Shortlisted: In the Shadow of the Cypress (short)

In Iran, there are many potential causes of PTSD. For this crusty old sea captain, it was trauma related to the Iran-Iraq War, but for others, it could just as easily be unjust imprisonment, torture, or even facial disfigurement to punish “immodesty.” Unfortunately, the old man often lashes out at his daughter, continuing the cycle of misery, but extraordinary circumstances help them think beyond their troubled relationship in Hossein Molayemi & Shirin Sobani’s wordless animated short, In the Shadow of the Cypress, which has been shortlisted by the Academy.

When the old man is not distant, he is abusive, but during those times, he is not mentally with his daughter. His mind travels back to when his ship was strafed during the war. Unfortunately, he has a constant reminder, because the slowly sinking vessel still lists in sight of their beachfront shack.

Finally, his daughter resolves to leave, but upon departing she is stunned by the sight of an enormous beached whale. Setting aside their dysfunction, they try to push and pull him back to sea, but to no avail. While she tries to comfort the great beast, he hatches a desperate but possibly cathartic rescue plan.

Kyiv Theater: An Island of Hope, OVID.tv

According to the actors based in Kyiv, Ukrainian theater overwhelmingly reflected a Russian influence, until Putin’s illegal invasion. Since then, they have increasingly looked towards the European avant-garde for inspiration. Of course, Putin does not care about culture, but it is another example of Russia’s loss of international prestige. French theater director Ariane Mnouchkine is exactly the sort of artist the Ukrainian theater world has been drawn to. To show her solidarity, Mnouchkine travels to Kviv to hold an intensive workshop, which Duccio Bellugi-Vannuccini & Thomas Briat documented in Kyiv Theater: An Island of Hope, premiering tomorrow on OVID.tv.

Throughout her residency, Mnouchkine heard drone raid sirens nearly every night, but fortunately, she never witnessed catastrophic-level destruction. Nevertheless, her traveling company staff fully understood that was a very real possibility, but they joined her anyway. Yet, throughout the workshop, both the Ukrainian and French participants deliberately avoided explicit political subjects and references. The Ukrainians had already had more than their fill.

Instead, we watch numerous improvisation exercises that often resemble out-takes from Samuel Beckett plays. Frankly, these very theatric theatrical performances are the least interesting parts of Vannuccini & Briat’s doc, but they get a majority of the screentime, in a film that clocks in a whisker shy of an hour.

Shortlisted: Maybe Elephants (short)

Fortunately for the narrator, her parents did not quite go to Mosquito Coast lengths. However, their decision, not particularly well thought out, to spend several years in Kenya was certainly disruptive. However, their three daughters had much more fun than the children in Paul Theroux’s novel. During their Kenyan interlude, they shared an experience that became the stuff of family legend. Yet, they apparently remember it very differently. Director-screenwriter Torril Kove tells her version of the tale in the 16-minute animated short film Maybe Elephants, supported by the National Film Board of Canada, which has been shortlisted by the Academy.

Hopefully, the Academy does not mind sequels in this category, because Maybe Elephants is a loose follow-up to Kove’s Me and My Moulton. The prior nominated short looked back at Kove childhood in 1960s Norway, living with two very hippy-dippy parents. They seem a bit more grounded when Maybe Elephants starts in the 1970s. Her father has comfortably settled into life as a middle-class architect. However, the narrator’s mother shows signs of discontent that perhaps even hint at a relatively mild but persistent form of depression.

Then one day, the narrator’s mother (also a trained but under-employed architect) announces she wants to move to somewhre, anywhere in Africa, to help plan and build public works. Rather archly, her daughters ask how she knows the Africans even want her help. Nevertheless, the family moves to Kenya, but it is their father who secures the three-year posting with an NGO. Arguably, the change of scenery still does them good. There is also an incident with elephants—maybe.

George A. Romero’s Resident Evil

Beyond the zombies, it is easy to understand how Umbrella, the evil pharmaceutical company in the Resident Evil video game franchise would resonate with an old-fashioned liberal like George A. Romero. Ironically, that distrust of big pharma has become more prevalent on the populist “right” in recent years. Similarly, Romero’s commentary regarding government censorship and misinformation during times of crisis probably seemed “leftwing” when he made Diary of the Dead, but it lands very differently today. If the government ever starts censoring his films, it will start with Diary. Unfortunately, fans never had the chance to see Romero’s take on the popular survival horror game, even though he scripted several drafts. Friends and insiders consider what might have been and offer their tributes to the master in Brandon Salisbury’s documentary, George A. Romero’s Resident Evil, which releases today on VOD.

Everyone at the Japanese video game company Capcom fully understood the Resident Evil game never would have existed without George Romero. He essentially launched zombie horror with Night of the Living Dead and maintained it as a subgenre with his subsequent sequels. Evidently, Romero felt the same way, so he had mixed feelings about the game (which he claimed to enjoy). Nevertheless, Capcom was eager to forge a closer association, so they hired Romero to direct the commercial for the second installment of the game (known as Biohazard in Japan).

Inevitably, the commercial caused a minor sensation in the horror world and it helped propel the new game to record-setting sales. Consequently, Capcom recommended Romero to direct the feature film adaptation. Although the surviving rough drafts of his proposed scripts are all pretty rough, fans agree they would have captured the spirit of the games much more successfully than the Paul W.S. Anderson live-action movies. However, a key executive at Constantine Films, the Germany production company, just didn’t understand the IP they bought—and eventually fired Romero, because he did.

Salisbury’s doc grows a small but growing list of films that document films that never came to be, but should have, as previously exemplified by Jodorowsky’s Dune and Henri-Georges Cluzot’s Inferno. Sadly, Romero’s Resident Evil never advanced as far as either of those non-films.

Viktor Taus’s Girl America

In the Communist-era Czechoslovakia, there was not much difference between the orphanages and the prisons. Emma Cerna would know, because she “served time” in both. Unfortunately, the lingering effects of her various institutionalizations cause her to continue cycles of dysfunctional behavior in Viktor Taus’s Girl America, which screens this week at Bohemian National Hall in New York.

Cerna’s mother was a party-person who could never really face reality, once she became a parent. Frankly, trouble dealing with reality runs in her family. She comes to share her older delinquent brother Mirek’s delusion their long-absent father waits for them in America (building the United States into an unrealiistic paradise in Cerna's mind). Since her mother frequently disappears on long benders, Cerna must act as a mother to her toddler brother. Eventually, the neighbors finally call social services, who separate the two siblings. Sadly, her little brother vanishes into the socialist system, never to be seen again, at least by her.

However, Cerna briefly reunites with her older brother when the authorities transfer him to her orphanage. Unfortunately, his rebelliousness and the schoolmarm-ism head mistress’s prejudices soon result in his expulsion. Nevertheless, Cerna develops sisterly feelings towards many of her fellow orphans. Somehow, the orphanage successfully places her with decent foster parents (although her step-sister is admittedly a pill), but she prefers the fantasy of her American father over a flesh-and-blood home. Inevitably, her self-destructive behavior lands her back in another state facility, of the correctional variety, where again she finds comradery with young women very much like her.

That all sounds pretty grim, which it often is. Yet, Taus’s visual approach is so wildly surreal, it sometimes makes the film rather confusing to follow. Frankly, between the bleak tone and the stylistic excesses, Girl America might be the most exhausting film of the decade.

Regardless, it is clear everyone invested their hearts and souls in this film. Klara Kitto, Julie Soucova, and Pavla Beretova are all equally and relentlessly devastating as Cerna, from childhood through adulthood. However, Tomas Sean Psenicka really stands out as a potential breakout international star for his intense, but also edgily charismatic performance as big brother Mirek.

Teen Titans: Snowblind, at Paley

KGBeast is one of DC’s most sinister villains, but his alter-ego, Anatoli Knyazev was converted into a good-guy on Arrow, because who could believe Russians might commit heinous crimes against humanity? So far, DC animated productions have been much more successful incorporating its Cold War characters and legacy, especially in Superman: Red Son. As a further case in point, the early 2000’s animated Teen Titans series offered an interesting take on Red Star in the episode “Snowblind,” which screens at the Paley Center as part of its Winter Frolic programming.

In this version of DC reality, Leonid Kovar, a.k.a. Red Star, was the lucky subject of a Soviet “super-soldier” experiment devised by the notoriously reliable Prof. Chang (a recurring villain in the animated series). Yet, much like the Hulk, the super-Soviet could not control his powers. When over-agitated, he expelled tremendous bursts of radioactive energy. Consequently, Red Star sequestered himself in an adapted bunker outside the secret military installation where he was formerly based.

Suspicious radioactive readings brought the Teen Titans to Kovar’s remote Siberian homeland. However, Red Star is not producing the energy they detected. There is something else terrorizing the local village, but they just assume it is the same radioactive devil they know.

Screenwriter Rob Hoegee does his best to play down Red Star’s Communist era origins, but they are inescapable. Indeed, Raskov, his former commander turned persecutor, bears all the worst hallmarks of the Soviet era military. However, this version of Red Star is an acutely tragic character, who is developed fairly thoroughly for a half-hour episode.

Aladdin 3477: The Jinn of Wisdom

Evidently, in 1,400 years, or so, there will still be people who believe in magic—not just Jedi and Bene Gesserit mental powers, but straight up magic. However, they will no longer spell Djinn with a “D.” Regardless, a luckless loser finds a certain lamp in director-screenwriter-editor Matt Busch’s Aladdin 3477: The Jinn of Wisdom, which is now available on VOD.

Yes, his name is Aladdin and he eventually stumbles across a lamp, but it is clear Busch was more interested in remaking Star Wars (even giving it poster-placement and a shout-out) rather than The Thief of Baghdad. Aladdin hopes to rescue a princess, which is a common element to both films, but his constant companion is a robot named Fidgi, shaped suspiciously like R2D2, but he flies very much like V.I.N.CENT in the Black Hole.

There is also a dodgy adventurer who keeps conning thieves into trying to steal the Jinn of Wisdom’s lamp from its buried tomb, but he can never successfully negotiate the inevitable “you throw me the idol, I throw you the whip” impasse. Of course, Aladdin agrees to be his next unwitting victim.

In fact, it takes about an hour before the Jinn makes his first appearance. Frankly, the first fifteen minutes are entirely devoted to Aladdin running through a Hong Kong bizarre, trying to avoid the cops and his vengeful ex. That would be Hong Kong, China, as it is identified. The United States also happens to now be part of the United States of China, so Busch certainly did his best to position the film for a Chinese distribution deal.

There are times when the film’s grungy but inventive special effects hold nostalgic charm, especially for fans of Roger Corman’s Star Wars knockoffs (like Space Raiders). However, the titular character is boorishly obnoxious, especially in his treatment Oomi, his torch-carrying protector.

The Damned: Nordic Marine Folk Horror

For fishermen, the sea provides sustenance, but what it really generated were superstitions.  The Draugur (or Draugr) was supposedly one of them. However, a fishing camp in Iceland’s frozen Westfjords are about to learn they are actually real, because Thordur Palsson’s The Damned is horror movie that opens today in theaters.

There is no going back for the crew of Eva’s fishing boat, because no ships would dare traverse the icy waters until the thaw. Unfortunately, the fishing has been so poor, they have resorted to eating their bait. Technically, the widowed Eva owns the outfit, but her burly but much older second husband Ragnar acts as the skipper, foreman, and taskmaster. She has the final word, but Eva usually defers to him, so she does so again when a ship freakishly wrecks on the reefs surrounding their bay. He insists they cannot even feed themselves, so they cannot afford to rescue more hungry mouths.

Obviously, this generates some bad karma—especially when Eva and Ragnar organize a salvage operation to scavenge supplies. In fact, it gets rather ugly when they must beat off survivors. Of course, spooky old Helga recognizes all this provides a conducive environment for vengeful draugurs. Sure enough, something seems to soon start preying on the fishing camp, killing them off one-by-one and/or driving them mad. Helga tries to protect them with traditional charms, but to no avail.

Palsson and screenwriter Jamie Hannigan serve up another generous helping of folk horror. The isolated coastal location, the washed-out color palate, and the bleak tone prompt comparisons to Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse. Yet, even though The Damned is moody in the extreme, Palsson still maintains a healthier pace, which is quite impressive.

Admittedly, Palsson relies on casting to provide much of the shorthand character development for his supporting cast, like Francis Magee as burly middle-aged Skuli, baby-faced Michael Og Lane as nervous Aron, and Rory McCann as grizzled Ragnar. Yet, that economy often serves genre films relatively well—and it works here.

DC Showcase: The Spectre

Gen Z'ers could learn a lot from Det. Jim Corrigan’s work ethic. He works his colleagues’ cases as well as his own. Plus, he is technically dead, yet he never makes any excuses. Those evil-doers will not punish themselves, but Corrigan will, as the human host for an ex-demon-turned-righteous-spirit-of-vengeance. His latest case is very Hollywood, but that won’t impress Corrigan in Joaquim Dos Santos’s DC Showcase: The Spectre. (Technically, today is Corrigan’s in-world birthday, but he isn’t very festive anymore.)

In most storylines, Corrigan was killed while on his way to celebrate his engagement. Presumably, he knew Aimee Brenner sometime before that. They were once an item, so he duly arrives at the crime scene to comfort her—and annoy below-average Lt. Brice. As a bigtime studio producer, her father, Foster Brenner had no shortage of enemies. However, several former collaborators whom Brenner cut out of his latest blockbuster were particularly vocal expressing their grievances.

Frankly, you probably wouldn’t need to be the Spectre to solve this case, but he can do it especially quickly. Essentially, the Spectre visits the accused, sort of like the Ghosts of Christmas, showing them horrific visions based on their guilty memories. The makeup artist (who maybe not coincidentally partly resembles Tom Savini) is in for a particularly rough time, because of all the macabre models and props in his studio.

The coolest thing about The Spectre is its funky 1970s vibe. It could almost pass for an animated cousin of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The deliberately hazy look suits the murky morality of its Hollywood setting, while the soundtrack from The Track Team, Jeremy Zuckerman & Benjamin Wynn sounds very era-appropriate.

Lockerbie: A Search for the Truth, in The Epoch Times

There are conspicuous biases and an unfortunate lack of tension throughout Peacock's LOCKERBIE: A SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH. Yet, at least it provides a timely reminder of the continuing threat of state-sponsored terrorism, including violent extremist Palestinian groups, according to its driven subject, Dr. Jim Swire. EPOCH TIMES review up here.

Harbin: Anh Jung-geun’s Celebrated Mission

Harbin is the largest city in Northeastern China, but in the early 1900s, it was as Russian as Moscow. Back then, it was a major hub on the Russian-owned Chinese Eastern Railway, linking Vladivostok to Port Arthur. For the Korean resistance army, it was an advantageous area to operate, because the Imperial Japanese army had to respect the authority of the Russian government. For a future national hero in need of redemption, a Japanese state visit represents an opportunity to strike a blow for independence in Woo Min-ho’s Harbin, which opens Friday in theaters.

Anh Jung-geun fought and bled to liberate Korea. Unfortunately, as the film opens, he faces disgrace for allowing a potentially hard-fought victory to turn into a bitter defeat. The General learns the hard way that when your enemy offers to commit Seppuku, you ought to let him do so.   Instead, Anh showed Maj. Tatsuo Mori mercy, by disarming and releasing him under the current international laws of warfare. Mori repaid his kindness by wiping out Anh’s army with artillery.

Frankly, most of the resistance army’s ruling council consider Anh’s conduct foolish, bordering on outright treason. Yet, sufficient confidence remains in his loyalty to assign him a possibly game-changing mission that holds little chance of survival. Anh will lead a team tasked with assassinating Ito Hirobumi, the former Japanese Prime Minister and Resident General of Korea, who continues to act as the behind-the-scenes power broker, while he makes an official diplomatic visit to Harbin.

Yet, Anh’s misfortunes continue, when he is separated from traveling partners, Kim Sang-hyun (probably his staunchest defender) and Woo Deok-sun (his fiercest critic) on the train to Harbin. When they eventual reunite in the future Chinese Russian city, it will become clear one of them has been turned by Mori.

Compared to the similarly themed Assassination, Harbin is much more cerebral and considerably slower in pace. However, its intrigue definitely intrigues. In fact, Woo Min-ho and co-screenwriter Kim Min-seung address themes of mercy and redemption in a surprisingly thoughtful manner.

Still, Woo executes several warfighting scenes with brutal realism. In fact, the sight of Anh staggering along the Tumen River will likely become the defining image of Harbin, thanks to striking way cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo frames these sequences. Nevertheless, Woo concentrates on recreating the paranoia and feelings of outraged impudence that tormented the underground resistance.

The Top 10’s of Cinema Daily US

Happy New Year. It is a new year, but some of the best films of 2024 will only start opening outside of New York this month. My colleagues and I at CINEMA DAILY US have posted our top 10 lists (here), which are filled with great films you should either look out for or catch up with.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, in Cinema Daily US

WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL continues to entertain in the best tradition of animated dogs and their ostensive owners. It features the same genial tone and inventive visual sense of humor in a cracking caper that brings back a franchise-favorite nemesis. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Saloum, from Senegal with Fear

Fela Kuti might have said “music is the weapon…of the future,” but for the mercenaries known as “the Hyenas of Bangui,” guns and “voodoo”-like magic are better weapons. Their bwiti practitioner, Papa Minuit, covers their magical six. However, they will be severely out magically-gunned when they take refuge in the notoriously haunted Sine-Saloum delta region in director-screenwriter Jean Luc Herbulot’s Saloum, which releases today on BluRay,

Chaka leads the Hyenas from their base in the Central African Republic, but he originally hails from Senegal’s Sine-Saloum. For their latest gig, the Hyenas must safely escort a Mexican drug-lord out of the chaos of Guinea-Bissau’s 2003 coup. Unfortunately, a bullet nicks the fuel line of their getaway plane, forcing an emergency landing in Sine-Saloum, where Cheika happens to know a “nearby” (eight hour’s walk) artist’s retreat.

Except, their detour was no accident. Cheika engineered it, because he seems to have unfinished business with Omar, the proprietor, who can’t quite remember where or when they met. The family-style meals will be especially awkward, since they must share them with Souley Fale, a cop supposedly on vacation and Awa, a deaf-mute who makes it known to Cheika (through sign language) she knows who they are and she will expose them, unless he agrees to take her with them.

Initially, the Hyenas want nothing to do with the demanding Awa. However, when the local demonic monsters start attacking the guests through their ears, her deafness becomes an unlikely asset. For years, Omar kept them in check through a Faustian bargain, but Cheika’s plans upset the balance.

The swarming entities looking surprisingly cool on-camera, especially considering the film’s extreme budget constraints. They are also quite distinctively different from just about every other supernatural bogeyman horror fans might have seen before.

Yet, Herbulot does not merely overachieve with the special effects. Saloum is uncannily atmospheric and increasingly unnerving. Arguably, this is the most satisfying, relentlessly super-charged African film since Viva Riva! (exclamation point in title).

Adventureman Vol. 1: The End and Everything After, Graphic Novel

An Art-deco backdrop makes any hero look more heroic. It also helps to have a series of pulp novels extolling your virtues. Adventureman and his teammates in Adventure Inc. had both. Yet, they came to a tragic end fighting evil. Everyone assumes they were merely characters in stories, but Claire Connell receives mysterious signs that they might have ben really real in Matt Fraction’s Adventureman Volume 1: The End and Everything After, illustrated by Jerry Dodson, a tradepaper bind-up of issues 1-5, which is now on-sale.

The first issue chronicles Adventure Inc’s swan song, ending in a downer cliffhanger. Baron Bizarre had the drop on them, so he is poised to administer the coup de grace with his Inferno Pistol—and the end. If you find that ending rather unsatisfying, Connell’s son Tommy would certainly agree. Frankly, she is also a fan, so she recognizes the Adventure Inc. sigil on a rare volume a mysterious woman in 19^th Century garb drops off at her used bookstore.

After leafing through the book, Connell starts seeing evidence of Adventure Inc.’s existence, including their towering Empire State-like headquarters. Knowing their history, Connell deduces the right passwords, but she still must evade the aging robot sentries. She has definitely entered the world of Adventure Inc., but she won’t remember the details once she leaves. However, she will notice certainly physical changes.

Adventureman has a clever concept and Dodson’s art is clean and stylish, in an appropriately pulpy throwback kind of way (Dodson’s wife Rachel was also the inker, so presumably they work well together). Adventure Inc’s relationship with its own pulp novels might sound very meta, but thematically it harkens back to the second half of Don Quixote.

Squid Game Season 2, in Cinema Daily US

SQUID GAME's second season maintains the quality and tension that made the first a cultural phenomenon. It might even be smarter, in ways students of Game Theory can appreciate. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Hong Sang-soo’s A Traveler’s Needs

Hong Sang-soo’s films with French actress Isabelle Huppert have all arisen out of chance meetings and commenced without finished scripts. For their latest film, it really shows. Hong’s films are always lightweight, but this one could blow away with a gentle breeze. The film follows a French tutor, who like the director, somehow gets away with never preparing for her students in Hong’s A Traveler’s Needs, which just opened in additional cities.

Iris supposedly teaches French by prodding her students to rcall their deepest emotional memories and then translating them into French and recording them on audio cassettes for them to listen to. This way, their lessons will resonate for them, unlike that rote Dick-and-Jane stuff.

Okay, maybe. Not all of her clients are convinced, but her loyal student Isong buys in. She obediently discusses the thoughts that went through her head while playing piano (during which time, Iris boorishly steps outside for a smoke). Then, she refers her tutor to a married couple she knows.

Wonju clearly suspects Iris is a lazy scammer, but her husband Haesoon is impressed by her ability drink makgeolli without any signs of inebriation. Eventually, Wonju plays guitar, prompting a conversation almost identical to the one Iris had with Isong, which constitutes the film’s clearest manifestation of Hong’s regular doubling or repeating motif.

Then Iris returns home to spend time with her much younger roommate-slash-ambiguous boyfriend, Inguk, until his mother (who is about her age) pops in unexpectedly. Then, she is off like a rocket, leaving him to mother’s third-degree.

Honestly, Traveler’s Needs must be Hong’s dullest film to-date, which is saying something. Even by his generous standards, it is aimless in direction and decidedly sleight. Even Huppert, his buddy at Cannes, appears to struggle with her halting, minimalist dialogue. Hong’s regular player, Kwon Hae-hyo, just falls back on tried-and-true Hong-isms, mostly by drinking like a fish. There is simply no meat on his bony screenplay for them to sink their teeth into. Only Cho Yunhee successfully gets into any sort of rhythm as Inguk’s mom, who really is quite a formidable interrogator.

Place of Bones, Starring Heather Graham

Pandora is a frontier widow. That means she is a survivor, by definition. The homestead she shares with her willful teen daughter Hester looks dangerously secluded, but they have their faith. They are also surprisingly resourceful, but they need more guns in Audrey Cummings’ Place of Bones, which releases today on DVD.

They might live in the middle of nowhere, but trouble still finds Pandora and Hester. First, they hear gunshots. The next day, Hester stumbles over Calhoun’s bleeding body near her late father’s gravesite. Pandora manages to stop his bleeding, but his gangrene-infested leg needs to go. Of course, she confiscates his bullets first.

Slightly perturbed by the amputation, Calhoun assumes Pandora intends to steal his saddle-bags stuffed with cash, which he himself stole from his fellow bank-robbing bandits. However, she has no desire for blood money. Instead, she is rightly concerned someone will come looking for it—and Calhoun must reluctantly admit she is not wrong.

That someone is Bear John, along with three of his henchmen. Calhoun already killed three others, including Bear’s idiot brother. Unfortunately, he and his tracker, Cherokee Jack (who isn’t really Cherokee), are probably about as dangerous and lowdown as outlaws get. Eventually, Pandora will have give Calhoun his gun back, so they can try to hold off the killers together, but it will take them a while to work up to that level of trust.

The first 95% of Place of Bones consists of serviceable but rather unremarkable revisionist Western material. However, there is such a shocking twist ending, it seems strange the film has not generated more online buzz. Indeed, Cummings (who also helmed the pedal-to-the-metal horror film, She Never Died) and screenwriter Richard Taylor so scrupulously avoid telegraphing the big reveal, it genuinely surprises—even stuns.

Regardless, Heather Graham is surprisingly intense and forceful as Pandora, even though Cummings and the makeup department appear conflicted whether to accentuate her magazine-cover image or glam her down for the sake of gritty naturalism. Essentially, they split the difference, presenting her as impossibly clean for a dirt farmer, decked out in a primly schoolmarmish wardrobe.

Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot No. 249, on PBS

Arthur Conan Doyle would probably hate this adaptation of his mummy short story, for the same reason many of his fans will enjoy it. Departing from the original text, it creates a role that is clearly implied to be you-know-who. Of course, he could justifiably complain the annual BBC series, A Ghost Story for Christmas had no business adapting his creepy yarn, because it is about a mummy, not a ghost. Still, maybe screenwriter-director Mark Gatiss might argue a mummy is an undead spirit that loiters malevolently, much like a ghost. Regardless, there is plenty of gothic tweediness in Lot No. 249, which airs tomorrow on Buffalo Public Television (airing a Ghost Story for Christmas, more-or-less for Christmas, as it was originally intended).

Abercrombie Smith is a very smart but not quite genius Oxford medical student, who treats Edward Bellingham, the eccentric Egyptology scholar in the digs next-door for exhaustion, nervous collapse, or really just some kind bizarre trance-like state. Whatever you call it, viewers can tell he has been dabbling in black arts.

Sure enough, soon thereafter, Bellingham’s campus rival is throttled by a mysterious hulking figure. For an Oxford student, Smith puts two and two together relatively quickly, deducing Bellingham has found a way to reawaken and control the mummy he bought at auction—that would be lot number 249. However, before confronting Bellingham, he wishes to “consult” his unnamed friend, a detective hoping to soon move to Bakers Street, who is decidedly not inclined to give credence to the supernatural.

Indeed, the Holmesian references are quite amusing. Gatiss also amps up the gay subtext, which almost feels unnecessary for a story set in the rarified world of elite British public (meaning private) school alumni. Frankly, Mummy makeup technology really hasn’t needed to advance much since Boris Karloff bandaged-up in 1932, so this one looks just as well as most of the ones that came before.

Vermiglio, in Cinema Daily US

The austerity of VERMIGLIO will challenge many viewers, but its artistry is undeniable. It is an Oscar contender. CINEMA DAILY US review up here. Merry Christmas, by the way.