(Le moine, 2011) German-French director Dominik Moll’s been away from the art cinema for a long while and returns with “The Monk,” a vivid, lush, fevered sex-and-madness kitchen sink of a semi-supernatural movie that seems determined from every corner to make up for lost time and centuries of Catholic guilt. Vincent Cassel plays a seventeenth-century Spanish monk whose life began as a foundling on the Capuchin monastery steps, after which the friars raise him. After a career as a fiery, proud cleric, the path of righteousness leads, as it will, to temptation and extravagant depictions of sexual sin. Surrealism, sadly, does not take the head seat at the table—Buñuel and his screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrièreworked on a version of the source material for a bit—and while the material cries out for a more brute, baroque punch to its Gothic strokes, other visual pleasures await, including the stark Catalan landscape, eye-opening nighttime processions, and eventually, a willingness to leap into the narrative void into crackpot climaxes. Based upon a once-banned 1796 novel. With Geraldine Chaplin, Deborah Francois, Josephine Japy, Sergi Lopez. 101m. (Ray Pride)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
Seeing The Elephant: A Review Of Babylon The boisterous, brawling yet melancholy "Babylon," is a variation on film history, but more drawing for drama. It's gaudy and mean, celebratory and sorrowful.
Heart: A Review of Soul The real world is soulful, too, in Pixar's bountiful life of the mind.
Uncanny Ally: A Review Of M3GAN "M3GAN" sells itself in its first handful of seconds in how it introduces the handiwork of roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams, "Get Out") and her present product, PurrPetual Petz from Funki.
Spawn Sacrifice: A Review Of The Creator "The Creator" is richly detailed, punchy, pulpy, punkish entertainment that still has highly serious subjects in mind, without growing didactic and with substantial heart.
A Drag Getting Old: A Review Of Indiana Jones 5 In the protracted opening couple of reels, a very young, computer-crafted Harrison Ford plays a younger cultural marauder who first encounters the dull MacGuffin of the title.
Fine Line: A Review Of Shortcomings It's a season for the comeuppance of a curmudgeon in Randall Park's smart, biting "Shortcomings," adapted by Adrian Tomine from his graphic novel of the same name.
(Le moine, 2011) German-French director Dominik Moll’s been away from the art cinema for a long while and returns with “The Monk,” a vivid, lush, fevered sex-and-madness kitchen sink of a semi-supernatural movie that seems determined from every corner to make up for lost time and centuries of Catholic guilt. Vincent Cassel plays a seventeenth-century Spanish monk whose life began as a foundling on the Capuchin monastery steps, after which the friars raise him. After a career as a fiery, proud cleric, the path of righteousness leads, as it will, to temptation and extravagant depictions of sexual sin. Surrealism, sadly, does not take the head seat at the table—Buñuel and his screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière worked on a version of the source material for a bit—and while the material cries out for a more brute, baroque punch to its Gothic strokes, other visual pleasures await, including the stark Catalan landscape, eye-opening nighttime processions, and eventually, a willingness to leap into the narrative void into crackpot climaxes. Based upon a once-banned 1796 novel. With Geraldine Chaplin, Deborah Francois, Josephine Japy, Sergi Lopez. 101m. (Ray Pride)
