How are we already here? It is May already? Graduation is two weeks away? When did time start moving so quickly? It sort of feels like I have started binge watching a show on Netflix and the next thing I know it is 1 a.m. and I have to work in the morning.
What do we have on deck for this month, you ask? I’m doing a little spring cleaning here. We are going to talk about two movies that I have been looking for a chance to watch for a while (in one case, a fairly long while). A quick glance at the posters below will tell you that these movies are wildly different in style and substance, but I would argue that there is indeed a strong connecting thread that runs between both of these films.
Widows (2018) [R]
Director Steve McQueen is known for making serious movies about starvation, addiction and slavery. So when I heard he was remaking a pulpy heist mini-series, I was both surprised and intrigued. And that aptly describes how I feel about Widows now that I have seen it.
After a heist goes wrong, Harry (played by Liam Neeson) and his gang of career criminals are killed during a stand off with police. His wife Veronica (played by Viola Davis) is still in grief when criminal and politician Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry) shows up and tells her that Harry’s debt to him has now become hers. To pay it, Veronica enlists the help of the other wives to pull a heist that Harry had been planning before he died. Of course, that turns out to be far more complicated than it seems.
If you just look at the list of folks in this, I’m sure you can guess that the acting is top notch. It doesn’t hurt that the script is so good that the actors and actresses were given deep, fully-developed characters to start with. Hans Zimmer handles the score, which is great. McQueen assembled an incredible cast and crew to get this made and clearly took advantage of his resources.
As you may know, I love a good heist film. And this most certainly is one. I was a little skeptical that someone as high-minded as McQueen could make something as mass-market as this work. It is not as if the “serious” isn’t there. In many ways, Widows could be seen as a treatise on race and gender, but the film is so well balanced that I didn’t even think about it until it was over. Instead, I found myself wishing the film was longer, so I could get just a little more time with the heist and the characters. If you like your movies smart and entertaining, give Widows a shot.
8 paws out of 10
Tale of Tales (2015) [R]
Let me apologize at the beginning here. This has been on my radar for years, and I just hadn’t gotten a chance to watch it until last week. This one is, and I hate to use this terminology, “artsy.” Tale of Tales, which is the English title of the film, is based on the Pentamerone, a work of the poet and fairy-tale collector Giambattista Basile that predates the work of the Brothers Grimm. Ostensibly, these are stories for children but, well, you see that R rating up there. Basile (and writer / Director Matteo Garrone) may have a different idea than you of what children can handle.
Tale of Tales comes from three of Basile’s stories with a little extra thrown in from Matteo Garrone. The movie begins with an adaption of Basile’s La Cerva Fatata. Salma Hayek is the Queen of Longtrellis who is desperate to have a child with her husband the King played by John C. Reilly. A necromancer arrives and tells the couple that if the queen eats a sea dragon’s heart cooked by a virgin, she will become pregnant, but it will come at the cost of someone else’s life.
The second tale is adapted from La Vecchia Scorticata and is about the King of Strongcliff who spies a woman singing outside of her house. She is in the shadows so he cannot see her face, but based on her voice he assumes she must be a beautiful young woman. He tries to get her attention, but she scurries into her house. What the king does not realize is that the woman he heard is one of a pair of elderly sisters who share the house. He woos his dream woman through the front door of their shared home, but the sisters are divided on how to handle his advances.
The last story, La Pulce, revolves around Violet, the daughter of the King of Highhills. The king comes across a flea in his room and begins to care for it as a pet. As his attention is taken from his daughter and given to the flea, the flea grows larger and larger. Violet tells her father that she wants to leave the castle to explore the world and to be married. The king ignores her requests until one day, the flea dies. The king skins the flea and then holds a contest. Whoever can correctly identify where the skin has come from will receive Violet’s hand in marriage. He assumes that no one would ever guess that this enormous skin has come from a flea. But then an ogre arrives and correctly identifies the pelt as that of a flea.
Garrone interweaves these stories, and I’m not entirely sure that works here. It may have been just me, but it gave me the sense that these stories were going to connect at some point (and they kind of do at the end). I’ve read a few interviews where the director says that while all three of these stories have a distinct theme, they are all centered around the idea that desire can lead to obsession. And I can see that now that I have read it, but I didn’t pick that up while I was watching it.
With the help of his production crew, Garrone creates a stunning universe in which to set these stories. The film was shot entirely on location but looks as if everything was replicated in a studio. It is hard to describe, but it helps give Tale of Tales the feel of a carefully curated reality. Even in its most monstrous moments, you would be hard pressed to not find something beautiful.
It isn’t for everyone. I will certainly give you that. But Tale of Tales, sadly, is a rare treat. Sure, you can turn on the TV and see an adult take on fairy tale themes practically any night of the week. But this is something different. It is a wonderful balance of reality and fantasy, of the beautiful and the grotesque. It is a film with dark humor told with earnestness. Tale of Tales feels like something familiar but is also one of the most singularly strange films you will see this year. And it is for precisely that reason I would suggest you give it a shot.
7.5 paws out of 10
As always, if you have a movie you think I should check out or you want to talk further about one of these reviews, drop me a line on Facebook.