The Wailing
⋆⋆⋆⋆ out of four stars
Unrated: Disturbing content. In subtitled Korean and Japanese.
Theater: St. Anthony Main.
Brace yourself for mythic weirdness. Korean director Na Hong-jin's supernatural thriller will throw you for a loop. It begins as a sort of quirky Asian "Fargo," about a low-ranking policeman, Jong-gu (Kwak Do-won, a comedic common man with solid screen presence). He's ineptly investigating a series of mysterious fatalities in his rural village. Are they due to hallucinations caused by wild mushrooms, or connected to an eerie Japanese stranger living in the woods? Paranoid accusations finger everyone. When Jong-gu's daughter is seized by the victims' venomous signs of possession, he seeks help from a shaman of rock star charisma (Hwang Jung-min, combining the magnetism of James Franco with stronger acting chops). And then, literally, all hell breaks loose. The film operates on an amazing sensory level, with each shot brilliantly composed to trigger your emotional synapses. As the film moves from whodunit to what's-happening, its points of view fluctuate, gags shift to electrifying guts and gore, and visual clues are revealed as red herrings. It's deliberately designed as a baffling film, and still never loses its dramatic balance. Kim Hwan-hee's performance as the cop's stricken daughter makes Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" look like a Disney princess.
Colin Covert
Wiener-Dog
⋆⋆⋆ out of four stars
Rated: R for language and some disturbing content.
Theater: Uptown.
A four-part sick joke from cinema's dean of depressive, coldhearted humor, Todd Solondz. The flawless cast includes Danny DeVito, Julie Delpy, Greta Gerwig and Ellen Burstyn playing people who adopt and abandon a lovable sausage-shaped dachshund. Revolving across a quartet of America's classes and regions, the pooch observes, suffers and helps comfort human shortcomings. The characters are quickly introduced wild cards that keep the audience guessing, and the dog is extra-cute — sure to elicit endless awwwwws. There's even an animated intermission where we hear "The Ballad of the Wiener-Dog," an original ditty by Tony winner Marc Shaiman, complete with YouTube-worthy shots of the titular pup waddling here and there. He is far more adorable than the human characters, presented here with Solondz's trademark cynicism. But while he triggers viewers' Pavlovian impulse toward interspecies affection (a theme the lightweight trailers present as the focus of the whole film), the dark subtext is how we all face the challenges of life and death. While it would be spoileriffic to reveal the conclusion, be warned: "Benji" it ain't.
