Film Review

Blood, Ballerinas, and Mistress Uma

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 01:20:02 +0000

Blood, Ballerinas, and Mistress Uma Chet Kozlowski March 24, 2026 - 21:20

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Let’s see here: a group of innocent young women: check. A breakdown in a foreign country in the middle of the night: check. A trek in the dark through sinister woods to a secluded roadside inn: check. Gnarly, leering strangers with less-than-honorable intentions inside: check.

Pretty Lethal is a mashup of all sorts of action genres. I count six before the title credit.

Yet it’s a hoot. It’s clever, and it’s surprising, and I laughed out loud several times.

A dysfunctional troupe of ballerinas, bickering amongst themselves to be the perfect swan, is tapped to travel to Budapest, Hungary, to perform a classical ballet. Bonnie a.k.a. Bones (Maddie Ziegler) is the fearless one, in competition to be prima with Princess (Lana Condor). Grace (Avantika Vandanapu) approaches everything with a religious fervor. Zoe (Iris Apatow, Judd and Leslie’s daughter, all grown up since This Is 40) is the protective sister of deaf dancer Chloe (Millicent Simmonds). Ms. Thorna (Lydia Leonard) is their chaperone and protector.

This is the crew that breaks down in the remote Hungarian woods, makes their way to a dark mansion populated with brawny Hostel-style henchmen. Because of the rain, they are forced to wear their pristine costumes while their traveling clothes dry. They soon realize they are not in the safest hands and are, in fact, prisoners of these burly dudes (including Julian Krenn and Béla Orsányi), led by a mysterious femme fatale, Mistress Devora. She’s the owner of the place and a former ballerina whose career came to an untimely end years ago.

Pursued, abused, and almost tattooed, the dancers rally and decide that the only way out of there is to put aside their squabbles and band together. Bones issues the battle cry after besting two assailants: “These guys are drunk and out of shape, and we’re prima fucking ballerinas!” And so, dressed in tutus, they plié and pirouette their way to freedom. Their increasingly blood-stained costumes become a running joke.

The actors give it their all, the set pieces are inventive (one, with the ballerinas dancing while kicking the asses of an overwhelming flood of brutes, channels Kill Bill Vol. 1, especially since their nemesis, Mistress Devora, is played with vitality by Beatrice Kiddo herself, Uma Thurman. Devora’s failed past and her debt to a criminal kingpin are integral to one of several climaxes.

Director Vicky Jewson delivers ninety minutes of well-conceived thrills. Her direction is crisp; she has many characters to juggle, aided by expert, nearly invisible compositing and stunt work. Writer Kate Freund takes the part of Sona, Mistress Devora’s second in command. Those ballerinas are all played by former child actors. The absurd images of Sugar Plum Fairies amongst bloody carnage is worth the price of admission.

As usual, I have a problem with the title. Can’t anybody name anything anymore? “Pretty?” Why, because the ballerinas are pretty? “Lethal” because there’s a body count? Really? How folks who can bring you such an original and fun film come up with a title that sounds like a 1980s teen drama is beyond me.

The film’s been in development for a while. Lena Headey was originally cast, presumably as Mistress Devora. It was originally titled Ballerina Overdrive (better, but no cigar).

Pretty Lethal is released on Prime Video. It deserves a better name and all of your attention.

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Pretty Lethal. Directed by Vicky Jewson. 2026. Released by Amazon MGM Studios. Runtime 88 minutes.

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Fallen Angels and O.G.s

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:57:40 +0000

Fallen Angels and O.G.s Chet Kozlowski March 23, 2026 - 20:57

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Fantasy Life is a welcome throwback to low-impact comedy like Annie Hall, Goodbye Columbus, and Blume in Love. Writer/director Matthew Shear’s work fits perfectly into the mold of Jewish-centric comedy. You half expect him to unzip from the forehead and the pre-pariah Woody Allen to step out. It’s not a bad model to follow, yielding laughs and knowing insights about the caprices of human nature.

When we meet 30-year-old Sam (played by the multi-tasking Mr. Shear), he is being let go from his job. Dazed and confused, he recounts this to Dr. Fred, his shrink, who tells him his son and his wife need a “babysitter” and suggests Sam apply.

David the son is a charismatic musician, a rock bassist. Diane the wife is a once-popular actress who has fallen out of demand and hopes to be “re-introduced” to the filmgoing public. Sam accepts the job watching their three daughters while David goes off on tour, and Diane, depressed about “aging out” (one scene has an autograph seeker mistaking her for another actress, Lake Bell), wanders through the house like a sleepwalker. She starts chatting with Sam, and soon they’re watching old movies together. Sam is smitten. A bond forms. Things come to a head when David returns and the extended family summers on Martha’s Vineyard, where tragedy almost strikes when Sam, who is prone to panic attacks, puts the children at risk.

It’s a simple enough premise and handled with wit and aplomb by Mr. Shear. Fantasy Life assumes an old-school structure, a few steps removed from sitcoms and passed through a Mumblecore filter. Besides Amanda Peet (Diane) and Alessandro Nivola (David), both believable and appealing actors, Mr. Shear must’ve practically peed himself to get the rest of the cast: O.G.s like Judd Hirsh (Taxi, The Fablemans) as the shrink Dr. Fred, Andrea Martin (Only Murders in the Building, et al) as Dr. Fred’s receptionist, and isn’t that Bob Balaban (Asteroid City, et al) and Jessica Harper (Phantom of the Paradise) playing the grandparents? Season this with turns by Zosia Mamet (HBO’s Girls), Holland Taylor (Bombshell) and the vivacious child actors Romy Fay, Callie Santoro, and Riley Vinson as the kids, and you have a satisfying feast indeed.

Amanda Peet has many films and TV shows to her credit, including The Whole Nine Yards, Dirty John, and Your Friends and Neighbors (I have a special place in my heart for her in Aaron Sorkin’s single-season Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). Ms. Peet can be comic, elegant, and sexy at the same time. Her performance here as the conflicted Diane is subtle and a little heartbreaking. “I’m a wealthy white woman and I always feel like a victim,” she opines. She’s the prom queen in purgatory. Ms. Peet renders with delicate sorrow Diane’s quest to maintain her roles as mother and wife while remaining marketable. Ms. Peet is also listed as a producer of Fantasy Life.

Matthew Shear is a hyphenate to watch. This is his first feature film. As a writer, his script is witty and unpredictable; as an actor, he projects into Sam a vulnerability and self-awareness. His directing style is loose and not showy. In all roles, he’s willing to step back and give his able cast room to shine.

If I have any complaint about Fantasy Life, it’s a reliance on the lilting score by Christopher Bear. The music’s fine, don’t get me wrong. But too often, Mr. Shear undercuts the power of his scenes with its whimsy. Its placement softens some strong emotion. This instinct will hopefully relax as Mr. Shear gains confidence. I’m looking forward to his next effort.

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Fantasy Life. Directed by Matthew Shear. 2025. From Greenwich Entertainment. Runtime 91 minutes.

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I Put A Spell On You

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:27:10 +0000

I Put A Spell On You Chet Kozlowski March 8, 2026 - 20:27

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It all starts with a toad.

Young Aapo runs a pet shop with his mother in their native Yucatan. One day a Maya woman named Luz comes in, looking for a specific toad that has hallucinogenic properties. She belongs to a “conscious community of healers” called the Empire of Love, and they need exactly that type of toad for a ritual. She casts a seductive eye on Aapo and convinces him to deliver it to her in the jungle. Aapo motors out, naïve and unaware of what awaits him.

That’s the premise of the beguiling film Wetiko from writer/director Kerry Mondragón, which was made in 2022, and released now to select theaters.

Aapo’s journey twists and turns (Wetiko’s tagline bills it as a “psychedelic jungle thriller). A spirit moth flies in his ear and launches his visions. Luz (Dalia Xiuhcoatl, who has arrestingly angular features) transitions to Aapo’s ally as it gradually becomes clear that Aapo (Juan Daniel García Treviño) is being prepped to be the sacrifice du jour. The Empire of Love is a cult, run by the conniving gringo Shaman Zake Zezo (played adroitly by Neil Sandilands, who’s been in the films News of the World and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes). Shaman Zake has displaced the former shaman under mysterious circumstances. He’s a smooth talker, promising transcendence, while maintaining a cadre of look-alike maidens called the Marias, women groomed to be at his sexual beck and call.

Then there’s that pesky toad. It keeps disappearing. Everybody keeps losing it, and their search takes us deeper into the depths of the jungle and brings more quirky characters into the mix, like Franky Whiteout (Jordan Barrett), Goddess Jenny (Claire Kniaz), and Goddess Sasha (Bárbara de Regil).

Writer/director Kerry Mondragón shot Wetiko in Mexico. In 2014, he was Spike Lee’s assistant and associate director on Lee’s Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. His debut feature, Tyger Tyger, was released in 2019. Mr. Mondragón’s style is loose and has a DIY appeal. His byword in Wetiko is color: saturated reds and blues and yellows peek gaudily out of a murky soup of browns and blacks (the primary action takes place at night). Much of the dialogue is in Spanish, and the English subtitles are yellow with a red drop shadow. Every frame of Wetiko is admirably crowded with visual information.

F.Y.I.: The term “Wetiko” is Algonquian, meaning “a cannibalistic spirit of insatiable greed, selfish consumption, and egomania.” That may be meant to describe Zake, even though the film embodies much more than his malevolent "mind virus." But Zake’s final act seems incongruous to the manipulator we’ve come to know. Wetiko begins and finishes with The Tremeloes’ version of “Silence is Golden,” a jolting contrast to the setting, but an ironic note at the end.

As far as phantasmagorias go, it’s pretty low-tech. During the hallucinations, there’s some use of a fish-eye lens. The ritual site resembles a beer garden, festooned with neon lights and glow sticks. The height of the special effects is shots seen through heat-sensing goggles. But that adds to its goofy charm. It reminds me of Roger Corman’s slapdash drive-in movies, in intention and budget. Wetiko is seat-of-your pants filmmaking that is also sincere and indigenous. It’s a trip worth taking.

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Wetiko. Directed by Kerry Mondragón. 2022. In English and Spanish with subtitles. Runtime 89 minutes.

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"Trust Is A Red Herring"

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 21:59:42 +0000

"Trust Is A Red Herring" Chet Kozlowski March 3, 2026 - 16:59

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In the opening montage of the faux-documentary Group: The Schopenhauer Effect, various New Yorkers walk to the Group session, heeding their inner voices, which are ambivalent, argumentative, insecure, and so on. Once in the room, under their therapist’s guidance, they express their turmoil and, in doing so, help each other. The Group rules are simple: what’s said in Group stays in Group, and the participants can’t meet separately outside the office. It’s a closed unit and an effective form of therapy. The film is based on a successful web series that chronicles the fictitious practice of real-life psychoanalyst Dr. Elliot Zeisel.

The conceit of the film has the participants returning from Covid’s limbo of Zoom. They meet weekly and are happy to be back in person. A new member creates a disturbance: Alexis, a filmmaker who wants to observe the Group as research for an upcoming project. He’s been convinced by Dr. Zeisel to join and commit for real. His presence throws the balance off. The others object, fearing he’ll mine their serious purpose for trivial entertainment. They are wary of him until he proposes a plan that will encourage them all to make real therapeutic progress.

Sounds dry, I know, but fans of Showtime’s Couples Therapy, HBO’s In Treatment, and even Netflix’s Love is Blind (once they leave the pods) will find much to enjoy. First, there’s the buzz of identification (from common issues and skirting mental ruts; Dr. Zeisel’s probing questions and jolting statements —“Trust is a red herring”— blasts oneself out of complacency), and the superiority that comes with the illusion of solving the troubles of others.

The ensemble is seasoned actors, and the film and series are scripted and improvised. Thomas Sadowski (of HBO’s The Newsroom) is Alexis, the surrogate of the film’s director Alexis Lloyd (30 Beats). The cast is rounded out by Lucy Walters, Teresa Avia Lim, Ezra Barnes, Bernardo Cubría, Gabriela Kohen, Elisha Lawson, and Cara Ronzetti, all giving empathetic performances. The characters, even the disagreeable ones, become familiar quickly.

The mise-en-scène blurs the line between reality and fiction. It’s lots of close-ups by a handheld camera in a room. Yet Mr. Lloyd makes it compelling (my online screener kept bugging out, making me frantic to rejoin). I wonder how Group: The Schopenhauer Effect will play out on the big screen, given its YouTube roots. Watched on a phone or laptop, the segments put the viewer in the Group as well, producing an intimacy that could be lost when expanded. The conversion to a feature film also freezes the premise, making it a one-off rather than a reliable ongoing series. But the actors are appealing, and the insights edifying. We are sad when our time is up.

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Group: The Schopenhauer Effect. Directed by Alexis Lloyd. 2026. From Abramorama. Runtime 119 minutes.

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Local Color in Chiaroscuro

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 23:32:14 +0000

Local Color in Chiaroscuro Chet Kozlowski February 16, 2026 - 18:32

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Two new films shed light on the vagaries of modern Irish life.

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Perennial Light

Directed by Colin Hickey. 2024. Runtime 82 minutes.

Perennial Light is an ambitious work by filmmaker Colin Hickey, expansive in intent and minimalist in execution. Think The Tree of Life as a series of black and white stills, punctuated by pencil sketches.

Set along the Irish coast, the plot, such as it is, follows a young fisherman’s journey from childhood to adulthood, haunted by a mortal tragedy. But for Perennial Light, a plot is beside the point. The point is the images: a string of them, glowing, austere, barely moving, depicting snatches of memory that take to the skies in meditative drone shots.

This journey is nearly silent, with a simple score compiled by Juliet Martin that runs like water under it. This reductive approach makes for a montage that’s languid yet stirring. It’s a unique, somewhat lulling way to spend 90 minutes.

Mr. Hickey has been making shorts; this is his first feature. He uses nonprofessional talent in Perennial Light and assumes a part himself. He doesn’t ask much of the actors, sometimes just to stand still while the camera lingers on every detail.

These shots are intermittently dotted with childlike drawings and flipbook-style animations depicting babies, stars, and the cosmos. These illustrations are by Paolo Chianta, who shares auteur credit with Mr. Hickey, who is credited as “Writer/Camera/Editor.”

Happy mention goes to his large cast, which includes Finn O’Donovan, Clara Rose Hickey, Muriel Pitton, Jack Mahoney, and Ciara Hickey, among many others.

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The Spin

Directed by Michael Head. 2025. Runtime 92 minutes.

The Spin provides what’s absent from Perennial Light: color and comedy.

Two slackers, Dermot (Brenock O’Connor) and Elvis (Owen Colgan), own Boneyard Records, a struggling vinyl shop in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Rent’s due, child support’s due, and their best bet is a road trip across the length of Ireland to procure a cache of rare records. Mix High Fidelity and Coogan/Brydon’s The Trip, and you get the idea.

It’s a simple setup that pays off well. The duo has a goofy charm, as well as eccentric peripheral characters, like an overbearing landlady (Derry Girls’ Tara Lynne O’Neill) whose abuse Dermot finds oddly arousing. Quirky and breezy, the Irish way of puttin’ things is in evidence: Dermot says of a cohort, “Look into his eyes and tell me Dave hasn’t murdered someone.” Elvis debates his ex-wife over whether she threatened to “slaughter him like sheep” or “slaughter him in his sleep” (“Sorry, I misheard,” he says, splitting hairs). One episode has their backseat occupied by a man with a taxidermized dog, a stripper, and a nun.

Michael Head writes/directs/acts in films including Bermondsey Tales, Meeting Across the River, A Gangster's Kiss, The Gift, and the upcoming feature Jackie the Stripper.

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Olden Valor

Chet Kozlowski — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 01:45:04 +0000

Olden Valor Chet Kozlowski February 12, 2026 - 20:45

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Hellfire caught my attention because of the cast: Stephen Lang, Dolph Lundgren, and Harvey Keitel. All character actors who have had rich careers, peaked, and now do these low-budget films to either keep their chops sharp or their bank accounts full. But this one looked promising. I wasn’t disappointed: Hellfire is an inventive addition to the action genre, hitting all the marks, tweaking cliches, and shooting around deficiencies.

Stephen Lang stars. He’s an intriguing figure, and I’ve appreciated him in small parts in Manhunter and Last Exit to Brooklyn, as the villain in the first Avatar film, and in a commanding performance on Broadway in John Patrick Shanley’s play Defiance. More recently, he’s been the blind guy in the Don’t Breathe movies. Mr. Lang appears bigger than he is: he’s actually on the shorter side and stealthy, traits that serve him well against the beefier assailants he faces in Hellfire.

The town of Rondo, Texas, is terrorized by a drug operation run by piano-playing patriarch Jeremiah (Mr. Keitel). A stranger comes to town, a nameless wandering hitchhiker (Mr. Lang). Turns out he’s a former Special Forces. He employs his specific set of skills to challenge the gang leader Clyde (Michael Sirow), who has eyes for local beauty Lena (Scottie Thompson). It’s pretty standard stuff, what you’d expect from an 80s action star like, say, Jean Claude Van Damme. And speaking of '80s action stars, Dolph Lundgren plays a Texas sheriff (!) in Hellfire, pretty convincingly, adding texture to any setup he’s in.

The fight scenes start off standard as well, but stunt coordinator Heather Burton (also credited with special effects) makes a few stand out: one in an abandoned factory (where a shoot-em-up amongst abandoned refrigerators looks like a tribute to Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master movies), and in a restaurant kitchen (including creative use of a cheese grater). Mr. Lang, the avenging vet with no name, parries and punches and grunts and tucks and rolls. Much of the dramatic weight is assumed by Ms. Thompson, who is known for work in TV series like NCIS. Her Lena is the tale’s fulcrum, and her fashion model features are a welcome visual diversion from the dominant macho motif.

Then there’s Harvey. I worry about Mr. Keitel. Mortality takes its toll, and the actor who defined Mean Streets, Bad Lieutenant, and The Piano, to name a very few, is a cherished national resource. His Hellfire scenes are few, his energy is low, and he’s put together and propped up. Shoestring movies like this exploit his name, but at least director Isaac Florentine gives him real lines to read and uses him to his best advantage.

Despite its limitations, Hellfire works. Stephen Lang’s wanderer looks poised for a franchise; the fights are cleverly staged. Even the music, mostly reworkings of recognizable tunes in the public domain, is effective in its simplicity.

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Hellfire. Directed by Isaac Florentine. 2026. From Saban Films. On VOD and digital platforms. Runtime 95 minutes.

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New York Jewish Film Festival 2026

Brandon Judell — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 01:36:14 +0000

New York Jewish Film Festival 2026 Brandon Judell January 25, 2026 - 20:36

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The last twelve months supplied us with numerous transportive moments across screens big and small that were very hard to cold-shoulder.

Take the explosive final half hour of the un-kosher Sirāt. Against the backdrop of an unsparing southern Moroccan desert, a father (Seregi López) searches for his daughter, accompanied by four tattered hippies, his son, and a hypnotic techno soundtrack. Motto: No matter how little life has blessed us with, we can still wind up with less.

Meanwhile, Marty Supreme chronicles the overzealous ping-ponging exploits of a self-absorbed, Philip-Rothian Jew (Timothee Chalamet) with an unbridled Type A persona. The film’s tail-end leads to Marty discovering his raison d’être off the table tennis table. Tearing up, I recalled one of my favorite Roth observations from American Pastoral:

“The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride.”

Well, more than a dozen such right-and-wrong moments are scattered among the 30 offerings currently being shared at the 35th Edition of the New York Jewish Festival presented by The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center.

Emily Lobsenz’s documentary short, “A Bit of Everything and Matzoh Balls Too,”boasts enough for several features. Comprised of Jewish families of varying size in the midst of rolling their matzah balls and simmering their chicken soups, the film showcases how this savory concoction has been passed from one generation to another. Recollections of lost ones, of childhoods, of joys yet to be grasped rise up along with a nod to Moses and his peers as the scent of fowl broth rises up from stove tops. A bonus: There’s also a defining of schmalz (rendered chicken fat).

The highlight of A Bit of Everything, though, is great-grandma Minnie Osher, whose ability to smile today was once part of a future she thought she would never experience. Looking straight at us, she recalls:

“My grandmother had 10 kids. She had 35 grandchildren. Hitler killed them all for no reason. They had shaved off all of our hair. No hair on my head. I looked at my sister. My sister looked at me. We couldn’t recognize each other. And Dr. Mengele . . . he was the killer in Auschwitz. He made the selection: who should live and who should die. So I took a brick while Dr. Mengele was in the back, and I rubbed the brick on my cheeks to make them rosy so I’d look good, and he let me live.”

Lobsenz’s offering is clearly a celebration of both Jewish survival and a reaffirmation of community that includes a Mexican matzoh ball recipe and a young woman who delivers the beloved soup to those who are ill.

All of which reminds me that when Marilyn Monroe was wed to Arthur Miller, she was said to have been served matzoh ball soup three meals in a row. After the third time, the star inquired: “Isn’t there any other part of the matzoh you can eat?”

I wish the answer Ms. Monroe received had also been recorded for posterity. No luck there.

And no matzoh here in Native Australian Jack Feldstein’s films that have nothing to do with “fressing,” but they do supply plenty of food for thought. His 30 or so shorts often explore the institutions and inhabitants of the Big Apple with a huge nod towards Judaism. When delving into his oeuvre, expect no less than a Yiddish song or two, a collapsing Golem, the 91-year-old former head of New York Culture Affairs, plus the book and lyrics for something subtitled “The World’s First Theremin Musical.”

But be forewarned: much of Feldstein’s output might trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy. “Why?” you ask. Simply because he’s the master of neon animation or neonism, which has been explained by critic David Jaffer as “cartoonish pop-art visualization. Strange, wonderful, and a must-see for fans of the monologue.” Feldstein himself has been said to describe this technique as “a stream of consciousness narrative with a cartoon aesthetic that takes modernist stream-of-consciousness filmmaking into a post-modern and humorous form.” As for his content, it’s been compared to that of Woody Allen and Spalding Grey.

The humor within Feldstein’s works is often evoked by an interplay between the visual elements and the solemnity of the souls he’s interviewing. With “Animated New Yorkers: Joel,” part of an award-winning series, the focus is on the eponymous Joel, who was born into an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community from which he had decamped four years earlier.

So what do you do when you escape into a modern life that has a totally different set of restrictions and freedoms, most of which you are not yet familiarized with? You join a WhatsApp group with a few other religious Jewish people who are becoming secular.

What ensues is the five-minute story of Joel’s first romantic encounter told in a straightforward manner yet illustrated with ever-changing visuals that borrow from Chagall, Picasso, and maybe even R Crumb.

Joel: “I never felt a woman’s touch and certainly not with women my age, where’s there’s the possibility of this type of intimacy even happening.”

Soon, the pair are watching movies on a laptop in her father’s car and progress to hand-holding.

Joel: “No one had ever told me they liked me before. It exploded my brain. At the same time, I felt this tremendous pressure, like I didn’t know what to do in such a situation. And I immediately begin to worry about whether her level of like is more than my level of like...and do I like...and in what way do I like.”

Maybe if there’s a “Joel: Part 2,” we’ll discover if this chaste romance leads to our young man stepping on a glass and a few years later burping some babes, but sometimes hand-holding is more than enough.

For those seeking a feature-length entertainment that shoehorns in a funeral, a wedding, and a bat mitzvah, you might want to attend the festivities celebrated in Mazel Tov, which, according to Wiki, was the most successful Argentine film of 2025. Directed and starring Adrián Saur, who’s apparently a big deal in his homeland, this mildly comic, sometimes over-the-top, intermittently dramatic exploration of a dysfunctional family delightfully argues that when relationships are deteriorating, Jewish traditions can be the glue that mends.

But if you can’t get to see a screening of Mazel Tov, let me share a bit of it that Rabbi Telushkin shared in his classic Jewish Humor. He labeled this "A Final Jewish Reflection on Antisemitism.”:

“Albert Einstein said: “If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German, and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. If my theory should prove to be untrue, then France will say I am a German, and Germany will say I am a Jew.”

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Last Sátántangó in Budapest

Gary Lucas — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:41:33 +0000

Last Sátántangó in Budapest Gary Lucas January 8, 2026 - 09:41

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Bela Tarr and Gary Lucas in Sarajevo. Photo by Snjezana Milivojevic

Really sad to hear of the death of the great Hungarian art-film director, Bela Tarr, at the young age of 70. The master of the glacially slow take, his singularly dark, visionary black and white fever dreams, especially those made in collaboration with the Nobel Prize winning author Laszlo Krasznahorkai (among them the 7 1/2 hour Sátántangó, Damnation, Werckmeister Harmonies, and The Turin Horse, all with music by Mihaly Vig) are some of the most profound and stunning works of contemporary art cinema. Intense contemplation through repeated viewings of his hypnotic oeuvre is seemingly capable of actually stopping the passage of time. Susan Sontag declared that she would "be glad to see Sátántangó every year for the rest of my life" (all 7 1/2 hours of it. You can laugh at its extreme length–sometimes it's shown with an intermission, but that makes it even longer. Still, I've never seen anyone walk out of it). His films, set in the grimy dysfunctionality of rural post-Communist Hungary, ultimately have a mystical aura about them, a kind of transcendence in the wonder of the universe. Still, you would never confuse Tarr with Terrence Malick. His metaphysical worldview is definitely painted black, laced with touches of absurdist humor–and I think he stands more in the tradition of literary titans such as Celine, Beckett, and Dostoevsky, and painters such as Mark Rothko and Franz Kline (and many old master painters as well), than film makers–although some of the films of Werner Herzog, Carl Dreyer, early David Lynch, and Romanian director Radu Jude have certain affinities with Tarr's output. But his cinema really exists on a plane of its own, and I highly recommend him.

A few years ago, I made a pilgrimage to Sarajevo to meet the Master and hang out with him for the afternoon. He was then heading up a Film Academy with a select group of eight young, fledgling filmmakers. Sadly, he had forsaken the hustle of trying to get his films financed at this point (shades of Orson Welles); it was a dead end for him. His work was still feted at film festivals all over the world, and I went to visit him the very last time he was in New York, when the Film Society of Lincoln Center mounted a retrospective. It was right after a Q&A following a screening of an early film, Family Nest, and he was sitting on the patio outside the Walter Reade, looking a bit jet-lagged and blue. As I approached him, his face crinkled up, and he broke into a big smile. He was quite a lovely guy, a gentle humanist really, with the creative warmth of a blazing sun within him, and we had a pleasant reminiscence about our meeting in Sarajevo.

Despite the over arching bleakness and despair of many of Bela Tarr's films, they still are full of life (especially in the pub scenes) and occasional redeeming points of lightand they are ever more relevant today: Werckmeister Harmonies ends with the terrifying rise and rampage of Fascists triggered at a Dark Carnival in a nameless village presided over by a maniacal "Prince” and its prize exhibit, an enormous dead whale, and Sátántangó depicts the manipulation of the lumpen residents of a broken down collective farm in the middle of nowhere by conmen and spies for the communist government secret police.

Bela Tarr's films are eternal–and are not going gentle into that good night.

(Read The Guardian obit here.)

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How Not to Survive Pre-Adolescence

Brandon Judell — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 13:22:10 +0000

How Not to Survive Pre-Adolescence Brandon Judell January 6, 2026 - 08:22

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"Carrie's got the curse! Carrie's got the curse," sang out the teens stomping onstage in a locker room in the short-lived 1988 Broadway adaptation of Stephen King's ode to menstruation.

Don't be surprised then if "Ben's got the plague! Ben's got the plague," is being chanted likewise in the near future. If "that time of the month" with a dash of telekinetic powers can inspire a musical, why can't a lad with a ghastly rash do the same?

Writer/director Charlie Polinger's The Plague, with its current 100% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating, is a raw, painful look at pre-adolescence based on the director's actual journals from when he was 12, a time he notes "when social anxiety is so visceral that every day feels like life-and-death." He labels his mesmerizing film "psychological horror."

With its trauma-inducing score (Johan Lenox), its eerily immersive cinematography (Steven Breckon), its perfect casting of both awkward and bullies (Rebecca Dealy), plus its riveting pacing (editors Henry Hayes and Simon Njoo), The Plague does for pre-teens what Jaws did for sharks and The Shining accomplished for recovering alcoholic authors with writer's block. You'll want to keep them at more than an arm's length.

Although shot in Bucharest, Romania, the film takes place somewhere stateside in the summer of 2003 at the Tom Lerner Water Polo Camp, 2^nd session.

Opening shot: a huge, uninhabited swimming pool. A screen of discomforting, gurgling blue. Suddenly, one boy jumps in from a distance. Then a multitude follows. Within seconds,s all we see are dozens of headless, flailing tweens kicking to and fro. Sound: disembodied blasts as if from a ship leaving port.

Cut to the boys' torso-less heads bobbing up and down above water as they clap hands in the pool, rather reminiscent of a Synchronized Swimming Olympic event as choreographed by Sweeney Todd? Fear not. It's a cheerful visual. Not a slaughter. The chaps are having fun. It's only the soundtrack that's at times rather worrying, plus your own memories, especially if you hid in bathroom stalls during your junior high years.

(Warning: After watching The Plague, be prepared for the rising up of flashbacks of some of your most traumatic pubescent trials by fire that you once thought were submerged forever. One of my own: After school was out, Howard B., who lived in my building, gleefully told me in the elevator that everyone in gym class that day noticed that my testicles were hairless. How they saw, I didn't ask. Worn-out undies? Anyway, I hadn't yet read Questions Children Ask by my mom, who borrowed the book from Susan Rosenhouse's mother across the street. Consequently, I didn't know I was supposed to be hirsute down there. By the way, the first two questions in that pragmatic guide were "Why don't I have one?" and "Why is Daddy's bigger than my own?" Thankfully, my father, who exposed me to many mental horrors throughout the years, avoided exposing himself, so I never even thought of asking that final one, and clearly I had no need to ask the first. But wait! They come in sizes? Clearly, a lack of sex education was just another reason in the Bronx in the early '60s to ridicule someone already blessed with a higher voice, uncoordinated limbs, and an inability to play punchball. Don't worry. Gyms and facial hair rid me of the taint.)

Back to critique: Class time. Coach Daddy Wags (Joel Edgerton), who himself had a depressive youth, understands lads and is forgiving even when someone draws a penis with an unerasable red marker on the whiteboard he's utilizing for instruction. The probable artistic villain of this dastardly deed and the apparent leader of all non-scholastic on-campus delinquent doings is the ever-smirking Jake (Kayo Martin, nominee for several Breakthrough Performance awards at the moment). He's been around the whole summer and knows the ropes.

Not so for the new boy, the fragile Ben (Everett Blunck, who was so brilliant in last year's Griffin in Summer). He's walking through life as if feeling his way across a newly frozen lake. Every step can be a fatal misstep. But so far, the in-crowd is accepting him even if Jake immediately unearths Ben's flaw. The youth pronounces "stop" as "sop" and "Boston" as "Bosson." That's teasable, but not enough reason to be ostracized.

Happily, Ben is accepted at the "popular" lunch table, and he's even asked his opinion on such heady philosophical questions as would he rather have sex with a dog without anybody knowing or not have sex with a dog with everyone thinking he did.

Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) isn't so lucky. This quirky, shapeless youth, who's been around since the beginning of summer, has suddenly broken out with a body rash which Jake and pals have deemed a highly contagious form of leprosy. Don't touch Eli or sit where he has sat, or you'll have to run to the shower and soap up rigorously.

Ben feels both the absurdity and the injustice of this ostracization, but can he both befriend the boy with the dermal eruptions and still pal around with locker-room elite who lie about their sexual exploits when the lights go out? Of course not.

Edward Burne Jones, the pre-Raphelite painter, once noted: "I can only come near to what I wish, and am unhappy in consequence." Ben could wear that on a T-shirt.

In the end, what might at first sound like a Netflix 8-episode trek through the agonies of acne and the want to be accepted is instead a nigh-perfect film that is terrifying from beginning to end without the need of monsters because we, intentionally or not, are the monsters.

(Please note: the appropriately named Spooky Pictures is one of the production companies involved here.)

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Missing No More

Chet Kozlowski — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 01:48:25 +0000

Missing No More Chet Kozlowski December 27, 2025 - 20:48

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Film Review

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drama

I’ve been a fan of Jared Harris since seeing him as John Lennon in the 2000 TV film Two of Us (to Aidan Quinn’s Paul McCartney). He’s done a lot more since (and before) then, of course, but I remember him most as King George VI in Netflix’s The Crown, and Lane Pryce in Mad Men—his lined face, gruff demeanor, and throaty growl mask a pained tenderness. So I looked forward to seeing him in the new film Reawakening.

He plays John, an itinerant electrician. John and his wife Mary live a quiet working-class life in England. Their daughter Clare stormed out of the family home a decade ago. She was fourteen years old and presumably left to live on the streets. Mary mourns. John canvases neighborhoods, showing Clare’s photo, chasing phantoms, and tracking down leads that, over ten years, have gone nowhere. He sits on a TV stage to plead for clues on the tenth anniversary of Clare’s disappearance and slips into a trance while looking at a photo of her face.

And now, suddenly, Clare has returned. No fanfare, she’s just there on the doorstep. The years have left her lean. She asks forgiveness and wants to come home. Mary takes her in, no questions asked. But John is suspicious. Is it really her?

Juliet Stevenson plays Mary. She’s best known for Truly, Madly, Deeply and one of the best screen Noras in a 1992 TV production of A Doll’s House. Erin Doherty, who appeared in Netflix’s The Crown and Adolescence, whose delicately elongated features would inspire Modigliani, is Clare.

John and Mary’s conflict is played out in terse remarks courtesy of writer/director Virginia Gilbert’s literate script. John implores Mary to see the cracks in Clare’s story. “You must feel it isn’t right,” he says, to which Mary replies, “Don’t tell me what I feel.” When John asks Mary what this imposter could want, Mary cries, “Why should she want anything from us? We’re nobody! We’re nothing!” For her part, the woman skitters around the edges, there but practically not in the frame.

The return of the Prodigal lends itself to a thriller motif, often leading to violence and mayhem. And in fact, Reawakening is being marketed as a thriller of that stripe. But Reawakening isn’t that; it’s more modest and more thoughtful. The suspense comes from what the characters won’t or can’t do, how they are helpless. The ensemble plays an understated cat-and-mouse game of passing glances and conflicting emotions that addresses the loneliness of loss and what we’d do to relieve it. In the end, Reawakening gives poignant meaning to its title.

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Reawakening. Directed by Virginia Gilbert. 2024. Runtime 90 minutes. In theaters and on VOD.