Pointed Reviews: Movies in 2021

The following is a collection of reviews of movies I wrote in 2021 that I consider to be “pointed” pieces of criticism. These are reviews that tend to operate with a specific thesis or angle in their critique. Some of them have been edited slightly. These were all posted on Letterboxd, a film journaling site. You can follow me there to see these reviews and more by clicking here.

I didn’t write a lot of movie reviews I think are worth putting here in 2021, and unfortunately, two of the three I do think are both for trash movies. Then again, it’s probably good practice to bring a critical eye to trash, too. Regardless, I hope to write some more in the near future! If you’d like to read some reviews of games from 2021, click here, and if you’re interested in music reviews from 2021, click here.

All of these reviews contain spoilers.

The Adventures of Açela (2020)

The Adventures of Açela, unironically, challenged me in ways comparable to Tarkovsky, Pinter, or Beckett. I don’t know what to make of it. It’s an object.

The film’s obsession with long, silent shots with slow pitter-pattering is completely inexplicable. The camera is undirected; it lingers on whatever it pleases. The plot lacks any coherent drive or motive. Something about a flower and Taleteller. It is a Dadaist assembly of assets, rippling like a stagnant pond. It asks for an infinite well of patience. You must make peace with silence. But you cannot make peace with silence. Nothing happens. People speak of movies where nothing happens. Less happens in this. Things occur, events transpire, but nothing happens. Just silence. Walking. Talking. The twittering of birds. Repetition of the same words. “Taleteller! Where are you, Taleteller?” These words mean nothing. They are like silence in that way. There are short conversations, barely even registering as normal speech. These taunt you. There are glimpses of paroxysmal ludicrity that engage you, maybe even delight you. But they mean nothing. Because there is no payoff. There is no reward. There is something far worse than that.

Near the end of this film, a character speaks uninterrupted for eleven minutes. He is telling a story, a deluge of words that never seems to end. It is long and meandering and incoherent. It is in the shape of a fable but is empty of meaning and sense. I cannot explain the story. I do not understand the story. I do not want to understand the story.

The thought occurs to me, “I miss the silence.”

Transformational. Terrible. 1/5 stars.

Selfie Dad (2020)

Yet another Job, Selfie Dad is the story of a man who cannot fix anything. That’s his shtick: by classic Disney Channel causation (where something that never in a million years would get popular becomes wildly popular), our protagonist is skyrocketed into the spotlight. He makes Youtube videos about trying and failing to fix household objects. That’s not what the movie is actually about, of course. It’s a metaphor. The movie is really about the Bible. This becomes clear within a matter of minutes into Selfie Dad, when a “hip cool coworker” (he’s not cool and he sucks) talks deep with him about the Bible and stuff, man. It’s all about Jesus. The central dilemma of this movie comes from the eponymous dad experiencing persecution for talking about his love of Christ. It’s always that story with these Christian propaganda pieces, where Christians, despite having such immense popularity, are constantly being oppressed. He loses his sponsorship and fears his life is about to completely fall apart. (Interestingly, pretty much every character in the movie agrees that he needs to remove that video, and he does so under duress, with pretty much no ramifications. Some faith!) But through his new emboldened faith in Jesus and by focusing on his family, yadda yadda, you know the rest. Roll credits.

That, of course, is not what the movie is actually, truly about. Selfie Dad is actually, under everything, about sex.

Arguably, the most important scene in this movie occurs after Selfie Dad wins an award for “Best New Comedian” and bumps into a woman who interviewed him a while back. They talk over drinks at the afterparty, and she propositions him. He is flustered, tempted, but he makes the decision to eject from the situation. He gets back to his hotel room, takes a deep breath. What willpower it must have taken. When he returns home, he is struck with the fear of his daughter having gone missing or even having died. It’s an incredibly bleak scene. This reads as a punishment from God for his temptation. His daughter is returned to him only after he prays with his wife and son. That woman at the party later texts him, even with a sexy photo, and in “profound” act of dedication, he tells her not to contact him again. In the eyes of the film, these are brushes with Jezebel.

But Selfie Dad is not against sex. Far from it. Take for example, later in the film, Selfie Dad and his wife speak in euphemism about having sex. His wife makes the move because her husband becomes suddenly very interested in — you guessed it — the Bible. The Bible holds a funny place in this movie; it’s a book that is spoken of as sublime, transcendent, the literal Word of God, but is virtually never discussed in terms that deal with its subject matter. The only quotation I recollect was at the end of the movie. Maybe that’s typical of these kinds of movies. Another notable (and pretty unnerving) beat is when Mickey, that hip and cool Christian coworker, visits his house, and his daughter, Hannah, displays visible attraction to him. Selfie Dad notices this, pushes her to drop it, but later, at night, he tells her that, while he’s a bit old for her, he’s a good guy who “deserves someone like her”, and gives her the book Mickey (who notably did not express interest in his daughter) lent him about — you guessed it — the Bible. That’s all that really matters.

Selfie Dad cannot fix anything. He cannot fix his broken marriage or his relationship with his daughter or his shit job or anything. Instead, all he can do is put his faith in the Bible, and Jesus will do the rest. Accept that, and he is rewarded with his carnal desires fulfilled. Selfie Dad, for all its conservativism (or perhaps because of it), frames sex as a gift given by women to righteous men. When tempted by infidelity, you are punished. The good sex is that which happens between a man and a woman within the sanctity of marriage, as a reward for faithfulness, fornication under the consent of the King of Kings. Read the Bible. Have righteous sex and proselytize. So says Selfie Dad.

The Wolf House (2018)

Facts:

1) La casa lobo (The Wolf House), the utterly stunning and mesmerizing debut feature from Cocina & Leon, is set within a frame narrative: the film itself is a piece of propaganda produced by Colonia Dignidad, in order to convince them never to run away.

2) Colonia Dignidad was a real place in Chile. It was a farm, a Christian cult, and a torture camp with ties to the Nazi Party and Augusto Pinochet. Currently, it’s a tourist spot called Villa Baviera.

3) La casa lobo, all said, is a retelling of the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf. This all comes together in the final moments. It tells the story of Maria, a girl who runs away from the colony, finds refuge in a house in the woods with two pigs. The pigs are transformed into children, and Maria attempts to raise them. She struggles to keep them safe and fed, and as the children turn to eating her, she accepts her failure and calls for help from the colony.

Questions:

1) Maria runs because she fears punishment for having lost three pigs. When she arrives at the house, she finds two pigs. Is Maria the third pig?

2) What is meant by dignity? What is meant by purity?

3) At first, the pigs are transformed into children with black hair and brown eyes. Maria calls them “ugly”, hopes to make them more beautiful with honey. Their hair turns blond and their eyes turn blue, they wear lederhosen and dirndl, and they turn on her. Why do the children become increasingly German and “Aryan” in appearance?

4) Visually speaking, it often feels like a waking night terror. But what of its narrative? La casa lobo, as a film, is often categorized as horror. Why?

5) Colonia Dignidad and its leader are represented in this story by a wolf. The wolf speaks to Maria, insists that she cannot succeed and that she should return home. The story of the three little pigs’ villain is the wolf. Why is the savior of this tale represented by a dangerous predator?

6) Where does Colonia Dignidad end, and Chile begin?

An interpretation:

I often grimace at this kind of formal analysis, as it’s often an exercise in self-serious self-gratification. But let’s take a crack at it. La casa lobo is entirely filmed and produced in stop-motion on the walls and interior of a house. It’s easily one of the most visually stunning features I’ve seen in my entire life. It’s eerily beautiful, objects forming and decaying frame by frame. Does this signify anything? The haunting presence over the film is a feeling of entrapment. Maria cannot escape Colonia Dignidad and its local hegemony. A whole universe is projected onto the walls because it has nowhere else to go. Maria runs away, but the Colonia Dignidad is still within her. Her subjectivity and intersubjectivity are still bound by the colony and its ideology. Her sense of beauty, her sense of safety, her sense of purity, her sense of dignity, her sense of family. As an agricultural colony, the theme of food and eating is returned to over and over again. She heals the children with honey, they cannibalize their mother. The colony gives her a better family than her own children ever could. You can not nourish yourself. Her attempts to raise a family away from Colonia Dignidad are subject to the same interpellations. She builds a new house with master’s tools. The wolf is at the door. She stays inside, never opening the door. But is she afraid to of going out, or of letting the wolf in? By the end, she begs the wolf to destroy her home. She gives in to the wolf. Oh, Maria, it was always the wolf’s house.

All images have been taken from The Movie Database.