Category: Movie

An unusual, dramatic, and moving documentary by filmmaker Lucy Walker, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa centers on the 2022 climb of Mount Everest by Tibetan-born Lhapka Sherpa accompanied to base camp by her teenage daughter (with fascinating juxtaposition with her other daughter back home). Lhapka has the almost unbelievable record of ten Everest climbs, yet works as a dishwasher in Connecticut. The director alternates stunning climb footage, scenery footage, archival material, and interviews, while also telling Lhapka’s life story: her other incredible climbs, her determination to be allowed as a Tibetan woman to be a sherpa; and the traumas of emigration to Connecticut with an American-Romanian abusive alcoholic. This is a tale of soaring triumphs, juddering lows, and the love of the high snowy mountains. Superb scripting maintains tension throughout. A must for fans of climbing and the snow, Mountain Queen is also a rousing adventure of the human spirit.

Jack-Reacher-style thrillers based on the lone protagonist hitting town and enacting justice are as old as the Shane movie. Rarely do they offer much more than diversionary entertainment. Rebel Ridge, written and directed from an aspiring wunderkind, Jeremy Saulnier, is a welcome exception. The film kicks right into action with our hero, an ex-army martial arts tyro, being rammed off his bike by two country cops. From there the action is tightly and splendidly scripted, as the hero is swallowed up and spat out by a corrupt town, and then embarks on a mission of revenge and justice. What makes Rebel Ridge stand out are the relentless pace and superb action staging, and the lead actor’s clever, principled performance by Aaron Pierre. Need to lose yourself for a couple of hours? Sink into this satisfying, mature thriller.

The first season of Kleo introduced a brilliantly portrayed (by Jella Haase) German equivalent of Villanelle from Killing Eve. Trained throughout life as an ultra-secret Stasi assassin, Kleo’s life falls apart at the time of the Berlin Wall coming down when she is betrayed big time, and the season gloried in her violent revenge. That season sparked off Kleo’s increasing confluence with Sven, a hapless West German bumbler whose only virtue is persistence. The first season was plot heavy, stylish, fast-paced, and addictive. Now we have Season 2, in which Kleo continues to pursue the true underpinnings of her betrayal, searching for a red suitcase despite being pursued by the CIA and the KGB, and Sven is still there, less clumsy but more and more fallen for Kleo. The second season adopts a lighter, almost slapstick tone but the underlying plot is as wild and internally logical as ever, and the action scenes remain a treat to watch. The six episodes build in intensity and the climactic outing is incandescent, both violently riveting and emotionally rich. For this reviewer, Kleo is trumping Killing Eve, and that is a high bar to scale, one it scales with vivacious ease and style.

Eric, a six-part series written by Eric Abi, offers an intriguing plot device. When the nine-year-old son of a “genius” TV puppeteer, creator of a much loved kids’ show, disappears in AIDS-era New York city, the asshole puppeteer, his sanity cracking, begins imagining a blue monster puppet walking beside him. The plot, expertly guided by a strong script over the episodes, involves the public, desperate hunt for the boy, a black gay policeman’s search amidst personal traumas, the plight of the New York homeless, and the puppeteer’s search for redemption. The cast is strong enough but is dominated by a mesmerizing lead role performance from Benedict Cumberbatch. Benedict Spence’s cinematography in the streets, and under the streets, of that fabled metropolis is captivating. As the viewer approaches the climactic episode, one wonders if the disparate subplots can be knitted together, but the final half hour is a triumph of plotting, eschewing over-dramatism or sentimentality for a satisfying, fascinating ending. Without Cumberbatch, Eric would have been a capable series; with him, it is a 2024 viewing highlight.

Call it Only Murders in the Building transplanted into rural Irish eye candy if you like, but it works. The seven episodes of Bodkin follow a timid American podcaster (Will Forte is a perfect mix of goofiness and canniness in the role), a hardbitten investigative journalist hiding from British eyes (also a great performance by Siobhán Cullen), and the podcaster’s greenhorn assistant (a role, from Robyn Cara, that grows over the season) as they investigate a cold-case multiple murder years earlier. The plot is wild, the dialogue is nigh perfect, and the scenery just adds to an immersive, sometimes-grisly-mostly-cozy viewing experience. Recommended.

Rumaan Alam’s 2020 literary dystopian thriller impressed many, so my expectations for the movie adaptation, Leave the World Behind, were high despite the lead female role being played by Julia Roberts. The plot is highly charged and enigmatic, with a family of four suddenly seemingly stranded in a luxury rental house that also fills up with the black owner and his daughter. Some form of national calamity seems to have turned off all communications and disaster looms as the six of them variously cope and don’t cope, as they grope toward understanding and action. The novel seemed to be pitched as a literary thriller; the movie adopts mysterious, avant garde stylings. Whilst the underlying plot intrigues enough to drag the viewer through to the enigmatic climax, the execution is execrable. It is hard to choose between Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke (playing the husband) as the more wooden; not that they have much to play with, the script being burdened by terrible expository dialogue. The other actors are nearly as hapless, the only saving grace being a cameo role from Kevin Bacon. Tod Campbell’s cinematography adds a welcome note of spooky mystery but nothing can save this wreck of a film.

Leigh Sales is not one to shy away from adventurous topics and in The Assembly, fifteen autistic journalism aspirants attend a course and then, over six episodes, prepare and gather to interview top Australian names. The entire process is overseen by Sales and she shines as organizer, coach, and mentor. Each episode is entertaining, each episode casts a light on certain of the fifteen, and there is even a final extra episode in which a handful discuss the experience. The trainees are extremely diverse, ranging from a brilliant woman in a wheelchair to a near-middle-aged man with little to distinguish him from a neurotypical Australian; all are keen as mustard and engaging. The six interviewees range from Anthony Albanese the Prime Minister to pop singer Delta Goodrem. Highlights were Sam Neill, battling health problems and so sweet; ex-footballer Adam Goode, inspiring and welcoming; and warm-heated, open comedian Hamish Blake. The show obliquely challenges society’s prejudices about autism in a refreshing manner. A mild series with a difference, The Assembly is well worth watching.

Gods of Tennis, a BBC three-part series, takes a dramatic look back at core Wimbledon match-ups over two decades from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s. Expertly weaving archival footage with an amazing array of present-day interviewees (including Billie Jean King, John McEnroe, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Sue Barker, Pam Shriver, and, most significantly, the traditionally reclusive Bjorn Borg), the focus is mostly on the drama of the big matches. The most thrilling episode is the middle one climaxing with McEnroe’s victory in the 1981 final. This episode includes footage of the 1980 final won by Borg, a match I recall watching in awe. The first episode, focusing on 1975 winner Arthur Ashe and Billie Jean King, offers wider themes; Ashe pioneering race inclusivity, King pioneered equal rights for women. The final episode, building up to the 1991 final between Evert and Navratilova, is less momentous, even with the latter’s outing as gay. Overall, Gods of Tennis is a clever, diversionary documentary that should satisfy tennis fans and others alike.

A bravely emotional story from that terrible period of Spain’s history when freedom vanished just before the Spanish Civil War, The Teacher Who Promised the Sea spends most of its screen time showing a principled, modern-thinking teacher inspiring young boys and girls in a small, remote town. Enric Auquer nails the teacher and Laiai Costa rings true as a modern-day, troubled young mother searching for the fate of her great-grandfather, swallowed up by the Civil War, at a mass grave excavation site. The direction by Patricia Font is slow but kinetic, heartrending yet never sentimental; in her hands, the film becomes a search for truth and then moral beauty. There are, as one would expect from a film of this type, scenes of devastating cruelty and loss, but what stays with one after viewing The Teach Who Promised the Sea is the magic of childhood wonderment imbibing fine teaching.

An Icelandic film about an old man’s quest to track down a fleeting love from sixty years earlier, Touch is constructed as the current day search from Iceland to London to Japan interspersed with the romance’s unfolding as an extended flashback. The core of the film is undoubtedly the latter, as a Finnish university student in sparky 1960s London drops out to learn cooking in a bustling Japanese restaurant. He befriends the restaurant’s owner and gradually falls in love with the owner’s daughter. The flashbacks are filmed in soft, lustrous colors that enhance the idyllic times, and the two key actors, Palmi Kormákur and Kôki are excellent as beautiful young idealists. The present-day plot (actually it is set in 2020, complete with Covid lockdowns) looks more muted and the updated key actors, Egill Ólafsson and Yôko Narahashi, are also muted. A plot twist in the form of a historic tragedy underlying the daughter’s sudden departure provides some dramatic tension in the present-day sequence but it fails to rescue it from mundanity. Overall, Touch offers many lovely, rhapsodic scenes but fails to grab the viewer.