Review: Sheep In A Box

Image courtesy of Neon.

Hirokazu Koreeda is one of Japan's greatest filmmakers and has been considered the heir apparent to the great Yasujiro Ozu. Both filmmakers are known for their measured paces and quiet observances of the human condition.

Koreeda's latest, "Sheep in the Box," finds the filmmaker venturing a little further from his typical subject matter, despite it still being a family drama, by confronting the topic of AI and telling a story that could best be described as science fiction.

In the picture, Kensuke (Daigo Yamamoto) and his wife, Otone (Haruka Ayase), live a quiet but seemingly normal life, considering that their young son, Kakeru, died two years before in an incident that only becomes more mysterious as it is further discussed.

Otone learns about a company that provides artificially intelligent (AI) family members to those who have lost love ones - and despite Kensuke's reluctance, the couple agrees to welcome a new Kakeru, who looks like their son but is obviously a robot, into their home.

No, the film doesn't turn into a horror movie, but instead focuses on how the couple tries to reconcile that their son is lost forever and that the being who looks like him - and seemingly has recovered some of the boy's memories - isn't actually him.

There are some interesting scenes to be mined from this story and, for about two-thirds of the film's running time, it remains intriguing. Koreeda makes an odd storytelling choice in its final third that involves Kakeru being mentored by a teenager who might also be AI and who leads a group of robots who have been abandoned. The film portrays this crew as a lost boys (of the Peter Pan variety, not vampires) type of group and ends on a utopian note that I can't help but view as a misstep.

Koreeda has made some great films - notably, his Palm d'Or-winning "Shoplifters" as well as "After Life," "Maborosi," and "Broker" - and his latest film adopts the gentle style and character-driven storytelling techniques with which one has become accustomed, but it doesn't completely come together. 

"Sheep in the Box" is far from a bad movie - in fact, it's a pretty decent one before the misstep late in the film - so it ends up just being a minor movie from a typically reliable director. 

Review: One Night Only

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

"One Night Only" mostly induces groans (though not the type for which the film is hoping), but I suppose it deserves some sort of credit for being the only - checks notes - raunchy rom com that is set in a Christofascist regime.

Playing sort of like a more humorous (albeit only occasionally) version of "The Purge," replete with meet-cutes and jokes involving people running around barely clothed in Manhattan, "One Night Only" doesn't exactly start with the greatest premise. 

In the film, Congress has recently voted for The Mandate, which declares that non-married people can only have sex one night per year and, therefore, this one particular night turns into a sexual free-for-all in which people are roaming the streets desperately trying to hook up with strangers.

At the center of this story is Allie (Monica Barbaro), whose job singing jingles to the tune of popular songs about such things as psoriasis is one of the picture's few jokes that land. Allie had a seemingly successful hookup the previous year, but was ghosted by the guy.

The film's other lead character is Owen (Callum Turner), a sincere pizza shop owner whose girlfriend (Maya Hawke), tells him on the big night that she plans on sleeping with someone else, leaving him bummed out and scrambling for companionship.

Most of the film involves these two characters continually bumping into one another - the first time literally - and becoming friends throughout the day, all the while evading the obvious solution: that they should be together. Instead, they ignore the obvious and seek sexual healing elsewhere - he with an older British woman whom he awkwardly brings to his mother's house for a hookup and she with a musician who gets increasingly creepier.

But while the film, for most of its running time, is a mostly harmless rom com with a premise that seems relevant to the moment, but then doesn't do anything interesting with it, the movie ultimately takes a very peculiar route toward its end in which its protagonists decide to simply embrace the fascist rules imposed on them - but for the sake of romance, or something like that. 

There have been a few films that have adequately captured the present moment we're living in, whether it's Paul Thomas Anderson's Oscar-winning "One Battle After Another" or some of the horror movies of the past few years. "One Night Only," however, isn't one of them. It tries to mine laughs out of an unsettling situation before ultimately saying to just give in to it. 

If there's anything that makes the film watchable, it is its two leads, both of whom are likable. But the script demands ludicrous things from them and, ultimately, their presence isn't enough to recommend this oddly conceived film.

Review: I Want Your Sex

Image courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

It's been 12 years since indie provocateur Gregg Araki made a feature film, so if nothing else his latest, "I Want Your Sex," is a cause for celebration. The film is a comedy with a slight element of mystery involved - its wraparound story involves its lead character being grilled by two detectives - in which a young man just out of college named Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) gets into a sub-dom relationship with his boss (Olivia Wilde), a controversial artist who sees sex as the thing that most informs her art. 

Elliot's life is less than lively when we first meet him. He lives with his best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders), and is looking for his first job after having graduated school. His girlfriend, Minerva (Charli XCX) is disinterested, both in bed and in general, and he doesn't have much money to live on.

So, he's naturally enthused to land a gig as the assistant to Erika Tracy (Wilde), a provocative artist whose gallery is filled with her works, most of which have to do with sex. One assignment involves Elliot and co-worker Zap (Mason Gooding), who brags about the orgies in which he's involved seemingly weekly, sticking numerous pieces of chewed bubble gum on a large picture of a vulva that Erika has drawn to give it a certain look and texture. At times, Erika sits and listens while she's working to a soundtrack of her moaning from her at-home masturbatory activities. You get the picture.

No sooner than Elliot takes the job than he is asked by Erika to be her sub. This involves everything from him having to crawl around in her office to being spanked and, in one case, meeting up with a friend of Erika's from out of town and being her "date" for the evening - one which goes spectacularly wrong.

The film opens with a female body floating in the water in a scene that is reminiscent of the opening of "Sunset Boulevard" and the film drops other cinematic references - one cue card says "9 1/2 Weeks Later" - along the way. As usual for an Araki film, there is near constant music playing on the soundtrack, though there's very little of what we might typically expect to hear (no Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, or Ride).

Araki was one of the most outrageous filmmakers of the 1990s indie scene, most notably for his bleak and nihilistic Teen Apocalypse trilogy that included "Totally Fucked Up," "The Doom Generation," and "Nowhere." But it wasn't until 2005 when he reached his creative peak with the devastating and ethereal "Mysterious Skin," one of several movies from that decade that haunted me for years.

"I Want Your Sex" is his most potent film since "Mysterious Skin." It's not as powerful or thoughtful as that picture and comes off as more of a lark. The film somewhat explores issues of power in the workplace and the fact that Erika has economic dominance over Elliot, while at the same Araki tries to keep things light, rather than peeking into some of the darker corners that his previous films did.

Araki has discussed in interviews that he believes Generation Z is sexless and, in the film, this is explored through Elliot and his milieu, though Zap is far from a prude and Elliot gradually learns to become comfortable with his sexuality. This would probably make Erika an avatar for Araki, although she is also clearly viewed as being in the wrong for the manner in which she exploits Elliot and how she uses her persona as a transgressive artist to shield herself from criticism. 

A heavier movie might have followed this thread a little further down the road, but Araki is working in a mode here that has more in common with his other comedies such as "Splendor," "Kaboom!" and "Smiley Face." His latest is not his best movie, but it's his best in a while and I'm glad to see him making another film at long last.

Review: Her Private Hell

Image courtesy of Neon.

It happens sometimes that talented filmmakers become too enamored with their style or obsessed with their fetishes and find themselves adrift. There are numerous directors who could be cited, some of whom eventually bounce back and others who never do.

This seems to be the conundrum for Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish provocateur who was once the toast of the Cannes Film Festival but has in recent years been cranking out neon-lit fever dreams that are long on atmosphere but short in other departments.

I have championed some of Refn's films, most notably "Drive," the 2011 film that won him Best Director at Cannes and ended up in my top 10 of that decade. Prior to that stellar neo-noir, I was a fan of Refn's "Pusher" trilogy and "Bronson," and thought that his "Bleeder" and "Fear X" were underrated.

But he followed "Drive" up with "Only God Forgives," a grim and surreal gangster saga set in Japan that felt like a letdown, and "The Neon Demon," which was a slight improvement but once again favored style over substance. Unfortunately, his latest, "Her Private Hell," is his furthest delve into the trance-like zone in which his most recent films have been set. 

The film has some stunning imagery and a stellar score from the great Pino Donaggio, but these are both in the service of a story that is borderline nonsensical and performances that seem as if they are tuned in from another wavelength. 

There's the typical Refn stuff here - a complex mother figure, slow stylized violence, eyes being gouged, women who look like models, a hero clad in leather, and inspiration from David Lynch, Samurai, and Giallo films. But very little gels in a way that makes it a watchable film.

There's little point in trying to explain its plot, but I'll give it a shot: Elle (Sophie Hatcher) has a complex relationship with her father (Dougray Scott) and stepmother (Havana Rose Liu). At the film's beginning, she meets a young actress (Kristine Froseth) who says she is excited that the two of them will star in a movie together, though we never get a glimpse of that.

Meanwhile, a mysterious man known as Private K (Charles Melton) roams the foggy, neon-lit city where the film is set, brutally attacking Yazuka figures and searching for a demonic presence known as the Leatherman, who literally tears young women apart. Private K believes that the Leatherman stole his daughter from him some years before.

All of this material is presented as if it's the coolest thing you'll ever see. Characters speak lines as if they are disinterested whether they will register with the audience. Mostly, they come off as posturing. The Leatherman is described in a manner that is meant to strike fear in the heart, but the entire plot line involving this figure is ludicrous. How any plot strand in the film connects with another is beyond me.

Many of my favorite films could be described as strange or oblique, but it's all about how you present your material. Refn here appears to be nurturing his obsessions and stylistic trademarks, but seemingly without much concern as to whether it comes together and forms a movie that might engage an audience. 

He's a talented filmmaker - "Drive" remains one of my favorite films from the past decade, and his earlier work still holds up - but this is now the third film in a row in which he relies solely on style and mood to do the heavy lifting, but it ultimately provides very few rewards for sticking it out.

Review: The Odyssey

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" is an expensive looking art film that plays as an epic adventure - but also occasionally a horror movie - and is one of the most unique blockbusters of recent memory. It's the type of film that hardly gets made anymore in the sense that a major movie studio gave a renowned director the creative license to take a monumental work and transform it into his own personal vision.

Interestingly, the picture takes a fair amount of liberties, all of which not only do not detract from the picture, but instead add unique elements. For example, the Trojan Horse is mentioned briefly in Homer's epic poem, but it plays a major role in Nolan's film. Also, the character of Sinon (Elliot Page) plays a pivotal role in the movie, but is referenced in Virgil's "Aeneid," and not in the works of Homer.

Much has been made - and by all the worst people - about the casting in the film; for example, the casting of Page, a trans actor, as a fierce male warrior, Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy, John Leguizamo as Eumaeus, Zendaya as Athena, or Himesh Patel as Eurylochus. There are even a few Greeks with New York accents.

But these particular casting choices were made, most likely, because Nolan liked these particular actors, but also because while "The Odyssey" is set in ancient Greece, the director is saying that it belongs to all of us. One of its central themes is that, in the Greece of that time, all people should be welcomed in one's land and treated with dignity and respect because it is possible that they might be a god traveling in disguise. Those who oppose this universal law for power or money are considered villainous. 

The film unfolds non-sequentially, occasionally being told by Odysseus (Matt Damon), the great warrior who has led Agamemnon's (Benny Safdie) army to victory against Troy and then spent 20 years trying to get home, and sometimes from the perspective of Telemachus (Tom Holland), his son. The latter attempts to keep at bay the many suitors who are circling his mother, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), as she awaits her husband's return. The most sinister of these suitors is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), who once cheated the lottery system that would have forced him to accompany Odysseus on his voyage and instead got Sinon to take his place.

The film is full of stunning cinematography, incredibly staged battles, and unnerving scenes that often veer into horror territory - a frightening battle in a cave against The Cyclops, the nerve-wracking choice between Scylla and Charybdis, and Samantha Morton as a scene-stealing Circe, a witch who lures Odysseus' men in with food and then does some pretty nasty things to them.

Nolan is a filmmaker who is used to working on big canvases and his two most recent films - the remarkable "Oppenheimer" and this one - are his most successful epics. There are few filmmakers who can pull off a film of this size and scope, but Nolan does so here.

The picture is also filled with strong performances, some small but memorable (Morton, Page, Leguizamo, and Charlize Theron as the nymph Calypso) and others larger-than-life (Pattinson's sneering villain and Hathaway's distraught wife-in-waiting). But it's Damon who holds it all together in one of the best performances of his career. 

One of the film's more intriguing touches is that its hero isn't always that heroic - he stands by as his men loot and plunder small villages and, during one the most powerful scenes late in the picture, he describes to Penelope the horrors he saw during the Troy invasion, which included women and children being slaughtered by his men. Odysseus also occasionally makes decisions that lead to the death of his own men on the voyage home. 

This summer, so far, has produced two very strong movies from old masters - Steven Spielberg's "Disclosure Day" and this one. Typically, large-scale blockbuster movies don't rank that highly on my list of the year's best, and that's often because despite their abundance of spectacle, they are short on imagination. That cannot be said of Nolan's film (or Spielberg's) as they are absolutely bursting with it. This is one of the year's best.

Review: The Invite

Image courtesy of Annapurna Productions.

Imagine a much raunchier and funnier version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and you'll mostly capture the vibe of "The Invite," which is Olivia Wilde's best outing as a director to date. The film is mostly a chamber piece, set in a San Francisco apartment over the course of an evening, in which a bickering couple portrayed by Seth Rogen and Wilde entertain their neighbors from upstairs, played by Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton, who are known for engaging in loud sex.

From the start, it's easy to tell that the evening will not go smoothly. Rogen's Joe has just gotten home from teaching at the small music conservatory where he goes through the motions of his job - he's a former musician who never made it and is seemingly bitter about his lot in life - and learns that Angela (Wilde) has planned a dinner with the neighbors since their daughter is spending the night away from home.

Joe is adamant about cancelling the dinner, and threatens to bring up the fact that the neighbors' epic bouts of sex make it hard for them to sleep. When the guests arrive, Joe and Angela are surprised at how normal they seem - Hawk (Norton) is a retired firefighter who now spends his time obsessing over his interests (he's an admirer of rugs and other home decor touches), while Pina (Cruz) is a psychologist whose work often includes sex-related issues (we learn at one point in the film that Joe and Angela's sex life has taken a turn for the worse over time).

It's not too long into the evening when Joe and Angela learn that Hawk and Pina's loud nocturnal activities are a little wilder than they imagined: The upstairs couple often hosts orgies. This piques the interest of their hosts, who ply them for details, seemingly living vicariously through their neighbors. Soon afterward, the plot takes an even nuttier turn that I won't divulge, but suffice it to say that the evening gets increasingly wilder as the pasts and interests of all the gathered come to the forefront.

The film's second half is much stronger than its first, which suffers a little from over-direction - the fights between Joe and Angela are dialed up to 11 in the film's early scenes and border on being cartoonish. 

But the film becomes increasingly funnier - Rogen's reactions throughout the picture to all that is going on around him are priceless, while Norton provides some great supporting comedic support -  and more emotionally resonant as the evening proceeds. Late in the film, Norton gives a great monologue about how he chose the name "Hawk" for himself, and the film's final scene suggests a possible reconciliation that is moving.

This is Wilde's third effort behind the camera. Her debut, "Booksmart," was a widely praised coming of age comedy that I liked well enough, but didn't think was as amazing as some others did. Her much-maligned sophomore effort, "Don't Worry Darling," was a visually stylish mess in which individual moments were greater than the sum of its parts. 

"The Invite" may be smaller in scale due to its sole location and smaller cast, but it's more assured, often very funny, and a showcase for its cast. It's a movie that observes its characters well and occasionally cracks a joke at their expense, but never judges them. And amid its almost nonstop barrage of laughs (once it really gets going), it occasionally surprises when its characters reveal something honest and true. 

Review: Young Washington

Image courtesy of Angel Studios.

A film about a founding father certainly beats spending a Fourth of July weekend listening to the current president rant and rave, calling his political opponents "communists," or attending the Great American State Fair, which has fewer participants than the Bounce House at your small town's weekend carnival.

"Young Washington" has been produced by Angel Studios, a company that primarily releases religious-themed movies - some not so bad ("American Underdog"), some not so great ("Jesus Revolution"), and some entirely dubious ("Sound of Freedom," which is on a list of movies alongside "Melania" that I refuse to watch).

This movie, which chronicles the early years of George Washington (William Franklyn-Miller), is probably the studio's most watchable film that I've experienced - which is not quite the same as saying it completely works. The picture is well shot - although I've read that it utilized AI in about 100 shots, which is indefensible - and it is has a solid cast that includes Ben Kingsley, Andy Serkis, and Mary-Louise Parker.

The film is, if nothing else, an interesting enough history lesson about what Washington was up to prior to becoming a leader in the American Revolution and the nation's first president. The picture primarily follows his days as a surveyor in the Ohio territory and his resulting conflicts with the French. It depicts both his ambition and his foibles, which at one point lead him to a devastating defeat by the French as he attempts to gain favor with the British. 

Franklyn-Miller does a decent job of capturing the young man's confidence without making him seem arrogant or cocky. His scenes with Kingsley, who portrays Robert Dinwiddie, are the film's best, while the sequences with Sally Fairfax (Mia Rodgers), whom he moons over, are not as effective.

For a film by a studio that mostly traffics in religious pictures, "Young Washington" has some surprisingly tense and well-made battle scenes, though the one in which Washington rides side saddle to avoid being shot would, perhaps, have been better left to a Roland Emmerich picture. The film also mostly sidesteps religious themes, that is, until the end when a Native American chief suggests that his men's inability to shoot Washington during a battle must be because he was some sort of Chosen One.

All in all, "Young Washington" isn't too bad - but I'd also argue that there's a better film to be made about the nation's first president. The film's dialogue is a little on the nose and often a bit on the melodramatic side, giving it the feel of a Hallmark or made-for-TV movie. But as I said before, it certainly beats tuning in to the current "celebration" of our nation's 250th anniversary.