‘Sasquatch Sunset’
David and Nathan Zellner churned out quirky, experimental indie works such as “Plastic Utopia” (1997) and “Goliath” (2008) and later veered into slightly more digestible alternative fare with “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” (2014), about a depressed Japanese office worker obsessed with the movie “Fargo” (1996) who searches for that film’s lost suitcase of cash. They opt for something more fantastic and scatological here as they embed us in a group of Sasquatch over the course of a calendar year. The film’s not far off from “The Dawn of Man” sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968); no human words are uttered, though there are plenty of human gestures. Amid the lush greenery of the Pacific Northwest we get to know our clan of cryptids; the brusque alpha male (co-director Nathan Zellner), the lone female (Riley Keough), the more demure junior male (Jesse Eisenberg) and an ostensibly adolescent ’squatch (Christophe Zajac-Denek). Early on we get a fairly gratuitous sex scene right out of “Clan of the Cave Bear” (1986), then there are bouts of masturbation and self-exploration of genitalia (yup, you get full-frontal bigfoot). As base as that may sound, the film unfurls more like a stock nature documentary until things move toward the comic and absurd: Employing a turtle withdrawn into its shell as something of a cellphone; or the alpha munching on what can best can be described as herbal hallucinogens and laying his desire for sex on a mountain lion, which does not go so well. It feels like “The Three Stooges” by way of Nat Geo, and near going over the top. There’s plenty of pissing and shitting too, especially when the clan discover a logging road running through their territory (it’s up to this point that it’s unclear if we’re in the Paleolithic or the present) and experience the need to mark it. As much as you could say it’s a “Beavis and Butt-Head” spin on the Pakuni from the 1970s Saturday morning TV staple “Land of the Lost,” there is vulnerability, fear, compassion, grief and a sense of community that registers onscreen. Well crafted (the costume, makeup and cinematography impress), “Sasquatch Sunset” is at turns weirdly touching and, as the title suggests, there is the heartbreak of witnessing what may be the last of a rare breed.
‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare‘
The title might tie you up with thoughts of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” and isn’t too far off – both are about teams assembled by the British government to stave off evil forces with world domination in mind, and both have links to James Bond (more on that later). Beyond that, one is based on a comic book and the other on the real-life derring-do by a ragtag team of World War II commandos trying to cripple the Nazi naval war machine as Britain remains the lone European holdout against Hitler and prays for the entry of the United States into the war.
Based on Damien Lewis’ 2016 nonfiction book spun up from Winston Churchill’s declassified papers, the Guy Ritchie-helmed film homes in on Operation Postmaster, one of Churchill’s unauthorized and unsanctioned covert ops that proved instrumental in swaying the balance of power in the war.
The rich potpourri of strapping can-dos is led by Maj. Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill, aka Superman, rocking a killer handlebar mustache), sprung from the brig for the suicide mission. With him are explosives expert Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding, “Crazy Rich Asian”), Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), captain of the modest fishing vessel used for the operation, and gleeful Scandinavian killing machine Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson), who would give Alexander Skarsgård’s berserker in “The Northman” (2022) a run for his money in bloodletting and wear a broad beaming smile while doing it. The target is a critical Nazi supply ship (of CO2 filters for U-boats) and ammo depot on the West African island of Fernando Po, then a Spanish colony. Along the way the raffish rascals sink a Nazi patrol boat, liberate tactical strategist and ladies man Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer) and tangle with a British destroyer. They have operatives on the island as well with Richard Heron (Babs Olusanmokun) who, a la Rick in “Casablanca” (1942), runs a casino, and club chanteuse Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González), who’s deadly with a pistol but oft dangled as bait to ply Nazi command.
Ritchie, known for his cheeky, stylistic verve (“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “The Gentlemen”), which the director set aside for his other “truly happened” effort “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant” (2023), reverts pleasingly back to his roots. It’s “The Guns of Navarone”(1961) if reenvisioned through an “Inglourious Basterds” (2009) lens. The cast is all in, even if the narrative, long for its two-hour running time, ebbs when it should be cresting.
Back to that Bond thing: Under hushed asides from Churchill (played by Rory Kinnear, so electric in “Men” but no Gary Oldman here) there’s a Brigadier Gubbins code-named “M” (Cary Elwes) and his aide, a young Ian Fleming, the guy who would go on to pen the secret-agent novels–allegedly inspired by Cavill’s suave Major. The original 007, Sean Connery, played Allan Quatermain in that other “Gentlemen” movie.
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