FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / February 2022 / Gabriel Ricard
Image © United Artists
Let’s make this the year we all just completely ignore the Oscars. Seemingly a lifetime ago, I could get into the Academy Awards in the same way I could get into pro wrestling. It didn’t really matter, but it was fun to make predictions, get annoyed when they didn’t work out, and then gently argue with other people on social media, who hopefully also don’t take this shit too seriously.
Beyond any genuinely surprising diversity grabs the Academy may have in store for me, it’s only February, and I’m already willing to just jump ahead to April. 2022 has a few movies I’m looking forward to, particularly in horror, and I doubt any of them are going to be serious Oscar contenders.
At this point, my thinking is that if you’re going to force movies to compete, at least make it official. Cannes isn’t perfect by a long shot, but at least everyone understands the stakes involved. Just going to Cannes is good enough for a lot of people, and at least it’s the atmosphere of people watching movies together.
Which leads me to the hope to find more communal ways to enjoy films, as we stagger blindly on into the horrific reality of a world going dangerously backwards. I’m not the most social person in the room these days. It was an effort and then some just to start leaving the house to go to the movies late last year. I was glad I did. I found that up to a point, there is still something wonderful about watching a movie with other people.
I’m sure I’ve made this promise somewhere in this long, wearying pandemic, but one thing I personally want to do more of this year is watch movies with other people. This may have to be limited to online watch parties for a while, but that’s also fine. Watching movies with people who at least love the potential and general idea of cinema can be good for your own personal enthusiasm. It can also put you in front of discussing movies with people who actually watch movies.
I need to find more of those people this year. I need to listen to opinions. I need to discover new interests and movies by way of the passion of others. If anything keeps the general doom and gloom away, specifically about the state and future of film, it’s a plan like that.
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (2021): A-
Image © IFC Films | 9.14 Pictures
With so many interviews, lectures, and even audiobooks to pour over, you can very easily create an impression of what author and essential satirist Kurt Vonnegut was like during his long, beautifully human life. There’s a lot of that material around. This doesn’t even cover the novels, short stories, essays, drawings, and other things Vonnegut willed into existence from a very conflicted, ultimately hopeful existence.
So, to the specific end of boiling everything down to something that covers the essentials, but doesn’t sacrifice going into greater detail whenever possible, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is close to perfection. While perhaps feeling a little less than rounded occasionally, and only occasionally, this documentary is nonetheless a riveting case for Vonnegut’s importance then, and most certainly now.
Unstuck in Time is also distinctive from any other biographical material on Vonnegut because of the relationship writer and director Robert B Weide had to the man itself. To put it another way, it makes sense that someone who truly knew and loved Vonnegut’s depiction of the absurd has a stack of credits for shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm. Weide gets into his own personal life by addressing the nature of the documentary, as long as his long-standing difficulty in finishing it.
The good news is that Weide worked on this documentary for several years, allowing him to become friends with one of the greatest science fiction writers and humorists of the 20th century. If you find that such a friendship informs a bias of how the documentary is presented, fair enough. I would argue this relationship adds several compelling shades to the film we are shown.
Heaven’s Gate (1980): A+
Image © United Artists
At some point in my life, I feel like it would be fun to watch the theatrical 149-minute version of Heaven’s Gate. This is one of those movies where the epic status is more than justified, at least by my own standards. If anything, the 216 director’s cut from Michael Cimino left me wondering what the original 325-minute workprint edition must be like.
Time has tempered the overall impression of this film. It is considerably less controversial than the year of its release. That 1980 disaster saw the film completely fail at the box office, anger critics by its mere existence, and at least help to destroy the career of its writer and director (Cimino would direct only four more films, before retiring in 1996, and dying in 2017). Heaven’s Gate can still start an argument. Is it a brilliant spectacle of storytelling, action, visuals, and on-screen performance? Is it a bloated exercise in filmmaker excess, the inevitable result of the auteur theory run amok?
These are fun talking points, but we won’t get into them here. All I can really say is that I’m glad to have finally experienced this epic western. Loosely based on the Johnson County War, Heaven’s Gate offers a sprawling story of human weakness, greed, and a complex depiction of the immigrant experience. The film features brilliant performances by Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Jeff Bridges, and several others.
It is one of those movies that nerds who love movies believe anyone serious about film should watch at least once. I would agree with that, and I think at this point the film has more admirers than detractors. As it should be.
What Happens Next Will Scare You (2020): B+
Image © Midnight Crew Studios
Although the rapid-fire approach of crafting and presenting several viral YouTube-style videos in the anthology format leads to a very uneven viewing experience at times, What Happens Next Will Scare You is still a hell of a lot of fun. Created by some of the key names associated with the excellent low-budget horror-comedy WNUF Halloween Special, including Jimmy George and Chris LaMartina, this film is in a similar vein to that one.
Only instead of the local news, What Happens Next is set at a crisis-level staff meeting of internet journalists, desperate to keep their website and jobs intact. An entertaining group of characters and expected cynical online journalist types then present a series of videos and other discoveries they have found, designed to take advantage of the always-reliable fact that people like to watch scary shit on the entertainment. What Happens Next Will Scare You then gets to its strongest feature, a series of cleverly-made “amateur” videos and other oddities. Some are harmless, and the film does a good job of peppering its strongest serious horror moments with such scenes and exchanges. As the videos go on, the office building of the journalists seems to become more dangerous with every passing moment. The movie brings everything to a fairly satisfying conclusion.
The emphasis on comedy over a more straightforward type of horror won’t be for everyone. The movie’s conclusion to its wraparound is a blistering descent into comedy and the genuinely disconcerting. This film is at its strongest when all bets for expectations or logic are completely off the table.
Antlers (2021): C+
Image © Searchlight Pictures
Well, if you’ve been waiting for a mainstream American horror movie that really doubles down on punishing the innocent (which is not a bad thing), I suppose your folk horror ship has come in. Antlers might be one of the bleakest horror movies to come out this decade. We understand we’re in for a rough time with its story of a middle school teacher (Keri Russell, strikingly up for the challenge of a character whose living hell is truly multipurpose) who tries to help a young child in her class. The consequences of simply trying to protect a child clearly in harm’s way makes up the rest of this sometimes-too-slow horror film.
Antlers could perhaps have used a little more time, although this may not be helpful either, as there are several very slow lulls throughout its 99 minutes. The protagonists, highlighted by very good performances by Jesse Plemons and Jeremy T. Thomas (who often beautifully carries the movie’s more brutal scenes) as the child, have heart, but lack depth at times.
There are also components of legends and stories taken from the Algonquin peoples of Eastern Canada. While this nets us a welcome performance by the criminally underrated Graham Greene, this is another piece of a movie that just can’t fit everything together. It also doesn’t help that the movie’s ending is a little on the anticlimactic side.
However, on that last point, assuming you’ve just seen the 15 minutes which proceeded the final five, it’s hard to imagine anyone being able to add more story in a meaningful way. Director and co-writer Scott Cooper has a strong core idea here. It works well for the most part with good performances, strong editing by Dylan Tichenor, and striking creative touches in the production design and makeup. I just also think this is ultimately just a good movie, when it could have been great.
The French Dispatch (2021): A+
Image © Searchlight Pictures
Even with a list of movies to watch that actually kills several of my braincells by merely looking at it, I have managed to see The French Dispatch 3 times since catching it in theaters this past November. Only one of those was in theaters. The other two were from renting and then insisting other people who couldn’t escape from me watch it.
I think even people with expectations for a Wes Anderson movie at this point will be surprised, pleasantly so, by The French Dispatch. I also just wanted to get in a few more viewings of this collection of stories and vignettes collected under an American newspaper outpost in the middle of a fictional French town. With dozens of flawlessly executed angles and edits, several different visual styles working in remarkable harmony, and a funny, tragic script and story as the foundation for the dozen or so award-worthy performances you will find here, The French Dispatch might just be my current favorite from this filmmaker.
Performances from Léa Seydoux, Benicio del Toro, Steve Park, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, and particularly Jeffrey Wright (I would actually like to meet this character again someday) are only part of what elevates The French Dispatch. Attention and respect should also be paid to some of the best art direction, production design, and set decoration work ever brought to one of Anderson’s films. I’ve found everything about this movie worth breaking down and appreciating on its own.
Gabriel Ricard writes, edits, and occasionally acts. His books Love and Quarters and Bondage Night are available through Moran Press, in addition to A Ludicrous Split (Alien Buddha Press) and Clouds of Hungry Dogs (Kleft Jaw Press). He is also a writer, performer, and producer with Belligerent Prom Queen Productions. He lives on a horrible place called Long Island.
