Luxor (In French: Louxor)
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 →
Kunstneren og tyven
A few years ago, Czech painter Barbora Kysilkova had two paintings on display in Oslo. It was something of a break for the artist, whose lifelong curiosity of death and nature didn’t quite fit the descriptor of “gothic.” It was a little too clean for that, but it was hers and it made her a few dollars. Then it was stolen. The question of who didn’t last long as Karl-Bertil Nordland was caught on the security footage, and while the drug-addled robber couldn’t remember much of the robbery, it didn’t really matter to the painter. Continue Reading →
Shrill
Annie makes amends & demands a place in the world in a quietly powerful sophomore season of the Hulu comedy-drama.
This week season two of Hulu’s effervescent Shrill returns to give us more of the same sharply observant humor and inclusive empowerment—tempered with painful obstacles and real character growth—that made season one a breakaway hit.
Based loosely on Lindy West’s memoir Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman and geared towards a millennial audience, Shrill isn’t always an easy watch. For a show that has more than its fair share of uncomfortable moments, one of the most gutting is when Annie Easton (Aidy Bryant) introduces her boyfriend Ryan (Luka Jones) to her parents. Her mother Vera (Julia Sweeney) tells her she looks “so put together.” It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, but it boils down to Vera being unable to tell a fat woman—her own daughter, no less—that she looks beautiful. The tension between Annie and her mother, Annie and her friends, her boss, and her boyfriend, are still very much a part of the new season, but showrunner Ali Rushfield wisely chooses to make season 2 less about Annie chafing against a world that seeks to minimize her and more about Annie learning to unapologetically take up space in that world.
After the outrageous season one finale that sees Annie blowing up almost every support she has—her friendship with Fran, her relationship with her parents, her job at the Weekly Thorn, we see Annie trying to mend those fences over the course of the season. Luckily her friendship with Fran (Lolly Adefope) is quickly repaired, in part because Fran finds herself dealing with some fallout of her own in her relationship with Vic, and Fran needs Annie as much as Annie needs Fran. Fran has her own stories to tell in this season; reconciling with the fact that she has hurt many women the way that Vic has hurt her, her continuing struggle for acceptance and understanding from her mother, and the developing friendship between her and Emily, played by writer and performer E.R. Fightmaster, a welcome addition to the cast. Continue Reading →
Summertime (In French: Vacances à Venise)
Sandwiched between a rough start and too tidy of an ending, Carlos López Estrada's latest finds love in its large ensemble.
“The sewage water smelt like butterscotch,” a young woman (Mila Cuda) muses. The contradictions are inert, the delivery self-serious, the writing okay but sold as something much more. Elsewhere, Tyris (Tyris Winter) berates a waitress for a restaurant’s prices. They go on a rant and submit a scathing Yelp review before pretending to choke for the sake of a free meal. Their behavior reproachable and their words petty, the movie still seems to side with them. And at this point, it would seem that we’re off to the races with Summertime.
Well, not quite. Carlos López Estrada’s follow-up to Blindspotting is, to say the least, the type of movie that makes a surprising about-face after 20 minutes or so. Set over the course of one July day, it takes a neorealist base and warps it into the body of a musical, following an ensemble piece of 25. But it isn’t music: with each character comes a spoken word poem, a fade between the inner and the outer. It’s incredibly uneven at points and obnoxious at its worst, but when it finds its stride, it’s that kind of livelihood that’s too infectious to deny.
In some ways, that makes its missteps all the more bizarre. Estrada, who shares a story by credit with Vero Kompalic, approaches most characters with a similar empathy. All of the performers write their respective poems, but Estrada approaches most characters with a similar empathy. Its uniformity is its greatest weakness. It helps, then, when Summertime unravels its connections and its characterizations, allowing them to breathe in tandem with the environments. Continue Reading →
Star Trek: Picard
Patrick Stewart returns to his iconic role in a new Star Trek series in desperate need of a shakedown cruise.
It’s pleasing enough to see Patrick Stewart once again gazing at the stars. He calls his dog “Number One”, and orders earl grey tea, and shares a moment with some familiar faces. This older Picard is a bit more subdued than the confident captain who once strolled the decks of the Enterprise. But every once in awhile, the captain awakens once more, and Stewart delivers a line or look or an expression that briefly rekindles the fire that fueled The Next Generation.
It’s pleasing enough to see Star Trek finally advancing the timeline beyond Nemesis. This first real measure of in-universe progress since then deals with the Romulan detente hinted at in the 2002 release and the destruction of Romulus depicted in the 2009 reboot. The series contends with the more expansive use of artificial life hinted at in Data’s adventures and the aftermath of so many Borg encounters.
It’s even pleasing enough to see another series advancing Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future, upholding his spirit by channeling current issues and events. The Federation we see in Star Trek: Picard< is not the same institution whose principles the show’s title character once so vigilantly upheld, but rather, one struggling with its place in a changing universe. Continue Reading →