THE ISLAND BETWEEN THE TIDES: what dimension is this?

Paloma Kwiatkowski in THE ISLAND BETWEEN THE TIDES. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The Island Between the Tides: In this supernatural thriller, a young girl wanders away from her parents on the isolated British Columbia coastline and returns seemingly the same. As a young woman, she disappears again, and this time returns 20 years later, but at the same age as when she left. She’s trying to figure out what has happened, as is the family who has been grieving her loss for twenty years, not to mention her son, who is now older than she is. They and the audience are bouncing between the unsettling possible explanations of delusion and disassociation, ghosts or a dimension where beings move to and may be trapped in different times.

The story is based on the play Mary Rose by Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie, which I’ve read that Hitchcock wanted to adapt, but couldn’t overcome studio suits finding it “too troubling”. Impressive feature debut for writer-directors Austin Andrews and Andrew Holmes. 

Paloma Kwiatkowski is good as the protagonist, and she is ably supported by Donal Logue, Camille Sullivan and David Mazouz. I always enjoy Adam Beach, and here he gets to play a sunny, non-brooding role,

Cinequest hosts the world premiere as Cinequest’s opening night film. The Island Between the Tides is one of my Best of Cinequest.

OUR FATHER, THE DEVIL: can revenge extinguish trauma?

Photo caption: Babetida Sadjo in OUR FATHER, THE DEVIL. Courtesy of Cinedigm.

In the gripping drama Our Father, the Devil, an African immigrant in France is rocked when an African priest shows up in her workplace – and he could actually be the savage warlord who traumatized her in her homeland.

Marie (Babetida Sadjo) is the head chef at an elder care facility in a French mountain town. We see that Marie is talented, competent and kind. There are hints of trauma in her past – a hair trigger reaction to a possible threat, a scar on her back.

The new priest (Souleymane Sy Savane) shows up, and Marie fixes on his voice before she sees him and, before we see his face, she has positively identified him as the young commander from decades before. We wonder how she can be so certain, although that is later revealed.

Our Father, the Devil makes for a riveting character study of Marie that becomes a thriller when Marie gets extreme. We learn more and more about the back story – it’s not just her own victimization that has traumatized Marie. Does violence traumatize the perpetrators as well as the victims? And Our Father, the Devil ultimately poses this question – can revenge extinguish trauma?

Our Father, the Devil is the first feature for Cameroon-born, American writer-director Ellie Foumbi, and she’s both an impressive director and screenwriter.

Babetida Sadjo delivers a compelling performance as Marie, built on the intensity of her gaze and her extraordinarily expressive eyes.

Souleymane Sy Savane, so good in 2008 as the sympathetic, relatable lead in Ramin Bahrani’s fine Goodbye Solo, brings texture and depth to the priest – and his own evolving view of his past.

Our Father, the Devil benefits from interesting and filled-out minor characters – Marie’s dying mentor Jeanne Guyot (Martine Amisse), her cheeky best friend Nadia (Jennifer Tchiakpe), her love interest Arnaud (Franck Saurel), and even her stressed-out boss Sabine (Maelle Genet). There’s not a two-dimensional character or a poor performance in the lot.

Our Father, the Devil has been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and has won the best picture award at over13 film festivals. I saw Our Father, the Devil at the SLO Film Fest in April, where it also won the jury award for Best Narrative Feature, and it’s now streaming from AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.

FALLEN DRIVE: revenge noir with complications

Jakki Jandrell and Phillip Andre Botello in FALLEN DRIVE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The neo-noir thriller Fallen Drive begins with some 20-somethings congregating in a suburban Airbnb ranch house, having returned to their hometown for a high school reunion. It looks like the successful Liam is really more interested in reuniting with his mysteriously estranged younger brother Dustin. Tightly wound Charlie (Jakki Jandrell) and her boyfriend Reese (Phillip Andre Botello) arrive, and it’s apparent that they have an agenda that could be more grim than drinking with high school buddies.

Soon we are enmeshed in revenge noir, in a variation of the perfect crime film. Things get more intense – and more unpredictable – as the story evolves. There are Hitchcockian touches – he suspects us.

Fallen Drive is written and directed by Nick Cassidy (who also plays Liam) and David Rice; it’s the first feature for both. A very strong screenplay elevates Fallen Drive from the paint-by-numbers thriller we see so often. Here Cassidy and Rice have made the characters complicated and added some ambiguity to the back story. There are subtle hints about the relationships of Liam and Dustin and of Reese and Charlie, and the audience is asked to fill in the blanks. You’ll never guess the two characters driving off together at the end.

There’s also a minor character who still parties too much, who could have been written merely for comic relief; but Cassidy and Rice make it clear that his alcoholism has left him immature – that’s why he behaves like a jerk.

The performances are strong. Jandrell is superb as the coiled Charlie. Donald Clark Jr. is also excellent as Dustin, who the others have always found creepy. Cassidy makes for a sufficiently smirky Liam.

An uncommonly textured revenge thriller, Fallen Drive should be a crowd-pleaser. Cinequest is hosting the world premiere of Fallen Drive.

CHILE ’76: simmering suspense

Photo caption: Aline Kuppenheim in CHILE ’76. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Chile ’76 is a masterfully understated thriller set in the first days of Pinochet’s coup in Chile and the resultant reign of terror.

Carmen (Aline Kuppenheim), the wife of a prosperous Santiago physician, is away at the family’s beach house when she is approached by the small coastal town’s priest. Knowing that she has medical training, the priest asks her to secretly nurse a young man (Nicolás Sepúlveda) with a gunshot wound. The priest says that he is hiding the young man because he had become a petty criminal through hard luck and deserves a break; but Carmen is savvy enough enough to know that the young man must be a leftist who is hunted by Pinochet’s secret police. To care for the young man would be taking a grievous risk. If discovered, the consequences for Carmen, and perhaps for her family, would be unspeakable.

Carmen embraces the risk, and the tension simmers. The audience follows her, knowing that her secret could be uncovered at any moment. All the time, she is carrying on the appearance of a privileged matron, directing servants and focused on interior decorating and the children’s birthday cakes.

Chile ’76 is the first feature for director and co-writer Manuela Martelli. What Martelli achieves in Chile ’76 is a remarkably subtle suspenser, without jump scares or on-screen violence. Instead, Martelli builds tension in the minds of the audience, as we wonder if her phone is tapped and if she is being followed. Carmen’s each chance encounter becomes more sinister. Even the meticulous tissue wrapping of new store-bought shoes is chilling. Without seeing it, we are ever conscious of the horrors of merciless repression.

Aline Kuppenheim and Nicolás Sepúlveda in in CHILE ’76. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Aline Kuppenheim is excellent as Carmen, a cipher who seems so confident in her role as affluent doctor’s wife and grandmother. She likes her cigarettes and a drink, and lets others lead the cocktail party banter. Her family takes her presence for granted and would never suspect her of going on a potentially deadly secret mission.

So, why is Carmen doing this? There are clues. Although she is not overtly political, she doesn’t embrace the rightwing sentiments of her peers. She is a bit of a do-gooder, volunteering to read to the vulnerable. Because of her gender, she wasn’t able to choose a career more important (or dangerous). The answers are behind Carmen’s impassive affect. Still waters run deep.

Chile ’76 is all about how Kuppenheim’s Carmen navigates her situation. In deciding “where to look from”, Martelli says that she and cinematographer Yarará Rodríguez adopted a “rule…to always be with her, sometimes to look at her, and sometimes to look at what she was looking.”

(Back in 2004, Martelli was one of the kid actors in the fine coming of age film Machuca.)

Chile ’76 is now playing in select theaters, including in LA and the Bay Area.

KIMI: an adequate REAR WINDOWS ends as a thrilling WAIT UNTIL DARK

Photo caption: Zoe Kravitz in KIMI. Courtesy of HBO.

Steven Soderbergh is very good at making tight little thrillers, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In his Kimi, Angela (Zoe Kravitz) is a Seattle techie living and working in her loft apartment during the COVID lockdown, where she and the loft apartment dwellers across the street watch each other being locked down. But she’s not really trapped in her apartment by public health protocols, which have eased – she’s agoraphobic.

Angela works for a big, sinister tech firm that harvesting way too much private information from each of us and that is the basis for the paranoid facet of this paranoid thriller. She believes that she has heard a violent crime, as in an audio version of Rear Window. Now she knows too much, and she’s in danger.

Kimi is an okay paranoid thriller until the finale, when it turns into a superb action movie. It turns out that the tiny, sniveling Angela has some commando resourcefulness in her. The final set piece is like Wait Until Dark on steroids – very tight, very imaginative and very entertaining.

Kimi is streaming on HBO MAX.

on TV: ASHES AND DIAMONDS: a killer wants to stop

Photo caption: Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Coming up November 15 on Turner Classic Movies, a masterful director and his charismatic star ignite the war-end thriller Ashes and Diamonds, set amidst war-end treachery. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir.

It’s the end of WW II and the Red Army has almost completely liberated Poland from the Nazis. The future governance of Poland is now up in the air, and the Polish resistance can now stop killing Germans and start wrestling for control. Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is a young but experienced soldier in the Resistance. His commanders assign him to assassinate a communist leader.

Maciek is very good at targeted killing, but he’s weary of it. As he wants out, he finds love. But his commander is insisting on this one last hit.

This is Zbigniew Cybulski’s movie. Often compared to James Dean, Cybulski emanates electricity and unpredictability, Unusual for a leading man, he often wore glasses in his screen roles. He had only been screen acting for four years when he made Ashes and Diamonds. Cybulski died nine years later when hit by a train at age forty,

Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Andrzej Wajda fills the movie with striking visuals, such as viewing Maciek’s love interest, the waitress Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), alone amidst the detritus of last night’s party, through billows of cigarette smoke. Wajda’s triumphant signature is, literally, fireworks at the climax; the juxtaposition of the celebratory fireworks with Maciek’s emotional crisis is unforgettable.

Ewa Krzyzewska in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Wajda adapted a famous 1948 Polish novel into this 1958 movie. In the adaptation, the filmmaker changed the emphasis from one character to another.

Ashes and Diamonds was the third feature for Andrzej Wajda, who became a seminal Polish filmmaker and received an honorary Oscar. US audiences may remember his 1983 art house hit Danton with Gerard Depardieu.

Ashes and Diamonds can be streamed from Amazon and AppleTV. It was featured at the 2020 Noir City film festival.

Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

THE GRAY MAN: an action movie highlight show

Ryan Gosling in THE GRAY MAN. Courtesy of Netflix.

Ryan Gosling stars in the kickoff of a Netflix espionage thriller franchise, in The Gray Man. It’s a top rate action film directed by the Russo brothers, Anthony and Joe (Arrested Development, The Avengers and Captain America) .

Gosling plays a highly skilled covert operative with a back story thatreally doesn’t matter – just think of him as a renegade American James Bond.

There are six, count ’em, SIX, amazing action set pieces , at least as good as in any James Bond film. The effect is like watching an all-highlight show like ESPN’s Sportscenter, where every football clip is an amazing TD catch and every baseball clip is a walk-off home run. No need for much dialogue or character development in between, That’s okay – The Gray Man isn’t trying to be more than it is – glossy entertainment.

There’s a reason that Ryan Gosling is a Movie Star in the best sense of the phrase. He has a special charisma before the camera, and we are driven to watch him and to sympathize with him. Of course, he’s a remarkably versatile actor who can be heroic, stolid, sexy, dangerous, funny, lovelorn and even musical. Gosling has brought whatever was needed to excellent cinema like La La Land, Drive, The Ides of March, The Big Short, The Place Beyond the Pines and Crazy, Stupid Love, and even to crap like Gangster Squad, First Man and the execrable Only God Forgives. Gosling is a perfect choice to lead a franchise like The Gray Man, and his acting chops are not challenged here.

Netflix’s bankroll provides the Russos with an impressive cast. Chris Evans is a worthy villain to match up with Gosling, and Ana de Armas is a glamorous sidekick. The great Alfre Woodard, along with Billy Bob Thornton, show up in key roles. There’s a very brief flashback to a rotten father figure, close to a non-speaking part, and the Russos were able to utilize the always memorable Shea Whigham in this tiny part.

The supporting roles of Jessica Henwick (Nymeria Sand in Game of Thrones) and Tamil superstar Dhanush set them up for key roles in future chapters of the Gray Man franchise.

The Gray Man streams on Netflix.

DON’T WORRY, DARLING: misfire (but with Huell Howser’s cool house)

Don't Worry Darling (2022) - IMDb
Photo caption: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles in DON’T WORRY, DARLING. Courtesy of Warner Brothers.

Don’t Worry, Darling is a paranoid thriller that, most unfortunately, stops thrilling halfway through.  We’re in the late 1950s, and Alice (Florence Pugh) is a housewife married to Jack (pop star Harry Styles), an engineer.  They live in a company town, an idyllic, color-saturated suburb improbably planted in the remotest corner of the Mojave Desert.  All the men work on a highly secret R&D project, and no one is to leave the company’s property, “where it’s safe.

Everyone is going full Mad Men with cocktails and cigarettes, Alice and Jack are gloriously oversexed, and Don’t Worry, Darling sports a delightful period soundtrack.  It’s a much better Stepford Wives, only really hedonistic.  So far, so good.  

But Alice sees some things that are disturbing.  Is she hallucinating?  Or has she stumbled upon the company’s evil secret? During this Am I Going Crazy part of the movie, I started to think that this is taking way too long.  And then it got less and less interesting.

Part of the problem is heavy-handedness, with an unnecessarily overt Order vs Chaos message.  Poor Alice even utters the words, “you’re gaslighting me.” In case we don’t get it, I guess.
And there are (I think two) brief scenes with Alice and Jack at their same ages, but set in the present, where they are having a lot less fun.  These bits are confusing and superfluous.
None of this is the fault of Pugh or Styles.  It’s all in the increasingly less gripping and less coherent story.

Don’t Worry, Darling especially disappointed me because director Olivia Wilde and screenwriter Kate Silberman had previously collaborated on the smart and sweet Booksmart.

Olivia Wilde the actress is very good as the pack leader who wrangles the other wives.  Nick Kroll shines as her husband, a good timer who has drunk the Kool-Aid.  I always love seeing Chris Pine, and he’s predictably good here as the corporate leader admired by the other men to a cult-like degree.  Timothy Simons (Veep) is perfect as the company physician/enforcer.

My friend Keith that he was distracted from the story when he recognized the building that stands in for the evil corporation’s secret headquarters.  It turns out that it is a home in Twentynine Palms, California, owned by the late Huell Howser, the relentlessly affable host of California Gold, where each week he would discover another a-MAZ-ing roadside attraction.

All I’ll say about the film’s off-screen controversy is that no one would raise much fuss about a male movie director dating a much  younger female star, which has been going on since the birth of cinema.

Don’t Worry, Darling is in theaters.

WHAT WE DO NEXT: searing performances, as the dominoes fall

Corey Stoll in WHAT WE DO NEXT. Courtesy of Magano Movies and Media.

Writer-director Stephen Belber’s taut drama What We Do Next featured the best acting ensemble at Cinequest, with searing performances by Karen Pittman, Michelle Veintimilla and Corey Stoll.

I was familiar with Corey Stoll’s work since his turns in House of Cards and Homeland, but Karen Pittman (The Morning Show, Yellowstone) and Michelle Veintimilla (Seven Seconds, Gotham) were revelations.

The story unfolds in seven segments over a a span of years. It opens with Sandy (Pittman) compassionately counseling a teenage Elsa (Veintimilla) to survive abuse from Elsa’s father. Years later, the lawyer Paul (Stoll) reconnects with Sandy, now a rising NYC politician; the two game out how an innocent miscalculation years before could erupt into a career-killing political scandal today. Each of the characters becomes more entangled by the choices of the others, and the dominoes fall.

What We Do Next explores the difficulty that those traumatized and ill-equipped by upbringing have navigating the legal system and making constructive choices.

I am not unfamiliar with political crisis management, and most segments of the story rang true.

I attended What We Do Next’s world premiere at Cinequest, with Stephen Berber in attendance. After four days rehearsal in the producer’s backyard, What We Do Next was shot in six days – in a COVID bubble in Louisville. I’ll let you know when What We Do Next is released theatrically or on demand.

THE OUTFIT: no one is just what they seem to be

Photo caption: Mark Rylance in THE OUTFIT. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The Outfit is a satisfying period crime thriller with some big surprises. We’re in 1956 Chicago, and the accomplished actor Mark Rylance plays a very proper British maker of bespoke men’s suits, who allows local gangsters to have a secret drop box in the back of his modest shop. He and his assistant (Zoey Deutch), a young woman from the neighborhood, ask no questions.

Astonishingly polite, he does insist that everyone knows that he has been a Savile Row cutter, the more skilled artisan who cuts the fabric for men’s suits, not a tailor, who sews on the buttons.

The gangsters who own the drop box, however, come under a triple threat – the FBI, a competing mob and an inside rat. There’s an incriminating audiotape out there somewhere, which becomes the Macguffin in this story. Circumstances converge to trap our hero and his young assistant in the shop, where murderous gangsters are certain to do them in.

But, no one is just what they seem to be, and major plot twists tumble forth.

This is the directing debut for co-writer Graham Moore, who won a screenwriting Oscar for The Imitation Game, which starred Benedict Cumberbatch as mathematical genius Kenneth Turing. This time, Moore sets the entire film, every single shot, inside the same interior location; that makes for economic filmmaking, and the claustrophobia heightens the tension.

Mark Rylance is perfect as the very contained and ever civil craftsman plunged. into a desperate situation. Rylance, one of Britain’s seemingly endless stream of superb actors, came to broad attention (and to mine) in 2015 with the Thomas Cromwell historical series Wolf Hall and Bridge of Spies wth Tom Hanks. Since then, he’s starred in Dunkirk, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Don’t Look Up.

Zoey Deutch is likewise excellent as the saucy shopgirl with her own secrets. She was the best thing in the raucous comedy Zombieland: Double Tap, in which she practically reinvents the Dumb Blonde.

The rest of the cast is good, too. Simon Russell Beale, known for playing erudite Englishmen, gets to play a mid-century Chicago hood.

Don’t confuse this film with the 1974 neo-noir The Outfit with Robert Duvall, Linda Black and Joe Don Baker (which is also good). The 2022 The Outfit is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.