Thriller

Society of the Snow: The Hunger Shames

Jeremy BeckReviews
A scene from Society of the Snow

The movies love an impossibly true story—and if you aren’t familiar with the ultimate fate of the passengers of Uruguayan Air Force flight 571, you should probably stop reading now. If you are acquainted with this chilling saga of disaster, despair, and endurance—in which the survivors of a plane crash spent 72 days marooned in the Andes before being rescued—it might be because you’ve seen Alive, the 1993 feature directed by Frank Marshall. That decidedly American production, which was distributed by Disney, starred Ethan Hawke and Josh Hamilton as two of many white dudes cast as Uruguayan rugby players. Now, in a reclamation of sorts, comes Society of the Snow, a more culturally accurate recreation of the 1972 ordeal suffered by the Old Christians rugby team and other unfortunate travelers.

In a way, this operates as an inversion for J.A. Bayona, the Spanish filmmaker whose diverse credits include Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and The Orphanage (his first and best), and who previously revisited real-world tragedy and triumph with The Impossible. That movie, inspired by the plight of a Spanish woman during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, made the controversial decision to tell its story primarily through the lens of three white UK actors. Here, Bayona seems to have inoculated himself against any accusations regarding representation; the men who play the ill-fated athletes all hail from Uruguay or Argentina, and none of them possesses a recognizable name that could be leveraged for marketing purposes. Their relative anonymity is in keeping with the picture overall—both for the heartfelt homage it pays to its real-life counterparts, and for the struggle it exhibits when attempting to turn torchbearers of agony into distinct characters. Read More

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Eileen: That Pretty Red Mess

Jeremy BeckReviews
Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway in Eileen

Smoke gets in more than just your eyes in Eileen; it fills up your lungs and seeps into your pores. Directed by William Oldroyd from a script by Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh (adapting the latter’s novel), this sly and engrossing psychological thriller wields fog like a haunted-house barker, cloaking its characters and vehicles in clouds of swirling vapor. Seductive imagery aside, the omnipresent haze is a fitting device for a movie that obscures its intentions, priming you for a queasy study of obsession before pivoting into a nightmare of a different sort.

This isn’t to imply that Eileen, in its bold strokes, is especially novel or even surprising. Its titular heroine, played with supple intensity by Thomasin McKenzie, is a familiar type: a loner whose existence is so mundane, she can scarcely give voice to her repressed desires. Eileen works at a juvenile detention center in Nowheresville, Massachusetts, where she mindlessly frisks female visitors and shuffles inmates through corridors. On her evening commute, she stops by the liquor store; when she arrives home at her ramshackle house, she places the fresh bottles at the feet of her drunken father (Shea Whigham), collecting the day’s empties without comment. She’s less a wallflower than a smear of taupe. Read More

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Saltburn: Brother, Can You Spare a Crime?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Barry Keoghan and Archie Madekwe in Saltburn

“Eat the rich” is generally meant as a metaphor, but in Saltburn, the new psychodrama from Emerald Fennell, it verges on becoming literal. Midway through the movie, during one of the many pivot points in its kinked narrative, a young man coos that he intends to devour his female quarry before burying his face between her legs. Shortly thereafter, we see him sinking into a bathtub, blood dripping down his chin, like a vampire crawling into his coffin after a fresh kill.

This is among the movie’s plentiful striking images that are designed to induce a gasp of horror or a shudder of pleasure. Saltburn’s plot may traffic in ghastly occurrences—deception, suicide, murder, undercooked eggs—but it primarily operates as a work of provocation. If you find yourself clucking your tongue at its tactlessness or wincing at its indecency, you are simply playing your part as the appalled observer. To paraphrase a popular line that tends to circulate on social media, the obscenity is the point. Read More

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The Killer: Shoot to Thrill

Jeremy BeckReviews
Michael Fassbender in The Killer

Critics are invariably tempted to draw parallels between artists and their subjects, but with The Killer, David Fincher almost makes it too easy. Here is a movie about a man who practices his craft with fanatical exactitude, who exhibits unwavering patience, who abides by a ruthless set of codes and rituals. Remind you of anyone? The only apparent difference between Fincher and his titular character, an assassin for hire played with sleek magnetism by Michael Fassbender, is that the latter aims a gun instead of a camera.

OK, maybe not the only difference. To begin with, for all of his apparent experience and expertise, it’s unclear whether The Killer—who’s unnamed, so let’s call him TK—is especially good at his job. When we first meet him in Paris (after a brisk and absorbing title sequence, a Fincher specialty), he’s sitting in a vacant WeWork loft (WetWork?), calmly educating us—in the nonstop, blackly comic voiceover that will accompany the entire film—on the physical challenges of doing nothing. Even ignoring the picture’s title, TK’s accoutrements—a high-powered arsenal (including a sniper rifle), a spiffy set of binoculars, a wristwatch tracking his biometrics (pro tip: never pull the trigger unless your pulse is under 60)—convey that his vocation is murder. Yet despite his thorough surveillance and his ascetic mantras (e.g., forbid empathy), he botches the hit. It will not be the last mistake he makes, though it is the catalyzing one; the remainder of this fleet, exhilarating movie chronicles the fallout of TK’s error and the pileup of bodies it produces. Read More

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Fair Play: Investment Wank

Jeremy BeckReviews
Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor in Fair Play

The power couple at the center of Fair Play both work at a pressure-cooker investment bank, so it’s fitting that the movie opens with its own form of aggressive sales pitch. Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) are cavorting at a wedding, where they sneak into the bathroom for a quickie. Luke performs some moan-inducing cunnilingus, but Emily’s gasps turn from pleasure to shock when she realizes that her menstruation has bloodied both his face and her dress. Yet they recover their poise (“You look like you slaughtered a chicken,” he giggles), then sneak out a back door and race home to their swanky Manhattan apartment, where they enthusiastically finish what they’d started.

The purpose of this introduction is twofold. On a character level, it’s designed to establish Luke and Emily’s mutual passion—an ardor whose strength and durability will be tested as the film unspools. And in terms of style and imagery, it announces its provocative intent—not as a product of pornography (the simulated thrusting and the glimpses of nudity are more coy than explicit), but as a piece of proudly sexed-up entertainment. Here at last, writer-director Chloe Domont proclaims, is an adult movie for adult audiences. Read More

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