Not the greatest story ever told

    

 

    When I first heard about The Carpenter's Son, I thought it was going to be a sacrilegious over-the-top horror movie anchored by another memorably outrageous performance from Nicholas Cage. 

     How could it not be with Cage playing The Father, a character clearly meant to evoke Joseph of Holy Family renown?

    The movie opens with a title card that suggests that director Lotfy Nathan has something different in mind. His story, we're told, has been adapted from the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a book that deals with parts of Jesus's early life you won't find in the New Testament. 

    Those who see the movie will understand why a gospel that's not widely read by most Christians has been deemed heretical by Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox clergy.

   To begin with, The Carpenter is an agonized doubter about his son (Noah Jupe). Frustrated and desperate for answers, he wonders whether he's The Boy's "real" father. At one point, anger gets the best of him and he rants about how The Mother -- played  by rapper FKA Twigs - might have had sex with a Roman soldier and, therefore, became unclean.

    Twig and Cage seem don't look like they belong in the same movie, but only The Mother seems certain about The Boy's identity. The Boy himself seeks answers and is only beginning to understand that he has supernatural powers -- and I don't mean this in the superhero sense of the word.

     From the moment of his birth, The Boy faces danger. After a screaming birth scene, The Carpenter and The Mother take flight. The movie then leaps ahead to 15 AD. To avoid exposure, the Carpenter keeps moving his family around Egypt, finally settling in an eerie-looking village. A local merchant hires The Carpenter to carve an idol, a sure sign that something -- perhaps many things -- will go wrong.

    The heart of the movie involves The Boy's encounter with a village child called The Stranger (

Isla Johnston). We immediately know that The Stranger is Satan because Johnston has a fierce gaze and speaks with a beautiful British accent that's unlike any other in the movie. 

     If you see Johnston's work, you'll instantly know why director Baz Luhrmann cast her to play Joan of Arc in his upcoming Jehanne d'Arc. Even as the devil, there's something grounded yet spectral about his young actress.

     As played by Jupe, The Boy seems a bit of an adolescent misfit, although the story takes place long before anyone knew there was such a thing as adolescence. When The Boy has sleep-disrupting dreams about the crucifixion that awaits him, he wakes up screaming. His sometimes rambunctious behavior angers The Father, who frequently runs out of patience for the strange, preoccupied Boy.

     A creepy torture chamber -- crucifixions and other forms of horrible punishment -- can be found on the village's outskirts, adding a further disturbing note. Watch out for snakes.

     Lilith (Souheila Yacoub), a young woman who catches The Boy's attention (make of that what you will) suffers demonic possession and winds up in this doomed section of the village. We await The Boy's intervention.

     Can Satan lure The Boy away from his true calling, thus marking what might be deemed the First Temptation of Christ?

     I suppose you already know the answer, but this darkly hued, sometimes creepy, and determinedly strange movie is neither a horror movie nor a conventional piece of religious storytelling.

    The Carpenter's Son sets its story in a Manichaean world of light and darkness, but, in the end, I'm not sure what the movie captures -- other than a rare instance in Cage can't seem to find his footing, in which Twigs doesn't quite fit, and cosmic issues are supposed to vault over everything. 

      Whatever the movie had it mind, it's definitely not operating in the world as we know it, but that doesn't mean it's clear what world it's meant to occupy and, equally important, why it's taking us there. 

      

Running a too-familiar race

 

  A quarter of the way through The Running Man, a remake of an action-stuffed 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, I had to pinch myself. "Wait," I thought, "Isn't this November, and if so, why am I watching a movie that looks as if it should have been part of the summer action sweepstakes.

  This second adaptation of a 1982 Stephen King novel -- published under the name of Richard Bachman -- moves quickly, but not quickly enough to make us forget we've already seen movies about deadly game shows run by authoritarians interested in controlling the masses and reaping profits. Need I mention The Hunger Games?

   Director Edgar Wright (Baby Driver, Last Day in Soho) tells the story of a reality-based show broadcast by an evil corporation called The Network. If any of the movie's contestants survive the hunt, they win $1 billion, a sum purportedly worth risking one's life for in a society in which few are privileged.

    A buffed Glen Powell plays a husband and father with anger-management problems. Powell's Ben Richards keeps losing jobs because he flies off the handle while sticking up for underdogs at work. 

    Desperate to find care for his sick infant daughter and financial relief for his overworked wife (Jayme Lawson), Richards auditions for non-lethal TV game shows. He plans to avoid The Running Man, but Network head Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) talks him into competing in the deadly competition.

     From that point on, the movie is off and running, racing through one set piece after another while dragging along some overpacked thematic baggage behind it. 

     Let's get the message out of the way: All the Network cares about is ratings. If it needs killings to up the dramatic ante, it doesn't hesitate. The Network also uses doctored videos to turn the contestants into menaces who purportedly threaten the common good. The masses buy in.

      Set in a dystopian near future, The Running Man relies heavily on Powell, who may not have been the ideal choice for this kind of action movie. I don't mean that as insult. Powell was great in Top Gun: Maverick and in the dark comedy Hit Man, but a kick-ass star? I suppose the box-office will decide.

      In all, three contestants (Powell, Katy O'Brian and Martin Herlihy) compete, but it's hardly surprising that only the top-billed Powell remains standing through the escalating mayhem. McCone (Lee Pace), a masked Hunter, remains in dogged pursuit throughout.

    The move can feel pretty dogged itself. I'm talking structure, not pace. As he moves from New York to Boston, Richards receives help from friends and sympathizers. William H. Macy plays Molie, a guy who outfits Ben with armaments. Daniel Ezra portrays Bradley, a savvy guy who facilitates Richards' travels, and Michael Cera appears as a  well-equipped rebel with plans to fight the Hunters.

    Toward the end of the movie, Ben hijacks the car of a realtor (Emilia Jones), who believes he's the villainous fiend the Network claims him to be.

    It's tough to avoid cliches in this kind of movie. Colman Domingo portrays Bobby Thompson, the amped-up host of The Running Man, a showy role that doesn't offer much for Domingo to chew on.

      Aiming for the big finish, Wright concocts a dizzying  airborne showdown. By that time, I was wondering whether the movie hadn't fallen into a trap. If you don't have anything novel to say, try saying it louder.

      None of this is bad enough to condemn Running Man or good enough to praise it. The Running Man has the all-too-familiar markings of a movie that wants to be a summer blockbuster. But, as I said at the outset, this is November.

For the record ...

 

  Every week, the number of movies released threatens to become more unmanageable. Some films creep into the market where I work without opportunity for advance viewing. That makes the critics' job difficult. And given the onslaught of releases, particularly as the year draws to a close, playing catch-up can be daunting.

 So where am I going with this?

 I've been looking for a way to call attention to movies I believe deserve consideration, although I may not offer full reviews. I hate to see movies of interest fall through the cracks. 

  So, here are two movies I found worth my time and may well be worth yours.

  Let's begin with Nouvelle Vague, director Richard Linklater's movie about the making of Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard's groundbreaking 1960 movie. By 1960, the French New Wave had already broken on the shores of world cinema. Godard was late to chime in, but he made his presence felt.

  Beautifully filmed in black-and-white, Nouvelle Vague features Guillaume Marbeck as Godard, who was 29 when Breathless hit world screens, a little old to be a cinema enfant terrible, but still young enough to begin a career that lasted 70 years.

  Aubry Dullin portrays Breathless star Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Zoey Deutch appears as Jean Seberg, his co-star. 

  Nouvelle Vague reminds us of a time when audiences were discovering movies that felt fresh, invigorating, and full of promise. The future seemed open and expansive, as if something vital was happening -- not just in one movie but across the cinema board.

   And that's the key. We don't necessarily yearn for  something "new" at the movies. We yearn for something "fresh," movies that reignite our excitement by making cinema feel alive and putting us in touch with aesthetic sensibilities that awaken the senses, and -- in rare cases --point us toward truth.

Christy tells the story of Christy Martin, nee Christine Salters, a woman who boxed professionally from 1989 to 2012. A West Virginia native, Christy became known as "The Coal Miner's Daughter," which, in her case, was literally true. Her dad was a miner.

   Sydney Sweeney, who reportedly gained 30 pounds to play Christy, looks fiercely credible in the ring as a hard-punching boxer driven by fury and ambition.

  Christy's sexuality -- she's a lesbian -- gives the movie another focus, shedding light on her relationship with her trainer, Jim Martin (Ben Foster). Martin coerced Christy into marriage and took charge of her career, convincing her that no one else could help her advance.

   The movie charts Christy's rise in conventional ways, but  her relationship with her husband makes for an increasingly wrenching domestic drama, made all the more painful by the Svengali-like control Martin exerts over Christy and which culminates with a shocking display of violence.

   Sweeney and Foster are in fine form. Additionally, Merritt Wever gives a scalding performance as Christy's censorious mother, a woman more worried about public perception than her daughter's well-being. Similar kudos for Chad L. Coleman, who plays boxing promoter Don King, a man who could charm but who always lets those around him know who’s in charge.

A 'Predator' movie takes a fun turn

     

     Predator: Badlands, the latest film in a long running series that began in 1987, skillfully mixes actors and CGI, employing enough computer-generated imagery to make the movie look like a teeming helping of animated sci-fi. 

    CGI notwithstanding, Badlands has a refreshing human element that keeps the movie from turning into another exploitative gook-and-gore festival -- which is not to say that you won't find oozing substances or clangorous action.

    Oddly, the movie's humanity comes from an android. Elle Fanning, the movie's best addition, appears as Thia, an android who lost her legs in a violent encounter that precedes her introduction into the movie. Thia's head and torso become a major character. Even if you consider her half a character, she exerts an outsized influence on the proceedings.

      You don't need to be well-versed in Predator lore to know that Yautjas -- warriors with fangs and strict codes of honor -- will figure heavily in the story. 

      This time, a Yautja named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) becomes the film's hero. Dek reluctantly joins Thia, who understandably wants to retrieve the lower part of her body. She also hopes to reunite with Tessa (also Fanning), the twin "synth" sister she idolizes.

       Thia's rediscovery of her legs, by the way, becomes a source of cartoonish amusement when the legs take on a life of their own.

        For much of the movie, Dek carries Thia around like a backpack while he schemes to avenge his brother Kwei (Michael Homick), a Yautja warrior who was murdered by their father (also Schuster-Koloamatangi). Kwei intervened to save Dek from his father's wrath, showing the kind of weakness the Yautja loathe. Who knew? The Yautja have daddy issues, too.

    Working from a screenplay by Patrick Aison, director Dan Trachtenberg, who also directed the 2022 Predator movie, Prey, creates exotic backdrops through which his characters wander. Watch out for deadly flora: plants with poisonous spikes, deadly vines, and seed pods that explode like grenades.

    The movie also adds a near-Disneyesque twinkle when a creature named Bud. Cute despite bad teeth, Bud joins Dek and Thia on their adventures, which involve Dek's quest to bring home the head of The Kalisk, a beast no warrior has ever defeated. It's an honorable Yautja ambition that's supposed to help Dek attain warrior status.

     Trachtenberg tweaks the plot in ways that challenge expectation and allow him to delver the movie's message -- albeit without too heavy a hand. Cooperation can be more effective than individual action and clans needn’t be defined only by blood. 

       The movie's finale and epilogue are satisfying and it only takes an hour and 55 minutes to reach the finish line. The movie's softer tone (for a Predator movie) and PG-13 rating may displease hardcore franchise fans. But Badlands is more fun than I expected. That's enough of an achievement for a franchise movie that doesn't feel like its only aim is to ride the coattails of its predecessors.

  

She's no stay-at-home wife

   Never timid, always willing to push toward extremes, and unflinching in her boldness, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay remains an unabashed risk taker. 

   In Die My Love, Ramsay adapts a 2012 novel by Ariana Harwicz, an Argentine writer who set her story in rural France. Working from a screenplay she wrote with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, Ramsay moves the story to Montana and leaves it to Jennifer Lawrence to convey the complex inner life of new mom Grace, a bored, libidinous wife mired in postpartum depression.

    But don't mistake Die My Love for a disease-related TV movie. Lawrence and Ramsey stretch the story's metaphoric possibilities to the breaking point. Grace seems to embody a near-primal spirit that can't accommodate the life of a stay-at-home mom. Like a cat stalking prey, Grace crawls on all fours through the grass surrounding her house.

    As the movie progresses, Grace becomes both more volatile. At one point, she crashes through a plate glass window in the ramshackle home that she and her husband (Robert Pattinson) occupy, a shocking, rebellious eruption.

    Jackson's mother (Sissy Spacek) and his addled father (Nick Nolte) live nearby. As a wife who submitted to  convention, Spacek's Pam recognizes Grace's "craziness" as a powerful expression that deserves respect.

    Graphic sex scenes and nudity are on full display early on. Grace is a sexual being, but Jackson can't keep pace with his ravenous wife. Predictably, she winds up having sex with a biker (LaKeith Stanfield) who enters the movie as if he's casing the house where Grace and Jackson live.

     Did the movie need such a digression? Probably not.

     Ramsay fragments time, destroying chronological order. Frequently, we must recalibrate where in the story we might be. Ramsay allows parts of the movie to burst onto the screen, throwing scenes at us with an abandon that can mirror Grace's volatility.

     Grace's condition grows progressively more outlandish. At a social gathering, she takes off her clothes and jumps into a swimming pool where kids are playing. If you haven't already, you'll begin to wonder why no one has tried to deal with what seems like an obvious case of mental illness. 

      Ramsey tests us in the same way that she tests her characters. The baby's crying grates on our nerves. Ditto for the incessant barking of dog that Jackson brings home.

      I'll include a spoiler for those who'd rather not witness Grace taking a rifle from her mother-in-law's house, walking back to her home, and shooting the unfortunate dog, a creature that's evidently ill and neglected.

    Lawrence's purposefully erratic performance seems in sync with the movie's intentions. The world in which Grace finds herself can't accommodate her essential self. OK, that's vague, but it's as close as I can get.

    Pattinson's character makes less sense. With a multi-directional haircut and a sheepish demeanor, Jackson looks like a lost traveler in need of directions.

    The movie builds toward a finale that can be taken literally or metaphorically, but it's preceded by a kind of gentle detente between Jackson and Grace. Maybe he finally understands the woman he married.

     I had my reservations about Die My Love, but I can't finish without an addendum.

     I respect Ramsay's courage, something she displayed when she brought her 1999 movie Ratcatcher to the screen and continued in 2002 with Morvern Callar, which relied heavily on the work of Samantha Morton as another difficult character.

      Die My Love is Ramsay's first movie since 2018's You Were Never Really Here, which starred Joaquin Phoenix. I hope we don't have to wait another seven years for the next film.

      Whatever you think of Die My Love, you should know that Ramsay has a powerful voice, and isn't  afraid to raise it. Sometimes, I wondered why I was watching Grace unleash her furies, often in cruel ways. But if Ramsay and Lawrence set out to create a character too combustible for "normal'' life, they've succeeded. Like Grace, Ramsay refuses to be pigeonholed. That's a quality worthy of respect.

    

A small story with epic reach

 

  Director Clint Bentley takes on author Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, a 166-page novel that deals with large themes about the destruction of the American West, the trials of one tormented man, and his inability to make sense of tragic loss. 

  Perhaps to make Johnson's authorial voice part of the movie, Bentley makes heavy use of a narrator (Will Patton). Never intrusive, Patton's voice guides us through the story of Robert Granier (Joel Edgerton), a sturdy resident of the Pacific Northwest who ekes out a living as a logger.

   Logging takes Robert away from his wife, Gladys (Felicity Jones), and his infant daughter. He'd rather stay home, but money is scarce, and so are jobs.

   From the start, it's clear that Bentley and cinematographer Adolpho Veloso will celebrate the beauty of Northeast Washington, where the movie was filmed. Never purely decorative; the landscape and its trees have a near-hallowed quality. 

   For a time, Robert and Gladys live in a Western Eden, two people and a child in a small cabin Robert builds. All they want is to be together and live.

   Of course, there's no story in "just living." On a logging expedition, Robert becomes complicit in the death of a Chinese worker, hurled off a bridge by bigots who accuse the man of stealing. From that point on, Robert believes he's cursed. The events that follow suggest that he might be right.

    Principal among such catastrophes is a massive forest fire that consumes Robert's home, taking the lives of his wife and child. Robert was on his way home from a logging expedition when he saw smoke clouding the sky. He arrived too late to save his wife and daughter.

     Even in the early going, Bentley breaks the movie's bucolic moods with shots of trains sparking and roaring through the landscape. A recurrent train dream slices into Robert's sleep, an engine of destruction.

    The perils of logging come into sharper focus when Robert gathers around campfires with fellow loggers. These rough-hewn men include Apostle Frank (Paul Schneider) and Arn Peebles (William H. Macy). The men acknowledge the danger of their work: A falling branch can take its revenge on those who swing the axes. 

    Some of Robert's dreams evoke memories of his cherished domestic life.  Robert and his daughter share beautifully tender moments, and when Robert and Gladys are together, their love bubbles with laughter.

     A bearded Edgerton gives a solid performance as a man who, throughout most of the movie, knows little peace, but who also knows how to bear his troubles. He's a man of limited knowledge, but Edgerton suggests depths Robert can't quite grasp.

     Late in the film, Robert meets Claire (Kerry Condon), a widow who works as a lookout for forest fires. She lives in a tower that affords an overview of the territory Robert only has seen in pieces, and she expresses a deep and moving sympathy for Robert's plight. 

      The movie covers Robert's life from around 1917 to 1968. The scenes in the '60s struck me as  jarring, perhaps intentionally so. Robert's best days were lived before the frontier vanished. Still, there's a mood-breaking awkwardness to the these scenes I found difficult to digest.

      I also wondered what the film would have been had Bentley (Jockey, Sing Sing), working from a screenplay he wrote with Greg Kwedar, eliminated the narration and let Robert's journey grow and flow on its own. 

     Still, as I've said, Paton's narration can be viewed as part of the film's fabric, helping Bentley to play a trick that gives the movie its poignance: He takes a subject of epic scope and tells it in small strokes that mark the life of a man who'll never see how his life fits into the big picture. But, then, who among us ever will?

     

       

A psychiatrist at Nuremberg

 

  In Nuremberg, Director James Vanderbilt benefits from a trial that remains relevant and compelling 80 years after it captured the world's attention, the Nuremberg trials of 1945.

  The subject is not new to movies; Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) stands as one of the best-known dramas to deal with Nazi war criminals.

   Vanderbilt tells a real-life story that's less familiar, basing his movie on the experiences of Douglas M. Kelley, a lieutenant colonel assigned an unusual task. A psychiatrist by trade, Kelley was ordered to evaluate Nuremberg's prisoners, including Hermann Goring, Hitler's second in command.

   Meeting with Nazis in dank cells in a bombed-out city was no easy task. Though certain to be sentenced to death, Goring -- played by Russell Crowe -- remained calm and cunning. Crowe plays him as self-assured and arrogant, a man who believes that his inherent power can't be taken away by lesser mortals even in captivity. 

   Rami Malek portrays Kelley, an Army psychiatrist whose professional ethics are tested when the military asks him to provide "confidential" information that could be used to undermine Goring at trial.

    Eager to establish his reputation, the somewhat naive Kelley plans to write a book about his experiences at Nuremberg. Goring accuses the aspiring author of hitchhiking on the infamous reputations of high-ranking Nazis, principally Goring himself. Kelley knows Goring isn't entirely wrong about that.

  Kelley's book -- 22 Cells in Nuremberg -- details some of what occurred between Kelley and imprisoned members of the German high command. Kelley hoped to identify the cause of their evil. Surely, such horrendous crimes couldn't have been committed by ordinary men.

   The movie, however, isn't based on Kelley's book but on Jack El-Hai's The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Herman Goring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII. That's a long title, and it's matched by a two-hour and 28-minute movie that features Michael Shannon as Robert Jackson, the Supreme Court justice who believed the Nazis should be tried rather than summarily executed. Not everyone shared Jackson's views.

    As the movie unfolds, Kelley develops a relationship with Goring. The psychiatrist visited Goring's wife (Lotte Verbeek) and young daughter and treated them sympathetically. He brought Goring letters from his wife and seems shocked when he discovers the depths of Nazi depravity, a reaction that mirrors the way many felt immediately after the war.

    We don't get to know a great deal about Kelley, and Jackson receives less attention, although Vanderbilt deals with the political maneuvering required to ensure that the trial was more than the US versus the Nazis. He wanted it to seem as if the world was standing in judgment.

   As if to emphasize this point, Richard E. Grant portrays Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, a British deputy chief prosecutor who comes to Jackson's rescue when the American prosecutor is about to be bested by Goring during a tense moment of testimony.

    The movie's dramatic high point, the trial, includes real footage from Hitler's death camps, horrific no matter how many times we may have seen such images.

    Perhaps to add topical flair, Vanderbilt includes obvious dialogue about the dangers of power-hungry leaders and autocracy. It's as if he's underlining points that are ingrained in the story he's telling. They hardly needed elaboration. 

  I don't think Nuremberg is the great movie such a momentous subject requires. It can bog down in exposition that tends to be instructional, something on the order of Nuremberg 101.

   Still, Vanderbilt's conventional telling of the story is compelling when it needs to be. It also encourages thought about an observation that's not new to the movie or to anyone familiar with Hannah Arendt's oft-cited coverage of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, which occurred 16 years after Nuremberg, and gave rise to Arendt's key phrase, "the banality of evil."

    Search as one will, it's impossible to identify traits of malignant exceptionalism that lead ordinary men to such monstrous behavior. Not everyone agrees, but it's still worth pondering.

    A footnote: Goring escaped the noose, swallowing a cyanide capsule he had hidden from his captors shortly before he was to be hanged.*

*I've used the spelling of Goring used in the credits, but couldn't figure out how to add the umlaut over the "o" that German requires. 

An Iranian director assays revenge

   Director Jafar Panahi has paid dearly for his art. He’s been in and out of Iranian prisons, initially for "propagandizing" against an oppressive regime.

   In his new movie, It Was Just an Accident, Panahi tackles issues of guilt and responsibility while raising disturbing ethnical questions: How far should those who've been tortured in prison go to avenge themselves? If it's justice they seek, how would that look?

  That sounds heavy, and it is, but when you see It Was Just an Accident, you may be surprised that Panahi’s thriller includes moments of absurd humor. And as is the director’s practice, Panahi embeds his story in the rhythms of ordinary life. His movie can be as deceptively simple as its title.

  Where to begin? A chance incident on a lonely road brings Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) in contact with Eghbal, the man he believes tortured him in prison. Vahid recognizes the man’s walk because "Peg Leg," or "The Gimp" as the prisoners called him, had a prosthetic leg with an identifiable squeak. You could hear him approaching.

  Like other prisoners, Vahid was blindfolded during his interrogation; he never saw Eghbal's face.

  After kidnapping his purported tormentor, Vahid is about to take his revenge. He starts to bury Eghbal  alive in parched land outside Tehran. But the man’s pleading raises doubts. Is this really the sadist who ruined Vahid’s life, costing him his marriage and his job? He needs confirmation.

   Vahid's captive winds up in a trunk in Vahid’s van, and Vahid begins contacting other prisoners, hoping they'll help him make a positive identification. If he harms an innocent man will he be any different than the men who tormented him?

    Former prisoner and photographer Shiva (Maryam Afshari) is in the middle of taking wedding photos when she’s recruited by Vahid. She leads him to Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), a hot-tempered fellow with no compunction about killing the man suspected of torturing him.

  Also on the journey are the prospective bride (Hadis Pakbaten) and the unsuspecting groom (Majid Panahi) who've been posing for Shiva's photos. Still wearing the gown she wore for pictures, the bride is eager to take revenge for having been sexually abused by Eghbal -- not to mention the nooses that were tied around her neck when she was threatened with hanging.

   Putting the suspected government official off- screen allows Panahi to shift the film's focus. He's less interested in the abuser than in the abused and how they behave when confronted with an opportunity to turn the tables.

  This unlikely group winds up traversing Tehran. At one point, Vahid's stalled van must be pushed through a busy street, an odd sight considering that the bride and groom haven't shed their formal wear.

   All of this follows a disorienting opening that sets the story's stage. A bearded man (Ebrahim Azizi) drives at night with his pregnant wife (Afsaneh Najmabadi). His young daughter (Delmaz Najafi) bounces to the beat of songs on the radio in the back seat.  

  When the driver's car hits a dog, he needs a mechanic, which brings him to the garage where Vahid works. Vahid's boss attends to the car. From the shadows, Vahid decides that the driver is the same intelligence officer he blames for ruining his life. The walk is a giveaway.

  Panahi has said that the descriptions of torture related by his characters derive from stories he heard in prison, and if anyone’s entitled to add humor to a tough movie, it’s Panahi, who displays a taste for the absurdity that confronts characters who often deal with the unexpected by acting on impulse.

 Considering his circumstances, every Panahi movie can be viewed as an act of courage. It Was Just an Accident, which won the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, qualifies as an important movie from a director whose struggles with oppression haven’t extinguished the spark that makes him human; that's the same spark that allows him to tell stories that touch our humanity as well.

 

 

  

Seeking redemption in a city of neon

 

    Director Edward Berger is best known for his stunning remake of All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) and his box office hit Conclave (2024). Both movies qualify as well-made conventional offerings, movies dealing with battlefield horror during World War I and political intrigue within the Catholic church on the cusp of selecting a new pope.

  Berger's latest, Ballad of a Small Player, represents a shift, a movie that can be viewed as an adventurous -- if not entirely successful -- spiritual journey. I'm talking about religion, but about the journey of a desperate man who -- not entirely willingly -- seeks his freedom.

   The story centers on an Irishman (Colin Farrell) on the run. Having landed in Macau, Farrell's character adopts an upperclass British accent and becomes a regular at the baccarat tables. He calls himself Lord Freddie Doyle, but he’s slippery enough to slide off the screen.

    Berger veers from what could have been a standard noir offering, opting instead for high-gloss glamor; he revels in Macau's neon lure, and the charged sense of hope that animates a city that has been called the Las Vegas of Asia. Ballad of a Small Player might be the most brightly lit noir ever.

    Doyle’s troubles center on money, beginning with an unpaid hotel bill of $145,000 Hong Kong dollars that launches his compulsive attempt to win enough  to pay off his debts, including money he stole from an elderly British woman.

    A British investigator (Tilda Swinton) arrives in Macau, threatening to turn Doyle over to the authorities if he doesn’t return the money he stole. Doyle — who sweats a lot — does his best to evade her. Despite significant evidence to the contrary, he  continues to believe he can win enough at baccarat to solve his problems. 

     Farrell sinks into the role, creating a tragic figure — a compulsive gambler who has no control over his life, but tries to convince himself that he’s master of his fate. 

      It's obvious to us that Doyle can't beat the odds, a point that's reinforced by an older woman (Deanie Ip) who plays against Doyle at the baccarat table. An oracle of misfortune, she immediately pegs Doyle's as a hopeless loser. At the same time, he meets Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a loan shark who becomes an increasingly mysterious ally and a pivotal figure in moving the story.

       Once Berger sets the pieces in place, he turns his movie into a modern fairy tale that makes room for references to Hungry Ghosts — insatiable creatures of the afterlife — the unexplained appearance of a large sum of money, and a near-magical turnaround in Doyle’s sagging fortunes.

       Working from a screenplay credited to Rowan Joffe and Lawrence Osborne, who wrote the novel on which the movie is based, Berger doesn’t bother to dot every “i” or cross every “t." He pushes the movie into a metaphoric world in which Doyle must redeem himself by paying off his debts, both financial and spiritual. At times, the story feels as if it’s unfolding in a neon-lit dreamscape.

      That’s a big burden not only for Doyle but for a movie whose themes are expressed in ways many will find obscure and confusion, meaning dropped into a color-drenched mess.

       I understand that point of view, but I'm also glad to see Berger, like the hero of his movie, overreach. In so doing, he sounds surprising notes and finds moments of strange resonance. I'm eager to see where he goes next.