‘Omni Loop’
Television and the theater have served Mary-Louise Parker better than film. Let us cheer, then, Bernardo Britto’s “Omni Loop,” which gives the actress the kind of complex movie role she has long deserved.
Parker plays Zoya, a theoretical physicist who has a black hole in her chest and is terminally ill. Her death is on hold, though, because she can pull a pill from a bottomless supply that makes her relive the same week over and over. Rather than being happy at the reprieve, Zoya is bored and dispirited — at her 55th birthday party, she wishes she “could do something different.” And one day she actually can, with the unexpected and unexplained apparition of Paula (Ayo Edebiri), a student whose presence spurs Zoya to get out of her rut.
While it starts off with enough gentle humor to suggest we’re in for a buddy comedy with a time-loop gimmick, the film quickly changes its tune as it starts digging into the frustration and regrets that have long gnawed at Zoya. I can’t say that I connected all the plot’s dots, or even that they can be connected, but “Omni Loop” builds to a surprising emotional punch — I’m not crying, you’re crying! — that overrides any sense of confusion.
‘Previously Saved Version’
Naoki (Hideaki Ito) is a perfect romantic leading man: Handsome, sensitive and solicitous, he is also rich enough to secure a high-tech haven orbiting Earth for himself and his wife, Mayumi (Yuko Araki). If your first instinct is to think he is too good to be a science-fiction romantic lead, you are right. Naoki has the terrible habit of lying to Mayumi, then repeatedly killing her — Kei Ishikawa’s film puts a nifty twist on gaslighting by making the victim an android. (Brad Wright, a key player in the “Stargate” franchise, wrote the screenplay with Ishikawa.)
Attempting to recapture his late wife’s looks and essence at the peak of their love, Naoki keeps tinkering with new versions of her to create a perfect version. But much to his frustration, perfection is difficult to both achieve and control as the Mayumis end up accessing memories that Naoki would prefer keeping buried. The movie has a contemplative pace and Ishikawa beautifully sets the slow unveiling of Naoki’s manipulative rottenness against the sleekly sterile environment he and his wife share. Tip: Don’t dismiss the couple’s C-3PO-like robotic helper as a mere cutesy prop.
‘The Becomers’
A squishy sex scene involving an oddly shaped orifice is reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s work, but the rest of Zach Clark’s new film is off in its own dryly funny world. For his first venture into pure genre, Clark (whose “Little Sister” is one of the underrated indie gems of the 2010s) has held on to his naturalistic touch, except now it also involves aliens.
The characters here are people we could meet in, say, the parking lot of an Illinois Home Depot — which is where we first encounter Carol (Molly Plunk). She is but one in a series of unwitting hosts for two separated alien lovers who are jumping from one human body to another in an effort to reunite. The only way to tell that seemingly banal people are being possessed by creatures from outer space is by their socially awkward behavior and glowing eyes. (The effects in this low-budget movie are primitive by necessity but also by design.)
The film gets slightly derailed when Carol and her husband, Gordon (Mike Lopez), become embroiled in a strange cult. It is on much surer footing in less plot-driven scenes, as when the aliens learn to enjoy the pleasures and rituals of suburbia at its most average. The results are darkly funny, bittersweet and at times surprisingly touching.
‘Humane’
As our planet teeters on the brink of ecological collapse, countries must implement reductions in their population. Forced euthanasia, culling: Whatever you call it, the task is not easy. In Canada, the Department of Citizen Strategy (nice euphemism) handles the task, which is made somewhat easier when people agree to voluntarily “enlist” (nice euphemism again). This is what Charles (Peter Gallagher), a star anchorman and the patriarch of a wealthy and powerful family decides to do, and to celebrate the occasion, he invites his children to a lavish supper of rarefied foods.
It’s tempting to compare Caitlin Cronenberg’s directorial feature debut to the work of her father, David Cronenberg, but the acidic portrayal of the rich and entitled in “Humane” made me think more of Luis Buñuel’s 1970s films — “these rules aren’t made for people like us,” Charles’s son Jared (Jay Baruchel) says. None of Charles’s children react well to his news, to put it mildly, and the arrival of a government contractor (Enrico Colantoni) ready to take care of the grisly business does nothing to alleviate the tension. Before long the family members turn against each other and the get-together descends into violence. It often feels as if Cronenberg bit off a little more than she could chew, but there is enough misanthropy and nastiness to keep me on the lookout for her next outing.
‘Handling the Undead’
Many of the questions coursing through science fiction start with two words: “What if?” In Thea Hvistendahl’s movie, from Norway, the full query is: What if we could have another chance with the loved ones we lost? As is so often the case, the answer is that we should be careful what we wish for.
The spare, austere “Handling the Undead” revolves around three groups of people who must deal with family and partners who mysteriously come back from the dead: a young child, a wife and mother, an older spouse. Technically their heart is beating, but that does not mean that they are alive, if by that we mean having human emotions and flesh that does not rot. While she does include some body horror and a scene likely to traumatize animal lovers (they might want to look up the movie on the Does the Dog Die? website), Hvistendahl does not traffic in zombie scares. Her film’s impact reaches deeper, in the part of us that cannot deal with loss and grief. Driving a stake into a walking corpse’s skull might be easier than managing those feelings.
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