L’amour et les Forêts. Love and the Forests. This title, in the film’s original language, deepens the meaning of the English title “just the two of us,” encompassing the audience in a tale of love so vast, manipulative, and obsessive it becomes suffocating like the sickly sweet air in a watchful forest.
Just the Two of Us, directed by Valérie Donzelli, is a story we’ve seen before. That lessens nothing. These 105 minutes of lust, fear, and desperation center on Blanche Renard (Virginie Efira) and her relationship with Grégoire Lamoreux (Melvil Poupaud)— documenting its toxic development over nearly a decade.
As soon as the film begins, cinematographer Laurant Tangy gives it life with his close-up shots of micro-movements and facial expressions that tell all. The lighting strengthens every shot, intensifying the emotions of each moment: red for lust, blue for a calculated almost-love, and green for jealousy. Everything teems with vibrancy, then it doesn’t, signaling that something must be wrong, priming us for a closer look.
The performances in this film are phenomenal. Efira, who plays twin sisters Blanche and Rose, conveys everything with her deep, expressive eyes. At one point, she licks a tear from her own face so quickly it seems invisible.
Poupaud terrifies as Grégoire, his sharp-witted duality between tenderness and cruelty giving the film its rightful label as thriller. There are no fantastical monsters or jump scares, only the dramatic irony of a dangerous relationship.
Time feels ambiguous and the pacing variable, but it works with the concept of a disorienting relationship that puts love in a liminal space. A few loose ends don’t taint the film because its main focus is the relationship, not the minute details.
Be warned: this film is very intense and could be triggering for those who’ve been in an abusive situation. Just the Two of Us is beautiful with its realism, but it is also hard to watch. But the stunning performances and technical execution are worth it.
You don’t find a lot of outright war/horror genre mashups, but there are a few. Most of them involve murdering Nazis (yay!!). But the shadow of war—its threat, its echoes, its reach toward civilians, its leftover orphans, its cowards and criminals—that influences horror. The Last Circus, Dead Birds, A Serbian Film, 2019’s Guatemalan La Llorona, even The Others – all solid genre films all reeling from the memory of war. But we have other favorites:
5. Ravenous (1999)
The blackest of comedies, the film travels back to the time of the Mexican/American War to throw us in with a cowardly soldier (Guy Pearce) reassigned to a mountainous California outpost where a weary soul wanders into camp with a tale of the unthinkable – his wagon train fell to bad directions, worse weather, and a guide with a taste for human flesh.
Pearce is great as the protagonist struggling against his own demons, trying to achieve some kind of peace with himself and his own shortcomings, but Robert Carlyle steals this movie.
As the wraithlike Colonel Ives, he makes the perfect devil stand-in. Smooth, compelling and wicked, he offsets Pearce’s tortured soul perfectly. The pair heighten the tensions with some almost-sexual tension, which director Antonia Bird capitalizes on brilliantly.
4. Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Tim Robbins plays Vietnam vet Jacob Singer with a weary sweetness that’s almost too tender and vulnerable to bear. In a blistering supporting turn, Elizabeth Pena impresses as the passionate carnal angel Jezebel. The real star here, weirdly enough, is director Adrian Lyne.
Known more for erotic thrillers, here he beautifully articulates a dreamscape that keeps you guessing. The New York of the film crawls with unseemly creatures hiding among us. Filmed as a grimy, colorless nightmare, Jacob’s Ladder creates an atmosphere of paranoia and dread.
3. The Devil’s Backbone (2001)
The Devil’s Backbone unravels a spectral mystery during Spain’s civil war. The son of a fallen comrade finds himself in an isolated orphanage that has its own troubles to deal with, now that the war is coming to a close and the facility’s staff sympathized with the wrong side. That leaves few resources to help him with a bully, a sadistic handyman, or the ghost.
Backbone is a slow burn as interested in atmosphere and character development as it is in the tragedy of a generation of war orphans. This is ripe ground for a haunted tale, and writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s achievement is both contextually beautiful – war, ghost stories, religion and communism being equally incomprehensible to a pack of lonely boys – and elegantly filmed.
2. Under the Shadow (2016)
First-time feature filmmaker, Iranian Babak Anvari, treads familiar ground yet manages to shift focus entirely and create the profound and unsettling Under the Shadow.
The tale is set in Tehran circa 1988, at the height of the Iran/Iraq war and just a few years into the “Cultural Revolution” that enforced fundamentalist ideologies. Shideh (Narges Rashidi) and her young daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) shelter in their apartment as missiles rain on Tehran.
Frazzled, impatient, judged and constrained from all sides, Shideh’s nerve is hit with this threat. And as external and internal anxieties build, she’s no longer sure what she’s seeing, what she’s thinking, or what the hell to do about it. The fact that this menacing presence – a djinn, or wind spirit – takes the shape of a flapping, floating burka is no random choice. Shideh’s failure in this moment will determine her daughter’s entire future.
1. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Guillermo del Toro’s masterpiece is Influenced visually and logically by fairy tales. It takes us to a fairy tale land but is not set on any existing fairy tale, not unlike Argento’s greatest work, Suspiria (1977), and Jee-woon Kim’s brilliant Tale of Two Sisters (2003).
But honestly, there is nothing on earth quite like Pan’s Labyrinth. A mythical cousin to del Toro’s beautiful 2002 ghost story The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth follows a terrified, displaced little girl who may be the reincarnation of Princess Moanna, daughter of the King of the Underworld. She must complete three tasks to rejoin her father in her magical realm.
A heartbreaking fantasy about the costs of war, the film boasts amazing performances. Few people play villains—in any language—as well as Sergi Lopez, and Doug Jones inspires terror and wonder in two different roles. But the real star here is del Toro’s imagination, which has never had such a beautiful outlet.
Director and star Jung Woo-sung manages to craft his own take on the man with a criminal past trying to live on the straight and narrow in his film, Man of Reason.
Su-hyuk (Jung), newly released from prison after 10 years, finds much of his world has changed. What hasn’t changed is the expectation that he will resume a life of crime. However, an ultimatum from his ex-girlfriend (Lee Elijah) is all Su-hyuk needs to shun his former lifestyle.
But as we all know, walking away from a crime syndicate isn’t easy.
What follows is a predictable blend of attempted murder, fights, chases, and kidnap. Where Jung succeeds is the introduction of fun characters who enliven the action and the tension. Murderers-for-hire, Jin-ah (Park Yoo-na) and Woo-jin (Kim Nam-gil), are a hell of a lot of fun, despite their penchant for bombs and general mayhem. And despite their humorous inclusion, they still bring a measure of hostility to the film, especially Jin-ah, who is the colder and more calculating of the murderous duo.
As our silent, determined hero, Jung is fairly winning as Su-hyuk. In one of the best scenes, a car that was a gift from his former boss is used to great effect as a weapon against said boss. And while we often tread car commercial territory (frequent shots of the BMW emblem are front and center of several scenes), it doesn’t stop it from being a lot of fun to watch.
Of course, you know what will happen. Each beat unfolds in predictable measure. Whether or not you’re able to lose yourself in the movie and ignore the familiar territory depends on how much you like big action sequences. At this, Jung excels.
It helps that the actors are at their best, bringing the right level of humor, menace, and thrills. As you may also expect, a child at the center of the action raises the stakes, and little In-ba (Ryu Jian) is the perfect mix of adorable, sad, and precocious. Her dilemma is where most of the tension lies, and Ryu ably tugs at our heart strings.
While there isn’t anything new to find in Man of Reason, that doesn’t make it any less thrilling to watch.
Very few 2024 films have been more eagerly anticipated by horror fans than Oz Perkins’s Longlegs. For some, it’s the filmmaker’s criminally underappreciated features The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Gretel & Hansel, and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House that compel interest in his latest effort.
For others, it’s lead Maika Monroe, a tremendous talent who routinely chooses challenging, satisfying horror, including It Follows, Watcher, The Guest and more. But for most people, let’s be honest, it’s the chance to see Nic Cage play a deeply deranged serial killer. (We are not made of stone!)
Cage excels, as does Monroe—both aided immeasurably by memorable support work from Blair Underwood and Alicia Witt. Monroe is Agent Lee Harker whose “hyper intuitive” nature has her assigned to a confounding case of whole families murdering one another, the only sign of an outside presence being an encoded note left at the scenes.
Monroe’s green FBI agent is as stiff and awkwardly internal as Cage’s psycho is theatrical. Her terror is as authentic as his lunacy.
Perkins shines as bright as ever, too. As always, his shot selection and framing evoke dark poetry. His use of light and shadow, architecture and space is like no one else’s.
His Longlegs direction and writing contain provocative notes of his own Blackcoat’s Daughter, but the plotting here is anchored by something slightly more predictable. I defy you to watch Blackcoat’s Daughter and figure out where it’s going, and yet it ends up exactly where it needs to be. For all the many fascinating flourishes and unsettling performances in Longlegs, there is something here that feels more obvious than any of the filmmaker’s previous films. Maybe it’s the clear influence of 90s thrillers: The Silence of the Lambs, Zodiac, maybe even a little bit of Se7en.
It is nagging—the sense, for the first time in any of his films, of recognizability. But don’t let that deter you. In many ways, it’s Perkins’s sleight of hand, his way of suggesting one thing while saying something else, of rooting audiences in something familiar expressly to pull that comfy rug away.
Longlegs is strangely beautiful, deeply unnerving, and a fine reason to be a horror fan.
Filmmaker Nicole Riegel returns to her Southern Ohio roots, but Dandelion delivers a decidedly more lyrical look at the Buckeye state than her remarkable 2021 indie breakout, Holler.
Kiki Layne is Dandelion, a frustrated musician playing to disinterested crowds at a hotel bar in Cincinnati. Confronted by the reality of her shelf life, she heads to a biker rally in North Dakota for an audition to open for a major touring act. The audition goes terribly, but she meets Casey (Gossip Girl’s Thomas Doherty), who rekindles her dying flame of creativity—among other things.
The film plays a bit like an American version of John Carney’s Once. Loosely plotted around songwriting sessions and picturesque sightseeing, Dandelion delivers more harmony than melody, but that’s often OK. When the script weakens—a convenient stretch of dialog, a predictable turn of the plot—cinematographer Lauren Guiteras’s camera, Layne and Doherty’s performances and the music itself strengthens.
Doherty’s all vulnerability and tenderness. Layne—in easily her best role since If Beale Street Could Talk—finds a way to hold anger, resignation, hope and joy in the same moment.
Riegel’s depiction of intimacy, in the core relationship as well as the act of creation, is tactile: fingertips, chords, a rock’s surface, veins throbbing in a throat. There’s real poetry in the direction, in the way voiceover conversation floats around landscapes and sunsets, Black Hills and backroads.
The live music is as infectious as the romance, although neither is really the point. Dandelion is a character study at heart, and Layne more than delivers on that promise. But Riegel does get a little bogged down with the beauty and atmosphere—as lovely as the film is, at a full two hours, some of the poetic meandering feels like filler.
It’s interesting to see Riegel take such a sharp turn from the grim authenticity of Holler to the poetic beauty of Dandelion, but there is a common thread of fighting to find and keep yourself that gives both films focus and life.
There’s a deep-rooted, surreal evil lurking at the heart of the idealized, candy-colored world of Blue Velvet that traps all its characters in a web of… no, wait, this is The Blue Rose.
Writer and director George Baron’s first feature film is either a love letter to David Lynch or a pale imitation that draws heavily—heavily—on that director’s themes, mood, tone, plots, imagery and characters. Your mileage may vary depending on your affection for the original source material.
Young LAPD detectives Dalton (Baron) and Lilly (Olivia Scott Welch) take on a gruesome, high-profile murder case set in a dreamy 1950s version of Los Angeles. Like anyone in Hollywood, the two are looking for their big break, one much needed after botching their last case.
This one should be a straightforward whodunnit: painter Sophie Steele (Nikko Austen Smith) has more than enough means and motive in the death of her abusive husband. As the detectives chase down leads and interview less than forthcoming persons of interest, the lines between potential witness and suspect start to blur.
And all of that’s before the pair gets thrown into a Lynchian nightmare of an alternate reality, masterminded by a femme fatale overseeing a vast conspiracy. While this nightmare world often fails to rise above echoes of Lynch, the production design is immaculate for such an ambitious setting. It also goes a long way—along with a number of wonderful off-kilter performances—toward giving the nightmare sequences some actual teeth. (In particular, Viola Odette Harlow channels her best Isabella Rossellini as the nightclub ingenue Catherine.)
Often, though, Baron’s dream world swaps out soul-shaking Lynchian horror for jump scares. The effects are creepy but fleeting, and emblematic of the bigger problems with the story. The Blue Rose might be a fun diversion for diehard Lynch fans. But it also serves as a helpful comparison for those usually put off by the director, to see what a skin-deep send-up looks like without the cosmically unnerving core of the original.
It’s not the worst outing for a feature debut, but Baron should go beyond the sum of his influences if he hopes to equal them in profundity.
Director and co-writer Lee Tamahori lets us know that for 500 years, the Māori were “edged weapon” warriors. Then, the 1800s brought them muskets, and Christianity.
You can guess how that worked out.
In The Convert, Tamahori brings us into their world via Thomas Munro (Guy Pearce, solid), a lay minister who has accepted an assignment as Chaplain of Epworth, a British colony on New Zealand.
After years in the British army, Munro has a new commitment to mercy, and it almost immediately puts him squarely between two Māori warlords still committed to blood.
One Chief sends young Rangimai (Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne) and Pahirua (Duane Evans Jr.) to live in Epworth and be mentored by Munro. While the opposing Chief plots an invasion to take back the land he feels is his, Munro quickly finds how deeply the bigotry grows in little Epworth.
New Zealander Tamahori (The Edge, Next, Die Another Day) shows a strong respect for authenticity in casting, language and customs of the Māori people. But as we learn more about why Munro “converted” from a soldier to a man of peace, a strong Dances With Wolves vibe clouds the more compelling history of these two rival tribes.
Some worthy (and timely) points are made about wars between “have-nots” only serving the “haves,” but while the film never goes full-on white savior, you wonder how it would have benefitted from a less pale point of view.
Munro’s arc isn’t frivolous, but neither is it fresh. The emotional pull here is clearly with the Māori, and it’s a shame The Convert is content to make them side players.
Who stole the loot? It’s the question at the heart of The Outlaws, co-directed and co-written by Austen Paul and Joey Palmroos (with a third writing credit going to Andres Holmes).
This movie is a mess. Is it a case of too many cooks in the kitchen—or rather, too many writers with different ideas smashed together into one movie? From the unnecessary narrator to the jumps backward and forward through time, there are a lot of moving parts in a movie with such a short runtime.
That’s not to say that none of it works. Most of the backward jumps offer a glimpse of our characters and how they ended up in the present situation. That present situation being that after a train heist, the money goes missing, and it’s crook against crook while we watch the tension build (just not very well).
But there are also unnecessary time jumps that don’t add anything to the story nor move it forward. There are also fake outs that create confusion. At one point, the narrator spends time narrating a false ending with a line something along the lines of “this is one way the story could have ended but did not.” Really?
Our primary outlaws are Wild Bill Higgins (Arthur Sylense), JT Tulsa (Dallas Hart), Boone Collins (Jonathan Peacy), and Henriette Parker (Celeste Wall). You’ll hear both their first and last names a lot just in case you forgot them in the smorgasbord of characters. Of these four main characters, Boone Collins is probably the most fun, as Peacy brings a lot of life to this outlaw. The others are a mishmash of characters you’ve seen before, and it might be for the best that their names are repeated so frequently. They’re a forgettable lot.
The film is not helped by the late arrival of Eric Roberts as Bloody Tom. He’s about as menacing as a puppy, so his presence does nothing to amplify the non-existent tension. On occasion, Sylense imbues Higgins with some genuine menace, but it’s too inconsistent to elicit any edge-of-your-seat suspense.
This is one of those films that tries hard to thrill you but sadly falls very short.
Invisible Nation, directed by Vanessa Hope, tells Taiwan’s story through a lens of empathy, courage, and resilience.
This film details most of Tsai Ing-wen’s presidency, also providing background on Taiwan and its history, specifically its colonial history with other powers— the Qing Dynasty and Japan, for example. The main point of the documentary, however, is to give an inside look into the people and leaders that make Taiwan a nation— one that is very different from the People’s Republic of China. It highlights past and recent struggles for independence, and instills a hope for the future.
Visually, the doc engages with lovely landscapes pictured in interludes throughout the film, conveying the inherent beauty of Taiwan and its people. Tactful, poignant editing includes clips of protests, cultural celebrations, and many interview shots to deliver a well-rounded window into Taiwanese perspectives.
Feminism, specifically its acceptance by the public as a means for Taiwanese independence, also plays an integral role. Tsai Ing-wen, president of Taiwan from 2019 to 2024, was the first female president, but she also emphasized that this resulted from people’s desire for the best leader they could have, regardless of gender.
Empathy is a main facet of Invisible Nation, and it is utilized masterfully. Each person we meet in the film, we get to see more over time. We watch them grow, learning of their struggles, their defeats, and their triumphs— specifically Tsai Ing-wen’s. The audience has access to her powerful speeches but also views clips from an interview in her home where her cat terrorizes the shot with its incessant mewing. Relatability is established, and through this, the common struggle for independence is actualized.
Invisible Nation captures the spirit of Taiwan with its emphasis on collective strength and action, as well as its documentation of history and key social movements, both past and present.
