Capsule Reviews - 'Society of the Snow,' 'Eileen' and 'The Persian Version'

by Philip Price

Society of the Snow

Photo: Netflix

​Let's just be happy J.A. Bayona wasn't so influenced by his time in the franchise world that he added Ethan Hawke's Nando Parrado showing up through a portal in the third act of this film.
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For real though, I imagine everyone will be talking about how visceral the plane crash sequence in “Society of the Snow” is. As someone who sees as much as I can and rarely winces or looks away this sequence in particular caused me to do both. Writer/director Bayona is a master of set pieces and scale, so this shouldn't be surprising, but what is unexpected about his telling of the Uruguayan rugby team who crash-landed in the snow-swept Andes in 1972 is how it frames itself and further, how that framing device is used to emphasize the interior of these people who were placed in an impossible, unbelievable circumstance where each had to either find the will to live or come to peace with giving in.

The physical and external challenges are abundantly clear throughout, and their relentless nature keeps us both tense and enraptured, but by conveying the internal struggles through one of the men who survived the initial crash Bayona taps into something more than your standard survival movie. "Who were we in the mountains?" is a question posed that best encapsulates this intellectual undercurrent regarding how both those who didn't survive the 72 days they were stranded and those who made it and were able to reintegrate with society processed and understood the measures they were willing to take to remain alive for as long as they could. Sure, the stages of this story and the length of the film in general add an episodic nature to the proceedings but how the scope of the story is melded with the depth of those involved is genuinely an accomplishment.

“Society of the Snow” is streaming on Netflix. 

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Eileen

Photo: Neon

A Hitchcockian thriller that works largely because of the sense of humor Eileen has about itself and that it keeps in line tonally throughout. Don't get me wrong, the guy who made Lady Macbeth has still made a terribly bleak and ultimately very cynical follow-up, but through Anne Hathaway’s turn as the most stereotypical of stereotypical blonde bombshells (she's vamping it up and she knows it, she likes it and she wants you to like it to) in Rebecca and the alluring yet tainted presence she imbues on both the film and our titular young lady (Thomasin McKenzie) one can't help but to be sucked into her arc even if we know there's no way this is heading in a promising direction. When that direction takes a hard left in the third act though, it's already too late; Rebecca has you in her grasp and there's nowhere for you to go. I didn't necessarily love it, but I completely dug what it was going for and I always dig a Shea Whigham performance.

“Eileen” is playing in select theaters. 

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The Persian Version

Photo: Sony Pictures Classics

“The Persian Version” is tonally and structurally all over the map, but its heart is in the right place. Writer/director Maryam Keshavarz is passionate about and deeply invested in the story she's telling even if she's attempting to tell three or four different stories simultaneously. Additionally, I don't know if it was the screener version I viewed or if it has been updated since, but this had some extraordinarily rough ADR and sound editing. Keshavarz nails the ending though. Absolute full-on tears.
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“The Persian Version” can be rented for $5.99 on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube and more.