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Reality (2023)
Reality is the subject in more ways than one
Re-enacting the interrogation of Reality Winner verbatim from the FBI transcript was a brilliant decision. Anybody who has seen even a few FBI and/or espionage-related interrogation TV or movie scenes could easily whip up a boilerplate example of how they always go in fiction. A slick band of federal agents approach the suspect and use their sinister, practiced charm to get them nervous and talking. The suspect has a few deft countermoves of their own, but inevitably get shaken by the agents and break down in confession, and the outcome is then folded into some parallel or ensuing drama.
Reality strips back all of the polish. The conversation between Reality and the FBI agents is stilted, awkward, and for quite some time, completely unproductive. It's not just the stakes of the investigation. It's also the simple fact that Reality and the agents are awfully paired interlocutors. Everybody stumbles over words and rambles about nonsense to make either themselves or the other person more comfortable, which is never the effect.
It is at a lot of times comedic. Every attempt, whether by Reality or the FBI, to make halfway-decent small talk during their obligatory period of dancing around the elephant in the room goes down like a lead balloon. Even when the interrogation really gets cooking, the inclusion of every flustered moment and indiscernible non-sequitur pulls the viewer in ever closer. It all feels so very real, and because of that, exchanges that ought to produce humor instead produce tension and dread.
Sydney Sweeney is fantastic. During the events of the film, Reality Winner comes off as a lot of different things: a shy neurotic, a competent professional, an animal lover, panicky suspect, and a bit of an all-around oddball. Sweeney strikes each of these tones just right. Over an hour-twenty-minute or so conversation, all taking place in one room, all circling one subject, and all heading in one direction; she had me dying to know what she was thinking the entire time. In fact, the whole cast was excellent. They did a lot with a little, turning one contiguous transcript re-enacted (mostly) in one room into a bona fide thriller.
I would strongly recommend this movie to anybody who likes watching interrogation tapes, the Law & Crime Network, or other things of that nature. If you like playing armchair forensic psychologist, Sydney Sweeney has built you a playground within these 82 minutes. If you just like to see some good acting, well, she did that too. It's great.
There was also some very cool camera/editing work done to accentuate the bigger conversational turns. I'd call this the cherry on top. The real feat here is that they turned a verbatim re-enactment into a movie so compelling as to be fit for the big screen with a star as the lead. Just an interesting film, through and through.
Roller Town (2011)
Shockingly Good
I like Picnicface but after watching this I wanted them to quit sketch comedy and go full time into filmmaking because Roller Town is phenomenal. It's a cult movie by design. The jokes and gags are dumb and smart at the same time. The humor hits every note; dark, dirty, goofy, campy, slapstick, and so on. The whole movie is just joke after joke, so when I meet a fellow Roller Town fan and we get to quoting it, we go on endlessly.
The most impressive thing, in my opinion, is how the movie never runs out of steam. Lots of comedy movies like this usually unravel near the end, i.e., all the good bits are frontloaded and the premise eventually wears thin. Roller Town overcomes this-the film never drags, it stays funny to the glorious end.
I have probably watched Roller Town 10 or 11 times. It's one of my favorites ever. I once put it on in a room full of distracted people as background ambience and 10 minutes later the whole room was glued to it, laughing hysterically.
Cannot recommend enough. Roller Town.
Roller Town?
Roller Town.
The Consultant (2023)
Drunken Chef Amazon Blowtorches Fine Steak
They had everything a production team could want and more, and they dropped the ball hard enough to crater the earth. The premise-a mysterious 'consultant' with an M. O. of talking struggling CEOs into voluntary death by promising to make them and their work legendary posthumously-is quite strong and is a great match for Christoph Waltz. After setting up this conceit competently enough, the show proceeds to spend nearly every scene of 8 entire episodes unraveling a mystery that just isn't there.
We follow Mr. Regus Patoff (Waltz) through his time 'consulting' for mobile gaming company CompWare. The first step is to kill the CEO (per his wishes), which he delegates to a young kid on a field-trip tour of CompWare offices. How did he convince this kid to shoot a man dead, thus condemning himself to asylum for god knows how long? It is never explained. Patoff even visits the kid in the psych ward, but nothing is revealed besides Patoff and the kid being in cahoots, which we already knew. Patoff is often suggested to be the devil, or something along those lines, so I guess the answer is that he possessed the kid, hence his calmness through everything. The problem with this is that Patoff's primary scheme; talking executives into dying for their legacy; is accomplished through cunning exploitation of their glory-hungry nature, so it is deeply unsatisfying to then see him simply slap mind-control onto the side characters his plans require.
Probably the first 'twist' is when we find out "Regus Patoff" is a bogus name that comes from REGistered US PATent OFFice during a very strange scene in which a CompWare employee strips naked in his office and, crying profusely, bathes himself with soap from a large wooden crate. The employee does this for very flimsily-plotted reasons that clearly serve to make sure the show is seen as oh-so-unusual because look at this weird scene it has! Anyways, the US Patent Office thing is kind of intriguing, but, again, is never followed up on. Regus Patoff has nothing to do with the patent office. He didn't get the name from the soap crate either, because people who knew him before the CompWare contract also knew him by that name. It means nothing, connects to nothing, and goes nowhere; just like everything else in this crying shame of a show.
Early-ish on, we find out Regus paid a jeweler millions to make him a golden skeleton, piece by piece. At the end, it is confirmed that Regus is indeed walking around with this gold skeleton inside of him instead of bones, explaining why he struggles to climb stairs and why the glass floor always creaks beneath him. Why has he installed gold bones in himself? No reason, at least not one that the writers care to mention.
The two protagonists, Craig (game coder) and Elaine (executive assistant), despite being main characters have maybe two compelling moments apiece throughout the 8 episode run. One is when Craig (Nat Wolff) is coerced into participating in a kidnapping. His panic and dread are fantastically acted and feel very real. Another is when Elaine eventually builds a productive working relationship with Regus, taking a calculated approach to circumvent the endless inscrutable idiosyncrasies of his character. These, along with a few other flashes in the pan, give a taste of what the show could have and should have been.
In most every other scene, these two are flat soda. Craig's fiance is a nag who is demanding his conversion to Catholicism, but sometimes he sneaks out to smoke weed with Elaine at the office. Riveting. Elaine's ex-boyfriend is a criminal of some sort who she hires to steal an elephant for a publicity stunt for CompWare's latest game. The stunt works, CompWare soars into the black, and then Elaine-at Regus' suggestion-burns her ex by ratting him out to the police instead of paying him the $10K she owed him, even though she and Regus were under absolutely no pressure to do that. Instead of siphoning $10K from the now-enormous CompWare profits, Elaine risks a police investigation into a crime that was committed by an ex she was still in contact with, that benefitted her company massively, and that there was ample evidence of. She does this, presumably, because she was already midway into a turning-evil arc that came far too late to be interesting, and so this pointless betrayal was pulled from thin-air. Of course, she walks, the police apparently buying her denial immediately. She spends most the interrogation musing about Regus and his business acumen. The musing makes sense, but why then and there? The show ends a few minutes later.
Craig's story goes nowhere. His fiance is mind-controlled by Regus (Get it? Because she's CATHOLIC! How ironic!), typing away day and night, compiling a "file" on Craig for Regus to exploit. What shocking secrets of Craig's did she spill in her possessed state? It is never said. The "file" factors into nothing except for a brief allusion to Craig's "weakness" made, but left unspecified, by Regus. How is Craigs's fiance saved from being possessed? Elaine simply walks into the room she is in and just sort of nudges her out of it. I guess the power of a demon is more limited than you'd think.
After a 'climax' so pointless that I can't even be bothered to summarize it here, the show does a half-hearted 'wrap-up' for each of the main 3 characters that doesn't actually really wrap anything up. Craig seems satisfied to have finally confirmed the golden bones thing for some reason. Of all the things he needed closure on, that was just not one of them, so he goes out like a wet fart. Elaine is something of a corporate heavyweight by the end, but she was pretty much already headed in that general direction from the start, so she, despite her season-long internal moral wrestling match, fails to have any kind of compelling arc whatsoever. Regus' conclusion is that he is carrying on as usual, moving to the next company no better or worse for wear. He did fulfill his promise to the late CompWare CEO, so I guess there's that. Finally, the kid who shot the CEO is last seen beating an 'unbeatable' level of CompWare's latest game, and lo-and-behold, a golden skeleton waits for him at the end of the level. If the golden skeleton meant anything, maybe this would have been a good ending, and not just one last gasp of an overwrought mess.
For every bit of pointless nonsense I've described here, there are five more like it in the actual show. What a waste.
Jagten (2012)
Lame dud masquerading as powerful
The good:
- The way the allegation comes to be leaves pretty much no way for Lucas to fully exonerate himself, which is a smart move that prevents the film from turning into a 'quest for the grail' of proof of one's innocence
- The totality of the predicament Lucas finds himself in is indeed fascinating and chilling
The fatal flaw is that the plot completely runs out of gas almost immediately after Lucas is accused. From that point, he basically wanders around town having the same charged moment ("could this man I've known for so long really have done something so terrible?") with every person in his life, one after the other. One of the first such occasions is with his best friend (and father of the supposed victim) who stares him down, not wanting to believe his friend abused his daughter; wrestling with the uncertainty. This is compelling, but they never move forward, and just keep striking this same chord again and again until the movie ends.
With a plot about the power of false accusations, the film plants the seed artfully, and then completely botches its growth. A real surface-scratcher.
Nobody (2021)
Like the protagonist, punches well above its weight.
I knew this movie would be fun. I was surprised to find it was also very good.
Nobody-moreso than any other action flick I have ever seen-knows exactly where to be inventive. The building blocks of the story are all standard issue, but the construction of the plot and the manner in which the fight scenes play out feel completely fresh.
Early on, with minimal prompting, we understand as viewers that it is a "retired special forces guy goes ape on unsuspecting two-bit goon squad" story. However, they put a slight twist on this formula and make some, imo, fantastic subversions:
- Hutch's "reactivation" is not some poetic call to arms, but does resemble one enough that Hutch can himself use the "Just when I'm out they pull me back in" trope as a pretense to unleash the aggression that has clearly been stewing within. The universe doesn't align to bring Hutch back into the game. The decision to do so is quasi-arbitrary, which I think is much more compelling than being handed a quest from on-high.
- They skip the whole "your bloodthirsty rampage is putting a lot of strain on our marriage" arc that these films somehow always feel they need to have. When Hutch impulsively starts a gang war, his wife is basically unsurprised, is not mad, and just kind of lays low until things cool down. At the end of the film, she is back with him and drops a line that shows she is perfectly comfortable with all of this happening again. This seems more reasonable than the usual tropes as the reaction of a person who would marry such a comical super agent as Hutch.
The story, dialogue, and characters are all top-notch; but what really shines are the fight scenes. In every single sequence, the choreography is unbelievable. They make heavy use of the environment as part of the fight and are so detailed in their approach that I continually notice new 'moves' as I keep rewatching. The creativity is off the charts. The way Hutch kills the main villain is unprecedented as far as I am aware.
One thing I liked was how the fight scenes gradually eased away from realism instead of committing wholesale to either realism or unrealism. The first fight (on the bus) makes a lot of effort to be plausible. The last fight (in the factory) is a spectacle of absurdity. As the plot escalates, so too does the ridiculousness of the action sequences, and this coupling is just so so satisfying.
This movie defines the term "blaze of glory"
The Square (2017)
A bunch of pointless nonsense and one cool scene
The only worthwhile part of the whole movie is the scene where Terry Notary does the performance art where he acts like a monkey. However, Notary does this elsewhere-the fact that a cameo is the films strongest scene is a succinct indictment of this piece of garbage.
The main character does a good job looking like a brooding museum curator. Throughout the movie, he does and says nothing interesting whatsoever. Even handed interesting scenarios, he dulls them until they are entirely unremarkable. 'crime' scene, condom scene, phonecall meltdown scene. All flat.
That said, besides Terry Notary, the leading man remains the movie's center of gravity. No supporting characters step in with any intrigue of their own. The height of drama seems to have been when the main female character is somewhat miffed that the protagonist didn't call her after they slept together. This, like the rest of the film's similarly banal plotlines, leads to nothing of note.
Bad film. Do not recommend. Just watch the Terry Notary part on youtube and skip the rest.
Irma Vep: The Severed Head (2022)
A fun enigma
TLDR: It's like 30 Rock for high-brow French film
I was slow to warm up to the Irma Vep (2022) pilot because it at first seemed like barely more than a trope-fest. However, it became clear that trope & cliche are the show's ground, not its figure. This is because Irma Vep is a show about making TV, so TV tropes are simply the stereotypes of the workplace, just like those of any other. The show is more complicated than that. In fact, it is intentionally over-complicated well past the point of what is reasonable. The story is barely linear, and once realizing this a viewer can begin enjoying the bizarre format.
As far as I can tell, the point of the show is to poke fun at the culture of high-brow cinema production, with a secondary objective of paying homage to the same high-brow type of cinema. So what you get is the comedy of ultimately regular people who are all trying to live up to some unspoken 'standard' of how the cast of a hyper-artsy french film should behave; as well as the legitimately top-quality (or so I assume with my limited knowledge) cinematic moments where the show reminds you why these otherwise-unremarkable goofballs get paid the big bucks.
It's well acted, funny in a sometimes surreal way, and delivers (through its being a love letter to all that is old and avant-garde) some scenes that are top-notch in the classical sense.