Tyrannosaur

Paddy Considine’s TYRANNOSAUR is a slog, an actor’s directorial debut that tells a simplistic story, but, because of the “gravity” of a debut, is overwrought and repetitive, every scene re-establishing the “thesis” in a scholarly but not very fun manner. Other than the title, which takes a brief and not very interesting story into exaggerated account, the film is one-note. It tells of the pathetic life of Joseph (Peter Mullen) who’s just been laid off and spends his days drinking and calling everyone a cunt. In fact he swears and curses so much that he loses his shock value. He gets in bar fights, and he yells at everyone, showing them their worst values. However, he runs into Hannah (Olivia Coleman), who runs a religious charity store although there’s not a fucking vestige of anything religious in her except that we’re supposed to believe that she is. Joseph thinks she’s a fool (she is…) and the two develop a rapport despite incessant fighting. Every scene Joseph proves he’s just the kind of mean guy we knew him to be, and every time Olivia talks she proves herself to be a ditz. Later though, it is revealed that Hannah is a battered wife, although things escalate quickly and suddenly as if they’d never happened before despite the fact that we’re supposed to believe this is a regular occurrence. But the one-note story is stretched right into the one-note lighting. TYRANNOSAUR is one big nothing, an obvious and weirdly dramatized bore.

★/5

The Sleeping Beauty

An evil witch sets a curse upon a newborn, appearing like a specter, unseen but powerful. The curse condemns the baby girl to death. Three fairies appear and adapt the spell, so that the girl will prick herself with a thorn at six, and sleep and dream for a hundred years. She will wake in a modern world though, confused and unable to cope with the new world. She has many adventures though, living at first on a farm with a boy who is devolves from her friend to a teenaged, annoyed older brother. Then, a snow-covered landscape, and tent in the middle of it. She wakes at sixteen and is penetrated literally and figuratively by a world she doesn’t understand. Catherine Breillat’s fittingly dreamy, weird, and melancholy story is festooned with great color and contained settings, an it shows the destruction of a tale as well as the destruction of a girl who was doomed from the start. The film has many problems with pacing, but it makes up for that with its sad sensibility that pervades through each story.

★★★/5

Rampart

Woody Harrelson is a pretty good actor, and in his previous film with director Oren Moverman, the two made a pretty good film, THE MESSENGER. RAMPART could almost be called an actor’s movie, giving almost all of the screentime to Harrelson, and allowing him to dominate the film as a crooked, Rampart-division, 90’s era, L.A. cop named Dave. Dave’s a real tough son-of-a-bitch, beating up suspects, and maintaining a tough-as-nails authority figure in both his job and at home with a convoluted family situation, basically having two daughters and a wife whose sister he had also had a fling with. One day regularly acting like a crazy asshole, Dave gets hit in his car, jolts out to arrest the driver of the other car, and is hit in the face by the door as the man flees. Understandably, he pursues him, but after tackling him to the ground, beats him an inch from death. The whole thing is caught on tape, and Dave becomes the poster boy for corruption in the L.A. police department. He resists, attempting to maintain the position he has the most power in, but quickly descends as fast as the movie’s quality does. Dave is basically shown to be mentally ill, but the way that Moverman establishes this is shoddy, losing any of the regularity that was earlier established. The routine of Dave’s life is completely deteriorated, and the film becomes a series of vignette-like situations in which Dave shows us that he’s a fucking asshole. But such an obvious “revelation” is drilled into our heads with annoying, faux-arty over-saturated shots, and even Harrelson’s performance becomes rooted in the badness of the film overall. Essentially, Moverman tries to prove to us that Dave is a crazy person, but that’s so clear from the start that the film becomes boring.

★★/5

The Son of No One

What is immediately striking in THE SON OF NO ONE is Dito Montiel's sublimely perfected sense of filmmaking. The way he renders New York City is fantastic, the streets, the cops, the way people talk, the tone. What strikes you after a while though, is the complete idiocy of Montiel's script: a shoddy piece of ridiculousness spurred by wanton events. In the film, a cop, Jonathan White (Channing Tatum) attempts to cover up his past. White used to go by "Milk", as the only white kid in a building filled with blacks. With his friend Vincent, the two forged a friendship. But Milk killed a man in self defense as a kid, and then killed another man in order to protect his dog. These two extremely unlikely events aren't handled well by Montiel, and they seem even more ridiculous within the scope of the film, to the point where they belong in a comedy movie about a kid who just can't stop mistakenly killing people (like in 2011's TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL). But, as the son of a NYC cop who was gunned down years ago, Milk was protected by Charles Sanford (Al Pacino), a detective and friend of his felled father. The story was covered up, and White became a cop, married to the unbearable Katie Holmes. But now anonymous notes are being sent to the police station, referencing two murders by a cop in the department. White suspects his old friend Vincent, while Sanford and suspects White himself. A news reporter played ridiculously by Juliette Binoche promotes the stories in her watchdog-esque newspaper, and ensuing are a series of decisions that White has to make in order to protect his name. But Montiel's script handles the whole thing in a way that accentuates the ridiculousness he's trying to sell you, and uneven performances promote Montiel's weaknesses as a director. There are some truly dramatic scenes, but they are uniformly bookended by bad ones.

★★

Circumstance

Coming from Iran, CIRCUMSTANCE is a supposedly ballsy film about sexuality. Considering the volatile filmic Iranian situation, any film that contains a subject matter--lesbianism--that even American audiences would find offputting, coming from Iran, would receive immediate praise for simply being about such things. CIRCUMSTANCE uses a wealthy Iranian teenager, Atafeh, to get its point across. Considering her access to money, Atafeh is prominently part of the night scene in Iran. The burkah's come off when you go indoors, apparently, and a night scene pretty typical of any teenage demographic unfurls. But the novelty of that revelation quickly subsides, and Atafeh's life is seen to be one of constant juggling: between the obvious progression that Iran will have to undergo with the ascension of the youth coupled with the still-persisting demands of the blindly-respected elders. Also present is the lesbianism, or perhaps just the explorative sexuality of Atafeh, especially manifested within her relationship with her best friend. But despite all of CIRCUMSTANCE's quasi-revelations, the film is obnoxiously drenched in saturated colors, and choppy, uncoordinated and occasionally jarring editing. Furthermore, all of the established themes seem to be driven into the ground by ridiculous conceits, ending up in contrived locations that feel forced and "we told you Iran was this way!" tonality. It's a poorly made film, especially for the kind of subject that's trying to come through. Further, all of Atafeh's partying, etc. come from a wanton sensibility towards teenagers, and this forces all of her actions into generality rather than specifically-incensed defiance.

★★

50/50

Sadly, 50/50 is another one of those Hollywood films that takes dead-serious subjects, like, in this case, cancer, and trivializes it into a series of generalities, or Joseph Gordon-Levitt having to chide Seth Rogen for using his cancer to get chicks. It's too bad that the film is usually so damn likable too, establishing some funny characters, decent pacing, and general jolliness when at its center is one big ugly spinal-cancer. In the film, Levitt's Adam is diagnosed with spinal cancer at only 27, and only has a 50% chance of surviving. He's shocked, especially due to his age. That's a problematic piece of information to begin with anyway, as if the public can only see a "serious" film about cancer if it's a 27 year-old with it. Hey, he sets off his dialogue with 'like', I can relate to him! His mother (Anjelica Huston) is distraught, his girlfriend (an icy Bryce Dallas Howard) is hands up for what to do, and his best friend (Rogen) is tastefully dismissive of the subject, attempting to cheer Adam up in any way that he can. Adam starts to see a psychiatrist (Anna Kendrick, always likable) and begins to have feelings for her. In fact, the best part of 50/50 is seeing Adam's shifting romantic allegiance, and, if the film had centered on that rather than the fact that it's so upsetting to see him with cancer, and THE REAL FACE OF CANCER, then we would have a pretty damn good movie on our hands. Instead, 50/50 places itself at the head of importance, and it's not only offensive, but poorly and weakly done. Adam cries, Adam mopes, Adam is happy, Adam is sad. This is not bold filmmaking, but easy filmmaking, boiling down seriousness to an emoticon selection bar.

★★

Hesher

The mostly nice-guy Jason Gordon-Levitt plays Hesher, of the title, against type. Hesher is a mean piece of trash. He's got long hair, ridiculously stupid tattoos, and his sense of discipline is skewed, chocking up to: figure it out yourself. Hesher comes about when T.J. throws a rock through his window. It's not really his window, though, as Hesher's been hiding out in an abandoned house. He walks out and drags T.J. on the ground, the cops come, everyone runs, T.J. goes home and finds Hesher living in his garage. T.J.'s around 12 years old, and his mother has just died in a car crash. His father has resorted to absolute depression, and doesn't really mind Hesher. The point of the film seems to be to point out that any kind of interruption of normality or routine can shift sensibilities, and that's pretty well established by Levitt's Hesher, who couldn't be called a good influence, but certainly influences. However, the film is just so mired in a boring sense of what's interesting, setting up silly or stupid jokes that we're just supposed to snarl at. The film actually is so bad that despite committed performances it just angers us in its nonsensical rationality.

★

Sleeping Beauty

I would say that the main element at play in SLEEPING BEAUTY, the Julia Leigh directed, Jane Campion produced quasi-feminist (or at least, woman-promoting) film, is to allow for a contradiction to exist. Many films have such contradictions working for them, and in SLEEPING BEAUTY, that contradiction, or simplistic contrast, is the orderly, occupational sex, gagging, and fondling within a pristine and sterile environment. This is stark, even at the opening, in which Lucy (Emily Browning) enters a medicinal research facility, flattened by evenly distributed light, and allows a long string with a camera to be lowered down her throat. As she gags, we get an obvious foreshadowing for the sex that is to come, but this is mainly to establish the kind of person who Lucy is: taking odd jobs or really, any, job, no matter how degrading, because she fails to value her body. There's an odd subplot that fails to work that comes up and, regardless of its weirdness, establishes Lucy as someone who breaks her life up into a series of duties and decisions. Eventually, Lucy takes a job as a Sleeping Beauty. In the job, she is drugged after drinking a spiked tea, and then is laid naked on a bed for old patrons to fondle her naked body. The one rule is: no penetration, but we see dangers illustrated in every single interaction: one man burning her to test the strength of the drugs, and another turning her over on her face where she almost suffocates. I think that the end of the film is weak and pathetic, pretending that suspense has been built when it really hasn't, and sort of betraying the earlier orderliness that's actually been established. I think the film sets a lot up but then forgets where to go. It's a very interesting film, but not a very good or full one, eventually becoming uneven and undeservedly preachy. Still, I found Browning's performance to be brave, but not in her nude scenes. And I'm already anticipating Leigh's next film.

★★

Shame

SHAME is one helluva movie, transposing the life of a sad, animalistic man against the supposed order of the great city. Brandon (Michael Fassbender) plays a chronic sex addict. He masturbates in the shower, has a disgusting hard drive filled with terms some people don't even recognize, and fucks anyone he can. Luckily for Brandon, that "anyone" is usually someone pretty attractive. I wonder what director Steve McQueen's film would have looked like without any glamour. Instead, this is a pretty glamorized film, featuring many scenes of Fassbender eye-fucking women on the train, the streets, the bars. But, once again, almost in defiant surprise, McQueen's contradictory glamorizations don't ruin the film. As in HUNGER, SHAME concerns itself with a disgusting topic through the lens of high art, and it still ends up working. I think this is because McQueen is tapping into a desire of ours to see such things through such lenses. I don't think this is a deplorable action, actually, because if we see these things through such lenses, our responses to them must be judged under the same lens. Brandon is extremely charismatic, and he exists at the polestar of sex, putting his co-workers to shame. The film is not as it has been billed: a film about the state of sex addiction, but more like: what can it be? what must it be? It's a dreamier approach, but because Brandon is such a symbol, we can respond to him in that fashion. It's sort of a sad but brilliant way to approach things, and it works.

Shame: ★★★★

Everything Must Go

The second notable Will Ferrell movie that's supposed to be serious, EVERYTHING MUST GO traces its lineage back to a Raymond Carver short story on which it's only loosely based. It's one of those films that consists of a dozen or so one-liners that fit cleanly into a trailer, but, when viewed in context, are far apart and less funny because of what they're retorting against. In the film, Ferrell plays Nick, a Vice President of one of those businesses that vaguely does business. He's fired after an incident with an intern (which holds all the connotation it really even needs), and he mopes back to his house after slitting the tires of fellow executives, foolishly leaving the instrument behind that holds his name on the outer plating. Upon returning home, Nick sees everything laid out on the lawn and a note from his wife saying she's left him in one of those visual manifestations of a metaphor that wasn't meant to be literal. Nick buys some beers, is obliquely a dick to some high schoolers, and returns home to stake out his lawn. For one thing, EVERYTHING MUST GO has an odd sense of where to place blame, for it seems to have a lot of shit against Nick for his moping, but nothing against any of the people who are blatantly being unhelpful and unrealistic like his bitch wife who's acted in the "because I was wronged I have the right to everything you own" sensibility, his banker who throws his hands up in the air, and his supposed detective cop friend who tells him to get his shit together when he has none of the tools to do that with. There's some nice interaction between Nick and a couple of nice people he meets on the block like an overdrawn black kid on a bike, and an old love-interest from college. Both characters are sort of inexplicably interested in Nick though, as if the flair he had that made him Vice President of a company are simmering beneath his alcohol laden surface. But that isn't apparent in Ferrell's performance, and thus, the device goes unexplained. Furthermore, Nick quasi-befriends a neighbor who's just moved in across the street (Emily Blunt), a photographer who he basically creeps on and bosses around proving another pathetic attempt of the film that even if a piece of shit gives you good advice, they're not exempted from being a piece of shit. But Nick's anti-outrage is just as frustrating as the film's anti-outrage, which places its decades old source material against the justifiable outrage of the 2008 and onward recession. This makes it sort of worthless, for it takes a stance that doesn't make any sense, and then parades about reasons to leave that stance on its periphery.

★ out of Five

Into the Abyss

I've found myself drawn to Werner Herzog's documentaries in a stronger way than my attraction to his narratives had ever been. I like his style, simplistic as it occasionally can be, and he puts everything together in a way that's sometimes clearer than his narratives' set-up. In the same year INTO THE ABYSS came out, Herzog released CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, which, through its simplicity and universality was, for me, a triumph. Thus, I came into INTO THE ABYSS with some real expectations, and they weren't really met. Herzog makes it clear pretty quickly that he's against the death penalty, and then shows us a truly despicable and pathetic Texan on death row. Herzog could make a point here about how Texas has executed more people than any other state, or that some of the people they've executed have been proved innocent, but he instead chooses to focus on someone who is obviously guilty. The man's name is Michael Perry. He has greasy black hair, bulgy eyes, but a clear way of expressing himself in personable quips. He murdered three people, and will be dead in a few weeks. His partner in the crime (also extensively interviewed) was given a life sentence. Herzog breaks the film in a series of parts. The first deals with the crime itself, and then he moves onto people who knew Michael Perry, and then the family members of the victims, once of which actually expresses her disbelief in the death penalty, but her joy at Perry's death. What Herzog fails to do, though, is take any real stance, and I felt deceived by a story that really went nowhere. It's a queasy film, and you can't help but have a lot of hatred for Michael Perry and his accomplice. Essentially, I don't think Herzog knew what he was doing here, because the film's ambiguities feel as if they were non-answers repurposed as artsy vagueness.

★★ out of Five

A Better Life

For what is basically an immigrant drama, I didn't have high hopes for A BETTER LIFE. Directed by Chris Weitz, who has made a stream of films that are either schlocky are pretty darn good, the film follows Carlos (Demían Bichir) as he evades danger as a Mexican immigrant living in Los Angeles. Carlos is a single father, and he's not at home much, merely lending out some demands in Spanish to his son. Well-intentioned, Carlos is simply unable to raise his son, Luis, who has been descending into the world of gangs. Luis is pretty unlikable, especially when contrasted against his father, who Bichir plays with nobility and a face that falls into empathetic looks of melancholy or hope by scrunching his eyes under a vast forehead. Carlos' gardening partner is moving back to Mexico, and plans to sell his truck. Carlos borrows some money from his sister to get the truck, which he could use in order to sustain his gardening for rich L.A. whites. But Carlos' kindness is taken advantage of, and his truck is stolen. Distraught, he inducts his son in his search for the truck, which results in a colorful and entertaining mystery-plot as the two trek the streets of L.A. looking for just one truck, and with the memory of a generic-looking Mexican named Santiago to assist them. But A BETTER LIFE poignantly displays Carlos as a respectable man who just wants a better life for his son. Any questions that I came up with the challenge the film were answered a minute after I'd thought of them, even having Luis come up with a few queries for his father like "why would you have me?" But what Carlos conveys is a hope and yearning that is still planted in the American dream, false as it is. And the only thing he has to cling to is the though that he might make life better for someone else, and that he'd enjoy that process.

★★★★ out of Five

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

I must admit that I was originally drawn to Apichatpong Weerasethakul's UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES by a single image appearing first in its posters around the internet and art house theaters, and then it's dvd cover on the racks at Hastings. The image is of a dark figure enveloped in the greenery of a forest, it's red-eyes leering at me. The creature seemed to look like a similar creature that terrorized the space family Robinson in Irwin Allen's 1960's tv series "Lost in Space" in one of the better episodes. My thought that these two creatures seemed similar was even confirmed by Weerasethakul, who said that they were inspired by such cheap monsters that he'd seen as a kid. But despite coming in to BOONMEE with an interest in its images, I found Weerasethakul's images drawing me into a more effusive tone of ideas that must die. At the beginning of the film, Weerasethakul begins the enigmatic experience with Boonmee sitting at his dinner table with a couple of family members, only to see his dead wife of many years to appear beside him, converse with her, and prepare to be lulled into his own demise, guided by the already-dead. When Boonmee asks a practical question, he receives no answer, and when his son, transformed into a forest-spirit, "Lost in Space" gorilla creature walks up to the table and sits, we cannot help but feel some sense of hilarity that is carefully intertwined with poignance. Yes, Boonmee is due to die of organ failure, and yes, we can see how these spirits will help guide him, but there is an obvious sense that the spirits are not as omniscient as they should be. Weerasethakul uses long takes to allow these ideas to stir within his audience, and his images are interesting enough to keep us captivated as he does this. As the spirit world becomes present, Boonmee's past lives become apparent, especially one involving a princess who comes to a lake and sees herself as beautiful in her reflection the lake, but also as white. In this one scene is so much history, comedy, and drama it's astounding, and wrapped up in all of Weerasethakul's film are ideas, the dismantling of those ideas, and simple truths evoked through images such as: the forest, the hotel room, watching tv.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives: ★★★★ out of Five

J. Edgar

I would be lying if I were to ignore a decline that's been apparent in Clint Eastwood's work ever since his great film, GRAN TORINO. Perhaps because that film was so good, or because subsequent films have been challenging, and daring (sometimes resulting in uneven films), HEREAFTER, which I found less impressive on a second viewing, and INVICTUS, have been far from great, while containing some excellent bits. The same is true of J. EDGAR, which tells the story of J. Edgar Hoover in vignette-like, chapter based sections that follow highlights of his life. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hoover awkwardly, sopping up the performance with a distractingly fake sounding accent, which is only awkward, oddly, in the scenes where Hoover is young, and works in the scenes where he's old. Furthermore, a lot of the lighting in J. EDGAR just feels contrived, or as if someone should be saying "someone turn a fucking light on in this room!" I actually drained my screen of color for a couple of minutes, and the film looked fantastic, but when there's color in the picture, it just looks bad. Armie Hammer is excellent as Clyde Tolson, and the relationship he has with Hoover in the film is the heart of the film, and the level of its understated nature is perfectly contrasted to Hoover's similarly understated demeanor. About half of the film feels well made, but another half just feels as if it wasn't thought out very well. Didn't someone look at the coloration, or hear DiCaprio's accent and frown? This seems to actually be something that, sadly, is to the fault of Eastwood, who sometimes lets his collaborators run away with his picture, trusting them to much to direct them effectively.

★★ out of Five

Immortals

There are so many great shots in IMMORTALS, that one can almost forgive all the shots in between. But Tarsem Singh's occasionally striking, dreadfully inaccurate film feels like a slump. It's boring, and then Singh throws in some great shot. But too much of the film is muddled in darkness, and incomprehensible battle scenes which consist of a sea of men thrashing their swords in every direction on an oddly corpseless battlefield. The film follows Henry Cavill's Theseus, the famed killer of the minotaur in a giant maze. Here, Theseus is looked over by Zeus (John Hurt & Luke Evans) and eventually set off on a quest to find a mythical bow that aided the Gods in their banishment of the wicked Titans. King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) wants to release the Titans and...rule the world...but Theseus, with the Gods on his side, is due to prevail. Oddly though, Zeus, who has been meddling in Theseus' life in the body of an old man, forbids his fellow gods in meddling. He evil murders some of the gods, and in the final battle scene, the gods fight well, but die pretty easily, which is completely and totally ridiculous. Furthermore, Theseus, who is supposed to be our man, loses so many battles it's laughable. He's not a good hero, and is always calling for the gods to help. The film is only worth seeing for a handful of striking shots, but that's about it. Singh's aesthetics are wonderfully colored, but when they don't work perfectly, they don't really work at all.

★★ out of Five

Martha Marcy May Marlene

As the film opened to a scenery of the Catskills that resembled a painting's texture, the green of the trees and the dark brown of the ground so well shot and damp looking it was stunning, Elizabeth Olsen appears as she begins her plight from a cult. Sean Durkin's atmospheric, slow, long-shot film is an American masterpiece, filling each shot like a palette, oppressively evoking truths through images, and providing the vessel for Olsen, whose placid face contorts into such a range, she's due to become one of the great American actresses. With Olsen we don't just get a character's feeling at a certain time, we get a character whose face feels like the product of emotions from birth to that moment. 

As she plays Martha, a damaged girl whose fled from an abusive cult, she arrives in a vacuous home populated by her sister (Sarah Paulson), who she hasn't spoken to in years, and her husband (Hugh Dancy). John Hawkes plays the seductive cult leader who brings her in, and he lends an extra creepiness to the film. But what MARTHA does so well is stray from clichés while remaining truthful. So many films stray from clichés but result in implausibility. MARTHA understands clichés, and thus uses truths and varieties in order to create a specific character in Martha. When Martha is back at home, her mind is still polluted with the cult's insanity, and her actions are that of a habitual way of life that became normality. Olsen inhabits this role fully and boldly in her marvelous role, portraying Martha as someone admirable and who is truly trying to escape a situation in the best way possible.

★★★★★ out of Five

Silent House

SILENT HOUSE's problems are apparent in its trailer, which has the same odd mesh of greatness and Hollywoodness, a mesh of something original and bold, and something mired by expectation and self-recognition. Original and bold: I speak of the cinematography and Elizabeth Olsen, who are the true masters of this film. A straight-out horror film, suggesting the Hollywoodness of the film, SILENT HOUSE begins in a very different way, though. A large, overhead shot of Olsen as she sits on a rock before a pond. She looks tranquil, but its the sort of out of place camera placement that suggests something's awry. Then it swoops down brilliantly in an arc, and we see Olsen move across the pond and over marshy ground to a boring driveway, and a couple of flat actors. The first time she spoke in the film, I knew I was in good hands, her iterations are perfect, expressive of a specific kind of person who plays with speech conventions as twirls them around playfully. Such a person can talk about Facebook or other such trite modernities without losing a step in their articulateness. The camera swoops about as she talks, and we enter the Silent House (foolishly named, but artfully rendered). This is a haunted house movie, and Olsen's Sarah goes about the house with her father and uncle as they inspect broken down bits of the dilapidating house. All the windows are boarded up, and the interior of the house is black, although it's evening outside. Sarah encounters a strange girl on a bicycle outside, and then re-enters the house to a volley of noises. By this time her father is the only one in the house but her, and she pleads for him to go upstairs in order to inspect the noises. He yells from another room as she waits for him, and sees intruders in the house. She runs, and runs in a frantic, desperate, real way that is just another testament to her powers as an actress. We never get the sense that her foolish actions are just plain foolish, but foolish because she misjudged a certain situation at a certain time. The plausibility that Olsen lends is astonishing, and she commands the screen with incessant close-ups of her face for the full duration. The camerawork is similarly good, as the camera swoops about and focuses in and out in odd drops and falls. Then comes the Hollywoodness that was apparent even in SILENT HOUSE's trailer. In the trailer, we see the previews of the film, which are mostly good because the film is mostly good, but then, at the end of the trailer there's an awkward yelling and screeching and poor editing that rears its ugly head near the end of the film. Many critics found the ending problematic due to its ghastly twist, but I wasn't off-put by it, because I had followed Olsen for so long that I figured I could follow her a bit more. Instead, there's a bit of a jumpiness near the end that feels unwieldy. Furthermore, the film gained some criticism for supposedly pretending to be done in one take. This isn't so, and is obvious for watching the film that it doesn't do much else but add an effect as it was intended to. To treat it as some expectation or claim is ridiculous and a separate issue from the experience of viewing the movie.

★★★★ out of Five

A Dangerous Method

I found David Cronenberg's latest film, not a bore as I had been expecting and hearing about for months, but an extension of his foray into drama. Here, in A DANGEROUS METHOD, there is no overt act of violence that we've come to expect from him, but a buried fear, a buried dread, and a buried truth. We follow Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) at the birth of psychoanalysis. He takes in a patient who's been sexually abused named Sabina Spierlein (Keira Knightley). He decides to approach the patient with a method of Freud's which has not been tested. Sabina is insane, but through talking, Jung convinces her of her affliction, and she gets better. Innately though, Spierlein is very intelligent, and becomes herself a titan of psychoanalysis. But Jung develops a friendship that shifts to rivalry with Freud (Viggo Mortensen) who is electrifyingly convincing, and actually convinced me of his way of thinking rather than Jung's, which, I think, was Cronenberg's desire for me to end up with. The film worked anyway for me as Jung's life become engrossing.

I became riveted by his life, and by his struggles with a problem that was set in his mind as much as Sabina's problems were engrained in hers. Jung wanted to cure his patients, but Freud points out that such a thing is impossible, and that we are all prisoners to innate decisions. But there's even some mysticism that arises near the end of A DANGEROUS METHOD involving Jung's premonitions, but we see that his affliction was to succumb to Sabina, and that becomes the center of the film. Beyond this, the film is brilliantly shot, and Vienna looks stunningly beautiful. Keira Knightley reveals herself as yet another young actress who was robbed in the last Academy Awards, and stands with Elizabeth Olsen and Rooney Mara as a great young actress. Her portrayal of Sabina is crazed, but justifiably so, and as she becomes normal by the end of the film, her performance becomes more nuanced.

★★★★ out of Five

The Skin I Live In

I can see why many people didn't like THE SKIN I LIVE IN, and I'm glad that they didn't like it, because it shows how far Pedro Almódovar had to go to make a masterpiece. Many of his films are very good, but I don't love all of them, or, really, any of them. They tend to stick to the same, safe storyline that Almódovar is used to, and there's enough transvestites for all of the cinema. But, with THE SKIN I LIVE IN, Almódovar builds suspense like Hitchcock, designing quiet, creepy arenas for his characters to exist in. Basically, the film is about the escape of Vera (Elena Anaya) from a plastic surgeon, Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas). Ledgard exists within a lush, gated house where he conducts experiments on Vera, but Almódovar uncovers bits of the story like peeling skin back. The way he does this is brilliant, and THE SKIN I LIVE IN is actually his most accomplished work in every possible way. It's cleanly balanced, features astonishing colorful visuals that are his trademark, and Banderas and Anaya are brilliant in their roles. But THE SKIN I LIVE IN raises the stakes on every level, creating compartmentalized worlds for every action of every character.

★★★★★ out of Five

House of Tolerance

Bertrand Bonello's HOUSE OF TOLERANCE is a great film. Emerging languorously among booze, opium, lavish dresses, and naked bodies, it stops at nothing, knowing no bounds to what it wants to express. Such a theme is practically absent from modern cinema, but Bonello's film makes you experience every aspect of it in a hard hitting way. The film begins before the turn of the century, 1899, and ends after it, in 1900. Most of the film takes place in a Paris brothel, upscale and attracting the same gents every night. One girl, however, is tied up one night, and cut from the inside of her mouth on either side. At first we just hear her screaming, and then we see her bleeding and crying and thrashing about. We next learn of life at L'Apollonide, through the arrival of a new prostitute whose just a teenager. But unlike any of the pathetic and offensive Hollywood takes on whoredom, HOUSE OF TOLERANCE emerges us into every aspect of these women's lives. They look after each other like sisters, sharing a specific and horrid existence in the closed-in house of perpetually increasing debts. As one woman is brilliantly photographed, she tells the newcomer of the gels she has to apply to her lips, vagina, and asshole. "It stings at first, but that's normal," she says with boredom. The madam watches her ladies through a one-way mirror, yet the girl from earlier, the scars in her cheeks red as lipstick, still walks about the house like a ghoul. As a decline becomes clear, Bonello's film crescendo's like an opera, pounding music and breaking up shots into four segments of real-time, and then cutting the music off abruptly shifting its focus only to return to pounding opera music. The end of the film only brings everything together under a different lens, but in its similar imagery, reminds us of what came earlier. It's a brilliant film.

★★★★★ out of Five