7/23/17: The Bad Batch

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2017 films, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Ana Lily Amirpour, cannibals, cinema, cults, dystopian future, film reviews, films, Giovanni Ribisi, Jason Momoa, Jayda FInk, Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, Lyle Vincent, movie reviews, Movies, revenge, romances, spaghetti Westerns, Suki Waterhouse, The Bad Batch, writer-director, Yolonda Ross

Some films have such an impossibly fascinating premise that they demand your attention: writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014), was one of those films. Billed as “the first Iranian vampire film,” this gorgeous, black-and-white homage to everything from John Hughes to Roman Polanski more than lived up to the premise, showcasing a fresh, exciting new voice that promised a truly fascinating career.

For her follow-up, The Bad Batch (2017), Amirpour moves the action from Iran to the badlands of west Texas, hammering down harder on the spaghetti-Western leanings of her debut to craft something that is far more visceral but no less gauzy, in its own way. One thing remains abundantly clear, however: Ana Lily Amirpour is an amazing filmmaker whose craft continues to impress at each new turn.

We find ourselves in a world that’s recognizably ours, yet smeared with a heavy coating of grease and grime: think early Mad Max, pre-Fury Road. “Undesirables” are processed through some vague penal system, dubbed the Bad Batch, tattooed with an identifying number and tossed out into the unforgiving, scorched Texas badlands. Your choices, at that point, are pretty slim: you can try to get to the frontier town of Comfort, led by smarmy New Age guru/Ibiza part host The Dream (Keanu Reeves and one seriously choice mustache) or you can try to avoid being dinner for the roving cannibals known as Bridgers, while surviving on whatever you can eke out of the cracked earth.

Arlen May Johnson (Suki Waterhouse), as it turns out, opts for more of an “all of the above” approach. She gets captured by cannibals, loses an arm and a leg, escapes and makes it to Comfort, only to realize that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. One day, while target shooting in the wastelands outside the town’s walls, Arlen comes upon a pair of cannibals, a mother and daughter, and makes the fateful choice that will put her into direct contact with the formidable Miami Man (Jason Momoa). Arlen will come to learn that when you’re already on the fringes of society, questions of “right” and “wrong” don’t mean much and that people with the least often have the most to lose.

To get the gushing praise out-of-the-way: I really loved The Bad Batch, part and parcel. I’m more than willing to admit that the film isn’t perfect, mind you, but the sheer level of invention on display here should more than gloss over some narrative wheel-spinning or any nitpicking. We need more filmmakers taking risks and this, if nothing else, is one helluva risky film.

Risky, you say? Let’s see…you have a gritty, revenge-oriented, spaghetti-Western, complete with all the stock characters and trappings you would expect. You also, of course, have a Mad Max-style, post-apocalyptic film where people live in junkyards and a messianic guru holds court from atop a giant, neon boom box. Let’s not forget what could arguably be called a traditional, ’50s teen romance where kids from the wrong side of the tracks somehow find true love. Oh, yeah: it’s also got elements straight out of The Hills Have Eyes. Easy sell, right?

As with her debut, however, Amirpour is a natural when it comes to taking all these disparate elements and blending them into a completely organic, believable whole. Although the scale is certainly smaller, The Bad Batch definitely evokes some of the wonder of the Fury Road world: with its cannibalistic body builders, DJ-led cults, baroque prison system and dystopian wastelands, it’s not hard to place this in the same, general universe. I left the film wanting to know more about its world and denizens, always the biggest compliment I can pay any film, especially a stand-alone movie.

From a craft standpoint, The Bad Batch looks and sounds phenomenal. The cinematography, courtesy of Lyle Vincent (who also shot A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night), is simply gorgeous, full of rich wide shots and eye-popping, vibrant colors. The score and sound design make excellent use of songs to highlight scenes, in much the same way as AGWHAAN did, but puts a greater emphasis on sparse arrangements: for much of the film, there’s no score at all and it’s a powerful, well-executed choice.

For her cast, Amirpour collected a pretty diverse group of performers and manages to make the choices look like anything but stunt casting. Suki Waterhouse, equally great in last year’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, is simply superb as Arlen, turning in the kind of kickass turn that would make spiritual forebears like Clint Eastwood proud. Equally great is Jason Momoa, giving us the kind of tragic character that would be exceedingly hard to pull off with so little (largely garbled) dialogue, let alone as a violent cannibal. Keanu Reeves, continuing his latter-day trend of quirky roles, brings the proper amount of genuine pathos and complete sleaze to his cult/town leader role and is never less than magnetic when he’s on-screen.

To that core trio, let’s add a roster that includes: the always incredible Yolonda Ross as Miami Man’s wife, Maria; Jayda Fink, doing a fair amount of heavy-lifting in only her second performance, as the little girl; Jim Carrey, doing some of the best acting of his life, in a completely silent role (and I’m not being snarky, in the slightest); and Giovanni Ribisi, as a possibly prophetic madman. It’s a cast that looks odd, on paper, but plays together beautifully. In a film with plenty of sublime joys, the acting is certainly one of the foremost ones.

When all is said and done, The Bad Batch is an incredibly smart, self-assured experience. The film is about many things – one need only look at the marked contrast between the serious, family-oriented cannibals and the party-hardy, hedonistic townies to know that Amirpour has a few things to say about a few different subjects. From a purely cinematic viewpoint, however, she’s created a completely immersive experience and, as an avid cinephile, that’s something I just don’t get enough.

From the first spoken words, as the Bad Batch are processed, to that final, amazing campfire shot, Amirpour’s sophomore film holds your attention like a bear trap. It’s not always an easy film (shit gets hacked off and there will be blood) but there’s a genuine beauty to the ugliness and grime that’s undeniable. As someone who grew up on films like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, I appreciate that glorious combination of the panoramic shot and the gut shot…the decision of the individual to shrug, say “the hell with it,” and wade back into hell just because…the way that death is an ever-present given but life and love still manage to carve their own paths through the wilderness.

The Bad Batch might not be a perfect film but I’ll be damned if I didn’t feel close to perfect on at least a dozen times while watching it. That’s just about all I need to know, friends and neighbors.

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5/1/16: This Kitten’s Got Claws

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action parodies, action-comedies, Alex Rubens, Anna Faris, buddy films, cinema, co-writers, cute kittens, Darrell Britt-Gibson, drug dealers, film reviews, films, Hot Fuzz, Jamar Malachi Neighbors, Jas Shelton, Jason Mitchell, Jordan Peele, Keanu, Keanu Reeves, Keegan-Michael Key, Key and Peele, kidnapped pets, Luis Guzmán, Method Man, Movies, Nia Long, Peter Atencio, Rob Huebel, Tiffany Haddish, Will Forte

In many cases, you never know quite what you have with a movie until you’ve actually sat down and watched it. Sure, the poster and teaser trailer might have given you some idea of what to expect but there’s almost always that “aha!” moment where all is actually made clear. After all: you know that all of those famous floating heads must be in the film somewhere but what are they actually doing?

Take, for example, the advance poster for Keanu (2016), the inaugural, big-screen starring debut from sketch-comedy mavens Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. One look at the poster would have us believe that the film centers around the terminally mild-mannered duo laying waste to everything around them, all in order to save an adorable kitten in a do-rag. Once you actually get into the film, however, you quickly come to realize that it’s actually about the bumbling duo laying waste to everything around them, all in a desperate attempt to save a kidnapped kitten, who just happens to sport a do-rag for most of the proceedings. Wait a minute…

This, of course, is not only needlessly reductive but downright mean: Keanu might offer up exactly what’s advertised but it does so in such a buoyant, jubilant and bighearted way that you’d have to be a literal monster not to be charmed. Think of this as the goofy, nerdy little brother to Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz (2007), a little brother raised on Nickelodeon shows, ’90s-era bullet ballets like Bad Boys (1995) and Con Air (1997) and enough Mountain Dew to kill a rhino. Silly? Without a doubt. A blast and a half? You know it!

Concept-wise, this loads a bunch of comedy/action tropes into a blender, hits puree and pours out the frothy results for instant audience enjoyment. Our heroes, Clarence (Key) and Rell (Peele), are the kind of meek, vanilla nice guys who make Mr. Rogers look like Max Cady, by contrast. Clarence, an avowed George Michael fanatic, seems completely oblivious to his neighbor, Spencer’s (Rob Huebel, oozing slime like a garden snail) smarmy machinations regarding his wife, Hannah (Nia Long). Rell, for his part, has just suffered a painful breakup and chooses to sooth his inner turmoil with copious amounts of weed purchased from next-door-neighbor Will Forte (doing his best K-Fed impression).

Change comes to the best friends in the form of the ridiculously adorable titular kitten, an escapee from the drug warehouse massacre that opened the film in full-on John Woo mode. Rell falls in love with the little fuzzball when it shows up on his doorstep and instantly finds a reason to not only stop moping around but to fully embrace life again. When the dynamic duo returns home from a movie and finds Rell’s house ransacked and Keanu missing, however, they’ll need to embrace their inner tough guys (well…relatively speaking, at least) and rescue the little guy. Along the way, they’ll tangle with the notorious 17th Street Blips, get dosed with a dangerous new designer drug, stay one step ahead of the lethal Allentown Boys, find love, earn some street cred and prove that nice guys can, in fact, finish first.

From the jump, Keanu is a thoroughly ridiculous, silly and absurd film: make no bones about that. The kicker is that everyone involved is so good-natured and all-in that it’s impossible not to get swept along for the ride. Praise must go to stars Key and Peele, of course, since the whole enterprise would quickly sink without their impeccable timing and genuine sense of camaraderie but the film is full of little touches that prove it’s more than just an extended skit from their show.

Like the aforementioned Hot Fuzz, part of the key to Keanu’s success is that it genuinely likes the moldy old tropes and cliches that it skewers left and right. This isn’t a case of derisively mocking cheesy buddy-action films: this is about pointing out the inherent absurdity of said cliches while simultaneously celebrating them. To that end, we get copious slo-mo gun battles, shell casings falling like snow and assassins so badass that they refuse to die, no matter how many rounds you pump into them. We get the obligatory car chases, tense promises of torture and a pounding soundtrack to highlight all of the gleeful carnage.

The difference, here, is that Key, Peele and their frequent TV collaborators (director Peter Atencio and co-writer Alex Rubens) are smart and skillful enough to weave plenty of surprises and sly commentary into this otherwise familiar tapestry. We get the expected plot point where Rell and Clarence need to impersonate tough guys in order to infiltrate the Blips but the scene pays-off pretty spectacularly when Key’s Clarence mugs so virulently that he becomes a cartoon-version of a gang-banger. Add to this their chosen gang monikers (Techtonic and Shark Tank) and you have a great gag that finds new ways to explore an old concept.

This upending of expectations manifests itself in ways both subtle (notice how the drug-packers in the opening scene are all scantily-clad guys rather than the underwear-clad women that are usually par-for-the-course with this type of thing) and in-your-face (every single bloodthirsty killer in the film appears to be as head-over-heels in love with Keanu as Rell and Clarence are) but it all has the effect of keeping the audience on its toes. Even if we recognize the basic set-up for a joke, chances are the filmmakers will find some way to subvert or modify it.

Despite how thoroughly charming and fun the film ends up being, however, Keanu is certainly not without its share of flaws. 100 minutes is a fairly long time for a silly, breezy comedy and there are plenty of scenes that could have benefited immensely from some judicious editing. In particular, a set-piece that contrasts Rell and Hi-C (Tiffany Haddish) trying to deliver drugs to an upscale party while Clarence waits outside and teaches the Blips to love George Michael starts off great, with plenty of big laughs, but ends up going on forever and becomes something closer to annoying. Call it too much of a good thing but plenty of this could (and should) have ended up on the cutting-room floor.

There are also frequent dead spots in the film, usually at any point that doesn’t feature Key, Peele and the kitten as the main focus. When the trio are together, they’re pretty much unstoppable: Key and Peele have such a natural, unforced chemistry that they handily sell each and every interaction, whether sweetly sentimental or delightfully demented. When it comes to the rest of the cast, however, the results can be a bit more hit-and-miss when they take center-stage: Forte, in particular, is so one-note and stereotypical that he wears out his welcome shortly after his introduction…and this is from someone who thinks he’s one of the best comic actors of this era. Ditto Method Man, whose steely Cheddar (because he played Cheese on The Wire, dontcha know?) never seems like more than a stock character type.

In the end, however, most complaints about this will be more quibbles and nitpicking than anything major: Keanu comes out of the gate with a very specific modus operandi and, if you’re on its wavelength, I’m willing to wager you’ll love it. From the scene where Rell and Clarence roll into slo-mo battle to the tune of George Michael’s “Freedom” to the fist-raising bit where Keanu saves the day, this is a film that knows how to deliver one crowd-pleasing moment after the next. Keanu may not be the most original film out there but there is one claim it can make: it is, without a doubt, the best action-comedy about a kidnapped kitten in a do-rag and tiny gold chain that you will ever see. That, my friends, you can take to the bank.

 

2/10/15: A Badass and His Dog

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action films, Adrianne Palicki, Alfie Allen, Best of 2014, Chad Stahelski, cinema, Clarke Peters, co-directors, David Leitch, dead pets, dead wife, Dean Winters, Derek Kolstad, directorial debut, Edge of Tomorrow, father-son relationships, favorite films, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, hitmen, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, John Wick, Keanu Reeves, Lance Reddick, Michael Nyqvist, Movies, revenge, Russian mobsters, stolen car, stunt performers, The Matrix, The Raid 2, violent films, Willem Dafoe

In a way, you almost have to feel a little sorry for the Russian mobsters in John Wick (2014): all they want to do is steal a guy’s sweet Mustang and kill his adorable puppy…you know, nothing too outrageous or outside the bounds of polite society, especially when you’re rich, crooked and used to getting your way. And how do these unsung heroes get repaid? Why, the ungrateful bastard up and massacres every last one of ’em with extreme prejudice…what a jerk!

As singular of purpose as its titular “boogeyman,” John Wick, the movie, is streamlined, relentless, fearless film-making at its very best. It has but two goals: to kick your ass and melt your fucking face off, not necessarily in that order. It’s the best comic adaptation ever, despite being based on an original screenplay by Derek Kolstad. It’s a flawless, extravagant live version of the Hitman video games, despite having nothing whatsoever to do with that property. It would be the single, greatest action flick of 2014 if it weren’t for Edge of Tomorrow and The Raid 2…even then, it still might be. John Wick is a worthy successor to that other little film that Keanu made once, The Matrix (1999), featuring some unbelievably epic, instantly classic action setpieces. It’s a near flawless bit of filmcraft, equal parts beautiful and brutal, as if Takashi Miike and Nicolas Winding Refn decided to collaborate on an update of old spaghetti Westerns. In other words: John Wick is one helluva movie.

Plot-wise, the film is as streamlined as the mean-spirited ’80s revenge flicks that it draws so much inspiration from: former mob hitman, John Wick (Keanu Reeves), has been out of the “biz” since he met and married the love of his life. After pulling off one last, “impossible” assignment for Russian mob lord Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist, coming off like a fiendish combo of Bond super-villain and Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man in the World”), John is granted “early retirement” and left to enjoy his newly peaceful life. After his beloved wife dies, however, poor John is despondent, left to mope around in the sad wreckage of his lonely lifestyle. In the best spirit of strong, silent heroes, John is inwardly broken, even if he’s outwardly as serene as a still lake.

Relief comes in the form of a posthumous gift from his wife, an adorable, little puppy that comes with the heartfelt request that John “learn to love something else.” He does, of course, and the scenes involving the playful little critter and the gruff former hitman (he gives his new puppy a bowl of cereal, complete with milk, since that’s what he’s having, natch) are impossibly sweet without coming off as overly saccharine. John’s happy and life is good. This, of course, can’t last: we’re not in that kind of a universe. Instead, John ends up running into a group of Russian thugs at the gas station, including Viggo’s worthless, hot-headed, shit-heels of a son, Josef (Alfie Allen). Josef has his eyes on John’s kickass black Mustang (who doesn’t?!) but John’s not looking to sell. After leveling a veiled threat against John, Josef and the others take their leave. The issue, of course, is far from over.

That night, as he lets his puppy out to do its business, John is ambushed by a group of masked intruders, led by Josef. After being knocked unconscious, John wakes to find his beloved puppy murdered and his car missing: his eyes go hard, a placid lake freezing into jagged ice. From that point on, John has only one mission: find and destroy every last person involved with killing his dog. This, of course, doesn’t sit well with Josef’s father: he might think his son is a worthless shit, too, but he’s his worthless shit and he’ll be damned if any “former employee” is going to wear his skin like a pelt. Offering a $2 million reward for John’s head, Viggo sits back, happy to watch the sparks fly. The problem with sparks, of course, is that they often start fires: in no time flat, Viggo is watching his precious, privileged world burn to cinders before his eyes. You see, John Wick is the very personification of Death…and Death is coming for each and every one of them, one bloody, dead body at a time.

And that’s it, folks. Sure, we get introduced to subsidiary characters like Aurelio (John Leguizamo), the faithful chop-shop owner; Marcus (Willem Dafoe), John’s old friend/peer and Ms. Perkins (Adrianne Palicki), the deadpan assassin who shoots first and smirks later. In a nutshell, though, this is Keanu’s movie, through and through. With a sense of physicality and sheer badassitude that’s been sorely missed since the glory days of his performance as Neo, Keanu is a complete force of nature, a dour, lethal, balletic blur of violence who shoots, stabs, bludgeons and mauls his way through a seemingly endless array of heavily armed foes. In the same way that Clint Eastwood was the very personification of violent death in his glory years, so, too, is Keanu’s John Wick: part Man With No Man, part Terminator, all killer, no filler.

As an action film, John Wick is practically peerless, so “next-level” as to be casually groundbreaking. During one amazing setpiece, John fights a never-ending wave of attackers in the foyer of a busy nightclub: the scene is set to a pounding EDM score and everything is so immaculately choreographed and timed that it feels like the world’s most killer music video. As the musical beats collide with the gun shots and bone breaks, the whole thing assumes an organic totality that positively intoxicating. Watching the scene, I experienced the same sort of heady thrill that I got when I was a kid and pounded through Eastwood, Bronson and Bruce Lee films like they were going out of style. Unlike most modern action films, all of the fight sequences in John Wick feel real and impossibly solid: despite the hyper-kinetic flow of the film, there’s nothing headache-inducing about the style, whatsoever. To be honest, I sort of wish that other action filmmakers would study under the apt tutelage of Wick’s dual directors, Chad Stahelski and David Leitch: this, as far as I’m concerned, is how you shoot action/fight sequences.

As for Stahelski and Leitch, suffice to say that I was blown away when I discovered that the filmmakers responsible for this utterly mind-blowing treat were former stuntmen (they worked with Keanu on The Matrix, along with roughly a billion other projects over the last 20 years): aside from some second-unit credits, this was their debut feature. In a word: wow. With credentials like that, it makes sense that the film would be filled with fantastic fight sequences: that’s their bread and butter. The amazing thing about John Wick ends up being how consistently strong the entire film is: certain sequences reminded me of nothing less than Refn’s Drive (2011) and that’s high praise, indeed. The film has a great, evocative look, thanks to Midnight Meat Train (2008) cinematographer Jonathan Sela (Meat Train was another film that looked like a billion bucks) : all cool colors, dusky blues and red neon, John Wick is a real feast for the eyes. Add in a tense, pounding electro score by soundtrack maven/Marilyn Manson bandmate Tayler Bates and you have a film that looks and sounds like the equivalent of a finely tuned, vintage muscle car: the dictionary definition of badass.

If it wasn’t rather obvious from all of the above, let me sum up my feelings on John Wick thusly: I absolutely adored everything about this movie. As someone who feels that Alex Proyas’ The Crow (1994) is pretty much the apex of comic book films (sorry, folks: Keaton’s Batman or bust, for me), John Wick checked off every single item off my “must have” list. Hateful, evil, over-the-top villains? Check. Ruthless, avenging angel hero? Check. Terminally cool production design? Yep. Underlying element of sadness? Gotta have it. Matter-of-fact, unflinching attitude towards violence? Uh huh. Watching John Wick, I felt like I was 10-years-old again: sitting on the edge of my seat, shouting at the screen and throwing my fist in the air every couple of minutes, this was the most fun I’ve had watching a movie in a while.

If you grew up on ’70s, ’80s and ’90s action flicks, you’d be hard pressed to find a better modern representation of said films than John Wick: in every way, the film is an instant classic and deserves its own place in the canon, with the rest of the greats. While I felt that Edge of Tomorrow was a rip-roaring good-time, John Wick is, at heart, much more my type of film. Apparently, the scuttlebutt around the water cooler is that a sequel is already in the works: in this case, the only thing I can say is…bring it on. If Stahelski, Leitch and Keanu have another film like this in them, it runs a very real risk of knocking the earth off its axis: no way I’d miss that!