The award-season catch-up continues! Missed many goodies
this year including the following:
Lucky
(USA, 88 min.)
Dir. John Carroll Lynch, Writ. Drago Sumonja, Logan Sparks
Starring: Harry Dean Stanton, David Lynch, Ron Livingston,
Beth Grant
Could Harry Dean Stanton have found a better swan song than Lucky? This offbeat indie isn’t the late
character actor’s final film (that would be the upcoming Frank & Ava), but Lucky
gives Stanton the great lead performance that eluded him throughout his career.
He will forever endure as a legend among character actors for his small but
memorable turns as oddballs, weirdos, and creeps, particularly in the
filmography of David Lynch, and John Carroll Lynch’s extremely Lynchian Lucky is smartly tailored to Stanton’s
wiry frame and zen-like strangeness. It’s a perfect marriage between actor and
character, and an even better endnote to a long career.
Fans of Stanton’s work with Lynch are bound to enjoy the
director’s supporting turn that offers plenty of playful repartee with the
actor, while some plum monologues embrace the endpoint of mortality and the new
journey ahead. Much of Lucky simply
lets Stanton quietly do his thing of staring off into space with offbeat charm.
It’s a bittersweet pleasure to watch him inhabit a character with such lived-in
confidence and coolness.
Lucky is playing in limited release.
The Big Sick
(USA, 120 min.)
Dir. Michael Showalter, Writ.
Kumail Nanjali, Emily V. Gordon
Starring: Kumail Nanjali, Zoe
Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Anupam Kher, Zenobia Shroff
Boy meets girl. Boy like girl.
Girl likes boy. Boy and girl fight. Girl gets sick. Girl goes comatose.
That trajectory isn’t ideal for
any budding relationship, but it fuels the romance of Kumail and Emily in the
sweet rom-com The Big Sick. Silicon Valley’s Kumail Nanjali and The F Word’s Zoe Kazan star as the
ill-fated couple and their problems set in ASAP when they both realize that
Kumail is cast in a remake of Guess Who’s
Coming to Dinner? Simply put, his traditional Pakistani parents (played by
Anupam Kher and Zenobia Shroff) are playing matchmaker with eligible Pakistani
women. Bringing home a white girl would be a source of shame.
The Big Sick finds two great family dynamics in the humour of the
culture wars that surround Kumail’s family table, while Emily’s parents (a heartbreaking Holly Hunter
and a surprisingly good Ray Romano) are guarded and equally quirky, but eager
to see the best for their daughter as she clings to life in hospital. Nanjali’s
rapport with Romano and especially Hunter gives The Big Sick its best moments. The strongest relationship is the
chemistry with the young man and his could-have-been-in-laws, rather than the
rapport between Nanjali and Kazan (whose character is awfully hard to like),
and there is something strangely satisfying about a rom-com that reminds us of
the great importance of familial love. Like most comedies with Judd Apatow’s
stamp on them, The Big Sick runs on
far too long (it could be a greater film at 100 minutes) and features a lot of
on-the-nose stand-up comedy routines in which characters express true feelings
and show their vulnerability but director Michael Showalter plays it all with
down-to-earth authenticity that makes the relationships feel real. Take two
Golden Globe nominations and call us in the morning.
Birdshot
(Philippines, 116 min.)
Dir. Mikhail Red, Writ. Mikhail
Red, Rae Red
Starring: Mary Joy Apostol, Arnold
Reyes, John Arcilla, Ku Aquino
Experience an unnerving and
violent coming of age story in Birdshot.
Birdshot, the official Oscar submission
for Best Foreign Language Film from the Philippines, is a dense and gritty
father-daughter saga coupled with an explosive allegory of police corruption.
On one hand, it’s a coming of age tale for a young girl named Maya (impressive
newcomer Mary Joy Apostol) as she learns the ropes in the wilderness alongside
her father (Ku Aquino). On the other hand, it’s a story of descent for earnest
and well-to-do rookie cop Domingo (Arnold Reyes) as he learns the all-consuming
elements of vice within the legal system.
Things go wrong for both Maya and
Domingo (and everyone who crosses both their paths) within the same proximity.
Maya’s dad is teaching her how to use a shotgun, and her restlessness with her
poor aim inspires her to go practice on some birds in the woods. She pegs one. It’s
an endangered and protected Philippine Eagle. In a conservation area. Oh my.
A dead bird doesn’t seem like that
big a deal, however, since Domingo and his partner are investigating the
strange case of a bus full of migrant workers that disappeared and resurfaced—empty—in
Maya’s neck of the woods. However strange and suspect Domingo finds the case,
and he really seems to be sniffing the trail of something sinister, his
superiors insist that this matter with the eagle is of greater importance.
Their fates align and violence explodes on the family farm as Maya becomes
empowered by this test of endurance while Domingo becomes undone by his weak
spirit, and the loss of innocence brings Birdshot
to a bleak bloodbath of a finale. Exquisitely shot and paced with brooding and
thoughtful rigour, this meditative thriller exists in a world where everything
gets corrupted. It’s an unnerving moral fable.