Critic's Notebook

About Face

A24

MOVIE REVIEW
A Different Man (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

“A Different Man” reunites filmmaker Aaron Schimberg with his “Chained for Life” leading man, Adam Pearson. If you think deeply about it, the new film, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, is actually incredibly sweet in its attempt to normalize the actor’s deformity caused by neurofibromatosis type 1. For the uninitiated, though, it’s more like some mashup of “Face/Off,” “The Elephant Man” and “Beauty and the Beast.” It may look like body horror, but it’s a comedy . . . maybe?

Attack of the Killer Lesbians

Anna Kooris/A24

MOVIE REVIEW
Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

“Saint Maud” auteur Rose Glass returns with something more deliberately A24-y, a gonzo pulp fully in the mode of ’70s grindhouse and its ’90s Quentin Tarantino-led renaissance. Ms. Glass disclosed at the Sundance Film Festival premiere of “Love Lies Bleeding” that she originally set it in Scotland, but the story just makes much more sense in the States. She ain’t wrong. This toxic mix of unhinged bloodlust and sleazy softcore is basically cinematic apple pie.

A Haunted House

Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Presence (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

Perhaps the only filmmaker who has successfully bounced between commercial and indie careers, Steven Soderbergh returns to Sundance Film Festival, where his breakout arrived via 1989’s “sex, lies, and videotape,” with another lean and mean production perfectly appropriate for the annual Park City event. You can almost venture to guess that principal photography for “Presence” took something like 11 days; and I don’t mean this in a bad way.

The Help

Tobin Yelland/Focus Features

MOVIE REVIEW
The American Society of Magical Negroes (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

Spotlighted by Spike Lee in the early aughts, Magical Negro is a well-worn narrative trope involving Black supporting characters whose entire raison d’être is to selflessly serve the white protagonists. We’ve been told this story time and again, in popular movies such as “The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Green Mile,” “The Legend of Bagger Vance” and “Green Book,” to name a few. While now well-known and widely accepted in cinema studies, the academic jargon still makes many a white editor uncomfortable and prone to excise it almost instinctively as if it’s unfit for polite conversation. Unfortunately, this time they won’t be able to cop out and strike it from the title of “The American Society of Magical Negroes.”

Once Upon a Time in Oakland

Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Freaky Tales (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

Named after a Too $hort track from his 1987 album, “Born to Mack,” “Freaky Tales” is a quadriptych chock full of interconnected characters – among them, a fictionalized Too $hort played by the rapper Symba and Too $hort himself narrating and making a cameo as a cop whose yen for rocky road ice cream is unfulfilled. The film, from Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden and premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, isn’t Too $hort’s “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” however.

Human Interest

Courtesy photo

MOVIE REVIEW
One Life (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

In telling the true story of a British stockbroker who facilitated escapes for 669 Jewish children on the eve of World War II, “One Life” bounces between two disparate timelines unconnected until the end, if that. In 1938, Nicholas Winton, here played by obscure South African actor Johnny Flynn, arrives in Prague at the behest of Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai) to assist Martin Blake (Ziggy Heath) of the British Committee for Refugees From Czechoslovakia in ironing out the logistics of evacuating refugees in advance of the German blitzkrieg. In 1987, Winton, now played by two-time Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins, has to reckon with the diminished stakes of clearing out his study of paperwork hoarded for nearly five decades.

Family Feud

Courtesy photo

MOVIE REVIEW
Animal (2023)

By MARTIN TSAI

Even by Bollywood standards, “Animal” is bonkers. Just as an example, our hero Vijay (“Superstar” Ranbir Kapoor) and Geetanjali (Rashmika Mandanna), whom he had just smooth-talked into breaking off with her fiancé at their outdoor engagement celebration after luring her inside with a rendition of their old school anthem, both exit the cockpit of Vijay’s airborne private jet, leaving the plane on autopilot while they repair to the cabin for some sexy time. As they rouse themselves following the afterglow, the jet nearly crashes into a mountaintop. But that’s not all.

Apocalypse Now

TIFF

MOVIE REVIEW
The End We Start From (2023)

By MARTIN TSAI

“The End We Start From,” which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, is a postapocalyptic thriller that begins as catastrophic weather and flooding ravage London and force people to evacuate. Although nature has emerged as a credible villain these days amid growing concerns of global warming, what the story, adapted from Megan Hunter’s novel, does with the premise isn’t exactly unique. In more ways than one, the film comes off like “A Quiet Place Part II” without the scary creatures.

Life Lessons

Seacia Pavao/Focus Features

MOVIE REVIEW
The Holdovers (2023)

By MARTIN TSAI

On paper, “The Holdovers” appears to be right in Alexander Payne’s wheelhouse: much like his 1999 classic, “Election,” the story takes place in a school and centers on a teacher – another curmudgeon played by Paul Giamatti, just like in Mr. Payne’s 2004 Oscar-nominated “Sideways.”

The Trail Not Taken

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
The Eight Mountains (2023)

By MARTIN TSAI

“The Eight Mountains” is an adaptation of an Italian coming-of-age novel by Paolo Cognetti, who himself attended film school but whose only contribution here apart from the source material is a cameo role. Instead, the adaptation and directing duties inexplicably have gone to a pair of Belgians: Felix van Groeningen, best known on these shores as the director of “Beautiful Boy” starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet, and Charlotte Vandermeersch, an actress with an extensive resume in Belgian TV. Though la Belgique is nowhere near les Alpes, the filmmakers do a good job of conveying an overall literary aura. Still, it’s hard to argue this should not have been a miniseries instead.