Coup de Chance (2024)

Direction: Woody Allen
Country: USA

The prolific New Yorker Woody Allen returned to Paris for his 50th film, Coup de Chance, an anemic romance that morphs into an uninvolving detective comedy. With a fully French cast led  by Lou de Laâge and Melvil Poupaud as Fanny and Jean Fournier, respectively, the film follows them as a married couple whose relationship is suddenly thrown into turmoil when Fanny encounters Alain Aubert (Niels Schneider), a former high school friend and eternal admirer.

While the themes are recurrent in Allen’s filmography, the execution leaves much to be desired as the elements don’t quite mesh. Delivered without magic or brilliance, this is an ordinary masquerade superficially plotted, sloppily directed, unevenly acted, and whose attempting humor falls flat. While the conventional dialogue and mannered staging are quintessentially Allen-esque, they fail to elevate the film beyond its artificial Parisian backdrop, depicted with excessive sharpness and color. 

Coup de Chance is Woody Allen at his weakest, presenting every emotion and action as false, idiotic or frivolous. The film's saving grace lies in its incredibly groovy jazz soundtrack, featuring trumpeter Nat Adderley performing two of his own pieces: “Fortune’s Child” and “In the Bag”, along with a wonderful rendition of Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island”.

The Iron Claw (2024)

Direction: Sean Durkin
Country: USA

Having savored Sean Durkin’s previous directorial works - Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) and The Nest (2020) - I eagerly anticipated The Iron Claw, his third feature based on a real story about a family of wrestlers. However, it proved to be a significant disappointment. Despite the weighty events it attempts to chronicle, the film's tone feels surprisingly light, resulting in a dismal execution that casts a shadow over its potential.

This American tragedy, transformed into a ludicrous pastiche, follows the inseparable Von Erich brothers, driven to wrestling stardom by their tyrannical and negligent father. While they left their mark on professional wrestling in the early '80s, the film questions the price paid for success. 

The Iron Claw compares to wrestling in the way that it’s all pose and artifice but no brains or integrity. In addition to overlong, the film lacks emotion at every turn, and the acting never impressed - Jeremy Allen White being the exception. 

Making matters worse, Durkin’s loss of direction in the sentimental last part of the film sinks the narrative deeper. Regretfully, The Iron Claw emerges as a slippery and inaccurate sports drama, failing to make a lasting impact. 

The Son (2023)

Direction: Florian Zeller
Country: USA

In his second feature, French director Florian Zeller doesn’t repeat the masterstroke of his debut. If The Father (2020) - starred by Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman - was a powerful drama that left me disarmed with astonishment, then The Son - with Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and Zen McGrath in center roles - made me eye-rolling several times. Zeller based himself again on his own stage play, having raised the bar too much to be reached. He failed roundly in this clumsy, gloomy melodrama that ends up irritatingly supplicating and artificially tearful.

The story, set in Manhattan, New York, is devoted to the topic of adolescent depression and the difficulties of parents understanding it. At 17, Nicholas (McGrath) seems to be aimless, no longer being that luminous child who always smiled. He harms himself, living in constant anguish and anger. This started to happen after his successful father, Peter (Jackman), had left home. Unable to communicate his feelings with his mother (Dern), Nicholas asks to live with his father and his new wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), with whom he recently had a son. 

The Son sticks to an appalling linearity, poor staging and a heavy-handed sentimentality that provokes more indifference than pity. The film is suffocating, especially when Nicholas is pleading (McGrath’s lines are terrible and we have trouble sympathizing with him), but there’s also this dancing scene at the sound of Tom Jones that feels awkward, and corny flashbacks that help to anesthetize every feeling. Closer to a TV movie with a simplistic shooting structure than of a real drama, The Son is not recommended.

Amsterdam (2022)

Direction: David O. Russell
Country: USA 

Seven years after the dispensable Joy, writer-director-producer David O. Russell releases Amsterdam, assembling an impressive ensemble cast that nothing could do to make his period comedy thriller less underwhelming. The story is based on the Business Plot, a 1933 political conspiracy that intended to install a dictator in the place of the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The topic still applies to our days since constant threats to democracy hover over our heads for some time, but as a film, Amsterdam is a sketchy exercise where every move turns out mediocre, if not downright silly. It never feels authentic.

Working with the director for the third time (following the more successful American Hustle and The Fighter), Christan Bale is Burt Berendsen, a doctor scarred by the war who's not afraid to dive into experimental medicine. He and his former war buddy turned lawyer, Harold Woodman (John David Washington), will have to clear their name when accused of a crime they didn’t commit. For that matter, they have the help of nurse Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie) and a couple of spies (Mike Myers, Michael Shannon). 

Too busy crushing his excellent actors under the period mise-en-scène, Russell doesn’t seem to know how to make this story interesting, setting a trap for himself. Amsterdam completely collapses both as comedy and thriller, bogged down in apathy and prosaic temperance. The amazing actors, completely drowned in automatism and formal discipline, are unable to show off feelings. Besides protracted, the film remains too derivative, superficial, and humorless to produce an acceptable outcome.

Bullet Train (2022)

Direction: David Leitch
Country: USA 

Based on the novel Maria Beetle by Japanese writer Kôtarô Isaka, Bullet Train marks the eighth collaboration between director David Leitch and actor Brad Pitt, who first worked together in Fight Club (1999). The story follows five assassins on mission on a high-speed train from Tokyo to Kyoto. Their goals, despite varied, are interrelated.

Imbued with cartoonish spirit, this indigestible fast-food-type of action-comedy tries to strike the eye with acrobatic moves but quickly sinks deep into labyrinthine involvements and the mistaken idea that ‘the more the stupidity, the more you laugh’. Leitch nods to Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, without equaling them, in an inconsistently unfunny exercise that shows emptiness of mind. The stunts, inspired by the slapstick comedy of Jackie Chan, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, are mostly dull, and the unattractive scenario is filled with thin characters, including a risible appearance by Sandra Bullock in the final minutes. 

Ineffectively blending different cultures to make a concoction of Japanese yakuza and manga styles, Mexican fury à-la Robert Rodriguez, an American stroke of nonsensical serendipity, and British Trainspotting-like tantrum, the film fails to drum up any kind of interest. I ended up asking myself what was more vexing in this film: the allusions to popular culture, the crass hypocrisy of an overworked plot, or the phony action sequences.

Scream (2022)

Direction: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Country: USA

The fifth installment in the Scream franchise is co-directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the pair who made an impression three years ago with Ready or Not. Sadly, they were unable to put a fresh spin in a sequel, which, being hackneyed and immature, feels unnecessary within the slasher saga created by Kevin Williamson and the late Wes Craven, to whom the film is dedicated. This is the first of the series without the latter at the helm. 

The crazed Ghostface returns to Woodsboro and targets a few more youngsters directly related to the original murders that occurred twenty five years before. Among them is Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera), who hides a family secret that could be at the source of the recent attacks. She soon begs for the help of the town’s former Deputy Sheriff, Dewey Riley (David Arquette), and unexpectedly meets with two other female survivors, the brave Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and the news reporter, Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox). Sad to say that all three actors reprising their roles here perform on autopilot.

Imbued with fruitless stabs of suspense and a sense of constant tribulation that is more repetitive than challenging, this film employs overused conventions glued together by a catastrophic, invertebrate plot that shows a blatant lack of attention to detail. Each scene prompts laughs of annoyance and déjà vu instead of proper scares. With boredom, let’s just scream for no more! 

Being the Ricardos (2021)

Direction: Aaron Sorkin
Country: USA

Being the Ricardos is a tedious, flawed biopic centered on the actress Lucille Ball and her musician husband Desi Arnaz - played by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, respectively - two esteemed figures in the 1950s, thanks to I Love Lucy, a prime time television sitcom that aired on CBS for seven years. 

To be more precise, the narrative leads off in 1952, a particular difficult time for these entertainers as she is accused of being a communist while his infidelities are exposed in a scandalous tabloid article. Shamefully soulless and coarsely staged for most of the time, the film is so fixated on cynicism and enamored by its machinations that, with every line delivered, you just want to cover your ears. The pair of actors at the fore simply don’t suit their roles, and the writer-director Aaron Sorkin (Molly’s Game, 2017; The Trial of the Chicago 7, 2020), who has a penchant for the biographical, gets everything underbaked, emotionally insipid and extremely dragging.

Sadly, every single attempt to create cheekiness and irreverence came off flat and out of place. Hence, if you are into movies that depict true stories and relationships with wit and grit, then you might want to skip Being the Ricardos.

Titane (2021)

Direction: Julia Ducournau
Country: France

Titane is a shocker of a film, yet more dejected than astute. This French psychological body horror film seems self-satisfied about selling a paroxysm of violence and artsy gore and mixing it with a sense of emotional degradation. 

Julia Ducournau's sophomore feature - following the controversial Raw (2016) -  attempts an ambitious combination between the sci-fi horror of David Cronenberg, the neo-noir underworld of Abel Ferrara, the dark inner burdens of Nicolas Winding Refn and the maddening dysfunctional families of Takashi Miike. Not only the film fails to reach their qualities but also becomes ridiculous whenever it tries to alleviate the pressure accumulated by the two protagonists. They are sick, repulsive characters who bond at their own convenience. 

Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) is a nightclub dancer turned psycho killer who was implanted with titanium in her head as a result of a car accident, and Vincent (Vincent Lindon) is a delusional firefighter commander on steroids. As the police tightens the circle to catch Alexia, she finds the perfect hideaway by disguising herself as a man and assuming the identity of Vincent’s missing son. They play this stupid game for a while, but worse than that, she’s about to give birth to something grotesque, the fruit of a ludicrous sex episode with… a car?! 

Whether in agony or incomprehension, I resisted until the end, just to conclude that this indigestible film - assembled with an array of sordid, pretentious and imbecilic ideas meant solely to disturb.

Cry Macho (2021)

Direction: Clint Eastwood
Country: USA 

I have much respect for Clint Eastwood and his work both as an actor and a director, but Cry Macho lacks all the possible and necessary nerve to become acceptable, mostly due to the abominable script by Nick Schenk, the screenwriter of Gran Torino (2008) and The Mule (2018), who adapted N. Richard Nash’s 1975 novel of the same name. The comparisons between the three cited movies are flagrant.

It’s a contemporary western drama film composed of farcical situations, one after another, that made me disconnect from the story at a very early stage. The nonagenarian Eastwood stars as Mike Milo, a former Texan rodeo star turned grieving alcoholic turned recovered horse breeder who accepts to help his ex-employer, the rancher Howard Polk (country musician Dwight Yoakam), reunite with his delinquent 13-year-old son, Rafo (Eduardo Minett). According to his dad, the latter is being abused under the supervision of his irresponsible mother (Fernanda Urrejola). 

Mike drives to Mexico City and manages to connect with the kid. Both embark on a colorless road trip back to the US, over the course of which I can’t point out one single scene that have worked in its plenitude. Each scenario feels totally fabricated, often overemotional and with tons of schmaltzy dialogue. Not to talk about the unflattering romance.

Eastwood should know his limits by now, and I can only encourage you to stay away from this lamentable misfire cooked with stale ingredients and weak performances in general.

In the Earth (2021)

Direction: Ben Wheatley
Country: UK

Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth uses cheap tricks for mood, never achieving acceptable levels of satisfaction. The narrative develops with chunky episodes and mechanical dialogues, following a cooked-to-formula script that tries to play edgy with contemporary anxieties and an impure-nature setting.

The story pairs up Martin Lowery (Joel Fry), a scientist impassionately committed to making crops more efficient, and Alma (Ellora Torchia), an affable park ranger, as they venture into the woods when a deadly virus keeps ravaging the world. In the course of this journey they bump into a deceiving stranger, Zack (Reece Shearsmith), as well as Martin’s fellow colleague, Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires).

There’s not enough skill in the plotting and execution of a criminally boring fiction that comes packed with hallucinogenic pretentiousness. While exposing glaring plot holes, the film drowns in waves of imbecility, rendering everything frigid with a tacky approach.

The only thing this murky film can do is to trigger an epileptic attack via the unpleasant images that try to bring it to a climax. The woods can actually be scary, but not here. Wheatley’s new trance is not recommended, confirming the bad shape of the British director after the unsuccessful remake of Hitchcock’s Rebecca in 2020.

Tragic Jungle (2021)

Direction: Yulene Olaizola
Country: Mexico

A supernatural thriller entirely shot in the jungle about the femme fatale Xtabay - a Yucatec Maya myth - brings so many possibilities to mind that it’s hard not to feel excited about it. However what was presented here by director Yulene Olaizola (Shakespeare and Victor Hugo’s Intimacies, 2008; Artificial Paradises, 2011) was powerless, with an overwhelming absence of mystery and a dormant storytelling.

Although regarded as an exercise in mood, the film employs crumbles of surrealism and folklore in an ineffective way, with the story rambling in circles with no apparent direction before throwing a bland conclusion at us.

The year is 1920, and Agnes (Indira Rubie Andrewin), trying to escape an arranged marriage with a malicious Englishman (Dale Carley), crosses the border between Mexico and Belize with a friend and a guide. Surviving a vicious attack by her intended husband, she is later found by a group of gum collectors led by Ausencio (Gilberto Barraza), who like the others, becomes under the spell of her beauty. In addition to a cold and fearless posture, the smile of Agnes - ranging between flirtatious to cynical - incites the fantasies of the men, who easily succumb to her power by losing their sense of direction.

Sloppy in the period details, unproductive in terms of tension and lacking character depth, the film never really explores the sense of danger, and even less the sense of adventure that could have arisen from a story of this nature. Olaizola's excess of control prevented Tragic Jungle from achieving an identity as something scary or profound. To be frank, I couldn’t find one single original idea in this shapeless movie. 

Summer of 85 (2021)

Direction: François Ozon
Country: France 

François Ozon, who spread unforgettable cinematic pleasure with titles like Under the Sand (2000), Swimming Pool (2003) and Frantz (2016), disappoints with Summer of 85, a heartsore coming-of-age farce centered on two contrasting gay teens. From minute one, we notice that Ozon opts for an extroverted pose and a touch of madness to tell a story that was loosely adapted from Aidan Chambers’ 1982 novel Dance On My Grave. Unfortunately, that strategy became more silly than sensible, and besides manipulative and overstuffed, the film wrestles with plot contrivances.

Félix Lefebvre and Benjamin Voisin play Alexis Robin, 16, and David Gorman, 18, respectively. They meet under stressful circumstances during the summer vacations at a Normandy’s seaside town in the mid-‘80s, with their relationship evolving into something deeper than just a mere friendship. Both are troubled youths in a way: Alexis, a difficult kid fascinated by death and corpses, is in love for the first time, while David, an inveterate seducer, doesn’t prescind from casual romantic adventures, something that his new partner is not willing to tolerate. The apparent strong bond between them is put to test when Kate (Philippine Velge), an English visitor who speaks supersonic French with an annoying accent, piques David's interest.

This trio of characters was made so uncompromisingly unappealing, and among the cast, only Valeria Bruna Tedeschi (Human Capital; It’s Easier for a Camel), who plays David’s garrulous single mother, deserves some credit, especially in the film's earlier part.

The script already wobbles along the way, and completely crumbles in the last chapters, becoming embarrassingly ludicrous (oh, that scene in the morgue…) in its pseudo madness and bromidic conclusion. There are oodles of coming-of-age films available, and Summer of 85, a lamentable misfire, doesn’t elevate the genre in any possible way.

The Life Ahead (2020)

Direction: Edoardo Ponti
Country: Italy

Based on the 1975 novel The Life Before Us by French author Romain Gary, The Life Ahead is one of those sad cases where the execution fails to do justice to a potentially great story. While we bath in the competent cinematography of Angus Hudson, the tediousness associated to the clichés allowed by director Edoardo Ponti becomes the film’s worst enemy. Aggravating the scenario, the soundtrack is tacky, while the scenes, one after another, lack authenticity.

The story follows Momo (Ibrahima Gueye), a 12-year-old Senegalese orphan living in an Italian seaside town.  He's under the care of the aging Dr. Cohen (Renato Carpentieri), who entrusts him to the Jewish former prostitute Madame Rosa (the great Sophia Loren in her second collaboration with her son Ponti), a former prisoner in Auschwitz.

While the latter is giving occasional signs of dementia, Momo, recently expelled from school, works for a local drug dealer (Massimiliano Rossi). The anger mixed with the bad influences presumably make him a dangerous kid, but both Rosa’s friends - Lola (Abril Zamora), a former male boxing champ turned trans mother, and Hamil (Babak Karimi), a generous Muslim owner shop - see the contrary.

The performance of the young debutant actor has proved to be the most positive aspect of an unsatisfying tale where the energy peters out at a high speed, leaving you empty. Shamelessly manipulative, this formulaic debacle fails to offer something new; and even more important, something solid.

The Midnight Sky (2020)

Direction: George Clooney
Country: USA

George Clooney stars in and directs The Midnight Sky, a futuristic survival tale incapable of keeping up with the intriguing tone of its preface. Before going from mildly entertaining to disgracefully stagnant in its first two thirds, the film becomes unbearably soppy in the third act. Screenwriter Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) was at the wheel of this meager adaptation of the 2016 book Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton.

Clearly seeking paths of least resistance in detriment of an imaginative vitality, Clooney devises a two-front odyssey - with the story scuttling back and forth between Earth and space - whose articulation becomes problematic. In truth, its sections operate as a mechanism with a deficit of authenticity, and neither of them, on its own, are particularly fascinating.

The plot centers on a dying scientist, Dr. Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney), who remains at a remote observatory located in the Arctic. Everyone else had left the place, except for a little girl named Iris (Caoilinn Springall). He then tries to communicate with the crew of a stranded spaceship, whose mission was to find the next habitable planet for the human race in response to the harmful radiation that’s been hitting the surface of the Earth. 

This slogging post-apocalyptic fiction composed of space inanity and uninspired snow routes crawls right toward disappointment, lacking smart moves and shaping up as a collage of other already existing ideas. A monumental let down.

Lords of Chaos (2019)

Direction: Jonas Akerlund
Country: UK/Sweden

This nauseating semi-fictionalized account, directed and co-written by Swedish Jonas Akerlund, is as dark and heavy as the Norwegian black metal scene of the early 90s that it makes reference to. The focus isn’t exclusively on the musical genre but also on the sinister happenings and practices that led to the homicide of Oystein 'Euronymous' Aarseth, co-founder of the band Mayhem. The film was adapted from the 1998 book of the same name and stars Rory Culkin as the cited guitarist, Emory Cohen as Varg Vikernes (founder of the one-man-band Burzum and Euronymous’ murderer), Jack Kilmer as the self-destructive Dead, and Valter Skarsgård as the homosexual-hater Faust.

There’s absolutely nothing interesting in the life of these satanic church burners; nothing valid or positive can be taken from their wild, yet miserable existence, which can be summarized as a mix of chaos, prepotency, and idiocy. Clearly pursuing fame through other forms that not just music, the members of this hidden ‘Black Circle’ had admitted: “we are not normal people”. I agree.

Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono was pointed out to direct the movie a few years ago. It would be his first English-language film, but knowing his ferocious work as I do, it’s hard to believe that his version could escape the super explicit and gratuitous violence shown here. In fact, Akerlund, who is a black metal drummer himself, seems only interested in shocking the viewer, whether through serial stabs or any other type of repugnant savagery. Lords of Chaos feels like a sick extravaganza rather than an accurate and substantial account of the story/case it claims to portray. To make everything more difficult, the ending is the dumbest part of the movie. Skip it.

Glass (2019)

Direction: M. Night Shyamalan
Country: USA

M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass marks the last part of the Unbreakable trilogy, launched with Unbreakable in 2000 and followed with Split in 2016. This new thriller tries to funnel the two precedent story threads into a conclusion, but the problem is that I was unable to feel excitement or have any type of reward along the way. Shyamalan, 48, had his biggest success in 1999 with The Sixth Sense, and since then has been giving signs of creative constraints. Examples that testify what was just said are The Village, The Happening, and Lady In The Winter, all nonsense mystery movies.

In truth, the final chapter of the trilogy is also its worst part, a clunky superhero film fabricated with worn out procedures, where the thrills are so scarce or practically nonexistent that we want it to end before long. During the first 20 minutes, the director sort of promised to take us somewhere, but instead, he let it all dribble away, remaining in a fog of apathy that has absolutely no pay off in the end.

Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, and James McAvoy reprise their roles from the previous installments as the indestructible vigilante David Dunn, the murderous mastermind Elijah Price, and the multi-personality criminal Kevin Wendell Crumb, respectively. All three are locked in a mental hospital and defied by an ambitious and skeptical young psychiatrist, Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who undertakes the byzantine task of proving that they are just ‘normal’ people, totally devoid of superpowers.

Problems with this film: the ideas simply don’t breathe, the narrative is more viscous than fluid, the dialogue is stiff, the connections are simplistic and amateurish, and the performances have no room to shine. The fact of the manner is that the film is so anti-climax and preposterous that not even the action scenes with The Beast succeeded in capturing my attention. To summarize, Glass would need to be completely reconsidered, script-wise, and then redone from scratch.

Dragged Across Concrete (2019)

Direction: S. Craig Zahler
Country: USA

American director S. Craig Zahler had left a very good impression in his debut feature, the adventurous western Bone Tomahawk, but was powerless in maintaining the positive vibrations in the inglorious, punishingly tedious Dragged Across Concrete. The film is a neo-noir crime thriller written by Zahler and starring Mel Gibson and Tory Kittles as a suspended cop turned outlaw and a relapsing criminal with nothing to lose, respectively.

Frustrated Bulwark police agents, Brett Ridgeman (Gibson) and his reliable partner Anthony Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn) are captured in a video, using excessive force in an uncomplicated operation involving cash and narcotics. After a complaint is made, the case gets the attention of the media and they end up with a six-week suspension and no pay.

The situation forces them to radically change positions and infiltrate in the underground crime world. Not for justice, though, but to chase the wealth their lives are asking for. Their destinies cross with a ferocious gang that includes Henry Johns (Kittles), an African-American ex-con, who just got out of the prison to realize that his mother became a drug addict and prostitute. He bills are six months behind and she doesn't pay enough attention to his physically disabled younger brother.

The film incurs in a derivative minor subplot when Kelly (Jennifer Carpenter), an esteemed employee of the bank marked to be robbed by the ruthless gang, goes to work for the first time after her baby was born. On another note, swallowing a key was never so easy, while taking it out of the stomach was both coarse and repugnant. Apart from these details, the tale comes to a cop-gangster association enveloped in paranoia, mistrust, and suspicion.

There’s nothing here that hasn’t been seen before or better done. The uncharismatic characters and languid pace cut down any interest we might have in a story extended to 159 painful minutes where insensibility and banality reign.

Largely shot in lurid, gilded tones that serve to paint oppressive environments, Dragged Across Concrete is a tremendous misfire that even the most vehement fans of cop thrillers should have trouble to connect.

Suspiria (2018)

Direction: Luca Guadagnino
Country: Italy / USA

Italian Luca Guadagnino, auteur of powerful films such as I Am Love (2009) and the critically acclaimed Call Me By Your Name (2017), makes his first move in the horror genre with a botched remake of Dario Argento’s 70s cult film Suspiria. Working from a screenplay by David Kajganich, who has previously worked with the director in A Bigger Splash (2015), Guadagnino had a gifted cast at his disposal, featuring Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton as protagonists, and Mia Goth and Angela Winkler in strong supporting roles.

The fiction takes place in 1977 Berlin, to where Ohio-born Susie Bannion (Johnson) moves definitely in order to join the prestigious international dance academy headed by the sinister Madame Blanc (one of the three roles of the amazing Swinton). Two influential dancers, Patricia Hingle (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Olga Ivanova (Elena Fokina), left the school psychologically affected with recondite occurrences. The former is missing; the latter was victimized by an invisible entity with virulent dance impulses. In the sequence of their absences, Suzie becomes the new protégé of the inscrutable, vampirelike Blanc. She can feel a dark force pushing her while working in the dance room and regularly affecting her dreams.

Practically speaking, the school is under the orders of a witch society, a rare phenomenon that piques the curiosity of Dr. Klemperer (Swinton), an experienced psychotherapist who started to pay better attention to what his patient Patricia kept saying. He decides to visit the premises after meeting with the incredulous Sara (Mia Goth), one of the dancers and Patricia’s best friend. What he finds is as much bizarre as it is inextricable: esoteric rituals filled with magic, possession, and illusion.

The geometric architectonic configurations and muted colors that compose the 35mm-shot frames are relevant and propitious to the film’s ambitions; however, Guadagnino’s practices are overlong, stiff, and risibly gory in the final minutes. I got numb-brained while trying to understand why a director of this caliber would want to spoil the enchanting gothic tones previously created with a nasty sequence of human heads blowing up in blood.

Suspiria is mediocre at its best, presenting very little substance and lacking interesting character development. The songs by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke provide short moments of pleasure in a film to be quickly erased from memory.

Tyrel (2018)

Directed by Sebastian Silva
Country: USA

Tyrel is a totally missed shot by Chilean director Sebastián Silva, whose past releases alternate between the delightful (The Maid; Crystal Fairy) and the mediocre (Magic Magic; Nasty Baby).

We’re living complicated times where racial tensions keep escalating and symptoms of fear, anxiety, and violence are visibly abundant. Aware of all this, Silva wrote a plot that is conceptually logic and unequivocal, a sort of counterpoint to Jordan Peele’s Get Out that would likely lure more adepts if less diffuse in the message and more consistent in tone.

Jason Mitchell is Tyler, an African American young man who willingly joins his good friend John (Christopher Abbott) in an all-men weekend party in the Catskill Mountains. This opportunity will give him a break from certain family problems that have been bothering him lately.

The house where they’re going to stay, owned by John’s Argentine friend Nico (Nicolas Arze), suddenly becomes jammed with a bunch of peculiar white dudes he doesn’t know. While some of the guys are nice, like Alan (Michael Cera) or Max (executive producer Max Borne), others are somewhat provocative in their behavior, cases of Peter (Caleb Landry Jones) and Dylan (Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum). Frivolous conversation leads to silly games; alcohol leads to weed; everything starts rolling at a fast pace. Despite of a Trump doll hang in the living room and ready to be wrecked by torture, Tyrel becomes notably uncomfortable for being the only black person in the house.

The first night was tense, yet pacific; the second, maddening wild; both were prosaically banal. In our heads, we portray all those guys as racists and sadistic bastards ready to devour Tyler just for their own amusement. But nothing ever really happens and we feel somewhat betrayed by the pointless situations created. This sense of futility and deception was magnified from the moment I noticed that, after all, movie title and main character don’t share the same name - former is Tyrel, latter is Tyler.

With our alcohol-drenched hero programmed to act in paranoia mode, the film takes us to a neighboring house, where Silvia (Ann Dowd), her saxophonist husband (Reg E. Cathey), and their kid meet an afflicted Tyler. Are they the friendly type?

There is probably more religious turmoil here than actually racial, and the story progresses with a nonsensical self-contentment without delivering a single thrill. It doesn’t take us too long to understand Silva’s idea, in the same manner that we realize that the aimless script is populated with under-written characters. Tyrel breaks at the weight of its own ambition, feeling like an undergraduate exercise in tension. Sadly, even that tension is wasted.

Searching (2018)

Directed by Aneesh Chaganty
Country: USA

“Searching”, a low-budget, tech-based thriller directed by debutant Aneesh Chaganty, hinges on a catchy premise, advances with a so-so development, and waves bye-bye with a terrible resolution.

The gimmicky story, co-written by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian, is set in San Jose, California, and follows David Kim (John Cho), an over-controlling single father who freaks out when his 16-year-old daughter, Margot (Michelle La), goes mysteriously missing.

Within the first minutes of the film, through family videos, we learn that Margot’s mother, Pam (Sara Sohn), died from a lymphoma relapse. Two years have passed and Margot is now more independent, living her life without giving too much explanation to her dad. After the vanishing, David finds out she had canceled the piano classes six months before and made an unexplainable transfer of $2500 to a deactivated Venlo account. Managing to get several access codes and password recoveries, David dives in her Facebook page and gets in touch with her contacts, just to sadly realize they weren't exactly friends.

The case is assigned to detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing - remember Grace Adler from “Will and Grace”?), who first considers the chance of a ‘runaway teen case’ before concluding it was abduction. In the meantime, David keeps digging deeper in Margot’s social media accounts, which leads him to Barbosa Lake, a place she kept visiting for five months, and to the only person who she really maintained contact lately: Hannah, a young Pittsburgh waitress who uses fish_n_chips as web identity.

The suspects change along the way, from Margot's colleagues to David’s own brother, Peter (Joseph Lee). Yet, to complicate things a little more, an ex-con confesses the murder before committing suicide. Do not worry, because the story doesn’t end here.

Chaganty wanted his film to look intelligently cryptic, but what he achieved was just completely muddled. Moreover, the storyline is naive, contrived, and ultimately nonsensical, all aggravated by the utterly unconvincing performances from Cho and Messing.

With my patience wearing thin, I remained seated just to confirm that “Searching” steeply declines as the mystery unravels. It's an emotionally parched, insubstantial drama thriller.