When rating a film I ask myself these three questions: What is the director’s goal or purpose? How does the director try to achieve it? Is the director successful? Hence a big box office hit may get a “5” while a Eurosleaze sexploitation flick gets a “7”. My rating system in a nutshell:
10 = Brilliant!
9 = Exceptional
8 = Very Good
7 = Good
6 = Average
5 = Forgettable
4 = Bad
3 = Dismal
2 = Dog Barf
1 = Beyond Awful
~ ~ ~ ~
Go West (Bosnia and Herzegovina 2005) (9): Writer/director Ahmed Imamovic’s absurdist allegory combines tragedy, dark comedy, and scathing satire in this send-up of the Bosnian War and while the result may not be pitch perfect it sure as hell packs a punch. Gay lovers Milan (a Serbian student) and Kenan (a Moslem cellist) are living in Sarajevo when the war breaks out. As Serbian forces begin targeting Moslems (and homosexuals) Milan disguises Kenan as his young bride, "Milena", and the two make plans to flee to the West using forged papers. But first they must hide out at Milan’s isolated village, a supposed safe haven which they quickly discover has not completely escaped the insanities of war nor the ethnic hatred which fuels them. Set in a dusty hinterland of hovels, cobbled ruins, and drunken eccentrics, Go West has the feel of a Spaghetti Western—that village churchyard should ring a bell with anyone who’s watched The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly—a look further enhanced by the judicious use of off-kilter camera angles and a musical score which sounds as if it were composed by a Slavic clone of Ennio Morricone. It’s even dedicated to Sergio Leone! But while the look may be Cinecittà, Imamovic’s direction is more in keeping with the transgressive proddings of Gaspar Noé or perhaps the outrage of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Surrounded by grotesque scarecrows—horrific reminders of the Moslem neighbours who have recently gone missing?—Milan’s village is likewise inhabited by haunted figures: the town prostitute who yearns for love like an addict years for heroin; the crippled priest who has replaced the Word of God with nationalistic jingoism; the bearish twins who wield their chainsaws as if they were a fifth limb; and the local idiot who scrambles about challenging people with his wooden rifle. Even Milan’s usually stoic father has been reduced to a drunkard unable to let go of his dead past. It’s a heady, contradictory mix to be sure and when the village’s paranoia and moral decay begin to infect Milan and Milena/Kenan’s relationship a downfall seems all but inevitable especially after Milan receives his draft notice from the army. Bookended by a journalistic interview which starts out sympathetically only to end in a bizarre departure from reality, Go West is sure to frustrate anyone searching for orderly logic. But for those able to enter into its waking nightmare it is a harrowing trip indeed.
Turning Red (USA/Canada 2022) (6): Thirteen-year old Mei Lee is torn between being a dutiful daughter to her Sino-Canadian parents (mom and Dad run a Chinese temple tourist attraction in downtown Toronto) and wanting to fit in with her friends at school. But puberty brings a whole new dimension to her dilemma when it triggers an ancient family curse that causes Mei Lee to transform into a big red panda whenever her emotions get the better of her. Imagine a period with great big cuddly fangs and claws. Can she learn to control her transformations or will she have to submit to her mother’s demand that she undergo a drastic “cure”? Yes the Pixar animation is top-notch as usual, and it’s nice to see a cartoon evocation of Toronto filled with touches of Canadiana (maple leaf logos, Tim Horton’s, and a blue five-dollar bill!). And yes the underlying message of learning to make peace with one’s “inner panda” is a noble one even if it is drilled into your head incessantly throughout. But the glut of endearingly precocious animated tweens is becoming tiresome—Mei Lee’s grade school posse is composed of a Geek, a Goth, and an ADHD Grrrl—while the requisite life lessons are becoming predictable and facile. And it is LOUD! A non-stop barrage of manic meltdowns and shouting matches left me wondering if everyone in Mei Lee’s neighbourhood were popping cartoon amphetamines in between takes. The DEI crowd will love the cosmopolitan multi-cultural vibe however (no, that is not a bad thing) and animation buffs will smile at the technical bravura—I especially liked the Rogers Centre sequence featuring a Boy Band concert gone terribly wrong. But I can’t help feeling that I’ve seen it all before. Was a nominee for 2023’s Best Animated Feature Oscar.
Snow Angels (USA 2007) (5): Sometimes an indie film tries way too hard to be an indie film. Such is the case with writer/director David Gordon Green’s voyeuristic drama looking at the interconnected lives of residents in a nondescript American town (surprise! it’s Halifax!). There’s the usual dramatic fodder common to these flicks—the cheating husbands, the suffering wives, the angst-ridden teenagers, and for a little flavour there’s also the delusional nut-job and a little toddler too adorable for her own good. After Green’s roving camera establishes the tone by showing everyone’s dirty secrets and private hells (divorced mom can’t cope, divorced dad prays too hard, high school geek gets laid) he tosses in a one-two punch climax that supposedly throws everyone back into the blender… Unfortunately, despite a pair of okay performances by headliners Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell the entire production suffers from a stagey script and a bit of dramatic hyperbole which feels vaguely artificial thus robbing an otherwise gripping final reel of much of its impact. Some nice cinematography of snowy streets filled with happily oblivious extras however, and an inspired aerial view of a high school marching band practicing their routines suggests the randomness of life, or fate, or something. Perhaps Robert Altman or Paul Thomas Anderson could have salvaged something from this, but I doubt they would have bothered.
Marriage Story (USA 2019) (9): Successful Broadway director Charlie Barber and his celebrated leading lady, Nicole, are getting divorced. Wanting to keep things civil for the sake of their 8-year old son Henry, they try to work out the terms on their own but both have widely differing takes as to what went wrong with the marriage and what could have been done to prevent it. So when Nicole takes Henry and moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles in an effort to reboot her film career it prompts both parties to hire prominent divorce lawyers. And that’s when things start to get ugly. Based on his own divorce experience, writer/director Noah Baumbach’s clinical examination of a partnership coming apart features cutting dialogue, killer performances, and several well executed theatrical flourishes—a screen test sees Nicole donning several masks as if searching for an identity; for Halloween Charlie dresses, appropriately enough, as the Invisible Man. Leads Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver received a pair of well deserved Oscar nominations as the angry spouses too obsessed with their own pain to listen to the other’s—a climactic argument in a cramped apartment practically scorches the screen. Yet Baumbach balances the angry outbursts with moments of vulnerability so intimate I found myself holding my breath—when a desperately unhappy Driver belts out an impromptu rendition of Sondheim’s “Being Alive” at a NYC nightclub it pretty much brings the curtain down. Ray Liotta and Oscar-winner Laura Dern (Best Supporting Actress) play the battling attorneys: his cynical jabs and her smug retorts turning the Barber’s already painful ordeal into a street fight. Julie Haggerty is superb as Nicole’s scatterbrained Hollywood mother while Merritt Wever garners major laughs with very few lines as her equally scattered sister. And as Charlie’s first divorce lawyer, veteran Alan Alda provides a human touch as a law practitioner trying to look beyond the law. An intelligent, incisive, and often bleakly humorous look at two aggrieved people trying to remain adults even as the system goads them into throwing knives at one another. Bergman would have approved.
Taxi Zum Klo [Taxi to the John] (Germany 1980) (7): Shot in Berlin during the carefree pre-AIDS days of cruising and recreational sex, writer/director/actor Frank Ripploh’s semi-autobiographical shocker was initially banned in the UK for its hardcore sex. Ripploh basically plays himself, a gay teacher by day who eagerly indulges in anonymous sexual encounters by night (and on weekends and on coffee breaks). But life gets complicated for Frank after he meets and subsequently falls in love with Bernd, a quiet homebody who dreams of settling down with Mr. Right and raising chickens. Can Frank tone down his sluttish ways long enough to give this relationship a chance? Or can Bernd learn to accept the fact that Frank will always be ruled by his dick? With a directing style somewhere between John Waters and Kevin Smith, Ripploh populates his edgy urban comedy with all manner of fringe characters from leather boys and drag queens to a neurotic damsel in distress and an overly candid patient in a VD clinic waiting room who is only too eager to describe her symptoms to Frank (yecch!). And peppered throughout are scenes of transgressive man-on-man lust filmed guerilla-style in bedrooms, bathrooms, and city parks, sometimes accompanied by grainy B&W loops of antique hetero porn as if to confirm the fact that when it comes to sex nothing is new under the sun. A romantic bath for two contrasts jarringly with a later scene of water sports (google it if you have to); a fashionable drag ball becomes a study in social dynamics; and an “educational film” on pedophiles is inappropriately critiqued by Bernd and a bitchy transvestite (cringe!). And throughout Ripploh’s voiceover provides mordant commentary on everything from sexual mores to the pitfalls of romance. Yes it’s dated, and in light of what we now know it’s also dangerously irresponsible in parts—a certain hospital scene borders on criminal. And yes it fails to represent gay men as a whole despite one poster loudly proclaiming it a “masterpiece of mainstream male gay life”. Hardly. But for those of us old enough to remember it does hearken back to a time when promiscuity was confused with liberation and simply being homosexual was an act of defiance in itself.
Spring Breakers (USA 2012) (8): Rife with gratuitous tits and ass and bullets, writer/director Harmony Korine’s angst-riddled teen drama feels like a hybrid of Scarface and Baywatch reformatted as a retro MTV music video. A group of high school girls stage an armed robbery in order to raise enough cash to join their classmates for spring break down south. But a combination of drugs and public disorder on their part eventually attract the attention of suave drug dealer, “Alien” (James Franco sporting the tattooed body of a god and the mind of an antichrist) who seduces them with his gangster trappings. Alternately attracted and repulsed by his piles of cash and arsenal of automatic weapons—and emboldened by their recent plunder back home—the girls will eagerly embark upon a vacay they will never forget… Those familiar with Korine’s previous work already know that he never stays within the lines, his goal not so much to offend but rather to incite or at least jar, and Spring Breakers is no exception. Accompanied by a throbbing techno soundtrack, those slow repetitious pans of semi-naked party people sucking on bongs and jiggling their junk under the hot Florida sun are ultimately depressing in their sheer pointlessness while highly stylized scenes of violence are filtered into rebellious adolescent fantasies—imagine if Keeping Up With The Kardashians was set in a Columbian cartel. Style certainly vies with substance here, but ultimately Korine’s combination of wild excesses and contemplative departures so reminiscent of Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (2016) manage to provide both. An impromptu rendition of Britney Spears’ Everytime provides a sad irony while a totally surreal scene of heavily armed commando babes clad only in Day-Glo bikinis and hot pink balaclavas gives rise to the term “Beach Noir”. Leave it to Harmony Korine to once again elevate “trashy” to an art form all its own. Franco, decked out in braids and grillz, treads a fine line between sexy and slime; Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson play a fine pair of fallen angels; and Selena Gomez provides contrast as the nice girl who just can’t.
The Outrun (UK/Germany 2024) (8): Director/co-writer Nora Fingscheidt brings Amy Liptrot’s memoir to the screen and in doing so does a most amazing thing—she manages to capture the roller-coaster struggle of addiction subjectively as well as objectively. After unchecked alcoholism derails her career and her relationship, twenty-nine year old Rona returns home to Scotland’s Orkney Islands where she will have to make peace with past traumas (dad’s unchecked bouts of manic-depression, mom’s bible-thumping) as well as apply the brakes to her own out-of-control life. Against a fitting backdrop of barren rocks, howling storms, and crashing waves, Fingscheidt’s topsy-turvy editing propels the story back and forth through time, giving us a patchwork impression of what brought Rona to this point. One moment she’s floundering in a London nightclub while the bouncers try to deposit her outside, then she’s a child watching her father smash all the windows in the house during a manic episode, then she’s calmly reaching out at an AA meeting…and throughout her hair colour slowly reverts from gaudy orange to sea blue to earthy brown. The overall effect is a stream of consciousness whose apparently haphazard scenes perfectly mirror Rona’s own inner chaos. A thunderous backdrop of sea and wind (often drowned out by the club tunes on Rona’s headphones) underscore her ongoing struggle while the omnipresent seals whose large eyes seem to follow her as she walks along the shore provide a bit of magical realism. In the lead role Saoirse Ronan gives a standout performance playing a woman silently raging against her own self-destruction and in a smaller but crucial role Paapa Essiedu gives a heartbreaking turn as a bewildered lover forced to bail lest he be dragged down with her. Kudos also to cinematographer Yunus Roy Imer whose seamless jumps from windblown cliffs to pulsing dance floors somehow derive order from disorder.
Besieged Fortress (France/Canada 2006) (7): Combining amazing microphotography and a rousing orchestral score director/co-writer Phillipe Calderon’s nature documentary follows the travails of an African termite colony as it deals with floods, fire, and the constant threat of predators. Playing like a sci-fi thriller, his cameras get into the mound itself (or a very clever set piece) to observe the insects’ daily routines from reinforcing the nest’s mud walls to caring for the grotesquely swollen queen who is capable of laying thousands of eggs in a single day. But threats are never far away—a thunderstorm brings disaster, a hungry chameleon can’t keep its tongue to itself, and marauding bands of carnivorous ants display an uncanny knack for waging war despite the termite colony’s dedicated warriors. Extreme close-ups are not for the squeamish, especially when messy scenes of bugs being devoured are accompanied by crunchy sound effects, but unless they just happen to be destroying your house’s foundation you’ll admire the little protagonists’ tireless determination. You’ll also want to stomp on every ant you see. Ants are total dicks.
Propaganda (NZ 2012) (8): Supposedly smuggled out of North Korea by a pair of spies, this piece of anti-West agitprop skewers our most sacred institutions from organized religion to Reality TV, rampant consumerism, and the Cult of Celebrity. Westerners are cast as enslaved sheep drawn to the sedating effects of Christianity and a plethora of flashy yet useless consumer goods, sheep who are lulled into believing the illusion of “democracy” when in fact they are controlled, coerced, and seduced at every turn by the corporate overlords who actually run the show. Zionism gets a black eye, Hollywood and the One Percent get gutted, and flashy editing fills the screen with a non-stop barrage of everything from toy commercials to war atrocities (committed by the West and its allies, of course). And then our anonymous narrator gives the usual impassioned homage to North Korea’s “Glorious Leader” while placing his country at the forefront of revolutionary ideology. Of course the irony rests in the fact that this vitriolic attack is actually the brainchild of New Zealand writer/director Slavko Martinov and never graced a North Korean screen at all. However, as a mockumentary it is presented as deadly serious and only careful attention reveals the sarcastic humour behind the bluster and jingoism. Besides, aside from a few deliberately inaccurate allegations it really isn’t that far from the truth. If this had come directly from Pyongyang it would be tempting to use the old “pot calling the kettle black” analogy to discredit it, but these days one utensil pretty much looks like the other.
Last Party (Switzerland/France 2024) (7): Four acquaintances cross paths at a private graduation party: dour Angela who disdains all social functions until a spiked drink and line of cocaine lowers her guard; jock Alexander who is definitely not gay until he meets the party’s sexy young host; snobbish Lily whose health is not as robust as she pretends; and Ethan who just wants to be liked until a prank gets out of hand. As the party wears on and alcohol levels rise the four will suddenly find themselves curiously unable to leave the house—and that’s when things take a decidedly surreal turn… There is an unmistakable touch of Gaspar Noe to director/co-writer Nicolas Dozol’s existential drama about four teenagers who, during the course of one evening, will be traumatized both physically and emotionally while the world around them changes one tiny increment at a time. Perhaps it’s in the voyeuristic camerawork that’s presented as one continuous tracking shot, Dozol’s roving lens floating up and down stairs and in and out of doorways as if it were a restless guest itself (mirrors figure prominently). Perhaps it’s in the dreamlike cinematography which incorporates bursts of coloured light and an encroaching mist while snatches of trance music drone on in the background. Noe is definitely there in the transgressive drugs and sex as each character crosses an invisible threshold. But despite the build-up—a downplayed mix of angst-riddled psychodrama and subliminal horror—Dozol leaves us hanging with an intriguingly ambivalent epilogue. Is this a psychedelic coming of age allegory with a sunlit ending one would expect from John Hughes had he dropped LSD? Or is it more of a post-pubescent take on Tales from the Crypt?
No Way to Treat a Lady (USA 1968) (7): By day celebrated New York thespian Christopher Gill (Rod Steiger) runs one of Broadway’s more successful theatres, but at night he’s a serial killer who strangles single, middle-aged women right in their own apartments. And now NYPD homicide detective Morris Brummel (George Segal) has been tasked with catching the killer, an assignment which will prove to be more difficult than he imagined for how do you track down a madman who is not only a master of disguise but also takes sadistic delight in taunting you over the phone? From the chintzy decor and “mod” fashions to a host of over-the-top performances this is one policier firmly rooted in the ‘60s. Steiger growls and hisses before literally bringing down the house while Segal provides balance as the dogged mensch determined to track him down. Co-star Lee Remick plays it lukewarm as Morris’ newfound love interest and Eileen Heckart (bless her!) hams it up perfectly as his emasculating Jewish mother. It may not have withstood the test of time all that well—the retro technology is “interesting” while a couple of homosexual clichés are just plain tiresome—but like a fine piece of aged cheese it can still be enjoyed, mold and all.
Madeinusa (Peru 2006) (8): The residents of a little Indian town high in the Andes are preparing to celebrate “Holy Time”—that period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday when, so the natives believe, God is dead and therefore sin does not exist. Or to put it another way, all moral constraints are temporarily lifted and anything goes. For the duration of Holy Time, teenaged Madeinusa has been crowned honorary Mater Dolorosa, but despite the Virgin Mary trappings foisted upon her what she really wants is to escape the confines of the village (and her father’s incestuous advances) and head to the bright lights of Lima like her mother before her. Enter Salvador, a handsome young geologist from the big city whose presence will not only complicate the village’s upcoming bacchanal (they don’t want witnesses) but fire up Madeinusa’s latent libido thus incurring her father’s wrath… It’s impossible to pin down writer/director Claudia Llosa’s outrageous and frankly blasphemous fever dream for just as you peel away one layer of meaning another presents itself. Is it a dig at her country’s colonial roots? Certainly the culture shock between white gringo Salvador (such an ironic name!) and brown Quechuan Madeinusa (another great name!) takes centre stage as does the seamless melding of Catholic voodoo and pagan ritual—a brawny statue of Christ carries indecent implications while more prosaic religious artifacts moulder away in an attic. And Salvador’s righteous disapproval of the town’s debauchery doesn’t stop him from taking advantage of Madeinusa’s newfound sexual urges. Even the village’s name translates as “The town no one can enter”. Is it a feminist fable following one woman’s singleminded determination to rise above her station in life? There is definitely an undercurrent of empowerment to Madeinusa’s otherwise downcast features, her self-effacement finding counterpoint in her older sister’s fiery outbursts. Or could it be a tale of madness and retribution wrapped up in religious pageantry and topped by a bitter coda? Under Llosa’s skilful direction a pair of broken earrings will represent a greater tragedy while a simple bowl of homemade soup will bring down revenge like a double bolt of lightning. However you choose to view it there is no denying its ability to divide audiences and outrage clerical sensibilities. Catholics beware!
The Rule of Jenny Pen (NZ 2024) (4): Veteran actors Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow waste a pair of good performances in this insipid geriatric thriller which proves to be more embarrassing than frightening. After a stroke leaves him partially paralyzed, former judge Stefan Mortensen (Rush) winds up convalescing at a nursing home where the residents are being terrorized by one of their own, a sadistic psychopath named Dave Crealy (Lithgow) and his alter ego “Jenny Pen”, a creepy hand puppet whose empty eye sockets seem to glow with an inner malice. Taking an instant dislike to the new guy, Crealy proceeds to make Mortensen’s life as unbearable as possible—but the old judge still has a bit of fight left in him as Crealy will eventually find out… The institutional setting is depressingly real with forced bonhomie and a cast of septuagenarians suffering through various degrees of dementia. However the fact that the home’s support staff—who otherwise seem to be around every corner—are never present when Crealy is assaulting patients or going off on a manic rant pushes the believability factor especially when, conversely, they always seem to walk by just in time to misinterpret Mortensen’s indignant reactions. For his part Rush puts in a fine performance playing a crusty old man whose sharp tongue belies his feeble body, those fleshy features registering a mix of anger and fear as Crealy subjects him to a midnight campaign of terror. And Lithgow, for his part, plays the grizzled madman with a theatrical bravura that makes his silly puppet prop seem like excess baggage (when he starts talking in a little doll voice it comes across as comic relief). Two great actors hampered by a middling script, some cinematic overkill (as when Mortensen hallucinates a ten foot Jenny Pen looming over his bed), and a WTF? ending that leaves a couple of crucial loose ends still dangling. This is what you get when an attempt at psychological horror stays up way past its bedtime.
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (USA 1941) (7): Thanks to a heavenly error, prize boxer Joe Pendleton (Robert Montgomery) finds himself entering the afterlife too soon. In an attempt to rectify the situation a pair of guardian angels (Claude Rains, Edward Everett Horton) offer him a chance to return to Earth in a different body—that of a recently murdered millionaire. But the rich man’s killers are still at large and things get further complicated when Pendleton falls for the daughter of a man he (that is the dead millionaire) once swindled… Yes, it’s Heaven Can Wait done up as a sparkling screwball comedy in which the jokes centre mainly on reincarnated identities and divine confusion, and for the most part it works admirably. Regardless of what “body” he’s in Montgomery plays the lovable big palooka with conviction while Rains is in top form as the reasonable angel with Horton huffing and sputtering as his exasperated foil. But it’s co-star James Gleason who rakes in the biggest yuks as Pendleton’s grieving trainer who’s now faced with a reincarnated champ. A low note is provided by Donald MacBride’s hammy performance as a short-fused detective, and love interest Evelyn Keyes has too many stars in her eyes to be taken seriously.
Werckmeister Harmonies (Hungary 2000) (9): Composed of long, meticulously choreographed pans shot in sober B&W, Béla Tarr’s allegory on the twin perils of fascism and revolution takes time and patience in order to appreciate the artistry at work. Set around the time Hungary was transitioning away from Communism it centres on young János, an everyman figure who always strives to see the best in the people populating his small town. But rumours of criminality and vandalism are beginning to circulate prompting an ad hoc committee of frightened citizens to demand a return to law and order at any cost. Meanwhile, the arrival of a bizarre circus begins to have a curious, and decidedly dangerous, effect on the townsfolk… Anarchy and totalitarianism are two sides of a common coin in Tarr’s production where existential dread creeps over cobblestone streets like a shadow and chaos vies with order. Never one for straightforward narrative, Tarr instead drives his points home with brilliantly staged metaphors set to an appropriately sombre score of strings and piano: whirling drunks reenact a solar eclipse (wherein the joy of sunlight temporarily falls prey to the anguish of darkness); a violent mob assault takes on a funereal pall after the rioters come face to face with one of their intended victims; a soft-spoken matron, grown tired of lax morals, eagerly welcomes the arrival of an army tank; and a grotesque parody of nature, slowly rotting away in its oversized display case, is exploited for profit. And throughout the film winter landscapes shiver beyond bare windows and fog banks thicken. Not for those seeking easy answers and tidy resolutions, this is the art of cinema in its purest form wielded by a master.
La Syndicaliste (France 2022) (7): Union rep turned whistleblower Maureen Kearney (the incomparable Isabelle Huppert) steps on some pretty big toes when she starts reporting on corruption within France’s largest atomic energy consortium…corruption which stretches right into the halls of government. She soon finds herself the target of threatening phone calls and harassment, a campaign of intimidation that reaches its climax when she is physically and sexually assaulted in her own home by an unknown assailant. But a subsequent police investigation uncovers enough evidence to suggest she may have staged the attack herself in order to gain sympathy…. Based on a true story, director/co-writer Jean-Paul Saolmé’s political thriller has Huppert in top-notch form as a complicated protagonist whose private history doesn’t quite jive with her self-assured public persona—a woman able to stare down corporate CEOs over workers’ rights yet plagued by memories of past trauma. Not quite the feminist polemic one would expect given its subject matter, but the question of Maureen’s culpability does address issues of double standards, accountability, and the many ways personal bias can affect objective truth.
The Better Angels (USA 2014) (5): Writer/director A. J. Edwards and co-producer Terrence Malick have collaborated in the past and it shows in this rambling arthouse experiment which looks wonderful but has nothing much to to say. In the wilds of 1820s America a young boy works the land with his gruff taciturn father, gentle-natured mother, and sweetly naïve kid sister. With tragedy and deprivation never far away—sickness takes its toll, crops are never guaranteed, orphans are plentiful—the intelligent if somewhat dull boy loses himself in books, a habit encouraged by his mother though frowned upon by his more pragmatic father. And then he goes to school for the first time and his world becomes just a bit bigger… Filmed in evocative B&W with sweeping pans and off-centre zooms, Edwards and cinematographer Matthew J. Lloyd certainly know how to compose a shot as sunlight bursts through a homespun woollen sheet, bare winter trees are framed through a rustic window, and sheets of silvery water tumble over ancient rocks. But if you didn’t read the liner notes would you even know that the kid is supposed to be a young Abraham Lincoln? Aside from a few opening stills which will only make sense to those familiar with American landmarks, his name is never even mentioned. Presented as a collection of loosely linked vignettes, this is not so much a biopic as it is a visual poem giving us a series of impressions rather than a story, and therein lies the problem. This freeform approach to filmmaking works beautifully if it is built upon a solid base: Malick’s The Tree of Life used wild associations (dinosaurs and protoplanets!) to create a discourse on mortality, in Mother and Son Aleksandr Sokurov used warped lenses and strained whispers to impart the emotional devastation of a young man saying good-bye to his dying mother. In Better Angels we’re merely shown a succession of nicely composed snapshots while orchestral crescendos try to convince us that we’re witnessing something far deeper. An accomplished photography display and nothing more.
Dear Evan Hansen (USA 2021) (8): There are two types of people who will critique this film: those who saw the stage musical first and those who did not. The former tend to find it lacking while the latter tend to judge it based on its own merits. Thankfully I fall into the latter group and found myself quite moved. Neurotic, medicated, and suffering from all manner of anxiety, high school senior Evan Hansen (a 28-year old Ben Platt revising his Broadway success) finds himself tangled in the affairs of a grieving family who mistakenly believe he was the best (perhaps only?) friend of their late son, a troubled student who recently committed suicide. But as he tries to bring them closure with comforting stories about a friendship that never was, a crusading student decides to make him the poster child for a grassroots suicide prevention program. And thus his lies, made with the best of intentions, begin to snowball… Graced with simple yet powerful songs—recorded live on set to give them a sense of immediacy—this film adaptation was custom made for the GenZ/GenA demographic covering as it does such hot-button issues as bullying, depression, teenage anomie, and peer pressure. And director Stephen Chbosky casts social media itself as if it were a distinct character, all those little glowing screens offering either condolence or condemnation depending on which way the wind of popular opinion is blowing. The feeling of isolation even in the midst of a crowd is especially poignant to those of us who spent our high school years fading into the brickwork, yet there is enough humour (both light and dark) to keep things on the right side of maudlin right up to that bittersweet final pan. If it tends to be a wee bit preachy in parts it’s still a sermon that deserves to be heard. Julianne Moore plays Evan’s fiercely protective mother, Amy Adams and Danny Pino play off each other as the grieving parents with Kaitlyn Dever as their angry daughter, Nik Dodani plays for laughs as Evan’s cynical geek friend, and Amandla Stenberg gives a moving performance as a “perfect student” with a heavy secret.
The Company of Wolves (UK 1984) (8): Employing fantastical sets which unfold like a child’s pop-up book, director Neil Jordan’s stylized fever dream of a film, based on Angela Carter’s novel, adds a psychosexual dimension to the tale of Little Red Riding Hood resulting in one of the more visually striking and cerebral films to emerge from the ‘80s. As she drifts in and out of a restless afternoon nap, twelve-year old Rosaleen (a coy Sarah Patterson) finds herself immersed in a fairy tale world of rustic villagers and a gloomy forest beset by slathering wolves where a young maiden is only safe as long as she sticks to the sunlit path. “Beware…” warns her prudish dream granny (a delightfully prim Angela Lansbury), “…the worst kind of wolves are hairy on the inside and when they bite you they drag you straight to Hell!” Regaled by fireside tales of damsels betrayed and virtue lost, it becomes obvious to Rosaleen that in granny’s world lust and desire walk hand in hand with fear and damnation, and Beauty must always be wary of the Beast. But Rosaleen is not so sure the old woman knows everything and a detour off the straight and narrow opens her eyes to another kind of story… Awash in perpetual twilight where animal familiars cavort in the underbrush (or uncoil seductively from tree branches) and superstition rules everyday life, Jordan’s bedtime allegory cloaks one young girl’s rite of passage in layers of storybook metaphors: a stork’s nest heralds the onset of puberty; grandma’s house goes from repressed haven to sensual revelation; and a pack of howling wolves, eyes aglow and tongues drooling, represent both a threat…and a promise. Pure cinema!
At Eternity’s Gate (Ireland/Switzerland 2018) (6): Writer/director Julian Schnabel’s fractured film covers the final years of Vincent van Gogh as he slowly succumbed to mental illness while pursuing his elusive muse in the south of France. Less biopic and more stream of anecdotes, Willem Dafoe’s studied performance gives us an artist enraptured by light and colour, able to translate simple pastoral landscapes into primitive canvasses so bold and vivid in their depictions of the commonplace (a field of wheat, an empty cabin, a reclining mailman) that they helped herald a new school of art. Yet his personal life was a tragedy with blackouts and bouts of erratic behaviour leading to ever more frequent hospitalizations while his paintings remained largely unsold. Perhaps taking cues from van Gogh’s passion for painting coupled with his tenuous connection to reality, Schnabel utilizes shaky editing, overlapping voices, and the occasional rewind to underscore his subject’s state of mind—at one point the camera focuses on Vincent’s legs trudging through a field of flowers, another scene has him repeating his lines as if caught in a time warp, and as the film progresses unsold paintings (future masterpieces all) pile up on the walls of his humble shack like so many hallucinatory dreams. When it works, this quasi-impressionistic approach to filmmaking leaves us with a feeling of who van Gogh was rather than facts and dates, but when it falters we’re left with a rambling piecemeal story that seems to jump about with no discernible centre. Rupert Friend gives a compassionate performance as Vincent’s loving brother Theo; Oscar Isaac provides focus as fiery fellow artist Paul Gaugin; and Mads Mikkelsen has a small but vital role as a cynical priest whose verbal sparring challenges van Gogh’s commitment to his art.
