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Reviews
The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker (2023)
A Sad Cautionary Tale
On the surface, this doc charts the viral popularity of Kai, but really it's about the insidious, predatory nature of parasites who deliberately ignored his VERY obvious mental illness to exploit him for their own gain. The warning signs were there from the minute the cameras started rolling - this is a deeply unwell young man who seems unable to parse reality from delusion, and his story inevitably ends in violence. But hey, he gets clicks so the Kardashian producers want to give him a reality TV show. He looks uncomfortable, like a caged animal in a zoo, but I want a selfie to show my friends. Most of the interviews are industry people detailing the various ways they tried to profit off of him while ignoring glaringly obvious red flags, with few if any showing remorse or even self-awareness. This doc also borders on exploitative, but it has value as a satire of our celebrity-obsessed culture and flippant attitude towards mental illness. I'm just not sure that was the goal.
La Brea (2021)
Sci-Fi Channel-quality Lost ripoff
Remember the boom of micro-budgeted "mockbusters" like Transmorphers that banked on people misreading the title and accidentally renting them from Blockbuster? La Brea is like a mockbuster version of Lost. It has none of the mystery, artistry, ingenuity, wit, or technical craft as Lost, but oh man, do they want to be Lost.
A group of uniformly bland strangers (from Los Angeles no less!) suddenly find themselves in a lush, mysterious setting with scary, out-of-place CGI animals (wolves & a sabretooth tiger instead of polar bears), a selfish, wisecrackin' rogue who chooses to fend for themselves (Sawyer/cop lady), a drugged up but charming sidekick (Charlie/stoned guy, plus a cutaway to a stash of heroin in a trunk instead of a plane), the character who can somehow see beyond our time/dimension (Walt/the Dad), the determined, empathetic leader who at one point calms someone down by talking about breathing (Jack/the Mom), and so on. It's all incredibly predictable and copies beats wholesale from Lost, which could still work with the right casting, performances, mystery and/or suspenseful scenes, but nearly every aspect of this production is flat as a board and DOA. At one point, a character literally suggests they might be on an episode of Lost, so at least the writers have some self awareness about their creative bankruptcy. Even if it wasn't so derivative, this still ranks as one of the worst pilots I've ever seen.
Okja (2017)
Wildly Inconsistent but Bold and Often Very Enjoyable
Bong Joon Ho's follow-up to future cult classic Snowpiercer is part sentimental childhood adventure, part hardcore animal activism movie and part surreal R-rated dark comedy. Without giving anything away, the first two parts work much better than the third, frustratingly so.
Seo-Hyun Ahn is wonderful as Mija, Okja's loving companion, and the first 30 minutes or so that focuses on their relationship is the strongest material here.
Unfortunately, the other performances are all over the map. Jake Gyllenhaal gives a career-worst performance as a "wacky", perpetually drunk, borderline psychotic television host, and he alternates between channeling Jerry Lewis at a 10 and what I can only assume is one of the prisoners from Silence of the Lambs. It absolutely doesn't work at all, comedically or narratively, and he is the very, very, very low point of an otherwise enjoyable ride, completely at odds with the rest of the film. How the studio, filmmakers or actors watched this excruciatingly cartoonish performance and found it remotely acceptable is staggering, but it's a Razzie slam-dunk if I've ever seen one and it severely detracts from the overall experience.
The surreal, eccentric subplot about Tilda Swinton's character and her corporate empire fares slightly better in that it is never cringe-inducing, but still feels at odds with the tone of the Okja-Mija relationship, which is perhaps the only part of the story played relatively straight, for the better.
The film doesn't dance around its unsubtle messages about animals, factory farming and GM foods, to say the least. Some might be taken aback or even appalled at the unapologetic hardcore animal liberation themes, which include graphic, uncomfortable scenes of sadistic animal abuse, and even holocaust allusions. Holocaust allusions in a kid's adventure movie, you say? Welcome to Okja. Did I mention the film is rated R?
Still, if you can be forgiving of some truly curious decisions about tone and plotting, you'll probably enjoy Okja - the best parts of the film, like the heartfelt Okja-Mija relationship and a handful of riveting, beautifully put together action sequences, are so good that it makes the less successful choices more palatable. As of now I'd give it a 6.5 or so, but editing out Jake Gyllenhaal's atrocious performance would automatically bump it up a whole number.