It’s been a long time since I did my last issue of Weekly Review and seeing that I haven’t been to the theater in a while, I’ve decided to reinstate this weekly installment to get those film reviewing a’flowing.
United 93 (2006)
I recently revisited Paul Greengrass‘ critically acclaimed, controversial United 93. United 93 is a bold and inspired account of 9/11 told primarily from the perspective of the passengers aboard the ill-fated commercial jetliner. It’s an intimate true story that doesn’t descend to sentimentality or weepy objectivization.
The ending is a sobering, fore-drawn conclusion but that fact can’t negate the pulsing sense of suspense that Greengrass has managed to weave here. Where he could have easily turned these people into cheap caricatures, Greengrass instead humanizes his subjects, even unraveling to a degree the pathos the leader of this Al Qaeda suicide brigade. Using close quarter tactics, a talented fresh-faced ensemble and a tightly edited degree of propulsion, United 93 reaches an oft inimitable level of reality and intimacy.
A
Dogtooth (2009)
A bold, experimental Greek film, Dogtooth plays with the idea of obedience in seclusion to an often uncomfortable degree. We’ve all heard the horror stories of children exposed to harrowing, breathtaking amounts of domestic abuse but this film subverts that expectation in a discomforting way. There are no beatings. There is no physical abuse. Sure, there may be a little bit of forced incest going on but it’s all about the journey that counts.
What happens onscreen, in purposefully awkwardly framed shots, is a patient psychological degradation. This social experiment is a systematic dehumanization based solely on information manipulation and isolation. It’s a film that revels in the subtext and offers little to no solid conclusions. Instead, it offers you a scenario and allows you to create the outcome yourself.
While this sophomore effort from Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is surely controversial, it doesn’t quite reach the level of social commentary that he seems to have intended. Nonetheless, it is an intriguing attempt to illuminate and bastardize the supreme power of parenting.
C+
The Thing (1982)
Gooey and gripping, The Thing represents all things great about horror. From the suspense-laden moments of still to the sudden and explosive acts of violence, The Thing is all about mood. Set in the snowy confines of nowhere Antartica, a team of scientists are attacked by seemingly possessed neighbors and become infected one by one.
The atmosphere here is spot on with it’s blistering winds and towering snowbanks and the special effects are top notch. The comparisons to Alien are certainly there and as that film is an immense accomplishment in my mind, I’m somehow more inclined to enjoy this film.
Finally, effects like these really illuminates how much more realistic and downright grotesque puppets look compared to CGI. Why was the switch ever made?
C-
Lilyhammer (2012)
Outside of the movie realm, I plunged through the overlooked debut from Netflix Original Series, Lilyhammer. An episodic fish-out-of-water story that features Sopranos alumni Steve Zandt Vanh as a mobster-turned-informer who is relocated to Lillehammer, Norway.
As an international, genre-blending dramedy, the series succeed tremendously and while it doesn’t have the weighty darkness that permeated and defined The Sopranos, the levity of the series is what sets it aside and makes it special.
Vanh is essentially Silvio from The Sopranos with his perma-scowl, his affected diction and his iconic slicked back hair-do (which is actually a toupee) but sitting front and center of the series, we get to see a more personal side to Vanh that we never saw in The Sopranos.
