Tag Archives: 2021

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CAPSULE: NEPTUNE FROST (2021)

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Neptune Frost is currently available for VOD rental or purchase.

DIRECTED BY: Anisia Uzeyman, Saul Williams

FEATURING: Cheryl Isheja, Bertrand Ninteretse (AKA Kaya Free), Elvis Ngabo

PLOT: In an alternate-reality African nation, an escaped coltan miner teams up with an intersexed refugee to hack global information systems through their dreams.

Still from Neptune Frost (2021)
COMMENTS: Neptune Frost‘s scenario involves an authoritarian crackdown in an imaginary African country; a resistance movement composed of university students, refugees, and escaped coltan miners; and global hacking accomplished in dreams. With a first act that indiscriminately flips back and forth between two different on-the-run protagonists, one of whom is played by two actors, and dialogue spoken and sung in five different languages, Neptune Frost loses viewers in its thickets early on. And that’s before the first big musical number—in which a dream spirit transports the dreamer into a black-lit, monitor-lined room festooned with spinning rainbow bicycle wheels and advises him (later her) to “hack” into abstract systems like land rights, labor, and greed—even occurs. The film is aware of its own difficulty: a third of the way through, a character addresses the viewer directly: “Maybe you’re asking yourself WTF is this? A poet’s idea of a dream?”

Persevere through the confusion, or at least get yourself into a headspace where you’re not invested in everything adding up in a rational way, and you’ll find much to appreciate in Neptune Frost. Foremost is the music, which ranges from work songs (which carry over into protest songs) to dreamy electronica-based trance chants, and eventually full-bore hip-hop bashes. The African setting—landscapes, dress, flora and fauna—fosters a unique language of images. The costuming tends to the bizarre: background characters have keyboard parts and diodes glued to their clothes and faces, a spirit has a head enclosed in a semicircular wicker cage, the state’s brutal police favor pink uniforms, and Neptune herself sometimes has a bird’s nest on her shoulder. As it progresses, the movie throws datastreams of glitchy cybernetic psychedelia at the screen to represent its mystical hack of the global order. The narrative remains hard-to-follow all the way to the end, but themes of technology, gender, colonialism, and DIY revolutionary politics (local, global, and imaginary) float in and out of the mix. The film’s aesthetic may be Afrofuturist, but its style is Afrosurrealist.

Truthfully, there is almost too much to process in Neptune Frost: both the characters and the events can be a chore to sort out. The film’s concepts are half-hidden in a haze of impressionistic poetry and song (with phrases such as “binary crime,” “martyr loser king,” and “unanimous goldmine” carrying obscure significance); although at other times, messages are delivered bluntly (one song bears the refrain, “fuck Mr. Google”). It’s no surprise to learn that writer Saul Williams is a poet and musician. If Neptune Frost sometimes feels like a concept album brought to life, that may be because there is one: Williams’ 2016 left-field rap album Martyrloserking (and two sequels), plus a graphic novel. This world is much wider than the slice we see in the film, and further exploration may yield more answers than are given here. Neptune Frost comes achingly close to a general “” rating, and also to a “” rating. But ultimately, while impressive, I think the project’s appeal is decidedly niche: fans of Afrofuturism, proponents pf progressive (verging on radical) politics, and advocates of African film in general (of which we have far too few examples). If you’re not in one of those groups, but have adventurous tastes in cinema and are up for a challenge, then Neptune Frost is also a worthwhile visit: there is truly nothing quite like it out there.

Neptune Frost opens June 3 in New York City and Dallas, expanding to additional art-house theaters through June. We’ll let you know when streaming options get sorted out.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a bold, bizarre, and unflinchingly confident debut that prompts its audience to interrogate the very real human costs of the information age through the speculative lens of a future both vastly different and uncannily similar to our own.”–Toussaint Egan, Polygon (festival screening)

Capsules

CAPSULE: ULTRASOUND (2021)

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Utrasound is currently available for VOD rental.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Rob Schroeder

FEATURING: Vincent Kartheiser, Chelsea Lopez, Bob Stephenson, , Tunde Adebimpe

PLOT: After a car accident, a man spends a night at a couple’s remote house and—at the husband’s insistence—sleeps with his much younger wife, which leads to an increasingly strange series of events.

Still from Ultrasound (2021)

COMMENTS: Glenn blows out a tire in the rain returning from a remote wedding and takes shelter at the home of a strange couple. After an awkward evening between Glenn, heavyset “depressive” host Art, and his young wife, Cyndi, the scene suddenly switches to a new character, a woman swimming laps in a pool. She sometimes appears pregnant, and sometimes not.

“I don’t see the link between the two things,” says Glenn, much later, from a wheelchair. “It will all make sense as we go along, I promise” assures the therapist who’s guiding him through a roleplay exercise as a form of physical therapy.

Juggling multiple plots and subplots, the script basically keeps the promise suggested by the above line of dialogue. Characters will sometimes appear to change into other characters or locations into other locations, and their lives will take major turns without explicit explanations. Two pregnancies, which may or may not be pregnancies, supply part of the impetus for the title Ultrasound. Besides Art, Glenn, Cyndi, and the mysterious swimming woman, there’s a major conspiracy afoot, and a couple of other subplots running around, making for a movie that demands close attention if you want to figure it all out (a careful second viewing will, of course, make the timelines clearer, and allow you to catch otherwise obscure clues).

The acting is good, with veteran character actor Bob Stephenson a standout as the unassuming but subtly persuasive Art. (“Art has gotten so weird lately,” says one character, and another corrects her: “more emphasis on so weird.”) The score and sound design effectively increase the tension in moments when things seem “off” even though there is not much action onscreen. Although the sets and visuals aren’t lavish, first-time director Schroeder frames some clever compositions: in one shot, a countertop lines up with a refrigerator and a cabinet to create an imaginary line down the middle of the frame—a sort of in-camera split screen effect implying a world divided into different realities.

Still, it’s the script that’s the standout here. Ultrasound‘s profound paranoia resonates in our gaslit world of deepfakes, fake news, and fake claims of fake news. But it’s possible to puzzle our way through the illusions: the screenplay answers nearly all our questions, and what it leaves ambiguous is easily filled in by the savvy viewer. A satisfying outing for fans of reality-bending films who demand answers to the mysteries and aren’t afraid to do a little mental lifting to get them.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Weird, disorientating, and complex, Ultrasound compels the viewer into a fugue state into which this darkly dangerous science-fiction can unfold and wrap around then. Some truly uncomfortable ideas around the ability to control others are told through an overtly science-fiction lens, but the potential truth within the film is what makes it a harrowing watch.”–Kat Hughes, The Hollywood News (festival screening)

Capsules

CAPSULE: OFFSEASON (2021)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Jocelin Donahue, , Richard Brake, Jeremy Gardner

PLOT: After receiving a letter from the local cemetery caretaker, Marie returns to the island where her mother grew up.

COMMENTS: “Rhymes with ‘Smagon’.”

That’s all I’ve got. Because frankly, I have no idea what to tell you about this film apart from the following: it moves by quickly enough (which is a considerable relief) and it tells a mere shaving of the story it could have told. Offseason has all the elements: antiquated motifs (is this set in the ’80s?), madness, tales of a sea demon, and mysteriousness without much by way of reason. This final point is worth exploring, if only because, as in the far-better crafted tales from the Mythos Man himself, one can find something enjoyably unsettling in phenomena with no ready explanation. But Lovecraft’s unspeakable horrors all gelled into a gut-level understanding despite—or rather, owing to—the inexplicability of their horrifying events. Writer/director Mickey Keating’s movie feels more like a cobbling together of random eldritch parts into an ungainly stack of “Meh”.

When Marie Aldrich (wide-eyed and single-noted Jocelin Donahue) receives a letter informing her that her mother’s grave has been vandalized, she immediately heads to Lone Palm Island with her Gentleman (Husband? Ex-husband? Friend? Regardless, he’s played by Joe Swanberg, a poor man’s Philip Seymour Hoffman) and misses her first cue to head home. It’s a dark and stormy night when they arrive, and the bridge keeper (Richard Brake, a poor man’s Stephen McHattie) advises the out-of-towners that the island is “closed for the season.” This revelation is odd, but not so odd that Marie pays it any mind, and she insists on gaining entry. In the cemetery is a friendly Little Old Lady; surrounding the cemetery is a forest filled with blank-eyed townspeople. In town is the local drinking hole, “the Sand Trap” (its name yet another hint), in which a honky-tonk piano tune is being played, and whose patrons literally all stop and stare at Marie and Gentleman upon their entrance. Shifty-but-earnest Man With Boat (Jeremy Gardner, a poor man’s Michael Shannon) is there, and as his designation suggests, he has a boat—and is strangely insistent that Marie visit him later.

You get the gist. Keating somehow manages to overplay the surface goings on while ignoring virtually all of the interesting possibilities beneath. I am not giving too much away when I tell you I am very interested in the deal-with-sea-demon background for this island town. (This particular tidbit is dropped at the slightest prompt by any citizen one might encounter in the… off season.) But the story here spins out over an excessively prodding film score (the strings in particular seem to be shrieking, “Something Unsettling Is Going On!”) and features far too many of Marie’s wanderings through empty streets and semi-creepy back rooms. (I will admit, though, that I quite liked the amble through the historical society.) So yes, please: tell me more about the founding of Lone Palm Island. And spin me some yarns about the arduous existence faced by those who are blessed-cursed by the demon. Come to think of it, this premise was explored with actual tension, and humor, in The Endless. Go watch that again instead.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“If you enjoy surreal, nightmarish horror, then you’re likely to enjoy Offseason.”–Staci Layne Wilson, Women in Horror (contemporaneous)