Joker is a movie that everybody seemingly already has an opinion about. Having won the Golden Lion award, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in September, the film has only gained momentum since. It is the result of an unstoppable combination of scintillating controversy, an iconic villain, and a movie-watching public hungry for both of the above. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Joker is about a man gone mad and the society that has ignored him for far too long. The premise is a familiar one, of course, well tread by innumerable movies before it, but never in quite so much clown make-up. You too can form an opinion about this contentious film; Joker is currently showing at the State Theater. Tickets can be bought online or at the box office ($8.50 with a student ID).
Author: Corrina Lee
PREVIEW: Ad Astra
There is, seemingly, always another space film. Limitless in both their number and in material, a space film can stretch across genres. They can be slashing horror thrillers or lingering existential debates about humanity. They can even be horrifying existential debates. It is surprising, then, that so many space films bleed into each other, becoming forgotten in the blackness of the movie theater. Hopefully, Ad Astra will not be another one of these easily disposable films. This is an unlikely outcome though, especially considering the man at the helm. James Gray, both the director and a co-writer of the film, has found success in critical circles before with his previous effort, The Lost City of Z, wherein he explores themes of exploration and isolation. Ad Astra returns to those subjects, as astronaut, Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) searches for his long-lost father, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones). Clifford went missing years before on a mission that, now, may be of critical importance. With a more-than-competent director and cast, it already seems that Ad Astra will outlast so many of its space film brethren. Ad Astra is currently showing at the State Theatre. Tickets can be bought online or at the box office ($8.50 with a student ID).
REVIEW: Brittany Runs a Marathon
Sometimes, you look up from your phone, from your laptop, from your life and realize that you are in exactly the right place. Or at least, you convince yourself that you are in the right place. For if you admitted to yourself that everything felt utterly wrong and your life was actually a directionless path with the only certainty being its end, well that, that would be simply devastating. So, you question yourself for two seconds, ten seconds at the most, before devoting your attention back to that phone, that laptop, that life. It is, thus, very easy to justify and even become enamored with a lifestyle that makes you miserable. True change, after all, requires a fundamental reevaluation of one’s motivations as well as a complete shifting of one’s perspective. It’s easier to be miserable. It’s easier to walk the same path, on and on without deviation. Brittany decides to run a marathon.
Before that decision though, Brittany Forgler (Jillian Bell) is simply existing in New York City. She floats from late-night party to late arrivals at work. She takes situations and makes people laugh, mostly at her, but why should that matter? She is used to being diminished and so she diminishes herself. It is seemingly the only way to survive in a world that is intent on reducing her to her body type. Thus, when Brittany visits a doctor to scam a prescription of Adderall and his instruction is, instead, to lead a healthier lifestyle, it seems just another indictment from a hostile society. It is the same refrain that she seems to hear from every closing subway door, from every condescending smile: “Brittany is not skinny enough to be worthwhile of respect, much less love.” Making matters worse is the constant reminders that others have achieved the level of esteem that is denied to her. Her roommate, Gretchen (Alice Lee) brags about her life for a living as a social media influencer, and her landlord, Catherine (Michaela Watkins) has several apartments and a successful marriage. It is all enough to make Brittany suspect any act of kindness as an act of pity instead, for everything and everyone is seemingly against her. It is this combative viewpoint that the film stops to examine most closely, prodding at both society’s unfair weight standards and Brittany’s internal obstacles.
It is also here that Jillian Bell shines the most. She brings a brightness that never becomes too saccharine. She has an energy and an enthusiasm that lifts instead of oppresses. Tempering the sweetness is an incredulous cynicism that lives on her upraised eyebrows, constantly questioning the ridiculous situations that she finds herself in. She is world weary without becoming apathetic. She is light-hearted without becoming resorting to empty banter. In her performance, Jillian Bell connects the pathos with the humor, understanding that much of Brittany’s pain informs her playfulness and vice versa. It is this balance that keeps the film from drifting into the all-too familiar territory of the motivational movie. Brittany Runs a Marathon, as its title might indicate, is much too specifically focused on one person to prescribe solutions for everyone else.
This solution, of course, has its own drawbacks, resulting in many of the side characters becoming conventional foils for Brittany to react against. Characters like Catherine, Gretchen, and even potential love interest, Jern (the delightful Utkarsh Ambudkar), have minimal inner lives of their own. Instead, they appear when Brittany needs someone to alternatively, grow closer to or push away. It is a shame, too, that the movie writes and casts a diverse set of characters only to let them languish. Side characters remain primary colors, easily getting lost in the film’s brightly vibrant sets.
Sometimes, you look up and realize that you are in exactly the right place. Or at least you realize that you are, at least, heading in the right direction. Brittany Runs a Marathon is an entertaining movie that never gets too self-important. Though the film certainly stumbles at points (especially with some poorly conceived visual flourishes towards the end), it finishes its runtime, arms raised up in triumph.
REVIEW: The Farewell
The Farewell is a movie about an ending coming suddenly into sight. Billi (Awkwafina) comes home to do laundry and comes away with the knowledge that her grandmother, Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), has only a few months to live. With that fatal deadline looming, the entire family has decided to lie to Nai Nai, hoping to ease her mind by keeping the diagnosis of lung cancer a secret. Billi, though, has her doubts, complicated, in no small part, by her own need to say goodbye. But the rest of the family is insistent. They will gather together at Nai Nai’s apartment in China under the false pretense of a wedding. They will carry this secret so that Nai Nai won’t have to.
Much of the comedy comes from the fact that no one – not Billi, not her parents, not her uncles or cousins – can bear the weight of that secret entirely. The cracks widen with each barely mustered smile, with each nervous side-glance after a misplaced word. There is a palpable awkwardness to every interaction, as every member of the clan works to maintain a flailing façade. Even the shots are intentionally awkward. Frames are shot from the perspective of an individual in the scene, inserting the viewer first-hand into the lie. We are confronted by the knowing faces and a painful self-awareness. And we laugh as those faces contort into an expression resembling a smile. Because what else is there to do in a situation as dire as a coming death? So, the secret becomes an elaborate distraction, as much for the living’s sake as for the dying.
Together, the family help Nai Nai assemble the wedding. She attacks the tasks with a relentless zeal. There is no danger greater, after all, than a grandmother spurned. Of course, the wedding must have lobster instead of crab. Of course, the couple must be posed to indicate a perfect romance. Anything less would be unworthy of the family she has built. Nai Nia projects such familial fierceness that the false occasion takes on more than a tinge of truth. Feelings that were once faked become frighteningly real. Tensions buried for years bubble up and erupt. For as much as the family is united, they are also fractured in ways that only family can be. Billi’s father (played as a plodding gloom by Tzi Ma) and her uncle (Yongbo Jiang) are constantly at odds. They have been separated by long years and longer distances. While Billi’s father moved his small portion of the clan to the United States, his brother chose Japan. Now, they are brought together once again, back to where they came from. They share cigarettes at night while splitting a much heavier burden. They will have to be the pillars of the family from now on.
These poignant, lingering moments are sometimes interrupted by less poignant moments that linger even longer. The director, Lulu Wang, often uses slow-motion shots for emphasis but it comes off as syrupy instead. There is a sense of trying a bit too hard to romanticize the moment, as if the movie is memorializing this moment just as the characters are memorializing theirs. It is a good sentiment, executed less than perfectly. By, what feels like, the fiftieth poignant moment, you want the film to move on. But it can’t. The movie is stuck. The characters are stuck between celebrating life and mourning death, one that is still approaching. The film is premised on binaries. To tell or not to tell. Lobster or crab. Life or death. But as each character discovers, they reside in spaces that feel not quite right and not quite wrong. The Farewell meanders well, following the characters as they explore the mediums between the extremes. It is the static points where it struggles.
Billi, mainly drifts between the extremes of modernity and traditionally held values. It is also a question of how others perceive her, a young Chinese American living alone in New York City, and how she sees herself, a struggling writer searching for some of that childhood stability. She is, like many first-generation Americans, struggling to reconcile the alienation she feels from all sides. In herself, Billi embodies every influence throughout her life, from the gentle reproaches of Nai Nai and her parents, to the harsher financial admonishments of the American economy. The Farewell, then, is not only a film about moving in ambiguous places but also how those ambiguities can be incorporated within. The Farewell doesn’t much deal with resolute truths. It is more comfortable with lies and half-facts. We all are. And in death, as in life there really is no such thing as an absolute surety.
PREVIEW: The Farewell
Most secrets, we keep without a second of consideration. Instinctively, we slide away from the full truth, allowing for the slightest vagary to creep into our words. Secrets are a shield, but who are we protecting? The Farewell asks this question of Billi (Awkwafina) and her family as they confront the looming death of their matriarch, Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen). Nai Nai only has a few weeks to live and she is the only one who doesn’t know it. Billi’s parents, at least, think it is for the best, allowing Nai Nai to enjoy her last days without having to worry about the world she will soon be leaving behind. Secrets are a shield and The Farewell begins to ask what protection means to those of different cultural backgrounds even as they are part of the same family. The Farewell is a comedy-drama, currently showing at the State Theatre. Tickets can be bought online or at the box office ($8.50 with a student ID). Some showings feature Mandarin subtitles.
REVIEW: Shoplifters
Shoplifters is a quietly touching movie. It neither strives to be a tear-jerker nor is it overly pessimistic. It simply is. It is a story set perfectly in the real world, even though most of its characters are ignored by the rest of society. Constantly, they are told by others that they don’t exist. Most interestingly though, Osamu (Lily Franky) and Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), the central couple of the story, simply don’t care. They benefit from inattention, cultivating an unusual family in the midst of busy Tokyo. They are not married, but they have a child. Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), the older women that lives with them, is not their mother, but they call her ‘mother’ in front of the housing authorities. They are living false lives, but so is everyone around them. Osamu and Nobuyo see their lies as necessities for both their survival and the survival of the family that they have built together.
In addition to Osamu and Nobuyo, the ostensible ‘Dad’ and ‘Mom’ of the household, and Hatsue, the ‘Grandmother’ figure, the household consists of Osamu’s younger ‘sister’, Aki, and their ‘son’ Shota. All of their histories are carefully veiled, the audience only occasionally glimpsing their true pasts. The characters, themselves, seem to avoid their prior selves. They have discarded themselves as easily as the plastic wrappers thrown next to the road. It is freeing and empowering to only live in the present. For them, it doesn’t matter how they have gotten to this moment only what they can do now. It is a life with few regrets, but also little thought for the future. The fragility of their situation is constantly threatened and one of the greatest threats comes in the form of a little girl, Yuri. Yuri’s biological parents are constantly arguing, leaving her to play outside unattended. One night, Osamu and Shota find Yuri who has run away. Instead of returning her, they decide to take her into their own family. Other movies would simply assume that the adoptive family is Yuri’s salvation. But they, too, are dysfunctional.
Shoplifters, admirably, never chooses sides, instead finding the happiness in the messiest, most unorthodox situations.
