Film Movement Movie Review: White Riot (2019)

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Once upon a time, Eric Clapton lost his mind. Stopping a show in Birmingham to ask any "foreigners" in the audience to raise their hands, he told them he wanted them gone, not just from the concert but his country altogether. "I don't want you here," he shouted. "I think we should send them all back...We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man … This is Great Britain, a white country!"

The year was 1976. As shocking as these words were back then and remain to this day, when it came to views like these, Eric Clapton was far from alone. Joined in supporting the new rise of fascism in the UK, David Bowie argued that Britain was ready for a fascist leader and called Adolf Hitler the first rock star in an interview with "Playboy." Following Clapton's lead, Rod Stewart went even further, giving a full-throated endorsement for racist National Front political party member Enoch Powell, saying that he too thought it was time for foreigners to leave. But this position wasn't just coming from those in rock. With punk taking over the music scene in Britain, The Sex Pistols, Adam Ant, and Siouxsie and the Banshees were just three punk groups who openly embraced Nazi symbolism and swastikas in their costumes and performances.

What the hell was going on, you might ask? The short answer is that in the mid to late '70s, England was rampant with anger and hate. Inundated with job loss and scapegoating the problems of the country on immigrant "invaders" with "black, brown, and yellow faces," as the National Front ranted in their rallies, Britain's tide was turning in a horrific direction. Watching this happen in real-time, rock photographer Red Saunders vowed to do whatever he could to stop the impending flood of xenophobia before it was too late.

Writing an open letter to Clapton, whose music, he rightfully charged, was cribbed directly from Black blues artists, Saunders sounded the alarm and offered a solution. "We want to organise a rank-and-file movement against the racist poison in rock music," he wrote. Leaving his contact information in the letter for interested parties, after his missive was printed in music publications across the UK, Saunders was overwhelmed by the response.

Joining forces with gifted graphic designers, writers, photographers, musicians, and artists, they formed the group Rock Against Racism to reach the youths of England in an attempt to educate the younger generation against propagandist hate. Hosting events where they purposely had Black and white bands playing back-to-back, the organization put on more than two hundred shows in its first year and created a fanzine called "Temporary Hoarding," which addressed the real-world problems of racist policing, the Catholic side of the North Ireland conflict, sexual violence, immigration, LGBT issues, and other topics which were ignored by the mainstream press.

Chronicling the legacy of the group while bringing issues of "Temporary Hoarding" bursting to life through vibrant animation (which filmmaker Rubika Shah acknowledges was inspired by the films of Brett Morgan, including "Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck"), "White Riot" is a lively time capsule of a fraught period in England made eerily prescient due to recent events.

Watching the arguments made by the National Front in the wake of MAGA, Trump, the murderous Nazi march on Charlottesville, police brutality and the Black Lives Matter protests, as well as the advent of increasing fascism around the globe, "White Riot" plays like one of the scariest horror films you'll see ahead of Halloween. From bullets in the mailbox to assaults against musicians and concertgoers to the open police support for the National Front and their policies, it's a harrowing document of a fraught era in British history and the brave artists, organizations, and youths who dared to join forces to put hate in its place.

Interviewing not only Red Saunders and his colleagues but also some of the musicians who played Rock Against Racism (or RAR) gigs, including The Tom Robinson Band and Alien Kulture, while Shah's film admittedly suffers from a lack of focus as it seems to adjust and expand its thesis every time a vital new issue is introduced, it's an urgent eye-opener, nonetheless. Releasing to virtual cinemas from Film Movement ahead of the U.S. election, it's sure to inspire viewers to get involved, stay involved, and – here in the states, at least – vote.

Featuring amazing archival interviews, photos, and concert footage with bands including The Clash, Sham 69, Matumbi, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, and more, "White Riot," which gets its name from a widely misunderstood Clash song off their first album, is of particular interest to UK music fans. Celebrating the grassroots movement that started in an east London print shop and exploded into a legendary carnival so important that The Clash swallowed their egos and played second to last before event headliner Tom Robinson (who'd been with RAR from the very beginning), the debut feature from Shah promises great filmmaking from the documentarian to come.

Clocking in at a mere eighty minutes, "White Riot," is the film equivalent of a punk song. Frenetically edited, it hits its thematic chords hard to drive home the message, ensuring that, unlike Clapton's "I Shot the Sheriff," this is one refrain you'll be glad to get stuck in your head long after it’s done.

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: A Call to Spy (2019)

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Tasked with recruiting female agents for Winston Churchill's secret army – the SOE or Special Operations Executive – during World War II, Vera Atkins (Stana Katic) is told to seek out women who'd lived in France, know the language inside and out, and are passionate about stopping Hitler. The last piece of criteria? “Make sure they're pretty,” she's advised.

Overwhelmed in the fight against the Nazis, both on the overt military front and the covert one where at least half of all spies that SOE leader Maurice Buckmaster (Linus Roache) sends out as part of Britain's “new ministry of ungentlemanly warfare” are caught and killed, it seems that attractive and accomplished women are the country's last resort. Deemed far less conspicuous to sexist Nazis who wouldn't think twice about a “French” beauty walking down the cobblestone streets of Paris, Vera Atkins casts her net out wide to locate two ladies who are even more likely to go undetected than your typical Frenchwoman.

An educated, intelligent American with movie star good looks, Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas) had dreams of becoming a diplomat. But after a hunting accident left her with gangrene and a leg amputated below the knee, she finds herself denied for the position just as Vera tracks her down. Finding another fascinating recruit in the fastest wireless operator they have on their side – the pacifist, half-American, half-Indian princess Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte) – Vera tells the two that she would like them to try out for “a club unlike any other.”

Drawing upon actual files regarding the women's work as spies from SOE, OSS, and CIA records, actress, producer, and screenwriter Sarah Megan Thomas (who plays Virginia Hall) does an admirable job of bringing their heroism to life. Fortified by terrific performances across the board, unfortunately, once Noor (played by the film's scene-stealer Apte) lands in France, she isn't given nearly enough of an arc to pay off on just how much “Spy” endeared her to us in the first half of the movie. Worthy of an elegant John Le Carre style miniseries to track the true scope of their work as spies since the film feels rushed and the last act suffers in its attempt to resolve everything at once, “A Call to Spy” is eye-opening all the same. 

A solid – if workmanlike – effort, that perhaps feels more like a made-for-PBS movie than first-time solo filmmaker Lydia Dean Pilcher was hoping it would, “A Call to Spy” cleverly uses the greater Philadelphia area to double for a bulk of the UK and France set period film, as well as Budapest. Shot by Miles Goodall and “Midway” cinematographer Robby Baumgartner and nicely scored by Lillie Rebecca McDonough, it's a handsomely crafted but ultimately average production. 

Nonetheless, a rousing ode to resistance in the face of tyranny that plays especially well in this era of rising authoritarianism in the United States, even though the film doesn't make enough of an impression to stay with you very long after you've seen it, what does remain is the film's message. Thus, while Thomas and Pilcher struggle to cram everything they wanted to convey into its 123 running time, the movie works as an earnest tribute to these unsung, amazingly heroic, and yes, beautiful Baker Street Irregular female spies, that I for one, am now eager to learn much more about.

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Film Movement DVD Review: Un Traductor (2018)

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"Are you a doctor already?"

Having quit medical school after one semester to become a professor of Russian language and literature, the last place that Cuban academic Malin (Rodrigo Santoro) thought he’d end up was a hospital.

"I’m working on a doctorate," he tells his young son Javier (Jorge Carlos Perez Herrera) who's just as confused as he is when Malin's classes are suddenly canceled by the government. "I'm not a doctor."

Assigned to work as a translator for the Soviet patients and families of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster who've been sent to Cuba for treatment, to say that Malin is out of his depth is an understatement, especially after he learns that he's been assigned the children's ward.

Forced to explain to a mother that nothing more can be done for her daughter his first night on the job, Malin initially walks away from his assignment working alongside Gladys (beautifully played by Maricel Álvarez).

A nurse who's a fellow outsider simply because she's from Argentina, after Malin learns that Gladys has covered for him when his absence is reported to the ministry, he returns to the hospital and gradually begins to apply the same tactics he uses as a professor and a father to his work with the children.

Bringing in some of Javier's favorite books for story time to give them an escape from the gloomily lit green-gray hospital, Malin also provides the children with an outlet for their feelings by inviting them to-write or draw on the back of what we gather are the pages of his long in process thesis.

Refusing to either play up the tragedy of the heartbreaking situation or paint Malin as a Patch Adams style saint, which is quite a feat considering that the film was directed by the real life Malin's sons – Rodrigo and Sebastián Barriuso in their feature filmmaking debut – the multilayered award-winning Cuban-Canadian feature is filled with complexity.

Exacerbated by his schedule as he works all night and sleeps all day, Malin starts to see the world with the same life or death urgency of the hospital while going through an existential crisis of his own. Shutting out the world which, with the fall of the Berlin wall has brought hunger and a gas shortage to Cuba, Malin's pregnant wife Isona (Yoandra Suárez) is forced to juggle all of the duties of the household and try to take on the role of both parents to Javier.

While everything comes crashing down on the characters all at once in a predictable third act dramatic conflict, screenwriter Lindsay Gossling gets credit for not only expanding Un Traductor's point of view but also reminding the viewer that the myth that we can have it all isn't gender specific, as the formerly devoted husband and father starts neglecting his wife and son.

Belittling his wife's work as an art curator by contrasting it with the hospital – somehow forgetting his own background in the humanities as well – the filmmakers foreshadow some of the drama to come onscreen and off for Malin and Isona.

An involving chronicle of an ordinary man trying to make a difference on the most basic human level, although Un Traductor's ambition gets the best of the film at times by touching on socioeconomic and historical subplots that it never fully explores, it's still an impressive achievement, not to mention an all-around terrific feature filmmaking debut.

Though universal in its appeal overall, Rodrigo and Sebastián Barriuso's film is nonetheless hindered by the fact that its success is dependent upon how much you know about that era in history.

Relying on big historical events like the fall of the wall to deduce the year the film takes place, while the absence of specifics only strengthens the hospital arc by highlighting the way so many strangers work side-by-side to save a life, at the same time its lack of context in framing it for today's audiences does lessen its reach.

Instantly transporting the viewer to Cuba, M.I. Littin-Menz's stellar cinematography effectively illustrates the contrast of life for Malin in and outside the hospital at the end of the cold war.

Featuring a tender, moving performance by Santoro alongside a strong supporting cast (including a memorable Nikita Semenov as one of the young patients), Un Traductor is newly available on DVD and digital from Film Movement and will be premiering on Film Movement Plus in the future.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Rodin (2017)

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Illustrating a change in the way he illustrates before working with clay, towards the end of writer/director Jacques Doillon's Rodin, the famous titular sculptor Auguste Rodin (played by Vincent Lindon) notes that he used to suggest poses for his models to take during sessions but he no longer makes that mistake.

Letting the two young, beautiful women that stand before him just organically move, bend, and rotate together, Rodin notes that he can't look down even for a second at what his hands have been drawing or else the connection between what he feels and what he sees will be broken.

A fascinating description of Rodin's creative process in a film overflowing with them, the delicate connection between life and art (and more often than not love and art) is a recurring theme of Doillon's Rodin which – much like their subject – struggles to find a balance between the two right from the start.

Opening in 1880, the film begins as forty-year-old Auguste Rodin earns his first state commission to sculpt "The Gates of Hell" based on Dante's "Divine Comedy." Yet despite having spent a year sketching his plans for such a massive undertaking, he prefers to rely on intellect and instinct, debating every point in a form of brainy foreplay with his student Camille Claudel (Izïa Higelin), the fiercely talented sculptor in her own right who would go onto become his lover, assistant, and muse.

And much like the way he confesses later on that he learned how to sculpt by watching clouds form, as a lover of movement who needs to feel what he sees – even with the foundation of his drawings – Rodin confesses that figures come to the most when he works with clay.

Trying to capture this feeling in the medium of film, Doillon and Coco Before Chanel cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne – who shot most of the film in the historic locations in which the events take place – rely on framing to emphasize Rodin's sensuous approach, vacillating between frenzied movement as Rodin chases his lovers to suddenly statuesque composition throughout.

Whether lounging on a bed before changing to another in a series of poses in quick succession or dangling her foot off the edge of a boat rowed by Rodin, the scenes with Claudel feel like living reflections of art we imagine he would've been eager to capture on the page, canvas, or clay.

Likewise depicting the imbalance of power that exists between the two – perhaps best epitomized by a gorgeous off-balance sculpture of her own entitled "The Waltz" – while in his letters Rodin frequently tells Claudel that he can't work without her, early on in their relationship we see her as dominating her older, more famous lover easily.

Escaping to England for months at a time, when she returns she pressures Rodin to make good on his promises to legitimize their relationship by signing a contract to make her his only student, introduce her to everyone, and marry her someday, which would force him to leave his decades-long partner, Rose (Séverine Caneele), his veritable housekeeper and trusted friend.

However, things change as the film goes on and we see how much the scales have tipped as she suffers by contrast. A brilliant artist ahead of her time, not only will the world never accept a nude sculpture made by a woman (even if most of the nudes are of and modeled by women), Claudel also discovers that they won’t accept one they believe was made in the Rodin style, despite the fact that they'd worked side-by-side and inspired one another for years.

And as the disappointments in her personal and professional life mount, it leads to the offscreen mental breakdown we've seen depicted over the years in other biopics – most famously by Isabelle Adjani in Bruno Nuytten's 1988 contemporary classic Camille Claudel.

Tired of seeing women used up and thrown away for the sake of an older man's career and reputation, especially when (unlike Lindon's far more benevolent and in fact almost feminist Rodin) the one played by Gerard Depardieu had been an arrogant ass, after I saw Nuytten's Claudel over fifteen years ago, it made me so angry that I had an immediate creative response.

Crafting a modern day gender flipped spin on the characters, Claudel became my own muse as well as I wrote my very first award-winning play, which understandably made me curious to see how I'd react to another telling of her life story in 2017.

However by switching the point of view to a surprisingly even-tempered Rodin and moving a majority of Claudel's downfall offscreen, this time from a feminist perspective you feel an even greater sadness for Rose who, just like the sculptress she resents, gets sidelined by love for an artist.

And while the main cast is excellent (especially Lindon who's been doing some of his best work over the past ten years in a variety of films including Mademoiselle Chambon and Welcome), Rodin's emphasis is less on its people than the art itself.

For as the film continues we realize that, aside from some scenes of domestic fireworks here and there, there's so much we don't know about them personally, which is evidenced by sudden lines of dialogue referencing characters and subplots that are never explored beyond that one moment of screen time.

Similar in spirit to the vastly superior La Belle Noiseuse, Rodin fascinates most when focusing on the creative process itself, including an outstanding sequence where – not wanting to see a pencil – Victor Hugo refuses to pose in a traditional way, necessitating Rodin to run back and forth in between rooms in order to capture Hugo's angles and features on paper before he forgets them.

With its ode to creativity culminating in a gorgeous coda as he helps stage a moonlight photo of his beloved masterpiece Balzac (which was never appreciated in his lifetime), Rodin walks a fine line between inspiring us with its detail and taking things much too far such as when it unnaturally tries to work in Monet, Cezanne, Rilke, and company into the film.

Stagey from the get-go given the way its characters wax poetically throughout by speaking in platitudes and quotable quotes, far too often it seems as if Doillon's extensive research and love for the period gets in the way of an organic plotline as Rodin plays as though he's trying to squeeze a four hour film like Noiseuse into a two hour one.

Considering the disconnect between life and art, in the end, it's a shame that the film didn't take a cue from its subject more often and – in place of too much detail from voice-overs to famous French figure cameos – just let things take shape naturally Rodin-style and form like clouds in the sky, a pencil on the page, or hands in clay.

Ultimately worth seeing since Rodin's passionate celebration of creativity outweighs the problems with its narrative reality, with its emphasis on framing and intriguing composition, perhaps its greatest takeaway is that it'll leave you looking at the world through an artist's eyes, at least for a little while.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Loving Pablo (2018)

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Greeted by the sight of armed men waiting for her as soon as she lands at Pablo Escobar's estate for a private party in 1981, when Colombian journalist Virginia Vallejo (Penélope Cruz) first meets her host (played by Javier Bardem), not only does she not recognize him, she fears that he's going to kidnap her for ransom.

Explaining the guns away by saying that they're meant to protect guests from the exotic animals he has on his property, even though he doesn't abduct her outright, very soon it becomes clear that the married son of a poor farmer turned successful businessman has stolen Vallejo's heart.

Though at the top of the list of Colombia's nouveau riche, we discover that at the time of their first meeting, very few people – outside of the Medellín Cartel, that is – knew precisely how Escobar and his associates acquired so much wealth so quickly.

However, once he shows her one of his philanthropic endeavors to build housing for the poor and sees the children of the slums running through garbage just to get a glimpse of him, Vallejo decides that it's less important how he's made his money than how the man dubbed "The Colombian Robin Hood" uses it.

Building up his profile on her television network to acquire enough fame and power to get elected to political office a year later, by now the source of Escobar's outrageous revenue has become increasingly obvious as, instead of "Robin Hood," the businessman from Medellín has become internationally known as "The King of Cocaine." And as Vallejo soon discovers, if anyone gets in his way, he either buys them off or has them killed.

Based on Vallejo's bestselling 2007 memoir Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar which chronicled not only their romantic relationship but also corruption at the highest levels of the government of her country which, thanks to Escobar, became known as "the murder capital of the world," the film, written and directed by Spanish helmer Fernando León de Aranoa, takes some liberties for dramatic effect.

And dramatic, as it turns out, is the key word for Loving Pablo, which is so over-the-top in places that – in the aforementioned scene wherein Vallejo lands on Escobar's property – before I discovered that Vallejo was a reporter, I simply assumed Cruz was playing a soap opera star who'd wandered over from the set of the latest film by Pedro Almodóvar.

Speeding through more than a decade of complicated history, including international drug smuggling and corruption as well as the personal lives of Vallejo and Escobar, although Pablo uses subtitles to translate Spanish to English, I found myself wishing it also would've served up a timeline or a secondary documentary style voice-over to tell us where we are in the scheme of things.

A longtime passion project of Javier Bardem, the Academy Award winning star (who also produced the film made by his Mondays in the Son director) shared in the film's production notes that he turned down the role of Escobar in a number of productions over the past twenty years because "they didn't invoke any feeling beyond a stereotype."

Though it's Vallejo's story overall, in Aranoa's adaptation of her memoir, we do indeed see several different sides to the figure as Escobar goes from a greedy up-and-comer climbing up the power ladder to a paranoid madman who barely reacts while his men use a chainsaw to remove someone's limbs in a private prison under his control.

Yet while it's his real life wife, fellow Oscar winner Penelope Cruz, who steals the movie from start to finish, Bardem is predictably excellent in the role, in spite of his tendency in the first act to – like Marlon Brando in The Godfather – mumble so much as Escobar that we wish we had subtitles for him even when he's speaking English.

Though fortunately we either become accustomed to the rhythms of Bardem's Escobarian mumbles to understand enough of his dialogue (or he learns to enunciate more clearly as Colombia's Robin Hood becomes a country conquering cocaine king), unfortunately the film's rushed storytelling and lack of cohesion damage the overall character arc.

While most viewers with Netflix are more than familiar with Escobar via their acclaimed albeit gritty series Narcos, there's no denying Bardem's star power, especially in the final sequence leading up to Escobar's death, which is so compelling that you wish the rest of the movie had worked nearly as well.

Fans of the two stars will enjoy watching the couple act opposite one another onscreen as Cruz manages to distract us from the film's hundred mile an hour pacing – elevating every scene she's in to the level of a high class soap – and practically winking at the audience alongside the always terrific Peter Sarsgaard's DEA Agent as if to say, "I've got this."

Criminally under-utilized, Sarsgaard might as well be playing a man named DEA Agent for all we actually know about what surely must be a composite character.

Despite that, Aranoa manages to show us just what he's capable of as a director in a truly thrilling sequence early on in Pablo as a semi truck jackknifes across a Florida highway before a cartel plane lands right behind it and people in waiting vehicles hurriedly load its contents into vans and trucks nearby all to the tune of "Let it Snow."

While the dark humor is right out of Scorsese, the scene itself is reminiscent of Doug Liman's underrated American Made, and once again illustrates just how good Pablo could've been with the right script and tone.

Trying to tell a story that is far too massive and complex to be compressed into a 125 minute running time, although it's made with superior ingredients, including not only Cruz and Bardem but also a standout score by The Secret In Their Eyes composer Federico Jusid, in the end Loving's recipe never quite comes together as a whole.

And while Aranoa's latest work isn't one I'd recommend rushing out to the theater to see, given its irresistible combination of sudsy drama and campy excess, Loving Pablo is sure to reach more viewers in its run on cable – holding those staying in on a Saturday night hostage with entertainment so over-the-top that you'll feel as though you've just gotten off the plane with Vallejo.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Lizzie (2018)

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More than just the brutality of the crime – the double murder of her father and stepmother with an axe – or the socioeconomics and the setting and the fact that it shocked New England high society in 1892, the reason that the Lizzie Borden saga has captured our attention for over a century is the exact same reason that she was acquitted of the crime.

Namely, because – whether back then to an all-male jury or even today given the gender of most killers we see on the news – it’s damn near impossible to compute how a girl could evolve from "sugar and spice and everything nice" to "Lizzie Borden took an axe." Yes, even nursery rhymes couldn't resist an homage to Borden's "forty whacks."

A longtime passion project of producer and star Chloë Sevigny, this daring feminist retelling of one of America’s most notorious murder mysteries sets out to answer those questions and also capture, as producer Liz Destro reveals, "the loneliness of being an educated and ambitious woman at the time."

Working in a number of theories from a wealth of Borden biographies Sevigny gave her screenwriter friend Bryce Kass as well as details gleaned in a visit to Borden's home and community of Fall River, Massachusetts to lure him aboard the project, the subsequent film from The Boy helmer Craig William Macneill manages to do the same.

With cinematographer Noah Greenberg's "slow, creeping zooms that create a sense of claustrophobia" captured on vintage lenses that give even the darkest of subject matter an intentionally softer, John Singer Sargent-esque painterly feel, we feel as though we've stepped back in time and into Lizzie's shoes.

Purposely framing characters off to the side and taking the corners tighter voyeuristically, in the words of Greenberg, "as the camera follows Lizzie throughout the house," we get the impression that the walls are closing in on Borden to the point that even when the most likely undiagnosed epileptic woman isn't having an attack, it feels like she could at any moment.

Reminiscent of the way that as Chloë Sevigny notes "women of the time...were virtual prisoners in their homes," under what she reinforces and the film implies through the characters of Lizzie's domineering father and uncle as "patriarchal rule," for Lizzie Borden, "the only way to get out of that house was marriage or death."

Deemed an old maid at age thirty-two (similar to her older sister Emma, played by Kim Dickens), when the headstrong Lizzie manages to twist her strict father's arm long enough, an occasional evening out at the local theater has become her one reprieve, even though it's frowned upon in society to go out unaccompanied.

A lonely outcast who spends the rest of her time with her birds, reading, or reading to her birds, Lizzie gets a friend where she least expects it with the arrival of Bridget Sullivan, a young housemaid played by Kristen Stewart.

Cutting right through their differences in class or status, the women only grow closer as they feel the metaphorical noose tighten around their necks in a house run with fear and abuse by Andrew Borden (Jamey Sheridan).

And while both actresses are outstanding, without the benefit of much dialogue or a character nearly as well-documented as Sevigny's nonetheless richly complex Lizzie, in the hands of another, the subservient Bridget could've easily been overpowered by Sevigny.

Yet, creating a fully realized individual, Stewart – incidentally the first person they imagined in the role – turns in one of her strongest recent performances as the housemaid whose relationship with Lizzie surprises them both when it turns romantic.

From anonymous threatening notes to a shady uncle, although red herrings abound as we lead up to the double murder and Macneill and Kass throw the audience a few curve balls in various subplots (including some that either feel contrived or don't go anywhere), Lizzie isn't afraid to take an absolute stance on the crime itself.

Leaving ambiguity in the past, in a bravado sequence that not only commands the viewer's attention but is also worthy of greater feminist analysis, the film – which opened with the discovery of the crime before backtracking six months – dares to go back in time once again after Lizzie's arrest, wherein we see the way the murders were carried out within this particular version of the tale.

A jaw-dropping finale, unfortunately, despite the high caliber performances and gorgeous cinematography, Lizzie stumbles greatly in its pacing. Succeeding a little too well in establishing Borden's home as an intellect draining prison, needless to say that for a movie about a legendary suspected axe murderer, it's a bad sign when the only one hundred and five minute film nearly put this viewer to sleep twice.

In a missed opportunity to augment its thesis even more, aside from a few cursory scenes, Lizzie largely overlooks the points-of-view of the other women in the house from Lizzie's stepmother Abby (played by Fiona Shaw) to her sister Emma which could've helped inject the already feminist work with even greater understanding of what it was like for women in the era, beyond Lizzie and Bridget.

All the same, anchored by its cast and first rate technical specs (including top notch production design which believably swapped out Massachusetts for its Savannah, Georgia location shoot), this ambitiously made, surprisingly empathetic passion project takes a literal and figurative axe to the Victorian period. I only wish it would've either done the same to the running time or spent a little more time trying to give Lizzie more life.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Netflix Movie Review: The Angel (2018)

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"When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself." - Jacques Yves Cousteau

For spies, access (to people as well as information) is everything. And as the son-in-law of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser who would – following Nasser's heart attack – quickly become the special adviser and Secretary General for Nasser's former Vice President and successor, Anwar Sadat, Ashraf Marwan's access to everything was extraordinary.

Inspired by (as the production notes describe) the "failed chicken farmer" Juan Pujol Garcia who became a British and German double agent to undermine the Nazis in World War II, Marwan initially reaches out to the Israeli intelligence organization, the Mossad when he's a husband, father, and university student in England.

Although he’s blown off at the first, eight months following Nasser's passing – just when he's begun to form a close alliance with Sadat – Marwan is startled when the Mossad follows up, tracking him down from England to Egypt.

Hoping to prevent another war, after Sadat and his advisers begin making plans to take back the land that Israel had claimed when they defeated "the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan" in 1967’s Six Day War, Marwan begins selling secrets to his Israeli handler "Alex" aka Danny.

Fearing for his family's safety as well as his own, although he enlists the help of some friends, including beautiful British actress Diana Ellis to snap a photo or provide cover as a faux mistress, as Sadat's plans and war games escalate, so does the danger for the spy code named "The Angel."

Filled with as much plot and background data as one of Marwan's reports (including an opening voice-over that quickly sums up an entire war), while this approach does unfortunately hold us at an arm's length since we're never able to stop long enough to get a true sense of the people behind the pages handed from one man to the next, it's fascinating stuff regardless.

Anchored by the compelling Dutch actor Marwan Kenzari, who costarred with his Mossad handler played by Toby Kebbell in 2016's Ben Hur (which undoubtedly helped their chemistry), Kenzari's affecting, multilayered, largely internal portrayal helps add a deeper sense of struggle to the goings on.

Giving us an in depth look at the responsibilities faced by a man who has begun to excel at deception, even for the noblest of reasons, The Angel works as well as it does, in large part because we believe Kenzari – regardless of which role he's playing when and to whom – as a husband, spy, or adviser.

Alluding to a gambling habit, money problems, and trust issues with his wife, Marwan's love of western culture as a student in England seems clear early on. However the film's juxtaposition of his resentment at the way he's treated by Nasser with his subsequent call to Mossad leaves the viewer with more questions about Marwan as well as his initial impulse to pick up the phone.

Although he matures and changes before our eyes, we find ourselves wanting to know more about his thought processes beyond some of the film's key expository lines, penned by Spy Game and Children of Men screenwriter David Arata for The Iceman director Ariel Vromen.

Hoping to, as he revealed in the production notes, "try to make it as realistic and visceral as possible" in the way the we see "the journey of one man, where he starts, [and] where he's planning to go," Vromen drew upon Ben Affleck's Argo for inspiration, as well as Steven Spielberg's underrated Munich.

While prior to the film I was more familiar with the end of Marwan's story (which is still in need of investigation and has only become timelier and more suspicious over the last ten years), The Angel offers a fast-paced, exciting, well made depiction of everything he'd done decades earlier to lead to roughly forty years of peace.

And needless to say, with results like those, even if we occasionally find ourselves wanting to know more about not only our lead but also the people and places glossed over throughout, in the end – and like most spies – we're grateful to The Angel for the information as well as the access.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Amen. (2002)

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Alternate Titles: Der Stellvertreter; Amen

A well-intentioned, emotionally charged yet historically questionable passion project from Oscar winning filmmaker Costa-Gavras that’s been roughly forty years in the making, Amen. takes you on a behind-the-scenes journey of what should’ve been naturally engrossing terrain.

Hoping to investigate the question of who knew what, when and why more wasn’t done to stop the “Final Solution” that led to the mass execution of Jews during the Holocaust, Amen. initially resonates with viewers on a humanistic level.

Unfortunately, as the film continues the admirable motives of the piece get bungled by leisurely pacing, static editing and an overreliance on manipulatively manufactured melodrama to try and make points when understated simplicity would’ve been far more effective in driving the moral subtext home.

Based on Rolf Hochhuth’s divisive 1963 play The Deputy, a Christian Tragedy which was criticized by those from all nationalities and religious walks of life for the artistic liberties that were taken with real figures and events surrounding the horrific genocide that occurred during the second world war, Amen. confronts the controversies inherent in Hocchuth’s text head-on.

Adapted by Costa-Gavras as well as Jean-Claude Grumberg, the audacious script raises valid (if contrived) questions about the culpability of other leaders by daring to make the government officials of other countries and various organizations – most notably the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII in particular – accessories to the crimes that occurred at the Nazi Death Camps.

Centered on a historical figure, the film revolves around the moral crisis faced by a hardworking German chemist named Kurt Gerstein (played by Ulrich Tukur) after he discovers that the vaccine that he’d created to provide a safe haven from typhus is instead being used in the form of a gas to murder men, women and children by the thousand.

Hoping to alert the Vatican in order to put a stop to the horrific actions of the SS officers he has no choice but to work alongside for fear they’d slaughter his wife and children, Gerstein’s pleas to reach the pope fall on deaf ears.

Finding an ally in a young Jesuit priest (played by Matthiew Kassovitz) who’s as passionate to stop the insanity as he is despite having no means or influence, the two men realize they cannot stand by while such atrocities are occurring nearby.

Needless to say, it’s easy to understand why the work riled up viewers for its shocking portrayal of the Catholic Church (and foreign governments) especially when you realize that portions of the plot in addition to the Jesuit priest character had been invented entirely out of thin air.

However after researching Gerstein out of curiosity in order to separate fact from fiction, I couldn’t understand why someone as drawn to political filmmaking as Costa-Gavras was had chosen to use the play as the basis of his film when the details available that chronicle Gerstein's real life are far more riveting on their own.

As debated as the facts are surrounding the man in question via Gerstein’s own handwritten accounts, rather than relying on fiction to formulate a clumsily crafted and overly contrived final payoff in the film’s meandering final act, Costa-Gavras could’ve instead crafted an intriguing, investigate thesis worthy of Oliver Stone.

The last film from the director to utilize an English language track to date, the rather heavily accented dialogue would’ve benefited from the inclusion of a subtitle option on this otherwise technically stellar high-definition Blu-ray that shows off the meticulous frame composition, production design and cinematographic quality for which a Costa-Gavras picture is known.

Likewise it’s the technical specs of Amen. as well as the moving performances by our two leads that serve as the saving graces of this otherwise uneven production.

Furthermore, just like subtitles would’ve heightened our understanding, another read-through of the onscreen text might’ve augmented the film overall.

In a mind-boggling juxtaposition of pictures and words, Amen. illustrates one fate for our character and then uses a decidedly contradictory word choice moments later that makes us wonder if we either missed something, misunderstood some vital detail, or if the screen cards had been given an unsupervised translation after being written in a different language altogether.

While any foreign film buff understands that typos are quite common, because Amen. had been so structurally all over-the-place (not even clarifying the years when time flies by), ultimately we’re left with one awkward final impression of a film that attempted to reveal the truth about the final solution without understanding the importance of the final act in doing just that.

Disappointingly underwhelming despite its original potential as a work so many decades in the making, Amen. will be of particular interest to devotees of Costa-Gavras, even if it’s a minor entry in an otherwise staggering career of major achievements (aside from the lukewarm reception of another WWII inspired effort via Music Box).

The rest of us will do better to opt for one of several finely crafted, emotionally riveting and historically sound films that brought the horrors of the Holocaust to life for the current generation – whether by way of The Pianist or Schindler’s List.   

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.