Reviews

A Bollywood actioner from 2022 streaming on Netflix. During the British rule of India, a contingent of rebel factions are starting to threaten that rule w/a jungle leader, played by N. T. Rama Rao Jr, emerging as the head guy in charge (I wonder why, was it the scene where he corrals a tiger?). Things come to a head when his sister is taken away by the ruling magistrate, Ray Stevenson, since she was quite prodigious in applying henna tattoos on his wife's (played by Alison Doody from Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade) hands. Enter Ram Charan, an ambitious member of the British forces who is guaranteed a leadership position if he catches Rao Jr. Which becomes a bit of a thriller since when he does meet him, as they both save a child from falling debris from a bridge, they bond but they don't know they're actually on opposite sides of the impending violence so when it comes, we get Charan's backstory & his true motives, setting up the extended conflict which wraps up the narrative. Now a warning, if you've never indulged in a Bollywood film then the sheer gamut of emotions that you'll go through will snap the neck of most casual viewers but if you're up for it then you'll get the closest thing to a visual smorgasbord as this film has action, adventure, horror & a song number or two w/the all the players gleefully serving up this mishmash w/a smile on their collective faces or gallons of tears wiped from anguished cheeks.

From last year comes this off kilter romance cum horror flick starring Coda/Locke & Key's Emilia Jones. Jones is at college working at a movie theater which specializes in retro fare. One day one of her customers, Nicholas Braun, buys a peculiar combo of concessions to eat which prompts a breezy reflect from Jones. Wondering aloud to her roomie, Geraldine Viswanathan, that she may be interested spurs some pushback but date they do even though some signposts are clear & evident that Braun may not be the guy she envisioned culminating in a sex bout which would have anyone else racing to the hills. Jones does come to her senses & w/Viswanathan's brusque help breaks up w/him which spawns a fuselage of texts as to why. Thinking there's something off about the whole situation prompts Jones to stay on the defensive which culminates in a showdown in his home that when broken down makes both sides logical in their findings. Never really buying into Jones fascination w/Braun (whether because she's lonely or went through a bitter break-up w/her ex who we meet on a trip home who's now asexual) was a big hinderance into an 'in' to Jones' character making the rest of the narrative fall apart although Jones is on her way to being an actress to watch.

A current cult film to be currently in release starring Bill Skarsgard & Jessica Rothe. Skarsgard has grown up mute & will not speak stemming from growing up in a totalitarian futuristic wasteland where he lost his sister. Running into various colorful types which includes Warrior's Andrew Koji, District 9's Sharlto Copley & the original Jean Grey herself, Famke Janssen, the film lurches from one bloodstained colorful set piece to the next which from the opening bass thumping salvos wore me out as I tried in vain to stay awake during this sensory malarkey overload. Also starring Brett Gelman from Stranger Things, Michelle Dockery from Downton Abbey & Yayan Ruhian from the Raid series wasted here w/his chopsocky chops.

A timely documentary from 2022 (& also the Oscar winner from that year) about Russian dissident & rival to Putin's presidency, Alexei Navalny. Following the events of his poisoning discovered in a Russian flight which was diverted to a hospital, the Navalny camp fought & won to have him ferried to Germany where recuperating, the drug Novichok (or at least the remnants of it) were discovered. Hooking up w/a Russian journalist, Christo Grozev, the pair along w/Navalny's producer, track the players in the poisoning scheme & even further calling the phone numbers which were unearthed where a dunderheaded chemist spills the beans on the entire scheme. Bookended by Navalny's return to Mother Russia as the seconds tick down before the plane lands & we witness what'll happen next makes this a doc feel like a double thriller even though recent news of Navalny's passing makes the ending a surety. Considering the ever changing nature of history & our place in it, it's a wonder this story ever got out & to the exacting details in which it did which makes Navalny's legacy, which hopefully the Russians people will continue to foster & fight the good fight.

An engaging Western from 1949. Starting off in the present day (the late 1940's), we have the grandson, William Prince, of a gold prospector, Glenn Ford, searching for the fabled entry to his grandad's mine but instead of finding it he comes across a dead body of another man who also was in search of the elusive treasure. Being picked up by the authorities, Prince regales & is regaled on the history Ford had w/the mine (where we see Ford finds it & loots the treasure after killing his companion, played by stalwart character actor, Edgar Buchanan). Going back to town to cash in his ill gotten gains, Ford draws the attention of a scheming bakery owner, Ida Lupino, who hopes to gain some of Ford's gold even using her estranged lout of a hubby, Gig Young, to run interference. Ford falls under her spell but then overhears the truth (from an advantageous window outside the bakery) setting up the finale, in the past, as Ford gets his revenge. Coming out on the heels of the seminal Treasure of the Sierra Madre the year before, another tale of greed, this film's tricksy structure makes it a contender for the former's throne while being a hoot of a yarn of the first order w/Ford giving a great perf as the villain the audience still roots for.

Akira Kurasawa's (Ikuru/Red Beard) 1955 paean to the perils of the Atomic Age. Kurasawa's go to actor Toshiro Mifune, again stars as an old man who after living through the trauma of the nuclear bomb attacks by the US (Hiroshima & Nagasaki), now fears it's going to happen again so he intends to move his brood abroad (he may buy land in Brazil) but his family is not having any of it so they enlist a board of arbitrators, one of which is Takashi Shimura, a dentist, to intervene so what follows is a back & forth of one man's (& probably Japan as a nation) rationalization of his crippling doubts which may cost him his own sanity. One could argue the extremes Mifune goes through may border on the maniacal but being a nation that's never faced that kind of nuclear terror what do we know? Another marvelous facet to Mifune's performance is how well suited he was at playing an old man (he was 35 at the time playing a man double his age) using minimal make-up & a hunch to his gait.

From earlier this year comes a biopic on Bob Marley, the world's most renowned reggae artist who left us too soon in 1981. Essayed by Kinsley Ben-Adir (the villain of Secret Invasion) & taking place during a 3 or so year period after there was an attempt on his life at his Jamaican compound where he & some others were shot, Ben-Adir relocates to England to gather his thoughts as he preps to record his seminal recording of "Exodus". Back home the violence arose from the political race which was taking place & since Ben-Adir eschewed matters of state, declining to get involved, it opened him up to the drive-by but finding a safe space in Blighty, Ben-Adir recenters himself, preps the album & soon finds fans on the international circuit (we glimpse someone obviously aping Mick Jagger posing w/Ben-Adir for a photo) but while its intimated he wasn't the most loyal of spouses which wife Rita, played by Lashana Lynch, goes w/the flow until she doesn't & his manager, Anthony Welsh, was caught milking an African concert venue for more cash, Ben-Adir decides to return home to perform a restorative concert for peace to quell the masses which proved to be a rousing success. Blessed & shepherded by the Marley family, you can feel the film wanting to dig deeper into the man but since the focus is limited to a chapter of a many layered book, we deal w/what we got letting the music weave in & out of the narrative providing the best sounding soundtrack ever w/o even trying. If you want a deeper delve into the man, watch Kevin McDonald's titular 2012 doc to quench that particular thirst. Also starring Michael Gandolfini (James' son) playing a record exec & Top Boy's Micheal Ward as one Marley's assassins.

The 1999 sequel to 1995's Once Were Warriors about the domestic drama revolving a Maori family in New Zealand. Taking place a few years after the events of the first film we find the patriarch, Temuera Morrison, still besotted at his local watering hole when word comes down his eldest, Julian Arahanga (reprising his role but wasted here!) is killed during a gang hit. Already on the outs w/his family (his wife, Rena Owen, also wasted, has divorced him), he decides to not attend the funeral where another of his sons vows revenge & joins a rival gang to find out what happened. Morrison meanwhile, still nursing his old demons, has hit his occasional girlfriend & is tossed to the proverbial curb but a pair of clean living brothers take him under his wing (& give him a job) so when his son shows up, he decides to help. Based on a novel by Alan Duff (much like the predecessor), here Duff does scripting duties which do the story no favors (an author wants to get every nook & cranny into his story as he can) as Morrison's road to redemption takes a backseat to his son's story-line which smacks of an A-Team episode making whatever strides Morrison makes get lost in translation.

A 1949 film noir starring Ida Lupino. In what amounts to a trial run for Julia Roberts 1991 vehicle Sleeping w/the Enemy, Lupino is the abused wife on the run from her heel of a husband, Stephen McNally, who believes Lupino is still alive even though it's believed she took her own life when her car went off a cliff. During one of her stops in a small town she befriends an itchy footed cashier at a pharmacy, Howard Duff, who takes a fancy to her so much so he follows her when she boards a bus out of town & reaching a new berg they disembark & spend the day together even getting involved in a large convention in the same area. Seeing the reward for Lupino's return in a newspaper, Duff decides to call McNally (he believes Lupino's disturbed behavior is a result of hysterics) letting him know he's found her which pleases McNally since he does want to kill her off, along w/the help of his equally bent side piece, Peggy Dow, so he can gain control of her company setting up the last third in a warehouse where Duff comes to the rescue. If you've seen Enemy than you know the ebb & flow of the yarn but seeing how effective the bare bones original played out makes a good argument for less is more. Fun fact, thanks to Eddie Muller from Noir Alley for the edification, director Michael Gordon is Joseph Gordon-Levitt's granddad.

A 2021 comedy which could be described as Tron meets Wreck-it-Ralph has Ryan Reynolds as a rosy eyed optimist who is an avatar in an interactive videogame who suddenly gains awareness. Enter the object of his affection, played by Killing Eve's Jodie Comer, who has an agenda of her own as she tries to find the gamecode, currently being stashed away by the company man, Taika Waititi, so she can publish for free to the public at large. In the real world, Comer, now playing her user, & her on-again & off-again game programmer boyfriend, Stranger Things' Joe Keery, both scramble to get this information out before Waititi can unleash a sequel to the masses w/inherent bugs & all. Reynolds now the talk of the web since his newfound sobriety has made him popular, partners w/Comer to save the day all the while living his avatar life to its full potential. Maybe using a real game (Sims, Fortnight?) would've gotten me more in tune here but being such a standard take on an open world environment peppered w/Reynolds' typical motormouth quippy delivery left me feeling kind of non-plussed as the CG & over-caffeinated story-line plumb tuckered me out.

A 1955 Spanish language film (from Spain) which finds a well to do couple (Albert Closas & Lucia Bose) hitting a bicyclist on the road one night & decide to flee from the scene of the crime. Once back in their respective corners (Bose is married & stepping out w/Closas) they both descend into their own moral quandaries w/Closas guilt ridden (heading to the victim's neighborhood to find out about the man) while Bose is blasé about the whole thing even though a hanger-on in her social circle insinuates he knows what happened. Closas is inconsolable however even suggesting towards the film's end to turn themselves over to the authorities which doesn't end well for him. Getting much mileage from guilt, director Juan Antonio Bardem (who turns out to be an uncle to Oscar winner Javier Bardem) milks the moody lighting for all its worth w/winning performances across the board especially Bose who is perfect as the femme fatale.

Buster Keaton's 1928 silent comedy. Trying to eke out a living in the titular profession, finds Keaton at first meeting a secretary, Marceline Day, who he quickly becomes infatuated with so much so he gets into debt buying a camera set up which takes him a bit to get a grasp of (evidenced when he hears about a fire & ends up hitching a ride w/a random firetruck back to its station). The relationship between Keaton & Day starts moving in fits & starts w/a date at a public pool more event filled for Keaton (losing his oversized suit in the pool) but when Keaton finds himself during a riot in Chinatown, he's lucky enough to be in the midst w/his camera & a former organ-grinding monkey (?) to catch the fracas but when he shows up at Day's office (she works for a news concern) to sell his wares, it turns out he never loaded a film magazine in the first place or did he? Keaton rightly in some circles gives Chaplin a run for his money w/this whimsical take on the burgeoning profession which at this point must've been brand new w/Keaton's deadpan visage enough to sell the comedy w/out any physical antics to embellish any given scene makes this a winner.

Guy Ritchie's latest (Lock, Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels/Snatch) is brilliant homage to Leone-esque WWII yarn which coincidentally is based on some real-life people currently in cinemas. Doing the dirty jobs no one will do (& for which England would not even acknowledge if caught) a merry band of assassins & monkey wrenchers led by Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, Henry Golding, Alex Pettyfer & Hero Fiennes Tiffin who are soon joined by fixers Eiza Gonzalez & Babs Olunsanmokun to thwart the German U boat effort by destroying some of their supply ships moored near a Spanish isle run by a German businessman Til Schweiger, loyal to the Reich & a Spanish commandant, Henrique Zaga. Having their plan down pat & w/all the players in position the siege is on but when at the last minute they find out the ship's have been recently been retrofitted w/extra metal plating making demolition a nonstarter makes the demo mission a heist which is gleefully over the top (Ritchson gets his Reacher on w/all comers sometimes w/a thrusting knife) w/a score which sounds like Morricone in his heyday makes this a glorious popcorn time to be had at the theaters. Also starring nominal British American Cary Elwes as the team's contact in the military, Rory Kinnear essaying Churchill & Freddie Fox (late of Apple +'s Slow Horses & himself son of actor Edward Fox) portrays Ian Fleming who is said to have patterned James Bond after some of the team members.

Oscar nominee Dev Patel ventures behind the camera (also starring & co-writing) this India set revenge yarn. Coming from meager straits, Patel has had to make his way to the big bad city (since we see in flashback, he was a country bumpkin at heart) now a masked fighter who's not making a much of a dent on the fighting circuit but when he comes in contact w/a lawman, Sikander Kher, who torched his village & raped/killed his mum, he decides to put an elaborate plan in motion (getting in good w/a woman club owner, Ashwini Kalsekar, who he returns a purse back after we see a montage of different hands the purse went through ending up in his paws) getting a job bottom rung level style setting his plan in motion where he makes some plusses holding his own against some of Kher's hordes but when he gets hurt & finds himself in a nearby village to recuperate, a holy man counsels him on his journey to become a freedom fighter whose fight is a good one, Patel redoubles his efforts (cue the training sequence montage) leading to a showdown w/Kher in a no holds bar pugilist clutch. Maybe too much, at least for me, an effort for Patel to take on ultimately wore me out when you take a John Wick style narrative of comeuppance layered w/attacks on India's caste system, the have's & the have-not's, the hero as spiritual savior, et al made me feel the way my eyes do whenever I glance at the offerings at an all you can eat smorgasbord. Oooh, I need some cinematic pepto! Also starring Sharlto Copley as the ring announcer in Patel's bouts.

Akira Kurasawa's (Yojimbo/Seven Samurai) 1950 drama about an artist, Toshiro Mifune, who is caught in a photograph w/a famous musician, Yoshiko Yamaguchi, prompting a gossip mag to move units as people start to believe an illicit affair occurred (when it didn't). Mifune, miffed at the attention, shows up at the rag's offices & bops the editor one prompting a low level lawyer to come out of the woodwork, Takashi Shimura, who volunteers to sue the paper which Mifune & Yamaguchi agree to but what the plaintiffs don't know is that the gossip mag has Shimura in their pocket (paying off & feeding his gambling habit) & him having a sickly daughter doesn't help his financial situation either which makes the subsequent trial particularly nail biting as we wait for Shimura to finally do the right thing. Kurasawa puts his stamp on something other directors like Frank Capra would've played for laughs but by inserting this sadsack attorney into the mix, the film is deepened for the better elevating the material in spite of itself.

Now streaming on Netflix is Zack Snyder's (Sucker Punch/Dawn of the Dead) follow-up to his mega-opus from last year which wraps up his Seven Samurai homage (poorly constructed theft?) as the heroes make a stand against the evil Galactic Empire, sorry Imperium, on a moon whose people are trained to fight the good fight w/the ultimate clutch between the good Sofia Boutella & evil Ed Skrein taking place on an imperial cruiser. Snyder at the outset never did himself any favors by espousing how 'original' his take on Kurasawa canon was when others like John Sturges & recently Antoine Fuqua managed to take his samurai epic & transplant it to the old West but even if you're argument leans on his melding samurai adventures w/a sci-fi aesthetic, sorry Roger Corman got there first w/1980's Battle Beyond the Stars.

Robert Wagner stars in this WWII yarn where a privileged land owner or 'cropper' who's been a bit of a cad w/his workers on his land back home (strangely all white!) but once he gets to the battlefront, surrounded by people he knew back home, namely his commanding officer & father-in-law, played by Robert Keith & even one of his comrades in arms, played by L. Q. Jones, one of Wagner's croppers from back home, his attitude changes as he begins to realize everyone deserves a fair shake no matter what strata they come from. As the fighting intensifies, Wagner starts to develop battle fatigue (PTSD to be more accurate) even though he still finds his nerve to be a worthwhile soldier (even after an incident where a comrade accidentally, out of fear, mows down his own men, Jones included!). Wagner snaps & beats the man within an inch of his life & is sent out to a remote bungalow run by a crass Captain, played by Broderick Crawford, who runs ramrod over his men but even w/that Wagner proves his mettle when during a recon mission he spots a large platoon of Japanese heading in their direction which proves catastrophic when Wagner's best bud, played by Buddy Ebsen, is hurt while they're defending a foxhole prompting Wagner, also shot & wounded, to race back to safety to get the Calvary to save the day. Directed efficiently by Richard Fleischer (The Narrow Margin/The Boston Strangler) who knew how to meld characterization w/action gave Wagner a fine platform to build upon. The solid supporting cast which features Brad Dexter, Harvey Lembeck (who would be the go to baddie in the Beach Blanket Bingo movies) & Frank Gorshin (The Riddler from TV's Batman) all contribute even in the smallest of performances.

Neil Jordan's (The Crying Game/Interview w/a Vampire) psycho-thriller from 2018 starring Chloe Grace Moretz & recent Oscar nominee & French treasure Isabelle Huppert. Moretz finds an expensive handbag while commuting by train one day & finding an ID w/an address inside decides to return it. Huppert is gratified by the bag's return & they soon become fast friends where Moretz upon hearing about a passed away pet drags her down to a pound to adopt a pooch that's about to be put under. Moretz is happy to be engaged w/Huppert since her own mother passed away years before & she has a chilly relationship w/her dad played by Colm Feore. Her roommate however, played by It Follows Maika Monroe, feels the friendship may be a little too one sided planting some doubts into her head which are confirmed when during a dinner date at Huppert's home, Moretz finds a cabinet filled w/handbags, each w/different names of past 'companions'. Angered, Moretz breaks off their platonic romance but as night follows day, the friend from hell starts calling or texting & finally has to make an appearance at her job at a high end eatery where she makes a scene to end all scenes where she's eventually carted away in a straitjacket. No one is safe apparently as Monroe is stalked by Huppert (in the film's best sequence where pics of her hunt are sent to Moretz who is in contact w/Monroe via cell) but then that final third act gets going & having seen one or two of these things, you know what the outcome will be but somehow Jordan along w/his co-writer Ray Wright bungle things to the point where Moretz becomes the nominal damsel in distress & needs saving even though w/some judicious editing a more satisfying ending could've been reached. Also starring Jordan go to guy Stephen Rea (wasted here as a private investigator).

Guy Ritchie's latest from 2021 finds him reuniting w/his occasional go to guy Jason Statham in this potent tale of revenge & the lengths one man will go to achieve it. Told in a non-linear fashion under 4 chapter headings, we see Statham's son being killed when an armored car robbery goes bad (w/shades of the opening theft from Heat) but being a crime boss he has his men beat the bushes to find the culprits only to yield nothing so he decides to infiltrate the armored car concern to ferret out who was responsible. As the drama plays out, Statham's determination knows no bounds as we finally get a glimpse of the perpetrators (an elite military squad which consists of Jeffrey Donovan, Scott Eastwood & Laz Alonso) planning their last heist (at the armored car depot) w/Statham lying in wait to pounce. Probably Richie's most mature film to date (based on a 2004 French movie named Le Convoyeur) which initially had me worried when his predilection for his laddism (immature character nicknames) was at the fore but once the hook of the plot locks on, I was entranced. Also starring Holt McCallany, Eddie Marsan & Josh Hartnett as Statham's fellow co-workers, Post Malone as a thief in over his head & Andy Garcia in a small role as a fed in thrall to Statham.

Elaine May (Ishtar/The Heartbreak Kid) 1976 one-night odyssey involving a couple of lifelong buddies cum hoods, Oscar nominee Peter Falk & John Cassavetes, race through the night avoiding a hit man, played by Oscar nominee Ned Beatty. Playing out as a series of arguments through various venues (a movie theater, a bar, a cafe) as Falk tries to get Cassavetes to safety after he's absconded w/some ill-gotten gains. Once the reveal is made that Falk is on the kill & Cassavetes knows but still goes through the motions of putting some semblance of trust into his relationship w/Falk & May, maybe inspired by Cassavetes' own body of work but has said in interviews everything was scripted from people she knew in her neighborhood growing up, has crafted a yarn whose surprise is telegraphed so early that the follow through feels like its going through the motions leaving the finished product of 2 actors at the top of their game trying to make a meal of some meager vittles.

An ill-plotted Blum production from 2019. David Oyelowo is a cop who has a tight relationship w/his niece played by Storm Reid. Tragically one day Oyelowo is called to his niece's home to find she & her parents were murdered. At first the murders are written off as enemies from his brother's past (he had a rocky history w/gangsters) but before the investigation can get underway, Oyelowo receives a phone call from his niece, from 2 weeks before when she was still alive. Oyelowo decides to back-fill Reid's fate to avoid the current tragedy but soon enough the true killers are onto him. Will he save himself as well as Reid before she's killed? Basically this is a retread of a better film called Frequency from 2000 which starred Jim Caviezel & Dennis Quaid (in that film the time expanse was years & they communicated via a ham radio) which used a hokey time displacement device to better effect but here the film can't decide to either embrace the whimsy or wallow in unnecessary violence (Oyelowo's brother, played by Brian Tyree Henry, is shotgunned to the head) when the easier thing would've been a great female empowerment yarn, from Reid's perspective, making her the heroine in the piece but as the final grisly scenes play out, you're wishing you'd be collateral damage to put you out of your own misery. Co-starring Mykelti Williamson as Oyelow's partner & Alfred Molina as their boss.

Alex Garland's (Ex Machina/Annihilation) latest is a hot button (considering a certain ex-president's on going court cases) narrative as the United States has fallen into a fractious war after the president, Nick Offerman, now in his third term has engaged his forces to fight against separatist forces (from Texas & California) who're mounting a campaign to take back the nation. Into this fracas are a quartet of journalists; Oscar nominee Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley & Wagner Moura go on a road trip towards DC to hopefully link up w/the siege on the White House seeing the state of the nation from one puzzling & disturbing set piece after another (culminating in the much talked about stop by some soldiers led by Oscar nominee & Dunst's hubby in real life Jesse Plemons) which really will be the touchstone scene on most people's lips for some time to come. Keeping some of the details on how we got here a bit specious works wonders as we concentrate on the actions unfolding & how it could mirror, if the heated sides which exist today actually come through on their threats, become more than just a cautionary tale & enter a realm of frightening docudrama.

A 1959 biblical epic from 1959 starring Yul Brynner & Gina Lollabrigida. Taking place in the final days of King David's rule, who's on his death bed, the taking over the throne comes down to Brynner & his brother, played by George Sanders, who has opted to not be by his father's side since he's in the midst of a battle. Dismayed at Sanders effrontery, Brynner becomes king & has a good reign as one of the wisest kings in history of Judea but then Lollabrigida comes down the pike, working w/the Egyptian pharaoh, hoping to corrupt Brynner by bringing in different faiths when Israel was angling towards monotheism which spells doom for Brynner when he does in fact fall for her while his many enemies gather their forces to overthrow him. Brynner, who grew out his hair & took over after original lead Tyrone Power passed away from a heart attack, is a bit lost here playing his character as meek & understated when his roles up to this point, namely his Oscar win for the King and I & Ramses in The Ten Commandments, were justifiably over the top & enjoyable. Here, where perhaps Charlton Heston would've been better suited, Brynner seems stunted & castrated w/a lot of set pieces aping what Cecil B. Demille (the final battle has a slew of Egyptian soldiers blinded by their enemies into running off a cliff en masse) did so much better. I would only recommend this if there isn't any bible related epics on air but that's not saying much.

Eli Roth's (Hostel/Green Inferno) latest from last year which is actually a full-length version of his mock trailer he made for the 2007 Grindhouse omnibus. Taking on the haloed tradition of slasher films inspired by a theme (here a holiday), we open on a disastrous Black Friday sale opening where people are trampled & hurt (w/some unfortunates killed). Flash forward a year later & a masked killer, wearing the visage of a pilgrim forefather, starts taking revenge on the band of youths who cut the line the night of the sale along w/others the killer feels are responsible for the carnage w/each killing sticking to the edicts of a Thanksgiving spread. Pretty gruesome but tethered to an air of remove since most of the victims you wouldn't waste your time crossing the street to yell at them (something of an Achilles' heel w/Roth's writing) takes a game cast which includes Gina Gershon, Patrick Dempsey, Rick Hoffman, Karen Cliche as the adults in the room while the young'ns which include Addison Rae & Mino Manheim to name a few getting lost in the contempt the killer has for them as well as, not surprisingly, the co-writer/director.

Last year's final (for me) nominee for Best Picture is a quiet, disturbing stunner about a Nazi commandant, Christian Friedel, who runs a concentration camp & lives on its periphery in a home w/his wife, Sandra Huller (nominated for Anatomy of a Fall), children & servants like nothing is out of the ordinary. More a treatise of the banality of quiet evil, the film (feeling like something Stanley Kubrick made) is just there w/long shots detailing the comings & goings of the home's inhabitants as the horrors next door (we hear some gunfire, an occasional scream or two) continue unabated. Co-writer/director Jonathan Glazer rightfully won the Best Foreign Language Oscar for his effort (also winning for Best Sound) & in a career which has spewed films like Birth, Under the Skin & Sexy Beast, this release continues a winning streak.