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Down the Rabbit Hole with THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS 4K
Lana Wachowski’s radical reinvention of the Matrix franchise stuns on UHD
Lana Wachowski is not here for your bullshit.
After fending off years of pressure on all sides from studio execs and Matrix trilogy fans alike, the ever-renegade director shocked the world when she returned for a fourth Matrix film with Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne Moss in tow. The Matrix Resurrections, however, quickly separated itself from its assumed place in the over-saturated marketplace of IP reboots, sequels, and re-imaginings with a dizzyingly meta storyline that saw our once-dead heroes not just revived, but even more vulnerable as they lived shockingly complacent lives within a new Matrix.
Gone are the black-and-white (black-and-green?) delineations of good and evil between human and machine. Now, Neo and Trinity lead the same boring lives they’d previously escaped, their adventures subsumed into in-universe mass-marketed video games. Neo/Thomas Anderson’s parent company, Warner Brothers, is eager to move forward on a fourth installment with or without his involvement. Any dreams of the “real world” are explained as a way of coping with past trauma, easily mitigated with a blue pill. On the flip side, Trinity/Tiffany is a coffee-slinging soccer mom (married to Chad) with a love for bike repair. She enjoys the brief escape rides give her, but she’s satisfied by her new role as wife and mother. The heroic destinies of the previous Matrix films here are relegated to a comforting place of fiction for our newly-resurrected heroes–and it’s rightfully jarring that Neo and Trinity have the same reaction we undoubtedly would when faced with no longer having to worry about the fate of the Universe. Echoing Joe Pantoliano’s earlier villain Cypher, Thomas Anderson and Tiffany are either unaware or relieved that their place in the universe isn’t just ordinary, but unimportant.
The series’ mind-bending action sequences are eventually ushered in by an equally-resurrected Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and a team of familiar Wachowski stars spearheaded by the headstrong young Bugs (Jessica Henwick), who shake Neo out of his complacency to free him from this latest iteration of the Matrix. However, Wachowski doesn’t place a premium on scenes of shoot-em-up mayhem like previous installments. Rather, she pivots Resurrections into something else entirely, using the tantalizing connection between Neo and Trinity to explore a battle between love, art, and commerce. Neo and Trinity’s fight to reconnect is, at large, a fight to regain control of identities that have been exploited for the survival of the powers that be. The only force that can overcome it is the spark between them–so that the fate of the Universe rests not in how many bullets are spent but in believing that love will literally conquer all.
Audiences were understandably split, some rabidly so, as they reckoned what the film was with the film they wanted it to be. It’s not an action film choreographed by Yuen-Woo Ping (absent from this installment), leaning even further into heady philosophical debates about the nature of reality instead. This time, however, the focus is on what we owe to reality–as creators, as ordinary people, as would-be heroes–that is, if we owe anything at all. Wachowski doubles down on this through the film’s reflexive flourishes, re-contextualizing (and even wholly re-creating) favorite moments from past installments in order to imbue them with new, often bitingly critical meaning. To me, it’s amazing how instead of getting another Matrix film as we all expected, we got a film set in the Matrix about being set in Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix; it’s a film whose characters (and even its creator) are at war with their own legacy, and the expectations thrust upon them by those who hold them on such a formative pedestal. Much like the nostalgia-critical (and far too maligned) The Last Jedi for Star Wars, this is a fair point of hatred by those who did, well, want another Matrix movie.
But as much of the film shows, The Matrix Resurrections isn’t necessarily for those audiences. What’s more, as creator Lana Wachowski (ditto sister Lilly) has evolved into and embraced the personhood and identity they’ve always been at their core, Resurrections dares to suggest that fans may have fallen in love with the original films for dubious reasons. Even before Lana and Lilly’s public transition, much has been written about The Matrix as a Trans allegory (since confirmed by the creators), placing its audience in a struggle to break free of a binary society where one’s idea of self has been predetermined by higher powers since their birth. Buried under the sheen of anime and Hong Kong action influences and effortlessly cool leather jacket/sunglasses combos is a struggle for expression, of choice, of freedom; not just to escape to the real world, but to return to the real body that the mind knows is there, but is forcibly kept away at a tantalizing distance.
It’s a subversive message, unfortunately even by today’s standards, but so damn much has happened in the decades since The Matrix Revolutions. Not only have The Matrix’s creators been able to publicly live as they truly are, but the fight for LGBTQ+ representation on and off-screen has reached a fever pitch in American culture. With projects like Cloud Atlas and Sense8, the Wachowskis stoke a frenzied, unbound rallying cry for every human’s right to exist and love who they choose, featuring characters who transcend the roles forced upon them to pursue a greater sense of compassion, freedom, and justice. In these projects, the ability to be who you truly are is as fantastic and effective a superpower as kung fu, mind control, or flight. What’s more, it’s a power the Wachowskis firmly believe every human being has the capacity to wield, and it’s a force that can ultimately overcome societal constructs of racism, bigotry, greed, and overall hate.
These themes are still present in the original Matrix Trilogy, as the awakenings of the first film morph into a love story centered around Neo and Trinity with the fate of the world held in the balance, but The Matrix Resurrections by far showcases how these themes have progressed alongside with their creators over the last few decades.
To The Matrix Resurrections, what we owe to the world isn’t to live up to who society has defined us to be. It’s our responsibility to earnestly seek out our own self-definition, to live true to it in a world full of hate and self-doubt, and to connect with, love, and fight for others who are trying to do the same. In a world where IP reigns, we must hold true to our original selves–even if that means shedding off the parts of us that others loved most, if it was ultimately for the wrong reasons.
To me, The Matrix Resurrections is the culmination of decades of creative and social evolution by both Wachowski and her audience. It’s not a film that rejects its audience as some have earnestly suggested, but it fiercely acknowledges that the best of art–whether it be another iteration of IP or something rare and original–never exists in a vacuum. It’s a film that finally has the budget and social acceptance to reflect the true identity and intentions of its creator, unbound by pre-existing notions of what’s right or cool. Hell, it’s a film that has ultimate badass Keanu Reeves try and fail to fly not once, but twice. It’s the most vulnerable he’s been onscreen in years.
The Matrix Resurrections is a courageous feat of action cinema, one that wholly justifies its own existence by encouraging its audience to redefine the franchise that came before it. It’s unabashedly sentimental and self-effacing in a way no other recent blockbuster has been–and the result is a soaring success.
VIDEO/AUDIO
Warner Brothers presents The Matrix Resurrections in 4K Dolby Vision UHD and 1080p HD in its original 2.39:1 aspect ratio. An English-language Dolby Atmos track is the default audio option on both discs.
Audio Options are as follows on the 4K: Atmos tracks in English, German, and Italian. 5.1-Surround tracks in English, English Descriptive Audio, French, German, German Descriptive Audio, Italian, and Spanish. On the Blu-ray: Atmos tracks in English, 5.1-Surround tracks in English, French, Hindi, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu.
Subtitle Options on the 4K: English SDH, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish. On the Blu-ray: English SDH, French, Greek, Hungarian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish. Subtitles are available for both the feature and special features.
Benefiting from decades of technological advancement between The Matrix Revolutions and this film, The Matrix Resurrections has a gorgeous transfer on UHD that takes full advantage of director Lana Wachowski and cinematographers John Toll and Daniele Massaccesi’s vibrant expanded color palette. With an extreme emphasis on multi-colored crispness in the revamped Matrix, these sequences of the film look almost too perfect, while the signature grimy grays and blacks of the “real world” vividly return in the film’s ship and sewers sequences. The neo-Zion human city of IØ provides a welcome opportunity to showcase UHD’s versatility when it comes to shadows and flames, which highlight the textures of the earthy, decaying production design. The extensive CGI featured in the film’s robot-laden sequences, as well as in the creation of a new liquid-metal iteration of Morpheus, is intricately worked into the film’s presentation, responding well to light and shadow without errant blocking or artifacting.
Audio tracks are equally well-represented, showcasing control over a chaotic mix of shoot-em-up foley work, cryptic dialogue, and an iconic score revamped by longtime Wachowski collaborator Tom Tykwer. Both the Atmos and 5.1-Channel tracks make full use of any sound system, creating an engaging and immersive experience for viewers on first and repeat viewings.
SPECIAL FEATURES
For this presentation, all special features are on the accompanying Blu-ray Disc.
- No One Can Be Told What The Matrix Is: The cast of The Matrix Resurrections presents a humorous intercut recap of the original Matrix trilogy. Many cast members’ recollections are pretty off-the-cuff, with newer cast members’ fan-based reactions playing well off established cast’s half-remembered plot details. Lots of “that’s so cool!” with “And this happened, and this, and this…”
- Resurrecting The Matrix: A stunningly put-together behind-the-scenes featurette placing viewers in the shoes of Lana Wachowski as she recounts the debate of returning to The Matrix, the evolution of her cinematic style as it relates to her trans experience, and the cast and crew’s embrace of a more fluid, improvisational style that embraces imperfection and spontaneity–which one wouldn’t expect from a massive fourth-installment blockbuster.
- Neo x Trinity — Return to The Matrix: Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss share their infectious joy and apprehensions of coming back for another Matrix sequel, complete with BTS of the original trilogy in conjunction with BTS for Resurrections.
- Allies + Adversaries — The Matrix Remixed: The new supporting actors of the Matrix Universe share their surreal experiences joining established cast members Reeves and Moss for the Resurrections journey. It’s a wonderfully nerdy experience for yours truly to see so many Sense8 cast reunited for this!
- Matrix 4 Life: A charming BTS package of legacy cast members reflecting on the experience of coming back for a healthy amount of creative freedom on the newest Matrix film.
- I Still Know Kung Fu: Profiles the action sequences and stunt work of Resurrections, with a focus on practicality (real crowds, real helicopters, etc.) and in-camera trickery.
- The Matrix Reactions: The Cast and Crew of The Matrix Resurrections provide a hybrid behind-the-scenes making-of and philosophical commentary on select sequences from the film. Included are Echo Opening, Deus Ex Machina, Welcome to IØ, Bullet Time Redux, Morpheus vs. Neo, Exiles Fight, Neo vs. Smith, The San Fran Chase, and The San Fran Jump.
The Matrix Resurrections is now available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD courtesy of Warner Brothers.
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SXSW 2022: Nic Cage is Nic Cage in THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT
A game Cage and a game-changing Pedro Pascal give this comedy heart.
One might think that the absolute key to making a meta action comedy starring Nic Cage as Nic Cage would be the actual presence and performance of Nic Cage. After all, if you have no Nic Cage, you have no movie. And while this is indeed true, I don’t believe that Nic Cage alone could have piloted this beast of a film to a smooth landing. For as much as Cage needed to be up for something as ludicrous as this, and for as much as writers Kevin Etten and Tom Gormican (who also directed) needed to be crazy enough to write something like this just on the blind hope that Nic Cage would be interested, and as much as their contributions are vital to the existence of this film… none of them are the secret sauce that elevates The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
That honor would go to Pedro Pascal, playing the multi-millionaire Nic Cage superfan Javi who may or may not be a cartel drug lord but who most definitely is a genuine fan who paid a lot of money to set the plot in motion and have Nic Cage come out to his party on his majestic compound for the weekend. The film is structured around a concept very similar to a film I love deeply called JCVD, in which a weary and down on his luck Jean-Claude Van Damme is caught up in a bank heist and must grapple with everyone’s perception of him as his onscreen persona when he’s not really a bank heist-foiling superhero in real life. That film was a revelation of Van Damme’s genuine talent and his willingness to pull back the star facade and be a little vulnerable. But where JCVD includes some absurdity, it’s a bit more grounded and internal than Massive Talent, which goes in more of a full-on action comedy direction.
Incredibly, this action comedy really works. From amusing to outright hilarious, Etten and Gormican’s script very clearly loves Cage’s body of work and the star persona he has cultivated, and inspired the man himself to go all in, making jokes at his own expense but also getting personal about his passions and shortcomings. The action component comes into play when Ike Barinholtz and Tiffany Haddish’s FBI agents recruit Cage to infiltrate Javi’s compound and gather information to shut down the cartel they suspect Javi is leading. Things escalate from there, but Javi is always the main complication.
Pascal’s Javi is the beating heart of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. On the one hand, he’s the audience surrogate, a Nic Cage super fan who kicks off this entire absurd tale. But the genuineness Javi displays is endless. He’s not a creepy fan that would turn this into some kind of stalker thriller. He sees Nic Cage as a full human being—he just desperately wants to collaborate with him on a film project, and happens to be fabulously wealthy. So as Cage is trying to stall and stick around in order to gather more intel for the Feds, he also comes to genuinely love Javi just as much as the rest of us do. Sure, Javi may have some skeletons in his closet and be obscenely wealthy, but he also loves Paddington 2 and Face/Off and has an entire room full of Cage memorabilia.
I kind of hate the term, but The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent thrives primarily as a bro-mance, and it’s the sincerity (and absurdity) of the developing bond between two complicated and kindred souls that grounds the film and makes it more than the sum of its parts. Beyond this, there’s not a whole lot more to the film than countless references to Cage’s career (some of which I’m sure I missed, which would very much reward repeat viewings), and lots of belly laughs. In my book, that’s absolutely alright. I didn’t need a bracing character study, I needed to be entertained and invested, and I was.
And I’m Out.
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SXSW 2022: Darkness Beckons in MASTER OF LIGHT
The documentary on artist George Anthony Morton is a compelling story of the power of family.
Morton’s daughter. George Anthony Morton has straddled two worlds his whole life: Parent and child. Incarcerated and free. Former drug dealer and classically trained painter. As an adult in his hometown of Kansas City, he tries to fit back into his old life, to joke with his siblings and bond with his nephew, without being sucked back into a vortex of manipulation and guilt. It’s not just that his family has trouble trusting each other or that Morton’s seen a lifetime of hardship in his 30s because of who he is, where he comes from, and how the state treats Black Americans; his girlfriend, Ashley, frequently chimes in to say that she understands the challenges of multigenerational poverty and drug use, but Morton insists that she that she is missing a key element of his story. Morton’s kryptonite isn’t any drug, but the draw of his mother’s love, as conditional as it is.
Master of Light is ostensibly a portrait of Morton, a bio-documentary with an uplifting story about how a man turned his life around after eleven years in prison. Director Rosa Ruth Boesten accomplishes both, reminding us that the best way for a film to make a larger statement about a social issue is by narrowing in on a specific character’s journey. But the story of Morton and his mother becomes the more interesting one, capturing the attention of not only the viewer but also Morton’s therapist, siblings, colleagues, daughter, and partner. Morton’s capacity for forgiveness — and his vulnerability to his mother’s whims — is as large as his artistic talent.
When he was twenty years old, Morton was arrested for a drug deal and sentenced to over eleven years in federal prison; all his siblings have been to jail, we learn, but he’s the only one who’s gone to prison. He knew that his mother, who had him at fifteen after growing up with a mother who struggled with substance use issues, had been involved in his arrest, taking a deal with police to reduce her own sentence in exchange for information. Sixteen years later, his life as a painter is overshadowed by the revelation that his mother played a more active role, bringing the informant to their home and directly setting up her child for incarceration. He is heartbroken and dumbstruck, turning in turmoil to the therapist whose work may be unraveled by a twist that feels both cruel and unsurprising in the context of the film. Morton had threatened, in a moment of earlier frustration, to leave a portrait of his mother unfinished; by the time we learn the truth about their past, the portrait feels inconsequential.
Morton copies a Rembrandt work. Morton’s art is not a secondary part of his life, but does feel somewhat shafted in Master of Light. We see how his work evolved from painting in prison recreation rooms to attending the Florence Academy of Art. He’s fond of the Dutch old masters, meticulously copying Rembrandt’s works in museums like a studio apprentice; he even travels to Amsterdam and sits in Rembrandt’s chair, saying that he feels like the virtuoso is watching over his shoulder. “I feel as if darkness is my friend,” Morton says of both the role that chiaroscuro plays in his work — an effect mimicked by cinematographer Jurgen Lisse throughout the film — and the allure of the depressive episodes that threaten to reel him back in. Though Morton’s achievements as an artist are noteworthy and the questions he asks about the depiction of Black subjects in painting (including the fact that he was discouraged from painting Black features and skin tones in his studies) are relevant and prescient in today’s art world, Master of Light is not sure how best to explore them. The film is instead caught in the vortex of the Morton family’s multifaceted drama, a story that will induce shock and anger but also inspire resiliency. For this, the documentary, however scattered, is worth the investment.
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SXSW 2022: WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND
Iliana Sosa’s documentary about her grandfather becomes a beautiful elegy.
What We Leave Behind, which made its world premiere this weekend at SXSW, is a quiet documentary primarily filmed in Mexico. Austin-based filmmaker Iliana Sosa spent time in her abuelo Julián’s small town as he built a new house near his old one. Through her dreamlike narration intermittently inserted in the film, we learn more about Sosa’s grandfather and her memories of him.
The film explores themes of memory, family, and migration as Julián remembers his time as a bracero and how his children started leaving after the death of his wife. He seems to keep changing his mind about who he is constructing a new house for. While he sees this structure as part of his legacy, What We Leave Behind explores how his legacy is much more than a new house that few of his descendants can use.
The power of Sosa’s documentary dwells in the pauses between sentences, the breaks in the stories being told. The filmmaker and her crew make good use of natural light. As Julián is shown shaving, the light and shadow adds a certain beauty to the many cracks and wrinkles of his face. There are a few blurry, out-of-focus shots throughout, but this doesn’t detract from the overall quality of the work, which is visually stunning.
For a film about a rather stoic man, What We Leave Behind is unafraid of honest displays of emotion. Even though we can’t see Sosa, we hear grief in her voice off-camera as she echoes the chanting of family members surrounding a death bed. The film isn’t a sort of hagiography; we see the real man, or at least as much as Julián would show of himself on camera. It’s a poetic appreciation of the man Sosa knew as her abuelo: the man who would travel to Texas by bus each month to visit family until the bus company said he was too old to go alone, the man who tried planning for his blind son to have a place to live after his death, and the man who will live on in his family’s memory.
What We Leave Behind screens one more time during SXSW: 2pm on March 16 at Alamo S. Lamar.
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SXSW 2022: Ti West’s X: Horror, Executed
X is, indeed, gonna give it to ya
I am starting to believe that the horror genre is running out of worthwhile variations on the “van full of outsiders descend on a cabin in the woods and end up being gruesomely executed” subgenre. As someone who’s written movie reviews on the internet for decades now, I can assure you there’s an absolute glut of this type of film. And my interest level in checking them out has waned quite a bit. But, much like the zombie subgenre keeps threatening irrelevance only to dig up new life via creative artists, along comes one of this generation’s most exciting horror filmmakers, Ti West, with his own variation on this time honored tradition, to show the others how it’s done.
Ti West delivers a great slice of horror here with X. Six filmmakers rent out a guest house on an isolated farm in 1979 Texas to make a porn film. It’s a real “ask forgiveness and not permission” kind of scenario that producer Wayne (Martin Henderson, Torque) has arranged with the older couple who own the farm. Maxine (Mia Goth, Suspiria) is Wayne’s young up and coming star and lover, Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow, Bushwick) and Jackson (Scott Mescudi aka Kid Cudi, Bill And Ted Face The Music) are Wayne’s time-tested stars, and Lorraine (Jenna Ortega, The Fallout) and RJ (Owen Campbell, Super Dark Times) are film school students who’re in just a little over their heads running sound and camera, respectively. It’s worth highlighting our entire crew by name because West genuinely does a great job distinguishing all these people and fleshing them out in the context of 1979 America and their own life philosophies and goals and character arcs. This virtually never happens in these films where larger casts are introduced mostly as fodder for a decent kill count by the end.
Unfortunately for our largely quite likable crew, farmers Howard and Pearl are not the ideal hosts for their guerilla porn shoot.
Ti West’s signature slow burn style is on glorious display here, with patient and gorgeous camera work and top notch scripting that keeps us laughing, leaning in, and curious to know more as all the pieces click together. And all that craft does indeed pay off with absolutely wicked practical gore effects and kills that had the world premiere audience at SXSW screaming, jumping, and clapping.
What X brings to the table along with its well-written characters, great kills, and patient rhythm of storytelling is a genuine meditation on sex, youth, and our collective human terror around aging. X is actually a sexy film that earns its title. It doesn’t shy away from being a film about flesh and the ticking clock we’re all living under, no matter our gender, the color of our skin, or whatever phase of life we find ourselves in. In a way it’s a kind of sex positive horror film that posits that it isn’t sex or youth or money that necessarily corrupt, but rather our human desire to cling to our vitality at the expense of others that gets us into trouble. The harder we try to cling to youth, the more it slips through our grasp. This is the kind of thoughtfulness that can really be executed incredibly well through the horror genre. X is genuinely off–putting. Pearl and Howard are designed to horrify us all; characters in their own right, but also symbols that dredge up our deepest fears around aging. So West is able to design set pieces and character moments that physically make the skin we’re meditating on (and trapped in) crawl. Talk about a multisensory experience.
X occasionally does feel a lot like what has come before it, recalling the aesthetic of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or just making old people terrifying ala Shyamalan’s The Visit. After all, it still IS a horror film about people getting killed off at a creepy farmhouse. But it’s 2022 and this is inescapable. Ti West writes, directs, and produces here, and manages to wring something fresh and thrilling and thought provoking from a desiccated husk of a subgenre.
And I’m Out.
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SXSW 2022: SOFT & QUIET is a Showcase of Technique and Terror
Hateful words escalate into hateful actions in this unnerving real-time thriller
It all starts innocently enough: A collective of like-minded women gathered together under the roof of a church. Coffee kept warm in a carafe, donuts and snacks passed around, a freshly baked strawberry pie laid out, and a knife cutsting through the swastika-adorned pastry on top to take a slice. This seemingly genteel meeting is led by Emily (Stefanie Estes), a kindergarten teacher who has already made a small difference that day, telling a kid in her care to chastise an immigrant for daring to do her job as a janitor at the school. Joining her is her close friend and local store owner Kim (Dana Millican), young moms Jessica (Shannon Mahoney) and Alice (Rebekah Wiggins), the young and frustrated Marjorie (Eleanore Pienta), and a new recruit, the rather gung ho Leslie (Olivia Luccardi). After their meeting is cut short, some of the group take up an invitation from Emily to go back to her house. Along the way, they meet up with Emily’s husband Craig (Jon Beavers) at Kim’s store to grab some wine, and, fired up from earlier conversation, they butt heads with two Asian American women, Anne (Melissa Paulo) and Lily (Cissy Ly). Anger, along with a prior history of conflict with Anne, prompts Emily to suggest they teach the pair a lesson—how dare Asian girls talk back to a white woman—by breaking into their house and stealing Anne’s (surely not American) passport. This already dark affair escalates the film to new heights.
Writer-director Beth de Araújo delivers an indelible reminder of how hate can catch fire and spread, in some instances becoming an uncontrollable blaze. This “All Lives Matter” brigade, emboldened by hearing each other speak, takes us from a deeply disquieting roundtable to an intense home invasion thriller. They all have reasons for their bigoted behavior, problems they’re all too willing to tie to the influx of immigrants (with a dose of antisemitism thrown in for good measure), dilution of their stock and moral values—prefacing their comments with the statement that they’re “good people,” of course. They’re mundane monsters with a white board for suggestions on how to perpetuate negative stereotypes about people of color, shield the unity and purity of their American race, and use their “soft” and unexpected positions as white women to further their agenda. Beyond the situation at hand, where small talk turns to hate crimes, the film is very adept at conveying how people of this nature can be planted within our local institutions, such as shops and schools, festering and spreading their vile prejudices through our society.
Beyond the gripping subject matter and performances, Soft & Quiet is notable in its structure and execution. Unfolding in real time, the 89-minute film was shot straight through, four times, over eight days of shooting, with the best take ultimately used. A handheld camera, weaving within the players, follows them from location to location. Clearly admirable levels of prep, rehearsal, and planning, all feed into the intricacies of this deeply perturbing tale. Some might argue that a greater degree of control with some edits and cuts might tighten up the affair, and it is to the credit of the script and performances that it feels like the film might have been as effective without the real-time playout. But there is no denying the effect the approach has in terms of crafting an immersive experience. Soft & Quiet is infused with an unrelenting energy. The tension is palpable, to the point that you feel like gasping for air on occasion. Some particularly brutal moments did precipitate walkouts at my screening, so prepare for discomfort. As things deteriorate, we witness power shifts, manipulations, maneuvering, panic, and even hints of psychopathic tendencies emerging. The script fluidly introduces the elements and deftly builds this combustible affair. The film is replete with talent and a hella committed cast who gamely plunge into this process and terrifying headspace. Impressive sound design and a score from Miles Ross reinforce the discordant feel of the situation these women made for themselves, while cinematographer Greta Zozula makes tremendous use of space and light in what was undoubtedly a phenomenal logistical challenge. Soft & Quiet is a real-time revelation from de Araújo, who delivers ambitious, engrossing, and truly potent filmmaking.
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SXSW 2022: EMERGENCY Entertains and Engages
Director Carey Williams & writer KD Davilla project a voice that demands to be heard
Sean (RJ Cyler) and Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) have a plan.
Tonight, weeks before their college graduation, they’re going to get their photo on the Black Student Union’s wall of fame by attending all 7 of the major campus parties in one night. Kunle is the studious one, concerned about keeping his lab bacteria refrigerated, while Sean is the partier, concerned mostly with the perfect level of buzz before their crawl. Kunle is headed to Princeton after graduation, though he hasn’t told Sean yet. Sean believes they’re going to live together off campus and continue bro-ing out. All those plans change in an instant when Sean, Kunle, and their roommate Carlos (Sebastian Chacon), three promising and frankly delightful young men of color, find a random white girl passed out in their living room.
For me, a straight white middle class male, this would be a crazy and highly unlikely development which I’d most likely resolve with a phone call to the police. For Sean, Kunle, and Carlos, this is an emergency. Young men like them have historically faced violence and imprisonment when getting perceived to be “wronging” a white woman in any way. And interactions with law enforcement? Fraught to say the least. Sean, whose brother is on parole, argues the most vigorously that the police should not be called, while Kunle, whose parents are doctors, is much more inclined to just go ahead and make the call. What follows is a “one crazy night” type of film that expertly explores issues of major social relevance and also engages and entertains with visual energy (from director Carey Williams), a crackling script (from writer KD Davilla), and game cast.
This is not stodgy material. Emergency brims with humor, promise, and just plain likeability. Within minutes the audience grasps the significance of the bonds of friendship between these roommates, and the unique challenges and microaggressions these young men experience on an American college campus. By the time their emergency arises, we’re already with these guys, rooting for them to get through this night unscathed and get this young lady to safety. There’s energy, meaningful relationships, and propulsion in the plotting as we also follow the unconscious white girl’s friends and family who are tracking the phone Emma has hidden in her dress. The audience desperately wants everyone to get out of this unscathed, but the consequences of this scenario so very clearly differ from the black men to the white women.
While Emergency entertains and hooks its audience, it also deals with the weight of the situation with an appropriate heaviness, and nuance. Sean is resolute in his need to steer our group away from any and all contact with the police. Kunle is more willing to put himself at risk to help unconscious Emma. But Sean is more aware of the consequences and Kunle is slightly more naive. At the heart of the film is actually the poignant bond of friendship between Sean and Kunle, two black men who simply care deeply about one another, and the potentially deadly consequences one drunk white girl stumbling into their lives can have on their friendship and their future.
Coming soon to Prime Video, Emergency deserves the wide exposure that that streaming platform can bring to it. This is the kind of film that has so much to say, but isn’t a chore to watch. It brings nuance and humanity to the types of situations that people of color in America today face that many privileged and/or white viewers, such as myself, may not always take into consideration. This is the kind of film that can appeal to a wide audience of any background through its energy and likeability, but will leave viewers from all walks of life with something to think about as they walk one crazy night in the shoes of the kinds of young men the future of this country will be built on.
And I’m Out.
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SXSW 2022: EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE: An Absurd, Assured Masterpiece
Daniels mix the infantile with the infinite to profound result
This review contains mild spoilers for Everything Everywhere All At Once, a multisensory film experience which is itself virtually unspoilable.
When you peer into the abyss, what do you see? When confronting the consequences of eternity, will you choose nihilism, or love? Also, what would it be like if you had hot dogs for fingers?
Unshackled writers/directors/producers Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) ask all of these questions and many more in the brilliant, absurd, and powerfully emotional Everything Everywhere All At Once, which blew the lid off the Paramount Theater as the opening night film of SXSW 2022. This multiverse-spanning emotional sci-fi epic brings us a narrative so uniquely personal, so brilliantly cast, and so batshit crazy (whilst simultaneously focused and sophisticated), one could have trouble worrying about the state of cinema today if something like this can still come into existence.
The absolutely legendary Michelle Yeoh captivates in a performance unlike anything we’ve ever seen before from her (and which could only have been played by her) as Evelyn Wang, a Chinese immigrant who’s struggling to relate to her adult daughter (a brilliant Stephanie Shu as Eleanor), avoiding her relationship with her kind and skittish husband (Ke Huy Quan, whom I’ll get to in a minute), kowtowing to her demanding and aging father (James Hong AKA he of 449 acting credits on IMDb), and desperately attempting to finish filing the taxes on their family laundromat business to appease their vindictive tax auditor (A revelatory Jamie Lee Curtis). She also may be the only person across thousands of universes who can put a stop to a chaotic force destroying the fabric of reality and she’ll have to tap into every single version of herself across space-time to do it.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is not a film that will speak to everybody. Daniels are creative wrecking balls whose signature style is to introduce infantile humor into their narratives and smash that immaturity up against profound meditations on love and existentialism. The constant boner jokes of their previous film Swiss Army Man, or the revelation of just how Dick Long died in Scheinert’s The Death Of Dick Long, or EEAAO’s aforementioned hot dog fingers are all plot points that are simply so absurd and juvenile as to be off putting to likely many potential viewers. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I want filmmakers to craft divisive works, and I understand film viewers who might be turned off by Daniels’ “potty” humor. It’s just that these two visionaries have an equally profound handle on the human experience and imbue their creations with impossibly relatable struggles, questions, fears, and small victories. I know I’ve never seen a film before featuring meticulously choreographed kung fu battles where secret powers are only unlocked through the insertion of a butt plug and where I also wept for 30 straight minutes meditating on the profundity of choosing kindness amidst the chaos of this planet.
Yeoh’s Evelyn is a protagonist for the ages, an aging Chinese immigrant whose life is chaotic and whose regrets are eating away at her. We never get protagonists like this, and the ease with which Daniels create a diverse tale that taps into universal themes puts to shame the idea that white people are essential to relatability in the casting of a film. Yes, Evelyn’s laundromat life is very specific, but the intergenerational struggles of a woman fighting to appease the demands of her father, wrestling with accepting the homosexuality of her daughter, and trying not to resent the squirrely, push-over nature of her husband, all while getting the finances in order? These are the kinds of things the human beings of 2022 are struggling with. And so, when an interdimensional traveler taps into her husband Waymond’s body and tries to convince her that she’s the main character in a grand, sweeping multiverse conspiracy, well… who wouldn’t want to get caught up in that kind of intrigue and excitement when the alternative is endless mundanity?
Evelyn’s quest, though, is inexorably tied to the phenomenal cast of characters Daniels assembled for this film. For those among us who grew up in the 1980s, Ke Huy Quan might not be a household name, but he’s the beloved Short Round from Temple Of Doom and Data from The Goonies. Quan’s acting gigs dried up as he grew up, but he kept working behind the camera and makes a triumphant return for the ages here that is so personally moving to me. I have genuinely loved him in both of those child star roles for as long as I can remember, and while Temple of Doom has its problems, Short Round has to be one of my favorite kid sidekicks in all of cinema history. Quan is called on here to play a pushover, a dashing romantic lead, and a dimension-hopping martial arts master, and to swap between them at the drop of a hat. His Waymond is the beating heart of this movie. The rock on which Evelyn has built the life she resents. And Waymond’s monologue about kindness set me to blubbering, which didn’t cease until the end credits rolled. Equally crucial is Stephanie Hsu as Eleanor. It ultimately all comes down to Eleanor and her fraught relationship with her mother. In this multidimensional showdown, Evelyn and Eleanor will face off as developing super beings who clash across space and time to either careen into destruction or reconcile by putting aside the intergenerational and cultural anxieties and acknowledging that nothing matters, even though EVERYTHING matters.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is aptly named, and while it’s frenetic, laden with tonal whiplash, and absurd beyond measure, it’s also confident, never sways off course, and is somehow tightly controlled and focused. With a narrative so unwieldy as this, it honestly shows Daniels’ mastery of their craft that they’re able to deliver such a profound and entertaining work of brilliance. I can’t imagine I’ll see a film this year at SXSW, or all year long, that speaks more directly to my cinematic sensibilities (sci-fi kung fu that makes me weep?!) or inspires more reflection on my own life and the ideas that keep me going than Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Nothing matters. So be kind.
And I’m Out.
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OFFSEASON Delivers Eerie Cosmic Horror on a Micro-Budget
The folk horror film maximizes its locations to genuinely foreboding, occasionally riveting effect.
Welcome to Lone Palm, where guests can check in, but they can never leave. In the first moments of Mickey Keating’s (Psychopaths, Carnage Park, Darling) gripping film Offseason, an unapologetic, unironic slice of trope-embracing folk horror, a bedraggled, middle-aged woman speaks directly to the camera or to an unseen partner. What seemingly starts as a rational, grounded monologue about roads not taken and choices not made ends abruptly with an existential scream followed by a fade to black. It’s as disquieting and disconcerting an opening scene in recent cinematic history, implicitly promising an emotional and narrative journey into wrenching family drama (and trauma) mixed with surreal, skin-crawling terror.
Offseason repeatedly returns to the disturbing mood and atmosphere created by this first scene. We soon learn that the woman, Ava Aldrich (Melora Walters), has moved on from this mortal coil. Her influence and presence, however, continues to hang over her thirty-something daughter, Marie (Jocelin Donahue, House of the Devil), and her daughter’s bespectacled longtime partner, George Darrow (mumblecore pioneer Joe Swanberg). They’re driving south from New York City to Ava’s enigmatic birthplace and burial space, Lone Palm, an isolated coastal island closing within hours to outsiders due to the imminent winter season.
When you find yourself playing Silent Hill without a user’s guide. Marie’s return to Lone Palm has little or nothing to do with paying respects to her late mother or her memory, but to the purported desecration of Ava’s cemetery plot. Marie’s anxious, antsy behavior combined with a misplaced sense of urgency suggests that her state of mind isn’t as stable as it first seemed. As callous as it might sound, her mother’s dead and the dead are nothing if not patient; she could have handled the repair of her mother’s grave remotely or simply waited until the spring, but it’s obvious that Marie doesn’t want to wait, in large part due to her late mother’s misgivings about Lone Palm and her dying wish not to be buried there—a wish contradicted by her last will and testament.
Once Marie and George arrive in Lone Palm, Keating inexorably piles on the eeriness, from the unfriendly locals who freeze at inopportune moments, suggesting an offscreen, unseen puppet master, to the only road out of Lone Palm that becomes impassable the moment they try to leave. In a newly deserted Lone Palm, Marie, separated from George, wanders through one empty storefront after another, looking for answers that remain perpetually out of reach. They’re closer, though, for genre-familiar audiences who’ll easily decipher the nature of the mystery behind Lone Palm, who’s responsible for it, and what they ultimately want with Marie.
The beer is warm, the fries are cold, but the locals are nothing if not friendly. While Marie’s narrative journey never strays from well-trodden genre paths, Keating overlays the proceedings with fog so thick and ever-present that half-aware audiences might confuse Offseason with an unofficial remake of John Carpenter’s The Fog (or even the stealth Silent Hill sequel genre fans have been due for close to a decade). When Keating isn’t paying homage to Carpenter, he’s liberally borrowing ideas, concepts, and plot turns from H.P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft’s many successors and imitators. For all the lack of narrative originality, however, Offseason maximizes its locations and modest budget to genuinely foreboding, occasionally riveting effect.
RLJE Films and Shudder will release Offseason in theaters and on VOD and Digital on March 11, 2022.
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THE ADAM PROJECT Gives Ryan Reynolds Another Sub-Par Star Vehicle
A surface-deep family reconciliation drama wrapped around an overly derivative, unimaginative sci-fi/time travel premise
No one’s phoning home in The Adam Project. It took more than a decade in development hell and four credited writers (and untold uncredited ones), each one apparently working at sub-optimum levels, to come up with the screenplay for The Adam Project, a surface-deep family reconciliation drama wrapped around an overly derivative, unimaginative sci-fi/time travel premise, that also doubles as another mid-tier vehicle for the seemingly inexhaustible Ryan Reynolds. With three starring roles in less than two years (Red Notice and Free Guy), audiences, however, might be tiring of Reynolds and his relentlessly quip-heavy shtick. (Reynolds recently announced an extended break from fronting mainstream studio efforts, a decision that might do him and, by extension, grateful audiences, some good.)
When we meet Reynolds’ character, Adam Reed, he’s piloting a sleekly futuristic jet high-above the stratosphere, avoiding fire from a pursuing ship, and escaping just in the nick of (literal) time by conveniently opening a wormhole into the past. There’s just one problem (actually, many problems) with Reed opening a portal into the past: He’s returned to 2022 from a vaguely dystopian 2050, but he really intended to visit (or rather, revisit) 2018. The reason becomes, eventually (if not compellingly) clear, when the audience peeps a sad-eyed Reed gazing lovingly at an image of his time-lost romantic partner, Laura (Zoe Saldaña), on the 2050 equivalent of a cell phone (hint: It looks like a 2022 cell phone).
Ryan Reynolds and his dog, also named Ryan Reynolds. Arriving four years later than intended leaves Reed, if not exactly lost, then a man without a back-up plan, especially since the time-jump left Reed’s jet damaged and in need of (self) repair, meaning Reed has to hang low and chill out in the home of his 12-year-old-self and mini-me (Walker Scobell). With a small, slight frame and a tendency to goad bullies into misbehavior, preteen Adam has all the hallmarks of a Ryan Reynolds character, just younger and shorter. He’s just as prone to quipping his way out of dangerous situations as his older counterpart, except his quips often result in a more prolonged beatdown from the cartoon bullies who live to make preteen Adam’s life a purgatory of sorts.
It doesn’t help, of course, that both versions of Adam continue to mourn the premature loss of their father, Louis (Mark Ruffalo), a big-brained, time travel-obsessed scientist who died in an unexplained accident before Adam turned 11. The forty-something Reed remembers a neglectful, unsupportive father while the younger Adam remembers a more compassionate, empathetic parent. The younger Adam, however, has directed his understandable disappointment, despair, and anger at his long-suffering undeserving mother, Ellie Reed (Jennifer Garner, badly underused save for one emotional, heart-wringing barroom scene).
It’s obvious that Young Adam and Middle-Aged Adam have some unhealthy, personality-warping sh*te to work out for themselves, but with the equivalent of the time police led by Louis’s ex-business partner, Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener), and a trove of disposable soldier-henchmen at her command, getting through the five stages of grief and/or hugging it out will take most of The Adam Project’s sub-two-hour running time. Periodically, competently made, mostly forgettable action scenes, remind characters and audiences alike of the supposed high stakes: saving the future by saving, possibly changing the past, Terminator 2-style.
Two-and-a-half generations of the Reed clan together again (for the first time). Reynolds’ director, Shawn Levy (Free Guy, The Internship, Night at the Museum), deliberately sidesteps the complexities inherent in time-travel stories, waving away any number of paradoxes involving multiple versions of the same character coexisting in more than one timeline, multiple, branching timelines, and time loops (among others). For Reynolds and Levy, time travel is both a figurative and literal device, an opportunity to fully leverage or exploit Reynolds’ star persona by giving him a mini-me or working out family trauma/drama. Anything else qualifies as an inconvenience vaguely explained away via a “fixed point” that eventually snaps every timeline change to its original position (or something along those lines).
Giving time travel any more thought here, though, would likely result in a wormhole-sized migraine, leaving The Adam Project to sink or swim on the strength (or lack thereof) of Reynolds indulging his inner quipster again, the novelty involved in Reynolds interacting with a mini-Reynolds (a dubious novelty at that), and the usual assortment of action scenes typical of non-cerebral, mid-budget science-fiction onscreen. In the end, the paltry, underwhelming results don’t justify an audience’s investment in time, effort, or concentration.
The Adam Project will be available to stream Friday, March 11th, on Netflix.
