2022 - IN REVIEW: MOST UNDERRATED

 

WATCHER

The film I have chosen this year as my most underrated of 2022 is director Chloe Okuno's “Watcher”. While the film does not reinvent the wheel, personally I think it is a superior thriller that should have garnered much more attention than it did. The imdb describes the movie like this: “A young American woman moves with her husband to Bucharest, and begins to suspect that a stranger who watches her from the apartment building across the street may be a local serial killer decapitating women.” From this synopsis, you can no doubt tell that “Watcher” is Hitchcockian in nature, with “Rear Window” being the obvious template, but that is essentially Okuno's starting point. What Okuno does so well, and why “Watcher” is so successful, is that she makes you feel the incredible isolation and loneliness Julia herself is feeling. Being in a new country where she knows no-one, where they speak a language she doesn't understand, living in a giant and somewhat empty apartment that is anything but home, you understand why Julia feels the way she does. She is a good wife, moving out of her comfort zone for her husband's career, but he is not a good husband in the fact that once they hit Romania, he does little for Julia to make her transition smooth and that she is okay in the situation. He is constantly leaving her for work or work functions, or when he does come home with friends, they speak in Romanian (which Okuno leaves unsubtitled so we feel Julia's frustration), further isolating Julia. The more scared, terrified, or potentially paranoid Julia gets, Francis (the husband) does the worst thing possible by not believing Julia or attempting to understand how she could possibly feel this way.

Maika Monroe is outstanding playing Julia. She makes you believe and feel everything that her character does, particularly when she gets close to a nervous breakdown. I have said this many times before, but I just do not understand how Maika Monroe is not a massive star. She certainly has the talent, not to mention the looks, so the only thing I can think of is that it is a conscious decision of Monroe herself to not go down that rabbit hole, and to stay just on the fringes of Hollywood, doing great stuff in smaller, independent productions. Anyway, like I said, she is phenomenal in “Watcher”, and while Julia is often seen in a fragile way throughout, she ends up proving herself to be a strong female who doesn't need a man to protect her.

I really loved the way Chloe Okuno tells her story with “Watcher”. She has paced the film much slower than is the norm for today's cinema. She has shot the film, along with her cinematographer Benjamin Kirk Nielsen, in a very classic, old fashioned style, that just works wonders for the film. Through both the style and the pace, Okuno is able to wring out every drop of suspense possible in this paranoid thriller, and it is a seriously suspenseful film. Two scenes in particular, one on the subway and the other in a cinema, are white-knuckle suspense through and through. When the scenes are over, you don't even realise that you had forgotten to breathe. The scene on the train is particularly impressive in that it has the ability to change your opinion on and feel sorry for the neighbour that Julia thinks is terrorising her. You see the story from his perspective and suddenly realise that, in fact, Julia may be paranoid, and her isolation from everything she knows and feels safe around, is causing these delusions. The inclusion of a plastic bag that the neighbour is holding makes the scenes unbearably tense throughout too.

While Chloe Okuno is more interested in suspense with “Watcher”, it does come with a very bloody finale, which was almost perfect, until the final two minutes when it sadly when a little Hollywood. It is the only real miss-step in this very entertaining and superior chiller. It is a shame that it hasn't received the exposure that it deserves, but it goes without saying that I look forward to whatever Chloe Okuno does next.

2022 - IN REVIEW: MOST OVERRATED

THE FABELMANS

Let's get this out of the way, straight up; I am a big Steven Spielberg fan, and I actually do like “The Fabelmans”, but I believe that the film has been overrated, probably due to the fact that this is Spielberg making a film about Spielberg, and thus fans and critics find it hard to critique one of the masters after making something so personal to him. And let's face it, he is a master. He is a giant of cinema and deserves all the accolades he gets, because he is brilliant at what he does, and has been great at it for such a long time. Spielberg is a genius with the camera and he has created more classics than any modern filmmaker going around. Hell, he even changed the movie business forever with his little known 1975 film, “Jaws”, which sent shock waves throughout Tinseltown and is often credited as the first big “summer blockbuster” movie. Considering all that, when Spielberg finally got around to making a film about his own childhood, it was always going to be reviewed well, but sometimes I feel that one of his greatest strengths can also be, at times, his greatest weakness, and that is when he leans too heavily into sentimentalism. You can tell through his films that Spielberg is a positive person and always sees the good in people rather than focus on their negatives, but personally I have found that the films where he goes too far in that direction, are the ones that do not work for me as well.

Steven Spielberg will never make a “bad” film; he is far too polished a filmmaker that his films are always expertly made, with his use of camera second to none. That said, he has made a few duds in his time, and like I just said, these are usually the ones that stray too far into sentimentality to the point of becoming twee. They become too saccharine sweet, which makes them harder to stomach. I will not go so far as to say that “The Fabelmans” falls into that category entirely, but I will admit that knowing this was going to be a nostalgia piece for this great director, there was a chance that he would go down this route. When the trailer for the film finally came out, my fears appeared realised, as it was all big wide-eyed visions of how great cinema was and the impact that it would have on this little boy, that it was a little sickening. The movie itself isn't as sweet as the trailer suggests, as Spielberg does tackle a number of heavy subjects like a parent's infidelity which leads to a subsequent divorce, growing up the only Jew in the neighbourhood and the abuse he suffers because of it, not to mention the idea of missing out on so much of his family's life in his pursuit to make movies. I love that all of this is included, but it has been imbued with the golden light of nostalgia, without the hint of melancholy. Another thing that irked me about “The Fabelmans”, (and I cannot believe I am about to say this), was Michelle Williams performance as the mother of the family, Mitzi. Williams is one of my favourite actresses, and I often think she is luminous onscreen, and she has the fantastic ability of bringing a humanity and realism to any role she plays, no matter how minor or unimportant it may seem. However in “The Fabelmans” her performance is so broad and big, that it felt like she was also mugging for the camera's attention. Too often, her reactions to things happening in the film was the whole wide-eyed look of awe and surprise. I also hated her hairstyle, but understand this is based on the haircut Spielberg's own mother used to have. Paul Dano, who plays the father Burt is fine, but he has never been an actor that I have liked much. Gabriel LaBelle, on the other hand, I thought was excellent playing Spielberg's surrogate, Sammy Fabelman.

As I mentioned above, despite my criticisms, I actually liked “The Fabelmans” (I gave the film 3.5 stars) and the film has a number of excellent sequences in it. Probably my favourite moment in the film is when Sammy discovers his mother is having an affair, which is done in a dialogue-free scene with him going back and forth through family footage he has shot at a picnic, editing it down until he finds out the devastating truth. It is a bravura moment that I am sure is Spielberg's homage to his good friend Brian DePalma. “The Fabelmans” is at its best when Sammy is making his movies or recreating scenes he has seen in movies with his schoolmates. You can feel that Spielberg loves recreating these moments of his youth and the excitement he felt while making these original films. To be honest, I think Spielberg still has that love of creating the perfect shot and telling stories, but its the purity of these moments (before the “business” of movie-making enters his life) that makes them stand out. “The Fabelmans” also ends on a fantastic scene involving David Lynch (!) playing director John Ford, who is absolutely hilarious (and foul-mouthed) in the advice he gives to young Sammy. This brief scene is almost worth the price of admission itself.

While I do like “The Fabelmans” a lot, I think that the universal praise that it seems to have received since its release is somewhat unwarranted. It is a good film, but not the out-and-out classic everyone is making it out to be. It certainly isn't top tier Spielberg, (the likes that include “Jaws”, “E.T”, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, “Jurassic Park”, “Saving Private Ryan”, “Schindler's List”, “Munich”, and “Minority Report”), but probably the next level down. Again, I am not arguing that the film is bad, “The Fabelmans” is a good movie, but I still think it is probably the most overrated film of 2022. Personally I would have loved to have seen the almost universal praise of this film been applied on Spielberg's previous film, “West Side Story”, which was just outstanding!

 

2022 - IN REVIEW: BIGGEST SURPRISE

 

SMILE

As you should all know, the horror genre is where my beating heart lies, and yet “Smile” was never on my radar as something I needed to rush out and see. The way the film came into my life was thanks to my twelve year old daughter (also a horror hound like her dad) who told me that the film looked cool and she wanted to see it. She showed me the trailer for it, but honestly I wasn't that impressed, and thought it looked like one of those ho-hum, by-the-numbers Blumhouse productions like “Truth or Dare” or “Fantasy Island”. I think I told my daughter it looked okay though, and she was happy with that and moved on.

Some months past and its release drew near, and “Smile” ended up being rated MA15+ which,for those of you who do not live in Australia, is a restricted rating meaning people under the age of 15 cannot see the film without a parent or guardian present. This meant my twelve year old daughter would not be able to see the film without me taking her, and I wasn't really thrilled about going to see “Smile” on the big screen so I never brought it up around her. That changed when my other daughter, who recently turned fifteen, came home after seeing the film with her friends saying it was the scariest film she had ever seen, that she was crying. Miette is not above a little hyperbole from time to time, so I took her “review” with a grain of salt, particularly since she is not a fan of horror films and is easily scared by the smallest things. However her reaction did intensify daughter number two's desire to see “Smile”, and as is no doubt obvious by now, I relented and took her to see it...............and absolutely loved it!

Just from the sheer number of horror films I have watched in my life, I no longer get scared by them and never jump throughout them (much to the chagrin of my daughter, Peyton), but I can always tell when a horror film is working and just how effective it is. “Smile” is a very impressive horror film that had a hardness and intensity to it that I was not expecting. After the very impressive opening scene, which sees a patient kill herself mid-panic attack during a session with her shrink, I immediately understood why my other daughter found the film so frightening; it was an intense experience. I could also feel that tension in the daughter sitting next to me in the cinema too, including one moment towards the end when it got too much for her and she just said “Nup!” and closed her eyes. Director Parker Finn has created a smart horror film, that tackles a number of serious subjects like mental illness, and the effect past traumas can have on a person, while not forgetting how to build the suspense of his film and architect its scares. “Smile” has the best jump scare I have seen for ages in a horror film, but the moment isn't of the cheap variety, it has been well and truly earned, which is why it is so successful. It gives a release to the audience who feel they have been holding their breath for so long, although the timing of the scare is unusual which makes it so surprising.

“Smile” is an extremely well acted film, with a brilliant lead performance from Sosie Bacon (yes, daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) who makes her mental breakdown, and fear of schizophrenia, so believable, and because of this, also makes the film so sad at times. As I mentioned before, the film deals heavily in trauma, and Bacon does a fantastic job at portraying the weight of the trauma from her past that she is haunted by. From the way she is portrayed at the beginning to the complete disintegration of her character by the end, this is a beautiful but tragic performance rarely seen in horror films. I also want to give a shout out to Australian actress Caitlin Stasey who plays the patient, Laura, in the opening scene, and sets the tone for the rest of the film to come; she is outstanding!

Initially, I had some misgivings in regards to the similarities between “Smile” and “It Follows”, as they both involve entities that come after you in the guise of someone different each time, but by the end of “Smile” it had travelled its own course that it never felt like a total rip off. That said, I still thought I should mention the similarity because it does exist. One aspect that I loved about “Smile” is that director Parker Finn tried to shoot everything in camera when he could, using very little CGI in the film. He has gone on record stating that all the demented smiles in the film are real, and were not augmented in post which I appreciated because the whole CGI mouth thing has been done to death lately. Gore effects are predominately done practically too, only using CGI to hide the magicians tricks, and I was very surprised by the fact that one very strange moment at the film's finale was done via puppetry and a man in a suit; good stuff.

Before I finish up, I have to say that “Smile” wasn't just a surprise for me, but also the distributors themselves. The film was originally made for Paramount's streaming channel, but after a test screening produced a hugely positive result, it was decided to give “Smile” a theatrical release instead, where it has done huge numbers around the world, making it one of the biggest success stories of the year.