HOUR OF THE WOLF — SHOCKTOBER!

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

 

 

Ingmar Bergman's haunting 1968 psychological thriller is, at heart, a bold reflection on the lasting effects of childhood abuse.

Filmed on the island of Fårö, Bergman announces the minimalist movie with a flourish of self-referential artistic expression to set up the bizarre narrative that follows.

Sounds of its stage set being built, under the conversation of a film crew give way to, "Camera."

"Action."

Liv Ullmann speaks directly to the camera as Alma. She speaks of revelations she has discovered from reading her husband's diary.

Alma has given birth to a child on this lonely, desolate island. Her beloved artist husband Johan (Max von Sydow) has vanished.

Suicide perhaps. A victim of murder? We may never know.

The couple have come to the island for Johan to paint. Their love is strong, but ghosts from Johan's past haunt him. Johan's place in the world as an artist reveal subtexts of Ingmar Bergman's own self identity.

Johan is unable to find peaceful sleep in the couple's cold water cottage.

Dreams and nightmares blur with harsh reality.

Suspicion and regret hang in the air.

A dinner invitation by a coven of insulting aristocrats inhabiting a 14th century castle, leads to an explosion of social anxiety for Johan. Are the blue-bloods real, or merely composite figures from Johan's troubled imagination?

A quote from "Rosemary's Baby" springs to mind.

"Witches, all of them witches."

The subconscious and conscious minds of our lonely couple reveal cracks that all married couples experience.

Only we, the audience, can decide where the truth lies — that will take time.

Impeccably conceived and executed, "Hour of the Wolf" is an eloquent thing of cinematic perfection. Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann provide stunning performances.

What is this nightmare called love?

Not Rated. 87 mins.

MR. KLEIN — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

 

 

Joseph Losey's Nazi-era war drama is based on a composite of actual people and events wherein French police collaborated to arrest Jews and send them away to concentration camps.

Working from a script by Franco Solinas ("The Battle of Algiers"), Mr. Losey combines different filmic styles toward a slow-burn climax that is arresting.

The year is 1942.

The film's brooding sense of privacy invasion by local authorities and occupying forces darkens as the film's opportunist title character unknowingly puts himself under ever increasing scrutiny by Jew-hunting French police. 

It seems that Mr. Klein has a mysterious Jewish would-be doppelgänger who goes by the same name. Mr. Klein's hubris and self-hating racism drive him into grotesque agony.

Alain Delon remains the most iconic image of inscrutable masculinity that French Cinema provides. Mr. Delon put skin in the game to produce "Mr. Klein," with the assertion that Blacklisted expat American director Joseph Losey be given the Director's chair.

Mr. Klein (Alain Delon) deals in Parisian antiques. Mr. Klein lives among his gilded treasures in a palatial Paris apartment he shares with his bed-loving girlfriend. Mr. Klein is openly insulting to his Jewish clientele, of whose predicament he takes full financial advantage when purchasing their art works for pennies on the dollar.

Entropy takes over Mr. Klein's life as even his trusted lawyer openly betrays him in light of Mr. Klein's inability to prove his heritage as other than Jewish. Now that Mr. Klein is in the police department's system, he is stuck on an uncertain path toward death.

Mr. Losey is careful to include the LGTBQ culture of the era in telling sequences with Parisian showgirls.

Complex in its narrative, Joseph Losey's historically accurate "Mr. Klein" (1975) predicts our modern day tech dystopia of surveillance capitalism that has ruptured every society, and the planet, to the point of near or present collapse.

"Mr. Klein" is a haunting film for the reflexive dichotomy it shares between the dystopia of World War II France, and the totalitarian existence we experience today.

In 2023, we are all Mr. Klein.

Rated PG. 123 mins.

 

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

 

 

Ruben Östlund's spotty social satire about smartphone-driven influencers goes on a "Gilligan's Island" styled trajectory.

"Gilligan's Island" holds up as a better example of the left roasting right-wing capitalist pigs, whose greed knows no sliver of human decency.

Ego, ego, ego.

Money, money, money.

Dirty, dirty, dirty.

The film's sadness comes in the form of a third act failure that dashes all hopes for the narrative to rise to its promised elevation.

Punchy dialogue keeps you on the hook, but the story evaporates with a ghost-in-the-machine tableau that just makes no sense.

Stupido.

Woody Harrelson nevertheless delivers a kick of comedy as Captain to a ship cruise carrying a mixed bag of social classes. Mr. Harrelson is indeed a proper Captain host to the movie.

If only Harrelson's character had more to do.

Check out "Don't Look Up" if you're looking for smart, sharp, and funny social satire.

Sad this movie didn't pay off on its promise.

Clunk.

Rated R. 147 mins.