Review: Crawl

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Alexandre Aja's "Crawl" seeks to answer a time honored question: Why does anyone live in Florida? Like, seriously. This relatively short and often bloody horror movie features a young woman and her father - and anyone unlucky enough to attempt to try to help them - tormented by massive, nasty alligators that have overtaken their house during an enormous storm most likely brought on by global warming.

We get one of those obligatory scene setters in which Haley (Kaya Scodelario), a college swimmer, doesn't give it her all during a swim team practice, and we get a flashback of her father, Dave (Barry Pepper), telling her as a young girl that she's an "apex predator," although I'm not sure that's normally something you'd want to call your daughter, and that she's not a quitter. Naturally, as I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn, this comes into play once they're stuck in a home filled with rising water and hungry gators.

Haley and Dave are seemingly not talking as the film opens for reasons never quite divulged, although it likely has something to do with his split from Haley's mother. Haley's sister calls to ask her to check on her father, who has made the foolish decision to visit the family's old property located on the coast as a major storm system descends on the area, to ensure he's safe. Soon after Haley - and her pup - arrive at the scene, she's being attacked by one of the reptiles in the basement. She finds her injured father and the two spend the rest of the movie attempting to not become gator snacks.

If the plot sounds thin and the characters' decisions often silly to the point of a head shake, it's because they are. However, the impressive set pieces and obvious skill that went into the making of the film, much of which involves people making their way through rooms full of water and clogged with debris, almost make up for how silly the entire endeavor is.

Aja has talent as a director - his breakout film, "High Tension," was deeply unsettling and somewhat provocative, his "Piranha" remake was deliriously gory and "Horns" was, well... it was something - and this is obviously on display here. Do I wish that he'd apply those skills to a horror movie that digs a little deeper, rather than a by-the-numbers genre exercise? Yes, of course. But as far as entries into the animals-gone-wild genre go, you could do much worse than "Crawl."

Review: Echo In The Canyon

Image courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

Is "Echo in the Canyon" mostly just a needle-drop documentary that plays iconic tunes as background music to interviews with the legendary musicians responsible for them? Is it safe to say that we don't learn anything new - other than that Stephen Stills and Mickey Dolenz once held a nudist party - about its subject matter? Is the entire film mostly a vehicle for Jakob Dylan, son of Bob and former lead singer for The Wallflowers, who recently recorded an album filled with the songs in the film?

The answer to all of these questions is "yes," and yet the film, directed by Andrew Slater, is still a pleasure. The film follows the mid- to late-1960s scene in Los Angeles's Laurel Canyon, where a ton of great musicians moved and inspired each other to write some of their best music.

At various points, the scene was inhabited by Stills, Graham Nash, the members of the Mamas and the Papas, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, The Byrds, Brian Wilson and other members of the Beach Boys and numerous others. In "Echo in the Canyon," Dylan - acting as tour guide - interviews some of those musicians as well as others inspired by their music - for example, Tom Petty, and some other musicians from Jakob Dylan's era - Beck and Fiona Apple, among others - take part in a concert that is interspersed throughout the picture in which they perform the songs.

A curious - and interesting - inclusion in the film is footage from Jacques Demy's "Model Shop," a mostly forgotten 1969 film that was the French director's only movie in English. The film features some of the best footage of Los Angeles at that time, as its protagonist spends a significant amount of time behind the wheel in the movie making his way through Los Angeles's major throughways and winding hills.  The filmmakers note that Demy's picture was somewhat of an inspiration for this documentary in that it did a good job of capturing a moment in that city's history. It's a film well worth seeking out.

While none of the interviews are particularly enlightening - much of this history has been revealed elsewhere - it's nonetheless enjoyable. Ringo Starr tells a funny story or two, Roger McGuinn makes an attempt at being diplomatic when discussing past band members, David Crosby less so and Michelle Phillips is surprisingly open about her exploits with other band members.

And, of course, there's the music. Dylan and his pals do some decent renditions, but the use of the actual music - especially The Byrds' "Goin' Back" and Buffalo Springfield's gorgeous "Expecting to Fly" - is the film's greatest treat. Many of these songs are extremely cinematic - think "California Dreamin'" or Buffalo Springfield's music - and while most of them have been used to death in previous films, there's still a thrill seeing images set to these tunes.

So, while "Echo in the Canyon" doesn't tell us anything we didn't likely already know, it's still well worth catching up with these great musicians - many of whom are well into old age - and hearing them talk about one of the greatest eras for rock 'n roll music and filmmaking in this nation's history. "Echo in the Canyon" goes back to the well - but this material is so rich that it remains interesting nevertheless.

Review: The Last Black Man In San Francisco

Image courtesy of A24.

To be able to hate a city, you have to love it first. That's the sentiment of the appropriately named Jimmie Fails (played by, appropriately, an actor named Jimmie Fails), one of the two lead characters in Joe Talbot's lovely and melancholic debut, "The Last Black Man in San Francisco."

While I can't agree 100 percent with Jimmie - there have been some cities I haven't liked, and it wasn't because I loved them first - I can understand where he's coming from. If you've lived somewhere for a long time, you may grow to be frustrated with its faults, but often that feeling of resentment stems from a love for a place and one's wanting it to be better.

The film is both a love letter to the titular city and a poignant tale of a friendship. Jimmie's best pal is Montgomery (Jonathan Majors), a sensitive man who writes plays that are seemingly never produced and makes impressive drawings on a note pad. Montgomery lives with his blind grandfather (Danny Glover), and Jimmie - who we learn is somewhat estranged from his scheming father and absent mother and once lived in a group home - crashes on Montgomery's floor.

Much of Jimmie's time and headspace is devoted to sprucing up a gorgeous house in a gentrified section of San Francisco. Amusingly, the house belongs to an older white couple, who appear alarmed every time he comes around to paint the house or make other fixes, considering that he doesn't live there. The wife even throws fruit at him to try to make him go away, but he's undeterred.

According to Jimmie, his grandfather built the house in the 1940s, but his family eventually lost it. After the neighborhood gentrified, the property was worth $4 million, which Jimmie cannot afford. So, he cares for the place, dreaming that he can one day own it himself. One day, he gets a break after the couple living in the house moves out, leaving it vacant. He and Montgomery move in as squatters.

One of the film's finest elements is how it observes the people of San Francisco. The picture's opening shot is a doozy - Jimmie and Montgomery share a skateboard, riding down the city's hilly streets to the house. On their way, they glide through neighborhoods of varying socioeconomic status, all the while a corner preacher whom they often watch while waiting for the bus gives a sermon about the black community's place in a city that is slowly pushing lower class people out.

The entire film has an observant nature. There's an amusing scene in which Jimmie waits for a bus. A completely naked older man sits down at the bus stop and makes conversation. In another film, the scene would be played for maximum laughs, but Jimmie shrugs it off as just another day in San Francisco.

There's also an ongoing fascination with a group of young black men who stand on the corner near Montgomery's grandfather's house and, essentially, talk shit. Their constant chatter - which involves dissing one another, making fun of passersby or just making aimless conversation - is used humorously - however, we later learn that Jimmie was once friends with one of them, and a tragedy late in the film leads to a poignant scene in which Jimmie notes that you can't define any person by just one thing.

This is a film that is light on story, but heavy on mood, place and character - and as such, it works very well. The film's gorgeous photography and use of music helps to heighten the ambience, and the various neighborhoods of San Francisco are almost characters themselves. It also helps that Fails and Majors give strong leading performances. Their friendship strikes a curious balance - Jimmie is headstrong and determined, while Montgomery is quirky and shy - and is the heart of the film.

The movie is basically composed of two love stories - neither of which are romantic. One involves Jimmie's love for his best friend, while the other revolves around Jimmie's love for the house - an object that he can never truly have. As a story about longtime residents of a city being shoved out by gentrification - a phenomenon I've witnessed in numerous cities - "The Last Black Man in San Francisco" acts as a dirge, albeit one that made me laugh frequently. This film was a bit hit at Sundance this year, and it's easy to see why. Talbot's debut film is one to seek out.

Review: Midsommar

Image courtesy of A24.

Ari Aster follows up his acclaimed debut "Hereditary" - a Bergman/Cassavetes-esque tale of a family falling apart disguised as a haunted house movie - with an ambitious, but slightly overlong, sophomore horror tale about a group of clueless Americans who get lured in by a cult, although the movie is clearly more interested in the breakup story at its center.

For starters, "Midsommar" doesn't quite live up Aster's debut - it's often quite good, and while never exactly scary, the fact that its horrors all play out in the glaring daylight makes it deeply unsettling. Plus, it's very well acted, is filled with strong camerawork and features a few memorable set pieces. It also drags slightly in sections, and while specific relationships between the characters are well explored, some of the other characters are underdeveloped.

Much like "Hereditary," Aster's latest story is centered around a horrific tragedy. In the opening moments, Dani (Florence Pugh) has received an email from her bipolar sister that appears to hint at a suicide attempt, but also says that she plans to take their parents along with her. Dani is crushed after the worst thing that could happen does, and she falls to pieces. Her boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), is aloof and as we find out during a conversation with several of his pals, he was on the verge of dumping Dani, but now sticks with her out of guilt due to her family tragedy. This doesn't mean, however, that he's any more emotionally available. Their troubled relationship is the heart of the film.

At a party some months later, Dani is surprised to learn that Christian is planning on taking a trip to Sweden with his friends Josh (William Jackson Harper), party boy Mark (Will Poulter) and a Swede named Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), who has invited them to attend a ceremony being carried out in his isolated village. Pelle's people are known as the Harga, and every 90 years they take part in a ceremony that Christian and his friends expect to include psychedelic drugs and folkloric rituals, but they're unaware that the festival's events go much further than that.

Aster's film, much like his previous one, is seemingly influenced by European cinema of the 1960s and 1970s - Tarkovsky and Bergman, for example - but it also clearly pays homage to the 1973 horror classic "The Wicker Man." For those familiar with that picture, you'll remember that it doesn't turn out too well for the outsider who finds himself in the middle of a pagan ritual.

At two hours and 20 minutes, "Midsommar" is a slow burn. The first quarter of the picture involves Dani's tragedy and is set amid a snowy backdrop, while the remaining three-quarters of the film are set against the disarmingly bright Swedish backdrop of Pelle's bucolic Swedish village (the film, however, was shot in Hungary). From the start, something about the place seems off. Villagers are playing flutes and other instruments, everyone is friendly to a fault and from the moment they arrive, the Americans are given a mind-altering drug that results in a bad reaction for Dani.

The scene starts to become intense as the visitors make some faux pas that upset the Harga - Mark urinates on an ancestral tree and Josh takes pictures of an ancient text after being warned against doing so - while a pair of Brits who are guests of another young Swede want to leave after several days there and Christian finds himself the object of attention from a young village woman, who leaves pubic hairs in his food and a ritualistic object under his bed.

The picture's first horrific moment - and, frankly, it's the film's most gruesome set piece - occurs about an hour into the movie. Dani, Christian and his friends witness a ceremony that leaves them deeply unnerved and wanting to leave, prompting Pelle to try to soothe them and convince them to stay.

Other reviews have noted that all hell breaks loose in the film's final 20 minutes - which involve Dani taking part in a competition to be the May Queen, a hilariously lurid sex scene involving Christian and a bunch of Harga women and the ceremony's final brutal ritual. For me, the scene an hour into the movie was the most difficult to stomach, although the final ceremony in the film contains a major twist and the film's final shot is one that's going to prompt a fair amount of debate.

While "Midsommar" isn't quite on par with "Hereditary," it's still a solid folkloric horror picture with a solid cast - Pugh especially - and a fair amount of ambition. The movie is most intriguing when it explores how people deal with tragedy by throwing themselves into something new, even if it's reckless, and the picture's other most interesting component is its breakup story. The combination of his first two films makes Aster one of the most unique filmmakers - along with Jordan Peele - among the current crop of horror movie directors. "Midsommar" requires some patience, but it ultimately pays off.

Review: Yesterday

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Danny Boyle's "Yesterday" is undoubtedly one of the filmmaker's more lightweight efforts, most likely stemming from the fact that his source material this time is Richard Curtis - screenwriter of "Love, Actually" and "Notting Hill" - rather than, say, Irvine Welsh ("Trainspotting") or Vikas Swarup ("Slumdog Millionaire").

The picture asks us to imagine a fantastical scenario - one night, the power across the world goes out and when it comes back on, The Beatles's music has been completely erased from history, and seemingly only one person - a down-on-his-luck songwriter named Jack Malik (Hamesh Patel) who gets into a bicycle crash at the time of the blackout - remembers the Fab Four's songs. Naturally, he decides to pass their tunes off as his own, with a few roadblocks, such as his struggles to nail down the lyrical timeline of "Eleanor Rigby."

It's a cute concept that only maximizes about 50 percent of its possibilities. Other than Oasis not existing and, strangely enough, Coca Cola's disappearance, the lack of Beatlemania has seemingly not resulted in a vastly different world in Boyle's film. There are a few references to other cultural touchstones that have also vanished as a result - and a few, honestly, don't make much sense - but otherwise, modern popular culture comes out looking much the same without John, Paul, George or Ringo.

So, when Jack begins passing off The Beatles's music as his own, those around him are shocked to learn that after years of failing to find success as a musician, he could come up with such miraculously brilliant lyrics and music. There's an amusing scene during which a greedy music producer (Kate McKinnon, pretty funny here), is wowed by The Beatles's music that Jack has co-opted as his own, but dislikes one of his actual songs that he attempts to slip in during a recording session.

An early scene in which Jack, who hasn't yet realized that The Beatles no longer exist, sings "Yesterday" to a group of friends after being gifted a guitar upon his release from the hospital after his bicycle crash is emotionally resonant as his pals are deeply moved by that tune's melancholy. There's also clever use of "Back in the USSR" and the lovely "The Long and Winding Road."

The plot thread that could have undermined the entire effort is one in which singer Ed Sheeran pops up as himself, playing a mentor to Jack, although the latter ends up outshining the pop singer in short order. The only reason this thread - which only resurfaces in spurts - works is that Sheeran's role is self-deprecating, although there's a scene in which he's playing to a massive crowd at Wembley Stadium that veers slightly from self-deprecation into self-promotion.

The storyline in the film that gets the most play - and is slightly under-cooked - is the romance between Jack and Ellie (Lily James), a young woman who has been friends with Jack since childhood and harbored a secret crush on him during all the years that she has acted as his manager and booking agent. There are several scenes in which circumstances, for lack of a better word, keep the pair apart, but these are only there to delay the inevitable.

"Yesterday" is boosted by the fact that both leads - Patel and James - give solid performances and are likable leads, and that Patel can actually sing, quite well in fact. There are two scenes in which Jack meets characters not central to the story - one an iconic figure, the other a pair who are in a similar situation to Jack's - that might have derailed the film, but are handled well enough here. There are some critics who'd disagree with me, but the scenes worked for me.

Boyle is a director who can bounce between various genres and different types of subject matter. His best films - "Trainspotting," "28 Days Later" and "Slumdog Millionaire" - typically are darker or grittier fare. His latest is uncharacteristically sunny. It's also not one of his best, but it's often clever and is filled with fantastic music. Like the recent "Rocketman," it's a good movie that utilizes the music of a great musician. It's light and breezy - and, for the most part, an enjoyable watch.

Review: Toy Story 4

Image courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures.

"Toy Story 4" culminates the beloved animated series, which launched Pixar into the stratosphere, on a surprisingly kooky and not-so-surprisingly moving note. The animation studio continues to pile up the sequels for a number of its most popular titles, but it's the "Toy Story" series that has continuously kept up the quality across its four films.

While some thought that the wonderful "Toy Story 3" would have been a nice way to end the series, this final chapter goes in a few directions one might not expect. For starters, there is a bevy of new characters - some creepy dolls and their leader, Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), a pair of squabbling stuffed animals named Bunny (Jordan Peele) and Ducky (Keegan Michael Key), a Canadian daredevil (Keanu Reeves) and, most notably, Forky (Tony Hale), a spork-turned-toy created by Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw), the young girl who is now the owner of most of the film's toys.

At the picture's beginning, Woody (Tom Hanks) recalls Bo Peep (Annie Potts) being taken away with some other toys with which Bonnie no longer plays. In the present, Woody is feeling left out as Bonnie prefers to play with cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack), and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) is too busy trying to figure out what Woody means when he talks about one's "inner voice" - AKA the conscience.

Bonnie is starting kindergarten and has trouble making friends, so she creates Forky during class, and Woody spends the film's early scenes trying to keep a watchful eye on Forky, whom he recognizes as Bonnie's new best friend. Much of his time is spent trying to prevent Forky from jumping into a garbage can, which appears to be his comfort zone. It's one of several gags in the film that made me laugh heartily - another is a gut-busting sequence during which Bunny and Ducky concoct plans to stall an elderly woman.

But during a family road trip, Forky sees his chance to break free and jumps out of the window of the RV that Bonnie's family is driving. Woody follows suit and they end up in a small town that houses an antique shop, where Gabby Gabby and her creepy doll companions rule the roost, but Woody also has a reunion with Bo Peep.

"Toy Story 4" feels a little more plot driven than some of the previous entries in the series - the film mostly revolves around the toys attempting to stall Bonnie's family from leaving until Woody can get Forky back, Buzz can save Woody, etc. - and there are a number of set pieces, some funny, others more action-oriented. There's also a Randy Newman song - "I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away" - that seems a little on the nose, albeit humorously, at first, but ends up holding a deeper meaning as time goes on.

Ultimately, the film ends on a note that is emotionally satisfying, as one might expect from this series, which has long found poignancy in unexpected places. Pixar films work best when they combine stunning animation with emotional arcs and unforgettable characters - and "Toy Story 4" has all three going for it. It's a lovely way to end the series, which is one that has appealed to several generations of children and adults alike.

Review: Long Day's Journey Into Night

Image courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Bi Gan's haunting, dreamlike "Long Day's Journey Into Night" - which has nothing to do with the Eugene O'Neill play - is an enigma wrapped in a puzzle, as the saying goes. There's no other film you'll likely see this year that's quite like it.

The film's first half is a visually lush and languid mystery, of sorts, in which a man named Luo Hongwu, (Jue Huang) who describes himself as a detective, searches for a woman he once knew who has apparently gone missing. In its dazzling second half - which was shot in 3D - he descends into a strange underworld that acts as a cinematic representation of a dream. The film has one of the most thought provoking and enticing final shots of recent years.

For those unfamiliar with Gan's previous film, "Kaili Blues," his work tends to involve slow moving, but hypnotic, mysteries - albeit ones of the soul more so than the flesh - that are set in the Chinese Southeast mainland city of Kaili. Both films employ long takes - in his previous picture, there was a lengthy motorcycle ride composed of one shot. In his latest, the film's final hour is one long continuous take that is guaranteed to take one's breath away, especially when considering all of the choreography that went into it.

Near the film's beginning, Luo asks how one can know whether one is in a dream or real life. He notes that his body is made of hydrogen, but his dreams are made of stone, and during the course of the film we see how those memories weigh him down. There are several scenes in movie theaters - most notably, one in which Luo puts on a pair of 3D glasses, transitioning the film to that format in the film's second half and launching into its hour-long dream state - and at one point Luo notes that films are always fake, but memories are a combination of truth and lies, including the ones we tell ourselves.

The film's plot is purposefully murky. It involves Luo attempting to discover who murdered a friend of his named Wildcat, which leads him to meet the mysterious Qiwen Wan (Tang Wei), a beautiful woman with whom he becomes entranced. They share some moments together before she disappears and he doesn't see her again. Nearly 20 years later, he has returned to his hometown for his father's funeral, and takes up the search for Qiwen.

Luo's mother, who owned a restaurant, tells her son to remove a broken clock that has long collected dust on the eatery's walls. Much later in the film, Luo gives a watch that has stopped to a woman whom he believes might be Qiwen. In "Long Day's Journey Into Night," time is an abstract construct and, much like the clock and watch, time has stopped for Luo, who attempts to reclaim a past that may no longer exist.

After the dreamscape kicks in during the film's final hour, Luo meets a number of characters after passing through a portal-like entry to the underworld - including a young boy who challenges him to a game of ping pong before giving him passage, a group of youths at a pool hall, an older couple who are bickering with each other and the woman whom Luo believes might be Qiwen.

The film's hour-long shot is an amazing technical accomplishment. The camera follows Luo as he traverses the underworld, but also stops to speak to various characters, takes a motorcycle ride, gets involved in a pool game, rides a harness down a mountainside and even flies above the city. The camera follows every move in a feat of incredible choreography. Even one minor misstep would likely have forced Gan and company to start the shot all over again.

The picture ends on a beguiling, mysterious image that speaks to the fleeting nature of all of life's beautiful things. In "Long Day's Journey Into Night," all of its characters are searching for one thing - in Luo's case, the girl who got away - that they consider essential, but are missing. This is a visually stunning and hypnotically engrossing movie. Rather than trying to follow the film's opaque narrative, I'd recommend allowing its moody visuals and soundtrack to wash over you and feeling your own way through the story. Everyone experiences a piece of art differently, and I'd imagine that this film will elicit a variety of reactions. My own is that "Long Day's Journey Into Night" is one of the most unique and transfixing movies I've seen this year.