Belfast (Kenneth Branagh, 2021)

 

Cast: Jude Hill, Catríona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Judi Dench, Ciarán Hinds, Lewis McAskie, Lara McDonnell, Colin Morgan, Michael Maloney. Screenplay: Kenneth Branagh. Cinematography: Haris Zambarloukos. Production design: Jim Clay. Film editing: Úna Ní Dhonghaíle. Music: Van Morrison. 

Viewing terrible times from the point of view of a child is a familiar movie trope: In 1987, for example John Boorman did it in Hope and Glory and Steven Spielberg in Empire of the Sun. And Kenneth Branagh did it quite well in the semi-autobiographical Belfast, set in the titular city during 1969, the year when his family decided to emigrate to England to escape the bloody conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Branagh has been a middling director of films except for his Shakespeare outings, particularly his Henry V (1989) and Much Ado About Nothing (1993) – I’d also include his Hamlet (1996), but it’s a little too gimmicky with its cameo roles for actors like Billy Crystal, Charlton Heston, and Robin Williams. Belfast, however, is a heartfelt personal project, which is its greatest strength but also – in a certain lack of distance and sentimentality in the storytelling – its chief weakness. The standout performances come from Catríona Balfe as the mother, whose grit and determination are finally undermined by the rioting, and Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds as the grandparents. For once, Dench is not cast as a crusty old dame in the mode of her Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria, but rather as a sweet and slightly dotty old woman devoted to her husband, played also somewhat against type by Hinds. The whole thing is set to a score and songs by Van Morrison, another move in the film’s favor. Solid, somewhat old-fashioned moviemaking. 

All These Sleepless Nights (Michal Marczak, 2016)

Cast: Krzysztof Baginski, Michal Huszcza, Eva Lebuef. Screenplay: Michal Marczak, Katarzyna Szczerba. Cinematography: Michal Marczak, Maciej Twardowski. Film editing: Dorota Wardeszkiewicz. Music: Lubomir Grzelak. 

Youth, the adage goes, is wasted on the young. In All These Sleepless Nights, Michal Marczak’s pseudo-documentary, the young are hell-bent on wasting it. The film centers on two Warsaw art students, Krzysztof Baginski and Michal Huszcza, playing themselves in scenes both spontaneous and scripted, along with Eva Lebuef, the ex-girlfriend of Michal and the new girlfriend – at least for a while – of Kris. They lead a hedonistic life, with drug-taking and sex and cigarette smoking and partying, with only occasional reflections that this life can’t last. There’s only fleeting interaction with older adults and no indication that there is a price to be paid for self-indulgence – indeed, they seem to have unlimited means, as the apartment with the spectacular view that Kris lives in very much suggests. But this isn’t a moralizing movie: The tone is very much on the side of carpe diem. The ephemerality of this way of life is symbolically represented by the fireworks display at the film’s beginning, but there’s no hint of burnout in the story. Only near the end is there a scene that suggests self-awareness, as Kris does a bit of performance art in a public park, dressed as an Easter bunny and speaking via loudspeaker to passers-by, including an elderly couple whom he praises for their closeness and endurance. But then at film’s end he’s practicing dance moves in the middle of traffic, living on the edge. There’s no story to grab onto, and the film sometimes stretched my patience, but as an immersion into other lives it’s worthy of attention.

 

Daughters of Darkness (Harry Kümel, 1971)

 

Cast: Delphine Seyrig, John Karlen, Danielle Ouimet, Andrea Rau, Paul Esser, Georges Jamin, Joris Collet, Fons Rademakers. Screenplay: Pierre Drouot, Harry Kümel. Cinematography: Eduard van der Enden. Art direction: Françoise Hardy. Film editing: Denis Bonan, August Verschueren. Music: François de Roubaix. 

Daughters of Darkness is a horror movie loaded with style, featuring Delphine Seyrig in what feels a bit like a camp sendup of her mysterious woman in Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961). It’s about a couple of newlyweds who come under the spell of a woman who claims to be the Countess Elizabeth Báthory, the 17th-century Hungarian serial killer whose story became a staple of vampire lore. Seyrig is a treat as the undead countess, slinking about in a variety of outfits that include a silver-lamé dress which cinematographer Eduard van der Enden films with a star filter to jazz up its dazzle. It’s all very creepy and over-the-top, but unfortunately, it also leans heavily on the old trope of queerness as decadence, a too-common feature of films from its era. The husband, Stefan (John Karlen), seems to be the boy toy of a man he calls “Mother,” which causes some tension with Valerie, his new wife (Danielle Ouimet), who keeps insisting that he call his mother to tell her that they’re coming for a visit. Stefan turns out to be a bit of a sadist, driving Valerie into the arms of the countess. Karlen seems to have landed the role of Stefan in part because he was already known from another vampire story, the TV series Dark Shadows. Today, he’s probably mostly remembered as Harvey, the husband of Tyne Daly’s Lacey, on the series Cagney & Lacey. 

Raya and the Last Dragon (Don Hall, Carlos López Estrada, Paul Briggs, John Ripa, 2021)

 

Voice cast: Kelly Marie Tran, Awkwafina, Izaac Wang, Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, Benedict Wong, Jona Xiao, Sandra Oh, Thalia Tran, Lucille Soong, Alan Tudyk. Screenplay: Qui Nguyen, Adele Lim. Cinematography: Rob Dressel. Production design: Helen Mingjue Chen, Paul A. Felix, Cory Loftis. Film editing: Fabienne Rawley, Shannon Stein. Music: James Newton Howard. 

Raya and the Last Dragon is an engagingly fantastic journey into a world that might be called “Asian-ish.” With its blend of elements from various Southeast Asian cultures it risks falling into the trap of Orientalism, but it’s too beautifully busy to be stamped with such a label. It succeeds because of its varied and often elegant visuals and also because of a gifted voice cast, with Awkwafina as the standout as the voice of the sometimes giddy, sometimes wise dragon Sisu. Where it doesn’t quite work is as a fable about trust, an always dicey virtue, the mention of which carries the echo of Ronald Reagan's “Trust but verify.”