For a film where not a lot happens, and what does happen happens very slowly, Islands is strangely gripping. That could be the hypnotic effect of its endlessly sun-drenched Canary Island setting, as writer-director Jan-Ole Gerster dips his audience in the languorous pace of a holiday destination in this low-boil psychological drama.
There is no question that Gyllenhaal packs her film with so many ideas that it can become dizzying. The themes sometimes pile up, the tonal shifts arrive quickly, and the story occasionally feels less like it’s unfolding than tangling itself into elaborate knots. Some viewers will likely bail when the plot begins tripping over its own ambitions. But the film also has an undeniable boldness. A willingness to be strange. To be excessive. To be gloriously weird.
Smith’s musical performances in the film, which are big on power chords, anthemic hooks, and gravel-voiced melancholy, help fill some the film’s emotional weak spots. What primarily distinguishes this lowkey, unsurprising drama is a well-stocked soundtrack, courtesy of music supervisor Natasha Duprey, amounting to a survey of Canadian alt-country songs over the past three-and-a-half decades.
This is pared-down storytelling that leaves you to draw your own conclusions, but nobody’s dreams are coming true here. Filmmaker Franco seems to assume his viewers will be paying attention, so Dreams is a typically understated affair, just slightly chilly in its detachment and stripped down in action and in dialogue. Money talks, though.
None of it makes any sense, alas, and you’ll stop caring about what happens or who it happens to, fairly early on. There seems to be a lot of pseudo-Freudian yammer in the middle of this crime drama, or perhaps there’s a lot of drug-trade-related violence in the middle of a psychological family study; either way, it’s mystifying as hell.
There are two types of pirate film fans: those who love the genre for its thrilling adventure. Then there are the fans of actual piracy, the more bloody and violent the better. The Bluff combines the salt and tang of piracy with a daring, bloody fight to the finish that will satisfy fans of all ranks and allegiances.
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert doesn’t ask you to worship Elvis so much as to remember what it felt like when the man took control of a room and decided—joyfully, deliberately—to make it move with him.
