KWIF: constant Crave-ings

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:
Incendies (2010, d. Denis Villeneuve - Crave)
The Witches of Eastwick (1987, d. George Miller - Crave)
Total Recall (2012, d. Len Weisman - Crave)
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009, d. Garreth Carrivick - Crave)

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Denis Villeneuve made four films in his native Quebec before he transitioned into Hollywood fare with the star-studded Prisoners in 2013 and evolving into the preeminent director of science fiction over the past 8 years (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, the Dunes).  Though I've yet to see it, I've heard Prisoners it's a bit of a rough watch. The Academy Awards-nominated Incendies, I can with confidence proclaim is an even rougher one.

The story of Incendies is an adaptation of the stage play of the same name by Wajdi Mouawad, partially based on the life story of Lebanese dissident Souha Bechara but with extensive liberties taken. It tells the story of Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) who, upon her death, reveals in her will to her twin children, Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) that they have a brother.  The will provides a letter to each of them one for their father whom they always presumed dead, one for the brother. Once they deliver the letters, a third letter will be provided. Simon wants nothing to do with this game, clearly he has some resentment towards his mother, while Jeanne immediately ventures to her mother's homeland (unnamed in the film) where she starts to investigate both the whereabouts and identity of her father and brother.

The film cuts between Jeanne's steps through her investigation and each new location triggers another flashback to her mother's past. The bulk of the film is actually told in these flashbacks, with just enough of Jeanne and Simon (and their dutiful lawyer, played by Rémy Girard) to be invested in their response to their discoveries of their mother's history.

Needless to say, for Nawal to have hid her past from her children, it must have been full of trauma, and, indeed it is, starting with her brothers murdering her refugee lover, her grandmother forcing her to give up her love child and getting ostracized from the village. The latter is both the fortunate and unfortunate turn, as Nawal is forced to go to university and receive an education, but there she becomes further involved in fighting the nationalist discord that has erupted into violence, and she takes on the role of assassin, attempting to kill the leader of the anti-refugee government.

And that's just the starting point. Where it moves from there is deeper into a well of both survival and almost utter despair. I was reminded a lot of Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy though vengeance is in very short supply in Incendies. 

Villeneuve's direction, along with André Turpin's cinematography, show distinct signs of what is to come in the director's career. Impeccably composed shots, grounded performances in even the most phenomenal of circumstances, and being able to deliver a heavy, weighted tone while still being compelling and entertaining.  There is minimal score outside of the use of two Radiohead songs, "You and Whose Army?" and "Like Spinning Plates" -- both used to tremendous effect.

I have to contemplate representation with this film, as it's a curious issue. Nawal's home country, left explicitly unidentified, allows some wiggle room in the storytelling to play with details, history and culture. It doesn't have to answer explicitly to any particular gaffes in presentation. But would it be more potent if it were trading in very specific historical details, or would that just be even more problematic to base a fiction around it, especially given the dramatic extremes occurring. As well, it would seem none of our three leads, Azabal, Désormeaux-Poulin, and Gaudette, are of middle-eastern decent despite the film taking place in the aforementioned unnamed middle eastern country.  I'm not sure what the crossover is in French-speaking actors of middle eastern origin but, excellent performers all, I doubt that Villeneuve would make the same casting choices today with Hollywood money behind him.

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I have to admit I've spent most of my life not engaging with Cher... her music, her acting, her stabs at middle-aged sex symbol status...none of it I found appealing in my younger years, and everything she did in the 80's and beyond seemed to me to be trying too hard.

Now, in my very middle-age, I have to admit I was perhaps foolish to be so dismissive. I believe this viewing of The Witches of Eastwick will lead me to more peak-80's actress Cher: Moonstruck, Mermaids, Mask, MSilkwood and MSuspect (did you know that Cher voiced a role in 2020's Bobbleheads: The Movie, and did you also know that in 2020 there was a fucking Bobbleheads movie!?!). Cher is so compelling in this role, and stunning. I'm seeing her through much different eyes and I'm completely entranced. I've had crushes on her co-stars Pfeiffer and Sarandon for ages (duh, who hasn't) and yet I found myself captivated by Cher so much more.

The film, in general, perplexed me. From a gender politics angle I'm not at all sure what it's trying to say. Is it a feminist movie, or is it retrograde anti-feminist? It's based on a John Updike novel and I don't think anyone has ever confused him for a feminist. Jack Nicholson's devilishly horny Daryl van Horne is seemingly summoned to Eastwick by two divorcees and a widow who collectively want the perfect imperfect man, which describes Daryl to a T. He is a louse and a letch, but has a gift of saying exactly what each woman wants to hear as he sets out to seduce them all, and succeeds. His playbook is faux humility, negging, flattery and bribery, plus he's stinking rich. It's not long before the three women are ostensibly his harem, though clearly of their own choice.  It doesn't bode well for the town, or them, especially once they start rejecting him.

From a metaphysical angle it's a film that feels like it has no roots, no rules, no guiding principles. It's called "The Witches of Eastwick" and yet, Cher, Sarandon and Pfeiffer are barely witches at all. They certainly wouldn't describe themselves as witches in-film.  And who Daryl exactly is never is made clear. The actual devil, or just a devil? A demon? What?

George Miller, of Mad Max and Happy Feet and Babe fame has a gift for irreverently told stories with a different sense of timing. But with those films, Miller had the utmost creative control.  This being his first (and really, only) studio film, it didn't seem like he had full control over the story being told.  I think this should feel more Beetlejuice-like, but the pacing of the film just felt so off with so many takes seemingly lasting a couple seconds longer than they should, or shots that seem to imply something more worth looking at only for nothing more to appear.

It is a horny movie with questionable tastes. It didn't fully work for me, but it didn't not work for me either.

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I had dismissed Total Recall (2012) as a real "who asked for this?" movie, with the presumption of it being tired Hollywood remake garbage from a that b-movie action franchise director. But, when I spied Kurt Wimmer on the screenplay credit, I though maybe there might be some fun to be had. Not that Wimmer has the most stellar track record, and not that I've seen all of them (I have prejudged the Point Break and Children of the Corn remakes just as I have judged this Total Recall remake) but I think many of his B-movie scripts as elevated B-movies. And yeah, damn, it's a pretty fun sci-fi action movie with some big, big set pieces and Kate Beckinsale being a doggedly fierce antagonist. I think had this film just used a different title and character names, most people wouldn't have even noticed it was *that* similar to the 1990 Total Recall (though the three titty'd lady would have totally tipped it off).

The future tech on display in the film is pretty great. In one scene a security force breaks a small hole in the door and fires a small projectile in the room. The projectile explodes with dozens of self-adhering cameras affixing to every surface at all angles. The leader of the squad then rips down a flap off the back of one of his men revealing a monitor which projects every camera's view, each one selectible for a better view. This sequence later transitions into a foot chase through a very surreal and confounding cityscape that I would love to just sit and admire all the design work gone into it. This then transitions into a car chase which tries to one-up Minority Report and maybe doesn't succeed, but it also doesn't suck.  Even most of the fight sequences are quite entertaining. In the long pantheon of elevator fights, this one's not at the top of the top ten list but could easily be in the middle.

It's not a groundbreaking plot, of a man, discovering he has been living a false life, and that he has a greater destiny before him, and a hot girlfriend from another life, while his hot wife from his false life is on the warpath to kill him.  You know, that old story.

By no means is it a great movie, and no it is not as thoroughly entertaining or adventurous as the 1990 film (which, yes, had a sense of humour this one doesn't), but as a sci-fi action spectacle it delivered the goods very, very well and far better than its reputation would imply.

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Three British lads go to pub after work. Two of them are nerds, one of them's a jock, but they're all pals. One of 'em (let's call him Nerd 1, because I can't be arsed to look it up, as played by Chris O'Dowd) got fired from his job at the start of the film, but that's pretty irrelevant to the rest of the film. Nerd 1 goes to buy the next round and winds up having a chat with a pretty girl from the future. The other lads don't believe him until the Jock goes to the bathroom and comes out at a later time and everyone's dead in the pub. He goes back into the bathroom and returns to his regular time. Then all the lads go to the bathroom together and start time traveling to other times in the pub's future, sometimes running into time travel girl (Anna Farris). Over time (ha) the boys find them looping back around on the other times they've already seen until they solve the thing that they need to solve and save their own future. Or something like that. You know the drill.

Maybe if I'd never seen a time travel film before, I'd find this clever. As well versed as I am in the milieu, I found it utterly predictable. 

I love Chris O'Dowd but his character here has no character, and even O'Dowd's considerable charms brought almost nothing to make the character more interesting or appealing. The other leads too are similarly lacking in anything of interest in their individual journeys. Just three lads caught up in something, yet there's no weight to any of it. And for a comedy, not much levity either, maybe the odd chuckle here or there, but little to stick out in memory long term.