Ma Ha's Magic Film Corner

The kind of movie that you’d think was made before the members of the cast were famous and then released now to capitalize on said fame (just look at that poster) but no, Pottersville was shot and released in the year of or our Lord, 2017. Apparently Michael Shannon is old friends with first-time feature director Seth Henrikson, which explains his presence and executive producer credit on this holiday turkey.

To be fair, Pottersville is fairly intriguing for the first half-hour or so, with Shannon doing a decent Jimmy Stewart riff as the kindly general store owner of a quaint small town who finds out during the holiday season that not only is his wife (Christina Hendricks) cheating on him with the town sheriff (Ron Perlman), but they’re secretly part of the furry community as well. When his response to this is to get wasted, throw on a Bigfoot suit that he has lying around his store for some reason and run around the town at night hollering like a lunatic, I was all strapped in and ready for a wild, unpredictable wild. 

Unfortunately, once the town goes crazy over this supposedly real Bigfoot sighting and Thomas Lennon arrives as a smarmy reality-TV host who specializes in tracking down mythical creatures, we’re treated to a series of wacky comic misadventures that all land with a thud (including a decade-late extended reference to the Christian Bale-Terminator rant). And yet the film also wants to have that heartwarming It’s a Wonderful Life touch, a balance that completely implodes once it gets to the incoherent third act and slapped-together climax.

Yet somehow, Michael Shannon can always pull out a worthy performance with even the shoddiest of material, as he garners a ton of sympathy for his put-upon character even when you barely have any clue what the filmmakers are trying to say. He makes Pottersville way more watchable than it has any right to be.

God bless TBS Superstation for giving us the gift of a yuletide action extravaganza that sees Dean Cain and Eric Roberts going mano-e-mano in a mall during the holidays. Christmas Rush (a.k.a. Breakaway) doesn’t really pretend to be anything other than a direct Die Hard clone, which is kind of admirable I guess, and instead just focuses on cramming as much ridiculous mayhem into its running time as its budget will allow.

Cain plays a reckless Chicago cop named Cornelius Morgan who has just been suspended due to excessive force in a sting operation that unfolds in the opening scenes. Roberts plays a master thief named Jimmy Scalzetti, whom Cornelius (good names, btw) has been trying to apprehend for years. So it’s a good thing that Scalzetti plans to pull off a Christmas Eve heist at the mall where Cornelius’s wife (Baywatch’s Erika Eleniak) works, just as Cornelius himself unexpectedly arrives at close to pick her up (and with a lovely bouquet of Christmas flowers to boot). 

What was apparently supposed to be a simple after-hours robbery turns into a major shit show as Scalzetti takes hostage the remaining civilians in the mall (including Cornelius’s wife) and sends out his array of goons to dispatch Cornelius. Numerous shootouts and massive destruction follow (particularly from a couple of inept demolition experts that are part of Scalzetti’s crew), all of which apparently nobody in the vicinity can hear since at no point do the authorities swing by to investigate all this obvious ruckus.

Cain and Roberts tear into their roles like the festive hams they are, although Roberts definitely takes the cake (when does he not, though?) with a hilariously pained and drawn-out death at the end that plays like somebody forgot to yell “cut” or something. 

Also memorable are the film’s awkward attempts at inclusivity during the holidays. In one scene, while the hostages are all locked up in a storage room, Mrs. Cornelius tries to lighten the mood by going around the room and having everyone relate their best Christmas ever. When she gets to one of the security guards and he responds that he’s Muslim, she blankly stares, nods, says “Okay” and then quickly moves on to the next person. Christmas may be a Christian affair, as evidenced by the cross necklace worn around her neck or the fact that in another scene she prays for the lord to send them an “angel of mercy to deliver us from evil” (that angel would be Dean Cain of course), but I guess people from other creeds are welcome to join in as well.

I also took a page from Cain’s handbook and picked up Christmas flowers for my own girlfriend this year so it was a learning experience all around.

It happens every year - I plan to post reviews throughout the festival and then I either don’t have time or get lazy or can’t bear to look at a screen anymore so I fall behind. But I haven’t given up yet! Here’s brief (very brief) thoughts on everything else that graced my eyeballs a few weeks ago.

CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR - dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul

More beautifully serene cinema from the Thai master. He merges the real world and the spirit world better than any other current filmmaker I can think of. His movies are always such a treat.

ONE FLOOR BELOW - dir. Radu Muntean

A super slow-burn from Romanian new-waver Muntean. It starts out with a premise straight out of a trashy domestic thriller (a genre that I LOVE), but then subverts your expectations of such a thriller at every turn. It’s a brilliant psychological exercise, keeping the tension locked up in the protagonist’s psyche.

HIGH-RISE - dir. Ben Wheatley

I admire the anarchic spirit, but Wheatley’s latest chaotic genre-mashup left me a little underwhelmed. Although, that may be largely due to the fact that I read J.G. Ballard’s source novel earlier this year and the film adaptation didn’t really capture the strange mood that the book left me with. Instead, Wheatley throws a lot at you, both in terms of plot and varying tones, and not all of it sticks. Dude’s definitely got style, but we already knew that.

FEBRUARY - dir. Oz Perkins

Creepy as hell, drenched in mood, this enigmatic horror puzzle will stick with you after and possibly give you nightmares. It’s also touching and heartbreaking, with a trio of impressive performances from Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, and Lucy Boynton. A great debut from actor-turned-director Perkins (son of Anthony).

EVOLUTION - dir. Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Over a decade after her first feature, Innocence, Hadzihalilovic is back with another surreal fairy tale. This one is a darker and more abstract work (with a ton of beautifully disturbing imagery) and even though I can’t say I made sense of everything, it still lingers in the mind long after. Its staunch refusal to provide any clear explanations makes its mysteries more intriguing.

THE MISSING GIRL - dir. A.D. Calvo

Calvo is a horror director with four previous features to his credit made over the last few years. Here he switches gears to quirky, life affirming, middle-aged crisis comedy about a schlubby comic-book store owner who goes searching for his new employee when she doesn’t show up for work one day. He’s going for a Ghost World or American Splendor vibe but ends up with the kind of watered-down, clumsily sentimental film we’ve all seen hundreds of times before. It’s not particularly funny and there’s no mystery to where the missing girl of the title is, so the point of the film gets lost. Lead actor Robert Longstreet, who is a superb role player from numerous indie flicks, deserves a much better star vehicle than this.

LOVE - dir. Gaspar Noé

A lot of people are going to hate this but what can I say - I loved Love. It’s actually a lot more romantic than I expected, giving off a playful, freewheeling French New Wave vibe along the lines of a Jules and Jim. Sure, it’s indulgent and probably features more sex than is needed, but that’s also exactly what our memories of love are like. It’s a sensual, vivid experience and it features not just one, but two 3D cumshots. When Noé makes a movie, he fucking goes for it.

ANOMALISA - dir. Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson

I expected a masterpiece and I got a masterpiece. Kaufman’s storytelling is fully intact as he weaves a touching, hilariously weird love story of sorts. The stop-motion animation complements and expands the thematics of it and voice actors David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan nail their respective roles. Paramount picked it up for distribution and will release it by the end of the year - please just go see it.

THE WAVE - dir. Roar Uthaug

Norwegian director Roar Uthaug (how I wish I had this name) said during the Q&A for this that he was inspired by the disaster films of the 1990s like Dante’s Peak and Twister. Sign me up! His own attempt, however, about a real town in the mountains of Norway that is under threat of a potential tidal wave through the adjacent fjord if the pass falls out, is a fairly bland carbon copy of these films. But if you’re a fan of the genre, there’s some fun to be had as well as a ton of unintentional laughs stemming from a heavy reliance on cheesy emotional manipulation. At least the chief disaster sequence is well done, making the tidal wave an impressive and tense visual effects spectacle.

FULL CONTACT - dir. David Verbeek

A moody allegory that starts off as a portrait of a disconnected drone strike soldier in the Nevada desert (reminiscent of Andrew Niccol’s recent Good Kill) and then morphs into something else. It’s surreal and beautifully composed, with an arresting lead performance from French actor Grégoire Colin (a Claire Denis regular). A strong thematic work that leaves you thinking.

RAMS - dir. Grímur Hákonarson

Winner of this year’s Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, Rams is a great little tragicomedy about two sheep farmer brothers who live next to each other but haven’t spoken in years. It’s a hilariously dry film that becomes something more tender and thrilling, particularly in the final act. Plus there’s a lot of sheep, so that’s good.

THE CLUB - dir. Pablo Larraín

After the more crowd-pleasing (but still excellent) No, Larraín returns to the more insular vibe of his earlier efforts, crafting a complex meditation on good and evil within a Chilean country house that is home to a group of excommunicated priests. He again chooses a unique shooting style, giving the film a foggy muted look that complements the characters’ psyches. It’s the kind of harsh honesty mixed with dark absurd comedy that he does best.

STRANGER - dir. Ermek Tursunov

Kazakhstan’s official entry for the Oscars this year tries to be so Hollywood it hurts. There’s nothing wrong with making an expansive period epic based around the important historical events within the country in the first half of the 20th century - but when it’s filled with so many groan-worthy cliches, then it’s hard to take things too seriously. If you like some major cheese, have at it.

JOURNEY TO THE SHORE - dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Kurosawa’s latest is a delicate supernatural romance that uses some of his usual ghost story tricks but in a non-threatening way. It’s a tad too sentimental at times, but overall it’s a touching story about grief and trying to move on when a loved one has passed, sharing some similarities with Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films. Not one of his best but worth a watch if you’re a fan.

JAMES WHITE - dir. Josh Mond

An intense performance from Christopher Abbott anchors Mond’s directorial debut. Framed mostly in close-ups, we follow the titular character as he spirals into self-destructive behaviour after his estranged father dies and his mother’s (Cynthia Nixon, doing some career-best work here) cancer returns. The evocative sound design puts you right in the thick of Manhattan and the camera refuses to release its harrowing grip. It all comes back to Abbott’s performance though, which is honestly De Niro-esque in its intensity.

BLACK MASS - dir. Scott Cooper

Have you seen Goodfellas? How about The Departed? Or any contemporary gangster film for that matter? Well, then you’ve pretty much seen Black Mass. It’s competent but painfully familiar, with a bunch of famous actors doing sketchy Boston accents. As for Johnny Depp... he looks like Dracula, but he’s the best I’ve seen him since the first Pirates of the Caribbean. Although that’s not saying much.

COUPLE IN A HOLE - dir. Tom Geens

This drama about a middle-aged couple that retreats to an Eastern European forest to live as hermits is stylishly made, but lacks any surprise in the direction that it takes. There’s an initially unspecified trauma that has driven them out into the wilderness and when a nearby farmer wants to help them, it doesn’t take too long to figure out what his motivations are. Beautifully shot and scored though, and it culminates in an ending that, while not entirely unexpected, is pretty bold.

HOMESICK - dir. Anne Sewitsky

An affecting Norwegian drama about incest that is a lot sadder than I expected. Not that I expect every incest movie to be a laugh-out-loud comedy, but the emotional fragility and abuse that the lead character, Charlotte, experiences as she navigates a burgeoning sexual relationship with the half-brother that she barely knows really hits hard. Newcomer Ine Marie Wilmann breaks your heart in the lead making you invest in her struggle completely.

WE MONSTERS - dir. Sebastian Ko

An alternately intriguing and frustrating German film about parents trying to cover up their teenage daughter’s terrible crime. Paul and Christine are divorced and living with new partners, which has led to their daughter, Sarah, becoming a horrible, spoiled brat as they both try and cater to her whims out of guilt. So when she does something really, really bad, they scramble around to try and sweep it under the rug, which of course only leads to worse things.

The actors all play the mounting hysteria pretty well and it’s jagged trajectory never bores you. As Paul and Christine start to make stupider decisions, the film does get a little annoying, but at the same time, it’s keeping in line with how normal people may act in these kind of pressure situations.

In certain moments, Ko seems to be going for more of a blackly comedic vibe, but then he always steers things back to a more serious level. It’s a shame, because I think if the whole thing was played for more laughs, it would have worked better - not broad comedy or anything, just a continuation of the subtle edgy humour that is already present in a few specific scenes.

In any case, the note that he ends the film on is great.

HARDCORE - dir. Ilya Naishuller

I’m surprised it’s taken this long for someone to make a completely first-person shooter style action movie. Sure, there were those cool 5 minutes in the otherwise awful Doom but this Russian-American coproduction from first time feature director Naishuller (who expands what he did in a previous viral music video) takes this concept to the nth degree. It’s basically Robocop or Universal Soldier with the energy of Crank but all in POV and it’s so much fucking fun. 

I don’t even know how this was put together, as the lead character punches, kicks, shoots, and jumps around through a futuristic Russia. The action setpieces are large and explosive and seem to use as minimal CGI as possible so that you’re in it every bloody step of the way. Sharlto Copley is also hilarious as a constantly regenerating sidekick named Jimmy.

THE LOBSTER - dir. Yorgos Lanthimos

Lanthimos’s bizarre worldview broadens significantly in scope with his first English-language feature and I think it may actually be his funniest film yet. But like his breakthrough Dogtooth and its follow-up Alps, the humour is often very, very dark. The most intriguing thing initially may be seeing famous actors like Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz and John C. Reilly enacting the stilted absurdist performance style that is common in the Greek director’s movies. Farrell in particular is pretty hilarious as a schlubby awkward loser.

But as it progresses, The Lobster becomes more than just a weird stunt joke of a movie. The world Lanthimos creates - wherein single people are forced to find a mate in a certain amount of time or else they’ll be turned into the animal of their choosing - ends up mirroring some scathing and touching ideas about modern society, from the concept of relationships in general to our obsessions with setting rules and boundaries.

It’s similarly styled to his previous work, but I’d say it still feels like a pretty big step forward.

THE SKY TREMBLES AND THE EARTH IS AFRAID AND THE TWO EYES ARE NOT BROTHERS - dir. Ben Rivers

Yes, that is actually the title of this gem of a film from experimental British director Rivers. I saw his last film, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, at TIFF a couple of years ago, which was 2/3 contemplative nature mood piece and 1/3 piercing metal music performance, but overall pretty intriguing.

This new one starts off fairly normal, as we observe a Spanish filmmaker (real life director Oliver Laxe) shooting some kind of historical film in the deserts of Morocco. In the second half, however, the director leaves the set and ends up following a mysterious black-hooded man who may or may not have been one of the actors from his film. From there on, the film gets stranger and stranger and even a little funnier. I don’t want to spoil much, but I’ll just say that the director character eventually gains the title of “Lord of the Tin Cans”.

The movie is pure avant-garde cinema so it’s definitely not for everyone, but if you’re in the mood for something different, give it a chance. It’s hypnotically shot on 16mm film and may just cast a spell on you.

BASKIN - dir. Can Evrenol

Baskin may be the first Turkish horror movie I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, it’s a dispiriting, boring waste of time. The plot concerns a unit of police officers who get called in for backup to some kind of old, abandoned building that serves as a portal to Hell. However, it’s really just an excuse for Evrenol to try and throw as much sick, twisted stuff as he can think up at you, regardless of any rhyme or reason. It basically turns into torture porn for the last third of the run time and yet for all the blood and gore, none of it has any real impact. It feels like you’re being baited by a teenager who’s just getting into horror movies and desperately wants to shock you.

The police officers are all unsympathetic assholes, so you don’t care what happens to any of them, especially after having to sit through their interminable raunchy sex talk in the opening scenes (again, going back to the teenage amateurishness of it all). Beyond this, there’s so much more banal and unnecessary dialogue (mostly of the expository type) that Evrenol should have just made a radio play out of this instead.

Once again, I am seeing a large handful of films for the Toronto International Film Festival this year because I looooooooove movies. Seriously, just hook them up to my veins already.

In between free McCafe trips, I’ma post some of my quick thoughts. Or ravings of a lunatic - however they come off to you, dear reader.

SON OF SAUL - dir. László Nemes

The Grand Prix winner at Cannes this year was a pretty heavy way to start off the fest. It’s by far the most immediate and visceral Holocaust movie I’ve ever seen, totally devoid of any sentimentality. It has a moral complexity that I was totally unprepared for, as we follow a concentration camp prisoner who is forced to burn the bodies of his fellow prisoners and work other horrific jobs for the Nazi guards. When he takes up a debatably delusional mission to secure a traditional Jewish burial for a young boy who has just been gassed, his actions can seem frustrating at times, as he puts a lot of other prisoners at risk in the process. But it captures the unthinkable mental state that you would have to endure in that situation in a way that you won’t be able to shake.

Shot in tight on the central character’s face for the majority in the running time, it’s a movie that never lets you off the hook.

GREEN ROOM - dir. Jeremy Saulnier

After his great neo-noir breakout Blue Ruin a couple of years ago, I was highly anticipating Saulnier’s pulpy sounding follow up. The premise is great: a hardcore punk band plays a sketchy show at a backwoods bar run by white supremacists and then after witnessing a crime, they find themselves holed up in the dingy green room while a surrounding group of Neo-Nazis try to flush them out. Saulnier sets up the atmosphere real well, much like he did in his previous film, and he submerges you in the setting perfectly.

And yet, still, I felt strangely underwhelmed. Once the action gets going and it turns into a proper siege film, everything proceeds fairly conventionally, without much shock or surprise. It certainly nails some moments here and there, but it never had me on the edge of my seat like I expected.

This review originally appeared as a shorter, edited version for Toronto Film Scene.

Kumiko, a young Japanese woman, lives a drab existence until one day when she finds a worn videotape of the movie Fargo. Believing it to be a factual document of some sort, she becomes obsessed with the idea that the satchel of money that Steve Buscemi’s character buries near the end of the film is still out there in the wilderness, waiting to be discovered. So Kumiko flies to America on a journey to Fargo, North Dakota to find the money, encountering some colourful characters on the way.

Just like the Coen brothers’ seminal masterpiece, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter also begins with the claim that what you are about to see is a true story. This time, however, there is a real life basis to the story. In November of 2001, a Japanese woman named Takako Konishi was found dead in a field in Minnesota. Based on a conversation she had with a police officer shortly before her death, it was speculated that she had come to the US to find the money buried in Fargo, convinced that it was actually a true story, and that she had died trying to locate it. It’s the kind of story that you wouldn’t believe if it weren’t true.

Except it’s not true. That story has long since been debunked and the real reason for Konishi’s death is now well known – she had just lost her job and came to the US to kill herself, choosing Minnesota because it was where she had once traveled with a former lover. She sent a suicide note to her parents and overdosed on alcohol and sedatives. The Fargo story was born out of a misunderstanding between her and the police officer and the media ran with it because of its juiciness. Now it’s just a common urban legend, one in which indie talents the Zellner brothers now run with for their own film.

This makes Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter an interesting proposition and the Zellners play with the idea of “truth” in their own unique way. Thinking in any logical fashion, the character of Kumiko (wonderfully played by Rinko Kikuchi) is completely delusional, never questioning that the treasure in Fargo is real, despite the fact that a quick internet search would disprove it and even if it was a documentary like she thinks, the treasure would most likely not still be there, since it would have already been investigated by the filmmakers. She doesn’t even know where she’s going beyond the town of Fargo, relying on a hand-made “map” that she’s just recreated of the fence next to where Buscemi buries the satchel, providing zero information on an actual location. How can you invest in Kumiko’s journey when it’s so obviously futile?

And yet the film is still oddly compelling. The Zellners reframe the story so that it’s less about the concrete details of her journey as it is about putting you in the headspace of someone who is completely at odds with the rest of the world and its expectations – a true outcast from conventional society. Almost half of the film is spent in Japan preceding her journey, so that you really get the sense of the constant daily pressures Kumiko feels to act a certain way and achieve certain goals that society deems important. Her stressful one-sided conversations with her mother about why Kumiko hasn’t gotten married yet or been promoted at her crappy office job get under our skin as well. It’s enough to drive anyone to escape and find an elusive treasure buried somewhere afar. No matter how crazy Kumiko’s quest is, the film meditates on how much crazier and more harmful it might actually be to blindly follow society’s expectations and how running away is sometimes the sanest reaction.

I finally caught up with this majorly acclaimed documentary after all these years and it's certainly an extremely important and scathing takedown of the corporate world. It's an engaging history lesson that does it's job of firing you up.

Is it just me though or is this movie kind of amateurishly made? It frustrates me to no end when documentary filmmakers decide that they don't need to put any thought whatsoever into the look or feel of their films. You're still making a movie - it's a visual medium for a reason. That's not to say I need heavy doses of style to keep me interested, but if you can't even figure out how to compose talking head interviews in a halfway decent manner, why even bother making a film? Just write a book or give a lecture or something.

Tusk is not a very good movie. It is at least better than Red State, though, which was Kevin Smith's first insistence that he can do darker horror material but only betrayed the fact that he seemingly didn't understand the genre at all.

Tusk works better because he plays it more as comedy than horror, enjoying how ridiculous the idea of a madman who captures people and turns them into walruses is. And the way Justin Long looks when he's finally transformed into said walrus is a pretty glorious money shot that you'll definitely want to Google image search if nothing else.

This film has no business being as long as it is though, stretching the thinnest of plots (developed by Smith and his producer buddy Scott Mosier after they brainstormed it on their podcast) to feature length. There are several unnecessary diversions here, including the much-talked about Johnny Depp subplot, where he plays a gross French-Canadian cop who's been after the killer for years. Admittedly, Depp is kind of amusing but what should be a small cameo turns into an entire third act lark. The French-Canadian stereotype is also just one of many obvious jokes about Canadian culture that Smith stuffs in. Being a Canadian myself, it doesn't offend me or anything - I'm just surprised that Americans still make jokes about us saying "a-boot". Is it really that funny?

Adding to the meaninglessness of the whole endeavour is the fact that Long's obnoxious podcast host character is such an irredeemable asshole that you don't really care about his fate. He kind of deserves it, to be honest.

So yeah, there's not much to really recommend here. But after watching an interview about the film with Smith on the Blu-ray, you remember how cool of a guy he is. His thoughts about how he hopes Tusk inspires new filmmakers to make their own movies, whether they love it or hate it, is endearing. After over two decades in the film industry, you can tell he's still super grateful and humble about where he's gotten. So I can't really be all that annoyed with his recent career choices. He's making movies his own damn way and I can certainly appreciate that.

If this had been made in Hollywood in the ‘90s by someone like Barbet Schroeder or Curtis Hanson, it would have been a ton of trashy fun. Unfortunately it’s been made now as a typically lifeless Telefilm-funded Canadian “prestige” picture… meaning it’s no fun at all.

The winner of the Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes Film Festival is a subtly beautiful delight. It’s an alternately naturalistic and dreamlike coming-of-age drama with some wonderful performances, especially from the young children.

Two hours of Sean Penn trying to prove that he’s still cool. Judging from the opening weekend box office, I guess the consensus is that Sean Penn is no longer cool.

Your typical Sundance-y styled indie dramedy, but it’s worth watching for Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, two of the funniest and most inspired comedians working today who also bring some real nice dramatic nuances to these performances. It’s a film that never really surprises you story-wise, but their chemistry is so good that you believe these two are really brother and sister. It’s not a bad little exploration of sibling bonds and the things we carry on from our parents.

Chilean director Raul Ruiz passed away a few years ago, leaving behind a remarkable body of work. Over his 50 year career, he’s got more than 100 directorial credits to his name, representing a broad variety of projects. The expansive Mysteries of Lisbon may not have been his last film (that would be the posthumously released Night Across the Street), but it feels very much like a grand final statement - an epic, sprawling saga about storytelling itself.

Beginning in 19th century Portugal, Ruiz tracks the lives of several different characters over many years, traversing France, Italy and Brazil as well. Everybody has secrets and the narrative consists of the revealing of these secrets by someone who knows to the person who wants to know, utilizing a constant flashback structure to enhance the feeling of a series of short stories. It’s interesting that a high percentage of the events that we see have already happened and the film is mostly a reminiscence of these things. So the story keeps doubling back on itself and filling in the blanks until we start to get a clear picture of the timeline. It’s a fascinating narrative gambit.

As for the plot itself, it’s mostly conventional melodrama but it’s treated in such a low-key way that it feels like a dream, or like the film is floating in the clouds. And with a runtime of over four hours, it rarely sags - never overheating the drama, but keeping you pleasantly engaged. There’s a good sense of deadpan humour here too.

An epic morality play that also doubles as a scathing critique of contemporary Russian society. The comparisons to Tarkovsky are apt - Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film is gorgeously and poetically bleak. It’s the best Russian film I’ve seen in quite some time (not that I see a ton of Russian films or anything). Meant as a retelling of the Book of Job, it is at once as ancient as its source material as it is alarmingly of the present. Definitely one of the masterworks of 2014.

One of the most famous true experimental films of all time is from Canada’s own Michael Snow and it’s a 45 minute long slow zoom across his New York City loft. That’s pretty much it. There are a few fragments of plot - some movers bringing in furniture, two women chatting while listening to the radio, a possible murder - but they all take place in the margins of the frame, not conveying enough information to fully comprehend.

Yet it’s mesmerizing. The central character is the space and it shows how little that space cares about the events that take place within it. It’s also kind of creepy, aided by a soundtrack of tones that gets increasingly more abrasive as the zoom gets closer to its endpoint.