movie gourmet

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Tim Blake Nelson in OLD HENRY. Courtesy of Shout! Factory.

Three new movies in theaters this week, but I’m only recommending one of them. Of course, I’ll try to catch the new James Bond movie, the last with Daniel Craig, No Time to Die.

I just got back from covering the Nashville Film Festival, and here’s my preview of the Mill Valley Film Festival, opening tonight.

IN THEATERS

Old Henry: If you appreciate a good western, then Old Henry is your movie.  The big shootout is thrilling, and Tim Blake Nelson is so good as a man who knows he can’t have redemption and only seeks some solace. Old Henry is now playing nationally, including for one-week run at San Francisco’s Roxie.

The Nowhere Inn: In this comedy, Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia) plays herself directing a documentary about her real life friend, the avant-garde musician Annie Clark, who performs as St. Vincent. These are two smart and talented women, and the movie is maybe half as funny as they are. If you need a dose of St. Vincent’s sexy vibrancy, then watch her perform instead.

Titane: Demented, icky and excessive, the Cannes Palme d’Or winner is intentionally unpleasant to watch. A maniac stripper has sex with, and becomes impregnated by, a Cadillac; she’s also a serial killer with a fetish for impaling her victims. I felt punished, even tortured, when I was watching Titane.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

Sandra Guldberg Kampp in WILDLAND. Photo courtesy of BAC Films.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

ON TV

Edmond O’Brien in D.O.A.

On October 13, Turner Classic Movies brings us one of my favorites – 83 minutes of noir hysteria titled D.O.A. This gripping whodunit opens with a man walking into a police station to report HIS OWN MURDER. The man (Edmond O’Brien) finds out that he has been dosed with a poison for which there is no antidote – and that he has only a few days to live. He desperately races the clock to find out who has murdered him and why. Much of D.O.A. was shot on location in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and one SF scene has one of the first cinematic glimpses into Beat culture. The little known director Rudolph Maté gave the film a great look, which shouldn’t be a surprise because Maté had been Oscar-nominated five times as a cinematographer. The next year, he followed D.O.A. with another solid noir, Union Station, with William Holden and Barry Fitzgerald.

OLD HENRY: too late for redemption

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Photo caption: Tim Blake Nelson in OLD HENRY. Courtesy of Shout! Factory.

The fine western Old Henry is centered on Henry (Tim Blake Nelson), a widowed settler in the wilds of 1906 Oklahoma.  Henry is content with being a solitary sod buster, but he has serious skills from a violent past, and both the past and the skills are unknown to his teen son (Gavin Lewis).  The son is brash and impulsive, and desperate to escape the drudgery and isolation of the homestead.

A man badly wounded by a gunshot (Scott Haze) turns up with a satchel full of cash ( (obviously contraband).  Henry nurses him, and chooses to hide him when three armed men show up, led by Ketchum ( Stephen Dorff), who claims to be a sheriff.  Ketchum knows that his target is in Henry’s cabin, and he recognizes that Henry is more than a dirt farmer.  When Ketchum returns with reinforcements, a climactic gun battle is inevitable.

One wild card is the wounded man, with his uncertain identity and motives.  Another is the son, rigorously sheltered by Henry and ignorant of the cost of real violence.  He’s spoiling to get into a fight  – and that is not helpful.

Tim Blake Nelson, with nary a wasted word or action, commands the screen as the ever steely Henry. I saw Old Henry in personat the Nashville Film Festival,  where Nelson revealed that his performance was informed by “restraint and stillness” because, for Henry, “any exposure means vulnerability”.  So, Blake made Henry “laconic in actions as well as words”.  

Nelson is a magnificent actor, who has elevated many a character role (Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?).  Here he gets the lead role in a movie that premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Good for him.

Old Henry is the the first feature written and directed by Potsy Ponciroli. And it’s a well-crafted film.  The filmmakers get the period right.  The art direction and the production design are flawless, and the weapons have the necessary heft.  Old Henry was filmed on a cattle farm in Tennessee, but it sure looks like Oklahoma. 

If you appreciate a good western, then Old Henry is your movie.  The big shootout is thrilling, and Tim Blake Nelson is so good as a man who knows he can’t have redemption and only seeks some solace. Old Henry is now playing nationally, including for one-week run at San Francisco’s Roxie.

TITANE: demented, excessive and icky

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Photo caption: Agathe Rousselle and Caddy in TITANE. Courtesy of NEON.

I don’t think I’ve ever before described a movie-going experience as “punishing”, but here goes.  After being assaulted by the French sci fi horror film Titane, which purports to be two portraits of abnormal psychology, I felt beaten, even tortured.

The headstrong child Alexia causes an auto accident and gets a platinum plate in her skull.  She grows into a stripper at car shows (Agathe Rousselle), and has a serious automobile fetish.  In Titane’s most notorious scene, Alexia gives a new meaning to auto-eroticism by having sex with, and becoming impregnated by, a Cadillac.  

Alexia is also a serial killer, and her second signature fetish is impaling her victims.  She keeps a spike in her hair for this purpose, but a bar stool will suffice, too. One victim gets away and indemnified her, so Alexia changed her appearance and goes underground as a young man. Here, she happens on a beefy fire captain (Vincent Lindon), who is grieving for a son who disappeared ten years ago, and adopts Alexia as his long lost, now recovered, son.

Through much of Titane, we are asking WTF is going on? Writer-diretor Julia Ducournau keeps surprising us by piling on segments that are SO twisted and bizarre, that most of us could not imagine them.

Most of Titane is intentionally unpleasant to watch.  Characters bleed blood, unless they bleed motor oil.  Bones crunch, mouths froth and bellies are picked open. The murders are gory, and Alexia self mutilates as her pregnancy progresses, right up to an excruciating birth scene.

Oh, and let me be very clear about this, Titane is NOT a date movie.

The character of Alexia is just a bad seed, a feral maniac. The character of the troubled fire captain is also bizarre, but he’s more psychologically interesting.  He insists that everyone else accept what is clearly a delusion.  Does he understand that this is not his son?

Vincent Lindon in TITANE. Courtesy of NEON.

Lindon (who muscled up for the role) is superb in this crazy role, which requires him to exude command authority and also the deepest vulnerability. It’s a very brave performance, and it works, for example, in his solo dance to She’s Not There. 

Myriem Akheddiou is also excellent in a brief scene as the mother of the fire captain’s missing child.

I know my share of American firefighters.  They would be surprised by Titane’s French firefighters, who let off steam by getting high and holding raves in the firehouse, all hypnotically dancing to electronica.

Notably, Titane won the Palme d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. While one of the two most prestigious prizes in cinema (along with the Best Picture Oscar), the Palme d’Or is no guarantee that a movie is great – or even watchable. On the positive side, recent winners have included the superb Parasite, Shoplifters, Amour, Blue Is the Warmest Color and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. On the unfathomably bad side, cinematic excrement like The White Ribbon, The Tree of Life, Dancer in the Dark, and now Titane – has also won.

The critical consensus is far too kind to Titane.  Many critics correctly label what had come out of  Julia Ducournau’s mind as “demented” and then credit her for the visual excess in telling an unbearably icky story.  It’s just demented, excessive and icky.

THE NOWHERE INN: watch a St. Vincent performance instead

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Photo caption: Annie Clark (St. Vincent) and Carrie Brownstein in THE NOWHERE INN. Courtesy of IFC Films.

The Nowhere Inn is a comedy about the making of a fictional showbiz documentary.   Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia) plays herself directing a documentary about her real life friend, the avant-garde musician Annie Clark, who performs as St. Vincent.  (Bill Benz is the actual director of The Nowhere Inn.)

Now here’s the best part of The Nowhere Inn.  We see snippets of St. Vincent’s dazzling performances.  And, even when off stage, the camera loves Annie Clark and her magnetism

In The Nowhere Inn, Annie Clark sees herself, when not “on” as St. Vincent,  as an introvert who gets pleasure from mundane pursuits like eating radishes. That creates tension with Brownstein, who needs more interesting back stage content for the doc.  The two get increasingly annoyed with each other until Brownstein ambushes Clark with a situation that is too emotionally raw. 

This is witty and all mildly amusing. And then The Nowhere Inn gets sillier, as Clark and a famous sexpot actress show up in black lingerie (the actress deadpans “Annie turned me gay”) and force Brownstein to film their amorous play.  Then there’s a Texas segment which looks like a late night comedy sketch shoehorned in – which it is.

These are two smart and talented women, and the movie is maybe half as funny as they are.  If you need a dose of St. Vincent’s sexy vibrancy, then watch her perform instead.

MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL: see ’em here first

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Photo caption: Simon Rex in Sean Baker’s RED ROCKET, paying at the Mill Valley Film Festival. Photo courtesy of A24.

The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) is always the best opportunity for Bay Area film goers to catch an early look at the Big Movies – the prestige films that will be released during Award Season. This year’s fest runs from October 7 through October 17.

The biggest movies playing at this year’s MVFF:

  • Red Rocket: a Cannes hit from Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine).
  • Dune: Denis Villeneuve’s take on Frank Herbert’s epic science fiction novel.
  • Parallel Mothers: Pedro Almodovar’s latest, with Penelope Cruz.
  • Spencer: Kristin Stewart as Princess Di.
  • Belfast: Kenneth Branagh’s period coming of age film set amidst Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Branagh will appear in person at the MVFF.
  • C’mon C’mon : Joaquin Phoenix’s performance has been described as “endearing” (huh?). Also wih Gaby Hoffmann.
  • The French Dispatch: If you can bear to sit through another of Wes Anderson’s star-studded, overly precious self-indulgences, here it is.
  • A Hero: The latest from Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, The Salesman).

The slate of documentaries includes:

  • The Velvet Underground: Todd Haynes (Carol, Far from Heaven) looks at the seminal band.
  • Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres: About the pioneering rock journalist.
  • Becoming Costeau: About the iconic Jacques Costeau, popularizing the worlds under the surfaces of our oceans.

Last year, MVFF brought us the year’s two most honored films: Nomadland and The Father. In 2019, MVFF showcased five films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: the winner Parasite, along with Marriage Story, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit and Ford vs. Ferrari. The 2018 festival featured Roma, Green Book, Shoplifters, If Beale Street Could Talk and Cold War; those five films combined for 28 Oscar nominations and 7 Oscars. You get the idea.

Take a look at the Mill Valley Film Festival program. Here’s the trailer for Parallel Mothers.

Movies to See Right Now

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Sylvie Mix and Bobbi Kitten in POSER, playing at the Nashville Film Festival, Photo courtesy of the Nashville Film Festival.

I’m in Music City for the Nashville Film Festival, which is both an in-person and on-line event. Check out my coverage so far:

IN THEATERS

Without Getting Killed or Caught: This lyrical documentary traces the lives of singer-songwriter Guy Clark and his painter-songwriter wife Susanna. Their roommate was troubled songwriter Townes Van Zandt, Guy’s best friend and Susanna’s soulmate. This is a film about an unusual web of relationships amidst the creative process. It’s already slipped out of Bay Area theaters, but I’ll let you know when it streams.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

Wildland: A teenage girl is orphaned and is placed with relatives that she doesn’t really know. She gradually learns that the family, headed by her mom’s estranged sister is a ruthless criminal enterprise. Wildland simmers and evolves into a nail biter right up to its noir-stained epilogue. Laemmle.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

ON TV

Levon Helm at left and Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter

Turner Classic Movies is aligned with my trip to Nashville, the Ground Zero of Country music. On October 4, TCM airs Coal Miner’s Daughter, one of my 5 Great Hillbilly Movies. Sissy Spacek won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Loretta Lynn in this successful biopic.  In an early major role, Tommy Lee Jones plays Loretta’s husband Mooney.  Levon Helm, the Arkansas-bred drummer for The Band has one of his rare but compelling film roles as Loretta’s Daddy.  Besides the performances, the movie works because Loretta must grow from nobody to star, girl to woman and hick to worldly.

Coal Miner’s Daughter was one of the big Hollywood movies directed by Michael Apted, whose 7 Up series is one of the most significant documentary series in cinema history.

Under the radar at the Nashville Film Festival

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POSER. Courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

The Nashville Film Festival, opening today, has its share of high-profile movies (notably Spencer), but don’t miss the gems that are screening under the radar. Here are my picks, including the festival’s Must See film, Poser. These movies are why we go to film festivals.

POSER. Courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

Poser: This deeply psychological portrait of an artistic wannabe among real artists is the Must See at this year’s Nashville Film Festival. Lennon (Sylvie Mix) reveres the underground music scene of Columbus, Ohio’s Old North (which she compares to Renaissance Florence). Her entrée is a podcast, which allows her to meet a panoply of local artists, including Bobbi Kitten, the charismatic front woman of the real life band Damn the Witch Siren. At first, we chuckle and cringe at Lennon, until it becomes apparent that a much darker personal plagiarism is afoot and Poser evolves into a thriller. A shot of the recording of a train’s sounds is indelibly chilling. Be prepared to be creeped out by Mix’s performance and to be dazzled by Bobbi Kitten. Poser is the first narrative feature for directors Ori Segev and Noah Dixon (Dixon wrote the screenplay), Mix, Kitten and damn near the entire cast and crew, and it’s packed with original music. Must See.

THE TALE OF KING CRAB. Courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

The Tale of King Crab, a story-telling masterpiece from Italy, begins with old Italian guys rehashing a legend, correcting each other on the details. That story concerns Luciano (Gabriele Silli), the town’s smartest and most interesting man – and also the local drunk. Luciano fixates on a grievance – the closing of a shortcut for shepherds. In spite of his own anti-social bent (and matted beard), Luciano he falls into a romance. The grievance, the romance and his alcoholism combine to precipitate an accidental tragedy. We next see a sober and guilt-ridden Luciano searching for buried treasure at the barren tip of South America. This is an operatic fable, exquisitely told. The Tale of King Crab is the first narrative feature for writer-directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis and for cinematographer Simone D’Arcangelo. D’Arcangelo’s work, in vibrant Lazio and desolate Tierra del Fuego, is stunning.

FAYE. Courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

Faye: Filmmakers Kd Amond and Sarah Zanotti have ingeniously braided horror elements into an unexpectedly funny grief movie. Faye (Zanotti) is a best-selling author who is paralyzed by grief. She holes up at her editor’s vacation house in a Louisiana bayou to get herself writing again – her own personal Overlook Hotel. So, we have a woman isolated in a swamp, and she can hear things go bump in the night and the neighbors’ chainsaws. The first thing we notice about Faye is that she is talking to someone who isn’t there – her dead husband. As we listen to Faye (ironically, a self-help author) talking herself though the stages of grief, her sanity goes on a roller coaster and Faye takes on the look and feel of a horror movie. That idea, the exquisite editing and Zanotti’s’s performance makes spending 83 minutes with a neurotic woman eminently watchable.

CLEAN SLATE. Courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

Clean Slate: In this clear-eyed documentary, Cassidy and Josh are living in a faith-based recovery program – the kind you need to avoid incarceration. They are working to make a short film about the program. It’s stressful enough to make an indie film – finding a no-budget cast and crew, braving torrential downpours while shooting exteriors, and wrangling a roadkill armadillo. But more than a movie is at stake with these guys – they’re both hanging on to their sobriety by their fingernails. Like living with an addict, Clean Slate has its heartbreaking moments. Over 23 million Americans are living in long-term recovery from addiction. Clean Slate is the rare film that explores the connection between relapse and recovery – and it’s a cliff hanger.

Here’s how to find these nuggets:

  • The Tale of King Crab is screening in-person at Nash Fest.
  • Poser and Faye are screening in-person and streaming within the Southeastern United States (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina).
  • Clean Slate is screening in-person and streaming within the United States.

Check out the program and buy tickets at the festival’s Film Guide. Watch this space for Nashville Film Festival recommendations (both in-person and on-line) and follow me on Twitter for the latest.

The Nashville Film Festival – in your home

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Bo Maguire in his film SOCKS ON FIRE. Photo courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

The 52nd Nashville Film Festival opens today – in Nashville and on your personal device. Nash Fest is a hybrid in-person and on-line event, which means that you can watch some of the films through October 6 without even traveling to Nashville.

These Nash Fest films can be streamed anywhere in the United States:

  • Socks on Fire is Bo McGuire’s tale of his own family’s inheritance battle over a Hokes Bluff, Alabama, bungalow. The family of church-going Bama football fans – and one drag queen – is jarred and wounded by the mean behavior of one aunt. Enriched by old home movies and re-enactments, this ain’t your conventional talking head documentary. Socks on Fire swings between funny and operatic, and there’s a sweet remembrance of a grandmother in here, too. Won Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival.
  • Clean Slate: In this clear-eyed documentary, Cassidy and Josh are living in a faith-based recovery program – the kind you need to avoid incarceration. They are working to make a short film about the program. It’s stressful enough to make an indie film – finding a no-budget cast and crew, braving torrential downpours while shooting exteriors, and wrangling a roadkill armadillo. But more than a movie is at stake with these guys – they’re both hanging on to their sobriety by their fingernails. Like living with an addict, Clean Slate has its heartbreaking moments. Over 23 million Americans are living in long-term recovery from addiction. Clean Slate is the rare film that explores the connection between relapse and recovery – and it’s a cliff hanger.
  • Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine has the best title at the festival and must be the trippiest movie. A worker on a cruise ship touring Patagonia opens a door in the crew quarters and finds himself inside a Montevideo apartment. There’s a parallel story set in the Philippines highlands where villagers find a mysterious concrete shed. How do people react to a portal that disrupts the space-time continuum? The film hails from Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Netherlands and the Philippines.
  • Fable of a Song is a documentary about the writing of a song; this film was originally intended to document the creative process, but real life intervenes both to stagger the artists and to impact the very meaning of the song’s lyrics. There’s an insider’s peek into a cowrite, where professional songwriters take a glimmer of inspiration and work over two days to form it into a complete song. In a no-dry-eye moment, the song is performed for its subject in a personal studio concert.
  • Adventures in Success: This broad comedy traces the misadventures of a self-help retreat center led by a self-described energy transformationist who claims to have experienced a 12-hour orgasm. Her movement is centered on the female orgasm, the mantra is Jilling Off, and the sessions are essentially orgies where men are not allowed to ejaculate. Opens with an impressive 28-second performance of urination art.
Sylvie Mix and Bobbi Kitten in POSER: Courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

These films can be streamed anywhere in the Southeastern United States (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina):

  • Poser: This deeply psychological portrait of an artistic wannabe among real artists is the Must See at this year’s Nashville Film Festival. Lennon (Sylvie Mix) reveres the underground music scene of Columbus, Ohio’s Old North (which she compares to Renaissance Florence). Her entrée is a podcast, which allows her to meet a panoply of local artists, including Bobbi Kitten, the charismatic front woman of the real life band Damn the Witch Siren. At first, we chuckle and cringe at Lennon, until it becomes apparent that a much darker personal plagiarism is afoot and Poser evolves into a thriller. A shot of the recording of a train’s sounds is indelibly chilling. Be prepared to be creeped out by Mix’s performance and to be dazzled by Bobbi Kitten. Poser is the first narrative feature for directors Ori Segev and Noah Dixon (Dixon wrote the screenplay), Mix, Kitten and damn near the entire cast and crew, and it’s packed with original music. Must See.
  • Faye: Filmmakers Kd Amond and Sarah Zanotti have ingeniously braided horror elements into an unexpectedly funny grief movie. Faye (Zanotti) is a best-selling author who is paralyzed by grief. She holes up at her editor’s vacation house in a Louisiana bayou to get herself writing again – her own personal Overlook Hotel. So, we have a woman isolated in a swamp, and she can hear things go bump in the night and the neighbors’ chainsaws. The first thing we notice about Faye is that she is talking to someone who isn’t there – her dead husband. As we listen to Faye (ironically, a self-help author) talking herself though the stages of grief, her sanity goes on a roller coaster and Faye takes on the look and feel of a horror movie. That idea, the exquisite editing and Zanotti’s’s performance makes spending 83 minutes with a neurotic woman eminently watchable.
  • The Neutral Ground: In this pointed documentary, C.J. Hunt explores the continuing legacy of Confederate monuments in America. Hunt, a producer for The Daily Show, started out to make a snarky YouTube video, but he found himself drawn more deeply into the history of Confederate monuments, so intentionally braided with white supremacy.  Hunt is fascinated by the chorus of White Southerners advocating for the preservation of Confederate monuments, all claiming that the Civil War was not about slavery. Hunt probes the disconnect between historical fact and the Lost Cause lie – and his own racial consciousness.
  • Fanny: The Right to Rock documents the first all-female rock band to get signed by a major record label and churn out five albums. Fifty years ago, the band Fanny was breaking ground for women musicians – and for lesbians and Filipinas. These women can still really rock in their 70s, and they’re a hoot.

Check out the program and buy tickets at the festival’s Film Guide. Watch this space for Nashville Film Festival recommendations (both in-person and on-line) and follow me on Twitter for the latest.

CJ Hunt in THE NEUTRAL GROUND. Courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

WITHOUT GETTING KILLED OR CAUGHT: her soul and her heart

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Guy Clark holds his favorite photo of Susanna Clark in WITHOUT GETTING KILLED OR CAUGHT

The lyrical documentary Without Getting Killed or Caught is centered on the life of seminal singer-songwriter Guy Clark, a poetic giant of Americana and folk music. That would be enough grist for a fine doc, but Without Getting Killed or Caught also focuses on Clark’s wife, Susanna Clark, a talented painter (album covers for Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris) and songwriter herself (#1 hit I’ll Be Your San Antone Rose). What’s more, Guy’s best friend, the troubled songwriter Townes Van Zandt, and Susanna revered each other. Van Zandt periodically lived with the Clarks – that’s a lot of creativity in that house – and a lots of strong feelings.

Susanna Clark said it thus, “one is my soul and the other is my heart.”

The three held a salon in their Nashville home, and mentored the likes of Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle. You can the flavor of the salon in the 1976 documentary Heartworn Highways (AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube). It features Townes Van Zandt’s rendition of his Waitin’ Round to Die. (Susanna was also a muse for Rodney Crowell, who, after her death, wrote the angry song Life Without Susanna.)

Documentarians Tamara Saviano and Paul Whitfield, have unearthed a great story, primarily sourced by Susanna’s diaries; Sissy Spacek voices Susanna’s words. These were artsy folks so there are plenty of exquisite photos of the subjects, too. It all adds up to a beautiful film, spinning the story of these storytellers.

Guy and Susanna Clark in WITHOUT GETTING KILLED OR CAUGHT

I loved this movie, but I’m having trouble projecting its appeal to a general audience, because I am so emotionally engaged with the subject material. I’m guessing that the unusual web of relationships and the exploration of the creative process is universal enough for any audience, even if you’re not a fanboy like me.

The title comes from Guy’s song LA Freeway, a hit for Jerry Jeff Walker:

I can just get off of this L.A. freeway

Without gettin’ killed or caught

There is plenty for us Guy Clarkophiles:

  • the back story for Desperados Waiting for a Train;
  • the identity of LA Freeway’s Skinny Dennis;
  • Guy’s final return from touring, with the declaration “let’s recap”.

There’s also the story of Guy’s ashes; the final resolution is not explicit in the movie but you can figure it out; here’s the story.

Without Getting Killed or Caught is in very limited theatrical run; I saw at the Balboa in its last Bay Area screening.

WILDLAND: giving family ties a bad name

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Photo caption: Sandra Guldberg Kampp in WILDLAND. Photo courtesy of BAC Films.

In the remarkable Danish neo-noir Wildland, teenage Ida (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) is orphaned and is placed with relatives that she doesn’t really know. She gradually learns that the family, headed by her mom’s estranged sister (Sidse Babett Knudsen) is a ruthless criminal enterprise.

Will Ida become entangled in a life of crime? Can she escape? Wildland simmers and evolves into a nail biter right up to its noir-stained epilogue.

WILDLAND. Photo courtesy of Snowglobe.

Wildland is a study in both study in teen psychology (why doesn’t she report these criminals?) and in dysfunctional family dynamics. The aunt is the indisputable matriarch, and not only runs the crime crew like Tony Soprano, but also seeks to control the personal lives of her adult sons. She infantilizes them, keeps them all living on her house and expects to pick their romantic partners. Jonas (Joachim Fjelstrup), the oldest and most functional-appearing son, is always affable and seems in control – until his mother has a conflicting whim.

Sidse Babett Knudsen was Mads Mikkelsen’s co-star in Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding, which I pegged as the second-best movie of its year. Playing a prime minister, she was the lead in the political drama series Borgen, a huge, 30-episode hit in Denmark and the UK. Here, Knudson goes downscale as a trashy, middle-aged mom, still with a saucy walk; she’s always in control – until she isn’t.

Sandra Guldberg Kampp, with her watchful and ever-observant demeanor is perfect as Ida. This is a breakthrough, possibly star-making, performance.

Wildland is the first feature for director Jeanette Nordahl, who also had the idea for the story. The movie’s original Danish title Kød & Blod literally translates as Flesh and Blood.

Wildland has been compared to the Aussie neo-noir Animal Kingdom, which garnered Jacki Weaver an Oscar nod as the ever-ebullient grandma who puts out a hit on her own grandson. Animal Kingdom also featured the crime matriarch with a set of thuggish sons and lots of suspense, but it featured more action than does Wildland – fence-jumping escapes and a shooting at the finale. Wildland is more deeply psychological.

Wildland is streaming on Virtual Cinema at Laemmle.