Tribeca ’22: Family Dinner

We need to get horror film directors some sort of group subscription to Discovery+, because they need to start developing healthier relationships with food. You would think there would be plenty of healthy eating in this film, because Simi’s Aunt Claudia is a nutritionist, but the ominous countdown to Easter dinner clearly implies something awful will be happening in screenwriter-director Peter Hengl’s Family Dinner, which screens during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Tired of getting bullied over her weight, Simi invited herself to Aunt Claudia’s rural Austrian farm over Easter break, in hopes she could get some personal weight-loss mentoring. The thing is, Claudia (an aunt by a marriage-now-divorced) is not as welcoming as Simi hoped—but her new husband Stefan is weirdly hospitable. Her cousin Filipp is probably downright hostile, but he isn’t getting along so well with his mother and Stefan either.

Despite some initial misgivings, Aunt Claudia agrees to help Simi, but her rigorous program borders on the draconian. It seems physically unhealthy and the mind games grow increasingly sinister. On the other hand, Stefan finds Simi more useful than Filipp during a hunting trip, so she has that positive reinforcement going for her.

There is a lot of slow-boiling in Family Dinner, but it is pretty clear what is it all heading towards. Not to be spoilery, but if you really think about the title, it is a dead giveaway. Unfortunately, Hengl expects the climax will be so shocking, it will make up for the slowness of the build and the lack of significant plot points.

Tribeca ’22: January

Early 1991 was an opportune time to be a film student in the Baltics, because history was exploding daily. It was also a dangerous time for the same reason. Jazis generally supports Latvian independence from their Soviet occupiers, but he has yet to mature to the point he can fully appreciate the gravity of the moment in Viesturs Kairiss’s January, which screens during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Jazis wants to be the next Tarkovsky, which would ordinarily alarm most parents, but his anti-Communist mother is fine with it, along as he gets a draft deferral from his film school. The last thing she wants is to have her son in the Soviet army, potentially in harm’s way, while putting down democratic opposition movements. His father also basically agrees, even though he is a Party member. Unfortunately, Jazis’s drive and talent level will complicate matters.

For a while, his affair with Anna, a pretty fellow film student awakens some passion in him. However, when she falls under the influence of a famous filmmaker, Jazis spirals into depression and apathy. Yet, maybe the Soviet military’s attempts to stifle Baltic activism for independence might awaken him from his lethargy.

Kairiss skillfully uses a textured lo-fi style (including Super8), integrated with genuine historical archival footage, to recreate the tenor of the early 1990s in the Baltics quite vividly and evocatively. You really get a sense of the tension and potential violence that was literally hinging in the air. In one telling moments, Jazis asks an elderly woman if she was scared to deliver the food she baked for demonstrators. “No, I’ve been waiting 50 years for this,” she tells him.

January is highly effective time capsule and mood piece, but Jazis is so moody and sulky, we hardly get a sense of any character there within him. Arguably, many of the minor figures, like Jazis’s parents, resonate more than he and his film school-mates.

Wyrm

In our world, there is already plenty of pressure on geeky middle school kids trying to ask someone out. In this alternate 1990s, Wyrm Whitner could be held back if he doesn’t get to first base fast. His electronic monitoring collar will know whether he lands that first kiss or not. Of course, his weird family drama is hardly helpful in screenwriter-director Christopher Winterbauer’s eccentric coming-of-age fantasy, Wyrm, which releases today on VOD and in theaters.

Whitner’s brother Dylan was the jock-hero of his high school, but he wasn’t such a great brother, or even much of a person. Nevertheless, Wyrm doggedly records audio tributes for Dylan’s one-year memorial, perhaps as an excuse for the embarrassing collar obviously still affixed around his neck. Unfortunately, his older sister Myrcella is not helping, even though she hangs out with Izzy, the new girl across the street. Instead, she is more interested in earning “credit” with the Norwegian exchange student and writing poison pen letters to their classmates.

Poor Wyrm is pretty much on his own, because neither of his parents are much of a presence in their lives anymore. Instead, their slacker Uncle Chet and his immigrant girlfriend Flor handle most of the parental duties. Maybe they aren’t perfect, but at least they are trying.

Wyrm works surprisingly well because Winterbauer maintains the logic of the “No Child Left Alone” system, while not boring us with the deep dive details. Admittedly, the obsession with preteens’ sexual development feels a little creepy, but the Last-American-Virgin-style drama is weirdly compelling. Perhaps inadvertently, it also maybe argues how mandates can be counter-productive. (It is also worth noting the actual “No Child Left Behind” program was not designed to put pressure on kids. It was intended to measure the effectiveness of their teachers, who started stressing their kids out to perform well, just to cover their butts, so riffing on its name in this context really isn’t fair.)

Lost Illusions, from the Prescient Balzac

At this point, we really shouldn’t accept newspaper reports as reliable primary sources. The Washington Post’s embarrassing controversies regarding stealth edits and misleading corrections are nothing new. Their imploding newsroom could totally relate to the poisoned-pen scribes at Le Corsaire-Satan. They traffic in gossip and sell their reviewers’ critical judgement to the highest bidder. The editor, Etienne Lousteau definitely shapes its stories to fit his preconceived “narratives,” until someone pays him to slant them differently. That is just fine with Lucien de Rubempre, until he finally believes he can attain the noble stature he believes is his birthright in Xavier Giannoli’s Balzac’s adaptation, Lost Illusions, which opens tomorrow in New York.

When people want to annoy de Rumpre, they call him Chardon, because that is technically his name and the name of his absent father, who ruined his blue-blooded mother. Like it or not, he is a commoner, so he should not be seen in compromising situations with Louise de Bargeton, the artistic patron for his poetry. Nevertheless, she brings him to Paris, risking a scandal that her older admirer, the Baron du Chatelet manages to suppress, at de Rumpre’s expense.

He was supposed to slink home to the provinces in disgrace. Instead, de Rumpre starts writing for Lousteau’s rabble-rousing anti-monarchist newspaper, quickly adapting to its advertorial ways. Yet, the corrupted poet cannot resist the temptation of vague promises to restore his family’s lost title.

While much of what transpires is tragic, the caustic characters and their unrestrained cynicism makes the film play more like a razor-sharp satire. Obviously, the portrayal of the media as deliberate misinformation peddlers could not be timelier. Given it was culled from Balzac’s The Human Comedy novel-cycle, Lost Illusions also clearly establishes the long-standing tradition mercenary journalistic ethics.

Dark Winds, in The Epoch Times

Tony Hillerman was a decorated WWII vet who largely popularized Southwest westerns. Nice to see a well-produced new take on his hardnosed Lt. Joe Leaphorn. EPOCH TIMES review of DARK WINDS now up here.

Offseason, on Shudder

Apparently, this small island community has brought New England-style weirdness to a Florida key. It would seem even cults built around Lovecraftian horror find the Florida economy more inviting. Marie Aldrich’s movie star mother made it clear she never wanted to return, not even to be buried. That is why the daughter was so shocked when her mother’s will stipulated she be laid to rest in the island’s cemetery. It also makes her especially annoyed when she is summoned to the tourist trap island, by the news her mother’s grave was desecrated. Of course, someone or something wants to lure her there in Mickey Keating’s Offseason, which premieres Friday on Shudder.

When Aldrich arrives with George Darrow, her close-to-being ex, the groundskeeper is nowhere to be found. The locals are not exactly friendly either. Darrow is understandably eager to leave the island before the drawbridge closes (or rather opens) for the duration of the offseason. However, a strange force keeps steering them into dead-ends.

Keating is very definitely an up-and-down filmmaker, but Offseason might his most successful film yet, in terms of crafting mood and atmosphere, even more so than Psychopaths and Darling. It is also probably his most polished film, so far.

There is definitely a lot of Shadow Over Innsmouth vibes going on. The flashbacks are mostly padding, but the film definitely mines the tight little island setting for maximum impact. Production designer Sabrena Allen-Biron notably contributes some memorably eerie analog sets and trappings that really give the film a distinctive look and texture.

Brace Yourself for Ninja Badass

The doughy, pasty-white ninjas of Indiana are about to wage an all-out war. Who will lose? Eventually everyone, but good taste and dignity will be the first casualties. Rex isn’t much of a ninja, but he will have to cowboy up if he wants to save the girl and stop the evil puppy-eating cannibal ninja cult in writer-director-everything-else Ryan Harrison’s Ninja Badass, which opens Friday in Los Angeles.

Rex is a screw-up, who is completely oblivious to his ineptitude. Nevertheless, when Big Twitty, the leader of the local chapter of the Ninja VIP Super Club, kidnaps the attractive woman from the pet store (along with their stock of puppies), Rex decides to “rescue” her back. Fortunately, Haskell, a relatively law-abiding ninja, agrees to tutor him, for revenge, after Big Twitty tears his arm off.

Of course, neither Rex or Haskell can walk and chew gum at the same time. However, Big Twitty’s estranged daughter Jojo is a match for her father. She has no illusions regarding Rex’s idiocy and incompetence, but she still reluctantly teams up with him.

Basically, Ninja Badass was made for people who find Troma movies too sophisticated and pretentious. It is chocked full of crude gore and deliberately cheesy superimposed special effects—including puppies going into the blender. Seriously, it makes The Greasy Strangler look like a drily witty Noel Coward comedy.

There is little point in submitting Ninja Badass to an in-depth critical analysis. It is meant to be ridiculous and shocking, which it is. However, a film like this running over one hundred minutes is just excessive. Honestly, after one hour, we totally get the joke and then some.

The Policeman’s Lineage

This Korean cop thriller is based on a Japanese novel and tries for some serious old school Infernal Affairs-style Hong Kong vibes. For third-generation cop, Choi Min-jae, the line between right and wrong is straight as an arrow and clearly demarcated. For his new boss, Park Kang-joon, that line is wavy and fuzzy, but fortunately he always has an innate sense of where it is. Choi is not so sure, which makes his new assignment rather tricky in Lee Kyoo-man’s The Policeman’s Lineage, which releases today digitally.

Choi just blew a prosecution on the stand, because he would not lie or dissemble regarding the rough treatment of the accused. He would not appear to be a good candidate for Kang’s team on paper, but Internal Affairs transfers him, to serve as their undercover source anyway. They know Kang will take Choi, because he has a connection to the naïve cop’s father.

It turns out the death of Choi’s father remains surrounded in rumors and innuendos. Both Kang and AI will try to play him, by promising to reveal all. However, as Choi fils pursues his investigation of Kang, he finds plenty of controversy and departmental politics, but not the smoking guns he expected.

Lineage does not quite rank with the best of Korean thrillers, but for the most part, it is respectably hardboiled and entertainingly cynical. Bae Young-ik’s adaptation of Joh Sasaki’s novel tries a little too hard to over-complicate the narrative and all the behind-the-scenes secret cabal maneuvering sometimes feels a little too pat and forced.

After Lambana, a Filipino Graphic Novel

What happens when the human world encounters that of mystical Diwata folk spirits? Human authorities naturally try to regulate them and their magic out of existence. Yet, for one mortal, Diwata magic might hold the only hope for treating his mysterious ailment in After Lambana, written by Eliza Victoria and illustrated by Mervin Malonzo, which goes on-sale today.

Conrad Mendoza de Luna does not know it yet, but there is a significant connection between him and Ignacio. He just knows him as a grateful IT client, who might have sources who might provide underground medication for the so-called “Rose” disease, wherein physical flowers start laying roots, until they bloom through the skin. It is not always fatal, but de Luna’s is located right over his heart.

Magic diseases seem to demand magic cures, but any form of spellcasting is now illegal now that the gateway to the Diwata realm of Lambana has been forcibly closed. Those who were in the mortal world at the time must now live in permanent exile. De Luna will meet several, while following Ignacio through the back alleys and midnight markets of Metro Manila.

After Lambana starts in a noir vibe, but it slowly unfolds into folk-inspired fantasy. Victoria’s intriguing world-building never feels like mere exposition, because it is so richly archetypal, and yet grounded in the various traditions found throughout the Philippines. She convincingly depicts the culture clash between the materialist mortal world and the magical Diwata realm. It is exactly the sort of vision of an intersection of the human and the fantastical that the film Bright should have realized better (but didn’t).

Rondo and Bob: The Creeper and his Texas Chainsaw Fan

Rondo Hatton honorably served his country in WWI, but his name became synonymous with villains and monsters. Due to his acromegaly, his was often cast as hulking brutes, including “The Creeper,” in a few late classic Universal Monster movies. The pathos of Hatton’s life fascinated several young fannish future filmmakers, including Robert A. Burns, who is best known as the art director of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. Joe O’Connell tells both their stories in the dramatic-hybrid documentary Rondo and Bob, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

Although Hatton’s acromegaly started manifesting after he was admitted to a field hospital, it was unrelated to the mustard gas attack he had been caught in. Eventually, his first wife left him, but he went back to his work as a Tampa reporter. He met his second wife while on assignment at a local society function. She would have been the obvious choice to be a movie star, but the studio saw Hatton as a possible replacement for Boris Karloff.

In addition to being one of the foremost authorities on Hatton, Burns was also the guy who put all the creepy stuff in Chainsaw Massacre, like the bone furniture and the chicken in the birdcage. Unlike Hatton, he was apparently somewhat standoffish around people. One family member diagnosed on the spectrum speculates Burns might have been too. Regardless, O’Connell’s subjects contrast greatly, with one looking menacing, but being a wonderful person inside, while the other looked like anyone else, but was hard to get to know.

As a result, the Hatton segments are dramatically more compelling. Yet, probably more time is devoted to Burns, because there is more available material (including his unreleased proto-found footage microbudget horror film, Scream Test). Unfortunately, that makes the film feel somewhat unbalanced. We want to spend more time with Hatton and his second wife, Mabel Housh, because O’Connell and his cast humanize them so compellingly.

Tiananmen Square on TV: Old Wounds

You would think film and television writers would often "rip-from-the-headlines" reference some of the biggest stories of late 1980s and early 1990s, like say the First Gulf War, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc. Yet, you will find precious few dramas addressing the Tiananmen Square Massacre, despite audiences’ familiarity of the iconic images of Tank Man and the Goddess of Democracy statue. It is slim pickings, but the Canadian X-Files knock-off PSI Factor joined MacGyver and Touched by an Angel, by producing the Tiananmen-themed episode “Old Wounds” (S3E13), which currently streams on multiple sites.

Honestly, this show wasn’t very good, but the premise of “Old Wounds” is somewhat interesting. Matt Prager’s paranormal investigative team has been summoned to look into an incident at a tech firm with shady government connections. Adia Carling was testing an immersive VR game when she suffered real world injuries during the in-game battle. Weirder still, wounds spontaneously healed.

The team quickly sleuths out Carling is not from Hong Kong. She is, in fact, an illegal alien living under an assumed name, who was imprisoned and tortured in China for her role in the Democracy protests. Somehow, the VR game reopened the old wounds she suffered while in custody, including the horrific burning of her left arm. She has the psychic powers to physically heal them, but the team’s good Dr. Anton Hendricks must hypnotize her, to help her heal her emotional wounds.

Ideally, one would prefer to see a serious subject like the Tiananmen Square Massacre addressed in a more reflective, less exploitative manner, but there are not a lot of examples out there. Anyone who knows of a Tiananmen Square-themed TV episode, beyond this MacGyver, or Angel, please shoot me an email. Writers Jim Purdy & Paula J. Smith treatment of the Massacre and the subsequent brutal crackdown are not exactly inspired, but director Luc Chalifour manages to convey the cruelty of CCP torture techniques, while adhering to commercial broadcast standards.

The Tank Man, on the Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre

As a result of the CCP’s draconian “National Security” Law, Hong Kong residents can no longer safely watch this Frontline documentary, commemorate the events it chronicles, or search on-line for the image it focuses on. We must remember for them. In fact, the image of the lone man standing in front of a column of tanks has become an iconic image of courageous defiance in the face of overwhelming state oppression. Writer-producer-director Antony Thomas investigates who he was and how the crackdown on the 1989 democracy protests drove him to do what he did in Frontline: The Tank Man, which is available on-line.

Unlike other vital Tiananmen Massacre documentaries (like Tiananmen: The People vs.The Party and Moving the Mountain), Tank Man largely focuses on events outside the Square, but that rather makes sense, considering the Tank Man was blocking tanks on the Boulevard leading out of the Square. In fact, one of the eye-opening aspects of Thomas’s report is the carnage that resulted when the PLA strafed apartment buildings around Muxidi Bridge with combat-grade ammunition.

Consequently, Thomas’s talking heads suggest the majority of killings happened at barricades set up by average working-class citizens to protect the students in the Square. Yet, the most senseless murders were those of groups of parents mowed down by the PLA, who had come to the Square desperate to find their children.

Thomas and company fully explain the circumstances surrounding the historic film of Tank Man and how determined the state security apparatus was to prevent it airing in the international media. They also establish how thoroughly blocked all images of the protests are on the Chinese internet—as well as the culpability of Western tech firms like Microsoft, Cisco, and Yahoo in aiding and abetting the CCP’s censorship.

Thomas also spends a good deal of time examining the vast economic disparities between the urban super-rich and the rural underclass. They make valid points regarding the inequality of China’s economic growth, which has been used to justify the Party’s ironclad grip on power post-Massacre, but it sort of distracts from sheer courage and abject horror of the events of 1989.

Atabai, from Iran

Do not call Kazem by his name. He prefers the honorific “Atabai” (sort of like “esquire,” but with more clout) bestowed upon him by his provincial Northwestern ethnic Azerbaijani hometown. The village holds a lot of painful history for him, especially the arranged marriage of Kazem’s younger sister, which ended badly—for her and everyone related to her. Years have passed, but the entire family still carries guilt from her suicide, but nobody more so than their Atabai. After an extended absence he returns to reluctantly face his tragic past in Niki Karimi’s Atabai, opening today in New York.

Kazem has mixed feelings about being home, but he is happy to see his nephew Aydin. He has real affection for the dopey teen, but we soon figure out the well-respected Atabai is also controlling his life, as a way to get back at his sister’s husband. Frankly, Kazem’s relationship with his own aging father is nearly as fraught with complications and baggage.

The returning prodigal once loved and lost during his college years—and still carries the emotional scars. The last thing he wants from his homecoming would be a wife, despite some rather mercenary interest. Yet, a woman with her own tragic reasons to avoid intimacy stirs some long dormant feelings in him.

Atabai is a messy but heartfelt film about the long-term effects of grief and trauma. It is easy to identify with Kazem’s family, even though the particulars of their circumstances are very much Iranian—starting with the arranged marriage of his sister, at the distressingly youthful age of fifteen. Arguably, Kazem also gets away with physically lashing out in rage more than he would in Western countries. Being an Atabai has its advantages, but everyone understands where that anger and pain is coming from.

The Time Capsule: Love and Relativity

Faster-than-light travel doesn’t change people. It just alters the way they experience of time. That makes it quite tragic for those who don’t want to go, like the poor shipman involuntarily pressed into service in L. Ron Hubbard’s To the Stars (from when he was still readable and not yet messianic). Hundreds of years will pass on that poor soul’s home before he can return, but for Jack Lambert, only twenty years have passed on Earth since his teenaged girlfriend left for the space colonies. Now, she is back and she hasn’t aged a day in Erwann Marshall’s The Time Capsule, which releases tomorrow on-demand.

Lambert just suffered through the embarrassing implosion of his senate campaign, so he and his wife Maggie have come to his dad’s old lake house to regroup. They also need to sell the place, to help pay down his campaign debts. His old pal Patrice will help with the handywork. The place holds a lot of memories for Lambert, so he assumes he is seeing things when he spies his old flame Elise, who doesn’t look a day older than he remembers her.

It turns out, after ten years of suspended animation space flight, the colony was still behind schedule, so they immediately sent Elise and her father back to Earth, on another 10-year flight. Elise remembers seeing teenaged Lambert in what only feels like a few weeks prior, but now he is a very married, disappointing politician. Of course, he never got over her. In fact, it was his controlling father who arranged for their place in the colony. The adult version of Lambert knows he cannot just pick-up with Elise (even though the film repeatedly tells us she is eighteen, so nobody freaks out)—but there is still that old chemistry between them.

Marshall and co-screenwriter Chad Fifer cleverly use Relativity as their Macguffin and skillfully skirt the potential pitfalls (there are no inappropriate moments to gross-out the overly sensitive). It is actually a really smart way build a character-driven story atop a science fiction premise. They also shrewdly keep Lambert’s platform sufficiently vague, so as not to needless alienate viewers.

Echoes of the Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan

Today, you can find the name “Genghis Khan” everywhere throughout modern Mongolia. He sits magnificently astride the monumental equestrian statue erected in 2008, which has quickly become one of the nation’s top-drawing (and literally biggest) tourist attractions. Yet, during its years as satellite-state of the Soviet Union, Genghis Khan was demonized in propaganda and banished from public discourse. A lot of good change came quickly to Mongolia, but the nation is still struggling to process subsequent social upheavals. Director-cinematographer-co-producer Robert H. Lieberman chronicles Mongolia’s glorious history and examines its future challenges in Echoes of Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan, which opens in select theaters this Friday.

Ironically, everything bad you might think about Genghis Khan (a.k.a. Temujin) is largely the result of Communist disinformation. Yes, he was a conqueror of kingdoms, whose empire spanned three times the territory Alexander the Great controlled at his peak. However, as he incorporated new people into his empire, he extended to them rights they never had. Arguably, Genghis Khan “invented” the right of religious liberty, as we know it today. He also forbade the kidnapping of women and established an early form of diplomatic immunity.

Yet, the Communist regime jealousy suppressed celebration of the Mongolian national hero. (For comparable hypotheticals of a nation erasing its cultural-historical legacy, imagine the United Kingdom trying to cancel King Arthur, or America forbidding mention of George Washington, neither of which quite captures the scope of the Communist Party’s negation of Genghis Khan.)

One historical episode explained in the film that has particular resonance for our world today came relatively early in Genghis Khan’s career of conquest, when the Uyghur people sent an emissary, inviting his invasion of their lands, in order to liberate them from their oppressors. It came as a surprise to the Mongol leader, but he obliged.

The film also archly observes how many commissars from the early Communist era met suspiciously premature demises—and openly invites the audience to make the obvious conclusions. Even more fundamentally, when watching Lieberman’s film, viewers will be immediately struck but the sensitive geographic position Mongolia occupies, as a functioning democracy nestled between China and Russia.

It is pretty clear Mongolia is a country Americans should be thinking about much more than we are. Although Mongolians have pretty forcefully repudiated the Twentieth Century Communist era (the 130-foot Genghis Khan memorial says so, loud and clear), they still have to maintain cordial relations with Russia. They also have considerable cultural ties, having adopted Russian tastes in opera and ballet, to a surprising extent, as Lieberman and company vividly illustrate.

Furthermore, Americans can well relate to Mongolia’s current struggles with increased urbanization and a widening gap between the city life of Ulaanbaatar (UB) and the traditional way of life on the steppe. Lieberman takes viewers into the gers (or yurts) of traditional herders, which look warm and cozy on the steppe. However, he also illustrates the downsides to coal-heated ger-living in the urban tent-cities of nomads who have been recently force to relocate to UB.

Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko, from GKIDS

Yes, all parents are embarrassing, but Nikuko is in a league of her own. Yet, her daughter Kikuko never judges her too harshly, because she understands her better than even her mother realizes. Life dealt Nikuko a lot of disappointments, but at least she has her daughter in Ayumu Watanabe’s Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko, from Studio 4ºC and GKIDS, which screens nationwide tonight (and opens Friday in select theaters).

Big-hearted and big-boned Nikuko has a long history of getting involved with the wrong men, who inevitably took advantage of her. The last was arguably the best of the bad lot, so Kikuko sort of understood when her mother dragged her to his sleeping fishing village-hometown, afraid he had fled there to take his own life. They never found him, but they decided to stay and make a home there.

Nikuko works for the gruff but protective Sassan at his seafood grill and they rent his ramshackle houseboat. Boys are not really a factor yet in tomboyish Kikuko’s life, but she is reasonably friendly with her fellow girls at school. In fact, she is courted by two basketball-playing cliques, because of her height, but she is uncomfortable committing to either side. However, her anxiety is probably really coming from a fear Nikuko will uproot them again.

Despite being a slice-of-life story (think of as a Japanese Beaches, but with less weepy melodrama), Lady Nikuko features some wonderfully vivid animation. The coastal village and surrounding environment sparkle on-screen quite invitingly. (It is easy to believe this came from the same animation house that brought us Tekkonkinkreet.) Ironically, there is a far more visual dazzle in this film than Watanabe’s more fantastical Children of the Sea.

Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future (the New One)

David Cronenberg is catching the Greek Weird Wave, filming his latest in the ancient but economically depressed nation. Aesthetically, they are perfect for each other. Body horror meets subversive, extreme anti-social behavior. Yet, according to Cronenberg’s vision of the future, both the body and society are evolving, but to what is yet to be determined in Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, not the one from 1970, the entirely new and unrelated one that opens this Friday in New York.

It is not exactly clear how far into the future this film takes us, or where, but the environment is vaguely Mediterranean, for obvious reasons. Cronenberg doesn’t exactly pander to viewers during the prologue, in which a mother smothers to death her son, for eating the plastic waste basket.

Those are definitely Weird Wave vibes. Saul Tenser delivers the body horror, but he calls it art. For years, his body has spontaneously generated new mutant organs, which his partner Caprice surgically removes during their performance art programs. Each organ is considered a work of art that the newly formed National Organ Registry duly records. Not surprisingly, the Registry’s two employees, Whippet and Timlin, are among Tenser’s biggest fans.

Lang Dotrice also closely follows Tenser’s work. In fact, he offers Tenser a concept for his next show: autopsying Dotrice’s son, Brecken, who was killed at the start of the film. Dotrice leads a mysterious cult that has genetically modified themselves, so they can only consume plastic waste. Brecken was the first of their progeny to naturally develop their ability to digest plastic, but he apparently creeped out his unevolved-human mother.

Cronenberg definitely brings the gross and the weird, but the story and characters are a bit sketchy. This is an idea film and a mood piece rather than an exercise in story-telling to hold viewers rapt. However, the mood is pretty darned moody. Even though this is the future, everything looks dark, decaying, and fetid, like it could be part of a shared world with Naked Lunch, while the strange surgical and therapeutic devices look like they were inspired by the designs of H.R. Giger.

Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux are perfectly cast and do indeed create an intriguing relationship dynamic as Tenser and Caprice. Cronenberg raises some challenging questions about the roles they both play in creating art, particularly with regards to the nature of authorship and intentionality.

Unfortunately, characters like the two mechanics from a shadowy Vogt-like multinational company, who are constantly servicing Tenser’s feeding chair and pain-relieving beds could have stumbled out of dozens of uninspired dystopian films. (Frankly, the sort of bring to mind the Super Mario Brothers movie, which is not a good thing.) Beyond Tenser and Caprice, the most interesting character might be Det. Cope of the new vice squad, who is trying to anticipate future crimes against the body. Welket Bungue portrays his hardboiledness with subtlety not found anywhere else in the film.

The Phantom of the Open, a Different Kind of Cinderella Story

Maurice Flitcroft wanted to be the real-life version of Kevin Costner’s “Tin Cup,” but he just never played the game very well. Nevertheless, his record-setting high-score at the 1976 British Open made him something of a cult hero to frustrated duffers everywhere. After that, the British Open was very much done with Flitcroft, but Flitcroft was not done with them. His unlikely career gets the underdog movie treatment in Craig Roberts’ The Phantom of the Open, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Having always provided for his wife Jean, their twin sons Gene and James, and his older step-son Michael, Maurice is not sure what he wants to do with himself as retirement approaches for the working-class crane operator. Somehow, he gets it into his head golf will be his thing. He has the ugly clothes, but his swing is even uglier.

Naturally, he figures he will enter the British Open, because it looks like a nice tournament on the telly and because he can. That is why it is called an “Open.” It turns out there is a lot less paperwork to enter as a professional rather than an amateur, so that is what he does. Stodgy Keith Mackenzie of the R&A is scandalized by Flitcroft record high score, so he bans him from future tournaments. However, loyal Jean encourages Flitcroft to persevere, so he starts devising ways to enter subsequent Opens under assumed names.

Without question, Phantom is most entertaining when it revels in the subversive farce of Flitcroft’s Open capers. His disguise as French golfer “Gerald Hoppy” is a sequence worthy of Peter Sellars. (It even comes with a Clouseau moustache.) However, Roberts somewhat loses his way, indulging in some painfully maudlin family melodrama during the third act. Flitcroft was born to burst pretensions, rather than be elevated to some kind of tragic hero.

RRR, The Telugu Smash is Back

It is one of the highest grossing Indian films of all-time and it was partly shot in Ukraine, but apparently that didn’t mean much to the government of the “world’s largest democracy” when Putin invaded. After all, shooting had already wrapped, on a picture that ironically protests the brutality of British imperialism. In this action epic, the British probably lose more soldiers than they did at Bunker Hill. Such an incident would have surely led to a parliamentary inquiry, especially since a regional governor precipitated the whole mess by abducting a young girl. That just isn’t cricket, you know? Two legendary early Twentieth Century revolutionaries form a fictional friendship and team-up against the British in S.S. Rajaouli’s RRR (a.k.a. Rise Roar Revolt), which has a special one-day return to American theaters this Wednesday.

Governor Scott Buxton and his Lady Macbeth-esque wife Catherine happened to hear a young Gond singer during their trip to Telangana, so they just figured they’d take her with them as a souvenir. As the “shepherd” of the tribe, it is Komaram Bheem’s sworn duty to find her and safely bring her back. To do so, he naturally falls in with Delhi’s revolutionary circles. Unfortunately, his brother comes to the attention of A. Rama Raju (better known as Alluri Sitarama Raju), who was then a hard-charging Indian officer, but secretly harbored revolutionary ambitions.

While chasing Bheem’s brother, Raju stops to rescue an endangered street urchin, with the oblivious help of Bheem himself. Being men of action, a fast-friendship blossoms between them, but when Bheem launches his rescue operation, it forces Raju to make a series of soul-searching decisions.

Despite the patriotic themes (critics would call RRR jingoistic if it were made in America), the reason it traveled so well outside of the subcontinent is the off-the-wall action. The sequences involving CGI-animals might even be a little too off-the-wall, but perhaps they look better on a more spacious big screen. Still, our introduction to Raju is quite a barn-burner and incidentally also a good lesson in crowd control. Arguably, the whole thing morphs into a super-hero movie during the climax, when they become invested with the powers of Lord Rama, but it certainly makes for some wild spectacle.

Julia (Child) on CNN

You have to appreciate a celebrity chef who acknowledges the five-second rule. Julia Child wasn’t above brushing off a little dirt from kitchen mishaps, which was one of the reasons she was so fun to watch. For years, she was also the original and only really notable TV chef. If she were alive today, she would probably have her own streaming channel, but the magnitude of her success in her time was still no can of corn. Julie Cohen & Betsy West chronicle Child’s life and career in the documentary Julia, which airs tomorrow on CNN.

Before she served dinner, Child served her country as a staffer for the OSS, Wild Bill Donovan’s forerunner agency to the CIA. Her family insists she never did any spycraft, but that still seems like a good idea for a fictional thriller. Regardless, she met her future husband, Paul Cushing Child, when they were both posted to Ceylon. Eventually, his career in the Foreign Service brought them to France, where she met Simone Beck and started collaborating on Mastering the Art of French Cooking, an unusually detailed cookbook, intended for American readers.

Public television was pretty grim in the early 1960s, but WGBH viewers appreciated how she livened up a book review program, by demonstrating the proper technique for making an omelet. As a result, they took a chance on a show of her own, The French Chef. The best part of the doc gives a behind-the-scenes view of its early, by-the-seat-of-its pants years. The production process might have been an adventure, but the show was an immediate hit.

Everyone gives Child credit for making PBS watchable, yet Public Broadcasting thought it was time to put her out to pasture in the early 1980s, so she signed with Good Morning America instead. It is clear throughout Julia that Child was a shrewd capitalist. However, Cohen & West (whose RBG celebrated Justice Ginsburg for having a kneejerk political record on the bench, rather than a coherent judicial philosophy) do their best to transform Child into a divisive figure, by celebrating her liberal activism.