Dir - Ben Wheatley
Overall: MEH
As far as bringing hopeless chaos to the screen, Ben Wheatley's adaptation of J. G. Ballard's 1975 novel High-Rise assuredly succeeds. Comically and brutally portraying the increasing collapse of the British class structure represented by the residents in an ultra-modern and posh tower block, the movie opens with madness and only briefly lingers in a bit of normalcy before the focus is primarily right back to that madness. While its themes may be crystal clear to those who have not even read the source material, the narrative itself is a bit impenetrable. The entire ensemble cast adapts any level of hedonistic behavior, blurring the lines between all of them. While this is no doubt intentional, it does make it difficult to follow everyone's motives and acceptance of the lunacy they envelop themselves in. The film feels its length as well, growing monotonous as everything goes in circles with dystopia reigning. An adequate representation of the book it certainly is, but as a viewing experience, it is more like a one-note foray into squalor and pandemonium that beats, (and eats), a dead horse a little too much.
Dir - Craig Macneill
Overall: MEH
Making your themes positively obvious and having your narrative crawl along are not each exclusively poor choices to utilize when it comes to movie making. They both slightly get in the way of The Boy though, not the first or last film with such a generic title to be released not even within a year of each other. This is the one with Rainn Wilson, hot dogs, and spaghetti. The first solo feature from Craig William Macneill, (who collaborated with Alexei Kaleina on 2009's The Afterlight), The Boy is very much about child neglect and not really anything else. It can also be said that the proper mood of monotony and boredom is conveyed. The day to day toil of having nothing to do except clean the same unused motel rooms ad nauseum and collect road kill, young Jared Breeze's title character mutters to himself and gets immediately attached to the very few strangers that come passing through. None of this ends up for the better of course and you can see where things are going almost from the instant the movie starts. It is adequately made in some respects, but it is also the kind of film where you can simply read the synopsis, save yourself a hundred and five minutes of actually watching it, and come away with basically the same experience.
Dir - Agnieszka Smoczyńska
Overall: GOOD
More of an interesting, stylized melding of genres and folklore than a powerful or even accessible story, Agnieszka Smoczyńska's feature-length debut The Lure, (Córki dancingu - Daughters of Dancing in Polish), is probably the only 1980s-set horror musical about mermaids that will ever be made. The film could examine any number of things besides the obvious concept of how people are both fascinated and repulsed by emerging womanhood, but it could also just be a fun, often wildly inventive indulgence of song, dance, nudity, and gore. Smoczyńska presents a large number of musical sequences, some shown as live performances in a nightclub where the context seems more down to earth, but most being burst into song sections where everyone on screen seems to compulsively be participating. The passage of time is portrayed liberally and the mythology of the fishfolk is reduced to a few old wives tales, (most of which are proven to be true), being tossed around. Even during its most somber moments, the emphasis is more on beauty than anything else, (both visually and in song), all of which just enhances The Lure's whimsical quality more and more.
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