The Whistlers (2019) | Directed by Corneliu Porumboiu

 4/5

Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers is a heavily plot-driven crime thriller, taking many of the familiar tropes and narrative techniques employed by the genre and working them into a thoroughly engaging wholly unique heist film. There’s a visceral pleasure to the film’s deadpan comedy and casual irony embedded in its many twists and turns. Chapter breaks provide an effective way to introduce the film’s numerous characters – especially as the plot gets more and more convoluted (in the best possible way). Corruption and paranoia seem to be a simple fact of life in Porumboiu’s Romania, with everyone under surveillance and everyone on the take. The only thing that separates the good from the bad is loyalty and compassion for another, which Porumboiu never sentimentalizes. Everything is played straight – the camerawork is simple, but elegant, both humor and emotions and presented with a slight distance and remove. With all of the twists and turns of the plot, character motivations do become a bit murky, but in the end it’s a thoroughly captivating thriller.

Golden Men (2019) | Directed by Vincenzo Alfieri

 1.5/5

Vincenzo Alfieri’s Golden Men is a crime thriller with a handful of interesting elements and a few intriguing ideas that all end up buried under the weight of some rather blatant misogyny and the director’s attempts to mimic the generic ’90s indie crime films that arose in the wake of Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting. There are a few moments that are fun and inventive (especially in the way Alfieri crosscuts between the armored car safe and the cab of the armored car throughout the robbery to ratchet up the tension), and the complications that arise once our criminals think they’re in the clear makes for rather compelling moments of suspense. But Alfieri is so enamored with his slick camera tricks – all of which are devoid of any meaning – and the film’s semblance of cool, that he never allows us to care about his protagonists and only manages to give us the barest sketch of their motivations for the robbery. Fragile male egos abound, and the film wants us to feel sorry for these braggarts, abusers, and manipulators. All the while, the women in the film are treated as sex objects, harping shrews, or obstacles to the male bid for freedom. It’s a messy film that takes all of the wrong lessons away from the abundance of Tarantino imitators, indulging in some of the worst excesses of the crime genre.

Where to Watch

The Ties (2020) | Directed by Daniele Luchetti

 3/5

Daniele Luchetti’s The Ties is anchored by a stellar performance from Alba Rohrwacher – which alone is almost worth the price of admission – but this overwrought relationship drama doesn’t quite hit the mark. Which is too bad – there’s so much here to like. In some ways, this is a fairly standard divorce story – infidelity, emotional outbursts, children caught in the middle. Here, it’s the story structure that makes Luchetti’s film unique. We’ve given these shifts in perspective – beginning with the wife’s viewpoint, then shifting to the husband’s – that don’t exactly make this revolutionary, but it certainly makes the narrative a bit more interesting. Well, it’s interesting until the film devolves into a brief section where we’re supposed to feel sorry for the cheating husband who can’t choose between spending time with his mistress or spending time his wife and kids. And the film leaves us with the impression that the wife (with whom we spent the first half hour, getting her intimate perspective on the relationship) has actually been a terrible “shrew” for years. What keeps the film from being completely insufferable is a final shift in perspective for the film’s final act – a delirious denouement that shows just how damaging this has all been on the children who have lived through their parents bitterness, selfishness, and fighting. It’s this lovely and cathartic moment in an otherwise fairly pedestrian film.

Wolfwalkers (2020) | Directed by Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart

 4.5/5

Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart’s Wolfwalkers is an absolutely gorgeous work of animation – a delightful family film from beginning to end. The hand-drawn images evoke medieval Irish illustrated manuscripts – the flattening of perspective, the highly detailed and intricate patterns around the edges of the frame, the use of split-screen as if they were separate illustrations laid out on the same page – giving the film a rich sense of myth and legend and folklore. The vocal performances are all fantastic and draw us deeply into the story, getting us to care (and believe) in the midst of all of the narrative’s mystical events. The film’s central conflict – humanity’s voracious appetite for conquest versus the untamable wildness of nature; the brutal constraints of certainty versus the freedom and joy to be found in mystery – is compelling, and the two girls at the story’s center are thoroughly engaging protagonists. So many children’s films speak down to their audience, so it’s refreshing to see a work of animation that treats its core audience with so much respect – never hiding the difficult truths of the world, never distracting its audience with scenes that belong in an amusement park instead of a movie, and never being afraid of letting a little danger and sadness seep into the story. It’s an incredible film, beautiful, joyous, empathetic, and deeply moving – exactly the kind of art we should be encouraging our children to seek out.

Let Them All Talk (2020) | Directed by Steven Soderbergh

 4.5/5

Steven Soderbergh’s Let Them All Talk is a thoroughly captivating and wonderful bit of cinematic experimentation. It’s always a delight to see how Soderbergh chooses to play with form, theme, narrative, style, and technique. With his latest film, the short shooting schedule, the improvisation, and the barest sketches of an idea have yielded some intriguing results. The underlying pseudo-detective narrative that’s been fused into this story of three septuagenarian friends reconnecting after thirty years is incredibly fascinating. The twenty-something nephew, our viewpoint character, is tasked with discovering what his aunt’s friends think about her after all these years, his aunt’s agent has tasked him with learning more about the new novel, and one of his aunt’s friends even tasks him with finding out more about a potential suitor. Mysteries abound throughout the narrative, but the film’s real mystery is one of human connection – how one consciousness reaches out and touches another, however fleetingly. The improvisation adds to the feeling of the tenuousness of these connections, how quickly they can all melt away. Soderbergh’s handheld camera floats across the ship that serves as the backdrop for all of this action, capturing these generative conversations, these moments of surprised reaction, lending to the feeling of impermanence as well. It’s thrilling to watch these actors at the top of their game taking such risks with a filmmaker who is often taking risks, coming together to explore the mysteries of connection.

Where to Watch

Notturno (2020) | Directed by Gianfranco Rosi

 3.5/5

Gianfranco Rosi’s Notturno is a documentary with mesmerizing and haunting sequences that unfortunately tries to do too much in the space of its limited running time. The ways in which Rosi presents these slices of life in the Middle East, on the edges of conflict, are all extremely compelling – a husband and wife smiling a hookah on the roof of their apartment, mothers and widows wailing for the dead, a young man in a boat out hunting ducks, traffic attempting to navigate a bombed out roadway – all while we hear gunfire and artillery off in the distance. But the film begins to lose the cumulative power of the images it has been building as it returns to sequences without a sense of purpose or overall structure. There isn’t any rhyme or reason for Rosi returning to the patients at the mental hospital rehearsing a play on the history of Iraq, or the soldiers on patrol, or the family whose eldest son works as a guide to hunters. And then these vérité sequences are punctuated by passages detailing the atrocities of ISIS – told by children in therapy in one instance and as a series of voicemail messages in another, all feeling a bit too manipulative in the context of the film’s other footage. If there was less structure to the film – if Rosi weren’t coming back to as many of the latter sequences and simply allowing this to be slices of life, this would have been a highly effective portrait of individuals eking out an existence in the midst of chaos and conflict. And if this was more rigidly structured in the way it returns to previous scenes or sequences, that also could have worked quite well. As the film stands, there are only moments and brief sequences that effectively convey what life is like in these conflict zone. The rest gets lost in Rosi’s attempt to do everything in the space of 100 minutes.

Small Axe 4: Alex Wheatle (2020) | Directed by Steve McQueen

 5/5

Steve McQueen’s Alex Wheatle, the fourth film in the Small Axe anthology series, is another stellar entry exploring the Black West Indian community in London and the ways that connection, community, and activism are intertwined in the struggle against oppression. The previous installment’s ending notes of quiet resignation over a broken system lead perfectly here into the title character’s feelings of helplessness over being trapped within that same system at the beginning of this film. The film’s exploration of the ways in which the dominant, white power structures attempts to cut young Black children off from their roots and culture is gut-wrenching. But as in all of the Small Axe films, McQueen doesn’t leave us in the sorrow and the pain. Once Alex moves into a predominantly Black neighborhood, the joy that erupts on his face is lovely. Growing up as a ward of the state, we’re shown the ways that he doesn’t quite fit in with the members of the West Indian community he’s moved into, and yet he’ll never be accepted by the dominant white culture that raised and abused him as a child. And so the tension within the film arise from his need to carve his own path. As with so many of the films in this anthology, music plays an integral role in creating the mood and the atmosphere, but also in telling the story – it’s Alex’s point of connection and entry-point to the community. Just as powerful are the visual touches McQueen peppers throughout – the low angle, slow push in on Alex at multiple points throughout his life as he is restrained by social workers, police officers, and other agents of the racist power structure. Most powerful is the photo montage of protests that comes midway through the film, accompanied by a spoken word poem that reflects Alex’s dawning political awareness. And like all of the films in the Small Axe anthology, this is a film about the need for connection and community, offering the first possibility for escape from this broken system that we’ve seen.

The Prom (2020) | Directed by Ryan Murphy

 3.5/5

Ryan Murphy’s The Prom, while deeply flawed, is a much better film than it has any right to be and is likely to strike a chord in the heart of any former (or current) musical theatre kid. There’s a wry cynicism in the first act’s skewering of the ways in which celebrities (or pseudo-celebrities in this case) can attempt to hijack a worthy cause and make one person’s struggles all about themselves in an effort to “help.” There are also some lovely, emotionally honest moments throughout about what it’s like to be an LGBTQ+ teen living in a more intolerant community, making this a film has the potential to be really important for LGBTQ+ youth today. However, the film starts to fall apart in the middle and you can see the plot machinery grinding along to its inevitable, charming finale. Character motivations become fuzzy, plot points cease to have stakes, and some of the most important character arcs are resolved with a single line of dialogue, cheapening the investment we’ve placed in their growth. Meryl Streep finds the best balance between self-obsessed narcissist and wanna-be savior, and both Keegan-Michael Key and newcomer Jo Ellen Pellman transcend the material, while the rest of the cast turn in admirable performances – with a few one-note exceptions. Director Ryan Murphy never quite gets a handle on the visual language needed to make the transition from a Broadway production to a feature film – especially in the editing rhythms and the moments when he leans too heavily into the under-lit naturalism of the prom sequences – but when he allows for moments of cinematic theatricality, the effect is magical. It’s far from perfect, but I found it unexpectedly moving, and if there are those who find solace in this, who am I to complain?

Sorry We Missed You (2019) | Directed by Ken Loach

 4.5/5

Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You is another fiery, angry film from the master of working-class British realism and an essential look at the ways modern capitalism dehumanizes the individual while pretending to be giving us more choice and greater flexibility. This time it’s the gig economy and contract work that call under Loach’s carefully researched microscope, and the film takes care to show how the options for regular, full-time employment have become more and more limited, pushing more workers into jobs with no protections, no benefits, no time off, and the illusory promise of “flexibility” that really mean lost wages and fines. The film’s rhythms are intentionally suffocating, barely giving us a moment to breathe before the narrative hurtles us to the next task, the next delivery, the next job, without a moment’s respite, leaving us as emotionally exhausted as the characters. And the film is carefully structured to show us the toll this type of work takes, not just on the individual, but on the family as well. It’s an angry, urgent film that cries out for better protections and safeguards for everyone forced into gig employment, demanding better from those in power.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) | Directed by H.C. Potter

 3.5/5

H.C. Potter’s Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a delightful little comedy from classic Hollywood – narratively slight, perhaps, but delightful just the same. Cinematographer James Wong Howe’s long tracking shot that opens the film and introduces us to the Blandings family’s “cramped” apartment is exquisite – it’s the perfect way to set up the plot, especially after the quick succession of ironic clips about how idyllic life is in the hustle and bustle of New York City. Cary Grant is great, as always, as is Myrna Loy, and rounding out the trio leads is Melvyn Douglas with a fantastic performance as friend of the family and the sole voice of reason in the midst of all the shenanigans. I love that Loy is just as unreasonable and over-the-top with her demands as Grant – and there’s a touching moment toward the end where an honest contractor brings the film out of its deepest point of crisis. But the whole endeavor feels a little too slight at the end of the day – the stakes aren’t very high and the narrative is really just a series of building mishaps. A series of very funny building mishaps, but not much to string a feature film around. Still, it’s light, enjoyable entertainment, and you can do worse than to have a few hours with the Blandings.