Three Films Make A Post: Takes a killer to make one

Ocean’s Eight (2018): As with the Soderbergh Ocean’s films, this all-female spin-off directed by Gary Ross is a technically very accomplished heist movie. It also suffers from the same main problem as its brother movies: it’s not as smart as it clearly thinks it is and never stops congratulating itself for it. Turns out Soderbergh’s smugness is infectious.

However, what this one mostly made me think of are the horrors of Hollywood’s obsession with youth as beauty, particularly in women, and its habit to push aging actresses into what borders on self-mutilation based on the insane assumption that not being able to move her face anymore while looking like some sort of moving doll on the wrong side of the uncanny valley is a lesser problem for an actress than having a couple of wrinkles like actual human beings do. I’m also pretty miffed that all the all-female Ocean’s film is able to is make me think of the way its protagonists look.

Proxy Killer (2018): But enough of that. How about a perfectly fine low budget thriller instead? Scott (Charlie Babcock) survived an encounter with a serial killer his wife didn’t. Making his first step into self-help groups, he meets the mysterious O (Mandy Amano) who easily draws out the killer in him. Even though it is easy enough even early on to see where Kyle Downes’s film is going, the focussed presentation and convincing performances by Babcock and Amano keep things going effectively until the pleasantly logical conclusion.

Look Away (2018): Less focussed and less consequent is Assaf Bernstein’s tale about bullied eighteen-year old Maria (India Eisley) coping with an emotionally abusive family by trading places with her much more confident but alas evil mirror image. Thematically and visually, there’s a lot to like here, and India Eisley’s, as well as Mira Sorvino’s and Jason Isaacs’s performances are fine. The execution, however, flounders repeatedly, first making Maria’s environment just a little too horrible to credit, and then expecting the audience to care when Maria’s mirror image provides these nasty caricatures torturing our heroine with their comeuppance. A bit more subtlety, and a couple of human traits for everyone involved would probably have worked wonders there.


The film also suffers under the contemporary obsession with giving everything a backstory, so Maria’s mirror personality is of course not just a supernatural or psychological projection of her desires but the spirit of her dead twin her father apparently killed directly after their birth because she was deformed. See what I meant about subtlety and the lack thereof?

Three Films Make A Post: A HORROR HORDE OF CRAWL-AND-CRUSH GIANTS CLAWING OUT OF THE EARTH FROM MILE-DEEP CATACOMBS!

The Hunger Games (2012): As someone who hasn't read the book (YA in general is not meant for me, what with me being older than time and liking writers who use complex language), I don't have an opinion on the quality of Gary Ross's film as an adaptation of it. But I do recognize a confidently clever piece of dystopian SF when I see it, appreciate a film that's tighter directed than it seems to be on first look (seldom has blockbuster Hollywood been less showy while using the untold millions in its budget for production design good), and respect how script and film transform everyday experiences of its main target audience into action and drama on screen without having to betray that element for the SF, nor the SF for that element. Add to that another great (and appropriately physical) performance by Jennifer Lawrence and you'll see me all aflutter about a film.

The Survivor (1981): The IMDB (not the most trustworthy of sources, of course) says there exists a twenty minutes longer version of David Hemmings's film, which - if true - may just be the version that makes good on all the film's promises, as made by the often moody direction and a very good cast including Robert Powell, Jenny Agutter, and a ridiculously unnecessary Joseph Cotten. Unfortunately, the version I've seen is just terribly undercooked with no characterization to speak of and a plot that seems too fragmentary for words; it really does feel as if all the connecting tissue of the story were missing, with characters appearing and disappearing from the plot at random, and no sense of progression. That sort of thing can work if a film is so weird the lack of normal narrative connectivity actually feels more fitting, but in The Survivor's case, it just leaves a hole where the film's core should be.

Paprika (2006): Generally, I'm not as excited about the body of work of anime director/writer Satoshi Kon as many of my peers are. The high aesthetic and technical standards of the man's films are of course out of the question. However, I've always felt uncomfortable with the way the Kon uses pop culture to express his loathing of popular culture, even more so with the cloying nostalgia for a stagnant past that seems to underlie most of his films, even if the result is as difficult to resist as anime giallo Perfect Blue. Basically, Kon put his incredible talent in service of a conservatism that makes it impossible for me to get too excited about his films. Ironically and sadly, Kon's final finished movie sees the director changing his tune. Here, the film's designated bad guy is sprouting exactly the sort of ideology usually underlying the director's films; here, the possibility of change and a humanism in Kon's earlier works have become core values. This change of mind is packed into a SF story in techno thriller mode about the manipulation of dreams, the mutability of identity and dream-images as striking as one could wish for, always hinting at a richness and depth the Kon is actually willing and able to provide.

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