IN THEATRES: Crawl

While a Category 5 hurricane rages outside, a young woman attempts to protect her father from a pack of hungry alligators who have taken over their flooded neighbourhood.

Watching Crawl, it felt like I was watching a cinematic rebuttal of last year's The Meg: small-scale where The Meg sprawled; deadly earnest where The Meg coated everything in faux irony; and more brutal in showing the danger its scaly antagonists pose.

Directed by French horror alum Alexandre Aja (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes remake), Crawl is my kind of genre flick: a simple concept; a claustrophobic location; and most importantly, a willingness to put its main characters through absolute hell.

It is such a perfect example of this kind of small-scale genre filmmaking that - if it were not for the CG gators - I would have thought this was a b-thriller from the 70s or 80s. 

The main characters (played by Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper) are straightforward, and their conflict -resolved in a key moment before the climax - somewhat predictable. But that is part of the fun.

To give the movie some more juice, we get a couple boatloads of minor characters to give the gators a bodycount. 

The creature effects are pretty good - the gore looks mostly practical and Aja keeps the CG monsters in the shadows and under the water, which gives them more weight. 

Setting most of the movie in the house's flooded basement is a brilliant decision that adds to the movie on a couple levels: one, it traps our heroes, two, it gives the movie ticking clock as the flood waters from the storm slowly rise. Finally, it helps to hide the CG monsters with shadows and under the water. If this movie took place in daylight, the effects would look terrible. Aja does not hang the entire affect of his movie on them, and gives the creatures more weight.

If I have one criticism, it's around injuries. Our heroine gets bitten a couple of times, but after the first injury there is little affect to her ability to perform physical tasks. I watched this movie after taking a pretty bad tumble down some concrete stairs and I was walking like an old man for a couple days. I will chalk it up to adrenaline, but it did start feel a little repetitive. 

One thing I did not expect, was how the movie re-wrote a familiar character turn: as somebody who watches a lot of action and disaster movies, one character turn that always turns up is the dad no-one respects who ends up proving to be totally right and accepted by his family at the end. Instead, the big turn here is Dave (Pepper) telling Haley (Scodelario) that his marital split was not her fault, they just don't love each other any more. He even says his wife did nothing wrong and deserves to be happy with her new partner. It is a small moment, but in a movie that is enjoyably cookie cutter, a welcome swerve.

Crawl has not been dealt the best cards at the box office. It will probably become a streaming perennial, but if you - like me - enjoy smaller genre efforts like this, buy a ticket and take your family to see it this weekend (Someone took their baby into the screening I was at, which made for some very interesting commentary).

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on the British girl group the Sugababes, cleverly entitled SugaBros. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!

REDUX: Little Woods (Nia DaCosta, 2018)

On probation for smuggling medicine over the Canadian border, Ollie's (Tessa Thompson) problems are piling up: her mother's house is being foreclosed and her sister Deb (Lily James) is pregnant.

With time short, Ollie goes back in to business, putting her on a collision course with a rival drug dealer, Bill (Luke Kirby) and the law...

Little Woods was one of the highlights of last year's NZ International Film Festival. When it finally made its way to general release a couple months ago, checked it out again. After the formless dreck of Tessa Thompson's last vehicle, this was a real palette cleanser.

Re-watching Little Woods made me really appreciate the craft of writer-director Nia DaCosta.

This movie is so economical. The movie is filled with moments like this - none of the film's stylistic choices are that overt. 

The opening sequence is a marvel; Thompson is shot in a long shot coming from the woods onto a road. As she moves into the middle ground, the camera pulls out the famous pull out-zoom in (from Vertigo, although DiCosta uses it to similar effect to Spielberg in Jaws) as a police vehicle speeds past her and pulls up behind her.

As Thompson runs into close-up, we hear the hard hammering of what sounds like the judge’s gavel, passing sentence on Ollie. Cue a hard cut to Ollie waking up to someone hammering on her door.

In a few minutes the film has brought the viewer up to speed on Ollie, and set up the laser focus of both its story-telling and the mindset of its central character. There is a strong sense of functionality to the story-telling, which keys in the viewer to the world that these characters live in. Ollie does not have time for contemplation or luxury. She has to move forward or die.

One of my (other) favourite sequences is in the diner when Ollie is interviewing for a job out of state. Bill arrives, having sniffed out that Ollie is back selling meds. 

Initially we do not even see him - DaCosta plays his arrival on a tight OTS shot of Thompson's face, with the sound of a door and her eyes snapping to focus on a point over the interviewer's shoulder.

In an extended tracking shot along the diner booths, we follow Bill as he storms toward the table. Ollie excuses herself just before he arrives and heads down the line of tables, so they appear to walking in lock step with each other. DaCosta does not over-use editing - she lets scenes play out. This tracking shot works to show Ollie's adaptability, as she shifts gears from anxious interviewee to cool professional, matching Bill's stride as she heads off Bill's attempt to dominate the scene.  

When there are cuts, they signal important shifts in power: in the following scene, Bill confronts Ollie in the bathroom. Ollie tries to defuse the drug dealer but Bill grabs her by the throat and slams her against the wall. DaCosta cuts here to a tight two-shot of the characters face-to-face. When Bill threatens Ollie, and demands a cut of her earnings, DaCosta cuts from the two shot to an ever-so-slightly low angle close up of Luke Kirby's face. When the filmmakers cut back to Ollie, it is back in the same two-shot as before. Ollie has lost this struggle.  

In my last review I focused on the film’s association with noir; on this viewing the film felt even more like a western - albeit one in which the frontier is gone, and all the mythology of exceptionalism and progress has evaporated.

On this watch, I was struck by how much Thompson's Ollie reminded me of a classic western archetype - the no-nonsense man of action, with a personal code and a past of misdeeds. No matter the setback or obstacle, she has to move forward. Like the gunslingers of so many westerns, people expect her to do the dirty deed - in this case, run and sell drugs, that she has given up on. However, circumstances dictate that Ollie has to 'get back in the saddle'.

Even the way Deb describes Ollie is all about action - she is called ‘practical’ and a ‘doer’. But the movie highlights the difference with the archetype: while she is an incredibly active and forceful presence in the movie's narrative, Ollie is not physically imposing - there are two physical altercations in the movie (one which she initiates) and both of which she loses. In this universe violence is not a vehicle for character or narrative progression.

Like that archetype, Ollie is also defined as an outsider - she is a woman in a world of men (I remember an old John Oliver segment that explained the ratio was 2:1 in North Dakota), and a black woman in a world of white people. The only other person of colour is Ollie's parole officer Carter (Lance Reddick), someone whose ideological and professional role makes him an (unknowing) adversary. Ollie is alone.

Despite her loner status, Ollie is also defined in terms of her relationship with/juxtaposition to her sister Deb (James). Deb is initially presented as the opposite of  Ollie - while Ollie looked after their dying mother, and lives in the family home, Deb is a single mother living in a trailer park. She is presented as a more passive presence, and in contrast to Ollie, never thinks ahead - a trait which leads to the film's biggest narrative turn.

While Ollie's race is never openly acknowledged, it provides the subtext to a terrifying sequence towards the film's end: while her sister is getting a forged Canadian health card, Ollie waits outside a bar. Framed in the foreground of a wide shot, Thompson looks small and vulnerable. In the far background, the door to the bar opens, and the familiar shape of a policeman's hat appears under the entrance light. A police officer steps out, stands for a beat and then turns to face Ollie. It reminded me of the way John Carpenter presents the Shape in Halloween. 

The sequence is one of the film's highlights - DaCosta intercuts Ollie's interactions with this cop with Deb and the two forgers.

One choice I liked was that DaCosta only provides a rough sense of geography - while we know that the bar is close to the house where Deb is negotiating, we never get of sense of where the house is in terms of line of sight or distance. The sisters feel more separate than ever before.

The house where Deb confronts the forgers has almost no musical score, and DiCosta frames most of the scene from Deb's POV, with the forgers at the edge or in the back of frame. Like the cop they are threats, although their intentions remain more oblique (at first).  

These two sequences emphasise the different tensions and threats the main characters face - while Deb has to deal with the threat of physical violence and sexual assault, Ollie has to deal with the representative of an institution with an established bias against people like her. 

There are no helping hands in Little Woods - in a place of supposed prosperity, this is a world defined by limits and obstacles. Men are either clueless or obstacles themselves (Ollie's parole officer Carter (Lance Reddick), Deb's alcoholic ex Ian (James Badge Dale), Bill and the forgers).  

Ollie and Deb ultimately have to depend on each other: when the forgers betray the deal, Deb steals a bunch of stolen Canadian health cards and bolts. Unintentionally, her quick thinking winds up saving Ollie, who is on the losing end of the policeman's interrogation. 

Set amid North Dakota's oil boom, the contemporary equivalent of the gold rushes and other ventures of America's real and cinematic past, Little Woods is a place where the illusion of Manifest Destiny has evaporated. Capitalism has triumphed, hollowing out the ground and the people: There’s a scene about midway through set at a rodeo in which we see the performers re-bandaging old injuries and covering them with their shirts. In a brief cutaway, the movie undercuts a popular image of machismo, revealing it as nothing more than set-dressing.

Right, this review is really starting to ramble all over the place. 

I loved Little Woods even more this time around. It is so well-crafted and acted, it deserves as many eyes on it as possible. Check it out, wherever you can find it.

Related

Little Woods (NZIFF 2018)

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on the British girl group the Sugababes, cleverly entitled SugaBros. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!

IN THEATRES: Spiderman - Far From Home (SPOILER CITY, FOLKS)

Following the death of Tony Stark, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is trying to move on, focusing on his class trip to Europe and his plan to win the affections of his crush MJ (Zendaya).

However, the appearances of a group of supernatural entities known as the Elementals, and a mysterious stranger from another dimension, Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), means that Parker's plans are soon on the back-burner...

I really enjoyed Spider-Man: Homecoming. It was not the deepest movie in the world, but it is incredibly charming, boasts a great cast and - in Michael Keaton - a villain to write home about.

I really enjoyed Spider-Man: Far From Home. It was not the deepest movie in the world, but it is rather charming, boasts a great cast and - in Jake Gyllenhaal - a villain to write home about.

I have reached a point with Marvel where I no longer expect these movies to act like singular stories - they do not push the characters forward, they do not escalate in terms of stakes. What they exist as is middle episodes in a soap opera. Maybe if I had invested in watching the last two Avengers movies, this one would have a bit more emotional resonance, but I doubt it. 

After watching last year's terrific Into The Spider-Verse, this movie cannot help but feel rote. Fundamentally, it never really gets under its main character's skin. And no matter how great Holland is - and he is terrific - the MCU Peter Parker is still stuck in neutral.

But as I stated at the outset - this movie is a lot of fun. Marvel may produce movies with machine-like efficiency, but by god does it do so with zest.

First off, Spider-Man has one of the most interesting and eclectic rogues galleries of all the superheroes, which gives this new incarnation plenty of new adversaries to introduce. Homecoming had a great version of Vulture, and Far From Home has special effects genius Mysterio.

Mysterio initially presents himself as a hero from an alternate Earth, who has come to stop his adversaries the Elementals from destroying Peter's world. It's a great, cheesy backstory that comes close to feeling like a send-up of the typical origin story, but not really.

Jake Gyllenhaal is great as the initially benevolent Beck. Gregarious and empathetic, he is easily the most appealing of the would-be mentors that Parker has had cinematically (Alfred Molina's Doc Ock is the only real competition). Despite the lack of focus on this relationship, it is a testament to Gyllenhaal and Hollands' performances that Parker's rash decision to essentially give Beck the keys to Tony Stark's kingdom does not feel as rushed as it otherwise would.


I wish the movie had focused more on building more of a rapport between Parker and Beck. Their initial confrontation is great, with the filmmakers taking full advantage of Beck's abilities, but as with the previous movie, the filmmakers are unwilling to really bring Holland's Parker to figure out what his weaknesses are and then push him to a breaking point.

Rather like the previous movie, I don't really understand what the turning point for Parker is - he does not really change between the beginning of the movie and the end. Dramatically, the most dire peril Parker faces is reserved for the mid-credits sequence. It's a great cliff hanger, but highlights the movie's weakness in terms of conflict for its main character. Here is hoping Spider-Man 3/8 delivers on what this -very enjoyable - sequence promises.

I am not a fan of the Raimi movies but the thing they understand (and ran into the ground) was the consequences of Peter being a superhero - having Stark Industries and Nick Fury in the wings to help out prevents the stakes from ever getting that big. In this movie, all he needs is a pep talk and a new suit and he is sorted.

Contrast this with last year's Into The Spider-Verse, where Miles Morales is faced with trying to figure out what kind of hero he wants to be, and the entire movie is premised on his journey to figuring that out. I went back and watched the key scene where the other Spider-people leave Miles tied up in his room. That scene involves TWO monologues, and they both fulfil important functions in helping Miles to recognise what he needs to do.


I feel like this franchise was impeded from the beginning by the decision to introduce the character sans origin. I have no desire to see Uncle Ben die again, but both Homecoming and Far From Home are hamstrung by not providing a solid sense of Peter's wants and needs, and then developing conflicts that force him to confront what is really important to him.


These movies are so much fun, and the cast are so good (Jacob Batalon is once again marvellous as Ned), it is so disappointing that movie is so disinterested in building a narrative infrastructure that would allow this character to really soar. To be honest, when Far From Home focuses on comedy, it soars. If the filmmakers had more courage, they would ditch the rote super-heroics and just craft a teen comedy. With all the various supporting players and their subplots, this movie feels like a couple of episodes of a teen show I would watch religiously.


In terms of subplots, I was looking forward to seeing how Peter's relationship with MJ developed. She was such a fresh departure from the classic archetype of Mary Jane Watson (she felt closer to the confident nerd of the Ultimate version). After essentially providing a comic cameo in the last movie, it is good to see Zendaya get a bit more to do, although - as with Beck - I would have liked to see her fleshed out more, beyond the fact that she likes Peter.


Overall, Far From Home is a movie filled with pleasures. But it is ultimately too much dessert with not enough meal.


Related reviews

Spider-Man: Homecoming

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on the British girl group the Sugababes, cleverly entitled SugaBros. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!