‘The Brutalist’ Review: A Dense Historical Epic About the Difficulties of Making Art

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It’s been weeks, and there are images from Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist that haven’t left me. It’s an exquisitely crafted film, shot with care on VistaVision, a largely obsolete 35mm film format that hadn’t been used in the full production of a movie in decades. This is a large, dense film. In a strange way, it reminds me somewhat of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis but without the camp and bad green screen. It’s audacious, ambitious, visually distinctive, and structurally unique. Like Megalopolis, The Brutalist is an American epic. It’s about an architect, a visionary, and in many ways, it’s about filmmaking itself—art-making itself—and the ways that art interacts with commerce, the obstacles and sheer manpower that it takes to erect a building or create something like a film. It’s also an immigrant story, about people who come to America to build monuments and achieve the greatness promised by the American Dream. I still don’t know what to fully make of The Brutalist, but I do know that it’s been haunting my brain ever since we walked out of the Paramount Theatre in Austin, where we had the pleasure of seeing it projected on 35mm. The experience was fantastic, and seeing a movie that was shot on film projected on film is, bar none, one of the best ways to experience a movie like this. It not only looked amazing, but the material quality of the projection made it feel like watching the past come to life, which is exactly what you want in a historical drama. Set in the post-war period, the movie follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody at his best), a Hungarian-Jewish architect, the titular brutalist, who makes his way to Philadelphia to build a life after being separated from his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), who are still in Europe after the Holocaust. There, his life becomes entangled with rich industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who recognizes his talent for building and gives him a project. The film is structured in two parts, with a built-in 15-minute intermission in between, as well as an overture and an epilogue to bookend the whole endeavor. Structurally and formally, it’s one of the most striking movies I’ve seen in a long time. The use of a near-forgotten film format, the length and distinct two-part structure, the inclusion of an intermission—all of these elements are a kind of cinematic brutalism, emulating in a way the architectural movement that gives the movie its title. Brutalism was and is an architectural movement borne out of the tumultuous mid-century, a reaction directly in response to modernism and post-war architecture. The name is largely thought to have come from the French term, “béton brut,” meaning “raw concrete.” Concrete is one of the staples of brutalism, which was largely centred around creating functional buildings out of sturdy and cheap materials, left unadorned to expose their material qualities. The principles of brutalism emphasized simplicity, structure, and material honesty. At its inception, it was built on a utopian ideal of utilitarianism. As a movement, brutalism was short-lived and has something of a contentious legacy, with its large concrete structures often deemed cold and ugly. Its legacy is, however, far-reaching, found in everything from Soviet housing blocks to underground transit systems to city halls and libraries and cultural centres around the world. Personally, I find a lot of brutalist architecture to be beautiful in its own way. Brutalism is a blank canvas and an open question. It’s both utopian and dystopian, minimalist and maximalist, all at once. It’s confrontational. Of course, it was doomed to fail. Of course, it fell out of favour. But the best architecture, like the best cinema, invites you in, asks you to make your own interpretation, makes you feel something. That’s exactly how I experienced The Brutalist. I was captivated and moved by it. I was left with an open question. I realize I’ve said little about the actual movie so far, but it’s a movie that I don’t think I can really do justice by simply telling you about it. It’s not a perfect film. The first half moves and breathes more fluidly than the second half, which gets a bit lost in the fog of its own ambition, somewhat akin to Tóth himself. But I can say that I was never bored during its three-and-a-half-hour runtime, which is a rare feat. Adrien Brody also gives what is surely one of the best performances of the year, while Guy Pearce steals almost every scene he’s in. There’s beauty, humour, and darkness here in spades. In fact, some beats are bleak to the point of almost being borderline melodramatic, but the film somehow never buckles under the weight of those choices. If the end result has its rough edges, like raw concrete, the whole of it—long and dense and difficult, but still beautiful and balanced—is something you can’t help but admire. Verdict The Brutalist is big, bold, and beautiful. I loved so much about it, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since leaving the theatre. It’s one of the most beautifully shot films I’ve seen all year, and it takes big swings in a way that I can’t help but respect. If you want a sweeping historical epic about people in all their flawed humanity trying to build things that will leave their mark on the world, portrayed by some of the best actors we’ve got, then this is one movie you don’t want to miss.

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‘The Order’ Review: Jude Law’s Neo-Nazi Docudrama Is One of the Best Cat-And-Mouse Crime Thrillers of the Year

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The Order was one of the biggest surprises of AFF for me. I went into it with no expectations, not really knowing anything about it. What I got was one of the tightest crime dramas of the year so far. Of director Justin Kurzel’s previous work, I’d only seen his gritty, brooding adaptation of Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender. Most of the rest of his filmography consists of smaller films set in his native Australia and probably his most high-profile film, the poorly received Assassin’s Creed adaptation from 2016. Likewise, screenwriter Zach Baylin’s previous credits include the Oscar-nominated King Richard alongside films like this year’s The Crow reboot and Bob Marley: One Love. All in all, a mixed bag, so you’d be forgiven for going into The Order with some trepidation. I assure you, however, it’s well worth your time. Set in the 1980s, the film is based on true events, following the FBI’s investigation into a white supremacist group, called The Order, behind a string of increasingly violent crimes with the goal of eventually overthrowing the US government. Jude Law plays the aging FBI agent in charge of the investigation, opposite Nicholas Hoult as Bob Matthews, the icy and persistent leader of The Order. If the plot sounds familiar or particularly resonant with recent history in America—well, it is. I was, personally, unfamiliar with the events depicted in the movie, so watching it was pretty eye-opening. I couldn’t believe that I had never heard about The Order or their crimes, some of which were quite high-profile and led to one of the largest manhunts in FBI history.   Impressively, the movie manages to stay propulsive and entertaining without sensationalizing or diminishing the weight of the events it depicts. For having such dark, frighteningly relevant subject matter, it toes that line very well. Maybe it’s that I had just watched another gritty cat-and-mouse thriller in Dirty Harry earlier during the festival, but The Order felt like it had the sensibilities of a 70s procedural, despite its 80s setting. It’s stylistic without being flashy, dark and naturalistic, straightforward but still propulsive and thrilling. I’ve been a fan of Nicholas Hoult’s since I was a Skins-obsessed teenager (shout out to my other formerly Skins-obsessed girlies), but I’ll readily admit he’s been a fairly under-the-radar presence since breaking out into bigger film roles. He’s never bad, but he’s never particularly stood out, either. But here, he is chillingly good as a racist insurrectionist, giving what is undoubtedly a career-best performance so far (this one edges out his performance in Juror #2 for me, though he’s very good there too in a different kind of moral tale). Law is also fantastic as the down-and-out, mustachioed Agent Husk, in what might also be one of his best performances to date, making a role that could easily fall into tropey familiarity feel lived-in. Even the supporting cast is excellent, particularly Jurnee Smollett and Tye Sheridan, who both bring a lot of pathos to characters that might otherwise feel surface-level. I wasn’t expecting to be so moved by this film, yet I was. The movie’s action sequences—shootouts and robberies and an unforgettable final raid in a smoldering house—stand out as thrilling set pieces. But the film also effectively conveys the weight of collateral damage amidst all that violence. While there are clear bad guys and good guys here, given one side is made up of militant neo-Nazis, the movie draws some interesting parallels between its two leads. In particular, it draws a line between the sacrifices that are inevitably made in dogged pursuit of a single-minded obsession—whether it’s pursuit of an ideological conviction or of justice. Husk’s career of chasing criminals has cost him his family and his health, and over the course of the movie, we see Sheridan’s overzealous rookie cop character increasingly buy into Husk’s determined approach, almost “indoctrinated,” as screenwriter Zach Baylin put it in the post-film Q&A at AFF, in parallel to Matthews’ indoctrination of his disciples and his children. Of course, Sheridan’s Jamie is driven by his moral compass and a desire to protect his family, wanting to make the world a little safer for his biracial child. But in a strange way, family is also what Bob Matthews offers to his followers—a twisted form of acceptance and community, ironically based around a hateful and destructive ideology. For all his talk of brotherhood and family, however, he’s selfishly obsessed with furthering his own bloodline, at the expense of his wife and their adopted children. The explosive and unnatural violence that’s borne out of his commitment to his cause stands in stark contrast with the vast and natural beauty of the film’s Pacific Northwest landscape (gorgeously shot by DP Adam Arkapaw). These larger thematic threads all give the film some depth, despite what is largely a by-the-book narrative. Ultimately, there’s nothing revolutionary here (how many times have we seen the ‘grizzled detective with skeletons in his closet’ trope before?), but the movie accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish remarkably well. It’s tightly paced, with beautiful cinematography and excellent action sequences, and tells a story that’s both emotionally and historically resonant. Verdict If you’re looking for an old-school meat-and-potatoes historical crime thriller about cops and neo-Nazi robbers, The Order fits the bill perfectly. While some of the supporting characters are thinly drawn, the movie is bolstered by standout performances, propulsive action, beautiful cinematography, and a story pulled from one of the many dark chapters in American history, one that’s in many ways still being written.

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September 5 Review — A Tense Look at the Munich Crisis Through the Eyes of the Media

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The last of my coverage from the Austin Film Festival (AFF) is with this review for the upcoming film, September 5.  September 5 was co-written and directed by Tim Fehlbaum, a Swiss film director in his first mainstream feature film. Moritz Binder and Alex David join Tim as co-writers.  The film chronicles the 1972 Munich Olympic hostage crisis, but what makes this movie more unique is that it’s all from the perspective of the ABC Sports crew that was managing one of the first ever live coverage broadcasts.  The cast that fills out that ABC Sports crew is an impressive one that includes Peter Sarsgaard (Jarhead, Batman 2022) and John Magaro (The Big Short). The supporting cast includes Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, and Zinedine Soualem among others!  So, should you tune in to September 5 or change the channel?  My Thoughts  September 5 is a solid movie that did a lot of things right. First of all, I was completely unfamiliar with the 1972 Munich Olympic hostage crisis and if you don’t know much about that incident, I assume the movie is a bit more compelling overall to you. With that said, the strength of the movie isn’t really in the hostage crisis itself, but the ABC Sports team that is in Munich to cover the Olympics.  I really enjoyed this perspective as a way to make the movie feel a bit more unique than other movies like it. The added layer is that they were first a sports crew and not a news team, but also that this incident was a first of its kind with live footage being broadcast during the crisis itself. Something we’re all too familiar with in 2024.  While this offers an interesting perspective, it’s also a pretty big risk because almost all of the movie takes place in the building the ABC crew is broadcasting from and so you can’t place the audience anywhere in the crisis itself, except for what the live cameras can show us in the room.  I definitely think this risk pays off for the most part, especially towards the end of the movie. Without giving away any spoilers, as the hostage crisis concludes, the final location is completely dark both literally and in the sense that there are no cameras to really see what is happening. If, like me, you had no idea how the hostage crisis ends, you and the news team are left in the same position, wondering what is happening and struggling to balance reports about what actually occurred.  Regardless of the narrative, for a movie like this to succeed, the cast needs to be incredibly strong, and they certainly were. The biggest standout for me was definitely John Magaro, who was effectively running the live coverage from the control room. His character starts his shift with some questions floating around about his qualifications to even call the coverage for the Olympics, but then as the hostage crisis unfolds, he’s forced to make some major decisions that will be seen by millions around the world. He really does carry the bulk of the movie on his shoulders, but everyone around him (especially Peter Sarsgaard, Ben Chaplin, and Leonie Benesch) does a fantastic job as their characters challenge and support him throughout the crisis.  With all of that said though, the movie really struggled to elevate itself to something truly great for me. I did see this in the middle of a full day at AFF, but the movie ultimately struggled a bit with the pacing. I just felt a lack of momentum, especially as the ending built more to a confusing and unclear moment instead of something more concrete. This makes sense given that the ABC Sports crew was in the same boat as the audience is in terms of not knowing, but it just struggled a bit to build and maintain momentum for me. This is definitely part of the downside of the risk I mentioned earlier about keeping the focus so tightly on the ABC crew, when there were moments occuring that would have been more interesting to see outside the control room. To be clear, I’m not making a case of “Oh the movie would have been more interesting if it did something differently,”. Firstly, because I’m not sure that’s even true, but more importantly I don’t really believe in that kind of criticism. The idea that a movie is different than what you wanted or expected and is therefore not as good, is very hollow criticism to me. What I mean here is that I found my mind being more drawn to what’s actually happening in the crisis while the movie was trying to make me more compelled by what was happening in the control room. While I found the conflict in the control room interesting, it still wasn’t as interesting as the conflict they were covering. One thing I also feel compelled to mention is the apparent controversy that is already brewing ahead of the film’s wide release. For those unaware, without spoiling the movie at all, the hostages that were taken were Israeli coaches and athletes and they were taken by Palestinian terrorists. When I went to log the film on Letterboxd (you can follow Adriana and I on there) the top review said “I’m sorry, but it felt like watching Israeli propaganda.” Further, there was speculation that the film was rejected from the Toronto International Film Festival because of the ongoing Israeli and Palestinian conflict.  For what it’s worth, I do disagree with the idea that this feels like Israeli propaganda, but it’s obviously hard to not think about the movie while ignoring the ongoing conflict. I think the movie itself is very focused on the time and the situation and it never felt preachy to me or anything like that either. It was very much about the ABC Sports crew and them having to pivot and cover the crisis. The text blurbs that appeared at the end

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Operation Taco Gary’s — A Road Trip Movie with Conspiracies, Comedy, and a Few Bumps Along the Way

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Our coverage of the movies we saw at the Austin Film Festival keeps moving along! This time I’m talking about Operation Taco Gary’s. Written and directed by Michael Kvamme, this comedy is a throwback to comedies of the early 2000s, even going so far as to cast Jason Biggs of American Pie fame. The two leads of the film are Simon Rex as Danny and Dustin Milligan as Luke, two brothers that share very little common ground when it comes to the way the world works. So, is this road trip comedy a nostalgic joyride or does it run out of gas? My Thoughts There’s definitely some laughs to be had with Operation Taco Gary’s! The setup is simple, as Luke is getting ready to leave and start his new chapter in Ottawa, to pursue a new job opportunity. Before he leaves, his brother Danny arrives, who is a big time conspiracy theorist and as they hit the road together, it appears that there might be more to these conspiracies than Luke thought. First, we gotta touch on the cast! Simon Rex definitely stood out the most, but Dustin Milligan was solid as well as the co-lead and the audience surrogate for the movie. The supporting cast here is great though too, with Brenda Song, Tony Cavalero (who is hilarious in this and the HBO series Righteous Gemstones), the previously mentioned Jason Biggs, and the amazing Doug Jones. A solid cast is key to a good comedy and writer/director Michael Kvamme definitely had plenty to work with here! Another thing that I liked about this movie was the way it actually handled the comedy around the conspiracy theorists in the movie. I found that the movie really balances the idea of laughing at and with the conspiracy theorist characters, which makes it more accessible to anyone and avoids the trap of just repeatedly mocking these kinds of people. It also manages to avoid feeling too much “of its time” by not being hyper focused on the conspiracies of the current era and takes a more creative approach to develop more unique conspiracies for the world of the movie, even if they take some inspiration from the real world occasionally. The best parts of the movie were a couple sequences in particular that really stood out, including a chase scene through the woods that had the audience at our screening in Austin cringing and laughing in equal measure. In fact, the highest points of the movie for me happened earlier in different scenes that took place in the woods. This hurt the movie a little for me on a pacing level, just because I laughed the hardest before the midpoint of the movie at a couple different sequences that they never really were able to top in the back half of the movie. On that note, I think the shortfalls of the movie fittingly were a lot of the shortfalls of the early 2000s era comedies. The narrative thread that is propelling the characters forward isn’t the most engaging, for example. It also has a particular brand of humour woven in throughout the movie that just didn’t land with me as consistently as I would’ve hoped, but if you get on its wavelength, you’ll definitely have some pretty consistent laughs. The third act in particular didn’t work as well for me, as the movie has a more serious moment that really clashes tonally with the rest of the movie. After this moment, I was kind of waiting for the movie to do something to undo that moment or make some light or add some humour to it and they just didn’t. Verdict Overall, I liked the commitment to a pure comedy that doesn’t rely on or overload itself with forced emotional moments. It’s definitely a throwback to that early 2000s era of comedies and if you like that idea, I think you will definitely like this movie! For me, while there were some incredibly solid moments in the first half, I thought the last half didn’t work as well. The movie doesn’t overstay its welcome, thanks the lean runtime, which kept it from feeling like a chore in the back half, even if it didn’t work as well for me. Still, if you’re looking for a break from the world, there’s definitely laughs to be had with Operation Taco Gary’s!

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‘The Beldham’ Review: Eerie Sound Design and A Haunting Exploration of Motherhood Elevate This Indie Gem

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The Beldham opens with a title card, informing us of the meaning of its title: “Beldham” (alternatively spelled “beldam”)—an old woman; a witch. It immediately clues us in to what kind of monster we may be dealing with in this indie horror gem. Directed by Angela Gulner in her feature debut, the movie follows Harper (played excellently by Mike Flanagan regular Katie Parker), a woman who’s recently given birth and moves into an old house that her aging mother (Patricia Heaton) is in the process of flipping with the help of her new boyfriend (Corbin Bernsen) and a live-in aide (Emma Fitzpatrick). With that setup, you might expect a run-of-the-mill haunted house story, but The Beldham isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. As a strange presence lurking within the house begins to reveal itself to Harper, it’s her own mind that starts to come into question—and it becomes clear that there’s more going on than meets the eye. One thing I appreciated about the movie is its use of setting. The whole movie takes place in the aforementioned house, and, while I’m sure that’s partly due to budgetary constraints, it makes the movie more focused and gives it a concrete sense of place. Like the best haunted house stories, however, it’s unclear if it’s the house or the psyche of its inhabitants that’s haunted. As one character puts it: “the brain is a wild beast.” In The Beldham, the mind itself is cast as a monster. Is Harper really seeing a witch or is it in her head? Can it be both? Is there something else entirely going on? For most of the film, that ambiguity drives the action, blurring the lines between the natural and the supernatural. That central metaphor not only makes for interesting narrative tension but also allows for deeper exploration of the movie’s themes. It’s easy to position the film in a line of modern-day motherhood-themed horror movies, but The Beldham reminded me most not of a movie, but of one of my favourite short stories—Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” First published in 1892, the story is about a woman suffering from what we’d now call postpartum depression but was then diagnosed as a form of hysteria. To treat it, her doctor, like Gilman’s real-life doctor, prescribes a “rest cure,” during which she’s prohibited from writing. The unnamed narrator, like Gilman, is a writer, so not being able to write, and being confined inside the asylum-like house she and her husband move into, causes her mind to slowly deteriorate in what is one of the greatest feminist psychological horror stories ever written. The key to its power lies in its ambiguity—is the narrator losing her mind? Or are there supernatural forces at work in the house? You can interpret it either way, and that’s what makes the story so effective. My favourite kind of story lives in that gray area between the natural and supernatural, and The Beldham fits into that storytelling tradition beautifully. It feels hewn from the same stuff that Gilman’s short story is: grief and rage and confusion and anger. The painful realities of motherhood and aging, of being a woman, and the archetypes that we’ve been cast into for ages, since long before even Gilman’s time—the mad-woman, the old crone, the beldham. It’s the stuff that the best horror stories are usually made of. As Gulner herself puts it, horror is “the internal made external.” This—this is exactly why I love the genre. Horror, maybe more than any other genre, is so good at taking the internal—the emotional and psychological realities we experience—and externalizing it through metaphor and fantasy, making complex human experiences more intelligible through the inhuman and profane. While The Beldham doesn’t reinvent the formula, its particular mixture of elements felt pretty fresh to me. In fact, the movie genuinely surprised me, with a narrative turn that I didn’t see coming. In today’s movie landscape, it’s a real feat for a movie to surprise its audience, and on that front, The Beldham succeeded for me where so many other recent horror movies have failed by being overly predictable. Sure, the beats here are familiar, but the movie is smartly written and confidently directed. Some of the creative flourishes—I’m thinking particularly of a few recurring dream sequences with very striking visuals and cinematography, as well as the sound design throughout the movie, not to mention that final shot and credits sequence—show just how creative you can get with a small budget and a single setting. Another thing I appreciated is that the movie isn’t afraid to take its time as well. For having a short runtime of 85 minutes, the pace feels a bit slow at times, but its considered approach gives the characters more room to breathe. I was mostly compelled and on-board with the central relationships, although some of the characters (particularly the boyfriend) feel superfluous and lacking in depth. I did, however, appreciate that all of the main relationships are between women—mothers and daughters and caretakers—which is itself still something of a rarity to see. The performances here also stand out. I was especially impressed with Parker, who proves to be a capable lead in a role that demands a layered performance. Heaton is also great, at turns cold-hearted and almost villainous, and at other times, more of a caring mother figure, walking a fine line to great effect by the end. Like “The Yellow Wallpaper”, The Beldham is interested in the complex emotional realities of its characters, and it uses the tropes of haunted houses and witchcraft to explore larger themes of motherhood, aging, loss, and intergenerational trauma. Ultimately, this is a very solid debut, and I’m very jazzed to see more women-focused horror movies that are actually directed and made by women filmmakers. Verdict While The Beldham is more chilling and emotional than outright scary, and it treads some familiar ground, it’s also a surprisingly confident feature debut with some great performances and

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Special Delivery Review – Sex and Sound FX Lead to Love in This Surprisingly Sweet Short

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From the moment I read the synopsis of this short film while I was at the Austin Film Festival, I knew I had to see it. Written and directed by Emily Everhard, the synopsis for Special Delivery reads:  “A Foley artist for pornography falls in love with a porn star during an ADR session.” For anyone that doesn’t know what a Foley artist is, their job is to essentially make the realistic sounds you might hear in a movie or even a video game. I don’t want to give away any of the bits in the short, but some cool examples of this from other media are using coconuts to simulate a horse walking, using celery for breaking bones, or even using rain to create the sound of bacon cooking.  As you can imagine, being a Foley artist for pornography seems like fertile ground for comedy, and boy was that the case with Special Delivery. Right at the start I let out an audible belly laugh and there were more to be had in the brief 10 minute runtime.  What surprised me the most though was just how genuine I felt the romantic part of this short was. I’ve seen massive Hollywood features that had millions of dollars, A-list stars, and a feature length runtime and they couldn’t make me feel the warmth that this short did. It’s no surprise that Special Delivery won the Enderby Entertainment Filmmaking Fellowship and the Audience Award at AFF. Writer/director Emily Everhard absolutely crushed this and so did her great cast and crew!  Speaking of the cast, Kate Owens kills it as Sandy the Foley artist who takes her job VERY seriously and Rob Kellogg is fantastic as Tad, the pornstar who comes in for the ADR session.  By winning the Enderby Entertainment Filmmaking Fellowship Award, Emily will take a week-long trip to Enderby’s Los Angeles offices to benefit from their guidance, and for the opportunity to shadow executives and filmmakers on-site.  Verdict If it isn’t clear, I absolutely loved this short film. The concept alone is brilliant, but the addition of very genuine portrayals from Kate and Rob ensured that Special Delivery exceeded my high hopes for it. When the short is available for the public, we will update this review so you can see this one for yourself because it’s absolutely worth your time!

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