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Pregnant Pause

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Goody Goody

by Hope Madden

Filmmaker Raymond Creamer made the most of what he had for his feature debut, Goody Goody. What did he have? Four talented actors, two locations, and a knack for atmosphere.

Samantha Robinson (who was utter perfection in 2023’s The Love Witch) is Goody. Goody is pregnant, and she’s creating the beautiful childbirth her baby deserves. She knows that he’ll feel it. He’ll know. It has to be perfect.

Colleen Foy is Sarah, the grownup in the room. Sarah is Goody’s midwife, the one who warned Goody not to give birth in a remote cabin deep in the woods during winter. The only reason Sarah agrees to the job is the fear that Goody, her husband Jayson (Colby Hollman), and his sister Candace (Zoe Renee) will go through with the home birth on their own.

Pregnancy/childbirth horror is so common because it is custom made for the genre. A beast is attempting to burst out of a human body. That human is swollen to a ludicrous degree and is, therefore, wildly handicapped when it comes to things like running or lasting more than ten minutes without having to pee. It is easy to generate dread because, even in real life, it’s terrifying and vulnerable and bloody and it really hurts.

Because it is so common, it can also feel tired. But Creamer develops dread differently. Our point of view is Sarah, the competent one. Watching her grow anxious generates a different kind of dread. When the one who knows what she’s doing is worried, everybody needs to worry.

Foy is remarkable in this role. The way Sarah’s patience and care are soothing but authoritative is a comfort to Goody and family, but also the viewer. As her nerves begin to show wear and tear, we feel more realistically trapped in this nightmare with her.

Robinson’s also wonderful, treading a line between entitled and defenseless, reckless and idealistic. She’s almost hypnotic, almost seductive, and that level of ecstasy helps the film find its tone.

It’s a gorgeous movie. Creamer creates striking moments in a dreamily rustic environment, slowly and quietly introducing the supernatural before pivoting to a full-blown creature feature. The tonal shift wouldn’t work were it not for Robinson’s spellbinding work bumping against Foy’s urgent realism.

For some, it still may not work. The film’s waning moments are mesmerizing, beautiful, and unsatisfying. But for most of Creamer’s 110 minutes, he counted his blessings and made them count.

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Summertime Blues

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Sunny Dancer

by Rachel Willis

Ivy is pissed off. It might be hard to understand why at first. She’s been in remission from cancer for 10 months, so one might think she would be happy.

However, writer/director George Jaques isn’t interested in how you think a person should feel after surviving cancer. With Sunny Dancer, Jaques gives us something nuanced yet familiar as Ivy (Bella Ramsey) finds her way with a group of teens at summer camp.

Ivy’s disconnection from life is the reason why her parents (James Norton and Jessica Gunning, making the most of their limited screen time) want her to spend four weeks at “chemo camp.” And though she is reluctant to participate and surly with the other campers, Ivy soon realizes camp was exactly what she needed.

Despite the hardship Ivy and her fellow campers have faced, they’re still teenagers at heart. Anyone who has felt rebellious or snuck out at night or just spent time with people who know you like no one else can relate to Ivy’s story.

The highlight of the film is the cast of kids who surround Ivy. Each one, from Ivy’s first love, Jake (Daniel Quinn Toye), to her horny best friend, Ella (Ruby Stokes), are fun to follow as they run wild and bring Ivy back to life.

The problem with any film that introduces a large cast of characters is finding ways to flesh out each one. Though the kids are great, not all of them get much depth. And the writing doesn’t bring each character to life as much as it could, but this is Ivy’s story. The two people she most gravitates to are the ones who most come to life.

As Ivy, Ramsey is good, but Stokes steals the show. She dominates each scene. Ramsey is a fine choice to carry the film, but the best scenes feature Ella.

With such a strong, naturalistic film, the movie’s emotional climax feels manipulative. It’s hard not to be disappointed by it when the rest of the film is so lovely.

Outtakes

Denied Pregnancy and Delayed Justice

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Baby Doe

by Matt Weiner

There’s no true crime mystery at the heart of director Jessica Earnshaw’s riveting documentary Baby Doe. Gail Ritchey gave birth in 1993 and left the newborn in the woods in Geauga County, a conservative rural suburb outside of Cleveland, Ohio. The case was a local sensation that went unsolved until 2019, when DNA evidence led investigators to arrest Ritchey for murder.

What follows from that arrest is a challenging examination of the criminal justice system, its treatment of women and their mental health and how we view those accused of what popular culture (and pulpier true crime fare) dub acts that are “especially heinous,” told through a blend of contemporary footage and intimate access to the Ritchey family and their legal team.

Earnshaw’s camera becomes an ever-present member of the extended Ritchey family as they grapple with an unthinkable crime. Ritchey’s high school sweetheart and now husband Mark was unaware that Gail was even pregnant with their child at the time, and Earnshaw doesn’t shy away during interviews as Mark and Gail both reckon with their deeply conservative Christian upbringing that may have contributed to Gail’s state of mind at the time.

As Ritchey’s defense team confers with experts on how to get a jury to sympathize with Ritchey, Earnshaw touches on other high-profile cases on the subject of “denied pregnancy.” This is where the documentary takes yet another surprising—and enraging—turn, with medical experts on one side offering up compelling and deeply moving testimony on the under-discussed condition. On the other side, there is Ohio law, which in this case bars Ritchey and her team from using any of this as part of her defense. Instead, her lawyers must focus on the argument that the baby was stillborn.

Earnshaw’s raw interviews ultimately weave a sad, winding narrative that starts with Ritchey’s overbearing father and ends up in a suburban Cleveland jury room filled with male jury members and a reproving judge. It’s difficult to shake the sense that whatever is happening in that courtroom, it’s not about justice.

We do at least find more tender moments and even grace outside of the trial. Some of this comes from likely sources (a welcoming church, spearheaded by a caring pastor’s wife). But one of these moments comes from a surprising figure near the end of the film, one of the few men outside of the Ritchey family who sees Gail as someone who is more than the acts she has committed.

These moments, rare as they are, hardly make up for a criminal justice system that seems both unequipped and uninterested in understanding the mental health of why some people do what they do. Thankfully, Earnshaw is, and she tells the story beautifully in a way that suggests if sympathy is impossible, we can still find room for empathy.

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Put It Right On Me

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The Weight

by George Wolf

A few desperate men are given the chance to wipe their slates clean. Transport some precious cargo across 100 miles of hazardous terrain —including one very unstable bridge — and they’ll all be free to start new lives.

The Weight will bring to mind Sorcerer and The Wages of Fear, specifically, but on a more general level it recalls a throwback brand of thriller that’s dense with themes of sin and redemption layered through the choices, toil and sweat of conflicted souls.

It’s 1933 in Oregon, and the country is still reeling from the Great Depression. Sam Murphy (Ethan Hawke) is already struggling to provide for his young daughter Penny (Avy Berry) when a brush with the law lands him in a labor camp.

Warden Clancey (Russell Crowe) notices that Murphy is a quiet man who can solve problems, so he presents a tempting offer: move the stash of gold out of Blackhawk mine before FDR confiscates it, and Murphy will be out of jail in time to save his daughter from becoming a ward of the state.

It’s an easy call, so Murphy handpicks a small team, and heads out — under the watchful eyes of two armed chaperones, of course.

Director Padraic McKinley, reuniting with Hawke after The Good Lord Bird series, crafts his big screen debut with detail and vision, adapting the weighty script from Matthew Booi, Shelby Gaines and Leo Scherman into a tense and visually striking adventure. The forests and rivers become daunting obstacles that raise the stakes, while McKinley illuminates an exquisite fight for life via lighting bursts of a thunderstorm.

And of course Hawke is perfect. He’s become such a reliably wonderful actor, and this type of understated inner struggle is his sweet spot, finding an authentic, cautious chemistry with a terrific Crowe and the solid ensemble, including Julia Jones (Dexter: New Blood) as a runaway woman eager to join the mission and not look back.

You may guess a plot turn or two, and a tighter grip in the editing room would have trimmed some bloat from the nearly two-hour runtime, but The Weight still carries plenty of welcome genre heft. It manages to balance familiarity with richness of character and craft, giving us the kind of movie we should be glad to still find in the theater.

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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.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?