Another good film whose trailer had me fooled: TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (2022), a movie about haves and have-nots, whether it’s beauty, love, money, or power. In this remarkable film, a beautiful couple, both of them fashion models, ultimately go on a cruise aboard a luxury yacht, only to face dire consequences that raise interesting questions about power and where it comes from. If you like similar films like THE MENU and PARASITE, which also explored class, you will likely dig this one.

Carl and Yaya are models and social media influencers. In the opening scenes, we see Carl audition to be featured in a new fashion campaign. He later attends his girlfriend Yaya’s show and takes her to dinner, only to fight over who should pay. They go on a pleasure cruise aboard a yacht, where society is fixed between out-of-touch wealthy people whose every need is catered to by a uniformed “middle class,” while a poor underclass keeps the boat running.

The movie examines power and how it derives from having or not having, whether it’s beauty, love, wealth, skills, and more, and how the value of these things changes depends on the situation, creating new power dynamics–for me, the “triangle of sadness” where no one is innocent, only having or lacking power based on the context. In one scene, a wealthy woman tells the staff to go swimming with her after having an epiphany “we are all equal,” though the staff doesn’t have a choice in obeying, reinforcing they are in fact not equal at all. In another, the Marxist boat captain and a Russian oligarch spar over ideology while discovering they are in fact equal in the lowest common denominator sense. Over time, the themes ramp up and fall squarely on the nose, though to the filmmakers’ credit, while they shout the question again and again, they don’t push any answers. And you never really feel like any of these people are despicable so much as ridiculous.

I also found the filmmaking style interesting here. It’s shot in a traditional foreign film style, with long takes and scenes that go deep into their subject, and an almost documentarian feel where you feel more like a fly on the wall than directly involved. The result is a feel where you are being told a story than experiencing it yourself, which is a bit distancing but has its charms.

Overall, I liked TRIANGLE OF SADNESS a lot. I kind of loved it. Whatever you do, don’t let yourself get fooled by the trailer, which seems to promise a slapstick farce. There is far more going on here, and the real comedy is far more subtle.

Based on the fascinating book by Naomi Alderman, THE POWER is an Amazon Prime series about an evolutionary change in humanity that threatens to dramatically alter the balance of power between the sexes. The result is reaction, struggle, and possibly a new natural order. This is stunning sci-fi at its best.

The story follows a woman who is the mayor of Seattle, her family, a reporter in Nigeria, a teenager connected to a minor British crime family, a teenager on the run for murder who is taken in by a home run by nuns, and the wife of the dictator of an Eastern European country infamous for sex trafficking. Each provides a lens and focal point for a bizarre twist in evolutionary history: young women everywhere have been born with an organ that like an eel allows emission of electrical discharge.

Suddenly, their hands now able to become literal weapons, women gain an incredible power, which some learn to tune in many ways both curative and lethal. This proves disruptive in countless ways and may just threaten the existing order. As men increasingly feel threatened and unsafe, however, a major conflict may be brewing…

I read THE POWER some years back and found it a powerful work of speculative fiction. At first, I was hesitant: was this going to be good fiction or a thinly veiled social statement? Happily, it’s very much the former with the right amount of the latter. Alderman holds nothing back, both regarding the routine fears and injustices women face that can now be corrected, but also the inherent tendency of power to create injustice. She even dares to say that maybe if women ruled the world, it might not look that different than the way it does now, which I think took courage.

The only criticism I had of Alderman’s book was she didn’t have the space to go very deep with a concept that honestly had so many facets. The show didn’t have that problem. In fact, I’d expected this to be a miniseries, but where it ended left a ton of the book on the table; the show is not finished, and I hope it will be renewed so we can get more. The show takes its time and goes quite deep and expansive with ideas, and it all feels realistic. In particular, I also enjoyed how even-handed it is about the way things are and why they’re that way, and while the focus of the story here is on women, all the men get their say and they’re not always wrong. And the cast is terrific, notably Toni Collette and John Leguizamo.

Overall, I loved THE POWER and I’m looking forward to another season. As an author, I’m envious at the loving and lavish treatment Alderman’s book received, though it certainly deserved it. Again, this is sci-fi at its best, the kind of story that makes you think and feel something new.

Created by Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, SWARM (Amazon Prime) is about a young woman pushed to the brink and who decides to take vengeance on anyone who besmirches the pop star she idolizes. Roughly inspired by separate true events, it’s a strangely compelling if bleak watch, a dark comedy that never had me laughing.

Dre is a young woman living in a big city. It’s obvious she’s both a troubled soul and that she idolizes Ni’Jah, a pop star roughly modeled on Beyoncee. Tragedy forces her onto the road, where she decides to kill people who insulted Ni’Jah online. What follows is a road trip of sorts to various cities and towns, providing glimpses into weirder aspects of American life, long moments of contemplation, and sporadic bursts of artistic violence.

I’m really torn about this one. I liked it, I couldn’t stop watching, but it was hard at times and I’m not sure what it added up to. Artistically, it wallows but it’s good and it meanders but it’s good, and every episode has an artistic but almost documentarian feel to it, like this is a work of hyper social realism. Unfortunately, the show’s commentary on superfandom is so subtle that it comes across as really a sad tale of unchecked mental illness. (Though it’s interesting how everyone who meets the honestly vapid Dre regards her as a blank slate to project their own desires, the opposite of Ni’Jah, who presents a perfect life.) The separate events the story is based on provides its own sharp commentary on society’s many hairline fractures, however, and this ultimately proves far more effective.

Overall, again, I liked this one. Maybe even loved it a bit. Even if in the end I wasn’t totally satisfied with what I’d just experienced. Recommended if you’re looking for something offbeat and where you can enjoy the strange dark art of the parts without worrying too much about their sum.

Usually, nature documentaries for me are like a trip to the zoo–something I’m usually happy to put off, though I love that they’re there and available. So it was surprising when I checked out Netflix’s CHIMP EMPIRE on a lark and found it utterly enthralling. Who knew nature could write Shakespeare?

Welcome to the Ngogo rainforest in Uganda, where scientists discovered the largest known group of chimpanzees living in the wild. Humans have been studying them so long that the chimps just sort of roll with people being around. This provided the filmmakers the opportunity to capture incredible footage of their daily lives and shape them into a narrative about family and power.

Some time ago, the group split apart into the larger Central Group dominated by alpha male Jackson and his lieutenant Miles, and the Western Group. The Western Group is smaller, under tougher stress to get food, and therefore they are far more collaborative. The Central Group is beginning to become stressed by restless chimps who want to become king and have begun testing the waters. Sensing weakness, the Western Group decides it’s time to see if they can expand their turf–and maybe settle their old feud with Jackson once and for all.

The chimpanzees are beautiful to watch, especially the highly expressive children, and they all come across as individuals with distinct personalities. The jungle feels like another world, one that deserves protecting. Narrated by Mahershala Ali, the storylines are dramatic and compelling–a bit anthropomorphic in the telling, but as chimpanzees are humans’ closest living relative in the animal kingdom, it’s entirely forgivable. Again, in its brute simplicity and impact, this is Shakespeare as nature might write it.

In short, I’ve never been so riveted by a nature documentary. I loved it, and I hope they’ll do a season 2 so I can keep up with the chimps’ never-ending story.