Movies

Has there always been so many assholes around, or is the proliferation of entitled, rude people a 21st century phenomenon? Assholes: A Theory explores this question and many more, examining why and how the asshole develops, as well as where they thrive.

This documentary (directed by Canadian filmmaker John Walker) was inspired by the bestselling book of the same name by Aaron James, a professor of philosophy. James appears in interviews throughout the film, but especially the first third, where he and others define the term asshole in quite academic terms. For example, assholes are usually (but not always) male, white, and affluent. You can’t be an asshole until you’re old enough to know better. Finally, assholery points to a feeling of superiority and dismissal of other people’s emotions (rather than a complete lack of empathy, as in narcissistic personalities).

With a burbling, jazzy soundtrack and plenty of funny anecdotes from the likes of comedian John Cleese, Assholes: A Theory is clearly aiming to be light-hearted. However, as the second half of the film swings into matters like assholes in power, it becomes harder for the director to veil the seriously negative impact these people have on the world.

Apparently, assholes thrive in competitive environments like the financial and tech industries; think Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Interviewees dance around arguably the most prominent asshole on the planet right now, President Donald Trump, before delving into the careers of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and ex-prime minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi. Italian LGBTQIA+ activist Vladimir Luxuria, a direct opponent of Berlusconi’s, provides fascinating insights here.

Vox pops from ordinary people slow the pace somewhat, especially as I’m not sure who these talking heads are – at least some of them describe themselves as assholes.

Despite its provocative premise, Assholes: A Theory ambles along, entertainingly musing on the people we love to hate. If you’ve ever wondered how and why people are so dang rude these days, it’s well worth a watch.

In 2016, 22-year-old New Zealander David Hyde made headlines around the world when it was revealed that as an unpaid intern for the United Nations, he was living in a tent on the side of a lake in Geneva. Little did the press – or the UN, for that matter – know that Hyde had only taken on the position (and the unfortunate sleeping arrangements) as part of a film project.

Call Me Intern is the end result of Hyde’s UN stunt, a compelling documentary about the exploitative nature of unpaid internships. Cleverly, he and co-director Nathalie Berger springboard off Hyde’s experiences at the UN to concentrate on the stories of young Black Americans Marisa and Kyle. Marisa was ousted from her unpaid role at the Obama For America campaign after she reported her sexual assault, while Kyle worked at Fortune 500 company Warner Music from a homeless shelter.

The interviews were obviously done with great skill and care, as Kyle and Marisa both reveal intimate details of their backgrounds, motivation to pursue unpaid work, and devastation when they realised their internships were a dead end. Their stories brilliantly illustrate how unpaid internships also work to restrict diversity in white-collar professions and at top companies. Only rich kids can afford to work for nothing, and statistically speaking, rich kids are more likely to be white.

The movie side-steps any accusations of millennial whingeing with extensive interviews from academics. They put these stories in a greater context, where unpaid internships account for up to half of all internships offered in America, in a workforce where entry-level jobs are all but disappearing.

I’ve never heard of an unpaid internship in Aotearoa, but the stories in Call Me Intern still resonated with me. It’s extremely hard to find meaningful work as a young person, even with a university degree. While to some degree Call Me Intern was preaching to a millennial choir, I hope that older generations can recognise the injustice the film delves into so well.

For a certain sector of movie fans and comic lovers, Avengers: Endgame is nothing short of a cultural moment. It’s the fourth and final episode in the Avengers series, and is also the latest entry in the Marvel film canon, which now numbers a whopping 22 movies. At the time of writing, the blockbuster is set to break records across the globe. With so many people flocking to see Endgame in theatres, I’m going to assume you’ve seen it. Beware – spoilers ahead.

Endgame starts directly where Infinity War left off, in the aftermath of the evil Thanos wiping out half of Earth’s population with a click of his fingers. The Avengers assemble, swiftly organise Thanos’ demise, and then mire themselves in their profound loss. That is, until Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) zaps his way from the quantum realm, but also the past, or something. With the mathematical genius of Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr), the Avengers enact a new plan: to travel back in time, steal back the infinity stones, and right Thanos’ wrong.

While I wouldn’t call myself an Avengers fan per se, I’ve always loved Iron Man, and Endgame is a wonderful vehicle for Downey Jr’s talents. The wisecracks are still there, yes, but the narrative also allows him to play a doting father, grief-stricken comrade, and finally, the true hero we always knew him to be. His last moments onscreen were captured in dramatic, sincere close-up – it was powerful stuff, especially for the small child openly sobbing in the seat next to me.

The rest of the movie is a perfectly fitting send-off, if a little convoluted at times. I have a few minor gripes (can we stop with the fat jokes in every Thor scene?), but overall, Endgame made great use of its stellar cast and hundreds of millions of dollars in digital effects. It’s a fabulous, funny, clever conclusion to one of the 21st century’s most iconic superhero sagas.

Jordan Peele’s 2017 debut Get Out scored him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, cementing him – and the horror genre, now definitely enjoying a renaissance – as Hollywood forces to watch. Us, his sophomore effort, isn’t quite as narratively disciplined, but is nevertheless a riotously fun genre exercise that walks the line between laughs and scares with glee.

After a cryptic opening sequence, we meet the Wilsons: a middle-class Black family holidaying on the Californian coast. There’s Gabe (Winston Duke, dripping with dad-joke energy) and mum Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), as well as their two kids: Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Alex Evan). Us establishes a light, funny home life that swiftly turns dark when the Wilsons’ doppelgängers (played by the same actors) turn up on their driveway, dressed in blood-red jumpsuits and wielding golden scissors.

The Wilsons’ holiday home soon becomes a murderous funhouse that Peele’s camera manoeuvres around with fluid ease. Doors conceal frantic bodies, bare feet slap on wooden floors somewhere down the hall… But each shot is taut, purposeful, in sharp contrast and focus. Despite the old-school feel of its slasher gore, Us’ cinematography is so contemporary; the moving shot of a bloodied (and brilliant) Elisabeth Moss is my highlight.

Nyong’o is superb in her twin role of Adelaide and Red, her homicidal double. As Adelaide, she’s fierce, enigmatic, maternal. Red, on the other hand, is deeply chilling, expressed through a raspy voice interspersed with loud gulps. She moves as if guided by a metronome, her posture ramrod straight and her walking staccato.

The Easter eggs in this movie – referring to pop culture, religion, and other horror films – are delightful. The Shining is the most obvious influence, as Peele nicks both the creepy twins and the extended birds-eye shots of the landscape. But in the third act, when the horrors begin to unfurl, Peele’s ideas pile up too quickly. While Get Out felt elegant, Us feels overstuffed. Diving into its late plot developments does the movie no favours; it’s best enjoyed on a visceral level, behind a cushion if necessary.

I really wanted to like Daffodils. But when the random friendly stranger next to me asked my opinion as the credits rolled, I started with “can I be honest?”

Even at 93 minutes, Daffodils dragged. Its flat characters, jarring use of a much-hyped Kiwiana soundtrack, and soapy writing made for one of the most disappointing New Zealand movies I’ve seen in years.

Based on the stage show of the same name, Daffodils is the love story of Eric (George Mason) and Rose (Rose McIver), who meet by chance on a drunken, stormy night in the Hamilton Domain. To the ire of Rose’s well-to-do parents, the pair fall madly for each other, get married, and eventually have two daughters. One of their girls, Maisy (Kimbra), narrates their (spoiler: doomed) tale through voiceover and song.

I’ll start with the good stuff: Mason and McIver work admirably with the material they’ve been given, and the set dressing is pitch-perfect (shout out to the tomato-shaped ketchup bottle in every kitchen scene).

But there are so many things that don’t work. The covers of New Zealand classics by the band Lips are at best, not bad. And in not quite the same way as a musical, where everyone in the movie participates in the song-and-dance number, Daffodils’ characters mime songs that the others can’t hear. It slows down the pace, and worse, it sticks us in emotional spaces that often don’t quite line up with the scene. The most mismatched for me is an early moment when Rose becomes fiercely jealous that her not-yet-boyfriend Eric is greeted by another girl. She has a slow-motion musical moment in the corner of the dancehall that feels completely unearned.

Moreover, the swirl of assumptions at the centre of their relationship breakdown is sitcom-level stupid, and could be solved with a five-minute conversation. What could have been a sensitive and insightful chance to look at Pākehā stoicism is given a simplistic, hugely frustrating treatment.

Yeah nah, you can probably give Daffodils a miss, eh.

Director Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning film Moonlight was one of the best films of 2016. Based on the James Baldwin novel of the same name, his follow-up If Beale Street Could Talk is softer and less art house, but is no less insightful on love, community, family, and racial hatred.

19-year-old Tish (KiKi Layne) and 21-year-old sculptor Fonny (Stephan James) are hopelessly in love. Dreaming of a modest life together, their biggest problem is that they can’t secure a New York City apartment from racist landlords – until Fonny is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. A rape victim was coerced into picking him out of a line-up, so he’s chucked in the slammer with little hope of release. At the same time, Tish discovers she is pregnant.

The movie opens with a quote from Baldwin, explaining the origins of the novel’s title. Beale Street is a historically significant street in Memphis, and according to the author, is the symbolic birthplace of all Black Americans. Thanks to Jenkins’ gorgeous use of colour, slow motion sequences, and Nicholas Britell’s swelling score, the idea of legacy is evoked again and again. At times, If Beale Street Could Talk is more like a visual poem than a movie. But I’m not complaining; it’s beautiful.

And besides, there’s plenty of compelling action to drive the narrative. In a superbly shot scene starring Brian Tyree Henry as Fonny’s old friend Daniel, Henry delivers a stomach-roiling, eerie monologue on the horrors of incarceration. A climactic scene where Tish informs Fonny’s horrible “holy roller” mother (Aunjanue Ellis) that she’s expecting provoked gasps from the audience. And Regina King (Tish’s mother) more than earns her Best Supporting Actress Oscar in a sequence where she talks to Fonny’s alleged victim, begging her to recount her testimony.

If Beale Street Could Talk is a brilliantly gentle, bittersweet movie that handles big ideas of humanity and prejudice with grace. It might have received fewer accolades than Moonlight, but it’s a worthy addition to Jenkins’ oeuvre.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is one of the most famous civil servants in the world. She sits on the US Supreme Court at the age of 85, and is best-known for her work demolishing legislation that discriminates on gender. Her story was always going to be incredible, but in the hands of director Mimi Leder, it becomes even more compelling. On the Basis of Sex at first seems straightforward, even glossy, but excels when it delves into the trickier stuff.

The biopic follows Ruth (Felicity Jones) from her time at Harvard Law School as one of its first-ever female students through to the case that changed everything for her – and America’s women. Along the way, we nestle into her spectacularly functional, progressive marriage with Marty (Armie Hammer), and see first-hand the kind of discrimination that Ruth and her kin were up against.

Despite its long runtime, On the Basis of Sex held me in its thrall. Sure, it was funny when the young Ruth humiliates the sexist, condescending Dean of Harvard Law (Sam Waterston), but the film is its most cutting and fresh when it skewers so-called ‘allies’ of the feminist movement. After graduating, top student Ruth can’t get a job anywhere in New York. One interview seems promising; the interviewing partner seems sympathetic to her plight – but he can’t hire her! What would the wives say? Smarmy ACLU lawyer Mel Wulf (Justin Theroux) is for equal treatment for all people under the law, apparently. But he refuses to treat Ruth as his intellectual equal, and after one particular dressing-down even the audience doubts she can win.

These thematic through-lines work so well because they stem from complex social and cultural issues that women and non-binary people are still wading through today. It effectively conveys to the viewer that while ‘the Notorious RBG’ did a lot of important work for gender equality, we’ve still got a way to go. On the Basis of Sex is inspiring, but it never loses sight of the fact that social change is a lot of hard work.

Green Book is heart-warming, straightforward, and optimistic. It’s basically everything that real-life racism isn’t.

The Golden Globe-winning film is essentially a buddy comedy, based on real events. The classically trained jazz pianist Dr Don Shirley (Ali) is embarking on a tour of the South in the Jim Crow era. As a Black man, he knows the trip could be perilous, and so he hires Italian-American Tony ‘Tony Lip’ Vallelonga (Mortensen) to be both his driver and bodyguard. While ‘the Doc’ is highly educated and a bit uptight, Tony Lip is a boarish chatterbox who eats whole pizzas folded over like a sandwich. Over the course of their eight-week sojourn, the two very different men learn to like each other.

Directed by Peter Farelly (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber), Green Book is best when it’s funny. Ali and Mortensen play off each other wonderfully when stretching the outer limits off their characters – the scene where Lip convinces the grease-averse Doc to try fried chicken for the first time, for example. Mortensen is also to be applauded for his incredible commitment to the role (he must have packed on 20kg in his belly alone), and for breathing a rich inner life into Lip.

However, the film’s view of racism is pretty rosy; it’s posited as a past tense problem rather than something that continues to oppress millions of Black Americans. The Green Book that the title refers to is a publication detailing which motels, shops, and roadside diners would welcome ‘coloreds’, and which it would be best to avoid. It’s a relic of an overtly racist past – it almost seems ridiculous now, alongside smoking inside and segregated restaurants. Green Book points to those things as evidence that we’ve changed.

But have we? Thanks to the current President, the pain felt in America’s minority communities in 2019 is hot and angry and urgent. This kind of filmmaking, in these times, feels insultingly reductive. Green Book wants to make you laugh, cry, and forget about America’s racism problem for a couple hours. And that’s okay. But I think it’s high time for the more difficult conversations.

I love that Bradley Cooper chose A Star is Born for his first outing as a director. The Hollywood warhorse first appeared in theatres in 1937, and has since been remade four times. In this defiantly fresh 21st-century take, Cooper sings a love song to the movies without compromising on his methodical artistic integrity.

You know the story. Jackson Maine (Cooper) is a country-rock superstar overly reliant on booze and pills. One night, he drags those cowboy boots and twinkling blue eyes to a cabaret, where he meets waitress and singer-songwriter Ally (Stefani Germanotta, aka Lady Gaga). Jack convinces her to join him on tour, and as quickly as the pair fall madly in love, Ally’s star begins to rise.

The first half of A Star is Born is seamless. The moment Ally takes the mic with Jack for Shallow is perfect – despite, or even because of, the fact that we’ve seen that scene a thousand times before. It works principally because of the beautiful chemistry between Cooper and Lady Gaga, which aches not only with sexual tension, but with kindness and care. Both leads are astounding, but it’s Lady Gaga that takes you by surprise. Her performance, unlike her famous musical persona, is completely without artifice. Her Ally (very different to Judy Garland’s or Barbara Streisand’s) is no naïve ingenue, but a modern woman with both street smarts and a heart given to dreaming.

It’s only in the second act that the plot hits a few flat notes. The attention to detail given to musical sequences is less often applied to dialogue, so that some developments feel rushed. You could attribute this to the world of showbusiness these characters inhabit, but it is just as often the dated source material poking through. The final and most devastating development doesn’t quite hit as hard as it deserves to, mostly because the preceding scene had me questioning its verisimilitude.

Despite its faults, A Star is Born is Hollywood done right. It’s nothing short of a modern classic.