Originally intended to be part of this dispatch of capsule reviews, I already went long on Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere, the best film I saw “at” Sundance’s virtual 2021 edition. You can find that piece here. For the rest of the good, (but mostly) bad and ugly, see below.
Searchers (Pacho Velez, USA)
Pacho Velez, known best for highly conceptual collaborative projects Manakamana (2013, with Stephanie Spray) and The Reagan Show (2017, with Sierra Pettengill) has made a solo documentary feature, Searchers, that is on one level simple and direct but on another is rewarding and expansive. Centered around a single formal device in which people look for prospective mates via various dating apps, subjects are seen in close-up as they peer into the camera lens, essentially directly at the viewer, scrutinize their options and reflect on online courtship. The interface of each respective app, be it Tinder, Grindr, or Match, is vaguely seen in a translucent overlays that drape the frame and their faces. Moving from people of different ages, orientations, and motivations, Searchers explores the isolated and virtual nature of modern romance, dating and hookups. Often noted for their alienating effect, Velez focus is not on the apps so much as the users. These suspended close-ups in which we watch the subjects contemplate and/or react to what they see creates a level of intimacy that we presume is lost in the realm of online dating. Instead, what we witness throughout the film is the vulnerability, humility, and warmth of those using the apps, whether it’s for love, sex, or even transactions, we become embodied in the humanity of the experience—one that for many of us is a huge part of our lives. What is normally a one-way dynamic between a user and the screen of their phone or computer takes on another dimension in this mirror-like setup where we can peer right back through the screen, thus restoring some semblance of a returning gaze from the otherwise abstracted, static representation of a person contained on the app. Velez even swipes through Tinder himself, so that he too is put in this vulnerable position the conceit of the film requires, in one scene amusingly accompanied by his own mother who, in reference to one potential match, points out that she “looks flexible”. Another film marked by the reality of COVID-19, Velez and co. are seen in masks throughout, a reminder of how this mode of dating, and modern life in general, has become even more isolated. At times funny, sweet, and poignant, Searchers feels like a better encapsulation of modern romance than a rom-com could ever provide—and with more genuine laughs and pulled heartstrings along the way.
In the Earth (Ben Wheatley, UK)
Ben Wheatley emerged as a filmmaker by way of a peculiar trajectory from viral video success to advertising to working on sketch series before his 2009 distinctly indie feature debut Down Terrace announced him as a new talent to watch in genre and UK cinema at large. He peaked early with his sophomore Kill List (2010) which won over horror buffs and cinephiles alike by ingeniously generating its shocks and scares through momentous psychological tension. Wheatley’s middle class fuckups imbued his first two films with a sense of identity, one rooted in a particular milieu, concerned with abusive characters whose damaged relationships to other people reflected their inner struggles and culminated in twisted, surprising ways. From there, Wheatley moved in various different directions but with unfortunate, varying results. While the ambition may have been admirable, there’s nothing wrong with having a wheelhouse, and 2018’s ensemble dramedy Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (2018) saw him return to a comfortable palette, making full use of a domestic setting and mining the interpersonal tensions of an eccentric family to great effect.
His latest film brings him back to horror but without either the sense of suspense nor character that made his early work so memorable. In the Earth, conceived at the outset of UK’s COVID-19 lockdown and shot and completed just a few months later, is disappointingly undercooked. Set against the contemporary backdrop of our quarantined-present, Dr. Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) ventures out of isolation to head deep into a forest where his colleague and former partner (Hayley Squires) has gone missing. Accompanied by park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia), it isn’t long before things go awry and they’re captured by a madman named Zach (Reece Shearsmith) who is convinced he can communicate with nature through creepy ritual derived from local mythology (an excuse to play with some cult-y elements not unlike Kill List by way of Midsommar). The early stretch of the film is where things feel most strained, as the attempts to give Martin and Alma psychologies that will motivate their later behaviour and direct their arcs but come off as overly schematic and thin. This is exactly where Down Terrace, Kill List, and Colin Burstead excel: their drama, horror, and comedy all are vehicles through which to express the particularities of their characters. In the Earth feels like it’s reverse-engineered, conceived to include COVID and some kind of commentary on our relationships to nature and each other, before anything else was fully thought out.
This doesn’t mean the film is without intrigue. Shearsmith’s Zach is a laughable character and their time spent in his capture has some tense moments but feels tired and obvious. But once the fourth principle character comes into play, the missing scientist, who is also convinced there is a means through which to communicate with nature, but through scientific methods, things develop in a genuinely unexpected way. Attempts to reach nature via music à la Close Encounters is particularly inspired, and some ensuing psychedelic sequences, however cheaply, effectively create a prevailing mood. There is an interesting question here: what is nature trying to tell us and do we really want to find out? This dialectic, which only emerges in the third act, of a need to reach nature either through spiritualism or through science, amidst a drama involving four differently isolated characters at odds with themselves and each other presents the spark that probably initiated the whole project—but alas there is far too little between that impetus and execution.
The Sparks Brothers (Edgar Wright, UK)
What to say about Edgar Wright’s passion project documentary on his favourite band, the relatively unsung heroes, Sparks? Earnest and inoffensive, Wright has fashioned a cookie cutter doc tribute to this prolific and enduring pop duo, which aside from a small handful of formal flourishes, hardly matches up to their own eccentricity and personality. In fact, the linear rise and fall narrative that The Sparks Brothers follows, however true to the roller coaster career of its subjects, feels at odds with their spontaneity and unpredictability. One wonders if a more creative approach to the very makeup of such a film would be more of a testament to the ingenuity of a pair whose five-decade spanning career has defied definition. Perhaps their collaboration with Leos Carax, the forthcoming musical feature Annette, will be a more fitting culmination of their life’s work. After all, botched opportunities to make movies with Jacques Tati (!) and Tim Burton (=/) represent two of their biggest disappointments, so it seems like the film with Carax is the (hopefully) true triumph, especially for these siblings who put their own work ahead of seemingly else for so long. But it’s hard to level too much criticism at such a sincere, openly hagiographic fanboy documentary that bursts with admiration for the Brothers Sparks, especially when it feels like, after so many ups and downs, they themselves are reveling in the making of this chronicle as if it were a celebration in itself. Let them have it. Who gets hurt?
A Glitch in the Matrix (Rodney Ascher, USA)
After his intellectually bankrupt Room 237 was given far too much attention by many cinephiles, I have paid some vague level of morbid attention to Rodney Ascher and his deeply irresponsible instincts. Presenting a handful of crackpot theories around Kubrick’s The Shining, Room 237 did profound disservice to the film at the core of its focus, as well as to the nature of discourse and analysis, in exchange for the sensationalism of wacko tangents. Again with Glitch in the Matrix, Ascher seems to care less about the topic that his subjects find fascinating, instead finding their own eccentric interest to be its own object of study. This may make for an amusing form of documentary, but it comes at the expense of legitimacy and is, I think, distinctly unethical in its cannibalizing of its subjects musings for the purposes of docu-tainment. This time the topic is simulation theory, and again Ascher offers no POV of his own nor any differentiation from the opinions and/or ramblings of academics, writers, thinkers, armchair conspiracy theorists (including a murderer enabled by the reality-bending concept of The Matrix). He even throws Phillip K. Dick in the mix, whose lecture on existing alternate realities to a group of unsuspecting French sci-fi nerds provides a thread through the entire feature. One may argue that Ascher’s uneditorialized moving between each of these people provides a space and gives power to the viewer to distinguish between their rhetoric on their own—but I think something far more questionable is occurring here. Critical thinking on behalf of the filmmaker is absent and the gap between these accounts is collapsed—everything comes off as nuts as a result, and everything is given equal credence. Thus, this is a film that has nothing to say about simulation theory, implicitly mocks a small, selected handful of people who do (for better or for worse), and exploits the sensationalistic potential of these points-of-view. This kind of flippant yet oppressive filmmaking is nothing less than the enemy of thought.
Prisoners of the Ghostland (Sion Sono, USA)
Sion Sono, who just in the past decade has directed close to 20 films, has been a perennial cult figure of Japanese cinema whose prolific and eccentric output has sparked a rising popularity among Western viewers. So the arrival of an english-language debut by way of a Sundance premiere seemed like an inevitability and here it is with Prisoners of the Ghostland, starring none other than Nicolas Cage. With where Cage is at in his career, having become a living meme who will make just about anything in order to receive a steady influx of paycheques, it seems like the perfect opportunity for a gonzo auteur like Sono to have his way with such an iconic Hollywood star. Cage plays a criminal enlisted by The Governor (Bill Mosely) to rescue his granddaughter Bernice (Sofia Boutella) from a dystopian wasteland where time stands still in the wake of a devastating incident. Thus, Cage must journey from Samurai Town to Ghostland, as Sono’s film traverses across fictional landscapes composed of genre tropes both East and West. The one catch: he is only permitted to do so while wearing a suit that attaches explosives to his arms, throat, and testicles to prevent him from committing any transgressions along the way. Filled with inspired, pop art set design that embody its synthesized influences, Sono’s film is one of compelling backgrounds and surfaces and little else. With an air of studio meddling (or at least restriction), Prisoners signifies troubled production at every turn, with its incoherent narrative, awkward performances, and, in spite of its overt outlandishness, a dull tameness. Even in the campiest sense, Cage’s central turn is a total dud—there’s no semblance of either the good actor nor the ironic goof, just an empty shell. The redemption tale at its core, of a criminal haunted by his past with a chance to make amends, is exactly the sort of straightforward opportunity for subtext that one would hope talented hands could take advantage of with this set of toys, but Prisoners finds the already hit-or-miss Sono with his arms tied behind his back.
Mass (Fran Kranz, USA)
“It should have been a play,” may be one of the most obvious criticisms of a film, such as Fran Kranz’s feature debut Mass, which takes place in a single room and seems nothing more than a vehicle for some serious acting. It’s not an unfounded criticism for being obvious, but while Kranz’s Mass would make for a better play than a movie it wouldn’t make for much of a play either, as the degree of insight you may gain from this exercise whatsoever is minimal. And these seemingly theatrical limitations have been the inspiration for cinematic excellence throughout the history of film. Shot inoffensively and unobtrusively, Kranz doesn’t so much as make any stylistic missteps as he fails to enact any style whatsoever. Imagine the most basic way you could shoot an extended dialogue sequence between four characters in one room and you will probably already be able to see Mass in your mind’s eye. Centered around two sets of parents—A + B whose child was killed in a school shooting and C + D, whose child was the shooter—the film is mostly made up of a single conversation between them as they reckon with grief, guilt, and trauma. Without saying anything further, I’d venture to guess you would be able to guess the banal themes explored here: loss of a child is immeasurable, school shootings are not explainable as a phenomenon, trauma and loss divides us but also brings us together, etc. And you may also guess this film culminates with some kind of catharsis between these characters? Well, then, why am I even writing about Mass—and, moreover, why was it made?
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