Reed Morano, a successful cinematographer, takes her first shot at directing with Meadowland. And it may be because she’s so cinematically inclined, or perhaps she has a dark side the public is getting a taste of here, but she’s chosen some truly heavy material from Chris Rossi (also his first) to kickstart her directorial career. Granted, drama makes for plenty of opportunity to play with the camera, and she certainly does, providing dreamy, close-up, mood all over the place. And it may be because she usually only has control of the camerawork of a film that she felt so inclined to rev up the other sensory experiences of the film to maximum intensity.

The film is about Sarah and Phil (Olivia Wilde and Luke Wilson) who, at the film’s outset, are struck the heavy blow of having their only son kidnapped. Flash forward a year and Phil is back at work as a cop, dealing with his grief with the occasional support group meeting and lunches with a friend who lost his daughter (John Leguizamo). Sarah, on the other hand, stays fairly numb with the help of lithium, barely passing for a teacher at the grade school she teaches at. Clearly these two have chosen the grieve alone path, Sarah often wandering around Times Square late at night, not necessarily searching so much as distracting herself, and Phil parking outside the gas station where their son disappeared as though he may wander back in the dead of night.

The detective on their case presents some new evidence that suggests what neither, though Sarah especially, want to hear. In her own misguided attempt to avoid reality she goes to cringe-worthy extremes leading to a belligerent and uncomfortable end. Grief manifests differently for everyone, especially in the circumstance of a cold case where the absence of concrete evidence doesn’t allow for proper grief, but Sarah’s self-destruction is especially difficult to watch. Morano also makes it quite hard to listen to. The music and sound design of the film are pumped up so high at parts it hurts. What’s meant to be a distraction tactic for the characters is just plain wearisome for the viewer.

Calling the film a bummer is an understatement. Wilde is convincingly inconsolable—and a bit crazy—in what is clearly meant to be a showcase of her talent, but in the hands of Morano, we’re rather hit in the head with it repeatedly. Wilson is of course the easier to sympathize with, those trademark Wilson puppy dog eyes playing to his advantage, but Rossi could have written Phil with more backbone to counter Sarah’s intensity better. As is, the two don’t have much in the way of chemistry, or even a believable animosity befitting their situation. They are more like two characters sharing the same story by chance.

Rossi wrote a script exploring the most gruesome depths of repressed grief, Morano certainly pulled it out of the actors and added further intensity with her blurry focus and pore-revealing intimacy in almost every scene, throw in the ear-assault and too-serious actions of the characters and it stops being insightful and starts being a bit scary. The film does a full stop at the very end, attempting to bring the mood back up with a slipshod scene that feels so much like a therapy session it’s laughable. Sorry Morano, you can’t assail viewers for 90 minutes and not expect them to be numb by the end to any ploy at pulling at heartstrings. Like Rossi’s characters, we can’t help but follow their lead and remain neatly anesthetized.

Originally published as part of our 2015 Tribeca Film Festival coverage.

Well-suited for its Halloween release, Alexandre Aja‘s (The Hills Have Eyes, High Tension) devilish new film, Horns, is a dark cross-genre film. Highly saturated with the colors of the Pacific Northwest and starring a 5 o’clock shadowed Daniel Radcliffe, the film is based on the novel by Joe Hill (mini-clone and son to Stephen King). With its similar setting and a heavy dose of maniacal absurdity at play, Horns has a tinge of Twin Peaks sensibility to it, but its far-too-fast pace and loosely formed mystery leave it short of such cult status. Overall, with Radcliffe in the lead and solid co-star performances, the film does still manage to intrigue and the imagery of it all will please horror fans looking for a strange Pan’s Labyrinth style scary-fantasy.

Equal parts tragic-romance, dark-comedy, and straight-up horror, Radcliffe plays Ig Perrish, a young man in a dark place after the recent death of his long-time girlfriend Merrin (Juno Temple, seen in flashback). Harassed by the media and questioned by those closest to him, Ig maintains his innocence despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. His lifelong best friend Lee (Max Minghella) is now a lawyer and doing his best to defend Ig during the investigation and trial. After a late-night candlelight vigil is held for Merrin by her grief-besotted father (David Morse), Ig goes on a particularly bad bender, ending up in bed with a trashy old friend, Glenna (Kelli Garner). Adding to the confusion of Ig’s life, he wakes up in her bed the next morning with something worse than an STD — horn tips are making their way out of Ig’s forehead.

After a particularly strange interaction with Glenna, who continues to ask Ig for permission to eat all her donuts, he rushes to the doctor for advice. Instead everyone he interacts with seems to want to tell him all the bad impulses and thoughts they are having. A mother in the waiting room expresses her disdain for her screaming child, the doctor asks permission to crush up some Oxycontin and snort it. Searching for respite at his parent’s home only leads to their own confessions of the grudge they hold against him for putting their lives into uproar and their doubts that he didn’t murder Merrin. Eventually Ig realizes by touching people he can see the bad things they’ve done, and an interaction with his musician brother Terry (Joe Anderson) gives Ig new insight into Merrin’s death, while also helping him realize he can use his new powers to get to the bottom of what happened to her.

As the deceased Merrin, Juno Temple manages to hold up the chemistry between her and Radcliffe in the flashback scenes. But Radcliffe’s best work in the film is definitely when he’s being evil and revenge-driven. His British sarcasm is put to good use, even though he hides the accent quite well. Cinematographer Frederick Elmes is put to great use with the film, creating some truly lovely scenes with color and light in the flashbacks that contrast with the darker present day scenes. A sometime collaborator with David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, and Charlie Kaufman, he seems to get the magical reality quality these directors love so much. The only artistic note I’m not sure I entirely understand is putting much of the most frightening action in broad daylight. While still brutally gruesome at moments, the tension would have been a bit more dramatic if it had that class horror element to it.

The slight variances from the novel (which I happened to have read) are subtle and sensible, though a fault of translation, especially in horror, is that much of the tension lies within being in the mind of a villain. A perk the novel maintains over the film. The build to the film’s final reveal seems weak. Though the final showdown is formidable enough. The film’s (and to be honest, the book’s) biggest failing has to do with some padding at the end to soften the blow of how much tragedy we’re forced to endure and provide some unnecessary character motivation. It tries to justify some of the death and comes across as insensitive instead. An unnecessary afterthought that no proper horror film would ever ascribe to.

Full of language and grittiness, Horns suffers from what most multi-genre films do, a bit of a scattered personality and an inability to do it all. But the juggling act is still an amusing thing to behold, and all of the devil jokes and imagery are just fun. Those with an appreciation for the macabre and the fantastical will appreciate the strange brew that is Horns.

Horns is out in theaters in the US October 31st, and is currently available to stream via VOD.

Mr. Nobody is proof that just having all the right ingredients does not automatically make it a great dish. This film contains an intriguing plot, spectacular visuals, solid acting performances, more ambition than you can shake a stick at, and yet the results are not half as good as it sounds. Or at least not nearly as good as it sounds. In any case, one cannot help but wonder if not living up to the film’s potential is the very reason why it took so long (four years from its Venice Film Festival premiere) to get a proper U.S. distribution.

At the heart of the story is the unimaginable decision that a young boy must make between which parent to live with after they divorce. From there Mr. Nobody spirals off (out of control) into several parallel timelines that form based upon which decision he could have made. The film experiments with concepts of the butterfly effect by exploring the possible outcomes in a nonlinear fashion. In fact, it begins by showing the protagonist named Nemo (Jared Leto) dying in different ways before jumping all the way back to an elderly (117-years-old to be exact) version of him, who is considered to be the last man who will die of old age because everyone else on earth has benefited from stem cell treatments.

It is easy to get lost when the film jumps around between all of the different scenarios and timelines that the character is involved with. Nothing short of multiple viewings or detailed infographic of the film’s structure will help. But most of the major themes the film wanted to get across were made clear—most notably Nemo’s various love interests (Sarah Polley, Diane Kruger, Linh Dan Pham, and Juno Temple) in different stages of his life. The problem is aside from Polley, the emotional attachment to any of the characters is not actually felt.

Throughout the film I kept trying to figure out if I am supposed to take the film completely seriously or not at all. Perhaps the correct answer is somewhere in the middle. One just does not expect to see unicorns and other playful things intertwined with such a serious coming-of-age narrative and thought-provoking framework. This amalgamation of genres is admittedly fun and even adds some character to the film, but at times it makes the already confusing film even more baffling.

You will likely be reminded of several films while watching Mr. Nobody, the very first that comes to mind is Cloud Atlas—both were released around the same time and contain interlinking storylines spanning across several decades of time, including the distant future. Moments when the character thinks they are with one partner but then quickly revealed to be with another will remind you of Vanilla Sky. There are multiple Fight Club-esque moments aside from simply sharing Jared Leto and the Pixies song “Where is My Mind”. You could even draw some comparisons to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with its visually bizarre self-aware dream sequences. The list of influences could go on and on. While Mr. Nobody is reminiscent of all those films, it is unfortunately not as effective as any one of them.

Jaco Van Dormael’s film is stunning to look at and if nothing else makes the film a decent visual experience for the viewer. The CGI is handled well in film’s depiction of our futuristic world in 2092, mostly consisting of sterile white environments. By far the most impressive visual achievement was the makeup transformation that Leto had to undergo while playing the 117-year-old version of himself. It was scary just how realistic it looked.

Mr. Nobody ends up being one exhausting ride with constant leaps back and forth between multiple timelines, never slowing down enough to allow the audience to become attached to any of the characters on screen. Not helping matters is the fact that the film goes on for nearly two and a half hours. You certainly cannot fault Mr. Nobody‘s efforts to be an ambitious film, and it is easy to admire it just for that reason, but those efforts alone are not enough to save the impenetrable and messy final product.

As Juno Temple (Killer Joe)—playing a glitter-sweating stripper named McKenna—grinds and gyrates on Kathryn Hahn (Parks & Recreation) in a private booth in a strip club, staring seductively, deeply, into the older Hahn’s eyes, it’s a perfect representation of everything that’s right with Afternoon Delight, the new cringe comedy written and directed by Jill Soloway (who formerly produced Six Feet Under), though things don’t stay right for long.

Hahn plays Rachel, a pretty housewife whose sexless marriage with her workaholic husband Jeff (How I Met Your Mother‘s Josh Radnor) has brought them to the club in hopes of recharging their libidos. Her nervous reluctance has rendered her stiff as a board under the perky body undulating before her. The warm, rose-colored lighting is clean and moody, and Solloway’s camera gets in close, never shying away from the intimacy.

“How old are you?” asks Rachel, breathless. “I’m 19!” squeaks McKenna. Rachel tenses up some more. “Oh my god—that’s young.” The frazzled way in which Hahn delivers the sharply-written, oddball dialogue is spot-on. “I had a baby,” she blurts, rejecting McKenna’s attempt to lift up her shirt, referring to the birth of she and Jeff’s five-year-old son, Logan. It’s after the steamy exotic encounter when things begin to go south.

You see, Rachel decides that inviting McKenna—a stranger who we discover later to be a whore—to stay in the guest room of her family’s beautiful home in the affluent Silver Lake neighborhood of L.A. is a great idea. Why? Probably because she found herself surprisingly titillated by the private dance, though she swears she’s determined to “rescue” McKenna from her demeaning lifestyle. But what about Logan? It’s fine—McKenna will make a great nanny! How does Jeff feel about all this? Well, Rachel never consulted him about it, and he doesn’t feel comfortable with putting up a stranger, let alone a stripper/whore (crazy, right?), but hell—at least she’s cute! The whole arrangement is so contrived, so unbelievable, that your eyes will be ready to fall out of their sockets from rolling so much.

What inflames the insanity is that Hahn comes off as a smart, wise-cracking, perceptive woman. “How can I complain? Women in Darfur walk 14 miles to get water and get raped on the way,” she pontificates, in one of a handful of egregiously shoehorned-in therapy sequences featuring Jane Lynch (admittedly hilarious) as her shrink. Sure, she’s got marital frustrations and is locked in the same loop of malaise that a lot of stay-at-home moms find themselves stuck in, but she isn’t stupid—even an idiot could foresee the catastrophic repercussions of her ridiculously short-sighted decision.

Where Afternoon Delight is really great, however, is when it’s in Apotow mode, best represented in scenes involving Rachel yammering on and gossiping with her friends, fellow housewives with poker-playing, cigar-smoking, neglectful husbands. At one of their swanky homes, the ladies drunkenly reminisce about their now-long-gone sorority years. The always dependable Michaela Watkins acts as pack leader, an overly-enthusiastic soccer mom who is constantly pestering Hahn about helping out at the JCC. When Hahn, sweating alcohol, insists that they lock eyes as they toast wine glasses (interrupting the story Watkins is desperately trying to tell the group), Watkins irately refuses to return the gaze. Hahn just stares…and stares…until Watkins grudgingly obliges. Hahn ups the squirm-in-your-seat factor when she poses the mind-numbing question, “Has anybody here wondered what their aborted children would be like?”

Focus is what’s sorely lacking here, tonally. The smart-ass exchanges between the comedy-centric ensemble generally read as light-hearted and clever, no edgier than what you’d see on The Office. Then, abruptly, Solloway throws in a dark, atmospheric scene that looks ripped straight out of a Soderbergh drama. A prime example is one in which McKenna invites Rachel on a run to visit one of her Johns. Rachel watches on, repulsed, terrified, and unsettled, as McKenna rides the bear-bellied client, who reaches his hand out to Rachel, pleading with her to grasp it. It’s a harrowing scene that works cinematically, but feels woefully out of place after we’d just seen Rachel joking around and making witty remarks at a JCC function. The juxtaposition just feels wrong.

Afternoon Delight ends with a sigh, dissipating into nothing, but Solloway nevertheless exhibits some good writing and directing ability in the lead up. She has a way with words, and every quip and snide remark she wrote into the script is laugh-worthy. It’s great dialogue, despite it serving a broken larger story. Solloway brilliantly captures the compelling performances put forth by Temple and Hahn, which buoy Afternoon Delight. (The rest of the ensemble, while talented, don’t offer up anything memorable.) Temple’s McKenna is free-spirited, straight-talking, and strangely all-knowing, almost too comfortable in her own skin. Hahn commands the screen at all times—her scrunchy facial expressions can convey anything from disgust, to joy to rage with effortlessness. The two beautiful leading ladies and have enough electricity between them to drive the story forward, but they deserve better than this ill-conceived vehicle.

Afternoon Delight trailer:

Co-directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman bring the story of Linda Lovelace, a celebrity in the adult entertainment industry, to the very screen that brought her fame into mainstream culture from her seductive role in Deep Throat. Lovelace was made for half of the amount that Deep Throat was made for back in 1972 (not including adjustment for inflation) with seemingly a quarter of the amount of inspiration. The film attempts to produce laughs, chills, and entertainment, but fails to deliver any of those qualities.

One of the first things you are likely to notice about Lovelace are the aesthetics of the film; a high contrasting warm color palette shot on grainy film stock against a rocking soundtrack helps recreate the time period. Beginning in 1970, Linda Lovelace is (Amanda Seyfried) tanning and talking about her sex life (or more accurately the lack thereof) with her best friend Patsy (Juno Temple) in the backyard of her parents’ house. The Virgin Mary statue in the front yard serves as a symbol of her conservative upbringing and a nice contrast to what is about to unfold.

Linda is swept off her feet by an older man named Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard)—a topless bar owner who views Linda not only as girlfriend but a potential worker. The film skips ahead, something that happens quite frequently, to the two living together in New York, where Traynor’s abusive and manipulative side begins to show. One of the best scenes of the film is when Traynor decides to exploit her oral sex skills in an upcoming production of a pornography film aptly titled Deep Throat (which ends up being a massive box office hit). Linda’s naïve personality is put on display when a makeup artist discovers bruises on her legs that Linda passes off as just being clumsy—an obvious lie that fools nobody.

The closing credits inform us that Linda spent twenty years speaking out against domestic violence and the pornography industry—the film only captures the former while practically skipping the latter. Even though Lovelace does not glorify the porn industry, it does not exactly condemn it either. With all the attention on the domestic violence Linda endures, the adult-film industry is portrayed much tamer than one would think.

Inconsistency plagues the film more than anything else. While most of the scenes play out with so much exaggerated drama that it feels like it was made for the Lifetime Channel, others are chock-full of campy sex jokes that lighten the mood too much. This combination not only made the tone of the film unclear, but also much less effective when it attempts to have an emotional impact on the audience later on.

Despite setbacks in other areas of the film, the acting performances found in Lovelace are top notch; aside from the surprisingly unconvincing James Franco as Hugh Hefner. Amanda Seyfried takes on the daring role as wide-eyed innocent girl turned porn star in perfect stride. Peter Sarsgaard handles the duality required of the role flawlessly; going from charming in one scene to terrifying in the next. Even the smaller roles from Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, and Bobby Cannavale are equally as good.

Lovelace is a story that is practically served on a silver platter considering it is a real-life story of an ordinary woman turned overnight adult-film star, who eventually speaks out against a brutal and abusive relationship with her manager and pornography industry, yet somehow this biopic manages to be both unexciting and unemotional. On top of that, Lovelace never ventures below the surface of the story that most people are vaguely familiar with already. Credit the cast for going well beyond the material they were given, without their performances the film would be a complete catastrophe.

Lovelace trailer:

Time behaves very strangely here in Cannes. Days feel like they are short changed the 24 hours that they are supposed to contain. Thus, there does not seem to be enough hours in the day to do everything that you want to do. Most often time ceases to exist all together. Other times it is irrelevant like when all-night parties bleed into the next day. But then there are times when you are standing in line for a film for an hour and it feels like an eternity. Physics explains time is relative, Cannes is able to prove it.

Director Sebastián Silva and stars Juno Temple and Michael Cera on stage for Magic Magic

Only God Forgives

Only God Forgives is methodically paced, save for sudden outbursts of ruthless violence from time to time. The film resembles a jack-in-the-box as most of the time you know what is going to happen, just not when it is going to happen. The ending feels abrupt and rushed, which is actually a bit bizarre as Gosling moves so turtle like that you mistake many of his scenes to be in slow motion. The weak ending might be because it used its great showdown between characters in the middle of the film, which feels out of place and leaves for a rather anticlimactic ending. Though some broad elements from Drive are present in Only God Forgives, fans of one will by no means guarantees that you will be a fan of the other.

RATING: 5.9

Read my full review of Only God Forgives

Magic Magic

Magic Magic is a peculiar film about a girl named Alicia (Juno Temple) who travels outside of the United States for the first time to meet up with her friend Sarah (Emily Browning). As soon as she arrives into South America Alicia is greeted by Sarah and her three friends who all plan to road trip to a remote getaway together. Not long into their trip Sarah receives a phone call about an exam she must take at school that forces her to leave for a couple of days. This leaves Alicia alone with three strangers that all seem a little quirky.

But quirky might not be the right adjective to describe their character. Alicia spends only two days with them before she is calling them Satanists. One character in particular, Brink (Michael Cera), seems as if he might either be mildly mentally handicapped or on some kind of drugs. One thing is for certain, these people are not stable. But when Alicia does not sleep for four days due to her insomnia, her perception on reality is morphed.

As a whole, Magic Magic was a big letdown for me. This was one of two films Sebastián Silva had premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this year, with his other one (Crystal Fairy) earning great remarks from us from our SFIFF coverage. In this film Cera’s bizarre antics make for an interesting character, but that is about all. It is welcoming to see him play a character that is outside his typical one, but his performance was not at the top of his game. Magic Magic is a unique film featuring a mysteriously eerie vibe, though it ultimately goes to waste due to unconvincing situations and characters found within the film.

RATING: 5

The first thing I did when I finished William Friedkin’s Killer Joe was take a shower. The film is up to its neck in grunge, sweat, dirt and blood. There isn’t a moment where you have time to breathe either because as soon as the film begins you’re plunged into this trailer park soap opera of lies, cheats and blood money. All the credit goes to the veteran Friedkin who takes out any shades of morality and presents some of the stupidest and most vile people you’ll ever see in a film. A friend of mine put it best. There is no emotional core to absolutely anything in the film.

Friedkin is probably one of my favorite directors to ever work in film. Everyone has seen at least one of his films; The Exorcist, The French Connection, To Live and Die in L.A. (a personal favorite), Sorcerer and Bug, just to name a few. The guy knows how to take an audience on a thrill ride and Killer Joe is no exception.

Joe is played with a frighteningly calm power by Matthew McConaughey who gives easily the performance of his career here. He has never been better in my opinion. He comes off cool and collected, but when pushed in a direction that he doesn’t prefer, McConaughey unleashes a lion’s worth of indignation. In one scene a poor unfortunate soul meets the monster that Joe is forced to become when pushed too hard. Give this guy an Oscar nomination already.

The film involves a family living in a trailer court on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas. The Smith family is poor of course and had no hint of manners present at all. Led by father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) and his wife Sharla (Gina Gershon) they live with his daughter (her step) Dottie (Juno Temple). Both Temple and Gershon are very brave actors for accepting roles like these. They both go to places in this film that takes guts.

One night, Ansel’s son Chris (Emile Hirsch) comes home in the pouring rain to talk to Ansel about a pressing matter. To give you an idea of how much Sharla is aloof too much of anything, she basically laughs off Chris when he complains of her answering the door with no panties on. Ansel didn’t seem to get it either. Friedkin really drives home the point that these people seem to have no moral compass.

Chris and Ansel go to a strip club to talk about the predicament he is in. Chris is a terrible gambler and is in to a local drug dealer for some money he owes. If he doesn’t pay soon they will kill him. A little birdy tells Chris that his mother (not Sharla) has a life insurance policy of $50,000 if anything were to happen to her. Chris was also told about a crooked cop who moonlights as killer for hire if the price is right. This killer is played by McConaughey.

Chris and Ansel then go to a strip club to talk about the predicament he is in. It turns out Chris is terrible with money and owes his scumbag boss a lot of it. If he doesn’t pay soon he will be killed. A little birdy tells Chris that his biological mother has a life insurance policy of $50,000 if anything were to happen to her. Chris was also told about a crooked cop who moonlights as killer for hire if the price is right. This killer is played by McConaughey.

Chris sets up a meeting with Joe about the deal to kill his mother. When Joe says his pay is $25,000 up front no questions, Chris tells him he can’t pay it. Joe starts to walk out but notices young Dottie playing in the street. He inquires about her being his “retainer” in lieu of the $25,000 Chris cannot come up with. They agree. This leads to an extremely tense scene of seduction involving Joe and Dottie in the family’s trailer home that has to be seen to be believed. It’s a very edgy scene that could cause some people to rethink the film they are watching.

The rest of the film I will not reveal as Friedkin builds his entire plot to an utterly outstanding, and very outlandish, final 30 minutes. As I mentioned earlier, do not go searching for a moral center in this film. It does not exist. There is not one redeeming character on display here. Friedkin bathes you in the dirt and filth these people live in on a daily basis.

Make no mistake about Killer Joe. The film is not all serious business. In fact, the film is brutally funny at times. Especially the final 15 minutes of the film which will have some people cheering at Friedkin’s audacity at showing a ferocious McConaughey making a complete meal of the Smith family in their home. The final lines of the film will have you laughing in disbelief and you’ll probably never look at fried chicken the same way again. Killer Joe is one of the best (if not dirtiest) film going experiences I’ve had this year.

Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy comes to a close with The Dark Knight Rises and if anything the series is done being nice. Long gone are the days when little one liners would pat the audience on the back and let them know it’s going to be alright. Gone too is the series’ sense of excitement and adventure. The Dark Knight Rises is instead filled with a flat out serious tone that prevents the series from ending on a high note.

The Dark Knight Rises begins with Gotham in a grand state of peace. Essentially all organized crime led by the Joker in the previous film has been shut down with literally thousands of criminals locked up under The Harvey Dent Law. It’s been nine years since the last events took place. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become secluded to his mansion with no one seeing him for years except for his always faithful butler Alfred (exquisitely played by Michael Caine). Wayne now walks with a cane after years of crime fighting have taken their toll on his body.

We get introduced to a couple of new characters early on, one of them being Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway). Faithful followers of comics and Batman will know her as Catwoman, the slinky sexy antihero of the Caped Crusader universe. I don’t feel guilty giving this tidbit away since virtually everyone knows this and it is revealed very early in the film. Another character we meet is beat officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Levitt probably gives the best performance in the film other than Caine. Blake becomes a trusted ally of Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman). One of the few he can trust. Blake eventually gets promoted to the role of Detective after impressing Gordon when he hunts down certain clues that ultimately reveal what’s really happening in Gotham.

Miranda Tate, played by the luscious French vixen Marion Cotillard, is a mysterious billionaire who is trying to work with Wayne Enterprises on a new secret project that could allow Gotham to live in a more energy efficient manner. I had suspicions about her character early on, mainly because she reminded me of a character from the Batman cartoon that aired in the 90’s. However, I’m done talking about her character.

We all know by now that the main villain in Rises is the mask wearing, muscle bound brute known as Bane (Tom Hardy). Nolan’s version of Bane is a far cry from the abomination Joel Schumacher used in his terrible Batman & Robin. In that film he was a doping bumbling idiot of a bodyguard. Here he is cold, calculating and most of all, uncompromising. He is an out and out terrorist. Where he comes from and he thirst for destruction I will not reveal here as it is one of the better pieces of the film.

The opening scene of the film holds a lot of promise. It’s unfortunate that the rest of the film never quite reaches these heights, except for once. The CIA takes a few men in hoods aboard a small plane and flies them over some truly beautiful landscape. But make no mistake. This is no site seeing trip. They want to know the mystery behind Bane. Little do they know that Bane is actually one of the hooded men. All of a sudden a bigger plane is flying above them. Men drop from this second plane hooked to wires and grab onto the smaller plane eventually busting the wings off it and let it dangle like a carrot from a string. Bane makes a grand escape from this plane with a mystery man in tow.

Along with his thirst for pain and his conquest for destruction, Bane is a man made of rock. With his massive shoulders and gigantic biceps, he intimidates anyone who crosses. In most cases he would just grab someone’s head and snap their neck. He is remorseless. Where the Joker’s agenda was to playfully offer ways out of his traps for his victims while he would gleefully chuckle at their inevitable failures, Bane is here to merely destroy any kind of system. Whether it’s that of a city or that of a man’s soul, Bane simply does not care about anything or anyone. He is the meaning of destruction.

After the film’s hair raising opening, the film then settles into a weird rhythm that it unfortunately doesn’t break away from during the film’s remaining runtime. Other than one scene in the middle of the film, Rises is not exciting for a second. Gordon, one of the series’ best characters, is bed ridden for most of the runtime while he has the Levitt character running all over town for him.

The best scene of the entire film is a showdown between Batman and Bane in an underground fortress controlled by Bane and his henchmen. Nolan handles this scene with pure brilliance. Instead of letting the loud and intrusive score (by Nolan faithful Hans Zimmer) and flashy editing intrude on the scene, he lets the scene unfold in silence. Only the sounds of a waterfall ignite the soundtrack as Bane verbally and physically decimate Batman. Shots of Bane’s henchmen as they watch, almost ashamed to follow such a crass leader, are inter-spliced with the action showing how ruthless Bane truly is. The look on their faces as they watch Batman beaten to a pulp is at times hard to watch. Even they can barely watch such reprehensible evil exist.

Unfortunately after the showdown, the film settles back into a state mediocrity. The film trudges on for what feels like forever to a final conflict that feels way too sprawling for the series. I know what we are essentially watching is a comic book/superhero movie, but the final hour seems too illogical to ever really happen. Bane’s ambitions are not unimaginable, just the way he goes about them. Some of these scenes are interesting, but they always require a lot of faith from the viewer. For me it was too much. For the sake of the virgin viewer’s eyes, I will not go into detail.

After everything that happens with these climactic and insanely sensational scenes we are given a closing montage that is a little too ridiculous. One character is revealed to be a crime fighting torch bearer in a stupid wink wink moment and another is given a second life after we are lead to believe of his demise in a stupid gotcha moment. It’s too much and it feels like Nolan, who is a director who almost never comprises, has finally given in to his audience’s demands. I don’t think The Dark Knight Rises is a bad film at all. It’s very well made. All the dollar signs are on the screen and Christopher Nolan is still one of the best and brightest Hollywood directors working today. The film simply does not rise out of its consistent state of complacency. It takes itself too seriously and lacks the straight up excitement of the first two films. A summer blockbuster can be brainy and serious while it hurtles itself through explosions and vibrant action if it wants to, yes. But you still have to have fun while you do it too. Unfortunately, The Dark Knight Rises flies to close to its villain’s coattails to realize this.

A feature debut from Jordan Scott (daughter of Ridley) who wrote and directed Cracks – a story that starts off innocent but eventually unravels to show a dark psychological side. Some say it’s a girl version of Lord of the Flies, which I agree that there are a lot of similarities between the two, but the underlying theme in this is lust and desire.

Cracks is set in the year 1934 at St. Mathilda’s School in Stanley Island, England. The all-girls boarding school is oppressive and strict which is probably why most of the students look up to the diving instructor Miss G (Eva Green), because she is the opposite. Miss G is a passionate and rule-breaking teacher that is adored by all the students for her lack of traditionalism, but none more than Di (Juno Temple).

Miss G is also a very confident woman and knows the girls look up to her for advice, which she is willing to give. She says that “the most important thing in life is desire” – “nothing is impossible, all you need is to desire it”. You get the sense that Di has desire for Miss G.

The girls receive news that a new girl from Spain will be joining their class. Fiamma (María Valverde), the newcomer, is not exactly welcomed with open arms. This is not surprising considering the typical school atmosphere filled with cliques. Since Di acts as the captain of the group, she sets her straight on the rules, even when Fiamma questions some of the strict ones.

Blatantly obvious is Di’s dislike for Fiamma from the very start and it does not end there. Miss G has all the girls practice high diving into the lake. Di is deemed to have set the bar for the group until Fiamma dives that is. Even though it is winter in Spain and new to the group, her dive is the best out of all of them. Further impressing Miss G and subsequently creating more hostility from Di.

Even more than being impressed with Fiamma, Miss G seems to be very much intrigued by her. She is jealous that Fiamma has been all over the world, citing that traveling is one of her favorite things to do. Perhaps expanding upon her intrigue she goes through Fiamma’s records only to find out that she has been in trouble because of her behavior and is of great concern. Needless to say, Miss G is a little taken-aback, not to mention us as the viewer.

Although Miss G seems startled about learning that about her student, she seems even more attracted to Fiamma, in more than one way. She approaches her and awkwardly and in a bizarre fashion states the two of them could be best friends but with a slight hint of implying something more. Miss G even goes out of her way to buy her special lunches from town just for her and not the other students, clearly favoring Fiamma. It is hard now not to start questioning if Miss G or Fiamma is the one that is slightly off.

The ending literally had me saying wow. I do not like giving away spoilers to films like this because it is what makes Cracks so enjoyable. Therefore, it is hard not to give away the specifics but the ending for me was amazing and haunting. Being as generic as I can, we are led to believe a letter at the end was written by one character but shows it was really a different one, my theory is perhaps they were both the same character. It probably is not the case but that’s how I interpreted it and thought it was a genius last twist.

The cinematography is outstanding. In shots outside, especially the lake, are crisp and beautiful. Even at night, the lake is wonderfully lit and everything is visible. The film is shot with lower saturation, so the colors are muted a little more which gives it sort of a vintage feel that is spot on.

Hard to believe is the fact that Cracks is Jordan Scott’s first feature as a director, as it is remarkably well shot. Cracks had sort of a classical or Shakespearean type of story with lust, jealously, sexuality, betrayal and tragedy. The story may be too lackluster for some but the way it slowly cracks, pun intended, from an ordinary and innocent one to a psychological and disturbing one was great.