Thirteen Lives (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

As a filmmaker, Ron Howard is fascinating because he vacillates so wildly between big-budget blockbuster fare and offbeat, heart-of-gold dramas. His movies are meticulously researched, even when they sometimes sacrifice realism for melodrama or spectacle. But you can almost always tell he's at the helm just because of his unique energy as manifested in the visuals, the pace, and sometimes the thematic material. Thirteen Lives is a bit unusual for him in that I forgot for most of its runtime that Howard was directing. Its urgent, grounded feeling -- and its presentation almost as a documentary -- is exciting from him, because it reminded me that Howard can put the prestige aside and tell a damn good story.

You'll probably remember the media frenzy from summer 2018 when a soccer coach and his team of a dozen adolescent boys were trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand for eighteen days. It wasn't that long ago, it's been told in several news specials and documentaries already, and its miraculous ending make it a readily familiar tale. It's quite a different matter, however, to be part of a dramatized version of those events. Howard has some trouble handling the "behind-the-scenes" scenes, in which a large international team of rescuers convenes to problem solve the rescue efforts, and that takes a lot of time and energy to establish all the characters and motives and concerns and why they matter. He's not helped much by the screenplay, which doesn't offer us much new information nor much emotional intrigue; writer William Nicholson (Everest, Gladiator, and many more) can't decide what parts of the story are most interesting, so he includes a little bit of everything.

Meanwhile, Howard seems determined to force thrills and chills out of the movie by focusing most on the flooded caves. The incredible sets and impressive real SCUBA work by the actors are wonderful, and add arresting authenticity to the film. Underwater cinematography and sound mixing isn't always beautiful, but it is always eerie and claustrophobic here, and really puts us in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave with the boys and the rescuers. I was very glad not to be swamped with unnecessary survival-type subplots, and the long middle part of the movie keeps us tightly focused on the physical and mental toll the six-hour dive through winding, pitch-black caves and tunnels took from the divers.

And while the cast is awesome -- led by Viggo Mortensen, Tom Bateman, Colin Farrell, and Joel Edgerton -- they aren't really playing fully realized characters so much as flat archetypes meant to move the plot along and remind us of the real-life heroes' names. Howard smartly tries to sidestep the "white savior" narrative by frequently reminding us of the Thai Navy rescuers, the Thai soccer coach, and even the local farmers who destroy their own rice fields to reroute incoming water away from the cave system. The closest thing to a complex character in the film is the lame duck governor, who pops in a few significant times to navigate the awkwardness of handling catastrophe while in political power while also being keenly aware that he's one his way out and is uniquely positioned to take full blame if the boys aren't rescued.

My problem with Thirteen Lives isn't in its production design or the dedication of everyone involved; it just isn't a memorable cinematic experience. I watched it about a week ago, and almost none of it has stuck with me, except as some visual reminders of the real-life story over four years ago. Howard's film didn't really teach me anything about the real heroes or survivors, about the geography of the labyrinthine caves, about the international response efforts. It felt like dramatized news reels and comparatively dull reenactments of what should have been riveting action. But if you're in the mood for straightforward, hard-hitting drama that reminds us about an amazing rescue mission, Thirteen Lives isn't the worst way to spend an evening.

Infinity Pool (2023)

Score: 2.5 / 5

Brandon Cronenberg only has three films under his directorial belt, and each is fascinating and haunting. Not in the same ways as his father David's films, though: perhaps Brandon's are so memorable because they are distinctive, unique, and arrestingly confident. His slow, deliberate pacing and far-outside-the-box ideas reveal a young filmmaker who knows exactly what he's doing in the realm of sci-fi horror and has the balls and clout to deliver on his every whim. As David's movies get more abstract and weird -- just look at Crimes of the Future -- Brandon seems to be pushing the boundaries on what can be realistically achieved on screen. If you've seen his Possessor, one of the great hidden gems of 2020, you know exactly what I mean.

Infinity Pool starts with an author, James Foster (Alexander Skarsgard) and his wife (Cleopatra Coleman) on vacation at a resort in a fictional country. James needs inspiration to get past his writer's block, which he's had for six years since his first book was published. The couple doesn't seem particularly happy -- one wonders if their relationship is strained due to his inability to work, and then what exactly they do for work anyway that allows them luxurious trips like this -- and it only gets worse when a pushy young thing starts interloping. Gabi (Mia Goth) approaches James and reveals that she's a big fan of his first novel; she and her partner persuade the Fosters to join them for a countryside cruise the next day, despite strict resort rules to stay on the premises.

There's a beachside indiscretion between the forceful Gabi and willfully submissive James, who seems enamored of the attention (both literary and sexual). There is a lot of drinking. And that night, on the way back to the resort, James accidentally hits and kills a local man. They get to the resort panicked but needing sleep to process what happened; they are awoken by the police and taken in for questioning. The police chief explains that their country metes justice for murder by allowing the victim's son to kill the criminal. However -- and this is where things get really interesting -- surely due to the high tourism in the area, they offer a way out of this fate: the extremely wealthy can pay to have a proxy killed in their place. And not just any proxy. The country can clone you, and your clone will be murdered in your place.

It's a fascinating angle on the disgusting privilege of the wealthy to sidestep consequences for their sins, yes, but it also creates a shockingly fresh idea in making us wonder what happens to a person who must watch their own murder. Is his guilt or shame displaced onto the clone? Does one's clone's death increase his guilt, in that yet another living thing has died from his actions? How can one be sure it's the clone getting murdered or the clone watching?

For James, it turns out, the death of his clone seems to remove any morality he still had. Gabi and a group of her friends at the resort -- we're never really clear about their relationship, except that they're all wealthy, cruel, and criminal -- act the same way, and seduce James into leaning into his violent desires. Since they can buy their way out of justice, they get grossly intoxicated and commit heinous crimes of vandalism, theft, kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder. James's wife, horrified, leaves. James, however, stays, seemingly becoming a Dorian Gray of sorts and seeking to do as much sin while he's able to do it in this exotic and forgiving place. Is it only our fear of consequences that stops us from giving in to these hedonistic and violent impulses? Cronenberg seems to think so, and most of this film chronicles James's free fall into evil.

And, without spoiling anything else, that's probably why I'll never watch this movie again. It's visually arresting and beautifully constructed. It's also one of a very few movies that disturbed me to a point I can't come back from. Inasmuch as Cronenberg seems intent to explore the nature of evil, or perhaps the evils of the privileged, I can't help but feel that this film is content to wallow in that evil. Its perverse delight in unapologetic, pornographic violence feels like an unholy crossover between The White Lotus and Hostel, which probably sounds more exciting than I mean it to. I'd compare this movie tonally to Funny Games but utterly devoid of the bleak comedy that movie tries to maximize. And, for me at least, it's just not something I want to experience again; I needed a shower minutes after getting home after the screening, and I still felt icky all night.

Missing (2023)

Score: 3 / 5

Who knew that 2018's Searching would spawn a franchise? That might be a bit ambitious to say, as Missing isn't really a sequel so much as a sister film or continuation of similar ideas. It's another "screenlife" film, as the relatively new terminology allows us, an evolution of found footage films that really kicked off in the early-to-mid 2010s. For reference, Paranormal Activity 4 and The Den were probably (arguably) the first forays into depicting most of their action on computer screens, and they were released in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Timur Bekmambetov coined "screenlife" and has directed or produced the most work in the burgeoning subgenre. Other than Searching, notable titles include Profile, Unfriended, and Host. The format isn't for everyone -- though it thankfully doesn't induce as much motion sickness as found footage films usually do -- and I personally find the constant clicking and multiple windows and tabs and speedy (read: reckless) web searches to be more anxiety-inducing than others might.

Yet, as Bekmambetov and Aneesh Chaganty have demonstrated time and again, it is a fabulous medium for mystery-thrillers with an edge for real-life horrors. I imagine it's also an editing nightmare, but it's telling that the directors of Missing previously edited Searching. The film begins with a barrage of images that includes references to the previous film, revealing that they are in the same shared universe of mystery, false identities, digital crimes, and deadly real-world consequences. This time, our protagonist is a young woman named June (played by the always surprising Storm Reid) who, after a wild week of partying while her mother (Nia Long) is on vacation in Colombia, is forced to start looking for her mother, who she declares missing. She does so almost entirely on her laptop, using social media, search engines, her linked cell phone and email, and even surveillance footage. She communicates this way with her mother's best friend, her own friends, a hired hand in Colombia, and an FBI agent assigned to her case. It may stretch credulity, but it also functions to stretch our conception of how to use these technologies; at least, it does for me, though I expect Gen Z viewers might relate a bit better.

Too many details will spoil this film, as it works best to be taken at face value. The mystery itself is breathless, presented in frenetic style by the worried teenager on her computer as she navigates Snapchat and Venmo and FaceTime and TikTok and Ring and Taskrabbit and online dating profiles and hacking into her mother's boyfriend's (Ken Leung) e-mails. She's resourceful in intimidating ways -- a call to her mother's hotel with its Spanish-speaking clerk works because of June's quick-witted use of Google Translate -- and finds local help on the ground in the form of Javi (played by a heartwarming Joaquim de Almeida, who has a surprisingly emotional role to play). But the screenplay is also hopelessly convoluted, as far too many red herrings make the central mystery sometimes forgettable. That's always the problem with mysteries, right? They're either too simple or far too complex. Here, at least, it seems appropriate, because the internet makes everything far too complex.

But that also makes Missing a hell of a lot of fun. And, in some ways, an interesting look at the ways technology both helps and hurts us these days.

Women Talking (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

What a strange and wonderful film. Women Talking is almost precisely that: a film about women talking their way through the single biggest decision of their collective lives. The 2018 novel of the same name -- by Canadian author Miriam Toews -- is described as a "reaction through fiction" of real-life events as well as an empowering "act of female imagination." If it is anything like this film adaptation (I haven't read it yet), we could loosely describe it as a Socratic conversation, deeply philosophical and existential. But what isn't philosophical is their emotional investment in this conversation and the life-altering consequences that will ensue. So the drama of this film isn't at all based in any dynamic or even fully coherent narrative; there is no real plot, not much action, and really more themes than characters. It's about the situation, the words, the feelings, and the various reactions and responses to the horrors of these women's lives.

In an unclear, intentionally vague time and setting, a group of women gather in a large community barn. They are Mennonites, of a seemingly conservative variety, who live in a remote, rural colony somewhere; in the film, they speak with American accents and seem to be in a temperate setting, while the real-life colony was located in Bolivia. They have come to the realization, after an eyewitness's accusation, that many women in their colony have been systematically drugged with horse tranquilizers and raped, sometimes repeatedly and sometimes with complications like STIs, unwanted pregnancies, and injuries like knocked-out teeth and bruises. Now that the men of the colony are gone -- the opening narration tells us they've gone to try and gather money to bail the group of condemned men from jail -- the women are able to gather and discuss their plan of action: do they stay and do nothing, stay and fight, or leave?

There are too many interesting things at work here, and I can only really touch on several of them. But to start, let's discuss voice and agency. The film features the voiceover narration of one of the younger girls of the colony, and it seems to be addressed to the unborn child of the pregnant (by rape) woman Ona (Rooney Mara). This makes the narration both very dark and very innocent, and by film's end, surprisingly hopeful, as she intones something to the effect of "this has been my story, and it will not be yours." It's interesting particularly because none of the women have been taught to read or write, and so their oral history is crucial as they decide to leave the colony (SPOILER: they do in fact leave at the film's end; that's not really the point of the film so much as how they get to that decision). Additionally, the colony's male schoolteacher August (Ben Whishaw) -- a former apostate -- joins the women in the barn to take their minutes and record their dialogue. He is not formally permitted to speak, and while he harbors romantic feelings for Ona, he respectfully fulfills his duties without intruding much. His presence makes things a bit weird and tense at times, and in my understanding, it's his words that comprise the book on which this film is based; it's fascinating to me, and very welcome, that his voice and formal control over the narrative is so diminished in this film.

The women debate for a day and a half, and most of the film is just them talking about everything from how to conduct their discussion to their opinions of each other and the men, from vague, dark hints at what has happened to them to heightened concerns over their faith, gender roles, education, place in the world, marriages, etc. It's not unlike, in that way, much classical Grecian drama; for that matter, it's not all that different from 12 Angry Men. Each decision carries so much weight. Doing nothing (as only Frances McDormand's character voices support for) would mean further violence and no change in quality of life, but it may mean guaranteed salvation, as the only pathway to heaven is in fellowship in the colony. Staying and fighting for themselves -- that's a debate, too, if it would be for justice or revenge or equality or incremental improvements in their lives -- is an option, but perhaps carries too many more complex questions and intricacies. Would they have to forgive the men, and could they even if they wanted to? At what point does their abuse of forgiveness become permission? Leaving may mean damnation but liberation, but it too carries too many unknowns: they don't know where in the world they are, have never seen a map, can't read or write anyway. What would they do about the children? At what age are the boys too old to join them? If they stayed, would they be corrupted by the men, or would August be able to help the next generation of men to be better?

It's a very didactic and in some ways theatrical film, but it's never quite cinematic, and so it just won't appeal to everyone. That is, despite excellent production design and staging and cinematography, I'd rather have seen this in theatre, as it just never felt appropriately visually dynamic to me. I found its tone, however, to be the most surprising element of the whole thing. Given its horrific and tragic subject matter, I expected bleak nihilism more than anything. Instead, the film is almost arrestingly calm and even funny. It features no -- again, absolutely no -- onscreen violence. A few blink-and-you'll-miss-it shots show various women waking up, in flashback, with blood on their sheets or bruises on their bodies; bloodied teeth is the most unsettling image. There are references to violence verbally, of course, and some visible bruises (especially on Jessie Buckley's Mariche, whose husband beats her). There is one transgender man in the colony who is mute after his own rape; he only speaks with the children, and when one of the women finally calls him by his male name). His presence is more tragic than anything, and I wish the film did a bit more with him. Even with all this, the dialogue often sparks laughter, or at least smiles, even unexpectedly, as when one of the young girls pretends to be distraught and leaps from the upper level of the barn, only to land safely in a pile of hay.

During the screening I attended, I was reminded more than once of both George Cukor's The Women and M. Night Shyamalan's The Village in tone and, I guess, subject matter. It's not all terribly realistic -- obviously, in terms of actual history, but even in-world of the film -- and I wondered more than once as they referenced medicine where exactly they'd get it, or many of the goods in their colony. Perhaps, as the point of Women Talking is dialogue and ideas more than plot, it would be better conceived of as a parable. The women all seem to represent various stages of grief or ways to process trauma, including revenge, clamming up, fleeing, fighting, dissociating (telling stories), etc. The actors -- who also include Sheila McCarthy, Claire Foy, and Judith Ivey, as if there already weren't enough powerhouse women involved -- are all magnificent, and clearly know the profound depths of their screenplay. By the end, the main takeaway is primarily the universal yet still impossible choice to hope for the unknown or hate the familiar. And it will leave you reeling, if you allow yourself onto this film's wavelength and sit with it a while.

The Pale Blue Eye (2023)

Score: 4 / 5

The year is 1830, and the dying of the year is settling on the Hudson River Valley. Chilly weather precedes a chilling crime as a West Point Military Academy cadet is found hanged; soon after, his body is discovered to be desecrated and his heart forcibly removed. Terrified of scandal at the fledgling institution, the captains and superintendents hire a nearby semi-retired detective to investigate. While looking into possible -- and evidently likely -- occult activities on campus, he realizes he needs to penetrate the cadre of cadets to learns what's going on internally: enter a young Edgar Allan Poe, a real-life cadet at the time, whose poetic personality leads him to assist in the investigation.

The Pale Blue Eye is a recent Netflix film that adapts a magnificent novel by Louis Bayard. It's a difficult project, to be sure, as one of the primary charms of the book is the occasional shift in narrative voice from the detective to Poe; fans of the latter find the passages written in Poe's voice beautifully rendered from the historical man and artistic visionary. It seems appropriate that the so-called father of the American detective story would get his taste for the aesthetic from a formative experience early in his life, and so the whole concept is brilliant. And, while the novel almost ceaselessly twists its way through red herrings and minor mysteries to be solved, the film manages to faithfully adapt the major moments for its primary story. It just can never quite capture the joyful voice of Poe himself.

Which is by no means a fault of the cast or director/screenwriter. Scott Cooper helms this in those latter two capacities, and it's about as bleak as anything else he's done (Antlers, Hostiles, Black Mass, Out of the Furnace). Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi views the whole thing -- surely inspired by the title -- in pale gray hues, so much so that the whole thing could have been quite effective in black and white, except for streaks of blue in the river valley and the cadet uniforms. And the cast is great across the board, from underutilized but effective heads of West Point including Simon McBurney and Timothy Spall, to the primary family of suspicion including Toby Jones, Gillian Anderson, and Lucy Boynton.

The detective himself, Augustus Landor, is played by frequent Cooper collaborator Christian Bale. Landor, semi-retired no doubt due to isolation, alcoholism, and depression -- he's a widower whose adolescent daughter left him a couple years ago -- is still sharp as a knife and quick-witted. Prone as he is to the bottle and to melancholy sexual encounters with a local barmaid (Charlotte Gainsbourg), he seems dedicated to cut through the bureaucratic crap of the academy and solve the crimes. One might wonder why an actor of Bale's uncommon skills wants to play a bedraggled, world-weary man so comparatively early in his career, but if you're familiar with the book, he's not as detached from the proceedings as he first appears.

And then there's Harry Melling, playing Poe, whose performances lately have proved him a frighteningly intense and versatile actor coming into his own. He reminds me a bit of a young Gary Oldman in that way, and I'm eager to see how he continues. Here, though, he straddles a fine line between the agony of an artist unable to fully commit to his craft, the urgency of solving a crime for which he will inevitably also be targeted (either as a potential victim or suspect, or both), and his eager romanticism that will lead him into trouble with the family of the primary suspect. There are a few key scenes in this respect that shine, as he courts the sister of a particularly brutal cadet, though these were far more numerous and emotionally impactful in the novel. It's a side plot that better serves our understanding of Poe's character -- he uses her name to inspire some poetry of his own under the similar name "Lenore" -- that would make the already bloated film much longer.

But for a bleak, literary, and haunting mystery in the chilly midwinter, The Pale Blue Eye is exactly what the poet ordered.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

Perhaps the most genuinely sweet movie of the year, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris manages to delight us with its brilliant, uncalculated simplicity. It's a realistic fairytale, one that combines its colorful fantasy with grounded emotions and relatable conflicts, adapted from a similarly titled novel from the middle of the last century. Essentially the story of an older, working woman in London who dreams of owning a single Dior gown, the film follows her life as it takes a Willy Wonka-esque turn and she finds herself spending a week in Paris in the hopes of her own haute couture. Think The Devil Wears Prada meets Phantom Thread but without a lick of unnecessary drama and with a lot more heartwarming cuteness.

Ada is a war widow, working as a domestic cleaner for various clients, saving her pennies in a glass jar, and played by the exquisite -- but here disarmingly earnest -- Lesley Manville. Manville also featured as a much more villainous role in Phantom Thread, which is almost hilariously hard to forget about as we see her quaint frocks and eccentric twitchiness in this film. She works hard to sell the film's primary conceit, and she succeeds magnificently: that is, that a hardworking woman who is by no means a spring chicken would spend her entire life savings on a single designer dress. She's so simple (and I mean that endearingly) that she thinks she can simply go to a fashion show and purchase any dress she sees, regardless of its size or fitting.

But Ada's got stars in her eyes, and in many ways her quest for fashion is an expression of her own self-love, something she seems to feel she needs to earn still. But we see right away that she loves people around her with an endless supply of affection, from the self-absorbed young wannabe actress she cares for to the philandering businessmen and his cadre of "nieces" who pay him frequent visits. But Ada already has some fashion sense, and the film firmly earns its own Oscar nomination for costumes, as she's never less than dressed to the nines, usually in comparatively cringe-worthy floral prints. From her late husband's pension to her hopeful bets on dog races, she eventually saves enough money for her excursion to Paris, helped along by her charming friends (played by Jason Isaacs in a rare sympathetic role and the blissfully lovely Ellen Thomas). 

She quite literally stumbles into the House of Dior and a new fashion show, meeting new friends along the way (including a handsome young accountant played by Lucas Bravo and a beautiful young model played by Alba Baptista, who share a love for existential philosophy and who Ada will be helping get together as a de facto matchmaker). Ada also makes at least one new enemy in the form of house manager Claudine (a wickedly delightful Isabelle Huppert, much as Manville herself played in Phantom Thread). As Ada realizes she must stay for the week -- for measurements and tailorings -- she settles in with her friends, navigates flirtations by a very eligible Marquis (Lambert Wilson), and matchmakes with nothing but positivity and kindness in her heart. She ends up saving Dior (in a scene wonderfully reminiscent of one from a personal favorite musical, Mrs. Santa Claus, in all its surprisingly economically progressive glory). 

But I won't spoil the logistical details for you, because half the joy of this movie is going on the adventure with our unlikely heroine. There are a few sad turns, but by and large, this is the breath of fresh air we always need during Oscar season, both as a balm for the usually thematically heavy awards contenders as well as the bleak midwinter blues. Thank you, Mrs. Harris, and director Anthony Fabian, for uplifting our hearts with your warmth and beauty in a world too easily gone to rot.