Prime

THE FAREWELL (2019)

January 22, 2021

(kanopy/Prime/VOD)? With the recent handwringing about theaters potentially going out of business due to the pandemic, a lot of folks focus on the communal experience of shared spectacle and of whiplash moments, but few discuss how the darkness of theaters also allow us to nakedly indulge in other emotions with strangers.

Case in point: THE FAREWELL. (Warning, some small spoilers ahead, but really, they aren’t.) I watched it solo on a balmy Friday night, late in July 2019. There was a fairly sizable crowd and, while we laughed and tensed up at every well-crafted moment, it was the end — and I don’t mean the epilogue — that brought the entire room to tears. As the taxi drove away, everyone was audibly sobbing, men and women, myself included. (Although, I admit, I’m a soft touch when it comes to tears.)

Obviously, we were saddened for Billi, for her grandma, for the front that the family felt forced to put up, their regret at not being able to be truthful and have proper closure. However, as the camera revealed the rest of the family inhabiting the cab, it felt like we were also crying for those around us who had lost family, who knew what it was like to experience unreconciled grief. The theater became a shared funereal experience, one that simply wouldn’t have happened in a brightly lit room with a giant LCD screen.

While the film’s epilogue staunched the tears a bit, there remained a somber feeling in the air as we numbly walked towards the exit, barely looking at one another, perhaps a bit embarrassed, perhaps a bit raw. It’s these sort of experiences I’ve missed the most during the pandemic, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

VIVARIUM (2019)

January 16, 2021

(Prime/VOD) A high-concept slow burn about a couple (Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg) who, in the process of looking for a house, find themselves trapped in an empty suburban development with no exit.

VIVARIUM recalls the hour-long episodes near the end of the first THE TWILIGHT ZONE run, the ones that still had a kernel of an interesting concept, but struggled to draw it out over the 50+ minutes allotted to them and, ultimately, left you feeling listless and frustrated, perhaps sighing loudly. Like those episodes, VIVARIUM has an intriguing concept, and there are a few interesting reveals peppered in, but watching Eisenberg and Poots — despite both injecting some much needed pathos into characters — try to crack the mystery of their situation while they waste away is a frustrating endeavor, especially as the film nears the end.

However! I still watched each and every one of those hour-long TWILIGHT ZONE episodes and never felt it was wasted time, and I feel similarly about VIVARIUM. Director Lorcan Finnegan and writer Garret Shanley — both of whom previously shared the same roles on WITHOUT NAME (2016) — make the film’s peculiarities feel fresh which, for a piece so focused on domestic roles and suburbia, is no small feat. Would I have preferred it to have focused on how three different sets of people would react when placed in this situation? Certainly, especially given the title of the movie, but this is the film we received, and it’s a film I’ll be chewing over for a while.

As usual, the trailer gives away too much, but here it is anyway:

THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF WOLFBOY (2019)

January 13, 2021

(hoopla/kanopy/Prime/VOD/Vudu) Paul (Jaeden Martell, IT (2017), THE LODGE) is a thirteen-year-old boy with Hypertrichosis (also known as ‘Werewolf Syndrome’), whose body is fully covered with hair. He’s grown up without his mother and feels ostracized and misunderstood by all — even his loving but somewhat misguided father (Chris Messina, SHARP OBJECTS, BIRDS OF PREY) — so, when he gets a birthday present from his mom, marking a spot in Philadelphia and promising answers, he takes off in search of her.

What follows is a misfit coming-of-age story as Paul encounters all sorts of threats and oddball friends along the way, many of whom mirror those Odysseus met during his adventure, including Sophie Giannamore (TRANSPARENT) as a singer who loves water, executive producer John Turturro as a predatory carnival owner — Turturro should really play more villains — and Eve Hewson (TESLA, previously recommended) as an energetic eye-patched punk who loves to steal.

WOLFBOY’s penned by Olivia Dufault (a playwright who has also written for LEGION and PREACHER — the very definition of an epic misfit adventure) and while the unique folks Paul meets along the way are the focal point of the film, she inserts whimsical elements while keeping them grounded in the real-world. First-time feature director Martin Krejcí manages to instill artistic wonder and scale into traditionally humdrum urban locations. A soundtrack featuring the delightfully melancholy DeVotchKa and Timber Timbre also imbue WOLFBOY with swoony charm.

In my opinion the trailer shows too much but, with this film, it’s about the journey.

LUXOR (2020)

January 12, 2021

(hoopla/kanopy/Prime/tubi/VOD) A quiet drama about British Aid doctor, Shea (Andrea Riseborough, MANDY, CHRISTINE), who is currently on leave because she’s ‘seen some things no one should see’. She embarks on a trip to Luxor, Egypt and, quite quickly, runs into her former lover of twenty years ago, Sultan (Karim Saleh, TRANSPARENT, COUNTERPART), who is there on an archeological dig.

While the above may sound like a ‘late-in-life rekindled romance’, it isn’t, although the looks and stumbled phrases they exchange upon seeing each other after so many years ensure they’ll be orbiting each other for the rest of the film. The core is a human story about a woman who is not confident that she will feel broken for the rest of her life. While the undercurrent of revitalized romance is there, it’s just one facet of Shea’s present time.

Quiet tales like these, about people with lived lives, of adult reflection, are rarer and rarer nowadays, and writer/director Zeina Durra (THE IMPERIALISTS ARE STILL ALIVE!) does an exceptional job realizing her script, letting the camera follow the actors and allow the silence to speak volumes.

GET DUKED! (2019)

January 11, 2021

(Prime) A light comedy/horror movie about four city boys (three hellion misfits, another a straight-up nerd) who have mostly unwillingly signed up to participate in The Duke of Edinbergh’s Award, an ‘outdoor adventure challenge in the Highlands’ set up in 1956 by the Duke of Edinbergh to help inspire young teens to ‘attain standards of achievement and endeavour in a wide variety of active interests’. (The film opens with a clearly faux-dated training video that — partially due to its use of fonts — feels like parody, but it is not, the Award is a very real thing: https://www.royal.uk/60-years-duke-edinburghs-award .)

Left without adult supervision, and only the barest of instructions, the boys dick around, smoke up (using part of the map they were given), and act generally obnoxious (except for the nerd, who is disheartened he’s not receiving the bonding adventure he’d hoped for). For the first third of the film, sitting through the scenes of infantile behavior is tedious, but the gears shift upon the introduction of a older stranger determined to kill youths, and he has his sights trained on them.

From there the adventure really begins, as the boys try to find ways to survive despite their incompetence and their willingness to leap first and look later. There’s a particularly rousing break about midway through that serves as a self-indulgent music video — this is the first feature effort from writer/director Ninian Doff, who has previously directed videos for acts like Run The Jewels and the Chemical Brothers — but the song and visuals ratchet up the fun, before culminating in a final act that tries to draw out a bit of political satire before immediately turning on its heel as if to tell the audience ‘fuck that, have a few more laughs.’

It helps that those playing the boys are able to come across as goofs instead of maniacs, and DUKED is fleshed out with great supporting talent like Eddie Izzard, Kate Dickie (THE VVITCH, PROMETHEUS, PREVENGE), Alice Lowe (SIGHTSEERS, PREVENGE), and Jonathan Aris (loads of British TV like HUMANS, SHERLOCK, etc.) Yes, it’s a slight film but, by the end, it had earned a bit of love.

BLOOD ON HER NAME (2020)

January 6, 2021

(hoopla/Prime/tubi/VOD) This is one hell of a neo-noir thriller. In the wrong hands, this story of mother accidentally murdering a man could have been Lifetime movie, but director/writer Matthew Pope, along with lead Bethany Anne Lind, shape it into a wickedly ruthless tale, then punctuate it with a gut-punch of an ending.

I’M YOUR WOMAN (2020)

January 5, 2021

(Prime) There’s a moment early on in Julia Hart’s (FAST COLOR) I’M YOUR WOMAN where Jean (THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL’s Rachel Brosnahan), while making breakfast for her husband as their baby cries, cracks an egg into a frying pan and you can see how her nail punctures the shell, resulting in a broken egg yolk. I noticed and muttered to myself: ‘I wonder how intentional that was.’

As you might suspect, it was very intentional and turned out to lack subtlety — hell, it’s in the trailer I failed to watch beforehand — but it’s a brisk character detail.

I’M YOUR WOMAN is a 70s period piece about Jean, a young wife who has a baby literally handed off to her by her charismatic, but criminally-minded, husband. Before she’s even had time to acclimate to the baby, one of her husband’s friends rings her doorbell, tells her she has to leave her home right now, and passes her off to Cal — played by Arinzé Kene (HOW TO BUILD A GIRL) who he says will watch over her. Matters spiral from there as Jean attempts to shine light on the underworld events that fractured her life.

The film moves quickly and swiftly establishes just enough about the characters involved to keep you wanting to know more, while managing to tease you through to the end without being needlessly frustrating. That said, at times certain events can be off-putting and needlessly bleak and, for such a character-centric movie, the supporting personalities often outshine Jean and her ‘newly independent’ arc.

I hadn’t planned on recommending it upon watching it a month ago, but its smaller moments have lingered in my mind. While it I’M YOUR WOMAN doesn’t always balance its character and genre work, it’s still a noteworthy attempt in a year full of similarly high-minded crime thrillers.

BLOW THE MAN DOWN (2020)

December 29, 2020

(Prime) A taut crime thriller about the women who run a small fishing town in New England, the secrets that they keep, and the two teen girls caught up in the middle after killing a man.

Writers/directors Bridget Savage Cole & Danielle Krudy (who recently co-directed two episodes of the latest THE STAND adaptation together) do wonders with their whip-smart script. They shape their words into some amazingly considered camerawork (often leaning on an array of close-ups for context instead of expository long shots), ruthless editing, and a prickly score that features a viola, piano, oddly punctuating percussion, and occasionally a few interjected shanties.

More importantly, it’s a film about community, and family, especially sisters, sisters that butt heads. It’s a raw tale and town that feels so lived in that it might as well be an re-enactment.

Oh, and the cast! Morgan Saylor (HOMELAND) plays the fuckup, closes-out-the-bar daughter Zee, while Sophie Lowe (THE RETURNED UK, ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND) plays the responsible daughter trying to keep everything together. Classic character actor Annette O’Toole (CAT PEOPLE (1982), SMALLVILLE, HALT & CATCH FIRE) is a voice of reason, and Margo Martindale oversees matters, all while putting a slight twist on her matriarchal JUSTIFIED presence.

As small town crime genre work goes, it doesn’t get much better than this.

“Fucking coleslaw.”

THE BOOKSELLERS (2020)

December 15, 2020

(Prime — yes, Amazon picked this one up, despite the fact that they forced so many physical bookstores out of business) Whenever my wife and I travel, we always make it a point to visit the local bookstores and find a book (or two or three) to bring home as a worthwhile memento to read later, and documentary THE BOOKSELLERS instigated flashbacks of our trip to NYC in 2016, as we stopped by all of the classic NYC bookstores. Sure, we didn’t have the money to buy anything too rare or fancy, but we did pick up a few token prints and a handful of cheap genre books with snazzy covers.

THE BOOKSELLERS is a NYC-centric deep dive into the folks who collect and sell rare and/or interesting books, or just consider themselves ‘collectors of books’. The people they interview are a wide tangle of distinct personas, ages, and genders, which is rather refreshing as, yes, it’s still unrightfully considered a ‘male’ business.

I constantly harp about the need for physical media because it’s something that’s -important- and it’ll only become more important in the future as fewer works are denied proper physical releases. We’ll see more and more important works wither off because of licensing issues, because they’re too niche, deemed too unimportant. This doc definitely details the fetishization of physical media, but it also makes the case for the importance of it.

Ultimately, this is a documentary about people who care about the -printed word- and ensuring that these words live on. It’s not the most engrossing documentary but, if you’re a book nerd, it’ll open your eyes towards certain facets of of the industry. And, if you’re familiar with the booksellers, it’s a welcome COVID escapist film.

One item of note: Julia Wertz has a terrific collection of NYC book store renditions in her amazing illustrated history of New York City: TENEMENTS, TOWERS & TRASH. It’s a hefty tome, and I don’t know how relevant it is in a post-COVID world, but it’s well-worth your time.

http://www.juliawertz.com/2017/09/24/trash/

“The only thing I regret are the books I’ve never bought.”

TUFF TURF (1985)

December 10, 2020

(Prime/hoopla/tubi/VOD) A quintessential mid-80s high school film where the teachers fear the students, but a new pupil has come to town to set them straight. TUFF TURF features a pre-PRETTY IN PINK James Spader as the new stranger at school, Kim Richards as the gang leader’s girlfriend who Spader has designs on, and a pre-LESS THAN ZERO Robert Downey Jr. as Spader’s over-eager new friend.

TUFF TURF is directed by Fritz Kiersch, best known for helming the first CHILDREN OF THE CORN, which may explain why the film is surprisingly violent, especially the elaborate final confrontation. While the combination of wooing, dance scenes, and vicious beatdowns does feel a bit jarring, it results in a rather winsome little film. It helps that the soundtrack features a healthy dose of The Jim Carroll Band.