Capsule Reviews of: "Level 16" (2018), "Scarecrow" (1973), "Alita: Battle Angel" (2019), "Weird City" (2019), "Kingdom" (2019), "Russian Doll" (2019)

"Level 16" (2018), Danishka Esterhazy.

"The Island" but done right. The recently celebrated Lanthimos, which specializes in this kind of cold authoritarian dystopias (even when dressed in period clothes), lacks what this movie has in spades: human connection. The classroom from "The Girl With All the Gifts" is mixed with a "Stanford Experiment" prison in this timely metaphor about capitalism and consumerism, dressed as a simple tale of a school taken out from the society of "A Handmaid´s Tale". It was disliked by many amateur reviewers on IMDb, and I can´t understand why. It is nicely shot and suspenseful enough.

IMDb link

"Scarecrow" (1973), Jerry Schatzberg.

An episodic character study and road movie with a young Al Pacino and Gene Hackman at the sublime heights of their game. The two drifters travel through the low-class parts of 1970s American society, with plans to become respectable and productive citizens. Excellent photography and exuberant public displays of character between the era of the white picket fence and the fall of the national dream. Trashy life seemed a lot less violent than contemporary social anomie. Was America freer back then, more open to alternative ways of being?

IMDb  link

"Alita: Battle Angel" (2019), Robert Rodriguez (& James Cameron influence).

A waste of talent. Impressive technological feat obscured by erratic pacing due to highly compressed narrative and a superficial teen romantic plot. Threads are not given time to breathe, and main plot points are covered in scant minutes just to get to a cliffhanger ending. You can make things slower and add significance to the proceedings, or you can cut all the relationships and use cues and visual shortcuts to reach the (a) final point in one film. What you can´t do is mix both approaches and stay in the middle: emotion is not deserved and denouement is sacrificed in the Altar of the Sequel God. Such a shame.

IMDb link

"Weird City", Jordan Peele, 2019.

Social Justice Warrior interpretation of "Black Mirror" in farce mode. Of the six episodes, only the last one is somewhat imaginative. The rest are a series of comedy vignettes augmented to twenty something minutes each. The first episode suggests to find happiness disregarding biological imperatives; the second and fourth make fun of "male losers" (nowadays called incels, toxic, and other names); the third one posits that given the option between helping your family and society or following your own selfish motives, individualism wins. Also for some reason a man is thrown under the bus, again. It will be lauded in the mainstream media, but I found it to be cynic, obvious, infantile and a waste of my time.

IMDb  link

"Kingdom" (2019), Seong-hun Kim, Netflix.

"Game of Thrones" meets "Train to Busan". What else can you ask for? The first season of this big-budget extravaganza is only six episodes long, of which the first and half of the second episodes set the pieces in motion for what it is to come. And when the monster mayhem finally arrives, it is in a stunning and relentless violent way that American series can only dream of. Beautifully shot, with the usual social commentary regarding classes, albeit simplistic for intellectual tastes. Director Seong-hun Kim is also known for the Korean blockbuster "The Tunnel". Winter is coming, have a happy binging.

IMDb  link

"Russian Doll" (2019), Leslye Headland, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler.

Derranged "Groundhog Day" tale grounded by astounding foul-mouthed post-hipster Natasha Lyonne. Eight short episodes (a long movie really) for an engaging fantasy that fires in all cylinders once it reaches the end of the third one. It is the first great binge of the year. Shades of the book "Replay", good urban setting, intelligent comedy, and emotional denouement.

IMDb  link

"Bad Timing", Nicolas Roeg (1980) - Capsule Review

A masterpiece. An obsession story for adults, impossible to film in today´s culture, about a Manic Pixie Nightmare Girl called Milena and her psychiatrist lover. In a sense is the granddaddy of series like "13 Reasons Why" with tour-de-force editing and tonally emotive psychological flashbacks in place of cassette recordings. Outstanding performance by Theresa Russell, with her body in constant voyeuristic display to make the point even stronger. Exotic locations and Cold War paranoia add fire to the proceedings. Late 1970s style permeates the film in such a way that it becomes a quintessential example of the period. At its premiere, it could be seen as a critique of expected bourgeois relationships, but giving that Milena´s "lifestyle" has become mainstream in the second decade of the 21st Century, the film remains relevant albeit for different reasons. Plot resolution is shocking and will enrage viewers, both past and contemporary. A must watch.

TSPDT Number:  987 (2018 list)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080408/

 

"Design for Living" (1933), Ernst Lubitsch. Capsule review.

Sexual innuendo comedy about two guys in love with the same manipulative woman. It´s superb, but also completely immoral and very relevant to our day and age. As everything Lubitsch it is a funny affair, but the more you think about it the more it is provocative. It is based on a homoerotic play by Noel Coward, but the transposition to heterosexual polyamory makes it shocking. We are talking about a "Tinder-world" movie from 1933.

IMDb Link

"The Fountainhead", (1949), King Vidor. Capsule review.

Insufferable yarn penned by one of the worst individuals of the 20th Century, solipsistic Ayn Rand. An architect goes against the current and wants to build horrible modernist concoctions that ruin city skylines. Don't forget, one of those styles is called "brutalist" for a reason. Dialogue is robotic and heavy-handed, with that particular elitist view about rapey and terrorist Ubermensch that made Rand such a dispecable character. Direction by King Vidor is excellent as usual, with Langian landscapes full of clear cut lines.

Le Corbusier was a genius, but I have been in one of his houses, and while special, I shudder to think of entire cities built under the retro-futuristic coldness. Think of modern shopping malls. Superficial no-places disconnected from the local culture surrendered to commercialism, its function.

"Dunkirk", Christopher Nolan (2017) and "War of the Planet of the Apes", Matthew Reeves (2017). Movie reviews.

"Why so serious?" is the omnipresent question that every filmgoer must do to to the less talented brother of Michael Bay: a guy called Christopher Nolan.  "Dunkirk" is all problematic show, no substance.  A couple of scenes of grandeur does not save this movie from the smart-ass approach to the segmented narrative and the shallow level of characterizations.  As with almost all Nolan films, "Dunkirk" has an artificial heart, a few fake feelings that do not make up for the simulacra of great cinema.  Nolan is such a fascist that even the Nazis are not named.

"War of the Planet of the Apes" is a technological marvel that mixes Trump´s America War on Foreigners with the tale of Moises, the Egyptians and the Exodus, adding sprinkled scenes from the Vietnam War and Amon Göth.  The movie has its share of issues: resolution is swift as accustomed in modern blockbusters, ponderous scenes try to lend gravitas to otherwise popcorn entertainment, comedic character appears out of nowhere as a mean to let the audience escape gas, and trails for the sequel/remake of the sixties´ classic are too explicit to appear organic.  However, "War" is a step above its comic-book siblings by believing that its audience deserves a film and is smart enough to understand a story told by images other than colorful explosions.  The "Apes" series is what should be the baseline for mass entertainment, and we should only chose upwards as we buy movie tickets.

"Altered Carbon" (2018), Netflix, various directors. Capsule review.

Despite some middling reviews this Blade Runner-ish series is quite well constructed, from the neo-noir proceedings to the increasingly deranged ideas that come from its timely device. The rich can live forever, and immortality (as Asimov noted on one of his trilogies) provokes the stagnation of a reified social body and its decadence, both upstairs and on the smelly basement of human society. The tone is not for everyone, and the dystopian ambiance is a staple of the commentary on the current disarray. Still, it is said that the decline of a civilization stirs the waters of creativity. From a simple child´s song in Tim Minchin´s "Matilda" to a detective story set in the far future, artists use the oppressor´s own funds to scream that we must rebel in the end if we intend to survive. Is this a sublimation of our own desires, made to maintain us quiet? Or are these works of fiction the first salvoes on the liberation war to come?

"El Verdugo" (The Executioner), 1963, Luis María Berlanga. Capsule review.

A true masterpiece of black humor, this Berlanga piece is much more than it meets the eye. Done during the dictatorship of Franco, the movie is full of little details and commentary on the dichotomy of life under the iron hand of the "Caudillo". A man must take an immoral job to preserve his family´s living situation, and he will not go quietly to the guillotine. Popular and burgeois happiness are all over the place, but our hero has something more sinister in his mind. A must-see.