by Oscar O’Sullivan

Monday – Speed Racer

Let it never be said that I don’t like fun. Speed Racer is a magnificent, joyous explosion of a film, a non-stop twirling headlong rush though a cartoon world of vibrant colours and bizarre characters treated with a genuine and heartfelt emotional honesty that just doesn’t seem to exist in blockbuster filmmaking anymore. The main character’s legal name is Speed Racer – what more do you need to know? The story is an epic parable about holding to your convictions in the face of oppressive systems – Speed and his father Pops (John Goodman at his most boisterously lovable) have struggled for years to keep their racing business completely independent, but when Speed gets his first big win, the corporations come knocking. Chief among them is Mr Royalton, who plies the family with folksy good humour and offers of luxury, but reveals himself as a snarling, pitiless ultra-capitalist when his buyout is rejected. From then on it’s Speed against the world, as the entire corporate-controlled system of professional racing is mobilised to prevent this talented outsider from shaking up the rigged setup that has been so carefully contrived by heartless men with too much money. This is the story of the Wachowski Sisters – outsider artists whose insane passion project The Matrix unexpectedly hit big and broke through the studio system, and who would spend the rest of their Hollywood careers fighting a losing battle against studio notes and audience backlash. Speed Racer was their first film after the Matrix trilogy, and in many ways is a more obviously commercial effort – kid-friendly, cartoonish, eminently merchandisable and based on a familiar but not ubiquitous IP. That doesn’t mean the director duo took their foot off the gas though – this is one of the most formally ambitious films ever conceived, let alone executed. The racing scenes are not only physics defying digital rollercoasters (like Cameron years later, the Wachowskis understood that the advantage of shooting without a ‘real’ camera was the ability to create motions and visuals impossible in physical filmmaking), they also play with perceptions of time – Speed is both haunted and uplifted by visions of the past which flow seamlessly into the montage-like motions of the races, every element of the production in perfect harmony to create a film that absolutely sings emotionally. Lana and Lily were once again ahead of the curve – this type of schizophrenic fast-paced maximalism would probably do insane numbers with the Tik Tok generation, if they could be convinced to focus for more than two hours and watch something made before 2015. As an enjoyer of genuinely ambitious, emotionally sincere mega-scale filmmaking, this 100% did it for me. 10/10.

Tuesday – Longlegs

A mystery where most of the answers are staring you in the face right from the very beginning, taunting you with how obvious it all is while distracting you with it’s overwhelming atmosphere. Main character Lee Harker is an FBI agent with vague psychic capabilities who is pulled in to re-open a case that’s been unsolved for decades – a string of near-identical slaughtered families all credited to the mysterious “Longlegs”, who leaves no evidence behind except for noted written in an unsolved cipher. Layers of meaning and distracting details hide the truth – what is the importance of the murdered girls’ birthdays? Why did one victim survive? And what is Harker’s role in all this? Longlegs somehow knows who she is from the very beginning and leaves a note in her home that lets her crack the code of the other letters. From then on, it feels as if she’s always being watched, an extra level of paranoia overlaying everything else that happens. Maika Monroe is excellent as Harker, a numb and socially uncomfortable character who is eerily still and composed. Even she doesn’t know why the case hits so close to home for her – it’s just a feeling that gnaws at her, distracts her. The truth is hidden in plain sight, both for her and the audience – you just need to know where to look. The visual language of the film is both reserved and intense – every frame is meticulously composed to make the most of the space, everyday locations made sinister and ominous. Sound design is also very important here – oppressive silences condition you to listen closely, the explosions of sound and fury becoming all the more frightening. The film’s biggest selling point is also one of the most difficult parts to analyse – Nic Cage as the titular Longlegs. The performance is impeccable, Cage’s mastery of movement and complete lack of self-consciousness allowing him to create an utterly absurd, inhuman being, a glam-rock satanist caked in pale make-up who speaks in a breathless falsetto and erupts into emotional singing seemingly at random. It’s incredible to behold, but is it too far from the tone of the rest of the film? There are touches of much-needed humour throughout, but nothing else is as aggressively over-the-top insane as Cage, as if he’s been transplanted in from another film. Without spoiling the later revelations, there may even be an argument that Cage is superfluous to the plot, which could unfold in much the same way without his character. It doesn’t detract from the film in a significant way, but it is something to chew on. The contradiction is surely intentional – the question then has to be does it work? For me, it mostly does – I’d just need a rewatch to figure out if it goes the distance. 8/10.

Wednesday – Jupiter Ascending

An unfortunate dip in quality from one of the greatest ever director duos. Jupiter Ascending should work on paper – a galactic epic with themes of capitalist exploitation of the human spirit, a love that transcends time and space, a nobody chosen for greatness, all the pieces are there. It’s also not badly made per se, with fascinating alien designs and rock-solid special effects. It’s just not up to the standard of their usual work – it feels too conventional, too pedestrian, none of the flash or flourish that makes me think of a Wachowski movie. And the plot doesn’t work, in spite of all the interesting pieces – it’s a film that feels perpetually in the setup phase, introducing new characters and moving to new settings but never seeming to actually move forward in any real way. A solid cast and well-defined backstories do not translate to interesting characters, the intergalactic stakes made to feel tame and insignificant by the lack of urgency that permeates every scene – dialogue, action, dialogue, action, dialogue, action, it lulls you into a rhythm that becomes boring and predictable. I was hoping to discover something I had missed when I saw this in the cinema, because I could remember very little from that first viewing – turns out there was just nothing worth remembering. 4/10.

Thursday – Deadpool & Wolverine and What Women Want

I did not like Deadpool & Wolverine. It was worse than being bad – it was boring. As a fan of everything the film was based on and was trying to be, it did nothing for me. I actually found every attempt to cater to my tastes insulting. The open laziness of the filmmaking is something I could forgive if I found the film funny – I think the humour, more than anything, is what killed my desire to engage with the film. In a broad sense, I can understand what people find enjoyable about this film – I just disagree with it. Follow the link above for my full, overlong thoughts on the biggest (and worst) film of the year.

What Women Want is a fantastical comedy where a macho misogynist who feels professionally threatened by new female boss mysteriously gains the ability to hear the thoughts of every woman around him. The contrived set-up leads to solid goofball comedy where our hero uses his new power to try and get ahead in his job and in love. The gender politics are contrived and not entirely clear – Mel Gibson plays the fool as the hero whose masculinity is played up and torn down, who realises that the dozens of women in his life that he takes for granted have thoughts and feelings that he’d never even guessed at before. It’s a metaphor for maturity and empathy, a man learning to understand how the opposite sex thinks and feels by literally reading their minds – the ethics of using this knowledge to better himself are easily ignored if you accept it as allegory. No matter how ridiculous Gibson is made to look, it’s balanced by him being straightforwardly charming – he’s willing to be done up in drag as a joke but only because he’s just shown off his song and dance skills in a number that would make Gene Kelly blush. His charm also keeps you fundamentally sympathetic to a character that could have been too abrasive – he never fully shakes off his frat-boy attitude, but the drama he causes is too much fun for us to turn against him. The eventual romance between him and his boss is never fully satisfying, as his persistent mind-reading manipulation makes this the one thing that can’t be fully forgiven by abstraction – the chemistry between Gibson and Helen Hunt isn’t anything special either, so the final reconciliation after he reveals his lies feels tacked on, contrived to wrap things up with a neat happy ending. It’s still an acceptable love story, and a fairly fresh comedy premise that packs in a lot of great gags and plotlines, so there should be at least one thread to latch onto if the central romance doesn’t do it for you. The only Nancy Meyers directed film that she didn’t also write, and you can really tell – she drew the best she could out of a juvenile script and almost makes it sing. 7/10.

Friday – It’s Complicated

You know what’s not complicated – the fact that Nancy Meyers is the GOAT. This is right in her usual wheelhouse, a riotous comedy about an older divorced couple unexpectedly reconnecting in the midst of major family events. The last of their three children is moving out, mother Meryl Streep is facing into being truly alone for the first time in her life, while distant dad Alec Baldwin is having second thoughts about his new, young wife. It’s clear from the start that Baldwin is the one who wants to reignite their romance, pursuing her relentlessly, while Streep falls back into his arms because it’s easy and comfortable. But she has another prospect – shy but charming architect Steve Martin, showing his dramatic range for once (except during the film’s best sequence where the grownups get cartoonishly stoned and tear it up at a house party). This becomes the core struggle of the film – go back to what you know and hope that you’ve learned enough to make it work this time, or throw caution to the wind and start again with something new and unproven? The whole cast is predictably brilliant – Baldwin knows he’s good and isn’t afraid to let you know that he knows, while Streep is just magically charismatic, perfectly filling the ‘slightly manic and spiritually sad but incredibly successful and loveable’ archetype that Meyer’s female leads almost all fall under. Meyers is never afraid to take jokes that one extra step towards hilarity, even if it can make her films feel almost slapstick at times – it’s all part of the charm. As always, it’s beautifully shot, gorgeous sets flatteringly lit, and an active but unobtrusive camera guiding us gently through the story, subtly drawing our attention exactly where it’s needed in any given scene. Watching any Nancy Meyers film just makes me want to want to watch all of them over and over again – I hope my enjoyment only grows when I inevitably revisit the lot. 8/10.

Sunday – Zatoichi in Desparation

Here we are, almost at the finish line of the Zatoichi series. This is the second-last entry in the original unbroken 25-film run by star Shintaro Katsu – and the first one that he stepped in himself to direct. You can tell that he’s having a blast behind the camera from the word go – the film seems at times to be composed entirely of tight close-ups, focus pulls, long-takes weaving through cramped and densely packed rooms, distractingly extreme angles, frames obscured by carefully placed foreground objects and some stunning lighting choices. It could almost be too much, but the story is bold enough to break through the layers of visual distractions and grab you hard. It begins with Zatoichi bearing witness to the unfortunate death of an old woman on a damaged bridge, and setting off to find and help the woman’s daughter to ease his guilty conscience. But this isn’t the usual tale of the blind swordsman rescuing some poor young wilting flower and saving a town from oppression. Unfortunately, the girl he’s honour-bound to save, Nishikigi, isn’t all that interested in being freed from her job as a whore – the safety suits her, and she has a regular gentleman caller who she loves. She goes along with Zatoichi’s plans almost out of boredom, inadvertently distracting him from the real issues the town faces. In the big picture, the local Yakuza have gone beyond all in their tyranny over the people – forcing them into gambling debt and burning their boats and nets so they can’t make a living, and brutally killing any man who fights back. Zatoichi doesn’t find out about the scale of these atrocities until it’s too late – in on especially pointed scene, a massacre on the beach pans over to reveal Zatoichi being led in the opposite direction by Nishikigi, too far away to hear what’s being done. On the smaller scale, he completely misses the plight of another girl in the brothel who needs his help much more than Nishikigi. Kaede is a teenage orphan essentially trapped as a whore to pay her family’s debt, struggling through to try and provide for her young brother. Zatoichi never even learns of her tragedy, but the film is sure to keep cutting back to her story to remind us of how doomed she is without Zatoichi’s help. The ending is perhaps the most bleak the series has ever seen. Our hero’s altruism hasn’t saved anyone, only brought pain to himself and others. The one consolation is that the bad men are dead, but even that doesn’t mean much – the big boss and his entourage simply turn and leave when Zatoichi begins to slaughter the rest of the army brought against him, free to carry on terrorising the people somewhere else. The final shot frames Zatoichi against the rising sun as he staggers along the beach, broken physically and spiritually as he leaves this misadventure behind him. Near the edge of the frame he stumbles and falls, yet rises again, and continues on his way. No matter how badly he is beaten down, Zatoichi will always surge forward – even this most desperate of stories won’t be enough to keep him down. 10/10.