‘Profile’ Brings Timur Bekmambetov’s Screen Life to the World of Jihadi Recruitment

May 11, 2021

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Profile (CREDIT: BEZELEVS and Focus Features)

Starring: Valene Kane, Shazad Latif, Christine Adams, Morgan Watkins, Amir Rahimzadeh, Emma Carter

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Rating: R for Language and Images of Violent ISIS Activity

Release Date: May 14, 2021 (Theaters)

I’m a sucker for a good gimmick, and Timur Bekmambetov has hit upon a pretty dang excellent one with his series of “Screen Life” films. With the likes of Unfriended, Unfriended: Dark Web, and Searching, he’s produced some weirdly irresistible flicks that are presented entirely within the confines of a computer screen. Now he’s stepped into the Screen Life Director’s Chair himself for Profile, based on the nonfiction book In The Skin of a Jihadist, which documents journalist Anna Erelle’s efforts to contact an ISIS recruiter via Facebook. I’ve watched these movies on the big screen and on the TV screen, but not once have I ever watched them in their entirety on a computer. They certainly don’t lose any effectiveness they might have had by playing out just a few inches away from my face. No matter what distance I watch them from, they’re thoroughly intimate and all-encompassing, and Profile is no different.

Profile‘s stand-in for Erelle is Amy Whittaker (Valene Kane), a constantly stressed-out London-based reporter with an assignment that promises a rewarding payday but at the expense of her emotional stability. Under the guise of “Melody,” a 20-year-old convert to Islam, she soon attracts the attraction of Bilel (Shazad Latif), an ISIS leader in the market for recruiting young European women to Syria to join the fight for the Islamic State. Both Amy and Bilel are making their cases through layers of dishonesty, as she concocts justifications for her investigates instincts and he underplays his organization’s propensity for violence and human trafficking. But the best undercover work is driven by honest emotions, and Amy and Bilel do appear to forge a genuine connection. Bilel also has roots in London, and they’re both disillusioned by a country that failed to take care of their families. Everyone has their vulnerabilities, and Profile makes it inescapably clear how they can be preyed upon.

I’ve been singing the praises of Screen Life from the beginning, and this might just be its best use yet. We’re entirely stuck within the point of view of Amy, someone who’s losing any outside perspective that could keep her from losing herself. She gradually merges with the Melody persona, and for an hour and a half, you just might as well. Our online lives are not our entire lives, and it is important to be regularly reminded of that. Profile‘s entire raison d’être may be that everything is always connected, but weirdly enough, it might also be one of the most effective tools to convince us to step away every once in a while. Indeed, this is a movie that has been made by people who have beheld modern society and wondered, “What have we wrought?”

Profile is Recommended If You Like: The Screen Life genre, Undercover work, Freeze frame detective skills

Grade: 4 out of 5 Winking Cat GIFs

‘Together Together’ Review Review

May 4, 2021

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Together Together (CREDIT: Bleecker Street/YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Ed Helms, Patti Harrison, Julio Torres, Rosalind Chao, Tig Notaro, Sufe Bradshaw, Fred Melamed, Nora Dunn, Anna Konkle, Evan Jonigkeit, Jo Firestone

Director: Nikole Beckwith

Running Time: 90 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: April 23, 2021

Now that I’ve seen Together Together, I’ve got to wonder, can I now call it “Together Together … Together“? Do Ed Helms and Patti Harrison have room for a third. And would that third be anybody (and everybody) in the audience to see their little film? That might sound like an awkward arrangement, but it surely fits with the vibe of a fortysomething single dad-to-be forging a tight platonic bond with his twentysomething surrogate. But anyway, what I’d really like to focus on is Anna Konkle, who shows up for one scene as a New Age-y birthing coach. Excuse me while I fan myself. Also, Nora Dunn and Fred Melamed are on duty as Ed Helms’ parents, which is significant because I’ve also seen both of them in other parental roles recently (Dunn on the new ABC sitcom Home Economics and Melamed in the sensational Shiva Baby).

Grade: Julio-Torres-as-One-Man-Greek-Chorus Energy

What’s in the Swedish Rainwater?: ‘The Unthinkable’ Review

May 3, 2021

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The Unthinkable (CREDIT: Magnet Releasing)

Starring: Christoffer Nordenrot, Lisa Henni, Jesper Barkselius, Pia Halvorsen

Director: Crazy Pictures

Running Time: 129 Minutes

Rating: Unrated, But PG-13-Level for General Disaster Movie Energy

Release Date: May 7, 2021 (Theaters and On Demand)

If you’ve ever seen M. Night Shyamalan’s 2008 eco-thriller The Happening and thought, “I like this, but I wish it were more Swedish,” then The Unthinkable just might be the movie for you! The Happening is frequently dinged as one of the twist-meister’s silliest efforts, but it does feature striking images of people inexplicably shooting themselves and walking off the roofs of skyscrapers. The Unthinkable ramps that energy up to 11 with its scrumptious selection of chaotic vehicular pile-ups. One sequence plays out like the highway chase from Bad Boys 2, but as if Will Smith and Martin Lawrence were just sitting in their squad car, gaping on as the mayhem crashes in on them. But unlike the typical wham-bam actioner, we’re invited to linger upon this violence and truly ponder why society is suddenly crumbling into apocalyptic chaos right before our eyes.

This phenomena remains unexplained for a while, which is positively chilling. Eventually we do learn the cause behind all the calamities, even though I for one probably would not have recommended straying from the ambiguity. But the explanation we do get is a doozy: it turns out there’s some sort of agent in the rain that makes people forgetful in a way that’s likened to “getting Alzheimer’s in 15 minutes.” The Russians are the suspected culprits.

Honestly, at this point, this actually sounds more American than Swedish, save for the fact that it’s taking place against the backdrop of the Midsummer holiday. Also, there’s some sort of domestic drama wherein a fellow named Alex (Christoffer Nordenrot) is dealing with the fallout of growing up with his abusive father Björn (Jesper Barkselius). Plus, Alex may or may not still be carrying a flame for his childhood friend (Lisa Henni). I’m not sure what all of that backstory adds, but it’s at least interesting that The Unthinkable is basically three movies in one. Ultimately, though, I just care a lot more about the business with the sudden-onset Alzheimer’s and kind of wish Alex were also more focused on solving that mystery.

The Unthinkable is Recommended If You Like: The Happening, Melodramatic family drama, The cinematic persistence of Evil Russia

Grade: 3 out of 5 Car Crashes

‘Limbo’ is an Offbeat and Lovely Ode to Refugees

April 28, 2021

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Limbo (CREDIT: Focus Features)

Starring: Amir El-Masry, Vikash Bhai, Ola Orebiyi, Kwabena Ansah, Kenneth Collard, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Kais Nashef

Director: Ben Sharrock

Running Time: 103 Minutes

Rating: R for Occasionally Angry Language

Release Date: April 30, 2021 (Theaters)

Limbo is like Napoleon Dynamite, but if it were about refugees on a remote Scottish island instead of high schoolers in Idaho, and if the Pedro character were the lead and the Napoleon character his wacky roommate. Both feature oodles of quirky cinematography of patient wide shots. Both have a charmingly contemplative spirit. Both have their hearts in the fringes of society. Both include awkward classroom scenes. And both feature a climactic musical sequence: where once Napoleon boogied down to Jamiroquai’s “Canned Heat,” Limbo‘s Omar strums out a triumphant performance on his grandfather’s oud.

Writer-director Ben Sharrock is fully attuned to the light surrealism of an existence in which so much of your day-to-day life is beyond your control. Omar (Amir El-Masry) is a little hard to read, but it seems like he’s happy to have escaped the strife of his native Syria. And while he puts on a stoic face, he’s clearly yearning for something more permanent. He lives in a mostly unfurnished house with three fellow refugee roommates, and the rest of his routine is just as starkly unfurnished. He spends much of his time attending cultural assimilation classes that cover everything from English grammar to role-playing scenarios for sexual harassment awareness. Every few days, he calls his parents via a payphone on the side of an empty road. And when he goes grocery shopping, he appears to be the only customer, and all he hopes to find is his beloved sumac spice.

Omar’s refugee experience could be a whole hell of a lot worse, but his melancholy predicament makes you hope that he can improve it by taking some small measure of control wherever he can. So when he asks the shopkeeper about the sumac and it eventually shows up, we feel that victory. And when he reaches out to his estranged brother, it cuts even deeper. And when he finally picks up his oud after betraying no interest in it for most of the time we spend with him, it’s cause for doing cartwheels in the aisle. I can’t speak for everyone else who’s seen Limbo, but I know that I couldn’t help but air-oud to that performance.

Limbo is Recommended If You Like: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Wes Anderson symmetry, Cliff-filled seaside isles

Grade: 4 out of 5 Apricots

Existential Swedish Vignette Adventure Time: ‘About Endlessness’ Review

April 27, 2021

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About Endlessness (CREDIT: Magnolia Pictures)

Starring: Martin Serner, Jessica Louthander, Tatiana Delaunay, Anders Hellström, Jan-Eje Ferling, Bengt Bergius, Thore Flygel

Director: Roy Andersson

Running Time: 78 Minutes

Rating: Unrated, But It Should Be Rated E for “Extreme Existentialism”

Release Date: April 30, 2021 (Theaters and On Demand)

About Endlessness is so far afield from any other movie I’ve ever seen. I make an effort to watch as many new films as possible, so it’s nice to know that hard-to-define surprises can still arrive every once in a while. And sometimes when one of those new experiences makes its way through, I find myself at a total loss to respond. If I were assigned to review About Endlessness for an outlet with multiple critics, I would probably ask someone else to take over the job. But since this is my own blog, I feel compelled to do my best. So world, for the record: I’ve seen About Endlessness, and it’s fair to say it challenged me.

When I’m at a loss when writing a review, I find it wise to fall back on what can be objectively stated. So with that in mind, what we have here is a series of vignettes courtesy of septuagenarian Swedish auteur Roy Andersson. It opens with a couple sitting on a bench overlooking a city. A man walks through a town carrying a cross while a crowd chants “Crucify!” Some young women dance while some young men watch. A priest despairs, “What should I do now that I have lost my faith?” Hitler even shows up at one point. The whole thing ends with a guy having car trouble in the middle of the road.

I was raised Roman Catholic, so obviously the parts with the priest and the cross-carrying resonate with me. But beyond that, I have to chalk the point of this whole affair up to Andersson’s emotional/creative/existential whims. Is the experience of About Endlessness satisfying enough for me to recommend it? I’m not sure it’s supposed to be “satisfying,” unless you can be satisfied by the despair of mundanity. For some viewers (and you know who you are), that may actually sound appealing. But if you still have doubts, you should know that it’s only 78 minutes long. So if you’re feeling even just a little bit adventurous, why not give this oddball concoction a chance?

About Endlessness is Recommended If You Like: A Nordic outlook on life

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Park Benches

I LOVE ‘SHIVA BABY,’ IT MADE ME LAUGH SO MUCH!!!!!

April 26, 2021

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Shiva Baby (CREDIT: YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Rachel Sennott, Molly Gordon, Danny Defararri, Polly Draper, Fred Melamed, Dianna Agron

Director: Emma Seligman

Running Time: 77 Minutes

Rating: Unrated

Release Date: April 2, 2021

After watching the very Jewish Shiva Baby, I discovered that its lead, Rachel Sennott, is not Jewish but Italian Catholic. Meanwhile, Dianna Agron, who plays the shiksa wife, is Jewish! But after the initial shock wore off, I realized that this actually wasn’t terribly unbelievable. American Jews and Italian-American Catholics do have some cultural similarities after all, especially if we’re talking about the ones in or around the New York City area. Sennott is from Simsbury, Connecticut, which is fairly close to NYC, while Agron was born in Georgia and raised in Texas and California, so perhaps the real difference is geographical. So much of American cinematic Jewish culture is New York Jewish culture!

Anyway, I enjoy stories about people with taboo jobs who are also just taking care of their lives, you know? And that certainly applies here as Sennott plays Danielle, a soon-to-be college grad who makes extra cash through a sugar daddy app. While attending a shiva with her parents, she runs into one of her clients, and it’s about as awkward as you can possibly imagine! Throw in some bagels, a bunch of nosy aunts and family friends, and a confrontational childhood friend/ex-fling, and that’s Shiva Baby!

Grade: 3-5 Bagels out of 1 Ripped Pair of Tights

And Now For Something Completely Blood-Soaked: ‘Death Ranch’ Movie Review

April 20, 2021

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Death Ranch (CREDIT: Dark Temple Motion Pictures)

Starring: Deiondre Teagle, Faith Monique, Travis Cutner, Scot Scurlock, Brad Belemjian

Director: Charlie Steeds

Running Time: 78 Minutes

Rating: Unrated, But Filled with Blood and Guts and All Sorts of Profanity

Release Date: April 20, 2021 (On Demand, DVD, and Blu-Ray)

Grindhouse, grindhouse, grindhouse!!! Do you want to see a bunch of racists get their guts ripped out? Well, if you’ve stumbled upon Death Ranch, then you’ve come to the right place. If you are who considers yourself a friend to all of humankind, then surely you believe that the Ku Klux Klan is one of the most distasteful organizations in modern society. Ergo, they’re an obvious choice for the villains in a tale of three Black siblings on the run through the woods of Tennessee in 1971. And in true grindhouse fashion, these Klansmen are just outrageously, disgustingly awful. If you can imagine the most depraved things possible, then chances are writer-director Charlie Steeds has thought to include it, from rape to cannibalism to an extreme close-up of body hair-ridden petroleum jelly. There’s a lot of real-life trauma baked in this den of horrors; it’s up to you the viewer to decide if this is the sort of thing you can stomach.

When I see a movie about Black people fighting back against their tormentors, I’m generally inclined to pontificate about where it fits within the tradition of African-American cinema and about how it resonates with real-world struggles. But there’s something telling me that that might not be the approach that this particular movie is asking for. Looking over the rest of Steeds’ filmography only confirms that suspicion. It’s filled with titles like Deadman Apocalypse, Vampire Virus, and The House of Violent Desire. And if Escape From Cannibal Farm is anything to go by, then people eating other people in rural settings is clearly a recurring theme for him.

I almost feel like I shouldn’t be reviewing a movie like this at all. Shouldn’t it be a secret that gets passed around in grimy basements and abandoned projection booths? It’s actually available on demand and on DVD and Blu-Ray for regular home viewing, but something tells me that the most appropriate way to watch Death Ranch is by setting up your own impromptu theater in an empty barn on a creepy country back road.

Death Ranch is Recommended If You Like: BlacKkKlansman but wish it had been a lot more like Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Pathetic White Men

Godzilla vs. Kong vs. My Internal Composure: A Movie Review

April 19, 2021

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Godzilla vs. Kong (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Godzilla, King Kong, Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Mechagodzilla

Director: Adam Wingard

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: March 31, 2021

What if it were Godzilla vs. Kong vs. … jmunney? Does the latest no-holds cinematic brawl between these two iconic behemoths make me want to join the fight? Hey man, I’m a pacifist! But entering their domain in some capacity might be fun. They seem like good company.  Kong is certainly a clown. And sensitive, to boot! Godzilla’s harder to peg, but I’d be willing to put in the emotional groundwork to make the connection. What’s Mechagodzilla’s deal, though? He sure comes out of nowhere. Does he even have a soul?!

Grade: 5 Podcasts of 10 ASLs

The Comforting Confusion of ‘The Father’

April 15, 2021

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The Father (CREDIT: Sony Pictures Classics/YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss

Director: Florian Zeller

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: February 26, 2021

Whenever I think about The Father, I can’t help but pronounce it the way that Mike Myers does when he encounters Marv Albert in the “Dieter’s Dream” SNL sketch (“Fah-thuh!”, although for some reason I add a “z” i.e., “Fah-zhuh”). Weirdly enough, that’s an apt comparison, as Florian Zeller’s film is pretty much equally surreal as the avant-garde German talk show host’s trip into the subconscious. Apparently, the way to make a movie about dementia exciting instead of a total bummer is to arrange it according to the whims of the dementia-addled mind. It’s rough to see Anthony (Hopkins) losing his sense of reality, but it’s fascinating to be bent back and forth by the facial mismatches and temporal-spatial distortions he’s experiencing. In the absence of a cure, maybe embracing the absurdity is the best way to handle something as disorienting as dementia. At the very least, it worked for this movie.

Grade: 4.0 out of Dec. 31 Missing Watches

‘In the Earth’ Follows Its Cinematic Brethren Into the Woods

April 14, 2021

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In the Earth (CREDIT: NEON)

Starring: Joel Fry, Ellora Torchia, Reece Shearsmith, Hayley Squires

Director: Ben Wheatley

Running Time: 107 Minutes

Rating: R for A Few Scenes of Grievous Bodily Harm

Release Date: April 16, 2021 (Theaters)

In the Earth combines elements of some of my favorite dread-filled horror and sci-fi flicks, which is good enough to grab my attention, but you can see the seams in the synthesis. A scary trip to the woods quickly leads to reality-altering vibes in the vein of Annihilation and The Blair Witch Project, and then there’s also the society-breaking-down milieu typical of any zombie flick. And I even catch a whiff of pod people-energy, as I worry that certain characters’ misplaced priorities could lead to some body snatching. It’s a hodgepodge, occasionally a visual feast, and ultimately more of an experiment than a landmark achievement.

My only previous exposure to writer-director Ben Wheatley was his overcaffeinated shoot ’em up Free Fire. In the Earth is equally non-squeamish (it does feature a guy getting his toes cut off, after all), but it’s also more reflective and meditative. Conceived and produced during the pandemic, it obviously required a more scaled-down and intimate approach. It’s ostensibly about the cure for a global virus, but it hardly resembles our current reality, at least not in any way I or anyone I know has been experiencing it. In practice, it’s just a spooky sylvan journey, making it just the latest in a long and dense cinematic tradition. Something weird is happening, a couple of characters are sent off on their own to figure it out, and then they encounter some other weird happenings. It happens!

During In the Earth‘s early going, I said to myself, “Is this just Annihilation but with a micro-budget?” That trip to Area X is one of my favorite movies of the past five years, so I quickly steeled myself for inevitable disappointment. But it’s always nice to be reminded of something that I love, so it wasn’t all bad. Then about halfway through, there was a sharp turn to a completely different movie. Well, perhaps not “completely” different. More like “tangential” and “different enough.” One major crisis had been dealt with (or at least escaped from), and then some other characters got some more screen time, and I felt myself thinking: well, it’s better to steal from a whole bunch of movies than it is to be the cheap knockoff of just one movie.

In the Earth is Recommended If You Like: Annihilation, Blair Witch, The Walking Dead, and whatever ever else Ben Wheatley watched during the pandemic, all tossed carelessly into a blender

Grade: 3 out of 5 Backpacks

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