itsamadmadblog

Ringo Lam's "Undeclared War" had me from its stunningly violent open in which a baptism ambush leads into hand grenades and helicopters. From there, it staggers into pretty much every late 80's/early 90's action film aesthetic- from the gaudy lens flares that visually accentuate Hong Kong 'actioners' of the time to the cop buddy narrative that sees two opposing worldviews combine to stop a global terrorist. Add to the mixture loads of cop swagger and "Undeclared War" is a pop masterpiece from a director known more for inspiring the skeletal outline of Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" than for his own works. After seeing Lam's "Sky On Fire" at the 2018 Dallas International Film Festival and then lapping up the brutality of his Jean Claude Van Damme collaboration (one of his many) "In Hell" last year, I've had the enjoyment of discovering one engaging action film after another. As usual, going beyond pop culture lip sync to observe the original purveyors holds so much more value.

And the value in "Undeclared War" hits the viewer in the face immediately. After the aforementioned violent opening, the stage is set for a visiting CIA Agent Gary (Peter Liapis) to team up with a local special agent in Hong Kong, Bong (Danny Lee), after his ambassador brother is assassinated by a terrorist named Hannibal (Vernon Wells). Played to cool perfection by Wells, Hannibal seems like a baddie ejected from the "Mission Impossible" universe.... prone to quickly dispatching those who fail him and eluding everyone through a variety of disguises. He's also a pretty good hand-to-hand combat fighter as well.

But beyond the mechanics of a plot that sees Gary and Inspector Bong putting aside their personal differences (Gary from the "Lethal Weapon" school of policing and Bong from the respect-bureaucracy phase of detective work), what stands out from "Undeclared War" is the clean and precise action set pieces. From a funeral home to a large hotel conference finale, Lam maintains a focused, organized logistics of violence. We understand where everyone is. The gun shots feel real. The delineation of good guys and bad guys is pronounced. Unlike so many Hong Kong action films, Lam doesn't lose sense of the placement of bodies and the elongation of suspense. Just watch how he handles a bomb in the finale. Or the cool confidence of police guys doing their work. Like the films of Johnnie To or especially Michael Mann, Lam infuses "Undeclared War" with a keen awareness of both public and private space in an action universe. I love discovering works like this and look forward to more Lam.

 

Dominik Graf's "Bitter Innocence" twists about halfway through from a corporate thriller to a sweet love story borne out of the casual indifference and sexual violence men perpetrate on women. That the love forms between a twenty-something woman (Laura Tonke) and the young teen daughter (Mareike Lindenmeyer) trying to unravel the mystery her parents have immersed themselves in should come as no shock to those who've watched just a few of Graf's films. They are mostly love stories buried within a larger framework of genre. Last year's masterwork called "Fabian: Going to the Dogs" is one of the most lush romance films in years, buttressed against the backdrop of an encroaching Nazi evil. Situated firmly in the times it was made (1999), "Bitter Innocence" follows the same pattern as love is widdled out of the complicated yuppie mindset that those in the corporate world can get away with anything if their check book is large enough.

But before we get to the central relationship of Vanessa and Eva, Graf's film wanders through the thriller realm when aggressive boss Larssen (Michael Mendle) threatens to destabilize the vague pharmaceutical company Andreas (Elmar Weppar) has been conducting research within for the past few years. Andreas' fears about the wolf Larssen are confirmed when he discovers him raping Vanessa behind closed doors. Working as a waitress for a catering company providing services at a company party, Andreas doesn't report (or even lift a finger to help) the vulnerable Vanessa, instead using the the act to steal a file that may secure his employment..... which is a prickly move since Vanessa sees him dodge out without coming to any sort of chivalry rescue.

From there, Larssen, Andreas, his wife Monika (Andrea L'Arronge), Vanessa and young daughter Eva become embroiled in a cat-and-mouse game of who-knows-what and whose-blackmailing-who. It's about two-thirds of the way through that "Bitter Innocence" grows a moral compass in the scrappy personality of young Eva as she tries to set things right..... and falls in love with the sophisticated perfume salesman-Vanessa during the process.

With the visual style of a glistening television movie (Graf has careened through an array of features, both for the big and small screens) and a sense of rhythm like that of a soap opera, the film's themes of ravishing passions and high intrigue feel right at home with that lowbrow entertainment. But Graf's swirling ambition about the youth of the world being the most morally grounded figures in a world set on financial gain and personal advancement (and I didn't even mention the affairs!) fits right at home in the subversive tactics of a filmmaker who continually buries so much in his works. I look forward to carrying through with his expansive body of work. 

Generally regarded as one of the first true paranoid thrillers, John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate" dealt with the brainwashing of a Korean War POW (Laurence Harvey whose steely eyed presence seemed like the perfect tonic for an empty vessel) and his subsequent mission as a presidential assassin. It holds up even better today.

Released just a year later in 1963, Basil Dearden's "The Mind Benders" certainly hasn't gotten the same acclaim as Frankenheimer's effort, but it's no less terrifying. I'd even argue it's a much more insidious example of the ability of one human to crack open and infect the brain of another human. In Dearden's stratosphere, the purpose isn't world domination, but simply the nature of suggestion in wielding power over another.... which plays havoc and begins the dissolution of a happy marriage.

As he did a few years prior in Dearden's taboo breaking "Victim" (1961), Dirk Bogarde is the man placed in a precarious situation fighting for his very soul. Portraying Dr. Longman, Bogarde is a scientist involved in an experiment whose opening title card suggests the entire story is ripped from the annuls of American research documents involving isolation tanks and perception reduction. And if this doesn't sound so far out today where such tactics dot the fringe landscape of psychology, things don't start so well for one doctor involved in the experiment who rightly tosses himself off a moving train in the film's opening minutes.

Hoping to find out if this strange death is a matter of political subterfuge or just someone unable to deal with his own mind, Major Hall (John Clements) asserts himself in the experiment and convinces a research aide (Michael Bryant) to help him push the boundaries of isolation. Enter Henry Longman (Bogarde), another doctor on the experiment who volunteers to stay submerged for the longest amount of time possible.... a stoic step for science and the perfect excuse for Major Hall to play with his own limits of twisted psychology.

After a terrific paranoid-filled first half, "The Mind Benders" turns chamber-piece driven in the second half. The slight suggestions whispered about his wife (a wonderful Mary Ure) moments after a hectic decompression from 7 hours in the tank turns the film into an acidic story about the slow dissolution of self and relationships. Bogarde doesn't always drip with empathy in many screen roles, but here, he really allows the snide distrust to leak off the screen..... even as his wife is 8 months pregnant and struggling just to understand the seismic shift in her once loving husband. 

This abrupt shift from tangential science fiction elements feels odd at first, but once "The Mind Benders" settles on Longman and his wife's shifting power dynamic, the film's kitchen sink realism (a style dominating much of British cinema during this time) feels all the more powerful in showing how disruptive progressive science can be. He's not slated to kill a presidential candidate, but the final riverside boat party seems just as violent for the way he openly courts another woman (Wendy Craig) and flagrantly challenges the tenets of marriage. Longman's brainwashing may not be the equal of murder, but "The Mind Benders" makes a strong case that its something far more damaging.

Perhaps best known for the aforementioned "Victim" and the first film in his own production company, "The League of Gentlemen" (1960), Dearden isn't an extremely well known filmmaker, mostly noticed for his social justice films of the 50's and early 60's. While "The Mind Benders" doesn't seem to have a great cause, it's no less thrilling for how it utilizes genre to twist and burn into an expert examination on psychology. Based on the handful of films I've seen, Dearden deseres to be mentioned in the same breath as other contemporary artists of his time.

 Triangle of Sadness

 

All of Ruben Ostlund's films are provocative and hermetic social anxiety dramas that feel more like sociological experiments than films. Up until now, none of them have really vibed with me. The closest that made me pay attention to his distinctive ethos of class and approximation was "Play"... a film that pushes the clash of cultures between young teenagers to the brink of intellectual exhaustion. Now, with his latest subtly sadistic "Triangle of Sadness", I sort of see what Ostlund is up to. Whether it's the exuberant comeuppance through extreme scatological humor or the precise shifts in power and subordination, this is a scathing eat-the-rich comedy that sees a beautiful but tenuous couple (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean) get caught up in more than their scabrous arguments about who's paying for dinner. Divided into three sections and running at two and a half hours, "Triangle of Sadness" doesn't ask one to care about anyone, from a communist yacht captain (Woody Harrelson) to the survivors who find themselves stranded after a disastrous event. Filmed with formal elegance (just admire that quiet, slow pan back from the point of view of a boat drifting towards a multi million dollar yacht that elicited gasps in my screening) and populated by needle drops that serve as ironic counterpoints to the empty vessels of wealth and pomp, "Triangle of Sadness" does skewer the upper class, but then proceeds to take a fine slicing of all the classes in between before this masterpiece of a film cuts out.

Bardo, a False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

Admiration for Inarritu's head trip epic comes far more easily than enjoyment. Immensely uneven and (at times) borderline didactic and dull, "Bardo, False Chronicles of  a Handful of Truths" ventures down an enigmatic path. Just like its main character, a respected journalist-turned-filmmaker Silverio (Daniel Cacho) who seems to be slipping in and out of reality at will, the film itself alternates between soulful family drama and pretentious fever dream in whiplash fashion. I was immensely more moved by the family interaction between Silverio and his wife (a wonderful Griselda Siciliano) and children (Ximena Lamadrid and Iker Solano). If Inarritu had wanted to completely follow their path, I think "Bardo" would have been a masterpiece of familial heartbreak and common healing. One sequence with the family in Baja, California is without a doubt one of the most moving and insightful sequences in any film this year. Likewise a husband-wife playful chase around their apartment and a banquet dance sequence that radiates careless ebullience. Unfortunately, "Bardo" has heavier things on its mind (or outside its mind) and every time the film switches back to the netherworld wanderings of Silverio and a passion to metatextualize everything from the scrupulous practices of the media to Mexican history, the film is diluted of its intrinsic power built up by the drama of its nuclear family. There's a magnificent film in here somewhere, and sometimes less is certainly more.

In a scene towards the end of Carlos Saura’s psychological chess match “Stress Is Three”, a man Antonio (Juan Luis Galiardo) is grounded, literally and figuratively, when he tries to drive away in his car on the beach and ends up only spinning its wheels in the sand. This comes after the frustration (and imagination?) of him seeing his wife (the luminous and blonde wigged Geraldine Chaplin) making out with their best friend Fernando (Fernado Cebrian) behind a jetee of rocks on the beach...... an act poor Antonio has internalized the entire film. It’s his breaking point, but in typical 1960’s ennui fashion, it's a violation of the human contract between husband and wife that may have only happened in his mind. If nothing else, Saura's film is about the disconsolate attitudes of the privileged and how they tear each other apart when left to their own devices.

Taking place over the course of just a couple of days, the trio embark on a road trip together. There’s no denying the flirtation between Teresa and Fernando from the very beginning. It’s enough that at one point, Antonio sneaks off the road ahead of them and spies on them through his binoculars. And because this paranoid act occurs towards the beginning of the film, it's a nervously implied sequence that sets the ominous tone that something is happening.

Eventually arriving at Antonio's farm home (and in typical ominous fashion, none of the family is there to meet them) the division between reality and fantasy gently rises in Antonio's head. But for all this talk about challenged masculine identity, "Stress Is Three" really belongs to Geraldine Chaplin. Starring in a handful of Saura's early films from 1967 until the mid 70's, her presence is as inseparable as that of Anna Karina was to the initial masterpieces of Jean Luc Godard. Here, it's easy to understand why Antonio would be selfishly jealous of his beautiful wife.

All of this frustration and ennui culminates in a trip to the beach where the stark black and white cinematography mutes all the beauty of the day and Antonio's spying seems to prove his buried suspicions. But then, Saura pulls a fantastic cinematic trick out of his bag, effectively rewiring the entire film and setting the template for a style of incisive satire and black psychological comedies that will dot his oeuvre for the next three decades. It's all there in just his second film, and "Stress Is Three"- gaining wider attention as a selection on the Criterion Channel- hopefully will bring more understanding to a filmmaker largely forgotten in 60's and 70's world cinema.

Kon Ichikawa's "The Makioka Sisters" trades on alot of the same sentiments that made Ozu such a beloved figure in international cinema. It's a film that concerns itself primarily with the task of finding suitable husbands for two of the 4 titular sisters... something that drove so many of Ozu's efforts about the nuclear family and its important formation. And while Ozu deserves his place in the echelon, Ichikawa has worked a bit more in the margins and toggled through all types of genre. And while no one is going to accuse him of stepping on Ozu's toes in subject matter, in my opinion, "The Makioka Sisters" is better than anything ever produced by him.

Genuinely humane and bitingly funny, "The Makioka Sisters" does involve four of them, but it eventually narrows its view on the two youngest- indecisive but independent Yukiko (Sayuri Yoshinaga) and volatile, brash Taeko (Yuko Kotegawa). The two older sisters Sachiko (Yoshiko Sakuma) and Tsuruko (Keiko Kishi) spend most of their days trying to find suitors for both, but the film underlines something deeper than arranged marriages. That the Makioka family is well off (but often not as important as the male suitor's families lined up) is a central theme, but as the film travels in years after its starting point of 1938, their family declines. Add to that young Taeko runs off with a bar owner when her real love dies a peasant's death because he couldn't get surgery in time and Yukiko demures any advances from any established suitor, and Ichikawa's adaptation makes a strong case that the family is far more liberal and free spirited than the aristocratic frame they're often poised within. They want to conform, but young Yukiko and Taeko certainly have other ideas.

Full of wonderful, quickly edited reaction shots (mostly from the family's help in young Oharu played by Yukari Uehara) and a dinner meeting that carefully frames everyone in uncomfortable banter, "The Makioka Sisters" is also one of Ichikawa's most humorous efforts. Listening to a suitor ramble on about his work in aquatic reproduction and then hearing Yukiko turn him down with "I'm not a fish" gently underscores the admiration that slowly builds for these four women throughout the film. They have personalities. They grow on us like an expansive intimate epic should. And the slow puncture of Japanese cultures and mores feels like something revolutionary in the hands of a master director like Ichikawa.

Released in 1983, "The Makioka Sisters" (only 1 of his 93 films spanning from the late 30's until 2006) also uses color brilliantly. From a face bathed in red light inside a photography production room to the sickly green hue of a corner bar, it's a film that sees a purpose in each designation. Of course, there's the obligatory cherry blossoms as well. In a scene that bookends the opening and closing images, time has passed and life has been altered. But luckily, there's no great sadness. No one has died and the world is still spinning, although Yukiko and Taeko are at vastly different paths in their lives. And even though some melancholy has settled, "The Makioka Sisters" proves that even minor shifts can have tremendous impact.

In David Miller's "Lonely Are the Brave", the wild west isn't in conflict with the modern world. It's already past... a distant, dusty memory as technological advances and "civilization" has already encroached on its manifest destiny boundaries. Cowboy Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) is the one who refuses to relent. He's still playing a cowboy while- in the opening few minutes and a furtive harbinger for the finale- his horse tentatively makes it across a busy highway to arrive at his destination where he can kick off his chaps and settle into the role of maverick savior for his old friend Jerry (a wonderfully complex Gena Rowlands). And while he agrees to help spring her husband (and his mutual friend) from a local jail cell, "Lonely Are the Brave" never forgets it's dichotomy of something stuck in the past century. One side uses a horse, while the other uses helicopters and off road vehicles. The dye is set early on, but Douglas and filmmaker Miller do a fabulous job of drawing out the tension in mutating a simple idea into a lethargic lament.

As Jack, Douglas is all gristle and clenched jaw. He accepts the challenge of helping his friend with the gusto of an outlaw, first picking a (hilariously staged) fight with a one-armed drunkard in a saloon, then acting like the pied-piper savior for a cell full of locked up guys. Even that scenario goes sideways, further deflating the mythic qualities of the wild west anti-hero riding in and saving the day. From there, the second half of the film is a glorious cat and mouse chase in the mountains as the sheriff (Walter Matthau) tries to locate the escaped convict. As Dalton Trumbo's precise script belies, neither man seems to be taking the game very seriously, even as gunfire is exchanged and freedom (or failure) is just mere inches away.

Released in 1962, "Lonely Are the Brave" can, I suppose, be called a western. Like John Huston's equally brilliant "The Misfits" just a year earlier, both films represent a moment in time when the landscape was truly shifting beneath the feet of so many cultures. Some embraced the change with open arms while others remained fixated in the roots of their past, no matter how abruptly the winds were blowing. Both Matthau as the law and Douglas as the "outlaw" completely believe their outlook is correct. Even in the film's final, mournful moments, both men nod supremely that they're right. Honestly, it's hard to deny their worldview. "Lonely Are the Brave" posits that both can exist at the same time.

Released in 1999- during the explosive and now legendary year of new Hollywood classics produced by expressive individualistic talents- Zhang Yuan's "Seventeen Years" deserves its overdue status as a masterpiece in the midst of this towering cinematic year. Essentially an observational travelogue film about a recently furloughed prisoner and the prison guard who unselfishly escorts her to her holiday destination, it eventually becomes an overpowering examination of regret and forgiveness. I dare anyone to watch the final few minutes and not get emotionally floored in the way Yuan stages a reunion scene where eyes, guarded body language and the gentle unspoken curl of lips says more about the inner workings of this family's trenchant relationship than any screenplay could ever deliver.

But before that, Yuan establishes a cadre of characters in a family during 1980's China, stepping back in time seventeen years. Now on his second marriage, Yun (Liang Song) is barely able to keep his household together. His wife and her daughter Yu (Liu Lin) seem to provoke and taunt his daughter Tao (Li Jun) at every turn. When the issue of missing money comes up one morning, the two stepsisters (urged and inflamed by both parents) argue before leaving for school. On the way there, something happens that sends young Tao to prison for the aforementioned time span.


The tragedy of how Tao got there takes up only a fraction of the film's swift but effective run-time. "Seventeen Years" resumes those years later when Tao is released from prison for the duration of a Chinese New Year holiday. Also traveling from the prison is guard Chen (the wonderful Li Bingbing in an early role). Initially helping Tao find the right bus route and then realizing her indifference to actually getting anywhere at all, Chen decides to help her find her way home.

It's in this quiet relationship between Chen and Tao that "Seventeen Years" shines. Not much is said between them, but the moments they encounter together, such as Yuan's sly comment on China's destructive march of progress when Tao discovers her family's home has been demolished for years for urban renewal, echo the nostalgic sentiments proposed in so many of fellow countryman Jia Zhangke's films.

By also presenting two women as the protagonists in an era where Chinese films mainly treated them as simple matriarchs of a family through the passage of time or second wheels to the more dominant men in their lives, "Seventeen Years" stands out as something special for treating their problems....their worldview.... their sympathies for one another as equally haunting and monumental as that of male figures during the time. It's in the quiet, reserved performances of Jun and Bingbing that "Seventeen Years" really surges, however. The way they silently eat together or walk with hunched shoulders.... and especially the dignified reaction and slow turn Bingbing gives during the final scene when she realizes the magnitude of her unselfish mission with Tao... the two actresses seem to "existing" more than acting. It's a wonder to behold.

Though not an art house/household name, filmmaker Zuan (who did gain some acclaim a few years prior with his "East Palace West Palace") has carried on making films for the past two decades, but none with the exposure or impact of his 90's work. It's a shame. I desperately want to to see more of it. If the sensitivity and acute purpose of realizing the harsh truth of real forgiveness as exhibited in this film is present even remotely in his other work, than we have a talent who's sorely underappreciated. "Seventeen Years" reveals that time doesn't always heal all wounds, but the simple act of facing up to them can help dull the pain.

Late in Jean Renoir's first technicolor film "The River", a tragedy strikes the British family living in India's wonderland of colors, scents and smells. The incident happens off-screen, but in one of the few times Renoir allows his camera to move, he gently dollies over and across several members of the family in various states of relaxation and slumber, oblivious to the disaster that's about to sweep over them. It took me about ten minutes after this series of scenes to realize the pregnant importance of those seemingly arbitrary camera moves. Once I realized the subtle intelligent design behind the aesthetic choices, it only confirmed my belief that Renoir's film is striving for something more than a standard year-in-the-life observation of a family, but that he's searching for the inherent beauty (and sadness) in life itself, ebbing and flowing like the majestic body of water nearby.

Renoir does something similar with movement in his 1945 film, "The Southerner", panning across a series of pictures and a calendar on the mantle of the Tucker family towards the end of that film. Serving as more of an exhale of exuberant relief as the migrant-farm working family have accepted and passed through many turmoils and disasters over their humble homestead, Renoir's humanist beauty calls attention to itself only in afterthought. Nothing is forced, but its proof that he's a master collaborator of mood, style and subject.

But back to "The River". Often praised for its Technicolor sharpness (and no doubt it looks incredible), but the real hook of the film is it's gentle spirit of the intimate. Focusing mainly on three young women- teenage daughter Harriet (Patricia Walters), friend Valerie (Adrienne Corri) and adopted Indian daughter Melanie (Radha)- the family lives in a sprightly existence. Prone to poetry and introspection, Harriet serves as the film's narrator, trying her best to objectify the subjectivity that happens along the way. And what happens along the way is the appearance of Captain John (Thomas Breen), a wounded war veteran who comes to live with the family, setting off fireworks between all three females on the property.


But far from a glib tale of unrequited love or possession, "The River" (based on a novel by Rumer Godden) is much too smart for such a thing. Each woman steadies a distinct relationship with Capt. John and the film carefully measures out the mood of each. With Valerie, the relationship is seductive and adult. With Melanie, it's tenuous since they both come from staggeringly different backgrounds. Their relationship feels like the one that would overtake the rest of a much more slight effort. And with Harriet, "The River" finds its true footing, which is an examination of a young woman trying to make sense of both her flowering adulthood and the cruel world around her. None of the three relationships drown the other out, and each compliments the film as something attuned to the gentle rhythms of growing up.

Made smack in the middle of Renoir's second life in cinema, rooted in Hollywood after fleeing Europe during World War II, I'm repentant it's taken me this long to see this film (as if the case with so many late career Remoirs). Washing over one like a golden memory, "The River" introduces itself like an easy memorization  of languid colonialism, and soon transforms itself into an interior examination of what it means to actually remember those metamorphic moments that make us the people we are today.

One might mistake the first third of Marco Bellocchio's latest film "The Traitor" as something produced from the Bruckheimer factory of splatter ammunition and human carnage. Taking place in Italy during the late 70's and early 80's, the film initially charts the reckoning of a mafioso war as the ravages from both sides ratchets up... complete with scrolling counter that appears on the edge of the screen, ending on a certain number as the bodies on-screen lay in their final violent resting place in each episode. It's not only a sobering gambit that factually recalls the terror of its time, but a visual keynote that instills certifiable dread in the viewer as it tumbles towards gargantuan numbers. However, Bellocchio isn't interested solely in shock value. What this opening third of the film does for the rest of its 150 minute epic length is caste a pallor over its real intention, which is to subtly define the growth of one Tommaso Buscetti (embodied perfectly by Pierfrancesco Favino) from mafioso snitch to plagued nobody left in the gleaming wilderness of neon Miami with a small arsenal and bleary-eyed regrets for the sins of his criminal past. It's not quite "The Irishman" level of haunted blackness, but it's awfully close.

Even though it resides in a loopy science fiction template that features ghost ships, nerve-jangling space walks and knife fights inside a cockpit, James Gray's "Ad Astra" is a lot closer to his morose studies of male psychosis and obsessive choices than it first appears. In fact, it makes for a nice double feature with his previous masterpiece "The Lost City of Z" in which pioneers of terrain and courage venture farther out into the unknown than anyone before them. In "Ad Astra", that explorer is astronaut Brad Pitt, chosen to travel to Mars (a planet that houses the last stable outpost of humanity in near future of colonization) in order to hopefully coax his lost father (also an astronaut) to stop sending chaotic micro bursts of energy from a failed mission decades ago. I know, it does preposterous when explained, but Gray manages to create a moody and introspective work of art that challenges science fiction conventions in its quiet remorselessness.

In between the bursts of action- probably maintained to keep the interest of those audience goers enticed into the theater looking for the spectacle of a big budget Star Trek- "Ad Astra" is especially intense in its introspection. From the voice-overs of Pitt that question everything from his masculinity to his accepted mission, "Ad Astra" lives in the margins of second guessing. It's also a film that lingers on choices. The sadness of watching a nonfunctioning life vessel slowly melt away into space or the vastness of black that engulfs a floating figure moment later are given much more prominence than other films that deal with characters in space.


Director Gray has been creating impressionistic films for more than two decades now and while "Ad Astra" is certainly his most adventurous trip to (inner) space, it's also a complimentary work that falls into his glorious landscape of psychological exploration.

About two-thirds of the way through- and once the film's teenage friends played wonderfully by Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever finally make it to the graduation party they so desperately want to attend- "Booksmart" finds its footing and attains something quite terrific. The film's patchwork assortment of outrageous characters and high school crudeness coalesces into an achingly honest and masterful examination about the crushing facade of teenage life and its very thin margins of identity/acceptance. First time actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde balances the pieces together brilliantly, manifesting all the strengths of her film in one long shot that turns a shattering underwater discovery into an equally shattering composition of two young women trying to compose themselves in the uncertainties of adulthood. Just a great film all around.

Of the half dozen Josef von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich vehicles I've seen, "Dishonored" is perhaps the least mentioned of their collaborations but the one that feels most honed into the exuberant, twisted path they would travel over the next few years together. Filmed in 1932 (immediately after their breakthrough "The Blue Angel" and the quite mellow "Morocco" both in 1930), it's a film that exists just to see how many lurid poses and buoyant backdrops Dietrich can be placed within. And did I mention it's also a spy thriller? A film of many themes, insinuations, and fait accompli acceptance, "Dishonored" makes the buried sadomasochism of "The Devil Is a Woman" look like child's play for the way Dietrich bends men to her will, even at times of outright war.


After picking her up on the street as a prostitute, Dietrich becomes X27, a secret agent for the Viennese government trying to ensnare a high ranking officer (Warner Oland) from passing secrets to the Russians. After (somewhat) accomplishing this mission, she's given the task of finding this officer's other informant, played by the staunch-jawed Victor McLaglen. Their relationship becomes a coy, shifting perception of allegiance that finds X27 disguising herself even further and tracking McLaglen to a country estate as the war limps to its finale.

Though the plot machinations are firmly intact, von Sternberg and Dietrich lace "Dishonored" with a positively loopy sense of humor and visual flair. The New Year's Eve party attended by X27 and McLaglen is so cramped with graffiti and streamers (coupled with each of their diabolical costumes that feel like something out of a Kenneth Anger picture of the radical 60's), that the scene threatens to be overrun by the background of pomp and circumstance. It's downright delirious and remains my favorite scene of the von Sternberg canon. And when the film does kick into gear towards the end with sleight-of-hand spy skulduggery and flared-up sexual tension, "Dishonored" becomes just as fascinating for the tempestuous betrayals that lead to a crushing finale.

It's tempting to not judge "Dishonored" on its own, but instead as a cog in the majestic wheel of an actress-and-director spinning a maelstrom of ideas, images and perfected glances outward from a burgeoning Hollywood studio system that wasn't quite sure what it had. They just knew Dietrich sold pictures and von Sternberg was adept at making them. "Dishonored" proves both of these points and then goes beyond to reveal the duo were probably having more fun skewering the genre into their own perverse plaything. Yes, this was 1931, but it feels like 2031.

The Nun


Part of what makes James Wan's "The Conjuring" universe so nerve-wrecking is the seemingly endless fray of demonic entities and supernatural beings that waft in and out of people's dreams (or altered realities) with such ferocious mystery, that we become terrified of the sheer depth of terror swirling at the fringes of our consciousness. What doesn't always work is the filmmaker's attempt to affix an explanation of said entity. Corin Hardy's "The Nun" takes on the challenge of explaining (and explaining more) the character that jangled people's senses in a previous film with disastrous results. If less is more, than "The Nun" fails simply because it turns an atmospheric presence into a straight-forward hell raiser with a hammer sensibility of terror and jump scares timed to such obvious precision that the life is sucked right out of the film from the very beginning because it so desperately wants the absolute 'most'. It's also such a dimly lit affair (from DP Maxime Alexandre) that its visual scheme adds nothing but confusion to a horror film poised to wallow in disappointing mediocrity.


White Boy Rick

Told with all the handheld grittiness filmmaker Yann Demange promoted in his good debut film "'71", his first American funded effort is just as equally trenchant but far less resonant. This time, the bombed out center of violence isn't the U.K. but downtown Detroit in the early 80's as teenager Rick (Richie Merritt) and his father Rick (Matthew McConaughey) find inventive ways to sustain a living. For the older Rick, it's arms dealing (albeit with a license) and for young Rick, it parlaying his father's fringe interests into a high flying career of drug dealing and double crossing when the FBI come knocking. This type of story has been told dozens of times before with the only difference being its main character is a teenager, and Demange and screenwriters try their best to infuse "White Boy Rick" with a streak of originality including hearing the voice of the real-life Rick at the end, but the whole effort becomes mired in a been-there-done-that syndrome in which it never fully recovers.


Assassination Nation

Like a lurid pop-dream, Sam Levinson's "Assassination Nation" is a visually bold and simmering assault on everything from gender equality to the sometimes toxic nature of social media. Appropriating ages old literature from the likes of Nathanial Hawthorne and our nation's own descent into supernatural madness with the Salem witch trials (a town which our new film aptly mimics), writer and director Levinson has crafted a jaw-dropping tale that takes place in the very current when four teenage girls (played to perfection by Odessa Turner, Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef and Abra) become targets- and subsequently are forced to become justice swinging vigilantes- after a computer hacker exposes the town's deep, dark personal secrets. Aided by some of the year's finest cinematography courtesy of Hungarian Marcell Rev and a thumping score by Ian Hutlquist, "Assassination Nation" ascends to wondrous heights in commentary and visual pastiche, masterfully stealing the whimpers that similarly themed films like the egregious "Purge" series aspire towards. Hopefully, this film will catch onto some sort of zeitgeist on home video as it came and went in theaters faster than most. I loved every second of it.


Free Solo

A National Geographic Films production whose story overcomes the company's very obvious template of narrative. Full thoughts on Dallas Film Now