This week’s roundup features a trio of new films in theaters and/or streaming that are willfully odd: that strangeness works fairly well at times in “I Love My Dad” and “Medusa” but barely at all in “Resurrection,” despite the always excellent Rebecca Hall’s most intense efforts.
In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week
I Love My Dad (Magnolia Pictures)
Based on writer-director-star James Morosin’s own experiences, this darkly comic character study dissects young Franklin’s frayed relationship with Chuck, his estranged father, and how Chuck, wanting to remain connected, ends up catfishing Franklin by creating a fake Facebook profile for a local waitress named Becca and responding to Franklin’s ever more affectionate texting. It all remains a bit creepy, as it’s supposed to be, but Morosin isn’t an accomplished enough filmmaker to make it more insightful. Still, Patton Oswalt gives one of his best performances as Chuck and newcomer Claudia Sulewski is delightful as the unwitting Becca, whom Chuck morphs into Franklin’s dream woman.
Medusa (Music Box Films)
In Anita Rocha da Silveira’s toughminded satire, Mari and a group of likeminded evangelical young women prowl the streets physically abusing those they deem to be too sinful, even while remain blissfully (or is that willfully?) unaware that they are helping to promote a fascistic regime that is also deeply misogynist. The problem with the film is that, after setting up this unsettling glimpse of contemporary society rife with hypocrisy—which has its parallels to what is actually happening in her native Brazil and elsewhere—da Silveira concentrates on eye-popping colors and visual style, so much that the repetitiveness becomes grating after two hours. But in lead actress Mari Oliveria the director has a remarkably vital collaborator.
Resurrection (IFC Films)
Even a powerhouse performance by Rebecca Hall can’t save this risible, ultimately imbecile concoction by director/writer Andrew Semans, who has made an unholy, always grating hybrid of the worst impulses of David Cronenberg and Peter Greenaway (even the score by Jim Williams at times sounds like what Michael Nyman used to turn out for Greenaway). What might have been a slow-burning psychological horror story about a woman whose past returns in the form of an abusive ex is, instead, ridiculously obvious, signaling its unsubtlety 20 minutes in, when Hall dreams about a finding something cooking in her oven. It’s all downhill from there, with nary a shred of narrative or dramatic coherence, let alone anything incisive, to be found.
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
Apples (Cohen Media)
Greek director Christos Nikou’s intimate study of identity loss, set during a worldwide pandemic that leaves its victims with no memories, follows an ordinary man, Aris, whose amnesia puts him in a recovery program. As Aris builds a new life that includes new memories, Nikou gently suggests, through razor-sharp images that take in the full absurdity of modern life, that the way out of a global catastrophe might start from within; it is an understated but humanizing drama. The tight 4×3 aspect ratio perfectly reflects the protagonist’s claustrophobic world and is nicely rendered on the excellent Blu-ray transfer; extras are two interviews with Nikou, one including executive producer Cate Blanchett.
Battle of the Worlds (Film Detective)
Describing this cheesy sci-fi flick as a B-movie damns it with faint praise, as Italian director Antonio Margheriti crams much mediocrity into the 80 minutes that make up this loud, empty exercise in “the world’s going to end” melodrama. Only Claude Rains, as a veteran scientist who’s humanity’s last hope, does what might be charitably called acting, and the Z-grade special effects are laughably amateurish throughout. A bonus featurette about Margheriti, by film historian Tim Lucas, and audio commentary by film historian Justin Humphreys end up making the case that this might be best seen on a tiny B&W screen.
DVD Release of the Week
Fanny—The Right to Rock (Film Movement)
I thought I knew my classic rock, but Fanny—an all-female hard-rock group that released albums and toured in the early ’70s to critical acclaim but popular indifference—was a band I knew nothing about, so happily, Bobbi Jo Hart’s documentary sets things right by chronicling the women’s long-ago career, comeback and how those in the know (like David Bowie) hyped them. The Sacramento-based Fanny’s energetic tunes are showcased in vintage clips; there’s also new material the latest incarnation has put together as well as a healthy dose of archival and new interviews that provide an intimate glimpse at a band more rock fans should know about. Plentiful extras include additional interviews and deleted scenes.
