Calvary

John Michael McDonagh, 2014

Can I Stream it?

4/5

Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is taking confessions at his small-town church when a voice tells him that he plans on killing him in a week, revenge for the sexual abuse that the mysterious man was subjected to as a child.

The small-town Irish setting is gloomy, lonely. The visual aesthetic spills over to the overall tone of the film. The town consists of quiet encounters of it’s inhabitants during the day, and the consumption of spirits at the local bar come nighttime. Father James lost his wife years before he entered the priesthood, and you get a sense that it’s a grief that he carries with him through his daily life. He’s surrounded by many morally compromised people in his small Irish community. Adulterers, abusers, drunks, sex addicts, the greedy. They all float around him as if he’s some kind of central force that they can descend upon every Sunday to clear their conscience. When his daughter comes to visit him, it’s a reminder of his past life and his inability to completely escape the memories. After all Father is an enduring figure. Willing to drink a beer with his congregation members, but reluctant to consume whiskey (for an unspoken reason, presumably justified). When he hears the familiar voice through the grated window of the confession booth, he struggles to understand why he would be chosen to be the human sacrifice for some unknown priest’s sins. He has put in good time becoming a good man. But he is forced to spend the following week reflecting on his life, on humanity in general. He ultimately realizes that he is no different than the people of his community. They all breathe the same air, have the same blood in their veins. It’s all taken into consideration when deciding whether or not to show up on that beach the following week.

After the Dark

John Huddles, 2014

Can I Stream It?

4/5

A philosophy professor challenges his students on their last day of class in Jakarta to a social experiment. If faced with the apocalypse, how would they narrow down their group of 21 students to 10 to successfully survive in a fallout shelter for a year?

Huddles delivers an fascinating picture that examines a very interesting philosophical concept. You have a group of people. Each individual person possesses a unique skill-set. One is an organic farmer. One is a structural engineer. One is a psychologist. But then you drop to a "lower" tier of specialties. Gelato server. Poet. Trades that are noble on their own but may not necessarily be in high demand when the world comes to an end. You also have to consider the future sexual needs that will exist as well. These students will need to reproduce. So ensuring a complimentary dynamic between the group is also a must. The future of the human race is at hand. That very study comes into play, and the final result is both thorough and at times unforgiving.

In a sense it's a limited storytelling piece, similar in ways to Richard Schenkman's 2007 picture The Man from Earth. The students never actually leave the classroom. But when you're treated to the visual representation of the story, the film really is a feast for the eyes. Although the Indonesian classroom setting is nothing you want to look away from, you find yourself eager to get back to the imaginary world. The survivors are not confined to a concrete shelter below a run-down post office. The bunker is a modern sanctuary. The mahogany gates are open wide basically giving you a warm welcome to the futuristic quarters that is filled with sleek nooks and chrome crannies with all of the amenities and comforts they would need for a year. The story entertainingly plays out in multiple scenarios, each time putting the students in front of some marvelous natural backdrop that is inevitably about to be destroyed by an atomic blast.

We are living in an interesting time when it comes to film-making. Capable filmmakers are no longer handicapped by enormous budgets. If you have a appealing script and a good editing/video design team, you can still create a quality picture with impressive digital effects like those seen here. On paper it's easy to sell you on this story. Instead of becoming over-indulgent on the visual elements or excessive with the gory parts, it doesn't. It just relies on humanistic creed to sort out the problems at hand. Just like the students are taking the lesson seriously, the actors are really taking their performances seriously. In this sense the film plays out much more like Lord of the Flies and much less like a Final Destination film with it's abrupt demise of any individual person. There are moral breakdowns going on. There are ramifications to each and every decision, and once the decision is made there is no turning back. You're left to live out a year of life, possibly being the only people left alive on earth hoping that you have surrounded yourself with the right people.

Touching the Void

Kevin MacDonald, 2003


3/5

Using first-hand interviews interlaced with accurate reenactment footage, this docu-drama covers the story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, a pair mountain climbers who run into trouble when one of them falls and breaks their leg while attempting to climb the west face of the Siula Grande in the Andes mountains in 1985.

It is undeniably a story worth telling. Using the technique of reenacting the journey, it certainly puts you in the action. The camera is not just fixated on the side of the mountain either. Unique locations like elevated above the climbers, down at the base of the snow where you see chips of ice falling on the lens. It makes the work much more cinematic, more entertaining than if you were just sitting watching two veteran climbers reflect on their journey. When the heavy snow is pinning them to the sides of the cliff at night while they look above with miner's lights on their helmets - you really get a sense of the comradery involved. Connected by a piece of rope, their lives are really in each others hands. The sudden decision made by one of the climbers is made in a few seconds but is clearly a life-changing one. It certainly presents a moral dilemma to the film that leaves the viewer wondering what he or she would do in the same situation. When the film makes a shift into a more survival-based theme, its very reminiscent of the struggle in Danny Boyle's 127 Hours. Like that story, there is a focus on the resilience of the human body. The film certainly explores the concept that perhaps there are parts to this world that are not meant to be accessed. But that wouldn't be human nature would it? We are curious creatures, bound to take risks. We are eager to put our foot in virgin soil. We want to make our mark.