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Reviewed in brief: 'Experimenter,' 'Bone Tomahawk' and 'Labyrinth of Lies'

October 24, 2015 at 1:55AM
Jason Robinette/Magnolia Pictures Peter Sarsgaard in "Experimenter," a Magnolia Pictures release.
Peter Sarsgaard in “Experimenter.” (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Experimenter
⋆⋆⋆⋆ out of four stars • Rating: PG-13 for thematic material and brief strong language • Theater: Uptown

"Experimenter" is a dramatic feature about the life and work of Stanley Milgram, whose Yale study is the 20th century's best known psychological experiment. You know, the one with the fake electric shocks? In 1961, Milgram wanted to study obedience and authority, but he told his subjects he was testing something else, whether punishment helped people learn.

He put a "teacher" in one room in front of a console that supposedly administered painful electric shocks, and a "learner" in the other, hooked up to wires. Every time the learner answered a question wrong, the teacher had to administer an electric shock. With each wrong answer, the shock level was increased.

Milgram found, to his horror, that in many cases the teachers went ahead and completed the full round of shocks, despite the learner's screaming. They obeyed, not because they were forced, but because someone in authority told them to proceed.

The beauty of director Michael Almereyda's approach is that he acknowledges, just in the way he films the story, that Milgram's research revealed something unsettling within human nature. As Milgram, Peter Sarsgaard narrates his own story on camera, sometimes walking down a corridor with an elephant following him. Often, in the midst of a scene, he will turn to the camera and start addressing the audience.

Seemingly free-associative in style, "Experimenter" makes a sober and chilling point. Maybe it's not just a matter of people feeling they must follow orders. Maybe people want to follow orders because they crave permission to be cruel. In wartime, this impulse, when let loose, can be catastrophic, but even just on a day-to-day basis — the cop who gives you an unjust ticket, the person behind the counter who won't cooperate — it has a way of souring life.
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Bone Tomahawk
⋆⋆⋆ out of four stars • Rating: Unrated (grisly violence, sex) • Theater: Eden Prairie

On the list of things the world needs, a mash-up of "The Searchers" and "Hannibal" is pretty far down there. But if there is going to be such a thing, the smartly cast and well-crafted "Bone Tomahawk" fills the bill nicely.

Kurt Russell is flinty Franklin Hunt, the sheriff of a small, sunburnt town on the edge of the Western frontier who leads a posse into hostile territory to rescue his deputy (Evan Jonigkeit), the town doctor (Lili Simmons) and a strange drifter (David Arquette) from the clutches of a tribe of renegade American Indians. Now, this isn't just any tribe but one that has turned into a clan of cave-dwelling cannibals called troglodytes. (Seemingly added to blunt charges of racism, an Indian character named the Professor arrives early on to explain that these guys are no longer Indian and are just evil.)

Rounding out Franklin's group is a strong cast that includes Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins and Patrick Wilson.

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First-time director S. Craig Zahler is more concerned with the Western elements than the horror and, surprisingly, he avoids camp completely. When the violence comes, it's brutal, but much of the film's far too leisurely 132-minute running time is devoted to this not-so-Wild-Bunch's bonding on the trail, something that may make viewers in search of cinematic shock antsy.

Yet these actors, along with the script's undertow of suspense and dark humor about Manifest Destiny and stereotypical Western tropes, make it work.
Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Labyrinth of Lies
⋆⋆½ out of four stars • Rating: R for a sexual situation, brief disturbing images and stories about Holocaust atrocities. • Theater: Edina. In German with subtitles.

In postwar Germany, young people were shielded from the atrocities carried out by their parents, neighbors and bosses. It seems stranger than fiction that Nazi crimes against humanity could be systematically buried, but here's a movie with this issue at its center — and it's based on a true story.

Johann (Alexander Fehling) is a young prosecutor who takes on the case of an Auschwitz survivor who has recognized a neighborhood teacher as a brutal S.S. guard. In the film, Johann is blocked at every turn. The statute of limitations has run out for Nazi crimes, with the exception of murder. His associates were either Nazis themselves or they'd prefer to remain willfully ignorant of the barbarity. And the entire system is controlled by a government filled with former Nazi party members.

But Johann won't be dissuaded. The more he learns, the more obsessed he becomes with getting justice.

After hearing so many sickening stories, he sees everyone as a potential suspect. "Labyrinth of Lies," Germany's submission for the Academy Awards, is certainly worthy, but the movie's methods aren't always sound. Nearly every scene is marred by an occasionally maudlin score and a tendency toward cliches.

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Nevertheless, "Labyrinth of Lies" is an eye-opening story about the importance of seeking the truth — even when it's complicated, ugly and buried beneath years of secrecy and deceit.
Stephanie Merry, Washington Post

Photo by Scott Everett White Kurt Russell stars in "Bone Tomahawk.î
Kurt Russell in “Bone Tomahawk.” (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Alexander Fehling in "Labyrinth of Lies." (Heike Ullrich/Sony Pictures Classics) ORG XMIT: 1174660
Alexander Fehling in “Labyrinth of Lies.” (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
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