KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie of which he writes a longer, thinkier piece, and then whatever else he watched that week he attempts a quick wee summary of his thoughts (and fails...in the "quick" part).
This Week:
Tokyo! (2008, d. Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, Bong Joon-ho - Tubi)
Shiva Baby (2020, d. Emma Seligman - Netflix)
First Men in the Moon (1964, d. Nathan H. Juran - Silver Screen Classics)
Rolling Thunder (1977, d. John Flynn - AmazonPrime)
Miami Blues (1990, d. George Armitage - AmazonPrime)
and go.
---
I don't know how I've gone this long without having heard of the French-funded anthology film
Tokyo! which features three exceptionally notable modern auteurs of cinema. Like, you would figure it would have come up in any conversation about the repertoire of these visionary filmmakers. But no, I had to find out by spending 20 minutes thumbing through the "free to me" movies section of my cable provider.
Yes, I still have cable, because... shut up.
Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Bong Joon-ho? I've said many places about how I hate anthologies (usually in relation to comic books) mainly because they're usually nominal works from their creators, but to watch three short films from these luminaries, there can be no disappointments here.
Gondry cut his teeth making impeccable music videos that tell wildly imaginative stories in a very short amount of time, so it's almost like 30 to 40 minutes may be more his wheelhouse than actual feature films. His entry, Interior Design, is based on the sequential art short story Cecil and Jordan in New York by Gabrielle Belle. The story finds a young couple Hiroko and Akira coming to Tokyo to screen Akira's first indie film. They stay with Hiroko's college friend in her tiny apartment, but it's supposed to be very temporary. It is not. While Akira finds a menial job immediately, Hiroko can't even manage that. Akira says she's has no aspirations, and Gondry very effectively captures her aimlessness, which is truly the heart of the story. Hiroko wanders the streets of Tokyo, looking at apartments, but always feeling a step behind, hopeless and homeless. After Akira's screening she's chatted up by another woman who tells her how important it can be to solely be the support base for an artist, to have no purpose than to ease another's burdens so that they can be creative. It hits Hiroko in her core being. Who is she? What is she?
I can't really talk about what puzzles me about this film without spoiling its very Gondry-esque twist. So skip this paragraph if you don't want to know... ... ... Hiroko starts turning into a chair. The classic wooden type with the spindled back. She's utterly distraught and very publicly transitions, her clothes falling away as her legs become wooden stilts, until eventually she just is a chair. But she can also not be a chair, emerging fully naked in the evening streets of Tokyo is a scary place. She transitions in and out of being a chair, until a musician, just takes chair-Hiroko home. The musician's place is gorgeous, the perfect apartment she failed to find in her own search. When the musician leaves, she starts tending to the space, watering the plants, cleaning the kitchen, and when he returns, she's a very useful chair. I mean... what? It seems that Hiroko finds a sense of fulfillment out of being a piece of useful furniture, not just taking up space, but having purpose, but the sort of regressive domestication and becoming exactly the support base for an artist had me scratching my head at the messaging (especially since the night before we were watching comedians make fun of the "Tradwives" of the internet). Not that there's anything wrong with a woman finding fulfillment in such a life, so long as she doesn't advocate it as the *only* option for women. Anyway, it threw me for a loop that I'm still circling.
Carax's story, Merde, starts out darkly comedic, as a milky eyed, long-nailed leprechaun with an oddly-groomed red beard and green corduroy suit (no shirt, no socks, no shoes) emerges from the sewer and proceeds to walk down this busy Tokyo street disrupting everything, with Carax doing a long rear-facing take tracking the action. He steals things out of peoples hands, tosses lit cigarettes into baby carriages, eats people's money and flowers, licks a woman's armpit, and is generally just an ugly, uncultured nuisance. Oh yeah, and it's all set to the key theme of Godzilla. The local TV news (which Carax depicts as being, like, cable access) has eyewitness statements and begins calling him, as subtitled "The Creature from the Sewers" (and my keen ears did hear the actual use of Kaiju in his name). The leprechaun explores the underground of Tokyo and finds an old WWII military depot, including a crate of grenades, which on his next exploration of the surface he begins lobbing everywhere, murdering dozens. A task force is sent into the sewer and captures him. He's put on trial where a French attorney, with a similar oddly-groomed red beard and long nails is one of only three people who speak the same language as the creature, who we learn is called Monsieur Merde (or "Mr. Shit"). M. Merde is a terrible racist and hates the Japanese, but he explains he is as his god made and delivered him, and he is cursed to be in places where he is at his most uncomfortable.
The trial find Carax using one of his favourite tricks, split and multi-paneled screens. He does this I think because otherwise the trial is rather interminable to watch as any statement to or from M. Merde needs to be translated from Japanese to French then French to Merde's weirdo language, or in reverse. It's a bit of a trifle, this neo-kaiju story, as far as I can tell, there's not really much of a statement being made here. In referencing Godzilla through the music, a heavily allegorical film, it implies there may be an allegory here as well, but I can't seem to find it. If anything I was made uncomfortable by M. Merde's similarities to those unhoused or addicted experiencing a mental health crisis very prevalent in Toronto, which is definitely coincidence but really puts a damper on this as just a bit of an odd lark.
The final story is Shaking Tokyo from Bong Joon-ho. It begins with a title card defining "hikikomori", sort of a shut-in/agoraphobe/hoarder, but really young (like teen or 20s). Teruyuki Kagawa plays our hikikomori here, who describes his routine in every detail, nothing that he hasn't been outside in over ten years, hasn't looked another person in the eyes in as much time and gets everything delivered. His house is piled high with books, magazines, pizza boxes and toilet paper rolls, but they're all immaculately stacked in a very orderly way. His comfortable, familiar world is usurped when receiving his usual pizza delivery, he catches a glimpse of the driver's garter belt, which instinctively causes him to look up, and he meets the young woman's eyes. The awkwardness is palpable for both but, just then, an earthquake hits. The young woman falls over unconscious. Panic stricken, the man first keeps his distance, then grabs her a glass of water (which he then drinks) then checks (without touching her) if she is still breathing. He notices she has tattoos on her arm, buttons, with labels ("sadness", "hysteria", "headache"). Then he notices another on her leg that says "coma". He presses the "button" and she awakens. She takes in his space, compliments him on it, and notices a flaw in his pizza box stacks before departing. He is clearly smitten. Days later, off schedule, he nervously orders another pizza, only it's delivered by a very gruff man who barges into his space leaving pools of rainwater behind him. The girl has quit, become hikikomori herself. He psyches himself up for days to go out into the world and save this young woman from her fate.
Director Bong is such an immaculate craftsman, not that Gondry and Carax are not very specific in their productions, but there's such a crispness and exactness to all of Director Bong's productions and that is just as evident here. The short is beautifully shot, every frame seemingly perfect in its composition. His spaces, even his messy spaces, seem so refined, but here we have a hoarder who is so orderly. Just like with Interior Design and Merde, there is one element that just makes me uneasy, and it's the fact that our hikikomori is clearly older then the seemingly very young delivery woman. Their "meet-cute" is hella cute, brief as it is (and teetering dangerously on manic pixie dream girl territory, if not for the fact that he's sort of a manic pixie dream man himself), but the age disparity (I looked it up and there's a 20-year age gap between the performers), particularly in the end where he is groping at her arm and forcebly pulling the young woman out of her house to, in his mind, stop her from becoming like him...well, it's a deeply uncomfortable level of physicality. It speaks to the man's desperation, but there's also a fixation paradigm here that the physical engagement, despite intention, is a step too far.
Each of these three stories I was immersed and immensely compelled by. These are great storytellers and directors each really interested in abnormalities of society. But at the same time they're very 2008, and each story, as noted, has an element that, by today's standards, would have to be reconsidered.
As a whole, these are stories that take place in Tokyo, and use Tokyo as their environment effectively, but I wouldn't say that Tokyo is necessarily a character, or that these three outsiders are representing anything foundational or even observational about the massive city (heck, Gondry's is a transposition from New York-based source material). Their weirdo vibes are always welcome though, and I think overall it's a successful anthology, with an asterisk.
---
 |
I love this spin on the classic
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana
Brass "A Taste Of Honey"
album comver |
Lady Kent and I very much enjoyed
Bottoms, last year's absurd high school outsiders comedy that plays with the trope of marrying sex and violence with immensely delightful results. It was the second feature from writer-director Emma Seligman and co-writer/star Rachel Sennott. I had heard of this duo as a result of their highly praised debut
Shiva Baby, a film
I have had every intention of watching since it's pandemic era release...but I had heard it was a cringe-comedy and I've become really averse to the subgenre. With the evening running short and nothing more pressing to watch one night, the 1-hour 17-minute runtime, more than anything fit the bill.
The film opens with college-age student Danielle (Sennott) having sex with older man Max (Danny Deferrari). It's very clear he's her sugar daddy, though maybe not clear to him. She's missed the funeral of an elderly relative, and she meets up with her parents (Fred Melamed [Lady Dynamite] and Polly Draper [Thirtysomething]) for the shiva. Her mom is very concerned with social status and preps manufactured talking points for the family when friends and relatives engage them on what Dani has been up to (and everyone is into everyone's business). he family dynamics are very quickly, concisely, and clearly conveyed. It's masterful scripting and tremendously funny. Dani spies Maya (Molly Gordon, The Bear) and avoids her. Turns out they were best friends-turned-lovers gone sour, in what Dani's mom calls "a phase", but if lying about her schooling, career goals, work history and romantic life while avoiding her old flame isn't enough, who shows up to the shiva but sugar daddy Max...who is married (to a shiksa no less) and has a baby ("Who brings a baby to a shiva?").
While the proceedings are frequently uncomfortable (Dani's fixation on Max, and, moreover Max's tall, hot blonde and very successful wife, lead her to say and do some very ill-advised things), it's kind of clear that Dani is in a bit of a crisis. The comedy is Dani doing and saying the wrong thing, but there's a deeper meaning to it all that Maya clocks right away. They have their own baggage they need to sort through, but at the heart of it, there is love and affection. Even Dani's mom, judgemental as she is, clocks something is off with her, but is too busy circulating to really drill down. She just wants Dani to pretend she's someone else and behave herself for a couple hours, unaware of the toll such repeated requests is having on Dani's ever-fracturing psyche.
Particularly the last act, when Dani's unconscious competitive and vengeful streaks start to manifest, directed at Max's wife (who, once we are separated from Dani's POV of her, actually seems very nice, and very much the victim of a husband taking advantage of her), the film does venture into "cringe" territory, but for the most part it's not interested in doing something funny without it having a character purpose. Cringe characters are those that make bad choices either unconsciously because they are narcissist or idiots incapable of self-reflection. Dani is neither of these and Sennett, the full-fledged, ready-made star of this movie, delivers every nuance, while Seligman's use of focus and lenses enhances what Sennott is delivering, really capturing the mental breakdown she's going through. What a debut.
---
I was browsing cable (
yeah, yeah) one day and I stopped on a channel, utterly perplexed by what I saw. Big expensive sets of alien landscapes, gorgeously lit, with men in sci-fi spacesuits...this wasn't some low budget B-movie from the 50's or 60's that of course I've never heard of if it wasn't MST3K fodder, no, this was a beautiful technicolor (sorry "dynamation") production that clearly had some coin behind it. So what was it and why had I never see it before? Turns out it was the 1964 adaptation of H.G. Wells'
First Men in the Moon, a film for all my years of nerditry, I'd never, ever heard of.
I say this so confidently, but it's probably more a case of "if I ever had heard of it, it clearly didn't make an impression")
Released 5 years before man would actually land on the moon, the film begins with the first moon landing, a laughably cooperative effort between the U.S., Russia and Great Britain. It's quite the slog of an opening sequence before we actually get to the men on the moon, pretending to be all realistic but comes off as unnecessary filler. Once we see the shuttle descend towards the moon, a not-too-shabby effect for '64, and then the really nifty space suits in action, it definitely picks up. Until one of the astronauts finds, of all things, a ratty old Union Jack flag and a degraded note sitting on a rock.
The note claims the moon in honor of her Majesty Queen Victoria but written on the back of a court summons. A curious mystery that leads to a ground pursuit for the name on the summons, that leads to a kooky old man in a care home. He then tells the story of how he wound up as one of the first men on the moon...in 1899!
We flashback to rural England, where flim-flam artist Arnold Bedford is hiding out from his creditors. His American fiancee, Katherine Callendar, has come to join him, unaware of his tumultuous financial position. They become entangled in a real estate scheme with their neighbour, Joseph Cavor, a mad-scientist of the Doc Brown persuasion. He's invented a solution called Cavorite, that, when applied to an object, and hardens, it eliminates all mass from the object. It makes no scientific sense, but it's the conceit of the story so we just go with it. Cavor's whole goal is to take a trip to the Moon, and Bedford wants in on the product for commercial gain... the trip to the moon will be the ultimate selling point. As their preparing to leave, Bedford's creditor's show up, and an incensed Katherine goes to confront him, only to be pulled into their vessel on their mission.
The trip to the moon is riddled with scientific inaccuracies, but for a tale written before aeroplanes were even a thing, there's a lot of good guesses to the science needed behind such a journey. Once they get to the moon, though, it's a whole other story. For example, they're using deep-sea diving suits, but gloveless so their hands are fully exposed.
On the moon, they encounter an alien race of bug-people who, despite Cavor's insistence on peace, Bedford can't help but just keep killing. The film waffles between both men's perspectives of these aliens they encounter. Cavor's scientific curiosity leads him to extend his best graces to this unknown civilization (who have the technology to adapt to communicating in a shared language). Bedford just sees the unfamiliar-as-enemy and can't help but kill and keep killing, and wanting nothing more than escape and their complete destruction.
As a viewer, I really wanted the Star Trek solution here, the diplomatic pursuit of peace and sharing of culture, and Cavor is the vessel for that desire. But the film seems to settle much more into Bedford's panic, and we never escape the fact that Bedford can only see them as a threat. It's so ugly and colonial. Katherine, for her part, doesn't seem to give a shit either way and just wants to go home. She wasn't wanting to be on this journey to begin with.
Cavor stays behind, but send Bedford and Katherine on their way, to which we return to "present day" where Bedford warns of the threat the astronauts currently on the moon will face. They turn the TV on to discover the astronauts have found the insects' lair, but it's abandoned and crumbling. Turns out Cavor's germs killed them all years ago. It's unclear if this Twilight Zone-wannabe ending is supposed to be a happy or sad ending.
As I said, it's a pretty posh production that features stupendous Ray Harryhousen effects, so it's really easy on the eyes. The story, as sci-fi, is very rudimentary but then it is based on a story decades old by that point. It's got tinges of modern science fiction of the time, again Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Doctor Who and Quatermass (the latter also a creation of this film's screenwriter Nigel Kneale), but it's holding fairly true to the tepid structure and plot of sci-fi from a more naive time. It's also going for the uniquely British 60's styled fantasty-adventure romp that dials up the slapstick and pithiness (especially in Caver) to a nearly unpalatable degree.
I also have to admit the viewing experience was not served well by the lengthy commercial breaks that interrupted it every 25 minutes or so
---
I had heard of
Rolling Thunder back in the '90's when I went gaga over
Pulp Fiction and was consuming every Quentin Tarantino article and interview I could find. Tarantino has mentioned it was a favourite, if not the favourite film of his. I had just assumed, for years, given his predilection towards Grindhouse, that it was, like, a trucker revenge fantasy maybe by a quality director but from their early days working for Roger Corman...or something like that. It wasn't the most readily available film at the time, and it somehow never made my "to watch" list (or if it did, it was a list from many generations of lists ago).
My expectations and what Rolling Thunder actually is were two very different things. From the description on Amazon Prime, my expectations were immediately readjusted to it being what Tarantino calls a "revengeamatic" - those 70's-era films of a man or woman wronged and the great lengths they go to get revenge that seem to all hit the same consistent story beats. So, when I hit play I was now expecting a heightened pulpy, gritty, film with actors. making. choices. I still was so far off.
For 90 percent of Rolling Thunder we get an incredibly sensitive portrayal of post-Vietnam veterans, in this case late-stage released prisoners of war, returning home and finding a world that is both unfamiliar to them and to find they are emotionally unequipped to engage with it.
The film opens at a San Antonio airstrip with a vast welcome party waiting for Major Charles Rane (William Devane, Payback) and other POWs while plane is making its descent, over which Charlie Pride's "Is Anybody Going to San Antone" plays. Charles is greeted by his wife, and the son he's not seen in 7 years since he was a baby. His wife admits she's been with another man, a policeman she's now in love with, and Charle's son admits he doesn't remember him at all. Charles has a therapist and is coping with this world that's changed since he's been away, but he's numb inside. He's been gifted all sorts of presents, including a gorgeous red convertible Cadillac, and 2,555 silver dollars (one for every day he was a prisoner), and he's garnered the affection of a local taven waitress who calls herself a Major Rane groupie.
Half the film is just Charles' sense of reality, his trying and having extreme difficulty connecting with others. Only his groupie, Linda (Linda Haynes), doesn't seem to mind but also Charles isn't really ready for what she's serving. All these performances are remarkably restrained, and honest. These feel like people and not caricatures. They have adult conversations and don't avoid difficult subject matter, which, as a result, takes all the usual dramatic stakes right off the table. Charles being cuckolded isn't even a thing. He gets it, and he doesn't care, so long as his kid is getting treated well in it all.
But some goons come looking for the silver dollar collection they saw in the news. They think they can beat and torture Charles for the collection's whereabouts, not realizing that Charles. has some incredible coping mechanisms for dealing with such things after 7 years as a POW. Even when they stick his hand in the garbage disposal, he doesn't crack. It's only when his wife and son return home, that the men have leverage, and the kid gives up the coins. They are all then shot, and only Charles survives.
He has extensive rehab and extensive questioning from the police (especially his wife's fiancee), and he gets closer to Linda (or, at least, she gets closer to him). He's still mostly dead inside, but there's a little fire burning. Where most films would move into the obvious revenge plot, the stalking and killing of the individual goons, Paul Schrader's script for Rolling Thunder doesn't work that way. It's not in any way a revengeamatic, it refuses to follow the flow. Charles prepares his cache of weapons, sharpens his hook hand, collects Linda (who at times seems to get Charles' mission, but has trouble staying on board) and heads south to track down the men that murdered his son. It goes pretty awry, and Charles has to recalibrate.
In the end he ditches Linda from his mission, recruiting his POW comrade (Tommy Lee Jones, U.S. Marshals) and they plan a sneak attack at a brothel (in a scene Schrader repeats, though a different impetus, in Taxi Driver) that goes about as expected. It's neither clean, nor heroic. It's not to be celebrated, it's just what a broken man with the help of a broken friend feel is all they can do in this world.
There is an uncomfortable anti-Mexican undercurrent to the final act, only really palpable in the way the film thinks these white American men should just be able to walk into Mexican spaces and have a right to do whatever they want in them. The bad guys are a mix of Americans and Mexicans, the worst of which are the white men, so it's not framed in any way as an anti-Mexican picture. It does seem unintentional, but just a product of the superior-by-default whiteness that has dominated pop culture in North America for centuries. It doesn't spoil the film overall, as its character focus is tremendously compelling, plus I find it fascinating that even before the revengeamatic was in full swing there was already a film that was a subversion of it.
Pairs well with First Blood?
---
 |
Real badge
Real gun
Fake cop
Bad poster |
I don't remember in what context
Miami Blues was recommended as an underrated, maybe even forgotten picture, but worthy of reassessment, but it's been on my radar for the past few months.
It was probably the Blank Check Podcast episode on The Hunt for Red October talking about Alec Baldwin's career...but don't quote me on it.
It is a very brightly lit, 90's pastel-soaked production that looks like a comedy but has a deep dark heart. We meet handsome, shifty grifter "Junior" (Baldwin, Match Game) on an airplane to Miami. Within seconds of landing, he's stolen a suitcase and broken the finger of a Hare Krishna...unknown to Junior, the shock of which kills the young man.
Junior arrives at a hotel where he has a contact, and has her send a girl up to his room. So arrives Susie (Jennifer Jason Leigh, eXistenZ), a perky, naive (but not unintelligent) college student, who is there for sex work, but Junior is basically there to scam. He seems to take a shining to her, but it's evident Junior can't ever get his brain out of grifter-mode to fully understand emotions. They do start a relationship but one in which Junior is in full control. He's not physically abusive, but he is fully manipulative and doesn't care an ounce about what Susie thinks about anything or her aspirations.
Detective Sergeant Moseley (Fred Ward, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins) is on the case of the dead Hare Krishna, and in tracing witnesses finds Junior (under whatever stolen ID he was using at the time) and Susie. He winds up at their apartment and shares dinner with them. It's an amazing cat-and-mouse scene of Moseley picking up on Junior's habits, analyzing them very vocally and Junior having to quick-think his way into explanations (Junior eats the meal with his shirt off, the combo of Baldwin's incredible pelt of chest hair and food making me feel very uncomfortable). It's clear to Junior that Moseley has his suspicions so he later finds Moseley's apartment, sneak attacks him, beats him half to death, and steals his badge and his false teeth.
Then Junior starts parading around town as a fake cop, interrupting crimes in process, only to finish the crimes off himself. It's a rampage that has not gone unnoticed by the police, and Moseley, still recuperating, is obviously very invested in resolving.
The tone of this film is the hardest part to glom onto. Junior is a horrible, horrible person, but it's a film that's daring us to like him. We've seen plenty of anti-heroes over the years, but director Armitage never commits to the label. If anything as we get to know Susie we become more keenly aware of how much of a villain Junior really is. There's no high drama, no pulse-pounding suspense, no over-the-top action, but it's a comedically punched-up story of a sociopath and the cop and young woman both in over her head with him. I think I like this film more in retrospect than I did watching it, and now I think I'll need to go back to it sometime, there were some really, really great lines that I need to pin down.
I just realized, at the very end of this review, that this reminds me sort of a Coen Bros. movie. I wonder if Armitage was riffing off of Raising Arizona when he was making this. It shares vibes with the Coens' crime comedies, but it's not stitching along the same seams. I would almost say it pairs better with American Psycho, but I'm two decades removed from viewing ol Patrick Bateman so I can't fully say.
