Review: The Vast Of Night

Image courtesy of Amazon.

Andrew Patterson's inventive, low-budget sci-fi yarn "The Vast of Night" is one of the year's great discoveries. My only gripe is that I haven't had the chance to catch it on the big screen (thanks a lot, coronavirus).

Set in the center of UFO sightings - a small town in New Mexico circa late 1950s - the picture does a great job of creating a sense of community in the fictional town of Cayuga, although the picture is primarily a two-person show with two fantastic supporting roles that exist to move the film's brisk story forward.

The film opens with a high school basketball game about to start - the fans are in the stands or eating food in their cars before the game and the players are warming up. Inside the stadium, a local radio disc jockey named Everett (Jake Horowitz) is attempting to help out with a problem involving flickering lights. A mixup involving his name provides one of the film's heartier chuckles.

As he's about to leave to head back to the radio station where he hosts "Highway Hits," an evening broadcast with a self-described audience of five, he's accompanied by Fay (Sierra McCormick), who operates the town's switchboard. Fay is a science junkie, and she regales him with predictions for the future that she's read about in various magazines. He shows her how to use a piece of recording equipment to carry out interviews.

For the first 15 minutes or so of the film, their conversation is held in a long shot as they walk through the dark streets of their small town toward their respective places of work. The effect is aimed at slightly distancing us from the characters - another such effect is portraying the entire movie as an episode of a "Twilight Zone" type of television show that kicks off in black and white through a TV screen.

But we soon get better glimpses of the characters, especially Fay, during a terrific 10-minute close up of her operating the town's switchboard and dealing with various people on the line. During this sequence, she notices a strange noise interrupting Everett's radio show at a station known as WOTW (could that possibly stand for "War of the Worlds"?). She calls him, and the two begin playing detective.

After playing the noise over the airwaves, they get the first of two calls that will set the course for the rest of the story. A man named Billy calls to tell them a story about how he once worked on a top secret project in the desert years before when he was in the military. In one of the film's most poignant scenes, Billy says that the military felt safe with him knowing about the project because - since he's black - no one would believe him if he spilled the beans.

The second call to the station is from an elderly woman with a creepy story to tell - and a visit to her house is among the picture's more unnerving scenes. For a sci-fi movie about a possible alien invasion, I found it fascinating that two of the best set pieces in the picture involved long stretches of conversation - one in which the screen occasionally fades to black for periods of time - rather than special effects (although there are a few of those too near the end).

The film's piece de resistance is an incredible tracking shot that begins at Fay's switchboard office, travels through the streets of the town, a field, a parking lot, through the stadium where the basketball game is being played, out the window, back out onto the road and winds up at WOTW. The sequence is an amazing visual representation of how information can spread across a town, and it's impressive that such a shot could be pulled off successfully in a debut film.

"The Vast of Night" isn't just one of the best science fiction thrillers I've seen in a while, it's one of the best movies I've seen this year so far, period. Its two leads are both very good and do a convincing job of carrying off the snappy, 1950s lingo, all the while making their characters sympathetic and a pleasure to be around. The film is also suspenseful and Patterson has learned a great lesson from the best examples of the genre - that withholding can often make a good story into a great movie. It's what we don't see in "The Vast of Night" that makes it even more compelling. This is an impressive and very enjoyable first feature.

Review: The Lovebirds

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae make for nice company and have good chemistry in the new comedy "The Lovebirds," which was originally slated for theatrical release earlier this year and since picked up by Netflix, so it's a shame that the film feels like a missed opportunity. The duo does a nice job of creating the vibe of two people who make for good hangout pals, but come to grow tired of each other while dealing with the realities of romantic relationships and living with someone else.

This chemistry between the pair finds itself dropped into a silly story in which the couple - Jibran (Nanjiani), a documentary filmmaker who is sensitive about his work, and Leilani (Rae), an advertising executive - witnesses the murder of a guy on a bike when a mustachioed man commandeers their car and runs over him, and then the couple freaks out and flees from the scene, thinking they are the police's prime suspects in the murder.

Jibran and Leilani attempt to do the thing that only people in movies do - crack the case themselves. This leads them to break into a frat house, where they are led to believe the murderer has some connection with its inhabitants. Prior to that, they get taken captive by a woman who offers them their choice of torture - hot grease to the face or being kicked in the chest by a horse. Late in the film, they end up at a ritualistic orgy that looks like lost footage from "Eyes Wide Shut."

Nanjiani and Rae make the material watchable because they are both likable and funny, but the material just isn't that good to begin with. Nanjiani proved himself an actor worthy of funny line readings, but also pathos, in the acclaimed "The Big Sick," while Rae recently impressed in the romantic drama "The Photograph." In each case, the actors were given more to do than try to sell somewhat stale comedy gags as they are forced to do here.

One of the few funny jokes that lands is their being seen by all who come across them as the annoying couple that argues - and their constant squabbling over nonsense (such as details surrounding the TV show "The Amazing Race," for instance) is relatable because you feel like you've come across such a couple in your own experience. I laughed a few other times during "The Lovebirds," but not nearly enough considering the talent involved. It's not a bad movie - just a mostly forgettable comedy of the type that Hollywood cranks out multiple times per year.

Review: Capone

Image courtesy of Vertical Entertainment.

I'll say this for Josh Trank's "Capone" - despite its flaws, the film keeps one's attention at all times. To answer the question: yes, the film is as outlandish and over-the-top as you might have heard - but no, it's not quite as bad. Which is not to say that it's good either.

Tom Hardy gives the type of oddball performance that only someone great like Marlon Brando could have provided - one that involves a fair amount of hamming it up, but completely committed to the role and operating on its own wavelength.

For those who are expecting - or hoping for - a biopic of America's most notorious gangster, disappointment might be the instant reaction. The picture is set during the final year of Al Capone's life, and he has been released from prison to rot away in his gaudy mansion in Florida, while the ghosts of his past haunt him and his body degenerates from neurosyphilis and dementia. More of a phantasmagoria that has more in common with, say, "The Shining" than "The Untouchables," Trank's film is a slowly paced, but often deliriously strange, chronicle of one man's descent into madness and decay.

Throughout the course of the film, Hardy's Capone mostly communicates by blurting out "eh" to questions from the concerned family members, who refer to him as "Fonse" and don't know how to handle his falling apart at the seams. A man played by Matt Dillon appears to question Capone about $10 million that he apparently hid away somewhere - although he's forgotten the location due to his decline in health - but we later question exactly who the Dillon character is.

Lawmen listen in to Capone's conversations via wire, and a doctor played by Kyle MacLachlan, who also has his own schemes planned, also attempt to get information from Capone, but with little luck. Fonse's patient wife (Linda Cardellini) and son are frustrated at their incapacity to help Capone as he wastes away.

The film is filled with nutty moments - Capone shoots an alligator that steals a fish he's caught on a line, a possible dream sequence in which he shoots a gold-plated tommy gun at family and friends is especially jarring and another moment during which Fonse leaves the house incognito in women's clothing has to be seen to be believed.

All the while, Hardy rasps, mutters and looks like a half-dead zombie in his kooky - but energetic - portrayal of Capone. In fact, the actor - and the gorgeous photography - are really the main reason the film remains mostly watchable. I'm not sure what Trank, who also wrote the script, is trying to convey in this film - it's somewhat without a purpose - and it's unclear whether it's over-the-top vibe is intentional or accidental.

All in all, "Capone" is sort of a mess - but a good looking one with a compelling lead performance. I can't exactly recommend it, but it's occasionally transfixing.

Review: Valley Girl

Image courtesy of MGM.

Martha Coolidge's 1983 cult hit "Valley Girl" was a surprisingly sweet teen movie that was sensitively written, featured a fantastic soundtrack and included a great early performance from Nicolas Cage. The new - well, sort of, considering the film has been shelved for two years - jukebox remake of "Valley Girl" has taken all the wrong lessons from Coolidge's original film.

The 1983 picture featured satirical elements and boasted a punk-rock attitude, whereas this new version - which basically tells the same story, but with musical numbers - is more sanitized and glitzy. It's one of those movies that takes every element of what make cheesy movies from the 1980s charming and over-stylizes them in a way that makes them feel grating.

The film starts with a young woman in the modern era arriving home late at night to be greeted by her mother (Alicia Silverstone), who regales her with a story from her own youth in which she was a - you guessed it - valley girl in the 1980s. Julie Richman (Jessica Gothe) utilizes "omigod" and "like" in typical San-Fernando-circa-mid-80s fashion, but she's slightly smarter than most of the rest of her crowd.

She has a dopey jock boyfriend (played by controversial web presence Logan Paul) and a group of young women with whom she pals around - mostly at the mall. At the beach one day, she meets a punk rocker named Randy (Josh Whitehouse), and he and his two bandmates - a spiky-haired drummer and a guitarist played by Mae Whitman - show up at a party where Julie is attending later that night.

Julie and Randy hit it off, she ditches the dopey boyfriend and her valley friends don't seem to know what to make of the situation. In Coolidge's original version, some actual drama was drawn from the scenario. Here, it's used as an excuse for the cast to break out into a variety of '80s radio hits - such as "You Might Think," "Take On Me" and "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."

Despite the abundance of sing-a-long classics, the film attempts to replace actual storytelling with decades-old lyrics that are supposed to stand in for what the film's characters are thinking. Yes, I know that's what a typical musical often does - but in this case, it's stealing old songs and trying to repurpose into a story, and it rarely works.

Also, "Valley Girl" nearly follows Coolidge's original film beat-for-beat in terms of plot, right down to the limo sequence at the end. The 1983 film is a real charmer - this new version opens with "We Got the Beat," but rarely does the film actually do so. This remake is a case in point for the phrase "leave well enough alone."

Review: Liberte

Image courtesy of The Cinema Guild.

It's somewhat of a surprise that Albert Serra's squalid new film "Liberte" doesn't end with someone shouting "the aristocrats!" In the case of this particular picture, it would have made sense on multiple levels. While Serra's intentionally torpid earlier features - the much better "Story of My Death" and "The Death of Louis XIV" - managed to entrance despite their slugging pacing, his latest feels punishingly so, especially considering the fact that it's a two-hour-plus chronicle of degenerate behavior.

The film displays the exploits of a group of exiled - you guessed it - aristocrats who have been banished from the court of Louis XVI, and take to the woods for an evening of behavior that could best be described as a libidinous theater of cruelty. As the film opens, one of them tells a carriage carrying several others of how he witnessed a horrific public execution in which a person was pulled apart by four horses, but also with the assistance of several men with knives who had to cut away some of the limbs. The aristocrat then goes on to mention the group's "vision," which requires some "defending."

Although the photography in "Liberte" - which has less to do with liberty than libertines - is often lush, it merely serves as a backdrop for sequences that are fairly ugly. Serra might have been inspired here by Pier Paolo Pasolini's notorious "Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom" - another film about a group of fascist aristocratic types celebrating their final days in power by torturing the young and attractive - but his vision is lacking the inspiration displayed in that film.

While "Salo," with its blunt and cold approach, is an often masterful vision of horror, "Liberte" is merely a plodding bore featuring some partially clothed French actors engaging in all manner of grotesque behavior, much of which I do not intend to describe here, although it includes numerous bodily fluids, an amputated arm and some ridiculously over-the-top sequences of characters talking dirty to one another.

The political implications of the picture seem too easy, whereas the concept of a moviegoer being little more than a voyeur could be of a little more substance - that is, if it seemed remotely possible that anyone would want to spy on this group of people and the activities in which they engage.

Although the film features its own share of voyeurs - characters lurk in the woods, watching the others take part in their follies - what's displayed in "Liberte" is unquestionably unpleasing to the eye. Serra often displays visual mastery in his works - but this time, there's little reward for one's patience. Rarely has debauchery been such an icky snooze.