THE FLASH

Directing: C
Acting: B-
Writing: C-
Cinematography: C+
Editing: C
Special Effects: D+

When it comes to The Flash, we have to start with Ezra Miller, less because of their relatively competent performance and more because the great life lesson we must all learn from them, apparently, is that nonbinary people can also be massive creeps. Gone are the days of arguing for “separating the art from the artist,” and rightly so: no film exists in a vacuum, nor has it ever. This is why I can no longer stomach watching any film featuring Mel Gibson or Kevin Spacey or Woody Allen. The defenses and justifications just don’t work anymore.

Where does it end, you might ask, when Hollywood is packed with creeps? Do we just avoid all movies altogether? Setting aside the fact that there are degrees of severity (as well as redemption), and the fact that such a question is arguably disingenuous, ideally it ends with people like this no longer being given chance after chance while their behavior remains unchanged.

Your next logical question might be why the hell I went to see this movie, especially if I tell you I already went in with my expectations in the basement, and the answer is simple: I couldn’t help myself. That’s a lame answer, sure. Sometimes people are lame.

I never would have bothered with this movie were it not for the knowledge that Michael Keaton was returning to reprise his role as Batman, for the first time in thirty-one years. Like many people, I feel that Keaton has always been the best of all live-action Batmen, and my all-time favorite movie since my teens has been Batman Returns (1992), which I have seen more times than any other film. By extension, I have a similar, if less passionate, fondness for its predecessor, Batman (1989), which was helmed by the same director (Tim Burton). It is from that earlier Batman that The Flash takes all of its visual references, which is a delight if you’re An Old like me, and maybe pointless for anyone half my age or younger, brought up on endless iterations of the same superhero dreck that, unfortunately, this film also is.

If you were to split The Flash into three acts, both the first and the third are mind-numbingly busy with CGI chaos. (Not to mention witless: in the opening sequence we see a bunch of babies slide out the window of a collapsing building, just so we can hear it called a “baby shower.” Don’t worry about the babies, though: not only do they—spoiler alert—get saved, but they aren’t real!) I have to admit, however, that I found a whole lot of the second act genuinely delightful, as it successfully traded on nostalgia for a time when high-profile, blockbuster superhero movies were still a novelty, only came out every few years, and were elevated by deeply creative, practical production design. Oh, right: and they also had good scripts.

The second act is when we meet Bruce Wayne as played by Michael Keaton, now 71 years old (Jesus, this means he was younger than I am now in Batman Returns), an alternate-timeline version of The Flash’s mentor after Barry discovers his powers allows him to travel through time and attempt to save his dead mother. For a good twenty minutes or so, I was charmed by all the visual callbacks: from Keaton’s very face, to the dusty bat cave, to the Batmobile with the exact same design as in the 1989 film. Even when Barry and his younger, alternate-timeline self (we’ll get back to that) first walk into Wayne Manor, they find themselves in the exact room from the 1989 film when Robert Wuhl as Alexander Knox says to Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale, “Check this out. He must have been King of the Wicker People.”

Later, we even get a jolt of recognition when Batman trots out the Batwing aircraft, which ultimately plays heavily in the story, which quickly becomes a huge mess. The Flash is trying to cheat its way into the long-overused “alternate universes” plot device, which has been used extremely well in Everything Everywhere All at Once and the animated “Spider-verse” films, but hardly any of the far-too-many others. This one might as well be called The Flash and the Multiverse of Numbness. (Granted, the same could have been said for that Dr. Strange sequel.)

Both the opening sequence and the needlessly endless climactic sequence in The Flash are typical examples of what I have complaining about average superhero movies now for years: incoherent action extravaganzas laden with CGI that looks either unfinished or cheap. I am also not a huge fan of packing too many different superheroes into one movie, and this one definitely has too many. If the middle act could have been the whole movie, I’d have liked it a lot more. But, instead of getting the Michael Keaton Batman treatment he deserves, we get him grafted onto a movie with not one, but two Barry Allens. What the hell happened to all these arguments that meeting yourself in an alternate timeline could be cataclysmic? Well, I guess that’s just . . . part of an alternate timeline. How convenient! Here, The Flash and The Flash practically become frat bros. If it were me, and especially if I looked like Ezra Miller, I’d be too distracted from saving the world by all the time spent fucking myself, but I suppose that’s another conversation.

I haven’t even gotten to the cameo by Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, or Michael Shannon truly phoning it in as General Zod, or Sasha Calle as Supergirl in a part that is completely devoid of any real meaning or gravitas, and ultimately just leaves her rendered in CGI flying around punching people like a cartoon. That’s what these movies are, increasingly literally: dumb animated features. They’re cartoons.

Even the Michael Keaton of it all, that being the best part of this movie by a mile, has diminishing returns. It’s like takin a hit of drugs when we hear Michael Keaton utter the famous words, “I’m Batman.” Did we also need a pointed close-up of him saying, “You wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts”? No, we did not. In the end, The Flash attempts to tug at our heartstrings with visual references most of the young audience won’t even get, such as a brief CGI rendering of Nicolas Cage as Superman in the movie that never got made—I almost said “famously,” but this happened back in the nineties. Who is going to remember a movie from the nineties that never even happened, let alone give a shit?

The bottom line is, The Flash is a shit sandwich with a moderately tasty center, except what’s the point of a tasty center in a shit sandwich? I suppose we could call the two Ezra Millers in it the buns. There are some nice shots of their butt in that suit, for what it’s worth. And for the record I am separating the art from the buttocks.

Ezra Miller, Ezra Miller, and Saha Calle give us multiple dimensions of mediocrity.

Overall: C

SANCTUARY

Directing: C+
Acting: B+
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B-

Sanctuary wants you to think it’s sexy, provocative and clever, and it is none of those things. Everything that happens in it is preposterous. All I could think about, through its entire, tedious 96-minute run time was that no person in either of these characters’ positions would ever actually do or say the same things.

Here’s what it does have going or it. The two leads—indeed literally the only two characters ever seen onscreen, with the brief exception of a couple of extra walking through a hotel hallway—have chemistry with each other, and onscreen charisma. Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott, as a hired dominatrix and an ascending multimillionaire CEO, make the most of some truly subpar material. Within that context, though, Abbott in particular is well cast: he has a face made for a character who gets off on being humiliated.

This film is an odd specimen in that it both feels like a “covid movie,” being a two-hander with only two onscreen speaking parts and is entirely set inside a hotel room (with occasional forays into the hallway and the elevator outside of it), while simultaneously feeling like it could have been made any time, with this concept as its gimmick. It was a gimmick that wore thin with me very quickly.

Hal’s about to become CEO of his late father’s company, which owns and runs the chain of hotels this one is a part of. He’s been hiring Rebecca to come and humiliate him in one of the rooms, using memorized lines from a full script he wrote for them, for an unspecified but long time. Writing out entire scripts with lines they both memorize sure seems like a lot of effort for a climax in which Hal just jerks off sitting on a bathroom floor next to a toilet. To each his own, I guess. I’m not kink shaming! It’s just the first kink I’ve run across that involves the kind of work that is indistinguishable from mounting an Off Broadway play, albeit a dirtier one.

Hal has decided that his ascension to CEO means he must end his professional relationship with Rebecca. In response Rebecca decides to up the stakes of everything that is and has been going on between them.

Is Rebecca just expanding the limits of their sexual games? Is Hal actually indistinguishable from the doormat part he’s playing? Is Rebecca telling the truth with her threats of blackmail? Is Hal really this easily manipulated? Are these two actually in love? A better writer might have been able to make me care about the answers to any of these questions.

I can tell you this much: as soon as there was any suggestion that Rebecca might have real feelings for him—is she telling the truth? is she actually just still manipulating him, as he suspects?—even in the absence of a definitive answer, I decided Sanctuary had crossed over into the realm of total bullshit. Nothing these two said to each other ever rang true, even when we were meant to believe they were playing mind games with each other.

Sanctuary wants us to think it has a novel approach to gender dynamics, and it just doesn’t. Hal is broken and weak, Rebecca is bold with hints of insecurity. How revolutionary! I suppose we are meant to wonder whether the entire movie was just part of their “session,” and actually everything we saw was supposed to be as contrived as it seemed, all of it multiple layers of ways for Hal to get off. The movie just isn’t interesting enough to maintain that premise as a compelling idea.

What a disappointment when the games e play aren’t any fun.

Overall: C+

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A-
Animation: A+
Special Effects: A-

Some movies take a while to make clear they are great. Some take a few scenes, a few minutes, for it to sink in that you are watching something special. Once every few years, sometimes even a lot longer, a movie comes along that confidently announces it stands apart as of its opening frame.

The fact that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is one of those movies is just one of many reasons why I love it. A movie this good that’s a sequel skirts the edges of astonishment. Would it be hyperbole to utter this film title in the same breath as The Empire Strikes Back? The Godfather Part II? Maybe. Time will tell. Right now, I am sorely tempted. I mean, I just did it.

I had been deeply impressed with this film’s predecessor, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse when it was released in 2018. It blew me away, and a film so skillfully nuanced, funny, entertaining and beautiful that was both a superhero movie and an animated feature almost defied belief. To say it exceeded expectations would be an understatement. What’s even more amazing is that there’s a strong argument to be made that Across the Spider-Verse is even better.

Its three-person writing team has only one in common with the first film (Phil Lord), and its three-person directing team is entirely new (including Soul co-director Kemp Powers). By definition, they still have to explore the endless possibilities of the wildly overused “multiverse” concept, but these animated films about it not only find almost shockingly clever angles with it, but actually improve with their own iterations. Somehow the convoluted plot mechanics actually make more sense this time around.

And they take their time with it: this movie is 140 minutes long—a record for an animated film—and it doesn’t even finish the story. I’m being careful not to spoil plot details here, but I do think it’s useful to know that the original title for this film was indeed officially Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Part 1. Now they’ve dropped the Part 1 and the next installment will be called Beyond the Spider-Verse. It remains a part 1, though: with tons of story left to go, the film ends with a comic-book style caption: To Be Continued. It was an entertaining experience being in a theater full of people who did not already know to expect this. It was a unique combination of sounds that emitted out of the crowd.

And I cannot stress this enough: those minutes truly fly by. Like its predecessor, the animation is a sight to behold, that being the only consistency across different and distinct animation styles depending on the dimension we’re in. My favorite is the dimension the film opens in—after thrillingly rendered, animated title sequences that flip through dimension styles even through the many production company logos—which is the one home to “Spider-Gwen” (Hailey Steinfeld). The animation itself responds to characters’ emotional states, the colors of their environment flowing in waves away from them like water color paint.

Every style of animation is beautiful, though, an impressive feat given the many different, wildly differing styles, many of them clear visual references to literal comic book drawing and painting styles. This is the kind of literalization in adaptation that movies like this need, giving it a visual depth that augments the incisively written script. The spectacular action sequences are almost incidental, even as they serve the story rather than the other way around, and we become deeply emotionally invested in the relationships—particularly those between the title character, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore, reprising the role even though he’s aged five years whereas teenage Miles is only supposed to be a year older—Moore was in his twenties either way) and his parents (Luna Lauren Vélez and Brian Tyree Henry, both fantastic); also Gwen Stacey and her father (Shea Whigham, voicing a man beautifully drawn). And, of course, Miles and Gwen, whose romantic potential remains a question, whether or not they will be dimension-crossed lovers.

I even liked the villain better this time around, given the knowingly on-the-nose name of “The Spot,” and voiced by Jason Schwartzman. Due to an accident with an Alchemax collider, he’s been rendered a white body with black spots, all of which can be used as portals. The Spider-Verse films are never content with keeping things simple, though, and an alternate dimension Spider-Man from 2099 (Oscar Isaac) seem to exist in a gray area between heroism and villainy.

Across the Spider-Verse reportedly has settings in six different dimensions, but there are channel-surf-like movements through many more, most of which are delightful surprises that I won’t spoil. I simply have to mention my favorite, however, even though few others will care about it as much as I do: “Mumbattan,” which basically splices together Mumnai with Manhattan, and features an Indian Spider-Man named Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni, previously featured in the Deadpool films). Once Miles, Gwen, Spider-Man 2099 and yet another dimensional badass Spider-Woman (Issa Rae) who has her own motorcycle enter the Mumbattan dimension, we are treated to an extended sequence with both fantastic action and a lot of very funny gags that should land well with South Asians. (This is some excellently integrated content for potential international audiences.)

There is an incredible number of characters in this film, apparently some 240 of them, a whole bunch of them in a spectacularly funny and entertaining action sequences featuring seemingly infinite versions of Spider-People (or in multiple cases, Spider-Animals). The humor and gags in this movie come at such an unusually fast and steady clip, I am eager to see it again just to see what I missed the first time around. And this is in the same movie that had me so deeply absorbed in its story and its characters that I actually got misty-eyed. It can be hard to trust any assertion that a movie has everything you could possibly want and more, but in this case, you can take that to the bank. The movie’s producers almost certainly will. This movie is a truly amazing specimen of cinematic craft.

There is simply nothing not to love about this movie.

Overall: A-

THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

I’m not sure anyone else would dare call The Eight Mountains a love story, but I will. Even though there is very little romance in it, and certainly not between the two main characters—at least not of the sort that “romantic” movies are typically about.

This is really a platonic love story, between two boys, and then between two men, who are simply close friends. This is precisely the kind of story I have long pined for more of: about close friendship, about an intimate relationship that doesn’t have to be romantic or sexual. These types of relationships are plentiful out here in the real world, and we so seldom get to see it depicted onscreen.

I’d love it even more to see an American film about such a relationship, but I’ll take what I can get. The Eight Mountains is Italian, set mostly in the Italian alps, some of it in Turin, Italy’s fourth-largest city with a metropolitan population of about 2 million—more than enough to provide a stark, urban contrast to the film’s primary setting of Grana, a rural community of fewer than 1000 people all of about 31 miles east of Turin.

This is the story of friendship formed in boyhood, at around the age of twelve, between Pietro, whose parents are renting a house in Grana for the summer; and Bruno, who is the last child left in this mountain community.

A good chunk of the film, at least the first quarter, follows these two and their relatively carefree exploits, over the first couple of summers they know each other. The boys at this age are played by Lupo Barbiero and Cristiano Sassella, who are both great. After Bruno is forced to start working in town during the summers, the brief portion of the film about their adolescence focuses on a bitter and sullen teenaged Pietro (Andrea Palma), who only sees Bruno once during this period. They then don’t see each other for fifteen years, until they reconnect and resume a close friendship as adults—now played, through the rest of the movie, by Luca Marinelli as Pietro and Alessandro Borghi as Bruno.

Bruno resents the time he was forced to work in town; he loves his mountain life too much, and establishes an ultimately unsustainable milk and cheese farm in Grana. He convinces Pietro to help him rebuild a stone house up there in the mountains, as promised to Pietro’s late father during a long period in which Pietro and his father weren’t speaking.

There follows many years in which Pietro continues going away, but coming back to visit during the summer, even through some of the time he spends abroad in Nepal. In turn, they find spouses; Bruno has a child. The Eight Mountains has a pretty long run time—two hours and 27 minutes—but it has a warm and inviting tone to it, this kind of slow burn narrative of two people who deeply care about each other, what their lives have been like, where their lives are going, and what challenges they face.

It may be a cliché, but there are those who speak of that special friend with whom they can spend a lot of time away from each other, sometimes many years, but once they are together again it’s as though they were never apart. You could say that that kind of friendship is what The Eight Mountains is about. The title is a metaphor that is explained in the film, referring to the ways two very different types of people move through the world. Pietro and Bruno clearly represent the two different types, in a way where their cyclical journeys regularly intersect.

There are no thrills or twists in The Eight Mountains, which is more of a quiet drama, which caresses you like a pleasant summer breeze. Granted, some of it is also set in harsh mountain winters, but the warmth between these two men stays consistent. There is but one brief period of conflict and fairly quick resolution between them; every story must have that, and yet that’s not really what this is about. This is about two people who, in spite of living very different lives, understand each other in a way no one else really does.

Bruno is very obstinate about his perceived place as a resident of the mountains, as though it is his destiny, no matter what the consequences to his livelihood or his family. Still, there are no great tragic moments, only some detours into melancholy. Early on, Pietro contemplates something his father told him, about how every bright period must be followed by a period of gloom. I think a lot about that idea, because it’s really the only way we appreciate the bright periods when they happen. Such is the case with the long, meandering friendship between Pietro and Bruno, two close friends who deeply love each other. Going on that journey with them is a lovely experience.

Pietro and Bruno share one of countless quiet moments together.

Overall: B+

YOU HURT MY FEELINGS

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

The most impressive thing about You Hurt My Feelings is the relative insignificance of its central conflict, and how compelling, warm, fun and charming it is in spite of that.

To be fair, the conflict is not insignificant to the characters, or particularly Beth, as played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Beth is an author, has published a modestly successful memoir and has been working on a novel for the past two years, which she has given, draft after draft, to her husband to read. Her husband, Don, is played in a perfectly cast Tobias Menzies—who, incidentally, is 49 years old, as compared to Louis-Dreyfus at 62. His being younger than her is mentioned in the film, although they don’t say by how much; Julia Louis-Dreyfus still looks so fantastic that they could have played characters the same age.

And there is a lot of insecurity at play in the story here, although really none of it has anything to do with age—with the exception of Don’s vanity coming to the fore over wrinkles around his eyes. The “big issue” at play, actually, is the discovery that Don has been telling Beth all along that he loves her novel. But, she overhears him confessing to a friend that he doesn’t like it at all, and this leaves her spinning.

As written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, who previously directed Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the lovely Enough Said (2013), You Hurt My Feelings is concerned about much more than this lie that a husband tells his wife out of love and compassion but still winds up hurting her. It’s just the greatest example of a fairly common theme among all the characters, which is basically what morally gray things we do in what we consider to be the best interests of the people we love.

These things apply also to Beth’s sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) and her husband Mark (Arian Moayed), respectively an interior decorator and a struggling actor. Ditto Beth and Don’s 23-year-old son Eliot (Owen Teague), who is also an aspiring writer and winds up offering some perspective on Beth’s neuroses at just the right time.

I really enjoyed all of these aspects of You Hurt My Feelings. For once, an engaging movie that’s not about something vital or possibly fatal—no one’s world is either literally or even figuratively falling apart, even if it does feel like it for a brief period. These are just normal, everyday—okay, white and upper-middle-class and by some standards maybe even wealthy—people, having fairly regular, everyday interpersonal problems. The magic here is in the telling of the story, with the unique touch by Holofcener.

Back in 2023, I called Enough Said “Simple and Charming.” Maybe that is just Nicole Holofcener’s brand, because the exact same can be said of You Hurt My Feelings. This one does deftly weave together a lot of seemingly disparate narrative threads, such as Don struggling to feel effective in his career as a therapist. This allows some fun guest stars, such as David Cross and Amber Tamblyn as a married couple incapable of getting along.

In the end, everyone comes to terms with whatever relatively minor issue they’re dealing with. Along the way, it’s just a joy to hang out with these people; Julia Louis-Dreyfus remains a consummate performer, particularly of comedy. And this film has its fair share of laughs, delivering truly everything that you could want or expect from it.

Tobias Menzies and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are confronted by some hard—but also funny—truths: which is to say, white lies.

Overall: B+

MONICA

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

Monica takes subtlety and understatement to new levels. There’s never a moment that explicitly states that the title character, who is returning home after many years to look after her estranged, ailing mother, is a trans woman. She’s played, however, by trans actor Trace Lysette, previously seen as a regular supporting character on the rightfully acclaimed Prime Video series Transparent. A lot of times it’s said—a lot of times by me—that going in cold would enhance a movie watching experience, but I would argue that, in the case of Monica, these are details that are helpful to know going in.

Monica’s mother, Eugenia, is played by Patricia Clarkson, a reliably welcome screen presence. Here, at the age of 63, she plays a woman deteriorating from a tumor. We learn that she doesn’t recognize Monica, who has come at the invitation (or maybe pleading) of a sister-in-law she’s evidently never known, as the family needs help. Eugenia’s first assumption is that Monica comes from the hospice care she insists she doesn’t want.

Again, something Monica never makes explicitly clear is when Eugenia figures out who Monica really is. There’s no dramatic apology, no speech. There is a bit of a speechless, tearful breakdown, which perhaps stands in for an apology. Over time, Monica and Eugenia inch toward an emotional connection.

It really must be noted: “time” and “inch” are key words here. As directed and co-written by Italian filmmaker Andrea Pallaoro, and particularly as edited by Paola Freddi, Monica moves at a truly glacial pace. This element alone is likely to turn off a lot of viewers, even as it moves critics—including me. Monica is quality work, but hardly populist. It is far more artful than it is entertaining. It has a strangely unusual aspect ratio, nearly square in shape, with very long shots that stop short of being mundane.

That said, I found this film to be deeply memorable and affecting. The acting is excellent, and it’s wonderful to see a trans actor so well cast in the leading role of a trans character. Trace Lysette is more than up to the task, and I’d love to see her cast in more roles that are more widely seen. She’s one worth looking out for.

This is rarely an effective selling point, but by the end of Monica, it felt well worth the quiet, meditative experience. It’s not a slog; it’s just slow. And in this case, the editing is deliberate, almost pointed. You live in Monica’s world with her, experience highs and lows, none of them borne of the kind of trauma that history has taught viewers to expect. One might suspect that was the intent. This is the kind of skilled subtlety that offers you some space, a kind of distance in which the effects seep into you. It’s a uniquely impressive achievement.

A different way of facing each other.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: FILIP

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

There’s a fascinatingly unusual angle to Filip, a film about Nazi Germany produced by one of its many occupied countries during World War II: Poland. Indeed, the opening sequence focuses on the Jewish people in the “Warsaw ghetto,” handheld camera work following cluelessly joyous young people on their way to see a cabaret act. Even as they all walk around with the Star of David affixed to their sleeves, they are all smiles and joy, Filip (Eryk Kulm) and a fiancé preparing to perform a dance onstage.

It’s obvious very early on that this opening sequence is going somewhere very dark—not because of anything we see onscreen, which would seem fun and carefree in any other context. But, knowing this is Poland in 1941 changes everything about the expectations.

Shortly thereafter, the setting shifts to Frankfurt two years later, where Filip is posing as a Frenchman working among the serving staff of a hotel. And this is where the point of view offers something unusual, in the midst of countless films set during the second World War. Although Filip is himself Jewish, and he is indeed the protagonist of this story, his Jewishness only comes up occasionally. Given the removal of the Jewish community, the Nazis are left to oppress and moralize with the others left on the periphery—namely, the foreign workers in business establishments.

Which is to say: even with Filip successfully posing as someone who isn’t Jewish, he’s still not German. The Nazi obsession with “purity” extends to the French, or Belgian, as in the case of Filip’s roommate and close friend Pierre (Victor Meutelet). There are perpetual dangers even to these people, and in one particularly memorable scene, three different non-German men are hanged for the crime of having had sex with German women.

Director and co-writer Michal Kwiecinski makes much of Filip’s sexual exploits, as he does exactly this, having sex with multiple German women—all part of his plan, to seduce German women, “turn them into whores,” and humiliate them, as his own form of subversive revenge against the Nazis.

This, indeed, is where Filip is a bit disappointing; I have mixed feelings at best about this premise, which threads an undertone of misogyny into the narrative. Eryk Kulm is excellent as the stoic and brooding title character, and every scene is shot with propulsive tension—Filip is a riveting experience, albeit a predictably dispiriting one. His targeting of German women specifically is a strange turn, though, given that the Germans who slaughtered his whole community in Warsaw were all men. And as with any patriarchal society, with Nazis controlling their women’s behaviors and exploits, the women really can’t win—not even with the man who is ostensibly our hero, not even when one of them makes clear she does not support what the Nazis are doing.

That said, everything else about how Filip is made and constructed is excellent, and we do get some narrative turns into things like friendship and loyalty. Spoiler alert, these things also tend to have tragic ends.

The basic gist is that Filip is simply surviving, and existing in some moral gray areas—to put it generously—in order to do so. There are moments in Filip that are truly heartbreaking, especially after witnessing communal joy fatally cut short. It’s clear that Filip, still a young man, will always be damaged. Filip has a fair amount in common with the 2002 film The Pianist, which was also about a Polish Jew surviving the Nazis, albeit in far starker and more desperate circumstances. In this case, Filip is hiding in plain sight.

Filip comes within striking distance of greatness, falling just short due to some unfortunate narrative choices. What is has to recommend it manages to supersede its flaws, however, making it well worth a watch.

Serving the enemy: Eryk Kulm hides in plain sight.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: THEATER CAMP

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Theater Camp seems to pick up where Christopher Guest left off—and, I mean, where he left off with his last great movie, A Mighty Wind, in 2003. His 2006 film For Your Consideration aside, Guest hasn’t been in top form in a solid twenty years. In that wake, countless imitators have come and gone.

Somewhat astonishingly, first-time feature co-directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman have come along with a film worthy of the comparison. It also fantastically updates the charming but flawed precepts of the film Camp, which was also released in 2003, was also about a theater camp, and incidentally costarred a then-18-year-old Anna Kendrick.

Who knows which of the many, incredibly talented children in Theater Camp will similarly become stars in the near future? The cast this time is rightfully much more diverse, right down to the straight theater kid who has two dads. And the characters this time are not saddled with a plot about backstabbing competitiveness. The central conflict here has very little to do with interpersonal conflict, as the characters—teachers and kids alike—exist in a sort of utopia of sorts, one by all accounts very similar to those remembered by drama kids today. Instead, Theater Camp is much more about finding success through making the best of very limited resources.

The more I think about this movie, the more fond of it I become. There’s something about the storytelling, that is sweet without being sticky, heartwarming without being overly sentimental. It’s not just that these varyingly eccentric kids exist in a world that allows them to be their whole, authentic selves. It’s that, in the world of this movie, there isn’t even any particular novelty in that. It’s just what these kids—and their teachers—know.

And none of this is to say that Theater Camp doesn’t lean into the humor of “theater types.” It very much does so, but it’s always with a loving humor, a clear fondness for its subjects. One of my favorite things is how this extends to the camp founder’s grown son, Troy (Jimmy Tatro, who could easily pass for Ike Barinholtz’s younger brother), one of two key straight male characters. When his mother, Joan (Amy Sedaris, criminally underused) falls into a coma, Troy must step in and take on her duties. Even with Troy characterized as a “bro” type vlogger who comes in largely clueless, he is never characterized as the enemy—which, honestly, is refreshing. Instead, he’s merely a fish out of water, trying to find his bearings, stumbling on his way toward attempts to keep the camp afloat. He is met with some resistance, but in a way that makes us feel for him.

And that is perhaps the most delightful part of Theater Camp: it has a huge, ensemble cast of characters who are wildly different from each other, the one key thing they have in common being a love of theater. And every single one of them is likable—even, somehow, the director of the neighboring camp who is keen on taking over theirs.

The cast also prominently features Ben Platt, and co-director Molly Gordon, as teachers at the camp who play a gay man and his straight-woman best friend who attended this same camp as kids, and now compose an original play every year. This year their play is about the life of the play’s founder, which cleverly winds up touching Troy in subtly inventive ways.

Through this play-within-a-movie, we get a film that itself is technically not a musical, and yet we are treated to plenty of incredibly catchy, original musical numbers. If musicals aren’t your thing, then Theater Camp won’t be or you. But if you have any kind of appreciation for theater at all, and particularly the lovably odd personalities that inhabit that world, then you will be utterly charmed by this film.

You’ll be delighted by everyone in this movie. End of discussion!

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: BEING MARY TYLER MOORE

Directing: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

I should have done more research on Being Mary Tyler Moore beforehand. This is premiering on HBO a week from today. Why bother wasting a SIFF ticket on it?

I was hardly the only person to do so. I saw this at the Uptown Theater and, of the four SIFF films I have seen thus far, this had by far the largest crowd—more people in this audience than at even any regular-release film I’ve seen since probably last summer. This is a testament to the enduring legacy of Mary Tyler Moore, I suppose.

The woman was an icon, no doubt about it—and in a way that transcended the gross overuse of that word. The irony is that Mary Tyler Moore’s characters, particularly Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, were more interesting than she was. It may be fair to say that the documentary Being Mary Tyler Moore is the definitive record of Moore’s entire life, but far more is to be gained by watching The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) or The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977), both of which hold up shockingly well. The latter remains more forward thinking than about three quarters of any network series on today.

It would seem that Mary Tyler Moore, more than anything, was simply a vessel for a persona. This film suggests the real her is a lot closer to Beth Jarrett, the cold, grieving mother in Ordinary People (1980) for which Moore was nominated for an Academy Award. And Moore did endure far more than her fair share of tragedy, with a sister who died at age 21 from an overdose; a son who died at age 24 from a gun accident (amazingly, only a month after the release of Ordinary People), and a brother who died of kidney cancer at age 47.

On the upside, her third marriage was apparently the charm, with a man 18 years younger than her and who stayed with her 34 years, until her own death at the age of 80 in 2017.

That was six years ago. Why we’re getting this documentary now, as opposed to five years ago, is unclear. Except: this woman’s career and legacy remains as relevant as it ever was. Even all the way back during the Dick Van Dyke Show, Moore ironically played a housewife while pushing boundaries for American women: she was the first woman to wear pants on television, and was herself a working wife and mother offscreen. Nothing, of course, could possibly match the legacy of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which depicted a single woman, totally fulfilled by her personal and professional life, content to find and land a man if she can but comfortable with the outcome if doesn’t. This show aired in the era of Roe v. Wade, a bittersweet memory now if there ever was one.

And I certainly don’t mean to suggest that Mary Tyler Moore herself is uninteresting. She led a life worth examining. It’s just that she herself can never stack up to the characters she played, which is what causes an unfortunately muted effect to this film about her. Of course she was much more than Laura Petrie or Mary Richards: she had ups and downs on both Broadway and in film. She was later diagnosed with diabetes. But are any of these things as interesting as the enduringly groundbreaking TV shows she was an integral part of?

Being Mary Tyler Moore is a pretty standard documentary, about a deeply talented but slightly indecipherable woman, who played a couple of characters who will be (and already have been) remembered for generations. If you’re just a casual fan, then you could take or leave this film. If you really love her, you’ll like the movie. It might be of more interest to know, however, that The Dick Van Dyke Show is now streaming on Peacock and The Mary Tyler Moore Show is streaming on Prime Video.

She was just a bit more than what you saw onscreen.

Overall: B

SIFF Advance: HIDDEN MASTER: THE LEGACY OF GEORGE PLATT LYNES

Directing: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Who the hell is George Platt Lynes? I had no idea, myself, until seeing this documentary film about him listed in this year’s Seattle International Film Festival schedule. It turns out, he was an artist of photography, in his prime in the 1920s and 1930s, who was by all intents and purposes openly gay. More to the point, he was incredibly talented, his work was infused with male sexuality, and that combination is likely the biggest reason his vast and stunning body of work has gone unnoticed for decades.

Anyone who knows anything about the cross section of art history and gay history has heard of Robert Mapplethorpe—who was clearly influenced by George Platt Lynes. Lynes pre-dates even Mapplethorpe by a good five decades.

After seeing Hidden Master, I am dying to see a major exhibition of Lynes’s work. But, as director and co-writer Sam Shahid tells us, no American museum will touch this body of work. Several art historians and curators are interviewed for this film, and Shahid briefly includes some commentary on the “double standard” of art exhibition that plasters the naked female form all over the place, even when sexually evocative—sometimes even provocative—and yet won’t do the same for the naked male form, which by contrast threatens people. There appears to have been multiple books published about him and his work, however, and I just placed a hold on the single one of them apparently carried by the Seattle Public Library.

That book was published in 1994 and evidently focuses on the body of work Lynes left to the Kinsey Institute—one of many fascinating things about George being that he both became good friends with famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey, and was an active participant in his research. Hidden Master, the movie, is a far more contemporary look at Lynes’s life and work, having been finished nearly three decades later.

What’s more, this film, ten years in the making, features interviews with multiple people who knew Lynes personally. In all but one case, the interview subjects passed away shortly after the interview, giving the film a bit of an “under the wire” quality. We’re talking about a photographer who was himself a stunningly beautiful young man a full century ago, after all. Even the interview subjects who knew him would have had to have been young even compared to Lynes when they knew each other—in the forties, or perhaps the early fifties. George Platt Lynes dyed of lung cancer in 1955, at the fairly young age of 47.

The crucial element of Hidden Master, though, is the countless examples of his work featured: a seemingly endless slide show of gorgeously rendered, black and white photos of male nudes, no less beautiful for how unsubtle they often are. The lighting of his subjects is incredible, and the themes of sexual desire are stunning, particularly for the time—people don’t know today how early on there was precedent for art like this, and that’s what makes this film so crucial. I could not stop thinking, as I saw example after example of Lynes’s photography, that I could have easily believed this work had been done today. God knows I never would have assumed these photos were taken between the twenties and the forties, without them being contextualized for me.

A fair bit is made of Lynes’s “physical snobbery,” in that he never chose average looking people as his subjects. His nudes were nearly all young men, and without exception the men were beautiful. Lynes also worked as a fashion photographer, his female subjects also exclusively beautiful. In apparently one exclusive case, he even had a sexual relationship with one of his women subjects. There are nude photos of her as well.

It should be noted, not all of his photos were sexual, although he seemed to have an appreciation for the naked human form whether it was sexualized or not. He even took nude photos of his brother, who was straight, and helped find more models culled from his college friends.

Which is to say, in just about every way you can imagine, George Platt Lynes was so far ahead of his time it’s mind boggling. This was a man fully self-possessed, comfortable in his own skin, casually defiant in his sexuality—all a full hundred years ago. He was himself so beautiful he fit right in with his subjects. He pushed boundaries in more ways than with his sexuality, also sensual, nude photos of Black and White men together. From today’s vantage point, there is an element of privilege there that both cannot be denied and which was about a century away from being even a hint of a part of anyone’s vocabulary. It’s even acknowledged in this film that the racial provocativeness has an element of exploitation to it.

Although not a lot of time is spent on it, there is some acknowledgement in Hidden Master that Lynes was an imperfect man, sometimes a little manipulative, particularly in sexual situations. To me, these details are classic elements of people whose beauty allows to get away with what others can’t. Somewhat on the flip side of this, Lynes was also the third partner in what we now would call a polyamorous relationship, and which itself lasted decades. Even by mainstream queer standards this is incredibly forward-thinking. There is no indication Lynes thought in these terms at all, however. He was only ever just completely and utterly himself.

I do appreciate the sexual frankness of Hidden Master, clearly a positive byproduct of having a queer story told by queer people. Given the nature of virtually all of Lynes’s male nudes, it would make no sense to shy away from it. It turns out Lynes did also take a few sexually explicit photos, just a couple of which do we see, during a brief discussion of the fine line between “art” and pornography, and how it gets applied differently between men and women. In any case, I could not find any indication that Hidden Master has received an MPA rating at all, but this film is definitely not for children.

I feel a deep, abiding appreciation for this film—not just its construction, but its very existence. It’s full of people who lament the lack of Lynes’s presence in any serious look at art history, and the film makes a very strong case for this man to get the kind of appreciation he has long been denied. His personal life at his particular time in history is deeply fascinating in its own right, but nothing comes even close to the vitality of the photography work itself. Whether or not you see this movie, do yourself a favor and just look him up. I am eager to learn more just because of this film.

Both erotically charged and a multi-level challenge to the viewer: George Platt Lynes is worth your time.

Overall: A-