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The Seed (2021)
⭐⭐⭐
I was about twelve when I saw "Species II" on cable, flipping through channels before landing on an alien horror movie that was just starting. The film generally disgusted me. It was either too sexy or too gory to appeal to my poor child self, who had the benefit of "2001: A Space Odyssey" to weigh it against - admittedly an unfair comparison. My parents only caught the relatively innocuous opening scene and, best I can figure, surmised that it would be fine for me to watch as they left me to my own devices. It's unlikely they were around for the naked woman strapped into a chair in the scene that followed.
I bring this up not for the purposes of recommendation (any movie with "Species" in the title is generally to be avoided), but because I was reminded of that experience watching "The Seed", a movie with blood, sex, and alien infiltration on the brain in more ways than one. Had it been playing instead that night, I imagine it would've had the same approximate effect on me.
The writing from writer-director Sam Walker and the acting from our trio of unwitting egg sacs (Lucy Martin, Sophie Vavasseur, Chelsea Edge) don't initially fill you with confidence. Arriving at their vacation home in the Mojave Desert for the weekend, the girls speak to each other in flat, stilted diction, hotly anticipating how the upcoming meteor shower will work wonders for their Instagram feeds. It's typically a bad sign when the dialogue of female characters sounds like it's fed to them by an older male writer skimming his daughter's text messages.
You know, it occurs to me that I'm not entirely sure if that problem ever goes away. Maybe I just stopped noticing as it became less relevant. The turning point arrives in the form of an alien finding its way into their yard, where it discharges an oily, blue substance. One of the girls, whose family owns the house, bemoans that her parents are going to kill her. To this, I venture: 1) Where exactly on Earth a celestial body finds itself landing can hardly be helped, and 2) We the audience know that a stained pool is bound to be the least of their issues.
When I first saw the critter, I was reminded of the baby in "Eraserhead"; not necessarily because it looked anything like it, but the effects evoked the memory - slimy, wrinkled, perpetually yowling. In a time when movies are rooted in a quagmire of flat, impersonal, lifeless, muddled, stultifying digital effects, we find ourselves exalting the slightest hint of practicality. A movie like "The Seed" would be considered a relic today.
The effects involving the alien aren't entirely convincing. I do not think they are meant to be. Plenty of blood, pus, and more of that blueberry yogurt secretion are produced through the course of the film, as is what looks to be dark ink which the girls weep and cough up when things really get dire. In the tradition of B-movies, the acting and effects don't seek to convince, but are there just to give you the idea. Some of the visuals and sound design do mean to unnerve, and they work on that level. The midsection is comprised of some disturbing, psychedelic sequences that warrant mention of Cronenberg. (Again, in more ways than one.)
As the days go by, as things get increasingly weird, as the alien creature starts to reveal a troubling disposition... yeah, I guess I fell into Walker's bizarro wavelength. "The Seed" isn't concerned with characterization, though the three are assigned "Vapid", "Rich", and "Individualist" respectively. It intends to be a plainer, more -visceral- experience, ha ha. There is a voice here, an eccentric vision that elevates this above the likes of "Species II" by way of artistic intent.
It might surprise you to hear that "The Seed" is, nominally, a comedy. Rather black, as opposed to the film's bright, saturated color palette. Whatever humor there is to be found isn't in jokes or banter, but in the movie's attitude towards its own material. It helps that it doesn't usually seem to take itself remarkably seriously... to a point. Speaking of, it might also be of interest to you to learn that the movie is actually mostly devoid of violence up until the final stretch. This is when it shifts into the all-out climactic bloodbath, a stark change of pace from the surreal, leisurely tone it had mostly been maintaining. Stark, but somehow not jarring. I attribute this to how Walker and the actors have also managed a sense of palpable foreboding at key moments throughout.
Regardless, I would never call "The Seed" an even product. Walker starts to establish a particular group dynamic amongst the girls, writing each to have a specific kind of relationship with one another, then just stops. This winds up being a problem bigger than itself, as whatever themes he appeared to be developing within their bonds - like juxtaposing each girl's relationship with technology and social media - follow them right out the window. Tonally, in terms of writing, in terms of pacing, "The Seed" is a right jumble. No one ever said art had to be whole.
South of Heaven (2021)
⭐⭐⭐½
"South of Heaven" opens with Jimmy (Jason Sudeikis) at a parole hearing, imploring for a chance to make up for twelve years of lost time with his betrothed Annie (Evangeline Lilly). She's dying of cancer - reckon she has about a year left. The walls are closing in. He ½starts giving the "I Had A Speech Prepared, But" monologue, and I confess that two minutes into the film, I am resisting the urge to furrow my brow. I try to keep my heart open, but there was apprehension at what I felt was... stock sentimentality. Call me a cynic.
My reticence soon eased, and later faded into the ether. What I came to appreciate over "South of Heaven"'s two hours of violence and mischance was its thumping heart. It's there in the acting, earnestly imparted by Sudeikis, Lilly, and Mike Colter in a wonderfully layered role I won't go into. It's there in the writing, which reads a tad clunkily, but seems more genuine for it. It's also heard in the soundtrack. Scenes march to the rapping of a beating clock, whose tick-ticking reminds us, as it must remind our hero, that each passing moment is a moment bled from a rapidly dwindling reservoir.
The film premiered at Beyond Fest 2021 at the Los Feliz 3 on Vermont (festively dubbed the Shudder Theatre), after which the director Aharon Keshales stuck around for a Q&A panel. Listening to him discuss his story's inspirations, I felt the same love for the characters that I feel in a Coen Brothers movie. Indeed, the film I kept returning to during "South of Heaven" was the Coens' first feature, the quiet masterpiece "Blood Simple" (someone's hand even gets a nail driven through it here). Like in that film, the characters are mere objects of fate, subject to a logical procession of events beyond anyone's control, but which informs their actions and thoughts in ways that are perfectly sensible for who they are.
This said, I don't feel that Shea Whigham's Schmidt, a one-dimensional parole officer whose relevance is limited to indirectly setting the driving conflict in motion, really belongs. He's too cartoonish a villain for a film otherwise teeming with humor and humanity. I have no doubt that such people exist, and would naturally be drawn to positions affording such power over others, but his presence is an anomaly beside characters who are worse but afforded moments of empathy, even sorrow.
"South of Heaven" isn't perfect. But it's sincerely felt, in its compassion, in its sadness, in moments of levity found within grim situations, in embraces against a hanging sun, and in its final shot, which had my heart singing as it was overcome with longing.
In other words, it had opened.
EDIT: My girlfriend, who is smarter than I am, has helpfully suggested that Schmidt's character is meant to serve as a foil for someone. Seeing this interpretation through, I find that a specific scene has suddenly clicked for me, and I can better understand his inclusion.
I am bumping my original rating of 3 stars out of 4 up a half-star.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
★★★★
Mad Max: Fury Road is a genre film of the highest order, one that torpedoes through its genre conventions in an eruption of smoke and rust and would sooner perish than take a moment to dust off its shoulders. It is a film drenched in gasoline and liquid anarchy, splurting flames out of its umpteen exhaust pipes and rumbling so deeply the back of your skull starts itching. Director George Miller, who also directed the past three Mad Max films, released his last entry "Thunderdome" three decades ago, and this one seems to have bathed (or scorched) in the vivid gleam of his wildest fantasies for every minute of them.
While Thunderdome has since garnered a reputation for being the worst entry in the series – my thoughts being the exact inverse – Fury Road brings a previously unknown dimension in modern technique to its proceedings that adds to the effect in ways that would never have been possible back in the franchise's time. Miller's latest is an unceasing succession of sensational action sequences– a visceral circus act that isn't content with simply juggling chainsaws; they must be ablaze, while it walks a tightrope that is also ablaze.
Max Rockatansky, who we've come to know as Mel Gibson's post- apocalypse persona, is recast as Tom Hardy, whose formidable presence has not been lost upon the chaos and the Madness of the world around him. He is a man haunted by his past trespasses and hunted by whoever is within proximity. This world, brought to a wastelandic extreme we've yet to see from this series, is ruled in part by a tyrannical dictator by the name of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a creature whose mask can only remind viewers of Hardy's previous role as Bane in "DKR". His cult is in possession of a spectacular array of vehicles that make for chase scenes that set out to overwhelm and succeed.
Joe and his army are in pursuit of Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a female warrior of Joe's who sets out to escape his wrath with his Five Wives in tow. Here is where the film's feminist undercurrent is rooted, in the developments of these women who have none but themselves to look towards in the midst of mayhem. In the previous films, the mere presence of a woman on-screen has been sufficient cause for unease, the promise of death or worse perpetually shimmering on the horizon, drawing ever near with each passing moment. That raw fear has since driven these women to adopt a fierce will to survive while shielding their perceived delicacy from the cruel outside. They are powerful but nonetheless fragile, beautiful but capable; an oasis of purity in what is very much a man's world.
Among those pursuing them is a War Boy named Nux (Nicholas Hoult), a blindly devoted member of Joe's army who is also Max's captor. He employs him as a "blood bag" and a living masthead of sorts for his vehicle. Nux serves his master with a raging loyalty and a belief that his efforts will secure him a place in Valhalla alongside the best of them. They follow the pack into battle, and from this point forward, the film sets a cinderblock upon the gas pedal and hunches over the steering wheel, crazed and with black rings around its eyes. The entire film is in essence one long chase, ebbing and flowing, constantly involving, and always aware of its surroundings. The chase scenes in Fury Road aren't simply a means to a cheap thrill; they explore all that is possible within the boundaries of their convention. They have spatial awareness, making full use of the depth of space around the vehicles. An explosion isn't something that just happens for the sake of an explosion; you see where it is in relation to everything else, how it affects the surroundings, whether it changes the state of play. The cars don't simply inhabit the desert environment; they are integrated into it, which means the stunts are allowed to be as fluid and elegant as those you would expect to see in a Jackie Chan movie.
It's gratifying to watch Miller's supercharged imagination run wild across the screen. The characters are all either desperate for purpose or starved of reason. With bodies painted white and faces in various stages of embellishment or disfigurement. They howl, they pant – you'd swear they guzzle octane like OJ. The vehicles are all tattered assemblies of the remnants of our society, tricked out in various ways that suggest a Transformer's rendition of "Frankenstein". The set pieces are monuments of modern filmmaking. The initial chase involves a storm, which is all I'm willing to divulge, as I can neither bear spoiling the scene any further nor ever come close to doing it justice. And then the movie tops it with each new sequence. The canvas is saturated with colors that would be too rich for a desert wasteland but for the vision of its artisan.
Max, one who for the most part faces his inner demons in anguished silence, seems to take the passenger-seat to Furiosa, who is a force to be reckoned with, as beautiful as she is unrelenting. Her black- sheen brow, shaved head, and mechanical arm all tell stories about her before she utters a word. Applause is also due towards the wives, who escape from the citadel in search of a better world that may not be and never have been. They ground the events in a sense of urgency, a realism brought about by the conviction in fighting for a cause which keeps the film from mushrooming into a 2-hour blowout of unchecked excess and insanity. Well... completely.
I just about enjoyed every minute of Fury Road; in a phrase, it was exhilarating. In another, it is one of the year's best films. This isn't a reboot of a classic franchise, or even a proper sequel; it's an evolution.
Signs (2002)
★★★★
In the unraveling of a story, people expect a payoff. With Signs, the payoff is the unraveling. We pick up on strange frequencies given by the somber tone of the film. We tell ourselves that nothing is there, our senses desperately scream at us otherwise, and the film builds and builds and builds.
The mastery of Signs isn't in its concept, but rather in the way it manages to sustain a certain tone of trepidation, and deliver upon it in progressively suspenseful ways to the very end. Movies like Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable" have been wise in the ways they've concealed a crucial element to understanding the true nature of themselves right in plain sight-- the telling felt off, right up until their realities were overturned while leaving audiences frantically working out the logistics of the newly defined truth in their heads. Signs has honed this skill, and uses it to suspend our need for explanation while all around, things have never felt more wrong. The unease inherent in fearing something just beyond our ability to see and hear is something we are more receptive to than any other type of fear; command over this instinct is what separates bad horror movies from good ones, then good ones from great ones.
From the opening credits, we are granted insight into how the movie works. At first, the words are introduced with slow fade-ins and the aid of subdued violins. Low-key, before a Hitchcockian score cuts through the repose and the title is introduced like a jump cut to something unfriendly. The title cards are now shown in regular cuts, but then- whoosh!- now they're zooming onto the screen with the score now in full Psycho-mode. This is escalation, and it reflects perfectly the aim of this film and the way it chooses to go about it. The opening shot is just as disseminating: a normal backyard in all respects, and yet... Something is Wrong.
The backyard belongs to a farm in rural Pennsylvania, under the ownership of Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) and his family of two kids, Bo (Abigail Breslin) and Morgan (Rory Culkin). Graham is a former priest who seems to have lost his faith ever since an incident that left his family a little emptier. Bo, his daughter, cannot ever seem to finish a glass of water but has discomforting dreams that seem to mean something for the family; the dreams are never brought into the spotlight, cannily remaining in the fringes of the movie's focus for us to interpret. Morgan is the son who suffers from asthma and maintains his faith despite his father. They are accompanied by Hess' brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix). They are already a broken family before the crop circles form in their field, and we start seeing things, signs. Of?
Terror is quiet. We stare for longer than we should because we think we saw something. We listen intently, and hear nothing, and we listen harder. Skillfully done horror doesn't manifest in the form of tangible scares, but in their absence. You remember the saying by Hitchcock: "There's two people having breakfast and there's a bomb under the table. If it explodes, that's a surprise. But if it doesn't..." Dogs bark at nothing, the wind blows strangely, and it's as if what's hidden is right in the characters' faces. Right in the air they breathe. In a scene that has the characters parsing a book on the possibility of extraterrestrials, I thought back to Jaws.
Whatever they are, the things we can't see, we perceive them through secondhand means. We see shadows, we hear noises, silhouettes in the night slink in and out of view. When footage of them is captured, the image quality is low and grainy; we see just enough. Fewer things are more disturbing than catching a glimpse of someone's, or something's, head dart behind a wall. Because our terror is inflamed by what we can't sense and justified by the few times we can, their presence extends far past what we can physically make of them and locks the whole movie in a state of omnipresent dread.
Our knowledge of the aliens is as sparse as it is beside the point. News reports aren't that informative or knowledgeable-- realistically, they know as little as we do. Although we know the spaceships are there, we can't see them. We know there must be panic brewing down there, but we never see any rioting or commotion; by diverting the focus away from scenes of pandemonium in the streets and in homes, we aren't given a means of climactic catharsis standard to the aftermaths of alien invasion movies. The crop circles explain pretty much nothing and everything. We don't have to know where they come from, just that it's obviously unnatural. Our imaginations take care of the rest. Quite a bit is left up to the viewer's imagination, but Shyamalan gives us the tools to start out. When crickets suddenly stop chirping, he gives us room to consider why.
The story is all the more real for keeping its scope limited to the experiences of a few. They live ordinary lives, are surrounded by ordinary things. That these events are transpiring is all the more unnerving because whatever normal is, this isn't. Signs gets under your skin, inside your mind, takes your most primal fears and plays hide-and-seek with them. Don't look in the pantry.
The Lego Movie (2014)
★★★★
The Lego Movie is something of a miracle. It rushes along at breakneck speed, zipping through gag after gag as if its creative and smart visuals would tire the eyes. The movie builds upon itself unceasingly, aware of its nature as what is essentially a feature- length commercial for Lego and blasting through that bar in a burst of color and wit. It will bring parents delighted relief, children unbridled joy at watching their imaginations interpreted and expanded onto the big screen. It makes regular use of the far- reaching trademarks of its brand for good and consistent reason. And wouldn't you know, there lies a touch of heart within its blocky exterior. It's better than Wreck-It Ralph; it's lighter on its feet than Toy Story. Everything is indeed quite Awesome. You will see what I mean.
The film is a majestic hybrid of two distinct comic presences: the directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller had previously churned out the manic Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, while co-director Chris McKay is known for the animated sketch comedy show Robot Chicken. Assemblies of different presences helming a single project have oft been the cause of a film's shortcomings, as voices struggle to meld harmoniously while making themselves heard over the others' rabble. Judging from the way this movie glides through the entirety of its running time, the three could be an a cappella group.
The story sets its sights on one particular character in its collection: a construction worker named Emmet (Chris Pratt), who is so unremarkable that a wizard named Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) prophesied that he would one day become the Special and save all of Legokind from the clutches of Lord Business (Will Ferrell) and his superweapon, the Kragle. This is to be accomplished by obtaining the Piece of Resistance through a quest that spans so many different Lego worlds and setpieces it would make children's overclocked imaginations whirl. Stop me if all this sounds a little like one of those adventures you would have with your Lego set, giving things fantastical names and generating countless scenarios through a process transcending convenience.
I'm getting ahead of myself. You see, Lord Business has seized control of the world and monotonized and streamlined the lives of his adoring citizens without their noticing his despotic presence all about their cities, from their strictly unvarying 9 to 5 (each person comes with an instruction manual on How To Live Your Life) to the absurdly overcharged coffee. Out of all the children's movies to have nailed the social commentary on commercialism (and conformity) so expertly, it's one that indulges in it under the table. The snag is that it works; Hollywood could take notes from this, "the best way to sell is to make a good product."
To probe further is to get in too deep, and really, I've revealed all the necessities. The Special is to be aided in his quest by a legion of Master Builders, some of whom are a spunky female fighter named Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), a magical hybrid animal named UniKitty (Alison Brie), a 1980s space astronaut referred to as "1980s space guy" (Charlie Day), Superman (Channing Tatum), MetalBeard the pirate (Nick Offerman), and Batman (Will Arnett). Batman steals pretty much every scene he is in, which is faint praise in this case considering that this movie is a continuous frenzy of characters stealing scenes from everyone else.
This also goes for Business's top henchman, a two-faced cop that's played by Liam Neeson with an Irish snarl that's impossible not to appreciate. Apart from the accent, his particular feature is- oh, I've already said.
What haven't I said already. The animation is damn impressive, as everything on-screen is convincingly modeled after Lego pieces – to the point that it never lets out where the CGI ends and where traditional hand-based animation, if employed, starts. There must have been parts involving actual Lego pieces crafted by hand; the attention to detail is too great, and the movie is too meticulous. At any rate, it makes for action sequences that leave you breathless from absurd momentum. There are parts that resemble the segments in those commercials where children construct Lego models through jacked frame rates. The hands are absent, but the tempo remains.
If you are seeing this with children, God be with you. I am writing this a week after having seen it in a packed theater of young and old, and I am still vibrating from the residual energy the movie has left me with. It is an enduring experience. I feel as if I have taken a glimpse into the future of merchandising cinema. And I have no complaints.