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Bold and Boundless ‘BLACK BEAR’ Boggles the Brain

What begins inauspiciously as a nervy tableau about an unhappily married couple unmoored by the arrival of a duplicitous and tempestuous female boarder soon spins into a bizarre anti-anthology that breaks as many rules of traditional-storytelling as it can in its bewildering and enchanting 104 minutes. Writer and director Lawrence Michael Levine (Wild Canaries) sets out to defy the logic of filmmaking grammar, having his principal cast play variants of different characters without stopping to explain the leaps from one storyline to the next. In essence, Black Bear refuses to be caged. To any one style, to any one genre, to any one story. In a nutshell, it is a relationship drama meets a dark comedy meets an artistic deconstruction meets a survival story. Though certain to confuse and frustrate viewers looking for a more linear and easy-to-define cinematic experience, Black Bear remains a daring and boldly-acted pièce de résistance from a filmmaker disinterested in falling in line and fully committed to braving the wilderness of going it alone.  Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘INDIGNATION’

The basic plot structure of Indignation couldn’t be simpler. The precocious son of a New Jersey kosher butcher heads off to college, goes on a date, changes dorm rooms and gets appendicitis. For a film with such narrative simplicity, the margins are sprawled with a rich tapestry of emotionally vibrant reveals, loaded with unconventional wordplay comedy and brimming with decadent forbidden relationships, all pumping along to a mule kick of a curtain act. As a crossbred of coiffed 1950s romance and genteel protest piece, Indignation is a delicate ballet that culminates in first time writer/director James Schamus doing a tap dance on your fluttering, caved-in chest. Read More

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Out in Theaters: DRACULA UNTOLD

Let me tell you an untold story: a bunch of studio execs crowd in a room. The air is thick with the fumes of aged (pronounce age-ed) scotch, the carpet stamped in the cookie cutout of a Louis Vuitton heel. The unpaid Lambo payments and hefty beachside mortgages are palpable. “How can we play the franchise game without shelling royalties to a greedy parent company?” The question all kids dream of answering someday. The words hang. Their answer is a lightbulb: unlicensed public property characters. Like Hercules! Or Frankenstein! Pump out films about characters that’ve been around for infinity because easy money. There’s literally no one in that Wolfman family tree coming forward to claim a check when Benicio dons a hairy mask. “I know! What about Dracula?” Penny saved, penny earned. This seems about the extent of thought that birthed this (dis)passion project that is Dracula Untold. In the petri dish that is the studio system though, this revisionist take on a monster movie classic actually (amazingly) transformed into something half-worthwhile; an appropriately enjoyable bad movie. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ENEMY

“Enemy”
Directed Denis Villeneuve
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rossellini
Erotic Thriller
90 Mins
R

Enemy.jpg

Doppelgangers have been contemplated endlessly in history. Shortly before he died, Abraham Lincoln wrote in his diary that he had dreamt an encounter with his doppelganger. It’s an eerie concept:  two completely identical copies in the same dimension. Cloning isn’t natural, it’s dangerous, un-Godly. Dopplegangers bring out the evil inside.

“Chaos is order yet undeciphered,” flashes on the screen in deep yellow font. Enemy tricks and weaves, flowing its way through psyche until you’re left wondering what’s true and false, what’s real and what’s not.

Enemy is steganography in its purest form. Every twist and turn holds some truth within the winding web Director Denis Villeneuve spins. All is hidden in plain sight, or maybe it isn’t hidden at all.

The film is based on a Spanish novel, The Double, which looks into the life of a man who meets his exact replica, a man who can ruin his life. Jake Gyllenhaal is a history teacher at a university in Toronto. He lectures about time, about Mesopotamian empires. These empires use distractions to divert the masses, to entertain them and keep them at bay. History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

But the film doesn’t begin there. Another Jake Gyllenhaal walks through a dimly lit corridor, sliding a key into an austere door, revealing a strange underground club of ponderous-looking men. There’s a main stage. A pregnant woman masturbates in front of them. She orgasms. Gyllenhaal buries his face in his hands. He’s shocked.

Then, the main attraction. A woman walks out with a silver platter. She disrobes, pulls the lid off the silver plate. Out steps a tarantula crawling around the stage.

Gyllenhaal—the history teacher—he’s boring. We’re not sure who that just was at that Tarantula mess, but it definitely wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been. This man’s too clean-cut. His evenings are spent tangled in bed railing his girlfriend, falling asleep alone when she goes home. His days are spent delivering the same lecture, over and over again. History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

One day a colleague tells him to check out a movie. What movie? Any movie. Sure, why not? Not like he’s got much else to do.

Gyllenhaal rents a random film, pops it into his laptop. A deep organ sounds, the score eviscerating the scene, ripping the emotions out of you: there’s another Jake Gyllenhaal, an extra in the film dressed as a bellhop.

Enemy_2.jpg
Enemy
catches you quick, pinning you down, choking you to the edge of that last breath. Things cavalcade, piling on until the tension boils over. Contributing foremost is the sound design, which is monstrous, creeping and crawling like an eight-legged beast on your skin, making you shiver at the slightest touch. The organ tones, the elegiac score pulsate and drip their venom in your deepest corners. Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans spin a masterpiece, weaving you and garroting you until you turn blue.

Villeneuve is no stranger to quirky set design. Rooms in the film are eerily dressed, calling attention to the empty space as if there’s something lurking underneath, inside, everywhere. Every set piece has an uncanny quality. A bed with green sheets takes on the appearance of a murderer. For a film that relies so heavily on symbology to confuse and contort, Enemy’s set-work is a masterpiece.

Enemy has an incandescent glow to it, a yellow hue mixed in with the dark shadows. Villeneuve wipes his color pallet clean save a gelatinous yellow and a ghastly black. Walls ooze a chaotic nausea. This film uses color psychology to wreck your psyche, gnaw at you with anxiety on the brain. Every symbol, every color in Enemy is carefully thought out, fine-tuned to bring out the soul’s deepest fears and terrors. It’s a creepy brand of traumatic.

We mustn’t forget Jake Gyllenhaal, however, who here collaborates with Villeneuve again after their work on Prisoners. Gyllenhaal has two credits in Enemy, possibly more. He plays too men, completely identical yet separately unique. When they meet, their temperaments flash. One is aggressive, almost murderous; the other is terrified, squirmish. They pull up their shirts to reveal the same scar. Were they born on the same day? History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

What occurs as Enemy progresses is quaking, the earth below your feet seems to tremor faster and faster, moving its way up the Richter scale. A floating Tarantula as big as a Goodyear blimp slinks its way over Toronto. A woman’s body with a Tarantula’s head walks upside down through a corridor. At 90 minutes, it shrinks and expands the mind, then ends abruptly with no questions answered. Enemy is a rollercoaster personally designed by the Devil. Twist and turn, crash and burn.

Billed as an erotic psycho-thriller, Enemy is bare as “After Dark” on CineMax, but far more violently erotic. Naked bodies contort together, almost like two spiders dancing on a delicate web. Aggressive, deep thrusts and hollow moans add to the erogenous aura that swallows the theater whole. Villeneuve uses sex like a weapon, goring open the mind’s thoughts and bleeding them out like venom. Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon are splendid in their supporting roles. They make writhing spine-tinglingly sexy.

I have never left a theater so thoroughly mind-wrecked. Gyllenhaal’s gritty performance combined with all the production elements that Villeneuve flaunts breaks this story open. They subject you to their hegemony then trap you in it. The story is captivating, corrosive. It scared the shit out of me then left me fallow. This is more mysterious than Memento, more intricate than Inception. Enemy is the movie you’re too afraid not to watch twice. It will take a while to decipher this psychosomatic chaos.

A-

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Out in Theaters: ENEMY

“Enemy”
Directed Denis Villeneuve
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rossellini
Erotic Thriller
90 Mins
R

Enemy.jpg

Doppelgangers have been contemplated endlessly in history. Shortly before he died, Abraham Lincoln wrote in his diary that he had dreamt an encounter with his doppelganger. It’s an eerie concept:  two completely identical copies in the same dimension. Cloning isn’t natural, it’s dangerous, un-Godly. Dopplegangers bring out the evil inside.

“Chaos is order yet undeciphered,” flashes on the screen in deep yellow font. Enemy tricks and weaves, flowing its way through the psyche until you’re left wondering what’s true and false, what’s real and what’s not.

Enemy is steganography in its purest form. Every twist and turn holds some truth within the winding web director Denis Villeneuve spins. All is hidden in plain sight, or maybe it isn’t hidden at all.

The film is based on a Spanish novel, The Double, which looks into the life of a man who meets his exact replica, a man who can ruin his life. Jake Gyllenhaal is a history teacher at a university in Toronto. He lectures about time, about Mesopotamian empires. These empires use distractions to divert the masses, to entertain them and keep them at bay. History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

But the film doesn’t begin there. Another Jake Gyllenhaal walks through a dimly lit corridor, sliding a key into an austere door, revealing a strange underground club of ponderous-looking men. There’s a main stage. A pregnant woman masturbates in front of them. She orgasms. Gyllenhaal buries his face in his hands. He’s shocked.

Then, the main attraction. A woman walks out with a silver platter. She disrobes, pulls the lid off the silver plate. Out steps a tarantula crawling around the stage.

Gyllenhaal—the history teacher—he’s boring. We’re not sure who that just was at that Tarantula mess, but it definitely wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been. This man’s too clean-cut. He spends his evenings tangled in bed railing his girlfriend, falling asleep alone when she goes home. His days are spent delivering the same lecture, over and over again. History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

One day a colleague tells him to check out a movie made in the local scene. Sure, why not? Not like he’s got much else to do.

Gyllenhaal rents the film, pops it into his laptop. A deep organ sounds, the score eviscerating the scene, ripping the emotions out of you: there’s another Jake Gyllenhaal, an extra in the film dressed as a bellhop.

Enemy_2.jpg
Enemy
catches you quick, pinning you down, choking you to the edge of that last breath. Things cavalcade, piling on until the tension boils over. Contributing foremost is the sound design, which is monstrous, creeping and crawling like an eight-legged beast on your skin, making you shiver at the slightest touch. The organ tones, the elegiac score pulsate and drip their venom in your deepest corners. Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans spin a masterpiece, weaving you and garroting you until you turn blue.

Villeneuve is no stranger to quirky set design. Rooms in the film are eerily dressed, calling attention to the empty space as if there’s something lurking underneath, inside, everywhere. Every set piece has an uncanny quality. A bed with green sheets takes on the appearance of a murderer. For a film that relies so heavily on symbology to confuse and contort, Enemy’s set-work is a masterpiece.

Enemy also has an incandescent glow to it, a yellow hue mixed in with the dark shadows. Villeneuve wipes his color pallet clean save a gelatinous yellow and a ghastly black. Walls ooze a chaotic nausea. This film uses the psychology of color to wreck your psyche, gnaw at you with anxiety on the brain. Every symbol, every color in Enemy is carefully thought out, fine-tuned to bring out the soul’s deepest fears and terrors. It’s a creepy brand of traumatic.

We mustn’t forget Jake Gyllenhaal, however, who here collaborates with Villeneuve again after their work on Prisoners (even though this was filmed before that). Gyllenhaal has two credits in Enemy, possibly more. He plays too men, completely identical yet separately unique. When they meet, their temperaments flash. One is aggressive, almost murderous; the other is terrified, squirmish. They pull up their shirts to reveal the same scar. Were they born on the same day? History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

What occurs as Enemy progresses is quaking, the earth below your feet seems to tremor faster and faster, moving its way up the Richter scale. A floating Tarantula as big as a Goodyear blimp slinks its way over Toronto. A woman’s body with a Tarantula’s head walks upside down through a corridor. At 90 minutes, it shrinks and expands the mind, then ends abruptly with no questions answered. Enemy is a rollercoaster personally designed by the Devil. Twist and turn, crash and burn.

Billed as an erotic psycho-thriller, Enemy is bare as “After Dark” on CineMax, but far more violently erotic. Naked bodies contort together, almost like two spiders dancing on a delicate web. Aggressive, deep thrusts and hollow moans add to the erogenous aura that swallows the theater whole. Villeneuve uses sex like a weapon, goring open the mind’s thoughts and bleeding them out like venom. Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon are splendid in their supporting roles. They make writhing spine-tinglingly sexy.

I have never left a theater so thoroughly mind-wrecked. Gyllenhaal’s gritty performance combined with all the production elements that Villeneuve flaunts breaks this story open. They subject you to their hegemony then trap you in it. The story is captivating, corrosive. It scared the shit out of me then left me fallow. This is more mysterious than Memento, more intricate than Inception. Enemy is the movie you’re too afraid not to watch twice. It will take a while to decipher this psychosomatic chaos.

A-

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