Review: The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent

Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

It may not end up being quite the ingenious meta exercise that it appears to promise, but "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" more than makes up for that by the fact that it's charming and consistently very funny. While the picture may not be a philosophical mindbender like "Being John Malkovich," Cage's game performance and the film's freewheeling spirit go a long way in making up for a lack of pointed commentary.

In the film, Cage plays what I'd expect is a slightly more exaggerated version of himself. Once one of Hollywood's biggest stars, he has been reduced to starring in mostly B pictures in which he contributes often strong - see "Mandy" or the especially surprising "Pig" from last year - performances in low-budget pictures. His portrayals are also, as those familiar with the actor's work know, a bit over the top.

There's a funny scene early on in which Cage is meeting with a producer to discuss his possible role in a dream project. In the parking lot of the restaurant where they're eating, he basically forces the producer to listen to his excitable audition of the character he wants to play. 

So, while Cage is working steadily - seemingly in order to pay off debts he has accrued - he's not getting the parts he wants. On occasion, he has conversations with a de-aged CGI version of himself - whose pep talks include a hilarious shouting of his name - who reminds him that, to paraphrase LL Cool J, he doesn't need a comeback because he's been there for years.

His home life isn't much better. His ex-wife (Sharon Horgan) seems to tolerate him, but lambasts him for not being present for their teenage daughter, Addy (Lily Mo Sheen). There are some very funny scenes in which Cage tries to explain to a family counselor why he forced his daughter to watch the 1921 classic "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," which he ranks among his favorite films, and a birthday party visit that goes awry.

Desperate for work after he doesn't get the gig for the movie for which he'd auditioned, he agrees to spend a weekend at a rich Spanish man's home in Mallorca for a birthday party. The man - Javi (Pedro Pascal) - is apparently a huge Cage fan, and hopes to use the weekend as an excuse to slip the actor a script he wrote. One of the running jokes is that some of Cage's films that flopped - for example, "Guarding Tess" or "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" - are held up as sacred texts by Javi, and Cage in all seriousness delves into the psychology of playing the characters in those movies.

I don't want to go too much further into the film's plot, but suffice it to say that two CIA agents - Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz - have been watching Javi's actions for some time, believing that he is the head of a cartel who has kidnapped the daughter of a political rival, and they enlist Cage to become a spy during his weekend at Javi's lavish home.

The picture eventually becomes an action film of the type Cage might have been associated with during the 1990s - "The Rock," "Con Air" and "Gone in 60 Seconds" all get referenced here - but it always keeps its comedic spirit intact. There are some big laughs to be found here - my favorite two are a forced laugh out of paranoia following a drug intake, and a running joke involving the film "Paddington 2."

And what makes all of this work is that Cage is a great sport about all of this. He's a very good actor - and his performance here, despite all of the silliness, is impressive - who has long been in on the joke that some of the lower budget films in which he has starred aren't worthy of his talents. When he overacts, there's a knowingness to it. 

The film's biggest surprise is its sweetness, whether it's the friendship that blossoms between Cage and Javi, or the dealings with Cage's increasingly estranged family. In the film, Cage is itching for a comeback - although he has given some impressive performances in recent years, namely "Mandy and "Pig" - and by the end of the picture, we hope he gets one.

Review: The Northman

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

 

Imagine "Hamlet" filtered through early 1980s heavy metal and you'll get a sense of what to expect from Robert Eggers' grim, often masterfully shot and somewhat thematically simplistic "The Northman," which is apparently based on a folk tale that went on to inspire the Bard's most famous play.

With just three films, Eggers has proven himself to be a meticulous researcher whose exacting period horror films included semi-realist stories with psychotronic imagery. His latest, while arguably his most accessible, is his least inventive, although that doesn't mean audiences won't get a fair amount of mileage from its unyielding batshit craziness.

Death doesn't just stalk the film's characters - it's ever-present, whether we're talking about the ridiculous amount of beheadings that take place throughout the picture, noses being bitten off, the unrepentant slaughter of women and children and even a nude fight to the death on an active volcano. Loud grunting among the film's viking warriors punctuate the nonstop carnage.

Eggers' first picture was the creepy colonial folk tale "The Witch," while his second - and my favorite of the three films - was the trippy 19th century freakout "The Lighthouse," which was complete with cinema's most absurd masturbation scene and a Promethean ending. 

His latest is to be admired for the sheer artistry involved. Despite all of the grime and gore, "The Northman" is often gorgeous to look at, from the transfixing rite of passage between the doomed king (Ethan Hawke) and his young son (portrayed by Oscar Novak) with a sorcerer (Willem Dafoe) to the rolling hills where the second half's action primarily takes place.

In the film, young Amleth observes his father, King Aurvandil, being killed by his uncle, Fjolnir (Claes Bang), and his mother, Queen Gudrun (Nicole Kidman), being carried off by the traitor. Amleth vows revenge - in fact, he repeats over and over, "I will avenge you father, I will save you mother, I will kill Fjolnir."

Some years later, Amleth (now played by Alexander Skarsgard) is a brutal warrior traveling with a pack of vikings who loot and plunder villages with no mind for the collateral damage involved. When he gets wind that Fjolinr lost his kingdom to another ruler, and that he has relocated with his family and servants to a nearby area, Amleth decides to pay a visit and, well, kill everyone.

In the process, he meets a female slave named Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy) who appears to be some sort of seer - another visit with such a type during the film is memorable in that it involves the first onscreen appearance by the singer Bjork in some time. The two become partners in a plot to escape, but they first hatch a plan to be taken on as slaves to Fjolinr, who doesn't recognize his beefed up nephew.

If you're aware of the story of "Hamlet," then you have a pretty good idea where this is all going, despite the bludgeoning factor being turned up to 11 in this particular telling of the tale. It's a little difficult to judge the performances because, at least in the case of Skarsgard's character, there's little in the way of emoting. Men grunt and shout ritualistic chants as they amp themselves up for battle. Other characters speak more cryptically. During a father-son ritual early in the picture, the means of communication are farting and burping.

But what "The Northman" might lack in storytelling and character development, it nearly makes up for in aesthetically impressive brute force and astounding visuals. The film might be my least favorite of Eggers' three feature films thus far, but it's still pretty engrossing. And while it may not be the most introspective version of "Hamlet," it's certainly the most berserk.

Review: Choose Or Die

Image courtesy of Netflix.

At one point during Netflix's relatively brief new horror movie, "Choose or Die," a character confronted by a villainous individual blasphemes the 1980s after being told that said villainous individual collects memorabilia from that decade. The character doing the blaspheming - Kayla (Iola Evans) - may feel that way, but director Toby Meakins' film clearly does not.

Teeming with '80s callbacks - "A Nightmare on Elm Street" poster on a wall and video game graphics that appear straight out of that era - the film is obviously trying to recreate a "Brainscan" or "Ghost in the Machine" type of throwback horror movie. Robert Englund even pops up - but in voice only - as the narrator to the titular computer game that lures its victims in and forces them to take part in dangerous games of choice.

The setup is on the no-frills end of the spectrum. The picture opens with an '80s memorabilia lover (played by Eddie Marsan, in a delectably disturbed recurring cameo) who gets sucked into the game, which forces him to choose during the picture's opening sequence involving his wife squabbling with their son between having her ears or the boy's tongue removed. Ick.

We then cut to Kayla, whose character has some relatively vague traumas of the past, including a drowned younger brother and a mother (Angela Griffin) who is addicted to drugs and at the mercy of a sleazy dealer (Ryan Gage), who makes unpleasant sexual advances toward Kayla.

Kayla's best pal is Isaac (Asa Butterfield), who not-so-secretly likes her, and he is enlisted to help her once she stumbles upon the game Choose or Die, her intro being a scene at a diner in which she must make a choice that results in a perky waitress there being forced to munch on glass. Ick, again.

Once we finally get to the sequence late in the film when Kayla and Isaac's snooping leads to some discovery, the explanation for how the deadly game came to exist is, well, somewhat nonsensical. Thankfully, it is followed by the film's demented finale - its piece de resistance - in which Kayla meets up with Marsan's character at a dining room table sequence that has to be seen to be believed. The sequence slightly lifts the picture from the dreary doldrums in which it had existed during the previous hour.

But alas, it's not enough. "Choose or Die" may have a memorable ending, but the journey there is mostly generic, short on inspiration (a sequence in which Kayla fights off her drowned younger brother in an empty swimming pool is particularly unnecessary) and lacking adequate explanation for its story. 

The film often feels as if it's making the story up as it goes along. The picture's villainous video game forces its unwilling participants to choose between two bad choices, and the irony is that the film itself is mostly one poor choice after another.

Review: Everything Everywhere All At Once

Image courtesy of A2.

While maybe not every moment in "Everything Everywhere All At Once" felt completely necessary - at nearly two hours and 15 minutes, there is a bit of a lag during the film's middle section - it's still a wildly inventive action-comedy-sci-fi-family-drama, and the one multiverse movie of late you shouldn't miss (in all fairness, I still haven't found time to watch the other one).

Trying to describe the story of this latest film from Daniels - the directorial team of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who were also responsible for "Swiss Army Man," AKA the farting corpse movie, of which I was not particularly a fan - is possibly a fool's errand. There's a lot going on, and trying to make sense of it in the context of a review might be not worth the effort.

But let's suffice it to say that, at least to an extent, the film is a story about a fractured family - including Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh, who's quite good here), a tired laundromat owner who is married to Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), an affable man who is plotting how to hand over divorce papers to his wife, and has a daughter named Joy (Stephanie Hsu), who's anything but, and has a girlfriend who she's afraid to introduce to her somewhat conservative family.

At the beginning, Evelyn is planning a birthday party for her aging father, Gong Gong (James Hong), who's made no mystery of the fact that he's disappointed with his daughter. But first, the family makes their way to a meeting with grouchy IRS agent Diedre (Jamie Lee Curtis), who basically tells them that they're screwed unless they quickly get their financial affairs in order.

But a curious thing happens. On an elevator, Evelyn is told by a version - and I can't go into much further detail about what I mean here - of her husband, who gives her a secret about finding a multiverse that exists and, in which, she has led varied lives in numerous realities - and in some of which she's a badass kung fu expert. She, much like Neo in "The Matrix," is some sort of chosen one who must stop a nefarious character - who it turns out is one of the numerous variations of her own daughter - from destroying all the multiple universes.

Or something like that. It's best not to get too caught up in trying to keep up with the story in "Everything Everywhere All At Once." Just find amusement in the various tidbits - which include a chef whose mastery is derived from the raccoon hiding under his chef's hat, or the multiple versions of violent Diedre across the multiverse, or a universe where everyone has hotdogs for fingers, or - the best of the bunch - a universe where human life cannot be sustained, so Evelyn and Joy have been reduced to a pair of talking rocks overlooking a cliff.

The picture exists in that small category of movies like "Being John Malkovich" in which no explanation you'll give could likely sell it to someone you're trying to convince to watch it. Instead, they'll just have to trust your oddball tastes and go along for the ride. And what a ride it is. While the film's first half is amusing and well enough crafted, it's not until the second half when it really kicks in. 

And aside from all the off-the-wall jokes - among which is a pretty funny fight scene involving a woman and her pet dog - there's some genuine emotional involvement to be found. At its heart, "Everything Everywhere All At Once" is a story about a family struggling to hold it together. When the film goes from loony antics to a surprisingly emotional series of scenes at its end, it actually feels earned. 

So, while the film isn't exactly perfect - some of the kooky comedy sequences in the film veer a little too close to being twee - it's a wholly original work with some fine performances, a unique visual style and an emotional punch you might not see coming. Those who enjoy the cinema of the peculiar might consider this one to be a veritable feast.

Review: Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood

Image courtesy of Netflix.

A good natured and nostalgic memory piece - sort of similar to a Terence Davies film or Woody Allen's "Radio Days," but animated, set in the late 1960s and populated mostly by young people - "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood" is partially a typical Richard Linklater picture - a hangout movie filled with needle drops and aimless young people; and also rotoscoped, an animation style the director previously utilized with the dreamy fantasia "Waking Life" and the sci-fi drama "A Scanner Darkly" - but also a science fiction fantasy that most likely takes place in its lead character's head.

I say most likely because although the film's finest scenes involve Jack Black narrating the story of a young boy's youth in 1969 Houston, and including incredible layers of detail on everything from the second-rate TV shows the kids watch in the film to the popular snacks or automobiles of the time and, of course, the music, the film's other plotline involves young hero and narrator Stan being chosen by NASA to take part in a test run to the moon prior to the actual July 1969 landing.

The film plays this plotline straightforward, so it's really up to the viewer to determine whether it's all supposed to take place in Stan's imagination or whether we're supposed to extend our disbelief that the boy is picked by two government agents because NASA must first send up a smaller craft to the moon for the test run, and only a child would fit into it. 

The film leads with this storyline, but does a freeze frame - and an almost literal "you might wonder how I got into this situation" piece of narration - and flashes back about a year prior to Stan's trip to the moon. These flashbacks encompass at least half - if not more - of the film, and they are the most delightful. 

In the style of a typical Linklater film, the scenes are almost free-form in terms of narrative. We learn that Stan's father is a paper pusher at NASA, and that his five siblings are all more accomplished or cool in various ways than Stan.

The level of detail about what it must have been like growing up in Houston in the late 1960s is meticulous. Stan seemingly consumes every available bit of the culture, from episodes of "Dark Shadows" and B-level movies - such as "The Frozen Dead" or early Robert Altman effort "Countdown" - to interviews on TV with Janis Joplin and trips to Baskin Robbins, where his sister works and hands out free ice cream to her siblings. 

There are iconic images we've all seen before - troops in Vietnam carrying their wounded out of the jungle to assassinations and clips from famous movies, such as "2001: A Space Odyssey," that give off a dreamy vibe as they are presented in a rotoscoped animated style.

There's a breezy style to these early scenes, and while it's slightly missed when the plot thread involving Stan's training with NASA kicks in, it helps to set a tone that it comes around to again at the end during the moon landing and Stan's family's viewing of it. The picture captures the excitement of the landmark moment, although Stan mostly sleeps through it due to extracurricular activities that stole his energy during the course of that day.

It's almost a throwaway line, but there's a great one late in the film as Stan's parents put him to bed after he drifted in and out of consciousness as the rest of the family watched Neil Armstrong take one giant leap for mankind. Stan's father is disappointed that his son missed the incredible moment that he played a small role in his job at NASA in bringing to fruition, but his mother relays a wise comment: "You know how memory works. Even if he was asleep, he'll someday think he saw it all."

And that's the tone set early on in "Apollo 10 1/2" - that of a lovely dream with snippets of memory filling in for narrative, and the hazy splicing together of pieces of music, news clips, scenes from movies, glimpses of childhood in moments that made great impressions - such as the manner in which some tough neighborhood kids managed to rip off the local arcade - and other fragments of images that we store in our brains and later reflect upon as pivotal moments. Whether everything occurred the way we remember it is beside the point.

Many of Linklater's best films - "Boyhood" and the "Before" films - play with the concept of time, so this one's views on the limitations of memory, which are informed by the passage of time and our dreams and imagination, fit in nicely with his overall body of work. "Apollo 10 1/2" may not be as revelatory as "Boyhood," and while the dreamlike nature of "Waking Life" is hard to replicate (especially for a third film using rotoscope animation), his latest is an obviously personal picture that is often a joy to behold.