Lee: The WWII Photojournalist History Forgot

Lee Miller practiced journalism at a time when reporters drank like fish, told the truth, and didn’t care about anyone’s feelings, especially their own. Frankly, for Miller, those things were all basically intertwined. She lived hard, but documented even harder truths, most notably the crimes against humanity committed during the Holocaust. Yet, she died in relative obscurity. Fittingly, Miller’s career is chronicled, warts and all, in Ellen Kuras’s Lee, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

In the early thirties, Miller was a former model-turned fashion photographer, greatly enjoying the Bohemian lifestyle Europe offered. However, most of her smart-set friends were still deeply concerned regarding the rise of Hitler. That was especially true of Roland Penrose, a gallerist and poet, who much more serious about life than her other friends, especially when it came to her.

Settling down in London with Penrose, Miller pitched her current events and slice-of-life photojournalism to British Vogue, where she was championed by Audrey Withers, partly because she recognized Miller’s talent and partly because she annoyed the insufferable Cecil Beaton.

Soon, Miller publishes legit coverage of the war’s homefront impact to high acclaim. Yet, getting to the war itself proves tricky, because of 1940s attitudes. Nevertheless, when she finally reaches France she finds her greatest ally in a male rival, David Scherman of Life magazine, with whom she developed a healthy collaborative relationship and a somewhat odd but scrupulously platonic friendship.

Together they covered the liberation of Paris and documented evidence of the mass murders committed at Buchenwald and Dachau. Obviously, these scenes are horrific, but Miller had other reasons for her depression and emotional detachment, as will be revealed in the wrap-around interview segments (which are conspicuously stilted).

Regardless, reviewing Miller’s career should be a “teachable moment” for contemporary “journalists.” One can only wonder how the acerbic Miller would react to American Vogue’s infamous puff-piece profile of Syrian First Lady Asma al-Assad, which described the First couple as “wildly democratic.”  Miller was a thorny figure, but her WWII journalism is impeccable.

What Remains: The Work of Three Skarsgards

It turns out mental hospitals for the criminally insane are especially depressing in Scandinavia. The cold weather and long, dark nights do little to liven up the ambiance. Regardless, that has been child-killer Mads Lake’s home since his late teen years. Evidently, his family’s house was far from nurturing. Perhaps that is why he develops weird, almost co-dependent relationships with his abnormal psychologist and the detective who originally investigated his case in Ran Huang’s What Remains, which releases this Friday in theaters and on demand.

Apparently, there were enough grounds under Finnish law to institutionalize Lake, but not enough to convict him of the heinous crimes everyone believes he committed. He was about to be released after a long confinement, but his tentative experiments with freedom were so disastrous, he hardly minds with his new shrink, Anna Rudebeck, cancels his release.

Instead, she starts delving into his psyche uncovering parental sexual abuse that seems pretty predictable. Meanwhile, crusty old Soren Rank (embodying a brand of existentialism far more fatalistic than Kierkegaard’s), who assisted the senior detective on the case years ago, starts interviewing Lake, under Rudebeck’s supervision, in hopes of uncovering information that might console the victims’ families.

What Remains is about as bleak as films get. It unfolds almost entirely in drab institutional buildings lit to evoke the drabness of Dogme 95 movement. This is supposed to be a thriller, but somehow the conflict, tension, and suspense were misplaced somewhere inside the grim Brutalist building.

The buck starts and stops with Huang, especially considering the quality of his primary trio. Stellan Skarsgard is perfectly cast as the world-weary Rank and Gustaf Skarsgard manages to be both creepy and pathetic, simultaneously, as Lake. Andrea Riseborough (who dared to be Oscar-nominated, even though the Academy did not pre-approve her candidacy) is also appropriately off-kilter and cerebral, playing the neurotic shrink.

The Grudge (2020): Because You Can’t Keep an Angry Ghost Down

It’s human-to-human transmission rate is minimal, but the site of Kayako Saeki’s violent angry death is 100% infectious. The death rate is nearly as high. It is time to go back to Tokyo circa 2004, where it all started for the American remake series. Instead of rebooting, the series branches off in a separate, simultaneous, but not so radically different direction in Nicolas Pesce’s The Grudge, which releases today on DVD.

Flashback to 2004: Fiona Landers is an expat social worker in Japan, who pays an inspection visit to the house of horrors that started it all. She subsequently returns home, taking Kayako and her grudge with her. Soon, tragedy strikes the Landers family, as evil become deeply rooted in their home. That means Saeki is quite an efficient multi-tasker, since she was simultaneously tormenting Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Grudge (2004).

For obvious reasons, the Landers House quickly develops an evil reputation. Det. Goodman still refuses to step foot inside it, which seems rather strange to his new partner, Det. Muldoon, since he ostensibly investigated the multiple homicides that occurred there. It wasn’t just the Landers who met untimely deaths. The realtors handling the sale of the property, Peter and pregnant Nina Spencer, met similar fates.

As is usually the case in horror movies, Muldoon relocated to exurban Pennsylvania hoping to find a safer, more stable environment to raise her son Burke after her husband’s devastating death from cancer. Needless to say, those plans go out the window once she enters the Landers house. From there on, she is in for the full Grudge treatment.

The Grudge 2020 is a respectable American installment in the franchise, but Pesce’s reputation as the indie auteur who helmed The Eyes of My Mother and Piercing will raise many fans expectations well above what the film delivers. We’ve seen just about all of it before, but Pesce does it with a surprisingly prestigious cast. There are two Oscar nominees in Grudge 2020: Demian Bichir, who is terrific as the devout but world-weary Goodman and Jacki Weaver, who helps humanize the thankless role of Lorna Moody, an assisted suicide activist, who pays an ill-fated visit to the current owners of the Landers house.

Sundance ’20: Possessor

Tasya Vos works for the corporate equivalent of brain controlling parasites, like the exotic “zombie ant” fungus. She’s the fungus, or in this case, an assassin who commits hits while controlling the body of an unwitting host. She is a lethal legend among the limited numbers aware of her company’s true specialty, but her next assignment will involve unexpected complications in Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor, which screens during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

The process is pretty simple—and sinister. Through some kind of cyber-punky procedure, Vos’s consciousness is inserted into the abducted host. She establishes a pattern of suspicious behavior over a few days, before killing her target. Then she blows the host’s brains out just as her handlers extract her. We can see pretty clearly from the opening hit how the process is supposed to work. It is also pretty easy to see Vos is increasingly troubled by lingering memories and flashbacks, even though she manages to conceal it from her employer, Girder.

She really should have more down time between possessions, but she agrees to do a priority rush job with little rest. Her next target will be John Parse, the CEO of a data-mining firm, who happens to be played by Sean Bean, which does not auger well for his potential survivability. The host will be his daughter’s low-life boyfriend, her former drug dealer, Colin. He doesn’t seem like much, but he manages to wrestle control of his body back from Vos, at least temporarily, after much damage has been done.

Cronenberg, a chip off the old block, balances scenes of intense violence with trippy surreal passages in a sleekly stylish package. Fans of his father should also eat this up with a big spoon. However, it should be duly noted there is a previous precedent for the body-jumping assassin: Jesse Atlas’s short film Let Them Die Like Lovers, which screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, so nobody should say it is completely unknown. To be sure, Cronenberg comes up with plenty of his own twists. Nobody is implying anything, just acknowledging Atlas.

Sundance ’20: Luxor

The stately Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor is due for a renovation, but the old carpeting and décor have a lot of character. It would almost be a shame to modernize it, like the old Plaza in New York, especially when so many of its guests are visiting to experience some kind of connection with Egypt’s ancient past. Hana once shared their interest, but she has returned hoping to forget her recent history in screenwriter-director Zeina Durra’s Luxor, which screens during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Hana is a doctor working for a “Physicians sans frontiers” style NGO. She is clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress from her last posting near the Syrian border, but she has chosen not to deal with it. Instead, she quietly takes a few archaeological tours on her own, until she perchance happens to cross paths with her former lover, Sultan. Currently, he is working on a nearby dig with several mutual friends. Although romance is the last thing on her mind, their mutual attraction is undeniable.

Luxor unfolds slowly and obliquely, but there are violent emotions buried below its surfaces. It is an affecting love story, precisely because Durra’s characters are so deeply flawed and world weary. The film could definitely be compared to Ruba Nadda’s Cairo Time, but there is less romance and more existential angst. Throughout it all, the grand old Winter Palace provides a richly evocative setting.