Sundance 2020: Black Bear, Shirley, The Dissident

Aubrey Plaza fans rejoice, the indie actress gives one of the best performances of her career in Lawrence Michael Levine’s “Black Bear.” In a dual role that not only stretches her depths as an actress, but shows off considerable artful vulnerability — the “Ingrid Goes West” actress is nothing short of stunning. Too bad the movie itself, split into two parts, a high-wire act of gonzo filmmaking, takes so many risks that it all eventually ends up feeling like overkill. Both halves in “Black Bear” are set in a remote lake house; the first part has a filmmaker (Plaza) Airbnb-ing a lodge whose married tenants (played by Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gavron), already in a marital crisis, are shaken up by her flirtatious presence. The second half, the stronger section, has the roles reversed, as the lodge turns into a movie set with filmmaker (Abbott) and actress (Plaza and Gavron) engaging in a battle of wits. It’s a dysfunctional war of camaraderie as artist and muse try to one-up each other in twisted fashion, that is until tragedy strikes. The frenetic handheld camerawork, courtesy of DP wizard Rob Leitzell, livens up the stakes and offers up a few hypnotic passages here and there. However, the stylized nature of the film eventually becomes a distraction, because the story itself is more flash than substance. Watching “Black Bear” requires stamina as the viewer ultimately feels pummeled by the filmmaking. However, it’s Plaza who keeps your eyes glued to the screen — she’s an unmissable treat: sexy, provocative and ready to blow up. [C+]

Josephine Decker turned heads two years ago at Sundance with her experimental theater drama, “Madeline’s Madeline.” Although that film ultimately felt too overcooked for its own good, watching it, you felt like you were witnessing the coming of a major new directorial voice. Sadly, Decker’s latest, “Shirley,” is a step back, opting for a more conventional narrative, and it’s a meandering experience. Based on Susan Scarf Merrell’s novel, Decker tries to capture the spirit of author Shirley Jackson (a miscast Elizabeth Moss), a depressed literate genius with a bad case of writer’s block. Merrel’s novel dealt with the events that lead Jackson to create her classic, “The Hangsman”, and that’s exactly what Decker tries to get to here as well. Married to music professor Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg), Shirley would eventually find inspiration in Rose (Odessa Young), an early twenty-something bride who moves into the Jackson’s Vermont home with her husband Fred (Logan Lerman) for his summer apprenticeship and teaching assistant gig with Stanley. Despite the considerable ambition of the filmmaking, Decker has a real eye for framing. The story is told in rather murky fashion, and at times it seems as if Decker isn’t sure just how to fully inhabit the creative, and sexual, connection between Shirley and Rose. There’s an ambivalence to the on-screen characters that feels off and that ultimately puts the viewer at a distance from the drama. [C-]

The story of slain Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi was very well-reported by the media back in 2018, so much so that one does wonder what fresh new territory Oscar-winning director Bryan Fogel (“Icarus”) could possibly tackle in his Khashoggi doc, “The Dissident.” As it turns out, quite a bit. Of course, for those who may have lived under a rock at the time, Fogel needs to remind us what happened. If you remember, 60-year-old Saudi-born journalist/dissident Khashoggi, an enemy of the Saudi Prince, entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey only to never come back out. The evidence gathered over the next weeks and months pointed to a plot concocted by the Saudi state to ambush Khashoggi, kill him and then dismember his body, for it to never be found again. At least that’s what the Turkish transcripts of the incident described. Fogel doesn’t necessarily tell his story in any sort of inventive ways, and it also, at times, feels like he’s repeating himself by re-mentioning some crucial events, as if the viewer couldn’t get around to them the first time they were tackled. Also, the decision to use former CIA director John Brennan in the film, as a talking head interviewee, feels wrong, as his tenure as director from 2013-2016 was filled with blatant corruption. Regardless, this is nothing short of a compulsively watchable doc that needs to exist so as to expose the cover-up, on both the Saudi and American sides. [B]