Tag: American

The Grudge

Posted on by victorfraga

In 1998, for the TV anthology Gakko no Kaidan G, Takashi Shimizu made two very short (three-minute) shock films, respectively titled Katasumu and 4444444444, in which he introduced creepy, contorting revenant Kayako Saeko and her meowing son Toshio, laying the central groundwork for the grudge-dbearing, implacably vengeful spirits at the epicentre of what would become his Ju-on series. Their popularity enabled him to expand this universe into the feature-length ‘V-cinema’ features Ju-on: The Curse and Ju-on: The Curse 2 (both 2000), and these in turn would be remixed by Shimizu into the theatrical features Ju-on: The Grudge (2002) and Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (2003). By this stage, the J-horror craze had hit the United States, and Shimizu was invited to remake his films for an American audience. In the first of these, The Grudge (2004), Shimizu retained the Tokyo setting and the extraordinary actress Takako Fuji (in the role of Kayako Saeki), while importing an ensemble of American characters to add to the alienation and disorientation that were always fundamental parts of the series. By The Grudge 2 (2006), Shimizu had allowed Kayako’s curse to be translocated stateside to Chicago, and by The Grudge 3 (2009), he had handed over the property entirely to director Toby Wilkins’ caretaking. There have been further reboots in Japan (also lacking Shimizu’s personal touch) with diminishing returns, and there has even been Koji Shiraishi’s more-fun-than-it-sounds Sadako vs Kayako (2016), a postmodern crossover of The Grudge with that other iconic, multiple sequel spawning sequel J-horror sensation Ring (Hideo Nakata, 2000).

So there are inevitably some whose knee-jerk response to news of yet another attempt at The Grudge will be to roll their eyes and begrudge this umpteenth retake its very need to exist. After all, there is little new that co-writer (with Jeff Buhgler) and director Nicolas Pesce brings to the prospect, apart from his identity as an extremely talented creator of mannered indie horror (The Eyes of My Mother, 2017; Piercing, 2019), and the associated promise of a more idiosyncratic spin on the material. Yet with The Grudge, Pesce merely retreads old ground. We have already many times seen Kayako aiming her irrational rage at anyone – young or old, male or female, good or bad, local or foreign – who has the misfortune to step into the residence where she and Toshio were murdered by her husband.

We have even already seen this rage transferred across the Pacific to America. Pesce is pointedly going back to the source of his inheritance, expressly setting the passage of Kayako’s grudge from Japan to America in 2004, the same year as Shimizu’s first cross-cultural American remake, and then skipping ahead to 2006. the year of Shimizu’s remake sequel. The new location of the transplanted curse is a small town in Pennsylvania whose very name, Cross Rivers, marks it as a site of transition – a place of passing between one country, or perhaps one state of being, and another.

Ignoring the warnings of her police colleague Detective Goodman (Demián Bichir), newly widowed, newly arrived Muldoon (Andrea Riseborough) starts investigating the connections between a strange series of deaths that have radiated out from 44 Reyburn Drive ever since, two years earlier, Fiona Landry (Tara Westwood) returned from a Tokyo job and moved in there with her family. You already know the score. The stories of those that either lived or even just set foot in the house, and the inexorable deaths that came to them afterwards, are here told in a mixed-up manner that confounds the norms of chronology, fitting everyone’s fate (including Muldoon’s own) into a complex jigsaw of creeping horror. This is, essentially, the pattern found in every version of The Grudge. Even Shimizu’s first theatrical version from 2002, not to mention his first American remake from 2004, were merely replaying – and refining – a routine that he had already set out clearly in the series’ previous incarnations. Not only do the Grudge films, with their recurrent hauntings in showers, baths, beds and closets, echo one another, but repetition – of a viral variety – is inscribed as a theme in the very fabric of each and every instalment, as the curse is passed, like a contagious infection, from one person to another, always, inevitably, leading to the same vain struggle to survive or escape, and to the same destructive outcome.

In all these films, the conclusion is foregone and a mood of utter nihilistic doom pervades. That is the films’ raison d’être – it is, precisely, the nature of the grudge, an ineluctable, supernatural force which, once it has put its hooks into a person, will never let go. Here, as previously, the fractured timeline ensures that we know that most of its characters are going to die – indeed, are already dead by the time Muldoon comes to look back on their cold case files. In this franchise, like in the Final Destination series, mortality is prescribed, and is not meant to come as a surprise, even if the precise form that it takes may, until revealed, be less clear.

Complaining that Pesce’s version is merely more of the same may involve some truth, but it is also missing the whole point of the franchise. Apart from Kayako herself, the one fixed point of these films is grotesque, harrowing death foretold, which Pesce, like previous directors, duly delivers as a bleak memento mori for the popcorn-chewing, thrill-seeking viewer. Pesce’s The Grudge is most definitely a Grudge film. If you have objections to that idea in principle, or dislike the Grudge films in general, then obviously it would be strange to pursue this one. The clue is in the title. If you like some or all of those other films, then Pesce’s film has all the grim goods – and if those goods seem like pre-loved hand-me-downs, in a way, with this particular franchise, they always were. Kayako’s iterative acts of vengeance have always been passed down a chain of contagious inheritance, affecting anyone and everyone but the actual party who wronged her.

“We’re still settling in,” Muldoon tells Goodman of her and Burke’s recent move to Cross Rivers. “It’s definitely different.” Perhaps Pesce felt the same way, having to find his way around a property that was not originally his own. Pesce’s previous film, Piercing, was already itself a Japanese import, adapting a 1994 novel by Ryu Murakami (whose writings also inspired Takashi Miike’s Audition, 1999) into the stylised idioms of an urban American giallo – but with The Grudge, one feels Pesce is far more constrained in his inventiveness by the demands of a studio, and struggling to put his individual stamp on an established and now highly conventionalised set of franchise tropes. He is certainly well-served by a cast that includes (among its victims) John Cho, Betty Gilpin, Jacki Weaver, Frankie Faison and Lin Shaye, all of whom – apart from Shaye, whose character’s dementia makes her different from the others – play their rôles with a genuine, earthy earnestness that brings an anchoring reality to the film’s more surreal flights of fancy.

Most of the effects work is practical, while careful attention is paid to the house’s gradual deterioration over time – like the terminally ill loved ones that both Muldoon and Goodman had to watch slowly getting worse. Old William Matheson (Faison) is also having to bear witness to the decline of his wife of 50 years, Faith (Shaye). Perhaps the most disturbing innovation of the film is not any of several standard (and not especially effective) jump scares, but rather William’s stated claim that the house, whose ghosts represent an opportunity for someone who otherwise has no belief in an afterlife, might be the best, indeed only, kind of hope for him to be able to spend more time with his dying wife. This is a loss of Faith in more than one sense. No doubt some viewers will state that Pesce’s film is not frightening, but most of its dread is of a more existential brand, with everything awash in anxiety, despair and the panic of fatalism.

The Grudge ends with a sustained exterior shot of yet another home. Even if we suspect that something horrible is happening indoors, nothing happens in the shot itself, which elapses merely to the banal sounds of a garden sprinkler and birdsong. This is where Pesce comes into his own as the film’s director, with a sequence that, in looking away, distances the viewer and frustrates any expectation of pat resolution. Though they always come with a supernatural overdetermination, most of the film’s killings are carried out by the living upon members of their own family, opening up a subtext of domestic violence and mental illness (both of which are formally presented within the film as the police’s explanations for the multiple deaths at Number 44). Pesce’s long final shot offers the chilling suggestion that we never really know what is going on inside, behind closed doors, in an America whose sunny suburban surfaces conceal a deep-seated anger and murderous madness that are catching.

The Grudge is in cinemas on Friday, January 24th. Also available on Netflix.

Waves

Posted on by victorfraga

Tyler (Kevin Harrison Jr.) is going to be the best at wrestling. His father Ronald (Sterling K. Brown) says so. He orders it, mercilessly training him every day in their own improvised gym at the top of their splendid middle-class house. Ronald is a successful businessman. He worked hard to get there. He tells his son that there is no option for an African-American to be “average” at anything. He must excel. Such is to be black in America.

Tyler has other problems. His girlfriend Alexis (Alexa Demie) is pregnant. They go to an abortion clinic in order to get the pregnancy terminated and encounter some very vocal anti-abortion protestors. One used the n-word on Tyler. Tyler is desperate to get the pregnancy ended. Alexis decides to keep the baby. In a frantic couple of hours, Tyler smashes up his room, rushes out of the parental home, goes to a party where Alexis is and in a fatal argument causes her to fall on the kitchen floor where she dies. He ends up the local “reform” facility with a life sentence. There is the possibility of parole after 30 years. The judge describes this a provision for “mercy”. The state of Florida has indeed a very odd notion of “mercy”.

The film then switches to the predicament of Tyler’s sister Emily (Taylor Russell). Isolated at High School and harassed on social media because of what her brother has done, she is befriended by a kind boy called Luke (Lucas Hedges and becomes his girlfriend. Luke has problems of his own. His father is dying of cancer in a hospital in Missouri and Luke cannot forgive him for what he put his mother and Luke through when Luke was young. Emily persuades him to visit his father and the father eventually dies amid forgiveness and reconciliation.

This film is about forgiveness. It is about how decent and well-meaning people screw up their lives because they lose their temper too much, because they are trying too hard, because they need to hang on to those they love. As such, it is winning and moving. The camera work is inventive. The music is compelling, particularly Dinah Washington’s What a Difference a Day Makes. Some, however, may feel the camerawork too dramatic, the emotional underscoring too obvious. Even the most innovative of Hollywood films can’t stop telling you what you ought to be feeling at any given moment. A good weekend weepy!

Waves is in cinemas on Friday, January 17th. On VoD in June.

Gutterbee

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM THE TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL

Two outcasts join forces in order to set up a German restaurant in the fictional Midwestern town of Gutterbee, a shabby cowboy and white supremacist paradise. Mike McCold (Antony Starr) is a local who has just been released from the “slammer” (prison), and is now seeking redemption from his past crimes through an honest trade, while the German immigrant Edward Hofler (played by iconic Scottish actor Ewen Bremner, who does come across as über German) wants Americans to experience his culture, particularly his sausages and the Bavarian Schuhplattler (slap dance).

The two unlikely business partners have to contend with the highly xenophobic and flamboyantly named Jimmy Jerry Lee Jones Jr. (W. Earl Brown), a local singer, cowboy and petty gangster with a profound dislike for anything vaguely un-American. He has previously tortured and expelled a Chinese man called Chan from the community (with a helping hand from Mike, who ended taking the blame and the custodial sentence). He despises his son Hank because he believes that he’s a homosexual. Mike attempts to convince his former associate that the German restaurant may not be a bad idea after all. He’s nearly persuaded once Mike proposes a white Bavarian (sausage) should be made bigger and called a White American instead. The social satire is silly and puerile. Never caustic, stinging and dry.

The film is peppered with peculiar characters. They include Sheriff TV Brown, who is obsessed with a receding hairline, the enthusiastic cabaret/local joint owner Luke Kenneth Hosewall, and so on. There is also a pretty lady called Sue with a prosthetic leg (which Edward loves varnishing, alongside his furniture). She’s the only prominent female character, in this grotesquely white and masculine world. A film guaranteed not to pass the Bechdel test.

This is the second feature film by Ulrich Thomsen, after In Embryo (2016). Both films are set in the US. The 36-year-old actor-turned-director is neither American nor German, but Danish instead. He does, however, knows what it feels to be a foreigner in the Land of the Free, having previously worked as pizza delivery boy on American soil.

Gutterbee feels too long at just 107 minutes. That’s because the movie script, which was also penned by Thomsen, is highly convoluted. It tries too hard to extract humour from every single sequence, every single minute. And that gets tiring. Plus the story is broken down into incomprehensibly-titled chapters (I’m still not sure whether that was deliberate). The jokes about sausage are hackneyed and repetitive, while the references to German culture are too esoteric. There are multiple attempts at highbrow slapstick, such as in the slap dance, but it just comes out as infantile and not funny at all. At best, Gutterbee is a charming feelgood comedy, and it might occasionally make you smile. But it won’t make you burst out laughing.

Gutterbee just saw its world premieres at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, as part of the event’s official Competition.

Harriet

Posted on by victorfraga

This is a celebration of the life of Araminta Ross, a slave in Dorchester County. She escaped her enslavement and adopted her freedom name “Harriet Tubman”, becoming the most celebrated conductor (guide, saviour) of slaves on the Underground Railroad across the Mason Dixon Line. She conducted about 70 individuals to freedom. She was the first woman commander to lead an armed assault in the American Civil War and later settled in New York State, devoting herself to the cause of female voting rights and her religious beliefs. This is a story that needs to be told – especially to white people.

The role of Harriet is carried off with an all-consuming passion by Cynthia Erivo, who keeps herself firmly in the centre of the film. The movie refers to the historical aspects of Harriet’s life . When she was young, she was accidentally hit by a two-pound metal weight on the head thrown by a slave owner at another slave, who was trying to escape. This left her with blinding headaches and strange visions. They formed part of her lively relationship with God. The visions gave her strength and even, sometimes, God’s instructions.

She and slaves she is conducting are rushing towards a river. To cross the river the slaves can gain their freedom but many of them can’t swim. The slave owners are coming up fast behind with their guns and dogs. What are they to do? Harriet falls down in a swoon. “She’s talking to God,” explains one of the leaders. She comes out of her faint. She stands up, “Ok. This way – to the left!” and off they go to freedom. This may perplex many with modern sensibilities, but this is how she worked.

The visions, as depicted in black and white in the film, are themselves instructive, illustrating the terrible, casual cruelties of slavery, the forcible separation of families, spouses dragged away from each other, children snatched out of their mothers’ arms to be sold off elsewhere. If you look at the original photographs taken of Harriet Tubman towards the end of her life, you can see she was a woman who did not allow anyone to treat her badly She suffered and her story needs to be told to Caucasians. This is black and feminist history gone mainstream. Hollywood has repaid a debt that has been long outstanding since Birth of a Nation (DW Griffith, 1915) and Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939).

Harriet – which was directed by black female director, Kasi Lemmons – is in cinemas across the UK on Friday, November 22nd. On VoD in April.

Earthquake Bird

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Tokyo, 1989. An American woman who’s not long been in Japan has disappeared and the last person to see her alive is Lucy Fly (Alicia Vikander) who has lived in the country for five years, two months. Lucy is hauled in for questioning by the police and as her life in Japan slowly reveals itself in flashback, it becomes apparent why they want to talk to her.

Lucy is quiet, reserved, introverted. She mostly keeps herself to herself. She fits in well in Japanese society with its emphasis on the importance of the group over the individual. She is fluent in Japanese and works as a translator. She plays cello in an amateur string quartet with three much older Japanese women.

She also socialises with a group of international expats which is where Bob (Jack Huston) introduces her to the woman about whom the police wish to question her, Lily Bridges (Riley Keough) who is working as a nurse. The two women possess very different personalities. Lucy might be foolish to agree to take the newly arrived foreigner under her wing and show her the ropes. Lily is the stereotypical American: brash, outgoing and nosy. Not someone you imagine adapting well to Japanese society. She doesn’t even speak the language.

Lucy’s life changes when she runs into a man taking photographs on the street. He claims not to be interested in photographing people, only buildings, water, reflections. Something hooks her. Teiji Matsuda (Naoki Kobayashi) works at a noodle restaurant, but amateur photography is his passion. Soon she’s regularly going back to his flat, strangely situated at the top of an exterior spiral staircase and fully equipped as a darkroom, to be photographed. When on one occasion she removes her top, he tells her that wasn’t what he wanted. Before long, however, the pair have entered into a full-on, physical relationship.

She becomes obsessed with the photographs of old girlfriends Teiji keeps locked away in a filing cabinet. She knows where the key is and takes a look. When he later finds out, he is not pleased. Lily, meanwhile, wants to meet the boyfriend and when she does is clearly attracted to Teiji. This classic love triangle setup is fuelled by the growing tension between Lucy and Teiji.

Much as it would like to play like a Japanese thriller, Earthquake Bird is the adaptation of an English novel and it doesn’t feel very Japanese – despite a great quantity of Japanese dialogue, much of it delivered by Vikander. (To her credit, for this film she had to learn both the Japanese language and playing the cello, the latter something she’d learned a little as a child.) That said, as an outsider’s view of Japan, it’s convincing enough. And it has to have something of a grasp of Japanese culture and the country’s mindset to work.

When the police initially question Lucy, they do so in second-rate English until they discover she’s fluent in Japanese, something she doesn’t initially reveal. This seems to be typical of the woman. She is beset by guilt for an incident in her pre-Japan past for which she rightly or wrongly believes herself responsible.

For those wondering about the title, it relates to a bird that, as Teiji explains to Lucy, if you listen carefully, can be quietly heard to sing following an earthquake. There are several small-scale literal earthquakes in the narrative, that are soon over without any ill after effects. And then there are minor earthquake-comparable incidents, like a violinist from the string quartet slipping down steps to her death, to the shame of her fellow player who has recently polished the stairs and fears she may be responsible for the accident. Or Lucy falling ill when she, Teiji and Lily go on a day trip to Sado Island.

The whole is visually arresting throughout, with top-notch cinematography by Chung Chung-hoon who shot Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003) and The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, 2016) and production design by Yohei Tanada who also did ManHunt (John Woo, 2017) and The Third Murder (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2017), so while you could wait a couple of weeks for it to turn up on Netflix, you might enjoy it more if you see it on the big screen first. As you might expect from Wash Westmoreland, previously the co-writer-director behind Still Alice (2014) and Colette (2018), this is as much character and culture study as it is thriller, which may infuriate some but reward those with the patience to take it on its own terms.

Earthquake Bird is out in the UK on Friday, November 1st. On Netflix in March!

Ladyworld

Posted on by victorfraga

Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015) resembled something more of a play than a film. Set in the wooden confines that a stagecoach lodge sheltered eight strangers, the indulgent run time devalued a compelling premise which otherwise could have granted Tarantino a winner. That’s where Ladyworld comes in, composing an eerily similar premise, but mindfully keeps the viewers attention long enough to enjoy the stellar powerhouse ensemble.

This is a film by women, about women and for women. It understands them in an unconstrained way. The characters, not a man among them, find themselves in various points of dress, undress and duress as they try to navigate themselves in a situation which has literally locked them into the party. Between them, they fight to see who should lead the group to safety. Piper (Annalise Basso) with all her Machiavellian qualities, finds the more grounded Olivia (Ariela Barer) a competitor for the title, while the others struggle with the natural fears of adolescence and the will to survive.

Amanda Kramer has a theatrical background, easily discernible in her style of filmmaking. Characters are more important than the camera. The director does, however, offer moments of directorial inventiveness, not least with some slow Gilliam style close-ups detailing the mass claustrophobia settling in.

Through a thick impasto of cuts, we watch the heroines huddle from doorways to hallways before perching in a tautened, orderly nest on the cupboards. There is an unnerving acidity at play as viewers and actors nestle in the hurried house, with food, nerves and water on short supply. This is trick of discomfort has been traditionally kept for the theatre stage, as actors and punters join each other in gaped breath as they ask of each other their will to survive.

And then there’s that gut punch of an ending as we watch the characters wade in the bathed sunlight of fiery despair. Silently, the credits roll over the tattered leads as the single moment induces the varied tear filled responses each of us finds on our life’s journey.

If Quentin Tarantino isn’t green with envy, he should be! Ladyworld is in cinemas on Friday, October 18th. On VoD Monday, October 28th.

After the Wedding

Posted on by victorfraga

Isabel (Michelle Williams) is first seen meditating with a group of children on a vastly scenic temple in India. She works for an Indian orphanage struggling to secure sufficient funds. This sets off a divisive plot point that has always been a very common archetype for movies regarding the white saviour in a foreign land, realising the penury its indigenous masses endure on a daily basis. Isabel is considerably not only the ‘saviour’, but a mother to the children, especially Jai (Vir Pachisia), a boy who was discovered abandoned when he was a baby, and taken to care by Isabel.

When a wealthy benefactor has a potential offer to donate to the orphanage, Isabel flies to New York, where she’s uncomfortably accustomed to a glamourised suite and suits with assistants. She meets Theresa (Julianne Moore), the benefactor. Immediately there’s something strange about their exchange. Could it be Isabel’s muted percipience on the luxurious and all too bourgeoisie lifestyle Theresa instinctually exhibits? Could it be the impassive nature of Theresa’s business, and the lack of genuine empathy for a cause which seems to be the only thing motivating Isabel? Yes, those are pretty instant factors that are played too easily on the nose, but there’s something deeper that eventually adds up.

Their meeting is quick and futile, but Theresa questionably invites Isabel to her daughter’s wedding. Isabel attends the wedding only to make a discovery that further unveils a traumatic backstory between Isabel, and Theresa’s husband, Oscar (Billy Crudop), and the bride herself, Grace (Abby Quinn).

After the Wedding is a remake of Susanne Bier’s Danish film of the same title starring Mads Mikkelsen. This version switches the roles, yet tells the same story. The wedding itself serves as a metaphor for drastically committing to life term decisions without truly understanding the principles behind the commitment. Grace inexplicably marries when she truly isn’t ready to, in the same way Theresa, Oscar, and Isabel weren’t ready to be parents at a time of ignorant bliss, and that all pretty much intersects after the repercussions of what transpires during the wedding.

Oddly enough, both this remake and the Danish film aim to tell three different stories and are only really interested in one. One story being the secret the main players discover and how they all emotionally learn to come to terms with it. The second being a more intriguing story on the all too parallel but all too contrasting nature of the Americanised-higher class culture meshing with an American’s refined experience for a culture which serves little to no attention to finding significance to insignificant attributes for happiness. The third being the white saviour of an Indian orphanage.

The drama After the Wedding seems all too contradictory and manipulative. It becomes clear Grace is the key, and ironic mirroring image for Theresa, Oscar, and Isabel. Her involvement in the discovery of a long living secret has her switching personalities, and making decisions that don’t really ever seem realised. And Theresa’s motives, which gradually builds up towards the end, seems all too coincidental and heavy handed.

As a remake, what is After the Wedding trying to say that can be taken by its viewers to an abstruse means? Why include the backdrop of the Indian orphanage other than to convey Isabel’s desensitised perception of Americanised culture (this specifically being rich white people from New York)? Could’ve there been a deeper, perhaps more singular story of the boy, Jai (maybe aim for a mainstream take on an ‘Apu’ trilogy narrative)? And if not, could’ve we’ve just gotten an entire film set on the night of the wedding with no immediate backstory to the main players?

It feels all too polished, strongly relying four very good performances. But what After the Wedding proves as a remake, is its lacking approach for telling a story beyond its original story. Its images and ideas open for intriguing premises that are only there to strike a sentiment already too familiarised.

After the Wedding is in cinemas on Friday, November 1st. On VoD in April!

Ready or Not

Posted on by victorfraga

Each film festival will feature the proverbial “big-hitters”, which come with the question mark of whether they will sink or swim in the waters of the audience’s response. Surviving or not is a fitting analogy for a film centred around a game of hide and seek with deadly intentions. Ready or Not does not disappoint, and in the context of its own survival as a piece of filmmaking, it also goes so far as to protect the interests of studio horror in a line-up surrounded by independent genre films.

Grace (Samara Weaving) is not only marrying fiancé Alex (Mark O’ Brien), but is becoming a part of the rich and eccentric Le Domus family, owners of a grand old games company. Fittingly, the family have a traditional ritual when someone new marries into the family – they play a game chosen by chance. Unfortunately for Grace, the card she picks is hide and seek, and soon whether ready or not, the bride learns that the rules of this game are far from harmless.

Ready or Not belongs to a rich heritage of storytelling, of an individual in a life and death struggle, films that include Hard Target (Joh Woo, 1993), Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000) and You’re Next (Adam Wingard, 2012), as well as Beyond the Reach (Jean-Baptiste Léonetti, 2015), based on Robb White’s 1972 novel Deathwatch of man hunting man after the one witnesses the other commit murder in the Mojave Desert.

Comparisons can also be drawn to the Western genre that centres around a violent and adversarial confrontation – the hero or villain exerting his will by mastering the other one’s propensity for violence. Not dissimilar to the Western hero, Grace conforms to a traditional concept of the hero who tempers her own propensity, while those around her embrace theirs with narcissistic indifference. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s film features shades of the Western, while the base plot of whether Grace survive a violent situation is in keeping with the spectacle of violence in action and horror genre cinema.

Weaving is perfectly cast, who in her wedding dress and make-up looks in one respect dainty and fragile, yet her attitude and words show a less lady-like edge to her personality. With expressive eyes, Weaving conveys her emotions without a reliance on words, and in a story driven by action and not conversation, this is to her character’s benefit. What makes her character so compelling is not juxtaposing her vulnerability and strength, but more the childlike moments at play before understanding her peril. Grace’s look and journey offer up comparisons to the culling of innocence in the fairy tale, accentuated by the bride in white as a symbol of innocence. This forges a visceral meeting between innocence and maturity, while her in-laws resemble adolescents, who with an air of farcical superstitious fear that lies behind the game of hide and seek, lust not after sex, but bloodshed.

Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett show an appreciation for the value of humour. Whether the focus is on hunters or prey, there is a comedic heartbeat to the film. Humour can make a film both memorable and re-watchable, and the directors intertwine the spectacle of violence with frequent beats of humour. On a meta level, the humour becomes a communicative language that breaks the fourth wall because the film does not either try to, or ask us to suspend our belief entirely.

By now, the language of a film such as Ready or Not has bled into the characters. There is a conscious awareness transmitted by the filmmakers and the cast, or rather here we can sense a playful warmth of the familiar beats struck to the humorous interrogation of the rules of its own world, that leans towards self-consciousness and flirts with becoming a spoof. This is at the very heart of the pleasurable experience that is Ready or Not, where the humour becomes the proverbial wink from storytellers and characters, acknowledged by our smiles and laughter.

Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett know the film they want to create. The two directors make no apologies for leaning towards the spectacle of superficial pleasure. Character back stories such as Alex’s self-exile from his family, his brother Daniel’s (Adam Brody) cynical feelings towards his dynastic family, and his sister-in-law Charity’s (Elyse Levesque) determination that she will not return to her impoverished past, all offer something of value. The ideas of the family as a source of one’s identity, what people are able to live with knowing about themselves and our drive for self-preservation are all introduced, while Grace’s desire to become a part of a family speaks of our inclination to belong.

These may only be passing thoughts that are never developed on a thematic level, and yet we nonetheless perceive these doorways to themes even if they remain sealed. These passing thoughts amidst a plot-driven reverie of violence and comedy speaks to films such as this being repressive acts – repressing the natural inclination of story and characters to not only be superficial. Ready or Not stimulates its audience on an experiential level, and while knowing how to play with a humorous self-awareness that effectively flirts with spoofing, even if a repressive act, it does not diminish the pleasure it evokes and its success as a commercial genre filmmaking.

Arrow Video FrightFest hosted the UK premiere of Ready or Not. The film will be released theatrically by Twentieth Century Fox on Wednesday, September 25th. On VoD in April!

Hail Satan

Posted on by victorfraga

Political activism has never been this dirty and fun before! A small and yet very vocal and active group of political activists founded an entity called the Satanic Temple. They dress up in black and use a copious amount of iconography, as you would expect from a good evil-worshipper. Yet there is no religious connotation to their endeavour. They have simply found a very peculiar and effective way to make themselves visible and their progressive statements heard.

Their creepy-looking leader Lucien Greaves (who is seemingly blind in one eye, although it’s not entirely clear whether that’s just a clever ruse), explains that the “satanism” is an entirely random choice. They are not eagerly waiting for the arrival of some Antichrist. Instead, they stand against “arbitrary authoritarianism” and demand a separation between church and state, and they find very provocative ways of drawing attention to themselves. During the film climax, they request that a Ten Commandments monument is removed from a government building in Arkansas, and upon failing that, they proceed to install a statue of the demonic Baphomet facing the holy scripture. To the sound of Marylin Manson’s I Put a Spell on You!

Hail Satan is a register of a little-known subculture teeming with vivid and extravagant characters, who are seeking a cathartic outlet from their mediocre existence. They are male and female, of various ages, and come from many parts of the US. What they have in common is that they are seeking more personal freedoms. This is expressed in a variety of ways, ranging from a passionate pro-choice enunciation to a very naughty and demonic dance, where male nudity is prominently featured (thereby challenging old-fashioned sexist orthodoxies). They are also anti-aesthetic, refusing body fascism and mainstream beauty stereotypes (which might explain Lucien’s eye)

They have devised the Seven Fundamental Tenets, which include “One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason and “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone”). Their principles are far more morally liberating than the Ten Commandments. They are also fiercely anti-violence (a member is promptly expelled after advocating) and very socially active (cleaning streets, educating children, etc).

All in all, Hail Satan is a devilishly fun documentary to watch. Ironically, it’s also a feel-good movie. It’s not anti-Christian. Instead, it challenges the autocracy of government of religion. Simply dirtylicious. Go see it!

Hail Satan is in cinemas on Friday, August 23rd, and then on VoD the following Monday,

The Biggest Little Farm

Posted on by victorfraga

The year is 2010. John and his wife Molly are your average Californian urbanites. They dwell in a very small flat in Santa Monica, a coastal district of Los Angeles. John is a established documentarist, while Molly is a chef. One day they adopt a black pooch called Todd, saving him from certain death at local dog pound. But Todd won’t stop barking while his parents are away. As a consequence of the nuisance noise, all three get evicted from the building. They have just 30 days to find a solution and move out.

Giving Todd away isn’t an option because they are firmly committed to keeping the animal for life. Moving into a different block would probably see a similar closure. So they decide to move into the countryside near Los Angeles and set up a farm. They don’t have any money, but friends and investors promptly chip in. The farm isn’t just about Todd’s well-being. Molly always wanted to plant her own vegetables, while John is a also a environment lover, having worked in many nature shows for television. So they set the Apricot Lane Farms, where they grow a plethora of vegetables (from lemons and avocados to tomatoes and greens) and raise a variety of animals (chickens, goats and a pregnant pig called Emma, who succeeds to give birth to no less than 14 piglets). In total they plant 10,00 orchard trees in more than 200 different crops. Their farm is in stark contrast to the neighbouring establishments, mostly gigantic monocultures.

Their initiative is indeed fascinating and it epitomises the escapist fantasies of many large-city dwellers. This tallies well with our vision of cinema as a tool for personal liberation. They hire a local consultant who helps them to overcome the successive challenges year after year. A few years later, however, tragedy strikes and they are left to fend for themselves without professional help. The challenges are numerous: pest (coyotes, snails and small rodents), draught, flood, ferocious winds and changing climate patterns. Little by little, they learn how to grapple with the constant changes and barriers on their own

The most touching moment of The Biggest Little Farm is the realisation of inevitability of death. John notes that his idealisation of Todd’s life did not prevent from shooting a coyote. He now understands that the ecosystem is “energised by the impermanence of life”, and that biodiversity is entirely contingent on species killing and eating one another. Their puerile awe at the recognition of the food chain in endearing to watch. It’s something we all learn in primary school, but most of us never have the privilege of observing from so close.

This American doc – which follows the couple for eight years – is extremely well crafted. It’s evident that the director/subject had extensive experience with the movie camera. There are plenty of cute animals and delectable family moments to awe. Perhaps too many even. The entire film is constructed as some sort of fair tale for children with pretty animations et al. It’s borderline didactic. It gets a little soporific for adults able to separate romanticism from reality. This is not helped by an irksome music score with an unrelenting country guitar.

I also found it very strange that a cash-strapped couple could create such a large, ambitious and undoubtedly expensive endeavour virtually overnight. Their business plan must have been made of gold. I wish there was more emphasis on how they managed to seduce investors and raise so much money so quickly. That is far more miraculous than the cycle of life itself.

My Biggest Little Farm premieres at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It shows in London on July 4th at the Cine Lumiere. It’s in general release on Friday, November 29th.

Gloria Bell

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

When I saw the Chilean film Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, 2013) some years back, I was blown away. The story of a 50-something divorcée going out and finding herself sounded like the sort of movie I’d hate… and yet, against the odds, Lelio’s film, particularly its feisty central performance by Paulina Garcia, completely won me over. I recall it having a pretty decent Latin music soundtrack too, culminating in Umberto Tozzi’s triumphant disco anthem Gloria.

Leilo having in the interim carved himself out a respectable international movie career – an Oscar for A Fantastic Woman (2017), an impressive change of pace with the British drama Disobedience (2018) – he’s had the inevitable offer to remake some of his Chilean output for the US market. In Gloria Bell, adding the character’s surname to the title for the remake, he collaborates with sometime Oscar-winning actress Julianne Moore.

So all the ingredients should be there to deliver something very special, whether you’ve seen the original and are going for the comparison or you are coming to the story for the first time here. And yet, somehow, the new film feels flat. It lacks the magnetic quality of the original.

Maybe it’s the difference between Chile, rarely seen on the screen here in the English-speaking world, and the US whose movies have flooded our cinemas. Maybe it’s the 80s’ US disco music on the soundtrack which replaces the original’s far more vibrant Latin selection. Certainly, it peps up at the end when the title song (this time the American version recorded by Laura Branigan) comes on, but it’s far too late by then.

Apart from shifting the story from Santiago to Los Angeles and the heroine from Chilean to American, the story is pretty much identical. So it’s hard to believe the problem is the script adaptation. This even applies to the trailers – the trailer for the original Gloria can be seen for comparison further down the page below the Gloria Bell trailer.

The plot has 50-something Gloria (Moore) go to discos in search of love and eventually embark on a relationship with divorced father Arnold (John Turturro). Cue unflattering, over-fifties sex scenes in which he has to remove a medical girdle he wears round his waste, all very commendable in terms of visual representation of that demographic.

Gloria has pretty much learned to let her grown up kids get on with their own separate lives while she gets on with hers. Her son Peter (Michael Cera) is dealing with an absent partner who has left home for a while to find herself and leave him to bring up their child. Her daughter Anne (Caren Pistorius) is on the verge of moving to Sweden to make a life with a surfer she met via the internet. By way of contrast, Arnold seems to be constantly under pressure from his two daughters who we never see but are constantly making demands of him over the phone.

After much resistance, Arnold is persuaded to come over for a meal and meet Gloria’s family – not only her kids but also her ex-husband. The evening proves too much for Arnold and marks the beginning of the end of his and Gloria’s relationship. Except that, try as she might to cut him off, Arnold doesn’t want it to let her go…

Julianne Moore is on the screen most of the time. Where the original film and Paulina Garcia’s seemingly effortless performance in it felt like a welcome breath of fresh air, however, if you’ve seen the original, this one feels like a pointless retread with Moore failing to add that certain something that Garcia brought. Which is a pity, because on paper this remake sounded like it might be really quite something.

Gloria Bell is out in the UK on Friday, June 7th. Watch the film trailer below:

And here, for comparison, is the trailer for the original 2013 Chilean film Gloria: