Category Archives: Jay

Force Majeure

Sweden’s official submission for best foreign language film at this year’s Oscars is a real doozie.

A big thanks to Ottawa’s Bytowne Cinemas for bringing it here. This film is not an easy one to catch, but worth every effort.

A beautiful blonde family is on a ritzy, picturesque ski vacation in the French Alps. The workaholic father Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) is taking some much-needed “family time” – that is, until the second day, when an avalanche threatens the family and he saves his own hide, leaving his wife and kids for dead. Luckily, the avalanche was controlled and everyone’s fine – well, everyone’s uninjured. Physically uninjured. But everyone’s hurt.

This film is a fascinating look at what happens to this family now that it’s been confronted with an awful truth. What are these primal instincts? Can we blame them for our actions? Can we count on them? Who can we count on?

After the movie, a small group of Assholes met up at Maxwell’s Bistro on Elgin to debrief, and boy did we need it. The director, Ruben Östlund, is a master at manipulating tension. The fallout unfolds slowly. He uses blank spaces to let the tension mount. It sometimes feels pressurized, unbearable. But every uncomfortable scene is worthy of comment. Together they piece together a larger portrait of a relationship that is being redefined quickly.

What happens when your spouse lets you down so profoundly? What happens when you let yourself down, when you fail to live up to your own values? Can a relationship really be measured by a split-second decision?

The film holds a mirror up to our own relationships, and we ask ourselves what we would have done. And if we’re asking honestly (because of course in our guts we all hope we’d do the right thing) we have to wonder: at our most base self, our most primal self, are we heroes, or are we survivalists?

There are flaws to this movie. The children, though clearly shaken and probably scarred, are hardly dealt with. They intuit that something is wrong with the family unit, and they want to comfort and protect their father from whatever he’s going through. But their own confusion and anger is never given a voice. Focus remains on the couple, and we are constantly reminded of just how intimate our eavesdropping is, although the wife, Ebba, ( Lisa Loven Kongsli) seems to find it easier to voice her disbelief and criticism in public rather than in private.

It’s awkward. Oh man is it awkward. Imagine being at this dinner party. Your friend of many years, it turns out, is a huge coward who saved himself and abandoned his children for dead. You feel sorry for him. Do you comfort him? Comfort her? Make excuses for him? Identify with him? Question your own motives?

This movie is unafraid. It’s not pretty, but we aren’t allowed to look away. It’s not enough just to break the marriage open, now we have to go inside and poke around. It’s terribly invasive. It’s provoking. It’s exactly the kind of movie I adore – one that makes me question everything.

Because whether we collectively condemn or forgive Tomas, our judgments are based on what, exactly? Gender stereotypes? Expectations of filial duty? Idealization of romantic love? Physical bravery? Basic instincts?

This movie is a much better look, psychologically, into the makeup of a marriage than Gone Girl. The characters are more relatable. But that’s also why it’s so much more difficult to sit through. It’s not just a movie. It’s a mirror.

(I hope many of you get the chance to go see it, and I hope you all come back here to chat about it in the comments. If you haven’t seen it, beware – comments may contain spoilers.)

Killer Joe

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I’m so shell-shocked from this movie I’m having trouble writing about it.

When Chris, a not so great guy from a not so great family ( Emile Hirsch) has a stash of drugs stolen from him by his mom, he has to come up with cash quick, or he’s dead. He and his father, Ansel (Thomas Hayden Church) hatch a plan to kill the mom and collect on her life insurance policy. And Chris knows just the guy to do the job – Killer Joe, a Dallas detective who happens to be a hit-man on the side. Too bad they can’t afford to pay his retainer…until Joe spots Chris’s sweet little sister Dottie (Juno Temple) and decides that sexual collateral will do just the trick.

This film is trash. Trash trash, not trailer trash. Don’t be fooled by the actual trailer park. These people aren’t just hicks, they’re actual filthy, morally bankrupt people. This fact is established very very quickly – it’s immediately vulgar, over-the-top vulgar, and that’s before the beaver gets flashed in your face. Chris’s stepmom (Gina Gershon) has no boundaries and apparently no pants. Letts, the playwright, is adept with fucked up families (think August: Osage County) but this one takes the cake.

So I was repulsed by this movie, and this from the girl who didn’t blink once while watching Sin City a few weeks ago. My revulsion was knee-jerk and I went straight for the “bad movie” label – bad, bad movie. But I didn’t turn it off. And as I watched more, I realized that the badness is on purpose. It’s the point. You’re not supposed to like these people. This film is showing us a very dirty, seedy class of people. The badness is actually pretty expertly done, which doesn’t mean it’s easy to watch.

Enter Matthew McConaughey, a southern gentleman and a breath of fresh air. His demeanor is calm, his drawl is polite. He injects the movie with a much-need hit of stillness that lets us catch our breath after all the frenetic coarseness. The audience wants to eat him up which is a very effective device because it turns out he’s just as morally reprehensible and probably the most soulless character yet. He just has a more polished facade.

There’s so much tension in this movie that occasionally a giggle will bubble up, guiltily, without relieving even an ounce of the tension. This movie will make your jaw ache. It’s brutal. It’s sadistic. There so much fetishistic sexual cruelty that you won’t know where to look. If you’re comfortable exploring dark, nasty, demented sides of people without every really scratching the surface, then by all means, you won’t do better than this movie. I sort of hesitate to call it exploitation cinema, but isn’t that what it means? To be a voyeur in this condemnable underworld and enjoy watching the bloody violence and perversion vicariously? But Killer Joe has the capacity to really catch people off guard, and not in a good way. (You won’t ever eat fried chicken again.) It’s provocative but doesn’t really attempt to teach us anything. The characters are not remotely redeemable, but neither is the movie. Galling, outrageous, and ultimately superficial. And as polarizing as the movie is, just wait til you get to the end.

(And if by chance you’ve landed on this site just needing to talk about what you’ve seen, then please take the chance to do so in the comments. Assholes Watching Movies is providing a public service: vent, ask questions. Others be forewarned that there may be spoilers.)

Love Actually

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I’ve actually started packing away my copy of Love Actually with my Christmas decorations every year, which limits my viewing of it to just once, annually. This is a necessary precaution because it’s way too easy for me to get swept away in this movie.

It feels like the ultimate romantic movie, possibly because in this movie Hugh Grant AND Colin Firth both get the girl. But for every frenzied makeout session, there’s also a cold, awkward peck on the cheek. Your heart breaks as much as it soars. There’s grand gestures, and well thought-out lingerie, slow dancing cheek to cheek, and enough first kisses to charm even the more cynical hearts.

But for me, this movie excels not in its romantic tropes, but in the darker corners. You don’t need this movie to tell you that Emma Thompson is superb, but it does confirm it. The scene when she’s in the bedroom, having just unwrapped Joni Mitchell instead of jewelry, is moving and real. Only a few moments (and even fewer tears) are devoted to her broken heart and we watch her pull herself back together to give her children a smiling, overbright Christmas. Only an extended hug for brother David belies just how much she’s hurting. This movie happens to take place in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and while the magic of the season seems to heighten the romantic aspects, and give courage to those who need it, it also highlights the loneliness, the forced joviality, the false cheer.

There’s probably some sort of personality test about which couple your root for in this movie, but I must confess, I also adore the non-romantic-couple bits: the sweet and silly bromance between Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) and his fat manager, the sacrifice of Sarah (Laura Linney) for her institutionalized brother, the shared grief and renewed bond between Daniel (Liam Neeson) and his young stepson.

I’ve been watching this movie for a decade and I still squeal at all my favourite parts: the papier-mache lobster head, the Rowan Atkinson gift wrapping, the Beatles sendoff, Hugh Grant dancing unselfconsciously, the falling in love by subtitles between Jamie and Aurelia, Martin Freeman warming up his hands for “the nipples,” Rick Grimes taking a break from zombies. This movie has it all, and I’ve certainly heard it criticized for being over-stuffed, but personally I wouldn’t know which subplot to cut. Sure it’s self-indulgent, but watching this movie every year is a gift I give myself.

The assholes will be reviewing their favourite holiday movies all December long, so stay tuned!

The One I Love

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On the brink of separation, Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) are referred by their therapist to an idyllic vacation house for a weekend getaway in an attempt to reconnect and save their marriage. What begins as playful and romantic soon becomes surreal.

And at first this weird, creepy little twist is interesting. What does it mean? What are the rules? How does this affect the relationship? But since the movie lacks the balls to actually answer or even address any of these questions, you might just find yourself losing steam because the encounter is monotonous by its very nature.

I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into with this movie. I saw Mark Duplass and hit play (LOVE him in the The League!). Elisabeth Moss? Bonus. Ted Danson? Weird, but okay. I’ll buy it. Duplass and Moss give great performances, luckily, and the little relationship microcosm can be explored almost without limit – but to what end? I love the questions the movies seems to ask of us – Can happiness be sustained long-term? Do we marry a perfect but ultimately false partner and then feel let down when reality is revealed over due course? – but though this movie has potential and great bones, those bones lack meat. I wanted something I could sink my teeth into and ended up unsatisfied.

Lucky Them

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Toni Collette plays Ellie, a music critic who’s assigned to track down her musician ex-boyfriend. He disappeared over a decade ago, just as his career was taking off, and hasn’t been heard of since. She’s clearly still nursing old wounds: she’s a mess, personally and professionally. She has one-night-stands instead of relationships. But now suddenly she has to go ripping off band-aids with the help of an old flame and total creepster (Thomas Haden Church). Church is a cringe-inducing rich prick who’s decided to take up documentary film-making. Collette is an imposter with a veneer so thin even a complete stranger calls her on it between bites of wedding cake.

This movie is what would happen if last year’s mournful, Oscar-nominated Inside Llewyn Davis and Oscar-winning treasure Searching for Sugar Man got together and had a mediocre baby. Well, maybe mediocre’s a bit harsh. I love me some Toni Collette and she does a bang-up job turning this somewhat predictable coming-of-age-l into a relevant, layered coming-of-middle-age tale. Church allows her to bounce off his deadpan delivery, although she often seems reduced to grimacing when the script fails her.

The movie is purposefully slow. We really get a sense of Ellie’s stagnation as she is given a goal and then proceeds to ignore it for huge chunks of the movie. Instead of road-tripping out to find the ex-boyfriend, we explore relationships and maybe do a little growing up. All in all, this is a nice little indie flick that didn’t do much in theatres but will have a nice second life on Netflix. This baby doesn’t live up to its parents’ standards but when you run out of A material, here’s a nice solid B.

Hateship Loveship

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I’m still wondering if I liked this movie.

It’s quiet and unassuming, much like the drab and dull caretaker character played by Kristen Wiig (who’s so retiring the costume designer actually wraps her up in beige). Sent to help an elderly man (Nick Nolte) care for his granddaughter who lives with him (mother dead, father recently released from prison), the mousey Johanna becomes privy to family secrets and hungers for some kind of belonging. The granddaughter (Hailee Steinfeld) pulls a mean prank on Johanna and starts up a fake correspondence, ostensibly from her father (played by Guy Pearce). Naively, Johanna quickly falls in love and goes to him.

It’s at this point that I started to feel like I knew this story, that I had read it in some very similar, too similar to be coincidence, but not quite the same, form. And it’s true. It’s based on an Alice Munro story called Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, although you have to smudge the details a bit, such as replacing “rural Canada” with “Chicago.”

So Johanna treks out to remote, inaccessible Chicago to be with the man she loves, but who has no idea they’ve been involved in an online relationship. There she finds a coke addict and a thief, but she decides to stay and soon plain Johanna has a green emerald dress and (hello, metaphor!) you know what that means – she is transformed.

The film has a pretty strong cast of supporting characters but I’m not sure I bought Wiig as Johanna. Her dowdiness is expressed in mannerisms familiar to her fans – she started many a character is much the same way, eyes fluttering downward, pursed lips, negative space. So her performance felt a little like an SNL skit without the punchline. Serviceable, but ultimately unsatisfying.

So I guess my feelings toward this movie are as tepid as the movie itself. It veers away from the source material in interesting but fundamentally disappointing ways. Whoever thought they could improve on Munro’s ending should be shot. Munro is much more comfortable with things left unsaid; she trusts her readers to draw their own conclusions. Liza Johnson, the not-so-fearless director, does not. She leaves us with a generic, happy ending instead.

Fading Gigolo

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John Turturro writes and directs this movie, and stars in it alongside Woody Allen doing a terrific Woody Allen impression.

Both men are past their prime and underemployed, so when Woody’s doctor mentions that she and her girlfriend are thinking about having a “menage” (a trois!) he volunteers his good pal Johnny Turturo, who’s “good with the ladies” and “sexy” and “looks good naked.”

All of these things are new and surprising and difficult to comprehend for an audience more used to thinking of John Turturro as he actually is. Good thing for director’s conceit.

It was hard to digest this movie for many reasons, but above all: why on earth would a hot lesbian couple made up of Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara need to pay for sex? And if they were so inclined to do so, why are they paying for John Turturro and not Channing Tatum? The only way John Turturro starts to seem like a good option is when you stand him next to say…Woody Allen. Oh. I see what happened here. Suddenly the casting all makes sense. Johnny looks good in a comparative\relative way, and he gets to make out with a lingerie-clad wet dream and call it a living. The only thing more mystifying than this dynamic is the one between Turturro and a Jewish widow who is so orthodox that she cannot shake his hand and yet somehow has sought out the services of a neurotic gigolo and his spastic ho.

I see now that it was a morbid curiosity that made me watch this movie and I tell you with confidence that the world could have done without it. This gigolo didn’t fade fast enough.

From One Second to the Next

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From legendary documentary film maker Werner Herzog comes Frome One Second to the Next, an unflinching look at the consequences of texting and driving.

This documentary is really about content. Herzog tries to jazz it up with some stylized shots of people kneeling thoughtfully beside crash sites, or the empty hand of someone who was once holding on to a child for safety, but these shots are glaringly unnecessary in a film that already has an impactful message.

Of course we hear from victims, or victims’ families, but these accounts are as predictable as they are tragic. It sounds like testimony, like victim impact statements. We find more connection in other moments, like a police officer choking up over an infant’s fatal injuries, or the blank stare of a woman so traumatized she registers no emotion hearing her sister list the extensive damages incurred to her both physically and financially, but suddenly engages when recalling her dog, also a victim in the acciddent, who flew violently threw the air before landing where he would ultimately die, but not before seeing his owner into an ambulance.

I was glad to hear from a couple of the perpetrators (and angry to not hear from all). Their regret is palpable even if their sentences are underwhelming. For the most part, the film keeps its focus appropriately on the victims, always with the distinct undercurrent of the complete preventability of their deaths.

This film is available on Netflix.

Jurassic World: a preview

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Everyone’s buzzing about two movie trailers that were supposed to drop into theatres this Friday – Star Wars, and Jurassic World. But Jurrassic world managed to win the day with a “leak” (that was probably more scoop than oops).

So who’s excited to see this one? I think the franchise lost a lot of viewers with their last installment but they’re hoping for a major reboot (and a major payday). They’re peddling their little asses off; as if a trailer premiere isn’t enough, they teased the teaser in the days leading up to its realease.

You’ll still have to wait 6 more months of this movie – Jurassic World is released June 12 – but it looks like the park is finally open. Yes, 22 years (22! Who feels ancient?) have passed since the park was first dreamed into reality by John Hammond. We all know that didn’t exactly go well for the park or for the people (and director Colin Trevorrow promises that neither Sam Neill, Laura Dern, nor Jeff Goldblum will be forced back onto the island under any pretenses. Pinky promise?). This film features Chris Pratt (note: too cute to be eaten) as an on-site scientist doing behavioural research on velociraptors (um, why?). Dinosaur-hell breaks loose when the company inadvertently (worst track record ever!) unleashes a genetically modified (because they can be patented – cha-ching!) hybrid dinosaur on the park.

I think Sean just got wood. Not only is this going to be a MAJOR drive in movie this summer, it’s also going to get its own Lego sets (making this Chris Pratt’s third time as a little yellow plastic man – there’s gotta be some kind of club for that). Merchandising aside, this movie is guaranteed to be good – after all, the last time co-stars Judy Greer and Bryce Dallas Howard got together, a little piece of movie magic called The Village resulted. No bombs in sight.

p.s. Let’s hope the Jurassic animatronics are of slightly better quality than the Zombeavers ones. Can I get a hell yeah?

Zombeavers: a totally real movie. Apparently.

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So it’s come to this: Zombeavers. If this isn’t a sign of the apocalypse, I don’t know what is. I don’t want to know what is. Sean’s cousin pointed me toward this gem and I can’t thank her enough.

The worst thing about this movie is that it doesn’t really know it’s a joke. It tries to be a real movie. There’s no parody here (I mean, can you even parody a parody?), no wink toward the audience. It’s genuinely, earnestly a movie about zombie beavers.

Okay, that’s not the worst thing. But it’s a very bad, terrible thing.

Is it outrageous? No. It’s tired. The beaver jokes start almost immediately (to call it innuendo is aiming a bit too high, considering the script…innuendo implies something clever is happening, and there is NOTHING clever happening) unless you count the title, in which case the first and only joke is made before you even start the movie. If you’ve seen the poster, you’ve seen enough.

Bill Burr and John Mayer in a handlebar (believe it) open this thing up with a discussion about shitting in your friend’s house. It turns out that this would be the high point of the film (plus or minus the gratuitous dick pics), and it shouldn’t come of much of a surprise that it’s these two chuckleheads responsible for the whole zombified beaver mess.

Cue the pretty people partying and sexing it up in a secluded cabin in the woods. The script refers to them variously as college kids and sorority sisters but leaves the audience wondering which college exactly lets in kids who don’t know what a beaver dam is, or a landline for that matter. There is near-immediate toplessness (admittedly some pretty great tits) but then the douchebag boyfriends show up and a round of pointless fuking ensues.

A fun drinking game to play while watching this movie (and believe me, you’ll want to be on the vodka train for this doozie) would be to guess which douche is the first to bite the dust. Or better yet: which douche goes for a swim in the lake and comes back holding his own severed foot?

But wait! These zombeavers aren’t just hungry for human meat, they’re also quite devious. They don’t just sever feet, they also sever phone lines.

By the way. This movie goes the way of some 80s classics of the genre, eschewing effects for animatronics which are inevitably terrible. You’ve seen better animatronics on the 25 cent carousel in front of your grocery store. They’re not funny, they’re not scary, they’re just beaver puppets and totally, totally regrettable. A real dog is thrown in as beaver-bait and when he dies, so does the best actor in the bunch.

The worst actor of the bunch, “Hutch Dano”, does in fact “play” a very convincing dickwad. What he fails to convey with any aplomb is “guy hammering a nail.” Seriously. Watch this guy hammer a nail. And then watch him play whack-a-mole when the beavers start popping up through holes gnawed in the floor.

And if you thought the zombeavers were bad (and they’re godawful, truly), you should see what happens when a human gets bit and morphs into a zombie-beaver-human hybrid. It’s almost poetic and the costume lady seems to have saved herself some time by reusing the Miley Cyrus’s redneck teeth she bought for Halloween. Two birds, meet one stone. Love it.