Lebanon’s official Best Foreign Language Film selection for the 84th Academy Awards, Where Do We Go Now? juggles comic fantasy and politicized drama in telling a story of religious strife held at bay by the better angels of women’s nature. Its commingled tonalities don’t always quite mesh, but if one sticks with it there is some off-kilter delight herein that cuts against erroneous notions of foreign films tackling such big social issues as necessarily staid and stuffy affairs.

Directed by Caramel multi-hyphenate Nadine Labaki (above), Where Do We Go Now?‘s insistent message of tolerance and coexistence should make it a strong arthouse performer for especially the older urban demographic, though any wider breakout is unlikely.

Set in an indeterminate time, Labaki’s movie unfolds in a remote Lebanese village, virtually sealed off from its surroundings and accessible only via a thin bridge in severe disrepair. There, church and mosque stand side by side, and the women, whose friendships more naturally transcend the religious fault lines of their community, act as a collective leavening influence, managing and rerouting the testosterone-fueled energy and impulses of the men in their village.

Widowed Christian café owner Amal (Labaki) and Muslim handyman Rabih (Julian Farhat) nurse a bit of a mutual crush, but news of religious violence from the outside world darkens the town’s mood. A series of accidents and misunderstandings ensue, and when a terrible accident befalls one of the children who serve as an errand boy, the village is pushed closer to getting caught up in a sectarian bloodbath. The mayor’s headstrong wife, Yvonne (Yvonne Maalouf), feigns a miracle connection and chat with God, and the women turn to increasingly fanciful ploys, eventually landing upon distracting belly dancing and pot-infused pastries, the former by way of a busload of mock-stranded Ukrainian strippers the women pay to vacation in their town.

While it doesn’t deal in abstractions, Where Do We Go Now? works best if one accepts it as the working draft of a kind of cinematic treatise, or a flavored, chewable children’s vitamin. A sort of cheeky moralizing is its aim, so it takes a while to get into, and additionally lags some in the middle, suffering from ill-conceived scenes that pull viewers away from the crux of the story.

While it cycles through plenty of entertaining schemes of distraction hatched by the women, Labaki and her screenwriting collaborators aren’t interested in digging much down into the lasting consequences of these acts. So the film takes on the feeling of a cutesy serial, punctuated by some serious rage. The ideas and effort often trump Ladaki’s big picture execution, in other words. Likewise, the movie’s gender politics is necessarily broad, in order to support the conceit, which puts a twist on the classic comedy Lysistrata.

The film mixes in non-professionals alongside working actors, with mixed results that, when they do work, give Where Do We Go Now? a charged sense of spontaneity and energy. Labaki and Baz Moussawbaa are particularly engaging, and exude a nice chemistry together. As its title indicates, the film ends on a note of cautious optimism. (Sony Pictures Classics, PG-13, 100 minutes)

A putative dramedy centering on the happy-face domestic veneer many of us feel it so necessary to play-act and pantomime, The Perfect Family never locates and communicates a very persuasive reason for its existence, or even a compelling dramatic throughline. As a vehicle for the not-much-seen Kathleen Turner, this indie flick from first-time director Anne Renton, which premiered at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, is so-so, but that represents the high point of qualified recommendation for this resolutely middle-of-the-road affair, a cinematic “meh” if ever there were one. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Variance Films/Certainty Films/Present Pictures, PG-13, 85 minutes)

Richard Linklater is an American original, a filmmaker with a deep and eclectic body of work, spanning studio movies and independent fare alike, who has religiously used the medium of cinema to pursue inquiries into his varied fields of interest. In an ideal world, there would be more directors like him, who labor less for stature and craft, and more to shine lights into experiential nooks and crannies, and explore their own curiosities about modern life and all its contradictions and incongruities. Linklater’s 15th feature offering, the delightfully off-kilter Bernie, is both different from much of his other work, and yet inimitably the same in its priorities and sublime telling. It’s kind of a less overtly comedic Eastern Texas response to Fargo, a fantastically absorbing and comedically inflected docu-drama which tells the tale of a beloved Sunday school teacher and a strange and shockingly unexpected murder.



Based on a 1998 Texas Monthly article about the bizarre true story of its namesake protagonist and other characters, Bernie unfolds in the small town of Carthage, where 39-year-old confirmed bachelor Bernie Tiede (Jack Black) takes a job as the junior mortician at the local funeral home. Sweet-natured, church-going and unerringly polite, choir member Tiede soon becomes friends with virtually everyone. That includes Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), a reclusive and ill-tempered 81-year-old millionaire widow who rubs most of the other townsfolk the wrong way. The endurance of Tiede’s patience and kindness seems to wear down her nastiness, however, and Tiede soon becomes Nugent’s gentleman companion.

Nugent’s constant put-downs and nagging eventually begins to wear on Tiede, however, and in a flash of anger he murders her. For months, though, Tiede keeps her death a secret, doling out her considerable fortune in a string of charitable acts that keeps questions about her societal withdrawal at bay. Rising from the position of assistant funeral director to a full-time post, Bernie basically becomes a servant of the entire town. Suspicious district attorney Danny Buck (Matthew McConaughey), however, senses something is amiss, and, tipped off by Nugent’s financial planner, eventually closes in on Tiede, shocking the town.

Bernie works so well because it doesn’t funnel the stranger-than-fiction facts of this case through one subjective point-of-view. In its commingled sympathetic affection and raised-brow disbelief and reservation about both the small town setting and various characters, the movie comes across as shaggy and oddball without ever feeling scornful or mocking. Some of the performances abet this; McConaughey is a bewigged hoot and Black gives a superlative turn, laced with light effeminate touches but also brimming with warmth and sincerity. It’s mainly a testament to Linklater’s masterful construction and deft touch with disparate tonalities, though.

The movie leans toward a comedic vibe dark and dry, but isn’t a “black comedy” per se, nor does it tip over into absurdia in the manner that a Coen brothers’ treatment of the same material might, for better or worse. Bernie feels real throughout, if definitely weird. Part of this owes to a unique framing choice made by Linklater. Co-written by the director and Skip Hollandsworth, the film interweaves interviews with real-life Carthage residents into the story, sharing their experiences with Nugent and their thoughts on the case, and mystery surrounding it. If Errol Morris and John Waters collaborated on a narrative feature, well, it might resemble this. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Millennium Entertainment, R, 104 minutes)

Pablum would be a step up for Suing the Devil, an inane, moralizing Australian production from writer-director Timothy Chey that centers around a lawsuit against Satan filed by a down-on-his-luck law school student. Aiming for some theoretical sweet spot between comedy, courtroom drama and Up-with-Jesus! sermonizing, this poorly sketched and dreadfully acted movie can’t even be saved via an attempted personality transfusion from a ranting, raving Malcolm McDowell, in the title role.

Scripture is trotted out on both sides, naturally, but Chey’s stooping efforts to try to shoehorn in comedy (wherein Satan claims responsibility for leaf blowers and automated customer service, and constantly derides everyone as losers and nitwits) is about 10 percent as clever as he thinks it is. “Trial of the century,” huh? Only in movie hell. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, click here to visit its Facebook page. (River Run/Mouthwatering Productions, unrated, 97 minutes)

Part thriller of containment, part horror movie, Asylum Blackout is a skillfully cobbled together little calling card of a film, suffused with a certain woozy dread. If in the end it’s a bit short on convincing payoff, its atmospheric spell should generally satisfy genre fans and also augur good things for all those involved.

Formerly known as The Incident, but re-titled in more forthright fashion, director Alexandrer Courtes’ movie centers on a group of friends and aspirant musicians who, between small gigs, work as kitchen cooks in a high security mental asylum in Washington State. When a big storm fries the wiring for the security system one dark and rainy evening, however, things take a turn for the worse.

Director Brad Anderson cut his teeth on stuff like this, moody sleights of hand in which small character ensembles grapple with unraveling sanity in grave and otherwise diminishing situations. Sound design and style matter enormously in such cinematic undertakings. So Asylum Blackout helmer Alexandre Courtes and cinematographer Laurent Tangy imprint a strong and frequently compelling visual scheme on the proceedings; in this respect, their film recalls Pontypool, another low-budget thriller that made unnervingly excellent use of its dingy, confined setting.

The movie’s big twist or revelation doesn’t completely come together in a coherent fashion. That said, its strong performances, effective production design and value, and technical polish make Asylum Blackout a moody treat for genre fans inclined to take a flyer on a movie with lesser known talent. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. NOTE: In addition to its theatrical engagements, Asylum Blackout is available nationwide on IFC Midnight Cable VOD, and a wide variety of other digital outlets, including iTunes, SundanceNOW, Xbox Zune and Amazon Streaming. (IFC Midnight, unrated, 85 minute)

Billed as “a provocative exploration of female sexuality,” NC-17-rated French import Elles is a self-satisfied, ponderous drama that can’t be saved by a characteristically strong and nuanced performance from Juliette Binoche. A would-be character study desperately in search of interesting characters, director Malgoska Szumowska’s film comes across as a plodding and muddled adaptation of a didactic women’s studies term paper.



Binoche stars as Anne, a French magazine journalist in the finishing stages of an article on young women ostensibly subsidizing their higher educations through prostitution. Pledging confidentiality, Anne gets the girls — French-born Lola (Anais Demoustier) and Polish exchange student Alicja (Joanna Kulig) — to open up about their work, and what led them to the sex-for-money trade. Lola, whose real name is Charlotte, describes some of the tension it creates in the relationship with her boyfriend Thomas (Arthur Moncla), while confessing that one can “get used to the money.” Both girls also note the level of organization their job requires. Some of their reminiscences with Anne are rendered in flashback, which (heavily) breathes erotic life into their descriptions.

Co-written by Tine Byrckel and director Szumowska, Elles aims as much for a stirring of the head as the loins, if not more so. Possessing a lively energy and flitting eyes, Binoche richly imbues Anne with the sort of complex interior life at which the script only hints. In addition to the requisite masturbation scene, a drunken dinner sequence between Anne and Alicja marks Binoche as perhaps the only actress in recent memory brave enough to spit up chewed food in deranged delirium. A shame, then, that Elles doesn’t serve as a better vehicle for her efforts, but instead builds to a ridiculous climax of all-caps Artistic Statement. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Kino Lorber, NC-17, 99 minutes)