The tag team of Bernard and CJ run wild on this episode as they talk about Denis Villeneuve’s new film, Sicario, as well as make sense of a blood-boiling argument Bernard had with a friend about the plausibility of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer. Also, highlights from the roundtable interview Bernard had with Andrew Garfield, the star of Ramin Bahrani’s housing crisis drama 99 Homes. All that, plus our Indie Picks of the Week on this week’s exciting installment of the Indiecast!

Topics

• Indie Picks (3:34)
• Plausibility For Dummies (10:02)
• Sicario (29:22)
• Andrew Garfield (48:03)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

99 Homes TIFF Review
Sicario Review
Victoria TIFF Review
Jafar Panahi’s Taxi Review

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It’d be hard for anyone to poke holes in Sicario, a dark, pulpy thriller crafted exceptionally well by director Denis Villeneuve and his team. The story starts as a slow-burn mystery, following Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), a wary FBI agent slung head-first into a shady government task force mission meant to cleanse the U.S./Mexico border of drugs, corruption, and violence. As the streets fill with blood we slowly uncover, with Kate, more and more of the truth behind her new team’s blatantly unethical methods of crime-fighting, the film develops into a tense, action-packed scramble that will leave you gasping for breath.

Sicario is so confidently presented that many of its finer details may go under-appreciated. One subtlety that comes to mind is the sense of traversal Villeneuve creates to immerse us in the story’s nightmarish setting. Early in the film, we see Kate traveling with her team in a caravan of armed vehicles, rolling through the streets of Juarez en route to apprehending a suspect that may lead them to the head of the cartel. We see bodies hanging under an overpass like aging meat, their bodies mutilated, blood dried. Aerial shots of Mexico fill the screen with orange, dusty earth, emphasizing the fact that the Americans are invaders in a sprawling, buzzing hornet’s nest. Cinematographer Roger Deakins is invaluable, shooting Mexico as a forbidden place polluted by death and despair.

The care Villeneuve puts into making these sequences, in which we take time to watch the team travel from point A to point B, is the core of what makes Sicario so engrossing. The tension builds with each gruesome thing we see, each morally indefensible act Kate is forced to participate in. The storytelling evokes a sinking feeling of “I’m not supposed to be here” that makes every little moment terrifying in its own, twisted way. It’s one of those great movies that forces you to go at its pace rather than pandering to yours. It can be unbearably intense at times, which in turn makes it an unforgettable, white-knuckle experience.

Blunt is supported by two of the industry’s best, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro. Brolin plays a Department of Defense consultant named Matt who acts as the veritable keeper of secrets on the task force’s. He’s a laid-back, Dude-like agent who only gets serious when he’s on the front lines or when Kate is badgering him for the truth. The enigmatic shadow hanging over the movie is Del Toro’s Alejandro, a skilled killer and torturer whose presence on the team worries Kate maybe more than anything. Why is he here, and who does he actually work for?

This is one of the best performances of Del Toro’s career. As Alejandro, he intimidates his prey not just by hurting them (though he does loads of that), but by invading their space. In the cramped back seat of a car, he extracts information from a corrupt cop not by punching him, but by driving his finger into his hostage’s ear canal. When the hostage refuses to talk, he leans his body weight on him, driving his shoulder up under his chin as if to say in a twisted gesture of dominance. When we learn the truth behind Alejandro’s motivations, the character and performance become even richer.

The second half of the film would be standard action fare if stood on its own, but when stood on the foundation of paranoia and confusion built in the first half, it’s volcanic, heart-stopping entertainment. The story’s revelations don’t come easy or quickly, but when they do, they’re rattling and resonant and will stick with you for days.

Matthew Heineman’s documentary Cartel Land was a shock to the system, taking us deep into the belly of the border drug war, and Sicario serves as a perfect narrative companion, exploring the seedy underworld through a more poetic, explicitly violent lens. Does the Sicario demonize Mexico? No. It considers the psychology of the people who drive the conflict that ravages those terrorized towns on the border and questions the nature of U.S. involvement. Villeneuve, his cast, and crew have made an undeniable, powerful film that works on so many levels it’s scary.

There’s no better evidence of Denis Villeneuve‘s handle of craft than in Sicario. Directing a tightly paced screenplay by Taylor Sheridan, Villeneuve follows Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), an FBI agent recruited to join a task force headed by government worker Matt (Josh Brolin) and his intense sidekick Alejandro (Benicio del Toro). From the start, Kate realizes she’s out of her depth; Matt and Alejandro lie (a trip to El Paso winds up in Juarez), and they prefer to keep her in the dark about what they’re really doing when it comes to luring a top cartel member out of hiding. And as the mission gets more dangerous (and more vague), Kate realizes she’s thrown herself right into the vicious maw of the War on Drugs.

There are points early on where Sicario feels like watching a masterclass on how to create a truly nerve-wracking thriller. Relying once again on legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (who lensed Villeneuve’s first mainstream effort Prisoners), Villeneuve keeps things in Kate’s perspective, taking advantage of the southern border’s vast landscapes to clash with the chaotic unknowns Kate finds herself thrust into repeatedly. Blunt is terrific as her character fights between maintaining some sort of control of her situation and pure, pants-shitting terror at what she’s a part of, and del Toro can be downright bone-chilling when he shows his ruthless side in the film’s latter half.

The choice to include a brief subplot involving a Mexican police officer, an attempt by Sheridan to offer a look at the human cost of the drug trade, is less of a relief from the unrelenting tension and more of a distraction than anything. It’s an attempt to broaden the film’s scope, but it fails because there’s no need; by observing the headache-inducing bureaucracy, the little value placed on lives, and the “means justifying the ends” philosophy taken to the utmost extreme, Sicario does plenty in showing off the disastrous state of the drug trade today.

Excuse me while I lose my mind. Ryan Gosling is in final negotiations to star in the new Blade Runner sequel, directed by Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners).

Harrison Ford is also attached to reprise the role of Rick Deckard, who we first met in Ridley Scott‘s 1982 sci-fi classic. It’s not known who will be the film’s lead (it could be Ford’s Deckard continuing to drive the story forward, or Gosling’s character could take the reins), but either way, the casting of Gosling is pretty damn exciting.

Blade Runner was a sci-fi thriller that took place in a dystopian 2019 Los Angeles, and the sequel will be set several years after. Scott’s original has been hailed as one of the best, if not the best, sci-fi movies of all time, and that we’re getting a sequel over 30 years later is surreal, to say the least. Right now we don’t know very much about the project, but Gosling’s involvement is a good sign.

Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Fremaux and president Pierre Lescure announced this morning the films that will play at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. This comes just days after announcing the opening film Emmanuelle Bercot‘s La Tete Haute. Premiering at the festival this year will be Paolo Sorrentino‘s The Early Years, Todd Haynes‘ 1950’s romantic drama Carol (starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara), Woody Allen‘s Irrational Man, and Yorgos Lanthimos‘ highly anticipated follow-up to Dogtooth called The Lobster. Also playing will be Pixar’s animated film Inside Out, Gus Van Sant‘s Sea of Trees (starring Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts) and a special screening of Natalie Portman‘s A Tale of Love and Darkness.

While the bulk of competition and out-of-competition titles were announced, a few more films are expected be added to the lineup over the next few weeks. The Cannes Film Festival this year runs from May 13th – May 24th.

Opening Film

Standing Tall (La Tete Haute), Emmanuelle Bercot

Competition

Carol, Todd Haynes
Macbeth, Justin Kurzel
Dheepan, Jacques Audiard
La Loi du March, Stephane Brize
Marguerite and Julien, Valerie Donzelli
The Tale of Tales, Matteo Garrone
The Assassin, Hou Hsiao Hsien
Mountains May Depart, Jia Zhangke
Our Little Sister, Hirokazu Koreeda
The Lobster, Yorgos Lanthimos
Mon roie, Maiwenn
Mia Madre, Nanni Moretti
Son of Saul, Laszlo Nemes
Youth, Paulo Sorrentino
Louder Than Bombs, Joachim Trier
Sea of Trees, Gus Van Sant
Sicario, Denis Villeneuve

Out of Competition

Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller
Inside Out, Pete Docter, Ronaldo Del Carmen
Irrational Man, Woody Allen
The Little Prince, Mark Osborne

Special Screenings

A Tale of Love and Darkness, Natalie Portman
Asphalte, Samuel Benchetrit
Panama, Pavle Vuckovic
Amnesia, Barbet Schroeder
Hayored Lema’Ala, Elad Keidan
Oka, Souleymane Cisse

Midnight Screenings

Amy, Asif Kapadia
Office, Hong Won-Chan

Un Certain Regard

Madonna, Shin Suwon
Maryland, Anna Winocour
The Fourth Direction, Gurvinder Singh
Masaan (Fly Away Solo), Neeraj Ghaywan
Hruter (Rams), Grimur Hakonarson
Kishibe No Tabi (Journey to the Shore), Kiyoshi
Je Suis Un Soldat (I Am a Soldier), Laurent Larivere
Zvizdan (The High Sun), Dalibor Matanic
The Other Side, Roberto Minervini
One Floor Below, Radu Muntean
Shameless, Oh Seung-Uk
The Chosen Ones, David Pablos
Nahid, Ida Panahandeh
The Treasure, Corneliu Porumboiu

Over the past 30 years Blade Runner has done nothing but grow into its current mythological size following its release in 1982. And while the fan base has been constant, the notorious tinkerer that is Ridley Scott has not left it alone, releasing several director’s cuts (each apparently being more director’s cut-y, and a little less or a little more vague–depending on the cut), and talked endlessly about a sequel; even going so far as to postulate about the logic behind Rick Deckard’s (Harrison Ford, who is already on board to return) inevitable aging.

For years Scott’s talk has been just that: talk. But the sequel is finally coming together. To make it a bit more official Denis Villeneuve has now signed on to direct (a role many thought Scott would reprise). And, admittedly, Villeneuve is quite possibly the most surprising and satisfying choices possible for the gig. (Who are we kidding? We gave the press release a round of applause!)

Villeneuve came out swinging for American audiences with his Best Foreign Picture Oscar, Incendies. But it was his 2013 one, two punch of Enemy and Prisoners that solidified his presence in our hearts. And it’s Enemy, the Jake Gyllenhaal (x2) starring film about a man who meets his perfect doppelgänger and watches his life come apart as a result, that so clearly proves Villeneuve is the right man for the job–assuming, of course, that the sequel is permitted to remain the dark and existential film that it must be to follow up Blade Runner and fit in Villeneuve’s oeuvre.

So, while there are a lot of unanswered questions (what will happen to Villeneuve’s other awesome projects he’s got in the pipeline? who will join Ford in the cast?), and filming won’t begin for a full year, this is definitely news to get excited about! Put this one on 2017’s must see list.

Denis Villeneuve has been keeping himself very busy. At the Toronto International Film Festival last year, it wasn’t enough that he had the tightly wound Prisoners making its world premiere, but he managed to have another film finished in time to double dip at TIFF. Though if you end up seeing Enemy (which only got its theatrical release this month) it will be easier to wrap your head around Villeneuve’s ability to pull that off. Smaller in scale, lighter on actors and directing a more local crew, Enemy has all the ingredients of an indie flick. It really feels more like an experimental visual monograph on delusion and paranoia than just your run of the mill film, which goes from point A to point B, ticking all the boxes in the screenwriting rulebook along the way. No, this is a film that crawls out of all boxes and weaves its way around a singular phenomenon with no interest in really going anywhere. And that’s okay.

The opening sequence of the film perfectly sets the tone for the kind of absurdity, confusion and intensity that’s prevalent throughout this picture. A bearded man (Jake Gyllenhaal) walks into an underground strip club where male eyes gaze at a dancing naked woman. A tray appears covered by a silver lid and the woman lifts the top to reveal the hors d’oeuvre: a hairy tarantula. The bearded man stares at the creepy crawler with acute intrigue, almost welcoming him. Out of this surreal scenario, we are brought into the reality of this man’s life. His name is Adam and he is a History professor at the University of Toronto. His life is a web of boredom: repeating the same things in his courses, riding the stuffy public transportation system, going back to his barren apartment and sleepwalking through his relationship with Mary (Melanie Laurent). Then, in one of the film’s lighter moments, a colleague asks Adam if he’s a movie guy and recommends that he watch a movie called “When There’s A Will, There’s A Way.” Adam finds the movie in a local video store and watches it one night, but when he has dreams of a particular sequence from the movie, he wakes up in the middle of the night and plays the sequence again. This time around, he notices a person in the scene who looks exactly like himself. After some digging, this turns out to be actor Anthony Saint Claire (Gyllenhaal) and it’s obsession at first sight.

Villeneuve manages to create something truly unique with Enemy because, as mentioned, no conventional rules guide this movie. Rather than progressing in a linear, plot-driven manner, the story slowly fades into the distance to make way for an aimless type of suspense, which keeps the viewer glued to Adam’s possessed idea of meeting Anthony. Gyllenhaal commands the screen, a key factor because he’s in practically every frame of the film. As the quirky, fidgety and mild-mannered professor Adam, Gyllenhaal creates the kind of sympathetic character pitiable from a distance but too strange to befriend. And while Adam looks like he couldn’t hurt a fly, Anthony is the confident and cocky B-movie actor who gives off the impression that he tortured loads of flies as a kid. When the two worlds collide, the suspense begins to reach boiling point and what looked like a thriller morphs into something much, much stranger.

Despite some of its more outlandish moments, and putting aside the stinging sensation of watching a film where virtually none of the characters feel fleshed out, Enemy‘s mood is what makes it worth seeing. Thanks to its experimental nature, by the time those (slightly demented) yellow closing credits roll, there’s an undeniable aftereffect of the experience. What sort of experience? An experience that Villeneuve inflicts on us through the language of cinema, and that was well transcribed from the film’s basis, Jose Saramaga’s novel The Double. Watching Enemy, the influence from a few masters is noticeable and very much welcomed: master of the macabre David Lynch, master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock and master of the bodily absurd David Cronenberg. The film’s frantic editing–the cuts often synchronized perfectly with the eerie score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans (seriously, these guys need to be working way more than they are)–coupled with an oozing yellow color tone secreting from the feverish camera angles, all work together to build an atmosphere that is oddly satisfying in and of itself. Oh, and how could I forget all those wonderfully creative spider motifs? Arachnophobes take this as a warning, even with no spiders on-screen their presence is often felt, making for a decidedly creepy tingling sensation.

Enemy is worth your time if you’re the sort of movie-goer who doesn’t mind being forced into slight discomfort for a little mind prodding. But you’d have to be willing to forgive its disembodied approach to narrative and swap character development for visual development because you won’t get both. Ultimately, Villeneuve creates an absorbing experimental movie which manages to linger long after the credits roll despite the missed opportunity of digging deeper into the concept of doppelgängers. In many ways it’s a fitting companion piece to Prisoners, because above all else it proves that Villeneuve is becoming a natural for unsettling the mood and creepily crawling under your skin.

Enemy trailer

Denis Villeneuve, the French-Canadian director of Polytechnique and Incendies, has seemingly hit the jackpot with his English language debut. Teaming up with a cast of terrific actors along with legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins, Prisoners sadly spends most of its time letting the incredibly talented people behind it build a hollow shell of a film. The mentions of spirituality, faith, and morally grey situations are laid out but never explored beyond the surface. Thankfully, with people like Villeneuve and Deakins at the helm, the technical mastery makes up for plenty lost in the lackluster screenwriting.

The film starts on Thanksgiving with two neighbouring families, the Dovers and the Birches, visiting each other for dinner. It’s only until well after the dinner that both families realize their youngest daughters, Anna and Joy, are nowhere to be found. Their concern eventually turns to panic as they realize someone took their children. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) leads the investigation into finding the missing girls, while the two sets of parents grieve in their own ways. Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) is furious at the police for being ineffective, while his wife Grace (Maria Bello) constantly takes pills to stop herself from going into hysterics. Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) simply co-operate and hope for the best.

The only suspect in the case at this point, the driver of an old RV the kids played around with before disappearing (played terrifically by Paul Dano), is mentally impaired to the point where it would be impossible for him to have successfully kidnapped two children. The police let him go, but Keller is convinced of the man’s guilt and kidnaps him. At this point the narrative cuts back and forth between Keller’s torturing of Dano for information and Loki’s attempts to solve the case through more traditional means.

The moral issues that come with Dover’s actions are touched upon only when Franklin and Nancy get roped into helping him. Keller never shows any sense of guilt for what he’s doing, but Howard and Davis do excellent work showing how their characters feel like there are no other options but helping Dover out. Most of the cast ends up doing the leg work for their characters, as writer Aaron Guzikowski mostly boils them down to one or two traits (Keller’s a doomsday prepper, Loki is the classic determined detective, Franklin plays the trumpet). Davis and Bello get the worst material to work with, as Nancy amounts to nothing more than a blank slate and Bello is reduced to frequently wailing. With characters defined so broadly it’s hard for the film’s themes to resonate.

Luckily there is a much better film within Prisoners, and it comes out when the focus turns back to a standard thriller instead of shallow introspection. Villeneuve creates plenty of tension, especially in the film’s dark final act, and Deakins is on top form as always. There are plenty of things going on stylistically, like the way Villeneuve plays with the violation of space throughout the film, however, it’s one of the only interesting things going on for the first two-thirds. Prisoners can be quite good when it chooses to be a regular thriller. Unfortunately it decides to try for more, and comes up short in doing so.

Prisoners trailer:

Incendies is a French Canadian film directed and written by Denis Villeneuve, which was adapted from a play by Wajdi Mouawad. The film, whose title is translated to Scorched, is a dual narrative about siblings uncovering their families past and the mother’s struggle for survival in times of political conflict. The very opening scene that plays Radiohead’s “You and Whose Army?” in the background, gives off a haunting feel as a room full of Middle Eastern boys are getting their heads shaved. The camera pans to a boy’s tattoo, which means little until later in the film, but it is obvious foreshadowing.

Simon and Jeanne Marwan are twins who live in Canada that are about to hear the last wishes of their mother from the reading of her will. The will said the money is to be equitably shared between the two, the furniture should be distributed by mutual agreement and all the assets will be split. Pretty straight forward until the notary hands them each an envelope that their mother instructed them to give to their father and their brother. Before the reading of the will, they had no idea their father was still alive or that they even had a brother.

The twins travel to the Middle East homeland of their mother, Nawal Marwan, on a mission to find their father and brother. The envelopes that they must deliver to previously unknown family members proves to be a blessing in disguise as they go on to discover the history of her brave and heroic mother.

Through the use of flashbacks, we get to see Nawal living in a war filled country in the Middle East. Nawal was a Christian on the South but she fell in love with a Muslim on the North. This relationship is highly frowned upon politically and religiously as the South and the North are at war with one another.

Nawal is on the North side as she tries visiting her lover as a bus full of people approaches. She could use a lift instead of walking so Nawal quickly takes off her necklace of a cross as the bus is full of Muslim people. She falls asleep on the bus only to be awakening by gun shots. The bus had been stopped by an army of Christian men. Ironically for her, they are Christians killing the Muslims on board. Luckily, she had that cross necklace to show, otherwise she would have ended up dead like all the others on the bus. Watching these turn-of-events unfold is a powerful scene.

Jeanne goes to visit her mother’s old village to get clues to where her father might be. The whole room is in an uproar when she mentions she is a part of the Marwan family. Jeanne was not aware her mother had been impregnated by a man of the rival side, thus considering the family a shame. That is just one part of the mystery she uncovers about her family.

Jeanne continues to visit the places that we see Nawal in in the flashbacks. The aftermath and rumble she sees are haunting as we know what their mother had been through. This is especially true when she visits the prison where her mother was in after she murdered a rival political leader. She finds out that her mother was tortured for 15 years and never once broke down to talk to the guards. Rather than speak she would sing to herself and was known by others in the prison as both Number 72 and “The Woman Who Sings.” Adding to the cruelty, she was raped and subsequently got pregnant just before she was released from prison.

The theme of the Incendies is evident when the mother writes, “Nothing is more important than being together.” The envelopes brought the siblings closer to their mother in a way, even though she had passed away. If was not for the envelopes they would not know who their father or brother was, but most importantly, what her mother had been through. Even though her mother could have just told them while she was alive but that would not have been nearly as good of a story.

Incendies earned a 2010 Academy award nomination for Best Foreign Film, which I felt was very deserving. The storyline was brilliantly written and the cinematography was done wonderfully, the camera placements and photography captured the mood. Luna Azabal was by far the performance that stood out the best, the rest are mostly forgettable compared to her.

One of the best qualities about Incendies is the way everything comes together at the end. It reveals the mystery with a few big twists, which would be completely ruined if I mentioned what they were. Because of the dual narrative storylines, some of the flashback scenes of their mother in danger are a little less dramatic because we know she lives through it. However, that is not a major plot point of the film, the cruelty and tragedy still have an overwhelming impact.