The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020): After the actually
watchable first Babysitter, this is a step back into his old crappiness
for director McG(odawful). The film’s more a compilation of badly realized and
badly staged pop culture references, with a script that interrupts any scene
that should be perfectly entertaining when just left alone for some smug “joke”
that’s generally about as funny as getting murdered. The final act is total
catastrophe, the film pretending it has emotional character arcs (it would need
actual characterisation for that) and going for an ending that’s supposed to
connect this one better with the first film but mostly feels random and
shoe-horned in to get the most out of a shooting day with Samara Weaving.
And please don’t get me started on the thing’s tendency to point out that it
has just made a joke, suggesting the filmmakers believe their audience consists
of actual cave dwelling monkeys. It’s genuinely dreadful.
The Wind (2018): A completely different kind of film is this
piece directed by Emma Tammi. Told slowly and out of chronological order, it
isn’t the easiest film to get into or understand initially, but a fantastic
performance by Caitlin Gerard, wonderfully creepy and beautiful shots of wide,
empty plains and fields do ease one nicely into the uncanny atmosphere. It’s a
tale of the supernatural and of madness that keeps things just ambiguous enough
to work, exploring the uneasiness of the settler in a very strange land with
particular emphasis on the strains this kind of life puts on women.
It’s also an insightful psychological portrait of a murderer, using the
strange and the supernatural, mental illness and delusions as ways to understand
things difficult to.
The ‘Maggie’ aka High and Dry (1954): This
British comedy by Alexander Mackendrick has obvious parallels to the brilliant
I Know Where I’m Going, but without that film’s undertow of the
mythical, and does not quite reaches its heights. That’s not a shame, really,
for not being Shakespeare doesn’t after all necessarily mean you’re a bad
playwright. At the very least, the film is funny, using certain clichés about
Scots and Scots working class people in contrast to an American businessman with
American business work ethics without getting preachy or embarrassing about
it.
But then, when the film isn’t setting up its jokes, it does spend so much
time and love on its characters that they stop being short hands for ideas or
butts of jokes and become people, the film genuinely trying to understand where
everyone is coming for, what got them there, and what they might learn from each
other. That’s so not 2020, but really rather refreshing.
Saturday, September 19, 2020
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