Tag: film review

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Cinéma réaliste: Les Misérables is a compelling exploration of modern strife

Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables is a multi-faceted, socio-political thriller set in suburban Paris. The film won the Jury Prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. Image courtesy Amazon studios

Despite its name, Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables is not a retelling of Victor Hugo’s famous novel. But there are many ways it closely resembles its namesake. Within the confines of a tight thriller and a runtime of less than two hours, Ly explores questions of justice, crime, redemption, rebellion, collective and individual responsibility, and the socio-political role of architecture in modern-day Paris—including in the same suburb that inspired Hugo’s novel. The particular issues of today are different than the 1832 June Rebellion, but the underlying questions facing humanity remain the same. If an insurrection is morally justified but destined to fail, should it be quashed before it begins? Should we punish lawbreakers or maintain stability? If society is a pot about to boil over, should we struggle to keep the lid on and risk building more pressure, or let it happen and face the consequences?

Though the title invites comparisons, Ly’s Les Misérables is very much its own film, a bold societal and stylistic statement on par with City of God and Do the Right Thing. It’s an incredible mix of crime thriller, day-in-the-life police procedural, and social realist commentary with spectacular flourish, and would be an easy favorite to win Best International Feature Film if Parasite were not also nominated.

Les Misérables

R, 102 minutes

Violet Crown Cinema

The film follows the SCU, a team dedicated to monitoring lower-income, predominantly immigrant communities in Paris led by Chris (Alexis Manenti), whose methods wouldn’t be out of place in the Old West; depending on how you look at it, he’s either highly effective or completely reckless. His partner is Gwada (Djibril Zonga), an officer of African descent who is prepared for the worst but favors containment and cooperation over confrontation. Joining them is Stéphane (Damien Bonnard), nicknamed “Pento” or “Greaser.” During their regular patrol, they must address tensions after a boy named Issa (Issa Perica) steals a lion cub from Roma zookeepers. To stop an all-out confrontation, the SCU has to find Issa and return the cub, but the distrust they’ve created in the past complicates the present, particularly when a series of mistakes by the police threatens Issa’s life.

What follows is best left unspoiled, but is a masterstroke of stylistic and thematic escalation. A situation arises that could have been avoided, but once it arrives, it cannot be defused. The characters can only hope to navigate these events with their lives and their values intact. Some may not appreciate the ending, calling it a cliffhanger, but it is the only honest way to complete the emotional arc of this film. Issa is left with a choice: stand up for himself and risk everything, including the lives around him, or stand down and continue in his unsustainable life. This is where we are as a society: We can either act now to avoid this unwinnable game, or be prepared to lose everything in the blink of an eye, the pull of a trigger, the lighting of a Molotov cocktail.

As a film, Les Misérables is top-to-bottom perfection. The direction is nimble yet grounded, always focused even as the events of the story spiral out of control. The tension stays at a low hum, the characters are deep no matter how secondary to the narrative, and it has a compelling moral core even if it has no definitive answers; attempting to wrap everything up would have been dishonest and manipulative. At the start of the movie, Issa and his friends sing “La Marseillaise” in celebration of a soccer victory, and like that anthem, Les Misérables is a call to fight for what’s right, but also a warning that the solution is not as simple as taking up arms.

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056.

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

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Groundhog Day

PG, 103 minutes

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, February 1 and 2

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Bold classic: Greta Gerwig takes Little Women to new heights

Little Women’s outstanding cast and the savvy direction of Greta Gerwig make for a refreshing take on the literary classic. Image courtesy Columbia Pictures

It would be against the spirit of Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women to compare it to other versions, particularly the 1994 one directed by Gillian Armstrong. Just as the March sisters are all different yet equally deserving of a fair shot at happiness, so too does each adaptation tap into a separate aspect of Louisa May Alcott’s enduring tale of family. If you have a particular attachment to Katharine Hepburn or Winona Ryder as Jo, you need not put that aside in order to appreciate Saoirse Ronan.

What sets Gerwig’s film apart is the way she modernizes the story while preserving the time in which it was written. It’s stylistically bold yet thoroughly classic, adding an inventive nonlinear structure. The characters are true to the text yet deepened, but not artificially inflated. And perhaps most impressively, Gerwig’s metanarrative feels decidedly un-meta, growing naturally from the story as if it had been there all along. How a filmmaker can achieve a postmodern throwback, an innovative-yet-classic work of brilliance on her second feature is, frankly, nothing short of astonishing.

Little Women

PG, 135 minutes

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

The story follows the irrepressible March family in Civil War-era Massachusetts: sisters Jo, Amy, Meg, and Beth (Ronan, Florence Pugh, Emma Watson, Eliza Scanlen) live with their mother (Laura Dern) while their father serves in the Union Army. The sisters are always up to something, talking about someone, staging a play, constantly with a whirlwind of energy. Scenes from their youth are juxtaposed with their lives seven years later, showing us how their shared childhood shaped who they’ve become. Along for the ride is Laurie (Timothée Chalamet), a boy from a neighboring family whose charming yet occasionally self-centered demeanor makes him alternately a love interest and object of scorn for Jo and Amy.

One important thing Gerwig does is respect her characters. She doesn’t reduce them to one trait nor does she talk down to the very real emotions of young people. Jo is a born storyteller and just as driven as any successful man, but cares about others as much as her ambition. When she considers leaving her writing career behind to marry, it truly stings because we know how hard she has worked and how much she thrives in the company of those she loves. When Amy pursues a mature career after a lifetime of being a near terror to Jo, we can see the pride and regret in her eyes. And when Laurie grows up, his journey is deeper than losing his spoiled tendencies.

(It would be a crime not to mention the exceptional supporting cast. There are no small parts here, and though Ronan and Pugh shine, everybody enhances the story, including Watson, Dern, Chris Cooper, Tracy Letts, Bob Odenkirk, and others too numerous to name.)

Though Little Women is a massive leap in technique and style for Gerwig, it is a continuation of themes she’s explored in her previous work, as writer-director of Lady Bird and co-writer and star of Francis Ha—finding balance between who you are and who you want to become, discovering the moment you can no longer coast through life, and accepting responsibility without losing your most cherished traits. That she’s made such a personal story from an internationally renowned novel, and managed to innovate a text that has been beloved for a century and a half, updating the plot and characters without robbing them of their time and place, is a subtle miracle.

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056.

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

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Xanadu (glow-along)

PG, 96 minutes

January 11, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

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Good looks: Movies that moved us in 2019

Film critic Kristofer Jenson share his top 10 of 2019. Top-tier work could be found at all levels, from megaplexes to arthouses and even on demand.

This year was an embarrassment of riches when it comes to quality filmmaking. Long-established directors were firing on all cylinders, while new talents were upping their game. Top-tier work could be found at all levels, from megaplexes to arthouses and even on demand.

So, while these are my picks for the best of 2019, they are not the only great films of the year. If your list is different, we’d love to see it!

  1. The Nightingale

  2. Parasite

  3. Little Women

  4. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood

  5. Uncut Gems

  6. Us

  7. The Farewell

  8. The Irishman

  9. Midsommar

10. In Fabric

Please note that The Nightingale is one of the most harrowing, disturbing films I’ve ever seen. This is recognition, not recommendation. If you consider yourself a movie-lover in the sense that you enjoy a night out at the pictures, this is not that. If you’re a believer in the power of cinema to explore the most essential problems of humanity, including our most ugly, violent, and vicious tendencies and the systems we create to enshrine those vices (colonialism, private property, human servitude, and slavery), then you have to recognize The Nightingale as an unmitigated masterpiece.

After assembling this list, I was struck by the prevalence of sophomore features. Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, Jordan Peele’s Us, Ari Aster’s Midsommar, and Lulu Wang’s The Farewell are all the second full-length films for their respective directors. It’s a fascinating trend; the follow-up is usually where the wunderkind stumbles, but not only do these films succeed on their own terms, they each show a singular and uncompromised vision for what are sure to be long, rewarding careers behind the camera.

For the more established directors, we saw a tendency toward reflection and self-examination. Many of Martin Scorsese’s films feature characters on a collision course with one of two outcomes: death or regret. The Irishman works as a coda to the excitement of Goodfellas; in the latter, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) never lost the gleam in his eye from a life of crime; he simply acted out of self-preservation and wishes he could still live his old life. Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), on the other hand, outlasts and outsmarts everyone, but can you consider yourself a successful criminal if the end of your life is spent wishing for repentance?

Quentin Tarantino, similarly, digs deeper on his prototypical hero in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Long an admirer of 1960s and ’70s pop culture, his dive into the making of Hollywood mythology questions what it means to be that archetype. Is it all great clothes, tough attitudes, and excellent soundtracks? How much of it is fed by toxicity, and how complicit are we in overlooking the dirty deeds of those we admire? Fun, funny, and endearing in its own right, it’s also his most thoughtful film yet.

With more space we could examine our remaining three films: Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, the Safdies’ Uncut Gems, and Peter Strickland’s In Fabric, but let’s summarize it this way: producers, please finance any films these people want to make. Audiences, please see any film of theirs that gets produced.

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Dress success: Funny and surreal, In Fabric is a perfect fit

Say yes to In Fabric, a bizarre horror comedy in which a possessed dress brings strange occurrences upon its owners. Image courtesy A24

Subverting genre conventions is one thing. Channeling them into a wholly unique artistic vision is another thing entirely. This is what sets English filmmaker Peter Strickland apart as an innovator, even as he works with decades-old material. Film after film, he manages to be postmodern yet devotional, ironic yet totally sincere. A giallo slasher with no violence (Berberian Sound Studio) and a Rollin-esque Eurosleaze lesbian romance fantasy with no nudity and virtually no sex (The Duke of Burgundy) might seem like gimmicks and auteurist indulgences. But Strickland repurposes the stylistic language of those genres for a deeper connection with the logic-defying worlds of his characters, erasing the space between our suspension of disbelief and our ability to empathize.

In Fabric takes a simple, absurd low-budget horror idea—what if a dress is possessed/haunted/evil?—and uses the opportunity to explore vanity, self-perception, and ambition. When we dress to impress, are we more than glorified mannequins? Are we placing too much of our self-worth in a dead piece of fabric as our soul deteriorates within? When we fall for a sales pitch, are we signing part of ourselves away? Do we define our identity too much by external factors, including our occupation?

In Fabric

R, 117 minutes

Now streaming

In Fabric follows a size 36 red dress (that miraculously fits every person who wears it) on its journey from high-end (and probably demonic) retailer Dentley & Soper to several otherwise unconnected Londoners. We start with Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a single mother and bank teller trying to reenter the dating scene. After a hard sell from Miss Luckmoore (Fatma Mohamed), she buys the dress, but notices strange events, such as a peculiar rash on her chest, vivid dreams, strange sounds in her closet, and the dress appearing where she did not leave it. The dress then goes to Reg Speaks (Leo Bill), a washing machine repairman who is forced to wear it on his stag night, again experiencing the strange occurrences.

This is without a doubt Strickland’s silliest movie, but that never comes in the form of self-deprecation, knowing winks, or tired references. He never belittles or satirizes the source material, preferring to earn laughs from the absurdity of this universe in which bosses call lunch break “feeding time,” detailed technical descriptions of washing machine repair are hypnotic and pleasurable, and a clearly nefarious store like Dentley & Soper can continue to operate. Strickland casts famous comedians Julian Barratt and Steve Oram as Sheila’s bosses, fixated on the length of toilet breaks and polite gestures toward superiors. It is also a delight to see Gwendoline Christie given the opportunity to chew the scenery as Sheila’s son’s model girlfriend.

Despite the lighter tone, Strickland sacrifices nothing in terms of style, using a striking color palette reminiscent of 1980s kitsch. His incorporation of comedy is a surprising fit, having made such powerful statements on dread and alienation in the past. If you are new to Strickland’s work, In Fabric is a perfect place to start.

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056.

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

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It’s a Wonderful Life

PG, 130 minutes

The Paramount Theater, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

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Riding it out: Familial clashes move Waves through a complex narrative

Parent-child relationships ebb and flow with intensity in Waves starring Kelvin Harrison Jr., Taylor Russell, Sterling K. Brown, and Renée Elise Goldsberry. Image courtesy A24

Trey Edward Shults’ Waves is an ambitious next step for the writer-director of Krisha and It Comes at Night, balancing his atmospheric skills against a complex narrative of parental pressure, trauma, transgression, and redemption with overtones of race and class. It is very nearly a runaway success in all categories, as the cast brings life to layered characters and Shults’s stylistic flair is never gratuitous, always serving a narrative or thematic purpose. And while the film’s social commentary can be uneven, a deep sense of empathy is palpable. Shults’ good intentions are sincere and you will not leave the theater unmoved.

Waves is a story in two parts, following the Williams family before and after a shocking event. Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is a high school senior, a wrestler from a financially secure family with a loving girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie). Pressure from his father Ronald (Sterling K. Brown) helps him excel, but cracks begin to show in Tyler’s stable life. A shoulder injury threatens his athletic career, and he treats the pain with stolen prescription pills. His girlfriend becomes pregnant, and decides against an abortion, and his furious reaction causes them to break up. The series of decisions that follow will devastate everyone permanently and irreversibly.

Waves

R, 135 minutes

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

The perspective then shifts to Tyler’s sister, Emily (Taylor Russell), who has led an isolated social life until beginning a relationship with Luke (Lucas Hedges). She finds some normalcy and reconnects with her father, so that when it comes time for Luke to face his own troubled relationship with his father, they can break the cycle of resentment and hate.

The main metaphor is front and center: no person is isolated from the waves created by the actions of others. Sometimes they’re big, sometimes they’re small, and sometimes we don’t notice them until we’re already drowning. Heightened moments frequently involve water and its many properties: redemptive, playful, loving, calming, and dangerous. Water has more than one characteristic, as do people. It’s always wet, we’re always human, but that has different meanings in different contexts, not all of them pleasant.

The most trenchant observation Shults makes is in the meaning of forgiveness. There is no taking back what happened, there is no ignoring the past, but there is also no changing it. Forgiving someone does not mean they are no longer responsible for their actions. It does mean acknowledging their humanity and freeing yourself of the hate you feel toward them. (This observation borrowed from Mr. Rogers; in a curious coincidence of unexpected overlap, I watched Waves immediately after A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.) No deed is undone, no punishment unserved, but through forgiveness, we can break the cycles that make us feel trapped—expressed visually with a change in aspect ratio, from wide and full of possibilities, to tighter, restricted, and suffocating.

As an analysis of rage and catharsis, Waves is excellent. As social commentary, it’s murkier. Through dialogue, it’s suggested that Ronald’s parenting is rooted in pressures he felt to excel, needing to work twice as hard to get ahead as a black man. Brown convincingly embodies this mentality, pushing Tyler so hard that he all but disregards Emily’s needs. Luke, on the other hand, was abused by his addict father, and constantly fights with his mother, but is emotionally present and attentive for Emily, and his father-son reconciliation comes quickly. This could be a statement that the racism experienced by previous generations still clings to people of color while white people have the privilege of moving on, despite socioeconomic status. If this is the message, it is made less emphatically then the film’s other themes, and as a result distracts from the film’s other qualities.

These questions aside, Waves is gorgeous to behold and devastating to experience, led by strong performances and contagious optimism.

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056.

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

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Elf

PG, 97 minutes

December 14, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

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Sharp and intriguing: Knives Out is an Agatha Christie-style thrill ride

Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is an instant classic with an all-star cast that delivers charming wit and whodunnit suspense. We think we know who did what, how, when, and why, but that’s not the story we’re watching. LIONSGATE

In the grand tradition of Agatha Christie comes Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, an ingenious, exciting, rollicking good time. It’s best experienced with no knowledge of the plot, so if that’s enough to convince you to see it, our job here is done. If you need a little more, read on, where we will endeavor to review with as few spoilers as possible.

Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is a successful mystery writer whose apparent suicide shocks his family. What should be a clean-cut investigation is then complicated by the arrival of Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a detective of some renown, who is hired by an anonymous note in an envelope filled with cash. The suicide was somewhat uncharacteristic, and Blanc navigates the complicated network of trust and hate among the clan. All felt some anger toward the patriarch, but each had an interest in keeping him alive so they could ride his gravy train, even as they suffer from delusions of being “self-made” despite his immense financial assistance. Joining Blanc in his investigation is Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), Harlan’s nurse and close confidant with a secret of her own.

Knives Out

PG-13, 130 minutes

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

The film is immediately charming, with its delicious intrigue and gut-busting laughs. The wit is fast and sharp, the setting straight out of a classic whodunit. The colorful characters are brought to life by an all-star ensemble cast: Plummer, Craig, de Armas, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, Jaeden Martell, Katherine Langford, and Riki Lindhome—a reviewer could devote his entire word count to their performances.

Alfred Hitchcock once described the difference between surprise and suspense: imagine two people are sitting at a table, and suddenly a bomb goes off. Yes, the explosion is a surprise, but it’s not very exciting and it’s not much of a story. If, however, the audience sees the bomb and knows that it will go off but the characters do not, that’s suspense. We’re now fully engaged, counting the seconds until they find out. The same is true of mysteries. If the only important part of the story is the big reveal, our enjoyment is based only on how surprised we are, and rewatching is essentially pointless. And if we can predict the perpetrator, we’re just spinning our wheels for two hours while the story catches up.

What is it that sets Christie stories apart, and how does Johnson build on that so effectively? There are the surface-level qualities: high-society characters with countless secrets, an unstoppable detective facing an unsolvable crime. The complexity of the story makes you wonder how everything will unravel, and the resolution makes you gasp, even if you predicted some version of it. And even once you know what happens, you want to experience the story again and again.

That final component is the real key to success in Christie’s stories, and in Knives Out. For much of the film’s duration, the emphasis is not on whodunit, but on how a particular character will conceal a crucial bit of information, doing so with the audience’s full sympathies as the lead detective carries out his investigation. We think we know who did what, how, when, and why, but that’s not the story we’re watching. Johnson is devilishly clever in the way he pulls this off and frees us from having to solve it for ourselves so we can enjoy how well the story is told.

Throughout it all, Johnson’s use of the current political climate is the slyest of all his tricks. In a family this large and affluent, there are sure to be competing beliefs, and disagreements amplify the divisions between them. But characters are not measured by political sympathies, rather by who they seek for comfort when their position is threatened. There’s stability in wealth and family, more so than in sacrificing status for professed beliefs. Class solidarity unites the wealthy across the liberal-conservative divide, and the Thrombey family only unites when their employee, an immigrant woman, becomes their main obstacle.

Knives Out is thrilling, funny, and brilliantly realized. There is no weak link in the ensemble cast, no dull moment in the dialogue. The tone is breezy but wonderfully tense. A taut, breathless, instant classic.

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056.

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

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Meet Me in St. Louis

NR, 113 minutes

December 8, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

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Together apart: Marriage Story works through tears and humor

Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver fight, laugh, and search for authenticity while going though separation and divorce in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. NETFLIX

Though Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story openly invites comments on the irony of the title—this is, after all, a movie about divorce—it’s in their separation that Nicole and Charlie Barber (Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver) see one another for who they are, as opposed to who they’d become while married. The life they built together was full of creativity, financial success, and critical acclaim. They have a wonderful son. Is it tragic that a marriage like this ended in divorce? Or is the tragedy that building this life led to buried resentment, unspoken frustrations, and uneven power dynamics, and that the most logical thing to do—go their separate ways—comes at such a steep emotional, financial, and legal cost? Or is the struggle to divorce entirely justified, and we should accept the pain inflicted as a natural part of the human experience?

Funny and frustrating (in a great way), Marriage Story paves the way for a mature discussion on the subject of divorce. Nicole and Charlie live in New York as part of a successful theater company: He writes and directs, she acts, and together they win awards and adoration. Nicole, however, feels she has always lived in his shadow, as a supporting player in what is ultimately his story. She left a burgeoning movie career and her roots in Los Angeles for the New York stage, and wants to reclaim her success. Charlie, meanwhile, feels blindsided by her complaints, and wants to continue with his career and maintain their home in New York.

Everything is cordial, if tense, at first. It’s when the facts of living a bicoastal life with a child emerge that the rocky road to divorce reveals itself, even if the idea is amicable. As the bureaucratic and spiritual difficulties arise, they have to confront one another, and have the conversations they’ve been avoiding. How do you tell someone how hurt and rejected you feel by them without insulting them? How do you lay claim to part of their life that you feel you’ve earned without ruining them? And should those concerns stop you in the first place?

Baumbach’s film challenges us to reexamine how we think about relationships and how they end, dispensing with the notion that someone has to be right or wrong for a marriage to come apart. There are many rights and countless wrongs, all of which deserve the light of day. As Nicole and Charlie’s lawyers (Laura Dern and Ray Liotta, who steal every scene) bicker on their clients’ behalf, they hear their feelings put into words in a way they would never have said, but left to their own devices their truth would have gone unspoken.

This review has focused on the emotional maturity of Marriage Story, but the movie’s not just one big dissertation on divorce law. It boasts an exceptional lead and supporting cast, excellent dialogue, and a rich sense of humor. Like the film’s characters, you won’t know whether to laugh or cry, and will frequently do both.

Marriage Story / R, 136 minutes / Violet Crown Cinema

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056, drafthouse.com/charlottesville z Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213. regmovies.com z Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000, charlottesville.violetcrown.com z Check theater websites for listings.

SEE IT AGAIN

Remember the Night NR, 91 minutes / Alamo Drafthouse Cinema December 1

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Serving truth: The Report delivers through strong performances

The Report stars Adam Driver as a Senate staffer who leads an investigation into the CIA’s interrogation program. Image courtesy Amazon Studios

Investigative thriller The Report cares so passionately for its subject matter that it could almost be considered a new work of journalism, rather than a docudrama. Director Scott Z. Burns has written and produced several films on the theme of speaking truth to power using any means available, whether it’s with a wire (The Informant!), with fists (The Bourne Ultimatum), or a slideshow presentation (An Inconvenient Truth). Where those films used democratic accountability as a thematic foundation for stories about people within a system, The Report is first and foremost a detailed examination of a system that broke down. Characters are defined primarily by their role in relation to the so-called “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” and their backstories are second.

The Report

R, 118 minutes

Violet Crown Cinema

Counterintuitive as this may seem, it’s the film’s main strength. Burns shares a passion for justice with his lead character, Daniel J. Jones (Adam Driver), a former investigator for the United States Senate working under Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening). Jones is tasked with uncovering the CIA’s use, justification, and subsequent cover-up of EITs, a clear euphemism for torture, in the war on terror. At least one might think it’s clear: over the 10 years Jones spends researching and preparing his report, roadblocks are thrown in his way. Some are expected in a democracy, but many are patently absurd.

Corruption, as Jones discovers, is not only the work of wicked people for self-enrichment. People who wish to do good within the system might tolerate abuses in order to make a political trade. Is this the same thing as being complicit, wanting justice but choosing not to act in order to attain another set of goals? Where does political realism become its own form of corruption? Does just governance require tolerating evil?

The Report is the kind of movie that is not typically good, but it is the best version of this kind of movie. There is shouting, but there is no “Scandal”-style screaming monologue revealing the full story. There is a rogue’s gallery of perpetrators, but there is no main bad guy who can be arrested to fix everything, a la Money Monster. Best of all, The Report accepts that there may be a political bias within the film, but has the courage to insist that being against torture ought not be controversial. Burns avoids the vulgar comparisons between the Bush and Trump administrations that plague so many political thrillers, and he doesn’t let Obama off the hook for looking the other way in the name of “post-partisanship.” There are no unearned slam dunks, no distracting references to “Fool me once,” “Mission Accomplished,” or “known unknowns.” Personality matters, but cold, hard facts matter more.

Good performances, tight dialogue, and smart direction make The Report a watchable film. What makes it more than that is the urgency of its material. Everything Jones did was in service of the truth. Everything Burns does in The Report is in support of keeping our eyes on the prize, and the belief that anything worth having is worth fighting for, even if you shouldn’t have to.

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056.

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

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The Last Waltz

PG, 116 minutes

November 23, 8pm, The Paramount Theater

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Dreadfully good: Doctor Sleep will keep you up at night

Stephen King’s mastery of horror continues to shine in Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep, which stars Ewan McGregor as a grown-up Danny Torrance. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

The best thing you can do with a Stanley Kubrick sequel is to make it as un-Kubrick as possible. Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep, adapted from Stephen King’s follow-up to The Shining, has about much interest in recreating its predecessor as its lead character, grown-up Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor), has in revisiting those events. When the story does come up, it’s with mournful regret, in the same way that Danny, a recovering alcoholic, considers taking a drink. It’s unfair that anyone should live with the burden of addiction or the sins of our parents, but it is our responsibility to right those wrongs for generations to come.

Doctor Sleep is a terrific change of pace, and the next step in Flanagan’s evolution as a horror storyteller. Though his films have their fair share of bumps in the night, his best work concerns horror of a personal, intimate nature, and the dread of being helpless against forces beyond your control. From Absentia to The Haunting of Hill House, Flanagan explores tragedy and mental illness as their own forms of horror, ones that plague us after the monsters have died and ghosts have been exorcised.

Doctor Sleep

R, 181 minutes

Violet Crown Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

The years have not been kind to Dan Torrance. He and his mother escaped their father and The Overlook Hotel, but his gift (the “shining”) is still a magnet for ghosts, demons, and evil forces. Always on the move and drowning his problems in alcohol, he finds roots and some semblance of peace in a small New England town with the help of Billy (Cliff Curtis), who gets him work and into AA. He also learns to channel the shine into a meaningful career in hospice care, where he telepathically communicates with dying patients to ease their transition with peace of mind.

The shine is far more powerful than we knew, with many variations. It can be used to communicate across the world, leading to a psychic friendship between Dan and a powerful child named Abra (Kyliegh Curran). It can also be used to manipulate others, and those who have it can be consumed by energy-eating entities known as the True Knot, led by Rose (Rebecca Ferguson). Dan, Abra, and Rose, three people who have never met, are now on a collision course. Do Dan and Abra run from Rose, or do they fight her? Would it even be possible to hide? And how do they stop this evil from preying on future generations, as the Overlook preyed on Dan?

At their most basic metaphorical level, ghosts and demons are our memories that we cannot reconcile with the life we want to live. That’s one of the reasons they’re such a reliable tool for horror stories, lingering evidence of some unspeakable transgression or hidden truth. Doctor Sleep accepts the presence of these spirits but wants to reconcile instead of hiding them, and the result is more supernatural mystery drama than scary ghost story. There is more dread in the idea that people are destined to never find peace than in the jumpiest jump scare.

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056.

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

See it again

Interview with the Vampire

R, 123 minutes

November 17, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

Categories
Arts

Back again: Terminator: Dark Fate sends the series into a tailspin

For the first time in decades, the story of Terminator is about something more than the minutiae of its own lore, but every new idea gets buried under weightless callbacks, dizzying action, and hollow noise. Image courtesy Paramount Pictures

Apparently not all jobs outsourced by James Cameron are created equal. Earlier this year, we saw Alita: Battle Angel, his collaboration with director Robert Rodriguez. The hands-on approach of both filmmakers seemed to bring out the best in each, with Rodriguez’s slick camera work and knack for creating chemistry between characters enhancing Cameron’s boundary-pushing special effects and deeply humanistic undertones.

The same lightning did not strike during Terminator: Dark Fate, touted as the series reclaiming its greatness by following T2 and ignoring everything else. The desperation for credibility is right there on the poster: “James Cameron Returns,” with director Tim Miller (Deadpool) getting second billing. Cameron is listed as producer and is one of six credited writers; yes, he’s technically back, but we see little of him in the finished project. For the first time in decades, the story of Terminator is about something more than the minutiae of its own lore, but every new idea gets buried under weightless callbacks, dizzying action, and hollow noise.

Terminator: Dark Fate

R, 134 minutes

Violet Crown Cinema

In an alternate timeline, a previously undetected T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) succeeds in killing John Connor shortly after Skynet has been successfully destroyed. For decades since, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) has been killing any Terminators that find their way back. Today, a different future produces a new model known as the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) and an augmented human soldier, Grace (Mackenzie Davis), fighting over the fate of Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), an unsuspecting woman who finds herself responsible for human society the same way Sarah did in 1984.

Like many of the great science fiction storytellers, Cameron uses the genre to explore more than cool robots, futuristic warfare, and pretty alien worlds (though there are plenty of those). The first Terminator forced a young Sarah Connor, living her regular life, to carry the weight of the world and do it thanklessly, while navigating the paradox of what it means to fulfill a destiny that is uncertain. T2 examined what makes us human, and whether our self-destructive urges can be altered or reprogrammed. Dark Fate teases at deeper meanings, both personal and political. Both Sarah and the T-800 lost their purpose when Skynet was destroyed and John was killed; once you lose your purpose, the past doesn’t disappear and the future remains unwritten, so either find a new one or adapt.

Politically, Cameron’s touch can be detected in jabs at systemic racism and the exploitation of public trust as a means to circumvent laws and regulations. All Rev-9 has to do is claim a service role, wear a badge, and talk prayer, and he can get through metal detectors and the cops overlook irregularities. A scene in which Grace opens the cages of people rounded up by border control might even elicit some cheers.

Of course, this all amounts to a positive review of Cameron’s involvement in what is otherwise a normal-to-bad movie. Sarah’s triumphant return to the screen is diminished when she says, unprompted, “I’ll be back.” The villain looks cool but is just not scary. The cast is dedicated but their interactions are undercut at every opportunity, and what might have been memorable sequences are slashed to hell with reckless editing. T2 wasn’t just about robots, it also pushed the genre forward visually and technically, so it’s a fair expectation that a direct sequel might at least try to look good. If you insist on comparing Dark Fate to the other sequels, sure, it’s better, but it’s like trying to decide between a Quarter Pounder and a Double Quarter Pounder when a Kobe beef steak is on the menu.

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056.

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

See it again

The Godfather Part II

R, 210 minutes

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

November 10, 12