Movies this week are good, good, good—not qualitatively, but rather in the sense of that particular word being in every title. The best one is, actually, called Good One. Writer-director India Donaldson’s debut feature (which opens Fri/16 at SF’s Kabuki 8 and the Smith Rafael Center in Marin) is about Sam (Lily Collias), a 17-year-old New Yorker about to start college. But first she’s spending part of her summer break on a camping trip with dad Chris (James Le Gros) and his longtime friend Matt (Danny McCarthy.) The latter’s son was supposed to come too, but they’ve had an argument, so he bails. That leaves quietly observant Sam as the sole youth and female on a trip with two middle-aged divorcees, one a bit of a control freak (Chris), the other a failed actor who’s genial but also a self-pitying hot mess (Matt.)
The beauty of the Catskills country they backpack into only does so much to quell various tensions, let alone our suspicion that despite being one-third her companions’ age, Sam is the most emotionally mature person here. When a line is crossed, she finds neither of these two supposed adults has her back. Reminiscent of Kelly Reichardt’s early film Old Joy, another deceptively casual dissection of relationships during a wilderness sojourn, Good One likewise seems more a cinematic short story than a novel—the narrative feels a little underweight for feature-length. Still, it’s astutely acted and crafted, with an interesting score by Celia Hollander that reinforces the subtlety of the character revelations here.
Also probing extended-family dynamics is The Good Half, a directorial effort by sometime actor, producer, and power pop act Rooney’s main element Robert Schwartzman. Brett Ryland’s screenplay revolves around Renn (Nick Jonas of more famous pop act Jonas Brothers), a Los Angeles-based writer reluctantly returning to Cleveland for his mother’s funeral after a long battle with cancer. Sullen and peevish, Renn has bones to pick with his sister Leigh (Brittany Snow) and divorced father Darren (Matt Walsh of Upright Citizens Brigade); nobody likes Rick (David Arquette), mom’s glib, oily second husband.
A somewhat awkward flashback structure reveals that the late Lily (Elisabeth Shue) was something of an exasperating free spirit as a mother and wife, with a penchant for kleptomania. But we never really get a fix on her, or the impact she had on others—which ought to be the dramatic core here. Prioritizing mild character quirkiness over any depth of backstory or emotion, The Good Half is one of those ensemble seriocomedies that keeps you interested without ever quite staking out its own distinctive terrain. Nonetheless, it ultimately accrues a certain amount of heft and goodwill, with some nice surprises, such as the fact that the least likable figure here (Arquette’s) gets a speech that deflates everyone else’s smug assumption of superiority at his expense. It opens this Friday at the Lark in Larkspur.
Playing AMC’s Metreon in SF and Bay Street 16 in Emeryville this Thu/15 in the evening plus a Sun/18 matinee is Good Bad Things, whose director Shane D. Stanger co-wrote it with producer-star Danny Kurtzman. The latter plays the co-founder of a marketing startup with BFF housemate Jason (Brett Dier), who is so happy-go-lucky he’s like a six-foot, two-legged puppy. But Danny (presumably we are meant to conflate the performer with his onscreen character) is an angstier type, acutely aware of how differently he is perceived by the world due to his muscular dystrophy and wheelchair. Even when he meets an attractive, available, clearly-interested woman in photographer Madi (Jessica Parker Kennedy), he is reluctant to trust his good fortune—assuming he’ll be rejected, he prefers to do the rejecting first.
It’s rare that we get romantic comedies (or any genre, really) involving disabled people, let alone starring real-life ones rather than able-bodied actors proving their “versatility.” So in that respect, this slickly produced indie is refreshing. Nonetheless, it often feels less insightful and more of a vanity project than it ought, given the glossy-magazine-layout lifestyles the characters live, and everyone’s breathless enthusiasm about how wonderful Danny is—something that Kurtzman’s rather flat, one-note performance does little to illustrate. Indeed, the other actors sometimes seem to be working too hard to make up for his lack of rapport with the camera, or with the other cast members. Good Bad Things is significant in representational terms, but frankly it needed a more charismatic lead to be as charming and inspiring as intended.
There are plenty of just plain bad things driving other new screen arrivals this week, from institutionalized abuse to vampires:
Sugarcane
For over a century, starting in 1894, Indigenous children in the lands known as Canada were mandated to attend segregated boarding schools mostly run by the Catholic church, the idea being that somehow this would prepare them for an adult life in mainstream (settler) society. But little such integrating results occurred; indeed, the aftermath of these residential schools often seemed to be alienation, alcoholism, and poverty. Worse still, rumors of rampant abuses within the system simmered for decades, with little official investigation, or consequence for the perpetrators. That had only begun to change when not long ago, myriad unmarked children’s graves began to be discovered on former mission school grounds, igniting national fury (and a rash of arson against Catholic churches), forcing eventual apologies from the government and even the Pope.
It was a hidden genocide whose true extent may never be known. But surviving witnesses in Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s documentary recall instances of suicide, sexual abuse, child pregnancies, infanticide, whippings, beatings, torture, “disappearances,” runaways freezing to death, and more. Priests who complained about the state of affairs were often simply shuffled to a new post. The PTSD runs thick over multiple generations, as latter-day youth had to deal with the problematic or nonexistent parenting of elders still traumatized by their residential school experiences. That cycle is seen here, with the filmmakers focusing on several individuals rather than a horrific “big picture.” Featuring quite a bit of archival footage in addition to the handsomely crafted new material, this is a potent investigation of an important subject that had more than its share of equivalents in the US. Sugarcane opens Fri/16 at SF’s Opera Plaza Cinemas.
Not A Pretty Picture
A different kind of disturbing, still-relevant flashback is offered in this restored reissue of a 1976 first feature by Martha Coolidge, who would go on to make some significant commercial releases (Valley Girl, Rambling Rose) before moving into primarily into prestige television work. Here she uses professional actors to recreate and analyze events of her adolescence in 1962, when she was a prep school student lured into a night out with some peers and older boys in NYC. At 16, she was so naive that it wasn’t until she reached college she knew to apply the term “rape” to what subsequently took place.
A real timepiece reflecting process-heavy currents in ’70s feminism and independent filmmaking alike, Picture finds Coolidge frequently on-screen, coaching her actors through their often improvisational scenes, discussing the unsettled emotions and personal stories dredged up. (Her main actress, Michele Manenti, was also a rape survivor.) This isn’t some fun Me Decade souvenir, but a sometimes-indulgent, more often thought-provoking and discomfiting challenge to the viewer. While much about the project may now feel nostalgic, the unpleasant truth is that the core issues of coercive gender dynamics have changed so little in a half-century since. Not a Pretty Picture is getting released by the Criterion Collection on blu-ray and DVD as of Tue/20, with plenty of contextualizing extras.
Dead Skin, Undead Skin: Two Battlefronts Against Mortality
Two more-or-less thrillers with black comedy slants find not everyone content to accept the natural path of aging, or even death. In Austin Peters’ Skincare, which opens in theaters this Fri/16, Hope (Elizabeth Banks) is a “celebrity aesthetician” who operates an upscale Los Angeles salon, and is about to launch her own line of skin-rejuvenation products.
But that effort is not helped by the unwelcome opening of a business run by a rival (Luis Gerardo Mendez) just across the mini-mall corridor, or by other sudden instances of sabotage and stalking that may or may not also be his doing. Landing smack between satire and suspense terrain, this movie ends up excelling at neither; it never quite finds its tone, leaving the able cast and a few decent ideas twisting in the wind.
More successful is Adrien Beau’s The Vourdalak, which is based on a Tolstoy story previously used for the creepiest segment in Mario Bava’s 1963 horror omnibus Black Sabbath (with Boris Karloff as the Wurdulak.) In 18th-century Eastern Europe, a foppish envoy from the French court (Kacey Mottet Klein) gets robbed of his transport by bandits in the countryside.
Looking for help, he stumbles onto a gloomy abode where the patriarch has been absent some days, warring against the Turks. But his relatives were warned that if he returned after a certain point, he would have turned into the title creature—a sort of vampire, cadaverous and ravenous. Needless to say, that is just what happens. Staged like a 1970s European exercise in mannered genre camp à la Jean Rollin, Andy Warhol’s Dracula, and Herzog’s Nosferatu, this macabre fairy tale is a weird, comical, and visually poetic delight. At presstime its last scheduled show at the Roxie Theater was Fri/16, but check for possible added dates.
Three By Shinji Somai
After an apprenticeship spent in the low-budget fleshpots of late 1970s pinku films, Somai directed 13 features in the next two decades before expiring from cancer at age 53 in 2001. Though generally well-received at home, none of those movies were widely exported outside Japan. He’s belatedly getting some of that international attention now via several recently restored titles.
As of Fri/16, the Roxie is showing his 1993 Moving, in which 11-year-old Renko (Tomoko Tabata) is godsmacked by her parents’ sudden separation. Once that news sinks, the sixth grader starts acting out with a vengeance, her aberrant behavior running a gamut from igniting a classroom fire to howling at the moon. Somai was known for his affinity for young characters, whose psychology is seldom explored in predictable case-pleading ways. Here, Ren is a bratty-yet-sympathetic force of nature whose forms of resistance ultimately acquire the feel of an epic journey, as the film moves into more surreal and dreamlike territory.
Two of the director’s earlier films are also currently available to stream from Metrograph at Home. 1983’s P.P. Rider is an anarchic original whose three teenage protagonists crisscross Japan on the trail of a fourth who was (in a case of mistaken identity) kidnapped by yakuza. Freewheeling and eccentric, with the performers visibly doing a lot of unpredictable stunts, it provides goofy contrast to the more languid Typhoon Club, released two years later. Its own characters are likewise mostly teens, weaving in and out of a tapestry narrative that finds them stranded—some in a high school gymnasium—during the formidable titular weather event. These films are all hard to get a secure grip on, yet they leave a singular impression.
