Possessor.

Review #2131: Possessor.

Cast: 

Andrea Riseborough (Tasya Vos), Christopher Abbott (Colin Tate), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Girder), Sean Bean (John Parse), Rossif Sutherland (Michael Vos), Tuppence Middleton (Ava Parse), Kaniehtiio Horn (Reeta), Raoul Bhaneja (Eddie), Gage Graham-Arbuthnot (Ira Vos), Rachael Crawford (Dr. Melis), and Gabrielle Graham (Holly Bergman) Written and Directed by Brandon Cronenberg.

Review: 

“I never made a conscious decision to embrace horror specifically. It’s just where my instincts are right now. I’m making films that are honest and creative impulses. One of the things that I like about horror is that it explores parts of the spectrum of human emotion in a way that other genres don’t. That’s satisfying to me. I don’t want comfort food when I’m sitting down to watch a film. I want to be pushed into a different headspace."

Okay, to get it out of the way: like father, like son. Brandon Cronenberg was actually interested in books growing up in Toronto as the first-born son of David Cronenberg and Carolyn Zeifman. He thought about being a writer, painter, or a musician, but he soon found that film was his real interest in terms of study. As such, he studied it at Toronto Metropolitan University. He made his first feature with Antiviral (2012), a Canadian/French production that came out of his 2008 short Broken Tulips involving injecting viruses harvested from celebrities that was inspired by an infection he had when in film school. The time between that film and this one saw time spent developing the script to the latter along with doing a short film with Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You (2019). The idea for the film essentially came from his experiences in promoting his first film in public (and a few other things) that had him think about personal identity within public personas in the media self with its own life without oneself. 

Oh sure, you could probably say that you've seen films before that engage with acting in someone else's body, such as say, Being John Malkovich (1999). But it is a fascinating subject when in the hands of someone who clearly is interested in showing a horror far beyond just being wrapped in someone else's body: the reality that is to befall the one who ends up actually keeping control of said body when all is said and done. You have an assassin with an interesting relationship with violence (specifically when it comes to methods of choice or in general) to go with a wandering grip on reality. Oh, and there is a handful of practical effects utilized for wonderful execution. The opening sequence isn't the big highlight of the film, but it gets the film on the right foot as a testing ground for what is next to come in terms of clinical effectiveness of possession in the ideal sense of chills on the inside (complete with a tear right before a suicide by cop). It is a grisly and bleak film set in a distinct type of setting where the best assassins are left to their devices to basically serve as actors for a time in the most cynical and clinical way imaginable for the clean kill. Just like in life, the best type of actor really does endure the longest above all, I suppose. In that sense, Riseborough and Abbott have the best type of challenge possible for a film like this, since by the time we are introduced to the latter (not particularly too long into the 104-minute runtime), one is seeing a mesh of puppeteer and puppet that jumps in definition depending on who looks in control. It might feel like a bad case of phantasmagoria, but it is a very apparent nightmare for our lead focus. The most interesting sequence to show this challenge might be the "data mining" sequence involving Abbott's character that is trying to do descriptions involving drapes in the background of certain videos, which at one point involves zooming past sex. The assassins and data miners are more alike than they wish to admit when it comes to paring people down to simple data points. I also particularly like the sequence involving Riseborough trying to practice the dip back into mother and wife for a couple of (on-screen) minutes that is full of great artifice. One can only be playing with fire when it comes to how long they spend acting as someone else right before they violently kill that part off, especially when they undergo evaluation each and every time when one finishes a job (in this case to see if they still regret killing and mounting a butterfly when they were young). Leigh makes a suitable logical master of puppets, if you think about it, since one never sees a veneer of grimace at the very nature of the character besides wanting the best in a certain type of labor. Bean isn't exactly in the movie too long, but he makes the kind of craven type that would find someone to kill off as a threat just as much as he would be a target of himself. Of course, the sequence involving the melting of one's face to reveal the other when it comes to that fateful possession is a damn great one in squirm-inducing curiosity that throws you in the right loop. Regardless of what you would expect for its ending, it makes for a suitably satisfying note to close such great horror in terms of identity that has managed to find just one thing at the end of confronting attachments and logic: death. Possessor is the kind of body horror film that makes you wonder aloud just what you possess about yourself as a person and the people that you associate with in labor and beyond. 

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Next: Cronenberg-Cronenberg for the big 40. 

Birdman.

Review #1570: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).

Cast:

Michael Keaton (Riggan Thomson), Zach Galifianakis (Jake), Edward Norton (Mike Shiner), Andrea Riseborough (Laura Alburn), Amy Ryan (Sylvia), Emma Stone (Sam Thomson), Naomi Watts (Lesley Truman), Lindsay Duncan (Tabitha Dickinson), Merritt Wever (Annie), Jeremy Shamos (Ralph), and Benjamin Kanes (Young Riggan / Birdman) Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

Review:

"I have always said that innocence is much more powerful than experience. And, in some cases, people who suddenly fall into circumstances can unexpectedly bring some virtue to them—that’s kind of the case with this character."

"It’s rare that you get to be part of some amazing experiment like this. The movie gets dark and gets weird, and it gets funny. So you’re constantly on this surfboard, kind of feeling it out. I like that. I just like seeing if I can do it.”

Filmmakers have had a variety of experiences that shape who they are that can go beyond just being shaped by cinema. For one, they can be shaped by their life experiences, as is the case for Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Born in Mexico City as the youngest of seven siblings, he was shaped by his travels made on cargo boats as a teenager (having struggled with studies in high school), which took abroad across America and Europe. He returned back to his country to study communications at Universidad Iberoamericana. He got himself into working for radio at WFM as a rock music radio host, which led to making promos and eventually transitioning into work with his own production company in Z Films, which dealt with shorts and advertisements. Iñárritu made his feature debut with Amores perros (2000), which served as the first film of a trilogy involving death and multiple storylines that would have writing from him and Guillermo Arriaga. This was his fifth feature film. It started as making a comedy in a single shot in a theatre (that developed over the span of a couple of years), done not only because of a desire to do a comedy over another drama but also because of his belief in that one lives their life with no editing, where one could be taken in by "an inescapable reality" just like the protagonist (there had been quite a few movies that were meant to play out in real time, most notably with Rope in 1948). Iñárritu, in addition to direction also co-produced the film and co-wrote it with Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr, and Armando Bó, who wrote the film for a period of nearly two years while working together through Skype and e-mails. Each of them, along with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, would win Academy Awards for their work with this film, which seems aptly appropriate.

What, a gimmick utilized to tell an interesting story that garnered attention in 2014? Anything is possible when you start with a man levitating while in his underwear. Ultimately, the enjoyment of the film relies on how much one absorbs themselves into a film that might resemble in some ways Don Quixote in its disparity between expectation and reality when it comes to who we think we are as a person, particularly in ego. When it comes to acting, that is never more true, since they are having to be someone different from themselves in a desire to be approved and so on and so forth with insecurities to list. One will either be swept away by how entertaining it proves in its execution to go alongside its elements of black comedy and drama or they will find a curiously strange experiment that lives and dies on its level of satire and fateful ending. For me, I found it to be an intriguing two hour experience, one that is a clear achievement for Iñárritu and Lubezki that moves with seamless ambition and wry enjoyment that benefits from a worthwhile cast to serve as a worthwhile film to encapsulate capable filmmaking for the 2010s. Keaton, picked by Iñárritu after he had finished the script for his ability to bring "meta-dialogue between the film and the reality", is exquisite. He manages to do so well in capturing a man wrapped in crisis over what it means to live a life wrapped in either past glories or current pursuits to find meaning within ignorance - in other words, it is one of Keaton's best performances, crafted well in anxiety that grabs one early and never loses footing in competence because we never think it is just self-aggrandizing. The rest of the group do quite well in going along with the show in terms of well-placed charm or timing, as is the case with Galifianakis or Norton, who both are quite funny in what the film requires in either wry sensitivity or self-important confidence, respectively. Riseborough and Ryan also prove useful in lending layers to outside the theater, while Stone serves as a useful bridge between a testy act with Keaton alongside her own testy grasp of her struggles. Watts and Duncan round out the cast handily for a film that builds itself up on sharp little moments between each other without being fitted into any tight cliché square or all-the-way wrapped up narratives. On the whole, I found it to be an enjoyable and curious film, balancing its act of magic realism with efficiency that tells a worthwhile feature of ego and virtue with maturity that will lend itself well to more than one viewing (particularly with its ending) to appreciate the detail that goes into a worthwhile feature of excellence and curiosity.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.