LONGLEGS Review

A completely surreal style a la the isolation of characters and staging of settings that writer/director Oz Perkins manages to merge with the expectations of a procedural; allowing the story to boil in the tedium of its case gone cold before the unexpected convictions of its characters come to light - revealing the true intent of the piece. Key to this intent is the understanding that the world we're being presented is largely dictated by the perspective through which we're seeing it. Longlegs doesn't always sustain itself on the intrigue of its mystery yet continuously gets under the skin with the disturbing if not sometimes heightened ideas it has around real-world difficulties. That isn't to say the central conceit of the film as a crime thriller doesn't work but more if that's all one takes away from it then they are missing the point. In essence, Perkins has put together a cautionary tale of sorts, regarding the trappings of mythologizing both regular human beings who choose to do terrible things as well as deities, demons and whichever side you affiliate with in terms of worshipping them. 

Perkins, who is presently the father of two teenagers, is also if not more interested in the ideas of the extent and severity to which parents go to not only protect their children but ensure the purity of their life experiences for as long as possible than he is said procedural aspects. Alicia Witt turning in a genuinely chilling performance in support of such. Yes, Longlegs features the titular character played as extravagantly as one would expect Nicolas Cage to play a creepy serial killer who looks like Tiny Tim and Powder's lovechild but for as effectively (and memorably) as Cage portrays this doll-making witch doctor what echoes for days after seeing the film is not the actions of the character of Longlegs, but more the credibility he lends his beliefs based off nothing more than intuition and furthermore, how far he was willing to follow them.

I CARE A LOT Review

I Care A Lot is the type of film that knows exactly what it is and what it means to be from the very first frame. Healthcare workers divvy up monotonous rows of medications into small plastic cups intended to keep their targets as much in check as they do healthy. The first piece of dialogue is a woman's voice seemingly calling the viewer out, "Look at you. Sitting there," she says as she goes on to explain how the idea of "playing fair" is a joke invented by the rich to keep everyone else poor. All of this accompanied by the immediate needle drop of Death in Vegas' 1999 track "Dirge" or what is another word for a "sad song", an elegy. Writer/director J Blakeson (The Disappearance of Alice Creed) pushes all the way down on the syringe releasing every facet of his technique into the bloodstream as quickly as he can. From that first moment the tone is fully engaged and every tool Blakeson has at his disposal is being used to elevate the story being told; the film is firing on all cylinders. The difference between I Care A Lot and most films that begin with such promise though, is that it sustains its nasty yet overwhelmingly engaging tone throughout its nearly two-hour runtime. By the end of that runtime one is bound to be both satisfied as far as viewing experiences go, but also somewhat overwhelmed not simply by the lengths the narrative decides to venture, but the implications of our lead character's, the anti-hero in many respects, course of action. It is this course of action, this central scheme that Rosamund Pike’s Marla Grayson has cooked up, that provides much of the propulsion and confidence the film displays throughout as one would require such attributes to pull the type of legal Olympics off that she does here. While the tone is enjoyable - delectable even - and we, the audience are having a blast watching these people do these terrible things there is no escaping the fact that afterward, once the credits have rolled, we're also somewhat appalled at the fact we did enjoy this level of duplicity so much. 

How real and damaging the effects of what the character of Marla Grayson is doing here are the reasons Blakeson has chosen to employ that all-knowing and judgmental narration, why he uses bold, primary colors in both setting and wardrobe to heighten the world in which his film takes place, and why he utilizes Marc Canham's electronic-heavy score to give Grayson's actions an edge that, while understanding she's an inherently evil person, still makes her seem cool. It's the age old question of why we root for the bad guy, the villain, and often times it's because we can recognize their flaws in our own, but even Marla Grayson would tell you her only flaw is being too ambitious and too driven and that she finds no fault in doing whatever it takes to get to the top. It's not that these qualities aren't relatable or are the reasons we aren't sympathetic to Grayson come the end of the film, but it's how far she's willing to cross the line in order to make her ambitions a reality that separates the human being from the truly despicable.