Pet Sound

Rabbit Trap (2025) - Chainey This is the second British (well, Scottish and Welsh) film I saw this year that features a rabbit folklore -where as Starve Acre takes place on the Scottish moors, Bryn Chainey's Rabbit Trap takes place in Wales. Rabbits or Hares in Welsh folklore are depicted as a connection to the spirit world and fertility. Known as the pwca in Wales, rabbits are shapeshifting creatures that bring both good and bad fortunes.

A childless musician couple from London - Darcy (Dev Patel) and Daphne Davenport (Rosy McEwen), have moved into a secluded cottage to finish their album. Equipped with recorders and a soundsystem, they are exploring the new sound in the Welsh woods for inspiration. One day in the woods, doing the field recording, Darcy hears distinctly human voices in the woods. Then he finds a circle made of white stones in the floorbed of the forest. Soon, he encounters a young person of indeterminate age and sex (Jade Croot), who claims that they are from a nearby village. They know places in the woods that would interest the Davenports.

The child takes a shine on Daphne and their visitation to the cottage becomes more frequent. But the child's insistence and clinginess becomes more intense and uncomfortable, first for Darcy, then eventually for Daphne. There's something supernatural definitely in the woods and the child is not what they say they are.

Moody and trippy, both cinematography (Dp, Andreas Johannessen) and sound design are terrific. Verging on magic realism, the moss and fungus invading the interior of the cottage as Davenports are put under the spell of the child is truly a wonder (thanks to production designer Lucie Red). Patel and McEwen are both fantastic as a couple who share an unspoken, probably some dark backstory, and have terrific chemistry together. But it's young Jade Croot who shines as a mysterious child who throws themselves in the lives of Davenport, and who might not be human at all. Croot's performance has the similar intensity as young Barry Keogan in Lanthimos's Killing of a Sacred Deer.

Rabbit Trap is a terrific folk horror/fantasy film that is beautifully crafted and put together with stellar performances. Now streaming on multiple platforms.

Monsters

Frankenstein (2025) - Del Toro Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus, portrayed the human arrogance in the age of industrial revolution and tragedy that befalls its protagonist, a mad genius, Dr. Victor Frankenstein. In Guillermo Del Toro's version, which is magnificent by the way, Frankenstein is told in three perspectives. One from the captain of a Danish ship marooned in the arctic ice, the other from Victor's point of view and then by the creature.

Frankenstein starts in the frozen arctic sea, as Danish sailors struggle to thaw the ice so their ship can get free. There's an explosion in the distance and they rush to investigate. A gravely wounded man they find on the frozen ground is disheveled Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), he warns of a creature who is stalking him, and protecting him would put everyone around him in danger. Soon enough, the tall creature (Jacob Elodi), comes charging in with superhuman strength, killing everyone in his way. Bullets and knives are no match for him.

Secluded in the captain's quarter, Victor tells his version of a story to the captain (Lars Mikkelsen), so starts one of the most rapturous, big budget Hollywood films worthy of a theatrical experience in a long time. Production design and costume in Frankenstein are typically Del Toro-esque, but turned up to eleven, in that unmistakable Victorian gothic/steampunk way. It shows Victor's upbringing and fixation with conquering death- growing up with a stern, borderline abusive surgeon father (Charles Dance) and losing his mother early in a child birth. His younger brother William (Felix Kemmerer), with his sunny dispositions, becomes naturally father's favorite. So while he is being a brilliant but unorthodox weirdo in medical school tinkering with human corpses with electricity, William makes names for himself in the finance world. It's William's business associate Harlander (Christophe Waltz) who recognizes Victor's genius and bankrolls his grand vision of a laboratory to resurrect the dead. Willam also introduces his fiancé, the niece of Harlander, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), a fetching young woman who doesn't mind being around the corpses and flirting with Victor. It's his arrogance and drive that she finds intriguing.

So they find a decrepit castle with a large spire and a big medusa head adorned wall in somewhere in European continent and it soon becomes a corpse disposal factory - for Victor to assemble body parts from recently executed criminals and dead soldiers from the Crimean War (So Del Toro's version diverts from Shelley's in terms of timeline - the Crimean War was in 1854, the book was published in 1818). Harlander dies in an accident while pleading to be part of Victor's creation because he is dying of syphilis. And the 'IT'S ALIVE!!' sequence is spectacular. But the marveling over his creation is short lived, as Victor finds the creature not too communicative and intellectually stunted. So he has it chained in the dungeon of the castle, equipped with its own, elegant, tiled drainage system (reminiscent of a Turkish bath). But the creature finds great empathy from Elizabeth. She asks Victor whether he considered if the creature had a soul, when he was creating it. Victor admits that he hadn't. Disgusted with what he created, Victor tries to burn the castle down with the creature with it. The creature escapes and Victor loses his leg in the explosion.

And the creature comes on board the ship and tells his side of the story. Even with the POV shifts, told in chronological order, Del Toro maintains the forward momentum without a hitch. The film is a lean two and a half hour experience where you don't feel its running time. Frankenstein feels much more refined in its depiction of violence and its sentimentality than GDT's other films. The action sequences are violent, but not his usual over-the-top, sadistic way (no act of facial disfiguring, of course except for the creature. who is already sewn up with different parts.

The segment with the farmer's family and the blind man, played by David Bradley (from Harry Potter films and the voice of Geppetto in GDT's Pinocchio) is perhaps the most touching part of the film. From Oscar Isaac as arrogant Dr. Frankenstein who gets his comeuppance and his sins forgiven, to Jacob Elodi's skulking, yet highly humanistic creature, to Mia Goth's smart and kind-hearted Elizabeth, not to mention the great Dance & Bradley, the acting in this film throughout is superb. Regular character actors Ralph Ineson and Burn Gorman also show up briefly.

The story of a madman's obsession destroying everything he loves and blaming it on his own creation, their unbreakable bondage and finally forgiveness really moved me in the end. Del Toro, chasing after his childhood dreams of remaking Universal Monster films, created something classy and beautiful here. I understand that he is teaming up with Netflix because he wants to continue making big budget projects, but it's a pity that the theater run of Frankenstein is only a few weeks before it premieres in streaming. It's a gorgeous film and I want everyone to experience it big. Go see it in theaters if you can.

Grand Illusion

Mr. K (2024) - Schwab The 90s and 2000s were wild times in art-house cinema. These little idiosyncratic and absurd European films that didn't make much sense plot-wise, but had elaborate set designs and filled with surrealist whimsy, were dime a dozen, and you were glad they existed and available through Netflix DVD services (R.I.P.) Two decades later, with plot driven superhero movies, taut policier thrillers, 3D animations dominate the cinemas. Then Mr. K comes along, starring the king of oddity, Crispin Glover, directed by Norwegian born, Dutch filmmaker Tallulah Schwab. The film, referencing Kafka with his protagonist Joseph K from The Trial, indeed showcases a Kafkaeque labyrinth, where our protagonist can't escape from. With a great production design (Maarten Piersma and Manolito Glas) and filled with eccentric characters, harkening back to good old days of art-house nonsense filmmaking, Mr. K is a breath of fresh air.

Traveling Magician, Mr. K (Glover), is first seen doing tricks in front of uninterested audiences. The trick, suspending the globes of the solar system in the air, doesn't get any responses. This beginning reminds me of the mysterious and whimsical way Bela Tarr's Werkmeister Harmonies starts, where the village idiot explains how a solar eclipse works to a bunch of drunkards, delving into philosophical comedy to set the tone. “Every being is a universe within themselves, floating about in eternal darkness.” K narrates, alluding to the dream logic conclusion of the film.

The self contained universe in this film is an opulent but aging hotel that K checks into. After dealing with a glass eyed grumpy matron, and witnessing a man under his bed and a cleaning woman in his closet, hurriedly scampering out of his room, K goes to uneasy sleep, expecting to check out the following day.

As K wakes and gets ready to go, he finds himself marooned in the decaying hotel. Endless corridors lead him in circles and K can't seem to locate the exit. Someone scribbled "LIBERATOR" on the wall of the corridor. Chased by a marching brass band that seemingly materialized from the walls, and his bag stolen by feral children, K ends up in the opulent stuffed room of two old sisters (Dearbhla Molloy and Fionnula Flanagan) who are kind but can't seem to direct him to the exit.

He is then pushed into the hotel's busy kitchen, taken in as one of the kitchen staff. He is on an egg sorting line. And he meets fellow egg sorting worker Anton (Jan Gunnar Røise), whose ambition is to be promoted as a whiskerer, and who doesn't seem to have ever been outside the hotel. "We have everything we need here." He tells K. For whatever reason, the head chef (Bjørn Sundquist), takes a shine to our protagonist, as if he is the chosen one sent by some higher power, like a man in some secret prophecy. Without trying, K is promoted to the whiskerer's line, much to the chagrin of Anton. The kitchen staff are party animals it turns out. So they party after hours and sleep on piles of other workers. But K has to make his meeting with a client and needs to get out of the hotel.

K is awakened by the noise from the peeling wall. And he finds the hotel is physically shrinking. And there are some sinewy roots growing inside the walls. He has to warn the residents of the hotel! Is K the liberator?

Thick and dark green interior wall papers, the endless corridors and secret compartments/doors and cramped interior are as much the characters as well as the hotel's eclectic inhabitants. It might annoy you that there's no coherent plot in Mr. K. You will need to surrender your logically wired mind to embrace the film full of absurd humor and surrealist whimsy. Glover, who cultivated a unique persona over the decades playing weirdos and outcasts, fits right in as Mr. K in the world with its own self-contained hierarchy and rules. Part Jeaunette & Caro (Delicatessen), part Roy Andersson (Songs from the Second Floor), part Gordon & Abel (Iceberg), and part Jens Lien (Bothersome Man), Mr. K harkens back to the wry humor and wild imagination that was signature element in art-house cinema of the 90s and early 2000s.

You might be disappointed with the unresolved ending, but Mr. K is undoubtedly a unique film among mountains of narrative driven cinemascape of today. If you want to take a mental break from complicated and intricate plotting, and want to give in to the absurdities of an European art flick, Mr. K will be a highly rewarding movie going experience.

Mr. K plays in New York and will open in theaters in Los Angeles, 10/21.

Slave to the Rhythm

Sirât (2025) - Laxe What starts out as The Searchers type allegory of taming the untameable, this Moroccan desert set film by Spanish helmer Oliver Laxe (Fire Will Come), morphs into an existentialist experimental film that defies categorization. It's at once tragic and riveting at the same time. And you can't look away in this downer for two hours. And I respect Laxe for orchestrating the power over us.

The first thing we see is the great expanse of canyon walls of the Moroccan desert as a large, but well worn speaker system is set up. Soon, it's the rave scene of the weathered, sinewy, dusty bodies gyrating to the heavy bass of the techno music. This is not the Burning Man kind of rave, the group is decidedly older with gnarly teeth, braids and bits of limbs missing. Among them, we see Luis (Sergi López) and his pre-teen son Esteban (Bruno Núñez), moving from one raver to another, handing out a 'Missing Person' sign. They are looking for Luis's daughter Mar, whom they last heard from five months ago. Someone told them that she might be at this particular rave. But no one there knows her.

A raid from local police breaks up the gathering, and instead of following the caravan of cars to evacuate, ragtag of French ravers - Steff, Josh, Bigui, Jade and Tonin breaks off from the crowd with their decked out RVs and Luis and Esteban follow them in their minivan. So starts a road movie of sorts that's filled with death and explosions and unimaginable grief.

The title card indicates that Sirât in Arabic means a narrow bridge between heaven and hell. And that is what the film portrays. A purgatory that plays out in the backdrop of the world in chaos, the inescapable reality of indiscriminate deaths and misery even in the remotest places on earth. Yep, we are all in this, experiencing the end of the world, together.

The improbable sound of techno beats (scored by French musician Kangding Ray) against nothingness of the desert, move the film along and play pivotal roles in key moments of the film.

Sirât is part Madmax, part Sorcerer, part Antonioni, contemplating where Cormac McCarthy's The Road left off. It's not making a grand statement about the hopelessness of the state of the world. It shows how random death stalks, that grief is universal, that we can't ignore the suffering of others because, again, we are all in this together.

Raft

Miroirs No. 3 (2025) - Petzold Christian Petzold, after many recent films with diverse themes and genres, goes back to the theme of his earlier films (The State I am In, Ghosts and Barbara) - the concept of family with Miroirs No. 3. When I talked with him after his film Barbara (2015) came out, this is what he told me about the theme of his films back then:

"Say, there is a shipwreck, and people are scrounging up to build a raft out of what's left over. Since 2000, all my movies are about this structural collapse (both economic and familial) and people trying to build a lifeboat to survive. So what's happening on the raft.... All these films, they are trying to rebuild something you can live with, out of the ruins.... We have to find little survival structures and I think that's what my movies are about."

With the world that seems more chaotic than ever - genocide in Gaza and Sudan, prolonged war in Ukraine, periodic school shootings and political violence and intensifying commercial colonialsm, I believe Petzold is looking inwards, and finding that the concept of family more important as ever.

Petzold is a master storyteller and it's not uncommon that everything he does has elaborate back stories. He chose Miroirs No. 3 as a title of his new film from Composer Maurice Ravel's 5 piece piano suite Miroirs. No.3 being titled Une barque sur l’océan/A Boat on the Ocean. Hence, the film about a makeshift family, completely makes sense.

The film concerns a music student Laura (Petzold's frequent collaborator, Paula Beer). She is seen a little disoriented in her surroundings, lost in her thoughts near the water's edge. When she gets to her apartment, her boyfriend, Jacob, and other couple friends are waiting for her. They are supposed to go away to the countryside. While being driven in the car, she notices an older woman Betty (Barbara Auer, also a Petzold alum) on the side of the road. As if she had a premonition, at a gas stop, Laura tells Jacob that she wants to go back home. Disappointed Jacob relents to her demands. He will drive her to the nearby train station to go back home.

On the way to the station, Laura notices Betty again and the car crashes. Jacob's dead but Laura is unscathed. Betty runs to the crash site and Laura, for some reason, wants to stay with Betty in her empty house indefinitely. It turns out Betty lost her daughter to suicide and her family broke apart. She was in a mental hospital and her mechanic husband Richard (another Petzold regular, Mathias Brandt) and their son Max (Enno Trebs), moved out. She was painting picket fences of her house while witnessing Laura's car crash. Not knowing Betty's family history, Laura and Betty carry on their living arrangement.

With Laura staying in Betty's untouched dead daughter's room, the two women fall into daily routine - gardening and cooking, while some neighbors gossip outside their house. Laura insists on cooking for Betty's family and they invite Richard and Max, who reluctantly come. "Betty's off her medication," Richard and Max say in their worried voices and sideway glances. Then they meet Laura and get warmed up in her presence and they also carry on their daily routine. Laura visits them in their garage, riding their dead daughter's bike, fixing meals. As long as Betty's happy, they would carry on their make-believe family.

At various points, the family members attempt to tell Laura the truth. And when the truth comes out, it freaks out Laura. It's too creepy for her and her real father from Berlin picks her up. They would never see her again.

Music plays a pivotal role in Miroirs No. 3. It connects characters, not in a superficial, tugging at your heart strings way, but more of a shared experience, that unspoken acknowledgement and understanding among people. Petzold, in his usual economical ways, presents smaller, tighter films with only a few main actors and locations. In terms of scale, The film has the look and feel of his last film, Afire, taking place in a rural setting.

The melodic piano composition of Miroirs No. 3 reflects the sound of the gentle waves. Whatever the circumstances of the people who are lost at sea in that scenario, the music is soothing and calm, reflecting on the comfort of a family. The white picket fence that Betty is painting also reflects the yearning for ideal family life. As the title suggests, everything is a reflection of what should have been. It's the idea of a perfect family that haunts Petzold's characters, even though they never had it in the first place. And it is this tragedy in the modern world that Petzold keeps stressing with his films: yearning for the ideal world that never has materialized under the capitalist system.

Paula Beer is, as always, magnificent as a troubled young woman who is missing something in her life. So is Petzold regular Barbara Auer and Mathias Brandt in their roles as deeply scarred parents over the death of their child.

As usual, Petzold's Miroirs No. 3 is a compact, masterful filmmaking with affecting performances. One of the year's best.

Elegy to Cinema

Resurrection (2025) - Bi After the impossible feat of Long Days Journey into Night, his sophomore film partly shot in 3D, Bi Gan, the wunderkind of Chinese cinema, comes up with a sumptuous epic that tells the history of cinema's past, present and future spanning the whole 20th century in Resurrection. In a lumbering 2 hr 40 min runtime, the film is divided into 5 chapters with different actors playing the same character, Fantasmer/dreamer. You see, in the future, people live forever because they don't dream. Fantasmers, because of their ability to dream, they burn bright but they don't last long. Perhaps a century.

Bi, with Kaili Blue and Long Days, cultivated cinema as a waking dream with languorous filmic language with implausibly long takes and dreamlike atmosphere. Resurrection, its ironic title notwithstanding, is an elegy to the cinema and its history. It starts out with the title cards, mimicking old silent movies of the turn of the century. With production design right out of German Expressionism, with Big Other, a maternal figure, played by Shu Qi (of numerous Hou Hsiao Hsien films), wakes Fantasmer (first played by Jackson Yee), an ogre like monster, from his slumber, to guide him through the century and send him off to his death at the end.

These dreams/stories moves from a mysterious murderer in a war time noir, then a smuggler meeting a spirit of bitterness in an abandoned old Buddhist temple, a con artist teaching a young girl card tricks for a big score, and a young punk falling in love with a vampire on the eve of the new century. Each elaborate chapter, dedicated to different senses, is shot in differing formats and styles, showcasing Bi's command of the artform.

And again, the 40-minute uncut last section of the film, spanning night to dawn, is a jaw-dropping cinematic feat that really needs to be seen to be believed. Taking place in and out of squalid urban slum by the water, camera follows two would be young lovers as they enter various rooms, industrial landscapes, seedy shops, and a nightclub filled with people, all captured in fluid motion of the camera gimbal in one take (shot by DP Dong Jingsong of Wild Goose Lake, Long Days Journey into Night). To make things even more incredible, POV changes in mid take to an all powerful mob boss who sings in a karaoke bar, who ends up stabbing our protagonist multiple times.

References are everywhere from Murnau to Wong Kar-wai to Jean Vigo and I'm sure there's a lot I didn't catch in my first viewing. But Resurrection is a staggering work of an artist with means (backed by CG Cinema and Arte France) to go big or go broke. While the premise being thin, Resurrection is a towering artistic achievement above the sea of mediocre offerings in the state of world cinema right now.

Commercial Colonialism

The Fence (2025) - Denis Taking place in one night, Claire Denis's new film The Fence charts both familiar and new territories for the 77-year old master filmmaker. Set in a fenced and heavily guarded industrial factory in an unnamed Western African country, The Fence once again invokes Denis's continued interests in post-colonial Africa (due to her upbringing in Cameroon) then and now.

Matt Dillon plays Horn, a grizzled foreman of the factory, who is in charge of workers. Except for his young lieutenant Carl (Tom Blyth), all workers and guards in the compound are black. Earlier in the day, a black worker died in an accident. And the victim's brother Alboury (Isaach De Bankolé) appears outside the fence, to claim his brother's body. But Horn has a lot on his plate: it's the eve of the handover, a Chinese company is taking over the ownership in coming days, and his newly wedded young wife Leonie (Mia McKenna-Bruce) is soon arriving from Britain. He tries to wave off the grieving brother by offering money, also utters thinly veiled threats of violence, but Alboury won't budge from the spot until he gets the body of his brother back.

Through several tension-filled exchanges between Horn and Alboury, we gather that Horn is deliberately delaying the release of the body, that the death wasn't really an accident and hot-headed Carl was directly responsible for the death. It becomes pretty clear that Horn is not only covering for his company, but also protecting Carl, that there is something more than a boss-worker relationship between them.

To make matters worse. Leonie arrives in her high heels with big luggages. At first naive and innocent, Leonie catches on quickly with the tension filled surroundings. Something is not right: it's not only no air conditioning and a shared bathroom, but the fenced off compound doesn't feel safe, despite her husband's repeated assurance.

From her debut film Chocolat, Beau Travail to White Material, Denis examined the colonization and its aftermath of the African continent by white Europeans. Entitlement, guilt, violence and eroticism were all there. Then she made films depicting the African diaspora experience in No Fear, No Die, I can't Sleep and 35 Shots of Rum with her trademark grace and sensuality. With The Fence, (shot by veteran French cinematographer Eric Gautier, their third collaboration after Both Sides of the Blade and Stars at Noon), the political message here is much more blunt. In the beginning of the film, there's a surreal sequence of a vicious dog biting the flesh off of a human with his brain exposed. The film is based on Bernard-Marie Koltès's play Black Battles with Dogs. Bankolé addresses the audience directly- breaking the fourth wall, “Every White man’s dream.”

Matt Dillon who became an European cinema darling recently, and here working with Denis for the first time. He makes a perfect white American company man. Tom Blyth is great as a volatile young man, so is McKenna-Bruce as a quick witted gold digger thrown into the tense situation that she has no business to be part of. But it’s Denis’s frequent collaborator De Bankolé’s towering presence that makes the mark as the grieving brother of the deceased, who knows that the death wasn’t an accident. His weathered face and dignified stare speaks volumes alone.

The rich minerals needed for anywhere from smart phones and computers to nuclear weapons attract global conglomerates. This time, the African continent in the 21st century is under commercial colonialism. Appeasing the local population is not the company policy.

Main actors engaging in long dialog as if it is a stage play, the dialog in The Fence seems a little stilted and on the nose. But it makes the point across more clearly. It’s a film that is more direct in messaging while retaining the sensuality and lyricism Denis is known for.