Jojo Rabbit: A Complicated Comedy

Jojo Rabbit is a satire about Nazi Germany. That alone should tell you to expect some extreme tonal whiplash. Based on Christine Leunen's novel, Caging Skies, writer-director Taika Waititi has created a movie that genuinely beggars belief. I was raucously amused at the beginning, squirming and uncomfortable in the middle, and in the final scene, I suddenly started crying, because it turned out the entire movie had been about the triumph of the human spirit. It's a joyous ending that one would not expect from a movie about Nazis, and I was completely bowled over by how the hell Waititi manage to pull off this impossible film.

The wonderful Roman Griffin Davis stars as ten-year-old Johannes "Jojo" Betzler, an extremely patriotic German boy whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler (played by Taika Waititi himself). Jojo cannot wait to attend his Hitler Youth training camp with his best friend Yorki (Archie Yates, an adorably pudgy British kid who is not remotely trying to do a German accent in this movie, unlike everyone else who is at least giving it a shot). At the training camp, he ends up with the derogatory nickname of Jojo Rabbit when he turns out to be too soft-hearted to kill a rabbit. But this doesn't dampen his ardor, and despite having to leave the camp for other reasons, he is determined to do his best for the Nazi war effort. Unfortunately, his zeal takes a a bit of a hit when he discovers his mother, Rosie (played by the always dependable Scarlett Johansson), has a secret that his good friend Adolf wouldn't be too thrilled about.

No further spoilers (though you can probably make an educated guess). The relationship between Jojo and Rosie is remarkable, and it builds to a crescendo that packs quite an emotional wallop. But the relationship between Jojo and imaginary Hitler? That is just crazy. It's so hilarious at the beginning, with Hitler playing a hype man to Jojo and encouraging him to believe in himself, not be too scared about going off to training camp, and giving him encouraging advice on how to be the best Nazi he can be. But as the movie progresses, and Jojo's Nazi ideology starts to wane, Hitler goes off the rails, screaming loudly, demanding loyalty, and reminding us all that it's always the men who seem charming at first, who become the scary monsters later on. The movie opens with a German version of I Want To Hold Your Hand and propaganda shots of people screaming in adulation (akin to Beatlemania) when they see the Fuhrer. The gradual evolution of that "fun" Hitler to the evil one is so educational; this is how dictators win your trust and then start the Holocaust.

The final shot of the movie also features a German version of a popular English song; that music cue was perfect, and Waititi continues to be a filmmaker who always picks the best song for every occasion. More importantly, that song is used for a life-affirming, spectacular scene. I was honestly not enjoying the film halfway through - the comedy had become too black, the stakes had gotten too real, and the satire had taken on a razor sharp edge that hurt too much. All the nasty propaganda about Jews and how they have horns and can read people's minds is supposed to expose how dumb and awful the Nazis were. But listening to that endless Jew-bashing for more than an hour gets wearisome, and you want it all to end. Thankfully, that ending is pitch perfect. It is not a happy ending, because there's nothing happy about what happened in Nazi Germany, but it is a reminder that evil was defeated and life goes on.

I loved Jojo Rabbit, but believe me, it was touch and go there for a while. It is an extremely polarizing movie as it deals with painful and incendiary subject matter. Its tone is wildly uneven, which is sort of the point, and even the actors are wildly inconsistent with their German accents, which is also the point. No one is striving for accuracy here, they just want to make fun of the Nazis. But along the way, Taika Waititi has created an oddly extraordinary movie that somehow manages to find the grace and beauty of humanity against the backdrop of one of the most evil periods of human history. 

Parasite: Horrifyingly Hilarious and Hilariously Horrifying

When I finished watching Parasite, I felt like I had just finished reading a very dense and brilliant novel, brimming with interesting characters, captivating settings, and a bananas plot that relentlessly delivered for two hours straight. It was a deeply satisfying experience; apparently, I need more South Korean films in my life.

Parasite unanimously won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May. So it’s already a critical darling and I went into it knowing that people I respect have a pretty favorable opinion of this movie. Critics can be notoriously weird and I don’t agree with them all the time, but I fell for this movie hook, line, and sinker. The friends I saw it with though, who were Korean and don’t watch a lot of movies, weren’t as taken with it as I was. So it’s definitely an acquired taste.

What’s the movie about? I wish I could tell you, but it’s so important you go into it without knowing too much. Watching the craziness unfurl delicately and then insanely on screen is what makes this a true theatrical delight. Let the title of this review be your guide - this is a movie that is very funny, but also extremely dark and does have some bloody horror elements towards the end. I won’t say why, but there’s a twist halfway through that leads to some extreme violence and an ambiguous ending that I loved because you can interpret it as you would like depending on how optimistic or pessimistic you're feeling that day. And I know that’s generally seen as a cop out in any kind of storytelling (I personally hate any novel that doesn’t end properly), but this movie completely earns its ending and doesn’t make you regret watching anything that came before.

For those who insist on knowing some basic plot, here it is. The movie follows a Korean family in Seoul that lives in a semi-basement (i.e an almost underground apartment where they get a sliver of light from a window but also risk getting peed on by drunk men who like to urinate on the sidewalks at night). They are struggling to get by and work a variety of odd jobs, but when the son gets a chance to tutor the daughter of an exceedingly wealthy family, the family’s fortunes start to reverse, and what follows is an extremely funny hour of deception followed by a grisly hour of comeuppance. It’s a dark movie about what people in dire straits will do to get ahead in life as well as a look at how the wealthy treat their servants and engender the resentment and disparities that pervade society today. Every actor in this film is phenomenal, offering up a nuanced performance that leads you to feel genuinely conflicted about who exactly to root for (the answer is no one).

Parasite is such a genre-bending, wonderful movie. It’s like nothing you’ve seen before. Don’t be fooled by the subtitles and critical acclaim - this is not the stuffy and dramatic kind of "foreign film" that generally becomes awards bait. Instead, this is a refreshing and ridiculous film that signals writer-director Bong Joon Ho might be one of the most creative filmmakers working today. From here on out, I am not missing any movie that this brilliant weirdo makes.

Judy: A Swan Song

Judy is a familiar tale about an aging actress who has long struggled with the perils of fame. While nothing about this movie feels particularly fresh or novel (sadly, such stories are a tale as old as time), what is marvelous about it is the central performance by Renee Zellweger. Give the lady an Oscar nomination, she has earned it.

Set in 1969, the movie tells the story of Judy's London tour when she was in her late forties, a desperate attempt to get some money so she could provide a stable home for her children and not lose custody to her third husband, Sidney Luft (played by Rufus Sewell, who I love and never get to see much of anymore). The film also features flashbacks to Judy Garland's days as a child actress on the set of The Wizard of Oz. Young Judy is played wonderfully by Darci Shaw, and through these flashbacks we get to see the cruel way she was treated by Louis B. Mayer and her handlers. She was a work horse, denied any semblance of a childhood, and was also fed a constant diet of drugs to suppress her appetite, keep her thin, and make her sleep, all of which led to her crippling addictions and anxieties in later life.

The Zellweger performance is incandescent and she fully inhabits this role. Twitchy and nervous, both untrusting and naive, she captures all of the woman's complexities, and then walks on to the stage to also capture her voice. At this point in her life, Judy's voice wasn't great - she had undergone a tracheotomy two years prior following a suicide attempt, and all the drinking, pills, smoking, and exhaustion had certainly taken their toll. All this to say that Zellweger isn't meant to be delivering a bravura singing performance. But what she does deliver is the dramatic flair and love of performing that always drove Judy Garland despite all her neuroses. When she takes the stage, she isn't just singing a song - she is singing her heart out. At the end of the movie, when we finally get to that long-awaited performance of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, I defy you not to feel moved. 

Judy is not a masterpiece. Adapted from the stage play, End of the Rainbow, by Peter Quilter, it has its melodramatic beats and flights of fancy. But that central performance anchors the whole thing and keeps you riveted to the screen for two hours. Special kudos are also due to costume designer Jany Temime, and the hair and makeup designer Jeremy Woodhead, because their transformative work are integral to making this performance work. Overall, it's a standard biopic that is elevated by a brilliant actress. Whether you're a classic film buff or not, Judy Garland was a star, and you know her music even if you don't know the woman. This movie is well worth your time. 

Joker: No One Will Save Us

I just walked out of the theater and am trying to process my feelings about Joker. Mostly, it was disturbing. Way too disturbing. I thought the years of watching Game of Thrones would have inured me to a certain amount of violence, but nope. This movie features some pretty brutal murders that almost made me throw up. That's not a ringing endorsement. 

I will not be watching this movie again. But there were still elements of it that I found breathtaking. Such is the power of the big screen - a movie can literally make you nauseous, but you still come out of the theater humming "Send in the Clowns." Speaking of which, I cannot improve upon Glen Weldon's observations in his NPR review of this movie where he talks about how unlikely the scene is where a group of Wall Street bros start singing Send in the Clowns before they beat up Arthur Fleck (that's the Joker's real name before he takes on his manic persona). That scene was meant to be violent but it just made me giggle, because it's true, those are not the type of men who are well-versed in the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim. The movie also ends with Frank Sinatra's version of the song, which I had never heard, and it only disturbed me further, because that song is famously sung by a woman. Sure, Sinatra made it popular, but it is a gorgeous, heart-wrenching song, and the Judi Dench version is the one I love. By choosing Sinatra's version, the movie makes its intentions known. This is a movie concerned with bombast and polish rather than ragged emotion and substance. Sure Sinatra sounds great, but he certainly doesn't capture the emotion or context of that song at all. Likewise, Joker looks great, but boy does it not want to think too deeply about what it's saying.

Joaquin Phoenix's performance is the saving grace of this film. The man has committed himself body and soul to inhabiting this character, and while I wanted to shout, "why have you gone to all this trouble for a comic book movie," I have to give him his due. He is shirtless a fair bit in the film and this seems to be expressly for the purpose of revealing his shrunken form, with his ribs sticking out so alarmingly that I wanted to feed him a burger every time he was on screen. It's not pleasant to look at. And then of course, there's the famous clown makeup. Arthur starts off as an ordinary clown, but the gradual evolution to the Joker look that we all know (and love?) is brilliantly done. His eye makeup is always running, his red lips are always evolving (first with lipstick and greasepaint, then by other more sinister means). And that laugh. He has an uncontrollable laugh due to neurological damage, a sort of Tourette's-like tic that is deeply unnerving and gets him into trouble all the time. It is a high-pitched cackle that trails off like a cat choking on a hairball and it is awful and mesmerizing at the same time. 

There are also clever bits of plot. There were story beats that made me think, "that makes absolutely no sense, why on earth would these characters behave this way," and then it got explained and I felt less icky about it all. But this movie was so clearly written and produced by a bunch of men. The Joker is a villain, and the movie doesn't try to make him out to be a good guy, but it certainly does try to place his actions in the context of, "he's only being heinous to the people who treated him poorly," which doesn't quite fly when he's stabbing people in the eye with scissors. Yeah, that's the bit that made me nauseous, spoiler alert.

Joker is trying very hard to be some kind of artistic, dark take on the superhero genre, but it has veered way off course. The recent SNL parody was a perfect satire, highlighting the self-importance and aggrandisement of this comic book villain. It's a great character but trying to delve into his origins is an exercise in futility because it feels like an attempt to excuse thoroughly inexcusable behavior. Director and co-writer Todd Phillips certainly hasn't done himself any favors lately when he proclaimed comedy was dead and people were too sensitive and woke to appreciate jokes anymore. But I don't think woke people are going to be able to stand this dramatic movie either. In our current day and age, there are so many awful men who are going to watch this film and come away thinking that the Joker is a hero. It is deeply irresponsible and pointless, and while I certainly wasn't bored while watching this movie, all I wanted to do when I came home was to cleanse my soul with A Little Night Music. Send in the clowns, but please take the Joker away. 

Unbelievable: Women Seeking Justice

Unbelievable is another show I put off watching for a while because I thought it would be too painful to watch. But yet again, given the rave reviews, I logged onto Netflix and was blown away. I certainly took plenty of breaks in between episodes at the beginning as it was quite an infuriating watch. However, towards the end, I found myself racing through the last few episodes, desperate to see justice finally done and breathe a sigh of (somewhat) relief.

The first episode opens in 2008 with the rape of a young woman named Marie Adler (Kaitlyn Dever). Just 18 years old, Marie is a former foster child who recently moved into her own apartment. In the middle of the night, a man breaks into her house through an open window, threatens her with her own knife, ties her up with her shoelaces, blindfolds her, rapes her, takes photos, and vanishes. Marie calls up a friend, her former foster mother, and the police, and what follows is a painful exploration of what a rape victim needs to endure in the aftermath of an already harrowing experience. She has to keep repeating her story to multiple cops, then at the hospital to the nurse while she undergoes the indignities of a rape kit. Later, she has to repeat her story yet again to detectives and then prepare a written statement. As minor inconsistencies are found with each repetition, and her former foster mothers start to worry that Marie seems to be too calm about the whole thing, we have to watch as the cops start to disbelieve her story and eventually accuse her of making the whole thing up. For the rest of the series, we see the implications of this on her life and the downward spiral it sends her on.

Meanwhile, starting in Episode 2, we move to 2011 and are introduced to Detective Karen Duvall (Merritt Wever) who is called in to investigate the rape of a college student, Amber Stevenson (Danielle Macdonald). In this investigation, we get to see how a rape case should be handled, with careful consideration given to the victim, always asking her permission before broaching painful questions, ensuring she has privacy, giving her the space to react however she wants, and always telling her that there's nothing wrong in what she may be feeling or experiencing. People react in a variety of different ways during and after a rape, and as Det. Duvall gently questions Amber, she gets a ton of information from this brave young woman. When she shares the details of her case with her husband, also a cop, he mentions that a detective in his department has been investigating an eerily similar crime. Duvall reaches out to Detective Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette) and together, the women combine forces to track down a serial rapist who has been terrorizing the women of Colorado.

Did I mention this is all a true story? Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning article, An Unbelievable Story of Rape, by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller, this show is a searing look at the criminal justice system and how we treat the victims of sexual assault. We see the right way and the decidedly wrong way to treat a woman who has just suffered one of the most horrifying moments of her life, and we also witness the aftermath of that incident on her life. Long after the investigation, these women continue to suffer from PTSD, anxiety, and the inability to trust those around them, constantly wondering what they might have done wrong and terrified that they will have to suffer a similar ordeal all over again. As the show cuts back and forth between 2011 and 2008, it's distressing to see how Marie's life is so completely undone by this one night of horror, and you can only desperately hope that the two detectives in Colorado catch this predator years later and deliver some semblance of justice to this woman.

Unbelievable features stunning performances and tells a painful but necessary story. It is hard to watch but it is also an incredible police procedural, highlighting both the failures and the successes that cops are capable of. But most importantly, it's a story about the victims of sexual assault and the manner in which they are often reduced to an object over the course of an investigation. These women have names, they have lives, and they deserve to be heard. No two women react to a violation of this magnitude in the same way, and dismissing anyone's story simply because they don't seem to be acting "appropriately" is a gross miscarriage of justice. So watch this show and develop a better understanding of why so many women are afraid to speak out, and why so many suffer even after they do. 

Chernobyl: Truth Hurts

Chernobyl premiered on HBO in May but I put off watching it until a few weeks ago. I was worried it would be bleak and depressing and what’s the point of rehashing a tragedy from decades past? Well turns out sure, it’s bleak and depressing, but it is also a story filled with heroes and bravery, and incredible lessons that we still need to learn to cope with the current political climate.

The series is a brief five episodes, so it is not a significant time commitment. But boy is there a lot to unpack in each installment. It begins, naturally, with the nuclear meltdown and the immediate response from firemen and emergency personnel and mass confusion among the citizens who live near the power plant. In the subsequent episodes, we are introduced to Valery Legasov (Jared Harris), the scientist tasked with cleaning up this mess and investigating what happened. He is partnered with Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgard), a gruff soldier who seems like he will be Gorbachev’s stooge and always toe the Communist Party line, but turns out to have much more of a backbone and will shift heaven and earth to get Valery everything he needs for the insane effort to clean up the disastrous radioactivity spreading across the country (and even the globe). Emily Mortimer completes the trio as Ulana Khomyuk, a scientist who talks to the survivors from the power plant and tries to piece together what exactly happened that fateful night. She uncovers state secrets and a conspiracy, and the series finale is all about what exactly individuals can do when the information they possess could benefit humanity but doesn’t benefit their political leaders.

In our era of fake news and refusing to believe scientists, Chernobyl is a painful reminder of the cost of lies and willful ignorance. Dozens of brave first responders died as a result of that meltdown - the firemen trying to put out a fire that simply couldn’t be quenched, and the doctors and nurses trying to save men who had been exposed to unimaginable levels of radioactivity and became thoroughly contaminated by the “yellow powder” themselves. In the days following the meltdown, hundreds of soldiers were conscripted to the region to kill animals, evacuate citizens, cut down trees, and bury radioactive bodies under layers of concrete where they would continue to remain radioactive for the next century. Miners were employed to dig a tunnel under one of the reactors - it was hard work and they quickly ditched all their protective gear, because ultimately, it was never going to save them anyway. When actual robots were incapable of clearing the graphite from the roof of the plant because it was too radioactive, biorobots, aka human beings, were employed instead, wrapped up in protective gear and working in 90-second shifts because anything longer would mean death. Of course, everyone ended up getting cancer and dying several years later of radiation-related illnesses, but the Soviet Union never tracked their numbers. We will never quite know the extent of the disaster.

Chernobyl is brilliantly written and powerfully told. It is compelling and educational, telling a story that I had never thought to pay much attention to. I know the name Chernobyl, but the disaster happened before I was born and seemed to be something we had already dealt with. This series reveals how close the world came to being completely obliterated solely because of a weak government that was more keen on propaganda than the truth. If it were not for the brave scientists and citizens who chipped in to clean up the mess, giving up their lives so the rest of the world could be safe, everyone would be much more aware of Chernobyl. Now, however, thanks to this series, we can be aware of these heroes and their sacrifices. And have a think about whether we are yet again putting politics above science and dooming the world to catastrophe.