Bottom Row (L-R): ‘Trap (Warner Bros. Pictures),’ ‘Look Back (Avex Pictures).’
In this edition of Bite-Sized Reviews, I give you my thoughts on last year’s M. Night Shyamalan release, a Greek Yorgos Lanthimos flick, an animated film that blew me away, and an Alice Rohrwacher film that I can’t stop thinking about.
F.A.Q.
- What are Additional Bite-Sized Reviews?
– My movie and television catch-up review series ‘Additional Bite-Sized Reviews‘ is an evolution of the Overview-article section previously titled ‘What I Didn’t Write About.’ In articles such as this one, I will provide my readers with my thoughts on select new films, new shows, or even classics that I feel like giving my thoughts on relatively briefly, since I don’t have the time to dedicate thorough reviews to them at this point in time. - Why do the bite-sized reviews not include either a letter grade or a review score?
– In my full and thorough reviews, I like to score or grade what I watch. But since these reviews aren’t as detailed, I think it is fairer to the films and shows to simply just decide whether or not to recommend them. I guess you could say this is the only type of review that is basically ‘scored’ with the classic thumbs-up/thumbs-down-method on my site, though sometimes my recommendation answer comes with a caveat.
La Chimera | Film | Directed by Alice Rohrwacher | Screenplay by Alice Rohrwacher | Release Year: 2023 | Recommended?: Yes.
I think one of the biggest positive surprises I’ve had with relatively new and underseen European cinema is Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera. Though mostly in Italian, it features one of Britain’s finest young actors in Josh O’Connor in the film’s lead role as a scruffy-looking, lonesome, and heartbroken archaeologist turned criminal tomb raider — a criminal and aimless Indiana Jones living from cigarette to cigarette. It is both this meditative or contemplative film that I think is partly about our relationship to the past and how we can treat it — either with respect and proper distance or through exploitation and to make a profit, which some will do even if it means they have to sell their soul — but it is also something so excitingly visually inventive and genre-curious. It features so many interestingly incorporated magical realist moments, such as a recurring troubadour, characters having a special relationship to the after life, characters appearing as ghosts or hungry like a pack of dogs almost frothing at the mouth. There are symbols that link it to Greek mythology and, at the same time, sometimes sped-up editing that makes it look like something that could pair well with the Benny Hill theme. And somehow it all really works?
It features gorgeous-looking and evocative cinematography that, among other things, highlights texture, but is not showy, and it portrays the Italian country side with an alluring mysticism. Rohrwacher’s special concoction is tragic, soulful, meaningful, and is an absolute must-see for cinephiles. It feels timeless in the best way possible, and I absolutely loved it.
Dogtooth| Film | Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos | Screenplay by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou | Release Year: 2009 | Recommended?: Yes.
Yorgos Lanthimos is now something of a household name, but, prior to his successful Hollywood experiments, he played in the filmmaking sandbox of Greece with films such as Dogtooth, which is challenging and odd in the way Lanthimos’ brand of cinema is known to be. It is really interesting to look at this film after having seen all of his English-languaged work, because all of the trademark stylistic and communicative elements that he has come to be known for are there. Dogtooth, like many of his other films, features strange rules and the breaking of said rules, and an unmistakeable disturbing absurdism running through it from minute one. The film, which features parents who have lied to their children about the outside world and the meaning of language for their whole life, is about questioning the rules and so-called truths dictated by authority figures or maybe even an authoritarian regime. The film has horror and allegorical traits, and Lanthimos’ film makes its points repeatedly and with control. It is presented in such a straightforward way with wide shots and little-to-no mood setting music that the absurdism jumps off the screen. It is a difficult film to recommend because of how disturbing the material is and what is depicted on screen, but it is a fascinating film in that Lanthimos is stylistically fully formed here and never shies away from what he is trying to do. It gives you the idea that once he broke through outside of Greece, he was already a fully-formed filmmaker with a remarkable control of his narrative, dialogue, and style. While I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, I highly recommend it to any cinephile who is interested in the origins of one of modern international cinema’s most distinct voices.
Trap | Film | Directed by M. Night Shyamalan | Screenplay by M. Night Shyamalan | Release Year: 2024 | Recommended?: Not really, unfortunately.
Honestly, few, if any, trailers got me as excited as the first trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap did. Here was yet another ridiculously inventive and thrilling premise from Shyamalan. Trap is about a serial killer who is stuck at a concert with his daughter while law enforcement is closing in on him (Think Dexter meets the Eras Tour meets Sudden Death), and, with Josh Hartnett in the lead role, it looked like something that could genuinely be yet another mainstream return to form for Shyamalan. But, while, yes, there are very many critics (including Cahiers du Cinema) who are head over heels in love with this film, it, instead, ended up as a divisive flick, and, even though I really wanted to like it, I, on first viewing, struggled to really buy into it.
Like before, Shyamalan here struggles to write dialogue that feels natural, and his premise is even built around a misunderstanding of how concerts work. I found it to be tonally off the tense thriller it was sold as, and I found it to be over-the-top to an extent that, ultimately, did the film no favors. As for the famous Shyamalan twist? Well, this time there are no real world-breaking tricks up its sleeves. I am open to the reading that maybe it was intended as this campy, deliberately silly film, but it didn’t feel like that, to me, on the first viewing, so when it got more and more unbelievable — sometimes even laughably so — it started to lose me. It also doesn’t help that it is awkwardly paced and that its ending is overwritten. Frankly, I think the film falls apart once the characters leave the concert itself, as there is eventually this perspective shift that doesn’t work. I will say that I thought Hartnett was quite entertaining in this, but, for as intentionally or unintentionally fun (depending on your reading) it may be to some, it stretches credulity to the extent that it loses believability. I don’t think it is outright bad, it’s just not quite good enough to ellicit more than a shrug, to me. But, hey, maybe a rewatch will make it work better for me. However, I doubt it’ll improve to be anything more than a guilty pleasure if it can even accomplish that.
Look Back | Film | Directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama | Screenplay by Kiyotaka Oshiyama | Release Year: 2024 | Recommended?: Yes.
It was every bit as good and emotionally impactful as I had heard, though I was surprised by just how shocking and tragic it was. I was completely blindsided by the event that changed everything for these characters — it shocked me to my core. But, wow, what a brilliant hour-long animated film. It looks gorgeous, the music is so good, and the narrative has so much emotional weight — it gets its hooks into you and never lets go.
A rich but painful story about friendship, competitiveness, regret, time, people helping others out of their shell, and moments we wish we could have back. It is astoundingly good. On the one hand, perhaps it could’ve been even more impactful if it were longer and gave certain scenes more room to breathe, but, frankly, on the other hand, that it is as short as it is, well, it is, sort of, the point, isn’t it? Its short runtime works as a way to emphasize its point about the characters wanting more time.
– Reviews Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 
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