Movies about movies tend to be as sentimental as Cinema Paradiso, the all-time tearjerker in the genre, or as caustic as the recent Babylon. But Lone Scherfig finds a fine balance between love of movies and the harsh wider world in The Movie Teller, a beautifully made coming-of-age film about Maria Margarita, who acts out the Hollywood movies she has seen at the local cinema in her small mining town. Set in the Chilean desert in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the drama benefits greatly from the sure hand and clear eye Scherfig has brought to her best films, other period pieces including An Education (2009) and Their Finest (2016). All that can’t quite make up for the rocky screenplay, though.
The story is adapted from the Chilean writer Hernan Rivera Letelier’s 2009 novel. The first version of the screenplay was tackled years ago by the Brazilian director Walter Salles, and more recently reworked by the Spanish writer-directors Isabel Coixet and Rafa Russo. The film has the cobbled-together feel of a literary adaptation that is too pared-down at the start and overstuffed toward the end.
The Movie Teller
The Bottom Line A sweet but minor addition to the movies-about-movies genre.
We follow Maria Margarita as she grows from a girl, played by Alondra Valenzuela in a dynamic performance, to a young woman, played by Sara Becker, who makes her affecting. Becker’s opening voiceover, used sparingly, says, “I grew up in the driest place on Earth,” the Atacama Desert, site of a town for workers in the saltpeter mine. Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) plays her mother, Maria Magnolia, straining against the limits of her life as the mother of four and wife of a miner, Medardo (a solid Antonio de la Torre). In the smaller role of Hauser, the German manager of the mining company, Daniel Bruhl doesn’t have much more to do than give knowing, sympathetic looks, but he does that effectively. With its Danish director and international mix of writers and cast, the Spanish-language film is a virtual United Nations, but that part at least works seamlessly.
True to her lucid, no-frills style, Scherfig often keeps the camera on a face in the middle of the screen, holding just long enough for us to see what no one says: Maria Magnolia’s desperation, the haggard Medardo’s awareness of it. We observe what their young daughter might see without completely comprehending: the way Hauser brushes her mother’s hand.
The one bright spot in this family’s life is the cinema. On Sunday afternoon, they dress in their best and go to see Paths of Glory, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence or Some Like It Hot. We see very brief glimpses of these movies along with the inevitable shots of the audience looking rapt, which Scherfig thankfully keeps to a minimum.
When Medardo loses the use of his legs in a mining accident, the family can’t afford more than one movie ticket, and in turn each of the children is sent to watch and tell the film to the others. In episodes that briefly add a comic tone, one brother can’t finish telling Breakfast at Tiffany’s because “Who can understand women?” When another tells about the lovers parting on a railway platform in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg it turns into a detailed description of the train.
But Maria Margarita is a natural, acting out films with dramatic flair. One day she is Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, the next she is Spartacus (well, who isn’t?). The specific movies are never the point. The soothing, magical escape they offer is. Bracingly, The Movie Teller recognizes that illusion can’t last.
The film was shot in the actual Atacama Desert, and Daniel Aranyo’s cinematography brings clear, cool light to the dusty landscape and beige palette. That look is punctuated by the bright pastels of Maria Magnolia’s wardrobe, a sign that she doesn’t belong in this drab life, and soon she runs off for good.
The story takes a leap in time and begins racing through events. Becker takes over the role, and the adult is now a vibrant, cheerful woman who works as a cleaner and also earns money telling movies to the town, and for individual clients. From then on the film shortchanges too many tragic turns, including a traumatic incident that Maria Margarita signals has happened by acting out Johnny Belinda.
The film is set during a turbulent period in Chile, and the slightest political undercurrent runs through most of it, including a brief scene of workers trying to organize against the capitalist mine owners. Those scenes don’t amount to much. But very near the end, it is 1970 and suddenly we hear news reports that the socialist Salvador Allende has been elected president, swiftly followed three years later by Augusto Pinochet’s military coup, events that result in violence and the closing of the mine. Despite a few scenes of Maria Margarita’s brother’s political activism, the news lands abruptly, like an intrusion of the real world on the hermetic town.
That isn’t necessarily a wrong-headed choice; the social changes might have hit the characters in just that blind-siding way. But like too many other dramatic plot turns here, it lands too jarringly to be convincing. Graceful but slight, in the end The Movie Teller tries to do too much and accomplishes too little to fulfill its big ambitions.
Cobweb didn’t quite make waves when it was released in July, but its aptly timed Blu-ray release comes right in time for the spooky season, which fits it much better than summer. Samuel Bodin’s directorial debut has a talented cast that features Lizzy Caplan, Antony Starr, and Cleopatra Coleman, alongside child actor Woody Norman, who continues to be one to really watch. With some fun ideas, a unique framing, and some cool practical effects, Cobweb winds up making an impact despite its limited resources.
“Eight-year-old Peter is plagued by a mysterious, constant tap, tap from inside his bedroom wall – a tapping that his parents insist is all in his imagination,” says the synopsis. “As Peter’s fear intensifies, he believes that his parents (Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) could be hiding a terrible, dangerous secret and questions their trust. And for a child, what could be more frightening than that?”
What makes Cobweb really stand out is the performances. Caplan and Starr are great as the parents, delivering creepy performances that leave the audience truly guessing if they are anxious parents, abusive psychopaths, or somewhere in between. While not particularly scary at any point, the film is always engaging, and Norman does a great job of portraying a child’s natural fear in such a situation.
The film will leave viewers with a lot to digest, especially if you engage with what you just saw and try to make sense of it. How much is to be taken literally? Could it be a child’s imagination that leads to a tragedy, and the more supernatural elements are simply used to cope? There are a lot of ways to read the events that take place, which makes this a prime candidate for rewatches. It’s one of those movies that are just as fun to discuss with friends as it is to watch.
The special features don’t really engage a ton with its interpretation — which is fine and almost ideal as we don’t need literal answers to every piece of art –, but I still would’ve loved to have heard a director’s commentary discussing what went into the movie. There are three short featurettes, though, totaling around 8.5 minutes. They provide a decent look into the practical effects that went into its final act, using a child’s perspective to tell the story, and taking advantage of primal fears, such as being afraid of the dark and spiders. While I wish there was a bit more to sink your teeth into, they do complement the film well and are worth checking out after you finish watching.
Cobweb winds up punching above its weight, and there’s no better time than fall to revisit it. Just as intriguing a film to engage with as it is to watch, it’s a quick and rewatchable movie that is worth discussing. While there aren’t a ton of special features, what is here is an interesting glimpse at production. While it’s not one of the year’s best horror movies, it’s still a fun watch worth your time.
Disclosure: The publisher sent us a copy for our Cobweb Blu-ray review.
1 of 5 | Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren star in “Caligula.” Photo courtesy of Vitagraph Films
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 30 (UPI) — Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, which screened at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles, is unlikely to win over critics of the original film. But, fans of the notorious Penthouse production will be treated even more debauchery in a more focused narrative.
The film charts the rise and fall of Roman Emperor Caligula (Malcolm McDowell). The empire’s excesses involve the carnal delights that Penthouse magazine specialized in.
However, producer Bob Guccione took the film away from director Tinto Brass and added hardcore sex to the film’s orgy scenes. The Ultimate Cut is comprised entirely of alternate takes of scenes or footage that has never appeared, and none of Guccione’s additions.
It remains the story of Caligula, though. Caligula’s predecessor, Cesar Tiberius (Peter O’Toole) already had a harem of sex slaves performing for him or fulfilling his needs.
So any take chosen is still full of background actors naked, writhing and simulating sex. Some sex acts are even suggested in shadow.
Once Caligula becomes Cesar, he enjoys the abuse of power. He makes light of the actual duties of the position.
Some absurdity remains in the nature of the material and is not necessarily out of place in an epic of decadence.
Caligula dances and prances around. In the rain his palace becomes a Slip N Slide. With his short kilt, McDowell inadvertently moons the camera every time he turns around.
The most memorable scenes from the film are still in this cut. Those would be the execution by decapitation machine, and the assault on newlyweds Proculus (Donato Placido) and Livia (Mirella D’Angelo).
Much of the film’s last hour is restored for the first time, which gives Caligula an actual arc. It explores Caligula’s insatiable madness to its inevitable conclusion.
McDowell plays the megalomania of speaking in dramatic declarations like, “If only all Rome had just one neck” and declaring himself a god.
The third hour also restores much of Helen Mirren’s role as Caligula’s wife, Caesonia. Considering the softcore sex scenes she shares with McDowell in this section, it’s surprising Guccione would have ever omitted erotic material with his lead actors.
Caligula is never boring. It can be exhausting, so at three hours plus an intermission, one might have taken the opportunity to hone the cut down to a more manageable running time. Perhaps Caligula is destined to be excessive by its very nature.
The only excess that feels out of place is the decision to open the film with more than five title cards explaining the circumstances of the original production. That is too much information to read at the beginning of a film.
This version of the film should just be presented either for people to discover afresh, or for fans to explore further before or after the film.
At that, even without Guccione’s interference, there are plenty of orgies and taboos in this edition of Caligula. Even without the hardcore sex scenes Guccione added, Caligula will never be tame.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
Some thrillers coast on mood. Reptile slowly drowns in it. For nearly two-and-a-half hours, this plodding murder mystery sustains a single note of hushed unease. Every scene has the same vibe, a pinprick of vague dread amplified by the low hum of what the Netflix subtitles refer to as “tense music.” A man walking into a building? Ominous. A couple dancing at a bar? Ominous. A detective admiring an automatic kitchen faucet? Believe it or not, that’s ominous too. Because the film never strays from this atmosphere of impending doom, it quickly loses its persuasiveness, like a boy crying wolf one too many times.
For a little while, though, it’s an effective approach. The opening minutes have a seductively sinister pull, efficiently drawing you into the apparent New England dream life of two young real estate agents, Summer Elswick (Matilda Lutz) and her boyfriend, Will Grady (Justin Timberlake). It’s not just the overcast lighting scheme that clues us to storm clouds forming on the horizon. There’s also the way Juice Newton’s timeless “Angel of the Morning” rises triumphantly on the soundtrack, only to be swiftly cut off by an opening door. The movie’s first and arguably only true shock arrives just as abruptly, as Will comes home to find Summer brutally stabbed to death. The title slams dramatically across the whole screen, obscuring our view of her mutilated body.
Seasoned detective Tom “Oklahoma” Nichols (Benicio del Toro) catches the case and works it, very gradually. The pool of suspects is small but almost comically filled with plausible psychos. We can’t rule out the boyfriend, thanks to how close to the chest Timberlake plays his emotions. There’s a dirtbag ex-husband (Karl Glusman) who looks like a police sketch personified, with his pencil stache bracketed by sharp cheekbones. And what gumshoe wouldn’t turn his magnifying glass on Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt), a townie who pulls the classic serial-killer move of appearing among the gaggle of onlookers outside the crime scene and holds a grudge against Grady’s local real-estate dynasty? Eli also has the misfortune of being portrayed by Pitt, the frequent onscreen creep who gave TV’s Hannibal and the English-language Funny Games remake some additional notes of distress; how obvious the movie will become hinges partially on whether he’s the culprit or an easily profiled red herring.
Making his feature debut, director Grant Singer fits a profile, too. He stages scenes just like a guy who cut his teeth on music videos: obsessed with surface effect, less so with how well his story tracks from one carefully composed image to the next. The clipped editing, seedy overhead illumination, and periodic plunges into file cabinets mark Reptile as another entry, like The Little Things or Prisoners before it, on the growing log of David Fincher imitations. In fact, the movie often plays like the work of someone who caught Zodiac or Gone Girl on cable years earlier and is trying to recreate it from memory, getting some of the sickly sleekness down but remaining foggy on the specifics.
This movie could really use a Gillian Flynn pass. It has the veneer of a Fincherian procedural, but not the density of clues or complications or studiously observed lead-chasing. Singer, who also cowrote the screenplay, portentously stretches out his ho-hum mystery, which gets less interesting the closer the detective comes to solving it. (The biggest revelation, the one that cracks the whole case, is uncovered thanks to laughable carelessness on the guilty party’s part.) Padding out the protracted runtime are scenes of the detective’s intersecting personal and professional lives. That his wife, played by Alicia Silverstone, is an encouraging, unofficial partner is a nice subversion of police-movie convention. A more playful thriller might have some fun with their dynamic instead of folding it into the general gloom.
There’s some craft to admire at least. The cinematographer, Mike Gioulakis, supplies some of the same creeping menace he previously lent films by Jordan Peele, David Robert Mitchell, and M. Night Shyamalan. He has an expert eye for the evil lurking in the cracks and crevices of suburban life. Beyond the polished imagery, it’s the performances that prop Reptile up. Del Toro, especially, draws you close with his understatement. He downplays everything, raising an eyebrow but never his voice, even when threatening the man flirting with his wife. Is that lawman strategy or essential temperament? There’s much more intrigue in the actor’s carefully subdued delivery than what the whodunit provides.
Then again, maybe he’s just drowsy. The audience probably will be. Reptile drones through its mystery, almost daring viewers to zone out, perhaps in hopes that we might miss a few key details and walk away thinking we’ve seen something more suggestive and complex than we have. The film has no ups or downs, just a flatline of disquiet connecting one identically inflected moment to the next. It’s the detective thriller as foreboding white noise machine.
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