Gaspar Noes "Climax" is a Hallucinogenic Nightmare Dance Party and Everyone's Invited

Article by Gabe Zia

When you think of directors like Lars Von Trier, Takashi Miike, David Lynch, or Nicolas Winding-Refn, a few common themes will come to mind. Violence, graphic content, realistic and unsettling gore, tense situations with volatile characters, and just an overall sense of deliberate discomfort. These directors are good at making their audience uneasy, most of the time through how they capture graphic images. However, when it comes to capturing that sensation through purely audio-visual means, without relying heavily on graphic content and more leaning on subtext and how the camera is used, few fit that description more than Gaspar Noé.

Much like all those previously mentioned directors, Noé has made a name for himself in the Art House genre as a disturbing filmmaker. His cult classic film, "Irreversible", saw no less than 250 walkouts during its premiere at the 2002 Cannes film festival, and according to a BBC news report of the premiere, 20 people passed out during the feature. Suffice to say, he's no stranger to his movies being too much for some people. This isn't exactly uncommon, Lars Von Trier and Nicolas Winding-Refn also frequently face walkouts at the infamous film festival, what makes Gaspar Noé special however is his lack of reliance on gore and disturbing imagery.

Don't get me wrong, his films are by no means free of graphic violence, sex, and drugs (and a lot of the time all three of those things in one scene), and while Irreversible might not have so much cult fame if not for an infamous 9-minute one-shot sequence, there's nothing to suggest it's quality would drop significantly, or that it wouldn't be able to be as unsettling without it. It's in his filmmaking technique, the way he uses the camera or colour or sound as tool to instil emotion into his audience that turn his movies into the gut-wrenching nightmares that they are. And his most recent film, "Climax" flawlessly demonstrates that even without horrific sequences of sexual assault or repulsively gorey scenes, he can still make an audience deeply horrified by camera and sound technique alone.

Climax starts out with an outstanding one-shot sequence of the group performing a dance routine, following by continuing this one shot throughout the party, following the various dancers and letting the audience get to know who these people are one by one. This whole sequence lasts as long as an hour, which isn't by accident. By establishing who these characters are early on and firmly rooting that into the audiences head, either through their behavior or through how they dance, Noé is preparing us to have an idea of how these characters are going to react under pressure or when forced into a bad situation. And the use of one-shot sequences is important, one-shots can be fun in action movies but their relevance in movies like this is how they can make an audience feel trapped. Without the camera constantly cutting away, in an uncomfortable situation the audience will begin to feel that lack of a cut, and in turn feel that there is no escape. It's a great trick to make the audience feel paranoid and claustrophobic and this isn't the first time Noé has used it.

However, it's when the nightmarish, emotional, drug trip kicks in that Climax shows its true colours. Not only is the second half of this film filmed entirely in one take (or at least edited to create the illusion that it is, which is still a very impressive feat), but this is where the real meat of Noé's experimental use of the senses comes out to play. As the characters begin to spiral into the bad trip of a lifetime, the audio starts to become crisp, and sharper, before very quitly plunging into binurial sounds that echo around the room like a phantom. The grit and grime of the dirty hallways of the abandoned school are put into focus, the camera starts to drift much closer to its characters than before, the lights start to go down as the colour is accentuated, all the while we're following these characters fall deeper and deeper into their worst nightmares. What makes these sequences especially compelling is that we don't know what their worst nightmares are. We don't actually see their hallucinations or hear their thoughts, we only see the world around them and see them screaming in terror at things we can only imagine. This may sound like it's less frightening, but seeing characters seemingly screaming and losing their minds and attacking each other over something that isn't there is far more compelling than if the movie let us actually see their hallucinations.

Climax isn't a movie for everyone. While it may not match up to the staggering walk-out count Irreversible had, I saw roughly 15 people walk out of Climax during my screening. And I was sure it had nothing to do with enjoyment because it was during some of the most harrowing and upsetting sequences of the movie. So knowing that, I can't realistically assume everyone reading this will love Climax. It's entirely possible that nobody who's reading this will like the movie at all, but I'm not here to tell you what to like. Regardless of whether or not everyone has the stomach for it, Climax is hands down Gaspar Noés best work to date so it's a movie I absolutely have to recommend to everyone, it's something I just think most people should at least try even if they end up hating it. While it may not be out in the States or Canada, it'll likely see it's release in the coming months or at the latest Early 2019, so keep an eye out for this one.

Highlights from June 2018 (I'm Back!)

Article by Gabe Zia
Okay so if you follow this blog you may have noticed that the number of full reviews I put out has slowed down in a really big way. Essentially I just saw a few too many movies over the past month and keeping track of them became a chore in a really big way. So, to make up for it, I've gathered 6 movies I watched in the last month that I feel are worth recommending, and instead of 6 individual full reviews, I'm gonna run off a few mini reviews summarizing my feelings on them and why they're worth watching, or not worth watching.

You Were Never Really Here - 5/5
You Were Never Really Here is bar none one of the most psychologically fascinating movies of 2018. The film follows Joe, a career vigilante who makes a living rescuing young girls from human trafficking rings. In between his time being a vigilante he also suffers from violent, often jarring and unsettlingly vivid PTSD flashbacks and suicidal thoughts, which leads me to what I really liked about this movie, while the actual story revolving around him and human trafficking conspiracy, the real meat of the movie comes with Joaquin Phoenix's stunning delivery of this characters brutal and devastating mental state. Not to mention the actual flashbacks themselves are incredibly vague, nothing about Joes past is ever truly delved into and no specific details are ever given, we only get glimpses of specific moments out of context, which for the movie really works. At the very most we only get to see as much as 10 seconds for each flashback, it's enough to give the audience an idea of the scenario and the extent of his involvement but keeps enough information hidden that the audience has to think for themselves and reach their own conclusions. And the violence - both shown in flashbacks and hallucinations as well as stuff actually happening in the real world - is very well done. It's not flashy or action movie feeling, and it's not so overstated that it feels like its gore for the sake of gore. The use of violence in this movie serves a purpose and always feels real, to the point where the brutality of it is more unnerving than anything else. You Were Never Really Here isn't a movie for the light hearted or those with short attention spans but for the right audience it's absolutely perfect.

Revenge - 5/5
This ones been making the rounds for movie fans, it's shown up a lot in discussion of both violent thrillers and feminist filmmaking, and both for very good reason. Serving as both a sharp, bloody revenge flick and a brilliant subversion of the genre Revenge is that amazingly beautiful yet so damn rare combination of a movie that is as entertaining to watch as it is thoughtfully made and made with passion. This isn't just a mindless action movie, much like John Wick this is an action movie with genuine artistic vision. Essentially the film follows a girl named Jennifer, who's on vacation with her boyfriend and two of his hunter friends - all three of whom are married men - when as you can expect from the title, things go horribly wrong and it leads to the three men attempting to kill her. When she miraculously survives it's up to her, her wits, and whatever she can find to survive and kill them before they kill her. It doesn't get any more complex than that narratively, but watching the movie offers a whole lot more than just the plot. I won't delve any deeper as I intend to write a full thing about this once I've watched it a second time, just go watch it.

In Darkness - 2/5
So yeah, not every movie in my monthly highlights is gonna be a winner. Good or bad, as long as it's interesting to talk about I'm game. In Darkness sets off with a really fun premise - A blind pianist hears a murder in the apartment above hers. I was pretty sold by this idea, a simple hook for an entertaining murder mystery thriller with an almost Hitchcockian premise. There's so many directions it could go with that idea, both in terms of new angles to tackle a murder mystery with a main character who can't see, but also from a directorial standpoint this idea offers a lot of options for creative uses of visual and audio editing. At this point, you're probably thinking "This sounds awesome! Why did he give it a 2/5?", and I say that because that's pretty much exactly what I thought when I saw the 5/10 reviews, the 56% on RT. And then I watched the movie, and at first things went exactly how I hoped, the movie was intriguing, it kept information away from the audience, the main character was just a normal person caught in a bad situation, the way the movie used binaural sound was genius. And then, just as the first act ends, the entire movie goes spiralling down so far it basically becomes a completely different movie. Suddenly, exposition about these characters and their political ties is thrown left and right, what could have been an intriguing murder mystery quickly becomes a melodramatic political revenge thriller, the main character is suddenly revealed to have a backstory tying into the murder mystery. And although I won't spoil it specifically incase you want to see this movie for yourself, the ending is so stupid and so out of left field that it kind of ruins everything the first 30 minutes got so right. It's a shame that it barrels down into mediocrity so quickly because the opening 30 minutes are really genuinely something special and really had me thinking I was in for a treat. Personally, I can't recommend this one.

CUFF 2018: An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews

CUFF 2018: An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn

Anyone remember 2016's The Greasy Strangler? Probably not, the movie didn't get a lot of buzz, probably due to the fact that it was weird, uncomfortable, kind of awkward, and just a generally speaking really gross movie. If you didn't remember it because it was such an unpleasant experience to on a sensory level that you've since blocked it from your memory it might just be because outside of the fact that it was weird it didn't really do anything that refreshing. It seemed like it should have, it seemed like it wanted to, but it didn't. Well, that director made another movie and it's... Well it's technically better I guess.

Look, before I get into this I want to make something clear - I am not against weird, unconventional, or subversive filmmaking. In fact, weird, unconventional and subversive best describes my top 3 favorites of 2018 thus far (Isle of Dogs is weird, A Quiet Place is unconventional, and Thoroughbreds is subversive) but it's not universal and these things need to have a purpose. Being weird can be good because it can make your movie unique and charming, but what's the purpose of it being weird and intentionally awkward? With Wes Anderson, "weird" is just a vehicle to tell a story that's set in a strange world but its sort of like an uncanny valley, the resemblances a Wes Anderson movie bare to reality in comparison to the weird qualities are what make it charming. Unconventionality is fun because it takes something familiar and replaces it with a version of that familiarity that is new and refreshing, the break of typical structural rules in an unconventional film has a purpose, it's serving a goal, its unique qualities don't come from how it's unconventional, but why it's unconventional. And subversion of stereotypes and tropes can be great fun, especially in satirical films and stories that parody other stories. But for this to work, it has to have a goal in mind, it has to have something it's subverting, something it's satirizing.

With An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, none of these three parts of a unique movie seem to be fully understood. It's not weird with purpose or in a way that's ever interesting, it's just odd. Sometimes the goal is humor, and sometimes it isn't. It's just weirdness for the sake of being able to claim the title of "weird", it breaks convention without a purpose and does nothing with it, it seems to subvert and satirize tropes and stereotypes that don't even exist, it's like it's parodying a movie that was never made to begin with. Not to mention the elephant in the room - subversion, unconventionality, and weirdness are often traits that could characterize a comedy film, and despite An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn clearly wanting to be a comedy, the movie just isn't very funny.

Final Rating
What's the best recommendation I can give for this movie? Well, if you liked The Greasy Strangler, you will like this. If you didn't like The Greasy Strangler, didn't see it, or haven't heard of it until today, this movie isn't for you, just like it wasn't for me. I'm gonna go easier on the rating than I usually would because A) I know this is an esoteric niche appeal and I'm not the type of person to go for movies like this, and B) I still have to respect the director for making this movie his own and not making a movie simply with the goal to appeal to other people - but that being said I still can't personally recommend it.

A Quiet Place Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews

A Quiet Place

Okay so I know I still have to review Ready Player One and Isle of Dogs, as I saw both of those earlier this month. For now though I saw A Quiet Place and I'm honestly not going to be able to cogently write words about those other two movies until I get the word out that you and everybody you know should go see it as soon as possible. It's definitely up there with Thoroughbreds as just pure outstanding stuff from this Spring, and much like Thoroughbreds I hope as many people see this movie as possible so it gets the attention it deserves.

The horror genre has been on a bit of an uphill curve recently, in 2016 we saw eight fun, unique horror movies, and 2017 nearly doubled that. It's a far cry from the typical diamond in the rough we get once a year, and although 2018 hasn't been as good, the upcoming release of films like Hereditary and The House that Jack Built set the stage for more greatness to come. And not only is A Quiet Place an outstanding horror movie, featuring some great direction and editing used to build suspense, but it's also a fantastic movie in general. It's a rare feat for a horror movie to accomplish being both scary and good, and while A Quiet Place isn't the scariest movie ever, it's a lot scarier than a lot of really good but not very scary horror movies like It Follows or Oculus. 

Dialogue is one of the strongest assets an actor has, the tone and range an actor speaks is probably the easiest way to convey on-screen emotion, so it's always interesting seeing deaf/mute characters or seeing stories where the cast has to convey emotions in any way except for tone of voice and dialogue. While only one of the characters in this movie is actually deaf, for a large portion of the movie none of them have any ability to speak or even make noise. It's all in the face, it's all in the body language; save for the two scenes in which characters actually talk to each other. There's also something to be said for this movie for casting an actual deaf actress to play the deaf kid, not only does this kid turn out a great performance but also kudos to this movie for going that extra mile for authenticity.

If there's any one aspect that's always a big topic for me, it's anything that involves editing and sound. I'm a sucker for good editing and good post-production technique, and especially anything that involves sound mixing. For a movie like this, one where sound is the key component of the story and the volume and range of certain noises is the gimmick of the movie, sound mixing is of the upmost importance. And let me tell you, as far as this category is concerned, this movie never misses a single beat. And every noise is at just the right range too, nothing that is meant to be background noise is too loud, so when something is meant to be a loud disrupting noise, you would know it. It's a little hard to describe, but trust me if you see the movie you'll know what I mean.

If there's another quality this movie has thats something I regularly bring up it's the rule of show don't tell. For those unaware of what that means, essentially "show don't tell" means that background information about the story is better conveyed by visual cues and vague hints sprinkled throughout than one character flatly explaining the backstory or some text at the beginning catching the audience up to speed. A great example in this movie is that none of the characters at any point in the movie ever specifically say that the monsters are attracted to noise. It's the little things like the way characters behave and respond to noise, or newspaper articles shown just for a couple of seconds, at no point in the story is there a scene where everything is explained all at once, but the information is given slowly throughout the movie. It's great to see this as it's just getting a little tiring going into just about every movie and having to read a wall of text explaining the events leading up to the movie, or having one smart/scientist character explain the story to the main character. This movie begins in media res and only ever gives you just enough information to enjoy the story as it is, it never feels incomplete or like it's overcompensating.

Rating
Right up there with Thoroughbreds, A Quiet Place is truly something remarkable. Great sound editing, great acting, spectacular writing, hey it does its job as a horror movie. It's great to see that this movie is getting the praise and commercial success it deserves. If you haven't already, go check out A Quiet Place. It's a near-perfect horror movie with some genuinely amazing filmmaking to back it up.

Thoroughbreds Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews

Thoroughbreds

So after 2 months of a really slow start to the year with little to no interesting releases and only one good movie so-far, I was skeptical going into Thoroughbreds. It was a directorial debut, and the premise based on the trailers seemed to be heavily teetering into melodramatic violent teen movie territory. But it also featured two leads who are some of the best youth actors working today and was the last movie of the late Anton Yelchin, so for me that was enough to give it a try. And hey, not only was I not disappointed by the end result, but I was also thoroughly impressed with its execution.

As I said, one of the main reasons I wanted to watch this movie was the leads, Anya Taylor-Joy has proven to have remarkable talent as an actor with movies like Split and The Witch, and Olivia Cooke showed remarkable comedic talent in underrated gem "Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl". They're playing starkly different characters here, each playing to their great talents. Where Taylor-Joy shines with heavy emotional work, playing a ranged character with lots of complex emotions, Cooke stands out as well as a surprisingly hilarious deadpan comic relief with amazing timing and delivery. It's hard to tell at times how much of it is fully scripted or if some of her lines are ad-libbed simply from how naturally she sells it.

Director Cory Finley has had success in the theatre world prior to this movie, and it really shows in the way this movie is written. The structure into a 4 act story is done exceptionally well, allowing each quarter of the movie to feel fluid and connected without feeling as though I'm having the movie be split up for no reason. The dialogue is also outstanding, as I said before the delivery and emotions from the two leads is great and it works immensely well with the lines they've been given. Snarky, witty dialogue that feels realistic at the same time is my favorite kind of dialogue, back and forth that's engaging on its own even if nothing else is really happening. It's the kind of thing I'd see from Sorkin or Tarantino, and it's really impressive to see this kind of talent from a first timer without it feeling like its leaning heavily on anyone elses style.

And this bleeds into the direction as well, which is even more interesting. Despite his lack of experience Cory Finley displays an impressive amount of knowledge and talent in framing, lighting, colour scheme, and use of negative space. However, this isn't the first time a directorial debut has demonstrated immense talent - just look at Dan Gilroys Nightcrawler. What makes Thoroughbreds especially impressive as a directorial debut however is that it showcases a very original voice and style - something even seasoned directors have difficulty showing. It's very easy and common for a newcomer director to mimic the styles of Ridley Scott or Tarantino - in fact those two being mimicked by newcomers is pretty common - but instead of doing that Cory Finley firmly establishes his own voice in the filmmaking scene, and creates a movie that is fully and in every sense of the word his own.

Final Rating
In a year that so-far has not impressed at all, Thoroughbreds comes in like a bolt of lightening with a fresh new voice in the filmmaking scene. It's funny, it's dark, it's emotional when it needs to be, it has great writing, amazing direction, and two very entertaining lead performances. Thoroughbreds is a movie I would recommend to pretty much everybody, if there's a new release to see this weekend, it's definitely this one.

Mom and Dad Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews

Mom and Dad

So recently I rented the Nicolas Cage thriller 'Mom and Dad', a movie I'd been excited for for some time. Whether you think he's a terrible actor or a full blown genius it's hard to deny that as an actor he never fails to entertain. The premise of Mom and Dad is that there's a subliminal message being broadcasted across America that's causing parents to go nuts and try to kill their kids. It's a morbid concept, but one rife with opportunity for entertainment when the main characters dad is played by Hollywoods madman Nicolas Cage. Unfortunately, and shockingly, the movies entertainment value comes nowhere close to its full potential.

Don't get me wrong here, this is not a boring Nicolas Cage performance. When he's in the movie, he's fun, he's so much fun. It's screaming, erratic, lunatic Nicolas Cage at his most batshit insane, and it's wonderful. What's less wonderful is how little screentime he actually has in this movie. From a director who has delivered fun stupid Nicolas Cage before even if the overall movie wasn't good, it's downright shocking how little Nicolas Cage is in this movie, especially so considering how much he is undoubtedly the best part.

As if that's not bad enough, it really doesn't help that the best word that can be used to describe this horror comedy about parents going kill crazy is boring. It takes an unnecessary amount of time to set things up for the explosive third act when the actual action starts happening, and even once it does start its like the movie is willingly trying to stay away from it at all times after that. Intermittent flashbacks and moments of weird and badly written dialogue distract from the real meat of the movie, and it's unfortunate because had the movie had some focus and structure there could have been something really fun here.

And all of this might all be okay, if not for this movie doing the one thing that anyone who reads this blog knows I hate more than anything - it has a bad ending. If you read this blog regularly, you may know my stance on endings, I think when it comes to movies a good ending or a good third act can be that determining factor that brings my rating up from a 3 to a 4 or even a 5, and the other way around a bad ending can turn even a good movie into garbage. And make no mistake, Mom and Dad is the latter, with what is without a doubt the worst movie ending I'll see in 2018 and possibly the worst ending since 2013's The Call. I doubt the last seconds of this movie could even pass for an ending under any qualifier, since it just kind of stops. Mid-sentence as well, I won't give specifics because of spoilers (although at this point it should be clear this movie isn't getting a recommendation), but the movie just cuts to black in the middle of a sentence of what really should be the third act of the movie. It's really stupid and despite not liking most of the movie up to that point this ending really drove it home for me.

Final Rating
Mom and Dad isn't the worst movie of 2018, but that doesn't mean you should see it. Nicolas Cage is a lot of fun, he's arguably the only reason to watch the movie, and even then it probably won't be long before someone uploads a compilation of his scenes from this movie, so there's nothing to recommend here.

Black Panther Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews

Black Panther

So after 10 years and 18 movies, Marvel seems to be on a solid winning streak with 3 pretty great movies in a row in 2017, and having just seen Black Panther I can confirm they can add a fourth movie to that streak of winners. While The Winter Soldier will always hold that golden spot for me as best of the franchise, Ryan Coogler has made one of the best and most competently made superhero movies in recent memory. While it may suffer from some of the usual problems that MCU movies have, it packs a story thats significantly darker and smarter than the typical superhero movie.

Part of what made The Winter Soldier the best MCU movie is how disconnected it felt from the superhero affair, and felt more like a Metal Gear Solid style espionage thriller. The best examples of the superhero genre are the movies where it feels more like an original story rather than a cookie cutter CGI big superhero fight movie. And where Winter Soldier is an espionage thriller or Ant-Man is a heist movie, Black Panther in both story and style plays more like a James Bond spy movie. Like a Bond movie, its story structure is less world ending galactic conflict and more hypothetical preventative, the big climax being centred around the prevention of what could lead to a world changing conflict rather than the world changing conflict itself. The restraint shown in containing the story to itself rather than making it as big and cosmically important as possible is pretty rare in this genre, and it works really well for this movie. 

While Civil War was on the whole kind of just okay, it did have one standout feature, Chadwick Bosemans scene stealing performance as Black Panther. One of my concerns though was a concern I have a lot of the time a scene stealing supporting character is used as a main character in a follow up. Part of what makes supporting characters great is how they play off the actual conflict of the main characters story, and can't work on their own with their own story. Luckily, this is not such a case, and Chadwick Bosemans performance as well as the character he plays works perfectly for a main character role. Michael B. Jordan is the best actor in this movie as the villain, usually MCU villains are pretty bad, even in the MCU movies I really like, but recently they've done a really great job with their villains. Much like Adrien Tombes this is a significantly more sympathetic and understandable villain than a generic bad guy who does things because he's bad. It's nice to see that recent Marvel movies at least try to make their villains compelling and have motives that we can believe and even to a certain extent understand where they're coming from. If the rule is that the best villains are ones with motivations that are believable and to a certain extent could be argued to carry more weight than the heroes motives than Killmonger definitely fits that description. 

Aside from villains though there is one other problem that for the longest time seemed to have the MCU in a chokehold, and that's tone. With some exceptions most Marvel movies seem to consistently have a problem with balancing how much of the movie they want to be taken seriously and how much they have to have fun with, and I'm not just talking about comic relief, I mean even in the ones I really like such as Spider-Man Homecoming this problem is relevant, scenes that seem to be very serious can be interrupted when the tone shifts suddenly to a more lighthearted comic book vibe, it's really annoying and I'm glad Black Panther is one of the few that doesn't have this issue. Despite still being a comic book movie for the most part it maintains a consistently serious tone, and even though it still has some out of place comedic moments it doesn't ruin the experience. But this comes with two drawbacks that were kind of annoying, mainly how the movie went about comic relief itself. While the serious moments and darker story work really well the humour feels really forced and most of the jokes whenever it tries to make one don't land. I know this movie isn't a comedy but the comedic moments in it really don't work. I'm not even kidding, there's a really cringey outdated meme reference in this movie, despite how much I was enjoying the movie aside from that.

Final Rating
It might have a fair amount of issues, personally I still loved Black Panther, it had some great action, it had great acting, it has one of the best stories in an MCU movie, and it has one of the most interesting main characters in the series. I'd love to see a sequel to this, and I'd definitely like to see where Wakanda and this story goes in Infinity War. Whether you're a fan of this series like I am or you're totally new, Black Panther is worth watching, so definitely check it out.