Review: "Black Widow"

We’re in an interesting phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) right now, somewhat adrift -- but also open to fresh possibilities.

A decade of carefully interlocking movies culminated with “Avengers: Endgame,” with a number of pivotal characters definitively dying (not just “ashed” and then came back a la the Infinity Stones.) Now they’re turning up in Disney+ streaming shows like “WandaVision” and “Loki” and, with “Black Widow,” the first post-“Endgame” feature film.

(As you may recall, it was supposed to be released more than a year ago, so absent COVID it would have been out months before those shows.)

How does the movie get around the death of Natasha Romanoff, aka the former Russian superspy Black Widow? That’s easy enough: the story is set five years ago, in the in-between space after “Captain America: Civil War” and before “Infinity War,” when she was on the lam from her own government.

This film is essentially an origin story/reexamination of the character, with star Scarlett Johansson getting a chance to show more color and shadings for Natasha. We saw bits and pieces of them in the movies, but they had to be squeezed in between the big story pieces and male dominance of the MCU.

These are really the best parts of “Black Widow” -- learning about how Natasha morphed from abandoned kid to international heroine, dealing with lingering family schism (more on that in a minute) and exploring her journey from tragedy to redemption. This is a character who has outwardly expressed impervious confidence while hiding enough self-loathing to fill a Dostoevsky novel.

The action scenes are plentiful -- a little too much so, imho -- and can get repetitive, bordering on dull. Of course, we’re dealing with all normal, if exceptional, humans here with a paucity of super powers on display. There’s a self-conscious acknowledgement of this, with someone mentioning to Natasha that she previously enjoyed protection because people were afraid to come after her and risk retaliation from one of the “big Avengers.”

I’m not a big Avenger? she wryly challenges.

Australian director Cate Shortland (“Lore”) comes from an indie background, which probably explains why her character scenes are so compelling and the fighting stuff is a little jumbled. The screenplay by Eric Pearson, with story by Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson, starts with Natasha as a disaffected preteen in 1995 living in Ohio as part of a family that’s just a spy op cover.

Rachel Weisz and David Harbour play their parents, and will turn up again in the more modern section. She was a brilliant scientist and he was the Red Guardian, a super-strong analogue to Captain America. Weisz does her woman-of-mystery thing to a T, and Harbour has fun playing a loud-mouthed blowhard always ready for fight, the guy who thinks he’s coaching the team when really he’s the mascot.

Florence Pugh is terrific as Yelena, Natasha’s long-lost kid sister, now an adept spy/badass herself. She harbors an ocean of resentment against her more famous sibling, and even coyly mocks the overplayed “superhero jump landing” thing (already dinged in the second “Deadpool”). She brings a jaded Gen Z cool to the table.

Of course, none of them are really related to each other, but they gradually come around to the idea that they’re the closest thing to a family any of them has.

The heavy is Ray Winstone as Dreykov, a Russian mastermind who has been building an army of all-female “Widows” assassins, for which Natasha set the mold. Back in her day they underwent psychological conditioning to break their will, but this new generation is chemically altered to obey. Olga Kurylenko turns up as an especially notable recruit.

I won’t argue that “Black Widow” is one of the best MCU movies. In fact, I’d put it toward the lower end of the pool with “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” It’s got a lot of elements that feel like retreads of earlier S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff, right up to a vertically enhanced headquarters called the Red Room.

But even if the blammo stuff is a little stale, Johansson gets a chance to flex thespian muscles in ways we hadn’t seen before for this character. Will there be another Black Widow movie, a la resurrection or more backstory stuff like this? We’ll see, but it was worth the wait for her to get a chance to shoulder her way past the boys to the front line.

Video review: "Berlin Syndrome"

As I was researching video release details about “Berlin Syndrome,” I saw its genre described by one source as “Sex Horror.” After a good chuckle, I realized that’s as apt a description as there is.

I’d heard it called a revival of the “torture porn” fad from a decade or so back, and superficially there are resemblances to “Hostel” and its ilk – visitor in a strange land is captured and increasingly nasty things done to (usually a) her. But “Berlin Syndrome” is less physically grisly than psychologically harrowing, as a kidnapped woman navigates a fraught quasi-relationship with her captor.

Teresa Palmer plays Clare, an Australian wannabe photographer from Brisbane (“BRIS-bun,” she corrects her host, not “Briz-bane”) visiting Germany to take pictures of buildings, experience life and maybe publish a book out of it. She’s doing it the cheap/student pathway, staying in hostels and limiting her purchases to kitschy little nooks.

Then she bumps into Andi (Max Riemelt), an intense/charming local who shows her some hidden corners of Berlin. A bit awkward and self-doubting, Clare allows herself to be quickly romanced and bedded.

Curiously, he accidentally locks her in his apartment the next morning while he goes to work as an English teacher. He lives in a remote old building on the far end of a courtyard, and no one can hear her calls for help. He returns and they commence canoodling again, with some light teasing about remembering to leave the key this time.

Then it happens again, and Clare discovers the windows are unbreakable, her cell phone has disappeared and she’s really his captive.

Director Cate Shortland, working from a script by Shaun Grant, goes through the usual motions of Clare frantically searching out ways to escape, including physical confrontation with the much stronger Andi. But the filmmakers are more concerned with how things play out emotionally between these people.

Time goes on, weeks turning into months. Andi has been using her phone to text reassuring messages to her mother. Meanwhile, he navigates a fraught relationship with his father (Matthias Habich), who wonders why his son keeps getting into romances with tourists whom he never gets to meet.

Andi seems convinced they’re in an actual relationship, and after an initial period of fear and loathing, Clare starts to act that way, too. (The title is reference to “Stockholm Syndrome,” a psychological phenomenon in which the kidnapped come to identify with their captors.) She dresses sexily for him and allows him to take Polaroids of her for his scrapbook. It should come as no surprise that Clare eventually learns this is not Andi’s first go-round in such a weird arrangement.

“Berlin Syndrome” is an interesting, disturbing film with a decent amount of tension. I found it an odd choice to focus more and more on Andi’s story than Clare’s, especially in the second half. There’s only so many shots you can have of her aimlessly wandering around the apartment, I guess.

The lesson is that the line between passion and fear is a lot thinner than we’d care to think.

Alas, my aforementioned research was in vain: I couldn’t find any details about Blu-ray/DVD bonus features. Rather than assuming there aren’t any, I’ll forego assigning a grade.

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Video review: "Lore"

We are used to all sorts of stories about depravity and inhumanity during World War II. There have even been a number of wonderful movies about the struggles of children to survive the Holocaust and mayhem – “Europa, Europa,” “Au Revoir Les Enfants,” “Empire of the Sun.”

But “Lore” may be the first movie to examine the plight of Nazi children displaced and abandoned by the war. This Australian-German production is about a teenage girl who must lead her younger siblings hundreds of miles to the safety after the German fatherland falls to the Allies.

Lore (a terrific Saskia Rosendahl) struggles to keep her brothers and sister in line, who range from preteen down to an infant. The sight of these well-heeled kids rambling across the countryside with suitcases and a baby carriage is evocative, and heartrending.

Things grow more complicated when they encounter an older boy on the road, another wayward refugee, who turns out to be a Jewish survivor of the concentration camps. Lives are imperiled, and tragedy visits upon the little troupe of youngsters.

At first we are mean to identify with Lore, but our feelings grow more ambiguous when we learn that her parents’ odious lessons have been absorbed, at least in part, by their oldest child.

“Lore” is not the sort of film to ask or offer easy answers. Director Cate Shortland provides a plaintive, harrowing portrait of the way war and hatred infect the soul.

The video release is being accompanied with a decent collection of extras. These include a making-of documentary, an alternate ending, deleted scenes and a panel discussion with cast and crew. There is also a featurettes, “Memories of A German Girl,” that looks back on the war from a child’s perspective.

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Review: "Lore"

 Even with so many thousands of cinematic stories inspired by the events surrounding World War II, it never fails to surprise me when I encounter something new and unexpected about that dark hour of human history.

Case in point: “Lore,” the tale of a family of children separated from their parents and forced to march hundreds of miles through uncertain territory. Here’s the twist: the kids are Germans, offspring of high-status Nazis, and their encounters with American and Russian conquerors upend everything they were ever taught.

Lore, simply by virtue of being the oldest at about 15, is designated as the leader of the intrepid group. Their mission is to find their way to their grandmother’s house, more than 500 miles away, while their parents turn themselves in to the Allied authorities. Mother (Ursina Lardi) gives them money and her jewelry to barter, but with the trains shut down it soon becomes clear their journey will be arduous.

This would be hard enough for an adult, but in addition to younger sister Liesel (Nele Trebs), Lore must oversee rambunctious twin boys Günther and Jürgen (André Frid and Mika Seidel) and their infant brother, Peter. The sight of this awkward little band trudging across the countryside, dressed in their upper-class clothes and pushing a baby carriage, is at once endearing and off-putting.

The role of Lore is an extremely challenging one, but Saskia Rosendahl pulls it off remarkably well. At first the audience is encouraged to root for her as she finds ways to overcome adversity, keeping her siblings alive, fed and moving toward their goal. Later, though, we learn that the horrifying lessons of the Third Reich have been instilled in her since birth, and we are repelled by her prejudices and compartmentalization of suffering.

But slowly Lore comes to question her upbringing. She’s spurred in part by photos of concentration camps that all Germans are required to view. In one, she spots a German officer who may be her father (Hans-Jochen Wagner).

Things really shift when Thomas (Kai Malina) tags along with their group, and eventually becomes their de facto protector. An older boy with thin hair and a lined face, Thomas eventually reveals himself to be a Jewish refugee of the Holocaust. Ironically, after years of being alienated and abused under the German Reich, he finds that his status as a Jew helps cut red tape at border crossings and such.

Lore is at first repulsed by having a Jew in their midst, insisting he not touch her and sit far away while eating. But she’s also attracted by his survivor’s resolve and kindness toward the children.

“Lore” was directed by Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland, who re-wrote the screenplay by Robin Mukherjee, based on a portion of the novel “The Dark Room” by Rachel Seiffert. Shortland shoots in an abstract, almost lyrical way, using close-ups of small details and shimmering images to suggest Lore becoming uncoupled from her roots, both geographically and morally.

“Lore” may be a challenging for some viewers not used to seeing the war and those affected by it from the German perspective. But it’s a worthwhile and well-told tale that is meant to discomfort the audience, not soothe them.

3 stars out of four