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Her Hidden Life

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You Won’t Be Alone

by Hope Madden

To suppose that filmmaker Goran Stolevski is a fan of Terrence Malick seems fair. His tale of 19th century Macedonian witchery offers the same type of visual aesthetic, whispery voiceover and absence of dialog in much of Malick’s work, especially 2018’s A Hidden Life.

You Won’t Be Alone follows Neneva (Sara Klimoska), a teenager raised in isolation, hidden from the Wolf-eatress (Anamaria Marinca) who’s claimed her. Freed from hiding, the teen shapeshifter takes on different forms (Noomi Rapace, Felix Maritaud, Alice Englert) and learns of life.

The vast majority of the film’s spoken language comes in the form of Neneva’s thoughts via voiceover. Having grown up alone and unable to speak, Neneva’s language is disjointed and poetic, her musings untouched by traditional socialization.

These reflections are periodically punctuated by the bitter logic of her lifelong tormentor, the Wolf-eatress, whose own upbringing among the human race has left her horribly scarred, literally and metaphorically.

Sections of the film are quite lovely. Admirable performances all around help to keep you engaged. Klimoska’s physical performance reflects the primal beginnings of Neneva’s explorations. Rapace brings an awkward adolescence feel to the character’s early interpretations of normal human behavior. Englert carries the character into adulthood with quiet curiosity, never losing that animalistic inquisitiveness carried throughout the earlier performances.

Stolevski’s cast gives him all he could have hoped. Unfortunately, he doesn’t entirely deliver on his end. The story free floats, its style often overwhelming its substance. You feel every minute of its running time.

That’s not to say Stolevski’s approach is a failure, only that it’s taken too far. His fractured storytelling suits his purposes of exploring gender identity and the nature of humanity. He builds dread well and his fluid camera allows his tale to cast a spell.

The result is mainly entrancing, but too often frustrating.   

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It Takes a Village

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Nitram

by Hope Madden

About a decade ago, director Justin Kurzel made one amazing true crime film. Working from a script by Shaun Grant, Kurzel took a notorious crime spree and created the most realistic and unnerving film of 2011 in Snowtown.

The pair reteamed for 2019’s underseen treasure based on true Australian events, True History of the Kelly Gang. They are back, once again digging into the seedier side of Aussie history with another true crime in Nitram.

In 1996, Martin Bryant murdered 35 people, injuring another 23 in Port Arthur, Tasmania. The horror led to immediate gun reform in the nation, but Kurtzel and Grant are more interested in what came before than after.

Playing the unnamed central figure (Nitram is Martin spelled backward), Caleb Landry Jones has never been better, and that’s saying something. He is one of the most versatile actors working today, effortlessly moving from comedy to drama, from terrifying to charming to awkward to ethereal. There is an aching tenderness central to every performance. (OK, maybe not Get Out, but that would have been weird.)

Kurzel surrounds him with veteran talent at the top of their games. Essie Davis matches Landry Jones’s with a fragile, winsome turn as the older misfit who becomes his friend. Anthony LaPaglia creates a believable, gentle presence as Martin’s father, while the formidable Judy Davis nails every nuance as his complicated, hard mother.

She’s mesmerizing and award-worthy.

Looking at the making of the monster is no new concept in film, and it’s often a misfire, either romanticizing or relishing in the lurid. Nitram does neither. Grant’s greatest gift as a writer may be his ability to mine difficult terrain without sentiment. (His script for Cate Shortland’s crushing 2017 thriller Berlin Syndrome is his greatest triumph in this area.)

Nitram looks at how nature and nurture are to blame. Socialization plus parenting plus bad wiring is exacerbated by the isolation and loneliness they demand. Everyone is to blame. It’s a conundrum the film nails.

But it’s Landry Jones you’ll remember. He’s terrifying but endlessly sympathetic in a bleak film that’s a tough but rewarding watch.

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Wrestling with Family

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Brighton 4th

by Brandon Thomas

Georgian filmmaker Levan Koguashvili’s Brighton 4th is a charming drama that surprises with some subtle comedic flourishes. It’s a film that never gets lost in a self-serious tale of immigrants “roughing it” – instead staying firmly grounded in interesting and likable characters.

Kakhi (Levan Tedaishvili), a former Olympic wrestler, travels from the central Asian country of Georgia to the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn to visit his son. He finds him living in a shabby boarding house and learns that his son owes serious debts to a local mob boss. Hoping to get his son out of this jam, Kakhi begins looking for ways to raise the money to pay off his son’s debt and return home to Georgia. 

Tedaishvili wows with a beautifully stoic performance. Kakhi is a character that happily takes on the burdens of those he loves. From committing a “minor” case of kidnapping to help two women get the pay they’re owed, to letting that same man free out of a sense of respect, Kakhi is a man with a strong – but quiet – moral code. Tedaishvili’s performance is all the more amazing as this is only his second film. His debut was all the way back in 1987’s Khareba da Gogia.

Brighton 4th wonderfully blends drama and comedy. There’s a grounded absurdity to the comedy that makes it entirely relatable. Whether it’s the chaos from the kidnapping plot, or Kakhi’s family members continually losing money over minor annoyances, the laughs are good-natured and always centered in character. 

The most striking part of Brighton 4th is the spotlight it puts on basic decency. It would be easy to focus on the ugly parts of life when depicting the struggles of immigrants. That part is apparent in the film for sure, but Koguashvili’s interest is in how people treat one another when times get hard. Kakhi continually puts the hardships of his friends and family on his own shoulders and does so without complaint. One scene in particular – when the newly kidnapped man helps soothe a woman with epilepsy while she’s having a seizure – showcases the film’s core belief: that when things are hard, people will rise up to lend a helping hand.

While not being an overly complicated tale about the strife of new immigrants, Brighton 4th does offer a sweet, uplifting tale of a family doing what they can with what they have to help each other.

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They’re at the Gate

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Barbarians

by Hope Madden

Why is the dinner party such a ripe concept for horror? Or at least trauma?

Indies It’s a Disaster and Coherence bend time and space. The Invitation takes things in a bloody direction, The Humans picked more familial scabs. What they all have in common is that intimate gathering where familiarity breeds contempt.

They also require few locations and minimal cast, so they’re not too tough to mount on a small budget.

Director/co-writer Charles Dorfman takes all that into consideration with his feature debut. A veteran producer, Dorfman co-writes this fearsome tale with another longtime producer making his creative debut, Statten Roeg.

Together they spin the story of birthday boy Adam (Iwan Rheon, Game of Thrones). He and girlfriend Eva (Catalina Sandino Moreno) await their two guests. Eva is a sculptor, and she and Adam have been living in the first of what will be many exclusive new homes developed on ancient, isolated, mystical UK land.

The developer, Lucas (Tom Cullen and his exceptional beard), is Adam’s polar opposite: narcissistic, ambitious, full of shit. Today Eva unveils her big sculpture, she and Adam sign final paperwork to own the house, and Adam blows out the candles on his dream of making it as a director in London in favor of quiet country life.

Well, maybe not because a) Lucas has had another offer, and b) masked intruders threaten the whole evening.

Part comedy of manners, part home invasion thriller, Barbarians finds itself on uneven footing.

With its monolith and fertility festival masks, the film not-so-subtly conjures 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Wicker Man. It can’t deliver on either promise, though.

More problematic is the way Dorfman discards the themes and character development so carefully articulated in the first half of the film. The fact that the invasion itself never matches the tension of the simple dinner —what with its evasions, lies, manipulations — becomes Dormfan’s biggest problem. At dinner, the filmmaker tends to the themes of the film, twisting discomfort into a knot that’s too easily untied by some intruders in animal masks.

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Gun for Hire

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The Contractor

by Hope Madden

Chris Pine is Hollywood’s unsung Chris, isn’t he? Under-sung, anyway. Just because he’s not an Avenger. He is a dependable, charismatic presence in any film, though, which is why each of his efforts deserves a little optimism. Even one as seemingly unremarkable as The Contractor.

Pine plays James Harper, a Navy Seal with 5 tours under his belt. One shredded knee, one worthless lung and a host of other physical consequences from his time under fire mean that Harper is no longer of use to the US military. Debts at home have him entertaining offers he probably shouldn’t.

After too lengthy an Act I, The Contractor pivots to tight action thriller. Pine delivers vulnerability and honor as the damaged service vet, and director Tarik Saleh surrounds him with able support.

The great Ben Foster arrives about 20 minutes into the feature, and that’s never a bad sign. The film’s biggest draw is the chance to see Pine and his Hell or High Water co-star reunite. Foster is among the most effortlessly authentic actors working, every character’s backstory hanging on his face and haunting his eyes.

He and Pine have a lived-in camaraderie that goes a long way toward deepening the emotional underpinning of what is otherwise a blandly repetitive, unimaginative military action flick.

The real surprise is that Saleh — who began his career with the bizarre and amazing dystopian fantasy Metropia — couldn’t produce something a little more intriguing. The by-the-numbers script from J.P. Davis doesn’t help, but aside from a handful of decent fisticuff sequences, Selah does not prove himself as an action director.

Gillian Jacobs, Fares Fares, Eddie Marsan and Kiefer Sutherland — all underused — do what they can to bring nuance to underwritten characters, but it’s not enough to salvage the film.

Rather than elevate a bland picture, the performances feel wasted in this derivative and formulaic thriller.

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The Horrors of Garage Entrepreneurship

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Madelines

by Christie Robb

Madeline (Brea Grant, Eastsiders) and her husband Owen (Parry Shen, General Hospital) are two independent scientists working on a time travel device in their garage laboratory. Everything seems to be going well. They successfully moved an orange across time and space. They secured investment capital from their backer Rory (Richard Riehle, Office Space/legendary “that guy”). And they are all set to try experimenting on human subjects.

But one night, Madeline starts coding after she’s had a few too many wines and sends herself into the future only to return and find out that, due to a typo in the code, she and Rory can expect a new Madeline to return from the future every day at the same time for 3,600 days. What to do?

It’s a real conundrum.

Directed by Jason Richard Miller (who produced Frozen—no, not the Disney one) and co-written by Brea Grant, the film manages to entertain despite its minuscule cast of three and limited setting. A lot of the credit goes to Grant, who gives individual quirks to the various Madelines that she embodies.

Matt Akers’s 80s-inspired synth score is also a real delight, providing the entire project with a late-night direct-to-syndication guilty pleasure vibe.

It’s not a movie that can stand up to much logical scrutiny, though. And both the horrific and comedic elements could have been dialed up somewhat. But as an experiment, I think the team is on to something.

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Wicked Woods

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Sideworld: The Haunted Forests of England

by Hope Madden

Jonathan Russell and George Popov have been exploring England’s haunted history for a number of years now. For their first feature collaboration, 2017’s Hex, the co-writers/co-directors took us into the woods for a spell.

In 2020 the pair co-wrote – this time with Popov flying solo behind the camera – a modern exploration of folk horror with The Droving. Once again, the two unveiled a spooky history where primitive behavior meets supernatural forces deep in England’s woods.

The filmmakers’ latest suggests a serious preoccupation at this point. Their documentary Sideworld: The Haunted Forests of England walks us through some of the spectral history that likely influenced their earlier dramatic efforts.

Where Kier-La Janisse’s recent doc Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched dove into dramatic recreations of folk horror, Popov and Russell dig into the myths that inspired the fiction.

Russell writes, Popov directs and lends vocal talents to the fairly brief excursion into local folklore surrounding three different forests: Epping Forest, Cannock Chase and Wistman’s Wood. Their stories tell of pig beasts and howling dogs, weeping children and witches, tragic lovers and highwaymen.

They don’t stop with musty legend, though. Links to contemporary crime help to bridge the modern with the ancient in a way that sheds light into how tales of hauntings originate.

Though Popov narrates most of the film, he’s joined on occasion by Suzie Frances Garton and William Poulter. The film would have benefitted from more vocal variety, particularly since the filmmakers avoid any kind of talking-head footage. A little commentary from folklorists or experts would also have helped the film deliver a bit more relevance.

You can’t fault the spell Sideworld casts. Richard Suckling, who did such a beautiful job as DP for The Droving, again develops an atmosphere of beauty and dread. His cinematography mesmerizes from the opening moment. Paired with Matthew Laming’s haunting, whispering whistle of a score, the forests of Popov’s exploration easily convince of spectral menace.

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In Sickness and in Health

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7 Days

by Matt Weiner

We likely have years of pandemic-related movies ahead of us. And while 2022 may seem a bit soon to look back on the early days of Covid-19 (much as this country seems ready to declare mission accomplished no matter what), here’s some good news: You’ll be hard-pressed to watch anything more winsome and heartening than Roshan Sethi’s 7 Days.

A pre-arranged first date in March 2020 between Ravi (Karan Soni, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Sethi) and Rita (Geraldine Viswanathan) goes for much longer than either one was expecting when Covid grinds the country to a halt. Unable to get back out of town right away, Ravi hunkers down with Rita.

As the world outside Rita’s house falls apart, the two opposites—traditional, marriage-minded Ravi and freewheeling, drinking and partying Rita—slowly get to know each other on a deeper level than their disastrous first meet-up.

Sethi’s romantic comedy might be the first to use shelter in place as a meet cute, but the film earns its medical bona fides. This is Sethi’s feature debut, perhaps because he is also a practicing oncologist who wrote on medical dramas while finishing Harvard Medical School.

The film is set not only in quarantine but almost entirely within the confines of Rita’s house—save the occasional video call for Ravi, who keeps to his arranged dating schedule even with Rita sitting just feet away. So it falls entirely on Viswanathan and Soni to make these people we genuinely want to be trapped with, even as their perfectly opposite foibles drive each other mad.

And sure, their relationship follows the usual romcom course. (No spoilers, but you will get an answer to the question of whether opposites attract.) But both leads bring an impressive level of charm and depth to their roles, with a chemistry that feels natural and earned even within the formula.

Ravi and Rita have more in common than they first think—not just their traditional families urging them to settle down, but also the struggle of forging their own identities and paths in life.

Of course, the shadow of Covid looms over all of their conversations, especially the early days when so much was unknown and a cough could be the harbinger of weeks on a ventilator—or worse. The way the film works these concerns into the third act is inevitable but no less affecting.

Nothing about the phrase “Covid romcom” should play out as well as everything does with 7 Days. For that alone, the movie is a surprising gem. But to also get an incisive look at love and dating, thoughtful cultural commentary and genuine laughs is a pandemic miracle.

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Romancing the D

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The Lost City

by Hope Madden

A romance novelist who’s really a bit of a hermit becomes a reluctant adventurer looking for legendary jewels in a far-off land, with a roguishly handsome man—part hero, part heartthrob—at her side.

No, it isn’t Romancing the Stone. It isn’t even Jewel of the Nile. Aaron and Adam Nee’s romantic adventure comedy The Lost City offers less adventure, more screwball comedy. And more sequins.

Sandra Bullock is Loretta Sage, whose romance novels are known less for their anthropological mysteries than their hunky hero. That hero has been depicted over many book covers by Alan (Channing Tatum).

Promoting their latest effort, The Lost City of D, Loretta gets nabbed by a wealthy villain (Daniel Radcliffe, playing delightfully against type), who believes she can decipher a map leading to untold riches.

The real gem in this film is Brad Pitt in an extended cameo as the tracker hired to find Loretta. The Oscar winner and veteran leading man is just so much fun when his only goal is to be funny, and in this movie, he’s a riot. (It helps that he gets to deliver the film’s single best line.)

Bullock and Tatum are both solid comic performers, but neither is given much to work with in this odd couple romance. A grieving widow given up on love, Loretta doesn’t offer Bullock a lot of room for hilarity. Instead, she becomes a rather dour anchor for the project.

Tatum’s dunderheaded beefcake is appealing enough, but can’t quite keep the film afloat. A side plot featuring Da-Vine Joy Randolph (Dolemite Is My Name) feels like filler, which this 2-hour film did not need.

There are some chuckles, especially when Pitt’s onscreen. Bullock and Tatum share enough chemistry, deliver physical comedy well enough, and generate enough charm between them to keep the breezy entertainment enjoyable.

The Lost City offers pretty, lightweight fun, not unlike a romance novel.