Weekend Screen Scene: A Different Man, The Wild Robot

 

 

Last week saw the release of The Substance, a black horror comedy about fame, beauty standards, vanity, and identity. This week brings us A Different Man, a black comedy that also touches on vanity and identity, but this time the story centers on a male actor, not a woman.

Sebastian Stan stars as Edward, a struggling actor in New York city. He has neurofibromatosis, which causes extreme facial deformity, so his roles are relegated to things like industrial training films about how to handle tricky situations with disabled coworkers. He lives in a dilapidated apartment with a leaky ceiling, and is in love with his friendly and perky playwright neighbor Ingrid (Renate Reinsve of The Worst Person in the World). When he's approached to partake in a drug trial that may cure his disease, he agrees. The drug works, though the transformation is not pleasant (and is pretty gruesome to watch).

The second half of the movie finds Edward now living a "normal" life, working as a hot shot real estate agent. But his past comes back in the form of Ingrid, now producing her play, and Oswald (Adam Pearson of Under the Skin) a happy and popular man with the same facial deformities that once plagued Edward.

While Stan's facial deformities are the creation of talented makeup artists, Adam Pearson actually does have neurofibromatosis. For both of them, facial movements are limited, and their eyes are partially obscured, yet both are able to give truly memorable performances despite these limitations. 

 

Stan's pre-transformed Edward is slouched and nebbish, clearly trying his best to remain as invisible as possible, but he also exudes a shy charm that his neighbor Ingrid definitely finds herself drawn to. Stan is really, really good in this. 

 

Pearson's Oswald is Edward's complete opposite. He's friendly and gregarious, always wearing something loud, and when he enters a room, he's the center of attention, not because people are horrified but because people are drawn to him.

This is something Edward cannot understand, and the film does some interesting things with his resulting crisis of confidence. It also does some things that are a little muddled, taking the plot near the end of the film in directions I wasn't completely on board with. Still, the performances by Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson more than make up for any faults of the plot.

 

The animated featured The Wild Robot is based on a series of children's books by Peter Brown, about a futuristic task robot who finds itself on a forest island devoid of humans after a container ship loses its cargo.

Lupita Nyong'o voices the robot "ROZZUM unit 7134," (eventually just "ROZ"), and damn, is there nothing this woman can't do? She's perfect, imbuing ROZ with both robotic imperatives and maternal warmth as she finds herself adopting an abandoned gosling she names Brightbill, accepting motherhood as another task to complete, teaching him to swim and to fly so that eventually he'll be able to leave.

 

The first 10 minutes of the film only feature the voice of ROZ, and I was wondering if it may end up being an entire movie of just a robot talking to animals that don't understand it, but the plot finds a way to work talking animals into the story, so we also get Pedro Pascal as a Fink the Fox, Catherine O'Hara as an opossum mom, and Mark Hamil as Thorn the grizzly bear.

The Wild Robot is one of the most beautiful animated films of the year, with aesthetics that are closer to the hand drawn animation of classic Disney than to most contemporary CGI animated films. It's also one of the most emotionally touching, absolutely earning my tears by the end. It will easily go down as one of the best of the year.

Weekend Screen Scene: The Substance, Never Let Go

There’s a moment near the end of The Substance, director Coralie Fargeat's latest provocative horror movie, where Sue/Elisabeth is getting ready for a big show. She's looking in the mirror, putting earrings on, and the famous Bernard Herrmann music from Vertigo starts to swell in the background. A little while later she faces an angry crowd, yelling back at them that she’s not a monster; that she’s "still the same person!" And I immediately thought, “Oh shit. This movie is about Kim Novak!”

OK, that may stretching it, but no one is going to tell me it was not at least partly inspired by Kim Novak’s 2014 Academy Awards appearance, and the horrible online reactions to her face, which only emphasized the lose/lose situation older women in the public eye find themselves in. Look old, and you're relegated to the sidelines. Do what you can to look "younger," and you risk a botched job and being called a monster.

In The Substance, Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, an actress-turned-TV celebrity who, after her 50th birthday, is fired from her show, as the network head (played, almost too disgustingly, by Dennis Quaid) deems her too old to host. She receives a mysterious offer to try something called "the Substance," which promises her regained youth, with a catch: she must live one week as her own age, and one week as a younger version, switching back and forth every seven days. Don't make the switch, and bad things will happen.

Bad things happen.

Margaret Qualley plays the youthful version, who deems herself just "Sue." She instantly gets hired for a new version of the show Elisabeth was fired from. That the show, supposedly a monster hit, is, essentially just an exercise show (it brought to mind the ridiculous Aerobisize videos from the early 80's), reducing her stardom to, literally, just her tits and ass, is one of the many ham-fisted details in the film; this is not a subtle movie. But that is not a criticism, per se. I think it's very much by design - everything in it is an off-kilter or exaggerated version of celebrity life, from its version of Hollywood, which consists of seeminly one palm tree-filled street, to billboards that face into apartments and not the city below. Setting The Substance in this bizarro version of L.A. better prepares you for the completely unrealistic way "the Substance" itself works.

This tone can often throw the movie into camp territory, but what saves it from become something you'll do nothing but laugh at are how fiercely Moore and Qualley throw themselves into their roles. This is not a tame horror movie; it is at times really horrific, a result, much of the time, of how committed the two actresses are to just going full throttle into it. More than once I was reminded of Isabelle Adjani's remarkable turn in Possession. This is no holds barred body horror that even Cronenberg could see as going too far. (Along with many Cronengberg films, it also briefly brought to my mind 1989's insane Society).

Yes, The Substance is not subtle, but neither is removing fat from your ass and injecting it in your face. Surgeries and treatments to prolong youth can be gory; the self-inflicted violence some women feel compelled to commit on themselves because society has deemed them no longer fuckable, or sellable, or just...able may not be as horrifying as some of what The Substance shows us, but it can still be pretty damn horrifying, and in the end, you may still just be called a monster by a crowd that once claimed to love you.

In Never Let Go, Halle Berry plays a mother trying to survive in the woods with her young twin sons after an evil has taken over the world, turning everyone into literal monsters. An old family cabin provides shelter, and the family is protected as long as they are inside, or tethered to the house via long ropes tied around their waists.

It becomes clear pretty early on that mom may not be entirely sane, and the fact that only she can see the "demons" haunting the woods gives credence to that. The first half of the movie plays with that notion, but knowing that all of this horror may just be in her mind actually makes the film a tough watch. If she is imagining all of this, then what she is putting her boys through is essentially horrific child abuse, and the question becomes, what is the real horror?

I won't say where the movie lands, but I will say, after what is a pretty shocking twist about three quarters of the way through, it heads in a direction I would have been satisfied with, and then veers off towards an ending that, to me, did not make a lot of sense. Never Let Go has good performances from Berry, and Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins, the young actors playing her sons, and being a movie set in an old cabin in the woods, it has some good scares. But in the end, it just lost me

Weekend Screen Scene: The Greatest Hits, The Beast, Sasquatch Sunset

If you've gone through a heartbreak, and are of a certain age, there's a good chance you've made a mix-tape, or mix CD, or playlist, of all the songs you associate with that heartbreak. It's a kind of audible time capsule. Listening to those mixes can bring back the good and the bad memories, and are, in a sense, a sort of time travel.

The Greatest Hits, which is now streaming on Hulu, takes that concept, and makes it literal. Lucy Boynton stars as Harriet, a young woman in L.A. who is trying to get over the loss of her boyfriend, but is having a hard time of it because whenever she hears certain songs she associates with Max (David Corenswet), she is transported back in time to when they first heard the song together. But nothing she can do in the past seems to change the outcome of tragedy. Then a new man (Justin H. Min) enters her life....

The movie is brisk, and wastes no time setting up the concept, and while it's dealing with some heavy themes of loss and trauma, it's still fun, as many time travel movies can be. If I have any complaint it's that very few of the "transporting" songs, aside from a good Roxy Music needle drop, are memorable, but that just may be my Gen-X sensibilities speaking.

Bertrand Bonello's The Beast is another unique science fiction take on love and trauma, starring Léa Seydoux and George MacKay as star-crossed lovers in the years 1910, 2014, and 2044. In all of her "lives" Gabrielle (Seydoux) has interactions with a man (MacKay) who is sometimes a potential lover, and in others, a possible foe.

In 2044, Gabrielle (Seydoux) agrees to a procedure that "purifies" her DNA, relieving her of the trauma of her past lives so that her current life will be free of "strong feelings." She agrees to this, ostensibly as part of a job requirement. 

And it was just as I was writing this that I realized it all sounds very Scientology, though I am pretty sure that is not writer and director Bertrand Bonello's intent here, as it also seems to be critical of the Buddhist concept of past lives as well. In many ways, it feels very Lynchian, and Bonello fills the film with some remarkable imagery. Seydoux and MacKay inhabit all of their past and present lives with a sense of longing and the inevitability of that "beast" known as fate. I'm not sure I completely understood it, but it definitely left me thinking about it for days.

Sasquatch Sunset is like a nature documentary but with all the gross stuff kept in - screwing, puking, crapping, and pissing. The film follows a family of Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) in the densely forested hills of Northern California. The nameless Sasquatch (Sasquatches?) are an alpha male (Nathan Zellner), a female (Riley Keough), a beta male (Jesse Eisenberg), and an adolescent (Christophe Zajac-Denek). We watch as they sit in fields and munch on leaves, set up shelters, mate, frolic with fellow woodsy creatures...and get high as hell on things like fermented berries and magic mushrooms.

As the film is essentially a silent one, with no dialogue, there is a lot of physical humor, and some surprising moments of pathos. Riley Keough gives the best performance behind the (very good) prosthetics, using just her eyes, and sometimes, a complete lack of expression, to elicit both laughs and tears. But there's a reason your average nature show or doc is only an hour long - they can get a bit monotonous, and at 90 minutes, Sasquatch Sunset feels stretched thin. I definitely appreciated it (the final image is perfection), but came away wanting less instead of more.

Weekend Screen Scene: DogMan

I'll get this out of the way first: DogMan has a large cast of dogs, but none die in the film. There is some implied violence against dogs, but this takes place mainly off-screen.

With that out the way, I have to say, this is the most insane tribute to dogs ever put on screen. At times, I was absolutely howling with incredulous laughter, at others I was completely confused, and by the end, I'll admit, I shed a tear.

In cinema's craziest hero (or villain??) origin story, Caleb Landry Jones stars as Douglas, survivor of an abusive childhood where he was kept in a cage with dogs his religious father bred for dog fighting. This childhood appears to take place in the 1940's, for reasons not fully explained, since the majority of the movie takes place in modern times. Years in that cage left Douglas partially paralyzed, and really, really good with dogs. Like, really good. And he uses that skill for both good (protecting a family from a local gang) and evil (let's just say his dogs make good cat thieves).

Luc Besson does not make subtle movies, and he has, once again, gone completely gonzo here. I feel like it's best to go into this knowing very little, so I will simply add that DogMan also includes perhaps the best drag rendition of an Edith Piaf song every performed, if there were any justice in this world, Caleb Landry Jones would be getting an Oscar nomination come 2025, and leave it at that.

Weekend Screen Scene: Carol Doda Topless at the Condor, Riddle of Fire, Late Night with the Devil

It's odd to think that there is not a time in my life when I was not aware of Carol Doda, even if it was just knowing there was a giant sign of a lady with blinking boobs to be seen any time the family ventured to North Beach. But that was just part of the joy of growing up in San Francisco in the 1970's and 1980's. 

The new documentary Carol Doda Topless at the Condor aims to expand that awareness past the City limits and decades past by centering Doda as a cultural revolutionary, even if she didn't necessarily see herself that way. Co-directors Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker utilize previously recorded interviews with Doda herself (she died in 2015), along with commentary from fellow North Beach performers, and a few cultural academics, and pair it up with an impressive amount of archival footage and photos to help flesh out a portrait of Doda, who was notoriously cagey about her personal life. 

It's definitely entertaining seeing Doda's trajectory from cocktail waitress, to go-go dancing cocktail waitress, to featured dancer, to the country's first topless dancer (kind of), to topless and bottomless dancer, the uproar all of that caused, and her ultimate status as a San Francisco icon (the city's other "twin peaks"). But I actually found some of the stories shared by her fellow entertainers even more enjoyable. (I can't believe I was too young to check out the stripper with the pet monkey!) 

Carol Doda Topless at the Condor is less about Doda and more about the cultural shift she helped spearhead, intentionally or not. And while it left me wishing I could know a little more about the woman herself (the interviews they do include show she was a really witty woman), as a portrait of San Francisco in the late late 1960's and early 1970's, it's tops.

The 1970's were also brought to mind while watching the indie gem Riddle of Fire, even though the film is contemporary. Shot on 16mm, in gloriously yellowish tones, the movie looks and feels like a b-movie of that era, perhaps something that may have played as the second film in a double feature with a live action Disney movie in 1977.

When I tell you it is an epic fairytale about three kids on a quest to find a blueberry pie for their ailing mother, it probably sounds pretty saccharine, even though that is in fact the bare bones plot. But these adolescent kids also ride dirt bikes, carry paint ball guns, swear occasionally, and are in search of this pie because it's the only way their mom will give them the password to the TV so they can play the new video game console they stole. Along their quest they also run afoul of a gang of poachers, lead by a possible witch, who puts their lives in danger.

Not so saccharine!

I was enchanted by this oddball film, and director Weston Razooli's commitment to its unique tone. The rural Wyoming setting is photographed beautifully, and the soundtrack brought to mind scores by Tangerine Dream and Goblin (along with an actual needle drop from the film Cannibal Holocaust). Letting three actors under the age of 14 carry a movie is always a risky move, especially for a first time filmmaker, but I was really impressed by the performances Razooli got from Phoebe Ferro, Skyler Peters, and Charlie Stover. Sure, at two hours long, Riddle of Fire could have used a bit of trimming, but I was also a little sad to see the adventure of Alice, Jodie, and Hazel come to an end.

The 1970's strike again with the horror movie, Late Night with the Devil,  about a talk show that had one really, really horrifying Halloween special back in 1977. 

The film is presented as a mockumentary about a fateful episode of Night Owls with Jack Delroy, a late night talk show constantly competing against the success of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. After tragedy befalls host Jack Delroy (played to perfection by David Dastmalchian), he attempts a comeback with a Halloween episode featuring a medium, the author of a book about a demon possession, and the possibly possessed girl, and a former magician-turned-skeptic who's there to debunk it all.

The parts of the film that are the "actual" episode of the show are absolutely terrific, with the production design, late night style jokes, and performances completely nailing the tone. Which is why it's so disappointing that the movie doesn't stick with that, instead inserting "behind the scenes" footage supposedly shot during the show's commercial breaks. This footage makes absolutely no sense on a practical level (why was it shot? Why does it involve multiple cameras? Why do none of the performers ever acknowledge it's happening?) and also completely disrupts the realistic feeling of the TV show. 

The whole "mockumentary" set-up is also pretty much dropped for an ending that goes off the rails, but, ironically, could have worked perfectly had they stuck to the premise. Still, enough of the movie succeeds that I can forgive it its trespasses, even while hoping for an alternative cut that just features that Night Owls with Jack Delroy Halloween episode of 1977.