Movie Reviews: Sia makes Music; Mena Suvari looks at What Lies Below
Music is the directorial debut from singer-songwriter Sia.
(12A) stars Maddie Ziegler as the eponymous heroine, a young woman on the autism spectrum whose life is upended when her grandmother Millie (Mary Kay Place) dies. Enter Music’s half-sister Zu (Kate Hudson), recently released from prison and a recovering alcoholic who can barely take care of herself, let alone address Music’s special needs. Not that she has any intention of trying: Zu has only returned home to case Millie’s home for loose cash and items worth pawning.
Until that is, she meets her new neighbour, the charming Ebo (Leslie Odom Jr.), a Ghanaian immigrant whose easy-going style seems to soothe Music whenever she gets too stressed. The directorial debut from singer-songwriter Sia (who co-writes with Dallas Clayton), Music embraces the conventions of the romantic drama but reshapes them to offer unconventional perspectives. Kate Hudson and Leslie Odom Jr. create sparks as the leading pair, not least because both Zu and Ebo are hiding secrets from one another, but it’s through the character of Music that the film truly comes to life.
Music is physically and socially awkward in the ‘real’ world, but when she plugs into her songs – she’s never seen without her headphones – Music is totally in sync with who she truly is, starring in pop videos that allow her to process the traumas of the external world (imagine a surreal collaboration between Bjork and Lady Gaga and you get some sense of how vivid is Music’s imagination).
Previously a dancer in Sia’s pop videos, Maddie Ziegler is a revelation here in the twin roles of the autistic Music and as her dancing queen alter-ego, delivering a moving performance that refuses to resort to sentimentality. All told, it’s a hugely impressive feature-length debut from Sia, and one that suggests we’ll be seeing her back behind the camera very soon. (internet release)
She played one of this generation’s best femme fatales in Gone Girl, but Rosamund Pike is even more cold-bloodedly ruthless in (15A). Here she plays Marla Grayson, a legal guardian who takes responsibility for the sick and vulnerable, and who abuses her position to bleed dry the finances of those in her care.
Her latest victim is Jennifer Petersen (Dianne Wiest), a wealthy retiree who is shipped off to an old folks home without having a say in the matter. Unfortunately for Marla, Jennifer is not who she pretends to be, and soon Marla discovers that she’s butting heads with Roman Lunyov (Peter Dinklage), formerly of the Russian mafia and now a freelance purveyor of mayhem and murder. J Blakeson’s film is rather undermined by the fact that both of its main players are utterly despicable human beings, which leaves the audience between a rock and a hard place when it comes to choosing who to root for: Peter Dinklage is terrific value as the gloomy, malevolent crime boss, while Rosamund Pike is bracingly cruel in her role of an impeccably groomed Nurse Ratched.
That said, and as the ironic title suggests, Blakeson is more interested in satire than he is in providing us with the standard story of good-vs-evil: Marla’s sprawling empire is described as ‘the perfect example of the American dream’ even as it leaches its aged victims of every last cent they possess and does so with the connivance of health professionals, the judiciary and the police. Some of the twists are a little improbable, even by the standards of the genre, but for the most part, I Care a Lot is an entertainingly audacious account of how easily the care ‘industry’ can be abused and exploited. (Amazon Prime)
(15A) opens as a domestic suspense horror when rebellious teen Libby (Ema Horvath) meets John (Trey Tucker), the new boyfriend of her mom Michelle (Mena Suvari). A marine biologist whose job is to ‘speed up mother nature,’ John is devilishly handsome, slick and charming, although perhaps we should fear the worst when he presents Libby, on first meeting her, with a bracelet that is a token of ancient Phoenician fertility.
That’s just for starters, though, and the truth about John is far more shocking than Libby initially suspects: Braden Duemmler’s film is a body-shock horror in the vein of David Cronenberg’s early work (John’s speciality as a scientist is the study of the parasitic lamprey), with some gothic sci-fi creepiness added just to keep things spicy.
Very likely the most attractive male scientist ever to appear in film, Trey Tucker is deliciously sinister as the predatorial John, and while the story tends to lurch from one implausible scenario to another, the intensity of his push-pull relationship with Libby ensures that it crackles with tension. (internet release)
