Tag Archives: Rainn Wilson

TIFF19: Blackbird

Lily (Susan Sarandon) and Paul (Sam Neill) have called their loved ones over for a very important occasion – Lily’s death.

Oldest daughter Jennifer (Kate Winslet) arrives first, early, with salt and pepper shakers, a gift she immediately questions, and regrets, but feels compelled to give anyway, and a cake she made from scratch, because that’s what she does. Husband Michael (Rainn Wilson) and son Jonathan (Anson Boon) trail in behind her, at a slight remove from her chipper wake. Younger daughter Anna (Mia Wasikowska) arrives late, of course, empty-handed and with meagre excuses for having missed the last several family gatherings. She’s accompanied by unexpected/uninvited Chris (Bex Taylor-Klaus), her on-again/off-again girlfriend. Also on hand: Lily’s best friend and indeed lifelong family friend Liz (Lindsay Duncan). And that’s it. These are all the people Lily wants to say goodbye to before she takes her own life before an unnamed degenerative disease can do it for her, in a likely prolonged, painful, and undignified way.

Everyone knows of Lily’s intentions and everyone tries to put on a brave face despite their own personal feelings – for a while. Lily wants to revisit some old haunts, drink some good wine, host one last Christmas dinner (despite its not being Christmas), and give out some precious heirlooms while she’s still alive to see the recipient’s face. Lily is exceptionally happy to have this last time together, but she’s the only one who can truly enjoy it. Everyone else is just sort of grimly bearing it while having private breakdowns, until one wine-fueled dinner leads to all kinds of family secrets breaking open.

This movie isn’t going to win major awards or draw major box office. It’s a remake of the 2014 Danish film ‘Silent Heart’ which I have not seen. But despite it not being particularly ground-breaking or excellent film making, it is perhaps the single movie out of the 40 or so I saw at TIFF that I’ve thought about the most.

This family believes itself to be, prides itself on being, close-knit. And it might have gone on that way forever, untested, if not for this incredibly stressful time that they’re sharing. Surrounded by her family, Lily proclaims how proud she is of her daughters – a lovely sentiment that would normally be quite harmless, but in this pressure-cooker of a weekend, daughter Anna can’t help but wonder out loud if that can really be true if her mother’s really never known her. Not her true, inner self. And if you’re the introspective type of moviegoer, I suppose you can’t help but reflect on your own family situation. These people, who are supposed to know you and love you best, are often the source of the most conflict and pain. Your own mother, who made you and cooked you in her belly, who birthed you and bathed you and cared for you – does she know you? Do you hide any part of yourself from her? Are you comfortable knowing everything about her? Are any of us truly knowable by any other?

I confess, this movie sent me into a tailspin. And to be honest, that’s exactly what I love about going to the cinema. It’s the chance, albeit a pretty slim one, that I will leave the theatre thinking. Feeling. Questioning. Considering. I did not need a movie to remind me that my mother doesn’t truly know me, but it did leave me wondering what, if anything, I would reveal of myself if I knew her time was limited.

Lily is someone to each person at her table: wife, mother, best friend, grandma, in-law, trusted confidante, role model, judge. Everyone has something different to lose, and it’s figuring out exactly what that is that makes this process so difficult. Life is an equation. Lily feels her good days are up and craves the control to prevent too many bad ones. Anna feels she isn’t ready to lose her mother. Is anyone, ever? I think both sides of this equation are reasonable, but only one can prevail. These are the seminal relationships of our lives and we are born knowing that they will end. Are we ever really ready?

Susan Sarandon is self-assured and brave. Sam Neill is a stoic, steady silver fox. Kate Winslet is anxious and authoritative. Mia Wasikowska is wounded and fragile. They are not a perfect family, which is to say: they are a family. And they’re about to break.

The Meg

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With a budget of $130 000 000(!), The Meg is probably the world’s most expensive watch commercial.

It pretends to be a movie too. It’s about a tough, gruff drunk named Jonas (Jason Statham) who wears watches while bitterly licking his wounds after losing two of his mates during a rescue mission that saved 11. He claims that something very large and unseen crushed a nuclear submarine, but doctors claim he’s crazy. Still, he’s the guy Mac (Cliff Curtis) and Zhang (Winston Chao) call on when only the best will do.

Zhang is the brilliant watch-wearing scientist running a deep underwater research lab, funded by eccentric billionaire Morris (Rainn Wilson), who loves watches almost as much as he loves sneakers. Zhang believes that there is more depth to the ocean the-meg-feature than even Mariana’s Trench will have you believe – and a sub from their research facility proves him correct as it plunges below what was previously believed to be the bottom of the ocean. There is all sorts of undiscovered life down there (science boner!), including something big enough and antagonistic enough to ground the submarine containing 3 crew members with only their large, expensive watches to keep them company, the fairest of whom is Jonas’s ex-wife. So down he goes.

And then up he comes, but he’s not alone. It seems he’s brought something with him: a megalodon, an enormous shark previously believed to be extinct for millions of years. This time the science-boners are tempered by the fact that this fish (affectionately nicknamed ‘The Meg’) is eating all the people AND their waterproof watches.

Jason Statham is of course the perfect man for the part. His sneer of contempt is so effortless. It’s a quite sturdy cast, on the whole. Bingbing Li plays opposite Statham – not as his ex-wife, but as his future ex-wife. She’s no damsel in distress, though. She is constantly testing the warranty limits on her watch by jumping into wherever danger lurks. Ruby Rose, Page Kennedy, and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson round out the possible choice of appetizer for the shark. Kennedy was likely cast for his wonderful wrists, able to hold cups of coffee at such crazy, awkward angles to better show off the stunning watches on display there – even on the outside of his jacket cuffs, if necessary. Ruby Rose nearly drowned on set, and at one point when her character narrowly survives an encounter with the Meg, she hauls herself out of the water, and lays there heaving, her wristwatch posed for maximum admiration by viewers only tangentially concerned with her fate, probably wondering whether it’ll be an heirloom, and if so, who’s getting it in her will.

The Meg takes itself quite seriously while I expected (and maybe wanted) a campier version. One that embraced the cheese factor along with the blatant product placement. But no. And the thing is, The Meg is definitely menacing, but he’s no Jaws. Jaws is much smaller of course, capable of much less damage, but he was a better villain because he almost seemed to make it personal. The Meg is just a monster with a prehistoric brain. He can’t help himself. You could almost dredge up sympathy for the guy. I mean, he doesn’t even have wrists, how’s he going to wear a watch that lets everyone know he’s a man of distinction, a motherfucker to be reckoned with?

The Meg is a bit of dumb fun. Sean thought mostly fun, I thought mostly dumb. And also very overpriced – for that kind of money, everything should look a lot better. But there’s no amount of budget-gloss or gung-ho casting that could hide the flaws of the script, which veers drastically from its source material. I can’t say this movie disappointed me. It sank more than it swam, which is about what I expected from a story picked from the carcass of another, better shark movie.

Shimmer Lake

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Shimmer Lake is a murder mystery told backwards. The story reverses day by day through a week as a small town sheriff investigates a bank heist gone wrong and the three local criminals he suspects. Innovative? Sure, maybe a little. Confusing? Maybe a lot. It’s just a lot of story to keep track of. And often the first time we meet a new character, he or she is a dead body. Ten or fifteen minutes later for us is usually a day earlier for them, so the corpse reanimates and is suddenly a major player.

Now, telling the story backwards is a gimmick, and one that in my opinion, doesn’t really MV5BZGQ0OWFhNTgtYTJiOS00MDU1LTg2MTgtZTU5NzQ4Yjg0YzkxXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjEwNTM2Mzc@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,999_AL_ pay off. I suppose the story was too generic to get greenlit when played forward, but for future purposes, I’d appreciate it if Netflix could release movies in their natural order, and I’ll use my rewind button if I feel a particular need to bedevil my brains. Without proper introductions, I couldn’t even keep the character names straight. One of the film’s running jokes has its punchline right at the beginning but then we have to watch it get set up one morning at a time. It’s the kind of movie that might require some note-taking but it’s not good enough for me to be motivated to go rummage around in the drunk drawer for a pen.

With credits like Rainn Wilson Rob Corddry, Adam Pally, and John Michael Higgins, I expected them to put the comedy into black comedy. They don’t. Shimmer Lake seems to have some over-the-top elements but it never really embraces them. The script is safe and scrubbed of laughs. Oren Uziel, one of 5 writers credited for 22 Jump Street, writes and directs this one all by his lonesome. And while I appreciate that Netflix is trying to take some risks, this one doesn’t pay off. Or, it does, but only in the last seconds, which means you’ll spend the vast majority of this film not enjoying it very much at all. The ends do not justify the means.