philipbrasor.com

Talking animals have always been a staple—if not the default subjects—of cartoons, their appeal reduced to a confluence of familiar species behaviors and anthropomorphic acting out. This particular credo became even more pronounced as CGI made those behaviors more lifelike, thus throwing into greater comic relief the attributes associated with human emotional reaction, especially those that tend to be exaggerated on film. Animation studio Illumination’s 2016 box office hit Sing took this formula and pumped it up with popular songs that everyone knew and, presumably, loved, and then incorporated it all into a trite tale about a local theater impresario, a koala named Buster Moon, trying to save his dying venue by staging an amateur singing competition and, in the process, discovering all this local talent just bursting with latent star power. Which brings us to the last component of animal-oriented CGI animated features: A-listers doing the voices of these characters, which in this instance meant they also got to show off their singing chops. 

Sing was fine in that it touched all the requisite comedy bases thanks to a screwball approach to dialogue, and while these elements are retained in Sing 2, the basic gimmick no longer has a purchase on the material. If anything, the sequel is even triter and less imaginative than the original. Having saved his theater and made local stars of some residents, Buster (Matthew McConaughey) sets his sights on bringing his show to the big time, which in this universe is a Vegasy metropolis called Red Shore. Being local stars means nothing in the naked city, and much of the movie is given over to contrasting the naive sensibility of Buster’s revue with the super sophisticated (read: utterly cynical) professionalism of the Red Shore stage aesthetic as epitomized by the sensibility of the Mafioso-wolf hotelier Jimmy Crystal (Bobby Cannavale). Desperate to get a chance at putting his group of misfits on Crystal’s stage, Buster desperately promises to secure the services of Clay Calloway, a legendary lion-singer-songwriter who has been MIA for at least a decade. Buster lies and says he knows Calloway and can get him in his show, and Crystal assents with hints of violence if Buster doesn’t come through. Consequently, the movie shuttles between the porcupine punk rocker Ash (Scarlett Johansson) hunting Calloway down and trying to persuade him to come out of retirement, and the antics of her fellow Buster-managed singers trying to get up the nerve and wherewithal to learn a new act (some weird sci-fi-themed musical) that will wow the Red Shore regulars. But whereas the cast of mammals (with a few reptiles and birds thrown in) was kinda cute the first time, here they’re just annoying. The only compelling character is Jimmy’s daughter Porsha, who is promised a central role in Buster’s production because daddy demands it and is talent-challenged though utterly game. As voiced by the pop star Halsey (meaning, not primarily an actor, like almost everyone else), Porsha is a millennial version of all those characters Judy Holliday played in the 1940s and 50s, and she’s a trip. However, this cognitive dissonance has the opposite effect when it comes to another cast member whose day job is singing. Once you realize that it’s Bono doing Clay Calloway, it’s all you can think of. Talk about being driven to distraction. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku PIccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Sing 2 home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2021 Universal Studios

What is it about Istanbul and stray animals? In 2016 we had the documentary Kedi, which celebrated the famous stray cats of the city. Now, we have director Elizabeth Lo, who grew up in Hong Kong and studied film in the U.S., taking a knee-level view of stray dogs in the same city, and conveying something very different, something sadder and deeper. In a way, that makes sense, since we tend to think of cats as more independent-natured and thus more resilient to the environmental pressures of living on the streets of a major metropolis. Moreoever, stray cats, by their very nature and appearance, tend to receive more sympathy from the average human, whereas dogs, which are considered needier and more socially minded, evoke stronger emotions, both positive and negative. At the beginning of Lo’s documentary, we’re informed that at one time Istanbul had a policy of rounding up all stray dogs and putting them down, but public opinion was strongly against this policy and now they are allowed to roam free.

Lo’s main subject is the female mutt Zeytin, who acts the part almost too well: melancholy in demeanor, purposeful in behavior, physically robust. As befits such a subject, the narrative (without narration) is random and episodic, a series of encounters with inviduals both two-legged and four- that, in its own way, elucidates Zeytin’s personality, while at the same time through accumulation of detail conveys what life on the streets is like in Istanbul, which means hanging out not only with dogs but with street people, including children, who sniff glue or otherwise make life bearable under these circumstances. This is the film’s main stylistic and thematic difference with Kedi, which mostly focused on the emotional nexus between the city’s working population and its feline underground. In that regard, Lo gets the most dramatic mileage from how Zeytin and her ilk are adored and despised in equal measure, depending on whom the camera is depicting in reaction to the dogs’ various actions. If the denizens of Istanbul seem to like stray cats better than stray dogs it has less to do with these respective species’ appearance or appeal to human feelings than it does with what they do in public. It’s obvious that Lo means to hide nothing, and we see the dogs not only rutting and defecating and rummaging through garbage, but the humans observing these actions, usually in a state of appalled disgust. Consequently, when near the end of the movie Lo juxtaposes this sort or response to the situation regarding homeless immigrants, who are natural allies, as well as defenders, of the stray canines, a point is made that is both powerful and awkwardly exploitative. You can’t help but wonder what Lo’s purpose was at the outset. 

No dialogue (though some Turkish background speaking). Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Stray home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2020 This Was Argos, LLC

Greek directors have in recent years coopted that species of European ennui that used to be associated with Scandinavia, but filtered through a more mordant sensibility. There’s a fatalism inherent in the work of the most celebrated of these filmmakers, Yorgos Lanthimos, whose former assistant, Christos Nikou, foregoes his ex-boss’s typical black comedy and settles into a kind of droll numbness. Apples‘ premise is high concept, but Nikous doesn’t take sufficient advantage of it. There’s a virus at large in the greyed-out society depicted that renders its victims memoryless, and while amnesia is one of those cinematic cliches, like the forlorn hitman, that’s been wrung dry, here the loss of a recognizable past is complete to the point of erasure. Language is all that remains.

The patient offered for our consideration is Aris (Aris Servetalis), who is stricken while on a bus, and once he falls into the hands of the authorities–he has no ID on him–he is placed in an institution that specializes in his condition. By this point the specialists understand there is no use in trying to recover memories (the title refers to the only thing that Aris knows he “likes”) and thus the “rehabilitation” involves constructing a whole new identity. The comic potential is ripe, and to a certain extent Nikous finds a lot of dry humor in Aris’s situation and his road back to social normality. What’s most interesting about the script is the clinical means that Aris’s doctors use to bring about this transformation—and it is presented as a transformation. Regardless of Aris’s blank slate condition, there is still a personality there, and as a character study of a man without character, Apples works well. Aris’s mission is to relearn everything a modern human being learns to become a functioning member of society, from riding a bicycle to picking up sex partners in a bar, and the fact that all these tasks are documented (with, of all things, a Polaroid camera) emphasizes the conventionality of what we take for human development, which has become yet another function of capitalism.

But Nikous himself is trying to present something conventional as well, and the movie’s wry take on social conditioning eventually gives way to an emotionally fraught melodrama. This change in tone should be startling, but it feels less than consequential since Aris’s default behavior is, by definition, impossible to read. When he becomes sad, it actually seems like an improvement. Nikous is defeated by his own cleverness.

In Greek. Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670).

Apples home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2020 Boo Productions and Lava Films