Boldly Gone
Elio
by Hope Madden
Few films, animated or otherwise, breathe the rarified air of Pixar’s best. The animation giant has turned out an alarming number of outright masterpieces: Toy Story, WALL-E, Up!, Toy Story 3, Inside Out. Their second tier is better than nearly every other animated film you’ll come across. The originality, humanity, and visual magic on display in these films is so superior to anything else out there, it becomes an almost impossible standard to bear.
Pixar’s latest effort, Elio, tells the sweet story of a lonesome orphan who wants desperately to believe that “we are not alone.” Elio inadvertently casts himself as leader of earth and invites aliens to abduct him. They accept.
Elio’s writing team includes Julia Cho, who penned the charming Turning Red, and Mike Jones, whose Soul rightfully took 2021’s Oscar for Best Animated Feature. The directing team includes Turning Red’s Domee Shi and Coco’s Adrian Molina. That’s a solid team, one fully aware of the wondrous possibilities of animation and family friendly storytelling.
And they do tell a lovely story. As Elio (Yonas Kibreab) finally finds a friend in galactic warlord Grigon’s (Brad Garrett) son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), he also realizes that he might have liked his Auntie (Zoe Saldaña) more than he thought.
Once Elio is space bound, the film brightens. The inhabitants of the Communiverse are delightfully oddball. There’s brightly colored fun to be had. But Act I doesn’t dig deep enough into Elio’s relationship with his auntie to give the film real stakes, so the emotional center that creates the Pixar gravitational pull is never as strong as it is in their best efforts.
The story beats also lack the freshness of the best Pixar has to offer. Still, a first-contact film that retails a childlike wonder about what lies beyond the stars without resenting what waits at home is a rare thing.
Still Crazy After All These Years
28 Years Later
by Hope Madden
Nearly a quarter century ago (!!), director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland unleashed the genre masterpiece 28 Days Later. Smart, prescient, with a broken human heart and 113 minutes of sheer terror, it changed the “zombie” genre forever with living, breathing, running, rampaging humans infected by a rage virus.
Original as it was, there was still a little Romero in there. You might not have seen it with the racing beasts, but Boyle and Garland understood what Romero knew all along—it’s organized human authority you need to really worry about.
Boyle’s film was followed in 2003 with a fine, if mean spirited, sequel, but the Oscar winning director returns for 28 Years Later. So does Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men, Civil War), who’s gone on to be one of the most interesting filmmakers of our time.
They pick up the story 28 years after the rage virus hits London. Onscreen text tells us that continental Europe was able to turn back the virus and keep it from spreading globally, but the islands that were once the UK are, and will forevermore be, quarantined. No one leaves. Not ever.
We’re dropped into a small Scottish highland community where 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) is about to go on his first mainland hunt with his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). They’ll cross a bridge only passable during low tide, which means 4 hours to get back or it’s an overnighter on the big island full of the infected—which includes some mutations we didn’t worry about 28 years back—and the uninfected, who can be worse.
Wisely, Garland and Boyle anchor the film with family drama. Plucky Williams makes for a great hero, his arc from innocent to survivor both heartbreaking and impressive. A supporting cast including Jodie Comer and the great Ralph Feinnes enhances that tender drama. But what’s missing are the scares.
As Romero’s zombie films developed, so did his monsters. By Land of the Dead, they had their own leaders, their own families, their own kind of consciousness. The zombies were evolving around and without us. It was interesting, but it wasn’t scary. Likewise, 28 Years Later conjures beasts that have evolved into their own kind of society, and while it’s clever, it lacks the visceral terror of both previous installments. There’s also a lot of dubious science afoot.
The film’s opening and closing segments promise something meaner and more mischievous in upcoming sequels. (There are three films in this second part of the series, and the next installment—28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, directed by Nia DaCosta—is in post-production now.)
Maybe the bar set by the original is simply too high for any sequel to meet. 28 Days Later remains one of the scariest films ever made. Circling back to see how humanity’s getting along a generation later is interesting, sometimes gorgeous, awfully bloody, and frequently very sweet. It’s just not very scary.
Pumpkin Spice Horror
Eye for an Eye
by Hope Madden
Way back in 1988, legendary practical FX and make up genius Stan Winston directed his first feature film, Pumpkinhead. In it, a grieving father (Lance Henriksen) awakens an unstoppable evil to avenge his terrible tragedy.
The film remains effective because it is so genuinely heartbreaking. Winston, who also co-wrote, understands the unreasonable, destructive nature of grief, and that is what every frame in the film depicts.
Fast forward nearly 40 years, and veteran music video director Colin Tilley shapes Elisa Victoria and Michael Tully’s similarly themed script Eye for an Eye into something like Pumpkinhead lite.
Still reeling from the car wreck that took her parents, Anna (Whitney Peak, Gossip Girl) moves in with Grandma May (S. Epatha Merkerson, Chicago Med) in the Florida bayou. Grandma’s blind, but behind those big, dark glasses is evidence of something cursed, something supernatural. And now that Anna has gotten mixed up with a couple of locals who bullied the wrong kid, she might be cursed as well.
What works: some really believable performances almost salvage the film. Reeves has an understated, shell-shocked approach that slows down reactions, giving proceedings a dreamy quality while ensuring audiences keep up with plot twists.
Both Laken Giles and Finn Bennett veer outside of cliché as the nogoodnik townies Anna takes up with. And veteran Merkerson elevates the villain-in-waiting grandmother character with endearing bursts of humor.
Everything that works in the film delivers a YA drama. Three lost teens, one finding her way, the other two already poisoned by circumstances, face the music after an ugly incident.
But Eye for an Eye is a horror movie. And besides Grandma May’s empty stare, nothing genre related works. The confused Freddy Krueger-esque mythology feels Scotch-taped onto an indie drama.
Nightmare sequences are weak, backstory feels convenient and of another film entirely. The production values impress, giving creepy bayou vibes that emphasize the horror. But conjuring both Pumpkinhead and A Nightmare on Elm St. sets a very high bar for an indie horror flick, and Eye for an Eye can’t deliver on that promise.
Fright Club: Horrific Families
The family that slays together stays together, isn’t that what they say? That was certainly a lot of the fun in Ready or Not, You’re Next, Frightmare and more. But what are the best examples of horrific families working together in horror movies? Brandon Thomas joins George with the full list!
5. The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
Wes Craven’s original Hills – cheaply made and poorly acted – is a surprisingly memorable, and even more surprisingly alarming flick. Craven’s early career is marked by a contempt for both characters and audience, and his first two horror films ignored taboos, mistreating everyone on screen and in the theater. In the style of Deliverance meets Mad Max, Hills was an exercise in pushing the envelope, and it owes what lasting popularity it has to its shocking violence and Michael Berryman’s nightmarish mug.
The Hills Have Eyes is not for the squeamish. People are raped, burned alive, eaten alive, eaten dead, and generally ill-treated.
In fact, Craven’s greatest triumph is in creating tension via a plot device so unreasonably gruesome no audience would believe a film could go through with it. The freaks kidnap a baby with plans to eat her. But by systematically crushing taboo after taboo, the unthinkable becomes plausible, and the audience grows to fear that the baby will actually be eaten. It’s not the kind of accomplishment you’d want to share with your mom, but in terms of genre control, it is pretty good.
4. Frailty (2001)
Director Paxton stars as a widowed country dad awakened one night with an epiphany. He understands now that he and his sons have been called by God to kill demons.
Frailty manages to subvert every horror film expectation by playing right into them.
Brent Hanley’s sly screenplay evokes such nostalgic familiarity – down to a Dukes of Hazzard reference – and Paxton’s direction makes you feel entirely comfortable in these common surroundings. Then the two of them upend everything – repeatedly – until it’s as if they’ve challenged your expectations, biases, and your own childhood to boot.
Paxton crafts a morbidly compelling tale free from irony, sarcasm, or judgment and full of darkly sympathetic characters. It’s a surprisingly strong feature directorial debut from a guy who once played a giant talking turd.
3. Where the Devil Roams (2023)
There is macabre beauty in every frame of Where the Devil Roams, the latest offbeat horror from the Adams family. The film was co-directed and co-written by its three lead actors – Toby Poser, John Adams and Zelda Adams – who are also a family. ike their earlier efforts, Where the Devil Roams concerns itself with life on the fringes, rock music, and the family dynamic.
The ensemble convinces, particularly the sideshow performers, but the film’s most enduring charm is its vintage portrait look. It’s a gorgeous movie, the filmmakers creating the beautifully seedy atmosphere ideal to the era and setting.
Where the Devil Roams feels expansive and open, but like anything else in the sideshow, that’s all trickery. There’s more happening in this film than they let on, which is why the final act feels simultaneously “a ha!” and “WTF?!” You won’t see it coming, but in retrospect, it was there all along.
2. We Are What We Are (2010)
Give writer/director Jorge Michel Grau credit, he took a fresh approach to the cannibalism film. In a quiet opening sequence, a man dies in a mall. It happens that this is a family patriarch and his passing leaves the desperately poor family in shambles. While their particular quandary veers spectacularly from expectations, there is something primal and authentic about it.
It’s as if a simple relic from a hunter-gatherer population evolved separately but within the larger urban population, and now this little tribe is left without a leader. An internal power struggle begins to determine the member most suited to take over as the head of the household, and therefore, there is some conflict and competition – however reluctant – over who will handle the principal task of the patriarch: that of putting meat on the table.
The family dynamic is fascinating, every glance weighted and meaningful, every closed door significant. Grau draws eerie, powerful performances across the board, and forever veers in unexpected directions.
1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
It is around the dinner table that a guest gets to see the true family dynamics. Sally Hardesty’s getting a good look. Like a really close up, veiny eyed look.
The family meal is the scene that grounds Tobe Hooper’s 1974 masterpiece. Suddenly it’s a family with a lived-in vibe and a backstory. And another person’s face. And a metal basin and a nearly mummified old man.
We’ve met the brothersk. Edwin Neal’s already had his chance to nab the spotlight in the van, and of course Gunnar Hansen’s the star of the show. But at the table, the cook, Jim Siedow, gets to dig in and create an unforgettable character.
Screening Room: How to Train Your Dragon, Life of Chuck, Materialists, Echo Valley & More
God Defend New Zealand
Prime Minister
by Rachel Willis
New Zealand’s former prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is the subject of directors Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe’s documentary, Prime Minister.
The film starts with Ardern’s election as leader for her country’s Labour Party, seeking to rescue it from gloomy poll numbers. That she actually wins the position of Prime Minister just a few weeks later comes as a bit of a shock, most of all to Ardern.
Ardern is an interesting central figure for the film. She was only 37 when elected, and even more fascinatingly, was pregnant at the time. She becomes the second woman in history to give birth while in a position of government leadership at that level.
But the documentary leans into the personal over the political, seeking to humanize Ardern and understand her approach to governance. It captures intimate moments in which Ardern gives voice to those emotions that leaders often have to hide from public view.
However, Utz and Walshe never dig too deeply into any one subject. Prime Minister neither focuses long enough on her political leadership nor her family life. At times, it even drags as it hops from one event to the next.
That’s not to say that the events that took place during Ardern’s time in office were without consequence. While leaders may always experience tumultuous events over the course of their tenure, Ardern’s seems especially marked by tragedy.
The film picks up speed in the second half, as Ardern faces an unprecedented event with the arrival of Covid-19 virus to New Zealand. The filmmakers devote the most time and attention here, rightfully, as it becomes Ardern’s biggest challenge as Prime Minister.
If the point of the documentary is to humanize those we elect to power, then it hits the nail on the head. Ardern herself opens the film with a plea to humanize those with whom we disagree. It’s a poignant message in a world that seems increasingly fraught with political turmoil.
It’s unfortunate that message will likely be lost to those who most need to hear it.
Mommy Can You Hear Me?
Echo Valley
by George Wolf
The barn roof at the Echo Valley horse ranch is bad. Like $9,000 bad. And when Kate (Julianne Moore) makes the trip to her ex-husband Richard’s (Kyle MacLachlan) office for some financial help, we get some nicely organic character development.
In those few important minutes, director Michael Pearce and writer Brad Ingelsby let us know Kate and Richard’s daughter Claire may have some serious issues, and that Kate may be enabling her.
From there, we can guess that Claire (Sydney Sweeney) will be showing up soon.
She does, and says she’s clean. She just needs for Mom to buy her another new phone while she breaks away from her boyfriend Ryan (Edmund Donovan). But of course Ryan shows up, followed by their dealer Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson – a nicely subtle brand of menacing), and it isn’t long before a frantic Claire comes home wearing someone else’s blood.
The somewhat pulpy, kinda noir-ish pieces aren’t exactly new, but Pearce (Beast) and the terrific ensemble always find frayed edges that keep you invested. We’re set up to pull for the put-upon Kate, then continually given reasons to doubt that very support.
Does Kate’s aversion to tough love make her an easy mark? Maybe, but maybe Kate’s smarter than anyone expects. Especially Jackie.
Pearce keeps the pace sufficiently taut and supplies some hypnotic shots of a countryside that comes to play an important part in the mystery – as does modern tech. Instead of copping out with a 90s timestamp, Echo Valley leans into the texts and tracking. True, the resolve might not be water tight digitally, but the timeliness gives the tension some relatable urgency.
It’s also refreshing to find a streaming release that doesn’t continually cater to lapsed attention spans. From that opening meeting in Richard’s office, Echo Valley assumes you’re settled in for the ride, all the way through a rewarding deconstruction of events and a final shot that cements what the film was getting at all along.
Proper Credit
Materialists
by Hope Madden
Just two years ago, filmmaker Celine Song produced a breathtakingly original romance movies in Past Lives. With that film, she delivered a love triangle of sorts where no character felt cliched, no choice felt obvious, and every moment felt achingly true.
Now she sets her sights on something decidedly more mainstream, but that only makes her instinct for inverting cinematic cliché in search of authenticity that much more impressive.
Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a skilled matchmaker at a high-end Manhattan boutique. When she attends the wedding of clients she introduced, she runs into her ex, John (Chris Evans). He’s handsome, thoughtful, clearly into her, and he’s catering. Actually, he’s a waiter working for the caterer.
Lucy also meets the groom’s brother, Harry (Pedro Pascal). In the parlance of Lucy’s profession, Harry is a unicorn: handsome, wealthy, smart, and single.
Immediately, we know this movie. Lucy’s job is to broker relationships. Check boxes. Create partnerships. And the film is going to teach her that a good match can’t hold a candle to the unruly nature of love.
It has been done to death. But the path Song takes to get there, and the insights and realities she explores along the route, never cease to fascinate.
Characters use the words value and risk a lot, terms that have a specific meaning in business but actually mean something quite different in the human setting. It’s interesting, in a society where women have agency and financial means, how different the vocabulary of love can be. Listening to women turn men into commodities, ordering as if from a buffet or build-a-bear, is simultaneously funny and horrifying.
Of course, Lucy has men for clients, too, and Song is quick to remind us of the entrenched language of objectification and conquest. And the different definitions of risk.
She also never asks us to root against anyone. Harry’s a gem. John’s a good dude. The one person whose flaws are explored is Lucy, and Johnson’s reflective, quiet delivery is characteristically on point, allowing those flaws to draw us closer to the character.
Materialists isn’t perfect, and to a degree, Song submits too much to formula. But the way she works within those confines is often magical.
Thanks for the Memories
The Life of Chuck
by George Wolf
Near the end of The Life of Chuck, a character enters a room and is careful to test the floor as he steps in. Organic dialog earlier in the film has let us know why he’s doing this, so no voiceover narration explaining the action is necessary.
This moment stands out, because it’s one of the few where viewers are given space to think for themselves.
This is a film that is impressively crafted, with an immensely likable cast and a broad, generically inspiring message that many people will be quick to embrace. Writer/director Mike Flanagan adapts the Stephen King novella with such earnest polish that the film can leave you feeling guilty for not liking it – and I didn’t.
Flanagan, who has already done stellar King adaptations (Doctor Sleep, Gerald’s Game) and whose own great work (Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House) can have a distinct King feel, keeps the story’s reverse chronology intact.
In chapter one, teacher Marty Anderson (Chiwtel Ejiofor) and his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) try to make sense of repeated ads thanking Charles Krantz for “39 great years!” as the world seems to be ending.
From there, we see how the buttoned-up accountant “Chuck” Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) learned to rediscover his love of dancing.
And finally, we go back to two different periods in the life of young Chuck (Benjamin Pajek and later, Jacob Tremblay), as he’s raised by his caring grandparents (Mark Hamill and Mia Sara) to find joy in dance and fear of the cupola upstairs.
It’s wonderful to see Sara back in a feature for the first time in 14 years, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Oscar talk for Hamill. The film is often warm hearted and lovely, but the familiarity of the cosmic profundities and the constant narration from Nick Offerman reduces its overall effect to that of a pop-up audiobook.
Causes, effects and motivations are provided at nearly turn, diluting potential magic down to mundane and undercutting the power of the film’s eventual sleight-of-hand reveal.
It’s a twist you may see coming, you may not. But you will understand the surface deep lesson being sold. The Life of Chuck leaves no room for nuance or interpretation, just take your dose of bland inspiration and move on.
So yeah, thanks Chuck. I guess.
