Review: Kajillionaire

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

Miranda July is sort of the eccentric Donna Tartt of filmmaking - she makes a movie about once a decade and her work displays its own unique voice. Her debut feature, "Me and You and Everyone You Know," was a rightfully acclaimed low budget indie, but her follow up - "The Future" - was a sophomore slump, an oddball indie comedy trying too hard to be quirky.

Her latest, "Kajillionaire," is another exercise in low budget quirky indie filmmaking, but it has more to offer than her previous film, although it's not nearly as successful as her debut. The film opens with a low rent criminal couple - Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa (Debra Winger) - and their offbeat daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), whose name provides for the film's funniest running joke, in the midst of their latest scheme. Old Dolio sneaks into the post office, opens a locker, places her thin arm through and steals mail from adjoining lockers.

The trio is barely surviving - they sleep in an abandoned office space located next to a car wash - the suds leak through the walls and they catch them in buckets - and they are constantly trying to sneak by their landlord, to whom they owe several months worth of rent. After a scheme involving a trip to New York City fails to bring in instant money, Robert and Theresa connect with an affable, charming and good looking young woman named Melanie (Gina Rodriguez) on the flight back.

For some inexplicable reason, the couple invites the Puerto Rican woman in on their schemes, which doesn't exactly please Old Dolio, although she knows her parents will likely end up scamming the new partner anyway. Melanie contributes her own ideas. Her work involves visiting lonely elderly people, and she suggests stealing some small items from their homes that they might not miss.

At the center of the story is Old Dolio's many neuroses - mostly stemming from the fact that she doesn't know whether her parents love her as their child or merely see her as another partner in their criminal schemes. They always insist on splitting everything three ways in a matter of fact manner. Also, romantic feelings - occasionally reciprocated, other times one sided - develop between several characters, making matters more complicated.

"Kajillionaire" has its share of moments - occasionally funny, sometimes moving - but the film shares some of the problems with July's previous film, "The Future." It often feels as if it's trying too hard to be twee, even though it's closer in quality to "Me and You and Everyone We Know," and lays pretty hard on the quirky elements, especially Old Dolio's often erratic and bizarre behavior - a scene in which she displays ecstatic joy after an earthquake in a convenient store is, well, something.

I can't quite recommend the picture, although there are elements to like. There's good camaraderie among the cast, there are enough funny bits to keep it entertaining and Rodriguez gives a scene stealing performance as Melanie, who seems to stick with this motley crew because she could use the money, doesn't have many friends and doesn't have much else to do.

Wood has a more challenging performance as Old Dolio, a young woman who has been denied much human affection from her family and seems to be lost inside the oversized track suits she often dons and the long stringy hair that hides her face. It's the type of performance that could slip into self parody - and the screenplay occasionally threatens to do so - but Wood manages to keep it on track.

Ultimately, "Kajillionaire" feels a little too manufactured in its oddness, and an ending that is meant to be sweet comes off as unexpected and slightly random. But there are some elements here that work, so I'd describe July's third film as a flawed one, but of interest to fans of the director's work and those who enjoy offbeat narratives.

Review: Antebellum

Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

"Antebellum" is a stylish horror thriller with some intriguing ideas, but a major plot twist that completely changes the reality of the story is more faulty than it is clever, and while many of the film's concepts are timely in a very unsettling manner, they could have been put to better use than in a genre film of this type.

No doubt about it, "Antebellum" is great to look at - with its visual palettes, camera movements and art direction - and one has to give credit for its trying to give viewers something to chew on, even if it's in the service of a movie that relishes twists more than it does a political statement. Also, while it's great to see Gabourey Sibide in the first movie I recall seeing her in for a while, the amount of time spent with her character is... a little too much.

The film opens on a plantation, where a slave named Eden (Janelle Monae) is given somewhat preferential treatment due to the fact that she's forced to sleep with a vicious older Confederate general. She tells the other slaves on the plantation to keep their heads down and to bide their time. Meanwhile, Eden watches in horror as a young woman slave who attempts to flee is murdered in front of her husband. 

The plantation scenes are not surprisingly filled with abject cruelty - for example, a young pregnant slave is forced to spend time with a young Confederate who acts shyly, that is, until he gets her alone and is abusive and evil as the rest of the white soldiers or denizens of the plantation. There's also a particularly cruel overseer in the plantation's fields, and a white woman (Jena Malone) who lives with her family on the property and brings her daughter round to inspect new arrivals.

Then, something strange happens. We cut to the present, where Monae plays Veronica, a talking head type whose latest book on black women's struggles in America has led to her appearing on newscasts, where she debates MAGA types. At home, she has a husband and young daughter. She meets up for drinks with some old friends - including Sibide as the chatty one. 

Meanwhile, strange things are afoot - a young girl dressed in clothes from the past wanders around the hotel where Veronica is staying as part of her book tour. Malone pops back up - with an exaggerated southern accent - as a woman wanting to discuss Veronica's book, although Veronica finds her suspicious. Someone sends her flowers, but Veronica can't figure out who did it.

What exactly is going on, you might ask at this point? The question will soon be answered, and the plot twist, resembling one from an old M. Night Shyamalan movie, lands with a great big thud - not because you can't envision certain people involved in the twist wanting to do the things they do, but rather the fact that they're able to carry it off. 

There's a major issue with this twist - which I'm really trying to conceal here - in the manner that certain characters speak and behave. In the scenes before we know the twist, they do so in a way that is believable, given what we're led to believe. Later, when they speak and behave in a way more suited to the story as we've come to understand it, the film's earlier scenes become less believable. I know, that sounds really vague. But the film's big twist is one that, while I'm sure the filmmakers found it to be juicy, fails in execution.

Also, movies about slavery - much like films about concentration camps - are often difficult to witness because we know that things similar to the cruelty depicted onscreen actually occurred. Some genre films - "Django Unchained," for example - have successfully mingled exploitation tactics with historical horrors - perhaps, one of the reasons Tarantino's film worked so well was because it was cathartic to see a slave rise up and kill plantation owners. 

Maybe it's just this moment in time in our nation's history that makes it hard to watch the horrors of slavery provide a backdrop for a genre movie involving plot twists, thriller elements and creepy horror movie tropes. Perhaps it feels too much is at stake in real life for such horrors to be utilized for the sake of cheap thrills. 

Regardless, "Antebellum" is a handsomely made genre movie, and Monae does a good job of juggling a somewhat complex role. And, without giving too much away, there is catharsis in this film when we finally reach the point when the racist villains get their comeuppance. But while "Antebellum" has some elements that make it watchable, it feels disjointed.

Review: The Broken Hearts Gallery

Image courtesy of TriStar.

"The Broken Hearts Gallery" gave me low expectations in its early scenes with its overtly quirky hipster dialogue, but it eventually settles into being a somewhat charming - if not wholly believable - rom com with an agreeable lead character.

Geraldine Viswanathan plays Lucy, an assistant to a famous art gallery owner (played by Bernadette Peters) who wants to one day have a place of her own to exhibit art. But this dream plays second fiddle to her obsessing about ex's and her collection of memorabilia from previous failed relationships. Her two roommates - Nadine (Phillipa Soo) and Amanda (Molly Gordon) - find Lucy's collection to be slightly unsettling, but she sees the objects - from a rubber ducky to a bizarre-looking Barbie doll with frizzy hair - as being permanent in a way her relationships were not.

After being dumped by her latest boyfriend, Max (Utkarsh Ambudkar), whose ambition exceeds his empathy, she gets drunk and hops into a car she believes to be an Uber - it's not. This is the - to use a Roger Ebert phrase - "meet cute" she'll have with Nick (Dacre Montgomery), an affable guy who's in the middle of planning a boutique hotel in Manhattan.

After becoming friends with Nick, Lucy visits him at his hotel-in-progress. While there, she hangs a tie from her former beau on a nail on the wall and adds a description. An idea pops into her head: Why not create an exhibit completely of memorabilia from relationships gone bad? Hence, the film's title. Needless to say, she moves forward with the plan and Nick grudgingly agrees to let Lucy use space in his hotel - known as the Chloe - for the exhibit.

It may not surprise you to hear that "The Broken Hearts Gallery" is the type of film in which lowly assistants live in posh pads in Manhattan or that dreams can come true in a matter of weeks with just the right amount of pluck. There's even a scene in which a speech Lucy is giving to a group of people is interrupted by a "grand gesture" from Nick - which some might find to be an example of movies insisting that female characters emphasize their love lives before their careers. In other words, we're in standard rom com territory.

What makes Natalie Krinsky's film slightly more watchable than average examples of this genre is Viswanathan, whose never-ending, rapid fire delivery and Lucy's wear-your-quirks-on-your-sleeve personality eventually become endearing. The picture also pays a fair amount of attention to its supporting characters - from Lucy's roommates to Nick and his construction partner, Marcos (Arturo Castro), and Marcos's very pregnant wife - which is nice.

So, yes, "The Broken Hearts Gallery" often follows romantic comedy cliches - often to its detriment - and I can't exactly say the film is an overall success. But its leading lady, the supporting cast and a few good laughs and charming moments make it watchable enough.

Review: Nomad: In The Footsteps Of Bruce Chatwin

Image courtesy of Music Box Films.

It makes sense that legendary German director Werner Herzog and English travel writer Bruce Chatwin, who died in 1989 due to complications from AIDS, would have been friends. Herzog's work - from his epics about adventurers with mad visions ("Aguirre: The Wrath of God" and "Fitzcarraldo") to globe trotting documentaries that have taken him from Iraq to Alaska - has often been defined by a sense of restlessness and a penchant toward setting out into the great unknown in search of experience. 

Chatwin, quite the world traveler himself, produced work - novels and cultural studies - that would fit into Herzog's areas of interest. In fact, Herzog adapted one of Chatwin's works, "The Viceroy of Ouidah," into the 1987 film "Cobra Verde," which was the third film in which he'd directed cinema's great madman, Klaus Kinski, as a man traveling to a foreign locale and attempting to conquer it.

"Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin," Herzog's latest documentary, is a chronicle of Chatwin's life, but also specifically a story about the duo's friendship, and how Chatwin's travels inspired Herzog to follow in his footsteps to such places as South America and Australia. Utilizing some gorgeous drone footage, "Nomad" is a travelogue documentary in which Herzog honors his friend by keeping his mythos alive, but also introducing audiences to his work and the fascinating places and cultures it portrayed.

Two of Chatwin's works, "In Patagonia" and "The Songlines," draw much of the film's focus. In the former, Chatwin was inspired by what he believed to be a piece of brontosaurus skin - it turned out to be a giant sloth - to travel to the region where it was found. Chatwin's fascination with the skin and even some feces from the animal that have been preserved displays the writer's ability to transform something mundane into a storytelling device and open worlds of possibility for those with the knack for travel and history.

Herzog is obviously fascinated by "The Songlines," which interestingly enough tells of how some Aboriginals in Australia use songs - rather than maps - and other mnemonics for travel. Perhaps, as a filmmaker, Herzog is captivated by the concept of storytelling and art as a means to get people from point A to point B - even from birth to death - in their own journey.

Some might consider "Nomad" to be a smaller - or more minor, if you will - Herzog documentary, especially when faced with such a masterpiece as "Grizzly Man," something so topical as "Lessons of Darkness" or a film on life or death matters like "Into the Abyss." That may be so, but it's still often spellbinding and gorgeous to look at. 

Many people have suffered through slide shows of travel photos from friends or family - but in the case of "Nomad," the story being told, the journey being described and the places being chronicled are often mesmerizing. This is one of the year's better documentaries.

Review: I'm Thinking Of Ending Things

Image courtesy of Netflix.

"It's good to remind yourself that the world is larger than the inside of your own head," says a character in Charlie Kaufman's equally fascinating and maddening new film, "I'm Thinking of Ending Things," based on the novel of the same name by Iain Reid. But by the end of the picture, one might ask oneself whether that's true at all. What's to say that one's interior life - or a fantasy one concocts and makes true in one's own mind - isn't any more real than the, as one character puts it, "objective reality" we all face day to day. Or, as Keanu once put it, "whoa." 

The film often plays like a horror movie, even though it's not exactly that, and it doesn't reveal itself until its final moments, although I was able to figure out what was going on fairly early in the film. That didn't ruin any surprises for me because part of the pleasure - and frustration - with Kaufman's third film as a director is figuring out how everything will be pieced together - sort of.

The film opens with a 20-minute sequence during which a young woman (Jessie Buckley), whose name is occasionally Yvonne and sometimes Lucy and later Amy, travels through a snowy winter landscape with her boyfriend, Jake (Jesse Plemons), on the way to meet his parents - played by Toni Collette and David Thewlis - who live on a farm in Oklahoma. At one juncture, she ponders why a brand new swing set is sitting in the yard of an abandoned house.

While en route to the farm, Lucy (or Yvonne or Amy) thinks to herself that she might dump Jake - "I'm thinking of ending things," she says to herself - and it's almost as if Jake can read her thoughts. Are the thoughts Yvonne (or Lucy or Amy) is thinking her own - or did someone put them in her head? 

During one of the many discussions between the young woman and Jake - which cover everything from David Foster Wallace and Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" to the use of the word "wow" and whether "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is "rapey," but also include an odd sequence in which Yvonne (or Lucy or Amy) regurgitates Pauline Kael's review of the John Cassavetes film "A Woman Under the Influence" and passes it off as her own thoughts - the concept is brought up that every person is many people. In other words, our own personalities are made up of other's opinions. When we argue about the quality of, say, a book or movie, we often pass other's thoughts or arguments off as our own. Where do all of the movies, books, theories, political positions, art works and music that influence us end and where do we actually begin?

Once we arrive at the farmhouse where Jake grew up, we are firmly in David Lynch territory. After Jake regales the young woman with a disconcerting story about a pig infested with maggots and she notices a series of scratches on the door leading to the basement - which Jake seemingly doesn't want her to enter - we finally meet his parents, who strangely get younger and age rapidly as the night wears on. Collette takes her performance from "Hereditary" one step further, continually breaking into uncomfortably long and forced laughs, while Thewlis repeats stories over and over.

After Yvonne (or Lucy or Amy, sometimes referred to as "Ames") convinces Jake to head back home - it is, after all, snowing heavily outside - they take part in another long conversation behind the wheel, this one seemingly more bleak and dour than the one at the beginning. They stop at a small ice cream parlor, where the young women attending the counter behave strangely, and then finally arrive at Jake's old high school, where he claims he wants to get rid of the cups holding the ice cream, which are dripping on his car.

By the way, I haven't yet mentioned that throughout these entire proceedings, we continually cut back to a lonesome looking janitor, who sweeps the floors of a high school and occasionally sits mournfully in front of the TV - during one particular oddball moment, he watches an absurd rom com that culminates with the credit sequence "Directed by Robert Zemeckis." Later in the film, the acceptance speech from "A Beautiful Mind" is regurgitated and there are several scenes in which songs from the musical "Oklahoma!" are performed.

What in the hell, you may ask, is going on? Eventually, we find out - although, as I'd mentioned, my guess about the janitor's purpose proved to be correct - and the finale gives perspective to the entire endeavor. Kaufman has long been considered one of filmdom's most creative - and unique - screenwriters. His screenplays include the brilliant "Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." In all three instances, his words were utilized by filmmakers with vision.

His directorial work has been a little less successful, although there are many who'd disagree with me. Many found "Synechdoche, NY" to be brilliant, but after two tries I could merely appreciate its vision, without actually finding myself that moved by it. "Anomalisa" was better, but still not as great as the films adapted from his screenplays.

"I'm Thinking of Ending Things" is, at least in my opinion, his best directorial work yet. At times, it feels a little overlong, and its finale - which is supposed to be its emotional crescendo - disappointed me, although I could appreciate what it was trying to do. For me, it was a matter of execution failing a good idea. That being said, the film gave me much to chew on - certainly more than can be expressed in the form of a relatively short review like this one. "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" is a challenging movie, and one that is sure to put many people off. But appreciators of surrealism and films that challenge one's notions of self and time, while playing with themes of regret and the influence of art, might be fascinated by this movie.

Review: Tenet

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

Considered to be the movie that could finally draw moviegoers back to theaters after a five-and-a-half month shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" is likely to leave those who venture out to see it scratching their heads. This should come as no surprise, considering that Nolan is responsible for the brilliant mind-bender "Memento" and the brain teaser "Inception," but his latest, while visually gorgeous, has more diminishing returns.

Let me reiterate: "Tenet" is often great to look at - it has some beautiful camerawork and stunning special effects, especially those portraying a world moving backwards. But the film is often more confusing than intriguing and its time-traveling plot involving an attempt to steal pieces of a weapon and the algorithm to enable a world-ending device feels pretty rote when you attempt to explain it in a linear fashion.

The film opens with a stunning action sequence during which an individual known merely as The Protagonist (John David Washington) and a SWAT team prevent a kidnapping at the symphony in Kiev, only to find himself taken hostage by the terrorist organization that attempted to carry out the plot. The Protagonist takes a cyanide pill, but rather than dying finds himself in a hospital, where an intelligence officer (Martin Donovan) explains that the pill was merely a test, and that The Protagonist is being considered for a vital mission.

That mission involves attempting to pass off a fake Goya to an art dealer (played by Elizabeth Debicki), who is married to a ruthless Russian arms dealer (Kenneth Branagh) who might be in possession of some material that enables time to move backwards. He is given one example of a bullet that possesses "reverse radiation," and watches as it moves backward instead of forward. The Protagonist is partnered with a mysterious man named Neil ( a suave Robert Pattinson), who helps him with his mission.

The Protagonist is told that a battle is playing out in the future, and elements that will allow for the annihilation of the world have been buried in the past, so his mission is to ensure these elements are removed from the wrong hands - Branagh's Russian gangster and his minions - and hidden to ensure they do not endanger mankind.

Although previous Nolan films have drawn some criticism regarding the possibility of their heady themes, the much better "Interstellar" was, in fact, vetted by physicists, whereas "Tenet" appears to aim to confuse its audience to the point that questioning its concepts seems futile. I've tried explaining the story in this review, but there's no doubt I've barely skimmed its surface. The problem is that no matter how much deeper you dig, I'm not sure there's much enlightenment to be found.

That being said, the film has its share of impressive visuals and action sequences - the symphony attack and a chase scene on a highway are among the best - and there are a few moments when the past and the future click into place - for example, a phone call placed for the sake of "posterity" and a fight scene that is repeated twice, but with the second time providing more context.

But all in all, "Tenet" is one of Nolan's weaker films. At his best - "Memento" and "Dunkirk," for example - Nolan is one of big budget filmmaking's most consistently intriguing storytellers. This time around, however, it feels as if he's bitten off more than he can chew. The film can be engrossing, but it's ultimately an example of too much going on at the service of too little payoff.