IT CAME OUT OF THE SKY

 

MOVIE
Nope
Director Jordan Peele
Review Ray Chan

Jordan Peele's most acclaimed productions have a common characteristic: copious amounts of symbolism that just about demand a second or third viewing to enable one to make out all the subtle metaphors and what they could possibly mean.
    His latest offering, labelled as “sci-fi horror”, seems a lot more straightforward than his other films, and begs the question of whether we finally have a Peele screenplay that doesn’t require ambiguous allegorical introspection and confusing conspiracy concepts.
    In Nope, a giant entity resembling a spacecraft but also transforms into tidal tufts of tissue, chooses to harass a small, remote American town. These incidents always occur in the US, of course.
    Peele hides the antagonist, using the age-old trick of concealment to heighten suspense. The aerial predator lurks behind a static cloud in the sky, so we only catch glimpses of it as it terrorises a horse ranch and a small western theme park.
    The farm is run by OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and his feisty sister Em (Keke Palmer), while the park is the brainchild of former child star Ricky 'Jupe' Park (Steven Yeun). When debris starts falling from the skies and people and animals mysteriously disappear, OJ, Em and Jupe spot the UFO, and plan to take commercial advantage of it.
    Em and OJ invest in camera equipment to capture the extraterrestrial on video, hoping to cash in on the footage, and are joined by UFO enthusiast Angel Torres and professional cinematographer Antlers Holst. Jupe has more insidious plans, planning to feed horses to the alien while incorporating it as part of his rodeo show.
    How they go about this and what transpires form the gist of the story.
    Both OJ and Jupe are shown to experience personal tragedies: the former watching his father being killed by junk raining down from the blue, and the latter traumatised by a killer chimp on the set of a TV series in which he was a child star.
    Indeed, the sub-plot involving Jupe is perhaps the most horrific of the movie, and the reason for its inclusion is unclear.
    There is an initial lack of connectivity between Jupe’s experience on the sitcom called Gordy’s Home and events around the alien. In flashbacks, Peele shows how the show’s central character, a chimpanzee named Gordy, was startled by a series of popping balloons on set and viciously attacked several of his human co-stars.
    Jupe was unharmed but frozen with fear as the panicked primate maimed and mauled other people in front of him. And just as Gordy calms down and gently approaches the terrified child, the simian is shot, splattering blood everywhere.
    It’s odd how Jupe never expands on this history, indicating there may be deleted scenes left on the director’s cutting room floor. But it’s clear that events on the show left an indelible mark on him.
    In quiet moments, he stares into space and replays that trauma in his mind, while telling everyone he’s fine. He plays the past off lightly, showing visitors his Gordy’s Home memorabilia and complimenting the Saturday Night Live sketch about the chimp attacks, but Peele gives the audience a glimpse of the echoing chaos in his head, and shows how little it matches his serene surface.
    And if one were to look hard enough, maybe that is the underlying theme of the movie: how people cope with trials and tribulations in the face of unseen and unknown threats.
    Trauma is largely an internal process that everyone handles differently. In Nope, the laconic OJ keeps his problems to himself, joining a dangerous quest to document the UFO without discussing how he feels about it. Antlers, in trying to film the alien, charges out alone to seek personal glory that he doesn’t want to share with anyone else.
    But Jupe turns his into a one-sided relationship with an alien creature that doesn’t care about him and sees him only as a source of food. He’s so defined by a past tragedy that he walks right into a bigger one, making himself the film’s greatest victim.
    So back to that second paragraph. A straightforward movie? It’s safe to say that’s hardly the case. Trauma, tragedy and triumph: it’s not Peele’s best effort, but it does make one ponder, in the process doing nothing to lessen his stature as one of Hollywood’s rising stars. 
    As a matter of interest, round shapes seem to abound throughout. Old vinyl records, discarded coins, clocks, ornaments, trophies, horses trotting around on a longe line, a well, masks of aliens that are spherical with round eyes, Stetson hats, slurpee machines with rotating paddles, not to mention the initial appearance of the object up above which also looks like a giant eye. Do they represent the circles of life? It will probably take another four viewings to decipher.

#NOPE #universal

THE MULTIVERSE OF THE MUNDANE

 

MOVIE

Everything Everywhere All At Once
Directors Daniels
Review Ray Chan

The concept of a multiverse – a hypothetical dimension consisting of a number of universes, of which our own is only one – has been expanded on in many movies of late, most notably in various Marvel cinematic offerings.
  But for each super-hero variation, there is a similar doppleganger for the everyday person. That’s where Everything Everywhere All at Once takes us to: a realm where everyone exists in a myriad of realities, each with their own experiences. 
    It’s the story of a married couple, the strong, peremptory Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) and milksoppish Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan), who were born and raised in China and came to the US as adults. Their laundromat is losing money even as they grow distant from each other, while putting on appearances before Evelyn’s father, who’s visiting from the homeland.  Their daughter Joy is a college graduate whose homosexuality is hidden from her grandfather by Evelyn, which fractures the mother-daughter relationship.
    The Wangs find themselves in tax trouble with the IRS, as aggressive auditor Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis) threatens to seize their business and personal assets, giving them one final chance to reorganise and re-submit their claims.
    But then, unexpectedly, Waymond transforms into someone like himself but who’s not exactly himself, and we soon realise it’s one of the husband’s other iterations from the multiverse.
    In intricate exposition, he explains his presence to Evelyn, and says she’s the most important version in the cosmos, and needs her help as she is the only one who can curb the butterfly effect that is causing all the other ones he’s known to have met violent deaths. She can do this by tapping into all the infinite Evelyns out there, using their talents and doing battle with a mysterious, cross-dimensional warlord.
    Armed with a set of instructions that will enable her to enter the parallel worlds, and share the alternate lives that she could have lived, Evelyn makes way to the portal: a janitor’s closet down the hall from Deirdre’s desk. The launch involves switching shoes to the wrong feet, special scans and earbuds, a murder in the closet, a punch in Deirdre’s nose, and a fight with security guards in which divergent Waymond uses his fanny pack as a lethal weapon. 
    Evelyn’s travels on her astral journey are a manic pastiche of her meeting her counterparts in a race against variant daughters with the help of variant husbands and grandfathers. Her adversaries generally take the form of Dierdre, plus her own daughter, whose body is claimed by an incarnation of Joy with vengeance on her mind.
    Indeed, the most enjoyable parts of the movie involve the different routes that other Evelyns have taken. The funniest alternate domain is one in which Evelyn and Deirdre are lovers, with fingers as hot dogs squirting mustard and ketchup. Deirdre plays the piano with her toes, while being caressed on the face with Evelyn’s own tootsies.
    There’s another reality in which no life existed and Evelyn and Joy are just rocks on a cliff; one in which they are piñatas dangling from a tree; one in which they are Disney characters; and another in which security guards get their kung-fu power from trophies stuck in their rear ends.
    The journey round the multiverse includes one poignant and ironic road: Evelyn, instead of leaving China with Waymond, stays home and becomes a movie star in martial-arts films, reflecting real life where Yeoh is well-known for her martial arts movies (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and recently, Shang Chi) as well as being a glamorous starlet. The scenes are interspersed with actual footage from Yeoh’s red carpet history. 
    The emotional resonance of the film is couched in the second-guessing Evelyn feels — mirror-image Waymond notes the reason she is the most special rendition is that she’s the first he’s met who’s failed at everything she ever started, making her a perfect sponge for absorbing the others’ abilities. Yeoh’s versatility shines in her portrayal of a woman who is tragic yet aspirational, silly while heartbroken, especially in the final scenes she shares with Joy. 
    The film is directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, who both grew up on Hong Kong cinema. And the influence of that heritage shines bright in the movie. The title itself is a very Westernised translation of a Chinese phrase, while typical Chinese movie tropes, clichés and visual gags abound, such as physically-challenging slow-motion pirouettes, action scenes with little sense or logic, pinky fingers with biceps (because they’re so powerful), and reviving unconscious people with the whiff of worn-out shoes. 
    However, it’s not just straight out slugfests and slapstick. Symbolically, there is a proliferation of spherical shapes: googly eyes, references to bagels, items on tax receipts circled in black marker. What do they mean? Because they have no beginning and no end, round structures have come to represent the eternal cycle of life, where in this case nobody is alone in the multiverse, which turns out to be a place where families can work on their issues. The circle, of course, is also zero in our system of numbering, and signifies the embryo for change, as in Evelyn’s life. Or maybe the Daniels simply meant them to indicate unity: when people want to come together and support one another, they form a circle. That way, everybody is visible to everybody else, meaning they can communicate openly and extend a sense of togetherness. 
    The kaleidoscopic madness lasts for two hours and 20 minutes, a length of time that will have viewers fidgeting in the seats if they can’t get into it. But if they persevere, they will be rewarded in the closing act, which proves to be a surprisingly touching salute to appreciating the life we have and the people who make it special.  
    The ambition behind the production can’t be denied, nor the fact it’s certainly one of the most wildly creative genre movies to hit cinemas in some years, so brimming with invention and ideas —where even vignettes that last less than a minute could be whole films — that it’s dazzling to behold.

#everythingeverywhereallatonce  #buzzmarketing #A24

IT WAS A DARK AND GLOOMY KNIGHT

 

MOVIE
The Batman
Director Matt Reeves
Review Ray Chan

How many reboots of Batman is it now? And yet, despite the many incarnations, every adventure of the dark knight since the campy 60s version seems to have been made with one aim: to out-dark and out-grim its predecessor.

    Always a bleaky, dirty Gotham City, shrouded in depressingly gothic architecture, amid miserable, rainy weather. Always a sullen and traumatised Bruce Wayne, torn between being a prince and a protector, and becoming more monosyllabic and guttural with each recasting. Always a grouchy Alfred and serious Commissioner Gordon with no sense of humour.

    It’s more of the same with the latest movie and its new iteration of the protagonist, but amped up to stratospheric levels. It’s directed by Matt Reeves  with whatever the opposite of a light touch is, and stars Robert Pattinson as the caped crusader by night, and millionaire recluse by day, not that it ever is day. 

    Interestingly, as with the recent Spider-Man franchise offerings, there is no origin story. Batman is just there, already renowned as Gotham’s guardian. But rightly so. Really, do we need another retelling of how he came to be?

    Peer beyond the shadows, though, and there is a semblance of a solid tale to tell. The principal evildoer of the piece is the Riddler (Paul Dano), who sets about killing all the city’s top corrupt officials while leaving plenty of collateral damage and cryptic clues for Batman to decipher. Along the way, we see revamped versions of some of the Bat’s criminal coterie: the Penguin (an unrecognisable Colin Farrell) and Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz).

    As you might expect from action productions these days, there are copious amounts of explosions, floods, car chases, hands-on violent combat and other set pieces, but ultimately, nothing innovative of note. It’s like watching firework displays in the sky: spectacular but oh so predictable.

    The general storyline comfortably comes to an end around the two-hour mark, but then – like Wonder Woman 84 and its ilk – a sub-plot is introduced which extends the whole shebang into a seat-fidgeting 180 minutes. It’s as if movie producers these days feel that a movie’s worth is determined by its length.

    But despite these irritations, its relatively linear storytelling form makes this instalment a lot easier to understand than the convoluted narratives of its predecessors, and therefore pushes up the enjoyment factor a small notch. 

    Here’s an interesting sidenote: in the aforementioned Adam West TV movie, our hero tackles four vacuous villains, Bat shark repellent and all. It’s a guilty pleasure to see the quartet all appear again in this latest film, but with malevolence and menace all duly upgraded to suit the times.

#universal #thebatman

OLD LEASE OF LIFE

 

MOVIE
Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Director Jason Reitman

Review Ray Chan

This sequel continues on from Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II (ignoring, of course, the 2016 all-female reboot) and is set three decades later.

    Original Ghostbuster Egon Spengler (the late Harold Ramis) has passed away, and his estranged and financially-strapped daughter Callie is forced to relocate to his derelict farmhouse, accompanied by her milksoppish son Trevor and headstrong daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace).

    There they soon discover a secret that Egon hid from them, and with assistance from science teacher Chad Grooberson (Paul Rudd) and some plucky local kids, they embark on a dangerous mission to remove a malevolent supernatural presence.

    Therein lies the basic premise of the film, in which the familial theme runs strong: not only does Phoebe follow in her grandfather’s exorcism exercises, but the film is directed by Jason Reitman, the son of the man who produced the first two instalments.

    Sadly though, it seems he tries too hard. Perhaps aiming to recapture the essence of what came before, the story is packed with so much Ghostbusters mythology that it’s hard to see what could be gleaned from this experience that wouldn’t be improved upon by simply watching the 1984 original.

    This reviewer sits in the group of people who didn’t think those movies were side-splittingly funny anyway. So re-using a template of cringe-inducing dialogue and dated gags is not going to impress.

    This is none more so exemplified than by the unexplained appearance of the Stay Puft marshmallows – a mainstay of the franchise. We see sentient marshmallows roast each other on a barbecue, presumably to raise a chuckle from the parents in the audience who enjoyed the original chapters when they came out.

    Indeed, this scenario represents a problem that Hollywood finds itself experiencing time and time again; how do you mine past successes for content without merely regurgitating a series of familiar images in pursuit of box office returns? Even Rudd serves little purpose here … recruited no doubt for his popularity in Ant-Man, just to pull in audiences. His character does nothing of note in the battle against the demons.

    The original troup of Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson reprise their roles, alongside a digital representation of Ramis, and it’s their inclusion that will delight many viewers old enough to remember what it was like when Ray Parker Jr first belted out the dynamic theme song.

    But that seems to be all this production is: a foray into nostalgia that will bring a smile to the emotionally-invested children of the 80s, but probably not the current crop of teenagers.

#ghostbustersafterlife  #sonypictures

 

A HIT .. AND RUNS

MOVIE
Licorice Pizza
Director Paul Thomas Anderson
Review Ray Chan


Graphic slang for a vinyl record, the term 'licorice pizza' is also the name of a long-gone chain of LA record shops founded by James Greenwood in 1969 … the era and place of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest foray into teenage angst and navigation of first love.
    The running time of the movie is two hours and 13 minutes, and indeed it seems that running is what most of the cast do. Protagonist Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) is seen racing toward a gas station, past a line of idling vehicles, against a backdrop of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?”. For her part, the heroine, Alana Kane (Alana Haim), sprints to a police station, after Gary has been wrongly arrested. Later on, Gary spurts away from his pinball arcade in anger. And, at the climax, they both scamper again — Alana from one direction and Gary in the other, to meet in the middle.
    Is there a reason? Perhaps it’s to symbolise the pursuit of happiness, which is essentially what the film is about.
    It’s set in the San Fernando Valley, in the early 70s, when cars are queueing for gas because of a global oil emergency, and Richard Nixon is beseeching Americans to trim their fuel consumption.
    The pair first meet up at high school where 15-year-old Gary is attracted to Alana, who is 10 years older and works for a photographer taking head shots for the yearbook.
    Displaying a maturity beyond his years, Gary chats up Alana and seeks a date, his well-meaning confidence borne out of a short career as a child star. His penchant for showmanship and eye for money-making ventures soon lead him to opening up a water bed store, and later the pinball business, with Alana lending moral support.
    There isn’t much of a plot to this movie. It’s more like a Seinfeld episode, where things just happen but nothing really happens.
    We get weird one-off episodes such as Bradley Cooper portraying Jon Peters, Barbra Streisand’s paramour, who dresses in angelic white and behaves like a dirty devil. Then Sean Penn appears as Jack Holden, a former Hollywood idol who flirts with Alana, and is friends with an aging director played superbly by the wonderful Tom Waits.
    Most humorous of all is Harriet Sansom Harris, who steals the show as a patronising casting agent, most of it spent on the phone (“love to Tatum”) and framed in so extreme a close-up by Anderson’s trademark roving camera that even her dentist will be impressed.
    Cooper, the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who himself was so long a stalwart of Anderson’s work, is never less than endearing, and allows us to soak in Gary’s belief in himself. Shining equally bright is Haim, whose Alana demonstrates a spiky self-doubt and sense of arrested development that dovetails perfectly with Gary’s own accelerated adulthood and restless urge to reinvent. Not bad going for two actors making their professional debuts.
    Busy and thronging, rammed with cameos and comic turns, and sewn together with a soundtrack of the times, Licorice Pizza works best when it’s focused on the pair. The movie basically hangs on the rapport between Gary and Alana — more than a friendship, less than a love story, and sometimes a power struggle.
    An entire Golden Age of on-screen romance teased viewers with “Will they or won’t they”; here, that question is bracketed not just by Alana and Gary’s age difference but by entrepenurial ambitions that converge and diverge with hit-and-miss unpredictability.

#licoricepizza  #universal

THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN

 

MOVIE
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Director  Jon Watts
Review Ray Chan

This blog has reviewed the first two movies in the Tom Holland Spider-Man franchise, so of course we have to wrap it up with a look at the conclusion of the story arc.
    And what a triumphant denouement it is. This discussion comes with a warning that some spoilers may lurk within, but then readers of such critiques will know that’s somewhat of an occupational hazard. In any case, many of the “surprises” had already been leaked on-line.
    There have been nine solo live action productions featuring the wondrous webslinger: three starring Tobey Maguire, two with Andrew Garfield, and then this current set of three. And an even 10 in total, if you include the TV series fronted by Nicholas Hammond.
    The magic of No Way Home is that it uses all of those previous episodes and experiences  ─ adversaries, allies, triumphs and tragedies ─ to its advantage, enriching the recipe and increasing its emotional depth and range. It even enhances the earlier chapters retroactively, adding new facets to characters we thought we'd seen the last of, and giving them the momentous send-offs they might not have had the last time around.
    It all starts with the unmasking of Spider-Man as nerdy teen Peter Parker, the cliffhanger thread that the last instalment teased viewers with.
    Faced with serious legal ramifications of the revelation, Peter,  sardonic girlfriend MJ and buddy Ned Leeds seek out “very good” lawyer Matt Murdock, played by Charlie Cox in a reprise of his TV Daredevil role, and raising the first squeals of delight from the Spidey-fans.
    Sadly, it is a blink of a cameo, and one can’t help but wonder how more interesting the movie would have been if the blind barrister had donned his red costume and teamed up with the main protagonist. But it’s just the first of many presents dropped in the audience’s laps and a harbinger of the stream of notable cameos to come.
    The criminal repercussions are given short shrift however, and before long, Peter is begging Marvel's resident wizard, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), to cast a spell that will erase his dual identity from the memories of everyone in the universe. But when Peter changes his mind at a crucial moment, the spell goes awry, and the Doctor accidentally summons various inhabitants of other universes instead.
    Anyone who has glimpsed the trailers or publicity interviews will know that those visitors include the crazed Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), the haughty Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), plus Electro (Jamie Foxx), all from the previous instalments.
    Strange immediately chooses to send the interlopers back to the alternate realities where they belong, but Peter finds out that in those timelines, the villains will be killed in fights with their versions of Spider-Man. Rather than sending them to their deaths in another dimension, he insists on attempting to reform them.
    Indeed, the youthful lens we first meet Peter through does not dissolve into darkness. Even when drowning in grief and worry, he finds the light, and this time, he selflessly shares that experience with the sordid characters who have suffered too long in the stifling shadows.
    And therein lies the premise on which No Way Home is based, and on which the original comics were defined: Peter’s noble naivete and the sacrifices, painful consequences and great responsibilities that come with great power. Holland embodies the best of this character even in his dimmest hour, and success here stems from his phenomenal portrayal of growing pains.
    The action sequences are fast and frenetic yet always fabulous, and the digital effects are spectacular. But the film's real superpowers are its endearing performances, not just by the principal cast, but also from the two previous Spideys pulled in by Strange’s conjurations.
    There’s Andrew Garfield in his super-suit with the witty dialogue and over-the-top movements that characterised his Spider-Man. Maguire, on the other hand, was always an exceptional Peter Parker, so he is portrayed as the kind and courageous man behind the mask.
    The standout emotional undertone of the union between the arachnid ensemble comes when MJ loses her footing and falls from the Statue of Liberty, provoking a powerful countenance of peril between Holland’s Peter and his girlfriend.
    The picture’s most significant parallel quickly follows as Garfield’s Spidey comes to the rescue. The power this moment of redemption holds for him in the wake of his girlfriend Gwen’s death in the first movie is defined by the tears welling in Garfield’s eyes as he lets us feel every inch of grief.
   Superhero sceptics probably won't be fully converted, nor presumably those who did not watch any of the previous chronicles. But for fans who have love for the genre, the constant shift between humour and pathos in No Way Home will not just put a joyful smile on their faces for two hours, but surely more than a few sobs and chokes in the throats as well. It is a perfect conclusion to the trilogy.

#nowayhome #spider-man #sonypictures

HIS NAME WAS BOND

 

MOVIE
No Time To Die
Director  Cary Joji Fukunaga
Review Ray Chan

The fifth and final instalment featuring Daniel Craig as James Bond wraps up a multi-film story arc that began with a young intern earning his elite status in Casino Royale, to the now-years-retired seasoned veteran who is drawn back into service.
    The movie picks up close to where the last chapter (Spectre) ended, with our hero still deeply in love with Madeleine (Léa Seydoux). But he soon discovers that he’s been betrayed, and he ends his time at MI6 unceremoniously.

    From there, the film jumps ahead five years, with Craig (and therefore Bond) looking suitably aged, still a fine specimen but a little shaken and a little stirred. He’s living in seclusion in Jamaica until an old friend from the CIA, Felix Leiter, comes to visit with a dodgy Pollyana of a peon to recruit Bond to do a little light espionage that they can’t do themselves.
    This is where the plot turns every which way, as the spy teams up with a dazzling young agent, Paloma, to kidnap a scientist who holds the key to finalising a germ warfare plan known only to a few, including Bond’s old boss M (Ralph Fiennes) and the film’s primary villain, the mysterious Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek), who has use for Madeleine and her access to MI6. Safin indeed utters one of the movie’s best lines when he tells Bond: “We both eradicate people to make the world a better place.”
    Cue the spectacularly choreographed scenes of parkoured action, pretty ladies, gadget demonstrations, and social drinking. But as this is the conclusion to a grand adventure, the proceedings certainly go further than just more of the same.
    Not unlike great film sagas of these days (Avengers, Star Wars, Justice League), many of the recurring characters and actors feel like old friends: apart from Fiennes, it’s nice to see Naomie Harris as Moneypenny, Ben Whishaw as Q (now confirmed gay), Rory Kinnear as M’s right-hand man Tanner and even Spectre’s villain Blofeld (Christoph Waltz).
    We are also introduced to the new 007, Nomi, who represents the next generation of double-0 agents. Yet despite her proficiency, one can’t help but wonder if bigger things are instead planned for the afore-mentioned Paloma.
    No Time To Die is to this Bond franchise what Logan was to the Wolverine mythos: ending things definitively for the titular character, highlighting Craig’s strengths in suffusing Bond with more personality than his predecessors, while reminding us why this collection of films is so different to the other versions.
    It’s less a traditional James Bond movie and more a victory lap, greatest hits package, and blaze of glory all in one. 
    Perhaps the only blip is the theme song, always a highlight of each Bond offering. Billie Elish's dreary tune may have won a Grammy but it's unmemorable and listless. Far more beautiful is the piece chosen for the end credits: Louis Armstrong's We Have All The Time in the World, reprised from 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, in which Aussie George Lazenby starred in the leading role.

 #notimetodie #universal

TEPID TERROR

MOVIE
Halloween Kills
Director David Gordon Green
Review Ray Chan

The Halloween franchise was rebooted in 2018 with a very solid legacy sequel, directed by David Gordon Green, which showed that a revamped Michael Myers film really could bring forth some intelligent commentary to mix with the trademark gruesome kills.
    It looked at the generational trauma passed down from defiant protagonist Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) to her passive daughter Karen and fiesty granddaughter Allyson, as they came to grips with the terror inflicted by the unhinged serial killer.
    Now Green returns for Halloween Kills, which picks up immediately where that film left off, with Myers apparently burning to death in the firetrap set by three generations of Strode women, and Laurie getting hauled off to the emergency room with a knife wound in her stomach, screaming at passing fire trucks: “No, no, no! Let it burn!”
    Unfortunately, Laurie is unconscious in the hospital for quite a while after that, oblivious to the fact that firefighters did indeed rescue Myers from the inferno, at the expense of getting massacred in the process. It is admirable of Green and his co-writers Danny McBride and Scott Teems to commit to the reality of Laurie’s injury and not have her conveniently, immediately and miraculously recover, but it’s a testament to Curtis’ charisma that the vitality of the film dwindles to a very low ebb in her absence.
    Anthony Michael Hall as Tommy Doyle, the boy that teenage babysitter Laurie saved from Myers, comes to the fore plot-wise instead, and he does a lot of grandstanding and yelling “Evil dies tonight!” as the head of the local vigilante mob — but he’s merely a tedious gascon in the role and definitely no substitute for Curtis.
    Indeed, the formation of the lynch group in a small town appears to be a token effort by Green and Co to instill some sort of meaningful hook to replace the dynamic relationship between the Strodes, which entertainingly carried the first movie.
    The fear over Myers ultimately leads to the frenzied community hunting down an innocent man who they mistakenly believe is the maniac, forcing him to jump to his death from a hospital window.
    It’s a clumsy attempt at a tribe mentality metaphor, aimed at demonstrating how easily people’s opinions can be shaped by charismatic leaders. Here, the townspeople have been encouraged by Doyle to gather their baseball bats, knives, guns and probably pitchforks and torches, as they allow a single evil figure to make them so fuelled by hate, that they become just as heinous.
    And like much of the rest of the movie, it doesn’t really work. There is so much backstory unearthed without spotlighting any particular occurrence: the period flashbacks, with so many story lines involving people who encountered Myers back in the day and lived to tell the tale, weighs down the whole thing.
    The only really grisly parts of this offering are the different ways Myers continues to kill his victims, and indeed they raise more snickers than shock as we see yet another witless innocent – who’s gone on to think he can take on Myers alone – get stabbed, slashed, poked, shot or disfigured.
    It’s been revealed that this movie is part of a trilogy and the conclusion is expected to pit Strode against her immortal nemesis. In that sense, there is no real element of surprise as to how this instalment ends.
    Halloween Kills is less of a sequel than a half-baked interlude before the finale. It is a bloody, violent, chaotic and cynical mess, but if anything, it whets the appetite for the final closure, with viewers intent to see if evil really dies.

#halloweenkills

MOURNING MONOLOGUES

MOVIE
Shiva Baby
Director Emma Seligman
Review Ray Chan

This movie is an extension of debut director Emma Seligman’s 2018 short film of the same name, enabling her to explore more of the themes surrounding the premise of a social encounter at a shiva: in Jewish faith, a seven-day period of formalised mourning by the immediate family of the deceased.
    Danielle (Rachel Sennott), a young woman with a humdrum life and who offers sexual favours to earn some extra income, attends a shiva with her parents, at which she has awkward encounters with her family friends and her ex-girlfriend, Maya (Molly Gordon). To make matters worse, her sugar daddy Max unexpectedly turns up at the gathering.
    Danielle already doesn’t want to be there: so feeling forced to attend, her growing discomfiture stems from a blend of embarrassment and the need to hide her personal life – notably, her side hustle – from her personable, talkative parents. Despite being openly bisexual, her overpowering mother and eccentric dad do not fully understand their daughter, failing to support her life choices amid a host of judgemental friends and relatives.
    She finds herself at the receiving end of somewhat intrusive and barbed comments about her weight, her relationships and her future prospects, particularly from older aunts and grandmothers who wish to share their wisdom. These slowly chip away at her emotional walls and, as we see the shiva unfold almost in real-time, it becomes a boiling pot of tension.
    The presence of Maya and Max are just other unpalatable ingredients tossed in the cauldron. Although she is the only one that truly connects with her, Maya is bitter about the break-up and doesn’t hesitate to attack Danielle with snide remarks. Max, who’s there with his wife Kim, tries to hide his involvement with Danielle, not to mention some indiscreet topless selfies on the phone.
    Reprising her role from the short film, Sonnett’s performance as Danielle is confident and shows a natural talent in front of the camera. There is also strong chemistry with Polly Draper and Fred Melamed, who smoothly combine awkwardness and comedy in their performances as Danielle’s parents. Dianna Agron’s subtle performance as the cold, quietly voiced Kim also provides a brilliant foil for the chaotic Danielle, and viewers are left to wonder if she suspects anything afoot.
    Throughout, the endless screaming of Max and Kim’s baby – hence the movie’s name – and Danielle’s growing anxiety produce a relatable feeling of claustrophobia within the closed environment. The escalating apprehension does undermine the humour though, making the film less funny as time goes on, which is a shame since Sennott has a deadpan humour to admire, and there are some moments of observational comedy that really hit home.
    In the end, the audience is forced to sit with bated breath and clenched palms as it awaits for the land mines of emotion and rebellion to blow up, but Shiva Baby ends on a surprising yet uplifting note, allowing us to breathe easier in the calmness after the storm.


#shivababy

BITTERSWEET CANDY

 

MOVIE
Candyman

Director Nia DaCosta

Review Ray Chan

It is arguably a sign of shoddy production values when a viewer struggles to comprehend what’s going on in a movie if he or she either hasn’t seen or has forgotten the original film it’s based on, and there’s no easy-to-follow recap.
    Such was the case with the much-touted, rebooted Candyman, with its progenitor released so long ago (three decades!) that even if you did manage to watch it in a theatre, you’d be forgiven for not remembering the premise.
    So here’s a quick rundown: for many years, the Cabrini-Green complex – a series of dilapidated, graffiti-riddled buildings sandwiched between Chicago's wealthiest neighbourhoods – had been showcased in the media as symbolising the horrors of public housing.
    The titular character was once, a couple of centuries ago, a talented Black painter named Daniel Robitaille, who was murdered for his love of a white woman, and in a gruesome fashion: his hand was hacked off by a lynch mob and a hook jammed into the stump, while his body was smeared with honey as a vengeful swarm of bees proceeded to sting him to death.
    His ashes were scattered across the ground upon which the public housing complex would be erected decades later, from which a legend grew. Say his name five times in front of a mirror and he'll appear – the return of the oppressed, as it were – before swiftly sinking his clasp into the summoner.
    And so the Candyman is a bogeyman born of racism, as indeed was Cabrini-Green, developed to house the under-privileged.
    But now in the present, things have changed. Set in the present day, Nia DaCosta's revival of the franchise returns to a newly-gentrified site, where the crumbling old high-rises have since been torn down and luxury developments gleam in their stead.
    The Black residents are part of the new normal: wealthy, yuppie millenials who enjoy lives of modest luxury. Among them are artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and curator Brianna Cartwright, the new owners of a sprawling apartment in the block.
    Unfortunately, Anthony is in a bit of a rut, his creative spark lost, leading him to feel he can’t fulfil his potential as "the great Black hope of the Chicago art scene of tomorrow".
    That is until he is initiated into the Candyman legend after an encounter with a former Cabrini-Green resident, which provides him with some much-needed artistic inspiration. He calls up the man to see if he can use him to help rejuvenate his mojo, and promptly gets stung by a bee. Slowly, surely, his right hand becomes increasingly infected. From there, you can predict what happens next.
    The movie certainly bears the distinctive imprimatur of Jordan Peele, who co-wrote the screenplay with up-and-comer DaCosta and Win Rosenfeld, and produced it under the banner of his own Monkeypaw Productions. It aligns almost too perfectly with the kind of satire-infused horror-as-racial allegory for which the Get Out director has been lauded.
    But the social critique in this Black-lensed, next gen Candyman lacks the clever metaphor-filled sequences of his previous films.
    Instead of trying to find cleverly concealed Easter eggs, the viewer gets them flung in the face at times: for example, when one of Anthony’s first Candyman-prompted art exhibits, a mirrored bathroom cabinet accompanied by a set of instructions for the conjuring, is entitled 'Say My Name' – boldly evoking the Say Their Names movement.

    His festering limb succumbs to rot, to be replaced by a makeshift grapnel, and becomes symbolic of how a once-healthy community in the beehive of apartment blocks has been replaced by a monster.
    Interestingly, the film posits the existence of multiple post-Daniel Robitaille Candymen, each a casualty of racially motivated violence – an attempt to expand and update the urban legend for possible future sequels, in which
perhaps they'll actually take the time to explain the mythos behind the madness.

#candyman #universal

ON THE GROUND

 

MOVIE
In The Heights
Director John M Chu
Review Ray Chan

West Side Story this ain’t.
    This overbearing adaptation of a screenplay by Lin-Manuel Miranda is a musical with a working-class New York setting, but that’s pretty much where the comparison with the Stephen Sondheim classic ends.
    The title refers to Washington Heights, a mainly Latino neighbourhood at the north tip of Manhattan, where the protagonist Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) runs the corner grocery shop while planning to take over his late father’s business back in the Dominican Republic.
    A framing device depicts a slightly older Usnavi on an idyllic beach, telling his story to an audience of children, who exhibit a commendable patience because In the Heights doesn’t really have a story – at least, not one that needs to be stretched over nearly two and a half hours.
    Basically, the movie revolves around two couples. Usnavi likes Vanessa, who works at the local beauty parlour, and Usnavi’s pal Benny likes Nina, who falls out with her father over her choice to quit university.
    As well, because it’s intended to be a musical, with wildly over-the-top choreographed sequences and flash mob scenes popping out at every major turn, it’s a weirdly sanitised picture of human existence in general: no sex, humour, violence, and only the minimum of bad language.
    Director John M Chu ensures that any drama that exists is never to the point where anything gets truly painful, while also failing to summon enough comedic forays to create a light-hearted balance.
    And then we come to the raison d'etre, the actual musical numbers. While intended to be extravagant, they are over-edited and visually cluttered, not helped by the songs and lyrics crafted but not mastered by that jack of all trades, Miranda himself.
    This reviewer is firmly in the group of those who do not put him on some lofty pedestal as a modern-day Sondheim, in whose league he definitely does not belong.
    Still basking in the afterglow of his Broadway smash hit Hamilton, the playwright is fortunate that he’s still revered as some wunderkind of the stage and musical.
    Yes, there are many other less talented craftsmen out there in the entertainment world. In his favour, Miranda can act, can write, can direct, looks good, and can carry a tune. But songwriting is far from his strongest attribute.
    He lacks the melodic nous of a Richard Rodgers, a Lionel Bart, a Lloyd-Webber, a Richard and Robert Sherman, and yes, a Stephen Sondheim, who graced us with unforgettable lilting masterpieces such as America, Maria, and Tonight, from the afore-mentioned West Side Story.
    On the other hand, see if you can remember any of the tunes from In The Heights, even if you’re game enough to go to multiple viewings.
 

#intheheights