The Films of 2023

[DarkImbecile]

As always, this is the thread in which the tiny handful of people still watching new movies in 2023 can post reactions to any film released this year that doesn't already have a thread created for it. If a poster and a movie they write about here love each other very much (or just make some bad decisions together that they both regret later) and as a result a clump of posts form, a new thread for that movie will be mandated by law to be created whether the poster and/or film want it or not.

Please limit yourself to one film per post — even if that means a few consecutive posts after a day-long trip to the multiplex — as the mods have hard enough jobs already without having to try to split your 1,000-word epistle comparing and contrasting the theological implications of The Devil Conspiracy and Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist into multiple threads.

Since my attempt to be lazy and solipsistic last year was roundly rejected by the forum in favor of The Big Snarky List, the finger on the monkey's paw has curled and you will now be subjected to the biggest, snarkiest list ever — so big that it had to be broken into sections in order to keep snark levels from spiking above those approved by regulators for public consumption.

In 2023, if you can tear yourself away from House hearings on Hunter Biden's laptop long enough to visit a movie theater, you may well find:

GENRE TRASH

• A ripoff of Child's Play but for girls
• A long-delayed Guy Ritchie action comedy that had the misfortune of featuring evil Ukranian gangster villains in 2022
• A Gerard Butler action thriller set in and around a plane called — wait for it — Plane
• M. Night Shyamalan's latest thriller to get a D- Cinemascore and $50 million in profits
• Steven Soderbergh's triumphant return to his best franchise
• An action thriller in Mumbai serving as star Dev Patel's directorial debut
• John Woo's dialogue-free action movie, Silent Night
• Ray Liotta giving one of his final performances opposite a bear on a coke rampage
• The first movie in the extended Rocky franchise without Sylvester Stallone
• The first movie in the Scream franchise without Neve Campbell
• Willem Dafoe as an art thief trapped alone in a locked down penthouse
• Robert Rodriguez returning to features after a TV stint with a twisty thriller starring Ben Affleck
• Adam Driver in what sounds like one of those astronaut-centric Twilight Zone episodes
• Adam Sandler in what sounds like one of those astronaut-centric Twilight Zone episodes on LSD
• The Farrelly Brother without any Oscars (yet?) directing Woody Harrelson as a Special Olympics coach
• A Dungeons & Dragons movie <insert first half of Drake meme> from the directors of Game Night <insert second half>
• Russell Crowe is either an exorcist for the Pope, performs an exorcism on the Pope, or is the Pope needed to be exorcised, TBD
• Three decades after flirting with vampirism, Nic Cage finally gets to be Dracula
• The tenth installment of a series of family dramas about car enthusiasts starring Vin Diesel
• An original Pixar project about Aristotelian elements
• The fourth in a famous series of action films starring 58-year-old Keanu Reeves
• The seventh in a famous series of action films starring 60-year-old Tom Cruise
• The third in a famous series of action films starring 67-year-old Denzel Washington
• The fourth in a famous series of action films starring 76-year-old Sylvester Stallone
• The fifth in a famous series of action films starring 80-year-old Harrison Ford
• The second in a less famous series of action films starring a 60-million-year-old giant shark
• Margot Robbie stretching in a role as an impossibly proportioned, unnaturally gorgeous woman
• A courtroom drama prominently featuring John Cena and Wile E. Coyote
• A Hunger Games prequel prominently featuring Peter Dinklage
• Timothée Chalamet playing Johnny Depp playing Gene Wilder
• A Doug Liman remake of the classic action cult movie Road House with Patrick Swayze lookalike Jake Gyllenhaal
• A David Gordon Green remake of the classic horror franchise <insert first half of Drake meme> The Exorcist <insert first half of Drake meme again>
• The second chapter we weren't sure we were going to get of a major sci-fi blockbuster, now with Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken, and Léa Seydoux
• The latest appearances of those iconic comic book characters that have captivated the American imagination for decades: Ant-Man, Shazam, Blue Beetle, Aquaman, Kraven the Hunter, Peter Quill and friends, The Marvels, Spider-Ham, and The Very Fast Non-Binary Person Suffering a Dangerous Mental Health Crisis

MIDDLEBROW STUDIO PRODUCTS

• A filmed adaptation of the stage musical adaptation of The Color Purple
• A Kelly Fremon Craig adaptation of Judy Blume
• Zach Braff roping ex-girlfriend Florence Pugh into his latest dramedy
• A pharmaceutical drama with Emily Blunt and Chris Evans
• Julianne Moore and John Lithgow in a Manhattan billionaire drama
• David Lowery plays in the Disney fantasy sandbox again with Peter Pan & Wendy
• A mixed-race relationship comedy with Jonah Hill, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Nia Long, and David Duchovny
• A psychological thriller about racial tensions with Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, and Kevin Bacon
• Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell's new thriller with Rosamund Pike, Barry Keoghan, and Richard E. Grant
• The first feature in 15 years from Ellen Kuras (cinematographer for Spike Lee, Errol Morris, and Michel Gondry), a WWII drama starring Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, and Jude Law
• Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's latest collaboration, a drama about Nike signing Michael Jordan
• Jennifer Lawrence in No Hard Feelings, what I am assuming is an edgy impotence comedy
• A historical drama about WWI-era sound recordings with Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor
• Rooney Mara starring in an adaptation of a 65-year-old play about culture clashes in a NYC restaurant

PRESTIGE VANITY PROJECTS

• Helen Mirren IS Golda Meir
• Forest Whitaker IS Doc Broadus
• Cillian Murphy IS J. Robert Oppenheimer
• Colman Domingo IS Bayard Rustin
• Regina King IS Shirley Chisholm
• Jude Law IS Henry VIII
• Bradley Cooper IS Leonard Bernstein
• Adam Driver IS Enzo Ferrari
• Cailee Spaeny IS Priscilla Presley
• Joaquin Phoenix IS Kitbag
• Chris Pratt IS Super Mario

SUBTITLED FESTIVAL OBSCURITIES

• Victor Erice's first film in three decades
• Abderrahmane Sissako jumps from West Africa to China with his latest romantic drama
• Nuri Bilge Ceylan's latest contribution to slow cinema
• Hirokazu Kore-eda's first Japanese-language film since Shoplifters
• François Ozon's new drama with Isabelle Huppert
• Michael Rozek's new drama with Isabelle Huppert
• Élise Girard's new drama with Isabelle Huppert
• Dario Argento's new drama with Isabelle Huppert
• Phillipe Garrel's new drama with...out Isabelle Huppert(!) but featuring his own kids(!!) as traveling puppeteers(?)
• Catherine Breillat's new drama with Isabelle Huppert
• Pablo Larraín's slight departure from biopics about famous white women: a black comedy about Augusto Pinochet as a centuries-old vampire
• Hayao Miyazaki trying to redeem himself in the eyes of Mr Sausage with his latest bout of unretirement
• Mélanie Laurent starring in her own heist thriller with Adèle Exarchopolous and Isabelle Adjani
• Valeska Grisebach's follow up to Western
• New oddities about tortured artists from Quentin Dupieux and Michel Gondry
• Aki Kaurismäki's latest Scandinavian dark comedy
• The latest French social drama from Ladj Ly
• The latest Chinese historical drama from Zhang Yimou
• Christian Petzold's relationship drama set against a natural disaster
• Vicky Krieps following up Corsage with another European biographical drama for Margarethe von Trotta
• Bertrand Bonello's sci-fi drama with Léa Seydoux
• Lisandro Alonso and Viggo Mortensen's long-awaited follow-up to Jauja
• Bruno Dumont's absurdist fantasy about an intergalactic war over a messianic child

AUTEUR PRETENSIONS

• Yorgos Lanthimos' latest off-kilter drama starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Margaret Qualley
• Yorgos Lanthimos' latest off-kilter drama starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Margaret Qualley
• Wes Anderson's latest original quirky ensemble piece
• Wes Anderson's latest adapted quirky ensemble piece
• Joe Talbot following up The Last Black Man in San Francisco with a period drama starring Lily-Rose Depp and Renate Reinsve
• Kitty Green following up The Assistant with an Australian outback thriller starring Julia Garner and Hugo Weaving
• William Oldroyd following up Lady Macbeth with a psychological thriller starring Anne Hathaway and Thomas McKenzie
• Rose Glass following up Saint Maud with a lesbian body-building thriller with Kristen Stewart, Jena Malone, and Ed Harris
• Luca Guadagnino's tennis drama starring Zendaya
• Alice Lowe's century-hopping romance Timestalker
• Warwick Thornton directing Cate Blanchett as an Australian nun confronted with an Aboriginal orphan
• Jane Schoenbrun following up We're All Going to the World's Fair with another trippy horror film starring Phoebe Bridgers, Danielle Deadwyler, and Fred Durst(?)
• Emma Selgman following up Shiva Baby by retiming with Rachel Sennott for a queer high school sex comedy
• Cory Finley adapting National Book Award winner Landscape With Invisible Hand
• Alice Englert starring in her directorial debut alongside Jennifer Connelly and Ben Whishaw
• Neil Jordan's noir giving Liam Neeson a shot at a character already played by Bogart, Mitchum, Gould, Garner, and Powell
• Rebecca Miller's latest romantic dramedy, this one starring Anne Hathaway, Peter Dinklage, and Marisa Tomei
• Jessica Hausner directing Mia Wasikowska as a teacher who might be encouraging students to starve themselves
• French cinematographer Benoît Delhomme's feature debut with Jessica Chastain and the omnipresent Anne Hathaway
• Andrew Haigh's eerie family drama with Claire Foy and Paul Mescal
• Kantemir Balagov's first film after fleeing Russia and his English-language debut, Butterfly Jam
• Marielle Heller directing Amy Adams as a woman who may or may not be turning into a dog
• Nicole Holofcener reteams with Julia Louis-Dreyfus for another comedic relationship drama
• David Michôd tries his hand at comedy with Pete Davidson, Orlando Bloom, and Sean Harris
• Justin Kurzel directing Laura Dern and Benedict Cumberbatch in a society that doesn't sleep
• Michel Franco brings his signature dread to New York with Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard
• Alex Garland's next and possibly last film, a political action epic with Kirsten Dunst
• Ken Loach's latest polemic about an English community coping with an influx of refugees
• Sean Durkin directing Zac Efron in a drama about a family of fringe wrestlers
• Jeff Nichols' long-awaited return with a motorcycle club drama starring Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, and of course Michael Shannon
• Steve McQueen's WWII drama with Saoirse Ronan
• Todd Haynes' celebrity drama with Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore
• The Other Coen Brother's solo feature debut with Margaret Qualley and a potentially scandalous title
• Some relative of Roman and Sofia Coppola’s ambitious, wine-financed sci-fi epic

All this in addition to the likelihood of previously promised films from Jeremy Saulnier, Brady Corbet, Martin Scorsese, Joshua Oppenheimer, Gareth Evans, Brandon Cronenberg, Terrence Malick, Alexander Payne, Jonathan Glazer, Ari Aster, and David Fincher. There are also less certain but still possible new projects from Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Woody Allen, Marco Bellochio, Liliana Cavani, Robert Eggers, Lynne Ramsay, Roman Polanski, Paweł Pawlikowski, Paolo Sorrentino, Alice Rohrwacher, Matteo Garrone, Richard Linklater, Radu Jude, and Mike Mills.

Everyone and anyone is encouraged to offer their thoughts on these or any 2022 release that provokes a reaction, whether it's a hidden art house gem or the latest all-consuming Disney tentpole release — you never know when your post will be the one to kick off the forum's latest argument about cancel culture.

[knives]

That Exorcist part is a pure kiss.

Also, even if it’s terribly I am excited for anything Rustin.

[beamish14]

Animated adaptation of multiple Haruki Murakami short stories, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Michael Winterbottom’s newest feature Promised Land, about how the British Mandate of Palestine was turned into Israel, sounds great. It was filmed in the fall of 2021.

I truly thought that Marlowe had already been dumped onto streaming. Neil Jordan can’t catch much of a break anymore

New film from Mike Leigh that apparently has a primarily Black cast

Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation of graphic novel Here

[therewillbeblus]

Without a shred of news in 27 months, I'm not holding out hope for The Brutalist any more, at least not with the same cast/crew

[domino harvey]

Hilarious first post. If only I liked movies!

[diamonds]

Good chance we'll see Victor Nunez's new film Rachel Hendrix this year as well.

[Murdoch]

I'm most excited for M3GAN, less so for Cocaine Bear

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Zhang Yimou also has a contemporary thriller called Under the Light that's been in the can since 2019. State media reported last month that it's finally due for release this year.

Other Chinese films we might see in 2023:

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man from Liu Jian (Have a Nice Day), which was supposed to premiere at last year's Directors' Fortnight but was pulled prior to announcement, ostensibly because it wasn't ready
• Dwelling by the West Lake, Gu Xiaogang's follow-up (but not a sequel) to Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains
• My Father's Son, the sophomore feature of Qiu Sheng (Suburban Birds)
• Decades-spanning crime drama Where It Begins, which was supposed to have been the directorial debut of Fifth Generation cinematographer Zhao Fei but was beaten to theaters by youth romance Ten Years of Loving You, regarded by many Chinese cinephiles as the worst film of 2022
• Three Words, Lou Ye's entry into the popular Chinese-twentysomethings-grappling-with-life-and-love genre, which recently completed a rough cut
• Hedgehog (unofficial title), a drama/black comedy with Ge You that will hopefully see Gu Changwei returning to the mode of Peacock and And the Spring Comes after a couple of underwhelming romcoms
• Ultimate Fighting (another unofficial title), an MMA drama co-directed by Jia Zhangke's frequent cinematographer Yu Lik-wai and recent Jia protégé Wang Jing (The Best Is Yet to Come)
• Most exciting for my money is All Ears, Liu Jiayin's first feature since Oxhide II, with Hu Ge as a screenwriter who moonlights writing eulogies

Unfortunately the prospects for Tian Zhuangzhuang's long-delayed Cry of the Birds aren't good.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, Johnnie To, who even after the release of Septet has yet to clear his backlog—a project shot in 2016 with Wai Ka-fai starring Andy Lau, Gong Li, and (oof) Jacky Heung is still MIA with no release in sight—wrapped his first streaming series (unofficial title: Three Lives) in 2022, which sounds promisingly redolent of Life Without Principle.

[Michael Kerpan]

Sounds like a lot of interesting Chinese things to look forward to. That is, if we get subbed releases. (which I suspect we might not get for many).

[Rayon Vert]

In Category 1 (with maybe a dash of 5 ?), Gareth Edwards' first directed and self-written (screenplay) film since Monsters, True Love (sci fi) is due out in the fall .

[hearthesilence]

For those going by the U.S. release schedule, should Saint Omer count as a 2023 film? I didn't realize the theatrical run actually began after New Year's despite prior festival and preview screenings. (MoMA had a screening in December.)

[therewillbeblus]

I don't even follow a consistent logic with that stuff anymore, but usually my rule of thumb is that if I saw it on U.S. soil at a film festival in the year before its public commercial release, I'll put it for that year, and if I didn't catch that screening and saw it when it opened to the public during that wider next-year release tour, I'd assign it then. Typically if I do catch an early premiere, unless I travel to NY (or one of the other big cities that more frequently have one-off premieres compared to Boston), it's because the movie came to IFF Boston, and that usually means it toured a bunch of festivals in many cities, so it's less of a tough call in year assignment since there were so many public screenings here in the previous year/more opportunities for more people to see it (basically a time-limited wide release before its wider release). But if I lived in NY/LA, as you do, I think I'd either do more research to see where else it played, or just not care and put it for that year, which is basically what I'm doing these days

[DarkImbecile]

My rule of thumb is to use the year a given film was first available for public screenings outside of festivals, anywhere in the world

[DarkImbecile]

The first film for me from this year's edition of Sundance, Sofia Alaoui's Animalia [Parmi Nous] is a unique blend of cultural specificity, science fiction, and a tangle of class, gender, and spiritual anxiety, and science fiction that benefits from Alaoui's light touch, especially regarding the genre elements. If there's maybe a bit too much going on here thematically for some of it to be as impactful as intended, the strong score and visuals — both in terms of the cinematography and the largely subtle visual effects work — also make Animalia an evocative sensory experience that also succeeds in presenting its North African milieu as a fascinating, conflicted place.

Oumaïma Barid stars as Itto, a young Moroccan women late into the third term of her first pregnancy, trying to acclimate to her wealthy husband's family and her own approaching motherhood when a series of bizarre phenomena separate her from the rest of the family and send her on a journey alone across an unsettled countryside. Switching between French, Moroccan Arabic, and a regional Berber dialect as the situation requires, she struggles to make it to her husband and his family while coming closer and closer to the potentially extraterrestrial oddities affecting people and animals across the area. My favorite performance in the film is Fouad Oughaou’s as a melancholic villager who reluctantly agrees to help her reach the city where her family has holed up — his quiet seething at Itto’s attempts to buy his help and the other signifiers of her status and remove from his own life is memorable.

As I indicated earlier, the sci-fi elements are well-integrated without ever being bombastic or drawing too much attention from the character concerns driving the story, even as they underline Itto’s sense of alienation from her family and her uncertainty about becoming a mother. There’s some really nicely done effects work with animals and one big visual effect that is both beautifully rendered and presented as matter-of-fact in stark contrast to the histrionics or Spielbergian awe that a lesser movie might have emphasized.

Marginally interesting side tangent: The friend I saw this with spent some years in southern Morocco with the Peace Corps, and in addition to adding some interesting context about the linguistic and cultural details in the film, he raised some questions about how dogs are used — they’re a prominent presence, especially in the first half, but apparently in the part of the country he’s most familiar with dogs are not generally kept as pets and viewed as a nuisance to be tolerated at best and systematically poisoned at worst. The film takes place in north central Morocco, so perhaps attitudes toward canines are different there, but it does change some of the significance of the protagonist’s behavior early on if those views are prevalent nationwide.

Ultimately, I’m not entirely sure yet whether my inability to fully grasp everything Alaoui is offering here — especially on the spiritual/religious front — is her failing or mine, but I do think there’s more than enough talent on display here to make this worth seeking out, and enough ambiguity and mystery to make it worth revisiting. Would make a nice double-feature with Jeff Nichols’ undervalued Midnight Special.

[DarkImbecile]

I think I'll only have time for one of the collections of shorts available from this year's edition of Sundance, so of course the one I made room for was the Midnight program:

"In the Flesh" (Daphne Gardner) — The first of the shorts definitely lives up to the “Midnight” designation: in a mere 13 minutes, we’re treated to an explosive outburst of raw sewage, black oily goo leaking from our protagonist’s vagina, a decapitation, and a masturbation journal (typical entry: “cum x3, late because cum x1”).

The metaphorical treatment of repressed trauma and its intertwining with sexuality might not be getting anywhere brand new, but the commitment to raw humor and cringeworthy levels of honesty from both director Daphne Gardner and star Edy Modica are worth a look. To paraphrase my friend’s response, it’s too bad another director and actor just made a body horror movie about fucking a car, because these two would have been perfect for a (very tonally different) version of that movie.

"Pipes" (Jessica Meier; Kilian Feusi; Sujanth Racichandran) — An amusing enough erotic animated short, this four-minute depiction of a bear (ahem) plumber attending to leaky pipes in a gay fetish club packs in a ton of visual innuendos and outright erotic material. The black and white visuals are effective and the punchline is funny enough, but there's ultimately just not enough going on here outside of a quick resolution to some homoerotic anxiety to really latch onto.

"A Folded Ocean" (Benjamin Brewer) — Far and away the best and most accomplished of the Midnight Shorts, "A Folded Ocean" uses impressively disturbing, Society-esque visual effects to illustrate what happens when the partners in a new relationship begin to get too close. In addition to overseeing the squirm-worthy imagery and eliciting solidly naturalistic performances from Annabelle Lemieux and John Giacobbe, Benjamin Brewer also closes with a really stellar final shot that signals just as much promise for his future as the more high-concept elements.

"Unborn Biru" (Inga Elin Marakatt) — In this nordic folk horror entry, Marakatt captures an impressively realized period winter landscape in telling the story of a pregnant widow who steals from corpses to feed herself and her child. While this is the better of the films I saw today featuring creepy kids, the film unfortunately also feels either somewhat incomplete or perhaps dependent on some specific cultural knowledge that I personally didn't bring to it. I was interested throughout, but the abrupt ending left me unsatisfied in a way none of the other shorts in this program did — even the inferior ones.

"Power Signal" (Oscar Boyson) — The longest of the shorts is unfortunately also one of the less focused and least successful, featuring an e-bike delivery rider who in a roundabout series of events runs into the more environmentally conscious and obstetric cousin of the motorbike driving alien in Under the Skin. While it centers a strong lead performance by Babs Olusanmokun (who some might recognize from Villeneuve's Dune), the odd happenings around him feel so loose and disconnected from him that it's hard to muster more than a shrug at even the climactic light show. The technical side is well-executed, for the most part, but the writing could have used some tightened focus and some of the supporting performances aren't on the same level as the lead's.

"Claudio's Song" (Anders Nilsson) — The programmers saved the funniest for last, with Anders Nilsson's bizarre crime/futurist musical gag making me chortle happily as a scene featuring an Eastern European influencer being menaced by a family of low-rent mobsters segued seamlessly into a performance by a cult in the distant future led by a man playing a musical instrument that can only be described as a spherical butthole. Buoyed by its production design and the catchy eponymous number, Nilsson's short also has the discipline to nail its gag, then get out quickly before anything has a chance to wear thin.

[DarkImbecile]

The word "harrowing" is probably a bit overused when it comes to documentaries like 20 Days in Mariupol, but I'll be damned if I can think up a better descriptor for Mstyslav Chernov's depiction of the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine through the eyes of the only team of journalists to remain in the doomed city of Mariupol through even the first portion of its siege and destruction.

This is the story of how Chernov and his crew captured the footage that many will remember from those early weeks of the war — exposing incidents like the bombing of a maternity hospital and the dumping of dozens of civilian corpses in slit trenches — and of the many other incidents they witnessed during the collapse into hellish ruin of a modern European city. Even if you followed news of the war closely at the time and have seen much of the more famous snippets of this footage before, the cumulative weight of this film is difficult to bear without succumbing to emotion as doctors weep over the bodies of children they could not save, or at the humanity and bravery of nurses cooing over a minutes-old newborn and then shielding her in a doorway when the boom of shelling echoes through the hospital. Chernov makes clear that he views documenting the suffering of his country and its citizens as a moral duty, and though he and his crew are clearly affected by the pain and loss they witness, he makes a point of mourning just as fiercely the untold number of victims in Mariupol whose stories will never be told.

There may not be much to single out that aesthetically or artistically unique about how this film presents its content as documentary art, but it remains necessary, vital journalism, and experiencing the bravery and humanity on display from both the filmmakers and their subjects is worth the pain of bearing witness to what they brought out of Mariupol.

[DarkImbecile]

Daina Reid's Run Rabbit Run is a really frustrating blend of clear talent in the cinematography, sound design, score, and parts of the performances on the one hand and fatally poor choices in direction, editing, and writing on the other. Veteran television director Reid brings a solid eye for image-making, and the opening half has moody horror atmosphere to spare — the problem arises when it becomes clear that there were only enough solid ideas for maintaining that atmosphere to fill about 45 minutes.

By the end, the repetition of certain elements would be laughable if they weren't so grating: if I had to see one more shot of the damned rabbit sniffing around the floor to ominously bookend a scene— or for that matter had to hear a misdirected Sarah Snook anxiously cry out "Mia?" one more time — I would have slammed my own hand in a car door.

Despite repeatedly drifting in the direction of feeling derivative of Jennifer Kent's The Babadook (a far superior expression of the anxiety of parenthood), I actually kind of like the core elements of this narrative. I only wish Reid had been willing to change pace and focus on the character elements of the story instead of desperately trying to keep the same aura of dread going for 90+ minutes.

[DarkImbecile]

So delicate and modest that it could blow away in a light breeze, Angus MacLachlan’s A Little Prayer attempts to make use of two strong performances and a well-scripted, gently tearjerking climactic scene to justify 90 minutes of almost pointedly uncinematic small-scale family melodrama.

A near-perfect example of the eminently forgettable low-budget Sundance stereotype, MacLachlan bounces a beloved older actor and an up-and-coming star off of various topical issues. Both David Straithairn and especially Jane Levy deliver on their end, but despite a few strong lines toward the end, the humor, drama, and character specifics in the script are so mild and presented so placidly as to lull viewers into a perfectly pleasant stupor.

Agreeable enough that I kept wanting to like it more than I did, Prayer engineers just enough fine moments for its two most prominent talents for me not end up negative overall on it, but I doubt as it disappears into the pool of films from this year that it will leave more than the most humble of ripples.

[DarkImbecile]

Well into David Zonana's military academy drama Heroic, I was enjoying the assured visuals and restrained, precise performances but still assuming this would eventually conform to a more predictable narrative pathway. Luis, our protagonist, would of course become the target of the more senior cadets' sadistic hazing, and/or be revealed as queer and closeted as a mid-film complication. Instead, Zonana is less interested in pitting Luis against the violent, toxic products of the incredibly scenic Mexican Military Academy than in exploring the manner in which that toxicity seeps into his pores and the consequences for those around him.

Santiago Sandoval Carbajal and Fernando Cuautle are both stellar as Luis and the fourth-year cadet in charge of his company, Sierra. The charismatic older sergeant runs the cadets under his command like a babyfaced version of R. Lee Ermey's boot camp sociopath in Full Metal Jacket, quieter but more insidiously sadistic. Even as he and his cohorts escalate their abuse of other cadets, Sierra takes Luis under his wing, challenging the younger man's sense of self and camaraderie. The general shape of their ultimate fates feel inevitable but also shaded with additional layers of character that left me contemplating and re-contextualizing early moments in light of the final scene.

Zonana and cinematographer Carolina Costa craft a cool, grey visual palette that often feels as chilly and harsh as the dark volcanic rock that makes up the foreboding, almost mythic structures in the center of the Academy's campus. The score is sparingly utilized but effective, and its last appearance in the film is thematically striking and memorable.

This is an often uneasy viewing experience, but a rewarding one more complicated and critical than it might appear at first glance.

[DarkImbecile]

While AUM: The Cult at the End of the World is definitely one of those documentaries whose largely middle-of-the-road formal choices are elevated by inherently captivating subject matter, directors Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto are presenting subject matter that is indeed morbidly fascinating enough — and the failures of Japanese institutions around the cult disturbingly relevant enough — to make the time spent with it feel worthwhile.

Like most outside of Japan, what I remember of the contemporary coverage of the Aum Shinrikyo cult centers around the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system and the group's thwarted apocalyptic ambitions. AUM places that infamous event at the center of a near-decade long wave of terror, and also makes clear how the Japanese media and justice systems abetted the cult's rise and protected it from consequences until thousands paid the price.

With unsettling parallels to recent events in the Western world and elsewhere, Braun and Yanagimoto illustrate how media outlets large and small treated the cult as a ratings-driving human interest curiosity, prioritizing sensationalism over factual journalism, ignoring activists and experts warning of the group's bent towards violence, and in one horrific instance even actively aiding in the cult's attacks on its critics. Similarly, Japanese law enforcement was reluctant to be seen as targeting a religious group after the grim history of Imperial Japan's embrace of state-sanctioned religion and oppression of those that failed to conform, blinding them to the risks of allowing open declarations of hostility against Japanese society and the state from a messianic leader. Hearing cult leader Shook Asahara explain his humiliating defeat in local elections away as the predicted of a rigged system bent on humiliating him and his righteous followers is certainly pointed.

Perhaps most surprising to me were two revelations: first, that the cult's influence expanded far beyond Japan itself, and that their success in post-Soviet Russia was central to their ability to obtain the tools of their terror campaign; and second, that some of the cult's key surviving leaders maneuvered to put in place a secondary organization utilizing the cult's teachings under a different name, still operating to this day. The revelation that one of the key interview subjects is not describing his experiences from the perspective of a reformed, repentant cultist but an active participant in maintaining its influence is unnerving, to say the least.

Another key component of the film is the surreal animation sequences taken from the cult's anime-influenced recruitment videos, which add a more distinctive element to the standard VHS footage of egomaniacal speeches and bizarre dance routines. Braun and Yanagimoto sparingly add to this their own more prosaically animated depictions of certain events.

In a time of bloated episodic true crime miniseries, I did appreciate the effort to pare down an unwieldy story into a tight 100 minutes, though even then there are intriguing details glided over a little too briskly; as a result, I came away from AUM feeling both that I had learned substantially more about the topic, and also that I might be interested in hearing even more about it.

[DarkImbecile]

If A Little Prayer is an example of the bland and unmemorable type of Sundance drama, Laurel Parmet's The Starling Girl is the more rewarding and worthwhile version of that template. Like that film, this is a performance-driven drama built around a family in Kentucky, but Parmet elevates hers with precise control over the tone and visual sensibility that produces many memorable moments and images without feeling ostentatious or showy.

Eliza Scanlen gives a remarkably assured and confident performance as Jem, a young woman in a tightly bound religious community struggling with her burgeoning sexual desires and attraction to an older member of the church. As her father (a very good Jimmi Simpson) struggles with his own demons, her attempts to balance her faith and her needs put her place in the community at risk and force her into decisions about her future.

Parmet's ambitions with her first feature may be modest, but she is more than successful in translating them into absorbing drama, an attention-grabbing lead performance, and a place among the better features in competition at Sundance this year.

[DarkImbecile]

Coming into the pseudonymously directed 5 Seasons of Revolution, I assumed viewers would be getting a ground-eye view illustrating the Syrian crisis that begin as anti-regime protests and evolved into a revolution before collapsing into a massively destructive civil war. Instead, filmmaker "Lina" primarily documents a group of urban, cosmopolitan, upper class Damascus young people trying to find a way to contribute to, document, and navigate their own survival and relationships during the thwarted revolt against the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

While there is unique footage from the war zones of Homs and Aleppo, most of the film documents the initial optimism, rising frustration, and ultimate frustrated dissolution of this group of privileged Syrians. They express disgust with their sheltered capital's refusal to commit to the cause, some begin to grow more brazen in their acts of civil disobedience, they squabble over tactics and commitments to non-violence, and others take more and more risks to document and distribute footage from opposition areas under increasingly brutal attack from the Syrian army.

While this smaller scale, more personal approach to telling the story of an enormous, kaleidoscopic conflict can be compelling, "Lina" is also limited in her ability to reveal the details and personalities of those involved by the risks to them and her. The filmmaker has to use blurring or deepfaked facial features in addition to limiting details about them to hide the identities of those who remain at risk of retaliation from the government, which makes the dramatic, emotional moments — several of the group of 20-somethings are detained, tortured, killed, or flee the country across the five years covered by the film — less impactful than they might have been were we better able to know them as individuals. This remove, though obviously the only responsible way to tell the story, also ultimately limits the film's ability to communicate the true cost to these young people as they lose their vision for the future, or in some cases lose their country altogether.

[DarkImbecile]

Filled with scabs to pick at and scars to admire, Alice Englert’s debut Bad Behaviour is often funny, sometimes baffling, and elevated by a fiery, enervating Jennifer Connelly who single-handedly manages to justify the entire project.

Connelly’s Lucy is a former actor seeking enlightenment at a retreat run by a guru — a suitably ridiculous, often barely awake Ben Whishaw — who embodies his own “Don’t think” mantra. Her razor sharp edges are even more obvious amid a crowd of seekers and empty banalities, and her increasingly fraught attempts to restrain herself are further tested by troublesome dreams, the worst security light on the planet, and the particularly needling presence of a fashion model there to soothe her anxieties about aging out of her beauty.

Meanwhile, Englert herself plays Lucy’s daughter, Dylan, a stunt performer on a film set halfway across the world, trying to establish herself professionally and keep her strained relationship with her mother at arm’s length. For much of the film, this half of the bifurcated story feels pointedly superfluous — almost unavoidably because it takes us away from Connelly — but Englert’s unconventional story structure has its payoffs when the two women’s trajectories are brought back toward each other in surprising fashion.

There are plenty of awkward narrative choices, and a few too many that feel unnecessary even after it becomes clearer what kind of story Englert is actually telling here. Still, she has enough of a knack for dryly amusing situational comedy, cutting dialogue, and composition to regularly make for memorable scenes, even if those scenes don’t always entirely hang together. Ultimately, it’s Connelly who keeps the whole odd exercise together, and it’s exciting to see her tear into a role like this at this point in her career.

[DarkImbecile]

Look, I love a crushingly depressing drama as much as the next festival-goer, but it is possible to be so unrelentingly bleak — and in such grindingly inevitable fashion — that even a modern Russian cinema fan such as myself can’t wallow in it. Belgian drama When It Melts tells a worthwhile story well enough to be memorable, but clearly telegraphs the grim resolutions of both major tracks of its narrative, then subjects the audience to a slow, steady drip of cold misery.

The story follows Eva, a young woman alienated from her family and past, returning to her hometown one winter to confront those responsible for a debilitating trauma. We also track a younger Eva navigate a fateful summer where the cruelties of adolescence and neglect by adults has long-reaching consequences. These twinned timelines are both compelling, but by their respective conclusions they’ve pummeled viewers into a frozen numbness rather than the raw, aching emotion they should be experiencing.

Veerle Baetens’ debut feature has much to commend — first and foremost a wrenching performance by young Rosa Marchant — but when the final 30-40 minutes more or less give up on surprising the audience and instead drag them through a slog of miserabilism. Impressively realized miserablism, to be fair, but not enough so to keep the conclusion from feeling less like a tragedy and more like a relief.

[DarkImbecile]

Christopher Murray’s Sorcery is so close to being something special: this telling of a real-life incident on the Chilean island of Chiloé has cultural and geographic specificity to spare, and an inherently gripping story resting on themes of colonialism, heritage, and religion. For everything it has going for it, the storytelling occasionally lapses into the prosaic and the production values — enhanced as they are by location shooting on the island — end up a little too starved of resources to be convincing at some key moments. 

Rosa, a young teen working for a family of German colonists in the late 19th century, watches as her father is viciously killed for challenging a white settler; as her pleas for justice from the government and the church are turned away, her commitment Christianity is challenged and she reconnects to her roots with the indigenous Huilliche people. Mystics and witches initiate her into the world of brujería, where she discovers the tools to achieve her revenge.

Many of the film’s most effective scenes stem from Rosa’s exposure to these supernatural forces, but others that should be equally compelling are stunted by reliance on early-2000s-TV-movie visual effects, particularly when it comes to fire and animals. This isn’t entirely fatal to these scenes, but it does make for a significant contrast with the verisimilitude on display in nearly every other respect. Perhaps if the film is picked up for distribution, there may be some investment in improving those shots. 

Murray’s patient, quiet storytelling choices, the specifics of this unique place and its cultures, and Valentina Véliz Caileo‘s lead performance are enough to make this worth seeing, even if I wish Murray had made fewer conventional choices in the second half of the film to match the eerie, inexplicable atmospherics of the earlier scenes.