“The Report”

I’m kind of a sucker for ensemble-driven government procedurals like “All the President’s Men” and this is the best film in that subgenre in years. Amazon has picked it up for a likely awards season run, and it’s easy to see how this could become the biggest hit out of Sundance 2019. Adam Driver gives one of his best performances as Daniel Jones, the Senate staffer assigned with determining exactly what happened with the EIT program – you know, the one that said it was OK to torture if it stopped a terrorist attack. What’s so great about Scott Z. Burns’ film is how tightly wound the whole film is, cinematically representing its protagonist’s increasing outrage at what he discovers. Even in just the ten days since I saw this, I keep reading stories of questionable governmental activity and hearing Maura Tierney’s CIA character in my head, shouting, “It’s only legal if it works!” People are going to be outraged, enlightened, and angered by this movie. I can’t wait for it to drop into the national conversation. (BT)

“The Souvenir”

It’s time for British auteur Joanna Hogg to be better-known stateside—with films like “Exhibition” and “Archipelago,” she has been cinematically untangling domestic knots for quite sometime now. With the gorgeously shot, delicate period piece “The Souvenir,” her best film yet, she brings a fictionalized version of her own story onto the screen, giving it the signature Hogg treatment: precisely composed, patient and poetic. Her Julie (soulfully played by Tilda Swinton’s daughter Honor Swinton-Byrne), whose artistic awakening gets hampered by a dysfunctional, increasingly toxic relationship, is heartbreaker of a character. You will weep by her side, thinking of that one person who broke you, but also enabled you to rise again with strength and a renewed sense of self. (TL)

“Wounds”

Babak Anvari fashioned himself as a classic horror director with his 2016 film “Under the Shadow,” which mixed a nightmarish force with a political story of Iran under attack. But he’s become a mad scientist with his sophomore effort “Wounds,” a Lovecraftian thrill-machine designed to jostle and challenge horror nuts. Anvari uses a story that might sound familiar of jump scares but focuses it around the moral misadventures of a cranky bartender played by Armie Hammer. “Wounds” is a great showcase for his comedic side, especially as his dopey character essentially finds himself in the middle of plot straight out of “The Ring,” as if he were a shit-out-of-luck innocent bystander looking through a dorm room window when a bunch of Millennials fired up that fateful VHS. A parody of jump scare lunacy that stands on its own, Anvari creates infectious fun out of the deliciously nasty and surprising events that come his way. The last shot is pure madness, but in the emotional and playful sense of “Wounds,” it makes perfect sense. (NA)

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