Usually, it is fairly easy to pigeonhole a movie. Comedy, drama, romance, sci fi, horror, action. Those are the easy ones. It gets slightly more complicated as you branch off into hybrids like dramedy, Menippean satire, docufiction or rom com. Then, along comes a movie like “Bones and All,” a new, queasy genre buster starring Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell and Mark Rylance, and now playing in theatres.
Based on the 2015 novel of the same name by Camille DeAngelis, it is something I’ve never seen before, a romcanrofi, ie: a romantic, coming-of-age cannibal road film.
When we first meet Maren (Taylor Russell), she is a seventeen-year-old high schooler, being raised by single father Frank (André Holland). She appears to be a normal teen, sneaking out to a slumber party with schoolmates and the like, but when her taste for human flesh reveals itself, Maren and her dad have to hit the road before the police turn up.
When Maren turns eighteen, her father disappears, tired of hiding her terrible secret. Leaving the teen to fend for herself, he leaves behind some money, her birth certificate and a tape recording describing her life, from her first cannibalistic incident when she was just three-years-old, to providing details about Janelle (Chloë Sevigny), the mother who abandoned Maren when she was an infant.
On a search for answers, Maren hits the road, landing in Ohio, where she meets Sully (Mark Rylance), an older cannibal who says he could smell a fellow “eater” from blocks away. Like Maren, Sully is a drifter, but he’s not looking to answer life’s questions, he’s on the hunt for food. “Life is never dully with Sully,’ he snorts.
Sully teaches her the tricks of the trade, how to pick victims and feed without attracting attention, but something about him makes Maren uncomfortable and she moves on to Indiana where she meets Lee (Chalamet), a fine young cannibal who becomes her partner in life and death.
“Bones and All” isn’t exactly a horror film. The subject matter might be horrifying and there are some stomach-churning sound effects that won’t easily be forgotten, but this is more a coming-of-age love story as Maren adapts to her ever-changing circumstances.
The blood and guts are kept to a minimum, mostly serving as a vehicle for the movie’s metaphor of cannibals as anyone who has ever felt like an outcast. Maren and Lee are the ultimate others, a compulsive couple who aren’t treated as monsters, but as two people living outside of collective norms. Come for the cannibals, stay for the languid, sensitive essay on life on the fringes of society.
Seductive and strange, director Luca Guadagnino anchors the movie with his two leads, Chalamet and Russell. Both are driven to extremes by their appetites, while, at the same time, searching for acceptance and a place to call home. Both actors bring humanity to their characters, concentrating on their personal journeys rather than the monstrous aspects of their personalities. Their performances give the eccentric story a universal feel even if it is a very specific topic.
“Bones and All” has more to do with relationship road movies like “Two-Lane Blacktop” and “Badlands” than it does “Cannibal Holocaust.” It’s a haunting tale, if a little languorous for its own good, that makes a meal out of its allegory.
“Cup of Cheer,” a new Christmas film available for free on Tubi for the next two weeks and playing now at drive-in theatres, is an extremely silly comedy that places Hallmark movie conventions—the meet cute, a random royal, time travel, the small-town holiday setting and more—under Santa’s magnifying glass, blowing them up large .
“I guess I should start at the beginning,” says Mary (Storm Steenson), a writer living in the big city (a mix of NYC stock shots and live action Toronto street scenes). “That’s when it all started. Funny how these things always start at the beginning.”
She’s about to be let go unless she can come up with a grabby idea for the magazine’s upcoming cover story. When she pitches a story about Christmas cheer and is randomly sent to Snowy Heights, a small town legendary for it’s cool yule. “Whatever you do don’t fall in love with some small town 8 out of 10 stranger and find the true meaning of Christmas,” says Mary’s editor. “I’ve lost too many reporters that way.”
Of course, that is exactly what happens as she begins a journey that involves Chris Smith (say it fast), the owner of Cup of Cheer, a main street hot cocoa shop that may be forced to close by Christmas if Mary’s rich ex-boyfriend goes through with his plan to open a rival café next door.
There’s more. Lot’s more, as Mary tries to save Cup of Cheer and Christmas.
Essentially “Cup of Cheer” is a series of bad puns strung together with tinsel. Its commitment to Christmas clichés, wordplay and double entendre gags is truly remarkable but Jake Horowitz, director and co-writer (with Andy Lewis), keeps things lively with quick pacing. If you care for a joke, don’t worry, there will be another one in ten seconds. Don’t be a Grinch. It’s a dizzying onslaught well delivered by a game cast.
“Cup of Cheer” feels like a sketch blown up to feature length and may be best enjoyed after a glass or two of your own cup of cheer of choice (unless you’re going to the drive in!).
“All About Who You Know” takes a rom com premise and uses it to tell a story of ambition, cynicism and romance. But it’s not a rom com. It’s too meta for that. It’s a movie that follows the rom com rules but twists them to become a tribute to the kind of movies that inspired it.
Cole (Dylan Everett) is a film grad who sees life through a lens of movie references. His life is a series of imagined scenarios, ripped from the movies he is obsessed with. His dreams are that of many a film student. He wants to live and work in Los Angeles, writing screenplays that don’t follow the “same six storylines,” but he needs an in. When he meets Haley (Niamh Wilson), daughter of an Oscar winning screenwriter (David Hewlett) he contrives a rom com style hook up to get to her and her father. “It was all planned like some horses**t heist movie,” he says later. His scheme works but he soon realizes that real life and the movies are two very different things.
“All About Who You Know” takes a genre we’ve all seen and recontextualizes it with clever dialogue and characters who don’t behave as though they have just swigged from a bottle of love potion. They bare themselves in ways that no real rom com would allow. When he questions why she didn’t give him her phone number when they first met she says, “Because I wanted you to find me. I wanted you to prove that you wanted me. I am sick and tired of being obsessed with people who aren’t obsessed with me back.”
It is, as the tagline on the poster reads, “romantic-ish,” a movie that finds satisfaction in allowing the characters to behave true to form and not by allowing the form to dictate how the characters will behave. It’s a nervy take on the rom com genre and it works.
“All About Who You Know” is a clever movie that sometimes feels a little too self-aware and occasionally allows the pacing to go slack but a trio of lead performances from Everett, Wilson and Stephen Joffe as Cole’s BFF bring the film’s premise to shimmering life.
Add to that a sparkling indie soundtrack and you have something that isn’t a rom com—maybe we should call it a rom can’t—but a reinvention from Canadian writer-director Jake Horowitz.
“All About Who You Know,” which lost its festival run to the pandemic, can be now be found on Crave.
