Three mini-reviews: Memoir of a Snail, A Different Man, The Apprentice
FYC edition of the mini reviews!
We are in the thick of For Your Consideration days, and while I have seen many eligible films, there are still plenty I have not seen, including a number of movies that will likely be in the awards conversation. I am a voting member of four critics organizations: GALECA, OFTA, IFSCA, and IFCA. And while some of those will undoubtedly get a longer review, there are simply too many for me to write about all of them. So here are a few movies I’ve been catching up on and what I thought about them.
Memoir of a Snail (dir. Adam Elliot)
It has been 15 years since Adam Elliot graced us with the melancholic and slightly gruesome film Mary and Max, but he is back with the absolute gem of a film, Memoir of a Snail.
Animated in the same stop-motion style as his previous work, Memoir of a Snail follows the story of twins Grace (Sarah Snook) and Gilbert Perdue (Kodi Smit-McPhee). They are separated following the death of their father. Grace never deals with the trauma of repeated loss and becomes a hoarder of snails, guinea pigs, and romance novels. Her life seems aimless until she meets Pinky (Jacki Weaver), an elderly woman who teaches her what it means to live her life without fear.
This film is an essential reminder that animation isn’t a genre, as this film is very adult in both its animation and its subject matter. But it is an absolutely gorgeous look at familial bonds as well as familial trauma. It is a film about connection and the ways that some people can fall through the cracks but can also be caught and brought back. The storytelling is glum and somewhat straightforward for the bulk of the movie, but the last 10-15 minutes are transcendent. You can watch Memoir of a Snail on VOD.
A Different Man (dir. Aaron Schimberg)
The conversation about representation in cinema has been raging for a while and with good reason. We still see a shocking number of “firsts” in awards shows when it comes to minorities. One area where this is most noticeable is in the disabled community. Marissa Bode made news as the first person who uses a wheelchair to play the wheelchair-bound Nessarose. A Different Man directly addresses the issue of representation, as well as a sense of self, sometimes as shaped by media.
Edward (Sebastian Stan) is a struggling actor who meets Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), a struggling playwright. They form a tentative friendship, but Edward is impeded by his discomfort with his looks as a man with neurofibromatosis, a nerve condition that causes massive tumors on one's face and body. When Edward is offered an opportunity to try a drug that can cure his disease, he takes it, and following his transformation, he puts Edward to death and calls himself Guy.
One day, years later, he stumbles across auditions for Ingrid's play Edward, which examines their relationship from her perspective. He is cast in the role until Oswald (Adam Pearson), an effervescent man with the same disorder, shows up and disrupts Edward’s life.
Both Stan and Pearson give fantastic performances, and the way the film handles the themes of disability and representation is very clear-eyed. The three acts feel a bit disjointed, almost like it’s three short films cut together, but overall, this is one worth watching. A Different Man is available on VOD and will be coming to Max in January.
The Apprentice (dir. Ali Abbasi)
The Apprentice follows Donald Trump’s time with lawyer Roy Cohn, from when he helped Trump settle his violation of the Fair Housing Act in 1973 to Cohn’s death in 1986. It also covers Trump’s relationship with his first wife, Ivana, including him raping her, as she testified in their divorce proceedings in 1990. While the
What surprised me the most about The Apprentice is how little of it feels like a caricature of Trump. The makeup in this film is stellar, giving us a sense of Trump without falling into something that feels stylized or absurd. Sebastian Stan only puts on a “Trumpy” voice in the very final moments of the movie, whereas the bulk of the film is done more or less in his voice with a slight New York accent.
Jeremy Strong also gives a fantastic performance as Roy Cohn, a self-hating queer man who eventually died of AIDS. As with so many of his roles, he plays a big, boisterous character, but his true strength as an actor is in the small, subtle moments.
This isn’t a movie I have any interest in watching again, but it was worth seeing for the performances of both Stan and Strong. Trump is obviously a polarizing figure, so it’s hard to watch this movie without some level of bias. Still, it is a fairly dry biopic compared to what one might expect while covering someone as controversial as Donald Trump. You can watch The Apprentice on VOD.
Agree 100 percent on SNAIL, especially the transcendent ending. I thought Sarah Snook's narration was perfect and worlds away from Shiv!