Gemini

“Gemini” is preceded by a showing of “Aspirational”, the 2014 short film in which Kirsten Dunst, playing herself, is comically, cuttingly reduced to a prop in the selfies of a pair of millennial fans who approach (semi-accost) her on the street. This pre-movie treat initially suggests something akin to a mission statement, considering that writer/director/editor Aaron Katz essentially lifts a few shots verbatim, where his own movie’s famous actress, Heather Anderson (Zoë Kravitz), is forced into a photo in a diner booth with an over-zealous fan. It suggests friendship in our confusing digital age as forged through nothing more than an Instagram page and a hashtag, which Jill LeBeau (Lola Kirke), the woman sitting opposite them, is there to refute. She might be Heather’s personal assistant, putting out her client’s fire as the movie begins, but she is also Heather’s friend, and that friendship is what the movie’s first twenty or so minutes coolly evokes. Rhythms of anxiety and chill alternate as Heather and Jill fend off a sneering paparazzi (an impeccably cast James Ransone), shoot the shit over Mello Yello and St. Germaine, a peculiar concoction heralding the movie’s own air, and sing karaoke, the latter sequence concluding on an astonishing neon-bathed close-up of Kravitz, where she effortlessly evinces both joy in the moment and a seemingly kind of cosmic knowing of what comes next.

What comes next is that Heather winds up dead on the floor of her own home with Jill fingered as the prime suspect. If this twist suggests an injection of gravity, the movie merely gets lighter, as if a warm breeze blows through to completely remove any sense of edge. In one scene, the detective assigned to the case, Ahn (John Cho), takes Jill to a diner, more or less forcing her to drink coffee and asking questions in a way that suggests he knows what’s up. As he does, however, the camera suddenly slides left to right revealing the sneering paparazzi one stool over, listening in. Ahn deals with him, but then the camera slides back right to left, revealing that Jill has run out the door. It’s an ancient trick of what is in the frame and what is out of the frame, but in this context it also evinces how Katz deliberately diffuses his own drama by cutting away to something else.

If the first twenty or so minutes of the movie suggest that anything can happen, the rest of the movie demonstrates that nothing really will, as even a late movie motorcycle/car chase minimizes the adrenaline by keeping the camera still, less concerned with thrills than angles, reveling in the sparkling nighttime Hollywood Hills scenery as the camera cranes up. Katz has worked mystery territory before with “Cold Weather” (this blog’s favorite 2011 movie), and while no one would have confused it with John le Carré, it was positively intricate compared to “Gemini”, which has A Ha moments so easily obvious that they feel pulled from “Scoop.” As such, Katz barely seems to care about the mystery, employing it merely as a means to proffer an exercise in tone. That tone, while occasionally nodding toward the icy-blue atmospherics of Michael Mann, ultimately feels more like an improbable blend of the drollness of “The Nice Guys” and the surreality of “Mulholland Drive”, where the indifferent air of a movie producer (Nelson Franklin) does not come to stand for anything more than his own indifference to compassion and a tendering of the voodoo juice to Jill at some tiki-themed bar does not come to mean anything more than the moment’s own delightful abnormality.

“Cold Weather” was droll too yet ultimately revealed its mystery as the conduit to a re-conjuring of childhood innocence. And the ultimate twist, not to be revealed, in “Gemini” also suggests the opportunity to transform the film into something else, calling back to its “Aspirational” opening. That doesn’t happen. As the movie concludes and the camera gazes upon downtown Los Angeles from afar, the whole thing practically evaporates, like waking up from a dream.

Land Ho!

Near the end of “Land Ho!” its seminal moment arises. Two men in their sixties, Mitch (Earl Lynn Nelson) and Colin (Paul Eenhoorn), one-time brothers-in-law, less friends by choice than circumstance, have come to Iceland for a rejuvenating road trip. Camped out in the pristine Nordic countryside, Mitch confesses his reasons for conscripting Colin into this voyage were not entirely forthright and so he proceeds to offer an explanation. And the explanation is everything precisely because it isn’t much at all. The details will not be revealed but suffice it to say they are not based in disease – “I have cancer” – or some such. He didn’t even technically lie, he just conveniently eliminated information because, well, as a man of booming pride he felt a little embarrassed. And in that embarrassment, he betrays a remarkable honesty. And Colin responds just as a real friend would, reassurance by way of soft humor. Then, the film, like life, simply continues as is.

In a thus-far four film career, Aaron Katz, who edited and co-wrote and directed here with Martha Stephens, has proven himself an unrivaled purveyor of these moments, ones in which he takes a traditional movie scenario (The Confessional in this case) and rather than spoof it or turn it inside-out, strips it of the showy non-essentials, leaving behind only the imperatively authentic.

Consider a moment in their trek aboard a rented Humvee (matching Mitch’s personality perfectly) wherein they confront rushing water across the narrow road. Not knowing if they should dare and drive through since they do not know the precise depth, Colin decides he will wade out to gauge it. Seconds later, another car zooms past to reveal it easily passable, instantaneously sucking dry the scene’s inherent suspense, which is essentially what the film itself is doing. No specific goal is aimed for, no obvious epiphany waits. Instead “Land Ho!” is about finding peace in the moment and peace in the place.

Mitch is a gregarious Kentuckian, a part-time pothead and ogler of women half his age who can B.S. with the best of ‘em. This is a dangerous character to both create and play, one that is so outsized and often boorish it teeters on the edge of outright obnoxiousness, like Jonah Hill in “Superbad” with a pension, and yet every boast and vulgarity is undercut with a surprising sweetness. A retired doctor, a brief scene in which he brings out his stethoscope is full of low-key compassion, and acquires further meaning as the film progresses.

Colin, of course, is his opposite, an introspective Australian who is both accustomed to and nevertheless still chagrined (humorously and exasperatedly) by his friend’s behavior. You might say they are a new school Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, but that would suggest “Land Ho!” belabors the rote idea that “opposites attract” when it is more interested in exploring how common ground can be forged in spite of opposing mindsets.

The landscape becomes integral, not incidental, to their journey, the mountainous panoramas and erupting geysers encountered upon leaving Reykjavik behind subtly working to reduce the dual protagonists in their image. Nowhere is this more apparent than an ill-advised middle-of-the-night hike that finds them swallowed up by nature's vastness with nothing but a pair of pitiful glow sticks for guidance. It predictably leads to squabbling - The Break-Up, you might say - but almost instantly the characters move past it. Even as the environ diminishes them, it builds them back up, immersing them in its restorative powers, such as a sequence in a hot spring in which Colin essentially has a lo-fi Meet Cute. It is not, however, a trigger for transformation but a simple embrace of the present. “Land Ho!” is not about getting old and reflecting but about being old and recognizing, an idea the film brilliantly illustrates by ending when it does.

Early in the film, Mitch’s once-removed cousin Ellen (Karrie Crouse) and her friend, Janet (Elizabeth McKee), both college-aged, passing through on their own excursion, join the older men for a fancy dinner. Janet gives a lifelike oration on her field of study, Jewish Mysticism, explaining that below the surface of what we perceive as reality is a divine spirit. Not long after the girls have gone on their way, Mitch and Colin find themselves bundled up on a beach, shuffling to a song on the soundtrack bestowing “Land Ho!” its title. I don't really know if a divine spirit bubbles beneath the surface of this tiring and frustrating reality of ours, but to watch this moment and to watch this film undoubtedly makes me believe that sentiment might just be true.