"All of Us Strangers"

   ☆☆☆☆☆ 

The London skyline glimmers with an ethereal glow in the opening shots of All of Us Strangers, as screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) sits at his computer and struggles with creating something new. And the city glows with promise—but Adam can't touch it, if only because the windows in his high-rise apartment block don't open.

Adam seems to be one of only two tenants in the whole of the modern building, which seems to open onto the sky, despite its dim and claustrophobic hallways. The other is Harry (Paul Mescal). They have seen each other before, in the oddest of ways, and when they finally meet Harry wastes no time in making the moves on Adam. Though he's rebuffed, something about their meeting seems almost fated.

And call it coincidence, but just after meeting and rejecting Harry, Adam takes a trip to his childhood home and finds, to almost no astonishment at all, that his mother and father still live in the house—even though they died decades ago.

So, at least on this one level, All of Us Strangers is a ghost story, but there are no sinister happenings, no spooky goings-on: These ghosts exist to try to reconcile the present and the past, and the whole of All of Us Strangers takes place in a quiet and melancholy place between life and death as Adam meets with his mother and father (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) with increasing frequency.

Largely, they discuss Adam's homosexuality, which is such an integral part of of All of Us Strangers—a movie that is in equal parts emotionally resonant, sexually stimulating, and engagingly mystifying—that it's something of a shock to learn the novel on which it's based is about a straight man and his relationship with a woman (and the ghosts of his parents). Writer-director Andrew Haigh has taken the scenario and turned it into a film that contains at its core a quiet devastation known mainly to gay men, yet I suspect also broad enough to touch the hearts of anyone who grew up differently than they, or their parents, hoped.

As Adam and Harry, initially aloof, grow closer, so does Adam draw nearer to his parents, in a flight of fantasy that remains perfectly grounded. An unexpected delight in All of Us Strangers is how perfectly, and without stereotype, it draws us back into the mid-1980s and the struggles of a teenager growing up gay in the twin shadows of homophobia and AIDS.

All of Us Strangers is partly about coming to terms with a difficult, turbulent past, and with the guilt that's left for so many who escaped the terror of the times only to struggle with the emotional challenges of finding love. But, more deeply, it's about the way death and time work together to leave everyone unfinished, unresolved, yearning for reconciliation.

There's another layer, too, to All of Us Strangers, one I haven't touched on, one that every viewer should be allowed to discover on their own. I thought it massively satisfying, deeply puzzling, and mysterious enough that I'm eager to see All of Us Strangers another time. Or two. Or three.

Viewed December 31, 2023 — Landmark Sunset 5

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"Society of the Snow"

   ☆☆☆ 

The first time this story was made into a mainstream film, in 1976, Paramount crudely dubbed and quickly released a low-budget exploitation flick called Survive! that inexplicably opened at No. 1 at the box office. Then, 30 years ago (astonishing in itself) came Frank Marshall's Alive, which was given a big-budget Hollywood sheen by, of all studios, Disney.

Now comes Society of the Snow (original title: La Sociedad de la Nieve), which both strips away the big-budget gloss despite having a big budget financed by the biggest of the modern versions of studios, Netflix, but that remains dogged by the core problem telling this story will always have.

The story is that of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which was carrying 45 people, mostly a rugby team and their friends and families, when it crashed high in the Andes Mountains. When two survivors finally made it to safety after a harrowing 10-day trek, 14 more young men were found alive—72 days after the initial crash. To survive those two months in the barren, snow-covered and storm-tossed mountains, they had to resort to cannibalism.

Almost every other aspect of their incredible, unbelievable experience pales next to the discussion of cannibalism. The survivors didn't even want to tell the world what they had done, knowing that it would become the only part of the story anyone wanted to know about. And so it remains.

From that first shlock movie to Frank Marshall's film this one, directed by J.A. Bayona, whose The Impossible and A Monster Calls each were harrowing in different ways, "they had to eat the bodies of the dead passengers" is the immutable fact at the core of the story. It is sort of shameful to admit it; it is not something we are supposed to want to know about. But it is there. And no filmmaker has ever been able to get past it; Bayona is no exception.

Society of the Snow is the first film to cast Uruguyan and Argentinean performers in the leading roles, almost all of whom are newcomers, which further adds to the film's significant challenges. The screenplay doesn't take time to help us get to know them before they take off in the plane, so in the confusion of the wreckage, all the actors seem interchangeable. With a cast this large, it's imperative to give us the time to know who the characters are, but none of the young men (or the few women who initially survive) become much more than stoic cyphers, often wracked with guilt over their actions.

Adding to the confusion over who's who is the film's incessant use of close-ups, which might work much better on a home screen than on the big screen. None of that can take away from the impressive, often grueling, physicality of the film. Society of the Snow is in every way well-made and constructed. But with not much differentiation between characters and even less in the setting—snow becomes hard to make interesting after a while—the movie has a hard time investing its audience emotionally. It comes down to wanting to know if they really did do that in order to survive.

Yes, they did. And since this is an oft-told story, Society of the Snow should be about a lot more than that. In its final few minutes, the film manages becomes more thoughtful and profound, but this story and the real people behind it may never overcome the shock factor of what they did to make it through those inconceivable 72 days.

Viewed December 27, 2023 — Laemmle NoHo 7

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"The Zone of Interest"

  ☆☆☆☆½ 

Nothing about The Zone of Interest is easy, a promise this imposingly calm film makes clear even before the first shot—a bucolic lakeside picnic—appears on screen. The movie opens instead on an empty screen, its title taking an ominously long time to fade into nothingness as we sit in the audience and are assaulted by a cacophony of sounds we don't understand. This goes on for an unusually long time, making us squirm in our seats, and it won't be the last time: The Zone of Interest is nothing if not uncomfortable for nearly every second of its running time.

The Zone of Interest is a movie about the Holocaust, a description that will leave you thinking the wrong thing. It's set at Auschwitz, the most infamous of the death factories, hellscapes of terror, torture and murder. But The Zone of Interest never goes inside the fortified exterior walls of Auschwitz. It doesn't need to.

The story it tells is terrifying and almost inconceivably disturbing for a different reason—it follows the story of Rudolf Höss, who was a real SS officer who led the operations at Auschwitz, where more than 2 million Jews were first gassed to death then burned in incinerators that ran all through the night; "loads" of 700 Jews an hour, we are told.

Höss, who is played with a chilling sort of blandness by Christian Friedl, has a wife (Sandra Hüller, equally unnerving) and children, including an infant. Together, they live in a beautiful villa with many rooms, a staff of servants, and two large, verdant gardens in which they like to host parties. Beginning near the front yard and extending the length of the garden is one of the impenetrable walls of Auschwitz.

Almost every hour or every day, the Hösses can hear men and women begging for their lives, screaming in terror, being shot in cold blood. Guns crack constantly. And above the backyard of the home that Frau Höss loves so much are the smokestacks, always belching out their unthinkable ash, emitting a hellish glow at night.

This is the background of their lives. They don't mind, especially since it comes with perks: from toys to shirts to china and silverware to fur coats, the Höss family can select any number of luxuries from the confiscated earthly possessions of the Jews sent to die at Auschwitz. They wear these clothes to lavish garden parties, where they eat, drink and be merry to the sounds of gunshots and bullets thudding against flesh.

All of this, director Jonathan Glazer shows is in long, static, unhurried shots, often composed with wide lenses. You may feel, watching The Zone of Interest, that not a lot happens, that it feels a little dull and ordinary, because this ultimate evil was carried out with bureaucratic banality.

There are inconceivable terrors on display in The Zone of Interest: One of Hess's sons collects human teeth; a local servant girl rinses blood from Höss's shoes; a seemingly mundane business meeting revolves around discussion of a new method to kill as many people as possible as swiftly as possible. None of this seems to disturb Rudolf Höss or his family—except during one peaceful trip to the river when the discovery of human remains causes unexpected panic.

Otherwise, children run and play. Young lovers dare an illicit kiss. Mother and Father fight over simple matters. Life goes on for the Hösses and their friends, though not for the tens of thousands of Jews who, right next door, are being treated like animals led to execution.

The Zone of Interest never asks us to empathize with the Hösses, nor does it suggest we should or could. They are cold and cruel and evil; nothing they do bothers them. But director Glazer has crafted a film that always, in almost every frame, bothers us. There is no rest throughout—the film is suffused with constant noises of cruelty, pain and death. Everywhere, the walls of the Auschwitz extermination camp crowd into view. It is always, always there.

There have been many films about the Nazis who conceived of this unfathomable evil, but never one like this, that presents them as such boring, everyday people, striving to be good at their jobs and earn the lives they have made. How could they have done such things? As easily, The Zone of Interest tells us with unyielding, oppressive certainty, as you or me.

Viewed December 21, 2023 — Vista Theater

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"Poor Things"

  ☆☆☆☆☆ 

Yorgos Lanthimos gives his audience no opportunity to settle in to Poor Things, which confuses and assaults from the moment the opening credits appear. This is not a film or a filmmaker who wants to take things slow and steady, and that's for the best, because if there were a minute to really consider what's on screen, the whole movie might collapse.

But it doesn't. Instead, it moves at its own crazed pace and dares the audience to keep up, and by the time the film and the audience are in synch (it did, I admit, take me quite a few minutes), Poor Things has worked its spell.

The movie takes place in the late 1800s, opening in Victorian England on a truly mad scientist who has shocking ideas. Well, maybe not so shocking, because they aren't too far removed from the general outline of the story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. But what if the monster wasn't attacked and killed by outraged villagers, didn't have that flat head and those neck bolts, and learned at an advanced pace? And what if that so-called monster looked less like Boris Karloff and more like Emma Stone?

To give the broadest outline of Poor Things is to imply this is a horror film, or a science-fiction parable, or some demented satire, and all of those things are undeniably true. But Poor Things begins much in the same way, coincidentally, as Barbie, with the created woman treated merely as, well, some poor thing, and all the men around her laying one claim or another to her brain, her body, or both.

The name given to this fabulous creation is Bella Baxter, and it isn't long before she becomes the subject of legal wrangling and is swept off her unsteady, ungainly feet by a lustful lawyer who wants her for only one thing—the same thing they all want: her body. Bella, meanwhile, is starting to get an idea that she might crave adventure. That she might want something ... more.

Trying to condense the narrative plot points in Poor Things into a few lines is impossible, and the last paragraph is only the first 30 minutes or so of a wholly unexpected adventure, entirely disarming, frequently grotesque, often shocking in its graphic and matter-of-fact displays of both body functions and, above all, sex. Lots and lots and lots of sex.

This isn't a movie for prudes, but even the most prudish will have to admit they see something of themselves in the story of Bella's awakening to life and its complexities. As she journeys into Europe, her unpredictable experiences recall something of Voltaire's Candide and John Irving's Garp. Yet Poor Things is grandly, defiantly singular. This isn't like any movie you've known, and its blunt observations of humanity and the things "polite society" doesn't usually talk about (but we do, in our minds, in our hearts, in our darkened bedrooms or less savory locales) might land cinematic body blows on uptight audiences who aren't prepared.

Consider that a warning, a challenge and a delighted, full-throated recommendation: Poor Things is a marvel, a challenge, and a gloriously unprecedented bit of creation.

Viewed December 18, 2023 — AMC Topanga

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"Saltburn"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

Some very terrible people do some very terrible things in Saltburn, and while it may feel like at this particular moment in time we don't much need another movie about horrible people who live morally reprehensible lives, somehow Saltburn winds up delightfully, perversely enjoyable.

That said, understand that if you see Saltburn, you may find yourself gasping at some of the things that are done. The night I saw the movie with a packed audience—who seemed to be unaware that Saltburn has been getting mixed reviews and marginal audience scores—the gasps were audible and the uncomfortable laughter was loud and appreciative. There are things in Saltburn you might wish you hadn't seen, yet the film as a whole is so assured, twisty and well-executed that you never once want to turn away.

Take, for instance (and, don't worry, there shall be no spoilers) that midnight walk through the magnificent grounds of Saltburn, an impossibly grand, imposing and often cold estate in the English countryside. Or the scene in the graveyard. Or the scene in the bathtub. Any of the scenes in the bathtub, come to think of it, and there are a few. Or the discomfiting scenes featuring Poor Dear Pamela, a hilariously unaware bore of a person played with sniveling perfection by Carey Mulligan. These aren't scenes you have seen in movies before. You'll probably never see them in movies again, either.

But that's the perverse beauty of writer-director Emerald Fennell's contemporary gothic melodrama, in which Mulligan is just part of an ensemble cast that seems to have no inhibitions at all. Barry Keoghan, frequently an unsettling presence in film, and Jacob Elordi, frequently a tall and sexy presence on TV, lead that cast, and they excel at leaning into what we think we know about them. One of the most intriguing aspects of Saltburn is how aware it is that we will immediately make assumptions about its characters, its setting, its motives, and then has fun making us wonder if we were right or wrong all along.

Keoghan and Elordi are undeniably at the center of the film, but they are not the only characters or actors of consequence. Saltburn also brings us Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, and two less familiar but equally impressive performers in pivotal roles, Archie Madekwe and Alison Oliver, all of whom create such specific fully realized characters that involve us deeply in their unsettling, private dramas. So deeply, in fact, that like a master magician we don't even notice how easily we've been misled.

But to say anything more would be unfair and unwise—except that this is not a film for everyone, nor is it one that likely stands up to much scrutiny. It will shock and offend the easily shocked and offended, and it will almost certainly fall apart if picked over too much by the kind of moviegoer inclined to pick. There seems little deeper in its agenda than to entertain and provoke, two things it does spectacularly well.

Viewed Dec. 9, 2023 — AMC Universal City

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"The Abyss" Special Edition

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

At least from the perspective of the audience, The Abyss is a prime example of the cinematic ends justifying the means. To say this was an arduous, brutal production would, apparently, be putting it mildly. "I'm not talking about The Abyss and I never will," actor Ed Harris said in his one and only comment about making the movie. Likewise, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio has described the working conditions as "unnatural," and said she'll never talk about it again.

Is it some sort of disloyalty to two fantastic performers to find The Abyss an extraordinary achievement? That statement applies not only to the film as a technical marvel and a cracking adventure story, but to the performances by both Harris and Mastrantonio, who both deliver strong and compelling performances that rank with the best work either has done. And for both of them, that's saying something.

Whatever trauma they experienced cannot be diminished, but every sacrifice they made has proven to be in service of a movie that in many ways is better and more fulfilling now than it was 34 years ago, when it underwhelmed at the box office and left many audiences puzzled.

In part, at least, that was because of an anti-climactic third act in which the film moves from an intense, industrial-strength (and -looking) action film to a gentle encounter with underwater aliens. In the original theatrical release, the aliens appear, they act as a sort of deus ex machina to rescue our heroes from an impossible situation, then the film just sort of ends.

A few years after the theatrical release, director and writer James Cameron—whose technical mastery is unassailable and whose scripts are often derided for the simplicity that makes them fun, accessible, and insanely popular—went back and added in an extended ending, along with some additional scenes earlier in the film, that make all the difference.

The story, in broad terms, involves the crew of an experimental underwater oil rig that is called in to assist with the military search for a nuclear submarine that crashed with live warhead aboard. The rig was built by Lindsey Brigman (Mastrantonio) and its crew is led by Bud (Harris), who are estranged, warring husband and wife. There are evil Navy SEALS, a topside hurricane, and political tensions that drive the story and lead to some incredible action sequences and one of the most wrenching and nail-biting near-death scenes in movie history.

Everything about The Abyss is impressive and works as well as it did three decades ago, often better because we've become so used to empty spectacles lacking in character development, story and ideas. The Abyss has all of those things, arguably maybe a little too many ideas not entirely thought through, though to my mind even those climactic aliens and their renewed sense of purpose fits both the story, the mood of the late 1980s, and, more importantly, the title.

In 1989, the world was looking into an abyss. Now, here we are again. And it's something of a timely joy to have James Cameron's The Abyss back with us (it played in theaters for one day only, and will be released next week to streaming services) to remind us that our worst instincts are often little more than the mirror image of our best.

Viewed Dec. 6, 2023 — AMC The Grove

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