FILM REVIEWS:
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (India/France/Lux/Neth 2024) ***½
Directed by Payal Kapadia
A female film all the way directed by also by a female, The hit at this year’s Cannes is a hazily lit, dreamy and idyllic-looking feature bringing together three women, each of whom have their own problems. Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) are roommates and nurses at a Mumbai hospital. Prabha is married, but her husband went abroad to work many years ago. Now drifting into middle age, she focuses on her job. Anu, by contrast, is young and full of dreams for her future, which she hopes will include the handsome Muslim boy she’s secretly seeing. Prabha initially regards the potentially scandalous affair as an annoyance, but she comes to sympathize with Anu’s passion, perhaps because she, too, feels the tug of frustrated ardour, thanks to the attentions of a poetry-writing doctor. When Prabha’s friend Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) is evicted from her home by heartless developers, she decides to return to the coastal village of her youth. Prabha and Anu tag along for a holiday. Far from the city’s perpetual clamour, the women’s feelings and sense of life’s possibilities are given free rein. The film celebrates womanhood, showing how each needs to support another in the face of male-related problems. In unity, females can face the world with strength and resilience—great shots of Dubai life and the beautiful Indian beach areas.
THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE (Pigen med nålen)(Denmark/Sweden/Poland 2024) ****
Directed by Magnus von Horn
Premiering at Cannes this year followed by screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival, THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE is an excellent historical drama though a very depressing one. The film is shot in black and white with a setting in post-WWII Denmark, which is made even more depressing by the story in which bleakness piles upon bleakness. If one can stomach the bleakness, a superbly crafted film is in for the taking, though definitely not of a feel-good nature. The film is based on true life events - that of a baby killer, one of Denmark’s most infamous killers. A woman pretends to take in babies from mothers who seek a better life for their babies, but the woman kills babies instead using several methods.
The protagonist is Karoline, a young woman trying to survive after the war. Vic Carmen Sonne is remarkable in her portrayal of Karoline, a young seamstress trying to survive on her own since her husband was declared missing in action. Fortune smiles upon her when she develops a connection with Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), the owner of the factory where she works. Yet a cascade of misfortunes soon reminds her of how little protection she enjoys. As the film progresses, one can only pity Katroline as things get from worse to worse.. Can things improve even a little? Firstly when the film begins, Karoline is evicted from her squalor apartment. She finds lodging in an even more horrid room with no running water and a window that cannot be opened. She is warned not to have any visitors though one can only imagine who would want to visit such a place.
Her woes improve a bit as the events set her on the path toward Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), a shop owner she works for as a seamstress, who offers a particular service to women in need. The dynamic they form will have major repercussions for them both. They fall in love and she is impregnated by him. Just as one can think the film is leading towards the kindness of human beings, Dagmar’s mother stops the romance between her son and her and tosses her out on the street. She takes a needle to a public bath and tries to abort the unborn child, hence the title of the film THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE. There she meets the baby killer and things do NOT get any better. Karolyn and the baby killer strike up a camaraderie, even when Karolyn discovers the truth. More of the darkness is included with the reappearance of Karolyn’s supposedly husband missing in war with a disfigured face. Why he has not responded to her letters is not really explained in the film. The ugliness of his facial injury is not hidden from the audience.
For all its bleakness and depression, THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE is a compelling film with strong performances, stunning cinematography, and production values. I ranked it one of my Top 10 films of 2024.
THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE, the Danish entry for Best International Feature for the upcoming Academy Awards opens in theatres on Nov 27th, 2024.
Trailer:
MARIA (Italy/Germany/Chile/United States 2024) ***
Directed by Pablo Larrain
MARIA is the third film in Larraín's trilogy of 20th-century iconic women, preceded by SPENCER (2021) and JACKIE (2017).
MARIA, the film about Maria Callas, is set during Her final years in Paris in the 1970s. It is not a Callas biopic, as neither were the two other Lorain films, JACKIE and SPENCER, about Jacqueline Kennedy and Lady Diana Spencer.
Angelina Jolie portrays the diva, the diva that she is. She is proud and pompous like a peacock who does not care for anyone else except for the wealthy and famous in her social circle. Vanity project or Oscar bait? Could very well be both. It is noted that Bradley Cooper’s MAESTRO on Leonard Bernstein did not win him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. But to give credit where credit is due, it should be noted that to prepare for her role, Jolie spent seven months training to sing opera. In the scenes set during Callas' heyday, an estimated 90 to 95 percent of Callas' original recordings were used, with Jolie lip-synching along to these songs. However, Jolie's singing comes to the fore during the film's final act. It is reported that the film received an eight-minute standing ovation at the Sala Grande Theatre during its world premiere, reducing Angelina Jolie to tears.
When the film opens, Callas is suffering from ill health, often taking too much medication. She has lost her ability to sing and perform, but her reputation still precedes her. One would wish more information be given on how she lost her goal abilities. Still, she is headstrong aided by no less, her personal butler and housekeeper. She often asks her housekeep how she sing, noting that the housekeeper has no operatic experience. Yet she trusts her judgment. Her two employees obey her at her every request, and the butler supports her and beats up a reporter who is hounding her and threatening her that her audience no longer respects her. The reporter is pushed severely by the by=tler, and he clerkly deserves what he got.
The film celebrates an Italian cast, though Callas was an American-born Greek soprano. Angelina Papadopoulou plays young Maria Callas, while Pierfrancesco Favino as Ferruccio and Alba Rohrwacher as Bruna plays the Callas’s Italian household.
Callas loves her pets dogs - two of them, often seen following her around her residence. “It is 99% about food and 1% about love,” she remarks, which is very true for all dogs.
The best thing about the film is the images of the real Maria Callas, which include her aging during the closing credits. The audience gets to see the real person in her glamour with it fading during her latter years.
MARIA is pretty much the same as Larrain’s other two films of his trilogy JACKIE and SPENCER, with elaborate and meticulously orchestrated production set pieces but empty vehicles on the whole where the sum of the parts do not really add up to a strong narrative or purpose.
Despite the chaotic often unrelated segments and often glorified scenes of Callas, the film is still magnificent to look at, and does Callas justice that is due to her.
MARIA opens in select theatres on November 27th and streams on MUBI from December 11, 2024.
Trailer:
NEVER LOOK AWAY (USA 2024) ***½
Directed by Lucy Lawless
The doc NEVER LOOK AWAY celebrates Margaret Moth, warts and all.
Born in Gisborne, New Zealand, as Margaret Wilson, she got her first camera at age 8.
She was the first news camerawoman in New Zealand, originally for the local DNTV2 station in the South Island before working for the national TVNZ channel. She changed her name to Margaret Gipsy Moth reportedly because of her love for parachuting from Tiger Moth airplanes and her desire to have her "own" name.
The doc initiates the audience to the woman with her first fling with a 17-year-old while she was 30. The doc then follows Moth as she moved to the United States and worked for KHOU in Houston, Texas, for about seven years before moving to CNN in 1990. Moth covered the Persian Gulf War, the rioting that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination, the civil war in Tbilisi, Georgia, and the Bosnian War. She had been described by colleagues as quirky, tough, fearless, and funny.
The doc works avoids being a biopic by omitting Margaret’s past. When the first boyfriend (the17 17-year-old), Jeff Russi asks Margaret about her past, her reply is that she had forgotten. So, no mention of her childhood is found in the doc.
Risks come with a price. No one is invincible - Margaret Moth included, In July 1992, Moth was shot and severely wounded while filming in Sniper Alley in Sarajevo. Because of this injury, considerable damage was done to her body, and her speech became slurred. Despite her injuries, she returned to work in Sarajevo six months later, joking that she was going back to look for her missing teeth.
War is the ultimate drug. Better than rugs like LCD and heroin that CNN photojournalist Margaret Moth partakes. CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth made the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Lebanon, and Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, real for North American television audiences. While her fellow journalists took cover, Moth ran towards danger, camera in hand, to get the shots. Colleagues including Christiane Amanpour attest to her bravery but it is Moth’s friends and lovers who reveal the self-destructive nature of the artist behind the lens. Innovative reconstructions of her near-lethal assignment in Sarajevo’s Sniper Alley, which turned Moth into headline news, are paired with unsettling interviews with witnesses to her daredevilry, forming the grit of this unconventional portrait. In her directorial debut, actor Lucy Lawless reveals the fearlessness of a fellow Kiwi woman The document ends with Moth being diagnosed with colon cancer and dying in the arms of an old friend fellow CNN cameraman
at the age of 59. The film’s ending minutes are spent concluding on the courage of the woman and the large impact her journalism had on stopping wars.
Director Lawless also goes personal, trying to understand the woman who faces danger and dismisses family life. What is behind her anger? Why is her background leading to this state?
If the name of the director Lucy Lawless sounds foamier, she is a famous New Zealand actress. She is best known for her roles as Xena in the television series Xena: Warrior Princess, as D'Anna Biers in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series, and as Lucretia in the television series Spartacus: Blood and Sand and associated series. Since 2019, she has starred as Alexa in the television series My Life Is Murder. NEVER LOOK BACK is her directorial debut.
Trailer:
THE SHADE (USA 2023) ***
Directed by Tyler Chipman
THE SHADE begins with a car driving into a graveyard. A man and his son exit the car to enter the graveyard. The man begins to set fire to a tombstone. The boy witnesses the grave being set afire together with his father burnt to death. an indeed traumatic experience for the boy. The film time cuts to the future where the boy, Ryan now a teen of 20, wakes up from the nightmare, suffering mental trauma and taking medication for it while seeing a therapist routinely.
A grieving young man struggles to protect his family from an unspeakable darkness.
Ryan Beckman (Chris Galust), a 20-year-old college student from a declining town in the northeast, struggles with a debilitating anxiety disorder following his father's death. His older brother, Jason, returns home unexpectedly while battling his own demons. Together with his younger brother James, Ryan struggles to break the destructive cycle threatening their family as ancient darkness closes in on them.
THE SHADE, directed by Tyler Chipman and co-written by the director and David Purdy covers several genres and can best be described as a drama, thriller, psychological thriller, and horror. It runs a lengthy 2 hours, a bit long for a typical 90-minute horror feature, but the extra time allows the film both character and plot development. The excellent blend of psychological horror and family relationship drama makes THE SHADE stand out as a compelling film.
The film spends its first hour introducing the family unit, with its problems and Ryan’s troubled relationship with his mother and his returning older brother Jason. One night, he enters his brother’s room to confront him with the extra loud music blaring only to vaguely see a woman there before Jason punches on him. More agony to the family arises when Jason is found dead in’s room. Ryan tries to protect the youngest brother who seems to cope quite well. At the same time, pressure mounts because of Ryan’s horrid low-paying pizza job. His buddies include a motor-mouthed Latino, who provides some comic relief to an otherwise serious future and his girlfriend who seems supportive until Ryan becomes a bit too much to handle, explaining her disappearance from the story for a while.
The film rests on young actor Chris Galust who does a solid job as the troubled 20-year-old. Tony Award winner Laura Benanti also deserves mentioned as Ryan’s troubled mother, who is at a loss for how to deal with her three sons. Also of notice is the cinematography which is also excellent right from the beginning of the burning graveyard scene. A lot of scenes take place in the night, allowing the d.p. to show off the talent.
THE SHADE is an impressive directorial debut that has won multiple accolades during film festivals. Among the noted ones are:
WINNER Best Special Effects – Days of the Dead Film Festival
WINNER Best Directing – Days of the Dead Film Festival
WINNER Best First Time Filmmaker – Days of the Dead Film Festival
WINNER Jury Award Best Feature Film – Snowdance Independent Film Festival
THE SHADE is available Video On Demand on November 22nd.
Trailer:
WICKED (entitled onscreen as WICKED PART 1) (USA 2024) ***½
Directed by John M. Chu
Wicked is one of the most successful Broadway musicals and the film adaptation was originally set for as way back as 2021. Unforeseen circumstances like scheduling and the Pandemic resulted in delays and even a director change from Stephen Daldry (BILLY ELLIOT), but the end result is worth the wait. Musical and theatre fans are in for a real treat with musical numbers combined with special effects, animation and romance.
WICKED is a 2024 American epic musical fantasy film directed by Jon M. Chu from a screenplay by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox. It is the first of a two-part film adaptation of the stage musical of the same name by Stephen Schwartz and Holzman, which in turn was loosely based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire. The film stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, with Brit actor Jonathan Bailey as Prince Charming, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode, Peter Dinklage (voicing the donkey professor), Michelle Yeoh, (as Madame Morrible and Jeff Goldblum (as the Wizard of Oz) in supporting roles. The eclectic cast gives the film political correctness with an African American Erivo, an Asdia Yang, a Malaysian Chinese Yeoh and even a Brit who plays Prince Charming. The film is also too obvious in its message on minorities. Here, the animals are the minorities that are caged and eventually lose their ability to speak. There is also an invaliding wheelchair who is portrayed by an actress in the same boat.
WICKED is directed by Chinese American John M. Chu. The films that he has directed often include musical elements, including the dance films STEP UP 2: THE STREETS (2008) and STEP UP 3D (2010), musicals JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS (2015) and IINTHE HEIGHTS (2021), and the live concert films Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (2011) and Justin Bieber's Believe (2013). It is as if all these films prime Chu for the big budget $145 million over-the-top musical extravaganza.
WICKED is a musical extravaganza all the way, The film is lengthy with a running time of 2 hours and 40 minutes, and this is only for part 1. The phrase ‘to be continued’ appears proudly on the screen at the end of the movie,. For Broadway, theatre and musical fans, I would give the film 4 stars and three stars for others, as the musical and choreographed numbers can be a bit too much, less overbearing. For example, the first 10 minutes of the choreography do not add anything to the film but add to its production costs.
Because of the scope of the musical and the intent of including all the songs in the musical as well as the addition of new ones, the filmmakers have decided to split WICKED into two parts. Though WICKED is just touted as WICKED, the opening credits say WICKED PART 1. Part 2 arrives next year in November and is also directed by Chu.
WICKED opens in theatres on November 22nd.
Trailer;
WITCHES (UK 2024) ***½
Directed by Elizabeth Sankey
The new British documentary from MUBI that took the London International Film Festival by storm is a compulsive eerie, creepy and understandably creepy piece of work for the reason that what transpires on screen seems so real and close to home. The titles at the start of the film inform and insist that what is seen on the screen is based on true events with actual people. The woman featured in the film is the film’s director herself, sharing her own horrid experiences. WITCHES has so far received two nominations at the British Independent Film Awards 2024, for the Raindance Maverick Award and Best Feature Documentary.
The film is a profound exploration of the unexpected yet compelling connections between postpartum mental health and the history and portrayal of witches in Western society and popular culture.
Following on from her critically acclaimed feature ROMANTIC COMEDY, also released by MUBI in 2019, director Sankey now uses her trademark video essay style to turn the camera inward, focusing on her own experiences with postpartum anxiety and depression.
Using her own experience of being admitted to a psychiatric ward after the birth of her son, Sankey intertwines her personal narrative with historical and cinematic footage. It is this woven cinematic footage that creates an eeriness and makes the film so compelling. With the words spoken by the doc’s subjects, relevant footage from horror classics, the serious ones not the camp horror slasher flicks like Roman Polanski’s ROSEMARY’S BABY, George Miller’s THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK Robert Egger’s THE WITCH, Jane Campion’s ANGEL AT MY TABLE as well as oldies like Rene Clair’s I MARRIED A WITCH, all immediately recognizable because of the film’s famous faces. The film also features interviews with medical professionals, historians, and fellow sufferers, offering a multifaceted perspective on how women with mental health issues have been stigmatized and misunderstood over time while creating her own coven of women to reclaim their stories.
The doc at its most scary shows a mother and a baby isolated together. Many mothers post-birth have fears of harming their babies. Being alone with their babies is often the greatest fear these mothers may have. On the other hand, for other mothers, the bond between mother and child is healing. The doc shows that post-birth mental illness is not a rare disease and one that many have the fear of bringing out out into the open.
The scariest moments are the segments where past inmates talk about their mental anguish. One cannot recognize herself in the mirror. One has to lay out things like her spectacles and other items so that she knows how to proceed daily in life. And in the institution, they are watched daily, anoint and day by the staff who look like witches. The inmates are prisoners who are locked in with no way out.
WITCHES is arguably the scariest film of the year because it is a doc featuring interviewees who experience real horrors of potential mental psychosis and nonfiction is more real than fiction.
WITCHES had its world premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and its U.K. premiere at the London International Film Festival and is available exclusively on MUBI from November 22nd, 2024.
Trailer:
