At The Movies: Indie charmer Cha Cha Real Smooth and muddled Spiderhead
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A still from Cha Cha Real Smooth, starring Cooper Raiff (left) and Dakota Johnson.
PHOTO: APPLE TV+
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Cha Cha Real Smooth (M18)
108 minutes, Apple TV+
3 stars
The story: American film-maker Cooper Raiff wrote, directed, produced and stars in this movie about an aimless recent university grad who moves home to New Jersey and gets a job hosting neighbourhood children's parties. He becomes smitten with a single mum a decade his senior, played by Dakota Johnson.
Two reasons to watch this film:
1. Remember Coda (2021)?
Cha Cha Real Smooth was acquired by Apple TV+ for distribution after winning the Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival in January. That same trajectory last year landed Coda the Academy Awards' Best Picture, so Raiff's indie hit is off to a good start.
2. Not a regular date movie
The love interest inconveniently has an age-appropriate fiance (Raul Castillo), plus an autistic daughter (winning neurodiverse newcomer Vanessa Burghardt).
She has her own adult problems. This romance dramedy leaves uncertain how the relationship will evolve, and Johnson, enigmatic and vulnerable, is a standout amid a warm, messy, sprawling ensemble of families and friends.
One reason to reconsider:
1. Growing pains
Raiff, like his character, is still in his 20s, onto his sophomore feature. He further mixes in school bullying, and bipolar and clinical depression, but the coming-of-age narrative of a nice young man outgrowing post-collegiate malaise lacks the mature wisdom to be anything deeper or edgier than a sweet-natured pleasure.
Spiderhead (M18)
106 minutes, Netflix
2 stars
The story: In a state-of-the-art penitentiary on a tropical island, inmates volunteer for medical experiments to reduce their sentences. Miles Teller is one such lab rat who starts to question the morality of the tests and uncovers sinister motives.
One reason to watch this film:
1. It is by the guys behind Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Spiderhead is director Joseph Kosinski's second outing with Teller this year, or his third since the 2017 firefighter drama Only The Brave.
Co-starring as the programme's bespectacled tech visionary is Chris Hemsworth and he is gleefully smarmy, injecting the prison population with mind-altering drugs.
How controlling are these psychotropics? They can instantly induce two strangers into having frenzied sex.
One reason to skip this film:
1. It is nothing like Top Gun: Maverick
The futuristic thriller confined mainly to a brutalist research compound differs from that action blockbuster in both scale and genre.
It is also a clunker. Booker Prize-winner George Saunders pondered human will and technology's manipulation of personal behaviour in his 2010 short story, Escape From Spiderhead, and this adaptation has Hollywoodised the ending while misjudging the dark satiric tone throughout.
There are more needle drops featuring the likes of Supertramp and Roxy Music than there are thrills, as if the penal colony were instead a 1980s rock archive.
