Reality
SimilarA Real Young Girl (1976), Almost Famous (2000), Brubaker (1980), Copying Beethoven (2006), Freedom Writers (2007), Gandhi (1982), Mississippi Burning (1988), Sleepless in Seattle (1993),
Watch afterAnatomy of a Fall (2023),
The immediate issue with Tina Slatter’s debut feature, Reality, is how disengaging it is as a movie. A direct adaptation from Slatter’s theatrical piece Is This a Room, the conceptual background is probably the more interesting part. That show took the recorded transcript of FBI agents and former veteran and NSA translator Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney) about Winner's leaking of classified information on Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election and used it as a verbatim dialogue. Everything uttered on the tape is replicated almost exactly in the play and, now, the film. The stutters, pauses, coughing, dog barking, doors opening. Everything. Recreated in minute detail. Continue Reading →
After Yang
Ambulance
Michael Bay, whose 1990s actioners are—for good and ill—iconic parts of the decade’s cinema, and whose 2000s and 2010s work is reliably fascinating (from the terrific Pain & Gain to the baleful Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) delivers a bombastic chase movie that doubles as a damn good character study. Loving but criminal brothers (Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) take an ambulance hostage to escape a heist gone sideways. Along for the ride are a masterful EMT (Eiza González) resigned to personal apathy, and a critically injured cop (Jackson White). Amidst the carefully shaped chaos of burnt rubber and bullets, Bay makes space for Gyllenhaal (frenzied and in denial about how badly everything’s gone) Abdul-Mateen II (trying to keep cool even as that becomes impossible) and González (who must break out of her self-built walls if she is to survive) to bounce off each other in a pile of compelling ways. [JH] Continue Reading →
הברך
StudioARTE France Cinéma,
A motorcycle streaks through the rainy streets of Tel Aviv. Its rider is Ahed Tamini, a Palestinian woman who slapped an Israeli soldier in the face when he was attempting to break into her house. In response, an Israeli parliament member tweeted “In my opinion, she [Tamini] should have gotten a bullet, at least in the kneecap. That would have put her under house arrest for the rest of her life.” Oh wait, that isn’t actually Ahed Tamini. We’re seeing an actress auditioning to play her in an edgy digital video project. The flutter and flurry of disorienting images feel confusing, anxious, and raw. Continue Reading →
Wild Indian
Watch afterThe Whale (2022),
The Michael Greyeyes-starring Sundance debut announces Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr. as an exciting new filmmaker.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.)
The never-ending cycle of violence and abuse is at the center of Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.’s directorial debut Wild Indian. Part drama thriller and part character study of historical and generational trauma, Wild Indian announces Corbine as an exciting new voice. His vision is bold, confidently going to places that are dark and unconventional, with a masterful cinematic language often only found in the works of a seasoned filmmaker. His writing is airless, tightening the tension of the story up to eleven. It’s a phenomenal debut in the truest sense. Continue Reading →
Cryptozoo
SimilarPrincess Mononoke (1997),
The new film from Dash Shaw and Jane Samborski uses its breadth of bold psychedelic inspirations to distract from a tepid script.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.)
Somewhere in the forest, Amber (Louisa Krause) and Matt (Michael Cera) strip naked, have sex, and then get high. Matt relays a dream he had of—of all things—storming the Capitol and overthrowing the government. His mind’s eye blends with our objectivity, which, in turn, heightens his and our subjectivities. It’s trippy to say the bare minimum. The animation in Cryptozoo holds a breadth of inspirations. There’s the classic psychedelia of the ‘60s, sure. There’s also the choppy, two-dimensional aesthetic that Fantastic Planet popularized in 1973. Some locales look like a backlit blackboard and some are even cleaner, like in 1981’s Son of the White Mare.
But that’s mostly when Dash Shaw’s latest is peaceful, and that’s not always. Minutes into Cryptozoo, Amber and Matt come across a fenced-in tower and find a collection of caged mythical creatures. Then tragedy unfolds. This isn’t this couple’s story, and there are several spurts of violence, to say the least. Our lead is Lauren Gray (Lake Bell), a veterinarian who helps the sage Joan (Grace Zabriskie) save cryptids from the government. To be fair, the plot is by far the least original and most protracted part. The visual ingenuity, on the other hand, is something to witness. Continue Reading →
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.) Continue Reading →