Okja

Bong Joon Ho's Okja filled me with ambivalence. I have respect for Bong's craft, but felt this was little more than a live action remake of a Miyazaki film: Spirited Away with My Genetically Altered Neighbor Totoro. Miyazaki's films are critiques of the elite as is Bong's previous feature, Snowpiercer. Tilda Swinton is on hand in Okja, as in Snowpiercer, to reprise her parody of Mrs. Thatcher, albeit in American guise this time. 

She is excellent, performing with a knowing bravura that is choice ham and zesty burlesque. Bong also gets nice performances from Paul Dano and Hee-Bong Byun, but such interesting performers as Giancarlo Esposito and Shirley Henderson are left with little to do. Jake Gyllenhaal is deplorably giddy and giggly, making one think that Bong left his thesps to their own devices. 

Okja is beautifully designed, shot, and costumed film that suffers from a second rate premise. We know that our young heroine will rescue her genetically modified porcine friend, but when she does, Okja's fellow prisoners in the giant slaughterhouse are left to their fate. Okja frolics with her young friend in a verdant natural setting and while this will surely please young viewers, their elders would be justified in viewing it as a sop. 

Bong cannot reconcile the ambivalent nature of this film: one half gentle children's fantasy, the other half a dystopian nightmare that features slaughterhouse footage and genetic pig on genetic pig rape. Black comedy seems to be Bong's forte, but he cannot quite reconcile with Okja's sap. I would rate this slightly above The Host, but below Snowpiercer, much less Memories of Murder or Mother. (6/24/22)

Humor Me

Jemaine Clement and Elliott Gould in Humor Me

Sam Hoffman's Humor Me was released, briefly, in 2018 to minimal box office. What little critical response it gathered was mixed. I saw it on TUBI, the crippled step-child of streaming services. I do have a small place in my heart for crippled step-children, TUBI and, subsequently, Humor Me. The film breaks no new ground, especially visually, but it is a pleasant kvetch leavened with schtick.

An expansion of Hoffman's show, "Old Jews Telling Jokes", the film is utterly predictable. Jemaine Clement plays a stunted playwright dealing with the fallout of an unexpected divorce. He is forced to seek the shelter of his father's house in a senior community monikered "Cranberry Bog". The jokes write themselves. There is power walking, seniors going to pot, and an octogenarian puts the make on Clement. A ramshackle production number from The Mikado suddenly turns magical in the last reel and there is a brush with death, happily averted.  

Gould plays Clément's dad. He uses humor to deflect questions that provoke his fears and anxieties. Black and white interludes illustrate his lengthy jokes. Joey Slotnick, forever fated to be a second banana, is wonderful as "Zimmerman", the perpetual protagonist of the gags. These joke sequences suggest not only alternate worlds to the drab reality of "Cranberry Bog", but different perspectives from which to view the calamities of life. 

What won me over to Humor Me, despite it formulaic nature, was the warmth and dexterity of its (well) cast. Elliott Gould was born to play an old Jew. Annie Potts is a delicious Yum-Yum. Clement is too ugly and inert to be a popular leading man, but he is expert at playing off his fellow actors. He establishes an easy rapport with both Gould and Ingrid Michaelson, who plays his romantic interest. Mike Hodge, Bebe Neuwirth, and Priscilla Lopez all have nice moments. Hoffman overdoes the horny senior bits, but keeps the pace brisk. Comedy is hard, folks, and you could do worse than this inconsequential and pleasant film.

Let Me In

Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Grace Moretz in Let Me In

Matt Reeves' Let Me In, from 2010, is an OK, if somewhat pointless remake of the very good Swedish film, Let The Right One In. Reeves gives us some nice pictorial moments. A shot of hospital doors with a reflection of Reagan decrying evil places us convincingly in the 1980s. However, Reeves can't really develop this theme, despite gratuitous pondering of the nature of evil by the twelve year old protagonist (Kodi Smit-McPhee), because perfidy is personified by a junior high bully; a straw dog.

Reeves gets some nice Rear Window effects with his protagonist's telescope spying on his neighbors in his apartment complex. The film's tone, however, is off. In the original, the dead end nature of the apartment dwellers lives was mirrored by the spartan and bleak character of the complex itself. In Let Me In, the complex is just too darn gentile for people trending downwards. When the protagonist talks with his deus ex vampire on a jungle gym in the original, the spot seemed like an oasis in relation to its surroundings. In Let Me In, the effect is negligible.

Part of the problem is that the sexuality of the vampire is foregrounded instead of being implicit. Chloe Grace Moretz's vampire's untouchable glamor and otherness is plain to see from the start. Despite Ms. Moretz's effective performance, it is obvious that she is just not some young chick in a hoody. The film is thirty minutes too long and talented performers like Richard Jenkins and Elias Koteas barely register.