Tag: Robert Longstreet

Sorry to Bother You is one of those films that sort of snuck up on me with a roar. I heard idle mentions of it earlier in the year, but didn’t go out of my way to do further research.

I knew the star. I guessed the theme. And yet none of that would prepare me for the trailer.

The trailer felt very fresh and told me that this. Would be a movie with a lot going on. A sort of extreme satire, maybe very political, but whatever it is it has a message and will be both subliminal and superliminal with that message.

I was excited and ready for this screening, without really knowing what it might give me.

I am getting a Japan / sumo wrestler headband vibe here.

Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) is your regular, down on his luck, poor, brother. He is living in a garage in the house of his uncle (Terry Crews), with his long term girlfriend artist (Tessa Thompson), and they aren’t having a lot of luck making money.

But Cassius is able to get a job working as a telemarketer, working for commission. It is better than nothing. And he has the promise that if he does good, he can go to the top floors of the company. He can ride in the special elevator. He can be a “power caller,” and make the big bucks. No one really knows what they sell up there, but it ain’t magazines and book sets.

Cassius is told to just stick to the script, don’t get out of line, and make money. Once he makes money, he can make more money and more and be a success for once. Especially if he taps into his white person voice.

Starring David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Lily James, Forest Whitaker, and Rosario Dawson! Or at least their voices. Also starring Jermaine Fowler, Steven Yeun, Omari Hardwick, Armie Hammer, Robert Longstreet, Danny Glover, Kate Berlant. and Michael X. Sommers, that would be their voices and their bodies.

This is how white people drink champagne.

Strangely enough, the trailer for Sorry To Bother You only gave you a slice of the whole story, so I tried to do the same with my plot. There is a whole lot more that goes into this story. Topics of slavery (multiple levels) , class warfare, poverty, selling out, and American indifference to clear wrongs in the world. This movie coming out now is extremely well timed given the border problems that keep getting swept away by other media distractions.

It is not a film to use subtle clues to drive the point home. No, these clues are obvious, with a hammer. Fuck, one of the most uncomfortable scenes was the precursor to a “rap” where the chants, the disparity of the cast, made everything all too real and uncomfortable.

Stanfield is amazing in this film as our lead. His senses will probably always align with the audience on the scale of what is right and wrong and when to finally draw the line. Oh yes, you will know when that line is drawn. It was good seeing Yeun in a role very different than his previous work. Thompson was great. Hardwick was as well, despite more limited time, and Hammer was a blast going full crazy CEO for this film.

Unfortunately, areas do feel a bit clunky and jarring. Especially in the end, time seems to go by strangely and not everything seems to have the same attention to detail as earlier on in the film.

Sorry To Bother You will be looked back as an important work, with extreme topics in order to get the point heard loudly.

Hey! A new movie, on Netflix! That means this bad boy didn’t go to theaters, it just appeared in our lives, and in some film festivals. Because I had quite a few critic friends talking about it, and I had no idea why.

When I heard the words I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore, I groaned. Last thing I need to see is a bunch of twenty-somethings bitching about the tiniest inconveniences and quoting Futurama. I then assumed it was some indie movie opening in five theaters across the USA, and only decided to watch it when I got on Netflix and the film slapped its dick in my face.

And even then I had reluctance. It was that little boy from those ring movies that made me want to watch it.

Actual footage of man me and girl me glaring at the movie from afar. In my car.

Ruth (Melanie Lynskey, indie movie princess) is pissed off at the world. She is a nursing assistant, but that doesn’t matter right now. She lives alone, has some friends, and people piss her off. People cut in front of her at the supermarket, dogs shit on her lawn, people spoil the book series she is reading, and someone broke into her house, fucked it all up, and stole some of her things.

Oh yeah, that is a pretty big one. She is shaken up about the whole thing, even more upset that the police (Gary Anthony Williams) seems to not give a shit about it, taking her statement and not giving her hope for restitution.

So she sets out to finding the culprit on her own, footprints and all. And after a brief tiff, she enlists the help of a neighbor, Tony (Elijah Wood), who is upset over theft in the neighborhood. They have hacking skills, ninja stars, and they are pissed off at the world. They will find out who took her stuff and there will be some sort of payback. Maybe a stern talking to.

Also starring Christine Woods, David Yow, Devon Graye, Robert Longstreet, and Jane Levy.

Nothing like book spoilers to spoil ones appetite as well.

Despite my rantings about indie films, I really didn’t know what to expect. Elijah Wood has been doing a lot of this darker, trippy stuff in his post Hobbit career. There was Sin City, there was Wilfred, Cooties, and now this. And of course Tobey Maguire was in The Details, which is kind of the same thing since they are similar. I didn’t expect this film to be a dark comedy, but once it started, it delivered hand over feet.

It has a few shocking events, sudden escalations, death, violence, and a bit of realism. If there is a fight, both sides are getting hurt and in unexpected ways, as they realize they are NOT superheroes. There is real danger for the characters involved and a lot of morally gray areas as well. And morally very very black areas, but we get through those as well.

This has got to be Lynskey’s best work to date. I am not going to call myself a super fan of hers or anything, and I have only seen a handful of roles, but most of them are side characters, reserved, and forgettable. In this film, it is HER movie, she grows as a character, she starts to take charge, and it is a good change.

If this film had problems, it would mostly just involve the ending. How everything ends up resolved might not match the tone from the rest of the film. It also took me awhile to really get into it, the build up being necessary, but still unexciting.