“The Double”
The whimsy of Richard Ayoade’s “Submarine” transforms into something nefarious in “The Double,” a hilarious, creepy, topsy-turvy Fyodor Dostoevsky adaptation that sees Jesse Eisenberg giving two equally brilliant and ultimately very different performances. Like the hero of “Submarine,” the downtrodden working-class schlemiel at the center of “The Double” has a perception of himself that’s at odds with who he is in his day-to-day life. Unlike the hero of “Submarine,” “The Double’s” tormented Everyman protagonist is eventually set upon by an über-confident doppelganger who acts as his unhinged id made manifest: in other words, he’s everything Eisenberg’s forlorn central loser is not. We all struggle with our self-image from time to time and while “The Double” is surely resonant on that front, it’s Ayoade and co-writer Avi Korine’s insights into toxic male wish fulfillment and the solitude of solipsism that distinguish this filmmaker’s sophomore outing as more than just a gimmick masquerading as a movie. – NL
“Enemy”
What could constitute an existential crisis more than discovering there is another version of yourself out in the world? A version that looks, sounds, and moves just like you, yet if you didn’t stumble upon their existence by accident, you would never even know they were there at all. What happens when the most basic fundamental perceptions we hold true – that we are in some way unique from the billions of other people on this Earth – are shattered in an instance? Thankfully, director Denis Villeneuve isn’t particularly interested in answering those questions. Instead, Villeneuve imagines a dreary, sickly yellow metropolis that confines our protagonist(s) Adam and Anthony (both played by Jake Gyllenhaal), creating a claustrophobic sense of unease as the two seemingly parallel lives begin to intertwine. A film that can easily be applied with the same type of dream logic and unanswerable questions as a David Lynch film, “Enemy” is sort of a choose-your-own-adventure that can service your own mirrored existential questions or just operate as an effective, lean and mean piece of Cronenberg-inspired horror. Regardless, Villeneuve has crafted one of his best films, one that teases its audience with fragmented pieces of nightmare-inducing imagery while preying on our darkest desires, fears of intimacy and the inherently human quest for individuality. – MR
“First Reformed”
“Who can know the mind of God?” That’s the question at the center of Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed,” the last great American movie made about a collective crisis of faith. Schrader’s film asks us this: how do ordinary people maintain conviction and true belief in a world where humanity is living on borrowed time? 2020 was a trying year; on certain days, it seemed like knocking back a glass of whiskey spiked with Pepto-Bismol was the only way to make sense of what a circus our world has become. “First Reformed” is about a species that refuses to hold itself accountable for environmental collapse, to the point where even so-called pious men are pushed to the brink. The movie’s very memeable final frames are rooted in another of the screenplay’s finest quotes: “A life without despair is a life without hope.” – NL
“High Life”
Living through a pandemic like COVID-19 has reignited conversations about our broken medical and financial systems, but one topic that’s unfortunately gone overlooked is how it’s affected our equally broken judicial system. It’s hard to think of a recent film that’s managed to tap into the existential/moralistic crisis of imprisonment than Claire Denis’ profoundly visceral “High Life.” Simultaneously her most mainstream and divisive film to date, “High Life” sees the influential French director putting her own spin on the space film the same way she did her equally brutal and disturbing take on the vampire film, “Trouble Every Day.” Following a group of death row inmates (Robert Pattinson, Andre Benjamin, and Mia Goth among them) confined to a ship orbiting towards a black hole in the deepest regions of space, Denis refused to move in a more mainstream direction for English-language debut, instead bringing her usual themes of alienation, colonization and sexual deviances to the sci-fi genre. In the film, Denis probes our most primal desires and fears to create a dystopian vision of incarceration and the inherent cruelty of human nature. A space odyssey more interested in the psychological unraveling of its inhabitants than bogging down its plot in unnecessary exposition, “High Life” is a frighteningly relevant portrait of losing yourself when forced to isolate from the rest of society. – MR
“Hour of the Wolf”
Ingmar Bergman defines “the hour of the wolf,” i.e. 3am, as “the hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are more real.” “Hour of the Wolf” is Ingmar Bergman’s most terrifying film, embracing outright horror iconography to spin a tale about the inherent emptiness of existence, the fragility of the human mind, and the unraveling that can result from being cut off from the world at large. “Wolf” reunites Bergman with familiar collaborators (Max Von Sydow, Liv Ullman, Sven Nyquist), but otherwise feels like the work of a director pushing himself into dangerous, at times Freudian new terrain. Bergman’s look at insomnia-induced depravity is admittedly less well-regarded than the likes of “Persona” and “The Seventh Seal,” but for our money, this is one of the master’s most unshakable visions. If nothing else, it contains the most genuinely horrific dinner party scene this side of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” – NL
