Gemini (2017)

31 Friday Aug 2018

Tags

Aaron Katz, Actress, Drama, Film noir, John Cho, Lola Kirke, Murder, Mystery, Paparazzi, Review, Superfan, Thriller, Zoë Kravitz

D: Aaron Katz / 93m

Cast: Lola Kirke, Zoë Kravitz, Greta Lee, John Cho, Michelle Forbes, Nelson Franklin, Reeve Carney, Jessica Parker Kennedy, James Ransone, Ricki Lake

Jill LeBeau (Kirke) is the personal assistant to famous actress Heather Anderson (Kravitz). Heather has been in talks to make a new movie but has decided to take a break for a while instead. She persuades Jill to tell one of the producers, Greg (Franklin), the news, and he’s predictably angry. Ensuing attention from a self-proclaimed superfan (Kennedy), as well as a paparazzi, Stan (Ransone), adds further stress to Heather’s decision. When Heather asks Jill to borrow her gun because she doesn’t feel “safe”, Jill reluctantly agrees. At Heather’s home one morning, Jill tries to take back the gun but it goes off accidentally. No one is hurt, but Heather keeps the weapon. However, when Jill comes back later, she finds Heather dead from multiple gun shot wounds. It isn’t long before the police, led by Detective Ahn (Cho), deduce that Jill was the last person to see Heather alive, and that only her fingerprints are on the gun. With the residue from the misfire on her hand as well, Jill quickly becomes the prime suspect in the eyes of the police, but she determines to find out for herself just who did kill Heather…

For much of the first twenty minutes of Gemini, the nature of the relationship between Jill and Heather is somewhat blurred, and perhaps deliberately so. There’s a hint that they might be lovers, something that’s given a degree of credence when one of Heather’s ex-boyfriends, Devin (Carney), calls to say that he knows “what’s going on” (and to make a convenient death threat). Later, when the superfan asks if they’re an item, Heather’s response is indignant, but she doesn’t deny it outright. Nor does she when Stan the paparazzi asks the same question. But on another night, they share a bed at Heather’s home, and Heather whispers “I love you” while Jill sleeps. With the possibility of a deeper emotional relationship existing between the pair, writer-director Katz establishes a more profound meaning for Jill’s solo investigation of Heather’s murder: she’s not just keeping herself out of jail, she wants to find the killer of someone she truly cared about. This informs much of Jill’s quest to keep one step ahead of the police, while also providing the narrative with a depth that is both unexpected and entirely welcome.

What also helps is the modern day film noir vibe that the movie gives off, with Jill in the role of erstwhile private investigator, and the list of suspects such that any one of them could have done it. Katz manipulates the various clues and potential culprits with a great deal of skill, even including a scene where Jill speaks to Greg and he tells her who he thinks is the killer – if he were writing the whole thing as a script. Clever touches such as this, along with a number of visual flourishes, keep the movie from feeling stale or inevitable, and it’s further embellished by a terrific performance from Kirke, giving Jill a resourcefulness that keeps her focused and willing to take calculated risks, whether it’s sneaking into Devin’s hotel room or evading the police on a motorcycle. It’s a confident portrayal of a confident woman, and Kirke proves throughout that Katz was right to choose her for the role. In support, Kravitz is sweet natured yet nervy as Heather, while Cho is charmingly off kilter as the detective who would usually believe in the heroine’s innocence but instead is convinced she’s guilty. It’s another quirky, atypical choice from Katz, and like much else, makes Gemini more than just a pleasant diversion.

Rating: 8/10 – an conventional murder mystery given an unconventional spin, Gemini is an unexpected delight, thanks to Kirke’s self-assured performance, Katz’s witty screenplay, and a tremendously atmospheric mise en scene; only occasionally betraying its modest budget, it’s a movie that provides far more than meets the eye for the viewer willing to delve deeper into its seemingly straightforward plotting.

Cold Weather (2010)

09 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Aaron Katz, Cris Lankenau, Disappearance, Mystery, Portland, Raúl Castillo, Raffles, Review, Robyn Rikoon, Sherlock Holmes, Trieste Kelly Dunn

D: Aaron Katz / 96m

Cast: Cris Lankenau, Trieste Kelly Dunn, Raúl Castillo, Robyn Rikoon, Jeb Pearson, Brendan McFadden

Doug (Lankenau) is a twenty-something slacker with a background in forensic science but no motivation to make a career from it. When Cold Weather begins he’s without a job, without a girlfriend, and reduced to sleeping on his sister’s couch. He’s a classic underachiever. Eventually he gets a job working nights at an ice factory where he meets Carlos (Castillo). They become friends, and the usually aimless Doug begins to come out of his shell, admitting his love of Sherlock Holmes and his dream to become a detective some day, like the sleuth of 221b Baker Street (also, throughout the movie Doug carries a copy of E.W. Hornung’s Raffles around with him). When Doug’s ex-girlfriend, Rachel (Rikoon) appears on the scene her subsequent disappearance leads Doug, aided and pushed in equal measure by his sister, Gail (Dunn) and Carlos, into using his nascent detective skills to find her.

Cold Weather is a curious movie. It mixes modern film noir with a slacker aesthetic and adopts a slow-burn pace in an effort to heighten the drama and the mystery of Rachel’s disappearance. However, the mix fails to gel, and the viewer is left waiting for the movie to pull itself together. When Doug and Carlos are in Rachel’s motel room looking for clues – a scene normally ripe for increased tension – there’s some rudimentary checking of drawers and the bathroom before Doug notices something in the parking lot. Instead of this being a sudden revelation geared to reinforcing the audience’s attention, it falls flat due to a) Lankenau’s reading of the line (it’s not his fault, to be fair, it’s how the character has been written by Katz), and b) the static camerawork that leaves Carlos’ reaction almost offscreen.

There’s a fair degree of intelligence at work here but it’s undermined by the decision to pace the movie so glacially, and by having its central character be so socially awkward and unable to engage with others. When we meet Rachel it’s hard to understand what she might have seen in Doug; plus it’s already obvious that the only female relationship that Doug is comfortable with is with Gail, and she is often more of a mother to him than a sister. As the movie struggles on to its annoyingly abrupt ending, Doug does become less and less insular but only registers any real emotion when delighting in some minor vandalism. What becomes clear is that without the involvement of Carlos and Gail, Doug would never have looked into Rachel’s disappearance at all. With this in mind, the movie now feels contrived, and Doug given no motivation to act unless his friend and sister bully him into it.

Against this, there’s also the aforementioned glacial pacing. Katz directs at a snail’s pace, dragging out shots and scenes for no other purpose (it seems) than to extend what would otherwise be a pretty short movie. One sequence, where Gail and Doug are driving up to the top of a multi-storey car park, is filmed from the backseat and contains no dialogue as they ascend. The view through the windscreen is over-exposed, so there’s no detail… and the whole sequence serves no valid purpose. There are other, similar moments and while slow-paced movies can be rewarding in their own right, they still have to be engaging and astute in the assembly of the material.

Fortunately the performances are good, with Lankenau – who also appeared in Katz’s Quiet City (2007) – effective as the bordering-on-Asperger’s Doug, while Dunn quietly outshines everyone with her take on a sister who seems to have willingly put her life on hold to look after her brother. Castillo and Rikoon provide solid support and the suitably wintry location photography – all steely greys and blues – is lensed by Andrew Reed to great effect. And while Katz’s screenplay is packed with unnecessary longueurs, there is still enough of merit to warrant looking out for his other works (he just needs to sack his current editor – himself).

Rating: 5/10 – it drags badly in places but Cold Weather has a quirky feel to it that helps it through; there’s a deeper meaning here too but it all depends on whether or not the viewer is interested enough to dig for it.