Searching (Aneesh Chaganty)

August 27, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Aneesh Chaganty, Searching

To distinguish itself immediately from the Unfriended series, Aneesh Chaganty’s Searching opens with a sequence that compresses a decade’s worth of Margot Kim’s (Michelle La) childhood. The exposition dump depicts the trauma of Margot losing her mother to cancer and her entry into high school; her father David (John Cho) sticking by her side. It’s an intriguing move, a notably swift, exquisitely edited example of narrative economy that also summons some rather uncomfortable feelings about Chaganty’s manipulative use of saccharine musical cues and blasé plotting. Those two qualities become more pronounced as Searching screeches at numerous points before stumbling upon its dunderheaded conclusion. It’s baffling, really, that anyone could suggest that Searching’s narrative trajectory is any less insipid or dumb as what we get from the Unfriended films. At least those films resist the banalities that we get from Searching.

Operation Finale (Chris Weitz)

August 26, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Operation Finale, Chris Weitz

Operation Finale moves with steady if unsatisfying progress. It navigates a narrative path that bares a noticeable resemblance to Academy Award winners of its past, not even remotely concerned with camouflaging its numerous hackneyed influences or banal passages intended to provide clip-worthy fodder moments of capital A Acting. If you told me Ben Affleck directed Operation Finale I wouldn’t have been surprised. Instead, it’s Chris Weitz. A swift Google search jogs my memory of the filmmaker’s quote unquote credentials: he directed the Oscar-nominated A Better Life. He also did one of those Twilight films. Well, at least he’s consistent. With Operation Finale, Weitz tackles the Holocaust. There’s a throughline in between these three films I’m missing but I’m certain it’s there.

Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu)

August 14, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Crazy Rich Asians, Jon Chu

Jon M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians, the film, is sufficiently unastonishing; a meandering though nevertheless engrossing romantic comedy that, despite its cast of Asian actors and Singaporean milieu, remains tethered to American values and principles, both culturally and cinematically. Crazy Rich Asians, the commercial product, is perhaps a little more interesting and certainly sheds light on the troubling innocuousness of the film. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and, more importantly, financed by SK Global (a relatively new conglomerate formed from American distributor Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and the Hong Kong-based Ivanhoe Pictures), the synergistic opportunities in adapting Kevin Kwan’s worldwide bestseller are impossible to overlook. Subsequently, to find Kwan’s text navigate a series of obfuscated, impossible to distinguish conglomerates, fashioned and engineered to placate audiences throughout planet Earth is, at the very least, head-clutchingly impressive. Which, with the Academy Awards now singling out achievements in “Popular Film”, probably makes Crazy Rich Asians a shoe-in for a gold statue.

Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub)

August 04, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Puzzle, Marc Turtletaub, Review

A neglectful husband; a past riddled with missed opportunities and searing regrets; a sharp, inquisitive mind rendered stagnant by domesticity; a family who takes her for granted; being named Agnes: the logarithm of suffering checks all the request boxes in Marc Turtletaub’s Puzzle. It’s a film of modest ambitions, made by a director whose history as a producer includes the likes of Little Miss Sunshine, Sunshine Cleaning, and Jack Goes Boating. Which, as a review, may as well speak for itself. Depending on my temperament, I can describe the qualities of the Turtletaub genre of films as either toothless renditions of white domesticity or modest (there’s that word again, which practically reads as a polite version of lame) examinations of white anhedonia. Neither of these definitions are especially generous but I won’t deny that these films can provide a measure of solace and comfort, especially when they’re anchored by some especially terrific performances. Little Miss Sunshine had Steve Carell and Alan Arkin, Sunshine Cleaning had Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, Jack Goes Boating with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Puzzle has Kelly McDonald and as you’d expect, she’s astonishingly good. Shame that the movie she supports is so pedestrian.

En el Séptimo Día (Jim McKay)

July 25, 2018 by Daniel Nava in Jim McKay, En el Septimo Dia, 2017, Review, Noteworthy

José (Fernando Cardona) is a restaurant deliveryman. He cycles through the hectic streets of NYC, avoiding car doors, as he survives another day-in-day-out hustle. He returns home to an apartment shared by nearly a dozen others: undocumented Latino workers, all aiming for something better, and holding onto a promise of an American Dream that seems increasingly less possible with each passing day. It’s only on his day off on Sunday, i.e. the film’s title, that he’s able to indulge in his two faiths – church and soccer. And it’s here where Jim McKay’s En el Séptimo Día situates the conflict of his modest drama, where José’s humble living is presented with an existential battle between duty and happiness. The stakes may seem low, but when you have so little, the most minuscule of inconveniences end up resonating profoundly.

Unfriended: Dark Web (Stephen Susco)

July 18, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Unfriended Dark Web, Stephen Susco, Noteworthy

In Zadie Smith’s 2016 novel Swing Time, the main character offers a backhanded compliment of certain b-tier Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers films, asserting that “the story was the price you pay for the rhythms.” Perhaps at my grumpiest I would’ve taken umbrage with that statement, but I think it’s an assessment that can be applied to Levan Gabriadze’s 2014 film Unfriended and its new sequel, Stephen Susco’s Unfriended: Dark Web. The two films are above all examinations in form, removed from their experimental trappings and provided global distribution. As such, Dark Web remains indebted to certain banal, universal truths in service of its genre, but communicates its ideas in novel, perpetually intriguing ways. What certain Astaire and Rogers’ films may have lacked in narrative sophistication they made up for with the finesse and rhythms of their physical performances. The “performance”, as it were, at the center of Dark Web is one of ocular empathy, where, contained on a desktop, the movement of every mouse click, collapse and minimization of a window, and the flickering of a cursor is given tactile depth.

Mysteries of Oakland: On Carlos López Estrada’s Blindspotting and Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You

July 15, 2018 by Daniel Nava in Carlos López Estrada, Boots Riley, Blindspotting, Sorry to Bother You, 2018

A panoramic view of Oakland’s shipyards closes Carlos López Estrada’s Blindspotting in what unfortunately becomes an engineered scene intended for generic uplift. It’s a curious moment in an uneven film that suggests one of two things: (1) that the filmmakers yearned for a tidy, pat ending that imparts a measure of closure w/r/t its profoundly erratic racial polemic or (2) that the filmmakers were actually far more conscious of their milieu’s social and racial history and, based on the way the final shot is composed, posits that a confrontation between past and present is necessary before we can even begin to rationalize our discomfort and obligation in talking about Race.

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (Genndy Tartakovsky)

July 10, 2018 by Daniel Nava in Hotel Transylvania 3, Genndy Tartakovsky, 2018, Review

Pierce through its glossy integument and clear away the fart-joke methane of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation and you have a modern animated film that analyzes the depths of white female guilt with regards to the 2016 election; a vis- à -vis confrontation between maintaining white (male) Alt-right values against intrinsically restricted (female) rights. Our pseudo-monsters, our immigrant titan of the hospitality industry, Dracula (Adam Sandler), is an overworked cog to a capitalist society, running a mélange hotel/wedding planning service with a coterie of other migrant monsters. Dracula’s perpetually harassed by Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan), our MAGA stand-in, a character defined by his tiny hands, orangutan-ian hued coiffure, and proclamations of maintaining a (white[1]) legacy. Helsing is thoroughly dispatched each time the two battle, in Road Runner/Wiley Coyote fashion, but it weighs heavily on Dracula’s constitution. This prompts Dracula’s daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) to plan a vacation for him and the monster staff aboard a cruise ship. Initially reticent, Dracula becomes overwhelmed by the sight of Ericka (Kathryn Hahn), a specter of a human, perpetually donning glossy white, as he becomes “zinged” – the film’s vernacular for love at first sight.

A Halfway There Checklist: The Best of the Year So Far

June 26, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018

2018 saw me begin my thirtieth orbit around the sun in the sort of anniversary that weighs heavily on the spirit. This was preceded by a seismic shift in my day-in-day-out routine, where the necrotic dullness of my previous job has been replaced, now by a new cast of professionals that have kept me adequately on my toes. The ennui that mounted during the winter months, on the marrow-petrifying cold Chicago days that somehow would still pervade the month of June, have been more difficult to shake; unhappiness and listlessness still ooze through my pores as I attempt to find more energy to make the best of every day.

It’s been in the exceptional films of 2018 that I’ve managed to find a measure of solace and compassion. The best films of 2018 often spoke directly to my personal existential crisis, frequently providing me with a keener appreciation for my time on planet Earth. Optimism, in our current climate, may not be in vogue, but it’s a vanity that must persist if I’m going to survive. It’s a comment that I’m paraphrasing by Amanda Seyfried in Paul Schrader’s major new work, First Reformed, that lingers in my mind most: I may share all your beliefs of doom, but I cannot share your despair. Every hour need not be the darkest hour.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Juan Antonio Bayona)

June 21, 2018 by Daniel Nava in 2018, Review, Jurassic World 2, J-A- Bayona

I saw Juan Antonio Bayona’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom at Chicago’s Navy Pier. It was my first visit to the tourist trap since it completed its series of renovations and I was struck by the innocuousness of it all. The gaudy souvenir shops and ramshackle vendor carts that colorfully defined the spot have been replaced by a series of umber-hued marquees that make no distinction between a keychain peddler and churro stand. I can’t say I was ever enthusiastic about going to Navy Pier. Even as a kid, its charms registered as stratagems, always intended to resemble the taste of local flavor in the same way aspartame mimics sugar. You just can’t fake authenticity. But despite the city’s marketing campaign, this place was never intended for a local, particularly one who animates contempt for consumer culture on a daily basis. So I suppose I understand why tourists would make a trip out of Navy Pier: it presents a series of digressions within proximity to a gorgeous lakefront view and adjacent to a skyline that offers a variety of Instagram-worthy fodder. It’s a place that makes you feel a little better about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it because of the shoulder-to-shoulder allure of all the things we yearn to be near: beauty, wealth, kitschy novelty mugs, etc. The new interior mirrors that same exterior: it’s better lit and intended to look more quote unquote modern, even if the end result ends up looking soullessly industrial. Did I mention I saw Juan Antonio Bayona’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom at Chicago’s Navy Pier?