Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Lily Topples the World’ Review: What Goes Up

      by

      A gifted YouTuber gets a superficial profile in this lackadaisical documentary.If you’re not one of the more than 3 million subscribers to Lily Hevesh’s YouTube channel, then you may be unaware of what it takes to become a world-famous domino artist. “Lily Topples the World” aims to enlighten you; but this undisciplined, curiously shallow documentary from Jeremy Workman might leave you with more questions than answers.Blessed with a subject who is charmingly open and seemingly devoid of ego, Workman mostly keeps out of the way. Adopted from China as an infant, Hevesh, now 22, has been designing, building and toppling fabulously intricate contraptions since the age of 9, posting her efforts to YouTube. This passion requires patience and a certain obsessiveness, as well as a willingness to learn the basics of geometry and physics. The results are a divine fusion of engineering and aesthetics; so why are no engineers or artists invited to comment?In place of knowledgeable contributors are irritating music and blandly repetitive interviews as we follow Hevesh from convention appearances to meetings with ecstatic fans and collaborative projects with fellow topplers. With no real structure, the film becomes a blur of collapsing plastic rectangles. It’s all very pretty, but it’s also indulgent and uninformative — terms like “column technique” are dropped, without explanation — teaching us little about the effort and skill behind the shapes.Similarly, we see Hevesh ponder the worthlessness of a college degree to a career in toppling, but are never apprised of her possible long-term professional options. No arguments, frustrations or consequential disappointments mar the film’s unvaryingly upbeat tone. This leaves us with a movie that feels more like a marketing tool for her self-designed brand of dominoes than a nuanced portrait of an unusual talent.Lily Topples the WorldNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Isabella’ Review: Audition of a Lifetime

      by

      The Argentine filmmaker Matías Piñeiro, who riffs on Shakespeare, expands his ambition with this drama.The New York-based Argentine filmmaker Matías Piñeiro has carved out an exclusive niche: Each of his fractured, low-stakes narratives is tied to a different Shakespeare play. His last feature, “Hermia & Helena,” involved a Spanish translation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” His latest, “Isabella,” revolves around two actresses, Mariel (María Villar) and Luciana (Agustina Muñoz), auditioning for the part of Isabella in “Measure for Measure.”If Piñeiro’s Shakespeare citations have sometimes freighted slight stories with unearned significance, “Isabella” finds him expanding his formal ambition. The movie courts confusion, at first: Sorting out the characters and timeline isn’t easy. Piñeiro sometimes shoots dialogue with the actors (or their faces) offscreen. The chronology is scrambled, with Mariel’s state — she is shown visibly pregnant or not, or else with her young son after he’s been born — providing an important marker.While the pieces more or less fall into place, trying to solve the mysteries of “Isabella” may be missing the point. The opening voice-over concerns a ritual in which a person must decide whether to cast stones into water, and the film itself seems to exist in a suspended state. The pivotal color is purple (somewhere between red and blue). A motif of rectangles that evokes Josef Albers’s “Homage to the Square” suggests infinite regress.Rhymed scenes and repeated lines contribute to the sense of indeterminacy. Both women are capable of stepping into the same part; acting is presented as, for some people, the same thing as living. Everything in “Isabella” unfolds in parallel — measure for measure, if you will.IsabellaNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 88 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      ‘American Sausage Standoff’ Review: Order the Salad

      by

      This misbegotten satire about bigotry and mysterious pork products is unfunny and maladroit.The far-fetched but hardly distinctive tale told in “American Sausage Standoff” is prefaced by a title card reading “This story is based on fact.” The opening shot is of a man sitting in his car while addressing the audience directly, his soothing, honey-toned voice setting the scene.The writer-director Ulrich Thomsen nods at Joel and Ethan Coen here, specifically to “Fargo” and “The Big Lebowski.” The unfunny and maladroit scenes that follow make one wonder if “the anxiety of influence” also can apply to artists who are, through no fault of their own, doing the influencing.“American Sausage Standoff” is set in a nearly deserted town called Gutterbee. This self-proclaimed “Cabaret Capital of the West” is overseen by a guitar-picking rabid racist named Jimmy Jerry Lee Jones Jr. As indicated by character names like that, this is a movie that delivers its sociocultural observations with a sledgehammer.Starr (who, with Thomsen, starred on the TV series “Banshee”) plays Mike Dankworth McCoid, a one-time confederate of Jones who has tired of grotesquely humiliating Asian Americans and running them out of town. (These humiliations are depicted in some detail; the film’s ostensible objection to such actions is sorely undercut by the relish with which they are staged.) Instead, he forms an alliance with the newcomer Edward, a connoisseur of both German sausage and its lore.Edward is played gamely by Ewen Bremner, but his efforts, like those of the character actor Clark Middleton (who died last year) as a truculent, corrupt preacher, merely demonstrate that commitment will only get you so far with a nothing part. What ensues when Edward and the town’s reactionaries clash cannot be properly called hilarity, and the end product of this dismal film is mostly befuddlement.American Sausage StandoffNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Mosquito State’ Review: Bugging Out

      by

      A Wall Street genius becomes the willing host to a colony of mosquitoes in this dreamily surreal horror movie.Borne along on the whine of insects and a lead performance of surpassing strangeness, “Mosquito State” is a disquieting merger of body horror and social commentary.It’s the summer of 2007, a global financial meltdown is imminent and Richard Boca (a disconcerting Beau Knapp), a wealthy Wall Street analyst, is attending a black-tie party. When he leaves, he will have a stunning young student (Charlotte Vega) on his arm and a female mosquito on his neck; he will fully bond with only one of them.From its gorgeous opening credits to a peculiarly poignant and lyrical finale, this mesmerically slow-moving tale (directed by Filip Jan Rymsza and written by Rymsza and Mario Zermeno) works to forge a fragile link between psychic and societal breakdowns. Richard may be an algorithm savant, but his colleagues refuse to listen when his computer model warns of looming market instability. Holed up in his cavernous penthouse, all brutalist décor and dim lighting, he fumes, consoled only by the buzzing mosquito whose bites are transforming his body and whose offspring are rapidly colonizing his home.Arranged in chapters named for the insect’s stages of development (egg, larva, pupa, imago), “Mosquito State” has a dreamlike, almost dazed quality, pierced by moments of disturbing beauty. Admirable for its total refusal to ingratiate, the movie nurtures an unapologetically hostile vibe that gradually relents alongside Richard’s deterioration. Like Jeff Goldblum in “The Fly” (1986), he’s a grotesque alliance of two species; yet watching him in his apartment, the mosquitoes a milky cloud above his head or a black swarm feeding off his supine body, we see a man who has chosen the bloodsucking life form he prefers.Mosquito StateNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Shudder. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Colony’ Review: Fertile Ground Goes to Waste

      by

      In this science fiction film, set generations after humans have destroyed Earth, an astronaut returns to the planet to see if it is habitable.“The Colony,” a new sci-fi drama directed by Tim Fehlbaum, posits an Earth once rendered uninhabitable by climate change, pandemics and war. Years later, though the ruling elite has fled to another planet, they must reinvestigate Earth after their society becomes infertile.The astronaut Louise Blake (Nora Arnezeder) leads the latest such mission — not for herself, but, as she has been taught to eerily chant since she was a little girl, “for the many.”Therein lies the problem with this sprawling, ambitious movie: Though it centers on one woman, anything we might stand to learn about her own developing values is quickly swallowed by overcomplicated narratives about secondary characters, corrupt colonizers and family secrets. When Blake lands back on Earth — and smack in the middle of another conflict between warring parties — “The Colony” interrogates who, in this dystopian portrayal of humanity, is really worth saving. But it could be asking far more interesting questions about its own main character.For instance, Blake uses herself as a fertility test subject and dazedly notes the arrival of her menstrual cycle, but is she personally interested in repopulating her society? Given her androgynous appearance, her preference for her masculine surname and the fact that she has the most on-screen chemistry with another single woman, this character could, at the very least, have complicated feelings about heterosexual reproduction.“The Colony” has big ideas about class, colonialism and who should inherit the earth. But in developing them, it sidelines its own perfectly compelling protagonist — and wastes a magnetic lead performance from Arnezeder. It can dress itself up in political intrigue all it wants; this existential narrative is really begging to be a character study.The ColonyRated R for violence and an attempted sexual assault. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Together’ Review: Love and Loathing in London

      by

      Sharon Horgan and James McAvoy play a battling couple trapped in lockdown in this theatrical pandemic drama.Like an awful herald of what could lie in wait as future filmmakers grapple with our ongoing viral nightmare, Stephen Daldry’s “Together” is an almost punishing watch. That it’s bearable at all is entirely because of the superlative acting skills of James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan as an unnamed couple forced to endure an extended London lockdown. In place of a plot, we get a setup: They can’t stand the sight of each other.A yearlong pandemic diary embedded in a prickly domestic negotiation, the movie is essentially a two-person play set in the upscale kitchen of the couple’s comfortable middle-class home. Repeatedly breaking the fourth wall — perhaps to avoid breaking the crockery — the two address the camera in earnest monologues. While these can range from confessional to explanatory (like a lengthy ponder on the meaning of “exponential” when tallying Covid infections), they are almost always suffocatingly self-absorbed.An agonizing opening scene lays out the pair’s practiced hostility (“I hate your face!” “I think of you as a cancer!”) and the bickering state of their union. She’s a Liberal of some privilege; he’s a Tory from a poor background. She works with a refugee charity; he has a highly profitable consulting business. Floating somewhere on the periphery is a young son, Artie (Samuel Logan), who’s supposedly the glue that keeps the couple quarantining together. A monologue from him might have gone a long way toward explaining his parents’ dysfunction.The movie’s persistent squabbling is bad, but its too-raw reminders of pandemic trials are almost worse. The reports of denuded grocery stores and mask refuseniks; the paeans to an overworked Somali caregiver and a saintly nurse standing watch over a relative’s hospital bed. And by intermittently stamping the movie with a date and a U.K. death count, Daldry seems to chide us for caring about his characters at all, the fussing and fighting of the living rendered even more trivial alongside the bodies piling up off screen.An awkward and uncomfortable experiment, “Together” unfolds with a staginess that rebuffs our involvement. Political lectures are never fun, and the movie’s bitterly angry attacks on government ineptitude and nursing-home deaths made me wonder if the writer, Dennis Kelly, needed a back rub. So it’s a relief when McAvoy’s character starts growing asparagus and an uneasy détente is reached: No one needs a plague tale whose arc refuses to bend toward hope.TogetherRated R for cruel language and cringeworthy sex talk. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘No Man of God’ Review: Buddying Up to Bundy

      by

      The film dramatizes what it sees as the rapport between an F.B.I. profiler and the serial killer.“No Man of God” can’t help but play like the special Ted Bundy episode of “Mindhunter” we haven’t gotten to see yet. The movie, directed by Amber Sealey, dramatizes what it sees as the rapport that developed between Bundy (Luke Kirby) and the F.B.I. profiler Bill Hagmaier (Elijah Wood), who visited Bundy in prison and tried to pick his brain.While they aren’t the only two characters — Robert Patrick appears as Hagmaier’s boss, and Aleksa Palladino plays a lawyer trying to get Bundy a reprieve from execution — the movie is at heart a two-hander, with tense scenes of Bundy and Hagmaier interrogating each another. Will Hagmaier get Bundy to share every grisly detail? Or will Bundy crack him? In this telling, they grow comfortable enough for at least Bundy to consider it a friendship.For anyone who has heard audio of Bundy, Kirby’s impersonation will sound chillingly close to the real killer’s deadened, yet at times disturbingly raffish, cadence. Wood is persuasive, too, although Kit Lesser’s script writes the character as a cliché: the agent who gets too close.Introductory text says the film is inspired by F.B.I. transcripts, recordings and Hagmaier’s recollections, but the conversations carry a distinct echo of other serial-killer movies. Bundy wants to convince Hagmaier that he, too, would be capable of murder, and that they think similar thoughts. The mind meld becomes so intense that when Bundy unburdens himself toward the end, Sealey employs crosscutting that draws attention to the connections between them, and has Hagmaier recite dialogue that should logically be coming out of Bundy’s mouth. The film’s Hagmaier may finally have gotten inside Bundy’s head, but — even in the forthrightly nonrealistic context of the sequence — the mental-linkage conceit is absurd.No Man of GodNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed’ Review: No Gloss

      by

      This documentary on “The Joy of Painting” star focuses on the controversy over who controls his brand and legacy.Bob Ross’s hair was a thing of beauty. When he appeared on “Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee,” Regis Philbin teased him about his Afro, which Ross sweetly admitted might be more nurtured than nature. And photos of Ross as a teenager and then as a young airman rocking a pompadour make clear he always liked a good ’do. This is among the cheerier scenes in the director Joshua Rofé’s “Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed,” a documentary less about Ross’s life than about what happened to his brand in the later years and after his death. Annette and Walt Kowalski, who were Ross’s business partners, are not painted in a flattering light. (The couple declined to participate in the film.)Ross’s television show, “The Joy of Painting,” ran from 1983 to 1994. And the title nods to the way Ross coached students and then an exponentially growing audience to treat a mistake as a “happy accident.” Yet, as much as happy was Ross’s touchstone word, grief permeates the film. Ross died of lymphoma in 1995. He was 52. His only child, Steven, and friends and fellow artists John Thamm and Dana Jester carry the heft of the storytelling here.If we are to trust the film — and this is not an unreasonable concern given that it treads on disputes over the estate — then heartache laid the foundation of Ross’s relationship with the Kowalskis. Annette Kowalski had recently lost her son when she took a course with Ross in 1982. A still deeper sorrow infuses the film. “I’ve wanted to get this story out for all these years,” Steven Ross says early on. Later he states, “What they did was shameful, and people should know that.”From the outset, the documentary nudges us toward the shadows with a twinkling then foreboding score. Illustrations with the texture of a paint-by-numbers kit underline the darker themes of Steven Ross’s recollections. The film’s depiction of what the Kowalskis did to own Ross’s name when he became ill is ugly, yet unsurprising given that the parties were in the midst of a legal dispute after Ross’s death.Toward the end, the director pulls out of the moral tailspin by introducing folks touched by Ross. These testimonials are welcome but they underscore that the other side of this saga is sorely missing. The melancholy result is that the painter with the spectacularly lulling voice, the hallmark ’fro and the liberating kindness remains a mystery; not the brand that’s made millions but the guy who touched millions.Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & GreedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More