Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Some movies make you think: that’s where I want to be, I wish that were me on the screen. But other movies have the opposite effect. This week, I’m looking at three new movies in the second category, about people who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are friends at a reunion stranded in a cabin in the woods; a man in a  disguise imprisoned in a Nazi internment camp; and some space cadets quarantined in a New Mexican desert town.

The Blackening

Dir: Tim Story

It’s Juneteenth, and a group of friends are getting together for a reunion ten years after graduating from college. They’re meeting at an Air BNB to iron out old rivalries and past love affairs, catch up, drink, take drugs, and have fun. But little do they know what awaits them in this cabin in the woods. They’re deep in redneck country, and they all happen to be Black. And somehow, the doors are locking and unlocking, the power is being turned on and off, and their cars are all disabled. And when they discover one of their group is already dead, they realize something is very, very wrong. The only way to save themselves is to correctly answer a series of questions about Black culture and history, as dictated by a creepy, racist board game called The Blackening. The game centres on a hideous plastic head which talks directly to them. If they make a mistake, someone scary is lurking in the shadows with a crossbow loaded with arrows. Can they escape or defeat the deranged killer? Or will they all end up dead?

The Blackening is a thriller/ horror/comedy that pokes fun at both slasher movies and Black pop culture. It’s meta-horror, like Scream, so everyone knows not to split up, but also that in slasher movies the “sole survivor” is never Black. This allows it to challenge a lot of horror conventions. I had my doubts about his movie — the director, Tim Story, made The Fantastic 4, one of the worst superhero movies ever (Correction: Fantastic 4, 2015, was dreadful, but was made by Josh Trank; I have never seen Story’s 2005 version)  and while I’m always up for another cabin-in-the-woods story, the last few I’ve seen (like Knock at the Cabin) have been less than stellar. Luckily, The Blackening is funny, strange, surprising and very entertaining. It’s an ensemble piece, starring Antoinette Robertson, Dewayne Perkins, Sinqua Walls, Grace Byers, X Mayo, Melvin Gregg and Jermaine Fowler. It’s also more funny than violent — with an emphasis on characters, humour and clever dialogue over blood and guts (but there are some scary parts, too.)

I like this movie.

Persian Lessons

Dir: Vadim Perelman

It’s WWII in German-occupied France. The Nazis are arresting Jews across western Europe detaining them in a French transit camp before they are sent to the Poland for extermination. Gilles (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart: BPM, Deep in the Woods) is a Belgian from Antwerp, a prisoner on a transport truck heading for the camp, when another man trades a book of Persian stories for Gilles’ sandwich. A few minutes later, the guards park the truck and start gunning down all the prisoners by the side of the road… but the book saves his life just before he is executed. He claims to be a Persian, named Reza — a name inscribed in the book — and not a Jew. Soon he’s working in the camp’s kitchen under the supervision of Klaus (Lars Eidinger). He keeps Gilles alive — and away from hard labour splitting rocks in the quarry — because he wants to learn Farsi. Of course Gilles doesn’t speak a word of it, and the book is incomprehensible to him, but to stay alive he has to invent a language and remember all the words, without the Commandant figuring out his ruse. But how long can he keep it up before his deception is exposed?

Persian Lessons is an ingenious and moving dramatic thriller set within WWII and the Holocaust. Strangely, most of the dialogue is in German, because, aside from Gilles and a few others, it’s mainly about the Nazi guards and officers, not the prisoners. Not sure why so much of the movie is about petty rivalries, love affairs and cruelties among the guards, rather than the lives of the prisoners. Even so, it’s still an interesting story with a surprising twist. Argentinian-French actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart beautiful plays Gilles as a frail, doe-eyed waif, always on the brink of angsty collapse. While Lars Eidinger, as Klaus — I’ve seen him in at least a dozen movies — is good as always, this time as a cruel but conflicted man with dark hidden secrets.  

This is a good one, too.

Asteroid City 

Co-Wri/Dir: Wes Anderson

It’s the 1950s in a tiny desert town in New Mexico named Asteroid City after a meteorite hit the earth there. The Space Race is gaining momentum, while the Cold War is chillier than ever.  Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) is a news photographer with his teenaged son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and three little daughters. They’re there for Woodrow to reserve a national science prize. In a local diner he meets Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) a famous Hollywood movie star, accompanying her teenaged daughter, also up for a prize. She’s divorced and he’s a widower. There are also tourists, military brass, scientists, astronomers and cowboys, as well local hucksters out to make a quick buck. But everything changes when — in front of everybody — a space ship lands there, and an alien steps out to grab the asteroid and fly away! The government declares emergency measures, and no one is allowed to leave Asteroid City. Will romance bloom in this time of isolation? And will they ever get out of this place?

Asteroid City is a meticulously-crafted, comic pastiche of American pop-culture in the 1950s. It’s filled with atomic bomb tests in the background, and a roadrunner saying beep-beep between scenes. And there are wonderful scenes shot through adjoining motel windows.x As in all Wes Andersen’s movies, there are dozens of characters and an equal number of tiny side-plots. It has cameos by Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Liev Schreiber, Adrian Brody, Hong Chau and Matt Dillon, among countless others. The art direction is impeccable, as is the music, editing, costumes and sets. But for some reason, this time we also have actors breaking the 4th wall, taking off their makeup and talking about the making of this movie. And these actors are also appearing in a stage play about it. And the stage play is being performed on live TV, with a narrator — all set in the 1950s. While it’s fun to watch all this, it takes an interesting and funny plot and sadly turns it into just another example of Hollywood navel-gazing. For the life of me, I don’t know what all these meta dimensions add to the story. 

That said, of course I enjoyed and appreciated this film. Wes Andersen’s movies are always a joy to watch… I just wasn’t as dazzled by this one.

The Blackening, Asteroid City and Persian Lessons all open this weekend in Toronto, with Asteroid City expanding nationwide next week; check your local listings.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.