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1/25/2025 0 Comments the substance
The first thing one needs to grasp about Coralie Fargeat is that her glaring lack of subtlety isn’t really a bug, but a feature. The French filmmaker tackles deeply loaded topics, but the point isn’t so much to generate fresh commentary as it is to probe their contours through a deliberately extremist form of cinematic language. That was certainly true of her debut feature Revenge - a straightforward take on toxic masculinity filtered through a modern exploitation lens - and it feels doubly applicable to her polarizing, Cannes-approved follow-up The Substance, a body horror parable which takes on aging and female beauty standards with all the delicacy of fishing with pipe bombs. You don’t have to like the end result, but you do have to acknowledge the particular game that Fargeat is playing.
Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, an Oscar-winning actress grappling with her faded stardom as she nears her 50th birthday. As the film opens, we see Elisabeth’s coral-pink star freshly laid on the Hollywood Walk of Fame… but the passage of time renders it cracked and weathered as indifferent pedestrians tread across it, spilling food and grinding out cigarettes on its terrazzo surface. As visual metaphors go, it’s so on-the-nose the screen might as well be halfway up your nostril, but the imagery proves boldly and thrillingly impactful all the same. Elisabeth has been reduced to hosting a cheesy morning aerobics show, but even that gets wrenched from her grasp as odious TV exec Harvey (Dennis Quaid - shot in ghoulish, funhouse mirror close-ups) informs her bluntly that the network needs to “go younger.” Eventually getting wind of a mysterious, black market drug known as “The Substance” that promises a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of oneself, Elisabeth injects herself with the activator serum (which looks like radioactive Mountain Dew) and proceeds to literally (and graphically) birth a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of herself (played by Margaret Qualley) from her backside directly onto the cold bathroom tile. This new version dubs herself “Sue” and quickly lands Elisabeth’s former aerobics gig with her impossibly perky bod (it feels like meta commentary that even an actress as attractive as Qualley can’t live up to the plot’s requirements - she openly admits she was fitted with a flawless set of prosthetic breasts), quickly rocketing to fame and fortune. But part of The Substance’s Faustian bargain is that Elisabeth and Sue have to trade-off every seven days (the inactive body just lies there like a nude meat sack, receiving intravenous nourishment). While the supplier’s disembodied voice insists that they “are one” and share a single consciousness, it isn’t long before Elisabeth and Sue have splintered into separate personas, each increasingly resentful of the other as they start to jockey for control. Both actresses are stellar - Qualley has solidified herself as a genuinely captivating, risk-taking talent - but Demi Moore is the true revelation. Even at the apex of her 90s stardom, Moore tended to feel like a passenger in hugely successful movies (Ghost, Indecent Proposal, A Few Good Men). Slightly bolder choices (such as GI Jane, The Scarlet Letter, and Striptease) largely backfired, eroding her bankability. There was no reason to think she possessed a performance of this caliber (or fury, or commitment) anywhere in her locker - let alone at age 60. Even the film’s detractors tend to concede that the sequence in which Elisabeth arranges a date with a dweebish former classmate, purely out of some desperate craving for validation - only to succumb to vicious self-loathing and self-doubt before she can even walk out the door - is a humdinger. Moore leaves everything she has on-screen, as if making a ferocious, final bid for immortality. It’s certainly no stretch to call it the defining performance of her career. “Media literacy” has become a lazy, catch-all criticism for modern cultural discourse, but in the case of The Substance, there’s been a gnawing, frustrating refusal - or inability - to engage with the film on its own terms (a similar issue dogged Shyamalan’s Trap, with viewers more intent on outsmarting the plot than simply enjoying the ride). What a tedious way to approach art, if you can’t fathom a frame of reference beyond the confines of your own reality! Fargeat’s film is too blunt to be considered allegorical, but it clearly isn’t concerned with tethering itself to real world logic (would a random aerobics program really instigate this level of carnal frenzy over Sue, to the point that she’s gazing upon herself on monolithic billboards erected outside her penthouse window? Unlikely, but then it ably serves Fargeat’s overarching purpose of maximizing Sue’s delectable flesh in all its taut, youthful glory). As the tenuous balance between the two lead characters starts to fray and Sue looks to stretch her time beyond the allotted seven days (which is paid back in accelerated aging to Elizabeth’s own body), the movie starts taking increasingly brazen swings, Fargeat’s fearlessness perhaps adopting a tinge of recklessness. Up to this point, The Substance feels like rapturously twisted entertainment… the result of an audacious director in full command of her craft, both on page and screen… but as the third act escalates, the film’s carefully calibrated fun-to-ick ratio begins to wobble. Sue is slated to host the network’s New Year’s Eve extravaganza, but as her own body starts to systematically break down, she makes the ill-fated decision to re-inject herself with the activator serum and, well… all hell breaks loose (and then some). Fargeat pushes the body horror to levels that would make even Cronenberg blush and the climax grows so resolutely bonkers (the screen literally becoming drenched in bodily fluids and viscera), it’s hard to know whether to howl with incredulous laughter or to simply wilt with antsy embarrassment. The film becomes a bit of an ordeal, frankly… and yet it’s hard to argue that Fargeat missteps. For better or for worse, she sees her vision through to its logical conclusion. Whether that makes The Substance a great (or even particularly good) film is open to debate… but it’s impossible to deny that Fargeat has produced the year’s most uncompromising and unapologetic work of horror. Like Elisabeth Sparkle herself, it’s rendered immortal.
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11/6/2024 0 Comments beetlejuice beetlejuice It could have been so much worse.
That may not seem like much of an endorsement, but the extent to which Tim Burton’s fastball has deserted him in the 21st century is so acute that the mere thought of him attempting to mount a legacy sequel to one of his certified, early-career bangers is enough to make one’s hair stand on end. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure remains Burton’s most entertaining film, Ed Wood his most accomplished, and Edward Scissorhands his most personal… and yet it’s his ghoulish 1988 oddity Beetlejuice that stands as arguably his most weirdly beloved - and quintessentially Burton-esque. Thirty-six years later, the film remains a joyously relentless hoot - and a refreshing reminder of a time when special effects had actual personality, utilized in service of a director’s visual style. Michael Keaton’s performance as the titular agent of chaos is a hand grenade of comedic energy, but the entire cast works in perfect concert with one another. The pacing over a mere 92 minutes is sublime. The movie really does feel like a minor miracle of sorts - one that would scarcely seem possible today. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is, to put it bluntly, a bit of an unholy mess - it feels as if three or four different sequel concepts that had been developed over the ensuing decades were simply mashed together into a single overstuffed shooting script. But the film wrings a lot of residual affection from its returning characters, and sees Burton at least occupying the general ballpark of his early glory days (even if he remains stationed along the outfield warning track). The opening credits attempt to evoke the original - from the town model to a retooled version of Danny Elfman’s iconic theme - but the nostalgia is tempered by how keenly one senses they’re watching a facsimile - an inferior imitation. Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has grown up to host a cheesy supernatural TV show called Ghost House, is estranged from her teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega, all withering scowls and eye-rolls), and feels deeply ambivalent about her simpering boyfriend/producer Rory (Justin Theroux) (for all her goth moroseness, Lydia was arguably the most grounded and relatable character in the original - it’s a little disappointing to see her adult self as more of a dysfunctional caricature). After getting word that her father Charles has died unexpectedly (Jeffrey Jones not returning for obvious reasons, which the movie goes out of its way to highlight winkingly - and perhaps a bit inappropriately), Lydia joins Astrid and stepmom Delia (Catherine O’Hara) at the old house in Wind River, Connecticut for the funeral. Without getting into the guts of the plot too deeply, let’s just say that Astrid ends up trapped in the Afterlife… and Lydia has to make a Faustian pact with Beetlejuice to save her. This is actually a great concept for a sequel - so it’s unclear why Burton and writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar feel so compelled to clutter the works with surplus subplots, such as Beetlejuice’s vengeful ex-wife (Monica Bellucci) randomly running amuck (Willem Dafoe is very funny as a scenery-chewing ghost cop, but he never once feels necessary). But then so much of the script lacks the fine-tuned elegance of the original. Beetlejuice’s return should be the equivalent of Lydia opening Pandora’s Box… and yet, in reality, he’s not safely tucked away - we find him freely chilling in the Afterlife, working a 9-to-5 job overseeing a bio-exorcist office. He still pines for Lydia, but has no apparent designs on rectifying his failure at the altar (he’s had over thirty years, after all)… the character is oddly purposeless, he simply exists in narrative stasis (Lydia, meanwhile, is suddenly stricken with hallucinations of the Juice, for reasons that are never really made clear). This is messy, first draft-type plot construction - the sort usually associated with a project hastened into production. The storytelling seams show almost as badly as the industrial staples stitching Bellucci’s face together. And yet, Burton’s creative flame manages to reignite, even if only flickeringly so. His intuitive grasp of a visual gag and sense of morbid whimsy remain intact. The spirit of the original still beats at the heart of the picture - even if it frequently suffers from arrhythmia. Keaton, as he showed when he donned the cape and cowl in The Flash last year, hasn’t lost a step, impressively (the film also has the good sense to once again use him sparingly, resisting a sequel’s natural urge to plaster him all over the screen). It is, of course, easy to revere Beetlejuice’s maniacally unrestrained id as a child, but the transition to adulthood means recognizing that Delia was arguably the funniest character all along. Catherine O’Hara remains a treasure in the role, though - like Lydia - her depiction feels inordinately heightened. She’s basically playing a deliberately loopier version of an already broad caricature. Ortega’s fresh presence is vital in terms of keeping things at least semi-grounded. What Burton understands above all else, however, is the macabre appeal of this particular playpen - the creativity of the Afterlife and its layers of bureaucracy still has the capacity to genuinely delight. For a legacy sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice manages to maintain an underseasoned but mostly palatable taste. Like I said - it could have been so much worse. 10/25/2024 0 Comments Terrifier 3
Love or loathe the Terrifier franchise, it’s hard not to admire what director Damien Leone has built over the past decade through passion and sheer force of will. What began inauspiciously as a short in the All Hallows’ Eve anthology and a subsequent micro-budgeted feature has since evolved into a bona fide cultural phenomenon; its newly released third entry implausibly opened #1 at the box office, symbolically toppling 200-million studio tentpole Joker: Folie à Deux in the process. If one feels the sense of scrappy underdog triumph is undercut by its dubious association with a film in which a poor bastard’s genitals are bisected as a chainsaw is literally shoved up his ass, well too bad - it’s Art the Clown’s world now, we’re just trying to keep our lunches down.
Lauren LaVera returns as the now PTSD-riddled Sienna Shaw, who’s spent the past five years bouncing in-and-out of various psychiatric facilities… but is looking forward to spending the holidays with her Aunt and Uncle, as well as her doting cousin Gabby (Antonella Rose). Sienna puts on a brave face as she attempts to embrace normalcy, but we can tell she’s like a porcelain ornament, crippled with survivor’s guilt, that could shatter at a moment’s notice… and that’s before Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) and his disfigured sicko victim/muse Victoria Heyes (Samantha Scaffidi) show up to spread some homicidal Christmas cheer. When last we saw the duo, Victoria had just given birth to Art’s decapitated head on the floor of her padded cell (don’t ask)… and upon escaping the asylum, they take refuge in an abandoned building, where they seemingly enter a state of extended hibernation. Art, it seems, has unfinished business with Sienna - their epic battle of good vs evil is like a prog rock concept album - but first he has to flex his killing muscles. As graphically as possible, ideally. Thornton’s ecstatically expressive performance feels like it has an extra limber bounce in its step throughout this picture - as if the actor can sense, giddily, that Art is poised to explode into the mainstream, the same way Robert Englund did as Freddy Krueger in the 80s. Not everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid. But a major reason people seem to connect with the Terrifier films, for all their debased aggression, is the joy that radiates from Thornton’s portrayal. The more depraved Art’s actions become, the more it feels as if Thornton’s genuinely having the time of his life. It helps that Leone’s narrative chops - never a strong point - have become at least slightly more honed. The film’s 128-minute runtime frankly isn’t much of an improvement on Terrifier 2’s gobsmackingly indulgent two-hour-and-twenty-minute frame, yet the pace feels more assured, the length less overtly oppressive. The persistent sadism can still be trying (one character’s fate - involving a glass tube, live rats, and a blowtorch - is almost breathtaking in its cruelty). But for the most part, Leone taps into more of an impish, darkly comedic vein with his bloodbath set pieces… whether it be Art putting a liquid nitrogen tank rigged with projectile funnel to suitably wicked use, or irritating college podcaster Mia (Alexa Blair Robertson) engaging in shower sex that’s rudely interrupted by Art and his aforementioned chainsaw. Terrifier’s brutal kills can often be a wearying endurance test, but this latest round manage to tickle one’s gag reflex and one’s debauched sense of guilty fun in at least equal measure. Shhh - don’t tell anyone. Still, fans who have started pushing back against the criticism that these films are essentially plotless gorefests are spirited yet overreaching (slapping a crown of thorns on Sienna’s head doesn’t equal profound religious allegory). Leone continues to idly toy with the overarching mythology (it’s understood that the demonic entity Art is partnered with has taken possession of Victoria - a just reward for loyal franchise soldier Scaffidi - though the marvelously creepy “Little Pale Girl” from part 2 is sorely missed… and not just by Spirit Halloween, which crammed its shelves with her costume this year), but these films remain about as deep as a rain puddle. There’s a long and proud tradition of Christmas-themed horror, and yet the holiday feels as ill-fitting with the Terrifier series as the Santa suit Art dons for the majority of the picture. The vibe is queasy (it also undercuts the liberal use of synthpop that elevated the last film - when “Chrissy” by Dreamkid plays over the end credits, it hits like a drug). Once again it’s up to the astonishing LaVera to do the heavy lifting. If there was any lingering doubt that Sienna Shaw deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Laurie Strode and Sidney Prescott, that’s been well and truly put to bed - what LaVera puts herself through emotionally and physically in these movies is virtually unrivaled (almost Christ-like in her suffering - that much the defenders got spot-on). She may not have her iconic valkyrie armor this time, but she’s no less of a warrior-angel. There’s a rare level of synergy at work between final girl and slasher villain here that feels special. Terrifier 3 ends on a cliffhanger, one that suggests the next installment will literally take Sienna to the depths of Hell and back. All I can say is - bring it on.  On paper, Ti West’s “X” trilogy is a fascinating venture - an interconnected trio of horror films, each of which pays deliberate homage to a different stylistic era. But West remains a solid conceptual filmmaker who rarely backs it up with actual ideas or inspiration. X was basically a porn-themed riff on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - and 70s grindhouse horror in general… the end result intermittently fun but largely unadventurous. Prequel Pearl offered more surface intrigue as a Technicolor subversion of a Douglas Sirk period melodrama, but proved rather hollow outside of the marvelous platform it provided West’s muse/star/co-creative Mia Goth. Now - with concluding entry MaXXXine - the series jumps into the seedy underbelly of 1980s Los Angeles… and its giallo-tinted, 80s-pop-scored fervor initially feels like catnip. The opening of the film, in which adult film star Maxine Minx (Goth) nails her audition for a mainstream horror sequel and struts across the studio backlot to ZZ Top’s Gimme All Your Lovin’ as the opening credits unfold, is the single headiest dopamine hit of the year-to-date. It’s pure cinematic candy. And with the Night Stalker on the loose, a scuzzbucket PI (Kevin Bacon, stinking up the theater with sweat and cheap cologne) lurking in the shadows, the body count rising, a pair of detectives (Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale) asking pointed questions, and Maxine’s dreams of Hollywood stardom being threatened by her past, it very much feels like Ti West has finally gotten his narrative ducks in a row. Unfortunately, once West reveals where the story is headed, it all goes rather limp - not unlike the would-be rapist Maxine cathartically curb-stomps early on (the film’s creative stuntedness is perhaps best exemplified by the fact West is given the enviable opportunity to play with the Bates Motel on the Universal backlot… and basically comes up with zilch). Goth remains deeply committed to the cause, and her performance across all three films should cement her place as a neo horror icon. But she gets hung out to dry during the climax. Because the series was essentially conceived on the fly (West began writing Pearl while filming X and was inspired to take the project straight into production), the overarching commentary on fame and stardom feels haphazard - there’s no true connective tissue in terms of why Pearl’s failure ultimately becomes Maxine’s triumph. Maxine is hellbent on becoming a star… but when it comes time for the claws to come out, they remain frustratingly sheathed. For a movie that acts as if it were forged in the crucible of 80s B-movie sleaze, MaXXXine offers a tepid denouement that barely lives up to the sordid promise of a single X - let alone three.  “Peculiar” is probably the most apt description when it comes to Longlegs and its impressively muscular performance at the box office (it’s no stretch to call it the most significant indie horror breakout hit in years). The new Oz Perkins film is not particularly accessible, nor is it all that much fun. It’s obliquely mean-spirited, a nihilistic horror-thriller whose nastiness is only somewhat mitigated by a healthy streak of kook DNA. Maika Monroe (quietly making a case as the best horror starlet in the business at the moment) stars as fledgling FBI agent Lee Harker, whose clairvoyant potential gets her assigned to the “Longlegs” case… a serial killer responsible for a string of familial murder-suicides dating back decades, who leaves cryptic letters at the crime scenes packed with Satanic coding. To an extent, Perkins wants to have his cake and eat it too… he stages the film as a grounded procedural in a similar vein to the work of Thomas Harris, which makes it all the more jarring when the story zags into legitimately looney occult territory and just keeps going. The approach doesn’t necessarily serve Monroe - in spite of the increasingly harrowed tenor of her performance, she’s given frustratingly little agency in an investigative sense (either from a practical or a paranormal perspective) - no matter how many breathless comparisons people attempt to draw with Clarice Starling (clearly the template Perkins was working from). This isn’t incidental, admittedly - it’s all part of the plot’s cruel jape, which crystalizes in the third act… but feels dramatically limiting all the same. It’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that the titular villain is played by Nicolas Cage and one’s tolerance for the inherent campiness of his performance will definitely vary. The fact Cage is being hailed as a revelation is a puzzler; as a performer, he’s never been shy about indulging his inner-freak. With his pale, puffy visage and simpering, high-pitched voice, he’s wholly committed… but there’s also something a bit arbitrary about his choices, as if they’re informed by random whimsy more than anything (it’s not unlike Johnny Depp’s increasingly diminished collaborations with Tim Burton, who began to let him operate virtually unchecked). For all that, Longlegs still manages to strike a nerve. It permeates the skin and lingers there, slightly necrotic. Perkins doesn’t really sweat the wonky internal logic too much - his is a movie that’s more about basking in its own elliptically bleak vibes (Alicia Witt, long removed from her own teen horror days, makes an indelible impression as Lee’s religious-minded mother, clinging to her faith in what feels like a punishingly Godless world). One wishes Perkins were a little more disciplined in his approach; the storytelling can be casually sloppy. But Longlegs, oddly enough, feels like a movie that may get its hooks in deeper with repeat viewings. Only time will tell.  Cuckoo offers truth in advertising, because German director Tilman Singer’s sophomore feature is definitely horror moviemaking at its most rapturously bonkers. Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer stars as Gretchen, a teenager forced to join her semi-estranged father (Martin Csokas), indifferent stepmother (Jessica Henwick, disappointingly wasted), and her mute half-sister in the Bavarian Alps following her mother’s death. They arrive at a resort overseen by the enigmatic Herr König (Dan Stevens), where Gretchen takes a part-time job at the front desk and soon finds herself privy to bizarre happenings… such as vomiting guests, a mysterious hooded woman who lurks in the neighboring woods like some nightmarish, bled-together blend of De Palma and Cronenberg and Nicolas Roeg, and both seizures and apparent time loops induced by some sort of reverberating shriek. Revealing how all this knits together would, of course, be criminal… suffice it to say, the movie takes some big and seriously whacky creative swings. Who says there are no new ideas?
The talented Schafer feels destined to blaze a trail as a trans actress who isn’t restricted to playing trans characters. It’s a testament to her fearlessness - and Singer’s warped sense of humor - that she spends the majority of the film looking as if she ran smack into a brick wall…her face heavily bandaged and swollen like a catcher’s mitt. The lack of vanity (particularly for her first starring role) is delightfully refreshing. Stevens, meanwhile, continues to burnish his reputation as one of our most fiendishly warped character actors - it’s hard to remember when he was best known as the appreciably vanilla Cousin Matthew on Downton Abbey (or when his exit from the show felt like such an ill-advised betrayal). Between this film and Abigail (and, to a lesser extent, Godzilla x Kong), he’s already left an ineffaceable mark on 2024 (and given his accent kit a full-blown workout). One can argue that Cuckoo doesn’t entirely work - in fact, its script has a messy, staple gunned-together quality - yet it hardly matters when a film establishes a wavelength this weird, creepy, yet darkly funny. Singer (who showed initial promise with his 2018 debut Luz) demonstrates a bananas sense of showmanship during the climax… he juggles so many balls, more than a few are fumbled and hit the ground, but the sheer audacity is worth applauding all the same. 8/7/2024 0 Comments Summer horror blowout (part 1): In a violent nature, the watchers, and A quiet place: Day One In a Violent Nature is the sort of movie whose premise feels commendably ingenious… until you actually stop and consider it for more than thirty seconds. The film functions as a standard slasher knockoff in the Friday the 13th vein, only in this case the camera remains purposely cemented to the story’s lumbering, implacable Jason Voorhees-esque antagonist at all times… from the moment his reanimated corpse claws its way out of the earth, following him from behind as he tromps methodically through the woods and eventually acquires a pair of dragging hooks and a vintage firefighter’s mask from the nearby park ranger’s office. At first, the approach feels thrillingly subversive (the sugar rush of the horror genre, after all, is that elusive sense of stumbling onto something creatively fresh), but reality quickly sets in - if you strip a horror film of any and all trace of character or suspense, what exactly are you left with? It’s to the movie’s credit that the end result isn’t as stultifying as it might have been. Director Chris Nash stages the film almost like a nature documentary, devoid of any sort of musical score, the drawn-out single takes achieving a soothing, almost hypnotic quality… reminiscent of Gus Van Sant’s Elephant. But Nash doesn’t quite have a firm handle on the material. In a Violent Nature feels fundamentally at odds with itself, torn between its untextured yet high-minded sociological commentary and its deconstructionist approach to conventional slasher storytelling. It’s amusing that the film cultivates its own deliberately dopey lore in the narrative margins (the killer’s soul is tethered to a locket that’s swiped from his gravesite), largely conveyed through snatches of overheard dialogue… but its almost meditative regard for its central figure is undercut by the spectacularly graphic, borderline cartoonish manner with which he dispatches of the film’s forgettable cast. These kills (including one that’ll likely have gore junkies rhapsodizing for years) were clearly conceived to elicit a certain Pavlovian giddiness from seasoned horror fans. At any rate, the gimmick wears out its welcome long before the final frames (it’s hard to imagine a kill involving a log splitter feeling this tediously belabored - if I wasn’t ready to tap out then, I definitely was during the meandering climactic monologue… which feels a lot like a single-engine plane circling a dirt runway, unsure how to land). In a Violent Nature has a touch of ingenuity, and that’s to be applauded - but it doesn’t make the experience any less hollow.  Even by the indigestible standards of Hollywood nepotism, the meteoric rise of Ishana Night Shyamalan feels a bit, well… difficult to digest. Landing her first studio feature at the age of 23 (having honed her craft writing and directing on the Apple TV+ series Servant, which just so happened to be executive produced by her dad) undoubtedly feels like gravel in the eye for many an aspiring filmmaker. But this industry remains defiantly sink-or-swim and, unfortunately, Shyamalan’s debut The Watchers, which she adapted from the novel by A.M. Shine, mostly sinks. Initially, the way the story delves into Irish folklore feels promising. Dakota Fanning stars as Mina, a young woman driven to Ireland out of grief, who’s tasked with transporting a golden parrot she nicknames “Darwin” from Galway to Belfast. When her car breaks down less-than-fortuitously in the middle of the forest and night soon falls, she’s forced to take refuge in a single-room bunker… where the other inhabitants (including Olwen Fouéré and Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell) gravely instruct her to stand motionless before the mirrored window so the titular creatures can “observe” her. There are rules, you see - and breaking them would be inadvisable. Shyamalan clearly picked up a few tricks from her dad. She understands the value of a tantalizing plot hook, and demonstrates a solid enough grasp of mood and atmosphere. But like many of M. Night’s films, the setup is considerably stronger than the payoff. However, unlike, say, The Village - in which the fantastical was undercut by the mundane - The Watchers sees Shyamalan double down on the story’s supernatural implications… to the point of spiraling lunacy. Her still-budding screenwriting chops are increasingly exposed (we’re honestly supposed to buy that this group spends literal months inside the bunker and never once thinks to check underneath the rug?). Fanning is fine, but Fouéré is the real standout - with her piercing stare, slightly untamed, Targaryen-like silver hair, and aura of ethereal sagacity, she’s like something straight out of Celtic myth (actors from Ireland and the UK remain the most reliable defense against dubious dialogue and ham-fisted exposition). Her performance isn’t enough to salvage the movie - particularly during the rank nonsense of its third act - but Shyamalan has good casting instincts. Next time - and presumably there will be a next time - she should make sure there’s a script of corresponding quality.  At first glance, A Quiet Place: Day One has the acrid whiff of a cynical cash-in - an unnecessary prequel designed to milk some extra profit from John Krasinski’s popular sci-fi horror franchise before the third chapter eventually arrives. However, if that was the plan, the studio might have been better off hiring someone other than Pig’s Michael Sarnoski. This is one of those thrilling exceptions in which an indie auteur accepts a big Hollywood payday but effectively bends the project to his own artistic sensibilities, rather than submitting to the vulture-like whims of a production mandate that leave his creative bones picked clean.
The story takes place in New York, which is established from the outset as a sonic battleground (the film claims the city’s average decibel level is 90, the equivalent of a continuous human scream). Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) is a former poet, terminally ill with cancer and fairly embittered about the whole situation. Lured from her hospice facility to the city by the promise of pizza, she’s instead greeted by a shower of meteors that unleash vicious extraterrestrial creatures attracted to sound. It’s striking how indifferent Sarnoski appears to be to the trappings of conventional monster movies. He dutifully stages the requisite, nerve-fraying set pieces - which are given fresh dimensions by the urban landscape (the sight of the creatures cascading en masse down the sides of a glass skyscraper is terrifying) - but he’s clearly more invested in Sam and her support cat Frodo, who eventually cross paths with an English law student named Eric (played by Joseph Quinn of Stranger Things). What unfolds is a disarmingly sorrowful-yet-sweet meditation on mortality and making the most of what time you have left, the apocalyptic backdrop at times seeming almost incidental. Once again, it feels deeply exasperating that Nyong’o isn’t one of the biggest stars on the planet - like Sarnoski, she’s punching in a different weight class than a genre exercise of this nature typically requires. A Quiet Place: Day One still doesn’t feel altogether necessary, at least from a franchise perspective - it’s not like the story (concocted by Sarnoski and Krasinski) expands the nominal lore in any meaningful way. And those looking for summer escapism may not readily spark to the film’s existential approach. But this is purposeful horror moviemaking that embraces creative risk. Unlike In a Violent Nature and The Watchers, you can’t say its director doesn’t know exactly what he’s trying to accomplish.  The resurgence of the Planet of the Apes franchise - some forty years after the original series of films ran their course (dutifully ignoring Tim Burton’s failed 2001 attempt) - has been rather remarkable. Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes arrived in 2011 with minimal hype and became a breakout success at the box office. The reins then passed to Matt Reeves, who arguably engineered a Dark Knight-level creative jump with follow-up entries Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes - both massive, critically adored hits. The reservoir of good will for this particular series is almost unrivaled in today’s cinema. And yet… I find these movies a lot easier to admire than to love. For all the spectacularly cutting-edge motion capture tech on display, the hyper-realistic depiction of simian behavior feels, frankly, less fun than the distinctly 60s-flavored rubbery mask-like kitsch of the originals.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Wes Ball (the Maze Runner trilogy), picks up several centuries after the time of Caesar and introduces us to Noa (Owen Teague) - a young chimpanzee hunter whose clan is built, intriguingly, around the practice of falconry. Parallels to Luke Skywalker are almost certainly not incidental; Noa is a young would-be warrior who longs to prove himself, but remains largely sheltered within his clan’s way of life. But when his village is raided by soldiers who answer to the ape-lord Proximus, his requisite hero’s journey quickly takes shape. Embarking on a quest to rescue his people, he soon acquires an Obi-Wan Kenobi-type mentor (sort of) in the form of Raka (Peter Macon), an orangutan scholar who specializes in the teachings of Caesar… and crosses paths with Mae (Freya Allan), who - unlike the feral mutes they’re used to - reveals human intelligence and the capacity for speech. Allan, best known for playing Ciri on Netflix’s Witcher series, is almost preposterously photogenic. The makeup team smears dirt all over her face and the costume department dresses her in filthy rags and she still looks like she stepped directly out of an Estée Lauder ad. She’d be an obvious choice to play Helen of Troy if the opportunity presented itself - her green eyes are so hypnotic, it’s easy to imagine men going to war over them. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has a surprisingly slow and tedious build-up. It’s pushing 80 minutes before Noa even reaches Proximus’s coastal stronghold, where the enslaved are forced to chant “What a wonderful day!” like some sort of military state-sponsored mantra. Proximus (a bonobo) is played by Kevin Durand - not a household name, but a distinctive actor you’d likely recognize (he just appeared in Abigail, and has been on shows such as The Strain, Vikings, and Lost). The settlement is erected around an old military bunker and Proximus makes a massive spectacle of the daily attempts to breach its vault-like entrance. “In their time, humans were capable of many great things,” he says. “They could fly, like eagles fly. They could speak across oceans. But now, it is our time. We will learn, apes will learn. I will learn” - explaining why the bunker’s technological treasures are key to his vision. At one point, near the climax, Mae brandishes a firearm and we see his eyes widen, as if he’s been presented fire by Prometheus, the entire future of his kingdom laid out before him. But for all that Durand brings to the role, Proximus feels slightly undercooked. Frankly, so does the movie. To be clear, there are intriguing ideas here - none more so than the notion that apes and humans can never be truly aligned in purpose (the planet can only support one dominant species, after all)… which is teased out through Noa and Mae’s porcelain-fragile alliance. William H. Macy turns up as Proximus’s obsequious advisor on all things human history and preaches to Mae the value of subservience over fighting a battle that’s long since been lost. And not to force filter everything through the MAGA lens (I’m already exhausted just typing this), but there are obvious (and relevant) parallels to a charismatic autocrat deliberately twisting the teachings of a much-revered religious figure for personal gain. But these themes are predominately flirtations, nothing more. The climax makes for decent enough spectacle, but the ape-on-ape action never truly dazzles (to be honest, the allure is mostly lost on me - the evolution into heightened realism has stripped the franchise of any real giddy schlock value). At least Owen Teague holds his own mocap-wise as Noa - a not insignificant feat when you’re placed in the formidable shadow of Andy Serkis (some have claimed the motion capture effects are a cut below in this new film, even a touch soulless, but it doesn’t really feel that way). Noa gets his requisite hero beats and they land emotionally, for the most part. But Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is ultimately a rather lukewarm attempt to erect a fresh trilogy on the backside of the last trilogy. And with Fox already making noise about a subsequent trilogy (bringing the total number of films within the reboot series to nine), that’s way too much Apes for my appetite. I’d sooner let them have the planet than the cineplexes. 5/18/2024 0 Comments the fall guy The Fall Guy is exactly the sort of movie - a breezy slice of summer escapism, turbocharged by genuine movie star chemistry - that people claim to be ravenous for, yet rarely seem to turn out in support of. Although nominally based on the 80s TV series (in which Lee Majors played a Hollywood stunt man who moonlights as a bounty hunter), the film is effectively free of any IP shackles; it’s a liberating burst of original moviemaking, lively and nimble-footed, infused with rom-com DNA and a zesty sense of spectacle… one should breathe its cleansing, oxygenated qualities deep into the lungs.
Ryan Gosling stars as Colt Seavers, stunt man extraordinaire, who enjoys a steady gig doubling pampered movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). However, a stunt-gone-wrong results in a fractured spine and - 18 months later - Colt has washed out of the industry, reduced to a humble life of parking cars. That presumably would be where the story concludes, only Colt receives a call from high-strung producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso), urging him to fly to Sydney, where Tom’s latest production - the sci-fi blockbuster Metalstorm - is in full swing. Tom, it seems, has gotten mixed up with some shady characters down under and appears to have gone missing… Gail wants Colt to track him down. “I don’t know why I’m talking so much,” Colt admits, in voice-over, as he prepares to get on a plane. “I’m not the hero of the story. I’m just a stunt man.” The setup is, admittedly, a bit muddy. Why is Tom’s former stunt double considered uniquely qualified to play amateur sleuth? Who knows. But once the ball gets rolling, the plot generates real kinetic momentum. Besides, the real reason Colt agreed to jet halfway across the world is the fact that Metalstorm’s director happens to be his ex-girlfriend Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), a former camera operator who he ghosted following his accident. Anyone with even a modest interest in the alchemy of on-screen chemistry would be wise to study this movie - the sparks Gosling and Blunt strike could ignite the theater’s carpeting if one isn’t mindful. It’s not altogether surprising. Gosling’s particular brand of laid-back cool has always meshed with that particular hint of class that comes with being British; the fact that both stars are blessed with legitimate comedic chops is a sizable bonus. Gosling is such a good performer, he’s able to maintain an air of self-aware charm even when he’s being emotionally vulnerable. Some seem disappointed that he’s retreated from the edge of his Nicolas Winding Refn collaborations for such squarely mainstream fare (The Gray Man, if we’re being honest, was the more demoralizing pivot), but he has the smooth adaptability of a true movie star - the sort whose mere presence makes something worth watching. The Fall Guy was directed by David Leitch who, like Colt, began life as a stunt man. He and Chad Stahelski segued into filmmaking with John Wick (though only Stahelski was ultimately credited) and their career divergence has been fascinating. Stahelski dedicated the next decade of his career entirely to the Wick franchise, raising the bar in terms of craft and overall quality with each subsequent entry, while Leitch helmed a bunch of successful studio blockbusters (Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw, Bullet Train) that did comparatively little for his reputation. There is something lacking in personal style - even a sequence as technically audacious as Atomic Blonde’s one-shot apartment complex/stairwell brawl has a certain bruising yet mechanical detachment. The Fall Guy, not surprisingly, was conceived as a valentine to stunt performers and the intricate practicality of the set pieces is impressive (at one point Colt surfs the streets of Sydney on a slab of metal that showers sparks as part of a high-speed garbage truck chase)… but even then, Leitch can’t help but revert to the comfort of jittery editing with a glossy mainstream sheen. Nonetheless, there’s a level of infectious fun on display here that can’t really be faked (particularly in comparison to a film like Bullet Train, which strains as if in childbirth to maintain its facade of manic exuberance). In spite of the initial narrative speed bumps, the story comes together smartly… riffing slyly on the title’s built-in dual meaning. But the plot is almost secondary to the movie’s core appeal, which is that a stunt man is a natural action hero, given his body’s preconditioning to absorb a perpetual pummeling. Suffice it to say, Colt takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ - Gosling wearing the accumulated nicks and scrapes and contusions impressively well. But the movie is just as engaging when Colt and Jody are thrust together like a couple of magnets, attracting yet repelling one another (there’s a great sequence in which the two of them litigate the fallout of their breakup in front of the crew as Colt is set on fire and hurled against a rock face take after take after take). Blunt is the rare sort of talent whose latest performance always feels like the thing she should be unquestionably dedicating the rest of her career to (in this case screwball rom-coms, but one remembers a movie like Edge of Tomorrow, in which she immediately felt like the next great action heroine). The Fall Guy isn’t a substantial work of entertainment (we could talk about the fact that Jody is supposed to be a natural born director, but Metalstorm is quite obviously a piece of crap), but that’s part of the film’s specific, first-weekend-of-May appeal. It’s caffeinated cinema, designed to flood your bloodstream with a temporary sucrose high… sit back and enjoy the rush. 5/9/2024 0 Comments Civil war Given the largely moronic tenor of most cinematic discourse on social media these days, a film like Civil War is basically the equivalent of writer/director Alex Garland carelessly tossing a lit match over his shoulder as he walks away from hemorrhaging gasoline pumps. The only saving grace is that Garland is so disinterested in ideology, and so deliberate in his attempts to obfuscate any sort of political agenda, that the subject matter’s caustic fumes feel deprived of oxygen; the hyperbolic fallout can’t fully flower when people can’t even articulate why they should or shouldn’t feel either validated or offended.
Civil War grapples with its titular conflict in a dystopian alternate reality and speculative fiction framework that many would argue isn’t all that alternate or speculative (the setup is just credible enough to incite mild perturbation… or maybe just a twinge of indigestion). The unnamed US President (Nick Offerman) gives off a faint whiff of MAGA authoritarianism (he’s supposedly in his third term), while Texas and California have somewhat incredulously joined forces in opposition… beyond that, the background lore is little more than an inscrutable haze. Garland is far more interested in focusing his attention on the nation’s war correspondent ecosystem - specifically photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and her partner-in-crime Joel (Wagner Moura). Lee wears the hardened expression of someone whose facial muscles would require an electrical jolt to form a smile, while Joel plays the devil-may-care jester as an obvious coping mechanism. The two of them are heading into Washington DC - the “belly of the beast” - to try and finagle an improbable interview with the White House (regarded within their circles as a glorified suicide mission - the press aren’t exactly welcome in the Capitol). Along for the ride are Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a New York Times scribe who’s gotten too old for this perilous racket but doesn’t really know how to do anything else, and wet-behind-her-ears cub Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), who Lee reluctantly takes under her wing. Civil War is, at heart, an episodic road trip movie… and some of those episodes pack a legitimate punch. Not surprisingly, everyone has been talking about Jesse Plemons (he throws at such consistently high heat these days, his mere presence is like cinematic adrenaline), who appears briefly as a chilling sociopath in strawberry sunglasses, armed with an assault rifle and spewing white nationalist rhetoric in an emotionless affect (some have pointed to his character as evidence of the film’s politics, but acknowledging that a) white nationalists exist and b) they’re generally bad barely constitutes a stance… it’s like claiming Indiana Jones is political because he punches out Nazis). But the pieces don’t necessarily gel into a more cohesive whole. Garland seems fixated on the ethical repercussions of war journalism - of prioritizing impartiality in the face of atrocity - which is compelling subject matter… it’s also a theme filmmakers have been grappling with for literally decades, dating back to 80s dramas such as Salvador, The Killing Fields, and The Year of Living Dangerously. It’s a peculiar angle for Garland to gravitate towards - especially given he has no particularly fresh insights in spite of the unconventional backdrop - so it’s a good thing he at least picked his four leads with such care. Spaeny - who popped off the screen as a teenager in Pacific Rim: Uprising and was heartbreakingly good in Mare of Easttown - feels like she’s inching ever closer to stardom. She’s 25, but her age feels entirely fluid - within her relatively small body of work, she’s shown an astounding ability to appear significantly younger - or more mature - than her years. She partners effectively with Dunst, who no longer has the photogenic glow of her teenage stardom, but wears her current age extremely well. Her features have a certain lived-in gravity about them now… and it’s her hollow stare that so often holds the center of the frame in its cool grip. She’s never been more intriguing as an actress. As a filmmaker, Garland is an imperfect purveyor of ambitious originality (most regard the 2014 techno thriller Ex Machina as his magnum opus, but I always gravitated more towards Annihilation, his unnerving 2018 descent into hallucinatory sci-fi-flavored madness). He produces imagery - particularly in the third act - that one can’t help but find queasily affecting… helicopters swooping over the smoldering ruins of the Lincoln Memorial, a Special Forces squad turning the corridors of the White House into a bullet-riddled Call of Duty set piece. The sound design is stunning, the gunfire like a percussive symphony played on your eardrums. At its best, this is genuinely intense moviemaking - a reminder why Garland has amassed such a fiercely loyal following. But the film keeps you firmly, frustratingly at arm’s length. One can hardly fault Garland’s reluctance to tread the sort of knee-jerk path that inevitably foments a discursive trash fire. But there’s something almost cowardly in the way the film capitalizes on an inflammatory hook while refusing to truly engage with America’s cultural currents. Many have described the film as frightening, but that feels more like projection. This Civil War is little more than the stuff of illogical fantasy, its audacity deprived of any real focal point. Garland’s refusal to take sides feels like a miscalculation at best and vexingly cynical at worst. He’s made an incendiary device of a movie that ultimately smolders harmlessly. It's disappointing. To pseudo-quote Alexander Hamilton (or to simply quote the movie Sucker Punch) “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”  Love Lies Bleeding is probably the single coolest queer pulp-thriller since the Wachowskis released Bound back in 1996. Rose Glass’s sophomore feature doesn’t just exude style - it pulses with it, like blood coursing through a swollen bicep vein. Set in the Southwest during the neon swelter of 1989, the story follows Lou (Kristen Stewart), who spends her days overseeing a craphole gym with barely disguised indifference… until the impressively sculpted drifter Jackie (Katy O’Brian) fatefully arrives in town and strikes romantic sparks with her. An aspiring bodybuilder, she’s looking for a place to train in anticipation of a major Vegas competition… and takes a job waitressing at the gun range owned by Lou’s estranged father (a wildly reptilian Ed Harris, looking an awful lot like the geckos sunning themselves on the New Mexico rocks). The crime-thriller elements are a tad disappointing in their familiarity. Lou’s father is a local crime kingpin and her brother-in-law JJ (Dave Franco) is an oily twerp with a porn mustache and ponytailed mullet (the film all but roils with male odiousness). When things take a dark turn and quickly go from bad to worse, the story beats reside comfortably within the film’s neo-noir pocket. It hardly matters though, as Love Lies Bleeding is the cinematic equivalent of molten steel; its radiance is white-hot. K-Stew truthers have known for years that the erstwhile Twilight starlet is one of the most talented actresses of her generation, but O’Brian is the real revelation here. With her brontosaurus thighs, vascular physique, midriff-baring tank tops, and frizzled hairstyle, she’s like a comic book superhero crossed with an 80s aerobics instructor… but there’s also a sensuality to her performance - particularly around the eyes - that’s disarming. She pops on-screen in a way that feels utterly inimitable - I don't know where exactly she goes after this movie, but someone in Hollywood better figure something out fast (thankfully, she’s already landed a role in the next Mission: Impossible). As a director, Glass understands the undercurrents of bodybuilder culture, infusing it with a mutant strain of body horror DNA. Lou hooks Jackie up with steroids, and we watch as her muscles ripple and expand to Hulk-like dimensions. At its best, the end result is a sultry and violently fanged, synth-fueled head trip that’s dope as fuck. Near the end, Glass takes a massive creative swing into magical realism and frankly not everyone will be willing to ride with it, but in its own way, it makes perfect sense - sometimes love is so great, it’s almost too big for the world to contain.  Margaret Qualley has been flirting with major stardom for several years now (those who saw her in the Netflix limited series Maid might argue she’s already there). In Drive-Away Dolls, she chews on an oversized Texas twang slathered thick with Southern molasses. The choice is mildly grating and yet - paradoxically - it validates her loopy fearlessness as a performer. She plays Jamie, a lesbian whose life is one of those cheeky hurricanes of personal drama, who decides to tag along with her buttoned-up best friend Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) on a road trip to Tallahassee. The two of them sign up for a drive-away service (run by Bill Camp - instantly the best thing in the movie), but a comedic misunderstanding results in them driving off in the wrong vehicle… one that contains a certain briefcase containing certain items that a certain group of unsavory customers want back pronto.
Drive-Away Dolls has a certain puppy dog charm, but it evokes the strained quirkiness of far too many indie comedies from the 90s. If anything, it feels like a Coen Brothers movie that’s tonally out-of-joint… which makes sense, since it was - in fact - directed by a single Coen Brother. While Joel is off trafficking in Shakespearean moroseness, Ethan, it would seem, is intent on extracting the idiosyncratic marrow from their prior filmography and distilling it into its most concentrated form. Both well into their 60s now, and having made eighteen features together, an artistic reconciliation is - perhaps - not altogether necessary… but the evidence already feels incontrovertible that the duo balanced each other out creatively. Barely 80 minutes in length, the plot of Drive-Away Dolls feels entirely beside the point; its narrative noodling is a far cry from the finely calibrated, genre-splicing crime comedies the Coens once specialized in. It’s a good thing Qualley and Viswanathan have such a genuinely oddball rapport… they’re almost like a Vaudeville duo - Jamie, slouched and uninhibited, and Marian, repressed to the point of social paralysis (she reads Henry James to unwind). But the movie is much better off when it’s reveling in the natural tension of their mismatched buddy chemistry… as soon as it pushes them into romantic territory, the alchemy falters. The film is so slight, a modest breeze could blow it away. Eventually we do learn of the very specific cargo the girls are transporting and it’s a prankish payoff, but then again - maybe we were all better off *not* knowing what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.  It’s not particularly hard to grasp the underlying reasons for Sydney Sweeney’s meteoric rise over the past several years… but for all her obvious sex kitten potential, she clearly has designs on establishing herself as a legitimate actress. She certainly gives a committed performance in Immaculate, a fitfully gripping religious thriller that, for all the predictably pearl-clutching cries of “blasphemy,” might as well come affixed with training wheels - particularly for Zoomers with a budding interest in horror. Sweeney plays Sister Cecilia, who enters a picturesque Italian convent where sinister happenings are plainly afoot. Not long after arrival, she discovers that she’s pregnant - in spite of an ixnay on any sort of sexual congress with a man - and is heralded as the next Virgin Mary. But miracles are never quite that straightforward and as the months tick past and she enters her third trimester, Cecila begins to suspect something other than the Hand of God might be involved in her condition (for those excited about the casting of breakout star Simona Tabasco from The White Lotus… well, don’t be. She only appears in the opening scene - which is too bad, since she’s exactly the sort of nun who’d inspire a crisis of faith). The first half of Immaculate is relatively plodding (it’s a slow burn without much of a burn), but there are some clever contextual clues sprinkled in - such as the charismatic Father Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte) mentioning off-hand his original background in biology, or the chapel supposedly housing one of the Holy Nails from the Crucifixion. It’s not difficult to put two and two together, but when the reveal comes - a twist that’s like Rosemary’s Baby by way of Jurassic Park (no, really) - the film does ignite with a certain sacrilegious zeal. The third act kicks up a galloping pace that doesn’t relent. Up until this project, Sweeney’s heavy-lidded gaze frequently contributed to an acting style that could kindly be described as narcoleptic, but the final frames - depicting her in frenzied close-up, wild-eyed countenance smeared with blood, her flawless teeth flecked with spittle, guttural cries of anguish clawing their way from her throat - are revelatory, like something out of the most far-flung madness of 70s Italian cinema. That might not be enough to recommend the movie, but it does hint at a potential movie star emerging auspiciously from behind the placid curtain of an objectively pretty face.  In Late Night with the Devil, David Dastmalchian stars as Jack Delroy, host of the 1970s talk show Night Owls. Once regarded as a rising star in the late-night arena, Delroy’s seen his popularity plateau amidst an increasingly futile quest to catch Carson in the ratings… which leads to him attempting a live, occultism-themed episode on Halloween night as a last-ditch effort to bolster his sagging numbers. The movie itself is presented as salvaged footage previously unavailable to the public. This is a deeply rad premise (the 70s setting, a time when late-night TV felt largely unregulated, is particularly inspired) as we watch this “lost” episode unfold in real time, with behind-the-scenes interactions taking place during the commercial breaks. Delroy welcomes the colorful psychic “Christou” and the magician-turned-skeptic Carmichael the Conjurer (a marvelously curmudgeonly Ian Bliss), but the star of the evening is parapsychologist June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and her ward Lilly (Ingrid Torelli) - the lone survivor of a Satanic death cult - who supposedly shares a connection with a demon known as “Mr. Wriggles.” Delroy wants to summon the demon in front of his studio audience as a live TV stunt - which June insists is an extremely bad idea - but it would seem he’s in thrall to his own dark master… one that goes by the name of “Nielsen.”
Late Night with the Devil is a movie powered by that most precious of resources - a genuine spark of originality. The period detail and overall production design (making allowances for the controversial use of a few brief, AI-generated interstitials) are first-rate. The film is a gimmick, but it’s a gratifying one. The on-air footage spliced with jittery backstage energy lend the story an accelerated and absorbing rhythm. One feels that distinctly pleasurable tingle of being in confident hands. Still, one can’t help but wonder if directors Colin & Cameron Cairnes have made things needlessly complicated - rather than a straightforward tale of hubris, they hint at Delroy having participated in some sort of fuzzy Faustian pact that never quite makes sense. Dastmalchian (in a long-deserved upgrade to lead actor) is outstanding - his genial demeanor is tinged with just the right level of smarm - but it might have been better if Delroy were a bit of a bastard. His comeuppance, when it occurs, doesn’t cut as cleanly or as sharply as it should. That being said, this is fresh and vibrant horror moviemaking. The genre often feels akin to flipping through hundreds of interchangeable cable channels, but Late Night with the Devil - to use the parlance of its era - is one program worth putting down the clicker for. 4/3/2024 0 Comments ghostbusters: frozen empire I’ve seen Ghostbusters: Afterlife four times now and I feel like my overall regard for it has diminished a little more upon each viewing. Initially, filtering the components of the beloved 1984 original through the more family-friendly lens of an Amblin-style feature felt like a pretty winning combination… thanks in no small part to the film’s genuinely likable cast. It gets increasingly difficult, however, to overlook the story’s hollow center; an aggressively nostalgic retread that almost borders on the shameless by the third act (also, while fashioning the story as a tribute to the late Harold Ramis feels sincere, there’s no getting around the fact that this is a version of Egon who simply didn’t exist in the previous movies). It all feels a bit too calculated in its pandering to the fandom. Ghostbusters may be my all-time favorite movie, but I’m not crazy with how it’s become the poster franchise for weaponizing the almost feral reverence for one’s childhood.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire - which sees Jason Reitman pass the directing reins to his co-writer Gil Kenan (who made the underrated animated pic Monster House and that Poltergeist remake that seems to have been scrubbed from cinematic history) - marks a welcome return to New York City (Sony was seemingly willing to loosen the purse strings a little more after Afterlife’s respectable box office showing). Picking up three years later, ghostbusting is now a family business for the Spengler clan - mom Callie (Carrie Coon), surrogate dad Gary (Paul Rudd), older son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), and younger daughter Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), who remains arguably more competent than the other three combined. But a run-in with New York’s mayor Walter Peck (the returning William Atherton, whose officious edge has slightly dulled with age) leaves the underage Phoebe benched… driving a wedge into the familial operation just as a fresh crisis presents itself in the form of an orb that contains an ancient demonic god capable of unleashing an ice age upon the city. At its best, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire evokes the vibe not of the original film, but of the franchise’s equally beloved animated series… it’s the sort of lore-heavy supernatural adventure that Dan Aykroyd seemed to originally envision when he was first developing the concept, before Ramis and Ivan Reitman helped ground it (whereas Bill Murray appears mildly embarrassed to still be suiting up in his 70s, Aykroyd can barely repress his glee - particularly when tasked with any convoluted, ghost-related exposition). Those complaining that what began as an irreverent comedy with a distinct mixture of SNL and National Lampoon DNA in its veins now treats its inner-mythology with solemn reverence fail to grasp how malleable the premise is. Evolution is more than welcome. The issue is that the humor once did the heavy lifting - the paranormal balderdash only had to provide basic narrative propulsion (the brilliance of Ghostbusters was that the premise, at heart, was about starting a business… and that business just happened to be poltergeist removal). Frozen Empire has ample charm, but the laughs are milder… and the plot feels exposed, its basic thinness better suited to a half-hour cartoon. This is also a film that clearly suffers from casting bloat. The entire lineup from Afterlife is essentially run back - and that includes Phoebe’s pal Podcast (Logan Kim, who clearly and jarringly experienced puberty between productions), who’s been appointed Ray’s sidekick in the occult bookshop, and Trevor’s onetime love interest Lucky (Celeste O’Connor), who’s interning at a paranormal think tank bankrolled by Winston (she might still be Trevor’s love interest - who can tell when they exchange all of two lines?). With the original Ghostbusters taking a more central role and new characters to integrate (including the likes of Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswalt), it’s a lot to juggle. Coon, Rudd, and Wolfhard all get sidelined to various degrees, though the talented Mckenna Grace thankfully remains the star of the show. As Phoebe, her social discomfort has been supplemented with a spiky dose of teenage sullenness (at one point she tells Callie “If you weren’t a Spengler, you’d be answering our phones”). But her friendship with a teenage ghost named Melody (played by Emily Alyn Lind) doesn’t really make much sense (the movie hints at a romantic spark, but mostly dances around it). Phoebe keeps saying Melody is the only person who understands her, but all she seems to offer is a sense of haughty cool. Gary struggling with the desire to be Phoebe’s pal and the need to be a father figure to her is far more compelling, but Rudd’s arc is given short shrift, frustratingly (Coon, sadly, is given even less to do - a truly wasted asset). Thankfully, the paranormal spectacle still has the capacity to dazzle. Kenan shows a much surer hand with the FX work than Paul Feig ever did in the calamitous 2016 version. The film’s opening chase sequence - which sees Ecto-1 pursuing a spectral “sewer dragon” through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen - is a low-key banger. There are plenty of fun flourishes - such as when one of the iconic marble lions outside the New York Public Library comes roaring to life. Nostalgic callbacks are once again plentiful (Slimer returns; Ray has another run-in with the Gray Lady in the stacks), though not quite as aggressive as the trailers seemed to indicate. Garraka - an elongated wraith with massive demon horns and no personality to speak of - isn’t much of a villain though. The climax is crying out for its own version of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, a creative curveball designed to galvanize the audience with giddy delight. Given its lack of reliable IP, Sony seems determined to milk the franchise for all its worth. I have mixed feelings. Bustin’ will always make me feel good, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend the rest of my life doing it. 2/25/2024 0 Comments madame web Madame Web is set in 2003, which is fitting since Sony continues to make comic book films as if we’re all still out here using iPods with scroll wheels. There’s a unique whiff of desperation to the studio’s live-action Spider-Verse. Given that Spider-Man’s ancillary characters are the one sliver of the Marvel universe that Sony controls, the desire to wring them of any MCU-adjacent gold dust - however sparse - is understandable… even if the end result is a fiddly attempt to rebrand various Spider-villains as franchise antiheroes (first Venom, then Morbius… with Kraven the Hunter looming on-deck). Madame Web, on the other hand, has traditionally served as a minor ally of Peter Parker at least, but there’s still the sense that Sony is increasingly force-feeding a non-existent appetite; the further the narrative strands venture from the web-swinger himself, the more desiccated they become.
Dakota Johnson stars as Cassie Webb, a New York paramedic who begins experiencing glimpses of the future after a near-death experience. Her visions eventually lead her to a trio of teenage girls - Julia (Sydney Sweeney), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Mattie (Celeste O’Connor) - whose future destinies as a Spider-Woman collective has put them in the crosshairs of Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), a vaguely sketched baddie who’s plagued by nightmares of his eventual death at their hands. Sims also has enhanced strength and arachnid-like abilities thanks to a rare and powerful spider he was able to extract from the Peruvian jungle 30 years earlier… while not-so-coincidentally on an expedition with Cassie’s pregnant mother, whom he betrayed. Sims pursues the girls with Terminator-like relentlessness and Cassie’s fledgling abilities are the only thing keeping them a half-step ahead… which may seem like a heavy burden, but as she’s told (incredulously) at one point “When you take on the responsibility… great power will come.” Madame Web is no doubt a mediocre movie - fumbling and unconvincing in intention - but it’s hardly the once-in-a-generation cinematic calamity some would have you believe. There’s been an almost manic need on social media to meme the film into oblivion, to frame it as some sort of Sistine Chapel of awfulness (starting with the much-mocked “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders just before she died” line from the trailer (though notably absent from the actual film) that went viral for reasons unknown - it’s not especially funny). The end result is frankly no worse than early-aughts fodder such as Elektra, Catwoman, Blade: Trinity, The Punisher, or Fantastic Four (many seem to have deleted the pre-Iron Man landscape from memory). But such is the exhaustive reality of the cultural climate - every critical take has to be amplified to hyperbolic extremes for the sake of Twitter engagement and YouTube thumbnails. Every flag must be planted dramatically in a hill and frantically flown to draw attention to itself. It’s just plain embarrassing at this point. Dakota Johnson has a uniquely beguiling quality - a weave of the relatable and the unobtainable, part cute girl behind the shop counter and part beauty on the billboard - that Hollywood hasn’t quite figured out how to harness. She glides mostly unscathed through the narrative detritus, but there’s a slight whiff of embarrassment to her performance she can’t fully repress. It’s hard to buy into a movie fully when the lead actress can’t quite bring herself to do it. Cassie’s three charges have an appealingly bratty rapport, in spite of their schematic nature (Mattie’s the rebellious one; Anya’s the brainy one; and Julia’s the shy one, assuming you can buy Sydney Sweeney of all people as a bespectacled wallflower)… but if the intention was to lay the groundwork for their own Spider-Woman franchise, the enthusiasm levels remain pretty dormant. Rahim, meanwhile, is one of the weakest, least effectual comic book villains in recent memory… though his performance was seemingly crippled by sloppy slatherings of ADR in post-production. He probably deserves a pass, all things considered. It’s unclear how much blame should be laid at the feet of director SJ Clarkson - a British TV vet who’s worked on shows such as Succession and Dexter - who feels less like she was directing the film then she was steering it towards a release date. Madame Web is stricken with oddly shabby carpentry for such a big-budget feature (scenes often feel as if they were edited by meat cleaver)… but the more glaring issue is how limited and less-than-cinematic Cassie’s powers actually are. By the end of the movie, she’s leveled up into the titular heroine - able to sense the elaborate, web-like strands of fate that connect us all, not unlike Neo being able to see the Matrix - but this feels less like an origin pic than a tepid prelude to one. There’s little that’s enticing about a potential sequel. Clarkson, mercifully, skips the traditional post-credits fan service, so we don’t have to sit through Vulture and Morbius time-surfing to pitch some sort of alliance (we’ve already gotten a bellyful of that via the not-so-secret identity of Adam Scott as Cassie’s not-so-coincidental paramedic partner). Madame Web doesn’t exactly linger beyond the closing credits anyway; you brush it from your mind like cinematic cobwebs. 1/9/2024 0 Comments Thanksgiving It took Eli Roth the better part of 16 years… but the horror maverick finally managed to make good on his longstanding pledge to turn the fake trailer for his twisted turkey day slasher (originally featured in 2007’s Grindhouse) into a full-length feature. The first thing you’ll probably notice is that Roth elected to scrap any pretense of a cheap, grainy, scratched-to-hell 70s exploitation aesthetic in favor of a sleek modern sheen… a decision which might initially seem like a betrayal, but in truth should actually be commended. It is, after all, extremely difficult - if not borderline impossible - to make modern grindhouse films that don’t slip easily, almost imperceptibly into spoof; looking back on the Grindhouse experiment (and its subsequent imitators), Tarantino proved the only filmmaker capable of truly threading the tonal needle. The genre grants giddy license to unshackled creativity, an invitation to wallow freely in the amoral narrative muck… and yet, it’s precisely that lack of inhibition, that craving to electroshock the audience with volts of outrageous audacity that inevitably leads to an excess of self-conscious rib-prodding. It’s an almost co-dependent form of filmmaking - the director needs constant affirmation in order to function.
Thanksgiving is set in Plymouth, Massachusetts in present day… though its overall vibe feels most reminiscent of the post-modern slasher era of Scream that spawned films such as Urban Legend and Cherry Falls. A Black Friday sale at the local RightMart soon turns ugly (Roth maximizing every drop of warped capitalist satire from the sight of blood literally being spilt over free waffle irons)… and one year later, a killer in a pilgrim’s hat and a John Carver mask is targeting those who were at the heart of the fray. That’s bad news for Jessica (Nell Verlaque) and her friends - popular jocks Evan and Scuba (Tomaso Sanelli and Gabriel Davenport) and their girlfriends Gabby and Yulia (Addison Rae and Jenna Warren) - who slipped into the store early (Jessica’s father - played by Royal Match spokesman Rick Hoffman - is the owner) and enflamed the already volatile crowd into storming the entrance. Who might our masked slasher be? Could it be ex-floor manager Mitch, who’s harbored a much-publicized vendetta against RightMart ever since his wife was tragically killed that fateful night? Could it be Jessica’s ex-boyfriend Bobby, a baseball phenom whose pitching arm was maimed during the ensuing fracas, causing him to ghost his friends and drop off the grid? Or could it be Jessica’s new squeeze Ryan, exactly the sort of clean-cut “nice guy” whose vanilla facade masks a more sinister agenda? Roth has had a somewhat vexing career. Cabin Fever and the Hostel franchise positioned him as the next big thing in horror, yet it often feels like he never quite burst from the starting blocks. There have been highlights, of course - the family-friendly John Bellairs adaptation The House with a Clock in its Walls, most notably (not to mention his memorable turn as the Bear Jew in Inglourious Basterds) - but Thanksgiving feels like precisely the sort of movie he should have been prioritizing all along. His grasp of the material has a comfortable, intuitive ease… he understands when to use the throttle and when to use the brake (the most (in)famous moment of the trailer was when a cheerleader does the splits in midair, only to land crotch-first on a knife blade jutting through the trampoline… a scene which Roth recreates, yet subverts - once again showing a desire to evolve beyond the strained gimmickry of the project’s grindhouse origins). As is often the case with the better slashers, the death sequences have a fiendish sense of showmanship; a graphic flair that never quite drifts into nihilistic cruelty the way the Hostel films did. Roth’s innate love of shock value has been tempered with more refined storytelling instincts. It seems odd to say about a film that features someone literally being crisped alive into a Thanksgiving turkey, but he’s noticeably matured as a director. If only Roth and his screenwriter/childhood pal Jeff Rendell had managed to cook up a more robust payoff - lumps start to form in the third act’s figurative gravy. Certain characters are awkwardly compromised by their red herring status (I’m looking at you, [redacted]). You can sense the underlying urge to establish John Carver as the next great slasher icon, but it never quite materializes - not in the way it did with, say, M3GAN earlier this year. He’s like a pilgrim Ghostface crossed with “V” from V For Vendetta (minus the charisma), which is a lot less fun than it sounds. The cast is surprisingly bereft of name talent - mostly Patrick Dempsey as the town sheriff and technically Addison Rae (a TikTok superstar, though you wouldn’t necessarily guess that based on her mostly indifferent screen presence here) - but newcomer Nell Verlaque intrigues. She may not be the next Neve Campbell, but physically she almost evokes the young Julia Roberts. Thanksgiving fared well enough at the box office that a sequel has already been commissioned, so Roth will get another opportunity to tweak his approach… not unlike a sweet potato casserole recipe that comes out of the oven adequately tasty yet not quite perfect. In the meantime, you could find a worse pairing for the post-meal pumpkin pie than this festively sanguinary slasher, come next November. 12/6/2023 0 Comments the marvels
For months now, a particularly dubious subsect of comic book fandom has been sharpening its knives to an absolute razor point in anticipation of The Marvels, sensing blood in the water. Regardless of contentious motives, there’s little question that the film has - fairly or unfairly - become a symbolic distillation of everything that’s gone awry with Marvel’s post-Endgame landscape… with its calamitous box office performance sending industry alarm bells clanging. The Marvel ship has been listing for some time now, but The Marvels, unfortunately, is the project that finally grazed the iceberg.
There are basically two ways you can choose to look at this movie. The first is as an enjoyably loose-limbed and aggressively silly comic book jaunt that leans heavily on the chemistry of its three leads - Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani). When the trio’s light-based powers become entangled (for reasons I don’t feel particularly inclined to try and summarize here), they have no choice but to temporarily team up… especially given that using said powers now causes them to inconveniently swap places, regardless of where they happen to be in the known universe. Carol is in hot pursuit of Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), a Kree warlord who’s siphoning off resources from other planets in an attempt to restore her ruined home world of Hala (she initially targets the atmosphere of a planet housing a Skrull refugee colony, which - if we’re being technical - bears more than a little resemblance to the plot of Spaceballs). Director Nia DaCosta (who helmed the recent Candyman remake) seems determined to keep the tone as resolutely tongue-in-cheek as possible; she’s like a kid who keeps cracking up and making silly faces on school picture day. In some respects, the approach is refreshing. Vellani - who transcended her somewhat hit-or-miss Disney Plus series - is the obvious standout here, with her infectiously wide-eyed, kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm (the fact that she’s effectively a real-life Kamala Khan - an MCU fangirl who became part of the MCU - feels like a joyous case of life imitating art). But it’s also worth noting that Larson - who’s been unfairly vilified as some sort of humorless scold within certain Marvel circles (all because she, like… advocates for female empowerment, or something equally terrifying) - seems wholly at ease with the film’s goofiness. She, Parris and Vellani have authentic rapport - their comedic banter easily outpaces the grating self-satisfaction of something like Thor: Love and Thunder. The second way to look at The Marvels, unfortunately, is the rather shabby movie the three leads find themselves occupying - a cinematic straw house that’s all-too-easily blown down by the figurative wolf. Dar-Benn, in spite of Ashton’s best efforts, is a pale wisp of a villainess… she drives a rudimentary plot that feels as if it comes with a tin twist key. The climax is so weak, it lays bare the sheer insufficiency of the film as a whole. Certain sequences probably sounded a lot better in theory than they come across in execution - most notably a planet in which everyone communicates in song, or a literal cat-herding set piece scored to a needle drop of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Memory.” DaCosta will likely be left bruised by the experience, though she probably shouldn’t be - the film was clearly wrenched from her grasp in post-production. She showcases a certain sense of staging, rhythm, and spatial awareness with the action set pieces - selling stock in her career moving forward would be premature. The real issue with The Marvels, however, is how reluctant the film seems to engage with even the most basic of character beats. I hate to say it, but it’s not clear why the film needs Monica at all - she and Carol have baggage (easily resolved, and which Carol seems barely cognizant of in the first place), but the real dramatic juice is between Carol and Kamala. Unfortunately, the script wants nothing to do with any of it… whether that be Carol, stressed over babysitting duty, lashing out at Kamala for “cosplaying as a hero,” or Kamala being forced to reckon with the realization that your idols aren’t flawless. One senses a vague mandate from the Marvel hierarchy to keep the inter-team drama casual and the character conflict barb-free. Any potential edges are affixed with bumper rails. It speaks to a larger issue within the MCU, which is the increasing lack of consequences (Carol’s guilt - which stems from events that took place entirely off-screen since Captain Marvel (which is a whole OTHER issue) - is almost effortlessly resolved via a single climactic act). Character deaths have zero impact now that the multiverse can unwind virtually any plot stroke. It would be foolish to try and claim The Marvels is the nadir of the entire MCU enterprise - there have been too many indifferent sequels, too many boilerplate origin pics - but it’s probably time to admit that the post-Endgame issues are less a bug in the system and more of a problematic feature. 11/17/2023 0 Comments the 2023 aero all-night horrorthonThe 18th annual all-night Aero Horrorthon took place on the Saturday before Halloween and, as usual, it was one of my favorite nights of the entire year. However, in a scandalous turn of events, the organizers elected *not* to announce the lineup beforehand! A lot of people prefer a mystery reveal - which is how the New Beverly, among others, traditionally operates - but I am most definitely not one of them. I like to know *exactly* what I’m in for so that I can mentally prepare… and not knowing basically sent me spiraling in the week leading up to the event - to the point that I was half-tempted to hysterically accuse the Aero of committing fraud by selling tickets under false pretenses. The good news is that the organizers at least saw fit to release a series of “cryptic clues” the morning of, and a group of enterprising sleuths managed to unravel the entire lineup over social media while we were waiting in line. 20 minutes advance notice was honestly all I needed to get my head straight and in we went (Aero membership, meanwhile, ensured we had our best seats ever). The skits, pre-show interstitials, and overall vibe were top-notch as usual (though the traditional serving of “soylent pizza” appears to well and truly be a thing of the past now, sadly)… with the overall pace between screenings feeling particularly and deliberately tight this year. Anyway - on to the films!  In a rather amusing turn of events, Dolls was the last remaining film in my Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams box set from Arrow Video… and I had actually penciled it in for Halloween night. Well, so much for that plan! See, this is precisely why I need to know what the titles are going to be in advance! One of the more iconic 80s efforts from Charles Band’s prolific Empire Pictures and director Stuart Gordon (see my Robot Jox review in the Arrow Video section), the film follows a little girl named Judy, who finds herself stranded in the English countryside with her louse of a father and witchy stepmother. The trio is forced to take refuge for the night in the nearby gothic manor of a kindly old dollmaker and his wife, where they’re joined by likable schlub Ralph and two female hitchhikers of dubious moral fiber. Long story short - the dolls are alive and those who are dicks end up dead (or worse). A really solid dose of fairy tale-flavored fun, with nifty stop-motion special effects and a surprisingly endearing bond between Judy and Ralph, who lend the film a surprising amount of heart. Not *quite* the stone-cold banger you typically look for to kick things off (it would have been a perfect second film, especially with its 78-minute runtime), but an appreciably lively opener nonetheless. Burn Level: 1 (finished off a Ghost Cherry Limeade (my new go-to energy drink of choice) and it basically had me functioning like Pacino in Heat - keeps me sharp… (*snap*)… on the edge… (*snap*)… where I gotta be)  This 1990 cult farce from director Frank Henenlotter is a darkly comic riff on the classic Frankenstein formula, featuring James Lorinz (who’s like Dana Carvey’s edgy younger brother with a touch of James Spader) as Jeffrey… a tightly-wound power plant employee (he performs self-trepanations with a power drill to manage his anxiety) and amateur mad scientist, whose fiancee Elizabeth perishes in a freak lawn mower accident. Able to salvage her head, Jeffrey sets about trying to build her the perfect body by targeting New York street walkers… who he attempts to lure with lethal “extra-strength crack” he whipped up in his lab (yes, I’m being serious - just wait until you get to the exploding orgy scene). Things only get nuttier when the title character (played by Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen) is reanimated and inadvertently unleashed upon the city. A bit shoddy from an actual filmmaking perspective, but wildly inappropriate in the best way possible. The Horrorthon should really screen more horror-comedies like this. On a side note, I saw a girl wearing a Frankenhooker t-shirt and if that was strictly coincidence, then I tip my cap to her. Burn Level: 2 (minimal fatigue, senses sharp, echolocation functioning at a peak, Morbius-level efficiency)  I must admit to having a bit of a soft spot for this film. The notion of turning Hitchcock’s suspense masterwork into some sort of belated 80s horror franchise is obviously beyond cringe… and yet, director Richard Franklin (who also helmed prior Horrorthon offering Link) manages to chart his own compelling path, narratively - due in no small part to a genuinely sad and sympathetic performance from Anthony Perkins as a reformed Norman Bates who just wants to live a normal life. Franklin was never going to go toe-to-toe with Hitch stylistically (in color, no less), but even with its more muted visual approach, the film manages several sequences of well-crafted suspense (and if you’re a fan of the subsect of De Palma films that feature sleazy Dennis Franz performances, this one’s got a humdinger). The main issue is that the story delivers a pretty respectable twist about two-thirds of the way through, but then has to cook up an additional twist to pull everything together, and that’s where the movie wobbles… the plot seams definitely start to fray, though the resonance of the final shot is undeniable. On a side note, I think it’s all but impossible not to fall in love with Meg Tilly in this movie - she’ll break your heart anew every time you watch. Burn Level: 4.5 (holding up surprisingly well, definitely aware that the event is now officially pushing two AM but no significant signs of fatigue)  A suitably gonzo effort from the prolific (and slightly mad) “Ed Wood-esque” auteur Jesus “Jess” Franco, and co-starring Horrorthon cult hero Telly Savalas, this late-80s French slasher functions as a very loose update of the 1960 classic Eyes Without a Face. Helmut Berger plays a plastic surgeon whose sister is disfigured by acid (meant for him, courtesy of a disgruntled patient)… who subsequently joins forces with a Nazi war criminal (as one does) to attempt a radical facial transplant. Unfortunately, one of the models he abducts as a potential “candidate” happens to be the daughter of Savalas’s New York bigwig, who dispatches his old war buddy turned gumshoe (played by Chris Mitchum) to investigate. With its bad dubbing, mediocre acting (Savalas excepted, of course), lurching tonal shifts (it switches almost indiscriminately between genuine horror and borderline soft-core porn), and weirdly incongruous theme song (see below), the end result is a narrative Jackson Pollock piece (to put it kindly)… and yet it kinda, sorta rocks? That might be the Rockstar Silver Ice talking, it’s hard to say. Burn Level: 6.5 (my customary two AM Rockstar Silver Ice gave me a second wind... a few restless moments, but never in any significant danger of nodding off, unlike years past) Up next was the John Carpenter classic Prince of Darkness (a surprisingly modest slot for a film that easily could have - and probably should have - kicked off the entire evening), which totally rules but I’ve also seen a zillion times… so even though I was still in relatively good shape physically, we once again decided that four films was our limit and packed it in. Maybe next year. For the record, #6 was Primal Rage, which I watched on Shudder a few days later - a great hunk of 80s cheese about a research chimp that unleashes a rage virus on a college campus. The sort of movie where the band that wrote the deliriously peppy pop song that plays over the opening credits (see below) shows up to perform it live at the climactic Halloween dance. Like Slaughterhouse Rock last year, I imagine the screening was a total hoot… assuming anyone was still awake enough at that point to enjoy it. UPDATED HORRORTHON RANKINGS
01. The Entity 02. Jason X 03. The Blob 04. The Hidden 05. House of Wax 06. Critters 07. Maximum Overdrive 08. Halloween II 09. Psycho II 10. In the Mouth of Madness 11. Dolls 12. Link 13. Frankenhooker 14. Horror of Dracula 15. Faceless 16. Phantasm II 17. Lord of Illusions 18. Mortuary 19. Nightbeast 20. It’s Alive 21. Body Melt 22. Devil Fetus 23. Ruby At first glance, this would appear to be a disappointing lineup, with no titles in the top-8 (though I contemplated putting Psycho II as high as #6), but I would actually argue this was the most *consistent* Horrorthon lineup to date, with four really solid films and no duds to speak of. If you factor in Prince of Darkness and Primal Rage, it might have been the best overall from top-to-bottom. Can't wait until next year! 11/6/2023 0 Comments streaming horror: no one will save you, pet sematary: bloodlines, and five nights at Freddy's If movies were judged on degree of difficulty, No One Will Save You would receive extremely high marks. Writer/director Brian Duffield starts with a cool elevator pitch (what if a home invasion thriller doubled as an alien invasion thriller?) and ratchets up the creative challenge by staging the film with no supporting cast to speak of and virtually zero dialogue. Working within those restrictive parameters, he nonetheless does a deft job establishing key details of world and character - Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) is a young woman who lives a solitary life in the isolated farmhouse where she grew up, and appears to be ostracized by the neighboring townsfolk for reasons unknown. One night, she’s alerted to the presence of an intruder in her home - a gray-skinned alien humanoid with telekinetic abilities - and from there Duffield keeps his foot firmly mashed to the accelerator, keeping the audience off-balance as his script begins zigging and zagging in unexpected directions. This proves to be tremendous B-movie fun… for about 45 minutes or so. In spite of the propulsive pace, it’s incredibly difficult - even for a talented filmmaker - to keep upping the narrative ante while avoiding repetition (there’s only so much fresh cat-and-mousing you can stage throughout the house and in the neighboring forest) and doing enough character-wise (again, without the benefit of any dialogue) to knit it all together convincingly. The rules and inner logic start to feel fuzzy after a while. Nonetheless, Dever proves insanely, compulsively watchable - it’s the mark of a truly gifted actress when you strip away every tool but her own expressiveness and it remains more than enough for her to single-handedly carry an entire picture. Duffield, who wrote such films as The Babysitter and Underwater, is known for his innovative approach to screenwriting (a sample page from this movie features terse, bolded action descriptions embedded in a wall of text that reads “she can’t move” over and over again). No One Will Save You is ultimately too much of a high-wire trapeze act for its own good, but I seriously dig the way Duffield’s creative mind works.  I doubt even the most ardent fans of Stephen King’s 1983 novel Pet Sematary would suggest the concept is remotely compelling enough to build an entire cinematic universe around. And yet, following Mary Lambert’s original 1989 adaptation (and 1992 sequel) and the largely indifferent 2019 remake presided over by Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch, we somehow have this nonessential prequel - which presents itself as the origin story you never knew you needed (or wanted) for Jud Crandall (the character memorably played by Fred Gwynne in the original and John Lithgow in the remake, and mostly portrayed here as some wide-eyed goober by Jackson White). Crandall is preparing to leave the town of Ludlow for good with his girlfriend Norma (the scorchingly photogenic Natalie Alyn Lind) in 1969, but events conspire to keep him put… right as the reclusive Bill Baterman (David Duchovny - what in the world?) reveals that his son Timmy recently returned from Vietnam in one piece. Of course we catch on pretty quickly that Timmy did not, in fact, return from Vietnam in one piece, and almost certainly took an ill-advised detour through the pet sematary… the ancient and sinister burial ground that resurrects the dead, but brings them back, well… not quite right (this is actually based on a story Jud tells in the novel, though Timmy served in World War II). Timmy (played by Jack Mulhern from Mare of Easttown) doesn’t necessarily act as if he’s been infected with malevolence; rather he appears to be suffering from a form of PTSD (something one imagines that director Lindsey Anderson Beer was attempting to grapple with on some vague thematic level). Pet Sematary: Bloodlines delves into the dark history of the town, but like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, it’s really just an excuse to rehash the original like a slightly reshuffled deck of cards. There’s nothing revelatory to be found here. “Sometimes dead is better,” Jud says, in one of the novel’s more iconic lines. That goes for people, and for IP as well. Some things needn’t be continually resurrected.  Five Nights at Freddy’s is based on the hugely popular video game series, and those who haven’t been indoctrinated will likely be left scratching their heads over what’s essentially a Chuck E. Cheese version of The Black Phone (infused with a healthy dose of Nightmare on Elm Street dream logic). Josh Hutcherson stars as Mike Schmidt (no apparent connection to the baseball legend), who has no choice but to take a gig as the night security guard at the long defunct pizza parlor Freddy Fazbear’s, which garnered significant notoriety back in the 80s after several kids went missing (Mike is tasked with caring for his socially withdrawn younger sister Abby - a slightly more intriguing dynamic than if he’d simply been given a daughter). Mike, who attempts lucid dreaming each night in the hopes of unraveling his brother’s childhood abduction, soon comes to realize that Freddy and his animatronic pals (Bonnie, Chica and Foxy) come to creaking, lurching life after hours… their intentions unclear (though if the fate of Mike’s predecessor is any indication, probably not great).
Five Nights at Freddy’s has been demolishing box office records (I took the coward’s way out and simply watched it on Peacock), but it’s hard to see it as frankly much more than the rough skeleton of a movie. The dramatic tension remains slack and largely ill-defined until the third act (the script has to contrive antagonists - such as a group of would-be looters, who receive their just desserts in the film’s best sequence - for fear that nothing would happen otherwise). The main reason to see the movie is the marvelous job Jim Henson’s Creature Shop does bringing Freddy and friends to life in all their clanking, tactile, grubby-felted glory - every time they’re on-screen, the film sputters to life. Hutcherson has an easy, appealing chemistry with Elizabeth Lail (who looks like Jennifer Lawrence’s peppier younger sister who did more extracurriculars in high school) as Vanessa, a cop who stops by Freddy’s every night and appears to know more than she lets on. The mythology feels tenuous yet oddly overwrought (an extension of the games and their supposedly convoluted lore). It’s unlikely this adaptation will convert many newcomers, but the Five Nights faithful seem well-pleased, for what it's worth. 10/27/2023 0 Comments killers of the flower moon Martin Scorsese’s filmography is far too diverse to attempt and slot it into some sort of reductive thematic box… but there’s no doubt a good number of his movies are fixated on how the American Dream has become inextricably entwined with the malignant influence of capitalism. In Goodfellas, Henry Hill sees his larger-than-life gangster fantasies (exemplified by the cars they drive, the wads of cash they brandish, and the power and influence they wield) disintegrate into a pathetic, coke-fueled paranoia nightmare. Casino uses Vegas as the backdrop for its sprawling rise-and-fall tragedy - a symbol of the Faustian allure of instant (and unearned) wealth (the true American Dream, some might say) - while The Wolf of Wall Street distorts the world of high finance through the most hilariously ghoulish lens imaginable, suggesting that economic excess is the most addictive and soul-destroying drug of all.
Joining the list is Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese’s long-awaited adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller, which was about, well… many things, but mostly cast a light on one of the more shameful racial transgressions in the history of a nation that’s had quite a few of them. Set in Oklahoma in the aftermath of World War I, the story reveals that the Osage Nation became the wealthiest people per capita on Earth after discovering oil on their reservation. Early scenes offer the surreal sight of the Osage impeccably clothed in the finest suits, furs and flapper fashions and chauffeured in the fanciest of automobiles, the obsequious white townsfolk flitting about them with naked, wolfish avarice. Independent of the tragedies that would ensue, Scorsese gently broaches the subject of whether this financial windfall was of genuine benefit, beyond superficial materialism. The character of Lizzie Q (whose family controls a large share of the oil headrights, and whose four daughters reside at the heart of the story) laments the erosion of cultural identity; her children assimilating via white husbands represents a literal and figurative diluting of their native bloodline. The sight of the Osage - at the crucial moment of discovery - staging a whooping, celebratory dance while bathed in black gold isn’t necessarily the moment of triumph it appears on the surface... one senses Scorsese’s queasiness with the image - and repercussions - of their bodies being tainted, literally, with this country's poisonous lifeblood. Eventually the Osage - the majority of them young and seemingly healthy - begin turning up dead at a virtually epidemic rate… each fatality punctuated with the same chilling refrain - “no investigation.” The story isn’t really framed as any sort of mystery; we grasp from the get-go that local ranching titan William “King” Hale (Robert De Niro) is orchestrating the murders… both to gain control of the oil wealth, and to correct the natural (racial) order he believes has been subverted. Much has been made of how the narrative was chosen to be framed - whether it might have been strengthened from the Osage perspective, while also acknowledging that this wasn’t necessarily Scorsese’s story to tell (further complicated by an understanding that, while indigenous filmmakers have made great strides in recent years, no studio or streamer is likely to hand one a 200-million budget just yet). Purely from a dramatic standpoint, it’s a tricky approach to navigate… particularly over a monolithic 206-minute runtime… not only because the perpetrators are singularly repellant, but also due to the fact that - aside from the Machiavellian Hale (played with a wicked, matter-of-fact menace by De Niro) - these are fundamentally dull, brutish, thoughtless characters who do little to engage the dramatic senses. The movie grips through sheer force of will, but it doesn’t necessarily captivate the same way that the pillars of Scorsese’s filmography do - like a drug that hits the cinematic bloodstream. There is a clear-cut narrative purpose at work here, however. Enter Hale’s nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), recently returned from the war (where he served as a cook - the film is quick to stress there was no heroism on his part). He begins courting - and eventually marries - Molly Kyle (Lily Gladstone), the key chess piece in Hale’s master plan (he begins eliminating her sisters one-by-one, ensuring her family’s headrights coalesce around her). The emotional reality of Ernest and Molly’s marriage remains elusive… but one gets the sense that there is both love and genuine conscience on Ernest’s part; he’s simply too weak-willed to make good on them, particularly when he’s instructed to start doping Molly with tainted insulin. This is a shuddering portrait of the banality of evil (to see Ernest as conscienceless is to let him off the hook) and DiCaprio - a movie star operating at the absolute peak of his powers - gives a performance completely shorn of any trace of vanity. Slouching and sallow-faced, his mouth twisted in a pout of consternation, he feels, by the end, as if the competing demands on his soul are forcing him into a paralyzed fetal position. It’s a truly pathetic showing, in the most complimentary way. Gladstone has an incredibly interesting countenance that holds the screen; she’s at her best when she’s at her most still, allowing you to lose yourself in the contours of her face, in the veiled intensity of her gaze. Where her career might go from here is exciting to contemplate. Grann’s book was as much about the rise of J. Edgar Hoover’s fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation (its subtitle is literally “The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI”), which comes to unravel the conspiracy - but lawman Tom White (played by the ever-dependable Jesse Plemons) isn’t really much of a character here. There’s a strong case to be made that this material would have been better served by a miniseries, which would have offered more elbow room. But Scorsese’s cinematic mojo appears in no danger of cresting. Killers of the Flower Moon isn’t as rapturously entertaining or stylistically intoxicating as his very best pictures, but it simmers and throbs with diamond-cut indignation. The final scene, expertly sprung by a director whose craft knows virtually no bounds, lands like a blow to the solar plexus. Some have argued that, like Jordan Peele did with Nope last summer, Scorsese is subversively condemning the very medium he’s operating within… and castigating the audience’s complicity in the process. That may or may not be true, but there’s little doubt that the ending casts the concept of justice in this country in a very stark and sobering light. After all… it’s easy to view the tragedy of the Osage through a 21st-century lens of moral outrage, but it doesn’t change the fact that the atrocities perpetrated against them were relegated to little more than historical footnote for decades. It’s not an easy truth to digest. It sits like gravel in your gut. 10/17/2023 0 Comments the exorcist: believer I’ve made little secret of my dislike - if not outright contempt - for the exorcism subgenre over the years. William Friedkin’s 1973 classic The Exorcist may be an undisputed titan of cinematic horror, but its legacy is more akin to that viral Oppenheimer meme in which a stricken-looking Cillian Murphy leans forward with his fingertips pressed to his temple. The ensuing half-century - and the past twenty years in particular - has seen a parade of creatively… well, if “bankrupt” sounds too harsh, let’s at least say unadventurous imitators. Films such as The Conjuring trilogy, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Last Exorcism, Deliver Us From Evil, The Last Rite, The Devil Inside, Prey For the Devil and The Pope’s Exorcist, which mechanically recycle Friedkin’s playbook beat-by-beat, with almost no understanding of what made the original work in the first place (hint: it wasn’t heads rotating 360-degrees, beds levitating, basso growls emerging from children’s mouths, or crosses turning upside down on the wall). We’re basically just watching Xeroxes of Xeroxes (of Xeroxes) at this point.
It’s a strange yet undeniable quirk, however, that the actual follow-ups within the Exorcist series proper aren’t really amongst the offending parties. Say what you will about John Boorman’s infamously off-the-rails sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic, but it’s definitely committed to its own unique brand of locust-fueled fever dream lunacy. William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist III - the only remotely palatable film of the bunch - was a flawed but fascinating supernatural police procedural with George C. Scott punching way above the movie’s weight, one legendary jump scare, and a studio-mandated exorcism tacked on at the end. And it’s hard to know what exactly Paul Schrader and Renny Harlin’s jousting Exorcist prequels Dominion and The Beginning were going for (they’re each lousy in their own way), but at least they went way off into the sun-baked dust of the East African desert to do it. The Exorcist may be a mediocre franchise, but each entry has made a passing effort to carve out its own niche. The Exorcist: Believer, on the other hand, is a legacy sequel cynically designed to replicate the iconography of the original in the sacred name of “fan service.” Set in small-town Georgia, the story follows 13-year-old friends Angela (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) - both of them fine, but neither in danger of taking Linda Blair’s crown - who head into the woods after school to attempt a seance (rarely a good idea)… three days later - following a frenzied manhunt - the two of them turn up in a barn over 30 miles away, disoriented and believing mere hours have passed. This opening act… while not exactly great, does have legitimate tonal texture and a firm tingle of emotional stakes. Unfortunately, it’s at this point that the movie inevitably shifts into standard exorcism territory and the air slowly bleeds from the narrative balloon. Having wrapped his Halloween trilogy barely 12 months ago, director David Gordon Green wasted precious little time in tackling another of the horror genre’s most sacrosanct properties. Many have had trouble getting a handle on the seemingly arbitrary twists and turns of his career; the closest parallel would be Soderbergh - another prolific onetime indie darling who’s taken to following whatever creative winds happen to catch his fancy. The difference, however, is that even when Soderbergh misfires, there’s a certain clarity and erudition to his filmmaking… I’m not sure the same could be said of Gordon Green. Halloween Ends, to its credit, showed tantalizing glimpses of the more innovative and ambitious horror film he likely aspired to make if given free rein… but The Exorcist: Believer is little more than glossy hackwork. It has no discernible personality, no visionary spark. Its most noteworthy gambit is its Doublemint approach to possession - which feels very much in the same spirit as The Lost World concluding that the best way to top a T-Rex attack is simply to add a second T-Rex. Leslie Odom Jr. does most of the heavy lifting as Angela’s single dad Victor - tasked with a devastating choice in the opening sequence that eventually comes full-circle… but the hype is understandably centered on 90-year-old Ellen Burstyn, who was somehow talked into reprising her role as Chris MacNeil from the original (no doubt she concluded the payday would be a tidy windfall for the great grandkids). The role is non-essential nostalgia bait with the corniest of payoffs, but Burstyn’s screen presence remains fiercely undiminished. The real standout is Ann Dowd, a fabulous character actress who deserves to be seen as more than the store-brand alternative to Margo Martindale. She plays Victor’s neighbor Ann, a nurse who nearly became a nun and, in one of the film’s more inspired flourishes, is tasked with leading the exorcism after the church completely wimps out (we should probably be thankful Father Merrin’s grandson doesn’t show up, with Lieutenant Kinderman’s nephew in tow). But why is the climax cluttered with so many rando characters? Katherine’s family pastor shrieks “Hallelujah,” then a Haitian Hoodoo woman chucks herbs into the fireplace - it’s an absolute circus. There’s nothing even remotely close to the sorrowful tenor of Jason Miller’s performance as Father Karras (which, to be clear, *was* the key to the original’s greatness). The Exorcist: Believer is committed to the first movie in a slavish yet irritatingly half-hearted fashion (if we’re doing this, you might as well be flogging those tubular bells every ten minutes). It’s supposedly the first entry in an all-new trilogy, but does virtually nothing to lay the groundwork for future installments. If cooler heads were to prevail and simply call the whole enterprise off, then I’d be the true believer. 10/6/2023 0 Comments saw x From 2004 through 2010, horror fans were literally greeted each October with a new Saw entry - as steadfast a harbinger as the leaves changing color or the start of football season when it came to the transition from summer to fall. In a strange way, given the gruesome subject matter, the series became almost like comfort food - reliable, rib-sticking torture porn. Even as the sequels increasingly devolved into a mess of grisly traps and overwrought mythology cluttered with ancillary characters no one particularly cared about, the appetite for these films seemed insatiable. It honestly felt like we’d get another dozen more.
Of course, the box office returns eventually began to taper off and Lionsgate elected to pull the handbrake after part VII (the obligatory 3D entry). In recent years, the studio has fitfully attempted to reignite the franchise with 2017’s Jigsaw and 2021’s Chris Rock-led spin-off Spiral, without much fanfare. Saw X, on the other hand, may be the tenth installment of the series, but it actually serves as a follow-up to the original… falling somewhere before the events of part II on the Saw spectrum, which allows for the much-needed return of fan favorites John Kramer (Tobin Bell) and his protege Amanda (Shawnee Smith). In retrospect, one could argue the decision to kill off Jigsaw at the end of part III was a miscalculation that the series has been paying for ever since… though the void likely would have been mitigated had the producers simply committed to Amanda instead. Smith always had a twitchy ferocity in the role… like a junkie who’d been raised by wolves. Her long-term potential was largely untapped; there’s little question she could have shouldered the franchise. At any rate, Saw X begins with another marvelously twisted contraption, as its would-be victim is forced to willingly allow his fingers to be splintered one-by-one, lest the vacuum tubes attached to his face suck out his eyeballs like pickled eggs. From there, however, the film shifts into uncharted emotional territory as Kramer seeks a miracle cure for his terminal brain cancer at a clinic outside Mexico City… only to discover he’s the victim of an elaborate con. The perpetrators - led by the poshly statuesque Norwegian Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund) - are systematically rounded up and placed in a warehouse-of-horrors to be “tested”… but this time the proceedings are charged with a raw and righteous fury we haven’t really seen before. It’s the rare instance in which we feel an emotional stake in the victims’ transgressions… in the graphic mutilations that ensue. Not all Saw fans will be onboard with the film’s surprisingly slow build in the first half… but it does afford Bell - whose Jigsaw tended to be more concept than character - a rare opportunity to explore Kramer’s more vulnerable, flesh-and-blood dimensions. The script brushes up against all sorts of juicy character potential… such as this earlier iteration of Amanda still wavering ever-so-slightly in her commitment, terrified of inheriting Kramer’s mantle, and experiencing a guilty spark of kinship with the troubled Gabriela (Renata Vaca), who - like her - has seen her life crippled by drug addiction. But it proves difficult to fully extract the marrow (to reference one of the film’s more fiendish traps, one involving a Gigli saw). It’s hard to explore such concerns with any appreciable depth (or breathing room) when people are busy fishing chunks of grey matter from their frontal lobes while strapped to a chair. Saw X nonetheless - more so, arguably, then any entry since part III - feels like a considered story, rather than a mechanical exercise in the grime-and-rust aesthetics of grunge torment. Still, the underlying emotional ethics are a bit tricky to parse. Celia, with her sculpted Scandinavian features and haughty smugness, is a prize antagonist… we’re practically slavering over the prospect of her receiving a richly deserved comeuppance by the end. But her accomplices - largely undeveloped as characters - are a different matter. Jigsaw, per his standard modus operandi, isn’t about retribution, but rather “teachable moments.” But are we rooting for them to be redeemed… or simply to suffer? It’s not entirely clear (neither is the question of whether we’re simply abandoning any remaining pretense of moral nebulousness and simply embracing Kramer as a lovable antihero). However, none of it really matters once the climactic reckoning is at hand and Charlie Clouser’s iconic “Hello Zepp” theme initiates like clockwork… a moment which blew the roof clean off the theater. It’s easy to be jaded, but experiences like that are still genuinely exciting. To the uninitiated, Saw X may seem like a bald-faced attempt to wring the last few remaining bucks from a depleted franchise… but it feels more like a second wind. I’m ready for a dozen more. 9/28/2023 0 Comments bottoms In my review of Cocaine Bear earlier this year, I commented that you can’t simply will a cult film into existence - it’s an organic process, one which stems from developing your own esoteric wavelength and unapologetically putting the onus on viewers to find their way onto it. Bottoms, the new high school comedy from director Emma Seligman and co-writer Rachel Sennott is, if nothing, else a genuine cult film in-the-making; its particular idiosyncrasies are encoded deep within its cinematic marrow. It is not a creative frequency I was ultimately able to fully align with, personally, but still - game recognizes game.
To be honest, I must have read and re-read the film’s tagline over a dozen times and I still have trouble making sense of it. Sennott (Bodies Bodies Bodies) and Ayo Edebiri (The Bear) star as PJ and Josie, best friends and sexually frustrated lesbians starting their senior year at Rockbridge Falls High. The girls are defined almost entirely by their queerness - there’s little insight into their aspirations, backgrounds or even the specifics of their friendship, beyond the driving need to get their rocks off (to be fair, that’s not unusual for the sex farce subgenre, but if we’re being honest, it’s not like the hetero versions were anything to aspire to much of the time). A random confluence of events leads to a rumor that the duo spent the summer bloodying their knuckles while incarcerated in juvie… and results in them starting what could best be described as a makeshift cross between a fight club and a female self-defense group - more or less by accident. But the unexpected spike in popularity that ensues puts PJ and Josie in sudden position to make a run at their objects of cheerleader affection (played by Kaia Gerber and Havana Rose Liu, respectively). The plot points in Bottoms are connected by such tenuous narrative tissue, it often feels as if the film were conceived by a glitchy AI program. The obvious point-of-reference - as is the case with virtually any outside-the-box high school comedy from the past 30 years - is the 1988 classic Heathers… but Seligman’s film has a fuzzier point-of-view. Its absurdist reality is tougher to buy into (“Could the ugly, untalented gays please report to the principal’s office?” we hear broadcast over the school’s PA system early on). There’s actually something tantalizingly clever at the core of the movie’s self-awareness, cloaking what’s essentially a queer American Pie in fake female empowerment (in addition to LGBTQ representation in the form of gay characters who behave just as selfishly as their straight counterparts). But Seligman’s reconceptualization of the genre struggles to take shape - it teeters between parody and homage (best exemplified by a needle drop of Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” as PJ and Josie mope through their “lowest point” character montage). Eventually Rockbridge’s football rivalry with Huntington High turns murderous and the film flies into such tonally bonkers territory, it’s hard to know how to react (it’s as if the third act of Heathers were stapled to a completely different movie). It’s a good thing that Sennott and Edebiri are such marvelously expressive performers - almost Muppet-like in their emotive dexterity. The movie is very funny on a moment-to-moment basis… Seligman and Sennott’s dialogue has a pleasingly acidic Gen Z afterburn. Ruby Cruz (who portrayed a warrior-princess to very fine effect on Willow last year) gives a revelatory performance as PJ and Josie’s endearing, vulnerable, and underappreciated pal Hazel, while the movie is very nearly stolen by former NFL star Marshawn Lynch - the weirdest, most inspired casting decision of the summer as the club’s faculty advisor. Seligman has talent… but one hopes her visual sense gains a bit of stylistic musculature in time - the film’s flat, plastic look doesn’t necessarily do it any favors (it could have used a touch of aesthetic inspiration from a movie like Jawbreaker). There’s little doubt, however, that Bottoms - whatever its shortcomings - is going to amass some extremely devoted fans. As well it should. After all, we don’t watch movies for the sake of cinematic perfection, we watch them to find stories that resonate and characters who speak to us. And there are quite a few people, I expect, who will be sharply attuned to this zany oddity’s particular pitch. 9/19/2023 0 Comments blue beetle At the start of Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes (Xolo Mariduena) returns to Palmera City after his triumphant graduation from Gotham University… only to learn that his working-class family has fallen on hard times and is on the brink of losing their home. A chance encounter with Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine) - scion of Kord Industries - promises potential employment… but when Jaime reports for his interview, she thrusts a Big Belly Burger box into his hands, implores him to guard it with his life, and oh yeah - whatever you do, don’t look inside.
Naturally, he looks inside… and discovers a metallic scarab, which promptly fuses with him on an organic level, creating a symbiotic bond. A sentient weapon of alien origin, the scarab (voiced by viral pop star Becky G) encases Jaime in an armored exoskeleton and - after some initial growing pains (including a sojourn into space and accidentally bisecting a city bus in half) - informs him that she can materialize virtually any weapon he can imagine, amongst other handy superheroic perks. Unfortunately, Jenny’s ruthless Aunt (and Kord Industries CEO) Victoria (Susan Sarandon) has big plans for the scarab as part of her secret OMAC (One Man Army Corps) project, which will help revolutionize the company into one of the world’s foremost military contractors (much to the dismay of Jenny, whose late father deliberately fought against this particular shift in philosophy). If this sounds like an amalgam of virtually every comic book movie that’s come before, well… you’re not exactly wrong. Blue Beetle doggedly follows the superhero 101 template to the letter, right down to Victoria’s imposing (and partially augmented) henchman Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo) snarling “The love you feel for your family makes you WEAK” (spoilers - turns out Jaime’s family is actually his greatest strength), and Jaime’s Uncle Rudy (George Lopez) making earnest declarations such as “The universe has sent you a gift. And you have to figure out what you’re going to do with it” (groan). But director Angel Manuel Soto (Charm City Kings) has a spry touch… a jazzy enthusiasm that keeps the movie from getting rooted too deeply in cliche. Palerma City’s futuristic, blue-and-purple-neon sheen (like a comic book Miami Vice) offers a striking contrast to the increasingly homogenized visual look of the MCU and the drab-and-dreary color palette of the Zack Snyder superhero pics… as does the film’s surprisingly robust score (courtesy of The Haxan Cloak), which is infused with retro synthesizers almost reminiscent of Stranger Things (and 80s moviemaking in general). This is the rare DC installment that feels… unencumbered. It’s a frosting shot of late-summer escapism, breezily unburdened by the need to slot itself into some tortured Justice League jigsaw puzzle. Anyone who’s seen Xolo Mariduena on the hit series Cobra Kai - where he plays the role of Miguel Diaz - is well aware of the young Latino actor’s easy charisma and potential star power. Watching him headline a studio blockbuster is legitimately exciting… his likability in the role couldn’t be more natural. Damian Alcazar and Elpidia Carrillo (Anna from Predator!) are pleasingly sturdy as Jaime’s parents, as is Belissa Escobedo as his sarcastic sister Milagro. But your mileage regarding Lopez’s mugging comic relief and tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist shtick may vary; ditto Oscar nominee Adriana Barraza as Jaime’s beloved abuela, who dubiously morphs into a cartoonish ass-kicker when shit gets real. Sarandon, meanwhile, offers one of the weaker variations of the “respected-actress-slums-for-a-paycheck-by-playing-the-antagonist-in-a-comic-book-movie-or-YA-adaptation” trend… though the rugged Trujillo’s screen presence is fierce. It’s too bad the film isn’t able to capitalize more deeply on the pathos of his damaged, tragic Carapax. Soto shows a confident hand in the fluidly choreographed action scenes (tinged with a distinct anime influence - such as the oversized Cloud Strife buster sword Jaime summons), which frequently utilize practical effects and real locations. But at the end of the day, this is yet another superhero being launched into an already impossibly crowded landscape - there’s a particular sense of lassitude, even without the complication of the film being caught in the crossfire of James Gunn’s impending DC reset. The marketing leaned heavily on the movie’s Latino representation and familial focus as a means of differentiating it from the pack, but there’s only so much that can be done to transcend basic formula as well-worn as this. Blue Beetle is a reminder that comic book movies with a genuine blend of humor and heart always have something to offer… but the pulse also quickens a little less with each boilerplate origin story. 9/1/2023 0 Comments barbie Love it or hate it, there’s no question that Barbie is the biggest party of the summer. Is it really deserving of its staggering, billion-dollar success? Well, putting aside the fact that the majority of its billion-dollar club brethren are comic-book blockbusters and franchise sequels (stuff like Captain Marvel and Jurassic World Dominion - the cinematic equivalent of underwhelming and underachieving Ivy League legacies), you could argue that the film’s satirical edge is surprisingly butterknife-soft at times… and that its meta-approach isn’t necessarily any more audacious than, say, the Brady Bunch Movie from the mid-90s. But Barbie is also directed with such easy confidence by Greta Gerwig (working from a script she wrote with partner Noah Baumbach), and benefits from the two best leads you could possibly hope for to headline this particular property. And on a website literally called Pop, one must tip one’s cap to the poppiest of pop moviemaking.
We begin in Barbieland, a pink pastel wonder of practical production design, where the classic Barbie iteration - i.e. “Stereotypical Barbie” (Margot Robbie) - enjoys a perpetual nirvana of carefree routine, living it up in a matriarchal society with her fellow dolls (all of whom are also named Barbie). Ken (Ryan Gosling) spends his days at the beach with the other Kens (including Simu Liu and Kingsley Ben-Adir, among others), hoping to take his relationship with Barbie to the next level… though she gently rebuffs his advances in favor of all-girl sleepovers and dance parties at her Dreamhouse. Suddenly stress fractures begin to manifest on the surface of Barbie’s candy-colored facade - dark thoughts of mortality, along with cold showers and flat feet. “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinnon), a disfigured outcast, informs Barbie she must venture beyond Barbieland and locate the child playing with her doll in the real world in order to set things right (one of the refreshing things about the movie is that Gerwig doesn’t sweat the meta-logic; it’s not Tarkovsky, after all… it’s a film based on a toy line. Like Barbie herself, it’s best to just put on a Colgate smile, hop into a pink convertible, crank the tunes and enjoy the ride). The trailers suggested that Barbie and Ken crossing over into our reality is the primary thrust of the plot… but this actually constitutes a relatively small portion of the film’s runtime. Instead, Ken gets wind of “the patriarchy” and the knowledge he brings home throws Barbieland into complete chaos as he inspires a “Ken uprising” and a complete inversion of established gender roles (one of the most laugh-out-loud funny gags is Barbieland’s unofficial radio anthem changing from “Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls to Matchbox 20’s “Push.” Trust me - if you’re a certain age, you get it). In a weird way, the movie’s structural looseness and artificial aesthetics capture the nostalgic freedom of childhood play, to a far greater degree than the Transformers movies or GI Joe ever managed. It also results in a certain scattergun quality that some will find easier to overlook than others. America Ferrera, most notably, is given the film’s showstopper monologue (and will rightfully be remembered for it)… but the fractured relationship with her tween daughter, played by Ariana Greenblatt, starts near the emotional center and ends, well… not particularly near the emotional center. Likewise, the Will Ferrell-led toy execs who want to put Barbie “back in her box” remain fussing about, long after the shift back to Barbieland has rendered them moot (there’s a lot of gentle ribbing of Mattel while keeping the claws firmly sheathed; someone like Todd Phillips wouldn’t hesitate to bite the hand that feeds, but Gerwig plays nice). The reason Barbie works to the extent that it does, however, is due almost entirely to Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling bringing unironic heart and pathos to characters that are, quite literally, molded plastic. Robbie’s particular nuclear blend of beauty, talent and fearlessness is almost without peer… but aside from her note-perfect portrayal of Harley Quinn and Oscar-nominated turn in I, Tonya, she’s struggled at times to find a worthy outlet (more recently she’s had to settle for the self-conscious grandiosity of middling auteurist fare such as Amsterdam and Babylon). Her on-screen luminosity goes without saying (the camera truly does worship her), but it’s easy to overlook just how nimble her performance actually is… the way she pivots from frivolous slapstick to emotional vulnerability, often within the same scene. Hopefully the post-Barbie world order is one in which she’s free to operate with no career handbrake. As an actor, Gosling has a singular intensity that somehow never feels one-note… though it does often overshadow how funny he can be. There’s something quite endearing about reports of him approaching the role of Ken with the same level of focus and dedication as if he were prepping for a Nicolas Winding Refn picture. He finds the film’s wavelength with an ease that a loopy method freak such as Jared Leto never could. His rendition of “I’m Just Ken” has deservedly etched its place in the zeitgeist fabric of 2023. Of course, there’s plenty to theoretically criticize - the existentialism doesn’t go deep enough, it’s not particularly risky as feminist polemics go, plenty of jokes fizzle out like a damp firecracker (the “beach you off” gag is the cringiest of puns)… but Barbie has a genuine warmth, and few filmmakers could balance celebration and satire better than Gerwig does (it’s a movie that’s almost rapturously free of cynicism). Much like one of Barbie’s Dreamhouse shindigs, you’d have to work pretty hard not to have a good time. The film also delves surprisingly deeply into Barbie lore (Michael Cera plays Allan, the dorky and much-mocked Ken alternative, while Emerald Fennell portrays Barbie’s pregnant pal Midge). More than anything, Gerwig deserves credit for her astoundingly perfect and subversive closing gag. It’s a complete 180 from Oppenheimer’s shattering grace note, and yet… both endings are unforgettable in their own way, and complement one another perfectly. That, more than anything, is the true enduring power of “Barbenheimer.”  The Last Voyage of the Demeter is an expansive adaptation of a single chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but - as many (including Norwegian director Andre Ovredal) have suggested - it might as well be Alien reconceived aboard a 19th-century seafaring vessel. Set in 1897, the story revolves around the titular ship as it sets sail for London, unaware that its Romanian cargo includes a certain fabled bloodsucker who begins feasting nightly on the crew. Given the title, it’s not really a spoiler to admit that things don’t turn out so well. Ovredal (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) has legitimate filmmaking chops. He calibrates the creaking ropes, groaning shipboards and lashing rain for maximum visual and auditory impact - frequently evoking the gothic grandeur of the Hammer Horror era. The capable cast includes Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones) as the ship’s captain and the versatile Corey Hawkins (24: Legacy) as a medical man who’s a last-moment addition to the crew (the suddenly ubiquitous David Dastmalchian - already seen this summer in The Boogeyman and Oppenheimer - plays the ship’s gloomy first mate, who only grows gloomier as the voyage wears on). The film has an appreciable nasty streak; throats are torn out and blood is spilled liberally. The fate of the Captain’s grandson Toby (Norman Woody) - his underage status normally providing some built-in measure of protection - encapsulates the movie’s fundamental and unapologetic meanness. Most horror fans will readily applaud the cut of its jib. Alas, it’s a rather limited premise, however, and the script - in spite of a supposedly two-decade journey from spec to big-screen - makes little effort to fashion a, shall we say… less-limited approach, a clever riffing on Stoker’s basic melody. There are no narrative surprises. The character work is largely perfunctory (Hawkins noting his medical career’s been stymied by racism is about the sum total of it). Dracula’s unique allure has long been his dichotomy between stately aristocrat and savage predator… and while there’s something to be said for a version that’s entirely feral, after a while he just begins to feel like another creature feature concoction - a shallow F/X monstrosity. The character’s seductive charisma and dark wit are sorely missed. The Last Voyage of the Demeter slakes a basic appetite for grisly horror, but is not unlike its namesake - solid and seaworthy, but ultimately doomed.  Let’s be honest - it should *not* be this difficult to produce a genuinely groovy prehistoric shark thriller. The original Meg - released in 2018 and directed by Jon Turteltaub - was fine, but merely functional. It never rose to the tantalizing B-movie gusto of its premise. This sequel - randomly directed, as if on auto-pilot, by offbeat Brit auteur Ben Wheatley (Kill List, High-Rise, Free Fire) - promises a more off-the-rails, Meg-fueled extravaganza, but it mostly just vaporizes any brain cells in the immediate vicinity.
Jason Statham returns as Jonas Taylor, now battling eco-criminals when he’s not co-parenting the now teenage Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai) along with her Uncle, played by Wu Jing (it feels very much like original lead Li Bingbing simply declined to reprise her role, and the script was hastily revised in the most painless manner possible). A routine submersible dive into the Mariana Trench uncovers an illegal mining operation, one that involves the farming of rare earth minerals worth billions. Mercenary Montes (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) triggers an explosion to cover their tracks, leaving Jonas and his team stranded on the ocean’s floor and punching a hole in the thermocline - the all-important layer that keeps the Trench’s prehistoric ecosystem firmly in place. This first hour is astonishingly dull, toothless and largely shark-free stuff. Our leads must figure out a way to get from the station back to the surface (and unravel a bit of industrial espionage in the process)… and until they do, it’s as if the film is left puttering in neutral. The third act finally cuts loose as a trio of Megalodons - along with a giant octopus and a pack of lizard-like creatures known as "Snappers" (capable of wreaking havoc on land and sea in equal measure) - descend onto a tropical resort known as “Fun Island.” In theory, this is exactly the sort of Jaws-on-HGH nonsense that the original never quite pulled off, as Jonas goes shark-jousting on a jet ski and fends off a Meg with a severed helicopter rotor. But it’s all oddly lacking in creative flair. Unlike a movie such as Piranha 3D (hardly a noteworthy work of art to begin with), there’s no devious spark; it’s a bland and bloodless affair. Statham’s acting style is such that it’s virtually impossible to tell if he’s merely bored, but his hard-boiled gruffness at least carries some value in an enterprise such as this. The Meg should, by all accounts, be a hugely entertaining franchise, but so far it’s been little more than cinematic chum. 8/22/2023 0 Comments oppenheimer Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a biopic that, ironically, is best approached as if it’s not actually a biopic at all. Ostensibly the story of its titular figure, theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project during World War II and father of the atomic bomb… the film would - perhaps - be more accurately described as Nolan’s own sober-eyed deconstruction of that inevitable and distinctly Promethean moment in which humanity willingly sowed the seeds of its own destruction. Oppenheimer would come to bear the weight of that burden, but we carry the fallout inside each and every one of us - a collective sin that continues to be passed on from generation to generation.
The early stages of the movie have a disorienting quality. Nolan touches on key, formative moments in Oppenheimer’s early life with the harried rhythm of someone scribbling physics calculations in the margins (a peevish attempt to poison his professor in Cambridge with a cyanide-laced apple speaks to Oppenheimer’s tendency to act without fully considering the repercussions). The scenes are juxtaposed against testimonial excerpts - both from Oppenheimer’s own controversial security hearing before the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954, and the Senate confirmation of former AEC commissioner Lewis Strauss as Secretary of Commerce in 1958 (did I mention this is a film primed to gross almost a billion dollars?) - and the cross-cutting often feels not unlike hydrogen atoms smashing together, forcefully yet inelegantly. Oppenheimer is played by the great Irish actor Cillian Murphy, who conveys the lean, sharp-angled intelligence of his features, the probing and penetrative intuition of his gaze… and, eventually, the hollowed-out gravity of his haunted visage during the ensuing post-war years. Murphy keys in on Oppenheimer’s less flattering traits - his arrogance, his wandering eye, his self-absorption - and lives within the character’s crevices of complication. His piercing cobalt stare holds a 70mm IMAX screen unwaveringly - arguably better than any special effect. It’s a remarkable performance. The narrative jerkiness solidifies once Matt Damon arrives as General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project… and his character’s military-honed gruffness generates a pleasingly frictive rub with Oppenheimer’s smugly unerring confidence. In spite of his potentially troublesome flirtations with the Communist party (which includes a brief fling with Florence Pugh’s troubled Jean Tatlock), Oppenheimer eventually gets the gig and sets up shop in Los Alamos, assembling a scientific dream team that includes the likes of Benny Safdie’s Edward Teller and David Krumholtz’s Isidor Isaac Rabi. Nolan has little interest in canonizing his subject - if anything, he makes a deliberate point of portraying Oppenheimer less as a practical, hands-on genius and more as a wily and efficient project manger (his field of expertise was theoretical, after all). The Trinity test on July 16, 1945 is the movie’s centerpiece, and it’s a showstopper. Nolan, perhaps, overthinks how to dramatize the actual detonation, which takes a slightly abstract slant (we don’t get the immediate, inescapable horror of an IMAX screen awash in nuclear fire)… but the buildup to the button being pushed is some of the year’s most rigorously gripping filmmaking (calculations indicate there’s an infinitesimal chance of the explosion triggering a chain reaction that ignites the Earth’s atmosphere… which obviously didn’t occur, but still lends the sequence an aura of apocalyptic dread. Like any great showman, Nolan casts a spell that makes you believe - in the moment - that the worst *could* still happen). Nolan packs the film with A-list talent, which might seem like a self-indulgent flex, but there’s a stark logic to the approach - it’s by far the simplest cinematic hack when it comes to tracking the story’s dense network of characters (it’s unlikely secondary figure David L. Hill’s key testimony near the end of the movie would fully land were he not helpfully played by Oscar winner Rami Malek). Several make the most of their limited screentime (Casey Affleck is chillingly good in his lone scene, while Kenneth Branagh is excellent in his brief turn as Niels Bohr)… though the obvious standout, other than Murphy, is Robert Downey Jr. A generational talent who nearly threw it all away, he earned the comfort of serving as the face of Marvel’s billion-dollar Avengers brand - though seemingly at the cost of his incisive edge as an actor, which has steadily eroded over the past decade. It’s been a minute since Downey Jr. has done, well… anything really beyond riffing on his Tony Stark persona, but as the petty, conflicted Lewis Strauss he rediscovers his acting fire; there’s still an abundance of fuel left in that tank. Some have suggested the film slackens slightly during its third hour, as Oppenheimer - tormented by guilt - begins to advocate against further nuclear research (others have complained that the movie doesn’t actually show the bombs fall on Japan - as if the scene in which Oppenheimer addresses the cheering throngs in the Los Alamos gymnasium like a high school pep rally, only to see it all turn to nuclear ash before his very eyes doesn’t adamantly get the point across - a rather depressing commentary on how people expect literal spoon-feeding in place of critical thought these days). The aforementioned sequence is a harrowing standout; it’s like watching Oppenheimer’s psyche splinter in real time. He may have declared himself “Death, the Destroyer of Worlds” in the aftermath of the Trinity test, but this is the actual moment those words sear into reality. The rest of the movie does seemingly downshift into familiar scenes of men sitting in rooms, talking - between Oppenheimer being hauled before the AEC’s kangaroo court and Strauss’s increasingly fraught Senate confirmation - but its nails manage to dig even deeper, nearly drawing blood… the echo of Bohr’s observation that “You are the man who gave them the power to destroy themselves… and the world is not prepared” underscoring every moment. As a filmmaker, Nolan can often be too cute for his own good (Tenet’s deliberately muddy sound mix; the multi-timeframe structure of Dunkirk), but with this movie, he’s working in a register of righteous yet cold-flamed fury we haven’t seen from him before. Oppenheimer is a tough film to wrap your head around in a single viewing. It lingers with you. The missteps (and there are a few - such as Emily Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer having a vision of her husband and Tatlock copulating mid-testimony) are ultimately outweighed. The final scene, staged between the title character and Albert Einstein, is so starkly chilling and thematically unflinching, you’ll immediately want to experience the entire thing again.  Is Mission: Impossible the best currently ongoing studio franchise? You could certainly make that argument. The Tom Cruise-led series was initially a fascinating haven for A-list filmmakers to leave their own distinct creative stamp - Brian De Palma’s retro-flavored espionage… John Woo’s sleek pyrotechnics… JJ Abrams’s grounded and gritty emotional stakes… Brad Bird’s dazzlingly fleet-of-foot escapism - but has, in recent years, stabilized under the stewardship of director Christopher McQuarrie, who has arguably struck an appreciable balance between all that came before. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - the first half of a two-part blowout that may or may not serve as the franchise denouement - sees McQuarrie continuing comfortably in the same vein as Rogue Nation and Fallout… though his narrative grip feels slightly more tenuous this time. The spectacle remains as ambitious and adrenaline-jacked as ever, though the architecture underneath the hood doesn’t invite much poking or prodding.
But let’s be honest here - the plot in a Mission: Impossible film is, more often than not, beside the point (typically it boils down to Ethan Hunt and his IMF gang going rogue in order to avert global catastrophe)… and Dead Reckoning is no exception. All you really need to know is that there’s a rogue sentient AI known as “The Entity” and Ethan (joined, once again, by Ving Rhames’s Luther, Simon Pegg’s Benji, and Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa) is amongst several interested parties trying to acquire both halves of a cruciform key that can supposedly be used to control or destroy it (the jokes about Cruise - patron saint of theatrical moviemaking - targeting a streaming algorithm as the ultimate antagonist all but write themselves). The Entity is aligned with Gabriel, an ominous figure from Ethan’s past… and while Esai Morales has a slippery and pleasingly cultivated menace in the role, it’s surprising how firmly the movie keeps him at arm’s length from the audience - even taking into the account the revelations all-but-certain to come in the next installment. There’s a clear emotional wedge to his animosity towards Ethan (and vice versa)… we’re just not privy to it yet. Integral to the proceedings is Grace, a professional thief played by Hayley Atwell in yet another performance that begs the question of why she hasn’t been a bigger star. The franchise has largely been stripped of sexual tension at this point (Ethan now operating with an almost monk-like devotion to the job), but she and Cruise have an effective working rapport. McQuarrie stages a madcap car chase through Rome with the two of them handcuffed together (awkwardly shifting between vehicles and trading places behind the wheel on the fly) that almost feels like it’s been injected with a strand of screwball DNA from The Pink Panther, or one of Roger Moore’s sillier James Bond entries… but, as was the case with Ghost Protocol, the action never quite succumbs to the cartoonish. It maintains a gigglingly gleeful, kinetic momentum. Not everything is pulled off with quite such aplomb. There’s a key character death, and while it makes narrative sense, the moment doesn’t feel maximized; what should be emotionally shattering instead manages only a muted impact, frustratingly (some have suggested that the death will prove to be a fake-out in Part Two, but that feels even more cheaply manipulative). Pom Klementieff of Guardians of the Galaxy has a pleasingly feral ferocity as Gabriel’s henchwoman (her sociopathic, borderline orgasmic glee during the aforementioned car chase is a definite highlight), but the movie attempts to foist a character arc onto her late in the game that feels forced. There are arguably too many characters. It’s hard to have too much female awesomeness (anymore than you can have too much pizza), though Atwell, Ferguson, Klementieff and Vanessa Kirby’s deliciously posh arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis are a lot to juggle… on top of Henry Czerny (making a welcome return from the original) AND Cary Elwes as intelligence bigwigs of ethically uncertain motivation, as well as Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis as US agents fruitlessly chasing Hunt and his team (and starting to question why they’re doing so). But Dead Reckoning ultimately delivers in all the ways a Mission: Impossible entry should. Like John Wick: Chapter 4, the movie navigates its eyebrow-raising 165-minute runtime with a cool, well-calibrated propulsion. McQuarrie’s climax aboard the Orient Express is an absolute banger, particularly when Ethan and Grace are forced to chart a gravity-defying path through a string of train cars suspended terrifyingly over a chasm (it’s ironic that the craft of someone who began his career writing the densely labyrinthine script for The Usual Suspects has become almost entirely visual; McQuarrie has few peers in terms of technically audacious staging). Is the Entity an effective antagonist? Debatable. There is, of course, something inherently chilling about an opponent you literally can’t outthink (there’s a great early sequence in which Benji must unravel a set of riddles the Entity devised for him), though fairly or unfairly, the parallels to Hollywood’s current labor issues put a comedically meta slant on things that's hard to shake. At any rate, let’s put a pin in it until Part Two. The series, as usual, comes down to Cruise. The star has achieved an admirable equilibrium at this phase of his career - keeping his personal life compartmentalized and focusing on big, theatrical crowdpleasers that indulge his love of envelope-pushing stuntwork, rather than chasing awards season validation. At age 61, Cruise hasn’t lost a step. If Harrison Ford can still be reprising Indiana Jones when he’s 80, there’s no reason this still fully-juiced franchise can’t go another decade or more. |
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