THE PENGUIN LESSONS

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Punk heart still beating.

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Based on Tom Michell's 2016 memoir about his time spent teaching English during a coup in Argentina in 1976, "The Penguin Lessons" is a stellar politically-minded comedy, packed with subtle and not-so-subtle humor, historic political perspective, and Steve Coogan's infectious wit.

And, there's a penguin. I know what you're thinking, another shaggy dog story. Not so fast.

"The Penguin Lessons" is all about metaphors. As such, our penguin guide gifts us with the power of identifying underlying meanings in pretty much everything that the movie has to offer.

Facing up to social responsibility is on the list for Steve Coogan's instinctively truth-telling rendition of Tom Michell. Lying takes too much effort. It's easier for Tom to rip off the band-aid when touchy questions arise.

Throw in a dramatic tearjerker aspect, and you've got some sublime entertainment.

Björn Gustafsson is excellent as Tom's taller-but-less-confident co-worker.

Serious and funny in equal parts, the well-paced narrative gravitates toward deeper truths than you realize until you are stuck in its deep water. 

However potentially treacherous the dramatic terrain of working with children and/or animals, Steve Coogan dances through the tricky narrative like the experienced dancer he proves to be in one of the movie's pivotal sequences.

It's always value-added when there's dance involved. This sequence shines.

Here is a family movie built to stand the test of time. "The Penguin Lessons" will be a safe bet when you see it available to watch on an airplane.

Steve Coogan's comic genius seems to always find its level. This thematically rich material perfectly matches Coogan's advanced skill-set.

Hilarious. I couldn't possibly count how many times I laughed or cried during this masterful picture.

Director Peter Cattaneo ("The Full Monty") captures every microscopic nuance of comedy, tragedy, satire, romance, and mystery in this wonderful movie. 

Impressive.

Rated PG-13. 110 mins.

ENTER THE VOID — SHOCKTOBER!

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Gaspar Noe specializes in brutally grueling films of sex and violence. Anyone who has suffered through his 2002 film "Irreversible" knows well the feeling of seeing something that you would never want to see again.

"Enter the Void" is such a virtuosic, if orgiastic, piece of experimental exploitation cinema that the audience is simultaneously repulsed and mesmerized by the bold attack on the senses that Noe assaults the viewer with.

Set in Tokyo, "Enter the Void" captures the most immersive subjective viewpoint for its drug addicted protagonist that any filmmaker has ever achieved. Through the eyes of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), we experience a casual conversation with his sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) that leads to a mind-melting drug trip after she leaves.

Psychedelic to the extreme, the visually stupefying sequence goes far beyond even Stanley Kubrick's groundbreaking visuals for "2001: A Space Odyssey). It's only when Oscar finally faces his bathroom mirror that we finally see what he sees, his surprisingly young and innocent face.

The story progresses in real time until Oscar's life takes a shocking turn inside a bar bathroom. Oscar's and Linda's back story about the car crash that took their parents' lives when they were small, informs their dodgy lives in Tokyo where he makes his living as a drug dealer, and she as a stripper. The filmic odyssey is eventually brought low by its own excesses.

At 137 minutes, there is too much brain-hammering repetition of headache-inducing segues of flamboyant neon color and grotesque physical elements to serve the filmmaker's bizarre vision. With a good 30 or 40 inessential minutes excised from it, "Enter the Void" could have been truly amazing. However, in its current form it is a traumatic film that wears out its welcome.

Not Rated. 137 mins. 

I STAND ALONE — SHOCKTOBER!

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Desolation of the human soul is the provocation for Gaspar Noé’s dead-end French antihero, a nameless, broke 50-something butcher (played by the commanding Philippe Nahon). Nahon’s insidiously repulsive narcissist carries all the marks of a card-carrying right-wing extremist. Self-loathing, racist, misogynistic, and shaking with pedophiliac desires, Noé’s existential everyman of moral depravity narrates his life story. It reads like a bad acid trip.    

Growing up as an abandoned child during World War II leads to the adult butcher owning his own meat shop. His mute 13-year-old daughter appears with blood on her panties. Believing his daughter was raped, he chases the suspect with a knife, but accidentally stabs an innocent man. Several years in prison leave the butcher briefly ready to “reset the counter” on his life. It doesn’t take long for that fantasy to fade. The setting is France circa 1980. Our hateful man (with the metaphoric and literal occupation title that describes him) questions his morality while wandering Paris on the run after pummeling his pregnant girlfriend, thereby killing their baby. Noé’s dual-antagonist-protagonist earns no empathy from his audience.

The Argentinian filmmaker uses simple but dynamic stylistic devices, such as a single gunshot sound effect, to emphasize sudden leaps in the butcher’s progressively offensive inner monologue of discontent and rage. Noé isn’t above using cheap gimmicks to toy with his audience, as when “ATTENTION” flashes across the screen before giving the audience “30 seconds to leave the screening of this film,” with only 20 minutes left. Rest assured any weak-kneed viewers would already have exited the cinema long before Noé’s tongue-in-cheek alert.

“I Stand Alone” (Gaspar Noé’s feature debut) is as much a philosophical denunciation of humanity as it is a thought-provoking treatise on mental illness as a socially communicable disease. The suicidal butcher’s cynical philosophy has flashes of clarity amid bouts of violent actions and bloody fantasies. Love may be the only remedy for the butcher’s nagging death wish but even that comes as a sick travesty.

Not Rated. 81 mins.