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The Midnight Gospel (2020)
Great premise ruined by self-indulgent, pretentious twaddle
Got most of the way through the first episode assuming this was piercing irony intending to satirize the kind of bland, existential navel-gazing popularized by the 'Live Laugh Love' generation... and it might still be, but I just don't care.
The concept is great, the trippy animation is okay but not especially endearing or interesting - in fact, it becomes repetitive very quickly - but the writing just falls apart. Apparently the episodes are drawn from interviews on Duncan Trussell's podcast, which means the "guests" featured aren't VO artists. So... all that pretentious, mind-numbingly silly meandering? Those are real people, expressing what they believe are real and "deep" thoughts about spirituality, identity, and consciousness.
It's a real shame, because I love the concept. It's just ruined by flat, ridiculous hipster twaddle... and I say this as someone who is pretty much a millennial hipster myself.
We can do better.
Wounds (2019)
Wasted potential - "rotten at the core" - don't bother
**very mild spoilers**
This movie is a tremendous letdown. The idea is a sound one, and I was curious to see what was made of the "found phone" trope, but sadly what could have been a halfway intelligent meditation on people's search for meaning - finding "missing pieces" of ourselves within each other - descends very quickly into cheap horror movie cliches that are never evolved beyond brief MacGuffins.
Armie Hammer's performance as Will - an "average" guy who isn't especially likeable (he drink drives, tries to cheat on his girlfriend, and honestly hasn't got a single remarkable or interesting thing going for him) - is steady, especially next to an incredibly weak Dakota Johnson as his partner Carrie, with whom Will's relationship is foundering.
What starts as a promising cross-section of characters - including Zazie Beetz as Alicia, 'the one that got away', and Brad William Henke as Eric, a boozy regular at the bar whose pack of unreasonably large, meatheaded friends can't keep their testosterone in check - is never fleshed out, so instead of symbolising Will's isolation and lack of fulfillment, the paper-thin people around him just feel like bad storytelling and poor adaptation on the part of screenwriter/director Babak Anvari (though admittedly I haven't read the novella Wounds is based on; I have no idea if that's any better, or just as concerned with indulgence of and apologism for its flawed protagonist).
The plot - such as it is - feels like a shoddy rip pulled from the first couple of urban legends found on a Google search page, and never serves as anything more than a vehicle for Will's by-the-numbers traipse into insanity, culminating in a very dull "evil within" ending, which drowns us in CGI instead of building any true tension or showcasing the human callousness and disconnection that sits at the root of evil (as per the Joseph Conrad quote that kicks off the movie).
To see a handful of reviews claiming those who didn't like this movie "didn't get it" or want "easily packaged entertainment" is a real shame, because it's a mistake to attribute anything about the panning of Wounds to anti-intellectualism. It's not that this movie is too ambiguous or artsy to understand... it's just that it's bad. Simplistically bad. Rather like The Perfection (2018), it's a movie that exists to frame a couple of set pieces and a vague concept, but it doesn't furnish the viewer with enough plot, style, or atmosphere to make that worthwhile.
Wounds is boring, weak, and fundamentally both a waste of the viewer's time, and its own potential. If you're looking for more challenging spooky fare this Halloween that meditates on life, connection, and reality, try something like Boys in the Trees (2016), Jacob's Ladder (1990), or even Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), to start with.
The Perfection (2018)
Tedious, Lacklustre, and Decidedly Imperfect
With more time, more work, and a healthy dose of subtlety, this movie could have been an interesting surreal thriller, and it deserves some credit for at least trying to be different... except it never seems to manage accomplishing any of its goals.
Superstar cellists Elizabeth (Logan Browning) and Charlotte (Allison Williams) - both products of the same hothouse conservatory run by their mentor Anton (Steven Weber) - are drawn together when, after time out of the music world, Charlotte returns to Anton's circle.
The two women begin a relationship that soon turns sinister, with gory consequences that - over the course of the film - reveal the reasons for Charlotte's psychological struggles, and the dark underbelly of the apparently charmed lives they led as young girls.
The cinematography and direction are both pretty flat, punctuated by certain set piece scenes where the use of colour and form suddenly seem to be borrowed from a movie with a firmer grasp of its own aesthetics, and - for a film centred on the classical music world - the soundtrack is oddly clunky, relying heavily on the Loud Ominous Stings device instead of actually building tension or atmosphere.
The dialogue is for the most part straight up predictable and cringe-inducingly bad, and the performances from an undeniably talented cast are flat and boring, either due to direction, a poor script that doesn't have enough weight to counterbalance its far-out premise, or the fact that not one single character in the entire movie has anything interesting or empathetic about them. They're all unpleasant, objectionable people, so it's hard to care what happens to them, and the only reason to watch the movie is the fact it was marketed so hard as a "shocking" thriller with multiple narrative twists.
If you do stick it out to see what happens, and you make it through the lumbering flashbacks to Charlotte's mental breakdown and suicide attempts - all shown with the most eye-rollingly cliched iconography, including screaming, head-shaving, and ECT - you will be treated to some solid attempts to twist the narrative through flashbacks and retelling sequences, which is interestingly done even if quite contrived, and then the ultimate bombshell regarding both women's pasts is revealed... which will surprise no one.
Because the movie has larded on so heavily more flat, uninspired stereotypes that present Anton's conservatory members as stuffy, snobbish, rich people oozing with white saviour complexes (Anton literally trawls the world, we're told, for young girls from remote places to pluck from obscurity and train) and wealth privilege, it's no surprise to learn he's been abusing the girls in his care.
This - more because the script demands it than due to any internal logic - leads to Charlotte's revenge plot that, ultimately, sees her and Elizabeth combine forces to make their abuser suffer... and it's just awful. In fact, as someone who actually is an abuse survivor, I found it bordering on offensively awful - and I'm not easily offended. The problem is, every single ham-fisted stereotypical trope is here, from "Rich People Bad" to "Rape Makes Girl Go Insane" and "Victims Want Blood," and this whole core of the movie comes across as hollow, boring, and tacked on merely to provide an excuse for an ending that has some pleasing visuals but is ultimately less shocking than an episode of The Twilight Zone.
In terms of a complex drama rife with psychological tension and horrific motivations - a tale of abused women wreaking twisted vengeance - The Perfection is about on a par with Baise-Moi or I Spit On Your Grave... and there's nothing inherently wrong with revisiting the spirit of trashy grindhouse flicks, but in the late 2010s audiences both want and deserve more nuance in portrayals of female-led abuse-based vengeance. That's why I was surprised to see people call this movie "feminist propaganda" - it isn't. It plays like a return to 1970s sexploitation movies that used the exact same rape/vengeance storylines, but is masquerading as something fresh... which it is not.
Movies like Hobo with a Shotgun, Piercing, or Splatter - in my opinion - pull off the same trash aesthetic much more effectively, because they go out of their way to embrace what they're doing. The Perfection is not a mind-bending twisty thriller: it's a simple revenge story that tries too hard to subvert the viewer's expectations in order to make itself look smarter than it is, and that's ultimately what I found most frustrating and disappointing in a movie that had the potential to be very complex and interesting.
Overall, worth putting on in the background if you want to see what everyone was talking about for a hot minute, but an immediately forgettable waste.
White Chamber (2018)
Anaemic Dystopia Lacks Nuance
I wanted to like this movie, and there are enjoyable points - specifically, the committed performances from a decently rounded cast; the pared back direction and cinematography that, with a better script, would have built tension beautifully; and the competently structured plot twists that try to elevate the material into something more mind-bending.
Unfortunately, while "White Chamber" succeeds at telling a story that's been told very often before, it neither treads new ground nor fully engages with the questions it raises, and everything after the first act steadily falls apart, descending into farcical caricature.
After the revelation that Shauna Macdonald's frightened, vulnerable "Ruth" is in fact Dr. Eleanor Chrysler, head of a team running horrific chemical tests on human subjects in the white chamber - and that her erstwhile test subject (apparently) is now her captor - the movie basically throws nuance out of the window.
Every opportunity to dissect the complexities of war, politics, and the ethical tensions between the ugly necessities and moral ideals of scientific experimentation is completely ignored or squandered. Instead, we are treated to an unravelling Dr. Chrysler barely holding on to control, and some truly execrable signposting that gives away the ending early on, yet also makes us sit through terrible dialogue to get there.
"A well-scented woman," says snarky traditionalist lab tech Sandra, "exudes control."
"Unless," replies wide-eyed yet spunky new assistance/audience avatar Ruth, "they're masking the smell of fear."
Clunky, out-of-place lines like this and repeated scenes that feel inserted purely for shock value - especially anything to do with poor meth zombie Anya - weaken the premise and potential of the movie as a thoughtful exploration of the capacity of human cruelty in the face of perceived necessity or political impetus.
Ultimately, Chrysler's insanity is blamed on the loss of the men in her life rather than digging deeper into her political or personal motivations, and the addition of an extra twist ending (which was needed to make the question of identity work, but still feels tacked on) does not take away from the sense of a deeply underwhelming finale. It's a shame, because there's a much more interesting movie buried in here, and I hope that at some point writer/director Paul Raschid is able to fulfil those ambitions.
Native (2016)
Understated thoughtful sci-fi - on a budget
This is a great movie for people who aren't expecting to be spoonfed a plot, and don't demand splashy CGI and space battles in their sci-fi. If you like the genre for space operas and explosions, you will be bored and probably confused.
Rupert Graves and Ellie Kendrick star as Cane and Eva, alien colonists on a singular mission. Their culture is based on utilitarian uniformity, enforced by their telepathic connections - which are all the stronger in rare "twins" - and motivated by working for the good of the Hive. But, as they near Earth, the messily unique individualism of human life and its strange products, together with internal tragedy, cause the colonists' resolve to unravel.
So far, so simplistic... and this is in many ways a very simple, very pared back movie with few truly original turns. The "humans are chaotic but beautiful" trope has been played out plenty of times before - but that's not truly what Native rests on. The austere sets, mood lighting, and telepathy sequences replete with arthouse shots and sound design create a claustrophobic atmosphere that has more in common with small production theatre than most sci fi movies, and makes for a wholly character driven journey that explores concepts of individualism, identity, self-reliance and the aching need to connect - in any way possible.
There are a few mis-steps and the movie does waver a little into cliche and over-explanation, but more with the feeling of invoking familiar iconography than truly being a boring retread. With great performances and prickly chemistry from the two leads, and a deftness of world-building that leaves lots to the viewer's imagination - plus a neatly uncompromising ending - I would recommend this a million times over any recent big budget laser battle fiasco.
After all, science fiction at its best dissects what it means to be human, and explores how we engage with the possibilities of our nature, our future, and our identity... and those are exactly the issues at Native's heart.
Climax (2018)
Incredibly dull
I expected an erotically charged fever dream full of twisting paranoia, complex choreography and intermingled expressions of lighting, sound, and visual excellence. You know, something that would live up to the simple yet potentially good premise, and serve as an appropriate vehicle for a movie using dance to explore themes of decadence, loss of control, and fear, all of which can be skewed as inherently sexual.
What I got was a poorly paced, repetitive, and above all painfully tedious soup of mediocre and messy choreography, bad acting that was neither compelling or 'authentically' real, some very lazy stereotyping (now with extra by-the-numbers racism, misogyny, and homophobia!) in place of any actual characters or psychological avatars, and some relentlessly boring shots of the same group of people doing the same thing over and over and over again.
There are some relatively committed performances, and some very tired 'enfant terrible' tricks that one would assume Noe would have grown out of by now (flipping the camera upside down, putting the end credits first, and flicking up trite little title cards about the enormity of birth and death are just some of them), but nothing really makes up for the sense of wasted opportunity and, frankly, wasted time.
The best thing in this film is the lighting, and even that - by minute thirteen of a red- or green-drenched shot of the same hallway - wears its welcome very very thin. For those who can get an interesting experience out of this movie, I salute you. Well done.
Edith Walks (2017)
Longform student film shot on an iPhone
I truly wish I could like this piece better. As a postgrad medieval studies student, I was excited by the idea of a film engaging with the compelling myth of Edith and Harald - the intersection of a pivotal moment in English history, radically shifting cultural identity in the form of Norman/Anglo-Saxon tensions, and a very dramatic, human story. The idea of exploring these things through a medieval-style walking pilgrimage is apt, as is the guerrilla filming (no permits here, for sure!) and the self-consciously quirky decision to use Super 8 emulation on an iPhone, alongside 1960s archive footage from a 1960s primary school project (presumably because it was public domain), and a soundtrack largely provided by the participants themselves.
Unfortunately, what could have been an interesting concept devolves almost immediately into shoddy, flabby, self-indulgent waffle, with no real attempts made to frame the narrative, object, or history involved. The result is a shallow, frustrating look at a group of people who, in the main, don't really seem to know much about the subject matter - or at least can't agree on which version of it they're sticking to for the purposes of the documentary - but are certainly having a lovely time flinging neologisms at history and playing dress-up, to the accompaniment of a great deal of whispered poetry, torch songs, and moments that barely stop shy of interpretative dance.
Even a guest shot from Alan Moore, spouting congruent but mildly silly philosophy about space-time and the concept of Harald as an English Osiris, can't save this wholly missed opportunity to actively engage with any of the source material or the ideas raised.
The cinematography is middling, and the editing is maddening, with everything from songs to Moore's audio - and pretty much anything else salient anyone tried to say - recycled so often it far exceeds 'making a point' about the idea of history being finite and cyclical, and just feels like a desperate attempt to pad the run time and great the illusion of meaning.
Such a shame, because there were evidently some good ideas behind the project, and a few lovely visuals and concepts... but ultimately it all falls very flat indeed.