Tag Archives: Drama

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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)

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CAPSULE: SPLENDID OUTING (1978)

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Hwaryeohan wichul, AKA Brilliant Outing

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DIRECTED BY: Kim Soo-yong

FEATURING: Yoon Jeong-hee, Lee Dae-keun, Lee Yeong-ha

PLOT: A corporate executive travels in search of her dead twin sister’s spirit, and her journey descends into a surreal nightmare.

Still from Splendid Outing (1978)

COMMENTS: “I had read the original script. . . and I expected that once Splendid Outing was made into a film, then surely its ambiguous meaning would take on some clarity—so I watched it with that hope. But again, I still couldn’t clearly grasp what its meaning was supposed to be. In the end, I began to wonder if this film was meant to be some kind of puzzle: ‘Here’s the question, now you try to solve it.’” – Im Yeong, Film: Theory and Practice (March/April, 1978) (essay included in the booklet that comes with the Blu-ray)

Gong Doo-hee embodies the stereotypical woman who “has it all”: president of the appropriately named Royal Group, she presides over multinational business deals with the regal grandeur of a queen. When she isn’t expanding her company’s territory into far-flung parts of the globe, she lectures at a local women’s association, gives television interviews about feminism, and supports a charity for disabled children. But when she goes home to her own kids in her suburban mansion, she sleeps alone and dreams of a mysterious girl performing a ritualistic dance.

A widow, the one thing lacking in Gong’s life is a husband. We gradually learn, through voiceovers, how this troubles her; she’s clearly conflicted on whether or not to sacrifice her position in order to remarry. Whenever Gong is alone and we’re privy to her inner thoughts, a male voice narrates them. Are the men in her life still telling this liberated woman what to do? Or has she adopted a male internal monologue in order to increase her own sense of command and authority? This is but one of many fascinating ambiguities peppering the narrative, each of which reveals the complexity of Gong’s character, to the point of completely destabilizing her identity. When Gong consults a shaman about her repeating dream, she learns she had a twin sister who didn’t survive birth. The girl’s spirit still exists, but Gong needs to revisit the seaside community where she was born in order to communicate with her.

Just the thought of the seashore gives President Gong a headache, but she dutifully drives herself out of Seoul, leaving behind her chauffeur and her pampered existence. Upon arrival, she’s immediately recognized by the villagers who, in a disturbingly strange scene, surround her car and attack her. In the first of many sudden outbursts of violence against her, Gong’s “splendid outing” quickly takes a very dark turn. Mistaken for the runaway wife of a local islander, fishermen promptly catch her in a fishnet. After a beautifully noir-ish sequence where she’s suspended in a shadowy space by blood-red netting, a crew of female divers deliver Gong to her “husband.”

The rest of the film leaves the viewer wondering if this is a case of mistaken identity. Is Gong, the illustrious head of a corporation, now cruelly kidnapped and held hostage by a lawless populace? Or is she the village runaway, who abandoned her abusive husband five years ago to live an alternate life in the city? Or have she and her unborn twin somehow traded places in an act of cosmic reversal?

The plot hints variously at all these possibilities by selectively surfacing the protagonist’s memories. Day-dream (1964), a seriously weird film also about a woman undergoing a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a man with whom she has an ambiguous relationship, apparently influenced Splendid Outing‘s fractured structure. The quick edits recall Franco Arcalli’s work with , as does the color symbolism of contrasting reds and blues. The soundtrack features a mix of traditional music and then-contemporary electronics, also similar to Day-dream‘s even more disorienting score. The changes in tone heighten the contrast between the past and the present, the rural and urban, but also underline moments of idealized femininity.

Director Kim intended the film as a political allegory, one so skillfully hidden within a modernist narrative that government censors failed to notice it. While knowledge of South Korea’s Yushin Era history adds even more layers to President Gong’s story, that background isn’t necessary to appreciate the film’s sense of style and mystery. Even though the ending provides a concrete answer for Gong’s surreal experiences, a profound uneasiness still lingers even after the outing’s over.

Splendid Outing initially found few screenings outside of its native South Korea. In 2026 Radiance rediscovered it and released it on Blu-ray. Unfortunately, it is not currently available for streaming.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…quite an unusual film that blends modernism with a touch of realism. It reminded me a little of the work of Luis Buñuel, in its mix of biting social commentary with surreal flourishes…  whilst Splendid Outing didn’t grip me as tightly as I’d have liked, I did admire its peculiar, dream-like approach and can’t deny it’s an intriguing and beautifully made film. I’d suggest you give it a watch and make up your own mind.”–David Brook, Blueprint: Review (Blu-ray)

Splendid Outing

Splendid Outing

  • Following an eerie dream a successful tycoon takes a drive to the seaside but her outing becomes a nightmare as she is kidnapped.

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CAPSULE: ÉL (1953)

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AKA This Strange Passion

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Arturo de Córdova, Delia Garcés

PLOT: A Mexican landowner seduces a woman into marrying him, but his paranoid jealousy quickly poisons the union.

Still from El (1953)

COMMENTS: The career of Luis Buñuel breaks cleanly into three periods: the avant-garde (or first French) period, the Mexican period, and the renaissance (or second French) period. He begins in Paris with the revolutionary experiments of Un Chien Andalou, L’Age d’Or, and Land Without Bread; moves to Mexico where he directs commercially-oriented films after an unsuccessful flirtation with Hollywood; and then, in the twilight of his career, returns to France to produce masterworks such as Belle de Jour (1967) and Discreet Charm of the Bourgousie (1972) with the assistance of new collaborators Serge Silberman (producer) and Jean-Claude Carrière (writer). Of these eras, the Mexican period, from 1947-1965, is the longest—and it can itself be split into early and late periods, as Buñuel again achieves international notoriety with Viridiana in 1961, and re-emerges into surrealism with 1962’s The Exterminating Angel.

The Mexican period is often overlooked, and it’s undeniable that Buñuel was far less experimental in this era, placing commercial realities above personal passions, and sneaking in surrealism and social commentary where he could. But Buñuel was honing his craft in Mexico, and these films are still fascinating to see the development of his aesthetic. Naturally, he also made some great movies in these years, among which the psychologically astute Él (which translates in this context as “he”) is a standout.

The film begins, without dialogue and somewhat mysteriously, with priests ritualistically washing the feet of young men on Maundy Thursday. The gaze of our protagonist, Francisco, scans a line of boys’ feet and priestly hands until it alights on a pair of high heeled shoes supporting shapely calves; his eyes then turn at a right angle to travel vertically up the body to briefly meet the eyes of a young woman, whom we will later learn is Gloria. What this opening means—with its nods to the director’s foot fetishism and his complicated relationship to Catholicism—is a point for academic debate. But no matter; the story immediately takes a turn for the melodramatic, following Francisco as he seduces the demure Gloria (stealing her from her fiancé, an associate of Francisco’s), while expressing his vain desire to recreate his ancestral real estate empire. Francisco’s irrational jealousy emerges as early as the honeymoon, where he gets into a fight with an old friend of his bride’s that the couple coincidentally encounters. Gloria quickly realizes she has made a terrible mistake. Things escalate through beatings, a dangerous scene in a bell tower (which anticipates Vertigo), and finally a disturbing and menacing bit where Francisco gathers up surgical equipment for purposes you can certainly guess. In the end, Francisco has a complete psychotic break, allowing Buñuel to deploy some light surrealism (via editing) to portray the triumph of paranoia over objective reality. (This climax occurs, naturally, inside a church.) An ironic epilogue shows Francisco, now convalescing in a monastery, his demons at least temporarily at bay, zig-zagging down a straight garden path.

Buñuel‘s own process during the Mexican period follows the same path: he follows the inevitable line of conventional narrative, but zigs and zags into his own obsessions. The director claimed that Él was one of his most personal works, and we know from his wife Jeanne’s autobiography that Buñuel himself suffered from irrational jealousy and sexual repression. Thus, he identifies with Francisco, but only in a masochistic and self-reflective way: he’s too perceptive to deceive himself, as his protagonist does, into thinking he’s always in the right. The source novel, by a woman speaking from personal experience, reportedly focuses on social critique of the Mexican patriarchy and its mistreatment of women; this subject interests Buñuel as well, but he leans into the character study aspect of the material. It is a way to exorcise his personal demons, and despite the conventionality of the approach, Él is at heart a typically vituperative strike by Buñuel at the hypocrisy of the human heart.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a dark, troubling, classily produced melodrama. It may not have the showy, surreal touches of Buñuel’s best known work but it still packs a punch.”–David Brook, Blueprint: Review (Criterion Blu-ray)

Él (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Él (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

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CAPSULE: THE THING WITH FEATHERS (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Dylan Southern

FEATURING: , Sam Sprueli,

PLOT: After the loss of his wife, a widowed man comes in contact with a mysterious human-sized crow.

Still from The Thing with Feathers (2025)

COMMENTS: Dimly-lit interiors and catatonic acting clarify from the beginning that this will be a grim watch. And it is, as we follow an unnamed man, dealing with complex emotions after the passing of his wife, struggling with denial while trying to care for his two sons and to find comfort in his work as a comic artist. This is not a realistic tale, but an allegorical and elliptical one, with gothic flourishes as a human-sized crow gradually makes his appearance.

The narrative, based on Max Porter’s novel “Grief is the Thing with Feathers,” is divided into four chapters, each dealing with a different perspective. The first, focusing on Dad, remains close to typical horror conventions, with its slow-burning atmosphere culminating in a series of violent confrontations with the aforementioned crow. The intensity of one of those encounters is underlined by an excellent 360°  shot. The aggressive, grotesque bird mocks our hero for his self-pity, and evens becomes physically violent, while calling him generic names like Sad Dad and English Widower. At the same time jump cuts bring us back into reality to create an ambiguity regarding the nature of the crow, which could just as well be a figment of the protagonist’s imagination.

The next chapters focus on the bird, the kids’ perception of the events, and a new demon plaguing the family’s home, seemingly an enemy of the crow. Events are open to interpretation as different monsters come to symbolize different aspects of the mourning process, drawing, through allegory, a distinction  between grief, as a healthy way of dealing with loss, and total nihilistic despair.

We don’t have the most original and unique premise here. The central metaphor isn’t exactly something we haven’t seen before. However, thanks to a competent main performance by Benedict Cumberbach and an emphasis on dimly-lit interiors, the execution doesn’t completely disappoint. For fans of art-house psychological horror, in the vein of The Babadook  and similar movies distributed by A24, this is an okay recommendation.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…the perfectly cast Cumberbatch effortlessly moves between fever dream, painful reality and apparent hallucination with every cell in his body present in the character… It’s a strangely beautiful, well paced and moving film…”–Annete Basile, Film Inc (contemporaneous)

The Thing With Feathers

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    CAPSULE: HOWLER (2025)

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    Howler is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

    DIRECTED BY: Richard Bailey

    FEATURING: , , Abel Flores, Blake Hackler, Laura Martinez

    PLOT: A grisly hunter threatens the woods as Leni, an attuned poet, prepares to accept a life-changing award.

    Still from Howler (2025)

    COMMENTS:

    “Your life is going to change.”

    —”How do you mean that?”

    “Oh, not in the sense you might hope.”

    This exchange is intended more as a kindly tip-off than as a threat, but, as with most wisdom, it is not well received. The words here are talismanic; but then, in a way—and especially to a poet—all words are. Words are simultaneously weighty and evanescent. They are everywhere, and nowhere. And, from my vague understanding, one primary task of a poet is to nail them down and convey them—at least in their fleeting significance.

    Howler is another meditation from director Richard Bailey on the nature of communication, perception, and the intersection of reality and unreality. Two earthly plot lines anchor the discourse: one concerning a poet, the other concerning the “grisly hunter” mentioned prior. But as per usual form, Richard Bailey the (word) poet and Richard Bailey the (image) poet are inseparable. Time and again the screen is just non-human sound and natural imagery. A triptych of floating blossoms recurs throughout as punctuation between conversational musings on vengeance, serenity, annihilation, and regrowth.

    A poet’s lot is often an unhappy one,  toiling away at building spiritual insight using words, punctuation, and line breaks. But the joy it can bring, even to just one witness, makes their ordeal worth the sacrifices. Bailey dissects his vocation and that of his peers, through the lens of natural and human friction and coexistence. The ominous figure of the hunter is, I’d wager, symbolic: though I could not commit as to what. Perhaps he is our path toward ruination of self and surroundings; perhaps he is more tragic than malevolent.

    There is much to misunderstand about humans and humanity. With Howler, Bailey takes another stab at capturing truth essence through the primitive tools of language, image, and sound.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Howler is not a horror film, despite what the opening 3 minutes suggest. While that will undoubtedly disappoint horror hounds, stick with it. The story is interesting, the characters engaging, and the direction dreamy.” — Bobby LePire, Film Threat (contemporaneous)