WARFARE Review

Making a war film inherently means you're making an anti-war film even if that intention was never part of the process. No matter your political persuasion, the reasons for the conflict, or even the dopamine hit certain types of personalities receive from being amidst such situations, one would hope we could agree the waste of life given in exchange for such rationale is not only unfortunate, but unnecessary. By default, most war films are labeled as propaganda - using seductions of the cinematic language to portray the horrors of combat in an idealized and/or unrealistic fashion - yet writer/director Alex Garland in collaboration with Navy vet Ray Mendoza seek to strip the genre of all such seductions in order to make audiences both more aware of such stories while also conducting something of an experiment in order to gauge what conclusions are drawn and what the perceived central idea becomes when taking a more forensic approach to these events as opposed to a more fabricated one. 

Interestingly, the film informs the audience of said experiment up front stating that the film is based on the memory of the people who lived it. Though Mendoza serves as co-director as well as receiving a screenwriting credit and is portrayed in the film by D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Warfare is an ensemble piece that is essentially a re-enactment of an encounter this platoon experienced during the Iraq War in the wake of the Battle of Ramadi. The film gives no more context than this, allowing viewers to take from it whatever they choose to glean. While the film very clearly seeks to honor and respect what these men do when risking their lives in order to execute the whims of their superiors and their superiors’ superiors, in terms of being an exercise in the “less in more” school of filmmaking and crafting what is ultimately a collage of memory pieces it is a fascinating experiment as it is inherently understood that even the most vivid of memories are subjective, that there can be no absolutes in the chaos of such confrontations, and further – that everything that has happened to these individuals since these events has informed their recollections of these moments.

FREAKY TALES Review

Neither Anna Boden nor Ryan Fleck, the writers and directors of Freaky Tales, hail from the Oakland area where their latest feature is set but Fleck grew-up in Berkeley and was eleven years-old in 1987 - when the film is set - indicating this is more a passion project for Fleck and something more akin to a challenge or an insight for Boden. Fittingly, the dynamic between the filmmakers - the homecourt advantage for Fleck and visitor status of Boden - is imbued in the final project as Freaky Tales fittingly straddles the line between being an underdog tale while understanding domination is the more appealing perception in the real world. Still, when it comes to the stories - or excuse me, tales - the underdogs continue to stand as the more inspiring option with this line of thought being present from the opening scroll of Boden and Fleck's latest.

Narrated by Too $hort with the film itself taking its title from the MC's 1989 track, we're told that Oakland in '87 was "hella wild"; the people, the culture, the music - it didn't matter - the descriptor applied to all. $hort also informs us the reason for everything feeling so fresh likely had something to do with a "bright green glow" that felt akin to an electricity in the air but clarifies said glowing green was not the same color as the city's "underdog A's uniforms". What the "bright green glow" might symbolize or represent is of course up to interpretation and will likely vary based on age and relation to the time and place at the heart of the film but broadly, it's meant to be something of a vibe incarnate; an embodiment of the attitude of Oakland at the time that lends each of the characters in each of the featured vignettes the swag necessary to convince us there's something a tad atypical or "freaky" about these tales that are otherwise as old as time.

BETTER MAN Review

With better musical numbers - at least as far as how they’re conveyed in the format of film - than Wicked and a more innovative take on the musical biopic certainly than anything that has been released since Bohemian Rhapsody became a four-time Oscar winner, Better Man transcends its multiple genres and demolishes expectations via a number of choices, perspectives, and ideas. Chief among these being that the main character, British pop star Robbie Williams, is rendered as a chimpanzee for the entirety of the film. Whether this is due to the fact he felt “less evolved” than those around him, that he felt treated like a circus act during his "Take That" days, or simply that he became something of an animal once fame afforded him the space to be, the central gimmick is more admirable in a distracting fashion than it is an influential one, but it doesn't not work and that was the risk in taking such a swing.

The facet that actually separates Better Man from the current crop of musical biopics is the fact Williams himself couldn't give less of a shit about PR. That is to say, the man has no issue showing you his scars or telling you how he feels about those that surrounded him. Getting this kind of unfiltered access and perspective feels more and more rare these days when the majority of musical documentaries are more or less controlled and therefore extremely filtered pieces of marketing material for their subjects. Luckily, a puff piece is not what neither Williams nor director Michael Gracey were interested in. As these things always go, it begins with wanting to make a father proud because of the lack of attention said father paid to their child while still on their own quest for fame and fortune. This neglect enables the kind of imposter syndrome Williams suffers from throughout the film and likely still to this day even with all of the awards and accomplishments, propping up the drive that has ultimately placed him in a position to command his own musical biopic despite what some might consider proper talent.