The latest film releases are La Bête, Monkey Man, Girls State, and Música. Weighing in are Amy Nicholson, host of the podcast Unspooled and film reviewer for the New York Times, and Tim Grierson, senior U.S. critic for Screen International and the author of This Is How You Make a Movie.
La Bête (The Beast)
In this French sci-fi film, people are getting a medical procedure that purifies their DNA, which is supposed to help them heal from trauma. It stars Léa Seydoux.
Grierson: “It does bounce around from three different time periods. It looks at these two characters, played by Léa Seydoux and George MacKay, in 1910 in Paris, in 2014 in Los Angeles, and 2044 in a dystopian Paris. … And it's based on the Henry James novella, The Beast in the Jungle.
… We have so many movies about the encroaching technological advancements that are going to destroy society as we know it, whether it's The Terminator, or The Matrix, or whatever. But The Beast does it in a very different way, which is to tell it through a love story. But in all three stories, what we're actually seeing is that people, in their own ways, will cut themselves off from the feelings that they have, because they're afraid of their own feelings, because they're afraid of love. And so the idea of the beast is this … unknown force that's going to destroy us in any lifetime that we live. And so the movie is a horror movie, a sci-fi film, a period costume, romantic drama.”
Nicholson: “I think the beast is our inability to control our own fear or negative emotions that keep us from happiness. … I just got a little bit restless sometime in the execution because it is also one of those films with a little bit of a ponderous pace, people talk very slowly. It's very heavy on the metaphor, but there are moments in it that I like a lot. And it is very much a star showcase for Léa Seydoux.”
Monkey Man
Dev Patel directs and stars in this action thriller set in Mumbai. He plays a fighter seeking revenge against the city's sinister elite after his mother’s murder.
Nicholson: “It is a very, very, very violent movie with great fight scenes, very strong imagery, interesting setting. And this is a movie that in many ways you've seen a million times, and even named checks John Wick in the dialogue.”
Grierson: “Dev Patel has talked about the importance of weaving in Indian culture, Indian mythology, the Indian class system into the movie, because those things are close to his heart. And he feels like those things help elevate this from the other types of action movies that we see. And my complaint is I feel like all of that ends up being not very compelling because it's really just window dressing for a story that's very, very, very familiar.
And so I will say this: As somebody who's also a big Dev Patel fan, I could not think of a better resume reel for him being the next James Bond than this movie. I think that he is a very, very striking action hero. And he's never really done that before in a movie. … I'm very curious to see what he directs next.”
Girls State
Following the 2018 documentary Boys State, this film focuses on teen girls in Missouri who start a mock government. This was shot in 2022 right after news leaked that the Supreme Court would probably overturn Roe v. Wade.
Grierson: “What's especially interesting about Girls State is that this Girls State in Missouri took place the exact same week as Boys State did in Missouri. And so what's the interesting wrinkle about this documentary is that while it's primarily about the Girls State experience, the teenage girls in the documentary notice what's going on at Boys State simultaneously because they're basically on the same campus. And what they quickly discover is that Boys State has more amenities. They have more resources. … And also, Girls State … is partly about forming a government, but it's also about talking about empowerment of women, and also building their self confidence. And while those things are important, it's fascinating how the teenage girls at Girls State are like, ‘Why are we being treated with kid gloves where the boys of Boys State actually get to … put together a government and make laws?’ … I think both of these movies work really well as companion pieces to each other.”
Nicholson: “You get to see lots of different types of what female power can look like, and how the psychodrama can work in a small group like that. You have the girls who are known for being too aggressive, too bossy at their school. … You have another girl … her way is soft power, is that she's just going to be incredibly likable. She's going to befriend everybody. And she's going to do that almost cheerleader pep talk thing. And it's always worked for her in the past. And now the question is: Is she gonna be able to pull it off in a group of girls that's more serious about their intentions to talk about politics? And it really digs into a question I think is so fundamentally important right now, and we're trying to talk so much about quality, which is … maybe we're asking these girls — in this film and maybe women everywhere — just to settle for empty, patronizing pep talks about how they can do anything, while not actually treating them like equals and letting them do the real work that does let them actually do everything.”
Música
In this coming-of-age romantic comedy, a man named Rudy is looking for love but is tortured by music. He has synesthesia, so he’s constantly distracted by sounds and making music in his head. This comes from the social media star-turned-director Rudy Mancuso.
Nicholson: “This is just a delight. … It has so much style, so much talent, and so much confidence. … Rudy … he's a guy who's come up making puppet skits, music videos that he put online. This is his first movie, but it is so confidently put together that to me, he immediately feels like … a person we have to take seriously.
… At the beginning of the film, [he’s] just plunging us in, to show us what it feels like to have synesthesia, where we see him always be distracted by the sounds of the city, and he can't help trying to shape them and wrangle them into music. And we also see how … that makes him a bit of a lousy boyfriend, he cannot concentrate on conversations with the women in his life. The ending is a bit rushed because I feel like he's going for something that's honest, that maybe he doesn't know what the answer is right now. It's a little bit sped up and tacked on. But the way he tells the story is just fantastic. It is shot and put together amazingly.”
Grierson: “The movie is about 90 minutes long, and I think the last 30 minutes, it really gets bogged down in problems that the rest of the movie got away from, which is really familiar rom-com trappings and cliches and predictable things. I won't spoil anything but the romantic triangle, I think, comes to a head in a way that I don't think works very well. … I think it is a pretty flawed film, but there's so much to enjoy in it.”