Author: 39frames

2017.  Directed by Macon Blair.

The casualty of self absorption is often common courtesy, with the hallmarks of charity being forsaken on the altar of fast paced living.  Macon Blair’s pugnacious directorial debut, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore frames the grand questions of existence in a bluesy package, filled with inept criminal mayhem, a twisting nosedive into violence, and an endearing pair of performances by its two leading actors.

Melanie Lynskey’s central performance is both a totemic representation of the ignored and exploited and a cheer inducing portrayal of a woman who finally hits her limit.  The story revolves around a depressed nurse whose breaking point involves a peculiar robbery that leads her on a mission of revenge that rapidly spirals out of control.  Lumet’s Network is anchored by Peter Finch’s televised dissent in a post Watergate world, while Lynskey’s medicated ferocity is the perfect satirical remedy for the digital age.  Comparisons with the Coen Brothers are unavoidable, as the entire premise hinges upon normal people becoming involved in extraordinary circumstances, however Lynskey’s wry understanding of Blair’s surprisingly poignant script is sensational.  She is the person in the express lane who complains out loud when someone pulls out a checkbook.  She is the rage in your head when someone won’t pull forward enough to let you get into the turn lane.  She is the sum of every real and imagined sleight that we endure on a daily basis, and she is the viewer, a deeply flawed human who has the possibility for greatness.  Lynskey is a spinning wheel of emotional resonance blending the sadness of insatiable anger and the unmistakable satisfaction of doing the right thing, regardless of the cost.

Elijah Wood supports as a quirky, Kung Fu wielding neighbor who balances the furnace of his personal anger with the calm of shared spirituality.  His chemistry with Lynskey is a platonic oddity, a potent ingredient for the bizarre microcosm on display,  Jane Levy (Don’t Breathe) has a dark turn as a trailer park disciple that keeps the roiling narrative grounded in the dangerous plausibility of a caper gone wrong.  This is the essence of I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore.  The unfettered bliss of finally lashing out at the world always ends and reality has a nasty way of reminding you how important your normality is.  This concept is enhanced  by Brooke and Will Blair’s soundtrack that offsets the humor with deep, brooding tones which hold the promise of the violence to come.

Larkin Seiple’s cinematography has a dime store quality that is perfectly at home in the world Blair has created around his criminal miscreants and Samaritans gone awry.  Grungy blues and exhausted browns flood the screen, while shadowy, reverse shots in doorways put the impending malice on display.  The deep greens of the Oregonian wilderness are shot with interesting light combinations that enrich the mysterious idea of providence that hangs over the final act.  Everything is detached, with even the film’s most endearing moments framed at arm’s length.  On the surface this film says go away, but beyond the bellicose presentation lies a warm fable about loving oneself that is undeniably inviting.

Available on Netflix now, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore won the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival.  This is a film that is not for everyone.  Its characters are extremely odd (making them even more human) and the plot borders on fantastical, turning the dials of the crime genre on their head, displaying the misfit backyard of Macon Blair’s mischievous subconscious, a place I am eager to return to.  If you’re looking for a film that will make you laugh and cringe in equal amounts, all the while reminding you of the importance of contentedness, this will not disappoint.

Highly Recommend.

2017.  Directed by Colm McCarthy.

Zombies movies have been slowly losing their luster in recent years.  Production studios and publishing houses have squeezed every drop of heart’s blood out of the shambling hordes to deliver a handful of stone cold classics and a gangrenous mob of mundane horror offerings.  Colm McCarthy’s The Girl With All the Gifts thankfully belongs to the minority.  Featuring a stellar central performance, poetic cinematography, and a haunting story about the definition of humanity, this is a remarkable effort in the genre.

Despite the outstanding technical attributes, the entire film hinges on newcomer Sennia Nanua’s chilling lead performance as Melanie.  Seesawing between polite, inquisitive child and inhuman killer fluidly throughout the film’s duration showcases her uncanny physicality and wonderfully subdued demeanor that combine in truly unsettling ways as the narrative expands.  M.R. Carey’s script, based on his novel, is a breath of fresh air.  The viewer is dropped into the center of a world already lost.  There are rules to these frightening creatures, the soldiers trying to destroy them, and the hybrid children caught in the middle, but the viewer is not spoon fed the information. Instead it is seeded within the nuanced screenplay and carefully parceled out as the action progresses, leading to some stomach churning revelations.

This is the best part about The Girl With All the Gifts.  Things begin en media res, with Melanie being held captive in a military research center.  She has the love of her teacher, played by  Gemma Arterton, in a maternal turn, and she has the ire of the center’s unscrupulous lead scientist, a gleefully campy Glenn Close.  The premise is then methodically built around a bizarre classroom, toying with the viewer’s sensibilities before pulling the curtain only halfway off.  It is at the end of the first act when Simon Dennis’s sublime cinematography truly begins to shine, starting with a calm tracking shot through a storm of undead combat and then sustaining throughout with longing, blood drenched close ups of Melenie and restrained wide shots of the environs.  There’s an aerial shot of a sleeping city that not only accentuates Dennis’s visuals but blissfully realizes  McCarthy’s directorial vision.

Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s score blends ominous child like voices with distorted notes to create a nightmare lullaby.  The grim ambiance is enhanced by Liza Bracey’s world weary costume design and Monica McDonald’s fungal makeup effects that present the zombies as torpid predators, laying in wait for the scent of human flesh.  Each element is aligned to present an atypical apocalypse with an elegant purpose.  The Girl With All the Gifts keeps the focus on the child at its center, exploring the innocent and often terrifying ramifications of the abuse that the young endure at the hands of their ill advised caretakers, stripping away the usual conflicts of a survival film to expose the dark naivety at the center of a heart born in world long gone.

Available now for digital rental, The Girl With All the Gifts is an excellent horror film.  Filled with gratuitous head shot blood splatter, bickering survivors who consistently dance around the evils they must do, and the usual trappings of a flesh eating “And Then There Were None”, it will not disappoint genre lovers.  However, underneath these cliches lies an engrossing story about the price of sacrificing our young for the greater good that resonates all the way until the film’s disturbing, but absolutely satisfying conclusion.

Highly Recommend.

-Kyle Jonathan

2017. Directed by Jordan Peele.

Horror is a genre that can be used to devastating, socially and culturally relevant effect when wielded by the right provocateur.  Comic mastermind, Jordan Peele’s Get Out is 2017’s first genuine surprise, a hypnotic thriller that masquerades as a commentary on race that is built upon a labyrinth of stereotypes and best intentions.  What begins as an extremely well designed horror comedy transforms into a surreal manifesto on violent domination.

Peele’s malicious script is packed with uncomfortable polite discourse that highlights the essence of privileged sensitivity while laying an intricate trail of dominoes throughout the film’s single upscale location.  Clues abound, from robotic household staff, a cringe worthy therapy session, and the insidious placement of trophies throughout the familial home at the center of the mystery.  The humor is tied to the protagonist’s friend back home, using Peele’s well known comedic genius to bring levity to the bizarre.  Thankfully, these moments are sprinkled throughout a genuinely terrifying fever dream.  Dinner party participants simultaneously stop speaking, a groundskeeper runs circles around the house in the moonlight, and the family’s harmless maid is a smiling harbinger of madness, all of which combine to create a poisoned key that unlocks the film’s corrupted core in the thrilling final act.

Toby Oliver’s cinematography is the film’s best surprise.  Innocuous interiors are delicately framed, using extreme closeups to ensure that the facade remains in focus.  Moonlight is used to counteract the false serenity of the environs, bathing the ensemble in pale neon blue to heighten the psychic underpinnings.  Michael Abels’s score capitalizes on the up front premise, using terse notes to supplement the uncanny behaviors of the “staff”.  Seeing the trailer is enough to fool you into thinking you know, but the outstanding cast latches onto Peele’s words and makes them something more, with Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams doing remarkable work as the skin tone crossed lovers at the center of a horrifying cautionary tale.

This is a layered metaphor that pulls no punches.  Violence is the inevitable result of forced captivity and red and blue lights are not always a sign of sanctuary.  These truths are subverted to remarkable ends to produce a delirious Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner by way of Beyond the Black Rainbow mind bender.  Racial discord swan dives into a cesspool of nightmarish implications to carve a bloodstained benchmark for socially aware cinema and the result is a horror film that is respectful with its homages and rebellious with its implications.

In theaters tomorrow, Get Out is a clever youknowwhodunnit.  The rules are set early, but it is the players, and Keele’s elastic mastery of the material that takes a simple premise into places best left unexplored, and yet the viewer can’t help but to watch.  The final act regrettably ups the violence, undoing the psychological dread, but this is the purposefully natural consequence of the preceding acts, symbolizing both the inherent fears of a black man in a white world and the smartphone dissertations on what those fears symbolize.

Highly Recommend.

2017.  Directed by Gore Verbinski.

A neo-Gothic fable about the self constructed purgatories of obsession, Gore Verbinski’s A Cure for Wellness is a brutal existential horror film.  Filled with skin crawling compositions, macabre set designs, and absolutely stunning visuals, this is one of the most artistic studio films ever made.  Hearkening back to Frankenheimer’s Seconds, what begins as a cautionary tale about the dangers of soul consuming employment glacially devolves into a surreal homage to the boundary pushing renegade films of the 70’s.

Passive protagonists are a tricky enterprise.  Dane DaHaan’s Lockhart spends the bulk of the film as a victim, both of circumstance and physical injury.  The danger of him being a simple lens through which the story happens is gleefully subverted as the end of the film dovetails with the beginning.  DeHaan loses himself inside his role, the corporate lackey on a fool’s errand.  Justin Haythe’s screenplay is frequently disjointed, but this is part of Lockhart’s crucible.  There are no jump scares and the mystery becomes frustratingly elusive at times, however this is essential for putting the viewer into the main character’s head space.   Layer upon layer of discomfort and supposition are brick and mortared around you as you tiptoe through lonely corridors filled with affluent phantasms, upper class vanguard whose distinct lack of concern for anything outside their control is a physical apparition that clings to the walls of the sinister hospital at the heart of the narrative.

Renaissance cinematographer Bojan Bazelli uses a constantly evolving repertoire to frame every shot with undeniable proficiency and palpable dread, using green whispers and blotted reds to consistently undermine the facade of safety.  Eve Stewart’s production design is essential, harnessing Grant Armstrong’s art direction and Jenny Beavan’s costume design to create an insular mythology that may or may not be real.  Everything hinges on films that came before, such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Devils, using each reference to construct a methodical morality play that almost achieves perfection.  Regrettably, everything collapses in the final act, and the mystique of the preceding two hours is undone for a cliche’, crowd pleasing resolution.  The insidious attributes of German expressionism haunt the bulk of the narrative, from inhuman camera angles to sequences of extreme physical and mental duress, but all of this is undone with haphazard CGI and underwhelming confrontations.

In theaters now, A Cure for Wellness is a genuine horror offering that pilfers heavily from the buffet of classics that came before it. It uses a wealth of genre staples to propel a trove of ideas down a razor sharp path of inconsistencies that render an incomplete masterpiece.  If you’re a horror fan, or someone who enjoys psychological turbulence, this will not disappoint.  Despite the various flaws that almost threaten its legitimacy,  A Cure for Wellness is a unique experience with merits, and sometimes, even a flawed film is worth the price of admission.

Highly recommend.

-Kyle Jonathan