The U.S. prison system, though as ubiquitous to the American landscape as banks and baseball fields, suburbs and city centers, remains a touchy subject in many conversational circles. Centuries after the ratification of the 13th amendment in December of 1865, which continues to allow slavery be used as punishment for a crime, it can be easily understood that much of that system has become corrupted (just look at all the Black men still incarcerated for non-violent marijuana possession charges in states where its sale has since become legal); now, even those prisons which are not generally seen as corrupt are built with a specific design, not to rehabilitate or punish, but to beat or sap out of inmates the very things that make them human beings. Hell, even those facilities for which this design is not an explicit goal is not an explicit goal, by the way they are designed and run, manage to do this anyway. One such of these facilities is Sing Sing, a maximum security prison located in Ossining, New York, along the eastern bank of the Hudson River. According to Britannica, it is “one of the oldest penal institutions in the United States…especially notable for its harsh conditions in the 19th and 20th centuries.”
 
It is within the walls of Sing Sing that we find Divine G (Colman Domingo), incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, who finds purpose by writing for, acting in, and helping to run a small theatre troupe called RTA (inspired by the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program) inside the prison. As the group is gearing up for their next production, a wary outsider called Divine Eye (Clarence Maclin) elects to join, and the troupe decides to stage their first original comedy – a time-traveling musical featuring Hamlet, cowboys, and Freddy Kreuger. What follows is a beautifully-told and profoundly moving story about humanity, the resilience of the spirit, and the transformative power of art.
 
There are a lot of great prison-set films that focus on the humanity of those most of society has already cast out as inhuman, Sing Sing only being the latest of them, but what sets this film apart from those, and indeed from any other film released this year, is how delicate and unassuming it is in its approach to this idea. There’s never a line of dialogue or showy moment to demonstrate the film’s larger point – that art is as essential to retaining humanity as humanity is to understanding art – but there is always an emphasis on the film’s refusal to see these inmates of Sing Sing as anything less than human artists, which is juxtaposed against an understanding of the oppressive structures within which this point can become easily lost. Most of the film is set within the rooms of Sing Sing prison, its cast constantly surrounded by walls, but even when the characters are outside, the camera never shoots them in close-up. The image is always wide, so that we continually see the walls that surround them even then, both literally and figuratively. During a clemency hearing, Divine G’s invitations to speak are met with skepticism and apathy, even interrupted by those interviewing him, who have not spent time with him as we do over the film’s one hour and forty-seven minutes; to us, however, he is not just another inmate, he is a playwright, and actor, and friend – his is the first face we see, and it’s in the film’s refusal to treat him as less than those things, to insist upon his innate humanity as it does with all its other characters, where director Greg Kwedar (who co-wrote the film’s beautiful script alongside Clint Bentley), finds the sensitive heart.
 
That heart is also supported by a beautiful score from Bryce Dessner, which is constant but never overbearing, always there to lift up the action but never overstepping so far as to direct its flow. In fact, the single issue I had with the film on the whole (and it’s really not even that big of an issue, all things considered), is that the film’s final moments are closed with a song, rather than pure sound or score. It’s the only time in the film that I felt a moment had a hint of manufacture, and it’s a testament to Dressner’s score that not one second of the film apart from that feels as though the music is driving how the audience is meant to feel at any given moment.
 
That feeling is determined by the outstanding performances from Kwedar’s ensemble of actors (including Sound of Metal’s Paul Raci as the play’s director), many of whom were formerly incarcerated at Sing Sing themselves – some even participants in the RTA program – but the standouts of which are Sean San José, Clarence ‘Divine Eye’ Maclin, and Colman Domingo. (The first two played themselves.) While José does get one great scene, though, it’s Maclin and Domingo in particular that are electric here, the former an immediate star whose participation in the film is not simply a testament to his acting ability given this is his first time acting in any film, but also to the film’s commitment to seeing the humanity in its characters. It’s not an especially showy performance, but it is perhaps the most lived-in of the year to date. The showier role – far from a pejorative in this context – belongs to Colman Domingo in the lead as Divine G. If last year’s Oscar race was any indication, Domingo simply needed a better script to get his performance to the front of the line for a win in the Best Actor category, and while the rest of awards season is sure to and while the rest of awards season is sure to bring out some heavy hitters, Sing Sing might just be exactly the right script for him at exactly the right time. It is through his eyes that we experience the journey of the film, and there’s nary a false note in his entire repertoire of choices.
 
That’s really the best part about Sing Sing; it insists upon the choices made not because they make the most sense cinematically, or even artistically, but because every choice re-emphasizes how profound the human ability to make choices is. All art is is choices, and there can be no true art without an emphasis on true humanity. There have been a number of great films released this year, even films with which I feel a particular kinship, that examine the human experience in a uniquely meaningful way (hello, other A24 movie I Saw the TV Glow), but Sing Sing is the first and only film so far that I would genuinely argue is an important watch for anyone and everyone who has a chance to see it. If we are to continue incarcerating human beings at the rate the United States enjoys, the very least we can do is attempt to see their humanity, manifest through artistic struggle, and hopefully, the walls of the oppressive structures that attempt to rob inmates of both of those things will eventually, finally crumble.
 
I’m giving “Sing Sing” a 9.8/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

With their debut feature, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, director Jane Schoenbrun burst onto the scene as a voice with a particular talent for examining gender dysphoria through coming-of-age horror, utilizing found footage and screen recordings a la Unfriended and Searching to explore how online spaces may exacerbate or further complicate the uncertainty of youth and our innate desire as human beings to belong to something…or somewhere. Hoping to pull off the hat trick a second time, Schoenbrun now has set their sights on the world of late-night 90s television in an effort to relay the experience of queer dysphoria primarily through the lens of trans identity using old-school, analog psychedelia as a means of telling their story. The central premise revolves around the relationship between Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), who meet on an election night at the local high school. The two bond over their shared love for a late-night show called “The Pink Opaque,” which somewhat mirrors real-life hits like Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark? Over the next several years, both Owen and Maddy begin to feel that something about their lives isn’t quite right; stuck or suppressed, they know that whatever experiences they share through The Pink Opaque feel more real than reality itself – could it be more than just a tv show?
 
The plotting of this movie may occasionally feel static, the characters within not fully drawn while their respective personal journeys stretch too thin for comfort, but further examination of these elements’ relationship to the film’s themes reveal their deliberacy in being crafted this way. I Saw the TV Glow is not merely concerned with the idea of trans identity, but the with the journey of its inherent and often terrifying uncertainty, prior to its embrace or rejection by the individual wrestling with it. It is in this way that we come to connect with Owen as a character; because he doesn’t know who he is, we also don’t, and any queer individual will instantly recognize just what that feels like – to not really know if the real you is just a bug in the system, an idea that requires suppression because the truth is a terrifying antithesis to the reality you know. When we first meet Owen, he is a husk, a shell merely watching life play out on a tv screen; we witness his journey from boy to man between cut-ins of him sitting at a fire, recollecting what it was like to have lived as himself at all, attempting to examine his own repression, recalling how Maddy’s presence in his life has altered it in a way that terrifies him.
 
It is also in this way that Schoenbrun pleads with their audience to recognize the dangers of suppressing one’s true identity as a queer individual (in this film specifically, a trans individual); the melancholy that accompanies it leaves one in eternal night, a forever death that eventually subsumes all else, even as no one else can see it happening until it’s too late. To quote the film itself, “the longer you wait, the closer you get to suffocating.” Working at both a movie theater and the ironically-named “Fun Palace” where the only light sources are entirely artificial, Owen suffocates under the guise of living life how it “should” be lived; one of the quotes playing in the background film on display states that “machines now walk the Earth,” as Owen does. In refusing to let go of the life with which he is familiar, he becomes nothing more than a robot, a believer in the idea that even as he suppresses his true self, love will save him from the melancholy that plagues him, even as the viewer knows it won’t; it can’t – only though embracing his identity can it ever be conquered.
 
But as much as the film is a warning against the suppression of identity, it’s also a call to those people who feel this dysphoria to embrace the truth, even if it’s terrifying to confront one’s true self; “there is still time,” written in chalk on a suburb street, reminds us that though time moves quickly, one can be free of the “midnight realm” and defeat “Mr. Melancholy” through true self-actualization. As Owen walks down the hallways of his school during act one, the first sign he sees states “to thine own self be true,” the last “without courage no other virtues matter.” There is, of course, other signage on the walls, including one just down the hall from the last, but for Owen’s walk, these are not coincidental placements. Immediately after he turns down a different hallway, he is bathed in the light of the trans flag colors as they make up the stained glass in the windows. In the opening section of the film, prior to the title card coming on screen, Owen can be seen participating in a group activity with a gymnasium parachute which also features the colors of the trans flag; he is the only one to get up and walk around underneath it, in direct contrast to the previous idea of his being a husk stuck in “reality.” I feel here than Schoenbrun is asking their audience to walk around as themselves for a while, just to know what it looks like – at the very least, it’s better than being stuck in a world where suffocation and melancholy are the alternatives.
 
While the success of I Saw the TV Glow as a film is sure to vary from person to person, there is something entirely undeniable about its being; there’s no doubt this film comes from a very personal place, as it sees queer youth – specifically trans youth – through a lens that only a queer person really can. In one act two bar scene, the band Sloppy Jane performs their song “Claw Machine,” which features the lyric “I paint the ceiling black, so I don’t notice when my eyes are open.” If you have ever struggled as a queer person with your identity, you understand this lyric better than anyone. The confrontation of one’s true self is a terrifying thing; it can be so easy to just paint the ceiling black so one doesn’t even notice it anymore. Schoenbrun’s film is both an understanding of that temptation, and a plea not to follow it, with all the style and vision a story such as this would require. Queer cinema, horror cinema, and queer horror cinema have shown audiences a lot of ways to interpret identity dysphoria, but rarely has it been this clearly rendered. It’s an almost impossible feeling to apply language to, but suffice it to say, to bear witness to something that allows one to feel seen in this specific way – I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.
 
I’m giving “I Saw the TV Glow” a 9.8/10.
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​The Friendly Film Fan Reviews Alex Garland’s Directorial Swan Song.

What is the point of journalism? What is its essence? Is it objectivity, or truth? And who’s to say the two aren’t always the same? What responsibility do we bear in observation when atrocities occur before our very eyes? These questions lie at the heart of Alex Garland’s latest and perhaps last directorial effort, Civil War, a film set in the modern day which follows a group of rogue photojournalists as they traverse a divided America in the midst of an ongoing and increasingly deadly conflict – a literal civil war. But while the script offers a perspective on these questions, it doesn’t exactly answer them, preferring instead to present the audience with ideas that films such Jordan Peele’s Nope have also wrestled with regarding the human obsession with spectacle, the perfect shot, and what level of ethics we find ourselves sacrificing in order to attain it, whether in service of ourselves, or in this case, in the pursuit of objectivity. Even then, to focus on the act of journalism itself may be missing the point. As a largely apolitical film which doesn’t simply refuse to present the ideologies of either the in-power American government or the Western Forces (henceforth referred to as the W.F.), but actively avoids even hinting at them, Garland’s story lacks a point-of-view in the traditional sense, but to watch the film play out, one gets the idea that the mere observation of all the havoc wartime violence wreaks – not a stance on whether that violence is justified or not – is exactly what he’s aiming for here.
 
The story, as it goes, is largely centered on Kirsten Dunst’s Lee – a wartime photographer whose previous efforts in the field she viewed as sending a warning back home against the very idea of war – and her colleague Joel (played by Wagner Moura). Lee’s ultimate endeavor is to capture the shot and get the story every photojournalist is after: the President of the United States on the brink of invasion. However, in order to acquire those two things, she needs to get to Washington D.C. before the W.F. is rumored to be reaching the White House on July 4, which in turn brings reluctant but respectful rival newspaper writer Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) along for the journey. Joined by a young up-and-comer named Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) with dreams of being a wartime photographer like Lee, the group needs to cross over 300 miles of dangerous terrain, passing through the front lines of the conflict on their way, where any threat could be the last one any of them ever meet.
 
By and large, the plot of Civil War is rather simple and often fairly repetitive as our protagonists run into conflict, manage to narrowly escape it, run into a different kind of conflict, escape that, and so on and so forth. What ultimately sets this film up for success is not the unpredictability of its plot or complexity of storytelling, but the ways in which – despite knowing that certain scenes haven’t happened yet, so there’s no way they die in this scene or that scene – one constantly feels as though these characters’ ultimate peril is imminent. There are but one or two moments where things feel safe or restful, thanks largely to the film’s exceptional craftwork. This is some of the best pound-for-pound filmmaking in Alex Garland’s entire career, particularly as a director, and especially vis-à-vis the on-the-ground action sequences along the road to D.C., which are filled with fantastic camerawork and terrifically-crafted sound that could very well be competitive at the Oscars next year. The third act in particular is one of the most harrowing and visceral of any film in recent memory, a non-stop military raid on D.C. that belongs with the likes of Zero Dark Thirty in terms of sheer intensity.
 
The film is also near-perfectly acted; readers may recall a thrilling sequence in the film’s trailer which features Jesse Plemons with bloodied finger grooves asking Wager Moura’s Joel “what kind of American are you?” before lifting his rifle to fire on him, presumably for offering an answer Plemons’ character wasn’t too fond of. The scene in question is every bit as rife with tension as the trailer presents it to be, and while it unfortunately largely bears little weight on the film as a whole, the performances contained within it are second-to-none. Stephen McKinley Henderson is as excellent as ever, though he doesn’t get any “moments” – even small ones like he did in Lady Bird – and Wagner Moura is consistently engaging, but the movie really belongs to Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny. What Dunst does with this performance is subtle, but all the more effective for it; she essentially has to be the rock of the group, but one can see in real-time that she’s slowly getting to the point where an at-home conflict where she can’t ever remove herself from the environment (such as with the others) is wearing her down to her last bit of resolve; I don’t think I would call it a career-best, but it’s certainly up there with the best of her work, even if the technical elements of the film are clearly what shines brightest overall. The slightly showier part – as “showy” as one can be with performances this wisely unassuming – belongs to Cailee Spaeny, who is now sure to have a firm grip on the attention of moviegoers everywhere after putting out this and Priscilla back-to-back. Spaeny’s ascendency from eager-to-please tagalong to somewhat tragic master of her craft is remarkable to watch; she carries so much in her eyes, and the performances she’s been able to pull off from one point to the furthest thing from that point in just over two hours without a second of it feeling unnatural (and she’s done it twice, no less) indicate a once-in-a-generation-level talent.
 
Overall, while Civil War struggles to offer any real point-of-view or substance in terms of its themes or vision of the world, the good contained within it far outweighs what it lacks, making a not insignificant hole in its center seem more like a missing feature than an outright defect. The excellent cinematography shines on large-format screens and the visceral sound design worthy twice the admission price by itself. Any answers to the questions it presents may be a bit muddy when all is said and done, but the film nonetheless remains an exceedingly well-crafted piece of work which puts Alex Garland firmly back near the top of his game.
 
I’m giving “Civil War” an 8.8/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​The Friendly Film Fan Discusses A24’s Feature Adaptation of the Early 2010s YouTube Shorts.

Late in the year 2010 – October 16, to be exact – one video creator named Dean Fleischer-Camp uploaded to YouTube (and Vimeo) a short mockumentary-style film about a little mollusk shell named Marcel, who wore Tennis Shoes and was voiced by comic and future genre star Jenny Slate. Marcel used toenails as skis, wore lentils as hats, and drug around a piece of lint on string to have as a pet, with future openness towards having a dog join the family. The short, running 3 minutes and 22 seconds in total, quickly became a viral hit, and now sits at 32 million views. In fact, it was such a success that a second 4-minute short featuring the character was made and released one year later, with a third to follow three years after that. The two sequels didn’t quite garner as much attention as the original, however, dropping from 32 million to a rough final estimate of 11 million views for the immediate sequel, with the trilogy closer bowing out at a mere 4.6 million. Since October of 2014, Marcel the Shell has not appeared on any screens or in any other works apart from those shorts, until director Dean Fleischer-Camp dropped a feature-length adaptation/sequel to the shorts at the Telluride Film Festival in September of 2021. Its script was written by Fleischer-Camp, Jenny Slate, and Nick Paley, who all worked on the story with Elisabeth Holm. And perhaps most importantly, it was a hit. The feature was then quickly snatched up by indie powerhouse studio A24 and given a summer 2022 release, limited starting June 24, and gradually expanding in more markets until its nationwide release, which is due on July 15 of this year. Whether or not the box office will reflect people’s general nostalgia or interest in the property is anybody’s guess, but for movie fans, and especially for families, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is likely to be one of their favorite summer experiences.
 
While there’s not much in the filmmaking itself to surprise, subvert, or challenge audiences in terms of sheer creativity, this new feature-length adaptation of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is every bit as fun and funny as the shorts on which it is based. Jenny Slate once again excels as the titular character, her voice absolutely perfect for the sort of high-tone childlike comedy aspect of the film, but more than capable of selling its lower moments as well. And, of course, the mockumentary-style format is perfect for telling this sort of story in just this sort of way. As Marcel moves around the home, one can feel the ingenuity that went into crafting not just the character’s personality, but the ways in which his actions reflect that. (He’s also just as adorable as ever, so there’s that.) These are all things that worked before, and they work just as well – if not better – here.
 
What’s different this time around, what with the longer runtime and more room to breathe, is that the film is also full of aching, tugging, occasionally wrenching heart. The emotional undercurrent of Marcel’s journey to find his long-lost family after two years of separation sings with heft and gravity. There’s a pathos here about shell communities and how they came to be, and within that pathos lies an intimate story not only about Marcel seeking his literal family, but about filmmaker Dean Fleischer-Camp coming to grips with what’s become of his own. A24 has always been pretty good about using creative and outlandish stories to tell personal tales of grief, love, loss, pain, and all sorts of other things, but in Marcel, those personal tales are the driving force of the entire film. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On isn’t so much about the adventure aspect as it is about the reflection upon it – how long it can take, how impatient one can become, how frustrating it can be to feel so far from the goal line. Too few adventure films explore just how tiresome for their protagonists the adventure can really be, the toll it can take on whatever hope one began with, eventually leaving one resigned and burnt out. But that’s the thing about indie adventure stories, isn’t it? Whatever resignation the character feels, there is always hope that remains, and Marcel understands this without calling overt attention to it.
 
The one thing that can be said about Marcel in terms of having any flaws at all is that its technical presentation doesn’t do a lot to stand out from the shorts on which it’s based. In fact, the entire movie can sometimes feel as if it was constructed specifically for an online space, unlike another YouTube/comic sensation – Bo Burnham – whose movie Eighth Grade (also an A24 film) tackles the culture of the internet without ever feeling as if it may have been constructed via the internet. To that end, the filmmaking itself could have used a little more heft in terms of the ways in which some scenes are shot, but in keeping with the style of its source material, it does ground the viewer in a familiar setting, so it’s a drawback easily forgiven, and unlikely to bother anyone not actively attentive to those kinds of things.
 
In the end, there’s not a whole lot to say about Marcel’s latest adventure that hasn’t already been said and no corner of his world left unexplored by interested parties. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On may not be as poetic as Moonlight or as creative as Everything Everywhere All at Once, but it is every bit as worthy and reverent of the A24 logo in its opening credits as those are. (And truthfully, what movie can say the same thing about either of those other two?) This summer is chock full of huge releases from a lot of major players in the studio system, but it may be A24 who walks away the victor of the indie scene in 2022, what with that second mentioned film and this. Whatever the case, viewers would remiss to miss this one in the wake of the other three major releases this weekend. Sure, Marcel likely won’t blow your mind, but it’s more than worth whatever time you have to give it. What a lovely, heartwarming experience.
 
I’m giving “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” an 8.2/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

The Friendly Film Fan reviews A24's latest horror feature from returning director Ti West​.

Over the weekend, a new horror film from indie powerhouse A24 released, entitled “X” (yes, that’s the whole title). This comeback of director Ti West is a 70s-set picture about a group of young people setting out to make what it is referred to in the film as “a good dirty movie” – porn and prestige filmmaking all in one place. It stars the likes of Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, Scott Mescudi, Martin Henderson, and Owen Campbell. As the group arrives to a distant farmhouse, they are shown the boarding house where they’ll be allowed to stay. But something strange is going on with the land’s owner and his wife, and it will be up to this band of merry misfits to either determine what’s happening…or to survive it.
 
In as few words as I can put it, X is a good movie, to a fault. It takes some big swings, and mostly makes those into hits by being as bold and brash with its material as it could possibly be. The ride only gets wilder the longer it goes on – but don’t expect that wildness to hold all the way to the end. There’s a lot that works here, but there’s often almost as much that works against it, though to explain why may give away the game in some capacity. I’m not sure it’s even entirely possible to review it in any certain terms without spoiling it, but being that it did just release, I will do my best on that front. The truth is that the film is noticeably style over substance, although one doesn’t pick up on that right away. The allusions to old horror classics like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre are obvious, but the film itself pretty much leaves them at that – allusions. The rest of it is filled with a lot of aggrandizing filmmaking – though one can tell director West is not aggrandizing himself; rather, he is aggrandizing the horror films of the 70s and 80s through his directorial style. That sweaty, summer-toned, sexy look is all over every scene of X, regardless of whether what we’re show is the film itself or the movie being made within it. In all this aggrandizing, however, whatever substance the movie has is pushed further downwards; it’s definitely still there, but it’s very much not at the forefront of the story here.
 
Is there a story here? There’s certainly a narrative: characters interact with each other and the world around them, things happen to them, they happen to things, there’s a clear beginning, middle, and end. But what is the movie trying to say exactly? That it is, in fact, possible to make a good dirty movie? Perhaps, and if that is indeed the point, consider X a success in that regard, but I won’t pretend to have loved it where I mostly just really enjoyed it, and part of that lack of infatuation with it does come down to the fact that the message of it doesn’t seem to be any deeper than “this is a slasher like the old ones you knew, and it doesn’t need to be anything else.” Many may call that simple or unpretentious, but for myself, I was still left wanting a little more.
 
However, that’s not to say that X doesn’t give us plenty of scenery to chew on. Its sexually-charged, hyper-stylized first half is a real treat to see, every performance toing the line between unhinged and charismatic – subtle or otherwise – and each scene laying down small but notable groundwork for how the rest of it is going to play out. Unfortunately, that incredibly singular first half with all its unexpected direction and character turnings eventually gives way to a second half that is essentially all horror with very little in the way of flourish. Once this thing morphs into a straight-up slasher (though with a noticeable wrinkle in that subgenre), all that sexy 70s-style pizzaz turns off like a light switch, as if a second movie has entered the fray; a good movie, to be sure, but one that feels a little bit at odds with what preceded it, stylistically at least. One part Texas Chainsaw meets The Nice Guys, and the next minute, a Halloween movie with an alternate Michael Myers.
 
And that’s really where the main problems lie. Despite all the good will it builds within the horror genre, and regardless of how many times Brittany Snow or Scott Mescudi end up stealing the whole show, that show never really gets around to defining what it really wants to be or be about. The words of the Sheriff at the end of the film (the main story takes place between a prologue and epilogue) ring in the audience’s ears: “one goddamn fucked up horror picture.” But is that really all X wants to be in the end? Perhaps, and perhaps that’s a fair shake, given how thoroughly A24 has been both largely praised and widely blamed for the rise of “elevated horror.” But just because a movie works on its own terms doesn’t mean that it couldn’t work on better ones.
 
Regardless of all the complaints I’ve made and issues I’ve attempted to address, I still thoroughly enjoyed myself watching X. Sure, it may be style over substance, but boy oh boy, that style sure is infectious. Maybe this is the move A24 needed to make in order to be done with “elevated” horror and simply produce something that doesn’t have to think about deeper meanings or the next way grief can be explored in some witch ceremony or ancient demon book. Maybe a straight-up slasher was the right move for a studio so associated with one kind of horror to make, and whether you love the idea of “elevated” horror or not will likely have a lot to do with how you view Ti West’s return to the silver screen. All that said, this one is still worth checking out, and it’s definitely the most fun, stylish piece of media in theaters right now that doesn’t feature a man beating up thugs in a batsuit.
 
I’m giving “X” a 7.9/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan