All Hail the Notorious RBG!

RBG
   

from Indy Week

RBG, the new documentary chronicling the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is way more fun than it might sound. Surprisingly bouncy and engaging, it charts Ginsburg’s gradual ascension from pioneering legal scholar to eighty-five-year-old pop-culture icon.

RBG is one of those rare docs that built enough momentum on its festival rounds (it opened Full Frame this year) to propel it onto the indie cinema circuit. It’s perfectly timed for a theatrical run through the heart of the American zeitgeist. With SNL skits and Notorious RBG T-shirts, Ginsburg has found a new generation of young admirers energized by #MeToo and America’s broader resistance. As the Supreme Court continues its rightward drift, Ginsberg has become an absolutely critical voice: our Great Dissenter.

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Tomb Raider is a superior genre specimen

from Indy Week

Tomb Raider
★★★ ½

In 2013, the venerable Tomb Raider video game franchise unveiled its tenth installment in the series, a complete reboot/origin story with a new emphasis on gritty realism and emotional stakes. The new game was clearly designed to retire the persona of the old Lara Croft—a stone-cold fox with cartoonish female proportions—and introduce the new Lara as a likable and vulnerable rookie archaeologist.

It worked. Tomb Raider was one of the best games of 2013, with a storytelling strategy that encouraged players to empathize and identify with young Lara. The back story was solid and the cinematic cut scenes were visceral and gritty. When Lara is forced to kill her first mercenary goon, she actually throws up.

The new Tomb Raider movie, based on that 2013 game, includes a similar scene, and it’s a perfect indicator of the film’s determination to reinvent the Lara Croft character for the silver screen. As played by the formidable Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina), Lara is no longer the sexy, icy killer of the Angelina Jolie movies. She’s young and inexperienced; tough and resourceful. She’s funny, too, and the filmmakers have a good time playing with the de rigueur video game tropes that longtime franchise fans will appreciate—watch out for those exploding red barrels!

Ferenc Török’s 1945 Is a Dark Fable and a History Lesson Wrapped in Fine Cinematic Storytelling

from Indy Week 

A few months after V-E Day, outside a small Hungarian village, two strangers disembark from a train that pours sinister black smoke into the sweltering summer sky. Dressed in somber black suits, the men hire a cart to transport two steamer trunks into the village. Their arrival and the rumored contents of their cart trigger a panic in the village. In conspiratorial whispers, the news spreads: “The Jews have returned.”

Director Ferenc Török’s 1945, based on the short story “Homecoming” by Gábor T. Szántó, is a grim parable about guilt and the wages of sin. Filmed in dramatic, high-contrast black-and-white, it borrows tropes from classic Hollywood Westerns to tell a story that moves through darker territories.

A quick bit of history helps: during and after World War II, many rural villagers in occupied Europe profited from the deportation of their Jewish neighbors. Ownership of all those homes and storefronts had to eventually change hands. Self-appointed local officials had a vested interest in this system. But sometimes, the Jews returned.

The film unfolds over one afternoon, and the story has the dark, elegant efficiency of a fable—the old and scary type. The villagers clearly share a terrible secret, and each reacts differently to the arrival of the strangers. The mayor scrambles to destroy incriminating paperwork. His wife numbs her guilt with morphine. Only the town drunk seems prepared to face the truth.

Török’s furtive camera peers through curtains and around fence posts. Small objects take on terrible significance: a property deed, a child’s shoe. Spare, haunting music adds tension and complexity to carefully arranged visual compositions. When the purpose of the strangers’ visit is finally revealed, it’s devastating. This is cinematic storytelling at its finest, and 1945 is one of the best films of the year.

The Top Ten Films (Plus Four Critics’ Picks) of 2017

 

From the film review staff at Indy Week, an informal Best Of for 2017…

1. GOOD TIME

Raw, rambunctious, and funny, Good Time redeems American cinema from the doldrums of pre-packaged comic-book franchises and inert middle-class dramas. Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) traverses New York’s five boroughs, stealing and jumping fences, to rescue his mentally ill brother from a state-run facility. Dramatizing Connie’s odyssey with desperate dark humor, Ben and Josh Safdie emerge as unique filmmakers capable of toeing the line between exploitation and gritty social realism with actual heart. —Laura Jaramillo

2. GET OUT

Writer-director Jordan Peele pulls off an impossibly difficult maneuver with the fabulous, timely Get Out, delivering a real American horror story about race and violence that also works as grim satire. Peele understands that timing is key to both comedy and horror, and his beautifully crafted script unwinds with clockwork precision. It’s the movie we didn’t know we needed until we saw it. —Glenn McDonald

IT will flip ya. Flip ya for real …

It
★★★★

Theodicy is a theological term that refers to the problem of evil as an active force in the world.  More specifically, it’s an attempt to resolve the dilemma in many Western religions of how evil can exist in a universe supposedly created and governed by an all-powerful and benevolent God. It’s a puzzler, all right.

In the very excellent, very scary horror film It—based on Stephen King’s famous novel—there’s no ambiguity about the existence of evil. In the hard-luck town of Derry, Maine, the power of darkness manifests as a terrifying clown named Pennywise, a shapeshifting demonic force that wakes up every twenty-seven years to hunt and kill children.

The evil clown thing has been done to death, of course, but Pennywise is practically the originator, and surely one of the freakiest fictional entities ever dreamed up. In the new It, director Andy Muschietti sprints right past the tired scary-clown tropes and delivers a story so disturbing that you may find yourself thinking of arcane terms like theodicy.