Memoir of a Snail

The second movie in my double feature at the Broadway last night was Memoir of a Snail and I was surprised by how often I laughed out loud during a movie that is so melancholy.  After the death of her eccentric friend Pinky (Jacki Weaver), Grace (Sarah Snook) releases her favorite snail into Pinky's garden and begins telling it her life story.  She has a series of misadventures, the worst of which is when she and her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) are separated after the death of their parents and she is sent to live with a pair of swingers in Canberra while he is sent to live with members of a religious cult in Perth.  As her life becomes bleaker and bleaker, she retreats into herself just like the snails she obsessively collects hide inside their shells.  It is only when she receives a posthumous letter from Pinky that she finds the courage to come out of her shell and begin living her life (after so much trauma there is a happy ending).  I really loved the stop-motion animation because the style (all of the characters look like blobs of clay with exaggerated features) really suits the dark themes while providing so much comedy (I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe when Grace gets a perm).  I also loved the voice cast, especially when Magda Szubanski and Bernie Clifford (who play Gilbert's abusive foster parents) speak gibberish during their religious ceremonies.  The humor is incredibly dry and I loved it whenever I would notice something hilarious seemingly hidden on the screen (pay attention to everything, especially the names of books and what is written on all of the signs) and the messages are poignant (my favorite one is that kindness will eventually be repaid).  This strange little movie is one of my favorites this year and I highly recommend it!

Blitz

I had another double feature at the Broadway last night and I started with Blitz because I am a huge fan of Saoirse Ronan.  I have heard this criticized for being too episodic with themes that are introduced but never explored fully but that is why I like it because it is a slice-of-life portrait of the people the two main protagonists encounter, many of whom are often underrepresented, while trying to survive the Blitz.  Rita (Ronan) is a single mother of a biracial nine-year-old boy named George (Elliott Heffernan) who works at a munitions factory and lives with her father Gerald (Paul Weller) in east London.  She makes the difficult decision to evacuate George to the countryside for his safety and tearfully puts him on a train.  However, he doesn't want to leave her and jumps off the train at the first opportunity and then finds himself lost in London.  George undertakes the journey to get back home, experiencing both adventure and terror, while Rita does whatever she can to find him.  I really loved George's encounter with an air-raid warden originally from Nigeria named Ife (Benjamin Clementine) because not only does he help George find safety but he also helps him find his identity.  I also loved Rita's interactions with a firefighter named Jack (Harris Dickinson) who helps her search for George because he represents the spirit of community during dark times.  It was fascinating to see events portrayed through a different lens because I never knew about the looting that occurred after buildings were damaged (it seems obvious to me now) nor did I know that people were denied access to underground stations during the bombings (almost every other movie about the Blitz depicts people sheltering there).  The action sequences are absolutely visceral, especially the opening scene of firefighters trying to control a blaze, and the camera work is incredibly immersive, particularly the closing scene when the camera pulls back from Rita and George to reveal the devastation all around them. Ronan gives a very affecting performance (she also does a great job singing) but I was really impressed by Heffernan because he is captivating.  I really liked this and highly recommend it.

Heretic

The second movie in my double feature at the Broadway last night was Heretic and to say that I was excited to see it would be an understatement.  It is deeply unsettling but I found it very entertaining (for reasons).  Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who are invited in to give their message to Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant).  They are initially hesitant because the rules stipulate that they cannot be alone with a man without a woman present but they are told by Reed that his wife is there baking a blueberry pie and are reassured when they smell it baking.  They begin a discussion with him but soon become uncomfortable when he mentions some problematic points of doctrine.  When Sister Barnes realizes that the smell of the blueberry pie is coming from a candle, they try to leave only to discover that Reed has locked them inside.  Thus begins a terrifying cat-and-mouse game in which Reed forces them to examine their beliefs.  This is psychological horror at its best and I found Reed's thesis that all religions are just iterations of the same idea to be fascinating (the use of "The Air That I Breathe" by the Hollies and "Creep" by Radiohead to prove his point is brilliant) and his assertion that belief is really a surrender of control is disconcerting (to say the least) because it is so true.  The production design (I loved all of the religious iconography), lighting design, and sound design are all incredibly atmospheric and the cinematography emphasizes the claustrophobia.  Grant is so menacing as Reed because he is playing against type (I am really enjoying his villain era) and delivers the most disturbing monologues with his usual charm and charisma.  Thatcher and East also give outstanding performances because their escalating dread is entirely believable.  Watching this with a crowd in Utah was absolutely wild and I highly recommend it.

The Piano Lesson

There are so many movies playing at the Broadway right now that I want to see so I decided on a double feature last night (I have another one planned for tonight).  I started with The Piano Lesson and, even though I found it to be uneven, I enjoyed it.  It is a sprawling story about several generations of the Charles family beginning in rural Mississippi with the purchase of a piano by James Sutter (Jay Peterson) for his wife Ophelia (Melanie Jeffcoat).  He trades two of his slaves, Bernice and her young son Boy Charles, to buy it but Ophelia misses them so he has Willie Boy Charles (Malik J. Ali) carve the faces of his wife and son on the piano.  The grown up Boy Charles (Stephan James) and his brothers Wining Boy and Doaker eventually steal the piano but Boy is caught and burned alive.  Years later the piano belongs to Boy's daughter Berenice (Danielle Deadwyler), who lives in Pittsburgh with Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson) and Wining Boy (Michael Potts), but his son Boy Willie (John David Washington) wants to sell it to buy the land in Mississippi once owned by the Sutters.  Berenice and Willie Boy clash over the piano because she believes it is an important reminder of her past and refuses to sell it while he sees it as a way to secure his future.  This exploration of one family's legacy is very powerful but, in my opinion, a supernatural subplot involving the haunting of the piano by the ghost of James Sutter, including a dramatic exorcism by Berenice's boyfriend Avery Brown (Corey Hawkins), is less compelling.  There are a lot of characters to keep track of (I was sometimes confused about who was who as well as the relationships between everyone) and a few extraneous scenes that create some strange tonal shifts (my mind often wandered when the action strayed from the central conflict).  However, I loved the performances, particularly the juxtaposition between the wild and exuberant Washington and the restrained Deadwyler.  I really liked this but not as much as I thought I would and I recommend waiting for it to stream on Netflix.

Small Things Like These

Last night my nephew and I saw Small Things Like These and I was incredibly moved by its theme of quiet heroism.  Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) is a coal merchant in a small town in Ireland in 1985.  He is the hard-working father of five daughters and his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) considers him to be too kind-hearted because of his concern for the less fortunate.  When he makes an earlier than usual delivery to the local convent, he discovers a young pregnant girl named Sarah (Zara Devlin) locked in the coal shed.  He brings her inside the convent and is taken to meet Sister Mary (Emily Watson), the Mother Superior, who implies that his younger daughters will not be admitted to the the convent school if he reveals what he saw and then gives him a "tip" for his services.  He begins to suspect that the many pregnant girls living at the convent are there against their will and are mistreated but he is conflicted about what to do.  Eileen and several townspeople want him to forget what he saw because he can't do anything about it but he has flashbacks to when his unmarried mother Sarah (Agnes O'Casey) was taken in by her employer Mrs. Wilson (Michelle Fairley) when she became pregnant with him (the young Bill is played by Louis Kirwan) and wonders what might have happened to him if someone hadn't intervened.  He spontaneously returns to the convent in the middle of the night and, when he finds Sarah locked in the coal shed once again, he makes a decision.  This is definitely a slow burn but I was so riveted by the story that I was genuinely startled when the screen went to black (my nephew mentioned that he could have kept watching for another hour).  I actually really enjoyed all of the subtle symbolism (the ringing of a church bell is especially ominous and the scenes of Bill scrubbing his hands at the end of the day are portentous) and the use of a bleak color palette to represent the hardship of Bill's life makes his small act of kindness even more powerful.  Murphy gives an incredible performance because you see everything he is feeling with very little dialogue (the one tear falling from his eye almost undid me) but Watson gave me chills with the malevolence she conveys over a cup of tea.  This is a haunting character study about man who refuses to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing and I highly recommend it.