Review: "Deerskin" on HBO

by Cláudio Alves

Fashion kills in one of Quentin Dupieux's latest absurdist comedies, the loony nightmare that is Deerskin. After blessing moviegoers with the nonsensical sight of a homicidal tire in Rubber, the French director has now imbued a fringed jacket with the power to unravel the human mind and precipitate its wearers into paroxysms of murderous madness. Jean Dujardin's Georges is the victim of such demonic influence, though, at the start, he, like all things in Deerskin, appears unnervingly mundane…

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Doc Corner: 'Totally Under Control'

By Glenn Dunks

There have been experimental Zoom horror movies on streaming services and there have been lockdown diaries where we get the news. Hell, Spike Lee’s New York, New York was ‘released’ so to speak on the filmmaker’s Instagram feed. But none feel quite as spontaneous and ambitious as Totally Under Control from directors Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger. A feature-length documentary that takes its title from one of many Donald Trump quotes that should theoretically haunt him for years to come (if he was capable of shame or regret, that is) and which examines the United States’ response to the still very present COVID-19 pandemic and just what went wrong.

The finished product isn’t quite as much of a bombshell as its initial trailer drop just a week and a half ago might have suggested. The truth is, there’s very little in here that will be breaking news to anybody who has followed along closely (some of the Jared Kushner stuff had passed me by, though, amid the never-ending doom-news cycle that is 2020).

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Kelly Reichardt and the "Roads to Nowhere"

by Cláudio Alves

With First Cow, Kelly Reichardt reaches an apotheosis in her career. Watching the director's filmography, one wouldn't suppose she was building up towards a monument, a grand summation of an auteur's cinematic idioms and preoccupations. Yet, here we are. While Reichardt has a very characteristic style and collection of favorite themes, one of the main elements of her oeuvre is a conspicuous lack of grandiosity. She's one of the great voices in contemporary American cinema, but her works seldom underline their mastery or call back to the films that came before, their predecessors in the Reichardt canon. 

Because of that, it feels like a good time to meditate on Kelly Reichardt's cinema, to revisit her features' wonder and, perchance, reevaluate what each one was trying to say. It's also an opportune moment to examine how those films were made, the methodologies of the artist. The way something is created imbues it with particular qualities, both aesthetic and ideological, thematic, and even spiritual. Helping us through this odyssey of discovery on the films of Kelly Reichardt, we now have Seventh Row's latest e-book, Roads to Nowhere: Kelly Reichardt's broken American dreams, as a handy guide… 

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Doc Corner: Jamal Khashoggi and the 'Kingdom of Silence'

By Glenn Dunks

It has been a while since I was quite so turned off by a documentary as quickly as I was by Kingdom of Silence. Well-intentioned in its exploration of the special relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and how journalist Jamal Khashoggi came to be executed, but built in a fashion that mimics some sort of Tony Scott crime thriller from the 1990s. Using every trick in the book when the story at its core is so interesting only seeks to diminish its impact.

Director Rick Rowley, an Oscar-nominee for Dirty Wars, isn’t just content with verite filmmaking to create a sense of urgency. Rather his film is edited through a woodchipper, it has an over-abundance of unnecessary focus pulling and slow-motion, plus over-the-top zooms and anonymous overhead camerawork of cities and crowds implying menace everywhere you look. All played against an incessant droning soundtrack full of technological bleeps right out of The Matrix. And that’s just its first two minutes and 51 seconds.

The cumulative effect of it all is exhaustion.

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Doc Corner: 'Dick Johnson is Dead'

By Glenn Dunks

One of the heartiest laughs I have had in months comes towards the end of Dick Johnson is Dead during Dick’s funeral as his best friend pulls out a bugle to play a tune and bid his buddy farewell. Why is it funny? Well, you’ll have to watch the film to find out. But it’s a moment that epitomises what the entire film, directed by Johnson’s daughter, Kirsten Johnson, does so well. It confronts our own morbid idea of life and death and laughs in the face of the idea that we have any sort of real control over our mortality.

For a film about death and grief, Dick Johnson is Dead is also probably one of the funniest movies of the year.

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