The Regime
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess, Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Brides of Christ, Cleopatra, Dancing on the Edge, Dead by Sunset, Elizabeth R, Family Guy, Golden Years, Intruders, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, Moeder, waarom leven wij?, More than Blue: The Series, Murder in the Heartland, Pope John Paul II,
Pride and Prejudice Scully, Son of the Morning Star, The Buccaneers, The Gangster Chronicles, The Gold Robbers, The Murder of Mary Phagan, The Phantom of the Opera, The Shining, The Sun Also Rises, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Troubles, Viso d'angelo, Witchcraft, World War II: When Lions Roared,
It might help some to think of The Regime less as satire and more as dark farce with political opinions. Yes, there’s nothing especially new here in the series’ send-up of a paranoid autocrat, Chancellor Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet), whose withdrawal from the larger world has brought an ever-decreasing grasp of reality. But sometimes, it is enough for a story to just make you laugh and feel sick with fear for the real world.
Much like creator Will Tracy’s The Menu, The Regime's advertisements suggest a different viewing experience than it delivers. And, as with that film, the audience risks missing a nasty treat if they don’t meet the series where it lives. The film arrived when “Eat the Rich” entertainment seemed to be spiking. However, The Menu’s focus didn’t lie with economics, at least not solely or predominantly. The Regime hits MAX as America is facing an eight-month nightmare Presidential election campaign goosed by the worst human being you’ve ever known, armed with his naked desire to rule entirely for personal gain and without even the slightest hint of criticism. However, the show’s goal isn’t a six-episode allegory on the excesses of executive power.
The dialogue, from an array of writers including Tracy and Bodies, Bodies, Bodies writer Sarah DeLappe, often suggests Veep with a less dexterous tongue. It keeps the palace intrigue fun and quick even when it the notes feel quite familiar. The willingness to spike international incidents with amoral verbal tartness is a delight. Continue Reading →
To Leslie
Andrea Riseborough and Marc Maron shine in a study of a one-time lottery winner years after her life has gone bust.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 South by Southwest Festival)
To Leslie tells a story of painful loss and possible redemption as familiar as the ones recounted in the country songs born out of its West Texas setting. In the case of Michael Morris’s feature debut, familiarity does not breed contempt. What To Leslie lacks in originality, it more than makes up for in terms of its craft and very impressive central performances from Andrea Riseborough and Marc Maron. Continue Reading →
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
SimilarBack to the Future Part III (1990), Copying Beethoven (2006), Metropolis (1927), The Elephant Man (1980),
StarringSophia Di Martino,
StudioFilm4 Productions,
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is an alternatively madcap and melancholic retelling of the artistic and personal life of the peculiar Louis Wain by making a lot of noise but not saying much. Biographical films have to tread a very difficult line. They must tell their central characters’ life and accomplishments while humanizing them through their rituals and quirks. And they must do this all without turning the movie idealization or fetishization of such things. Narratively, what Louis Wain gets right is that focusing on the man as a deeply troubled individual and melds his artistic work along with the afflictions that he suffered. What it gets wrong is its inability to dig deeper into Louis Wain beyond his whimsies and mannerisms and the surrounding greater Victorian English culture. Continue Reading →
ZeroZeroZero
Amazon's adaptation of the Roberto Saviano novel is far too passive and jumbled to capture your interest.
“Look at cocaine and all you see is powder. Look through cocaine and you see the world,” says the tagline to Roberto Saviano’s book, ZeroZeroZero. Now an eight-part mini-series on Amazon Prime, the show promises the same. It purports to be the whole picture of the cocaine trade from the Italian buyers to the Mexican sellers to the American brokers. We follow the effects of a single shipment of cocaine on the lives of people spread across multiple continents. Unfortunately, showrunners Stefano Sollima, Leonardo Fasoli, and Mauricio Katz’s attempt is unwieldy and unfocused.
Reviews of the source material reported similar issues, with Saviano’s narrative often lacking, well... narrative structure. You’d hope that the show would seek to correct this by streamlining Saviano’s many interviews into a cohesive picture, but it ends up replicating them instead.
It does simplify the cast of characters, however. We focus mainly on three sets of people: the tumultuous relationship between an Italian mobster grandson (Giuseppe De Domenico) and his grandfather (Adriano Chiaramida) who plan to buy the cocaine shipment; the American brother (Dane DeHaan) and sister (Andrea Riseborough) brokering the deal; and the Mexican soldier turned narco (Harold Torres) doing the selling. Continue Reading →
Possessor
Brandon Cronenberg's second feature is a po-faced collection of genre tropes that wastes its cast and a modest sense of style.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.)
It’s about 45 minutes into Possessor when its most apt moment comes. A bunch of generically rich people in a generically glossy mansion turn to each other and give a toast. That toast, as it so happens, is “to boredom.”
Now, while Brandon Cronenberg’s second movie in eight years isn’t a complete failure, it’s an empty one: a grab bag of sci-fi clichés with a few spurts of violence. The occasional gore gets your attention, sure, but that’s because it’s something on the screen. The production design from Rupert Lazarus does what it sets out to do, but that aim is to recreate older, better sci-fi movies. It’s just… there, and then the color palette generously shifts from pale to neon. These tricks might have an effect if they hadn’t been done so many times before. Continue Reading →
Luxor
A solid first half and great work from Andrea Riseborough aren't quite enough to make up for Zeina Durra's Egyptian indie.
Having spent time treating victims of the war in Syria, it would seem as if Hana (Andrea Riseborough) has given all of her life to others. She’s something of a ghost now, and upon going on leave for a while, she does what any specter would do: she haunts. In particular, she haunts the streets of Luxor. She lived there a few years prior and, be it spiritual or mental healing, is looking for a week to recharge. What feels like a Greek choir of whispers arises as she visits the tombs and ruins, and it’s enough to make up for the more unmotivated choices.
That is, for a while. Luxor, Zeina Durra’s sophomore effort, of course isn’t actually a ghost story, but it works when it does because she approaches it like one. There’s a crypt of memories to open, silences that play like music. The conflation of the mental and the spiritual blur until they’re one and the same. It’s 85 minutes too! But what starts as something subtle shows itself—and its protagonist—to be much more traditional, lessening what’s on its mind as a result.
She understands the culture. She has a few friends in the area and she knows some of the locals. This all works well, her worldliness that Riseborough plays with ease. And then she starts to get on with an old friend of hers, an archeologist named Sultan (Karim Saleh). He makes a notice of it being “just like the old days” in a way the movie treats refreshingly identical to how an old pal says elsewhere in the movie, and it seems as if their relationship is going to stay strictly platonic. Continue Reading →