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Across six earlier options, author/director Tim Sutton has excelled at crafting moody, ephemeral character research which have prioritized feeling over plot, typically for the very best (see “Donnybrook”) and typically to a movie’s full detriment (see final yr’s languid “The Last Son”). He reunites along with his “Son” star for his latest, the Colson Baker (aka Machine Gun Kelly) meta-fiction “Taurus.” An odd mash-up of biofiction and movie star cautionary story, “Taurus” is heavy on temper — using woozy, overexposed cinematography and a dread-inducing rating by Baker — to showcase a burgeoning rapper’s self-implosion over the course of per week or so.
Deadly critical in a method that flirts with the kind of self-parody that “Son” usually fell into, “Taurus” is commonly rescued from its sheer oppressiveness by a dedicated efficiency by Baker. A extra fascinating actor than he’s given credit score for, Baker performs out his character Cole’s descent with a kind of mumbling despair that might work even higher with out all of the odd real-life parallels that Sutton bakes into his script.
But his character’s title, in addition to his occupation and drug historical past, purposely blur the traces between fiction and reality in ways in which really feel extra like pretensions than any deeper commentary on Baker’s personal life or the recording trade at giant. We are given a mixture of new and previous songs from his Machine Gun Kelly persona and an odd (and frustratingly elliptical) interlude with Megan Fox — who wordlessly performs Cole’s ex Mae — that grafts biography onto fiction seemingly with out objective or curiosity in unpacking the diverging storylines, as Cole falls deeper and deeper into drug abuse and Baker is, effectively, seemingly doing fairly okay today.
Mainly, nonetheless, the movie is honed in on Cole as he goes about his every day routine, taken from place to put by his benevolent and exasperated assistant Ilana (Maddie Hasson). Acting as his driver, human calendar, ingesting buddy, and therapist, the 2 type the kind of toxic-love connection that would solely exist in a movie about artistic sorts. He each respects and abuses her, criticizing her one minute for being late and leaning on her one other as he recovers from his umpteenth hangover.
Hovering on the movie, and body’s, periphery are a sequence of supporting characters. There’s Lena (Naomi Wild), an up-and-coming singer invited to the studio by Cole to put down backing vocals, Scoot McNairy’s report studio intermediary Ray, who pushes Cole to complete his album; and a intercourse employee/drug vendor Zia (Sara Silva) whose companionship solely additional underlines his personal loneliness.
What does all of this brooding add as much as? “Taurus” lacks the singular contemplativeness of Gus van Sant’s “Last Days,” an apparent inspiration. But the place that movie narrowed into Michael Pitt’s Kurt Cobain avatar with delicate precision, Sutton’s Cole is simply too clean, with Sutton utilizing the supporting characters as literalizations of Cole’s numerous wants, like stability (Illana), love (Zia or Mae), or success (Ray). This would possibly work effectively on a metaphorical stage, nevertheless it additionally reduces Cole to a self-destructive empty vessel, shaded in solely by the extra-textual references to Baker’s personal life.
Further, Sutton populates the movie with a number of odd postmodern twists that pull the movie out of its lived-in actuality. For each second we get of Cole freestyle rapping within the studio, there’s additionally a whip-its-induced cellphone name to Mae that’s performed out as a stand-up routine on an imagined stage. These two modes by no means actually coalesce, as Sutton basically abandons the imagined realities midway via.
Once Sutton’s affectations fall away, we’re left with a singular efficiency by Baker, who has basically stripped away any and all affability to play a really determined man unable to cease circling the drain. Even if he’s solely actually given a single be aware to play — distress, primarily — he performs it fairly effectively, assuredly oscillating between sad-boy mystique and petulant youngster. “Taurus” might not attain the existential heights of “Last Days,” nevertheless it’s a step in the fitting path for Sutton and a continued reminder that Baker wants extra roles that replicate his ability set. [C+]
RLJE Films releases “Taurus” in theaters on November 18.
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