“The Mad Woman’s Ball,” a new Gothic, French language thriller now streaming on Amazon Prime, is a human look at the dehumanizing oppression foisted upon patients at Paris’s notorious 19th century Pitié-Salpêtrière psychiatric hospital.
Young socialite Eugénie Cléry’s (Lou de Laâge) father is not happy. Her rebellious behaviour, like
sneaking off to read poetry and smoke at cafes, offends his deeply conformist world view. Even worse is her newfound belief in spiritualism. Eugénie believes she can communicate with the dead. Those encounters leave her in a state of anxiety and cher vieux papa Cléry is having none of it. Embarrassed, he forcefully commits her to Pitié-Salpêtrière, a women’s hospital specializing in experimental treatments devised by Professor Jean-Martin Charcot (Grégoire Bonnet).
Diagnosed as “hysterical,” she finds solace in the company of Geneviève (Laurent), a sympathetic nurse who believes Eugénie doesn’t belong at the facility. Together they plan the young woman’s escape on the night of the hospital’s degrading “Bal des Folles,” (Mad Woman’s Ball) where Paris elite mix with the clinic’s patients.
An adaptation from the 2019 book by Victoria Mas, “The Mad Woman’s Ball” is a melodramatic story of survival set against the backdrop of the barbaric beginnings of psychiatric medicine.
Director Laurent paints an evocative picture of life inside the 19th century hospital. Laughs and screams fill the air as Laurent’s camera details the gothic details of the facility. On the inside intimidation and oppression loom heavy, but the storytelling is compassionate. Eugénie and Geneviève are soldiers in the fight against fight against misogyny, personified by men like the arrogant Professor Charcot and Eugénie’s father, who oppress them and ultimately, misunderstand them.
It’s powerful storytelling, buoyed by wonderful performances, marred only by the occasionally overwrought contrivance. “The Mad Woman’s Ball” is best in its quiet moments between Eugénie and Geneviève when the power of their solidarity is heightened.
The family drama “Mia and the White Lion” breathes the same air as “Born Free,” “The Black Stallion” and even “Bedtime for Bonzo.” While it feels like many other humans-and-their-beloved-animal films is its political stance. Woven into the story is strong criticism of South African laws that allow lions to be sold and hunted in enclosed areas. “It’s the way South Africa works,” says Mia’s father John (Langley Kirkwood). “It’s the way it has always worked.”
When we first meet Mia Owen (Daniah De Villiers) she is a young girl upset about leaving her life and friends in London behind when her family moves to South Africa. Alone, separated from all she knows, Mia makes an unusual friend, Charlie, a white lion cub born on her father’s farm. Three years in Mia’s parents worry about her safety. Charlie has grown and while the bond between he and his human is strong, for her own safety Mia’s parents forbid her to see her best friend. When it appears Mia’s father will sell Charlie to hunters to protect his daughter the plucky teen steps up to save her leonine buddy.
Like the Oscar winning “Boyhood,” director Gilles de Maistre’s “Mia and the White Lion” was shot over the course of several years. That allowed De Villiers to form a relationship with Charlie in real life as well as convincingly grow up on screen. The process makes for some startling, realistic moments between Charlie and his lion whispering friend. Unfortunately, their intimacy is the only really surprising thing about the movie. Good messaging about animal welfare aside, “Mia and the White Lion” relies a little too heavily on predictable, family film tropes and cardboard characters to maintain interest.
Three years ago “Now You See Me” played like “Ocean’s Eleven” reimagined by Penn and Teller. A magical heist movie, it introduced a prestidigitation collective known as The Four Horsemen—Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher (replaced by Lizzy Caplan in this sequel), Woody Harrelson and Dave Franco—who outsmarted the FBI and Interpol with some highly focused hocus pocus. The tricksters stole from the rich to give to the poor—the poor people who paid premium prices to see their shows.
When asked how any of this could have happened Interpol agent Alma Vargas (Mélanie Laurent) says, “Some things are best left unexplained.”
Also left unexplained is how a star-studded but modest hit like “Now You See Me” spawned a sequel three years after it briefly played in theatres.
The new film, “Now You See Me 2,” begins one year after the last one ended with the Four Horsemen staging a comeback. This time, however, the trick backfires and the magicians are forced to escape, fleeing from one side of the world to the other via a giant chute.
New York to China in under a minute. “This makes no sense,” says J. Daniel Atlas (Eisenberg) upon arrival in China. Damn right. It’s that kind of movie. Buy into that and the rest of the movie’s twists and turns will seem… if not quite believable than a little less preposterous. The world’s greatest magicians have just become the object of someone else’s magic trick.
In Macau, the Vegas of China, the mysterious tech genius Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe)—imagine Harry Potter with a James Bond villain vibe—forces them to use their skills to pull off a seemingly impossible heist, the theft of “the stick,” a device able to hack any computer on earth. Using misdirection, hypnotism, showmanship and sleight-of-hand—coupled with some good old-fashioned CGI movie magic—the Horsemen must pull off their greatest trick—exposing Mabry.
“Now You See Me 2” has a serious case of the sillies but luckily it embraces its silliness. Revels in it, even. For instance Caplan’s character Lula is best known for a previously unheard of magic trick, pulling a hat out of a rabbit. Make sense? Nope, but in “Now You See Me 2’s” world it doesn’t have to.
It all makes sense in a Harry Houdini misdirected kind of way, but don’t worry if the labyrinthine plot loses you here and there. Every few minutes one of the characters explains what’s just happened, or what is about to happen. Even though magicians aren’t supposed to tell their secrets the Horsemen can’t seem to stop giving away the movie’s riddles. There’s way too much exposition but by and large the mix of action, intrigue and magic is a fun diversion.
“Enemy,” an art house thriller from director Denis Villeneuve and actor Jake Gyllenhaal, is an intriguing head scratcher that plays more like an existential puzzle than a traditional narrative.
When we first meet him the “Brokeback Mountain” star plays a history professor named Adam Bell. When not lecturing in class, he leads a normal, if somewhat repetitive life with his girlfriend Mary (Mélanie Laurent). One night while watching a rented movie he is astonished to see someone who looks exactly like him on screen.
After some research he discovers the actor’s name is Anthony St. Claire (Gyllenhaal) and that he lives in Toronto’s west end. Spooky similarities arise. Both have beautiful blonde significant others—Sarah Gadon plays Helen, Anthony’s six-months pregnant wife—but there’s more. Both even have a scar on their chests.
Adam and his doppelganger have completely opposite personalities, but their lives become intertwined when Anthony becomes interested in Mary and duo struggles to discover what connection they have.
“Enemy” is the kind of movie that, if it grabs you, you’ll want to see it twice to try and make sense of some of the more narratively opaque sections. If the slow build of existential dread doesn’t grab you, however, one viewing will be more than enough.
But, as Hunter S. Thompson used to say, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” In other words “Enemy” is a challenge, a film that revels in its confounding story. Like Polanski on downers, it’s willfully difficult, taking the audience down a rabbit hole deep into the psyche of these unrelated twins. It’s a long strange journey with many rewards for the attentive viewer.
One of those rewards is Gyllenhaal’s interesting and varied work. He plays two parts of one person’s personality, but creates fully formed individual characters that, even though they are identical looking, are much different in the way they tick.
“Enemy” is stylish and sinister (with a big tasty dollop of mystery on the side) that will keep audiences guessing long after they’ve left the theatre.
The last words of “Inglourious Basterds”, the new film from director Quentin Tarantino, are “I think this just might be my masterpiece.” The words aren’t spoken by Tarantino (I’m not going to give away anything and tell you who says them), but they did flow from his pen and it isn’t hard to imagine him claiming them as a comment on his own work. After all he did spend more than a decade working on the script, so long, in fact that “The Irish Times” wrote that the film “has been predicted more often than the second coming of the Lord.” It’s meant to be the director’s magnum opus; a sprawling film that has been gestating inside him for years. I’d like to be able to report that it is his masterpiece, but it’s not, that’s the impossible to better “Pulp Fiction”, but it is as combustible a movie as will be released this year.
Borrowing the title from a little seen 1978 Enzo Castellari film, (the second word is spelled differently, inserting an “e” where the “a” usually sits), Tarantino has created a violent WWII fantasy that rewrites history.
The Basterds are a group of Jewish-American Allied soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). Think of them as the Dirty Half Dozen. Their mission is to hunt down, kill and scalp at least one hundred Nazis. The rare Nazi who escapes a nasty death at their hands—left alive to tell others of the Basterd’s ruthless tactics—is marked for life by a swastika carved deep into his forehead. Running parallel is a story thread about movie theatre proprietor Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a young Jewish woman, aching for revenge against SS colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) A.K.A. the Jew Hunter. In Tarantino’s bloodthirsty world it’s inevitable that Raine’s band of brothers, Shosanna and Col. Landa will cross paths.
The films of Quentin Tarantino deeply polarize people. For every person who quivers at the thought of a new film from the “Reservoir Dogs” director there is another who thinks his movies are too long, too self indulgent and too derivative. Despite those criticisms, fair or not, there is almost no argument that of all the brand name directors working today, Tarantino is the most audacious. His films are a singular vision and “Inglorious Basterds” is no exception.
It opens with an almost unbelievably tense scene, spanning the first twenty five minutes of the movie. It is a tour de force of razor’s edge filmmaking, sadistic and twisted, all without a drop of blood or a raised voice on display. It’s pure cinema, and as a set piece is the best filmmaking I’ve seen this year.
The opening sets a high standard and Tarantino does his best to live up to it, taking his time unfurling the story in chapter form. Unlike bombastic directors like Michael Bay, Tarantino understands the ebb and flow of the storyline. His movies don’t clobber you over the head with every frame, instead he calibrates the story to include deliberately paced scenes which create a sense of anticipation for the next crescendo of violence or plot.
The movie is, as I said, deliberately paced, but never feels slow. Tarantino weaves together the disparate storylines, and styles—everything from spaghetti westerns to 70’s exploitation and über violence—into one seamless package.
The bow on top of the package has to be the performance of the Austrian-born Christoph Waltz. As SS colonel Hans Landa he is pure evil; a slimy villain for the ages.
“Inglourious Basterds” won’t be for everyone, it’s too extreme for casual viewers, but the film lover in me is tickled that the heroine is a cinema owner who literally uses film to bring down the Third Reich. Love him or not, you can never accuse Tarantino of being boring.
There’s a reason why “Beginners,” a melancholy new family drama starring Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer and Mélanie Laurent feels so authentic. Director Mike Mills (the “Thumbsucker” filmmaker, not the R.E.M. bassist) based elements of the story on his real life. The result is an intimate portrait of a man shaped by the influence of his parents.
In this nonlinear story we follow the broken timeline of Oliver’s (McGregor) broken life. He’s having a strange year. First his mother dies of cancer, then, just as he is coming to grips with her passing, his 75-year-old father Hal (Plummer) comes out of the closet, announcing that he’s always been gay and now that his wife is gone he’d like to explore that long buried aspect of his life. Hal’s news is followed by turns both good and bad. First he meets a wonderful man, but just as their relationship is blossoming he is diagnosed with stage four cancer. The cumulative effect of all these events sends Oliver deep inside his own head to a sad and bad place until he meets Anna (Laurent), a beautiful actress with father issues of her own.
Told in flashbacks embellished with many stylistic flourishes, the movie never allows Mill’s montages and other frills to overwhelm the story. Mills, who along with his personal connection to the story, brings a keen sense of how real people conduct themselves in times of stress, isn’t afraid to allow his characters to be introspective. A good portion of the story is internal, conveyed by McGregor’s dour expressions, Plummer’s dignity and Laurent’s vulnerability.
Even the meet cute of the McGregor and Laurent characters—her voice is shot, laryngitis, and she has to communicate with a notepad—which would normally be too quirky by half for me, works because this isn’t a fluffy rom com but a textured look at why people behave the way they do.
Mills has also drawn expert performances from his cast. Plummer looks ripe to earn another Oscar nomination for his touching take on a man who finds happiness only to have it taken away too soon and McGregor and Laurent make a compelling couple.
Topping off the tender tale is the cutest on-screen dog since Benji who provides unique insight into Oliver’s emotional maturation.
