Year: 2017

Effortlessly articulate in its unabashed social consciousness and fearless in its evocation of delectably dream-like ambience, “Get Out” is something of a miracle in terms of the modern cinematic circuit; a brooding, remarkably intelligent picture that pays its respects to the horror masters of old while making way for the new. That the latter in question is none other than Jordan Peele, one half of subversive comic duo Key and Peele, only serves to make the film’s enduring taste all the sweeter.

While Peele is hardly the most likely candidate that comes to mind when faced with the task of delivering grueling terror, he’s no stranger to the festering racial tensions that his debut actively confronts. In this case, Chris (Daniel Kaluuyah), an established photographer and all around exceedingly likably guy, is the vehicle and the catalyst is the family of his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams), who he is soon to finally meet over a weekend getaway in the country.

While it’s safe to assume that Peele’s influences range far and wide, it’s perhaps most obvious that he’s taking significant pages from the Book of Polanski, as this turns out to be quite the enticing slow-burn. Rose’s family appears to be a jolly bunch – a little too jolly, in fact – and the presence of two African American servants who act as if they’re trapped inside their own bodies is certainly foreboding. Chris’ social isolationism and apprehension toward his partner’s kin plays well against old-timey interiors and a sequence of increasingly odd incidents, one example of which being a collision with a deer on the backroads early in the film, a harbinger of worse things to come, and another being a midnight cigarette break that turns into a trauma-bearing hypnotism session courtesy of Rose’s mother (Catherine Keener).

This is as rich and brave a brew as they come, but at its heart, “Get Out” is a scathing critique of liberal bigotry; a portrait of a toxic mindset which ultimately does more harm than good in spite of assuming the contrary. It’s decidedly serious stuff, though roughly half the fun is watching Peele and company flirt with conventions with such an obvious affection for genre blissfully in-tact. This is an exceptional entertainment that makes no attempt to conceal its intentions, and it shouldn’t have to; simply getting to the heart of the problem, and daring to challenge it like Peele does here, is more than enough.

Besides, there’s plenty of intimate deception, nosebleeds, and blind man’s bingo to tide one over until the storm.  There’s also no shortage of humor to allow the darkness to go down a bit easier, most of it courtesy of Chris’ friend Rod (Lil Rel Howery) back home, but what’s admirable is how the film doesn’t once let its meticulously crafted guard down. Peele commits to his anger and anxieties all the way to the bittersweet end, and if nothing else, his passion is the unmistakable mark of vision.

If this is his entrance onto the scene, then it’s an unforgettable one; and if this is his voice, it’s been heard loud and clear. More terrifying than the film’s implications where racial politics are concerned – like the best the genre has to offer, “Get Out” envisions cinema as a mirror – is the fact that Peele can only get better from here on out. If it can even be argued whether or not he displays a master’s hand now, just wait a few years. He’ll surely attain it in no time.

Imagine being locked in a building with 79 of your other co-workers, ordered by a voice on a PA system to kill your co-workers.  Much like deer hunting season, the employee with the most kills, wins.  “Survival of the fittest” doesn’t even begin to describe Greg McLean’s black comedy/horror film, The Belko Experiment.

Filmed and set in Bogotá, Columbia, Belko Industries, an American company, has opened a corporate office on the outskirts of the city filled with a well-rounded mixture of corporate executives and worker-bees; staff members of all ages, races and stature.  James Gunn, who wrote and produced the movie makes effective use of his opening, establishing what’s to come with ‘Yo Vivre’ (I Will Survive) performed by Jose Prieto and sharp-witted dialogue. Cinematographer Luis David Sansans sets us up with short character moments, giving us enough time to get a glimpse in to each character so that we’ll remember them once the carnage starts.

Of course, once the rat race begins, each character tries to grandstand one another.  One tries to assert their authority (the brilliant Tony Goldwyn); another with their sexual prowess (the ever-indulgent John C. McGinley), while others try to maintain calm (James Earl) or their cool disdain (Michael Rooker).  Then, there’s the employee who does what’s expected of him (10 Cloverfield Lane’s John Gallagher Jr).   Much like the star-laden Disaster movies of the 1970’s, Belko has so many characters that it doesn’t matter who’s who. This is its underlying brilliance and its flaw:  it felt very familiar.

Coming in at a very lean 88 minutes, Gunn took advantage of the closed environment, building his tension, not only from the menacing voice overhead, but from each of the character’s fears.  Sansans is up to the challenge, finding angles and using colors to his advantage.  Much of the tension works because of his attention to detail.  The frenetic pace of the film could not have been achieved without the brilliant quick-cut work of Julia Wong (Red Riding Hood, Hercules).

“A fear of competition in a capitalist society” is a theme that runs throughout the narrative to demonstrate the superiority of a few, the result of which is a few well-timed and well-staged murders.  The stated grandstanding ultimately subverts the intended meaning of the film; gore is over-emphasized and our protagonist doesn’t firmly believe in it, it’s not in his nature.  I’ll freely admit that I related to the protagonist, but only to an extent: fear overrules our rationale decision making process, rendering our intelligence mute.  Even our protagonist displayed that ultimate trait, fumbling what could have been a strong horror narrative.

Following on the heels of Split and Get Out, Bloomhouse has locked on to a winning formula with low budget horror films, allowing for each to find their box office legs over the long haul.  Co-produced with MGM’s newly revived indie flag, Orion (complete with their 1980’s logo) and aimed at a very targeted audience, Belko has a reported budget of $5 million and it should continue to extend Bloomhouse’s winning streak.

Gunn’s story is timelier than ever:  it speaks a little too close to what our world is rapidly becoming.  Charles Darwin would probably find the familiar Belko frighteningly humorous.  It starts out very strongly, tightening its grip, gives us a little California Dreamin’ in the middle and is just loose enough to allow the audience to go along for the ride at the end.

Now in theaters, The Belko Experiment is Recommended.

Featuring the voices of Gaspard Schlatter, Sixtine Murat, Michel Vuillermoz, Paulin Jaccoud, and Veronique Montel. Directed by Claude Barras. Rated PG-13. 66 minutes. 2017.

My Life as a Zucchini is a film of solemnity and quirk, of sadness and strangeness, that makes a significant impression in spite or, perhaps, because of its short length. At barely more than an hour, the film covers a surprising terrain of emotions within complex, well-rounded characters who are not what one expects from an animated feature. We are accustomed to the broad strokes. Animated characters, especially those who are children, are inherently innocent unless the film goes out of its way to underline their evilness. Here is a film that doesn’t coast on such assurances. These are remarkably vulnerable children at the center of this narrative, of which there is a thin one that kind-of, sort-of frames the central action. They mean well, but their spirits are utterly decimated by life’s cruel twists of fate. If they hurt others, that is because they are a product of their environment.

This is a roundabout way of saying that our story begins with young Zucchini (voice of Gaspard Schlatter) accidentally killing his mother by slamming an attic door on her head and sending her tumbling back down the ladder. The mom (voice of Natacha Varga-Koutchoumov) was a verbally abusive drunk, but he didn’t mean to do her any harm. She’s his mom, at any rate, and the incident changes the boy’s mood. His name, of course, isn’t actually the vegetable, but it’s what his mom called him. He keeps (or reclaims) it, much as he packs one of the hundreds of beer cans that were littered on the floor of their home and which he used to build various structures in what increasingly feels like a previous life. They are souvenirs of that past existence, certainly not of happier times, but as a reminder of them and as a keepsake.

After the mother’s death, Zucchini is transferred to the care of the state, his father having not been in the picture for some time. The officer who handles his case, a kindly man named Raymond (voice of Michel Vuillermoz), finds himself identifying with the boy during his stint with a home for damaged children. The two correspond while Zucchini becomes accustomed to life with a makeshift family of troubled youngsters as his siblings and with the likes of Rosy (voice of Veronique Montel) and Mr. Paul (voice of Adrien Barazzone) as their parental units. It’s a state of limbo while better plans are made for the children, but one gets the feeling that such plans are rarely fulfilled for this lot. That isn’t, of course, a reflection upon the children themselves, who are an eccentric lot as prone to compassion for others as anyone else, but their situations have made them into ticking time bombs with an emotional charge.

A few of them exist in the background, but it’s a tribute to the screenplay (by Germano Zullo, Morgan Navarro, and director Claude Barras, adapting the novel by Gilles Paris) that the few characteristic traits we receive are comprehensive ones. Ahmed’s (voice of Raul Ribera) mother was deported one day while the boy was at school, and he bursts from the structure asking if she’s returned every time a car door slams outside. Alice’s (voice of Estelle Hennard) father did “disgusting” things to her that have left her with a scar over her right eye and a tendency toward anxietal tics such as tapping her spoon or intentionally entangling herself in a jump rope. Simon’s (voice of Paulin Jaccoud) parents committed a crime that landed the both of them in jail and their son to the state support system.

They are characters defined by trauma, but the definition isn’t a simple one. That becomes plain upon the introduction of Camille (voice of Sixtine Murat), a new child at the institution. The girl witnessed her father commit suicide after killing her mother, and now her aunt (voice of Brigitte Rosset) verbally abuses and degrades her. The film’s final stretch, which involves an elaborate escape plan for Zucchini and Camille, with Simon’s initially reluctant help, is, on the face of it, an unnecessary addition of external conflict, but the effect is sneaky: The stakes for these characters extend far beyond the film’s story, and their escape from a life of waiting for a new destiny that seems unlikely to come is joyous to behold.

The film’s style contributes a lot to its effect, because such a sad story feels inherently oddball and, thus, absolutely right. The film is a stop-motion creation, featuring characters with unusual proportions, although Zucchini’s strangely sized and shaped head is the oddest of them all. There’s a cute factor to the animation here that is undeniable and attributable to the usual charm of seeing stop-motion in work. The story told with such a style would seem more apt for black-and-white live-action, so the rush of affection for its characters is heightened by such a representational shift. The oxymoron works in My Life as a Zucchini, which is uncommonly powerful for the animation medium, engrossing us in the lives of wounded characters and returning, to some of them, a bit of emotional agency. What a wonderful and sorrowful film this is.

Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline. Directed by Bill Condon. Rated PG. 129 minutes. 2017.

The 1991 animated masterpiece, a Disney production that was the first of its kind to be nominated for Best Motion Picture at the Academy Awards, receives a live-action reimagining with Beauty and the Beast, which spends a lot of time reminding us of its originator and ends up doing it too well. There have been some cosmetic tweaks in the storytelling, some of them appreciated and others mostly innocuous, but one spends the duration wondering what the point to the whole enterprise is. It’s not a cynical thought, either, or at least it isn’t once one moves past the question to look at the creation that sparks it. Director Bill Condon and screenwriters Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos are so enamored with the earlier feature that they’ve gone and essentially created a facsimile of the thing. Comparisons, pesky as they can be, are impossible to avoid in this case.

The story pretty much remains the same. The Beast (Dan Stevens, in a great performance of immense sadness and reluctant compassion) still becomes one after scoffing at the ragged woman who was actually an enchantress, although we receive some appreciated context into the prince he was before the curse was cast. The tragedy of the Beast, of course, is that he was less desirable as a prince than as a misunderstood brute, and this film does a solid job of capturing that sad truth about his character. Belle (Emma Watson), meanwhile, is still a farm girl and an enigma to townfolk who still think it unwise that a girl be a bookworm. She is still sought by Gaston (Luke Evans), the self-obsessed lout who wants her as his bride whatever the cost (Speaking of Gaston, he is still shadowed by LeFou, played by Josh Gad, who looks upon his friend with – let’s say – a little more fawning admiration than in the animated feature), and her father Maurice (Kevin Kline, boundlessly wonderful) is still considered the village madman.

During a horse ride, Maurice still stumbles upon the Beast’s castle, at which he is stunned to discover moving and speaking dishes, furniture, and decor. Trapped by the Beast in a holding cell, Maurice is still found by a frantic Belle, who offers herself up as a tribute for imprisonment in the place of her father. She is treated gruffly by the Beast but kindly by the animated inanimate objects that populate the castle. The candelabra Lumiere (Ewan McGregor) and the carriage clock Cogsworth (Ian McKellen) are still the comic relief, the teapot Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson) and her teacup Chip (Nathan Mack) are still sources of sneaky wisdom, and the wardrobe Madame Garderobe (Audra McDonald), the piano Cadenza (Stanley Tucci), and the feather duster Plumette (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) are still pretty much background decoration. The designs of these characters are clever in the way the physiological features develop naturally from the designs of the objects, but the realism is also odd and slightly irksome in execution.

The other design elements, from the magnificent castle to the seamless visual effects to the emotive motion capture work on the Beast’s profile, are stunning to behold, but they tend to outshine everything else here. The bevy of old songs feel, with the exception of the title theme, obligatory (Lumiere’s dinner welcome of “Be Our Guest” falls especially flat as it becomes a lot of random visual noise with an orchestral arrangement that overpowers the lyrics), and the handful of new songs are simply interruptions that say what’s already been said. Unfortunately, this Beauty and the Beast only emulates the pleasures of its animated counterpart, bloating much of a simple story beyond the two-hour mark and removing much of the passion from the production. It’s a gorgeous but mechanical whisper of its true potential, never as before and rarely a surprise.