SIFF 2025: Time Travel is Dangerous (**)

May 23, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

Chris Reading’s comedy-adventure about a pair of North London antique shop owners who stumble on a working bumper car time machine seemed to have the requisite elements that would put it right in my wheelhouse: I love British comedy, I love science fiction, and I especially love British science fiction comedies (e.g. Time Bandits, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Morons From Outer Space, The Mouse on the Moon)…but unfortunately it never quite gelled for me.

The story centers on two long time friends, Ruth (Ruth Syratt) and Megan (Megan Stevenson) who are in arrears with their landlord and in imminent danger of losing the lease on their vintage shop. When they discover they have the ability to time travel, they see dollar signs (imagine scoring antiquities in mint condition!). What they don’t foresee are the (wait for it) dangers of time travel (wormholes, the possibility of meeting yourself, changing reality, etc.).

Despite a promising setup and some amusement, the proceedings get progressively more cacophonous and disjointed- especially once one of the women gets trapped (along with the third act) in some kind of inter-dimensional purgatory called The Unreason.

It feels like a waste of a good cast, which includes seasoned British thesps like Brian Blessed, Jane Harrocks, and Stephen Fry (Fry narrates). By the time the credits began to roll I found myself wishing I could travel 99 minutes back in time before all this happened to me.

Conspiracy a-go-go, Documentary, Politics, True Crime

SIFF 2025: Suburban Fury (***)

May 23, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

Within a 17-day period in the early fall of 1975, President Gerald R. Ford survived two attempts on his life-both taking place in California. One could argue that the first would-be assassin, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme is the only one people remember, by virtue of her well-known association with the Manson Family.

The second shooter, Sara Jane Moore, has remained a relative cypher. For one thing, she wasn’t a member of a high-profile death cult, and in stark contrast to Fromme’s psycho daisy couture, Moore looked for all the world like a buttoned-down housewife who had strolled straight out of a John Cheever story (although in this case, a buttoned-down housewife armed with a .38 Special).

Not that she didn’t have a screw loose…which became apparent (to me) as Robinson Devor’s documentary unfolded. Mixing archival materials and a present-day interview with an evasive and truculent Moore (now in her 90s), Devor tries to piece together the jigsaw of her bizarre journey from suburban mother of four to FBI informant, self-proclaimed revolutionary and would-be presidential assassin.

Moore (released from prison in 2007, after serving 32 years) is too cagey to drop any real bombshells here, so her motivations remain foggy. What I found even more interesting than Moore’s story was the adjacent retrospective on a politically tumultuous period in San Francisco (e.g. Moore has a tie-in with the Patty Hearst debacle). Despite leaving a number of questions unanswered, Suburban Fury is nonetheless a worthwhile watch for political junkies and the curious.

Con Game, Culture Clash, Drama, Politics

SIFF 2025: Souleymane’s Story (***)

May 22, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

Every minute of the next 48 hours of Souleymane’s life counts, because it will determine whether or not he will be granted the asylum he has been seeking in France. He’s barely scraping by, and has to bike around Paris day and night delivering food just to remain flush with his creditors. He has no legal papers, so he has to pay to work, forking over a fee to a fellow Guinean delivery man so he can “borrow” his identity.

Most importantly, he has a looming deadline to pay off the shady fixer who is selling him a new “story” he claims will be more likely to convince the authorities that Souleymane warrants asylum. Adding to his stress level, Soueymane has to memorize the extremely detailed narrative to a tee, or he’ll risk raising red flags for the well-seasoned bureaucrat he has been scheduled to meet with in just two days time.

Driven by a realistic lead performance by non-professional actor Abou Sangaré and imbued with a kinetic energy and sense of urgency recalling Run Lola Run, writer-director Boris Lokjine’s Souleymane’s Story is really the story of millions of émigrés all over the world who dream and strive for a better life.

Post-apocalypse, Sci-Fi

SIFF 2025: U Are the Universe (****)

May 22, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

As Elton John sang, it’s lonely out in space. Especially if there’s no Earth to come home to. Andriy (Volodymyr Kravchuk) is the pilot on a garbage scow loaded with nuclear waste destined for disposal on one of Jupiter’s moons (it’s just his job, 5 days a week). When he gleans that the world’s entire population has been wiped out by a cataclysmic event, he’s saddled by the realization he may be the last living human in the universe.

Considering that there is an ample yet finite supply of food on the ship, Andriy has calculated he can survive for a while, but obviously not as long as he would have expected, had the Earth not been destroyed. His growing sense of existential despair is kept somewhat in check by the presence of his onboard AI technical assistant/personality-enhanced companion Maxim, which at least gives him “someone” to interact with.

Then, one day, out of the vacuum, a glimmer of hope. He receives a voice-only communication from a Frenchwoman named Catherine, who tells him she’s the sole occupant of a space station on a collision course with Saturn (she figures she only has a couple weeks before there’s an earth-shattering kaboom). Andriy now has a raison d’être; he immediately sets course for a rescue mission (despite Maxim’s dire warnings about his ship’s limited power reserves).

While this may be familiar territory (with shades of 2001, Solaris, Silent Running, and Miracle Mile), Ukrainian director Pavlo Ostrikov’s film (which was in the midst of wrapping production in Kyiv in 2022 as Putin began sending salvos of missiles into the city) is armed with a smart script, tight direction, a nuanced performance by Kravchuk, and a beautiful statement on love, compassion and self-sacrifice-adding up to one of the best genre entries I’ve seen in some time.

Dramedy, Politics

SIFF 2025: The Safe House (**1/2)

May 19, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2025)

Lionel Baier’s dramedy (adapted from Christophe Boltanski’s novel La Cache) is a child’s-eye view of the political tumult that permeated Paris in May of 1968.

A nine-year-old boy lives in a comically cramped apartment with his parents, his grandparents, a pair of uncles, and his great-grandmother. Everyone in the family is quirky, colorful, and whimsical (despite the near-revolution raging in the streets outside).

If you can get past the initial Wes Anderson vibe (with a zest of Jacques Tati), Baier does occasionally turn down the twee enough to fold in the sociopolitical realities of the era; leading to some profound moments (e.g. the film’s best scene is completely absurd, yet unexpectedly moving).

Con Game, Documentary

SIFF 2025: Unclickable (**)

May 19, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2025)

Just in: From the nanosecond you log in to a social media platform, you are being tracked. Not only are you being tracked, but you are being filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, and numbered (YOU are Number 6). In short: you are being bought and sold. That smart phone, laptop, or tablet in your hands is not the “product”. YOU are.

I know. In this day and age, any internet-savvy 8 year-old could tell you that.

Consequently, it was hard for me to be shocked, shocked by the revelations in Babis Makridis’ “torn from the headlines” investigative documentary. Although to be fair, his film does take a slightly different tack from similar exposés I’ve seen about how we’ve all become slaves to the algorithim; this one focuses on the proliferation of digital ad fraud.

To demonstrate how easily cyber scammers can cash in, Makridis enlisted a former tech executive to form a team of software developers to create a digital ad fraud operation, and basically documents thier step-by-step procedure (don’t try this at home, kids).

Unfortunately the film stalls out once the team starts getting hits and picking pockets (we are assured they did not bank the revenue). I suppose it’s interesting to learn how everyone from advertisers to phone users are getting screwed (except for Google and Meta, who still reap massive revenue-whether ad click data is legit or artificially inflated) but it leaves you wondering what you’re supposed to do with this information (maybe switch off and go touch some grass?).

Drama, Family Issues, Troubled Teens

SIFF 2025: Monarch City (**)

May 19, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2025)

Set in an economically depressed small town in Washington State, writer-director Titus Richard’s network narrative drama serves up a dollop of family angst and sprinkles it with lives of quiet desperation. Hovering somewhere between Peter Bogdanovch’s The Last Picture Show in its aspirations and Larry Clark’s Kids in its vibe, Monarch City suggests both; but due to an uneven script and scattershot approach, it unfortunately achieves neither. Richard does capture and sustain a “nowheresville” mood, and there are some earnest performances, but at 70 minutes and with this many players, there’s barely enough time for any kind of meaningful character development.

Art world, Drama, Family Issues, School Days

SIFF 2025: By the Stream (***)

May 19, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

I was surprised to learn that South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo has made 33 feature films over the last 20 years (which by my estimation makes him one of the most prolific filmmakers this side of Fassbinder). I also felt a bit ashamed that I didn’t discover him until I saw In Our Day at the 2024 SIFF.

With By the Stream, I may now have only two Sang-soo joints under my belt, but I think I “get” his rhythms. Like In Our Day, this is a languidly paced and understated character study about people involved in the arts; there’s lots of eating and drinking and walking and talking (with exchanges that frequently feel improvised).

Melancholic Jeonim (Kim Minhee) is a textile artist and university lecturer who coaxes her famous Uncle Chu Sieon (Kwon Haehyo) out of retirement to rewrite and and take over direction of a play that some of her students have been working on after the production hits a snag.

While Uncle Chu seems genuinely flattered and more than happy to get back on the boards, you sense that he mostly sees this as an opportunity to reconnect with his niece, with whom he’s been out of contact with for a number of years. This could be Jeonim’s motivation as well, although she is a more of a cypher in the emotional department.

It turns out that Jeonim’s supervisor is a Chu super-fan; when she begins a relationship with him, it triggers a dynamic shift in Jeonim’s interactions with her uncle that suggest some unresolved family business may be at play.

The film’s deliberate pacing may not be for all tastes, but the naturalistic performances and gentle rhythms makes this rumination on life, love, art and family ties relatable on all fronts and easy to digest.

Art world, Documentary, Movie Movie, Writers

SIFF 2025: Jean Cocteau (***)

May 19, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2025)

Director Lisa Immordino Vreeland utilizes a non-linear collage of film clips, archival interviews, and a present-day actor reading from letters and diary entries to create a vivid portrait of the avant-garde poet/visual artist/playwright/film director. It’s an enlightening study; I picked up a number of new tidbits on his life and work (I was familiar with him mostly from his films – e.g. Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, and Beauty and the Beast). The address he made in 1960 “to the youth of the future” is a mind-blower. I found it particularly interesting how his “apolitical” stance made him a pariah to both the Left and the Right at various junctures. Absorbing and rewarding.

Animated, Cult Movie, Fantasy

SIFF 2025: Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (***)

May 18, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hulllabaloo on May 17, 2025)

How do I describe the weird micro-universe Stephen and Timothy Quay have created through their stop-motion/live action films? They’re pieces of dreams; a screen capture of that nanosecond of Jungian twilight between nodding off and jerking awake. Their latest film explores grief and memory through the eyes of a man who travels to a sanatorium where his father has died. Or that’s what he believes…until he arrives. The “reality” is left up to the viewer.