Anyway - guests!
(Quick jump to IMDB, and, oh, she was Dot on Miss Fisher? Wow!)
If you're reading this on Wednesday the 31st (Day 14), it's probably my shortest day: It looks like I won't get to De Sève in time for Hell Hole (but it's okay; I haven't exactly love the Adams family's previous stuff), Rats! looks like the sort of thing I don't usually go for, Electrophilia looks interesting but is listed as subtitled in French rather than English, and I saw The Roundup: Punishment a few months back (do these movies just not play Montreal? I think this is the second time this has happened with this series). So maybe just Timestalker!
"Meat Puppet"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
Are high-school and university graduations the same throughout the English-speaking world? It's one of those things where some bits of pop culture tell me that there are differences but others make it look universal, though I hear that's kind of influenced by American pop culture. Anyway, this looks pretty American despite being set in the UK, from what I see, but that's kind of not the point; the point is that Cuba (Máiréad Tyers) and Oz (David Johnsson) are a couple but Oz is kind of immature, tending to sit around his room messing with toys and collectibles unless she drags him away, like she does with a phone call on the day of graduation, only to be tempted again when a delivery person shows up. He thinks it's a statuette he's ordered, but it's a weird puppet, and can't resist taking a look. It's a bad idea; not only does his consciousness enter the little guy, but the thing fuses to his arm, and it looks like his body is dead or dying!
Writer/director Eros V isn't particularly shy about saying what "Meat Puppet" is about - half of Cuba's lines are about Oz needing to grow up and become self-reliant, and there is, in the last bit that is built to get the audience to give a grossed-out howl, a pretty obvious illustration of taking control of your own life even if you're too busy laughing to notice - but that's kind of fine; these are emotional kids probably prone to blurting stuff out and it's the kind of short where everything's so screwy that the sudden "hey, I'm going to bring up this mundane thing!" switch is part of the screwiness, even if there's a puppet curse that you'd think would be more urgent.
And the gags are pretty good. The usual deal with someone in a puppet body - it's weird that this is a trope, right? - is having them be as mobile as a puppet character is, and instead having Oz having to deal with his body's dead weight is quality slapstick. The puppeteers do a decent job of playing things so that he's expressive without looking like Muppet-y flailing is his natural state. And, yes, they build the jokes to an impressive crescendo with quality bits after the climax and through the credits.
The Paragon
* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
I really dig the vibe of The Paragon, which pulls off the trick of making one believe that a potentially multiverse-shaking narrative could play out in a small New Zealand town with a slacker protagonist without being so tongue in cheek that the comedy takes over. It's weird and offbeat but not poisoned with self-awareness. That makes it a sort of oddball movie and one where you've got to live with the reaction to your recommendation being "uh…okay". It's fun but in a small way.
It introduces the audience to Dutch (Benedict Wall), a tennis player who was good enough to be ranked but not good enough to be famous, at least until a hit-and-run left his leg broken in four places and his bitterness drove wife Emily (Jessica Grace Smith) to an affair with a co-worker. Crashing with his petty-criminal brother Oates (Shadon Meredith), he starts canvassing the town for the very common model of car that hit him, impulsively taking a slip from a poster promising psychic training. The woman who put it up claims he has great psionic potential in part because his heart stopped for six minutes during the accident, but Lyra (Florence Noble) is also frustrated at his insistence on taking easy ways and shortcuts, especially since she needs a disciplined ally to help her find a powerful crystal before it falls into the hands of her evil brother Haxan (Jonny Brugh).
Folks have made much more serious movies with that general description, and The Paragon has stakes, but it's also a comedy that recognizes that everybody in it should be funny in some manner, whether it's Dutch's bluster or the deadpan weirdness of Lyra and Haxan, raised to be psychic warriors by their messed-up father. Even Emily, who could be written and played to be a generic sort of ungrateful shrew or as understandably overwhelmed is written so that Jessica Grace Smith can make her funny in a very specific way. No matter how serious the moment is, there's a joke available, but the characters are also fleshed out enough that there's nowhere to go but the gag. Benedict Wall is very funny as Dutch, but can play it straight and demonstrate just enough self-reflection that his scenes with Michelle Ang don't go as one might expect. Florence Noble's Lyra is socially stunted but not to the point of stupidly following a menu of tics.
The film gets a lot of value out of sort of screwing around, with a lot of time spent on training and resisting it and side quests, and not feeling the need to tire everything together. There's a temptation to make everything interlock too much, or toss in a romance the film doesn't need, or hammer home an obvious theme. These guys don't do that, just telling their little fantasy story with a few jokes and not worrying about making it bigger than it need be.
The filmmakers are also fairly smart about how they deploy modest resources. They don't add visual effects to psychic powers that can work just as well if invisible, and don't tease that there's something bigger and flashier on the way. It helps keep the focus on Dutch, but also keeps the audience able to believe that maybe this has been here all along and there's been no way we could notice it. That may not be the actual primary intent, but it works, a case of pieces that fit together not making one look for the spots where they don't.
All told, The Paragon is fairly modest, but that modesty works for it in ways that ambition might not have. You often here talk of people squeezing a lot out of resources, but this doesn't look like there's that much strain.
"Bladder Shy"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)
"Bladder Shy" is one pretty obvious joke - a man who just dashed into a restroom has performance anxiety when someone else stands next to him and, no matter where he imagines himself being instead so that he can loosen up and just go, the other fellow shows up - but it's told well. There are variations full of gay panic or something otherwise uncharitable, but director Joel Goundry, writer/co-star Christopher Duthie, and co-star Mike Tan keep it from ever being mean-spirited or anything much more than folks being used to privacy when they pee.
I'm also kind of amused, after the fact, at how this five-minute short which feels like it all takes place in an ordinary restroom and could be done in an afternoon, probably actually took days or weeks because the small cast and crew was going around to various locations and shooting a few wordless seconds of people standing in or near water. Movie magic by Goundry and editor Dan Perrott right there, and I say that without jest.
Scared Shitless
* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)
Scared Shitless is what it looks and sounds like and it's good at being that thing, or at least certain parts of that thing: The filmmakers push things a lot less than they could and than they probably should in most cases, to the extent that I wonder if there are harder-edged cuts of this movie in the editing suite, with what a lot of horror-comedy fans might consider the good stuff set aside because the filmmakers found the upbeat vibes working best.
Not that the story is upbeat to read the bullet points: It opens with a mad scientist (Mark McKinney) fleeing a burning lab after a confrontation about his extracurricular activities goes wrong in the usual way, and then movies elsewhere in Hamilton, Ontario, to introduce Don (Steven Ogg) and Sonny Donohue (Daniel Doherty), a father-and-son odd couple; father Don is a gruff plumber and Sonny, already suffering from chronic stomach issues, has also become a shut-in due to traumatically-induced germophobia. Don figures the way to help Sonny get past that is to have him start coming along on jobs, starting with a regular client who he suspects gets her toilet clogged because she wants attention. Of course, the guy from the opening has an apartment in this building, the thing he brought home has found its way into the pipes, and the nice young lady at the front desk who was a classmate when Sonny could still attend college, Patricia (Chelsea Clark), would kind of like anything weird the Donohues find kept quiet because between her med school tuition and her father's health issues, they really need to sell this building.
The movie is very much more comedy than horror, but more affectionate than mocking, from the old couple doing some BDSM play to how, even when Don and Sonny are introduced getting on each other's nerves, there's tons of affection between them. The filmmakers seem to actually like most of their characters and presume that they're going to try their best - Patricia even sounds apologetic as she delivers the "this deal has got to go through" lines - rather than building up conflict that's going to feel silly soon. Where it's aware of horror tropes, it's aware in the way that actual people tend to be rather than as a winking way to flatter the audience.
It's cheerfully gross, maybe not Steve Kostanski's most creative work as an effects artist, but he and his crew execute the basic tentacle/slug thing well, with all the attendant goop, blood and guts, and severed limbs. I suspect a lot of folks will appreciate that there's plenty of blood and guts but little actual toilet stuff, because that's two different ways of being disgusted. Kind of related, perhaps, is that the film has one of the tamest "naked camgirl gets attacked by a monster in the shower" scene it could, like they're going to kill a lot of people but don't want to be leering creeps while they do it.
Most of the fun, then, comes from the main cast. Steven Ogg casually sells a punch of goofy plumber jokes and has good father-son energy with Daniel Donehy, who also has a fun vibe with Chelsea Clark; they're a trio that seems pretty fun to hang out with and are the right kind of smart to treat this as a problem to be solved without seeming unreasonably capable for three sort of random folks. The building full of potential victims are entertaining right up until they sell being eaten as horrible but also twistedly funny, and the opening scene with Mark McKinney as a schlubby mad scientist (he kind of gives off "dumb Captain Kangaroo" vibes) and Julian richings as the guy looking to steal his work is more or less exactly what one would expect from those particular pros. Nobody seems to be trying too hard, especially once the film is set up and just rolls forward.
Like I said, there's probably a gorier, more exploitative version of this movie that could show up as an unrated director's cut on disc if those were still things, but it would probably have the wrong vibe somewhere and collapse. This is good bloody fun all the way through.
Tatsumi
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
Tatsumi is the sort of crime movie where one is surprised that the veteran criminals don't, at some point, let out an exhausted sigh that the behavior of some loose cannon is just not professional, because, really, that maniac is the real liability. Unfortunately for its characters, maniac loose cannons get stories started and keep them going; you kind of need one to get a crime story this good.
That is not Tatsumi (Yuya Endo), who tries to stay out of the violent part of crime and just stick to keeping things running at the yakuza-controlled docks where the fishing boats come in, calling his boss Takeshi (Ryo Matumoto) "Skipper" and unsentimental in how he treats his meth-addicted brother (Kisetsu Fujiwara). He can't entirely escape it, though - he's still Takeshi's go-to guy for when he needs a body disposed of, and ex-girlfriend Kyoko (Nanami Kameda) is asking for a favor: Her high-school dropout sister Aoi (Kokoro Morita), a mechanic at the garage Kyoko manages for Takeshi, has sticky fingers and a bad attitude, and if Tatsumi could help cool things down, that would be great. Unfortunately, another gangster (Ryuhei Watabe) has even stickier fingers, and when Takeshi sends his maniac brother Ryuji (Tomoyuki Kuramoto) to handle it at the garage, Kyoko and Aoi are witnesses, and Aoi is none too impressed when Tatsumi's plan seems to be "just accept what's coming".
Gangster narratives use the word "family" a lot, and without necessarily tipping his hand that much, writer/director Hiroshi Shoji casts a critical eye on this: Sisters Kyoko and Aoi are polar opposites and get on each other's nerves but also clearly love each other more than anything else; it can also be easy to miss that Takeshi and Ryuji are actual brothers as opposed to just being in the same gang, or at least lose sight of that. Mostly, it's Tatsumi grappling not so much with his own sins but seeing a reflection of his own screwup brother in Aoi. Skipperrepeatedly speaks to how the yakuza is family, but eventually Tatsumi comes to realize that that's not a measure of loyalty, but something that has caused him to treat other relationships as similarly transactional, or at the very least conditional.
It's a good background and way to add some uncertainty to a nastily grinding story of characters who can't run but are almost certainly overmatched if they choose to fight back, let alone seek revenge. Despite not being constantly beset by new dangers, things move fast enough that Aoi can't change out of her bloody hoodie - the film's take on mob violence is that it relies on overwhelming force by people who know what they're doing, and someone like Aoi getting a blow in is pretty lucky - and there's just enough time to watch Tatsumi and Aoi show the wear of their situation. It helps show how, maybe, Tatsumi was worn down in a similar way.
Yuya Endo is impressive in how he gets that across, because Tatsumi doesn't particularly change aspect or the habits of a lifetime, instead just seeming to realign what he considers worth fighting for and maybe feeling a little better about who he is in the film's later moments compared to his feeling on the subject earlier, even if it comes with regret. His hard, overly practical manner clashes nicely with Kokoro Morita as Aoi, whose emotions are always right on the surface and whose immaturity is allowed to be frustrating rather than innocent. She plays off Nanami Kameda's Kyoko well, as does Endo - there's familiarity between these two but also little doubt about why it ultimately didn't work out, despite their both being smart, practical people. Of course, Tomoyuki Kuramoto steals nearly every scene he's in as Ryuji and isn't particularly subtle about it; he's a mad dog where one is never quite sure just how tightly Takeshi is holding his leash, speaking with a raised voice most of the time and with a tendency to push his head forward a bit, getting further into personal space to show there's nothing stopping him from getting further. It's the sort of vicious gangster performance that could wear itself out, but is present just long and often enough to keep the audience from getting the least bit sentimental about the enterprise.
It's the sort of energy that lets this feel like a road movie at times even though nobody ever gets very far on a map: It matters in which direction Tatsumi turns the wheel regardless of how far he's going.
"AstroNots"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
This is another short that has one really joke, but where "Bladder Shy" was looking to repeat, "AstroNots" is seeing how well it can be drawn out. It starts with the first manned mission to Mars about to launch, and as Mission Control runs down the checklists, pilot Abraham Adams (Aaron Glenane) confesses to Commander Thomas Collins (Adam Dunn) that he's spectacularly unqualified, somehow having BSed his way through various tests and gotten lucky on others. Collins knows he should abort the mission upon hearing this, but not only would that likely end the program, he's a descendant of Michael Collins, the man who stayed in the orbiter while Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, and the idea of also being so close but forgotten is something he can't bear.
Dunn and Glenane are also credited as writers, and one can imagine the writing process as one of sitting around and riffing, trying different ways to crack each other up and challenging each other to figure out ways in which the whole thing doesn't work and which snappy answers are funny enough to become dialog and lead to something else. Somewhere in there, they figure out just what will keep things going for long enough to get to a near-perfect deadpan punchline, just really tight comic scripting.
It's good work all around, getting the right level of panic and recognizing that this gag calls for a reaction shot and this one should linger. Comedy direction and editing seems like it must be thankless and invisible whether done right or wrong, but it's pretty much always right here.
Pendant ce temps sur Terre (Meanwhile on Earth)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
There's likely a better example of the phenomenon than Meanwhile on Earth, but it feels like a bit of an inversion to a certain formula, where you promise weird aliens and horror with the idea of sneaking some sort of loftier ideas to the audience. This one, arguably, can be sold as a meditative drama, maybe one set in the future but where those elements are a metaphor, only to deliver something weird and chilling on top of that.
Elsa Martens (Megan Northam) was always close to her astronaut brother Franck (voice of Sébastien Pouderoux), and just as she was excited for him being selected for a deep-space mission, he couldn't wait to see how she grew as an artist, fully expecting her to be having shows in Paris when he returned even though she was crashing with parents Annick (Catherine Salée) and Daniel (Sam Louwyck). But he didn't return; winding up lost in space, and now Elsa is still living at home, occasionally defacing the statue erected to memorialize her brother and working at the palliative care center Annick manages - and even there, best friend Audrey (Soifa Lesaffre) is moving away to take a job somewhere on the coast - while Daniel scans radio bands hoping for a message and Franck's son Vincent (Roman Williams) is a frequent visitor. It's Elsa that receives a signal, though, via a strange biological receiver, from entities that say they have rescued Franck, and need Elsa's help to prepare for their arrival.
This is a pretty nifty situation for a movie even before the science fictional elements start appearing, although they are welcome when they do; if it is not going to be fantastic, why have the brother vanish while in deep space as opposed to at sea or in the country, after all? Writer/director Jérémy Clapin gives the viewer a good sense of who Elsa is and the way that this sort of grief and loss can feel tremendously isolating, as can a hostage situation, and like nobody can possibly understand because who has faced such trials before? She's confronted daily with the tragedies and indignities of the end of one's life and cannot find acceptance, much less solace in the idea that her family has avoided all of this. If this is all there was, it would be a great role for Megan Northam, who can hint at the vivacious young woman who should be there but who looks worn and spent instead.
After that, it's got a bit of a horror-movie story, although the story is carefully built to keep it on a certain path (fittingly enough) that it's not exactly suspenseful much of the time, but turns a screw or two nicely. The way that Elsa starts out initially seems like the way Clapin has set things up is designed to absolve her, but it leads to is more horrifying, that Elsa's good intentions have set her on a course she cannot escape, as it is made very clear to her that not making a certain choice is itself a decision with consequences, but where she also can't escape the guilt.
Though the live-action debut of someone known for animation, it's far less gaudy than many such films. There are animated pieces - it's kind of telling that the animated renditions of Elsa's comics about her and Franck having adventures from their childhood cast her as an alien, suggesting she didn't fit in and her brother was nearly her only friend - and there are a couple sequences and bits of weird biological design in the middle that definitely spring from the sort of mind that starts from this sort of visual, but the filmmakers take care to highlight the mundane nature of many situations, giving us a thoroughly lived-in world where most have moved past the thing that has devastated this family, even though it is extraordinary.
It's nifty work that can be sold as boutique-house science fiction even though, for all that it plays as something about human dilemmas and difficult moral choices, he also does not hesitate to use a chainsaw to point out how far Elsa might go if push came to shove. Just being smart doesn't make it any less a nifty genre thriller.
"Ahora vuelvo" ("Be Right Back")
* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
I don't know that I've ever really considered how bizarrely incongruous raising a modern child in one of these old European apartments must be - most of the time when they show up in this sort of movie, the kid is dour because a parent has died or they've had to move in with a weird grandparent, but here we get Maria (Anastasia Russo), bouncing off the walls, watching cartoons at ear-splitting volume, shoveling microwave popcorn in her mouth. It's kind of no wonder that her mother (Belén Cuesta) is looking frazzled, and maybe doesn't feel that bad about stepping out to run a couple of errands.
She doesn't come back right away, of course, so it's not until the sun has set and Maria's stomach starts rumbling even though she's just finished the last kernel of popcorn that she realizes that this is actually a pretty scary place, and the person knocking at the door claiming to be her mother but having really weak excuses for not having a key might be faking. It almost seems to be about the shifting tone at times, how things that seem harmless can suddenly become spooky with the right shift, and a brash, kind of bratty kid can lose her nerve. It tips its hand fairly quickly, but also has some fun exploiting the idea that the sort of child who could be the resourceful heroine of this kind of story might also be a real frustrating handful for her parents.
The Beast Within
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
There's ambition to The Beast Within, and talent, but it's not exactly evenly distributed: The performances I love are all build around one that leaves me cold, and the ending isn't quite enough for me to circle back and consider how it all fits together. The pieces are seemingly all there for a fine psychological werewolf story, but they don't click together in solid fashion.
It takes place on a gated plot that doesn't seem to be very productive beyond a few backyard chickens and hogs despite the large, ancient stone farmhouse; with 10-year-old Willow (Caoilinn Springall) confined to it due to a respiratory disease that has her lugging an oxygen tank around. Or maybe it's just enough to be worked by father Noah (Kit Harington), mother Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings), and grandfather Waylon (James Cosmo), who despite the size of the house lives in a mobile home parked on the grounds. It's the sort of isolation where things faster, and maybe there's a reason why they live that way rather than in town - after all, every once in a while, Imogen takes Noah to another corner of the property for the night, along with a bit of their dwindling livestock, to be chained up until something passes.
So, do folks like Kit Harington on the show with all the dragon nonsense? I ask this because I can't recall ever seeing him in a film where he displays much in the way of star power or charisma, and it really kind of kills this. There's this terrific small cast around him, but much of the film almost seems to be hiding him rather than give the audience a chance to be charmed enough by his character to be shocked when his monstrous side comes out. He's admittedly got a particular challenge that some of the other members of the cast don't have, needing to play certain things as ambiguous enough to be reconsidered later, but the end effect is that this movie doesn't work if Noah's not interesting and he barely makes an impression. Bland, in some cases, is worse than bad.
I like much of what the filmmakers are doing otherwise; the rest of the cast in particular is strong, playing the metaphor pretty straight and building this really earnest core. Carolinn Springall gives the impression of someone who is used to her physical limits as Willow, which even more experienced actors often stumble at managing, while Ashleigh Cummings shines as the tough but often overloaded Imogen and James Cosmo gives off the very specific vibe of someone who never liked his daughter's husband but is there for support even when he doesn't say as much. They cover a set of family relationships that is likely very familiar to many even before the monstrous elements start to surface.
Once one gets a hang of the sort of timeless setting, it's a really nice thing to settle into, although I admit, I thought we were looking at multiple time periods at the start. The werewolf effects are mostly kept out of sight for much of the movie but do feel impressively tactile even as they're right on the border of where some in the audience would laugh at the man in a suit. It's fine for them to be kind of crazy and hard to believe, as it's a werewolf in a movie mostly told from a child's point of view, and works best when it's part of the shadows. The action-oriented finale is pretty well-staged, a good balance of things lurking just out of sight, sudden violence, and why you should not use antlers in all of your decorating.
There's not a lot there, though, with the film and audience biding a lot of time until that finale. I do feel, at least on a first watch, that the ending revelations are fortunate to have the emotional impact that they do one doesn't really care to examine just how hard the movie worked at pointing in another direction at times but just let it be. Folks will make excuses if they care about the characters enough, although it's likely better if they don't have to, and The Beast Within has an unfortunate tendency to straddle that line.
No comments:
Post a Comment