 Content Warning: Tell Me Your Secrets involves heavy subject matters that may be triggering to some viewers, including violence and rape. These issues are briefly discussed in the following review.  Lily Rabe as Karen in TELL ME YOUR SECRETS, an Amazon Original Available now on Amazon Prime, Tell Me Your Secrets is a mystery/thriller series revolving around two women who have little in common except their unfortunate connection to a convicted serial killer. While it’s not the most original or nuanced thriller, I’d be lying if I said the show wasn’t engaging. The 10 episodes that make up season 1 are so jam-packed with explosive emotions that it almost watches like a desperate attempt to snag viewer attention with drama and shock value amidst the insane amount of streaming content that’s now being produced. One you start watching, you’ll no doubt want to stick around until the end to find out how everything fits together. But you might find yourself rolling your eyes along the way.
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Originally published on Elements of Madness   L-R: Miranda Richardson as Kat, Michael Caton as Les, and Sam Neill as Colin in RAMS. Director Jeremy Sims brings together the talents of Sam Neill, Michael Caton, and Miranda Richardson in Rams, his English-language remake of the 2015 Icelandic film, Hrútar. Rams centers around feuding brothers Colin and Les Grimurson (Neill and Caton, respectively), who have been engaged in a silent-treatment standoff for decades as they keep separate flocks of sheep on opposite sides of their family land. After Les wins the local ram judging contest, Colin and the local vet, Kat (Richardson), make a life-altering discovery. Les’s prize-winning ram is infected with Ovine Johne’s disease, a deadly bacterial disease that could easily wipe out all the local herds. The community’s agricultural department orders all farmers in the area to eliminate their flocks and undergo extreme decontamination procedures, effectively destroying the town’s main source of income. While Les responds by lashing out in drunken rages, Colin devises a secret plan to hold on to his family’s specially bred sheep for a little while longer. At the risk of losing the things they love most, Colin and Les must figure out how to reconcile their differences in the face of unexpected changes and grief.
 Biljana Čekić as Dara in DARA OF JASENOVAC. Photo credit: Aaleksander Letic. Serbia’s official submission for the 2021 Academy Awards, Dara of Jasenovac, reminds us that no matter how many Holocaust films are made, there are important details and individual stories that have not yet been represented on the screen. Directed by Predrag Antonijević, Dara of Jasenovac is the first film about the Jasenovac complex in The Independent State of Croatia during the 1940s, which was run by the fascist Ustase government and used for the systematic murder of ethnic Serbs, Jews, and Roma people. While the film’s protagonist, 10-year-old Dara (Biljana Čekić), is not based on a specific historical person, the filmmakers chose to tell the story from a child’s perspective to emphasize the fact that there were specific camps in Jasenovac for children. The film begins when Dara is first transported to the complex along with her mother, infant brother, and other people from her village. She is subsequently moved through different facilities, gradually coming to understand the evil unfolding around her as those who entered the camp with her are killed one by one. Taking on more responsibility than she should ever have to bear, Dara resolves to do everything she can to keep her brother alive.
Originally published on Elements of Madness   Niousha Jafarian as Neda Naderi in Kourosh Ahari’s THE NIGHT. Courtesy of IFC Midnight. An IFC Midnight Release. Kourosh Ahari’s psychological thriller, The Night, is a stellar example of a film that may not have the next best original ideas within its genre, but is so well done that it is nonetheless entertaining and worthwhile. Despite a handful of predictable plot points and stereotypical gendered conflicts, The Night’s talented cast and distinct style create a spine-chilling, mind-bending, what-did-I-just-watch experience that reminds us why the horror genre is so exciting.
 Jake Robinson as The Kid (L) and Thomas Sadoski as The Narrator (R) in THE MIMIC The tagline for The Mimic, “the lighter side of being a sociopath,” boasts an intriguing story for anyone interested in representations of mental illness on screen. While this dark comedy from writer/director Thomas F. Mazziotti is not quite the informative and mental health-positive flick you might expect, The Mimic still has several interesting stylistic tidbits to offer. The story’s self-proclaimed narrator (Thomas Sadoski) is a brooding screenwriter and widower who becomes suspicious of the new guy in his neighborhood, referred to as “The Kid” (Jake Robinson). After both men attend a meeting for the community newspaper, The Kid starts following The Narrator around everywhere and popping up in the most unlikely places, leading The Narrator to believe that this unwanted “mimic” is a certified sociopath. However, The Narrator is also pining after The Kid’s young wife, who is characterized as a beauty so perfect that she cannot be shown on screen. As The Narrator takes a deep dive into obsessive research on sociopaths and even begins writing a screenplay about The Kid, it’s hard to tell if he is being stalked by his overeager new neighbor or if The Narrator is turning into a stalker himself. With dark humor and an obscure style, The Mimic is an off-beat, self-referential buddy comedy that touches on psychology and interpersonal relationships.
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"Our embodied spectator, possibly perverse in her fantasies and diverse in her experience, possesses agency...finally, she must now be held accountable for it." 
Mallory Moore
Film Lover | Writer | Cat Mom | Member, North Carolina Film Critics Association | Contributor, Elements of Madness | MA Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago '19 | BA English, Gardner-Webb University '18 Archives
February 2021
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