The Congress (2014) - A HIDDEN GEM

If given the choice to be young forever, would you jump at the opportunity? Actress Robin Wright (Princess Bride, House of Cards) is given that choice, albeit through contractual agreements, by the fictional Miramount Studios in Ari Folman’s (Waltz with Bashir) The Congress. Studio executives propose her body and facial expressions should be scanned by advanced computers with motion capture technology so they can puppeteer her image into c-grade films and, as the greedy studio head Jeff (Danny Huston) would argue, “keep her young forever.” The only stipulation: she can never act in films, television or stage again—and she will be given a lump sum of money in return for signing away her identity. Wright reluctantly agrees at the pressure of her agent (Harvey Keitel) who argues her poor life choices and burned bridges have left them with few other options to consider.

Twenty years follow and a grey-haired Robin Wright drives a sports car down a desolate desert road of a very different America; the rapid expansion of science and technology has created a culture of psychedelic pharmaceuticals that can change reality into an animated world that looks like the personal nightmares of Mickey Mouse. Penn arrives at the gate for Miramount Studios, taking the drug at the urging of a security guard, and descends into a psychedelic world of land-swimming whales, robot butlers and other fantastical characters and creations. Nothing is what it seems, nobody can be trusted, and the concept of reality and personal freedom is now a stale concept.

The first act of The Congress is live-action, filmed by Michal Englert, a Polish cameraman that won best cinematography at Sundance for Lasting, and every frame is absolute beauty; each scene a canvas to be explored, consisting of vibrant colors and moody set pieces that draw you in like a Van Gogh painting. Soon after, the film transitions entirely into colorful and surreal animation that has an underlying sense of dread in its imagery. The switch from live-action to animation can be jarring at first, but it differs from films like Cloud Atlas which make jerky tonal choices that create eye-rolls rather than dropped jaws—and that is due to an incredibly strong script that shelters the animated segment from treading on tacky, kitschy seas—instead creating a brainy science fiction film that surprises the audience often and explores the depths of the human heart.

That being said, The Congress isn’t a perfect film. It can feel a bit uneven in its tone—sometimes teetering between a Spike Jonze and Wachowski Bros. film—and it expects the audience to willingly extend a hand to the lengthy, animated portion without struggle—but the flaws are embraceable since the script continuously remains clever. The dark, inventive aspects of the story not only prove interesting but often satirical, hoisting itself beyond extrasensory schlock with gorgeous imagery and sharp wit. It unapologetically jabs at big business and the film industry at large, all the while portraying tangible relationships between its characters amid the chaotic, psychedelic elements.

Robin Wright’s performance really carries the film as she battles against a world voluntarily surrendering their freedom to become a figment of their own imaginations; she brings density to the self-deprecating role of herself, and although animated for most of the film she still exhibits her versatility as an actress. Harvey Keitel, Paul Giamatti, Jon Hamm, and Kodi Smit-McPhee complement Wright’s performance with compelling characters that exhibit the remaining humanity in a world of nightmarish delusion and rampant greed.

Loosely based on the satirical novel The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem, The Congress is an ambitious and flawed film that takes bold and imaginative leaps many films fear to attempt: it will satisfy as well as polarize and while I think a second viewing of The Congress is necessary to prove the fantastical elements hold water, it is undeniably an entertaining and trippy experience that will quell the thirstiest of art-house and science fiction fans. I highly recommend giving it a look and definitely go into it with an open mind. Arguably one of my favorite films at the Newport Beach Film Festival of 2014 and a real head-scratcher.

Ready Player One (2018) - 100 WORDS OR LESS

Dir: Steven Spielberg

A milquetoast main character that lacks charisma, blatant cliches, and lazy direction, Ready Player One is fan culture fodder that is painfully unoriginal. Ben Mendelsohn and supporting cast do their best with little to do; and one interesting, original sequence involving The Shining shows potential, but the third act is lazy: many jokes flop, the acting is beyond terrible, and too many coincidences led me to believe the film would be written-off as one long dream sequence. References to beloved properties feel tacked-on, uninspired, reminding me of better films with compelling characters/plot lines. It flounders what Super 8 accomplishes effortlessly (6/10).

Hereditary (2018) - 100 WORDS OR LESS

Dir: Ari Aster

A highbrow haunted house movie. More homage to Rosemary’s Baby than Paranormal Activity, a genre aficionado’s horror film filled with slow-burning dread. It treads into familiar tropes while tweaking them to still feel fresh. Bound to divide audiences like Robert Egger’s The Witch, often appealing to a niche offshoot of horror fandom with use of symbolism, deliberate imagery, and sometimes labored pacing. Anguish, death, grief swells throughout, and is strengthened by one of the top performances of 2018 by Toni Collete. She brings tangible, deafening pain to scenes never once pulling emotional punches, merging the paranormal with genuine human grief. (8.5/10)

GMO OMG (2014) - REVIEW

Like most Americans, I begrudgingly wave the white flag of surrender when it comes to healthy eating–mainly due to financial reasons, but also because I know corporations like Monsanto have their genetically modified finger in my mouth when choosing my food and drink. Many aspects of what we put on our plate, whether it be the farm our corn is harvested from or even the choice of organic or artificial at the grocery store, is often beyond our control. Unless we farm our own crops and raise our own livestock, we simply don’t know what’s in our food. And even for the most well-informed foodie, there is a catch-22 due to high costs of organic food being much less appetizing than the short-term savings of a Slim Jim or other such mystery meat. Yet, this is nothing new; it has been happening for a long time, frequently under the public’s noses, so do we really have choices when it comes to what we eat?

Father and rookie filmmaker Jeremy Seifert seeks out to answer that question in his comical and eye-opening debut documentary GMO OMG. A film that originally hatched from his parental concerns about what he’s feeding his children and to satisfy a curiosity about what genetically modified organisms (GMOs) really are, if they have lasting health effects, or is it all just widespread hysteria and paranoia—something as uniquely American as apple pie.

The crusade for answers involves a series of interviews with politicians, seed salesman and trips across America and the world—some leading as far as an international seed vault concealed within a Norwegian mountain. But the film, at its core, mainly serves as a journey of Seifert’s to educate his children, who have a love of collecting seeds, why they should be concerned about new genetically modified seeds on the market.

Interposed between interviews are animated segments explaining the more complicated issues that arise regarding the food industry, with facts and statistics that often anger and shock—frequently concerning the corporation and agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto, a company that has patents on genetically-engineered super seeds they designed and massively distributed to most commercial farms. It does sound a bit Orwellian that one giant company has a hand in almost everything we eat, but it is a stark reality of our modern market and the documentary sheds light on Monsanto’s corrupt practices ranging from providing farmers and post-earthquake Haitians with non-renewable, parasitical seeds at the expense of agricultural sovereignty, leading as far as 500 million dollars worth of lobbying in Washington D.C. to strike down bills asking for the labeling of GMOs, ensuring status quo and hindering Americans’ freedom-of-choice.

Despite the bleakness and seeming defeat over our food that Seifert exposes he tries to keep his documentary light-hearted, optimistic and filled with humor in addition to prying answers—and he succeeds. One particular scene has Seifert comparing how his mother would run through cornfields to play as a child—but due to worry about modern corn possessing GMOs, Seifert and his boys dress up in hazmat suits and gas masks in order to be safe whilst frolicking in the cornrows. It is this wedging of sharp wit with eye-opening evidence that keeps the film fresh and entertaining—yet at the same time never loses sight of keeping the film grounded in its roots: a father wanting what is best for his family—with candid footage of his wife and boys fishing, playing and generally enjoying life amidst the surrounding madness.

The only real complaint I have about the film—besides the goofy title—is the under-representation of his wife. His photogenic children play an extremely large role throughout, but his wife is often confined to the background of scenes, never really providing substantial insight about her concerns as a mother, just a few lines and smirks about her husband’s quirky obsession with GMOs. Also, Seifert’s narration feels a bit overused at times, but the documentary succeeds where many others fail: it is concise. Never does it feel sloppily edited, containing extraneous scenes, but it is rather precise in its narrative with an energetic and lightning-fast pace that not only entertains, but also doesn’t undercut the power of its message by being too short.

Ultimately, the documentary prods Americans to question what contributes to our dwindling culture, mainly our self-sacrifice of our values with mere convenience. Near the closing credits, a young Haitian woman performs a traditional dance, confident and unyielding, embodying her proud culture and traditions, a representative of a people who burned Monsanto seeds donated after the devastating 2010 earthquake in direct defiance of the corporation, and as a symbol of their unwillingness to lose their agricultural sovereignty. Seifert’s film challenges Americans to adopt the same revolutionary spirit concerning Monsanto, no longer having our support for the uprooting of our values by big business. It promotes long-lasting change with small actions, driving home the point that something as simple as planting a seed in someone’s mind, or even in our own backyards, can grow into a movement much larger than anticipated and long overdue.

I, Tonya (2017) - 100 Words or Less

Comparable to Goodfellas in its execution, an experimental powerhouse of direction and narrative playfulness. Snubbed for best picture at The Oscars this year, this film deserves more praise for being more intelligent and introspective than the subject matter deserves. Bolstered by an amazing ensemble cast, Margot Robbie’s depiction of Tonya Harding as a sympathetic, heartbreaking figure is as fascinating as it is polarizing. The narrative plays with facts, acting as a gonzo, meta-fictional satire of media sensationalism and toxic American pop culture. Culminating in a film more Grecian tragedy than Hollywood biopic, I, Tonya is a charming, fun, and smart surprise. (9/10)

Any Given Sunday (1999) - Mini Review

An amalgamation of ideas, characters, and pacing, Any Given Sunday breaks cliches while also reveling in them, proving to be one of the most interesting and frustrating football movies ever made, and a perfect echo to Oliver Stone's ego in itself.

The cast is diverse, amazing and frustrating at the same time. This seems to be the running motif with all of Oliver Stone’s films after Natural Born Killers. Jamie Foxx gives a breakout performance, and leaves no question as to why he became a star after it. Al Pacino is his Pacino-iest in this, and while this may not be very different than his normal shtick, damn is it entertaining. As Foxx jettisons fast toward super stardom, devolving him into a shell of what he once was as newly obtained power tends to corrupt, he loses his way. The cutthroat ice queen of Cameron Diaz reminds me of when she gravitated toward interesting, out-of-the-box performances before she decided to voice Shrek movies and participate in unfunny c-grade comedies for the rest of her career.

The conclusion of the film tends to abandon all of the character arcs it sets up in the previous 90 mins, which is supremely disappointing, attempting to wrap up everyone in a nice bow with changes in personality, relationships and motivations, which feels tacked on and lazy. Regardless, the film’s first two acts, despite the frustrating edits where Oliver Stone aggressively wafts his own farts at the screen. The film still stuck the landing for me, and tries a lot harder than most football films tend to do, and though it plucks heavily from the same football films it's trying to separate itself from, there was enough here to leave me engaged throughout. (7.5/10)

Personal Shopper (2017) - 100 Words or Less

Moody, introspective reflection of our times, showcasing the nomadic, modern lifestyle and search for purpose in a deeply impersonal digital age. Personal Shopper has more breathing within than average ghost story fare, managing to unearth deep emotional depth, and challenge conventional storytelling, without feeling stuffy or pretentious. Unfamiliar with Director Olivier Assayas previous work, if the rest of his films have an inkling of the understated, careful touch this one does, then there will be much to discover. Primed by a beautiful and haunting ending that begged for a second viewing, and alluded to further mysteries and revelations to uncover. (8/10)

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) - 100 Words Or Less

A messy, cliched film that sacrifices character beats for regurgitated set pieces stolen from other science fiction movies. Borrowing from Alien, Sunshine and Event Horizon, the paradox becomes more about what went wrong behind the scenes, and how this movie was clearly salvaged by the studio slapping the Cloverfield brand on it to diminish a financial loss. Why should we care about characters we never spend enough time with to give their lives or deaths any meaning? If there is a silver lining to be found, it is free to stream on Netflix. A movie theater 5; a Netflix 7. (5/10)

Crimson Peak (2015) - Review

A film that is more beautiful than it has any right to, mildly losing its balance when it takes a plunge into the ghost and horror element near the end; a far more interesting Gothic parable than expected.

As far as Guillermo Del Toro is concerned, I will see anything he makes. Even if I find one of his films, uneven or lacking big ideas, which a lot do, there’s usually enough interesting things sandwiched in to like. He’s one of the most versatile filmmakers working, making passion projects that are small and character-driven, and then follow it up by making something gaudy and big like Pacific Rim---an excuse, I expect, to gather enough money to produce a smaller, more personal film the year after. And being late to the party on this film, most of my friends saying it is “fine,” I had low expectations.

A local art-house theater highlighting Del Toro films was screening the film for a final day this week, and even though the reputation of Crimson Peak is less than stellar, I decided to give it a shot on a bigger screen, expecting to get more out of it there than the confines of my home. And I was pleasantly surprised by how much there is to love.

Mia Wasikowska plays Edith Cushing, a 19th century aspiring writer in Buffalo, New York. Her father is a wealthy industrialist, but she wants make a name for herself with a story she’s writing that people dismiss as a “ghost story” despite her struggle to explain there’s more to find if they took the time to read on. A man from across the Atlantic, Thomas Sharpe (Thomas Hiddleston) who is showcasing a machine to Edith’s father, is immediately disliked and rejected by him. Edith, however, finds Sharpe charming, falls in love with him and follows him to his family estate Alderdale Hall, a creaky and crumbling home referred to by locals as Crimson Peak due to the red clay foundation it sits upon.  Sharpe’s more unbalanced sister Lady Lucille (Jessica Chastain) is cold and unwelcoming to Edith, seeing her as an intruder, and as the days pass ghosts begin to surface, clawing above the red clay from beneath the home, and screaming of a sinister past. Suspicious intentions by both Sharpe and his sister are unearthed as Edith investigates and wades deeper into the buried secrets within the walls of Crimson Peak.

While the argument could be made that Crimson Peak definitely loses its narrative footing when it crosses into horror full-stop, there is so much to enjoy from this film in its Gothic architecture and story that it is very difficult for me to dismiss it as a lesser work, as there is such a clear effort from the production and costume designers that far bigger films have little inklings. The Gothic atmosphere, the clear influence in color palette reminiscent of Italian horror films (Dario Argento's Suspiria came to mind throughout) was so gorgeous and expertly crafted,  invoking moody, wonderful set-pieces. Visuals alone, the film is worth a watch; but it has a lot more going for it beneath the surface, and isn’t as icy or wooden as viewers say it is.

Admittedly, the story is shelved behind the cinematography; and the dialogue can be overbearing at times to where I could see why some viewers may cringe or roll their eyes. But the film’s period setting allowed that to be ignored and kept me engaged, never throwing my interest overboard. The clear effort in every frame overshadows  these minor problems, plucking the film out of a sloppy amalgamation beyond repair. Edith is a strong female character that has things to do, never feeling like a victim swept up by circumstances that other films in the genre tread heavily. Wasikowska gives a strong performance that is believable and sympathetic in the face of the internal and external demons. Hiddleston is a charming, sinister con man that has a complexity beneath the surface that is compelling and Chastain hams it up without being overwrought as his mentally inept sister, chewing the scenery in fun ways. The ending may be the weakest portion, perhaps because of Charlie Hunnam who is giving the weakest performance in the film, but the step into interesting territory far more than the recent The Shape of Water kept me  immersed into this gorgeous, terrifying world.

Perhaps Crimson Peak suffers being chained to the audience’s expectations. Those who desire a straight horror film won’t be pleased, and those who expect a Gothic Romance will be disappointed as well. It fuses the two genres together, and does so in less-than-desirable results at times. It works for me as a fairytale, a ghost story, something I would love to listen to as a child before bed. Expertly crafted and visualized in ways that only Del Toro can, if you have the chance to see it in a theater I highly recommend doing so. (8/10)

Last Flag Flying (2017) - 100 Words or Less

While teetering into over-sentimentality, Linklater reigns in the film with bouts of strong direction and human moments in the face of tragedy. More nuanced performances by Fishburne and Carell are often overshadowed by a larger than life performance by Bryan Cranston; but the honest talk and revelations concerning morality during wartime, the regrets they carry, and the search for meaning and faith felt genuine. As their glory days trail further in the rear-view mirror, this road trip of self-reflection kept me engaged; and despite careening into old-fashioned territory sporadically, a strong heartbeat underneath keeps the film on a sincere path. (7.5/10)

The Shape of Water (2017) - 100 Words or Less

Relevant to the current political climate, a film about otherness and how outsiders are persecuted, and monsters are created, through an unwillingness to empathize. This film not only works as an entertaining creature feature, but also as an allegory for the civil rights movement. The beauty of the cinematography/staging alone is worth the price of a ticket; and while some of the scenes feel on the nose in its message, there is enough heart to illustrate the lasting impact people can have if they take the time to listen to the voiceless, and the commonalities we find in doing so. (8/10)