Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe star in Lars von Trier’s disturbingly primal yet compelling new film, Antichrist.

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MOVIE REVIEWS (Week of Nov. 13)

ANTICHRIST
Starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe
Directed by Lars von Trier
4 stars (out of 5)
Lars von Trier’s latest assault on viewers’ senses and sensibilities refuses to be ignored. By the time its end credits roll, many in attendance will be appalled by what they’ve just seen. Others will be moved to defend the Danish provocateur. Either opinion is entirely justifiable. What seems inconceivable is that anyone might be capable of summarily dismissing one of the year’s most challenging films. Mark my words: This one will haunt you.

Capturing von Trier at his unhinged and extreme zenith, the film depicts the most harrowing marital breakdown this side of Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession (a Cannes cause célèbre back in 1981, just as Antichrist was this past spring). After the death of their son, He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) retreat to their cabin in the woods to help her cope with her grief. A trained therapist, He is loaded with smug affirmations and rational systems. Conversely, She is prone to cryptic utterances such as, “Women do not control their own bodies. Nature does.” When She later suggests that “nature is Satan’s church,” you have some hint as to the utter mayhem that will soon unfold.

While the proceedings may be littered with excesses (genitals are mutilated; a fox hisses, “Chaos reigns!”), the raw emotion that fuels these passages is undeniably genuine. The film was conceived when von Trier was mired in a deep depression, and every ounce of the filmmaker’s anguish has been channelled into the tragic figure inhabited by the fearless Gainsbourg. In witnessing her descent into madness, sitting in a movie theatre becomes akin to a primal experience. As the fight-or-flight instincts kick in, one must “have the courage to stay in the situation that frightens you.” By doing so, you might just achieve some dark reward. —Curtis Woloschuk

TETRO
Starring Vincent Gallo, Alden Ehrenreich
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
3 stars (out of 5)
Marking a significant step in the right direction after 2007’s problematic Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola’s second self-produced indie has many of the key components in place. It’s just a shame these individual elements don’t coalesce into a more satisfying whole.

In focusing on the trials of an artistic family, Coppola introduces us to 17-year-old Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich) as he arrives at his half-brother Tetro’s (Vincent Gallo) doorstep. A decade earlier, Tetro fled New York and his domineering father for Buenos Aires. Having weathered a spell in an institution, the would-be writer considers himself divorced from his family and has no interest in reconciling with Bennie. However, the younger sibling persists at insinuating himself into Tetro’s life, uncovering several guarded secrets in the process.

If nothing else, Tetro confirms that Gallo is still capable of actually acting and not just carrying on like a self-important jackass. His finest showing in a decade, the mercurial performer perfectly embodies the frustrated “genius without the accomplishments.” As he’s worn down by Ehrenreich’s wide-eyed earnestness, Gallo continues to unveil new facets of his character, revealing him to be a complex creation. Also noteworthy is the spirited turn by Maribel Verdú as Tetro’s long-suffering yet stalwart girlfriend.

Coppola’s overstuffed script ultimately undermines his visually rich and operatic film. The filmmaker’s first original screenplay since The Conversation feels like an amalgam of every notion that’s enchanted him over the past 35 years. After a measured opening hour, Tetro’s second half frustratingly digresses into road trips, sex romps, Fellini-esque set pieces, and full-on melodrama. For the third entry in his self-proclaimed “second career,” one can only hope that Coppola tempers his renewed exuberance for his craft with a greater degree of focus. —CW

INSIDE HANA’S SUITCASE
Directed by Larry Weinstein
4 stars (out of 5)
Closely following the events set down in Karen Levine’s acclaimed book Hana’s Suitcase, Inside Hana’s Suitcase begins with the Auschwitz Museum sending a suitcase from its collection to Tokyo Holocaust Museum director Fumiko Ishioka. Fascinated by the case and its contents, Ishioka is compelled to unravel the story of the little Jewish girl the suitcase once belonged to. After an exhaustive search, Ishioka finds Hana Brady’s older brother living in Toronto, and the two work together to bring her sad, tragic tale to light.

You’d think a journey as incredible and compelling as that of Hana’s suitcase would have sparked at least one Hollywood blockbuster by now (Renee Zellweger, as Ishioka, was once attached to an ill-fated studio effort), but Hana’s brother, George, instead gave the story to Toronto filmmaker Larry Weinstein. The result is a powerful, beautiful, and heartbreaking film that blurs the line between documentary and theatrical filmmaking.

Interweaving documentary techniques, narration by schoolchildren familiar with the story, grainy black-and-white reenactments, and unexpectedly powerful animation, Weinstein takes what could have been an over-the-top tearjerker (Zellweger, remember?) and transforms it into a poignant tale that’s part historical tragedy, part engaging mystery spanning three continents, and part portrait of the rage, guilt, and acceptance of a Holocaust survivor (the supremely affecting George Brady).

Reverent without being cloying, and revolutionary in its use of screen techniques, Inside Hana’s Suitcase is an inspired film, and a fitting monument not only to the titular heroine but to the other six-million lives that were cut short by the Nazis. —Steven Schelling

PIRATE RADIO
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh
Directed by Richard Curtis
1 star (out of 5)
Writer-director Richard Curtis (Notting Hill, Love Actually) has never made do with one storyline where half a dozen might conceivably be slapped together. With Pirate Radio, he’s attempted to write a love letter to the maverick offshore broadcasters who beamed rock ’n’ roll into the homes of a newly liberated Britain during the mid-1960s, when government-controlled commercial stations refused to do so. But he can’t decide which of several movies he wants to make: a lighthearted but authentic sociohistorical study, a father-and-son reunion parable, a triumph-of-the-human-spirit crowd-rouser, or a knowingly archaic piece of Austin Powers-style slapstick. So he gives us all of these things, and none of them work.

As a government minister (Kenneth Branagh) works to shut it down, an expelled schoolboy, Carl (Tom Sturridge), is brought on board the pirate ship Radio Rock to spend time with his godfather (Bill Nighy), who is the ship’s captain. His errant mother hopes a spell at sea will straighten Carl out; instead, he’s introduced to sex, adult-male camaraderie, and the notion that all women (including lesbians) are monosyllabic idiots straight out of a Benny Hill episode. Radio is pretty much incidental to the shenanigans.

By the time the final act belatedly rolls around — amidst a veritable Time-Life avalanche of classic-rock hits — Pirate Radio has become so confused as to its purpose that you sense Curtis succumbed to a kind of hysterical breakdown, with seemingly dozens of loose ends scrambling to tie themselves up as the clock ticks past the two-hour mark. Chances are, though, that you’ll either be asleep or in the nearest bar, intent on forgetting what you’ve just been through. —Michael White


2012
Starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet
Directed by Roland Emmerich
2 stars (out of 5)
Proof that a $250-million budget can still buy you the faintest of praise: director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) keeps 2012 from lapsing into the epic idiocy of last year’s 10,000 BC. This bloated tale of grand-scale calamity supplies some intermittently compelling silliness and manages to elude an “utter disaster” designation.

With the Earth’s core redlining and seismic activity running amok, geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has declared that Armageddon is imminent. While the world’s governments draw up clandestine plans, novelist Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) and his family are seemingly singled out and stalked by the apocalypse. After bailing on California as its collapses into the Pacific and escaping Yellowstone National Park as it goes volcanic, Jackson’s brood sets course for humanity’s last hope, hidden somewhere in the mountains of China.

Taking its casting cues from the star-studded disaster films of the 1970s, 2012 is loaded with actors — Tom McCarthy, Danny Glover, and Oliver Platt amongst them — capable of lending stock characters some semblance of depth and humanity. Cusack provides a solid everyman anchor for the film, and Ejiofor maintains his dignity despite being saddled with some truly insufferable speechifying. Refreshingly, Woody Harrelson openly acknowledges the movie’s inherent ridiculousness and swings for the fences as an unhinged conspiracy nut.

While the CGI spectacles of mass destruction don’t disappoint, they do offer diminishing returns. Emmerich unwisely plays his best card — the methodical destruction of L.A. — first, leaving the subsequent mayhem to pale by comparison. By the time the monster tidal waves finally roll in for an overdue and thoroughly underwhelming climax, the majority of viewers will find themselves wishing that Emmerich would just get the end of the world over with already. — CW

I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL
Starring Matt Czuchry, Jesse Bradford
Directed by Bob Gosse
(zero stars)
This film is so infinitely stupid. But, really, what more could be expected from a film based on the novel by bestselling professional douchebag Tucker Max? After all, he’s the man who “hilariously” writes about women vomiting and shitting on his penis during the myriad sexual misadventures chronicled famously on his blog, which is revered by frat boys and 12-year-olds everywhere. Given Tucker’s absurd popularity and the considerable hype surrounding his movie-based-on-a-book, one would think the film would contain at least a shred of compositional merit or narrative cohesion.

Not so.

The amateur, immature, scattershot production is so shoddy it looks as if the Granville Entertainment District got together to make a feature film. The result is an offense to moviegoers more than it is an insult to feminists and women. No easy feat, considering Tucker’s legendary misogyny and the actors’ uncanny ability to stare at women the same way bratty nine-year-olds disrespect their teachers.

The most infuriating aspect of the film, however, lies in its incredible hypocrisy. The tired plotline of a bachelor party gone awry is predictable and boring, and its supposed appeal lies entirely in its shock value: midget sex, deaf-girl sex, explosive diarrhea. But it relies so heavily on conservative values (fidelity, marriage) that any attempts at revelatory upset fall flat.

Audiences could waste their time sitting through this abomination to become enraged that Tucker Max actually exists (as a pop icon or in general), but why bother? After all, those who find this movie funny are only embarrassing themselves. —Jackie Wong