Entertainment
Monstrosity, kooky Christmas, longings and love: The animated shorts of Oscars 2022
The 2022 Oscar-nominated animated brief movies plumb the guts — and the guts of darkness. They’re from the U.S., England, Spain, Chile and Russia and decidedly not for teenagers (apart from, successfully, a kooky Christmas particular by the oldsters at Aardman). They current nightmares, grotesques … and a visually gorgeous meditation on the character of romantic love.
“Affairs of the Artwork”: This joint UK-Canada manufacturing is a continuation of a sequence of roughly sketched movies about Beryl, a 59-year-old manufacturing unit employee longing to change into an artist. It’s comedic, discovering the ugliness and awkwardness inside its topics and presenting it for laughs (which it additionally does with a couple of situations of cruelty to animals).
Producer-screenwriter Les Mills explains Beryl’s recognition: “The viewers likes her. What she represents isn’t usually represented in motion pictures: A barely chubby, middle-aged, working-class girl.” As he says it, director Joanna Quinn emphatically factors to herself on a video name.
Quinn attracts a comparability between her personal profession arc and Beryl’s drive to specific herself creatively. “We have been doing adverts for 13 years and although you could be artistic in commercials, it’s probably not your thought,” she says, noting that she and Mills crafted the Charmin marketing campaign with the cartoon bears. “Aside from our partnership with the Nationwide Movie Board, all the cash got here from rest room paper.”
“Bestia”: A meticulously textured and animated work, with masterful cinematic aptitude. It’s additionally a monstrous nightmare. It’s a voyage the place most of us would possibly concern to tread: Contained in the thoughts of a brutal secret police agent throughout Chile’s navy dictatorship. The Envelope provides sturdy warnings concerning the unflinching content material and depictions of her depravity.
“The movie travels into the thoughts of a sinister girl. It’s like a nightmare,” says director Hugo Covarrubias. “We are able to see by way of her thoughts the frustrations and traumatic ideas.”
Whereas the character was impressed by an actual particular person, Íngrid Olderöck, who was accused of committing very particular atrocities, the filmmakers stress that the film shouldn’t be a documentary.
Producer Tevo Díaz stated, “This particular person was a story machine to speak concerning the evil of [the dictatorship]. We use the character as a bridge to connect with ideas which are vital to us — how this machine works that killed so many individuals in the course of the dictatorship.”
Covarrubias stated, “The fracture, the open wound that exists within the nation, it’s vital to know these scars and perceive them. As a substitute of masking them up, we have to perceive these sorts of cracks.”
“Boxballet”: The brief from Russia manages to generate the strain and emotion of a feature-length movie in 15 evocatively drawn minutes. In it, a battered boxer falls for a willowy ballerina. The movie’s rough-handed tenderness will probably stick with viewers.
Director Anton Dyakov says of the boxer Evgeny, “I wished to point out, behind the brutality and coarseness, the anxious soul of a kid. The character of [the ballerina] Olya was far more of a thriller for me. For Evgeny, I drew closely alone emotions, however female power is a distinct sort of power. I spent a very long time drawing, trying to find Olya’s face, a mixture of refined magnificence and magnificence, however not overloaded with element. Whereas Evgeny’s face is a fancy panorama, a patchwork of creases and scars, Olya’s is sort of a classical amphora, easy and stylish.
“There’s one [real] lady I used to be pondering of … an adolescent with hopes and goals, who fantasized concerning the world, and sooner or later that adolescent’s goals collided with actuality.”
“Robin Robin” An Aardman-Netflix presentation directed by Dan Ojari and Mikey Please that seems like a Christmas particular or the blueprint for a vacation film. Within the joint UK-U.S. manufacturing, a robin raised by mice clumsily tries to sneak her approach to success as one in all her stealthy clan.
Ojari says, “We have been pondering of that custom of the Christmas particular; the picture of a robin within the U.Okay. is sort of as Christmasy as Father Christmas.
“We’d inform it to family and friends round Christmas; it was fairly a great way of refining the story.”
Richard E. Grant (as a materialistic magpie) and Gillian Anderson (as a menacing cat) flip in excellent vocal work.
Please says, “We’d had Richard E. Grant as the middle of our pin board, in his Withnail scarf and trench coat, placing a magpie’s head on it. Once we imagined Richard within the story, it fell into place.”
“The Windshield Wiper”: Scene after breathtaking scene within the U.S.-Spanish manufacturing bears the look of exactly rendered work (not rotoscoped) assembled with bravura cinematic approach right into a seamless, flitting meditation on romantic love.
Producer Leo Sanchez says, “Each shot has been tweaked by hand in each body. We’ve been stopping and beginning — taking different gigs alongside the best way — for seven years.”
The movie fleetingly visits moments imbued with the ineffable factor it desires to specific, moments that show potent and memorable.
Three-time Emmy-winning director Alberto Mielgo says of that central query, “What’s love?”: “All of my relationships have been so completely different, I couldn’t actually name them the identical factor. ‘The Windshield Wiper’ is a metaphor that resembles the variations [among] relationships. Let’s say that every drop that falls on the window creates a sample. Then when the windshield wipes, there’s one other sample that could be a utterly completely different relationship.”
‘Oscar Shorts 2022 – Animation’
Rated: Unrated (grownup content material together with nudity/sexuality, violence and torture)
Working time: 1 hour, 33 minutes
Taking part in: For native showtimes and tickets, go to shorts.television/theoscarshorts
Movie Reviews
My Sunshine: Jesus director returns with poetic ice-dancing drama
4/5 stars
Rarely has figure skating been shown as so pure, poetic and sensual than in My Sunshine, Hiroshi Okuyama’s feature about two young ice dancers and their coach over one winter in a small town in Hokkaido, in Japan.
Filmed in the classic four-by-three screen ratio and boasting a desaturated colour palette which gives everything a dreamy quality, My Sunshine revolves around Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama), a stammering boy who is as awkward at sport as he is with his speech.
Bad at school in both baseball and ice hockey, the boy finds himself captivated by figure skating – or, specifically, the elegant star skater Sakura (Kiara Nakanishi). His perseverance in trying out pirouettes is noted by the girl’s coach Arakawa (Sosuke Ikematsu), who gives the boy proper skates and then private lessons.
Sensing a prodigy in the waiting, Arakawa begins to train Takuya alongside Sakura to compete in a pairs skating competition. Through this, the man rediscovers the joie de vivre he seems to have left behind after his retirement and relocation to the rural hinterlands.
Teasing natural and dynamic turns from his cast – with Sosuke looking very much the part with his smooth moves on the ice – Okuyama delivers scenes that ooze youthful energy and human warmth.
In the film’s pièce de resistance, a scene depicting Takuya and Sakura’s full routine, the duo glide gracefully across the ice, their breathing and the crisp glissando produced by their skates saying much more about their emotions than words ever could, whether about their dedication to the sport or the unarticulated feelings bubbling within each of them.
But My Sunshine is not all sweetness and light. Its descent towards tragedy is perhaps prefigured by Okuyama’s frequent positioning of his characters as small dots in vast spaces – an allusion, perhaps, to how their fates are somehow shaped by unspoken social forces they could not control.
And it is exactly such tacit norms which will eventually snap the trio’s growing bond.
Eschewing melodrama, Okuyama simply hints at the prevalent conservative attitudes in the town, the disapproval of Arakawa’s private life never really breaking into the open beyond one single word Sakura throws at her erstwhile mentor.
It is an altercation that is as brief as it is heartbreaking, and it speaks volumes about Okuyama’s deftness in evoking such emotions through his very economical storytelling and stylistic rigour.
Entertainment
At a Cannes Film Festival of big swings and faceplants, real life takes a back seat
“Is it too real for ya?” snarls the Gang of Four-soundalike punk band Fontaines D.C. over a thrumming bass line on the soundtrack to “Bird” as we cruise the streets of Gravesend, Kent, east of London. How’s this for too real? Piloting an e-scooter is the shirtless, much-tatted Bug, played by Barry Keoghan, last seen in “Saltburn” wearing significantly less. Hanging onto him is 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams), his daughter from a previous relationship (something of a stretch, age-wise, but sure).
Ever the optimist, Bug is planning to sell the hallucinogenic slime he skims off the back of a toad he’s imported from Colorado to fund his imminent wedding to a fling of three months. And despite having an elaborate, curling centipede inked on his face and neck, he’s crestfallen that Bailey would let a friend cut off her locks before the big day. She’s entering surly adolescence like a hot comet and not thrilled to have a new stepmother.
It’s all in keeping with the studied miserablism of British director and Cannes darling Andrea Arnold (“American Honey”). Every interior in “Bird” is more squalid than the last; every door seems designed to be busted down by a violent boyfriend.
Is it too real for ya?
Actually, no, not really. And that’s before Arnold introduces us to Bailey’s creepy Boo Radley-ish friend, the mysterious title character (Franz Rogowski of “Passages,” deepening his brand of bug-eyed strangeness), who, in a long-telegraphed moment of protective vengeance, sprouts huge CGI wings that were already painfully suggested.
“Bird” is part of what might be described as Cannes’ reality problem. Or so it seems — it’s only the halfway mark — as we ping-pong between screenings of revered directors leaping off the deep end, their former penchants for verisimilitude tossed aside. Emerging from the raves for George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” came the admission, shared by many, that it just wasn’t convincing physically: too lacquered and digitally finessed, the grungy tactility of “The Road Warrior” long gone. Any hope of Francis Ford Coppola reproducing the warmth of his best films was dashed by the sprawling “Megalopolis,” a Rome-as-New-York urban fantasia that, for all its delightful looniness, could have used some subway grit.
Maybe realness is overrated. It’s tempting (but too easy) to impose a coordinated aesthetic on any one edition of a film festival, the early responders hoping to collate their scattered experience of seeing multiple movies a day into a larger sense of coherence. Still, this was restless work. Many of Cannes’ first-week offerings felt like products of the pandemic and, as such, exuded an air of desperation.
Paul Schrader’s flashback-heavy “Oh, Canada” — sluggish even at 95 minutes — is expressly about notions of reputational realness unraveling. A Hollywood lion in a fascinating winter, the always-watchable Richard Gere plays Leonard Fife, a celebrated Errol Morris-like lefty documentarian, who, though suffering through the final stages of cancer, agrees to a filmed interrogation by some of his most devoted students. Already you anticipate that some of these interviews aren’t going to go Leonard’s way as Schrader’s métier, the language of self-excoriating doubt, finds voice.
Was he a draft dodger who fled to Canada on principle to escape military service? Was he a faithful family man? No points for guessing correctly on those two. Meanwhile, a deeper truth emerges, more about the inexorable march of time than integrity. Gere, reuniting with Schrader for their first collaboration since the exuberant strut of 1980’s “American Gigolo,” is a fragile, vulnerable presence here, playing up Leonard’s thickened voice and dimmed virility. “I have a Genie and a Gemini!” he sputters, clinging to his awards while the rest of his life tips into fabrication.
Please, Yorgos Lanthimos, show us how it’s done: If we’re going to have a Cannes overrun with fantasy, let one come from the maker of “Poor Things” and “The Lobster.” The Greek director has chosen an unfortunate moment to do a faceplant. “Kinds of Kindness,” though it gets its audience pumped with opening credits set to Eurythmics’ snaky, pounding “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” slackens into a tiresome trio of subpar mini-films lacking the emotive weirdness that Lanthimos usually serves on tap.
It’s not the actors’ fault, many of whom take on triple duty in three brittle, gruesome tales about, sequentially, murderous micromanagement, cannibalistic survival and obsessive cultdom. The cast launches gamely into the flat-toned violence: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau and a particularly committed Margaret Qualley (who hopefully filed for worker’s comp). The weak link, however, is the script by Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, who, despite the hope they’d steer back to their darkly suggestive “Dogtooth” days, can’t seem to link their customary meanness to any kind of profundity.
Lanthimos has never made a movie this gratuitously brutal (brace for a fried thumb served on a dinner plate), nor has he made one this dumbly obvious, relying on that ominous, pinging piano note from “Eyes Wide Shut” and a frisky cast to sock it over. He’s clearing his throat. It’s more a collection of memes than a sustained piece of thinking.
One filmmaker, though, has nailed the free-floating dreaminess that Cannes seems to be lost in, the Zambia-born Rungano Nyoni, whose confidence summoning a mood clarifies in the exquisitely haunting “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl.” (Playing in the Un Certain Regard section, her drama runs circles around several others in the official competition.) It begins in the middle of the night — a sequence you’ll never want to end — as Shula (Susan Chardy), driving home from a party, pulls over. There’s a dead body on the road. Turns out it’s her uncle Fred. A garrulous, drunk cousin, Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), shows up, lending her some unwanted company.
The movie then eases into the rituals of mourning: mounting a funeral, cooking for the bereaved, grieving performatively, so much of it conducted in a state of shock. Nyoni’s debut, the surreal 2017 comic satire “I Am Not a Witch,” poked a sharp stick in the eye of African mysticism, drafting a solemn girl into unwanted witchery while other women remained tethered to traditional roles. Here, the connection is cooler and more disturbing. As Shula steps into rooms flooded with water, the film pivots to a trance-like menace, echoed by Lucrecia Dalt’s scraping experimental synth score.
We also learn more about guinea fowl than ever imagined, including how the plump species warns the rest of the herd of danger. Shula, lost in her stubbornly vague half-memories, can’t quite shake free of her uncle’s past. And when a final showdown arrives — several women and girls chirping out an animalistic warning — the hair on the back of your neck pricks up.
Suddenly, Cannes was too real after all.
Movie Reviews
‘The Substance’ Review: An Excellent Demi Moore Helps Sustain Coralie Fargeat’s Stylish but Redundant Body Horror
Not long into Coralie Fargeat’s campy body horror The Substance, Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is unceremoniously fired from her gig as the celebrity host of a daytime exercise program. The former actress’ credentials — an Academy Award, a prominent place on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — aren’t enough to save her Zumba-meets-Jillian-Michaels-style show, fittingly called Sparkle Your Life. Her producer, an oily personality conspicuously named Harvey (Dennis Quaid), wants to replace Elisabeth with a younger, more beautiful star. In his words: “This is network TV, not charity.”
The Substance, which premiered at Cannes in competition, is Fargeat’s second feature. It builds on the director’s interest in the disposability of women in a sexist society, a theme she first explored in her hyper-stylized and gory 2017 thriller Revenge. She gave that film a subversive feminist bent by turning the trophy girlfriend — a sunny blonde who is raped and murdered — into a vengeance-seeking hunter.
The Substance
The Bottom Line Uneven genre offering boosted by formal ambition and Demi Moore.
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
Cast: Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid, Margaret Qualley
Director-screenwriter: Coralie Fargeat
2 hours 20 minutes
In The Substance, a woman also takes fate into her own hands and combats underestimation, only this time she’s at war with herself, too. Fargeat combines sci-fi elements (as in her early short Reality+) with body horror and satire to show how women are trapped by the dual forces of sexism and ageism. Beauty and youth are the targets at the heart of this film, but the director also takes aim at Hollywood’s ghoulish machinations and the compulsive physical and psychological intrusiveness of cisgender heterosexual men.
Fargeat flaunts an exciting hyperactive style. Ultra wide-angle shots, close-ups and a bubble-gum color palette contribute to the film’s surreal — and at times uncanny — visual language. The British composer Raffertie’s thunderous score adds an appropriately ominous touch, especially during moments of corporeal mutilation.
There’s a lot going on in The Substance, and while the ambition is admirable, not everything works. The thin plotting strains under the weight of its 2 hour 20 minute runtime; there are scenes, especially in the middle of the film, that land as leaden repetition instead of clever mirroring. But strong performances — especially from Moore and Quaid — help sustain momentum through the film’s triumphantly amusing end.
During his final meeting with Elisabeth, Harvey doubles down on his offensiveness. By the time women reach the age of 50, he suggests to Elisabeth while stuffing his mouth with shrimp, it’s over for them. Fargeat heightens the perversity of Harvey’s blunt assessment with shots of his mouth masticating on shellfish bits. As he crushes the coral-colored creatures with his molars, Elisabeth stares at him with a faint disgust bordering on hatred. Quaid’s character lives in the more satirical notes of The Substance, and the actor responds with an appropriately mocking performance.
Harvey’s words, coupled with the blank stares Elisabeth now receives from passersby, drive the actress to seek a solution. She reaches out to the anonymous purveyors of The Substance, a program that allows people to essentially clone a younger version of themselves. While Fargeat’s screenplay leaves much to be desired when it comes to conveying the company’s scale of operations or how they function in her version of Los Angeles, the rules of the experiment are straightforward. After individuals spawn their duplicates, it’s critical they maintain a balanced life. Every 7 days one of them enters a coma, kept alive through a feeding tube, while the other roams free. Then they switch. The catch, of course, is the addiction of youth.
Elisabeth and her younger self (Margaret Qualley), Sue, follow the program rules for a bit. The middle of The Substance is packed with scenes underscoring the difference in treatment they receive. While Sue blossoms, winning the affection of Harvey and getting her own exercise show, Elisabeth languishes in the shadow of her invisibility.
Moore imbues her character with a visceral desperation, one that enriches the unsettling undercurrents of Fargeat’s film. She plays a woman who can’t quit the addiction of having youth at her fingertips despite its lacerating effect on her psyche. In one particularly strong scene, Elisabeth, haunted by a giant billboard of Sue outside her window, struggles to leave the house for a date. She tirelessly redoes her makeup and each attempt reveals the layers of anguish behind the actress’s pristine facade.
Moore leans into the physical requirements of her role later in the film. Elisabeth eventually learns that upsetting the balance of the experiment reduces her vitality. Sue, greedier for more time outside the coma, becomes a kind of vampire, and Elisabeth wilts. Moore’s slow walk and hunched shoulders add to the sense of her character’s suffering. Special makeup effects by Pierre-Olivier Persin render Elisabeth’s withering even more startling and persuasive.
Qualley does not have as meaty a role as Moore. Her character functions as Elisabeth’s foil, seeming to exist only to help us understand the perversion of Hollywood’s gaze on the starlet. That’s a shame, because The Substance’s smart premise and direction promise more revelatory confrontations between Elisabeth and Sue than the one we are offered.
The reality of this experiment is that it traps both characters in the same toxic, self-hating cycle as the standards imposed by society. The most compelling parts of The Substance deal with how social conventions turn women against themselves. A stronger version of the film might have dug into the complexities of that truth, instead of simply arranging itself around it.
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