Review: Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son

Reviews

Manderlay

Von Trier's trilogy continues, sans Nicole Kidman.

By PETER KEOUGH | February 16, 2006

2.5 Stars

Bryce Dallas Howard and Isaach De Bankolé

Lars von Trier’s Manderlay has something to offend everyone: blacks, whites, conservatives, liberals, and those who, like myself, found Dogville a bold if flawed experiment. This second film in a projected trilogy reduces its predecessor to formula. In a soundstage version of 1933 America, Grace, played here by an appealing Bryce Dallas Howard instead of Nicole Kidman, has journeyed with her gangster father (Willem Dafoe) from the scene of her last adventure to the Alabama estate of the title, where slavery is still being practiced. Hapless do-gooder that she is, Grace tries to set things right, with predictably bad results. Anti-Iraq war allegory? Reactionary version of Reconstruction? Despite the provocations, Manderlay impresses most with its ingenuity in tormenting its characters regardless of race, gender, or politics. Trier, a Swiftian misanthrope, is attacking not America but the damned human race.

Related: All-American?, Cannes goods, Road rules, More

Topics: Reviews , Celebrity News, Entertainment, Movie Stars, More

| More

view all

[ 02/16 ] Chamberlin + Tan Vampires + Worried Well @ Empire Dine And Dance

[ 02/16 ] "Guyland: the Perilous World Where Boys Become Men" @ Bowdoin College

[ 02/16 ] Mary Halvorson + Chris Weisman @ Buoy Gallery

More Information

Watch the trailer for Manderlay (QuickTime)

More on this story:

All American?: Lars von Trier at Cannes 2005. By Gerald Peary.

ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH

REVIEW: CORIOLANUS | February 16, 2012
In a line of fascist-style stagings of the Bard from Orson Welles's 1937 black-shirted Julius Caesar to Richard Loncraine's brown-shirted Richard III (1998), Ralph Fiennes sets his lean and hungry take on Shakespeare's tragedy in a mo dern-day war zone, paring the play to a brisk two hours.

REVIEW: SAFE HOUSE | February 15, 2012
Daniel Espinosa's over-edited but engaging spy thriller delves into edgy territory untouched by any of the numerous movies it imitates: it has Brendan Gleeson do an American accent.

REVIEW: THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY | February 15, 2012
The most touching love story and best children's movie in a long time, Hiromasa Yonebayashi's adaptation of Mary Norton's book The Borrowers employs old-fashioned animation techniques to create a world that is familiar, uncanny, and luminous.

REVIEW: RAMPART | February 15, 2012
The rotten cop flick has become a mini-genre of sorts, a subset of noir, going back at least to Orson Welles's Touch of Evil .

REVIEW: THE OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS 2012: DOCUMENTARY | February 10, 2012
The films in this program contain some of the most powerful images to be seen on the screen this year.