Dear friend,
to be honest I don’t know how these February days are going: it feels like a transitory period in which anything that happens is thrown in a blender and mixed into an indistinct mess, waiting for the Spring to come and bring clear events, milder temperatures, and possibly some holidays.
Gretel & Hansel, directed by Osgood Perkins, written by Rob Hayes, from the tale by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, US/Ireland, 2020 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I love the wordplay in this film’s tagline: A Grim Fairy Tale. It has a great atmosphere rather than an actual plot, and it’s not like we don’t know the story of the two German brothers who get lost in the woods and find a house built of bread and cakes and a nasty homeowner. Perkins and Hayes retool the story a bit not to make it look too silly, make the sister the main character, and end up with a film that undoubtedly reminded me of another vvicked vvitch, but was also so beautiful to watch that made me wish that all my dreams and nightmares would look like this.
Captain America: Brave New World, directed by Julius Onah, co-written with Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Rob Edwards, Julius Onah and Peter Glanz, US, 2025 - ⭐½
I was really hoping that after a year without an MCU film (Deadpool 3 doesn’t count), Marvel had taken the time to understand what to do with their phase five (Are we still in phase five? I feel I no longer care). And, maybe they have, it just doesn’t show on the screen yet.
But I despair.
This film says so much about how Marvel sees its new Captain America: like Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson, Brave New World feels not adequate for the role, so it rehashes most of the character beats from Falcon and the Winter Soldier (for which Spellman was the showrunner), and instead of proposing anything brave and new, it looks back to one of the less successful instances of the MCU.
It would take Mjöllnir to hammer together these components into a satisfying story, but there’s no Thor in sight, and the mix ends up not working at all. It doesn’t help that it also wants to adopt some movements from Captain America 2 (which, if you ask me, is already one of the most overrated MCU films).
Finally, the story of Sam Wilson is completely obscured by that of President Ross: the film tries to present itself as the conclusion of a character arc that started in 2008. But I don’t think anybody thought this arc even existed. Good for Harrison Ford, taking over the role from the departed William Hurt, much more charismatic than any of the other performers.
On the negative side, it might be the worst moment in history to release a film centred on the moral dilemma of the President of the United States.
The Dark and the Wicked, written and directed by Bryan Bertino, US, 2020 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Another film that’s all atmosphere and very little story: it took me some time to get used to the cinematography and the accents (sorry, non-native speaker and sometimes I still struggle), but very slowly and very steadily the thick coat of dread put on film by The Strangers’ Bertino won me over.
It’s a film about grief and how it makes families (and possibly Countries, as suggested by the insistence on showing US flags) vulnerable to lies and evil.
The darkness and the sense of inevitability reminded me a lot of When Evil Lurks (which was released years later), but without the backstory and lore that Rugna’s film slowly unveils.
Wicked, directed by Jon M. Chu, written by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, from the musical by Holzman and Stephen Schwartz, based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, US, 2024 - ⭐⭐⭐
This film is supposed to be the ‘origin story’ of ‘future Wicked Witch of the West’ Elphaba, but for most of the running time it puts ‘future Good Witch of the South’ G(a)linda front and centre: Ariana Grande in the latter role is incredibly sparkly and fun, while Cynthia Erivo spends most of the time rolling her eyes in the background. The same applies to the musical the film is based on, with the exception that in a theatre you can decide who to look at. And you only need to wait fifteen minutes to get to the second act and some payoff for all the setup laid down here.
Unfortunately, this means having to survive two hours of trite ‘outcast at college’ plot before something interesting happens, which is more or less when Jeff Goldblum shows up, Michelle Yeoh becomes a bit more active, and Elphaba finally finds something to do.
The last half-hour is what saves the film, in a crescendo that leads to the act defining the whole musical and defying gravity: a moment that manages to be breathtaking despite being almost fifty years since we first believed a person could fly.
Alice, Sweet Alice, directed by Alfred Sole, co-written with Rosemary Ritvo, US, 1976 - ⭐⭐⭐½
A bizarre ‘giallo’ or proto-slasher, more interesting because of its catholic themes than the plot and technical aspects; the acting, especially, is not stellar. As a whodunnit, it’s strikingly honest, in the sense that you can easily eliminate characters from the suspects list and guess who the masked killer is.
The film seems more interesting in highlighting the duplicitous nature of its protagonist Alice, captured between childhood and puberty. Unfortunately, this process includes a couple of uncomfortable instances where sexual attention is directed towards the 12-year-old character, plus some body shaming.
C’est arrivé près de chez vous/Man Bites Dog, directed by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde, co-written with Vincent Tavier, Belgium, 1992 - ⭐⭐⭐½
The original title of this film, which can be translated as It happened in your neighbourhood, is in my case quite fitting because, well, it’s a Belgian film and the houses portrayed in it are very similar to those in my area.
The English title feels a bit lazy; the Italian one (Il cameraman e l’assassino, meaning The cameraman and the killer) is, for once, more on point in describing this mockumentary where the crew documenting the criminal acts of a killer with very high self-esteem slowly gets more and more actively involved in the atrocities he commits.
Since I moved to Belgium, I’ve come to appreciate Benoît Poelvoorde as, primarily, a comedian, so seeing his debut in this ruthless role was quite a shock. As for the film itself, I would compare it to a mockumentary version of A Clockwork Orange, oscillating between humour, boredom and extreme sadism (I’m not surprised by the fact that Quentin Tarantino is a fan) in a very uncomfortable way.
I would really really really have done without the prolonged sexual violence sequence.