Updated: with comments on the new doc about Guillermo del Toro.
Previous: In our weekly guide to new and noteworthy indie and international genre films, we have a protective dog, a doc about a director, dreams about a train, battling professors vs. a student, and battling marriage mates.
Good Boy
The film is now streaming on Shudder.
Indy the dog protects his human from the supernatural forces that have invaded their new home. Ben Leonberg directed.
Our intrepid critic J Hurtado attended a SXSW screening and filed a doggone good review: "A fascinating and entertaining film that will have the audience empathizing harder with a dog than they do with most human protagonists. With an innovative hook and Indy's mind-blowing lead performance, Good Boy is one of the most unique experiences of the year; it is big fun in a cute, furry little package."
Sangre del Toro
The documentary is now streaming on Netflix.
With his Frankenstein stirring much discussion after its recent arrival on Netflix, here comes a documentary described thusly: "Director Guillermo del Toro journeys through a labyrinth of childhood memories, cultural myths and monsters to reveal the origins of his visionary films."
Expect affection, rather than analysis. As it happens, we're working on an analysis piece from several writers on Frankenstein itself, so consider this a (hopefully) good warm-up piece. Yves Montmayeur directed.
Updated 11/21 12:36: More than a "good warm-up piece," the doc dives deep into del Toro as an artist, covering his childhood, his inspirations, and how his films have been formed and then shaped by those continuing influences. Mostly, director Montmayeur allows director del Toro to explain himself, which he does eloquently.
The doc glides back and forth across del Toro's filmography, using his films as touchstones to explain the monsters who keep appearing in his horror and science fiction creations. It's mesmerizing, and a very fine piece of creature work by Montmayeur. The third act of the doc features additional comments by Japanese author Junji Ito and others, but, mostly, it's the del Toro show, and it's a very good show indeed.
Train Dreams
The film is now streaming on Netflix.
Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, and William H. Macy star in a tale of "a logger [who] leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America," according to the official synopsis. Our critic Kurt Halfyard saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival. In his review, he wrote: "Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick have spent their entire careers trying to articulate this with the medium of cinema.
"Director Clint Bentley (Jockey) clearly is aiming for the visual style and structure of the latter, possibly to his detriment by comparison. Nonetheless, the slow cinema experience on offer with Train Dreams is well worth the trip -- if only because the plot of the film, and the antagonist as well, revolves around the passage of time. "
After the Hunt
The film is now streaming on Prime Video.
Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield star as college professors who find themselves pitted against accusatory student Ayo Edebiri. Luca Guadagnino directed.
Watching it at the New York Film Festival, our critic Olga Artemyeva had much the same reaction that I did, though she says it much more eloquently than I could: "What was the intention really is the biggest question here, and After the Hunt does its best to skirt it, just as it does with every other major topic that Nora Garrett's screenplay introduces.
"By trying to pack as much as possible into the story - sexual harassment, the self-serving and fluid morals of academia, social and class divide, privilege, quests for self-identity, the inherent ideological gap between generations, and more - the script actually fails to say anything significant about any of it."
The Roses
The film is now streaming on Hulu.
Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch star as a married couple whose marriage quickly goes sour -- and then it gets worse. Tony McNamara adapted Warren Adler's novel, giving director Jay Roach's film a different spin than Danny DeVito's 1989 version starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.
Our lead critic Mel Valentin found the film far funnier than I did: "Above all, though, The Roses succeeds or fails based on two factors, McNamara's screenplay, specifically the richly inventive, incisive dialogue he gives the title characters and, of course, Cumberbatch and Colman's performances as Theo and Ivy, respectively.
"They're instantly believable as flawed, complex characters who choose love, romance, and marriage in rapid-fire succession and yet, when that marriage teeters at the edge of failure for years, deliberately ignore the obvious fault-lines, repeatedly choosing the status quo (inertia) rather than doing the hard, necessary work needed to save their marriage before its irrevocable collapse."
Now Streaming celebrates independent and international genre films and television shows that are newly available on legal streaming services.