GODS OF EGYPT: The joyous spirit of Michael Powell's The Thief of Bagdad lives on!

What a cacophony of critical nonsense greeted the debut of the would-be blockbuster, GODS OF EGYPT, which you will be lucky to still find in theaters one week later. And what a shame the majority of today's critical establishment is so untutored in film history -- not to mention the joy that comes from watching a well-made and exciting kids' adventure film -- that they stupidly gave this very enjoyable visual knockout such a drubbing.

A number of our "cultural guardians" even claim that the movie is difficult to follow, which must say something pretty dismal about their own IQ. This is one of the easiest-to-follow films, not to mention the most delightful of roller-coaster rides, to hit screens in a long while. Directed by Alex Proyas (shown at right and no slouch in the "great visuals" department: The Crow; Dark City; I, Robot) and written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (who also gave us the underrated Dracula Untold), the movie reminded me most of the rightly famous and now-classic 1940 film The Thief of Baghdad. Granted, it is nowhere near as special as that movie, but it does indeed adhere to many of the tropes, themes and fine style of the Michael Powell/Ludwig Berger/Tim Whelan film.

How can anyone who's seen both films not almost immediately recognize young Brenton Thwaites (above, center, right) as the film's delightful Sabu-like hero, Bek? The flying carpets and genie of the early film may have been replaced by today's special effects (the effects here really are quite special), but their use remains in the service of telling a fine story about the importance of love, quests, gods, mortals, life, death and, of course, doing the right thing. (That's the willowy and gorgeous Courtney Eaton -- center, left, above -- who plays Thwaites' love interest.)

In the gods department you'll find a whole raft of fine performers in both the good and the evil sections -- from Gerard Butler (above, left) and Elodie Yung (above, right) to Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (below, right)

to none other than Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush, who plays Ra, the Sun God who must spend his days fighting off a very naughty, cloud-with-teeth-like monster from who-knows-where. (Mr. Rush handles this with his usual exemplary aplomb.)

If the movie seems to take awhile to find its footing and get into gear, I am not sure if this is actually the fault of the film itself, as much as it is our own for being simply so unused to seeing a good, old-fashioned fantasy/adventure like this one.

The movie may be all-green-screen all the time, but so far as eye-popping backdrops go, it looks like a billion bucks. You won't have seen this much imagination, color, and creativity going into fantasy-movie production values in a long time.

Compare what you see here, in fact, to the high-tech-but-pretty-ordinary crap dished out by so many of those Marvel franchises -- Iron Man, Avengers, Spiderman -- or much worse, that ridiculous abs-and-attitude movie, 300, in which all the backdrops looks almost the same. (One of the more special of the effects has to do with how much larger the gods register on-screen than do the humans -- even if, occasionally, the scale does seem a bit "off.")

Acting is on-target throughout, and the writing is just fine: The dialog and screenplay move everything along at a very fast clip, even as those themes of love, loss and redemption are given their due. There is a sweetness to this movie that escapes most fantasy blockbusters these days, and it is to be treasured, I think.

The monsters? They're quite fab, as well: fun and scary and created with extra flair and oomph. The movie may not be a classic, but it is so much better-than-expected in every way that to miss it on the big screen seems a shame.

It was hoped by the film's distributor, Lionsgate, that this would turn into another HungerGames/Divergent franchise. I guess not. But maybe there will be an after-life on home video, once cult world-of-mouth takes hold.  Click here to find out where these Gods are playing near you.

A strange, troubling Scot miserablism fantasy: Paul Wright's quivering FOR THOSE IN PERIL

What a strange film. Not only do its characters morph as the movie moves along, so does the "plot," such as it is, the theme and finally the entire meaning of FOR THOSE IN PERIL, the first full-length film from writer/director Paul Wright (shown below). Set in a terribly backward fishing community in coastal Scotland, immediately after an accident at sea, in which five of the six men aboard were killed -- and the one life saved was a younger and less tutored brother of one of the victims who perhaps should not have gone fishing in the first place -- the movie initially appears to be about that awful situation we refer to as survivor guilt.

Oddly, the movie-maker this film made me most recall is Terence Davies, although Mr. Davies has not, so far as I can remember, made a movie about a fishing village or seaside life. Yet the scenes of family life, of how past impacts on present, the quiet camera movement and the punishing sense of characters being held down by the mores of their community, which include giving over to everything from bullying to religion, is certainly part of Davies' territory.

While the characters of many of the townsfolk we meet remain pretty much the same -- critical, conformist, and with a distinctive fear of anything "other" --  it is the characters of the two brothers, Aaron (the survivor) and Michael (now dead), their mother Cathy, and Michael's girlfriend Jane that grow and change so much in the course of the film.

Aaron (shown above, and further above) takes on the pivotal role here and moves from sad, guilt-ridden young man to someone who is perhaps "slow," if not downright feeble mentally, to a frightening horror and then to maybe a saviour, after all. As played by an impressive young actor, George McKay -- currently on view in Pride and the streamable How I Live Now -- he turns this tale into something rich, strange, menacing and more.

As the mother, Kate Dickie (above) turns in an equally strong performance. She's the character with whom we can most identify, and so she carries us along until.... (The film has one of the more bizarre finales seen in some time. And yet there has been plenty of foreshadowing along the way, so this does not come, as they say, out of nowhere.)

Jordan Young, as the dead brother who may not be quite all we had imagined, and Nichola Burley (above) as his best girl (the one person among the townspeople who does not forsake Aaron), are both up to snuff, creating full-bodied characters and owning their screen time beautifully.

Full of tall tales, mythology, sea life and more, little in For Those in Peril is as it first appears. But somehow, by the end of this unusual endeavor, I don't think you'll mind at all.

This award-winning film, from Random Media and Cinedigm, opens today in Los Angeles at that popular site for indie film, the Arena Cinema. Next week, on October 7, it will become available via VOD nationwide, and on DVD, as an Amazon Exclusive -- though, as of now, you can find no mention of this at the Amazon site (except for the British PAL edition of the film, which is not playable on American DVD players).

You little deer! Mythic Korean folk tale turns urban in Lee Isaac Chung's ABIGAIL HARM

It's almost always a pleasure to see Amanda Plummer at work, though how much enjoyment you derive from her new movie, ABIGAIL HARM, will depend, I think, on your tolerance for somewhat heavy-handed whimsy (we need a new word for this sort of thing: maybe whamsy). This new film from Korean-American filmmaker, Lee Isaac Chung (shown below), is said to be based on a Korean folk tale, The Woodcutter and the Nymph, though here the sexes seem to have been transposed, for Ms Plummer plays an odd middle-aged woman, evidently in no particular need of money, who reads aloud to the blind and has no compunctions about what she reads or says. With her first client, she is asked to describe some naughty pictures and seems to thoroughly enjoy doing it, just as the client enjoys hearing it. (Her second client is played by Burt Young, who has so little to do or say that the sole reason for the character's being here would seem to be the fact that he is played by Mr. Young.)

Abigail appears a very private person, who herself tries her best to keep from being seen by others. She lives in a surprisingly deserted area, somewhere in New York City's five boroughs, and keeps to herself in what appears a nearly unoccupied apartment building. Not quite unoccupied, however, as suddenly we see a large deer ambling up the hallway. The deer then (I think --all this is very fable-like with little connecting tissue) turns into Will Patton, an actor who is always interesting to watch and who gives our gal helpful hints on how to land a love interest -- and keep him. Before you can say bibbity-bobbity-boo, Abigail is more or less following his instructions, looking quite lovely and vulnerable against flaking paint (below) and, sure enough, finding her significant other.

He, who was most likely also a deer just a tad earlier in the game, sheds his magical cloak and takes a bath (Mr. Patton has a bathing scene, too, by the way), and then, just as predicted, moseys along home with Abigail. The two bond slowly, as she introduces her guy (played by a sweet and lovely-looking Tetsuo Kuramochi, below, left) to life, lunch and finally lovemaking. He's adept at maybe two out of three.

But, ah, can Abigail keep him, trust him, and form a real bond with her new friend? Perhaps. Abigail Harm is a parable about love -- how to get it, how to keep it, how to lose it and how to play with it a little -- the moral being , I  am guessing: If you love it, let it go. Chung's film does have a fairy-tale/myth-like quality, but it's not accessible enough or specific enough on any level to make a great deal of sense or hold our attention. For awhile, you may find yourself wishing for more dialog. But then, around 50 minutes in, when Abigail starts talking more, you realize that this does not help the movie at all.

Visually, there are some nice touches, lovely compositions (see above) and so forth. These, together with the dreamy, urban myth-like quality, may be enough to hold you. They didn't hold me. The combination of the barely-told story, together with the overly-bizarre title character, proves too much. Abigail Harm, more so, I suspect, than are most movies, is very much a matter of taste.

The movie -- from Almond Tree Films and running 80 minutes -- after a number of festival plays, opens this Friday, August 30, in New York City at the Quad Cinema for a week's run.

Personal Appearances: Director Lee Isaac Chung (and select crew members) will appear for a Q&A after the 7pm & 9:20pm shows on Friday 8/30 and Saturday 8/31. Star/Lead actress Amanda Plummer and Director Lee Isaac Chung will appear for a Q&A after the 7pm screenings on Sunday 9/1 and Tuesday 9/3.

Breillat's THE SLEEPING BEAUTY goes even farther afield--& brilliantly--than Bluebeard

And you thought the princess just pricked her finger and went to sleep?  No, we're in Catherine Breillat territory,
a la last year's Bluebeard, and so, yes, she does get "pricked" -- finally in both meanings of the word. But what an event-filled and fanciful tale this lately more quietly transgressive French filmmaker has given us! From the start in her newest film, THE SLEEPING BEAUTY, eschewing the use of heavy duty special effects, this writer/director simply has the princess' mom unable to see the evil or good fairies that curse and then (sort of) lift same from her newborn daughter. (The good fairies' bickering in this scene proves a surprise delight: ladies, please!) 

Jumping off from the original  Charles Perrault story and using a mix of periods in the costumes, as well as a blend of fantasy and reality, the filmmaker, shown at right, also negotiates a sweet combination of poetry and naturalism in the dialog, as she explores the ways in which this primal tale continues to impact women (and men). Or maybe it's all about how we continue to play the roles in which history, psychology and DNA have cast us. If Breillat's illusions are sometime illusive (her allusions are allusive, too), all the better: Who wants to be whacked atop the head with insistent "meaning." 

Overall, The Sleeping Beauty truly is enchanting and -- oh, yes -- sexual. And dark, though there's light at the end of the tunnel. Sort of. One of the great pleasures of late (I should say mid-life) Breillat is that, while her works grows less transgressive, it is not in the least less challenging or less entertaining. It is also less blatantly, in-your-face sexual -- remember Romance?  Anatomy of Hell? -- and while I have to say I loved Breillat in that mode, I'm perfectly willing to watch and hear her in this one, too.

The kind of road trip the filmmaker has her "beauty" take, while sleeping, is so much more interesting than mere sleep, or the usual dreams/
nightmares most movies offer (along the way, she seems to have mashed-up to interesting effect The Sleeping Beauty with bits of The Snow Queen). The odd and unforgettable people (and animals) our heroine meets on her journey are all worth their weight, as well. Made for French television, the film pretty much nails the differences between Europe's and America's sophistication levels where entertainment and age-appropriate viewing is concerned. 

The Sleeping Beauty made its New York debut during the Film Society of Lincoln Center's most recent Rendez-vous With French Cinema. Here in the states, Strand Releasing is distributing the movie, which opens today in New York at the IFC Center, and on July 29 in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Sunset 5.  It'll play theatrically elsewhere, too, I am sure.

The photo of Ms Breillat, above, comes courtesy of IndieWire.