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All abuzz for American Honey
New movies opening this week include Long Way North and The Accountant
American Honey: Sasha Lane stars as Star.
Movie
American Honey ****
…needs lots of American worker bees to make it, a roving swarm that labors for the sake of preserving the hive and comforting the queen, and thinks of nothing else. (If that analogy seems a bit much, just take note of the preponderance of bugs through this captivating film’s generous but well-considered runtime.) In this case, that means a van full of Lost Boys and Girls, roaming the heartland and selling magazines door to door under the stern care of their ladyboss Crystal. Except, of course, the grime of commerce has a way of getting under your fingernails (and your clothes, and your skin…), and super-seller Jake (a revelatory Shia LaBeouf) quickly makes it clear to our runaway heroine Star (a mesmerizing Sasha Lane) that what you’re selling isn’t magazines, it’s you. Writer-director Andrea Arnold artfully sets love against money and manages one of the best endings in recent memory. She does a lot of other things right as well, using the kids' use of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll (well, hip-hop) to illustrate both the nightmare and promise of being young and alarmingly free in America.
American Honey is the second movie from a Brit director about economic hardship in America that has won me over this year — the first being Hell or High Water. Where Hell is tight, polished, and tense, Honey is loose, ragged, and suffused with a mostly amorphous but occasionally pointed sense of dread.
Hell is about recovering what’s been lost from the Bastard Haves; Honey is about somehow staying human among the Ravenous Have Nots. Hell left me hankering to thrill to it again; Honey left me drained but glad I had taken the ride. I liked them both for different reasons is what I’m saying.
The Accountant, on the other hand...I think there were two or three things Gavin O’Connor was interested in doing, and they had to do with fathers and sons and fighting. After that, he let the high concept of “high-functioning autistic man whose every bug is a feature” do the work and counted on emotional hooks to keep the audience’s interest, whether or not they made much sense. I think it would’ve been vastly more effective (if, gasp, less relatable) to make Affleck’s character truly as damaged as someone who had his condition and his upbringing would have been. Ah, well.
I was much happier with Long Way North’s interest in telling a simple adventure story with simple animated images. Simple can of course be engaging and also beautiful.
Scott got the short end of the movie stick this week: he despised the exploitation in Desierto, tolerated the filmmaking in Closet Monster, and suffered through Clinton, Inc. only to see it go unreleased here in San Diego. (Spoiler: he didn’t care for it.)
Unreviewed by us but well-regarded elsewhere: the Kevin Hart stand-up film What Now? Unreviewed by us but admired by our predecessor: The Battle of Algiers. Unreviewed by us but poorly regarded elsewhere: Passage to Mars.
Here's something you might be interested in.
All abuzz for American Honey
New movies opening this week include Long Way North and The Accountant
All abuzz for American Honey
New movies opening this week include Long Way North and The Accountant
American Honey: Sasha Lane stars as Star.
Movie
American Honey ****
…needs lots of American worker bees to make it, a roving swarm that labors for the sake of preserving the hive and comforting the queen, and thinks of nothing else. (If that analogy seems a bit much, just take note of the preponderance of bugs through this captivating film’s generous but well-considered runtime.) In this case, that means a van full of Lost Boys and Girls, roaming the heartland and selling magazines door to door under the stern care of their ladyboss Crystal. Except, of course, the grime of commerce has a way of getting under your fingernails (and your clothes, and your skin…), and super-seller Jake (a revelatory Shia LaBeouf) quickly makes it clear to our runaway heroine Star (a mesmerizing Sasha Lane) that what you’re selling isn’t magazines, it’s you. Writer-director Andrea Arnold artfully sets love against money and manages one of the best endings in recent memory. She does a lot of other things right as well, using the kids' use of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll (well, hip-hop) to illustrate both the nightmare and promise of being young and alarmingly free in America.
American Honey is the second movie from a Brit director about economic hardship in America that has won me over this year — the first being Hell or High Water. Where Hell is tight, polished, and tense, Honey is loose, ragged, and suffused with a mostly amorphous but occasionally pointed sense of dread.
Hell is about recovering what’s been lost from the Bastard Haves; Honey is about somehow staying human among the Ravenous Have Nots. Hell left me hankering to thrill to it again; Honey left me drained but glad I had taken the ride. I liked them both for different reasons is what I’m saying.
The Accountant, on the other hand...I think there were two or three things Gavin O’Connor was interested in doing, and they had to do with fathers and sons and fighting. After that, he let the high concept of “high-functioning autistic man whose every bug is a feature” do the work and counted on emotional hooks to keep the audience’s interest, whether or not they made much sense. I think it would’ve been vastly more effective (if, gasp, less relatable) to make Affleck’s character truly as damaged as someone who had his condition and his upbringing would have been. Ah, well.
I was much happier with Long Way North’s interest in telling a simple adventure story with simple animated images. Simple can of course be engaging and also beautiful.
Scott got the short end of the movie stick this week: he despised the exploitation in Desierto, tolerated the filmmaking in Closet Monster, and suffered through Clinton, Inc. only to see it go unreleased here in San Diego. (Spoiler: he didn’t care for it.)
Unreviewed by us but well-regarded elsewhere: the Kevin Hart stand-up film What Now? Unreviewed by us but admired by our predecessor: The Battle of Algiers. Unreviewed by us but poorly regarded elsewhere: Passage to Mars.
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