One of the nominees for Best Foreign Language Feature at this year’s Oscars!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
It’s not a film titled ‘Quick Reactions,’ it’s a bunch of quick reviews from the films I’ve seen in the last few days!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
No spoilers today, but a long intro about podcasting and hosts. Check out The Kid Who Would Be King!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Round three with director Cody Clarke restrains us to what is generally the most comfortable place in the world: the bed. With Bed, Clarke steps in front of the camera to play one half of the film’s engaging couple. His partner is the wonderful Chloe Castiglioni. The two of them go through a lot of emotions in Bed, but comfortable doesn’t come up as often as expected.
In short, it’s a bottle movie. The camera is almost always trained on the titular bed, and the characters are almost always occupying that bed. Save for a couple of choice shots while the girlfriend prepares to go to work early on, we are in the bed with them for the duration of the film.
If you don’t think that premise sounds enticing, I don’t blame you. It’s not one that immediately lends itself to being cinematic. There are no action or outdoor shots. When the boyfriend goes to cook dinner, we stay with the girlfriend in bed. The energy of the film relies entirely on Clarke and Castiglioni’s performances and chemistry.
The screenplay, adapted from Clarke’s own novella of the same name, gives us a lazy, but not languishing day with this couple. After brief resistance from the girlfriend, our heroes decide that this day, a weekday, is one that deserves to be spent in bed. That decision feels spontaneous. In truth, most days spent in bed aren’t put on a schedule or planned for. And yet, as Bed progresses, the spontaneity of the event begins to disappear. I don’t mean that in the sense that it was a secret plan that either character was intending on carrying out for days or weeks prior, but that their presence and the ultimate trajectory of their day leads to, in my opinion, a fated reckoning.
Bed meanders at first, finding its footing and establishing a relationship that the viewer encounters deep into its existence. Most of the specifics are kept hidden and only referred to in subtext. The deeper we sink into their relationship, the more I thought about what this day would have been if they didn’t spend it all in bed together. The boyfriend might have still been in that bed, or he might have wandered down to the store at the corner. The girlfriend would have gone to work and spent the day readjusting her shirt to avoid any lingering pain from her sunburn. What we get is a day filled with highs and lows.
Fans of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy will find a lot to like in Bed. Clarke combines elements from all three of those films. He shows their relationship at its height as boyfriend and girlfriend smile, laugh, have sex, and revel in each other’s company. He reveals its nadir as they bicker, argue, and question what their relationship is and means to each of them. I found myself identifying with the boyfriend and the girlfriend at various points, but the final act went the direction I didn’t want. I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a good thing or not.
This single location film works. Chloe Castiglioni is excellent. Cody Clarke remains as skilled a director as he has been with his previous films that I’ve seen (Mute Date and Ramekin). Your enjoyment and experience will hinge on how invested you become in this relationship. I wasn’t hooked from the first shot, but Bed pulled me in. Clarke has a knack for turning innocuous things into pertinent pieces in his stories.
Check out this teaser trailer for Bed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rySVa4hDIbw
Spoilers start around the 6 minute mark. This is as bizarre a movie as I’ve ever seen and I attribute many equally incredulous words to it throughout this episode.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
It’s a late episode and I apologize! This year’s review of the first 2019 film I saw in theaters!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Back in April 2018, I reviewed a movie from Cody Clarke called Ramekin. It came out a year ago and despite the fact that it did not have a budget in the millions, it was a thoroughly entertaining film. I was later privileged to have Clarke on my podcast and talk to him about Ramekin and future projects he was working on. One of those projects is Mute Date, a 2019 film that he was gracious enough to show me.
Ramekin wasn’t exactly a grounded film, but Mute Date sees Clarke going a step further into the unreal. In Mute Date, we’re transported into the year 2020 (which isn’t as far away as it feels). Our protagonists, Erica Peters (Nina Tandilashvili) and Noah R. Gutman (Anthony Kapfer), have been included in a beta test for a new groundbreaking technology. They are asked to meet at a local park and remain in close proximity for an extended period of time. During this date, their thoughts are conveyed into each other’s heads. Noah thinks something and Erica can hear it, as if it was her own thought. They can communicate without ever opening their mouths.
It’s through this technology that Clarke mines drama, humor, thrills, awkwardness, pain, and distress. It’s a helluva technology. What’s more, the entire film relies on it. Noah and Erica communicate through their entire blind date in thought. It’s fun to watch them learn about each other in an intimate, but cold manner. A person’s face doesn’t display as much emotion when you’re thinking and not speaking. Hand gestures and physical cues are clunky because you aren’t projecting any sound out into the world. And passersby remain clueless as to what their conversation is about.
Watching Mute Date is kind of a bizarre invasion of privacy. The setting invites you into the lives of two people lowering their walls and opening up to each other, but I was reminded at various points throughout the film that if I was actually in that park with them, I wouldn’t be able to hear what they were thinking. It’s not just narration over an event, it’s inner thoughts that can be as loud, quiet, kind, mean, open, or guarded as their owner chooses them to be.
The film is strikingly broken into three acts. My description is mostly limited to act one, which I found to be slow to start, but naturally built into a working relationship between Noah and Erica. Noah and Eric are stark opposites in demeanor and personality, but their “opposites attract” bond grows and blossoms. That is, until the technology reveals that like every seeming upgrade to life; social media, smart phones, or online shopping, nothing comes without sacrifice. I enjoyed the deeper delve into the technology in act two even more than the opening. I wish I could have said the same for the final act of the film.
While not what I would call a ‘twist,’ Mute Date shifts in tone for the final sequence of the film. Aspects of the final act did not work for me, which I won’t reveal with too much specificity so as not to spoil another’s experience. The film adds another character, whose addition clashes with the established back and forth we’ve grown accustomed to between Noah and Erica. It also weaves the story into a larger tapestry that I’m not sure it needed to do to be effective. I don’t know what kind of an ending I was looking for, to be honest, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was not the one for me.
It was to my great relief that despite my less than enthusiastic response to the ending, I was still very taken by the events leading up to it. Mute Date uses voice over as effectively as other films like Her and Molly’s Game. Kapfer and Tandilashvili are exquisite at making an unreal conceit come to life. Mute Date is an inventive drama that seems to mine its conceit for an entire franchise’s worth of facets in its brief runtime. Clarke’s direction is as steady and reliable as it was in Ramekin, but in venturing outside, he seems to have even better shot composition and creativity. I had a lot of fun with Mute Date, and I think most viewers will, too. Check out the trailer for Mute Date below. And if you haven’t seen it, check out Cody Clarke’s previous film, Ramekin. That trailer is linked below, as well!
Trailer for Mute Date: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u2EquFSj28
Trailer for Ramekin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QonrkVv0AbU
A Foreign Language Feature contender at the Oscars and every other awards ceremony this year. And it’s as good as advertised.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
No spoilers. A review of the new Lucas Hedges/Julia Roberts film. Enjoy!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
I am joined by the Prince of Darkness to talk about the hottest new animated film of the year. Spoilers ahead!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Three films for the price of one! Kind of. Lots of good stuff, though!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
There’s a new documentary and it’s available on Hulu if you have a subscription (free trials cost nothing!). Go watch it! It’s pretty great!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Loading ...