By: Paul Farrell

The Uncle

Three sweater-clad people wave in performative unison. Their uncle has arrived for Christmas dinner. Their unenthusiastic waving soon gives way to awkward embraces as uncle inquires about his grown nephew’s pubic hair and comments on the perkiness of his sister-in-law’s chest. Still, Christmas soldiers on, with presents and antics recorded on a VHS camcorder, a delicious turkey dinner and dancing to accompany the songs playing on 1980s Yugoslav radio.

An air of tension hangs over the events, however, as the domineering uncle presides over the festivities and the people around him force themselves to play their respective roles. Finally, the night concludes and uncle leaves. That’s when the people in the house reset. There’s a lot to clean and even more to prepare.

After all, tomorrow’s Christmas.

Writers/directors David Kapac and Andrijia Mardešić’s The Uncle begins as an uncomfortable mystery and progresses slowly but surely into a torturous nightmare. While some may dream of having Christmas everyday, this particular family would do anything to escape the monotony of throwing turkey after turkey into the pit behind the house. Each day the script is the same. Changes are forbidden. Time is stuck. But as the runtime progresses, it becomes clear that everything from songs on the radio to the 1980s aesthetic may be nothing more than the uncle’s twisted pageantry.

Disturbing levels of tension are consistently delivered through the uncle’s understated malice. Miki Manojlović plays uncle with control and quiet fury, instilling danger into every sharp gaze and lending credibility to the family’s absurd obedience. While their reasoning for complying with the distressing charade is part of the draw of the central mystery, their emotional, sexual, and interpersonal repressions create a whole other layer of festering resentment. The house and the people there are poison — to each other and themselves — soured by the lie they live over and over again, working to salvage a life that is already long gone.

The Uncle depresses, unsettles, and tightens its grip as it treads toward its foregone conclusion. Its stunted cast of players know their roles, accept them ,and hate themselves for it, resulting in a narrative that uses its repetitive conceit to wallow and revel in its characters’ artificiality, attempting to draw conclusions about the roles we play and what we hope to achieve by adhering to them.

Like the synchronized wave the family delivers at the start of each new day, The Uncle is a movie one must grin and bear if they are to survive it. I’m not entirely sure what the point of the exercise is in the end, but the film that carries us there is beautifully realized and adeptly told. Discomfort is a language and The Uncle speaks it well. I may not share its penchant for emotional disquiet but I can’t deny its ability to convey it.

Bark

Nolan considers himself a good person. Imperfect, sure, but good. Worth a damn. That’s why he can’t figure out why someone would hit him in the head, drag him out to the middle of the forest, tie him to a tree, and leave him for dead.

Bark finds Nolan bound and bleeding in the woods, racking his mind to figure out what happened and desperately looking for a way out of his potentially deadly predicament. Directed by Marc Schölermann, the film spends its first third playing with dreams and reality to varying degrees of success. Nolan’s concussed, malnourished, and dehydrated mind plays with visions of being tied with protestors and daring escapes while the film always drags him back to the cold, hard reality of the thick trunk to which he’s bound.

The story picks up pace when the Outdoorsman sets up camp nearby. Played by A.J. Buckley, the self-proclaimed Outdoorsman seems to be a calm, decent-natured Southerner who holds his cards close to his vest. Refusing to help Nolan on the grounds that if someone has gone to the trouble to incapacitate him in the woods, then there must be a valid reason, the two begin an ongoing dialogue that sustains the movie for the remainder of its runtime.

Bark is in many ways a morality play. While the Outdoorsman sits nearby, Nolan is put in a position to examine his life. The opportunity to confess takes on a spiritual tenderness, Nolan unwrapping his most toxic qualities as he confesses that his wife has left him and that he once caused and drove away from a terrible accident due to his callous, wanton selfishness. All the while the Outdoorsman listens on, responding in metaphor and riddle, playing with Nolan’s hope and projected anxieties while never revealing who he is or how he knows the man tied to the tree.

While it’s important to keep the finale a surprise, the film builds to a surprising and fascinating conclusion. The dichotomy between the sins of man and the graces of the natural world rises to the forefront and Nolan’s purpose, predicament, and prospective fate become clear. While the central premise and hook of the movie can wear thin at times, particularly in the first act, the payoff for the confined setup works well and serves to justify the film that birthed it.

Nolan considers himself a good person, it’s true. But perspective is subjective and, in the eye of the beholder, good can mean a great many things. Still, the beautiful thing about perspective is it’s fluid, ever-changing, and, in some ways, freeing. Peace can come through pain. Worth is attainable. Answers and self-reflection are part of the human experience. What better place to connect with that than nature. Tied to a tree. Left not to die, but to figure out why.

The answer to that, now, that’ll set you free — Nolan included.

What You Wish For

Ryan hasn’t seen Jack, his roommate from culinary school, in years. Ryan went on to work at the Marriott, slinging chicken in the kitchen while Jack pursued the private sector. Living in dreamlike luxury all around the globe, Jack’s exclusive dining experiences — designed for the world’s elite — provide him with leisure and extravagance, the frills of the rich at his disposal. Ryan, on the other hand, is in debt…and lots of it.

What You Wish For is a sleek, glossy look at the underbelly of the upper crust. As Ryan visits Jack in Latin America, he hungrily observes the life his old friend lives: the food, the wine, the women. Even as Jack ushers Ryan into his world of decadence, Jack struggles to embrace the serenity that world implies, mired in anxiety about the consequences his dangerous debt will reap back home.

The film veers into unexpected territory as Ryan is unceremoniously thrust into the role of elite chef. Still, the cost of prosperity is higher than Ryan anticipated and, as the film progresses, he is forced to face the pitch black truths of the bright, sparkling world that’s always been just out of reach.

Directed by Nicholas Tomnay, What You Wish For is an entertaining thriller that shares commonalities with The Menu and Fresh. Nick Stahl leads the increasingly tension laden events with caution, trepidation, and a certain self-assuredness that keeps the darkly unfolding narrative surprisingly light on its feet. Joining the cadre of eat-the-rich satirical genre fare, What You Wish For is an effective, funny, and engaging adventure into the fanciful land of those beholden to no laws but their own.

Ryan came to visit his friend. What he found was a life he could only dream of. But the thing about dreams is that they don’t always much care about the details. And the details — as Ryan comes to find out — are where the devil lives, sleeps, and, of course, dines.

Rage

A boy scratches at the window beside his seat. The landscape rushes by outside as the train rattles forward. The boy spies someone through the crack between his seat and the glass, taking a small toy from the person sitting there. The person wears a yellow mask and holds a finger to their faux lips as though to shush the exchange. The boy obeys.

This disconcerting exchange establishes the tone and ideology of Jorge Michel Grau’s Rage, a story which seeks to find the people beneath the masks they wear, both seen and unseen. The boy’s name is Alan and his mother has recently passed. His father, Alberto, moves him to a rundown, gated community with inexpensive, government-subsidized housing that has long been abandoned by the outside world. The place was home to Alberto’s deceased brother and holds the secrets to unlocking the truth about Alan’s broken family — and its potential ties with the supernatural.

Alan spends most of his time alone, wandering the flat, interconnected rooftops of the homogenous buildings. Although surrounded by people, he is entirely alone. Still, he befriends a strange man covered in sores named Coco, who whispers about Alan’s uncle and entices the boy to dig deeper into his family’s past. Then there’s Yanet, a local woman who had some indecipherable connection to his uncle. She’s heard of the boy and cares for him, attempting to curb his questionable exploits and butting heads with Alberto about what’s best for his wayward son.

As the town turns against Alberto due to the debts his departed brother owed and Alberto’s unwillingness to bow to his neighbor’s aggressions, the place becomes less and less safe for Alan. At the same time, odd and disturbing occurrences begin to plague the people there — like missing pets and strange, animalistic attacks — that seem all the more sinister once Alan uncovers his uncle’s old notebook. Full of cryptic warnings and drawings of monstrous creatures, the incoherent scribbling points to only one solution: death.

Rage is a slow-burning candle of a film, spending almost too much time wallowing in Alan’s loneliness and the monotony of the stone suburb before arriving at its bloody conclusion. Its jabs at the supernatural are slight — the central mystery regarding whether or not Alan’s father is a werewolf is only vaguely explored — choosing instead to focus on the deeply human emotional consequences such questions and assumed violence would carry with them. An admirable choice for an intimate portrayal of inherited class and trauma, even if at times it’s at the expense of a consistently engaging narrative.

In the end, chaos ensues, as the animosity the film spends its runtime building up to erupts in bloodshed and murder. Alan achieves the clarity he’s so desperately sought — but at the cost of his innocence, which may or may not beget a future not all that dissimilar from his elders. As in the beginning, there is a strange figure shushing Alan, encouraging him to be silent. To keep it all in. To protect a secret rather than seek out some unreachable truth. And, as before, we can only assume that the boy obeys.

Cobweb

Thunder roars. Lightning claps. A woman climbs a winding, ornate staircase in glorious black-and-white as a man screams for his life. Horror and tension collide as the celluloid depicts a masterclass in genre storytelling, treading ever forward toward its exciting conclusion and…

Director Kim shouts “CUT!” The horror picture dissolves to a set of various players, all working together to craft the film that was just being depicted. The director speaks with the lead actress, throwing more direction and insight at her in a handful of seconds than she’s able to digest. The crew moves to continue and that’s when Director Kim wakes up.

Reality shifts again as the would-be auteur roams his own, lonesome apartment. He takes his pills, but they’re no use. The scenes, vivid and roaring, plague his subconscious. There is a masterpiece in his head and its not on the footage he already wrapped. He knows what he has to do. It’s time to prove the critics, the performers, his producers, and the movie-going public that he’s no hack — it’s time to reshoot.

Directed by Kim Jee-woon, Cobweb seeks to capture the painfully absurd, physically taxing, and soulfully fulfilling process of making a movie. Set in 1970s Korea, the story follows Song Kang-ho’s Director Kim as he embarks on the impossible — convincing a group of people who have already finished a film that they weren’t in love with in the first place to get together and do it all again. Navigating frugal producers, furious censors, idiosyncratic celebrities, and all of the interpersonal drama that goes along with such larger-than-life personalities, the film asks how far one is willing to go to realize their vision and, graciously, refrains from judging the answer too harshly.

Playing as a bit of a cross between Ed Wood and One Cut Of The Dead, Cobweb dissects its featured personalities with humor and heart. Less about undermining Director Kim’s passion and more about underpinning the methods such passion often requires, the film is infused with the energy inherent within artistic creation. His lack of forethought or regard for safety in the face of making his masterpiece aside, there’s a sense of wonder, accomplishment, and determination that everyone on the set ultimately shares, uniting the crew in a kind of innovative stupor that’s more endearing than contemptible.

Hanging over Director Kim’s head is the shadow of his idol and former boss Director Shin, who perished in a fire some years before. Considered a great talent, the legacy of Director Shin and the on-set accident which took his life haunts the beleaguered Kim. Kim’s insecurities about his talent, his guilt regarding his deceased mentor, and the relentless rumors that he never wrote the script that skyrocketed him to a career in directing in the first place boil to the surface. All of this rolls into his relentless obsession, driving him to finish his film the right way, forgetting along the process the old adage that art is never finished, only abandoned.

In the end, thunder roars. Lightning claps. Fire smolders. The epic scene of perfectly crafted tension and horror plays out in full, no longer confined to the imagination. However, when the scene concludes and the credits roll, the audience revealed to be watching claps and cheers, soaking up the moving picture into their own hearts and minds.

Perhaps imagination is the destination of all art. Its birth, its life, its death — its reality defined by its capacity to inspire, excite, and entertain. Such creations have many shepherds, but it’s the director who’s ultimately responsible and accountable for their vision’s safe passage. Whether or not the director succeeds, well, that’s up to the audience. But they’ll never really know. An audience is exponential. Eternal. A director is finite. Mortal.

As before, and as it always will, reality continues to shift and art remains in a constant state of being reshot, in one way or another.