First Watch

Denis Villeneuve Week – Day 4: “Enemy” (Canada / Spain, 2013)

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Denis Villeneuve Week – Day 4: “Enemy” (Canada / Spain 2013)

Another day, another crazy Denis Villeneuve film to review. This time it is his first true English-language film, Enemy (as previously mentioned, Polytechnique was filmed in both French and English). Enemy feels most similar to Villeneuve’s early feature Maelström in that it has some amazing peculiarities but overall deals with a very human problem. In this case, it is the duality of man and his struggle to choose between two very different alternatives – both in his life, and his mind.

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Denis Villeneuve Week – Day 3: “Incendies” (Canada, 2010)

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Denis Villeneuve Week continues here on Plot and Theme with Incendies, the final foreign language film from the director, and his only film to receive an Oscar nod (Best Foreign Language film in 2010).  The film tells the story of twins who receive a cryptic message in their mother’s will:  their father and brother are still alive,  and the twins must seek them out and deliver letters to them.  A circuitous journey through an unnamed Middle Eastern country commences, and as the twins untangle myth from fact amid civil and religious war, the truth of their mother’s life is beyond their wildest dreams – and nightmares.

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Denis Villeneuve Week – Day 2: “Polytechnique” (Canada, 2009)

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Denis Villeneuve Week continues with the director’s first feature-length English-language film, Polytechnique (though the film was actually produced in both English and French, I will be reviewing the English film; Blu Ray editions contain both versions, if you’re sufficiently interested). The film is a realistic, formalist reproduction of the events of December 6, 1989, which would come to be known as the École Polytechnique Massacre (aka the Montreal Massacre). Villeneuve treats the subject with the utmost respect, and delivers a stark and beautiful rejection of all doctrines of hate. The trailer below offers a powerful sample of this great film:

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Denis Villeneuve Week – Day 1: “Maelstrom” (Canada, 2000)

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Welcome to Denis Villeneuve Week here on Plot and Theme! I have been fascinated by Denis Villeneuve (pronounced, Deh-NEE Vill-NEV) for about the last six months, when Jake Gyllenhaal’s recent resurgence led me to Enemy. Since then, I have devoured everything Villeneuve, and truly believe he is one of the best directors working today – especially if you’re into something a little darker. In celebration of Sicario, which enters wide release on October 2nd and has hooked me since I saw this trailer, I have chosen to review all of Villeneuve’s previous features. We start with a truly weird one: Maelström.

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The Intimidating, Slow Burn of “Black Mass”

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The threat of physical violence is omnipresent in Scott Cooper’s muted crime drama, Black Mass. The narrative focuses on the Faustian bargain between FBI agent John Connolly and his childhood friend and mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger.  As both men climb the ranks of their respective worlds, Connolly’s craft is subterfuge and deception; Bulger’s is intimidation and brute force. Though the card house tumbles eventually, neither the fall nor the resolution are the crux of this story. We may have come for the crime drama, but Cooper’s film strength is in the contemplation of Connolly’s misplaced loyalty towards Bulger, which the gangster wantonly exploits.

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Jennifer Kent’s “The Babadook” Offers Smart, Thematic Terror

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I cannot recommend watching first-time director Jennifer Kent’s Australian horror film The Babadook at night if you genuinely want to finish it. The terrifying atmosphere feels oppressive, to the point that the film almost encourages a viewer to throw in the towel and re-visit the film in the light of day (if ever). Minor tics from the characters manifest into horrible payoffs, but there are also just supremely creepy sequences that rival  the most chilling moments in any horror film. In addition, the narrative contains legitimate pathos, as we find ourselves caring about the characters’ respective arcs and struggles when we manage to peer through our fingers and actually see the screen.

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“Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” Discovers the Joy of Living

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The Zeller Brothers (David and Nathan) have clearly drawn a great deal of professional and artistic inspiration from the Coen Brothers in the creation of the pleasantly melancholic Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter. In response to the modern world surrounding her, Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi of Babel and Pacific Rim fame) seeks something more rewarding than the doldrums of her everyday life. She finds her solace in her pet rabbit Bunzo and an old beaten up VHS copy of the Coen Bros. magnificent film Fargo, and believes that the film actually is based on a true story, as the title card to Fargo suggests. To unearth the treasure, Kumiko embarks on a quixotic adventure to escape from the greyness and isolation of her everyday life.

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“It Follows” and the Strength of Uncompromising Visual Style

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Everything the audience needs to know about It Follows is established in the opening sequence of this masterful horror film from writer/director David Robert Mitchell. A haunting score establishes an uneasy tone to the film while the camera rotates 270 degrees to reveal a perfectly normal suburban street. A young women emerges from a house and starts running, looking behind her. No one seems to understand why she is running, but she informs her father that everything is okay. After a quick cut to later that evening, though, we find this same girl seated in a field, sobbing through a phone call to her father in which she expresses her resignation. Another quick cut, and she lay dead with misshapen, broken limbs.

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The Newest Comedy-Horror Masterpiece: “What We Do in the Shadows”

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Monster-mash together a Christopher Guest-style mockumentary on vampires and the comedic sensibilities of the Flight of the Concords crew and you get something like What We Do in the Shadows. Starring, written, and directed by Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi, this film is capable of transitioning from deadpan hilarity to a genuinely creepy found-footage horror – and then back to ridiculous slapstick. So many films fail to establish a single tone, and somehow What We Do in the Shadows manages to nail them all.

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Don’t Lose Guy Ritchie’s “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” in the Spy Thriller Shuffle

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The films of Guy Ritchie succeed best when they blend comedic elements with a strong circuitous narrative set on the fringes of society. Usually, that fringe is some underground criminal element, but with The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Ritchie puts his inimitable aesthetic to work on the period spy thriller. Though the plot can feel fairly derivative at times, the stars ably carry the film forward and offer some surprisingly funny moments amid the tradecraft and action set pieces.

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