THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

I’m not sure anyone else would dare call The Eight Mountains a love story, but I will. Even though there is very little romance in it, and certainly not between the two main characters—at least not of the sort that “romantic” movies are typically about.

This is really a platonic love story, between two boys, and then between two men, who are simply close friends. This is precisely the kind of story I have long pined for more of: about close friendship, about an intimate relationship that doesn’t have to be romantic or sexual. These types of relationships are plentiful out here in the real world, and we so seldom get to see it depicted onscreen.

I’d love it even more to see an American film about such a relationship, but I’ll take what I can get. The Eight Mountains is Italian, set mostly in the Italian alps, some of it in Turin, Italy’s fourth-largest city with a metropolitan population of about 2 million—more than enough to provide a stark, urban contrast to the film’s primary setting of Grana, a rural community of fewer than 1000 people all of about 31 miles east of Turin.

This is the story of friendship formed in boyhood, at around the age of twelve, between Pietro, whose parents are renting a house in Grana for the summer; and Bruno, who is the last child left in this mountain community.

A good chunk of the film, at least the first quarter, follows these two and their relatively carefree exploits, over the first couple of summers they know each other. The boys at this age are played by Lupo Barbiero and Cristiano Sassella, who are both great. After Bruno is forced to start working in town during the summers, the brief portion of the film about their adolescence focuses on a bitter and sullen teenaged Pietro (Andrea Palma), who only sees Bruno once during this period. They then don’t see each other for fifteen years, until they reconnect and resume a close friendship as adults—now played, through the rest of the movie, by Luca Marinelli as Pietro and Alessandro Borghi as Bruno.

Bruno resents the time he was forced to work in town; he loves his mountain life too much, and establishes an ultimately unsustainable milk and cheese farm in Grana. He convinces Pietro to help him rebuild a stone house up there in the mountains, as promised to Pietro’s late father during a long period in which Pietro and his father weren’t speaking.

There follows many years in which Pietro continues going away, but coming back to visit during the summer, even through some of the time he spends abroad in Nepal. In turn, they find spouses; Bruno has a child. The Eight Mountains has a pretty long run time—two hours and 27 minutes—but it has a warm and inviting tone to it, this kind of slow burn narrative of two people who deeply care about each other, what their lives have been like, where their lives are going, and what challenges they face.

It may be a cliché, but there are those who speak of that special friend with whom they can spend a lot of time away from each other, sometimes many years, but once they are together again it’s as though they were never apart. You could say that that kind of friendship is what The Eight Mountains is about. The title is a metaphor that is explained in the film, referring to the ways two very different types of people move through the world. Pietro and Bruno clearly represent the two different types, in a way where their cyclical journeys regularly intersect.

There are no thrills or twists in The Eight Mountains, which is more of a quiet drama, which caresses you like a pleasant summer breeze. Granted, some of it is also set in harsh mountain winters, but the warmth between these two men stays consistent. There is but one brief period of conflict and fairly quick resolution between them; every story must have that, and yet that’s not really what this is about. This is about two people who, in spite of living very different lives, understand each other in a way no one else really does.

Bruno is very obstinate about his perceived place as a resident of the mountains, as though it is his destiny, no matter what the consequences to his livelihood or his family. Still, there are no great tragic moments, only some detours into melancholy. Early on, Pietro contemplates something his father told him, about how every bright period must be followed by a period of gloom. I think a lot about that idea, because it’s really the only way we appreciate the bright periods when they happen. Such is the case with the long, meandering friendship between Pietro and Bruno, two close friends who deeply love each other. Going on that journey with them is a lovely experience.

Pietro and Bruno share one of countless quiet moments together.

Overall: B+

YOU HURT MY FEELINGS

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

The most impressive thing about You Hurt My Feelings is the relative insignificance of its central conflict, and how compelling, warm, fun and charming it is in spite of that.

To be fair, the conflict is not insignificant to the characters, or particularly Beth, as played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Beth is an author, has published a modestly successful memoir and has been working on a novel for the past two years, which she has given, draft after draft, to her husband to read. Her husband, Don, is played in a perfectly cast Tobias Menzies—who, incidentally, is 49 years old, as compared to Louis-Dreyfus at 62. His being younger than her is mentioned in the film, although they don’t say by how much; Julia Louis-Dreyfus still looks so fantastic that they could have played characters the same age.

And there is a lot of insecurity at play in the story here, although really none of it has anything to do with age—with the exception of Don’s vanity coming to the fore over wrinkles around his eyes. The “big issue” at play, actually, is the discovery that Don has been telling Beth all along that he loves her novel. But, she overhears him confessing to a friend that he doesn’t like it at all, and this leaves her spinning.

As written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, who previously directed Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the lovely Enough Said (2013), You Hurt My Feelings is concerned about much more than this lie that a husband tells his wife out of love and compassion but still winds up hurting her. It’s just the greatest example of a fairly common theme among all the characters, which is basically what morally gray things we do in what we consider to be the best interests of the people we love.

These things apply also to Beth’s sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) and her husband Mark (Arian Moayed), respectively an interior decorator and a struggling actor. Ditto Beth and Don’s 23-year-old son Eliot (Owen Teague), who is also an aspiring writer and winds up offering some perspective on Beth’s neuroses at just the right time.

I really enjoyed all of these aspects of You Hurt My Feelings. For once, an engaging movie that’s not about something vital or possibly fatal—no one’s world is either literally or even figuratively falling apart, even if it does feel like it for a brief period. These are just normal, everyday—okay, white and upper-middle-class and by some standards maybe even wealthy—people, having fairly regular, everyday interpersonal problems. The magic here is in the telling of the story, with the unique touch by Holofcener.

Back in 2023, I called Enough Said “Simple and Charming.” Maybe that is just Nicole Holofcener’s brand, because the exact same can be said of You Hurt My Feelings. This one does deftly weave together a lot of seemingly disparate narrative threads, such as Don struggling to feel effective in his career as a therapist. This allows some fun guest stars, such as David Cross and Amber Tamblyn as a married couple incapable of getting along.

In the end, everyone comes to terms with whatever relatively minor issue they’re dealing with. Along the way, it’s just a joy to hang out with these people; Julia Louis-Dreyfus remains a consummate performer, particularly of comedy. And this film has its fair share of laughs, delivering truly everything that you could want or expect from it.

Tobias Menzies and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are confronted by some hard—but also funny—truths: which is to say, white lies.

Overall: B+

MONICA

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

Monica takes subtlety and understatement to new levels. There’s never a moment that explicitly states that the title character, who is returning home after many years to look after her estranged, ailing mother, is a trans woman. She’s played, however, by trans actor Trace Lysette, previously seen as a regular supporting character on the rightfully acclaimed Prime Video series Transparent. A lot of times it’s said—a lot of times by me—that going in cold would enhance a movie watching experience, but I would argue that, in the case of Monica, these are details that are helpful to know going in.

Monica’s mother, Eugenia, is played by Patricia Clarkson, a reliably welcome screen presence. Here, at the age of 63, she plays a woman deteriorating from a tumor. We learn that she doesn’t recognize Monica, who has come at the invitation (or maybe pleading) of a sister-in-law she’s evidently never known, as the family needs help. Eugenia’s first assumption is that Monica comes from the hospice care she insists she doesn’t want.

Again, something Monica never makes explicitly clear is when Eugenia figures out who Monica really is. There’s no dramatic apology, no speech. There is a bit of a speechless, tearful breakdown, which perhaps stands in for an apology. Over time, Monica and Eugenia inch toward an emotional connection.

It really must be noted: “time” and “inch” are key words here. As directed and co-written by Italian filmmaker Andrea Pallaoro, and particularly as edited by Paola Freddi, Monica moves at a truly glacial pace. This element alone is likely to turn off a lot of viewers, even as it moves critics—including me. Monica is quality work, but hardly populist. It is far more artful than it is entertaining. It has a strangely unusual aspect ratio, nearly square in shape, with very long shots that stop short of being mundane.

That said, I found this film to be deeply memorable and affecting. The acting is excellent, and it’s wonderful to see a trans actor so well cast in the leading role of a trans character. Trace Lysette is more than up to the task, and I’d love to see her cast in more roles that are more widely seen. She’s one worth looking out for.

This is rarely an effective selling point, but by the end of Monica, it felt well worth the quiet, meditative experience. It’s not a slog; it’s just slow. And in this case, the editing is deliberate, almost pointed. You live in Monica’s world with her, experience highs and lows, none of them borne of the kind of trauma that history has taught viewers to expect. One might suspect that was the intent. This is the kind of skilled subtlety that offers you some space, a kind of distance in which the effects seep into you. It’s a uniquely impressive achievement.

A different way of facing each other.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: FILIP

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

There’s a fascinatingly unusual angle to Filip, a film about Nazi Germany produced by one of its many occupied countries during World War II: Poland. Indeed, the opening sequence focuses on the Jewish people in the “Warsaw ghetto,” handheld camera work following cluelessly joyous young people on their way to see a cabaret act. Even as they all walk around with the Star of David affixed to their sleeves, they are all smiles and joy, Filip (Eryk Kulm) and a fiancé preparing to perform a dance onstage.

It’s obvious very early on that this opening sequence is going somewhere very dark—not because of anything we see onscreen, which would seem fun and carefree in any other context. But, knowing this is Poland in 1941 changes everything about the expectations.

Shortly thereafter, the setting shifts to Frankfurt two years later, where Filip is posing as a Frenchman working among the serving staff of a hotel. And this is where the point of view offers something unusual, in the midst of countless films set during the second World War. Although Filip is himself Jewish, and he is indeed the protagonist of this story, his Jewishness only comes up occasionally. Given the removal of the Jewish community, the Nazis are left to oppress and moralize with the others left on the periphery—namely, the foreign workers in business establishments.

Which is to say: even with Filip successfully posing as someone who isn’t Jewish, he’s still not German. The Nazi obsession with “purity” extends to the French, or Belgian, as in the case of Filip’s roommate and close friend Pierre (Victor Meutelet). There are perpetual dangers even to these people, and in one particularly memorable scene, three different non-German men are hanged for the crime of having had sex with German women.

Director and co-writer Michal Kwiecinski makes much of Filip’s sexual exploits, as he does exactly this, having sex with multiple German women—all part of his plan, to seduce German women, “turn them into whores,” and humiliate them, as his own form of subversive revenge against the Nazis.

This, indeed, is where Filip is a bit disappointing; I have mixed feelings at best about this premise, which threads an undertone of misogyny into the narrative. Eryk Kulm is excellent as the stoic and brooding title character, and every scene is shot with propulsive tension—Filip is a riveting experience, albeit a predictably dispiriting one. His targeting of German women specifically is a strange turn, though, given that the Germans who slaughtered his whole community in Warsaw were all men. And as with any patriarchal society, with Nazis controlling their women’s behaviors and exploits, the women really can’t win—not even with the man who is ostensibly our hero, not even when one of them makes clear she does not support what the Nazis are doing.

That said, everything else about how Filip is made and constructed is excellent, and we do get some narrative turns into things like friendship and loyalty. Spoiler alert, these things also tend to have tragic ends.

The basic gist is that Filip is simply surviving, and existing in some moral gray areas—to put it generously—in order to do so. There are moments in Filip that are truly heartbreaking, especially after witnessing communal joy fatally cut short. It’s clear that Filip, still a young man, will always be damaged. Filip has a fair amount in common with the 2002 film The Pianist, which was also about a Polish Jew surviving the Nazis, albeit in far starker and more desperate circumstances. In this case, Filip is hiding in plain sight.

Filip comes within striking distance of greatness, falling just short due to some unfortunate narrative choices. What is has to recommend it manages to supersede its flaws, however, making it well worth a watch.

Serving the enemy: Eryk Kulm hides in plain sight.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: THEATER CAMP

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Theater Camp seems to pick up where Christopher Guest left off—and, I mean, where he left off with his last great movie, A Mighty Wind, in 2003. His 2006 film For Your Consideration aside, Guest hasn’t been in top form in a solid twenty years. In that wake, countless imitators have come and gone.

Somewhat astonishingly, first-time feature co-directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman have come along with a film worthy of the comparison. It also fantastically updates the charming but flawed precepts of the film Camp, which was also released in 2003, was also about a theater camp, and incidentally costarred a then-18-year-old Anna Kendrick.

Who knows which of the many, incredibly talented children in Theater Camp will similarly become stars in the near future? The cast this time is rightfully much more diverse, right down to the straight theater kid who has two dads. And the characters this time are not saddled with a plot about backstabbing competitiveness. The central conflict here has very little to do with interpersonal conflict, as the characters—teachers and kids alike—exist in a sort of utopia of sorts, one by all accounts very similar to those remembered by drama kids today. Instead, Theater Camp is much more about finding success through making the best of very limited resources.

The more I think about this movie, the more fond of it I become. There’s something about the storytelling, that is sweet without being sticky, heartwarming without being overly sentimental. It’s not just that these varyingly eccentric kids exist in a world that allows them to be their whole, authentic selves. It’s that, in the world of this movie, there isn’t even any particular novelty in that. It’s just what these kids—and their teachers—know.

And none of this is to say that Theater Camp doesn’t lean into the humor of “theater types.” It very much does so, but it’s always with a loving humor, a clear fondness for its subjects. One of my favorite things is how this extends to the camp founder’s grown son, Troy (Jimmy Tatro, who could easily pass for Ike Barinholtz’s younger brother), one of two key straight male characters. When his mother, Joan (Amy Sedaris, criminally underused) falls into a coma, Troy must step in and take on her duties. Even with Troy characterized as a “bro” type vlogger who comes in largely clueless, he is never characterized as the enemy—which, honestly, is refreshing. Instead, he’s merely a fish out of water, trying to find his bearings, stumbling on his way toward attempts to keep the camp afloat. He is met with some resistance, but in a way that makes us feel for him.

And that is perhaps the most delightful part of Theater Camp: it has a huge, ensemble cast of characters who are wildly different from each other, the one key thing they have in common being a love of theater. And every single one of them is likable—even, somehow, the director of the neighboring camp who is keen on taking over theirs.

The cast also prominently features Ben Platt, and co-director Molly Gordon, as teachers at the camp who play a gay man and his straight-woman best friend who attended this same camp as kids, and now compose an original play every year. This year their play is about the life of the play’s founder, which cleverly winds up touching Troy in subtly inventive ways.

Through this play-within-a-movie, we get a film that itself is technically not a musical, and yet we are treated to plenty of incredibly catchy, original musical numbers. If musicals aren’t your thing, then Theater Camp won’t be or you. But if you have any kind of appreciation for theater at all, and particularly the lovably odd personalities that inhabit that world, then you will be utterly charmed by this film.

You’ll be delighted by everyone in this movie. End of discussion!

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: BEING MARY TYLER MOORE

Directing: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

I should have done more research on Being Mary Tyler Moore beforehand. This is premiering on HBO a week from today. Why bother wasting a SIFF ticket on it?

I was hardly the only person to do so. I saw this at the Uptown Theater and, of the four SIFF films I have seen thus far, this had by far the largest crowd—more people in this audience than at even any regular-release film I’ve seen since probably last summer. This is a testament to the enduring legacy of Mary Tyler Moore, I suppose.

The woman was an icon, no doubt about it—and in a way that transcended the gross overuse of that word. The irony is that Mary Tyler Moore’s characters, particularly Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, were more interesting than she was. It may be fair to say that the documentary Being Mary Tyler Moore is the definitive record of Moore’s entire life, but far more is to be gained by watching The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) or The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977), both of which hold up shockingly well. The latter remains more forward thinking than about three quarters of any network series on today.

It would seem that Mary Tyler Moore, more than anything, was simply a vessel for a persona. This film suggests the real her is a lot closer to Beth Jarrett, the cold, grieving mother in Ordinary People (1980) for which Moore was nominated for an Academy Award. And Moore did endure far more than her fair share of tragedy, with a sister who died at age 21 from an overdose; a son who died at age 24 from a gun accident (amazingly, only a month after the release of Ordinary People), and a brother who died of kidney cancer at age 47.

On the upside, her third marriage was apparently the charm, with a man 18 years younger than her and who stayed with her 34 years, until her own death at the age of 80 in 2017.

That was six years ago. Why we’re getting this documentary now, as opposed to five years ago, is unclear. Except: this woman’s career and legacy remains as relevant as it ever was. Even all the way back during the Dick Van Dyke Show, Moore ironically played a housewife while pushing boundaries for American women: she was the first woman to wear pants on television, and was herself a working wife and mother offscreen. Nothing, of course, could possibly match the legacy of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which depicted a single woman, totally fulfilled by her personal and professional life, content to find and land a man if she can but comfortable with the outcome if doesn’t. This show aired in the era of Roe v. Wade, a bittersweet memory now if there ever was one.

And I certainly don’t mean to suggest that Mary Tyler Moore herself is uninteresting. She led a life worth examining. It’s just that she herself can never stack up to the characters she played, which is what causes an unfortunately muted effect to this film about her. Of course she was much more than Laura Petrie or Mary Richards: she had ups and downs on both Broadway and in film. She was later diagnosed with diabetes. But are any of these things as interesting as the enduringly groundbreaking TV shows she was an integral part of?

Being Mary Tyler Moore is a pretty standard documentary, about a deeply talented but slightly indecipherable woman, who played a couple of characters who will be (and already have been) remembered for generations. If you’re just a casual fan, then you could take or leave this film. If you really love her, you’ll like the movie. It might be of more interest to know, however, that The Dick Van Dyke Show is now streaming on Peacock and The Mary Tyler Moore Show is streaming on Prime Video.

She was just a bit more than what you saw onscreen.

Overall: B

SIFF Advance: HIDDEN MASTER: THE LEGACY OF GEORGE PLATT LYNES

Directing: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Who the hell is George Platt Lynes? I had no idea, myself, until seeing this documentary film about him listed in this year’s Seattle International Film Festival schedule. It turns out, he was an artist of photography, in his prime in the 1920s and 1930s, who was by all intents and purposes openly gay. More to the point, he was incredibly talented, his work was infused with male sexuality, and that combination is likely the biggest reason his vast and stunning body of work has gone unnoticed for decades.

Anyone who knows anything about the cross section of art history and gay history has heard of Robert Mapplethorpe—who was clearly influenced by George Platt Lynes. Lynes pre-dates even Mapplethorpe by a good five decades.

After seeing Hidden Master, I am dying to see a major exhibition of Lynes’s work. But, as director and co-writer Sam Shahid tells us, no American museum will touch this body of work. Several art historians and curators are interviewed for this film, and Shahid briefly includes some commentary on the “double standard” of art exhibition that plasters the naked female form all over the place, even when sexually evocative—sometimes even provocative—and yet won’t do the same for the naked male form, which by contrast threatens people. There appears to have been multiple books published about him and his work, however, and I just placed a hold on the single one of them apparently carried by the Seattle Public Library.

That book was published in 1994 and evidently focuses on the body of work Lynes left to the Kinsey Institute—one of many fascinating things about George being that he both became good friends with famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey, and was an active participant in his research. Hidden Master, the movie, is a far more contemporary look at Lynes’s life and work, having been finished nearly three decades later.

What’s more, this film, ten years in the making, features interviews with multiple people who knew Lynes personally. In all but one case, the interview subjects passed away shortly after the interview, giving the film a bit of an “under the wire” quality. We’re talking about a photographer who was himself a stunningly beautiful young man a full century ago, after all. Even the interview subjects who knew him would have had to have been young even compared to Lynes when they knew each other—in the forties, or perhaps the early fifties. George Platt Lynes dyed of lung cancer in 1955, at the fairly young age of 47.

The crucial element of Hidden Master, though, is the countless examples of his work featured: a seemingly endless slide show of gorgeously rendered, black and white photos of male nudes, no less beautiful for how unsubtle they often are. The lighting of his subjects is incredible, and the themes of sexual desire are stunning, particularly for the time—people don’t know today how early on there was precedent for art like this, and that’s what makes this film so crucial. I could not stop thinking, as I saw example after example of Lynes’s photography, that I could have easily believed this work had been done today. God knows I never would have assumed these photos were taken between the twenties and the forties, without them being contextualized for me.

A fair bit is made of Lynes’s “physical snobbery,” in that he never chose average looking people as his subjects. His nudes were nearly all young men, and without exception the men were beautiful. Lynes also worked as a fashion photographer, his female subjects also exclusively beautiful. In apparently one exclusive case, he even had a sexual relationship with one of his women subjects. There are nude photos of her as well.

It should be noted, not all of his photos were sexual, although he seemed to have an appreciation for the naked human form whether it was sexualized or not. He even took nude photos of his brother, who was straight, and helped find more models culled from his college friends.

Which is to say, in just about every way you can imagine, George Platt Lynes was so far ahead of his time it’s mind boggling. This was a man fully self-possessed, comfortable in his own skin, casually defiant in his sexuality—all a full hundred years ago. He was himself so beautiful he fit right in with his subjects. He pushed boundaries in more ways than with his sexuality, also sensual, nude photos of Black and White men together. From today’s vantage point, there is an element of privilege there that both cannot be denied and which was about a century away from being even a hint of a part of anyone’s vocabulary. It’s even acknowledged in this film that the racial provocativeness has an element of exploitation to it.

Although not a lot of time is spent on it, there is some acknowledgement in Hidden Master that Lynes was an imperfect man, sometimes a little manipulative, particularly in sexual situations. To me, these details are classic elements of people whose beauty allows to get away with what others can’t. Somewhat on the flip side of this, Lynes was also the third partner in what we now would call a polyamorous relationship, and which itself lasted decades. Even by mainstream queer standards this is incredibly forward-thinking. There is no indication Lynes thought in these terms at all, however. He was only ever just completely and utterly himself.

I do appreciate the sexual frankness of Hidden Master, clearly a positive byproduct of having a queer story told by queer people. Given the nature of virtually all of Lynes’s male nudes, it would make no sense to shy away from it. It turns out Lynes did also take a few sexually explicit photos, just a couple of which do we see, during a brief discussion of the fine line between “art” and pornography, and how it gets applied differently between men and women. In any case, I could not find any indication that Hidden Master has received an MPA rating at all, but this film is definitely not for children.

I feel a deep, abiding appreciation for this film—not just its construction, but its very existence. It’s full of people who lament the lack of Lynes’s presence in any serious look at art history, and the film makes a very strong case for this man to get the kind of appreciation he has long been denied. His personal life at his particular time in history is deeply fascinating in its own right, but nothing comes even close to the vitality of the photography work itself. Whether or not you see this movie, do yourself a favor and just look him up. I am eager to learn more just because of this film.

Both erotically charged and a multi-level challenge to the viewer: George Platt Lynes is worth your time.

Overall: A-

BLACKBERRY

Directing: A
Acting: A-
Writing: A
Cinematography: B
Editing: A

It’s not the story, it’s how it’s told. It’s good to remember that if you hear that there is a movie about the rise and fall of the first mass-market mobile device, the BlackBerry. Because this film, directed, co-written and co-starring Matt Johnson, is stunningly propulsive, edge-of-your-seat stuff. And it’s about a bunch of tech nerds who made it big, then came crashing down. Well, except the ones who got out at the company’s peak, such as Doug Fregin—who Johnson plays—who we are informed during end title cards is currently “secretly one of the richest people in the world.” Secretly? What does that mean? How do we know?

Whatever, it’s easy to trust that it’s true, considering he left BlackBerry in 2007. As depicted in BlackBerry the movie, the move was in response to longtime friend and Waterloo, Ontario-based Research In Motion cofounder Mike Lazaridis, and his single-minded drive to succeed at the expense of their friendship. Presumably the dynamics of their relationship are oversimplified, but as depicted here, it’s almost stunning what great drama it makes. That is, along with everything else we see onscreen.

It’s tempting to put BlackBerry in the same league with the revered 2010 David Fincher film The Social Network. Only time will tell if BlackBerry enjoys the same kind of enduring appreciation, and given the drastically different pop culture landscape today, I fear that it won’t. This movie may be doomed to be criminally under-seen forever. It opened last weekend at #14 at the box office. That was only on 449 screens, though, so where does it rank by per-screen averages? #14. Crap!

I assure you, this film deserves your eyeballs. Nearly everything about its construction is inspired, including the casting—particularly Jay Baruchel as Lazaridis, the severely introverted genius who designed the devices. This guy previously known from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010) now has a peculiar cut of solid gray hair that makes him virtually unrecognizable. Nearly everyone in this film is unrecognizable, though, which also works very much in its favor. The most famous face here is that of Carey Elwes, in the surprisingly small part of former Palm Inc. CEO Carl Yankowski, intent on a hostile takeover of BlackBerry.

The ease with which the actors disappear into their parts, though, allows the movie itself to shine as an amazingly well-constructed whole. It is nearly impossible to tell a story that spans so many years—in this case, about fifteen—with such precision. Glenn Howerton plays “co-CEO” of BlackBerry Jim Balsillie as a tightly wound prick, but an incredibly effective one. His sharklike business instincts combined with Lazaridis’s deceptively quiet genius turn out to be quite the effective combination.

BlackBerry is adapted from a book, by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, itself reportedly an exhilarating read. Even without having read the book, I can tell you this is an exceptional adaptation, because it’s a legitimately exhilarating watch. It likely helps that McNish co-wrote the script, along with Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller. The Social Network may have been a skewering of the zeitgeist, particularly at the beginning of the last decade, but BlackBerry examines both the quick rise of the mobile device that preceded the iPhone, and the mistakes made in attempting to compete with it. In this case, it’s a product that quickly dominated the market (“the crackberry”) and then suffered an even quicker fall.

Matt Johnson and his co-writers pack plenty more into this tightly polished story, which clocks in at an impressively solid two hours—arguably more than anything else, this film deserves an Academy Award nomination for Curt Lobb’s editing. There’s not a single wasted or dull moment in this movie. I left the theater fired up to tell others to see it, which is a rare thing indeed.

The higher they fly, the harder they fall . . . especially when they aren’t paying attention,

Overall: A-

SIFF Advance: AND THE KING SAID, WHAT A FANTASTIC MACHINE

Directing: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine is ostensibly a critical, yet beautiful, look at the history of the camera: from still photographs to moving pictures, from an hours-long process to capture one image to a world rife with photographic immersion. We’re meant to learn, I suppose, how the camera over time has influenced and distorted how we see what is in front of our very eyes.

And is is undeniably, deeply fascinating, especially for a film without any overt narrative beyond the very passage of time, from the first-ever photograph, taken in France in 1826, to the mass-media digital world we live in today. I just wish this film had a little more in the way of insight.

And the King Said is of a certain type of documentary film, assembled as a collage meant to convey the “big picture”—no pun intended—on a particular concept, without intercutting to talking heads, or anyone attempting to contextualize for us. This films jumps far back and forth through time, taking select images, or clips from YouTube or TikTok, and then jumping back to certain breakthroughs like the series of photographs proving horses have moments of all four hooves above the ground when they run, or the famous film of a train that was the first motion picture shown to large audiences.

If there’s any problem with And the King Said, it’s that it attempts to convey far too much in far too little time—all of 88 minutes, to be exact, to cover nearly two hundred years of history. And although the instinct on the part of co-directors Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck to tilt heavily toward coverage of the explosion of digital photography in the 21st century makes sense, the resulting effect is a series of random images that hardly feels like any random deep dive into Flickr or YouTube or Instagram. The film notes how many millions of photos are published every minute, which only makes one wonder how they chose all the images they include in this particular edit. There’s a million other edits that could have had exactly the same effect, and if you think too much about that, it dilutes whatever meaning this film is supposed to have.

I would have liked to see more time spent on watershed moments in the advancement of photography before the 21st century, and how those jumps in technological evolution insidiously infected the public consciousness. The paradigm-shifting advancement of television, for example, gets all but a few minutes of time, even though had a movie of exactly this sort been made in, say, 1995, it likely would have spent most of its time on that.

To be fair, And the King Said has some pretty sobering moments. There’s the award-winning photograph of a dead little girl in the wake of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, juxtaposed with a photo of the line of photojournalists all squatting to take her picture. (It could be argued it’s the latter shot that really deserves an award.) There’s the clip of a chimpanzee scrolling through Instagram exactly the same way any of us do, which, for me at least, caused some real cognitive dissonance.

And I have to admit, this film had me thinking about whether I should improve my life by deleting all of my social media. The science used in these apps’ algorithms dates back further than you think, when research was done decades ago to find out what interested people most, and content producers bought the data. Of course, I am far too addicted to TikTok or even online streaming platforms like HBO Max to have any hope of escaping their clutches. And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine offers a window into how we got here, where a company like Netflix can use simple computing to know our interests better than we know them ourselves.

That said, if that is the point of And the King Said, maybe the filmmakers should have been more explicit about that. I went in expecting a history of the camera and its effects on society—and there is some of that; one fascinating sequence shows people’s brains being broken by a demonstration of how cameras work, which is the exact same way our eyesight works, and is both incredibly simple and something I am unable to explain.

I guess you could call this film more of a meditation. If it had a mantra, though, it would be connected far more to very recent years, when we get viral videos of a woman doing sexy poses with a plush hamburger, or a group of amateur idiots get death-defying shots of a young woman being hung over the side of a skyscraper. Don’t even get me started on the guy who is driven crazy by viewers of his constant livestream who are going out of their way to cause chaos in his life, but for some reason he continues to livestream, including a stream of his rant against his viewers. You do have other options, sir.

But, maybe that’s the point: it’s easy to say there are options, and quite another to choose any of the other options, in a world optimized for engagement. It would be easy to get into a bit of an existential funk after watching this movie. Personally, I prefer to complain about its lack of narrative focus.

Apparently all photography roads led to this.

Overall: B

SIFF Advance: THE MATTACHINE FAMILY

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Prominently featured in The Mattachine Family, as a narrative symbol, are the Mattachine Steps in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, dedicated in 2012 to the Mattachine Society in memory of Harry Hay, who cofounded the gay rights group that preceded the Stonewall Riots by 19 years. In the film, we see a couple of shots of the sign posted by the staircase, both of them too quick to retain its text fully: The Mattachine Steps - Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society on this hillside on November 11, 1950. Hay died in 2002 at the age of 90; 2012 would have marked his 100th birthday.

As our protagonist, Thomas (Nico Tortorella) and his lesbian best friend (Schitt’s Creek’s Emily Hampshire) are hiking up a hill to these steps, it is pointedly noted that the Mattachine Society advocated for White queer people. At another moment, though, Thomas’s voiceover narration ponders the chosen family of his husband, Oscar (Juan Pablo Di Pace), and their close friends, and how seventy years ago, they would have called themselves a “society.”

Hene the title The Mattachine Family, which is to be taken both figuratively and literally: the plot focuses on Thomas and Oscar’s evolving notions of actually raising a child. They’ve spent a year fostering a child to whom they have become very attached, and now are grieving the loss after the child has been reunited with his mother—pointedly, a mother who is doing well and clearly the right place for the child. The question, then, is whether to move forward with similar efforts that might result in a repeat of the same kinds of heartbreak.

The Mattachine Family is clearly a deeply personal film, largely autobiographical as told by director Andy Vallentine, who co-wrote the script with real-life partner Danny Vallentine. The two are also parents, and all of this makes me a little self-conscious about picking at the film’s contrivances. Such things are arguably part of the point, though: what movie made in Hollywood—independent or otherwise—doesn’t have its contrivances? This one just happens to have not just an organically diverse cast, but actually tells a story heretofore not depicted onscreen. This film may not be a grand masterpiece, but how notable it is still can’t quite be overstated, especially as it breezily normalizes the very kind of family many across the country are now actively working to criminalize.

Fundamentally, The Mattachine Family is about a long-term, committed couple grappling with diverging convictions about whether raising a child is the right decision for them. Instead of the more typical love story about whether two people are right for each other, this one is about how ideas of family planning test the very strength of a long-established relationship.

Watching this film, I was struck by its relative wholesomeness that exists concurrent with frank depictions of gay sexuality. It’s not lost on me that the so-called “frankness” would not necessarily register the same way if this were about a straight couple thinking about adopting a child. The key here is in how the film stands apart, just by virtue of it being a same-sex couple. Mind you, Thomas and Oscar are a long-term, monogamous couple. They’re even married.

There are some, and I don’t necessarily agree with them, who might argue that they represent the heteronormativity of “acceptable” ideas of same-sex relationships. They do have a more, let’s say, “free spirited” close friend (Jake Choi), who cheerfully talks about hopes for a threesome with his date. And it’s not like there is any moral obligation to make Thomas and Oscar more promiscuous just to remove them from notions of heteronormativity—especially if their marriage reflects the same truth of the film’s storytellers.

It’s sort of odd when a film that’s plotted in a fairly formulaic way still feels definitively like progress. The one genuine surprise was the gay father Thomas meets (Hacks’s Carl Clemons-Hopkins), who I really thought was being telegraphed as a potential source of infidelity—and then the story goes in another direction. Side note: that character’s lesbian coparent is played by none other than Heather Matarazzo, of Welcome to the Dollhouse fame, and she’s delightful as a “mommy influencer.”

Which is to say, The Mattachine Family isn’t all heavy moral dilemmas and drama. It has plenty of humor, giving it an overall very welcoming vibe. From start to finish, it invites you in, to feel what its characters are going through, to empathize with and to root for them, and the Valentines’ writing and direction make it easy to do so.

One man’s society is another man’s family.

Overall: B+