All posts by Larry Christopher

dark comedy, Netflix, Standup comedy

Adrienne Iapalucci on Netflix: What Does Dark Comedy Tell Us About Society?

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Adrienne Iapalucci
Adrienne Iapalucci The Dark Queen

In her Netflix special The Dark Queen, Adrienne Iapalucci lives up to her moniker. She begins by saying, “I’m not a good person,” and nothing that follows gives us any reason to doubt this. I have no idea if her misanthropic persona is her true self. But if not, she does a great job of making us believe.

Standup comedy is one of the hardest forms of entertainment to pull off. More so now, for a couple of reasons. First, it’s gotten so mainstream that the competition is fierce, and being original is nearly impossible. Even the best of them start to sound like they’re regurgitating the same stuff after you’ve seen them a few times. The other reason is that it’s hard to know what you can joke about nowadays. The amount of backlash comics like Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais get for their un-PC jokes probably discourages others from stepping out of line. That is not remotely the case with Adrienne Iapalucci.

Nothing is off limits it seems, as she jokes about 9/11, Muslims, disliking Puerto Ricans, and victims of school shootings, for starters. Nor does she do it playfully, like Russell Peters who specializes in roasting every ethnic group. She unleashes one inappropriate line after another without any backpedaling.

Unlike left-leaning bluish comics like Sarah Silverman or right-leaning ones like Gervais, Iapalucci seems like an equal opportunity misanthrope. I can appreciate this about her, as she doesn’t push any particular agenda, apart from pure nihilism.

I find her more entertaining than your usual standup routine, but then I’ve never been the genre’s biggest fan. At least you never know what kind of unhinged, inappropriate thing she’ll say next. Her deadpan delivery adds to the effect.

Maybe cancel culture is already moving into the rearview mirror. People are finally realizing the futility of trying to quell opinions (and jokes) that offend them. After all, the controversy attached to Chapelle and Gervais has profited more than harmed them. They’ve turned their most objectionable jokes, regarding trans people, into branding tools. I’m not sure if that makes them funnier -I’d put them both into the large category of comics whose material has gotten overly predictable. But attempts to “cancel” them have surely failed.

I searched for reviews of the Dark Queen show and didn’t see much in the way of outrage or demands to silence her. I’m talking about “professional” reviews now as I didn’t scour the web for every Rotten Tomatoes review. It seems to be sinking in that calling attention to a message you don’t like is only fueling it.

What Does the Dark Queen Say About Us?

I’m a little torn when contemplating the societal implications of someone like Iapalucci, along with Anthony Jeselnik and others whose style of comedy is pure darkness. On the one hand, I wonder if such blatant misanthropy isn’t part of an overall desensitizing, contributing to a world where empathy is an anachronism and utter self-centeredness is the norm.

On the other hand, her utter disregard for limits serves to undermine the overly sensitive tendencies of cancel culture. As Kat Timpf points out in You Can’t Joke About That, society has become unsettlingly humorless in recent years.

In a better, saner world, comics like Adrienne Iapalucci wouldn’t exist, at least in their current form. The conditions and atrocities they chuckle at shouldn’t be part of reality. But given that they are, we have a choice. We can approach them with grim seriousness, allowing only pundits, experts, and leaders to address them. Or we can let the dark comics do their thing, for better and for worse.

Broadly speaking, Adrienne Iapalucci is part of a lineage that includes Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and George Carlin (to name a few). They often cross the boundary into the offensive and tasteless. But they also hold a mirror to society, revealing uncomfortable truths that are present whether we look at them or not.

 

 

Indie film directors, movie reviews, Netflix

The Killer on Netflix: A Hitman’s Vendetta

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The Killer on Netflix movie poster

It seems like Netflix is specializing in made for streaming movies with extremely limited theater runs about contract killers. At least if we consider two recent offerings: Richard Linklater’s Hitman and David Fincher’s The Killer (2023).

Actually, the two films aren’t very similar. I’ve already discussed Hitman, where the protagonist isn’t even a real contract killer but an undercover quasi-cop pretending to be one. The killer in The Killer is a bona fide killer. In fact, as played by Michael Fassbender, he’s one of cinema’s most ruthless hitmen, at least for a protagonist (when it comes to villains, it would be hard to list the endless variety of psychopaths portrayed over the years).

The killer, whose real name we never learn, uses a long list of pseudonyms, one of the movie’s few borderline amusing aspects. Although we see him in action, we mostly hear his inner dialogue, accompanied by a Smiths soundtrack.

It could be tedious to hear someone repeating various Nietzschean and Machiavellian quotes (along with one by Aleister Crowley), but here it’s actually compelling. Many of the words are repetitive, but we’re interested to see how (and if) the killer acts them out in each scenario.

As the killer meticulously prepares to do a job in Paris, he makes a mistake and shoots a bystander instead of the target. This sets off a messy sequence of events that throws off his equilibrium. As you might imagine, people who hire contract killers aren’t likely to forgive mistakes. They attack his home in the Dominican Republic and maim his girlfriend. The assassins, however, make their own mistake and leave her alive and able to identify them.

The killer, it turns out, isn’t too cold and calculating to resist the lure of revenge. So most of the film follows him as he tracks down each and every culpable party. He continues to repeat his mantra: “Stick to your plan. Anticipate, don’t improvise. Trust no one. Never yield an advantage. Fight only the battle you’re paid to fight.”

As his actions clearly don’t fit this stoic ideal, he almost seems like a malfunctioning android or Terminator, functioning at a high and deadly level, but not quite the way he was programmed to work. Tilda Swinton has a nice role as a charismatic fellow assassin who is on the killer’s list. They play a life-and-death game of cat and mouse over drinks at a restaurant.

We get no backstory for the killer. Did he watch his family get murdered as a child? Was he mentored by a fellow sociopath? We have no idea as we only see him as a finished product.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the 1967 French classic Le Samouraï, but that film similarly portrays a lone wolf, hard-to-kill hitman on the run.

The Killer brings an intense energy to a familiar genre. It alternates between action and slower-paced brooding scenes. While not exactly groundbreaking -a hitman seeking revenge is a familiar trope-, for fans of arty-Euro style suspense, it’s worth a watch.

Documentary

Kedi: The Cats of an Ancient City

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A cat on a stool in a restaurant.

Istanbul is known for many things: it’s the site of the old Byzantine city of Constantinople and, later, the Ottoman empire. It’s home to many famous sites and buildings such as the Hagia Sophia. It’s a popular destination for tourists, ex-pats and digital nomads. On top of all this, it’s famous for its  huge cat population.

Though it’s high on my list of places to visit, I haven’t yet gotten to Istanbul, so my knowledge is unfortunately all secondhand. I’ve come across many random videos of cats in the city: on streets, in the metro (often parked on the turnstiles where people enter the  system).

Cat in Istanbul Metro

Kedi: Cats of an Ancient City is a documentary that explores the ancient relationships between cats and humans in Istanbul. What’s refreshing is that it’s not the usual nature documentary with a narrator bombarding us with hundreds of factoids. To be sure, there’s a place for this kind of programming. However, it’s hard not to feel like you’re back in school being forced to sit through an educational video. Kedi focuses on the actual lives of cats and the people who love and care for them. We do get facts, but they are interwoven into the fabric of daily life.

There’s no complicated narrative here. We  see what a big part cats play in the everyday lives of many Istanbul residents. They naturally tend to congregate around markets and restaurants where food is plentiful.

One man describes how taking care of cats helped to cure him of long-term depression. A woman ponders how relating to cats feels like communing with an alien species. Several people emphasize how each cat has its own unique personality.

As heartwarming as it is to see people bonding with animals, it’s not all upbeat. Istanbul, like almost every developed area, is suffering from the common ills of gentrification and over-development, which impacts animals as well as humans. In a city that already has an overpopulation of cats, there are now fewer places for them to live. Towards the end, someone laments how the fast-paced way of life is making everyone less human. Some things are apparently universal.

Kedi: Cats of an Ancient City is must-see viewing for cat lovers. It’s also a less common view of a great city. Unlike the usual travel doc, which focuses on history and tourist attractions, this one takes you into actual neighborhoods and the everyday life of its residents, both human and feline.

I found this documentary on Kanopy, which you can access for free via public libraries and universities. I’m not sure if it’s streaming anywhere else at this time.

Film Festivals, indie comedies, Netflix

Hit Man: Fun Noirish Comedy But Not Vintage Linklater

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Hit Man movie poster

Richard Linklater, one of my favorite indie directors, is known for his episodic and conversation-heavy films such as Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Waking Life,  Boyhood, and the Sunrise-Sunset trilogy. Hit Man, on the other hand, is more like a Coen Brothers movie: twisty and plot-driven.

Hit Man went directly from a premier at the 80th Venice International Film Festival to Netflix. It did open at a small number of “select” theaters, but the vast majority of viewers will stream it.

Based loosely on a true story, it stars Glen Powell as Gary Johnson, a college professor who also works undercover for the New Orleans police. His superiors persuade him to pose as a hit man to set up people desperate or unhinged enough to hire a contract killer. Things get complicated when he’s “hired” by a woman named Madison (Adria Arjona) who wants to kill her abusive husband. Unlike prior setups, Madison seems like an actual victim with a just cause. It also doesn’t hurt that Gary is instantly attracted to her.

The story is a fairly typical modern noirish-comic tale with quirky characters and twists. Is Madison really a victim or more of a femme fatale with a hidden agenda? Will she discover Johnson’s true identity? To make matters more complicated, Johnson has a rival on the police force, a real cop named Jasper (Austin Amelio), who wanted the fake hit man gig himself. As Johnson gets involved with Madison, Jasper is watching.

One problem I had with Hit Man is how it starts. Gary Johnson narrates and just announces that he’s a philosophy professor with a mostly boring life who just happens to work undercover for the police, as if this is a normal thing. We see how he’s reluctant to take on the hit man role. But, really, that’s a relatively small step compared to the initial stage, which we never see, of getting recruited by the police in the first place. Maybe they didn’t want to lengthen the film by adding exposition, but to me it seems like a big omission.

I don’t tend to watch movies multiple times, but I get so much enjoyment from the verbal exchanges in many Linklater films that I often enjoy revisiting them. Sadly, I can only think of one scene in Hit Man that has this quality: a brief conversation between Gary and his ex-wife Alicia (Molly Bernard), who fall into the kind of profound and completely-inessential-to-the- plot type of conversation found in Waking Life, Before Sunrise, and others. Otherwise, the narration and dialog in Hit Man is either functional or typical flippant movie dialogue.

As played by Powell, Johnson is an enigmatic character who fluctuates between nerdy, charismatic, and unpredictable. From my research, I see he’s been in some popular movies I haven’t seen (I’m basically an all-indie guy). He mostly comes across like a movie star confident that the script has him covered. The role reminds me a bit of Tom Hanks in Catch Me If You Can.

I put Hit Man in the category of an A- or B+ semi-indie/semi-mainstream fils that I enjoy but wouldn’t go out of my way to see again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

dark comedy, Netflix

When You Finish Saving the World: Gen Z vs Boomer

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Movie poster: When You Finish Saving the World

When You Finish Saving the World, Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut and based on his own novel, stars Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard as a mother and son with serious social and communication issues, both with each other and the rest of the world. This is an insightful, sometimes funny, sometimes cringeworthy depiction of a conflict between two generational stereotypes: self-satisfied, affluent liberal Boomers and self-absorbed Gen-Zers who are more comfortable interacting online than in person. To its credit, the film doesn’t really take a side as both generations are lampooned.

Julianne Moore plays Evelyn, the director of a woman’s shelter in Indiana. Her teenage son, Ziggy, spends all his free time live streaming a music program that is broadcast globally to, he can’t stop announcing to everyone, 20,000 fans. Jay O. Sanders takes a back seat as Ziggy’s father, whose low key presence mainly consists of drinking wine, retreating with a book to his bedroom, and avoiding conflict as much as possible.

Ziggy is the kind of part Eisenberg himself would have played 20 or so years ago. In fact, this film vaguely evokes a 90s film in which he appeared, The Squid and the Whale, as both depict highly dysfunctional upper middle class families. Wolfhard is very effective in this role as a character who is often less than sympathetic. He’s both awkward and self-centered, oblivious of how off-putting his behavior often is.

Despite his apparent popularity online, Ziggy is socially awkward with his peers. He becomes infatuated with Lila (Alisha Boe), a politically active classmate who reads poetry at a local radical community center. Ziggy makes some ill-planned attempts to impress her. He turns one of her poems about oppressed people into a song and then brags how much money he made online with it. Ziggy suffers from the delusion that social media posturing is the equivalent of making a real difference in the world.

Evelyn is equally uncomfortable to watch. One of Julianne Moore’s strengths is playing characters who try to put on a brave front while barely hanging on emotionally. We saw this recently in May December, where she plays a woman living in the aftermath of a scandal. Here, she is equally off balance at home with Ziggy and her uncommunicative husband and at work, where she awkwardly tries to balance her role as supervisor with her egalitarian values. In one scene, her efforts to get friendly with a receptionist results in the other woman asking if Evelyn is planning to fire her.

Evelyn becomes obsessed with Kyle (Billy Bryk), a teen who goes to school with Ziggy (though the two are not acquainted) who is staying at the shelter with his mother. At first, she appears to take a maternal interest in Kyle, who seems more grounded and easier to communicate with than her own son. However, it starts to go in a queasier direction when she takes him out to dinner and gets giggly and flirty with him.

We need to look beyond Ziggy and his parents to find characters who are relatively normal and well adjusted. We see their foibles through the eyes of Lila and Kyle. The film’s major weakness is probably that the nearly perfect symmetry between Ziggy and Evelyn’s awkward interactions stretches credibility.

What I liked best about the film were some of the casual and offhanded observations. For example, we see Evelyn and Ziggy squeezing into an ostentatiously tiny Smart car, which is parked in one of the neighborhood’s larger and more ornate homes. This perfectly captures Evelyn’s need to be seen as a socially conscious activist while living a comfortable life in an upscale suburb. Then there’s the everyday hostility between Ziggy and his parents, who casually hurl obscenities at one another. This might be shocking to anyone not familiar with the norms of many liberal middle class families. Ziggy is especially territorial about no one disturbing him while he’s vlogging.

When You Finish Saving the World reveals how difficult communication can be in the modern world. . But overall, Eisenberg and the actors do an admirable job of sending up people whose self-importance and grandiosity can overshadow good intentions.

 

indie films

My Dinner With Andre 40 Years Later

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My Dinner With Andre, directed by Louis Malle, is a cult classic from 1981 that is still widely discussed today. It’s been called a prophetic look at a society that is increasingly alienated and dominated by technology. I hadn’t seen it for many years, so I thought it would be a good time to rewatch it and share my thoughts.

Just a Conversation

If you’ve never seen it, My Dinner With Andre is simply about two men, actor and playwright Wallace Shawn and theater director Andre Gregory, playing themselves, having dinner at a restaurant. Yes, it’s all talk. The only thing that prevents it from seeming like a stage play are the scenes before and after the dinner, where we are treated to some vintage scenes of New York City in the early 80s.

There aren’t very many movies, especially popular ones, that are 99% dialogue. Some of Richard Linklater’s films, such as the Sunrise-Sunset trilogy are dialogue-heavy, but in that case there’s a romantic mood as well as a variety of scenes (e.g. European cities). Waking Life is a closer comparison, as it’s full of philosophical inquiries, but that film diverts us with animated special effects. My Dinner With Andre is just two guys sitting in a restaurant for almost 2 hours. Yet, the movie continues to captivate viewers more than 40 years after its premier.

Does My Dinner With Andre Have a Theme?

Fortunately, Wally and Andre aren’t just uttering random, meandering thoughts. Although their conversation veers in many directions, there are some central themes. Andre introduces a fairly radical criticism of modern society, describing how people are almost entirely inauthentic and sleepwalking through life. His point is reminiscent of the mystic George Gurdjieff, who spoke of people being unconscious. I don’t believe Andre mentions Gurdjieff, but he does refer to Zen, which emphasizes living in the moment. Wally, meanwhile, argues for a more conventional and less confrontational attitude.

I suspect the disagreements between Wally and Andre are a bit exaggerated for dramatic effect. Most of the discussions revolve around Andre’s outlook while Wally takes on more of a Devil’s Advocate role as he upholds the virtues of bourgeois comforts over adventure and radical discontent.

One could say Andre’s point of view reveals a certain bourgeois privilege, as he has the freedom to travel the world in his quest for self-actualization. Of course, he understands this fully and expresses the requisite self-loathing that is, ironically, also characteristic of bourgeois intellectuals.

A Prophetic Movie?

It’s popular in some circles to look back at all the dystopian prophets, such as Orwell and Huxley, and discuss who came closer to the truth. My Dinner With Andre is sometimes mentioned as a prophetic work.

Many of the topics do take a grim view of modern civilization and the direction it’s headed. It’s especially disturbing to hear about alienation and self-preoccupation in 1981, about 15 years before internet culture, much less smartphones and social media.

I don’t think Andre is a prophet as much as an astute observer of what was already happening. He says at one point that the 1960s were the  “the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished.” To understand this point of view, it’s helpful to consider the era when these comments were made.

While it’s easy to be nostalgic about the 80s now, it was actually a rather pessimistic time, especially in big cities. The economy was in a recession, it was the middle of the Cold War, and the AIDS epidemic was peaking. This was also the beginning of the decline of New York’s (and America’s) middle class due to soaring housing costs. We get a glimpse of this mood early at the beginning of My Dinner With Andre, as Wally mentions his struggle paying bills and boards a graffiti-ridden subway.

It’s not entirely coincidental that Escape From New York, the post-apocalyptic thriller starring Kurt Russell as the vigilante anti-hero who rescues a US president who is trapped in a New York that has been turned into a prison, also came out in 1981. As different as these two films are, they share some of the dystopian angst that was in the air during that time.

Andre’s Vision of a New Underground

Andre’s vision is not wholly pessimistic. He advocates for a type of underground to keep civilization going during these new dark ages, using the model of communities such as Findhorn in Scotland, which is famous for its innovative agricultural methods and neo-pagan outlook.

This notion is similar to the  concept of temporary autonomous zones, an anarchist ideal that advocates the formation of spontaneous pockets of resistance and culture. Sadly, such idealistic visions have not fared well when people make a serious attempt to implement them.  This was brought to light in 2020, when an actual “autonomous zone”  called CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) sprung up in Seattle, where the initial euphoria soon degenerated into violence.

Similar problems have  plagued other utopian communities, including many that sprung up in the 1960s. I am digressing, but the point is that the kind of idealism Andre expresses is more easily experienced by financially independent individuals than by groups of people from disparate backgrounds who must contend with everyday survival and  conflicting social forces around them.

Was the Movie Scripted or an Improvised Conversation?

As Wally and Andre talk, it would be easy to believe that the movie is a documentary, capturing a spontaneous conversation. It turns out that this was not the case. As you can read in the review by Roger Ebert, the film was actually carefully scripted and was taped over a period of several months. So the conversation reflects the two men’s actual personalities but we can assume many of the events discussed (especially in Andre’s life) were invented or exaggerated for dramatic effect.

My Dinner With Andre: A Timeless Classic

My Dinner With Andre is a movie worth watching every so often. Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem dated today (aside from the shots of 1981 New York of course). Most of the topics they discuss are timeless. On the one hand, intellectuals have long bemoaned the decline of civilization. On the other hand, the modern world does seem to be getting ever more chaotic, alienated, and fragmented. My Dinner With Andre may not provide any solutions, but it can help to clarify some of the questions.

Watch My Dinner With Andre on Amazon Prime

Documentary, Netflix

Radical Wolfe -Tom Wolfe Documentary

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I watched Radical Wolfe  right after reading Tom Wolfe’s very first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Considering I lived through all the decades in which he wrote, I’ve had surprisingly little contact with his work. This documentary is a good introduction into a journalist and writer who was often controversial and who helped people to understand many of the most important cultural movements of the 1960s and beyond.

Radical Wolfe, directed by Richard Dewey, written by Michael Lewis, is 75 minutes, relatively short for a piece covering someone with such a long  career. I actually prefer this condensed approach, though someone could easily have made a 2 or 3 hour documentary on such a character.

Although it shows Wolfe in a mostly favorable light, it doesn’t ignore the fact that he was controversial and often provoked censure, as when he published a piece in New York Magazine in 1970 called Radical Chic ( which obviously inspired the doc’s title), targeting Leonard Bernstein and other liberal intellectuals who defended the Black Panthers. This helped to set the stage for Wolfe as a provocateur who would later offend people with The Bonfire of the Vanities among other works.

Towards the end, someone observes that no one in the future could ever replicate a career like Wolfe’s. The reason for this, sadly, is that someone as outspoken and controversial as Wolfe simply wouldn’t be tolerated today. I suppose this is debatable in the social media age, but it raises some interesting questions. People far more extreme than Wolfe have platforms on Twitter and YouTube for example. However, it’s not likely that anyone very controversial or extreme would be able to attain the mainstream popularity of Wolfe.

Radical Wolfe is a good introduction to a writer who captured some essential scenes and cultures of mid-20th century America. It’s currently streaming on Netflix.

dark comedy, Indie film directors, indie films, Netflix

May December -Complex Handling of a Tabloid Topic

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May December deals with the kind of tabloid-type topic you’d expect to see in a Lifetime movie or, going further back,  a TV movie of the week. The kind of movie that superficially condemns the scandalous behavior of its characters while titillating the audience.

Now imagine such a topic as handled by a director known for his insightful and complex approach such as Todd Haynes, and you have May December, a made for Netflix production. To be clear, May December does titillate the audience, but in a way that’s intended to make you feel guilty or at least uncomfortable for this.

May December is loosely based on a real incident of a teacher’s affair with a student.

Gracie (Julianne Moore) is a woman whose life has been defined by a scandal. When she was in her thirties, she seduced a 7th grade kid named Joe (Charles Melton), for which she went to prison. However, after she was released, Grace and Joe married and had kids. As the setting is a respectable suburb in Savannah, Grace’s standing in the community is ambiguous at best.

A strange detail to note is that the family, apparently supported by modest local jobs, somehow live in a grand home that could be called a mansion on a scenic lake. Perhaps Grace inherited it or had family money? Characters living above their realistic means is a common trope of movies and television but doesn’t really fit into  this otherwise more sophisticated film.

Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is an actress who is playing Grace in a movie. She arranges a visit, staying in town, so she can get to know the family and learn more about the character.

May December is all about the troubled and ambivalent interactions between characters, especially between Grace and Elizabeth but also between Grace and Joe and between Joe and Elizabeth. There are also the nuanced interactions between Grace and Joe and their just-grown children.

In some ways, Grace still treats Joe like a child, even while insisting he was “in charge” in their earlier relationship. Considering his reticent and basically passive nature, this interpretation seems unlikely. Joe retreats to his hobby of raising monarch butterflies, which no doubt has symbolism as he seems trapped in a situation he fell into while still a child.

Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is a strange case herself. She seems more fascinated and turned on than shocked by Grace and Joe’s history. In one scene, she visits the back room of the pet shop where the couple used to meet and re-enacts a seduction scene.

As with most Todd Haynes films, May December doesn’t answer many questions definitively. All of the characters are troubled and we can’t necessarily trust any of their motives. Elizabeth may have designs on Joe, but to what end remains unclear. Is she an actor who is obsessively dedicated to her craft or more of a voyeur reveling in other people’s scandals? Or perhaps the film is suggesting that these two are not mutually exclusive.

Grace may have been sexually assaulted by a brother growing up, which may partly explain her own behavior. She denies this ever happened and we are left wondering.

The film is alternately dramatic, tragic, and comedic, not giving us a chance to fall into a predictable mood. Haynes directed one of my favorite films, Safe, which came out in 1995 and also starred Julianne Moore.  Like May December, it deals with some heavy issues -in this case, health and how the world can make some people ill- in a disturbing and ambiguous manner. May December is a similarly complex exploration of issues that tend to get oversimplified.

See my review of Safe

dystopian, Hulu

A Murder at the End of the World: New Program by OA Creators

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Fans of the The OA (a mystery/sci fi show that ran from 2016-2019) will want to check out A Murder at the End of the World, a miniseries created by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij. The two shows are not related, though, so you can watch the new one without having seen The OA.

This review won’t be too thorough as I’m writing this in the middle of the season. I may add to it after I’ve watched all the episodes.

Darby Hart (Emma Corrin) is a young hacker and amateur sleuth who learned from being the daughter of a forensic investigator. The first episode begins as she does a book signing recounting her experiences investigating a murder. She is surprised to be invited to an elite conference in Iceland run by a tech guru named Andy (Clive Owen), where she meets a host of brilliant (and potentially suspicious) characters, including her ex partner (both romantic and in sleuthing) Bill (Harris Dickinson), Andy’s wife Lee (Marling) who is also a hacker, and Lu Mei (Joan Chen), a designer of smart cities.

The action alternates between the present and past, as Darby remembers how she and Bill followed cold case clues to track a serial killer.

The stark landscape of Iceland creates an intense atmosphere as the conference attendees are trapped in Andy’s luxury compound with an unknown killer on the loose. What begins as a luxurious getaway for the world’s tech elite becomes a struggle for survival.So

At this point in the series, Andy is an ambiguous character who may be working for the good of humanity or have a more self-centered motive. There are signs that the site of the conference is more of a survivalist compound than a luxury hotel.  This idea can be found in actual recent headlines such as:

Super-rich Preppers Planning to Save Themselves From the Apocalypse

A Murder at the End of the World isn’t a conventional murder mystery set in an exotic location. The story is also deeply concerned with bigger issues such as the role of technology (AI in particular), economics, and the possibility of imminent environmental catastrophe. A nearly sentient AI that can project a human form on a screen hovers in the background as a kind of super-Alexa/Siri. As in movies such as Ex Machina and Her, we’re made aware of how such advanced AI can pose dangers as well as benefits.

No matter how the program ends (I’m not sure if there will be future seasons), it raises some important questions. I found an insightful Salon Talks interview with Brit Marling, where she expresses a preference for posing questions over giving definitive answers.

A Murder at the End of the World Trailer

 

Fantasy, indie films, Romcoms

Another Version of You: Romcom Explores Parallel Realities

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Movies about parallel realities have been popular for a while, at least as far back as Sliding Doors (1998). Another Version of You (2018) is a low key entry into this genre. If you’re fascinated by the possibility that you can shift into alternate versions of yourself, this movie, written and directed by Motke Dapp, is worth checking out despite its shortcomings.

Diggsy (Kristopher Wente)is heartbroken that the woman of his dreams, Suzette (Sara Antonio) has married another man. A mysterious stranger in a bar hands him a key that allows him to shift realities, and off he goes.

Diggsy plunges into dozens of realities and meets different versions of Suzette, including a crazy one and one who is very ill. He also has a fling with another woman named Gwyneth (C.J. Perry) and meets different versions of his sister Daphne (Brittany Belland).

Diggsy visits all kinds of locations, which are never specified. There are scenes in various cities in North America and Europe. Apparently some of the film was shot in Iceland. Not sure why a movie with international locations wouldn’t boast about it.

Many of the scenes are basically montages of Diggsy jumping into other realitie. Some of these seemed like skits on a show such as Saturday Night Live. The ending was open-ended, which I suppose isn’t a bad thing with a movie whose point is that life can be almost anything.

I probably approach this kind of movie too literally, but I tend to fixate on practical details.  For example, how does Diggsy get by? Do his credit cards and bank account follow him from one reality to another? At one point, he even rents an apartment and buys furniture.

I also found the insularity of the concept a little claustrophobic. If you were visiting parallel realities, wouldn’t you be at least a little curious about the world beyond your romantic interest? There’s one reference to a movie having a different cast (in one reality, The Matrix stars Will Smith instead of Keanu Reeves) but nothing else about how the world might be different.

Another Version of You is an extremely lightweight look at a fascinating concept. It won’t provide you with any deep insights into the nature or reality or even human relationships, but it’s a pleasant enough diversion.

Another Version of You is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and possibly elsewhere.