Stretching the concept of a “short,” but too good to pass up: in 2014, “The Simpsons” allowed Don Hertzfeldt to animate a “couch gag” in the style of “World of Tomorrow.” Beam epasode now into exo-skulls and vigorously touch flippers.
All posts by Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)
CAPSULE: ALPHA (2025)
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Alpha is available to rent or purchase on-demand.
DIRECTED BY: Julia Ducournau
FEATURING: Mélissa Boros, Golshifteh Farahani, Tahar Rahim
PLOT: Young teenager Alpha gets a homemade tattoo, and her doctor mother obsesses over the possibility that she may have contacted a disease that will turn her into a statue; meanwhile, her heroin-addicted uncle comes to crash in their small Parisian flat.
COMMENTS: Alpha, the movie, is sick with contagion and addiction. In this diseased alternate-reality Paris, an Arab single-mom doctor tries to protect her improbably-named daughter Alpha from the dangers of the outside world. When the girl experiments with her limited teen freedom, getting a rustic homemade “A” tattoo on her arm at a party while intoxicated, her mother freaks out: where did the needle come from? Was it properly sterilized? Because, you see, there is a blood-borne disease going around which slowly turns those infected into statues. It primarily affects homosexuals and intravenous drug users, but unsanitary tattoo needles are also a disease vector. Fear that she may be deathly ill, and ostracism from her schoolmates once the rumors start circulating, aren’t the only stresses in Alpha’s life; her emaciated, estranged, heroin-addicted uncle, who is a stranger to her, has also moved into the small flat as he tries to get clean after a lifetime of relapses. At school, Alpha also keeps inconveniently (and humiliatingly) bleeding from her slow-to-heal tattoo wound; curious, although also seemingly tangential to the film’s main theme.
Despite the magical-realist plague and some confusing flashbacks, Alpha essentially plays out as a coming-of-age family drama. The three principals all do fine work, with Rahim (whose visible ribs suggest must have laid off baguettes for months in preparing for his junkie role) a particular standout. Cinematography is crisp, and needle drops from Portishead and Nick Cave add an undeniable (if possibly anachronistic) coolness factor.
Despite mostly eschewing the horror elements this time to focus on familial drama and teen anxiety, Ducournau retains her talent for conceiving scenes that are, on the surface, completely innocent, but which hint at deep perversions: in this case, a bit where Alpha’s jittery uncle white-knuckles his way through opiate withdrawal, while the anxious Alpha tries to fall sleep in bed next to him in their shared bedroom. The dreadful atmosphere of rising pandemic feeds into Alpha’s developmental worries. Growing independence, annoyance with lame and overprotective adults, and awkward liaisons with hormonal boys hardly override fears of death and an unstable adult roommate constantly on the verge of fatal overdose.
Alpha is well-written, well-acted, well-shot, well-scored, and has an serious emotional core… and yet, for some reason I can’t find it in my stony heart to unconditionally recommend it. The problem here is that, while Titane succeeded because it was a weird movie that slowly developed a deep emotional appeal, Alpha underwhelms because it starts as a humanist drama and then tacks on unnecessary surreal accoutrements. While Ducournau’s two previous efforts were weird movies that provided accommodations for art-house patrons, this one is an art-house movie offering accommodations for fans expecting something strange. Other than allowing an excuse for some cool makeup, the marbelizing symptom of the central disease adds little to the movie’s emotional or aesthetic effect. Had Ducournau made a standard drama, she might have gained a more appreciative audience… though at the cost of her reputation as one of the few provocateurs willing to ignore the inconvenient blah-ness of reality. Still, even if Alpha is not entirely a success, it’s a good film, and we’re happy to note Ducournau hasn’t sold out to the commercial allure of realist cinema. Let’s hope this is a temporary retreat, and she’ll relocate the bloody pulse of deep, dark weirdness for her next project.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
![Alpha [Blu-Ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51zPRRf-31L._SL500_.jpg)
SATURDAY SHORT: MANTIS STREAM! LIKE & SUBSCRIBE (2026)
A man chokes on an egg after proposing to a praying mantis on a livestream; can he get enough likes and subscribes to save his life?
CAPSULE: THE BRIDE! (2026)
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DIRECTED BY: Maggie Gyllenhaal
FEATURING: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Penélope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, Jake Gyllenhaal
PLOT: In the 1930s, a gangster’s moll is killed after Mary Shelley’s spirit possesses her and insults important men; soon after, Frankenstein’s monster convinces a mad scientist to animate her dead body as a mate for him, and the outcast pair go on a righteous killing spree.
COMMENTS: Just like James Whale‘s Bride of Frankenstein, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! begins with a prologue in which author Mary Shelley describes her unwritten sequel to “Frankenstein.” Only this Mary is foul-mouthed, angry, and very dead. Despite this handicap, Mary is so determined to birth her untold story that she enters the body of 1930s Chicago party girl Ida as she dines on champagne and oysters in the company of gangsters, overriding the girl’s compliant meekness to speak through her, resulting in Ida being thrown down the stairs to her death. When Frankenstein’s monster (who’s quickly given the nickname “Frank”) comes to town to ask Dr. Euphronious to create a life partner for him, this is the corpse the pair dig up and reanimate. From that point on, Bride Jesse Buckley, amnesiac about her past life, will occasionally be possessed by Shelley’s spirit, surrendering her streetwise Chicago accent and suddenly speaking like a pissed-off Victorian Dorothy Parker on a three-day bender.
The ghost of Mary Shelley (who, recall, was not only a novelist but also the daughter of an anarchist philosopher and a feminist pioneer) quite literally haunts The Bride! Her presence is about one-third literal possession, one-third meta-narrative conceit, and one-third symbolic feminist consciousness, with a touch of comic relief. It’s a strange and bold gambit that sets the unevenly absurdist tone of this oddball Gothic romance, and it provides recent Oscar-honoree Jesse Buckley the chance to reaffirm the fact that she’s the most versatile and accomplished actress working today. Her performance is necessarily schizophrenic, with the script frequently requiring her to switch accents in the middle of a line. Buckley understands the assignment, throwing herself into the role with risk-taking abandon, especially considering that she’s coming off a prestige performance as William Shakespeare’s grieving wife. Here, she embraces the campiness of the material, and her quick turnaround shows a willingness to accept absolutely any challenge and adapt herself to the requirements of the script. Without her in the lead, The Bride! might well have fallen flat on its face, rather than being a divisive work with defenders and detractors on both sides of the aisle. Let’s hope that, having gotten that Oscar under her belt at an early stage in her career, Buckley remains eager to take on these kinds of outré roles.
The rest of the cast largely plays straight man to Buckley’s crazy. Bale is a fine Monster, digging into the traditional loneliness and dignity of the character, playing him in a realistic register and always willing to yield the spotlight to his co-star. Annette Bening’s mad scientist is eccentric enough, but again does not overshadow the Bride. Penélope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard also play it straight as a pair of detectives on the monster couple’s trail, advancing the film’s secondary feminist subplot along more familiar lines. Gyllenhaal’s famous brother Jake delights in a small supporting role as a Gene Kelly type hoofer who dances in the fictional films beloved by Hollywood musical fanatic Frank.
Bride!‘s weirdo energy doesn’t stop with its wackadoo Mary-Shelley-possesses-a-moll premise or its Frankenstein-in-30s-America setting. Maggie Gyllenhaal directs The Bride! like the wannabe cult-film it seems destined to become, scene-by-scene and with little concern for superficial coherence. Sometimes characters are understandably horrified by Frank and his Bride’s gruesome appearances, while at other times these monsters who walk among us are treated as unremarkable. (Despite her cadaverous appearance and disheveled makeup, Buckley finds herself a target of numerous lechers.) At times characters appear onscreen in the various black and white features cinephile Frank insists on catching at every stop. The couple manages to stumble into the only 80s punk-scene venue in 1930s Chicago for a night on the town. An incongruous dance scene in he middle of a black tie gala in which the mischievous Shelley appears to possess the entire entourage serves as a centerpiece.
There’s enough crazy to go around, and along the way, there are as many references to Young Frankenstein and Bonnie & Clyde as there are to Bride of Frankenstein—and for reasons that barely fit, the film’s message is structured around an angry variant of Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to” philosophy. There is a “normal” story here, but Gyllenhaal eschews it in favor of a directorial philosophy fashioned around, as she has her Mary Shelley put it, being “disobedient and ungovernable.” It’s exactly the out-there directorial effort we would hope for from an actress whom we first noticed in Donnie Darko, and whose best-known acting credit is as a submissive in the BDSM comedy Secretary. Unfortunately, The Bride‘s box office performance suggests that Gyllenhaal may have already squandered her shot at being Hollywood’s next go-to female director, but we’re hoping she will continue to deliver the gonzo goods rather than reforming her “disobedient geometries” by chasing the almighty buck.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: MISS CANDACE HILLIGLOSS’ FLICKERING HALO (2011)
Scenes from Carnival of Souls are given an experimental, occasionally abrasive electronic score and edited with a blender to create the epileptic fit cut of a movie that was already a nightmare.
CONTENT WARNING: Flickering images that may not be suitable for persons with seizure disorders.