drama

Mood Indigo (2014)

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fourstar

The word “twee” is a loaded descriptor that is sure to chase away a large section of any potential audience. A lot of people bristle at the mere mention of twee, generally construing it as a brand of unbridled, whimsical cuteness. That dismissive conception entirely disregards the bottomless depression of twee genre staples like Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, Todd Solondz, and the music of Belle & Sebastian. It’s a bookish, sentimental sort of sadness, but twee generally plays its grief so close to the heart that it becomes extremely difficult to differentiate it from the heights of its cheery sweetness. Any twee work that’s worth a damn is just as depressing as it is joyful; the problem is that a lot of audiences don’t find any of it worth a damn to begin with.

Director Michel Gondry has received near universal acclaim for his music video work with acts like Björk & The White Stripes, but whenever he helms a feature film his name has a tendency to be an automatic turnoff for a lot of folks just as much as some people are turned off by the mere mention of the twee genre he often gets categorized within. His films, (titles like The Silence of Sleep, Be Kind Rewind, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) can be downright infuriating when you’re not on their wavelength, but they can also be deeply rewarding for those not alienated by their fanciful sentiments. Personally, I’ve always been a fan of Gondry’s, finding his films to range from pretty good to absolutely fantastic. My only slight qualm with his filmmaking style is that he always feels somewhat restrained by the format, like he needs to bend over backwards to justify the dreamlike loopiness of his practical effects visuals with a narrative purpose. In his short-form music video work, Gondry was free to experiment with visual techniques and surreal logic without having to provide context for their existence (like the video stores, dream sequences, and memory erasure in the titles mentioned above), but that sense of liberation has been difficult for him to translate to feature films.

In a lot of ways last year’s Mood Indigo finds Gondry at last discovering that sense of freedom on the silver screen. The film’s narrative makes no attempt to justify Gondry’s visual whimsy, but instead rolls with it as if it were a normal part of everyday life. It’s not a film that’s going to win over Gondry’s detractors, but it is instead one that caters to his established audience, assuming they are already game for the intricate, dreamlike quirk he is sure to throw at them. Entirely unrestrained, Gondry allows his imagination to run wild here, like an especially quirky Rube Goldberg contraption on the fritz.

Mood Indigo is just crawling with weird, loopy inventions like alarm bells that infest kitchen walls like bugs, pianos that mix hard liquor “harmonic cocktails”, see-though plexiglass limousines, elephant-shaped tanks, and a species of bird people that takes that concept even more literally than the movie Bird People. The film’s first half is a frantic flurry of Gondry whimsy that gets so overly excited that its elements blend together, causing a strange sort of synesthesia: vinyl records can be watched, food can be heard, sounds can be drank, etc. If the pace of the first half had kept up its blinding speed even I might’ve turned on the film. It’s a near-exhausting flood of strange ideas that begin to feel as if they are connected by no unifying concept at all, as if Gondry were the Richard Kelly of twee. Fortunately, if you stick with the film, it eventually relents and begins to reveal it does indeed have a very strict method to its madness. As the protagonist says to a friend, “Despite the complexity of your words you might be onto something.”

The loopy dream logic of Mood Indigo initially feels formless, but it’s eventually revealed that the movie’s fundamental reality is influenced directly by the mood of the characters that inhabit it. The film tells the basic full-cycle story of a life-long relationship from lovers being introduced by friends at a party to their blissful marriage to their eventual dissolution. The constantly shifting, optimistically energized mood of the first half (wherein everything from the food to the household appliances feels alive & happy) fades as the central couple suffers through sickness & poverty, a change sparked by a seemingly harmless water lily. As the mood sours, the pace slows tremendously; the walls literally start closing in, cobwebs form over once sunshine-blessed windows, characters age rapidly, and ominous shadows start coming to life. One character explains, “As you go through life spaces seem smaller.” It’s a sad statement that rings punishingly true as the ostensibly invincible young love from early in the film succumbs to the pressure of life’s heaviest burdens and the even the frame of the film itself begins to constrict & turn grey.

Mood Indigo is almost certain to alienate the twee-averse very early in its proceedings and may even push a large part of the remaining audience a little too far (the same way an increasingly fussy Wes Anderson has seemingly been testing how much Wes Anderson people can take in recent titles like Moonrise Kingdom & The Grand Budapest Hotel). From what I understand, the film’s original European cut was a full 40 minutes longer than the American home video version and that massive edits were made to cut down on its overabundance of ideas. Honestly, that extra 40 minutes probably would’ve poisoned even my viewing experience and I really, really liked the movie. As is, Mood Indigo is a spontaneous, lively film balanced out by the soul-crushing dread of its final hour. For audiences already on board with Gondry’s hyperbolic visual imagination, it’s refreshing to see the director set free by such a vague narrative structure as a gradually shifting mood and Mood Indigo might rank among titles like Eternal Sunshine as his best work. For those who find the idea of that lack of restraint insufferable, it’s best that you stay far, far away. If nothing else, the movie finds Gondry at his Gondriest, which can go either way for you depending on your tolerance of the heights & depths of both Gondry & twee.

Mood Indigo is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

-Brandon Ledet

Mother Night (1996)

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inaworld

threehalfstar

Mother Night is an outstanding novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., arguably his best work outside the holy trinity of his titles that get the most attention: Slaughter House Five, Cat’s Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions. Mother Night is surprisingly just as great (if not better) than any of those books, but what makes it even more surprising is that was remarkably adaptable for film. In addition to hitting my costume drama sweet spot (a low bar to clear, for sure) 1996’s Mother Night was also the best Vonnegut adaptation I’ve ever seen (another low bar, since I’ve only seen the not-very-good Breakfast of Champions). It obviously doesn’t touch anything near the greatness of Vonnegut’s novel (how could it?), but it was effective as a summary of the film’s best touchstones with some inspired casting choices helping bring his words to life.

Playing a role that would likely be filled by Bruce Dern if it were released in 2015 and not 1996, Nick Nolte is damn good in the film’s central role as Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American playwright turned Nazi propagandist during World War II. In some ways Vonnegut does for the Nazi scumbag what Nabokov did for a pedophile in Lolita: he makes Campbell a complicated, richly human character that is at times sympathetic and at other times beyond contemptible, even to himself. Especially to himself. Campbell is a Nazi propagandist who says gut-wrenchingly evil things about Jews as a people in his radio broadcasts, but he’s also an American spy who transmits sensitive information about the war in those very same broadcasts. Nolte carries the gruff, broken spirit of Campbell well, selling the alternating self-hatred and self-aggrandizing of his inner conflict exactly as I imagined it while reading the novel.

Vonnegut’s plot allows a lot of room for consideration in the ways morality during war is a lot more questionable than the typical good vs. evil narrative that’s usually depicted. For Campbell that means that the coded spy language that’s infused into his hateful Nazi broadcasts makes his sin & his virtue inseparable. As his German father-in-law puts it, it does not matter whether he is a spy or not, because the hate in his propaganda is so effective that there is no way he could have served the enemy (America) as well as he served his adopted country (Germany). Campbell tries to remain impartial to the Nazi/American divide, saying that he only feels allegiance to his marriage (“a nation of two”) but the impossibility of that lie is a lesson he learns too late. It’s a moral he summarizes as “You must be careful what you pretend to be, because in the end you are what you pretend to be.”

Mother Night is not only commendable in its competence at capturing Vonnegut’s tricky sense of humor on film; it’s especially praiseworthy because the task in this particular case is made even trickier by the story’s habit of culling amusement out of the horrors of Nazism. It’s partly successful because of its willingness to let the hateful things Campbell says ruminate, like in a scene where a filmed version of one of his broadcasts is projected onto his horrified face as he truly listens to his own words for the first time. Although Campbell is occasionally sympathetic, the movie rarely lets him (or the audience) forget that he is a monster. Besides Nolte’s excellent turn as the central propagandist, there are plenty of other performances to praise here: Alan Arkin’s role as his best friend; Sheryl “Laura Palmer” Lee as his German wife; a perfectly cast John Goodman as the American agent that recruits him as a spy; and Kirsten Dunst as an adorable, pint-sized Nazi moppet, among others. There are some really dark touches to the film’s humor, like when Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” plays over images of a concentration camp or when Campbell makes sensual love to his wife while one of Hitler’s impassioned speeches blares on the bedside radio. These touches all feel oddly subversive, as the whole film has a decidedly old-fashioned feel to it, like black comedy version of The Rocketeer. As a film, it’s more than just a rushed, abridged version of a great novel; it’s also a handsome, well-acted historical drama that finds a peculiar line of humor in narcissism, self-hatred, and genocide.

-Brandon Ledet

Dream Lover (1994)

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twostar

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Thrillers and James Spader are two of my favorite things, but they do not come together harmoniously in Dream Lover. The film’s director, Nicholas Kazan, seemed to be more interested in making this a chic, sexy movie instead of a genuine psychological thriller and that was a bad move on his part. Many thrillers, especially those in the early 90s, have sexual elements that enhance their appeal, but something went terribly wrong with this one. Dream Lover isn’t a well-balanced film, but it was sort of enjoyable because it was so crappy (hence the Camp Stamp).

Ray Reardon (James Spader) is a successful businessman that becomes instantly attracted to Lena Mathers (Mädchen Amick), a beautiful woman he meets at an art gallery. They partake in a passionate love affair and after sleeping together a few times decide to tie the knot. Of course, after marrying Lena and not knowing much about her past, Ray finds himself in a marriage filled with mystery and deception. He has recurring clown nightmares that reflect his crumbling love life and I absolutely hated them. They didn’t blend in with the rest of the film and are insanely annoying. It quickly becomes obvious that Lena is psychotic and after Ray’s money, but her plan to get her hands on his money doesn’t surface until the end of the movie. Thankfully, Kazan allows the audience to have a little bit of fun attempting to figure out Lena’s diabolical plan.

Uncovering the mystery of Lena’s scheme was a bit fun, but the film was ultimately a very unsatisfying, predictable thriller. There weren’t many surprises or unexpected twists, which are some basic components to a decent thriller. Spader was the best thing about the film because his acting was flawless (as always), but it wasn’t enough to save the film from falling into the depths of bad movie Hell.

Dream Lover is currently streaming on Netflix.

-Britnee Lombas

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

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twostar

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The best-selling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey recently made its long-awaited debut on the silver screen and, as a fan of the book series, I was very curious to see how this film could possibly be tame enough for movie theaters. What could have been one of the most iconic movies of the year turned out to be a total snoozefest. Literally. People in my theater were sleeping so hard they were snoring.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a film about a man incapable of love that falls for a hopeless romantic. What makes this average love story different from others is that he also likes to dominate his female partners in his “Red Room of Pain.” Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) is a successful, attractive businessman that really enjoys the color grey. He has a grey office, grey ties, grey cars, etc. Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is a shy college student that earns the opportunity to interview the hottest billionaire in Seattle, Mr. Grey. After administering a truly crappy interview, she finds herself to be attracted to Christian, just as he finds himself to be infatuated with Ana. He instantly becomes disgustingly obsessed with her and takes time out of his busy schedule to make sure he knows her every move. There’s a mysterious aura about Christian, but Ana just can’t seem to figure out his big secret, even after he shows up at her hardware store job to buy cable ties, rope, and masking tape. Shortly after that uncomfortable encounter, he tells her “I don’t make love. I fuck. Hard.” Everything sort of went downhill after that.

I don’t understand how a film about a BDSM relationship could be so quiet and lackluster. There wasn’t very much dialogue between Ana and Christian, and that really didn’t do much to make their love for each other believable. There was so much awkward energy between the two that it just became too much to handle. In the book, which is told in first person by Ana, many of her internal emotions are discussed, but this isn’t really shown in the film. The film made it look like she really didn’t enjoy being dominated, and at some points, it seemed like she was being sexually abused. It’s been a while since I’ve read the novel, but from what I remember, she was actually enjoying the submissive lifestyle; she was just scared that she liked it too much. Something went terribly wrong when the information from the book was translated into a film script.

In all honesty, I didn’t expect much from this film. The book was pure smut, so I was prepared for a silly mess of a movie that it wasn’t. With lots of good one-liners, a wicked soundtrack, and an amazing slow-motion flogging scene, it was far from the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Actually, I’m kind of looking forward to the sequels.

-Britnee Lombas

The Boy Next Door (2015)

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three star

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“I really love your mother’s cookies.”

Jennifer Lopez’s new erotic thriller The Boy Next Door is the kind of movie you’d expect to find on Cinemax at two in the morning in the mid-90s. It is badly written, poorly acted, and campy to its core, but it’s also a lot of fun.

To quell expectations, the film starts with one of the lamest, most unnecessary montages ever. High school English teacher Claire is shown jogging through the park as melodramatic flashbacks of her crumbling marriage and the effect it had on her son Kevin are interspersed at random. Why the filmmakers chose to have a flashback in the first thirty seconds of the film when a few lines of dialogue could have done the same thing is beyond me, but it does establish the film’s “bad Lifetime Movie on steroids” vibe.

This sentiment continues when we are introduced to Claire’s seducer and new neighbor Noah, whose chiseled biceps appear on screen before his face. Handsome and charming, Noah quickly manipulates his way into the family’s inner circle by developing a bizarre, slightly homoerotic friendship with Claire’s asthmatic son Kevin. The two are supposed to be high school age but Noah looks closer to 30. Noah then moves on to seducing Claire by doing hunky things like fixing garage doors and working on cars in a sleeveless shirt. He even reveals his sensitive side (“Ah, poets. Homer, Shakespeare, Byron, Zeppelin, Dylan.”) and proceeds to win Claire over by buying her a first edition copy of The Iliad at a garage sale (huh).

One night, after a really bad date and a few too many glasses of wine, Claire gives in to temptation and lets Noah seduce her. That’s when the real fun begins. After Claire rejects Noah’s further advances, his transformation from hunk to psychopath happens almost instantaneously. What starts with double entendres like “I really love your mother’s cookies” & “It got real wet over here” quickly escalates to full-blown murder. Along the way we are treated to typical movie-psycho behavior: stalking, hacking email accounts, cutting people’s brakes, etc. This all leads to an absurd third act involving arson & eyeballs that approaches the high camp that could have made the film a true cult classic if there were only more of it.

Jennifer Lopez does the best she can with what she’s given but she alone can’t save the movie from coming across like a really crappy rehash of Fatal Attraction. There are lots of unintentionally funny moments, but the film doesn’t truly embrace its own badness until the last twenty minutes. The Boy Next Door isn’t going to be on any critic’s top ten list this year, but for fans of camp it is a trashy, highly entertaining mess.

-James Cohn

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

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fourstar

Picking a film to watch based solely on its title is sometimes the best way to have an exciting viewing experience. That’s exactly what I did when I decided to watch Séance on a Wet Afternoon. I knew nothing about the plot or cast, but the title seemed promising. What I expected to be an old supernatural horror film turned out to be a riveting psychological thriller about a deranged psychic, her anxious husband, and a kidnapping gone terribly wrong.

Kim Stanley puts on a flawless performance as Myra Savage, a psychic that is willing to do just about anything to publicize her talents. She is able to force her weak, docile husband, Billy Savage (Richard Attenborough) to kidnap the daughter of a high-profile couple so she can aid the police with finding the child’s whereabouts using her psychic powers. Myra is obviously mentally unstable and has one of the best mental breakdowns in cinema history at the very end of the film. One can’t help but feel sympathy for her husband because he’s so fragile and wants to please his wife so badly, but there’s definitely more than meets the eye with Billy. As the Savages get deeper into the kidnapping (or shall I say “borrowing”) of the child, they devise a plan to demand a ransom. While Billy may seem like a nervous mess, he does a great job of keeping calm while carrying out his plan to accept the ransom money, which leads to a very exciting cat-and-mouse chase through the streets of London.

This classic British film is full of top-notch acting and has one of the most unique storylines that I’ve ever seen in a movie. There are times when the film seems to be moving at a slow pace, but I can guarantee that there is never a dull moment. It’s really easy to dislike Myra, especially in the film’s opening scenes, but in her breakthrough moment at the end, there’s no doubt that those feelings will completely change. The development of her character from the beginning of the film to the end is really phenomenal. I really can’t get over how perfect Stanley’s acting is in this film. This is the only film that I’ve seen her in so far, but I plan on exploring some of her other work very soon.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon is currently streaming on Hulu Plus.

-Britnee Lombas

Riding the Bus with My Sister (2005)

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onehalfstar

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“I’m not stupid, I’m just different.”

When I first learned that Riding the Bus with My Sister existed, I was both fascinated and frightened. Rosie O’Donnell playing a mentally challenged person whose main hobbies include riding the city bus and buying toilet seat covers held promise for sheer what-the-fuckness, but I knew that so-bad-it’s-good can end up being so-bad-it’s-really-bad real quick.

My worst fears were confirmed, unfortunately, in the opening credits as the words “Lifetime” and “Hallmark Hall of Fame” scrolled across the screen and were further solidified when Beth, waking from her disabled slumber, smiles into the mirror and in a loud, grating voice shouts, “Good Morning!” From that point forward, the WTF factor of seeing Rosie O’ Donnell play a mentally “retarded” woman with a heart of gold diminished every time she was on the screen.

Now I know it’s not politically correct to use the term “retarded” but it’s inexplicably used throughout Riding the Bus with My Sister, its negativity undermining many of the positive messages the film is trying to convey. One character even asks early on, “They still use that word?” It also doesn’t help that Beth is treated like crap the entire movie. In the first five minutes she is called a “hippo” by a downstairs neighbor, glared at with disgust by her fellow bus riders, and openly insulted for being lazy & living off the government. It would have been just as effective if director Anjelica Huston (Why?) flashed “People hate the handicapped” in bold red letters. For a simple woman who only wants to ride the bus, drink discount brand cola, and one day go to Disney World, she is treated as a drain on society.

The person who treats her the worst is her sister Rachel, a career woman living in New York who must leave behind her fashion photography business to take care of Beth after their father passes away. In a wholly unlikable performance, Andie MacDowell phones it in as the self-absorbed Rachel. MacDowell’s only job in the movie is to look nice & be annoyed by Beth’s antics. Rachel moves in with Beth to help her adapt to life on her own, but soon regrets it as Beth irritates her with conversation-starters like “Hey Rachael, I put seven red fishies inside of this can, do you think they can swim in cola? I sure hope so. I would hate to drown them.” Rachel’s characters arc (and the arc of the entire movie) amounts to the realization, “Hey, I’m kind of a piece of shit because I never really accepted my mentally challenged sister.” We learn this through a tedious parade of at least ten flashbacks of the sisters eating dirt, painting, even suffering seizures; all accompanied by sparse, acoustic guitar. This goes on for two hours.

The most frustrating thing about Riding the Bus With My Sister is that Beth is looked down on by Rachel but she seems to have life more figured out than her developmentally “superior” sister. She has her own place, lots of friends, and a routine she enjoys. She even has a similarly disabled boyfriend, Jessie, who treats her well, takes her out on dates, and has hobbies of his own like karate & riding his bike. Of course, in one of the many ways the movie manipulates viewers’ sentimentality, Jessie is beaten by a group of thugs towards the end of the film.

Kudos should be given to Rosie O’Donnell, though. While her performance mostly consists of rocking back and forth, shouting, and contorting her face, she does succeed in coming across as genuinely handicapped. In one of the film’s best scenes, Beth mourns the loss of her father by sobbing uncontrollably on a bench outside the hospital while eating a doughnut, drinking a cola, and wearing a kitty cat t-shirt. In another she talks about boning Will Smith. There are a few memorable moments like that in Riding the Bus with My Sister but with minimal plot development and a near-absence of likable characters the film falls apart. What could have been a heartfelt drama with camp value fails because the story doesn’t go anywhere. In the end, the viewer is left feeling as confused & unfairly abused as Beth is in the film.

-James Cohn

Cake (2014)

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fourstar

Over the weekend, I was able to make my way to the movie theater to see Cake. I didn’t know anything about the film until I came across the trailer last Friday. Where did this movie come from and why didn’t I hear anything about it? Maybe it’s because of a lack of advertising or the fact that I’m so behind with the times. I was so eager to watch it that I was first in line to see it Saturday morning. I was surrounded by tons of silver-haired old ladies, so I was pretty much in my element. The film brought out some inappropriate laughter, gasps, and lots of tears from just about everyone in the audience. Cake was a movie for real people about real people, and I absolutely loved it.

Jennifer Aniston really showed the world that she could be more than just a funny, flirty girl who stars in a rom-com every now and then. In this film, she plays the role of Claire Bennett, a pill-popper recovering from an unknown, tragic accident. Claire has such a horrible attitude that she drove just about all of her friends and family away. The only person in her life is her paid housekeeper, Silvana (Adriana Barazza). In her support group consisting of other women dealing with unhealthy addictions, one of the members, Nina (Anna Kendrick) commits suicide by jumping off a freeway. After having a few confrontations with Nina’s ghost, Claire develops an obsession with Nina’s family and suicide. This strange little obsession actually helps Claire come to terms with her personal tragedy and take initiative to get better.

Cake is simply a sweet story with a good bit of crude humor and lots of heart. After reading a couple of reviews about the movie, critics did not seem to enjoy the film’s slow pace, but I really enjoyed the way the movie dragged on with no straight-forward answers. It allowed me to develop a connection with Claire; she’s a nut job that I want to be best friends with. I personally know a few individuals that suffer from chronic pain and pill addiction, and I was shocked at how authentic Aniston’s performance was. It was so spot-on that it was scary. Eating her prescription meds like candy, grunting and complaining all the time, and acting like she has nothing to live for. Even if you have no interest in watching this type of film, it’s worth sitting through just to witness Aniston’s impeccable acting. Her performance really “takes the cake.”

-Britnee Lombas

Frank (2014)

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fourstar
“I’ve always wanted to work with someone who shares my dream of making extremely likable music.”

It seems easier now than ever to be a “musician”: gather a couple friends, write a few songs, release them on the Internet.  But just because your music is easier to get heard does not mean that it’s necessarily good. In the 2014 comic drama Frank we follow one such mediocre musician, Jon, played by Domhnall Gleeson, who finds himself dropping everything to join an avant-garde pop band led by the enigmatic and mysterious Frank. Frank is a musical savant with a history of mental illness who hides himself inside a large papier-mâché head.  Jon is enthralled with Frank’s outsider art but fails to see past his own ambitions and realize that there are dark secrets behind that fake, gigantic head.

Frank is grounded by a stunning performance from Michael Fassbender as the titular protagonist who channels Jim Morrison, Captain Beefheart, and Daniel Johnston; artists whose own troubled past and history of mental illness mirror Frank’s. Props should also be given Domnhall Gleeson, as it could have been easy to lose our sympathy for Jon as he latches on to Frank’s coattails. But in the end we realize he’s just trying to be something he’s not and for that he earns our sympathy instead of our scorn.

Some viewers might feel that the story loses steam in its melodramatic finale but the emotional third act brings home the larger theme of how different people react to mental illness when it is coupled with something like vast creativity: diner patrons call Frank a “freak” and laugh at him; Jon thinks he must have been ‘traumatized’; Frank’s parents love and support him, but are clueless about how to help him.

Ultimately, what sounds like a premise for a ridiculous indie comedy instead ends up being a deeply moving exploration of mental illness and blind artist worship. It is also wickedly funny. Director Lenny Abrahamson does a great job of juggling the seemingly contradictory tones in the film: whimsical and offbeat, sweet and punk-spirited, funny and melancholic. A definite must watch.

Frank is currently streaming on Netflix.

-James Cohn

The Juniper Tree (1990)

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three star

Discovering Björk’s acting debut in The Juniper Tree was some divine happenstance. I had lost track of her music career sometime after 2001’s Vespertine, so it was delightful to recently give her latest album Biophilia a (four years late) first listen and discover its fantastic weirdness, obsessively looping it through my headphones all last week. A recommendation that same week alerted me that I was 25 years behind on the release of another Björk project, a small budget, black & white indie film about witchcraft.

The Juniper Tree was filmed in 1986 in the months following the dissolution of Björk’s post-punk band KUKL and the birth of her first child. By the time the film cleared its financial hurdles and saw a 1990 release in Iceland and on film festival circuits, she had already earned much greater success with the alt rock group The Sugarcubes. By the time it saw a wide, international release in 1993, she had achieved major success as a solo artist with the album Debut. In comparison to the huge “Bad Taste” art collective behind The Sugarcubes and the big-name record labels behind Debut, The Juniper Tree’s cast and budget are microscopic, but the film does a lot with a little, pulling a weird little story and some bizarre images from a few locations and even fewer moving pieces. At least from a funding standpoint, it was a time capsule of a primitive state of Björk’s growth as an artist, but one that demonstrates how little material she needs to work with to produce something great.

Loosely based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the same name, The Juniper Tree is the story of two grieving families struggling to blend into one cohesive unit. Think of it as an Icelandic Brady Bunch, but with witches & cannibalism instead of puppy love & nose-breaking footballs. Björk plays Margit, a young woman whose mother was recently stoned & burned for practicing witchcraft. In the escape from their home her sister Katla marries a young widower who lives alone with his son. The boy befriends Margit, but is vehemently against his father’s marriage to Katla, who he knows to be a witch. Although Katla does cast spells (cruelly & often), it is Margit who possesses truly magical abilities, most importantly the ability to communicate with ghosts.

The film’s heart lies with the relationship between Margit and her young brother-in-law and the mourning that bonds them, but it’s the fleeting, hallucinatory imagery that makes it noteworthy. Despite its budget, The Juniper Tree manages to produce an impressive range of images: a hand thrust into a black hole, a ghost perched on Icelandic cliffs, fish picking at an underwater corpse, Northern Lights, birds in flight. It’s a somber, self-serious affair, but one that earns its odder moments in a very short run time. If nothing else, the heavenly tones of Björk’s singing voice elevate the material into otherworldly territory. She’s perfectly suited for this world of witchcraft & mourning and it shows in the final product.

Of course, The Juniper Tree will always be known as the other Björk movie. Lars von Trier’s powerful Dancer in the Dark gave her a much larger stage to prove herself not only as an incredible composer, but also as an actress, a talent she doesn’t utilize nearly enough. The Juniper Tree gets drowned out in the comparison, but when considered in isolation it’s an interesting little art movie. It’s very much Super Serious 80s/90s Film School Fodder, but if a young, feral Björk practicing witchcraft goes as far with you as it does with me, you’ll find it kinda perfect in its small-scale intimacy.

The Juniper Tree is currently streaming on Hulu.

-Brandon Ledet