At least, only one MIFF film.
The second film slot on Tuesday night went to the important
task of keeping up with new releases that might otherwise fall by the wayside
during the festival. Unfortunately, Midsommar and Late Night were still two days away from coming out, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood still nine days, so I had to choose
between Hobbes & Shaw and Ophelia, a new taken on Hamlet from the perspective of Daisy
Ridley’s title character. I can’t say that I’m disappointed that I chose Ophelia because I don’t know if I would
have liked Hobbes & Shaw less,
but I can tell you that I liked Ophelia
less than I was hoping I would like it. (Shakespeare purists need not
prioritize this one. Full review here if you’re interested.)
The night’s only MIFF film was again at The Capitol, and to
give you some sense of the beauty of this place, here, I’ve taken a picture:
That’s the ceiling, and the colors change from blue to pink
to green to yellow. Especially when they are blue, they look kind of like a
giant alien spacecraft landing on your head. It’s neat.
The Day Shall Come
is Chris Morris’ follow-up to 2010’s Four
Lions, the comedy about hapless jihadists trying to pull off a terror
attack, which actually has a surprising amount of heart. I liked that movie a
lot, making it all the more perplexing that it’s taken him nearly a decade to
make his next film. Who knows, maybe he was doing other things. Interestingly,
there’s no poster yet online, so I've gone with a still image instead.
This one is very much within the spirit of Four Lions, but I think the switch away
from England to the U.S. does something to the sense of humor I appreciated so
much in that one. Then there’s the fact that this movie goes into the well-worn
territory of mining humor from bureaucracy, the calling card of a guy like
Armando Iannucci. I was even reminded of the Coens’ Burn After Reading here, which is never a good thing.
The hapless terrorists in this case are a would-be black
militia in Florida. The “would be” has to do with the fact that there are only
four of them, and their leader believes he’s getting messages from God. They’re
political, but more than anything, they just want to run their farm and burgeoning
(or so they think) collective. But they’re also broke and facing eviction, so
they get embroiled in a plan involving more undercover agents than you can
shake a stick at, and the possible purchase/sale/donation of weapons ranging
from guns to nuclear. All they really want to do is pay the rent, but things
escalate quickly.
This was a film I resisted at first that ultimately really
won me over, though my initial resistance lingered enough that I ended up on
3.5 stars on it. The others in my crowd were laughing hysterically, but I was a
bit more reserved in my enthusiasm. Although this film also has a lot of heart
and the militia is very sympathetic, I did have a bit of trouble seeing them as
figures of fun, which could be my heightened sensitivity to the pitfalls of
race-based humor. I don’t think any of the humor here is actually negative in
any true racial sense, but it just made me a bit uncomfortable that the leader
was so delusional. Maybe it’s a variation on what Denis O’Hare’s FBI agent
says, which is that it’s okay to pin a terrorist plot on brown-skilled people,
but the optics are off if you try to do it with African Americans.
Okay, I’ll end this post there as I need to save up my
typing fingers for tonight’s two-movie night
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