Hatching (2022): There’s a lot going for this Finnish movie, Hannah Bergholm’s first feature film. It looks at a fraught mother-daughter relationship, part of a seemingly picture-perfect family. Young Tinja has to cope with the pressure of her first gymnastics competition, her mother’s affair/open relationship and the big humanoid bird she hatches out of an innocuous egg. The bird, Alli, is a projection of trauma, and she conjures a striking presence thanks to the practical effects employed. As the abstraction becomes more and more real, identifying with Tinja herself, the movie escalates things and concludes in harrowingly poetic fashion. A real treat, this one. 8
Aloners (2021): The solitude epidemic inhabits this debut feature by Hong Sung-eun. Set in South Korea, we are presented with Jina (Gong Seung-yeon), a young call-center operator who loves nothing more than to not interact with other human beings. She is borderline robotic and distinctly cold, but there are hints at a person behind this façade, particularly after being challenged by the death of an equally hermitic neighbour. Her humanity starts to seep through Jina’s melancholy, piercing gaze as she’s supposed to train a young girl to become an operator herself and the case for human connection is made. The movie becomes “warmer” as it progresses, but in spite of a fascination with the esthetic, I’m not sure it ever digs quite deep enough to establish itself as more than an intriguing exploration of solitude. 7
Benedetta (2021): An 80 year-old Paul Verhoeven wrote and directed this intriguing movie about a 17th century nun who purported to be saintly, while struggling with various erotic visions – and manifestations. It’s a semi-factual tale led by Virginie Efira, alongside a cast that includes Charlotte Rampling, Lambert Wilson and Daphne Patakia. Verhoeven doesn’t dawdle much on the question of legitimacy, but rather focuses on the political side of things, at a time when the black plague ravaged central Europe. Benedetta is portrayed as both perpetrator and victim, caught in the stranglehold of her times, and Efira’s performances goes a long way to sell this. Alas, there is something both prosaic and profane to the movie, which stifles the raw nature of its central character. 7
World War Z (2013): Celebrating a decade since the release of this zombie film that so obviously demanded a sequel, but never got one, WWZ is one of the fresh takes on the zombie post-apocalypse. Starring Brad Pitt as the luckiest man on earth and an expert sponge for whatever interesting exposition the other characters have to transmit, the movie overcomes the trite sphere it so often descends into by having some of the most visceral zombies around. These fellows are fast and don’t care about self-harm at all, which allows for very effective set-pieces and one of the most memorable “barricade breaks” in the genre. There are elements of the story that don’t mesh so well, with particularly the family sub-plot playing out as tired, but other than that, what we have here is a case of plain old zombie mayhem fun. 7
The Blackening (2022): I had seen a couple of movies by Tim Story (the classic Barbershop and Think Like a Man) and I found both to be mildly entertaining. With The Blackening, everything aligns and we’re served a horror-comedy that clicks most of the time, with memorable characters and some healthy twists to the formula. The story is themed around a cabin in the woods kind of situation, but with an all-out African-American demographic. So, you know, who’s going to die first if all characters are diversity hires? A phoned in villain works so-so, but this is just a movie with a vibe that works very well within its genre. 7
tributary stu 