Beauty and the Beast
Dir. Bill Condon
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Continuing Disney's redundant live action-ing of their back catalogue of animated classics, Beauty and the Beast is yet another remake meant to nostalgically prod audiences into theaters like livestock into a corral. Directed by Bill Condon (Mr. Holmes, Dreamgirls) and starring a post-Potter Emma Watson as everyone's favorite book-reading, yak-loving princess, Belle, this movie sticks extremely close to its beloved source material, slavishly reproducing exact songs, lines of dialogue, and even camera movements and edits as the original Disney film. Because of this, Beauty and the Beast may be the most outright pointless movie of the year, seeming to exist for the sole factor of making easy money for the House of Mouse. But still, Mrs. Potts knows what's up when she sings "Tale as old as Time": despite its unoriginality, I still found myself getting swept up in many of the musical numbers and dazzling set pieces. Despite my best efforts to hate on this movie, Beauty and the Beast is a competent, beautifully-crafted production that delivers the magic, even if it's repackaged magic.
For those who don't already know the story: the aforementioned time-old tale follows the exploits of a young French woman, Belle, a voracious reader who lives in a small village with her father, artist and tinkerer Maurice (Kevin Kline), as well as the narcissistic soldier trying to court her, Gaston (Luke Evans). One fateful day, Maurice loses his way in the woods, becoming imprisoned by The Beast (Legion's Dan Stevens), a former prince-turned-bipedal wildebeast whose whole castle staff was additionally transformed into furniture after a curse is placed on him by an enchantress not offered an invite to his fancy powdered wig-filled party. Belle offers to take her father's place as The Beast's prisoner, and in a strangely delightful case of Stockholm Syndrome, The Beast and Belle become fond of each other - Belle learning not to judge based on first appearances, and The Beast learning to read Shakespeare and not be a Grade-A asshole all the time.
The design of this movie is spectacular. Something is wrong if this doesn't win "Best Costume Design" at the Oscars, and the set design - everything from the candle-lit ballroom to a giant living boudoir - repeatedly left me awing at the sheer amount of undoubtedly countless man-hours that must have been spent crafting every nook and cranny of Beast's enchanted castle. The lavishness of the production values is continually shoved into your face, full-force, for two hours. However, despite its overall beauty, sometimes there was a conflict with tone. The look of the film is considerably more realistic and dark than its animated counterpart, which especially limits the expressive qualities of the "furniture" characters like Lumiere and Mrs. Potts, whose musical numbers such as "Be Our Guest" and "Beauty and the Beast" literally feel stiff as there's only so much their "faces" can move and still seem congruent to real objects.
Being a musical, one of the most important aspects to this film are the songs, which totally hold up today (along with the fantastic score from Alan Menken). I really wish, however, they could've gotten more Broadway talent for this one. Emma Watson may qualify in the "beauty" category of her character, and her bookish nature is definitely aided from a decade of playing Hermione Granger, but her pipes just aren't as strong as Paige O'Hara's. I also found many of the music numbers a bit over-produced (not that I'm surprised). After Tom Hooper's Les Miserables, I definitely prefer when actors sing live on set rather than "dub" their songs in music video fashion - even with the imperfections that brings, it feels more dramatic and honest. There are a couple new tunes here as well - a very transparent attempt from Disney to get an Oscar nom for Original Song - which were both fine and fit with the tone of the others, but did absolutely nothing to add to the narrative and will unlikely be remembered as classics.
Beauty and the Beast, unlike most of the other Disney live action remakes, doesn't seem to have its own identity. Pete's Dragon pivoted from being a traditional musical to a harrowing family drama, and Maleficent, for all its faults, at least presented an interesting new spin on the Sleeping Beauty tale. The rare times Condon's film dips its toe into something new it feels superfluous and immediately retreats back to the "safe zone" of the original's narrative.
Although it's an antithesis to risk-taking filmmaking, Beauty and the Beast serves its purpose. For many kids going into the theater, it might be their first time with this story, and if these live-action remakes are a generation of kids' gateway drug into classic Disney films, that's fine in my book.
Rating: B
The Belko Experiment
Dir. Greg McLean
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I love "what would you do?" movies. Movies that make you question how you would react in a given situation, and whether or not you'd be disappointed in yourself if John Quiñones rounded the corner with a camera crew to evaluate your crappy behavior. The Belko Experiment, similar to some of my recent "Top Ten" movies like Compliance or The Stanford Prison Experiment, looks in at human behavior and workplace ethics and brings them to their extreme, but logical conclusion: people are messed up, violent, and willing to do crazy things when the pressure is on.
The high-concept story follows a group of 80 worker bees in an isolated corporate office building in Bogotá, Colombia. During a seemingly normal work day, they become trapped inside when military-grade metal walls suddenly cover the doors and windows, and armed soldiers perimeter around the building. From a mysterious voice through the intercom, they learn that they are all now participants in a deadly game where two workers must be killed in 30 minutes, or even more will be killed at random. And that's just round one...
It's a cartoonishly unrealistic premise, but what makes this a great flick is that the human reactions to said insane premise feel real, or at the very least interesting. I love how certain people take on certain philosophies based on who they are; of course the bosses, used to making difficult decisions, come on the side of killing "for the greater good," while the underlings, perhaps naively, believe in banding together despite the threats. Characters also tend to make rational decisions here - which is a novelty for a low budget horror movie like this. The cast, a real "who's who" of character actors like John C. McGinley (Scrubs), Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead), and Melonie Diaz (Fruitvale Station) to name a few, elevates the material with some fantastic, believable performances.
While its extreme violence is not for everyone, I found this movie intense and disturbing in all the right ways. The Belko Experiment is indicative of both our time and some kind of universal wacko human condition that allows us to dehumanize others - whether it's a corporation turning its workers or consumers into numbers on a spreadsheet, or a scientist whose lab subjects are nothing more than vessels to collect data. Like another fantastic fright-flick of late, Get Out, The Belko Experiment takes real fears and translates them into a unique, blood-soaked, horror-filled world.
Rating: A-
Raw
Dir. Julia Ducournau
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Speaking of gory, Raw is another splatterific movie that is so outright disgusting that a theater in L.A. actually handed out barf bags to cinema patrons. To most [normal] people, the prospect of seeing this movie would be a big "no thank you," but my reaction was that of a kid on a plane to Disney World.
This French horror movie follows a young girl, Justine (Garance Marillier), a 16-year old college freshman whose whole family are vegetarians. She's attending a very exclusive veterinary school along with her older sister, and without even having a chance to get settled, the hazing process immediately begins. Her dorm room is raided, she's doused in red paint (or is it blood?), and forced to line up to swallow raw rabbit organs, directly violating her strict veggie-code. However, shortly after this incident, all sorts of meat starts looking pretty good to Justine, and slowly but surely the film descends into a garish nightmare not dissimilar to The Neon Demon in its alternately disturbing and beautiful imagery surrounding a confused young girl who may begin as an innocent Little Red Riding Hood, but realizes there's a bit of the Big Bad Wolf in her.
If you have a friend who's squeamish, show them this movie and watch them squeam like they've never squeamed before. But that's not all Raw has to offer. Although this movie's legacy may be reduced to its gross-out sequences involving meat, there are a lot of interesting ideas bubbling under the surface. The film doesn't simply stick to a single metaphor for Justine's ravenous craving for meat; it can be broadly applied to any number of human "appetites" gone out of control (smoking, drugs, sex, partying, etc). First-time director Julia Ducournau brings a very assured, confident voice to this movie, presenting these ideas and more in a mesmerizingly disgusting way. Grisly, provocative, immersive, and downright uncomfortable to watch - Raw is a film you might want to leave Grandma at home to go see.
Rating: B+
Kedi
Dir. Ceyda Torun
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Cats. And lots of them. Do you need any more of a recommendation to see this? Kedi is a documentary set in Istanbul, where for thousands of years furry felines have roamed around freely, wandering in and out of people's lives and bringing joy to those that care for them. This meditative film interviews a number of subjects who reflect on the ways in which they have been changed by the cats, and how cats mirror humans in some profound ways.
There's really not a whole lot to Kedi besides following a bunch of cats around for 1.5 hours, but I'm not complaining about that! Director Ceyda Torun and her crew manage to delightfully capture the alien beauty these creatures provide, with the camera following along with them at ground level and framing the cats in stunning ways that had to have been patience-straining to achieve. Kedi is one of the biggest love letters to cats I've ever seen, at times considering them holy figures, and I think fellow cat lovers can agree that the closest we humans can get to attaining nirvana on earth is when we're petting a cat. Meow.
Rating: B
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