Thoroughbreds

Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy are remarkable in Cory Finley’s darkly funny, opulent and dryly smart film destined to become a cult classic

thoroughbreds poster“It means I just have to try a little harder to be good.” That’s Amanda in an early line in Thoroughbreds plainly explaining her mental affliction to her old friend Lily. Amanda is without feeling and emotion, though she’s not quite a “sociopath.” She blankly stares into a mirror, tilts her head and flashes a smile. She can turn on a sunny demeanor in an instant, but there’s nothing behind that façade. And yet Lily is trying just as hard to be “good.” We’re all trying.

Cory Finley’s Thoroughbreds examines the effort we exert and the demeanors we put on to appear “normal.” It takes two teen girls, one who feels nothing and one who feels all too much, and examines what a friendship can do to these individuals.

Finley tells his character study via black sense of humor, opulent production design and stirring performances. Thoroughbreds feels like a modern indie take on “Heathers” in a way that makes it destined to become a cult hit. Continue reading “Thoroughbreds”

Green Room

A punk band gets trapped by neo-Nazi skinheads trying to kill them after witnessing a murder.

green-room-poster“Ooh, a conspiracy,” says one of the members of the trapped and tortured punk band in “Green Room.” These kids are so punk that even when they’re being slaughtered one by one, they still have room for sarcasm. But it’s not a conspiracy, “just a clusterfuck.”

“Green Room,” the second film from “Blue Ruin” director Jeremy Saulnier, masterfully arranges conflict, depth and intrigue within a gory and disturbing horror thriller, but it never spirals out of control into something larger than a one-room drama. The movie’s modest proportions make the danger and bloodshed flow all the heavier.

The four members of a Pacific Northwest hardcore punk band called Ain’t Rights are truly living on the edge. The film’s first shots show they’ve quite literally gone offroad, having fallen asleep at the wheel and drifted into a corn field with the engine still running. To get by they’ve mastered siphoning gas out of cars, giving them just enough for beer money and to get to a gig in a college town.

Saulnier has an erratic, invigorating pacing, with the band putting the needle down on a riotous record before immediately cutting away to the hazy morning after. They say in an interview with a local student journalist that they don’t believe in being online, and everything in their life is so makeshift and DIY, they reduce themselves to performing at a Mexican restaurant for nothing but their meals. The film is rife with the language of the punk lifestyle and feels perfectly plugged into the Americana surroundings.

But after that first gig is a bust, they head deeper into the Pacific Northwest backwoods home to a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads. Rather than abide by the rules, they open their set with a song telling everyone to fuck off. A hardened audience member gives them the death stare and spits beer on stage. Their fate is sealed.

The band’s guitarist and arguably most timid, Pat (Anton Yelchin), runs back into the green room to grab his phone, only to witness a woman who has been stabbed to death by the headlining act. The bar’s caretaker (Macon Blair of “Blue Ruin”) locks them and the woman’s friend Amber (Imogen Poots) all into the green room until the police arrive, but really buying time for the skinhead leader Darcy (Patrick Stewart) to calculate a plan to kill them and clean up the mess.

Saulnier manages to keep “Green Room’s” numerous moving parts all bottled up in that tiny room. The slow-burn tension plays out with Stewart’s calming, yet authoritative voice calling to them from the other side of the green room’s locked door. A band member has the bar’s bodyguard in a chokehold on the floor, and with no way out it’s only a matter of time before they allow their punk energy to explode.

Saulnier’s last film “Blue Ruin” was about a would-be-murderer who found himself way over his head, and “Green Room” puts these youngsters in a similarly grizzly spot. On stage they’re hardcore, but Saulnier tests their personalities and their resolve with brutal intensity. And while it would be tempting to label the film as merely a horror survival story and exploitation film, these characters have human vulnerabilities and are forced to make tough choices. Even the skinheads aren’t total monsters. One is forced to put his attack dog to sleep after the band has its way, and in a weirdly touching image, the dog curls up beside its owner to die.

What additionally sets “Green Room” apart from “Blue Ruin” however is how Saulnier has evolved as a filmmaker. That film was as scrappy and do-it-yourself indie as its protagonist. “Green Room” is taut and polished. He escalates the hysterics and violence in convincing ways, starting with Pat’s arm getting mutilated entirely off screen. As the band is forced to retreat back to the green room to still be trapped, their psychological horror goes through the roof, and the bloodshed is there to match it.

“Green Room” is one of the finest movies of the year. It’s disturbing, thrilling and stylish but doesn’t sacrifice its humanity. Now that’s hardcore.

4 stars

Only Lovers Left Alive

Jim Jarmusch’s vampire film is dripping with style, wisdom and wry, ironic humor.

Jim Jarmusch’s “Only Lovers Left Alive” is as much about vampires as “Night on Earth” is about taxi drivers or “Coffee and Cigarettes” is about either of those things. And if characters in Jarmusch films need a better excuse to be layabouts and wear sunglasses indoors, actually being a vampire is about as good of an excuse as any.

Jarmusch’s films exude coolness, and in a time when vampires are particularly in vogue, Jarmusch has found a unique vessel for his stories of mismatched relationships, affinities for the retro and ironic romance. “Only Lovers Left Alive” is dripping with style. It’s a vampire movie full of intrigue but remains mostly plotless without action or special effects. That the entire thing is absolutely magnetic despite it all is part of Jarmusch’s magic.

Jarmusch splits the time between urban Tangiers and an apartment on a notably empty street in Detroit. The film is so chic, so distinctly colored in every moment, it could belong to any time or place, and yet it is remarkably modern. Living abroad is Eve (Tilda Swinton), whose luxurious, golden, flowing robes are centuries old, and yet she still communicates fluently with an iPhone. Her only real companion is another vampire, Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), who confirms for us that he did in fact give his plays to Shakespeare. It’s one of Jarmusch’s wry jokes playing vampires allows him to make, with characters taking credit for Schubert’s symphonies and spending time with Mary Shelley.

Her lover for several centuries is Adam (Tom Hiddleston), living alone in Detroit and making droning, melancholy, underground rock and only leaving the house to bribe a hospital worker for blood. He’s assisted by a helpful and adoring human named Ian (Anton Yelchin), clueless to Adam’s real nature but more than willing to get him rare, vintage guitars and bullets made of a fine wood. Only in a Jim Jarmusch film can the characters have conversations about types of wood and the mechanics of a guitar. It’s odd, tedious conversation, as all of Jarmusch’s films concern, and yet it’s dryly eloquent humor no one does better. Continue reading “Only Lovers Left Alive”

The Beaver

Some stories are flawed on a fundamental level. No matter how well told or performed they are, there are certain things it becomes tough to get past. “The Beaver,” a lovingly directed film by Jodie Foster, falls into this trap. It’s not bad or uninteresting, just problematic.

Walter Black (Mel Gibson) is a hopelessly depressed man. He has no ambition and spends much of his day sleeping. As the CEO of a failing toy company and the distant father of his lonely little boy Henry (Riley Thomas Stewart) and his self-hating teenager Porter (Anton Yelchin), he has no one to look to but his wife Meredith (Foster). But she has given up on him after years of trying to help him come out of his slump and kicks him out of the house.

He drunkenly tries to kill himself, only to be startled by an ugly old hand puppet of a beaver. Walter talks through it with a Scottish accent and assumes this new persona. He convinces his wife it is a therapy procedure and finds his confidence at home and at work through it. Continue reading “The Beaver”