Theresa Arita

Zoë Kravitz's directorial debut is creative, intense, quite a bit surreal, and (mostly) believable. Along the weirdness lines of "Sucker Punch" and "Shutter Island," with strains of "Handmaids Tale (the book)", this artistic movie drew me in just as I was about to give up. The first part is a trip through feel-good fantasy, reminding me of the traps women are warned about to avoid abuse. But tough women don't always heed the warnings. Like a modern fairy tale, the revelations start coming fast and heavy once Sleeping Beauty awakens with the help of an old crone. Rather than escaping, though, our heroine turns the tables, and entraps her abusers. I could relate up to that point, but suspect this was a forced Hollywood ending, not from Kravitz's vision. Or maybe she's that immature as an artist. Give her time, to take risks in asserting deeper truths, and for Hollywood to allow it, and Zoë will rise to a powerful height. We need her stories.

The virtues of being loyal, brave and true, and devoted to family, are shown to be sacred trusts for these characters and standards that guide their choices. I wish our culture valued these more.

While the graphics are interesting, the characters are shallow and unemotional, the dialogue is pathetic, and the parents are so uncaring and ignorant about childcare, I wonder how these actors passed casting auditions. In the world after the comet, this kid would do better on his own. As with most films Butler is in, action trumps acting. I kept hoping this end-of-world story would highlight the hope of the singing church folk, or the kindness of the Latinos, or the wisdom of tough old grandpa, to add some humanity to the film. Where were the big questions, like what's the meaning of this-who can we help-what is most important? Even gallows humor would have helped. But instead we get to follow Mr. and Mrs. Know-nothing-Feel-nothing from one disaster to another as they lose the kid a couple times, commit murders, forget essential meds, lose each other, dodge angry neighbors and falling fireballs - only to end smiling, with their co-survivors, at two birds flying over a ruined Greenland. Badly done.

Artistic and interesting. Lovely landscapes, lighting, coloring, and clever chaotic cinematography that mimicked Bretnick's disjointed thoughts. Reminded me of "A Beautiful Mind," except here the imagined conspiracy is proven real - which somehow pulled the film down a notch for me. I think the producers and script writers had two very different agendas - to critique the exploitation of immigrants, and to entertain. These goals and genres shouId have remained distinct, for two separate films. Besides that, though, creative acting and story-telling! The complex burdens that paranoid schizophrenia put on the lead, Arthur Bretnick, were clearly pushing him to a murderous end - and I would easily have laid the final huge death toll at his feet- if it weren't for that package he mailed, and the chip in his chest! I now find myself questioning who had the truth, much like I did with "Inception." Well done.

Maybe the core of survivalist thinking is this pathological, after all: paranoid, grandiose, sociopathic, nihilistic, and without God or hope. If shtf, should we hide away, stop loving and seeking joy in living, as the father did? If a spouse disappoints us, or our children exhaust us, should we run away as the mother did? These were strong but flawed characters, afflicted by their neuroses: the naive boy-hero, the wounded father-protector, the woman finding herself at everyone's expense. They each held to their convictions, though, something novel in modern stories, which gives promise that this movie will stand the test of time.