Now that some of the bigger films have played and I’ve done full reviews, it’s time for some recap days. Today’s films came from all over the world: Israel, India and Japan, and have played around the world too: Tribeca, Cannes, etc. I expect The Congress to get a reasonably accessible release but you might have to really seek out the other three if they sound interesting to you.
Big Bad Wolves
I was really excited to see the new film from Navot Papushado and Aharon Keshales because I discovered their previous film Rabies at Fantastic Fest. Just like Rabies took the slasher movie in new, unexpected directions, Big Bad Wolves does the same for psychological thrillers. Therefore there’s no point in me even telling you any portion of the plot, because you don’t even know what type of movie it is until 45-50 minutes in.
Wolves is a solid follow-up for the bulk of the film, perhaps a little less surprising because the genre itself is more contingent on twists and turns, but it keeps you moving and guessing. It really doesn’t land the ending though, and that is a problem because the film makes such a big deal of the final reveal. I think the filmmakers really misjudged the power of their ending and that retroactively makes the rest of the film less rewarding an experience.
Commando – A One Man Army
Though they called it Commando, this is actually the Bollywood Rambo, which is to stay it’s about a veteran soldier disavowed and tortured who ends up fighting guys in the forest. Because this is Bollywood though, it’s also a love story and musical, as it damn well should be!
Viduy Jamwai is a magnificent physical specimen. Watching him work out in the opening shots is impressive, and he even has a bit of the Stallone sneer. If the opening text is true that they didn’t use wires, Jamwai is doing wirework moves for real. It looks it because the physics of his movement look like his momentum is unbroken by unnatural jerks and pulls of a wire crew. There’s always that little weightless puff of wirework, which is great too, but not with Jamwai.
So his fight scenes are awesome and he incorporates the environment in creative ways. The story is very much the Bollywood impression of an action movie. So the villain AK 74 (Jaideep Alawat) wants to force Simrit to marry him, and the Commando protects her and takes her on the run. Gotta get that overwrought emotion into the plot, and they play the old walking away from an explosion beat in a wildly inappropriate context.
The music is catchy, and not as fourth wall-breaking as I would have hoped and encouraged them to go for. Someone else sings a song about Simrit, the love song is just set to shots of Commando and Simrit running in slow motion, and AK 74’s harem girl does a really hot dance to a really catchy tune. So no gratuitous Jamwai dancing until the end credits.
The Congress
The Congress may be the first ever inside Hollywood sci-fi movie. I smell a new genre! Robin Wright plays herself in a Hollywood on the brink of removing actors entirely. Her hits and misses, professional and personal, are referenced “Entourage” style, for the purpose of a very interesting discussion on the ethics of technology. Miramount Studios wants to scan Robin Wright so they can put her in any movie they want, but then they will own her and she may never act again.
So it’s real stars in a fake studio and Harvey Keitel plays Wright’s agent with Danny Huston as the studio chief and Paul Giamatti as a doctor, so it’s a mix and match of real and fictional. This is also a Robin Wright who lives in an abandoned airport hangar but it’s as close as we’d likely get to real Hollywood in a movie, and the premise of a technology so flawless that this would actually be possible provokes an interesting issue. It even goes so far as to suggest movies will no longer be visual in the future. Perhaps we’ll just download stories directly into our brains, which is what I’ve been suggesting this whole time!
Then Wright becomes animated and that’s when it gets really artsy. Some of the sci-fi ethics are a little pedantic, spelling them out entirely rather than letting the audience ask the questions themselves, but they are fascinating topics worth exploring. The irony is a little bit forced too, like Wright wants to exclude sci-fi from the likeness contract. Get it? Because she’s actually in a sci-fi movie right now! Unless I’m reading too much into it and I’ve made a joke where there wasn’t even one. It’s really interesting though, a little pat but more interesting than pat. The celebrity as property angle touches on Antiviral territory, but Antiviral made up celebrities. In The Congress we get the real Robin Wright!
Maruyama: The Middle Schooler
In America, kids movies feature empowerment fantasies like being left home alone and defending your house, or making friends with an alien. In Japan they make movies about kids trying to suck their own d***s. Maybe I’m not as liberal as I thought I was if I don’t think this is cute. Aside from that, Maruyama: The Middle Schooler is pretty clever and creative.
When Katsuya Maruyama bends or stretches too far, he shocks himself into a fantasy realm. The images are surreal and wonderful, or direct spoofs of genre pieces. The sprawling story is filled with other high concept characters too, like a wandering neighbor with Alzheimer’s who crashes a band and jams, and Katsuya’s mom who obsesses over soap opera DVDs and tries to get it on with the building super. Katsuya’s fellatio training does pay off in the fantasy world, but come on. That’s not cute.
The preceding short, S/ash, about a teenager writing Harry Potter porn, does a much better job addressing kids’ sexual fantasies in a bold, line crossing way. It’s different cultures for sure, and every year at Fantastic Fest I realize I’m just not on the wavelength of some of these cultures.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
