Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy

For a nun in the 1940s, Sister Eileen is surprisingly progressive. That seems especially so with regards to the indigenous orphans she cares for. Admittedly, the Australian government ripped them away from their families and culture, but at least she tries to provide a sheltering sanctuary for her charges. However, the latest arrival is quite mysterious (according to both the conventional and Catholic meanings of the word) in director-screenwriter Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy, which opens in select theaters this Friday.

It is clear from the opening scene that Sister Eileen does not approve of the outback copper transporting her newest resident in a burlap bag. It is also clear that she runs the show at her remote orphanage-school, not the unseen authority figure, Dom Peter, for whom she claims to speak.

Even his fellow students consider their new classmate a wild child. They simply call him “the New Boy,” which Sister Eileen also adopts until a better name comes along, perhaps through divine intervention. Maybe that would not be so impossible. The New Boy seems to have supernatural healing powers. He also shows a strange affinity for the antique crucifixion altar piece that arrives shortly after he does. It is not exactly reverent awe. It is more like a sense of empathy for Jesus.

Arguably, the film’s identity politics could have been even more didactic. However, the allegorical religious symbolism remains crushingly heavy-handed. Somehow, Thornton’s screenplay finds a way to be maddeningly obtuse and glaringly unsubtle. Nothing whispers in The New Boy. Instead, everything scrams—despite the attempted dreaminess of Thornton’s work as his own cinematographer.

Cate Blanchett labors as Sister Eileen to deliver the film through its aesthetic temptations and stifling thematic travails. However, the most interesting portrayal is that of Wayne Blair, as George, an indigenous convert, who clearly relates to the student-orphans in very complex but personal ways. Likewise, Deborah Mailman also adds a lot of humanistic sensitivity, as “Sister Mum,” another indigenous convert, who presumably took orders after the tragic deaths of her children.

Unfortunately, despite the uniformly strong performances, the third act is just an impenetrable muddle. It is not a case where viewers might have fun debating elements left open to interpretation. Rather, it is a murky mess that leaves Thornton’s intentions unclear—and consequently unfulfilled.

Soderbergh’s Black Bag

This dinner party will be like Mr. And Mrs. Smith, hosting John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, and Spy. Unfortunately for George Woodhouse (the Mr. Smith), his wife Kathryn St. Jean is also under suspicion. Yes, he knows she has been keeping secrets, but so has he. That comes with the territory for two married spies. Regardless, Woodhouse must find the security leak in Stephen Soderbergh’s Black Bag, which is now available on VOD (and still in theaters).

Woodhouse’s dinner parties can be awkward, but when you are invited, you must attend. Tonight’s guest list was made up by Meacham, his superior, who has deduced the code for an extremely destructive weaponized virus has been compromised. There are only five suspects, including his wife.

Freddie Smalls, is a senior MI6 agent, who was considered Woodhouse’s protégé, until he passed him over for a promotion. Col. James Stokes, is the fast-tracked hotshot agent, whom Smalls lost out to. Clarissa Dubose, the satellite imagery technician, has been conducting a not-so-secret relationship with Smalls. Dr. Zoe Vaughan serves as MI6’s staff psychiatrist, who counsels all five suspects, including St. Jean, rather they like it or not (and she clearly does not). She also recently terminated her romantic relationship with Stokes.

It will be a super fun dinner party, because several guests reveal very embarrassing secrets. However, it is not immediately evident who transfered the so-called Severus Virus to a dangerous foreign element. It is not an ideal time for St. Jean to leave. She cannot explain either, simply invoking the term “black bag,” which agents use as shorthand for “I can’t tell you, because its top secret business.”

David Koepp’s original screenplay rather cleverly devises ways to bring the loyalties of the various couples into conflict with their professional and national allegiances. Eventually, the big picture also involves Russia, but not in the way Putin-hawks might expect or hope. However, one character’s Roman Catholic faith will play an edifying role, in the complicated intrigue.

In fact, Koepp’s machinations are just complicated enough to maintain suspense and uncertainty, but everything is sufficiently illuminated so that the ending makes sense and provides closure. Black Bag is intelligent, but not too smart for its own good. It also wraps everything up, more or less, in about ninety minutes, which represents remarkably skillful and economically story-telling in this age of narrative bloat.

Arguably, Black Bag earns the further distinction as Soderbergh’s most stylish film since Out of Sight. The vibe is slick, but sophisticated. David Holmes’ score (featuring Brian Irvine on keyboards) appropriately noirish, but also jazzy and snappy, in a complimentary way. It really adds a lot to the film’s identity.

Plus, Michael Fassbender’s wardrobe was clearly inspired by 1960s Michael Caine films, which is cool. You can tell Fassbender totally fed off that vibe. His performance is quietly reserved and cerebral, but absolutely magnetic.

The four suspect-guests are also terrific, in very different ways. Tom Burke (who more viewers ought to know from The Lazarus Project) puts on a show on his own as the shlubby, self-destructive Smalls. Naomie Harris does some great verbal sparring as Dr. Vaughan, the shrink nobody wants to confide in. Marisa Abela is a destabilizing force as Dubose, while Rege-Jean Page matches Fassbender’s ability to project calculating intelligence.

Disclaimer, on Apple TV+

Ironically, Stephen Brigstocke’s debut sells quite well for a self-published literary novel, especially considering he really never cared about sales. He was writing for a very exclusive audience: Catherine Ravenscroft, her husband Robert, and their anti-social son Nicholas. Unfortunately, for the Ravenscrofts, the book is transparently based on her, revealing the darkest time of her life. Yet, publication was only the first step in Brigstocke’s campaign of vengeance in creator-director Alfonso Cuaron’s 7-part Disclaimer, based on Renee Knight’s novel, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

The series opens on a high note for Ravencroft, but a fall is coming. She is about to accept a prestigious award for documentary producing and she finally convinced her awkward, under-achieving son to move out of the house. After the awards ceremony, she returns home, where she starts reading a book mailed to her, The Perfect Stranger. It is not the prose the causes her to start violently retching, but the content, because she easily recognizes herself in those pages.

To be honest, Brigstocke did not even write the book himself. His late wife Nancy did. Sadly, she slowly imploded after their college-aged son Jonathan died while on an Italian holiday, under murky circumstances that somehow involve Ravenscroft. His grieving mother wrote the book based on police reports and the revealing undeveloped photos he left behind. Many of them were sexually explicit pictures of Ravencroft. Those same pictures will eventually find their way to Robert Ravencroft, along with his own copy of The Perfect Stranger. However, Brigstocke fully understands his target’s weakest point: her son Nicholas.

In terms of style and tone, Disclaimer is closely akin to the “unreliable narrator” genre exemplified by Gone Girl, except in this case, the narrator, the omniscient voice of Indira Varma, is quite credible. Instead, the author and readers are unreliable.

To be perfectly clear, this series is only intended for mature adults. The early episodes are highly charged sexually, whereas the final two are extremely difficult to watch. However, there is a point to the horrifying acts they depict. In some ways, Disclaimer could be a companion piece to Tar, which also starred Cate Blanchett. Both directly address the excesses of cancel culture, which Brigstocke shrewdly weaponizes against Ravenscroft.

Indeed, Cuaron viscerally reminds us how much context is missing from supposedly damning photos and cell phone videos. Frankly, Disclaimer shames us all for being at least complacent and more likely complicit in this toxic practice of personal destruction via cancellation and online dehumanization—and shame is indeed the only fitting word for it.

Blanchett is perfectly cast as Ravenscroft, showing how her elegant reserve slowly cracks into a million pieces. She perfectly executes the dramatic jiu jitsu the eventually lays the audience out flat. However, Leila George’s performance as the young Catherine Ravenscroft is arguably even braver, given the demanding physical nature of her work.

For those accustomed to seeing Kevin Kline in light middle-aged rom-coms, it will be shocking to see him decrepitly aged-up to play the sort of role we might expect of Tom Wilkinson or Jim Broadbent. Yet, he deftly lures viewers in, openly inviting us to identify with Brigstocke’s righteous fury.

Malick’s Knight of Cups

If you always suspected Hollywood was a den of vice and degradation, you are about to be vindicated by no less an auteur than Terrence Malick. His everyman screenwriter has been led astray by the hedonism Tinsel Town offers. Malick riffs on Pilgrim’s Progress, The Hymn of the Pearl, and Fellini’s 8½ while searching for higher meaning in Knight of Cups (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

The screenwriter’s name is “Rick,” but we only know that from the closing credits. Not a lot of names get bandied about in Cups and dialogue is rather sparse in general. Instead, we watch Rick’s life flash by in snippets better measured in seconds than minutes. He is the Pilgrim or the “Son of the King of Kings,” who found worldly success, but lost sight of his values. However, he has not forgotten his family. In fact, they are another cross to bear. His relationship with his devout but guilt-wracked father is strained, but reparable. Unfortunately, his unstable brother Barry is apparently a lost soul. He will also have relationships with a number of attractive women, but it is often hard to tell when he moves onto someone new, because of Malick’s insistence on filming the backs of characters’ heads.

Aesthetically, Cups might just be Malick’s most maddening film yet—and that is quite a heavy statement. Yet, what is really frustrating is the extent to which he undermines his own challenging ideas. This is not a sterile exercise in style at the expense of substance. Malick is one of the very few filmmakers working today who seriously grapples with issues of faith and an ostensibly disinterested God in a serious, mature, and non-kneejerk manner. He most definitely does so again in Cups.

In fact, the very best moments directly explore man’s spiritual yearning. Making the most of his fleeting screen time, Armin Mueller-Stahl delivers a shockingly powerful Christian apologia as Father Zeitlinger. Likewise, the late Peter Matthiesson (essentially playing himself) delivers a potent lesson in Zen Buddhism. “I can only teach you one thing: this moment,” he tells Rick. Yet, instead of letting these significant moments breathe, so we can properly digest them, Malick continues his MTV-style rapid editing, moving to the next stage of Rick’s life, practically at the speed of light.

Even though he is in most of the scenes, Christian Bale perversely hardly gets a chance to do any acting. Malick’s actors really have to make an impression quickly if they stand any chance of standing out. In addition to the wonderful Mueller-Stahl and sage-like Matthiesson, Brian Dennehy projects appropriate gravitas and poignant humility as Rick’s father, Joseph (remember, that’s a Biblical name). It is also amusing to watch Antonio Banderas essentially reprise his role from Nine under the persona of Tonio, the Hollywood playboy (he even looks like he is wearing the same suit). Problematically, the women in Rick’s life are almost used like props, but Cate Blanchett shows some forcefulness and gumption as his ER doctor ex-wife, Nancy. Presumably, that is why it did not work out between the two of them.

Cups could have possibly been a truly great film, but Malick’s approach is way too unfettered in its Malickness. Even as its wise men explicitly tell us to more fully live in the present, it hurtles ahead, like a cheetah suffering from ADD. This is a shame, because there is wisdom within its frames. Still, this is not a film that can be easily dismissed. Indeed, it is quite an important work when viewed in dialogue with Malick’s prior films, but as a discrete screening experience, it is bizarrely agitated and off-putting. Viewers who really want to wrestle with a film will find their match in Knight of Cups, but the more conventional should probably take a pass. Still, even now it defies any clear-cut rendering of judgment. For the auteur’s adventurous admirers, Knight of Cups opens this Friday (3/4) in New York, at the Landmark Sunshine and AMC Loews Lincoln Square.

NYFF ’15: Carol

Ironically, one of the most literarily significant lesbian novels of the pre-Stonewall era was written (pseudonymously) by a notorious anti-Semitic mystery and suspense novelist. Yes, the same difficult mind that created the talented Tom Ripley also gave birth to Carol Aird. Journey back to Manhattan in the early 1950s, when Madison Avenue wasn’t so mad yet. Lesbianism might have been a love that dared not say its name, but the sophisticated Aird is still not one to mince words in Carol (trailer here), Todd Haynes’ adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, which screens as a Main Slate selection of the 53rd New York Film Festival.

Therese Belivet is a mousy but proper young woman working in a Manhattan department store, while secretly harboring ambitions of a photography career. When assisting Carol Aird schedule a delivery, she is quite taken by the older woman, in an uncertain kind of way. After she haltingly reaches out to Aird, she is surprised and pleased when Aird reaches back. Soon, they are spending more and more ambiguous time together. However, the development of their relationship is complicated by Aird’s messy divorce proceedings with her future ex, Harge, who still refuses to let go. (With a name like Harge Aird, he must be Ivy League, possibly even a future CIA director.)

In order to win her back, Harge is willing to play dirty. That includes calling out Aird’s past fling with Abby Gerhard, her childhood friend and now platonic confidant. Feeling overwhelmed by the tawdriness of it all, Aird packs up Belivet for an impulsive road trip. Naturally, further complications will ensue.

Cineastes generally get Haynes’ affinity for the era and its attendant angsts, but the quality of Carol’s period details are still impressive in their seamless accuracy. As we see, this is a time that predates the LP, when music stores stocked ten inch records in brown paper sleeves. The film also has the good taste to prominently feature Billie Holiday’s rendition of “Easy Living,” recorded with the great Teddy Wilson. In fact, Holiday is a rather fitting choice, given the film’s themes. However, it should also be noted the uncharacteristically lush orchestral score is one of Carter Burwell’s best.

Carol looks great and sounds great it is not quite the instant classic some represent it to be. Despite the breathless plaudits it has generated, there is something rather affected about Cate Blanchett’s performance as Aird. Instead of truly submerging herself into the character, she looks and sounds like she is doing Aird as if played by Joan Crawford or Rosalind Russell. Still, who wouldn’t like to see either of them dig into such a juicy role?

In contrast, Rooney Mara delves inward for an unusually brittle and disciplined turn. You would half expect her to shatter if she tipped over. However, Sarah Paulson steals scene after scene as the earthy, no-nonsense Gerhard, while Kyle Chandler manages to humanize square old Harge remarkably well.

As a recreation of the 1950s, Carol is richly realized, but it is less convincing as a relationship drama. Nevertheless, it takes viewers to a specific time and place, where it duly scores it points. Earning a moderate recommendation for its technical merits, Carol screens tomorrow (10/9) and Saturday (10/10) at Alice Tully Hall, as part of this year’s NYFF.