So many movies, so little time.
Get Out
(USA, 104 min.)
Written and directed Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener,
Bradley Whitford, Lakeith Stanfield, Betty Gabriel, LilRey Howrey
Sink into the floor and fall into the wild, strange world of
Get Out. This brilliant and
spectacularly entertaining film from writer/director Jordan Peele offers a
visionary entry into the world of horror. Get
Out is a chillingly satirical commentary on race relations in America as
young Black man Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) goes away to meet the parents of his seemingly
sweet white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams). Chris worries that Rose’s
parents don’t know their daughter is bringing a Black man—gasp, her first!—home
for the weekend, and nervously considers the tense two days ahead.
Get Out is Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? reimagined for the era of “America First” politics. Rose’s parents, played by Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford, live in a stately all-white suburban neighbourhood decorated with pleasant niceties and casual racism. Their servants, black people who act like 90-year-old white folks, give off super creepy vibes and Chris soon realises that Rose’s family isn’t as perfect as it appears.
Peele constantly keeps the audience guessing and on their
feet as Get Out oscillates between
moments of unbearable tension, wicked horror, and shocking social commentary.
Kaluuya gives an engaging performance as the likable young buck turned
unwilling victim, while Keener all but steals the film in her small but
bone-chilling performance as Rose’s mother who orchestrates the family’s
deception through carefully calculated control. The scariest thing about Get Out is just how plausible it is, for
even if the action of the Armitages is farfetched, the politics, attitudes, and
motivations behind their crimes, are unnervingly on point.
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
(USA, 112 min.)
Written and directed by Noah Baumback
Starring: Adam Sandler, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Ben
Stiller, Grace van Patten, Elizabeth Marvel
Oh, my goodness. The
Meyerowitz Stories just doesn’t stop talking. Even a die-hard Noah Baumbach
fan will struggle through this chatty ensemble film that blabbers incessantly nearly
two hours. This Netflix original film is best viewed in the comfort of one’s
own home where escape is just a remote control away. However, watching the
vignettes unfold to reveal the story of the Meyerowitz family dynasty, one can’t
be bothered to care about any of these whiny people. It doesn’t help, either,
that Baumbach plays this motor-mouthed film with manic energy in which even
great actors like Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson struggle to give weight and
meaning to their characters’ vapid and trivial rantings. This film is
absolutely insufferable. We already have to suffer through the trials and
tribulations of our own relatives, so why bother with this petty and
self-absorbed clan?
Marjorie Prime
(USA, 99 min.)
Written and directed by Michael Almereyda
Starring: Lois Smith, Jon Hamm, Geena Davis, Tim Robbins
Somewhat in the same spirit of The Meyerowitz Stories, Marjorie
Prime is undone by the fact that it just doesn’t shut up. Good science fiction
is often a matter of “showing” versus “telling,” and this stage to screen adaptation
doesn’t leave much to the imagination as its characters sit there and voice all
the Big Ideas it has to offer. There’s actually a great premise and an
outstanding cast here to do the heavy lifting, but as Marjorie Prime dives into its story of a family wrought with grief
and puts the viewer in a household in which departed loved ones are replaced by
holographic likenesses of parents and children, it reveals too much too
quickly. Perhaps it simply works better as a play if a quartet of actors as
strong as Geena Davis, Jon Hamm, Tim Robbins, and an especially effective Lois
Smith are going to sit around and contemplate death and grief, but as a work
transported to a visual medium, Marjorie
Prime needs a greater sense of absence. Unlike The Meyerowitz Stories, however, you won’t be wishing everyone in
this family were dead.
