Vitalina Varela (2020)

Direction: Pedro Costa
Country: Portugal

Under Pedro Costa’s tonally murky direction, Vitalina Varela fictionalizes a real slice of life in a tale marked by bitterness, abandonment, betrayal, and resentment. Over the course of two hours, there’s an infinite sadness and a despairing melancholia spreading at a slow pace, forcing us to look attentively at the feelings of the real-life title character, a 55-year-old woman who travels from her hometown, Cape Verde, to an unattractive neighborhood in Lisbon to meet her dying husband, Joaquim. Unfortunately or not, she was late, and all she finds is a decaying house and lonely souls moving in and out like shadows in the night.

With a unique visual aesthetic, the camera lurks in the darkness, emphasizing surroundings composed of narrow alleys, simplistic interiors with dim lights, strange passageways, and a small church with regular chairs and a dirt floor, where nobody steps on it anymore except for a desolated priest (Ventura) marked by guilt and hopelessness. 

For 20 years, Vitalina waited for a plane ticket that would allow her to finally join her husband, but she never heard of Joaquim. He had left the African island without saying goodbye, abandoning Vitalina and the splendid 10-room house he had built for them but never entered. In Portugal, he worked in the construction field, but it turns out that he became lazy like his drunk comrades, got another woman, and started to sell drugs in order to pay for his modest, poorly-planned house and its meager contents. 

The film pulls all this together, leaking the revelations slowly and yielding in a mournful, meditative anticlimax with an idiosyncratic approach to expressionism. Costa’s challenging works (In Vanda’s Room; Colossal Youth; Horse Money) are always marked by this agonizing lethargy that penetrates deep in the skin before biting the soul with pinpoint-accuracy. Although Vitalina Varela is not his best film, it feels like a classy lesson in introspective cinema. It’s a relentlessly grim tale of immigration, suffering, and loneliness that deserves to be contemplated.

Come To Daddy (2019)

Direction: Ant Timpson
Country: USA

Elijah Wood stars in Ant Timpson’s feature film debut, as an emotionally wounded musician who finally meets the father who abandoned him when he was only five. After unmemorable appearances in The Last Witch Hunter (2015) and The Trust (2016), Wood had a promising return with I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017), Macon Blair’s first directorial experience.  He did a pretty decent job in Come To Daddy, and it wasn’t his fault that this comedy thriller - filled with cynical lies, wry humor, dark secrets, and violent romps - didn’t impress me all that much.

The screenplay by Toby Harvard carries a number of good intentions, but few of them materialize favorably. Norval Greenwood’s stay at his father’s secluded lakefront cabin in Oregon comes with lots of traps and manipulation. And that was exactly how I felt while watching it - trapped in nonsense and manipulated by artificial maneuvers.

Timpson wanted his film to look weird and wild, but because the lopped storyline is nothing special and the humor is unremarkable, the film goes off the rails sooner than later. He had no other option than using the violent scenes as a lifeline.

Sadly, the positive atmospheric set-up terminates abruptly with the first death. The film never fulfills the potential offered by a farcical yet mysterious inception. And then we have these ridiculous scenes involving slaughterous manhunts that feel more exasperating than frightening.

Clemency (2019)

Direction: Chinonye Chukwu
Country: USA

It’s with feral intensity and profound commitment that Alfre Woodard shapes her performance in Chinonye Chukwu’s thought-provoking death-row drama, Clemency. She is Bernardine Williams, an iron-hand prison warden who, as the years go by, gets deeply affected by the number of deaths she has been connected with. She usually takes the proceedings regarding to each case with such a determination and punctiliousness, but the next prisoner in line, Anthony Woods (Aldis Hodge), brings a considerable change in the way she sees and approaches her job. In truth, Bernardine struggles with sleep disorders, and every time she closes her eyes for a brief minute, the nightmares haunt her mercilessly. She’s been unable to maintain a normal life for the recent times, and what had been a solid marriage with her supportive husband Jonathan (Wendell Pierce), a dedicated teacher, seems to be crumbling fast.

The fragility of her emotional state is amplified, especially because there are serious doubts about if Woods really killed the cop for which he was convicted 15 years before. Despite the multiple appeals of his lawyer, Marty Lumetta (Richard Schiff), and daily public demonstrations outside the prison, no clemency is given.

This is Chukwu’s sophomore feature film and a solid step forward in her short yet promising filmmaking career. Balanced in tone and devastating in its conclusion, Clemency provides a refreshing alternative to the death-row-themed movies, addressing the problem from an uncommon angle.

Queen of Hearts (2019)

Direction: May el-Toukhy
Country: Denmark

Hailing from Denmark, Queen of Hearts is a spellbinding tale of luxury crammed with sexual tension and moral controversy. Co-writter Maren Louise Käehne and director May el-Toukhy had teamed up before in Long Story Short (2015).

With a razor-sharp performance, Trine Dyrholm can be classified as the director’s secret weapon, contributing heavily for the film’s triumph. She is Anne, a successful lawyer and mother of two who seduces her 17-year-old stepson, Gustav (Gustav Lindh), recently after he has joined the family. The explicitness of the sex scenes was an object of severe criticism, but they served to make the story more real, painful, and intensely felt. This moody drama has its pinnacle point when Anne’s secret is blatantly exposed. The situation still casts some doubt in her husband, Peter (Magnus Krepper), and that's when the remorseless Ann is forced to make a decision between her family/career and Gustav. Which will be preserved and which will be destroyed?

Queen of Hearts is a scandalous guilty pleasure that works so well because it’s patiently build with methodical accuracy and brutal authenticity. By focusing on a woman whose exploitative voluptuousness she coldly accepts, el-Toukhy provides us with a tough viewing, but not a superficial experience.

First Love (2019)

Direction: Takashi Miike
Country: Japan

The filmmaking style of Japanese auteur Takashi Miike doesn’t fit standard molds and conventions. However, and despite the classically twisted backbone of his latest work, First Love, he takes a more archetypal approach as he tells the story of a promising, if hopeless, down-on-his-luck boxer (Masataka Kubota) who bumps into a fragile woman (Sakurako Konishi) turned into a prostitute by the Yakuza. Inspired by the idea of Muneyuki Kii, who also produces, deft screenwriter Masa Nakamura (The Bird People in China) devises an exhilarating one-night ride into the mundane circumstances of contemporary Tokyo. There, you will find Chinese and Japanese triads clashing for power, greedy gangsters (Shota Sometani, Seiyo Uchino), a corrupt cop (Nao Omori), and a determined female assassin (Mami Fujioka).

And this boundless universe of crime is enriched with guns, swords, punches, and a furious driving scene where “trust in Japanese cars” is advertised before a brief yet colorful animated section appears before your eyes. The humor is taken to the limit and the film is infused with hilarious pranks - can you imagine a dying guy having to deal with an unexpected hard-on?

Thus, Miike’s inventive genius is still present, including his obsession for violent and dark contexts to satirize a sickening society, but the film doesn’t match the brilliant weirdness of some of his previous flicks. As expected, the romance was not as wild as the action, and the lurid aesthetics never compensate the overstuffness of the plot. It’s a visceral experience, nonetheless.

Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

Direction: Edward Norton
Country: USA

Edward Norton writes, produces, directs and stars in Motherless Brooklyn, a neo-noir detective story set in 1950’s New York City. The storyline was carved out from the 1999 novel of the same name by Jonathan Lethem and follows the tortuous paths of Lionel Essrog (Norton), a private detective with Tourette’s syndrome that investigates the assassination of his cool-under-pressure mentor, Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), shot dead with his own gun.

The man behind this dark curtain is Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin), an autocrat obsessed with power. As a city planner, he takes control of every construction site in the city, and not even his brother, Paul (Willem Dafoe), a frustrated dreamer, copes with his ways. In the course of the investigation, Lionel locates Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), an African-American activist from Harlem, who, he believes, could know something about Frank’s death. However, she was just looking to dismantle a fraudulent real estate scheme and now faces the dangers of opposing the gangster squad behind it.

Motherless Brooklyn lingers too much time in jazz numbers and attempts to romanticize what it's not romantic. Intermittently interesting at an early stage, the film keeps oscillating between solid and patchy, and eventually grows in disappointment as climaxes and thrills are taken to a minimum. The supporting performances are strong, but the machine assembled by Norton is far from well-oiled. Unfortunately, the narrative descends into retro boredom and, instead of something gripping and intellectually capable, you’ll find occasional sincerity but few emotion.

Corpus Christi (2019)

Direction: Jan Komasa
Country: Poland

It’s not surprising that Corpus Christi, a drama film directed by Jan Komasa (Suicide Room) and written by Mateusz Pacewicz, make it to final Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Film in a proud representation of Poland cinema. Engrossing all the way through, the film tells a riveting story based on true facts, focusing on an empathetic young inmate whose religious beliefs take him to miraculous places. 

All of a sudden, 20-year-old Daniel (newcomer Bartosz Bielenia is outstanding), sees himself out of the tumultuous juvenile prison in Warsaw, where he spent the last few years for a violent crime, to work on parole in a sawmill in a small countryside village. However, in opposition to what was supposed to, he seeks redemption for his crimes by impersonating the town’s new expected priest and actually helping its disoriented parishioners to overcome their burdens. He gradually adapts to this new life, metamorphosing completely into his new character and introducing innovative methods of spiritual liberation. Yet, he refuses to abide by the catholic conventions, working according to his own intuition.

Impeccably written and powerfully acted, Corpus Christi is one of the most daring foreign films of 2019. This raw depiction of a dream came true (Daniel truly aspired to become a priest) is framed with a careful composition and beautiful faint light, and comes loaded with the right blend of tension, violence, spiritual intention, and good-will. The wit is mordantly dark and one just has to settle back and let this tremendous account do the rest. Expect to be knocked out by a devastatingly potent finale.

Bait (2019)

Direction: Mark Jenkin
Country: UK

Bait is a taut arthouse drama with a vintage black-and-white look, sturdy performances, and nail-biter dynamics in its simple and efficient depiction of a picturesque fishing village in Cornwall. Due to its immersive atmospherics, the films of Henri-Georges Clouzot come to mind.

The central character is Martin Ward (Edward Rowles), a local cove fisherman who is forced to improvise professionally when his brother Steven (Giles King) takes their late father’s vessel for local cruise trips. However, his work is often disturbed by the annoying presence of tourists. His village is crowded with them due to a tourism business recently mounted by a couple of outsiders, Sandra (Mary Woodvine) and Tim Leigh (Simon Shepherd), who live in the now modernized house that once belonged to Martin’s family with their two teen children, Hugo (Jowan Jacobs) and Katie (Georgia Ellery). A jittery tension builds up with persistently dark and bitter tones, climaxing in an irreversible tragedy.

Director Mark Jenkin, a new brilliant voice in the British cinema, gives us a perfect view of the village dynamics, focusing his meticulously observant lens on the youth and adult alike. At times, it’s like if you were immersed in a psychedelic fever dream, but it’s not hard to wake up when the sad reality of gentrification bites. What can these people do if their lives are simply destroyed and ignored?

Bait is a tenacious, chillingly blunt, and unsentimental examination of a current topic that is getting out of control. It packs a punch by offering equal doses of fascination and disquietness, and deserves praise for combining extraordinary visuals captured by a vintage hand-cranked Bolex camera, a captivating intriguing mood, intelligent filmmaking techniques (the hand-processed 16-mm B&W film is an ode to the good old times and human craftsmanship), and compelling performances. An unmissable avant-garde gem is here folks!

The Report (2019)

Direction: Scott Z. Burns
Country: USA

The Report is a politically-charged drama starring Adam Driver as Daniel Jones, an obsessive behind-the-scenes staffer working for Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening). He got known for leading a thorough investigation about the CIA’s use of torture as part of its ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ following the 9/11 attacks. This slow-burning film, written and directed by Scott Z. Burns (the writer behind Soderbergh’s Contagion, Side Effects, and The Informant!) and produced by Steven Soderbergh, was partially based on a Vanity Fair article by Katherine Eban published in 2007.

There are moments when the film feels like dissecting the nearly 7000 pages full of conspiracy that Jones wrote with his small team of investigators. Although the film is sufficiently informative, the ones looking for thrilling revelations and mystery may be defrauded by how Burns has put things on display. Throughout this long and mostly solitary journey, Jones is helped by informers, but fiercely opposed by CIA director John Brennan (Ted Levine), who tries to cover up the big mess his agency is responsible for.

Driver’s lean and tight performance is what keeps the story minimally fueled, even when the movie stalls at its most frustrating passivity. In truth, what the film lacks in cinematic flair it makes up for in the one man’s unshakable determination to find the truth. But is this enough to recommend it? Struggling with mixed feelings myself, I would say it all depends on your patience and penchant for filthy politics unfolded with lies, hypocrisy, and disloyalties. 

By The Grace of God (2019)

Direction: François Ozon
Country: France / Belgium

François Ozon’s By The Grace of God explores a weighty theme, taking on the catholic church molestation cover-up with fierce determination. Confronting factors such as psychological damage, forgiveness, repent, and punishment, this drama film focuses on the particular sex scandal involving Father Bernard Preynat, a child predator whose sick conduct was neglected for years by his superiors. Ozon goes exactly to the central question: why monsters like these, who live hidden behind an institution, are not punished according to their crimes? 

This tightly patterned account is set in Lyon and involves several victims of the Father Preynat (Bernard Verley). Coming from different backgrounds, they are Alexandre Guérin (versatile Melvil Poupaud), 40, a banker and family man who cannot be silent anymore after realizing that the priest who abused him as a child over the course of two years was reassigned and keeps giving mass and working with children; François Debord (Denis Ménochet), a married man who takes Alexandre’s actions further by organizing a collective movement in order to call the attention of the media; and Emmanuel Thomassin (Swann Arlaud), a man in a toxic relationship, who frequently suffers seizures. All of them, and a few more, refuse to succumb to the trauma and agonizing memories that haunt them every day, and resolve to fight for justice. Cardinal Philip de Barbarin (François Marthouret), whose conduct is as impassive as Preynat is repulsive, is a key figure here as he tries to protect the institution and tone down the case. The guilt of those who knew but didn’t talk is also mentioned.

Mutating into a documentary-style approach, Ozon has a talented cast helping him stabilize the narrative disproportion whenever the film goes up and down in tone. Sometimes, we have the feeling that the story doesn’t go anywhere, but what the film lacks in the tension department, it compensates in exposing an uncomfortable truth that led Preynat to attempt blocking the release of the film in court.

Sorry We Missed You (2020)

Direction: Ken Loach
Country: UK

British director Ken Loach, an advocate of hyper-realistic cinema (Riff Raff; My Name is Joe; I, Daniel Blake), has always something pertinent to say through stories that are usually thoughtfully penned by his longtime associate Paul Laverty. That’s the case of Sorry We Missed You, a pungent family drama directly linked to the British working class theme, a recurrent topic in the filmmaker's body of work.

Willing to establish himself as a self-employed delivery driver for a franchising company, Ricky Turner (Kris Hitchen), a father of two, sells his wife’s old car and buys a new van. Through this move, he expects to bring more income, but makes things difficult for the good-hearted Abbie (newcomer Debbie Honeywood), who now works as a home-attendant after losing her job in the 2008 financial crash. Besides the daily predicaments related to demanding contract jobs - their schedules almost don’t allow them to see each other - the couple is having a hard time with their eldest son, Seb (Rhys Stone), who keeps skipping school and behaving whether indifferently or confrontationally whenever called into reason.

Their desperation makes a big impact on us, and it’s easy to realize that, in order to put food on the table, they were forced to abdicate from being a normal family. The strong bonds start weakening as the hard life keeps sucking out their energies. 

The title is multivalent, the storytelling keeps us hooked, the direction is uncomplicated, and the members of the cast deliver performances that are as raw, brave, and tough as the characters they play. Sorry We Missed You might not be Loach’s best film, but it’s a damn good one.

Freaks (2019)

Direction: Zach Lipovsky / Adam Stein
Country: USA

Directed by the team Zach Lipovsky-Adam Stein, Freaks is a sci-fi horror thriller that trusts the fantastic and the otherworldly to succeed. Yet, being original and narratively consistent while straddling genres is not easy nowadays and this film is not going to change that. After an interesting setup, the story takes its multi-dimensional fantasy beyond the acceptable, frittering away some possibly good ideas as it keeps degrading in front of our eyes. 

The plot centers on the special 7-year-old Chloe (Lexy Kolker), who is kept indoors by her paranoid, super-protective father (Emile Hirsch). He sometimes loses his temper when the crescent curiosity of the child makes her disobey and expose them to a violent exterior world.

Facing isolation and trained to stay calm under pressure, Chloe gets obsessed with the idea that she has no mother. She was told that her late mother, Mary (Amanda Crew), which whom she secretly communicates through a door in her closet, died because she broke the rules, but those rules are never disclosed. A mix of fear and fascination get hold of her when the suspicious Mr. Snowcone (Bruce Dern) convinces her to get in the ice cream truck with him to escape the home confinement imposed by her father.

More interested in surface flash than character depth, Freaks is a powerless surreal lunacy overstuffed with trivialities. It's a freak of a movie that grows busier than mysterious, and for this reason, will unlikely create a positive impact.

Monos (2019)

Direction: Alejandro Landes
Country: Colombia

Colombian-Ecuadorian Alejandro Landes is definitely a director whose work deserves exploration. Even if not as impressive as Porfirio (2011), his previous art-house drama, Monos is a beautifully photographed war drama-thriller loosely inspired on the acclaimed novels Lord of the Flies by William Golding and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The story, co-written by Landes and Alexis Dos Santos, revolves around a group of Colombian teenage guerrillas provisionally stationed at a remote mountaintop, where they watch over a single hostage, the foreign ‘Doctora' Sara Watson (Julianne Nicholson). These kids belong to The Organization, a mysterious political faction that, from time to time, sends them The Messenger (Wilson Salazar, a former FARC soldier). Besides supervising the place and stimulating their intensive training, this man always carries fresh orders and supplies. 

The eight young soldiers use signals to communicate and exclusively respond to their names of war. They are Wolf (Julian Giraldo), the squad leader; Lady (Karen Quintero), the former’s girlfriend; Dog (Paul Cubides), who accidentally shoots the milking cow entrusted to the group; the inattentive Smurf (Deiby Rueda), probably the youngest among them, who unintentionally conceded an opportunity for the prisoner to escape; Boom Boom (Esneider Castro), the bravest and strongest of the soldiers; Big Foot (Moisés Arias), a domineering warrior who likes doing things his own way; Swede (Laura Castrillón), an emotionally fragile girl desperately in need of love; and Rambo (played by actress Sofía Bonaventura), a misfit who dreams about abandoning the squad and that miserable life.

There’s some poignancy in this study of military subjugation, survival and distress caused by isolation and duty, but Landes, possessing a formidable command of mood within an unadorned style, seems only to be concerned with the experience of the members of the group, leaving many things unexplained around them. Disarmingly simplistic at a first sight, Monos has its fine moments of raw intensity, hiding more complex nuances in between the lines. It’s intriguing enough to worth a look, but in the end, not much of it sticks with us.

Socrates (2019)

Direction: Alexandre Moratto
Country: Brazil

Executive produced by Fernando Meirelles (City of God; The Constant Gardner; The Two Popes) and co-produced by Rahmin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo; Chop Chop; 99 Homes), this feature directorial debut from Alexandre Moratto is convincingly real in its portrayal of a young gay black boy, who after his mother's death, is left with the challenge of surviving by himself on the vile streets of São Paulo.

Unrespected and abandoned by his estranged conservative father, 15-year-old Socrates (Christian Malheiros) faces the possibility of going to an orphan’s asylum. Feeling the pressure to pay rent, which is already behind, he starts desperately looking for a job, a difficult task since he is still a minor. There’s no time to properly mourn for his loss, and he occasionally drowns his sorrows in cheap alcohol.

While seeking a way out, he gets physically and emotionally involved with Maicon (Tales Ordakji), a young man with whom he temporarily worked in a junkyard, but soon finds out that their relationship is not to last.

The rawness of the images combines with the poignancy of the story in a honest examination of a young life shattered by several social problems. Although scripted with plenty of incident, Socrates presents a mediocre conclusion. However, that aspect doesn't undermine the severity and importance of the topics addressed. Quite strong are the first appearances from young actors Malheiros and Ordakji.

Just Mercy (2019)

Direction: Destin Daniel Cretton
Country: USA

In 2013, Destin Daniel Cretton surprised the world with his debut feature Short Term 12, a gem of a drama based on his own experiences. He made clear that he has a gift to genuinely depict true stories, infusing them with cinematic power. However, his sophomore picture, The Glass Castle (2017), wasn’t so successful. He returns this year with the straightforward Just Mercy, a well-intentioned legal drama that lays bare the multiple injustices and incongruity of the death row. 

The film tells the true story of Walter McMillan, an innocent African-American from Alabama, who, after being convicted for the murder of a white teen woman with no evidence, was able to escape the mortal punishment with the help of Brian Stevenson, a freshly graduated Harvard lawyer. By impersonating the latter, Michael B. Jordan was given the opportunity to showcase his versatility after memorable action-packed roles in Fruitvale Station (2013), Creed (2015), and Black Panther (2018). In turn, Jamie Foxx impersonates the convict with a low-key posture. 

Cretton was able to capture the anguish that comes when fierce prejudice against black men erases every possibility of innocence. In parallel with this, one can observe the distinct case of Herbert Richardson (Rob Morgan). He was a former war-vet suffering from PTSD, who, involuntarily, killed a girl in the middle of a crisis. 

Never veering into excessive sentimentality, this absorbing courtroom drama denounces pure racial disdain and cynical manipulation of facts. It can be utterly uncomfortable.

Richard Jewell (2019)

Direction: Clint Eastwood
Country: USA

Once again (after J.Edgar, American Sniper, and Sully), reputable director Clint Eastwood got inspired by real events, putting out another biographical drama, this time centered on Richard Jewell, the security guard and police officer who, in the space of three days, went from national hero to main suspect of the bombing of the Centennial Olympic Park at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jewell, majestically embodied by Paul Walter Hauser, likes to state he’s a law enforcer. And that’s exactly what he is. Passionate about it and attentive to detail, this fast-food junkie is also a gun expert and a sharpshooter who believes in protecting people. He takes his job very seriously, and you can picture him as that sort of obsessive, overzealous guy whom everybody makes fun of. Yet, on the hot night of July 27, 1996, his suspicion about a green backpack lying underneath a bench in the cited park led to a partial evacuation of the place, avoiding hundreds of casualties and injuries in a terrorist attack.

With the manipulative FBI agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) at the center of the investigation, Jewell is made a suspect with no reason other than his past and the sloppy assumption that he fits the profile of the lone bomber. The help comes from Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), a pragmatic lawyer who had briefly crossed paths with Jewell in 1986, time when the film's narrative begins.

Eastwood and his writer Billy Ray (Captain Phillips; The Hunger Games) faced fierce contestation from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution newspaper for the way they outlined the methods used by late reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) in order to obtain relevant information.

Polemics aside, the director, prompted by an immediate and fluid storytelling, mounted some scenes that not always feel authentic. However, he makes a clear-eyed look about the failings and transgressions of American law enforcement agencies in their urgency to find a culprit. Hauser fuels this uneven account with an excellent performance.

1917 (2019)

Direction: Sam Mendes
Country: USA

After two James Bond ventures - Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015) -  English director Sam Mendes returns with an intense, schematic World War I drama, which he co-wrote with Krysty Wilson-Cairns. The script of 1917 was partly based on a narrative fragment told by the director’s grandfather, the novelist and short-story writer Alfred H. Mendes, to whom the film was dedicated. 

The expeditious camera focuses on two British soldiers, Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and William Schofield (George MacKay), who, while stationed in the North of France, are entrusted with the mission of delivering a vital message to the 2nd battalion of the Devonshire Regiment. The message includes direct orders from the general to stop a longtime planned attack that will lead them into a deadly German ambush. If delivered on time, the lives of 1600 men will be spared, including Blake’s bigger brother. 

During their pedestrian course in enemy territory, the men face death in claustrophobic interiors, traverse slippery, muddy land loaded with semi-putrefied corpses, stop at sinister abandoned places, and rush through ruins on fire, where bullets fly from every direction. Both the intriguing score and stunning cinematography, composed by Thomas Newman and Roger Deakins, respectively, assure a valuable consolidation. 

There are some plot distentions - Schofield is virtually bullet-proof in the battlefield and even carries milk to feed a hungry baby - but the film also piles up moments of true fascination, especially when it comes to the visuals. It’s a terrifying, grim look at war, filled with devastating post-battle scenarios, pushing-forward energy and acute tension. By the end, you’ll feel as exhausted as the messenger.

Beanpole (2019)

Direction: Kantemir Balagov
Country: Russia

Beanpole, the third feature from young Russian director Kantemir Balagov, is cooked with a gut-wrenching Bergman-esque agitation. Achingly performed, this grimly believable and often suffocating psychodrama set in the post-war Leningrad, features two talented newcomer actresses, Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina. The former is Iya, a traumatized survivor turned nurse in a hospital unit, and the latter is Masha, an anguished, exhausted, somewhat cynical soldier who returns from the front to pick up her three-year-old son, Pashka (Timofey Glazkov). The kid had been entrusted to Iya’s care, but died accidentally when his guardian was experiencing one of her episodic PTSD crisis. 

The title, beanpole, arises from the fact that Iya is tall and thin. That’s her moniker. Consumed by guilt and nurturing a secret love for the barren Masha, Iya reluctantly accepts to become a surrogate mother for her friend. Masha had already planned everything and even picked the head of the hospital unit, Nikolay Ivanovych (Andrey Bykov), as the future father of her child.

Painful to watch, the film is permeated with angst, shallow hope, and an inner emptiness that is quite disturbing. It’s like if you, by observation of the two leads, could feel years of real misery and suffering. To reinforce this idea, the film includes a sad case of euthanasia.  

Balagov, who was awarded in Cannes with the Un Certain Regard prize for best director, relies on close ups to express the women’s deep feelings as well as claustrophobic medium shots saturated in color that serve to expose the general instability and emotional devastation caused by the war.

Waves (2019)

Direction: Trey Edward Shults
Country: USA

Trey Edward Shults surprised the world with his debut feature Krisha (2015), an achingly intense family drama that deserved all the acclaim it got. With his sophomore picture, It Comes at Night (2017), he stepped into the apocalyptic horror genre with positive assurance. In his newest work, Waves, he returns to the complex family topic, setting the mood with abundant dramatic flair. Deeply focused on relationships, this ruin-and-rebuild tale amasses death, guilt, forgiveness, and hope with variable depth. Set in Miami, the story centers on a middle-class African-American family that will have to overcome the tragic consequences of an involuntary murder.

Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is a high school senior who is deeply committed to pursue a career in wrestling, but is advised by his doctor to stop any physical activity due to a serious, possibly irreversible problem in his shoulder. His domineering father, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), is the one who trains him with an unhealthy competitive posture. He’s married to Catherine (Renée Elise Goldsberry), who, not being Tyler’s biological mother, raised him as her own child. And then there’s the sensitive Emily (Taylor Russell), the younger daughter of the couple. Frustrated with the impossibility to compete, Tyler sees his life spiraling into chaos after his pregnant girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie), breaks up with him.

At the end of this first narrative segment, Shults dangerously embraces sentimentality, playing the scenes of a new chapter (involving Emily and her boyfriend) a bit too tight while stretching the roller coaster of emotions. With all its faults, Waves still provides incredible moments capable of freezing us in our chairs and pushing us into a hypnotic state. The ensemble cast does a wonderful job, and I see them as real champions whenever the script wibbles and wobbles. The score by Nine Inch Nails’ members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is outstanding, while the varied soundtrack includes songs from Tame Impala, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, and Radiohead, among others.

Waves doesn't work in its entirety, but when it connects, it’s powerful and uncomfortable.

A Hidden Life (2019)

Direction: Terrence Malick
Country: USA

After a couple of trivial drifting practices (Knight of Cups; Song to Song), director Terrence Malick returns with A Hidden Life, a structurally solid WWII account based on the real-life story of Austrian pacifist farmer Franz Jägerstätter. Refusing to swear loyalty to the Nazi regime, whose principles go entirely against his Catholic and moral ideals, Franz (August Diehl) is incarcerated at Tegel prison in Berlin, tortured, and then sentenced to death. Unintentionally, he’s making the life of his beloved wife, Fani (Valerie Pachner), a living hell. It’s because the people of St. Radegund, their small Austrian village, not understanding why Franz rejects his duties to the fatherland, cease to assist Fani in the heavy work in the fields. Notwithstanding, the latter’s unconditional support of her husband’s cause is laudable.

Franz asks the bishop of Salzburg (Michael Nyqvist): “If leaders are evil, what do we do?”. Considered a traitor, this man and his brave wife will endure years of solitude, emptiness, and misery. Their existential questions - “God, why am I here? Why did you create us?” - are articulated with that inner-centered, melancholic voice-off so typical of Malick’s deliberate style, while the visuals, preserving some of the oneiric aura of his previous works, offer something new in the hands of camera operator-turned-cinematographer, Jorg Vidmer. However, clocking in at nearly three hours, the film is exhaustingly overlong, with Malick taking too much time detailing a canvas that could have been painted with less brushstrokes. This setback is somewhat compensated with an accessible, less subjective script.

Opting for a non-exploitative presentation, Malick gets it right in the end, but at the expense of a lot of patience from the viewers. A Hidden Life is disconcerting both for the right and the wrong reasons.