love upstream movie review

Love Upstream

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Kimberly-Sue Murray (Charlotte) Steve Lund (Rob) Nadine Whiteman (Tina) Jeff Teravainen (Mike Abbott) Tina Jung (Mallory) Morgan David Jones (Doug Forth) Tenika Davis (Sasha) Sangita Patel (Monica) Jeremy Walmsley (Ben) Jennifer Gibson (Jane)

Bill Corcoran

Author Charlotte, a Chicago city girl heads to the wilderness of Minnesota to write her new book. Her guide, Rob, doubts Charlotte's skills. However, they realize they have more in common than not - and find themselves falling in love.

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Love upstream.

Directed by William Corcoran

When Ingrid, a successful Chicago author, moves to the Minnesota lakes to write a book on wilderness survival, she gets more than just another bestseller; she finds peace, a new sense of independence, and a connection with her handsome wilderness guide, Rob.

Kimberly-Sue Murray Steve Lund Jeff Teravainen Nadine Whiteman Tina Jung Sarah Dodd Hannah Galway Morgan David Jones Jeremy Walmsley

Director Director

William Corcoran

Producers Producers

Neil Bregman Adam Gowland

Writer Writer

Lauren Balson Carter

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Tom Berry Breanne Laplante Sebastian Battro Suzanne Chapman Louisa Cadywould

Reel One Entertainment CME Spring Productions

Releases by Date

25 mar 2021, 07 may 2021, 22 aug 2021, 12 aug 2023, releases by country.

• TV L SparkTV

85 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Michelle 🎄📚 MichelleBookAddict ★★★

Steve with a beard ♥️

Review by gabstar ★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Love the cast, cinematography, scenery, storyline, soundtrack, camera angles, dialogue,costume designs, pace, tone, sound effects,transitions,chemistry between the 2 protagonists,ending. 

This is a 2021 Canadian TV movie, romance, comedy. 

It felt like a cringy hallmark movie but it just a TV movie. 

Love the strangers to friends to fake dating ( pretends to be a prince to ward of her ex-boyfriend)to lovers. 

Trailer shows too many scenes from the movie. 

Filming locations are:

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Herkimer Apartments - 86 Herkimer St, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (Charlotte's apartment building)

Grand Tappattoo Resort, 30 Tapatoo Rd., Seguin, Ontario, Canada (credits)

Review by NotASexyVamp ★½

After feeling like I was on the mend yesterday, I woke up today in absolute agony. Waking up, I saw my mum had just started watching this on the TV and was in too much pain to change it to anything else, so sat down and watched this while waiting for painkillers to take effect.

It's fine. Not in the top tier of this kind of made for TV romcom but not really offensive either. Never really bought the love story and the plot takes a number of insane jumps to get to where it needs to be. Went to the bathroom for a moment and missed a major plot detail, forget how weird it is to watch something on…

Review by jess ★★

I’m too busy being FAT and mannish

Review by djjammasterh ½

The most interesting part of this was the person that stole all the canoes, like how????? Please I’m begging for information

Review by Rafael Silva ★★★★

Great movie.

I think this was one of the most balanced rom coms when the storyline involves them living in total different places. I wish we actually had experienced that week in the wilderness.

I liked how both the protagonists didn’t tried to change one another but to try find a way to work without losing any of their personalities and also that is proven when they both agreed to spend equal time in the city and in the countryside. 

The only thing that bothered me was that I think they left some plots unfinished, like the male lead dad and his brother were nowhere to be seen in the final scenes specially when his brother started dated the female…

Review by syfygirl ★★★★

A writer, nature and a hot guy? Sign me up yes and please

Review by han 🌷

marking this as watched because the 3 minute trailer showed literally every plot point, start to finish, down to the key moments of dialogue.

- exposition (uh-oh, city girl author is without a new contract) - rising action (cute wilderness man teaches her how to nature, takes her on cute nature dates, gets ideas for new book) - climax ( it will never work between us, our lives are too different) - falling action (publishes her book, nature man's friend asks if he's read it, he purchases the last seat on the plane to the Big City) - resolution (she shows up right as he's about to leave because she just had to find him, "I love you and I will…

Review by Pete Baran ★★

Its a kayaking love story with a) city girl writer who has the wrong boots for the country, b) a failing business c) a misunderstanding. The first ten MINUTES where the writer of a successful relationship book gets dumped feels a little harsher than these usually are.

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The TV Rom Com Movie Review

Love Upstream (2021)

"no one reinvented the wheel here, but...".

Love Upstream Kimberly Sue-Murray, Steve Lund

A found summary:

"Author Charlotte, a Chicago city girl, heads to the wilderness of Minnesota to write her new book. Her guide, Rob, doubts Charlotte's skills. However, they realize they have more in common than not... and find themselves falling in love."

You might have noticed that romantic comedies tend to be a bit formulaic. Oh, really? So what is it that makes one stand out from the others, even as it adheres pretty close to the same old formulas? Beats me. But Love Upstream seemed just a wee bit more watchable than others of its kind. I can't quite put a finger on why.

No one reinvented the wheel here, but there are a few small deviations from the standard template. City girl Murray goes into the wilderness, but it turns out she's from Idaho and is not unfamiliar with this sort of thing. Wilderness guy Lund was a city boy at birth. He grew up in Chicago and only came to the great outdoors after graduating. Now he runs a wilderness camp with his married couple friends and is fed up with knucklehead tourists.

Murray, the relationship expert, is ditched by her boyfriend early on and so can't write about love for a while. She takes a foray to where the wild things are with the notion of doing a Thoreau thing - or whatever - and writing about it. Lund sees her as just another spoiled tourist, but the struggling camp needs the revenue her extended stay will bring in. So he's all over it.

Some blossoming feelings and a big misunderstanding later and they've decided to split their time between the wilds and the city and probably headed off to pick a china pattern.

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When Ingrid, a successful Chicago author, moves to the Minnesota lakes to write a book on wilderness survival, she gets more than just another bestseller; she finds peace, a new sense of independence, and a connection with her handsome wilderness guide, Rob.

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LOVE UPSTREAM

Author Charlotte, a Chicago city girl heads to the wilderness of Minnesota to write her new book. Her guide, Rob, doubts Charlotte’s skills. However, they realize they have more in common than not – and find themselves falling in love.

Love Upstream

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When Ingrid, a successful Chicago author, moves to the Minnesota lakes to write a book on wilderness survival, she gets more than just another bestseller; she finds peace, a new sense of independence, and a connection with her handsome wilderness guide, Rob.

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• 1 hr 25 min
• 6.2   (619)

When Ingrid, a successful New York author, moves to the Oregon outback to write a book on wilderness survival, she gets more than just another bestseller; she finds peace, a new sense of independence, and a connection with her handsome wilderness guide, Rob.

Love Upstream is a 2021 tv movie with a runtime of 1 hour and 25 minutes. It has received moderate reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 6.2.

• Genres TV Movie Comedy Romance
• Cast Kimberly-Sue Murray Steve Lund Nadine Whiteman
• Director William Corcoran
• Release Date 2021
• MPAA Rating TV-G
• Runtime 1 hr 25 min
• Language English
• IMDB Rating 6.2   (619)

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Love Upstream (2021) Stream and Watch Online

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Want to watch ' Love Upstream ' on your TV, phone, or tablet? Discovering a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or view the William Corcoran-directed movie via subscription can be a challenge, so we here at Moviefone want to do the heavy lifting. Below, you'll find a number of top-tier streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription alternatives - along with the availability of 'Love Upstream' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into the nitty-gritty of how you can watch 'Love Upstream' right now, here are some finer points about the Reel One Entertainment CME Spring Productions romance flick. Released August 22nd, 2021, 'Love Upstream' stars Kimberly-Sue Murray , Steve Lund , Jeff Teravainen , Nadine Roden The G movie has a runtime of about 1 hr 25 min, and received a user score of 66 (out of 100) on TMDb, which put together reviews from 16 respected users. Interested in knowing what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "When Ingrid a successful Chicago author moves to the Minnesota lakes to write a book on wilderness survival she gets more than just another bestseller she finds peace a new sense of independence and a connection with her handsome wilderness guide Rob" 'Love Upstream' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on VIX .

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When Ingrid, a successful Chicago author, moves to the Minnesota lakes to write a book on wilderness survival, she gets more than just another bestseller; she finds peace, a new sense of independence, and a connection with her handsome wilderness guide, Rob.

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March 25, 2021,

William Corcoran

Kimberly-Sue Murray, Steve Lund, Jeff Teravainen, Nadine Whiteman, Tina Jung, Sarah Dodd

Comedy, Romance, TV Movie

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When Charlotte, a successful author from Chicago, moves to the Minnesota outback to write a book on wilderness survival, she gets more than just another bestseller; she finds peace, a new sense of independence, and a connection with her handsome wilderness guide, Rob.

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'The Dead Don’t Hurt' is a tender love story and a subversive Western

Justin Chang

Viggo Mortensen plays Holger Olsen in The Dead Don't Hurt. Marcel-Zyskind/Shout! Studios hide caption

One of the many charms of The Dead Don’t Hurt is that you can’t immediately tell whether it’s trying to be an old-fashioned Western or a revisionist one. It has a lot of familiar genre signposts: men riding horses across rugged landscapes, a bloody shootout in a saloon, and two actors, Viggo Mortensen and Vicky Krieps , who bring traditional movie-star charisma to a tender love story.

But at times the film feels casually subversive. The first of those horsemen we see is not a cowboy but a knight in shining armor — a figure out of a child’s fantastical dream. And then there’s the way the movie plays with time: That shootout, which technically happens at the end of the story, is instead shown at the very beginning.

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What a classic '50s western can teach us about the hollywood blacklist.

Mortensen, who wrote and directed the movie, trusts us to know the Western well enough by now that he can play around with the form without losing our attention. He isn’t attempting a radical reinvention of the genre, but he is using its conventions to tell a different and politically resonant kind of story.

It’s especially significant that the two lead characters are both immigrants. Mortensen stars as Holger Olsen, a wandering Danish-born carpenter who finds himself in San Francisco in the 1860s. That’s where he meets Vivienne, a French Canadian florist, played by Krieps, who’s every bit as independent-minded as he is.

Vicky Krieps is a French Canadian florist in The Dead Don't Hurt. Marcel Zyskind/Shout! Studios hide caption

The two fall in love, and Vivienne moves with Olsen to a dusty Nevada town called Elk Flats. Because the story is told out of sequence, we already know some bad things are headed their way, but for now, the mood is light and even comical as Vivienne grouchily sets about tidying their wooden shack of a home.

Vivienne isn’t one for domestic confinement, and she soon gets a job bartending at the saloon, where she catches the eye of one of the nastiest customers in town: Weston Jeffries, played by Solly McLeod, the brutish son of a wealthy rancher. Meanwhile, with the Civil War under way, Olsen decides to join the Union Army, to Vivienne’s fury.

One of the best things about The Dead Don’t Hurt is that it honors Vivienne’s grit and capability while also acknowledging how alone and vulnerable she is in this hostile, male-dominated environment. Several months after Olsen leaves, Vivienne gives birth to a baby boy under circumstances that are shrouded in some mystery. Years later, Olsen returns to Vivienne and the child, but it isn’t an entirely happy reunion, and they face a grim reckoning with the town and some of its most corrupt individuals.

Mortensen made his feature directing debut with the 2020 drama Falling , in which he played a gay man trying to take care of his ailing, bigoted father. With The Dead Don’t Hurt , he uses a story set in the past to comment on issues that are still with us in the present, from male violence against women to the complexity of immigrant relationships with their adopted country. Even as Vivienne embraces her life as an American settler, she proudly clings to her French Canadian roots, sometimes dreamily recalling the stories her mother told her about Joan of Arc — an obvious hero for a woman trying to forge her own unorthodox path through life.

As a director, Mortensen handles the material with quiet assurance; even when he cuts back and forth through time, he never loses the narrative thread. He also gives a gently grounded performance as Olsen, a decent man who sometimes makes impulsive, reckless decisions.

But this is ultimately Krieps’ movie. She’s often played women chafing against their proscribed stations in life, in dramas like Phantom Thread and Corsage . Here, she captures the indomitable spirit of a woman who’s making her way in a strange land and is determined to find and nurture beauty in even the harshest circumstances.

‘The Dead Don’t Hurt’: Viggo Mortensen Will Make You Fall Back in Love With Westerns

SAVE A HORSE

The Oscar-nominated actor wrote, directed, and stars in “The Dead Don’t Hurt,” a gentle, plaintive Western that proves the genre’s enduring vitality.

Nick Schager

Entertainment Critic

Shout Studios

While the 21st-century movie landscape has, to date, been dominated by superheroes, sequels, and animated fare, Westerns never go totally out of style. Offering battles between good and evil, right and wrong, that speak to issues of sacrifice, resilience, selfishness, regret, treachery, duty, individualism, and togetherness, they’re rugged vehicles for timeless American themes, and all of those concerns are in strong supply in The Dead Don’t Hurt . The story of an immigrant man and woman trying to make a life for themselves on the unforgiving plains, writer/director/star Viggo Mortensen ’s sophomore behind-the-camera effort occasionally stumbles along its well-worn path. Still, courtesy of his and Vicky Krieps’ excellent lead performances, it delivers moving measures of the genre’s beauty, brutality, and sorrow.

The Dead Don’t Hurt , which hits theaters May 31, begins at the end, with Danish carpenter Holger Olsen (Mortensen) sitting at the deathbed of his beloved French-Canadian partner Vivienne Le Coudy (Krieps), holding her hand and closing her eyes as she dreams her last dream of a knight in shining armor riding a horse through a sunlit forest. Vivienne is buried in a grave beside their remote home, and as Holger tends to this forlorn work, he’s watched by his young son Vincent (Atlas Green). The two are soon visited by riders led by Rudolph Schiller (Danny Huston), mayor of the nearby town, who informs him that six men have recently been murdered, and that a suspect (Alex Breaux) has been arrested and is set to stand trial. During their conversation, it’s revealed that Holger is the sheriff, and the look on his face upon hearing this news implies that he knows they’ve pinned the crime on a patsy—a fact that we know as well, given the preceding depiction of the massacre.

The Dead Don’t Hurt ’s real fiend is Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod), son of local bigshot Alfred (Garret Dillahunt), although the particulars of everyone’s true nature and allegiances are revealed slowly by Mortensen, whose script flip-flops uneasily between various time periods. The film is not especially lucid at outset, and the confusion sown by its formal construction goes some way toward undercutting its initial power. Nonetheless, it gradually gains its footing as things become clearer, not only about Holger but Vivienne, who’s raised on stories about Joan of Arc and grows up wanting to fight like her father. In 1860s San Francisco as a tough and self-possessed free spirit, the adult Vivienne rebuffs the controlling advances of a wealthy aristocrat, and at a dockside market—where she formally dumps her suitor—she catches the attention of Holger, who sees in her a fetching mixture of loveliness and strength.

Vicky Krieps

Mortensen’s crosscutting between different pasts and the present is disorienting and a tad clunky, and yet his patient pacing, plaintive score, and evocative cinematography (by Marcel Zyskind) conjure an affecting mood of gentle longing, tentative happiness, and looming danger. It’s not long after their first meeting that Holger shows Vivienne the dusty and unimpressive abode and land that he calls home. Despite its general dreariness, epitomized by its lack of flowers (which she previously sold on the streets of San Francisco), Vivienne moves in and sets about transforming it into a suitable residence for them both—a mission aided by Holger, a taciturn man whose fondness for Vivienne is unmistakable and highlighted by his acquisition of materials for a garden and a barn.

Ambling along, The Dead Don’t Hurt details the burgeoning bond between Holger and Vivienne and also the dynamics of their outpost locale, where Rudolph is the mayor and the owner of the bank, and is in cahoots with Alfred to snap up the majority of the surrounding land as well as the saloon co-owned by Alan Kendall (W. Earl Brown). The wild card in their plans is Weston, whom McLeod embodies as a standard-issue man-in-black rogue with no morality to constrain his itchy trigger finger. Like everyone in the film, he’s an archetype first and a distinctive character second. Nonetheless, he exudes engaging villainous personality, which can similarly be said about the rest of these figures, many of them played by veterans of David Milch’s peerless Deadwood .

At the trial of the aforementioned accused killer, a judge (Ray McKinnon) uses the butt of a pistol as a gavel, and The Dead Don’t Hurt extends that metaphor by proving, with its latter half, that 19th-century Western justice often came via violence. Even so, there’s just as much tenderness as viciousness in Mortensen’s film. Moreover, there’s considerable sadness once Holger opts to enlist in the Union Army, thereby leaving Vivienne to fend for herself. While Krieps’ protagonist is far from a wallflower (she works at the saloon and singlehandedly builds up her ranch), this abandonment leaves her in a precarious position. Her ensuing encounters with Weston underscore that point, and come to complicate her relationship with Holger, who years later returns from the war to find that his home and wife are not quite as he remembers them. In the aftermath of his reunion with Vivienne, he must come to terms with the reality of a new and thorny situation created by his own actions.

Remorse, grief, and a desire for revenge all conspire to fuel The Dead Don’t Hurt ’s finale, but Mortensen refuses to cast things in wholly conventional gunslinger terms. Rather, a heavy, melancholic air hangs over the proceedings, lending it its unique tenor. Further contributing to that mood are the performances of Mortensen and Krieps; he silent and kind, and she reserved and stout, the two make for a winning pair, suggesting through heartfelt glances and gestures the bedrock warmth and understanding that unites them in this barren and inhospitable region. Though Vivienne’s death flirts with being a hackneyed plot device designed to facilitate a vengeful finale, Mortensen goes light on clichéd fireworks, and his conclusion and coda boast a wistfulness that’s more satisfying than the nasty showdown to which his story has been, since its midway point, inevitably building.

In that regard, The Dead Don’t Hurt manages to straddle a fine line between the familiar and the unexpected. Overcoming its opening temporal-fragmentation missteps, it ultimately resonates as a stirring portrait of the complex fight for survival in the Old West.

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Up Used To Be My Favorite Pixar Movie, But After Watching It Again, I’m Not So Sure

The adventure isn't the same anymore.

It’s been 15 years since fans first learned “adventure is out there” with Carl and Russell in Pixar’s Up. Like many fans of the animation studio, I keep a running list of what I consider their best movies, and Up has always remained in my top 5. After rewatching the movie to celebrate the exciting anniversary, however, I’m not so sure it deserves such a high spot in my personal ranking of the best Pixar movies. 

Up ’s release in 2009 was a monumental milestone moment as it marked the animation studio’s tenth feature-length film. Since then, they’ve churned out some of the best family movies and are about to do it again when their project 2024 movie schedule Inside Out 2 hits theaters on June 14th. With almost two dozen films released after it, it’s no surprise the adventure movie has shifted in my personal rankings. However, it’s not just the studio’s iconic filmography that is responsible for my opinion changing, but also the plot of Up that often gets overlooked when fans talk about it. 

Up Used To Be My Favorite Because Of The Love Story 

There have been a lot of heartbreaking opening scenes in Pixar movies , but the beginning montage in Up has always ranked high on the unofficial list. Despite making me cry every time I watch it , getting to witness Carl and Ellie go from adventurous children to a loving, married couple is always a treat. 

It’s Carl’s love for Ellie that has always made me adore the movie, and it's why I’ve thought so highly of it for so many years. Few male characters would go to the lengths he did to ensure his wife got what she always wanted, even in the afterlife. The best part is that Ellie didn’t even need to reach Paradise Falls for her life to be worth it. She found adventure in the simple things she experienced with Carl, and that is somehow even more romantic than his grand gesture. 

Beyond the romantic love story, Up has always tugged on my heartstrings thanks to the unlikely parental relationship Carl finds himself in with Russell and Dug. Though he’s reluctant at first, he ends up finding a place in his heart to welcome them into the next chapter of his life, and how could you not love that?

But After Rewatching, I Realized I Don’t Really Care For Most Of The Plot 

There is no denying that Up remains one of Pixar’s best love stories, however, it’s only one small piece of the actual plot of the movie. When I sat down to rewatch it, I completely forgot about the action part that happens after Carl crosses paths with his childhood hero and explorer, Charles Muntz. Despite initially being ecstatic about meeting him, it becomes clear that Muntz is not a good person and, instead, is one of Pixar's most horrible villains . 

Thanks to Dug’s reckless nature, Muntz manages to capture Kevin, the local bird he’s been after for years, and he sets Carl’s house on fire in the process. Ultimately, Carl chooses to save his house instead of helping Russell save Kevin, which creates a rift between the pair. It isn’t until he learns that Ellie saw their life together as an adventure that Carl realizes he’s made a mistake and springs into action. 

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The rest of the film follows Carl as he faces off against Muntz in the hopes of rescuing Kevin and keeping Russell safe. I know the movie begins with footage of the explorer’s endeavors, and it’s fitting for Carl to go on a life-threatening adventure in the wake of everything he’s learned, but it still feels slightly out of place for a movie that moves at a much slower pace for the majority of its runtime. 

After watching, I felt blindsided by the sudden genre and pacing shift, which was the catalyst for me wondering why I’d held Up on a pedestal for so long. If I wanted to watch an animated action movie, I would have chosen to watch The Incredibles or even Cars 2. Not to mention, the resolution between Carl and Muntz is quite dark, with the latter falling to his demise because of his hyperfocused goal of capturing Kevin. 

I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving aspects of Up, like the love story and Carl’s relationship with Russell and Dug. However, I can’t call it one of my favorite Pixar movies anymore since I don’t like a third of the actual story. The shift in my opinion was shocking at the moment, but as I’ve reflected, it’s begun to make sense. It’s only natural for my position on the movie to change, especially when re-considering the story as a whole as well as the impressive lineup of films that have come since its release. 

It might not rank in my top 5 anymore, but it’s still a Pixar movie worth rewatching from time to time. You can stream Up with a Disney+ subscription , which is also where you can see the brand-new short that marked Ed Asner's final performance as the beloved Carl. 

Danielle Bruncati is a writer and pop culture enthusiast from Southern California. She recently earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Television Writing and Producing from a top film school. While she works tirelessly on her portfolio of original scripts, she is also a Freelance Writer for CinemaBlend. Danielle watches just about everything, but her favorite shows and movies often land in the YA and romantic comedy spaces. When she's not writing, she can be found wandering around Disneyland or hanging out with her laughter-hating corgi. 

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‘Handling the Undead’ Review: When the Dead Don’t Die

A zombie movie is wrapped in a gentle tale of mourning and love.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

The yearning to reverse death is baked into human nature, a longing to defeat evil, to set things right, to conquer mortality. In “Handling the Undead,” that desire is the fruit of great love. Who hasn’t, upon losing someone, wished desperately for just one more chance to see them, hold them, tell them how much they mean?

“Handling the Undead” has an earnest and simple premise that sounds like enough for a whole thriller: One day, out of nowhere, with little explanation, the dead are reanimated en masse. The film is unconcerned with the global ramifications of this phenomenon; instead, its focus is on three groups of Oslo residents whose lives are upended by the event.

There is Mahler (Bjorn Sundquist) and his daughter, Anna (Renate Reinsve), a single mother whose young son died some time ago. The two of them, from the looks of it, have never recovered from the loss — Mahler weeps on his grandson’s grave, while Anna tries to bury her anguish in work. Meanwhile, Tora (Bente Borsum) grieves her partner, Elisabet (Olga Damani), who has died after their long life together. And David (an outstanding Anders Danielsen Lie ), an aspiring comic, is shocked when his beloved wife, Eva (Bahar Pars), is killed in a car accident, barely knowing how to keep living with their two teenagers.

This is merely the beginning of the story. But what follows is simple, and the director Thea Hvistendahl wisely takes her time getting to any real action. Instead, with a slow-moving camera and plenty of filtered sunlight, she conjures a dreamlike state, the sense of hanging between planes of existence that tends to accompany those who grieve. There are times when the film veers too near the maudlin for comfort, but it always finds its way back to something spare and meaningful. What would you do, the story gently asks, if your fondest and most impossible wish was granted, and you realized it wasn’t at all what you’d hoped it would be? How far does real love go to maintain a connection with those whose time has come?

Hvistendahl wrote the screenplay with John Ajvide Lindqvist, the author of the novel on which the movie is based (as well as the quiet vampire story “Let The Right One In”). The drama borrows from zombie movies, but for something distinctly unzombielike. What’s under examination is the strange permeable barrier between life and death, and the way it appears to those who are left behind to deal with the fallout. In exploring it with a hint of mysticism, “Handling the Undead” joins a rich variety of entertainment, like “Fringe,” “The Leftovers,” “The Good Place” and “Six Feet Under.”

It’s also a foundational plank in the “Avengers” films, which take as one of their major plot points the notion of what’s called “the snap.” A villain manages to exterminate half of earth’s population, only to have the process reversed five years later. Outside of a few TV show plotlines, the Marvel Cinematic Universe — being big-budget Hollywood entertainment — has never really managed to reckon in a satisfying way with the chaos of a world where the dead are made alive again. Instead, the logistical nightmares and odd inevitable grief of the reversal (what if you remarried, and then your spouse suddenly returned?) are quickly dealt with in favor of defeating the next big bad.

“Handling the Undead” also eschews any of the practical questions, but with a more humanist intent: to lean single-mindedly into its characters’ emotions — and also its eerie mythical resonance. It’s a somber film, underplaying its potential for sentimentality. But it does have an oddly cheeky beginning. As the camera slowly moves through Mahler’s drab flat, we hear a choir singing in English. “God so loved the world, so loved the world,” they begin, in the British composer Bob Chilcott’s choral setting of John 3:16 . Both verse and song end with the promise that whoever believes in God’s son, Jesus, “should not perish but have everlasting life, everlasting, everlasting life.”

The verse and its text are such a cultural touchstone that the oddly macabre implications can be lost. It’s meant to be somewhat metaphorical, referring to an eternity spent in the presence of God, but on the surface it’s something much weirder: life that never ceases, that simply goes on and on, forever and ever, without end.

There’s something very terrifying in that premise (just ask vampire movies), and that’s what “Handling the Undead” taps into. There’s an old truism that it’s death that gives life meaning, that mortality is what makes every moment count. But truisms become truisms because they are true, and when a life ends, it changes the people it once touched. It’s cruel and wrong to suggest that death is good — but it’s kind, at least, to recall what death can mean to the living.

Handling the Undead Not rated. In Norwegian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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In a Violent Nature

When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime, his body is resurre... Read all When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it. When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it.

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• 71 Metascore

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• Trivia Filming began in central Ontario, Canada, near the Kawartha Lakes area, before moving to Algoma district in Ontario, in 2021. It released three years later, in January of 2024.
• Goofs Nearly every scene involves a rental cabin or Forest Ranger Lodge / museum, and implies some kind of major roadway with extremely accessible driveways right up to said cabins. However, half the movie seems to look very remote, such as POV tracking of either the villain hiking endlessly through woods or fields, or a young person being pursued and getting lost in the woods; more than likely, all these places would be much more closely situated to each other, and even in darkness the clear driveways and road would easily findable, for use as a guide.

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• May 28, 2024
• May 31, 2024 (United States)
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• Kawartha Lakes, Ontario, Canada (set locations)
• Low Sky Productions
• Zygote Pictures
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• Runtime 1 hour 34 minutes

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‘Filmlovers!’ Review: Arnaud Desplechin Gets Back on Track With a Breezy but Thoughtful Ode to Cinephilia

Spryly mixing documentary with another autofictional outing for his recurring alter ego Paul Dédalus, the French auteur's latest is welcome comfort viewing after some wayward recent films.

By Guy Lodge

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He certainly asks plenty of questions. A simple but effective highlight of the film’s documentary portion is a series of vox pop-style interviews with regular, unidentified cinemagoers, giving frequently idiosyncratic answers to straightforward prompts, from the first film they remember seeing to where in the theater they prefer to sit. One young woman’s favorites range from the “Mission: Impossible” franchise to “The Young Girls of Rochefort,” while a teenage girl reflects on how her existing passion for “West Side Story” was bolstered by Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake, to the point of inspiring her to write musicals of her own. Given the audience-minded focus here, it’s fitting that these voices are as prominently featured as the film’s interviews with comparably learned figures, among them critic-turned-filmmaker Kent Jones (a past collaborator with Desplechin on the film “Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian”) and literary critic Shoshana Felman.

“Filmlovers!” touches on key points of film history — puckishly stating that “America invented the first films, but France found cinema,” as it traces the medium’s early evolution from Edison to the Lumière brothers — and film theory, touching on ideas advanced by André Bazin and Stanley Cavell, but its tone remains conversational rather than didactic. The study of film, like film itself, is presented as a buffet from which the spectator can pick and choose as they will. In a lovely dramatized scene that bridges the film’s fiction and non-fiction conceits, a young cinephile gets chatting at a café to famed philosopher Sandra Laugier (playing herself), who echoes Desplechin’s accommodating perspective: Asked what constitutes “reality” in cinema, she genially replies, “If you ask the question, you’re awake.”

Lest this all feel a bit too loose-fittingly general, Desplechin takes illuminating diversions into more particular fixations of his, including his forever haunted relationship as a viewer to Claude Lanzmann’s seminal documentary “Shoah,” and his ongoing grief over the untimely death of Indigenous American actor Misty Upham, who worked with the director on the aforementioned “Jimmy P.” As a friend and collaborator, he mourns Upham herself; as a spectator, he mourns the films she never got to make. These sidebars are selective but not arbitrary, instead encapsulating Desplechin’s efforts to maintain a consciousness as a film-viewer that stands apart from his identity as a filmmaker, even as one inevitably informs the other.

It’s an experience bigger, if no less formative, than raptly watching Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” on a tiny television set while his family bickers over lunch. That sense of naïve wonder may be lost by the time he’s a college-age lothario mansplaining Coppola to a potential girlfriend, but not his reverence for what he watches. “Filmlovers!” cheerfully makes the point that we grow with cinema, and cinema with us. On the evidence of this fizzy little film, Desplechin’s not done growing yet.

Reviewed at Soho Screening Rooms, London, May 11, 2024. In Cannes Film Festival — Special Screenings. Running time: 88 MIN. (Original title: "Spectateurs!")

• Production: (Documentary — France) A CG Cinéma, Scala Films, Arte France Cinéma, Hill Valley co-production with the participation of Chanel, Arte France, Les Films du Losange in association with Indéfilms 12. (World sales: Les Films du Losange, Paris.) Producer: Charles Gillibert. Co-producer: Eric Nebot.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Arnaud Desplechin. Camera: Noé Bach. Editor: Laurence Briaud. Music: Grégoire Hetzel.
• With: Milo Machado-Graner, Louis Birman, Sam Chemoul, Salif Cisse, Kent Jones, Mathieu Amalric. (French, English dialogue)

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘In Good Hands 2’ on Netflix, a Mawkish Sequel to a Turkish Terminal-Illness Weepie

Where to stream:.

• In Good Hands 2

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Netflix says In Good Hands 2 is “the sequel to the 2022 hit In Good Hands ,” which, well, duh, it’s right there in the title, but what exactly does “hit” mean? Did it nudge its way into the Netflix Top 10 ? Did it earn an international audience? Was it widely watched in its native country, Turkey? Who knows. Yet some Netflix bean counter determined that it got enough eyeballs on it to justify investing in a sequel despite the fact that the first film’s plot killed off its protagonist – it was the story of a single mother with a terminal illness who tracks down her caddish ex and drops the bomb that he’s the biological father of her six-year-old son. The movie was a somewhat watchable melodrama with some wacky buts, but wasn’t quite worthy of a recommendation, so here’s hoping this continuation of the story rights the ship a bit.

IN GOOD HANDS 2 : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Melisa died a year ago, and her son and his father are living sadly every after. Young Can (Mert Ege Ak) lives with his dad, Firat (Kaan Urgancioglu), and the kid has pretty much everything he could ever want – materially speaking, anyway. And even that has its limitations, because out in Can’s elaborate backyard clubhouse, the kid’s building a time machine so he can go back and tell his mother he loves her in the hopes that doing so will cure her and she won’t die. Please note, this might be heartbreaking if it wasn’t such a capitalization-necessary Hokey Movie Premise, but all we can do is soldier on. Can and Firat are struggling. The kid acts out at school and the other students tease him. Meanwhile, Firat deals with his emotions by participating in a not-particularly-funny running joke that requires him to drink way too much and wake up on the lawn the next morning. There’s affection between Firat and Can, but the kid has yet to call him “Dad.” He’s just not there yet, and that’s understandable.

Our two dudes are sitting in a cafe one day when they meet Sezen (Melisa Pamuk). Actually, let me rephrase that – they’re being loud and annoying her and she tells them off in a rather assholish manner that involves telling Can that time machines don’t exist. A rather audacious introduction it seems, but movie characters like this don’t just drop in with their hard pragmatism then drop out. No, she turns up later when Firat is blasted-drunk at a bar and she gets him out of there before he further embarrasses himself. They form a connection because she used to be like Firat, but now is a teetotaler; on top of that, she’s sad because she misses her brother, who went to college in the States, and if that’s not quite as bad as losing the mother of your child to terminal illness, well, close enough, I guess. Firat and Sezen go out on a little date and when they end up taking their clothes off back at her place, he sees a scar on her back and they share their sadnesses. Everyone has scars, y’know, be they literal or symbolic.

Meanwhile, we can’t help but wonder what’s up with Can when the screenplay isn’t interested in h- er, I mean, while Firat is going out drinking and dating and suchlike. Well, I think he’s being babysat by Melisa’s friend Fatos (Ezgi Senler), a character from the previous film who exists in this film to do whatever it needs her to do, because she apparently doesn’t have a job or a life of her own? At least she occasionally says almost-funny things. Anyway, Can isn’t so sure about letting a new mother figure into his life – again, he’s just not there yet, and that’s understandable – until the ridiculous scene where Sezen visits him at school and douses his bully with a hose. I mean, the bully just stands there and lets himself be drenched instead of, you know, moving out of the way. So Sezen’s winning over Can a bit. But what about Firat’s drinking, and his insecurity, and the mother issues the screenplay tosses in haphazardly? He’s got lots of stuff to work through, and one can’t help but wonder another thing: Will this movie include the scene where the alcoholic participates in the ceremonial Dumping Of The Booze Bottles? NO SPOILERS but, yeah, probably. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I dunno, people were wise enough not to make Terms of Endearment 2 or Sweet December or Dying Younger (or Dying Even Younger ).

Performance Worth Watching: I liked Pamut’s performance in this movie – her charismatic screen presence transcends the lackluster material at times, but the hose scene (and frankly most of the third act) are too much of an uphill climb for anyone. 

Memorable Dialogue: Can gets literal and metaphorical when he confronts Firat: “You stink when you drink.”

Sex and Skin: None, really. The Revealing Of The Scars scene is very, very tame.

Our Take: The first movie had to drop in a whopper of an eyeroller of a soap-operatic third-act twist, and the sequel follows the same formula. I didn’t buy any of this implausible, sentimental drippery, and neither will you. Prior to that, In Good Hands 2 showed good intentions, establishing a dynamic that emphasized character development over plot, enough to encourage us to weather irritating scenes of child precociousness and overexaggerated drunkenness. There were moments where Firat, Can and Sezen felt like real people with real problems instead of movie characters with contrived problems, but ultimately, director Ketche and writer Hakan Bonomo (who also collaborated on the first film) opt for bloated melodrama instead of anything resembling reality.

Perhaps the film tries to do too much, incorporating romance into a father-son story, indulging a substance-abuse subplot, hinting at and eventually exploring Sezen’s trauma, dropping in Firat’s mother for a couple of scenes and doing whatever it does with the Fatos character (which is essentially nothing; her potential functionality as comic relief never yields any fruit). It’s admirable how Ketche aims for a poignant blend of comedy and drama, but seems uncertain as to how to achieve that. Does it want to be wacky? Does it want to be sexy? Does it want to explore ideas about grief, loss and redemption? The film’s ostensibly about Firat’s struggle to see himself as a worthy father, but that core idea is unfocused, and torpedoed by cliches (by the time we reach the moment where he delivers a drunken speech at a birthday party, you’ll be emotionally tuning out). Perhaps a more stripped-down approach would have worked, but In Good Hands 2 suffers the same fate as its predecessor: its many elements never come together as a watchable whole.  

Our Call: Second verse, pretty much the same as the first. SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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