The pandemic was tough on everybody. Eula (Chantelle Han) lost her grandpa, made a bad decision with her bartender friend (Charles Boyland), and may lose her restaurant if things don’t turn around.
So, at the height of lockdown, these two restauranteurs takeoff into the night with a mysterious letter sent just after Grandpa died by a recluse he saved during the war. They decide to drive that letter 20 hours to the recluse’s acreage where they hope to find him and some truffles.
Really, really valuable truffles.
In the hands of co-directors Han and Steven Garbas, Peppergrass is, on the surface, a kind of backwoods culinary heist movie – which is more than intriguing enough. But the film, which Garbas co-wrote with Philip Irwin, delivers more than that.
The film is beautifully shot, from the somber color and framing of the urban opening act to the purposeful camera and sound work throughout the balance of the forest-heavy second and third acts.
Han’s Eula – in charge, no nonsense, desperate – anchors the film beautifully. The perfect counterbalance, Boyland plays at being the harmless dumbass. Thanks to a lived-in chemistry between the two actors and Boyland’s committed performance, you never root against his Morris no matter how much you want to smack him.
The script is clever, sometimes roughly funny, often surprising. Tonal shifts can be a problem, but generally Garbas and Han move smoothly, their framing and pace matching the swiftly shifting genre. Peppergrass swings from heist to horror to survival tale and back again, losing its footing only rarely.
Fear of contagion timestamps the film, but it also generates a kind of paranoia that heightens tension – the kind of tensions suited to backwoods survival tales. But Peppergrass’s greatest strength is how deftly it tells its real story – the one motivating the heist, which is never discussed outright, though it haunts the film.
Tense, surprising and delightfully unusual, Peppergrass is a gem of a thriller worth seeking out.
As soon as Ember earns her dad’s trust, he can retire and she’ll run his shop in Fire Town. Unless her hot temper ruins everything. Or she falls for that sweet guy from Water Town. Or both.
Daddy issues. Romance. Coming of Age. There’s a lot about Pixar’s latest, Elemental, that feels familiar. Common, even. And if there’s one thing the animation giant’s managed to avoid for most of its almost 30 years in the business, it’s being predictable.
It doesn’t help that the characters immediately put you in mind of Pixar’s wildly imaginative Inside Out. But there’s little about the film that will strike you as wildly imaginative, although the animation is sometimes breathtaking, beauty spilling off all four sides of the screen. Animators explore and exploit all opportunities to find wonder in the glow and fluidity of characters and the magnificent 3D experience is well worth annoyance of the glasses.
The magic in this story’s telling lies less in an inspired, imaginative plot and more in the nuances of the execution. Ember, a child of immigrants, is seen as a danger to most of the rest of the city. And yet, as she traverses a landscape of people made of water, she’s the one who’s actually in danger.
John Hoberg, Kat Likkel and Brenda Hsueh’s crisp writing deftly navigates microaggressions, misunderstandings, and the anger associated with helpfully advising someone to “water down” their culture.
Back in 2015, Elemental director Peter Sohn made the unduly overlooked The Good Dinosaur. It was a beautiful piece of visual storytelling, charming and well-acted, although, like this one, the plot itself lacked imagination. I hope more people give Elemental a chance. It lacks the uniqueness of Pixar’s greatest or most enduring efforts, but it’s a touching, gorgeous, emotional and forgiving tale.
Don’t be late or you’ll miss perhaps the best reason to see Pixar films, the shorts that precede the feature. In Carl’s Date (which will also appear as episode 1, season 2 of the Disney+ show Dug Days), our beloved Carl (Edward Asner) from Up! needs a little courage to go through with his first date since Ellie. Crushingly lovely.
Maggie Moore(s) is nestled in a quiet little neighborhood between the Coen Brothers, Taylor Sheridan, and any mid-lfe rom-com. Expect engaging characters getting caught in dangerous games and possible romances, and reacting with clever witticisms, charming flirtatiousness and occasional bursts of violence.
And though the film doesn’t rise to the best of any genre, it patches together enough winning moments for a worthwhile caper-com.
With an opening declaration that “some” of the events actually happened, Paul Bernbaum’s first script since 2007’s Next takes us to a small desert town in Arizona that’s suddenly rocked by two murders in one week.
And both victims are named Maggie Moore. WTF?
Is there a connection between Maggie 1 (Louisa Krause) and Maggie 2 (Mary Holland)?
That’s what Police Chief Sanders (Jon Hamm) and deputy Reddy (Nick Mohammed) aim to find out. And pretty soon they’re finding out that Maggie 2’s husband (Christopher Denham) has a girlfriend (Bobbi Kitten) and a life insurance payout coming, while Maggie 1’s man (Micah Stock) has been passing photos for a pedophile food supplier (Derek Basco) in exchange for cheap and moldy cold cuts for his sub shop.
Oh, and Maggie 1’s neighbor Rita (Tina Fey) says the couple’s fights had recently been escalating.
Director John Slattery (God’s Pocket) exhibits fine juggling skills, giving his Mad Men pal Hamm plenty of room to craft Chief Sanders as the easy-to-root-for heart of the film. He’s a widower who takes a creative writing class at night, and his rebuff of a classmate’s overtures only makes us more hopeful when he and the divorced Rita find reasons to meet.
Of course, it helps that Hamm and Fey are real life buddies, with enough natural chemistry and snappy barbs (Him: “Wash your car.” Her: “Wash your ass!”) to make their time together a treat to watch.
Yes, putting a wannabe romance in the middle of Hell or High Fargo can bring a disjointed feel, but the orbit of distinct characters and cutting dialogue around it never lets the crime-solving grow tiresome.
Don’t look to Maggie Moore(s) for trail blazing or ground breaking, it will come up short. But for an hour-and-a-half of breezy, sometimes messy entertainment, it’s plenty capable.
A random trade in the back of a transport van gives Gilles (Nahuel Peréz Biscayart) a chance to survive the Holocaust in Vadim Perelman’s film, Persian Lessons.
The trade – a book in Farsi for a sandwich – seems inconsequential, even poor, but it prevents Gilles’s death when the van is unloaded in a field and everyone is executed. There’s a deputy commandant, Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger), looking for someone who speaks Farsi, so Gilles is spared – the book used as evidence of his nationality.
The problem is that Gilles is not Persian (Iranian) and doesn’t speak Farsi.
The situation creates immense tension as there are several soldiers who suspect Gilles (known to the soldiers as Reza) is lying. One makes it his goal to reveal the deception. As Gilles tries to create a language to fool Koch, we watch as he struggles to remember the words he’s invented. He keeps them straight using a pneumonic device based on the names of the prisoners entered into a register.
Because of Gilles’s peculiar status, he spends almost equal time with his fellow prisoners and the Nazis around them, but he is a part of neither group. And because of his unique access to Koch, and the fury this incites in some of the soldiers, we spend more time with these men and women than we do the prisoners around Gilles.
We watch as soldiers and officers flirt and gossip and attend parties, humanizing them in a way that makes them more sinister. These are the actions of people you might know – those who view what they do with enthusiasm or indifference. They form relationships with each other while dehumanizing the Jewish people around them. It adds an ominous realism to these characters.
Koch is the most disturbing. He helps Gilles on several occasions, but it’s clear if he were to ever find out Gilles is lying about his identity, the retribution would be swift and cruel. There is no real affection between the two; Gilles is fully aware of his precarious situation, even as he takes advantage of it. Koch is a means for Gilles’s survival, but never a friend.
As the film progresses, there is a constant tension. As prisoners are transferred from one camp to another, Gilles is physically spared, but the emotional toll of watching so many men, women, and children shipped to their death wears on him. His physical and emotional demeanor deteriorates throughout the film.
Perelman’s striking and terrifying portrayal of one man’s experience is one that will resonate for some time.
Billing itself as a blend of “documentary and narrative fiction,” Dry Ground Burning succeeds wildly on all fronts, turning the Sol Nascente favela in Brazil into a feminist battleground that mixes light science fiction with immediate real-world consequences.
Léa (Léa Alves da Silva) is just out of prison, and reunites with her half-sister Chitara (Joana Darc Furtado). Chitara has become a local hero as the hardened leader of an all-female gang that makes money refining stolen oil and selling gasoline.
Under Chitara’s leadership, the gang defies local authority, a presence that pervades the characters’ lives even if the direct police response to Chitara is only briefly shown. (The directors make the most of this screentime by giving them and their “state-of-the-art” armored vehicle the full Verhoeven treatment.)
The gang’s ambitions run deeper than just survival, although the film argues that even that is worth celebrating in the face of authoritarian resistance. The women have mounted a political challenge with their People’s Prison Party, advocating a platform that speaks to the needs of the city’s working class and disenfranchised.
Directors and writers Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós chose to cast two local women (not actors) to play versions of themselves. The docu side of the docu-drama comes into its sharpest focus when the women are out campaigning. Their voices are sometimes literally drowned out by Bolsonaro supporters. And a political rally for the now former president of Brazil takes on the look of a green and gold descent into the Inferno.
In that scene, and in so many others in Sol Nascente, Pimenta and Queirós allow the narrative part of the story to fade away. Long, uninterrupted shots bring us both the grotesque horrors of a fascist rally and the unbowed joy of a DIY dance party.
There’s also a heartbreaking moment in the story when the narrative suddenly breaks the fourth wall and it is revealed just how many real-life elements from these women have been brought into the film. Despite these setbacks, or in the face of them, Chitara and her gang continue to demand an alternative future for the country that sees them in it.
Speculative documentary, narrative fiction… why not add hopeful dystopia to the genre list?
How many kids does Nick Cannon have? Think on it, because your answer could say a lot about you.
It might even keep you alive.
Several friends from college (including Jay Pharaoh, Yvonne Orji, Sinqua Walls, Antoinette Robertson, and the film’s co-writer Dewayne Perkins) are reuniting at a remote cabin for a Juneteenth celebration. It isn’t long before they discover a talking blackface at the center of a board game called The Blackening (“probably runs on racism!”) and fall into a sadistic killer’s plan to pick them off one by one.
The game will test their knowledge of Black history and culture, and demand they sacrifice the friend they deem “the Blackest.” It’s a clever device that Perkins, co-writer Tracy Oliver and director Tim Story use to skewer both well-known horror tropes and well-worn identity politicking.
The old joke about Black people being the first to die in horror films is pretty well-worn, too, but don’t let that poster tagline convince you that the film has nothing new to say. The less “Blacker” these characters seem, the greater chance they have of surviving. That’s some fertile ground for social commentary, and what began as a viral comedy sketch lands on the screen as a refreshing new angle for a horror comedy.
The winning ensemble crafts unique, identifiable characters, and Story (Barbershop, Ride Along) keeps the homages coming, from Scream to Saw to Set It Off and more. But while the film’s brand of fun can be silly and/or bloody, there’s plenty of smart woven into the takes on scary movies, race, and sexual identity (Perkins’s character is openly gay and has some rules of his own).
But seeing that I’m a white man in his fifties, every joke in the film didn’t land for me. And I can respect that. This is a film from Black creators, with a Black cast, that speaks very knowingly to a Black audience while keeping the cabin door open for anyone to join the fun.
Thinking that only a certain type of audience could enjoy The Blackening is exactly the kind of stereotyping the film is eager to put in the crosshairs. And that assumption would be more than wrong.
If you are looking for a wondrously macabre fairy tale, a nightmare that’s both fanciful and terrifying, writer/director Ryan Stevens Harris has a tale to tell.
Moon Garden delivers a journey through the fertile imagination of 5-year-old Emma (Haven Lee Harris). We know from Act 1 that she funnels what she picks up from the world around her into delightfully odd, even spooky fantasies for her toys to act out. So, when trouble that’s been brewing at home (and spilling into Emma’s playtime fantasies) unexpectedly puts the tot in a coma, that fantasy world drowns out reality and Emma finds herself on a very big journey indeed.
Of its many successes Moon Garden can boast set design, creature design and stop motion work at the top. All are very solid, and all collaborate to evoke a big, dark, scary world where logic bends but wonder never dies.
Creature design – particularly the first creature – lives up to the expectations set early when we see Emma’s toys. And the film benefits immeasurably from a charming and believable central performance by young Harris. Excellent editing helps to make her physical journey seem more plausible, but her laughter and tears never feel less than genuine.
Augie Duke, playing Emma’s distraught mother, and Brionne Davis as Dad Alex are less impressive, although it may be that the artistic vision is so much stronger in the fantastical storyline that the real-world of the parents received short shrift.
Other characters glimpsed briefly within the otherworldly realm are more compelling, aided by stagey old school costuming. Wisely, the filmmaker blurs lines between good and evil, giving the story itself a kind of fluidity that feels appropriate to a dreamscape and also keeps you constantly surprised.
The story, and to a degree the entire film, is hokey but Moon Garden generates more than enough of the macabre in old school fairy tales to evoke a wondrous nightmare energy.
Fire, as the ultimate threat, has laid heavily in the public’s mind for a handful of years. West Coast dwellers live in near constant fear of ill-contained flames. With a significant spike in ravenous flames throughout the past decade, how can a government possibly triangulate and identify a solution to the rapidly progressing problem? As much as it postures, Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire doesn’t offer that fix.
Director Trip Jennings knows how to accost audiences right in their vulnerable ethos. Jennings thrusts us into Paradise, California during an autumn day in 2018. With ash blocking the sun and blazes destroying the city, an unbelievable loss of 85 lives and 18,000+ properties result from the string of ravaging forest fires the year produced. Firsthand iPhone video accounts of shaken parents throwing sobbing children into the back of cars as fires overtake their once sleepy streets is haunting. However, Jennings relies on this initial emotional connection to keep audiences engaged through a scientific and roaming remainder.
The film is a heavily logistical view of attempts to mitigate the impact of fire-based disasters on the human population. What is so deeply interesting and perplexing is the film’s failure to speak on the cause: climate change. It feels like a well-formulated dance around a concrete base. Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire makes no mystery that a rapidly changing climate is to blame, but also does no due diligence of explanation or exploration. It seems to unintentionally avoid the topic, which is incredibly strange. Ultimately, you end up wondering what the purpose behind the snub really amounts to.
This is not to say Jennings is an untalented filmmaker. The documentary itself is interesting, and digestible in its heavy scientific musings. The daunting subject matter is presented fairly and accurately, but a call to arms is missing. Beyond the begrudged idea that West Coast landowners should investigate fire-proofing their homes, no massively hopeful or inspiringly pessimistic conclusions are made.
Even in the lovely landlocked region of the Midwest, fire threat has become a permanent and harrowing dilemma. Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire offers no solutions, although it will thoroughly explain half hearted ideas. For a some, it’ll result in more confusion than comfort.
Remember the utility belt on the Adam West version of Batman? Whatever the situation, there was always something on that belt that was perfect for bailing him out of it.
Decades later, it’s starting to look like “the multi-verse” may be the new Get Out of Jail Free card for superhero adventures. It certainly is for The Flash, a movie that scatters impressive moments across a landscape of fan service that’s searching for a truly compelling story.
Ezra Miller returns as Barry Allen/The Flash, who discovers this time out that he can hit speeds fast enough for time travel. Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) warns him against messing with the past, but Barry is convinced that simply putting one can of tomatoes in a shopping cart can bring back his murdered mother (Maribel Verdú ) and in turn, free his father (Ron Livingston) from a murder charge.
Of course, that can of tomatoes carries plenty of butterfly effects. The changes are enough to put Barry face-to-face with a non-super version of himself, in a universe where Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) has hung up his cape, Eric Stoltz never got canned from Back to the Future, and General Zod (Michael Shannon) is still an imminent threat to destroy the planet.
That Stoltz name drop (along with Affleck’s priceless line about the size of his ego) are just two of the moments where screenwriters Christina Hodson and Joby Harold inject some lighthearted fun that never seems forced. Ironic, though, that the Stoltz backstory just reminds you that the controversial Miller didn’t get dropped from this franchise.
But beyond the many offscreen troubles, Miller is impressive here, effectively crafting two distinct Barry Allens who play off each other quite well. Keaton’s return is a nostalgic kick, and as much as he’s clearly enjoying getting back in the Batsuit, Keaton steers clear of scenery-chewing. His Batman is a perfectly weary version of the one he left in the 90s, a disillusioned hero ready for one more ride.
And as the Barrys and Bruce search for an imprisoned Superman, we get our first look at Sasha Calle as Kara/Supergirl, who provides an intriguing glimpse of what we might expect from the character’s upcoming standalone film.
Director Andy Muschietti (It, It Chapter Two) hooks us with an exciting and visually impressive – except for the computer-generated babies – opening sequence, but the pace begins to drag almost immediately after. Threads of other time travel films from Timecrimes to Looper are bandied about, leading to the puzzling centerpiece that is the Chrono-ball.
Inside the ball, any past version of a superhero can be trotted out for a fan service bow, often with GCI that’s less-than-super enough to recall DC’s embarrassing experiment with Superman’s mustache. You would think that after that debacle, the effects bar would be higher. Apparently not, which only exacerbates the feeling that the point here is not The Flash, it’s how many flashes of the past can be manufactured – before and after the credits.
Both the animated and live action Spider-Man films have shown us how delightful the multi-verse can be. The Flash never gets there, but it shows us enough of Barry Allen to wonder what might be possible if the DCEU can trust him enough to carry his own weight.
When a human being just doesn’t have enough meaningful ways to invest their time, they can go a little nuts. Here’s to the horror of life as the underappreciated, boxed-in, cast off and/or misused housewife. May they all draw blood.
5. Jakob’s Wife (2021)
Director/co-writer Travis Stevens (Girl on the Third Floor) wraps this bloodlusty tale of the pastor’s wife (Barbara Crampton) and the vampire in a fun, retro vibe of ’80s low-budget, practical, blood-spurting gore.
To see a female character of this age experiencing a spiritual, philosophical and sexual awakening is alone refreshing, and Crampton (looking fantastic, by the way) makes the character’s cautious embrace of her new ageless wonder an empowering – and even touching – journey.
With Crampton so completely in her element, Jakob’s Wife is an irresistibly fun take on the bite of eternity. Here, it’s not about taking souls, it’s about empowering them. And once this lady is a vamp, we’re the lucky ones.
4. The Stepford Wives (1975)
Ira Levin’s novel left a scar and filmmaker Bryan Forbes and star Katherine Ross pick that scab to deliver a satirical thriller that is still surprisingly unsettling. What both the novel and the film understand is a genuine fear that the person you love, whose faults you accept and who you plan to age and die with, has no interest in what’s inside you at all. You – the actual you – mean nothing at all.
It’s the idea of trophy wife taken to a diabolical extreme (as even the outright trophy wife isn’t long to last, what with the inevitability of aging and all). The term Stepford Wife worked its way into the lexicon, and there’s a clear pot boiler, B-movie feel to this film, but it still leaves a mark.
3. Dumplings (2004)
Fruit Chan’s Dumplings satirizes the global obsession with youth and beauty in taboo-shattering ways.
Gorgeous if off-putting Aunt Mei (Bai Ling) balances her time between performing black market medical functions and selling youth-rejuvenating dumplings. She’s found a customer for the dumplings in Mrs. Li (Miriam Yeung ChinWah), the discarded wife of a wealthy man.
With darkest humor and sharp insight, Chan situates the horror in a specifically Chinese history but skewers a youth-obsessed culture that circles the globe.
The secret ingredient is Bai Ling, whose performance is a sly work of genius. There are layers to this character that are only slowly revealed, but Ling clearly knows them inside and out, hinting at them all the while and flatly surprised at everything Mrs. Li (and you and everyone else) hasn’t guessed.
Gross and intimate, uncomfortable and wise, mean, well-acted and really nicely photographed, Dumplings will likely not be for everyone. But it’s certainly a change of pace from your day-to-day horror diet.
2. Swallow (2019)
Putting a relevant twist on the classic “horrific mother” trope, writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis uses the rare eating disorder pica to anchor his exploration of gender dynamics and, in particular, control.
Where Mirabella-Davis’s talent for building tension and framing scenes drive the narrative, it’s Bennett’s performance that elevates the film. Serving as executive producer as well as star, Haley Bennett transforms over the course of the film.
When things finally burst, director and star shake off the traditional storytelling, the Yellow Wallpaper or Awakening or even Safe. The filmmaker’s vision and imagery come full circle with a bold conclusion worthy of Bennett’s performance.
1. Watcher (2022)
If you’re a fan at all of genre films, chances are good Watcher will look plenty familiar. But in her feature debut, writer/director Chloe Okuno wields that familiarity with a cunning that leaves you feeling unnerved in urgent and important ways.
Maika Monroe is sensational as Julia, an actress who has left New York behind to follow husband Francis (Karl Glusman) and begin a new life in Bucharest.
Monroe emits an effectively fragile resolve. The absence of subtitles helps us relate to Julia immediately, and Monroe never squanders that sympathy, grounding the film at even the most questionably formulaic moments.
Mounting indignities create a subtle yet unmistakable nod to a culture that expects women to ignore their better judgment for the sake of being polite. Okuno envelopes Julia in male gazes that carry threats of varying degrees, all building to a bloody and damn satisfying crescendo.
