Movie review by Greg Carlson

Well-deserved praise for writer-director Amy Seimetz’s efficient and provocative “She Dies Tomorrow” almost inevitably points to the film’s eerie timeliness as a metaphor for pandemic-inspired malaise and disequilibrium. More interesting, however, is the split among observers who interpret Seimetz’s intended tone in different ways. Some claim the movie is hilarious, others see it as terrifying, and another faction argues that it is tragic. Of course, it’s entirely possible for the story to encompass all those descriptions and then some, but individual reactions to the filmmaker’s carefully calibrated vision will vary. For my money, that’s a positive thing.

The movie’s central rhetorical device manifests as a kind of highly contagious, virally-spread sense or premonition of impending death. Passed from one hapless victim to the next in a manner reminiscent of the linked-chain transmission in David Robert Mitchell’s “It Follows,” “She Dies Tomorrow” trades Mitchell’s sexual panic for a more disquieting and interpersonal apocalypse. We come to understand the nature of the “disease” through Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), an alcoholic who, certain her life is going to end the following day, calls her friend Jane (Jane Adams) to share the bad news.

Confused, concerned, and more than a bit annoyed at what she perceives is Amy experiencing a relapse, Jane does her best to offer some comfort. But Jane soon falls prey to the same strobing colored lights and pulsating sounds that signal the advent of next-day mortality. Jane attends her sister-in-law’s birthday party and infects the guests. And so on. In the film’s press notes, Seimetz writes about the film’s origin: “I was dealing with my own personal anxiety and found I was spreading my panic to other people by talking about it perhaps too excessively – while simultaneously watching a ton of news and watching mass anxiety spreading on the right and left politically.” It’s a grim coincidence that the movie’s eventual release lined up with COVID-19.

Even though Seimetz’s “ideological contagion” might have its roots in coping strategies for depression and a range of mental health issues, the director works wonders imagining how we might react if we knew we only had a few hours to live. The vignettes, which swing from poignant to bleakly comic, are among the movie’s highlights. Especially noteworthy is the droll, deadpan, and beautifully underplayed relationship between Brian (Tunde Adebimpe) and Tilly (Jennifer Kim). Their hard truths surrounding a striking, even shocking, hospital scene exemplify the gallows humor to such an extent we wish we could spend more time with the doomed duo.

The movie’s modest budget — reportedly covered by Seimetz’s “Pet Sematary” earnings —  is an asset; domestic spaces are vividly photographed  (Seimetz used her own home and yard as a key location) and situated for maximum impact. “She Dies Tomorrow” lacks the impact of “Melancholia,” but even though Seimetz’s film has been frequently compared to von Trier’s, there is a crucial distinction to be made: “She Dies Tomorrow” elects not to confirm whether the characters will, in fact, meet untimely ends. Instead, Seimetz ponders whether predictability or unpredictability would govern our choices and actions when the clock is running. Her answer? It’s personal.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Charlie Kaufman, the unfairly talented and imaginative cinematic magician whose screenplays and films have explored the realms of art, artifice, and identity over the course of a dizzying career, lifts the curtain on another masterful storytelling exercise. “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is based on Iain Reid’s 2016 novel, but like the hall-of-mirrors treatment Kaufman gave to “The Orchid Thief” in “Adaptation,” the source material is twisted in several significant ways. What results is one of the most rewarding and satisfying movies of 2020, a year in which film lovers have come to expect the unexpected.

Jessie Buckley narrates as Lucy — or Lucia, or Louisa, or Amy/Ames; we can’t entirely be sure. She is a young woman with a protean range of occupations that encompass painting and poetry and physics and scholarship and food-serving. Lucy’s inability to grasp the contours of her relationship with Jake (Jesse Plemons) are all the more troubling as he appears to be able to hear her thoughts during their snowy road trip to visit the farm where he grew up. Point of view and selfhood have assumed for Kaufman a place of great consequence from “Being John Malkovich” to “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” to “Anomalisa,” and “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is a remarkable extension.

Once Lucy and Jake arrive at the farmhouse, Kaufman turns the duet into a quartet, adding Jake’s parents — Toni Collette and David Thewlis, both hilarious and heartbreaking — to an unfolding weirdness exacerbated by the shifting ages of mother and father. Not since David Lynch’s unforgettable meet-the-parents dinner scene in “Eraserhead” has a filmmaker so vividly rendered the awkwardness and anxiety of making a good first impression. One could offer an argument that the influence of Lynch, particularly in Kaufman’s comfortable mix of horror, humor, dream-states and surrealism, is the lodestar of “I’m Thinking of Ending Things.”

When contemplating the work of Kaufman, it should go without saying that a spoiler-free viewing beats anything a critic or reviewer might have to say. Even so, the literary, theatrical, and cinematic allusions rain so thick and so fast, it would take a special kind of savant to identify all the layers of references and homages. Au courant recognition of the durability of “Oklahoma!” (which recently reported for duty in Damon Lindelof’s “Watchmen” series) joins a long list that includes the wide-ranging echoes and quotations of William Wordsworth, Guy Debord, Eva H. D., Ralph Albert Blakelock, David Foster Wallace, Anna Kavan, Frank Loesser, and Pauline Kael, to name a few.

The raspberries of Gena Rowlands’ Mabel Longhetti mingle with Kael’s bruising 1974 New Yorker review of “A Woman Under the Influence” in one of the movie’s many wonderfully eccentric scenes. Buckley performs both in a tour-de-force consideration of the “Misogynist! Genius!” dispute laid out in Le Tigre’s “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” The theme comes into even sharper focus when Kaufman steers us to the rural high school that will serve as the setting for the movie’s brain-melting finale, which, among other things, includes a mashup of “Wild Strawberries” and “A Beautiful Mind.”

Outside the school, Jake leaves the vehicle and Lucy says to herself, “It’s hard to say no. I was never taught that. It’s easier just to say yes. Anyway, sometimes you’re just caught off guard. And the request comes, can I have your number? And the easiest way out of it is just to say yes and then that yes turns into more yes, and then it’s yes, yes, yes.” Lucy’s agency and her frustration with the extraordinary demands placed on women resonate, especially given Kaufman’s decision to deliberately avoid springing what could be construed as a kind of twist or device. What we are instead invited to discover about the real and the imagined is a joy and a gift.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Director Arthur Jones makes his auspicious feature debut with “Feels Good Man,” an engrossing and timely documentary that examines the phenomenon of artist Matt Furie’s Pepe the Frog. Created by Furie in 2005 for the comic “Boy’s Club,” Pepe’s now iconic visage morphed into a surprisingly durable meme — made all the more confusing and controversial when internet trolls and supporters of the alt-right nationalist movement adopted and appropriated Pepe as a symbol of white supremacist hate. Pepe’s transformation ramped up during the 2016 presidential election, when candidate Donald Trump retweeted a mash-up of himself as Pepe.

While Jones’ film will appeal directly to anyone with an interest in media, intellectual property, and the labyrinth of web-fueled culture wars, the onscreen presence and participation of Furie grounds the movie as a deeply human story. Once the most vocal 4chan users twisted Pepe for their own ugly agenda, Furie was faced with the challenge that sits at the heart of the film: give up, overwhelmed by the seemingly Sisyphean task of reclaiming his character, or devote himself to the legal and intellectual battle to take back Pepe.

Jones tackles mountains of bizarre Pepe-related incidents on Furie’s exhausting odyssey, and the way in which they accumulate transforms “Feels Good Man” into a time capsule irrevocably linking Trump’s covert and overt support of the far-right through the originally innocent amphibian. As a consequence of his crossover into the mainstream, and recognition by “normies” and celebrities like Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj, Pepe is dragged to the dark side, relentlessly depicted as a swastika-adorned Nazi and worse.

Jones stacks up numerous examples of the injustices suffered by Furie after Pepe was stolen. Extremist Richard Spencer is punched in the head on-camera just as he was explaining his Pepe the Frog lapel pin. “The Adventures of Pepe and Pede,” an Islamophobic publication presented in the style of a children’s picture book, incenses Furie, who successfully files suit. Furie also takes on malignant InfoWars prevaricator and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who sold posters that included Pepe among a constellation of Trump-world figures.

“Feels Good Man” earned Arthur Jones a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and the moviemaker’s narrative instincts serve the film. Jones has a background in animation and motion graphics, and one of the most uplifting aspects of “Feels Good Man” is the use of colorful animated sequences featuring, as Furie describes them, the “chill” Pepe, “party animal” Landwolf, “wise guy” Andy, and “fashionable dancer” Brett. The psychedelic phantasmagoria of the anthropomorphic Boy’s Club quartet presents the most convincing argument for the future of Pepe, Hong Kong protest scenes notwithstanding.

The manipulation of popular characters outside the control of original creators has existed for hundreds of years, but what makes “Feels Good Man” especially significant is the entanglement with “fake news” during the era of Trump, who so easily denies affiliation with fascists while winking otherwise. Some viewers might take issue with Furie’s failure to immediately set up the necessary legal protections that might have prevented some of his later copyright infringement despair, but the portrait of determination that builds during the course of the film, abetted by Furie’s live-and-let-live stoner persona, is an overwhelmingly sympathetic one.

“Feels Good Man” will be available on demand starting September 4, 2020.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Peter Medak, the veteran filmmaker who met with early career success directing Peter O’Toole in “The Ruling Class,” puts together a fascinating cautionary tale in “The Ghost of Peter Sellers.” Haunted for more than four decades by the catastrophic disaster of his ill-fated relationship with the legendary comic genius, Medak revisits the painful memories of his “collaboration” with Sellers on the DOA feature “Ghost in the Noonday Sun.” Approaching 80 when he decided to exorcise his demons, Medak tracks down the surviving participants of the debacle. The story that emerges — part apology, part accusation, all therapy — is essential viewing for cinephiles and Sellers fans.

Medak was hand-picked by the mercurial star to take the helm of “Ghost in the Noonday Sun,” a pirate comedy loosely based on Sid Fleischman’s 1965 book for young people. And almost immediately, the 1973 shoot was plagued by Sellers’ idiosyncratic behavior and bottomless unprofessionalism. Medak, who accesses a wealth of files including budgets, logs, scripts, still photos, behind-the-scenes footage, and clips from “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” itself, recounts one jaw-dropping anecdote after another. Sellers’ lack of interest in the role he was to play was so poisonous, he reportedly didn’t bother to read the screenplay.

When Sellers arrives at the location in Greece, he won’t enter his rental quarters until an assistant sets up the stereo system and puts on a certain record. Not long after, Sellers more or less entirely fakes a heart attack and sneaks out of the local hospital and back to London. An apoplectic Medak discovers the deception when he sees a photo of his star out to dinner with Princess Margaret. Sellers falls out with pal/co-star Tony Franciosa and refuses to appear in the same frame with him, forcing Medak to restructure all their scenes. Sellers manipulates Medak, cajoling him into shooting a Benson and Hedges cigarette commercial — even as the actor reportedly represents the anti-smoking league.

In one of the many on-camera interview sessions, Medak says, “I want to kill people, but they’re all dead.” We understand he primarily means Sellers, but there is enough blame to go around. Medak’s talking-head interviews, often touching and poignant, remind us that the inevitable creep of time slows even the most vital lions. Lessons from the late producer John Heyman are particularly illuminating in this regard. But the visual spark of Medak’s film jumps out at us whenever we see the charismatic Sellers. And the funny thing is, Medak refuses to throw the man under the bus, recognizing that Sellers was positively sui generis.

“The Ghost of Peter Sellers” can be added to the shelf containing worthwhile movies about movies that didn’t turn out the way they were originally envisioned. “Burden of Dreams,” “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” “American Movie,” “Overnight,” “Lost in La Mancha” “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau,” “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead,” and a number of others could make up the screening list on a syllabus for “Abandon Hope 101: Filmmaking as Folly.” If failure is the greatest teacher, then Peter Medak has earned his doctorate.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The line is repeated so often that it does an instant, sexist disservice to the band’s greatness: The Go-Go’s were the first group composed entirely of women who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to climb to the top of the charts. And the next cold fact, cited more than once in Alison Ellwood’s new documentary on the group, rings with the subtext that no matter how good they were, in an industry dominated by men, misogyny, and the gatekeeping of the patriarchy, the band members continue to be judged by their gender: The Go-Go’s have not (yet) been added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ellwood’s film, now on Showtime following a January premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, makes the case for their inclusion.

Presented with straightforward diligence, “The Go-Go’s” moves confidently through a chronological account of pop and rock’s oldest plot. The exegesis of the rise-and-fall arc, however, comes courtesy of the participants themselves. All five members of the key lineup — Charlotte Caffey, Belinda Carlisle, Gina Schock, Kathy Valentine and Jane Wiedlin — contribute candid and heartfelt onscreen commentary. So much of what they have to say vibrates with raw, emotional power, you might think they broke up yesterday rather than in the mid-1980s.

One of the very best aspects of Ellwood’s storytelling is the extent to which the movie takes us from the intensity of the Los Angeles punk scene of the late 1970s to the glossy clips and colorful magazine cover shoots of the early MTV era, when the band reached an undreamed-of popular zenith. Fans new and old will appreciate learning more about the group’s punk bona fides. In both realms, “The Go-Go’s” boasts a treasure chest full of archival content in all shapes and sizes, and the imagery almost always complements the anecdotes told by the subjects with delightful detail. As Glen Weldon has pointed out, “the film’s determination to show its work is striking.”

And along with the sights, Ellwood curates just the right sounds. For viewers of a certain age, especially the ones who wore out our records and cassettes of “Beauty and the Beat,” “Vacation,” and “Talk Show,” the durable songcraft contained within the grooves of one of modern recorded music’s most infectious one-two combinations could sustain its own separate documentary (or at least a thorough track-by-track examination and breakdown in cult favorite series “Classic Albums”). Both “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips Our Sealed” continue to live as electrifying Mount Olympus earworms, and when the film turns its attention to their origin stories, you might feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

Several valuable and eloquent guests stop by, including manager Ginger Canzoneri, Miles and Stewart Copeland, Lee Thompson of Madness, and Lynval Golding of the Specials. The most riveting revelations, however, are the ones recounted by the Go-Go’s. The movie is very funny — Ellwood has even claimed that an early cut was “too funny” — and Schock might just be the most hysterical storyteller of the bunch. But alongside the humor is plenty of heart, and viewers might be surprised to find themselves blinking back a few tears when the women share the depth of sorrow, pain, and frustration caused by the demons of drugs, ego, and money.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Jeffrey McHale’s “You Don’t Nomi” lines up a colorful gallery of defenders and detractors ready to reflect on the serpentine journey of Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 spectacle “Showgirls.” Contemplating the movie’s gradual redemption as a kind of cult trash masterpiece balanced on the wire between self-aware satire and so-bad-it’s-good embarrassment, McHale has made a potent film essay investigating the boundaries of camp, reception, and artistic intention. No matter how one feels about the NC-17 Las Vegas odyssey of Elizabeth Berkley’s Nomi Malone, McHale’s feature is a thoughtful consideration of the multitudinous ways that some popular texts take on new and unexpected life long after their original theatrical engagements.

After viewing the documentary, I shared some thoughts with my friend and fellow cinephile Dan Hassoun. He noted that the movie “nails that sense of being awed/horrified/fascinated by something all at once, which is rare for a labor-of-love fan film to acknowledge,” and observed “how the film operates as both an auteurist exploration of Verhoeven while at the same time allowing for an anti-auteurist sense of how reception evolves past the intentions of the director.”

Packed with archival goodies that include time-capsule news media clips (featuring some great pearl-clutching, finger-wagging, and eye-winking from several recognizable presenters) and enough footage from Verhoeven’s own oeuvre to test the limits of fair use, McHale skips talking heads for all of his new interviews. It’s a good choice, as our eyes remain glued to the many scenes being deconstructed by deeply invested cinephiles like “It Doesn’t Suck: Showgirls” author Adam Nayman and writer David Schmader, whose hilarious and heartfelt scrutiny at “live annotated” screenings led to an MGM invitation to record a special edition DVD commentary.

McHale covers a lot of ground and sprinkles a lot of catnip. In one delectable sequence Jeffrey Sconce talks about Jack Smith’s adoration of Maria Montez’s total commitment in “Cobra Woman,” comparing it to the “hysterical energy” of Berkley. In another, “Showgirls” is anointed as the third jewel in a triple crown that includes “Valley of the Dolls” and “Mommie Dearest.” Drag performer Peaches Christ explains the participatory thrill of the midnight movie phenomenon and April Kidwell speaks candidly about her own intense identification with the star of “Showgirls.”

I was taken with the film’s comfortable attitude toward the complexity and ambiguity of work that can support and sustain such wildly opposite readings. Several times, McHale juxtaposes voices in sharp contrast with one another: “Showgirls” as pedestrian and mainstream versus “Showgirls” as rare and on the edge. Haley Mlotek’s compelling claims that Verhoeven is a misogynist abusing his position of power as a white male clash with Susan Wlosczyna’s opinion that Verhoeven is a filmmaker who “gets women” and doesn’t view them as “fragile creatures who need saving.”

Whether it is possible for him to be both manifests in the rise-and-fall trajectory of Elizabeth Berkley, the “Saved by the Bell” performer whose career was thoroughly dismantled by the failure of “Showgirls.” Much time is spent on Berkley’s performance, and McHale reminds us that the exaggerated emotional pitch of Nomi owes as much to the dialogue written by Joe Eszterhas and the precise demands and instructions of Verhoeven as it does to Berkley’s own choices. The one thing upon which it seems all agree is that Berkley got a very raw deal that she did not deserve.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Natalie Erika James delivers a strong directorial debut with “Relic,” another Sundance 2020 world premiere now available on demand. Working from a screenplay she co-wrote with Christian White, James thoughtfully explores mother-daughter relationships, the icy grip of dementia, and the inevitability of human mortality. Situating her core themes within the corner of art-house horror often identified as the slow-burn variety, James mostly skips the jump scares in favor of creeping dread and layered metaphor. Some of the resulting ambiguity might disappoint viewers seeking either concrete, logical explanation or deeper, world-building mythology, but the three central performers more than make up for any significant shortcomings.

Kay (Emily Mortimer) and her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) visit the home of Kay’s mother Edna (Robyn Nevin) — some distance from Melbourne — when alerted to Edna’s strange disappearance. A prologue suggests Edna might be experiencing some kind of supernatural intruder, but James also supports the simpler possibility that Edna, now in her 80s, has reached a point where she can no longer take care of herself. Her otherwise well-appointed and spacious cottage will soon take on a sinister life of its own, but when Kay and Sam arrive, they are greeted by rotting fruit and several handwritten sticky-notes with Edna’s reminders to flush, turn off the tap, and take her pills. A more sinister one reads “Don’t follow it.”

Local authorities help Kay and Sam comb the surrounding woods. Not long after the search begins, Edna inexplicably shows up back in her own kitchen. She greets Kay with a nonchalance that strongly supports the theory that she became disoriented and wandered off, but the large and nasty bruise on her chest is harder to explain. Nevin, a veteran stage performer and director, fills Edna with all sorts of traits recognizable to families who have dealt with dementia, aging, and end-of-life care. On a good day, Edna showers her granddaughter with love. On a bad one, she calls Sam a thief, demanding the return of a ring she forgot she had just given.

As the events of “Relic”unfold, James entertains a few key subplots. In one, a rustic cabin on the family property appears to hold the secrets of Edna’s troubling behavior. In another, an incident involving the son of Edna’s neighbor leads Sam on a deeper investigation inside her grandma’s house. I like the way in which James handles the dualities of internal/external as a parallel to the lucid/foggy divisions in Edna’s personality. The gradual transformation of “Relic” into a haunted house movie begins with classic tropes, like the vibrating washer and dryer recalling similar appliance behavior in Peter Strickland’s wonderful “In Fabric.” Soon enough, it escalates to the unnerving architectural impossibilities, loops, and Mobius strips explored by Stanley Kubrick during his visit to the Overlook Hotel.

At first glance, the house-as-trap works in conjunction with the abundant symbols of decay. Together, the twin motifs grow and spread and reach toward a climax that balances revulsion with empathy. Reminiscent of an astonishing scene in Jonathan Glazer’s brilliant “Under the Skin,” James’ gutsy move is as emotionally stirring as it is unpleasant. As a memento mori, it shares something in common with Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” another movie, albeit one of a different genre, worried and concerned by what happens to us at the end.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Both Jim Jarmusch’s contemporary classic “Dead Man” and Kelly Reichardt’s newly released “First Cow” open with cosmic epigraphs. The former uses Henri Michaux’s idiosyncratic line, “It is preferable not to travel with a dead man.” The latter begins with “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship,” from William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell.” Reichardt’s choice of Blake, along with the presence of Gary Farmer in a small but key role, pays homage to Jarmusch’s Acid Western. “First Cow” will rhyme and echo with that great movie in several other pleasing ways, but perhaps the most prominent yoke is the mutual investigation of close male friendship and love.

Farmer was Nobody to Johnny Depp’s William Blake, and in “First Cow,” a parallel connection develops between Orion Lee’s King Lu, first seen naked and on the run, and John Magaro’s Otis “Cookie” Figowitz, a one-time baker’s apprentice from Maryland now seeking his fortune in the Pacific Northwest of the 1820s. “Dead Man” marked accountant Blake’s westward journey as a mortal metaphor; Nobody shepherds Blake in the direction of a sea canoe that will bear his friend out of this world and into the next. Cookie and King Lu, like Nobody and Blake, will come together again following a separation, and may also remain together until death parts them.

While the intertextual references to “Dead Man” are more plentiful and prominent, Reichardt’s cast is also joined by the late, great René Auberjonois in one of his final screen appearances. The lucky-charm presence of the frequent Robert Altman ensemble member calls to mind “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” another frontier film in which the veil between life and death, happiness and despair, and love and loneliness is delicate and gossamer. Reichardt, sharing screenplay credit with longtime writing collaborator Jon Raymond for this loose adaptation of Raymond’s first novel “The Half-Life,” builds a world as rich and unique as the ones imagined by Jarmusch and Altman.

Behold the elegance and oft-cited aesthetic minimalism with which Reichardt unfolds so many thoughts and ideas about race, representation, and gender. Like “Old Joy,” “Meek’s Cutoff” and so many of her other films, “First Cow” addresses feminism and femininity in ways both inspired and insightful — the title milk source happens to be this particular story’s most prominent female. A territorial pioneer who has survived a journey that claimed her mate and her offspring, the brown-eyed marvel produces the secret ingredient procured illegally in the dead of night by King Lu and Cookie. Her gift will launch the entrepreneurs.

The two protagonists are partners in crime, partners in business, partners in dreams, and partners in life. The explosive popularity of Cookie’s delicious oily cakes means they are often sold right back to the very Chief Factor (Toby Jones) from whom the milk is stolen. Reichardt laces the film with an exquisite and ever-building tension revolving around the potential discovery of the scheme. Appreciative viewers will recognize familiar precedents for our duo: Ishmael and Queequeg, Huck and Jim, Bromden and McMurphy. Like those unlikely partnerships, the union of Cookie and King Lu is a special bond certain to please the discerning and the patient.