celluloid consommé

  The third and potentially final film in the  Baby Assassins   series is easily the best and most entertaining of the bunch. The character dynamics are smooth in their simplicity and naturalistic approach, focusing tightly on the central relationship between titular killer babies Chisato and Mahiro. They’re found vacationing in Miyazaki, soaking up the sun when they’re assigned a simple job that becomes sabotaged, putting them in deep trouble. Renegade killer Kaede (Sosuke Ikematsu,  Shoplifters, Shin Kamen Rider ) steals Chisato & Mahiro’s contracted kill and pursues them for interrupting his 150th, his personal best. Nice Days  hits a stride not exactly met in the previous two installments. That is to say, the one they hit is fairly perfect: Kensuke Sonomura’s magnificent fight choreography shines perpetually and evenly, matched by Chisato and Mahiro’s endless well of fun chemistry. In this potent mixture of action and comedy, the babies’ third outing sin...

  Content Warning: This review concerns depictions of sexual assault that are outlined in detail in the film described below.  Help is available for those experiencing sexual assault at the hands of a friend, family member, or partner.  Call the 24-hour National Sex Assault Hotline to speak to someone and be heard:  1-800-656-4673 Me and My Victim  is a mirror held against its creator, in this case, the only person who admits to being its creator, Billy Pedlow. What Pedlow aims to do with his so-called collaborative work with Maurane, with whom he shares the proverbial stage with here, is use the recounting of his and her actions as a springboard to examine the morality of human life through art and actions we take outside of it and because of it. Pedlow frames his relationship with Maurane as a complex one, and this is undoubtedly true. But as this project goes on it becomes quite clear that Pedlow is the one who has complicated it. Pedlow is a poet living in N...

Kourtney Roy’s debut feature  Kryptic  brings an air of mystery to its viewers, especially well after the credits roll. Roy makes it clear that she is not interested in providing a finite or compact set of questions and answers that we would see in any typical enigmatic narrative film. Perhaps that’s what’s inciting comparisons between her work and that of David Lynch, but in reality that is where these two filmmakers’ differentiations begin and end. To entertain a certain whimsy here, a line from the enigmatic cowboy in  Mulholland Drive  applies to Roy’s  Kryptic  in a somewhat satisfying way:  “When you see the girl in the picture that was shown to you earlier today, you will say, ‘this is the girl.’” Roy’s genre-melder follows Kay, a woman who has had some recent trouble getting out into the world and making friends. But something inside Kay drives her to remain isolated as she deliberately separates from the group to explore, conveniently after le...