New In Theaters

Bloodless

Leave a comment

Dracula

by Hope Madden

There are those who would call Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula a masterpiece. The score is undeniable, the costuming and set design glorious, the use of shadow, the creature design, the pulsing sensuality, Gary Oldman—all of it is exquisite. The entire balance of the ensemble? Terrible. There, I said it.

Still, it’s a memorable take—for many, a beloved all-timer—on Stoker’s vampire classic. I will assume that French filmmaker Luc Besson (Léon: The Professional, La Femme Nikita) is a fan. While his Dracula delivers much in the way of new ideas, the source material for his script is less Stoker’s novel than Coppola’s film.

He’s not hiding it. He even borrows—homages—bits and pieces of Wojciech Kilar’s score.

Caleb Landry Jones is Vlad the Second, Count Dracul. He loves his wife, Elizabeta (Zoë Bleu). He fights the Crusades to eradicate Muslims for God. But God does not protect his Elizabeta, so he curses God and searches the endless centuries, hoping for his loves return.

This storyline is 100% Coppola, not in the novel at all. Landry Jones is a talented actor, and versatile. See Nitram. But his performances tend to be somewhat interior, and you cannot help but compare his anguish over Elisabeta with Oldman’s in the ’92 film. Landry Jones comes up short.

And though Besson manages one pretty impressive wide shot of the Vlad armies, the earth burning behind them, nothing can compare to the macabre puppet masterpiece Coppola brought to the same scene.

But, after Act 1, the film settles into some new territory. France! No Renfield, no Van Helsing, no fight for Lucy’s hand, no Demeter. Christoph Waltz (a little bit autopilot here) is a priest whose order has been tracking vampires for 400 years. With this storyline, Besson, who wrote the script, forges some new ideas. Newish. And Matilda De Angelis is a particular joy as Dracula’s helper.  

Fresh ideas aside, Besson doesn’t bring much Besson to the film. There’s too little action here, and most of it is carried out by little CGI gargoyles, more comedic than thrilling. One scene doesn’t naturally lead to the next, characters feel disconnected to the plot, and, worst of all, it’s very talky and a bit dull. I’d call it a fanciful period piece before I called it horror.

It’s OK to borrow. What’s hard is to come up with anything original, because no fictional character has been on screen more often in the history of film than Dracula. Even Jesus hasn’t been depicted as often in film. So, it’s fine to borrow as long as you can do something new to merit another go. Besson just about accomplishes that. Just about.

Outtakes

Role Reversal

Leave a comment

Untitled Home Invasion Romance

by Hope Madden

Jason Statham is doing what Jason Statham does in a new thriller hitting screens this week. But did you know that Jason Biggs, known mainly for being a likeable dork who makes bad decisions, is doing just that as well this week?

Actually, with his latest film Untitled Home Invasion Romance, Biggs does stretch a new muscle. The American Pie star directs. It’s his first go behind the camera and, much thanks to a game cast and a surprisingly dark script from Joshua Paul Johnson and Jamie Napoli, he delivers an unexpected delight.

Biggs plays Kevin, an actor known best for his role in erectile dysfunction treatment ads. But Mr. Softy has decided to play rough. Just play, though. In an attempt to win back his wife (Meaghan Rath), he’s planned a weekend getaway where another actor (Arturo Castro) will pretend to break into the house, giving Kevin the opportunity to play the hero and win back Suzie’s love.

It backfires, obviously. And indeed, the set-up is so obvious you may be tempted to give up on Untitled Home Invasion Romance. I was. But stick it out, because not only does the film get zanier by the minute, but Biggs manages an impressive feat of tone, humor, and sly feminism.

Rath delivers nuanced comedy with a restrained but important physical performance. The action in the film is big and showy, but the comedy is a bit more low key. Micro, even, like the micro-aggressions both Suzie and police chief Heather (Anna Konkle) tolerate from the men around them who insist on taking care of things.

At a certain point, the underlying comedy of sexual politics takes over the larger-than-life home invasion plotline, but Biggs and cast have done such a wonderful job of charming and alarming that it feels both wildly out of place and exactly necessary.

A comedy this likeable and smiley, that’s simultaneously twisted and dark is tough to come by. Because a lot of people meet grisly ends, and most of them are actually pretty nice. Not the lawyer, though. Screw that guy.

Credit Biggs for stretching. Not the performance—Kevin is, to the letter, your garden variety Jason Biggs character. But the director knows how to wring a little something different out of his work.

New In Theaters

Off the Gridlock

Leave a comment

Shelter

by George Wolf

Just how many off-the-books groups of elite assassins are there? And does Jason Statham have expired membership cards from all of them?

Apparently, quite a few. And yes.

In Shelter, the secret group is called Black Kite, and Michael Mason (Statham) has been exiled and on the run since he broke a golden rule ten years ago. While hiding out at a lighthouse in the Scottish Isles, Mason’s rescue of a drowning girl named Jesse (Hamnet‘s talented Bodhi Rae Breathnach) gets them both spotted by MI-6’s new high tech surveillance system.

So now Michael’s been made, Jesse’s an orphan and they’re both on the top secret hit list.

This time out, Naomi Ackie gets to be the director barking orders in front of video feeds, while Bill Nighy is the oily spymaster who crossed Statham years ago. Much like the chess pieces Mason likes to play with, director Ric Roman Waugh is just moving new pieces around the same formulaic playground.

Screenwriter Ward Parry adds on the trusty child-in-danger trope, along with no shortage of cliched dialog.

“You really think we can outrun what we are?”

“Maybe I’m becoming like you…”

“You don’t want this life.”

It’s more plug-and-play action on the way to a requisite showdown, but Statham and Breathnach share decent chemistry, Waugh (the Greenland films, Angel Has Fallen) orchestrates some effective hand-to-hand combat sequences, and he’s able to build the film with a bit more nuance than Statham’s usual fare.

It ain’t Hamnet, but at least our righteous killing machine isn’t lathering up with a tube of shark repellant.

New In Theaters

Rainbow Connection

Leave a comment

Arco

by Hope Madden

A child who can’t wait to grow up goes against his parents’ wishes and stumbles head long into a dangerous adventure. Between the family-film formula for its plot and the hand-drawn animation, Ugo Bienvenu and Gilles Cazaux’s Oscar nominated Arco feels like it comes from another time. And that’s a lot of its charm, because the retro-futuristic vibe balances a delightful vintage SciFi quality with a disconcerting reality.

Arco (voice in English by Juliano Valdo, in French by Oscar Tresanini) is a boy from the distant future who, sort of accidentally, travels back in time to 2075 where he crash lands in the life of a lonely little girl named Iris (Romy Fay/Margot Ringard Oldra).

With her parents working in the city, joining by hologram for dinners and bedtime, Iris spends most of her time with a nanny robot named Mikki, and a toddler brother named Peter. But Arco shakes up her world, offering connection and companionship she’s been missing. Together, they’ll figure out how to get him back to his time before it’s too late.

Again, the premise itself is not that unusual. It’s essentially E.T.   

Bienvenu, writing with Félix de Givry, livens up the story with the loony humor of a bumbling threesome bent on finding the rainbow boy. They’d seen a boy just like him as children, and nobody believed them. Now they want proof.

The bowl cuts and rainbow sunglasses mark the characters—voiced in English by Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, and Flea—as harmless goofballs, but they serve more purpose than simply comic relief.

The miracle the filmmakers conjure with Arco is that the childlike wonder of the characters, the wholesome storyline, and the beautiful animation belie the absolute bleakness of the film’s context. The world around Iris is literally on fire, a danger that Bienvenu illustrates with lush ferocity and amplifies with a daring, feverishly paced third act.

Those two worlds—hopeful wonder and bleak reality—inevitably collide, and though Act 3 resolves as you likely expect it to, it taps into the bittersweet emotion and timeless hope that marks all great family films.

New In Theaters

Survivor: Boss Level

Leave a comment

Send Help

by George Wolf

As much as Send Help feels like the Sam Raimi film that it is, the writing credits seem a bit unfinished. With a premise taken more from Triangle of Sadness than Castaway, and two pivotal plot points lifted from films I won’t mention for fear of spoilers, you’d expect at least an inspired by or story elements citation of the previous works.

No? Alrighty then. Raimi works from a script by the team of Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (Baywatch, 2009’s Friday the 13th, Freddy vs. Jason), providing the requisite dark humor, blood splatter and body fluids for a fun, root-for-the-underdog romp.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is that underdog. Linda puts in long, committed hours in the strategy and planning department of a big firm. She’d been promised a major promotion from the founder (nice Bruce Campbell portrait on the wall!), but now he’s passed on and the d-bag son Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) has taken over.

And Bradley’s gonna give Linda’s promotion to his frat buddy instead.

Linda sticks up for herself, so Bradley gives her the chance to prove her worth at a big merger meeting in Bangkok. But when their plane crashes, Linda and Bradley end up as the only ones left alive on a deserted island. And right away, Linda’s skills are very valuable indeed.

Turns out, she’s a survivalist junkie who has auditioned for Survivor. Linda knows her way around the dangers of an uninhabited locale, while Bradley doesn’t know much beyond silver spoon-fed privilege. So Linda will not take kindly to being ordered around like the under-appreciated underling she was back in the office.

Bradley eventually becomes contrite, but can he be trusted? Linda appears ever helpful, but can she be trusted? Their castaway days become an increasingly bloody game of cat, mouse and wild boar, with some wonderfully competitive chemistry between McAdams and O’Brien.

She makes Linda’s transition to alpha female a crowd-pleasing hoot, and he crafts Bradley with a perfectly obnoxious mix of misguided mansplainer and smug elitist.

Yes, it’s over the top, just like you expect a Sam Raimi deserted island playground to be. What an unspoiled canvas for some blood spray, projectile vomiting, and a little survival of the deadliest. Game on!

Send Help delivers the R-rated fun, and it’s instantly relatable to the countless souls who’ve secretly dreamed of doing bodily harm to an insufferable boss. But it’s a comeuppance fantasy that still remains easily forgettable…unless you’ve seen the couple films it repeatedly recalls.

Then we’ll have something to talk about.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Mercy, Return to Silent Hill, The Testament of Ann Lee & More

Leave a comment

On this week’s Screening Room podcast, Hope & George review Mercy, Return to Silent Hill, The Testament of Ann Lee, H Is for Hawk, Magellan, and Mother of Flies.

New In Theaters

Point of No Return

Leave a comment

Return to Silent Hill

by Hope Madden

When I used to pick my son up from his dorm, invariably there was a video game on whether anyone was playing or not. Mainly it was badly articulated characters delivering stilted, unrealistic but wildly dramatic dialog on an endless loop because, with no one playing, there was no action.

I could also be describing Christophe Gans’s twenty-years-in-the-making sequel, Return to Silent Hill.

I did not care for the filmmaker’s 2006 Silent Hill, a film that followed a mother into a supernatural town to save her adopted daughter. The sequel, also based on the incredibly popular video game of the same name, follows a distraught man (James Sunderland) who returns to a supernatural town to save his girlfriend (Hannah Emily Anderson).

Gans’s original at least boasted Radha Mitchell, who can, in fact, act. Gans didn’t give her much opportunity, but she tried. Do not look for that here. Though it doesn’t seem that acting is what Gans is after. He lights and frames actors specifically to make them seem less fleshy, less human. Their movement is stiff and unnatural, their dialog stilted and dumb. You truly feel like you’re watching a video game you’re not playing. Nobody’s playing.

You would hope that in the 20 years between projects, the creature design would have improved. Not the case. You rarely get a good eyeball on any of the creatures—and the video game does have a slew of creepy beasties to choose from—and when you do see them, they’re bland and they do nothing.

Because nothing happens in this movie. The entire film feels like being trapped in the between action set ups of a video game that nobody is playing. Nothing happens. There is no action.

Somebody thought the storyline, sans shootouts, without monster carnage, just the storyline of a video game was interesting enough to make a movie out of. They were incorrect.

Outtakes

2026 Oscar Nominations: Praise & Complaints

Leave a comment

Well, if you’re a horror fan, 2025 was your year, at least according to the Academy. All told, the genre racked up 27 Oscar nominations. Ryan Coogler’s period vampire epic Sinners led the pack with a record breaking 16 nominations. The previous high-water mark was 14 nominations.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein nabbed nine noms, while Zach Cregger’s Weapons got one—Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Amy Madigan—and Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister garnering a nomination for Best Makeup and Hair.

Films outside horror did quite well, too. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another received 13 nominations, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value nabbed five. Joseph Kosinski’s F1 received three Oscar nominations and Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice received none. What?!

Wicked for Good got shut out, even in the makeup, costume, hair design and production design categories, which is a bit of a surprise. Otherwise, the Academy recognized what we all expected them to recognize, but, per usual, we have a handful of complaints.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Oh, glorious day, they recognized Delroy Lindo! This is a stacked category—Del Toro stole every scene he was in, and Sean Penn has not been such a hoot in any film in decades. Expected to see Paul Mescal, whose turn in Hamnet was so beautiful. Others who were great in smaller roles were Adam Sandler in the utterly forgotten Jay Kelly, and Miles Caton from Sinners. Not sure where we’d put them, though.

·         Benicio Del Toro, One Battle After Another

·         Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein

·         Delroy Lindo, Sinners

·         Sean Penn, One Battle After Another

·         Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Another stacked category with so much to be happy about. No real nits to pick here.

·         Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value

·         Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value

·         Amy Madigan, Weapons

·         Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners

·         Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

Best Actor in a Lead Role

This shook out the way we’d expected, although we would have loved to see Jesse Plemmons remembered for Bugonia. We’d have given Ethan Hawke’s slot to him or to Joel Edgerton for Train Dreams, although right now Hawke looks like he may be the upset winner, so what do we know?

·         Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme

·         Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another

·         Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon

·         Michael B. Jordan, Sinners

·         Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Best Actress in a Lead Role

We are thrilled to see Hudson get attention for her delightful performance in Song Sung Blue, although the money’s on Buckley. Chase Infiniti would have been welcome for her fearless performance in One Battle After Another, as would Amada Seyfried for The Testament of Ann Lee, but again, not sure who we’d lose to make room.

·         Jessie Buckley, Hamnet

·         Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

·         Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue

·         Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value

·         Emma Stone, Bugonia

Best Director

Would have loved to see Park Chan-wook on this list for just another masterpiece, No Other Choice, perhaps in Safdie’s place, but it’s a good group.

·         Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another

·         Ryan Coogler, Sinners

·         Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme

·         Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value

·         Chloé Zhao, Hamnet

Best Casting

It’s the first year for the award, and the Academy only came up with four films. Given the sheer volume of acting nominations One Battle After Another received, seems funny they didn’t make this list.

·         Hamnet

·         Marty Supreme

·         The Secret Agent

·         Sinners

Best International Feature

Where on earth is No Other Choice? These films are great—intense, heartbreaking, fascinating—but only Sentimental Value and It Was Just an Accident deserve the spot over Park Chan-wook’s film.

·         The Secret Agent, Brazil

·         It Was Just an Accident, France

·         Sentimental Value, Norway

·         Sirãt, Spain

·         The Voice of Hind Rajab, Tunisia

Best Score

What a great group! So thrilled for all five films, although we would have given Train Dreams the nod over Bugonia.

·         Bugonia

·         Frankenstein

·         Hamnet

·         One Battle After Another

·         Sinners

Best Original Song

Loved seeing Train Dreams and Sinners in there.

·         “Dear Me,” Diane Warren: Relentless

·         “Golden,” KPop Demon Hunters

·         “I Lied to You,” Sinners

·         “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” Viva Verdi

·         “Train Dreams,” Train Dreams

Best Adapted Screenplay

Not to beat a dead paper executive, but where is No Other Choice? We love you, Bugonia, but we’d have given your slot away.

·         Bugonia

·         Frankenstein

·         Hamnet

·         One Battle After Another

·         Train Dreams

Best Original Screenplay

Maybe it would have been too much to ask for Weapons over Blue Moon?

·         Blue Moon

·         It Was Just an Accident

·         Marty Supreme

·         Sentimental Value

·         Sinners

Best Documentary Feature

In another year of searing, heartbreaking, brilliant documentaries, great to see Come See Me in the Good Light get noticed.

·         The Alabama Solution

·         Come See Me in the Good Light

·         Cutting Through Rocks

·         Mr. Nobody Against Putin

·         The Perfect Neighbor

Best Animated Feature

Solid choices in a relatively weak year in animation.

  • Arco
  • Elio
  • KPop Demon Hunters
  • Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
  • Zootopia 2

 Best Cinematography

What an absolute gift we got in cinematography this year. Look at these gorgeous films!

  • Frankenstein
  • Marty Supreme
  • One Battle After Another
  • Sinners
  • Train Dreams

Best Costume Design

Here’s one where Wicked: For Good is a surprise omission.

  • Avatar: Fire and Ash
  • Frankenstein
  • Hamnet
  • Marty Supreme
  • Sinners

Best Film Editing

The Perfect Neighbor was a marvel of editing, and The Testament of Ann Lee was like a dream, but these choices are tough to argue.

  • F1
  • Marty Supreme
  • One Battle After Another
  • Sentimental Value
  • Sinners

Best Production Design

Wicked: For Good could be included here, too, but what to toss out?

  • Frankenstein
  • Hamnet
  • Marty Supreme
  • One Battle After Another
  • Sinners

Best Picture

F1? It was thrilling fun, but….

·         Bugonia

·         F1

·         Frankenstein

·         Hamnet

·         Marty Supreme

·         One Battle After Another

·         The Secret Agent

·         Sentimental Value

·         Sinners

·         Train Dreams

The 98th Academy Awards will be held Sunday, March 15th.

New In Theaters

Somewhere Beyond the Sea

Leave a comment

Magellan

by Hope Madden

Lav Diaz’s 2-hour and 40-minute epic Magellan is not for the impatient viewer. With no exposition, a primarily stationary camera, and only one internationally known actor (Gael García Bernal in the title role), the filmmaker quietly undermines a historically accepted notion of exploration and perseverance.

Scenes have a painterly quality, the framing and lighting especially of interiors giving the impression of an oil painting. Each scene, threaded loosely together by time and location, feels more like a work of art into which characters tumble and behave.

Relying almost exclusively on long takes with an unmoving camera, Diaz emphasizes not the characters in a scene but its geography, its ecology. Even in sound design, the crash of ocean waves, the rustle of jungle leaves, the creak and moan of a ship at sea are given equal, sometimes even primary attention. These set ups let the environment dictate the scene, emphasizing the natural world and not the puny individuals so desperate to leave a mark.

Diaz, who generally films in black and white, revels in the hues and tones of the environments. Rich, deep browns in ship quarters conflict with the steely blue grey of the sky and ocean, which pale beside the rich greens of land. And the filmmaker insists that you notice, holding every shot far longer than expected so there’s nothing for you to do but take note of the brutal beauty.

The showiest thing about Magellan is its silences, what Diaz leaves unexplored and disregarded. Don’t go into this film expecting a rousing image of endurance and vision. This film is not impressed by the explorer. Diaz’s languid camera empties his film of the urgency you might expect of a film so pointedly critical of colonizers and exploiters, and that seems to be the point.

Diaz robs Magellan of the passion and romance often attached to his single-minded mission. The film’s unhurried nature subverts expectations and leeches the nobility from the history, leaving instead the impression of blundering, cruel acts performed by misguided, greedy men who died in the mud, far from home, while trying to steal land and enslave human beings.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?