Review: 'Minari' is a warm and wise look at a Korean family trying to make it in America

Culture clashes and family struggles are at the heart of “Minari,” an emotionally resonant drama from director-writer Lee Isaac Chung.

Jacob Yi (Stephen Yeun, formerly of “The Walking Dead”) and his wife, Monica (Yeri Han), are a Korean-born couple who have left California for Arkansas in the mid-1980s, to pursue Jacob’s dream of running his own farm. With them are their American-born kids, Ann (Noel Kate Cho), who’s about 11, and 7-year-old David (Alan Kim), who gets extra pampering and worry from Monica because he has a heart murmur.

Jacob is enthusiastic about the fresh start, from buying a new tractor to hiring Paul (Will Patton), a local laborer who practices his own eccentric brand of Christianity. Monica is less thrilled about the single-wide pre-fab home they are living in, though her spirits pick up when her mother (Youn Yuh Jung) comes to live with them, bringing Korean chili powder and a penchant for playing cards. David is reluctant to befriend Grandma, whom he’s never met, but they bond over planting seeds of minari, a Korean plant and on-the-nose metaphor that fares well wherever it’s sown.

Chung’s script runs the Yi family through hardships, both financial and marital, while also displaying David’s child’s-eye view of life in the South. Chung’s direction captures the details of life in Reagan’s America, of Sunday church services and summer heat waves. And the cast, particularly Yeun and Han as the couple struggling to stay together through hardship, is exceptional. 

——

‘Minari’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 12, in theaters where open, and in virtual cinemas. Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and a rude gesture. Running time: 115 minutes; in English and in Korean, with subtitles.

——

This review originally ran on this site on January 28, 2020, when the movie screened at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'The Mauritanian' is an unflinching drama about one detainee's horrific time at Guantanamo Bay

In the harrowing true-life drama “The Mauritanian,” audiences are confronted with America’s foreign policy and its most horrific symbol of injustice and fear in the name of security: The American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Guantanamo Bay — a U.S. military base conveniently out of the reach of most American jurisprudence — is where Mohamedou Ould Salahi (played by Tahar Rahim) spends most of the 14-plus years in which he was held captive by U.S. forces. Detained by corrupt law officers in Mauritania, he is ultimately accused of being the recruiter for Al Qaeda who, while a student in Germany, befriended a couple of the men who flew planes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Salahi’s case, four years after that attack, becomes a high priority for the Bush administration, who want to see Salahi tried, convicted and executed. The prosecutor brought on board is Stuart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch), a Marine attorney whose moral rectitude is as thick as his Southern accent.

Taking up Salahi’s defense is Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster), an ACLU attorney who sees in her client’s captivity a snake pit of constitutional violations. Aided by a young lawyer, Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley), Hollander fights the secrets-obsessed bureaucracy surrounding Guantanamo, and convinces Salahi to write her letters that reveal the stomach-churning details of the interrogation techniques used on him.

Director Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”) pulls no punches in depicting the waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other techniques of “enhanced interrogation” — or, as sensible people who aren’t hiding their crimes call it, torture. The description Macdonald and screenewriters M.B. Traven, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani give to the torture Salahi suffered is frightening and infuriating.

In a cast with such heavyweights as Foster and Cumberbatch, Rahim (the star of the French prison drama “A Prophet”) is compelling, and Macdonald makes a wise choice to center the film around his performance. His take on the character is carefully ambiguous, so the audience isn’t sure for a long time whether Salahi is an innocent man caught in hell or a cagey terrorist sympathizer manipulating this situation for his own gain.

“The Mauritanian” isn’t likely to sway opinion about Guantanamo Bay or America’s shameful record of civil rights after 9/11 — those attitudes are too deeply engrained by now. But as a first-person account of the toll left by America’s embrace of such torture, the movie is thorough, arresting and alarming.

——

‘The Mauritanian’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 12, in theaters where open. Rated R for violence including a sexual assault, and language. Running time: 129 minutes.

Review: 'The Map of Tiny Perfect Things' adapts 'Groundhog Day' into a tender YA romance

The beauty of the “Groundhog Day” premise, repeating the same day over and over, is how malleable it is — translatable as romantic comedy (“Palm Springs”), action movie (“Edge of Tomorrow”), slasher flick (“Happy Death Day”) and, in the sometimes charming “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things,” existential young-adult romantic drama.

Mark (Kyle Allen) is a high-school student has been stuck in a “Groundhog Day”-like time loop for awhile now — long enough that he can smoothly ride his bike through town, grab the latte someone left on the roof of their car, drink it, and toss the empty cup in the back of a passing garbage truck. He’s obviously done this before, just as he has rescued a young woman (Anna Mikami) from falling in the pool and then finagled a date with her.

One day, though, another young woman steps through Mark’s perfectly choreographed pool scene, as if she’s seen it before. It turns out she has. Margaret (Kathryn Newton) is also caught in the same time loop, waking up every morning to the same day and, at midnight, rewinding the tape and starting over.

Mark and Margaret decide to join forces, to see if they can locate all the “tiny perfect” moments in this particular day, thinking that if they find them all, they will unlock some kind of secret and end the loop. Along the way, feelings of love grow between the teens — but things get complicated, as we get clues about why Margaret may not want this day to end.

Lev Grossman’s screenplay, adapted from his short story (he’s also the author of the novels on which “The Magicians” is based), gets a little too cute dropping references to better-known time-travel stories. Director Ian Samuels (who made Netflix’s “Sierra Burgess Is a Loser”) keeps the pace well, and shows some flair setting up long takes following Mark or Margaret as they waltz through scenarios they’ve practiced a thousand times.

All the delight taken from “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things” is from the chemistry between the two leads, which is considerable. Allen is a likable guy, handsome but humble. And Newton — whose ever-growing resumé includes “Blockers,” “Pokemon Detective Pikachu” and “Freaky” — is delightful as the sardonic young woman with a hidden dark side. Together, they create an emotional map well worth following.

——

‘The Map of Tiny Perfect Things’

★★★

Available starting Friday, February 12, for streaming on Prime video. Rated PG-13 for brief strong language, some teen drinking and sexual references. Running time: 98 minutes. 

Review: Robin Wright tries to get lost in 'Land,' a gorgeous drama about solitude, nature and grief

For “Land,” her first feature as a director, Robin Wright displays all the qualities she has as an actor: Elegance, natural beauty and a core of strength beneath a delicate surface.

Wright plays Edee, a woman who has suffered something — what that something is remains unexpressed for much of the film — and is looking to get away from other people. She buys a cabin deep in the Wyoming Rockies (the shoot was actually in Alberta), and holes up with a lot of canned food and some manuals on how to survive in the woods.

Working off a spare script, by Jesse Chatham and Erin Dignam, Wright shows Edee’s gradual evolution as she figures out how to live alone. After one event that leaves Edee starving and freezing, she gets an assist from a hunter, Miguel (Demián Bichir), who shows her skills that can’t be learned from a book. A friendship develops, though both recognize the other is in pain and are careful not to pry into each other’s pasts.

Wright and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski capture the austere, unforgiving beauty in which Edee has surrounded herself. And, with an assist from editors Anne McCabe and Mikkel E.G. Nielsen, Wright unfolds the depths of Edee’s grief and Miguel’s regrets in subtle strokes, creating a shattering effect when the whole picture becomes clear. Wright is also a fair arbiter of her own performance, which is as powerful as it is understated.

——

‘Land’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 12, in theaters where open. Rated PG-13 for thematic content, brief strong language, and partial nudity. Running time: 89 minutes.

——

This review originally ran on this site on January 31, 2021, when the movie premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: Farm life turns passionate in 'The World to Come,' an austere drama whose magic is in its details

Passion runs hot in the cold of 19th century New York state in “The World to Come,” a slow-burn romantic drama where the details are everything.

It’s 1856, and a couple, Abigail (Katherine Waterston) and Dyer (Casey Affleck) are scratching out an existence on their small farm. Abigail writes in her journal about her loneliness, and her concerns for Dyer’s mental state: “He told me contentment was a friend that he never gets to see.” Abigail is also mourning the death of her daughter, from whooping cough, and worried that she will never have another child.

Abigail’s spirit is lightened when a new couple arrives nearby, Finney (Christopher Abbott) and Tallie (Vanessa Kirby). Tallie becomes a fast friend, who invites herself over to see Abigail when Finney is doing the disgusting business of slaughtering a pig. Soon Tallie is a regular visitor, and Abigail is beside herself in those spaces when Tallie is not there.

Director Mona Fastvold (“The Sleepwalker,” SFF ’14) builds unbearable tension in the unspoken thoughts Abigail directs toward Tallie and the slight glances Tallie returns in Abigail’s direction. Eventually that tension must break, with life-shattering consequences for all concerned.

Fastvold, working off a script by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard, steeps this story in the authentic details of the two couples’ farm lives, until one can almost smell the pigpen and feel the pressing of pen to paper in Abigail’s fervent writing.

Affleck’s quiet menace isn’t as flashy as Abbott’s pious browbeating of Tallie, but both men embody the unspoken oppression their wives endure. Kirby, so powerful in “Pieces of a Woman,” matches that performance with a strong turn as a woman willing to unleash the passion she’s feeling. Waterston carries the movie’s weight, as narrator and the vulnerable, yet forceful, woman who imagines a better world than the one in which she must survive. This quartet comes together to make “The World to Come” a quietly heartbreaking drama.

——

‘The World to Come’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 12, in theaters where open. Rated R for some sexuality/nudity. Running time: 98 minutes.

——

This review originally ran on this site on February 2, 2021, when the movie screened at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Saint Maud' is a lurid, atmospheric horror film that showcases actress Morfydd Clark and director Rose Glass

A nurse with a messiah complex is at the bloody heart of “Saint Maud,” an atmospheric horror drama that spotlights two intriguing young talents: Actress Morfydd Clark and director Rose Glass.

Clark is somewhat familiar, or should be, having given solid performances in two Charles Dickens-adjacent period films: “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” in which he played Dickens’ young wife, and “The Personal History of David Copperfield,” where she stole the show as the title character’s ditzy fiancee.

Here, Clark plays Maud — or, at least, that’s the name she’s using now — who takes a job as a home nurse to Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a famous dancer and choreographer who’s now using a wheelchair because of a cancer on her spinal column. We come to learn that Maud had an incident at the hospital where she previously worked, but her nursing skills and bedside manner seem to be OK for Amanda.

Glass, in her feature debut as director and screenwriter, shows us that Maud is a recent convert to Jesus — and is concerned, almost to the point of obsession, with Amanda’s imminent death and her destination in the afterlife. Amanda jokingly calls Maud her savior, but Maud seems to be seriously auditioning for the role.

Glass puts an intriguing spin on the straight-forward narrative, by showing us this relationship through two prisms: Reality, and the hyper-real fantasy land that Maud sees as she carries out her plan to “save” Amanda’s soul. The view isn’t always pretty, but it’s often fascinating.

Glass’ pace is brisk, but leaving enough time for Clark to put her stamp on this tricky role. Clark plays Maud as a madwoman, certainly, but with an earnestness that makes her delusions almost defensible. Together, Glass and Clark create an intense portrait of madness, of fanatical belief taken to bloody extremes.

——

‘Saint Maud’

★★★

Opens Friday, January 29, in theaters where open; debuts February 12 on Epix. Rated R for disturbing and violent content, sexual content and language. Running time: 84 minutes.

Review: 'The Little Things' is one big mess, in spite of three Oscar winners filling out this sleazy serial-killer movie

On a scale of one to “Se7en,” “The Little Things” barely rates a three.

Writer-director John Lee Hancock peddles many of the tropes of David Fincher’s famous serial-killer police procedural — with an old cop working with a young cop, trying to outwit a seemingly implacable madman. But in trying to duplicate that movie’s moral ambiguity, Hancock just produces a muddled mess.

Set in Los Angeles in 1990, the story follows Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington), known as “Deke” to his friends — of which he doesn’t have too many these days. Deke’s a deputy in a rural California jurisdiction, sent by his boss to collect some evidence being held by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, a couple hours’ drive away.

Deke still has some friends in the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, where he worked as a detective a few years earlier — that is, until a case that, according to his old boss, Capt. Carl Farris (Terry Kinney), led to his suspension, a divorce and a triple bypass. Deke looks up some old acquaintances, but he also listens in as a young detective, Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), tries to reassure the press that the serial-killer case that’s terrorizing the L.A. area will be solved.

Despite warnings from Farris, Baxter seeks advice on the case from Deke — who sees parallels between this killer and the case that abruptly ended his LASD career. Soon, Deke is riding shotgun with Baxter, helping the ambitious young detective track down leads and try to make a case against a creepy guy named Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), who seems to be having too much fun toying with Baxter and Deke.

With three Oscar-winning actors and some luridly sensuous images of Los Angeles captured by cinematographer John Schwartzman (“Seabiscuit”), Hancock — who directed “Saving Mr. Banks” and “The Blind Side,” among others — should be able to knock this one out with little effort. Alas, his script is riddled with ham-fisted plot mechanics, a flashback structure that telegraphs the movie’s punches, and (no spoilers here) an ending in which the filmmaker thumbs his nose at every police-reform argument we have heard in the last few years.

Washington and Malek have some nice moments together in “The Little Things,” two generations of actors trying to bring some gravitas to a sleazy police drama. But they’re thwarted by that stink-bomb ending, which demonstrated that sometimes it’s not the little things but one big thing that destroys a movie.

——

‘The Little Things’

★1/2

Opens Friday, January 29, in theaters where open, and streams on HBO Max. Rated R for violent/disturbing images, language and full nudity. Running time: 127 minutes.

Review: 'No Man's Land' is a border thriller that takes an intriguing turn into a redemption drama

Like the Rio Grande that’s a central feature of the story, director Conor Allyn’s “No Man’s Land” has some twists and turns in it, delivering more emotional weight than first impressions would suggest.

The title refers to a stretch of real estate along the Rio Grande, between the river and the U.S. border fence. It’s an area where migrants cross over into the States from Mexico. It’s also where the Greer family runs a small cattle ranch, and deals with migrants walking through their land and disturbing the cattle.

Bill Greer (Frank Grillo) and his wife, Monica (Andie MacDowell), try to keep the ranch financially afloat, aided by their sons, Lucas (Alex MacNicoll) and Jackson (Jake Allyn, who co-wrote the script with David Barraza). Jackson has a way out of ranch life: A 92 mph fastball and a chance to join the Yankees’ AA farm team.

On the other side of the river, Gustavo (Jorge A. Jimenez), who has the nickname “Shepherd” because of his faith, is trying to get his 11-year-old son, Fernando (Alessio Valentini), over the border.

One night, the two families have an encounter, as Bill and Lucas try to retrieve some wayward cattle, and find Gustavo’s group trying to traverse the desert. One kid with Gustavo’s group pulls a knife, there’s a struggle for Bill’s rifle — and Jackson unexpectedly ends up in the middle of it. When the dust has settled, Lucas has been shot in the gut, and Jake has killed little Fernando.

One might think this is the jumping-off point for a revenge thriller, a kill-or-be-killed struggle between Jake and Gustavo. Instead, something more interesting happens: Jake rides off into Mexico, toward the city of Guanajuato, in an effort to find Gustavo and atone for what he’s done.

Jake’s journey is a rough one, across the Mexican desert. He finds help along the way, working as a laborer for a prosperous rancher (Juan Carlos Remolina). And he experiences Mexico, learning that the bigoted information he inherited from Bill is not accurate. Jake also has a violent thug, Luis (Andrés Delgado), and a Texas Ranger, Ramirez (George Lopez), on his trail.

Some of the characterizations, particularly of Jake and the family who takes him in, are well-drawn and compelling — people with whom you’d like to sit around a big dinner table and just talk all night. Alas, other characters, like the nasty Luis, are cardboard cutouts of humanity, repositories for every screenwriting cliche that comes to mind.

The Allyn’s have a lot working for them: A strong cast, a good sense of storytelling, and an eye for rugged landscapes. “No Man’s Land” doesn’t pretend it’s solving the problems along the U.S./Mexico border, but it gives all sides a chance to be heard, which is enough.

——

‘No Man’s Land’

★★★

Opens Friday, January 22, in theaters where open. Rated PG-13 for some strong violence and language. Running time: 115 minutes.