The Endless (2017)

The Endless (2017) felt like a very dark film from the get-go – it’s so devoid of color that it almost looks like there’s a permanent sepia filter on it. This suggests to us that we’re not going to see the happiest film, and we definitely did not. The main protagonists, Justin (Justin Benson) and Aaron (Aaron Moorhead), are brothers who are just barely living off minimum wage. Oh, and a few years ago, they escaped from a UFO death cult.

I think the way that the film framed the characters really affected my personal experience of the film. Justin acts as sort of a father figure to Aaron, who doesn’t understand the implications of a UFO death cult, and associates living in a cult with good things – the community of people, spending time with his family, and not having to eat instant ramen every day. This made me trust Justin more than I trusted Aaron. Everything Aaron said felt a little bit naive, while it was evident that Justin had a deeper understanding of what exactly being part of a UFO death cult entailed.

When we first see Camp Arcadia, there’s definitely something eerie about it, and the film succeeds in setting up this menacing image. It’s when the community, including Aaron, participates in the tug-of-war exercise, that we get the first inkling that something truly bizarre is afoot. Maybe these people actually are on to something. The Endless continuously challenges us – we don’t know what’s fake, and we definitely don’t know what’s real. There’s something so chilling about that – I felt like I was holding my breath for the majority of the film. There’s a lot of twists and turns in the film that you don’t see coming, but it’s not a traditional horror movie where you’d scream because of a jumpscare. It’s more of this perpetual feeling of unease and paranoia, because things aren’t what they seem. The scene in which the baseball that’s tossed up into the sky doesn’t immediately come back down immediately comes to my mind.

The moment the film establishes that this UFO death cult is not merely based on an illusion, I definitely became less skeptical of everything Aaron was saying. Justin, on the other hand, was obsessed with finding a logical explanation for everything. In the beginning, he definitely rejected all of the talk of UFOs, thinking that everybody was just being insane. But he soon realizes that the root cause of all these unfortunate and unexplainable events was something sinister brewing under (or above?) the surface.

The Endless grounds its narrative in a familiar story about sibling love. At the end of the day, you can tell that Justin and Aaron really care for each other, and there’s nothing like a near-death experience to test that love. I think that the film pulls this off well – it doesn’t feel forced, like they’re suddenly trying to make it more emotional than it should be. These two brothers are just searching for a home, because no place that they’ve ever lived in has really, truly, felt like one.

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Sorry to Bother You (2018) is a master class in storytelling. For a film that attempts to explore unjust social structures, it never takes itself too seriously, and this works to its advantage.

When we hear a white man’s voice come out of Cash Green’s (Lakeith Stanfield) mouth, we get the first inkling that Sorry to Bother You is not your stereotypical satire. Cash then immediately proceeds to crash-land into the houses of his customers to have face-to-face conversations, and our suspicions are confirmed – this film is going to be strange. It’s grounded in “real life,” yes, but there’s a fantastical element to it.

Cash’s talent soon gets him on RegalView’s top floor, where he becomes one of the “power callers” – and we find out they are actually selling Worry Free’s workers to huge corporations. Whenever Cash is up there, he needs to use his “white voice.” Eventually, he makes a lot of money, and can afford to lead a more extravagant lifestyle and finally move out of his uncle’s garage. However, the friends he’s made at RegalView, who have formed a sort of labor union, know there’s something up. For some reason, even if Cash makes the decision to keep working on the top floor, I wasn’t too upset with him. The film succeeded in giving us an intimate understanding of Cash’s character, so much so that we sympathized with him and understood why he chose what he did.

Sorry to Bother You gets so unapologetically weird when we meet Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), Worry Free’s CEO. There’s an extremely awkward freestyle rap scene and a mansion orgy, but perhaps the strangest (and most disturbing) scene of the whole movie comes when Cash enters what he thought was the bathroom, and discovers horse-people that Steve Lift has been breeding – the future of the American workforce. I swear the whole class went dead silent as Cash wandered through that hallway. We all just knew something bad was going to happen.

I really thought that the film would end there, but it just kept on going. Boots Riley is shoving insanity into our faces, and I kind of loved how he truly committed to his story he was trying to tell. This new sci-fi horse experiment dimension raises the film to a place you didn’t know it could reach, to a place you never thought it would go. He pulls us off the edge, and it feels like we’re falling for a very, very long time.

Sorry to Bother You has made up its mind – it wants to entertain you, and it never strays from being anything less than a crazy rollercoaster ride. Ultimately, the film makes you laugh, but it also makes you think about who holds the power in our societies, and why unjust structures persist. It talks about really heavy topics like capitalism and racism, but you don’t come out of the cinema (or classroom) feeling heavy. I feel like I’d have to see the film again to pick up on everything that I missed out on. Every scene had so many layers to it, every line was so deliberately placed. There’s just so much of the film to unpack, and that’s what makes it a joy to watch.

Repo Man (1984)

I’m going to preface this entry by saying that I found it extremely hard to follow Repo Man (1984). Sometimes it was entertaining, but most of the time it was just plain confusing. There was just a hell of a lot going on. As a first-time watcher, I struggled to make sense of the truly peculiar scenes and bizarre plot devices. Perhaps if I see the film a second time, I’ll be able to grasp how everything was connected. When I got home from class, I spent half an hour reading articles about the film. Was there something I had missed? Why did everyone seem to like it so much? I definitely was not aware of its cult classic status before watching it, but even after I found out that many people hold this film near and dear to their hearts, I couldn’t force myself to feel the same way.

First of all, the film’s protagonists were not my favorite. They weren’t too bad, but they weren’t that great, either. I never felt like there was any real attempt to get the audience to appreciate any of the character’s motives, or sympathize with them at all – it was a very “what you see is what you get” kind of thing. At the very least, I would have appreciated having at least one person to root for. Sadly, Otto’s (Emilio Estevez) character really reminded me of a lot of annoying people I’ve encountered in my life. He just kind of went along with everything that was happening, never taking time to stop and think about the potential rewards or consequences of his actions. He was funny at times, but only because he was really dumb. The people in Otto’s life weren’t any better – his parents gave away all their money to a televangelist, his now ex-girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend, and his best friend wants to get sushi and not pay for it.

The film is ambitious in the sense that it tries to incorporate the punk rock scene with automobile repossession men and aliens. It’s definitely not your run-of-the-mill production – Repo Man is unconventional in the truest sense of the word. It even refuses to show us branded food and drink – Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) asks Otto if he wants to get a drink, and emblazoned on the six-packs they purchase is exactly that. A “drink.” I guess there is something to be said about the film blatantly ignoring any commercially-successful formulas. It’s hilariously low-budget, and it takes a lot of risks.

In the film, the government is searching for a Chevy Malibu, because it contains evidence about alien life. There is a $10,000 reward to find the car – and all the repo men go wild. Otto and Bud’s main competition are the Rodriguez brothers. Ultimately, there’s this wild final standoff, which somehow ends with Otto abandoning his haphazard relationships and earthly life in the famed Chevy Malibu, to presumably see some aliens. I really identified with everyone else looking up at him in complete and utter bewilderment.

Velvet Goldmine (1998)

The more I think about Velvet Goldmine (1998), the more I love it.

The film’s narrative is non-chronological, driven by Arthur Stuart’s (Christian Bale) investigation on the whereabouts of Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a glam rock superstar from the 1970s. Brian Slade’s life is slowly revealed to us by people who were part of it, namely his manager, his ex-wife Mandy (Toni Collette), and his close collaborator and romantic interest Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor). This structure allowed the film to avoid having to explain absolutely everything. Some mysteries remain unsolved, and we’re left with many unanswered questions, but there’s a certain elegance in which the film pulls off its slightly open-ended conclusion.

It is revealed later on in the film that Arthur himself was heavily involved in the glam rock era. We are able to explore Arthur’s sexual awakening and witness how he is able to accept himself when he sees Brian Slade being so unapologetically himself. Glam rock was everything to Arthur, making him feel less alone in the world, like he might actually belong somewhere. There’s a stark contrast between Arthur as a glam rock groupie and Arthur as an investigative writer – present-day Arthur definitely isn’t sneaking out of the house in skin tight t-shirts anymore. But the universe that glam rock created will stay with him forever, reminding him of a time that changed him forever, but is long gone.

I think it’s the same for a lot of us. We cling to music, films, TV shows, and books from our formative years, because no matter how cringe-worthy we may find them now, they helped make us who we are. Being a weird theatre kid in elementary school, I always felt like I wasn’t as cool as everyone else. High School Musical becoming popular was a huge deal for me. Whenever I hear a song from the High School Musical trilogy I immediately feel like I’m being transported. Looking back, though, everything that I thought was a big deal back then seems so trivial now. There are things I figured out that I never thought I could figure out. Nevertheless, I enjoy re-experiencing that world, if only for a few minutes. And when you find people who also grew up watching, listening to, and pretty much worshipping the same content that you did, there’s just this instant connection. These things define generations. But how exactly do we choose our heroes?

Velvet Goldmine explores this through the rise and fall of a pop culture icon. Brian Slade’s persona was almost entirely built upon other people’s ideas of him. He was the glam rock star of our wildest dreams. He was everything we wanted him to be, until he wasn’t, and people started to move on. When we meet Tommy Stone, who is allegedly Brian Slade’s brand-new stage persona, he’s unfamiliar, as he isn’t played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. This suggests that Brian Slade has truly dissipated, now only accessible through our memories and our record players. Velvet Goldmine did not intend to invalidate our experiences of pop culture. If anything, the film celebrates pop culture’s powerful impact on who we become, but it does not neglect to highlight its transient nature.

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Perhaps My Own Private Idaho (1991) is not the type of film that can be fully understood after the first watch. After all, it’s largely told from the perspective of a narcoleptic.

I enjoyed the film, especially in its quietest, rawest moments. What I will discuss in this post leaves out a ton of other elements I may have neglected to piece together. There were, of course, the bizarre clients that Mike and Scott encountered – the guy who really enjoyed having a clean apartment, the rich lady who needed to get warmed up, that man who did a dance with a lamp. There are the references to Shakespeare that I didn’t pick up on, but read about online. There is the film’s legacy as a radical hallmark of queer cinema, given its historical context. What I took away from my first encounter with My Own Private Idaho, though, was a stunningly genuine depiction of loneliness that never really goes away, of an endless, fruitless search for belonging that is all too familiar. Through this entry, I hope to look into these musings.

For me, the film did not have an identifiable climax – we were all just sort of drifting along with protagonists Mike Waters (River Phoenix) and Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves) as they went through their lives, looking for love or escape or acceptance – but never truly being able to grasp it. My Own Private Idaho is densely layered, jumping back and forth between harsh reality and abstract dream sequences. Mike’s narcoleptic episodes constantly disrupt the plot, often neglecting to clearly show us how we moved from Point A to Point B. Sometimes it feels as though everything and nothing is happening all at once, mirroring Mike’s narcolepsy and framing the narrative through his consciousness (or unconsciousness).

What does become increasingly clear is Mike’s longing for love in the purest sense of the word. Abandoned by his mother when he was a child, Mike is constantly seeking comfort, a place to call home. In his dreams, he is haunted by old home movies that we’re not even sure exist. I’m pretty sure I heard a collective “aww” from the class while we watched the campfire scene, in which Mike professes his love for Scott. “I just want to kiss you, man,” he says, and it’s heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time. It’s tender, filled with longing, and it doesn’t ask for anything in return.

Sadly, Mike and Scott come from two different worlds. Scott is the rebellious heir to an elite family. He’s a hustler for the heck of it, while Mike is poor, and just trying to get by. While on the hunt to find Mike’s mother, the two protagonists somehow find themselves in Rome. Much to Mike’s despair, Scott falls in love with an Italian woman, marries her, and ultimately abandons Mike and the other hustlers once he is able to claim his inheritance. Was a love story between Mike and Scott doomed from the start? Possibly. But this does not subtract from the pain Mike feels as he comes to terms with the fact that no amount of unrequited love can bridge the gap between their two worlds

Futureless Things (2014)

Futureless Things (2014) was not the film I was expecting it to be. Within the first ten minutes or so, I mistakenly thought I had grasped what seemed to be a simple plot about young love. It was initially quite difficult for me to understand that the film contained several different narratives, following an episodic structure. Although these narratives intertwined, and were grounded in the fact that all scenes occurred in and around the convenience store, they remained independent of each other.

Choosing a convenience store as the main setting gave the filmmaker an opportunity to present us with an odd, mishmashed cast of characters. After all, a convenience store does not discriminate based on age, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. If you come into a convenience store, more often than not, you need something specific, whether it be a bottle of water, a pack of cigarettes, or a strange package that has the ability to talk to you – however, there’s not much to do once you’ve accomplished your task. Although the moments we spent with each group of characters were fleeting, they were impactful nonetheless. We saw the gambler who prayed to many different Gods, the North Korean clerk being harassed by a customer, the aspiring actor trying to make it to his casting call, and many more. I enjoyed the different comedic forms that the director experimented with – although it may be argued that the film is inconsistent, I found each and every “episode” refreshing.

I’ve recently become fascinated with K-Pop and K-Dramas, but I’m no expert on Korean culture, therefore making it impossible for me to pick up on all the social commentary embedded in the film. However, one of my particular favorite scenes was the interaction between the clerk and the English-speaking mother and daughter. It reminded me of the Philippines in the sense that there is a certain prestige attached to people who can speak and understand English. Even if you’re in your own country, you’re expected to adjust to English-speakers instead of the other way around. This is also evident in the way that the clerk was learning English on his shift and trying his absolute best to converse with the Middle Eastern women by using the sentences he had learned by listening to his tape.

There is a transitory nature to being a shop assistant – most of the protagonists we saw were working part-time as they pursued a better future and a bigger dream. Their futures are uncertain, but there is a glimmer of hope that they won’t be working at a convenience store forever. These people would definitely abandon their shop clerk jobs immediately after a better opportunity presented itself. Even the customers themselves float in and out of the store. Their presence is transient. However, the convenience store remains a constant in the life of its franchiser – he was buried in debt, could barely keep the business running smoothly, and was placed under constant evaluation by his superiors. Crushed under the weight of this responsibility, he eventually commits suicide.

Trainspotting (1996)

Trainspotting (1996) is not clean-cut or glamorous. It’s gritty, unpurified, and at times, downright disgusting. This works to its advantage, though – it’s a film about drug use and abuse, and follows the pretty much completely messed up lives of Renton (Ewan McGregor), Spud (Ewen Bremner), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), Tommy (Kevin McKidd) and Begbie (Robert Caryle). But, as Renton reminds us in his opening monologue, this is his choice: “I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”

The film tells its story from the inside looking out. It does not feel insincere or sensationalized. It feels real. We see the each character wrestle with a cycle of addiction, convincing themselves that they’re finally going to quit, but eventually giving in and falling back on their habits. When Renton makes the decision to move to London and become a real estate agent, his Edinburgh life creeps up on him, one old friend at a time. When the possibility of a drug deal comes along, Renton’s sobriety is ruined, bringing to light the social aspect of substance abuse. How can you quit, when everyone around you refuses to?

The film effectively illustrates the euphoria of drug use, but does not neglect to show us its consequences. Trainspotting makes you laugh, because it is genuinely funny. But there are tragic scenes, as well – the way that everyone breaks down crying when they find Sick Boy’s deceased child, witnessing Tommy’s death from HIV, and Renton’s arduous withdrawals. Because I didn’t fully connect with any of the characters, I was always just mildly uncomfortable while watching these scenes. I wasn’t sure if I should be sympathizing with them, because they had essentially sabotaged their own lives. These scenes didn’t exactly serve as melancholic breaks from a tumultuous plot. At the heart of each tragedy was an unresolved tension – if these people just put their foot down and made the decision to quit, they could start rebuilding their lives – but Trainspotting continued to prove to us that it’s never going to be as simple as going cold turkey.

Trainspotting showed me a life that was radically different from my own. I highly doubt that anything I experience in the future will even vaguely resemble any of the struggles highlighted in the film, and the director is clearly aware of that. Renton himself tells the audience he’s going to be just like us. It’s chilling in a way I can’t really explain. Many of us can fit into cookie-cutter stereotypes, no matter how hard that is to accept. In the end, we will end up choosing our idea of what exactly an accomplished life entails: “the job, the family, the fucking big television.” This begs the question: who put this idea in our head in the first place? Why do we all resonate with this idea of life so much? How are we sure that this is the right choice, anyway? For me, the film is far from a mere glorification of substance use – it’s definitely not telling us that drugs are the answer to all our problems. In its rawest form, Trainspotting is an unapologetic and chaotic depiction of an all too familiar narrative – young people making bad decisions.

Shin Godzilla (2016)

Shin Godzilla (2016), the first and only Godzilla film that I have ever seen, defied all my expectations. I presumed that I would be seeing a glorified montage of devastated citizens, flat-out destruction, and a classic redemption arc, and while Shin Godzilla ticked all these boxes with ease, the film also managed to be a clever depiction of modern-day Japan’s struggles with bureaucracy and deep-seated historical scars.

Whenever Gojira appeared on screen, it felt almost reverent to me. The way the camera slowly followed Gojira as it slithered through the city at its own pace was chilling, a stark contrast to the fast-paced shots of politicians and scientists trying to resolve the crisis within the limits of strict government protocol. We don’t get a sob story about innocent citizens being caught in the crossfire of Gojira’s rampage – there’s very little interest in the personal lives of those involved. Shin Godzilla effectively portrays the urgency of crisis management with rapid-fire, almost clinical dialogue as the film’s characters wrestle with the weight of their accountability to the people as they attempt to get the situation under control, recognizing that lives are hanging in the balance as they rush from boardroom to war room to basement to helicopter. However, I was pleased that I could follow the narrative even with the constant jumps and actual mental exhaustion it caused me. Governments are often unprepared to deal with disasters. Many of the characters adhere to the bureaucratic system despite the state of calamity, helplessly clinging to the societal structures that ground their decision-making. This was definitely frustrating at times, but it served to show us both the merits and inefficiencies of the system.

Gojira is continuously evolving and becoming more and more lethal as the characters evaluate and re-evaluate possible solutions to the problem. When the United Nations wants to take the nuclear route, Japan hesitates, because of its tragic history of atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A group of “lone wolves, nerds, troublemakers, outcasts, academic heretics, and general pains-in-the-bureaucracy” led by chief cabinet secretary Rando Yaguchi therefore brings it upon themselves to find an alternate solution. I love how the team uncovers Goro Maki’s codified research notes and try to decipher what it all means. They gather international support and put their deep-freeze plan into action just a few hours before the planned nuclear attack. It’s the redemption arc that I was expecting, but none of it feels predictable, and we’re left hanging until the very last second – will they succeed? Would a happy ending be too much to ask for?

Shin Godzilla’s conclusion was far from an extravagant celebration of Japan’s triumph, but it was satisfying nonetheless. It’s practically impossible to achieve a spotless happy ending for a disaster film, and I think that the directors were aware of that. The city must be rebuilt in the wake of Gojira’s destruction. Innocent lives were lost. And at the center of it all, we have a group of people just trying to do their best.

Schizopolis (1996)

Schizopolis (1996) is one of the strangest films I’ve seen to date.

When I watch a film, more often than not, I obsess over what each and every scene means, searching for insightful reviews online that show me things I might have missed. I usually associate the feeling of confusion with the feeling of dissatisfaction. Coming out of the classroom after seeing Schizopolis, though, I was extremely confused – but I wasn’t mad about it.

In the moments when I thought I knew where the film was going, I would be thrown off by what seemed to be an uncalled-for dialogue or random switch-up. Much of my confusion came after the first act, when we see Dr. Jeffrey Korchek being played by the same guy who played Fletcher Munson. (I later found out that the actor was Steven Soderbergh himself). I didn’t know whether or not the Korchek narrative was connected to the Fletcher narrative, and when it was revealed that he was having an affair with Fletcher’s wife, I honestly thought that it was just some weird role-playing thing. This still baffles me – are they really two different people? Did I miss something?

Perhaps this speaks of my inexperience with experimental cinema, but even after having some time to think, I find myself unable to grasp the movie as a whole, to see any semblance of a “bigger picture.” This is not to say that the film didn’t have any praiseworthy scenes. I personally loved Elmo Oxygen’s scenes in which some sort of gibberish dialect was used to seduce housewives. As I watched Elmo gallivanting around the neighborhood, I thought that this use of language was just some funny gag. The more I heard the random phrases he said, though, the easier it was for me to follow along. It felt like re-watching a K-Drama without subtitles. I could identify some of the most basic words (“nose army” for hello, “smell sign” for goodbye), but I depended on intonation and facial expressions to decipher the rest of the conversations. Once I understood Elmo’s main goal was to sleep with people, I recognized the gist of the situation, but not the specifics.

Soderbergh continues to experiment with communication and language throughout the film. Some of the most effective dialogues were in the interactions between Fletcher Munson and his wife, in which words such as “hello” are replaced with “generic greeting.” I recognized that Fletcher’s relationship had turned into a routine, so predictable that an outsider could know what was happening with close to zero context. The film continued to play around with these scenes between Fletcher and his wife, cleverly devising an unfamiliar way to illustrate the familiar narrative of a love that has ceased to exist. Although we will never be one-hundred percent sure what exactly Soderbergh intended to do by creating Schizopolis, the film in its entirety feels like an endeavor to find brand new ways to tell the stories that filmmakers tell over and over again. Maybe that’s why the narratives that we were presented with were half-baked and barely intelligible – we’ve seen all these these things before, but never in this way.