Fargo feels like Blood Simple, the Coens' neo-noir debut, got fed through the genre, well, woodchipper, producing a pitch-black comedy about the emptiness of greed. It's messing with you from the moment it opens with a blatant lie about being a true story, with Joel Coen later saying, 'If an audience believes that something's based on a real event, it gives you permission to do things they may otherwise not accept.'
"In cinema, three elements can move: objects, the camera itself and the audience's point of attention," Drew McClellan says to the crowd before showing an example on the projector screen. The clip is a memorable scene from Jordan's Peele's 2017 film, "Get Out," when the protagonist (Daniel Kaluuya) goes out for a late-night smoke and sees the groundskeeper sprinting toward him - in the direction of the camera and the viewer - before abruptly changing direction at the last second.
Have you seen this man lope around, as he does in Jay Kelly through Italian forests and expansive villas? He's awful at it. And it's so endearing! The film blurs the line between fact and fiction by featuring clips from Clooney's real movies and crediting them to the titular actor, insisting Kelly is one of the last A-listers in an industry shedding Hollywood's old guard.
As children, we are taught, by parents and supportive adults which behaviors are expected to navigate our society successfully. One aspect of this learning includes adopting societal norms and a moral code that determines when interactions and situations are deemed "right" and "wrong."
It was refreshing to watch this film after now having sat through 30 years' worth of biopics of various musical figures. This movie removes pretty much all the baloney that most biopics think they need to include.
Zombie movies are scary because they render the intimate so impersonal that we have to admit there's no difference between them, making '28 Days Later' particularly unsettling.