Get Out delivers multitude of horrors

Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

It's pretty easy to see the objectives writer/director Jordan Peele wants to accomplish in his excellent feature debut, Get Out. He shows it in the first scene, where a random African-American man walks down a seemingly peaceful street at night, muttering to himself about being lost as a car ominously drives in the background. Peele, most renowned for his work with Keegan-Michael Key on Key and Peele, plays up the odd humor of the scenario before letting the horror swoop in, all the while playing with the audience's perception on horror conventions. A well-lit suburb at night is about as safe as a place can get, as long as you're white.

The horror Peele mines for Get Out is rooted in the black experience in an extremely white environment, which is the case when photographer Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) spends the weekend with his white girlfriend Rose's (Allison Williams) family (parents Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener and a younger brother played by Caleb Landry Jones) somewhere in the woods. The whole experience is peculiar (as a friend of Chris played by LilRel Howry points out emphatically), but Peele makes it difficult for his protagonist to tell whether or not the situation is based on sinister motivations or the awkwardness from his hosts as indicated through their frequent dips into casual racism. The gap between the two is razor thin from an outside view, with clumsy good intentions and legitimate evil difficult to parse out. Using the slightly off concept is a standard horror trick built to disorient the protagonist and the audience, but Peele employs it as a way of seeing the world through his character's eyes, a clever trick to get one of his main points across.

Peele has many points to make with Get Out, and he uses uses horror as a vehicle for his social commentary about the complexities of racism. One of the most troubling points he makes comes from the fates of servants Walter and Georgina (Marcus Henderson and Betty Gabriel, respectively), the only two black characters Chris comes into regular contact with after leaving the city with Rose. Their behavior is remarkably discomfiting, exacerbating the overarching weirdness Chris absorbs, but the horror truly arrives when the reason for their odd behavior is revealed. It takes a second to think about it, but once that twist comes and the ramifications of it begin to permeate into the mind, the lack of respect held toward those characters becomes borderline heartbreaking. That’s an underlying theme for this film, in which the scares and fears are reinforced by tragedy.

Get Out is scary to think about, but it also offers its fair share of top notch horror. The film goes heavy on the psychological scares, showcasing the queer ambiance along with a few innovative ideas thrown in to ratchet up the anxiety. An impromptu therapy session between Chris and Keener's psychiatrist Missy results in some subtly bothersome imagery and the most menacing cup of tea ever depicted in film. It takes an innovative filmmaker to transform tea into a tool for evil, and it takes a damn good one to make it work. There is a battle though between serving the horror and throwing in a few laughs to lighten the proceedings and play more directly into Peele's background. It is a tough line to define given how easy it is for horror to devolve into comedy unintentionally, but he more often than not pulls off the tonal shifts with aplomb. He succeeds by having done some homework prior to filming, using some horror tropes (like the menacing groundskeeper) as a way of deriving laughs from the audience while still using them as a way of contributing to the atmosphere. It is funny to see the groundskeeper stare as Chris arrives with Rose, but the look he gives and his general reaction remain eerie regardless of how it’s played. The comedy feeds the horror, which later feeds the comedy that in turn feeds the horror, an ouroboros of emotional fluctuations.

There is a lot to unpack with Get Out and admittedly even more a person could sift through with additional viewings. It’s worth it for the intellectual challenge it offers, yet it does so without skimping on the horrors. Get Out is the ideal horror film, showing what a talented filmmaker can do with a proper understanding of the genre’s depths.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 103 minutes

Genre: Horror

Ask Away

Target audience: Definitely great for horror junkies.

Take the whole family?: It gets pretty gory right around the end, albeit not quite enough to necessarily warrant an R rating. Around age 13 is more than fine.  

Theater or Netflix?: A theater trip would be appropriate for people who like horror.

What else does this film do well?: One of the things Jordan Peele excels at is subtly breaking down horror conventions. There are a few moments where the audience is trained to expect something bad to happen at that moment, only for it to serve as a vital plot point. It is pretty interesting to watch the audience react to its non-reaction, and it becomes a moment worth appreciating once the importance of the scene comes into play.

Watch this as well?: Get Out owes a bit of debt to the Invasion of the Body Snatchers films, along with the original Stepford Wives. For a movie with a similar sense of atmosphere, check out the great House of the Devil.

Fist Fight never lands a good punch

Ice Cube and Charlie Day in Fist Fight. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

I really don't understand what the filmmakers behind Fist Fight were going for with this movie. I mean, it is supposed to be a comedy and casts ringers like Charlie Day, Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell and Kumail Nanjiani, along with complementary pieces Dean Norris and Christina Hendricks. But beyond the flailing attempts at comedy, the film lacks a clear message, relatable characters or anything worthy near a logical point. It seems like the movie might have something to say about education, but the folks behind the camera lack the talent and nuance to vocalize it thoroughly.

Fist Fight veers in several directions, bouncing from a story about a stressed out teacher (Charlie Day) trying to escape the titular match/assumed beating from a fellow educator played by Ice Cube to a movie about the sad state of public education to a last day of school flick that comes across as a discount Dazed and Confused knockoff. It tries to be all of these things and, fittingly enough, fails at all of them on some capacity, delivering a movie with a lackadaisical plot with an asinine conclusion. Even its criticisms of the education system are dinged by the savage and cruel actions of the protagonists (Day, Ice Cube and the rest of the staff), heavy hints at sexual abuse toward the students, and the hyper-reality the film lives in. The horrid actions of the students, whose shenanigans cover giving meth to a horse, lassoing teachers to said horse, and masturbating audibly in a public restroom, is either a typical lazy high school film or a parody of lazy high school film. The latter would be a more interesting concept if the film didn't try to ground itself with a story about teachers getting fired wantonly, using the students' outre actions as a sign for theoretically legitimate challenges and issues educators face. In other words, Fist Fight creates an exaggerated reality and uses that exaggerated reality as a root cause for real problems.

Perhaps a narrowly focused narrative – maybe one focused on, say, Day's slow acceptance of his doom at the fists of Ice Cube – would have resulted in better jokes from the writers.The film has many ideas for jokes, like the horse, the onanism and the bizarre behavior from the teachers, along with a hypothesis that swearing is funny in and of itself. Little of it works though because the filmmakers never take the time to develop any of the jokes. They just spit out a line or throw out an image with little context aside from the idea that what they have might be perceived as funny, but without taking the time to find a way to make it funny (let alone inventive or original). It's all wicked lazy and reflective of a general absence of curiosity over the craft they're attempting to master. Comedy is hard, but you have to at least put the effort in to make it work.

That extends to Fist Fight's cast as well, one that on paper is again more than qualified to at least bump this material up to tolerable. Nobody aside from Bell (who offers a peculiarly fascinating performance) appears to care that much about the material or making the junk in front of them work. Day, a person who is often very funny in a supporting role, is miscast as the film's lead, while the idea of Ice Cube being an intimidating on-screen presence went by the wayside after the release of Are We There Yet? That Norris, Nanjiani, Morgan and Hendricks are given so little to do that looking bored on screen is a viable option is a waste of their and the viewers' time.

What makes Fist Fight so frustratingly is it isn't a hopeless film. The pieces exist to build something adequate and at the least entertaining, something of value for people who schlep through a winter's worth of snow for a few laughs and maybe some pointed commentary. Yet the filmmakers seem unsure of how to use what they have to deliver something competent, or at least lack the motivation to do anything with it besides unleash 90 insipid minutes of cinema into the February malaise.

Review: One out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 96 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Ask Away

Target audience: People who like Charlie Day or consider Ice Cube to be an engaging comedic presence.

Take the whole family?: This film traffics in curses and obscene imagery, so perhaps keeping kids at home is for the best.

Theater or Netflix?: Neither is a good option.

What else is wrong about this film?: One of the main plot points is the school districts waiting for the end of the last day of school to inform the teachers if they'll be retained or not. Most states, including the one the film is set in, require districts to extend contracts for renewal well before the end of the school year (due in part to the need to get the budget prepared by the end of the fiscal year in June). In other words, even the process the film uses to fire teachers is malarkey.

Watch this instead?: There are many, many better comedies to watch than this, but I'm going to go outside the box a bit and recommend 24 Hours to Live from Hey Arnold! This episode also has a character waiting for a fist fight from a stronger opponent, albeit with a more interesting plot and a nifty resolution to the issue.

LEGO Batman a fun takedown of the Dark Knight

Batman and Robin in The LEGO Batman Movie. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

The LEGO Batman Movie is worthy of appreciation solely for offering a humorous look at the eponymous vigilante, serving as a contrast to the űber-dour caricature inflicted upon cinemas for nearly three decades. The concept of Batman is silly, so having a resource that deflates the character's overwhelming seriousness – and far, far away from the Zack Snyder interpretation – is sort of a blessing in and of itself. That Will Arnett's vocal work adds an additional layer of sarcastic self-importance to Batman only adds to the fun the film offers for much of its run time. Arnett's take worked great in The Lego Movie, his Batman serving as one of the highlights of an overall terrific film. But as the lead of his own film things get a little squiffy. The joke about the super self-important Caped Crusader runs dry by the midway point and the lesson the character is meant to learn less interesting than the one offered by this film's predecessor. So while LEGO Batman Movie is one of the best films about Batman in years, it a less than stellar movie about toys that induce sharp pains in one's foot when stepped upon.

Admittedly, the main issue comes from the films’ senses of humor. The comedic brilliance from Lego Movie doesn't shift over to Batman's feature film due to the absence of writing/directing duo Chris Miller and Phil Lord. They are replaced by director Chris McKay – whose work includes Cartoon Network staples Robot Chicken and Moral Orel – and a bevy of writers who can't replicate the mashing of plot and jokes accomplished by Miller and Lord. LEGO Batman Movie is a little looser with its plot, the jokes more often coming as asides than feeding from the flow of the film. (the comedic vibe is quite similar to the aforementioned Robot Chicken.) Not to say the film isn’t funny – the talents of Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Jenny Slate, Doug Benson, Ellie Kemper and the rest of the cast keep things afloat – but the jokes are forced and come in a less organic fashion than its predecessor.

Fortunately LEGO Batman Movie retains the underlying inventiveness of Lego Movie that makes the latter so memorable. The master builder concept from the first film carries over, reinforcing the creative aspect of the product this film is trying to sell. The filmmakers also take advantage of the access to characters outside the DC universe, giving the filmmakers access to Batman's rogues gallery (Riddler, Two-Face, Joker, Harley Quinn and many others) along with random villains Voldemort, Godzilla, King Kong and the gremlins from Gremlins. It adds to the playfulness of the endeavor, along with contributing to the weird vibe the film taps into on a regular basis. Weird is good for a film about toy blocks, so the frequent non-sequiturs back to previous Batman iterations (including the shark repellent) add to the meta humor the film succeeds at hitting.

The filmmakers were smart enough to avoid retelling Batman's origin story and focus instead on his connections with new ward Dick Grayson (Michael Cera), new police commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) and faithful butler Alfred (the wonderful Ralph Fiennes). Batman's tragic beginnings are well-trod at this point, so skipping them offers more time to analyze who Batman is now . LEGO Batman Movie has one of the better explorations of what drives Bruce Wayne to be Batman, even if it is done in a somewhat blunt and very child-friendly way. It explores how Batman would respond without villains to fight (Batman ennui is the best ennui), how far over the line Batman goes to capture criminals (along with the consequences of doing so), and the co-dependent nature between the character and his enemies. One of the main subplots, Galifianakis' Joker feeling spurned by Batman's blasé attitude toward him, is the most interesting interpretation of their duality depicted in a major motion picture. Viewers learn more about the Batman character in this film than they do after more than two hours of him acting like an idiot and waiting to fight Superman. That is one of the benefits of parody, as removing any sense of verisimilitude takes the audience a step away from the cinematic universe; the only way to fill the gap is to explore the character to the very bottom of his soul.

Review: Four out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG

Run time: 104 minutes

Genre: Animated
 

Ask Away

Target audience: Families, Batman fans and people who enjoyed The Lego Movie.

Take the whole family?: This film is generally tame and the humor is appropriate so even the younger kids won't have an issue with it.

Theater or Netflix?: A matinee screening would work just fine if you go see it.

What else is missing from this movie?: Mark Hamill. Zach Galifianakis does solid work as the Joker here, but it still pales in comparison to what Hamill did on Batman: The Animated Series and several other formats. Hamill could hit the light notes the film requires of its joker, but the moments of menace that Galifianakis can't quite hit would be filled perfectly by Hamill.

Watch this as well?: The Lego Movie is a helpful complement to this. This film also references a lot of the older stuff Batman has starred in, so including a few episodes from the Adam West era, the brilliant Batman: The Animated Series, and a couple of the Tim Burton/Chris Nolan reboots is handy as well.

Fifty Shades Darker edges closer to parody than scintillation

Dakota Johnson and Jaime Dornan in Fifty Shades Darker. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

Sometimes deciphering the difference between parody and sincerity is a fool's errand. A movie like Fifty Shades Darker is almost impossible to evaluate for this reason; using simple degrees of good and bad is difficult if viewers don’t know if the movie brilliantly incompetent or incompetently brilliant. What parts of this movie were intended by the filmmakers to be humorous because they're bad, and what parts of this movie try to be good but are still awful anyway? Are the filmmakers perpetually in on the joke of what they're doing or has the joke entered orbit above their heads?

I debated those questions with a friend who came to the screening with me, and I am not completely sure one way or the other, although I do have my suspicions based in part on the series history. The first film of the series, Fifty Shades of Grey, is a sincerely awful film carried modestly by Dakota Johnson's performance as the quiet heroine/Bella Swan ripoff Anastasia Steele. Fifty Shades Darker has many of the same problems of its predecessor, particularly sloppy dialog, a dreadful lead performance by Jamie Dornan and a childish view of the sexual content it showcases. Fifty Shades Darker also sports a less than stellar turn by Johnson, who doesn't appear to care all that much about her character or anything else around her.

It shares the same problems, but not necessarily in the same way as Fifty Shades of Grey. There is no plot beyond Christian and Ana reconnecting after parting ways in the first film: Everything else involves sex, visiting Christian's family (including Marcia Gay Harden and Rita Ora), more sex, unwanted sexual advances by Ana's boringly handsome boss Jack (Eric Johnson), additional awkward sex, some inane arguments resolved far too quickly, even more sex, some drama with a stilted ex, another round of sex, visits from Ana's old friends, and fireworks that symbolize sex. Structuring a cohesive, interesting narrative around that is close to impossible, and dragging that all out for nearly two hours is a cinematic crime. And even the parts in which there is an iota of narrative cohesion are hindered by an overarching lack of logic and, again, the dialog. That last point is one of the oddest parts of Fifty Shades Darker, with conversations starting but either  never coming to a satisfactory ending or getting returned to several scenes later without context as to why, for example, Ana would be upset with Christian but never bring up that point during breakfast. It is almost inconceivably sloppy, so close to being purely idiotic by the filmmakers it could, perhaps, be intentional.

And now we're back to the question of whether this is meant to be serious at all or a joke at the expense of Fifty Shades of Grey. Academy Award winners Harden and Kim Basinger each vamp up their fleeting moments on screen, offering one of the rare times in cinema one Oscar winner will slap the heck out of another in a beautifully campy moment. There is so much camp to be found in Fifty Shades Darker, from the Harden/Basinger slap to Jack's melodramatic scene at the end to some awkward images of extras clearly aware of the mischief Ana and Christian are getting into right behind them. It's tough to call this film properly over the top; doing so would indicate there is some max capacity that clearly does not exist in Fifty Shades Darker. Gauging whether or not those little inklings are done with a wink and a nod or a straight face remains tricky to parse out.

In thinking about it, I tend to edge closer to it being somewhat knowing but largely bad in an unintentional way. Those script issues are too severe to be intentional – even parodies have a grasp on basic narrative concepts – and the lack of effort Johnson and Dornan put in their performances feels more intentionally lazy than purposefully terrible. It is bad enough though to earn a large number of guffaws from audience members over how ludicrous the movie is in its entirety and from one scene to the next. Fifty Shades Darker isn't worth shelling out $12 for a ticket, but it would be great to watch with some friends to laugh at the poorly constructed and salaciously milquetoast saga of Christian and Ana.

Review: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 118 minutes

Genre: Drama

Ask Away

Target audience: Anyone who read the books or liked the first movie.

Take the whole family?: I'm going to say no for this one.

Theater or Netflix?: Stream it with some wine and friends.

What else is off about this film?: One thing that does bug me is the way the movie treats Anastasia. After leaving Christian, she is depicted at first as a woman who has her priorities in order and knows what she wants out of her second relationship with Christian. The independence ends in the first act when she starts to cede to Christian's whims and reverting back to who she was in the last film, which is rather frustrating.

Watch this instead?: Even with how ridiculous this film is, it still falls short of the insane brilliance that is Tommy Wiseau's The Room. Also worth a watch for people looking for enjoyable bad cinema is the Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Boy Next Door, which is ridiculous on so many levels.

Salesman a complex, captivating literary adaptation

Taraneh Alidoosti and Shahab Hosseini in The Salesman. Image courtesy Cohen Media.

Much of The Salesman’s excellence comes from its examination of the death of a relationship. The marriage between the generally genial Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and his otherwise independent wife Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) doesn't end with an enormous fight or a sudden implosion. Rather, the weaknesses of the marriage begin to seep through to the surface after one notable incident, revealing the reasons why their marriage was never as strong as the surface made it appear. That the entire situation results in tragedy only makes sense considering the film is an adaptation of Death of a Salesman, a play in which a man's flaws eventually overcome him.

Writer/director Asghar Farhadi blends a loose adaptation of the material with a literal retelling of it. Death of a Salesman is featured in The Salesman as a revival starring Emad and Rana, the actors periodically putting on the makeup and costumes to become lesser versions of themselves. The thematic presence of the show looms persistently even though the failure of Rana’s and Emad’s matrimony – an attack on the former by an unknown man at their apartment after a performance – comes from a different place than the pathetic torture Willy Loman puts himself through. Farhadi paints a rosy and progressive relationship between them, one fueled by common interests and familial potential. Farhadi cleverly obfuscates the possible causes for a destroyed marriage (although he again plays with the literal/figurative line by showing their first apartment crack from a construction accident) until the attack reveals the underlying issues with their wedding.

One of the complicated questions Farhadi poses in his wonderfully complex film is if the attack itself is the root cause of the unraveling or if it was the spur needed to end something that was never that great to begin with. The attack does change both Rana and Emad for the worst, with Rana losing her independence and becoming more docile and less effervescent. Alidoosti, who puts in a generally stellar performance, excels at showing the loss of her character's will and agency, revealing an empty shell of a person who is lost and confused after having her home violated. Her internal struggle hurts to watch, especially from a person as capable and fascinating as Rana. Emad, channeling his inner Willy Loman, is left impotent after being unable to prevent his wife's attack. It eats at him through the final two acts, his story evolving from a depiction of a decent and intelligent fellow to a man obsessed with discovering the man responsible for his shame. This aspect of The Salesman, tracing the root of the broken relationship, echoes a subplot in Death of a Salesman while adding trace elements of a detective film and a revenge thriller to the proceedings. It would appear the attack is the heart of the problem, but Farhadi is too good of a filmmaker to make it that simple. While it might be the impetus for it, Rana and Emad weren't able to overcome the worst versions of themselves. Farhadi makes it clear the problem lies in their inability to adapt and forgive, and for Emad to not let his perceived failings be what ultimately destroys the marriage.

Adding to the complexity of the situation is a running theme of Death of a Salesman Farhadi appropriates for his film about the simple and necessary values of a lie. Arthur Miller depicts the Loman family as a group on the precipice of falling apart, the lies its members tell the only thing keeping it together. The truth is the death knell for the Lomans, the factor that drives Willy Loman to suicide to avoid the shame he has wrought. Truth is equally dangerous in The Salesman, with Emad's quest for his wife's attacker the root cause for their demise. Farhadi makes that point clear once the attacker is revealed, in one of those rather smart twists that makes sense after the reveal, and the ramifications of his crime spreads beyond Rana, Emad and the attacker. Tragic figures like Loman and the characters in The Salesman can only live as long as the lie is in place; once the truth, whether it be a secret or a personality, comes to light, the stage lights go dark and all that remains is the remnants of an impossible fantasy.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

• Note: This film was distributed through Amazon Studios. I am employed full time at Amazon but I work in a different division of the company.

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 125 minutes

Genre: Drama

Ask Away

Target audience: Foreign film fans and people into good cinema.

Take the whole family?: The content is appropriate enough for young viewers but not interesting enough to keep them engaged for that long. Probably best for late teens and older.

Theater or Netflix?: Theater isn't vital unless you want to see it before the Academy Awards.

Academy Awards odds?: This film is up for Best Foreign Language Film and it is a favorite along with Toni Erdmann. One thing that could push this film over the top though is the controversial executive order signed by President Donald Trump banning travel from seven countries. That order has barred Iranian writer/director Asghar Farhadi from attending the ceremony, and a couple of tracker sites have pointed out voters might pick Farhadi's film in response to Trump's decision.

Watch this as well?: There is something a bit A Streetcar Named Desire about The Salesman. The latter film is much less mystical, but both share the underlying need for lies and fantasies to hold a marriage together. Also watch or read Death of a Salesman to have a bit of grounding for the adaptation.