Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird)

June 14, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Brad Bird, Incredibles 2, Review, Recommended

Critical complaint of the direction of Pixar’s sequel-driven mentality over the past decade has devolved into a sniveling murmur. Sure, I long for the days of the trinity of Pixar original content (Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up), but I’ve come to admire (or perhaps more accurately, accept) their Soderberghian one-for-them, one-for-me maxim that offers gifts likeInside Out and Coco in exchange for the likes of Monster’s University or Finding Dory. Yet Pixar’s sequel problem tends to do what most other sequels tend to do: that is, they fundamentally decline in quality when compared to their novel predecessors. And yes, that includes the Toy Story films. Don’t @ me. Brad Bird’s Incredibles 2, however, is the studio’s most persuasive argument for serializing their content. It’s certainly the most accomplished sequel in the studio’s filmography, and the one film that, if not surpassing the breadth of its predecessor, at least comes closest to matching it.

Ocean’s 8 (Gary Ross)

June 06, 2018 by Daniel Nava in Gary Ross, Review, Ocean's 8, 2018

Gary Ross’ Ocean’s 8 is not quite a remake, not quite a reboot, and not an especially good movie. The prevailing sentiment is one of irritable obligation in the kind of paradoxical effort that’s both relentlessly self-promotional and woefully insecure. This extension of the Ocean’s Extended Universe™ finds Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) out of prison and ready to enlist a cadre of skilled women in hopes of a obtaining a diamond necklace. Staging the heist during the Met Gala, the centerpiece caper promises all the stylistic extravagance that made Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 film such a delight. Ross, however, lazily operates within the confines of Soderbergh’s shadow, unable and unwilling to provoke anything meaningful out of anyone involved. The result is a barren rethread, a thoroughly bland film committed to dispensing blasé platitudes and charmless lallations. Never has a film starring the likes of Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, or Sarah Paulson been this innocuous and dull.

Hereditary (Ari Aster)

June 05, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Ari Aster, Hereditary, Review, Highly Recommended

Look, I don’t know anyone who is actually happy, so the characters of Ari Aster’s Hereditary, who wander listlessly through a thick air of anhedonia and despair, all holding onto vague ambitions that barely incentivize the process of getting up in the morning, spoke to me. Yet given that the film’s opening title card details an obituary to the Graham family’s grandmother, it comes as a bit of surprise that the family isn’t completely wracked by grief. Instead, the family – matriarch Annie (Toni Collette), patriarch Steve (Gabriel Byrne), son Peter (Alex Wolff), and daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) – leave and return from the funeral with the same requisite emotional discomfort that one imagines of any other family outing. The family resumes their activities in the separate chambers of their massive colonial home, as the day retreats without protest, with Annie left to wonder why she isn’t more despondent about the loss of her mother. The answer, as it were, is a complicated one.

First Reformed (Paul Schrader)

May 22, 2018 by Daniel Nava in Paul Schrader, 2017, Review, First Reformed, Essential

Paul Schrader’s First Reformed is about the distractions we wrap ourselves in. We become absorbed in the acquisition of intellect, surrender to a higher power, or worship our commitment to another person and fall in love. But in Schrader’s world, these once magical methods of filling that hollow feeling of desolation can only subsist for so long, before our internal gratitude battery reaches 0% and we’re asked to confront clinical truths that leave us stranded, feeling like a fraud, and incapable of fitting in anywhere, leaving every hour to become the darkest hour. That’s more or less the narrative of every Paul Schrader film since he wrote Taxi Driver over four decades ago. His success has varied wildly since but I have no hesitation in calling First Reformed one of Schrader’s best films, in what frequently registers as a summation of the writer/director’s preoccupations and anxieties.

Upgrade (Leigh Whannell)

May 21, 2018 by Daniel Nava in Leigh Whannell, 2018, Review, Upgrade

In the world of writer/director Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade, men and women thin away into an oblivion of commodified technology: a woman’s self-driving car shields away any image of the outside world, a sleek tank of a carriage that careens through the highways of a not-too-distant future. It’s both familiar and innovative, as Whannell’s future is one defined by ameliorations on the modern. But it’s Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) who’s our quote unquote transcendentalist, our HDT on Walden Pond. We first see Grey working on his American muscle car, toiling away amid grease and sweat. Whannell makes it agonizingly clear that Grey is a capital M Man, suiting the character with a penchant for retrophilia that speaks to a higher mode of thinking that values traditional values over that of our modern age. Oh boy. The braggart gets his comeuppance, as Whannell navigates a sometimes intriguing, mostly slipshod narrative on technological dependence that summons the memory of better, more accomplished films of this type. Still, you could do worse than a film that models itself after Robocop.

Previewing the Chicago Critics Film Festival

May 01, 2018 by Daniel Nava in Festival

Last year I was invited to join the rank and file of the Chicago Film Critics Association. As a Chicago-based quote unquote film critic, it is literally the highest distinction of its kind. I mean that mostly as a compliment. Or at least I try to think of it as such; I won’t deny that I get a certain measure of pride in seeing my name along a litany of other critics that I admire like Angelica Jade Bastien, Adam Kempenaar, Scott Tobias, and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky. It’s my self-effacing nature to wonder how I figure within the group. But for now, I’ll enjoy the perks and privileges that I frankly never imagined would have been afforded to me.

I’ve covered the Chicago Critics Film Festival as an audience member, member of the press, and now, in its sixth year, as a fellow critic. Over the past five years, the festival has screened the likes of James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now and The End of the Tour, Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell, and Kogonada’s Columbus. These films, by filmmakers of limited stroke and cache, were major personal discoveries and provided Chicago audiences with an early glimpse into some of the more notable titles to come out of Tribeca, Sundance, and other American film festivals.

This year’s programming includes some especially intriguing titles like Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls, David and Nathan Zellner’s Damsel, and Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. However, my most highly anticipated title is Paul Schrader’s new film, First Reformed, with the filmmaker in attendance for a post-Q&A session.

Below you’ll find links to select reviews of titles, updated throughout the duration of the festival. For schedule and ticketing information, refer to the Music Box website here.

Revenge

Shorts Program 1

Support the Girls

Three Identical Strangers

Tully (Jason Reitman)

April 30, 2018 by Daniel Nava in Tully, Review, 2018, Jason Reitman

Exasperated and days away from giving birth to her third child, Marlo (Charlize Theron) quickly sighs and mutters that she wants to kill herself. It’s one of those conversational accouterments; those examples of daily hyperbole that we tend to succumb to as we punctuate our conversations. She says this somewhat under her breath, loud/quiet enough to leave doubt in what we heard. But Marlo’s in the company of her ineffectual husband Drew (Ron Livingston) and their two children. It’s her eight-year-old daughter that first lifts her head from whatever screen she’s occupying herself with, her attention snapped by the comment, and looking to clarify exactly what was said. It’s a scene that’s played for laughs as we expectantly see Drew try to mitigate his daughter’s concerns. Marlo, we gather, isn’t kidding.

Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh)

April 12, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2017, Review, Andrew Haigh, Lean on Pete, Highly Recommended

Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer) is frequently observed running through the rural backlands of Portland, Oregon. The sights here are specific yet ubiquitous, in what frequently reminded me of the unsavory outskirts of Chicago’s suburbs. Suburbs like Addison or Elmhurst, those isolating enclaves that seem to wear a mask of authenticity, emulating what developers assume to be cozy and familiar sights of urban life, though ultimately exposing themselves as a hollow shell that bares no resemblance to the real thing. A boy like Charley - living with his father in a rundown, roach-infested home - grows restless in a community like this, and yearns for something, no matter how harsh, to distract his mind from living within the narrowest of means. Andrew Haigh’s Lean on Pete is full of woe, a film that observes the disenfranchised through the lens of a teenage boy. It’s a film that categorically aligns itself with the likes of Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy and Andrea Arnold’s American Honey, though projects a more mythic, indescribably diaphanous quality.

A Quiet Place (John Krasinski)

April 05, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, A Quiet Place, John Krasinski

John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place lingers on some intriguing questions of temporality, asking viewers to discern what sense there is in continuing with the present when the future has been catalogued. The future of A Quiet Place is stripped of impulse, a world robbed of a dissenting voice, echoes of pleasure, or the uproar of personal victories. In what will undoubtedly be cited as a critical breakthrough for Krasinski, A Quiet Place punishes its characters for broadcasting even the slightest of whispers, where the film tacitly corresponds noise, and really, resistance, with death. Such a commentary isn’t necessarily realized as abstraction either. Instead, there’s a literal monster that’s beckoned by the slightest tumult. But it’s in the implication, particularly given the narrative direction of where A Quiet Place goes, that is notably inspired: where modern political discourse finds marginalized voices brutally muzzled by omnipresent figures, silence can sometimes be your only refuge. Yet, the greatest challenge I found in appreciating A Quiet Place stems from its theoretically intriguing conceits melded with, shall we say, an inelegant and utilitarian formal design. The ideas here sing; its execution mumbles.

Unsane (Steven Soderbergh)

March 24, 2018 by Daniel Nava in Unsane, 2018, Steven Soderbergh, Review, Highly Recommended

For the past few months I’ve survived a seismic shift to my day-to-day routine. My old regimen had been undisturbed and calcified over the span of five years, unchallenging and ingrained in my muscles. It was pleasant, sure, but it was pleasant in the way that familiar things tend to be comforting. “Familiar” and “pleasant” tend to isolate themselves within air quotes when experiencing an especially unmanageable dose of existential despair. But now my psyche is bombarded by a new set of patterns and routines that are admittedly far outside my comfort zone. Sometimes it’s unendurable. Sometimes it’s refreshing. Sometimes I need to negotiate if what I’m experiencing is the former or the latter. Banal a segue way as it may be, but here it goes: Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane so elementally understands the staggering sense of despair that comes with trying to find a foothold in trying to become a brand new person. It’s not obvious or overt about it either. This is an intelligent film made by a clever filmmaker and anchored by a persuasive lead performance. It may just be (it is) my personal experience empathizing as I observed the film’s main character endure a series of cataclysmic, life-altering events, fecklessly staving off insanity. But it’s a film that I needed at the moment and it delivered in an unexpected and outright startling way.