Author: Cate Marquis

RED JOAN – Review

Judi Dench as “Joan Stanley” in Trevor Nunn’s RED JOAN. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films release.

Judi Dench plays a widowed retired librarian living a quiet suburban life who is suddenly arrested for spying in the Cold War, in the fact-inspired RED JOAN. Director Trevor Nunn based his film on a shocking real spy case, when an innocent-seeming older woman was arrested by the British Secret Service for passing classified information about the atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union in the early days of the Cold War. Told in part as the harmless-looking older woman is interrogated and in flashback as a young physics student recruited for the war effort, Joan Stanley relives the events of her life that led to the accusation.

The screenplay by Lindsay Shapiro is more inspired by than based on the sensational story of real spy Melita Norwood, an unassuming 87-year-old suburban widow arrested for espionage in 1999. In RED JOAN, the fictional character is named Joan Stanley. The film toggles back and forth between the octogenarian Joan, played by Judi Dench, and her younger self, played by Sophie Cookson. The spy tale is well-acted and well-shot, filled with fine period details and locations. The problem, for at least some audiences, is that the film shifts tone as it shifts between its present and past. In its present, it is a subtle character study unfolding as the older Joan is interrogated, while in the past, it is steamy spy thriller, which makes is feel a bit like two different films. In both time periods, the film presents a complicated picture of a women grappling with complex emotions, divided loyalties and confused ideas about patriotism, in a world that seems on the verge of nuclear war.

The flashback story takes us to Cambridge University before World War II, where young student Joan (Cookson) meets Leo (Tom Hughes, who played Prince Albert on BBC’s “Victoria”), a handsome young Russian/German Jewish refugee. Joan is a quiet, gifted physics student who is drawn to Leo and his adventurous, high-spirited cousin Sonya (Tereza Sbrova), because they are just so much fun. Joan accompanies the two charismatic newcomers to the Commie film screenings and events they organize on campus, less because of any interest in communism than her fondness for them. Joan quickly becomes fast friends with Sonya, and eventually falls into a passionate affair with the seductive but elusive Leo.

As the older Joan points out in the film, in those pre-World War II days, communism or the Soviet Union were not seen as threatening, and there was even a little fad of interest in the 1930s. As World War II breaks out, the Soviet Union becomes a British ally. Although Joan’s interest in her friends’ communist ideas has long faded, her personal history ties to the Russians and their circle remain and complicate her life.

If RED JOAN had stuck to the story in the past, it could have developed into a steamy, exciting spy thriller. But Trevor Nunn, a director steeped in theater, has other plans for this film beyond popcorn-munching entertainment. The film returns to the present periodically, which gives us more time with the always-wonderful Judi Dench and also allows her character to describe her rather complicated, even confused, reasons for doing what she did. A key point is her concern about preventing another war, as she has the misguided if well-meaning idea that peace has a better chance if both sides have the bomb.

It is a idea discussed by several characters in the flashback sequences but the anti-war theme is not the only one that runs through the film. A strong feminist aspect also emerges, as Joan’s brilliance in physics is consistently ignored by the men working on the war effort, who think she is better suited to typing up their research. Only Max (Stephen Campbell Moore), the head of the British atom bomb project, recognizes Joan’s remarkable gift for physics and recruits her as his assistant. But she still does the typing and filing.

As the atomic bomb project advances, things get complicated for Joan, both romantically and ethically. At first, the team works along side the Americans in the race to beat the Germans to the atomic bomb, but then the Americans stop sharing research. The British project continues anyway but in a more complicated political atmosphere. a situation that becomes even more complex after the war. The shifting political alliances worry Joan, who sees the Russians go from allies to adversaries, and the Americans go from collaborative to secretive about atomic research.

Even though her work takes her from England to Canada, she is still periodically contacted by Sonya, Leo and their commie friends, with Leo pressing her hard to share information despite her repeated refusals. Meanwhile, in the story’s present, the older Joan grapples with the pressure of the interrogation, and secrets she kept from her grown son, some due to the Official Secrets Act and some not. The son reels as information about his mother’s past surfaces.

Perhaps Nunn tried to do a bit too much with this film, layering this woman’s secret past with themes of feminist and anti-war sentiment. When the film focuses on the characters in the past, it builds a driving thriller tension, as events push Joan to the emotional edge. In the present, the story is more narrow and relational, focusing on the character’s inner turmoil and her relationship with her shocked son. The shift in style is sometimes jarring, making RED JOAN feel like two different films rather a single story, despite the superb acting, well-crafted production values and good intentions.

RED JOAN opens Friday, May 10, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

TOLKIEN – Review

Nicholas Hoult and Lily Collins in the film TOLKIEN. Photo Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. © 2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

One thing you learn early on in TOLKIEN is that it is pronounced “Tol-keen,” contrary to the way many fans have been saying it. That is one of many facts you learn in the J.R.R. Tolkien biopic TOLKIEN, which covers the early life of the “Lord of the Rings” author. It was not an easy life, as the young Tolkien, played by Nicholas Hoult (THE FAVOURITE, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD), endured personal tragedies and hardships, but it was also a time of deep friendship, challenges, growth, and even young love, capped by the singular horrors of World War I, experiences which the author later wove into his fantasy tales of hobbits, elves and the fellowship of a ring.

Actually, TOLKIEN is more an interesting film than the deeply involving one audience might hope it would be. This is despite the fact that Tolkien’s early life was marked by strikingly dramatic, even tragic, events. Finnish director Dome Karukoski, a big Tolkien fan, and screenwriters David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford carefully researched their subject but the films suffers from some flaws common to biopics. The director takes care draw attention to parallels between events in Tolkien’s life and his writings, and how these early experiences shaped the author’s later fantasy novels. It is a fascinating approach for fans, where one is constantly thinking “so that’s where that came from” as you watch the film. However, that observational, even analytical tact has a distancing effect, and the film often has a surprisingly restrained emotional tone.

Tolkien’s early life feels like something out of Dickens. The film opens with Tolkien (Hoult) in the trenches of World War I, and then periodically flashes back to his earlier life. Born in British-ruled South Africa, young John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (played as a child by Harry Gilby) learned to speak several languages and was steeped in languages, art and legends. Widowed when Tolkien was four, Mabel Tolkien (Laura Donnell) eventually relocates him and his younger brother to England, where they face financially dire circumstances. When Tolkien is 12, his mother dies and her friend Father Francis (Colm Meaney) takes charge of the two penniless orphaned boys, placing them in a boarding house run by Mrs. Faulkner (Pam Ferris) and arranging for their education.

From this point, the film focuses primarily on the friendships Tolkien forms with three other boys at the posh private school he attends and his budding romance with future wife Edith. The four boys create a fellowship of artists who encourage each other as they hope to transform the world. Lily Collins plays pretty, lively and musically-gifted Edith, another penniless boarder at the house, who earns her keep playing piano for Mrs. Faulkner.

The three friends, Christopher Wiseman, Robert Gilson and Geoffrey Smith, are played as young men by Tom Glynn-Carney, Patrick Gibson and Anthony Boyle. The friends engage in adventures, talk about literature and art, play rugby, and encourage each other as they grow from young schoolboys to college students, until their fellowship is tested by war.

In the war sequences in particular, director Karukoski draws direct visual links between those experiences and Middle Earth, with dragons and wraiths rising out of the smoke and fire of the battlefield. Other scenes evoke echoes to elements of Tolkien’s fantasy world, with Edith and their walks in the forest suggesting Elves and Ents, but none as powerfully as the war ones.

The story builds on themes of struggle, friendship, courage, love and war, mixed in with a love of legends and languages. Yet in the midst of all this drama, the film feels more focused on pointing out parallels between the author’s life and his books than in actually involving audience in the drama of that life. The director allows a bit more emotion to seep in for the love story between Tolkien and Edith but even here, there is a certain amount of restraint.

The approach has its problems. Nicholas Hoult has demonstrated his considerable acting talents in previous roles but under Karukoski’s restrained direction, he often seems to do little more than look handsome and occasionally a bit pained, the ultimate British stiff upper lip. Lily Collins as Edith gets a bit more latitude, bringing a bit more dramatic fire to her role. There are other problems. Tolkien’s younger brother all but vanishes from the story early on, and we never really get to know Tolkien’s closest friends beyond an superficial level. Even Edith never reveals the backstory on how she came to live in the boarding house. As the priest/guardian, Colm Meaney gets a little more room to stretch, and Derek Jacobi is charmingly eccentric as the Cambridge language professor who sets Tolkien on his academic career in languages. But overall, the characters feel a bit thin. It is all about pointing out those literary links.

Still, TOLKIEN does have much to offer Tolkien fans, even casual ones, who might be curious to know the personal roots of his fantastical fictional worlds. The film is packed full of intriguing references to Tolkien’s books, and insights on the origins of his fantastical fictional worlds. Young Tolkien would escape his troubles into tales of mythology, which turn up in his stories. With a gift for language, he amused himself by creating his own language, and by drawing imaginative worlds, long before the novels. While we don’t see an obvious hobbit inspiration, we certainly meet an elvish one, in the form of the musical, graceful Edith. The close friendships he forms at school clearly serves as a template for the fellowship of the ring. Even the ring of power and the heroic quest get a nod, when Tolkien and Edith visit a concert hall for a performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle operas.

TOLKIEN is an interesting film, well worth a look for J. R. R. Tolkien fans, if a less engrossing one than one might have hoped. TOLKIEN opens Friday, May 10, at several area theaters.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

ASK DR. RUTH – Review

Everyone knows Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the on-air sex therapist who speaks so frankly, but how much do you know about the personal story of this diminutive Jewish grandma who has been a darling of talk shows for decades, using her expertise as a PhD sex therapist to offer non-judgmental advice on sexual matters? Likely, not much. ASK DR. RUTH goes a way to correcting that. In the process, we again fall under the spell of this personable, lively, intelligent woman who has led an unusual life and overcome so many hardships.

Who knew Dr. Ruth, who seems so much fun, survived the Holocaust in a Swiss orphanage where as a ten-year-old she was put to work cleaning and caring for the younger children? Or that she was married several times? Or that she was an avid skier? These are among the surprises uncovered in this delightful documentary.

Director Ryan White’s illuminating, entertaining biographical film first introduces us to Dr. Ruth Westheimer in the tiny New York apartment where the nearly 90-year-old still lives, despite her financial success, before the documentary delves into her backstory. Dr. Ruth is an unlikely success story: a Holocaust survivor with a thick German accent, a prim-and-proper-looking tiny woman with a PhD in psychology who spoke on-air with bracing frankness about sex, just as America was entering the sexual revolution of the ’60s. The combination of her disarming appearance, her impeccable credentials and her plain speaking about sex made her a media celebrity and a popular favorite.

Turns out, Dr. Ruth has an unlikely personal story as well. Born in Germany near Frankfort, Karola Ruth Siegel was the beloved only child of Orthodox Jewish parents who doted on her. After the Nazis came to power, they sent her at age 10 to Switzerland by train, as part of a “kindertransport” with other Jewish children. Landing in a Swiss orphanage, the Jewish children were not welcomed and hardly had a comfortable life. The older Jewish children, including the ten-year-old, were required to work, which she did until the war ended when she was 17. With her parents vanished, she emigrated to Israel (then Palestine) where she switched her middle and first names to become Ruth K. Siegel.

The German-born, 4-foot-7 dynamo has lived in Switzerland, on a kibbutz in Israel, in Paris and in New York. After WWII interrupted her education, she went on to attend the Sorbonne and later earn a PhD from Columbia University, married three times, raised two children, and worked at Planned Parenthood. She started her career as on-air sex therapist on a late-night community radio show, Sexually Speaking. She met her last husband, the love of her life, engineer Fred Westheimer, on the ski slopes. And those are only a few of the sometimes surprising details uncovered in ASK DR. RUTH.

Director Ryan White illustrates the early phase of Dr. Ruth’s life with animated drawings based on photos of her as a girl, a cute pixie with bright eyes and a sweet smile. The animated sequences are appealing and narrated in part by excerpts from her diaries. Later phases of her life and career are illustrated with archival photos and video. Segments on her past are interspersed with footage of the present-day nonagenarian, surprisingly fit, in New York and on returns to Switzerland and Israel. The documentary also includes interviews with her children and grandchildren, old friends and colleagues, as well as a host of videos of Dr. Ruth at various events.

The documentary impresses us with Dr. Ruth’s personal story, and Dr. Ruth herself wins our affection with her energetic persona, but the film also notes that not every therapist is a fan of her on-air advice. Several note that advice based on shallow knowledge of a person gained from a call-in show can be dangerous for someone with real problems, a criticism that can be applied to all talk show therapists. However, Dr. Ruth did paved the way for the phenomenon, as she was followed by Dr. Phil and other therapists offering advice on talk shows, and she also set the trend of Dr. First Name, when early callers to her radio show struggled with pronouncing her last name.

While we learn a great deal we did not know about her, Dr. Ruth herself cautions us that she still keeps parts of her life private, and there are sides her we will never learn about, a refreshing kind of honesty in itself. Apart from a few moments of impatience, she is unfailingly good-humored, even when the documentary covers more difficult moments of her life. She keeps darker feelings under wraps, even when she visits the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, to read in their archives about the fate of her parents.

ASK DR. RUTH is an illuminating experience, a charmer of a film as lively and entertaining as its subject, and just as surprising. ASK DR. RUTH opens Friday, May 3, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE – Review

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE. Photo courtesy of Netflix.

When director Rachel Lears started following four women candidates in the 2018 congressional primaries, she had no idea one of them would become the focus of national attention. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was one of four female political outsiders challenging Democratic incumbents that Lears pick to follow for this political wild ride, as they attempt to knock down the doors to power in the U.S. Congress. The resulting documentary, KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE, is as thrilling, gripping and inspiring, as it is ground-breaking.

Two of the four women candidates featured in the documentary, St. Louisan Cori Bush and Nevadan Amy Vilela, will appear at a question-and-answer session after the St. Louis opening of KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE, at 7:05 PM at the Tivoli Theater, as the film begins its local theatrical run. KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE was a hot ticket at the True/False Documentary Film Festival this year in Columbia, MO, following its strong debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

At the start of Lears’ documentary, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is joined by Cori Bush, Amy Vilela, and Paula Jean Swearengin, four women who are not career politicians but driven to run against their Democratic elected officials from the progressive side, mirroring the way libertarian and Tea Party candidates have mounted primary challenges to Republican incumbents from the right in recent years.

Ocasio-Cortez was a Bronx-based bartender when she faced off against Rep. Joe Crowley for New York’s 14th district. Cori Bush, a registered nurse and an ordained pastor, challenged powerful St. Louis incumbent Rep. Lacy Clay for Missouri’s U.S. Congressional 1st District seat. In Nevada, Amy Vilela challenged Rep. Steven Horsford in the 4th District, while Paula Jean Swearengin took on Sen. Joe Manchin (the only one facing a senator) in West Virginia.

Lears directed,wrote, and shot KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE, her third film, and co-produced it with her husband Robin Blotnik, who edited the documentary. Lears follows each woman by turns, although she ultimately spends more time with Ocasio-Cortez as her campaign started grabbing national media attention. Lears also wisely chose to include diversity in the candidates and to follow campaigns from diverse regions of the country – big city to rural, East Coast, Midwest and West. That decision gives the documentary a national, broad-based feel.

We get to know, and care about, each of the women, with glimpses into their personal lives and reasons for running, as well as following the dramatic ups-and-downs of the campaigns. Each woman is running against a well-funded incumbent, and running against an incumbent is always a long-shot, so you know there will be some heartache by the end. Still, it is inspiring to simply watch these ordinary women give it their best shot, and the effort fills one with admiration and even hope.

KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE opens Wednesday, May 1, at Landmark’s Tivoli Theater.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

STOCKHOLM – Review

Ethan Hawke in STOCKHOLM. Courtesy of Blumhouse.

Ever wonder why they call the phenomenon where hostages bond with their captor “Stockholm syndrome?” The semi-comic crime film STOCKHOLM answers that question, in a tale based on a 1973 true incident. Ethan Hawke stars as a crook who walks into a Stockholm bank wearing a long-haired wig and sunglasses, toting a bag full of weaponry, and proceeds to take hostages. However, he is not there to rob the bank. Instead he demands the release of a friend, imprisoned bank robber Gunnar Sorensson (Mark Strong). As the stand-off with authorities drags on, the hostagetaker shows a softer, houman side and starts to form a tentative bond with one of the bank employees he’s holding, Bianca, played by Noomi Rapace, the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

There are undeniable parallels to DOG DAY AFTERNOON in writer/director Robert Budreau’s film but STOCKHOLM is a smaller, less ambitious film, an absurd tale with a sweeter, even comic side. It is not what we expect at the film’s start, as we watch Ethan Hawke’s character don his disguise and walk into the bank toting his bag of weaponry.

The film’s major charm is Ethan Hawke’s performance as this small time crook who isn’t really cut out for the work and whose heart isn’t really in it. Ethan Hawke gives us unexpected layers to this character and his scenes with Rapace are particularly good. Hawke’s slightly sad character has an underlying decency that Rapace’s character picks up on. Rapace’s character is a practical-minded wife and mother, who when she gets to speak to her husband by phone shortly after being taken prisoner, gives him detailed instructions for cooking the fish for dinner. It is the kind of dry, absurdist humor STOCKHOLM deals in.

Mark Strong also turns in a good performance as a kind of more grounded foil to Hawke’s impractical dreamer. The police chief Mattsson (Christopher Heyerdahl) handling the hostage situation is an arrogant, irritating fellow, and the other negotiators are equally unpleasant and duplicitous, which helps slant sentiment towards both the hostages and the crooks. As the stand-off drags on, we get to know the hostages and the crooks much better as people, and the closeness that starts to evolve between them makes more sense than you expect.

STOCKHOLM does not compare to DOG DAY AFTERNOON in scope or strength, but it is a surprisingly sweet character study, largely thanks to Ethan Hawke and Noomi Rapace. STOCKHOLM opens Friday, April 26, at AMC’s West Olive 16 Theater.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY – Review

Molly Shannon as Emily Dickinson in WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY. Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

Molly Shannon is spot-on in the serio-comic WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY, a completely different take on the personal life of poet Emily Dickinson, portraying her as a sharp-witted woman in a lifelong romantic relationship with her sister-in-law Susan, played by Susan Ziegler. This is not how we usually think of the reclusive poet.

Writer/director Madeleine Olnek drew on Dickinson’s own personal letters to craft a film portrait of Dickinson that is strongly feminist and LGBTQ but also just plain fun and unexpectedly entertaining. The key to that is Molly Shannon. Shannon runs with the idea with comic glee. She is a lot of fun to watch, upending Victorian conventions just out of view, in her signature style, with Susan Ziegler providing a good foil to her wilder moments. Olnek also adds an ironic, comic touch with Mabel Loomis Todd (Amy Seimetz), who published the poet’s work after her death, set herself up as an authority on her, crafting the recluse myth while covering up evidence of Dickinson’s real love life, even though she never met Emily face-to-face.

Emily Dickinson seems to be having kind of a moment. In the 2016 biopic A QUIET PASSION, she was played by Cynthia Nixon. Both films take on the image of the poet as a recluse while highlighting her razor-sharp intelligence, and also detail the way male hostility to women writers limited publication of her work. But the more comic, at times even light-hearted WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY focuses more of Emily Dickinson’s love life.

Using Dickinson’s personal letters, writer/director Olnek creates an eccentric, highly-entertaining tale about a woman with a most buttoned-down image, aided by Molly Shannon’s wonderful slightly loopy performance. Living next door to each other in Amherst, Emily and Susan shuttle back and forth constantly, largely ignoring Emily’s comically clueless brother Austin (Kevin Seal), Susan’s husband.

While WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY is a lot of fun, it makes serious points about Dickinson and the era in which she lived. The film delves into how Dickinson’s love life was covered up and the recluse myth created to conform with Victorian sensibilities after her death, and also the considerable obstacles male-dominated society placed before female authors, particularly a bold, challenging poet like Dickinson. The film includes periodic excerpts from her letters and poems, sure to delight fans.

Dana Melanie plays the young Emily Dickinson, while Sasha Frolova plays young Susan. Jackie Monahan plays Emily’s sister Lavinia and Brett Gelman plays Colonel Thomas Higginson, the editor who was Emily’s purported friend but did little to publish her work.

WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY is a surprising, engaging romp with the delightful Molly Shannon, with informative insights on the life of the beloved poet. WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY opens Friday, April 26, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

THE BRINK – Review

Steve Bannon speaks at a campaign event for Republican voters, in THE BRINK. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

To those of us who thought Steve Bannon’s far-right political influence ended when he parted ways with the Trump administration, THE BRINK is a jarring wake-up call. As director Allison Klayman reveals through her fly-on-the-wall documentary, Bannon may have left the White House but he has moved on to advising and promoting far-right Republicans, and more worrying, working with far-right political groups in Europe, in support of an ideology he calls “populist nationalism” that appeals to white-rights anti-immigrant groups and politicians.

In THE BRINK, Bannon proudly brags about being the architect of the Trump administration’s Muslim ban, which succinctly sums up much of Bannon’s mind-set. Since his exit from the White House, Bannon has campaigned for what he calls populist nationalism, both in the U.S. and in Europe, meeting with far-right candidates. Klayman follows Bannon around from Fall 2017 through the mid-term Congressional election in the fall of 2018, in this revealing, startling look at this force for political far right. It is a chilling, alarming peek inside Bannon’s work.

Klayman’s fly-on-the-wall approach is remarkably revealing. Bannon gave Klayman remarkable access, and she seems to follow him everywhere. There is no voice-over, no expert interviews providing analysis, and the documentarian only asks a few questions. Instead, she mostly lets Bannon do all the talking, which makes what’s on screen all the more chilling as well as insightful.

THE BRINK is one of two recent documentaries about far-right political strategist Steve Bannon, who went from running the far-right Breitbart website to working in Trump’s campaign and then the White House. The other documentary is AMERICAN DHARMA, by Errol Morris, the fabled documentarian behind FOG OF WAR. Actually, Morris film gets a mention in this documentary, when Klayman follows him to Venice for a film festival screening. Interestingly, Bannon does not actual go to the screening, instead holding meetings with a stream of right-wing politicians and activists in his hotel room.

Bannon is undeniably slick, surprisingly personable, good-humored and even charming. Bannon speaks in a breezy, relaxed manner, projecting charm and an air of reasonableness, something that is both unexpected and creepy given the extreme viewpoint he is advocating. Bannon is clearly a smooth talker, but it is what he does rather than what he says is the real key to this chilling documentary.

We watch Bannon as he meets with far-right politicians, not just here but in Europe, discussing his opposition to immigration and plans to dismantle the EU. Oddly, Bannon seems more interested in winning and the mechanics of his campaign than the ideas behind it, raising questions about who he works for. While he fires up groups of struggling ordinary people who feel left behind economically, he lives in a posh DC home, travels on private jets and stays in 5-star hotels, even joking about it at one point. Bannon seems to be doing very well financially, but where the money is coming from is largely obscured. At least one of Bannon’s funders is a Chinese businessman we meet in the film but generally Bannon is coy about where the money comes from for his work and lavish lifestyle.

Bannon does a lot of flag-waving and pro-American posturing, although his work is international, and does a lot of dog-whistling to racism ideology without actually saying it. Curiously, Bannon seems indifferent to his split with Trump, still finding Trump’s presidency a useful rallying point. In the run-up to the 2018 mid-terms, Bannon produces and distributes a pro-Trump film to be shown at rallies, a piece Bannon himself calls propaganda. “What would Leni Riefenstahl do?” he wonders with a chuckle, referencing Hilter’s filmmaker. Disturbingly, a group of right-leaning voters praise the film as “not propaganda.”

Klayman’s choice to just follow Bannon closely and let him do the talking makes THE BRINK one chilling ride. Anyone concerned about the rise of the far-right, here and in Europe, should run – not walk – to see this eye-opening documentary. THE BRINK opens Friday, April 19, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

HIGH LIFE – Review

Robert Pattinson in a scene from Claire Denis’ HIGH LIFE. Courtesy of A24.

For her first English-language film, renowned French director Claire Denis sends Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche into space on a mission to a black hole. Beautiful yet bleak, HIGH LIFE is more contemplative and ambitious than the typical space drama, but it perhaps does not rank among the best works of the 72-year-old innovative auteur director who gave us BEAU TRAVAIL and 35 SHOTS OF RUM.

The director co-wrote the script with Jean-Pol Fargeau. HIGH LIFE opens on a spaceship far out among the stars, with a man (Pattinson) and a baby as the sole survivors. We know there is a backstory to this, and eventually it is revealed in flashback. The film has moments of violence, bursts of sometimes graphic sexuality, and maintains a creepy tension, but it also moves slowly for most of its running time, meditating on the human condition.

The people on this journey through space are certainly not living the high life. They are convicts who have been offered service on a space mission to a distant black hole, as an alternative to their life (or death) sentences. The mission is to gather and transmit back information that might give Earth access to unlimited energy. The trip is long and while a few will serve as crew, most will be test subjects in experiments during the long trip. The convicts have been told they will return after the mission, although that is a lie.

The film grapples with that central deceit early on, in a flashback to Earth where a professor (Victor Banerjee) struggles with society’s guilt over the lie. The truth is that the convicts on the spaceship are traveling near the speed of light, which means they will age very slowly. As they make their very long journey, decades will fly by on Earth. Even if they could return, everyone they know will be long dead.

The science touches are among the film’s most interesting aspects. Besides addressing the way time slows as one approaches the speed of light, HIGH LIFE also depicts what might happen at the black hole’s event horizon.

The creepy side of the script is in what happens along the way, as the convict passengers are subjected to unsettling experiments by the ship’s doctor, also a convict, played chillingly by Binoche.

People going mad in space is not a new idea but Claire Denis uses it in a different way. There are hints of Andrei Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS and the 1973 PAPILLON, as Denis combines commentary on society’s treatment of prisoners and a story about on the resilience of the human spirit. It is ambitious stuff although not all of it comes together.

The cast also includes Mia Goth, as an impulsive woman who is unraveling after years in space. The ship is self-sufficient, growing food and recycling air, water and waste, and largely runs itself, with a little help from crew. These convicts never were the most stable people to begin with but the long journey has taken its toll. They are coping, or failing to cope, in various ways. Andre Benjamin plays Tcherny, a gentle man who prefers to spend his time in the shipboard garden, which provides food and oxygen. Other strong performances are provided by Agata Buzek as pilot Nansen and Lars Eidinger as captain Chandra.

In the lead role, Pattinson gives one of his better performances, tamping down his highly emotive style for something a bit more restrained. Pattinson has chosen roles mostly in indie and art-house films since leaving his TWILIGHT film days, with mixed results. This role is a more successful one for him, although it is too far from mainstream for his remaining fans of his early days.

HIGH LIFE has a moody, eerie visual beauty, thanks to cinematographer Yorick LeSaux, and a haunting score, which adds to its sense of tension. The film has a creepiness to it, and it does not quite find the right balance between that element and its more meditative side.

Still, the story about human minds coming undone in space and about about human resilience is admirable and ambitious. The film is full of unexpected twists, just like life, and features a surprisingly satisfying ending.

Fans of art-house films will find this thought-provoking drama more satisfying than mainstream audiences, although it is not Claire Denis’ best. HIGH LIFE has its moments but its mix of slow meditation on the human condition does not entirely gel, and that aspect does not mix as well with the thriller/horror aspects of the story as one might hoped. It is a thought-provoking film but not Denis’ most successful. Mainstream audiences expecting a thriller, as the trailer suggests, will likely be confused by the film’s focus on the passengers’ inner human journey and its social commentary on society’s treatment of prisoners.

HIGH LIFE opens Friday, April 19, at Landmark’s Tivoli Theater and Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

THE CHAPERONE – Review

Elizabeth McGovern in THE CHAPERONE. Photo by Karin Catt Courtesy of PBS Distribution

The prospect of a film about the iconic silent film star Louise Brooks was so tantalizing. The star with the sleek black bob and bold gaze was the most forward of the screen’s stars representing women breaking the social conventions in the Roaring ’20s.

THE CHAPERONE is a tale of Louise Brooks at 16,as she is just beginning her path to stardom, which made THE CHAPERONE seem irresistible. Yet, despite a fine cast led by Elizabeth McGovern and young Haley Lu Richardson plus a script by Julian Fellowes. THE CHAPERONE falls short of that promise.

This PBS production reunites “Downton Abbey” writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern in another period drama. Yet, directed by Michael Engler, in his first theatrical release after a long career in television, THE CHAPERONE feels like a TV movie. Despite nice locations and pretty costumes, it feels smaller and limited, and too often the dialog becomes flat, offering simplified social commentary from a modern view, a flaw often found in TV dramas. To their credit, the cast get all they can out of the script, co-written by Fellowes and Engler, and at times the film works. It is not so much a bad film as an uneven one, falling short of its dazzling promise.

After seeing 16-year-old Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) perform a modern dance piece as part of a fundraiser in Topeka, Kansas, society matron Norma Carlisle (Elizabeth McGovern) volunteers to accompany her to New York, after overhearing Louise’s mother Myra (Victoria Hill) talking about her trouble finding a chaperone. Talented Louise has been accepted as a student at the cutting-edge Denishaw modern dance school in New York. The ambitious, rebellious Kansas-born teen dreams of being an Isadora Duncan-style dancer but she is also chaffing to escape her conventional hometown Wichita.

Norma Carlisle has her own reasons for wanting to travel to New York. Something has gone wrong in her marriage to her successful lawyer husband (Campbell Scott), which we learn about later in flashbacks, and despite the material comfort of her life, she is searching for a change.

As the title suggests, THE CHAPERONE isn’t really about the star-to-be Louise Brooks but about the fictional chaperone character. Rather than the young star’s tale told through the chaperone’s eyes, we get the chaperone’s story with the young star as a supporting character. It is the 60-ish Norma who goes on a journey of change, while the confident young Louise does not change. Norma is interested in theater and art and recoils in horror when a socialite friend tells her she is joining the KKK. But she’s also a supporter of Prohibition and very prim and proper, insisting that Louise behave like a lady. On one level, it is a midlife crisis type of tale but scriptwriter Julian Fellowes also loads the story down with an array of social issues, including contemporary one.

The cast also includes Bythe Danner, in a remarkable single scene that is an emotional pivot point for McGovern’s character. In well-drawn portrayals, Miranda Otto and Robert Fairchild play dance innovators Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, who founded and run the Denishawn dance studio.

Geza Rohrig, the actor who was so good in SON OF SAUL, plays a handyman at the orphanage where McGovern’s chaperone goes seeking answers about her birth parents, and a romance story blooms between. Despite the script’s problems, the cast work hard to rise above it, and occasionally succeed. Haley Lu Richardson is a young actress with a lot of promise, but seems a bit miscast as Louise Brooks. She does not look much like Brooks but effectively channels her in the dance sequences and captures some of her fire and defiant style in other scenes. A particularly strong example is a scene where Louise sneaks out to a speakeasy. When confronted, Louise is not embarrassed or apologetic but breaths in Norma’s face, saying “That’s gin” with a defiantly grin.

Sadly, such moments of fire are too rare. The film follows the chaperone and her charge in New York, building up a relationship between the fiery future star and the chaperone who is increasingly questioning her own life choices. But then, frustratingly, the film skips over all of Louise Brooks film career, and reunites them years later in Wichita after Brooks returns home, the second half of a framing device that opens the film.

It is not a bad film so much as a disappointing one. Mostly it whets the appetite for a film that is really about Louise Brooks. THE CHAPERONE opens Friday, Apr. 12,at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

ASH IS PUREST WHITE – Review

Liao Fan as Bin and Zhao Tao as Qiao, in Jia Zhangke’s ASH IS PUREST WHITE. Courtesy of Cohen Media.

A searing epic of a gangster couple’s romance set against a backdrop of a changing China spanning near two decades, director Jia Zhangke’s ASH IS PUREST WHITE is an unforgettable journey. Ranging from the spring of 2001 to nearly the present day, we see the shift in ordinary Chinese life in the north, far from Beijing and Hong Kong, from coal mining region and the Three Gorges region, while we follow the lovers’ rocky path. This is a striking epic drama likely to haunt you long after the film ends, a personal story with universal human themes of love, loss and heartbreak told in a powerfully realistic way, as well as a revealing look at the enormous changes in China during their lives.

Jia’s brilliant and moving drama has been a hit at film festivals around the world and has been hailed as masterpiece from an already lauded director, winning the Palme d’Or and Best Actress at Cannes. The story opens in April 2001, with local gangster leader Bin (Liao Fan) and his young girlfriend Qiao (Zhao Tao) in the Mah jongg parlor they run in a small town in a coal mining region. Bin is a big fish in this small pond, fawned over by his gangster underlings and dancing the night away to Western music, while running the gang’s illegal loan sharking and gambling businesses for the area’s older gang boss. The parallels to THE GODFATHER are unmistakable: respect is a big deal, the gangsters call each other brothers, and locals come to Bin with problems. Everything is very formal and organized.

Qiao is Bin’s assistant as well as his girlfriend, and her work as a courier takes her home to the coal mining town where her aging father lives alone. Dad is a sad broken man, still fighting the Revolution by urging the coal miners to rise up against the mine boss, even though coal business is fading and the mine is rumored to close soon. He’s also unhappy with his daughter’s gangster life, but she tells him he must let her go.

Despite her work, Qiao doesn’t consider herself a gang member as much as Bin’s girlfriend. Yet when she talks of settling down, Bin is non-committal. Their conversation proves revealing about both Bin and Qiao’s essential natures as well as their relationship. In another revealing scene, Bin decides to show Qiao how to shoot his illegal handgun, following an attack on him by a couple of young thugs. As she fires the gun, she turns her head away, as if rejecting what she is doing. It is a striking visual moment. The gun later plays a pivotal, tragic role in both their lives.

ASH IS PUREST WHITE spins its tale of a changing China and the characters’ lives side by side, jumping forward in time at crucial moments for both. At one point, the characters find themselves in the Three Gorges region just before the historical villages in the area are submerged by the massive dam being built. Tourists coming to see the area’s sights before they are lost under water mix with lost-looking local villagers being dislocated by the project.

Director Jia Zhangke is a masterful visual storyteller, using striking images and carefully built scenes to draw us into the drama if lives of these two people, as well as the sweeping epic of the wrenching changes the country is undergoing. Where the events take place, the scenes in the background and the minor characters that come and go, say as much as what is happening the characters in the story at that moment.

Although this is the story of a love affair, the real star is Zhao Tao as Qiao, who is really the focus of the story. The actress is the director’s longtime collaborator (and now his wife), and pair create magic on screen, with a character who evolves from a confident girl to a broken soul to a tough as nails woman. While both characters change as their circumstances do, their basic natures remain the same. Liao Fan is perfect as small-time gangster Bin, who projects a tough guy persona but harbors a hidden ego-driven brittleness. The raw emotion of the shifts in their lives and relationship is particularly affecting as it plays across Zhao’s sensitive, expressive face.

Power plays a central role in this story, both literally in the sense of coal, hydroelectric and nuclear and emotionally in the shifting relationship and fortunes of the two characters. The two leads are brilliant in their roles, taking the characters from a kind of cocky innocence to a worn realism, as the actors age from youth to middle age. Zhao is especially good, transforming herself from obedient girl to a self-possessed and masterful woman. She is a joy to watch.

ASH IS PUREST WHITE is a masterwork, an true epic tale of love, loss, change and power in a shifting China as well as heartbreaking, realistic personal story. ASH IS PUREST WHITE, in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles, opens Friday, April 5, at Landmark’s Tivoli Theater.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars