Indie Focus: Unexplored worlds with ‘The Florida Project,’ ‘Blade Runner 2049’ and ‘Brawl in Cell Block 99’

Hello, I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

The world at large has seemed particularly tumultuous of late, which is why, as strange as it may sound, the world of movies has come to seem like even more of an emotional buoy than usual.

In particular, the Los Angeles-based Beyond Fest has been a source of real joy, as audiences and filmmakers come together to share in something positive, even when the movies on display are of the out-there variety.

In an interview, Dario Argento, maker of some of the most stylishly strange movies of all time, described how his movies have been a place for him to work out his own dark, bad feelings, and how that has been a source of connection for audiences.

“It was like a session of psychoanalysis,” Argento said of his moviemaking. “With my films, I move all my feelings inside me, the bad and the good, the violence and the sweeter. I move all those things deep in my unconscious. I describe for the audience all these things.”

As awards season continues moving forward, we should have plenty more screenings and Q&As coming up. Keep an eye on this space for updates on future events, or go to events.latimes.com.

‘The Florida Project’

Sean Baker has long been making deeply felt, empathetically humanist explorations of worlds many would overlook, from his earlier films “Take Out,” “Prince of Broadway” and “Starlet,” to his breakthrough with “Tangerine.” With his new “The Florida Project,” Baker finds a story within the realm of rundown motels in the shadow of Disney World in Florida, crafting a playful but emotional tale in which young children occupy themselves away from their struggling parents with infectious resilience. With its candy pallette and buzzing energy, “The Florida Project” is simply one of the freshest, most original movies of the year

As Justin Chang put it in his review for The Times, “’The Florida Project’ has the same intimately searching spirit and fascination with marginalized subcultures as ‘Tangerine,’ but it’s also something greater: Scene by scene, it assembles one of the most infectious and thrillingly alive portraits of childhood I’ve ever seen .... [Baker] has made a dazzling neorealist sugar rush of a movie.

At the recent Toronto International Film Festival, I interviewed Baker, actor Willem Dafoe and newcomers Brooklynn Prince and Bria Vinaite. Dafoe remarked how the atmosphere on-set, particularly corralling the youngest members of the cast, would often make its way into the film, when he said, “There was a shadow thing, the reality was really informing the action of the fiction.”

I also recently sat down with Dafoe in Los Angeles for an interview that will be out soon.

In the New York Times, A.O. Scott spoke of the film’s unlikely sense of innocence in a world with darkness looming, particularly Prince’s character of Moonee, when he wrote, “But of course the viewer who experiences vicarious delight in their capers — ice cream tastes so much sweeter when you have conned some tourists into paying for it — is simultaneously conscious of an undertow of sorrow, anxiety and dread .… We watch her Little Rascal antics increasingly sure that something terrible is going to happen.

At the LA Weekly, April Wolfe wrote further on Moonee et al.’s high-spirited misadventures, adding, “She and her little buds aren’t simply precocious pranksters; they are full human beings with hopes and fears and coping mechanisms. Though Moonee’s story may not have a Hollywood happy ending when she’s grown and the world has been cruel, Baker has created an indomitable character who’s at least got a fighting chance.”

‘Blade Runner 2049’

French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve has likewise long been making his way up the ranks, especially since “Prisoners” and “Enemy” in 2010, on through “Sicario,” “Arrival” and now the astonishing “Blade Runner 2049.” A sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 “Blade Runner,” the new film stars Ryan Gosling and, reprising his role from the original, Harrison Ford.

In his review for The Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, “What’s remarkable about ‘Blade Runner 2049’ is how good it is. You can quibble with aspects of it and people being people (as opposed to replicants) surely will. But the bottom line is indisputable: As shaped by Villeneuve and his masterful creative team, especially production designer Dennis Gassner and cinematographer Roger Deakins, this film puts you firmly, brilliantly, unassailably in another world of its own devising, and that is no small thing.”

For more context on the original film, The Times republished an in-depth article Turan wrote in 1992 on the original film’s storied history and legend, where he said, “More than anything else, ‘Blade Runner’s’ saga is, as the best Hollywood stories invariably are, a microcosm for the industry, starkly underlining how irredeemably deep the classic split between aesthetics and commerce is and also how painfully inevitable. As with an etching by Escher, the final decision on who the villains are here, or even if there are any villains at all, depends on your point of view.”

At the New York Times, A.O. Scott zeroed in on the acting and star persona of Gosling, noting, “This is impeccable casting. Mr. Gosling’s ability to elicit sympathy while seeming too distracted to want it — his knack for making boredom look like passion and vice versa — makes him a perfect warm-blooded robot for our time. He is also, in 2017, something close to what Harrison Ford was 35 years ago: the contemporary embodiment of Hollywood’s venerable ideal of masculine cool, a guy whose toughness will turn out to be the protective shell encasing a tender soul.”

Reviewing the film for Buzzfeed, Alison Willmore added, “It’s exquisite-looking and distant, inviting you into a painstakingly crafted world but no further .… Ford’s character wasn’t necessarily sympathetic in the first ‘Blade Runner,’ but he was one whose fate felt important, an individual trying to survive in a system run by giant, indifferent institutions, unwilling to consider the question of whether he himself was just a tool created by one of them. He was someone whose limited point of view was forcefully cracked open.”

‘Brawl in Cell Block 99’

Having made its local debut as the opening night film in Beyond Fest, Craig S. Zahler’s “Brawl In Cell Block 99” has now also opened in theaters. The film stars Vince Vaughn as a man drawn back into the criminal underworld he had been struggling to break free of.

In his review for The Times, Justin Chang praised Zahler, whose previous film was the western “Bone Tomahawk,” by noting, “He is both an unapologetic grindhouse aficionado and a painstakingly methodical storyteller, and it’s the tension between these two seemingly oppositional sensibilities that gives his work its peculiarly bruising impact.”

The Times’ Jen Yamato spoke to Vaughn and Zahler about the movie, which manages to be powerful and indirect, its message and politics surprisingly difficult to parse.

“It’s not right, it’s uncomfortable, and he knows that — and he’s responsible for it,” said Vaughn of Zahler. “Therein lies the messiness that for me makes it so entertaining.”

For the New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis added, “The title is pure grindhouse, but ‘Brawl in Cell Block 99’ reaches some distance beyond simple prison-movie exploitation. For one thing, the buildup is so grippingly patient that we’re more than halfway through before the titular battleground is reached. And for another, this painstakingly paced thriller displays an intensity of purpose that makes it impossible to dismiss as well-executed trash.”

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