Jumbo
We’re now more than a year into the pandemic, and the stress is really starting to show. Art is certainly having to work harder to retain attention. Edges which have been fraying for quite some time now are cracking and bleeding. There’s a feeling like somehow the gravity got turned up a notch, and it’s such a pain to try and just be a normal person. The vaccines are helping, but there’s so much entropic unease in the air that just enjoying things takes a heroic amount of effort. So this week’s offerings are very eager to sweep you away in some kind of experience that, for a little while, takes you out of feeling adrift and abandoned. As always, look back at past issues of the Scene for more recommendations of what to stream: March 26, April 2, April 9, April 16, April 23, April 30, May 7, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, June 25, July 2, July 9, July 16, July 23, July 30, Aug. 6, Aug. 13, Aug. 20, Aug. 27, Sept. 3, Sept. 10, Sept. 17, Sept. 24, Oct. 1, Oct. 15, Oct. 29, Nov. 5, Nov. 11, Nov. 26, Dec. 3, Dec. 17, Jan. 6, Jan. 21, Jan. 28, Feb. 4, Feb. 11, Feb. 18, Feb. 25.
Dementer
Dementer via Video on Demand
Sometimes the mood is right for a film rooted in a reckoning with the repressed. Obviously your mileage may vary, but there are times when it can be healthy and cathartic to confront the emotional dust bunnies knocking around in the back of the subconscious. Dementer, Chad Crawford Kinkle’s second feature (he made the haunting Jug Face), will facilitate that. Having escaped from a cult, Katie is looking to start a new chapter in her life, and she finds it working at an assisted living facility for developmentally disabled adults. But the thing about cults is that they’re often much harder to leave behind than would be ideal, and Dementer is relentless in the way it depicts the constant struggle of life away from security — and we are in it, experiencing the horrors of Katie’s past alongside the earthy humor and kind hearts of her co-workers. This film will both expand your empathy for those who work in health care and teach an unspeakable ritual for binding the devils, both of which are very useful. As always, the presence of Larry Fessenden remains a mark of quality.
Jumbo via Video on Demand
Jumbo is a film that deeply embodies the idea that there’s someone for everybody. Jeanne (Noémie Merlant from Portrait of a Lady on Fire) is socially awkward and ill at ease with the world around her, especially in her small Belgian town. But work at a small theme park has at least given her something to do. Until, that is, that fateful day when it gives her something more — when she gets to know Jumbo, the Move-It (the European equivalent of a Tilt-A-Whirl) that has become the park’s new big-deal ride. The love of Jeanne and Jumbo is very real, and handled with the kind of magical realism that allows the viewer to follow alongside its romantic path, which is fraught with all the obstacles you could imagine coming between a young woman and this massive machine. Zoé Wittock’s film has all the energy of a romantic comedy, but it doesn’t play the central romance for laughs, and Merlant commits completely to the role. This would have been an ideal Valentine’s Day viewing, and anyone who dug the Spike Jonze film Her should absolutely check this out — it’s weird and sweet and filled with kindness.
The Stylist on Arrow
Jill Gevargizian’s 2016 short (also called “The Stylist”) was a hell of a calling card, setting the stage for something visceral — a lush murderscape right out of both Modern Salon and EC Comics. The Stylist as a feature is assured and razor-sharp, a striking character study that thrives on the deeply melancholy while gathering inevitable force as it draws closer to an effective, haunting and genuinely jaw-dropping ending that embraces sensitivity and surreality with bangled wrists and opened arms. And in Claire, the titular coiffeuse who excels in both hair emergencies and the occasional murder, Najarra Townsend delivers an incredible performance that never lets the viewer displace the ragged humanity at the center of the story. Horror, thankfully, is a genre that can encompass just about anything. But this isn’t a slasher film. What haunts the viewer isn’t the thought of going under the scissors, but the palpable sadness that comes from alienation, resentment and what might have been. This film will mess with you. Get it via the streaming service Arrow.
Sator
Sator via Video on Demand
For a film made in California, Sator delivers Appalachian unease with an assured hand and a bottomless vale of imagination. Its central entity, antlered and calling to the family over generations, isn’t a typical demon or deity. To them, it is an obligation — the thing that lurks in the back of the mind at all times, threatening to flip the switch that derails entire lives; to involve others would be shirking their responsibility. That’s a mentality that resonates, even as it triggers big flashing warning signs in the subconscious. Filmmaker Jordan Graham did just about everything on this film except the acting, and it feels singular and distinctive — more than just a film, but a testament. Beyond any other aspect, Sator is visually staggering in a way that sticks with you. (It’s, like, Vitalina Varela beautiful.) And what it has to say about family secrets and the inescapable nature of our own weaknesses stays with you like a scar. Also, it uses deer cameras in an unprecedentedly terrifying fashion.
Get Duked!
Get Duked! on Amazon Prime
Get Duked! is a fun adventure stuffed to the gills with scrappy young folk, a darkly absurdist sense of humor and genial trippiness (thanks to the Scottish Highlands’ hallucinogenic rabbit droppings). It also has enough unsubtle but endearing social commentary to delight anyone looking for something that grabs at all genres and makes it all work. Three juvenile delinquents and a homeschooled teen looking to up his social skills head into the wilderness to take part in a social outreach program, only to find themselves hunted by decrepit gentry facing their own irrelevance. It’s filthy and funny, and the cast is an endearing bunch of up-and-coming youngsters and beloved genre cinema stalwarts (including Kate Dickie and Alice Lowe). If you like The Goonies, Attack the Block, An American Werewolf in London or The Monster Squad, you will find much to love herein.
