The sinister potential of New Age practices gets explored yet again in Karl Mueller’s Rebirth, a psychological thriller continuing the somewhat recent trend of films about cults like Faults, The Invitation, and Martha Marcy May Marlene. This time, rather than taking inspiration from the likes of the Manson family or Jonestown, Rebirth bases its eponymous enlightenment group off of the Church of Scientology, and anyone vaguely familiar with L. Ron Hubbard’s creepy “religion” will pick up on the influence within minutes. And while Mueller provides enough intrigue to keep viewers guessing, he has a hard time coming up with a proper conclusion for his small-scale mind games.

Kyle (Fran Kranz) is a typical upper-middle-class office drone, living in a big suburban home with his wife and daughter and spending his days working at a bank in the city. An opening montage establishes the happy monotony of Kyle’s life, which soon gets interrupted when his old college friend Zack (Adam Goldberg) shows up at his work. Zack asks Kyle to cancel all his weekend plans and participate with him in something called Rebirth, which he only describes as “an experience.” Kyle bristles at the boldness of his old friend’s proposal, but he decides to go for it after succumbing to his nostalgic feelings.

Things get weird in a short amount of time, as the hotel Kyle checks himself into for the weekend getaway turns out to be a ruse. A series of clues leads him to a bus filled with dozens of other men, all of whom have to hand over their cell phones and wear blindfolds for the entire ride while they’re taken to Rebirth’s real location. Upon arriving, Kyle and the other bus passengers get taken to a room where a man (Steve Agee) explains Rebirth’s anti-establishment philosophies, making it sound like some sort of college bro’s attempt at copying Chuck Palahniuk. From there, several strange events draw Kyle away from the main group and off into a sort of hellish funhouse, exploring a derelict building where each room offers a different, stranger facet of what Rebirth has to offer.

This section of the film turns out to be its strongest, even though its structure and influences are plain as day. Kyle bounces from room to room, and every door he opens functions as an excuse for Mueller to come up with a bizarre situation to throw his protagonist into. An early highlight involves Kyle stumbling into some kind of support group whose leader (Andrew J. West) torments people both physically and psychologically. It’s a gripping sequence, but it’s a borderline remake of the classroom scenes in Whiplash. Plenty of other influences pop up throughout Rebirth, including David Fincher’s The Game and Charlie Brooker’s TV series Black Mirror, but these comparisons aren’t complimentary; it just shows that Mueller is a competent copycat.

On the other hand, Mueller’s focus is squarely on creating an entertaining game of figuring out what’s real or part of Rebirth, and Kranz and the committed ensemble (including Harry Hamlin and Pat Healy, who take full advantage of their small roles) make the film’s transparent qualities easier to forgive. It’s in the final act, when the group starts exerting its influence on Kyle’s personal life, that the screenplay starts to break down. By breaking away from Rebirth’s controlled environment and into the real world, the plausibility of the whole scenario gets extremely thin, but not as thin as whatever message Mueller tries to tack on in the closing minutes. After an abrupt ending, the film switches over to one of Rebirth’s promotional videos while the credits roll. The video, a deliberate attempt to mimic Scientology’s promos (including the infamous Tom Cruise video), makes the whole film feel like the set-up for a corny punchline. A brief section of the video, where Rebirth promotes its branded product line, suggests a bit of a sly commentary on New Age ideas getting swallowed up by capitalist interests, but it’s drowned out by the parodic, wink-nudge nature of the clip.

The Jungle Book, Disney’s latest cartoon-to-live-action adaptation, gets a lot of things right: It’s wildly entertaining, full of great vocal performances by a stacked A-list cast, and boasts a hilarious/creepy musical number by none other than Christopher Walken. But, as delightful as it is hearing Walken sing a jazzy Disney classic (fond memories of Pennies From Heaven come rushing back), the thing that makes this John Favreau-directed romp so enjoyable is its spellbinding presentation, which is worth the price of admission alone. This thing looks and sounds like pure movie magic and elicits the same gasps of wonder the original 1967 animated feature did at the time. Hell, this modern update may even be better. Time will tell.

Aside from star Neel Sethi, who plays our tumbling, red-loinclothed hero, Mowgli, every character is a computer generated, anatomically correct animal. Cartoons they are not: wolves don’t have insanely big “Disney eyes,” and birds don’t suddenly flash inexplicably human-toothed grins. These animals look real. They’re of our world. The animators and sound designers have done such good work here that it’s hard to express in words how damn amazing this thing looks, so let’s dive into the other aspects of the movie as a sort of respite before I continue gushing about the sound and visuals.

The story feels like a mash-up of the original 1967 animated musical and 1994’s The Lion King (several images—a stampede, a fiery final battle—will give you deja vu). It’s a combination that goes together like peanut butter and jelly. But PB and J can get old (especially when you find it). There are no ideas, themes, plot contours, or characters in this modern update that feel fresh or exciting. This isn’t a big issue, though, as the narrative formula Favreau and his team follow is tried and true and will work like gangbusters for those stepping into the theater expecting nothing more or less than a good ol’ time at the movies.

Plot-wise, screenwriter Justin Marks stays pretty close to the ’67 original. Mowgli is found in the jungle by stoic panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), who brings the “man-cub” to a pack wolves led by the noble Akela (Breaking Bad‘s Giancarlo Esposito). Nurturing Mowgli as his adopted mother is Rashka (Lupita Nyong’o), who rears him as her own. There’s no greater threat in the jungle than prowling tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba), and Mowgli has the unlucky distinction of being at the top of his kill list (for reasons learned later in flashback).

To keep Mowgli out of the tiger’s clutches, Bagheera leaves to take the boy to the nearest man village. They get separated along the way thanks to a ferocious interception by Khan, and Mowgli falls in with loafer bear Baloo (a game Bill Murray, which is always a treat). Mowgli uses a pulley contraption to knock bee hives down from a high ridge (the animals disapprovingly refer to his handmade tools as “tricks”) and the two become fast friends. They, in fact, break out a jaunty rendition of “Bear Necessities,” which will please fans of the original and likely underwhelm youngsters who bring no nostalgia into the theater.

Baloo and Bagheera embark on a rescue mission when Mowgli’s captured by monkeys and taken to King Louie (Walken), a gigantic orangutan who’s like the jungle’s Don Corleone. He wants the boy to harness the power of the “red flower” and pass it along, making him the true king of the jungle. The “red flower,” of course, is fire, and when Mowgli learns that his family has been terrorized by Khan in his absence, he chooses instead to use the “red flower” as a tool of revenge.

It’s hard to understand how the digital artists made the animal characters both anatomically accurate while also expressing the wide range of emotions brought forth by the voice actors. Animals can be extremely expressive with their faces, but the fact that these onscreen beasts are speaking English and it doesn’t look weird at all is a feat of animation that’s hard to wrap your head around. Most CG animals look too clinical and fall headfirst into the uncanny valley, but these creatures look utterly seamless. While the plot isn’t anything special, the movie has a unique momentum to it in that you’re constantly dying to see which animal will be brought to life next (the elephants are particularly wondrous).

The unsung heroes of The Jungle Book, no doubt, are the sound designers and engineers. Their work here is astonishing. The animated characters look great, but what really sells them and makes them look convincing are the sounds they make as they walk around the lush jungle environments. Baloo is a big ass bear, so when he plops down to eat his honey, you can hear and, more importantly, feel the thud. Great sound design typically goes unnoticed, but in the iconic scene where Mowgli gets seduced by giant snake Kaa (Scarlett Johansson), her hypnotizing hisses swirl around you and squeeze like her coils, Johansson’s sultry voice fading in and out, swinging back and forth on the speakers.

Favreau’s always had a knack for giving his movies a sense of constant propulsion, even when there isn’t that much going on. His movies tend to just glide by, and The Jungle Book is no exception. It’s a rollercoaster thrill ride with simple, somewhat clichéd set pieces that nevertheless work like gangbusters because Favreau’s a good filmmaker who knows what beats to hit to get maximum excitement out of an action scene. There’s a tense hide-and-seek sequence involving Mowgli and Louie in the monkey temple that we’ve all seen before (you see the jump scare coming from miles away), but the way it’s edited and shot is just so riveting that you can’t help but eat it up.

There is one aspect of the movie that is, unfortunately, a constant distraction: Sethi’s dialogue delivery. Honestly, the kid’s just not good at saying his lines convincingly, and it makes some scenes just feel weird. It’s not his fault, really. He’s acting opposite imaginary characters whose voices are provided by some of the best actors in the business. But the sad reality is that it’s pretty jarring to hear this kid speak semi-awkwardly while his co-stars coast through their lines like butter.

What Sethi’s is good at is emoting with his body; he’s a physical actor, and a talented one at that. He’s a convincing wolf child, leaping through the trees and sliding down slopes with an effortlessness and sense of purpose, like jungle parkour is all he’s ever known. The film’s best, most touching moment sees Mowgli help a herd of elephants save one of their young, who’s fallen into a pit. The sun is rising, and in semi-silhouette, we see him save the calf (using one of his clever “tricks”) and wave goodbye to his new friends. He feels honest in moments like these, and thankfully, there are several. Sethi’s a mostly worthy Mowgli in a more than worthy retelling of a gem from the golden age of Disney Animation. If they can keep up this standard when bringing more cartoon classics into the world of live action, I say keep ’em coming.

Writer’s note: If you can, watch the movie in IMAX 3-D. The sound is spectacular and the 3-D is some of the best I’ve seen. Also, the closing credits definitely benefit from the added effect.

Adapted from a short film that played at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014, Sleeping Giant quickly turned into a Canadian indie success story when it was selected to play at the Cannes Film Festival in the Critics’ Week sidebar. Several months later, Sleeping Giant finally came back home to have its North American Premiere at TIFF in September 2015.

The film takes place over the summer in Thunder Bay, Ontario, where teenager Adam (Jackson Martin) spends his summer vacation with his family. At the start of his trip, he befriends Nate (Nick Serino) and Riley (Reece Moffett), two cousins from the area living with their grandmother. It’s immediately apparent that the friendship between the three boys only makes sense in the context of this vacation, with Adam coming from a sheltered, upper-middle-class life, and Nate and Riley coming from a lower class background. As the summer continues, tensions rise between Adam, Nate and Riley until they tragically boil over.

It’s been said many times already, but Cividino has made an impressive directorial debut with Sleeping Giant. As someone who has made similar trips up north as a kid, it was surprising to see how accurate Cividino portrays that unique feeling of spending your days away from home as an adolescent. In advance of Sleeping Giant’s North American premiere at TIFF, I had the chance to talk to Andrew Cividino about his film. Read on for the full interview below, where Cividino talks about his personal connection to the film’s location, learning how to work with young, nonprofessional actors, his feelings on finally bringing the film home and much more.

Sleeping Giant is currently out in limited release in Toronto, Ontario from D Films.

I never thought of the trip up to Northern Ontario as a rite of passage for kids in Ontario until I saw your film. I did it, my parents did it…I’m assuming this film had to come from a personal place for you.

I grew up spending my summers on the shore of Lake Superior in the exact locations that the film is set in. Every year at the end of the school year [my family] would go up the day school ended, and we could come back on Labour Day. It was like that well into high school, until I had to get a job. I made friends up there that occupied a kind of a special place because we grew up together but separate from our other lives. I think it was a chance every summer to go up and, as your identities form, have this separate group of friends that you’re spending this intense amount of time with. But you’re free from all the expectations of whatever hat you’re trying to wear in your high school in Southern Ontario.

To have that kind of an unsupervised playground hanging out with friends over the summer, you’re really just left to your own devices. You’re in the middle of nowhere. All of the sorts of risks that are associated with living in a more urban setting aren’t there. You just have to come for dinner basically, and that’s about it. You’re free to roam and explore, and that was kind of the genesis for me, wanting to capture what it was like to spend those years up in that place.

Your film feels more about capturing a specific sense of time and place than focusing on a narrative.

I think tone was something that was very important to me from the genesis of the project. There’s something that I saw mirrored that’s inherent to the landscape up there. It’s beautiful, but it’s also foreboding. If you know Lake Superior well, you know that you never feel fully at ease because it’s called Thunder Bay for a reason. There are always storms that could be rolling in, and it’s like the ocean in how the waves will whip up out of nowhere. There was this tension between it being like a romantic postcard view of nature and something much more, if not menacing, certainly indifferent to your existence. I thought was really well mirrored with what adolescent boys are like, the kind of tumult, the lack of empathy and that energy.

I feel like the editing is vital to the film because you’re combining intimate shots of nature, but you’re getting bigger macro shots as well. How did you find that specific rhythm going back and forth between the two types of shots?

I think it was in our philosophy from shooting it on the outset that we wanted to capture the grand scope and the intimate details, from sweeping aerial vistas to fighting insects on bark, and to do the same thing with our characters. It was important to step back far enough with our visuals to get a sense of space and location. It totally affects your understanding of what this story is, what it’s like for these characters to be here, and to get a sense of how isolated they are. There’s something under the surface. Like I mentioned before, [there’s] this idea of the romantic, European version of nature as this inviting thing, and there’s this other side of it which is more nature as a state of chaos. I really wanted to play that duality, both in terms of nature and how we shot it close and wide, and mirroring that with the two sides of the human story.

I’m assuming you had to have a lot of patience while making this in order to capture some of those shots up close, like the insects fighting on the bark.

I think, more than patience, it was about an openness to what’s around you. To recognize that you may be shooting a scene, but if you happen to see two bugs fighting on the tree, you have to run across the island and get your crew, and have them understand that it’s important enough to run with the camera on their back and to stop everything to shoot it. On the day [of shooting] it sounds totally insane, but you need people who can bind to that understanding and philosophy. For instance, we wanted to do a lot of stuff with crayfish. I used crayfish in the short film. We spent a day and a half trying to catch crayfish, but it was not a good year for them. We caught one in total. We couldn’t do it, and we had to re-envision the material. On the other hand, the bugs fighting on the tree was something that was just noticed, and we were able to stop and pay attention and actually capture it.

Did that openness apply to the rest of the production?

The narrative was nailed down, but what happens within scenes, and certainly where scenes happen, was something we had to be very much open to because the weather would repel us from the island. We were constantly having to adapt and reorganize our schedule, but the real openness was within scenes. To be open to allowing the actors to bring their own voices, and being open to explore possibilities while making sure that we don’t get off track of the number of narrative threads and character arcs that have to come together.

How did you approach working with these young, nonprofessional actors?

I was fortunate to do the short and develop a strong relationship with Nick Serino and Reese Moffett. There was a familiarity there, and I learned a lot about working with younger actors. I think the biggest thing of all was casting people who felt close enough to the characters. Not necessarily in terms of the details of their lives, but in terms of their personalities. [It’s] finding those people, and then being willing to change your own understanding of your character to allow them to bring their own element to it. You’re not going to get amazing craft performances out of young actors who usually don’t have any experience, but if you set things up properly, you may have put yourself in a situation where they feel comfortable to bring themselves to that role, to lose themselves in that scene or moment, and to draw on their own experiences if you can find those relatable things. It was about making sure it was a collaboration, and for them bringing their own perspective to it was important.

I wanted to ask specifically about Jackson Martin who plays Adam, because his role is so pivotal.

Jack was the most experienced of the three actors going in. We cast him in a traditional casting session out of Southern Ontario.

Did you deliberately choose a more experienced actor for the role of Adam?

I deliberately wanted a professional actor to play the role of Adam because I felt that the character was going to have to shoulder a lot more of the burden in that way, especially in the earlier drafts of the story. And I also wanted to cast someone who would be a fish out of water. For the other boys, it was essential that they were up there naturally and that was their environment. But I wanted to bring somebody up who felt like this was not their natural habitat.

I did want to talk about the homoerotic aspect between Adam and Riley. What made you decide to put that in the film?

I didn’t want to make a standard love triangle specifically, but I wanted to make something that kind of explored the complexities of sexuality coming online in a person. To me, Adam is not somebody who is necessarily going to land at gay or straight or who knows where on that spectrum. He’s somebody whose sexuality is just coming online, and who has a great deal of…pressure. Not intentional pressure, but expectations around heteronormative behaviour from everybody. There’s nobody in the film that’s homophobic, but the entire world assumes heterosexuality of him. That makes his admiration for Riley confused with [his] affection for Taylor, who’s his female friend as well. All of these things create this intense confusion for him as he’s trying to find his way.

2015 has been pretty exciting for Toronto-based filmmakers. There’s you, Kazik Radwanski (How Heavy This Hammer), and Adam Garnet Jones (Fire Song) to name a few playing at TIFF this year. It feels like a whole new generation of Canadian filmmakers is finally arriving.

I feel like it’s an incredibly exciting time to be making films in Toronto. I feel like I’m part of a community of people who are making really incredible and unique pieces. We share crews, we support each other’s work, we’re inspired by each other’s films, yet the voices are all quite distinct at the same time. I’m not sure exactly why it’s happening right now. I’ve been told by others, and I certainly feel it myself, that it’s something that hasn’t happened in a while. It’s this generation of filmmakers poking through at the exact same time and getting this kind of international recognition. I don’t know what the common threads are, other than the fact that it’s like “by any means necessary.” We go out and we find stories that compel us, and we’re not going to be constrained by financial resources. I’m really excited about where it will go.

You’ve made a film that feels very specific to an experience for people in Ontario, yet this is the first time your film will screen for audiences in Canada. You’ve screened the film at Cannes and Karlovy Vary already. Have you been surprised by the reaction from international audiences, and what do you expect from audiences at TIFF once they see it?

I was really surprised by the international response to the film. I always felt that the location for the film was incredibly beautiful but worried that was always just because of my personal bias towards it. I was really surprised to see how much the setting seemed to speak to people strongly when the film premiered internationally, and it how seemed exotic to them in a way. The colloquialisms, the way the boys speak in the film is so regional in a way that I wondered if that could have ever registered internationally, and I couldn’t believe it fully could. So I’m really curious to bring the film home. I hope that it rings true to people. I hope that it’s more than nostalgia too, I hope that the story connects. I’m curious and a little bit anxious to see how it goes over at home because, for us, this is the home crowd. I’m hopeful and a little bit scared. [Laughs]

A version of this interview was originally published on September 7th, 2015, as part of our coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival.

In Louder Than Bombs, Isabelle Reed (Isabelle Huppert) was a world-renowned war photographer who risked her life in pursuit of an endless string of perfect shots. She didn’t always come out of the war zone unscathed, but she always came out. It’s ironic, then, that despite surviving countless dangers around the globe, she wound up the lone fatality of a single-vehicle car crash in a cozy New York suburb. Three years later, a retrospective of her work is being organized, and her widowed husband Gene (Gabriel Byrne) has been tapped to display his wife’s photographs; he enlists the help of his grown son Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg).

Complicating matters is a New York Times piece set to be written in advance of the showing by Isabelle’s former colleague, war reporter Richard Weissman (David Strathairn). The piece will reveal that Isabelle’s car accident was no accident at all, but rather a suicide, something Gene is fully aware of. Not only would Gene prefer to keep a more positive memory of his wife at the forefront of the celebration in her honor, he would rather his younger son, the teenaged Conrad (Devin Druid), not know the truth about his mother’s death.

Louder Than Bombs, the first English-speaking film from Norwegian director and co-writer Joachim Trier, sets itself up to be a significant melodrama. All of the pieces are there and ready to be played.

There is Gene, the widower and father of two who, thanks to the retrospective being organized in his wife’s memory, must do more than face life’s small daily reminders of a love lost—he must immerse himself in the life she lived. He must look at every photograph she took and know that he’s seeing her life, a life she spent far away from her family, through her eyes. This takes its toll on Gene, which in turn takes its toll on how he handles his relationship with Hannah (Amy Ryan), his coworker and lover.

Next is Jonah, who is a lot like the old man and not just because they’re both teachers. When Jonah is faced with an event of overwhelming emotional magnitude, he also makes poor choices. In this instance, his wife Amy (Megan Ketch) has just given birth to their first child, but when the frazzled new dad scours the hospital halls for a vending machine, he runs into an old girlfriend. Their hug lasts almost as long as the lies he tells.

Conrad, whose life is challenging enough as a teenager without a mother, has all but disconnected himself emotionally from his father, opting to live in a world of loud music and online gaming. He’s awkward and introverted and everything one would expect from a 14-year-old in his situation, but he’s also undaunted in his secret love for his classmate crush, the cheerleader Melanie (Ruby Jerins).

Even Richard, the war correspondent, brings more to the story than just the byline on the revelatory posthumous profile of the revered photographer, wife, and mother.

Again, all of the melodramatic pieces are there, but much to his credit, Trier never plays those pieces the way most would expect them to be played. Instead, the filmmaker lets his characters progress through subtle developments that require the viewer to stay keenly attuned to the little things they say and do, rather than waiting for the next bombastic outburst to occur. A lot of that character progression is negative, but it’s genuine, and it’s fueled by the fatal flaws the trio shares—a wicked combination of denial, deceit, and dreadful communication. Watching them fool themselves and others isn’t like watching people spiral out of control and perish in a fiery crash. It’s more like watching people slowly dissolve. Only Conrad, despite (or perhaps because of) his youth, offers a glimmer of hope with his unflappable crush on Melanie and his refusal to be anything but the person he is. Husbands, fathers, and sons make poor choices that carry with them the potential for irrevocable consequences, and yet just like in real life, they can’t stop making those choices; it’s in their nature.

And what about Isabelle? She appears in flashback and in dreams, but she is more mystery than matriarch. Yes, she was a loving mother and wife, as well as a successful war photographer, but beyond that (and beyond the suggestion of depression), little else is known about her. This is a terrific move by Trier, because it maintains a sense of wonder about who this woman was and why she meant what she meant to the men in her life. To explain more would have done a disservice to the character. In the role, Huppert is mesmerizing, and Trier knows how to capture the best of her, including a long, lingering, dialogue-free close-up of Huppert as she stares down the camera, leaving you wondering what she is thinking about and hoping you’ll have the chance to learn.

The rest of the cast is excellent, anchored by an amazing performance by relative newcomer Druid as Conrad Reed. Byrne and Eisenberg may have (combined) decades more experience than Druid, but they need him to be great more than he needs them to be great, and he delivers.

Louder Than Bombs is a wrenching tale about the criticality of communication and the collateral damage of deceit in the wake of significant loss. The film has barely a false note in it, hardly a moment when a character says or does something that demands to be challenged, and only the ending left me disappointed as ringing somewhat hollow. Still, despite the questionable destination of the tale, the journey is completely worth it.

Jean-Marc Vallée enjoys playing heartstrings. He’s drawn to more irreverent forms of playing them but his end goals are clear, and what worked so well in Dallas Buyers Club and Wild—using broken and imperfect people to explore physical and emotional journeys—breaks down Demolition. The flawed protagonist in this case-study in grief is Davis Mitchell, whose emotional intelligence is so low it borders on sociopathic, proven by the (literally) destructive way he chooses to deal with the sudden death of his wife. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Mitchell as well as can be expected for such an irrational character, and Vallée’s introspective style pushes things as far as it can in building real feelings toward the story. It’s Bryan Sipe’s screenplay (his first major feature) that appears to be at fault, shoving as many emotionally explosive elements as possible into one script and only hinting at the sort of saving grace that would allow audiences to forgive the sentimental melodrama capping off the film.

Davis Mitchell is reminiscent of American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman in more ways than just his emotional numbness. Clean-shaven, well-groomed, and career-driven, the house he and his young wife Julia (Heather Lind) share is all glass and metal—antiseptic like he is. During an argument while driving one day he and his wife are hit by a truck and Julia dies at the hospital while Davis escapes without a scratch. Shortly after receiving the news of her death, Davis attempts to buy some M&Ms from a vending machine and, when the package sticks in the machine, he takes down the vending machine company’s info.

With keen editing, Davis’ experience of the details of his wife’s death focuses more on everyone else’s emotions surrounding him, while he remains undisturbed. He escapes during the funeral reception to write a letter to the vending company, describing in awkward detail the circumstances surrounding his attempt to buy M&Ms. It feels distinctly unnatural, as nothing of Davis’ nature suggests he’d care much either way at having gotten the candy or not, but we’re meant to understand this is his way of emoting.

After returning to work as an investment banker soon after Julia’s death, Davis’ father-in-law Phil (Chris Cooper), who is also his boss, encourages him to take some time off and deconstruct his feelings. Davis decides to take him at his word, and though he doesn’t immediately take time off work, he does start taking apart almost anything that annoys him or causes him to wonder. This includes a bathroom stall, his refrigerator, an espresso machine, and his work computer. This behavior, of course, leads to some forced time off, and by this point the customer service representative of the vending machine company, Karen Moreno (Naomi Watts), reaches out to Davis after becoming intrigued by his letters.

What follows is a hard to swallow friendship between the privileged Davis and Karen, a low-income single mother dating her boss and a marijuana—or cannabis, as she prefers to call it—user. While much of what happens on-screen is difficult to believe, such as Davis joining a construction crew to help destroy a house just for a reason to use a sledgehammer, his relationship with Karen and her son Chris (Judah Lewis) feels the most contrived. As if unable to pick a theme, the film slips into piling one high drama scenario onto the next, but through the filter of Davis’s inability to feel anything. If emotional appropriation is a thing, this movie embodies it.

How much more can a rich white man take from the world just to try and elicit some sense of grief for his perfectly awesome dead wife? As Davis bitches to the void through his letters to Karen (which continue, by the way, even after he knows she’s reading them, like some real-life Facebook status update), destroys millions of dollars of material possessions many people would be thrilled to own, and then forces his sorry self into the lives of poorer and more generous people than himself all while ignoring his own family’s attempts to show him love, it gets harder and harder to feel any empathy for Davis. It’s a case study in indulgent and privileged grieving.

Vallée is ever ambitious in exploring the nuances of the human condition and, as usual, he creates a film that looks and sounds beautiful. He’s an expert at incorporating music, even if Heart’s “Crazy On You” doesn’t fit here as smoothly as he might think. I find obvious fault with Gyllenhaal’s character but it’s not to do with his performance. If given the chance to express a more complicated range of emotion, it would have been easier to be endeared to Demolition. Watts is likable but her character is a washrag for Davis to wipe his face on. But the standout of the film is Judah Lewis, who is the only one capable of breaking hearts as a teenager trying to both find and be himself. Lewis’ character is the only one portraying emotions that make some sort of sense: teen angst, passion, and uncertainty. If only the film was about him.

As a small-scale Sundance character drama, writer-director Matt Sobel’s debut feature defies a handful of natural expectations. In its first act, Take Me to the River follows Ryder (Logan Miller), an openly gay California teen who wants to come out to his extended family during a visit to their farm in Nebraska. But his mother (Robin Weigert) and father (Richard Schiff) are considerably nervous about the consequences that would manifest if their conservative relatives were to learn the truth about Ryder’s sexuality. Sobel often goes out of his way to illustrate the level of social ineptitude that permeates the family. One blind relative, maybe an aunt, actually touches Ryder’s leg when she hears from others about the length of his shorts. In addition to this, Ryder is asked about girls and whether he has a girlfriend on multiple occasions. This initial conflict allows viewers to sympathize with Ryder quickly, but it doesn’t say anything new about what it’s like to be gay in America. It’s a good thing Sobel isn’t done setting up his story.

It’s perhaps worth noting that, while the teenage and adult members of Ryder’s extended family sneer at his queer appearance, the kids seem to adore it. One of his nieces, Molly (Ursula Parker), is particularly drawn to him and convinces her redneck dad Keith (Josh Hamilton) to allow them to search a nearby barn for birds’ nests. But something happens in the barn that results in Molly tearing back toward the gathered family with a bloodstain near her crotch. The accusations from her father are instantaneous and damning: Ryder is a pervert who has, in one way or another, assaulted and injured his daughter. The mysterious cause of the bloodstain could be anything from a fall to a cut to a case of premature menstruation, but Sobel avoids getting to the bottom of this enigmatic rising action. In this crucial early moment, and in many thereafter, Sobel insists on employing cinema’s eternally overvalued subterfuge: ambiguity.

Because key developments are so murkily communicated, the otherwise straightforward world of Take Me to the River often registers as surreal and dreamlike. This enhances the film aesthetically but cripples it narratively. Sobel doesn’t venture far enough into the skeletons in the closets of the quarreling relatives to properly grasp the tension boiling under nearly every scene. The framework of his story suggests an exploration of conflicting American mindsets, yet the actions of the characters are left shrouded in mystery when they could be used to reveal much more about what’s actually going on.

Misplaced obscurity aside, Sobel does do an impressive job of enhancing individual scenes. Whatever’s going on, there’s usually something engaging about the frame. Sobel will often inject queer imagery into the film’s redneck-laden Nebraska landscape. One shot, for example, depicts Ryder and one of his nieces riding small horses over a hill blanketed entirely by shimmering yellow flowers. Keeping in mind that Ryder’s nieces are the only members of his extended family with speaking roles who accept him, it’s almost as though the shot is conveying their environment’s satisfaction at being momentarily occupied only by people who accept each other.

More of what glues Sobel’s debut together is the strength of his cast. Robin Weigert is a standout as Ryder’s mother, embodying a woman clinging to a sliver of resolve to protect her son with deft skill. Logan Miller is also quite convincing in the central role. But the most impressive work might come from Ursula Parker, who seems to fully grasp the implications of her role in the film and uses that level of understanding to her advantage. Her ability to grasp complex concepts and then apply them to her character is astonishing considering she can’t be more than twelve or thirteen. Take Me to the River proves Sobel is a talented director, one who knows how to frame a shot so it’s visually explorable. If he would’ve been able to dig deeper into key plot elements rather than expecting the audience to fill in the gaps for him, he would’ve had quite the noteworthy first feature.

During a time when most mainstream movies seem to run around thirty minutes too long, it’s refreshing to see features that can pack a full story into a brisk running time. Ted Fendt’s feature debut Short Stay clocks in at just over sixty minutes, and still manages to tell a complete—albeit somewhat lackadaisical—narrative about a generic guy living a generic life.

Similar to Kevin Smith’s famous debut Clerks, Short Stay is a slice-of-life character study about Mike (Mike MacCherone), a perpetually bored twentysomething whose job at a local pizzeria isn’t providing him with the excitement he desires out of life. When a friend of a friend offers him a job giving tours of Philadelphia, Mike reluctantly moves out of his Jersey apartment and takes the job, thus beginning a new chapter in his mundane life. Of course, the move doesn’t change the man’s outlook on life, and being a timid loser frequently results in Mike being walked all over by coworkers, roommates, and potential love interests. The feel-good movie of 2016 this certainly is not, but it’s still a film worth watching.

One of the more interesting plot points in the film revolves around Mike’s attraction to a girl who assures him that she’s in a relationship but values his friendship. It doesn’t take a sociologist to figure out exactly what’s going to happen next, and while the film doesn’t offer any significant swerves on that end, watching the whole uncomfortable disaster play out is quite entertaining. Mike’s troubles with the ladies are somewhat relatable, but mostly just sad. The scenes in which the poor bastard tries to overcome the problems in his love life evoke secondhand embarrassment in ways that very few films can.

It’s all photographed on grainy 35mm, mirroring the haziness of Mike’s life. Opting for a documentary-like aesthetic, Fendt and cinematographer Sage Einarsen seem determined to capture aspects of real life, and they frequently do so. Reminiscent of mumblecore films from the mid-2000s, Short Stay is comprised of long takes, what appears to be improvised dialogue, and consistent naturalism. There are no action-packed set pieces or larger than life plot points but the film still entertains in spite of this.

Some members of the supporting cast aren’t exactly convincing, delivering lines with little believability and the charisma of a wet sock. This is somewhat routine in these kinds of films, but it still detracts from the experience. Naturalism simply doesn’t work when those performing it don’t come across as natural. MacCherone, however, portrays the mousy protagonist in successful fashion. He’s a total loser, admittedly, but Mike is a generally easy guy to root for. It seems as though his entire goal in life is to not be a complete and utter failure, but he just doesn’t know how to succeed. In that regard, Fendt’s feature debut is thoroughly depressing, but the tone is actually comedic. There aren’t any “jokes,” per say, but the strange manner in which Mike handles all of his problems is laughable in the right way.

Films like Short Stay are an acquired taste, and can justifiably be viewed as both brilliant and lazy, depending on individual perspective. Evoking shades of the early works of Andrew Bujalski, Joe Swanberg, and the Duplass Brothers, there should be little doubt as to what kind of cinematic experience Short Stay provides. The film does exactly what it sets out to do, and that’s always something to be appreciated.

Clocking it at well over five hours in length, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Happy Hour isn’t so much a character study as it is an entire character course. Following four women in their late thirties as they attempt to deal with their individual relationship troubles, the film is filled with relatable struggles and honest, emotional performances, but ultimately becomes a victim of its own ambitions.

Having been best friends for many years, Jun (Rira Kawamura), Akari (Sachie Tanaka), Sakurako (Hazuki Kikuchi), and Fumi (Maiko Mihara) have formed a nearly unbreakable bond together. They meet up frequently to gossip about their lives and air their grievances about their currently living situations. Having all been married at one point, their ideas about a woman’s place in a marriage differ. After Jun reveals a shocking secret about her own marriage, her friends have mixed reactions, adding a strain to their friendship.

Above all, Happy Hour is a movie about infidelity and how it affects not only those in the relationship but their acquaintances as well. Knowing that your friend is committing adultery is a tough spot to be in because it leaves a choice between loyalty to a friend and a commitment to doing what’s right. Adding to the complexity is the discovery that the infidelity involves a mutual friend, which is a major issue explored in Happy Hour. The results aren’t over-the-top or cinematic in any way. Instead, they’re deeply rooted in reality. All of the events feel as though they could happen tomorrow, which has its pros and cons as a filmmaking technique. It certainly adds to the realistic tone of the film, but it prevents the movie from being particularly exciting. Happy Hour certainly isn’t boring, but it lacks a frenetic energy.

The defining aspect of the film is the almost unheard of running time, which wouldn’t feel nearly as gratuitous if many scenes didn’t come across as unnecessary filler. As human as it is, there are a significant amount of scenes that could be trimmed down—if not eliminated completely—without the film losing any effect. One early sequence finds the protagonists attending a pseudo-spiritual workshop where they participate in borderline cult-like team-building exercises. After ten minutes, the point is made—the women’s personal problems mirror the teacher’s lessons in a Boy Meets World kind of way, albeit much more mature and existential—but the scene continues on for much longer. Hamaguchi seems determined to beat certain ideas into viewers’ brains, despite establishing them successfully in the first attempt. In a way, it seems as though he isn’t completely confident in his ability to express certain ideas, even though his ideas are quite strong.

The four leads deliver naturalistic performances that make their already empathetic characters all the more believable. Engaging in numerous, lengthy conversations about both nothing and everything, it’s almost impossible not to see aspects of your own friends in the women. They’re complex, generally likable, and extremely relatable. They discuss mundane aspects of everyday life with the same enthusiasm as more existential concepts involving their uncertain futures. Thankfully, these conversations are generally entertaining, considering the film is almost brutally dialogue-heavy. It’s not just a film with a lot of talking—it borders on being a film about talking.

At times, Happy Hour is a strenuous watch and a pretty tough sell, given the over five-hour commitment needed to experience it in full. However, if you do commit to viewing the film, the payoff is there. The characters are fully developed and fascinating, and their story arcs are engrossing in ways that few are. It lacks many of the qualifying themes to call it an “epic,” as there are no colossal set pieces or big action sequences—or action of any kind, really—but there is a strangely “big” feel to the film. It’s a heavy drama, thick with human emotion, that could benefit from being just a bit more brisk. Perhaps in the future, Hamaguchi will consider creating a similarly engaging feature that is much shorter in length.

Almost as long as there has been teen angst, there have been films about teen angst. From Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause  to Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, and including many in between and since, the teen angst film has been a moviemaking staple for six decades, offering insight into what teens go through during each film’s point in time. In most cases only the details change, as higher level themes of disaffection, identity crisis, and peer pressure have been common teen problems for generations. But those details are important, and can drive just how good a film is.

Kill Me Please is set in an affluent section of present-day Rio de Janeiro, where a clique of bored teenage girls finds titillation in a series of murders—murders that happen to be of other teenage girls. Facts are at a minimum but that doesn’t stop the rumor mill from grinding out plenty to quench their morbid fascination. As the body count rises, 15-year-old Bia’s (Valentina Herszage) obsession with the crimes and their victims grows too. Teens are still teens, though, and there is plenty else for them to cope with as they go about their daily high school lives.

The opening scene of Kill Me Please is terrific, showcasing the harrowing demise of a teenage girl whose only crime was walking home alone at night. Panic leads to pursuit, which leads to the girl’s final, fearful gaze into the camera and her piercing, dying screams. Neither the killer nor the girl’s blood is ever shown. The sequence is all atmosphere and adrenaline, recalling the openings of slasher flicks from the 1980s, and it’s an opening that will grab viewers from frame one.

With the opening gambit established, the film settles in, introduces its players—Bia, her girlfriends, her slacker brother João (Bernardo Marinho), her boyfriend Pedro (Vitor Mayer), a few other students—and delves into the daily drama of the young, rich, and beautiful, with diversions into the darker side of life with every new victim.

There are several films that come to mind when considering Kill Me Please. Its horror strains invoke thoughts of Brian de Palma’s Carrie; its beautiful and privileged teens having their lives jolted by death, and how reactions to death vary from teen to teen, harkens to Michael Lehmann’s Heathers; and João Atala’s lush and colorful cinematography calls to mind Benoît Debie’s lens work in Spring Breakers. Unfortunately, this film is nowhere near the level of any of those.

The problems begin early on, when the film doesn’t know when to stop settling in and eventually becomes stuck in a rut. Writer/director da Silveira parts ways with the slasher film motif (and all its promise) to handle things like character development and plot, of which there is very little. The teens’ lives include the expected, like sexual awakening, competitiveness in the athletic arena (handball), petty jealousy, passive/aggressive body shaming, religion, and rival cliques. These are all part of creating, wrestling with, and solving teen angst. The problem is how lifeless the characters are. Kids meant to be regarded as soulful or introspective instead come across as apathetic bores. Even Bia’s growing obsession with the murders never takes on any kind of intensity; it’s only an increased interest.

Because the director never returns to the intensity of his opening sequence, subsequent victims are shown after their demise, not during, or they’re simply talked about (save for a montage of their faces late in the film, only proving the dead were just as beautiful as the living). Some might consider this to be a less is more approach, but that sense is never conveyed. The murders are cold, distant events that lose all gravitas because they are talking points about murders, not the actual murders. The fact that there are adult characters in the film is an interesting and gutsy choice, but it strains credulity as the body count grows since no police ever show up.

Kill Me Please is a gorgeous-looking film that ultimately falls victim to its own narcissism, relying on its aesthetic so heavily that the function of its story is mostly an afterthought. After squandering an excellent beginning, it never recovers to offer a satisfying finished product.

Kill Me Please screens as part of New Directors/New Films in New York City. To learn more about the festival or buy tickets, visit www.newdirectors.org.

I love a good ghost story, so when I read the synopsis of first-time writer/director Zhang Hanyi’s Life After Life—a description that included the spirit of a deceased mother possessing her son—I was all in. While I didn’t quite get what I bargained for, what I got wasn’t bad. It’s a ghost story for sure, but one unlike anything I’ve seen before.

Mingchung (Zhang Minjun) and his son Leilei (Zhang Li) are walking through the forest gathering fallen sticks to use as kindling in the fireplace that warms their home. After a brief spat between the two, Leilei sees a hare race by and gives chase. He’s gone for several minutes and when he returns, he is Leilei only in body; his spirit has been replaced by that of his late mother, Xiuying. Using her own voice, Xiuying asks her widowed husband to return to their previous home, dig up the tree she planted in the front yard (a gift from her father), and replant it somewhere safe from the industrialization that is growing and will eventually lay waste to that old land. Mingchung dutifully obliges, at first attempting to recruit help but eventually doing it himself, with Leilei/Xiuying’s help.

The setting, which Hanyi and cinematographer Chang Mang magnificently capture in wide static shots with sharp details and an achingly muted palate, reflects a barebones Chinese countryside forever skirting the edges of industrial sprawl. The land is mostly dead, but the sense is that the death is not some hibernation demanded by the wintery season; instead, it’s the earth’s terminal state of complete surrender to the assault it is under.

The film’s characters are not much different. Repressed by dreadful socioeconomic conditions, Mingchung and those whom he attempts to recruit to relocate the tree are distant, unemotional, and devoid of personality or excitability. If no one is phased by the notion that Xiuying has returned in the form of her own son’s possessed body, then it comes as no surprise that no one is phased at the site of a man suffocating a goat. That’s a level of repression that borders on abused. It might also explain why Mingchung can’t get the help he wants since nobody cares.

And yet buried deep within these doldrums are sparks of hope. Xiuying, at least in spirit, is back with her husband, and she gets the opportunity to see her parents one last time. This offers hope for an afterlife and a way back for those so inclined. And at one point, Xiuying alerts Mingchung that his deceased parents have since been reincarnated—one as a dog and one as a bird. It’s absurd to the point of being funny, although the constant hum of misery stifles any laughter.

Then there is, of course, the love story. It isn’t overt or sappy, nor is it traditional, but it’s there in the form of Mingchung taking on this massive task rather than not rejoicing in his late wife’s temporary return. He didn’t have much of a life, but the life he had was put on old to make her happy one last time. He seals the deal with a devastating monologue late in the film, where the reason for her demise is revealed and his regret surrounding the circumstances and the aftermath come to light. It’s never elaborated on, but their meet-cute must have been something special.

Life After Life, with its foreign arthouse sensibilities, its glacial pace, and its chasms of silence between sparse lines of dialogue, is a film that dares you to dislike it. And yet I didn’t. In fact, I found it quite hypnotic. I also found it rather sentimental, given the task at hand for its protagonist and who’s responsible for sending them on their journey. It isn’t a perfect film, and it won’t be for everyone, but it’s certainly worth a shot.

Life After Life screens as part of New Directors/New Films in New York City. To learn more about the festival or buy tickets, visit www.newdirectors.org.

It’s only taken 35 years for Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu to reunite on screen, but anyone expecting fireworks between the two French acting titans will come away befuddled by Valley of Love. What begins as a two-hander dealing with the grief of two parents in Death Valley gradually transforms into something more surreal and mysterious, a sort of Lynchian turn that tends to happen with films utilizing desert locations. It’s a switch that fascinates more than it satisfies, turning the questions surrounding loss into literal (and increasingly bizarre) mysteries. Writer/director Guillaume Nicloux’s attempts to make his film into something more spiritual by the end don’t pay off too well, but Huppert and Depardieu’s strong performances help soften the blow.

The tragedy kicking the story into gear is the suicide of Michael, the only son of actors Isabelle (Huppert) and Gerard (Depardieu). The two of them have been divorced for years, and their relationship with Michael sounds strained; Isabelle last saw him over seven years ago, and Gerard, while having a stronger bond with Michael, admits he didn’t have much of a presence in his son’s life. At some point before or after Michael’s suicide (Nicloux keeps the distinction unclear, the first sign that something metaphysical might be going on), both parents receive a letter from him urging them to meet in Death Valley several months after his death. He lays out a series of locations across the desert for them to travel to, promising them that, if they follow his instructions, they will get to see him again.

Beyond the letters, Valley of Love leaves Michael undefined as a character, a choice that makes sense given the film unfolds through the perspective of his absent parents. The decision to follow their deceased son’s instructions is both a way to confront their loss together and an attempt at making up for their poor parenting. The majority of the film plays out through conversations between Isabelle and Gerard about their own lives, reflecting on the past and pondering about their uncertain future (Isabelle is in the process of divorcing her current husband, and Gerard’s health has been failing). This is where the presence of Huppert and Depardieu elevates Nicloux’s screenplay to something more meaningful. Huppert does an expectedly great job, weaving through different emotional states while keeping Isabelle grounded as a character, but the real surprise here is Depardieu. It’s a different role for Depardieu considering his output in recent years, and it’s a welcome change, giving him the opportunity to play a more nuanced role alongside Huppert.

But Nicloux has other ideas in mind than just letting his two leads’ chemistry carry the film. Eventually, the supernatural elements take a larger role in the story, like when Isabelle claims that Michael grabbed her ankle while she was alone in her hotel room. The film’s shift from drama to surreal mystery creates some striking moments (like Gerard having a strange encounter with a woman at his hotel), but it comes at the expense of reducing the story down to a conflict between faith and skepticism. That conflict weakens the film, making it go from an involving exploration of two characters processing the loss of their son to covering a broader (and, therefore, less interesting) topic. Aside from Huppert and Depardieu’s committed turns, the only thing stopping Valley of Love from collapsing in on itself is Nicloux’s earnest approach, making some of the more bald-faced moments—especially the closing scene—avoid becoming too mawkish or absurd. The difficulty in finding an overall purpose for Nicloux’s venture into the metaphysical makes Valley of Love feel like tagging along on a road trip that goes nowhere, but with company like Huppert and Depardieu, it’s hard to find much reason to complain.

Before my grandmother passed away, she taught my wife how to make homemade pierogi from scratch. There were no cookbooks nor smartphone apps to be found in the kitchen that day. All that filled the room were the intoxicating smells of our traditional Christmas Eve dinner, a pile of ingredients that dwindled as the day grew long, and two people standing side-by-side, one passing tradition along to the other in a culinary masterclass of ethnic cuisine. I was reminded of that day while watching Sweet Bean, the latest film from writer/director Naomi Kawase.

“Making bean paste is all about heart, sonny.” So says 76-year-old Tokue (Kirin Kiki) as she all but begs for a part-time job from baker Sentaro (Masatoshi Nagase). Despite her enthusiasm and her willingness to take less pay than he is offering, Sentaro is reluctant to employ Tokue because of her age, the frailty that accompanies it, and her gnarled hands. He isn’t dismissive, but he certainly isn’t open-minded. The next morning, Tokue returns with a container of her own homemade An (sweet red bean paste), along with a little trash talk about how Sentaro’s An isn’t very good. She argues that the paste he uses doesn’t taste good, and that the delicious pancakes he makes for his dorayakis are betrayed by such poorly mass-produced filling.

It isn’t until after he tries Tokue’s paste that Sentaro finds religion in the recipe. He hires Tokue, and in the process gets much more than a loyal and hardworking employee (and lines of new customers who have heard about this otherworldly confection). On his journey with the septuagenarian, one he shares with Wakana (Kyara Uchida), a teenage girl who frequents his shop, the baker learns much more than Tokue’s secret recipe.

While there is considerable depth to Sweet Bean, no other consideration can be given to the film without first addressing its culinary aspect. It’s marvelous. Some cooking scenes are brief but impactful, like several where Sentaro makes batter from scratch, pours the golden gooey goodness on the skillet, and flips the palm-sized pancakes at just the right golden-brown moment. Other scenes are a little more special, particularly the dazzling 10-minute sequence where Tokue and Sentaro work side-by-side so the elder can show the baker just how that paste is made. It’s all so dazzling in its meticulousness. Kawase’s observations on cooking are quite intimate, with many close-ups that give the viewer a sense of the food’s texture, combined with Shigeki Akiyama’s rich cinematography that strikes the perfect balance of soft and warm to create something of a visual tasting menu.

Deeper, though, the cooking sequences before the introduction of Tokue offer more than just gastric titillation. Nagase, who is excellent as Sentaro, uses the baker’s solo cooking scenes to convey a sense of heaviness in his soul. Cooking is driven by all five senses, making it a very passionate form of art. But through the listless repetition of his daily routine, Sentaro postures himself as one who has lost that passion years ago, with no desire to find it again. Even when a small group of giggling and chatty schoolgirls show up for their daily treat, he is unmoved by them. This is the result of something from his past that continues to haunt his present and affect his future, a secret that’s revealed later on in the film.

Also revealed later in the film is the part of Tokue’s life that at one time may have haunted her, but is now something that she has learned to live with and live through. Her approach to cooking has its roots in nature. She speaks of things like listening to the stories that the beans tell as she goes through her cooking ritual. One can’t help but wonder, at least at first, if these are simply the musings of a woman who has lived alone for too long. But the character is one keenly in tune with nature, particularly the cycle of the cherry blossoms, and who is mostly intoxicated by that connection, creating a giddiness that belies her age. Kiki, who is delightful in this role, presents Tokue as both the crazy aunt and caring grandmother everyone loves in equal measure yet for entirely different reasons.

Wakana is a little less developed as a character, thus a little more enigmatic, but no less important. Like Sentaro and Tokue, she is somewhat alone. She lives with her mother, but her mother seems more concerned about having spilled her beer than worrying about what the spill might have ruined. This less specific character sketch, coupled with the fact Wakana plays a critical role late in the film, suggests the girl is a step or two removed from being nothing more than a character of convenience. But her daily patronage of Sentaro’s shop, and how he treats her compared to the giggling schoolgirls who also come in every day, suggest Wakana has a certain gravitas that will eventually reveal itself. It does, but mostly in the sense that she will become the next generation needed to take up this art of cuisine and use what she has learned from those before her. She shares a brief but memorable moment over tempura with Sentaro, where the two of them meet by chance at a local restaurant one evening (before Tokue’s hiring) and decide to dine together. Sentaro speaks to Wakana like an adult, confiding in her something that surely took guts for him to admit, let alone share.

The film’s ending is predictable (and early), and that ending veers towards mawkish, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t satisfying.

Based on a novel by Durian Sukegawa, Sweet Bean (known also as An and Sweet Red Bean Paste) is a delicate, enchanting, layered Japanese drama about so much more than food. It’s about isolation, regret, and the sense of helplessness that comes with losing control of your own destiny. These three people are forever bonded as both equals and (unrelated) generations of a greater spiritual family. With excellent performances and a fine directing touch, Sweet Bean is a film worth finding and savoring.

Kaili Blues, which has made a quiet name for itself on the festival circuit, has described by fans and critics as dreamlike, and it truly is, in so many senses. For some, this dream is an incoherent poet, stumbling through the last few drops of whiskey in a flask. For others, it is an otherworldly calling, a dizzying sense of realisation—or what some might even call enlightenment. The line between the two is probably a fine one.

Set in the rural province of Guizhou, China, even the film’s foggy, mystical location exudes a surreal quality, as though we are floating from scene to scene, character to character. This experience is only heightened by director Gan Bi’s use of long, uncut takes, which frequently disorient our sense of time. Gan Bi himself explains his preference of long takes by describing them as “liberating” and “close to poetry.” Somewhere between the art of poetry and the motif of time is where Kaili Blues lies, driven not by a narrative but by a feeling. As much as we cannot tell where the film is going, we cannot tell if it is going anywhere at all, or if it even needs to be.

However, Kaili Blues is intermittently concerned with a more tangible journey, depicting the travels of Chen (Chen Yongzhong) from his hometown of Kaili to Zhenyuan in order to find his nephew Weiwei. Chen’s brother—Weiwei’s father—is the unreliable Crazy Face (Xie Lixun), whose character is best represented by the knowledge that he may have sold his son. On his journey, Chen stops through the town of Dangmai, where space, time and reason all become unfathomable, and the film relies solely on our emotional connection to each character as they transiently pass into and beyond the lens. It’s a bold move, but one that forces the audience to question our understanding of reality as the discernable opposite of fantasy, interweaving the two until their distinction is not only obscured, but rendered unimportant.

One of the most interesting ways Bi achieves this is through the inclusion of actual poetry, both his own and that from the Diamond Sutra, a text of ancient Buddhist teachings. Read by the protagonist as a voiceover during several shots, the poems center our experience of the film, allowing and encouraging us to speculate on various moments whilst ensuring we never stray too far into the ethereal. Indeed, these sharp, contextual poems feel somewhat necessary, as though without them we would be adrift in a sea of memories with no sense of direction.

This exploration of time and memory is also wonderfully portrayed through music—both in the film’s traditionally inspired soundtrack and within the story itself. Chen’s search for a group of men who play the Lusheng, a traditional Miao instrument, leads instead to a group of young men about to play a pop concert. It is a clear but unobnoxious signifier of the inevitable modernisation of rural China, demonstrating both visually and aurally the meeting point of two generations. Yet Bi’s construction of this encounter is critical of neither the modern nor the traditional, preferring to hang, motionless, in a chasm of time where both can exist harmoniously. This lack of any linear motion through time is almost entirely what the town of Dangmai seems to represent; it is a place where memories can happen tomorrow, and passing trains can turn clocks backwards.

Kaili Blues has thoroughly impressed many as a directorial debut, and it’s perhaps the promise of more to come from Gan Bi that truly grips our interest. One technical feat in the film has been rightly praised—a single shot that lasts over 40 minutes long, and must have required an incredible amount of choreography in order to seamlessly flow through so many scenes. It cycles through a wide variety of characters, each of whom plays a small but significant role in our gradual understanding of the film, if that ever happens. But just like a dream, understanding what has happened is a far less meaningful goal than embracing the experience: in this case, one of a delicate, pastoral trance.

Kaili Blues screens as part of New Directors/New Films in New York City. To learn more about the festival or buy tickets, visit www.newdirectors.org.

There’s a part of being the victim of infidelity that isn’t often discussed: the suspicion of infidelity. Unlike the flare of rage that comes with the surprise of catching a cheat, suspicion envelops the mind slowly like quicksand, pulling an already fragile psyche deeper and deeper into the abyss until there’s nothing left but suspicion itself. Innocuous happenings become something more, something ominous, but they never quite manifest into damning evidence. All they do is fuel more suspicion, because if that last thing was almost proof, the next thing surely will be proof. Suspicion creates a lot of smoke, but usually without ever producing the gun. In Asghar Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday, the suspicion of infidelity wreaks havoc on the psyche of a woman in Tehran.

Rouhi (Taraneh Alidoosti) is a beautiful young bride-to-be whose wedding won’t pay for itself, so she takes a temp role as a cleaning woman for a family of three. On her first day on the job, Rouhi finds herself dealing with more than messy rooms and dirty windows. The husband and wife who have hired her—Morteza (Hamid Farokhnezhad) and Mozhde (Hediyeh Tehrani)—appear to be on the last legs of their marriage as they ferociously argue in front of their new hire about how Morteza broke his promise to have a serious talk with Mozhde about their future so he could go to work on his day off. Mozhde sees this not only as a slight but as a sign that her husband is having an affair. Mozhde recruits Rouhi to spy on Morteza, but even that grows into something more than she signed up for.

Other than the glow from the soon-to-be-wed Rouhi, the first thing that becomes a constant presence in Fireworks Wednesday is the perpetual hum of chaos. The film takes place on Persian New Year when fireworks go off in the streets all day and night (seemingly by everyone in town). The constant bursts of noise sound like a military skirmish, creating a low-level hum of aural unease. This sets the film’s tone, acting as a celebration and a backbeat for the unfolding drama.

The highlight of the film is Farhadi’s construct of, and Tehrani’s portrayal of, Mozhde. The chaos in the streets outside and in the apartment inside are nothing compared to the chaos in Mozhde’s psyche. She starts out as angry, a woman defending her marriage and not feeling the same level of commitment from her husband to save it. But that anger is ultimately powered by suspicion, and when her husband is at work, that suspicion tears her down as it builds itself up. Every number on caller ID, every conversation overheard through the apartment’s ventilation system, every other randomly discovered factoid that doesn’t feel quite right becomes more smoke without a gun. Like a person with a terminal illness begging for a mercy-killing, Mozhde simply wants relief from her pain. Without saying it, she knows that relief will only come with discovering the worst because there’s no way of disproving her suspicion. In an effort to expedite that relief, she enlists Rouhi’s help.

Poor Rouhi. The young girl only knows love and happiness with her man, not whatever it is Morteza and Mozhde have. But over the course of only one day, Rouhi shifts from bystander to witness to full-on participant in a very messy domestic game, and in the process learns about the frailty of marriage, the criticality of communication, the trickery of deceit, and the importance of honesty. It’s a wedding gift no one intended to give her, and one she shouldn’t try to return.

Put it all together and the director of A Separation and The Past has done it again, crafting an excellent exercise in weathering sustained chaos. There are early moments when the film doesn’t have the steam it should, but once it gets going it plays almost like a psychological thriller, although one stripped of that genre’s tropes. Tension mounts, characters evolve, and secrets are revealed. Yet even with all that, and with the ominous sense of discovery forever looming overhead, nothing is ever overwrought or overplayed. Fireworks Wednesday was first released in Iran in 2006. After a decade-long wait, the film is finally receiving a release in the US.

After its premiere at 2015’s SXSW Film Festival (where it won the Grand Jury and Audience awards), Trey Edward Shults’ Krisha received comparisons to the likes of John Cassavetes and Terrence Malick. Given that Shults has worked on several of Malick’s recent films—starting out as an intern on The Tree of Life—those comparisons feel obvious, even though they’re earned. The Cassavetes comparisons come from both Shults’ low-budget, indie origins and his close-knit cast (almost everyone in the film is a family member). These associations with such big names in American indie filmmaking have critics and audiences making their point clear: Krisha marks the arrival of a new, bold voice for indie films.

Then again, referring to Shults’ work as nothing but an amalgamation of potential influences only does a good job describing what Krisha is like, rather than what it actually is. There’s something here that sets Shults apart from every other up and coming American director getting their break at film festivals around the country, and it’s evident right from the beginning: a close-up of the title character (Krisha Fairchild, Shults’ real-life aunt) staring the camera down, with ominous strings surging on the soundtrack. That stark opening shot is followed by a complex long take, where Krisha walks around a suburban neighbourhood looking for a house, finds it after winding up at the wrong place, and then introduces herself to the guests inside. It’s soon revealed that the guests are Krisha’s own family, who she hasn’t seen in over a decade, and she’s arrived to celebrate Thanksgiving with them. Shults’ decision to film the sequence in one lengthy shot implies either a keen understanding of his own material—the high-wire act of pulling off such a sequence feeding into the awkward nature of the family reunion—or a showy stunt, the kind first-time directors like to make as a way to get noticed.

What differentiates Shults from the pack has less to do with story (he’s far from the first person to tackle a disastrous holiday reunion) and more to do with his execution. Krisha’s decade-long absence from her family’s lives is due in large part to her addictions and penchant for self-destructive behaviour, and Shults lets the film’s form act as a gateway into his lead character’s anxious perspective. Using quick cuts, whirling camera movements, an abrasive score (courtesy of Brian McOmber), shifting aspect ratios, and plenty of other tricks, the film becomes a cacophony that reflects Krisha’s immense, self-imposed stress. Despite the invite from her sister Robyn (Robyn Fairchild, Shults’ mother), Krisha senses the anger and resentment brewing just underneath her relatives’ friendly demeanor. She expects every interaction with one of her family members to turn confrontational at any second.

But how can Krisha work as an entrance into its protagonist’s mind when there’s no proper context for it? The bulk of Krisha’s concerns come from the fear of her family calling out her poor behaviour over the years, yet Shults cares little about establishing his other characters’ relationships to her. Beyond a basic establishing of her past issues and the uncomfortable nature of the reunion, Shults doesn’t bother trying to convey a full understanding of what brought Krisha and her family to their current emotional states. That makes the inevitable sour turn of events, culminating in Krisha’s relapse, unearned; her downward spiral feels manufactured for maximum melodrama, and her relatives the pawns designed to carry the story to its emotionally charged destination.

So if we want to find a different filmmaker to compare Shults to, one that helps explain his sensibilities rather than the conditions of his production, we just have to look north. Much like Canadian director Xavier Dolan’s work—more specifically Mommy and Tom at the Farm—Shults shows an interest in emotional intensity for its own sake. They prefer to let the visceral qualities of shouting matches and familial angst compensate for the lack of any weight behind these intense feelings, all while wrapping it up in superfluous or ineffective formal quirks that amplify the content, instead of complementing or supporting it. Granted, Shults’ approach is an effective one, even if it’s transparent; Fairchild gives a great performance, and there’s something inherently involving about watching this family fall apart. But it only works up to a certain point. As Krisha keeps going, it’s obvious that its director only knows how to operate in loud, shrill tones, and what the film amounts to is a fireworks show: loud, short bursts of excitement that fade fast and get old quick. It doesn’t come as a surprise when the film ends during its most heated moment, cutting off mid-scream to a dedication before the credits start rolling. With Krisha, Shults shows that he knows how to get people’s attention—figuring out what to do with it is another story altogether.

In his latest movie, Knight of Cups, Terrence Malick asks us to join him, for the third time in a row, on a journey through the meandering thoughts of people lost in life, confessing their innermost moral quandaries to the cosmos as they stumble and crawl across god’s green earth and bask in heavenly sunlight. This time, the setting is Los Angeles, photographed in all its concrete, Art-Deco grandeur by trusted Malick collaborator (and Oscar darling) Emmanuel Lubezki. We follow and listen in on the thoughts of fading movie star Rick (Christian Bale) and, occasionally, his famous friends, as Malick lays out another unbearably thin narrative that’s as deviously frustrating as a 500-piece puzzle with 450 pieces missing. The eminently respected auteur clearly has a firm grip on the art of filmmaking—at his best, he’s one of the greats—but with his work becoming increasingly nebulous and less inviting to audiences, it’s come to the point where patience for his vagaries grows dangerously thin.

In an almost wordless onscreen performance (we hear his voice, but mostly in the form of narration), Bale drifts down the streets of L.A., occasionally jumping in thought to memories from Las Vegas, Century City and Santa Monica. Rick is in a perpetual state of punch-drunk spiritual crisis, surrounded by gorgeous women who glom onto his status, wealth and handsome looks until his emotional ineptness becomes too much to bear, at which point they make way for the next batch of girls to grab at his pants.

Rick’s fleeting romantic partners are played by a dizzying crowd of famous faces: Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Imogen Poots, Teresa Palmer, Freida Pinto, Isabel Lucas and more can now add a Malick film to their resume. The roles are thin—Blanchett plays his ex-wife, Portman plays a fling—but isn’t every role thin in a Malick movie these days? Antonio Banderas makes an appearance a Hollywood playboy who throws a swanky house party littered with real-life celebrities playing themselves (“Look! It’s Joe Manganiello! Nick Kroll! Danny Strong! Wait…Danny Strong? Huh?”). Banderas takes over narration duties for a bit, spouting twisted, misogynist philosophy. “Women are like flavors,” he says in his sumptuous Spanish accent. “Sometimes you want raspberry, but then you get tired of it and you want strawberry.”

Malick does a good job of laying out the monstrous, indulgent allure of showbiz that pulled Rick in and broke him down into the wandering, pulp of a man he is. He’s become a phony, just like all the other soul-sapped leeches overpopulating the trashy town that bred them (to be clear, Angelenos, I mean Tinseltown, or the idea of it, not L.A.). Similarly swallowed by the city is Rick’s brother (Wes Bently), a non-famous drifter whose short temper is inherited from his and Rick’s late father. The particulars of the family drama (and, in fact, most of the particulars of Ricks life) are left for us to imagine on our own, but the quality of Bale and Bentley’s performances helps to form some semblance of an emotional arc.

Some (this writer included) would consider it a duty of a true movie lover to meet the filmmaker halfway when a film’s concepts or ideas are challenging or obscure. But with Malick’s recent work, it feels like he’s not meeting us halfway. We can only give so much of ourselves over to him before his movies start to feel like tedious chores. What’s so tragic about this is that, on a cinematic level, he’s phenomenal: he and Lubezki’s imagery is sweeping, evocative and immaculately conceived. Some moments—like a ground-level shot of Bale taking a knee on the concrete as an earthquake shakes the buildings and people around him—are so exquisite you could cry. But without a deeper sense of cohesion, these cinematic feats start to feel hollow as they pile on top of each other for two hours straight. As with Malick’s last movie, To The Wonder, Knight of Cups topples over, leaving us to sift through a mess of pretty pictures in a desperate search of some morsel of meaning. Like his characters, maybe it’s time for us to wake the hell up.

Crass, crude, foul-mouthed comedies have been all the rage at the movies for some time now, with the trendiest comedians from any given year dropping F-bombs, and spouting off rapid-fire fraternity jokes in their (almost always nudity-obsessed) star vehicles. Wet Hot American Summer and The State co-creator Michael Showalter‘s latest offering, Hello, My Name Is Doris, is the perfect antidote to the unending strain of Apatow offshoots: It balances classy, screwball comedy, bone-deep drama, and old-fashioned romance with the finesse of an Olympic gymnast. For once, it’s a rom-com with aims of enchanting and disarming us rather than grossing us out of our minds.

The film’s greatest boon is its star, Sally Field, an actor of age who puts on a performance so range-y, powerful and tender that it all but wipes today’s young, sparkling starlets from memory. She plays Doris, a sixtysomething recluse who’s lived in her mother’s cluttered house in Staten Island her whole life. Doris falls into lonely despair when her mother passes away but thankfully has her job as a paper pusher to keep her busy during the day. She’s the only person over 40 at her company though her role as office outcast could be more attributed to her cat-lady eccentricities (cat-eye glasses, headscarves, wooly knits and all).

Hope of getting Doris unstuck from her rut arrives in the form of her company’s new art director, a strapping, decades-younger Los Angeles transplant amusingly named John Fremont (New Girl‘s Max Greenfield). On several occasions, we get lost with Doris in fantasy as she daydreams about John confessing his love for her in front of their colleagues and hooking up with him in the breakroom. Field is ungodly adorable as she fumbles and fawns, and Greenfield does a good job of keeping us in suspense as to whether or not Doris has got a shot at John’s heart.

With encouragement from her best (only) friend, Roz (Tyne Daly)—who takes her to a life-altering lecture by motivational speaker Willy Williams (Peter Gallagher)—Doris decides it’s time to make a change and begins fashioning herself to John’s interests (facilitated by Roz’s granddaughter, who schools her on the art of Facebook stalking), making a concerted, somewhat creepy effort to cougar her way into John’s arms. Suddenly, she’s clumsily throwing around millennial slang, rocking neon yellow outfits and going to indie electro-pop shows headlined by John’s favorite band, Baby Goya and the Nuclear Winters (where the two “coincidentally” bump into each other).

Just as a tight friendship starts to form between them and the thought of romance doesn’t seem so inconceivable, John meets another woman, bringing Doris’ dreams crashing down. In a drunken fit of desperation, she sabotages John’s new relationship (via a lovelorn timeline post from her fake Facebook account), a plan that naturally backfires and leads to even more heartbreak. Showalter and co-writer Laura Terruso—who directed the short the movie is based on as a student of Showalter’s at New York University—hit every romantic, comedic, and dramatic beat so well that the movie transcends genre. This makes for such an enjoyable experience because, instead of trying to predict where the story’s going, we’re allowed to let go of preconception and go wherever the emotions may take us. Every laugh, every heartbreak, every moment feels sincere, not hokey or contrived. Nothing’s cheap; everything’s earned. The movie’s liberating in that way.

Field is so talented it’s scary. It should go without saying—she’s a two-time Oscar winner, after all—but the sad reality is that female actors over 50 are typically relegated to secondary, tertiary, often motherly roles. Her career, tragically, supports that narrative. But that’s why Hello, My Name Is Doris is such a gift; in all her glory, we get to see Field showcase her unparalleled mastery of physical comedy (watching Doris quiver and drool as John pumps up her deflated gym-ball office chair is insanely funny) as well as her earth-shattering dramatic chops. In the movie’s most powerful, unsettling scene, Doris hops up onto her couch, screaming at her brother (Stephen Root) to leave her house as she tearfully refuses to clear out the piles of old magazines and expired food her mother left behind. It’s scenes like this that reveal the psychological complexity bubbling beneath Doris’ cartoonish exterior. Such a wonderfully weird, layered character is only safe in the hands of an actor of Field’s caliber.

Five years after nabbing the Palme d’Or for his 2010 feature, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul, has crafted perhaps his most intimate work in over a decade. Instead of enchanting his audience with surrealist imagery, Joe chooses to mystify us by employing tools as transparent as implication and conversation. But he remains a master of controlling the frame, of capturing the unadulterated sounds of nature’s pumping heart, and he deliberately pulls us into a trance, into a world that exists aesthetically between sleep and dreams, but textually between history and the present moment. Bucolic environments throughout the film are observed in their most silent states, yet the sounds that remain despite the emptiness are amplified. Joe navigates spaces that initially appear slight, but focuses on them so intimately that they become wondrous.

Like fellow East Asian filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang, Joe constructs his takes and their geometry with obsessive deliberation. What sets the two filmmakers apart, at least in terms of what’s visually obvious, is that Joe shoots the majority of his films outdoors, while Tsai’s meditative tone poems are generally consigned to dark interiors. Nature has a constant presence in Cemetery of Splendour. The environments feel sentient, and when the human characters walk through or interact with them, the visible gestures carry the weight of dialogue even though no words are actually spoken. The goal of many filmmakers is to find material worth observing; Joe believes all material is worth observing, and he proves it.

Cemetery of Splendour is set in its director’s hometown of Khon Kaen and stars his frequent collaborator Jenjira Pongpas, whose character, apparently mirroring her director, returns to her childhood home as an adult. She seeks out the school she attended growing up only to find it’s now a makeshift hospital designed to treat a company of soldiers suffering from a mysterious sleeping sickness. The location’s design is immaculate, conflating cloistered objects from its distant past with therapeutic technology that wouldn’t look awry in a modern science fiction film. Enamored by the events taking place in her prior schoolhouse, Jenjira begins tending to a young soldier named Itt (Banlop Lomnoi, co-star of Joe’s Tropical Malady). Itt occasionally breaks through into the waking world, but unless speaking through a telepathic woman named Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), he remains trapped in an unyielding slumber.

As the story progresses, we learn that the schoolyard turned hospital was built on a cemetery of kings, and that the restless spirits of these kings feed on the energy of these soldiers, ensnaring them in their own subconscious. Jenjira and the other characters occupying the present slowly begin to comprehend what exactly is going on, and as they do, history’s voice only grows louder. A pair of goddess statues take human form and begin to converse with Jenjira, telling her stories as though she were their contemporary. Viewing the film through western eyes, I can only assume the enigma of its mythology is exacerbated by cultural removal. But even taking this into account, I hesitate to wonder whether the extent of its message has failed to transcend that regional barrier. What Joe has to say seems like something people from all cultures could identify with.

The material in Cemetery of Splendour, while initially alien, is unpacked with grace and explicability. As ancient spirits contact those currently occupying physical bodies, a revelation about the confluence of souls begins to present itself. The high levels of cultural specificity the material appears to impose gets decimated by the universality of the ideology it harbors. Even referring to Joe’s philosophy as ideological seems reductive. He is merely enthralled by the relationships between conscious minds. It doesn’t matter that a hospital has been erected atop a cemetery, just like it doesn’t matter whether clouds look over a river or an ocean sits above the sky. All that matters is that these bodies and the minds that make them unique are in constant dialogue. Forgotten kings can chat with and advise millennial nurses and soldiers, because why wouldn’t they? Every tree, river, animal, and being that ever was and ever will be must rely on one another with the utmost compassion. Otherwise, how could we even bear to live?

It always feels important to rediscover an established filmmaker’s earliest work. There’s a unique artistic pleasure in dissecting the roots, looking for the under-developed thematic, narrative or formalistic signs of eventual greatness—almost as if we are over-analyzing a childhood to reconcile why someone became a serial killer. With its re-release at the IFC Center in New York on Friday, March 11th, our eyes fix on Kelly Reichardt’s River of Grass. It’s difficult to find reviews of the film from its premiere at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival and its subsequent limited theatrical release, but by all accounts, it received solid buzz considering it was a debut film. River of Grass was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance when the festival was at the height of its grassroots independent glory. Interestingly, Tom Noonan’s directorial debut What Happened Was (a film by a notable filmmaker that has been similarly forgotten) won the prize, which competed in a lineup that included Clerks, Spanking the Monkey and Hoop Dreams—three films that cemented the cultural importance of Sundance at the time. Twelve years after River of Grass, Reichardt made her breakout film Old Joy and has been on an indie cred tear ever since.

River of Grass stars Lisa Bowman as Cozy, a bored wife and mother, stuck in a boring life with a boring family in a boring community. Restless, she decides to hit the bar one night, abandoning her motherly responsibilities in the process. She meets Lee Ray (Larry Fessenden), a young slacker who has recently come into the possession of a gun. They connect, leave the bar together and eventually get into some trouble because of that loaded gun. Cozy and Lee Ray are now tied together by murder, a bond which Cozy notes is stronger than the bond of marriage. The two leads give very fine, understated performances, with Bowman particularly good in the weirder and quieter moments. Fessenden, in one of his earliest performance, brings energy to the film.

The film is very much in line with the 1990s Sundance indie from which it came. The offbeat characters, loose narrative, crime elements and hushed voice-over are all trademarks of its time, which gives the film a bit of a time capsule feeling. It also has an up-front comedic sense that we don’t associate with most of Reichardt’s films, but was definitely a part of indie cinema at the time. From a recurring joke with a profane punchline and weird character moments, the film is consistently funny. Sometimes it’s absurd too, like when Cozy and Lee Roy are on the lam only to be revealed they are in the same city as where they started. It’s the standard couple-on-the-run plot through the ’90s slacker sensibility. They see themselves as dangerous bandits but are ultimately too chickenshit to run through a toll stop. When they do eventually try to leave southern Florida, they fail in about the most pathetic way possible. Even Cozy’s monotone voice-over becomes humorous in its super serious pseudo-philosophy: Cozy’s realization of “If we weren’t killers, we weren’t anything,” for example.

For Reichardt, River of Grass is very much in line with her look at small communities. The film’s title comes from a Native nickname for the Everglades, the Florida swampland only miles outside of Miami with the complete opposite aesthetic. Instead of the bright fluorescent lights, beaches and nightclubs, the “River of Grass” is rural with miles of flat land dissected by lonely highways. The inhabitants are working-class and semi-transient, similar to their Northwest counterparts in Wendy and Lucy and Old Joy.

At less than 80 minutes, the film reveals itself as more of a slice-of-life than it seemed. This is perhaps what makes River of Grass most like its auteur’s work. All of Reichardt’s films, no matter how profound, emotionally or thematically rich, are very much a moment in their characters’ lives. Like Meek’s Cutoff, River of Grass ends with a particular sense of dread, but just open-ended enough not to pin down. Certainly, Reichardt could have expanded Cozy and Lee Ray’s life, added more debauchery or heightened the stakes of their criminal fall-out, but she chose to keep the narrative shaggy and simple—sure, the ultra-strapped indie budget probably had a practical effect on the film’s length, but there is the beginning of a narrative line here.

I don’t know why River of Grass didn’t immediately achieve a cult reception similar to Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Clerks or other films similar in their time and space, but thankfully Kelly Reichardt persevered, allowing you to take a look back to over-analyze or simply discover the roots of one of today’s most important filmmakers. It shouldn’t be forgotten, however, that River of Grass is a very good debut in its own right. The film is often funny, often elusive, and very confident in its style and narrative presentation.

A tale of love and nightmares, They Look Like People is a haunting, fun, emotionally rich genre piece that gives you plenty to ponder after the closing credits. Filmmaker Perry Blackshear and actors Evan Dumouchel and MacLeod Andrews ran a tiny, DIY production with a crew that consisted mostly of themselves, but they’d have had it no other way. Their goal was simply to make something together, bounce ideas off of each other and strengthen the bond and friendship they already had. In this regard, the project was a complete success. The fact that the movie kicks copious ass is just icing on the cake.

The movie follows Wyatt (Andrews), a disturbed man who foresees an impending war with otherworldly shape-shifters. Teetering on the edge of madness, he stays with his friend Christian (Dumouchel), who’s trying his best to understand Wyatt’s paranoia but struggles to come to terms with his bizarre visions. Confused and pushed to the breaking point, their friendship is put to the test, all leading to a heartstopping moment of truth that will change their lives forever.

I spoke with Perry, Evan and MacLeod during their visit to San Francisco this past February to talk about They Look Like People, which will be available to watch on demand in the coming months. To keep track of the movie, visit theylooklikepeople.com and like their facebook page.

I liked how the film explored mental health. I remember when I was battling depression I’d sometimes think terrible thoughts about my loved ones. It was really weird.
Perry: My friend went through a really tough time and started to think people were spying on him and also that people he loved were evil things pretending to be his loved ones. This friend is now extremely successful and married and is about to have his first kid. There isn’t anything deeply wrong with him, but I think that kind of thing can happen to anybody. It’s scary, man.

Evan: We’ve had a lot of people talking about how they can identify with what’s going on in the film. Maybe not just those kind of thoughts, but any issue you have with a friend. It resonates with people by simply asking them how they would react to a similar experience.

MacLeod: There has been a handful of people who very specifically have had similar circumstances with their friend.

Perry: We guys are really emotionally inept. [laughs] Sometimes when your friend is going through something, you’re just like, “Cool, man. Well…cool.” [laughs]

Evan: “Whoa, that sucks, bro.”

Perry: You can’t just say, “Call me if you have a problem.” There have been times when I’ve missed those kinds of signs. You have to kind of stay with someone. The movie’s about paying close attention to stuff like that.

What’s nice is that your movie is a love story between to guy friends who are very vulnerable. I feel like the media doesn’t really depict men as being vulnerable or needing help enough.
Evan: I would argue Whiplash is a love story between two men! [laughs]

You know what? I interviewed Damien Chazelle and I said that to him. I said that I felt it was a sexual movie, not in the literal sense of Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons being romantic, but in the tone of their relationship. He looked at me like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Evan: I definitely feel like it’s a love story, or at least a way that men can be men with each other that’s not about anything that’s sexually charged. There are a lot of different kinds of love. I think it’s important to explore that.

Perry: I wanted the movie to be about love between humans. People have said “bromance,” but I think it’s that these friends just happen to be guys.

MacLeod: But I think it is specifically about Christian’s experience and how he perceives masculinity; how he approaches women, how he wishes he could.

Talk about the scene where you’re doing judo with Margaret.
Evan: The take you see in the film is the first one. We didn’t know if we had the camera set up or the sound right. She had told us that she was a brown belt in judo, but that’s like someone saying they’re a concert pianist and you’ve never heard them play the piano. We were like, “Cool. She’s probably taken a few judo classes.” She proceeded to dismantle me. Everything you see, like when she asks me if I’m ready, I’m just being real to the experience prior to getting my butt kicked. [laughs] I got the wind actually knocked out of me. That’s all take one.

Perry: Right before she put the rear naked choke on him, she said, “I just did this at a wedding, and the guy passed out.”

How about tapping on her ass? Was that planned?
MacLeod: That’s just what happened. He was trying to tap out.

Evan: Mostly I was fighting for breath.

I was watching the movie in my apartment, and when she did the judo throw I was like, “OOOOHHHHH!!!” My wife asked if I was watching UFC, which I do a lot, but I told her, “No—this dude just got judo thrown on his ass on the fucking grass!”
Perry: Who’s the woman who broke, like, 100 girls’ arms?

Ronda Rousey.
Perry: Margaret used to do judo with her. But yeah, that was the first take, and we didn’t know what was going to happen, so you can actually hear in the footage all of us go, “OH MY GOD!!!”

Evan: Then we did four more takes, and we used the first one anyway. [laughs]

Just sitting with you I can tell you guys make a good team.
Perry: The whole reason I made the movie was to work with these guys. We bought the plane tickets for the movie before I wrote the script, which was a big leap of faith on their part. I told Margaret I was making a movie and it had no script, and she said yes. It was a really tiny crew and very collaborative. It was extremely hard. A lot of times the difficulty on set is navigating the different personalities and millions of logistics, but this movie felt like the four of us together, hiking up a giant mountain. There were no overlords.

MacLeod: I think we’re all sensitive to trying to take responsibility and work harder. If one of us would be tiring out, the others would be like, “I can handle this right now.” We’d kind of clap each other up.

Evan: We could all sense when we needed to be there for each other.

MacLeod: Perry’s been on tons of film sets and has seen everything that can go wrong on them. To us, an important thing was to come out of making this movie and still be friends. Perry presented to us this little constitution of ten laws that ended up being so important. One of them was to try and get eight hours of sleep a night. No drinking. If two of the three people take the other one aside and say, “You’re getting a little grumpy. You need to go have a snickers,” you have to stop and go eat something, no matter what. You start getting angry and short with people, and a lot of times it’s because you’re hungry. All three of us would do that at some point.

Evan: Another really important one was 20-minute naps after meals.

MacLeod: Snack time and nap time.

Perry: It’s basically preschool.

MacLeod: Preschool is kinda genius! It’s the basics of what people need!

That’s going to be the headline of the article, by the way: “Preschool is Kinda Genius.”
Perry: We didn’t have much money, but the equity we had was each other. It was very important to protect that and to make sure we were functioning.

MacLeod: The three of us working together was the point. The movie turned out great, but it was secondary to the process of working together. Protecting the friendship and the process was more important that manipulating each other.

Perry: I have a lot of director friends. On bigger sets, there are a lot of tough decisions to be made about relationships and success. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but our number one priority is to make sure we stick together.

Moving forward, how do you protect that bond? It’s going to get harder.
Perry: One of the biggest things I learned is that there’s more than one way to make a movie. Our way isn’t necessarily the right way, but it worked for us. The Duplass brothers make Hollywood movies, but they have a union crew. Once they set up the set, they get them out on the lawn for a day, and it’s just them and the cinematographer and the actors in a room. They protect the things that matter. We learned the things that are really important to us: the story, the characters, and the relationships. If other stuff started to infringe on those, we’d bring it back to what mattered. Hopefully, we can keep doing that even if things start getting bigger. My favorite thing about moviemaking is making them together, with your crew.

There’s a climactic moment of suspense at the end of the movie involving a paper bag. Regarding what’s underneath the bag: it could have gone one of two ways. I love the way you chose to go. I feel like most movies would go the other way. Was that always the ending, or was there a serious decision to be made about which way you went?
Perry: There was a decision to be made. The ending changed throughout writing the script a lot. Even though it’s a movie about monsters and scary stuff, it ended up being way more personal than we expected. The ending emerged from that.

Evan: I think it speaks to Perry’s use of structure and creating a truth to the answer to both questions. I’m really happy about it. The question exists in people’s minds of whether one or the other could be the case. Each could have been true for somebody, and that’s cool for me to hear.

Perry: We wanted to end in a way that gave some answers to some questions, but left others unanswered.

The story of British ski jumper Michael “Eddie” Edwards is of the classic underdog variety: In the 1988 Winter Olympic games in Calgary, he inspired people around the world with his bright personality and infectious enthusiasm, becoming the first ski jumper to represent Great Britain at the games. Funny thing is, Eddie lost. He lost BAD and in spectacular fashion. In both the 70m and 90m events he came in dead last, failing utterly and completely by most competitive standards. Nonetheless, the guy garnered millions of fans simply because he was happy (almost hilariously happy) to be there and do his absolute best.

What Dexter Fletcher‘s Eddie The Eagle gets right is its willingness to poke fun at Eddie, played here by Kingsman: The Secret Service‘s Taron Egerton. Too often movies of its ilk take their subject too seriously, in turn making the story feel schmaltzy, pruned and disingenuous. Fletcher’s film takes several liberties with Eddie’s journey, most notably inserting a fictional trainer (Hugh Jackman). This is easy to swallow: Historical accuracy will never be the most important aspect of telling someone’s life story. Capturing and paying respect to the person’s spirit and reflecting the true value of their accomplishments? That’s everything.

It’s the essence we’re after. In the case of Eddie, his essence is an ability to find pride, joy, and positivity in the face of adversity, derision, and even failure. When he was eliminated from Britain’s downhill ski team, he opted to take up the even more dangerous discipline of ski jumping instead of giving up. When he jumped a comparatively short distance than his competitors at the games, he celebrated and played to the cameras and excited crowds, simply happy to live his dreams. That’s his legacy, funny and inspiring at the same time, and that’s precisely how the movie feels.

Egerton—unrecognizable from his character in Kingsman, donning Edwards’ signature thick glasses, thick mustache and awkward posture—exudes the unlikely Olympian’s plucky positivity without being a caricature. When Eddie’s blue-collar dad (Keith Allen) pulls up to a bus stop to find his son packed and ready to leave home in pursuit of his Olympic dream, he barks at him to get in the car. “Have you ever had a dream?” Eddie asks, to which his father defiantly barks, “To be a plasterer! Let’s go home.” With his chin held determinedly high, Eddie says with compassion, “Bye, dad.”

When Eddie arrives in Germany to train for Olympic qualification, he meets a drunk ex-jumper, Bronson Peary (Jackman), who reluctantly (after relentless pestering) agrees to train young Eddie to land jumps instead of breaking his neck. The juxtaposition of the grizzled veteran and the clumsy rookie is good fun and would have worked better with a few tweaks to Jackman’s character or even a different casting choice. The Austrailian actor simply looks too put together and dashing to be a convincing drunken mess, and the alcoholism angle screenwriters Sean Macaulay and Simon Kelton go with feels unneeded, a futile attempt at making Bronson look like a loser. The actors do have chemistry, though, and Jackman’s pure gold in a scene that sees him illustrate the art of a takeoff via a feigned orgasm á la When Harry Met Sally. The moment is so absurd (especially in the family-movie context) that you can’t help but laugh at how much fun the movie’s having.

With the help of Bronson, Eddie finally makes it to the Winter Olympics in Calgary (despite dastardly attempts by the British Olympic Committee to block his participation, mostly because he’s goofy looking) where he at first enjoys his sudden stardom but then is reminded by coach Bronson to take himself more seriously and put forth his best effort despite the fact that he’s been ski jumping for a fraction of the time his competitors have. To the shock of everyone watching his Olympic escapades, Eddie vows to compete in the potentially deadly 90m jump, which leads us directly into the movie’s obligatory “He did it! He did it!” crescendo. The rousing finale’s done excellently though a random subplot involving Bronson’s old mentor (Christopher Walken) deflates the excitement for an excruciating few moments. There are no revolutionary changes made to the underdog formula, but the movie is special in that it celebrates the pride one finds in the simple act of participation.

Ski jumping, as it turns out, is one of the most cinematic of sports: Watching a human being soar through the icy air with long, slender skis stuck to his feet is an awe-inspiring sight, and Fletcher gets a lot of mileage out of a sport that pretty much looks the same every time (the variable being whether the poor guy eats snow or not; we see both successful and failed landings), using CGI stylishly and tastefully and giving us a terrifying sense of how goddamn high these athletes actually go. Looking down from the top of the 90m jump is bloodcurdlingly scary, and Fletcher makes sure to drive home just how crazy Eddie is to take up such a dangerous sport with such little experience. Once Eddie’s in flight, however, Fletcher has fun with interesting angles and brisk editing that, at its best, is exhilarating.

Most of Eddie the Eagle‘s success can be attributed to young Mr. Egerton. He makes us laugh at Eddie without making him clownish, and he makes us care for him without being corny. It’s a spot-on performance that sets the pace for everything else in the film, and he should be proud of the fact that, in this instance, he acts circles around the infinitely less memorable Jackman, a bonafide screen veteran. The gap in tone and timing and attitude between this role and Egerton’s turn in Kingsman is cavernous, and he makes the jump effortlessly (apologies for the totally-intentional pun).

“What the hell am I doing here?” I thought. Standing next to me by the Oakland Technical High School football field was Hugh “Wolverine” Jackman, leather jacket and all; next to him, his Eddie The Eagle co-star Taron Egerton and the movie’s director, Dexter Fletcher. The Australian megastar’s dashing good looks had me flabbergasted enough, but nothing was more distracting than the fact that I was standing next to WOLVERINE, my childhood hero! Reading the comics rabidly back in the ’90s, I never expected Logan would be this tall in person…

Making the scene even more absurdly amazing was the action playing out on the field just yards away: Throwing passes and running drills with high-school kids were Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Johnson and recently-retired Seattle Seahawk Marshawn Lynch, who were there in support of Fam 1st Family Foundation. Again I thought, “What the hell am I doing here?”

What I was doing, actually, was talking to the three talented men in front of me about their new film, based on the story of Michael “Eddie” Edwards (Egerton), a British ski-jumper who captured hearts worldwide with his inspiring journey to and performance at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. Jackman plays his reluctant coach, a fictional character conjured to provide Eddie’s story with a bit of friction and an element of camaraderie. When asked about the creation of the character, Jackman joshed: “I did test for Eddie…” His joke was met with thunderous, perhaps slightly exaggerated laughter from me because I was starstruck and shameless and simply couldn’t resist (I’m sure my fellow journalists participating in the roundtable can sympathize). He’s a real charmer, that Wolvie.

While I still have no clue how in the world a schmuck like me ended up in the star-studded situation I did, I’m glad fortune chose to smile on my that sunny day, allowing me to bring you this interview about a movie I found to be genuinely funny and inspiring and a whole mess of fun for all ages. Sure, it was cool chatting it up with your favorite X-Man. But the truly important people that day were running up and down that football field, the kids who, hopefully, with the boost of these famous fellows’ encouragement, will fight tooth and nail to reach beyond their wildest dreams in the spirit of Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards.

You can watch Egerton and Wolv…er…Jackman in Eddie The Eagle this weekend as the movie opens nationwide.

Walk us through the decision to include Hugh Jackman’s character in the movie since he wasn’t a real character.
Dexter: [The movie’s] about Eddie and his journey but it’s also important that there’s some sort of attempt to explain who Eddie is and what he’s going through, why he’s feeling the things that he is, and also have a character that pushes back against him [so that] the audience feels they’re a part of that journey as well. Initially, that’s the heart of it. We as an audience need a character who’s going to push Eddie on why he’s doing what he does. But it develops into something more interesting than that. You’ve got to have a human relationship at the heart of a film like this because that’s what people understand. It was important that Eddie didn’t feel like this lonely character. So we created this other character and it becomes a movie about friendship. That’s really important. You create a character who’s the polar opposite of Eddie and it throws a light on both of [them] and gives [the actors] something to get their teeth into. And Hugh Jackman wanted to be in it!

Hugh: I did test for Eddie. [laughs] Just to be clear, most of this movie is based on truth. There are some deviations but the key things, the most amazing things—his jumping, the injuries, the coming back, the fact that he was sleeping in a closet—all that is true.

Dexter: There were people that did help along the way and, of course, in a film you’ve got six, seven different characters coming in and playing some part in that journey. That becomes confusing. So we reduced that into one super-character which, in fact, would be Hugh Jackman. It’s a storytelling exercise. It’s facts told in a fictional way.

Taron, what was it like playing this role that could potentially inspire children and young adults? How does that make you feel as an actor?
Taron: If that’s the case, I can’t imagine anything more rewarding for an actor. That’s truly, truly gratifying on a level more than anything. The thing I love about Eddie is that he’s someone who’s easy to make fun of, deride, mock—but actually, he’s got this incredibly unique quality so few people have. Not that he’s impermeable but he takes the negative and is able to turn it into fuel for the positive. So, when someone says something unkind to him or tells him he can’t do it, in a very quiet, dignified way, he doesn’t engage with it or retaliate—he just allows it to make him stronger and tougher. I think that’s probably one of the most valuable lessons you can learn.

One of the things that appealed to me most about the movie is that it doesn’t take itself so seriously. We can actually laugh at Eddie a little bit, in a good-natured way.
Hugh: It’s called being British! [laughs] It has got that British, Full Monty quality. If you’re too earnest and on-the-nose in England, it’s never going to work! I think Eddie enjoyed having a laugh. If anyone ever in sports has shown [they] like to have a laugh at themselves, it’s Eddie Edwards.

Taron: Eddie’s a bright chap; he’s not an idiot. He knows that what he did was funny. He had been doing it a fraction of the time his competitors had been doing it, and it was this terrifying, death-defying jump he kind of threw himself into. That’s funny, and he knows that. When he saw the movie, he was thrilled. I think it’s because he knows that we struck the balance. There was a funny side but obviously, to him, it was a very serious thing. I know Dexter was very conscious—and we were, too—of making it a balance. You have to leave the theater going, “Yes! He did it!” I hope we’ve succeeded.

Hugh: At one point, [Eddie] actually broke his jaw and tied it up with a pillow case and competed like that.

Taron: We shot that, actually, but it didn’t make it in!

Hugh: Oh, really?

Dexter: We did! But also, I don’t think we treat [the story] in a sort of sentimental, mushy way. If you’re going to get up on those ski jumps, you’ve got to have a certain amount of fortitude. He’s not like, “I hope I don’t hurt myself.” He doesn’t even think about that. Being unsentimental allows him to be strong. We know he’s a strong character with a strong story, so we can afford to laugh at him.

Hugh, when looking at your role here, Charlie Kenton in Real Steel and even Wolverine, there’s a through line of rogues with a heart of gold. What draws you to characters like this?
Hugh: It’s the opposite of me because I’m seemingly very likable and outgoing but underneath there’s just zero heart. [laughs] I’m sure sometimes these kinds of roles come to me because of Wolverine, who’s sort of the ultimate reluctant hero. I just really love this story. If there had been some other construct or character, I probably wouldn’t have been part of it. I loved working with these guys and I do love, I suppose, seeing on film that idea of redemption. [My character] is someone who lives with a lot of regret and is, therefore, kind of cynical to the world. Deep down, he realizes he stuffed up his chance for whatever reason. Lack of self-belief, obviously. I love the idea that people are redeemable, I suppose.

Dexter: I think also that you’re not afraid to play the human flaw, you know? To play someone who’s flawed is a more interesting thing altogether. He’s flawed; he’s human; he’s real. I think that needs to be something you readily tackle and relish as well.

Perhaps for the entirety of his career, Aaron Paul will be tied to the iconic role of Breaking Bad‘s burnout-turned-meth-hero Jesse Pinkman. It’s something he’s thankful for: “I’m very blessed to have played an iconic character,” he says graciously. Since that landmark TV show, Paul’s stayed away from drug-addict roles for obvious reasons. But when he was presented with the script for John Hillcoat‘s ensemble crime-thriller Triple 9, he jumped at the chance to work with the director, despite the fact that he’d once again have to pick up a pipe on-screen.

The decision paid off: Paul is an absolute standout in a movie full of Hollywood heavy-hitters including Kate Winslet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Gal Gadot, Norman Reedus, Clifton Collins Jr., and more. Playing a member of a gang crooked cops pulling off an elaborate, dangerous heist, the still-evolving actor makes every onscreen minute count, creating a character with dimension and depth in what’s essentially a series of quick glimpses. Looks like he’s continuing to hone the tools he sharpened opposite Bryan Cranston on that seminal show forever doomed him to be referred to as “bitch” by his adoring fans. “I gotta take it in stride, you know?”

In a roundtable interview, I spoke to Paul about Triple 9, which is out in theaters nationwide today.

You’re sort of unrecognizable in this movie. The hair, the strung-out-ness. How did you go to that place? It feels like he’s so out of his depth at this point in his life.
He’s going through a lot. It was kind of easy; it was just on the page. I think these characters were so well developed before I even attached myself. Before we even started, John gave us all a giant folder of information, a dropbox that just kept filling up every day with images that are impossible to erase from your mind. Decapitated heads…he wanted us to draw from our own knowledge.

He had me go on some ridealongs with the LAPD and I saw some pretty crazy stuff. We drove around East L.A. in a neighborhood I’ve never been to in my life. You just see how cops are viewed. We pulled over this guy whose girlfriend had just been shot. She was in the front seat, his mom was in the back seat. This was now his third strike because he had a loaded gun on him with the serial number scratched off. Things got pretty real. He was arrested went down to the station. They take off his shoes, he’s handcuffed to this bench, and they ask me if I want to go in and interview him. He has tattoos all over his face—scariest guy I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m like, “No…I don’t want to go.” There was no reason for me to go interview him but I did end up going in to talk to him. He ended up being a fan of Breaking Bad, which is pretty funny.

What was your reaction to the script and this idea of these characters pulling off a “triple 9?”
God, I loved this script. I knew with John holding the reigns it was going to be such a brutal telling of this story but in a grounded way. I didn’t know what “triple 9” meant before shooting this film but it absolutely makes sense. If someone wants to cause a distraction in the police force, that’s definitely the way to do it. I love the story.

Early in the movie, you and Norman have a pivotal scene together. I think it’s such an important scene because you have to establish a lot of the emotional stakes for what’s to come for those characters.
Norman and I have been friends for the past sixteen, seventeen years. It’s the first time we’ve worked together, and we’re playing brothers, so we already have that bond, that love there. That scene you’re talking about was an added scene we shot after we were done shooting. They wanted to do just that—raise the stakes, really let people know that these guys aren’t just friends; they’re brothers. They love each other. It was great. I love that scene.

There are similarities between this character and Jesse Pinkman. Do you feel constrained by how iconic that character is?
I definitely don’t see Jesse Pinkman leaving me anytime soon. I know for the rest of my life I’m going to be called “bitch.” I gotta take it in stride, you know? I’m very blessed to have played such an iconic character [on a] show that became a part of television history. He’s a part of pop culture. It’s all about trying to do something different from that guy. This is really the first role since that show where my character’s picking up a pipe. I get offered drug addict roles all the time, on a weekly basis. I just try to stay away from that. But this script was impossible to ignore. It was beautiful. And, of course, John Hillcoat was the first name I noticed before I started reading it. It was a great ride, but when [my character] picked up the pipe, I was like, “Aww…Does he have to do that?”

The movie felt a lot like Heat.
Yeah. Heat is one of those timeless films. I really hope Triple 9 becomes that. My father-in-law was so excited. “It was like Heat! It’s like Taxi Driver!” I agree with him. It’s one of those gritty, brutal, crazy films.

You’re an actor who acts with his whole body. I appreciate that. Is it something you think about when you’re on camera or no?
It just kind of comes with the territory for me. Every character’s a little different. The only similarity is that I tend to gravitate toward characters that are going through a lot, emotionally. I think emotions run through your entire body. You kind of put yourself in a situation and force yourself to believe in whatever’s going on and hopefully people buy it.

In Need For Speed you were at the head of the ensemble. For this movie, it’s more of an egalitarian mix. How are those experiences different?
[One’s] less work, less shooting days. But I love them both. I love the ensemble cast. There are twelve main characters in this film and everyone has such a pivotal part in the story. With Need For Speed, I was in almost every scene. It was a lot of work.

What about the next movie, Eye in the Sky? What’s it like going from playing a criminal in this movie to playing someone who’s straight-laced and in the military?
I do play the darker side of things. But I always try to bring some sort of heart to my characters. With Triple 9, he’s technically a bad guy but you feel for him. He has a line he will not cross and this is that line, so he’s desperate to stop it from happening.

He’s really the hero of the movie.
Finally, someone said it! [laughs] It’s great being the bad guy and it’s also great being the good guy.

Who’s an actor that would be a dream for you to work with?
Oh man, there’s so many. I think probably Daniel Day-Lewis. He’s my favorite actor, for sure.

How about actors who aren’t alive?
You’re really changing things up on me, man! I would love to work with Marilyn Monroe. She’s such an idol, such a legend. I’d just love to kind of hang out with her in between takes and see what she’s all about.

A genre adventurer of sorts, filmmaker John Hillcoat has made a western (The Proposition), a post-apocalyptic drama (The Road) and a period gangster movie (Lawless) in his career thus far. Now, with Triple 9, he tackles the crime thriller genre, assembling an A-list cast (including the likes of Kate Winslet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clifton Collins Jr., Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, Norman Reedus, Aaron Paul, Anthony Mackie and more) to tell a gritty, urban tale of crooked cops, bank heists, double-turns and gang violence. Set in Atlanta, the film holds authenticity as its highest priority as the dozen-or-so protagonists maneuver, duck and dodge around each other until the bloody, bitter end.

In a roundtable interview, I spoke with Hillcoat about the film, which opens tomorrow nationwide.

You’ve expressed your desire to elevate genre movies. How did you elevate the crime thriller with Triple 9?
I feel like this genre, in recent years, has become very unrealistic. Initially, there were the golden years when film noir was created and all these fantastic, murky shades of grey were created. In the ’70s, they took all of these great genres and shook them up and gave them this kind of gritty realism. That’s what I miss in contemporary crime thrillers. The characters always seem to be chasing the plot. I wanted to find something where you didn’t know what was coming. In a lot of this genre, I feel like I already know what’s going to happen before it happens. [I also wanted to show] shades of grey instead of black and white. Again, in this genre, it’s become, “there’s the good guy, there’s the bad guy.” With all of that, I also wanted to bring it into a contemporary landscape. The world of crime out there in urban cities has completely changed.

When this script crossed your desk, was it something where you were looking to do something in this vein? What got your neurons firing?
I’d been looking for a contemporary crime thriller to do for well over a decade. My problem was, every time I’d read something, I felt like I could predict what was coming around the corner. My manager and producer brought a first-time writer and showed me this script because they knew I wanted a crime thriller that was a bit more unpredictable and grounded in reality.

There’s a lot to keep track of in this movie. It’s a controlled chaos. As I was watching the movie I thought, the casting is so key because these characters have to make big impression in just a small amount of screen time.
That was the single biggest challenge out of anything, to assemble that cast and line it up to where they all had a window available at that one time. It was beyond any rubik’s cube out there. The intention was to create a milieu and world you’re immersed in as opposed to the classic, two-hander thing. I love a film like Nashville where you’re just with characters very briefly but you feel like you could disappear into their lives. Life is like that too in a crowded urban environment. I wanted to get that sea of humanity. That’s what was great about this cast—they’re all so different and bring such idiosyncratic detail. We were conscious of that going in. They had to make interesting choices and create layers because of exactly that: screen time.

I was impressed by the action mostly because the things that are happening onscreen are unpredictable and chaotic and unexpectedly change location frequently. But I never felt lost, geographically. That must be incredibly difficult to pull off.
It took immense planning. We had whole maps of neighborhoods, we had meetings with different departments, we had models made. We had different visual references made for different departments saying, “Look, here’s an accident. We want it to look like that.” There was a lot of research as well. I was working with a very gifted second-unit action guy who did the Bourne Identity films and has an immense knowledge of that. We love realism and accidents, so we’re always on the lookout for how we find those and reference those in each situation and make it work cinematically.

I think you’ll know what I mean when I say this—I feel like you as a filmmaker respect the act of violence.
I take violence very seriously. I feel like there are no real victors. There’s always an element of chaos and, psychologically, no one comes out unscathed. I think that’s the key, for the actors to feel very much like it’s their choice or whatever they do that creates the situation, the build-up to it. Then, it’s how they process it afterward. When I’m working with an actor on these sort of things, I’m looking more at the before and after than the actual incident. We are human, and that’s the thing I try to do, get that human experience instead of just seeing bodies flying apart. That doesn’t mean anything. And you’ve just reminded me, that’s something we were very conscious of: We wanted to make every single death that happens matter. It’s a significant event every time. In crime thrillers, that’s really not considered. The body count is just, like, very gratuitous.

I thought there was strategic value to the decision of killing off a particular actor early on in the movie. Audiences are very familiar with this person. It was kind of like a Janet Leigh in Psycho thing.
That was very intentional. We wanted to create a situation where even the characters would suddenly take this situation very seriously. It’s that feeling of not knowing who’s next. And yet, we all know—and they know as characters—that they’ve chosen this life and nothing’s going to change that. They kind of know that, eventually, they won’t be retired on a tropical island. That’s not really what comes of this. And they never know when that moment is going to happen.

You’ve said before that you’ve witnessed violence growing up and have been a victim of violence. Do you think, as a filmmaker, that you have to have had that hands-on experience to portray violence onscreen authentically?
I think it’s definitely helped and given me more respect in trying to get to the truth of the matter and take it more seriously. I’m very influenced by other movies, but I do love that kind of one foot in reality. That has, unfortunately, [happened to me]. But I would never perscribe that as a prerequisite for film students. [laughs] “Doing a crime film? Shoot yourself in the leg!” [laughs] I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone but it certainly has impacted the work I do very much.

There’s a difference between “simple” and “simplistic” storytelling, and The Nightingale is a film that walks a fine line between the two terms. Director Philippe Muyl relies on an unfussy narrative, familiar character dynamics and placid visuals to make the sentiment of his tale resonate. The film is old-fashioned and contains a fair amount of charm, but it takes no risks (neither in the film’s aesthetic or its plot complications). Themes of reconciliation, youthful optimism and multigenerational bridge-building mosey on through, their potency limited by a lack of conflict and a penchant for easy answers.

Set in modern day China, The Nightingale finds a family suffering from disconnection. A married couple (portrayed by Xiaoran Li and Hao Qin) and their young daughter, Ren Xing (Xin Yi Yang), are living in a cold, sterile apartment in the city. The parents are preoccupied with their busy professions and the girl seems to be more endeared to the bright screen of her iPad than anything else. When a pair of important business trips send each of the parents away, the mother has no choice but to leave her daughter with her grandfather (Baotian Li). He lives a quiet life on the other side of town and has his own voyage in the works. The destination is his childhood village—a place nestled far away, deep in the Chinese countryside. A wealth of memories, both joyous and sad, await him there and whether the temperamental Ren Xing likes it or not (spoiler alert: she doesn’t), she’s coming along for the ride.

The bulk of the film follows the travels and interactions of this girl and her doting grandfather. Right away, it’s shown that he won’t get through to her easily. Ren Xing huffs about, making up complaints, willfully disobeying her grandfather and spurning any of his attempts to pick her brain. She’s clearly very independent, but her antics are unreasonable at times. Of course, the early friction transparently sets the relationship up for a tender reversal, as the more time the two spend in the countryside and amongst the smiling villagers, the more they bond and the better they understand each other. At the center of this is the titular nightingale that the grandfather carries around in a cage. Its meaning is gradually revealed and the bird eventually comes to be the film’s unifying emotional symbol.

From these descriptions, one might envision a gently affecting tale with low stakes and the potential for a hugely poignant takeaway. It is indeed gentle and the stakes are definitely low, but the execution is bland and conventional. The look of The Nightingale isn’t quite televisual, but the lighting and camerawork are so disappointingly unexpressive and flat. Even the sections in the countryside are—with all the gorgeous landscapes that are at the director’s disposal—generically “pretty” in the way the spaces are captured. Muyl is after a relaxed pace and ponderous tone here, but the imagery fails to provoke any thought.

As far as subtext goes, there’s plenty, but the motifs and messages are obvious. All throughout The Nightingale, there’s a running theme of dichotomies, the most prominent one being the unceasing movement and chaos of the city and the serene wisdom of the country. There’s something to be said about the divide between these two realms, but the film doesn’t do the topic justice, approaching it with a lack of nuance. The sprawling metropolis is repeatedly established with what appears to be slight variations of the same shot of sped-up traffic. By the third or fourth instance of this, we get idea. Meanwhile, the countryside is presented as a picture of paradise—accented by the perpetual laugh of children and shimmering, imperfect vistas.

This is where that “simplistic” sensibility comes in. The story is very straightforward and for a while, the absence of big, game-changing events is kind of nice. Baotian Li contributes a lot with his sweetly sympathetic performance and the sauntering nature of the tale is pleasant enough. But at some point, I began to hunger for something a little more substantial. Every little obstacle that comes up for the characters is very quickly dismissed or assuaged, and each beat of the characters’ individual developments falls into place, unearned. The countryside works like a magical sedative on Ren Xing’s sour mood and technological enslavement, and a previously strained relationship between the grandfather and the girl’s dad is quickly mended.

I’m assuming that The Nightingale’s target audience is children and easy-to-please families, as more cynical or discerning viewers may feel patronized by the easy sentiment and cookie-cutter storytelling. At the same time, there’s an oddly undercooked divorce subplot in the film that doesn’t fit the otherwise buoyant tone and feels out-of-place each time it’s brought up. Maybe this part is meant for adults seeking greater dramatic weight, but it isn’t thought out well enough to properly satisfy those needs, so I’m not sure what to make of it.

With all this negativity, it needs to be reinforced that The Nightingale is entirely harmless entertainment with, at the very least, a good heart and a nice message. It may be a fine choice for a casual afternoon viewing, but you probably won’t remember it the next day.

Teenagers can be incredibly frustrating, but maybe much of this frustration comes from knowing that we were once the same. Perhaps this is why Everlasting—a story centered around two teenagers—can be both relatable and compelling. It manages this in spite of our personal grievances and despite our insistence that we know better. There are certainly shortcomings to be found, but Everlasting is in itself a tale about remembering—and valuing—the positive over the negative, and perhaps it’s not a stretch for the film to ask the same of its critics.

At the very beginning, we are told by Matt (Adam David) that his girlfriend Jessie (Valentina de Angelis) has been murdered. The plot is straightforward enough from here, with a search for answers being the main driving force for our young protagonist. As Matt begins by providing their background story, we learn that he and Jessie are troubled high school students with only one source of true happiness: their love for each other. They spend their aesthetically gothic days fantasizing about death and throwing caution to the wind, and it’s only too obvious they believe themselves invincible, as teenagers often do. Jessie in particular is shown to be overly attracted to a darker lifestyle, intensely absorbed in the escape it offers her. When she decides to follow her dreams of becoming a model, Matt has no choice but to be supportive, reluctant as he is to lose her. The two drive to opportunity-laden L.A. from their hometown of Denver, with Matt using their trip as an opportunity to create a project for his film class. But after Jessie’s death, this project takes on a drastically different shape, thus becoming the story of Matt’s journey to find her killer. Told in a non-linear cumulation of his footage from both trips as well as moments of third party voyeurism, Everlasting works towards a resolution whilst keeping a strong footing on the subject of love.

Though the story may not be groundbreaking—and is undoubtedly a commentary on how such events happen all too often in real life—Everlasting manages to carve a space for itself by taking a more human approach than most. Matt states that he does not want Jessie to become just another name in a list, and the film tries its absolute hardest to ensure this doesn’t happen. Instead, Matt (as our main storyteller) painstakingly attempts to provide a complete picture of Jessie as he knew and loved her; while this does serve to create an emotional attachment for the audience, it also inadvertently highlights a lack of substance to Jessie’s character. We are provided with fleeting reasons for her often concerning behaviour and personality, such as being raised by a single mother whose own behaviour is far from perfect, but without delving into this relationship further it is hard to ascertain exactly why Jessie is so attracted to the darkness of life. As such, her “tortured soul” identity ends up feeling somewhat superficial. Matt, on the other hand, is clearly given more thought and nuance, and becomes much more cemented in our minds as a sympathetic figure.

Interestingly, many of the less central characters grab the audience’s attention and hold elements of intrigue, and this is largely due to sincere acting by more than a few cast members. Elizabeth Röhm must be mentioned for her heartbreakingly wonderful portrayal of Jessie’s flawed mother, and Pat Healy demonstrates once again that he knows all too well how to make an audience distinctly uncomfortable. As Jessie and Matt, both de Angelis and David provide solid turns in their roles, but at times present themselves underprepared to be the objects of such focus as the film provides. Director Anthony Stabley’s conviction to keep humanity at the center of Everlasting requires the beautiful, close shots of the equally attractive actors at work, but evidently proves challenging for both. However, any moments that may seem strained can be overlooked thanks to the stunning cinematography, which works not only to be visually pleasing, but more importantly, to thoroughly deliver an environment of everything the film is selling: youth, beauty and love.

The film has done particularly well within the horror community—having even won the Jury Award at the Nevermore festival recently—but it would be disingenuous to actually call it horror. At most, it’s drama with an edge. This isn’t to detract from its quality, but more to suggest that it perhaps has a more fitting place outside of the genre it is marketed toward, particularly given the rather specific (and misleading) horror-centered focus of its trailer. And so, while Everlasting may at times be as naive as its two protagonists, it also manages to be just as intriguing.

Bipolar disorder is the common ground that brings two opposites-turned-soulmates together in Touched With Fire, a cute but redundantly lyrical sanitarium romance inspired by Kay Jamison’s book “Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament” and the real-life experiences of writer-director Paul Dalio. Carla (Katie Holmes) and Marco a.k.a Luna (Luke Kirby) are manic-depressive poets admitted to the same psychiatric hospital where they at first can’t stand each other (naturally) but soon form a tight bond as they indulge in their shared mania and protect each other from unenlightened oppressors. The creative energy that forms between them is explosive and romantic, but when they choose to start a family, their manic tendencies begins to put their future in danger. Meanwhile, their stubborn, disapproving parents threaten to tear them apart for good.

In several ways the movie ponders the relationship between bipolar disorder and art, from Marco often referencing the legendary work Van Gogh did while manic to the couple explaining to their parents how they absorb the world in a deeper, fuller, more vivid way than normal people are capable of, which allows them to express themselves freely and unfiltered. Dalio also represents the disorder visually, using off-balance camera moves and surrealistic imagery to reflect our heroes’ mindstate. On occasion, the symbolism can be a little too plainspoken: When the couple are unwillingly separated and forbidden to see each other, Carla returns to the waiting room where they first met; we feel she’s missing Marco already, but suddenly an apparition of him appears to further emphasize her longing. The sentiment is nice and the device fits the artistry theme, but it’s a little excessive.

Dalio, who’s dealt with manic depression in his life, used battle rap as an outlet, performing under the name Luna. We see much of his personal struggle in Marco (who also battle raps under the Luna moniker) and the film’s greatest strength is that it feels passionate and personal throughout, evidently pulled directly from pivotal points of life experience. If there’s an issue with how the film ponders mental health it’s in the final acts, when the story starts to feel too studied, overly saturated by the influence of Jamison’s thesis. It’s especially jarring when the author makes an appearance as herself, meeting with the couple to discuss the dulling effects medication may or may not have on the creative process.

Movie romances often live and die by the actors’ eyes: If we don’t see that thirst in their eyes, we ain’t buying it. Holmes and Kirby, thankfully, are convincing in their desire, particularly early on in the film when they’re sneaking away to the hospital library in the middle of the night, going on manic adventures through time and space, unlocking the mysteries of the universe with childlike glee. The adventure’s all in their heads, of course, but Dalio does a nice job of bringing us into their headspace, sprawling projected images of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” across the library walls to reflect the scope of the couple’s obsession. Moments like these, when Dalio’s visual style feels pitch-perfect, are magical.

On several occassions, Carla and Marco’s parents stage both planned and impromptu interventions, expressing insensitively their wish for the couple to stay far away from one another so as not to further enable their shared mania. The drama in these scenes sometimes works, but more often than not the confrontations feel too transparently educational, with the young actors essentially explaining their mental disorder for those of us in the audience who don’t understand it. Holmes is particularly good, though, at attempting to make the scenes feel natural with her facial expressions and subtle body movements.

When Carla and Marco are alone, running wild with the ecstasy of being unshackled from the doldrums of everyday life, Touched With Fire feels vital and flowing and engrossing. The filmmaking seems to dull, however, when the couple are on their meds and fall back down to earth. There’s no reason a film can’t stay cinematically interesting while still reflecting the internal repression of its characters and, unfortunately, coupled with the staged nature of the later dialogue, the sober segments of the story don’t quite hit home.

Last year saw the release of Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, a film about The Boston Globe’s investigation of the systematic cover-up of pedophilic priests by the Catholic Church. It’s a challenging watch given the subject matter, and McCarthy finds a balance in his film that never sugar-coats or cheapens the crimes it profiles for dramatic points. But Spotlight is not nearly as challenging as The Club, a drama that looks at child abuse by the Catholic clergy from the perspective of the accused.

The latest offering from Chilean director Pablo Larraín focuses specifically on four accused priests living out a Church-mandated exile in a quiet Chilean beach town, run by a former nun with baggage of her own. Although sequestered and living within rules that prohibit most contact with outsiders, the Fallen Five make the most of their circumstance by training a greyhound to become a champion racer. Going into the film, viewers know, at least at a high level, the heinousness of the subject matter (the priests’ past actions are eventually revealed in greater detail), and yet Larraín manipulates right out of the gate. The setting is a beautifully cozy hamlet and its denizens are as non-predatory as they can get. They are four charming old men living out their golden years breeding a race dog on the beaches of Chile, all the while being mothered by a charming older woman and living in relative harmony in a delightful yellow house. It’s serene.

Then BANG—Larraín reminds you of the seriousness of the situation with a scene so uncomfortable (and seemingly endless in the most unsettling of ways), followed by a moment so shocking yet so utterly genuine, that I audibly gasped.

The situation upends the four priests’ lives when The Vatican intervenes in the form of Father Garcia (Marcelo Alonso), whose goal is to investigate the incident, investigate the people living in the house, and ultimately shut the place down. As circumstances unfold, however, Father Garcia’s task might not be as easy as he thinks.

Larraín’s film takes on a procedural tone, creating an interesting (and compelling) dynamic. It sets up a good guy/bad guy construct with the clergy as the bad guys and Garcia as good. But the bad guys here are otherwise so likable, and Garcia, with his interrogations, stricter living conditions, and goal of shutting down the house, is just off-putting enough to be unlikable. Eventually, the rooting interests become blurred, and then Larraín’s skills truly shine as he slowly builds two very specific cases.

The first is the case against the Fallen Five. Despite their dark collective past, they continue to make questionable choices in the lives they lead after living in service to the Lord. There are hints of this poor behavior early on. They lie to the police about the event that kicks the story off, but the lies are told to protect themselves; they snoop through Garcia’s personal things, but they do it to understand his intentions so they can better shield their interests. They also drink and smoke and gamble, and while these things aren’t illegal, they too fit into a certain pattern of behavior: sin. Minor, at least at first, but sin nonetheless. The viewer might miss it though because Larraín, like a magician, distracts with the obvious transgressions—including the child abuse—and when no one is looking, he carefully layers these other, smaller things into the characters’ routine actions. They might be subtle, they might be acts committed for self-preservation, but they are still acts of varying degrees of wrong. It’s on this foundation of the flawed nature of humanity that Larraín makes a more difficult case, one that’s less pro-Church and more anti-anti-Church.

Because these five people have engaged in a lifetime of recidivist behavior and, as the film progresses, the sinful acts they commit increase in both selfishness and severity, the Fallen Five show that they have learned nothing while in exile. Larraín makes it clear that the problem is with the person, not the Collar, nor the Habit, nor the higher institution they once served and represented. The presence of Garcia reinforces this case, who represents the good amidst this sin. Not only is he tenacious in his investigation of the quintet, he tries early to break them of their more pedestrian transgressions. It appears as punishment but it’s actually an effort to redeem. By the film’s end—an end that highlights his monumental compassion—Garcia’s actions, and in particular the goodness of them, stand in stark contrast to those from the collective he has been sent to investigate. It isn’t about his Collar, it’s about his Christianity.

But have no illusions: this film is no mea culpa on behalf of the Catholic Church. And while it takes place in exile on the beaches of Chile, that doesn’t make the core subject matter any different than that of the story told by Spotlight in the parishes around Beantown. Despite that similarity and the familiar procedural strains, what Larraín does with The Club is more daring and direct than McCarthy’s film. It’s also more thought-provoking, as it goes beyond the expected (and warranted) knee-jerk reaction to the crimes committed, adding a facet to the subject that is worthy of consideration and onscreen treatment.

Even though Emily Dickinson would become one of America’s most celebrated female poets, she led a hard life in the 1800s. She didn’t share her family’s ecclesiastical leanings, her passion was firmly rooted in poetry (not homemaking), she judged those around her too harshly, and, of course, she was a she. Beside her innate urge to express herself through poetry, which she would write in the quiet of night while the rest of the world slept, Emily’s other passion was her bottomless love for her close-knit family. Through exquisitely framed medium shots, supple camera movements, and a screenplay full of wealth and wit, legendary British filmmaker Terence Davies creates a lush biopic that does justice to a unique artist, slightly meandering on a few tangents along the way.

It feels like Cynthia Nixon is in the middle of her own Nixonassance, especially when you consider her searing portrayal of last year’s indie hit James White in addition to the powerhouse portrayal she conjures up here in A Quiet Passion. She so wholly embodies the poetess, you’d think she found a time machine to travel back to the 1800s and trace every inch of gesticulation and countenance befitting the introverted and rebellious woman. Emma Bell does a fine job as Young Emily in the first part of the film, when we get introduced to the Dickinson household and get a taste of conservative life in Massachusetts. But once Nixon enters the stage, you hear pins drop till the final curtain.

Scenes flow into one another like liquid being poured by The Queen’s butler, tracing the ebbs and flows of Emily’s emotional and mental state as she comes to terms with her own personality, the love she feels for her family, and her growing bitterness towards high society values. Her sister Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle, continuing to prove how unforgivably underused she is), her brother Austin (a slightly spotty Duncan Duff), her father (a brilliantly stoic Keith Carradine), her sweet mother (an outstanding Joanna Bacon), and Austin’s wife Susan (a revelatory Jodhi May)—all play vital roles in shaping Emily. Outside her immediate family, no one makes a bigger impact than Miss Buffam (a sensational Catherine Bailey); with a wit and banter second to none, she outplays every man in the room and always leaves room for more. It’s little wonder that Emily becomes instantly infatuated with her spirit. A Quiet Passion exposes a singular personality through the relationships and conversations she has with those closest to her. And for much of the running time, it’s consuming to the point of forgetting everything else in the world.

Davies’ bountiful screenplay takes the cake in terms of how rhythmic and effortless the viewing experience feels. It’s so vibrant with its verbiage, 1800s colloquialism, and sharp comebacks that there are scenes where it almost trips over itself, creating the “too much of a good thing” excess feeling. The first half of the film also overflows with a wonderful sense of humor. Then there’s, of course, the director’s signature painterly camera movements, pivoting around interiors to create an astonishing sense of intimacy and closeness. He would stay on characters during their most fragile moments (especially during the heart-wrenching scenes featuring Bacon) and gradually grind the viewer’s emotions into sawdust. The way he transitions from the early to the later years during a photo shoot sequence is breathtaking. All this is helped by Florian Hoffmeister’s brilliant work with lights and shadows; whether by candle or by sun, the glow that overwhelms A Quiet Passion is palpable.

Moving beyond the formal aesthetics and award-worthy performances, it’s Emily Dickinson’s character that keeps the film’s heart beating. Her flaws, her virtues, her desires, her idiosyncrasies, her painstaking love and love-wound pain—all are ironed gently to create a truly complex and mesmerizing personality. Affronted by obviousness in every aspect of life and art, so sharp in demeaning the overt piety and patriarchal Puritanism she was faced with on a daily basis, the Emily Dickinson that emerges is one fiercely intelligent, determined, funny, empathetic, and infinitely interesting woman. This, above all else, makes A Quiet Passion the magisterial film that it is, and confirms Terence Davies as director who knows how to tackle femininity from all angles.

While all this stands, the picture does tend to lose the plot on a few occasions, especially towards the end during what looks like a fever dream sequence involving Emily and an anonymous man. It’s a jarring moment that broke the magic spell for a few brief minutes, and though I understand its intention, I find myself wishing that it were executed in a more refined way. A blasphemous thought to have considering this is Terence Davies, but there it is. The in-and-out narration of Emily’s select poems will also ignite frustration in a lot of viewers I imagine.

Thanks to these quibbles, the film is a step below the enchantment of Sunset Song and The Deep Blue Sea. But no matter how well versed you are with Emily Dickinson’s poems, A Quiet Passion still manages to envelop the senses in warm, gentle waves of cinematic opulence for most of its running time.

The subject of white male platonic bonding is as far from today’s film trends as you can possibly get. Even with its shortcomings, then, the heart of the matter in Michael Grandage’s star-studded Genius goes refreshingly against the grain. Add to that the look in the life of American author Thomas Wolfe (whom many, I suspect, readily forget in lieu of the William Faulkner’s and Ernest Hemingway’s of his time), and a shiny spotlight on the behind-closed-doors role of the editor, and there’s plenty to bite into here. Of course, with a cast featuring Colin Firth, Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Laura Linney, and Guy Pearce, you walk in confident that if all else fails, at least the performances will keep you glued. And they do, but even beyond the curious choice of a dreary gray monochrome as the film’s primary palette, there’re a number of things that bog Genius down. The source is, as ever, the screenplay; in this case, John Logan’s adaption of A. Scott Berg’s biography Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. That said, Grandage takes the lion’s share of the blame for leaving the autopilot on his director’s chair and not trying something a little more enticing in way of presentation.

As it bizarrely shifts from black-and-white into colour, Genius opens with the famous editor of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Maxwell Perkins (Firth), receiving the bulbous first draft of what will eventually become “Look Homeward, Angel.” “Is it any good?” he asks, to which the deliveryman responds, “Good? No. But it’s unique.” That hooks him in. Of course, it turns out to be more than just good or unique, as we follow Max’ endearing routine of reading the manuscript until he reaches the end and gets that look—the title of Genius appearing to make sure there’s no confusion on our part either. During this routine, we get a passing glance at Max’s household, his wife Louise (Linney) and five daughters. Being surrounded by women all his life ends up playing a big part in the strong connection he develops with the erratic, enigmatic, and entirely insufferable Thomas Wolfe (Law).

Genius packs most of its meat into scenes featuring Wolfe and Perkins, as they bulldoze through Wolfe’s protracted manuscripts, first ‘Angel,’ and then—in a period of over 2 years!—Of Time and The River. Debating over how to cut down the chapter where his character falls in love with a blue-eyed girl is the film’s pinnacle; infinitely charming and richly insightful in the dynamic between ambitious author and economic editor. Threatening to steal the show from the two men, though, is Nicole Kidman, who pulls off a fiery and embittered turn as Aline Bernstein—a woman who left her husband and two children to be Wolfe’s full-time lover. Her whole life, it seems, revolves around this man who is too busy wrestling with his mountainous ego to return the love, and if the role weren’t so utterly thankless, Kidman surely would have soared even higher.

The two men’s flippant attitudes towards their respective other halves is never fully addressed (and, ironically enough, Max seems to care more about how much Mrs. Bernstein is suffering while completely ignoring his patronizing attitude toward his own wife). Among other issues that arise out of Logan’s screenplay are the peppered stings of obviousness throughout. The most articulate example comes when F. Scott Fitzgerald (Pearce) talks of “genius friendship,” and the double meaning of the title is neatly spoon-fed. There’s also Law’s exuberant performance as Wolfe. Showy, and something that must have been a lot of fun for the actor, but with just a bit too much pep in his step. This ultimately works against the film’s final moments.

It’s the prickly characterization of Thomas Wolfe that undoes Genius in the end. Whether by weighing the importance of the female characters (especially Kidman’s Aline, as Linney’s Louise is, sadly, much too minor to even mention) a bit more significantly, keeping Law’s performance in firmer check, or fine-tuning the screenplay so that the author’s moments of clarity have bigger impact; I feel Logan and Grandage could have handled it better. The fact that he’s not the main star leaves the film all the better for it. Firth’s mighty sensitive performance as the heart of the film keeps the strength of friendship resonating throughout, and is more than enough reason for a solid recommendation.

It almost feels like a religious experience, watching a movie that’s as beautifully alien and removed from convention as Embrace of the Serpent. Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra‘s Amazon-set drama is an indignant lament on the devastating, festering effects of colonialism, but it’s more experiential and less studious than that sounds. The black-and-white river imagery is supple, hypnotic and frightening, in that startling way that most unfamiliar things are, at first, frightening. The scariest thing, though, is how vividly Guerra shows us—via two white men’s parallel river quests, separated by 40 years—the extent of the destruction pale-skinned conquerors wreaked on the indigenous cultures of the region. Even scarier: the realization that the eradication of our indigenous people, in our America, makes Guerra’s dark fable hit uncomfortably close to home.

Like the narrative (which is based on a pair of white explorer’s real-life journals), the production’s heroes are dual, with cinematographer David Gallego having as much influence on the film’s success as Guerra. With locations as lush as the ones we glide and trudge through on the winding South American riverways, it seems best, for a story this restrained and contemplative, for us to simply, respectfully bear witness to the indescribably beautiful surroundings. There’s no need to breathe life into what’s already teeming with overly stylized presentation, and thankfully, Gallego’s got taste. The choice to go monochrome supports the thrust of the story; what would have been about color and vibrancy is now all about light, darkness and shadow.

At the center of the first story is Theodor Koch-Grunberg (Jan Bijvoet), a German explorer in search of a rare, sacred flower called the “yakuna.” Theo’s fallen ill on his expedition, tended to by his local guide, Manduca (Miguel Dionisio Ramos). As they land their boat onto the riverbank, they’re met by Karamakate (Nilbio Torres), a shaman who doesn’t take kindly to white men, whose violent conquest has rendered him a companionless river dweller, the last of his tribe. Locals like Manduca, who cooperate with the whites and have adopted many of their Western customs are, to him, just as disgusting. Reluctantly, Karamakate agrees to be their guide (only he knows how to reach the yakuna), enticed by Theo’s promise to help him find the last remaining survivors of his tribe, who the German claims he’s seen with his own eyes.

On their journey, the cultural divide is slowly bridged: Karamakate keeps Theo’s illness at bay with herbal medicine; Theo shares some of the worldly belongings he’s hauling around in his clunky luggage box. (Meanwhile, Manduca straddles the cultural line.) Their bond is shaken to the core when they come across a grove of drained rubber trees and indigenous workers mutilated and enslaved by the invaders. Tensions are heightened again when they happen upon a Catholic mission where a mad Spanish priest rules over orphaned indigenous children, forcing them to abandon their old customs as he abuses them on a whim in a multitude of sickening ways. This portion of the film is almost unbearably awful to watch. It speaks to Guerra’s integrity, though, that he shows no measure of restraint in depicting something so horrible as cultural extermination. Again, the true horror is how easily linked the priest’s child abuse is to issues of our time (Spotlight comes to mind).

Theo has a mental breakdown when his compass is stolen by one of the locals, fearing the technological trinket will sully the purity of the tribes traditions. Karamakate takes the fit as a sign of ignorant condescension, and they’re back to square one. Our link to the second story, set in the 1940s, is Karamakate, the older version of whom is played by Antonio Bolivar. We flash over to this second journey intermittently, which sees the shaman in a sorry state of soullessness, numbed to nothing by the continuing white-man takeover. He meets a new, American explorer, Evans (Brionne Davis), who, like Theo, is trekking towards the yakuna wonder-plant. The tone’s much more pensive and dirge-like in this less-eventful second story, which is mostly about the sorrow that’s built up in Karamakate following decades of watching his home ravaged by Western “progress.”

As grim and yucky as this all sounds, the movie isn’t without a few moments of mirth. Evans blowing Karamakate’s goddamn mind with a phonograph under a starry night sky is heart-meltingly cute, and when young Karamakate and Theo exchange the occasional glance of recognition and acceptance at each other, it gives the story just the right amount of hopefulness it needs to avoid being completely depressing. What’ll be most challenging about the film for many is its pace, which is relatively lax and often stretches moments and shots longer than normal. Some would call this meandering; I’d call it glamorously introspective (I have no qualms about staring at Gallego’s images for an extra beat or two—or three). Guerra’s made a magical film in that it feels strangely organic and of the earth. The mechanisms we’re used to recognizing and latching on to—performances, camera moves, editing, sound design—flow together so naturally in Guerra and his team’s hands that Embrace of the Serpent feels of the earth, not of 35mm celluloid.

After making films about social recluses (Curling), ex-convicts (Vic + Flo Saw a Bear) and venturing into documentaries on animals (Bestiaire) and factory workers (Joy of Man’s Desiring), French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté sets his sights on the upper class in Boris Without Béatrice. Its story, about a successful businessman confronting his own privilege after a surreal encounter, will undoubtedly rub people the wrong way given its sympathetic view towards an unsympathetic protagonist, but fans of Côté’s precise, arresting style will find plenty to enjoy, even if it’s in strictly formal terms.

James Hyndman plays Boris Malinovsky, a middle-aged man as arrogant as he is successful. Early scenes establish Boris’ rich lifestyle and hubris, like when he gets furious at the cashier of a high-class clothing store for asking him too many questions or crashes a town hall to lambast the mayor for not prioritizing an unpaved road near his house. But Boris’ obnoxious sense of pride and short temper might be influenced by added stress at home; his wife Béatrice (Simone-Élise Girard), a minister for the Canadian government, has come down with a severe depression that’s left her mute and bedridden. Boris, unable to deal with his wife’s ailment, hires Klara (Isolda Dychauk) to take care of her while he continues an affair with co-worker Helga (Dounia Sichov). It’s a typical case of someone using their wealth to fill the holes in their life with something else, rather than putting the work in to try and gain back what’s lost.

For a character so stuck in his own self-inflated world, it will take a lot to shake Boris from his foundation. Enter Denis Lavant as an unknown stranger, who leaves a message in Boris’ mailbox urging him to meet late at night in a nearby quarry. Their meeting, which feels like Côté’s version of the Cowboy scene in Mulholland Drive, has Lavant (who electrifies the film just by showing up in a kurta) explaining to Boris that he’s the cause for Béatrice’s condition, and in order to cure her, he needs to change his life. The encounter throws Boris into a crisis that makes him re-evaluate his life while diving further into his selfish comforts when he starts an affair with Klara.

While Boris Without Béatrice may be Côté’s first time dealing with affluent characters, he’s far from the first filmmaker to explore the problems people can afford to have, and the thematic familiarity can make certain stretches feel a bit stale. But one of Côté’s strengths has always been his ability to build an enclosed yet well-realized universe within each of his films, so it comes as no surprise that his style fits nicely when operating within the bubble of someone’s privileged existence.

Teaming up with cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné, Côté extends the functional qualities of the narrative to the film’s visuals. Just as every action in the film leads to a direct reaction involving some other aspect of the story— Béatrice’s health improves or worsens depending on how Boris acts—Côté uses environments to make a direct commentary on each character’s current state, whether it’s obscuring Béatrice behind reflective surfaces or using the vertical lines throughout Boris’ sleek estate to make him appear separated from others within the same scene. Côté’s efficiency when it comes to establishing information through visuals is most effective when using flashbacks to show Boris reflecting on happier times with his wife. Shooting these (brief) moments in warm tones on what looks like 8mm film, the organic and textured look of the footage establishes that, despite his bad behavior, Boris’ love for Béatrice is real.

For any shortcomings Boris Without Béatrice might have storywise, Côté’s direction and his ensemble pick up the slack. It may lack the same unpredictability that made Vic + Flo Saw a Bear so strong, but Côté has firmly established himself as one of Canada’s strongest and most consistent directors working today.

Dreams and reality collide, or rather blandly coexist, in Petr Oukropec’s In Your Dreams!, a coming-of-age tale that combines a teenage girl’s burgeoning emotions with parkour, the form of acrobatic urban exploration that became a passing fad in the early 2000s. Beginning at an off-season ski resort high up in a range of mountains, 16-year-old Laura (Barbora Štikarová) practices back flips while her father (Ivan Martinka) gets ready for the two of them to go out climbing. A tense climbing sequence establishes Laura as a teen whose craving for independence can make her reckless, as she climbs too fast and winds up slipping (lucky for her, the safety harness she complained about moments earlier saves her from falling to her death). This opening, while brief, makes a big impression thanks to director of photography’s Tomáš Sysel gorgeous visuals, using the film’s Cinemascope ratio to capture the jaw-dropping vistas provided by the high-altitude location.

The promise of a film filled with such eye-watering imagery soon dissipates as the movie has a literal and figurative comedown, with Laura abruptly cutting her trip short so she can go back to be with her mother (Klára Melišková) in Prague. Laura’s interests lie more with climbing buildings than mountains, and upon arriving back at her mother’s apartment she goes out with her friend Kaja (Veronika Pouchová) to audition for a spot on a parkour team. Kaja realizes that Laura’s desire to join the all-boys group might have more to do with her crush on Luky (Toman Rychtera), the cocky leader of the team, and after trying out Laura catches his attention, along with the group’s videographer Alex (Jáchym Novotný).

The emotional rush of potentially getting the boy of her dreams starts overwhelming Laura to the point where, when she’s taking the elevator down from her apartment, she falls into a dream world where she finds herself on a beach with Luka by her side. Oukropec’s structuring of his film between Laura’s dreams and the real world feels strange at first, especially when there’s no apparent reason for why she goes into fainting spells whenever she steps into an elevator (after the first incident, a doctor examines Laura but concludes it’s just the boundless mystery of female hormones). And it’s not that Oukropec needs to provide a logical, reality-based reason for his trips into the surreal; he just needs to make the transitions convincing within the realm of his own film, and on that front he comes up short. Compared to the opening minutes, Laura’s dreams look bland in comparison, filtered through drab greys and taking place in the same dull location that implies her own lack of imagination more than anything. It’s a problem that makes Oukropec’s intention of In Your Dreams! as a character-based piece fall flat, with every glimpse into Laura’s head too uninteresting to make anything register.

And once Laura’s dreams and reality begin influencing each other, it’s apparent that the film really has nowhere to go aside from watching its protagonist get over her crush through dreaming. Other aspects of Laura’s life, like a potential romance with Alex or the increasing presence of her mother’s new boyfriend in the apartment, get discarded altogether in the final act, leaving them unresolved or flat-out ignored. There’s also a brief episode where Laura questions whether or not her dreams are more than fantasy, since Luky vanishes after she dreams of him getting locked away, but Oukropec barely commits to Laura’s distressed state. At one point she starts imagining a dog from her dreams following her around in real life, and the development is treated so inconsequentially it just feels like a strange quirk rather than a sign of her further disconnect from reality. Even worse is the way Oukropec decides to wrap things up, letting the contrived climax play out entirely in Laura’s dream world that results in a near-incomprehensible plot resolution. The lazy execution of the film’s more imaginative side keeps Oukropec’s film tethered to its own uninteresting and poorly developed reality, with only Štikarová’s strong performance forming some sort of ground to stand on among the half-baked ideas. Aside from its visuals and some neat parkour stunt work, In Your Dreams! has about as much staying power as the majority of our own dreams.

Pensive and intellectual to the core, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things to Come is a remarkably intriguing follow-up to her previous film Eden, mostly in how natural it feels even with subjects that seem (on the surface, at least) like they couldn’t be farther apart. For those who’ve never seen the director’s 2014 EDM tale, it follows a young man (a semi-biographical extension of her real-life brother) as he grows up in the early ’90s Parisian dance music scene. Things to Come centers on a woman, decades older than Eden’s protagonist, who teaches high-school philosophy in Paris and lives with her two children and husband of 25 years. At a certain point, it becomes clear that the City of Love isn’t the only thing binding the director’s latest films. Hansen-Løve is fascinated by the idea of human growth, and her creative way of expressing is growing itself.

Things to Come is a gentle wind; it flows so effortlessly, you can almost feel the warmth of its silky texture on your skin. This is generated by the way Hansen-Løve and her DP Denis Lenoir wield the camera around with a spontaneous, fluid spirit, but much of it is also attributable to a marvelous doyenne of the acting world, who carries the entire weight of the film on her shoulders as effortlessly as ever. Isabelle Huppert has an uncanny knack of conveying a remarkably large range of emotions: turning down-to-earth into larger-than-life with one pout, one sideway glance, or an ever-so-slight intonation in a spoken word. She embodies Nathalie, the philosophy professor who is suddenly faced with a concept she’d long forgotten about. In her own words: “total freedom.” Her husband, Heinz (Andre Marcon), has left her for another woman, and she has retouched base with former student Fabien (Roman Kolinka), whose combination of youth and intellect make him especially interesting for Nathalie. In some other film, perhaps, their relationship would be replete with perverse suggestions; under Hansen-Løve’s wing, their bond is strictly platonic and cerebral.

As the film follows Nathalie and her various evolutions—adapting to a new school regime that takes a modern marketing ax to her dear philosophy, dealing with a demented mother (Edith Scob), etc.—questions are mulled over in the refined, graceful way one images an oenophile tasting vintage wine. Is there a practical place for philosophy in today’s world? What does a woman over 40, whose kids are all grown up and whose memories are now tainted by her husband’s decision, have to hold on to? Is burying yourself in intellectual thoughts and readings enough to be happy? Hansen-Løve bears her old soul through the way she deals with these questions, with just the right balance of humor and melancholy. There’s just enough style to keep it at an arms-length from being a slice-of-life picture in the cinema verité sense, but the story, the characters, and the ideas on display keep the film firmly rooted to the ground and in reality.

Women’s stories, female directors, roles for women over 45—these debates are very much at the forefront of today’s film conversations. Things to Come is a serendipitous celebration of all three. Mia Hansen-Løve, still in her 30s, shows immense sensibility and maturity in tackling insular subject matter that would have most studio heads bolting for the door. In Isabelle Huppert, she has found the perfect collaborator—an actress of incredible depth and range, who makes every frame that much more fascinating to behold. Now, when I think about Eden and Things to Come as companion pieces, it’s hard to imagine another director who handles the subject of “moving on” with the kind of delicate deftness and assuredness that Mia Hansen-Løve demonstrates.

The Unity of All Things will screen in the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s series ‘Friends With Benefits: An Anthology of Four New American Filmmakers.’ To find out more about the series visit the ‘Friends With Benefits’ website.

The lines separating mainstream, independent, and arthouse films are often blurred (especially around awards season). But to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, I might not be able to definitively summarize each category, but I know what I’m watching when I see it. This is particularly true when it comes to arthouse films. As far from the mainstream as possible and certainly well-removed from the indie scene, an arthouse film can do more than challenge a viewer; it can defy basic understanding. Such is the case with The Unity of All Things, a film as arthouse as they come, from the writing/directing team of Alexander Carver and Daniel Schmidt.

There’s very little plot to speak of, but the film is no less dense. It begins on a scientific level, as its physicist protagonist/matriarch faces the inevitable shuttering of her particle accelerator and the quest to build another. Still keeping physics heavy in the forefront, but with philosophical musings injected (“Knowledge of the universe does not change reality. The pursuit of that knowledge does.”), the film then plays on relationships between and among the protagonist, two other female scientists who work for her, and her twin sons (the sons, meant to be portrayed as beautiful boys, are played by girls). Those sons begin an exploration of their own sexuality as they engage in an incestuous relationship with each other. Beautiful visuals (the film was shot on Super 8 and Super 16) get mixed with monotonous scenes (meant to be viewed as art rather than consumed as film, I suppose), and the title card appears halfway into picture.

The Unity of All Things not only refuses to be pigeonholed into a traditional genre, it defies even being called a film. Less a motion picture than a piece of moving art, Carver and Schmidt’s feature debut epitomizes the notion of something being an acquired taste.

Studio-financed dramas based on real-life heroism stories are a dime a dozen. We’ve all seen a million of them and pretty much know beat-for-beat how they operate, which is pretty much the same way all Hollywood blockbusters operate. (“Here comes the part where the handsome white man beats impossible odds and saves everyone!”) One always hopes, when one of these incredible-true-story cash-ins comes along, that the filmmakers seize the opportunity they’re given and actually do something interesting and artful.

Regrettably, the opportunity is typically squandered, and such is the case with The Finest Hours, a decent dramatization that’s too restrained and measured to be interesting. A product of Disney, the Craig Gillespie-directed thriller is inspired by the efforts of a handful of Bostonian U.S. Coast Guard rescuers who save around thirty men from a ravaged oil tanker in the middle of the stormy North Atlantic. Such a story sets the foundation for the bevy of visual effects teams to go absolutely ham with digital rain and pummelling waves and sweeping views of raging sea storms. The CGI maelstrom indeed looks pretty impressive, but it’s all stuff we’ve seen before in other, better movies of the same ilk. Plus, oddly enough, despite the chaos surrounding our plucky heroes, it never quite feels like they’re in all that much danger.

In February 1952, an oil tanker was literally ripped in two by a winter storm off the coast of Boston, prompting the Coast Guard to deploy a sizeable team of their best to search for survivors. In a cruel twist of fate, a second tanker in the area, the SS Pendleton, was split in half as well. With the Coast Guard crew’s numbers severely diminished, just four men are sent on a small motorboat to somehow navigate the crushing, freezing waters and locate the Pendleton and its survivors.

They’re led by Bernie Webber, played by an unexpectedly wooden Chris Pine. Webber’s a man’s man, but he’s shy and mildly awkward, socially. Pine doesn’t find any depth within the character, which is a disappointment, though his co-stars feel similarly docile (Ben Foster, playing one of the four rag-taggers, is also uncharacteristically sleepy in his performance). Half of the movie follows what’s left of the Pendleton crew, a collection of archetypes embodied, again, by talented actors seemingly on cruise control. Casey Affleck plays the crew’s impromptu leader, Raymond Sybert, a sort of ship whisperer who devises clever plans to keep the Pendleton afloat until help comes. Raymond, like Bernie, is a softspoken outcast of sorts, their respective journeys parallel and largely flavorless.

We don’t know much about Raymond’s background, but we learn a lot about Bernie’s in the film’s open, which flashes back to the meet-cute between he and his sweetheart, Miriam (Holliday Grainger, who has the lovely look of a classic Hollywood starlet). When Bernie’s out on his impossible rescue mission, we occasionally check in on Miriam, who’s worried into a frenzy, taking much of her frustration out on Bernie’s commanding officer (Eric Bana). Grainger’s gifted, and maybe the nicest thing about the movie is that she’s given ample time to explore Miriam’s different colors of desperation and anger and denial.

The Finest Hours‘ issues really boil down to the fact that it moves forward in such a sleepy fashion that the stakes seem to evaporate into nothing as we watch the actors navigate the uninventive script (by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson) without any vigor or enthusiasm. The generic, sweeping score is relentless in how it dictates the tone of the scenes before the camera or the actors are given a chance to, which is another added frustration. It’s an incredibly bloodless affair, and the ending is so protracted and full of pointless, long stares that I was absolutely itching for the thing to be over.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that, given the word “diversity” dominating recent conversations around the film industry, a festival like Sundance can act an alternative to the homogeneity of the mainstream. By its very nature, independent filmmaking provides more diverse, unique and personal stories, and it’s only upon seeing these kinds of films that one can get a true sense of the importance of opening up to new perspectives. Andrew Ahn’s Spa Night, screening in Sundance’s Official U.S. Dramatic Competition, is a perfect example, a coming-of-age tale that’s refreshing just for the fact that it shines a light on an area of society that’s rarely put on film.

Taking place in Koreatown in Los Angeles, Spa Night follows David (Joe Seo), the son of Korean immigrants Soyoung (Haerry Kim) and Jin (Youn Ho Cho). David’s parents own a restaurant, and he’s been happy to forego attending college in order to help his family’s business. But once the restaurant shuts down, things change significantly for David and his family: Soyoung starts working as a waitress at a restaurant owned by one of her friends at church, Jin turns to drinking in order to cope with his inability to find work, and David starts becoming aware of his attraction towards men. Pushed by his parents to retake his SATs so he can go to college, David decides to find a job instead, working at a Korean spa that doubles as a site for discreet gay hook-ups. The spa serves as a heightened middle ground for David, providing an opportunity to explore his sexual identity while not straying too far from his own cultural comfort zone.

The film’s specificity, combined with Ahn’s sensitivity towards his own characters, go a long way to establishing Spa Night’s unique placement among US cinema, but those factors don’t change how inert the movie feels on an emotional level. David represses his homosexuality due to his religious upbringing and parents’ conservatism (when he asks how they’d feel about him dating a white woman, they stare at him with stunned, disapproving silence), which Ahn reflects through his rigid and detached form, making it hard to invest in David’s internal struggles. Beyond his attraction to men, it’s hard to pin down what exactly David might be feeling about his situation, shutting off any possibility of engaging with David’s story on a character level.

The same can’t be said for David’s parents, whose attempts to recover from losing their business help fill in the film’s emotional gaps. Haerry Kim and Youn Ho Cho both give great performances as David’s parents, but it’s Kim as Soyoung who steals the film from her co-stars. As her character transitions into the family breadwinner after the restaurant’s closure, Kim makes every aspect of Soyoung’s painful adjustment felt. The success of this subplot only makes Ahn’s issues with making David’s storyline resonate all the more frustrating.

What would happen to humanity if everyone lost their ability to retain memories? That’s one of the questions Claire Carré explores with her debut feature Embers, which drops viewers into a world 10 years after a disease infects everyone with short-term and long-term memory loss. Carré splits her film up into five narrative strands, each one examining how an aspect intrinsic to our existence changes within her own dystopian vision; a couple (Jason Ritter & Iva Gocheva) wake up every day trying to remember how they know each other; a former intellectual (Tucker Smallwood) tries different ways to learn again so he can find a cure; a boy (Silvan Friedman) with no parents wanders around trying to survive on his own; a young man (Karl Glusman, credited as Chaos) filled with rage attacks everyone he encounters; and the young girl Miranda (Greta Fernandez) lives in an underground bunker with her father (Roberto Cots), safe from the disease but cut off from the world.

On the surface, Carré’s film looks like standard post-apocalyptic fare, but its tone is anything but. Shooting in Indiana, New York and Poland, Embers casts its urban decay in a bland, grey hue that should bring to mind Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, except Carré doesn’t provide her film with the same bleakness and nihilism. With no one connected to their past, the strong emotions connected to memories don’t exist anymore, leaving characters to constantly live in the moment in a somewhat peaceful state. The only exception to this is Chaos, whose violent acts take on a new meaning given they’re instinctual and without consequence. The somewhat tranquil mood amidst a dying world makes for a fascinating juxtaposition, allowing Carré the ability to weave in emotional and philosophical questions about identity and the human condition.

With a short runtime and several disconnected storylines, Embers only disappoints with its inability to coalesce on a thematic level (most segments just end abruptly). The only exception is Miranda’s storyline, as her near-decade of isolation makes her consider leaving the bunker to go live in the real world. Her father begs her not to go, telling her that once she’s infected she’ll lose everything that makes her who she is. For Miranda, it’s a complicated situation that directly addresses Carré’s question at the heart of the film, over whether or not memory is the source of our own individuality.

The saying goes that time heals all wounds, but in A Good Wife time also uncovers new ones. For middle-aged housewife Milena (writer/director Mirjana Karanovic, making her first feature), life is going well. Her eldest daughter is a successful artist, her two younger children are doing great in school, and her husband Vlada (Boris Isakovic) makes sure she lives a comfy life. When Milena cleans around the house one day, she discovers a VHS tape containing footage of her husband committing war crimes during his days as a soldier. A disturbed Milena puts the tape back, telling no one of what she saw, but word starts getting around that the authorities might have already started investigating Vlada, and the threat of his arrest throws Milena’s happy life into turmoil. At the same time, a check-up at the doctor’s leads to the discovery of a large lump in one of her breasts, and despite Milena’s attempts to avoid getting it checked further, it’s clear that her life is about to go through some major changes.

Karanovic, an accomplished Serbian actress who’s been working for over three decades, shows she has plenty of talent behind the camera as well, directing in a subdued manner that places characters and themes at the forefront. The same can’t necessarily be said about her screenplay, which leans on some heavy-handed metaphors and familiar ideas that can’t help but feel stale. Karanovic makes the link between Milena’s tumor and her willful ignorance of the past impossible to miss, and even with the unique angle of the Yugoslav Wars, watching Milena’s growing awareness of her own domestication as more of a self-imposed prison sentence isn’t especially exciting. But the screenplay’s staleness only ends up being a slight bother, as Karanovic’s direction and captivating performance keep things from falling into tedium. A Good Wife has its flaws, but as a directorial debut, it shows enough promise to hope that it won’t be the only time Karanovic takes a seat in the director’s chair.

First-time writer/director Paul Taylor wants you to know that Driftwood is, in his words, “a reaction to contemporary cinema.” Citing excessive exposition and the old adage of style over substance, Taylor intends to make a film that breaks things down to cinema’s purest form as a visual medium. What that translates to is, in a literal sense, nothing: Driftwood doesn’t have a single word of dialogue in it, strictly relying on actions to communicate themes and plot. It’s a bold move for Taylor or any new director, but it’s hard not to feel a little hesitant about the move given its origins. Could Taylor’s eschewing of dialogue be an opportunity to provide a breath of fresh air from more standard indie fare, or is it merely a reactionary gimmick whose purpose is to stand out for the sake of it? Driftwood luckily doesn’t fall into the latter category, with Taylor sincerely trying to break from the norm to explore different ways of keeping viewers engaged, even if his methods might have their own shortcomings.

Opening with the arresting image of a Woman (Joslyn Jensen) possibly suffering from some sort of amnesia wandering out of a beach, Driftwood cuts to a Man (Paul C. Kelly) taking the Woman back to his house. There’s no relation between them from the looks of it—he more or less found her on the beach and decided to take her home—and the Woman is so far gone she doesn’t even know how to go to the bathroom. Is she suffering from amnesia, or is this something supernatural or stranger? That’s left up to interpretation, but when the camera lingers on a shot of the Man touching his new “friend” a little too affectionately, there’s no need to guess his intentions with her.

Without dialogue, Driftwood’s narrative keeps things basic. What the film boils down to is the Woman trying to escape from the Man, as her growing independence is met with harsher treatment by her captor. An unwarranted trip outside prompts the Man to lock the Woman in her bedroom when he’s at work, and her successive acts of rebellion lead to stricter living conditions. The Man’s motives for his behaviour get an explanation from Taylor early on, a bit of development that highlights the benefits of Taylor’s approach. With all the emphasis on visuals and sound, there’s more room for Taylor’s themes to take centre stage.

Aside from the more ambiguous questions surrounding the set-up, Driftwood’s straightforward storyline also means there’s just a lot more room altogether, and that space starts getting felt as the plot becomes repetitive. Later in the film, the arrival of a Young Man (Michael Fentin) threatens to shake things up, except it plays out more or less as expected, eventually falling back into the routine established earlier. That’s not to say Driftwood is a stale film by any means, though. It’s an inherently active viewing experience, with Taylor’s cinematography and the two lead performances keeping things both dynamic and engaging. But with more attention paid to what’s on screen, the patterns and repetitions inevitably become more noticeable as well.

So while there’s plenty of room to chew on Driftwood’s ideas of loneliness, grief and trying to rebuild the past, the comparably lacking story means more attention winds up being paid on filling in the background information, theorizing on the origins of the Woman and how she wound up rising out of the beach like a newborn. Those mystery elements make Driftwood a fun curiosity and Taylor’s refusal to give context is more than welcome, but it can only take the film so far. Nonetheless, Taylor can easily rest his film on its own ambitions. Driftwood showcases the good and bad of making a dialogue-free film, but it also shows the kind of riskiness that more indies should attempt.

Following in the footsteps of Alex Ross Perry’s comedies and 2014 SXSW winner Fort Tilden (whose co-lead Clare McNulty shows up here in a small role), Robert Putka’s MAD deals almost exclusively with watching selfish, heinous people behave in selfish, heinous ways, with Putka setting his sights on a dysfunctional family and their bipolar mother. Mel (Maryann Plunkett) suffers a breakdown after her husband leaves her, winding up in the hospital when she’s found uncontrollably sobbing by her neighbours. Mel’s daughters Connie (Jennifer Lafleur), a successful corporate worker with a husband and two kids, and Casey (Eilis Cahill), unemployed and trying to figure out her life, convince her to commit herself to a psych ward in order to rehabilitate herself, a choice fueled more by selfishness than a sincere desire to help their mom.

Of course, being a family with its fair share of relationship issues, every interaction ends up devolving into a brutal war of words between mother and daughter(s). Putka, who also wrote the screenplay, knows how to write some great passive-aggressive barbs (when a dejected Mel tells Connie that her daughters hate her, Connie calmly responds with “Casey doesn’t hate you”), and his game cast do a great job making their arguments crackle until the acid-tongued screenplay gets the better of everyone. For the most part, Putka’s tonal balance between sweet and bitter works (largely because of Plunkett’s performance), but the constant repetition of Connie or other characters lashing out at one another takes its toll, eventually making scenes feel like Putka trying to constantly one-up his own insults. That makes MAD work against itself when it tries to humanize its three leads, resulting in a rocky ending when the film goes for an emotionally satisfying payoff. Fans of extremely caustic humour should get their fill with MAD, and while Putka’s attempt to find a middle ground between the sincere and cynical doesn’t entirely work (a hard task for anyone to accomplish, let alone a first feature), he shows enough wit to make MAD’s ambitions worthwhile.

It’s hard not be drawn to a film whose hook focuses on a day in the life of a pair of closeted gay Muslim teens living in New York. The combination has serious potential as it sets up for things like the awkwardness of a blossoming teen love, the fear of being discovered by family and friends who might not understand, the conflict of being an active member in a religious community whose tenets negatively view homosexuality, and the constant hum of suspicion that comes with being part of the Muslim community in post-9/11 New York. All of this potential exists in writer/director Jay Dockendorf’s debut feature, Naz & Maalik.

Maalik (Curtiss Cook Jr.) and Naz (Kerwin Johnson Jr.) are two teens who make money by purchasing lottery tickets, prayer cards, oils, and other small items, and then sell them at a markup to passersby on the sidewalks of Brooklyn. They are also best friends who have recently discovered deeper emotions for each other. Throughout the course of the day, the young men roam the streets selling their trinkets, make time for prayer, and discuss greater social and spiritual issues as well as wrestle with the spiritual and familial ramifications of their relationship. All the while, they are under surveillance by an FBI agent (Annie Grier) who thinks the Muslim boys could be a greater threat.

Yes, all of the potential is there in Naz & Maalik, but it’s potential that is never fully realized. Rather than use weighty issues as something the leads can wrestle with, Dockendorf relies on the leads’ charm to carry the film while peppering the story with only weighty suggestions. The young men spend a fair amount of time walking and talking about heavy topics, but their conversations never delve deep enough to elicit considerable thought from the viewer. It’s as if their conflicts and musings exist solely as some philosophical or intellectual exercise, not discussions that will result in decisions that will have real consequences.

Once the pattern is established that their conversations exist only on a surface level, each subsequent walk and talk become that much more tedious. Dockendorf also spends far too much time showing the boys shopping for their items and then selling them on the street. An 86-minute film has no time to waste on such frivolity, but the endless presentation of meaningless moments suggests the writer/director didn’t know how to properly flesh-out his ideas, leading to stretched out scenes that pad the film.

This shallowness extends to other areas. The boys’ families, the most significant people in their lives (with the exception of each other) and those with a vested interest in what happens, are almost nonexistent. As for the boys’ onscreen spiritual involvement, it’s relegated to one visit to a mosque, a reading from the Quran, and some handwringing about the conflict between sexuality and their faith. I’m not one who needs everything explained, but I do need some ideas to be developed if they are to be believed.

The film also struggles with the entire FBI angle. I understand persons of interest, and I’m willing to go so far as to accept that the FBI agent caught the scent of the two boys based on a mostly bogus (and very racist) tip by a cop early in the film. What rings unbelievable is the subsequent (slow-speed) pursuit of the boys by the agent. She’s more private eye than Fed, and a bad one at that. Again, Dockendorf doggie-paddles on the creative surface instead of deep-diving, this time asking viewers to fill in the FBI blanks based on what Hollywood has taught them about law enforcement, rather than exploring issues like profiling and being profiled.

By the third act, there is trouble in paradise, both between the boys and with the film. For the former, distrust and suspicion begin to fester over the oddest of things. For the latter, the film winds down with a bizarre circumstance involving a live chicken. By the credits, the film has worn out its welcome.

It’s a shame. Jay Dockendorf has a refreshing premise and his stars have charm for days. But all of that quickly fades when nothing of substance develops from the premise, and nothing of consequence leverages that charm. Naz & Maalik is the kind of idea the indie scene wants, but it’s not the kind of film the indie scene needs.

Naz & Maalik opens Friday, January 22nd in New York City. It will be released on DVD & VOD on Tuesday, January 26th.

My earliest recollection of watching a road movie dates back to my youth when a local TV station aired the series of Bob Hope/Bing Crosby/Dorothy Lamour Road to… comedy pictures. Since then, I’ve amassed a lot of cinematic road miles with everything from It Happened One Night to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and from Thelma & Louise to Nebraska. The latest offering of what is most definitely a road movie is set not in 20th century America, but rather 19th century Romania. It’s unlike any road movie I’ve seen before but in the most positive of ways.

Radu Jude’s Aferim!, set in Wallachia (Romania) in 1835, tells the tale of Costandin (Teodor Corban), a law enforcement official who, with his son Ionita (Mihai Comanoiu), embarks on a manhunt. The man they are hunting is Carfin (Toma Cuzin), a gypsy who was caught having an affair with the wife of Iordache (Alexandru Dabija), a boyar (high-ranking aristocrat) now fixed on revenge. Costandin and Ionita trek on horseback across various terrains, searching from village to village to find their man.

If that sounds like a Golden Age Hollywood western, believe me when I say it feels like one, too. This is just one of the great joys of Aferim!—how Jude, who co-wrote the screenplay with Florin Lazarescu, structures the film in a way that harkens back to a film like Howard Hawks’ great western Red River. In that film, John Wayne and Montgomery Clift play a father/(adopted) son leading a cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail, but it isn’t getting from Point A to Point B that’s important; it’s what happens during the drive that is key. The same approach is taken here. The pursuit of Carfin is little more than an excuse to allow circumstances to unfold with and between the father/son duo during the trip. In both cases, the journey is more important than the destination.

More homage paid to the American western—or rather, more specifically, paid to director John Ford, a master of the genre—is Jude’s use of B&W film and his compilation of stunning long shots of the Romanian countryside. Helping Jude achieve his vision is cinematographer Marius Panduru, who dulls the contrast between the darks and lights to achieve something more visually fitting to humanity’s geo-centric bleakness of the time period.

Aferim! does not hesitate to depict the cruel history of slavery, racism, misogyny, and lawless corruption that existed in that region and at that time. The abuse of gypsy slaves, both verbal and physical, ranges from unsettling to harrowing (particularly in one instance of justice meted vigilante-style). Women are, by law, inferior to men, and the attitude towards other ethnicities, especially in one chunk of dialogue spewed by a clergyman (!), is shocking. Given the abundance of gypsy slaves in that part of the world during that era, the reminders of how cruel a people they were is constant. Being juxtaposed against such a beautifully lensed backdrop makes it that much more unforgettable.

Jude adds one additional dimension to his film that doesn’t soften the blow of dealing with Romania’s dark history head-on, but it sure does provide the occasional respite: humor. And not just any humor, but bawdy, raucous humor that uses foul language so liberally it’s like the script was seasoned by a salt shaker full of hand grenades. The frankness of language is initially disarming given the visual aesthetic, the need for subtitles, and the blunt delivery, but it quickly becomes a natural part of the film’s dialogue, mostly delivered by Costandin as if he were a character created by Judd Apatow.

As for Costandin, he’s a bullish, boorish old man whose verbal arsenal is never short on hilarious stories, couplets, quotes, or homespun wisdom, all of which he imparts on his son. (My favorite line: “Even a fallen tree rests.” Whatever that means.) Teodor Corban, who is in nearly every scene and has more than the most dialogue of any player, performs marvelously in this role. He’s a natural, delivering his lines with great bombast but never to the point of caricature.

Rounding out this excellent production are Dana Paparuz’s costumes and Trei Parale’s Romanian folk-infused score. Both add a high degree of authenticity to the film that helps transport the viewer to that point in time.

The triple-threat of imagery, history, and comedy, salted with language and made even better by a terrific lead performance, all combine to make Aferim! a road picture like no other. This is my first Radu Jude film, and it’s one that has me eager to find his previous two.

When discussing Romanian cinema, or more specifically the “New Wave” of minimalist, arthouse-friendly titles from this century (a wave that really isn’t that new anymore, given it’s over a decade old now), the word “slow” inevitably comes up in some form or another. With an emphasis on realism and letting scenes unfold through long, (usually) static takes, the apparent mundanity of what’s on screen ends up giving way to something thought-provoking and thematically rich. Whether it’s taking place in the country’s tumultuous past or its present day, the relatable and banal actions of characters provide a platform to explore personal, political and social ideas that delve well beyond the surface. These films are only “slow” in that their pacing isn’t what’s usually expected; “deliberate” would be a more accurate, and less reductive, description.

So it comes as no surprise that Radu Muntean’s One Floor Below is a very deliberately paced film, to the point where it might fly over some people’s heads. It starts with an innocuous act of eavesdropping: Business owner Patrascu (Teodor Corban) comes back home after taking his dog for a walk when he overhears an intense argument in the apartment below his. He listens in as Laura (Maria Popistasu) argues with Vali (Iulian Postelnicu), another tenant in the apartment. There’s a sound of a struggle and a scream from Laura before everything goes silent, and before Patrascu knows it Vali opens the door, catching him listening in. It’s an awkward moment for Patrascu, one he tries to forget about later that day until he sees police cars outside his building when he comes home from work.

Laura was found dead in her apartment with the police suspecting foul play, and while some directors might create a mystery over whether or not Vali did it, Muntean has different plans. The big question revolves around Patrascu instead, as he doesn’t divulge what he heard to police when they question him about Laura’s death. Without any hint of character motivation, Patrascu is more or less a blank slate for viewers to pin their assumptions and theories on. The only thing that’s obvious is his avoidance of anything related to Laura’s murder, shutting down the topic whenever his wife or son bring it up. But the hassle of trying to stay a silent witness gets worse for Patrascu once Vali starts involving himself in his life more and more, befriending family members and eventually asking Patrascu to help him out with a business matter.

It’s an enticing set-up, except Muntean seems intent on making his film a sort of inert thriller, focusing his time on things like Patrascu’s job as a bureaucratic navigator of sorts, helping people get their car registrations with little to no hassle. That’s what One Floor Below might look like at first blush, but it would be a mistake to interpret Muntean’s vast room for interpretation and reflection as nothing more than empty space. It’s a film that unfolds through gaps, to the point where its editing is so elliptical it’s easy to question basic facts: it’s never explicitly stated that Laura was murdered, and even then Muntean doesn’t make it clear that Vali killed her. Muntean’s omissions are blanks for viewers to fill in as they see fit, not holes in the story.

With so many films happy to withhold facts or delve into ambiguities, it’s easy to apply that same mode of interpretation on Muntean’s narrative, but with One Floor Below it might be a case of digging a little too deep. When Patrascu bumps into Laura’s sister in the apartment, trying to open her dead sibling’s overstuffed mailbox, it’s followed by Patrascu lambasting a friend for calling Laura a slut. Does Patrascu feel guilty about his silence after seeing Laura’s distraught sister, or is he just annoyed at the topic not going away? The real ambiguities of One Floor Below lie in its characters, not its story, which serves as a set-up for Muntean’s exploration of the reactions and fallout from Laura’s death. Patrascu, as a man who runs his own complicated business, finds himself inserted into a situation he has no grasp on, and in his attempts to maintain control he only finds it slipping out of his hands at a faster rate.

Teodor Corban’s performance is a low-key powerhouse in many ways, finding a perfect balance between a specificity that gives him an intimidating presence and an ability to hold back from revealing too much about what’s going on inside his head. Muntean pulls off a similar balancing act himself in his film’s construction, filming most of his scenes in lengthy, unbroken takes emphasizing the underlying tension between Patrascu and Vali. These scenes, especially when Vali starts showing up in Patrascu’s apartment to lend a hand, linger on the lulls in conversations, watching Patrascu try to get a handle on how to navigate himself out of a mess he inadvertently made himself a part of. Muntean has enough confidence in his premise and direction to simply present the situation, let viewers pick apart what’s raging underneath the surface and make their own conclusions about character motivations and psychology rather than what’s fact or fiction. And by creating the opportunity to navigate the murkier landscape of character rather than narrative, Muntean provides a more active and rewarding experience than One Floor Below’s conventional-sounding story implies.

One of the more awkward topics in the early points of a romantic relationship involves the discussion of past loves. The reality is most people are not their current love’s first love, and yet some struggle to admit there was someone before them. This topic can be most sensitive in the early months of a relationship, especially if there is a concern that feelings for an ex might still exist. Fear about this isn’t exclusive to new relationships, however. In Andrew Haigh’s sublime 45 Years, a couple who has been together for nearly half a century finds their relationship suddenly tested by a voice from the past.

That couple is the Mercers: Kate (Charlotte Rampling), a retired teacher, and Geoff (Tom Courtenay), a retired plant worker. They live a quiet life in the British countryside where they go about their business the ways most retired couples do: walking the dog, puttering about the house, running errands in town, etc. Those halcyon days of their golden years take a sharp turn just a week before their 45th wedding anniversary, when Geoff receives a letter that the body of a long-deceased former love has been found. “My Katya,” as Geoff refers to her when he breaks the news to his wife, was the love he knew before Kate. The discovery of Katya, whose body was frozen solid and lost for half a century in the mountains of Switzerland, changes Geoff. That change, along with the subsequent discovery of other information, changes Kate.

There’s a high degree of difficulty in properly presenting 45 Years without it devolving into some mawkish soap about old age and young love and regret and whatnot. Fortunately, it’s a challenge Andrew Haigh (who adapted the screenplay from David Constantine‘s short story In Another Country) more than rises to. The filmmaker has a keen awareness that a 45-year marriage is simultaneously strong and vulnerable, and he has a clear understanding that the frailty of the human ego is something that doesn’t fade with age.

The strength of the Mercers’ relationship is the most obvious aspect of the film. A couple doesn’t get to its 45th wedding anniversary on cruise control. Marriages take work to get that far, and the Mercers have put in that work, but their success is measured by more than just a number. It’s also measured by their contentment and ease with each other. It’s a subtle but important thing. This is an elderly couple not portrayed as bitter or cantankerous or even slyly dismissive of each other; they love each other and have for a long time. The fact that they are planning a 45th-anniversary party is a great example of that. They had planned a party for their 40th—a more logical milestone—but illness got in the way. They didn’t reschedule it for as soon as possible, nor did they clamor to try again at 41. They shrugged their shoulders, knew in their hearts they’d be together no matter what the year, and rounded to the next 5-year marker to throw a replacement party.

The part that’s less obvious, the part that’s more important, is the vulnerability of a relationship that has lasted so long. It isn’t a vulnerability that comes with boredom or complacency because these aren’t people looking for something new. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. These are people who are comfortable with, perhaps subconsciously cling to, the familiarities and rituals they have built up over 45 years. The film is rich with little suggestions of this. So when something like the unexpected reemergence of the corpse of a past love enters this familiar space, it might not crumble the house, but it chips the paint, and chipped paint is the kind of thing that gnaws at someone because they know it’s there and they can’t leave it alone.

And therein lies the never-aging frailty of the human ego that Haigh gets so right. With the reemergence of Katya’s body, Geoff is whisked back to the past and once again reminded of a love realized and yet left incomplete by tragedy. If he were a 40-something who had run into a high school flame at a reunion, he might buy a flashy car. He’s not that guy. Instead, he starts smoking again. He tries reading Kierkegaard again. He moves a little closer to being that irritable old man who wonders if he did it right. He worries that his old love’s frozen body has not aged a day while his has aged thousands. These little changes, these little comments, this renewed interest in a time he long filed away keeps the paint chipping and threatens to crack a wall.

Kate is in tune with it all. Acutely.

At first, it’s not that big a deal. Sure, it’s an old love, but it’s a dead love. However, as Geoff’s interest in Kierkegaard and finding old mementos increases, and as those moments when the couple would share quiet small talk turn into a discussion about Katya (again), Kate wears down. She asks questions—little ones—that illustrate the stoic and supportive face she wears on the outside hides an unraveling self-confidence on the inside. Learning something new and unexpected only exacerbates the problem because now it feels like Geoff is hiding something. When she starts poking around in the attic, her disbelief is crippling. The stakes are immeasurable because it’s not as if she might lose her husband to some fling the way a 40-year-old might; she might lose her husband to a ghost, and there’s no fighting that.

Rampling plays her incredibly deep and complex role to perfection. There is no scenery to chew, no impassioned speech to make, no confrontation to be had with “the other woman,” so in the absence of that, Rampling wields subtlety like a surgeon with a scalpel: precise, efficient, effective. It’s an amazing performance, and one made greater by the fact that Haigh keeps her the focus of almost every scene. But Courtenay is no slouch either, and it takes a real actor to be convincing in his late-life change and give Rampling everything she needs to shine.

Love does not have a finish line. There is no point along the timeline of a relationship where someone can say, “We made it this far; nothing can come between us now.” A relationship is like any other living thing: it needs constant care and attention, and it is always susceptible to damage, whether it’s a budding flower of romance or a mighty oak of marriage. With 45 Years, Andrew Haigh and his pair of stars prove this to be true, and they do so in the most well-measured yet mesmerizing of ways.

For Henry Gamble (Cole Doman), his 17^th birthday is a big turning point. He’s first seen lying in bed the night before his birthday with best friend Gabe (Joe Keery), talking about sex before the two of them mutually masturbate over Gabe’s fantasy involving a female classmate. It’s plain to see from Henry’s behaviour that he has a crush on Gabe, but before Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party becomes a story of a secret crush, writer/director Stephen Cone shows Henry praying before he goes to sleep, establishing both the film’s prevailing theme of religion and an ambition to deal with ideas that go well beyond the intimacy of the opening scene.

Indeed, Henry isn’t the only person dealing with internal conflicts at his party, although his own situation is complicated given his father Bob (the undervalued and always reliable Pat Healy) is a pastor. As the guests arrive one by one, Cone establishes his ensemble cast while gradually revealing information about the various dramas lurking underneath the surface. Henry’s mom Kat (Elizabeth Laidlaw) can barely hide that her marriage is going through hard times; sister Autumn (Nina Ganet) is visiting from college and trying to get over a breakup; the death of a prevalent member of the congregation hangs over the proceedings; and Henry tries to avoid his gay classmate Logan (Daniel Kyri), who has a crush on Henry and doesn’t hide it around him.

That’s only a small chunk of the many subplots swirling around Henry’s home, and as the day goes on many of the various crises going on between friends and family come to a head. Taking place over one day at the house, Cone’s skillful balancing of the large cast and multiple narrative strands is so impressive it’s easy to forget that it’s all an elaborate juggling act. Part of that has to do with the ensemble, a combination of amateurs and professionals that work together naturally (it’s worth singling out Healy and Laidlaw as Henry’s parents, who are so good it feels like there could be a film just about them), but it’s largely due to the thematic tissue connecting everyone’s stories. Almost everyone faces a similar dilemma involving their faith, finding themselves face to face with a desire that goes against what they’ve been taught. And as much as their community promotes a friendliness and openness with each other, the fact that their feelings and/or actions would be categorized as sinful means their issues stay buried.

Cone’s ability to extend his story beyond Henry’s own struggle with his queer identity is what helps give Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party an empathetic quality that’s rarely seen in US indies. Whether it’s Kat trying to fight against her feelings of leaving her marriage or someone wanting to break away from their overbearing mother, Cone approaches each character in a way that distinguishes them and respects their own inner conflicts. Granted, this isn’t the case for every character, and when Cone’s characterizations turn broad—like one woman who spends her time at the party ranting about pornography, or a minor character whose story takes a grisly turn at the climax—there’s a brief clash with the naturalistic mood. But the fact that there are no heroes or villains in a film dealing with homosexuality and Christianity is a rare and welcome sight, one that highlights the complexity of everyone’s situations without casting judgment on whatever they believe in public or private. It’s a film that’s not without its issues, but it displays a sensitivity that more films (indie and otherwise) should try to emulate.

Charlie Kaufman’s inventive, solipsistic narratives have consistently left cinephiles spellbound since he collaborated with Spike Jonze to reify Being John Malkovich in 1999. Through his screenplays for both Jonze and French filmmaker Michel Gondry, Kaufman earned a reputation few screenwriters attain. His distinct voice leapt off the page and manifested itself as a palpable entity onscreen. It has been seven years since Kaufman tried his hand at directing with Synecdoche, New York, and now he has discovered yet another fresh method through which to present his meditations on the intricacies and significance of human interaction.

Anomalisa is a claustrophobic stop-motion adventure that echoes much of the text present in Synecdoche, but funnels it through a decidedly less convoluted portal of expression. The great majority of the film takes place in a hotel, cleverly and relevantly titled “The Fregoli,” in which businessman Michael Stone (exceptionally voiced by David Thewlis) spends the night before giving a speech about the customer service industry. Like all of Kaufman’s protagonists, he is insatiably dissatisfied with his life, which he feels is despairingly mundane. The city of Cincinnati, in which the imaginary hotel is located, reverberates with blandness. Everyone Michael encounters seems to be repeating the same tired taglines. They insist he try the famous chili and proclaim he absolutely must see the zoo. Unsurprisingly, Michael has zero interest in either suggestion.

In terms of design, Kaufman, in collaboration with Duke Johnson, has cultivated an ability to frame his material so it’s both creative and digestible. With Anomalisa, Kaufman finds inspiration on a smaller scale, but manages to maintain an active imagination within the boundaries of his aesthetic. He and Johnson meticulously craft the architecture of The Fregoli to sculpt the oppressive impression of isolation in the mind of their audience. One paranoid dream sequence in the film’s second half is particularly impressive. Like past projects, his recent venture into animation once again ruminates on how banal and unfulfilling our lives are. Anomalisa, perhaps even more so than Synecdoche, is obsessed with the idea that nothing in life is truly concrete outside of one’s intrinsic awareness of the self. Nothing occurring within our lives is obtainable outside of the fact that we are able to think and perceive. Labeling Kaufman as a nihilist would be inaccurate. He affirms that life can be meaningful, but only in fleeting moments. If anything, he’s a miserablist, creatively trapped in his bleak interpretation of human existence.

Many viewers will relate to his desolate conclusion and find solace in his art, but the thesis that long-term happiness is essentially unachievable registers as unforgiving as opposed to illuminating. The brief moment of joy shared between Michael and a woman he encounters at the hotel, Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is undermined by a final lament that deconstructs the daunting image of its true value. These fleeting moments Kaufman illustrates become memories, and they, in navigating a dark and inhospitable world, are what we must cling to. Our survival is ensured not by genuine satisfaction, but by an image of it. After all, isn’t a memory just an image of a prior experience? According to Anomalisa, the experiences that form these memories are few and far between, and the majority of days we walk the earth, we will inevitably fail to encounter such happiness. In a world where aging couples can maintain a romance that began a half-century earlier, and where parents can lovingly watch their children develop into young men and women, the ideas underneath Michael’s existential crisis register as possessing little truth in the grand scheme of things. It’s not times of happiness that are ephemeral, but times of sorrow. Kaufman does sporadically use dry wit to assuage the misery of his conceit, and the intricacies of his aesthetic exhibit remarkable craftsmanship. But anyone with a generally positive disposition toward life will find very little insight in Anomalisa’s pervasive cloud of existential darkness.

Originally published on November 17th, 2015 as part of our AFI Festival coverage.

David O. Russell continues establishing himself as a top name in mainstream prestige fare with Joy, albeit in a different direction compared to his last three features. The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle showed off Russell’s strengths when it came to working with ensembles, whereas Joy prefers to keep its focus on one character. That means a more streamlined narrative compared to, say, American Hustle, although Russell’s own formula since his career’s resurgence is still here, even if it doesn’t cast as wide of a net. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Joy is a rather simple and entertaining film, a biopic of sorts that works best when seen as a strange, unique and slightly true success story.

In a clear case of not fixing what isn’t broken, Russell works with Jennifer Lawrence yet again in her biggest role for him to date. Inspired by the true story of Joy Mangano, inventor of the Miracle Mop and other successful household items, the film starts with Joy (Lawrence) bearing the burden of her needy family. Joy’s mother Terry (Virginia Madsen) stays in bed all day watching soap operas, and her ex-husband Tony (Edgar Ramirez) lives in the basement. Joy’s grandmother Mimi (Diane Ladd) takes care of Joy and Tony’s two children while she works whatever jobs she can to pay the bills, including helping out the business run by her father Rudy (Robert De Niro) and half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Rohm). On top of all this, Joy can’t shake her own disappointment in not pursuing her dreams of inventing.

It’s only when Rudy starts dating the wealthy Trudy (Isabella Rossellini) that Joy seizes on the opportunity to see her idea of the Miracle Mop through. It’s in this early section of the film that Russell leans on the familial elements that made The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook so successful. Joy’s family oscillates between being a support and a weight for her, with their individual idiosyncrasies either providing a funny narrative detour or an obstacle to Joy achieving her goals. Russell sometimes likes to start a new scene with only Joy before bringing in her family to overpower the proceedings (at one point Russell frames a meeting between Joy and Trudy as a one-on-one before revealing her friends and family surrounding them in the same room). Russell never goes so far as to paint Joy’s immediate family as villains in the story, understanding the complexities of blood relations. For instance: when Joy complains about needing a good sleep, her family’s response is to feed her a bottle of children’s cough syrup while she lays down on the stairs. They’re not malicious people so much as their best intentions do more harm than good.

The specificity of Joy’s family and experiences goes a long way to helping Russell establish that Joy should not be taken as some sort of symbol for the American dream in action. At first blush, Mangano’s tale does come across as an ideal example of working hard to make one’s own success, but in this film’s reality (Russell embellishes a lot of facts, and not enough is publicly known about Mangano to know just how accurate some of the film’s events are) it’s too bizarre and specific to be taken that way. It’s only when Joy winds up at QVC that a station executive (Bradley Cooper, acting like Russell called him in as a favour to take advantage of his and Lawrence’s on-screen chemistry) starts hammering home the virtues of America as a land of opportunity. The fact that these themes get delivered around artificial sets within giant, empty spaces is probably not a coincidence.

If anything, Russell’s film is more of a celebration of individual resolve. Joy faces constant rejection over her ideas, but she never doubts her own instincts about her mop having the potential to be successful. Russell’s script vindicates Joy through a simple and clever move: the narrative always advances because of a decision Joy makes on her own. Her decision to use Trudy as an investor gets the mop made, her decision to go on TV to sell the Miracle Mop herself gets people to buy it in record numbers, and in the film’s anticlimactic final act—an attempt at a climactic confrontation that fizzles out as quickly as it’s introduced—Joy’s acting entirely on her own. Still, watching Lawrence (who turns in another great performance, although her youth gets the best of her in a clunky flash forward) seize control of her dreams from the hands of those trying to pilfer off of them is fun to watch, and Russell’s unwavering commitment to highlighting her self-earned achievements make it all the more effective.

Quentin Tarantino’s last few films have crept closer to cinema’s theatrical roots. Sequences occur in contained rooms, recalling the claustrophobic, object-driven narrative environment established by the physicality of the stage. These scenes are dominated not only by the director’s trademark dialogue but also by an assured language of compositional details, which guide our eyes through the frame and divulge information with a meticulous sense of craft. Tarantino’s detractors are bothered by his compulsion to bloat his works with references to cinema’s long, colorful history, as well as an occasional penchant for comically distorting his vested tone. But after recently having the opportunity to re-watch Inglourious Basterds, it became clear that the work overall was more significant than the handful of lame gestures that prevented me from outright embracing it. A filmmaker calling attention to himself is often irritating, especially when he uses dialogue to inject his own opinion of what he’s created. But this isn’t, and shouldn’t be, anything but an unfortunate stumble along a journey that’s far more complex and rewarding than the singling-out of that gesture would imply.

The Hateful Eight is Tarantino’s most confined feature yet, which initially calls into question his use of the 70mm format. Upon first blush, the decision registers as an arbitrary homage to the golden age of American Westerns. While it is that to some degree, it’s also a method to capture minuscule details in the expressions and appearances of each duplicitous character.

The film begins in the early stages of a Wyoming blizzard as John Ruth “The Hangman” (Kurt Russell, channeling The Duke) nears the end of a journey to collect his reward, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Along the way, they encounter two stranded individuals who Ruth reluctantly adopts as passengers. The first man is the clever and cruel Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a bounty hunter we learn fought in the union army during the Civil War and the closest thing the film has to a lead character. The second scoundrel to be happened upon is Chris Mannix (a viscerally animated Walton Goggins), who identifies himself as the newly appointed sheriff in the town of Red Rock, where the entire ensemble is headed.

The four arrive at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a cramped, one-room lodge where they meet the remaining faces that make up the titular hateful eight. Bruce Dern’s Sanford Smithers was a Confederate general during the war. He has made the trek to Wyoming in the twilight hour of his life hoping to learn how his son was killed. John Gage (Michael Madsen), is a reserved, weathered cowboy who is almost certainly hiding something. Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth, chewing scenery in the best possible way) is a sly Englishman who claims to be Red Rock’s new hangman. Last but not least is Bob (Demián Bichir), the suspiciously gauche steward purporting himself as an employee of Minnie, thus the caretaker of the haberdashery in her absence.

It’s easy to argue that the narrative in which characters trapped in an inescapable setting are driven to face one another has been cinematically exhausted in decades prior. But Tarantino’s perspective on popular hatreds harbored throughout American history is strangely essential and unpacked with a necessary dose of self-awareness. He illustrates the tight-knit relationship between prejudice and contempt by procuring a tonal delirium punctuated by comic terror. Underneath lines of dialogue, which are programmed to register as humorous, lie disturbing implications about who our characters are and what they represent. At first, animosity is personified only through verbal slander. When tensions begin to rise, Mobray decides to split the room in half, sending Confederate sympathizers to one corner and supporters of the Union to the other. Later on, as viewers familiar with the sensibilities of Tarantino would predict, this animosity is emulated through the graphic mutilation of flesh. The segregation, however, isn’t the first instance in which folly manifests itself physically.

A percentage of those who see The Hateful Eight will be crushed by the weight of unflinching cruelty that man is capable of. But the film, circumventing all expectations, has the audacity to end on a note of coarsely drawn optimism. We’re shown the worst sensibilities of the soul through bloodied eyes, and as the tumult begins to dissipate, it becomes clear that someone’s hatred eventually had to be compromised. In a sea of gore with no redemption in sight, a subconscious shift in mindset embodies what is perhaps the most vulgar step toward progress ever captured on film.

The rhythm of the third and final chapter in Miguel Gomes‘ Arabian Nights shifts gears to the point of bewildering (as opposed to enchanting) those who are already done digesting The Desolate One. The Enchanted One is difficult (I’d even go as far as to say impossible) to fully appreciate as a standalone piece, considerably moreso than the two previous volumes. Its parts are divided up in the most irregular of ways. It begins with a prologue, before morphing almost entirely into something like a documentary about bird-trappers in Portugal. Stylistically, Gomes opts for the written word over Scheherazade’s (Crista Alfaiate) voice-over, asking his audience to literally read (a lot), or get lost. Then, suddenly, a Chinese girl (Jing Jing Guo) narrates her life-changing experience as a foreigner in Portugal, while images of people protesting fill the screen. The method in the meandering and meditative madness of Volume 3 is a mystery solved long ago, leaving the final chapter of Gomes’ masterwork somewhat disarmed of direct excitement.

While it’s considerably tougher to engage with the action here, in the bigger picture The Enchanted One is still a vital piece. For one thing, it feels important to spend a bit of intimate time with Alfaiate’s Scheherazade, even if that time ends up being somewhat disappointing. Her doubts over the effects her stories are having on the king, her sense of imprisonment, and her yearning to experience all the wonders of life outside the castle’s walls; all of these bring her character down to earth and, magically, enhance every story she told in The Restless One and The Desolate One. Once she starts roaming Baghdad’s archipelago, some of her encounters are decadent to an off-putting degree, but all it takes is one conversation with her father, the Grand-Vizier (Américo Silva), and we’re immersed again. Perhaps it’s because he reminds her of the importance of stories, and where they come from.

Scheherazade returns to her king, and begins the story about the songs of chaffinches. While it certainly looks labored, the choice of going with title passages over narration to tell this story must’ve really been no choice at all. As beautiful as Alfaiate’s voice is, it would only serve to disrupt the birds’ stirring songs and the bird-trappers’ silence in attending to their beloved passion. For The Enchanted One is at its most entrancing when it follows Chico Chapas (yep, Simao ‘Without Bowels’ from Volume 2) and other bird-trappers in Portugal—unemployed men, lonely men, men hardened by the harshness of life—in their efforts to find, nurture, and teach new songs to the little feathered crooners.

For the first time in Gomes’ Arabian Nights, Scheherazade breaks from a story and concludes it at a later point. In between, we get a brief, wholly captivating, rendition of Ling’s experience in Portugal. Her voice-over narration (in Mandarin)—as she recounts her experience with falling in love and living with a Countess, told over images of Portuguese demonstrations—is beautiful stuff. The fact that it’s so brief, and that Scheherazade returns to the chaffinches right after it, marries the incantations of the human voice with the musical chirps of the birds in a deeply profound way.

As fitting of an ending to Arabian Nights as it is—with a wondrous cover of Klatuu’s ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’ to send us off—The Enchanted One is considerably less powerful than the previous two chapters in this unforgettable saga. It would be an interesting experiment to see if its effects would be any different in a single sitting of all three volumes. Viewed as a single entity, though, it’s the least accessible piece of work Miguel Gomes—occupant of interplanetary craft—that he has ever done. In this way, it also feels like the most personal section of Arabian Nights; an impression that’s supported by a final, heartfelt, message from the director himself. As strong a case The Restless One and The Desolate One make as stand-alone films, The Enchanted One embraces all three into one inseparable whole. A whole suffused with a singular poetic imagination, confirming—as all great pieces of film art do—the powerful storytelling medium in cinema.

Originally published on October 2nd, 2015 as part of our coverage for the New York Film Festival.