Author: Ron Shaker

Kayla is about to finish the 8th grade and graduate middle school. Aside from having a lot of acne, her life seems pretty ideal. She’s got the soft-spoken, trying-to-be-hip 30-something single father that any boyfriend’s mother would love to meet. No one’s bullying her for lunch money, nobody’s forcing her to turn tricks, she’s not addicted to drugs (that we know of). We’ve all been in Kayla’s shoes before, living the middle-class dream, hanging out at the mall with friends because there’s simply nothing better to do.

Despite its narrow focus, this film should play well to the masses. The story is set in a very specific time and place, present day western society. It is targeted at white, upper-middle class Americans with a liberal leaning. Even if you didn’t grow up in a place like Bellevue, Washington ($104,839 median family income, circa 2012), and didn’t drive a Porsche or Mercedes to high school, and did have two after-school jobs just to help support your family, you’ll still appreciate director Bo Burnhams’s new invention of “credible cinema”.

Credible cinema doesn’t inflate the importance or likelihood of an event. Kayla doesn’t need to get arrested in the last quarter of the film just to trigger an all-out confrontation followed by the inevitable reconciliation of father and daughter (fade to black; roll credits). Timing and music are used to create crescendos and valleys over a relatively uninteresting, sometimes barren, landscape of what is the 8th grade. Write what you know, that is what they say.

Elise Fisher is perfect for this role, and the role is close to perfectly written. I’m not sure what else to say. It’s like that scene from Defending Your Life where Meryl Streep sits around re-watching heroic moments from her character’s life with the attorneys and judge on the last day of her trial–It’s a no brainer how well this film works.

Except the father. What kind of limp-dicked white yankee hangs out and goes “boo-hoo” with his daughter? That’s probably what the other 46% are wondering, as am I to a certain extent. I know he’s barely a supporting actor role, but give the man some dignity. Why can’t he have some drug or alcohol problem, something the daughter is helping him cope with and things are getting better. Or at least let the dad have flashbacks (of whatever, a construction accident is ok). The father figure in this story has no soul, no depth, … think of him as the smiley-faced computer in Moon.

Tune in next time when I try to define “Uncredible” cinema (example?)

WARNING: This film and its trailers are not meant for the mountain people of Nepal.

Venue: Seattle International Film Festival, 2018
Country: USA
Language: English
Genres: Comedy, Drama

IMDB

An Iranian man takes a jacket and slacks from the closet. They’re not newly cleaned, but carefully maintained, and apparently re-used on a regular basis. He has a serious look on his face that doesn’t waver. He lives in a small room of shared housing and is clearly not well off.

Earlier in the day, we saw the man receive end-of-day payment for an off-the-books moving job. After which, he proceeded directly to a Tabac and wired a large handful of money to some unknown, foregin recipient. He must be an immigrant mailing euros to relatives at home. He’s likely in Denmark on a temporary work visa.

But the man moves with a mission, so there must be more to his story. The evening finds him at a bar on the opposite side of Copenhagen, glad handing the ladies in a race against time to find a sugar momma (woman of Danish citizenship) that will say “Marry me!” and get Danish immigration off his back. But that’s only where complications begin, not a solution.

The film’s somewhat suspenseful. Definitely tense. There’s a little violence. There is lust, and love. Betrayal. The relationships we see (and don’t see) are complicated by invisible forces of marriage, family, disparity, guilt, and political history. My only first-hand experience with marrying for citizenship was a Jordanian student who was lured into a rent-a-fiance scam. Not sure how that turned out, but I do remember him contracting syphilis.

Foreign movies often don’t reach us until a year after they’ve been released elsewhere. I suppose that’s a good thing, not having to wade through the world of mediocre and bad productions. Once, not long ago, I ended up looking at a Russian distribution company’s catalog after seeing another of their films at festival. I recognized none of the catalog’s entries, new or old. Makes me wonder how limited my curated view of potential cinema really is.

Venue: Seattle International Film Festival, 2018
Country: Denmark, Sweden
Language: Danish, Persian
Genres: Drama

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Milad Alami on Vimeo

A long time ago, back in the summer of 1974, I saw my first Star Wars film. We were on a cross-country trip, my parents and I moving from Boston to Seattle, and stopped in Kansas City to visit some of my mom’s relatives. Because nothing says “getting to know you better” than a dark movie theater, a bunch of us ventured out to see this new sci-fi, special effects, fairytale by George Lucas. It was awesome.

Relocated and settled into the Seattle colony a couple of years later, I was distressed to learn that one of my schoolmates had not liked the masterpiece of Star Wars. He had apparently thought it too “childish”. Come to think of it, it was kind of childish. What with the princess and knight and bandits and horses (Banthas are hairy 4-legged mammals ridden by the Tusken Raiders aka Sand People). I was deflated. Not that it mattered much at that point because I’d long since outgrown Star Wars and was now in love with Empire Strikes Back. About once a month, I’d take the Saturday morning bus downtown and stand in line for hours to get the best seats in the house to see Luke get his hand chopped off.

A few years later, when they released the Ewok Adventure, I thought that was the nail in the coffin. A three deal serial is a nice round number, no need to get greedy, there’s plenty of other things for everyone to do with their time. Besides, the Ewoks had sent us over the top in cuteness factor, no one wanted to see any more of that crap. I didn’t need to shell out any more money, I could get on with my life.

And then there was a long pause.

In May of 1999, George Lucas excitedly hobbled back up onto the stage with a franchise reboot. Yes, George foretold all of this from the beginning, but it’s still a reboot. Technology, over the years, had advanced to the state of Jar Jar Binks. “Roger, roger” soldier robots, princesses body-doubles, and a young Yoda. This time, I watched from the sidelines, letting a new generation throw their support under the bus (Jar Jar seemed to be driving afterall). As CGI in live action cinema goes, this was still the pioneering days, albeit ridiculously careless ones. Jar Jar’s people and the droid armies on Alderaan upstage even the great Liam Neason, Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman combined. And the writing for those droids is f___ing atrocious.

Fast forward to today and The Last Jedi (I wish it was, I really do). The dialogue for live action characters is now as bad as that for the droids. Plot locations bounce from quadrant to quadrant with less explanation than ever. I would imagine that the number of filming locations could be reduced too, at least those requiring full cast and crew. Since a large portion of the movie is filmed in front of a green screen, aren’t the humans–sorry, I mean actors–the anomalous artifact at this point? (segue to The Congress).

Mark Hamill is hilarious this time around, that was probably my favorite facet to the film. I feel like he’s playing himself as opposed to the character of Luke. But Mark isn’t on screen much, so we’re left instead with Kylo and Rey who continually manage to butt-dial one another over the Force’s long distance lines at less than opportune moments (really?) Or we could hop a shuttle with Finn and Rose over to the casino planet full of arms dealers, and free a few racing beasts in the process (makes PETA happy). Perhaps illegally park our space ship on the beach and draw lots of unwanted attention from the local authorities? Or we could hang back on the rebel cruiser and listen to Leia drone on about something or other–No one else seems to listen to her, maybe she’ll appreciate the company.

The parade of secondary characters is puzzling. Benicio Del Toro, Laura Dern, and Justin Theroux. Did Theroux even have lines? I know Dern had lines, boy did she have some good ones, like when she dressed down Poe for asking too many questions. I believe she called him a “trigger-happy flyboy”. We started out with “scruffy looking nerf herder” and have somehow found ourselves at a USO dance in 1942. I wonder if Laura’s dance card is full, I’ve yet to compliment her on her dress. Oh, she’s a vice-admiral by the way, just wanted to make that clear, the earrings certainly don’t.

I won’t even touch on the meaning of dislike for Kelly Marie’s character, but it’s out there. I just thought she was poorly written, like all of the other characters.

The franchise now feels like a half-empty marketing vehicle, one with no writers near the wheel, in fact I think Jar Jar may still be driving. Blame yourselves for feeding the beast, and this Hollywood monster that refuses to die. The writing was never very good in this franchise, but the latest installment is that much worse. If this type of film appeals to today’s 12 year olds, I feel sorry for them. There’s a lot of good science fiction available to watch out there. Please don’t take your kids to see this.

Like McDonalds, Star Wars isn’t what it once was. Nothing fresh here, just some reheated meat on a stale bun.

Venue: Netflix streaming
Country: USA
Language: English
Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Sci-fi

IMDB

Does a piece of art need explanation to be understood or appreciated? That’s always been a conundrum for me. Shouldn’t it be up to the artist what they choose to provide and who the target audience is? Do you expect music’s lyrics to be explained in the album’s liner notes, and are you lost or uninterested without an explanation of exactly what a song means?

Frida’s summer in 1993 Catalonia isn’t terribly hard to relate to. Her parents are both recently deceased, early casualties of the AIDS pandemic. Fearful that Frida may have also contracted the virus, nervous relatives wait for test results and consult with physicians. The year is important, as it pinpoints where on the timeline medical research has progressed in combatting a relatively new disease.

But the film isn’t really about AIDS, that’s just part of the backstory and setting. It is the sudden upheaval of Frida’s life, moving to the country, taking up permanent residence with an aunt and uncle, and sharing her new guardians’ attention with a younger cousin that seems most traumatizing. That and an overly attentive grandmother who inadvertently interferes with the orphan’s acclimation to her new surroundings.

There isn’t much dialog to this screenplay. What we learn as an audience is mostly through observation, sometimes just two little girls playing in the dirt and half mumbling to each another. The “Joan Crawford” imitation, dress-up (pictured above) gives us a glimpse into Frida’s impression of her mother. It’s not a very flattering picture, but we at least get the impression she was loved on some level in the past.

It takes everyone a few months of self reflection and adjustment to begin moving forward, perhaps that’s why everything is so quiet in her new home over the summer. Authentic might be the one word that best describes this film. It’s not overly revealing, but focusses on the story’s most important aspects in a way that makes you comfortable with what isn’t said.

And how they got the kids to ignore the camera’s presence, I have no idea.

Venue: Seattle International Film Festival 2018
Country: Spain
Language: Catalan
Genres: Drama

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SIFF
Official Film Website

This was either poetically brutal or brutally poetic. Kyrgyzstan’s countryside is the backdrop for a small band of grifters carrying out what I can only assume is normal everyday life. A small boy, two wives (one old, one new), and a truck-driving-man swindle customers with fake medical remedies.

It feels like it’s every man for himself, but in a civilized, grifter-sort of way. When someone’s stay exceeds their usefulness, they’re gone. When someone slips and falls and cracks their skull, they’re dead. But when someone gets really, really drunk and crashes someone else’s remote control helicopter, there’s an interconnectedness that emerges. It’s a connection of inner child transcending both age and sex, first and second wife, wage earner as well as gambler, grifter and philanthropist alike.

Venue: Seattle International Film Festival, 2018
Country: Russia, Kyrgyzstan
Language: Kirghiz, Russian
Genres: Drama

IMDB

And I especially like this distribution company’s web site here.