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Ordinary Angels

by George Wolf

It’s understandable if Ordinary Angels seems familiar. Hilary Swank playing a tireless do-gooder in a based-on-true-events drama with a vaguely inspirational title is probably going to feel that way.

And while the film does rely on plenty of broad-brushing, it ultimately mines enough nuance to find some genuine feels, as well.

Swank plays Sharon Stevens, a hard-partying beauty salon owner in Kentucky who’s hoping one day to mend the relationship with her estranged son, Derek (Dempsey Byrk). While waiting at the grocery store checkout, a local newspaper story gives Sharon’s life new meaning.

Five year-old Michelle Schmitt (Emily Mitchell) has a rare disease and needs a liver transplant to survive. Her father Ed (Jack Reacher‘s Alan Ritchson), still hurting from his wife’s fatal battle with Wegener’s disease, is facing a mountain of medical debt while struggling to raise Michelle and her older sister Ashley (Skywalker Hughes) as a single parent.

After so much heartache, Ed admits to his mother Barbara (Nancy Travis) that he’s losing his faith. Could this hardscrabble hairdresser at their door be a Godsend? The few thousand dollars she raises from a salon fundraiser is a darn good start.

Two-time Oscar winner Swank is perfect for the role, even if the script from Kelly Fremon Craig (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret) and Meg Tilly (the veteran actress with her first feature writing credit) doesn’t provide many edges, at least early on. Sharon is all “hush my mouth” spunk, smiling through her accent as she imposes her will on multiple situations and begins to feel interchangeable with similar characters from The Blind Side to Swank’s own Conviction.

Ritchson is fine and shares sweet chemistry with the two adorable young girls, though Ed also lacks the depth to move the character beyond any number of faith-based dramas following a basic heart string-tugging playbook.

Ordinary Angels does find a unique voice in the third act, when Ed’s patience wears thin, and Sharon is finally forced to confront the life she’s really trying to save. Plus, director Jon Gunn (The Case for Christ, The Week) moves away from the formulaic to develop some respectable tension when the call for Michelle’s life-saving transplant comes during a monster snowstorm.

That really happened, and the true story here does provide an inspiring example of the good that humans are capable of. No doubt we need that right now, and Ordinary Angels manages just enough extraordinary moments to please more than the choir.

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Glad I Spent It With You

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Perfect Days

by Hope Madden

Wim Wenders is having a year. Though his epic 3D documentary Anselm somehow regrettably missed out on a Best Documentary nomination from the Academy, his unhurried slice-of-life Perfect Days caught their attention.

Nominated for Best International Film, Wenders’s lovely drama tails Hirayama (Koji Yakusho, perfection) through about two weeks in his life. Hirayama doesn’t have a lot to say, but he misses nothing in his days driving from public restroom to public restroom with Tokyo Toilet written on the back of his pristine blue jumpsuit.

Tools in rubber-gloved hand, Hirayama is meticulous as he works. He has a routine that suits him—brings him joy, even—and Wenders cycles us through that routine day after day after day. At a full two hours, Perfect Days begs your indulgence with this montage of minutely changing events.

The cumulative effect is, at first, lulling. As days pass, some small change draws attention and we try to predict a plot—will this turn into a love story, will that create financial chaos, is a tragic backstory of abuse about to come to light?

Not the goal of this movie. The film actually began as a commissioned short film meant to celebrate Tokyo’s pristine public toilets. I swear to God. It blossomed from there into a lithe, meditative character study shouldered by an impeccable Yakusho.

Though there are moments in the film that feel orchestrated—today, this happens; today, this happens—but not one breath, smile or nod of Hirayama’s head betrays the fiction. His is a mainly solitary, nearly silent life that can be surmised as a middle-aged man’s intentional creation. Hirayama has left something behind, has stripped himself of something, and what remains is what he finds vital: work where you can see a result; floor to ceiling shelves of books; a tidy and enormous collection of cassette tapes; a room full of tiny plants taking root, thanks to his tender care.

You could fit Hirayama’s dialog on less than a single page, and there are times when his silence feels forced and almost comedic. But Yakusho’s brilliantly nuanced, heartbreakingly felt performance makes up for any flaws in the film. Wenders punctuates scenes with joyously on-the-nose song choices—minus the cassette hiss—and the final few singalong minutes showcase one actor’s transcendent work.

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A Walk in the Woods

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Lovely, Dark, and Deep

by Hope Madden

What is the draw of the deep woods? Ticks? High likelihood of injury with haphazard chances of rescue? Cocaine bears?

Even the obvious reasons to steer clear of the woods can’t deter a lot of people. Writer/director Teresa Sutherland’s Lovely, Dark, and Deep links two risks that have haunted writers and creators throughout existence. Some people go crazy in the woods, and many get lost in there and never come out.

“And into the forest I must go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” John Muir said that. The “father of the National Parks” may not have predicted Sutherland’s translation.

Sutherland drops new ranger Lennon (Georgina Campbell, Barbarian) in the National Park back country, where she will spend the season mainly alone in her ranger hut. Does she know that Ranger Varney (Soren Hellerup) disappeared last season?

Likely it wouldn’t dissuade Lennon, who has a past to reconcile and some podcasts on missing people to listen to.

Campbell’s performance shifts as Lennon’s determination makes way for absolute confusion and terror. What begins as single-minded pursuit shows itself to be desperation in disguise. Willfulness gives way to horror as Lennon’s investigation turns up wooded weirdness and wickedness she did not predict.

Wide shots and drone work keep Lennon dwarfed by an increasingly claustrophobic forest, though Campbell never lets the character feel overmatched by nature. Not nature. But a disorienting woods as deep as these (it’s actually Portugal) can easily conceal a lot that is far from natural.

Sutherland’s film is a bit of a slow burn, but once it hits its stride, she throws an unsettling assortment of hellish visions at you. You don’t have to have a natural (and really healthy, I think) fear of the woods to know it’s time to get the F out of Jellystone.

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Holy Sanctimony

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God & Country

by George Wolf

When Rob Schenck was a young pastor, he was told never to prepare a sermon without consulting the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel.

Years later, Schenck learned that Kittel was also the man who gave Hitler a Christian blessing for his Final Solution.

“That was an eye opener,” Schenck admits. The point—that there is no limit to what radical Christianity can be used to justify—is what drives God & Country. And much of the film’s success comes from how it combats that fanaticism with a measured, confident deconstruction.

Director Dan Partland doesn’t insert himself into the conversation, but has no problem crafting a spirited one. Yes, he has a clear agenda, but includes enough footage from news reports, political speeches and televangelist messaging that the film’s worldview becomes the “other side” getting a chance to be heard.

Partland relies on historians, authors, and theologians to trace the rise of Christian Nationalism, it’s deviation from actual Christian teachings, the quest for power over values that earns a rebranding as “White Religious Nationalism,” and how the true believers have been convinced that America has a God-ordained role in human history.

And if democracy gets in the way? See January 6th, 2021.

The attack on the Capitol is what bookends the film, and in between, Partland actually elicits sympathy for the attackers, who have been fed a calculated diet of lies, fear and outrage. The resulting echo chamber creates an alternative reality bubble, one that was always designed to burst.

If you noticed the proudly theocratic ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court last week, you know that the threat to democracy is only becoming more dangerous. Partland makes it clear that the biggest hope is awareness, so that those led astray by the fervor (like Schenck) can experience a new awakening.

Christian Nationalism has nothing to do with Christianity. And God & Country finds a useful tone between sermonizing and condescension that can help us see that light.

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Fantastic Mr. Fox Corpse

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Stopmotion

by Hope Madden

There will be moments when you’re watching Robert Morgan’s macabre vision Stopmotion that you’ll think you see the twists as they’re coming. That’s a trick. Morgan, writing with Robin King, assumes you’ll catch the handful of common horror twists, but he knows that you won’t predict the real story unfolding.

Although you should because he’s given you every clue.

Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale) is Ella. She’d like to make her own stop-motion animated film, but instead she’s helping her mom finish hers. Ella’s domineering mother Suzanne (Stella Gonet, very stern) is a legend in the field, and she makes Ella feel as if she has no stories of her own to tell.

But when Suzanne is hospitalized, Ella determines to finish her mother’s film. Her boyfriend Tom (Tom York) sets Ella up in a run down, empty flat where she can work and he can check in on her, bring dinner and take care of her.

Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? Unless Ella really has no stories to tell, or the story she tells is too scary, even for her.

Stopmotion delivers a trippy, uncomfortable, and deeply felt tale of a struggling artist. This is a descent into madness horror of sorts, but it’s also the story of an artist coming to a realization about what scares her most. Franciosi’s turn is brittle and often internal. Ella’s insecurities float to the surface, and Franciosi’s unafraid to make the protagonist frequently unlikeable.

The dual storylines—live action and animation—are both well told, but the real pleasure is in the gruesomely tactile movie Ella is making. Her characters—wax and feather, bone and blood and ash—come to life in a lumbering, grotesque way that hints at any number of possible horrors.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s seen Morgan’s animated shorts, including “D Is for Deloused” in ABCs of Death. The animator sees the monstrous possibilities in his medium, clearly. But his feature debut balances that with an existential ugliness in Ella’s real life, and thanks to committed and nuanced performances from the whole small ensemble, both sides keep you riveted.

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Eugénie’s Feast

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The Taste of Things

by Matt Weiner

You know you’re in for a hell of a meal when the appetizer is a 15-minute cold opening that lingers on every small detail of cooking a feast to a degree that borders on pornographic.

This scene from writer and director Anh Hung Tran sets the mood—and pace—of the rest of his latest feature, The Taste of Things.

Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) prepares these elaborate meals for Dodin (Benoît Magimel), a famed gourmand and restaurateur who has relied on Eugénie’s unique blend of skill and intuition to bring his culinary visions to life.

The bright, airy kitchen where these feasts are prepared might as well be one of the film’s co-leads. Binoche is spellbinding as Eugénie, who must be played as equal parts enchanting muse and aloof lover to Dodin. It’s a delicate balance, especially in a film with Tran’s subtle direction where the emotional connection between the pair comes out as much in the physical acts of cooking food as in the dialogue.

The two seem to have forged an idyllic life together that caters to their passions. Their kitchen is an insular one—debates over French culinary giants like Caréme and Escoffier are as political as Dodin gets, even as outside the kitchen modernism is poised to upend European society and tradition.

But within this narrow setting, Tran’s light touch and genial script centers the story on Eugénie and Dodin’s love and respect for one another, and how the two intersect personally and professionally. Dodin is determined to get Eugénie to marry him, formalizing the intimacy they already share.

A drawn-out challenge to turn a paramour into a wife may sound like a lucky problem to have. But in The Taste of Things, such stakes are life and death. And why shouldn’t they be? Dodin and Eugénie’s mutual affection for one another isn’t just around cooking, but in the vanishing conviction that craft elevated to art is in itself a monumental—and rare—achievement.

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Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animation

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by Hope Madden

When I was a kid watching the Oscars, I remember always being perplexed by short film categories. How do people manage to see these shorts?

Good news, kids, it’s gotten much easier. Not only to we now have ShortsTV, but in the last several years, all the nominated shorts have been packaged by category for theatrical showings. And in the cases where the combined run times don’t reach feature length, some bonus shorts are added to the programs.

In this year’s Animation group, don’t look for a lot of silly fun. Or any, really. These animators have beautiful heartbreak in store for you. (Did Pixar not make a movie this year? Seriously, have your Kleenex handy.)

Our Uniform 7 Mins. Director: Yegane Moghaddam Iran

The lightest of the films in the category, Our Uniform delivers a tactile journey through the weight, feel and even sound of the fabric of our lives. Told from the perspective of an Iranian school girl, the film unfolds as a nonchalant conversation about the clothing she wears and how it changes depending on her age and where she is.

The animation is a delight of fabric and flow, and the story releases a sense of freedom and what that feels like.

Letter to a Pig 17 Mins. Director: Tal Kantor Israel

This haunting story, told mostly in black and white with startling uses of pink, follows the dream a school girl has as a Holocaust survivor visits her classroom to tell of a pig that saved his live.

Tal Kantor, who writes and directs, takes unexpected turns in tone. What at first feels like a heartbreaking but beautiful story of survival meeting the apathy of middle schoolers, turns to bitterness and hatred, which turns on its head as it’s translated into the dream of a child. It’s a harrowing, somber but beautiful work.

Pachyderme 11 Mins. Director: Stéphanie Clément France

This heartbreaking tale that sneaks up on you is told in lovely, fluid watercolor style animation with a lilting, melancholy delivery as a grown woman looks back at her visits to her grandparents when she was a child.

Together director Stéphanie Clément and writer Marc Rius tease one story from another, the combined tale told with the resigned distance of age by the narrator. The result is touching and lovely.

Ninety-Five Senses 13 Mins. Director: Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess USA

This is not a film I would expect from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess (working alongside his wife and directing partner, Jerusha Hess).

Tim Blake Nelson voices the protagonist of this story, an older man running through a personal tale depicting each of his senses. The delivery is cantankerous and the often quirky animation style suggests homespun wisdom. But the story the Hesses tell consistently surprises. It’s a startlingly human story of redemption, of sorts, and it pulls more tears than the others. (And that is a feat—these movies are out to destroy you!)

War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko 11 Mins. Director: Dave Mullins USA

A carrier pigeon flies through the winter sky, bombs bursting around him. A soldier clomps through snow, his boot print showing the blood beneath the snow.

A chess match unfolds that offers a birds-eye view of the idiocy of war. It’s another tear jerker, but what’s wrong with a good cry?

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Parents Who Use Drugs…

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Bleeding Love

by Christie Robb

It’s generational trauma time as real-life father and daughter Ewan and Clara McGregor play estranged family embarking on a 14-hour road trip across the American Southwest.

She thinks she’s going on a vacation. He’s taking her to rehab in the aftermath of a first OD at 20. His support now is made possible by his own sobriety journey. It’s just too bad that his rehabilitation started after his daughter’s early childhood had ended. And his rock bottom involved abandoning the family.

Directed by Emma Westenberg (Stranger’s Arms), Bleeding Love is a spare, gritty film. Quite a bit of it consists of extreme close ups of the pair, bathed in golden desert light, awkwardly attempting to rebuild a connection.

This is interspersed with the tropes you’ve come to expect from road trip movies—a breakdown, a sing-along, moments of high drama broken with comedic relief—the best of the latter coming from a sex worker (Vera Bulder) who helps the duo navigate a medical crisis.

With flashbacks to the daughter’s childhood, recalling moments of joy and pain surrounding her dad’s wacky behavior, the film will definitely give watchers of a certain age flashbacks to the large-scale anti-narcotics PSA by Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Nope. Not the frying egg. The other one.  The one with the dad finding a box of drugs in his son’s bedroom and asking the poor kid how he even knows to use them.

“You alright. I learned it from watching you!”

Bleeding Love can be a bit heavy-handed and ignores some of the realities of addiction (like the crushing hangovers) but it’s sweet and hopeful and grounded in the real-life struggles of the McGregors.

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Brick by Brick

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Monolith

by Brandon Thomas

Having already made a strong impression in last year’s Evil Dead Rise, Lily Sullivan delivers an even more impressive performance – and one where she’s the only actor on screen – in Monolith. Sullivan’s command of the screen for the entire 94 minute running time is a testament to her understanding of the material, and how that allows us, the audience, to recognize her character’s (known only as The Interviewer) complex motivations. 

Monolith begins with Sullivan’s former journalist holed up in her parents’ luxury vacation home. Nursing an enormously bruised ego after having been fired from her previous job for not fully vetting a source, the Interviewer is desperately hoping for that next big thing that will find her career redemption. The answer is an anonymous email that leads the Interviewer to a woman who once had in her possession a mysterious black brick. As the Interviewer digs deeper, she finds that multiple people in various parts of the world also have these bricks. The more the Interviewer reveals about the bricks and their owners, the more she also starts to succumb to a mysterious force. Is it the influence of the bricks or is the Interviewer’s own hubris and vanity causing her to spiral?

Director Matt Vesely and writer Lucy Campbell are able to wring so much tension out of a single location and a lot of phone interviews. As already noted, much of Monolith’s success rests in Sullivan’s hands. Her isolation as an actress informs the same isolation that the Interviewer is feeling. The audience begins to slowly match the Interviewer’s paranoia and discomfort with the bricks and the strange influence that they seem to have over people. Vesely’s command of tone and mood syncs up perfectly with Sullivan’s captivating performance.

Monolith is the kind of film that teases that it might show its cards but never actually does. For movies that are high on plot this might be a problem, but Monolith is character-centric through and through and the ambiguity only serves the Interviewer as she sinks further and further into obsession with the bricks. In fact, while the finale itself retains that overall ambiguity, it also reveals just how deeply personal the Interviewer’s journey ends up being. It’s a satisfying reveal that isn’t treated as some sort of Shyamalan “surprise,” but instead acts as the final piece to understanding Sullivan’s character and her true motivations. 

Monolith is the best kind of slow burn: one that trusts the audience to come along for a satisfying ride, but also delivers enough twists and unsettling scares that even the tiniest amount of boredom never sets in.

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Rastaman, Live Up

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Bob Marley: One Love

by Hope Madden

It’s kind of stunning that Bob Marley: One Love represents the first time someone’s told the star’s legendary tale onscreen. Yes, you can find concerts to watch (may we recommend 2020’s Marley?), as well as Kevin Macdonald’s outstanding 2012 documentary, Marley.

But this life seems custom designed for cinematic treatment.

Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard, Joe Bell–dude loves him a biopic) finally gives the Rastafarian some big screen drama with a fairly straightforward, greatest-hits look at what set Marley apart.

Kingsley Ben-Adir (Malxolm X in One Night in Miami) plays Marley. The 2012 doc provides a little clearer picture of Bob’s enigmatic, challenging character. Ben-Adir delivers a charming, eternally laid-back presence. Marley’s flawed, but just enough to make him human. Never enough to make him unlikeable.

As the film–written by Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers, and Zach Baylin–begins, Jamaica is in the middle of a contentious election year that threatens to erupt in a civil war. Marley hopes an upcoming concert can bring the people together.

His wife Rita (Lashana Lynch, The Woman King) disagrees. She thinks it will bring danger to Bob and his family. Rita is right.

The balance of the film follows Marley’s story, sometimes flashing to dreamlike snatches from his childhood, or allowing glimpses of the teen years that brought Bob, Rita, and Rastafarianism together. The main throughline is the trouble caused by success outside of Jamaica.

Lynch flexes muscles we’ve not seen before, though the unapologetic ferocity that has marked her work up to now is as present as ever. Ben-Adir’s Marley is all tenderness, and the performances balance each other nicely.

The music is great, obviously, and a large ensemble (Nia Ashi, James Norton, Anthony Welsh, Quan-Dajai Henriques, Michael Gandolfini) delivers.

Marley’s widow, his oldest son Ziggy, and several of his other children produce. Possibly this explains One Love’s soft touch. And the result is a perfectly lovely tribute to a figure who is not known as well as he should be. But it also does not really let us get to know him, which is too bad.