Dustin Lance Black's What's Wrong with Virginia tries for a style somewhere between the two Todds, Haynes and Solondz, that never quite meshes together perfectly. For the first hour of the film, his juggling act is steady and the film mixes comedy with the darker drama underneath successfully but as the film veers towards a bizarre finish, it can't fully reconcile its personalities. Beginning with the appearance of a gun, the film tries to take on more and more satirical elements but loses the audience somewhat along the way. Still, there is a lot of good to take away from the film, the most notable being Jennifer Connelly's Virginia, a character whose amusing quirks simultaneously frustrate and endear her to the audience. Black draws on his own familial experience with schizophrenia to write an elusive character living part of the way between our reality and her own and Connelly dives into the role with relish, always sympathetic even at her worst. The other highlight in the film is Virginia's relationship with her son. Even when the film loses its own grasp on reality, this connection always feels authentic and eases the audience through much of the schizophrenic second half.
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I can't recall a film more consistently brutal than Kim Jee-Woon's I Saw the Devil off the top of my head. Ten years ago, Battle Royale shocked audiences with its over-the-top violence and now, a decade later, that film feels like the minor leagues. The new horror shockers have taken a different approach - underlining their films with a kind of sadistic brutality that is even more disturbing for its casual realism and I Saw the Devil outgrimes them all. Essentially a straightforward revenge thriller expertly directed, the film doesn't attempt to deal in surprises or major twists - the serial killer is known to the viewer and the main character, a cop whose wife is murdered in the film's opening scene, within the first act. Where the film excels is in its cat-and-mouse tug-of-war between Choi Min-Sik's serial killer, a pathological, terrifying monster, seemingly incapable of pain or suffering or guilt, and Lee Byung-Hun's possible monster-in-the-making. In fact, apart from the victims and cops, several minor characters in this film are revealed to be monsters themselves in this perversely sadistic world. The film's twisted revenge hinges on a key withholding act by the main character that does not fully convince but if you let this point go, the rest of the film is a high-quality piece of cinema with a visceral energy borne of sheer rage that attempts to explore what makes a monster.
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Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives opens with a surreal silhouetted nature shot, backlit by the twilight, leading to a gorgeous, dreamy scene with an unhurried camera letting us soak in the quiet sounds of the jungle. The mysticism is elevated to a new level as the camera lets us catch a glimpse of a monkey ghost, its glowing red eyes staring out from the darkness, setting the mood for the rest of the film. It divides itself into six reels that shift in tone and style, and each reel has its own outstanding qualities from the first where two lost members of Uncle Boonmee's family appear at his dinner table, to the last, most ordinary reel that ends with a most unordinary timeshift/doppelganger puzzle. It doesn't feel like separate pieces despite an interlude into a fable (which may not be so much a fable in Uncle Boonmee's world as it is an accepted piece of history) but is tied together by its matter-of-fact acceptance of the supernatural. The film's meanings will have to be teased out on repeat watches but on its most superficial level, there's a pace of life revealed here in Apitchatpong Weeraskethul's cinema that feels near alien to the North American city life. It is one that calmly accepts the natural beauty of the world, that lives and feels the jungle and the world around in all its majesty.
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