Queen at Sea. Meanwhile, her teenage daughter, Sara (Florence Hunt), romances another teen, James (Cody Molko), whom she might lose her virginity to. Writer/director Lance Hammer has made an emotionally devastating and well-acted drama that's also tedious, exhausting, uninspired, heavy-handed and undercooked. It's such an unflinching slice-of-life that it leaves nothing to the audience's imagination, e.g. a lengthy scene where Amanda has to wash her mother in the shower because she had diarrhea or the scene showing Martin, beyond a reasonable doubt, laying on top of Leslie in bed while having non-consensual sex with her. He doesn't seem to understand the concept of spousal rape and thinks that his wife can legally consent to it. Amanda wants his behavior to stop, but doesn't want him to face the legal consequences of his behavior. All of the scenes with Amanda, Martin and Leslie feel voyeuristic in a way that will make audiences feel uncomfortable. Perhaps that's the point, but it gets tiresome and repetitive around the 30-minute mark. The romance between Amanda's daughter and her boyfriend feels like an unnecessary and distracting subplot that leads to tonal unevenness and a clunkily edited and tasteless scene that randomly cuts between them in the process of having sex and an intense scene with Martin and Leslie.
Moreover, the third act ends an abrupt, sour note that's leaves the film as incomplete and unsatisfying as Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite. The raw and natural performances by the ensemble cast, especially Juliette Binoche, are the film's major strengths, though, and almost compensate for the weak and dull screenplay. Is it too much to ask for levity or some form of comic relief? Why subject the audience to people suffering for nearly 100% of the time without any catharsis or narrative momentum? At a lengthy running time of 2 hours and 1 minute Queen at Sea opens at Angelika Film Center via Greenwich Entertainment. It would be the inferior B-move in a double feature with Amour.
Number of times I checked my watch: 3
Who Killed Alex Odeh? is a by-the-numbers, anemic and underwhelming documentary about the assassination of Alex Odeh, Palestinian-American civil rights activist, on October 11th, 1985. Co-directors Jason Osder and William Lafi Youmans combine archival footage and interviews with mixed results. They squander many opportunities to turn this into an intriguing, suspenseful, engaging or enraging thriller which would've made it a transcendent doc. There's not enough exposition about Alex Odeh's work as an activist or his life outside work, so audiences expecting to learn more about Odeh will be disappointed. It's essentially a reader's digest introduction to him and the mystery surrounding his assassination that has lead to zero arrests. There are possible suspects, though, like Irv Rubin, who was the chairman of the Jewish Defense League at the time of Odeh's death, but there's no hard evidence; just speculation. Therefore, Who Killed Alex Odeh? ultimately fails as a form of investigative journalism with no new leads or revelations. It also lacks scope and doesn't have stylish editing to compensate for its lack of substance.
The recent doc Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie by Alex Gibney also lacks insights, but at least it's unflinching and moving. A truly great documentary should find the right balance between entertaining the audience and provoking them emotionally as well as intellectually. Who Killed Alex Odeh? doesn't even come close to finding that much-needed balance. At a running time of 1 hour and 24 minutes, it opens at Quad Cinema via Watermelon Pictures.
Number of times I checked my watch: 3
