Shot in a Single Take, 'Victoria' Will Send You Anxiously Exploring the Streets of Berlin

Here's the deal: your flatmate just killed himself by accident. The problem is that it doesn't look quite like an accident. He lies in the kitchen floor with a knife in his back. A knife that you just used a few seconds ago. Your fingerprints are all over the place. The fact that you two had a really big argument last night and that all of his friends (which absolutely don't like you) know about it just adds more fuel to the fire. 

Knock Knock. Someone is at the door. Apparently the neighbor, an old lady who loves drama, heard some screaming. Cops must be on their way. Fuck.

Quick, think of the implications: If you go to prison, you won't be able to be with the person you deeply love for decades. But there's more. You won't be able to hug your parents. To touch their hands. Or continue your life together with your best friends, or even see their cheeks move while they eat fried chicken.

Within seconds your entire life as you know it will completely change for the worst. The American justice system will hunt you down. The prosecutor will try as hard as she can to put you in jail. It's her job, and having no mercy pays well. The knocking on the door persists. It's time to make a decision.

But that's not exactly the premise of Victoria. For your best interest, I don't recommend watching the trailer, nor reading the synopsis. The less you know, the better you will enjoy the unexpected chain of events. This German independent film aspires to claustrophobically portray the process of someone's life – someone like you and I – falling down like a Jenga tower. And it does it well.

One of the factors that makes this film different from the rest is that it was shot in one single long take, which might sound like a banal filmmaking choice, but it is actually brilliant due to the nature of the story. It couldn't have been used any better, and here's why: nowadays, most psychological thrillers create tension by giving the audience information that the characters in the film don't know yet, an approach that Hitchcock pretty much forged back with the classics. However, in Victoria, the audience and the characters truly learn and progress along together. You will never know more than our protagonist. There are no cuts. You are constantly with her, living the present, and this provides a very refreshing experience.

Now, not everything is perfect about this film. Many might consider certain plot details and some character decisions in particular situations not very realistic, and the first half of the film might be slow for some, but taking into account the promise that things eventually do escalate quickly to a genuinely anxious climax – particularly during the last thirty minutes of the film– it is very much worth the wait.

 Victoria will be released in the US on October 9.

M. Night Shyamalan Returns to Form in Horror-Comedy 'The Visit'

Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and director M. Night Shyamalan became an overnight phenomenon following the debut of his third feature, The Sixth Sense. To this day, any and all advertisements for his movies will feature the words, “From the writer and director of The Sixth Sense.” Following up on it proved simple for Shyamalan, releasing two more films that received similar acclaim, Unbreakable in 2000 and Signs in 2002, yet in the 13 years that have passed, he has (arguably) not made nor been involved in a single film reaching anywhere near the success of those three. (The Village has its defenders, but I am not one of them).

That is, at least, until now.

Shyamalan’s latest work, The Visit, is a found-footage horror-comedy about two young children who go to meet their estranged grandparents on a weeklong trip. The film starts off in an interview with the Mom (Kathryn Hahn), who has not spoken to her parents in 15 year following a massive falling out due to her relationship with an older man. 10 years later, the man leaves her with their two children, Rebecca (Olivia De Jonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould). Mom has a new boyfriend, and he decides to take her on a cruise, so, after a seemingly spontaneous invitation, the kids decide to make the trip to Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop-pop’s (Peter McRobbie).

But there’s something a little off about grandma and grandpa. No one is allowed in the basement, nor out of their rooms after 9:30 PM. When the kids decide the break curfew, they find that grandma sleepwalks at night and vomits everywhere. She makes strange noises and claws at the walls. When the kids come clean to grandpa, he writes it off as her just being an old lady. 

Unfortunately, grandpa’s not a shining example of normalcy either. One day, taking the kids into town, he gets paranoid and attacks a stranger. The kids call their mother and explain what’s going on. Mom says they’re just old.

Figures.

There’s one scene that stands out among the rest in this movie in terms of both horror and humor and effortlessly blending them. The kids are playing hide and seek in the crawl space beneath the house. We switch between their POVs throughout, and as one is being terrorized, we may cut back to the other, who has no idea what is going on. It’s a great scene that really showcases the directorial skill of Shyamalan. 

The Visit's script is an absolute return to form for Shyamalan, delivering what is easily his best work since The Sixth Sense, complete with fittingly outstanding performances. Oxenbould is especially notable, for giving a believable and hilarious performance, while De Jonge pulls us in as a young aspiring filmmaker who wants to stay ethical and true to her creative vision. Dunagan, however, is the true star of the movie, putting in a captivating, haunting, and profoundly entertaining performance, with McRobbie's character being off-putting throughout, coming up with half-baked explanations for the strange goings-on at the house.

Pay no attention to the trailers for this one. Remember in 2012 when Drew Godard’s horror-comedy masterpiece The Cabin In The Woods was about to be released? Or Adam Wingard’s 2013 You're Next? The trailers we got made it seem as if they were straight-up slasher flicks. Going into the theaters to actually see them proved disappointing for many, as what they ended up getting were dark comedies. This is a very similar situation to the campaign for The Visit. The trailer tries to sell the movie as something that will terrify you, but the truth is you will be laughing a lot more than jumping.

This movie is scary when it’s supposed to be, and it’s funny when it’s supposed to be. The Visit is M. Night Shyamalan’s first step toward a massive comeback. Here’s hoping he can keep it up.

'Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation' Continues Series' Incredible Resurgence

If there’s one thing that Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol proved, it was that it’s never too late to inject some life into your Hollywood franchise even with three installments already on the books. While the adventures of IMF agent Ethan Hunt had always been loads of fun, it was Brad Bird’s absolute joyride that was the first to make the jump from good to great. And if there’s one thing that Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation could be faulted for is that it does feel quite similar to its wildly successful predecessor.

The thing always most striking to me about the Mission: Impossible franchise was its ability to have remarkably different visual and narrative styles but still retain enough similarities to make the series feel coherent. Each new Mission was an experiment in how a new director could infuse their unique visual style with Tom Cruise’s love of practical stunts and decadent spy setpieces (a concept explored in this wonderful video essay by Sean Witzke) And while writer/director Christopher McQuarrie may not continue this sort of radical visual experimentation, Rogue Nation still offers plenty of fun allusions to film history and plenty of incredible action sequences that are among the high points of the entire series.

Rogue Nation finds the invincible Ethan Hunt on the trail of a vague network of underground terrorists known as “The Syndicate,” a group using the same amount of stealth and skill as the IMF but instead using it to spread chaos. At its head is the mysterious Solomon Lane, played with hissing menace by Sean Harris in the best villainous role of the series since Philip Seymour Hoffman’s terrifying turn in the third Mission. So to combat that threat, Hunt has to reunite the old team once again, including the hysterical Simon Pegg as Benji (finally given plenty to do in Rogue Nation, his third outing), as well as Ving Rhames’ Luther and Jeremy Renner’s Brandt.

As fun as it is to see the old faces again, the real star here is the new arrival of Rebecca Ferguson, who plays the illusive Ilsa Faust, a seemingly rogue MI6 agent practiced at the art of deception. In a refreshing change of pace from many modern roles for women in action blockbusters, Faust is given free reign to be interesting, layered and, above all, kickass. Sexy but never defined by her sexuality, the movie takes the time to let her develop nuance and make a memorable addition to Ethan Hunt’s accomplices he’s acquired over the years. (And, as an aside, having her named Ilsa and placing the action in Casablanca is a reference too lovely not to grin at.)   

Just as important as the team in a Mission: Impossible movie is the increasingly madcap action sequences Ethan Hunt has to put himself through, and thankfully Rogue Nation doesn’t disappoint. From the get-go Cruise is hanging off the side of a giant cargo plane 5,000 feet in the air, and it’s clear that neither he nor McQuarrie are interested at all in scaling back the excitement or invention that makes the action of this series just so much fun. And while a heist sequence has always been par for the course in this series, it hardly gets more nail-biting than the way Rogue Nation places it underwater and gives the ticking clock even more urgency.

Cruise gives every ounce of his physicality into the role of Hunt once again and has to be considered the West’s only answer to the union of stunt and star that is Jackie Chan. Cruise is still taking hits and taking them hard in a way that makes the abundance of martial arts in this movie feel more physical and realistic. He’s still rolling off motorcycles, flipping cars and taking very ill-advised jumps because he is Ethan Hunt, and he’s the only man who can do what he does. Thematically, it’s so rewarding because he is at his most interesting when he’s at his lowest point, and the more Cruise ages the more interesting it is to see him get up again after each fall.

But if the film had to be boiled down into a single sublime sequence it would have to be the night at the opera that introduces Hunt to the true threat of the Syndicate as well as Faust’s involvement in it. In a very overt and masterful homage to Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hunt has to foil an assassination attempt on the Austrian chancellor while scaling the backstage catwalks amid the crescendos of the Vienna opera. Shot by the incomparable Robert Elswit and with some really tight editing from Eddie Hamilton, it’s the wonderfully orchestrated high point in a movie full of amazing setpieces.

While Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel in a series that has benefitted greatly from big risks, it does take some of the best elements from the previous entries and distill them into a supremely entertaining whole. By combining the twisty espionage of De Palma’s first, the kinetic action of John Woo’s second, the sadistic villain in Abrams’ third, and the themes of Ethan Hunt’s aging first explored by Brad Bird in Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation delivers another wholly satisfying entry into a franchise that continues to intrigue and excite with every turn. Just try not to smile the entire time.