Per Quechua tradition, when a condor decides its life has lost its purpose, it flies to the top of the mountain, then closes its wings to die on the rocks below. It’s a heavy metaphor, and one that suits not only Utama’s hero Virginio (José Calcina) but perhaps the entire Quechua way of life.
Virginio and his wife Sisi (Luisa Guispe) live in the Bolivian highlands where they keep a small herd of llamas. But it’s been months since it rained. The well in the town several miles away is dry, and now Sisi has to make an even longer walk to a faraway river. Even the snow at the top of the mountain is gone.
To make matters worse, Virginio’s cough has gotten deeper and more insistent. Their grandson Clever’s (Santos Choque) unexpected visit further throws the pair’s generally calm and simple life into chaos.
In a stunning feature debut, writer/director Alejandro Loayza Grisi develops this simple premise into both an intimate tale of survival and a global allegory of time, change and destruction.
Gorgeous Bolivian panoramas tell half the tale on their own, and the filmmaker’s framing is exceptional. Unlikely heroes disappear Eastwood-like into sunsets, jauntily festooned llamas crane their necks curiously about. Each splash of color feels like an act of bravery. Cinematographer Barbara Alvarez merges joy and sorrow in every image, her execution of Grisi’s vision simultaneously serene and forbidding, but always gorgeous.
Sweetly heartbreaking performances from Guispe and Calcina deliver lived-in, enduring love that ensures the tale never tips too far toward symbol. You care deeply about what happens to these two. The authenticity of their work gives the film an almost documentary feel that only deepens its effect.
Beautiful beyond measure but never showy, deliberate, and set among elderly people of a tiny community high in the hills of Bolivia, a film like Utama feels impossible.
Ana (Olga Kurylenko) is a high-end chef with a particular set of skills leftover from her past, so High Heat also offers a slice of Taken. But honestly, Die Hard is just easier to have pun with.
Okay, I’m done.
And there is some shoot-’em-up fun to be had with this film, you just have to wait for Ana’s old KGB partner to join the party.
But first, it’s opening night at the restaurant Ana co-owns with her husband (not her Dad) Ray (Don Johnson). It’s a pretty successful debut, until some mafia goons show up to burn the place down and settle Ray’s massive debt with an insurance payoff.
And before you can 86 the sea bass, Ana’s dispatching the hitmen so quickly that big boss Dom (Dallas Page) has to call in some mercenary backup.
But Ana has a friend to call, too. It’s Mimi (Kaitlin Doubleday), who’s still mad about being ghosted when Ana (or is it “Anya?”) left the Russian spy game. Mimi might be more inclined to hurt Ana than help her, but she’s on her way, along with her getting-in-touch-with-his-feeling hubby Tom (Chris Diamantopoulos) and their teenage twins (Bianca and Chiara D’Ambrosio).
And it’s that nuttily contrasting family dynamic that delivers on the promise of director Zach Golden’s breezy, stylishly throwback opening. Doubleday and Diamantopoulos supply the chemistry here, and along with Jackie Long as a mob masseuse in way over his head, give the film the jolt it needs to avoid being completely forgettable.
Even so, James Pedersen’s debut screenplay feels slight. High Heat struggles to find enough padding for even an 84 minute running time, and will probably fade from the menu pretty quickly. But when it does, maybe Golden and Pedersen will recognize the potential in their side dishes.
Re-tool this project into some cable-ready episodes starring Mimi, Tom and the twins, and you might really get something cooking.
In 1974, Hiroo Onoda found out World War II was over and that he could return to Japan from the Philippine jungle where he’d been hiding since 1944. This is true. This happened. And it feels like such a tragic squandering of a lifetime that you almost have to cling to the absurdity of it, make it a joke.
Instead, French filmmaker Arthur Harari mines Onoda’s story to examine the more universal if romantic theme of finding meaning in your own life.
Across nearly three hours we travel with Onoda, from the drunken dishonor of his recruitment – he’d been rejected as a pilot because he was afraid to die – through the training that would make him believe in his singular mission, on to that mission and the decades of reimagining reality to create something in keeping with that mission.
Harari’s film glides easily from war story to survival tale to odd couple bromance, each shift marking a passage of time and a new reality for Onoda.
Almost immediately upon landing in the Philippines, Lubang Island fell to the Allies. Onoda, a novice intelligence officer, convinced six men to remain with him rather than surrendering, assuring the troops that their mission was to regain control of the island no matter the circumstances.
Hiroo Onoda – as portrayed in youth by Yûya Endô but in particular in mournful old age by Kanji Tsuda – is a mixture of sorrowful elegance rarely depicted with such humanity in a war film. The vulnerability both actors bring to the role creates a soldier worthy of empathy rather than mockery.
Onoda’s second in command, Kozuka – whether played in youth by Yûya Matsuura or in maturity by Tetsuya Chiba – becomes the bold and tender heart of the film. Passionate and foolhardy, he’s a wonderful counterpoint to Onoda’s quiet discipline. Both pairings of actors create compelling rapport, but Tsuda and Chiba are especially heartbreaking.
Eventually, of course, Onoda is found. A tourist of luxurious means (Taiga Nakano) put finding Onoda on his list of must-dos, right up there with finding a Yeti. Once found, the tourist’s flippant privilege in the face of Onoda’s unimaginable loss and confusion perfectly encapsulates the shift in cultural ideals and the sheer self-congratulatory idiocy of the 1970s. But with limited screen time, Nakano acquits his generation nicely.
Harari’s film is lovely, heartbreaking and respectful. Onoda becomes not just an anomaly, an oddity, but an image of a generation lost and a promise forgotten.
Our Christmas gift to ourselves this year is a walk through the career of horror master John Carpenter. Yes, we did want to include Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York. But we stayed strong, because we still had to sift through so many genre classics to determine which five would rise to the top.
5. The Fog (1980)
Stevie Wayne (director John Carpenter favorite, at least while they were married, Adrienne Barbeau) does an air shift from a studio in that old lighthouse out on Antonio Bay. But the fog rolling in off the bay is just too thick tonight. It’s as if she’s entirely alone in the world. Can anyone hear her? Will someone go check on her young son?
While a lot does not work in Carpenter’s pirate leper ghost story (leper pirates?!), his first theatrical release after Halloween does hit some of the right marks. The vulnerability of a radio DJ – totally isolated while simultaneously exposed – has never been more palpable than in this film.
Jamie Lee Curtis (another Carpenter favorite) joins her mom Janet Leigh and B-horror legend Tom Atkins to fill out the pool of leper pirate bait. While the film is hardly one of Carpenter’s best, his knack for framing, his voyeuristic camera, and his ability to generate scares with a meager budget are on full display.
4. They Live (1988)
More SciFi and action than horror, still John Carpenter’s vision of an elite class using tech to mollify and control the population of the US was eerily prescient. And horrifying.
At the time, though, it was just plain entertaining in a way that married Carpenter’s own iconic Escape from New York vibe with the SciFi horror miniseries of the day, V.
But mainly, it’s Rowdy Roddy Piper chewing bubble gum, and the 6 1/2 minute fight scene between Piper and undeniable badass Keith David that make this film as fun to watch today as it was when it was released.
3. In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
Sutter Cane may be awfully close to Stephen King, but John Carpenter’s cosmic horror is even more preoccupied by Lovecraft. The great Sam Neill leads a fun cast in a tale of madness as created by the written world.
What if those horror novels you read became reality? What if that sketchy writer with the maybe-too-vivid imagination was not just got to his own page, but god for real? This movie tackles that ripe premise while ladling love for both of the horror novelists who made New England the creepiest section of America.
2. Halloween (1978)
No film is more responsible for the explosion of teen slashers than John Carpenter’s babysitter butchering classic.
From the creepy opening piano notes to the disappearing body ending, this low budget surprise changed everything. Carpenter develops anxiety like nobody else, and plants it right in a wholesome Midwestern neighborhood. You don’t have to go camping or take a road trip or do anything at all – the boogeyman is right there at home.
Michael Myers – that hulking, unstoppable, blank menace – is scary. Pair that with the down-to-earth charm of lead Jamie Lee Curtis, who brought a little class and talent to the genre, and add the bellowing melodrama of horror veteran Donald Pleasance, and you’ve hit all the important notes. Just add John Carpenter’s spare score to ratchet up the anxiety. Perfect.
1. The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter’s remake of the 1951 SciFi flick The Thing from Another World concocts 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.
The story remains taut, beginning to end, and there’s rarely any telling just who is and who is not infected by the last reel. You’re as baffled and confined as the scientists.
Like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, Memories of My Father confronts what happens when a deadly serious story faces off against an endless supply of sentimentality.
It’s certainly a story worth remembering. Memories of My Father celebrates Colombian doctor, professor and public health leader Héctor Abad Gómez (Javier Cámara), as seen through the eyes of his son, the renowned Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince.
After spending decades trying to alleviate the health of Medellín’s poorest citizens (and winning few friends among the Catholic church and his university administration), Abad Gómez becomes increasingly active in politics during the country’s tumultuous 1980s.
Memories of My Father is well-intentioned and well-acted, with sensitive performances not just from Cámara but from those in the roles of the numerous women in Abad’s life. They are given little to work with in this treatment but do their best—as various university secretaries, devoted daughters and especially Patricia Tamayo as Abad Gómez’s wife—to give the hagiography some connection to humanity.
These moments are few and far between, however. As adapted from the memoir by Abad Faciolince, the film (with a screenplay by David Trueba) spends much of its time in the past establishing Abad Gómez as the world’s most attentive father devoted to his family and public health in equal measure.
Whereas Abad Faciolince’s memoir is the story of both one man and the decade of violence, paramilitary forces, cartels and militias that led to so many assassinations in the 1980s, Memories of My Father narrows its lens mostly to just the man. One gets a sense even from the way Abad Gómez is talked about in his own movie that the real person was a lot more interesting and less inclined to sentimentality than his onscreen treatment.
The film’s decision to keep politics on the periphery, with Abad Gómez himself asserting that he’s “just a doctor,” also seems to put this movie version at odds with reality. What is more maximally political than being on a state-approved list for targeted assassinations?
Memories of My Father gives us what amounts to a series of Very Special Episodes on moral childrearing, but very little in the way of historical context to prepare for the sudden, shattering final act. If the purpose of this story is to rescue Abad Gómez’s name from oblivion, he also needs to be rescued from the lack of nuance paid to a man who was unafraid to lead marches and write public letters to government officials. Turning Abad Gómez into a secular saint divorced from earthly concerns might keep his name alive, but this portrayal studiously avoids examining why his righteous crusade was needed in the first place.
We all wonder why we are the way we are. As teens we blame our parents. In early adulthood we blame society. Then as we reach middle-age we blame our parents again. It’s a vicious cycle that most of us never grow out of nor get a satisfactory answer to. In Nr. 10, filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam (Borgman) suggests the ultimate nature vs. nurture question set against the absurdity of local theater. What’s the question you might ask? Well, that would be giving away far too much.
Gunter (Tom Dewispelaere) is a member of a local Dutch acting troupe. On the surface, Gunter has what looks to be a good life. He’s a respected member of the troupe, he has a close – albeit complicated – relationship with his daughter, and he’s in a passionate relationship with a woman who just so happens to be the theater director’s wife. Things quickly begin to change for Gunter when a stranger approaches him and whispers a single word into his ear.
Nr. 10 is a difficult movie to discuss because getting too far into the weeds would potentially ruin any and all surprises the movie has. The surprises within the movie don’t necessarily make or break it, but they do constitute such a seismic shift that spoiling them might make future viewers feel cheated.
I do feel comfortable saying that Nr. 10 comes across as almost two separate movies. The first half is a deeply funny portrait of local theater and its idiosyncratic nature. The shallowness and vanity of actors are on full display as Gunter and a colleague squabble over the meaning of their characters and whether they would stick up for themselves when challenged. The antics of the theater and its culture never become the full focus – just a jumping-off point for Gunter and the other fabulous set of characters.
As the focus on the theater begins to wear off, the strangeness of what’s going on around Gunter begins to take hold. Well-dressed older men watch Gunter’s home and his day-to-day activities and report back to several high-ranking Catholic clergymen. Part of me didn’t want the eventual explanation of what was happening. The peculiarity of these scenes was just askew enough of reality to feel right at home in a David Lynch movie.
The eventual narrative shift toward the end of the film is a bit awkwardly handled but still leads to a satisfying back-half. The absurdity of the stage and its inhabitants is traded for an almost equally mind-boggling reveal of Gunter’s early life. The inclusion of a completely different genre shouldn’t work, but Warmerdam’s commitment to keeping the tone in check allows the film to barrel forward and not lose the audience in its wake.
Dewispelaere does a terrific job anchoring the film with his central performance. As Gunter’s early confidence withers away, Dewispelaere dances back and forth between helplessness and bewilderment at what is unfolding before him. It’s a performance that could’ve gone too big, and Dewispelaere wisely keeps things subdued even as the story gets wilder and more unbelievable.
Nr. 10 stumbles in trying to fasten together two separate narratives, yet the emphasis on dark comedy and character keeps the premise feeling fresh and fun the entire time.
There are certain actors – you know the ones – who seem to put out a film every year right at awards season. The people who somehow never have a straight-to-VOD indie or a summer romp, just yearly Oscar vehicles.
For at least one of these people it is a welcome return visit, year after year.
Hello, Olivia Colman.
Seriously, is there anyone who does not love her? Any filmmaker, any actor, any moviegoer? Her performances are shamelessly, giddily human, authentic to a chilling degree. Her force of nature in Sam Mendes’s ode to the cinema, Empire of Light, is no different.
Mendes’s 2019 epic 1917 showed him a master of pacing, understated emotion and visceral thrill. Back in 2012, he made an almost Shakespearean Bond film, easily the strongest in the entire franchise with Skyfall. For Empire of Light, the filmmaker – who also wrote the script – returns to the more sentimental content of his earlier career.
Colman is Hilary, the troubled, often melancholy manager of a coastal England cinema in the very early 1980s. A wonderful supporting cast – from the kindly Toby Jones to the prickly Colin Firth, the tender Michael Ward to surprising Tom Brooke – surrounds Colman with sparring partners up to the challenge.
Mendes’s tale, at its heart, revels not just in the magic of the movies, but of the movie house itself. Most of the patrons seem to come to the screenings alone, looking to escape the loneliness, the mundane, or the rising tide of extremism right outside those glass doors.
And though the crowds aren’t as large as they once were, the theater still has something to offer – as does Hilary. Her dutiful existence is shaken by the younger Stephen (Ward, outstanding) joining the crew, and together they start exploring some forgotten areas of the once majestic cinema.
The metaphor isn’t subtle, and the film’s tone is overtly nostalgic, but because Colman’s character is anything but typical, Mendes punctures his own sentimentality before it can become overbearing. Gorgeous framing from the great Roger Deakins doesn’t hurt, bathing it all in a grand beauty that reinforces what power can come from that certain beam of light.
The pandemic has drawn out no shortage of filmmakers who’ve been understandably inspired to assess their life’s work. With Empire of Light, Mendes is wearing his heart on his cupholder, imploring us to value what the theater has to offer.
This film can offer the exquisite Colman and a stellar ensemble, and that’s just enough. Through them, Mendes finds impact in his sweetness, rising above the moments that seem engineered for an ad that runs right before the one telling you not to talk or text.
In 2017, Michael Showalter directed the best romantic comedy of the modern age, The Big Sick. So, even though the majority of his filmography feels like a near miss – The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Lovebirds, Hello My Name Is Doris – whatever he delivers, I want to open. Even an avowed tear-jerker, even the same week I see The Whale. I loved The Big Sick so much, I gladly signed up for two public displays of bawling.
And yet…
Spoiler Alert is Michael Ausiello’s (Jim Parsons) true tale of romance, loss and sitcom love. A TV Guide writer, Michael tended to look back on his tragic childhood as if it were an 80s sitcom, replete with life lessons and a laugh track.
Showalter stages these moments like they are right out of Gimme a Break or any of that era’s centrally located couch-and-hijinks programs. They stand out, not because they’re clever or funny, but because they don’t fit in a film that is otherwise a tender if traditionally structured tragedy.
The socially awkward Ausiello meets and quickly falls for gorgeous, fun-loving Kit Cowan (Ben Aldridge). This ushers us into the sweet and odd moments (Ausiello has an extreme Smurf collection) that mark the couple’s development.
Showalter works from Dan Savage and David Marshall Grant’s adaptation of Ausiello’s book. The writers have primarily done TV – a medium clearly suited to Parsons. And here’s where the film really stumbles. Spoiler Alert is, of course, not a TV show and only feels like a TV show on occasions that pull you out of an emotional moment. Rather than creating a narrative thread or even an interesting gimmick, the TV angle distracts – sometimes quite frustratingly – from what otherwise feels like a very honest and necessary look at love.
Showalter alum and all-American gem Sally Field brings needed authenticity to the film, and Aldridge often excels as the hot Oscar to Parsons’s Felix. Plus, the sometimes frank sexuality is more than welcome.
But none of it fits. The framework – Ausiello delivering his life story as if he’s recounting a favorite TV show – is distracting at best. It robs the film of its passion and guarantees the feeling of inauthenticity. It has its moments, but it never delivers any honest laughter or tears.
Impurity, hate, forgiveness, rebirth. The repeated image of a man shooting himself in the gut may not seem like the ideal piece of media to use to examine these heavy themes, but 2nd Chance by Ramin Bahrani proves time and again that face value has no place in its 90 minutes.
2nd Chance delves into brazen shock value. At first, this feels cheap and unwarranted. The image of a man repeatedly shooting himself in his bulletproof vest, grimacing, then firing at undeserving coke bottles leaves a bitter taste on the tongue.
It becomes apparent, however, that this is not shock for shock value. Instead, this is the jaw-dropping life that Richard Davis has led for the past 70 or so years. If anything, Bahrani’s mission is to make Davis’s massive eccentricity somewhat digestible and justifiable.
It doesn’t take much to revel in Davis’s contradictions: his passionate drive toward realizing the American dream makes him familiar, yet his twisted morals pose him as alien.
The structure we’ve come to know and expect with modern-day documentaries is, in a word, boring. 2nd Chance does little to stray from the usual twists and calculated catharsis of others in its genre. Where it differs and excels is in the conscious effort to avoid making the filmmaker an important character. While many documentarians crave that command, inserting themselves into the narrative, Bahrani takes a diligent backseat. He acts as a firekeeper, poking the embers to evoke flames while distancing himself from the heat.
The film portrays Davis’s flip from eccentric business mogul to undoubtedly narcissistic sociopath. However, Bahrani gracefully captures Davis authentically in his moments of shortcoming. This light touch becomes especially gratifying as the largely unredeemable Davis himself twists that sympathy toward hatred.
Among the twists and turns, Bahrani brings forth some of the most genuine moments of human catharsis perhaps ever shown on screen. The contradiction these moments deliver takes the film from intriguing to masterful.
You may not expect the inventor of bulletproof vests to deepen your connection to humanity. 2nd Chance delights in flipping your expectations and pulling the trigger, whether you’re protected or not.
Writer/director T.J. Regan’s part-documentary, part-scripted drama examines the account of a man who claims to be infamous plane hijacker D.B. Cooper. Co-written with Sharmila Sahni, I Am DB Cooper, is another entry into the mystery surrounding the November 24, 1971 hijacking of Flight 305.
The film introduces Rodney Bonnifield, a career criminal who fills in details of the hijacking that supposedly only the perpetrator would know. Outfitted with a parachute, and carrying $200,000 dollars of ransom money, Cooper jumped into the night.
There is speculation that Cooper didn’t survive the jump. But there are those who don’t accept this, and Bonnifield makes the case that he is Cooper.
Enhancing the story with a scripted drama, Regan treats the audience to a visual retelling rather than limiting the story to interviews. While the film is composed primarily of documentary footage, the interspersed drama adds tension.
Ryan Cory plays Cooper of the 1970s. His charismatic and slightly sinister portrayal lends the film needed gravitas.
The parts of the film that don’t quite work are the actor-portrayed interviews with Bonnifield’s friends and family. It’s unclear if these are the words of real people or if they’re scripted pieces of Bonnifield’s story. This lack of clarity leads to questions about authenticity.
The dramatized moments add humor to a situation that’s not really funny at all. This is clearly the intention, helping to lighten the overall mood.
News footage from the time of the hijacking, including when a young boy uncovered $5,800 dollars of the stolen $200,000, adds depth to a history that contemporary viewers might not know.
However, sections of Regan’s film don’t quite fit with the scripted drama. The film takes Bonnefield beyond the hijacking into a relationship with singer Rita Coolidge (played here by Rainee Blake). If this addition is meant to cast doubt on Bonnifield’s story it isn’t really necessary. There are other reasons to wonder if the story is true. Talking with the actual singer/songwriter, though, would have been a fascinating and telling choice.
But the crux of Bonnifield’s story is that he claims he knows where the money is buried. Raising new questions and bringing a quaintness to the story of DB Cooper, Regan’s docudrama adds a new side to the original question: Who is DB Cooper?
