Movie Reviews

Screen Grabs: Zut alors! The Count of Monte Cristo rides again – 48 hills

Published

1 year ago

January 1, 2025

Screen Grabs: Zut alors! The Count of Monte Cristo rides again – 48 hills

Historical fiction is what’s happening at the movies this week, with a side serving of current events in two more features. The big, plush beach-read epic among them is The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas’ adventure classic being given an extravagant new three-hour visualization by the French writing-directing team of Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patelliere. Pierre Niney of Frantz and Yves Saint Laurent plays Edmond Dantes, a sailor of humble origin made good, until a jealous rival has him framed as an agent of the exiled Napoleon. Years later, he escapes an island prison and poses as a wealthy foreigner to insinuate himself into the worlds of the three men (Bastien Bouillon, Laurent Lafitte, Patrick Mille) who’d orchestrated his fate—and have profited from more crimes since.

Even with its narrative somewhat altered and compacted from Dumas’ sprawling original (which was first published as a serial between 1844-46), this remains a flamboyantly old-fashioned tale of credulity-stretching intrigue and coincidence. We seldom see its like on the big screen anymore—or maybe we do, but these days it’s more likely to take the overtly fantastical form of a Batman movie or the like. This lavish production does not shy from going over-the-top in its ostentatious settings, flashy drone shots or bombastic orchestral score. Still, it all pretty much works, particularly once the elaborate revenge scheme kicks in around mid-point.

It’s period popcorn entertainment on a grand scale, no less enjoyable for being more than a bit theatrically shameless. The Count of Monte Cristo begins opening around the Bay Area on January 3; likely SF venues (not yet confirmed at presstime) were the AMC Kabuki and Metreon.

As strikingly bleak in its handsome B&W austerity as The Count is eye-candy colorful, The Girl With the Needle from Danish director Magnus von Horn (whose prior Sweat we reviewed here) weaves fictional elements around a shocking criminal case from a century ago. In 1919 Copenhagen, Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) is a clothing-factory seamstress whose husband hasn’t come back from WWI service, and may well be dead. She is seduced by her wealthy boss (Jorgen Fjelstrup), but any dreams of a wealthy, stable future with him get squelched by a first/last meeting with his imperious mother.

Now pregnant and desperate, with legal abortion not an option, Karoline finds herself aided by a stranger met by chance. Middle-aged Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm) seems to be in the business of helping just such poor young women, and placing their unwanted children in “good homes.” But it is not until she’s become an integral part of Dagmar’s ongoing operation that Karoline realizes her benefactress is secretly a monster—a sort of matricidal equivalent to Sweeney Todd. It is that figure who’s based on a real-life one, her trial leading to major changes in child-protective laws; and the formidable Dyrholm is impressive as always in the role.

But primary focus here is on fictive Karoline, who is not very interesting or even terribly sympathetic. The facts on record are so much more powerful than what von Horn chooses to portray, his choices end up seeming rather inscrutable, despite the film’s compelling atmosphere and aesthetics. It’s an arresting exercise in many respects that nonetheless proves somewhat frustrating. Girl opens Fri/3 at SF’s Roxie, with other Bay Area venues to follow.

Taking place a few years earlier on the far opposite ends of Eurasia is Harbin from South Korean writer-director Woo Min-ho, of prior hit political thrillers Inside Men and The Man Standing Next. It’s set in 1909, four years after a multinational treaty forced Korea to basically become a colony of Japan following the latter’s winning the Russo-Japanese War. Abandoned by allies (including the US), nationalists formed resistance groups to combat the encroachment of further Japanese imperialism, among them the Korean Independence Army. Ahn (Hyun Bin) is fighting in their ranks when they score a combat victory over some surprised Nippon troops. But he insists on honoring international war-crimes rules by not executing some captured personnel, despite his own men’s objections. That turns out to be a bitterly regretted decision, because spared high-ranking officer Mori (Park Hoon) soon seizes an opportunity to massacre nearly all Ahn’s comrades.

To redeem himself, Ahn decides he’ll make it his mission to assassinate Japan’s Prime Minister as he travels across China to meet with Russian diplomats, orchestrating deals that will secure Korea’s subjugation. This involves a labyrinth of undercover intrigue, arms acquisition, betrayal, shootouts, and so forth, with a mole conveying most of these planned guerrilla actions to the relentless Mori before they can occur.

Dense with background details and explication that may be somewhat daunting to non-Korean audiences, Harbin nonetheless maintains interest with a somber, tense mood spiked by occasional outbursts of violence. It’s handsomely produced on impressive locations, from spectacular mountain and desert landscapes to myriad interiors whose dark look amplifies the surreptitious nature of the characters’ activities. A history lesson framed as heroic action-suspense tale, Harbin may for Western viewers recall starry big-budget WW2 espionage epics of the 1960s like Where Eagles Dare and Von Ryan’s Express—though it’s a bit less heavy on the swaggering machismo. It opens in Bay Area theaters Fri/3.

Another fact-inspired new drama has gotten a divisive response, with raves and awards from some quarters, while others have found it curiously alienating. I’m sorry to say I landed on the debit side of that divide—sorrier still because the source material seemed such a natural for the screen. Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning 2019 novel The Nickel Boys provided a succinctly powerful portrait of slavery long after the official end of slavery, via abuses visited on boys at a very long-running fictive Florida boys’ reform school (in real life the now-shuttered Dozier School). Its protagonist gets sent there unjustly as a juvenile in the early 1960s, and is lucky to survive the experience. Much later, he lives to see the institution investigated, uncovering decades of brutality including rape, beatings, and the unmarked graves of former wards who supposedly “ran away” or simply “disappeared.”

Nickel Boys (the “the” has been dropped) is a first narrative feature for RaMell Ross, who previously had turned his sojourn teaching photography in rural Alabama into a fine poetical documentary of life there. Hale County This Morning, This Evening was oblique but evocative, offering little in the way of concrete storytelling yet providing heady, lyrical insight into a place and culture.

But Whitehead’s book is full of vivid incident, character dynamics, and historical context; it’s not the sort of thing that lends itself to flavorful abstraction. Whatever led Ross to make the decisions he makes, they didn’t work for me: He has shot this intensely dramatic story entirely in the first-person, initially limited to the perspective of teenaged Elmwood (Ethan Herisse), then also that of Turner (Brandon Wilson), who becomes his only real friend at the dreaded “Nickel Academy.”

Their travails rendered murky by a POV in which we see the abuser, but not the abused (Ross and Joslyn Barnes’ screenplay tends to leave those acts to our imagination anyway), this is a movie whose high-minded experimentalism ends up only muffling the impact of its material. The effect is rather like reading a novel entirely written in the second person: It’s a gimmick that can be pulled off, yes, but why would you want to? The performers (also including Daveed Diggs, Hamish Linklater, and Jimmie Fails) are good, albeit handicapped by the alienating technique. Some, like Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Elwood’s grandmother, succumb to overstatement when repeatedly asked to play entire scenes directly to the camera, rather than a fellow actor.

The external threads Ross weaves in (often utilizing archival footage) involving the concurrent Civil Rights movement, “space race” etc. do ultimately pay off in making this long sit achieve a kind of complex, essayistic dimensionality. But those 15 minutes or so of Chris Marker-like montage succeed at the cost of The Nickel Boys, which will have to wait for a more straightforward future translation to realize the impact that fairly leapt off Whitehead’s pages, and which should have provided no obstacle to replication in this medium. It opens in Bay Area theaters Fri/3.

More direct depictions of grave present-tense injustices are on display in two more new films. Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev’s Porcelain War centers on three Ukrainian artists living in the vicinity of devastated Kharkiv, very near the Russian border. Originally they’d all lived in Crimea, yet another “life stolen from us by Russia’s occupation.” Finding themselves in a new war zone, they maintain their disciplines as a form of protest: Cinematographer Andrey Stefanov keeps filming, including the mines and IUD’s now littering their countryside, while married couple Leontyev and Anya Stasenko continue creating ceramic miniatures that now offer commentary on this nation’s appalling day-to-day reality.

Occasionally bringing those whimsical figures to “life” via animation, Porcelain Nation can seem a bit twee, particularly when compared to the many more bluntly powerful documentaries about Ukraine the last couple years. But in its second half, the film acquires some power of its own, as we watch Slava train as a weapons expert for the Ukrainian Special Forces, and Andrey must cope with sending his children into exile for their own safety. There’s even gritty you-are-there footage of combat missions. Ultimately, the film’s strength lies in showing how art can retain its relevance, and artists their artistry, under the most antagonistic circumstances.

Likewise, From Ground Zero: Stories From Gaza is not the most hard-hitting of recent features about Palestinians’ plight, but it benefits from a diversity of approach to a grim subject. Conceived by Rashid Masharawi, the project brings together 22 filmmakers for as many individual contributions to a nearly two-hour omnibus reflecting everyday life in Gaza. As amply demonstrated here, that life is to a large degree now spent in refugee camps, or combing through the debris of homes newly bombed to rubble—sometimes still hoping to find survivors buried beneath.

There are sequences that are straight documentary reportage, others more in the realm of personal essay, plus a fair number of dramatized vignettes. In lighter moments, we see a standup comedian provide some escapist relief for refugees; animation and marionettes are utilized elsewhere.

Not everything here is good, with a wince-worthy moment or two, as during a bit that’s like a tacky amateur music video on YouTube. But the immediacy of so many voices in front of and behind the cameras does generate considerable insight. It would take a heart of stone not to be moved when at one point various children are interviewed, and one notes that her baby brother hasn’t yet acquired the power of speech—his experience to date has only taught him to imitate the sound of an ambulance siren.

Porcelain War and From Ground Zero both open Fri/3 at SF’s Roxie Theater, the former also at the Rafael Film Center in Marin.

Movie Reviews

‘Greenland 2: Migration’ Review: Gerard Butler in a Post-Apocalyptic Sequel That’s Exactly What You Expect

Published

12 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

‘Greenland 2: Migration’ Review: Gerard Butler in a Post-Apocalyptic Sequel That’s Exactly What You Expect

Desperate migrants are forced to leave Greenland after a malevolent force makes their island uninhabitable. No, it’s not tomorrow’s headline about Donald Trump, but rather the sequel to Ric Roman Waugh’s 2020 post-apocalyptic survival thriller. That film starring Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin had the misfortune of opening during the pandemic and going straight to VOD. Greenland 2: Migration (now there’s a catchy title) has the benefit of opening in theaters, but it truly feels like an unnecessary follow-up. After all, how many travails can one poor family take?

That family consists of John Garrity (Butler), whose structural engineering skills designated him a governmental candidate for survival in the wake of an interstellar comet dubbed “Clarke” wreaking worldwide destruction; his wife Allison (Baccarin); and their son Nathan (now played by Roman Griffin Davis). At the end of the first film, the clan had endured numerous life-threatening crises as they made their way to the underground bunker in Greenland where survivors will attempt to make a new life.

Greenland 2: Migration

The Bottom Line

It’s the end of the world as we know it…again.

Release date: Friday, January 9
Cast: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roman Griffin Davis, Amber Rose Revah, Sophie Thompson, Trond Fausa Aurvag, William Abadie
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Screenwriters: Mitchell LaFortune, Chris Sparling

Rated PG-13,
1 hour 38 minutes

Five years later, things aren’t going so well. Fragments of the comet continue to rain down on the planet, causing catastrophic destruction. The contaminated air prevents people from going outside, and resources are becoming increasingly scarce. But there are some plus sides, such as the bunker’s inhabitants still being able to dance to yacht rock.

When their safe haven in Greenland is destroyed, the Garritys, along with a few other survivors, are forced to flee. Their destination is France, where there are rumors of an oasis at the comet’s original crash site. And at the very least, the food is bound to be better.

It’s a perilous journey, but anyone who saw the first film knows what to expect. The Garritys, along with the bunker’s Dr. Casey (Amber Rose Revah), run into some very bad people, undergoing a series of life-threatening trials and tribulations.

Unfortunately, while the thriller mechanics are reasonably well orchestrated by director Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, Kandahar) in his fourth collaboration with Butler, Greenland 2: Migration feels as redundant as its title. While the first film featured a relatively original premise and some genuine emotional dynamics in its suspenseful situations, this one just feels rote. And while it’s made clear that the crisis has resulted in people resorting to cutthroat, deadly means to ensure their survival, the Garritys have it relatively easy. All John has to do is adopt a puppy-dog look, put a pleading tone in his voice, beg for his family’s help, and people inevitably comply.

To be fair, the film contains some genuinely arresting scenes, including one set in a practically submerged Liverpool and another in a dried-up English Channel. The latter provides the opportunity for a harrowing sequence in which the family is forced to cross a giant ravine on a treacherously fragile rope ladder.

Butler remains a sturdy screen presence, his Everyman quality lending gravitas to his character. Baccarin, whose character serves as the story’s moral conscience (early in the proceedings she spearheads a fight to open the shelter to more refugees despite the lack of resources, delivering a not-so-subtle message), more than matches his impact. William Abadie (of Emily in Paris) also makes a strong impression as a Frenchman who briefly takes the family in and begs them to take his daughter Camille (Nelia Valery de Costa) along with them.

Resembling the sort of B-movie fantasy adventure, with serviceable but unremarkable special effects, that used to populate multiplexes in the early ‘70s, Greenland 2: Migration is adequate January filler programming. The only thing it’s missing is dinosaurs.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: A real-life ’70s hostage drama crackles in Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’

Published

24 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Movie Review: A real-life ’70s hostage drama crackles in Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’

It plays a little loose with facts but the righteous rage of “Dog Day Afternoon” is present enough in Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire,” a based-on-a-true-tale hostage thriller that’s as deeply 1970s as it is contemporary.

In February 1977, Tony Kiritsis walked into the Meridian Mortgage Company in downtown Indianapolis and took one of its executives, Dick Hall, hostage. Kiritsis held a sawed-off shotgun to the back of Hall’s head and draped a wire around his neck that connected to the gun. If he moved too much, he would die.

The subsequent standoff moved to Kiritsis’ apartment and eventually concluded in a live televised news conference. The whole ordeal received some renewed attention in a 2022 podcast dramatization starring Jon Hamm.

But in “Dead Man’s Wire,” starring Bill Skarsgård as Kiritsis, these events are vividly brought to life by Van Sant. It’s been seven years since Van Sant directed, following 2018’s “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” and one of the prevailing takeaways of his new film is that that’s too long of a break for a filmmaker of Van Sant’s caliber.

Working from a script by Austin Kolodney, the filmmaker of “My Own Private Idaho” and “Good Will Hunting” turns “Dead Man’s Wire” into not a period-piece time capsule but a bracingly relevant drama of outrage and inequality. Tony feels aggrieved by his mortgage company over a land deal the bank, he claims, blocked. We’re never given many specifics, but at the same time, there’s little doubt in “Dead Man’s Wire” that Tony’s cause is just. His means might be desperate and abhorrent, but the movie is very definitely on his side.

That’s owed significantly to Skarsgård, who gives one of his finest and least adorned performances. While best known for films like “It,” “The Crow” and “Nosferatu,” here Skarsgård has little more than some green polyester and a very ’70s mustache to alter his looks. The straightforward, jittery intensity of his performance propels “Dead Man’s Wire.”

Yet Van Sant’s film aspires to be a larger ensemble drama, which it only partially succeeds at. Tony’s plight is far from a solitary one, as numerous threads suggest in Kolodney’s fast-paced script. First and foremost is Colman Domingo as a local DJ named Fred Temple. (If ever there were an actor suited, with a smooth baritone, to play a ’70s radio DJ, it’s Domingo.) Tony, a fan, calls Fred to air his demands. But it’s not just a media outlet for him. Fred touts himself as “the voice of the people.”

Something similar could be said of Tony, who rapidly emerges as a kind of folk hero. As much as he tortures his hostage (a very good Dacre Montgomery), he’s kind to the police officers surrounding him. And as he and Dick spend more time together, Dick emerges as a kind of victim, himself. It’s his father’s bank, and when Tony gets M.L. Hall (Al Pacino) on the phone, he sounds painfully insensitive, sooner ready to sacrifice his son than acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Pacino’s presence in “Dead Man’s Wire” is a nod to “Dog Day Afternoon,” a movie that may be far better — but, then again, that’s true of most films in comparison to Sidney Lumet’s unsurpassed 1975 classic. Still, Van Sant’s film bears some of the same rage and disillusionment with the meatgrinder of capitalism as “Dog Day.”

There’s also a telling, if not entirely successful subplot of a local TV news reporter (Myha’la) struggling against stereotypes. Even when she gets the goods on the unspooling news story, the way her producer says to “chop it up” and put it on air makes it clear: Whatever Tony is rebelling against, it’s him, not his plight, that will be served up on a prime-time plate.

It doesn’t take recent similar cases of national fascination, such as Luigi Mangione, charged with killing a healthcare executive, to see contemporary echoes of Kiritsis’ tale. The real story is more complicated and less metaphor-ready, of course, than the movie, which detracts some from the film’s gritty sense of verisimilitude. Staying closer to the truth might have produced a more dynamic movie.

But “Dead Man’s Wire” still works. In the film, Tony’s demands are $5 million and an apology. It’s clear the latter means more to him than the money. The tragedy in “Dead Man’s Wire” is just how elusive “I’m sorry” can be.

“Dead Man’s Wire,” a Row K Entertainment release, is rated R for language throughout. Running time: 105 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Movie Reviews

Film review: IS THIS THING ON? Plus January special screenings

Published

1 day ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Is This Thing On?

Cinematic stories of disintegrating marriages are fairly commonplace—and often depressing emotional endurance tests, besides—so it’s interesting to see co-writer/director Bradley Cooper take this variation on the theme in a fresher direction. The unhappy couple in this place is Alex and Tess Novak (Will Arnett and Laura Dern), who decide matter-of-factly to separate. Then Alex impulsively decides to get up on stage at an open-mic comedy night, and starts turning their relationship issues into material. The premise would seem to suggest an uneven balance towards Alex’s perspective, but the script is just as interested in Tess—a former Olympic-level volleyball player who retired to focus on motherhood—searching for her own purpose. And the narrative takes a provocative twist when their individual sparks of renewed happiness lead them towards something resembling an affair with their own spouse. The screenplay faces a challenge common to movies about comedians in that Alex’s material, even once he’s supposed to be actively working on it, isn’t particularly good, and Cooper isn’t particularly restrained in his own supporting performance as the comic-relief buddy character (who is called “Balls,” if that provides any hints). Yet the two lead performances are terrific—particularly Dern, who nails complex facial expressions upon her first encounter with Alex’s act—as Cooper and company turn this narrative into an exploration of how it can seem that you’ve fallen out of love with your partner, when what you’ve really fallen out of love with is the rest of your life. Available Jan. 9 in theaters. (R)

JANUARY SPECIAL SCREENINGS

KRCL’s Music Meets Movies: Dig! XX @ Brewvies: As part of a farewell to Sundance, Brewvies/KRCL’s regular Music Meets Movies series presents the extended 20th anniversary edition of the 2004 Sundance documentary about the rivalry between the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre as they chart different music-biz paths. The screening takes place at Brewvies (677 S. 200 West) on Jan. 8 @ 7:30 p.m., $10 at the door or 2-for-1 with KRCL shirt. brewvies.com

Trent Harris weekend @ SLFS: Utah’s own Trent Harris has charted a singular course as an independent filmmaker, and you can catch two of his most (in)famous works at Salt Lake Film Society. In 1991’s Rubin & Ed, two mismatched souls—one an eccentric, isolated young man (Crispin Glover), the other a middle-aged financial scammer—wind up on a comedic road trip through the Utah desert; 1995’s Plan 10 from Outer Space turns Mormon theology into a crazy science-fiction parody. Get a double dose of uncut Trent Harris weirdness on Friday, Jan. 9, with Rubin & Ed at 7 p.m. and Plan 10 from Outer Space at 9 p.m. Tickets are $13.75 for each screening. slfs.org

Rob Reiner retrospective @ Brewvies Sunday Brunch: Last month’s tragic passing of actor/director Rob Reiner reminded people of his extraordinary work, particularly his first handful of features. Brewvies’ regular “Sunday Brunch” series showcases three of these films this month with This Is Spinal Tap (Jan. 11), The Princess Bride (Jan. 18) and Stand By Me (Jan. 25). All screenings are free with no reservations, on a first-come first-served basis, at noon each day. brewvies.com

David Lynch retrospective @ SLFS: It’s been a year since the passing of groundbreaking artist David Lynch, and Salt Lake Film Society’s Broadway Centre Cinemas marks the occasion with some of his greatest filmed work. In addition to theatrical features Eraserhead (Jan. 11), Inland Empire (Jan. 11), Mulholland Dr. (Jan. 12), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Jan. 14), Blue Velvet (Jan. 19) and Lost Highway (Jan. 19), you can experience the entirety of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return on the big screen in two-episode blocs Jan. 16 – 18. The programming also includes the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life. slfs.org

Death by Numbers @ Utah Film Center: Directed by Kim A. Snyder (the 2025 Sundance feature documentary The Librarians), this 2024 Oscar-nominated documentary short focuses on Sam Fuentes, survivor of a school shooting who attempts to process her experience through poetry. This special screening features a live Q&A with Terri Gilfillan and Nancy Farrar-Halden of Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, with Zoom participation by Sam Fuentes. The screening on Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m. at Utah Film Center (375 W. 400 North) is free with registration at the website.