Director: Jennifer Sheridan

Writer: Matt Stokoe

Stars: Sophie Rundle, Matt Stokoe, Nathan McMullen

Synopsis: Gripped by a violent, terrifying illness, Rose lives in seclusion with her husband, but the arrival of a stranger shatters the fragile refuge they have built.

[/info]

The theme of isolation is one that particularly hits home given the world we’re living in now, and in Jennifer Sheridan’s debut feature, COVID-19 is the least of the worries. With a fresh, unique spin on the vampire myth (who’d have thought that was possible anymore?) coupled with tense, macabre sound design and equally tense performances from its leads, Rose: A Love Story is an often engaging, if flawed, movie.

Rose and her husband Sam live in seclusion in the woods of an unnamed British town. She is hard at work on her novel, while he spends his days hunting for food and collecting petrol. Although it’s a strange situation, they do have what appears to be an ordinary relationship. They argue they have sex, they have rules established to maintain their relationship (such as ensuring they always eat dinner together). So far, so normal. Except when you realize Rose is eating a bowl of leeches for dinner. The same leeches which we saw earlier sucking on Sam’s blood. And then there’s the strange practice they have of locking Rose in a room whenever Sam goes out hunting. Rose, we’re told, has a mysterious blood condition of some kind which necessitates all of these endeavors. But Sam is a little paranoid and controlling at times, and their particular style of social distancing seems less to do with any kind of virus and more to do with the dangers of being discovered. This quiet solitude comes to an abrupt end, however, when a young girl is caught in one of Sam’s traps. With a broken leg, she’s unable to move much, so Sam and Rose take her in and attempt to nurse her back to health, with disastrous consequences.

Horror fans will find a common thread shared between Rose: A Love Story and Trey Shults’ It Comes At Night. Both feature claustrophobic isolation and a building sense of dread in a world gone wrong. However, whereas the latter is fairly pacey, Rose: A Love Story is glacier slow by comparison. As its name suggests, there is a bigger emphasis on romance here. Sam (played by Matt Stokoe, who also wrote the script) has given up everything for Rose. He has carefully built a life for himself and his wife, and Sheridan and Skokoe seem much more interested in showing the viewer exactly how Sam has maintained that. Moments are teased out slowly, such as Rose’s condition and Sam’s fierce loyalty, and left to linger. What we’re seeing is, ultimately, a tale of devotion and the lengths we go to for love. There is nothing especially overt about Rose: A Love Story until its final moments. Instead, the horror aspect is allowed to slowly gain traction through an excellent use of sound design and a suitably grim cinematographic style which captures the nature of the couple’s isolation very well.

Sheridan’s slow, methodical approach won’t be for everyone. Rose: A Love Story is much more concerned with the trappings of relationships than it is the insidious circumstance of its lead characters. It is understated to a fault, but thankfully the acting lifts it up. While the movie seems more interested in Sam, it is Sophie Rundle as Rose who provides the most human moments. Rose feels constant guilt that her condition is forcing Sam into a life he doesn’t want, frequently offering him a way out, and Rundle plays this to perfection. She evokes the neighborly bonhomie of an ordinary English woman and is very easy to warm to and empathize with. Sam, on the other hand, is distant and tense, ensuring the viewer’s loyalty will almost certainly lie with the former.

In fact, there’s the feeling that Rose: A Love Story would have benefitted from more of a focus on its eponymous character, but unfortunately, she’s almost always side-lined in favor of Sam. For the most part, she is left to display creepily vague characteristics (such as her ability to move around without making the slightest sound, frightening Sam at one point when she walks upon him) which hint at a more dangerous truth than is being let on. Perhaps this is by design: the less we know of Rose and her condition, the better the horror builds as she remains an unknown entity. This is especially true when Amber (played with chavvy vigor by Olive Gray) shows up and befriends Rose. How much danger is she in? What exactly is Sam afraid that Rose will do?

After the slow build-up, some of the tension drains towards the climax. There is only so much teasing one can endure before losing interest and unfortunately, Sheridan walks that particular line very closely. As Amber insinuates herself more and more into the couple’s lives, the pacing suddenly rushes a little faster, eschewing the atmospheric tension of the first half in favor of a slightly contrived ending which doesn’t carry the emotional heft it intended to. It’s a well done moment, but on balance it might have been better to pick up the pace a little more throughout and stop the tension – and the viewers’ stamina – from flagging.

Rose: A Love Story is exactly what it says it is. It’s a love story, concerned more with the minutiae of a rocky relationship than with easy jump scares or gory bloodletting. It is a slow, ambiguous movie content to let its characters develop their relationship and is carried well by both Matt Stokoe and by Sophie Rundell in particular. Unfortunately, it suffers from over-indulgence and will likely test the patience of all but the most ardent of horror fans, and the pay-off is nowhere near satisfying enough for the build-up involved in getting there. When it works, however, Rose: A Love Story is a well-acted tale with a fresh take on an overdone myth.

Grade: C-

Director: Francis Lee
Writer: Francis Lee
Stars: Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Jones

Synopsis: In 1840s England, acclaimed but overlooked fossil hunter Mary Anning and a young woman sent to convalesce by the sea develop an intense relationship, altering both of their lives forever.

[/info]

Usually, when I write about a film that flies by, it’s a good thing. It is a good thing to me when a 2+ hour film goes by and feels like an hour, keeping me engaged throughout. For a film that is exactly two hours long, it should be a good thing for me to mention that Ammonite felt like it was only an hour long. However, that ended up being a negative for the film, as I look back and wonder what really happened in this story and why it warranted the two-hour runtime.

This is a film that is meant to be a slow build, focusing on the characters and them forming their relationships. However, that does not justify the reasons as to why this film felt like it had no steady pacing at any moment. There is meant to be a sense of time passing between Mary Anning (played by Winslet) and Charlotte Murchison (played by Ronan), and yet there is no real sign in the film that the time did pass by. There are scenes that are dragged out for a prolonged amount of time, whilst other moments which are much more engaging are rushed through.

There are a few aspects of this film that were excellently done and kept me engaged throughout. The first thing on that list are the leading performances from both Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, who elevate the material to another level. The best moments of the film are when they are both on screen, as they bounce off of each other seamlessly and their relationship is so easy to buy into.

There are people who I have already seen talk about this particular sequence, but there is a graphic sex scene that features in this film between Mary and Charlotte. I want to thank Francis Lee for putting this in the film and not shying away from the subject matter, as not many filmmakers would take that risk. In a society where we see heterosexual sex being depicted in most mediums nowadays, it is time to normalize watching lesbian sex in the same format. It is a bold move, but it perfectly shows the relationship of the women at the time and their desires being met, something that clearly neither of them properly had in years.

It was not only that scene that stood out but other fleeting moments that worked so well for me. The set-up for the story and the first meeting between Mary, Charlotte, and her husband Roderick (played by James McArdle) is a strong set-up that helps connect all of the characters naturally. There are also some great moments of humor, particularly at the moment when Mary explains to Roderick what coprolite is whilst he holds it in his hand. These small moments are what make the film work at its best, but sadly there are too few of them to join the story together.

This is a film that focuses heavily on women, making the men feel very flat and stereotypical. I personally did not need an entire scene dedicated to showing that Charlotte’s husband treated her badly. It also became clear that the screenplay had no major plans for the character as soon as he was off the camera. He was simply there to give a reason for Mary and Charlotte meeting up. If he was going to be a major reason why Charlotte had an emotional connection with Mary, I wish there was a plan for his character later on in the film.

This film went by quickly, but I look back on it and wonder what I ended up watching. I struggle to see how this film is two-hours long, with the number of shots there are just of fossils and the dull grey background. The filmmaking itself feels uninspired, with only the sex scene standing out in terms of cinematography and editing. When the film has its moments and focuses on the relationship, that is when the film works for me. I just wish there was more connection between the story to have the same passion as the relationship does and truly communicate to the audience how important this story is. As much as I hate to compare it, it has to be said that there was another lesbian period piece that came out in the past year that did a much better job handling both the relationship and the overall pacing of the narrative. Don’t go into Ammonite thinking you are going to get the same level of connection as Portrait of a Lady on Fire gave us, because it simply isn’t there.

Grade: C

Director: Darius Marder

Writer: Darius Marder, Abraham Marder

Stars: Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, Mathieu Amalric

Synopsis: A heavy-metal drummer’s life is thrown into freefall when he begins to lose his hearing.

[/info]

Riz Ahmed plays Ruben Stone, a former drug addict four years sober who drums in a heavy metal power duo with his girlfriend, singer/guitarist, Lou, played by Olivia Cooke. In the opening shot, we see Ruben in form, shirtless with tats all over his body and drumming hard. In music, especially rock, loud is better and it’s all about the ears. But what happens when it is suddenly without warning taken away from you? In Darius Marder’s (co-writer of The Place Beyond the Pines) directorial debut, which made its initial splash at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, it is a prison that cannot be broken out of completely.

In what is now his career-defining performance, Ahmed as Ruben exhibits the pain and frustration of having been victorious against one major problem only to face another problem that interferes with his livelihood. He struggles to accept his situation as his hearing has rapidly deteriorated to the point where Ruben has to stay with a community of deaf people. No talking, no technology, just a sanctuary away from the noise where being deaf is not a handicap. With the guidance of Joe (Paul Raci), a leader of the community who still retains his speaking voice, Ruben finds his comfort in a new community while longing to regain the sound he remembers.

This isn’t similar to how Children Of A Lesser God portrays deafness. We are placed in the mind and ears of Ruben in his struggles and all credit goes to the sound engineers plus director Mardor in the film for such a non-romantic view of it. It captivates us, putting us in a position not seen before in movies, and makes us feel Ruben’s distorted hearing and feelings in a place that feels he’s trapped in. And his pain is reflected in Lou, hurt to see her boyfriend suffering but knows that if he doesn’t get help, he can easily fall off the wagon of sobriety while she could go to self-harm again.

Adding to the film’s authenticity is the fact that Mardor cast deaf actors, professional or not, in the deaf roles. Lauren Ridloff (The Walking Dead) plays a teacher to deaf children who also incorporate Lou into the class. In real life, Ridloff is deaf likes the rest of the ensemble. Also, Ahmed had never touched a drumstick, let alone hit a drum, and spent six months learning to play them while also studying American Sign Language. It’s these things that plays on the realism that Marder, who created the film’s story with Pines director, Derek Cianfrance, captures, in essence, a community never really portrayed on screen and how silence speaks more volumes than any note or thud of the drum. If there’s a reason to see Sound of Metal, it’s Riz Ahmed in what should be a deserved Oscar nomination.

Grade: A+

Director: Haifaa al-Mansour

Writer: Haifaa al-Mansour

Stars: Mila Alzahrani, Dhay, Nourah Al Alwad, Khalid Abduirhim

Synopsis: A young female Saudi doctor’s run for office in the local city elections forces her family and community to accept their town’s first female candidate.

[/info]

Saudi Arabia is still a very conservative country when it comes to women’s rights because of their interpretation of Islamic law. In the last several years, things have loosened a little bit, such as the right to drive a vehicle, travel abroad, graduate from college, and voting. In the world of cinema, movie theatres were banned until 2018 – two years ago – but that didn’t stop Haifaa al-Mansour to learn movies by videocassette and become the first female director from the nation.

In her fourth feature film, a young female Saudi doctor named Maryam (Mila Al Zahrani) deals with the usual restrictions and conformities of a Muslim woman. In the beginning, we see an old man being taken in after an accident, but when Maryam tries to see his injuries, he angrily rebuffs her because she shouldn’t touch him. Even though she has the experience to qualify upwards in her career, none of the male higher-ups make room for Maryam. Seeing the road leading to the clinic completely bumpy and unpaved, Maryam makes a bold move and says she will run for office for the city council. This, obviously being a woman, is farther than any woman has done in politics and it becomes an uphill battle for recognition and acceptance in the community and to her father.

al-Mansour keeps the story tight as she lays out the path Maryam has to run, not walk, through in becoming the title of the movie. Outside of her career as a doctor, she sings at weddings, following the path of her widowed father, a musician in a Saudi band. However, he is skeptical regarding his daughter’s ambitions, especially when locals chastize her and say women only belong in the household. It becomes a clash of the generations, where Maryam pushes to modernize herself like an American-styled campaign and other candidates find her presence a sham and offensive. It is a subtle feminist film in Saudi Arabia, something that would never have been thought of a decade ago.

Having made a splash with her first three films, Wadjda (submitted as Saudi Arabia’s first Oscar nominee for Best International Film in 2012), and her two English films, Mary Shelley and Nappily Ever After, al-Mansour’s return to her native country on a more progressive tone could be eye-opening for those unaware of Saudi culture and values. She has encountered criticism from her home country on her previous work for daring to question these values, but also praise for talking about things usually taboo at home. Again, with The Perfect Candidate, she has made some rumbles but puts on a perfect platform for the rights of women in such a restrictive country for the modern century. 

Grade: A-

Director: Chloé Zhao
Writer: Chloé Zhao
Stars: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May, Charlene Swankie

Synopsis: A woman embarks on a journey through the American West after losing everything during the recession.

[/info]

We live privileged lives. Many reading this have a good job, a home, and a loving family to spend time with at the end of a long day. We live in big cities with tons of opportunities and activities to keep your mind off the harsh realities that face so many other people around this country and the rest of the world. The comfort we have is something many struggle to achieve within an entire lifetime. In Nomadland, the latest film from director Chloé Zhao, we are taken into a world where our protagonist, and the people around her, are fighting to get by, one small job at a time, city to city, living in their vans.

We meet Fern (Frances McDormand), a woman in her late sixties living in a sprinter van, coasting through the heartland of America looking for jobs. Her husband passed years before her voyage throughout the country, thus she found her purpose in traveling around, exploring a world we don’t normally get to see on the big screen. Leaving her conventional possessions behind, she makes up her van to fit her needs and quickly becomes a part of a community that is quietly growing around the United States right now.

Van life is a reality for people of all ages due to the hardships of the economy since the late 2000s. Thousands of people are struggling to keep the lights on, put food on the table, and have resorted to the idea of this being their way of life. This doesn’t make it easy on them, considering most businesses will only hire stable employees who live in the area, rather than someone who is looking for something part-time. Jobs are simply hard to come by, we hear about this during every political debate on television, but Zhao shows you that keeping this life is not always going to be easy for Fern. Yet through all the hardships and bad luck, she is able to rise above it all and keep moving on.

It can seem like a lonely business to do this sort of living. After all, Fern’s family believes she is a modern-day nomad, a person that moves around for various new opportunities, but also does it because she can’t be in one place for too long. She does this to mask the pain of her life, the lives lost and people taken due to the harshness of the 2008 recession. It’s clear that Fern struggles to become close to someone, but as the film plays out, her walls come down, realizing this way of life is better because of the people she’s met along the way. Fern doesn’t have to be alone, like many people in this world right now. Therein lies the secret as to why Nomadland is a perfect film for 2020; because it’s a commentary on the ideas of isolation and how we can’t allow it to consume us.

Zhao, whose previous film, The Rider, was one of the best films of 2018, continues to build on the style she curated within that film and the others within her filmography. Besides McDormand and David Strathairn, all of the other characters in the film are played by real-life nomads, people who live this life day after day. That authenticity is what makes Nomadland feel so real. Even though there is a merger of Hollywood and the real world in this story, you never for one second feel like this is being manifested in a way that is disrespectful. Overall, it’s a human story built off the stories and lives of those less fortunate to comfortably live in our country, yet they find the comfort of this lifestyle to suit them even better than before.

McDormand is stellar in the role of Fern, in what might be her best work since her Oscar-winning role in Fargo. This isn’t the showiest of performances, rather one that is stripped of fluff so it can feel like we all know who Fern really is and the emotional toll this is all taking on her. You feel like you could just watch her walk slowly on screen for hours, contemplating the ideas in her head, taking in the beauty of the world around her. One could easily fall under the spell of Joshua James Richards’ cinematography mixed with Zhao’s direction by just watching Fern go through each step of her life.

Ultimately, it’s not hard to connect with everything you see on screen because you can understand every character like they were someone you know. We’ve all experienced hardships in our lives, and Nomadland displays it all so vividly that it hits home hard. In watching movies, we forget that some of the best ones strike us in our most personal emotional spaces, making us react to it in a tearful expression of gratitude. Right now, there are very few directors that can elicit this kind of response from audiences, but one of those is certainly Chloé Zhao. May we see her continue to challenge her audiences, as well as herself, in making some of the best movies you can see on any platform.

Grade: B+

Director: Cathy Brady
Writer: Cathy Brady
Stars: Kate Dickie, Nora-Jane Noone, Martin McCann

Synopsis: The story of two sisters who grew up on the fractious Irish border. When one of them, who has been missing, finally returns home, the intense bond with her sister is re-ignited. Together they unearth their mother’s past but uncovered secrets and resentments which have been buried deep, threaten to overwhelm them.

[/info]

Ireland has had its fair share of tragedy. The country was torn apart time and again by English rule various times over the centuries; from Cromwell’s invasion in the 17th century to The Troubles, lasting three decades from the 60s to the introduction of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Today there are still battles, the Unionist north railing against the Nationalist south; mostly the peace is kept thanks to the Agreement, but with Brexit looming there is potential for more violence, more bloodshed.

This is the backdrop for Writer-Director Cathy Brady’s first foray into feature filmmaking. It is a fitting one too, given its subject matter. For Wildfire is, ultimately, the story of two sisters torn apart by tragedy, trying to reunite and find some common ground, with varying results. It is an affecting, sometimes chilling tale of a small, unnamed, Northern  Irish border town and the small minds which come with it. It is also an insight into mental illness and how some societies still cannot accept this (especially a town steeped in Catholicism as the one depicted here). It doesn’t always hit the mark, and sometimes it threatens to boil over into mawkish melodrama, but when it works Wildfire is quietly fierce and profound.

Wildfire sees Kelly (played by Nikka McGuigan) return home, traveling across the Irish Sea. She has been homeless for a long time, and it shows: she has a feral intensity, wide-eyed and rangy, as though ready to take flight at the slightest provocation. She is returning to see her sister Lauren (Nora-Jane Noone), a straight-laced woman, respected in her community and married to similarly straight-laced, and tightly woven, Sean (played by Martin McCann, usually excellent but given a back seat here for good reason). Lauren works in an Amazon-style warehouse, and her life couldn’t be more different from her sisters. Nonetheless, Kelly explodes into her life like a bomb, leaving the hapless Lauren desperately trying to pick up the pieces her sister leaves behind in her wake.

It is hard to say quite who is the stand-out here. Nikka McGuigan gets the meatier of the two roles; Kelly is a bombastic force of nature, as comfortable stripping off and diving into freezing cold waters as she is chasing after a truck whose driver has just littered the street. She is completely unpredictable and manic. She is also, it is implied, likely bi-polar. She is compelled to dig her sister’s garden at 5 am in order to plant vegetables; nearly drowns a small child in a lake, and bounds around without any real awareness of the impact she’s having on the conservative township she’s inhabiting. She is also still mourning the loss of her mother, who died in a car crash, and who seems like the progenitor for Kelly’s illness; the sisters’ father died in an explosion set off by the IRA and this sent their mother spiraling into a depression from which it seems she never recovered. Despite, or perhaps because of this, Kelly seems to float in every scene, never quite tethered to reality. She lives in her own world and what goes on in her mind is anyone’s guess. McGuigan’s performance is also tinged with real-life tragedy: the actress succumbed to cancer at the shockingly young age of 33, not long after the production had finished. Wildfire is dedicated to her memory, and the knowledge of her death seems to give her performance an almost haunting, ethereal quality. She is absolutely absorbing as Kelly and deserves the plaudits coming her way.

Noone’s role is the less showy of the two. She has the slightly thankless task of staring numbly as her sister continually perpetuates the actions which bring both sisters into disrepute. Lauren has worked hard for the life she enjoys with her husband, but she is also fiercely loyal to her sister. She feels constantly on edge of breaking down, struggling to keep up with Kelly’s manic energy. Add to this, Lauren is more than aware of the effect Kelly is having on the community, and while Kelly is either blissfully unaware of it or simply doesn’t care, Lauren is deeply affected. One scene shows her in the warehouse as her colleagues, one by one, approach her to ask about her sister. Lauren clearly doesn’t want to talk about it and is disquieted by the morbid interest her colleagues are taking in her sister’s mental illness. Nonetheless, Noone imbues Lauren with plenty of familiarities. She is an empathetic figure, trying to hold two disparate sections of her life together despite their incompatibility.  Perhaps the most impressive scene sees Lauren and Kelly dancing in a bar. The usually demure Lauren lets loose completely, banging and swinging alongside her sister in a strange and sexually charged sequence; close as lovers, writhing against each other, the scene lit with blue filters and filmed handheld. It’s exhilarating and as close as Lauren, and the movie itself ever comes to really let go, aside from the shocking denouement which is best left for the viewer to discover themselves. It’s in this moment that Noone really shines, letting all of Lauren’s pent up frustration and anger bubble to the surface.

The themes of repression and depression, reunion and separation, abound in Wildfire. The sisters grapple not just with each other but with the memory of their mother, and the father who was killed in a political act they don’t feel quite engaged in. At one point they swim in a lake which separates the north and south Ireland. ‘I’m in the North!’ one shouts, ‘I’m in the South!’ the other response. The geographic distance as well as the generational one and the mental one, are always on display.

Unfortunately, Wildfire feels a little too thin at times to really make an impact. For much of the runtime, we witness the sisters as they each try to come to terms with their realities, but this doesn’t happen with much effectiveness. Perhaps that’s as Brady meant it to be, but it requires a little more patience from the viewer than one might expect and the ending doesn’t really pay off in terms of the emotional resonance it was building towards. It’s an engaging movie, but one that doesn’t necessarily reward the time spent with it.

Grade: C