Freaks (2019)

Score: 2.5 / 5

Freaks is a strange movie, and one that really should be watched without any prior knowledge. So if you want to learn its secrets firsthand and without expectation or disappointment, stop reading now.

We begin inside a closed-up house, reminiscent of The Walking Dead or Bird Box, in which a father (Emile Hirsch) teaches his daughter Chloe (Lexy Kolker) how to lie in a speech to be delivered if she's ever caught. We don't know what's outside, and neither does Chloe. We assume it's a sort of post-apocalyptic world, but the father does occasionally go outside for supplies with no visible protection or weapons. But in her few moments of isolation, she peeps through to the sunlit outside and seems enamored by what she sees, especially an ice cream truck driven by Mr. Snowcone himself. Soon she sneaks out to the ice cream truck, and Mr. Snowcone (Bruce Dern) takes her on a ride away from her house.

It's a chilling start, all the more so because we have no idea what's happening, why the secretive dialogue, or who to trust. Is the father being protective, or is he abusing her? Is Mr. Snowcone a kindly old man, a dangerous predator, or something even worse? And what exactly is happening in this strange world in which people's eyes sometimes bleed? Turns out, it's a world like you might see in X-Men, where certain individuals are born with, shall we say, uncanny powers to read minds, turn invisible, or fly. These individuals are known even by the government as "freaks" whose eyes bleed if they overexert their powers, and they are accused in the media of running loose as illegal citizens and hiding in plain sight, slapping us in the face with the real-life relevance of the immigration crisis.

The film is remarkably difficult to swallow, especially since we learn everything with -- and filtered by -- the young girl at its heart. People explain their world and powers in ways she might understand, though we are well aware there's always more going on than they say. And, possibly because of her age, things aren't always clearly happening in reality versus in her head, and almost everything is sentimentalized despite the film's attempts at grit and violence. But once all the players are on the screen and the board is set for a final sequence, I found myself utterly distractable, predicting each step in the otherwise rote plotline, wishing all the fuss amounted to more. The mutants -- or whatever they are -- are far better characters than superheroes, and so their powers are largely pointless apart from getting between plot points. I'd rather watch X-Men.

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019)

Score: 3.5 / 5

In the grand tradition of movies made about movies, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood showcases Tarantino's ability to flex his aesthetic tendencies while making a movie that feels like it could have been made by anybody. It is, in my view, his most accessible work for someone who either doesn't know or enjoy his style. Unfortunately -- even for me, who does not much care for Tarantino-isms -- this disconnect also made me feel the movie was severely lacking in any style at all.

In what attempts to be a sweeping series of interrelated character studies, Hollywood works best in its few moments of novelty. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt deliver stunning performances as a fictional star/stunt double navigating the changing screen cultures of 1969. As Rick Dalton (Leo) attempts to land solid jobs to reclaim some of his former glory, his double Cliff Booth (Brad) assists him as something between partner, friend, and personal assistant. There's not much plot here, but the series of vignettes are mostly charming.

While the film mostly works through its evocation of nostalgia (that is, nostalgia for a mostly white male-dominated industry) and its showbiz jokes about the inner workings of classic Hollywood, it also plays with convention by using fictional characters to interact and comment upon historical figures. It is here where my ambivalence toward the film begins. Certain characters are painted broadly -- even offensively -- such as the caricature of Bruce Lee, and it's funny in the moment but it's hardly realistic. Which forces the question as to what exactly Tarantino is doing. The timestamped details are so specific, while the fictionalized elements are bizarrely stretched if not totally disconnected from reality. Why? (I should add that Lee's characterization could easily be added to the list of racist tendencies in Tarantino's filmography, along with the dry slurs against Mexicans that pop up in this flick).

Perhaps the answer lies in the titular suggestion of a fairytale, and in the film's finale, which further emphasizes the laughably false nature of this story. Tarantino is no stranger to rewriting history, and so perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. But something about the ending rang hollow to me, as the Manson family would-be murderers approach Sharon Tate's house and get distracted by a drunken Leo. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for serial killers and cults, but I was kind of hoping for a bleak ending that recounted the crimes, much like they were depicted in the amazing NBC series Aquarius (which I will always hate NBC for cancelling early). Instead, we get a highly moralistic revision in which the family, declaring that they blame Hollywood for making them violent and insane, turn from the Polanski-Tate property and instead attack Rick Dalton's house. The violence they hoped to enact on celebrity is turned back on them in a brutal, hilarious twist ending, followed by a denouement in which the historical Tate murder victims invite Dalton over for drinks.

It's clever and interesting, I suppose. Just not my preference. As for the bulk of the film, Tarantino's typical writerly and directorial skills are fairly typical, if a bit watered down. Tonally and in terms of pacing, the whole picture feels very unlike his other work and more akin to a more traditional, polished, classic director. Then again, some of his -isms come into play here, along with a strange assortment of unusual crap, such as the long takes of Brad Pitt cruising around town. It's just weird. It's Tarantino. I don't understand him or his fans. His movies almost never do anything, much less mean anything; he uses them as a stylized system of ranting. He uses them almost as a form of indoctrination to his rabid fans, a very real and often vicious cult themselves.

Come to think on it, I'm surprised he didn't just do a straight-up Manson movie.

*Note: Not all the characters based in reality are caricatured or super fictionalized. I thought Margot Robbie's performance as Sharon Tate was fabulous, but that character is relegated to supporting cast My preferences would have been to dive into her story a bit more. But as I said earlier, I'm a sucker for the dark stuff. That, and any more focus on Tate would be to allow a woman some substance in a Tarantino movie (Jackie Brown aside), and we all know that won't happen. No, he's content to have his version of a leading lady admiring herself (playing a klutz, no less) on the silver screen. The only other consequential female characters are a child (played for laughs and to praise Leo) and a hippie (who offers to blow Brad, who uncharacteristically denies her and demands her age and ID).

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

Score: 4.5 / 5

"Every body has a secret," the tagline reads. That seems to be the mantra for the main characters of this film, a father-and-son pair of coroners. Working diligently and in perfect tandem, they deliver results with speed and care. One night a mysterious woman is wheeled in, the only unidentified corpse in a particularly violent murder scene, and the sheriff requests her cause of death to be high priority. Foregoing his date night, Austin stays with his father Tommy to open up the corpse.

Each new piece of evidence, however, leads them to different and conflicting conclusions. How can her skin be pristine when the organs beneath display stab wounds? How is fresh blood seeping from her nose and incisions when her cloudy eyes suggest she has been dead for days? Why are the bones in her wrists and ankles broken, and why has her tongue been cut out, and why are her lungs blackened from severe burns? Then there's the things they find inside her stomach. As if their night couldn't get any weirder or worse, strange things begin to happen around them. A storm arises, and something blocks the exit. Strange noises are coming from the vent, and the phone line isn't working. Light bulbs explode, doors open and close, and the other bodies in the morgue disappear.

The film is largely a love letter to the genre. It sews various motifs together until the movie itself becomes a Frankenstein's monster of references and likenesses. Besides sundry movies and shows, however, it also reminded me of a Stephen King short story. It starts with a mysterious scene of death, moves into a homely little location with two hard workers in a secluded environment, builds in tension and horror, reveals an explosive secret that hinges on our understanding of history, climaxes with an emotional sacrifice, and ends with the knowledge that the evil is not vanquished. In many ways, the film reminded me of Oculus, a similarly family-centered horror film that relishes in perceptions and misperceptions of reality; it's that quintessential meta-horror where what we see is not always what we get, horrifying for us the audience because we only see what the movie wants us to see. When the characters hallucinate, so do we, and we cannot trust our primary sensory access to the film.

I don't want to spoil the fun, so I'll leave it there. It's a 90-minute blast of pure horror. Artsy and stylish, the film takes immense pleasure in eking out the frisson we feel around dead bodies. The morgue's atmosphere is fabulously precise, and Brian Cox as the coroner/father is pitch-perfect casting. It's one of the scariest movies I've seen in some time, and I made the mistake of watching it alone in the dark. Sure, the climax is overwritten and tries too hard to Affect you. But if that's the only sin, we can forgive it. Even if Jane Doe can't.

IMDb: The Autopsy of Jane Doe