Destroy Everything You Touch

A Review of DESTROYER (2018)
Directed by Karyn Kasuma
Written by Phil Hay and Mat Manfredi
Cinematography by Julie Kirkwood
Score by Theodore Shapiro
Staring Nicole Kidman, Toby Kebbell, Tatiana Maslany, Scoot McNairy, Bradley Whitford, Toby Huss, and Sebastian Stan

Stop me if you've heard this before, but, I have a soft spot for certain kinds of movies. European technothrillers are one of them. Cops-on-the-edge are another. There is just something deeply compelling about people with a strong sense of right and wrong headed for a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour. Destroyer is definitely one of those and it's a pretty good one of those, at that.

The strength of Destroyer is that it's a film that does not want to be liked. It's characters are all assholes and they're all making obvious, if logical mistakes. It stays true to the sub-genre and doesn't ever feel the urge to make its characters have hearts of gold or secret doubts. No, they're just scared apes with shoes that are just smart enough to know that they'll be dead soon. It's a tragedy by way of a police procedural and while it isn't anything shocking or new, it is well put together

The plot of the film centers around Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman), a Los Angeles Police Department detective at the end of her tether. A body is found on the banks of the LA river and Bell, on her own accord, descends into the hell of an undercover case she worked from the beginning of her career. 

And, because we live in a post-True Detective world, her journey takes place across split times, weaving flashbacks into the narrative, showing Kidman’s Erin Bell before she was a complete waste-oid. The film bounces back and forth between young make-up and old make-up until the two narratives meet in a fairly unexpected way and, of course, Bell ends up where all bad cops in these sorts of movies end up: Exactly where she deserves.*

(It's also worth stating that in between the "beginning" of the film and the end of the film, we're treated to several botched bank robberies, lots of scenes of hangovers, and one of the saddest handjobs in all of cinema-- a point of distinction, to be sure.)

Nicole Kidman is the heart of this movie. Without her-- even with the odd bits of brilliant direction-- there is no film. As much as this movie throws wigs and dentures and weird make-up on top of her, Kidman never stops acting natural. She is believable as a bright-eyed young thing, as well as a boozed-up mom that should have been put out to pasture years ago. It's not so much intense as it is this slow motion garbage fire. It's a lot of fun to watch and it's the human heart beating at the center of what could have been an otherwise dreary bit of nihilism.**

One choice that stands out in the film is just how impervious Kidman's Bell is to cop one-liner bullshit. On multiple occasions, the older embittered Kidman character runs up against cops giving  her a ribbing and she just looks at them, as one should any time anyone tries to break your balls, with a look of confusion and contempt. It's a character choice and a script detail that I deeply connect with.

Would I say that I'm a Sebastian Stan stan? Yes, I would.

Sebastian Stan co-stars as a fellow cop/co-conspirator/lover and, as it typical with somebody juggling so many different jobs, it doesn't go great for him. It's always good to see Sebastian Stan and it's especially nice to see him acting in something that is more interesting than a house payment. I like him a lot, both in this movie and in general. I’ve liked him ever since Kings (a show that me and three other people watched). Anyways, go watch Kings.

Oh yeah, I guess he's pretty good in it. I mean, just look at him. He's great. But, also, I really just wanted to mention Kings. It was a great show and it had a lot going for it and the timing just wasn't right for it.

Man. Kings. . .

And speaking of fan favorites and True Detective, this movie has Scoot McNairy! And for once in his fucking career, he gets to play a normal guy who gets to live a normal life! I'll watch him in anything, but it's an especially nice change of pace when you're not counting down the minutes to him getting shot in the back of the head or whatever.

And, to clarify, Scoot was not in Kings, but you should still try to hunt it down anyways.***

The score from Theodore Shapiro is perfect for the film. Like the film itself, it vaccilates between these moments of well-composed beauty to ugly, droning heavy metal****. Like every great score, it both helps establish and amplify the sun-bleached horrorshow world of Destroyer.

Again, maybe I'm a sucker, but I do love me some sunbleached LA set to distorted violin strings. Or maybe it's because I'm American and I've got fuckin' taste.

Like a lot of movies, Destroyer is a movie that kind of came and went. And like a good chunk of those movies, it doesn't deserve that fate. While it isn't anything shockingly new, its stand out achievements in direction and acting elevate the picture above the usual morass of these sorts of stories-- and the sorts of movies that make all of the money these days. Destroyer is a work with a perspective and it sells its ideas with skill and with beauty-- albeit the beauty of a brush fire.

FOOTNOTES:
* And that's maybe why these movies are still tolerable: They're the only avenue in which bad cops actually get what they deserve. What a cool thing.

** On an ironic level, it's also fun to watch Nicole Kidman play "against type," meaning "what if she wasn't attractive?"

*** Seriously, watch Kings. It was only one season long and it's greatest sin was that it came out on network TV right before streaming and prestige TV blew up. It had Ian McShane and Bryan Cox on it!

**** I'm a little less hot on the droning metal part of the soundtrack. Again, as much as I'm a sucker for that sort of a thing, I do find it slightly annoying that, as a society, we all decided that traditional symphonic scores were just going to be replaced by synths being records in the next apartment over. I mean, whatever. It usually works. I shouldn't complain.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and does not smoke indoors. Must be losing his touch. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

What the. . .

I rented Assassination Nation (more on that in the future) and this was one of the trailers attached to the film.




I found it incredibly striking, so I had to find out what it was about. So, I checked out its Wikipedia page.

This movie, uh, goes some places. And now I have to see it. I mean, I read the entirety of the plot and I still have to see it just to find out if any of that is real. Because, man, what a wild fucking thing.

Back to the Outback

A Review of SWEET COUNTRY (2018)

Sweet Country is a long ride of a film and it feels like it. On the surface it appears to be a simple, by the number western, but as it creeps along, it slowly reveals a film about the pain and price of Australia's bloody past-- and indeed the bloody past of most all of western history. It’s not a film that you walk out of the theater feeling unsatisfied by. It’s a full, rich film that is also pointedly merciless and exhausting. It is a film that asks for as much as it gives.

Sweet Country tells a seemingly simple story that would fit perfectly between Shane and High Noon (or Unforgiven and The Proposition) about an Aboriginal farmer (Sam Kelly played by newcomer Hamilton Morris) wrongly accused of murder. A posse is formed and a manhunt ensues. And throughout all of this are the complicated domestic lives of people living at the edge of the dying British Empire.

It’s also a film that rides a line between traditional Westerns, revisionist Westerns, and Australian westerns (of which there are a surprising amount). As well trod as that genre (and sub-genres) is, Sweet Country stands out because it’s a film about the conflict between natives and settlers that is from the perspective of the natives (both in front of the camera and behind the camera). Not only is the story more interested about the Aboriginal people (and those that are stuck between two worlds as “half-castes”), but the camera itself seems to give them all of the best shots. And why wouldn't it be? In this world (ie: history), the best white people on offer are either abject racists, madmen, or well-meaning but complicit in the despoiling of Australia. While I can’t say that Sweet Country has a rich and bold Aboriginal voice, what I can say for certain is that it’s a movie that has a unique voice and that alone makes it worth seeing.

The stand-out among these is Warlpiri actor Hamilton Morris, who plays the runaway that the entire film centers around. Who has a face that belongs to another era—namely the golden age of Westerns. That man has a face and a carriage about him that just belongs on the big screen. And, like some of the greats of the American Western, he isn’t much for speaking. He lets everyone do the acting around him. Morris is an interesting choice to center the film around him as he very clearly isn’t a seasoned actor, he brings a verisimilitude to the picture that you don't often see in movies about native people. Hamilton Morris (what a name!) feels like a fulfillment of promise of "sensitivity" regarding native people that so many other films promise and then completely fuck up.

Sam Neill is also present doing his Sam Neill thing. I’d say more, but it’d be simpler and better for everyone if I just reminded you that Sam Neill is the best. He's great.

One of the bolder choices that Warwick Thornton makes is that Sweet Country is completely without non-diegetic music. From beginning to end, the only music you hear comes from a character. It’s

It’s funny because when I think of Australian and Westerns, I think of one of the best scored films of all time, The Proposition. 

Sweet Country is a film without distractions. Instead of making the film feel empty or lifeless, the lack of a score preserves the film’s tone. It’s a joyless world and it’s a joyless film. To add music would be to garnish it in some way that wouldn’t be true to the film.

It also leads to the only legitimate laugh in the entire picture. Again: Thank you, Sam Neill.

Another stand out feature of the film is the landscape (which is maybe the only unqualified strength of Hostiles). As full of bugs and snakes and god knows what else, Warwick Thornton (doubling as cinematographer) makes the Australian back country look like a place that you would want to visit-- or at least a place where you could stare longingly at the Abyss in peace.

It makes you pine for a world that somehow entirely gone and yet somehow still here. In that way, Sweet Country stacks up to the best films the genre has to offer. Sweet Country is a nearly joyless, nearly heartless film that fills its almost two-hour running time with a weight that matches the subject matter. It shows the Australian past as the heartless, soulless thing that it is and because of that, it isn’t something that anybody is going to be storming the gates to go and see. That only seems to make it even more vital as a work of art. Thinking on it, that’s probably the point.

James Kislingbury is a writer, a podcaster, and has never been south of the equator. You can donate to his Patreon . You can buy the book he edited here (and on eBay). You can also follow him on Twitter. Also, if you well and truly give a shit hmu on my Paypal. Want to buy me a coffee? Get at my Ko-Fi.

Your Buddy Dahmer

A REVIEW OF MY FRIEND DAHMER (2017)

True crime is having a moment. Online there's Serial and Criminal and My Favorite Murder and White Wine, True Crime, then there's Mindhunter (directed and partially produced by a guy famous for serial killer movie). I talk to ex-girlfriends about murders. I can’t sit down at dinner with my folks without Forensic Files coming on (mind you, this is after Frasier, who is also having a moment). It's only natural that Jeffery Dahmer would finally get his turn in the spotlight. 

My Friend Dahmer is an adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name. As a film, it’s a compelling blend of a portrait of a young madman with a regular horny teen comedy. And while those things sound anathema on paper, as you watch My Friend Dahmer you realize that these two things are actually closer fits than you might realize. That they might actually belong together and that the strangeness doesn’t come from the juxtaposition, but rather from the fact that nobody ever thought to pair these two things together in such a straightforward, forthright manner. More than that, the true horror of My Friend Dahmer isn’t how unusual a serial killer can be, but rather how perfectly mundane this man can be.

My Friend Dahmer performs an incredibly balancing act. It manages to make a sicko like Jeffery Dahmer into a sympathetic character without isolating him from the monster that he will become. You can feel sorry for the monster without feeling sorry for his monstrosities. It does not so much ask you to feel a certain way as it makes you aware that there are things in this world that are unknowable. There is never going to be a truly satisfying answer for a man like Jeffery Dahmer. The triumph of My Friend Dahmer is that it turns the annecdotal-- a year in high school-- into a project that is much more meaningful.

My Friend Dahmer is clever in that it never seeks to be clever. It simply is. Unlike the epic odes to ornate serial killers from David Fincher or the Millennium Trilogy, My Friend Dahmer is as straight forward and as po’ faced as can be. That’s too it’s credit. Marc Meyers and his cast and crew take what could very well be a crass or a cliched piece of entertainment and they made something unique and interesting that I cannot stop thinking about. It doesn’t hurt that every performance from top to bottom is pitch perfect. It's this careful combination of light and dark that allow the movie to be a simple story about a screwed up kid in high school, but also a study of Man's darkest urges.

My Friend Dahmer is a movie that is about cruelty by casual and active, both intentional and unintentional. In places, it's also really funny, and occasionally, it's even a little touching. It’s a movie that doesn’t judge and doesn’t preach and doesn’t bother to tart up what is already an incredible story. It simply stands there and shows life as it was. As it should not have been. Looking at the world, looking at movies now, sometimes you don’t need to explain everything. Sometimes the world enough is its own explanation.

James Kislingbury is a writer, a host, and a convicted criminal. You can listen to his news podcast. You can listen to his cult movie podcast. You can donate to both podcasts. But, seriously, don't try to blow up Margaret Thatcher, guys.

Come for the Movie, Stay for the Guy Behind You Talking About Peter Boyle's 1970's Hair

I'll tell you this: If John Huston asks if you're getting laid, you damn well answer him.

Winter Kills is an odd one. The cast alone is what sold me. Jeff Bridges, Toshiro Mifune, John Huston, and, oh yeah, Anthony Perkins. And Elizabeth Taylor. And Eli Wallach. And Sterling Hayden. And it was shot by Vilmos Zsigmond. With music by Maurice Jarre. I had to see this movie. The fact that I had never heard of it made me even more interested. I refused to look anything up. Was it a western? Was it a war story? Was it a musical? Early Dogme 95? Porno? I had to know! So I drove my ass out to the New Beverly tonight and I saw it.

And, let me tell you, Winter Kills is one hell of a mess.  A hilarious mess, a mess with some fine performances, but a mess nonetheless. The kind of mess you need to clean up with a hose.

Depending on what stage of your chemical exporation you are on, Winter Kills is a take off on the labyrinthine world of JFK assassination theories, and it's either a comedy with aspirations to thrill its audience or it's a thriller that thinks it can do comedy. I mean, I don't know, man. I'm not sure it's director knew either. I'm not sure I care. The mystery of the film is almost more interesting than the film itself.

The whole movie plays out like The Parallax View by way of Joseph Heller. But not Catch 22 Heller. Closing Time Heller. While it doesn't match the heights of other conspiracy thrillers of the time like Three Days of the Condor, it certainly is as brown, if not more so. So brown.


John Huston seems to be the only person having any fun in the film, which is just as well. He is one of the main reasons I saw it. I have to imagine he was thinking about his paycheck the whole time. Good for him. The real revelation in all of this is Anthony Perkins, who seems to have seen John Huston's dailies and went "I can beat that." Because his performance is bananas. It's ecstastically bonkers in a way that only the best of Jimmy Stewart of Nick Cage seem capable of delivering. He actually got applause for his big speech towards the end of the film. Somebody get that guy more work.

Then you have Toshiro Mifune, who is on screen for maybe three minutes before he is buried behind the wall of the film's insane plot. It's just as well. In hindsight the film benefits from layering on the confusion like this. There's a lot more fun to be had looking back and going "What the hell was that about?" than to eyeball the actual plot of the film.

Before I go off about the actual quality of the film stock, I'll give you a few highlights of the film to mull over:

• There's a wig warehouse owner that is a full blown Williamsburg Beardo. Powerful stuff.
• During a sex scene Jeff Bridges has to smother his girlfriend to keep her from screaming. He fucks that good.
• John Huston (spoiler) dies after clinging to a massive American flag.
• Sterling Hayden drives a tank. Because he's a man, damnit.
• Jeff Bridges has the vapors at one point.
• Belinda Bauer looks really, really good dressed like a man.

I'm sure I'm breaching some well-worn code about complaining about the quality of an old print, but I can only tell you what I saw: The reel looked like it had been dragged through hell and back. The color was shot to hell. There was a lot of dust on the frames and, what are those? Like, track lines? You know. The things that run up and down over a bunch of frames? I'm so far removed from actual film lingo I have no idea what to call these. I feel like a spoiled aristocrat trying to come up with the right words to describe the weekend.

Artist's concept of writer

"Well, you know, it's the day where you don't work. I mean, not that I would. But, others don't work. Except for our staff. Which is the entire town. And farmers. But, well, hmmm. . . "


Then again, there's a certain charm in being reminded what worn out, old film looks like. I can see why Quentin Tarantino insisted that the theater only show film. . . Wait. No I don't.

The second problem I had with the presentation was that there was, what I can only guess, is fifteen minutes missing from the beginning. The entire beginning of the film is missing. At first I was wondering if the film was just that daring, then it slowly dawned on me that, no, this wasn't how the film was supposed to be shown. After it ended, I asked the man behind me (who, before the film began was pontificating on his friend about the pluses and negatives of the film Hardcore), if the first reel was missing and he didn't seem sure. It's that kind of a movie.

And, again, maybe it makes me a snob. Maybe I'm missing the point. As charming as the physical medium of film is and as much of a rollercoaster thrill ride as wondering "Will this movie's color be completely blown out? Will the reels be in order this time?" I would much rather just straight up watch the damn movie.

That isn't to say that I won't be back. As flawed as this outting might have been, the New Beverly Cinema is delivering a service. It's showing films that nobody would show if it wasn't for this place. It's a place that still believes in the communal experience of the theater, of the actual physical medium of film, of the kind of artistic divinity that you get sitting with a group of strangers in a dark room watching a movie, especially some strange movie that you would have never heard of or never seen without the aid of the New Bev. Netflix is great, but it can't replicate that experience. And Hulu certainly can't because I think that site is run by apes. Stupid apes.

I just probably won't be back to watch Winter Kills.

James Kislingbury writes, draws, and does a few other things. You can listen to his podcast, A Quality Interruption. You can donate to fund that program here. Keep your eyes peeled. He's going to weird crap coming down the pipeline.