BOMBSHELL (US/Canada - 2019) Directed by Jay Roach. Written by Charles Randolph. Cast: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, Malcolm McDowell, Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Liv Hewson, Brigitte Lundy-Paine, Rob Delaney, Stephen Root, Robin Weigert, Amy Landecker, Mark Moses, Richard Kind, Holland Taylor, Alanna Ubach, Anne Ramsay, Andy Buckley, Brooke Smith, Ben Lawson, Josh Lawson, Nazanian Boniadi, Brian d'Arcy James, Alice Eve, Elisabeth Rohm, Bree Condon, Ashley Greene, Tricia Helfer, Jennifer Morrison, Lisa Canning, Ahna O'Reilly, John Rothman, Tony Plana, Kevin Dorff, P.J. Byrne, Spencer Garrett, Michael Buie, Marc Evan Jackson, Katie Aselton. (R, 109 mins)
A chronicle of the Fox News sexual harassment scandal that brought down chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, BOMBSHELL belongs to that same "ripped from the headlines" subgenre that gave us THE BIG SHORT and VICE, generally decent films that provide easy Oscar bait for big-name actors to do uncanny impressions of ubiquitous figures. BOMBSHELL is very much in line with those films, and could make an unofficial trilogy with director Jay Roach's two previous HBO political docudramas, 2008's RECOUNT and 2012's GAME CHANGE. Those were instant Emmy and Golden Globe magnets, with RECOUNT giving Laura Dern a chance to do a remarkable take on Florida Attorney General Katharine Harris, and GAME CHANGE showcasing Julianne Moore and Ed Harris as dead-on versions of Sarah Palin and John McCain, respectively. But because these stories are so recent and the 24-hour news cycle so constantly there and in our faces, BOMBSHELL falls into the same trap as the rest of these kinds of movies: it entertains but offers nothing that we don't already know. Given Roach's history with HBO, it's surprising that BOMBSHELL is even in theaters. It follows the same formula and style as RECOUNT and GAME CHANGE, eschewing the snarky smartassery that Adam McKay brought to THE BIG SHORT and VICE, opting instead for occasional fourth-wall breaking while generally keeping it straightforward and serious.
The Fox News scandal broke in 2016 and BOMBSHELL is already the second 2019 project to tackle Ailes as a subject, following the Showtime limited series THE LOUDEST VOICE, with Russell Crowe as Ailes and Naomi Watts as Gretchen Carlson, the fired Fox News personality who was the first to sue him for sexual harassment. THE LOUDEST VOICE was more about the entire Ailes story, starting with the establishment of Fox News, while BOMBSHELL just deals with the scandal, with the focus being on Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), who finds herself under fire as the film opens in 2015, just after her debate scuffle with Donald Trump that led to his infamous "blood coming out of her...wherever" comment. Ailes (John Lithgow, with prosthetic jowls and a NUTTY PROFESSOR fat suit) sympathizes with the way Trump supporters are raging at her on Twitter, but wants her to play nice, as Fox and Trump are well on their way to a perpetual state of symbiotic co-dependence. At the same time, Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is ruffling feathers on the afternoon dead zone she's been given after being bounced from the highly-rated morning show FOX & FRIENDS, and when she's eventually fired, she decides to blow the doors off the worst-kept secret in the building: that Ailes is a serial sexual harasser and all-around creep, and that the network's "boys club"--the costly harassment settlements of Bill O'Reilly (played here by Kevin Dorff) are unspoken common knowledge among the grunts in the newsroom--has made for a toxic work environment. The mood is also fueled by deranged, right-wing paranoia that comes straight from Ailes, who at one point makes an off-the-cuff remark to his legal team about an Obama White House plot to have him murdered, a comment so batshit crazy that even his attorney Rudy Giuliani (Richard Kind) is seen looking away in incredulous discomfort.
The third figure in the story is the most problematic in that she's a wholly fictional creation of Roach and screenwriter Charles Randolph (a co-writer of THE BIG SHORT). Margot Robbie is the improbably-named Kayla Pospisil, a composite character meant to show the kind of treatment given to established vets like Kelly and Carlson when they were ambitious youngsters at the network. Composite characters are very often a necessity with dramatic narrative recreations, and while it's no fault of Robbie's, the script just requires Kayla to be too many things at once. Ostensibly an "evangelical millennial" with a repressed upbringing in a staunchly far-right church family, Kayla is at Fox News to be a voice for young conservatives. She's first shown in a control booth, demonstrating no knowledge of the Eagles or classic rock in general when she puts a photo of Don Henley on the air to accompany a breaking news report on the death of Glenn Frey, blaming the gaffe on "never listening to secular music." The next time we see her, she's telling Carlson that she's leaving her staff to work for O'Reilly (wait...when was she on Carlson's staff in the first place?). Right after that, she's hopping into bed with a closeted lesbian cubicle mate (Kate McKinnon), who's a secret Hillary Clinton supporter. It's rightly disgusting and infuriating when we see ambitious Kayla requesting a meeting with Ailes and ending up being subjected to his degrading requests that she pull up her skirt for him, and the squirm-inducing scene is played very well by Robbie and Lithgow. But Robbie simply can't assemble a believable character out of the wildly disparate pieces she's been given.
Kidman has a good amount of screen time, but her story generally takes a backseat to what goes on with Robbie's Kayla and Theron's Megyn Kelly. Theron is definitely the MVP here, with just the right amount of subtle prosthetics combined with an astonishing mimicry of Kelly's voice, cadence, and speaking style. It's one of the most believable transformations of an actor into a real-life figure in recent memory. There's been some chatter online complaining that the film makes Kelly a hero, but that's another discussion for another time. No one deserves to be a victim of sexual harassment, and BOMBSHELL isn't about Megyn Kelly's dubious comments as a Fox News personality or during her short tenure at NBC. Briskly-paced and well-acted (except for the one scene between Theron and Robbie, which comes off as strangely clunky), with Theron and Lithgow being the standouts, BOMBSHELL also boasts a very large supporting cast, including Malcolm McDowell as Rupert Murdoch, Allison Janney as Ailes attorney Susan Estrich, Spencer Garrett as Sean Hannity, Tony Plana as Geraldo Rivera, a perfectly-cast Alanna Ubach as Judge Jeanine Pirro, Mark Moses as the loathsome Bill Shine, Anne Ramsay as Greta Van Susteren, Bree Condon as a Mean Girl-ish Kimberly Guilfoyle, P.J. Byrne as Neil Cavuto, and Connie Britton as Ailes' endlessly supportive wife, introduced scoffing at an employee for eating "liberal" grocery store sushi. Like RECOUNT, GAME CHANGE, THE BIG SHORT, and VICE, BOMBSHELL is perfectly fine entertainment and it'll almost certainly be up for major awards (Theron and Lithgow are both deserving). But once you get past the dedication and diligence of the performances, do these films have any lasting impact beyond that first viewing? THE BIG SHORT was great, but have I thought "I need to rewatch THE BIG SHORT" even once in the four years since I saw it in the theater?
Indie producer Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions has achieved significant Hollywood success with a hand in such films as the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, INSIDIOUS, and THE PURGE franchises, as well as SINISTER, THE LORDS OF SALEM, DARK SKIES, and OCULUS among others. Blumhouse titles are typically budgeted between $3 million and $5 million, with name actors taking pay cuts in exchange for a percentage of the profits, which really paid off for Ethan Hawke on SINISTER and THE PURGE. However, that formula isn't working for the actors starring in several Blumhouse titles have been languishing unreleased for quite some time--as long as five years in the case of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY helmer Oren Peli's AREA 51, acquired by Paramount and still awaiting release after being completed in 2009. Joe Carnahan's STRETCH was recently released directly to VOD, and it, along with three buried Blumhouse productions set to be distributed by Universal--NOT SAFE FOR WORK, MERCY, and MOCKINGBIRD--were recently released on DVD exclusively (for now) at Walmart and just this week, began streaming on Netflix Instant. All of these films had nationwide theatrical release dates penciled in at various times, but for a variety of reasons--primarily the claim of exorbitant distribution costs--Universal opted to shelve them until quietly making them available now.
NOT SAFE FOR WORK (US - 2014)
A sort-of Hitchcockian OFFICE SPACE, NOT SAFE FOR WORK has been on and off the release schedule since 2012. Directed by veteran journeyman Joe Johnston, no stranger to big movies (1989's HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS, 1991's THE ROCKETEER, 1995's JUMANJI, 2001's JURASSIC PARK III) and who, it should be noted, made this right after scoring another blockbuster with 2011's CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, NOT SAFE FOR WORK is a tight and fast-moving suspense thriller that, of course, gets dumber as it goes along. Fortunately, with an unusually short 74-minute running time (probably a major reason the theatrical release was nixed), it gallops along briskly enough that its flaws don't really have time to become a problem. Lowly, ambitious paralegal Tom (Max Minghella) screws up one too many times at the pricy law firm where he's employed, and is fired by his boss Emmerich (Christian Clemenson) on the eve of a huge trial involving a pharmaceutical corporation that knowingly put a medication with lethal side effects on the market. After Emmerich sends most of the staff home for the night, Tom ends up staying behind when he notices a well-dressed mystery man (JJ Feild) hanging around the main lobby and exchanging briefcases with another stranger before getting on the elevator to the firm's floor. When the stranger kills an attorney (Molly Hagan), Tom finds his buddy Roger (Tom Gallop) working late and the pair are soon involved in a game of cat-and-mouse as the killer has their floor locked down and mercilessly pursues them through the maze-like office.
It's a refreshingly simple set-up and Johnston is enough of a pro to keep it suspenseful, getting a lot of help from some twisty, snaking camera work by Jonathan Taylor, who handled second-unit duties for Johnston on THE FIRST AVENGER. It does sometimes seem like the film is too short, with some of Roger's behavior left unexplained (why does he react so oddly to Tom telling him he's secretly dating Emmerich's assistant Anna, played by Eloise Mumford) and his potential backstabbing of Tom dropped completely (why is Roger going through Tom's desk?), and it's hard telling what drew Johnston to the project. Perhaps after so many effects-heavy films and behind-the-scenes drama (he also directed 2010's troubled THE WOLFMAN), he just wanted to make something basic and simple with a producer known for being mostly hands-off and letting his directors direct. Buoyed by a terrific performance by Feild (James Montgomery Falsworth in THE FIRST AVENGER), looking and acting like a young Clive Owen as the relentless killer, NOT SAFE FOR WORK is the very defintion of a harmless time killer, unspectacular, slight, and not very inventive, but a polished and entertaining B-movie that's over before it ever has a chance to wear out its welcome. (Unrated, 74 mins)
MERCY (US - 2014)
Completed in early 2013, the shelving of MERCY is a bit of a surprise, considering it's based on a Stephen King short story ("Gramma," from his 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, which was made into a Harlan Ellison-scripted episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE in 1986) and stars Chandler Riggs, best known as Carl on THE WALKING DEAD. Riggs is Georgie, a sensitive boy who shares a deep bond with his loving grandmother Mercy (Shirley Knight). When Mercy is incapacitated by a massive stroke, Georgie, his older brother Buddy (Joel Courtney), and their mom Rebecca (Frances O'Connor) move into Mercy's ramshackle home to be her full-time caregivers. No one can figure out why the nursing home didn't want to deal with Mercy, but the townspeople still speak of her in hushed tones, as they have for 45 years, when, as a young mother of triplets, she watched her town drunk husband split his own head open with an axe. Mercy's moods are erratic, she's rarely lucid, and she's prone to shrieks and growls. In one of her seemingly saner moments, she convinces Georgie to replace her medication with saline, which essentially unleashes a demon from within. Screenwriter Matt Greenberg (who also scripted the King adaptation 1408) and director Peter Cornwell (THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT) mostly abandon the Lovecraftian tone of King's story to make MERCY yet another standard-issue demonic possession potboiler. It seems that young Mercy, after several heartbreaking miscarriages, was so desperate to be a mother that she disappeared into the surrounding hills for a night, making a pact with a necromancer called Hastur and returning the next morning pregnant with triplets thanks to spells in something called a "weeping book," the contents of which are invisible until the page is soaked with tears.
There's some interesting and disturbing ideas in King's story and for a while, MERCY is eerily effective and beautifully filmed, especially in some visually striking, almost painterly images of the mountains, hills, and the monstrous-looking trees with twisting branches that surround Mercy's home. Unfortunately, it soon devolves into more modern-day EXORCIST nonsense, made unique only by the bizarre sight of 77-year-old, two-time Oscar nominee Knight going through all the standard possession histrionics (including vomiting into Georgie's face) and doing the herky-jerky RINGU/JU-ON shuffle. By the end, the film just collapses into a smoldering heap of bush-league CGI and utterly incoherent plot developments and, running just a few minutes longer than NOT SAFE FOR WORK, looking very much like a strangely short film that doesn't seem to be all there (Kevin Greutert, director of the last two SAW entries, has an "additional editing" credit). Also with mumblecore icon Mark Duplass as Georgie's alcoholic, loser uncle, Hana Hayes as "Girl Next Door," Georgie's imaginary friend/guardian angel who appears in times of trouble (shades of THE SHINING's "Tony"), Jack Carter as a nursing home resident terrified by Mercy, and Dylan McDermott, appearing in his second film titled MERCY since 2010, as a local artist/handyman still carrying a torch for Rebecca. (R, 79 mins) MOCKINGBIRD (US - 2014)
Writer/director Bryan Bertino made his debut with 2008's THE STRANGERS, a tense home invasion thriller that many felt heralded the arrival of a major new talent, even if it owed more than a little to the 2006 French film THEM. Then...he disappeared. Bertino probably didn't think it would be six years before his follow-up effort would be released, but MOCKINGBIRD was also shelved by Universal upon its completion in 2012. But unlike STRETCH, NOT SAFE FOR WORK, and MERCY, there's almost nothing redeeming about MOCKINGBIRD. It's sadistic, depressing, and completely derivative, with Bertino ripping off both SAW and himself by basically retro-fitting THE STRANGERS as a found-footage horror film. Set in 1995 for no reason other establishing the lack of wi-fi internet and the ubiquity of smart phones, and to indulge in some shameless pandering to VHS horror hipsters, MOCKINGBIRD has an already running camcorder left on the doorstep of two homes--one belonging to married couple Tom (Todd Stashwick) and Emmy (Audrey Marie Anderson), whose two daughters are at a sleepover with his brother's family, and the other rented by quiet college student Beth (Alexandra Lydon). They assume it was a contest prize of some sort, and after playing around with them for a while, they notice there's no way to turn it off. Then more gifts arrive--cards telling them they can't stop filming, Polaroids of them sleeping, and a creepy VHS tape warning them that they're being watched. Meanwhile, slovenly loser Leonard (Barak Hardley) is given a package with a camcorder and instructed to don clown makeup and a costume and is sent across town on a series of JACKASS!-style pranks, of course filming himself the whole time as he comes off like an overzealous fan stalking Sid Haig at a horror con. It's obvious that these three parties will cross paths but to what end?
The puppet masters orchestrating the mayhem in MOCKINGBIRD are amazingly efficient and coordinated, creating a camera with an undying battery, sneaking in and out of Tom & Emmy's and Beth's house, breaking windows, banging on the doors, and blaring ominous classical music, all while somehow not drawing the attention of the neighbors, and still having enough time to fill Beth's garage with red balloons in the world's lamest Nena tribute. In no time at all, the film is little more than grating characters screaming and arguing, unfunny comic relief with Leonard in clown garb, and almost non-stop shaky-cam and darkness. There's no scares, because movies like this have you trained to watch the entire frame for a person to appear in the background, then immediately disappear. By the time everything wraps up, you realize that Bertino has made the sophomore slump a self-fulfilling prophecy, looking like a one-trick pony who's done nothing more than remake THE STRANGERS with one of the flimsiest excuses yet for found-footage while adding a little of SAW's impossibly elaborate gamesmanship almost as a bonus lack of inspiration. The best thing than can be said about MOCKINGBIRD--other than the fact that it does indeed, at one point, finally end--is that Bertino offers a knockout opening sequence that gets your attention and creates the impression that this one means business. It doesn't. There's nothing here. (Unrated, 82 mins)
When he isn't helming crummy video-game adaptations, Uwe Boll has made a habit of belatedly jumping on bandwagons that have already passed through long ago, be it torture porn horror (SEED), an end-of-days LEFT BEHIND ripoff (THE FINAL STORM) or a late '80s-style Vietnam exploitationer (1968 TUNNEL RATS). Dr. Boll is slightly more topical with his latest, ASSAULT ON WALL STREET, which boasts his best--relatively speaking--cast in years in a hysterically hyperbolic attack on big-money fat cats and assorted one-percenters while putting his "hero" through an introductory hour of deck-stacking misery. Dominic Purcell stars as armored truck guard Jim Baxford, a decent, hard-working, blue-collar guy just trying to make ends meet in the aftermath of his wife Rosie's (Erin Karpluk) battle with a brain tumor. The prognosis is good, but she still needs some expensive treatments, and Jim's reached his insurance cap. At the same time, the economy crashes and he loses his savings in some bad investments, and through some legal fine print in a real estate deal, finds he's on the hook for an additional $60,000 that he doesn't have. He borrows $10,000 from his buddy (a haggard, bleary-eyed Edward Furlong) to retain the services of a high-priced attorney (Eric Roberts), who then never takes his calls. Then the bank forecloses on his house and his boss is forced to let him go after a collection agency tries to garnish his wages. Then Rosie kills herself. Jim decides to make Wall Street pay for ruining his life and does all the textbook things that pissed-off-guys-on-rampages do in movies: wanders the streets, glowering and chain-smoking; rents a room in a fleabag hotel; has maps, newspaper headlines, magazine covers, and pics of the financial bigwigs he's targeting pinned to the wall (of course, he draws a big red "X" through their mugs after he kills them); spends hours listening to talk radio; lets his calls to go voice mail; buys some guns and ammo from a skeezy creep (Clint Howard!); and practices drawing his weapons in front of a mirror. Stopping just short of giving himself a mohawk and saying his name is Henry Krinkle, Jim arms himself to the teeth with various guns and grenades and goes after the firm that mishandled his savings.
Boll's glamorization of Jim is appalling. Of course we're supposed to hate these financial assholes, but the way it pans out--with Jim confronting callous, heartless, egotistical CEO Jeremy Stancroft (John Heard, seated at the same desk in all of his scenes, probably shot in one day) and turning the tables on him in the most improbable way imaginable--makes Jim out to be some avenging superhero of the middle class. There's supposed to be a gray area when it comes to vigilante protagonists. Movies like DEATH WISH (the first one, not the later ones), TAXI DRIVER, and ROLLING THUNDER justify the cathartic actions of the vigilante in the context of the film but stop short of legitimizing them as "heroes." Not here. It's probably just his way of again poking people with sticks, much like POSTAL's jokes about 9/11 and concentration camps, but in POSTAL's defense, it is a comedy. When Jim starts mowing down investment brokers, is the audience supposed to stand up and cheer? Boll's done ripped-from-the-headlines drama before with surprisingly competent results--his ATTACK ON DARFUR really isn't that bad--but his frothing histrionics over the Wall Street implosion and eventual bailout don't make for a credible film. It would be one thing if Boll presented this as some anarchic, absurdist, satirical fantasy but up until Jim goes on his rampage, ASSAULT is humorlessly stone-faced and serious, handled with zero subtlety (does any character name scream "rich asshole" like "Jeremy Stancroft"?), and prone to ham-fisted proclamations by the characters (Michael Pare and Keith David, as Jim's disgruntled cop buddies, almost serve as a Greek chorus, spouting dialogue like "We bust homeless people and issue citations for jaywalkin', but the real criminals are downtown, on fuckin' Wall Street, wearin' suits that cost more than we make in a year!"). Purcell doesn't help matters. This guy's a lumbering bore in everything he does, and even from the outset, Jim comes off like a ticking time bomb with a huge chip on his shoulder, so it's hard to really "like" the guy. It's also hard for a film to establish any credibility when it casts Edward Furlong as someone who has $10,000 readily available. (R, 99 mins)
BLACK ROCK (US - 2013)
Upon first glance, BLACK ROCK looks like writer/producer/mumblecore icon Mark Duplass (BAGHEAD, CYRUS, JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME) designed it as a vanity project for his wife Katie Aselton, who directed and co-stars. But it's actually a surprisingly effective fusion of character piece and wilderness/survivalist thriller, a sort-of chick flick version of DELIVERANCE or SOUTHERN COMFORT. Sarah (Kate Bosworth) arranges a weekend getaway with Lou (Lake Bell) and Abby (Aselton) to a distant, abandoned island they explored as children. It's also a chance for Sarah to play peacemaker for Lou and Abby, who haven't spoken in six years since Lou drunkenly slept with Abby's then-boyfriend. Tensions flare between the two and when they seem to be making progress toward a reconciliation, they find they aren't alone on the island. Henry (Will Bouvier), Derek (Jay Paulson), and Alex (Anslem Richardson) stumble upon the girls' camping area, carrying hunting rifles. They recognize Henry as the younger brother of Jimmy, a guy in their graduating class (Abby to Lou: "Didn't you blow Jimmy in high school?") and Abby invites them to hang out. Married Abby gets drunk and starts aggressively flirting with Henry, eventually luring him into the woods where they start making out while Derek tells Sarah and Lou about their dishonorable discharge from the military for a murderous act that they justify by saying "you do what you have to do." Abby tries to stop it from going to far and when Henry gets forceful, she bashes him in the head with a rock. Enraged, Derek and Alex decide to kill the women but they manage to get away, leading to an all-night pursuit through the island's dense forest.
BLACK ROCK admirably doesn't pretend to be anything more than what it is: a suspenseful B-movie. There's some clever sleight-of-hand in the way what seems like a mumblecore drama focused on three old friends having a weekend getaway quickly shifts gears and becomes a gritty, intense, brutal thriller. There's nothing particularly inventive here, but it's well-acted, fast-moving, wastes no time, and does what it does, all in the span of 80 brief minutes. The three stars have a solid chemistry and really feel like old friends in the way they read each other and know how to push one another's buttons and in the way the set aside the baggage of the past and deal with the serious shit at hand. The lean and admittedly slight BLACK ROCK isn't a threat to the supremacy of DELIVERANCE or SOUTHERN COMFORT (or even RITUALS) in this sort of genre offering and it only made it into a handful of theaters in early summer, but it's likely to find an audience on DVD, VOD, and its inevitably long life as an eventual Netflix streaming title. (R, 80 mins)
An occasionally amusing, very low-key comedy that exists somewhere in that space between mumblecore and quirky (one character has a fake ear and plays the zither!), SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED is the first starring vehicle for deadpan hipster heroine Aubrey Plaza (PARKS AND RECREATION). She's a sarcastic, loner intern at a Seattle magazine, and tags along with another intern (Karan Soni) and a writer in an early midlife crisis (Jake Johnson) to track down the Ocean City resident behind an ad for a time travel partner, with the caveat "Bring your own weapons...safety not guaranteed." They find the guy (mumblecore auteur Mark Duplass), a paranoid, part-time supermarket clerk, and Plaza ends up falling for him, despite not really being sold on the idea that he's constructed a time machine (and there are indeed government agents following him). While Plaza does all of his work for him, Johnson decides to look up an old flame (Jenica Bergere), the real reason he wanted to go to Ocean City. Likable if rarely laugh-out-loud funny, SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED gets a little too "cute" the more it goes on, but the cast is engaging (it's Plaza's film, but Johnson gets the biggest laughs), plus Jeff Garlin, Kristen Bell, and Mary Lynn Rajskub put in brief appearances. Perhaps the film's most memorable scene occurs when director Colin Trevorrow and screenwriter Derek Connolly give Duplass a very heartfelt, moving bit where asks Plaza her favorite song and articulates his need to travel back to an earlier point in his life. He says it's to find a lost love who died, but adds "It's not about the girl. It's about a time and a place. You remember that time and that place and that song and you remember what it was like when you were in that place, and you listen to that song, and you know you're not in that place anymore and it makes you feel hollow. You can't just go find that stuff again." (R, 86 mins)
SOUND OF MY VOICE (US -2012)
This perplexing thriller with possible sci-fi undertones is another impressive project by promising indie darling Brit Marling, who wrote and starred in last year's ANOTHER EARTH. Scripted by Marling and director Zal Batmanglij, SOUND OF MY VOICE has a pair of amateur documentary filmmakers--substitute teacher Peter (Christopher Denham) and his aspiring writer girlfriend Lorna (Nicole Vicius)--infiltrating a cult quietly operating in a house in a non-descript L.A. neighborhood in order to expose its charismatic leader Maggie (Marling) as a fraud. Maggie claims she's from the year 2054, and is gathering a small group of people to accompany her back to her future world. There's plenty of evidence to support the fraud theory: the fragments of her backstory indicate that Maggie might be mentally ill or might be a recovering addict, and when she's asked to sing a song that's popular in the future, she offers an a cappella rendition of The Cranberries' "Dreams" and banishes the lone cult member who dares to question her about it. Lorna is disturbed by Maggie's psychological hold on the members and that Peter seems to abandon the documentary project and might actually be buying into it. Things get complicated when Maggie asks Peter to bring her an emotionally-troubled eight-year-old girl from his class named Abigail (Avery Pohl), who lives with her mysterious single dad (James Urbaniak). For every clear indication that Maggie is lying, there's something to back up her claims. Such is the puzzle of SOUND OF MY VOICE, right down to its unanswered questions (Peter is very evasive of his own past; is the Department of Justice agent really who she says she is? And who exactly is Maggie's mysterious guardian Klaus?) and its conclusion straight out of the 12 MONKEYS and PRIMER school of ambiguity, the likes of which you can discuss from now until the end of time and never find a definite answer. Marling was recently seen as Richard Gere's daughter in ARBITRAGE, but between SOUND OF MY VOICE and ANOTHER EARTH (both were shown at Sundance in 2011, but it took SOUND OF MY VOICE another year to get released), she's established herself as both a solid actress and one of today's smartest and most imaginative screenwriters. This is a major new talent to watch. (R, 85 mins)
