‘Love’ RELATED: Why “Inside Llewyn Davis” is a laugh riot (in its super bleak way) ‘Experimenter’
The latest from maximalist provocateur Gaspar Noe (“Irreversible,” “Enter the Void”) doesn’t beat around the bush, as it were: Its opening shot is three minutes of a man and a woman in bed, in their birthday suits, servicing each other. “Love” is porn, but it’s more than that, of course. The stupping scenes are memories of an aspiring filmmaker (Karl Glusman) about the sexy girl (Aomi Muyock) who got away, remembered from the misery of fatherhood. As ever, Noe thinks big and sometimes dumb, though this time the idiocy appears to be intentional. Our strapping hero is noticeably, touchingly dim-witted, seemingly only good at porking and rattling off inane observations on the narration track. “Love” has the novelty of real sex, but it also has the novelty of sticking us with a protagonist who’s truly not so smart.
If “Love” is enjoyably basic, Michael Almereyda’s abstract chronicle of the life and work of controversial social psychologist Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) is unfailingly, incorrigibly brainy. Milgram became (in)famous in the early ’60s for his experiments into obedience, conducted with subjects who were lied to and made to feel terrible for what they’d done. Milgram spent the rest of his life defending his methods, even as he was seen by some as a sociopath. The film itself doesn’t take a stand, staying as cool and detached as Sarsgaard’s impressively remote performance. It dares us to take a stand on him, only to suggest by the end that we don’t know him at all.
‘The Fury’
Want to see John Cassavetes repeatedly blow up from 15 different angles, over and over and over again for a solid minute? Brian De Palma’s pricey, hubristic follow-up to his first smash hit, “Carrie,” goes big and crazy, upgrading from one teen with special powers to a bunch of them (including Amy Irving and Andrew Stevens) who are sought by shady government officials. But it’s all an excuse for some of the most bombastic set pieces De Palma ever devised, including a chase scene done in slow motion and its beautiful, beautiful, totally gonzo final moment.
