Buzz Blog

(By Scott Renshaw except where noted)
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley **1/2 [Premieres]
The “tragic artist” bio-documentary is its own entire sub-genre at this point, so it feels like filmmakers need to be putting in a little more effort in order to inspire a response more substantial than, “Huh.” Unquestionably, it was a tremendous loss when Buckley—a singer-songwriter with an angelic voice and matinee-idol looks—drowned in 1997 at the age of 30, with his acclaimed debut album Grace his only recording. Director Amy Berg certainly provides a comprehensive character study, exploring his childhood with a single mother his discomfort at comparisons to his biological father, musician Timothy Buckley; and his struggles with fame, likely intensified by undiagnosed mental health issues. The film benefits from energetic animations as part of the visual palette, amazing access to archival and personal material like phone voice messages to his mother, lovers and friends, plus great anecdotes like the time Buckley climbed a stage structure to get a better view of one of his idols, Robert Plant. Yet somehow, Buckley remains just as enigmatic at the end of the movie as he was at the beginning, with the material never pulling together in a more substantial way than a reasonably-accomplished VH-1 Behind the Music installment. If your creative choice when reaching the time of Buckley’s passing is to play his celebrated cover version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” you’re just not trying very hard to break free from the obvious.

The Perfect Neighbor **** [U.S. Documentary]
There are any number of ways director Geeta Gandbhir could have told a documentary story about “Stand Your Ground” laws in general, or about the particular case she’s exploring—but the way she did choose proves remarkable both in its structural ingenuity and in the way it adds power to the narrative. That story involves an incident in Florida’s Marion County, in which Susan Lorincz shot her neighbor Ajike Owens through Lorincz’s front door, claiming she feared for her life, and Gandbhir allows that case to unfold almost entirely through public records: police body-cam footage obtained from the many times Lorincz called sheriffs with complaints about neighborhood kids playing in a field (which was not Lorincz’s property) adjacent to her home; recorded interviews with witnesses to the events; and ultimately, police interviews with Lorincz herself. The result is a remarkable portrait of the neighborhood “Karen” as a toxic, almost-certainly-racist presence in a multi-racial neighborhood, and one that never has to resort to melodrama to convey the potential consequences of laws that allow someone to argue their fear might be more important than someone else’s life. There are emotionally devastating moments here, but perhaps nothing quite so disturbing as a fixed camera on Lorincz, caught in an obvious lie, trying to speak into existence the impossibility that she could be held accountable for her actions.

FOLKTALES *** [Premieres]
As much as directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing embrace the specificity of their setting—Finnmark, Norway’s Pasvik Folk High School, an Arctic circle venue for learning age-old skills like wilderness survival and running a sled-dog team—they also find something impressively universal about the struggle of young people to understand themselves and their place in the modern world. The filmmakers focus on three students of the year-long program, watching as 18- and 19-year-olds wrestle with self-image issues, social anxiety and more, all within the context of a curriculum designed (as one instructor puts it) to “wake up your Stone Age brain.” There’s a satisfying framing structure built on Norse mythology, which combines with the gently observational character studies to suggest how important it can be for young people to unplug from the social cues that you’re not [whatever] enough, how hard it can be to figure out who you are in that context, and how easy it is to fall back into focusing on the wrong things once you’re back in modernity. Grady and Ewing definitely lean into their tear-jerking moments, perhaps to a fault, but it feels forgivable in the context that wants us to believe that the kids will be alright. It’s a beautifully-shot crowd-pleaser, with protagonists who are easy to root for to find their bliss—and the love of a good dog—in this world.

Last Days ** [Premieres]
Hollywood’s Blockbuster Franchise Machine has a reputation for chewing up talented young directors and spitting them back out a little older, a little wiser and a little worse for wear. That feeling of a storyteller potentially bruised and at war with himself permeates this back-to-sorta-basics feature from Better Luck Tomorrow Sundance alum Justin Lin (several Fasts and Furious-es, Star Trek Beyond). He pivots here to the story of John Allen Chau, a real-life Christian missionary killed in 2018 while illegally proselytizing to an island-based indigenous tribe, among the last on Earth without contact to the western world; his story was also the subject of the 2023 documentary The Mission. To borrow again from Star Trek, Chau violated the Prime Directive, and paid the ultimate price. Sky Yang’s Chau is a sympathetic protagonist, but the film is impaired by its obvious disapproval of Chau’s actions, with supporting characters routinely interrupting to scold our hero, like a G.I. Joe PSA that “imperialism is bad, kids.” A police-based side-plot adds some ticking-clock urgency to what is otherwise a long walk to a death sentence. But the future is known, the Darwin Award achieved, and what’s left is a story about the dangers of undaunted faith told with the genre trappings of a “faith-based” production, perpetually jumping from applause to finger-wagging and back again. After a frenetic cold open showing off the action skills Lin honed in the big leagues, settle in for the weirdest sermon you ever sat through. (Benjamin Wood)

Mr. Nobody Against Putin *** [World Documentary]
Considering this story focuses on real-life risks taken to expose the reality of living under an authoritarian regime, this documentary ends up feeling less like a political thriller than a melancholy character study of someone realizing the place and vocation that mean so much to him are being lost to him forever. That character is Pasha Talankin, event coordinator and videographer for a school in the Ural Mountains town of Karabash, who decides to begin chronicling the new policies and propaganda-filled lessons instituted by Vladimir Putin in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Talankin and co-director David Borenstein offer a genuinely disturbing portrait of children being force-fed “patriotic education” in the form of marches, revisionist history and assemblies led by mercenary soldiers, while recent graduates face the prospect of conscription into the army. But as effective as the film is at conveying the patriotism-wrapped villainy of folks like doctrinaire social-studies teacher Pavel, it’s perhaps even better at showing through Pasha’s eyes what it’s like to love your country, your hometown and the people around you while being told that your ideas must be treasonous, and what students lose without caring adults they can trust. There are a lot of unsettling images in Mr. Nobody Against Putin, but the most heartbreaking might be the final shot of an empty room, understanding why it had become that way.

Two Women ** [World Dramatic]
At one point in director Chloé Robichaud and screenwriter Catherine Léger’s remake of the 1970 Claude Fournier feature Deux femmes en or, one character pointedly notes that women had it much worse in earlier decades in terms of relationship equality—which is just one reason why this sex farce feels like an artifact from another time. The two women of the title are neighbors in a Montreal apartment building: Violette (Laurence Leboeuf), a new mom whose traveling-salesman husband (Félix Moati) is having an affair; and Florence (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman), whose own long-term partner (Mani Soleymanlou) seems far more interested in his greenhouse than he is in her. Both women proceed to engage in various trysts with exterminators, plumbers and other visitors to their homes, with the pretenses and seductions proving somewhat repetitive But aside from a fun scene where a guy clearly trying not to get #MeToo’d bumps up against Florence’s lust, and the fact that one of Florence’s lovers is a woman, the premise just doesn’t ring quite as true for 21st-century professional women, and especially when Florence isn’t even legally married. And when the humor isn’t all about women being sexually forward, it’s clunky stuff like wordplay with an Abbot & Costello tinge to it. It’s not that there aren’t things to say about the desires and relationship limitations of contemporary women; it’s just that these never feel like those things.

East of Wall *** [NEXT]
The West is having a moment—in particular, the conception of a “new west” in tone and temperament that’s hard to define but, like many things in media, you know it when you see it. It’s a prime backdrop for this quiet killer of a movie from writer-director Kate Beecroft. And paying off in spades is Beecroft’s risky bet of not just basing her quasi-fictional narrative on the lives of a particular true-life family of ranchers in the Dakota Badlands, but to also have the not-really-actors portray their fictionalized counterparts. This too is in vogue in Hollywood—see: Nomadland—but, like the film’s western setting and structure, there’s little feeling of gimmickry here. Real-life mother and daughter Tabatha and Porshia Zimigra deliver remarkably sympathetic and sincere performances, in addition to their impeccable skill with horses depicted onscreen and which serves as the film’s central catalyst. Tabatha and her constellation of formally-and-informally adopted children have a gift for breaking, rehabilitating and training horses, running a 3,000-acre property on the edge of nothing. But they struggle to make ends meet, catching the eye of a wealthy businessman (the always dependable Scoot McNairy) who pitches his connections and resources as a well-intended arrangement to retain their way of life while working under his ownership. A horse needs to run free, but a horse also needs to eat. Adding to the lightning in a bottle is Jennifer Ehle, who enlivens here every scene playing against-type as the boozy, self-describing nightmare of a grand matriarch to this misfit clan. (Benjamin Wood)