Podcasting Them Softly

The thoroughly unnerving and slow-burn psychological drama Christine will almost certainly send a shiver down your spine, especially if you have no clue about the real events that inspired this deeply unsettling motion picture, which was directed with a continued sense of cinematic implacability by the sharp and extremely talented filmmaker Antonio Campos (Afterschool, Simon Killer). Rebecca Hall, appearing in nearly every scene, delivered nothing short of a tour de force performance as Florida newscaster Christine Chubbuck, an awkward woman in a very outward profession, who never quite fit into the station family that surrounded her on a daily basis. The exacting cinematography by Joe Anderson is matched by Sofia Subercaseaux’s patient editing , while the creepy and ominous musical score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans is shrewdly deployed in key moments, with the final sequence containing one of the more disturbing bits of on-screen violence that I’ve seen in a while. Not because it’s excessively gory, but rather, how personal and upsetting it all is. Campos is a fiercely talented filmmaker who is clearly choosy with his projects; I hope we see much more from him in the future. And make no mistake – Hall was totally robbed of an Oscar nomination, but I’d imagine the too-low-profile that this film received kept it out of last year’s awards race. Regardless, Christine is available on Netflix streaming and on DVD and is an expert piece of storytelling that never does anything you truly expect in any given moment, which has to be one of the ultimate compliments one could pay any particular film. Oh, and EXTREME Tracy Letts POWER.

This is a shamelessly entertaining film with lots of heart and a tone that bounces all over the place. Gregory Hoblit’s underrated 2000 genre-bender Frequency was a modest hit with critics and audiences at the time of its release, and while it’s hardly a great movie, it’s so much fun to watch, and it stands up on repeated viewings. This movie is so many things: A father-son drama, a sci-fi time travel piece, a serial killer thriller, a domestic drama, an action potboiler – screenwriter and future studio chief Toby Emmerich devised a true “kitchen-sink” film with a heady, complicated narrative that’s happy to fold back on itself repeatedly. Dennis Quaid was perfectly cast as the father impossibly communicating with his grown son, played by Jim Caviezel, years later via an old ham radio and some interesting celestial disturbances courtesy of a very active Aurora Borealis. And as in most time-travel narratives, the more you do to disturb the space-time continuum, the more likely it’ll be that things will have changed all around you, thus setting the butterfly effect in motion. This is a restless piece of work, a film that has tons on its active mind, and I can’t think of too many other efforts that resemble it in intent and execution. It certainly feels light years away from the types of films that are currently getting the greenlight at the studio level.

Hoblit, a dependable director who cut his teeth on various TV shows before making the leap to features with the excellent Primal Fear, has had a solid career as a helmer of underrated mid-budgeted thrillers (Fallen, Hart’s War, and Fracture are some other credits), and with Frequency, he took a project that had spent years in development under various other filmmakers and turned it into a film with a great sense of visual style, and wasn’t afraid to embrace the inherent silliness of its idea, and directed with a steely conviction that turned the entire piece into a slice of earnest entertainment. It’s certainly contrived to within an inch of its life but it’s no less enjoyable, and it’s admirable the way Frequency keeps piling it on all the way to its cornily effective finale, which will leave a lump in your throat unless you’re a true cynic. A big reason for this is the fantastic chemistry between Quaid and Caviezel, who despite not really looking like they come from the same family, exhibited a natural warmth and rapport with each other that went along way to making the film work as well as it does. For some reason, Frequency feels like a strange companion piece to Field of Dreams, and while that film is infinitely superior overall, I can’t help but feel that they share some of the same honest-at-the-core traits that always keep me coming back for more.

I’m not exactly sure what all the bitching and moaning was about (56% at Rottentomaotes – are you kidding me?!), but from where I sit and view cinema, the new Netflix original movie War Machine, from hot-shot director David Michod (Animal Kingdom, The Rover) is a pointed, extremely funny, and often times sad commentary on the war in Afghanistan and how the American military simply could never fully understand the ramifications of doing what they’ve done in the middle east. Brad Pitt is absolutely terrific as General Glen McMahon, a fictionalized version of General Stanley McChrystal, a take no nonsense commander who was given the unenviable task of “fixing” the situation in Afghanistan, something that he could never possibly have done, as he very quickly learned. One thing leads to another in this wild and woolly tale, and one of the things that I admired most about the film is that it carries a persistent “This is Fucked” vibe that’s both startling and humorous.

Pitt and the excellent ensemble cast, including Alan Ruck, Scoot McNairy, Anthony Michael Hall, Emory Cohen, Ben Kingsley, Topher Grace, Meg Tilly, Will Poulter, and Tilda Swinton, who gets one of the best and most ferocious scenes of the film with her reporter character going straight for the jugular, were clearly in match-step with one another, as Michod’s script, which was based on the book The Operators by Michael Hastings, is filled with sly yet upfront humor that rolls off the tongue, with an especially lacerating quality in various key spots. The outright hubris that was demonstrated on the parts of various government officials during these stages of the “War on Terror” is ridiculous to note, and the backwards and reductive approach to troop involvement is very much shown on screen. Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (The Martian, Dark City) shoots in a straight forward fashion, never calling attention to the images, but still giving the film a very polished and stylish look.

I absolutely love topical filmmaking and seeing stories about our current geopolitical conflicts. I’m not a “too soon” cry-baby (United 93 is and always will be a masterpiece) or someone who is easily rattled by Hollywood taking poetic license with the facts. Movies are movies, documentaries are documentaries, and when I watch something that’s ripped from the headlines, I can accept the fact that filmmakers have to change certain things around, condense characters and situations, and approach the material with a strong viewpoint in order to get their message across. War Machine is the sort of film that would have been funded by a major studio in past years, but because it doesn’t fit the current franchise-driven corporate mold and isn’t a safe “Oscar bet”, Netflix took action and made a relevant and smart piece of entertainment that sadly not enough people will check out. This is definitely not an empty-headed action picture, but rather, a film that has something on its mind that’s worth saying.

What Michod does so well in War Machine is present the absurdity of the situation, while piling on incident and conflict, with characters who shuffle in and out of the narrative who don’t ever have a full idea as to what’s truly going on around them. I don’t want spoil anything as there’s any number of scenes that are outrageous in their content and deeply funny because of the absurdity on display. The varied musical score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis plays up the comic uncertainty of the entire operation while still getting tense when required, while Peter Sciberras keeps a fast pace via tight editing; look out for a hilarious cameo during the final scene for one last kicker. And hey, if this isn’t your cup of tea and you stories cut from the world around you aren’t of interest, the latest and greatest in CGI-idiocy is playing down the hall or available to stream on various platforms. Me? I’ll take a bitter, ruthless, smarty-pants satire like this any day of the week, as War Machine further cements Michod’s arrival as a new and distinctive cinematic voice to take note of.