LITTLE FISH

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

“When your disaster is everyone’s disaster, how do you grieve?” I can’t stop thinking about that line. Surely director Chad Hartigan and writer Mattson Tomlin had no idea when they started making Little Fish that their little indie movie about a pandemic would run headlong into . . . a pandemic. But that’s precisely what happened, and what’s maybe the most curious thing about it is how prescient some of it turned out to be, and how wildly off base the rest of it was.

I don’t recall anyone ever using the word “pandemic” in this film. Do they even use the word “virus”? I can’t remember. Instead, the characters make casual references to what has happened to the world, so that we can piece it all together over time. Some things far more extreme than what we experienced with COVID-19. Grounded flights. Intermittent chaos in the streets. Okay so yes we had that last one in real life, but that was coincidental, about something other than the pandemic.

Other things are depicted as strangely tame in comparison to what we’ve really experienced. In Little Fish, there is all of one scene in which people are wearing face masks. There are no lockdowns. The film does depict government patrols made in an effort to control a wandering population, as the virus here causes dementia—another word never used in the script, but it’s still fundamentally it: people are losing their memories. Like our real-world pandemic, however, the severity and swiftness of infection varies depending on the person. In this case, some people “fade” slowly, and other people just lose their memories all at once.

In that sense, the virus depicted here is very similar to that of the 2008 movie Blindness, in that people around the world are afflicted with something that causes a disability, but they remain otherwise physically healthy. No one in Little Fish comes down with a cough or respiratory illness. They just, in effect, go insane. There are more accidental deaths as a result of “NIA” (“neuroinflammatory affliction”), however, such as when a pilot forgets how to fly. (Tomlin’s script makes no reference to copilots that must have been on that plane. Maybe it' was a small, single-pilot plane.)

This is all the backdrop in which Little Fish tells a micro story within a macro concept: we follow Emma and Jude (Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell) as they struggle to keep the memory of their own relationship alive, while Jack’s memory systematically fades. The same is happening to Emma’s mother who is back in England, though we never meet her; we only observe phone calls. Emma also works at a veterinary hospital, where her job has become little more than euthanizing the increasing numbers of lost pets whose owners don’t remember they’ve lost them.

In other words, Little Fish is a fucking sad movie. Do we really need this right now? I would argue no, but from the point of view of the filmmakers, what choice have they got? What insane timing for the making of a movie like this, whose planned premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2020 had to be postponed due to an actual pandemic. Given the long tail of this globally massive event in all of our lives, there was never going to be a time anywhere close to now when the release of this film would be “better.” So, once at least some of the dust has settled, it might as well be released now. And still, although it’s very well made, especially for the clearly small budget impressively maximized by Hartigan, I don’t have it in me to recommend it. Too much of it hits too close to home.

And I haven’t even yet mentioned that it was filmed in Seattle, which is where I live. I wonder if it goes down easier for people who don’t live here? I sort of doubt it. I keep going back to that line: “When your disaster is everyone’s disaster, how do you grieve?” How could anyone better summarize the year 2020? For literally everyone on the planet? This is supposed to be science fiction.

And to be clear, much of it very much is. An experimental surgical procedure is developed that involves puncturing the brain through the roof of the mouth. This makes for one particularly harrowing scene, but also strains the boundaries of plausibility. And even though this is clearly far from the point of the story, I sure wish someone in the film revealed even the slightest hint of how this virus spread. With the exception of when Jude applies for a clinical trial, no one here walks around wearing a mask. Is this just happening to everyone randomly without explanation? Apparently so, as is the case far too often in movies about a global virus, and it’s a bit annoying.

Chad Hartigan is clearly much more interested in telling a sort of inverted love story, where the young couple starts to forget how they fell in love in the first place. Does that sound like fun? Little Fish is like a mashup of a pandemic disaster movie and one of those movies about an elderly couple coping with Alzheimer’s. Except in this case, the couple is young—which is really the most novel thing about this film. In any event, everything about it is tragic, only the tragedy is realized in a slow burn, a creeping melancholy that might serve as a useful trigger any time you need a good cry. Which, to be fair, far too many people these days absolutely do need. I’m just not sure they need it from something that cuts so deep into the heart of all our actual lived experiences: a collective feeling of heartache and loss.

Had Little Fish been made even one year earlier, I might be more inclined to consider it a recommended watch. It actually is very well done. I could even say it is indeed a recommended watch . . . just not right now. Maybe just bookmark it for a watch five or ten years from now.

What you need to know is this movie will make you very sad.

Overall: B+

THE TRIP TO GREECE

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I’ve said it before, and I guess I’ll say it again: The Trip, in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play fictionalized versions of themselves driving all over Northern England to review pretentious restaurants, was bright, breezy fun in 2011. The Trip to Italy was more light, breezy fun in 2014. And when they did The Trip to Spain in 2017, it was even more light, breezy fun, albeit with just a hint of diminishing returns. That third film had a baffling twist ending, and left me wondering if these two would do any more of these films. Well, The Trip to Greece, which was actually released in mid-2020, came right on schedule: all four of these films have been released three years apart. In a way, this series joins the likes of the Harry Potter series or “The Up Series” of documentaries, or even the Before Sunrise trilogy. We’re watching people, and their relationships, age in real time.

Somehow, even though I’ve noted it in all three of my previous reviews, I forgot that in every case of The Trip movies, the source material is a six-episode British television series, edited into a feature film. I’d be curious to see the greater depth the series reportedly gets into, although, ironically, watching The Trip to Greece had me thinking about how even the films feel very much like watching a series. Now they are just four episodes with an average length of an hour and 45 minutes, the general tone always consistent, just the setting changing each time. All four films are available to stream on Hulu.

And the thing is, even as feature films, I would argue they work better as a home watch. The Trip to Greece is the first in the series I did not see in a movie theater, and I really couldn’t say for certain whether I would have gone out of my way to see this one in theaters were they open right now. Perhaps I would, but it really would have depended on whether or not it was just the best option at the time, given that typically in February, quality films are harder to come by. We are in very different times now, however, and it’s not at all difficult to find worthy content. Honestly the only reason I am reviewing this movie now, fully nine months after its release, is because I am a completist and don’t want to have only reviewed the previous three.

That said, there is almost nothing to differentiate The Trip to Greece from its predecessors. If you enjoyed the others, you’re apt to enjoy this; if you did not, then don’t bother. It’s essentially more of the same, the change of scenery being immaterial: the whole point is that they are traveling, and nearly every place they have gone through all of these films has been in Europe. There’s not a lot of space for, say, culture shock. Instead, they spend a lot of time at restaurant tables, amusing each other with their endless impressions of famous actors. And I do mean endless: this is a constant theme through all four films. I suppose it would get stale quickly if you did a binge-watch of all four films, but seeing them all three years apart makes it work, a pleasant diversion.

There is a very subtle undertone of melancholy as this series ages, however, and The Trip to Greece even touches on the death of a loved one. Coogan and Brydon spend a fair amount of time making cracks about their respective ages—and to be fair, they weren’t even particularly young when the series began a decade ago, when they were both 45 years old. Add another ten, and you know how old they are now.

And now, they say, this is the end of them producing this series; they want to “quit while they’re ahead,” which is a respectable position to take. I can’t say any of these films is especially vital, but considering they still leave open the possibility of returning to it many years down the road, that could also be an interesting experiment. We certainly don’t need more of these every three years indefinitely; they can only ruminate on celebrity and mortality for so long, and three years is really not that long. It’s a far cry from, say, the nine years between every Before Sunrise sequel, or the seven between all the Seven-Up documentary sequels. Maybe they should make another The Trip movie in some multiple-of-three years from now. How about nine? Someone should slip series director Michael Winterbottom a reminder note in 2029. Coogan and Brydon will be 64 then and even bigger, possibly more entertaining cranks.

Another three years, another European country.

Overall: B

MALCOLM & MARIE

Directing: C+
Acting: B+
Writing: D
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

“You’re hyperbolic!” snaps Marie, at one point in this movie that is, ironically, maybe the most pretentious I have ever seen. Malcolm & Marie feels like an experiment that failed spectacularly, a worthwhile exercise that should never have been taken any further than just that: an exercise. It’s among the first mainstream films to have been written, produced, directed and completed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, with only two characters ever seen onscreen and shot in a single location. With all that extra time on his hands, you;d think writer-director Sam Levinson could have developed this abysmal script into something that no longer felt like a first draft.

This movie is all over the place. It has a couple of strong points. Much like Levinson’s previous and far better film, Assassination Nation (2018), the cinematography is one of the best things about it. There are some truly beautiful shots. Malcom & Marie is also shot entirely in black and white, evidently to narrow the focus on the two performers. The problem this time is that shooting this endless string of drivel in black and white only adds another layer of pretension.

At least with this film Levinson managed to snag a couple of bona fide stars: John David Washington and Zendaya as the title characters, a couple returned from a movie premiere. They spend the rest of the night mostly fighting over unbearably stupid shit. I won’t lie, occasionally I did see my own relationship in the petty ways these two went out of their way to hurt each other. The difference is, my husband and I are never this articulate when we’re shouting at each other, nor are we ever shouting about high-minded philosophy of “art.”

Malcolm is the director of the aforementioned film whose premiere they have returned from, you see. I kept wondering if the nonsense coming out of his mouth, about making film, or about his frustrations with certain things film critics focus on, was just Levinson using a character and a film to air his own grievances. Who knows? It’s impossible to tell when it’s already taking a herculean effort just not to tune out the bickering.

What I cannot figure out is who this movie is for. Fans of the actors? People merely interested in seeing how filmmaking can work (or can’t work) in the midst of pandemic-related restrictions? Maybe just rubber-neckers eager to witness a disaster? Why this had to go on for 106 minutes, I’ll never know. After being relatively intrigued for the first third or so of the movie, I lost my patience with it 34 minutes in. I am convinced my stamina in this regard was greater than most.

The acting is good. I’m seeing some people, even harsh critics of the film, saying the acting is “brilliant,” but I just don’t see how that’s possible with dialogue this contrived, between two characters who are both so deeply unlikable. Even great actors can’t save this bizarrely slick ode to self-indulgence. The concept here could have been executed with finesse, if not for Levinson’s decision to make the characters Hollywood insiders, offering commentary on Hollywood. This is supposed to be a so-called “romantic reckoning,” which could be done far more effectively without all that “Hollywood” crap. Maybe this is a “write what you know” approach. It feels like Levinson doesn’t know enough about script revision.

What a wasted opportunity. Malcom & Marie could have been made with just as few people, and with a better script, still been compelling enough to make you forget it was made under unprecedented limitations. But it’s not like movies with only two characters or set in one location have never been made before; in the past, occasionally it was a gimmick for its own sake. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, but the point is, it can work. There’s no reason this couldn’t have. Instead, Malcom & Marie seems to exist solely to keep otherwise bored filmmakers busy. Some talented people have squandered their talent here, but at least they got some work. Good for them, I guess.

Take it from me, whatever depth you see here is an illusion.

Overall: C