Antlers (2021)

Antlers ticks all my boxes; hushed dark tone, supernatural allegory for real world problems, strong performances, family drama nestled in the story. Director Cooper has told a scary little camp fire story that also touches on some of the darkness in the human condition, and offers some hope. This is the sort of horror I tend to be drawn to. 

He shoots his film in a hushed darkness that is unsettling and beautiful in the way he keeps everything in shadows. He doesn't shy away from the gore that the story needs but uses it sparingly and powerfully when it is the most effective. He taps into old legends to bring about a story of addiction and its legacy. It is a clever story and truly frightening, riveting to watch. 

Russell and Plemons are both great as is new comer Thomas in a a role that feels connected to the legacy of great child horror performances like in The Exorcist, The Shining, or Let the Right One In. A quiet but effective film, Antlers spins a satisfying and scary little yarn. 

Antlers

Starring: Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, Jeremy T. Thomas, Graeme Green, Amy Madigan 

Director: Scott Cooper

Writers: C. Henry Chaisson, Nick Antosca, Scott Cooper

 

No Exit (2022)

No Exit is the sort of thriller I am drawn to. Disparate strangers trapped in a single location, a revelation that something bad is happening and someone is a killer, a battle of wills for survival. It's great popcorn entertainment. But No Exit doesn't quite make it all work, often riddled with weaknesses in the story telling. It ends up not being terrible, I enjoyed it enough to finish it, but I kept wishing it would be better at what it was doing. 

No Exit doesn't handle it's "twists" very well, telescoping them fairly early, perhaps revealing them to early, and not really being able to make them surprising enough. It doesn't spend enough time on the characters to make them rounded enough. It's a Coles Notes version of The Hateful Eight missing out on most of what made that film so compelling. Then its third act falls into a fairly cliched pattern that feels like exactly what we would expect. 

Still, the premise and the performances are strong enough that I was invested enough to watch to the end and see how it played out. I do worry that maybe if it had just been a worse movie I wouldn't have minded the film's shortcomings as much. 

No Exit

Starring: Havana Rose Liu, Danny Ramirez, David Rysdahl, Dennis Haysbert, Dale Dickey, Mila Harris, Benedict Wall

Director: Damien Power

Writers: Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari  

 

Cyrano (2022)

The story of Cyrano de Bergerac is both troubling and fascinating, a rumination on what love is and critical of how our romantic notions interfere with our lived reality, but it also glorifies deception, contributing to our romanticizing of lies like we see in so many of our modern romantic stories. Its themes and story have remained in the public conscious enough there appear to have been at least 3 stage musicals of the story. Now one of them has been brought to the screen by rethinking the idea of the character. Instead of having a large nose he is instead a little person. The nose is irrelevant as the point is to explore those we as a culture deem undesirable or unworthiness.  

The film's songs are rather standard yet they have a certain catchiness which had me humming them afterward. While visually beautiful the film flounders a bit as it goes through the motions of its plot. But what makes it all watchable is Dinklage giving one of his signature powerful performances. We are now used to seeing him in roles as someone everyone underestimates and he plays into this very well. As usual he is spectacular and mesmerizing on screen as he upends the haters providing that sort of satisfaction in watching the boastful get what's coming. But his performance is more than that. It is subtle and rich, his incredible face expressing powerful levels of emotion. 

The script isn't always up to what he brings to is and he manages to elevate the scenes he is in. I wish the film had been up to his level. It is all very watchable and visually it is stunning. But it is all rather rote. Its reflections on the complicated nature of love are... well, not very complicated. Mendelsohn's villain is too cartoonish (not the fault of the talented actor but how his character is written). Neither Harrison or Bennett are given enough with their characters to make them much more than cliches. And by sticking very closely to the original story, the film doesn't take the opportunity to subvert some of the problems of the narrative. 

But Dinklege gives one of the best performances of the year, perhaps even elevated by contrasting it with the weaknesses in the script. It is a revelation of a performance. 

Cyrano

Starring: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelsin Harrison Jr., Ben Mendelsohn, Bashir Salahuddin

Director: Joe Wright

Writer: Erica Schmidt

The Worst Person in the World/Verdens verste menneske(2021)

Watching Reinsve's performance I was struck by how rare it is we get such an honest, fleshed out, nuanced, and complete portrait of a female character in motion pictures. Her Julie is one of the most fascinating and riveting characters I've seen on screen in a long time while being very much an "every person". The combination of Vogt and Trier's script paired with Reinsve's excellent work here is just a revelation. 

The Worst Person in the World is a film that brings us little moments of joy, excitement, like flirting with a stranger and finding connection where one did not expect, to moments of great pain including loss and death, but also moments of pure melancholy and ennui at the lived experience of modernity.  It is a gripping ride through it all.

Paired with Danielsen Lie and Nordrum, Reinsve has a very honest chemistry so much so that it felt like you were peering into a real woman's life, or moments in it. Danielsen Lie is also captivating in all his complicated dimensions as well. The film economically, through glimpses of moments during its "chapters", paints what feels like a very real narrative of a human being and her life, the choices, the regrets, the boldness in everyday things.  

Trier isn't overly dramatic but yet his style remains cinematic. The Worst Person in the World is delightfully watchable, visually stunning. All of it comes together into the sort of experience that leaves you just sitting there as the credits roll grateful for the chance to have experienced that story. 

The Worst Person in the World/Verdens verste menneske

Starring: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum

Director: Joachim Trier

Writers: Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier

 

Drive My Car (2021)

Drive My Car is a film that on the surface shouldn't work. A 3 hour film where little happens, most of the "action" being a man sitting in the back of his car while a young woman drives him around. The two do not have a romance or sexual tension of any kind. It sounds a little like torture and art film indulgence. Yet it is remarkably and wonderfully watchable and engaging. 

To sum it up Yūsuke Kafuku is a theatre director who is married to a screenwriter who narrates stories to him after and during sex who then dies suddenly and he is overwhelmed with grief as well as guilt. He connects with the young woman assigned to drive him around in his own car by the theatre company mounting his production. She also has grief and the two bond over their guilt for how they handled their relationships with the dead family members. It is remarkable just how riveting their growing connection is. 

Director Hamaguchi doesn't gild his film with lot of attention getting camera work. Instead he finds a subtle visual language to capture this story of two very subdued and very trodden down characters they help each other claw their way out of their complicated emotions a bit. It is stunning and a complete surprise. 

Both leads handle the just-under-the-surface performances well but Nishijima especially stands out in his portrayal of Kafuku leading up to a power fulmoment at the end where despite everything he is able to break down. And he does so not in a scenery chewing fashion but with a quiet honesty that is palpable while you watch it. 

For me what made Drive My Car work so well is the subtle yet compelling nature of its story and performances. There were never moments that dragged. Watching these two go on with their lives never left me wanting. Drive My Car defies expectations in the best ways. 

Drive My Car

Starring: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Writers: Takamasa Oe, Ryusuke Hamaguchi

 

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an incredibly seminal yet deeply problematic film. While it comments on the death of the American dream and the abandonment of the working class, as well as some critique of the meat industry, it is also a film that revels in the torture and killing of young women. It leans somewhat into sympathy for its villain in a way that is unsettling, but not in a good way. The film's follow ups have never found the right groove to be much more than just slasher porn. It's one of those series that just keeps rebooting itself but never doing anything more than just telling the same story again and again. 

The 2022 take on this is more of the same. It promises to be a new "start" to the continuation of the story. But it ends up being just more of the same. It honestly tries with is run of the mill social media critiques, its surface level comments on racism, and its stolen from Halloween/Terminator/Scream final-girl-trauma-revenge plot, a plot it mangles pretty badly. And in the end it offers nothing new and feel as much like a retread as any of the other movies, if not more. At least it is blissfully short. 

It couldn't even come up with a new title...

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Starring: Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Mark Burnham, Jacob Latimore, Olwen Fouéré, Alice Krige, Jon Larroquette

Director: David Blue Garcia 

Writers: Fede Álvarez, Rodo Sayagues

 

Parallel Mothers/Madres paralelas (2021)

Parallel Mothers didn't quite work for me both thematically and dramatically. On the one hand I found its central question, about exploring how our relationships based on biological ties, to be underserviced, and narratively I found it dragged through parts while rushing through others. All in all it was a misfire for me never satisfying any of the itches it tries to scratch. 

There are "parallel" stories going on here. A story about two mothers who may or may not be biologically related to their infants and another story about descendants seeking a resolution to the mysterious disappearances (and assumed deaths) of their ancestors during Spain's fascist past. Each asks questions about the nature of those relationships to people who never meet but are biologically related. But the film never satisfactorily answers them. And not in a we're-leaving-it-to-interpretation sort of way. More in a we-don't-know-what-to-say about it way. There are big parts of the the film that feel gross in how they assume the supremacy of relationships based on blood while showing how tenuous any human connections actually exist. But the film isn't brave enough to actually sit with this conundrum and just rushes through a bunch of presumed reactions. I felt the film failed in delivering an honest exploration of any of those emotions. 

And this ties into the film's uneven pace. The film spends a lot of time building its central question, showing us Cruz' connection to her infant daughter only to reveal the predictable "twist" that her baby was switched at birth with another. Yes it's that soap opera-y. It even builds to her having a lesbian relationship with the infant's bio-mom which then allows a very convenient and rushed upon ending. Upon the big reveal the film careens through a gut-wrenching scene where she loses her baby only to have the couple reconcile and... well it all happens so fast I'm not sure exactly what happened. But I can tell you little of it felt real since we didn't get to see or feel most of it. 

My problems with the film are compounded by a rather racist feeling subplot. Parallel Mothers raises the paternity question by continuing to talk about how "dark" the baby is and how that doesn't fit with her assumed parentage. The film doubles down on this by revealing the bio-mom was raped by non-white men, explaining the baby's colouring but also implying a lot of really disgusting things about racialized people. Each time those thread came up I cringed. There had to be a better way to get to the baby switching melodrama. 

And the film ends on a weird moment of pathos where surviving ancestors of Franco's murdered victims stand over their bodies in a scene the film doesn't build to in any meaningful way. In fact the film continues to remind us that these people never met their murdered ancestors and never completely convinces us of their connection. Again if the film was wanting us to question this, then the ending makes little to no sense. But I'm not sure it does. Almodóvar seems to be assuming we'll just buy into that tragic moment. He doesn't earn it in anyway. 

So for me Parallel Mothers was a disappointment in how it left me wanting both narratively and philosophically. 

Parallel Mothers/Madres paralelas

Starring: Penelope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Rossy de Palma

Writer/Director: Pedro Almodóvar

 

Uncharted (2022)

As Tom Holland's star ascends it is only natural that Hollywood would find him the perfect vehicle to capitalize on all his talents. Sony, the studio that turns Holland into a megastar as Spider-Man, looking for a way to jump on the franchise/shared universe train that is the Golden Ring the studios are all searching for would naturally attempt to exploit their popular video game IPs. Uncharted feels like perfect corporate synergy.   

In light of all these goals we get Uncharted, a rollicking adventure story based on a popular video game that sets Holland as the charming hero who gets to do all the things he does well; be funny, charming, handsome and often half naked. Holland has great screen presence, impeccable comic timing, and has the face and body of a matinee idol. Yes the camera spends a lot of time on his ass and the movie ensures he is shirtless or in a wet t-shirt as much as possible. It's like a focus group outlined all they wanted from a Holland movie and they wrote a script around that. Holland has star magic and the whole movie he is delightful and hopelessly watchable. His charisma is a big part of what smooths over a lot of the film's weaknesses.

Overall Uncharted is simplistic fun. A lot of it doesn't make sense if you think too hard from its wild goose chase clues that run the characters around in needless circles, to the characters that show up just in time with little explanation. Uncharted is the sort of film you need to turn off your brain to allow yourself to enjoy this adventure. Uncharted kinda pieces together ideas from other popular franchises and even mentions most of them by name (Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean get shout outs in the script). It may be over referential and self-aware, it may be focused more on set pieces strung together than plot, it may have a lot of easy fixes when the writers clearly wrote themselves into a corner, but Holland and the rest of the cast make it all almost fun enough that you want to forgive the film its shortcomings. 

I'll give it props for focusing on the relationship between the friends (Holland and Wahlberg) and not playing into needless romances. While Ali's character could be read as a love interest the film never really commits to this and Gabrielle's is an ex but never rekindles that spark. Romances often feel shoehorned into stories like this so it is refreshing when the film realizes it doesn't need that. 

So Sony might be on to something here. They can start a string of light if somewhat silly movies (the easily marketable kind) and build up the talented star they have on their pay role. I had a good time despite myself although I'm not sure its the sort of film I would get much out of if I watched it again. Still I'd likely buy a ticket to the sequel. 

Uncharted 

Starring: Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle, Antonio Banderas, Steven Waddington, Rudy Pankow, Nolan North, Pilou Asbaek

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Writers: Rafe Lee Judkins, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway  

Bigbug (2022)

Oh how the mighty have fallen. French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet known for the acclaimed Delicatessen, an underrated Alien movie, and one of my all time favourite films (Amélie) makes his first film in almost ten years, and Bigbug is what it is?? This absurdist comedy about an AI revolution, or more specifically about a group of dysfunctional people trapped in a house during the AI revolution, tries to take a humorous approach to its satire but ends up being neither funny nor that satiric. It's almost painful to watch and it appears to prioritize being silly over having anything original to say about the concept. 

It isn't like the concept of "the robots" taking over is revolutionary at all. Since the early days of sci-fi this has been one of the mainstays of exploration from Asimov's I, Robot to Cameron's Terminator it's a favourite story. But Bigbug doesn't offer anything original to the discussion. Instead it just focuses on a group of terribly unlikable people and their eager for rebellion technology in what becomes a sitcom like farce. But since it lacks much humour, as I said, Bigbug is a tedious watch. 

Bigbug is generally lacking in ideas, at least not the obvious kind. Humans are terrible and aren't worth saving but that itself makes us worth saving. We've seen that a thousand times before. Here it is just on this beautiful set with Jeunet's colour palette. But that in itself isn't enough to make it interesting. Pretty but not interesting. It might as well be a Hollywood blockbuster. 

Bigbug

Starring: Isabelle Nanty, Elsa Zyllberstein, Claude Perron, Stephane De Groodt, Youssef Hajdi, Francois Levantal, Alban Lenoir, Dominique Pinon

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Writers: Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Marry Me (2022)

Sure it has an absurd premise, and sure the execution is just so so, but that's not why we go to these movies right? Marry Me is the sort of rom com that is filled with all the cliched notions of love we love to celebrate without any of the complications. There is just enough conflict to make us question for half a second whether or not the ending we all know will happen will happen. Nothing about Marry Me is real or honest. But to point that out would just be spoiling the fun. We go to see these movies for one reason and one reason only so why not just embrace it and run with it. 

Owen Wilson is the funny, loveable everyman that we all want to hold up as the ideal. The film manages to contrast him with the sexy young Maluma without vilainizing the latter which is a strong choice. The younger isn't bad he's just not as right as the self-effacing, supportive, smart, hilarious super dad that we're all supposed to hold up as the ideal (despite what happens in the real world). He's got the wacky sidekick and the smart but adorable daughter we all expect as if he's been ordered out of a catalogue. 

Jennifer Lopez is the glamorous superstar with a heart of gold and the desire for something "real." Her madcap career doesn't get in the way when the plot doesn't need it to and she always looks like she's just stepped out of a photoshoot, even after a night of passion. She's as unrealistic a stereotype as he is. 

And they fall in love cause... well... They're both good people? He makes her laugh? She's incredibly hot? I mean insert whatever comforting story you want to here. I'm not sure the film ever makes a convincing case. But again that's not why we're here. Criticizing this movie for being exactly what it sells itself as would be silly. 

But for me this sort of romance just doesn't land. It's charming and I can smile at it but I don't really believe it. But maybe the audience doesn't either. Maybe it's not about believing. It's just about tuning out for a hundred and some minutes and just basking in it for a while. And for that it does its job.   

Marry Me

Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, Sarah Silverman, Chloe Coleman, Maluma, John Bradley, Michelle Buteau, Stephen Wallem, Jameela Jamil, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Jimmy Fallon

Director: Kat Coiro

Writers: John Rogers, Tami Sagher, Harper Dill    

I Want You Back (2022)

 I don't have much to say about I Want You Back except it's a rather standard rom-com filled with all the problematic cliches of the genre that is really only watchable because of the chemistry and watchability of stars Jenny Slate and Charlie Day. Their infectious screen presence made it far more enjoyable that it was. It is funny enough to carry it through although I'm not sure it's really that romantic. Far more com than rom in this one. I Want You Back is not a waste of time but nothing special either. 

I Want You Back

Starring: Jenny Slate, Charlie Day, Scott Eastwood, Gina Rodriguez, Manny Jacinto, Clark Backo, Luke David Blumm, Pete Davidson, Jami Gertz, Mason Gooding

Director: Jason Orley

Writers: Isaac Aptaker, Elizabeth Berker

Flee/Flugt(2021)

Flee is the first film ever nominated for the categories of Best International Film, Best Animated Feature, and Best Documentary Feature, and it is well deserved on all counts. As a documentary it is. powerful, first person lived refugee experience. As an animated film it is beautifully drawn in a way that fully fleshes out Amin's story. And as an international film it brings the sort of story westerners often turn a blind eye to. And well really as any sort of film it is a powerful experience. 

Animation is one of my favourite forms of film making because of what it offers that live action cannot. It can create the fantastic but more honestly it can get to a deeper truth, experience the world in the way we actually experience instead of the limited ways our senses dictate. Films like Flee capture this and in doing so create a very honest sort of sharing of story. 

Director Rasmussen is interviewer and interpreter, bringing the story of Amin Nawabi to us through Nawabi's own words. It is a powerful one that is fraught with peril throughout. But it ends in a place of joy. There is a moment near the end that just unleashes queer joyousness in such a beautiful way. And while the film's conclusion may be a bit more peaceful, it is at the same time so full of happiness. Not all stories end this way so seeing Flee can make us all so thankful. 

Flee

Starring: Amin Nawabi, Riz Ahmed, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau 

Writer/Director: Jonas Poher Rasmussen

 

The Sky Is Everywhere (2022)

I didn't expect to enjoy this YA exploration of grief as much as I did. While many of these films feel trite and simplistic, The Sky Is Everywhere found a groove that made it just so watchable. While I found it fumbling some of the relationships, I was still generally hooked from early on and found it compelling all the way though. 

Director Decker is often described as "experimental" and while I think that can be a bit of an overreaction, her style is certainly outside the mainstream and she brings that energy to this, her most mainstream film I've seen. She infuses a charming sense of emotional resonance through the use of slightly surrealist elements in her otherwise straight forward narrative. The film is just beautiful to watch. As is her cast. 

Young actors Grace Kaufman and Jacques Colimon are magnetic on screen and both show a lot of promise by fleshing out their characters fully. Jason Segel and Cherry Jones are delightful in supporting roles and each transcend the parts written for them. Everyone is upping their game here and that contributes to the richness of the story. 

But for me the story's reliance on old love triangle tropes gets in the way of its far more compelling exploration of grief and loss. The film acknowledges the hurt we cause when we are hurt and how winding the grief process is. It finds lovely little moments of joy within the hurt, often rising above the tropes of movies about death even while exploring them. But it also struggles on the romance elements in ways that felt too cliche. For me the connection between Lennie and Toby needed more than the surface attention it got and her complicated feelings for the two young men in her life could have been more satisfying if the film had dropped some of it's rom-com approaches and allowed Lennie to have more complex desires and connections. 

So while The Sky is Everywhere escapes some of the pitfalls of its genre it doesn't quite make it out of those weeds. Still it is very enjoyable and sweet and a satisfying watch. It also excites me to see what Decker will explore next time. 

The Sky Is Everywhere

Starring: Grace Kaufman, Jacques Colimon, Jason Segel, Cherry Jones, Ji-Young Yoo, Pico Alexander

Director: Josephine Decker

Writer: Jandy Nelson   

 

Death on the Nile (2022)

I've enjoyed both Branagh's Agatha Christie adaptations. He brings his visually exciting directing style to his narrative and his bombastic thespian qualities to his performance to craft luscious films featuring Christie's enjoyable mystery puzzles basically being just a whole lot of big screen fun. Death on the Nile is a warm confection of cinema.

While I've never read the novel this is based on, I understand the film takes quite a few liberties with the story, rearranging characters and their relationships to each other, introducing Bateman's fan favourite Bouc from The Orient Express, and diversifying the cast so it reflects the real world. Don't worry, the murder and its culprits remain the same. It's a good little mystery playing some games with our heads. Christie spun a good yarn here and Branagh and Green play with it in clever funs ways. 

The film has some spotty CGI but generally is stunning to watch on the big screen. You feel hot watching it as it convinces you you are in the heat of an Egyptian summer. Branagh creates a claustrophobia for his characters stuck on a boat with a killer. It has that fun everyone-is-a-suspect unease to it that the best mysteries need. But Branagh adds more. 

With Green, he uses this film to take Poirot from being a rather gimmicky character into one with depth and back story. He still remains a big C character, but his oddities are played less for laughs and his own motivations and complexities are fleshed out a bit. With Death on the Nile, Branagh knows he's telling a fun little parlour story but he doesn't let that stop him from infusing it with layers that enrich its experience. One might try to reduce this to a why-he-wears-a-big-gaudy-moustache but that's missing a lot of the undercurrents here. The facial hair is just a metaphor for more of what they are trying to tell us. 

It was delightful to see Saunders and French together here although I wish they had more hilarity to pull off. While the two can't quite help being funny, the film doesn't lean into this and it feels like there is a missed opportunity there. Batemen remains as charming and delightful as he was in the previous film, remaining one of the best parts of this series. I was sad about one development in his arc but for me his inclusion here was well worth the changes it brought. But I'd say it was Sophie Okonedo who stole my focus for most of the film. Her blues singer (another change from the novel) is just exciting every time she's on screen. 

Death on the Nile did make me want more Poirot stories set in this universe and Branagh return to play (and direct) him. 

Death on the Nile

Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Tom Bateman, Gal Gadot, Annette Benning, Russell Brand, Emma Mackay, Sophie Okonedo, Letitia Wright, Ali Fazel, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Rose Leslie

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Writer: Michael Green

Kimi (2022)

Unlike some other A-list directors, Steven Soderbergh has fully embraced the streaming future of film. His last 5 films have skipped cinemas and come directly to us, with his film previous to this, No Sudden Move, being my favourite film in his oeuvre. In this case he has embraced COVID head on but unlike some of the films produced about the pandemic, it is background to the plot of the story, not consuming the story itself (a la Locked Down). Kimi's story is a modern spin on Rear Window whose story is enhanced by pandemic related threats in the background. While some other films that have tried to deal with the pandemic seemed too hyper aware, Kimi's setting felt natural and fleshed out the story in ways that it benefits from. 

Kravitz plays Angela, an agoraphobic and germphobic tech worker who, through her work, may have overheard a crime. She encounters resistance and gaslighting as she tries to deal with it. And in the process the film explores the way sexual assaults are treated in our culture, the lack of connecting in our connected world, and the fear and isolation arising out of the pandemic. But at its heart Kimi is a mystery, a mystery interesting enough to get you hooked even if it begins to spiral out of control a bit in the third act.

Soderbergh builds the suspense and then maintains it, isolating us with Kravitz in a way that is terribly uncomfortable.  I loved the way Soderbergh films her fear and panic. He finds a cinematic language for how terrifying the outside world can be. His visual language throughout is strong (no surprises there) and Kimi is a fairly beautiful film to watch. 

At the centre of this Kravitz who is given the task of being onscreen 90% of the time and carrying the story. She does so with flying colours. She is survivor, victim, saviour. She plays all layers of the character. I've never seen her showcased like this but she pulls it off so well. 

But as I said the film's plot begins to fall apart near the end. It falls into some fairly standard thriller cliches. The good will earned by Kravitz and Soderbergh up to this point maybe allow us to forgive some of its silliness. Their contributions rise this film out of what should be a standard forgettable thriller into something just a bit more satisfying even with its flaws. 

Kimi

Starring: Zoë Kravitz, Rita Wilson, India de Beaufort, Emily Kuroda, Byron Bowers, Jamie Camil, Jacob Vargas, Derek DelGaudio, Erika Christensen, Robin Givens

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Writer: David Koepp 

Summer of Soul (2021)

What a gift Summer of Soul is! Found footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival that hasn't been seen in 50 years, an incredible moment in time that so many haven't heard of. This is the documentation a the coming together of legends and we're lucky to get to see it. 

Summer of Soul is mostly concert footage from that music festival, which in itself is a joy. Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, The 5th Dimension, BB King, The Staples Singers, Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone. What it must have been like to be there. But the film makers set the entire thing into a context of the time, what was happening outside of the festival in that year. This helps a modern audience understand the significance of the joy we are watching, or at least begin to scratch the surface of understanding. 

Summer of Soul has to be seen to be believed. And it should be seen. 

Summer of Soul

Director: Questlove

Belle The Dragon and the Freckled Princess (2022)

I love it when I get to go into a movie without knowing anything about it and just letting it wash over me. Belle was that experience for me. The title (a literal translation) appears to have little or nothing to do with the plot (I assume there is nuanced meaning in the title that doesn't translate well) so Belle ends up being a very different movie than an English audience would expect. It is about identity and finding oneself. Sure that's not an uncommon theme, but the narrative in Belle and how it gets there is more unique than one might think.

This is the story of a school girl who, after the death of her mother while she was young, is never able to find a way to function in the world socially. She struggles with interactions from the very personal (with her doting father) to the more structural (the other kids at school). That is until she finds an online social network (a la Ready Player One) that allows her to be a stunning pop singer that takes over the virtual world by storm. She watches her avatar blow up on social media from her shy isolated life with only her nerdy best friend knowing this unassuming little school girl is the pop star de jour. 

From there the story starts riffing on Beauty and the Beast and then turns into a powerful drama about domestic abuse and isolation. It is all quite effective and moving. The story impressed me far more than I expected, and it effected me far more as well. The ending is cathartic and moving in ways I didn't expect. 

And Belle is a gorgeous film from the lovely watercolour "real" world of our protagonist to the fantastic online world of U (the virtual community she joins) Belle oscillates between the two beautiful worlds and takes full advantage of its differing animation styles to bring both to life. 

Belle is certainly more than I expected and might be more than you sign up for as well. 

Belle The Dragon and the Freckled Princess

Writer/Director: Mamoru Hosoda