The Hollywood Bowles

Brains!

Scott Bowles

April 30, 2019

Jaime King, Black Summer

Let’s face it: America has a zombie problem. They’ve invaded our TV shows, our films, our commercials, our toy shelves, our seasonal pop-up Halloween stores, not to mention the takeover of comic-book shelves and bookstores. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, there have been 70 zombie movies since 1980 — 23 of them since 2012.

So Black Summer, the latest horror series from Netflix, comes as something of a relief. Sure, it’s yet another homage to the flesh-eating undead. But at least it’s a fresh take on rotting corpses.

Created by John Hyams and Karl Schaefer, co-creators of Syfy’s Z Nation, Summer is supposedly a prequel to that eccentric zombie series, which was intended as a counter-punch to The Walking Dead, though Nation was canceled recently after five seasons. In truth, Netflix calls it a prequel likely to draw in the cultish fans of Nation, because the two shows share little zombie DNA. Summer is set at the onset of the apocalypse; Nation took place three years into the apocalypse. Summer takes itself (perhaps too) seriously and feasts on tension; Nation featured a zombie stripper whose arm fell off mid-dance. Image result for z nation strip club

Set a few months after an initial outbreak wipes out Denver, Summer thrives in the chaos of a nation that knows it is being overrun and unprepared to stop the takeover. It’s absolute mayhem when we drop into the premiere. Handheld camera operators follow survivors with long uncut shots as they creep through tunnels, break into abandoned houses and sprint down deserted streets (easily the most terrifying element of the show). If The Walking Dead is a cinematic look at the potential end of mankind, Summer is a flat-out sprint from that possibility; much of the show looks as if it were shot with GoPro cameras atop running actors.

And Summer has to capture that frenetic pacing, because character development is essentially non-existent. Instead, the story line — what little there is of one— revolves around getting from Point A (a suburb that’s been evacuated) to Point B (a sports stadium where survivors are being airlifted to safer parts of the country), and the depth of the characters goes as far as them not wanting to be eaten.

Though largely a B-list cast, Jaime King is the biggest name in the credits as Rose, a mother looking for her daughter after they get separated in the evacuation. Co-stars come and go as they get their own story threads, run away or become Lunchables. Jaime King, Black Summer

But that is the show’s unspoken strength. Black Summer is about thrills and thrills only. No maniacal Walking Dead human villains, no abstract debates about humanity’s role the apocalypse, no absurd rules to avoid becoming a living appetizer. Summer runs solely on adrenaline and instinct; there’s no time to debate morality because survivors are dropped from one creepy situation to the next.

The downside of this is repetition, and it’s hard to see Summer aspiring to be anything beyond zombie chases and run-ins with scumbag survivors taking advantage of the chaos. One episode consists almost entirely of a foot chase with brain-eaters that has about a half-dozen words of dialogue. Deep? No. Effective? Quite.

What Summer lacks in depth it almost makes up for in structural simplicity. Each episode is presented as a series of smaller chapters, with simple title cards laid over a black screen. As we follow characters, they are constantly crossing paths with each other, so we’ll see several scenes from different perspectives as we follow the different survivors. Image result for black summer zombie foot chase

Episode lengths range from your standard 45-ish minutes to a mere 20 minutes — the finale, which is a descent into chaos as the city is overrun. The lack of format works here, as it nicely underscores a lack of structure in an overturned world. Government forces are impotent; survivors accidentally shoot each other; some humans are as venomous as the undead. Summer forgoes exposition for breathless escapes.

Most effective are the zombies themselves. For one, they’re fast: think 28 Days Later or World War Z over the stumbling mumblers of, say, Night of the Living Dead. And zombies don’t die with a simple head trauma. Here, creatures usually need a fusillade of automatic gunfire to be brought down.

In a sense, Summer is The Walking Dead without the bloated melodrama and pretentious blabbering (and, unfortunately, big-budget makeup and special effects). Summer is less a TV show than a sensory experience. It’s not going to redefine the zombie movie, but Summer manages to breathe some life into a genre at risk of dying out from overexposure.

Say Cheese, For Old Times

Scott Bowles

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April 17, 2019

Image result for polaroid camera

Nearly 50 years ago, Dr. Edwin Land, the genius who invented the Polaroid/Land Camera, made a cryptic short film — just him in a lab coat wandering through a gutted factory talking about the future of cameras. He pulled out a wallet that looked like an iPhone for size comparison and spoke of “a camera that would be like, oh, the telephone…our long awaited ultimate camera that is a part of the evolving human being.”

The bold prediction underpins Instant Dreams, a trippy documentary about the film and device that not only made it possible to develop images in less than a minute, but ushered in the very era of immediacy that would eventually kill the Polaroid camera. As much about the birth of digital photography as the death of the analog process, the film peeks into the lives of aficionados who still favor the point-and-shoot method over digital trickery.

“For a product to be truly new, the world must not be ready for it,” Land said in the home video, which unwittingly forecast the emergence of cell phones when he introduced the Polaroid in February 1947. What Land could not have envisioned were the photographers, artists and others who would not let go of his outdated technology even after his death in 1991 or his company’s demise in 2008.

Directed by Dutch filmmaker Willem Baptist, Dreams follows quirky camera buffs, including German-born artist Stefanie Schneider, who wanders the deserts of the American Southwest in a vintage pink bathrobe and Crocs, taking Polaroid art shots of her hen and whatever model she can engage for the day. She keep a hoard of foil-packet, expiration-dated Polaroid film stockpiled in her vintage fridge because “Colors show up in a very very different way, not what you actually see with your eyes” on these photographs. She relishes even the splotches, bars or streaks, the age-or-light induced imperfections of such images.

We meet Stephen Herchen, a retired chemist who continues to work with and touts Polaroid film as one of the most complex analog chemical processes “that’s ever been created.” We meet New York magazine editor Chris Bonanos, author of Instant: The Story of Polaroid, who provides the history the camera and preaches and practices its use, a prophet for an analog religion that has all but disappeared in the digital age.

We hear newsman Lowell Thomas on old newsreels, extolling the virtues of this “new” technology — “press a button, and have a picture.” Long-dead science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke discusses how tricky it is, predicting the future and being ahead of your time, as Land was.

Author Bonanos describes and even demonstrates (Baptist follows him to parties, out in public with his camera) the “social” interchange” that is part of why he thinks of this process as inherently human; waiting for the shot to develop, the writer says, “forces you to make small talk to fill in the moment.” The cameras were criticized back in the day for not providing images as sharp as 35mm film, an idea which Bonanos dismisses — “The eye forgives everything if it’s a good photograph.”

The film also does a canny job of illustrating the camera’s distinctiveness — the Polaroid remains the only camera that does not leave a trace of itself after taking a shot: no negatives, no digital storage capacity. Each picture, Dreams underscores, is distinct unto itself, like a fingerprint or snowflake.

What’s missing from the film is the sense of fun the camera itself provided. The score is often brooding, the testimonies of its demise usually melancholy. There’s little whimsy here, including the beauty of tactile connection with old technology, from wrist watches to turntables to instant cameras. Dreams could have used a scene or two shot in the fun, washed out, overexposed tone that made Polaroid so distinct. And it completely ignores the commercial resurgence of instant cameras; a casual glance at Amazon demonstrates instant film is hardly dead.

Which is a relief. Instant Dreams can be too somber at times, but, like the film itself, give it some time and its beauty comes into focus.

To Tubby Little Gingers

Scott Bowles

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March 21, 2019

Review: Ricky Gervais gets spiny and squishy in the Netflix comedy âAfter Lifeâ

Ricky Gervais flourishes in the awkward moment: the uncomfortable silence of a stiff conversation; a tasteless joke that lands with a thud; the boss who tries too hard to impress employees. That all-too-familiar discomfit works magically on his TV shows and his four stints hosting the Golden Globes, and less smoothly in his scripted films, which have a record of spotty box office performances.

Luckily, Gervais is back in his uncomfortable wheelhouse with After Life, a new series streaming on Netflix. The show bounces gleefully from hilarity to heartbreak, tenderness to tasteless, absurdity to absolutely inspired in this story about a widower trying to regain emotional balance in what is Gervais’ best role since he created The Office with Stephen Merchant.

Gervais plays Tony, who works on a free British newspaper in a small town, run by his exasperated but indulgent brother-in-law Matt (Tom Basden). Tony’s works the human interest beat, so it doesn’t help that, angry and depressed over the loss of his wife to cancer, he regards humanity as “a plague.” Reluctantly present at work and mildly suicidal outside of it, Tony is a mess at home, pouring cold cereal into a glass because all the bowls are dirty and eating it with water because he’s forgotten to buy milk. All that makes him happy is watching videos of late wife Lisa (Kerry Godliman) and walking his dog.

The tragedy leads Tony to a fateful decision — to do or say whatever he feels because nothing matters anymore (a similar motif to his 2009 film The Invention of Lying). While the film was a flop, the premise blends naturally with Gervais on the small screen, where his subtle comic timing is impeccable as he reports local “stories” about oddball townsfolk. And his everyday interactions with them are even funnier.

Tony has a spiny shell but a soft center (which could be said of Gervais’ work as a whole) and the show is a series of transgressions and apologies. Tony’s happiness has been replaced by frustrations, irritations, and hopelessness. Tony nearly loses his mind when a man eats his chips too loudly in a pub. He walks by a grade school, where he calls one kid a “tubby little ginger” and moves on, unfazed. When he’s mugged by two older kids, Tony doesn’t hesitate to punch one in the mouth — if they stab him, who cares? He’s got nothing left to live for.

Like The Office, After Life is brimming with delicious side characters — Gervais may be better at creating characters than playing one. Among them are advertising manager Kath (Diane Morgan), with whom Tony debates God, photographer Lenny (Tony Way), whom Tony compares to a cross between Shrek and Jabba the Hutt, and the remarkable Ashley Jensen (who was the soul of Extras) as the nurse caring for Tony’s father. There’s also the likable town junkie (Tim Plester), the friendly town “sex worker” (Roisin Conaty), and the nosy town postman (Joe Wilkinson). Image result for tom plester after life

The “stories,” too, are not only hilarious, but quite on the nose for small newspapers: A man who received the same birthday card from five people; a couple whose baby looks like Hitler (though only because they have painted a mustache on him and combed his hair forward); and a woman who sells rice pudding made with her own breast milk.

After Life stumbles in a couple areas, particularly grief. We feel for Tony not because he’s established himself as brokenhearted, but because he says so often how said he is. And Gervais uses a couple of his characters for weak strawman debates over his some of his favorite talking points, from atheism to coping with death to common public courtesy. Anyone familiar with Gervais’ humor will see bits of his stand-up routine in After Life.

The series’ intentions boil down to personal accountability and humanity’s responsibility to itself. Midway through the season, Tony is told the meaning of life: “All we’ve got is each other. We’ve got to help each other struggle through until we die, and then we’re done. No point in feeling sorry for yourself and making everyone else unhappy, too.” It’s a common message in the show, and occasionally sounds a bit like a Hallmark card. But that doesn’t make the sentiments any less true or Gervais’ work any less thoughtful and often compelling.

Yo Adrian!

Scott Bowles

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March 4, 2019

Sports makes for natural cinema. You’ve got the underdog hero, the heavily-favored villain, the climactic clash, the clear-cut winner and loser. That’s what fueled Rocky to eight films and $800 million at the box office in the U.S. alone.

But many forget: Rocky lost the first championship fight. And losing can make for equally compelling viewing. Consider Raging Bull, The Bad News Bears, A League of Their Own, Friday Night Lights, Moneyball and on.

You can add Losers to that list. The new Netflix show is a heartwarming docuseries that examines those who lost in high-profile fashion, but turned defeats into victory, both moral and literal.

Created and directed by Mickey Duzyj, a veteran of ESPN’s 30 for 30 short films, Losers mixes documentary interviews with animation to examine eight sports across the globe and looks anew at some high-profile failures to examine athletes who redefined their lives in the aftermath of loss. The result is akin to eight mini-Rocky Balboas, complete with feel-good endings minus the predictability of a film franchise.

If anything, unpredictability is the underlying strength of a series that could have grown tired quickly. Duzyj features athletes who never wanted to be athletes, stars who never sought stardom and sports you probably know little about, including curling and dog racing. His targets are so eclectic that even if you do know the sport, you probably don’t know the heroes hidden within.

Fittingly, Losers begins with a Rocky-like tale, but with a significant twist: The Miscast Champion follows the life of Michael Bentt, a championship fighter who admits his dislike of the sport’s savagery — and was nearly killed by it. Despite his success in the ring, Duzyj follows Bentt after his near-fatal defeat and chronicles his unlikely path to Hollywood, where he finds his true calling.

The hope of the episode underpins the tenor of the series, though the themes and lessons of the story are vastly different. The Jaws of Victory is a hilarious episode about a perennially awful soccer club whose very existence is saved by police dog that becomes a local hero. Lost in the Desert is a harrowing tale of a marathon held in the heat and sand of the Saraha Desert where simply surviving the race is a victory in itself. Stone Cold tells the story of Canadian Pat Ryan, whose loss ultimately changed and popularized the sport of curling (which is concisely explained, as is its rabid following).

Each of the episodes would make for a feature-length documentary or sports film. But at roughly a half-hour apiece, Losers manages to flesh out its heroes with humor and emotion — all within a binge-able timetable. And the animation is brilliant, a dash of flashy graphics that encapsulate events cameras never could capture mixed with the retro charm of an 80’s video game.

Losers is not the place to find tragic stories, which litter all sports and sometimes become the lasting memories of athletes. There are no Greg Normans tightening up on the last 18 holes to lose the Masters, no Roberto Durans, declaring as they walk from the ring “No mas, no mas.” Hope, redemption and the beauty of giving it your all underscore every episode.

If there’s any strike against Losers, it may be the order of the episodes, which lead the series to end on a so-so note. The 72nd Hole, the tale of Jean Van de Velde’s 18th hole collapse at the 1999 British Open, is certainly a worthwhile entry. But it has nowhere near the emotional punch of Ally, which chronicles the story Iditarod dog musher Ally Zirkle, or Judgement, the story of black figure skater Surya Bonaly. Both will leave you fighting back tears — of joy.

But it’s a minor setback in an otherwise resounding victory for cinematic storytelling. It may be full of tropes about winning and losing. But Losers does, ultimately, remind us that the beauty of sport really is in how you play the game.

The Subtle Beauty of True Detective’s Dud Finale

Scott Bowles

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February 25, 2019

HBO’s finale to True Detective hasn’t seen this much controversy since the end of The Sopranos, which is fitting, because both ended on anticlimactic notes. Throughout its eight-year run, The Sopranos suggested that death was sudden blackness, an unexpected and unexplained exit from existence. To prove the point, Sopranos capped its own fans, ending the series in such sudden darkness viewers thought their TVs had shorted.

Similarly, the third season of True Detective telegraphed how the whodunnit would end, though that hasn’t stopped Reddit and YouTube pundits from becoming engulfed in anger over the unspectacular conclusion. The real twist to the crime series may be yet to come: whether HBO decides to renew the up-and-down show.

Despite its labyrinthian setup and hint of a vast conspiracy finally explained, Detective ended on the simplest of notes. After two months worth of shows and three and a half decades worth of investigation, Now Am Found revealed that the fates of the Purcell children was barely nefarious: Will died accidentally and Julie ran away and remained alive and happy.

The conclusion sent much of the True Detective fanbase into conniptions; some took to the net minutes after the finale, asking, in essence, WTF? They lamented that the ending didn’t feature a Woody Harrelson or Matthew McConaughey cameo from Season 1. They blasted it for wrapping loose ends too quickly (halfway through the episode), too cheerily for a dark series, and too bizarrely with a final scene of Wayne Hayes back in the jungles of Vietnam.

But that may have been creators Nic Pizzolatto’s point all along, one he hinted at in Episode 2, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. In that episode, the show referenced the Franklin child prostitution allegations, a reference that sent conspiracy fans and the character Elisa Montgomery, a documentary true-crime filmmaker, scrambling to solve a vast conspiracy.

Image result for franklin child prostitution ring allegations

The Franklin case was a true incident that began in June 1988 in Omaha, Nebraska, when authorities looked into allegations that prominent citizens of Nebraska, as well as high-level U.S. politicians, were involved in a child prostitution ring. Alleged abuse victims were interviewed, who claimed that children in foster care were flown to the East Coast to be sexually abused at “bad parties.” The case attracted significant public and political interest until late 1990, when separate state and federal grand juries concluded that the allegations were unfounded and the ring was a “carefully crafted hoax.”

Still, the conspiracy remains. And even the book that it inspired, The Franklin Cover-up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska, became reference fodder for fans seeking clues to the show.

Which may explain why the True Detective finale disappointed so many. From the JFK assassination to the 9/11 attacks to fictional crime dramas, it’s tough to accept that profound misfortune can result from commonplace events or simple bad luck. It’s easier (and more cinematic) to discover a massive conspiracy behind massive devastation.

And that was True Detective‘s point in the half-hour wrap up, as characters tried to reconcile the deaths and decimated relationships borne of a simple, tragic, traffic accident. Viewers learned that Isabel Hoyt, the wife of produce magnate Edward Hoyt, lost her daughter in a car crash. Devastated, she grew attached to Julie Purcell, became obsessed, and, after going off her meds, abducted her. With the help of groundskeeper Junius Watts and several nuns, Julie eventually escaped to go on to live a normal life. Not the crescendo viewers expected.

Image result for true detective julie and will purcell

Even the characters admitted disappointment at the anticlimactic ending. As Wayne and wife Amelia meet at a bar to discuss what went wrong in their relationship, Wayne admits, “There’s always been this big secret between us,” he says. “It’s all tied up in a dead boy and a missing girl.” They agree that a date night won’t fix their problems, but Wayne tells her to go write her next book and they will move on together. “Let’s put this thing down,” says Wayne. “It’s not ours.”

Image result for wayne and amelia true detective

Even the final scene was a red herring in a series chock full of them (for what is a conspiracy theory but the pursuit of inconsequential evidence?). Wayne is back in the jungle of Vietnam because he suffers from Alzheimer’s, a common disease that robs its victims of associating place and time.

Image result for wayne vietnam ghosts true detective

It’s unclear whether HBO will be more swayed by ratings or reactions in determining the fate of another installment of True Detective, whose second season was lambasted by fans and critics alike. Regardless, Pizzolatto succeeded in making the point he began raising in 2014 when the show premiered: Time, indeed, is a flat circle.

Image result for pedophilia circle true detective

You Talkin’ to Me?

Scott Bowles

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February 21, 2019

You can tell Netflix is feeling its big-studio oats by the fights it’s accepting.

First came the clash with major Hollywood studios with Roma, which is vying to become the first streaming service film to win Best Picture when the Oscars are handed out February 24. Then it won the bidding war at Sundance for distribution rights to the Ted Bundy biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile. And now it’s prepping for a scrape with Disney’s pending streaming service, Disney +.

Netflix officially called off its relationship with the Marvel TV Universe with the cancellation of The Punisher and Jessica Jones Monday, drawing the ire of some fans and stars alike. Eminem took the service to task for dropping Punisher, one of his favorite shows.

In a tweet Wednesday night, the rapper wrote: ‘DEAR @NETFLIX, REGARDING YOUR CANCELLATION OF THE PUNISHER, YOU ARE BLOWING IT!! SINCERELY, MARSHALL”

The cancellations were’t entirely unexpected. Late last year, the streaming giant dropped Daredevil, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. The moves added to a growing fanbase angry at the streaming service; fans launched an online campaign, #SaveDaredevil, to keep the show afloat, as its prospects on Disney+ are uncertain.

But data suggests that Netflix was warranted to cancel The Punisher. Viewership for the show dropped 40% from 2017’s first season to last month’s second season in their first weekends of release, according to data from analytics company Jumpshot.

Beyond individual shows, however, the fates of the programs underscore a larger strategic battle brewing between Netflix and Disney. Disney CEO Bob Iger has called the Disney+ streaming service the company’s “biggest priority” for 2019, and said the studio has for months planned a divorce from Netflix so it can launch its own service as the exclusive streaming home for Disney movies, TV shows and other original programming.

Marvel TV President Jeph Loeb penned a letter thanking the hundreds of cast and crew who worked on all the shows, from Daredevil onwards, and the fans for watching. Loeb also teased that the characters could return in the distant future, but in what capacity remains to be seen.

“Our Network partner may have decided they no longer want to continue telling the tales of these great characters,” Loeb wrote, “but you know Marvel better than that. As Matthew Murdock’s Dad once said, ‘The measure of a man is not how he gets knocked to the mat, it’s how he gets back up.’”

Netflix’s strategy, meanwhile, seems to have shifted its cross-hairs to another outlet, Dark Horse Comics. Already, it produced a film from one of Dark Horse’s webcomic and graphic novel series, Polar. And this month the service released the first season of The Umbrella Academy, another Dark Horse venture.

Loeb perhaps best summed up the upcoming battle with the final line of his letter to fans, a three-word promise: “To be continued.”

Streaming analysis: How Netflix is Changing Everything You Watch

Scott Bowles

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February 9, 2019

Roma‘s 10 Oscar nominations underscored not only the streaming service’s growing clout in Hollywood, but confirmed what analysts have been noticing since it hit airwaves a dozen years ago:

Netflix is altering almost everything we view, from movies to TV shows to viral videos.

Despite its fourth — and biggest — price hike in its 12-year history, 2018 proved a stellar year for Netflix and, more importantly, demonstrated the increasing reach and muscle of the streaming service. Roma‘s 10 Oscar nods tied The Favourite for most nominations.

Netflix announced a price hike of 13% to 18% (or $1 to $2 depending on viewing package) earlier this month, explaining that the hike would generate an additional $1 billion for new programming. Despite the hike, only 3% of its 140 million subscribers said in surveys they would drop the service, and Netflix stock rose 7% on the NASDAQ the day of the announcement.

From commercial movies to traditional TV to competing streaming services to the Internet itself, Netflix has become the Miramax of its day, only bigger, changing the viewing landscape the way the arthouse studio once changed film.

Consider its recent achievements, announced in a quarterly last month, in which it is finally sharing audience numbers. And they’re huge:

Netflix said that Bird Box, released last year, added another 35 million households in the first four weeks after its release, bringing its total audience to 80 million households. Considering the average movie ticket costs $9.12, that means Bird Box drew the equivalent of $729.6 million at the U.S. box office alone. And that’s assuming only one viewer per household watched.
Sex Education, a new Netflix program geared to demographically-friendly younger audiences, reached 40 million households in just four weeks.
The service is expanding internationally as well: Elite, which comes out of Spain, reached 20 million households in its first month, while Bodyguard (the UK), and The Protector (Turkey), and Baby (Italy) all reached more than 10 million households in their first four weeks.

Netflix is dominating high-profile skirmishes with other outlets, too. The Lifetime network released the chiller You with such high hopes that it greenlit a second season before the first was released. But when it pulled in an average of only .6 million viewers, it sold the rights to Netflix, which promptly pulled in 40 million viewers its first month.

In a battle of streaming services, Hulu attempted to get the jump on Netflix with a documentary on the catastrophic Fyre music festival, unexpectedly opening Fyre Fraud four days before Netflix’s Fyre. While critics split over which was the better documentary, Netflix grabbed the headlines with a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign that has raised more than $100,000 for vendors cheated by the scam festival.

Even YouTube has had to contend with Netflix’s reach. Following the wildly popular #Birdboxchallenge, the viral video outlet banned dangerous stunt videos from its airwaves.

Already, traditional TV networks and Hollywood studios are feeling the pinch. To date, Netflix has captured 63 Primetime Emmys, 31 Daytime Emmys, and 11 Screen Actors Guild Awards. Earlier this month, it was the surprise winner of Best Picture and five other statues at the Critics Choice Awards and the winner of two Golden Globe Awards, for best director (Alfonso Cuarón) and Best Foreign Language Film.

The movie’s 10 Oscar nominations have already ratcheted up the battle between theaters and home viewing. AMC and Regal theaters, the nation’s largest theater chains, announced they will ban Roma from playing during their Oscar Best Picture Showcase Screenings. Every year AMC and Regal screen the Best Picture nominees back to back, but because Roma was released on Netflix, only seven of the eight nominees in will play in 2019.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Netflix estimates that it now accounts for 10 percent of TV screen time in the US. (Its math here: Netflix says it streams 100 million hours a day to TV screens in the US, and it figures those TVs — which include more than one TV per household, plus sets in bars, hotels, etc. — are on for a billion hours a day.)

“When you think about some of the distribution deals (we’ve) done over the last couple of years,” Eric Sheridan, a Nexflix analyst, said in the company’s quarterly report, ” that’s creating some noise.”

Streaming review: Velvet Buzzsaw

Scott Bowles

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February 7, 2019

As Michael Clayton and Nightcrawler illustrated, Dan Gilroy is masterful at portraying the horrific underbelly of human nature. When it comes to outright horror, though, his artistic style seems a little rough around the edges.

Such is the mixed result of his fun-but-flawed latest work, Velvet Buzzsaw, which premiered at Sundance last week before settling into full run on Netflix. Directing his third film, Gilroy delivers a wonderful sendup of the cultural elite and the air-kissing art-world they inhabit. But when the movie attempts to morph from satire to savagery, the lines begins to smudge.

Reuniting his Nightcrawler stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo, the movie opens at Basel, the actual, annual bazaar of million-dollar art-buying in Miami Beach. Floating through the gallery in a Brian de Palma-style sweep, Gilroy introduces most of the main characters: Gyllenhaal’s high-handed critic Morf Vandewalt; L.A. gallery owner Rhodora Haze (Gilroy’s real-life wife Russo); her oily competitor Jon Dondon (Tom Sturridge); ambitious assistant Josephina (Zawe Ashton); art handler Bryson (Billy Magnusson); and museum executive Gretchen (Toni Collette), a piranha of an art consultant. We also meet Piers (John Malkovich) and Damrish (Daveed Diggs), two art stars on opposing ends of their career arcs.

As they bicker and flatter emptily, the dynamics between them begin to crystallize: all are in desperate need to secure their place in the backstabbing art-house hierarchy. It doesn’t take much of a leap to see Gilroy is skewering the pretentiousness of his own industry, and the clever jabs land squarely: Bryson brags he glued the cereal nuggets on “Froot Loops Hippo,” and a bitter Piers complains that today’s art looks like ink smeared by balloons (a shot at Jeff Koons, who has made millions on sculptures resembling balloon animals).

But when an elderly shut-in neighbor of Josephina’s dies, leaving an apartment full of disturbing and compelling paintings, the film takes a John Carpenter-esqe turn, and Velvet‘s hand gets shaky. Through some clumsy exposition, we learn the artist suffered horrific abuse, followed by criminal insanity, followed by work that is to die for — literally.

While Gilroy’s satiric shots at consumerism and criticism keep the film afloat (Morf, ever the critic, is mortified by the color of a coffin during a funeral ceremony), the gruesome deaths that befall those who profit off the dead artist make Velvet feel like a haute Final Destination. The deaths are increasingly clever, but the second half of the movie feels like a paint-by-numbers chiller.

Velvet never takes itself as seriously as its artists do, which keeps the film, ultimately, outrageous and enjoyable. And cinematographer Robert Elswit’s shots of Los Angeles’ nighttime skylines are more picturesque than the overpriced art for sale.

But by the time the final body drops, Velvet plays like a horror flick sequel: The concept is fun, though still derivative of the clever original.

Streaming review: High Flying Bird

Scott Bowles

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February 7, 2019

High Flying Bird fittingly resembles a no-look pass in basketball: unexpected, deftly maneuvered, and usually resulting in a score. And while Steven Soderbergh’s latest movie accomplishes most of the achievements of the flashy pass — including a score — it isn’t quite a slam dunk.

There’s no denying the basketball drama was unexpected, on a couple levels. First, it proved reports of Soderbergh’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, primarily by Soderbergh. He announced to New York Magazine in 2013 that he was done with film because of Hollywood’s shabby treatment of directors and emphasis on profit.

“Just to be clear, I won’t be directing ‘cinema,’ for lack of a better word,” he told the magazine in January 2013. “But I still plan to direct — theater stuff, and I’d do a TV series if something great were to come along.”

Soderbergh was either bluffing or trying to build buzz for projects, because he’s been anything but idle the last six years. He directed Logan Lucky in 2017, 27 episodes of The Knick and Mosaic for TV, and two movies in the past two years, last year’s Unsane and Friday’s Bird, which premiered on Netflix. But grant him this: He is rebelling somewhat against the film industry. Both Unsane and Bird were shot using iPhones.

And while his filming gadgets of choice feel (and occasionally look) gimmicky, there’s no denying Soderbergh’s mastery of the medium. Topical, tautly-written and showcasing the director’s love of disruption, this story of the economic battle between NBA owners and players marks his best work in years.

Streaming analysis: Could Roma upend the Oscar Race?

Scott Bowles

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February 6, 2019

Roma, Alfonso Cuarón’s latest masterpiece, wears several hats: It’s part homage to his Mexican upbringing, part love poem to his nanny and part examination of the political and social schisms of his country in the 1970s.

It’s also something of a Hollywood double agent.

The black-and-white film, which is garnering substantial Oscar buzz, underscores the latest power struggle over who holds sway over the industry’s biggest movies: streaming services or theaters. The question is nothing new for Hollywood, but the film marks the fiercest battle yet in the struggle for audiences, whose attendance has flat-lined in recent years.

To qualify for Oscar consideration, a film must make at least a two-week run in theaters in New York or Los Angeles. So Netflix, which produced Roma, gave it a brief vanity run on the big screen before returning it to the small, setting up a duel between traditional exhibitors and executives at streaming outlets, which have been expanding as competitors such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple ramp up original content.

Essentially, Roma needed movie theaters to battle movie theaters.

And while streaming outlets have already changed the landscape for television awards (Netflix won seven Emmys at last year’s awards, while Amazon claimed five), Oscar remains the gold standard among laurels.

Already, skirmishes for smaller Oscars have broken out between studios and streamers. Amazon and Casey Affleck picked up a Best Actor Oscar for 2016’s Manchester by the Sea, while Allison Janney won Best Supporting Actress for I, Tonya last year after Neon productions turned down Netflix in favor of a theatrical run.

But a Best Picture statue could alter the landscape permanently. Studios and actors prefer the big-screen experience and argue it remains the art’s truest form. And a Best Picture nomination is no guarantee for Roma (although it’s one of the year’s best-reviewed movies, with a 96% thumbs-up rating on Rotten Tomatoes). The film is subtitled with an unknown cast, possibly limiting it to a Best Foreign Picture nod.

On the other hand, it’s directed by Cuarón, a previous Oscar winner and awards darling. And, as Joe Pichirallo, a former executive at Fox Searchlight Pictures and a professor at NYU told NPR, audience size may soon trump audience experience.

“Suddenly (Cuarón’s) film can be seen right away, in 190 countries around the world, at a potential audience of 130 million people,” he said. “Roma is now being taken seriously, at least right at this stage. It’s still early. But right now Roma is being talked about as a serious Oscar contender.”

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