Review: "The Little Stranger"

“The Little Stranger” is a very different sort of ghost story.

There are thumps in the night and strange scratchings on wardrobes and all of that. But it’s more a tale of psychological obsession than supernatural boogums. It’s a claustrophobic, deeply immersive gothic horror film that takes its own sweet time getting to the scares -- and even then they come sideways from where you expected.

Domhnall Gleeson plays Dr. Faraday, a youngish country physician who finds himself summoned for a house call at Hundreds Hall, the crumbling mansion of the noble but decaying Ayers family. He’s intrigued -- his mother worked there as a maid decades ago, and he himself visited the place for a ceremony as a young boy, a grand day that lives large in his memories.

Now, in the post-World War II years, Hundreds is looking more like Dozens. The only residents are the matriarch, Angela (Charlotte Rampling), and her children Roderick (Will Poulter) and Caroline (Ruth Wilson), plus a maid, Betty (Liv Hill), who’s barely into her teens. Every year they have to sell off more of the immense acreage to pay their taxes and keep the brandy cart stocked.

Roddy was in the RAF during the war and left badly scarred and crippled. Faraday -- no first name is every supplied -- has an idea to treat his limp with electrical impulses, and over the next few weeks something like a kinship forms. The mother is serene and superior, her funds meager but her entitlement in high reserves, and she looks upon Farraday as an uppity village boy who made good but will never be their equals.

Caroline is intriguing, though. Described as the smartest of the clan, she’s stuck caring for her brother and mother, not to mention trying to keep the house from falling down around them. While Faraday carefully plays the role of the family friend, Caroline sees to it that most of his attention falls on her. People in the community talk about the state of affairs, but without resentment.

This is a very interior performance by Gleeson, a chameleon-like actor who is quietly asserting himself among the finest performers of his generation. Faraday often wears a stern look, staring at people with a mix of keen observation and concealed longing. With his strawberry locks pasted against his skull and bits of fiery hair above his eyes and lips, he seems both very old and very young at once.

Without giving away too much, it seems the root of the family’s problems lies with the eldest daughter, Susie, who took ill and died not long after Faraday’s childhood visit. Angela becomes convinced that her spirit is still residing in the halls, and physical manifestations start appearing to confirm her suspicions.

Director Lenny Abrahamson’s last film was the mesmerizing “Room,” and some of that same sense of closed-in space is at work here, too. While Hundreds Hall is vast, it weighs upon the characters like a putrefying corpse in danger of suffocating them. Lucinda Coxon (“The Danish Girl”) wrote the screenplay based upon the novel by Sarah Waters.

I appreciated the dusky, warbling moods of “The Little Stranger,” though the film teases out the mysteries of its narrative to the breaking point, and then a little further. It’s mostly interesting as a psychological portrait of a man who is always helpful and polite, the very picture of a true English gentleman, yet seems to have a smudge on his soul he can’t quite blot out.

Review: "Detroit"

Political correctness is a sordid game I refuse to play. But even I admit I’m uncomfortable with a feature film about the 1967 Detroit riots with an almost entirely white creative team.

Director Kathryn Bigelow reteams with her “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Hurt Locker” screenwriter, Mark Boal, in a film that attempts to look at the watershed civic unrest from the perspective of African-Americans who suffered at the hands of brutal police tactics. While most of the cast is black, the movie struggles to get over a sense of existing more to soothe white guilt than chronicle a racist tragedy.

Indeed, the first words we see or hear refer to the 1967 riots, also known as the 12th Street riots, as “the Detroit Rebellion.” I don’t know any serious historian who would use that term, which refers to an organized uprising designed to topple the power hierarchy, either by replacing the exiting government or splitting off from it.

Somehow, I doubt even the people who took to the streets, throwing rocks and setting storefronts on fire, would have called their actions a rebellion. They were simply enraged at being continually abused and stepped upon, and reached a point where they didn’t want to take it anymore.

I admired the film but got stuck on the fact this wasn’t the movie I was expecting. This is not a comprehensive look at the root causes of the unrest, the tactics undertaken by authorities to quell the violence, or the aftermath suffered by a community that struggles to this day to overcome that dark moment in history.

Indeed, if any moment can be pinpointed as the tipping point of when the great modern divide in America began -- between cities and suburbs, whites and those of color, blue and red -- the ’67 riot is it.

Although Bigelow and Boal start their story in the streets, this is really the tale of the Algiers Motel incident. Largely forgotten now amidst the bigger backdrop of the riots, this was the case of Detroit police officers, state police and national guardsmen detaining a group of young black men and two 18-year-old white women after gunshots were heard from the annex of the motel, a party spot a few blocks away from the mayhem.

Over the course of several hours, the suspects -- who were never charged with anything -- were beaten, abused, assaulted. It became clear the white officers were angered by white girls dallying with black boys. Three black men were fatally shot, with trumped-up excuses after the fact to justify self-defense by the officers. It was, as depicted in the film, essentially torture.

Anthony Mackie plays one of the victims, a recently discharged Army soldier, and Hannah Murray plays the mouthy girl. Algee Smith is Larry, lead singer of an up-and-coming Motown group called The Dramatics, who gets caught up along with his manager (Jacob Latimore).

Baby-faced Will Poulter is the central villain as the police officer directing the interrogation; earlier in the day we watched him pump two shotgun blasts into the back of a looter carrying groceries. Jay Reynor and Ben O’Toole are his wing men, dim and deliberate, respectively.

John Beyega is more or less the central character as Mel Dismukes, an African-American man working as a private security officer protecting a nearby business. He continually inserts himself into situations, using his uniform and officious demeanor to stave off some of the worst law enforcement abuses of black folks.

The film unequivocally presents Dismukes as a hero, when in fact he was charged with abusing the Algiers suspects along with the three police. All were found not guilty (though not, as the movie condenses, in the same trial).

Exactly what happened in the motel remains sketchy even today, though the movie carelessly presents its own version with crisp black-and-white lines, knowing this is what will be etched into the public consciousness.

From a narrative and technical standpoint, “Detroit” is a very well-crafted film that strings the audience’s emotions along with an expert hand. What’s less clear is who this movie is about, or for.

Video review: "The Revenant"

In my original review of “The Revenant” I predicted it would be a love-it-or-hate-it film, and I was even more right than I knew. People who had a year earlier divided by Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Birdman” quickly chose up sides again, mostly falling into the same camps.

But I switched teams. I thought Iñárritu’s direction mostly showed restraint, using roving cameras and other cinematic tricks largely in service to the story, rather than for their own sake. (As was the case with the overwrought “Birdman.”)

Leonardo DiCaprio deservedly won his first Oscar for his near-wordless portrayal of Hugh Glass, a real 18th-century scout who was mauled by a bear and left for dead by his companions. In their defense, the party was deep in the wilderness and many of them had just been killed in an attack by American Indians, and were still being chased.

Glass spends weeks dragging his maimed body through a barren frozen wasteland, with death waiting at nearly every turn. The film has a spare, harsh beauty to it that’s undeniable.

Tom Hardy is a brooding presence as John Fitzgerald, a Machiavellian member of the group who advocates leaving Glass behind to die, but then volunteers when a large bounty is offered to guard him. Of course, his intentions are less than pure.

I also liked Forrest Goodluck, a novice actor who plays Glass’ half-Indian son. He doesn’t say a lot, but his face conveys much without words.

Based on the “historical novel” by Michael Punke, “The Revenant” can be tough to watch. The bear attack itself, done mostly with CGI, is a technical marvel. The real gruesomeness, though, comes in watching a man who’s literally been torn apart struggle and refuse to die.

It’s a grim existential journey worth the investment of 2½ hours of your time.

Bonus features are disappointingly scanty. The blu-ray comes with a making-of documentary, “A World Unseen” – and that’s it.


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Review: "The Revenant"

I was not a fan of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s work on “Birdman,” which won the Academy Awards for Best Picture, screenplay and directing. I felt the filmmaker undermined Michael Keaton’s masterful performance with his (over)long takes and tracking shots. It stole our attention from the story and performance in favor of the direction, screaming “look at me!”

Iñárritu uses many of the same techniques in “The Revenant,” but much more modestly and effectively. In relating the harrowing story of a frontier trapper mauled by a bear and left for dead by his companions, the director employs his considerable skillset in service to the main character rather than for its own sake.

As Hugh Glass literally crawls hundreds of miles along the ground or plunges into angry icy rivers to escape those who would murder him, the camera work heightens his peril by making it a shared experience. It’s also one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s most compelling performances, and a largely wordless one.

The final result is an exemplary iteration of an old-school form of “you are there” adventure filmmaking that has seen a resurgence with films like “Gravity,” putting the audience right into the action next to the main character. I’m not sure if the film amounts to anything more than a grim and enthralling tale of existential survival, but I admired it for what it is.

Based on a true story, as translated by the “historical novel” by Michael Punke, the screenplay by Iñárritu and Mark L. Smith is narratively similar to last summer’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” in that it begins right in the middle of the action and barely stops. Characters reveal their inner selves through their behavior, not speeches.

A trapping and hunting expedition led by Captain Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) is ambushed by American Indians who want the pelts for themselves – and resent the interlopers fouling their ancestral grounds. Also, the chief (a quietly powerful Duane Howard) searches for his daughter, kidnapped by white men.

Many are killed, but due to Glass’ level-headed leadership they manage to escape downriver, including his own teenage son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), who is part Indian. Flashbacks and rumors divulge that Glass himself lived among the native people for many years, until his wife was killed by French soldiers. This does not endear him to his fellows.

Then Glass, the lead scout, is horrendously wounded when he chances upon a mother grizzly protecting her cubs. It’s hard stuff to watch as a man is tossed around like a rag doll, even harder when his clothes are removed to reveal ghastly rents in his flesh.

Glass seems sure to die, and John Fitzgerald, a self-serving member of the party played with morose charisma by Tom Hardy, urges them to put Glass out of his misery, as the Indians are still in pursuit. But Henry offers a large bounty to anyone who will stay behind with Glass until he dies, then give a proper burial.

Fitzgerald volunteers to join Hawk and another boy, Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), in guarding the man. But greed and fear lead to tragic results, and Glass wakes from his coma to find himself all alone, near death and without any tools or provisions. All he can do is scrape his bones along the rugged ground.

This section is just merciless to watch, a proud man reduced to a wasted expanse of bloody flesh and a few primordial instincts. At one point Glass finds some clean water to drink, but discovers that it leaks out of his torn throat before it can make its way down his gullet. He perseveres, and persists.

“The Revenant” is an enthralling film to look upon, nearly monochromatic and with a sort of spare, harsh beauty. I suspect this movie will divide audiences, many of whom will not care for its wintry tale of death and revenge. For those who can appreciate bleakness, it’s a haunting vision that lingers.