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Hair Raising Hallowen

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Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom

by Hope Madden

Fully two decades ago, the gang at Aardman animation produced Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and it was perfect. A perfect family Halloween film, perfect entertainment, it won the 2006 Oscar for best animated feature. And it’s the reason I was so delighted at news of Aardman’s new Halloween feature, Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom.

The dear Shaun the Sheep franchise is sort of a Grade B W&G, but imperfect Aardman is better than none. It’s almost Halloween at Mossy Bottom Farm, and the herd has been raising pumpkins to carve for their celebration. Meanwhile, Farmer laments his receding hairline because he wants to ask the Vet to the Mossy Bottom Halloween Hoedown.

Then Shaun finds a “Home Made Science” book and soon the pumpkins won’t stop growing, Farmer has vanished, and some incredibly hairy beast is running amuck!

One of the great charms of this franchise is its love of silent movies and its precise display of the sight gags that go into great comic storytelling. There’s no dialog in a Shaun episode. Even the human characters only gesture, sigh, and grunt. But you’re never unsure about the hijinks and that meticulous instinct for cinema is impressive.

Characters carve out whole personalities without a word. Shaun is a problem solver as likely to cause the problem as to fix it. Farmer’s a bit of a bumbler, sort of a country bumpkin Wallace, complete with a dog of high competence and higher tolerance. And overbites have never been more charming.

Though entirely wholesome, the film packs some lovely references for old school horror. The tactile animation feeds that vintage vibe, but the tone is forever goofy. Exceptional editing keeps the pace frantic, but not so quick moving that you’ll miss any of the fun going on in the background.

Plus, at 80 minutes, Shaun the Sheep keeps the pace crisp and exits the party without overstaying its welcome. It’s a joyous way to celebrate the season with the young ones, and it will entertain everyone watching.

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Track Your Package?

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Resident Evil

by Hope Madden

A lot of people seem curious to know what Zach Cregger is doing following up Weapons—one of the most revered horror films of the last decade—with the seventh installment in a horror video game movie franchise. By the looks of Resident Evil, having a blast is what he’s doing.

Rather than offer another badass on a mission story, Cregger’s episode, co-written with Shay Hatten (John Wick 3 & 4, Army of the Dead), enters the newly overrun Raccoon City with a hapless courier (Austin Abrams) tapped to run an important medical package to the Raccoon City General Hospital. Things go from bad to worse to much worse to oh my god no pretty quickly in an impressive series of set pieces showcasing body horror, carnage, mutants, goo, and more.

Cregger’s direction is fresh and fun, building dread and releasing it with bits of humor. He gives us some nifty first person shooter POV, but not enough of it to become tedious. The camera lingers when you don’t expect it to, and turns away when you really hope it will.

Cregger never takes the film too seriously, which is usually the downfall of any video game adaptation. But he absolutely embraces the video game-ness of the film, digging into the grossest and most disturbing elements of the game while rooting the mayhem in a character you can care about.

Resident Evil is frequently funny without falling into camp. Abrams, who was such a standout comic force in Weapons, delivers an ideal doofus to root for. John Walter Hauser has a fun expository sharing cameo, and Zach Cherry is also pretty funny.

It’s also pretty gross, fast paced, tremendously violent, and harrowing in a fun way.

The unhinged horror of it all won’t surprise those of us who saw Cregger’s 2022 feature Barbarian. He’s a horror guy. He knows horror and he has fun with it while still leaving some scars. Resident Evil isn’t going to win anybody an Oscar, but it’s a good time.   

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Sequel of the Witch

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Practical Magic 2

by Hope Madden

What made 1998’s Practical Magic so compelling? It was a beautifully filmed tale of a sad woman traumatized into dimming her light, a sister who shone, trauma be damned, and Aidan Quinn at his most swoon worthy.

Nearly 30 years later, somehow Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock) is just now having to deal with daughters and their boyfriends. Practical Magic 2 reunites Bullock and Nicole Kidman (she who shone) as witchy sisters who have to navigate the next generation of the Owens curse. (When Owens women fall in love, their lovers are doomed to die horribly.)

Sally’s been hiding her witchiness again, for so long that her daughters have forgotten all about the family power. But now Kylie (Joey King) is in loooooove. And her boy Gideon (Blue Beetle’s Xolo Maridueña) is in danger, so she’s off to England with a black magic book and the goal to break the curse.

Bullock and Kidman, who’s here almost exclusively for comic relief this go-round, make for a fun Odd Couple. Bullock’s low-key comic timing is always sharp, though Kidman seems less sure footed in the comedic role. There are also moments when the pair’s humor feels out of place. They are in search of Sally’s missing and presumed in-peril daughter, after all.

Directed this time by Birdbox’s Susanne Bier, PM2 embraces the beautiful clutter, perfectly mussed long hair, and 90s fashion sensibilities of the original. It’s still a movie meant to showcase Bullock’s beauty, and it does.

The international intrigue feels rushed and telegraphed, and at no point are you unsure of the film’s outcome. And while the first film was split between each sister’s storyline, that made narrative sense because they were the two beloveds who were meant to come together. (Quinn was mainly delightful eye candy.)

The narrative has lost its balance with the two sisters together, one daughter/niece in peril, some aunts back at home. Plus, dudes as witches? Ew.

Great to see Diane Weist and Stockard Channing return, as dear as ever playing the aunties. And though there’s not a scene that stands up to the charm of the original, Practical Magic 2 is fine. It reminds you that sisters are awesome, long hair is too, Cool Whip is delicious, and there’s rarely a bad time for a margarita.

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Action Hank

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Runner

by George Wolf

When all the running is done, Runner ends up caught in a movie limbo that is very 2026. If this has gone direct to streaming, it would rate above average among some less than stellar action romps. But among big screen releases, the latest from Angel Studios feels more like a passable but forgettable reach.

And yes, entertaining in its 97 PG-13 minutes.

Alan Ritchson stars as Hank Marlowe, a former military badass who “doesn’t hurt people anymore.” He’s a got a haunted past, a one year sobriety chip and a job in Australia as a “runner” who can deliver important packages such as priceless parakeets to various clients and destinations.

So even though he’s not hankerin’ for some action, action finds Hank when Ben Bishop (Owen Wilson) arrives with a very valuable asset. It’s a human liver meant to save the life of a seven year-old girl, and Ben will be serving as chaperone on Hank’s mission of mercy.

The mission get messy when a cartel kingpin (Rodrigo Santoro) comes calling. Turns out the girl and the liver share a rare blood type with the kingpin’s mother, who has a surgeon on standby waiting to perform her own life saving surgery.

As you might guess, Hank’s vow of non-violence gets thrown out the window alongside plenty of henchmen and bad guys.

Director Scott Waugh – a former stuntman – choreographs some decent actions sequences that cater to Ritchson’s size, physicality and understated charisma. Wilson is on auto pilot as the awkwardly enthusiastic comic relief, with the script from Miles Hubley and Tommy White conjuring moments of good natured rapport among some common action comedy beats.

It’s all a bit familiar and silly, and definitely guilty of too many bland, off- brand needle drops. But Ritchson and Wilson make their mismatch work well enough, and the film finds a groove of goofy fun that actually seems respectful of its audience.

So while Runner might be punching above its weight class, Ritchson is the perfect hero to put up the dukes and blow up some stuff while Wilson is quick with a quip. It ain’t quite art, but it’s not another streaming pile of algorithm, either. And if that’ll do, then enjoy.

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Harbor Frights

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Hope

by Hope Madden

When I learned that Na Hong-jin, the filmmaker behind 2016’s The Wailing and 2008’s The Chaser, was releasing a creature feature this year called Hope, well, I was as on board as a person can be.

The writer/director has an instinct for dumbass heroes, beleaguered and in-over-their-heads, and mysteries that are too big for them to solve. His shot making is breathtaking, often finding an almost obscene beauty in the most disturbing of images. And the humor in his films is so inappropriate given the gravity of the subject that it can’t help but be appealing.

And now a creature feature? We haven’t had a great Korean creature feature since Bong Joon Ho’s 2006 masterpiece The Host. Two decades! And for the first hour or so, Hope delivers a breakneck and breathless bit of horror.

Hwang Jung-min is the police chief of Hope Harbor, a tiny South Korean harbor town in the demilitarized zone just this side of North Korea. Chief carries himself with a little swagger, wears fancy Western boots and shades, and has no idea what to do when some hunters report an ox that looks to have been ripped apart by a tiger.

From that moment of revelation, what Na crafts is the most precise and astonishing chaos. The movement of the camera, what we see and what we do not, what we hear without seeing, the scale and the intimacy and the carnage is magnificent. Unheard of. Deeply amazing.

And within that pandemonium, characters emerge. They are funny, cowardly, fearless, dim-witted—sometimes all of those adjectives at different moments. The chemistry among castmates is fresh and electric, but you know you’re waiting for something more. Depth, a backstory, a twist. You know it’s coming.

With the first good look at the beast, the wheels begin to come off this joy ride. And as Na lets you take a breath between acts, complications pile up, genres switch up, and CGI continues to disappoint.

The actors never do. Zo In-sung is a force of nature in this film, and Hoyeon oscillates between sweetheart and badass depending on the needs of the scene. But their film, this breathtaking creature feature, feels like it’s bled into an entirely other movie. One more ponderous and pretentious and weighed down with CGI.

Hope is an impressive piece of filmmaking no matter its end result, but it’s fully an hour too long and that hour belongs to some separate, other movie, which keeps the movie I loved so much from a satisfying conclusion.

 

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We Were On a Break!

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The Sun Never Sets

by George Wolf

Buried deep in the guts of The Sun Never Sets is a movie we’ve seen plenty of times. It’s that amusing, sometimes zany rom-com where two impossibly attractive people slowly find their way to each to other. We know they’ll be together, it’s just a question of how enjoyable the journey will be.

And that can be a perfectly fine, easily forgettable time at the movies.

Joe Swanberg doesn’t make those movies. His stories are lived-in slices of humanity, often filled with easygoing humor, stellar performances and easily relatable characters who must navigate compelling pushes and pulls.

The Sun Never Sets has all of that, and it may be his finest film to date.

Dakota Fanning is simply fantastic as Wendy, a construction worker in Alaska whose two-year relationship with Jack (Jake Johnson, terrific) is suddenly at a serious crossroads. Jack is an older, divorced dad with two kids, and isn’t really interested in adding more wives or children.

He’s worried that Wendy will resent these choices as the years go by, so he insists she take a few months away from him, to “see what’s out there” and decide if she really wants Jack for the long haul.

Reluctantly, she takes that break, and ends up meeting her bad boy ex, Chuck (Cory Michael Smith, Saturday Night‘s Chevy Chase) who’s back in town as a charter pilot for tourists. Sparks are reignited.

And suddenly, Jack wants the break to be over. Imagine that.

Swanberg, doing triple duty as writer/director/editor, again sets a casual pace filled with authentic dialog that’s always propelled by a lovely, improvisational feel. The entire ensemble (also featuring Debby Ryan and Karley Sciortino) shines, each actor carving distinctly human characters amid oversized, Alaska-worthy fashions, a robust adult dating climate and the smell of salmon.

The Sun Never Sets is just a warm, funny, frisky delight. It’s a film that makes you feel you just hit town and are instantly accepted into a circle of friends involved in a juicy love triangle. You’ll get a kick out of where they take you, and where Swanberg leaves you.

Because the finale is something you won’t be expecting, even though you’ll leave the theater thinking you should have seen it coming early on.

Either way, you’ll probably be smiling.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Coyote vs. Acme, The Dog Stars, It Ends, Buddy & More

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Hope & George review this week’s new releases: Coyote vs. Acme, The Dog Stars, It Ends, Buddy, The Whisper Man, Colony, Boorman and the Devil, The Snare, and The Deb.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?