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While watching the absolutely delightful Hundreds of Beavers, I kept thinking of the aesthetic of Guy Maddin's similar faux-silent films, and wouldn't you know it, the trailer has a pull quote from him endorsing the movie. If hadn't been sold already... This loopy movie is like a live action Looney Tunes cartoon (though it still has animated elements, both classic funny animals and CG-produced collage animation that made me think of Karel Zeman's Invention for Destruction and Fabulous Baron Munchausen) with hundreds of gags and a kind of video game logic. Jean Kayak (great name) is a hapless fur trapper at odds with a variety of animals intent on outsmarting him - and I think it works best when they can rather than the middle part where he's growing in ability - animals played by people in mascot costumes as this is a lo-fi near-silent that I'd love to smuggle back in time and show to unwary 1920s audiences. The gags really build on one another cleverly, and director Mike Cheslik never pulls a shtick once if he can't pull it half a dozen times at least, each time with an amusing twist. But that's damning it with faint praise, because it often provokes genuine laughter. Sometimes it's the small things that do it, but it's also how crazy it all gets as time goes on. And what you thought was just a silly gag? It'll probably turn out to be important to the plot later. It may LOOK like the vignettes in any given Woody Woodpecker, Bugs Bunny or Road Runner cartoon, but it's intricately written so that everything fits like those plastic pieces in the old Mouse Trap board game. A great time!

I go to the theater often and I've had a lot of bad experiences with rowdy or disrespectful (also stupid) patrons. Lamberto Bava (Son of Mario) gets it. Demons (co-written by Dargento) is at once a horror pastiche of that kind of movie-goer and in concept, the movie fighting back. You're having a bad time, but you don't want to leave the movie because you're a prisoner of the story. A bunch of quickly-drawn characters are lured to a theater with golden tickets and the demonic summonings on screen slip into the real worlds. As they one by one become Deadites (and if there's a movie that deserves to count as part of the Evil Dead universe, it's this one), the patrons have to band together and either huddle in fear or try to escape. The front half of Demons is the stronger, with its cool interplay between the real world and what's projected on the screen, but the really crazy stuff is at the back, some of which I'm unable to even justify (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). Either way, the gore is very, very gooey. You've been warned. Man, I sort of wish I'd seen this IN a theater. I bet it would be much more effective than my living room.

Sometimes you're hobby/fandom/passion can get between you and your partner (or prospective partners). Sometimes it can bring you together. Faintheart is a really rather sweet situation comedy that explores this idea, with Eddie Marsan as a meek Viking battle reenactment enthusiast despondent over his recent separation from his wife (Jessica Hynes), losing his connection to his son in the process. Trainspotting's Ewen Bremner is his best mate, a virginal comic shop clerk looking for love on the Star Trek bulletin boards. And between the two of them, and the tween son who might fall in love if he can only get respite from bullies, we get different variations on the theme. Though much of the film paints the "fans" as losers of the social order, the last half hour is both rousing and touching as the characters accept who they are and double down after a period of doubt. Is it possible to grow up without growing OUT of something? Faintheart doesn't reinvent cinema, but it's a smile-inducing British comedy with lots of recognizable faces.

God lives in Brussels and he's a terrible a-hole in Jaco Van Dormael's absurdist comedy The Brand New Testament, but the writer-director is, quite frankly, judging him in His Works. From his point of view, his Son ran away from home and ruined everything with his Gospels. This is the story of his 10-year-old DAUGHTER, Ea (thankfully, because he's intolerable and deserves every taste of his own medicine he gets) as SHE runs away from home and attempts her OWN Gospel through her own apostles (most recognizably, Catherine Deneuve) and evangelist, people picked randomly from the crowd who are, like everyone on Earth, trying to parse the paradigm shift Ea has created during her escape. Their stories are ones of loneliness, and therefore makes Ea's Testament one of connection, with oneself, with others, and with the natural world. It is a beautiful piece of work. Van Dormael's image-making is surprising and wonderful. The twists are wild. The characters are poignant. The satire is biting. And for fans of Van Dormael's other films, you might even get a few of their characters folded into this larger world.

Trying to decode the alternate history in Alex Garland's Civil War is a fool's task, as is trying to untangle some kind of direct message about American politics. It's not about that, and will probably be the most misunderstood film of the year, or even the decade, because that's the natural impulse here. What it IS about, on a thematic level, is showing us what's already happening in the world - in Ukraine, in Syria, in Palestine - and giving it an American face, within American landscapes, to make what is far away more immediate to its target audience. The iconography is recognizable as what is transmitted by war correspondents, and therefore, this is the story of journalists and war photographers, the dangers they face (to both body and soul), the techniques they use, and the ethics of the job. It's a vocation that, in the absolute, is apolitical, and so Garland's America is necessarily fuzzy on its politics, a remix of the contemporary USA and of war-torn countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and it's on purpose, I think, that you're never sure which side the journalists are following around at any given moment, or which side is "righteous". Kirsten Dunst is great as a dead-eyed veteran photographer, at the end of her rope even as a younger model (Cailee Spaeny) comes in to slowly replace her in the narrative. The cycle continues. A lot of memorable moments that strike emotionally true in spite of the fantasy setting, mixing the mundane with the shocking in a way that can be missing from real-world footage where the "otherness"of a place might create a distance. But even if you're not an American, Georgia has been in films so much by now, the familiarity should have its effect.

It would be lying to say I knew what was going on in the first hour of Duelle, even WITH a synopsis. Just elegant women speaking lines in a faux-noir Paris. To me, it felt like director Jacques Rivette was making a Godard film - Noir trappings, stylized poetic dialog, experimental film making - and in your book, that comparison may be a plus. It isn't in mine. Ultimately, it's just that the film takes too long to explain itself, who its characters are, and what motivates them. The second hour is therefore much stronger as we start to understand what's happening. It's a modern fairy tale, with the Daughters of the Sun and Moon, made to taste the human world every year for a number of days, trying to find a jewel that will allow one of them to stay on Earth forever (and reign). Various human beings become their pawns, caught in a web of intrigue as the goddesses quest for the MacGuffin and manipulate them into deadly situations. Visually, Rivette offers interesting lighting, gorgeous fashions (Bulle Ogier and Juliet Berto are astonishingly beautiful in this, with Berto having as many looks as the Moon has phases), and a live score that can be distracting, but forces long takes and necessary silence (there can't be a piano or live band everywhere you go). On repeat viewings, it might grow in my estimation, but after a single one, I respect it more than love it.

Frog Dreaming (too Australian a title for marketers in other countries, so it's the woefully generic The Quest in North America and the ridiculous Go-Kids in the UK) stars Henry Thomas (Elliott from E.T.) in an Amblin-like production where kids ride bikes, invent gadgets, puff on cigarettes and kiss grubs (they didn't ENTIRELY get it, then). The film opens like a horror movie, and indeed there seems to be a monster in a quarry pond, which gives Elliott--I mean, Cody--the one American boy in this Australian venue, and his gal pals, an opportunity for adventure, getting into trouble, and sussing out if the Dreamtime is real. Sort of. The movie wants to have its cake and eat it too, so there's both a mundane explanation and a supernatural one, and both appear to be true. Which is fine, but also, both explanations are way over the top given its general tone. And I hate to go after kid actors, but Thomas looks miserable in this, over-serious 90% of the time, and pulling forced smiles the rest. Attempts at humor (and you've got Katy Manning right there as one of the mums) are just that and fall rather flat. It's like a Spielberg film if Spielberg lost his ability to manipulate the audience's emotions.

Looking back at Stargate (for Kurt Russell, of course, and he does provide the film with necessary humanity), I feared it would be much worse than it actually was. The Emmerich/Devlin dumbassery is, of course, present, even at this early stage, with stupid science, unearned coincidences, and bad messaging (if one of your heroes' tragedy is that his son accidentally shot himself with a badly stowed gun, you can't have arming child soldiers as one of your solutions later). It would have gone unnoticed at the time, but Emmerich's belief that conspiracy theorists are right and will save the world is already present (which is one of the reasons I hate his movies so much now). But the Egyptian sci-fi designs are cool, it's a bold choice to subtitle so much of the film (though apparently, Emmerich was going to let it play without translation until a catastrophic preview forced a producer's hand), and I enjoyed watching Russell slowly take the movie away from nominal lead James Spader. Obviously, Stargate went on to have a big legacy on television, though I've never seen more than a couple seconds of ANY of those shows. And several of its supporting players went on to bigger things like Djimon Honshou (here just a henchman) and 3rd Rock from the Sun's French Stewart (here as an annoying, unprofessional soldier). Better than I dreaded, sure, but too problematic for a recommendation.

Olivier Assayas is best known for art house dramas, but what happens when he attempts an action thriller early(ishj) in his career? Well, Boarding Gate's first act does have long conversations and characters with strange interests and detailed backgrounds, but it soon picks up in terms of violence, twists, turns, and paranoia. Asia Argento is a sexy damaged beauty trying to escape a toxic relationship, and escape she will, though her flight turns into a tense globe-hopping affair. We're right there with her, no seeing a complete picture of circumstances, sometimes even behind her on certain things. Assayas has assembled an international cast that includes Michael Madsen, Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth(!), and a number of solid French and Chinese actors, to tell a story about being out of control, letting others make the calls in our lives, and to my mind, only gives Argento's Sandra an actual choice and decision at the very end of the picture. A neat little thriller - grimy, perverse and absorbing.