Port Authority (Danielle Lessovitz, 2019)

Paul is a former juvie from Pittsburg. He’s come to New York to live with his half sister. His half sister is not waiting for him at the bus. 

Paul takes to the streets and winds up part of a gang of homeless white guys who make money terrorising illegal immigrants and other minorities by pretending to be enforcers for landlords or ICE. 

Paul stumbles into a ball and locks eyes with a beautiful young woman, Wye. Thus begins a slow-burn flirtation that metamorphoses into a romance.

And then Paul learns that Wye is trans, and something something something.

As you can probably tell, I am not the biggest fan of this movie. 

I was intrigued to watch this because the press made it out as a revision of The Crying Game. I am a fan of The Crying Game, even with its problematic aspects, and the blurb in the film festival catalogue from last year made it sound like Port Authority was a revisionist take on the 'twist' of Neil Jordan's film. So wrong was I...

While I enjoy ambiguity in films, I left Port Authority with so many questions that it just made me angry with how hollow it ultimately is.

Since I come from the same demographic as the male lead, I am going to try and stick to a very narrow critique of this film: the human black hole which is our lead character. This is no slight against actor Fionn Whitehead - this movie just gives him nothing to work with.

The big issue for me with this movie is that the movie's focus on Paul is a stumbling block that the movie cannot get over. Apart from the fact that it perpetuates the common theme of upholding a white cis male gaze over its trans characters, the film undermines its central theme of finding one's identity by making no attempts to delve into Paul's psychology.

While Paul is at the centre of the story's action, the movie really has no centre in either of its central couple - Wye remains an object of Paul's gaze, and we glean nothing from what is going on behind said gaze.

In the early part of the film, there were a couple of moments where it felt like the movie was playing with the trope of the gaze - Paul's first sighting of Wye is down a street, where she is surrounded by her family. In a couple of later scenes, he watches a gay man who has been living at the same hostel. There seems to be an implication that Paul is recognising something in himself, but the movie does not maintain this stance or delve any further into Paul's psyche.

For almost half the runtime, it feels like the movie has been highlighting hidden fault-lines in Paul's identity, with Wye and her family as an ideal he is too afraid to reach for. But the film-making choices make it hard to track, and the central character is such a black hole that it is difficult to piece together his motivations, and his final actions remain inexplicable.

The direction is a big factor: The filmmakers are going for a documentary-style fly-on-the-wall but too often the camera work feels like it is working against whatever the scene is about - there are scenes where Wye and Paul talk to each other, and the camera is just floating around like a distracted spectator - it is like the filmmakers watched an Andrea Arnold movie and took the aesthetic without recognising what made it work dramatically. The pseudo fly-on-the-wall approach is also inconsistent. The camera is always aligned with Paul's POV, and it makes the film feel like a spectator to Wye and her family. It never feels like the film's POV aligns with them.

There was a point about halfway through when I began to question just how modern the film's conceit was - Paul spends so much time with Wye and her friends, I actually thought that the film's twist on The Crying Game would be a reveal that Paul knew but was wary/empathetic enough not to ask.

Nothing of the kind happened. When the reveal did take place I actively began to question the film's reason for being.

Unlike The Crying Game, the movie does not visualise the reveal, and avoids the horrible stereotype of the trans woman ‘surprising’ her cis lover. But after that... the movie never expands in a way that would make Paul - since we anchored to this slab of meat - in any way interesting.

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that Paul needs to be the centre of this story. But since he is, the movie should answer for why he is the centre of the movie: is he questioning his sexuality? Is it the old trope of the white person learning [blank] from a minority? The movie is so non-committal it cannot even do that.

While the script makes some very light attempts to highlight the ways in which Paul is ignorant and too self-absorbed to recognise the ways in which he is endangering Wye (and their relationship), we know so little about Paul, and Fionn Whitehead's performance is so one-note, that I gave up caring. I did not care if he learned anything, I did not care if he was punished. I was stranded.

There is just something so wrong-headed about his character, and the way that the movie organises itself around him, that ultimately makes Port Authority feel far more conservative and far less embracing of the community it is trying to highlight.

While I am lukewarm on the movie overall, I absolutely hated the finale - after Paul finally confesses to the House, and they exact vengeance on Paul’s racist cohorts, Paul turns up to audition to join the house and the film ends as he is about to perform. Like the other choices, it just feels arbitrary - and the way it happened, it implied a romantic reconciliation that made no sense. It also reminded me of the endings to a thousand romcoms where a guy invades the woman's space to try and get back together with her.

May be that is too much of a read, but there is so little beneath the surface of this movie that you can almost bring whatever you like to it and it probably will make some sense. 

Port Authority is a disappointment. What makes me mad is that I feel so strongly about the apathy of this movie whereas in my previous review I lauded the movie's gonzo energy despite featuring certifiable transphobia. I'll be thinking about this for weeks. 

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls: Russ Meyer takes Hollywood

This the story of the Carrie Nations, a rock trio of innocent young women who travel to LA with dreams of stardom and end up seduced and destroyed by their Dionysian hosts. Or something.

It has been a good few years since I last watched a Russ Meyer movie. Last week the Academy held a screening so I decided to check it out and get the full Meyer experience on the big screen. Watching Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was like biting into a brand of cookie you haven't eaten since childhood. If that cookie was a whole pack of cookies, and each one was laced with cocaine.

Made with all the resources of the studio system and armed with a script by noted critic Roger Ebert - whose credit appears onscreen at the tail end of sequence in which a woman is shot dead and Martin Bormann is impaled on a sword by an unknown assailant dressed in cape, crown and thigh high boots.

A compendium of soap opera cliches, a blunt satire on a familiar story, a testament to the desperation of Twentieth Century Fox, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is as hilarious as it is jaw-droppingly superficial.

Meyer movies are not known for their plots - this is one exception where a surplus of plot works for Meyer’s familiar aesthetic: canted angles, sharp editing and vibrant colours.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls constantly feels like it is shoving so many characters and subplots that it always feels like it’s about to explode. Somehow, Meyer's razor-sharp editingkeeps the whole confection moving. It smooths out most of the tonal shifts and gives the film a sense of pace that means any dead spots pass by quickly.

In a rare turn, it is the men who are the most interesting characters in the movie, at least performance-wise. Dolly Read brings a wide-eyed naivete to her role as Kelly, but her fellow Carrie Nations are a little colourless. The characters are all archetypes, but the women kind of melt into the ensemble. Read's overly earnst performance is very funny, but it is not as vibrantly alive as Tura Satana in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! nor as hypnotising as Erica Gavin in Vixen!

By contrast, Beyond... offers a break from the usual neanderthal-cuckold archetypes who usually occupy Meyer's universe. Instead, Roger Ebert's script offers get fifty colours of a**hole: the peak of the bunch is Michael Blodgett as Lance Rocke, a simpering gigolo who uses his good looks to seduce and milk every woman he can. Duncan McLeod is a sleazy hypocritical lawyer who tries to cheat Kelly out of her inheritance, and future blaxploitation fixture James Iglehart plays Randy Black, a clear Muhammed Ali clone who equates everything to boxing. There is even a cameo from fugitive Nazi Martin Bormann (played by Henry Rowland, who would return as Bormann in multiple Meyer epics).

Towering above them all (for reasons beyond his performance) is John LaZar as Z-Man, the Phil Spector-inspired record producer who takes the women under his wing. With a cut glass delivery (inspired by Laurence Olivier) and all of the film's best/most memorable lines, within minutes Z-Man has stolen the film out from under its milquetoast leads.

Parts of the film were improvised on the set, and the most memorable is the revelation that Z-Man  is a woman, sorry, Superwoman). Coming at the last possible minute, it is followed by an ridiculously violent masacre in which Z-Man's romantic overtures are rejected and she proceeds to shoot and/or stab her party guests to death.

This sequence also feels very Meyer in a way that is impossible not to criticise. In the mid-60s, Meyer had discovered a formula for making exploitation palatable to the American mainstream: sex is punished.

It is a familiar subtext in a lot of American popular culture, and Meyer milked in through what is now known as his 'roughie' period: In movies like Lorna and Mudhoney, Meyer would start by giving the punters what they wanted: nudity, a bit of action, and then at the climax, he would have his main characters punished. For example, at the end of her movie, Lorna dies.

Meyer brings it back for the climax of Beyond..., having Z-Man dispatch a couple of the film's villains, before killing the film's gay couple. In a movie where nothing is supposed to matter, this moment hits differently. It does not help that one of those characters spends the movie struggling with her sexuality. In the preceding scene, she finally finds resolution in the arms of a woman (played by Vixen! herself, Erica Gavin).

While it feels like the morality of the times, Meyer's previous movie Vixen! had included a subplot in which Vixen seduces a woman - and she was not punished for it. I have two theories about this plot turn:

a) Meyer was a noted homophobe who - rumour has it - divorced one of his wives when he found out she liked women as much as he did.

b) maybe working for a big studio spooked the filmmaker and he decided to provide a moral sop to reactionaries in his audience.

It could be a combination of both. Whatever the cause, Z-Man's revelation-turned-rampage is the biggest tonal shift in the movie, and the moment where the film's sense of parody goes out the window and the film becomes a straight exploitation piece. While Meyer's movies had featured scenes of violence before, there is nothing like the carnage here. You could feel the temperature in the room change when a couple of major characters die. After this movie, Meyer would crank up the violence until he tipped over into the nihilistic transgressions featured in Up!, one of his worst films .

After Z-Man is defeated, the film swings hard in the opposite direction with a triple wedding and a miraculous recovery from paraplegia. As you do.

Meyer had his cast play the script dead seriously, betting that film would be far funnier if no one was in on the joke. The decision is a resounding success. If this movie were played with any sense of knowingness it would be insufferable.

At the screening I saw, the audience were dying. They were clearly confused, but we all fell for every bizarre plot turn and ridiculous line. As the credits rolled, the tonal whiplash of the double finale seemed to have left most of them stunned and/or dazed.

Meyer loved bright, vibrant colours (particularly red). The transfer at the screening I saw was crystal clear. It's the best-looking Meyer movie I have ever seen.

While it does not have the vibrance of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is one of his best and most polished films. Meyer's time in the studio would be short-lived, but at least for one movie he delivered all the hallmarks of his bizarre milieu.

For previous entries...

The Meyer Files #1: The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959)

The Meyer Files #2: Eve and the Handyman (1960)

The Meyer Files #3: Wild Gals Of The Naked West (1962)

The Meyer Files #4: Europe in the Raw (1963)

The Meyer Files #5: Lorna (1964)

The Meyer Files #6: Mudhoney (1965)

The Meyer Files #7: Motorpsycho (1965)

The Meyer Files #8: Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! (1965)

The Meyer Files #9: Mondo Topless! (1966)

The Meyer Files #10: Common Law Cabin (1967)

The Meyer Files #11: Good Morning and... Goodbye! (1967)

The Meyer Files #12: Finders Keepers... Lovers Weepers! (1968)

The Meyer Files #13: Vixen! (1968)

The Meyer Files #14: Cherry, Harry & Raquel! (1969)

Interlude

The Meyer Files #15: Blacksnake! (1973)

The Meyer Files #16: Supervixens! (1975)

The Meyer Files #17: Up! (1976)

The Meyer Files #18: Beneath The Valley Of The Ultravixens! (1979)

BITE-SIZED preVIEW: Crystal Swan (Darya Zhuk, 2018)

Minsk in 1996 - the USSR is dead, full employment replaced by a capitalistic free-for-all.

One young woman, Velya (Alina Nasibullina), dreams of leaving Belarus and going to America. Obsessed with American house music, she dreams of going to the 'home' of house, and becoming a DJ. 

After an error on her visa form puts her dream in danger, Velya has to come up with a plan to get out of trouble.

Arriving in the town of Crystal she finds herself distracted by the family the phone belongs to.

Sometimes I write about movies because I like them, sometimes it is because I have a strong idea that I want to put out to the world, and sometimes it is a way to bookmark a movie that I remember liking and would like to write about more extensively once I can find a copy of it.

Crystal Swan is a Belarusian film I saw at last year's film festival. I worte a bunch of notes on it, but for whatever reason I forgot about it. Re-reading my notes, I remembered really enjoying the film.

However, I am in need of a re-viewing before I write anything more in-depth on it.

Consider this review a teaser for a longer piece that will be released [at some point in the future].

An intriguing, personal depiction of life in the former Soviet block and the effect of American popular culture, Crystal Swan was a real surprise from 2019's festival.

The sense of chaos and hopelessness that the characters feel is

In the lead role, Nasibullina is a magnetic presence. It is rare to see a woman in a film where she both drives the action and is also focused on her goal at the expense of other people. In the world of this film, where one character notes that the rules their world used to live by have died and been replaced by nothing, Velya's self-sufficiency makes sense.

In thinking back to the movie, I wonder if Velya's opportunism and obsession with America are intended as a dark commentary on American individualism. I do not want to go off extrapolating without another viewing, but that is one frame I would be keen to apply to it.

Part of the reason I decided to check this movie out was the main character's obsession with American house music. 

In the movie, it kind of recedes into the background as the plot gets underway. For Velya it represents freedom from her current situation. House music has a long history of representing community for marginalized groups, so that could present another site to explore.

The key thing that I remember taking away from the film was its incredibly dark sense of humor. Velya's plan carries a certain comic tension as she becomes embroiled with the family, and her friend and fellow DJ, Alik is hilarious, constantly relating everything back to his obsession with his 'karma'.

Anyway, time to bring this ridiculous exercise in 'I vaguely remember...' to a close. Crystal Swan was really good, and is not currently available for streaming or disc (at least in my part of the world).

If you can, check it out. And my proper review. Whenever that comes.   

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BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Mope (Lucas Heyne, 2018)

Based on a true story, Mope tells the tale of would-be porn stars Steve Driver (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) and Tom Dong (Kelly Sry) who start working for a small-scale production company. As time goes on and his dream gets further out of reach, Steve begins a slow spiral to destruction.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett is the heart, soul and talons of this movie. Even as it gets scuzzier and more hopeless for its central characters, Stewart-Jarrett's performance keeps the movie involving.

A cold, dark retelling of a true story, Mope is an odd beast. As a mainstream movie about the porn industry, it has to grapple with the same riddle every other non-pornographic movie has to deal with in portraying the industry.

The movie nails certain aspects of the genre's aesthetic - an eternally moving camera; editing that feels akin to a post Greengrass action movie.  Even the score resembles the synth doodling of porn.

This is not so much fly-on-the-wall as cockroach in the drain. While the movie does feel lo-fi and sleazy, it feels odd that the movie keeps the sex out of frame in an incredibly familiar way.

It feels odd and discombobulating, because of the movie's aesthetic choices feel so of the genre.

I spent this movie wondering how to approach the subject without showing it. I found myself wondering whether the movie would benefit or not from that level of verisimilitude. There were scenes where it felt like there needed to be more, yet the only time the movie showed anything it was as a punchline to a joke.

On top of its aesthetic choices, I was left wondering what the movie trying to say? The movie it reminded me the most of was Pain & Gain in that it felt like the movie was presenting a thesis that it proceeds to leave undeveloped.

Does its point-of-view genuinely empathise with him, or see Driver as a joke? Nathan-Stewart brings vulnerability to the tortured protagonist, but the movie around him feels insecure about whether it is a comedy or a drama.

The performances overall are terrific. Sry brings an awkward empathy to Dong, and Brian Huskey provides great support as their pragmatic, and hapless boss, Eric. In a minor role, David Arquette adds a couple minutes of sleaze as a major director our heroes cross paths with.

An interesting story, with a great central performance, Mope is worth checking out - but it somewhat less than the sum of its parts (off-screen or otherwise).

IN THEATRES: Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

Following her break-up with the Joker, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) is trying to find her feet as a solo act while also dodging all of people who were previously too scared of her boyfriend to seek vengeance for her past actions.

Prime among these various miscreants is Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor), a minor crime boss who is making a major play to become the kingpin of Gotham's underworld. To do this he needs a diamond that has been stolen by a young pickpocket, Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco).

Seeing a way out of her predicament, Harley agrees to join the hunt for the young girl.

Hijinks ensues.

What a fun movie. I do not usually do this but I ended up checking out this movie twice.

What I really liked was the way the movie walked the line between the anarchy of Harley Quinn and centring her as a protagonist going through a major emotional journey. There are elements of this journey that do not quite land, but let's focus on the good stuff first.

I have not seen Suicide Squad, and I do not really intend to. Birds of Prey clearly recognises this and gives the viewer a neat little animated prologue that gives us the meat of Harley's life with the Joker, without ever showing the green haired one onscreen.

The movie is all about women overcoming the patriarchal forces in their lives - not just Harley's toxic ex, but Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) has to deal with her successful busts stolen by her chief; Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) is under the thumb of her boss; and Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) .

The first time I watched the movie, I was a little underwhelmed by the scrambled chronology of the first act, but it worked on second viewing. It adds to the sense that this is Harley's story, and she is losing track of important details.

As referenced in a previous review, one of my favourite comic book movies is Batman Returns, and a lot of that movie's power comes from the portrayal of Catwoman/Selina Kyle by Michelle Pfieffer. In a movie filled with outsiders, she feels like the genuine article – neither hero or villain, she feels like a fully dimensional woman and an over-the-top agent of chaos. She manages to have both pathos and fun.

It is a hard balance to strike -particularly nowadays, when filmmakers seem to confuse drama with anti-fun (i.e. the DCEU pre-Justice League). With Harley Quinn, you have a similar conundrum: how do you balance the story of a woman overcoming trauma and taking control of her life, while also holding true to the character’s sense of anarchy and whimsy.

While the balance never quite reaches those heights, BoP’s version of Harley Quinn is pretty fun, and Robbie handles the character’s pain without trivialising it for easy laughs. For this character, like Pfieffer’s Catwoman, anarchy is a release.   

Unlike her ex-boyfriend, her chaotic schemes and pranks start from specific needs: The destruction of Acme Chemicals is a way to signal her freedom, and her attack on the police station is a way to get her out of a jam.

While Harley’s staggered growth is centred, the title characters manage to hold their own. Because the movie orbits around Quinn, the title characters get less screen-time. In a certain sense, the movie (especially in its final third) feels like a pilot for a TV show. They are all involved in variations of Quinn’s plight which does bring them together, but it does feel a tad perfunctory. If there is a disappointment to the movie, it is that there are not more of their adventures available to watch (yet).

As Montoya, Rosie Perez offsets the cliché of the tough cop with wit and empathy. She also gives the role a physicality that makes her a believable opponent for the other characters. She ends up being the rock-solid foundation for the wilder antics of Quinn and the BS Montoya has to put up with from her male colleagues on the force.

It is great to see Perez in this movie in such a big role. I was impressed that all the actresses (aside from Robbie) were not in their 20s. There something refreshing about getting to see a broader range of women getting involved genre fare like this, and they are not consigned to specific parts of the film's palette - each of them is a specific kind of action hero, with their own specific strengths, and all the characters are funny, in ways that are specific to their characters.

Obvious stuff, but in Hollywood movies, this obvious stuff is rare.

The casting of Birds of Prey is the most obvious example of how this movie conceptualizes the women at its heart, and how it not interested in turning them into the hyper-masculine action heroines. If they do, the filmmakers highlight the cliché (Montoya) or perform some light revisionism in their portrayal (Huntress).

As the film’s lone masked vigilante, Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Huntress as an awkward loner, who is so focused on her mission that she has already built a mythology around her persona that only she knows – everyone else has different ideas of who she is (and what her nickname is). There is a version of this movie in which this character is foregrounded and treated as a cool badass. In this movie, she’s a weirdo in a hoodie. A badass, but still a bit of a weirdo.

In a different way, Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s Black Canary feels like an obvious action heroine. She may be hard as nails, but for most of the movie, she is reluctant to get involved. Feeding into the movie's theme, she is also pragmatic when it comes to the people who have power over her, like her employer Black Mask (Ewan McGregor). She sees herself as a small fish in a big pond.

·         Ella Jay Bascois also great as the no-nonsense Cassandra Cain. The script gives her a sense of agency and never reduces her to a plot point. 

All the characters reflect different versions of Harley's plight. They have all been put through the ringer by men and chewed up. All these women are trying to break out of the roles and circumstance they are in - even Winstead's Huntress's mission of vengeance is prompted by the violence of men seeking power.

Unlike a lot of action/comic book movies, Birds of Prey has some solid bad guys who serve a dramatic role that fits the movie’s theme will also staying in keeping with the movie’s tone. It also helps that the villain they face is formidable.

Ewan McGregor is having a great time as Black Mask. An egomaniac and  a narcissist, he is deeply insecure and is constantly exposing the deep sense of resentment that he feels toward the world - particularly the women in it. 

McGregor leans into the character's self-centredness. I often find his American accent forced, but here it feels like a put-on, a way to put himself over as more in control than he is.

Even better is Chris Messina as Victor Zsasz - paranoid and psychopathic, he possesses a quiet menace that complements McGregor's histrionics. The great thing about this pair is that - aside from Sionis's mask at the climax - they are just evil men. They have a creepy co-dependant dynamic that makes them far scarier than your usual super villains.

Even though this movie does highlight the misogyny and sexism of their world, and the movie is graphically violent, there is no attempt or hint of sexual violence to the villains' actions. They just want to kill Harley and her comrades because they are obstacles to their goals. 

As far as negatives go, I question the necessity for the R rating. The movie only features a few real moments of gore, but they feel out of place. There is one sequence that is specifically designed to highlight how bad the bad guys are, but it feels like a different movie. There is a scene later in the movie where Black Mask is screaming at a woman to dance on a table, and it felt far more violent and disturbing in its power dynamics than the gory execution he commits. 

The other thing I questioned was one specific beat in Harley's arc. I liked the idea of superimposing Harley's abusive relationship with the Joker over her conflict with Black Mask. The only thing that I wish had more attention was the character’s low point. 

On my first viewing, I noted around the point when Harley and Cass are hanging out in her den, the story starts to stall. My issue was clarified on re-watch: her betrayal by her landlord lacked punch. We are introduced to him a scene earlier, and then he betrays her. The movie does not really spend enough time on their relationship, so his betrayal does not hit in the way it is intended, and it feels a bit forced in how it leads to the split between Harley and Cass.

While a key piece of connective tissue falls flat, the film’s expression of its central theme is strong enough to push it to the finish line. On top of that, the characters are well-drawn and get at least a scene to themselves.

Following the superficial profundity of Joker, Birds of Prey feels like a cheeky middle finger. Whereas that movie defanged its themes and slathered itself in one-note grimness, Birds of Prey shows that you can tackle serious themes and also have fun as well.

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Wonder Woman

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