Corridor - MKE Film Festival banner
Civil War
(In Theaters April 12)
Who must a person become in order to photograph wars? Making that question more relevant, writer-director Alex Garland sets a civil war in the present-day United States. The fight is captured on film by Lee (Kirsten Dunst), a veteran photojournalist whose decades of conditioning allows her to remain calm when confronting danger (and detached from the horrors she documents). Here, she is embedded with the Western Forces, comprised of Texas and California, having teamed up to take down the U.S. President (Nick Offerman) and Washington D.C. Traveling with troops through war-torn towns, Lee relies on her press credentials, bullet proof vest and the soldiers she accompanies, to protect both her and rookie photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Suicide bombers, snipers and other armed combatants are all opposition players as young Jessie struggles with photographing those who have been brutally killed. Garland considers the consequences of being ideologically divided but realizes that perspective is everything in shaping our truths. The final assault constitutes the one nonstop action sequence in a film that’s difficult to watch yet stands at a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. (Lisa Miller)
Corridor
(Milwaukee Film Festival)
A bumbling security guard overhears a murder plot in this made-in-Milwaukee indie feature—and proceeds to put his foot in it. Directed by Jonathon Olsen and cowritten by Olsen and producer Zach Erdmann, Corridor is shot inside the War Memorial, in Bay View streets, on Wisconsin Avenue and even outside Champion Chicken on the Northwest Side. The funniest scenes concern CEO Stirling Phillips, his business card reads: “Developer. Entrepreneur. Dreammaker.” He’s a gentrifying condo builder comfortable at galleries, mouthing artspeak, but he's gotten himself into a situation. His firm, Middle Grey, is perfectly named. Corridor opens with effective use of animation and original music as the credits roll. 5:30 p.m., April 13 and 7:45 p.m., April 21 at the Oriental Theatre; and 6 p.m., April 22 at the Avalon Theatre. (David Luhrssen)
Glory to the Heroes
(Cohen Media Group DVD)
With Glory to the Heroes, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, never content with the lecture hall, returned to Ukraine for his second documentary on the Putin invasion. In his mordant narration, he describes what he shows in a city inundated after the Russians destroyed a nearby dam as “urbacide, ecocide—the flooded Earth strategy.” He was determined to capture the scene on camera before the evidence “evaporated.”
The silver-haired Levy, dressed as always in blue suit and white shirt (but under a Kevlar vest), strides along streets where snipers lurk and arrives at a front line post whose defenders call it the “Macron Position” in honor of the French artillery they fire. He visits the headquarters of the Charles De Gaul watching screens as overhead drones guide an assault on a Russia- held river island. Throughout Glory to the Heroes, Levy summons the spirit of French wartime resistance to the German occupiers—and to the international brigades of the Spanish Civil war after meeting “hotheads from 33 nations,” including American volunteers in the fight against Putin. (David Luhrssen)
Sting
(In Theaters April 12)
Using a combination of animatronic puppetry and CGI, Sting is an old-fashioned creature feature. Australian director Kiah Roache-Turner sets the action in a New York City brownstone, converted into an apartment building. As the film opens, pre-teen Charlotte (Alyla Browne) uses the building’s ductwork to spy on other tenants and, in the process, she finds a baby red-backed spider whom she appropriates as a pet. After naming it Sting, Charlotte learns it can whistle and that it grows exponentially larger each time it eats. Before long, Sting escapes captivity, using the brownstone’s ducts to hunt bigger and bigger prey. Comic relief is provided by an exasperated exterminator named Frank (Jermaine Fowler) whose fate is in jeopardy once Sting begins attacking people. This prompts Charlotte to defend her family, chasing Sting through ducts armed only with her wits and a toy gun. Critics largely find the film to be fun, noting that the killings are less gruesome than indicated by its R-rating. (Lisa Miller)
