Here We Go Again

Encounter opens with something falling to earth from space. An insect feeds from the forest floor. A praying mantis eats the insect. Then a mosquito flies through a window and feeds on a sleeping human.

Later, Malik Khan (Riz Ahmed) wakes his kids in the night and tells them they're taking a surprise road trip; they have to be quick and they have to be quiet.

When the older boy looks in dad's bag, finding weird photos and highlighted documents, Malik explains he's taking them to a special military base, one of the few places still known to be safe. But as the journey goes on, the child starts to grow suspicious of that story. Is Malik a marine who gained access to classified documents about a mind-controlling alien parasite? Or is he a delusional PTSD-sufferer, frantically trying to save his children from a threat that only exists in his own head?

Encounter is a tight psychological drama with a side of US social commentary. Ninety percent of the film is told from Malik's perspective, and Riz Ahmed is of course brilliant in it. Crucially for a film like this, the child actors are up to the job as well.

This film is rated poorly at imdb and rotten tomatoes, which is a real shame, because those people are wrong. I suppose if you sat down to watch a cool alien invasion movie, you'd be disappointed to find yourself watching a small psychological film about a family under stress. I found it well filmed, well paced, with a great performance from Ahmed, and I score it 4/5. Find it on Amazon Prime.

This film was what I expected - very silly, overall fine rather than great, but definitely had its moments. The three leads all do what they're good at. It was exactly the right film to watch while I sorted stuff into boxes and decided what's going to the charity shop and what's staying.

A productive Saturday afternoon! (Although there's more sorting to come, definitely not done yet...)

I have a mixed relationship with Almodovar's films. Some of them I adore and want to hug and squeeze so hard (Volver), some I wish I could scrub from my brain and forget I ever saw (Talk to Her). I love Antonio Banderas, and not just because he's half of one my big fandom slash pairings of old, but because I have huge respect for his willingness to play gay roles from back when that was widely regarded as career sabotage, in the 80s.

Pain and Glory has been on Hulu for a little while now - it sounded from the reviews like a departure from Almodovar's usual style, and I knew I'd have to be in the right mood to watch it, and that came today. Banderas plays an ageing writer and director who suffers from chronic pain and health conditions that trigger depression. He feels that if he's not physically fit enough to make films, his life is worthless, and the film looks back over episodes from that life, from his childhood and his early film career.

It's a good film; well shot, really well acted (Banderas deserves all the accolades he got for it). Slow and emotional, it has a few moments of humour to lift it, but not as many as is typical of Almodovar. Watched it, found it exactly as interesting as I'd expected, won't bother to go back there.

I keep watching all this stuff and thinking, 'I must make a post about that, but I'll do it when I have more than one thing to post about.' And then when I have four or five things to post about, I realise it will take me about half an hour to actually write the post, so then I procrastinate and never do it. So, change of plan, and here goes the new idea of posting about only one thing at a time, short and sweet!

We watched Raya and the Last Dragon last night, somewhat behind the times, but I had no inclination to give money to Disney. Afterwards, the SO immediately christened it 'Raya and the Last Furry: Friendship is Magic'.

I mean, he's not wrong. There was something very My Little Pony-ish about it, and not just the central message. It was entirely predictable and formulaic, but it still managed to be entertaining the whole way through. I was never bored, and it felt shorter than its running time, and the cast was good. I just wished it had a little more of an edge to it. It was missing something of the attitude that Maui brought to Moana. Watched it, enjoyed it, won't go back to it.

For about four months over the summer, I literally never set foot in a cinema because I had zero interest in what was being released. And then a bunch of interesting or fun films all came out at once, so I've been to see three in one week. Please spread out the good stuff more, studios!

First up was Terminator: Dark Fate, which had mediocre reviews and terrible box office. But the trailers looked AWESOME, so I went anyway. And I'm glad I did, because I enjoyed it. The plot is nothing new - it's largely a rehash of the original Terminator, with some added elements of T2. But that doesn't matter, because it's done well. Linda Hamilton was exactly as fabulous as the trailers made her look and Mackenzie Davis was as great as she always is. I liked the way they used Arnie too. I wanted fun entertainment and that's precisely what I got.

Thursday night, it was the turn of Ford vs Ferrari, which was released as Le Mans 66 in the UK, (don’t ask me what it’s called in the rest of the world). It’s a film I was definitely ambivalent about. The trailers I’ve seen for it were actively BAD and left me with zero interest in it. They reeked of a formulaic, Rocky-style film but with cars instead of boxing. Yet the reviews I’d seen were all fairly positive about it, which didn’t fit with the seriously crappy trailers.

Anyway, we got an invitation to a free screening with free food thrown in, so we went. And it genuinely was enjoyable, and pretty damn good. It took that Rocky formula that the trailers stank of and messed with it and made a genuinely engaging story with really good acting, especially from Christian Bale. It’s only half true, of course, with some added drama that didn’t happen in reality, but the pacing and scripting was tight.

And tonight we've just been to see Jojo Rabbit. This film has had some pretty mixed reviews, but looked very promising from the trailers. It’s the story of a ten year old boy in the Hitler youth who discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl.

I’ve had differing reactions to Taika’s films before - What We Do in the Shadows was pretty funny, while The Hunt for the Wilderpeople left me cold. Jojo Rabbit I really loved. It starts out mainly comedic, with some darker undertones, because war and Nazis, and then becomes genuinely heart-breaking as it goes on. In terms of tonal shift, it really reminded of another WWII film Life is Beautiful, which went from cute romantic comedy to a concentration camp half way through. And like Life is Beautiful, Jojo Rabbit doesn’t cover up the tragedies, but claws some hope back out of it all.

And while I'm here, we also went to see Parasite a week ago, which had ALL the buzz coming out of its win at Cannes and nothing but excellent reviews. The reviews and trailers make no secret of the fact that there is Something They're Not Saying (the trailers actually advertise it full on) and what starts out as a comedic social satire has A Twist half way through which changes everything. It is a genuinely good film, though perhaps inevitably over-hyped, given the degree of hype. I'm delighted I've seen it and probably wouldn't watch it again.

This last weekend was the Best of SIFF showings, and I got to see a film I really wanted to see during the festival but it sold out (I was literally five minutes too late - tickets went from 'selling fast' to gone while I was on the website trying to buy one). It sold out this time too, but I was quicker!

The Last Suit. A Polish Jew who survived the Nazis emigrated to Argentina after the war. Seventy years later, at almost ninety years old, he decides to return to Poland to look for the friend who saved his life in 1945.

This story of a cantankerous, ill and scared old man travelling through a Europe completely different from the one he remembers was everything I had hoped it would be. It's both funny and utterly heartbreaking, and I really must remember to take tissues with me when I go to see films like this! 9/10

Trailer for the 'The Last Suit' here.

So we belatedly got around to seeing Baby Driver this week, a film that I'd heard nothing but rave reviews for. And I'm still trying to figure out how I really rate it, because there are two different ways to assess it.

One way is as a heist movie about a getaway driver, as which it is well acted, entertaining fun, but not extraordinary or innovative. The other way to review it is as a unique gimmick, because 75% of the film is not only edited, but deliberately shot to fit its soundtrack. The only time that's not the case is when the music isn't playing. And as a gimmick it's unquestionably clever, but the problem with it is that you sometimes find yourself watching the editing rather than watching the film. And that's not just a me thing, as someone who has made music vids and edited footage that way, because the SO said the same.

When it works at its best, it's brilliant. There's one stunning scene where Baby walks down the street to get coffee for the group, orders it and then takes it back to the office. And it's not just the actor's movements and rhythm that are shot to the song playing, it's the graffiti on the walls and the items for sale in the shops he walks past that reflect the song's lyrics and instrumentation, and I can barely imagine how tricky the whole thing must have been to shoot. But the final effect is astounding, because it's four minutes of a guy going to fetch coffee from a block away and then coming back, and it's mesmerising. That's when it's obviously very forced and you don't care, but there are some occasions when the conceit starts to feel a bit more intrusive.

The SO and I also liked the fact that the film got the obvious car chase scene, the one with the Subaru and the Ken Block style moves, out of the way right at the start, so that you're not waiting for it. After that they could play with the vehicles a bit differently :-)

It's clever as hell, and I loved seeing it, and it's definitely given me a lot more thought than most heist movies would, but I think it should be a one off and not a trend.

We went to see Interstellar yesterday. I'd heard very mixed opinions on it, and now I know why.

Visually, it looked amazing. Of course it did, it's Christopher Nolan.The ideas it explored were interesting, though I'm not convinced it explored them as well as it might have done. But the big failing for me (and all of us who saw it said the same, so it wasn't just me) was that the film completely failed to connect emotionally. I was supposed to empathise with the father who was leaving his family, missing out on their lives while he strived to save the human species. It just didn't happen.

I have to compare Interstellar with Inception, because there's some overlap in the big themes they explore. There are definite parallels between the settings of space and limbo, of someone being stranded alone for years; of one person living out an entire life, while for a loved one little time has passed. Yet the emotional storylines of Inception worked - Dom grieving for his wife and missing his kids, Fischer Jr constantly seeking his father's approval and never getting it. I felt for those people. So how is it that the silly action movie, with all its crazy fight sequences and band of criminals, managed to work emotionally, while the slower, talkier film failed so badly?

I think maybe a lot of it comes down to the overall tone of the film. Interstellar is a very grim film, dealing with humanity facing starvation, and obviously its mood is going to be something of a downer. I'm not going to blame the acting - I can't speak for Anne Hathaway much, but I know Matthew McConaughey can play dour and restrained and still blow me away (True Detective). I just think a little humour now and then would have made a world of difference; some dark sarcasm, some attempts to cheer up the kids and distract them from the deteriorating world, anything to make the characters seem more like people. As it was, all they did was talk about doom and high concepts, and the element to make me invest in them as characters rather than plot enablers just wasn't there.

I'm glad I saw it, but I won't buy the DVD.

ETA The comments contain spoilers.

The 2010 Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival wound up this weekend, and as well as Pandora Boxx, I did go to see a bunch of films. Since I'm short on time, the reviews will be less detailed then I usually like to do.

( Some Films About Gay Issues )

Three more films for my almost-last entry of SIFF 2010 - the latest Jackie Chan film, a drama about gay Neo-Nazis and an Icelandic thriller.

( Variety is fun! )