tylerkom

Emilia Perez is a shockingly flawed film that is so weird that it almost dips into territory of art house. The life and times of a trans cartel boss is depicted through the eyes of a resourceful lawyer that helps her transition. But really, the film is more about cartel drama can any trans narrative. Not a good or bad thing, perhaps mismarketing on Netflix's part for a film that has drummed up so much drama.

The things that work in the film are very puzzling. The abrupt editing cadence is jilted and flows and stops on a dime. Storylines and subplots begin and end on a whim. The overall narrative is kept together with spit and bubblegum -- a common issue with these 'life and times of x' type films. But somehow, it kind of works? It's hard to explain but we're thrown very much into this fever dream that has train stops that slow down every now and then just to catch our breath before completely forgetting where we once were. Say what you want about the writing, the acting performances by Saldana and Gascon respectively were outstanding. A final thing I'll give kudos for is the cinematography. It's not beautiful per se, but it's experimental and energetic and brings a lot of visual interest.

However, for every weird thing that works, there are 3 more oddities that absolutely flounder. The odd sexual non-sequiturs, the loose (and I mean loose) narrative arc, the musical sequences that add little to the narrative or emotion. It's not so much that I should sit here and tell you what doesn't work with these decisions, but Audiard should really be explaining what the purpose of these idiosyncrasies are. The songs are peculiar and make no attempt to get the audience grooving. The fourth wall breaks are unexplainable. The temporal and spatial transition slides are ham-fisted.

Controversy and offended audiences aside, Emilia Perez is a fundamentally flawed film that experiments a lot, although it's not clear to what end. Extremely difficult to rate this film. It's not genius, and it plays like something outright *bad*, but somehow many beats work.

The Order is a mostly paint-by-numbers crime drama with some solid execution.

I don't have too much to say about this film since it's actually not really stand-out in any way. It's at its best when focused on the life and times of members in The Order and fleshing out this world of the rural pacific northwest. Nicholas Hoult is having a hell of a year and this is another great performance to add to the resume for the year. Everyone is was just okay performance-wise but there has to be some blame on the writers for leaning so deeply into the hard-boiled detective tropes. Sometimes the FBI officers just act way too-cool-for-school and it shows some laziness on the writers' part. A nice foil to that is Jamie (Tye Sheridan) who does a fantastically accurate impression of a small town cop. I'll be a defector and say that I actually enjoyed the action sequences, and I like that details within action plot points have actual effect later in the story. I'm getting a lot of No Country For Old Men influence, and that's a good thing.

The film has a really good handle on itself with a steady mix of tension building and discovery until the third act in which themes muddy significantly. There was some kind of two-sides-of-the-same-coin subtheme being attempted in the end between Terry and Bob that didn't really work for me, and cops suddenly lose all the discipline they had earlier in the film to do action hero things. There is a whole lot of world building in the film that adds to the whole rural aesthetic but I wonder if it contributed to its slow pacing. The film certainly felt long for a less than 2 hour movie.

Enjoyable crime thriller with some salient themes of racism and uprising to think about.