Sunday, March 17, 2024

Review: Love Lies Bleeding

Image courtesy of A24.

Being well made isn't necessarily the same thing as being good, and that's a distinction with which I had to wrestle when considering my feelings toward Rose Glass's "Love Lies Bleeding," a well-made movie that I admired a little more than I liked. In the end, I'd say that I could recommend the movie, which has much going for it, even if the experience of watching it wasn't always particularly pleasant.

The film is set in the late 1980s in a remote New Mexico town, where we first meet gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) cleaning out the nastiest cinematic toilet since "Trainspotting." It's the first of many messes she'll find herself cleaning during the course of the picture and only the first example of a scene in the film that nearly set my gag reflex in motion.

Lou meets and quickly becomes enamored with Jackie (Katy O'Brian), a newcomer to town from Oklahoma who's passing through on her way to Las Vegas, where she intends to take part in a bodybuilding competition. Jackie is jacked, partly due to her rigorous workout schedule, but also because of the steroids with which she's pumping herself. "Love Lies Bleeding" has the most evocative sound design since the recent "The Zone of Interest," in that every muscle flex or vein popping - not to mention some squishing while dealing with corpses - is reflected nauseatingly on the soundtrack.

Lou has a background that only slowly reveals itself to Jackie, who gets a job at a local gun range, which is run by the creepy Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), Lou's father, who is a local criminal extraordinaire, and whose wife's disappearance is never really explained - but, well, you can probably guess. Lou is troubled that her sister (Jena Malone) is abused by her ne'er-do-well husband JJ (Dave Franco, whose mullet is only the second worst haircut in the picture after Harris' insanely bad one), and Jackie takes note of this.

Soon, Lou and Jackie strike up a relationship, Jackie moves in, and some semi-explicit sex scenes ensue. Meanwhile, JJ takes it one step too far one night and - not to spoil anything here, but... - Jackie takes matters into her own hands, leading to another gag reflex-triggering moment. This leads to a downward spiral involving the police, another young woman who engages in sexual blackmail with Lou after witnessing her and Jackie driving JJ's car in the middle of the night, and Jackie's bodybuilding contest freakout in Las Vegas.

Glass's first film, "Saint Maud," was a religious-themed thriller that sometimes felt like a body horror movie. "Love Lies Bleeding" falls into that same category. Anyone who ever might have thought of using steroids will likely take a pass after watching this picture. Jackie's muscles flex to the point where they seem they might burst at any given moment, and her clear case of roid-rage is outright scary.

The film's eerie nighttime shots and electronic score, blended with its neo-noir trappings and neon-lit atmosphere, reminded me slightly of Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive," although the film that seems to have inspired much of "Love Lies Bleeding" is David Lynch's freaky "Lost Highway," from the nighttime shots of the highway flying by in the darkness, the creepy scenes in the desert, and even a gruesome death-by-table sequence that feels like a shoutout to the one in Lynch's film.

There's also a similarity to Lynch's film - in which one character literally becomes another halfway through the picture - in that character's pasts and true selves are hidden within the shadows of the night, during which much of Glass's film is set.

So, while "Love Lies Bleeding" isn't a film that's always enjoyable in the traditional sense - it's grim, grimy, and occasionally visually unpleasant - it's a film with much to admire, from the performances (Stewart's Lou is tightly coiled, while O'Brian is outright explosive and Harris is the scariest I've ever seen him) to its stylish visuals and dark sense of humor. One's enjoyment might be determined by how much one can relate to characters whose behavior often veers into the sociopathic and how much one's stomach can take by the grotesque imagery, but "Love Lies Bleeding" is, if nothing else, memorable.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Review: About Dry Grasses

Image courtesy of Janus Films.

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's films are frequently long - his latest being well over three hours - and talkative dramas that examine weighty subject matter - such as good and wrongdoing (in his Palm d'Or winner "Winter Sleep") or the nature of truth (his 2012 masterpiece "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia") - through conversation.

In his latest, "About Dry Grasses," Ceylan asks us to spend more than three hours in the company of a man who is, let's face it, unpleasant and often unlikable. Thankfully, great drama does not require feeling sympathetic towards a fictional character.

The film's lead character is art teacher Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), who has been assigned to work in a remote location in east Turkey, despite wanting to live in a more metropolitan area such as Istanbul, and who wears a condescending smirk on his face most of the time. He's equally friendly with the Turkish regime - he cavorts with local military men - and the opposition, namely a left-wing woman named Nuray (Merve Dizdar), a former military woman who lost a leg in a bomb blast, whom he befriends later in the film. It is she who calls Samet out and points out the zone of moral cowardice he inhabits that involves approving when a good thing gets done, but acting as if he wants nothing to do with politics.

A conundrum involving Samet, Nuray, and Kenan (Musab Ekici), Samet's roommate and closest thing to a best friend, arises late in the picture, but an earlier bit of drama dominates the film's first half. Samet shows outsized favorable attention to a girl named Sevim (Ece Bagci) whom he believes is smarter than the other students, whom he often berates cruelly. There's nothing to suggest that Samet has done anything to overtly cause harm to this girl, but he still crosses a line.

There's a scene early in the film in which the question of lying or telling the truth - and whether it's necessary to always tell the truth when feelings are involved - is discussed among some teachers in a faculty lounge in regard to a merchant who was selling fake goods. Samet believes that one must always tell things the way they are - people's feelings be damned - and this is obvious during a particularly unkind moment when he criticizes his students and tells them they'll likely not rise above their humble existences and during another scene in which Nuray asks Samet not to tell Kenan, who obviously likes her, about a night they spent together, which Samet goes out and immediately does afterward.

The most fascinating sequence in the picture is a long, dialogue-driven scene when Nuray invites Samet and Kenan over the dinner and, for once, the former lies and fails to mention it to the latter. This is the night that will end with them sleeping together, but first the two debate politics or, rather, whether one should become involved in community advocacy. Nuray calls Samet out over his selfishness and lack of interest in getting involved in the world, arguing that he hides behind a mask of faux politeness when, in fact, he doesn't want to admit that he cares for no one other than himself.

One of the film's ironic touches are the photographs that Samet takes of the town's inhabitants in the form of tableaux vivants, which appear lovingly shot; however, it's clear that Samet cares little about the subjects in the photos and thinks of most of the people in the town as uneducated and simple. 

There's also a perplexing moment late in the picture - and immediately before Samet and Nuray sleep together - that I won't give away, but it's something akin to breaking the fourth wall. It's as if to suggest that amid all this back and forth about the nature of lies versus truth, we shouldn't forget that the entire production - a film in which actors are portraying people other than themselves - is itself a lie.

Ceylan's finest film, in my book, remains the mesmerizing "Anatolia," but "About Dry Grasses" is another strong and often fascinating look at what truth actually means, and how it should be wielded. For moviegoers of the patient variety, this film will likely cast a spell.

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Review: How To Have Sex

Image courtesy of Imagine Film Distribution.

The British coming-of-age story "How to Have Sex" depicts modern teenage rites of passage - especially for young women - as a slow-motion horror show. The film begins as a story about a group of three British girls on holiday on the Greek islands and is replete with the requisite party-til-you-drop type of bacchanalia that you'd expect in any American entry in this subgenre from the past however many decades.

But a little less than halfway through the film - during a part when the girls attend a party at a nightclub where the sleazy MCs corral young men onto a stage and ask girls to do their best to make them hard - the film becomes something else entirely. Even though the boozy early scenes didn't exactly strike me as fun as they did their participants, the latter scenes take on an unambiguously unsettling air.

Tara is the lead character. Portrayed by a very good Mia McKenna Bruce, she is smaller in stature than her two friends - caring Em (Enva Lewis) and passive aggressive Skye (Lara Peake) - and displays a naivete in terms of who she trusts. Tara is a virgin, driven home by the "Angel" necklace around her neck with which she's frequently toying.

The girls meet another group rooming across the way from them. This trio consists of amiable Badger (Shaun Thomas), a heavily tattooed boy who obviously takes a shine toward Tara, as well as Paige (Laura Ambler), the film's most underdeveloped character who becomes a romantic interest for Em, and Paddy (Samuel Bottomley), an arrogant womanizer whom Tara makes the mistake of trusting.

In terms of setup and plot, "How to Have Sex" might seem simplistic. The three young women arrive at their exotic outpost, party quite a bit, meet the boys (and girl) next door, and party some more until things take a darker turn when a sexual encounter - in fact, more than one - raises questions regarding consent and a character appears stuck in a scenario that becomes increasingly tense.

The film's visual style remains interesting throughout. At first, the nighttime scenes have a hypnotic quality as the nightclubs visited by Tara, Em, and Skye are lit with glowing strobe lights. The daytime scenes show things in a bleaker, light-of-day manner, that is, until the switch in tone halfway through the picture. At that point, the nighttime - during which the characters drink heavily - takes on a more sinister tone, while the daylight offers a little reprieve.

"How to Have Sex" may not reinvent the wheel on the coming-of-age story, but it's a solid depiction of a young woman learning who she can lean on and who to avoid, while also portraying an unsettling initiation into the sexual rites of passage. Overall, this is a solid debut.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Review: Dune: Part Two

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

Director Denis Villeneuve raised some eyebrows recently when he made a comment that he primarily emphasizes the visual component of cinema and that, to paraphrase, dialogue doesn't interest him very much. He later retracted the statement, but the irony of it is that while I was watching the expensive-looking - and often visually impressive - "Dune: Part Two," I found the picture's numerous set pieces to be mostly engaging whereas the quieter moments in which the characters talk, mostly about whether Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) is a messiah figure, were less interesting.

Overall, this second film - both pictures are based on Frank Herbert's cult science fiction novel of the same name, and a third film based on "Dune Messiah" is sure to follow - is a pretty decent blockbuster film. It's about as good as the first film, which was a movie that I admired a little more than I liked. 

It's a well made film that is rich with visual detail, although the super serious discussions of messianic prophecies and a spice that rules the galaxy can be a little on the silly side, something that David Lynch recognized when making his much-maligned 1984 version of the film, to which time has been kinder than one might expect.

It's ironic also that the two films in Villeneuve's oeuvre that impressed me the most were ones that were dialogue-driven - the gripping thriller "Prisoners" and the bizarre and surreal "Enemy." I've admired his "Blade Runner" sequel, "Arrival," and the "Dune" films, but they honestly don't affect me as much as the aforementioned.

The second "Dune" movie picks up where the first left off - Atreides is in the desert with the Fremen, whom Paul will eventually inspire to take up arms against the emperor (Christopher Walken), his daughter (Florence Pugh), the sinister Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Sarsgard), and his sociopathic nephew, Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), who is this film's central villain.

Any further explanation of the plot would take up space that I'm not willing to fill and you're probably not willing to read. Needless to say, Atreides' possible messiah stature is questioned and tested - there's a great scene in which he rides one of those gigantic sand worms - and a romance buds between him and Chani (Zendaya), although this is one of the film's more undercooked subplots.

As I mentioned, there are some great set pieces - the sand worm ride, a sequence during which Paul and Chani lead a group to attack a large machine that digs up the spice and must hide in its shadows to avoid being shot, and a final battle that culminates with a fight between Feyd-Rautha and Atreides. The film leaves many plot threads open, which I'm guessing will be addressed when "Dune Messiah" inevitably gets made.

In the meantime, "Dune: Part Two" is a good example of a solid big budget studio property that isn't dumbed down for audiences and doesn't cater to the needs of all who attend. In other words, you're either a fan of this thing or you're not - those who liked the first entry will probably feel the same way about this one. This was my reaction as well. I liked the first "Dune," even if I didn't quite love it, and that's about where I stand with this second film.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Review: Perfect Days

Image courtesy of The Match Factory.

Wim Wenders' "Perfect Days" might seem to some to have an ironic title. The film is, after all, about a toilet cleaner who spends his days mostly engaging in the quotidian and sticking to an orderly schedule. And yet, Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) seems to relish the beauty he spots around him, sometimes in odd places - a game of Tic Tac Toe in one of the bathrooms that he cleans or the lovely, swaying Tokyo trees that he occasionally photographs.

People seem to mostly ignore Hirayama, as evidenced by the man nursing a hangover who knocks over his sign alerting bathroom users that the floor might be slippery and doesn't stop to apologize or pick it up, or the woman who willfully seems to not recognize his presence after he finds her lost child in a bathroom stall.

Some people might say Hirayama is living a life of resignation, but I'd say it's more one of acceptance. He takes his job seriously while cleaning the toilet stalls in upscale neighborhoods, and manages to be nice to his obnoxious co-worker (Tokio Emoto) and that guy's significantly more interesting girlfriend. 

All the while, Hirayama seemingly finds joy in the small everyday moments - listening to his cassette tapes (which populate the soundtrack with Lou Reed and Patti Smith songs) while he drives, observing people in the park, reading (William Faulkner and Patricia Highsmith are among the books he pores over in his semi-dark apartment), and eating night after night at the same restaurant, where the female proprietor knows what he wants before he's even able to order.

But is Hirayama hiding something? Is his situation a sort of forced penance? His dreams in black and white provide only slight glimpses, giving the impression that there's something on his mind, but there's not enough there for any definitive answers. His routine is broken up by the appearance of a runaway niece (Arisa Nakano), whose presence he obviously enjoys, but when his sister pulls up in a car with a driver up to pick up the girl after a day or so, she seems surprised that he is cleaning toilets for a living. In a final shot in which Hirayama drives his car listening to Nina Simone, he appears to vacillate between smiling and just the faintest hint of tears in his eyes. 

However, anything else in Hirayama's life other than what we see is simply to be inferred by the audience. There's a scene that stuck with me during which Hirayama is staring at a nondescript patch of earth that appears to be covered by some sort of bags. A man approaches and asks Hirayama if he recalls what used to be in the spot, hinting that it was something more attractive than what's currently occupying it. "That's what happens when you get old," the man retorts. Beautiful things fade and are occasionally replaced by ugly ones.

"Perfect Days" is Wenders' best film in a while and it's also one in a long line of works inspired by Japan. The director previously shot two documentaries in the country - "Notebook on Clothes and Cities" and "Tokyo Ga," which was directly inspired by Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu's work - also very present in the style of "Perfect Days" - and "Until the End of the World" included a section in that nation. 

In the 1980s, Wenders was one of the greatest working filmmakers, and his "Paris, Texas" and "Wings of Desire" are enduring masterpieces. Much like Werner Herzog, another member of the New German Cinema, Wenders has spent recent years making smaller independent films and documentaries. "Perfect Days" is his most potent in some time. This is a movie about living a life of simplicity that hints at much greater complexities. Yakusho gives an excellent leading performance and Wenders was smart to mostly center an entire movie around his day-to-day life. This movie is a small gem.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Review: Drive Away Dolls

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

Ethan Coen's first solo outing - following his brother Joel's first solo film three years ago, "The Tragedy of Macbeth" - is a raunchy road comedy that, perhaps, sheds some light on which Coen brother brings which sensibility to the duo's oeuvre. Based on what we've seen in the past few years, it stands to reason that Joel brings the brooding dark qualities, while Ethan is seemingly responsible for the kookier elements.

This is evidenced in "Drive Away Dolls," a film that follows two lesbian best pals, Jaime (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), who decide to rent a "drive-away" vehicle - in other words, one that you rent with the purpose of driving it to the location where the car rental business needs it to be delivered - to get to Tallahassee, where Marian aims to meet up with a relative for some birdwatching. Jaime is in the process of breaking up with her cop lover Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), so she decides to tag along.

However, before we meet the two young women, we see a man (Pedro Pascal) carrying a briefcase - which has contents that are kept secret for some time in the vein of "Pulp Fiction" and "Kiss Me Deadly," until they finalize emerge in one of the film's nuttier twists - who is caught in an alleyway and dispatched in a gruesome fashion.

The car that Jaime and Marian end up renting, unbeknownst to them, has this man's head in a cooler in the trunk along with the mysterious suitcase. As they make their way to Tallahassee, whose very existence appears to be the butt of a running joke in the film, a group of sinister men led by a character played by Colman Domingo are on their tail.

Without giving too much away, the contents of the suitcase are linked back to a conservative politician played by Matt Damon, whose character's ultimate fate - spelled out in a newspaper headline - makes for the film's best gag. Some of the film's other gags - a running joke involving numerous characters reading Henry James - are less successful.

In terms of tone, "Drive Away Dolls" is more in line with the Coens' wackier output, namely "Raising Arizona" or "Burn After Reading," although in terms of quality it's more on the level of "The Ladykillers" or "Intolerable Cruelty." In other words, it's a lesser Coen Brother(s) joint. But while it doesn't rank highly in the overall incredible body of work from the Coens - and Joel's "Macbeth" adaptation was easily the superior solo project - it's not without its pleasures.

"Drive Away Dolls" is good for some laughs, and Qualley and Viswanathan make for a likable leading pair. Qualley is the more abrasive and outrageous character, while Viswanathan is the more buttoned-up one. It's a tried-and-true formula for a buddy comedy, but that element works well enough. As opposed to some of the Coens' best work - "Fargo," "No Country for Old Men," or "A Serious Man," for example - this breezy 84-minute movie is skin deep in comparison. But overall, it's an amusing - and bawdy - trifle. 

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Review: Bob Marley: One Love

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

There's an introduction to "Bob Marley: One Love" during which Ziggy Marley, fellow musician and son of Bob, notes that the film you are about to see depicting his father's life is authentic. While this may be the case and the filmmakers deserve credit for trying to capture the essence of their subject, authenticity does not necessarily make for a successful biopic.

So, while the film - directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green ("King Richard") - appears to accurately aim to capture the manner in which Bob; his wife, Rita (Lashana Lynch); and his fellow Wailers speak (in other words, there's no attempt to Anglicize the patois) and it's full of great music, there's something missing here. At the risk of a dumb joke, let's say the filmmakers fail to catch a fire.

The problem is not in the casting. As the titular musical legend, Kingsley Ben-Adir turns in a convincing performance, while Lynch is solid as Rita, although her character drops in and out of the action and is often used as a plot device for Bob - for example, when she's shot the band decides to flee Jamaica for England for a while, whereas the flashbacks involving a younger Bob and Rita exist to show how the band came together. 

The issue is also not with the film's style. The picture often looks great - there's some gorgeous cinematography - and it is filled with not only some of Marley's most well known songs ("Jamming" and "Exodus"), but also some fantastic, lesser-known gems ("Turn Your Lights Down Low" and "Natural Mystic").

One of the issues is the picture's framing device - Marley's return from England to Jamaica to perform a peace concert is meant to unite the island's warring political factions several years after an assassination attempt was made on his life. While the concert itself might have been an intriguing window into the musician's life, it instead is utilized in the manner that is so familiar to many biopics of this type - an excuse for Marley to flash back on his life while awaiting the performance. 

Secondly, the film also includes the biopic trope that has always been a bit exasperating: the concept that musicians just make up songs on the fly when someone utters a phrase or an object in their line of sight causes momentary inspiration. In this case, Marley sings "Three Little Birds" to his sons when trying to convince them that everything will be alright amid Jamaica's unrest and, worse, during a sequence in which he catches his band members listening to the score to the 1960 film "Exodus" and seemingly comes up with the rhythm, lyrics, and overall sound to that song instantaneously.

"Bob Marley: One Love" isn't a bad film. The two lead performances are good - although virtually every other character is a minor sketch - and the film's lush visual style adds something. And, of course, you'll find no complaints here about spending two hours listening to Marley's music. But the music biopics that stand out for me are the ones that do a little something different - consider the remarkable Bob Dylan film "I'm Not There" or the N.W.A. bio "Straight Outta Compton." In comparison, this film is mostly by-the-numbers.