Month of Movies: September 2018

Total Films Watched: 9. Mother, Sorry to Bother You, Memories of Murder, Unsane, Solo Con tu Pareja, Malcolm X, Barking Dogs Never Bite, Marie Antoinette, Hold the Dark.

Top Two Films: Malcolm X and Mother. I've been a Spike Lee fan for a few years now, ever since I watched Do the Right Thing three times in three years for different film classes. That movie is a top-ten all-time great movie for me and I've enjoyed watching a lot of his others. So I was very excited to finally get to Malcolm X, one of his other 'major entries.' The three hour epic mostly deserves it's running time as it follows the life and evolution of Malcolm as a leader, a speaker, and an important figure. Denzel Washington is great here, conveying so much power through the speeches and the smaller gestures. The middle scene where he leads a protest march to check on an arrested colleague shows both of those very well. All that said, I probably still put it third in my current Lee rankings behind Do the Right Thing and 25th Hour.

Speaking of directors I've seen a lot of: this month was the completion of my Bong Joon-Ho binge. I have now seen every movie from the acclaimed Korean director. I enjoyed all his movies to some degree or another, but Mother is easily my pick for his best. Mother is the story of a mother who begins investigating the murder that her mentally challenged son was arrested for to prove his innocence. The movie takes its time setting up the main characters and establishing their family dynamic before the crime happens. Kim Hye-Ja is wonderful as the mother, showing the full emotional range of her anguish, and Won Bin gives decently nuanced life to a 'slow' character that could be insulting. It also looks beautiful, especially the super-wide shots isolating Hye-Ja and the striking musical moments.

Movie Death Match: Best dark debut effort from an international auteur- Solo Con tu Pareja or Barking Dogs Never Bite? There are several films from both of these directors that I prefer, and have talked about here before. They both definitely feel like late 90's dark comedies in that Tarantino-ripoff genre. I give the slight edge to Solo as an overall movie, but the most interesting parts of both were the glimpses they offered into what would come from their creators.

Solo Con tu Pareja is a strange foreign film. In some ways it's closer to episodes of Mad Men than most other comedies. The main character is an ad copy writer with boundless sexual desires who eventually learns to settle down. I guess; the ending of the movie doesn't really convince me that he changed. I had never seen an actual slamming-doors sex farce until the big scene in this movie, which is very well-done. The physical comedy is pretty solid throughout and the sex scenes as energized as Y tu Mama Tambien (presumably, since I haven't gotten to that one yet). And Emmanuel Lubezki is already getting memorable shots in his first film as cinematographer, making paper cups and city skylines both pop.

Barking Dogs Never Bite is less interesting and much more vignette-y. There's a graduate student with an irrational hatred of loud dogs and a generic 'frigid' wife. There's a young woman who wants to escape her office job and be famous for doing something good. There's an out-of-nowhere monologue about a boiler repairman that really makes the movie feel like the late 90's. But it also has more glimpses into where Bong will go. The darkly comedic tone around the animals, the vague political undercurrents, and especially a very good footchase in the middle of the movie. Doo-na Bae is also really good as the female lead and only improves as the plot gives her more to do.

Longer Thoughts About: Sorry to Bother You. I have not been fully keeping up with the movies that came out this year. Some of that was school and internships taking up time, and some of that was not wanting to spend money on the off-chance I love Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. This month I've seen a lot more. Of the three recent movies i caught up, Sorry to Bother You is easily my favorite. I didn't love the whole thing, but I appreciated the ridiculous number of ideas and bizarre turns that Boots Riley's debut film threw at the audience.

I am, obviously, not the best-equipped person to unpack all the racial symbolism and themes st play here. I can just say that I responded the strongest to the class struggles of Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield), the new telemarketer who gets promoted through the company while his fellow employees hold a walkout for better conditions. There's some unmistakable pro-union messages, and deeper commentary about how the system abuses its workers. A lot of that comes from Steven Yeun's character, who is a serious but completely likable union organizer. The movie doesn't start off that subtle about the working condition in the setting. A company called WorryFree forces their employees to live at the factory and Green is just barely scraping by in his uncle's garage. And that theme gets more blatant as the movie goes on. There are labor clashes with the police officers trying to protect the rich, a performance art piece about African exploitation, and a n insane metaphor for dehumanization.

That's maybe a third of the insane features of the movie, and probably the most successful third. The other elements were more hit-and-miss for me. A lot of the racial satire worked well, especially the central conceit of needing to use a 'white voice' to sell products. Stanfield does a good job changing his body during those scenes and making the dubbed voice of David Cross a little less jarring. The same goes even better for the Omari Hardwick/ Patton Oswalt combination that becomes his boss. But there's also some more blatant and unsuccessful attempts at comedy, like the 'rap' Green is forced to perform at an orgy of white millionaires. And Tessa Thompson is sweet as his girlfriend and believable as an artist. I just liked that subplot better when it was in Creed. There's also a moment near the end that is the only true indicator of how cheaply made this film was; until that short scene, Riley does a good job at delivering large scale on a small budget.