Get Out
Dir. Jordan Peele
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Meeting the in-laws is always a situation filled with anxiety. In his directorial debut, Jordan Peele (the comedic mastermind behind Comedy Central's sketch show Key & Peele), uses those same relatable discomforts to make a socially-conscious horror film with a lot more on its mind than cheap thrills. In a story that feels like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner meets Rosemary's Baby, Get Out follows a young interracial couple, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams), who are on a weekend getaway to her parents' house. At first, Chris reads her family's overly accommodating behavior to be nervous, "white liberal" attempts to deal with their daughter's relationship, but as the weekend continues, it starts to become clear that something disturbing is going on under the surface of this seemingly "woke" family. This movie not only works as a fun horror flick, but it's filled with layers of social commentary and subtext that makes Get Out one of the most thoughtful and well-written entries into the horror genre I've seen in a very long time. Despite being a "comedy guy" and first-time filmmaker, Jordan Peele has undoubtedly wrote and directed a modern cult classic.
Pretty much everything about this movie works. First off - the cast is wonderful. It's a mish-mash of new and familiar faces for me, but they all do a fantastic job of grounding these often complex characters in reality. I remember Daniel Kaluuya's jaw-dropping performance from the second episode of Black Mirror - one of my favorite episodes of TV ever - and similarly here he plays a man who feels slightly disconnected from everyone around him (at one point this feeling manifests itself literally during a creepy hypnosis sequence). Comedian Lil Rel Howery plays audience surrogate Rod, a TSA agent-turned-detective and friend of Chris's who always brings some much-needed humor to the film right when it's necessary. Also of note are Betty Gabriel and Marcus Henderson, who play the housemaid and groundskeeper of the Armitage household. Gabriel in particular was amazing for reasons I can't really get into without spoiling a specific scene, but I'll just say that she displayed a conflicting emotion in one of the freakiest, most eerie ways I've ever seen in a film.
What makes this such a brilliant movie is how Peele is able to talk about important issues and anxieties black men face today, but couches them in a palatable, entertaining, genuinely scary, mass-appeal fright flick without being off-puttingly didactic about its message. Again, it's hard to talk about this movie because of its fun twists and turns, which are all central to the meaning of the film, but broadly speaking Peele plays on the idea that although in this post-black president world where we've seemingly overcome racism, it's still alive and well, and in its own nightmarish way, the film explores how traces of slavery have still never left us (reminding me of recent Oscar nom 13th, Ava DuVernay's Netflix doc about the American prison system). Get Out also makes haunting visual allusions to instances of law enforcement going after African Americans, integrating the feelings of paranoia that many black men have in "white" suburban settings (at one point, Chris uses a cell phone flash to save himself, which on further inspection is a very interesting parallel to how it's been only through cell phone videos that the abuse of law enforcement against blacks has been captured).
It's hard to believe such a layered, well-crafted, cinematic, thematically rich, and totally confident work came from a first-time director more used to making short form comedy than Hitchcockian thrillers - but it makes sense when you consider just what he did with Key & Peele. After listening to Peele's interview on the Q&A Podcast (possibly the best movie podcast out there!), it dawned on me that he essentially got his "film school" by making hundreds of short films over the course of five seasons, often working in different genres and mining every situation for the underlying satire. He's doing the same exact thing with Get Out - the only shocker is that it's not only clever and satirical, but genuinely creepy and totally fits alongside other classics of the horror genre.
My only nit to pick is with its ending. Without giving anything away, I'll say that although I liked where the characters ended up, I wanted there to be just one more little kick-in-the-pants or darkly cynical stinger to close things off (like that of Night of the Living Dead). I also thought that - like with the first John Wick - by the end of the film, its "world" expands beyond what we see and a lot was left unexplored (writer Max Landis made an interesting quick video on his Youtube page about the "10 before, 10 after" rule regarding this film). Considering the success and positive word of mouth for this movie, a sequel may very well happen, and I hope if it does Peele delves even deeper and widens the scope of the Get Out universe, like what Blumhouse Pictures attempted with the Purge sequels.
While I may have been left craving the tiniest bit more when it ended, I think that's only a sign of how great this movie was. A perfect example of socially-conscious, slow-building horror in the vein of Rosemary's Baby, Get Out is an early film in contention for my Top Ten of 2017 and has truly cemented itself into the Pantheon of all-time great horror movies.
Rating: A-
A Cure for Wellness
Dir. Gore Verbinski
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For anyone that follows my blog, A Cure for Wellness is the first on my "Most Anticipated" list for 2017, so I was really looking forward to this. Gore Verbinski has directed some of my favorite films (The Lone Ranger aside), and one of them is the remake of The Ring, which is one of those rare horror films that legitimately gave me nightmares. He returns to the horror genre with A Cure for Wellness, a sort of Shutter Island-type psychological thriller with the creepy, dream-like undertones of a Dario Argento film. The story follows a young executive (Dane DeHaan), sent to retrieve his company's CEO from an idyllic, remote "wellness center" in the Swiss Alps. However, he has a difficult time convincing the CEO to leave, and slowly starts to suspect that something sinister is going on behind the scenes of this mysterious spa.
A Cure for Wellness is amazing on a purely visual standpoint. Without giving much away, I'll just say that there were images presented to me in this movie that transported me to a dark and disturbing place that I won't soon forget. Verbinski imbues every single shot with a kind of warped beauty - even a fallen-over water bubbler jug, with the water sloshing this way and that after a character knocks it to the ground after a heart attack, was eerily beautiful. The whole film operates under this kind of dream-like logic that is uncommon in a wide release film like this (which is why it probably bombed hard at the box office - pathetically coming in 10th place on its opening weekend), and for whatever reason, it held me under its spell for the duration of its 2.5 hour run time.
The haters of this movie often complain about its unnatural expositional dialogue and uninteresting characters, and I see where they're coming from (I'm glad I watched this before I saw Get Out). DeHaan's character has almost no agency in the film, and there's no real "audience surrogate," like the TSA agent in Get Out, to identify with. That being said, there is some interesting social commentary bubbling under the surface that I really liked - the idea of juxtaposing a sanitarium with the workforce, exploring ideas of how two places meant to present an "ideal" (work your way up the ladder! Get better with our treatments!) are more or less just two separate paths where creeps without your best interests in mind can control you. There's a lot of cool stuff going on here, and it's disappointing to me how badly this was both received by audiences and critics (only 40% on Rotten Tomatoes). While it may not be a masterpiece, I think A Cure for Wellness is a deliciously twisted slice of horror that should please fans of the genre.
Rating: B
The Salesman
Dir. Asghar Farhadi
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Asghar Farhadi, the Iranian filmmaker behind such internationally-respected films as A Separation and About Elly, made headlines shortly after President Trump's travel ban by refusing to attend the Oscar ceremony, for which The Salesman was nominated for Best Foreign Picture. He ended up winning the category (in my mind, because of this whole controversy), and a former director at NASA represented him, reading a prepared statement from Farhadi. All this controversy has completely overshadowed the movie at this point - so is it really that good? My answer is not really, especially considering it in the overall body of Farhadi's work as a filmmaker.
The story follows a married couple, Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), both currently starring in a stage production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. After their old flat becomes damaged, the couple are forced to move into a new apartment, in which it's hinted that the previous tenant may have been a prostitute. One day, when Rana is home alone, she accidentally lets in a stranger thinking it's Emad, and she is assaulted by an intruder. Despite Rana sort of just wanting to forget the whole ordeal, Emad goes in search of revenge, thinking that the intruder must be one of the previous tenant's "clients," leading them both to unexpectedly dramatic places.
While there's a lot to like about The Salesman - the naturalistic acting, the almost documentary-style camera, and an extremely tense final act - I did have some problems with it. I really was not a fan of the forced-parallel between the main story and the actors in Death of a Salesman. I'm sure I'm not "with it" enough to appreciate the juxtaposition, but I was confused as to how it connected to the plot (is it just because both "salesmen" are brow-beaten husbands?). I also found it problematic just how little we get to see from the female character's point of view. Rana is pushed to the background while Emad's quest for vengeance is front-and-center. We see more how Rana's assault affects her husband than Rana herself; this decision may have been intentional as this could be a general social insight into how women's perspectives are ignored in Iranian society (we don't even see the assault, it happens off-screen), but by the end, Rana doesn't have much say in how the events unfold and ignoring her character only reinforces those very themes I think Farhadi was trying to express.
Overall, The Salesman presents some tense, memorable moments and yet more interesting, somehow-palatable-for-American audiences insights into Iranian society from Asghar Farhadi, I just wish it managed to do so with the same dramatic pull as his previous films.
Rating: B-
Toni Erdmann
Dir. Maren Ade
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Germany's Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film, Toni Erdmann is a father-daughter comedy that's received a ton of critical acclaim and even convinced Jack Nicholson to come out of retirement to act in the American remake. So what's so great about it that it got Jack out of his AARP meetings and in front of the camera again? Well, it's pretty damn funny, heartwarming, outright bizarre, and it joyously embraces awkwardness in a way that makes The Office look like child's play.
The story follows a no-nonsense oil company consultant, Ines Conradi (Sandra Hüller) and her father Winfried (Peter Simonischek), a part-time music teacher with an unhealthy obsession with practical jokes of the "dad" variety. One weekend, Winfried, feeling lonely, shows up and spends an awkward weekend together with his daughter. However, when she tries to send him back on his way, he doubles down on his antics, assuming his alternative "Tony Clifton" persona Toni Erdmann, a buck-toothed personal consultant with an insane wig. She calls his bluff, brings him into her inner circle, and the result goes to unexpected places.
Toni Erdmann is a sweet, original movie with a great relationship at its center, a heartfelt message, and a number of striking visual gags and moments that I won't soon forget. However, the 3 hour runtime was way too long for this story, and after a while, Toni's antics stray from being "charming" in a Michael Scott kind of way to downright obnoxious after a while. To the actor's credit, many of his annoying characteristics are imbued with a kind of heavy sadness (the "sad clown" archetype, if you will), but at a certain point it's just like: ok, got it, this is his defense mechanism to cope with his emotional problems...
I don't want to give anything away, so I'll just say that even if it overstays its welcome, Toni Erdmann is still a delightful, surprising father-daughter story that is 100% worth seeing, striking the perfect tonal balance between absurd comedy and a touching family drama.
Rating: B
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