THE DRY

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

The Dry is essentially a murder mystery which uses rural Australia caught in the grips of more than a year of draught as its backdrop—hence, the title. The draught has created economic desperation for many, and this plays into the motive for the murder case at hand. In that sense, “the dry” (a phrase no character uses in the film) is relevant to the story.

There was another film, starring Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson, that set its story in a desperately dry Australia, that one a near-future and more of a chase than a mystery. Released in 2014, The Rover used that backdrop to far greater effect. I always felt that not enough people saw that movie. Side note: that movie is available on Showtime, or VOD for three bucks. It’s a much better deal than the $7 I spent to watch The Dry.

This movie stars Eric Bana, rounding out his portfolio with an independent production in his home country. This is actually playing in select theaters (albeit in a single theater in the greater Seattle area, in Tacoma), and I suppose there’s another way of looking at it: $7 VOD is a better deal than paying to see it on the big screen. Although it does have some nice cinematography, wide shots of increasingly barren Australian landscape, which probably renders well on a large screen.

Aaron Falk (Bana) is a police detective from Melbourne, returning to his rural home town several hours outside the city for a funeral. It seems his childhood friend Luke has shot his wife, his young son, and then himself, sparing only the baby. Or did he? Luke’s parents are convinced Luke could never do such a thing, and enlists the help of Aaron, effectively guilting him by bringing up how they know he lied about the circumstances of another death, Ellie, also from childhood. It seems everyone in this town, all of whom have secrets kept for the past twenty years and revealed in turn as the story unfolds, blame Aaron for Ellie’s death.

Thus, The Dry actually features two mysteries: whether or not Luke actually perpetuated a mass murder-suicide on his family; and the truth of how Ellie died twenty years prior. When Aaron was still a teenager, Ellie’s father essentially succeeded in running him out of town. Now, some of the townspeople are pissed to see him there again.

Based on a best-selling novel, I imagine The Dry is more gripping in literature form. Don’t get me wrong, I found the film compelling, but barely; it takes its time, really cultivating a lot more atmosphere than plot. It should be noted, though, that the film had one of the largest opening weekend box office takes in Australian history when it opened there in January: clearly there was an appetite for it. Then again, they were also headed back to theaters after months of pandemic lockdowns.

I suspect my tepid response to this film has more to do with the genre than anything else. Murder mysteries don’t often do much for me for their own sake, unless they’re cheekily complex, as in the wonderful Knives Out. That film doubled as a comedy, though, and The Dry is a drama, with some rather dark thematic elements. It’s a movie about broken people doing very broken things. For some people, that’s entertainment.

It’s well done for what it is, in any case. I suspect people into the genre—and god knows there are plenty—will enjoy it. I thought it was fine.

I mean, some might say just take a look at Eric Bana if you want to get wet.

Overall: B

GEORGETOWN

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

Too many actors dream of being directors. And too many of the best actors have their sights on “ascending” to the level of director, maybe because they want to be their own boss? There are plenty of cases where this works out, but arguably more often it doesn’t. Case in point: Christoph Waltz, in his feature film directorial debut with Georgetown, in which he also stars. Sure, more experience at it could make him better, but if this movie is any indication, he is better left as an actor in the hands of other directors. It’s earned him two Oscar wins, after all—albeit for his only two nominations, under the guidance of the same director, Quentin Tarantino.

Waltz is no Tarantino, and I daresay he never will be. Georgetown is a wildly different, yet far more understated and therefore less memorable, story about a D.C. con man attempting to make a name for himself among the political establishment with the help of his far older widowed socialite wife (Vanessa Redgrave) and her contacts. She’s found dead in their home one night, and of course the young husband is the prime suspect.

It should be noted that the film begins with this: This story does not, in any way, claim to be the truth. Nonetheless, it is inspired by actual events. The “actual events” are detailed in a 2012 New York Times Magazine article, “The Worst Marriage in Georgetown,” by Franklin Foer. Curiously, cited in the opening credits as the source material—although the script was adapted by David Auburn, who wrote the 2019 version of Charlie’s Angels as well as The Lake House (2006). After seeing Georgetown the film, my guess is that you’ll be far more likely to be wowed by the 2012 article. Just go read that.

Not that Georgetown is bad, on any level really. It’s just mediocre, on pretty much every level. The story, as written, is . . . fine. The performances are . . . fine. The treatment of the death at the heart of the story as a mystery is somewhat odd, given both the fact that we know from history and how increasingly obvious it is even in the film. And the film makes odd choices that make it almost pointedly less interesting than the real story, such as the fact that young Albrecht Muth was all of 18 years old when he first attempted to ask out Viola Drath in 1982, when she was still forty years married and 62 years old. That’s a 44-year age difference.

In Georgetown, these characters are respectively named Ulrich Mott and Elsa Breht, and when we first meet Mott, he’s an intern—just as Muth had been—but already in his fifties. Granted, by the time Elsa is found dead she is identified as being 91 years old, and Ulrich is still clearly in his fifties. No one ever states explicitly what their age difference is in the film, but it’s still clearly somewhere close to at least 35 years. Waltz just makes an effort to avoid depicting Mott any time in his youth, perhaps so he wouldn’t have to attempt playing that much younger than his own real age, or hire another actor.

Still: it’s less interesting. Georgetown also creates a young daughter for Elsa, who is suspicious of Ulrich from the start: “He looks like he could be my brother!” she says. The daughter is played by Annette Bening, an actress of ample talents who is entirely wasted in this part, and not just because she’s put in terrible wigs in the flashback scenes.

I wonder how many of these actors already knew each other on some level? Maybe they found the premise compelling and wanted to help out a fellow actor who is trying on a director’s hat. The spirit of giving is nice and all that, but when it comes to women actors past a certain age, both Vanessa Redgrave and Annette Bening are given thankless roles here. The entire film revolves around what a deluded conman Ulrich Mott is, and somehow even Christoph Waltz can’t make him that interesting. And this is a guy who duped countless high-ranking officials and politicians. There’s an irony on being a successful conman, when it takes that much skill and work to get there: why not just apply that same work ethic to legitimate paths to success? At leas then you won’t wind up disgraced. But, I suppose the mindset of a conman just doesn’t work that way.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure all the work that clearly went into Georgetown particularly paid off. This movie was filed as far back as late 2017, and wasn’t even scheduled for release until 2020. We all know what happened then. And after a brief Italian theatrical run in June 2020, it was punted to VOD release just this month, in 2021, three and a half years after production wrapped. That alone is somewhat telling. The movie is better than that might suggest, actually, but it’s also nowhere near its potential. I liked it okay, but I spent seven bucks to watch this on Prime Video and I don’t think you should.

A marriage of suspicion is no enough to make this movie all that memorable.

Overall: B-

SAINT MAUD

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

I spent a lot of Saint Maud thinking about how I couldn’t quite decide how I felt about it. This movie is the very definition of a “slow burn,” to the point that, if you were channel surfing and happened upon it at any point during, say, its first third, you’d be liable to get bored quickly and move on. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? “You should watch this movie, it’ll take a while to get into it!”

I’ve seen many movies this slowly paced that featured an ending worth waiting for. This one, I still can’t decide. The parting shot, just before the credits, is deeply memorable. But it literally lasts less than a second. Still, it did make me say “Oh my god” out loud. Maybe that was precisely the intent of writer-director Rose Glass. I’ll give her this much: it’s a strong piece of work by typical first-time-feature-director standards.

That said, Saint Maud is almost too cerebral for me, almost self-consciously so, and I felt it lacked clarity. There is certainly an effectively eerie tone from start to finish, vaguely reminiscent of some of the best horror films of the seventies—that similarity extending to the intensely religious themes. The key difference in this comparison though, is that so many of those old religious horror movies operated on the premise that God and Satan, and demons, were real.

Are we meant to believe what Maud (Morfydd Clark, well cast) is seeing and experiencing is real? There is a bit of clarity lacking here. Maud is a recently-converted and insanely pious nurse, hired as in-home care for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a former professional dancer now in the final stages of cancer. Maud becomes convinced that God has given her a calling to save Amanda’s soul, and at first, Amanda appears to take her seriously. But really, Amanda is just amusing herself: “You have no idea how dull it is to be dying.”

Well, it’s certainly not dull to be Maud. As the movie wears on (at a mere 84 minutes, thank god, lest this film itself become unbearably dull), she has visions, even hears God speaking to her. She takes on physical pain as an act of piety, in one difficult to watch scene, stepping into her shoes with upstanding nails inserted into them. There’s an earlier scene between Maud and a panhandler with a line I won’t soon forget: “May God bless you and never waste your pain,” she says to him. This, in a way, is the theme of the film, at least from Maud’s perspective.

The choice I made, quite easily, was that Maud was having hallucinations. Perhaps Saint Maud is about the dangerous power of self-delusion. Still, if we assume that, then is this movie about a young woman suffering mental illness? There is never any discussion of medication or the like—only an unspecified incident that resulted in Maud no longer being employed at the hospital where she used to work. It’s difficult to decipher precisely what kind of portrait is being painted here.

If nothing else, it is clear that no other character experiences the otherworldly or supernatural things that Maud does, even while in the same room. An old coworker stops by Maud’s apartment on her own way to work, and ironically babbles on about how they are all in their own bubble, while never registering the bizarrely quiet calm with which Maud just stands there, staring at the window.

Whether it’s in her head or not (it is), some fantastical things do occur in this movie. They just come few and far between, and be warned, nothing exciting whatsoever occurs in the first act. We just meet the characters, Maud and then Amanda, but also a couple of Amanda’s friends (including a young woman, played by Lily Frazer, who comes by for romantic trysts). For the most part, the cast here is very small: maybe half the movie features only the two leads.

And then, there is a jarring scene in which Amanda challenges Maud’s very faith, offering it a blithe dismissal: “He isn’t real.” I won’t say that making either of these characters likable was necessary, but it might have helped the film. There are moments when each of them seems to think they have compassion for the other, but in both cases they are profoundly self-involved, if in very different ways. And in this particular scene, it veers into one of the few sequences where genuine visual effects are involved. They aren’t especially impressively rendered, but given how sparingly they’re used, it doesn’t much matter.

What does matter, I suppose, is how Saint Maud stays with you after its brief but startlingly memorable end. The trick is in remaining engaged enough to get there.

Oh come off it, Maud, no need to break your back on your invisible high horse.

Overall: B

(Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.)

SHIVA BABY

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

There’s no one famous in Shiva Baby, but that’s one of the many things that makes it such a delightful watch. The movie is filled with character actors, one of whom, Fred Melamed, might be recognized from several other independent films if you’re prone to watching them, as well as TV shows. He’s run the gamut, from A Serious Man to In a World… to Bone Tomahawk to Lady Dynamite and WandaVisision. Whenever I see Melamed in something, I have come to regard him as a litmus test of sorts. He’s a good actor, but in some things he’s good, and in some things he’s not great, coming off as unrehearsed. I’ve decided this is a particular reflection of the director: did they get the necessary performance out of him?

I’m happy to report that Shiva Baby is one of the good ones, in which Melamed blends into the cast seamlessly, especially playing husband to Polly Draper’s Debbie. These two are both well-rounded even as they play the parts of bickering Jewish parents to the title character, Danielle. They are all attending the funeral service of a distant relative by marriage, where all but the opening scene of the film takes place—the simple premise being that Danielle has left the home of one of her clients, only to find him also at the service.

As written and directed by Emma Seligman, adapted and expanded from her 2018 short film of the same name, Shiva Baby clocks in at a tight 77 minutes, barely qualifying as a feature film—but given the single setting, it works. As played by 25-year-old Rachel Sennott (the only holdover from the original short), Danielle is a young woman whose often petulant motivations are never quite fleshed out, but Seligman keeps things running with such efficiency, you never get a chance to care. And I got a lot of good laughs out of this movie.

Advocates for bisexual representation should be pleased to learn that Danielle is decisively bisexual, and not confused about her sexuality—she’s just confused about a whole lot of other things in her life. To make things even more interesting, her ex-girlfriend Maya (Molly Gordon) also happens to be at the service. Between her slightly overbearing but loving parents, her ex-girlfriend, the many relatives who berate her for being too skinny, her sugar daddy, his wife she didn’t know about, and their baby, Danielle spends her time overwhelmed by the sensory overload of the event. Luckily for us, most of these peripheral characters are hilarious.

The sugar daddy, Max (Danny Deferrari), is not the most memorable character, really just fulfilling a role of plotting in this film; he could have stood a little more dimension. To call him a “sugar daddy” might be misleading to some, as Max is not especially old—he’s just, maybe, ten years older than Danielle. And even though Danielle’s motivations are never fully clarified, I still liked that her decision to have sex for money is never treated by this film with judgment: “I wanted money and it was an easy way to get it,” she says, matter-of-factly. Note the word wanted rather than needed: Danielle has parents who are attentive and provide for her. She’s a young woman figuring out her place in the world, and that process just happens to include sex work. Good for her!

Seligman does work in a bit of literalism with the “baby” of the title. Shiva Baby is not just a broad play on words with the phrase “sugar baby”; her parents keep calling her their “baby,” and when Max’s wife—who happens not to be Jewish—arrives, she brings a literal baby into the picture. Danielle, who has been telling everyone she’s been making her extra money “babysitting,” is confronted with holding the baby at one point, betraying how very much it does not come naturally to her.

Some might dismiss Shiva Baby as too clever for its own good, without anything of real substance to say. They wouldn’t be too far off the mark, except that this movie achieves everything it sets out to. It takes an amusing premise and runs with it, winding up far more entertaining—and funnier—than you might expect. There are unexpected layers to its characters and its characterizations, just not especially to its story, which is neither a requirement nor a necessity here. In short, I had a great time, and this was 77 minutes well spent. Given that it’s currently available only on VOD, it was also $3.99 well spent.

Would you believe these people are the life of the party I mean shiva>

Overall: B+

DANCE OF THE 41

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I sure wish it were easier to find out how Dance of the 41 (title in original Spanish: El Baile de los 41) is being received in its native Mexico. Perhaps this will change slightly over time, but at the moment I can find only one review written in English, and I am no longer fluent enough in Spanish to read the few reviews I have found in Spanish. There is no page for this film at MecaCritic.com, although over on RottenTomatoes.com it has a “fresh rating” of 75%, based on all of four reviews collected. (Actually all it’s officially showing is the user rating of 73%, the four critic reviews not enough in number to warrant an official “tomatometer” rating.)

I am here to tell you, though: this is a movie that commands attention. It deserves to be seen, and you should watch it. It’s streaming on Netflix, giving it a platform it could get few other places, so what excuse do you have? It does center around a 1901 event that became an enduring flash point in the history of queer people in Mexico, which, let’s face it, inevitably means it does not end well. You might want to brace yourself for the emotional gut-punch of the very last shot, in fact. You should still watch it.

The inevitably sad fate of the people involved notwithstanding, there is a lot to love about Dance of the 41. On a superficial level, the costuming and production design are impeccable; this is a visually lush period piece. I can’t imagine a huge amount of money was spent on this film’s production, but nothing that made it onscreen looks cheap. In fact, director David Pablos was granted access to Mexico City’s Casa Rivas Mercado for filming, a cultural center featuring the late 19th century architecture of the time.

There’s some pretty frank and occasionally explicit sex in this movie, both straight and gay—with quite a lot of male nudity. I say this not to be salacious, which this film really isn’t. When the Mexican president’s son-in-law, Ignacio de la Torre (Alfonso Herrera) introduces Evaristo (Emiliano Zurita) to the secret gay society to which he belongs, we eventually discover that they gather not just for high-society socializing, schmoozing and drinking and playing billiards, but also for orgies. What I love about how Pablos frames this is that it is always without judgment. Whether it’s a bunch of gay men sucking and fucking in a large room with a bunch of bathtubs, or an incredibly tender love scene between Ignacio and Evaristo alone in a bedroom, all Pablos seems interested in is showcasing queer joy. This applies to far more than just the sex; a key element of the historical event when one of these society parties gets raided by the police—in a man’s private home—is that half of them were dressed in drag. And until the raid, we just see a group of people being free to be their authentic selves, and it’s a beautiful thing.

The flip side, then, is the relationship between Ignacio and his wife, Amada (an excellent Mabel Cadena)—then-Mexican president Porfirio Díaz’s daughter. In an early scene, we see these two having sex for the first time on their wedding night, and it is one of the most awkward sex scenes I have ever seen committed to film. It’s rare we see this kind of scene, and I found myself thinking about how common it must have been in real life throughout history (and for some people, still is), for the poor women who marry men who are incapable of desiring them sexually. Given how easily this can breed (so to speak) resentment in such women, I think it will be easy for some to think of Amada as a villain here. It’s an easy trap that should be resisted, as it’s much more nuanced than that. I found myself sympathizing with Amada every bit as much as I did Ignacio.

Dance of the 41 takes a fascinating, contextualized look at a horrible moment in Mexican history—which I only learned about for the first time about a month ago, on TikTok. It’s apparently the reason many Mexicans have a negative association with the number 41 (and 42), with many in contemporary queer culture reclaiming them. This film, however, says little to nothing about the lasting cultural impact of the event, and focuses instead on the event itself, humanizing the people involved. Ignacio de la Torre was a real historical figure and rumored to have been at the event; it was always 42 people there, but the president, clearly wanting to avoid any association with it, had his son-in-law removed from persecution.

There is a brief sequence in the film depicting the horrible public humiliation endured by the other 41 people at the event, and it is indeed difficult to watch. Thankfully, Pablos neither dwells on it nor sensationalizes it, although he does allow enough time to challenge the viewers with the horror of it, which is only right and proper. Still, what sticks in your mind once the film is over, gut wrenching as the parting shot might be, is the far greater amount of time spent on the drama and romance leading up to it. In effect, most of this story is a love triangle, between two gay men and the wife of one of them. I really can’t recommend it enough, and really hope that word spreads that it’s worth seeing.

A lovely showcase for queer joy … until it isn’t: either way, a must-see.

Overall: A-

THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

I had high hopes for Those Who Wish Me Dead, because of its director, Taylor Sheridan: he’s got a proven track record of films I loved, including Wind River (2017), Hell or High Water (2016) and the best of them, Sicario (2015). Of these others, Sheridan directed only Wind River, but he has sole writing credit on all three, all of them being uniquely nuanced, layered, and thoughtful dramas with singular points of view. What makes Those Who Wish Me Dead a comparative disappointment is not just that Sheridan shares writing credit with two other people—including Michael Koryta, the author upon whose book this is based—but that he’s directing someone else’s story. It just doesn’t work quite as well.

Now, “comparative” is the operative word here; Those Who Wish Me Dead is not bad. It’s maybe even a little better than the rather mixed critical consensus would suggest. I did watch this streaming on HBO Max, where it will be available until June 14, but it is also playing in theaters, and I kind of wish I had seen it there. It’s not some high-octane action movie, exactly, but it is cinematic in a way that would benefit from the big screen. Especially in the latter half of the film, in which the characters are all threatened by a huge forest fire in the wilderness of Montana.

Which brings me to casting, one area we can perhaps agree is where this film missing the mark, at least with its marquee star: Angelina Jolie. We’ve all known her for decades now, as a gorgeous movie star. I won’t say it’s patently unrealistic for a stunningly beautiful woman to be a firefighting survivalist; I’m sure they’re out there. The issue is Jolie herself, as her glamorous stardom itself is a distraction. She gives a serviceable performance in the role of Hannah, a woman still feeling guilty about the young boys she was unable to save from fire in a forest a year prior. A more unknown actor in the role could have made the part shine. Granted, a lot of times it takes casting stars that big in order to secure funding for production to begin with, so there may be a bit of catch-22 at play there.

The rest of the cast is surprisingly diverse, especially considering it’s rural Montana—one of Hannah’s firefighting buddies is a Black man, and one of the principal supporting characters is a pregnant Black woman named Allison. That woman, by the way, teaches a local survivalist school, basically runs a ranch, and the woman who plays her, Medina Senghore, fits into her role far more naturally than Angelina Jolie does hers. Even Tyler Perry pops up in a cameo, as the primary contact of the two assassins (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult).

I do feel compelled to highlight the teenage co-lead, Finn Little, as 13-year-old Connor, who witnesses the murder of his father and is on the run from said assassins. It’s extremely rare that this could be said of any child actor, but Little’s performance is easily the best one in this movie. By comparison, everyone else is just going through the motions, in a movie that has very little to say.

Not that it has to have “something to say,” mind you, but it should either have that or be a fun ride, and the narrative here moves somewhere in the space between the two, seemingly unsure of a decisive thematic direction. It’s not boring, and it features just enough tension to keep it suspenseful (especially in its second half), but the script curiously leaves out pertinent details. Connor’s dad offers vague explanations for assassins coming after him for “doing the right thing,” without ever telling us precisely what that thing was. He gives Connor a written account of his “secrets” and asks him to promise to take it to the news if something happens to him. Connor gives these notes to Hannah at one point; we see her read them; we never learn their contents. And if we don’t know exactly why all this is happening, what reason do we have to care?

Furthermore, I’d have liked Those Who Wish Me Dead a lot more if the wildfire just happened naturally—it’s established immediately that it’s a regular occurrence, after all, and we even see scenes in which lightning strikes the ground in the forest and in an open field multiple times. But instead, the assassins ignite a fire just to create a distraction for local law enforcement, turning the fire into a cheap plot device. All I could think about, really, is the increased frequency of wildfires each year due to climate change, and how shit like this exacerbates it, but this movie has no interest in coming even close to addressing that. Which is, honestly, surprising for a Taylor Sheridan film, which we have come to expect to create portraits of characters facing issues unique to our time.

It almost feels like a sellout paycheck project. And maybe it is: good for him, i guess. I can only hope it helps him make a better movie again moving forward. Those Who Wish Me Dead isn’t deeply flawed, really; it’s just not up to the usual standards, and in so being, winds up being somewhat forgettable. You’ll enjoy yourself while it’s on, though.

If you want to survive, stick with an Oscar winner!

Overall: B

Advance: FINDING YOU

Directing: C+
Acting: B
Writing: C
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

Call it YA fiction, because that’s exactly what it is: Finding You is based on the YA novel There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones. Evidently, the film significantly departs from its source material, as reading through the Amazon user reviews of the novel, the story originally incorporated both anorexia and the main character’s “faith journey.” One book reviewer from 2019 writes, I'm looking forward to seeing the film adaption in 2020 and hope that the faith theme and Finley's personal struggles aren't glossed over since these are the heart of the story. Well, I’m sorry you’ll be disappointed, anonymous user from Hershey, PA!

I can’t really tell who this movie is for, which means, oddly, maybe the movie would have worked better for the same target audience of that novel, if it had been more faithful to it? Finding You says nothing about the faith of the main character, Finley (Rose Reid), until she finally locates the gravestone her late brother had sketched—and the camera lingers on an epitaph with a direct reference to God. I think that lady from Hershey will indeed think the “faith theme” was “glossed over.”

Instead, Finding You focuses on the context of Beckett Rush’s movie stardom, and how he and Finley fall in love while he’s filming another in a series of dragon fantasy movies in the small Irish town where Finley is studying abroad. As written and directed by Brian Baugh, to say that the entirety of Beckett’s life as a famous actor is contrived is an understatement. He’s a young but grown man, and somehow his father (Tom Everett Scott) has total control over every aspect of his professional and personal life, right down to making up romantic stories about Beckett’s relationship with his costar, Taylor (Katherine McNamara, in a much smaller role but somehow getting top billing). There’s a scene in which Taylor is trying to convince Beckett to stick with their made-up life in order to keep public interest turning into box office earnings. She says to him, “So few understand the life that we lead,” and I found myself thinking, Does this movie’s director even understand that?

This movie lost me within its first few minutes, when Finley is boarding her flight to Ireland from her hometown of New York, and a flight attendant just up and offers her a seat in first class because there happens to be an empty seat. Oh I see, so this movie is a complete fantasy. By the way, the airline is “Aer Lingus.” I thought that was ridiculous too, until I googled it and found out that is real. They get pretty prominent product placement in this movie. Am I the only person who sees the name “Aer Lingus” and thinks of mile-high cunnilingus? But I digress.

Finding You has some redeeming qualities. Rose Reid as Finley and Jedidiah Goodacre as Beckett have genuine onscreen chemistry, not to mention a natural screen presence that gives their performances a sincerity that transcends much of the bland formula of the script. It is perhaps for this reason only that I found myself sucked into the story in spite of its many flaws—well, that and Vanessa Redgrave in a supporting part as a local crotchety old lady. It’s always nice to spend screen time with Vanessa Redgrave.

But then the narrative cuts to Beckett on set, where the throwaway actor playing his director has the most ridiculous “European” accent I’ve ever heard. Trying to say the word “joke,” he literally says, “I made a yoke!” Is this supposed to be comedy? It’s embarrassing, is what it is.

At least the rest of the characters are well cast, including the Irish host family with whom Finley stays. And it’s helpful, actually, to cast relative unknowns as the leads (Jedidiah Goodacre played Dorian Gray in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina; this is Rose Reid’s fifth-ever acting credit), although it’s amusing to think how Goodacre’s personal life is still nothing like that of the famous actor he’s playing. In any event, those two are compelling enough to elicit hope that they both get better opportunities for meatier roles in far better films than this in their near future.

Can you believe this script?

Overall: C+

[Opens Friday, May 14.]

SHADOW IN THE CLOUD

Directing: C+
Acting: B-
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Special Effects: C+

There is so much to say about Shadow in the Cloud. Where do I even start?

If I were to start at the true beginning, then I would need to mention the 1963 Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” from which this movie clearly gets its inspiration. In that episode, starring William Shatner, a man taking a commercial airline flight sees a “gremlin” on the wing, and no one believes him. The episode has been remade a couple of times, both in a 2019 reboot of the series, and perhaps most famously, in a segment of the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie starring John Lithgow.

In this 2020 film, starring Chlöe Grace Moretz, the setting is World War II, and the cold open before the title cards features an old-school style animated instructional video cautioning pilots to stay focused and not blame their own errors on so-called “gremlins”—a real reference to a myth among aviators of the mid-20th century. This is even how they are first referenced, by character Murray Futterman, in the 1984 feature film Gremlins (which is far, far superior to this film). One could even argue that, at least in spirit, Shadow in the Cloud is the third film in the Gremlins franchise. It sort of blends the original myth with the literalization of the mischievous creatures of the films.

There’s even a serendipitous irony to the production of Shadow in the Cloud: it feels very much like a film that might have been made in quarantine, most of the run time featuring a single character onscreen, alone in a confined space. From this angle, it takes inspiration from films like Locke (2013), which featured only Tom Hardy driving a car for its entire run time. I’d estimate a good two thirds of Shadow in the Cloud features only Chlöe Grace Moretz, as Maude Garrett, in the Sperry ball turret of a B-17 bomber plane. She arrives at this plane with a crew of seven men, wielding a document proving she is on a top secret mission that means they must let her board. But, they demand that she ride in the turret.

It’s the setting, and the World War II context, where Shadow in the Cloud veers from that original Twilight Zone episode—which featured a man on a present-day commercial airline flight—but the basic premise remains exactly the same. She starts seeing a creature crawling around the outside of the plane, and, after the men spend a lot of time making openly misogynistic comments about her over the intercom, they don’t believe her when she tells them what she sees.

Before long, though, we see plenty of this creature, which, although they continually refer to it as a “rodent,” looks much more like a quasi-humanoid bat. This is going to qualify as a spoiler, but I don’t care because by this point the movie has gone into high-octane preposterousness: she has with her a “package,” which is later revealed to be concealing her baby. This package gets taken all over the place, including at one point being snatched by the creature. Whenever we see the box from outside of it, the thing is getting whipped around all over the place: flapping in someone’s hands as they run, or even dangling from beneath the wing, before Maude literally goes out of the turret to retrieve it and then crawl back into a hole on the underside of the plane, all while it is flying. At one point, even while Japanese aircraft are firing at them. And then? Every time Maude opens the box to check on the baby, it’s contented as can be.

The point is, there is no part of this film that is in any way concerned with realism. Having a “gremlin” somehow crawling around a flying fighter plane is one thing, but most filmmakers would at least compensate for that with some measure of plausibility elsewhere. Not director and co-writer Roseanne Liang (the initial drafts of the script were written by accused sexual assaulter Max Landis, which is a whole other story). It’s as if this film started with a literal cartoon just to prime us for the rest of the movie being just like one.

There’s a curious element to the tone of Shadow in the Clouds, which seems almost to be self-aware but stops just short. The storytelling is straightforward, which somehow makes it more entertaining. I won’t lie: even though this movie is objectively idiotic, I had a pretty good time watching it. Mostly because it was so shamelessly dumb. There’s a scene late in the film where Maude is essentially in a fist fight with the gremlin on the ground—and she’s kicking his ass. In no universe is it plausible that this woman could dominate this creater, but, perhaps Liang just made a conscious decision: in no universe would this gremlin actually exist either, so what does it matter?

The latter half or so of the movie is packed with this kind of stuff. The other men on the plane are dispatched, one by one, and somehow Maude narrowly escapes death herself each time. There’s even a moment where she literally falls out through an opening in the floor of the plane, and an exploding enemy plane just bounces her right back in—conveniently through the opening she just fell through. I laughed out loud. And nothing about the film suggests we’re supposed to find it funny.

The dialogue is nearly all completely contrived, which makes the “feminist” bent to the story a little hard to take. This movie is getting a fairly typical amount of hate by man-boys online who insist it’s made by “man-haters,” which is a stupid take no matter what. Still, even I would say the script lays it on a little thick, especially or a movie about a monster on an airplane. I’m usually all for feminist subtext, except in this movie it’s both unsubtle and clunky, lacking in any intellectual wherewithal.

Depending on your perspective, however, that arguably adds to its charms: the way this movie tries to be taken seriously as an action-horror filick and winds up being unintentionally campy. Not to an extreme degree, but it’s there. And it was a big part of what entertained me about it. I might have had less of a fun time if it were longer, but this movie not only clocks in at a mere 83 minutes, but the end credits begin with nearly 10 of those minutes to spare. It doesn’t even give you time to get too annoyed with it. It’s just a fun, dumb ride.

A gremlin snatches a baby in a box on the underside of an airplane, which is totally normal.

THE DISCIPLE

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Music: B+

The Disciple was only released a little over a week ago on Netflix, and it’s already one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year—ranked #20 for the year 2021 (so far) on MetaCritic—which, I will admit, was a big reason I decided to check it out. Knowing nothing else about it, aside from it being the story of a failed artist struggling to make it as a classical Indian music singer, I probably would have otherwise gleaned right over it.

The sad irony here is how much more easily accessible this film is on Netflix, ostensibly with a global audience, and yet it seems likely to have gained more media attention, and even more revenue, with a traditional theatrical release, even a limited one. Or rather, it would have before a pandemic happened, anyway. In spite of its impressively prestigious pedigree and history of accolades (executive produced by Alfonso Cuarón, Best Screenplay award winner at last year’s Venice Film Festival), its release on Neflix just throws it into a gigantic ocean of content, destined to disappear under the mass of it all. This movie isn’t even in the Netflix Top 10 in India right now.

That said, who would I recommend this movie to personally? No one, really. The Disciple is clearly constructed with measured skill and care, arguably to an almost Kubrickian degree, but I don’t know how much overlap there is in the Venn diagram of people interested in cerebral cinema and people interested in Indian classical music history. I’m sure they’re out there . . . I’m just also sure they do not make a very large group.

This movie moves at an almost glacial pace, which isn’t inherently bad, except that, again, it’s only available on Netflix. This does not feel like the kind of movie that benefits from at-home viewing. It’s the kind of film that requires immersion, which means it would be a lot easier to stay connected to in a darkened theater on a big screen. Which no one, at least no one in the United States (and that’s where I am and thus who I am writing for), is going to have access to with this film.

Which is to say: The Disciple is indeed a good movie. Writer-director Chaitanya Tamhayne has created a uniquely specific portrait of an Indian artist as a young man, and there is no question this is one of the best non-Bollywood films to come out of India and break into international markets in ages. Furthermore, Indian classical music is unlike any other kind of music you are ever likely to hear in film, particularly in America, and it is quite beautiful. The protagonist, Sharad Nerulkar (Aditya Modak), is meant to be struggling with mastering the form, and thus imperfect. But to any untrained ear, he sounds great.

As with youth in any context, this story also qualifies as a portrait of . . . just a young man. We meet him in his mid-twenties, with his guru asserting that he needs to be patient: focus only on practicing, until at least the age of forty. There is no sense in being frustrated with imperfection before then. Except this perspective ignores the realities of modern life, things like paying bills and debts, which are struggles even the guru contends with while being asked to travel long distances for performances in his twilight years.

There were moments of The Disciple that, for me, brought to mind Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. Not in either form or content, but rather, more in tone: each scene exquisitely designed, staged, and framed, with an almost frustratingly quiet pacing. Except in this case there’s a lot more music, in particular that of the tanpura instrument, which is similar to a sitar. Sitting through The Disciple, it’s easy to imagine someone calling it a “masterpiece.” It’s just that sometimes a “masterpiece” is so lacking in excitement it struggles to maintain our focus and attention. I kept nodding off. Would that have happened in a movie theater? I suspect it would be less likely, but we’ll never know.

Reverence doesn’t pay the bills, Sharad.

Overall: B

THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: C+
Animation: B+

There’s a lot I very much enjoyed about The Mitchells vs the Machines, and there’s a lot about it I found dumb or annoying. In the latter case, I have this sneaking fear that it’s just because I’ve gotten old and out of touch.

I mean, what’s the target demographic of this movie, anyway? The main protagonist being a young woman about to go to college—in the end casually revealed to be queer, no less—notwithstanding, it is clearly young children. I am 45 years old. Some disconnect here is inevitable.

This film is made by Sony Pictures Animation, which has made a few great animated features (especially Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse), but also a lot of pretty forgettable stuff. You could argue back and forth about this: such an assessment is merely a matter of opinion. But, history still doesn’t like: unlike, say, Pixar Animation Studios, Sony hasn’t made much in the way of animated feature film classics. On the other hand, maybe the more pertinent question these days is: does that matter? I can’t really deny that The Mitchells vs the Machines will be wildly entertaining for plenty of viewers. This movie has been available to stream on Netflix for a week and it’s still #2 on their Top Ten list.

So, what difference does it make what I have to say about it? Do you want to know about how meta my thoughts about it got while I was watching it? Like, this movie regularly pokes fun at our tech-obsessed society, and yet it could never exist without the very technology it criticizes. Or maybe, is there some underlying layer where it’s making fun of our fear of A.I. rising up against us? There is literally a line where, right after a knowing throwaway line about giving tech companies far too much power, a character declares “it’s not all bad.”

Honestly, my biggest issue with this movie is the editing. Way too much going on at any given time, almost from beginning to end, in a movie that goes on for 113 minutes and would have worked better at 90. Relentlessly rapid-fire editing is just pandering to short attention spans. But is there a moral value to that, really? Perhaps not. Still, I find myself far more impressed with pacing that can keep us in rapt attention while still allowing the story to breathe. It is possible.

I cannot deny the clever wit in the writing, though. Even while I was finding myself overwhelmed with this movie’s aesthetic of sensory overload, it regularly cracked me up. Just the sequence where the robots turning off the world’s wifi causes the collapse of society—I don’t want to spoil it, but suffice it to say, I found it very funny. There were several moments when I really laughed pretty hard.

The Mitchells vs the Machines also has a massive lineup of famous talent among its voice actors: Danny McBride and Maya Rudolph as Rick and Linda Mitchell; John Legend and Chrissy Teigen as their social media-perfect neighbors John and Hailey Posey; Eric André as Zuckerberg-esque tech mogul Mark Bowman; Fred Armisen and Conan O’Brien as different robot voices. They are all fine; truth be told, they could have cast complete unknowns in these roles and it would have made no difference. The one possible exception is the inspired casting of Oliva Colman as the villain, the “personal assistant” program who refuses to accept becoming obsolete and takes over all the world’s computers. She never changes from being a simple face on a smart phone screen, which allows for a lot of great sight gags.

I wonder what kind of licensing deals they got for product placement in this film? There’s an entire sequence in which the Mitchell family battles an army of Furbys. Did Hasbro get money for that? Does the fact that the product’s inclusion trades on nostalgia more than anything else make any difference? I did enjoy the sequence, in any case. In the same sequence, the Mitchells are met with another army of kitchen appliances that all have “PAL” microchips in them.

It really should be noted that, my many criticisms aside, The Mitchells vs the Machines succeeds at a kind of casual inclusiveness rarely seen in any movie, but especially in an animated feature. Katie Mitchell (voiced by Abbi Jacobson), the aforementioned queer protagonist, looks white on first glance but is still clearly a multi-racial character: all characters are rendered as the race of their voice actors, so her mother (Maya Rudolph) is a person of color. Their neighbors, the Poseys, as a Black family. There are even subtle hints to Katie’s queerness throughout the movie; I kept wondering about the rainbows in the quasi-fantasy sequences about her (which are references to her interest in digital art) and whether or not they signified anything. A single line near the end of the film pulls it all together, the kind of line that in any other movie would have felt shoehorned in, but here was what tied together a bunch of details already seen.

In short, the writing in this movie is unusually skilled and nuanced, not to mention frequently hilarious. I just felt the movie got bogged down a bit by throwing way too much onscreen at once too much of the time, but maybe that’s just me.

Spoiler alert! The Mitchells adopt a couple of robots.

Overall: B