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Review: ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is the ‘Jobs’ of Queen Biopics

Queen. A name  which immediately elicits thoughts of Freddy Mercury, internal hums of their greatest hits, and rightful praise of one of the greatest bands of all time. For a band so well known, it is also a band which has yet to receive the cinematic treatment beyond a few docs and a handful of concert films. But now in 2018, with the seal of approval from Queen, Fox managed to finesse a biopic that aims to tell the story of Freddy Mercury and the band itself. The film, titled Bohemian Rhapsody, has the tall order of being a great biopic that matches the greatness of its subject matter, but unfortunately, such lofty goals are not attained. In fact, it falls considerably short of that ambition. Instead, we receive a very safe tale of Freddy Mercury’s life that fails to tell us anything profound about his character and instead opts for a sugar-coated rendition that avoids being critical or daring in any sense. 

Bohemian Rhapsody follows the life of Freddy Mercury starting with his humble beginnings as Farrokh Bulsara to his ascent as the monolithic super persona that took the world by storm. Mostly concerned with Mercury himself, the film tells a tale of his personal struggles as he handles stardom, band members, and his own personal and sexual identity. From his rise to his death, Bohemian Rhapsody hopes to provide an introspective look at the man who had the world at his fingertips, but trouble defining himself.

In comparison to other biopics, this is firmly planted as the Jobs of Queen biopics when it really needed to be Steve Jobs. If you’re going to make a biopic about one of, if not thee, greatest bands of all time featuring one of, if not thee, greatest singers ever, then you really need to make a biopic that matches the legendary status of the subject matter. It needs extreme, conscious care, and the fact that Bryan Singer was removed from the project indicates that Fox knew that too. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done, and not even a replacement director could fix the systematic problem of the film: banking on Queen itself.

Pardon the crudeness, but there’s something pornographic about the film. Further, the story is not all that great, but to some extent, the film is saved by another aspect of the film, and in this case, it’s the music. It is so easy for the audience to let go and submit themselves to the music. I mean for crying out loud, it’s QUEEN. How can you not like “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “We Will Rock You” or “We Are the Champions” or “Another One Bites the Dust” or any of the other dozens of hits they produced? Hearing Freddy Mercury’s angelic voice paired with iconic beats on a high-quality sound stage found in a movie theater is great. It’s pretty much two hours of Queen’s greatest hits and it’s the best part of the film. But that’s a problem when you’re there for a movie.

Being reminded how great Queen is and how many bangers they made really helps gloss over the fact that the emotional throughline can be described as nothing more than baseline. The main theme is the need for identity: Freddy Mercury’s exploration of his own sexuality and the interaction with the band is how the film tries to develop him as a character. It starts with Mercury running from his heavily traditional family to joining a band who finds great success to leaving it for a solo career to ending up with him rejoining the band after he realizes how wrong he was to leave. It’s a narrative that’s as old as time, and one you would expect out of a Disney channel movie. It’s a sugar-coated narrative that skirts around anything substantial to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes, and it is evidently clear that Queen’s veto power over the film influenced what could and couldn’t be done. The narrative is oddly split between Mercury and the band itself; it’s two-thirds Mercury and one-third band when it should have really been all Mercury. At times the film has difficulty aligning itself with Mercury, which is the biggest problem here. The result is something completely impersonal, totally safe, and holistically uncompelling.

As many have probably already heard from word of mouth, Rami Malek is as good as everyone says he is. Most commonly known for his lead role on Mr. Robot, Malek has been relegated to smaller film roles leading up to this film, but here he is finally given the chance here to be a leading man, and his passion shows. Malek has no easy task of portraying Mercury, but to his credit, he puts his best foot forward. Malek’s swagger on and off stage as the eccentric personality is handled effectively in the performance. He seems to comprehend how much of a character Mercury was and plays into this extraordinary persona. It is where Malek displays the delicacy and fragility in Mercury’s need for an identity where the range comes through, but unfortunately, the aforementioned narrative renders much of that performance null.

For a band that is as prolific as Queen, it is a shame that we got a biopic that is completely mediocre. When we think about great biopics and what those films had to say about their subjects, one can only think about the profound, nuanced, and striking statements they made. Films like The Social Network were not afraid of making a negative claim (and in that case, one that was inherently true) that was bold and against the preferences of their subjects. They were daring. This isn’t to say I want a film that drags Freddy Mercury’s or Queen’s name through the mud but to give us a film that is afraid of getting its hands dirty with meaningful conflict or depiction is completely disinteresting.

Score: 2.5/5 Stars

Review: ‘Mid90s’ is a Painstakingly Authentic Coming of Age Tale

Mid90s, Jonah Hill’s directorial debut, is a painstakingly authentic homage to the not-so-distant past. Set in the age of camcorders and Discmans, anachronistic Super 16 film gives a charming air of nostalgia to this grungy ‘coming of age’ tale that follows Stevie (Sunny Suljic), a boy on the verge of adolescence, reconciling his developing identity amongst a rag-tag group of skateboarders in 1990s Los Angeles. With impressive attention to detail, down to the accuracy of 90s Dorito packets and the trash bags, Hill, in a feat of first-time-filmmaking, achieves poignancy and humour in this unconventional period feature.

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Review: Shirkers Is An Avant-Doc Master Work

Sandi Tan was a teenage rebel, growing up in the heart of Singapore. By age 16, Tan established her own cinema magazine with her best friend, watching American bootlegs. She began playing the part of protégé to Georges Cardona, her enigmatic film teacher whose life before teaching was entirely unknown. In 1992 at age 20 and by the urging of Cardona, Tan produced the visionary screenplay of Shirkers, a surrealist road movie. The inscrutable plot revolved around S, a young serial killer on a mission with a colorful gang of outlaws, including children, a nurse, and the largest dog in Singapore. Over a single summer, she, Cardona, and her friends Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique Harvey pulled together a production. Shirkers was a film that could have entered the cinematic conversation on a global scale, at the forefront of the national industry, and Sandi Tan stood at the precipice with the chance to alter the landscape of cinema permanently. 

Then without warning, Shirkers, along with Cardona, vanished without a trace.

For 25 years, the film faded into their memories, until recently when Tan received word out of the blue that Cardona had died and left behind the 70 cans of 16mm film long since thought to be lost. Now, Shirkers is Tan’s attempt to reconcile the past, to piece back together the 25-year-old footage, and to solve the mystery as to why it had been stolen away by her own mentor. Shirkers perfectly intersects at Avant-Garde and Documentary by blending its surrealism with a reality that may be even stranger. 

 

At first blush, Shirkers is an homage to its cinematic predecessors. Tan and her best friends acquired a voracious appetite for filmmaking that reflected the ways of both Hollywood and the French New Wave, admiring rebellious auteurs and their masterpieces. The French New Wave is particularly present in Shirkers, with voiceover and nonlinearity. It is a collage of footage dreamily reassembled in conjunction with the semi-scripted present. Tan’s omnipresent commentary and her interviews with Jasmine and Sophie are sharply funny and honest. They reflect on assembling a cast of kids and amateur actors as well as the adversities they faced in production. Tan toys with sequence, contextualizing their memories with cuts of film. They attribute their innovation to the fearlessness of youth; the reckless abandon with which these teenagers constructed a feature film on a shoestring budget. These girls were as uninhibited as their characters, pushing the limits of cinema and chewing gum at a time when it was illegal in Singapore. Yet, simultaneously, they were calculated and serious. The narrative itself is the same, pairing carefree adolescence with dark intensity, most clearly visible in Tan’s own bespectacled eyes as she plays the murderous S. She is a complex young prodigy in the shape of her idols. 

Her narration in retrospect is not unlike Avant-Doc film Time Indefinite, in which American filmmaker Ross McElwee chronicles his own life experiences in a video diary. This “Cinema of Self” is another layer that Tan wraps Shirkers in, with her meta reflections on the production process and her thoughts on her own role in the film. Tan’s identity is doubled; as she exists both on camera and behind it. Here what sets her apart in this regard is her humility. She does what the men who have cultivated the Cinema of Self feared to do: she actively criticizes her own filmmaking. It is an instance of being acutely aware of one’s subjective position. 

At the center of the film is Tan’s relationship with Cardona, who is as ethereal as the film he sought to imitate. The only references to his past were outlandish stories that never seemed to quite line up. He is the ghost that haunts her, and the only evidence of his existence are in recorded images and retrospect. In many ways Tan and Cardona are mirror images. They both contextualize their lives in terms of film and envisioned themselves as characters. Cardona fashioned himself a dramatic persona, aspiring to French New Wave figures such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard and American artists like Steven Soddeberg, even going as far as emulating the very personalities found in the films of sex, lies, and videotape and Breathless .Tan even has Cardona credited as a director, and the lasting impact of his actions on her work and identity are apparent. It is as if his absconding, death, and resurfacing are him posthumously contributing to the larger plot. He is framed as a missing person built entirely on myth and Tan concludes that this was his intention. His possessiveness over art and sabotage of his protégé can be chalked up to fragile masculinity and a fear of being outdone, but there is an element of dramatic flair that is undeniable. Cardona has achieved what he wanted most: for the opacity of his life to be preserved in film.

It is safe to say though time has passed, Tan has not lost her touch for aesthetics. As she threads together the lost-and-found footage, she evokes a beautiful, nostalgic picture. The archive footage’s otherworldly quality is reinforced by a haunting score by Ishai Adar. It uses early 90s Singapore as its backdrop, transforming the flourishing city into liminal spaces; it documents the vibrant landscape that has been lost to history with the process of modernization. What ultimately makes the film stand out is how it combines various documentary conventions with the rebellious originality of childhood. The original cut of Shirkers alone would have been a vanguard of its time, and to have its story rediscovered and “finished” is a phenomenon. It remains grounded and personal, despite its surrealism. In an interview with Vogue, Tan herself mentions how the original Shirkers seemed to predict the cinematic tropes of the 90s, and “would have just slipped right in.” We can only speculate how Shirkers would have been received had it not disappeared, but it is undoubtedly radical. 

Like a cold case reinvigorated with new evidence, Tan is able to find a sense of closure and a new chance at life for the film. Tan herself is uniquely equipped for filmmaking, as the story she tells is such an integral aspect of her identity. She dodges the sensationalism that strips other “unbelievable” documentaries of their humanity in favor of something more honest. It is refreshing to see an Avant-Doc spearheaded by a woman of color especially in a niche predominately occupied by white men. Her distinct brand of nostalgia is both delightful and uncanny. Whether you are a fan of film history, mysteries, or just looking for a diamond in the rough of Netflix, Shirkers is a vision to behold.  

Rating: 5/5 stars

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Review: David Gordon Green Brings the Scares with Halloween

The Halloween franchise has had a rough life since its original debut in 1978. The series has tried its hand as an anthology series. It’s brought back series legend Laurie Strode as an estranged relative to Michael Meyers. And it’s been rebooted by Rob Zombie to little fanfare. The mishandling of this 80s horror franchise joins the ranks of The Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th, which all tried to strike while the iron was hot, but resulted in entries that left plenty to be desired. 

Now, we have David Gordon Green taking a stab at it. The director who burst onto the scene with George Washington, but then later went on to direct Pineapple Express, Your Highness, and The Sitter, is now tackling one of the most beloved horror icons of all time. On paper, you would scoff. Maybe even dismiss it. But the fact that  Green is now jumping so obtusely into horror stands outs something unique, that he has such a compelling vision in mind that he would want to diverge from his usual wheel house. Luckily, the final result is best the Halloween film we’ve had since the original, retaining authentic scares, imbuing nostalgic fun into the film, and upholding the notions of the franchise while also standing on its own. 

Set forty years after the original, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis)  now lives as a survivor who trains and prepares herself for the impending return of Michael Meyers. On Halloween, Meyers breaks free and returns home to Haddonfield, Illinois. Having prepared for this moment, Laurie works to save her family and kill Meyers once and for all.

What is most surprising about the film is how scary can be. Green knows how to shoot horror that’s for certain. For someone who hasn’t really dabbled into horror, it’s welcoming to see a director enter the genre with such assuredness (a la Jordan Peele last year). Within Halloween, we see all the tricks of horror used in smart, efficient, and admirable ways. Cheap jump scares are pretty much non-existent, effective building of tension can be seen periodically, and Myers is a force to be reckoned with, not a caricature of a horror icon. Two scenes in particular involving a motion detector light and a gas station bathroom are two instances where Green flexes some serious economic use of horror tropes to generate some serious frights. After seeing something like The Nun more recently, it serves as a great contrast and an example of horror done right. Not as good as this year’s Hereditary, but commendable none the less. 

Surprisingly, this film is very fun and enjoyable. An oxymoron I suppose, but it has the fun texture of cult horror film while also retaining sincere horror moments. The fun aspect can be attributed to the rational use of comedy and tasteful callbacks to prior entries in the franchise. As someone who has a very critical perspective of comedy in non-comedy films, I found the use of jokes to be strategically used here. Not in your face, but rather natural. It’s a fine line it toes because too much will break the tension, but Green seems to be aware of the pulpy aspects of the genre. It is co-written by Danny McBride, so one can assume some of the film’s comedic aspects came from him. Regardless, the comedy is fun and doesn’t break the atmosphere of the film, but rather contributes to the over all feel and tone of the film.

Adding to this are the callbacks. This film retcons the cannon of the Halloween franchise by  positioning itself as a sequel to the original film and wiping away all other entries. Even though entries are technically wiped, there are still references to them. Masks from Season of the Witch, replicating iconic shots, and pulling fake jump scares accompanied by Carpenter’s iconic sound queues are all apart of the callbacks Green usess to remind you this is paying homage to the franchise, while also being its own thing. The audience at the screening I went to was having a great time with both the comedy and the call backs, eliciting plenty of laughs and cheers. 

How the film delineates itself is in the story it tells. Laurie Strode is a scream queen no more, and instead, a hardened survivor who has prepared herself for the return of Michael Meyers. Her character is empowered in the film and not positioned as ‘the final girl’ that we see all too often in horror films. This change in character marks a stronger delineation between this entry and others in the franchise, which found itself a new female lead to take on Strode’s position. The horror genre is so intrinsically tied to scream queens and final girls, and even though we get part of that in Laurie’s granddaughter, the new characterization for Laurie herself is much more of a character rather than a trope that the original Halloween helped create. It would have been interesting to see a female director handle something like this, but for what we got, it’ll pass.

The fact that the film makes slight appeals to nostalgia that honors the franchise while asserting its own identity that is not holistically dependent on the original is the biggest strength of David Gordon Green’s Halloween. With effective scares, gruesome deaths, and a firm grasp of the slasher genre, Green’s iteration can stand on its own without being beholden to past iterations or tropes within the genre. Could this film have been improved upon? Certainly, but for a franchise that has been dragged through the mud, rebooted, and then rebooted again, I am very content with what I got. Even happy.

Score: 3.75/5

Review: Beautiful Boy Makes Overt Appeals to Emotion

If the trailers for were any indication, Beautiful Boy positioned itself as an emotional look at addiction. With its flag firmly planted, the film promises a rollercoaster of emotions that hopes to make you shed a few tears in the process. With such lofty intentions, you would think the emotional moments of the film should be handled with great care to ensure that they have the weight and reverence to match the seriousness of the subject matter. You would think.

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Review: Damien Chazelle Tells Neil Armstrong’s Personal Ascent to the Moon in First Man

From the opening moments of First Man, director Damien Chazelle tells you everything you need to know for the journey in store for you. In what can be described as upfront and personal, the self-contain thesis launches you straight into the perilous space race with a sense of tension, doubt, and danger that will characterize Neil Armstrong’s journey for the rest of the film. That journey is not only about the spectacle of the moon landing itself and its importance in human history, but also the intimate story of the man who did it and emotional voyage he makes.

First Man is a film which consciously realizes the wonder of space while presenting the cost of it all. Through the eyes of Neil Armstrong, Chazelle shows us what it took to get to the moon. This is not a textbook rendition of the 1969 accomplishment, but rather a delineation that focuses on the trials and tribulations it took to get there. First Man is both a biopic and an odyssey; it is an epic that tells one of humankind’s greatest achievements through a concentrated personal story, and in a riveting manor, Chazelle aligns both the grand and minute to create a truly theatrical experience.

The film tracks Armstrong’s life for nearly a decade as we follow his life from aerospace pilot to Apollo 11 astronaut. In-between, audiences get a down to Earth story about Armstrong, his family, and the emotional burden they face as they navigate one of the most emotionally taxing periods in their life. Having to choose between the lure of space, national duty, and his domestic life, Armstrong grapples with the harrowing task that may end up going too far for him and his family.

This is very much Armstrong’s story. Everything we feel and know is told through his perspective. Played reservedly by Ryan Gosling, Armstrong comes off as emotionally boxed in, trying to maintain his composure for everyone around him, but never knowing his fate for himself. Deaths of friends and co-pilots offer heavy handed reminders that failure comes at a high price and that what he is doing puts just as much emotional burden on his loved ones as it does on him. Conveying this sentiment is Claire Foy’s Janet who is the wife to Armstrong; while Armstrong is off in space, she is left on the ground to deal with the emotional fallout and uncertainty that surrounds her husband’s fate. Foy arguably has the most range on display as she portrays a concerned wife who is frustrated yet supportive. It toes a fine line, but Foy is the character who best represents the emotional impact this journey has with the film’s most personal and meaningful moments stemming from the relationship between Janet and Neil.  

Grounding this is the pairing of domestic and civic life. The film often likes to pit one against the other and positions Armstrong in-between them. Showing small intimate moments like neighborhood barbecues, family roughhousing, or slow dancing to Lunar Rhapsody are ways in which First Man reminds us that Armstrong is a human being, not just some historical figure. But knowingly, this human being is at the center of one of the most iconic and historic events in human history. Contrary to what Marco Rubio may ignorantly tweet, this film hones in on the space race as a national and global achievement. Armstrong is compelled in inexplicable ways to push him and his family further and further in the face of death to achieve goals that are removed from his domestic life. This pairing of civic and domestic life is a central dynamic to the film’s narrative that grounds Armstrong and makes the actual landing on the moon that much more meaningful.

One of, if not the, best shots in the film.

The film has a very distinct look that deviates from Chazelle’s prior films. Working with cinematographer Linus Sandgren for the second time, the film adopts a hand held style of shooting that gets personal with Armstrong. Mobile tracking shots, narrow close ups, and abundant camera shake can be found throughout the film, but this is not just a stylistic choice. It’s something that directly translates into audience alignment with Armstrong. As mentioned before, this film is about Armstrong. We are in his shoes and the camera works placates to how we see him straddle between family man and space traveler. Close ups waver as doubt builds internally surrounding the mission. A spastic camera confines itself to the cockpit of the shuttle so we experience the launches strictly from Armstrong’s view. And a tracking camera moves and reframes much like you would expect with eyesight or an aligned perspective. The cinematography at play is very important to how we see and sympathize with Armstrong, and it is one of the most predominant aspects of this film. Perhaps a strong contender for Best Cinematography at the Oscars, but nonetheless a very effective use of substantive shooting style.

The moments when Chazelle launches us into space make especially good use of this style. Three times we are brought up above the atmosphere and each time is special for different reasons, but in particular, the second go is really an awe inspiring display of cinema. During said sequence, Armstrong goes up in to test the docking capabilities of a space craft, and for about 25 minutes, you are graced with an incredibly well realized display of danger that cross cuts between the space module and the broadcast on earth. It is without a doubt a superbly executed sequence that has insurmountable tension and palpable emotion that drips from every inch of the frame, and one in which I cannot separate from the overall film. If there were one scene to take away from this film, it may very well be this one.

The moon landing itself is the third and final trip up into space, and it too has much to be discussed. With the outcome already known, it is inconsequential to layer tension in this scene. While there is some placed on the decent, Chazelle has turned the moon landing into a personal moment which is contained within a larger, more global achievement. The success of moon landing not only becomes the climax of the film, but also the emotional one as we see the payoff of all the sacrifice and loss that resulted from the journey. The humankind achievement is just as important as the emotional one found in Armstrong and the two are so eloquently conveyed as equals when the film slows down and breaks with its stylings so that you too may feel the reprieve of the monumental task of landing on the moon.

On all fronts, First Man is a well executed biopic about one man’s odyssey to the moon. By grounding Armstrong to his family, Chazelle has made the ascent a personal story that is full of heart, danger, and tension that is unlike space films before. In an era when mid-tier budgeted films are becoming an oddity, it is films like First Man that remind us how important they are to creating engrossing pieces of cinema.

Score: 4.5/5

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Review: Bad Times at the El Royale Taps Into Moral Choice

Seven years after the release of his subversive horror film, Cabin in the Woods, Drew Goddard returns to the directing with the mystery thriller, Bad Times at the El Royale. In the meanwhile, Goddard has kept himself busy with scripts like The Martian, but for him to return to directing probably means he sees something special in this particular script. Something has drawn him out of the writers room and back into the director’s chair, and after seeing it, there is much more to the film than what its unique premise sells itself on.

The story takes place at the El Royale, a remote hotel located on the border between Nevada and California. After the outlawing of gambling, the hotel falls in popularity, and now, a sole bell boy (Lewis Pullman) runs the whole hotel. One day, four guests converge on the hotel: a priest (Jeff Bridges), a salesman (Jon Hamm), a singer (Cynthia Erivo), and a young woman (Dakotah Johnson), each with their own stories of why they’re here, but as we soon will learn, appearances aren’t what they seem as secrets unfold and paths cross one another.

The film has the feel of something like Murder on the Orient Express; a cast of characters are brought together under strange circumstances to a remote location when things start to go awry. It’s a proximate who-done-it tale, if you will, full of mystery and suspicion, where everyone has ulterior motives, and every action is questioned. This looming sense of distrust can be attributed to the film’s construction. The story is told in a chapter format focusing on individual characters. We start one chapter that picks up where another left off or we end a chapter on a cliff hanger that is only resolved with another chapter later on. In that way, the film is acting like a narrative puzzle, asking audiences to piece together events, characters, and motives as they’re provided. 

This type of construction is a major strength of the film. Perhaps self-explanatory, but a mystery thriller requires a true mystery in order for it work as intended, and to Goddard’s credit, the script is layered in such a way where things are never clear. Not in a crippling way, but rather in a conscious way, one that engages your curiosity. A priest, salesman, and singer are clearly not all brought to the El Royale out of sheer circumstance (though it does have the makings for a good joke set up), so it is inherent in that suspicion where much of the film’s appeal comes from. As Goddard plays his cards, there is a revelatory quality where back stories and motives are revealed that in turn satisfies our desire to connect all the dots. It’s a feeling that will surely evoke one or two ‘ah-hahs’ out of you. 

The film also extends beyond its star-filled cast and novelty aesthetics. One of the quaint points about the setting is that the hotel is split in half by the California-Nevada border, allowing guests to choose housing in one side or the other. It isn’t until late in the film that this detail of choice becomes more profound. Morality and aspects of choice emerge as its predominate theme. The line that divides the hotel acts a metaphorical moral line in the film, where our characters choose between right and wrong time and again to make declarations about who they are, and even if there is only two sides, straddling the line that divides them, in the gray area so to speak, is very well possible. 

However, there are some hiccups in this tale. Chris Hemsworth’s character, a Charles Manson-esk hippie cult leader named Billy Lee, enters the film in the last act and forces the film to enter a line of questioning about morality. Up until this point, the code of morality is only noted. When Hemsworth enters, the film sits you down and forces you into this new mode of thinking. Where you might of been trying to solve the mystery at the start, you are now entered into a new mode about morality. It’s not until this revelatory moment where you realize the actions taken prior have some deeper underlying meaning. I can’t say that this shake up is detrimental to the film, but it should be noted that the film flips like a switch as it narrows in on one scene for an extended period to nail down its message. 

The film is fixated on telling a tale of moral choice. Through our band of characters and puzzling narrative, Goddard has created a mystery thriller where the moral compass emerges as the conflict at hand unfolds. While there is a heavy handed approach to its messaging near the end, the moral conflict, winding mystery, and star-filled cast add up to a film that well exceeds its minor shortcomings. As enigmatic as it is engaging, Bad Times at the El Royale is a an excellent mystery film that will surely satisfy your inner Sherlock and Kantian philosopher. 

Score: 4/5

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Review: Cary Fukunaga’s Maniac Tackles Mental Health Like No Other

“Doesn’t seem right to be telling people what’s wrong with themselves before they figure it out for themselves.”

After Beasts of No Nation and a tumultuous run on IT, Cary Joji Fukunaga has teamed up with Netflix again to bring us his latest project, Maniac: a retro-future drama about mental health. With it, Fukunaga maintains his serious subject matter like that of True Detective or Beasts of No Nation, but adds in some dark comedy to create brevity in a rather serious topic. The result is a ten part mini-series that commentates on the mental struggles that come with traumatizing events and how the road to recovery isn’t as easy as everyone thinks it is.

Maniac is not a traditional film ‘film,’ but its construction speaks otherwise. It’s a ten episode mini series on Netflix with no theatrical release, so initially one would assume this to be relegated to the TV category, but consider this: there is only one title card, one director across all ten episodes, and there are no opening credits at the beginning of each episode. Think of Maniac in the same vein as Twin Peaks: The Return, OJ Made in America, or the forthcoming The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; the hairsplitter in all of us might raise question with the division of the ‘film,’ but make no mistake, this feels like one continuous, self-contained piece of cinema.  

Our main protagonists are Annie (Emma Stone) and Owen (Jonah Hill): the former a drug abuser who uses to repress the memories of her past, and the later a down on his luck, paranoid schizophrenic who is the odd duck of the family but who is now being called upon to protect the family’s name in court. The two are brought together via a drug trial at the NPB Corporation, a pharmaceutical conglomerate on the verge of creating a new drug therapy which aims to rid the mind of any problem. Together the two undergo the trial phase with the hope they will be absolved of their ailments, but as they progress, they learn that overcoming their demons is something not done easily. 

Intentionally so, Maniac keeps its cards close to its chest. The show operates under a very cryptic plot structure where revelations in both Annie’s and Owen’s narratives are only revealed as they progress through the trial. This structure not only works to engage the audience to watch the next episode, but the piece-meal approach has a mystique to it, opening our protagonist’s past in weird and unconventional ways. Instead of placing events out of order or merely using a flashback, Maniac uses the A-B-C steps of the drug trial to open Annie’s and Owen’s past. After taking each pill (A for agonia, B for behavioral, and C for confrontation), the show enters what it calls a ‘reflection’: a fantasy/dreamlike state where Annie and Owen are put in outlandish scenarios that draw parallels to their own reality. With the exception of the A phase, these scenarios are cryptic, causing audiences to read between the lines in order to understand the internal issues, guilts, and backstories of our characters. This method can be off-putting at first as they pull you out of the series’s established mode, but they often result in profound character moments that are at the core of what makes Maniac so compelling. 

Maniac is interested in the complex issues found in overcoming one’s demons. Both Annie and Owen have a resistance to moving forward from events in their past, and as the trials progress, they try to tackle their own with the help of a ‘magic pill.’ What Fukunaga conveys so well is the unsatisfactory sentiment that comes from the quick and easy solution to our internal struggles. It showcases the difficulty in overcoming these traumas, and that no matter how much we struggle, fight, or combat these inner demons, they never go. They are not fleeting emotions, but rather ones that linger and rear their heads in ugly ways. It says that these struggles are a part of you, that it is ok to grapple with them, and that before you can move past them, you need to reconcile and confront them. Skeletons that inhabit our psyche are not easily vacated with a pill or a quick fix, they are a process that takes time.

Tying these themes together is Maniac’s retro-future aesthetic and dark comedy. The series most closely resembles that of Spike Jonze’s Her which took on a similar look and feel. Technology that opens one’s mind is bulky and dated looking, tube computers run DOS-like programs, and adverts that could only come from the 80s are all a part of the surreal future Maniac paints. In tandem with it is the use of dark comedy which keeps things light. This isn’t a Marvel affair where the humor kills the tone, but rather, the humor here is intrinsically tied to the film’s tonal consistency. Jonah Hill dressed up like Post Malone while having a serious moment with someone who radiates heat waves is something I would never think would work, but it actually manages to hit home deep and substantive meaning. However, there is the occasional outlandish moment that doesn’t work; these moments can most commonly be sourced from the aforementioned ‘reflection’ sequences and can have eyebrow-raising effects, but the missteps are completely overshadowed by the times when it does work because when it does, boy is it good.

As a side note, I think Dan Romer’s score is excellent. I don’t have too much to say, but there are great standout pieces like ‘Annie and Owen’ and ‘Blind Spots’ that help convey a tremendous sense of sympathy, struggle, and heightened emotion. It’s all so beautiful and I love it dearly. 

For all its abnormalities and strangeness, Maniac has something to say and an unequivocally unique voice in saying it. From its stylish dressings to its cryptic narrative, Fukunaga has made a ten episode series that not only presents the bleak realities of mental illness, but promotes the process of getting better, and surprisingly, it is a series I wish to revisit so I may find new meaning in all its nuance and subtext, something I can’t say that about any other show. Simply put, Maniac is unforgettable.

Score: 4.25/5

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Review: Shane Black Comedy Characterizes The Predator

With five films and 31 years under its belt, the Predator series is not only contains one of the most prolific movie monsters in cinema, but also a character that only seems to have been pulled off once. From Predator 2 to AvP to Predators, the series has yet to have another entry in the franchise as good as the first, but it’s 2018 and Shane Black is returning to the franchise he once acted in to take a crack at the infamous Predator. His efforts are not perfect, but the result is a humorous outing that embraces the pulp action from the 80s that the series is built on and includes a narrative that is as equally pulpy. 

While on a special ops mission, Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) witnesses a space ship crash land. There he finds Predator gear that he subsequently takes and sends home to prevent the government from laying claim to it. Having witnessed the crash, Quinn is detained and sent to looney bin where he meets Group 2, a five man team of former military operatives who are now on a mission to retrieve the alien gear all while the actual Predator, government, and a unknown third party try to get it first. 

In all of the franchise’s history, The Predator most closely aligns itself with Predator 2. It has a late 80s/ early 90s feel to it where action melds with a slightly bonkers premise. The narrative is definitely hitting baseline believability, always straddling the line of absurd and rational but walking the fence between the two precariously. While there are moments where that narrative can illicit scoff-inducing reactions, the film always manages to pull you back and remind you that this is supposed to be taken lightly. 

The film is an action comedy through and through, but it is the degree to which comedy overtakes the action that is surprising. Shane Black’s sharp witted humor that we’ve seen in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys is all over this film. The repertoire between Group 2 is evoking the dude-bro military men from Predator, but this time with more banter and disorderly conduct. The result is action that is less serious than prior installments, but because it doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not, it works. Black’s humor pointedly characterizes the film, and anything less would have made the somewhat absurd plot look out of place. 

What is out of place is the barebones emotional elements between Quinn and his son Rory (Jacob Tremblay). Rory is a bullied kid on the autism spectrum and believes his dad isn’t proud of him because he always out doing military missions instead of being at home with his family. The motivations in the film lie in Quinn coming home to rescue and protect his son from the alien, but when it comes time to have any meaningful resolve, it’s clear that the film has other concerns it wants to focus on. Not to say action comedies need to have a strong emotional component, but the films that can execute on these aspects tend to be the better ones.

The Predator is not the serious action film some had hoped, but it is a stupid fun time. Whether it be the late 80s feel of a zany action film or Shane Black’s trademark humor, the overall package holds itself together long enough to just cross the finish line intact, even if the ending may go overboard. Come for the Predator, stay for the jokes and decent action. 

3/5 Stars

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Review: Repent for The Nun Has Sinned

The Nun marks the fifth film in “The Conjuring Universe,” and we’ve come a long way since the original in 2013. After a sequel and two spinoffs, the malicious nun finally gets her own theatrical release, and just like Annabelle before it, it too is another shameless studio cash grab that stiffens any potential it ever had and relegates itself to a truly awful horror film. 

In what can only be seen as a film that muddies the history of the franchise, the film kicks off with a pair of nuns trying to contain a demonic presence inside of a Romanian Abby. When one of them commits suicide, the Vatican sends Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) and Father Burke (Demián Bichir) to investigate the situation only to find something much more sinister at play, a shapeshifting demon named Valak that is looking for a new vessel to call home and spread his ill-doings. 

The cardinal sin of The Nun is how it inexplicably reuses so many scares with so little awareness of what it is doing. Panning an object out of frame only for it to disappear and then reappear happens at least five times in the film. Using negative space to present a looming threat over our protagonist and build “suspense” occurs at least ten times. A ghostly apparition coming from behind and grabbing Irene or Burke happens at least three times. And the jump scares are so bountiful you’ll need a second pair of hands to count. You cannot use these scares so often and expect the audience to reasonably buy into them again and again. It’s abhorrent and I found myself in utter disbelief that no one during the pre-production realized how similar all their ‘scares’ were to one another. It’s a rinse and repeat formula that is tiresome after their second use. 

From the premise, it’s hard not to think of Aislinn Clarke’s The Devil’s Doorway which just so happened to be released earlier this year. While not one to one, the settings and religious imagery is used to greater effect in Clarke’s outing. To the production designer’s credit The Nun’s sets are the best part in the film. From the opening moments, you get a terrific eerie setting of a remote gothic abby that had the makings of something truly sinister, but the failings of the film’s script and direction undermine the well realized locale. From history and past cinematic endeavors, Christianity has been loaded with unsettling symbolism that, if utilized properly, can make for some unworldly, supernatural experiences, but even with these inherent characteristics, The Nun can only sustain them for so long before it falls off and falls victim to its own sins.

Negative space shots like this are a dime a dozen in The Nun.

Another major hinderance is how it injects blatant attempts at comedy into scenes. I have never been to a screening where so many attendees were laughing not at what was being said but rather at the shear absurdity of it. Mostly conveyed through the relief character Frenchy (Jonas Bloquet), these moments of comedy are reminiscent of that of Get Out, but where that film aimed to be a social commentary, this film is strictly in it for the scares, and when comedy is so haphazardly placed inside of a horror film, it torpedos the atmosphere and tone.

The Nun is a sin through and through. From the undeniably lazy recycle of scares to it’s cheesy comedy, the film has very little salvage value. Anyone interested in this film for its creepy religious looks should seriously consider The Devil’s Doorway, The Exorcist, or anything else really as they will surely be better services to theological themes and scares than this will. Corin Hardy should really repent for what his has done with this one.

1.75/5 Stars