Talk to Me Review

Two embalmed thumbs up

BY SIENA SOFIA BERGT siena@sfreporter.com

“Gripping” is possibly the cheesiest word to apply to a horror movie about an embalmed hand. In the case of Australian twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou’s debut feature Talk to Me, it’s also likely the most succinct summation. But whether Talk To Me may be best appreciated through the lens of “horror” at all remains a matter for more debate.

That’s not to say the film isn’t frightening. The first possession scene occurs within mere minutes, after main character Mia (Sophie Wilde) learns the lore of the central ceramic-encased severed hand (possibly that of a psychic, as we discover in an exchange poking fun at the seriousness with which most high concept horror handles its mythology). She need only hold the hand, whisper the movie’s title and issue the invitation “I let you in” to be taken over by whatever spirits accept her offer. But before 90 seconds have passed, the connection between the realms must be cut lest the departed take up more permanent residence in their living hosts.

Of course, any rule introduced so early in a scary movie has to be broken—and Wilde’s committed and

8 + GORGEOUSLY CONSIDERED; POWERFUL - SLOW TO A FAULT AT TIMES

Though the messaging of director/writer Ruijun Li’s slow but poignant Return to Dust is not what you’d call subtle, the sweeping shots of rural China as contrasted by the encroaching modernity of the cold, unfeeling city and its accoutrements begin to feel like a siren call for simplicity. It’s not hard to find beauty in Li’s measured tale, and though the filmmaker takes his time in hitting his conclusion, its themes reveal themselves to be universal as they illustrate that love needn’t always be a sexy explosive fire bolt—maybe the better stuff comes as a slow burn.

Simple or no, Li’s minimalist film does feel like it was informed by the filmic epics in its cinematography, particularly in the grand scope of how it portrays familial frustrations and country vistas—the lands that sprawl out seemingly forever beyond the confines of one tiny village; the people who stay there, leave there, resent it or love it. In this village, aging farmer Ma (Renlin Wu) is entered into an arranged marriage with the weakly and timid Cao (Hai Qing). Both families seem thrilled to foist off their outwardly stranger relatives, hiding cruel indifference behind a somewhat common Chinese cultural norm and leaving the pair to await condescension at nearly every turn.

Ma, for example, is defined by slow, introverted intensely physical performance left even this self-professed gorehound trembling home from the theater. The film as a whole is so unrelenting it doesn’t even yield the checked-out relief that often comes when a story pushes past one’s terror tolerance threshold. It simply doesn’t let you go.

But unlike in the vast majority of horror movies, the fear doesn’t originate with the unknown—a murderer in a mask, a hidden cannibal cult, an ancient evil unleashed. Viewers see in the graphic cold open exactly what will happen to Mia, and multiple prophetic figures throughout the story reinforce that fate. Yet both she and the audience are helpless to stop it. In other words, we’re talking about a classic Greek tragedy. For all its abundant jump scares, its tightly-wound plot and gorgeous practical effects, Talk to Me is truly movements and obliviousness to the pace of the world around him. This seems to drive the people in his orbit mad, but he’s almost secretly capable and wise, which he most often proves by keeping his mouth shut. Cao, meanwhile, suffers from incontinence and epic timidity, but the light in her smile eschews the idea that her issues make her lesser. As houses long abandoned are torn down throughout their village, Ma and Cao begin to build their own home using the old ways: mud bricks and straw insulation. The land around them once thought inhospitable accepts the seeds they plant. It, like Ma and Cao, flourishes once it has the proper attention.

No spoilers, but the conclusion of Return to Dust—one that feels all at once so heartbreakingly disappointing for its characters while ultimately unavoidable, and one openly critical of the Chinese government—was reportedly censored in China with a text crawl. Its US release, which remains untouched, will play in a limited engagement at the Jean Cocteau Cinema from Friday, Aug. 4-Sunday, Aug. 6. (Alex De Vore) Jean Cocteau Cinema, R, 131 min.

Oppenheimer

+ IMPORTANT HISTORY, EPIC ARC OF TIME

− VERY FULL DANCE CARD, LITTLE NM CONTEXT

Most New Mexicans who viewed Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer had a head start on other mov- a film about the cyclicality and loneliness of grief. And grief is, after all, a horrifying experience.

Because of that trauma-steeped subject matter, this film might not satisfy those who turn to genre for an escape from lived pain (and extra care might be warranted for anyone sensitive to depictions of suicide). It’s also not a movie that’s going to thrill folks looking for visual innovation—the cinematography serves the story without ever offering much originality. But for anyone who loves Antigone as much as Antichrist, Talk to Me’s grasp will be too potent to resist.

TALK TO ME iegoers. Whether they had read the Pulitzer Prizewinning biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer or had learned about the state’s role in the birth of atomic war in grade school, they also carry other connections to the enduring legacy of the story.

Directed by The Philippou Brothers With Wilde Violet Crown, R, 95 min.

Nolan’s script adapted from American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin unfolds as three storylines: Oppenheimer’s rise to become director of the nation’s new secret weapons lab and the subsequent removal of his security clearance; the birth of the bomb itself from the chalkboard to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II; and onetime Atomic Energy Commission Director Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) as the story’s true villain with a tangled timeline.

Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders) disappears into J. Robert Oppenheimer, delivering a performance that captures the fresh and frantic graduate student in the pre-war days all the way through to the ghoulish, battered “father of the atomic bomb” phase as he undergoes a Red Scare beat-down of his reputation.

The hopscotch through time can be confounding, though expert costuming and makeup help sync the logic, as do shifts between black and white and color photography. The sheer number of characters, however, has a tendency to overwhelm.

Women take a decidedly backseat role in this version of the story. Emily Blunt has a few powerful moments as Oppenheimer’s troubled and alcohol-dependent wife Kitty, but Nolan’s choices around how much Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) appears onscreen don’t quite add up. Oppenheimer’s enemies use Tatlock, an also-troubled early love inter- est and member of the Communist party, to help make the case against him. It’s a pity the majority of Pugh’s screen time depicts Tatlock as nude and/ or neurotic. Kai and Sherwin’s book portrays both women as troubled, but doesn’t attempt to draw such a tidy bow on their disparate relationships with Oppenheimer or cast them as antagonists the way Nolan does.

The film acknowledges New Mexico’s role in the project but doesn’t offer a true sense of place. Nolan smartly filmed on-location; the script, however, contains little mention of the contributions locals made to the project and no mention of the ongoing environmental damage wrought by the Manhattan Project and the people who suffered and died from radiation poisoning due to the secret Trinity test detonation.

Could there have been fewer esoteric sizzles and sparkles to depict Oppenheimer’s mind? Less time with explosions and mesmerizing flames blooming across the screen? Certainly.

Yet, the story of why and how the United States developed the atomic bomb is itself more than complex, and Nolan’s film takes an admirable stab at unpacking the overlooked historical tick-tock. While Oppenheimer was hailed a hero for his leadership role in developing the world’s most destructive weapon, the government rapidly recoiled and cast aspersions on his character when it removed his security clearance. It’s puzzling, however, why the closing credits fail to reveal the posthumous reversal of that decision late last year. (Julie

Ann Grimm) Center for Contemporary Arts, Violet Crown, 180 mins.

by Matt Jones

a Drank” rapper

67 Chopin composition

68 1970s Cambodian leader Lon

69 To this point

70 Royal ___ (butter cookie brand with those reusable blue tins)

71 “What’d I tell ya?” DOWN

1 Helvetica alternative

2 Laptop item (which should go underneath the circled answer in the same column)

3 Dance design, informally

4 It may be presented first

5 “It’s the end of an ___!”

6 Columbia Sportswear president Boyle who starred in their “One Tough Mother” ads

7 Goth necklace designs

8 1998 Olympics city

9 One-third of a three-step

10 Primus singer/bassist Claypool

11 Someone who gathers and sells shellfish

12 Reference books that can expand your vocabulary, quaintly

13 Garden equipment

19 One of two guards in a classic logic problem, e.g.

21 With a not-too-bright approach

25 Interstate access

27 Law enforcement orgs.

28 Whittling tool

30 N.C. capital, for short

32 Quart divs.

34 1990 Literature Nobelist Octavio ___

36 Diamond expert

37 How serious players play

38 Wear out, as a welcome

40 President pro ___

41 Acronym popularized by Rachael Ray

44 Absorb, with “up”

46 Like the eyebrows in a 2014 viral video

48 “Pictures ___ Exhibition” (Mussorgsky work)

49 Completely avoided

51 Finite units of energy during the day, in a coping mechanism theory

52 Randall ___, creator of XKCD

54 ‘90s treaty acronym

56 Postpone indefinitely (or where you’d see what this puzzle represents)

57 This one, in Spain

59 Brown, in Bordeaux

62 50-50, for instance

63 1099-___ (bank tax form)

64 Mag staffers

Rob Brezsny Week of August 2nd

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Emotions are not inconvenient distractions from reason and logic. They are key to the rigorous functioning of our rational minds. Neurologist Antonio Damasio proved this conclusively in his book Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. The French philosopher’s famous formula—”I think, therefore I am”—offers an inadequate suggestion about how our intelligence works best. This is always true, but it will be especially crucial for you to keep in mind during the coming weeks. Here’s your mantra, courtesy of another French philosopher, Blaise Pascal: “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The famous Taurus TV star Jay Leno once did a good deed for me. I was driving my Honda Accord on a freeway in Los Angeles when he drove up beside me in his classic Lamborghini. Using hand signals, he conveyed to me the fact that my trunk was open, and stuff was flying out. I waved in a gesture of thanks and pulled over onto the shoulder. I found that two books and a sweater were missing, but my laptop and briefcase remained. Hooray for Jay! In that spirit, Taurus, and in accordance with current astrological omens, I invite you to go out of your way to help and support strangers and friends alike. I believe it will lead to unexpected benefits.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “Did you learn how to think or how to believe?” When my friend Amelie was nine years old, her father teased her with this query upon her return home from a day at school. It was a pivotal moment in her life. She began to develop an eagerness to question all she was told and taught. She cultivated a rebellious curiosity that kept her in a chronic state of delighted fascination. Being bored became virtually impossible. The whole world was her classroom. Can you guess her sign? Gemini! I invite you to make her your role model in the coming weeks.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In the coming weeks, I advise you not to wear garments like a transparent Gianfranco Ferre black mesh shirt with a faux-tiger fur vest and a coralsnake jacket that shimmers with bright harlequin hues. Why? Because you will have most success by being downto-earth, straightforward, and in service to the fundamentals. I’m not implying you should be demure and reserved, however. On the contrary: I hope you will be bold and vivid as you present yourself with simple grace and lucid authenticity.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In 1811, Leo scientist Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856) formulated a previously unknown principle about the properties of molecules. Unfortunately, his revolutionary idea wasn’t acknowledged and implemented until 1911, 100 years later. Today his wellproven theory is called Avogadro’s law. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, Leo, you will experience your equivalent of his 1911 event in the coming months. You will receive your proper due. Your potential contributions will no longer be mere potential. Congratulations in advance!

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Israeli poet Yona Wallach mourned the fact that her soul felt far too big for her, as if she were always wearing the clothes of a giant on her small body. I suspect you may be experiencing a comparable feeling right now, Virgo. If so, what can you do about it? The solution is NOT to shrink your soul. Instead, I hope you will expand your sense of who you are so your soul fits better. How might you do that? Here’s a suggestion to get you started: Spend time summoning memories from throughout your past. Watch the story of your life unfurl like a movie.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Nineteenth-century Libran physician James Salisbury had strong ideas about the proper ingredients of a healthy diet. Vegetables were toxic, he believed. He created Salisbury steak, a dish made of ground beef and onions, and advised everyone to eat it three times a day. Best to wash it down with copious amounts of hot water and coffee, he said. I bring his kooky ideas to your attention in hopes of inspiring you to purge all bunkum and nonsense from your life—not just in relation to health issues, but everything. It’s a favorable time to find out what’s genuinely good and true for you. Do the necessary research and investigation.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “I’m amazed that anyone gets along!” marvels self-help author Sark. She says it’s astonishing that love ever works at all, given our “idiosyncrasies, unconscious projections, re-stimulations from the past, and the relationship history of our partners.”

I share her wonderment. On the other hand, I am optimistic about your chances to cultivate interesting intimacy during the coming months. From an astrological perspective, you are primed to be extra wise and lucky about togetherness. If you send out a big welcome for the lessons of affection, collaboration, and synergy, those lessons will come in abundance.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Please don’t make any of the following statements in the next three weeks: 1. “I took a shower with my clothes on.” 2. “I prefer to work on solving a trivial little problem rather than an interesting dilemma that means a lot to me.” 3. “I regard melancholy as a noble emotion that inspires my best work.” On the other hand, Sagittarius, I invite you to make declarations like the following: 1. “I will not run away from the prospect of greater intimacy—even if it’s scary to get closer to a person I care for.” 2. “I will have fun exploring the possibilities of achieving more liberty and justice for myself.” 3. “I will seek to learn interesting new truths about life from people who are unlike me.”

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Champions of the capitalist faith celebrate the fact that we consumers have over 100,000 brand names we can purchase. They say it’s proof of our marvelous freedom of choice. Here’s how I respond to their cheerleading: Yeah, I guess we should be glad we have the privilege of deciding which of 50 kinds of shampoo is best for us. But I also want to suggest that the profusion of these relatively inconsequential options may distract us from the fact that certain of our other choices are more limited. In the coming weeks, Capricorn, I invite you to ruminate about how you can expand your array of more important choices.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): My best friend in college was an Aquarius, as is my favorite cousin. Two ex-girlfriends are Aquarians, and so was my dad. The talented singer with whom I sang duets for years was an Aquarius. So I have intimate knowledge of the Aquarian nature. And in honor of your unbirthday—the time halfway between your last birthday and your next—I will tell you what I love most about you. No human is totally comfortable with change, but you are more so than others. To my delight, you are inclined to ignore the rule books and think differently. Is anyone better than you at coordinating your energies with a group’s? I don’t think so. And you’re eager to see the big picture, which means you’re less likely to get distracted by minor imperfections and transitory frustrations. Finally, you have a knack for seeing patterns that others find hard to discern. I adore you!

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Is the first sip always the best? Do you inevitably draw the most vivid enjoyment from the initial swig of coffee or beer? Similarly, are the first few bites of food the most delectable, and after that your taste buds get diminishing returns? Maybe these descriptions are often accurate, but I believe they will be less so for you in the coming weeks. There’s a good chance that flavors will be best later in the drink or the meal. And that is a good metaphor for other activities, as well. The further you go into every experience, the greater the pleasure and satisfaction will be—and the more interesting the learning.

Homework: Make up a fantastic story about your future self, then go make it happen.

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Go to RealAstrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes and Daily Text Message Horoscopes . The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700.

© COPYRIGHT 2023 ROB BREZSNY

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