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Rules Are Rules

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The Teacher’s Lounge

by George Wolf

“What happens in the teacher’s lounge, stays in the teacher’s lounge.”

Mrs. (Carla) Nowak uses that line as a condescending quip to avoid some pointed questions from her students’ even as she’s starting to desperately wish it were true.

Carla (Leonie Benesch, fantastic) teaches 12-year-olds at a German grade school. Carla exchanges small talk with her fellow teachers, and doesn’t look away when she notices one who helps herself to what’s in the office coffee fund jar just minutes after Carla donated some change.

It’s a small but meaningful moment that writer/director Ilker Çatak uses to effectively illustrate Carla’s idealism, and to foreshadow her coming clash with reality.

The conflict begins to simmer when Carla witnesses two other teachers try to coerce some “good” students into naming who they think might be behind the recent rash of thefts at the school. Carla objects to the line of questioning, and reacts by using her wallet and laptop camera to set a trap and expose the guilty party.

What follows is a tense and utterly fascinating parable of accusation, distrust, paranoia and anger that has garnered an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature. Çatak crafts the school community as a Petri dish of contrasting agendas, one where teachers, students and parents fight for claims on the moral high ground.

Benesch is simply wonderful. Carla’s care for her students is never in doubt, but as the gravity of her situation begins to dawn on her, Benesch often only needs her wide eyes and tightened jawline to deliver Carla’s increasingly desperate mix of emotions.

As perspectives change, you may be reminded of Ruben Östlund’s insightful Force Majeure. But with The Teacher’s Lounge, Çatak moves the conversation to how the tribal nature of modern society can lead to separate realities, and how quickly those dug-in heels can be weaponized.

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Hey, Barbie

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Sometimes I Think About Dying

by Hope Madden

Sometimes I Think About Dying feels like the farthest from Star Wars an actor can go. And I like Star Wars, but still, I mean that as a good thing.

Rather than taking place in a galaxy far, far away, director Rachel Lambert’s film takes place in a set of cubicles inside an office near the ocean of a small Washington town. Daisy Ridley (who also produces) plays Fran. Fran likes spreadsheets, almost never talks, and sometimes she thinks about dying.

That is, until Robert (Dave Merheje) takes the cubicle recently vacated by Carol (Marcia DeBonis), who retired and went on a cruise. Robert’s outgoing, as all of Fran’s office mates seem to be, but there is one difference. Robert realizes Fran exists. And now suddenly, as she sits alone in her very modest apartment after eating a microwaved meal of meat patty covered in cottage cheese, Fran no longer thinks about dying. She thinks about Robert.

Lambert’s film benefits immeasurably from an incredibly lived-in, authentic environment. Though each character has its charm, each one also feels apiece of this world. Sometimes I Think About Dying doesn’t satirize the world of the cubicle as The Office or Office Space. It just understands it–recognizes the banality and camaraderie and sparks of humanity and humor.

What Lambert and Ridley mine beautifully is the difficulty people face when they’re trying desperately to be normal, and the only way they can manage is to be utterly invisible. The longing that comes to life in Fran’s face, her slow thaw to tenderness, vulnerability, brittleness, and panic testifies to Ridley’s versatility.

The full ensemble is a delight, but Merheje is particularly perfect in this role. His own insecurity and loneliness bubble to the surface as he tries and fails to figure Fran out and just have a normal relationship.

Working from a script by Stefanie Abel Horowitz (which she adapts from her acclaimed short), Kevin Armento, and Katy Wright-Mead, Lambert shies away from the morbid or fantastical that exists in the tale. It exists, but it’s accepted lightly in a film that is quiet. It sneaks up on you, like death or like love. And it shows an impressive, introspective side of Ridley.

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Arhat Get Your Gun

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The Monk and the Gun

by Matt Weiner

What if you took the interlocking stories of a Pulp Fiction, but all the gunplay was in the service of a hopeful Buddhist fable?

It’s a fantastical idea, but the film recognizes that so is the sight of a peaceful country being “forced” to go through the early throes of democratic governance. For The Monk and the Gun, there’s no great upheaval accompanying these sweeping changes.

Instead, Pawo Choyning Dorji’s delightful second feature (after 2019’s Oscar-nominated Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom) takes place in the aftermath of the King of Bhutan choosing to abdicate the throne and hold modern elections.

The rural village of Ura is holding mock elections to help prepare its residents, whose reactions to the abdication range from apathy or disinterest to outright hostility toward those voting for parties that do not seem aligned with the former monarch’s views.

Tshering Yangden (Pema Zangmo Sherpa), an elections official from the city, arrives in town to oversee the practice election and educate voters on why democracy matters. Her big city assurances about the great import of the election contrast with Ura’s locals, who question if they really need something that they don’t have to fight for.

As Yangden grapples with proving that democracy is as sacred as the campaign posters around the village proclaim, the village Lama (Kelsang Choejey) instructs his monk Tashi (Tandin Wangchuk) to bring two guns for the full moon ceremony so that the lama can “make things right” in the presence of the election official.

Tashi diligently follows his master’s odd (and unsettling) request, which gets the unassuming young monk caught up with an unscrupulous American gun collector (Harry Einhorn) and the criminal underbelly of Bhutan. While The Monk and the Gun is mostly bucolic satire, it’s a credit to writer/director Dorji that the ominous unease surrounding the ceremony persists up until the very end. Being given the means to control your life—and your national destiny—is serious stuff. But along the way, his film pokes both inward at itself and outward at the west, suggesting that nobody has a monopoly on the best way forward for a community.

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Island Vibes

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Ghostwritten

by Brandon Thomas

Guy Laury (Jay Duplass of TV’s Transparent) is eight years removed from the release of his successful first novel. Drowning in self-doubt and a healthy dose of writer’s block, Guy accepts an offer to travel to Nantucket Island for an isolated writing retreat. As Guy’s artistic inspiration remains elusive, he begins to wonder if there’s something sinister occurring in the house he’s staying in or maybe even with the entire island community itself. 

So much of Ghostwritten’s success is found in mood and atmosphere. The gorgeous black & white cinematography brings the remote coldness of Nantucket Island to life in a way that chills to the bone. Bursts of color appear randomly to signify Guy’s splintering state of mind–whether it be hallucinations or vivid dreams. It’s an interesting approach to highlight the lack of cohesion surrounding Guy’s perception of what’s real and what isn’t. The abstract weirdness of the film helps keep the audience on its toes and continually asking if Guy is an unreliable narrator or is something kooky really going on.

Duplass plays Guy as a man constantly at war with his own desires. One can almost see Guy’s ego swell on screen when an Island’s residents tells him that they loved his first book. He loves the idea of being a writer and the praise it brings him, but actually putting the work in to write seems almost insurmountable to Guy. That the supposed haunting and other strange occurrences might be an elaborate way for Guy to put off writing is both depressing and mischievously funny. 

Given Duplass’s non-acting work (he co-wrote Jeff, Who Lives At Home, Cyrus, and Baghead with his brother Mark), the abundance of comedy in Ghostwritten shouldn’t come as a surprise. Yes, there are legitimate attempts at scares and an unnerving tone, but the charming quirkiness of the film is undeniable and ultimately what makes the film stand out from this type of isolated genre fare. 

Ghostwritten wades into a lot of familiar territory (The Wicker Man being an easy homage), but it does so with a quirky lead performance and an oddball approach to mood an atmosphere.

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Bubblegum Noir

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Marmalade

by Christie Robb

Newbie prisoner, Baron (Joe Keery, Stranger Things), needs to be back on the street by three p.m. Luckily, his new cellmate is a veteran at all things illegal, including successful jail breaks. And he’s bored. If Baron can spin a compelling enough yarn about why he needs to make his three o’clock meeting, Otis (Aldis Hodge, Black Adam) will get him there on time.

Veteran character actor Keir O’Donnell takes the helm to write/direct his first feature with Marmalade.  And his casting is pretty great. Keery’s Baron shares a lot of the qualities that made his Steve from Stranger Things so much fun—great hair, the charisma of a golden retriever puppy, and a relentless devotion to his loved ones.

Here, Keery’s the caregiver of a bedridden mamma whose prescription medication just jumped up in price. All seems bleak until Marmalade (Camila Morrone, Daisy Jones and the Six) rolls into town. She’s got the pink hair, tattoos, and unconventional fashion sense of a manic pixie dream girl. But she’s also got a gun and a plan to rob a bank, so more a noir femme fatale who shops at vintage stores.

Marmalade is a little bit Forrest Gump and a little bit Natural Born Killers and a lot bit of another movie that I won’t mention because…spoilers. But you’ll figure it out before the credits roll.

It’s a stylish movie with good chemistry between cast members and some fun twists. However, the script deserved another few drafts before filming. In order to pull off what the film is trying to do, you need a tightly woven script that works the first time without giving away the ending, and that holds up to multiple viewings once you know. Here, there were plot holes as big as those in the hot pink fishnet tights that Marmalade so often wears.  

But if you don’t mind that, Marmalade is pretty sweet.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Argylle, The Promised Land, Scrambled, Greatest Night in Pop & More

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Argylle, The Promised Land, Departing Seniors, Scrambled, The Greatest Night in Pop, Dario Argento Panico, Fitting In, Hundreds of Beavers

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King’s Ransom

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The Promised Land

by George Wolf

Just going by its trailer, you might not expect The Promised Land to have much in common with Saltburn, but the similar themes are there. So while there’s no shocking bathwater here – or much bathing at all – there is a sweeping historical epic of one man’s quest for social climbing.

The man is Ludvig von Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen), a longtime captain in the German army who returns home to Denmark in 1755. Desiring both wealth and honor, he visits the court of King Frederik V with a promise to bring the King what no one else has managed to deliver: settlements on the Danish heath.

Ludvig promises to tame the barren land in exchange for a noble title, a manor and some servants. And to seal the deal, Ludvig will finance the farming project with his own military pension.

Battling the elements and the roaming outlaws will be tough enough, but Ludvig also must face the wrath of sadistic county judge De Schinkel (Simon Beenebjerg), who wants to claim the land as his own and make good on his promise to Ludvig that “life is chaos.”

Director and co-writer Nikolaj Arcel adapts Ida Jessen’s historical novel as a harrowing tale that consistently reveals new layers throughout its two compelling hours.

Mikkelsen – teaming again with Arcel after 2020’s terrific Riders of Justice – is perfection as the battle-tested soldier with steely-eyed dreams of nobility. Ludvig’s arc plays out patiently, but as the Captain takes in two runaway peasant farmers (Amanda Collin, Morten Hee Anderson), a well-meaning pastor (Gustav Lindh) and an unwanted child (Melina Hagberg), Mikkelsen ensures the awakened humanity feels well-earned and real.

And Arcel keeps the stakes rising to thrilling effect. Cinematographer Rasmus Videbæk’s majestic frames serve and volley with the twists of the screenplay to mine drama that can be as subtle as a framed patch of dirt or as overt as the triangle that springs from Schinkel’s intended fiancée Edel (Kristine Kujath Thorp) eyeing Ludvig as the man who can save her.

What price ambition? It remains an intriguing question, whether you’re surrounding it with delicious ultra-modern pulp or re-imagining true events from hundreds of years past. The Promised Land takes the road less adorned, forging a rousing tale of savagery, revenge and fulfillment that will not be denied.

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Binary Schminary

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Fitting In

by Christie Robb

It’s hard enough being a typical teenage girl. Then, layer on being the new girl in school. With a single mom who is taking on side hustles to pay for college tuition and breast reconstructive surgery post mastectomy. Then, throw in a cute boy who has cheekbones that could cut granite who wants to go all the way, and a charismatic nonbinary hottie.

And, just when you’ve found a ride-or-die BFF who will accompany you to the gynecologist for a birth control consult, you find out your reproductive organs decided to develop atypically. Instead of a canal you’ve got a dimple.

Fitting everything in just got a whole lot more complicated.

Writer/director Molly McGlynn’s background in TV comedy (she’s directed episodes of Grown-ish and Grace and Frankie) serves her well in this feature. She can find the right balance of pathos and humor inherent in stuff like using a series of medical dildos to DIY a vagina.

The movie is also semi-autobiographical and it always helps to write what you know.

Maddie Ziegler (West Side Story) is perhaps a little bit more comfortable with delivering McGlynn’s one-liners than she is surrendering to the emotional depths. Her mom, played by Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek) is a gem, sparkling with a wider emotional range. But Ziegler does an absolutely fantastic job conveying the body horror of being a newbie in stirrups acting like it’s normal to have a chit chat while some dude you just met with no bedside manner tries to plumb your hidden depths with a chilly metal device.

Fitting In is sex positive and fun and smart and silly. It explores the way that binary notions of sex and gender are limiting. It can actually pull off opening with two quotes—one from Simone de Beauvoir and one from Diablo Cody (writer of 2007s Juno and the upcoming Lisa Frankenstein). And the flick’s  got the absolute best visual metaphors soundtracked to Peaches’ 2000 jam “Fuck the Pain Away”.

Seriously.

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Yellow

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Dario Argento Panico

by Hope Madden

In 2019, documentarian Simone Scafidi turned his attention to Italian horror filmmaker Lucio Fulci for the film Fulci for Fake. It seems only fitting, then, that he shine a spotlight on Italy’s most revered horror maestro – and a bit of an artistic adversary of Fulci’s – Dario Argento.

Panico follows Argento into seclusion in a hotel where he hopes to finish his latest screenplay. From there, Scafidi interviews the director as well as his oldest daughter, Fiore, essentially ruining the whole point of Argento’s stay at the hotel, which makes the setup seem odd from the start.

Argento knows what’s up, though, posing thoughtfully with beautiful architecture and charming Scafidi with the odd reminiscence. These moments pepper a chronological throughline of archival footage and movie segments as well as contemporary interviews with family and other filmmakers.

Few genre fans would argue Argento’s influence or importance in cinema. Gushing tributes from Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn and Gaspar Noé (who cast Argento in the lead for his 2021 drama Vortex) offer delightful glimpses into just what an influence he has been.

Not every opinion is positive – one friend of Argento’s even articulates the plain truth that the maestro’s Nineties output lacked all art.

What Panico lacks are follow-up questions. A number of provocative comments from interviewees seemed like opportunities to hear from Argento on the matter, and yet at no point does Scafidi dig in. This is most confounding during a fairly lengthy interview with Argento’s younger daughter, Asia.

The star of six of her father’s films, beginning with Trauma when she was 16, Asia Argento has been the center of a great deal of speculation and debate concerning her father as a filmmaker and as a parent. And though she spins each unusual parenting or directorial choice as if it’s natural, positive, or wise, most of the time it clearly is not. In fact, an entire (and far more interesting) look at who Dario Argento is and what we should make of his movies could be carved out of just her interview, had Scafidi double checked any of it with her dad.

Nope. Instead, Dario sits across a table from Fiore. She asks him how he managed to be such an amazing dad, always doting on his two daughters. He says that’s just how a person goes about being a father.

I’m not bothered by a superficial doc that just points out why a filmmaker managed to leave such a remarkable legacy in a single genre. But if you’re going to tease us with actual information, choosing not to address any of that information makes for a very frustrating viewing experience.

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Barbarian at the Gates of Hell

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She Is Conann

by Hope Madden

What did I just watch?

It’s called She Is Conann, and it defies simple summarization.

French filmmaking provocateur Bertrand Mandico would like to take you on a strange journey. Conann, played throughout this experimental epic by six different actors (Claire Duburcq, Christa Théret, Sandra Parfait, Agata Buzek, Nathalie Richard and Françoise Brion) is no ordinary barbarian. But is she the most barbaric of all barbarians? At her death, her life is recounted to the Queen of Hell to make that determination.

Who is telling the tale? Rainer, a dog man (played by a woman, Elina Löwensohn) who’d been Conann’s near-constant companion since her earliest days of barbarism. They are, ahem, close.

This weird fever dream is told mostly in black and white with filth and sparkles, which makes the seemingly random pops of giallo-esque color more striking. We meet Conann at 15 in what is closest to the barbarian concept of the Schwarzenegger series that gives Mandico’s film its name. All swords and mud and conquest, the stage is set for vengeance to grip the orphan’s mind and set her on a path to rule all.

But her first real foe turns out to be herself, as she is forever murdered when visited by the version of Conann from one decade hence. This allows Mandico to leapfrog around time, creating bizarre and intoxicatingly staged eras that mix queer iconography with punk and disco, then symbols of conquest from the Roman Empire to Nazi Germany.

Rainer is always there, flashing photos as both witness and artist, one of dozens of ways the film links art with consumerism, artist with consumption. (Indeed, eventually the link is quite literal.)

Easter eggs to Naked Lunch, Blade Runner and many more, while fun, also embellish each era’s aesthetic. The result is morbid and macabre, grotesque and cynical and of course, strangely beautiful.

She Is Conann drags a bit, feeling every second of its 105-minute running time. Some eras grow more tedious than others, but a fresh and entirely bizarre surprise is around every bend. This is not a film you leave thinking, Oh, I saw that coming. The result is more of a bewildering if absolutely entertaining WTF?