Review: Both Sides Of The Blade

Image courtesy of IFC Films.

This week's moviegoing theme is seemingly minor works from major artists - namely, George Miller's "Three Thousand Years of Longing" and Claire Denis' "Both Sides of the Blade." In the case of the latter, the film might rank among the great French director's most unusual projects - but only due to its ordinariness when juxtaposed against the often cerebral, unsettling and surreal works that mostly dominate her oeuvre. 

For those unfamiliar with Denis' work, the highlights include the masterful "Beau Travail," which is inspired by Melville's "Billy Budd" and features one of the most jaw-dropping endings I've ever seen; the shocking erotic horror film "Trouble Every Day"; the powerful colonialism dramas "White Material" and "Chocolat" (no, not the one with Juliette Binoche); and the warm "35 Shots of Rum." Some of her other works - "L'Intrus" or "Bastards," for example - defy description.

So what makes "Both Sides of the Blade" so unusual is its relative straightforwardness. The picture opens on a shot of a vacationing couple - Sara (Binoche) and Jean (Vincent Lindon, who was incredible in last year's "Titane") - enjoying a swim in the ocean, holding hands as they walk against the tide through the water.

This idyllic scene is short-lived. Upon arriving back in Paris, we learn of how Sara and Jean met. Sara was dating Jean's good friend, Francois (Gregoire Colin), when the two of them met and Jean was married at the time - his son, Marcus (Issa Perica), lives with Jean's mother, and the relationship between father and son seems strained. When Francois turned out to be unreliable, Sara and Jean got together, breaking up his marriage. However, Jean also spent some time in prison for a crime that is never revealed.

Shortly after returning from their vacation, Francois pops back up out of the blue. He and Jean strike up some sort of business partnership that involves recruiting sports players - the details are vague - and some tension arises between Sara and Jean over the optics of the situation. She appears incensed that her previous dalliance with Francois seems to not be the subject of conversation at all between her husband and former lover, while Jean makes it obvious to Sara that he has no interest in broaching the subject.

Meanwhile, Francois and Sara keep a distance from each other as her husband seemingly runs off at any given moment to meet with Francois, that is, when he's not standing on the balcony speaking to him in hushed tones on his cell phone. The film gives off the appearance that something shady might be taking place, but we're never given more insight into the situation. 

Not surprisingly, Francois and Sara eventually make contact - and the tension between she and Jean increasingly gets worse. Meanwhile, he keeps trying - and failing - to make contact with Marcus to discuss his absenteeism at school and his penchant for swiping his grandmother's credit card.

Interspersed with all of this are some discussions about race - Marcus's mother is Black, so there's an uncomfortable discussion in which Jean tries to lecture to his son about people not seeing race when they look at people. There are also scenes in which Sara interviews people for the news radio program on which she works about topics of white privilege and racial identity. Although the topics are of interest, they are mostly left hanging between all of the domestic drama.

And that is primarily what "Both Sides of the Blade" is - a domestic drama with a tone that often makes it feel like a thriller. The inevitable breaking point is reached in Sara and Jean's relationship, leading to a series of emotionally brutal arguments near the picture's end - which culminates with a damaged electronic device that could portend not one, but two, unhappy endings.

Denis is a fascinating filmmaker - for the uninitiated, I'd highly recommend "Beau Travail" and "Trouble Every Day," for those who can stomach it - and her filmmaking skills are ever-present in her latest picture, even if the film itself is surprisingly more simplistic than what you'd typically expect from one of her films. It's a well-made melodrama with some strong performances, while at the same time a minor entry into her otherwise eclectic and impressive body of work.

Review: Three Thousand Years Of Longing

Image courtesy of MGM.

"Three Thousand Years of Longing" - director George Miller's first film since 2015's "Mad Max: Fury Road" - might be mistaken for the type of whimsical fantasy to which Tim Burton might be attached or Terry Gilliam might have concocted during his jollier period.

Based upon a short story by A.S. Byatt and filled to the brim with eye popping imagery, the film starts as an offbeat fantasy involving a self-isolated woman (Tilda Swinton) who gets granted three wishes by a djinn (Idris Elba) who has been trapped in an ornamental bottle for hundreds of years, but the movie later becomes something more unexpected.

As the film starts, Alithea (Swinton) - an academic who specializes in "narratology," or the study of storytelling - is arriving in Istanbul at the invitation of a friend to take part in a conference in her field. She is taken to a lavish hotel room where she is told that Agatha Christie once wrote "Death on the Nile." 

From the start, something seems off - Alithea's baggage is nearly taken from her by a miniscule man at the airport, and while speaking at the conference a man who looks like a knight sits in the audience and glares at her.

At an antique shop, she buys the ornamental bottle, which she then accidentally pops open once she's back in her hotel room. The djinn - in massive form - appears in her hotel room, but then shrinks himself to more acceptable proportions. He tells Alithea she must make three wishes to free him from being trapped between worlds. In an attempt to convince her of her duty, he regales her with various stories of past people to whom he granted wishes and how he came to be trapped multiples times in the bottle.

The film's setup bears some resemblance to the "Arabian Nights," in that much of the action typically involves characters other than Alithea and the djinn - although he pops up throughout the stories - and much of the film's running time is spent on the stories the djinn tells, that is, until a final chapter in which the picture takes a surprisingly different turn.

Alithea makes it known to everyone who'll listen that she's self-sufficient - she and her husband split up years before and she has made no effort to replace him, and the only conversation she has with her two semi-racist neighbors in London is in the form of squabbling. Alithea's third and final wish is what sets off the final series of scenes, which are more delicate and moving than you'd expect in a movie that, up until this point, was whimsical, fantastical and full of special effects.

Although "Three Thousand Years of Longing" is a more minor Miller picture - it's not on the level of, say, his "Mad Max" movies - it's a film that is often full of surprises, solid storytelling and stunning visuals. For a director best known for a series of action films about a lone avenger living in the deserts of Australia, it's interesting to see how his latest film tackles the hardships of being alone. While the film may not be considered one of the director's major works, its takes on companionship and the art of storytelling remain compelling throughout.

Review: Beast

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Baltasar Kormakur's "Beast" is a moderately well-made thriller with some some stunning scenery and a few well-placed jump scares, but it falls somewhere in the middle on the scale of man vs. nature horror movies. It's more on the level of "Grizzly" than "Jaws."

The picture takes the unusual step of making its ferocious villain - a gigantic, CGI lion on a killing spree - sympathetic in an opening sequence during which a group of poachers wipe out the lion's entire pride, causing the killer lion to immediately seek vengeance against not only poachers, but basically anything that walks upright on two legs.

Meanwhile, we get one of the type of human interest stories at the center of the plot that you'd expect to find in a film of this sort. Dr. Nate Samuels (Idris Elba) brings his two daughters to Africa for a trip to reconnect with their mother's homeland. Their mother and father had separated, and Nate still feels guilty that shortly after their breakup, his ex-wife had been diagnosed with cancer and died.

As a result, his older daughter, Meredith (Iyana Halley), seems to bear a grudge against her father, while her sister, Norah (Leah Jeffries), seems to want to tread lightly around everyone. After having arrived in Africa, they meet up with Martin (Sharlto Copley), an old family friend who had introduced Nate to his wife, now works to protect the animals in the area and is an enemy of the poachers.

Just shortly after these four take a trip into the wild to watch a pride of lions go about their business, they stumble upon a village in which the entire population has been wiped out. They quickly discover the source - the massive, angry lion whose pride was killed in the beginning of the picture. Much of the rest of the movie is set within a Jeep where Nate and his family try to fend off the lion, while Martin - who is injured - tries to make it back to the vehicle.

Later, not surprisingly, the poachers show back up - and it's amusing how the lion is able to take out an entire group of men with machine guns. "Beast" is not a film that is exactly striving for realism - and yes, there is a scene in which Elba punches a lion. 

The whole man vs. nature horror movie has been done to death over the years - we've seen man vs. shark, man vs. piranha, man vs. crocodile, man vs. grizzly, man vs. giant rabbits (if you haven't seen "Night of the Lepus," well, you don't know what you're missing), man vs. snakes on a plane and... you get the picture - and only a few of these have been memorable, at least, in a good way. 

"Beast" is a pretty standard entry into this subgenre. It's not bad, but it's pretty by-the-book - although it's finale, which you can probably see from a mile away, is a satisfactory way of ending it. Elba's presence is always a pleasure, whether he's portraying Stringer Bell, Nelson Mandela or, ahem, a man punching a killer lion.

Review: Summering

Image courtesy of Bleecker Street.

James Ponsoldt's "Summering" has a fair amount of dreamy atmosphere and a lot of good intentions - so it's a shame that it's not an entirely successful endeavor. The film's plot plays like a female-centric version of "Stand By Me" - so much so, in fact, that there are only two scenes I can recall featuring (alive) men or boys, and those scenes all exist for the purpose of making a specific impact on the story at the moment of their arrival - but it also has an end-of-summer vibe and even a dash of melancholic but hypnotic visuals paired with audio cues that reminded me of "The Virgin Suicides," although this film is significantly less tragic or dark as that picture.

As the film opens, four girls - narrator Lia Barnett (Daisy), who lives with her cop mother (Lake Bell) and has an absent father; Lola (Sanai Victoria), who has an artist mother; Dina (Madalen Mills), whose tight-knit family watches "Wheel of Fortune" together; and Mari (Eden Grace Redfield), who is the smallest of the group and whose mother is a helicopter parent - are enjoying the last days of August as they privately worry whether their friendship will carry over into middle school.

One day, when walking in a secluded area where they have built a shrine to a site they refer to as Terabithia, they discover a dead man's body. But rather than call the police or their mothers - whom they know will ask them a whole lot of questions - they decide they want to find out who this man is before they turn to their parents or the authorities.

The mystery of the dead body is really a distraction in a story about four young girls whose mothers are the strongest presences in their lives, and who are about to - as they are told by relatives - embark on what could be among the worst years of their lives: middle school. Each member of the group worries whether they will remain friends, especially since Mari is going to a private school, while Dina is told by her older sister that if she hasn't figured out who the "mean girl" is in her group yet, it might be her.

The scenes involving the girls' investigation into the dead body are a bit slight - and a visit to a bar to quiz the bartender and customers some struck me as slightly unrealistic and a little too precious for its own good. The girls eventually make some headway into their investigation, but that storyline is ultimately among the least interesting.

"Summering" shines more when it focuses on the relationships between the girls - and their relationships with their mothers. There's a looseness to the scenes not focusing on the main plot point that makes for a mostly enjoyable hang-out vibe, but it is occasionally interrupted by the dead body drama and - even less necessary - sequences during which each of the girls imagine they see the dead man's ghost. No, this is not a horror movie or ghost story in any sense, so those fleeting moments were probably best left for the cutting room floor. Some other unfortunate script choices include the introduction of a gun and a visit to the "dark web" - don't ask.

Ponsoldt's filmography has mostly included mid-range indie dramas - his David Foster Wallace picture, "The End of the Tour," was good and "The Spectacular Now" was particularly memorable - but his latest feels like a lower-budget effort similar to his earliest work. The director has said that he made this film so that he could do something his daughter could watch - and the picture is a noble effort with some elements to recommend. It doesn't reach the bar set by its most obvious inspiration - "Stand By Me" - but it's not half bad either.

Review: Bodies Bodies Bodies

Image courtesy of A24.

The slasher film/murder mystery "Bodies Bodies Bodies" vacillates between occasional cleverness and genre tedium before delivering an ending that I didn't see coming and that made me laugh. It's not a great movie by any means, but if nothing else it sticks the landing in its finale.

Although its foot is firmly planted in the horror genre - think a Generation Z "Scream" without movie references, but not-so-subtle nods to every social trend you might find on Twitter - the film's setup is something straight out of Agatha Christie: a group of wealthy young people - minus lead protagonist Bee (Maria Bakalova), an immigrant who has secrets about her financial struggles - gather at a mansion to host a party during a hurricane, one of them winds up dead, and the rest of the group suspect each other to be the killer.

There are numerous red herrings involving the various characters. Bee and Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) are in a relationship, but Bee has secrets and Sophie has been somewhat ostracized by the group at the mansion due to her behavior prior to her undergoing drug treatment. Emma (Chase Sui Wonders) and David (Pete Davidson), whose family owns the mansion, have a rocky relationship, while Alice (Rachel Sennott) has brought to the party an older guy, Greg (Lee Pace), who the rest of the group appears to find mysterious. 

Rounding out the group is Jordan (Myha'la Herrold), who is the grouchiest of the bunch and seems to have some type of crush on Sophie, although there's also Max (Conner O'Malley), who is barely seen after having gotten into a conflict with David before the story started and has disappeared.

As the group settles in for the storm, they begin to play the titular game, during which players roam around in the dark and try to elude the person who has picked the card to be the killer. The killer's job is to tap a person on the shoulder in the dark, killing them. The lights come on and the group tries to figure out who the killer is.

But in this case, as the storm becomes more fierce, one of the partygoers is found dead and the group quickly begins to suspect various members - of course, the outsiders (Greg and Bee) get the most grilling, although eventually even old friends begin to get into tense exchanges.

For most of its running time, "Bodies Bodies Bodies" is a well-enough made, but somewhat rote, slasher comedy. At one point, as the arguments heat up, we get a large serving of various Twitter memes in the form of an argument - one character accuses the other of being a trigger, while another accuses a friend of being "ableist" and another suggests she's an "ally" when race factors into the scenario. 

However, the film only seems to superficially tackle these concepts as movies with limited running times tend to do. Although handled in a somewhat humorous manner, the conversations feel a little tacked on to cross off a box, rather than explored with any depth.

But if there's anything worth the price of admission, it's the ending, which of course I wouldn't dream of ruining. Although, perhaps, I should have, I didn't see it coming, and it's the best buildup to a punchline that I can recall in quite some time. If only the rest of the film had been operating on that level, "Bodies Bodies Bodies" might have been more successful all around. As it stands, it's a moderately amusing murder mystery movie with a great ending.

Review: Fire Of Love

Image courtesy of Neon.

A mesmerizing blend of photography and archival footage, Sara Dosa's stunning documentary "Fire of Love" feels like a Werner Herzog documentary in terms of subject matter, but with an added dose of romanticism and a dreamy soundtrack that includes music by Air and Brian Eno.

The film tells the story of the late Katia and Maurice Krafft, two French volcanologists who fell in love in the late 1960s, married and spent the rest of their lives exploring and photographing active volcanos around the world until 1991 when a pyroclastic flow on Mt. Unzen in Japan took their lives as well as those of a group of scientists, journalists and firefighters.

The picture reminded me a bit of Herzog's masterful "Grizzly Man," another film about a person whose fascination with nature - in that case, bears - caused the documentary's subject to take greater and greater risks in studying his area of interest until one of them proved to be fatal. Similarly, the Kraffts seemed to not feel as if they were alive unless they were perched on the mouth of a volcano with lava spewing into the air just feet from where they were standing.

If for no other reason, "Fire of Love" is highly recommended for the absolutely stunning footage captured by the couple. At any given time, they are filming exploding volcanos just feet from where they are standing, although Katia explains that "red volcanos" tend to be the safer ones, while the grey volcanos - which can be misleading in terms of how dangerous they are - are the ones that pose the gravest threat.

Interspersed with the Kraffts' stunning footage - which was, in a sense, their livelihood since they would utilize it to make films, write books and go on lecture tours - is some equally fascinating archival footage of the various lands to which they traveled throughout the 1970s and 1980s as well as their personal backstory.

One of the interesting elements of the documentary is that it doesn't treat the Kraffts' demise as a tragedy. On more than one occasion, they note that they recognize the danger of what they're doing, but wouldn't have it any other way. Maurice notes that he wants "to get right into the belly of the volcano. It will kill me one day, but that doesn't bother me at all." Katia says, "It's not that I flirt with death," but adds that when she is in the moment on the cusp of the volcano's mouth, "I don't care at all."

On the one hand, there are themes to be drawn from the film - the Kraffts note how they increasingly became detached from the disappointments of society and only felt alive while in natural settings - and there are elements that reminded me of Herzog's man vs. nature documentaries. But on the other, "Fire of Love" is seemingly content with being an astounding exercise in pure cinema - in other words, the incredible visuals, editing, sound and soundtrack create an aura in which the audience is meant to get lost.

And it works. This is one of the better documentaries I've seen in recent memory. Its subject matter is fascinating, its subjects are interesting and flawed in very human ways, the footage is stunning and there's a sense of being allowed to see something you're not supposed to see - watching humans as tiny specks against massive flames and rivers of lava is breathtaking and frightening. For those interested in documentary filmmaking, this one is a must-see.

Review: Resurrection

Image courtesy of IFC Films.

Andrew Semans' "Resurrection" opens on a young woman's face as she describes to her boss - Margaret (an intense Rebecca Hall) - how her boyfriend often makes jokes at her expense and how, when she objects, he gaslights her into believing she just doesn't get the joke. Margaret gives some pretty good advice: Dump the creep and find someone who makes you feel good about yourself. For Margaret, however, this advice is easier said than done.

"Resurrection" is an odd and chilly thriller about a woman who believes she is being tormented by her past that plays like a standard thriller for about half of its running time before transforming into something much more sinister and, quite frankly, deranged. It's very difficult to discuss the film without giving away its twist - although it's less of a twist and more of an explanation that defies all sense of logic - and trying to make sense of it all is an even heavier lift.

Margaret is a very tightly wound manager in the biotech industry who is overly protective of her daughter, Abbie (Grace Kaufman), and has a noncommittal fling going on with a married coworker (Michael Esper), who appears to have more feelings for her than she does for him. 

All seems well and good enough - despite Margaret's intensely vigorous morning workouts, which depict some possible psychic torment - until one day Margaret spots a man named David (Tim Roth, creepy in a placid sort of a way) seated at a conference she is attending. Margaret flees and runs all the way home, cries in her bedroom and frightens her daughter in the process.

Suddenly, this man starts popping up everywhere - in department stores, in the park and elsewhere, and finally Margaret approaches him and tells him to "go away." At first, he pretends not to know her, but he then makes comments assuring us that he does. Margaret starts to slowly become unhinged by this man's presence, and David makes it clear that he's not going anywhere.

In the film's acting piece-de-resistance, Margaret relays to a coworker via a seven-minute unbroken monologue about her connection to this man - and suffice it to say, it'll elicit strong reactions. It's the type of scene that could have played for absurdist black comedy, but instead comes off as demented due to the complete seriousness with which it's delivered. There's a brief hint at what's going when Margaret confronts David and he makes a brief mention about a baby the two had together and where it is now.

Margaret begins to come undone, alienating her daughter, who has become terrified of her mother, and pretty much everyone else. David attempts to get Margaret to submit to psychological games - which Margaret had mentioned to the coworker in her monologue - known as "kindnesses" in which he asks her to take part in a task, such as walking to work barefoot every day, in an attempt to retain mind control over her.

The film becomes increasingly warped, and bears some resemblance to Andrzej Zulawski's insane 1981 masterpiece "Possession," in which another woman (Isabelle Adjani) undergoes a disturbing transformation. I definitely liked "Resurrection," even if its culmination involves a bit of weirdness that becomes too literal, when it could have been better left to the viewer to decide what's real or not. Hall, who was previously so good in the chilly horror film "The Night House," gives another doozy of a performance here and Roth exudes a calm menace. 

This is the type of picture that will elicit strong reactions: You either allow yourself to go with its weird flow and accept that what you're seeing could either be an unbelievably bonkers story or merely the figments of someone's fragmented imagination, or you might find that "Resurrection" is too off-putting to take. I'm in the former camp. Even if the picture falters a little in its gruesome denouement, it's certainly unlike anything else I've seen this year, Hall's performance is impressive and its eerie and bizarre tone keeps it compelling. So, yes, I'd recommend it, but don't say I didn't warn you.