drama

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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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.

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Enigmatic Enlightenment

Chet Kozlowski — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 17:20:56 +0000

Enigmatic Enlightenment Chet Kozlowski December 21, 2025 - 12:20

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Universal is an odd little movie. It seems to be made up of codes. First, there’s that title. Universal is hardly universal in any sense. It takes place in one setting, and the action is essentially a dialogue among three characters; no one else appears in the cast. It sets up situations and then doesn’t follow through, at least in an expected way. Are these missed opportunities or parts of the design?

Basically, in Universal, three people in a cabin in the woods confront the mysteries of the universe. Leo and Naomi are US-based British academics. They’ve been dating for three years. They arrive at a holiday rental, ready for relaxation. Leo has a wedding ring and is ready to pop the question. His plan is scuttled by Rickey, a graduate student at his college, who appears at the door. Rickey has been working in their mutual lab and made a startling discovery about “junk DNA,” Leo’s field of study, whose research will bring him tenure. Rickey drove hours to see him and avoids leaving. Remarkably, Leo and Naomi warm to Rickey’s discovery, which we see as primitively animated monochrome diagrams on her laptop.

Everybody is onboard with the premise. The actors give engaged, relaxed performances: Joe Thomas is appealingly nerdy as Leo, Rosa Robson softens convincingly to circumstances as Naomi, and Kelley Mack has an impish charm as the intruding Rickey. They talk, and they talk. There is precious little conflict yet several opportunities for it: a drug-fueled party; surprise nudity; a gun suddenly revealed. But little comes of them. And then the end credits roll. The ninety minutes have flown by, but to quote David Letterman, “It’s a long way to travel to find out the store is closed.”

Yet I would recommend Universal as a pleasant, low-impact experience. Weeks after seeing it, I think back on it fondly. The performances are shar,p even if it’s hard to figure out just what the film’s stakes are.

Writer/director Stephen Portland seems earnest and deals in clues here, but to a mystery only he can solve. Universal is pokey, and its arc is inconclusive, but it feels “organic,” very much intentional, and leaves you wanting more. Mr. Portland directed another film with a similarly generic one-word title, Something, in 2018.

In some respects, Universal feels like a prelude to a longer film. I wonder if there was more to it, and if the production was truncated by the tragic death of one of the actors. The film is dedicated to “the late” Kelley Mack, who plays Rickey, and who suffered a brain tumor, aged 33. Ms. Mack had a starring role in a season of The Walking Dead and did voice work for animated films. She might well have gone on to a solid career.

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Universal. Directed by Stephen Portland. 2025. Runtime 90 minutes. Available on demand.

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“Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain” But My Sister?

Brandon Judell — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 02:37:29 +0000

“Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain” But My Sister? Brandon Judell November 3, 2025 - 21:37

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“What can I say?” asks Vittoria (Monica Vitti) of her lover in Michelangelo Antonioni L’Eclisse (1962). “There are times when holding a needle and thread, or a book, or a man, it’s all the same to me.”

After DVD-ing five of the maestro’s offerings in a rather brief period, I can confidently note that no one can surpass Antonioni when it comes to celebrating romantic and social dislocation in world that might just end when you turn the corner. As for loving, supportive families, gondola elsewhere,

But if the latter is your need, try out writer/director Oscar Ruiz Navia’s unexpectedly comforting 15-minute docu-short, “Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain”(“Va Se Ven Los Tigres En La Luvia”) that was showcased at this year’s New York Film Festival. Dealing with different sorts of dislocations . . . those of space. . . of time . . . of possibilities, the film bears up to numberless viewings, on each occasion rewarding you with new interpretations, often those intended by the director and others sired by your psyche. Consider “Tigers” a visual poem of sorts. Or a cinematic Rorschach test.

The short is comprised of discovered home movies shot over decades in Columbia, scenes now intercut with current Montreal locales where Navia relocated to write and study film. There are also voiceovers including one supplied by a Canadian spirit guide and there’s some piano tinkling by children letting loose on the ivories.

Please note that “Tigers” is a memorial to the director’s sister, Ana Maria Ruiz Navia, who died in 2023 at the age of 37.

“Ana Maria Ruiz Navia (whose nickname was Anita) used to be not only my sister but my producer,” Oscar emailed me. “We were partners at Contravía Films, our company, even as she got cancer and struggled with this illness. At the end, after she unfortunately passed away, I decided to make a movie about my loss and my new arrival in Montreal, where I moved to start a new chapter of my life. I had collected many WhatsApp voice messages in the last two years. This is how I started to create this film.”

“Tigers” opens with various static shots of barren railroad tracks in Montreal, although we hear the rumble of ghost trains going by. (Are those the disembodied sounds of past journeys?) Then appear various ill-kempt streets also devoid of the living.

“I shot all the places surrounding my current apartment, literally places in my neighborhood,” Oscar recalls “The juxtaposition [with the footage of my family and the audio] is because I moved to Montreal when Anita passed. So I had to deal with deep grief when I just arrived in a new country. I wanted to show my present throughout with image . . . and my past-memory throughout with sound.”

Cinematographer Charles Duquet, who along with Pablo Álvarez-Mesa, shot Tigers, added in a separate email: “The concept behind the location choices was simple. Since the beginning of his stay in Montreal, Oscar paid attention to the places he'd walk by every day. Since the passing of his sister, these public places also became spaces of mourning. Our initial goal was to portray these places with delicate and fixed images, gathering material that would allow him the freedom to find further meaning with his sound recordings and archives. During the shoot, Oscar and I would walk the city together and get to know each other through discussions about family, filmmaking and Montreal seasons. It was somewhat close to what we call in French a déambulation, a walk without a precise goal, or in this case a fixed shot list. Oscar had places he wanted to film, but the way we would film them was decided in the moment, depending on the weather, the time of day or whether there would be people (or not).”

Over one such shot taken when the grounded autumn leaves already had lost their colors, we hear Anita for the first time: “Well, my pretties. I’m gonna sleep now. I’m here with my mum. She is already asleep. I love you all very much and have a good rest.”

We afterward find ourselves at the Le Jardin de Sculptures Crépuscule (the Twilight Sculpture Garden). Rusted artwork atop a dozen or so concrete bases are easily mistakable at first glance to be tombstones for the creatively dead.

Back to the past: the 14-year-old Anita is playing joyfully with a movie camera. She shoots herself in the mirror and swerves past the toilet into another room with family photos and paintings. Next it’s into her father’s office where Oscar is sitting at the desk.

She’s asked to shoot a closeup. “What’s a closeup?” Anita quickly learns and begins filming Oscar’s shoes and the mole on his arm and a dog with ticks. Great careers have often begun with home movies. Ask Spielberg.

Minutes later or earlier, the linear is forsaken here, the adult Anita’s leaves a tear-filled chat on Oscar’s phone, calling him by his nickname: “Hey, Papeto, today I got my medical results. The disease is progressing negatively . . . However, the good thing is that I have full faith and I will do my best to recover. Let’s go for it.”

Skip to an amusement park, where all the siblings are together chatting about roller coasters. Older sister Carmen is at that moment behind the camera when she asks her sister who is then decades away from cancer: “Anita, what do you want to say for posterity?”

Oscar chimes in: “Everything is for posterity.”

Finally, Marie-France, the aforementioned medium, arrives in voice only at the end of “Tigers.”. “This is a real recording of when I visited her when I just arrived in Montreal,” Oscar wrote. “We spoke in English because at the time my French was not the best. Marie-France unfortunately also passed away two months ago. She connected me with Anita when reading the tarot.”

Anita had not deserted Oscar, Marie-France discovered: “Anita says, ‘I will come during your sleep and will help your heart to be more happy. . . Why did Anita leave so early? Thirty is not a very old age. Actually, she has another reincarnation ready so she had to leave early to rest. She will rest most probably thirty to forty years which is nothing there.”

Then Anita will come back and wouldn’t it be something if she in her new persona gets to view hers former self in “Tigers.” Oscar should have chimed in, “Everything is for posterity, especially the gift of film.”

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That Face And Its Consequences

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 17:25:01 +0000

That Face And Its Consequences Chet Kozlowski October 27, 2025 - 13:25

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Before we see Hedda’s face, we see her in her surroundings. Under the shadows of night, she emerges from a dark lake, shedding rocks from her pockets. From a distance, we watch her run into a magnificent mansion. Inside, dwarfed by the size of the rooms, she darts up the stairs to her boudoir, dresses for a ball, then stalks through the various rooms. Preparations are underway for a grand party, and she’s making sure everything is right. We see her in a long shot, then through frosted glass. Finally, she settles down, and we see her face in a mirror. And what a face it is.

Hedda is played by Tessa Thompson, an actress best known as Valkyrie in the Thor movies and Avengers: Endgame. And that’s quite a face she has: big eyes, eyebrows like knives, high cheekbones—the beautiful face of sheer malevolence.

Let’s pause here to praise Ms. Thompson for having the cajónes to play Hedda. Hedda is based on Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play Hedda Gabler. Ibsen is known as the Father of Realism, portraying the cruelties of striving and privilege in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. He wrote complex female figures (see also Nora in A Doll’s House), which presaged a new social order. Hedda Gabler is one of the most coveted roles in theater. The part requires range, and Ms. Thompson has that. She makes Hedda headstrong, conniving, with a finger in every pot.

The plot in a nutshell: Hedda (Tessa Thompson) has married George (Tom Bateman), whom she doesn’t love, for his social status. To maintain that status, George must get a professorship at a prestigious university; otherwise lose everything. Hedda throws a lavish party to lure Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch) to hire her husband. George’s chief competition is his former colleague Eilert, who, newly sober, has written a book that will tip the scales. He has a muse and savior in Mousey Thea (Imogen Poots), who is also in attendance. Turns out Eilert, besides being George’s former colleague, is also Hedda’s former lover. And so, busy Hedda contrives to a) relieve Elbert of his sobriety and b) steal the prized manuscript and destroy it.

While we’re talking cajónes, let’s praise Nia Costa, the director, also of the MCU (The Marvels). She approaches this material with ferocity and mixes us a primal stew of psychological conflict.

Ms. Costa dutifully credits Ibsen as the primary writer, herself as the second, and has made some radical revisions to the story. First, Hedda is a woman of color, her exoticism scandalous yet arousing to her guests. She conducts a not-so-secret affair with Judge Brack (Nicolas Pinnock), the only person of African descent in attendance, under her husband’s nose.

The second change: Elert, George’s rival, is now Eileen, a lesbian and former lover of Hedda’s, played expertly by Nina Hoss, memorable as Cate Blanchett’s lesbian lover in the film Tår. Eileen is stately and reserved. She wavers between domesticity and the wild mind under which she wrote the book (the scene in which she crashes an all-boys meeting in the library is amazing). Thea (Imogen Poots), her confidante and keeper, has left her husband for this woman, this artist. She becomes aware of and resolves to foil Hedda’s plan of destruction. Thea calls her out, and Hedda cattily counters: “Do you resent fun, you miserable creature?”

My notes call Hedda a “hip-hop Downton Abbey,” even though no hip-hop is heard (more about the soundtrack in a minute). The film has hip-hop’s energy: the camera swoops and careens amongst the guests at the party. Composer Hildur Guonadóttir punctuates the action and Hedda’s scheming with an insistent drum tattoo. The kinetic choreography of Steadicam and actor blocking really should be seen on the big screen to appreciate. That’s by cinematographer Sean Bobbit and editor Jacob Schulsinger under Ms. Costa’s direction. A dance sequence, with Hedda initiating couplings, comes close to the one in Sinners, a riveting tableau of figures in motion.

Hedda’s psychology goes deep. The theme of identity runs under everything. She proclaims when cornered, “Sometimes I can’t help myself. I just do things.” Who is this Hedda? Who is Eileen, and what do they mean to each other? What happens to Hedda once she seeks to fuck things up? “Before you were domesticated, you were like fire.” Mirrors are everywhere, and much is made of dressing and disrobing, constant costume changes, switching selves (Costume designer Lindsay Pugh keeps things ornate but not ostentatious).

But that face. So much of it is about that face. It’s not a spoiler to tell you we end with a stunning closeup of Hedda’s amazing face. And then... the screen goes black. And up over the closing credits comes the disco beat of Roxy Music’s Love is the Drug. Say what? Ending with such an overused song is easy irony. It’s the one discordant note in a whirlwind of a movie. Why does Ms. Costa give us an intelligent and absorbing film, then wink at us, telling us not to take it seriously?

Hedda. Directed by Nia Costa. 2025. From Amazon MGM Studios. Runtime 107 minutes. In theaters and on Prime Video.

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Coming of Age

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 13:16:56 +0000

Coming of Age Chet Kozlowski August 25, 2025 - 09:16

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See Familiar Touch for the brave and nuanced performance of Kathleen Chalfant. She plays Ruth, a woman taken out of her comfortable home and transitioned into Bella Vista, a tony assisted living facility. Familiar Touch handles the subject of ageing and dementia from a unique perspective that is perfectly embodied in Ms. Chalfant’s performance.

We first see Ruth from behind, as she stands in front of a mirror. Her neck is creased with age, and her hair is white and sparse. She’s dressing, as she will several times in the film. From the outset, it’s clear Ms. Chalfant will give an unvarnished performance, candid in its imperfections.

Ruth is used to a life of the mind and can’t quite relate to hers slipping away. She has moments of lucidity. She doesn’t always recognize her son Steve (H. Jon Benjamin), who reluctantly committed her. In fact, in one scene, before we understand their relationship, she subtly flirts with him. Ms. Chalfant has a rich history on Broadway and in TV and film. She is tall and stately and employs all her skills to show Ruth’s shaky adjustment to her new surroundings.

At Bella Vista, she’s put on Memory Lane, the dementia wing. She is disoriented and annoyed. Much of Ruth’s ethos relies on the preparation of food. In the dining hall, she demands a menu. During an intake exam, she aggressively explains the recipe for borscht. At breakfast, she draws on her eggs (we don’t see the result). A scene of her takeover of the facility’s kitchen, assuming it’s her own, is funny and poignant.

Director Sarah Friedland’s inspiration to make Familiar Touch comes from observing a loved one’s decline as well as working as a caregiver to artists and creative people. Her sympathies show: Ms. Friedland eschews drama. She doesn’t go for the shock of Anthony Hopkins in The Father or the desperation of the elderly couple in Gaspar Noé’s Vortex. The pathos happens around the edges, involving mostly her primary caregivers, Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle) and Brian (Andy McQueen), both excellent. In one scene, Ruth eavesdrops on them as they chat in the parking lot below her window. Their comments underscore the disparity between the exclusive facility and the lives of the people who work there, the stakes of the real world.

As Steve cleans out his mother’s house — made warm with wood and leather furniture, books, and plants — we see the contrast with it and Bella Vista’s relative impersonality. The cinematography of Gabe C. Elder and the production design of Stephanie Ostin Choen bring the point home, so to speak. Thanks to Ms. Chalfant’s intelligent performance and Ms. Friedland’s sensitive direction, when Ruth finally realizes her situation and asks Vanessa, “I’ll live here for the rest of my life?,” we lament her past while confident her future is in good hands.

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Familiar Touch. Directed by Sarah Friedland. 2025. From Music Box Releasing. Available on VOD and digital platforms. Runtime 90 minutes.

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Talkin’ Covid Blues

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 00:26:46 +0000

Talkin’ Covid Blues Chet Kozlowski August 12, 2025 - 20:26

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Few filmmakers have put COVID in its place. If they address it at all, it’s in the past tense, an anomaly best forgotten. Or it’s a device, a genre gimmick. Few look frankly at this period of stasis and uncertainty. Maybe they think there’s just nothing there. Olivier Assayas proves them wrong.

Mr. Assayas is one of Europe’s most prolific auteurs with over three dozen films to his directorial credit. He has brought us Maggie Cheung in a catsuit in Irma Vep (1996), corporate techno-terror in Demonlover (2002), and existential identity theft in Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) and Personal Shopper (2016). Now he brings us a meditation on isolation and destiny with the new film Suspended Time.

Mr. Assayas calls this an “autobiographical comedy.” Two brothers, Paul (Vincent Macaigne) and Etienne (Micha Lescot), retreat with their respective partners — Morganne (Nine D’Urso) and Carole (Nora Hamzawi) — to their parents’ country estate to wait out the pandemic.

The brothers are temperamentally different. Paul is neurotic, Etienne is laissez-faire. One guesses they represent sides of Assayas’ personality and ambivalence about events. Paul, a filmmaker, obsessively disinfects and frets for his livelihood. After all, filmmaking is an art form that relies on social interaction, yet he acknowledges that “movie theaters and film sets are potential clusters.” Etienne, a music journalist, plies his trade online via FaceTime and Zoom.

Suspended Time is a gabfest (a la Woody Allen, who is the most likely American director to take something like this on). So they talk: what else is there to do? Sure, there’s a tennis court on the brothers’ estate, and their late father’s voluminous library, but one can serve or read only so much.

Paul is given to reminiscing, and many of his memories are of Mr. Assayas.’ (The film tellingly name-drops Kristen Stewart and Quentin Tarantino). Coming into his middle age, Paul has a wealth of past projects and successes to ponder. These are laid out in an impassive voiceover. Paul wonders if his art has become disconnected from nature. He escapes to the woods with his phone to confer with his therapist on FaceTime.

Despite the closeness that comes with quarantine, everybody in Suspended Time gets along well. Protocols and politeness give their days shape. One would expect tension, but besides Paul’s handwringing and Etienne’s single hissy fit, the major conflict is whether a burnt pot will come clean. Suspended Time works with copious charm and fine performances by its principals.

We also can’t watch without remembering our own angst about the situation. Was it the end of the world? Would life ever return to normal? And finally: What is normal and how did we come to define it? As Paul observes, “Saddest of all is realizing nothing will change.” When the KN95 masks finally come off, we, like Paul, yearn for the solitude and solace.

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Suspended Time. Directed by Olivier Assayas. 2024. In French with English Subtitles. From Music Box films. Runtime 105 minutes.

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Winged Creatures

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 13:56:21 +0000

Winged Creatures Chet Kozlowski July 29, 2025 - 09:56

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Take to heart Tolstoy's observation that "unhappy families are unhappy in their own way" when watching The Sparrow in the Chimney.

The family depicted in the film is large and complex. Women run it: matron Karen has taken over the family home after the mother's death. She lives in an OCD hell and expects everybody to follow her ironclad rules. Younger sister Jule comes with her brood to celebrate Karen's husband's birthday. Add to the mix resentful offspring, sensual games amongst relatives, and a mysterious woman who lives in the cabin across the field, and you have the ingredients for one of the intelligent family dramas for which the producers are becoming known.

The Sparrow in the Chimney is the work of writer/director Ramon Zürcher, who, with his twin brother Sylvan, probes domestic dynamics. It's the final installment of their "Animal Trilogy," intriguingly named because it connects human foibles to all manner of beasts while respecting the dignity of both.

Maren Eggert's Karen is our weathervane through the tumult, ever hovering and worn down by the weight of imagined obligations: the more opaque her expression, the more nuance flickers across it. Britta Hammelstein plays sister Jule as a blithe spirit by contrast, visiting with handy husband Jurek (Milian Zerzawy), fully attuned to their dead mother's continuing presence yet resolutely playful. Sexy daughter Johanna (Lea Zoe Voss) uses her piercing stare and angular features to defy mom Karen. Broken son Leon (Ilja Bultmann) is a Norman Bates-ish study in compliance: he keeps the housekeeping flame alive while openly despising the tasks. Prodigal daughter Christina (Paula Schindler), a welcome note of reason, returns home only to make it clear she'll abandon it again. Husband Markus (Andrea Dohler) reacts as a sensitive soul might to an unavailable wife. And the doe-eyed occupant of the cabin, Liv (Luise Heyer), floats through the house as the spirit of the mother floats through Karen, bringing with her a sweet note of eroticism.

I admire Mr. Zürcher's epic tableau, and masterful traffic direction—the interruptions, the brushings-by—of so many characters with so many secrets and lies. His blocking alone and control over the way characters enter and leave rooms is breathtaking from the opening minutes. His mise en scéne, composition, and editing stitch together a world that invites us in, at our own risk.

If all this sounds dense, it is. But The Sparrow in the Chimney is also a treat for the eyes. Great faces are everywhere, characters drawn clearly with minimum exposition. Winged creatures flit about in every scene, suggesting release and escape. I'm all in on these "arthouse" films if they show this much flair. The fun is in watching how roles switch and intents intersect in the way that would make Ingmar Bergman and early Woody Allen proud.

The first two films of the Zürcher brothers' "Animal Trilogy" are The Strange Little Cat (2013) and The Girl and the Spider (2021).

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The Sparrow in the Chimney. Directed by Ramon Zürcher. 2024. In German with English subtitles. Runtime 117 minutes. Only in theaters.

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Murphy Versus the Horrid Nuns of Ireland

Brandon Judell — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 14:18:50 +0000

Murphy Versus the Horrid Nuns of Ireland Brandon Judell July 27, 2025 - 10:18

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Oppenheimer has been lifting weights lately, trading in the mentally taxing toting of nuclear secrets for the bit-more physically challenging conveyance of sacks of coal. His recipients: the inhabitants of New Ross in County Wexford, Ireland. The year: 1985.

Yes, in Cillian Murphy’s first post-bomb effort, Small Things Like These, now free on Hulu, the doleful eyes of the Oscar-winning actor work hard to express the troubled interiority of Billy Furlong, a coal merchant delivering his goods to both the financially well-off and the making-do. Alas, on his daily route, while in his faithful yet challenged truck, the “happily” married dad and father of five daughters inescapably drives past townspeople with little mettle left to struggle by. A Dickensian lot, you might say.

Well, the times were tough for many in 1985 in Ireland and a few other locales.

Why, on one chilly night, Billy even comes upon a shoeless lad frantically lapping up milk from a bowl left outdoors for a cat. The ragged urchin looks up for a second, spots the eyewitness to his lactose thievery, but deciding Billy’s no threat, continues on with his meal.

Can Billy block out what he doesn’t want to see? Why is he so troubled by the misery bypassing his own kin who are getting by quite nicely? And didn’t his wife (Eileen Walsh) recently advise: “If you want to get on with this life, there are things you have to ignore.”

If this plotline sounds familiar, you might have already read Claire Keegan’s bestselling novella from which the film is faithfully adapted. Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and #41 on The New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21^st Century, Keegan’s Small Things is a superb, quick read with a hero worthy of James Joyce’s Dubliners’ description: “He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances.”

How did our gentleman get that way? Blame it on childhood, a curse many of us have had to live through.

Accordingly, the film, as does its source, jumps back and forth in time, chronicling Billy’s troubled youth that his adult self can’t shake off. His mother, Sarah, a maid, had him out of wedlock in a heavily Catholic area where such repellent behavior was far from condoned. Suppose it wasn’t for her compassionate Protestant employer, the widow Mrs. Wilson (Michelle Fairley), who gave Sarah and her son a home to reside in. In that case, Billy is aware he himself might have become a midnight scourer of pet bowls.

You see, there was a century or two where the “fallen women” in his mother’s unwed condition were often forced into institutions run by Roman Catholic nuns. Known as the Magdalene Laundries, the imprisoned, underfed pregnant souls there were brutalized and forced to work at all hours, laundering the niceties of the rich.

As Kegan notes in the afterword to her book: “Many girls and women lost their babies. Some lost their lives. Some or most lost the lives they could have had. It is not known how many thousands of infants died in these institutions or were adopted from the mother-and-baby homes. Earlier this year [2021], the Mother and Baby Home Commission Report found that nine thousand children died in just eighteen of the institutions investigated.” The last workhouse of horrors was not closed until 1996. Thirty thousand women might have been subjected this form of slavery. Some insist the fugure is much higher.

History.com’s “How Ireland Turned ‘Fallen Women” into Slaves” shares: “Often, women’s names were stripped from them; they were referred to by numbers or as ‘child’ or ‘penitent.’ Some inmates—often orphans or victims of rape or abuse—stayed there for a lifetime; others escaped and were brought back to the institutions. . . . In 2014, remains of at least 796 babies were found in a septic tank in [one] home’s yard.”

One day, while delivering fuel to one such workhouse, Billy, from a distance, sees a mother dragging her screaming pregnant daughter into the hands of the nuns. This chance encounter will transform his life.

Small Things Like These is a more than timely tale of a moral man who can’t turn a blind eye to anguish he sees outside his door. For Billy Furlong, just feeling empathy for his fellow man is not enough. He is being eaten up by the indifference he’s confronted by. Beware of upsetting the Church, he is warned. You have five daughters in a world of victimizers. Are his girls safe on the streets? At night, he lies on his bed staring at his steadfast wife. He is blessed but not at peace.

With Murphy as Billy, you can’t help but feel the coal merchant’s unending sadness that he tries to hide as his family prepares for Christmas, an overwhelming local celebration. Often, the residual effects of his inner battle comes out when he returns home, enters the bathroom, and scrubs away at the black grime encasing his hands. Lady Macbeth scrubbed not harder.

Clearly, Murphy is one of those actors who envelopes himself in a part so completely that when offscreen, we are still aware of what he’s thinking, of his stance, of his reaction to what is before us.

With his seductive angularity, his throbbing intensity, and with those singular orbs of his, Murphy believably transforms a man who might have remained a helpless onlooker at the world’s indifference to those in need into a Warrior of Hope.

With the addition of Tim Mielants’s (Peaky Blinders) spare, perfect direction, Enda Walsh’s singular screenplay, Maureen Hughes’s spot-on casting, Frank van den Eeden’s spectacularly transportive cinematography, and Emily Watson’s vicious head nun for which she won a Silver Berlin Bear for Best Supporting Performance, Small Things Like These is a change-of-pace stand-in for It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s certainly making my annual holiday viewing list.

Now free on Hulu!

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South Dakota Tone Poem

Chet Kozlowski — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 21:08:44 +0000

South Dakota Tone Poem Chet Kozlowski July 3, 2025 - 17:08

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Film Review

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drama

Fall is a Good Time to Die looks terrific. The images—from vast South Dakota landscapes to small spaces packed with specific details —are crisp and well-composed. Dalton Coffey did the cinematography.

Its pace is unhurried yet gripping. The editor was Dalton Coffey.

Its guitar score girds the action well, unobtrusive yet driving the film. Dalton Coffey did the music.

The script is full of surprising setups and convincing dialogue. You guessed it: Dalton Coffey wrote and directed it, too.

Multitasking is not uncommon today. Many new directors are getting their first shots and have auteurist ambitions. Dalton Coffey is different: he shows such taste and restraint in this film that it stands as the strong work of a singular vision.

The premise of Fall Is a Good Time to Die is a familiar one: a convict is released from prison, and someone sets out to find him and settle a score. The idea is simple, and in Fall Is a Good Time to Die, the delivery is confident and original.

A young cowboy named Cody is surprised that his estranged aunt appears one day to tell him Jason White is back at large. White was in prison because he raped and killed Cody’s sister. Cody makes his way across the vast landscape of South Dakota to avenge her death.

Meanwhile, a local peace officer wrestles with her own demons. Her work oppresses her, and her marriage has dissolved because of an act some deem heroic. Eventually, she, Cody, and White come together in a final reckoning.

Joe Hiatt plays Cody as a boy about to take adult matters into his own hands. He is fresh-faced and an interesting choice of protagonist. Jennifer Pierce Mathus embodies middle-aged angst as Jane, the deputy sheriff who must live up to her reputation. And it’s a real treat to see Joey Lauren Adams—Amy of Chasing Amy—in a rare turn as Trista, Cody’s meddling aunt.

Fall is a Good Time to Die trods ground similar to Hell or High Water and any number of modern Westerns. The difference is that Mr. Coffey approaches his material with deliberation and a sense of his own limits. His approach is direct and lyrical. He shows off a bit in his use of space and time, as scenes repeat, mixing past and present, sometimes within the same shot. His storytelling is linear to that point, and the change jolts until you understand what he’s up to. The technique is inventive and mostly works, but is a little unclear, ultimately, about what happens when.

But these are quibbles. Fall is a Good Time to Die is an engrossing open plains potboiler and a good sign that we’ll see even better work from Dalton Coffey in the future.

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Fall is a Good Time to Die. Directed by Dalton Coffey. 2025. From Buffalo 8. Runtime 90 minutes. On VOD and digital platforms.