Film reviews: ‘Is God Is,’ ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin,’ and ‘The Sheep Detectives’
Vengeful twins hunt for their father to kill him, introducing the man who invented Vladimir Putin, and a shepherd’s flock works to solve his murder
‘Is God Is’
Directed by Aleshea Harris (R)
★★★★
“Every filmmaker has to start somewhere. Aleshea Harris is starting at the top,” said William Bibbiani in The Wrap. In adapting her own award-winning 2018 play, Harris has made “one of the most stunning first features in recent memory,” a “jarring and confident” thriller about adult twin sisters on a mission to find and kill their monstrous father. Racine and Anaia, played by Kara Young and Mallori Johnson, were scarred during childhood by the man credited here as Man, and they thought their mother had died in a fire he set. But she tasks them with exacting revenge, and they treat her words as Scripture. “Is God Is is Old Testament. It’s Greek tragedy. It’s gothic. It’s punk. It’s grotesque. It’s beautiful.”
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Harris asked a lot of her actors, but “each of them understood the assignment,” said Odie Henderson in The Boston Globe. Young is a two-time Tony winner, and she and Johnson are “superb” as the volatile Racine and watchful Anaia, who during their cross-country hunt tangle with both of their father’s subsequent wives. Meanwhile, Sterling K. Brown “makes Man’s over-the-top wickedness terrifying.” For a revenge picture, Is God Is “doesn’t find quite the release one might expect,” said Guy Lodge in Variety. Even so, it’s a remarkable movie, both “wildly entertaining” and “viciously upsetting” as it dramatizes the deep, damaging effects of a society in which patriarchy and physical violence hold so much sway.
‘The Wizard of the Kremlin’
Directed by Olivier Assayas (R)
★★
Jude Law is so effective playing Vladimir Putin in The Wizard of the Kremlin that “there’s a choking sense of ominous tension whenever he’s onscreen,” said Wendy Ide in The Observer (U.K.). “Unfortunately, he’s not on camera nearly enough,” because Olivier Assayas’ new movie revisits Putin’s rise and quarter-century reign from the side angle of a fictional spin doctor’s role in events. And sure, the character is based on a real person. But he is played by Paul Dano, who’s “jarringly affected at best and genuinely terrible for much of the picture,” undermining its strengths.
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Early on, “the story arc is morbidly compelling,” said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times. We’re watching the origin story of a 21st-century czar. But even though 20 minutes were cut from the movie before its theatrical release, “the rest turns out to be a long whistle-stop tour through a real-world timeline,” and to enjoy it, “you should ideally have first spent three decades in blissful ignorance.” When the ambitious work was screened for festival audiences in its original form last fall, Assayas endured some of the worst reviews of his career, said Bilge Ebiri in NYMag.com. Yet it “happens to be a great film.” Even at its initial length, “I found its thundering journey through recent Russian and world history enormously entertaining.” Dano is precisely as creepy as he should be. And in Law’s Putin, the movie “gives us a villain who is chilling and believable.”
‘The Sheep Detectives’
Directed by Kyle Balda (PG)
★★★
“Good detective films are rare. So are emotionally rich family films,” said Tim Grierson in The A.V. Club. “Which is why it’s tempting to overpraise The Sheep Detectives, a winning PG comedy that ably combines both genres.” But while some of its jokes fall flat and most of its human characters are “a bit daffy,” this modest new hit about a flock of sheep investigating the murder of their beloved shepherd, George, proves “quite affecting.” Because George, portrayed by Hugh Jackman, routinely read mysteries to his charges before his sudden demise, these sheep aren’t complete novices, said Wilson Chapman in IndieWire. They also don’t have many suspects to sort through, which may make the culprit too easy for adults to spot. Fortunately, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Chris O’Dowd voice Lily and Mopple, two of the most prominent CGI-animated sheep, and “the film derives a lot of its most successful humor from Lily and Mopple’s outside perspective of the human world they’re stumbling into.”
Happily, “what’s most special about The Sheep Detectives isn’t any one element,” said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. “Instead, it’s the way the elements work together—humor, mystery, goofiness, and even sentimentality, all balanced beautifully.” Even in the way it addresses mortality, this is a movie that “treats each member of its audience with respect, no matter their age.” Films like this are rare these days. “Hollywood: Take note, please.”