Cynical, satirical, uncomfortable and likely to bristle viewers no matter where they fall on the political spectrum, Jessica Hausner’s latest, Club Zero, takes aim at, well, a lot of things.
A wickedly brilliant Mia Wasikowska is Ms. Novak, an expensive boarding school’s newest faculty member. Chosen by the parents’ board, Ms. Novak has been brought on to teach conscious eating. Being single and childless, she’s also available for those hard-to-fill weekend duties.
The film’s aesthetic—essentially, every color of vomit—draws attention immediately while Markus Binder’s audacious score delivers echoes of commodified Eastern music. The main target of Hausner’s film, co-written with longtime collaborator Géraldine Bajard, is the privileged, goopy wellness culture. It’s an easy target, but it’s not the only one the filmmaker hits.
Faith in anything other than science—cliquish privilege, capitalism, consumerism and nearly every manner of parenting—is sent up with sometimes unpleasant but never dull cynicism.
Hausner’s framing is gorgeous, and it keeps views at arm’s length from the action. Students are convinced, coddled, and cajoled by Ms. Novak into eating less and less, and into distancing themselves from anyone who wouldn’t understand the righteousness of their calling. In Club Zero, luxury and loneliness meet a culture of competition to create an environment ripe for radicalization.
The absurdity of the tone keeps this story‑— vulnerable young people succumbing to the attention of a personality that makes them feel special—from feeling tragic. It should, really. But Hausner doesn’t pity the children of privilege much more than their parents.
And while wellness culture is an easy mark, the final image—a clear callback to Da Vinci’s The Last Supper—reinforces the idea that blind, scienceless faith causes more harm than good.
Fear of infection, of contamination, of losing your personhood, of physical violation—all of it coalesces in often gooey fashion in the parasite movie. Metaphors abound and slugs take center stage as some of the greatest directors of the genre tell the tale of hosts and unwanted guests. Here are our favorites.
Shivers (1975)
In an upscale Montreal high rise, an epidemic is breaking out. A scientist has created an aphrodisiac in the form of a big, nasty slug. That slug, though, spreads wantonness throughout the high rise and threatens to overrun the city with its lusty ways.
Shivers takes a zombie concept and uses it to pervert expectations. (See what we did there?) Cronenberg’s his first feature length horror predicts so many of the films to come. The film obsesses over human sexuality, social mores, the physical form, physical violation and infestation, medical science, conspiracy, and free will.
Splinter (2008)
Road kill, a carjacking, an abandoned gas station, some quills – it doesn’t take much for first time feature filmmaker and longtime visual effects master Toby Wilkins to get under your skin. One cute couple just kind of wants to camp in Oklahoma’s ancient forest (which can never be a good idea, really). Too bad a couple of ne’er-do-wells needs their car. Then a flat (what was that – a porcupine? No!!) sends them to that creepy gas station, and all hell breaks loose.
Contamination gymnastics call to mind the great John Carpenter flick The Thing, but Splinter is its own animal. Characters have depth and arcs, the danger is palpable, the kills pretty amazing, and the overall aesthetic of that old highway gives everything a desperately lonesome quality where you believe anything could happen and no rescue is in sight.
Slither (2006)
Writer/director James Gunn took the best parts of B-movie Night of the Creeps and Cronenberg’s They Came from Within, mashing the pieces into the exquisitely funny, gross and terrifying Slither.
Cutie pie Starla (Elizabeth Banks) is having some marital problems. Her husband Grant (the great Michael Rooker) is at the epicenter of an alien invasion. Smalltown sheriff Bill Pardy (every nerd girl’s imaginary boyfriend Nathan Fillion) tries to set things straight as a giant mucous ball, a balloonlike womb-woman, a squid monster, projectile vomit, zombies, and loads and loads of slugs keep the action really hopping.
Consistently funny, cleverly written, well-paced, tense and scary and gross—Slither has it all. Watch it. Do it!
The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter’s remake of the 1951 SciFi flick The Thing from Another World is both reverent and barrier-breaking, limiting the original’s Cold War paranoia, and concocting a thoroughly spectacular tale of icy isolation, contamination, and mutation.
A beard-tastic cast portrays a team of scientists on expedition in the Arctic who take in a dog. The dog is not a dog, though. Not really. And soon, in an isolated wasteland with barely enough interior room to hold all the facial hair, folks are getting jumpy because there’s no knowing who’s not really himself anymore.
This is an amped up body snatcher movie benefitting from some of Carpenter’s most cinema-fluent and crafty direction: wide shots when we need to see the vastness of the unruly wilds; tight shots to remind us of the close quarters with parasitic death inside.
Alien (1979)
After a vagina-hand-sucker-monster attaches itself to your face, it gestates inside you, then tears through your innards. Then it grows exponentially, hides a second set of teeth, and bleeds acid. How much cooler could this possibly be?
Much ado has been made, rightfully so, of the John Hurt Chest Explosion (we loved their early work, before they went commercial). But Ridley Scott’s lingering camera leaves unsettling impressions in far simpler ways, starting with the shot of all those eggs.
Back in 2015, Sir Nicholas Winton passed away at the age of…106.
Healthy diet? Lots of cardio? Maybe, but One Life lets us know Winton could have subsisted on little more than whiskey, smokes, and the unlimited good karma from his days as a young man on a humanitarian mission that put faith in “ordinary people.”
In the years before World War II, “Nicky” (Johnny Flynn) was a London stockbroker. But as Hitler and the Nazis marched across Europe, Nicky committed himself to saving as many Jewish children as he could, spearheading a committee to place the children with foster families in the U.K.
Years later, the older Nicky (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife Grete (Lenas Olin) begin cleaning out their house, which brings him face to face with an old briefcase. Inside the satchel are the records from Nicky’s refugee network, and he begins to wonder if the story might be of interest to the local press.
It is.
Veteran television director James Hawes and the writing team of Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake adapt the book by Winton’s daughter Barbara as a standard take on an extraordinary story. Have plenty of tissues handy, which is a testament to the sheer power and timely urgency of Nicky’s life-saving work.
The flashback scenes are satisfactory, but lack the cinematic style and structure to find a unique voice amid the holocaust dramas we’ve seen in just the last several years.
It is the later narrative thread – with, unsurprisingly, a truly touching turn by Hopkins – that allows One Life to leave its mark. Overdue accolades only seem to increase Nicky’s despair over the lives he couldn’t save, and Hopkins is able to craft the haunted man with a nuance that underscores all the good that can come from turning care into action.
The film’s final act puts the effect of Sir Nicholas’s work in very specific, very human and very public terms. And even if you remember hearing about the goosebump-inducing way the “British Schindler” finally got his flowers, One Life makes sure those goosebumps will come again.
Animated sequels often work out. Every time you think “Do we really need another Toy Story?” you get one more cartoon masterpiece. Each How to Train Your Dragon movie is a stunner. And Puss in Boots: The Last Wish was not only better than any previous Puss in Boots film, it was better than any Shrek film.
So why not a fourth Kung Fu Panda? Literally no one expected the 2008 original to be a charming, lovely, thoroughly entertaining Oscar nominee. A couple more episodes in and maybe directors Mike Mitchell and Stephanie Stine have the power to entirely reimagine this franchise, find a universal truth and existential meaning that allows this installment to transcend its late-stage sequel position, a la Toy Story 3. Or Toy Story 4.
No, but it’s cute.
Po (Jack Black, lovable even if it’s only his voice) has been named the spiritual leader of the Valley of Peace, which means he must find his successor as Dragon Warrior. But he doesn’t want to. He finally found something he’s good at—kicking butt—and he’s kind of famous for it. And maybe he just fears change.
But all this successor stuff will have to wait. The Chameleon (Viola F. Davis) has a nefarious plan that needs thwarting and Po’s off to handle the situation with the help of this little thieving fox (Awkwafina, who may be voicing every animated film to come out, but she’s great at it).
Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) is disappointed. Naturally.
Hoffman is one of only a handful of returning voice talent—Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogan, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu and David Cross are noticeably absent. But Ian McShane returns, and that’s a voice we can all listen to all day long, villainous or not. Plus, there’s more room for new characters.
Davis is characteristically wonderful as the evildoer, but it’s really the budding relationship between frenemies Po and Zhen (Awkwafina) that compels interest. Not every actor can carry off animation, but both Black and Awkwafina shine.
The animation is good looking enough. It’s not gorgeous, but it’s nice. The action is fun, the characters are funny enough, and the lessons are solid. And there are these three bloodthirsty little bunnies, and I am a fan.
Kung Fu Panda 4 breaks no new ground, transcends no limitations, but it entertains throughout and delivers a pleasant bit of family-friendly fun. Plus reimagined Ozzy and Britney are a delight.
By definition, a totem is “a natural object or animal that is believed by a particular society to have spiritual significance and that is adopted by it as an emblem.” With Totem, her second feature-film, director Lila Aviles approaches the esoteric idea of totems through the eyes of a curious 7-year-old girl who is trying to understand the familial chaos surrounding her.
Having been dropped off at her grandfather’s house, Sol (Naima Senties) spends the day wandering from room to room, conversation to conversation, as the adults around her rush to set up a birthday party for Sol’s ailing father. As night falls and the party inches closer, Sol tries to make sense of the mixture of emotions, reactions, and actions coming from each member of her family.
The bulk of Totem is told solely through Sol’s eyes. It’s not a candy-coated depiction of a child’s viewpoint but it’s still an honest one. There’s a feeling of wonderment in even the most mundane things Sol observes. As children, many of us focused on the tiniest of details and differences around us. It’s something the camera captures expertly as is floats through the scene – making the audience feel less like an observer and more a part of the family. Visually, the use of the 1.33:1 aspect ratio – while probably overused in many modern movies – feels at home in the story Totem is telling. This tighter ratio that makes the image look cramped is a perfect visual metaphor for Sol’s large extended family crammed together in her grandfather’s modest home.
Despite the melancholy backdrop of the party, Totem never succumbs to heaviness or melodrama. Each member of Sol’s family is trying to make sense of their own fear and impending grief surrounding her father’s illness. For Sol, this difference is confusing and somewhat alienating. For us, the audience, it’s honest and all too relatable.
It’s never made clear how much Sol knows about her father’s condition. However, despite his circumstances, Sol’s love for her father is undeniable as are his reciprocated feelings, even though they are shared through pain and suffering. For Sol, the most important thing is seeing her father and feeling his embrace.
And for us that becomes the most important thing too.
Picture it: the Soviet-Chinese border, 1973. Three Chinese martial-artists dressed up like they are about to join John Travolta for a Saturday night at the discotheque, wire-fu their way into Soviet territory and kick the shit out of some guards.
One of the guards, Rafael (Ursel Tilk) falls in love. With kung fu.
Determined to learn, despite the practice being banned in the USSR, Rafael tries to teach himself. Then, his car fortuitously breaks down in front of a Russian Orthodox monastery. There, in a take on the Shaolin Monastery (birthplace of Shaolin Kung Fu), Rafael begins his true training, both physical and metaphysical.
Only in director Rainer Sarnet’s (November) movie, the trappings of Chinese kung fu are replaced with the long beards, black floor-length gowns, and gilt religious treasures of the Russian Orthodox aesthetic. And all the hand movements are derived from the symbolism of religious iconography.
The look is bright 70s pop art. The sound effects are cartoonlike. The music is Black Sabbath. The fight sequences are amusing and often manage to use food. (I’ve never seen someone weaponize a pierogi before.)
The only thing that got in the way of a thoroughly enjoyable movie-time was the sexual politics. The film really wanted to sort its female characters into the roles of either Madonna-mother or whore-demon. But maybe that’s more the Church’s issue than the movie’s. The kung fu surrealist comedy has the kind of video-store cult-classic vibes that would make for a great weekend watch with a group of rowdy friends.
When an ancient text is stolen, it sets off a war between kingdoms in director Bassanjargai Sambuu’s The Princess Warrior (previously titled Princess Khutulun)
The text is the Golden Sutra, an item passed down directly to the descendants of Genghis Khan, the most powerful family in Mongolia. During an ambush, an assassination party sent by a khan from another kingdom grievously wounds the king, setting off a chain of events that upends the ruling order.
The princess warrior is the king’s only daughter, Princess Khutulun (Tsedoo Munkhbat). Though chided from childhood that women are to be meek, to learn needlework not archery, she has nonetheless trained alongside her 13 brothers. During a council with those brothers, she refuses to obey her oldest and sets off with a clan of loyal followers to retrieve the Golden Sutra.
The film is lush with rich sets and costuming that bring the world of the Mongolian empire to life. Based on both a novel and historical facts, the film does a marvelous job of bringing Princess Khutulun to life. Some of the ancillary characters are more fleshed out than others, as the film’s short run time doesn’t allow for much depth in any character beyond Khutulun.
There is also cultural history that might be unknown to American viewers, but enough is conveyed through conversation that anyone should be able to glean the basics of this feudal society. In a world that was once ruled by kings and lords, it’s not surprising that wars of leadership raged in Mongolia much as they did in Europe.
Munkhbat gives a wonderful performance as the Princess Warrior. She is adept at bringing a range of emotion to a character that yearns to choose her own path in a patriarchal society. She likens herself to a sheep, but longs to be a wolf.
Though not everyone is able to bring the same skill to their roles, most of it can be overlooked considering the story, which is intriguing enough to please most viewers. The film understands its strengths and embraces them, while smoothing over the rougher elements.
The battle choreography is enjoyable, and the fights come fast and furious after the initial set up. There is intrigue, betrayal, and a woman warrior who cements it all in an absorbing character.
I was looking forward to American Dreamer, the comedy/drama that pairs Peter Dinklage and Shirley MacLaine as odd couple tenant/homeowner in a comment on the American dream.
And then I found out Matt Dillon and Danny Glover are in it, which appealed as well.
And then I wondered what on earth compelled any of the four of them to take this gig.
Paul Dektor’s film follows Dr. Phil Loder (Dinklage), an adjunct professor of social economics who is very down on his luck. Not sure how he got here? No worries, because a bartender will explain all of it to Loder, who one assumes must already know his own backstory. But this is how bad writing shows itself. And it won’t be the last time.
Loder dreams of home ownership, but he lives in a crappy apartment, drives a 30-year-old Saab, and makes (the bartender explains) less than 50k a year. But then he finds the deal of a lifetime in his price range. He just has to pay now, hold out in the stinky servant’s quarters and wait until the current owner (MacLaine) dies. Then his dream house is all his!
That’s convoluted and contrived enough, but wait, there’s more!
Mainly there’s a lot of sloppy, needless plot devices that do not entertain but do disjoint the overall film. One of these writers (Theodore Melfi) has an Oscar nomination for Hidden Figures. Go figure.
Not that the direction’s any better. Dektor can’t decide if American Dreamer is a slapstick comedy, a sex comedy, or a social diatribe aimed at capitalism. Choosing none of these, he winds up creating an inarticulate mishmash.
Everything that happens outside the relationship between Dinklage and MacLaine feels extraneous, but the focus is almost never on the two leads. Worse still, the actual relationship—what we see of it—is silly and superficial. Because of this, Loder’s arc is unearned.
It’s great to see Dinklage in a lead and in a comedy. Too bad it’s this one.
MacLaine is even more ill-used, and Dillon’s realtor character is unfathomable. You spend the whole time waiting for some revelation, like that he and Loder are boyhood friends or brothers—anything to explain their contemptuous yet close bond.
The Oscar-nominated documentary Four Daughters tells the story of Olfa Hamrouni and her four girls. The two youngest, Eya and Tassir, still live at home and speak for themselves. The eldest, Rahma and Ghoframe, are played by actors (Nour Karoui, Ichrak Matar) as the real sisters “were devoured by the wolf.”
Yes, it is a metaphor, one that Tunisian writer/director Kaouther Ben Hania explores with a deeply sympathetic mix of doc and drama.
Most of the time, Olfa will tell her own story while veteran actress Hind Sabri stands by, ready to step in and play the role when the emotion is too much for Olfa to bear.
Mother and daughters laugh, cry and bicker as we hear of their life in the patriarchal society of Tunisia. Olfa moves between gregarious and reserved, as capable of flashing a strong defiant streak as she is of handing down oppressive customs because “that’s just the way it is.”
And as Ben Hania slowly moves toward the source of the family’s heartbreak, the film’s many moving parts don’t always engage in perfect sync. The subtle aspects of Ben Hania’s reenactments – such as having actor Majd Mastoura play all the male parts, or the surreal interplay between real sister and stand in – pay dividends. But moments when actor and subject go off script to debate the familial choices can begin to blur unfortunate lines.
The staggering 2012 doc The Act of Killing used similar tactics, but the arc of barbaric murderers recreating their genocidal crimes mined insight from intimacy. Here, the staged production of pain spurs questions about when intimacy becomes exploitation.
Ben Hania wisely travels a more conventional road in the film’s third act. The reason for the elder sisters leaving home becomes clear, and Four Daughters leaves its unique mark.. A compelling, touching story of memory and generational trauma, it’s a heartbreaking roadmap to radicalization marked with a family’s despair.
