Quick takes on The Passengers of the Night and other films

I didn’t rush to see Leave the World Behind at first, seemed a bit gimmicky for some reason, even though I do love myself a good apocalyptic film. Glad I finally put it on the screen, as I loved it! Written and directed by Sam Ismail (of Mr Robot fame), it gives off an M Night Shyamalan vibe, only, you know, good. In the film, husband and wife Clay and Amanda (Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts) take their kids to a beautiful remote house for a weekend vacation. The first day goes fine, but that night, a knock on the door brings in George (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter, who claim to be the home’s owners and who rented the place to Clay and Amanda. George is saying the city had a power outage, so rather than try to make it to their New York apartment, they drove out to their country home, hoping to stay safe. Something seems off about him, and Amanda doesn’t trust him from the start. However, his story checks out once other weird stuff starts happening: they lose all phone and TV signals, and when George treks a couple miles over to a neighbor’s house, he finds it empty and ransacked. Once planes start falling from the sky and animals begin behaving weirdly, everyone knows that something serious is going down, even if we don’t know what that something is. Great film, with lots of tension in all the right spots, even if the weird camera movements/angles started to wear on me after awhile. The ending may be a bit too abrupt for some, but I had no problem with it. ★★★★

If the above film is great, Society of the Snow is perfection. Based on a true story, the movie tells the tale of the crash of an airplane in the Andes mountains in 1972, carrying 45 people. Many died in the crash and ensuing time afterwards, from injuries, avalanches, or cold, but 18 survived for over 2 months through the harsh mountain winter. There’s not much to say about the plot, it’s pretty simple, but it’s a film about the human will to survive, through unimaginable pain and suffering, with only your mental fortitude and the strength of your friends to get you through. The director’s capture of the picturesque scenery juxtaposed with the impossibility of the young people’s lives is magnificent. This event happened long before I was born and I stayed away from spoilers enough to not know if they survived or not, so maybe that made the struggle on screen even better for me. It’s a hard movie to watch, not only because the survivors had to resort to cannibalism when all other options were gone, but it’s well worth it for the power of its message. ★★★★★

The Passengers of the Night is the sort of authentic-feeling movie that you really have to be in the right mood for. Light on plot but heavy on character development and emotion, it begins in France in the year 1981, when the country has just elected a new president and there is joy in the streets at the coming change. Everyone is happy except a runaway teen named Talulah, who is at the train station picking a destination at random. After this short intro, the movie fast forwards to 1984 and we meet the other characters: recently divorced Elisabeth and her teen kids, Judith and Matthias. Newly single, Elisabeth is having to go back to work after a decade-plus of raising the kids, and her lack of skills bounces her from place to place. When she finally finds a permanent vocation, it is as a phone operator at a popular late night radio show. That’s where we catch up with Talulah, who has called in a few times and is now coming in to do a segment in person. She’s been homeless these last few years (it is hinted but never explicitly said why she left home), and Elisabeth immediately takes a shine to her. She takes Talulah home and gives her a spare room. Talulah grows close to the family and especially to impressionable 16-year-old Matthias, but when they have a sexual encounter one night, Talulah is spooked and runs away again. The film’s final act is 4 years later on, as the country prepares for another election (7 year terms at the time), and we see where the family is, as once again, Talulah’s path crosses with theirs. In the end, you don’t learn what happens to everyone; in fact, you don’t really learn what happens to anyone. It’s snapshots, moments in time, the kinds of moments that stick in our memory and can recall decades later. And while Elisabeth is the “main” character, we care equally for the kids and Talulah. We feel their joys and hurts. Very natural feeling and completely absorbing. ★★★★½

I’m not a big fan of documentaries, but Lynch/Oz combines David Lynch with The Wizard of Oz. What more could you want? The movie is interesting enough, but even for a big Lynch fan like myself, I found it very repetitive. This is mostly because it is broken up into half a dozen or so segments, each narrated by a different filmmaker, and they sometimes touch on the same subjects. It is advertised as a film about how The Wizard of Oz inspired, and continues to inspire, the films of David Lynch, but to fill out the movie, it finds a plethora of other films that were inspired by Oz as well. Really didn’t learn much, though it was interesting to see correlations between different films and whatnot. The narrators/presenters vary from dry to entertaining, but the best overall was director John Waters (who is always entertaining). People who are into docs may enjoy it more overall, but for me, ★★½

Killers of the Flower Moon is the latest Martin Scorsese epic, based on the book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. In the early 20th century, oil is found on an Oklahoma reservation owned by the Osage people. They are immediately wealthy, even though the government does everything it can to make it difficult for them to access their own funds. They need court-appointed guardians, white people only, to manage their money, because the indigenous people are considered “incompetent” no matter how intelligent they are. Enter into the scene William Hale, known as King Hale for his vast cattle lands. He is a rancher and claims to be a helper for the locals, as “it is their oil after all,” but he has hatched a plan to get his hands on that money the only way he sees how. His nephew Ernest has recently returned home from World War I and quickly marries an Osage woman named Molly, whose family owns oil headrights. No sooner is the ink dry on the marriage certificate that Molly’s family starts dying off, her sisters and mother coming to grisly ends. This has been going on for awhile, with oil headrights owners turning up dead for the last few years, and their rights passing on to their white guardians. Molly and Ernest love each other, so Molly doesn’t suspect a thing, even when we see Ernest engaged in terrible acts himself. The Osage Nation is pleading for anyone to help, but so far, the government has turned a blind eye. It isn’t until Mollly makes a trip to DC to talk to President Coolidge that they (the government) sends investigators to Oklahoma to see what is going on. This is a long movie, 3 1/2 hours, and fully the first 2+ hours are mostly exposition, dialogue, and setting up the action. Once the feds show up, stuff starts going down, but it is nearly too little too late. Readers of my blog know I like a good long movie, but I like them when they are long for a reason. This one just seems long to give the impression of an epic, when in reality, it could have been trimmed down quite a bit and felt more tidy. Brilliant acting from stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and especially Lily Gladstone, who recently won a Golden Globe portraying Mollie and should be on the short list to win more awards this season, but overall, it’s not one of Scorsese’s finest. ★★★

• TV series recently watched: Mr Robot (season 1), Echo (series), Batman: The Animated Series (season 1)
• Book currently reading: Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan