Movie review by Greg Carlson

Wittily written, sparklingly performed, and dazzlingly directed, “Mistress America” quickly makes for itself a strong case as Noah Baumbach’s finest film to date. If not, the movie is at least every bit as wonderful as “The Squid and the Whale,” though its tone more closely resembles an effortlessly madcap screwball comedy by Ernst Lubitsch or Gregory La Cava or Howard Hawks or George Cukor or Preston Sturges. “Mistress America” is the second writing collaboration between Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, and like “Frances Ha,” the movie blossoms under the influence and presence of the warm and winning star.

Gerwig plays Brooke, a brilliant dreamer who juggles gigs as a spin class instructor and bottom-rung interior designer with plans to open a Williamsburg restaurant where the home-style cooking will be served on deliberately mismatched china. Brooke lives in an expansive exposed brick loft – not zoned residential and reachable only by fire escape and unlocked window. The boyfriend to whom the space apparently belongs is absent. All of Brooke’s traits, and her cascade of blurted, hysterical non-sequiturs, cast a spell on Tracy (a smashing Lola Kirke), a Barnard first year and aspiring writer whose mother is engaged to marry Brooke’s father.

For the sake of future family harmony, the sisters-to-be decide to hang out, and Tracy’s trepidations evaporate in the presence of the energetic and uninhibited “adult.” Baumbach has always been a shrewd observer of human nature and desire at multiple ages, and one of the supreme pleasures of “Mistress America” is watching Tracy watch Brooke. Scott Foundas writes, “Like one of his own filmmaking idols, Eric Rohmer, [Baumbach] seems to have remained very much an adolescent at heart, and he’s one of the few American filmmakers to embrace young people in all of their amorphous identity, occasional callowness and naive optimism…” Though Brooke and Tracy are not all that far apart in age, Baumbach and Gerwig fully grasp the world of difference between them.

Without implying any disrespect to “Frances Ha,” a Sundance programmer identified “Mistress America” in his introduction to the film as a significant leap forward for Gerwig and Baumbach. The comment might have applied to a kind of collaborative confidence emerging from the pair’s onscreen and offscreen relationships, but it could just as easily footnote the filmmaker’s embrace of élan over introspection, brio over self-loathing, and joie de vivre over grim resignation. Those latter markers of melancholia describe aspects of “The Squid and the Whale,” “Margot at the Weddding,” and “Greenberg,” and are to Baumbach equally worthwhile sources of humor.

Fleet and nimble, “Mistress America,” like all great movies, leaves you wanting more and imagining additional experiences for characters you feel you got to know intimately in less than ninety minutes. There is much to recommend here: the John Hughes-esque application of Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips’ fantastic synth pop score, the incisive way Baumbach explores the boundaries between life and art (Tracy’s unauthorized use of Brooke as the basis for a short story character provides enough material for a movie of its own), and the breathless, astonishingly staged and realized set-piece that finds an odd assortment of unlikely guests committing to farce at a Connecticut home. But the greatest joys of “Mistress America” can be found in the warmth of the relationship between Tracy and Brooke.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Daniel Junge tackles the larger-than-life personality of iconic American motorcycle stunt performer Robert Craig “Evel” Knievel in the entertaining biography “Being Evel.” As fast-paced and foul-mouthed as its subject during his 1970s heyday, Junge’s movie prominently features plenty of footage interviewing producer Johnny Knoxville, a fellow fan who had simultaneously been developing a Knievel film prior to teaming up with the documentarian. In addition to his conversation with Knoxville, Junge conducted sixty chroma key interviews for the movie, compositing the talking heads with “projected” images in a visually striking theatrical setting.

Junge intends to reconcile Knievel’s heroic status with the man’s consistently horrible behavior, and on that count, “Being Evel” is reasonably successful. As the story unfolds, two Knievels – the patriotic, action figure and helmet safety advocate and the conniving, belligerent, greedy outlaw – emerge. For millions of kids who idolized Knievel, revelations about the less savory aspects of his character are brought to life through the recollections of those involved. Promoter Shelly Saltman, for example, offers insight and perspective on his painful meeting with the business end of a baseball bat wielded by Knievel following a perceived slight published in Saltman’s memoir.

Knievel’s exploits were very well documented, and Junge uses a trove of archival material to his advantage. Sections on the wildly popular Ideal Toy Company’s wind-up Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle and the 1971 movie produced by and starring George Hamilton contribute to an understanding of the Knievel phenomenon, but the most devoted aficionado will be looking for references to other artifacts, like the Bally pinball machine, the Topps bubblegum cards, and the spectacular Aladdin Industries lunch box. It is simply not possible to squeeze in everything (the rehearsal footage from Knievel’s “Jaws”-inspired shark tank jump, included in the 2005 “Absolute Evel” documentary, is omitted here), but Junge makes strong choices to explore key highlights in depth.

No matter how many times some of the clips of Knievel’s leaps have been shown on television over the last forty plus years, audiences will react to many images with fresh amazement.  The failed 1967 Caesars Palace fountain jump, which sent Knievel skittering and tumbling across the pavement like a discarded ragdoll, receives significant attention. So too does the 1974 Snake River Canyon attempt in the steam-powered Skycycle X-2. Junge recognizes the latter event, complete with the surreal spectacle of Hells Angels mingling with high school marching band members and the general atmosphere of criminal behavior and sexual debauchery, as a critical turning point in the narrative.

Junge and Knoxville credit Knievel as a spiritual godfather to the adrenalized and inherently dangerous world of extreme sports, modern stunt riding, and the Jackass generation. Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of the interview subjects in “Being Evel” are men, but one of the most moving witnesses to the circus is Knievel’s first wife Linda, to whom he was married for 38 years. Suffering the indignities of her husband’s serial infidelities and the psychological stress of raising four children who had to grapple with the possibility that their dad could lose his life every time he pulled on his red, white, and blue leathers (and that he did so by choice), Linda’s candid responses are among the film’s most pointed and poignant.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Going into the latest edition of the Sundance Film Festival, Don Hertzfeldt captured the record for most movies screened in competition by a single filmmaker in the festival’s history. And with his win for Short Film Grand Jury Prize, “World of Tomorrow” makes Hertzfeldt the only artist to have collected that honor twice. The new movie represents the next logical step in the animator’s increasingly momentous career. Longtime true believers, stunned by the conclusion of Bill’s journey in “It’s Such a Beautiful Day,” whispered to one another nervously: How could Hertzfeldt possibly create a follow-up to what is, quite simply, one of the greatest animated movies ever made?

The first hint of things to come arrived in the unexpected and delightful surprises packed into the two-minute couch gag for “Clown in the Dumps,” the 26^th season premiere of “The Simpsons.” Hertzfeldt’s fabulous, phantasmagoric commentary on the durability of the show many have dismissed for years contextualizes its place in our culture, simultaneously critiquing the commercial ubiquity of its iconic characters (“Make purchase of the merchandise”) and recognizing the special place they earned in our hearts long ago (“Still love you, Homer”). Like he will do in “World of Tomorrow,” Hertzfeldt imagines a distant future that is utterly unique yet anchored in the director’s durable observations of the mundane, everyday, and quotidian.

With his signature absence of capitalization, Hertzfeldt wrote in the journal he shares on his website, “there is something strange about the simpsons that i’ve always wondered about… it’s a 26 year old show that seems to always be set in the current day, yet none of the characters ever age and they usually refer to past episodes as past events in their lives. do the children have memories of events from twenty years ago? but while they don’t age, they do evolve… they’ve changed a lot over the years from the way they were first drawn in season 1. so that was where i wanted to start… what happens when the longest running show on tv just never ends?” Hertzfeldt’s answer to that question, which applies in equal measure to the principal themes explored in “World of Tomorrow,” is assuredly one of the best moments in Simpsons history.

One of Hertzfeldt’s greatest strengths as a storyteller lies in his ability to bring apparent opposites into close proximity. Like the Bill trilogy, “World of Tomorrow” soars with happiness one moment and devastates with sadness in the next. The actions and reactions of the characters are by turns profound, uplifting, pathetic and terrifying. Expanding on several of the visual ideas introduced in his work on the “Clown in the Dumps” couch gag, Hertzfeldt contemplates the biggest questions we can ask of ourselves: What does it mean to be alive? Why are there limits to the time allotted us? How do we love?

Employing digital tools – which he used on “The Simpsons” project – and, for the first time, widescreen, Hertzfeldt introduces us to Emily Prime (Winona Mae, Hertzfeldt’s niece, four years old at the time he recorded her), a little girl visited by her own future clone. The grownup Emily is voiced by Julia Pott, the accomplished British animator and illustrator whose arresting hand-drawn shorts “Belly” (2011) and “The Event” (2012) conjure fully realized worlds in which human-animal hybrids dream of love and friendship while dealing with their severed limbs. The two Emilys – one a child and one an adult but in some sense also the same person – struggle to effectively communicate with each other, but eventually manage to forge a connection.

Hertzfeldt continues to develop his capacity for jet-black comedy and brain-scrambling surrealism, and “World of Tomorrow” is crammed with jokes both visual and verbal that stare down grim, grinning death. Faulty, discount time travel machines drop passengers (and at one point, Emily Prime, like a Gashlycrumb Tiny) in barren snowscapes. Lovely shooting stars are composed of the corpses of the once hopeful. Significantly, the filmmaker’s earnest curiosity blocks out all cynicism, and viewers will take comfort in the cheerful, agreeable openness of Emily Prime. Hertzfeldt’s sensibilities radiate from both Emily Prime’s innocence and the cloned Emily’s bleaker, more wistful worldview (“Now is the envy of all of the dead”). The combination, like Hertzfeldt’s finest work, reminds us that life is short but it can also be so very sweet.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Fan studies scholars should salivate over Neil Berkeley’s portrait of writer/performer Dan Harmon, the self-proclaimed mayor of “Harmontown,” the popular podcast he hosts. Berkeley’s documentary bears the same name as Harmon’s loquacious, therapeutic circus, and hardcore devotees will already be familiar with the details of that freewheeling, improvisational, mental odyssey and the ways in which it thrives on audience participation. Following Harmon on the podcast’s national tour, Berkeley’s principal thematic concerns alight on the relationship between “Harmontown” and its intense and particular citizen: “a nerd full of love.”

Harmon is joined on the tour bus by his girlfriend (now wife) Erin McGathy, comptroller Jeff B. Davis, and dungeon master Spencer Crittenden, a breathing symbol of the way in which the “Harmontown” podcast experience erases barriers between audience member and performer. Crittenden, a bearded and bespectacled introvert who lives with his parents, soon emerges as the show’s unexpected star: an accomplished Dungeons & Dragons host swept up into Harmon’s new raison d’etre. Crittenden’s move from spectator to content creator inspires the Harmenian army, and Berkeley includes multiple scenes in which members of the “Harmontown” fan base take photos with and tell stories to both Crittenden and Harmon.

Podcast success aside, Harmon is probably best known as the creator of “Community,” the single-camera sitcom that premiered on NBC in 2009. Prior to “Community,” Harmon’s comic bona fides (he has been referred to as “tortured genius” enough times to make the ghost of Vincent van Gogh snip his other ear) were well established. The what-might-have-been, too-good-to-be-true promise of “Heat Vision and Jack,” a much discussed and costly pilot that starred Jack Black and Owen Wilson in a loopy metafiction with nods to “Knight Rider,” became a crazy calling card for Harmon and collaborator Rob Schrab, even though no additional episodes were made.

“Heat Vision and Jack” is covered in “Harmontown,” as is Harmon’s doomed relationship with “The Sarah Silverman Program,” which he co-created with Silverman and Schrab. Silverman appears in “Harmontown” (along with a number of other comedians and once and future Harmon collaborators like Black, Schrab, Ben Stiller, and many “Community” cast members) and describes the events leading to Harmon’s eventual ouster from “The Sarah Silverman Program.” Harmon’s deficiencies, vaguely described here as a kind of controlling perfectionism, foreshadow the firing of Harmon from “Community.”

At a certain point along the way, Dan has an epiphany that Spencer is in fact the hero of this narrative, and in another movie, Berkeley might have run with the idea. The filmmaker attempts a few times to temper the constant adulation from “Harmontown” ticket buyers with Harmon’s capacity for cruelty, but some will be left with the feeling that the documentary does not go far enough in trying to grapple with Harmon’s demons and dark side. Harmon’s alcohol consumption, for example, is a big elephant in a small room, but Berkeley keeps his distance, playing a night when Harmon gets fall-down drunk on moonshine strictly for laughs. I would also have appreciated an opportunity to get to know McGathy better. She seems to suffer more than anyone’s fair share of abuse, but remains pretty tight-lipped when it comes to criticizing her partner.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Paul Thomas Anderson’s future cult film “Inherent Vice” is soft-boiled detective fiction. Bleary-eyed and hair-tousled, the movie is a pungent, shambling, meandering, and thoroughly hilarious shaggy dog story with a non-agenda traceable directly to the likes of Howard Hawks’ adaptation of “The Big Sleep” and its famous anecdote in which Raymond Chandler received a telegram from the director demanding to know who committed one of the murders. Chandler, of course, claimed he had no idea, and the legend has evolved into one of the most glorious arguments summarizing the value of the journey rather than the destination.

As the pot-addled private investigator Larry “Doc” Sportello, Joaquin Phoenix is about as far as he can get from the tightly coiled Freddie Quell, and the one-eighty feels like Anderson’s gift to his star. A mellow cat in a dog-eat-dog, post-Manson horror show, Doc may or may not be smarter than he lets on. A visit from his ex “old lady,” Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston), propels Doc, more or less, in the direction of a knotty/naughty missing person case, and the leads only lead to what might be described as more rabbit warren than rabbit hole.

“Inherent Vice” is the first big screen adaptation of Thomas Pynchon to be produced, and Anderson’s script preserves much of the novel’s tone and language, especially evident via the narration provided by Joanna Newsom’s Sortilege. The story goes that Anderson transcribed the novel’s dialogue line for line and the action scene for scene before deciding what had to be cut, and the result should delight devotees of Pynchon’s gift for Heller-esque monikers, spider-webbed pop culture allusions, brain-melting argot and the warped antinomies of L.A. law enforcement, the last perfectly captured by Josh Brolin’s Lt. Detective Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen.

The flat-topped civil rights violator is a perfect foil and nemesis to Doc’s filthy-footed hippie, and the symbiosis between the two unlikely bedfellows provides many of the movie’s biggest laughs and most satisfying exchanges. Bjornsen’s square jaw and square attitude clash with Doc’s permissive anti-establishment vibe, but “renaissance cop” and gumsandal are more unified than either cares to admit. Theirs is the movie’s most thoroughly understood and fully realized relationship.

Anderson’s deliberately slack pacing will alienate many viewers, but the relaxed running time allows the filmmaker to indulge in one of his greatest strengths: the non-stop introduction of fabulous faces in meaty roles, some of which turn out to be single scene appearances so delicious you keep your fingers crossed that Doc will reacquaint himself with these creatures later. Not unlike the gallery of misfits in Anderson’s other 70s Southern California period trip “Boogie Nights,” “Inherent Vice” showcases the auteur’s affection for actors, and the giddy exuberance shows.

In his entertaining video essay, Chris Wade makes a case for the “Slacker Noir,” a “mystery in which the protagonist’s primary goal is to extricate himself from the main storyline rather than somehow solve or resolve the conflict.” Naturally, the subgenre mash-up of tough, pulpy crime writing perfected by Hammett, Cain, and Chandler (dependent on procedure) and stoner comedy (dependent on inability to function procedurally) relies on parody, and in this respect “Inherent Vice” can be aligned with hallmarks including Anderson-hero Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye” and Joel and Ethan Coen’s “The Big Lebowski.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

While there is an abundance of hero worship on display in Amir Bar-Lev’s raw and riveting documentary “Happy Valley,” the most courageous figure to emerge from the wreckage and devastation caused by the Jerry Sandusky case at Penn State is Sandusky’s adopted son Matt. For any number of possible reasons, Matt is the only person victimized by Jerry Sandusky to appear in the movie, and each time he speaks, Bar-Lev refocuses attention on the grim truth: the lives of many children and families were shattered by the monstrous actions of a serial child molester. In 2012, Sandusky was found guilty of 45 counts of sexual abuse of young boys and was subsequently sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison for his crimes.

“Happy Valley,” however, is not a movie that digs into the specifics of the criminal proceedings leveled at Sandusky. Instead, Bar-Lev uses the case as an inciting incident to examine the ways in which a variety of communities with competing interests and investments come together and are torn apart. The movie does make an argument that the passionate football fans of the Nittany Lions showed in their desire to exonerate venerated football coach Joe Paterno a stunning lack of perspective regarding Sandusky’s victims, but that viewpoint may not be emphatic enough.

Bar-Lev recognizes the challenges of addressing the relationship between Paterno and retired assistant coach Sandusky, and while the filmmaker shows old footage of an interview in which both men appear, the suggestion that Paterno was indifferent to — or even disliked — Sandusky precedes the questions of how much Paterno knew and for how long. “Happy Valley” spends significant time with Paterno’s wife Suzanne and two of their children, sons Jay and Scott, and while the film aspires to a kind of journalistic objectivity, Paterno is treated with respect, if not kid gloves, by the filmmaker.

While Paterno’s legacy emerges as one of the movie’s central themes, Bar-Lev juggles a head-spinning number of fascinating subplots and side trips, each of which could sustain a film. These topics are naturally interrelated, from the perceived severity/lack of severity of the NCAA sanctions to the unruly crowds that blame the media for hastening Paterno’s exit and physical decline. Only brief mention is made of the ouster of Penn State president Graham Spanier, senior vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz, and athletic director Tim Curley, possibly due to the ongoing and still unfolding events (something that prevents the document from achieving a full sense of closure).

One of the film’s most intense sequences takes place outside Beaver Stadium at the site of Angelo Di Maria’s bronze statue of Joe Paterno, where a man holding a small hand-written sign that reads “Paterno, the Cover-Up Artist! Paterno, the Liar! Paterno, the Pedophile Enabler!” verbally and physically clashes with several angry people. During the intensely uncomfortable confrontations, Bar-Lev cuts to the sky, where a plane pulls a banner stating “Take the statue down or we will.” The chaotic scene, complete with finger pointing and heated arguments, captures the bizarre culture that develops when something as sacred as big-budget collegiate football is challenged. The statue, of course, was removed and placed into storage, but plans by alumni acting independently from the university are underway to unveil a new statue of Paterno, a few miles from the stadium, in November of 2015.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Earning accolades for its stylish design on a modest budget, its reliance on character and storytelling instead of CGI, and its reverence for several legendary genre hallmarks, Jennifer Kent’s “The Babadook,” like its namesake ghoulie, can be tough to banish from your head. Tracing the downward spiral of a struggling widow who loses her husband in a car wreck on the way to the hospital to deliver their son, Kent grounds her breakthrough film in the horror of the everyday before she unleashes the supernatural frights of the title figure, a bogeyman who first appears in the pages of a mysterious pop-up book.

Amelia (Essie Davis) and the now about-to-be-seven Samuel (Noah Wiseman), manage the best they can, although the odd little boy’s constant disruptions and “disobedience” hint at longstanding behavioral issues we suspect stem from the tragic circumstances attending Samuel’s birth. Single parent Amelia, at her wit’s end, sacrifices her own sleep every night, since Samuel complains of regular torment by a monster who visits his bedroom. With her job at stake, Amelia’s stress is palpably conveyed by the sympathetic Davis, and Kent introduces the unsettling idea that mother harbors ill will, maybe even blame, toward offspring.

Amelia is less dismissive of Samuel’s claims after she discovers “Mister Babadook,” an authorless tome filled with grisly monochromatic images and prophetic rhymes. Featuring a menacing evildoer reminiscent of Lon Chaney’s repulsive “Man in the Beaver Hat” disguise from the lost “London After Midnight,” the twisted text grows more disturbing with each turn of the page. The creepy red-covered album, designed by Alex Juhasz, is a marvel of illustration and engineering, and “Mister Babadook” steals one of the film’s best scenes, immediately assuming a place alongside some of cinema’s most effective false documents.

Shrewd and ambitious – Kent famously wrote a letter to Lars von Trier that landed her the opportunity to work for the director on “Dogville” – the filmmaker manages to load plenty of potential readings into that dreaded volume and the creature it spawns. From the draining demands of motherhood to the unthinkable rejection of one’s own child to the bottomless grief of a marriage cut short, the Babadook can easily symbolize any number of demons. Kent leaves open the possibility that Amelia constructed the book herself, an idea that should give even the most hardened horror aficionado the shivers.

“The Babadook” is Kent’s inaugural feature following a long time spent as a performer, and given the movie’s confidence and imagination, it is hopefully just the first in a series of projects. Take one look at “Monster,” the 2005 short that forms the basis of the story that would become “The Babadook,” and Kent’s gifts as a visual storyteller are evident. A motif in “The Babadook” is the use of mediated imagery to intensify the jaw-clicking disequilibrium and hallucinations experienced by the exhausted Amelia while she stares at her television. Kent selects tantalizing clips from Rupert Julian’s “The Phantom of the Opera,” Lewis Milestone’s “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” and Mario Bava’s “Black Sabbath,” along with dazzling magic tricks from several evocative Georges Melies shorts.

One of Kent’s most challenging moves is to dive deep into Amelia’s psychological anguish, switching from a perceived external threat posed by the Babadook to an internal battle operationalized as a kind of possession. Narratively, the shift dampens the immediacy of the Babadook as an intriguing and involving instrument of fear, but parents may find Amelia’s filicidal tendencies every bit as harrowing as similar depictions in films like “Bigger Than Life,” “Eraserhead,” and “The Shining.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Jeremy Saulnier contributes a worthwhile addition to the family revenge thriller with “Blue Ruin,” a sharp livewire that transcends both its modest budget and the familiar expectations of the genre through the filmmaker’s keen intellectual investments. The umpteenth story to track the efforts of a driven protagonist en route to a climactic bloodbath, “Blue Ruin” unfolds with many of the hallmarks of tales in which the dire consequences of payback offer little in the way of satisfaction to the bereft. Saulnier aligns his stylistic approach with movies like “Blood Simple,” “In the Bedroom,” “Revanche,” “The Place Beyond the Pines” and “Out of the Furnace,” asking us to ponder the consequences of getting even.

From the film’s opening frames, Saulnier proves a shrewd and economical storyteller, carefully doling out just enough information to keep the viewer fully invested in the slow motion horror we are unable to prevent. Haggard and homeless Delaware beach vagrant Dwight Evans (Macon Blair) learns that the man who murdered his parents is soon to be released from prison. Evans returns home to Virginia, and the realization that he intends to do harm to the convicted killer is presented by Saulnier with as much woozy ambiguity as the sinking feeling that Dwight is in way over his head.

One of the unsettling dimensions of “Blue Ruin” is the ease with which Saulnier convinces the viewer to sympathetically align with Dwight in his quest for vengeance. Some of this is accomplished through the construction of the character, played by Blair as a sad-eyed sufferer fulfilling his destiny with a strong sense of doomed resignation. Dwight’s physical transformation, from scruffy, bearded, and emaciated to a smooth-cheeked square in a button-down dress shirt and khaki pants, only adds to his pathetic mismatch against the grim members of the clan he must face.

In his review of the film, David Edelstein asserts that “Aside from ‘Go for it!,’ the most pervasive motif in American film (and TV) is ‘I will have my revenge!’” Edelstein goes on to make the claim that the retribution theme “cheapens what it touches,” implying that our collective fascination with a kind of solipsistic and perverted sense of justice – combined with America’s cultural embrace of guns if not the violence connected to them – signals a depressing celebration of murder.

Edelstein believes that “Blue Ruin” is “drivel,” but his critique fails to account for any number of narrative surprises used by Saulnier as substantive moral and ethical complications standing in the way of Edelstein’s argument that “…there isn’t a second when we don’t think the people in question would be better off dead and that a measure of order will be restored by their killing.”

Edelstein does, however, make a compelling point not unlike some of the conversations about Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” that located the contradiction and disjunction of two seemingly mutually exclusive options regarding stories that simultaneously appear to condemn violence and celebrate violence.  Of course, fictions in which common folk resort to extraordinary actions have driven drama since the dawn of theatre. To the extent that it is possible in the movies, Saulnier grasps for ways to illustrate a kind of humanity for the antagonists. Most genre exercises in the vein of “Blue Ruin” don’t treat the “bad guys” with nuance and sophistication, and that’s enough to recommend the movie.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt continues to build her reputation as a storyteller of remarkable skill with “Night Moves,” a pressure cooker of a movie that observes the actions of a trio of radical environmental activists who plot to blow up a dam in the Pacific Northwest. Like her recent work, including “Meek’s Cutoff,” “Wendy and Lucy,” and “Old Joy,” “Night Moves” operates with visual precision and thoughtful staging. Rather than depend on dialogue-driven exposition and traditional plotting, Reichardt maintains an exacting distance from the dramatized actions, asking the viewer to drawn conclusions from several tantalizing ambiguities.

Jesse Eisenberg is Josh, a sullen, close-mouthed organic farmhand wound up tight with a level of indignation that matches his commitment to sustainability. Partnered with Dena (Dakota Fanning), a health spa employee from a wealthy background, Josh prepares to meet up with Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), a mysterious ex-soldier who claims to have previous experience in planning and executing dangerous, clandestine acts of mayhem. The government would likely label these three people “terrorists,” and one of Reichardt’s strengths is the careful way in which she withholds judgment, neither supporting nor condemning the plotters.

Reichardt co-wrote “Night Moves” with Jonathan Raymond, and their story’s similarity to Edward Abbey’s 1975 novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang” resulted in a lawsuit prior to the start of production. A feature film based on Abbey’s novel was being developed by Edward Pressman, who objected to parallels between Reichardt’s project and his own, and the complaint cited three basic areas of overlap: “the targeting of a dam for destruction by means of ammonium fertilizer-laden boats,” a U.S. Marine veteran with a knowledge of demolitions, and a “20-something woman who starts out as a companion of another member of the group but develops a sexual relationship with the bomb-making veteran.”

Obviously, the conflict was resolved and “Night Moves” completed, but similarities to “The Monkey Wrench Gang” aside, Reichardt’s film arrived following Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling’s “The East,” a far more conventional and less satisfying thriller that also addresses eco-terrorism. By contrast, Reichardt’s devoted taciturnity is sophisticated and demanding. The filmmaker runs the risk of alienating those who expect to learn something about the how and the why leading the characters toward violence, but will delight observers comfortable with drawing their own conclusions. One shocking incident that occurs late in the narrative is so disturbing, it echoes all the way to the movie’s final shot, an image of dread and paranoia.

Based on its subject matter, “Night Moves” at first glance seems far away from Reichardt’s three most recent features, but a closer look links the newest film with the other titles. Thematically, Reichardt likes to contemplate the relationship between all kinds of people and the environments with which they interact. Human-versus-nature is often identified as one of the classic structural conflicts in literature, and Reichardt grounds her stories in situations that carefully contemplate one’s “place” in the world. Whether or not “Night Moves” is as good as “Meek’s Cutoff” or “Wendy and Lucy” is debatable, but Reichardt’s remarkable facility with the icebox talk that blooms from the steady supply of nerve-wracking setbacks and unfortunate encounters with potential witnesses reveals a moviemaker at the top of her game.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Warsaw-born, UK-based Pawel Pawlikowski delivers one of the year’s most rewarding cinematic experiences in “Ida,” a stark, monochromatic treasure set in Poland in 1962. Quiet, introspective, and deliberate on the outside, the movie’s interior life is by contrast filled with the most tumultuous emotional upheaval imaginable. Raised by nuns and now on the verge of becoming one herself, Anna is instructed by her mother superior to seek out the aunt she never knew she had. Reluctant but obedient, the young woman meets Wanda, a weary judge who numbs her own sorrow with alcohol and one-night stands. The novice’s earnest piety is tested by Wanda’s flinty pragmatism, especially when Wanda reveals that “Anna” is really Ida, a Jew whose parents were killed during World War 2.

Aunt and niece begin a journey of discovery to find out the details of the fate of Ida’s parents, traveling by car through bleak landscapes en route to knowledge that might bring as much pain as peace. As Ida, newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska is, in her own way, every bit as mesmerizing as Emily Blunt’s enigmatic Tamsin in Pawlikowski’s excellent “My Summer of Love.” Trzebuchowska’s performance is perfectly complemented by the work of Agata Kulesza as Wanda, and both actors communicate the steadily developing respect that each character reluctantly earns from the other.

Pawlikowski’s unusual road movie functions on several planes, from the horror of the Holocaust and the political fallout of Poland’s post-Stalin era to the pragmatic debate between the tangible pleasures of the material world and the unknown territory of life everlasting. Identity, particularly in terms of the revelation that the main character is not the Catholic Anna but instead the Jewish Ida, is paramount. In Ida and Wanda, the oddest of couples, the differences are starkly outlined. One believes and the other does not. One is a virgin and the other demonstrates a worldly sexual appetite. One has grown up in ignorance of the grim events that stole her family while the other has lived with that knowledge every day for nearly two decades.

Shot in the squarish 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio of bygone cinema by photographers Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, “Ida” is filled with meticulous compositions that command attention. Pawlikowski frequently places characters low in the frame, exaggerating headroom to include the ceilings of many interior spaces visited by Ida and Wanda (so much so that, as noted by Catherine Wheatley, the subtitles often become surtitles so as not to interfere with the visuals). Both indoors and outdoors, Pawlikowski relishes opportunities for vivid internal framings and sharp contrasts between foreground and background objects.

An accomplished storyteller, Pawlikowski dispatches more information through Bressonian silences and long static takes than he does via lengthy exchanges of dialogue. In one enticing subplot, Ida and Wanda pick up jazz saxophonist Lis (Dawid Ogrodnik) on his way to a gig, and the young people are noticeably attracted to one another — much to the delight and amusement of Wanda. Lis later performs John Coltrane’s “Naima,” and for a few delicate scenes, Pawlikowski turns from the somber realism inspired by the Polish Film School to pay homage to the spirit of the influential films of the Czech New Wave, letting tiny rays of light shine in through the darkness.