Another World (2022)

Direction: Stephane Brizé
Country: France

Adopting a realism redolent of Ken Loach, French director Stephane Brizé keeps aiming at social injustices, questioning the ferocity and blind cruelty of modern corporations. With the contribution of dedicated actor Vincent Lindon, he concludes a sort of ‘work trilogy’, which began in 2015 with The Measure of a Man and proceeded with At War in 2018. Another World marks the fifth collaboration between the director and the actor.

Philippe Lemesle (Lindon) and his wife Anne (Sandrine Kiberlain) are about to divorce. They have two children: Juliette, who lives abroad, and Lucas (Anthony Bajon), who is going through serious emotional and mental problems. Philippe has been working his ass off as a corporate executive and barely has time for the family. His reputation is high, but the pressure becomes unbearable when he’s given a layoff plan demanding the sacrifice of 58 loyal employees. He can no longer find coherence in the system he’s been committed to for years. 

Brizé and his co-screenwriter Olivier Gorce excel in pointing out this business language where the meaning of the word "courage" is tendentiously twisted. One still finds shades of a certain melodramatic complacency, especially regarding the protagonist’s personal life, but the film leaves such a strong impression that we easily forget that aspect. 

Lindon is just perfect; we see him and we believe it. His performance is well supplemented by TV and radio journalist Marie Drucker as a cold and intransigent boss. A successful first theatrical appearance for her. Another World is another product of Brizé’s mature social observation.

Blonde (2022)

Direction: Andrew Dominik
Country: USA 

Adapted from Joyce Carol Oates' bestseller, Blonde turns the life of Marilyn Monroe into an endlessly disgusting tableau that Ana de Armas couldn’t save despite her charisma. 

In this fictional journey of real characters, Marilyn loses her mentally disturbed mother (Julianne Nicholson), spends the rest of her life searching for her unknown father, pays a high price to become a Hollywood celebrity, delves into a threesome relationship with Cass (Xavier Samuel) and Eddy (Evan Williams) - the sons of Charlie Chaplin and Edward G. Robinson, respectively - and has no luck in her marriages to baseball star Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) and playwright/screenwriter Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody). She’s also mercilessly humiliated by president Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson).

Stylized both in color and black-and-white and probing mutable aspect ratios (for no apparent reason), the film is just pose with no essence found. It’s protracted and overdramatized with repetitive despondent tones that make it barely bearable.

The simulated biopic starts strong as a tense family drama, segueing into a dragging middle section before ending up in an uninspired delirium of damaging pregnancies and ‘daddy’ relationships marked by toxic masculinity. The direction of Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2007) has some flashes of inspiration but is not to die for, while the script portrays the star almost as a dumb, without penetrating the woman's heart.

Saloum (2022)

Direction: Jean Luc Herbulot
Country: Senegal

Congolese director Jean Luc Herbulot teams up with producer Pamela Diop in the screenplay of Saloum, a biting crime thriller populated by African folklore and supernatural elements. The oppressive environment naturally lends an air of danger to a story that follows three mercenaries - Chaka (Yann Gael), Rafa (Roger Sallah) and Minuit (Mentor Ba) - who are forced to land their plane on the mystic land of Saloum in Senegal. They transport an important Mexican trafficker on the run from Guinea-Bissau and a gold bounty. 

Posing as gold miners while looking for fuel and resin, this gang - the Bangui Hyenas - is in this region for a particular reason. A few threatening human presences on the site are considered minor when compared to the inhuman forces they will have to battle.

While Saloum may be a little frustrating in its upshot, you’ll be sufficiently intrigued to keep watching. The film paints an unusual, funny, and sometimes violent portrait of a certain contemporary Africa, providing a rough sketch of past traumas and a quest for revenge with a nod to the Western genre. There’s no particularly sympathetic character for us to root for, and yet the scenes are well acted, technically decent, and infused with a well-connected soundtrack. 

A mixture of solemnity and comedy colors the whole film, and there’s a neat and meticulous attempt at illustration despite the occasional wild camera movements. The bet was risky, but it paid off since the film fulfilled its primary mission: to agitate and entertain.

A Love Song (2022)

Direction: Max Walker-Silverman
Country: USA

Max Walker-Silverman’s pensive indie drama, A Love Song, didn’t have the impact I was expected. There’s more synthetic quilt than real fabric and thread weaving this story of two lonely widowed friends - Faye (Dale Dickey) and Lito (Wes Studi) - who have become estranged over the years, and now try to find solace in each other. 

Faye has been living in a trailer since she lost her partner seven years ago. She’s stationed in a campsite by a lake in the Colorado mountains for quite some time. Living day by day from coffee and seafood, she patiently awaits Lito, her former love, who finally arrives to spend one night.

It gets pretty hard to penetrate beyond the superficialities of their past relationship and the awkwardness of being face to face again after decades. The way the film is presented doesn’t allow us to excavate deeply into these characters’ souls. 

The film carries a mechanical melancholy that becomes trivial after a while. By looking deeper into the author's approach, it’s not impossible to find a certain artlessness in his work. Despite the beauty of the scenic, bucolic landscape where it all takes place, the story offers few surprises, and we're left with a stunted perspective of hope and accomplishment that is unfulfilling. Too bad that the staging never deviates from the marked path, and the film doesn’t pass the barrier of conventionality.

The Quiet Girl (2022)

Direction: Colm Bairéad
Country: Ireland 

The Quiet Girl, a warmhearted Irish drama of superior quality, chews over love and care, enhancing their positive effects on the development of a young girl. The film is a mark of extraordinary promise from Colm Bairéad, a debutant filmmaker whose future works we want to keep an eye on. 

Employing a powerful simplicity in the process, Bairéad tells the story of Cáit (Catherine Clinch), a restrained and sensitive 9-year-old girl who tries to hide from everybody. Both her mood and behavior change completely during the summer of 1981, when she leaves her impoverished, dysfunctional family to spend a couple of months on a farm with estranged relatives (Carrie Crowley and Andrew Bennett).  

Generating empathy and honesty at every second, The Quiet Girl is a memorable film, not only for the way it’s mounted, but for going against the trendy themes of pessimism, hatred, dystopia, and chaos that consume most of the movies made today. The frames are captured with a rare sensitivity that makes you read and feel the protagonists’ emotions. For this particularity, much contributed the impeccable performances from all members of the cast, a surefooted direction, and an outstanding cinematography.

As subtle and delicate as an affectionate embrace, this is a beautiful film, whose story provides a heartbreaking insight into the different roles people may have in one’s life. The medium is love, and you always feel when it’s present or not. The exceptionally controlled storytelling avoids excessive pathos, but don’t feel surprised if the gracious, bittersweet finale moves you to tears.

Unidentified (2022)

Direction: Bogdan George Apetri
Country: Romania 

Unidentified is the first installment in a crime trilogy envisioned by Bogdan George Apetri, who keeps one foot in the ridiculousness of the Romanian police routines and the other in an impossible-to-solve crime mystery that puts us off-balance. Even slipping in critical observations about the precariousness, human disconnectedness, sexism, and prejudice in his country, the director wasn’t as efficient in the orchestration of this coal-dark satire as in Miracle, the film that followed up. Both films were shot simultaneously and share a couple of characters.

Florin is the man that catches our attention here; an indebted, sleepless and highly obsessed police inspector determined to solve a strange case in which two mothers were burned alive. But if his colleagues sin for indifference, then he takes his efforts too far. This is a challenging role for actor Bogdan Farcas in a work whose staging sinks into mannerism, leaving only room for the paranoid behavior of a policeman who thinks he is above the law. 

Unidentified is exactly like its protagonist: too serious to make us laugh, and too laughable to be taken seriously. A strong sense of incredulity grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. The result, an attempted mixture of adrenaline, madness and despair, never managed to keep me on the edge of my seat. 
Without sparing us any details related to this cop’s machinations, Apetri seems fascinated by him. We, less.

Speak No Evil (2022)

Direction: Christian Tafdrup
Country: Denmark

Speak No Evil is a well-filmed, highly unsettling Danish thriller whose story exudes gripping familiarity before taking us to harrowing conclusions. Adopting a hyper-realistic style, director Christian Tafdrup (Parents, 2016; A Horrible Woman, 2017) conjures up a mad world of predators and prey with dramatic power and a crescendo of emotions. His art consists in exacerbating borders to better abolish them, in a formally controlled exercise in suspense.

Co-written by Christian and his brother Mads, the story follows a Danish couple - the easygoing Bjorn (Morten Burian) and the astute Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch) - on holidays in Tuscany. There, they meet an opaque Dutch couple - Patrick (Fedja van Huêt ) and Karin (Karina Smulders) - who, months later, invite them to a weekend getaway in their isolated house situated in the Netherlands’ countryside. The circumstances of their staying might have been different, but this family seems to be inevitably drawn into a nightmarish tragedy. 

While the story is pretty strong, there are a couple of scenes that felt a bit awkward, especially those involving Bjorn’s vulnerable moments in the company of Patrick. His weakness and naivety were almost unbearable to me. However, and eschewing any type of stereotype about what pure parental ferocity should be, I got the impression that this couple could have offered more resistance by any possible means. This is a pretty sick game we have here. 

All four adult actors and the two kids do a great job, but a very special mention goes to Ms. Koch, who was fantastic at every single instance, and van Huêt, for his cunning manifestation of cordiality and pugnacity. Disseminating helplessness and dread in the last minutes, at the sound of an ethereal “Requiem” composed by Sune Kolster, this dismal film will teach you to never trust strangers.

Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

Direction: George Miller
Country: USA 

From the creator of Mad Max, the writer-director George Miller, Three Thousand Years of Longing showcases a reserved Tilda Swinton as Alithea, a respected professor in a comfortable white robe, and Idris Elba as a wish-granting, size-shifting Djinn inadvertently released from the bottle that was holding him prisoner for so long. 

The film, an uninspired adaptation of the short story The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by A.S. Byatt, is marred by an overflow of images with arguable special effects and also discussions that drag on with convoluted meaning. Overall, it lacks emotion, and only the cinematography by John Seale (he worked with Miller on Mad Max: Fury Road) is something one should take into consideration.

In Istanbul, in the sequence of Alithea’s difficulty in making three wishes for herself, the Djinn feels compelled to tell his restless 3000-year story marked by the presences of the biblical figure Queen of Sheba (Aamito Lagum), the knowledge-seeker Zefir (Burcu Gölgedar), and the irascible Sultan Suleiman (Lachy Hulme). With a tone that teeters between delicate and affected, this fantasy drama has no claws to be of more than passing interest. Basically, it fails to achieve what it tries to claim: the power of a deeply engaging narrative.

House of Darkness (2022)

Direction: Neil LaBute
Country: USA

Neil LaBute, the mind behind In the Company of Men (1997) and Nurse Betty (2000), wrote and directed House of Darkness, an insipidly chatty comedy horror film whose effect is more mildly irritating than genuinely disconcerting. 

In the manner of a joke without a punchline, the story takes place in an old, dark and secluded house full of memories. This house belongs to Mina (Kate Bosworth), a mysterious country woman, who, after incidentally coming across Hap (Justin Long) in a bar, invites him in. Tipsy, nosy and elusive, this middle-class city man keeps hearing noises and seeing things… are they alone in this little castle? 

Among naps, kisses and eerie dreams, we start to feel like we're drowning in the atmosphere, but the film just goes around in circles, adding more and more dragging conversation that has nowhere to go. Taking a pathetic direction, the story gives away everything too soon. The actors are better than the predictable parts they play, and we wish that moments like the five-minute gory fiesta that concludes the film had been spread across the film.

Unfortunately, LaBute sacrificed the narrative and characters in the name of a few formal coups, making House of Darkness a painfully unnecessary experience.

God's Country (2022)

Direction: Julian Higgins
Country: USA

Adapted from James Lee Burke's short story Winter Light, God’s Country is a slow burning, above-average drama thriller that, being sharp in intention, probes into the wounded heart of a disconsolate woman. Director and co-writer Julian Higgins crafts a compelling framework to address discrimination and sexism with a mix of deep poignancy, retaliatory ferocity, and indelible damage.

Told over the course of seven days, the story is centered on Sandra (Thandiwe Newton), a grieving college teacher who lives at the edge of the forest in Western Montana. When her land is repeatedly trespassed by two local hunters, the reachable Nathan (Joris Jarsky) and the obnoxious Samuel (Jefferson White), she confronts them. She's determined to not allow them get their way, but the lack of support from the law and the locals makes her dive into a grey universe of anger and hurt. Can she still show complacency towards people with no respect? 

God’s Country plays a minimalist pitch and puts all the emphasis on tone to achieve a sort of hypnotic enchantment. The message and feelings are there, and the picture plays more like a poignant indie drama rather than a rural western-style epic. With a large part of the success coming from Newton’s exemplary performance, there is so much that individuals can learn from this film.

Pearl (2022)

Direction: Ti West
Country: USA

Ti West’s Pearl, a prequel to X (2022), is a psychopathy-driven horror film that almost never manages to surprise, being neither better nor worse than any other. Yet, it’s definitely a showcase for Mia Goth, who plays the unpredictable title character with absolute confidence. Constantly followed by the camera, she delivers a mix of emotional fragility and murderous fury in her portrait of a young woman with real dreams and a repellent soul. And she saves the film. 

But is this really worthy of your time? Well, even if what you’ll get from this tale is the cruelty of the protagonist and learn nothing, the film is bathed in darkness and its gory scenes are a bonus for fans of the genre. Maybe a hint of black humor would have given the whole thing a more cathartic dimension. 

This way, Pearl felt more confessional than disturbing, occasionally managing to give us the chills, like in a scene where Pearl chases her next prey with an axe in her hand. It’s a shame that the script doesn’t unpack more of these moments for the actress who co-wrote the script with West. The latter, never putting enough stylistic spin of his own in the mix, wastes more time with Pearl’s alligator than generating chilly vibes. The result never fully rises above the pack, but it’s still passable.

The Justice of Bunny King (2022)

Direction: Gaysorn Thavat 
Country: New Zealand

Australian actress Essie Davis (The Babadook, 2014) stars in The Justice of Bunny King as the title character, a true fighter and single mother of two who is bound to battle the social services to be near her children - Shannon, four; and Reuben, 14 - who are in foster care because she's homeless. 

She stays temporarily with her sister Grace (Toni Potter) and her boyfriend, Bevan (Errol Shand), counting every penny collected from washing windscreens in Auckland. With the Child Protection Services restricting all her moves toward the children, she can only dream of getting an apartment and reuniting with her family. But a terrible finding involving her niece Tonyah (Thomasin McKenzie) pushes that wish farther away.

This New Zealander drama is occasionally moving but never surprising. Benefitting from its authentic execution, even if engaging sporadically in some unnecessary clichéd proceedings (why does every drama include a feel-good scene with music inside a car?), this is a vividly etched depiction of how a loving mother and her children can grow apart. 

In her feature debut, Gaysorn Thavat knits the drama with serious and sobering observation, whereas the script by Sophie Henderson had some margin to improve. Still, the final sequence - formulated with good and bad choices - may leave you with a lump in your throat, even though you clearly see the ending coming. Davis delivers on the story's promise with a convincing portrayal. There’s no doubt she deeply cares about the character she plays, compelling us to feel the same.

Barbarian (2022)

Direction: Zach Cregger
Country: USA 

This sort of trapped-in-a-house horror exercise starts off well, but derails during the second half. Barbarian creates an oppressive atmosphere and fair suspense, and would have been successful if it wasn’t for the script, which, even with social-commentary ambitions, is so weak that it can't shake that stench of imitation that clings to the whole thing.

The story follows Tess (Georgina Campbell), who, in anticipation of a job interview, drives to a dangerous Detroit neighborhood to spend the night in an airbnb she had booked the month before. To her surprise, the house has already an occupant, an apparently harmless young man called Keith (Bill Skarsgård). Even reluctantly, she accepts his suggestion to stay until the next morning - he on the couch, she in the bedroom. Soon, she realizes that Keith is not the real threat in the house but something that lives beyond a secret door in the basement. 

Actor turned director Zach Cregger created a disembodied film, but not quite hollow, since it still displays a couple of visually attractive scenes. It just simply doesn’t achieve its ultimate ambition: to scare the viewer. Moreover, the inconsistencies in the story are blatant - too many coincidences, few explanations, and… why is nobody looking for these missing persons?

Between the comic and the monstrous, the final scenes are the best. But, again, everyone seems too cool in the face of evil, a relatively frustrating glimpse of what the whole film could have been.

Fabian: Going to the Dogs (2022)

Direction: Dominik Graf
Country: Germany

Veteran German director Dominik Graf offers a wryly enlightened view of Jakob Fabian (Tom Schilling), an advertising copywriter with compelling poetic skills who lives nonchalantly in the troubled final days of the Weimar Republic. The film is an adaptation of Erich Kästner's novel of the same name.

The year is 1931, and Berlin’s night life bursts with sweating brothels, lively cabarets, underground pubs, and intoxicated artistic gatherings. This is where Fabian and his best buddy, Stephan Labude (Albrecht Schuch), are found on a daily basis. The former is in love with Cornelia (Saskia Rosendahl), but falls victim to the financial crisis that darkens the city, whereas the latter takes a firm political stand against the quick advances of the right-wing party while trying to recover from a lost love. Meanwhile, the ambitious Cornelia propels her acting career with dire consequences for the relationship. 

Graf dominates the lens with peerless openness and gets creative in the presentation. He employs both picture-in-picture and fast-forwarded techniques, shooting off dazzling visual fireworks, and going totally burlesque in tone, often with a touch of madness. The influence of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his mundane depictions is very much on display here, but there are also glimpses of G.W. Pabst and Fritz Lang, almost in a sort of celebration of the classic German cinema.

The stirring beauty of Graf’s drama comes from the genuine feelings transmitted by the leads, who, together with the editor Claudia Wolscht, contribute to the furiously cinematic outcome. In turn, the big tragedy is called love, and not for a moment does Graf feed our fantasy that this romance will have a happy conclusion. In the end, one gets the notion that life, in all its turmoil, is not always fun.

Emily the Criminal (2022)

Direction: John Patton Ford
Country: USA 

Drowned in debt and with a criminal record on assault, Emily (Aubrey Plaza) has a hard time finding a job that pays her well in Los Angeles. She can only experience some financial relief when joining a group of credit card scammers co-led by Youcef (Theo Rossi), a foreigner with whom she gets emotionally involved. This man pursues his own dreams and goals, but it’s Emily who faces most of the danger when the bar is raised and the jobs get bigger.

This is the story proposed by director John Patton Ford in his very first feature, which counterweights familiar crime thriller and grounded indie drama. The script he wrote might be thin, but there’s an energy captured by the camera that makes the suspense palpable and gives credibility to the emotions. It wouldn’t be the same without Plaza (Ingrid Goes West, 2017; Black Bear, 2020), who knows how to convey pungency in the face of trouble. Playing a brave woman who’s definitely not the passive kind, she surfs the prickly tension of every scene with fierce determination. 

The film uses no fireworks, opting for clear views instead of shading assumptions. Yet, the finale is most likely to surprise you. If you like your crime thrillers slightly smoked with fraught anxiety, then you should be able to commune with this film at a satisfactory level.

A Chiara (2022)

Direction: Jonas Carpignano
Country: Italy 

With a focused handheld camera, in an observant style close to documentary, Jonas Carpignano confirms the growing scope of his cinema in A Chiara. This drama film, being realistic and objective as well as rugged and heartbreaking, is the last part of his Calabrian trilogy around the port town of Gioia Tauro, following Mediterranea (2015) and A Ciambra (2017). For this purpose, he filmed a real family, the Rotolos.

The last chapter depicts the tribulations of Chiara (Swamy Rotolo), a tenacious 15-year-old student who decides to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her father (Claudio Rotolo) after an important family celebration. Ploughing a lonely furrow, from doubt to doubt, from clue to clue, Chiara sadly realizes that her father works for the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia-type organization that employs so many families in the region. More than anything, this astute teenager needs to understand what’s going on. She’s fiercely determined to know the truth, facing obstacles and maturely judging the options that may lead her to a better future. 

A Chiara is more family-oriented in its vision than a stereotyped mafia thriller. Despite the protracted party scenes at the beginning, Carpignano signs an honest film in which the atmosphere is heavy and the realism magnified by the fact that the mafia members, played by non-professional actors, are of the ordinary type. The young protagonist, who was first noticed in the casting of A Ciambra, fulfilled with distinction the role that the director had in mind for her. 

You will feel some suffocation among the tension and friction, and the result can be slightly disturbing in its forthrightness.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (2022)

Direction: Dean Fleischer-Camp
Country: USA

The central character in this witty animated fiction in the guise of a documentary is the gorgeous Marcel (voice by Jenny Slate), a little-bigger-than-a-pee shell who lives with his aging grandmother Nana Connie (voice by Isabella Rossellini) in a house listed on Airbnb. The director Dean Fleischer-Camp moves into the house and finds this conversational little creature who likes to sing, sleeps on a slice of bread, loves to work out on top of a spinning vinyl, takes care of a dog named Alan, and really misses his family and friends, who suddenly vanished after the couple who lived there moved out.

Being a documentarian, Dean starts to film Marcel’s routines and the little shell becomes so popular on the internet that television journalist Lesley Stahl from CBS’s program 60 minutes wants to interview him. Whereas Nana Connie is immensely happy with the idea, Marcel has his doubts about taking such risks. But that’s the only option he has in order to find his family. 

The successful project took approximately 7 years to be concluded, with Fleischer-Camp working closely with Slate, his ex-wife, to accomplish his first feature. They found the perfect tone to pull the strings of this skillfully produced fairy tale where the prowess of technology intersects with the simplicity of the story. Overflowing with naturalistic dialogues, this touching and comical film also presents cheerfully colored images and an unremitting low pressure in the narrative that contributes to the tenderness of the outcome.
Marcel’s ability to express deep feelings is sure to melt the hearts of young and old folks alike.

Waiting For Bojangles (2022)

Direction: Régis Roinsard
Country: France 

This adaptation of Olivier Bourdeaut's bestselling novel flirts between nutsy comedy and tragic drama, holding up thanks to the energy of the actors involved. Although realistic in nature, the story exudes an air of dreamy fable stamped with a ‘French’ sign that implies quality production values, visual aesthetics and decor. Watching it feels like we’re reading a children’s book, but it’s just a love story with traces of Jean Pierre Jeunet and Michel Gondry in an arguable celebration of life through death. 

The scenario actively develops from the love at first sight between Camille (Virginie Efira), a beautiful bipolar blonde, and the hussar of her childhood dreams, Georges (Romain Duris). Beyond their obvious chemistry, there’s this assurance of one supporting the other in no matter what circumstance. That notion is reinforced when they have a son, Gary (Solan Machado Graner), named after the American actor Gary Cooper, his dad's favorite. The kid often compensates for his parents’ lunacy by thinking and acting like an adult. 

This fiction paints an eccentric and sensitive portrait of the family, and goes deeper than what it seems. But there’s a strong sense of deja-vu along the way, especially regarding the tone. Waiting for Bojangles, whose title references Jerry Jeff Walker’s song “Mr. Bojangles” (here with an excellent interpretation by Marlon Williams who gives it a Nick Drake touch), never loses its lightness, even in the saddest moments. Duris, who also joined the director Régis Roinsard in Populaire (2012), and Efira, hold to their characters with absolute commitment.

Decision to Leave (2022)

Direction: Park Chan-wook
Country: South Korea 

In Park Chan-wook's latest film, a seasoned detective (Park Hae-il) falls for an enigmatic widow (Tang Wei) while investigating the death of her husband. She becomes his primary suspect, but he’s suddenly torn between his drive to solve the case and the strong physical attraction that devours him whenever she’s around. 

Assuming the classic type, Decision to Leave is the perfect antidote to the recent glut of stylish yet brainless thrillers. Being more character-driven than investigative, the script co-written with regular collaborator Jeong Seo-kyeong, forces Chan-wook to step away from the creepiest thrillers that made him famous (Old Boy; The Vengeance Trilogy). Taking the form of a romantic cat-and-mouse neo-noir, the film never burns, but sizzles and smolders, opting to enhance passion and sorrow to the detriment of thrills and violence. To be more specific, think of a Hitchcockian detective story (the director took inspiration from Vertigo) bathed with the filmmaking elegance of Wong Kar-wai. Although more formal and less furious, like in the sensual The Handmaiden (2016), Chan-wook refuses to adhere to conventionality.

In an early stage, the proceedings are quite subtle and the pace a bit torpid, but knowing the director’s filmography, one should expect some surprises and bittersweet tones along the way. His originality here is the clarity in the filmmaking, even dealing with multiple layers and complex temporal shifts in the story. He meets his goal with an incredible eye for detail and the help of awesome leading actors.

Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul (2022)

Direction: Adamma Ebo
Country: USA 

This religious satire in the style of a mockumentary deals with disquieting topics such as hypocrisy, delirious ostentation, sexual scandals, and humiliation within a Southern Baptist church. But the script leaves you wanting something more. 

American-Nigerian writer-director Adamma Ebo carries her debut directorial feature with big ideas in mind but gets lost in a whirlwind of tonal inconsistencies. Her farcical depiction is obviously seen as a reprehension, but the narrative process - employing slapsticky dramatic sequences in reference to embarrassing situations, as well as on-screen descriptions - becomes a bit exhausted in its last third, when the film heavily decays. Also, no big laughs were found here, just some corrosive smiles that could have been taken further if the director had stuck with that particular tone.

Overall, the film should please iconoclastic crowds of disbelievers and get people thinking, talking and arguing. Actors Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall, who embody a proud yet sinful pastor and the recurrently humiliated first lady, respectively, are the real deal and even rap along to Crime Mob’s “Knuck If You Buck”. They conspire to reopen their megachurch and regain the heart of thousands of worshipers lost to a younger couple of preachers. 

Honk for Jesus has painful truths in it, but even eschewing the sort of cynical, tasteless jokes that a project of this nature would naturally attract, it would need some ingenious twists besides the obvious to succeed. What it lacks in vision, it narrowly makes up for with entertainment.