Author: BRWC

20th Century Faux Shorts: Review

By Fergus Henderson. Four short takes on millennial living

LA filmmaking group 20^th Century Faux are freaked out by themselves, and the rest of us too. Member Will Blank’s previous short, Limbo, was a dreamlike piece of filmmaking, and evidently his collective believe that millennial life is equally phantasmagorical.

These Faux friends (headed by Will Blank and Jake Bradbury) have created a series of new short films, all of which address our social relations and the mitigating factors at play in keeping us separate from each other and ourselves. They proceed from simple premises and play out like jokes in a stand-up routine.

The fraught nature of our social connection, or lack thereof, is not a new subject, nor indeed is the suggestion that our technology serves to further loosen these connections. I won’t bust out the film history books to demonstrate this. Even an old hand like social satirist Michael Haneke has used that most vilified object, the smart phone, in his most recent film Happy End.

This is why 20^th Century Faux’s shorts come as a refreshing surprise. In the hands of prior generations this technology has been decided to be a categorically Bad Thing, to be regarded with absolute suspicion and resentment. The members of this group actually use it, have grown up with it, have it knotted deeply into the skein of their existence. In short, they understand it. What emerges from this understanding is an impression of great loneliness, and of a world of unsatisfactory surfaces.

In Girl, Interrupted (each name is taken from a pre-exiting film), we find a young woman getting ready for a booty call, trying on different outfits and cleaning her flat, even doing a little bump to keep her energy up. There is something quietly desperate in this liminal moment, something so relatable in the disparity between hope and reality. The Wizard puts it in more direct terms, showing a man wearing a huge VR headset, screwing around pointlessly in a fantasy RPG, the barrenness of his reality reflected in the stupidity of what he does in the game.

//vimeo.com/283368454

Elsewhere, How High does away with the potentially comedic qualities of someone getting far too stoned. Without any real punchline or plot all we really get is an extraordinarily vivid depiction of being uncomfortably aware of your surroundings, totally isolated from everyone around you. Stoner comedy this ain’t.

Finally, The Unbearable Lightness of Being lets the all too familiar experience of waving at the wrong person play out as if its main character is learning how to wave for the first time. So completely alienated is this person that as he raises his hand to wave he begins to breathe furtively, like a non-verbal animal briefly glimpsing something incomprehensible, alive in the ecstasy of recognition.

Although these shorts are all comic in design and execution, filmed and edited with the punchiness and energy of comedy, they are all at their heart tragedies. They are slight and ephemeral experiences that leave you a little unsatisfied and disquieted, familiar sensations to those of us these films are aimed at. This is the truth 20^th Century Faux is expressing. They recognise that technology is not an outside force that drives us apart, but rather a way for us to realise our pre-existing isolation in new and weird ways, creating uncharted pathways of expression for the particularities of our neuroses and discontent.

All 16 of their shorts will be screened at 20thcenturyfaux.com

18th February 2019
Who Will Save Tony Stark?

By Finley Crebolder.

If there’s one thing to take from the main trailer for Avengers: End Game, it’s that things aren’t looking too rosy for Tony Stark. Not only has he just failed in stopping Thanos and had a somewhat surrogate son to him “die” (dust) in his arms, but he’s now stuck on a spaceship with fuel, food and oxygen all fast running out. Nevertheless, his whole “zero chance of survival” concern is of course unfounded. They’re not paying you hundreds of millions of dollars to sit around and die, Robert. So, now that’s cleared up, we must ask ourselves, who’s saving him? Well, in true Doctor Strange fashion, let’s look at the possible outcomes – thankfully, there’s not quite 14 million to go through…

Thor

Thor got a shiny new weapon (Hammer? Axe?) in Infinity War, and with it a ton of rather handy powers. Not only can Stormbreaker harness his power and give him the ability of flight (No, not pull him off, Korg) but he can also use it to transport across space, as seen when he showed up on Wakanda to (almost) save the day.

Marvel’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron..Thor

Could he transport himself to Tony and pick him up? Well, in theory, if he knew his location, yes, but it’s a big if. Also, it’s probably not the best idea from a narrative perspective. If Thor were to come to the rescue at a crucial moment yet again, he’d just become a bit too “Deus Ex Machina”. It makes much more sense to give this moment to someone else.

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14th February 2019
Bird Box: The BRWC Review

By Alex Goldberg PhD.

There are some things to like about Bird Box, the movie where weird aliens/monsters descend upon Earth and cause anyone who sees them to commit suicide. There are also some things that are truly dumb and silly and make you roll your eyes—just look at that picture! They’re rowing down a river blindfolded! All considered, though, it’s a typical end-of-the-world monster movie with a story that has fresh (well, sort of fresh) ideas but doesn’t really find a meaningful conclusion for them to go to.

So, the story revolves around Sandra Bullock—totally forgetting what her name in the movie is, which isn’t a great sign, for either the movie or my memory…oh yeah, Malorie—as she traverses a river with her two kids, Girl and Boy (not shitting you, these are the names Malorie has given the two children), blindfolded so that the movie’s monsters don’t look into her eyes and cause her to kill herself. The rest is told in flashbacks to explain how her and the two kids got there, beginning with her visit to the doctor, where things start to go haywire and people start offing themselves in the street.

That initial set up is also pretty bland, regurgitating things you’ve seen before in an end-of-the-world movie. There’s nothing particularly fresh about it, with things that might disturb you only if you’ve never seen any recent horror movie ever. People die and survivors are forced to fend for themselves. What a novel idea! One of them even believes in hokie-pokie mythological gods or something! What?

Anyway, there are two things that the movie does well, and that’s make it somewhat suspenseful and make Malorie’s journey atypical. The suspense is pretty straightforward, from hidden monsters lurking around trying to effectively kill people to our heroes being blindfoldedly navigating obstacles, some of which are just really too stupid to ever ever ever try (please, don’t take part in the Bird Box challenge and try driving a car blindfolded, there’s no way you’ll make three feet down the road). Malorie’s storyline is somewhat interesting in that from the beginning, she’s reluctantly pregnant.

She doesn’t really want kids or the responsibility that goes with them, making the fact that she’s now responsible for keeping two of them alive during a monster infestation even more strenuous. It’s an interesting idea and, to the detriment of the film, it isn’t explored in nearly the amount of depth that it needed to be. Most of the film focuses on Malorie right before she gives birth, making her relationship with her kids vague at best, showing you only one or two scenes of how she handles it from day-to-day. I wish I could get to know the kids, because they’re only really dangled like pieces of meat for the grinder, making their names Girl and Boy actually kind of fitting in the grand scheme of things.

I laughed when I found out that those were their names, as if the director couldn’t tell the audience in a more direct way, “THIS WOMAN DISLIKES CHILDREN,” but really, why not? There’s absolutely nothing about them that makes them special in the movie, except that they make stupid decisions at bad times because the movie needs suspense. Now if you think about it that way…the suspense is cheapened by the manipulative dangling of the kids. I guess it’s filmed well, though.

If you like Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich, you could do worse than Bird Box. It’s got good production and interesting ideas. I just didn’t get too into it, because every time a fresh idea would appear, it would get cut off at the bud. A better way to have written the script is to forget about the flashbacks and give the audience something more concrete to hold on to, like a tense, lifelike relationship between Malorie and her kids.

The backstory provided too much filler and not enough atmosphere, a glaring problem for an apocalyptic tale that requires a bit of world building to keep you intrigued. By the end, no matter what the final destination was for the characters, I didn’t really care all that much.

13th February 2019
Escape Room: The BRWC Review

By Alex Goldberg PhD.

Escape Room is exactly what it says it is: a movie about escape rooms. There’s really not much more than that. It’s fun, sort of dumb, reminds me of Saw a bit, and makes for an hour and a half of people cleverly finding ways out of elaborate set pieces meant to kill them. You could probably do worse during January and February, when studios dump most of their weak-sauce films.

The film is about several seemingly random people who are sent boxes containing an invitation to the ultimate escape room. Once there, they must find clues within a certain time limit before their environment offs them. So, they go from room to room searching for clues, dangling from ledges, avoiding hypothermia, and finding key puzzle pieces that lets them get to the next room. There’s the awkward, shy college student, the cocky businessman, the down-on-his-luck guy who works packing boxes, a pretty, athletic woman, a random truck driver-looking guy, and a young guy who loves doing escape rooms (because of course he does).

All the characters play up to their stereotype throughout the movie, but not in any over-the-top or funny kind of way. The plot is thin…and I mean thinner than Tara Reid on drugs! (Hi-yoooo) It’s got some twists, but they’re not half as intricate as the escape rooms they designed for this thing. Overall, it’s really the most disappointing thing about the movie, because the escape rooms are fun enough, with plenty of suspense to keep you guessing when a character might get knocked off.

Of course, like a Rube Goldberg machine, things happen that, in turn, set off other events within the room that cause chaos and destruction, torturing our heroes as we cheer for them to make it out alive. Each room is well-designed, shuffling from one type of atmosphere (outdoors in the cold) right into another (a billiards bar). It’s just that the writers focused all their attention on the rooms themselves and forgot to add the same kind of dynamic to the story, from the initial character introductions and foreshadowing to the dull conclusion.

Look, you have two choices: either you want to see people escape from these rooms, risking life and limb, or you want to do an escape room yourself. Both are good options, and both will kill around two hours. Should you spend $20 and see Escape Room in theatres? Probably not. Is it worth renting when you have nothing else to watch? Yeah. Is it better for your brain to solve puzzles on your own instead? Of course! Just don’t expect too much out of either, because the prize at the end is rarely worth it—unless the escape room you finish gives you cash…cash or like LEGO sets or something, then it’s totally worth it.

12th February 2019
A Letter To The Academy

The following is a letter to The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and to Academy president John Bailey:

Mr Bailey,

The Academy seems willing to self-destruct in its pursuit of improved ratings, but you appear to be so preoccupied with attracting an audience that doesn’t exist, that you’re alienating the only one you’re ever likely to have.

The past twelve months have been frankly concerning for any Oscars fan. There was the ill-advised Best Popular Film idea that was swiftly canned, the Kevin Hart controversy, then the apparent decision to air without a host at all, and now the announcement that not all the awards will be aired during the live broadcast, with four being given out during the commercial breaks. The awards being cut are Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup & Hairstyling and Best Live-Action Short. It’s also expected that not all the nominated songs will be performed. This entire fiasco is promoting your ceremony as something closer to an endurance exercise as opposed to a celebration of filmmaking.

One would expect that The Academy was being run by someone who actually likes and appreciates films and filmmakers. One would assume someone who respects every element of the craft would be in charge of the most prestigious film event of the year. Alas, that doesn’t appear to be the case, so I feel it is my duty to inform you of several vital things before you lose your most loyal and vital audience.

I am aware that there has been a drop in ratings in recent years, and you clearly feel that shortening the ceremony is the way to bring them back up again. I’m here to tell you how misguided that is. It shows a complete misunderstanding of why the ratings fell in the first place.

The ratings are not low because the show is too long. The sad truth is that the only reason for the decreased viewership is that the general public just doesn’t care about the Oscars anymore. You seem to be aware that films have mass appeal but unaware that the Academy Awards do not. In this instance, a love of movies and an interest in the Oscars are not the same thing.

Of course, most people would consider themselves to be a ‘film fan’ of some sort. Most of us enjoy going to the movies, grabbing some popcorn and being taken into another world. However, the most popular films are not necessarily the best films. The elements that go into making a film sell and those that go into making a film great are different things.

You’ll often hear people say something along the lines of ‘the Oscars don’t represent what the public goes to see’ or ‘I’ve never heard of the films they’ve nominated’. Oscars are handed out on filmmaking merit. A film’s popularity has never been an effective measure of its quality. The amount of money a film makes means nothing. If you paid to see ‘Holmes & Watson’, all that proves is that you bought a ticket. It doesn’t prove that you enjoyed the film afterwards. The amount of people who go to see a film proves nothing more than an effective marketing campaign.

Also, the simple truth is that if the public want the films they saw to be recognised simply because they saw it, then there is already a prize for that popularity. It’s called the box office. The films that the public saw are the ones that make the most money, are they not? Meanwhile, those smaller films made by artists with a passion for their craft and a unique voice often go unseen by the public, but that’s not because they are ‘less deserving’ of recognition. It’s because the mass audiences simply aren’t aware they exist, or they perhaps have no interest in something that’s a little different to what they might normally watch.

This is the whole reason why Awards Season exists. It’s why it’s so important. It’s the one time of year that these films and filmmakers are given the recognition that they perhaps didn’t receive from the public.

The mass audiences can have their multiplexes. The studios can have their blockbusters and their box office hits. The best filmmaking of the year can have the Oscars. These things can and should live in harmony, but letting popularity dictate the Academy Awards just to please the public and drive ratings is not only giving films perhaps unworthy success when they already have plenty of it, but it’s also yet another step back in recognizing the most innovative filmmaking out there.

The further you get from your goal just ensures that these artists fade into greater irrelevance.

If the public really wish to see their favourite blockbusters pick up awards, they have the People’s Choice Awards. That outlet already exists for them. The Oscars are for cinematic excellence, and for the sake of the art form itself, they simply must stay that way.

This goes back to understanding why the rating dropped in the first place. As I said, it has nothing to do with the above. It has nothing to do with the ceremony not appeasing the public. I can assure you that the millions of people out there who didn’t care about the Oscars before… still don’t care.

No-one is sitting at home, with zero interest in the awards and only a passive interest in filmmaking, seriously considering watching the ceremony because it’s three hours instead of four, and you nominated ‘Black Panther’ for Best Picture.

There is one simple reason why the ceremony isn’t the ratings hit it was years ago. The Academy Awards is now a niche event.

The Oscars have spent years awarding the greatest achievements in film. Years ago, there weren’t as many films being made, and major Hollywood studios weren’t as adverse to original ideas as they are now. Consequently, the films at the awards often correlated with those that the public saw.

Times have changed. Hollywood now prefers to capitalise on franchise filmmaking that is anything but inspired or innovative, but instead makes a lot of cash. Talented artists are still out there creating interesting things, and the Academy has still been honouring them, it’s just that these things no longer go hand-in-hand, and subsequently the Oscars have lost their mainstream appeal.

It’s all quite obvious, when you think about it.

The Academy Awards is now a niche event for a niche audience, and there is nothing wrong with that. No-one who hasn’t tuned in before is going to tune in now because of these changes. You are simply at risk of losing the one audience you do have.

Any regular Oscars viewer will tell you that they like it just the way it is. I know I speak for many others when I say that I want the ceremony to last four hours. I want as many cinematic montages as you can throw me. I want to see every winner give a speech (not cut off mid-sentence) and I want to see all the songs performed. What I don’t want is endless skits and ‘jokes’ that waste time at the expense of everything the ceremony is supposed to be about.

Anybody who doesn’t agree with this is perhaps not the ‘film lover’ they once believed, and I’m fairly confident that they’re never watching the Oscars, whatever you do to convince them. They had no interest before and that likely hasn’t changed, but there are plenty of people being drawn away by your clear disrespect for the very craft you’re supposed to be honouring.

Film is a collaborative medium, and while you clearly think very highly of the directors and actors, these people are nothing without their crew. You are diminishing the work of a great many artists, all of whom played an equally significant part in what they created. To cut out these awards, you are saying by default that some roles simply aren’t as important as the others, and are not worthy of their time in the spotlight. To hold this opinion is plainly ignorant.

Cinematography and editing, in particular, are extremely vital parts of the process. They’re virtually major awards. They are two of the most fundamental elements of cinema. To quote Guillermo del Toro, director of last year’s Best Picture winner ‘The Shape of Water’: ‘Cinematography and editing are at the very heart of our craft. They are not inherited from a theatrical tradition or literary tradition. They are cinema itself.’

Cinematography is the very essence of cinema. It’s the first thing we see and feel, and editing is what gives films their rhythm and tone. While it is inherently wrong to cut any awards from the broadcast, it’s impossible to understand how you could have come to the conclusion that these two should be among the first to go. If you can’t see their significance in the art of filmmaking, then you shouldn’t be in charge of the Academy Awards.

If you’re still not convinced, let me tell you this: you can make a film without actors, but it’s impossible to make one without a cinematographer or an editor.

Even Alfonso Cuarón, one of this year’s biggest contenders, has spoken on the subject: ‘In the history of cinema, masterpieces have existed without sound, without color, without a story, without actors and without music. No one single film has ever existed without cinematography and without editing.’

You cannot consider yourself a lover of film if you support relegating these awards to the commercials. It shows a lack of respect for the work that these artists put in.

It’s also hypocritical to say your mission is ‘to promote films to a worldwide audience’, while cutting out the award for Best Cinematography, in a year in which three of the films nominated are foreign.

Crazy as it seems, the problems go even deeper than that. Imagine what this does to young people today who dream of one day becoming a filmmaker. All you’re doing is discouraging anybody who wants to get into cinematography, editing, makeup or hairstyling. Are you forgetting how inspiring it is for new filmmakers to see short films winning awards?

Apparently, you’re also not going to be airing all of the songs this year. It’s said that you’ll only be showing the nominees from ‘Black Panther’ and ‘A Star is Born’, because they were the most successful in the charts and have a greater outreach.

I feel like I’m repeating myself, but the commercial success of a song simply does not matter. Songs are nominated because of how they were used within a dramatic context.

The only people who wanted a shorter Oscars are those who don’t like them and never will, and yet it is their views being prioritised over the celebration of film itself. Can you not see how outrageous this all is?

If you’re really that desperate to make the evening shorter, there are plenty of things you could’ve done before cutting the awards themselves. How about losing that hour you spend looking at dresses on the red carpet? How about stopping all the jokes and skits?

Remember when Ellen DeGeneres hosted? She was a pretty good host by all accounts, but let’s not forget all the time she wasted. There was a whole segment in which everyone just started randomly eating pizza.

How about Chris Rock? He sold his daughters’ Girl Scout cookies during the ceremony.

What about the last two years that Jimmy Kimmel has hosted? Do you remember that awkward moment in which he brought a bunch of people in from a tour bus so that the celebrities could ‘interact with the norms’?

These things waste a great deal of time and nobody cares about any of it. Nobody wants skits at the Oscars and, more often than not, they’re just awkward anyway. This is the Academy Awards, not Saturday Night Live. Do away with all that and you might be surprised by the time you save. It’ll probably be enough to hand out some more awards, don’t you think?

The situation is even worse now that you apparently have no host whatsoever. How is it possible that you still don’t have time for these awards when you’ve had no issue in the past despite all the time the hosts have wasted?

The Oscars are defined as ‘a set of awards for artistic and technical merit in the film industry, recognizing excellence in cinematic achievements.’ The Academy should be focusing solely on this objective, as opposed to moving further and further away from it for the sake of pandering to an audience that honestly couldn’t care less.

The Academy Awards are supposed to give lesser known films a wider outreach, and honour those who played a part in creating them. It’s the only time all year that people talk about costume designers, production designers, cinematographers, editors, sound editors, sound mixers, etc. It’s the one time these people are actually acknowledged for the great work they’ve done.

The Oscars have always been the one ceremony that represents nearly every member of the filmmaking process. These people have worked tirelessly to get to this point. Let them have their moment. You’re forgetting everything you’re supposed to represent just so that your show can end a few minutes sooner.

Stop trying to create a ceremony for people who don’t respect what you’re celebrating. Stop trying to attract an audience that does not exist, and focus on keeping the one that does. How do you do this? You do this by getting back to your main priority: celebrating the year’s finest filmmaking achievements. Nothing else matters.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Jason Reitman: ‘For every young person who might watch the Oscars and dream of one day being an editor or cinematographer or make-up artist, I hope you enjoy all the musical numbers.’

12th February 2019