October
7th might be the most evil date in the calendar. Obviously, it has
become infamous for the Hamas’s horrific 2023 terror attacks. Furthermore, in
2006, independent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was ruthlessly gunned
down, in a blatantly politically motivated assassination, on October 7th—a
date possibly selected as a “birthday gift” for Putin, who was indeed born on
that very date. It was a tragedy, an outrage, and a precursor of worse atrocities
to come. Politskaya’s idea of journalism was telling the truth, without fear or
favor. Not surprisingly, that incurred the Putin regime’s wrath, as viewers
witness in James Strong’s biographical drama, Words of War, which opens
today in New York.
Politkovskaya
wrote for Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s only editorially independent
newspaper, edited by Dmitry Muratov, a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in
2021. Muratov is a muckraker at heart, but even he worries about the risks
Politkovskaya takes. Frequently reporting from the battlefields of Russia’s
dirty war in Chechnya, she earns the Chechens’ trust revealing Russian war
crimes. She also earns Russian military’s hostility and several beatings.
Her
family is not necessarily thrilled with her new notoriety, especially her son
Ilya. Her semi-estranged husband Alexander somewhat resents seeing her
journalistic prestige eclipsing his own. Yet, he makes a point of recording the
death threats she receives, which becomes almost a full-time job. Thanks to the
credibility she established, the Chechen militia hostage-takers requested her
as a mediator during the Moscow Theater Siege, so she saw first-hand how the
Russian police killed 132 innocent civilians through their use of an opioid-derived
chemical agent.
The
film begins with the first attempt on Politkovskaya’s life, an airliner
poisoning that eerily parallels the 2020 attempted assassination of Alexei
Navalny, and then rewinds to show the why’s and how’s. Frankly, it really
starts with a bang, because her escape from the compromised hospital,
engineered by Muratov and her grown children, Ilya and Vera, is a true white-knuckle
sequence.
It is
also worth noting Words of War never indulges in hagiography. As
portrayed by the aptly cast Maxine Peake, Politkovskaya is often difficult, but
always acutely human. She is also more right than wrong, at least on the big-picture
issues.
If you
don’t know how it ends, then the Kremlin would like to commend you on your choice
of news sources. For the rest of us who understand what is coming, it still
lands as a gut-punch, because it is so cold and cruel. We can’t say we weren’t
warned. What happened to Politkovskaya happened to Navalny and the war crimes
committed in Chechnya were repeated in Ukraine.
He is
an exorcist who relies on his bare fists. When the devil needs a good
butt-kicking, who you gonna call? Don Lee (Ma Dong-seok), that’s who. Technically,
Bow’s associate Sharon does all the spiritual casting out of demons, but he is
the one who holds off the hordes of satanic mortal followers. Frighteningly,
business is brisk in Lim Dae-hee’s Holy Night: Demon Hunters, which
opens Friday in theaters.
Ominously,
the mortal “Worshippers” have recently sacrificed quite a few innocents under
the direction of the shadowy “Archbishop.” Clearly, they are preparing
something big. Bow fears it involves the unseen Joseph (seriously guys?), his
fellow orphan, who was also “blessed” with elevated mojo, but gave himself over
to the evil one.
Determined
to avenge the nuns and orphans Joseph murdered, Bow dedicated his life to
demon-fighting, with the help of his associates, Sharon and Kim Gun, two
intended sacrifices he rescued. Sharon has the ability to operate on higher spiritual
planes, but each exorcism takes a painful toll on her, physically and
emotionally.
Young
Eun-soo is an especially difficult case. She does not lack for good medical
care, since her guardian older sister Jung-won is a neuro-psychiatrist.
However, being a sensitive orphan makes Eun-soo particularly vulnerable to
possession. In fact, the demon has dug in so deeply, Bow’s team must return to
the scene of the crime, the sisters’ new home, where something very sinister is
going on.
It
could very well be that Lim and Lee learned an important lesson from Schwarzenegger’s
only horror movie, End of Days. It is not a film that has a lot of haters,
but by the same token, few really embraced it either. For his fans, it just
doesn’t feel like a Schwarzenegger movie. In contrast, Holy Night is a
Don Lee movie, through and through. We often see him hitting Worshippers so
hard they literally fly through the air. He dishes out to the satanists like
they are gangsters in his Beast Cop/Roundup franchise.
She was
the Oracle of Twin Peaks. The show wouldn’t be the same without her or
David Lynch. Sadly and strangely, the 2015 return almost happened without either
of them. Wisely, Showtime came to their senses and brought Lynch back on-board
after previously deciding to proceed without him. There is no way Lynch would
have left out his old friend Catherine Coulson, a.k.a. the Log Lady, but accommodations
had to be made for her failing health. Friends and fellow cast-members pay tribute
to Coulson in Richard Green’s documentary, I Know Catherine, the Log Lady,
which has several special screenings starting today in New York.
Eraserhead
started her long,
close association with Lynch, even though her scenes were cut from the film. Instead,
she played key roles behind the camera, which turned into an unlikely career
for the academically trained thesp, who notably served as Eraserhead cinematographer
Frederick Elmes’ focus puller on Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.
Coulson
also happened to be married to Jack Nance, the lead on Eraserhead, but that
marriage would not last. Perhaps ill-advisedly, Green (who played the Magician
in Mulholland Drive) spends a lot of time on Coulson’s hippy early days in
the 1960s, perhaps not realizing the extent to which he alienates the children
of Vietnam vets and Vietnamese “Boat People” refugees, but the Twin Peaks sequences
are redemptive.
There is
indeed extensive footage of Lynch, Kyle MacLachlan, and Michael Horse. The
latter might not have had the most PR at the height of the show’s success, his
character had a special rapport with the Log Lady, so his presence is quite
fitting. However, the three cast-members who graced the cover of Rolling
Stone are absent and unaccounted for.
Of course,
Nance (Pete Martell in Twin Peaks) only appears in archival footage,
since he passed away in 1996. Green also documented his life in the film I
Don’t Know Jack. Regardless, colleagues and fans all explain how Coulson
was the glue that held the Twin Peaks community together during the
wilderness years. Consequently, even casual fans will get choked up when the
second unit crew describes Coulson’s grit and grace filming her scenes for the revival
series, shortly before her death.
