LGBTQ youth often find themselves at the receiving end of family and friend abandonment. The people who are supposed to support them through the coming out simply walk away. The story at the heart of Jack & Yaya is about what happens when two childhood friends go through the same life-changing events, and how those closest to them stick around to champion their lives.
Jack and Yaya grew up as next-door neighbors in south New Jersey. From early on, they both saw who the other truly was, a girl and a boy, even if the rest of their family and friends did not.
In her directorial debut, Jennifer Bagley wisely lets the film’s two subjects be front and center. Jack and Yaya share a genuine openness about their lives. Absent is any kind of hubris when the two of them talk about their struggles or their successes. This honest, matter-of-fact nature feels immediately welcoming.
The focus on day-to-day struggles for transgender people is real and evident even in this sunnier-than-normal documentary. Jack struggles with running into discrimination even in a city as large as Boston. Yaya worries about the constant financial stress around obtaining hormones. It’s a needed dash of reality.
As the colorful cast of characters who revolve around Jack and Yaya are introduced, it’s not hard to see how these two became the people they are. Bagley naturally captures the warmth and love that flows between all of them. Amidst the alcohol and ‘70s rock, Yaya’s uncle Eddie spills to the camera how much love he has for both Yaya and Jack. “All you need is frickin’ love!” bellows Eddie.
Jack & Yaya works exceptionally well at being a celebration of these two people as they figure out their ever-changing lives. This isn’t a film interested in making a grand social statement. Bagley lets these two tell their story, and show us who they really are through their own words and actions.
Jack & Yaya beautifully shows how good we all can be when we prop each other up. Jack and Yaya’s lives could’ve gone so much differently. But they had each other and a support system that evolved into a deep friendship of genuine acceptance and caring.
Has there ever been a place as glorious as the video store? The brain trust behind the horror anthology Scare Package clearly understands the secret joys of the independent VHS retailer and their beloved horror wares.
“This weekend is all about no rules, no clothes, and no cell
service,” begins Emily Hagins’s surprisingly fresh meta-horror Cold Open.
It sets the stage for a really funny way to spend about an hour and 40 minutes.
Chad Buckley of Rad Chad’s Horror Emporium (directed
by Aaron B. Koontz) is training a new employee, covering the ins and outs of
the VHS game and dodging that creepy regular customer. Periodically we get a
glimpse at the store’s rentals, taking shape as the set of horror shorts that
make up the anthology.
Chris McInroy’s consistently funny One Time in the Woods plays like a good natured Troma flick. So, it’s a bloody, gooey, gore-soaked, viscera-saturated mess with a bright disposition.
Noah Segan (Knives Out) makes his directorial debut with M.I.S.T.,E.R., which boasts the great casting of Noah Segan (how’d he get him?!) as well as Jocelyn DeBoer (Thunder Road, Greener Grass). You wouldn’t call it inspired, but a nice sleight of hand and one subtly creepy bartender are enough to keep you guessing and entertained.
Anthony Cousins’s The Night He Came Back IV: The Final Kill doesn’t offer much in the way of a fresh perspective and feels especially tame compared to the two other meta-horror episodes in the package. The two shorts that bridge sci fi and horror—Courtney and Hilary Andujar’s Girls’ Night Out of Body and Baron Vaughn’s So Much To Do—don’t answer nearly as much as they ask, but they do keep your attention.
The collection is weaved together with love and a lot of
nerdy horror know-how. Was it destined for Shutter? Well, that Jo Bob Briggs
cameo couldn’t have hurt.
Scare Package sports an excellent use of budget for a fun, campy set of horror-loving films—the kind of short movies that lovingly mock the genre. Most of the episodes offer a knowing lampooning, and each ends abruptly enough to avoid wearing out its welcome.
In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the neighborhood of Lapa is home to Luana Muniz, the focus of directors Theodore Collatos and Carolina Monnerat’s documentary, Queen of Lapa.
A photoshoot of Muniz opens the film. She is elegant in
black lingerie, holding a cigarette; the audience learns that she has been a
sex worker since the age of eleven and is now one of the most recognized
transgender (Luana prefers the term transvestite) activists in Brazil.
A hostel run by Muniz for over two decades provides a safe
haven for transgender sex workers. It is this world that Collatos and Monnerat
are privy to. They are given a level of access that allows the audience to
experience these women’s lives as they live them.
Muniz is a bit of a mother hen to the women, many of them
even call her Mother Luana. She scolds them for not cleaning up after
themselves, expresses concern over injuries, and fights to ensure the house
remains a place where transgender men and women can live and work safely.
It’s an important concern. Transgender men and women, and sex workers, experience violence at alarming rates. One of the women speaks of having gasoline poured on her before she escapes her attacker. The same woman is beaten and robbed one night, showing her injuries to her Facebook Live audience. Another woman is nearly raped but manages to flee.
However, the film focuses on more than one aspect of these women’s lives. It allows us a chance to spend time with the housemates and get to know them. There is a familial atmosphere as the roommates watch TV, do each other’s nails, eat meals together, and argue.
Some of the conversations are more interesting than others,
but the filmmakers play a critical role with their lack of presence.
They allow the group to share their own stories, to let their voices be heard
at a time when it is essential that those who have been silenced in the past
are allowed to speak.
Muniz says of herself, “the only star here is me,” and in
some ways, she is the sun to a community of people who need an advocate like
her. One of the women recalls seeing Muniz on TV as a child, never expecting to
know her as an adult, but it’s an example of the impact she has had on the
community. She teaches the women how to be safe, how to not be ashamed of who
they are, and that they are loved.
Witches, starvation, ghouls, oppression, Church and governmental oppression—there’s a reason they call them the Dark Ages! Filmmaker George Popov (Hex, The Droving) joins us to discuss the best horror movies about the Dark Ages.
6. Black Death (2010)
What Christopher Smith (Severance) delivers with Black Death that few if any horror filmmakers tackling the same themes match is a clear eye as to the flaws and merits on both sides of the witch hunt.
Eddie Redmayne is an innocent and a believer; Sean Bean is no innocent, but he does believe. Both are part of a Christian army who get word of a village untouched by pestilence—a village where some say the dead have been raised.
What follows is a punishingly human drama about using religion to suit your own ends, about what evil we are and are not willing to accept, and about the end of innocence.
5. The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
The sixth of seven Roger Corman/Vincent Price Poe films—and maybe the best—sees Price in a role that delights in its own evil.
No Corman film has ever used color to such glorious extreme, a tactic absolutely in keeping with Poe’s text. The film works from a short story, padding with subplots (one from Poe, one from elsewhere) that work well within the story and generate a little emotional depth beneath the lurid color and debauchery.
Stay through to the end, whatever you do, but do give this one a chance.
4. Hex (2017)
Two soldiers separated from their companies during England’s Civil War chase each other into a deep forest. The rebel Thomas (William Young) is young, soft and open to the dark poetry and doom of witchcraft. He’s not long in the woods before he sees his true enemy is not the countryman behind him with his sword drawn.
Richard (Daniel Oldroyd) fights for King and Country, strident and single-minded, logic keeps him from believing until he has little choice.
There is more happening here than you realize, and it’s to the filmmakers’ credit that you only recognize the film’s purpose when they are ready for you to do so. The result is a satisfying tale with more power than just magic.
3. Army of Darkness (1992)
Easily the most fun you’ll have with a Dark Ages film, Army of Darkness is Sam Raimi’s third and silliest installment in his Evil Dead trilogy. In it, like a Connecticut Yankee, hero Ash (Bruce Campbell at his buffest) finds himself transported to dark times.
You know what he finds. Deadites.
Ash must woo the girl (and then maybe accidentally get her changed into a deadite, which will necessitate killing her), say the spell (which he may or may not entirely screw up, inadvertently raising an army of darkness), and save the day.
Endlessly quotable, utterly bananas, and just a thrill ride of Monty Python meets Three Stooges meets Ray Harryhausen fun, Army of Darkness is a treasure.
2. The Head Hunter (2018)
In a land of yore, the geography forbidding, a far off
trumpet calls for the hardiest of warriors—those equipped to fight beasts.
Director Jordan Downey shows much and tells little in his
nearly wordless medieval fantasy, The Head Hunter. The filmmaker parses
out all the information you’ll need to follow this simple vengeance myth, but
pay attention. Very little in this film is without meaning—no creepy image, no
creak or slam.
In what is essentially a one man show, Christopher Rygh
delivers a quiet, brooding performance for a quiet, brooding film. He cuts an
impressive figure as the Vikingesque warrior at the center of this adventure
and his work speaks of joyless endurance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZqtRbifT6Q
1.Hagazussa (2017)
Making a remarkably assured feature debut as director, Lukas Feigelfeld
mesmerizes with his German Gothic poetry, Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse.
Settled somewhere in the 15th Century Alps, the film shadows lonely, ostracized women struggling against a period where plague, paranoia and superstition reigned.
It would be easy to mistake the story Feigelfeld (who also writes) develops as a take on horror’s common “is she crazy or is there malevolence afoot?” theme. But the filmmaker’s hallucinatory tone and Aleksandra Cwen’s grounded performance allow Hagazussa to straddle that line and perhaps introduce a third option—maybe both are true.
The film lends itself to a reading more lyrical than literal. Feigelfeld’s influences from Murnau to Lynch show themselves in his deliberate pacing and the sheer beauty of his delusional segments. He’s captured this moment in time, this draining and ugly paranoia that caused women such misery, with imagery that is perplexingly beautiful.
Leave it to Spike Lee to follow up the socially searing
masterwork in direction BlackKklansman
with something bigger, badder and even more immediately relevant.
Da 5 Bloods follows four Vietnam Vets (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Norm Lewis) back to the jungle where they left so much. They left a lot more than most, actually, including a beloved brother and a lot of gold.
Chadwick Boseman haunts the frames and the buddies as
Stormin’ Norm, the young platoon leader and inspiration that didn’t make it
home. If he represents past tragedies, Jonathan Majors represents the way those
pains echo into today.
A heist movie on the surface, Da 5 Bloods is clearly about a great deal more than making it rich. Lee has a lot to say about how those in power tell us what we want to hear so we will do what they want us to do.
As is always the case with Lee’s films, even the most overtly
political, deeply felt performances give the message meaning. The entire cast
is excellent, but Delroy Lindo is transcendent.
Lindo’s never given a bad performance in his 45 years on screen. As commanding a presence as ever at 68 playing Paul, Lindo again blends vulnerability into every action, whether funny, menacing or melancholy. His MAGA hat-wearing, self-loathing, dangerously conflicted character gives Lee’s themes a pulse. This may finally be the performance to get Lindo the Oscar he’s deserved for ages.
Staggeringly equal to the effort is Majors (The Last Black Man in San Francisco) as Paul’s son David. His performance illustrates a resilience as well as a tenderness that is utterly heartbreaking.
Even so, here Lee avoids the sentimentality that undermined
his 2008 war film Miracle at St. Anna. In its place is a clear-eyed look
at the many, insidious effects of not just war but systemic oppression.
It should surprise no one that Lee’s latest happens to hit the exact nerve that throbs so loudly and painfully right now, given that he’s been telling this exact story in minor variations for 30+ years.
“If a lot of people have just a little bit of courage, then nobody has to be a hero.”
If we can’t see the truth in that statement right now, we
are truly lost. It’s a call to action, and an argument that For They Know
Not What They Do patiently articulates.
A sequel of sorts to director Daniel G. Karslake’s 2007 doc For
the Bible Tells Me So, For They Know Not What They Do revisits the Christian
church after more than a decade to gauge its movement on LGBTQ rights.
The film drops you into the lives of four families
navigating the complex world of faith and sexual identity.
Elliott is about to leave for his freshman year at Vassar,
and he and his parents walk us through what it’s like to trust your adolescent enough
to begin the irreversible. Ryan, with the help of his genuinely loving if
deeply misdirected parents, commits to praying the gay away. Sarah is as
committed to the political career she started as a middle school class president
as she is in fully transitioning. Victor survived a tragedy thanks in part to
the unflinching support of his Catholic parents.
In and around all of these stories, Karslake examines the
political backlash to marriage equality, particularly the way the religious
right has targeted the especially vulnerable transgender population and what
that has meant in terms of violence.
All of the parents involved display their courageous human frailty,
owning their immediate and long-term responses to knowledge of their children’s
sexuality or gender identification.
Their continued reliance on faith to help them see where
religious dogma had become poisonous is among the loveliest elements of the
film. These parents lean on their scripture’s concept of forgiveness (mainly to
forgive themselves for having harmed their children), love, and acceptance to
help them see beyond their own fear.
It’s a path Karslake takes as well. This is a forgiving
documentary. It never turns a blind eye toward the way the religious right uses
organized religion as a tool to oppress. But FTKNWTD is more interested
in how faith does not have to be tainted by this noxious hate. It’s a bold
vision for a documentary on Christianity and LGBTQ suffering.
It is also perhaps the film’s strongest selling point. Karslake doesn’t preach at, condescend to or even vilify the audience most in need of the film’s message.
Arielle (Bella Thorne) is bumming. She’s got a crap waitressing job in a boring Florida town, and she’s way over living with her mom and her mom’s creepy boyfriend. And too many people pronounce her name like the Disney princess! But that’s not the nearly the worst of it.
Her Instagram numbers are pathetic.
Enter a hunky new bad boy in town named Dean (Jake Manley), a gun, and a string of brazen robberies along the route to a new life in Hollywood, and those followers start piling up.
The news reports begin branding the couple as a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, but it’s clear early on that what writer/director Joshua Caldwell has in mind is a Natural Born Killers for the social media set.
While the film’s timing – dropping right when we are seeing social media push overdue social change – isn’t great, its goal is an ambitious one. The internet age still seems ripe for the type of darkly comic and satirical fish eye that Oliver Stone used to frame mass media in 1994. And no matter how well you think that film has aged, you can’t deny the boldness of the vision.
There’s nothing remotely fresh about Infamous, let alone bold. The last straw catalyst for leaving town, the sex while driving, the media obsession and the misplaced adulation of the masses all line up and fall as easily as the next robbery.
About an hour in, Arielle and Dean take a hostage (Glee’s Amber Riley with a nice, understated turn) and it seems Caldwell is finally trying to make his own statement. But it stalls from exposition and generality, leading nowhere close to the intersection where Stone planted his flag, one where the film’s true commentary transcends the style and narrative.
And there is style here. Caldwell gives much of the action an urgent pace and a livestream feel, with texts and comments often darting the frame to remind you where Arielle’s heart is.
But she, and Dean, are more cliche than character, and what they tell us about social media isn’t much deeper. The interchangeable, angst-heavy soundtrack choices only confirm that Infamous isn’t reaching beyond these two outlaw lovers, and the youngest of adult audiences may actually identify with them for all the wrong reasons.
Going into Darkness Falls, I felt upbeat and positive. Gary Cole is the heavy of the film? Sign me up! His track record as a villain (namely A Simple Plan and Pineapple Express) is pretty spotless in my book.
Then I watched Darkness Falls.
Cue sound of deflating balloon.
Detective Jeff Anderson (Shawn Ashmore) has become obsessed with his wife’s suicide, convinced that it was actually a murder. As Anderson delves deeper into other similar suicide cases, he finds that a father and son serial killer duo (Gary Cole and Richard Harmon) are stalking his city.
From the opening scene, Darkness Falls leans heavily into cliche, and, if I’m being painfully honest, laziness. The filmmaking lacks any real type of energy or urgency. Director Julien Seri’s artistic choices come across as inept and amateurish, never really settling on a specific style. Seri tends to stage many shots to look cool instead of helping to tell an engaging story.
Giles Daoist’s script isn’t up to the challenge either. Rather than try something new with the genre, Darkness Falls relies on the same tired detective movie tropes. Anderson is the loose canon detective that the brass just can’t handle. And I’d be ashamed to forget mentioning just how often he slams his palms on counters and/or tables and shouts things like, “Tell me where he is?!” Truly riveting screenwriting.
The “twists” in the film are ones we’ve seen countless times before in much better films. The climax itself was probably done at least three dozen times before 1990. A few genuine “oohs” and “aahs” could’ve helped Darkness Falls be something more than a feature-length Criminal Minds episode.
Performance wise, things don’t improve. Ashmore, who’s notable for playing more squeaky-clean roles, awkwardly tries to embody the tough-as- nails detective. When he’s not chewing up scenes with over-acting, Ashmore’s performance barely registers above bored. Cole, who I usually adore, doesn’t fare much better. His papa bear serial killer lacks any kind of menace. The character is more of a homicidal used car salesman than threatening maniac.
With its pedestrian writing, cruise control direction, and phoned-in performances, Darkness Falls spectacularly falls on its face.
Veteran British writer Frank Cottrell Boyce (Welcome to Sarajevo, Millions) adapts his own short story of a grieving if dapper tailor, a not-so-prodigal son, making the best of a sad substitute, and Scrabble.
Thanks to the vision of first time feature director Carl
Hunter, Sometimes Always Never enjoys an eccentrically stylish,
elegantly odd presentation. Hunter, in turns, finds those exact same characteristic
in its sublime lead, Bill Nighy.
The film tags along as dapper Alan (Nighy) and his son Peter
(Sam Riley) drive some distance together. They’ve been summoned to an
out-of-town morgue to identify a body.
Between Hunter’s deliberate framing and set composition and
Nighy’s droll but endearing presence, the film cannot help but charm. But the
delightful and eye-catching style belies a grieving heart.
Nighy, of course, is brilliant—and how fun is it to watch him lead a film rather than take the screen as some minor if wonderful character? In his hands, Alan is unknowable but not intimidating. He’s spry and precisely drawn, never sentimental for a beat, and yet endlessly tender. Nighy owes Boyce a great debt for creating such a beautifully layered odd duck, and all of us owe Nighy even more for bringing Alan to life in his inimitable way.
Hunter surrounds his lead with a solid ensemble committed to understatement. Riley’s emotional turmoil has a resigned, lived-in quality that’s both sad and sweet. Jenny Agutter and Tim McInnerny (Severance), likewise, deliver the human contradiction of comedy and tragedy, while Alice Lowe (Prevenge) is just the sweetheart the film needs for balance.
Balance is an excellent word—though it may not net as many points as some more strategic choices, or is it as fun to say as “soap.” But in terms of the visuals versus the dialog, or the emotional versus the comedic, Hunter keeps a grip and never lets the film tip this way or that.
That doesn’t always feel true to the profound tragedy that has befallen this family and has caused, slowly but surely over the many years, the fractures Alan is attempting to mend. This pain too often feels overlooked, becoming a slight that keeps Sometimes Always Never from reaching its own cinematic potential.
