MIFF: Two more foreign films, neither starring Jason Bateman

I can't overstate the number of films I've watched at MIFF this year that I assumed were American/English language films that totally were not.

Okay, I guess it's only three. Still, that's a lot.

The latest came Thursday night, and it's the poster you're seeing here.

I had every reason to assume Riders of Justice was in English. Mads Mikkelsen probably does more English language roles than Danish roles these days, and besides, Jason Bateman can't speak Danish, can he?

Jason Bateman? Where did I get that?

Well, look at this poster and judge for yourself:

If that's not Jason Bateman riding shotgun, I don't know who it is. 

Okay, I do know who because I have IMDB. It's Nikolaj Lie Kaas, and he's really good in the movie. But he's Jason Bateman if I've ever seen Jason Bateman.

Of course, if this poster were what I'd seen, I would have known this were not the kooky ensemble revenge comedy I thought it was. (It's sort of that, but it's a kooky Danish ensemble revenge comedy.) That title -- Retfargegheandends (pause for breath) Rytereareyrre -- kind of gives it away. But it was seeing Kaas' picture in the MIFF materials that led me to my incorrect assumption.

Bateman or no, the movie was good. I don't think it totally sticks the landing, but before that, it's another masterful mixture of tones from a Danish director. That's something director Thomas Vinterberg already does well, and as it turns out, so can Anders Thomas Jensen. I could give you some further information about the film here, or I could point you to my review. The latter's easier so I'll just do that.

I had intended to review the movie I watched Wednesday night, Night of the Kings from the Ivory Coast, to lend more diversity to the slate of international films I watched at MIFF this year. In fact, I'm not sure if I've ever watched a film shot on the African continent at MIFF, and Night of the Kings gave me a good opportunity to rectify that. (I mean, I still watched it, even though I didn't review it. That begs the age-old question: "If you watch a movie but don't review it, does it make a sound?")

Alas, I had a rarity for me when it came to writing that review: writer's block. If I'd really sat down and set my mind to it, I'm sure I would have come up with something -- I always do. But I got caught up in the workday on Thursday (despite having technical problems that were making productivity almost impossible), and the two sentences I'd written never turned into anything more. By the time I missed posting it on Thursday, I allowed Riders of Justice to become a candidate for my last MIFF review of 2021, and as it turns out, I found it easier to churn out something passable about that film last night before I went to bed.

Part of the issue was that I resisted Night of the Kings a bit. It had a pretty intriguing setup, as the film is set in a notorious Ivory Coast prison where the inmates run the place. A new inmate arrives and per tradition, he is named storyteller, meaning he has to tell the inmates a story. The quiet part that doesn't get said out loud is that after he finishes this story, he's to be executed. Another prisoner (played by Denis Levant!) lets the cat out of the bag, so our storyteller keeps talking all night -- I guess if he survives the night, like Scheherazade before him, he will escape his fate.

There's some good gritty realism here, but also some parts that I just didn't really believe, like the fact that 60 prisoners would hang on this man's every word for a whole night. The story he's telling is in way too broad strokes to go on for 12 hours, or however long -- in order to tell a story like that, he'd need to recite the characters' most mundane dialogue, which would test everyone's patience long before then. We also don't learn much about any of the characters, and I didn't find the story he was telling very compelling either.

Just as well I didn't review it. To not love my first MIFF film set in Africa kind of undid the benefit of watching it in the first place. It's probably a good thing that my attempt at virtue signalling backfired, because that shouldn't be something we critics have to do ... though to suggest we might be exempt from it is pretty naive as well.

Okay, just two more MIFF movies for 2021. I'll either single them each out in their own post or combine them into one. I'm sure the suspense is killing you.

Time to change things up

Last August, Jason Bateman was in a movie called The Switch. This August, he's in a movie called The Change-Up.

Jason, how much harder must the cinematic universe work to tell you it's time to take a new path?

Let me start by saying I'm a huge Jason Bateman fan. In fact, I bet I've liked him a lot longer than you have. That is, unless you were also obsessed with the show It's Your Move, which ran on TV from 1984-1985 and co-starred Norman Lear. It was the sitcom Bateman was given after his funny supporting gig on Silver Spoons earned him buzz, and it way predates The Hogan Family.

So I was as happy as anyone to see him return to prominence, after a decade basically out of the spotlight, in Arrested Development. Since then, he's parlayed his Arrested success into a smart and fun movie career, particularly in such films as Juno and Extract.

However, lately it's starting to seem like Jason Bateman is beginning to wear out his welcome again. It's not that the profile of his work has diminished -- he still seems pretty bankable as a likable comic underdog. It's that he's gotten ... dare I say it? Lazy.

The comedies are sort of starting to come off the assembly line for Bateman: Couples Retreat. The Switch. Horrible Bosses. And now The Change-Up.

Like most phenomena I try to describe on this blog, it's more of a feeling I get than something I can absolutely prove -- a sense of a downward trend, like the type people in the stock market try to predict in order to avoid losing their life savings. Because those movies are not all bad. In fact, I can't say for sure that any of them are bad. Couples Retreat is okay, The Switch was pretty likable, and I haven't seen either of his 2011 releases, in part because The Change-Up is only just coming out today. (He was also in Paul this year, but that doesn't seem to fit the trend as much. You can include it if you're so inclined.)

Really, I don't know what I'm expecting from him. If I'm expecting him to pick up a job as a strung-out heroin addict, I may be deluding myself. It's not a knock against him, but he may not be capable of that, nor should he worry about it if he isn't. That kind of thing is not for everybody.

But I do remember thinking that the essentially comedic role in Juno was all the more memorable because it also showcased a certain melancholy, which Bateman hadn't previously proven he could generate. Jason Reitman had him back for his next movie, but Bateman's role in Up in the Air was essentially a cameo.

So I guess you could say I'm really just stuck on the Bateman I saw in Juno -- a guy who could sniff out a smart indie property with which to involve himself. Even though that was there in Extract, when you come right down to it, Extract only works in fits and starts anyway. The best part of Extract is actually Ben Affleck. (For the record, The Switch also contains Bateman in a more pensive mode.)

So maybe it's just his latest choice itself that's bothering me. A high-concept comedy in which his domesticated father of two switches bodies with a swinging bachelor type (Ryan Reynolds)? Haven't we seen this or something like it a hundred times before?

Then again, all I can really do is speculate. Making absolute pronouncements gets me in trouble. When I gave Seth Gordon a hard time for making Horrible Bosses, because I considered it beneath him as a one-time documentarian, you guys let me know that my perspective was short-sighted. And it looks like it was. After all, I've heard that some people really love Horrible Bosses -- people I respect.

Which just so happens to have been Bateman's last movie.

So what's Bateman's next movie? IMDB is cagey on the topic, though it lists the much-anticipated and long-awaited Arrested Development movie in 2012. However, as recently as a couple weeks ago, Will Arnett confirmed that the script was still in the writing stages. Which doesn't necessarily mean it won't come out in 2012, just that we should be wary -- we've heard this one before.

In between now and then, let's hope Bateman gets the hint and makes The Course Correction and The Smart Choice, instead of The Swap or The Do-Over or The Repeat or The Redundant.