Triangle of Sadness (2022) – ***
Though his brilliant Force Majeure only won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes, Ruben Östlund’s considerably less memorable The Square took the Palme d’Or over The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and he repeated the trick this year, winning the Palme for this film over Crimes of the Future (which is better) and Decision to Leave (which I haven’t yet seen but which seems to have inspired more active enthusiasm which is much better). I haven’t seen enough of the competing films to say for sure why Triangle won, but I wonder if the weight of Östlund’s name and the ever-relevant subject matter (the follies and foibles of the wealthy) had as much to do with as the film’s actual quality.
First we meet male model Carl (Harris Dickinson) and his model/influencer girlfriend Yaya (Charlbi Dean). Yaya is more successful than Carl, leading to a spat over the bill at dinner, but they make up and go on a cruise which Yaya got free tickets for. The cruise, captained by the alcoholic Marxist Thomas (Woody Harrelson), is populated mostly by the elderly rich of Europe, and the crew are encouraged to indulge their whims, including going for a swim in the middle of the day at one passenger’s request, by hospitality leader Paula (Vicki Berlin).
Thomas decides to host the “captain’s dinner” at the same time a storm rolls in, causing most of the passengers to vomit up their meals; Thomas is unaffected and ends up playing drinking games with fertilizer salesman Dmitry (Zlatko Burić), before they read political philosophy over the ship’s intercom, little noted by the ailing passengers. The following morning, pirates attack the ship, causing an explosion which sinks the vessel, killing numerous passengers. The survivors, including Carl, Yaya, Dmitry, and Paula, wash up on a nearby island, and soon find themselves in dire straits.
Another survivor is Abigail (Dolly de Leon), a Filipina janitor who is able to catch and cook an octopus, using this to assert her command over the others. As the survivors adapt to life on the island, Abigail decides to assert her position by inviting Carl to stay with her overnight, an arrangement which soon develops into an affair. Yaya is upset, but what can she do? Power talks, and Abigail has what power there is to have. But a revelation about their island might just threaten that…
There’s certainly nothing new about the notion of the shipwrecked wealthy being commanded by a servant—that goes at least as far back as Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton. Likewise, it’s hard to see the fashion industry being spoofed in the opening scenes and not think of Zoolander (which, to be perfectly honest, is funnier), or to see the passengers in their finery retchings and not think of, say, The Meaning of Life (again, funnier). Not that originality is everything—Tár was hardly the first film about an arrogant genius—but it’s hard to think of much that Triangle says about these themes that hasn’t already been said.
It really doesn’t help that, at 149 minutes, the film is too long and too unfocused, much like The Square, which had very fine elements, but tried to encompass more than it could do justice to. There are some very fine things in Triangle as well, and had the film tightened its focus and pace it could’ve come closer to meriting the accolades it’s received (the reviews are actually not that strong, at least for a Palme winner).
The whole first section of the film, for example, could have been omitted; aside from establishing Carl’s childishly jealous character, and subtly establishing the idea of self-commodification (one day a model, the next Abigail’s boy toy), it adds little to the film, the satire of the fashion world being quite forgettable. It does allow us to appreciate Dickinson’s very good performance (he’s so perfectly aggravating) and Dean’s very solid one (sadly, her sudden death in August means this was her final work), but it also tries to establish Carl and Yaya as the leads, when the rest of the film is definitely an ensemble piece.
Obviously, Abigail begins to dominate the film in the final third, thanks to de Leon’s sly performance as the shrewd little woman who knows just how much leverage she has over those who once spared her little thought or attention. But the middle section really clicks when Harrelson and Burić play off each other, trading aphorisms, drinking, and messing with the intercom; they’re two old rogues having a ball, and it’s great fun to watch. But the whole cast does quite well, with Berlin especially good as the service-minded Paula; there’s too much of this film, but most of what there is is well-acted and technically smooth.
What it lacks is the focus to make the most of its real strengths or the sting to cut through the relatively old-hat themes. Östlund was able to score in Force Majeure by focusing on a small group of characters who were well developed. Here, he loses track of the people and the ideas too often to hit the bullseye, but there are ample compensations for those who feel obliged to watch.
Score: 76
Rocktober: The Mummy Returns (2001) – **½
My old friend Nathaniel Creed (co-host of Words About Books) got the notion that we should watch every film Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson made, or at least every film in which he plays a proper role. Nathaniel, being a big wrestling fan, was familiar with Johnson back when he well and truly was The Rock and worked out how the shooting schedule of this film and its prequel, The Scorpion King, fit into Johnson’s WWF schedule. (Just think how much of film history has been dictated by who was available at what time.) The Scorpion King would be the first true test of Johnson’s abilities, but here we must begin.
What I’ll do, as we work our way through his filmography (Rocktober isn’t a specific month; it’s more of a state of mind), is rate each film on two scales. One, my standard 100-point scale, putting the film in the broader context of cinema. The other is the special Rock Scale, from 1 to 5 Rocks (including halves), which determines how the film fares as a vehicle for Johnson. Hobbs & Shaw, for example, was an okay film, but it was a very good showcase for his charm, humor, and physical prowess.
Oddly, I’d never seen The Mummy Returns, despite seeing the first film on video and the third film in theaters (which…it’s not as bad as you might have heard). I’d certainly heard of it and The Scorpion King at the time, but it was a few years before I’d be going to the theater on a regular basis. I was mainly familiar, over time, with the notoriously bad CGI in Returns, and despite buying a copy at some point, never chanced to put it on. But Nathaniel put it on while we were hanging out, playing board games, and drinking – the way God intended.
I went back and rewatched it as I wrote this, finding it even less impressive when I was paying full attention. In 1933, ten years after the first film, Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) is resurrected by Baltus Hafez (Alun Armstrong) and Meela Nais (Patricia Velásquez), the reincarnation of Imhotep’s great love, Anck-Su-Namun. Imhotep needs the Bracelet of Anubis to defeat an ancient enemy, the Scorpion King, and it just so happens that the O’Connells – Rick (Brendan Fraser), Evie (Rachel Weisz), and their son Alex (Freddie Boath) found it, and Alex has just locked it onto his arm (kids, amirite?) when Hafez, Meela, and Lock-Nan (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) storm their London home and kidnap him.
Long story short, the O’Connells, along with Evie’s buffoonish brother Jonathan (John Hannah), pursue Imhotep and his followers to Egypt, aided by Ardeth Bay (Oded Fehr) and Evie’s memories of her own past life as Nefertiri, daughter of the Pharoah and nemesis of Anck-Su-Namun. Everything builds to a showdown between the heroes and villains, with the Scorpion King himself making a fairly quick appearance before Imhotep and Anck-Su-Namun meet their own deaths, and the good guys ride off into the sunset on an airship piloted by Rick’s old acquaintance Izzy Buttons (Shaun Parkes).
When I first watched it, I found it silly but relatively entertaining, and thought it might be a low *** film. Now, it’s a mid-high **½, and even that might be generous. It’s the kind of film which doesn’t so much have a story as it has complications which keep the plates spinning until the credits roll. It’s a bit surprising to see that director Stephen Sommers wrote the script himself and by himself, but that seems to be standard practice for Sommers’ films; he was the sole screenwriter on seven of the nine films he’s directed. I guess that makes him an auteur?
That doesn’t mean his films are especially distinctive or unusually well-made, and Returns is neither. It’s got some nice spectacle, some genuinely good action scenes (the throne-room exhibition fight between Anck-Su-Namun and Nefertiri in particular), and charismatic stars, but it’s all pretty hollow. It’s hard to be really swept up in what’s happening because it’s the kind of film where things happen so more things can happen, and the characters are just there to act them out.
Some of the cast do well enough; Fraser is charming as always, Vosloo is nicely menacing (even getting a bit of pathos at the end), Hannah is amusing, and Akinnuoye-Agbaje is rather fun, especially when he’s forced to baby-sit Alex, to their mutual dismay. But Weisz, a first-rate actress with good material, seems vaguely lost throughout, while Boath tries to be a precocious quipster and falls pretty damned flat.
Of course, this being a Rocktober watch, I have to discuss The Rock’s performance. I can’t, because there isn’t really one to discuss. He appears in the opening scenes, leading his armies, staggering through the desert, biting into a scorpion, and being consumed by fire, and then at the climax, he “appears” as a kind of scorpion-centaur, but a mere seven minutes pass between his reappearance and his death, and he’s hardly on-screen for all of them. It’s barely more than a cameo, to be honest.
He’s not especially good, but he doesn’t have much to do, and he has about three lines of dialogue, all in ancient Egyptian, one of them drowned out by the narrator, which suggests the studio wasn’t entirely convinced of his acting ability. And to be fair, in the early scenes where he’s meant to be dazed and dispirited, he looks like a healthy young man trying to look dazed and dispirited. His appearance at the end is compromised by the dreadful CGI; the effects are pretty weak throughout, to be honest, but his scorpion-form at the end is especially unconvincing – his face looks like a mask and his claws look like plastic. Practical effects would’ve been so much better.
In the end, it’s an okay blockbuster at best, very much a product of its period (there are some silly flourishes which scream 2001), but as a vehicle for The Rock, it’s barely worth mentioning.
Score: 62
Rock Score:
Phantom of the Opera (1943) – ***
Pretty much every review you’ll read of this Phantom will mention how it really prioritizes the Opera, and I’ll go along with that, but since I like opera, it’s not a deal-breaker for me. In fact, I’ll go a step further and give the film, especially composer-arranger Edward Ward, for using existing themes by Chopin and Tchaikovsky to create operas for the film, and writing an original Provençal “folk” piece, “Lullaby of the Bells,” used by the man who will become the Phantom to write a concerto, a masterpiece which inadvertently led to his own wretched state.
Doesn’t sound familiar, does it? Well, this Phantom does a lot of things differently, introducing us at the beginning to Erique Claudin (Claude Rains), a violinist with the Paris Opera, who’s let go after health issues compromise his playing. Despite his long career with the Opera, he’s penniless, because he’s been secretly sponsoring the education of young soprano Christine DuBois (Susanna Foster), and banks on his concerto being published by Pleyel (Miles Mander), who is more concerned with making etchings.
After an argument with Pleyel, Claudin hears his music being played in the other room (by none other than Franz Liszt (Fritz Leiber)!) and assumes his work has been stolen. In a rage, he strangles Pleyel, and receives a faceful of etching acid from Pleyel’s mistress. Clutching his scarred face, he escapes into the sewers, and uses his knowledge of the Opera House to establish himself as the Phantom, drugging diva Biancarolli (Jane Farrar) to allow Christine (her understudy) to step in and deliver a star-making performance.
Meanwhile, Christine is in a love triangle with baritone Anatole Garron (Nelson Eddy) and policeman Raoul Dubert (Edgar Barrier), which actually takes up as much of the film, if not more, than Claudin’s story. But when a plan to smoke out Claudin leads to the famous dropping of the chandelier and his abduction of Christine, Anatole and Raoul set their rivalry aside to save her. In a touch I rather liked, the love triangle remains unresolved at the end, as Christine chooses to embrace her newfound stardom, leaving Anatole and Raoul to make peace with each other.
What I don’t like is how the fluffy final scene undermines the tragedy which precedes it. After Claudin is unmasked, he’s killed in short order by a cave-in (which would seem to compromise the opera house’s structural integrity, but no matter), and after our heroes escape to safety and spare a few words of mourning, we get a final shot of his mask and violin lying amidst the rubble. That would’ve been a great final shot, but instead we end with a scene of light comedy which doesn’t so much as acknowledge Claudin, Biancarolli (whom he killed), or the chandelier incident.
The 1925 Phantom originally ended with a final scene of Raoul and Christine on their honeymoon, but the version I watched – the most widely available version – ends with the Phantom being killed by a mob and thrown into the Seine. And really, as long we know the young lovers are okay, would we want to end on any other note? But then, this film bills Eddy first, Foster second, and Rains third – making it clear from the get-go what its priorities actually are.
As a horror film, this Phantom doesn’t really make the blood run cold. Claudin, especially when he takes Christine to his underground dwelling, can be creepy; as in The Invisible Man, Rains plays the obsessive fanatic well, and you may pity him even more than you pity his victims. But the film’s glossy tone and narrative emphases don’t allow him to loom over the story the way Chaney’s Phantom did, and the potential pathos of his arc isn’t fully explored either.
It doesn’t shine as a romantic musical comedy either. The love triangle is pretty silly stuff, and the gag of Anatole and Raoul speaking or trying to pass through a doorway at the same time is pretty weak for how much it’s milked. Eddy and Foster both sing well, but don’t make much impression in their dramatic scenes, and while the supporting cast is perfectly adequate, there are no real standouts; Hume Cronyn has a brief role as a police deputy, but unlike Shadow of a Doubt the same year, the film doesn’t make much of his distinctive presence.
Where the film really shines is as a spectacle. It won Oscars for its sets and cinematography, and it looks wonderful throughout; the Opera House set is the same one built for the 1925 film, but it looks great, and the other sets – the opera settings, the streets of Paris, the dressing rooms and offices, the catacombs and sewers – are superb. The costumes are also magnificent, both the period clothing worn by the characters and the opera costumes, especially those worn in the fictitious Le prince masqué du Caucase (The Masked Prince of the Caucasus).
The makeup is less remarkable, and we only see Claudin’s scarred face briefly at the end, but it gets the job done. More impressive is Ward’s Oscar-nominated music (although I find the electric organ in the Phantom scenes more tacky than creepy), but that brings us back to the perennial observation about this version, which there really is no escaping. If you enjoy the singing and spectacle, you’ll enjoy this version well enough. But if you don’t, you may find sitting through the opera scenes to get to the Phantom more trouble than it’s really worth.
Score: 73
The Little Island (1958) – ***½
Richard Williams’ career was at once illustrious and tragic. His triumphs included directing the animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, his adaptation of A Christmas Carol, his final film Prologue, his book The Animator’s Survival Kit, and the satirical animation he provided for the underrated 1968 version of The Charge of the Light Brigade. His tragedies most notably included The Thief and the Cobbler, which he worked on for decades, only to have it taken away from him, heavily reworked, and realized in a bastardized version. (Attempts have been made to restore his vision.)
This was the first film he directed, at age 25, and it won the BAFTA for Animated Short, but as shorts go, it’s pretty long at 33 minutes, and as first films go, it’s pretty ambitious, attempting to depict a philosophical argument in a purely visual manner. Whether or not he succeeded philosophically, the results are visually and aurally impressive – if not seamless.
Three little characters have one moral value apiece: one values Love, one Truth, and the third Beauty. They visit a small island and eventually begin to discuss their philosophies. Beauty primarily assumes the form of a figure on a Grecian urn, a preening aesthete. Love primarily assumes the form of a warrior, a short-tempered chauvinist. Their arguments soon turn violent, and Truth, getting fed up with them, decides to resolve everything with science…inadvertently creating The Bomb in the process.
It’s that final touch which keeps the film just on the right side of ***½. Up until then, it threatened to fall into a both-sides fallacy, or worse, a golden-mean fallacy, but the twist that Truth has its own pitfalls is a nice reminder that there’s no one solution for our problems. Still, it’s damned hard to convey the complexities of human thought without words, and I’m not sure Williams really succeeded, either at showing the essences of these values, or how they can curdle into dogma.
That said, what we see and hear is often delightful. Williams wrote, directed, and produced the film, but Tristram Cary wrote the music (well, not all of it – there’s a bit of the William Tell Overture) and designed the sound effects, which are rather vital here. The film uses a broad, semi-abstract style common to this time period, which fits the blunt messaging and satirical tone well – I especially like when Love and Beauty turn into a pair of grinning ogres – nearly identical, you’ll notice – while the varied score matches the images as the tone and message shift from scene to scene, and the sound effects follow suit, from the initial plinks and honks to the climactic rumbles.
It’s a suitably quixotic start to a career which would encompass a film that was meant to be the greatest animated film ever made and a film that combines animation and live action better than any other film ever has, and likely ever will.
Score: 77
Shivers (1975) – ***
CW: sexual assault.
Shivers is an extremely hard film to recommend, not because it’s bad (it’s not great by any means but it’s not bad) but because it begins with a murder which plays very much like a sexual assault, an act whose full context involves the revelation that a certain scientist created parasites which invade the body, override the host’s inhibitions, and drive them to seek sexual satisfaction with the nearest person. As such, it has multiple scenes of assault and attempted assault, which combined with the male gaze on display will likely repel many viewers, especially now.
It’s not so great or resonant a film that I can recommend it easily even to those who can accept this; it’s a frequently crude film, with rough editing, uneven acting, and dodgy sound, and like many of Cronenberg’s early works, it’s full of ideas but doesn’t quite nail the execution.
The scientist in question, Emil Hobbes (Fred Doederlein) has been using Annabelle (Cathy Graham) as a test subject for his parasite (and what little we learn of their relationship is rather horrifying in its own right), and he kills her at the start of the film to try and prevent their spread. But she has given the parasite to several other men, and over the following 18 hours or so, the luxury high-rise she lived in – the Starliner Towers outside Montreal – will descend into sexual chaos.
Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton), doctor of the Starliner clinic and a student of Hobbes, will attempt to outwit the parasite, in league with his nurse/lover Forsythe (Lynn Lowry) and Hobbes’ research partner Rollo Linsky (Joe Silver). But because the parasite drives its hosts to thwart anyone who opposes it, come the end of the film, the infected Starliner residents are on their way into the city to spread this particular plague.
There are obvious comparisons to High-Rise (the novel was published the same year) and to any number of zombie films, especially at the end when a swarm of infected residents pursue St. Luc. And, of course, one can compare this to Crimes of the Future (the original), with Hobbes’ parasites ostensibly being developed as a kind of substitute for organ transplants, and to Stereo, with the road to hell being paved by science. (Ronald Mlodzik, the star of both, has a supporting role as the leasing manager.)
But because Cronenberg was trying to tell a straightforward story with actual characters and synchronized sound, he falls short of the relative slickness of those films, and elements of real technical skill – the wonderfully gaudy 70s settings (it was filmed at Tourelle-Sur-Rive, a high-rise designed by Mies van der Rohe), Robert Saad’s cinematography, Joe Blasco’s practical effects (the parasite is a puppet, but a properly gross one) – sit cheek by jowl with those which betray this being a low-budget production by a director rapidly expanding his ambitions.
The acting is a mixed bag, with horror veteran Barbara Steele as the sly lesbian Betts and Silver (a character actor if I’ve ever seen one) taking top honors, although seen in the right light, Hampton and Lowry achieve a parody of the stiff-backed, lantern-jawed hero and his wholesome, fawning love interest. (Lowry, who’s worked extensively in horror before and since, may well have had her tongue in her cheek.) Still others come off as amateurs – or perhaps the problem was Cronenberg’s direction.
There is one speech, late in the film, which contains a passage of vintage Cronenberg:
…But then he tells me that everything is erotic, that everything is sexual. You know what I mean? He tells me that even old flesh is erotic flesh. That disease is the love of two alien kinds of creatures for each other. That even dying is an act of eroticism. That talking is sexual. That breathing is sexual. That even to physically exist is sexual…
Otherwise, whether or not you agree with the outrage it inspired from Canadian commentators at the time – Robert Fulford’s condemnation of it is legendary – it’s a difficult film to watch and one which serves mainly as evidence of Cronenberg’s developing talent.
Score: 67
The Bespoke Overcoat (1955) – ****
I’ve read Gogol’s classic short story, but aside from the basic premise, writer Wolf Mankowitz made the material his own, setting it among the Jewish community of London’s East End and giving greater weight to the character of the tailor, here called Morry (David Kossoff), while changing Akaky Akakievich into Fender (Alfie Bass), an elderly clerk in the warehouse of clothing wholesaler Ranting (Alan Tilvern, 30 years before he played R.K. Maroon in Roger Rabbit but instantly recognizable). The film begins with Fender’s funeral, after which Morry (the sole mourner) is visited by his ghost, and we learn how Fender asked Ranting to sell him a new overcoat by garnishing his salary, was refused, and after asking Morry to repair his own ragged coat, got Morry to make him a new one for cost.
But then Ranting let Fender go and he took ill, dying shortly after trying to cancel his order with Fender. Back in the present, Morry encourages Fender to break into Ranting’s warehouse and steal the fine coat he wanted – the coat he feels owed, after 43 years of working for Ranting and his family. This accomplished, Fender vanishes into the shadows, asking Morry to pray for him, and the film ends as Morry recites the Mourner’s Kaddish.
It’s a lovely, sad little film, the poignant tragedy of the story being underlined by the dingy settings, Georges Auric’s plaintive score, Wolfgang Suschitzky’s chiaroscuro-rich cinematography, and the quintessentially Jewish use of humor to keep the heartache at bay. There are many fine, vivid moments, like Fender sharing his lunch with a mouse, Fender and Morry sharing a drink of brandy in the dead of night, and Fender’s dying monologue, in which he laments being cast aside by a man he’d known as a boy – and treated kindly then.
Bass gets the showier role, and he’s very good as the meek, shrunken clerk, but for me Kossoff is even better, showing how Fender’s death weighs on Morry (along with the decline in his own business) while also showing the greater zest for life he’s able to enjoy. Whichever performance you prefer, they play wonderfully off each other, and you’d never guess that neither of them were yet on the far side of 40. Tilvern is also very solid as the cold, smug Ranting.
It’s not flawless; Bass is a touch hammy at times and there’s one scene, where Morry tries to see if Fender can pass through a wall, that doesn’t come off (possibly because they didn’t have the money for special effects). But that’s a minor point given how fine a work it really is. It helped kick off Jack Clayton’s intermittently impressive career as a director; after this won the Oscar for Live-Action Short (Two-Reel), his next film, Room at the Top, would be up for Best Picture and Director, and win Adapted Screenplay and Actress. Pair this with The Angel Levine for an evening of distinctly Jewish fantasy.
Score: 88
Decision to Leave/Heojil kyolshim/헤어질 결심 (2022) – ****
The set-up is the stuff of classic noir. A man is found dead. His wife – his much younger wife – seems less than heartbroken. The investigating detective – the married investigating detective – discovers reasons why the wife might have committed murder. Then he falls in love with the wife. This, of course, is just the beginning. And there are layers I haven’t yet mentioned, layers which make this more than just a story of crime and obsession.
There’s the inspector, Det. Hae-jun (Park Hae-il). He’s an insomniac, who uses the extra hours to pore over cases hot and cold alike. He only sees his wife, who lives and works in another city, only on the weekends. He’s an accomplished cook, and as he interrogates the wife he orders in expensive sushi, then, and as they’re drawn closer together, he cooks for her.
There’s the wife, Seo-rae (Tang Wei). She came to South Korea from China, where she euthanized her dying mother. She married an older man who abused her, who took bribes, who liked to climb mountains. She works as a caregiver for the elderly. She asks her cat, who’s killed a crow, to bring her Hae-jun’s head. Or did she say “heart”?
There are the cultural specifics of the story, which I can’t fully appreciate – Seo-rae’s supposedly imperfect Korean and the weight her status as an immigrant adds to the suspicions of the police, to name but two. There’s the other case Hae-jun is trying to solve, and the insight into that case Seo-rae freely gives him. There’s the humor provided by Hae-jun’s fellow officers, namely the obnoxious Soo-wan (Go Kyung-pyo) and the bumbling Yeon-su (Kim Shin-young).
And there’s the style with which the film is made, from Park Chan-wook’s magnificent direction to Kim Ji-yong’s dazzling cinematography (there are shots that should be laughably tacky that work perfectly, shots which are unnerving, and shots which are just plain beautiful), from Kim Sang-bum’s deft, graceful editing to Jo Yeong-wook’s tense, evocative, string-heavy score. For good measure, it has superb production design and fine sound.
Tying it all together is the script, by Park and Jeong Seo-kyeong, which tells its story at a careful pace (it runs a hefty 138 minutes), layering on bits of character, flourishes of story, and touches of humor (that corn dog), avoiding twists for the sake of twists, keeping us rooted in the mysteries of human nature, especially where the heart is concerned.
And the actors bring it to life. Hae-il convinces us of Hae-jun’s growing obsession and his skills as an investigator alike (I think of Touch of Evil: “He was a great detective.” “But a lousy cop”); he’s a fool, but he’s not necessarily a mere patsy. Tang convinces us of the fascination Seo-rae holds for Hae-jun (and others) as well as the haunted humanity which informs her actions throughout. And Lee Jung-hyun, as Hae-jun’s wife Jung-an, neatly fills the role of the decent woman whose husband is drawn inexorably to the darker aspects of human nature.
Really, you have to see Decision to Leave to fully appreciate it. You have to follow Hae-jun’s journey through to the end, you have to see and hear the imagery, the music, the editing, and the performances for yourself, you have to discover how much this film owes to the classic mysteries of decades past and how much it builds upon them, being no mere puzzle to be solved but so much more. It might be the finest film I’ve seen this year. I don’t know what more I can say than that.
Score: 91
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