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.

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. 

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.

Review: Lisa Frankenstein

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

Zelda Williams' "Lisa Frankenstein" - which was penned by screenwriter Diablo Cody ("Juno" and "Jennifer's Body") - is a mostly unsuccessful attempt to capture the vibe of the early work of Tim Burton, namely "Beetlejuice" and "Edward Scissorhands." It's morbid and has a few laughs, but all adds up to a horror comedy that is missing the spark to make it spring to life.

The film follows the story of Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton), a goth-clad girl who has come to live with her inattentive father (Joe Chrest), her horror show of a stepmother (Carla Gugino), and her popular - but well-intentioned - stepsister, Taffy (Liza Soberano) in the wake of her own mother being murdered by a madman during a home invasion that only Lisa survived, a plot strand that is curiously undercooked and seemingly unnecessary.

Lisa is not particularly popular at her new school, and has a crush on the head of the school's literary magazine (Henry Eikenberry). But she spends much of her time at a local cemetery hanging out at the grave of a man (Cole Sprouse) who died young, but is somehow revived during a storm, another instance of an ill-explained plot thread. The film is set in 1989, so everyone is of course decked out in over-the-top clothing from that period.

The fact that the film is set in the 1980s seems to exist solely for the sake of the costume department, the ability to reference The Cure and include The Jesus & Mary Chain and When in Rome on the soundtrack, and because its source material - early Burton films - were from that era. Most of the other references - including an unexplainable sequence during which the resurrected young man plays piano and Lisa breathily sings along to REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling," a tune of which I was not aware was a goth standard - exist for no reason.

There are some funny moments scattered throughout. Lisa attempts to spruce up the resurrected corpse and there's a running joke that his tears smell - in Lisa's words - like "a toilet at a carnival." Most of the successful attempts at humor revolve around her aims to make him look the part of a young man in the late 1980s.

When the duo get involved in what can only be described as a killing spree - despite some of their victims being completely unsympathetic individuals - the film struggles to remain funny. There's a particularly grisly - for a PG-13 movie - sequence during which a character is separated from a specific body part that elicited some laughs during the screening I attended, but the manner in which the scene is shot plays much more horrifically than humorously.

Ultimately, "Lisa Frankenstein" is an empty exercise in pastiche. It's not as funny, lively, or bubbling with personality as the Burton films it is trying to mimic. "Beetlejuice" was significantly more engaging, and Edward Scissorhands cut a more dashing figure than the zombie who befriends Lisa in this film. Much like the character who has been revived from the dead, the film often just lumbers along.

Review: Argylle

Image courtesy of Apple Studios.

Matthew Vaughn's "Argylle" is an example of a movie starting out promisingly enough but then going downhill when a director indulges in his worst instincts. It's not a bad movie, but it is an overlong, overcooked, and over-the-top one.

The film's opening sequence involves the titular spy (Henry Cavill) taking part in a mission in which he must deal with an international criminal (Dua Lipa), and things go awry when Argylle's partner (John Cena) learns that the agency for which they work is actually the bad guy.

Then, we realize the story is merely the plot of a novel by a popular author named Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), who specializes in espionage fiction. Her books sell like gangbusters but she's a little creatively blocked on how to finish the fifth installment. Her mother (Catherine O'Hara) suggests they spend the weekend together to figure out the finale.

However, on the way there, Elly is intercepted by Aidan (Sam Rockwell), an actual spy who tells Elly that her books have caught the attention of an undercover agency known as the Division - which is similar to the one in her novels - who believe that her stories are actually predicative of actual goings-on in the spy world. If this sounds far fetched, there actually is an answer (also far fetched) as to why this is happening.

Aidan prevents Elly from being killed by a group of baddies aboard a train and the two of them flee to London, where they are pursued once more by the Division, which is operated by Ritter (Bryan Cranston), who shows no mercy for flunkies that make mistakes. From here, Aidan takes Elly to meet a man (Samuel L. Jackson) who was previously involved in the CIA.

And this is where the picture starts to go off the tracks - not at first, despite a somewhat ludicrous plot twist, but due to a number of deliriously over-the-top action sequences that follow. First, there are numerous double crosses, although not all of them are genuine and it's never that difficult to figure out who is on whose side. By the time we get to a dance sequence shootout filled with colorful tear gas and then shortly thereafter an ice skating-themed shootout, my thoughts wandered to whether an intervention might have helped.

"Argylle" is stylish, occasionally funny, entertaining enough early on, and it boasts some decent performances (Rockwell is the MVP here), but it's a case of there being too much for too long. Vaughn's films vary for me from enjoyable ("Layer Cake") to not-so-much (the "Kingsman" films). "Argylle is goofier and more likable than that latter series, although there's a post-scene credits sequence that was somewhat confusing and completely unnecessary that left me shaking my head.

This is a movie that has its moments, but it's also one that has entirely too many moments in general. There's no good reason for it to run two hours and 20 minutes and the excess of its final shootouts and fight scenes bring it down a notch. This could have been a better film had it been tighter, a little more focused, and a picture that utilized a less-is-more strategy.