Science Fiction
‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’
It’s been an odd year for science fiction. One of the best such narratives was the Broadway musical “Maybe Happy Ending,” set in 2064 Seoul and in which two obsolete robots fall in love. Streaming series gave us an astounding range of stories and aesthetics, from “Sugar” to “Fallout” to “Dune: Prophecy.”
Feature films, on the other end, tended to be split between insipid or downright inept mega-budget productions and indies that often recycled similar premises.
Thank God, then, for George Miller, whose “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” reminded us what cinema can do. This prequel to “Mad Max: Fury Road” recounts how Furiosa (Alyla Browne as a kid, Anya Taylor-Joy as a young woman) ended up in the Citadel run by Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), and how she lost an arm.
The movie is in a constant escalation of one-upmanship, though Miller is only competing with himself at this point. Why settle for one madman, for instance, when you can stick your heroine in a power struggle between two of them? So the director introduces the warlord Dementus, played by a Chris Hemsworth unabashedly flirting with camp. While it is operatically berserk, “Furiosa” also has a stylish, virtuosic classicism. Miller did not wreck his legacy.
— ELISABETH VINCENTELLI
Horror
‘In a Violent Nature’
In a year of humdrum haunted houses and soulless spirits, Chris Nash’s slasher film “In a Violent Nature” was a brutal knockout — a surprise too, considering that it’s as placid as it is gruesome.
The premise is Slasher 101: A hulking, masked antagonist named Johnny (Ry Barrett) slaughters young folks who are just out for some fun in the wilderness.
But Nash brazenly defies convention by filming Johnny leisurely and almost entirely from behind, patiently following the killer as he treks along a tranquil natural landscape with nothing more than the sound of leaves crunching under his heavy steps. Johnny butchers his victims in absurd and grotesque ways, as if he were a Looney Tunes Jason Voorhees. Each kill is a thrill.
Using unsettling juxtapositions — stillness and savagery, naturalism and exaggeration — as a way to engage with evil is what makes the film so terrifying, and singular.
Two other movies gave me the willies, big time: “Longlegs,” Osgood Perkins’s chilling serial-killer thriller starring an unhinged Nicolas Cage as the devil’s conduit and a chill Maika Monroe as the diffident investigator on his tail, and “Mads,” David Moreau’s exhilaratingly nihilistic and blood-soaked single-take sprint toward the end of the world.
— ERIK PIEPENBURG
Action
‘Rebel Ridge’
The writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s “Rebel Ridge” is a barn burner of an anti-cop tale steeped in cunning brutality and combustible local politics. The rural town of Shelby Springs, La., led by the corrupt police chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson), is running a cagey scheme. Through a legal loophole, officers arrest travelers on misdemeanor drug charges and confiscate their cash for departmental spending. Unaware of the ploy, Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre), a Marine and a martial arts expert, arrives with bail money for his detained cousin only for local cops to rob him.
In that sense the premise of Saulnier’s “Rebel Ridge” often recalls “First Blood.” While that movie is firmly a vetsploitation flick deriving drama from PTSD, “Rebel Ridge” interrogates anti-Black policing (the law used by Shelby Springs is tellingly akin to the 1994 crime bill).
With the assistance of the local courthouse clerk Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb), Richmond wields his army training to demolish the town’s totalitarian force. While Saulnier’s explosive set pieces, such as the final standoff with Burnne’s goons-with-badges, are draws, it’s Pierre’s agile reflexes and the piercing blue eyes that form his brooding visage that gives “Rebel Ridge” its savory action-drenched edge. — ROBERT DANIELS
International
‘Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell’
‘Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell’
When it comes to great films from masters of world cinema, there is an embarrassment of riches on streaming right now: Alice Rohrwacher’s picaresque “La Chimera,” Radu Jude’s raucous “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World,” Mati Diop’s haunting “Dahomey.” But what a treasure it is to come across a debut feature by a little-known filmmaker that lands like a jolt of wholly original brilliance.
Pham Thien An’s “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” opens in Saigon with a long, unbroken shot that moves fluidly from a football field to a bustling outdoor restaurant to a motor accident on a nearby street. The technical wizardry of this scene, its sinuous and surprising shifts in focus, the way in which it both lulls and shocks us, all set the tone for the film that follows: A young man journeys from Saigon to his ancestral village with the 5-year-old son of his recently-deceased sister-in-law, contending with historical wounds, family secrets and questions of faith. Where many contemporary filmmakers rely on expensive effects to inspire big-screen wonder, Pham does it with intuitive artistry and something else: a reverence for this medium, with its capacity to both deceive and reveal. — DEVIKA GIRISH
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