Previous installments of the Purge series have squandered their attempts at tackling the issues being addressed, whether by providing bland, irrelevant commentary, such as 2013’s The Purge, or by having a pro-establishment savior, such as The Purge: Election Year. The Forever Purge, however, follows in the footsteps of The First Purge, offering an incendiary exploitation film with a fresh twist and enough Purging and violence to satisfy most fans, all while offering a natural conclusion to the series.

While not as direct as The First Purge, which was a totemic example of 21st century blaxploitation done right, The Forever Purge is a fine example of the Purge movies’ ideas and conflicts at work. The story follows a Mexican couple that has illegally crossed into the U.S. and made a home for themselves. After the annual Purge night has ended, a nation-wide group of white supremacists have called for a “Forever Purge,” continuing to commit crime indefinitely after the sanctioned day has ended. The couple, along with a wealthy Texan family who employed one of them, then attempt to escape to Mexican border. Where the previous films have shown an utmost failure of the system and its structure to offer protection for those who have less money and privilege, The Forever Purge shows its grisly end state, one of constant violence and dominant nationalist ideologies, dissolving both the facist government structure in the film, launching the country into complete anarchy, and the thin fictional veil of the Purge movies, showing a reality where this violence and hatred does not stay contained to a single night.

The film, like The First Purge, suffers stylistically without series creator James DeMonaco at the helm, but not to a great extent. While never great, DeMonaco’s style offered a unique look and energy to the events of the Purge night that was not replicated in the fourth and fifth movies, which adhered to a safer, blander visual style. Nonetheless, The Forever Purge director Everardo Gout is more than capable at handling the action of this movie, which is explosive throughout. 

While it doesn’t rise to the heights stylistically or thematically of previous installments of the Purge series, The Forever Purge mimics what it’s direct predecessor got right, while remaining entertaining and satisfying to fans of these films.

Score: ★★★ / ★★★★★

While it might be hard to make a general audience care about something as rare and expensive as white truffles, The Truffle Hunters radiates a unique energy that permeates through the runtime, despite a lack of substantial material present in the film. The film focuses on a group of aging truffle foragers and their loyal dogs in Northern Italy. While there is also a narrative undercurrent of the truffle foraging practice becoming oversaturated and even potentially dangerous, the weight of the film rests on the shoulders of its quirky subjects, as watching these aging men and their companions traipse about the picturesque Italian countryside offers a great deal of enjoyment. Although, after the credits have rolled, it leaves a little to be desired. The greater point about a younger breed of truffle foragers running these men out of their jobs is mostly lost on the viewer, as that arc is much less developed than the foragers themselves, and the occasional scene involving the business-and-consumer-ends of the truffle industry feel fairly out of place, as they consume so little of the conversations and screen time of the film. 

The film in subject feels very similar to the documentaries of the Ross brothers, as it contains no narration or subject interaction with the filmmakers, but, unlike the Ross’ films, has a very refined and cinematic look. This makes for an interesting contrast between the formalist style and realist content, with moments at which one crosses over into the other, such as the scenes where one of the dogs has the camera mounted directly on them, or where the old men enact obviously very staged conversations and actions for the camera. While a documentary that remains either entirely dedicated to one or the other, such as 45365 or Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up, may provide a more cohesive experience, the stylistic experimenting in The Truffle Hunters does not go unnoticed or unappreciated, as it is refreshing to see filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw attempt to break free from the trappings of documentary conventions. While a bit scattered in both content and form, The Truffle Hunters manages to find moments of joy and interest in its subjects and keeps the viewers entertained throughout with occasional unconventional stylistic choice.

Score: ★★★ / ★★★★★

    It’s often difficult to translate a stage play into a motion picture. Although the mediums may seem similar at a first glance, there are several factors which can make a successful theatrical production seem hollow on film. The two major factors stem from temporal and spatial manipulation. A play must proceed linearly, with a number of factors such as visual effects, timing, and physical stage space limiting the extent of immersion for the viewer. A film, on the other hand, can openly create and invite you into a fabricated reality where anything can be manipulated. Think of Memento, Mulholland Drive, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Time, space, and memory themselves are abstract concepts, so in the hands of a deft filmmaker, they can be used as tools to draw you into a novel story. This brings us to Florian Zeller’s filmmaking debut, The Father, adapted from his own 2012 play Le Pére. Despite being his first film, there is remarkable intuition displayed which elevates the material past linear constraints.

    The Father follows the story of an elderly Welshman as he struggles with the increasingly bleak effects of dementia. Anthony Hopkins, at the age of 82, gives the performance of a lifetime as the film’s protagonist, Anthony. Despite being in nearly every frame of the taut 97-minute runtime, he constantly reveals new layers to his character. In a particularly astonishing sequence of the film, he enters a room and charmingly wins over a potential caretaker, before launching into a merciless tirade against his eldest daughter (who is in the room with them), lambasting those who he believes are trying to tear him away from his beloved flat, and then curtly dismissing the shocked young woman. Hopkins is a master like no other of the mood shift. Throughout his career, he has been able to swing the tone of conversations with a single look or line, and that remarkable power is in full display here.

    Although this film could likely have functioned just off Hopkins’ devastatingly empathic performance, the rest of the crew rises to the challenge of matching him. Olivia Colman is reliably fantastic in the role of Anthony’s eldest daughter, Anne. She is caught between a rock and a hard place. She loves her father and respects his drive for independence, but she can no longer see him continue down a path where he can genuinely no longer function on his own. Anthony’s caretaker Laura, played by Imogen Poots, also finds it difficult to deal with his mercurial disposition. She resembles his youngest daughter (and favorite, as he makes no secret of), he says, but he can switch between doting on her to rejecting her on a dime.

    This, in fact, is the greatest strength of the film. Although we have seen many films centering around memory loss, many of them were from the perspective of a loved one or caretaker. Zeller places us squarely into Anthony’s perspective, and we see how his world is crumbling around him. Despite his protestations that he can live independently, we see him, again and again, flailing about to find some constant he can tether himself to. Everything which he takes for fact - the appearance of his daughter, the identity of her husband, the whereabouts of his wristwatch - is revealed to be something entirely unknown. He cannot even take time as a constant. What he believed to be 8:00 AM was, in fact, 8:00 PM. Or was it? Zeller’s editor, Yorgos Lamprinos, is an invaluable contributor here. The presence of cuts is nearly invisible as we wander around this labyrinth of unreliable memory along with Anthony, unsure of what is real or false anymore. 

    Zeller, however, is not even content with the nonlinear temporal shifts or the excessively unreliable narration. He embraces the medium of film and pushes it to its boundaries. With no foreshadowing, he changes the space of Anthony’s flat itself. The living room, the kitchen, the doorway, and every other feature in the house can change in an instant. Anthony believes he is living in his own flat, but then why is his daughter’s husband saying he’s living in their flat? He looks out his bedroom window, but why does he see something different today? Every single element of this film - the layout of furniture, the presence of Anthony’s hiding spots for valuables, the color of paint on the kitchen wall - serves to further disorient the octogenarian. While he attempts to fight back at first, and reassert what he knows as the truth, we see him increasingly lose himself in despair as he no longer has the strength to question his surroundings. He knows he is walking a fine line. By questioning the madness around him, he can either assert his independence or convince those around him that he is truly beyond their help. He can see it in their eyes; they question his sanity as he tries to rationalize his surroundings.
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    The Father, in short, is a truly remarkable feat in filmmaking, as deserving of praise as Memento or Pulp Fiction. In the pantheon of films about dementia, it stands far above its competitors. Reality and fiction, opinion and fact, family and stranger blend together and contradict each other as both the audience and Anthony attempt to orient themselves. Just as we think, ‘Aha, I understand what is going on now,’ Zeller delights in pulling the rug out from under us again in a completely new way. This is the potential cinema has to offer that no other medium can. For 97 minutes, we enter a world which may well be an entirely different reality, and yet is no less precise than our own. Hopkins continues to remind the world why he is one of our greatest living performers, and we look enthusiastically towards what Zeller does next.

Score: ★★★★½ / ★★★★★

SPOILERS AHEAD
 
"Shazam!" flawlessly captures the playfulness and creativity of being a kid. It follows fourteen-year-old foster kid Billy Batson (Asher Angel) — who receives magic powers from a wizard named Shazam (Djimon Hounsou) — and his foster brother and superhero fanatic Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer), as they fight a villain named Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong), who harnesses the power of seven deadly sins, in the form of large demonic creatures, and aims to steal Billy’s powers for himself. The film also features many of Billy’s other foster brothers and sisters who, along with Freddy, end up getting magic powers as well.
 
"Shazam!," the latest film in the D.C. Extended Universe, solves many of the problems that critics and fans identified in the series’ previous installments. Most notable is that in “Shazam!” the characters are actually relatable.  We learn in the film that Billy’s mother had left him at an early age, after which he shuffled from foster home to foster home. As a result, Billy is motivated by a desire for a family and a sense of belonging. Billy’s motivations are grounded and sympathetic, making him an engaging and endearing protagonist.  Moreover, while previous installments like “Justice League” and “Suicide Squad” juggled too many tones and couldn’t settle on an overall character and feel for their films, “Shazam!” sticks to a silly and playful tone (the continuous stream of well-paced jokes will keep viewers laughing throughout), which fits the original tone of the character Shazam from D.C. comics — unlike “Man of Steel” which took the inherently optimistic and happy character of Superman and placed him in a dark and gritty film. 
 
Additionally, the film humanizes the villain, Dr. Sivana, and doesn’t portray him as a one-dimensional, uniquely evil stock character. The very first scene of the movie shows us a young Dr. Sivana, who just like Billy, doesn’t feel at home, and is hated by his family. In Billy’s case, these experiences of being without a home gave him the desire to help people.  In Dr. Sivana’s case, very similar experiences made him angry and resentful, which inspired him to harness the power of the seven deadly sins. As a result, viewers can sympathize will Dr. Sivana, and understand what motivates him.
 
It was really hard for me to find anything bad about "Shazam!," but there are a few things that could be improved.  The special effects could be better, but on a relatively low budget (at least for a superhero movie) of only $80 million, the shortcomings are understandable. As a regular watcher of C.W.’s “Arrowverse” shows, I can sympathize with having to pull of a lot of big scenes with superheroes on a shoestring budget. The soundtrack didn’t blow me away either, but it still fit the movie well. The positives overwhelmingly outweigh the negatives; taken as a whole, “Shazam!” is a fun, nostalgic movie that will make viewers feel like they are a 14-year-old kid having fun again.

Grade: A/A-