I'm moving into my first-ever apartment on Friday!
It's a very exciting moment, I'm so stoked that, after year of searching for the right place and concern over my readiness to live independently, this is about to become a reality. This whole week is kind of a whirlwind, just a lot of busy busy things. I don't quite have time to write a lengthy review for everything I've seen lately...but I do have some thoughts on the varied features I've managed to watch in the last eight-ish days. For only the fourth time in the history of Land of the Nerds, I'm here to do Micro-Reviews, small bite-sized versions of a typical movie review. Read on below for what may very well be my last post in my pre-apartment domicile!
Fall
Two women get to the top of a tall radio tower, but end up getting stuck once the ladder to get back down collapses. It's The Shallows/The Martian/Cast Away/47 Meters Down, but super high up in the air. Another key difference from those movies? Fall isn't very good. Never offensively incompetent, Fall just never settles into a rhythm that would work best for its storyline. These kinds of plots are also made or shattered by their lead performers, and, unfortunately, leading ladies Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner just aren't quite good enough to hinge an entire movie around. Director Scott Mann gets some good vertigo-inducing imagery in there and there are a handful of moments (like Currey luring a vulture to its doom) that hit upon a successful creative groove. For the most part, though, Fall just reminds you of better movies.
Beast
Beast is the movie where Idris Elba fights a lion. That's it, plain and simple. Refusing to go even an inch deeper than that keeps Beast from being much more than an afternoon distraction. Thankfully, the movie has been brought to life by competent people, including director Baltasar Kormákur and leading man Idris Elba, who do know hot to wring entertainment out of such a straightforward premise. Elba especially does strong work delivering moments of actual gravitas and urgency while being chased by a CGI lion. It all moves quite quickly, the screenplay doesn't get bogged down by contrived subplots or extraneous characters, and the lion mayhem is crisply filmed and edited. It doesn't do much more than what it says on the tin, but there's something to be said for a movie like Beast that manages to deliver what it promises.
Flux Gourmet
I wasn't sure about Flux Gourmet at first. Initially, director Peter Strickland's latest exercise in bizarre storytelling told in a subdued serious manner seemed a bit too oddball, the kind of movie that would clearly be for somebody else's tastes but not my own. I'm not sure if Flux Gourmet won me over by the end so much as it browbeat me into submission with its constant adherence to escalating levels of strangeness...but I did grow to admire its commitment to the weird. The performances certainly help make things as engaging as they are, with Fatma Mohamed being quite gripping even when she's not saying a word while Richard Bremmer's facial expressions speak volumes. Bound to divide people and inspire one-star reviews on Amazon, Flux Gourmet isn't as good as Strickland's The Duke of Burgundy, but it might be worth tasting if only to see if such an unusual concoction tickles your own taste buds.
The Imposter
Bart Layton's feature-length directorial debut before he made the 2018 narrative title American Animals, The Imposter is a documentary recounting the story of Frédéric Bourdin. Specifically, it's about how this Frenchman decided, in 1997, to pose as Nicholas Patrick Barclay, a 13-year-old child who went missing in Texas a few years earlier. What follows is full of endless twists and turns all centered around Barclay's family welcoming a stranger into their home. Layton's decision to pepper Imposter with glossy filmed recreations of key moments in Bourdin's deceitfulness (like him impersonating a police officer to U.S. child serve representatives) sometimes feels like a minor mistake. These digressions feel too flashy for their own good, a story this preposterousness needs something more grounded and raw to work. But for the most part, The Imposter does click together and keep you on the edge of your seat, wondering what on Earth could happen next. Does it offer much more than that? Maybe not, but you can get away with that you're a documentary that's this compelling.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Holy shit, this is so much better than Star Trek: The Motion Picture! Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan moves at a good clip, and has actual tension, and a sense of bombast to its story about revenge that's been brewing for over a decade. It's just an exciting movie, the kind you want to see when you shell out a bunch of cash for a ticket to a summer blockbuster. Even better, the sincere approach to executing moments of pathos between characters like Kirk and Spock are handled exquisitely. In these interactions, the characters of the Starship Enterprise transform from caricatures of pop culture icons to discernible human beings. It's something both magical and only possible in a movie as good as The Wrath of Khan.
Samaritan
There's no question that Samaritan is among the worst movies of 2022 so far, down with Disney's live-action take on Pinocchio and Firestarter. But what specifically went wrong here? One would assume a gritty movie about a superhero past their prime played by Sylvester Stallone helmed by Overlord director Julis Avery would have some redeeming R-rated action elements. However, Samaritan takes its basic concept and creative team through run-of-the-mill PG-13 hijjinks. Worse, its tone is all over the map. Sometimes, our villains act like they're in a Robert Rodriguez kids movie while Stallone is always dropping pearls of wisdom for kids like he's in an after-school special. Other times, people are getting tortured or brutally beaten like this is something aimed exclusively R-rated audiences. More consistent is the terrible dialogue and drab cinematography, neither of which make Samaritan a pleasant experience. As a cherry on top, Stallone barely seems awake her and the editing does a dismal job concealing how an obvious stuntman is performing any task more physical than walking down a hallway. "They say that a hero will save us," Chad Kroeger once intoned, but I don't think he had the lead character of Samaritan in mind.
Stranger Than Paradise
It was a great joy to experience Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise without knowing anything about the plot first. The incidental nature of its ensuing plot (if you could even call it that) proved extra engaging, something I had no preconceived expectations for. An incredible restrained exercise, Jarmusch still grips your attention with quietly detailed characters and fantastic pieces of visual comedy, such as the arrangement of four characters in a movie theater. The lingering melancholy of the whole piece has also stuck with me long after the movie ended. This is a feature where its lack of a concrete plot is emblematic of how there's no set future or financial security for our lead characters. Their lives are aimless and unpredictable, right down to an ending that leaves everyone scattered and isolated, so why shouldn't a film chronicling them be similarly spontaneous? It's no wonder Jarmusch's career took off after this feature, Stranger Than Paradise, decades after its release, is still remarkable.
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