Review: Rental Family (2025)

Rental Family is a beautiful film set in Japan. It has Philip Vanderploeg (Brendan Fraser) as a fish-out-of-water American in Japan. The film starts with him as an underemployed actor who wants to do more. Although the characters say that Japanese culture is inscrutable to the non-Japanese, the film shrinks from presenting Japanese culture in caricatured stereotypes. An exception to that is the funeral that opens the movie. It presents the culture of a funeral in a cartoon situation. However, it offers a transition to introduce the audience to the chaotic world of rental families.

An enduring feeling in the film is one of loneliness. Looking across the way toward the neighbor’s apartments, Fraser could see the everyday lives of his neighbors as they raise children and celebrate days full of comfort and companionship. When he is not working, this view from his apartment returns to ground the film in the alienation of big-city life. Sometimes the people who are important to him are able to redeem that sadness and remind him of more recent joys.

At times, the film was filled with the manic energy of Fraser jumping between roles in lives of the clients of the agency he works for. That agency had rescued him from his boredom and depression. The agency is led by Shinji Taja (Takehiro Hira) who arranges situations for Fraser and his coworkers to join. Before each “acting gig,” Fraser would study the families as if he were studying for a role in a TV show. Although the situations that he joins are meant to deceive other family members, the relationships simulate reality and provide a rental family member that can fill some need. His first role is especially fraught where he is marrying a young woman. Fraser balks so his coworker, Aiko Nakajima (Mari Yamamoto), has to prevent a catastrophe by insisting on his participation. The intensity of that marriage commitment has an unexpected but affirming resolution.

Themes that are explored include dealing with memory, age and death. Another theme is commitment and responsibility. Fatherhood is a situation that replaces Fraser’s youth without a father by his acting as father to a young girl. Despite the simulated relationships that are dishonest, they can help people process difficult transitions. However, they also have a complementary effect on the actors that is an inevitable consequence.

One feature of the movie that I really enjoyed were the panoramic views of the world outside of Tokyo. The intermissions contrast the rectilinear, man-made world of a city with the natural, analog, beauty surrounding Tokyo. The natural world has a rhythm that is stable and calming. One sequence travels away from the city into a rural beauty near the ocean.

The online resources such as imdb.com categorize the movie as both a comedy and a tragedy. I definitely could identify the comedy because the bizarre situations that Fraser and his coworkers insert themselves into are really funny. As for tragedy, I don’t really identify that. Perhaps one could call the crisis in the movie as a tragedy, but that was a way of bringing the energy down a notch, not to announce failure and despair.

The movie starts with Fraser hitting bottom. He finds a way out through the rental agency and hits a euphoric phase of interacting as a for-rent family member. As things get stable, the euphoria levels off and Fraser has to make a decision of what he wants to be committed to. As the deception reaches a climax, the story flows into a crisis of confidence. It ends in a cheerful balance that is peaceful and comfortable. By the end of the moving the characters have had a chance to reflect on their lives and feel balance and hope.

The director and co-writer, Hikari, brought the characters to a stage of chaos and unpredictable situations that reminds me of the film Parasite (2019) which also has its characters in a whirlpool of deception. Rental Family doesn’t have them crash and instead they transition into a feeling of success and competence.

Review: Mon Oncle (1958)

Jacques Tati directed the movie Mon Oncle (My Uncle) which was released in 1958 in French. Tati plays the protagonist, Monsieur Hulot, an eccentric man whose sister, Madame Arpel (Adrienne Servantie), is married to industrialist Charles Arpel (Jean-Pierre Zola). Hulot is the uncle in the title to the Arpel’s son Gérard (Alain Bécourt). The overarching plot is simple: Charles is supposed to find his brother-in-law a respectable job that can keep him busy and out of trouble. A lot of silliness occurs in pursuit of that goal.

While I was watching the film, I was mindful of the theme that modernity is providing waves of technology for a modern homemaker to be proud of. That is a subtext of the reality that the Arpel’s move through. Their house is strikingly spartan. It has minimal furniture with no decorations nor signs of personality beyond its touches of automation. Outside, the garden is stark with only tiny patches of lawn and concrete stepping stones amidst gravel patches. The stones form paths from the outer gate to the house and small places to entertain guests.

The one embellishment of the yard is a ridiculous fish fountain. When a visitor presses the buzzer to request entry, Madame Arpel turns a knob to release a stream of water from the fish’s mouth. Next, she pushes a button to unlock the outer door. There is something peculiar about the fountain because it is never the same height and when it is turned off, the water hesitates to stop. Once the guest leaves, the fountain is turned off right away. Later, it’s the origin of a lot of silliness when it’s damaged by Mr. Hulot’s ever-present umbrella.

Newly invented technology is a theme in the “modern” world that the Arpel’s belong to. At his work, the phones are treated as fancy novelties. Mr. Arpel’s boss, Monsieur Pichard (Lucien Frégis) has his importance indicated by having two doors in his office that he can direct staff and visitors to choose. The factory makes kilometers of rubber hoses with a complicated machine that Hulot manages to crash. At home, the Arpel’s kitchen is controlled by a few mysterious buttons. Monsieur Hulot tries to open one of the cabinets and can’t find the correct (unlabeled) button in the console to get a snack. Suddenly, a cabinet to open and reveals a pitcher. Hulot accidentally discovers that the pitcher bounces satisfyingly. The glass that was in the same shelf didn’t bounce as well. A recurring theme is that the button is an essential feature of modernity. They can be found all through the house.

Mr. Hulot’s world is quite different. It’s a world of interesting people, their games and everyday amusements. Nothing is new and the market is full of (expensive) food options. His apartment is on the top floor of a three-story building. To get there, he follows a maze-like path to the roof. The windows in the house let the viewer see the stairs and corridors he passes on his trip. The first time he makes the trip, his slow, seeming random, progress is intriguing. Hulot introduces Gérard to this traditional world as he brings him home from school. Gérard has friends who are fond of pranks. For one trick, when cars are returning from dropping the kids off at school, the kids make a noise as if a stopped car was hit from behind, causing the consternation of the driver. Another game is to distract people walking so that they run into a lamp post.

The filmographer Thomas Flight has a recent video In Praise of Comfort Films which reported that Mon Oncle has the most cute dogs in a movie. The dogs are running the neighborhood and looking for whatever dogs look for. According to IMDB, the dogs came from a local pound. It reports that Tati found adoptive homes for the dogs after the movie was finished, promoting them as movie stars. The Arpels are wealthy and their home contrasts with the background images of generic, industrialized apartment buildings.

Although the movie is subtitled in English, the first few minutes of the film don’t have any dialog, just music and the activity of the everyday world that Hulot belongs to. The film was pretty funny with lots of LOL moments. The transition from traditional life to the technological world of modern cars and Arpel’s factory is full of dissonances. It seems that every opportunity for Hulot to fit into the future was a complete failure, but it didn’t affect Hulot’s playfulness and humor. A final show of opulence is the Arpel’s new pink and purple Cadillac, offering a ride into the future for Hulot.

Mon Oncle is really funny. It won a 1959 Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. The version that I saw was the French Language version with English Subtitles and not the dubbed English version. The disk was released by Criterion and also included a humorous short “L’ecole des facteurs” (The Postman’s School) that has Tati as a newly trained bicycle postman. Tati made several movies with Monsieur Hulot of which Mon Oncle is the most successful.

I was surprised that my search for the movie in the statewide library consortium, Evergreen, only found two copies of the film. I was really glad that one of them was in my local library. The library has a section of “Binge Boxes” which provide a wide selection of themed collections to binge watch with the whole crew. Mon Oncle was in the “Criterion 3” binge box.

A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick, 1977/Richard Linklater, 2006)

In the promotional trailers for Constantine, I saw one for the movie A Scanner Darkly which was directed by Richard Linklater. It was animated and visually fascinating because it was made via rotoscoping. In other words, the artists who made the film started with regular footage and transformed it into animation by redrawing each frame. The style of the film was striking and its trailer made me want to see it. According to material on the DVD, each character had a detailed style sheet for their animated design. The transformation was a time-consuming process.

After watching the film, I wanted to read the book. I was surprised that, although I needed to get the film via Interlibrary Loan, the book was in my local library. Philip K. Dick wrote several other stories that became movies including Blade Runner and Minority Report. I’ve seen both of those and they also have striking ideas of strange futures. The film begins, “7 years from now”, putting it into the context of something that could happen at any time.

Keanu Reeves was the protagonist Fred/Robert Arctor and Robert Downey Jr. played the character James Barris. Woody Harrelson, Win o na Ryder and Rory Cochrane also appeared as important characters in the film.

I liked Barris’s performance. He had a paranoid, muttering voice that recalled a drugged-out character who was trying to be impressive while not having much important to say. Fred was a police officer and simultaneously the friend of Barris, Robert Arctor.

The story centers around a powerful drug, Substance D. The police are trying to find the source of the synthetic. The drug is also known colloquially as death and wavering between life and death is a theme. As Fred, his police employers monitor its effects on him. The medical officers tell him that it is causing interference between the hemispheres of his brain. As the story progresses, he becomes more and more confused until he goes to a drug treatment facility that specializes in Substance D.

The book and movie follow each other pretty closely. Although the film presents the Los Angeles of the story as a surveillance state with the police monitoring public spaces, the novel has surveillance of a much smaller scale, of just several targeted houses.

One science fiction element in the story is the scramble suit. The officer wearing it continually changes their appearance to disguise who they are. The goal is to protect the identity of the officer when appearing for public presentations or with other officers. When Reeves’ character is with Barris and the others, he is not wearing the suit; at work, the full body suit makes him almost invisible.

In a sense, the book and film are weak because transition between the majority of the story and their conclusion is abrupt and the story could be summarized with just a couple of sentences, spoiling the events of the rest of the them before they reach their sudden resolution. It is a forward pointing story making you imagine what happens next.

I read the book after seeing the movie. I noticed that I didn’t visualize the characters in the book as the actors and I didn’t hear their voices as they spoke in the book. Perhaps the animation style of the story made the actors’ personal appearance less attached to the story.

The book and movie had a strong emotional ending. A coda follows with an author’s note memorializing friends of the author who had died or suffered severe consequences of drug use.

Review? Allegory? Commentary?

Film reviews explain and summarize the contents of creative expression. The results of an influential director’s efforts include a potent message. A film can donate an original idea to a culture’s growing lexicon. A review takes those ideas and puts them in a broader context. Film analysis is its own style of literature.

Film reviews not derived from a separate work would stand on their own. Rather than describing a released movie, it presents ideas from an imaginary film. It offers the film as an allegory or commentary while actually containing only the reviewer’s ideas.

A clever review can couch an important idea in a compact form. The review framework deflects the responsibility for the ideas to an imagined director. Generally, a review is neutral conduit for an idea. However, the text may adopt the review vehicle and make it a discussion about a controversial topic.

A successful review of a potential movie might be more palatable to our modern 5-minute attention span than a 3-hour cinematic masterpiece. Some essays might succeed as an analysis of potential films. An ingenious review could contain its own powerful message.

Constantine (2005)

Recently I saw an image of Keanu Reeves holding a dark gray cat with unnaturally long canine teeth. I went looking for the photograph online and found a video of the cat scene from the movie Constantine. Having collected Keanu movies in the past, I was intrigued.

The movie starts with three dramatic, seemingly unrelated, events. A man in Mexico finds an powerful spear (knife) that gave him supernatural powers. He walks in front of a speeding car and the car is destroyed and he walks away. John Constantine, Reeves’ character, arrives when a demon-possessed woman has flied up to the ceiling of the room. Constantine knows what to do and gets the demon dispatched with an intense performance. Finally, a woman in a hospital walks to the edge of the building and jumps, falling through a glass roof into a large swimming pool. All three events launch the movie with anxious urgency. That woman and her twin sister are played by Rachel Weisz.

The movie has a lot of demonology cliches like holy water burning demons and protective amulets. The people who are allies of the demons are half-breeds that are daunting antagonists and are able to survive extreme violence. Massed insects and a cross-shaped gold gun also show up. Although there is a divine rule that the demons and angels can’t enter this world directly, that rule is fraying and is at risk of annulment, hence the need for John Constantine intervention.

The visuals of Hell are striking. The demons in Hell have strange heads. One feature of Hell is the blistering hot wind and apocalyptic remnants of cars and buildings. The opening credits show the Hell environment as its wind erodes the production studios’ logos. Constantine travels to Hell with the aid of that cat and a pan of water.

The knife seems important since it is mentioned in the opening titles and the knife bearer is followed on his trip to LA. The purpose of trip is to construct a deadline for the urgent activities of Constantine. Once he brings the MacGuffin to its destination, he is unneeded and vanishes.

As a horror film, it was ok. Constantine was so confident in his abilities that I had little doubt of his success. Despite fighting terminal lung cancer, cigarettes come with him everywhere. His addiction is revealed when he sets one aside at the first exorcism and picks it up once he is done with his duties there. His cancer and impending death is the cause for Constantine’s desperate search for redemption.

It isn’t a great movie. Perhaps if I was more versed in the horror genre, I would appreciate it more. I looked at The Numbers and the movie was financially successful, with a worldwide box office of $221 million on a budget of $75 million. I think I’m committed now to watching more horror movies to find the ones with the best cats.

Wish (2023): A Disney Love Letter

The movie Wish (2023) stars the voice actors Ariana DeBose (the protagonist, Asha), Chris Pine (King Magnifico) and Angelique Cabral (the wife of Magnifico, Queen Amaya). One interpretation of the film is that it is a love letter from Disney creators to the “Spirit of Disney.” This message starts with the normal Disney Castle opening animation that reports that the film is part of the celebration of the Disney 100th anniversary. It is daunting to hide a subnarrative about the entire Disney project hidden in what the studio hopes will be an appealing story.

Wish is a fairy tale that was thrown together haphazardly. Eventually it becomes a stock story of good vs. evil. However, it starts sunny with a song introducing the island where the story takes place. From Asha’s song “Welcome to Rosas,” Rosas is described as a very happy, successful and safe kingdom. This song seems an uncanny clone of the introductory song “The Family Madrigal” from Encanto (2021). Further aspects of a Disney fairy tale that are obligatory are added as the story progresses: talking animals, a wizard, a hidden secret, and a supernatural force that shakes things up.

The movie opens its centenary theme with the 100th birthday of Asha’s grandfather. As the film progresses, one might notice details that resemble types from classic Disney films. Seven characters reprising the personalities of Snow White’s dwarves, dancing animals, a seemingly perfect society, a chase through the forest, and a powerful wizard. The tension between providing homage to the old cliches vs. having an original story was too much. I started to waste more effort noticing what a scene alludes to rather than appreciating the story for itself. That tension made the film appear derivative rather than creative.

In Disney films, there isn’t much doubt that a wizard is not going to be commendable for long. Here, instead, his wife is ambiguous. What is her culpability in Magnifico’s activities? Is she redeemed in the end? Does she even need to be redeemed? Her character is one of the more difficult to suss out. For much of the story, she is a passive side character until she is needed for more forceful action. She doesn’t really fit in a morality play about good and evil. Ambiguous characters in Disney films don’t need as much thought. However, I might just be infected by Star Wars’ proposition: the dichotomy between the dark side and light side is sufficient to analyze a character. Magnifico’s character certainly fits the light side/dark side character arc. It’s even made explicit in one scene. But if I’m trapped in that Lucas Simplification, a morally complex character like Queen Amaya just does not compute.

The credits of the movie are clever. Through them, you’re invited to play a game of identifying other Disney animated films. Twinkling starts form constellations in margin of credits roll. (One would wish on them?) Each constellation resolves into characters from other Disney animated movies. The audience could compete to recognize the characters and their film. This playfulness in the credits expands on the joy of 100 years of Disney. The very, very end of the credits is meaningful both as the love letter’s completion and the consummation of one final character’s wish.

Closed captioning in an election year

In November I was exercising at the gym. At the front of the room, they’ve got four different networks on the TVs. When I’m on the bike machine, it’s hard to not watch the video. Being November, it was time for the renewal of Medicare insurance policies.

It was hard to not want to mock the Advantage plan advertisers which didn’t include captioning. The vendors are trying to reach an audience that has a higher likelihood of having hearing loss, yet their ads are inaccessible to that group of people.

Election year is another time for lots of targeted advertising. Again, the gym is a good opportunity to see how much different candidates or political parties value the community. If they omit preparing captions, they appear not to care about a wide swath of their hoped-for constituents.

Hearing loss isn’t the only situation where captioning is valuable. Just as I can benefit from the captioning at the gym, live captioning of sports events enhances the experience of the game at a bar or restaurant. At family gatherings such as Thanksgiving, the ones who want to watch a game can turn on the captions and mute the sound to allow the rest of us to visit.

Although my hearing is normal, it is nice to have the captions on while watching a movie. It helps when background sounds in the film muffle the speech. My mom has good hearing but prefers to have the captions on as well. Sometimes people talk too quickly. It helps us enjoy the latest Marvel series more.

YouTube and Nebula also have captioning in the videos. In addition, to the presence of captions, the videos, the urgency for captions on new material can come at the prices of accuracy. It’s not easy to create good quality captions. Captions can degrade when the transcriber or voice recognition system isn’t primed with the vocabulary of a technical video. The technology can continue to improve. Some shows acknowledge the service and who paid for the transcription as the first of the captions.

In the teaser trailer for the Star Wars film, The Rise of Skywalker, I learned from the captions that the laughter at the very end is the Emperor. That was an interesting clue that felt like insider knowledge when I first saw the trailer.

I don’t really like to vote for a candidate whose ads don’t include captions. It shows a lack of care and consideration for who they are asking to vote for them. Do they really care about disabled or older voters, or do they just want to win the election as cheaply as possible?

Image “Closed captions” by Oregon State University [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Everything, Everywhere at Eckhart

A few years ago, my community’s library was attacked by an arsonist that destroyed most of their collection as well as caused severe damage to the main library building. It was really heartbreaking.

While the building was being renovated, the library set up a branch location in a local strip mall. It had a big banner above it “Eckhart Public Library.” Now that the library building is alive again, they have been building their collection for quite a while. I go to borrow videos. I also borrow books and videos from the inter library loan service available through their participation in the statewide Evergreen consortium.

Libraries aren’t just for books. The nearby Allen County Public Library has a makerspace. One time I used their tools to transfer a video I had made onto a DVD. They had a 3-d printer. Locally in Auburn, our library offers many digital services. One that I used last night was Kanopy.

Kanopy is a video streaming service that is optimized as a service for libraries. The library provides access to the service and the patron can stream the videos offered by the service. Months ago, I had watched “Parasite” there. Last night, I saw “Everything, Everywhere All at Once.” It was fun to see it again after seeing it in the theater when it was new. The next video that I hope to watch is Beau is Afraid with Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Ari Aster. I saw news about the Aster film when it was in the theater but never went when I had a chance.

The library is welcoming and a nice space to visit. Having an online presence makes it even more useful. They offer Wi-Fi hotspots for people to borrow. The fire happened in the middle of the summer reading program so there were more books checked out than normal so they that they could rebuild a small offering right away as they were returned.

I was concerned when they closed the temporary branch location before the new library was fully ready. However, it was providential that they did because shortly after that, the pandemic hit. The amount of money saved on not renting a facility no one could use could be folded into their renewed presence.

It breaks my heart for librarians who only want to provide the best service to their patrons are forced to spend time dealing with attacks on their professionalism and the people they serve. Even more so that a small number of people are filing complaints to harass communities that they don’t reside in. It’s shameful that people are losing out in valuable services because of a few troublemakers. According to the Washington Post’s research “The majority of the 1,000-plus book challenges analyzed by The Post were filed by just 11 people.”

Libraries are more than just books and offer lots of services. Our library here has a teen library with youth-oriented activities and resources. I’m glad that the community rallied around our library after the fire. It was definitely something that people who threaten librarians and libraries must never think of as a possibility–that libraries are an asset to a community and not a threat that needs bow to such a limited view of a library’s mission.

Lightyear (2022)… spoilers

I just saw Lightyear for the second time this week. It was better the second time.

The framework of Lightyear is that it is the movie that Andy from Toy Story watched which led him to fall in love with his Buzz Lightyear toy. In this film, Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Chris Evans) is a Space Ranger devoted to “completing the mission.” His intense focus on that principle costs him a lot. He doesn’t seem have the insight to see that life can have more purpose than just fulfilling a singular goal.

One of the transformations Buzz undergoes is that he comes to a realization that his friends had worthwhile lives without escaping the strange planet that they landed on. He had been convinced that he was a failure when he couldn’t rescue them. Several of the characters make mistakes that seems to be impossible to correct. Their level of distress is managed because a humorous solution exists to solve the problem. However, Buzz revealed that his career started with failures and the confidence of a mentor helped him succeed.

For some, the fact that a woman falls in love with another woman is too much to accept. Their disapproval seems to be reflexive. Diversity in the film is more deeply rooted than the superficial reading of a half-second kiss between two women as a horrific affront. When Alicia Hawthorne (voiced by Uzo Aduba) tells Buzz of her engagement, Buzz asks what “her” name is, indicating that he knew she was attracted to a woman. The final energy crystal had a rainbow of colors, a nod to the rainbow LGBTQ flag.

The story can be choppy with abrupt transitions. It was almost as if they had too much story to stuff into the allotted time so that scenes need to move quickly from one to the next. For example, their visit to a mine seems like an arbitrary plot device. Although the film foreshadows that particular event, other unexpected situations are science fiction cliches. The robotic cat SOX, (voiced by Peter Sohn) is a good comedian. The ludicrous bee-boop bee-boop when the cat is scanning can be silly, but the cat’s running commentary is also light-hearted. The cat also has some surprises built in.

There was a running gag about life on the planet being dangerous or even hostile. Buzz’s initial reaction is to report that the planet is uninhabitable but they stay. Perhaps this initial reaction was part of Buzz’s determination to escape. I couldn’t see the characters expressing many emotions but a crucial turning point, you see a hint of Buzz’s sadness. That tension quickly fades as the adventures restart.

Although the movie wasn’t outstanding, the story was engaging. It was an action science-fiction story and not a psychological commentary. If I wanted the film to make the characters seem more 3 dimensional, I was pretty much dooming myself to be disappointed.

The movie was good enough to see twice and I enjoyed it both times. The first I was able to see it in a local theater before it closed. The last movie I saw before the pandemic began was Onward, another Disney film. Now that both are available on Disney+ and BluRay, I probably won’t be able to see them on the big screen again.

Everything Everywhere All and Once news

I discovered that they are showing Everything Everywhere All at Once in the local theater again. They had stopped showing for a couple of weeks but now it’s up again. They’re also putting it up at the prime time of 8:30. When I saw it before it was in the afternoon.

the-numbers.com reported that the number of theaters carrying it jumped from 170 to 1490 this weekend. They also had a big jump in the box office receipts. Including international box office receipts, the movie has already collected about 4 times more than it cost to make it. The income per theater hasn’t changed that much this first weekend, but the gross number are a lot better.

So far this year, it’s #1 by a substantial margin in the category “Top 2022 Theater Average at the Domestic Box Office”

I was thinking about going to see it again before it dropped out, but now I’m considering it again. I already saw Lightyear which is gone. I’d also like to see the new Minions and Marvel movies but it’s easy for me to decide to stay home rather than hit the road for a show.

Go see it! It’s really high energy, funny and touching.

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