Tag Archives: Coming of Age

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CAPSULE: ALPHA (2025)

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 Alpha is available to rent or purchase on-demand.

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Mélissa Boros, , 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.

Still from alpha (2025)

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:

“Strident, oppressive, incoherent and weirdly pointless from first to last … Julia Ducournau’s new film Alpha has to be the most bewildering disappointment of this year’s Cannes competition; even an honest lead performance from Mélissa Boros can’t retrieve it.”–Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (festival screening)

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: OM DAR-B-DAR (1988)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Kamal Swaroop

FEATURING: Anita Kanwar, Gopi Desai, Lalit Tiwari

PLOT: A young boy named Om comes of age amidst diamond breeding frogs, melodramatic love affairs, and other absurdities.

Still from Om Dar-B-Dar (1988)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Almost completely incomprehensible at first, like a Hindi “Finnegan’s Wake,” Om Dar-B-Dar requires at least a second viewing to fully appreciate its eccentricities and chaotic nature.

COMMENTS:  At first, the narrative seems straightforward, but don’t be fooled, this is as surreal as a movie can get. We follow a family, father Babuji and his two children, a thirty-year-old woman named Gayatri and a young boy with the unique name Om. After a short voiceover introduction giving us a bit of a socio-political background, Om seems to emerge as the tale’s main character. However, something is off.

Dialogues between Om and his family start casually but stray immediately into the absurd. A love affair begins between his sister and a young man, full of extravagant musical numbers in the familiar Bollywood style, albeit with nonsensical lyrics. Early on, the movie shows a willingness to break with stylistic conventions and to parody and deconstruct long-established genres through absurdism. Gayatri’s love affair subverts the language of erotic melodramas, for instance, while the main narrative of Om’s life plays like an epic saga on steroids.

And then it really gets weird! Characters rant about space travels or express a longing for female emancipation, while embarking on a variety of bizarre schemes involving diamond breeding frogs, or imitating God for profit. Humorous sketches pseudo-poetic and pseudo-philosophical ramblings abound, all while delivering caustic commentaries on the commercialization of spirituality.

Om’s life flash-forwards before our eyes through rapid editing full of jump cuts. Occasional gaps in time or space create a sense of disorientation and the fragmented narrative contributes a dreamy quality. Hypnotic sound effects like voice echoes, or psychedelic futuristic tunes, are applied. There’s even a complete, albeit momentary, disruption of the audio at one point.

Om Dar- B -Dar is an enigmatic puzzle thanks to the unconventional way it combines the everyday with surrealism. It will appeal mostly to those that have some familiarity with Hindu tradition and history, though, as many mythological and cultural references can be found among the absurdity. The rest of us will scratch our heads and open an online encyclopedia.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a hodge-podge of non-sequitur dialog and scenes, trippy montages, political symbolism, genre-splicing, nonlinear storytelling, magical realism, social satire, society seen through pop-commercialism, art-house mysticism, and general confusion.”–Zev Toledano, Worlwide Celluloid Massacre

(This movie was nominated for review by debasish dey, who suggested it with the following background: “…a 1988 Indian Postmodernist film directed by Kamal Swaroop. The film, about the adventures of a school boy named Om along with his family, employs nonlinear narrative and an absurdist storyline to satir[ize] mythology, arts, politics and even philosophy. The movie was described by its director as a story of Lord Brahma, and it sprouted from the idea that in Hinduism, although Lord Brahma was considered the father of the entire universe, strangely no one ever worshiped him. The director also said that the film’s script was written based solely on dreams and images that he had and claimed he ‘cannot think in words.’ ” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: LAKKI… THE BOY WHO COULD FLY (1992)

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Gutten som kunne fly; AKA Lakki, Lakki… The Boy Who Grew Wings

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DIRECTED BY: Svend Wam

FEATURING: Anders Borchgrevink, Nina Gunke, Bjørn Skagestad, Jorunn Kjellsby

PLOT: A young man dreams of escape from his grim life; salvation may be coming in the form of the wings that seem to be sprouting from his back.

Still from LAKKI... THE BOY WHO COULD FLY (1992)

COMMENTS: Lakki comes by his pitifulness honestly. His father is intensely self-centered and will walk away from a relationship without a moment’s notice. His mother fosters a deep narcissism that expresses itself through wanton promiscuity. They’re both heavy drinkers. The boy’s grandfather was hauled away for insanity, and mom has a friend who comes over to the house and just sits around, day after day. Lakki’s school days are miserable, particularly thanks to his hyperaggressive gym teacher, who of course is now sleeping with his mom. None of these adults seems interested or capable of taking care of a child, and Lakki would happily remove their obligation if he weren’t only 14 years old. Growing wings and flying away is honestly the best idea he can think of.

Those wings are, one supposes, the most fantastical element in Lakki. Whenever he hits a particularly low point, he hustles to a mirror sneak a peek. Notably, we only see them when he does. While the film is cagey about how genuine we should find this, there’s no mystery about their metaphorical heft as a means of escape. But on another level, the characters are so outlandishly extreme and the situations are so cartoonish that the whole thing plays as unrealistic. Even Lakki’s ventures into the dark side of his situation play almost as parody. An attempt to offer himself as a rentboy results in a comically violent encounter in which he beats up the wishy-washy would-be John. Meanwhile, a walk down the path of drugs is met with overwrought hellfire and screaming. Far from being a cautionary tale,  even the most dire situation Lakki faces is laced with heightened ridiculousness. It plays like an ABC Afterschool Special, International Edition.

The dialogue is similarly purple, usually making Lakki feel ever more weighted down by the responsibility that the adults disown. His mother is especially dismissive, over-sharing, then dismissing her son’s frustration. (She’s pretentious, too. In a flashback, she tells Lakki, “We mustn’t shout. The night might punish us.”) In a pair of fascinating scenes, Lakki’s parents treat him not as their child but as the peer they yearn to confide in, right down to sharing their booze, and Lakki laps the attention up with needy urgency. Young Anders Borchgrevnik is in every scene trying hard to embody the emotional torment in Lakki’s soul, but some scenarios defy the talents of even the finest actors, and the multiple moments where the boy buries his face in his arm and sobs feel uncomfortably inauthentic.

Writer/director Wam and producing partner Petter Vennerød earned a reputation in Norwegian cinema for exploring social issues, but this, one of their last collaborations, doesn’t really pull back the curtain on the human condition. (After the initial release flopped, the film was recut and issued under new titles to give it another go.) Lakki’s situation is unique and odd, and his resolve to take on the responsibilities that are repeatedly abdicated to him feels more like a surrender than a culmination. Lakki doesn’t fly, and neither does Lakki. He never could.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Lakki is a complete chaos, and the style suggests that Svend Wam for a moment thought he was David Lynch.” – Fredrik Gunerius Fevang, The Fresh Films

(This movie was nominated for review by Morgan. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE ICE TOWER (2025)

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La tour de glace

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DIRECTED BY: Lucile Hadzihalilovic

FEATURING: Clara Pacini, , August Diehl, Marine Gesbert, Gaspar Noé

PLOT: Jeanne, a fifteen-year-old orphan, leaves her foster home and comes across a film shoot for a dark fairy tale.

Still from The Ice Tower (2025)

COMMENTS: In the realm of the Ice Queen, the snow is vibrant, ethereal—and menacing. Drifts of crystalline flakes reflect muted light as it swirls aimlessly, falling upon and around the Queen, whose dusky gaze is a terrible, beautiful thing to behold. Jeanne beholds this gaze, and is immediately entranced by the fictional queen, as well as the actress who portrays her. Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s new film is as atmospheric as it is contemplative, unfolding Jeanne’s journey toward womanhood with all the portentous flair that cinema can offer.

If one were feeling glib, The Ice Tower could be described as “art- haunted-house”; but perhaps the film is too serious for that. That’s not to say it isn’t permeated by camera magic, on display for the viewer, and for Jeanne, who serendipitously falls into a film studio (almost literally) as the team there attempts to re-bottle lightning caught in a previous adventure featuring the cold, enigmatic Ice Queen. The Queen is played by Cristina, a cold, enigmatic actor interchangeable with her on-screen persona. As troubled as she is beautiful, Cristina relies on her “doctor” to help her through the her quotidian routine of performance, and curb her ambitions for an unreachable perfection. (This perfection, unattained, is the responsibility of the film-within-the-film director, played with graceful frustration by none other than Gaspar Noé.) While Cristina cannot abide flaws, the director lives in the real world—even if he is a magic-maker of cinema—and is quick to recognize that “good enough” is, by definition, good enough.

The Ice Tower is primarily about the bond between Jeanne and Cristina, the former replacing the actress who was cast as the queen’s protégé. By the finish, after all the narrowly framed widescreen shots, scant illumination, and a hauntingly dangerous venture to a remote cliffside, a fissure splits open; Cristina sought a lover, Jeanne sought a mother, and neither ends up contented. The clash between innocence and despondence worms through the gloomy corridors of Hadzihalilovic’s vision, with bright, minute illuminations crowded on all sides by murk. She has conjured a melancholy view from her dark crystal ball—with the sorcery of cinema forcing its light through the umbra.

The Ice Tower is in theaters now. We’ll let you know when it comes to home video.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a twisted retro fairytale that sits somewhere between Frozen and Mulholland Drive… an Old World children’s tale set in a place that’s both eerily real and utterly weird.”–Jordan Mintzer (festival screening)

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CAPSULE: MAGNETOSPHERE (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: Nicola Rose

FEATURING: Shayelin Martin, Patrick McKenna, Colin Mochrie, Mikayla Kong, Steven He, Tania Webb

PLOT: A 13-year old girl with synesthesia deals with a new school, first crushes, bullying, and other typical teen problems.

Still from Magnetosphere (2024)

COMMENTS: Synesthesia, the neurological condition commonly described as “seeing sounds” or “hearing colors,” provides a tempting, if underutilized, possibility for filmmakers. A director can use “draw on the lens” techniques, easily achieved on the cheap through commercial software, to depict a protagonist’s subjective experience of seeing rainbows and candy-colored floaters overlaid on reality, providing an easy excuse to add phantasmagoric visual flair to any story. Typically, an in-film illicit drug trip would provide the pretext for such effects. By addressing synesthesia, director Nicola Rose can create a childlike world of sparkly kiddie psychedelia—fluffy unicorn and cotton candy stuff, but with a tie-dye aesthetic—while staying safely within the confines of a Disney/Nickelodeon storyline.

Protagonist Maggie almost constantly, if inconsistently, hallucinates. Sure, there are the green and purple and yellow sparkles that fill the screen when she sings a ballad on her portable keyboard, and the fact that, when she concentrates, she sees all the other characters with individual colored auras: pink for her sister, brilliant green for her crush, a squiggly mess of multicolored threads for her conflicted bestie. That’s textbook synesthesia. But Maggie can also draw lines and shapes in the air, persistent tracers that form hearts and crowns and words that glow with neon colors. An art lesson is so visually intense for her that the screen glitches into an incoherent muddle as dissonant music plays, causing her to puke. Her Barbie doll, Cassiopeia, talks to her, frankly confessing that she represents Maggie’s insecurities (while denying that she’s part of her host’s “weird brain thing.”). This expansive magical realism, transcending the bounds of simply “hearing colors,” is poetic license that expresses Maggie’s inner sense of alienness. But it also makes the girl seem like she suffers more from Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder than synesthesia. Perhaps her parents slipped LSD into her bottle back in their hippie days?

While the tastefully trippy visuals are novel in this context, the plot is formula, occasionally approaching pure corn. Insecure teen girl has some ultimately minor affliction that makes her self-conscious, experiences normal teen girl problems, gains confidence and the tools to resolve life’s little disappointments with maturity, the future looks bright. There’s bullying, an inappropriate crush, and an LGBTQ subplot to deal with, and it all gets resolved as neatly as you’d expect. To pass the time while the pattern plays out, we have not only the hallucinatory bursts, but a lot of comedy. Maggie’s dad is a goofball thespian directing a community theater production of “Pirates of Penzance” (which also has a predictable arc, with the scrappy citizen-singers overcoming obstacles with help from an unlikely source). The primary comic relief comes from “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” veteran Colin Mochrie, who plays weirdo handyman Gil, a guy who comes off like a kid-friendly version of Creed Bratton from “The Office.” He has a mysterious private existence somewhere outside of polite society and is given to inappropriate, absurd non sequiturs (“I saw action in ‘Nam so that boneheaded, ungrateful numbnuts like you could have a kitchen toilet!”) Gil also hunts rats with a chainsaw. I didn’t find his silly, unmotivated antics particularly amusing, but humor is subjective, and the jokes are for a much younger crowd.

We provide allowances for the script’s formularity, since the film is prosocially pedantic and aimed at a pre-teen to young teen audience. Still, the high ratings on this low-budget film are astounding: an 8.4 on IMDb (the original Toy Story has an 8.3), 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (Lady Bird has a 99% rating). Admittedly, that’s on inappreciable numbers (a mere 88 IMDb voters and 12 RT critics), but even accounting for the small sample size, these scores are a bit baffling. The movie is perfectly fine. The acting is competent, the effects cheap but effective, the message heartwarming, the comedy… probably works for some. But it seems that Magnetosphere is largely lauded for its good intentions rather than its actual quality. It’s a nice movie. There is a large element of self-selection here: with a very limited release, only people already well-disposed to this material are likely to queue it up. There aren’t enough teenage synesthetics to form a cult audience, and even those kids will be drawn more to the same mainstream Marvel/Hunger Games fare their peers devour—it’s mostly their parents who will be cheering Magnetosphere. For curiosity seekers like us, this is a decent, modest movie that won’t feel like a waste of time, but it’s not some hidden classic that justifies those gaudy metrics. A reminder to always be skeptical of high internet ratings on low-distribution niche items.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Magnetosphere is for the weirdo in all of us who believes in the beauty the world has to offer.”–Tina Kakadelis, Beyond the Cinerama Dome (contemporaneous)

Magnetosphere [DVD]

Magnetosphere [DVD]
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