Thursday, March 29, 2018

Unsane and Short Takes on Crazy Right

       “There is no path for happiness.”  (at least not in these films)
                                            quote from Sawyer Valentini, Unsane (more about her just below)

                                        Reviews by Ken Burke
                
                                                      Unsane (Steven Soderberg)
                      
“Executive Summary” (no spoilers): A young woman from Bostonwho’s been mercilessly stalked by a man who’s determined they should be lovershas moved to Pennsylvania, deleted all records of herself on social media, shifted from her desire to at least be a volunteer in the medical world to instead work as a bank’s financial analyst, all with an attempt to regain some semblance of a normal life.  But her constant fear of even casual intimacy with a man leads her to a counselor who overstates this worried patient’s casual remarks about suicide in her notes, has the young woman sign some papers (which she should have read more carefully) leading to her “voluntary” incarceration in the adjoining mental institution which she quickly tries to fight but to no avail, made worse by her intense aggravation with the situation leading to various physical attacks on others, earning her another week of confinement.  To make matters worse, she frantically realizes an orderly is her stalker, having discovered her new whereabouts and now working at this institution under an assumed name (unless all of what she claims is delusional, which we’re given some reason to believe given how intense her rejection of the confinement quickly escalates).  There’s a lot more to know about this effectively-intense-drama of mental duress but nothing I can reveal in this spoiler-free-segment except for the technical fascination of how effective this is as a big-screen-feature shot on an iPhone 7 Plus, which gives it more of a square format and harsher contrast than such works normally display but that’s all quite appropriate given this movie’s content.

Here’s the trailer:  (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate that same button on the full screen’s lower right or your “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)


If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but as this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film—or want to save some bucks—to help any of you who’d like to learn more details yet avoid important plot-reveals I’ll identify such give-away sentences/sentence-clusters thusly: 
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

What Happens: Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) is trying to start a new life working as a bank financial analyst in Pennsylvania after leaving Boston 2 years ago to escape stalker David Strine (Joshua Leonard) who—despite a restraining order and security advice to Sawyer from a cop (unadvertised Matt Damon)—kept sending text messages so frequently (once breaking into her home, leaving her a dress to wear) he was nearly driving her insane.   ⇒(We later learn in flashbacks how she found it too difficult to pursue her intended medical career so she became a hospice volunteer reading to a dementia-ravaged-elder, David’s father, whom his son made no attempt to communicate with; in the process, David became obsessed with Sawyer, convinced after his father’s death the old man would have wanted them to be together.)⇐  Now Sawyer seems to have few friends due to her fear of any sort of commitment, rejects an improper overture from her boss, attempts to pick up a guy at a bar for a non-involving one-night-stand but finds she’s terrified of actually having sex with him, seeks some counseling support at Highland Creek hospital, notes in her intake interview she’s mildly considered suicide at times when the fears are overwhelming, then signs some paperwork without reading through it, assuming it’s just to set her up for future therapy appointments.  Instead, she’s authorized herself for a 24-hour-confinement in the psychiatric ward which she now has no chance of overturning (she uses her 1 phone call to alert the police of the mistake, but they’re no help; a couple of officers arrive hours later, don’t even bother to seek her out, quickly leave after some doughnut-related-banter with the cheeky receptionist).  Sawyer’s screaming demands to be released, the ugly hassles with wardmate Violet (Juno Temple), punching an orderly (reminded her of David) and another inmate all lead to head psychiatrist, Dr. Hawthorne (Gibson Frazier), enforcing an additional 7 days for her.  Another patient in her ward, Nate Hoffman (Jay Pharoah), acts as a group leader to keep calm among the other inmates (with inconsistent success where Violet’s concerned), tells Sawyer he’s in for opioid detox but reveals that places like this actively find ways to lock up people like her for the 7 days or so of payments they receive from insurance companies, Medicare, etc. so she should just lay low until it's time for her to be released.

 Nate also has a smuggled-in cell phone so she uses it for a quick call to her mother, Angela (Amy Irving), not only because of the horrendous circumstances (with daily doses of required sedatives), belligerent behavior from Nurse Boles (Polly McKie)—who seems to have been trained by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s (Miloš Forman, 1975) Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher)—and further confrontations from Violet (who threatens Sawyer with the shiv [a sharpened spoon] she hides in her clothes) but also because the orderly who dispenses the meds on Sawyer’s second night is David, calling himself George Shaw (may have scribbled his surname incorrectly in my notes as it seems a tad unlikely [or it's a joke]) while ingratiating himself with Nurse Boles and the rest of the staff.  Sawyer’s horrified by this, admits to her mother she never said David was the reason for her New England departure, begs for help.  Mom gets there fast but also finds no aid from the police nor her lawyer, can’t convince the hospital staff anything's wrong with “George” (impeccable background check), then stays at a nearby motel with a promise to return soon with better results.  ⇒We’ve been given some clues maybe Sawyer’s delusional about David (George seems to be a decent guy, apologizing for any discomfort he may have inadvertently caused this fragile woman) but soon it’s clear Sawyer’s not only telling the truth but she’s also in danger from this unhinged guy.  First, he shows her an envelope with her mother’s home address so we quickly know Sawyer’s story is true even though no one else believes her, then David comes to Mom’s hotel room claiming to be a maintenance man after which we don’t see Mom again.  Meanwhile, a combination of Sawyer’s paranoia, continuing harassment from Violet, and a psychotic-episode-inducing-drug David slipped into her daily meds cup has pushed Sawyer ever further from being believed or helped by anyone except Nate (who turns out later to be an undercover TV reporter, gathering evidence of the illegal, unethical activities of this place [and so many like it, as he tells Sawyer]) so at various times she’s sedated, restrained, then finally sent to scary solitary confinement in a basement padded room.⇐

 Any help Sawyer hoped to get from Nate is voided when David captures, tortures, then kills him, leaving him appearing to be an overdose victim (his notes on the abuses of the institution are found in his locker but turned over to smug administrator Ashley Brighterhouse [Aimee Mullins] who simply hides them in her desk).  After which, David confronts Sawyer in solitary (he disables the video cameras first), tells her he’s already altered the records so it seems like she’s been released, wants her to escape with him to his cabin in New Hampshire where they can lead a happy, isolated life.  She strings him along, tells him he needs to experience another woman before trying to be romantic with her, convinces him to bring Violet down there for the needed intercourse, but, while Sawyer’s seemingly calming Violet before she’d have sex with David, Sawyer grabs the shiv, stabs him, takes his keys, escapes, looks back through the door’s window to see him breaking Violet’s neck.  Sawyer manages to get outside but is captured again by David; when she wakes up in his car trunk she finds Mom’s dead body there as well just before she manages to release the trunk lid.  He chases her into the woods, catches her, breaks one of her ankles with a hammer before carrying her back to the car, but she has Mom’s metal crucifix necklace with which she kills him, then staggers out to the road.  Meanwhile, a woman jogging with her dog in New England comes across the body of the real George (David killed him but didn’t bury him very well) which is somehow reported to the cops in Sawyer”s PA location, the TV reporters from Nate’s station learn of his death and go on air with revelations of the reports he’d already smuggled out even as the police rush in with a warrant leading to finding his notes, arresting Brighterhouse, hopefully shutting down Highland Creek.  6 months later, Sawyer’s back at her job—promoted—but as she’s having lunch with her assistant she sees a man she thinks is David, almost stabs from behind before realizing her mistake, leaves the restaurant in a state of disarray, seemingly suffering ongoing PTSD reactions.⇐

So What? Unsane’s filled with heart-stopping-scenes of tension which make it effective as an escapist thriller, with the added attraction of being shot on an iPhone 7 Plus in 4K high-definition so we’re constantly, subliminally amazed at how professional it all looks, having been recorded on a handheld device.*  All of that quickly-moving-action, the constant shutdown of any hope Sawyer has of help or escape, and the inherent situation of an innocent person being confined against their will (both on a personal and institutional level) helps distract us from a good number of plot holes which also exist on a subliminal level (because they zip by so fast you have no time to contemplate them) but undermine this otherwise tight narrative that seems to work so effectively as it’s flying along.  Clearly, David took George’s identity then used it for access to Sawyer’s psychiatric “jail,” but how did he find her?  How did he manage to get hired so conveniently there?  Why didn’t the “thorough background check” on George show any inconsistency with David’s appearance?  (Did they look alike, as well as George having an appropriate medical background so David could easily get a job at Highland Creek, or are the hiring procedures as shoddy as their mode of operation?)  I have to admit I didn’t catch this item, but wouldn’t Sawyer have somehow taken on her own new persona complete with name change?  If so, what records exist for her in order to apply for jobs?  If not, how did she expect to hide from obviously-obsessive David? (The credits list Sawyer and her mother with the same surname, so was that for our convenience or did the daughter just change locations without changing identities?)  Wouldn’t Nate have also been working under a false identity, so how did his station colleagues know it was him who died at Highland Creek—do they have access to reports of every death in this city?  Admittedly, I didn’t think of any of this while watching Unsane, but it all came out quickly when I started making my summary comments above.

*Soderberg offers a short (4:50) video explanation of why he shot his movie on a smartphone (he presents a solid defense), yet his argument's not nearly enough to convince the guy who rejects that decision in the 2nd listing of the Related Links section for this movie far below in this posting.

 In addition to these various plot quandaries (which, in retrospect, were distracting enough for me to think about that they brought my initial response of 4 stars of 5 for Unsane down to a reluctant 3½ because while the emotional ride is effective the narrative inconsistencies shouting “merely a convenient jump from one situation to the next” just keep nagging at me) there may be a misconception this is the 1st feature shot on an iPhone (see my review [toward your beginning scrolling through it you'll find a rare sighting of my "writing partner" Pat Craig, at least as he existed a few years ago] of Tangerine [Sean Baker, 2015] to clear that up [with my usual appeal to your layout-sensitivities to go easy on how this much-earlier-review looks, with my more-current-approach hopefully more tolerable to look at]—where I found that earlier one to be more effective, stable at the 4-star level, although its sense of immediacy admittedly verges more on quasi-documentary given the content and actors involved)* but even if that’s not a primary reason for interest in Unsane you still have to give Soderberg credit for effectively using his chosen technological limitation (at least I do; that guy I noted in the footnote just above thinks something made on such a small device should only be seen on a similar screen, leaving theatrical presentations to films actually shot with equipment intended to produce enormous images).  Initially, it’s clear the format’s a bit more squared-off than the wider aspect ratios we’re used to, just as the contrast is a bit harsh even in the scenes that don’t take place in the psych ward (where their appearance would be more assumed-acceptable as Expressionist-enhancement, as is most of what we see in Crazy Right, reviewed below), but once you get pulled into the rapid flow of this most-disturbing-story you not only don’t notice the presentational differences all that much but you also begin to sense a recreated-reality-TV-special-feel to Unsane, possibly made by the news crew who uncovered the scam going on over at Highland Creek enhanced with some professional actors.

*Here are 10 others for your edification (a couple made before Tangerine), none of which I’ve seen.

Bottom Line Final Comments:  Initially, I wasn’t sure if I was going to see Unsane (although I do try to keep up with most everything Soderberg directs), but then the opportunity came up to explore an independent film still in distribution-negotiation, Crazy Right (review below), so the somewhat-related-content sent me to the theater in order to provide you with this parallel-review-posting.  However, Soderberg could use some other incentives to get more patrons into the moviehouses because his opening-weekend-debut resulted in only about $3.8 million in domestic (U.S.-Canada) ticket sales (plus a mere $792.6 thousand in other markets) which leaves him in the dust behind (why bother, as far as I’m concerned) Pacific Rim Uprising (Steven S. DeKnight) at $28.1 million for the weekend box-office 1st place in its debut, finally pushing Black Panther (Ryan Coogler; review in our February 22, 2018 posting) to #2 with a “mere” 17 million domestic dollars last weekend (but after 6 weeks in release it’s now at about $633.2 million domestically [#5 All-Time], $1.2 billion worldwide [#12 All-Time]).  That lackluster response to Unsane may be due to its unnerving subject matter (clearly indicated in the trailer) compared to the sci-fi/superhero aspects of the top 2, the equally-escapist-aspects of #4 Sherlock Gnomes (John Stevenson), #5 Tomb Raider (Roar Uthaug), and #9 Game Night (John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein) or the pre-Easter interests of religiously-inclined-audiences seeing #3 I Can Only Imagine (Andrew and Jon Erwin) and #8 Paul, Apostle of Christ (Andrew Hyatt), but for whatever reason Soderberg’s latest—daring as it is with that iPhone-production-process/grim content—failed to draw much attention, despite being available in 2,023 domestic theaters (more discussion of that word at the end of the next review).

 Critics, though, were much more inclined toward acceptance (a key reason, along with my newly-intended-pairing of Unsane to Crazy Right, I was more interested in it than all of the above—except Black Panther, which I’ve seen twice already—along with knowing first-hand from a close friend what it’s like to be arbitrarily confined to a psych ward [for 3 days] due to suicidal feelings [despite that problem arising as a side-effect of a medication, with no one except for an after-the-fact-pharmacist willing to acknowledge the connection] so I was curious to see how this situation might be dramatized, in that the only other film like this I have a clear memory of is … Cuckoo’s Nest where main character Randlel McMurphy’s [Jack Nicholson] also in the “loony bin” but somewhat by choice so as to avoid the more-traditional-miseries of standard imprisonment [only until he sees how cruel is the treatment of the patients within the psych ward]) of Unsane, with 78% of those cited at Rotten Tomatoes offering positive reviews, a not-surprisingly-lower (but still supportive for them) 63% average score at Metacritic (details on both in the Related Links section below).  Certainly if you have any experience with being in such confinement (where you might much more likely have to fear irrational confrontations from an unhinged person such as Violet than find a helpmate like Nate)—especially if not by necessary choice—or if you’ve ever had your life made into a living hell by a stalker, you may not care to subject yourself to have any of that misery relived in Unsane, but if you’d like to get some seriously-considered-insights into those awful situations (notwithstanding the plot-holes-for-convenience noted above—including the one I didn’t mention before, which is why administrator Brighterhouse bothered to keep Nate’s notes rather than destroy them [same question we ask decades later about President Nixon and the incriminating Watergate tapes]) with a resolution offering both visceral release and justified retaliation against a cold-blooded-killer (truly the crazy one needing to be stopped before somehow talking his way out of a prison sentence, likely to find a means of escape from a mental hospital) but doesn’t sugarcoat the lasting emotional damage done to Sawyer—who’ll likely need years of sincerely-focused-therapy to rise above her ingrained fears—then I think you’d find Unsane worthwhile even as it's uglily-creepy.

 Or maybe you’ll be satisfied enough just listening to my chosen Musical Metaphor to accompany Unsane, leaving us a final bit of commentary but from the aural arts, which is Dory Previn’s “Mr. Whisper” (on her 1970 album On My Way to Where) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRN-GPFDTx4, inspired by her own stay in a mental institution, partially as the result of ex-husband André Previn having an affair with Mia Farrow, impregnating her, leading to divorce from Dory (then marriage to Farrow) with Dory enduring electroconvulsive (formerly shock) “therapy” before returning to her musical career with much of the trauma (from other events as well) of those years worked into this album.  I don’t mean to imply, as stated in these lyrics, David was just Sawyer’s “wild imaginary friend” who haunted her when she was “going ‘Round the bend […] driven Up the wall,” although with the psychological (and physical) harm he’s caused her, that she’s clearly not free of yet, we can understand why at some point past the events we witness in this movie she could think “I’d rather Madness Than this sadness In my head,” while David, the psychotic one in this mental-entanglement, wants to be “back In [her] apartment In [her] head [… telling her] Reassuring things [saying she’s] the Center of the universe [… as he takes] control Guides [her] heart And rides [her] soul The minute that He steps Inside [her] head.”  Just like Soderberg’s movie this is a most disturbing song, especially referring to Previn’s actual situation where “They shoot me With a bolt or two,” just as Sawyereven in her short stay at Highland Creek—is frequently sedated, strapped to her bed, then locked in solitary where she had no escape from David’s obsessions until she's able to smuggle in an unwitting weapon.  None of this is “feel good’ stuff but it might suffice to be exposed to it on our own “feel bad” days as encouragement that (hopefully) whatever we’re experiencing isn’t of the caliber of what Sawyer or Dory were required to deal with.
                    
SHORT TAKES (no spoilers here for a refreshing change 
[but, as usual, the comments aren’t really all that short])
                   
                    Crazy Right (Ian Stewart Fowler, 2017)
               
This is an intentionally-disturbing story about a man whose wife is now dead with him troubled by a horrid memory he killed her (no police action, though, so you assume he didn’t); as he sinks further into alcoholism, despondency, and delusions he begins to interact with her again in a manner that seems far too tangible to be imaginary—but it must be … right?
                
 Occasionally, we (well, only me so far, but Pat Craig's still somewhere out there in the ether—I can feel the vibrations) at Two Guys in the Dark receive a request to review a film not yet in general release, a service we attempt to do as far as our time and space (which—along with various forms of energy and matter—just about encompasses everything we’ve experienced so far but other dimensions likely await) allow, as with this inquiry from Patrick D. Green, one of the producers—as well as portraying the male lead (in this photo to your left)for Crazy Right (trailer's in Related Links due to BlogSpot software problems).  Green and company are in the midst of working on distribution deals so while I was able to see their work on a screener I can’t yet offer you an opportunity to view it in any format; thus, all I can do at this point is give you some commentary on it (noting it was an Official Selection of both the 2017 Covellite International Film Festival [Butte, MT] where it won Best Editing [I can see why; the imagery flows well through many varied scenes and circumstances] and the Tenth Annual Festival Angaelica [Big Bear Lake, CA], where it won the Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature Film, as well as also being an Official Selection last year of the Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival [Portland, OR]), with hopes it'll be available soon.  Given there’s no easy access to it now, though, I won’t reveal any plot spoilers because you don’t have the usual choice available with our Two Guys in the Dark reviews to either get a general sense
of what we're offering while avoiding the spoilers until you can see what we’re writing about or accepting our review in full, either after your own screening or deciding to take our word for it rather than investing your cash for a specific movie. With Crazy Right the situation is one that, as noted above, makes for an intriguing double-feature with Unsane because the focus is again on mental illness but this time it truly is a situation of extreme instability with the primary character (Paul) rather than an assessment being falsely assigned (Sawyer) as a means of manipulation by someone who’s the person truly insane (David) yet deviously crafty in madness.

 Some time ago Paul’s wife died of causes that aren’t fully clarified to us (although cancer’s the likely contributor, revealed through later dialogue during the film, as is his accusation of her as a “cheating whore” although not explained decisively) leaving him in a state of alcoholic devastation (downing enough vodka on a daily basis to soon send him to the cemetery as well) so that he never leaves his house (although an opening scene with a real-estate-agent indicates he’ll soon have it up for sale), apparently has no friends or family to help pull him out of his self-inflicted-stupor except a guy named Garry (Michael Draper) who comes by to show his concern but is chased away.  This sort of imposed-isolation connected to an attitude of complete psychic loss—shown graphically by the constant, arbitrary blue tonality of the images—is sort of like a reversal of the isolated emptiness of the main character in A Ghost Story (David Lowery, 2017; review in our July 27, 2017 posting) except that guy was dead, seemingly in self-imposed-connection to the house where his widow stayed for awhile before moving on while Paul’s still alive but just as lost in his grief, further haunted by the disturbing memory he killed Iris (LIndsae Klein) even though he keeps vehemently denying it’s true.  Honestly, though, once this concept of grief, confusion to the point of mental instability, and rejection of finding any hope of moving forward (except further into those vodka bottles, which he has delivered once a week along with some groceries for basic sustenance) has been established the plot seems to stagnate a bit until roughly the halfway mark (about 40 min. in of a 1 hr. 25 min. running time).  That changes abruptly when in the process of boxing up everything in the house Paul comes across some old audio cassettes which contain conversations he's had with Iris.

 After listening to some tapes he starts to directly address the Sony Walkman player which leads to equally-direct-responses from it in her voice, followed by Iris' sudden appearance in the bedroom one morning.  Paul’s admitted he’s delusional, but Iris’ re-found-presence is about as tangible as you could ask for, complete with a full range of activities from lovemaking to arguing (interspersed with flashback scenes in normal color tonalities that help us keep track of varied temporal markers).

 Unfortunately, I can’t go any further into what happens without intruding on that dreaded spoiler territory so all I can say within this context is the concept has a successful feel of a Twilight Zone-type-encounter although with intended unclarity as to what—if any—lesson might be learned from the activities both we and Paul will encounter; the visual strategy of the arbitrary coloration (including one intense scene where Paul watches himself relive a previous conversation with Iris so his present is shown in green tonality while their dual past on screen is naturalistically-hued [the official site—in the Related Links section below notes this entire film was shot in natural light, but the various hue emphases contribute to the mood in such a way they seem to be a successfully-imposed-palette) allows some structural complexity within an ongoing narrative situation kept claustrophobic in both location (we never leave the house, even in the flashbacks) and Paul’s mental stress (and Iris’ with both of them often presented in intense closeups); a wealth of camera-strategies including odd angles at times for disorientation along with some slow pans of the house’s rooms which help convey the confinement it presents for Paul; while the acting of the 2 leads is powerful throughout—often explosive in some confrontational scenes alluding to Iris’s death—with Iris offering the more-expansive-role of empathy switching to anger while Paul goes from near-comatose to frustrated lashing out as he tries to make some sense of what he’s experiencing, how sane he hopes to be, what he’s troubled by this reappearance of Iris hasn't yet been able to resolve.

 I encourage you to find Crazy Right whenever you can (hopefully in the near future), but in the meantime you’ll just have to make do with my chosen Musical Metaphor (although I guess I could have borrowed from some version of the soundtrack’s replayings of “Since You’ve Been Gone” but help yourself to some rendition of it if you like), which is Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage” flowing into “Eclipse” (culminating their masterful 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon) with just the original recording plus lyrics at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRH-URpgZrM, enhanced by this slightly-muffled-video of a Roger Waters live performance (I couldn’t find a concert with both of the key Floyd musicians, Waters and David Gilmour, so I chose this Waters version because he wrote the songs and this July 6, 2017 performance in Houston is the same as what I saw him do last May in Oakland [shot from about the same distance where I was sitting]).  For me, this music is reminiscent of how Paul has to deal with what happensif the dam breaks open many years too soon [… because his] head explodes with dark forebodings [… as he realizes] There’s someone in my head but it’s not me [… a result of the irony he finds when] All that is now And all that is gone And all that’s to come And everything under the sun is in tune But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.”

 Well, that’s my response to Crazy Right which I hope you’ll have some opportunity to see some day because it’s an intriguing story giving you a lot to contemplate even if for nothing else than to hope you never have to share Paul’s experiences yourself, but, then, you should always take what critics (including me) say with a grain of salt (or maybe a shot of bourbon) anyway because what works for me may be utterly useless for you or vice-versa.  Local case in point for me is an extremely negative review by the San Francisco Chronicle’s theater (not theatre, I’ll have you note, despite the frequent use of the latter spelling referring to staged narratives or drama companies rather than the buildings housing them) critic, Lily Janiak of a play, Office Hour (written by Julia Cho, 2018), just now finishing its run at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre ( note the spelling, Chron), which my wife, Nina, and I probably wouldn’t have bothered to see based on Janiak’s commentary (“It doesn’t unpack our American nightmare so much as steep you in alternately trite and preposterous versions of it”)—which she rates as 0 on a scale of 1 to 4—had we not already paid for it through season tickets.  This story of a troubled undergrad in a creative writing class (who carries a licensed firearm because rejection by his peers has left the kid angry, paranoid, compelled to write about heinous actions [seemingly traced back to his harsh father’s rejection of him as mildly physically-deformed]) going through a series of hostile vignettes with his teacher during her office hours is powerfully written and acted, extremely relevant for the violent times we live in especially concerning school shootings (Janiak even briefly notes the poignancy of this play opening a very short time after the tragedy at the Majory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL; ironically, we saw it on the afternoon of the nationwide student-led anti-gun-rallies last Saturday, finding it an extremely important aspect of that day), yet this seemingly well-versed-critic simply dismissed Office Hour as […] don’t waste your time investing in it“ (just as Entertainment Weekly’s Chris Nashawaty would have steered me away from Unsafe with his scathing C- review so I’m glad I found others that were more supportive).

 My point with all this intra-critical-collective-commentary is you have to decide for yourself what sounds intriguing to you because tastes—no matter how well-based in education and professional experience—will always be subjective (no matter how “universal” the critic may attempt to make her/his review sound, with absolute pronouncements stated as if no rational person could possibly find an alternative interpretation), so get as much input as you can, follow your gut, don’t be swayed by what anyone else tries to make you think (but if you’re still unsure, you can always consult my opinion, so brilliant it can save on your energy bill). As for Crazy Right, I do hope many of you will get a chance to see it for yourself, then tell me if you think I wasn’t as receptive to it as I might have been (given the reality it’s one of those I had to struggle with internally as to how high to rate it, finally going with 3 of 5 stars as I felt that designation was most consistent with what I’d seen in this film compared to others to which I also found 3 stars to be the most appropriate choice); Crazy Right still intrigues me to a possible higher level, though, as it’s hard to forget about, especially seeing it in such proximity to Unsane (which might make an interesting rental option for you at some point).  OK, enough of this exercise in ambiguous-implications, but I do find both of these explorations of mental instability to be something well worth your time, if for no other reason than to remind you to carefully read anything you sign lest you find yourself sent off to some version of Highland Creek “rehab.”  Stay free (and limited in your vodka guzzling) until next time we meet.
               
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
           
We encourage you to visit the summary of Two Guys reviews for our past posts.*  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!

*A Google software glitch causes every Two Guys posting prior to August 26, 2016 to have an inaccurate (dead) link to this Summary page; from then forward, though, this link is accurate.

AND … at least until the Oscars for 2017’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, March 4, 2018 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which 2017 films have been nominated for and/or received various awards and which ones made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists.  You may find the diversity among the various awards competitions and the various critics hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competitive-award-winners (which pales when compared to the even-more-noticeable-gap between specific award winners and big box-office-grosses you might want to monitor here)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices for success are as valid as any of these others, especially if you offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike many of the awards voters who simply fill out ballots, sometimes for films they’ve never seen).

To save you a little time scrolling through the “various awards” list above, here are the Golden Globe nominees and winners for films and TV from 2017 along with the Oscar nominees and winners for 2017 films.

Here’s more information about Unsane:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_WT6U-J2dE (5:05 summary and explorations about the movie but note this is full of spoilers as well; this videomaker’s intrigued by the story but not by the fact this is a big-screen-movie shot on an iPhone rather than a theatrical movie that some day later you just watch casually on your smartphone)



Here’s more information about Crazy Right:





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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my new email at kenburke409@gmail.com(But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews—if that even seems possible—academic articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile. Ken

P.S.  Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.  But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"
—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come.

OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.

Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month (which they seem to measure from right now back 30 days) the total unique hits at this site were 76,926; below is a snapshot of where and by what means those responses have come from within the previous week:

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

The Death of Stalin and Short Takes on Annihilation

            Hilarious History, Strange Sci-Fi
     
                                Reviews by Ken Burke
  
              The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2017)
                        
“Executive Summary” (no spoilers): This film is a purposefully-absurd-revisionist-look at the aftermath of the death of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union (by virtue of his position as General Secretary of that conglomeration’s Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952, Premier of the government from 1941 until his sudden demise in 1953 [the film doesn’t explain such details as best I noted, so I’m just trying to give you a bit more context]) with a focus on the internal manipulations of other U.S.S.R. leaders to take over after Stalin's unexpected departure, the chief rivalry being between Lavrentiy Beria and Nikita Khrushchev as various plots or alliances come and go in rapid fashion.  Given that the essential events and resulting outcome of this internal struggle are all matters of historical fact—even though the specific scenes of this film are surely exaggerated for laughs—there’s not much I can keep from you below in terms of spoilers but I’ll try to be circumspect where I can.  This film’s not playing in very many theaters yet but’s already being streamed in much of the world by Netflix so it should soon be universally available through that mode of delivery.  I think The Death of Stalin’s hilarious (even if you don’t know much about the details of the actual occurrences) because it’s so representative of secretive power struggles in all forms of politics, although for some audiences it may play too much like a Monty Python skit (Michael Palin's character seems to be functioning at times as the Minister of Silly Talks) extended into an almost-2-hour-length that could have been even more compressed for maximum impact (it probably needed to be filled out, though, to fully please aficionados of this bygone-era).

Here’s the trailer:  (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate that same button on the full screen’s lower right or your “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)


If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but as this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film—or want to save some bucks—to help any of you who’d like to learn more details yet avoid important plot-reveals I’ll identify such give-away sentences/sentence-clusters thusly: 
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

What Happens: In the 1953 Soviet Union we’re immediately told (though opening subtitles for the benefit of those too young to know about the U.S.S.R., the West’s long-standing-opponent during the days of the post-WW II Cold War) of the cruel reign of that consolidated-empire’s Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin).  As an example of the fear this dictator instilled in his people (with ongoing lists of “enemies of the state” who were taken away under trumped-up [so to speak, given the U.S.A.'s wanna-be-modern-parallel]-charges either to prison, the dreadful gulag labor camps, or execution) the beginning scene is a Radio Moscow broadcast of a Mozart recital to which, at its conclusion, Stalin directly calls chief engineer Andreyev (Paddy Considine) in his control booth demanding the recording be immediately sent to his countryside dacha.  Only trouble is, there’s no recording so the engineer frantically stops the musicians and as many of the audience as possible from leaving, rounds up more listeners from the streets to give a fuller sense of acoustics and applause, bribes pianist Maria Yudina (Olga Kurylenko) to stay even though she hates Stalin for executing members of her family, then has to hurriedly bring in another conductor (in robe and pajamas) when the previous one dies in a weird accident (certain aspects of this film resemble the insanity of Monty Python skits and not just because former-Python Michael Palin’s in the cast as Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov—he of crude gasoline [or other flammable liquid]-in-a-bottle-firebomb-fame).  After the orchestral piece is quickly recorded (Yudina secretly slips a defamatory note to Stalin into the record's sleeve), then delivered to the maniacal dictator, he reads the note followed by a severe cerebral hemorrhage (one might hope the boldness of the insult could cause such a reaction yet unlikely because he laughs at it [actual history speculates the seizure was from poor diet and stressful lifestyle]), leaving him essentially paralyzed on the floor in a pool of his own urine where he spends the night with the irony of his door guards terrified to go in without being summoned for fear of being condemned to death.

 When Stalin’s almost-expired-body’s found the next morning he’s moved to a bed where he’s not likely to get proper medical attention because all the decent doctors in or around Moscow have already been killed or sent away so most of the focus is on the treachery of other members of the tiny ruling Presidium (formerly, then again later called the Politburo) of the Central Committee trying to assert themselves as Stalin’s natural successor.  While the leadership role technically goes to Deputy General Secretary Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), it’s clear the true power within the group is held by NKVD (Secret Police) head Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale) who’s the 1st to arrive, finds then stashes Yudina’s note (saved for later coercion if needed), destroys some of Stalin’s files (among them a hit list including Molotov, a tactic to buy his support), and essentially guides Malenkov through the transition, even though it’s clear that Moscow Party Head Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) is quietly wrangling for the position, building allegiances with other members of the group as well as with Field Marshall Georgy Zhukov (Jason Isaacs).  In an attempt to sideline Khrushchev, Beria gives him the unenviable task of arranging Stalin’s funeral, after which he closes access to Moscow in order to better control the actions of thousands of Stalin loyalists while putting his NKVD forces in place as peacekeepers rather than Zhukov’s Red Army; he also has Molotov’s wife, Polina Molotova (Diana Quick) released from prison, plays up to Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough)—as do the other Presidium members—while trying to keep a lid on Stalin’s irrational son, Vasily (Rupert Friend).  Beria also implements reforms that Khrushchev planned to take credit for, including a halt to the “enemies” repression and inviting clergy from the Russian Orthodox Church to Stalin’s funeral, with threats to the other Presidium members not to take any action against him due to the damaging information he has on all of them.

 ⇒Nevertheless, through some further behind-the-scenes-plotting, Khrushchev allows trains to bring hoards of mourners back into Moscow (setting up fatal conflicts with the NKVD entry guards, as 1,500 are killed, putting Beria in a tight spot with public opinion), Zhukov’s soldiers take command from the NKVD; Beria’s arrested for treason as the rest of the Politburo unites against him, followed by a fast conviction and execution then his body’s burnt; Svetlana’s sent off to Vienna with a promise Vasily will be cared for; by 1956 Khrushchev’s in sole command but final subtitles note he’ll be ousted in 1964 by Leonid Brezhnev (as the secret-power-wrangling-game goes on).⇐

So What? I wish our frequent viewing companion, Jim Graham, had been free to join my wife, Nina, and me to see The Death of Stalin because he knows considerably more about both history and Russia (especially Russian history) than I do so he could probably have enjoyed it even more than we did as well as filling us in on how much of this was just intentional farce vs. what farcical truths were merely mildly exaggerated (unless any of it—beyond the clear fact that Stalin died in 1953—was truly literal rather than made even funnier than reality through creative license).  Certainly, I have no doubt there was internal jostling within the Presidium’s members to replace Stalin as the all-encompassing-commander of the U.S.S.R. (just as such political jockeying undoubtedly goes on at every level of any government, no matter what the ruling system may be—as shown by the WikiLeaked Democratic emails confirming how that party’s brass skewed their 2016 nomination to Hillary Clinton rather than Bernie Sanders, with no need for help from the Russians to accomplish it although such plotting was exposed via Russian involvement in getting this dirt to WikiLeaks just as Russians have also been exposed in their further efforts to then undermine Clinton in favor of Trump); as to whether anyone outside that dysfunctional-Soviet-Presidium would find their actual actions to be as funny as what this film depicts I have no idea, but even the cruel realities of the time—such as executions of "enemies" suddenly cut short by Beria’s new leniency policy—take on a quick punch of sardonic humor when we see the dead bodies juxtaposed with the just-now-allowed-to-stay-alive-ones, the obvious implication being only the split-second-timing of the order’s arrival determined who’d survive made funny by the matter-of-fact-attitude of the executioner who simply takes the directive, casually walks away leaving the line of relieved prisoners intact (implying commands from the Soviet hierarchy of the time were so capricious the only useful reaction would be a “whatever” shrug)—I’ve often tried to get clear the meaning of “being at the wrong place at the right time,” which I guess this could be an example of?

 While there’s an ongoing tone of absurdity in this film (despite the historical foundation of its primary events), The Death of Stalin isn’t always a laugh-a-minute kind of comedy because many of the situations require some serious set-up before the humorous payoffs can be produced, so it’s not just one bit of effective silliness after another (as in, for example, Some Like It Hot [Billy Wilder, 1959]—although that movie contains a gangster mass execution scene setting the rest of the plot in motion—or Annie Hall [Woody Allen, 1977]—although even this one has the potential for sadness when the primary romantic pair endures a final breakup but at least they remain friends with the script continuing to offer jokes until the very end).  Despite director Iannucci’s Italian name (both parents are of Italian heritage, although like her son, his mother was born in Glasgow) he’s Scottish with a long career in BBC radio and TV comedy (as well as the more-commercial [TV] Channel 4; he’s probably best associated in the U.S. with creating HBO’s satire, Veep, which continues Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ string of Emmy wins), so the overall tone of the humor is often of the understated-British-type, delivered more with nuance than extreme fabrication, although the concept of the scramble for power to run the Soviet Union, retaining carefully-chosen-aspects of Stalin’s absolute rule back in the 1950s, certainly doesn’t need any explanation for us to see the parallels with the scramble of current Russian President/quasi-dictator Vladimir Putin to resurrect the former impact of both the Russian empire and the U.S.S.R. at a time when the ongoing economic problems of his country require Putin and his henchmen to do everything possible to disrupt the functioning of more stable, prosperous nations.Still, even those with a limited knowledge of Soviet/Russian affairs or (dubious, in my leftist opinion) lack of concern about current Russian meddling in recent/upcoming U.S. elections can easily find the humor in The Death of Stalin even at just the level of the crude nature of political maneuvering in any system of government along with the levels that some power-brokers will stoop to in order to consolidate/elevate their own influence no matter the cost to others.

*In fact, The Death of Stalin’s been banned in Russia; here's a short video (2:15) that speculates this action was taken both because of the mockery of the Soviet past (which seems to be gaining a sense of nostalgia there) and quiet concerns about what will become of Russia once current strongman Putin’s someday no longer in power (but, like Stalin, it will probably take his death for that change in authority to happen; I don’t see him casually retiring after his next 6-year-term's up).

Bottom Line Final Comments: This film’s already been a rousing critical success with 96% positive reviews by those surveyed at Rotten Tomatoes along with an unusually high 88% average score from the normally-less-generous-folks canvassed by Metacritic (more details in my Related Links section way down below)—and I must thank my local-guru-reviewer, Mick LaSalle, of the San Francisco Chronicle (although I can't imagine he ever reads this blog) for giving it top honors because without his enthusiastic support of a film I wasn’t even aware of until last Friday I doubt I’d have paid much attention to it, likely figuring it was yet another one of the many documentaries that play in my area (also, giving LaSalle some kudos here partially balances my dismissal of his wretched opinion of Annihilation, soon-to-be-noted not-so-much-farther-below).  By comparison, domestic (U.S.-Canada) audiences haven’t had much of a chance to even see it yet, in release for 2 weeks but just now expanding from 4 to 32 theaters with a so-far-measly box-office-take of about $801 thousand (yet, its per-screen-average is an enormous $16.8 thousand so in the few places it’s playing it’s doing quite well, hopefully with more exposure and success soon to come).  In addition to LaSalle’s enthusiasm (“This hardly seems the subject for comedy, but in practice, that very thing presents an ideal comic opportunity, both because of the sheer perversity of these brutal figures and the bizarreness of looking at them in a comedy context. […] we appreciate the stakes and take seriously that the characters are at risk and that people are getting murdered.”), Nina had another reason to watch a story focused on Khrushchev because she’s long had a routine about herself that her initial appearance as a bald, chubby baby resulted from her mother somehow going to Russia in early 1950 for a quick fling with this later-to-be-Soviet-leader, with the in-joke of naming her after Nikita’s unassuming wife, also called Nina (she's played briefly in the film by Sylvestra Le Touzel), although I can testify (even from seeing my Nina K’s [for Kindblad, rather than Khrushchev] high-school pictures) that wasn’t how she looked for very long.

 I’ll speculate it's very likely the best enjoyment of the hilarious subject matter to be found in The Death of Stalin comes with some knowledge of the actual power struggle among members of that Presidium, but you can’t expect such insight from the majority of viewers (including myself, beyond a general sense of how these inner-circle-power-conflicts operate, dating back at least to the cruel "back-stabbing"-death of Julius Caesar [as Shakespeare put it, “Et tu, Brute {Brutus}?”]) so I’ll just say the combination of the most outrageous bits (especially the depiction of Vasily Stalin as a character resembling the ex-Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind [Kenneth Mars], wacky author of  Springtime for Hitler:  A Gay Romp with
Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden, the play-within-the-film of The Producers [Mel Brooks, 1967]), the more subtle humor (especially when it's focused on several feisty exchanges between Beria and Khrushchev, including some testy second-hand-remarks while standing in line at Stalin’s funeral), and even just thimplications of reality-made-silly (Vasily and the Presidium members lined up on a balcony to speak to the funeral mourners, reminding me of the cover of the Firesign Theatre album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All [1969] with an “All Hail Marx and Lennon” poster behind the dignitaries, praising Groucho and Beatle John rather than Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin) all add up to an enjoyable satirical distraction from our current reality of collusion investigations involving Russians and the Trump campaign organization, even though the actual accents of the British actors in this film (no one attempts to sound Russian here, another useful comic device working well without calling obvious attention to itself) were a little hard for my aging ears to follow at times.

 However, in searching about for my usual tactic of a Musical Metaphor to wrap up this review I had an easy choice of combining another famous Brit with a parody structure, Paul McCartney on lead vocals of “Back in the U.S.S.R.” (from 1968's The Beatles, also called the “White Album”) playing off both Chuck Berry’s “Back in the U.S.A.” and the general harmony/tempo structures of the Beach Boys, especially “California Girls.”  I couldn’t find a free version of The Beatles’ original so I’ll give you 3 McCartney solo versions instead: a 1989 re-recording, an ironic performance of the song from a 2003 concert in Moscow's Red Square after the fall of Communism (from a much longer video so all the credits appear at the end), and, even more ironic in contemporary context, a 2008 concert in Kiev, Ukraine, a country Putin’s put a lot of energy into bringing back under Russian control.  Maybe if we in the West don’t get left behind in the Putin/Trump attempted march to rule by oligarchy we’ll realize “how lucky [we] are” that the days of the Soviet Union haven’t fully re-emerged on either side of the Atlantic no matter how “Well the Ukraine girls really knock [us] out.” 
                 
(always aspiring toward) SHORT TAKES (despite the lengthy reality)
(please note that a few spoilers also appear here)
                          




                                                         Annihilation (Alex Garland)
                         
A cellular biologist is grieving the 1-year-disappearnce of her military husband when he mysteriously reappears but with no memory of where he’s been; he has a seizure, then government agents kidnap both of them to mysterious Area X where territory’s increasingly engulfed by a strange energy field (“the shimmer”) no one except the husband’s ever returned from.

Here’s the trailer:


       Before reading any further, I’ll ask you to refer to the plot spoilers warning far above.

 Due to a good number of other logistical considerations lately I’ve had to limit my available time for new offerings at local moviehouses so the few choices have been determined by either strong interests or easy access.  Thus, I hadn’t cared much about Annihilation, given the scathing review by Mick LaSalle (yeah, him again): “It fails to motivate the central characters [… leaving] audiences plenty of time to think—about their taxes, about what to eat when the movie is over, etc.—because it’s so uninvolving […] ‘Annihilation’ really isn’t worth seeing.  Still, if you meet someone who has seen it, have them tell you the good parts.”  Well, thanks to curious-and-generally-open-to-new-considerations-Nina, who—like me—was fascinated by what we’d seen of this story in the trailers, we sought out some further commentary by those who had seen Annihilation, finding it has a lot of supporters (RT offers 87% positive reviews, MC’s average score is 79%) such as James Berardinelli (of ReelViews, a guy whose opinion I’ve come to trust over the years) who gave it 3½ of 4 stars (compared to how RT views LaSalle’s decision as 1 of 4), saying: Annihilation makes you think. […] Although Garland’s unwillingness to compromise may limits his audience, it has resulted in a film whose ideas and philosophy demand thought and dissection and are not easily dismissed or forgotten.”  After having experienced this film, I much more agree with Berardinelli than LaSalle, especially where the ambiguous ending’s concerned.  In brief, the premise is Kane (Oscar Isaac), a Special Forces soldier, went on a secret mission a year ago but didn’t return leaving wife Lena (Natalie Portman), a cellular biology professor (ex-Army herself) at Johns Hopkins U., in a general state of depression which shifts into panic when Kane suddenly shows up, can’t tell her much of anything about where he’s been, has a seizure, but as she’s rushing him to a hospital they’re taken by government agents to a quarantine lab at Area X (somewhere on the southern U.S. coast), just outside “the shimmer,” an energy field expanding beyond its initial appearance at a lighthouse 3 years ago into the nearby state park, but no one—except Kane—who’s entered it has ever returned.

 Actually, all of the above narrative (along with most of what follows) is told in flashback with the present time (frequently intercut with past episodes including Lena both happily with Kane, then distant from him by having an affair with an also-married-colleague) being Lena under interrogation about what she experienced within the shimmer (she says she has little recall of it), due to the frantic concern of these government agents trying to understand the nature of this phenomenon which they’ve so far been able to keep secret from the public.  As we follow Lena’s events, she joins a small team of 4 women going into the shimmer, led by psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the only other one of the group who knows Kane is Lena’s husband.  Once inside this altered environment (bounded by a translucent, easily-entered “wall”) our explorers experience a cutoff of outside communication, some memory loss, inaccurate perceptions of time (Lena’s in there for 4 months, thought it was just a few days), strange versions of local flora and fauna (including a big alligator with a shark-like 2nd row of teeth and a gruesome creature they call a bear [looks more like a wolf to me] which kills 2 of the group).  Eventually they find an abandoned Army post where a left-behind-flash-drive shows them video of Kane cutting open another soldier’s gut to reveal his intestines moving around like an eel (then they find his body parts overgrown with a huge, mysterious plant); as they move further toward the lighthouse (their ultimate destination) another woman of the expedition, somehow infected by this environment (she’s a physicist who speculates the shimmer’s like a prism not only refracting light but also the DNA of anything within its territory, creating all these strange mutations) turns into a human-shaped-plant, joining others in a "garden."

 ⇒With just the 2 of them now left alone, Ventress sets out on her own to the lighthouse so when Lena finally arrives she finds a charred human skeleton and a video camera with footage showing Kane in desperation setting himself on fire with a white phosphorus grenade plus a quick glimpse of his double (which we have to assume is who returned from this altered existence, not her actual husband).  Lena then finds Ventress, dying of cancer, who tells her this has all been brought about by some alien presence in the process of absorbing/transforming our planet; she then explodes into a mass of energy (oxymoron, I know, yet about the only way to describe it) which pulls in a few drops of Lena’s blood then transforms into her humanoid duplicate, mimicking every movement.⇐

 ⇒Lena manages to trick her doppelgänger into holding another grenade which Lena activates before running out of the lighthouse.  The resulting explosion burns up the double with a resulting fire that also destroys the building along with the alien cave within it (sort of a huge womb) as all of the transformed, crystalline plants around there crumble into dust, the entire shimmer existence destroyed.  Back in the present in Area X “Kane” suddenly recovers, Lena embraces him knowing it’s actually the double of her husband, but her eyes have the same strange glow as his leaving us to assume she still has some of that alien transformation, with no indication what’s to come for humanity with these strange creatures now among us.*⇐  (This film’s based on a novel of the same title [2014] by Jeff VanderMeer, the 1st of his Southern Reach Trilogy; a summary of those stories reveals that the larger construct of Area X isn’t destroyed in the books but continues to grow and consume other characters.)  I find Annihilation to be more about mood and atmosphere (with some intense scenes to increase your heart rate [although maybe not as much as mine when the ticket-seller said “Are you sure you want to do that?” after I requested “Two seniors for Annihilation,” making me wonder briefly if I were back in The Death of Stalin territory]) than explanation, giving you good reason to contemplate what you’ve seen (wondering how esteemed critic LaSalle concluded these investigators had no motivation for probing into the interior of "the shimmer") as well as wonder what comes next for all of us from Lena and “Kane” (if the other books of this trilogy are also adapted they’ll only be vague inspiration because there is no Kane double in them).  Unlike LaSalle, I’ll encourage you to consider seeing Annihilation with its disturbing underlying theme as stated by Ventress: “Almost all of us self-destruct.”  But if you decide to do so hurry up because it’s been out a month already, isn’t getting much push from Paramount, its theater coverage has dropped to 1,087 domestic venues, its domestic box-office is only about $29.6 million (vs. a $40 million budget) so I doubt it’ll be around very much longer (although it’s being streamed outside the U.S., Canada, and China by Netflix so it’ll likely be available online in all countries sometime soon). 

*If you’d like more detail on this story you can consult this video (7:34) which posits “the shimmer” as a tumor invading Earth’s biology but you might also be interested in hearing from a few of the film's actors (Portman, Isaac, Leigh) on their interpretations of this plot, although they don’t reveal much, so the enigmatic Crosby, Stills & Nash song "Helplessly Hoping" (from their debut 1969 self-named-album; this performance, joined by Neil Young, is one I attended in Oakland, 1988), used in the film’s soundtrack, might offer just as much “interpretation” as anything else you'll find.

 I also had doubts I'd be able to find an additional song appropriate for a true Musical Metaphor here but I finally settled on a couple of choices that speak to the increasingly odd, disturbing situations the characters encounter before the shimmer’s impact is vanquished: First, to verify what a “long, strange trip” (but, no, I didn’t use that Grateful Dead tune appropriate as it might be in this circumstance) Lena faces in an environment familiar yet disorienting here’s the famous introduction to those equally-unnerving-episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone (original series 1959-1964, revivals in 1985-1989, 2002-2003, a 3rd set to debut soon) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8Y, but given it’s only a 29-second-video I thought you should have something else to finish off this posting so I’ve also included the Electric Light Orchestra’s “Strange Magic” (from their 1975 Face the Music album), which you'll find at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy7nKRUW7bE (a live 2001 performance) in reference to Annihilation’s weird world where the characters are “never gonna be the same again [… as they’ve] seen the way it’s got to end” (even if we likely never will).  OK, that’s all from me this time so feel free to do your own “shimmer” to “celebrate” (if you must, along with Trump's recent questionable congratulatory phone call) Putin’s “strange magic” re-election to yet another run as Russia’s president (even if his voters had to be pushed out to the polls to guarantee both a large turnout and a hefty winning margin) as he competes for the title of Greatest Dictator ever (don’t be surprised if he becomes U.S. President as well in 2020 rather than working through surrogate Trump; hell, if you going to hack our election system you might as well include a surprise-write-in-candidate’s victory).  If only what I’m joking about were just a political satire like The Death of Stalin instead of an increasingly-scary-alternate-reality, at least where Russian interference in the West (and the Mideast) is concerned.  Maybe we’ll collectively find a different sort of “shimmer” to alter such outcomes as dissent continues to grow toward these dangerous autocratic activitiesbeginning with a “blue tide” in U.S. elections next fall?  (Assuming Putin hasn’t already determined our outcome in the same way he's managed his own.)  Stay tuned.
               
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
              
We encourage you to visit the summary of Two Guys reviews for our past posts.*  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!

*A Google software glitch causes every Two Guys posting prior to August 26, 2016 to have an inaccurate (dead) link to this Summary page; from then forward, though, this link is accurate.

AND … at least until the Oscars for 2017’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, March 4, 2018 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which 2017 films have been nominated for and/or received various awards and which ones made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists.  You may find the diversity among the various awards competitions and the various critics hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competitive-award-winners (which pales when compared to the even-more-noticeable-gap between specific award winners and big box-office-grosses you might want to monitor here)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices for success are as valid as any of these others, especially if you offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike many of the awards voters who simply fill out ballots, sometimes for films they’ve never seen).

To save you a little time scrolling through the “various awards” list above, here are the Golden Globe nominees and winners for films and TV from 2017 along with the Oscar nominees and winners for 2017 films.

Here’s more information about The Death of Stalin:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNyIChf0EqI (33:34 video interview statements by actors Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Michael Palin, Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Paul Whitehouse, Andrea Riseborough, Paul Chahidi, Dermot Crowley,  director Armando Iannucci, co-screenplay writer David Schneider [with Iannucci, Ian Martin, Peter Fellows], production designer Christina Casali, costume designer Suzie Harman, and piano soloist for the musical score Christopher Willis [audio’s a bit low throughout])



Here’s more information about Annihilation:

https://www.paramount.com/movies/annihilation (as official sites go, this one’s pathetic; it even offer a link to another official site which turns out to just be at Facebook—you get the idea Paramount’s not that interested in promoting this movie?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5i7idoijco (30:28 interview with writer-director Alex Garland, which also includes commentaries on other films he’s written or directed)



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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my new email at kenburke409@gmail.com(But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews—if that even seems possible—academic articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile. Ken

P.S.  Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.  But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"
—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come.

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Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month (which they seem to measure from right now back 30 days) the total unique hits at this site were 80,223 (A new all-time high!  And quite notably so; thanks again to all of you marvelous worldwide readers); below is a snapshot of where and by what means those responses have come from within the previous week: