What about Groundhog Day, but with unrelenting psychological dread? That’s the premise of Johannes Nyholm’s horror fable Koko-di, Koko-da, and it’s a testament to writer/director Nyholm that the film’s excruciating time loop manages to go from torturous to therapeutic.
After a family vacation takes a shocking turn, Tobias (Leif Edlund) and Elin (Ylva Gallon) lose themselves in their own private grief, their marriage one submerged argument away from total annihilation. What better time for a camping trip in the foreboding Swedish forests to get that old magic back?
Their unresolved trauma starts to literally stalk the couple
in the shape of three carnivalesque figures, with each nightmare encounter ending
the same way: some gruesome death, and then Tobias wakes up to repeat the loop
all over again.
The horror of Koko-di Koko-da rarely gets gory.
Tobias and Elin continually suffer extreme violence and torture, but it’s all
(thankfully) implied. Instead, what’s so unnerving about the film is the
inescapable dream logic that suffuses their fateful loop: no matter how hard
Tobias tries or how fast he runs, it’s only a matter of time before the first
strains of the fateful nursery rhyme on which the title is based start up, and
the couple’s shared torture begins anew.
The film’s main down side is that we aren’t allowed to see
or know much beyond the confines of this inexorable—and unrelenting—loop. And
once the metaphor is clear, there’s little else to do besides feel like an
eavesdropper in a long overdue couples therapy session. (An unconventional one,
sure, with more murder and animal attacks than the APA likely recommends, but
who knows what they get up to in Sweden.)
Still, it’s impossible not to feel for the grieving pair.
Anyone deserves some kind of catharsis after enduring such tragedy, and both
Edlund and Gallon manage to make it feel earned, even with their thinly
detailed characters.
Koko-di Koko-da is not a pleasant film to watch, but it is often a beautiful one. And it lays bare the truth that there’s no escaping misery in life—that the only way to break the cycle is to confront it, pain and all.
It was a weird year for movies. When the world shut down, so did
production, so far fewer movies were being shot because when they did keep
filming, Robert Pattinson got Covid, and nobody wants that.
When movie theaters shut down, movies went directly to streaming, so
Oscar made the unprecedented (and correct) decision to include films without
theatrical releases in their body of contenders. That turned out to be a good
idea since no one went to the theaters even when they opened back up.
They also widened the window of eligibility, which means that 14
months’ worth of movies were in the running. What does that mean for 2021? Will
the 2021 eligibility calendar be just 10 months long? Will we forever push the
eligibility deadline back to March to keep it at 12? That choice will have a
bigger impact on what comes out when than you think. What it means for 2020 is
that small films that you hoped would get notice—First Cow
and Shirley, for example—still got swamped in the larger pool, and
recency bias potentially helped voters forget about films that came out early
in 2020. Let’s be honest, early 2020 feels like 1976 by this point.
It was just so long ago.
On the whole, though, we don’t have too many complaints about the
Academy’s 2020 Oscar choices. Independent films just kicked all manner of ass
this year.
Best Film
The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Thoughts:
Again, the Academy can potentially include 10 candidates. A film
has to reach a low-end threshold of votes to be included, which is why those
last couple of slots are usually left vacant. If we could fill them, Soul and First
Cow would certainly have made this list.
Lead Actress
Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Andra Day, The United States Versus Billie Holiday
Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of a Woman
Frances McDormand, Nomadland
Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman
Thoughts:
Killer lineup. It’s painful to see another year go by without
acknowledging the sublime Elizabeth Moss, but honestly, this group is hard to
complain about.
Lead Actor
Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal
Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Anthony Hopkins, The Father
Gary Oldman, Mank
Steven Yeun, Minari
Thoughts:
These five performances are undoubtedly award worthy. But where is
Delroy Lindo for Spike Lee’s almost completely overlooked Da Five
Bloods? We probably would give him the Hopkins or Yeun spot, but we would
definitely have made room for him.
Supporting Actress
Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Movie Film
Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy
Olivia Colman, The Father
Amanda Seyfried, Mank,
Youn Yun-jung, Minari
Thoughts:
How great is it to see Youn Yun-jung on this list?! Close is the sentimental favorite because she has inexplicably never won an Oscar regardless of her 8 nominations and mind blowing talent, but please God please don’t let her win for the abomination that was Hillbilly Elegy.
Supporting Actor
Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
Sacha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7
Leslie Odom Junior, One Night in Miami
Paul Raci, Sound of Metal
LaKeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah
Thoughts:
It’s impossible not to note that there are three Black actors on
this list—a historic moment and one worth celebrating. Most people assumed
Chadwick Boseman would be on this list for his role in Da 5 Bloods.
We’re wondering, though: if LaKeith Stanfield is a supporting actor, who was
the lead in Judas and the Black Messiah?
We’d also loved to have seen Michael Stuhlbarg squeezed in here
for his brilliant turn in Shirley, but to be totally honest, we
loved all these performances and have no serious complaints. Just questions.
If Kaluuya doesn’t win, the Academy is wrong.
Director
Thomas Vinterberg, Another Round
David Fincher, Mank
Lee Isaac Chung, Minari
Chloe Zhao, Nomadland
Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman
Thoughts:
Regina King (One Night in Miami) and Aaron Sorkin (The
Trial of the Chicago 7) are notable absences, and Vinterberg is the
obvious surprise here. We’d have loved to see Kelly Reichardt get some love
for First Cow, but that’s asking too much, we know.
Adapted Screenplay
Borat Subsequent Movie Film
The Father
Nomadland
One Night in Miami
The White Tiger
Thoughts:
The White Tiger is a pleasant surprise. When you think of Borat
Subsequent Movie Film, you don’t think of writing. You think of one guy
riffing, and you’re so surprised that he isn’t murdered in front of you that
you ignore the incredible amount of planning and, yes, writing that must go
into it. Good for the writing pool of the Academy for seeing past that potential
murder to take note.
Original Screenplay
Judas and the Black Messiah
Minari
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Thoughts:
Not a ton of surprises here. We’d love to see Soul in
this bunch, but we don’t know where we’d put it. 2020 was a bad year all
around, but it was a great year for original films.
Documentary
Collective
Crip Camp
The Mole Agent
Octopus Teacher
Time
Thoughts:
Year after year, documentary feature gets to be a tighter and
tighter race. In recent years there are more documentaries worthy of true
consideration than there are features. We’d loved to have seen Boys
State and/or Capital in the 21st Century on
this list, but this is a smart group and its content and style run a big gamut.
Smart money is probably on Collective because it’s also
nominated for International Picture, but we’d give it to Time all
day.
Animated
Onward
Over the Moon
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
Soul
Wolfwalkers
Thoughts:
It was an incredibly weak year in big screen animation,
although Wolfwalkers was an incredible film that you should
find and watch immediately. And Soul was quite possibly the
best movie to come out in 2020, so at least it will get its due here.
Catch the 93rd annual Academy Awards Sunday, April
25th on ABC.
The beautifully clear, almost neon blue water of Freeport, Bahamas provides an idyllic backdrop for the broadly-brushed and easily digested drama of Dolphin Island, an acceptable adventure for the 10 and-under set.
Since her parents died in a diving accident nine years ago, 14 year-old Annabelle (Tyler Jade Nixon) has lived with her fisherman grandfather Jonah (Peter Woodward). Annabelle loves to help Jonah on the boat, stroll through the docks saying hello to everyone by name, a la Mr. Rogers, and swim with her dolphin bestie, Mitzy.
Trouble comes in the form of Robert Carbunkle, Esq. (Bob Bledsoe), an unscrupulous lawyer representing Annabelle’s maternal grandparents – a rich New York couple who think Annabelle would be better off with them.
As Carbunkle starts manufacturing dirt about Annabelle’s living situation, she and Jonah will need help from a social worker (Dionne Lea), her handsome son (Aaron Burrows), and one incredible dolphin (Mitzy) to save the day and keep Annabelle at home on the island she loves.
Director/co-writer Mike Disa – a veteran of kids’ tv and video – steers the nicely diverse cast through a surface level drama that’s sanitized for family protection. In this world, even a 14-year-old is too young to understand serious illness and someone is always ready to explain things we can clearly see happening for ourselves.
But who doesn’t love dolphins and Caribbean locales?
If your young ones do, Dolphin Island will entertain them for 90 minutes while you daydream about visiting Mitzy’s home in person.
Our son Donovan joins us this episode, so obviously the best idea is to look into horror movie families that make ours look downright wholesome. Check out the boy’s band, NEW PLAGUE RADIO!
6. The Woman (2011)
Forget Pollyanna McIntosh for one minute (if that’s even possible). One of many reasons that Lucky McKee’s powerhouse of horror is so memorable is that McIntosh’s feral cannibal (who must smell awful) is not the scariest person on screen.
There’s something not quite right about Chris Cleese (an unsettlingly cherubic Sean Bridgers), and his family’s uber-wholesomeness is clearly suspect. This becomes evident once Chris hunts down a wild woman, chains her, and invites the family to help him “civilize” her.
It doesn’t go that well for anybody, really, in a film rethinks family.
Well, patriarchy, anyway.
5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Poor, unlikeable Franklin Hardesty, his pretty sister Sally, and a few other friends head out to Grampa Hardesty’s final resting place after hearing the news of some Texas cemeteries being grave-robbed. They just want to make sure Grampy’s still resting in peace – an adventure which eventually leads to most of them making a second trip to a cemetery.
But that’s not the family we’re after. The clan that will come to be known as the Sawyers begin humbly enough in Toby Hooper’s original nightmare: a cook, a hitchhiker, a handyman of sorts, and of course, Grandpa.
There are so many moments to recall. Maybe it’s the slamming metal door, or the hanging meat hook, or the now iconic image of the hysterical and blood-soaked Sally Hardesty hugging the back of a pick up truck bed as the vehicle speeds away from Leatherface.
Or maybe it’s dinner, when Hooper really gives us some family context. He uses extreme close up on Sally’s eyeball as she takes in the bickering family lunacy of a dinner table quite unlike any we’d seen before.
4. The Lodge (2019)
It’s Christmas, and regardless of a profound, almost insurmountable family tragedy, one irredeemably oblivious father (Richard Armitage) decides his kids (Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh) should get to know the woman (Riley Keough) he left their mother for. A week in an isolated mountain cabin during a blizzard should do it.
Dad stays just long enough to make things really uncomfortable, then heads back to town for a few days to work. Surely everybody will be caroling and toasting marshmallows by the time he returns.
What is wrong with this guy?! And it’s not just him. Turns out his kids are pretty seriously messed up as well. But fear not (or fear a lot) because Grace has some profound family dysfunction to fall back on, and pretty soon it’s just a guess as to who’s going to out-dysfunction the other.
3. We Are What We Are (2010)
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.
Jorge Michel Grau’s We Are What We Are is among the finest family dramas or social commentaries of 2010. Blend into that drama some deep perversity, spooky ambiguities and mysteries, deftly handled acting, and a lot of freaky shit and you have hardly the goriest film ever made about cannibals, but perhaps the most relevant.
2. Raw (2016)
Justine (Garance Marillier, impressive) is off to join her older sister (Ella Rumpf) at veterinary school – the very same school where their parents met. Justine may be a bit sheltered, a bit prudish to settle in immediately, but surely with her sister’s help, she’ll be fine.
Writer/director Julia Ducournau has her cagey way with the same themes that populate any coming-of-age story – pressure to conform, peer pressure generally, societal order and sexual hysteria. Here all take on a sly, macabre humor that’s both refreshing and unsettling.
Because what we learn is not just that Justine’s sister will not be a good mentor, or that there is definitely something wrong with Justine. By the blackly hilarious final moments on the screen, we see the big family portrait.
1.Hereditary (2016)
What else?!
With just a handful of mannerisms, one melodic clucking noise, and a few seemingly throwaway lines, Aster and his magnificent cast quickly establish what will become nuanced, layered human characters, all of them scarred and battered by family.
Art and life imitate each other to macabre degrees while family members strain to behave in the manner that feels human, seems connected, or might be normal. What is said and what stays hidden, what’s festering in the attic and in the unspoken tensions within the family, it’s all part of a horrific atmosphere meticulously crafted to unnerve you.
Aster takes advantage of a remarkably committed cast to explore family dysfunction of the most insidious type. Whether his supernatural twisting and turning amount to metaphor or fact hardly matters with performances this unnerving and visual storytelling this hypnotic.
There are elements of Anthony Scott Burns’s sci fi horror Come
True that put you in mind of early David Cronenberg, although what Canadian
filmmaker hasn’t been inspired by the master?
Like Cronenberg, Burns sets his unnerving tale amid the
humming florescents, beeping machines and grainy medical equipment displays of
an institution—someplace hospital-like, if not quite hospital-proper.
But where Cronenberg usually populated these dreary medtech landscapes
with the most disturbing body horror, Burns has other, slower terror in mind.
This is where 18-year-old runaway Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone)
finds herself. Nights spent on friends’ couches or at the local playground have
Sarah strung out enough that a two-month sleep study sounds exactly like the
safe, sound rest she needs.
Unfortunately, Sarah suffers from nightmares.
This is where Burns develops a marvelous sense of universal dread. As his camera (he also acted as cinematographer) weaves through hallways and caverns too dark to truly make out, human shapes or something like them hang, drape, congeal and otherwise loom in shadows. They are at unnatural angles and heights. Some seem to be looking at you.
What Burns sets in the corridors of Sarah’s mind abandons the Cronenberg universe in favor of a terror more reminiscent of Rodney Ascher’s documentary, The Nightmare.
Whew—heady stuff, and big shoes to fill. Burns follows
through with the tone and look of the film, creating a dreamy, retro vibe that
he amplifies with a score by Anthony Scott Burns, Pilotpriest and Electric Youth.
He also has quite a find in Stone, whose elfen look
perfectly suits the project. She projects something scrappy, vulnerable and
otherworldly and she carries this film on her narrow shoulders.
The cast around her does wonders to suggest a backstory that
isn’t shared, each pair or group with its own lingo and worn in rapport.
Where Come True falls short is in its story. The slow pace eventually works against the film. Worse still, it’s hard to see the climax as anything other than a cheat. Come True leaves you feeling massively let down, which is truly unfortunate after so much investment in a world this well built.
A few months back, Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt stupefied us
all (well, the dozen or so of us who saw Wild
Mountain Thyme) with an Irish romance about as authentic as a Shamrock
Shake. Writer/director Aoife Crehan’s The Last Right takes us back to
the Emerald Isle to see if there’s any romance or magic left.
Oh, there is? Well, fine then.
Dutch actor Michiel Huisman plays Daniel Murphy, Irishman.
Or American. Well, that’s fuzzy, but he’s certainly not Dutch, although his
accent is tough to pinpoint. Daniel’s been called back from Boston to County Cork
for his ma’s funeral, and to look in on his younger brother Louis (Samuel
Bottomley, Get
Duked!)
And old man – also named Murphy – dies on the airplane and authorities
believe Daniel is his next of kin. They want him to deliver the remains to a
church on the northern tip of Ireland, but that’s not his responsibility plus
he has all this work to do and he can’t wait to get back to Beantown where his
fancy lawyer job waits for him.
But Louis wants to go, and Louis has autism, which is where
the film really gets a bit off the rails.
Crehan nods to Barry Levinson’s Rain Man early into
the cross-country drive between two brothers with a large age gap, a long way
to go and a lot to learn. Along for the ride is mortuary assistant Mary (Naimh
Algar) and more contrivances than you can shake a shillelagh at.
Performances are solid. Algar brings a fiery spirit to the
roadtrip experience, and Crehan fills small roles with the venerable talents of
Brian Cox, Colm Meaney and Jim Norton. Plus the scenery is gorgeous.
There is a perfectly middle-of-the-road romantic dramedy here somewhere. You may enjoy it, assuming you can get past the tangle of convenient plot twists and you don’t wince at the device of an autistic character (played by an actor who is not on the spectrum, although Bottomley delivers a layered and respectful performance) teaching the real lessons.
Knowing that Cosmic Sin comes from the writers behind last year’s Breach probably won’t fill you with confidence about their latest sci-fi adventure.
But the good news is Edward Drake and Corey Large are improving. Very, very slowly.
Drake also takes the director’s chair this time, and coaxes a mildly interested performance out of returning star Bruce Willis (which Breach could never manage).
The year is 2524 (remember that) and Earth’s forces have formed the Alliance of colonies throughout the universe. Willis is General James Ford, renamed the “Blood General” after he wiped out one of the colonies with a “Q-bomb” and was stripped of rank and pension (ouch!).
But minutes after learning of first contact with an alien life form, General Ryle (Frank Grillo) calls Ford back to duty, where he’ll join a rag tag group of you know who to make a heroic you know what and save you know where.
Drake and Large (who also plays Ford’s sidekick) clearly blew the budget on Grillo and Willis (Grillis!), with a side of Costas Mandylor. 500 years from now looks a lot like next Tuesday, while planets light years away look like next Tuesday in Michigan.
And still, cinematographer Brandon Cox manages some slick deep space panoramas…that are often ruined by Saturday morning-worthy effects of our heroes flying through the stars and “pew pew pew”-ing in battle with the aliens.
Likewise, Drake and Large’s script toys with the meaty issues of war, sacrifice, and colonialism, only to abandon them in the name of heroic grandstanding. Potential threads (and Grillo’s entire character) grab our attention and then vanish at random, rendering much of the 88 minute running time a meandering mess.
Drug kingpin Bernard “Dutch” James (Lance Gross) rules the streets of Newark, New Jersey. In co-directors Preston A. Whitmore II and David Wolfgang’s film Dutch, we watch the primary event that frames this crime thriller: Dutch is put on trial for an act of domestic terrorism.
There is some mystery when the film opens. Is Dutch truly guilty of the crime? Is he being railroaded by the system? We get a glimpse of Dutch committing a crime as a teenager, but nothing at the level of what he’s on trial for. It’s easy to wonder if this is a set-up.
Whitmore and Wolfgang don’t sustain the mystery for long. It’s quickly forgotten as we bounce between past and present. You sense a powerful theme, but the movie isn’t interested in more than a surface reference to the legal system’s injustices.
Dutch maintains a decent balance between the events of the past and the present drama. Unfortunately, the film contains quite a few dull moments. We’re forced to watch a prosecutor’s entire opening statement, which is about as boring as they are in real life. There’s a lengthy discussion about a meatball that could’ve been funny had it been delivered with more conviction by characters with a little more meat to their roles.
And the acting is sometimes painful. Gross is the best of the bunch, but Dutch never seems truly dangerous. Gross brings the right amount of charisma to the character, but there’s nothing sinister. His history, as it plays on the screen, speaks to heinous crimes, but there’s never a moment where we feel we’re in the presence of someone who is capable of that level of cruelty – even as we’re watching him commit these shocking acts.
This is the first film in a planned trilogy, but it’s hard to muster up the interest in any sequels after a painful first installment.
Big, old, empty houses are creepy, right? Lots of dark, musty spaces to get the imagination conjuring up all manner of nasty things that might be lurking.
There are some nasty things lurking in Shudder’s Stay Out of the F**kingAttic, but the way they’re conjured leans more toward laborious and silly.
Shillinger (Ryan Francis), Imani (Morgan Alexandria) and Carlos (Bryce Fernelius) are three ex-cons working for the Second Chance moving company. When they show up to move the elderly Vern (Michael Flynn) out of his mansion, he surprises them with a hard-to-resist offer.
If the three will work through the night to get the job done by morning, Vern will reward them with a nice chunk of cash. Two things, though: stay out of the attic and the basement.
Bet they don’t.
The use of the edited F**king in the title suggests a mischievous, knowing tone that got off the bus in a totally different zip code than director/co-writer Jerren Lauder. That’s too bad, because this film is in serious need of lightening up.
Almost every element – from performances to dialog to cheesy score to practical creature effects – lands as stilted and overly staged. Though Flynn does make an effective villain and one particular creature ain’t half bad, even the brisk 80-minute run of Lauder’s feature debut seems like an overstayed welcome.
As our Second Chance movers uncover secrets about Vern (and each other), Lauder leans on body horror closeups and weak jump scares on the way to a big reveal that is bigly ridiculous.
Shudder’s been on an impressive run of originals lately, which makes this misfire a little surprising. Here’s hoping Lauder’s second chance will be a bit more worthy of the investment.
