Movie Review Downsizing

Downsizing (2017) 

Directed by Alexander Payne 

Written by Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor 

Starring Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig 

Release Date December 22nd, 2017 

The soulful Alexander Payne has ventured into new territory with his part sci-fi, part romance, Downsizing. Starring Matt Damon, Downsizing tells the story of Paul Safranek, a Midwestern schlub dealing with the daily grind of a job he doesn’t love, a home he can’t afford, and a wife, Audrey, who may or may not love him, played by Kristen Wiig. Paul’s typical Midwestern domesticity is upended by the discovery of Downsizing which gives humanity the chance to shrink to about 5 inches tall and help save the environment by consuming less.

Paul and his wife are not immediate adapters to Downsizing. In fact, the process of Downsizing is nearly a decade old when Paul decides that he is interested in the process. Paul is particularly intrigued when he’s told by a friend played by Jason Sudeikis, that downsizing means living like a millionaire on the salary of a middle class nobody. Paul and his wife’s savings turn into millions of dollars in assets if they choose to downsize.

Where the film goes from there is a real trip. Paul undergoes the procedure and is set to live out his life at 5 inches tall. Audrey pulls out at the last possible moment and Paul is left to fend for himself in this strange new world called Leisureland. Losing half his mini fortune in the divorce (I have no insight as to why Kristen Wiig was cast for such a small role), Paul is forced to take on another job he doesn’t like and begins dating another woman he doesn’t particularly like and seems content to live the same life he lived at regular size.

Thankfully, Paul’s neighbor Dusan, played with charm by two-time Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz, has other plans for his new best friend. At a party at his neighbors' home Paul drops acid and has his first trip. Then in the aftermath he meets Ngoc Lan (Hong Chau) and the two become friends. At the behest of Ngoc Lan, Paul begins following his long ago dream of being a doctor, he was a physical therapist before Downsizing, treating those who may or may not have willingly downsized, a relatively minor but intriguing plot point.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Showing Up

Showing Up (2023) 

Directed by Kelly Reichardt 

Written by Jon Raymond, Kelly Reichardt

Starring Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, John Magaro, Maryann Plunkett, Andre Benjamin, Judd Hirsch 

Release Date April 7th, 2023 

Published December 14th, 2023 

The Great Catch Up of 2023 continues with Kelly Reichardt's festival favorite, Showing Up. Teamed with her muse, Michelle Williams, Reichardt crafts a portrait of loneliness, disconnection, and art that feels a little like Reichardt's take on Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielmann, a languid, observant, sometimes bleak comedy about a disconnected woman longing to be seen and cared for while also nursing a mostly combative relationship with most other human beings. For Williams' Lizzy, other people are mostly a functional element of life that she must navigate while trying not to be bothered. 

Lizzy is an artist who crafts remarkable, fragile statues out of clay and fire and paint. Her work is abstract but painstaking. When she isn't making art in her garage, Lizzy also works as a secretary at an artist commune or art school, depending on how dismissive you want to be regarding art and artists. Lizzy got the job because her mother is in charge of the college and hired Lizzy as her top assistant. Lizzy does a good job while spending most of her time creating new ideas for her art. 

This would normally where I would launch into a thumbnail sketch of the plot, spoiler free, of course. However, Showing Up is not a movie that lends itself to such an easy boiling down. Kelly Reichardt's film is very much a slice of a relatively mundane life. Lizzy has few friends and a troubled family but she spends most of her time alone making art and feeding her cat. The biggest incident of any average day for Lizzy is badgering her fellow artist and landlord, Jo (Hong Chau) to repair her hot water heater which hasn't worked in weeks. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Whale

The Whale (2022) 

Directed by Darren Aronofsky 

Written by Samuel D. Hunter 

Starring Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, Sadie Sink, Samantha Morton 

Release Date December 9th, 2022 

Published December 7th, 2022 

One of the biggest anxieties in my life is having food on my face. It's a fear of humiliation, I get triggered by being embarrassed. Logically, intellectually, I know this is not something worthy of serious concern and that it is an unavoidable fact of life, food on your face is normal, wipe it off and move on. But, my brain won't let it be that simple. Thinking of this aspect of my anxiety has me triggered. My eyes are welling up and I can sense that if I linger further in this space, I will become quite inconsolable. 

I've rarely seen this type of emotional reaction, this type of triggered anxiety in a movie. It's quite difficult to capture this kind of internalized emotional struggle, the rigorous internal battle to stop yourself from crying over something not worthy of crying about. The Whale comes the closest I have seen in some time of seeing this kind of emotional turmoil, a roiling mass of embarrassment and shame, on screen. Brendan Fraser's Charlie captures this feeling in all of its internalized horror. If only the rest of the movie were capable of capturing anything remotely as genuine. 

Charlie is a dangerously obese man who gets by as a literature professor at an online college. The shame over his weight causes him to conduct his classes with his camera on, using only his voice to instruct his class. Charlie's only friend is his caregiver, Liz (Hong Chau). They were friends before she became his caregiver. In fact, Liz is intrinsically linked to Charlie's past. She was connected to Charlie's late boyfriend, a man whose death changed both of their lives. 

Throughout The Whale we will slowly unpack Charlie's backstory as a man who was once married and had a daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), who he would like to reconnect with. Charlie was pushed out of Ellie's life after he fell in love with one of his male students and embarked on a new life with this man. Ellie doesn't know that Charlie had wanted to be in her life but wasn't allowed to be. She only knows that he appeared to choose being with this man over being her dad and she harbors a deep, and justifiable resentment. 

Much of the plot of The Whale centers on Charlie trying to reconnect with Ellie before his weight problem, and his unwillingness to get help for it at a hospital, takes his life. Ellie, however, proves to be far more difficult to reconnect with than he imagined. Ellie's bitterness has hardened into an almost sociopathic cruelty. Despite Charlie's attempts at dressing up her cruelty as a kind of blunt curiosity, Ellie is rarely anything less than bitter to a toxic degree. 

This toxicity is explored in her relationship to a strange young man named Thomas (Ty Simpkins), who is insinuating himself into Charlie's life. Thomas claims to be a missionary from an extreme offshoot of Mormonism called New Life. He goes door to door with literature and, after meeting Charlie, and seeming to save his life, Thomas makes it his mission to save Charlie's soul before his weight kills him. Thomas is harboring a deep, dark secret that Ellie will spend some time drawing out of him. 

This is the portion of The Whale that is the most poorly developed. The idea appears to be to establish Ellie's empathy and care, qualities that she has worked hard to hide. How they choose to portray this is strange, misguided, and simply doesn't track with what we see on screen. In fact, it takes a late monologue from Charlie to explain that what Ellie did was kind and helpful. Realistically, it appeared she was trying once again to do something cruel, and it happened to turn out well. 

Find my full-length review at Geeks.Media. 

The Menu

The Menu (2022) 

Directed by Mark Mylod

Written by Seth Reiss, Will Tracy 

Starring Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor Joy, Hong Chau, Nicholas Hoult 

Release Date November 18th, 2022 

Published November 18th, 2022 

Imagine Gordon Ramsey as a character written by Ari Aster and you get a sense of what The Menu is all about. Director Mark Mylod and screenwriters Seth Reiss and Will Tracy have given foodie culture a massive middle finger while honoring the humble food workers of the world from the celebrity Chef to the humble Soux Chef. A group of the fabled One-Percent are gathered at a high end experience restaurant on an island on the coast of a major city for what they think will be the high art equivalent of dinner. What they get is a severe comeuppance. 

Anya Taylor Joy is our entryway character, Margot, a young woman who received a last minute invitation to this high end dining experience. Her date, Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), is a food snob and was desperately in need of a date after his girlfriend broke up with him. Margot has no interest in Tyler's food snob nonsense, and is barely tolerating his need to photograph his food and pontificate about the delicacy of Chef Slowik's (Ralph Fiennes) technique in crafting a food experience. According to Tyler, the entire menu is a story and you have to eat to the end to get it. 

There are only 12 guests at this restaurant which is located on a small island where the Chef and his staff live and cultivate all of their food, growing, raising, butchering, and serving food that is all sourced on the island. The cost of this dining experience is said by Tyler to be $12,000. per person. You get the pretentious attitude for free, thankfully. This particular dining experience is extra special as the diners have been specifically chosen and include Angel Investors, a Famous actor, played by John Leguizamo, and a famed food critic who helped Chef Slowik break into the big time in the world of Food Culture. 

Each of the guests on this night at the restaurant known as The Hawthorne have been hand selected. Except for one. That would be Margot and in the first few minutes of arriving at the restaurant, the Chef wants to know why she is here. Then he wants to know which side she is on, the workers or the diners. These questions escalate through the night as the Chef's plan comes more into focus and the fear and dread of the diners  radically vacillates from the whole experience being a theatrical presentation to the genuine fear that someone or, perhaps, everyone here is going to die. 

This builds to a final bravura moment that you will not be able to predict, a deconstructed classic of a desert with a visual flair that is audacious and darkly hilarious. I won't spoil it, I don't think I could, but I won't over explain it. It's just a phenomenal final scene and one I want you to experience for yourself. Some of The Menu doesn't quite land, it can be rather hamhanded at times in terms of the motivations of Chef Slowik or obtuse about the villainy of the diners, but those are minor complaints when compared to how great the ending of The Menu is. 

Anya Taylor Joy continues to make terrific decisions in the roles she chooses. She has unusual taste and that is well reflected in a filmography that carries few traditional choice and a variety of fascinating oddities like The Menu. Joy could very well have played one of the Kitchen staff or the main Chef as she carries an imperious quality that would fit with those characters Having chosen to play the most traditional audience surrogate available in this story she's equally winning. The script gives her a juicy secret to play with and the story centers on her in a very unique way. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media.