Terrible Children

The Lodge (2019) - Franz, Fiala

Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the Austrian duo, behind Goodnight Mommy, is back with another terrible children's game gone wrong movie. This time, children are a little older (played by Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh). The film moves along in brisk pace to leave all the implausibilities and plotholes behind. And that is all the better for horror movie like this. Franz and Fiala, again as was with Goodnight Mommy, are very good at psychological horror. This time, it's Riley Keough, a stepmom-to-be who gets tortured and driven into a mental and physical breakdown.

The divorce takes a toll on a mom (Alicia Silverstone) of two children, Aidan and Mia. Dad (Richard Armitage) is dating Grace (Keough), who was the subject of his book about the only survivor of a mass religious cult suicide led by her father (the kids look her up on google). Not long after he tells her his intention to marry Grace, mom kills herself. Six month later, dad is planning on trip to a lakeside lodge for Christmas, thinking it is a good time to have Grace and kids get to know each other and accept one another. He has to do some stuff in the city, so Grace will have some time with the kids for a couple of days.

With creepy soundtrack and their glacial visual aesthetics, Franz and Fiala excels at building up tension and add another classic to "cold horror" genre. Kids can be innocent with their games, but they can be vicious. F&F seem to tell us with two features now that they think us humans are capable of unspeakable violence and cruelty and it is in our innate being. I suspect their next film will be about young people doing mean things? Oh wait, that was done and it was called Funny Games by fellow Austrian.

LA Lazy Noir

Under the Silver Lake (2018) - Mitchell

This is a pointless, indulgent, boringass filmmaking and a direct result of a big-success-got-to-his-head effort by a young director. David Robert Mitchell was riding high after his great indie horror success, It Follows. Under the Silver Lake, written and directed by Mitchell, has the hallmark symptoms of 'I'm so clever, gimme all the money' (matte) painted all over the 2 and a half hour yawn fest. This LA lazy noir gives countless unnecessary nods to old, cliché Hollywood - Rear Window to Marilyn Monroe to Irma Vep to The Long Goodbye to Big Inherent Lebowski with tonally completely wrong Bernard Herman-esque soundtrack.

It stars not so fabulously fresh Andrew Garfield as a LA loser Sam (Spade?), a permanently jobless/on the brink of homelessness man who sits around in his apartment doing nothing in particular except jerking off to nudes in old magazines but snoops on his neighbors with his binoculars in his bungalow style adobe equipped with sizable pool. There is a serial dog killer going around in his neighborhood. One night he gets smitten by a swimming bae Sarah (Riley Keough) and has a brief cannabis induced intimate moment. The next day he finds her disappeared and her apartment cleaned out overnight. So starts Sam's conspiracy theory laden journey into the so called underbelly of the City of Angels - countless parties, death cults, coded pop music, 90s nostalgia, etc.

Silver Lake tries to be many things at once but fails to be anything. It is not a brazen satire of skin-deep LA scene, nor an anthropological study of millennial generation, nor the scathing critique of pop culture nor it is a straight comedy, because it didn't make me laugh once. It reminded me a lot of Southland Tales, another sophomore clusterfuck of then a hotshot Richard Kelly riding high on his debut Donnie Darko. All the actors in Silver Lake are too old for their roles. Their late 90s R.E.M. blaring parties are lame and tiresome, their boulevard of broken dreams ring extremely hollow but not hollow enough to be a satire. This movie is just very sad and depressing without trying very hard. This might be the worst movie I've seen this year.

Youth and Optimism Through Female Gaze

American Honey (2016) - Arnold

A modern day Wizard of Oz but Dorothy here is played with gusto by newcomer Sasha Lane. Her Star is a tough as a nail firecracker with a good head on her shoulders and a heart of gold. American Honey tell the rowdy group of traveling kids selling magazine subscriptions door to door. Only recognizable actors (I use the term loosely here) are Shia Labeouf and Riley Keough. But even they disappear into their respective roles as a slightly sexy older kid who show Star the ropes and young creepy, scary matriarch of the gang. The setting here is American south-midwest, but it isn't much different than Arnold's previous film Fish Tank, in terms of its theme- on the verge of womanhood, a girl from a poor family journeying through self-discovery. The hope Arnold portrays in those two films has less to do with its setting but with youth. This is what separates Arnold from other filmmakers. American Honey is being compared with Larry Clark's Kids. Yes there are plenty of graphic sex and violence. But whereas Clark's film unabashedly, proudly comes across as nothing but exploitation, Arnold's film shows real compassion toward its characters while not losing sight on the youthful passion. Arnold acknowledges physical, almost feral attractions that exist among people (even in adults in Red Road) but understands that she doesn't have to exploit it by showing boobies every other scene. For this reason, I think this film can be a great counterpart example to so-called 'male gaze' films by all these 'macho' directors.

Charging tirelessly through almost 3 hour running time, Arnold and co achieves something truly special here. It's a director's film through and through, not in any artificial David Fincher way. She even knows how to perfectly use actors like Labeouf who fits the role like a glove. She deserves every best director awards this year period.