blend seamlessly into the boisterous vibe of the film and greatly enhance even the funniest jokes.

Obviously, all of the goofs are intentional, as are the other not so subtle references to honor the genre. Black Dynamite himself is something of a superhero. His skills are countless and unmatched. He’s always one step ahead of the competition, and he seems to know what people are thinking before they do. Plus, when he kicks a man, it knocks him through a wall! Oh, and a tip for viewers out there: if a man isn’t African American, he’s probably up to no good.

Even the performances are on the ball. Any actor who can stay in character while having his Afro tickled by a boom mic is obviously committed to his part, but Michael Jai White shows he truly understands his role by his performance throughout the film. His strong, confident attitude conveys an invincibility necessary for the lead of any blaxploitation picture. It also fits perfectly with his stoic comedic style. Yes, this should probably be expected considering he had a hand in the screenplay, but that doesn’t mean we should take anything away from his acting feat.

Listening to White discuss the role in the DVD’s commentary track is almost as entertaining as watching him. Though the director has some worthwhile insights as well, White was the true attraction throughout the film.

The rest of the special features are pretty solid, too. Deleted scenes are always an intriguing inclusion, even if it’s fairly obvious why they were cut. There are behind-the-scenes videos of the filmmaker’s trip to comic-con and a making-of featurette that incorporates most of the cast. On other films viewers usually just want to see a lot of the star, but fans of Black Dynamite will certainly value the rest of the cast’s input in the bonus material.

That’s because the supporting cast is an impressive bunch. The aforementioned Arsenio Hall manages to stay within the situation and not blow it up with his occasionally outlandish humor. Tommy Davidson, as Cream Corn, is given most of the screen time and fills it well with his quick quips. Each of the supporting players complements White and the film nicely, though. Even when they’re not given much screen time, they all leave their subtle (or not so subtle) mark on the movie.

The lines provided them certainly help, though. Other than a few extraneous details that bog down a few scenes, the screenwriting team really nailed their goal.

Black Dynamite is an extremely entertaining satire whether you understand the genre’s history or not. The deliberate gaffes allow everyone to immediately engage with the film’s ridiculous nature. It’s not quite a classic, but Black Dynamite carves itself a niche in the genre all its own.

Watch Black Dynamite on tubi here: https://tubitv.com/movies/556703/black-dynamite

Saturday Matinee: Sorry To Bother You

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By Brian Tallerico

Source: RogerEbert.com

Boots Riley’s “Sorry to Bother You” is an adrenalin-shot of a comedy and a fearless dissection of identity politics, corporate malevolence, and the American tendency to look the other way when confronted with horror. In this brilliant satire, people gather around their TVs every night to watch a show called “I Got the Sh*t Kicked Out of Me” and embrace a new lifestyle called WorryFree, which is very clearly corporate slavery advertised as something good for you. There is so much to unpack here in a film that recalls Terry Gilliam, Michel Gondry, and Jonathan Swift, but it is basically the story of a man forced to finally see the injustice around him. Riley’s movie is designed to do the same thing to you. Pay attention.

Don’t worry. “Sorry to Bother You” is no message-heavy, standard social commentary flick. It is a hysterical comedy, one of the funniest movies of the year. Just as in the music he created with The Coup, the message never gets in the way of the rhythm. Riley’s film wants, first and foremost, to entertain you, and it almost certainly will do that, especially if you’re willing to go with it on a funky journey, no matter where it takes you.

The great Lakeith Stanfield does his best film work to date as Cassius “Cash” Green, a young man wondering, like so many, what he’s doing in life. Early in the film, we catch him talking with his girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson, who simply makes everything she’s in better) about the common human dilemma when one considers the impact they’re making in the world. So many of us live check to check and struggle to stay alive much less make a difference. Cash wants to do something important. He will.

His life changes when he gets a horrible telemarketing job at a place called RegalView, a company that sells those relatively worthless encyclopedia books that some people have on their shelves but few people ever read. When he’s advised by a colleague (played by Danny Glover) to use his “white voice,” Cash starts to move up the corporate ladder quickly, eventually getting access to the golden elevator taken only by the “power callers.” The men and women who work on the top floor—where only the “white voice” is allowed—don’t sell books. They sell things people really shouldn’t be selling, and Cash is good at that too, drawing the attention of the maniacal Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) and the disgust of Detroit and his fellow co-workers, who have been struggling to unionize for worker’s rights.

There have been stories of men who sold their souls for success since people put pen to paper, but Riley loads his Faustian saga with enough social commentary to fill a dozen comedies. Every scene feels like it works on multiple registers. It’s much harder than it looks to make people laugh and think at the same time, and it’s that ingenious balance that makes Riley’s script for “Sorry to Bother You” so special. It never loses sight of its need to entertain along with the fact that it serves as a wake-up call for viewers to ask more questions about their priorities and those of people in power. It’s also cinematically striking, especially for a debut. From the fantastic costume design to the visual flights of fancy—such as when Cash and Detroit’s garage apartment literally transforms as Cash makes more money and a literal nod to Gondry in a corporate Claymation video—“Sorry to Bother You” has a confident visual language that so much comedy lacks.

Great satires don’t hold back, and Riley turns most of his choices up to 11. For example, he could have had Stanfield mimic a “white voice,” but he dubs Stanfield with another actor. From the beginning, he’s making clear that this is an exaggerated, insane world—a funhouse mirror version of our own that only film could provide. That riskiness leads to a final act of insanity that will lose some people—both times I’ve seen the movie you could sense part of the theater tuning out as the movie takes a turn into sci-fi. For me, I love it when a filmmaker doesn’t pull back from the edge, but goes right over it. So while that part of the film may be weaker than what came before, I still respect the willingness to go there.

You’ll see a lot of movies this summer that feel like the product of focus groups and marketing teams. Every frame and choice in “Sorry to Bother You” feels like the opposite—a pronouncement of a major new talent. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Watch Sorry To Bother You on Pluto here: https://pluto.tv/us/hub/home?utm_source=google&utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_campaign=12080790684&utm_term=pluto+tv&utm_creative=617765758688&device=c&campaign=Search_Brand_Desktop_E&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw16O_BhDNARIsAC3i2GAIga-xQVO3KmtJs6gYhD6oY6lKyzS5NTNwGocZ_0X20assMp28HhsaAraCEALw_wcB#id=64f8b71cf6f05d0013416c5c&type=movie

Saturday Matinee: Tamala 2010

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By Zac Bertschy

Source: Anime News Network

Synopsis: Tamala 2010 Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space follows the hyperactive, non-sequitur adventures of Tamala, a little kitty with a spaceship. On her way to Orion, her ship is diverted to Planet Q, a place where dogs rule. Chased by a degenerate cop while evading society with the help of love interest Michelangelo, Tamala uncovers not only the secrets behind ‘Catty & Company’, the huge megaconglomerate that rules the Feline Galaxy, but also her own identity. That, and a whole lot of really weird stuff happens.

Review: The product of an artist group called Trees of Life (“t.o.L”), Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space is as strange a thing as you’ll ever see. Doubtlessly produced under the influence of past animated ‘head trips’ like The Beatles’ classic film Yellow Submarine, Tamala 2010 is, without a doubt, something that will only appeal to a very specific audience: art students and college kids strung out on illegal substances.

Tamala 2010 follows something of a storyline. Basically, we follow Tamala, a sort of Hello Kitty-alike who swears like a sailor and flies around in her retro spaceship. Engine trouble pops up, and she’s mistakenly rerouted to Planet Q, a place inhabited almost enitely by dogs. There’s a mild terrorism problem; dogs attack cats at random. Meeting up with a cat named Michelangelo, Tamala evades a perverted canine policeman and uncovers a whole load of mysteries and secrets surrounding Catty & Company, the gigantic corporation that controls nearly everything in the Feline Galaxy. That description, of course, makes the film sound fairly straightforward and simple, which is, unfortunately, not the case. The movie goes off on a series of hallucinogenic tangents that have almost nothing to do with the main storyline and will confuse anyone who isn’t paying strict attention. The irony is that the film seems to have been designed to make the viewer tune out, so paying strict attention might be missing the point.

Deciphering Tamala 2010’s message is fairly difficult. A single viewing of the film won’t reveal much of anything, except a warped sort of anti-capitalist message that doesn’t really assert itself due to the totally detached and apathetic main character. Catty & Company winds up being connected to a bizarre religious cult and supposedly has the ability to make and remake the universe in its own image; this all connects to Tamala, who doesn’t seem to really care about anything that’s happening around her. A visit to the t.o.L website reveals that the purpose of Tamala is to create a worldwide merchandising franchise, something that will basically do what Sanrio’s wretched saccharine creations have already done. Great. So what’s the point?

Well, for most people, the point is that this film is something to watch while stoned, created by artists who were also stoned. This conclusion is a little unfair; these days we have a tendency to attribute anything even slightly surreal or abstract to the abuse of narcotics, which undermines the entire concept of creativity. Tamala 2010, while certainly as tangential and nonsensical as your favorite addict’s acid trip stories, seems to be the concentrated effort of a group of artists to create something more than just entertainment. Whether or not they were successful is another matter entirely; if this really was an attempt at sparking a worldwide phenomenon, then why did they produce a cultish, R-rated animated movie with which to promote their concept? Only t.o.L really knows what the purpose of this film was, and we, as viewers, are asked simply to consume and draw our own conclusions.

Artistically, the film is unique. The characters are animated in a sort of Flash-like fashion, with smooth and simple movements. Vehicles and some backdrops are animated in 3-D; the result is a piece of pop art unlike anything else. The film is mostly in black and white, using color very sparingly. It’s hard to tell if the visual style of this film is intended to put across any sort of message; you just never know with films like this one. The soundtrack is a surprisingly pleasant trance mix, perfectly suited for the visuals. As an art piece, Tamala 2010 does not disappoint.

Basically, if you’re a film student, or an art student, you owe it to yourself to see this film at least once. It’s one of those cult events that any serious underground culture junkie will have seen. The artist group that created it seems strangely cultish, and it’s a wonder there isn’t more information out there regarding them and their project. Whatever conclusion you come to, Tamala 2010 is a unique experience, totally different from anything else available on the market today (aside from, you know, Cat Soup and Yellow Submarine).

Saturday Matinee: Gremlins 2

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By Kevin Lyons

Source: EOFFTV Review

Conventional wisdom has it that Gremlins 2: The Last Batch, Joe Dante’s follow up to his hit 1984 film Gremlins, is an inferior film. In truth, it’s just a very different film – same idea (the first half is pretty much a remake of the original) but with lots of new jokes, some stinging satire, fewer moments of childhood-scarring darkness (you’ll find no analogue for the father-in-the-chimney speech here) and a big city setting. The original will always be the “better” film by virtue of having come first, but that doesn’t mean that this madcap sequel can be so easily dismissed out of hand.

The Christmas setting of the original is largely abandoned, though Gremlins 2 seems to be set in the early half of December. In New York, slimy business tycoon Daniel Clamp (John Glover), a transparent pop at Donald Trump, already a figure of mockery 26 years before he became US president, has plans to redevelop Chinatown into a soulless shopping centre. The only hold out is Mr Wing (Keye Luke) who still lives behind his shop and who has Gizmo the mogwai (voiced by Howie Mandel) with him. When Wing dies, the shop is demolished and Gizmo ends up at Splice of Life, Inc., a genetic engineering lab in Clamp Tower. Elsewhere in the building, Billy Peltzer (Zach Halligan) and his fiancée Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates), who have located to the Big Apple from Kingston Falls, are working menial jobs for Clamp – he’s an underappreciated and bullied draftsman and designer, she’s a tour guide in the building. When Billy hears someone humming Gizmo’s distinctive song, he rescue the mogwai from the clutches of Dr Catheter (Christopher Lee) and his assistants Martin and Lewis (Don and Dan Stanton).

Inevitably, Gizmo gets wet, spawns dozens of offspring who eat after midnight and transform into a pack of ravening and very aggressive gremlins on the loose (“All they have to do is to eat three or four children and there’d be the most appalling publicity!” frets Catheter.) And so far as plot goes, that’s pretty much it. The rest of the film is one gremlin-based set piece after the other as the curious and ravenous creatures ingest samples from Catheter’s lab (“I could get you diseases – you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he offers) transforming into a winged creature, a femme fatale who takes a shine to Clamp’s head of security (Robert Picardo) and an urbane and articulate “brain gremlin” (voiced by Tony Randall).

To make up for the lack of a plot, Dante and his writer Charles S. Haas pack the film to the rafters with sight gags, cameos (composer Jerry Goldsmith, actors John Astin, Henry Gibson, Rick Ducommun, Bubba Smith and Hulk Hogan, and even Dante himself all turn up and Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph return as Kingston Falls residents the Futtermans) and in-jokes, most of them film related: Octaman (1971) is being broadcast on Clamp’s cable television network (the film also takes aim at Ted Turner), renamed The Octopus People; Catheter is seen carrying a pod suspiciously similar to that seen in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955); any number of Universal classic horrors are quoted; and it goes on and on and on.

Some might find the constant callbacks to the films that informed Dante’s childhood – and even ones he made – all a bit too much, but there’s plenty of other humour to enjoy, much of it of a scabrously satirical bent. Where the earlier film had poked fun at the clichés of small-town American in cinema, principally as imagined by Frank Capra and the film’s producer, Steven Spielberg, the sequel casts a jaundiced eye at big city living – ” this is some crazy city” notes a holidaying Futterman, though the gremlins seem to love it, staging a rousing production number around their rendition of New York, New York. 60s action films, particularly Die Hard (1988) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), genetic engineering, our over-reliance on technology that frequently lets us down, the venality of corporate millionaires and even the film industry itself all come under satirical assault too and the film doesn’t really hold back.

The clever thing about the film is how it manages all this while still somehow being more playful than its predecessor. It feels as though the darker elements of Gremlins had been deliberately toned down to make it more suitable for a family audience, particularly the younger children who had found the first film too scary. It still has its moments – the gremlins covered in pulsating sacs as they prepare to reproduce is a strikingly nasty image – but overall, Dante adopts a lighter touch. Perhaps to reassure anyone still worried by the cartoon-like mayhem (the film begins with a Warner Bros. style cartoon), the film even breaks down at one point, damaged by the gremlins, prompting a moment of weird self-reflexiveness as an angry mother (Dante regular Belinda Balaski, who had also been in the first film) to complain to the cinema manager (Paul Bartel) that “this is worse than the first one!”

The cast tend to play second fiddle to the gremlins created by Rick Baker’s Cinovation Studio but Christopher Lee stands out in a role that requires him to disappear for great lengths, but which gives him plenty of splendid dialogue to savour – “oh splendid, this must be my malaria” he exclaims gleefully when taking delivery of some new samples. He seems to have had a ball on the film, enjoying both the experience of working alongside Baker’s manic creations and the exposure that a big budget – though not entirely successful – blockbuster brought him. It’s often easy to forget that he could do comedy rather well and the chance to deadpan his way through lines like ” I swear to God, young man, I will never hurt anything ever again. There are some things that man is not meant to splice” is one he grasps with real relish.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch is unapologetically unruly, Dante skating perilously close to self-indulgence at times (film critic Leonard Maltin, who had pasted the original film, gets attacked by vengeful gremlins on the set of his new television show, while brandishing a videocassette of Gremlins) but just reins it in in time. You don’t see mainstream Hollywood films as wild and manic as this being made any more.

Sadly, despite toning down the horror, the film didn’t perform anywhere near as well at the box office as the original (it opened on the same day in the States as Dick Tracy and couldn’t compete with all the star power that far lesser film was able to bring to bear). It put a stop to the Gremlins franchise and apart from a few fan films, it remained dormant for many years, despite Dante’s best efforts to get a third film off the ground. And then in mid-2022, a third film, referred to by Dante on social media as Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, seemed to be edging closer to production. Whether it gets made, and whether its as anarchic, silly and as much fun as Gremlins 2 will remain to be seen.