ANTEBELLUM : Tuesday 6th October 2020.

'ANTEBELLUM' which I saw earlier this week is a MA15+ Rated American horror film Directed, Written and Co-Produced by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz in their feature filmmaking debuts. Originally slated for an end of April release date, this was pushed back due to the impacts of COVID-19 to the 20th August before being temporarily suspended from the release schedule all together. Subsequently, the film was released through video on demand on 18th September in the US, and saw its theatrical release in Australia from last week. Costing US$15M, the film has so far recouped US$4M and has garnered mixed or average Reviews so far. 

The film opens up on a sun drenched day on a Louisiana cotton plantation sometime in the early 1860's during the American Civil War. Run by the Confederate States Army who treat the enslaved black workers with disdain, complete disrespect and with a harsh hand. The slaves are not permitted to speak unless given permission to do so, they are not permitted to speak with one another and any that dare try to escape are quickly captured, killed and then burned in a crematorium. Eden (Janelle Monae) is amongst a group of slaves who has clearly been there only for a short while. She is favoured by the Confederate General (Eric Lange) who treats her harshly and one night brands her on the lower back with a red hot poker, and chastises her for crying out in agony ordering her to stop her whimpering. 

Six weeks later a group of new slaves are carted on to the plantation. Among the new group is a pregnant woman whom the female owner of the plantation, Elizabeth (Jena Malone) calls Julia (Kiersey Clemons). She is placed under the care of Eden. Over the course of her first few days Julia asks Eden to plan their escape, but for Eden timing is everything and instead asks her to lie low and to keep her head down in compliance until the time is right. Shortly thereafter a big dinner is held for all the Confederate Soldiers with the slaves waiting on. 

The General says to his men that the women are there to cater for their every need and want and that they shall not refuse any request. A young and very nervous soldier named Daniel (Robert Aramayo) is introduced to Julia whom he takes a liking to. He is too nervous to talk to Julia so the General intervenes and orders Julia to take him back to her cabin. In the cabin Daniel beats and kicks Julia in the stomach for speaking to him without his permission. The next day Julia miscarries in the cotton field, and the day after that Eden finds Julia hanged from the rafters of her cabin. That night the General rapes Eden, and she falls asleep.

The next morning Eden wakes up to the sound of her mobile phone ringing, but she is not Eden, she is Veronica Henley, a renowned and highly qualified sociologist, and this now serves as the backstory as to how she came to be on a Louisiana cotton plantation in the early 1860's. That morning she is scheduled to fly out of home to Louisiana to speak at a seminar and launch her new book at the same time. Her loving husband Nick (Marque Richardson) and young daughter Kennedi (London Boyce) make a fuss over breakfast. After her presentation to a largely gathered group of black and Asian women, her friends Dawn (Gibourey Sidibe) and Sarah (Lili Cowles) take Veronica out for dinner. In the meantime, Elizabeth, posing as a company representative, sneaks into Veronica's room, rifles through some papers and steals one of her lipsticks. 

After dinner wraps up, the girls gather for a group selfie outside the restaurant just as two Uber's pulls up. Veronica climbs into one for she needs an early night as she has a plane to catch at 6:30am the next morning leaving Dawn and Sarah to catch the second Uber and party on elsewhere. Inside the Uber Veronica is attempting to speak to Nick but the music in the car is turned up high. She asks the driver to turn it down and then notices looking in the rear view mirror back at her it is Elizabeth. From behind, a hand grasps Veronica around the face and she is knocked unconscious by Elizabeth's husband Jasper (Jack Huston). 

Back now on the cotton plantation, Veronica wakes and now doggedly tells one of her fellow male captives Eli (Tongayi Chirisa) that they will attempt an escape later that night. Eli's wife had previously attempted to escape and she was killed and burned in the crematorium as a result. While the General is sleeping, Veronica steals his mobile phone that she had previously seen him angrily speaking into in the early hours of one morning. However, she drops the phone when Daniel is walking by with another soldier, both of whom are more than half drunk. Picking up the phone, the soldiers are perplexed that someone would defy orders by bringing a mobile phone on to the camp when it is strictly forbidden. Veronica and Eli hide in the undergrowth as the two soldiers approach having heard something. One soldier leaves having said it's nothing, leaving Daniel to take a leak. Eli kills Daniel with a hatchet. The pair quickly discover that the phone can only be unlocked with facial recognition, and so Veronica goes back to the cabin to find that the General is awake. 

A fight breaks out and Eli is killed by the General with the hatchet embedded into his heart while trying to protect her. Veronica manages to stab the General with his own sword before unlocking the phone and calling Nick and sending him her location so that he can alert the Police. She pulls down the Confederate flag flying in the grounds and wraps the General's body inside it. She then drags his limp body to the crematorium. Jasper by now has been alerted to the commotion and runs into her. Veronica lures him and another guard into the crematorium and locks the three of them firmly inside, before setting it alight, leaving the men to burn to death as she steals the General's horse and rides off.

Various soldiers all pursue Veronica on horseback shooting at her randomly. They all fall away or succumb to the dense undergrowth, except for Elizabeth who doggedly chases after her. Coming to a clearing Elizabeth reveals that she handpicked every slave on the plantation except for Veronica, whom she kidnapped at her father's insistence and that she would be his jewel in the crown. Veronica knocks Elizabeth off her horse, a fight breaks out with Veronica ultimately gaining the upper hand by putting a rope around her neck, and then dragging her along behind her horse at speed for several hundred meters until she hits the stone plinth of a Robert E. Lee statue, breaking her neck instantly. Veronica flees the pursuing soldiers into the chaos of a battle, revealing that the plantation is actually part of a Civil War lifelike reenactment park owned by the General under his real name, Blake Denton. Veronica escapes as the Police arrive to liberate her and the other captives and the park, named Antebellum, is bulldozed sometime thereafter.

I have to say that I enjoyed 'Antebellum' more than most critics it seems fair to say, did. Whilst hardly a horror film in the true genre meaning of the term, there are certainly moments that can be described as horrific as slaves are either killed or maimed without mercy by their overbearing Confederate masters, but then when a slave gains the upper hand she also meets out her own vengeance without mercy and with just as much violence. The first act labours somewhat as it sets the tone of what is to follow, but the second and third acts certainly make up for the earlier shortfalls as the plot twist comes more into focus. Janelle Monae certainly proves her acting chops in her first major lead role whilst Eric Lange, Jena Malone and Jack Huston all ham it up admirably tarred with the same brush. Gabourey Sidibe looks out of place arriving on the scene as though she has walked into a comedy film, all larger than life, gushing with self confidence, and totally out there (but then I guess she is playing a self help guru here!). There are parallel stories at play here with the cultural oppression and racial discrimination just as evident today as it was 160 years ago, and with this reenactment park being able to fly under the radar of any authorities and get away with murder most foul for God only knows how long, this is surely a metaphor for white supremacists and the BLM movement as it is raging through the US right now. First time Directors Bush and Renz certainly know how to capture and maintain the interest from the opening frames to the last, whilst asking you to suspend all belief that a place like Antebellum can even exist. 

'Antebellum' warrants three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

What's new in Odeon's this week : Thursday 1st October 2020.

The 58th New York Film Festival is currently in full swing having opened on 17th September and running through until 11th October. This years opening film is Director Steve McQueen's 'Lovers Rock', with Chloe Zhao's already acclaimed 'Nomadland' being the Centrepiece and 'French Exit' by Azazel Jacobs being the closing night film. The festival presents a mix of in-person and virtual screenings, partnering with various local institutions to offer drive-in screenings. Maintaining pace with global film culture amid the Coronavirus pandemic, the festival brings a more streamlined and eclectic mix of shorts, experimental cinema, documentaries and auteur films.

This years Main Slate of films also includes another twenty two new features from around the world. Included in this line up are :-

* 'Mangrove' - Directed also by Steve McQueen as an anthology of five films about the lives of black people living in Great Britain that he has made under the 'Small Axe' heading that launched with festival opener 'Lovers Rock'. Recounting the true story of Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes), the Trinidad-born owner of the Notting Hill 'Mangrove' restaurant who was arrested for protesting the police’s countless acts of intimidation and brutality. This is a vivid and gripping dramatisation of these events and the resulting landmark 1970 court case of Crichlow and the other defendants, who came to be known as the Mangrove Nine.

* 'Red, White and Blue' - also Directed by Steve McQueen as an anthology of five films he has made under the 'Small Axe' heading that launched with festival opener 'Lovers Rock', continued with 'Mangrove' and concludes with this feature, with 'Education' and 'Alex Wheatle' not shown at this festival. John Boyega plays real-life figure Leroy Logan, a member of the London Metropolitan Police Force who both witnessed and experienced firsthand the organisation’s fundamental racism. The film captures Logan’s growing awareness of a system that he would one day try to dismantle from the inside, while also homing in on his relationship with his father, a victim of white police brutality who initially refuses to accept his son’s decision to enter the police force.

* 'Beginning' - in her striking feature debut, Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili tells the devastating story of a persecuted family of Jehovah’s Witness missionaries in a remote village outside of Tibilisi from the perspective of a traumatised wife and mother Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili).

* 'City Hall' - here Director, Producer and Editor Frederick Wiseman takes an in depth look at the function and practice of community, policy, and civic engagement and how this is shaping Americans’ everyday lives. This time, Wiseman trains his gaze on the inner workings of the city of Boston, taking viewers into the public and backroom discussions that can either inspire or stall municipal action.

* 'The Disciple' - Indian filmmaker Chaitanya Tamhane’s here Directs a finely crafted labor of love set in the world of Hindustani classical music, starring singer, and remarkable first-time actor Aditya Modak, as a man living in Mumbai who tries to follow in the footsteps of his father and become a maestro in the Khayal raag music tradition.

* 'I Carry You With Me' - Directed by Heidi Ewing this film unexpectedly and brilliantly incorporates documentary elements into the story of a burgeoning romance between two men - Ivan (Armando Espitia), a semi-closeted young father and restaurant worker, and Gerardo (Christian Vazquez), a high school teacher who has come to terms more fully with his sexuality - who cross the border from Mexico to the U.S. in search of a new life together and new work opportunities.

* 'Malmkrog' - from Romanian Director Cristi Puiu this turn-of-the-20th-century Christmas Eve gathering among five members of the European elite at an elegant Transylvanian estate becomes the setting for an increasingly intense succession of conversations on good and evil, Jesus and the Devil, war and peace in this at times frightening vision of the simmering violence beneath the colonialist’s veneer of courtesy and formal politeness.

* 'MLK/FBI' - throughout his history changing political career, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was often treated by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement authorities like an enemy of the state. In this virtuosic documentary, Director Sam Pollard lays out a detailed account of the FBI surveillance that dogged King’s activism throughout the 1950's and ’60's.

* 'Night of the Kings' - here Ivory Coast filmmaker Philippe Lacote tells the story of a pickpocket (Kone Bakary), newly arrived at the Maca correctional facility in the Ivorian capital of Abidjan, who, in order to stay alive, must keep his fellow inmates entertained with wild tales over the course of a night.

* 'The Salt of Tears' - Director Philippe Garrel here tells the story of handsome Luc (Logann Antuofermo) who aggressively courts Djemila (Oulaya Amamra) on a Paris suburb metro in this precise and economically told moral tale, but she isn’t destined to be his one and only.

* 'Time' - examines the tireless twenty year campaign of Louisiana woman Fox Rich to secure her husband’s release after he received a  sixty year prison sentence for robbery becomes a delicate work of nonfiction cinematic alchemy in the hands of Director Garrett Bradley.

* 'Tragic Jungle' - in the 1920's, Agnes (Indira Andrewin) escapes from the white British landowner she doesn’t want to marry into the deep thickets of the tropical forest along the Rio Hondo River. Mexican filmmaker Yulene Olaizola has here crafted a gripping adventure and a contemplative rumination on the brutality and splendour of nature.

* 'The Truffle Hunters' - this revelatory, earthy documentary is Directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw who immerse the viewer in the forests of Northern Italy where dogs, accompanied by their elderly and often irascible human owners of modest means, seek the precious white Alba truffle.

* 'Undine' - from German Director Christian Petzold, this melodrama centres around a pair of star-crossed lovers, Undine (Paula Beer), a historian and museum tour guide specialising in urban development, and Christoph (Franz Ragowski), an industrial diver—linked by their shared love of the water.

* 'The Woman Who Ran' - divided into three casually threaded yet distinct sections, South Korean film maker Hong Sangsoo’s latest offering sees Gamhee (Kim Minhee) as she travels without her husband for the first time in years, reconnecting with a succession of friends, on purpose and by chance.

For more news on this years 58th New York Film Festival you can visit the official website at : https://www.filmlinc.org/

This week then we have four new cinema releases to tease you out to your local Odeon. We kick off with two horror films - one from the US and the other from Russia. The first is a story that intertwines the modern day with the nineteenth century slave plantations of the deep south, but which one is reality for this successful sociologist who must face her past, present and future in order to survive. The second is set in the Russia of 1983 and how a young doctor works to save the life of a cosmonaut who has returned from space with a mystery organism living inside him. Next up we turn to a legal drama that in 1969 and 1970 saw seven protesters held to account for inciting riots, that was to become one of the most notorious trials in history. And we close out the week with a New York woman and her impulsive, larger than life father trying to find out if her husband is having an affair.

Whatever your taste in big screen film entertainment is this week - be it any of the four latest release new movies as Previewed below, or those doing the rounds currently on general release or as Reviewed and Previewed in previous Blog Posts here at Odeon Online, you are most welcome to share your movie going thoughts, opinions and observations by leaving your relevant, succinct and appropriate views in the Comments section below this or any other Post. We'd love to hear from you, and in the meantime, enjoy your big screen Odeon outing during the coming week.

'ANTEBELLUM' (Rated MA15+) - is an American horror film Directed, Written and Co-Produced by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz in their feature filmmaking debuts. Originally slated for an end of April release date, this was pushed back due to the impacts of COVID-19 to the 20th August before being temporarily suspended from the release schedule all together. Subsequently, the film was released through video on demand on 18th September in the US, but now gets a theatrical release in Australia from this week. Costing US$15M, the film has so far recouped just under US$2M and has garnered mixed or average Reviews so far. 

In the present day successful African American sociologist Veronica Henley (Janelle Monae) finds herself trapped in the horrifying reality of a nineteenth century Southern Confederate slave plantation overseen by a harsh Confederate General (Eric Lange) that forces her to confront the past, present and future - before it's too late. Also starring Jena Malone, Jack Huston, Kiersey Clemons and Gabourey Sidibe. 

'SPUTNIK' (Rated MA15+) - this Russian Sci-Fi horror film is Directed by Egor Abramenko in his feature film debut. Due to have seen its World Premier screening at the Tribeca Film Festival in April of this year, when the festival was cancelled due to COVID-19 the film was released through video on demand in late April in its native Russia, and now gets a limited run in select cinemas in Australia from this week. Having cost less that US$3M to make, the film has so far grossed US$23K, and has received generally favourable critical acclaim. Set in 1983, here Tatyana Yuryevna Klimova (Oksana Akinshina) a young doctor and neurophysiologist is recruited by the military to assess a cosmonaut who survived a mysterious space accident and returned to Earth with a dangerous extra terrestrial life form living inside him, which has created a symbiotic relationship with its host. Also starring Fyodor Bondarchuk and Pyotr Fyodorov. 

'THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7' (Rated MA15+) - here we have an American legal drama film Directed and Written by Aaron Sorkin in only his second film making outing following 2017's 'Molly's Game' although he has written the screenplays for the likes of 'A Few Good Men', 'The American President', 'Charlie Wilson's War', 'The Social Network', 'Moneyball' and 'Steve Jobs' amongst others. Costing US$35M to make, the film was initially slated for a limited cinema release from 25th September before a much wider release in mid-October. However, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the film now gets a limited run before streaming on Netflix from 16th October onward, and has garnered positive Reviews. Based on the real life story of the Chicago Seven, a group of seven defendants charged by the federal government with conspiracy in 1969 and 1970, for inciting riots, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War, countercultural protests and crossing state borders that took place in Chicago, Illinois, on the occasion of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Those seven were Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron-Cohen), Jerry Ruben (Jeremy Strong), David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), John Froines (Daniel Flaherty) and Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins). Also starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Frank Langella, Mark Rylance and William Hurt. 

'ON THE ROCKS' (Rated M) - this American comedy drama film is Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Sofia Coppola whose previous film making credits include 'The Virgin Suicides', 'Lost in Translation', 'Marie Antoinette', 'The Bling Ring' and 'The Beguiled' most recently. The film saw its World Premier screening at the New York Film Festival on 22nd September before a limited cinematic release this week and before steaming on Apple TV+ on 23rd October. Here Laura (Rashida Jones) thinks she’s happily married with two daughters, but when her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) starts putting in late hours at the office with a new co-worker, Laura begins to suspect the worst. She turns to the one man whom she feels may give her the insight she is looking for - her charming and impulsive father Felix (Bill Murray), who insists they investigate the situation. As the two begin prowling New York at night, bouncing from uptown parties to downtown hotspots, they discover at the heart of their journey lies their own relationship. The film has generated mostly favourable Reviews. 

With four new release films this week to tempt you out to your local Odeon, remember to share your movie going thoughts with your other like minded cinephile friends afterwards here at Odeon Online. In the meantime, I'll see you sometime somewhere in the week ahead, at your local Odeon.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-