lucky

It's always enlivening to see filmmakers take on new approaches to genre, even if the results aren't entirely successful. Brea Grant (also the film's screenwriter) stars as May in Natasha Kermani's Lucky, where a violent masked stalker (Hunter C. Smith) repeatedly attacks May, breaking into her house. The time loop conceit in recent media like Russian Doll,  Happy Death Day and Palm Springs, has worn thin. Often these works think they are more clever than they actually are and one has to endure their purposefully irritating monotony. Comparably, Lucky is a more unremittingly sly and mysterious offering, even if not ultimately a particularly satisfying one. 

What Kermani and Grant are skewering is sometimes ambiguous in Lucky: is it the market-focused self-help books that one might find in the aisle of Target that the lead character writes (her new book, isn't doing well, and her career now feels tenuous)? One of the better crafted scenes of the movie, where May is at a loss for words at a book event, shows the inherent flimsiness of this type of advice writing when interacting with readers face-to-face. The film oozes with shades of blue--perhaps an oblique ridiculing of the gendered hue for baby boys; it's optically distracting sometimes (from clothing, to paint colors, to a pop of it in Dawn dish soap on the kitchen counter) and mismatching if it's in attempt to unite the film visually. Perhaps least compelling is the film's horror element, which quickly begins to wane thin as the film progresses, especially with its flat atmosphere. Those expecting a traditional scary movie from its promotional imagery will be premeditatively duped. As a movie about reversing the film trope of the woman being attacked by a creepy predatory man--the frustrations of dealing with law enforcement (both by men and women) and husbands (Ted, played by Dhruv Uday Singh, is maddeningly apathetic) in helping and taking women seriously--Lucky excels. Its title suggesting the trite pat on the back people give for a woman's mere survival. **

-Jeffery Berg 

drew's rainbow

Recently I made a four disc set of CD's for my friend Drew entitled Drew's Rainbow.

I recycled a used copy of Mariah's Rainbow album for the artwork. 

Inspired by David LaChappelle's colorful photography, I went through songs with "rainbow" themes [including the "Reading Rainbow" Theme (which kicks off the odyssey) and a remix of Wizard of Oz dialogue by Melody Sheep]. 

While crafting the tracklists, my favorite discovery was a thrilling mashup of Crystal Waters and New Order on "100% Pure Bizarre Love Triangle" by Butterfly Roof.

I also found a nice through line with combining Drake's "Way2Sexy" and a mashup of Watermät's "Bullitt" and Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" in a medley. 

drive my car

The candy apple red Saab 900 in Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car blazes against the film's continuously washed-out color pallet. It's perhaps why that car, as it roams twisting highways, feels so significantly fixed in memory when thinking about the film. Hamaguchi's piece, influenced by works of Murakami (the movie is based upon stories from Men Without Women) and Chekhov, purposely and relentlessly restricts pleasure--its slick photography by Hidetoshi Shinomiya of modern drabness (neutral clothing, glinting yellow lights and white and grey concrete and wood walls and structures) is a dull thing to behold for its three hour runtime. It reminded me of the tones of the sleek German buildings in I'm Your Man or the white-ribbed World Trade Center Oculus: structures erected as an embrace of modernity, of living, and moving forward--especially over places of crisis, war and death--yet, their sterile, bone-colored somberness a tomb-like reminder of hallowed grounds. 

In Drive My Car, a significant part of the movie is set in Hiroshima, where a celebrated actor and writer, Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), is mounting a production of Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya. Afflicted with glaucoma, a symbolic gesture of blindness on the edge of what meets the eye, Yusuke must hire a driver to travel. Yusuke's quiet young chauffer Misaki Watari (Toko Miura, my favorite performance in the film), drives the red Saab, through womb-like tunnels and traffic-less roads, to what feels like the far reaches of the earth--to her hometown, her family and home, swept by landslides; nature, too, can bury over the past and the dead: viewing the crumpled wreckage of the house, it is half-buried by snow. This is an extremely moving aspect of Hamaguchi's richly layered film, and it's twinned with its literary sources. As we move along in the car, we hear the voice of Yusuke's departed wife, Oto (Reika Kirishima), as she reads lines from Chekhov on a cassette tape. Emotions too, are kept at bay. A sex scene of a woman screaming for pleasure is one shrouded to the audience in sadness, shame, and betrayal. Yusuke's bottled-up grief can be both a hinderance and asset to the direction of his play, especially with the casting of a young superstar lead actor, Takatsuki (Masaki Okada)--a perfect  contrast to Yusuke--with a past connection to Oto. 

While the film is well-played and shot, it's the unusual instance where the script (by Hamaguchi & Takamasa Oe) is more fascinating than the film itself. Something about those running rivers of language from the tape, to the halting dialogue in the table reads (its cast, often frustrated), to the storytelling between Oto and Yusuke and also, its arresting structure including a prelude, denouement, a coda that all have a lingering potency, all make me think of the blizzardlike wizardry of the script in contrast to the unabating austereness of the film itself. At three hours, visually, the movie is ponderous. The dramatic conclusions, including Yusuke's first emotional outpouring (the acting there, unfortunately, feels forced)--could work well on paper, or in a novel. Somehow, on celluloid, it renders empty and obvious after such a drab, winding run; surprisingly banal, for a film that seems to be up to something more complicated and mysterious. Still, the ambition of the movie and the blending of its literary influences, cannot be ignored. The note of hope the film ends on, that candy red car in a lot of white and silver vehicles, is likely a stirring one for the viewer. ***

-Jeffery Berg 

make me one

It's winter & I wish it was summer & I wish I was poolside.

Here's a new Poolside single featuring Body Music & Xavier Smith!

the power of the dog

In an era where the ideal of "strength" relentlessly persists within the confines of aggressiveness, muscularity and machismo, The Power of the Dog completely upends it in Jane Campion's quietly stirring revisionist western (based upon a novel by Thomas Savage). It's another vibrant, illuminating film in Campion's oeuvre; her fiercely intelligent period pieces such as An Angel at My Table, Bright Star, The Piano, and Portrait of a Lady, are always slightly askew from expectations and conventions. This tale set in dusty 1925 Montana feels much more bracing, fresh and subversive than many contemporary movies--and its all captured skillfully and unassumingly. 

Benedict Cumberbatch's vociferous rancher Phil is an aching mess of a character to behold--his hidden queerness gnawing him up inside and out. We watch the sensuality of him buffering a saddle of the departed Bronco Henry; and crawl through the trunks of trees to a clearing and a small lake where he luxuriates after slathering himself in mud--a place where him and Bronco Henry once shared. There are many heavy, literary metaphors like this in The Power of the Dog, but yet, not so heavy that they sink the movie. Instead, they enrich the picture--its tensions and mysteries building throughout. Phil is living in the same house as his brother George (Jesse Plemons, in another finely-tuned character turn) and George's former innkeeper wife Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and her son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who visits when not in medical school. Phil and George are wealthy ranch owners: Phil lives a doggedly grubby cowboy existence while George, to Phil's disdain, dresses and lives in a conservatively posh manner. Their relationship feels tenuous from the beginning, when Phil refers to him (and inherently, his lifestyle) as "Fatso." Rose and Peter, who Phil contemptuously describes as "a suicide widow and her half-cooked son," are suddenly wound within Phil's taunts and broody, agitated loneliness. A competition of companionship almost emerges within all of these characters from the throes of Phil. When Rose haltingly plays the "Thunder and Lightning Waltz" by Johann Strauss Jr. on the grand piano George gifted her, Phil one-ups her upstairs in the stairwell with a virtuosic take of the tune on his banjo; later, he taunts her, hidden from view, from an open window, whistling its melody. Phil is all thunder and lightning indeed in this quartet. Cumberbatch's embodiment is so red-blooded and alive, the viewer can sense everything that's going to make him tick, as one readies for what he is going to inflict next upon the others. He bullies Peter at first (him and the fellow cowhands are brutal), but slowly Phil becomes flummoxed by him and closer to him--almost emulating Bronco Henry ("He taught me to use my eyes in ways that other people can't") and the dynamic between him and himself when he was Peter's age. Any attraction he may have to Peter is  impossibly buried. As Peter, the lanky, rail thin Smit-McPhee, gives a haunting portrayal--his serenity and intellect a vigorous match against Phil. Kirsten Dunst is eerily captivating as Rose, as we watch her downward spiral into alcoholism. Despite their modest lives, none of the characters of this tale ever seem comfortable with themselves, especially when someone so loveless is taking up all the air in this ever-chilly house. 

As expected of any Campion film, the crafts are top-notch. Jonny Greenwood's tremulous, rugged string score adds to the anxiety, as it did in his masterful work on Spencer this year.  I was taken by Ari Wegner's photography (who also shot this year's bold-looking Zola). Campion has always been a director with a sense of the rigorous physicality of nature, rather than just ornamental pretty shots. The streams of herded cattle, blood-flecked wheat, the dusk skies--clouds edged with faded sunlight--the plains and far off mountain ranges like a wounded, muscled back and the roaming harsh, hardened ridges of Phil's closed-up heart. ***1/2

-Jeffery Berg

keep movin'!

Dave Lee provides a rousing remix of one of my favorite singles of the year, Jungle's "Keep Moving."

Music video for the original track below. Directed by J Lloyd & Charlie Di Placido and Choreographed by Nathaniel Williams & Cece Nama.

licorice pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the few contemporary filmmakers of my life so far where I can distinctly remember the experience of seeing their movies for the first time in the theater (with the exception of Hard Eight, which I watched on DVD later, and loved). All of his movies have that indelible immersive quality, and one that sometimes causes a jolt to the soul--they have a punchy immediacy, and sometimes take a few days to brew over. His rambling, nostalgic yarn Licorice Pizza, has that intoxicating effect--and most vivid is Alana Haim's extraordinary performance. Besides Lily Tomlin in Nashville, I can't think of another American actor whose fallen face can render so much heartbreak in a scene. Anderson's movie, hits all kinds of moods, and is mostly a joyful spin, full of dark or dusk-lit winding roads of its early 70s San Fernando Valley setting. Often characters are passionately running towards something--many times purely unfulfilling dashes. Sometimes we go to the movies for the pleasurable experience of escaping the unfulfilling dashes of the everyday, otherwise we go to relate to seeing that feeling evoked onscreen (True love seed in the autumn ground / When will it be found? Nina Simone sings on the main titles song "July Tree"--True love deep in the winter white snow / How long will it take to grow?).

Cooper Hoffman (the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of Anderson's muses) as teenaged child actor Gary Valentine looks old for his age--stocky and tall--with disheveled reddish hair, a ruddy, pimply countenance, and ill-fitting clothes (in one humorous scene where Maya Rudolph pops up--one of the movie's many actorly cameos, he auditions for a clothing ad, with much smaller kids). He's also a bit more audacious for kids his age--an unabashed "showman" and entrepreneur at heart. Perhaps knowing his child acting days are numbered, he seeks the next trend to exploit and quickly turn into a business, from waterbeds to pinball machines. His character's drive reminded me of Don Cheadle's lovable Buck in Boogie Nights, who desperately tries to hawk the latest stereo systems (and is also late-to-the party to the clothing "crazes" of the late 70s into the early 80s--knowing, eventually, it will come back). Gary's relationship with Alana (Haim), is as twisty and uphill and downhill as those Valley roads, many in small gestures and moments (awkward phone calls where Anderson elicits the way breathing and talking really sounded through those rotary phones). But Anderson also takes a more broad approach with big set-up scenes, mostly connected with cinema, with craggy, rugged Jack (William) Holden (Sean Penn) and cigar-chompy director Rex Blau (a very good and commanding Tom Waits--reminiscent of Ned Beatty)--an age of spectacle Hollywood withering on its vine; and another compelling odyssey with fiery, eccentric, coked-up producer Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper)--a man emblematic of a blossoming Hollywood generation. The 1973 oil crisis also plays a pivotal role in the film (David Bowie's grand "Life on Mars?" figuring against a line of those large, looming backed-up 70s vehicles). Like any big event, the consequences can unknowingly creep up on us, becoming entangled in our lives, but also having ramifications that go beyond ourselves and our citizenry. These small moments and sweeping diversions, ultimately prove that Gary and Alana are as mismatched as the title suggests (also a chain of record stores of the period, before Sam Goody bought them out), largely since Alana is over ten years older than him. And yet, there is a gnawing, zig-zagging bond between them.

Haim's performance is certainly the standout in this saga, the emotional through line and anchor. It's both her presence--a very un-movie star look (as Harriet Sansom Harris' agent character willfully scrutinizes)--and her line deliveries and physicality which feel so unfussy and natural. Hoffman is a perfect foil, because he doesn't pop as much onscreen: his character's age, limited view and somewhat emotional flatness--is exactly what he portrays. One of the things that's exciting in the best Paul Thomas Anderson movies, is that there's always really delicious performances across the board, even the tiniest turns (in that respect, immediately April Grace comes to mind, who as a delicately probing interviewer in Magnolia, levels out a very loquacious Tom Cruise; here, John C. Reilly and his unmistakable voice in Fred Gwynne Munsters get-up at a tragic teeny bop expo made an impression, and the audience laugh, in just a few seconds). Anderson tends to fit a lot (too much?) in his movies, and there are some winking moments which feel as if he's laughing to himself (some of the Japanese restaurant moments, despite a dedicated John Michael Higgins). The film is cut by Andy Jurgensen and the editing within scenes is beautifully done. The 70mm presentation of this movie is definitely special and precious (the cinematography is by Anderson and Michael Bauman)--a shot of Alana and Gary on a glowing gray waterbed, makes them look as if they are on the surface of the moon. Both Jurgensen and Bauman have worked departmentally with Anderson before, but these are their first full-length feature credits as editor and cinematographer. Even though we've seen a bevvy of nostalgic trips to the 70s in recent years, Anderson's piece remains distinctive, perhaps because it feels so personal. Earlier this week, I docked House of Gucci's bizarre, anachronistic music cues. Even though the early 70s people in Licorice Pizza couldn't possibly be listening to Chris Norman & scratchy-voiced Suzi Quatro's catchy '78/'79 hit "Stumblin' In" on airplane headphones, the song is almost like a dreamy recollection of a later-in-life Anderson, wistfully looking back at this time period--its lyrics of "stumbling" love perfectly encapsulating the predicament of these searching characters. ***1/2

-Jeffery Berg