Smash Cut

Tag: Christopher Abbott

  • ‘Black Bear’ is Aubrey Plaza’s best performance to date | movie review

    ‘Black Bear’ is Aubrey Plaza’s best performance to date | movie review

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    A young couple’s relationship is thrown into turmoil when an enigmatic filmmaker moves in with them to try and complete her latest film in Black Bear.

    With its sharp script, interesting structure, and a watershed performance by Aubrey Plaza, Black Bear is a deliciously entertaining and satirical quasi-thriller romp about what it is to be a creative.

    Black Bear is streaming on Paramount+. You can subscribe here.

    Black Bear, which premiered in the NEXT section of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, invokes feelings of a cross between a relationship drama like Before Midnight and a meta satire like One Cut of the Dead. And if that combination sounds crazy, it kind of is. Black Bear could have easily felt like a party trick of a film where a mid-movie shift changes everything you know about the film. Still, it manages to be more than a clever gimmick. 

    While Lawrence Michael Levine’s careful direction and sharp screenplay help, it is Aubrey Plaza’s dynamite performance as protagonist Allison that does a lot of the work to pull the movie off. Allison at first comes off like an alternate version of Plaza herself. She is a writer, director, and actress who escapes to the mountain home of a friend of a friend to get over a bout of writer’s block—and she maintains the same dry deadpan wit that is patently Plaza. 

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    The homeowners who are hosting Allison, Gabe (Christopher Abbott—also in Possessor at the festival) and Blair (Enemy’s Sarah Gadon), are a long-term couple—important to note that they’re not married—who are expecting a child. They’ve been offering their isolated lake home to creatives hoping to help inspire them, as they are with Allison, a filmmaker trying to complete writing her latest film.

    From the start, it’s clear that there is some simmering tension between the trio. Blair and Gabe seem to constantly contradict each other and take subtle jabs that they know sting. At the same time, it’s clear that Gabe is attracted to Allison, which Blair picks up on. It leaves her in the odd position of hosting Allison while trying to steer her boyfriend in the right direction. 

    The tension that Levine derives is palpable, though something seems off. Things seem maybe a touch too perfect. Or maybe too dramatic? Perhaps it’s that the dialogue is hyper stylized? Or maybe too natural. Eventually the movie answers at least part of the question of what’s going on, but I will spare you the detail because the reveal is all a part of the trick that makes the movie work. 

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    Black Bear is about everything and nothing. Not that it doesn’t have a clear purpose, but because of its experimental structure its allegiances are unclear. There are threads for and against the creative process, relationships, and gender dynamics that could have all easily become overwrought. But because of the way the movie twists to a sharp, satirical tone that is at times uproariously funny you’re never left too deep in dramatic waters. Until the climax. 

    The only proper way to end this review is with a full paragraph of praise for Aubrey Plaza’s performance which I’ll begin with ARE YOU F#CKING KIDDING ME!? Plaza’s performance is mind-blowing in its complexity. Allison herself is a character that code switches depending on who she’s talking to, but at the same time seems susceptible to manipulation. Or is she? Her thoughts are opaque and oh so transparent at the same time to the point that you can at times see her thinking through how she should come off at any given moment. But when that scene happens, and you’ll know it when you see it, you know exactly what she’s thinking. Give her the damn Oscar. 

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    Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter and Letterboxd. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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  • ‘Possessor’ puts gore to good use | movie review

    ‘Possessor’ puts gore to good use | movie review

    Possessor tells the gruesome story of an assassin who is able to take control of a subjects body to carry out her hits

    Possessor may be diabolically gruesome to the point of excess, however, it uses the gut-wrenching feelings it derives to great use in a story that is more than… skin deep.

    One could try and sum up Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor — which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year — as an arthouse techno body horror version of Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Though, that still doesn’t even begin to describe the diabolically visceral experience of watching the film.

    Laced with some of the most horrific gore I’ve seen in a film in, well, ever, Possessor is a lot more than the bloody exploitation of its surface. Like his father, filmmaker legend David Cronenberg (The Fly, Videodrome), the younger Cronenberg uses the disturbing imagery to explore something more. Something deeply human—how our identity alternatively works for and against us.

    In the prologue, we follow a woman we come to know as Holly (Gabrielle Graham). As she stares in the mirror, she plunges a needle attached to a device into her head. As she turns a dial, her emotions change from happy and laughing to crying to nothing. Later, she walks into a crowded restaurant, grabs a knife, and violently murders a man before her. She takes a gun that she brought and goes to turn it on herself. However a force prevents her from pulling the trigger. Instead, as the cops arrive, she turns the gun on them and is shot multiple times until she’s dead.

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    Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.



    Possessor movie
    Possessor movie
    Possessor movie

    Later we’ll learn that Holly wasn’t actually controlling her own body—it makes Graham’s short performance all the more impressive—and instead it was Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough), a sort of assassin who uses brain-implant technology to inhabit a subjects body and use them to carry out hits for clients without anyone suspecting a thing.

    Such is the case with her next job which involves inhabiting the body of Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott), to murder his girlfriend Ava (Tuppence Middleton) and her father John (Sean Bean), a billionaire and CEO of a large corporation, so that his stepson could take control of the business. Using Colin’s drug use and insecure masculinity as a cover for the crime.

    Refreshingly, Possessor avoids much of the heavy exposition that a movie with as high a concept usually is bogged down by. Instead, Cronenberg only gives us enough information to understand while focusing more on story and character, which is wise considering there is so much to unpack.

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    While we watch Tasya in Colin’s body go about setting up the crime, there is the subtext of her slow loss of grip on reality. Earlier we watch her go to visit her husband and son, however before going in she prepares rehearses what to say. Not because she’s nervous, but seemingly because she forgot how to be a person. Taking someone’s identity and committing increasing vile and gruesome murders will do that to a person.

    Usually, that’d be an asset to someone with Tasya’s choice of career, however instead of helping her, it’s giving Colin an opening to take control back of his body. And that’s where Possessor becomes truly great. With sometimes stomach-churning gore, Cronenberg portrays the psychic warfare between Tasya and Colin as a neon-drenched assault on the senses that is as engrossing as it is disturbing to watch.

    While Cronenberg doesn’t take full advantage of everything the world he’s concocted has to offer, he instead relied on its simplicity to dive into its complexities. Supported by understated but emotive cinematography by and Karim Hussain and engrossing score by Jim Williams, Possessor is nothing short of a test of will, but a test that is rewarding in the end. Because amid the carnage is something beautifully human.

    Possessor will be available on VOD next month.

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    More movies, less problems

    Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter and Letterboxd. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

    💌 Sign up for our weekly email newsletter with movie recommendations available to stream.

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