"The Lobster" Review

The Lobster is a dark comedy film directed by Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth) and starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, Lea Seydoux, Jessica Barden, Angeliki Papoulia, Olivia Colman, and Ben Whishaw. It follows a man named David (Farrell) in a dystopian future where older single people are taken to The Hotel where they must find a lover in 45 days or be turned into an animal of their choice and released into The Woods. David, upon his wife leaving him for another man, checks in at The Hotel on his quest to find love where he meets a large ensemble of bizarre unnamed hotel patrons, choosing to become a lobster should he fail to find a lover. All the while, the hotel patrons are prohibited from masturbating (but required to be sexually stimulated by a hotel maid to keep their drive up) and are shown propaganda giving examples of the benefits of monogamous relationships, such as not having to die alone and being less susceptible to sexual assault from strangers. All of this, if you haven't figured out, is an allegory for modern society's treatment of romantic relationships. And I think it's brilliant.

The Lobster has been getting a lot of goodwill on the indie circuit since its wide release this spring, and I think it's well deserved. This is sort of 2016's Her, in that it's a very subtle sci-fi drama with some dark humor elements that examines society's treatment of love and relationships. Photographed beautifully by Thimios Bakatakis, the film is painted in dull grays and whites, and every character is monotone, emotionless, uninterested, and speaks of even things that they purport give them unspeakable anguish with a measured, rational tone and diction completely devoid of pathos (their personalities also interestingly and cleverly match with their animal of choice). 

This is perfect for the film's absurdist strip-down of modern single life - love is reduced to requisite, mandatory, and controllable, and people are reduced to beings of sex, procreation, and pursuit toward monogamy, as if they exist for nothing else. Personal interests and personality traits exist solely to attract and use as fodder in the search for a mate. Friendships exist solely to complement romance. Children exist solely to validate long-term commitment. And if one is unable to find romantic love, they're cast out as animals, living as creatures without meaningful lives or direction, capable only of fulfilling base carnal desires. 

It's some depressing stuff, and the film is relentless. The clever visual and narrative metaphors between the operations of The Hotel and the anti-romance rogues of The Woods and the general attitudes of modern society toward relationships and love, especially for singles in their thirties and forties, are plentiful, non-stop, and always intelligent, striking, and usually pretty devastatingly funny. The film's script is endlessly creative, and for a movie populated with monotone characters devoid of emotion, has quite a bit of personality. This is mostly thanks to Lanthimos's effective use of violence and dark humor.

But this is not regular dark humor - The Lobster's dark humor is pitch black, to the point that many of the film's greatest examples of irony and allegory expel not just uncomfortable laughs of disbelief from the audience, but also shivers at the incredibly striking brutality and coldness of the world our characters live in that, ironically, in the pursuit of getting everyone to fall in love, has seemed to completely remove empathy or heart. Suicide, nihilism, animal abuse, domestic violence, physical disabilities, and the darkest tendencies of the human heart in long-term commitment are the most memorable and effective deliverers of the film's laughs and gasps.

Like any good work of absurdist fiction, though, The Lobster doesn't only demonize and ridicule the "you must marry" aspects of society. The loner life gets an ample ribbing especially in the film's second act, often being shown to be just as callous, selfish, and disregarding for human life as society's fervent insistence on monogamy. You might think that the film then makes the conclusion that one should just do what one feels is correct in love, but even that gets its share of criticism for lack of definitive purpose. Ultimately, this is an absurdist/nihilist/agnostic's wet dream. Which may have something to do with why I love it.

I've spent most of this review speaking about the screenplay, because I think without a doubt that is where the vast majority of the movie's strengths lie. But in terms of direction, cinematography, performances, and music (the soundtrack is filled with eerie, loud, and often unsettling classical pieces), the movie is a great example of extremely solid allegorical/satirical sci-fi filmmaking as well. Farrell, Reilly, Weisz, Seydoux, and Colman give the standout performances, and the film exudes odd beauty from its often strikingly disturbing images and subject matter.

Overall, The Lobster is a just-about-perfect work of social satire and incredibly witty science fiction whose brilliant screenplay, Lanthimos's sure-handed direction, and the cast's many wonderful performances make for a great absurdist and slightly nihilist breakdown of societal tendencies regarding love, sex, and relationships. I don't know if I could recommend it to everyone - it's not quite as sweet or silly as Her, and often actively tries to be off-putting and disturbing in tandem with its narrative ambitions. So, if being kind of depressed and disheartened with human nature for two hours doesn't sound like something you'd like to try out, it may not be for you. But if smartly crafted satire and incredibly dark humor interest you, The Lobster delivers in spades.

Grade: A

"A Bigger Splash" Review

A Bigger Splash is a romantic drama thriller film directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, and Matthias Schoenarts that is apparently a remake of a 1960s erotic film called La Piscine. Swinton plays an aging rock star on vacation in Italy with her boyfriend (Schoenarts), and their vacation is interrupted by Swinton's ex-lover Fiennes and his teenage daughter Johnson. Fiennes makes clear that he has come to visit for the sole purpose of trying to seduce Swinton back to him, and Johnson is pretty obviously trying to fuck Shoenarts. What follows is an unconventional and bizarre indie romance that seems simple enough for the most part.

This is going to be a very short review because I have no idea what to make of this film. On a completely superficial level, I enjoyed all four of the main performances, though I've heard undying praise for Swinton who honestly never floored me. Fiennes is the star for sure, in my opinion, playing Harry Hawkes (the only character whose name I remember) beautifully as someone who is belligerent and fun-loving and yet heartbreakingly selfish and emotionally disturbed. Johnson is ridiculously cryptic as his daughter (with whom he has a very uncomfortable relationship), and is appropriately sexy and actually pretty compelling especially in the third act. Schoenarts's character seems to be the most grounded, since he's oddly the most removed from the fast and furious showbiz life despite being a filmmaker himself, but has his own demons to work out as well.

Honestly, this is really about all I could say about this film. The first hour or so goes by following seemingly meaningless interactions between the four main characters underscored by some brilliant and striking imagery of an Italian island as well as some deafening string-heavy music, creating a palpable sense of unease that ultimately explodes with one event about halfway through the film. Between this and the four actors' brilliant performances, I can say honestly that I was thoroughly intrigued throughout the film, but could never really put my finger on what it was going for, and I still can't say I do even a month out.

I'm not opposed to ambiguity or a film being difficult to decipher, and I'm sure upon a second viewing I'd have more to talk about, but, while intriguing, so much of this movie's runtime was spent with me wondering where the fuck it was going. Once it proved to me that it was not going where I thought, I was pretty much completely lost. Choppy flashbacks and some odd directorial choices in terms of what a shot lingers on or what a character does or does not say add even more facets to the confusion. Maybe I'm just a dumbass, but I really don't know where to go from here.

Overall, A Bigger Splash has an intriguing storyline with compelling and well-written characters performed beautifully by its four main actors, especially Ralph Fiennes, and also offers some magnificent camerawork and scenery. But it's also super cryptic, confusing, and felt sort of unsatisfying in its ambiguity. Better minds than me will need to decipher it properly, but if it sounds like it may pique your interest, by all means see it and explain it to me.

Grade: B-

"Finding Dory" Review

After a really long hiatus for not much of any reason, I'm finally getting to actually writing reviews for all the films I saw this June. And I'm gonna start with Finding Dory, which is an animated comedy adventure film from Pixar and a sequel to the hit 2003 film Finding Nemo. Set one year after the events of Nemo, the film follows clownfish father and son Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo's blue tang friend Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), who suffers from short-term memory less, suddenly having sort of visions of her past with her parents, who she has not remembered in years. Dory becomes determined to find them, finding remnants of her past on the way and eventually being led to a marine life research institute and museum on the coast of California, with Marlin and Nemo desperately following behind her. There she meets a stretchy, cranky, camouflaging octopus named Hank (played by Ed O'Neill), a whale shark (Kaitlin Olson), and a beluga (Ty Burrell). Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, Dominic West, Idris Elba, and Sigourney Weaver provide supporting voice roles.

With the exception of last year's Inside Out, Pixar has been exceptionally unexceptional since Toy Story 3's release in 2010. I seem to be in the minority, but I think Finding Dory is a continuation of that. Finding Nemo is a nearly perfectly crafted animated family adventure film with a fluid screenplay filled with charm and wit that navigates its huge supporting cast and myriad of obstacles incredibly well, never slowing down but never growing stale, and ends up being a fairly subtle but very sweet and intelligent statement on over-protection and the importance of being able to let go, another example of Pixar's penchant for slightly unconventional but important and well-communicated messages in children's films. Finding Dory, on the other hand, aims to make a thinly veiled statement about mental disabilities and differences in general and the importance of using your own strengths and weaknesses to their advantage, and mostly succeeds, but at the expense of doing anything fresh or exciting.

Don't get me wrong - this is a competently done animated film, and if you've already scrolled down to see my score for it, you know that I must've had some kind of good opinion of it, and I do. Finding Dory is also a lot of fun, and unlike Cars 2's embracing of its predecessor's crowd favorite supporting character in Mater, actually adds a fair amount of dimension to the character of Dory. She's no longer simply the source of silly jokes, but something about her condition is actually a little bit heartbreaking. In my opinion, none of the movie's tear-jerkiest moments ever come close to the depth or emotional weight of Dory's speech to Marlin during Finding Nemo's third act, and for that matter neither does DeGeneres's once again wonderful vocal performance, but Pixar plays the requisite Pixar notes well enough, and it seems to have worked out for them. This goes without saying being a Pixar film, but the animation in the movie is absolutely brilliant, and the film gives you plenty of luscious undersea landscapes to ogle at their vivid attention to detail and beautiful colors.

Unfortunately, much like Cars 2, while this film's character is much more compelling (and far less annoying) than Mater, the film's narrow focus on Dory subtracts from every other character in the film, both our main characters from the last film and most of the new supporting characters, who exist without much depth and aren't particularly funny. The notable exception is Hank the octopus, who is by far the best thing about the film, both O'Neill's gravelly and curmudgeonly vocal performance as him as well as the wonderfully imaginative physical humor his character brings in. Other than that, every character feels flat and mostly useless, to the point that you sometimes forget that Marlin and Nemo were actually the emotional crux of a whole other movie. It's almost like Finding Dory is less a sequel to Nemo and more like an anthology film where we follow the exploits of a side character that give dimension to, but are mostly inconsequential to, the characters of the main story.

I think therein lies my biggest problem with the film - it doesn't feel like it needed to be told. Especially considering it's been thirteen years since the first film, this feels like too little too late. Something about the way the screenplay flows, as well as the film's flimsy premise and the timing of its release, make me think that the film began with the decision to make a film about the favorite character from Pixar's second-highest grossing film, rather than beginning with the decision to tell a story. Dory and her friends jump effortlessly from one impossible cartoonish scenario to the next with the only emotional weight being delivered through quick snippets of dialogue (all of which are incredibly on-the-nose), and especially during the third act gets particularly ridiculous, to the point that it mostly feels like the writers were throwing out weird ideas for stuff to happen without having it flow well together. And I think that quality comes out of the fact that Finding Dory mostly exists because of Dory's popularity.

I don't want to seem like I'm bashing on the film, because I did like it, but I thought it was incredibly average, which automatically puts it at the lower end of the Pixar crop. The message is nice enough, though maybe not entirely accurate (be yourself and things will work out), but feels tacky and conventional, and its connection to mental illness stigmas seems mostly concocted afterward by social media posts and isn't a totally complete picture using just the film's script. The movie moves along fine enough, but never seems to build to anything in a satisfying way. And, probably most importantly, it doesn't feel like a part of the Nemo universe that was worth waiting 13 years for. That said, Dory is done justice, and once again, the requisite (albeit more superficial and simplified) Pixar notes are hit well enough to most likely appease most.

Overall, Finding Dory is a perfectly fine family film that I'm sure kids will enjoy and will probably provide adequate nostalgia for fans of the first film. For me, though, it was much less intelligently crafted than Finding Nemo and didn't go nearly as deep as Pixar's best efforts, and outside of Hank, wasn't ever quite funny or charming enough to make up for that. That said, the film does a good job delivering the tear-jerky moments as well as a fair amount of charm and requisite visual splendor, albeit, in my opinion, lacking cohesion or anything matching the emotional weight of the first film. Again, I liked it, but "average" isn't a great descriptor for a Pixar film. I'm sure I'll like it better than Cars 3 next year though.

Grade: B