Glory ‘Days’ of Malick

Before legendary director Terrence Malick starting churning out movies that regularly passed the two and a half hour mark, his first two films were actually scant 90-minute affairs, but no less epic than his subsequent entries in his famous oeuvre.   

His sophomore effort, 1978’s “Days of Heaven” cannot be mentioned among movie fans without ushering superlatives like “gorgeous”, “stunning”, or “masterpiece”. It’s par for course for a Malick film to elicit those adjectives, but “Heaven” stands on its own too: it’s actually a starkly simple and straightforward tale, for the famously abstract, longwinded and impressionistic filmmaker. 

Set in the 1916 American heartland–at the onset, essentially, of the spirit of the twentieth century–before America joined World War I a year later, the film has a wistful sense of lost innocence. Richard Gere stars as Bill, a shifty, down-on-his-luck man who accidentally kills a man during a heated scuffle. Of course, he immediately runs off with his girlfriend, Abby (Brooke Adams) and kid sister Linda (Linda Manz). 

They do what anyone would do in that time and place: catch a train to nowhere (the Texas panhandle), to work the fields with dozens of other anonymous laborers. Here in the golden wheat fields, is the famous backdrop that gives this film its central identity. The story is compelling too though: the rich farmer (Sam Shepard) takes a shine to Bill’s petite girlfriend, and coupled with a chance eavesdropping that the farmer has a terminal illness, Bill the opportunist spies his lucky break.

Entering soap opera territory, Bill and Abby had already been posing as brother and sister in their new surroundings, perhaps presciently for opportunities such as this. Bill quietly nudges Abby to reciprocate the unassuming farmer’s interest. She obliges; the farmer is actually a handsome, kind man. The central issue is Bill and Abby’s deception of course, which forms the crux of the film’s dramatic arc–punctuated by Abby implicitly falling in love with her new husband too.

The story is simple enough, but as with Malick films, it’s also what’s seen, felt, implied, and intuited. “Days of Heaven” is what the term “mood piece” was built for. To borrow another cliche, it’s a “world” of its own. Along with its folksy score by famous composer Ennio Morricone, the film deftly captures a piece of Americana, while also being a product of its actual release time–the 1970s, with its pallid, rustic, and rugged landscape–visually and emotionally. Its modesty proves that Malick’s own take on minimalism could be just as effective. It isn’t overwhelming like his recent films aim for, but rather, a quiet storm–a dream that strikes you in its specificity and uniqueness of tone. It feels at once familiar yet strange, which is a winning cinematic formula.

‘Mind’ Games Keep You Guessing

The Year I Lost My Mind certainly avoids current gay indie-film tropes, if not most cinematic tropes altogether, with its bizarre collection of idiosyncrasies.

On the surface, it’s a thriller about a troubled young man who dabbles in petty illegal activities, but its his particular tics and habits that amount to a tantalizing viewing experience, if for no other reason than to find out just what the hell is going on?

Tom is a pale, offbeat, lonely gay man in his early 20s, living at home with his mother and sister in Berlin. Our first introduction to him sets the tone: he dons a large horse mask, compelling his resigned mother to ask “Why do you enjoy having people be afraid of you?”

Her inquiry is apt. Things only get stranger from there as her moon-faced, taciturn son walks into stranger scenarios, often wearing a variety of more masks from his bountiful collection.

Tom soon breaks into a stranger’s apartment where the handsome tenant sleeps peacefully, unaware of the passive crime that hovers over him. Tom simply observes the unsuspecting young man, then leaves—making mental notes for some later transgression perhaps.

This leads to a low-grade stalking scenario, spread out over the course of the strange protagonist’s idle days, spying on his subject’s routine around town from a distance.

Through his increasingly disturbing habits, interests, and behavior, one gets the sense that Tom has not only been marginalized by mainstream society but by the gay subculture too, with his unconventional looks that preclude reciprocation when he’s witnessed making advances on other men.

Is this why he is acting out, morally and legally? And to what extent will it manifest?

A subplot unfolds, where Tom encounters a fellow masked man—larger, stranger, and more foreboding them him, at one of his haunts around town: the nearby woods where men cruise each other.

This stirs another question: is his doppelganger’s existence real or merely a figment of Tom’s demented imagination?

Tom revisits his previous subject’s apartment regularly, affirming his lascivious motives in the absent man’s empty bed. He skirts the calamity of being caught more than once, escaping through the glass doors of the patio. His subject begins to notice missing cookies, misplaced books—but he also has a cat, so the picture is hazy.

The inevitable occurs one night when Tom boldly admires the handsome man sleeping in the middle of the night, but he manages to retreat through the front door, buffered by the shock he’s cast over his newly lucid victim.

It’s through another chance that the victim puts two and two together, and he resolves the situation through his own hands—with unexpected results that are intentionally shocking by the filmmaker. Although compelling, it doesn’t feel quite believable enough to be effective.

With a fairly adroit buildup to this climax, it feels a bit of a cheat to only tumble into improbability. The subplot involving Tom’s frightening double is resolved in a more subdued manner, alleviating some of the discord. Nonetheless, the film is effective enough for everything that occurred before its finale—an interesting study in anomaly: its images, moods, and actions are sure to linger long after the screen fades to black.

Movie Review: ‘It’ doesn’t deliver

Unless you’re from the tail end of Generation Z, you at least know what Stephen King’s It is about already. The question is if the new film is a worthy take on the classic novel, which had only been filmed once as a well-known 1990 TV mini-series. Spoiler alert: I did give in to nostalgic curiosity and re-watched the original version before viewing this new one. Don’t worry: although I’d long revered it as a fearful preteen back then, I was shocked to find now that it was rather underwhelming—a mild, moody drama with some decent scares thrown in.

So I was primed and as objective as possible to the prospective terrors of an ambitious new take from the best that Hollywood has to offer today. From the opening scenes in the film that lead to the introduction of Pennywise the clown, otherwise known as the title namesake It, the movie looked promising.

Unfortunately, it didn’t exceed expectations from there. First off, Pennywise the clown is the centerpiece of the entire story, hence the title. Without his terrifying image or concept of menacing evil, the story isn’t effective. Not to sound like a purist, but for lack of a better example: the original Pennywise played by Tim Curry in the mini-series was far more sinister. Although his looks were barely a step away from a typical birthday clown, that’s what made him frightening: he was plausible. Here was a clown that could exist in your neighbor’s backyard, surrounded by innocent children—yet there was a studied vitriol to his gaze and a barely controllable sneer to his painted red lips. When he opened his mouth to lunge at last—that spray of razor sharp teeth only solidified our very fears. The new Pennywise, played by Bill Skarsgard, is so stylized he’s as flat as a joker from a playing card. And as engaging. His appearances are not particularly memorable and are often upstaged by the other manifestations of “fears” that he lobs towards his victims, in the forms of an abusive father, a distorted painting of a woman, and a headless child from a history book.

What about the rest of the characters? The story centers around a gang of “losers” in the late 1980s: seven misfits from the local junior high in Derry, Maine, who congregate as a means of survival from the social hierarchy of their peers—and eventually, from the deadly curse that Pennywise has inflicted on the town for nearly a century. The child actors that portray them are all competent, but only three of the characters are given any distinct personalities that leave an impression: Bill, the stuttering de factor leader and protagonist who wants to resolve the death of his little brother from the opening of the film, is appealing and bright. The group’s lone female member, Beverly, stands out not just for being a girl—but because she gets the most screen time to develop her troubled back story that includes an abusive, preying father. Richie, the loudmouth comic relief of the group, is memorable by default because he’s the most vocal and biting. The rest of the kids aren’t fleshed out particularly well—they end up being ciphers who just provide physical power and exposition to the story.

As for the story itself, it lags in places and could have benefited from more urgent pacing—given this is a horror story, where timing is of the essence. Although the film is inevitably going to lapse into some preteen requisites, which is fine for the sake of character and plot development: crushes, friendships, betrayal, etc.—the overall story suffers as a result. Although the original novel was sprawling, it somehow seemed too unnecessarily long onscreen.

It’s fitting that this movie takes place in the 1980s because the special effects for the film seem to be right out of that era, almost. Although visual effects should never be relied on to propel a horror film—they are surprisingly disappointing and innocuous in this movie, given today’s technological advances. Since the movie suffered from middling pacing as well, that left for very little to keep me at the edge of my seat. By the time the movie hit its climactic standoff between Pennywise and the brave, bereaved kids, I gave up my search for something truly terrifying to materialize.

Overall, I don’t think this film will join the pantheon of truly classic horror films in my eyes. The hype clearly overshadowed the actual execution of the story onscreen. It ended up just being another underwhelming horror flick.

Movie Review: Tepid ‘Water’

The Shape of Water reads like an episode of The Twilight Zone or Outer Limits—and not even a good one at that. It’s amusing, slight, but certainly no opus. From the promotional art and trailers, one can already get a clear sense of the inevitable plot: outcast human falls for outrageous human-like animal. It’s bound to be unconventional and exciting, but thoroughly predictable.

When Sally Hawkins’ mute heroine opines that her shocking new lover “doesn’t judge her”, it’s utterly expected. The fact that she’s mute suddenly proves nothing more than a plot convenience for an otherwise typical odds-against-them love story.

Granted, the film shouldn’t be punished solely for lack of originality—what film can truly achieve such a feat in a world where storytelling stretches back millennia? The problem is that it also rests on clichés in execution as well: Elisa, the heroine, lives in an unnamed metropolis above a quaint movie theater and works in a drab factory as a janitor in the mid-twentieth century. The sets for these two locations and the urban landscape in between is utterly a twenty-first century take on such a place.

There is no genuine sense of remove. Again, this film could almost fit snugly on the small screen, within any season of a sci-fi drama series. For a film that aims to be unorthodox and novel in concept—it plays it safe. It could have gone full noir—texturizing the edges of the urban landscape, heightening the grimmer aspects of its story—visually and tonally. But it never does. It’s entirely paint by numbers, counting on audiences to relish the singular anomaly of interspecies love—like a single wilting rose, when it could have been a bucketful.

In an age of increasingly fanciful storytelling and visuals (mostly found on the more risk-prone modern television medium), this film feels hopelessly quaint for all the wrong reasons: it’s not provocative or unusual, but pretends to be.

Movie Review: ‘Beach Rats’ is relevant, compellingly told

In an era where gay issues have been at the forefront of social change and a visible part of mainstream culture with no signs of turning back—regardless of the new presidency in the U.S.—a film like Beach Rats stands out simply for not being politically correct.

How many films in the second decade of the new millennium center solely on a young man living in a premiere urban mecca in the U.S. yet refuses to come to terms with his clear proclivities for other men?

Frankie is a nineteen-year-old, born and raised in Brooklyn along its fabled beachfront that invites the lifestyle for which the movie is named for: his routine involves getting high on the beach with a pack of similar-looking bro’s, often topless or decked in wife beaters during the swampy summer months. It would be idyllic if it weren’t for his covert internal struggle.

Unbeknownst to his virile buddies, Frankie also engages in meaningless sex with older men, whom he meets on a very contemporary platform: a hookup website. From the very first such exchange that he attempts in the film, it is clear that Frankie is hesitant and discreet with this pastime.

And although it’s already been a couple of years since the Supreme Court overturned gay-marriage bans in the U.S., it’s clear why someone like Frankie would still be stuck in the past no matter how fast the rest of the world is moving: entrenched in ostensibly lifelong friendships with typically meathead bro’s, with no prospects of his own—educationally or professionally, not to mention his dying father and somber home life—it’s no wonder Frankie doesn’t want to make waves.

It’s easy to forget that this world—including supposedly progressive countries like the U.S.—is still full of stories like this. They could be in your own backyard, even if you live in a major metropolitan city.

Frankie’s narrative propels further into deeper waters when he encounters a young woman on the boardwalk who openly pursues him. He instinctively goes along with the courtship because she is the right age, beauty, and temperament.

Naturally, tensions and conflicts escalate as Frankie continues to lead concurrent lives that are at odds with one another.

What makes this film rise above whatever connotations that may haunt it—the themes of shame, deception, and meaningless lascivious activities for gay or bisexual men—is its lack of judgment. This isn’t a film about the triumphs of being gay, and it’s not supposed to be. Sure, there have been more than enough films like this since time immemorial, but it’s still part of the gay experience, progress be damned.

The style of the film also beckons for a more sympathetic ear to such a subject. The laconic, natural pace is almost voyeuristic—heavy on visual and mood, over unnecessary plot developments. Frankie is not just a cipher, although it’s easy to label him one due to his reticence and ambiguity as a character. Although none of the other characters are effervescent either, they’re also not mouthpieces for exposition or pedantic moralizing. They feel like real people you meet in passing, even if you don’t get a full chance to know them entirely.

Beach Rats is obviously an old story—closeted homosexuality—but it manages to breathe new life into it through an unlikely setting and character by default, and an uncompromising vision of the subject. Taken on its own merit, outside of our cultural context—it’s simply well done.