THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES (Focus/Universal – March 15): The title of Kobi Libii’s first feature refers to the unfortunately well-established movie trope where a noble Black character exists only as a catalyst to make the white protagonist a better person. (Think of everything from Driving Miss Daisy to The Green Mile, The Legend of Bagger Vance to Green Book.) Libii’s conceit is that there’s an actual organization of Black people whose job it is to use magic to keep the morale of white men up so their hostility will stay down, making the lives of Black people safer. It’s a great premise, but Libii’s script doesn’t fully deliver. It’s weak on world-building (as strong as David Alan Grier and Nicole Byer are as senior members of the Society, the rules they’re meant to enforce seem random) and chooses to focus on a newcomer to the group, Aren (Justice Smith). A visual artist with low self-esteem who’s given to placating and apologizing to the whites around him, he’s recruited by Roger (Grier), and given as his first assignment a graphic artist named Jason (Drew Tarver, from The Other Two), who’s struggling at his high-tech company. Aren’s job is to do most of the work on Jason’s upcoming presentation (on a rebranding necessary because the company has been accused of racism, no less) while making the white man think he’s the creative force behind it. Mixed into this social commentary, though, Libii decided to make American Society into a romcom, so even as Aren is trying to get his (i.e., Jason’s) job done, he’s becoming increasingly attached to Lizzie (An-Li Bogan)… who just so happens to be a colleague–and Jason’s crush–at the company. Smith and Bogan are delightful together, and a full-on romcon with the two of them might be great, but Libii doens’t figure out how to fit the pieces of his movie together. It’s also a bit odd that a movie that exists to poke holes in one movie trope is so indebted to the tropes of another genre that has its own sociological issues, although a stinger as the credits roll may be meant to deflect that. American Society is an extremely smooth piece of filmmaking for a first-time director (the warm photography is by Doug Emmett), but apart from its own flaws, it can’t help but suffer in comparison with the similarly-themed American Fiction, coincidentally in release at almost the same time, and an altogether better-structured piece of satire. American Society is a promising but not quite satisfying effort.
SASQUATCH SUNSET (Bleecker Street – April 19): David and Nathan Zellner are Sundance favorites, although you’d be forgiven for not recognizing the titles of their prior features Goliath, Damsel, Kid Thing or Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, none of which got any theatrical release to speak of (they did, however, recently direct several episodes of Showtime’s The Curse). Sasquatch Sunset is their highest-profile project to date, and its uniqueness will certainly draw attention, especially with a cast that includes Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg. The actors, however, are utterly unrecognizable, and that includes their voices, since Sasquatch Sunset (expanded from a short the brothers did in 2010) has no dialogue. That’s because the film simply follows a group of sasquatch through the course of a year, for the most part as though it’s a nature documentary. At the start there are four in the group, three of whom are essentially a family unit, with Eisenberg and Keough as mates, and Christophe Zajac-Denek as their child. The status of the additional bigfoot (played by Nathan Zellner) is less clear, perhaps the father of one of the adults, or simply a hanger-on. We watch as the creatures wander through the landscape, having fights and moments of contentment, facing the perils and beauties of nature. Eventually we learn in what era this is all taking place, although the discovery doesn’t lead to any overt drama. A lot of the time, we witness bodily functions, because boy, do the Zellners love depicting every possible substance that can emerge from the humanoid body. You have to respect the commitment that everyone involved brought to the process–it would be an understatement to say that the actors bring zero vanity to their work–and there are legitimate moments of beauty and poetry here. Still, even at 90 minutes, Sasquatch Sunset feels like a curiosity that’s extended too long, more a stunt than a functioning feature.
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