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.

I am always skeptic when it comes to most sci-fi action films but Looper is the rare exception that proves from time to time excellent ones are made. Rian Johnson’s Looper is a smart and unique science fiction film set in the future about time travel that is controlled by mobsters. Looper is not your average science fiction film; it understands the importance of character development and that explosions do not need to occur every five minutes in order to be entertaining.

The film is set in Kansas in the year 2044. Time travel is not possible yet but it is invented a few decades from then. Even though time travel is possible it is illegal to do. However, large crime organizations use it to get rid of people. See, if they send someone back in time and they are killed, that person vanishes from existence in both present and future.

This is where Loopers come in. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is informed when a person will appear from the future and it is his job as a Looper to be there to shoot that person immediately. Loopers blast their hooded targets with a powerful shotgun called a blunderbust from point-blank range. The range of the gun makes it impossible to hit anything beyond 15 feet but conversely impossible to miss anything closer than 15 feet, an important note that comes into play later in the film.

Eventually, when a Looper grows old enough, they will be sent back in time to be killed by his own younger self, which is called “closing the loop.” It is a clean process that only goes weary when the Looper fails to complete the loop. Letting your loop run when the person you are supposed to kill escapes is highly dangerous. Things start to go haywire when another fellow Looper named Seth (Paul Dano) sees himself as part of a closing loop and wisely decides not to shoot. Seth just so happen to recognize the song his future self was singing. By not closing his own loop, his future self was able to warn present Seth about what the future holds. Seth confronts Joe about this before their boss Abe has Seth killed for letting that happen.

Abe (Jeff Daniels) is from 2074 and is in charge of the Loopers for the crime syndicate. Abe criticizes Joe about his fashion style by preaching to be new and do something different. Which is precisely the advice that the film itself follows; to be something new and different. Joe has a plan to go to France after he is done as a Looper but Abe tells him, in a great scene, that he should go to China instead. Abe would know as he is from the future after all. Joe however is insistent about going to France and it starts to show just how ignorant his character is. He continues to study French between kills and saves up the silver bars he earns to travel there.

One day a man (Bruce Willis) appears late at the site without being tied up at all, two things that never happen. Joe freezes for a moment which gives this man enough time to escape. The man leaves a note for Joe that tells him he should leave town as soon as he can. After a short while you learn that the man who escaped is actually Joe from the future. Unlike all the others from the future, Joe willingly sends himself back in an attempt to save a loved one that wrongfully is murdered in the future. We are transported 30 years into the future to follow just how future Joe was able to show up not on time and not tied up.

Present Joe is very apprehensive about believing the man who claims to be him in the future. Or maybe it’s just his arrogance. We see a scar on future Joes arm of the waitress name that the present Joe often speaks to. Present Joe had just etched it into his arm, leaving a permanent scar that is seen on future Joe’s arm. This was likely done to try to prove that the older man is who he claims he is. Another detail that visually ties the two together is there is a bandage on present Joe’s ear and you can see that part of future Joe’s ear missing.

Jeff Daniels is only in a few scenes but he steals everyone one of them. The rest of the performances are not far behind with everyone pitching in making the film as a whole well performed. You could make a good argument that the young boy (Pierce Gagnon) is as equally superb and I probably would not argue. The filmmakers purposely made Joseph Gordon-Levitt to look physically different for his role to make him resemble Bruce Willis more closely. Which had me double-take a couple of times before I realized that it was actually Gordon-Levitt. The makeup team did an excellent job on altering his looks which apparently took 3 hours each day to do.

I kept seeing glimpses of Twelve Monkeys while watching this film. Bruce Willis being in both certainly had something to do with that but there are other reasons as well. Both are trippy sci-fi films that involve the main character coming from the future to warn people in the present about dangerous events soon to come. Both films do so by providing numbers or signs to watch out for.

Looper wisely tells the audience not to look too deeply behind the mechanics of the time travel because you are sure to find loop holes (pun intended). This high concept sci-fi keeps you guessing how it will end it until it does and suddenly it seems obvious. Backed with a unique premise, solid performances from the cast and a firm grasp on how to make a proper action film, Looper sets the bar on recent big-budget sci-fi action films.

Lasse Hallström’s Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is about having faith even if you do not believe in it. That in itself are wise words to live by; but as this film shows, it does not hurt to have someone wealthy funding the whole thing when you take that so called “leap of faith”. The film suffers from many of the pitfalls that romantic comedies typically suffer from, a predictable and generic plot put together by contrived situations and outcomes.

Harriet (Emily Blunt) represents a wealthy sheik, Sheikh Muhammed (Amr Waked), who wants to introduce salmon fishing into the waters in the Yemen. To fulfill this request of his Harriet contacts a fish expert who works for the British government named Dr. Alfred Jones (Evan McGregor). When the two meet up to discuss this idea Alfred instantly shoots the idea down saying that the climate is not ideal for the fish to live in.

Upon returning from the meeting, Alfred informs his boss just how ridiculous this project is. But inconveniently his boss gives him a choice of either being a part of this project or getting fired. Alfred is upset about the circumstance even when he finds out that they will be paying him double the salary if he takes on the project. He of course agrees to work on the project. The whole scene feels completely setup and artificial.

Alfred is so off-put by this project that he does not even stop for a second to consider this challenge at all. You would think that an avid fisherman such as himself would welcome this challenge to be a part of a once in a life time opportunity. I realize that the point of this is for later on when the project succeeds that it makes a point of “anything is possible” but his character is over-dramatic and annoying.

In one scene, there was a good metaphor showing Alfred going the opposite way in a crowd. This of course represents how salmon swim upstream and against the current of the water. It was to symbolize that he has changed his opinion and attitude on the project.

Just as the two finally being making some strides on the project Harriet receives a phone call that the guy she met just 3 weeks ago is missing in action from the army. As viewers we have to pretend to care about this man who she claims as her boyfriend even though they hardly knew each other. As she is tearing up she even admits to not remembering what his face looked like. The film made a point to bring up that she does not date often but she takes a whole week off of work which is a third of the time she knew the guy.

Everything seems to just fall conveniently into place in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Alfred and Harriet become single again at the same time, so it is easy to guess what will come of that. There always seems to be a solution to all the problems that do arise along the way making the conflicts seem little minor speed bumps.

There is one scene that in particular that can be best described as down-right laughable. The only problem is that it was not supposed to be comical. As Alfred and Muhammed are fishing a man with a gun aims to kill the sheik but Alfred notices just in time to cast his line out and hook him in the neck.

If you are in the mood for a mindless romantic comedy with a feel-good story, you could do worse than Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, but you could also do much better. The biggest problem with the film is how predictable it is. You can see what is coming next from a mile away. The film is not as bad as it is just plain vanilla textbook storytelling. There is nothing that makes it stand out.

Having liked Lynn Shelton’s previous feature, Humpday, I was anxious to see if she could duplicate her efforts in Your Sister’s Sister. I will tell you right now, she does just that and then some. Shelton’s greatest achievement here is taking simple conventional situations and making them into complex and extraordinary without sacrificing believability. It is something that is commonly tried but rarely achieved, at least to the degree it was here.

Friends gather around having drinks and sharing stories about their friend Tom who passed away a year ago. We never actually meet Tom in the film but from hearing some of the stories it leads you believe he was a nice and likeable guy. That is until his brother Jack (Mark Duplass) gets up and tells the group the side he knows of him, which is a physical and mental manipulative person. Jack has a typical brother assessment but completely inappropriate time and place to express that. Needless to say the crowded room fell awkwardly silent.

Luckily for Jack, he has a close friend who is keeping an eye on him. Her name is Iris (Emily Blunt) and at one point she dated his brother Tom. She tells him that for a year now he has been a mess and that he needs to change his current destructive ways. In order to achieve this she comes up with a plan to send him off to her dad’s remote cabin that is located on peaceful an island.

This cabin has no television or internet, a perfect scenario for Jack not to get distracted and allow him to think about his life just watching the waves in the water that surrounds the cabin. At least that was the plan. But as we all know, life often does not go according to plan, it is especially the case in films.

When he arrives at the cabin he approaches the front door only to see that there is someone already there. Not sure what to do he peers through the window until he makes himself noticed by making a sound. As the woman comes charging out the cabin with an ore in her hand, he notices that it is just Iris’s sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt).

The two did not start out on a good note but eventually make amends when they find themselves sharing a bottle of tequila around the table at 3:00 A.M. Hannah divulges that she has just got out of a 7 year relationship with a female partner. Jack explains how he has had a “shitty year” and came to the cabin for solitude. Several shots later a proposition from Jack arises for the two to hookup, even though she is a lesbian. We are not sure if it was the tequila or the intention to let go by try something different, but she accepts.

Almost exactly at the half way point in the film, I began to wonder how Shelton would advance the rest of the story. There is an obvious way the film could go and it does but not for very long. Somehow I knew, or maybe just hoped, that it would not stay on that obvious path for very long. Thankfully, it did not. It continued to hold your attention through it’s entirety.

For me, one of the best qualities a film can possess is for it to come off genuine. Do not get me wrong, I adore the weird crazy out-there films as well. But when a film can accurately replicate that awkward moment when someone prepares food in which you must lie by saying it is wonderful because they were so excited for you to try it, like found in Your Sister’s Sister, it is extraordinary.

I was shocked at how well the dialog was considering it was largely improvised. By definition it is a mumblecore film but for those of you who are turned off by that “genre”, do not worry. While the film still captures raw emotions in the moment with everyday dialog, it never feels like it rambles on for too long. It feels loose but not too loose. I guess you could call it Mumblecore 2.0 but the bottom line is that it worked well.

Remarkably, Shelton shot Your Sister’s Sister in just 12 days. When I first heard that I was expecting for it to be evident in the film. However, after watching the film you would never have guessed it was shot in less than two weeks.

I will admit that if you read just the synopsis of Your Sister’s Sister you will most likely think a typical sitcom is in store. Instead, the film is more of an intelligent romantic comedy featuring terrific characters in a very honest manner. It is an excellent example of how wonderful improvisational dialog can be when you have the right cast members and director. To cap it all off, instead of opting for a safe ending Shelton gives us an ending that fit perfectly with the rest of the film.

My ears perk up every time I hear the name Mark Duplass. It seems like he has really exploded as of late, whether it be directing or acting he is everywhere and I am not complaining. The last film he directed, Jeff Who Lives At Home, was highly reviewed by us.

Director Lynn Shelton used Mark in her last film Humpday (which we loved) so the two benefit from working together previously. In Your Sister’s Sister he plays Jack, a man is sent by a friend to stay at her family’s remote cabin when a unexpected relationship forms. The film also stars Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt. The trailer certainly gives off the same vibe I got from watching Humpday and that is not a bad thing. Your Sister’s Sister will be theaters June 15th.

UPDATE: Read our movie review of Your Sister’s Sister.

Official trailer for Your Sister’s Sister: