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The Power of the Dog Review: Uttering the Unutterable

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The Power of the Dog Review: Uttering the Unutterable

The concept of a secret is fascinating; it can only exist if it is not brought into language, and can only be what it is if nobody mentions it. Jane Campion’s new film The Power of the Dog is a phenomenal exploration of this, of the power given to what cannot be named. The film is about many things it never actually verbalizes, insisting on themes without persisting with them. It’s about a gay relationship, but never speaks of it; it’s about a murder plot, but never addresses it as such; it’s about the Oedipal complex, but never mentions it; it’s about a man’s relationship with his mentor, but the mentor’s never seen. The Power of the Dog is about Westerns, but is not a Western itself.

The Western genre is specifically suited for analyses of masculinity, which is perhaps one of the reasons why the style has become so popular in recent years as the #MeToo movement and dissections of patriarchy have shaped the contemporary cultural epoch. The Power of the Dog is resolutely a psychological drama and lacks the traditional trappings of Western cinema (gunfights, heroes, honor, imperialism, etc.) but taps into the significations within Westerns, utilizing their particular symbols and signifiers for greater ends.

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Related: Old Henry Review: The Wild West’s Death

On a ranch, there can only be one or two masculine bulls; the rest are literally castrated to prevent excessive reproduction and infighting. In Campion’s film, Phil Burbank demands to be the only real bull, the only dominant male on the ranch in 1925 Montana. He belittles and insults everyone around him, especially his brother George, whom he taunts and ridicules at every opportunity. When the wealthy brothers and their employees eat a meal at an inn during a cattle drive, Phil makes sure to condescend to and upset their server Peter, someone he perceives to be effeminate. The boy’s mother weeps, and decades of personality are reflected in her tears before George, the more sensitive Burbank, comforts her and falls in love in the process. This will become the catalyst for a tense psychodrama of sexuality, power relations, secrets, and shame.


The Secret Life of Ranchers

The film is so utterly careful, so artfully subtle, that it’s easy for a viewer to miss the psychological developments as they happen; secrets do, after all, tend to remain unsaid. Phil is irate at the prospect of George marrying this lower-class widow Rose, played perfectly by Kirsten Dunst, and is disgusted by her son Peter, played with understated anger by Kodi Smit-McPhee. Phil’s hateful fury belies something left unmentioned– he is possessive of his brother in an almost psychosexual way. In the evening, he wanders the empty corridors of the quiet inn, looking for his brother. He settles on an empty bed and waits, half-awake, for the sibling to return. George removes some clothes and climbs into bed with Phil. Everything is inferred, and nothing is explicit.


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Phil becomes obsessed with ruining Rose’s life and George’s happiness. Phil’s bitter pettiness is never fully explained, but rather hinted at in the context of his life. He seems to hate women, along with the feminine aspects of men like Peter, and demands domination. He yearns to be seen as a man’s man, like his mentor Bronco Henry. Bronco almost literally haunts the film as a spectre of desire, having influenced Phil and the ranch greatly but dying before the film takes place. He represents desire in two interesting ways. First, he seems to be the paragon of masculinity, as Phil and others tell near-mythical stories about Bronco’s abilities and power. However, he also seems to have been a gay man who perhaps took advantage of a younger Phil but nonetheless formed a close and intimate bond with him.


When Peter sees Phil alone in the woods, draping himself in Bronco Henry’s old handkerchief in an almost sexual manner, the two begin a closer relationship than Rose would like. After having demeaned Rose and attacked her publicly, driving her to drink regularly in order to cope with his presence, Phil’s strange friendship with her son sends Rose off the rails entirely, though more is going on beneath the surface than the viewer first realizes.

Phil Burbank is an amazing character, and Benedict Cumberbatch plays him in such a way as to not alienate viewers despite his explicit cruelties. While Cumberbatch’s American accent leaves much to be desired, sounding uncannily like Hugh Laurie attempting to be American in House, he is astoundingly good at locating the vulnerability at the center of Phil and building bitter defense mechanisms around it. The actor went extremely method, chain-smoking on set until succumbing to nicotine poisoning three times, and not bathing for weeks to emulate the character’s peculiar fascination with dirt, which has its own bevy of psychoanalytical meanings. He refused to speak to Kirsten Dunst during the shoot, locking into his character’s contempt for Rose and desire to destroy her.


Better Left Unsaid

Desire is the essential theme of the film. It informs the power relations, creates the secrets and shame, and fuels the animosity of every character. It’s difficult to display desire without directly referencing it, but Campion is a master of developing characters without dialogue, as attested to by the wordless protagonist of her Oscar-winning film The Piano. Assisted by cinematographer Ari Wegner, The Power of the Dog gorgeously turns landscapes into faces and faces into landscapes. In two scenes, characters spend some time trying to locate a meaningful image of a dog hidden in the distant mountains, and Campion and Wegner imbue the same meaning-making in nearly every shot of their characters, taking every opportunity to investigate the emotions and desire beneath the facial surfaces.

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The complex desires of the characters lead the narrative into surprising, revelatory moments which are all the more fascinating for dancing around the subject almost entirely; nearly everything that is said relates to a desire which is unsaid. Perhaps it is this limitation, this relegation of desire into the realm of the unspoken, which entraps the characters and condemns them into a kind of repetition compulsion. Phil seems compelled to become Peter’s Bronco Henry, George seems caught up in always submitting to the sadism of his brother, and Rose seems destined to become her deceased alcoholic husband.

Peter, on the other hand, is the only person in the film who locates his own desire, and it’s typical of the movie that he may be the central character despite being largely absent from much of it. The Power of the Dog is bookended by Peter’s words, the only lines of narration in the film spoken by him: “When my father passed, I wanted nothing more than my mother’s happiness. For what kind of man would I be if I did not help my mother? If I did not save her?” These opening sentences indicate Peter’s desire before becoming forgotten in the ensuing tensions of the film and are central to any understanding of its ensuing psychological warfare.


Related: 10 Best Psychological Thrillers, Ranked

Jane Campion is no stranger to this unique, defiantly atypical kind of psychodrama. Though she hadn’t made a feature film in 12 years before this, it’s clear that The Power of the Dog picks up on the criticism of power where her cinema left off. Intimately interested in the changing power dynamics of sexual difference, Campion’s films have always strived to reveal the ways in which sexual relations inform what it means to be dominant. Although she greatly expanded the character of Rose from the source material, this is still Campion’s first film to predominantly focus on male characters and masculinity itself, but she does so in a subversively queer way.

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Anti-Western Art

It would be wrong to go into this film thinking that it’s a normative Western, or anything other than a psychological slow-burn. If anything, the movie is an anti-Western in how it handles the homoeroticism and unspoken insecurities and desires latent beneath the surface of masculine competition and pride. It is a nearly $40 million art film, and maybe not intended for mass consumption. The movie’s emphases on absence and things left unspoken are sure to frustrate and confuse some viewers who would rather have a clearer overview of narrative and character intentions, but, ironically, it’s this aspect that makes the film such an essential meditation on secrets, desire, and shame.


It’s easy to get caught up in the theoretical concepts the film explores, but it would be a shame to ignore some of the excellent technical aspects of The Power of the Dog. The score from Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood continues his excellent atmospheric film work, complimenting the characters with his increasingly fragile and anxious string motifs. The acting, as mentioned, is superb, with real-life couple Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons comfortably excellent together, as they’d been in the second season of Fargo. Benedict Cumberbatch strays quite a ways from his usual posh and intellectual characters seen in Sherlock and The Imitation Game, and is genuinely surprising as the complex, cruel, curious but confused Phil. Kodi Smit-McPhee is an absolute treasure, inhabiting the specific physicality of Peter and alternating expertly between victim and victimizer.


Of course, there is Campion. There has been a Campion-shaped hole in the heart of cinema for over a decade now, and 2021 is a perfect year for her comeback. She distinguishes her film from other good contemporary Westerns by utilizing the setting to tell a very different and actually topical story about the desires and shame lurking behind much masculinity. She manages something almost impossible– she tells us a secret by not telling it at all.

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Bullet Train Review: A Wickedly Funny, High-Octane Thrill Ride

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Bullet Train Review: A Wickedly Funny, High-Octane Thrill Ride

Brad Pitt leads a wickedly funny ensemble in a high-octane actioner loaded with twists. Adapted from the 2010 Japanese novel by Kōtarō Isaka, Bullet Train has a bevy of disparate assassins manipulated by a mysterious criminal mastermind. Stuntman turned action director, David Leitch (John Wick, Atomic Blonde), stays true to form with unrelenting bloody and flamboyant violence. The codenamed characters get downright verbose before beating, stabbing, and shooting each other to bits. The loquacious banter tends to run long, but the narrative always bounces back with sharp reveals. Strap in for a helluva ride.

Ladybug (Pitt) boards the overnight bullet train to Tokyo with a newfound sense of self. He’s chock-full of philosophy after recovering from a near fatal ambush. Ladybug ignores his unseen handler’s advice to take a gun. Surely any issues can be resolved peacefully. The job seems straightforward enough. Steal a briefcase with a sticker and exit at the next stop.

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Also on board are Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), ruthless “twins” known for their brutal methods. Lemon is obsessed with the British children’s show “Thomas & Friends”. He reads people by comparing them to the anthropomorphized trains. The twins are escorting the previously kidnapped son (Logan Lerman) of a powerful gangster, the White Death (Michael Shannon).

None of the hired guns are aware of the Father, aka Yuichi Kimura’s (Andrew Koji), mission. He’s out for vengeance but foolishly runs into a deceptive figure. The Prince (Joey King) has a score to settle with the White Death. Meanwhile, the Wolf (Bad Bunny) joins the fray after his truly horrific Mexican wedding. He’s also ready for serious comeuppance. Ladybug quickly realizes they’re all unwitting pawns in a dangerous game. Someone has packed the train with killers for an unknown purpose. He desperately wants to get off but can’t seem to escape the carnage.


Related: I Love My Dad Review: Patton Oswalt’s Delightfully Cringeworthy Catfishing Comedy

Cast of Bullet Train

Bullet Train introduces the cast with splashy entrances that flashes back to their dark pasts. The murderous montages are informative but don’t fill in every gap. The script doles out more critical information as the bodies pile up. Alliances bounce back and forth as everyone wonders who’s actually pulling the strings. The whodunit element works well as the audience becomes embroiled in a series of betrayals. You don’t have a sense of the plot’s true trajectory until the third act. The film builds to a showdown that delivers a huge action payoff.

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Bullet Train has complex characters that each contribute slices of devilish humor. Brad Pitt preaching self-help and understanding is an effective gag throughout. Brian Tyree Henry’s constant comparisons to Thomas & Friends aren’t as comical but play an important role in the story. There are a lot of moving parts. Leitch, who worked as Pitt’s stunt double for years, is clearly fond of his players. He gives everyone a chance to babble incessantly. I would have trimmed the dialogue to be more incisive.


The action scenes are worth the price of admission. Leitch has a great eye for mixing stylized set pieces with intimate fights. He knows when to go big and small. You never feel let down by his pacing. There’s always the right amount of adrenaline to keep your pulse pumping. Bullet Train is another feather in a skilled filmmaker’s cap. Watch out for A-list cameos and a mid-credits scene.

Bullet Train is a production of Columbia Pictures, Fuqua Films, and 87North Productions. It will be released theatrically on August 5th from Sony Pictures.

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Bullet Train Review: Brad Pitt Has A Blast In The Silly And Badass Action Comedy

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Bullet Train Review: Brad Pitt Has A Blast In The Silly And Badass Action Comedy

If orchestrated properly, with adjusted stakes, tone, and atmosphere, there can be a beautiful, symbiotic relationship between intense action and comedy. A hero pulling off a rapid and vicious series of blows against an opponent can be savage and dramatic in one context, but it can also be so deliriously awesome that an audience’s first reaction is to laugh. Fast paced martial arts can be used for wonderful physical humor (see: the legendary career of Jackie Chan), and the best examples provide dual layers of entertainment: you marvel at the skill in all the ass-kicking, and cackle at the creativity in the choreography.

This is a sweet spot that filmmaker David Leitch knows well. After peppering funny moments in John Wick and Atomic Blonde at the start of his directorial career, he brilliantly utilized the action/comedy weapon that is Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool 2, and crafted some excellent physicality with the unique styles of Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham in Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. His latest, Bullet Train, is another effort that takes aim at that particular tonal target, this time with his most expansive ensemble yet, and it’s another success. With a sensibility that could be described as early Guy Ritchie with more specific action focus, it’s a movie that is both silly and skilled and inspires its primary star in particular to do energetic and engaging work.

Based on the novel Maria Beetle by Kōtarō Isaka, the film weaves multiple narrative threads through the cars of the titular bullet train as it speeds through the country of Japan – all of the protagonists being killers with their own particular reason and motivation for being aboard. Ladybug (Brad Pitt), for example, is a hired gun who has been tasked by his handler (Sandra Bullock) to perform what sounds like a simple job: find a briefcase marked with a train sticker and steal it. What he doesn’t know, though, is that said briefcase belongs to a pair of British hit men named Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and that the contents include the recovered ransom for the kidnapped son (Logan Lerman) of a powerful crime lord known as The White Death.

Meanwhile, Kimura a.k.a. The Father (Andrew Koji) is on the bullet train because he is on a mission of vengeance – hunting down the person responsible for nearly killing his son by pushing the boy off of a building. What he doesn’t expect is that the individual he is looking for is a young woman identified as The Prince (Joey King), and that she has purposefully gotten him on the high speed rail with the intention of forcing him to execute an assassination attempt.

And while five killers sharing the space would be enough for most movies, Bullet Train actually has even more that pop in and surprise throughout the film’s runtime – and their roles are worth keeping as a secret pre-release.

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Bullet Train has a chaotic storyline, but the pieces properly connect as a fun puzzle.

Narratively speaking, Bullet Train is a messy movie to put together, as focus briskly ping-pongs between the different players, but everything stays in harmony as the film persistently finds ways to build on each protagonist’s arc. This is particularly cool later in the movie as different characters are drawn together from individual angles and instant conflict is generated from their simple interaction.

The film is at its best when it keeps things simple, but it does let things go off the rails at times (if you’ll pardon the pun). This is especially true as it gets into the third act and it tries to pull off stunts like one of the leads leaping from a platform on to the back of the train as it leaves a station; it’s both a problem for the “rules” of the universe and in its strained use of visual effects. The movie also frequently tries to get a bit too cute and Tarantino-esque with what are admittedly familiar-but-not-quite-stock characters – the most prominent example being an ongoing and quickly tiresome gag with Lemon explaining that he understands people through the lens of Thomas The Tank Engine.

Primarily, though, it’s a movie that is able to generate its entertainment with engaging and quippy dynamics between the members of the ensemble, both when they are talking out their issues and trying to kill one another.

David Leitch puts a lot of exciting and weird fights in a confined space, and is at its best when working with a “less is more” philosophy.

Coming from a stunt background, both as a performer and a coordinator, David Leitch’s bread and butter remains deftly and specifically choreographed action sequences, and Bullet Train proves to be a terrific challenge and opportunity for his skills. Regardless of where you are in the titular transport, space is not a luxury, and the best fights in the movie are those that are being fought only between the characters, but against the limitations provided by the location.

There are guns, knives and explosives in the mix, but Bullet Train also has some terrific “found item” moments that add spice and humor to the various showdowns, whether it’s a pocketed cell phone saving a character’s life from a blade, a laptop making for a solid cudgel, a water bottle making for a useful projectile, or a venomous snake showing up at a perfect moment.

Once again we see David Leitch work a special magic turning dramatic and comedic actors into badasses with slick and stylish moves, and while everyone shows off some terrific skills, it’s very much the Brad Pitt show at the end of the day.

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Brad Pitt’s joy in the role of Ladybug is palpable.

At the nexus of everything good in Bullet Train is Brad Pitt, who very clearly had a blast reuniting with David Leitch (who performed the actor’s stunts in films including Fight Club, The Mexican, Mr. And Mrs. Smith and Troy). He’s a joy to watch in action not just because of the talented craft he demonstrates in his physicality, but how he channels the psychology of the character. As we meet him, Ladybug is reluctantly getting back into his business following a number of important breakthroughs with his therapist, and Pitt does a fantastic job conveying that he doesn’t ever want to choose violence as a first answer – both via verbal pleas and defense-heavy moves. Action/comedy is a genre he should revisit a lot more often.

Bullet Train doesn’t aim to revolutionize hitman movies, but instead plays with a tongue-in-cheek vibe that lets you recognize the tropes and appreciate how the film plays with them. It’s a slick/goofy action movie that is both contained and wild, and a satisfying late summer release.

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Luck Review: A Spectacular Debut Film from Skydance Animation

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Luck Review: A Spectacular Debut Film from Skydance Animation

The world’s unluckiest woman enters a magical land to change the fortunes of a fellow orphan. Luck will make you smile and possibly shed a few tears. The big-budget, CGI animated fantasy shines a spotlight on needy children while telling a truly original story. An assortment of lucky critters and creatures dazzle in a spectacular setting. The highly imaginative narrative gives age-old superstitions a dynamic new spin. Luck is a brilliant first film from Skydance Animation.

Sam Greenfield (Eva Noblezada) reaches her eighteenth birthday with trepidation. She’s finally aged out of the foster care system. Sam never found her “forever family”. She spent her entire life living in orphanages. It doesn’t help that Sam has the worst luck. Everything she does or touches ends in abject disaster. Her only thoughts are for young Hazel (Adelynn Spoon), Sam’s roommate at the girls home. Sam has been set up with a job and tiny apartment. She has to stay in school and employed to remain housed.

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Sam’s first day at Marv’s (Lil Rel Howery) floral shop goes exactly as expected. She sadly eats dinner sitting on a sidewalk. Sam learns that Hazel’s weekend trip with a foster family was canceled. She gives half of her sandwich to a curious black cat. It scampers away but leaves a strange penny behind.

The following day is a revelation. Sam’s lucky penny changes everything. Her ecstatic mood sours when she loses the penny in spectacular fashion. Stewing on the sidewalk, Sam’s surprised when the black cat returns. She’s astonished when Bob (Simon Pegg) asks for his penny. The “travel penny” is the only way a creature from the Land of the Luck stays safe in the human world. She follows an unnerved Bob back through the portal to the Land of Luck. Sam has to find another lucky penny to help Hazel. Bob reluctantly agrees, but they have to be careful. Misdeeds end up in banishment to Bad Luck.

Related: Bullet Train Review: A Wickedly Funny, High-Octaine Thrill Ride

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The Land of Luck

The Land of Luck is an absolute joy to behold. Leprechauns, cats, pigs, and rabbits, lucky creatures, are the bureaucrats tasked with spreading good fortune. Bringing Sam in such a place is a recipe for absolute chaos. Bob, and his leprechaun assistant Gerry’s (Colin O’Donoghue), efforts to contain Sam’s bad luck will have audiences in stitches. I’m still chuckling at Sam’s “Latvian leprechaun” disguise; their harebrained excuse for why she’s so much bigger than everyone else.

Luck’s serious themes are artfully addressed. Sam’s lonely childhood, and her desperate efforts to change Hazel’s, brings a melancholic touch to the narrative. The film reminds us to not take love and family for granted. Every kid deserves care, nurturing, and a safe place to grow. It shouldn’t take luck or chance for a child to find a “forever home”.

Insert sigh here. Recent headlines concerning John Lasseter (Toy Story, Cars) will undoubtedly cloud this film’s release. The genius storyteller and animator behind Pixar’s success left to head Skydance Animation after awful “Me Too” allegations. He’s brought his incredible talent to Luck, and it shows. This wonderful film deserves to be judged on its own merits. Sometimes we must divorce ourselves from art and the personality of the artist.

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Luck is a production of Skydance Animation and Apple Original Films. It will have an exclusive Apple TV+ premiere on August 5th.

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