2019, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Ash Is Purest White (2019): Struggles in a Changing World

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Jia Zhangke (A Touch of Sin) has made a name for himself telling stories of regular people as they struggle to survive in the midst of the social and economic upheaval occurring in China. His newest film stars his wife and frequent collaborator Zhao Tao (Mountains May Depart) as Zhao Qiao, the girlfriend of a mobster named Guo Bin (Fan Liao). After a repercussion of his criminal lifestyle, Qiao goes to prison and finds herself alone at her eventual release. She searches for her former lover as she tries to reclaim her lost time and identity, but learns the outside world has changed since she left it.

Jia finds beauty in the within the meager environments. Many of the households seen in the film are cramped, drab dwellings, but even as the spaces are unremarkable, Jia uses striking compositions to bring life to the settings. Whether it’s Qiao’s positioning or using reflections off a streaky mirror, the craftsmanship overrides the bleak interiors. In exterior scenes, Jia takes advantage of the eerie cities. He frames outdoor scenes with an emphasis on scale and emptiness. In some parts of China, rapid real estate development has led to “ghost cities” where the supply of new housing far outran the demand. Qiao is engulfed by this sprawling housing and infrastructure as she travels. Even when there are others nearby, her framing highlights her loneliness and disconnection from a world that is rapidly changing and leaving parts of itself behind.

Jia creates arresting compositions out of ordinary settings.

The film’s narrative has three acts, only two of which are successful. The early scenes of Qiao’s life as the girlfriend of a powerful gangster set up the frivolity of her existence and serve as contrast to the austerity of her life post-prison as she attempts to reconnect with Bin. This transformation and the conclusion of her search form a satisfying arc for her character. Then the film continues. The third act, which begins almost two hours into the film, makes leaps in logic and in time as it races towards the ending that seems to be Jia’s true target. Over a single cut, time skips forward and the lives of characters have drastically changed with little indication of how. For a filmmaker that typically basks in the small details of life, allowing narratives to unfold at an unhurried tempo, the rushed pacing is unexpected and leaves gaps in character development that harm the final scenes. Lacking the gradual buildup Jia has spent the first two hours establishing, the film’s conclusion fails to produce the intended emotional response and closes on unsatisfying note. Jia has created an observant look at a character’s growth in a changing world, but appended an unnecessary and rushed epilogue harmful to the film’s deliberate style.

3/5 stars.

2019, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Climax (2019): Don’t Drink the Sangria

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Regardless of his filmmaking talents, Gaspar Noé (Irreversible) is first known for being a provocateur. His films have angered and reviled audiences around the world and led to walk outs due to the content onscreen. Climax, while by no means even remotely close to mainstream, may be his most agreeable title to date, if agreeable is even a term that can be applied to anything Noé has created. The film follows a Parisian dance troupe as they initially practice then unwind by throwing a party. The mood is jovial until things take a turn for the worse. People start feeling something strange and they soon realize that someone has spiked their sangria with a heavy dose of drugs and it sets off a night of drug-fueled chaos.

The best part of any Noé film isn’t the narrative or the characters, it’s the pure experience. At his best, Noé uses a blend of unnerving sound effects, hypnotic music, high-contrast lighting, and swirling cameras to create a cinematically-induced euphoria or, in some cases, total paralysis. It’s a pure, visceral response that few films can produce  and even fewer filmmakers can consistently create. There are a few moments in Climax that reach this level of reaction. An opening dance number features the cast rhythmically gyrating and contorting their bodies in ways that we know are choreographed but feel like instinctual movements borne from the thumping electronic music that overwhelms our ears. The effect is mesmerizing as it inundates the senses and transfixes your attention. Sadly, this is the only scene of the film that is able to produce this reaction.

The film’s highlight is its opening dance number.

The majority of the film focuses on the pandemonium created by the high dancers. The drugs produce different responses in each person. Some become overly emotional while others become wild or even violent. Very few of them make good decisions as it becomes clear that the film has morphed into a horror movie with the negative effects of the unknown substance as the primary threat. The characters’ behaviors can quickly become tiring. We haven’t developed affections towards them and have little investment in their well-being which makes their blatantly stupid decision-making  irritating, even if it is understandable given their physical state. Mimicking their world rapidly spiraling out of control, Noé and his regular cinematographer Benoît Debie (Spring Breakers) use a swirling camera that is as mobile as the dancers, weaving through their tangled bodies and effectively capturing their confusion. Yet, because of the poorly sketched characters and their self-destructive actions, the intended horror is kept arm’s length.

As usual, Noé is guilty of several indulgences. The film opens with seemingly never-ending interviews with each of the dancers asking why they want to join the troupe and the party pre-drugs features several scenes of dialogue as inane as the characters are inebriated. Noé lets these scenes stretch into minutes long takes of drunken friends talking about which of the other dancers they want to sleep with as they go into excessive, graphic detail for no purpose. Furthermore, there are plot points and character outcomes that are present for no reason other than shock value. These sections pad out the film’s short runtime and highlight how little material is actually present. Climax has moments of the Noé’s best talent of creating enveloping visceral responses, but the film’s drug-trip-as-horror premise fails to connect.

3/5 stars.

2019, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Fighting with My Family (2019): Cheeky Humor and Genuine Heart

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Based on a documentary, Fighting with My Family is the story of how WWE Diva Paige entered professional wrestling and the upbringing that led to her career. Paige Knight (Florence Pugh; Lady Macbeth) comes from a very strange family. Her parents, played by Lena Headey (Game of Thrones) and Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz), are wrestlers and run their own independent wrestling association using their own children and any other interested parties in the ring. Paige has grown up dreaming of becoming a professional wrestler and gets an opportunity to make that dream a reality when the WWE comes to town looking for recruits.  

Nearly unrecognizable in her role, Florence Pugh is terrific. She plays Paige as a sharp-witted, hard-working but believably insecure woman who is coming dangerously close to the future she and her family have always dreamed of. The role is a marked departure from the period pieces Pugh has become known for. Her goth-like, foul-mouthed Paige is the epitome of a rebellious outsider as she visibly clashes with the former models and cheerleaders that make up the rest of her fellow recruits. At times, she can be overly hostile to her peers, but the unfriendly behavior is quickly revealed as a defense mechanism for her own self-doubt. Pugh is able to balance the tough exterior and uncertain thoughts naturally, making Paige the irreverent, but relatable lead needed to carry the film.

The Knight family’s attitude is hilarious, especially when they come into contact with normal people.

Director Stephen Merchant’s writing adds warmth and humor to the predictable plot. The narrative follows what is expected of a sports biopic with the necessary small-time beginnings, personal and professional struggles, and an expected outcome but with plenty of laughs along the way. Much of the humor comes from the flippant attitude of the Knight family. They wholesale reject anything outside of their one true cause with little awareness or regard for societal norms. Merchant subtly uses this comical level of devotion to add heart to the film. Yes, the idea of a family dedicating themselves to their little attended, barely sustainable wrestling show is ridiculous, but the sport is inextricably tied to their identity and familial bonds. Wrestling is what unites and connects them in a way that goes beyond pastimes or hobbies. Wrestling is a religion to the Knight family and their sincere commitment creates both the absurdity and genuine heart that bring life to the film.

It might be blatant advertising for the WWE, but it’s impossible to deny its effectiveness. No aspect of the film feels cold or designed by a brand strategy team. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson makes a cameo and spends his brief screen time grinning with pride, revealing the film for what it truly is: a passion project. With a strong supporting cast like Headey and Frost, the film has talent to spare and their performances take this story based on a sport that many look down upon and make it universal, even to those who dislike wrestling. Fighting with My Family becomes about more than athletic achievement. It’s about family, dreams, and the dedication it takes to achieve them, all packaged in a thick wrapping of hilariously crass, cheeky attitude.

4/5 stars.

2019, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Serenity (2019): Baffling and Bizarre

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Somewhere in the middle of the sea, Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey; Dallas Buyers Club) makes a meager living taking tourists out to fish tuna and sharks on his ramshackle boat. He lives an uneventful life save for a particular mammoth fish he has been chasing. One day his ex-wife Karen (Anne Hathaway; Les Misérables) abruptly arrives on the island and makes him an offer. She promises ten million dollars if he will take her current husband onto his boat and kill him. Her husband Miller (Jason Clarke; Zero Dark Thirty) has powerful ties, shady dealings, and has been physically abusing her. She sees this as her only way out and begs Dill to do this for their son who has now become a shut-in, spending his life behind his computer screen to avoid his abusive step-father. With a juicy premise written and directed by Steven Knight (Locke), Serenity initially seemed like a film to watch out for.

On the surface, Knight wants this to be a neo-noir. Every required trope of the film noir is present. Dill is a loner dedicated to his job, deliberately living in isolation, and Karen enters the film with the bleached blonde hair, barely opaque dress, and drawn out delivery of the classic femme fatale. The visuals are sun-soaked with raised contrast to emphasize the heightened reality of the story. While the script is intending to play with the established norms of the genre, it falls too snugly into the mold with characters lacking anything to distinguish themselves from a general archetype. Clarke’s villainous Miller is one-dimensional in his immediate and unmitigated loathsomeness and Hathaway’s Karen is little more than a plot device to force Dill out of his routine existence.

Despite the cast’s efforts, none of the characters are memorable.

Without spoiling anything, the film introduces a game-changing element midway through. This piece of info radically reframes the narrative and not to its benefit. It is a reveal that, while hinted at in the film’s narrative and stylistic choices, is ridiculous and renders much of the story pointless. Furthermore, it raises a myriad of questions about everything shown so far and the plausibility of every character’s actions. What should be a plot explanation becomes a source of numerous plot holes and immersion-breaking inconsistencies.

By the time the credits roll, we’re left in a state of disbelief and confusion. This isn’t a multilayered, reflexive narrative like Mulholland Drive, rather it’s an ill-conceived, poorly-executed idea that raises questions about film’s entire development process. Did no one raise any red flags after reading the script? Was the cast attached alone enough to override the glaring narrative flaws? This can’t have read well on paper so it boggles the mind that two Academy award winning actors and a talented writer-director would involve themselves in a project like this, particularly since this is an original idea. The combination of high powered talent both in front of and behind the camera along with a blatantly problematic narrative make Serenity one of the most baffling and bizarre releases in recent years.

2/5 stars.

2019, Recent Reviews

Glass (2019): Bent, but Not Broken

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After the surprise success of Split, Shyamalan’s follow up has become the much awaited sequel to this nearly 20 year film series. Having escaped capture, Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy; Atonement) continues kidnapping innocents until he and David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the main character from Unbreakable, find themselves caught and locked up in a mental institution with Dunn’s nemesis Mr. Glass (Samuel Jackson). They are placed under the supervision of a psychiatrist who claims they have delusions of grandeur, mistakenly believing themselves to be superheroes, and plans to cure them of this mental illness.

The leads are enjoying themselves reprising their roles. Willis, who has phoned in many of his performances, is fully invested in his weary, but committed Dunn who now runs a security store and patrols the city at night. McAvoy continues to embrace schizophrenic acting as he switches from playing a nine year old boy to a strict British woman and more. While sometimes resembling a comedian improvising new characters, the jarring personality changes are entertaining to watch. Jackson plays up his Mr. Glass as a cartoonishly evil villain that fits the film’s explicitly comic book tone. His erect hair and shimmering purple suit make him a cross between a mad scientist and the Joker with enough heinous acts onscreen to reinforce his threat, despite his physical appearance. The other returning cast member, Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey, plays a limited role and is pushed to secondary character status for the bulk of the runtime.

The pale, but pronounced colors rise far above the visuals of most superhero films.

As with all of Shyamalan’s films, the focus eventually shifts to the plot twist. In the case of Glass there are multiple reveals late in the film. None of these is as impactful as the twist from The Sixth Sense or as unexpected as the larger universe connection in Split. At the same time, the twists are inoffensive. They reveal some information which breaks a central relationship, but nothing that recontextualizes the narrative so far. They serve as additional facts rather than major paradigm shifts.

There are also attempts to flesh out the greater film world that fall flat. Shyamalan tries to expand his mythos with secretive organizations and hints at expanded lore, but these attempts at world-building come too late to have any effect. As the third, and presumably final, film in the series, this effort is unnecessary and distracts from the central story.

The final question of Glass is whether it builds on Shyamalan’s recent resurgence to good favor or if it is a trip back to his string of bad features from the mid-2000s. The true answer is neither. The film is somewhere in between. The story isn’t thrilling or surprising, nor does it create emotional investment, but the acting is enjoyable and the craft is strong. Shyamalan reteams with cinematographer Mike Gioulakis who adopts a striking color palette. He uses soft hues of purple, yellow, and green to represent Glass, Crumb, and Dunn, respectively, that are rarely used together in film and give the title a distinct, contrasting aesthetic. It won’t live up to the hype generated by the surprise reveal in Split and falls far short of its potential, but Glass is harmless entertainment.

3/5 stars.

2019, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Perfect Strangers (Perfectos Desconocidos) (2019): Dinner with a Side of Secrets

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Just how well do you know the people closest to you? That is the question at the center of the Perfect Strangers (Perfectos Desconocidos), the Spanish remake of the Italian hit that has been remade or is in development in a dozen other countries. Having never seen the original, I can only compare it to the French version starring Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) released as Nothing to Hide in the US. A group of old friends, three couples and a recently-divorced man, meet for dinner, wine, and fun during a lunar eclipse. As each party member is distracted by their phones, someone points out that their personal devices have become black boxes of their lives, containing all their secrets. This sparks the idea that will change their night and possibly their lives. They decide to play a game where, for the entire dinner, everyone places their phones on the table and publicly reads any text message and answers any phone call on speakerphone. What follows reveals more than expected between people who have known each other for decades.

The Spanish version distinguishes itself with its pop art style. The film’s visuals feature garish colors with blue interior walls, bleached blonde hair, and the hostess’s hot pink outfit as just a few examples. Anyone who has seen a movie by Pedro Almodóvar will used to the bright aesthetic. The editing is fast with short reaction shots and rapid cutting between different angles of the dinner. The cinematography is kinetic with the camera sweeping along the length of table or swiveling in the center to quickly capture everyone’s contrasting emotions, often to comedic effect. The reasoning behind this style is simple. The movie is essentially a bottle film, taking place almost entirely inside a single apartment with a small cast, and adding some energy to the visuals can help prevent the single setting from becoming stale. It serves the film well during its many humorous moments when the quick shots highlight the different personalities but it also undermines the more dramatic beats.  

The diverse personalities make for an entertaining meal.

This style gives the film a lighter tone. It makes the already short runtime pass by quickly but prevents its dramatic moments from having weight. There are several serious, tense, and touching moments throughout the story but the brisk pace doesn’t allow for breathing room. Before a difficult revelation can create an impact, the film has already moved on to the next phone call or text message.

The reason Perfect Strangers has been and is being remade so many times is that its premise is enticing and its characters are relatable. The script is strong featuring likable people with long histories together and their own perspectives. One couple is recently married and extremely passionate, another is distant and embittered, and the third is somewhere in between with the single guy as the odd man out. They have clear affection for each other and the potential of revealing what even the best of friends may keep secret presents a juicy source for drama. This iteration has a strong foundation in its dramatic and comedic script and enjoyable performances from an entertaining cast, but the faster pace and lighter tone limit the film’s more serious moments. Watch the French remake instead.

3/5 stars.

2018, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Roma (2018): Gorgeous Visuals with a Humble Story

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In a wealthy suburb of Mexico City in the 70s, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a maid and nanny, attends to the affluent doctor’s family that employs her. She lives in a separate apartment with another staff member and spends her days taking care of the four children, husband, wife, elderly grandmother, and pet dog.

The film is shot entirely in black and white. As the much anticipated release from director Alfonso Cuarón, this marks a stark shift from his previous feature Gravity, a $100 million special effects driven thriller. He works on a much more intimate scale here and uses his images to not only set the time period but also to establish the film as a willfully humble story. Cuarón acted as his own director of photography and the visuals are gorgeous. Black and white films often receive unearned praise for their beauty, but that is not the case with Roma. The digital cinematography has incredible detail and the special attention that has gone into use of shadows, reflections, and depth of field show the work of a master visual stylist.

Cuarón has created his own version of an Italian Neorealist film. He is interested in the everyday life of the subjects in his selected microcosm and never shies away from events that could be called mundane. We see Cleo cleaning floors, doing laundry, and dressing the children. None of these actions propels      the plot forward, instead they serve to establish a routine. This is a slice-of-life story and Cuarón embeds the audience in the smallest details of daily patterns. There are a few too many of these scenes, but the film’s greatest success is that most of these banal tasks aren’t boring. The film is on the longer side, but the majority of the additional scenes feel deliberate and necessary to fully comprehend Cleo’s existence.

Cleo’s chores form the bulk of the screentime.

Through her interactions, we see the subtle, but firm, difference between Cleo and her employers. She may technically live in the same house and spend her days with the family, but she is distinctly not one of them. Although the children clearly have affection for her, often saying “I love you” as she tucks them into bed, and the adults care about her well-being when she is in need, they are quick to order her around and occasionally take out their frustrations on her. We never see Cleo do the same to them. No matter what personal struggle she may be facing, she isn’t afforded the luxury of rudeness because she is at the bottom of this social ladder.

There are a few moments that have a sudden impact. Once Cuarón establishes the regular rhythm of Cleo caring for the family, he introduces conflict that creates emotional reactions. These feelings are amplified by Cleo’s subdued body language. Even in the most climactic scenes, her strongest expression is a quiet sob and the resulting effect is that the viewer absorbs the remaining emotions she is unable to exhibit. This can be an incredibly powerful technique and one that Cuarón has used in the past. Unsaid emotions have a greater impact than any dialogue could deliver, but as successful as this method can be, there are too few emotional moments across the runtime and the ones that are present don’t provide a strong enough payoff. Roma is an incredibly well made film that features flashes of emotion, but not enough to take it to the next level.

3/5 stars.

2019, Top Lists

Most Anticipated Movies of 2019

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With 2018 coming to a close, it’s time to look at what the new year might offer. This list covers the films and filmmakers I’m personally most excited about based on the topics, casts, and track record of the creative teams involved. Some may slip into 2020, but all of them are going to be worth keeping on your radar. Here are my most anticipated films of 2019:

11. The Good Nurse (TBA)

Tobias Lindholm has made a name for himself making tense, morally complex thrillers like A Hijacking and A War and his English language debut presents tantalizing subject matter. The story follows Charlie Cullen who allegedly killed hundreds of people during his 16 year nursing career and, with a cast that reportedly includes Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne as the leads, there is sure to be ample fuel for Lindholm’s drama.

10. Arctic (2/1/2019)

A survival story in the bitter cold of the Arctic is by itself an interesting premise, but adding Mads Mikkelsen (The Hunt) as the lead makes this a definite must-see. The film opened at Cannes this year to positive reviews with critics praising Mikkelsen’s performance and the film’s uncompromising vision.

9. The Lighthouse (TBA)

The Witch is one of the most interesting horror movies of the past few years, with meticulous period detail and escalating paranoia that few films can achieve. Robert Eggers’s follow up is sure to be in the same vein with Willem Dafoe playing an elderly lighthouse keeper in this dark horror-fantasy.

8. Everything Everywhere All At Once (TBA)

Very little is known about the newest film from the Daniels, but their involvement is enough to warrant a place on this list. The film is described as an “inter-dimensional action film” with Michelle Yeoh and Awkwafina of Crazy Rich Asians starring. I’m personally not a huge fan of Awkwafina’s style of humor, but the Daniels’ history of creating absolutely bonkers music videos and their first feature Swiss Army Man make me excited for anything they have to offer.

7. Jojo Rabbit (TBA)

WWII Germany is not where most people would think to set a comedy, but most people aren’t Taika Waititi. Hunt for the Wilderpeople was one of my favorite movies of 2016 and coming off Thor: Ragnarok, a studio film that neutered many of his best quirks, it’s nice to see him return to a smaller scale. The script is hilarious and features another precocious boy in a coming of age story with Waititi playing the child’s imaginary friend: Hitler. The film is filled with the well-meaning buffoons and dialogue misunderstandings that make his work so consistently entertaining.

6. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (TBA)

It’s been more than a decade since Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) released a live action feature. His movies can sometimes be too reflexive for their own good, but are always thought-provoking. With some added freedom and budget from Netflix, he can hopefully put together one of his signature introspective stories.

5. Untitled Danny Boyle/Richard Curtis Musical (6/28/2019)

This is the most mainstream film on my list and I can’t deny my appreciation for Richard Curtis’s work (Notting Hill, About Time). Some may call him cheesy, but he creates sympathetic, endearingly awkward characters and stories with unabashed heart. The pairing of his writing with strong direction from Danny Boyle seems like a great fit. The film’s story follows a struggling musician who, for currently unknown reasons, is the only person able to remember the Beatles and uses their music to launch his own career. This silly, but promising setup with a talented cast starring Himesh Patel and Lily James could be one of the most crowd-pleasing movies of the year.

4. Long Day’s Journey into Night (Spring 2019)

After opening to incredible reviews at Cannes this year, Bi Gan’s sophomore feature has hit unexpected pre-sale records in China and is poised to be an arthouse breakout there. The film has received huge praise for its dreamy visuals, startling use of 3D, and a supposedly 50+ minute long take. Building off his stellar debut Kaili Blues and tackling new artistic challenges, Bi Gan is shaping up to be an original filmmaker to watch.

3. Wounds (3/29/2019)

Babak Anvari’s feature debut Under the Shadow was my favorite film of 2016 so I’m predictably excited for anything he has slated next. His new film, whose title seems to be in flux, is based on a horror-mystery novel called The Visible Filth about a man that finds a cell phone that sends his life spiraling into nightmarish territory. It features Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson in the lead roles and seems perfectly suited to Anvari’s penchant for creating scenes of almost unbearable tension.

2. Ad Astra (5/24/2019)

This sci-fi thriller, co-written and directed by James Gray, may be the movie that delivers on what Interstellar could not. The film stars Brad Pitt as an engineer who travels through space searching for his father, played by none other than Tommy Lee Jones, who has been missing since he left for a mission to Neptune 20 years earlier. Ad Astra has Gray’s largest budget to date and with his focus on character and proven ability to tell decade spanning epics (The Lost City of Z), it could be the smart sci-fi we’ve been waiting for.

1. Climax (3/1/2019)

Gaspar Noé is one of my favorite filmmakers. He may be a provocateur and indulge himself in some unnecessary scenes, but he also creates visceral experiences like no other. Climax premiered at Cannes this year to the most positive reviews of Noé’s career, so much so that he was disappointed he didn’t hit his normal walk-out rate. His film follows a dance troupe whose celebration changes when they find out their drinks have been laced with LSD. Noé has played with hallucinatory imagery before but devoting an entire film to this setup, powered by his and his regular cinematographer Benoît Debie’s technical skill, is going to be an unrivaled example of pure audiovisual experience.

2018, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Bird Box (2018): Weak Knock-off

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Bird Box is told in two timelines. The first follows Malorie (Sandra Bullock; Gravity) as she prepares two blindfolded children, named Boy and Girl, to travel to a community downriver. The second tells Malorie’s backstory and fills in why the world appears to be in a post-apocalyptic state. On the way home with her sister following a prenatal checkup, Malorie realizes that something is very wrong. People are suddenly acting suicidal and jumping off buildings or running into busy streets. As chaos ensues, she finds refuge in a stranger’s house along with other stranded individuals and discovers that some unknown, unearthly entities are creating the havoc by controlling anyone who makes visual contact with them. From that point on, Malorie and company cover all windows and only step outside with blindfolds to protect themselves from contracting whatever frenzy is tearing their world apart.

Within Malorie’s journey is a blunt subplot about her personal growth. Her pregnancy is unwanted and unplanned and she repeatedly states that she is not mother material and has no desire to be. The writers intend the pregnancy and eventual raising of the children to allow for her to realize her parental instincts and see herself as more than she had previously believed possible, but the acting and writing is so heavy-handed that she appears to only have two phases of growth, being completely against the idea of being a mother and wholly embracing motherhood, with neither being believable and without a smooth transition between the two states. Her treatment of the boy and girl seems less like someone unsure of their ability to raise children and more like someone just annoyed that they have an additional responsibility. When she does finally accept them, Bullock acts with unconvincing, forced emotions and delivers the most predictable, corny dialogue. Her growth into motherhood is a flawed, failed attempt at character development that doesn’t engender the desired sympathy.

Malorie’s interactions with the children never create believable bonds.

Bird Box is the amalgamation of A Quiet Place and The Happening that no one wanted. The conceit of needing to cover your eyes to avoid infection could have been an interesting premise but the film does little to exploit the potential. Furthermore, limited sight does not allow for the tense situations that avoiding sound does. There is minimal risk to accidentally alerting the creatures because a simple blindfold negates their power whereas in A Quiet Place even a small false move could create a noise loud enough to lead to death. This danger infused tension into every movement, but in Bird Box their situation is almost entirely within their own control and the creatures don’t directly harm the characters so the narrative doesn’t provide enough reason to be afraid of the unexplained beings. The main consequence, that characters enter a suicidal rage, isn’t as laughably bad as in The Happening but the visuals of people ending their own lives still fail to produce a lasting emotional response. Bird Box is an unnecessary, weak twist on existing horror ideas that doesn’t understand what made them successful or learn from their mistakes.

2/5 stars.

2018, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Apostle (2018): A Better, Modern Wicker Man

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After receiving a desperate letter from his younger sister explaining that she has been taken captive by a cult on a remote island, Thomas (Dan Stevens; The Guest) is forced to join the cult in an attempt to save her. He has been dealing with his own personal issues after traumatic events left him in a mental breakdown but must put his needs aside to help the one person in his family that always believed in him. He ventures to the island to find it led by a charismatic “Prophet” named Malcolm (Michael Sheen; Midnight in Paris) who claims to be the voice of the island’s god, a being referred to only as The Lady. The film marks the English language debut of Gareth Evans best known for writing and directing the incredible Indonesian action series The Raid.

Apostle relies on drab visuals to represent the cult’s condition. The island has been developed with houses, churches, and farmland, but nothing in the production design communicates levity or joy. The cast almost exclusively wears cool, dark colors favoring muted blues, browns, and blacks. Buildings look worn from inclement weather and every daytime scene takes place under heavily overcast skies. The few characters that show signs of positive emotions soon face events that remove their happiness making for a downtrodden, gloomy community.

Thomas’s constant unease extends to the audience.

Evans successfully moves in a new direction, which may disappoint some. Fans of The Raid series looking for a continuation of the kinetic martial arts, will not be satisfied here. The film is closer to the thriller genre and relies more on tension and mystery than action. There are a few action scenes and their swift brutality reminds of Evans’s previous work, but they are few in number. The tension is created by Thomas’s infiltration of the cult. The severe consequences of being deemed a traitor or “blasphemer” are established early which makes every decision potentially lethal. Stevens displays the constant unease of the situation and appears to be looking over his shoulder at every opportunity. There are also questions surrounding the group’s unusual rituals and beliefs that may have some supernatural basis that further raise the stakes on Thomas’s mission and deepen the mystery.

The film feels like a modern, violent update to The Wicker Man. It also features a man going to save a young woman from a religious group living in isolation on an island, but Apostle takes the premise much further. It doesn’t immediately condemn people for having their own beliefs, but it also points out their moral inconsistencies. It delves into the fine line between speaking the good word and becoming a demagogue and shows how easily someone can shift between the two. Malcolm founded the community with idealist beliefs but, on the verge of famine, he has turned to kidnapping an innocent woman for ransom money. The struggles he faces test his rectitude and willingness to compromise. Other leaders are less steadfast and, while preaching virtues to others, violate them when personal issues arise. Exploring the drastic consequences of making small concessions to personal beliefs gives Apostle moral complexity to bolster its taut mystery.

4/5 stars.