Monthly Archives: August 2024

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Feed My Frankenstein

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AfrAId

by Hope Madden

Artificial intelligence is scary. Mary Shelley knew it. When you create something smarter than you are, with an endless ability to learn, you don’t just become obsolete. You risk becoming a slave.

Writer/director Chris Weitz is the latest to spin the story for its scary implications, although the weekly titled AfrAId is more thriller than horror.  

Good guy Curtis (John Cho—who’s had tech unravel his world once already in 2018’s Searching) is pressured by his overbearing boss (Keith Carradine) to take a new client’s product home for a bit.

The company’s IAI—a kind of superpowered Alexa—immediately ingratiates itself by convincing the kids to do the dishes and watch an educational documentary and giving Curtis and his wife Meredith (Katherine Waterston) some alone time.

In the blink of the surveillance camera’s eye, the buttery voiced AI has befriended each of Curtis and Meredith’s children—Iris (Lukita Maxwell), high school senior with an emotionally manipulative boyfriend; Preston (Wyatt Lindner), the middle schooler struggling to make friends; and wee Cal (crazy cute Isaac Bae).

Well, this AI is a godsend! Which, of course, is entirely and pretty obviously inaccurate. Weitz’s screenplay reflects societal anxieties effectively enough but there’s no center to it, no “but why?” explanation.

Terminator had that. Frankenstein had it, too. It’s a curious omission and without it, the film collapses on itself.

The cast elevates every scene. They are, top to bottom, first rate and the film boasts an always welcome David Dastmalchian sighting. The smooth performances and easy chemistry onscreen heighten tensions, and Weitz does make a narrative choice that feels like a grim surprise. But it’s not enough to make AfrAId one that stays with you.

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Pollinator and Predator

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The Wasp

by Hope Madden

There’s something about a two person show.

Yes, there are more actors in The Wasp than just Natalie Dormer and Naomie Harris, and each one of them—Olivia Juno Cleverly, Leah Mondesir-Simmonds, Dominic Allburn—does a fine job. But Guillem Morales’s thriller is more than anything a suspenseful showcase for two remarkable talents.

Harris plays Heather, an elegant, wealthy, unhappily married woman. Carla (Dormer)—pregnant with her fourth child, married to a gambler, making ends meet with a cashier gig and whatever other cash she can pick up—is suspicious and reluctant but desperate enough for cash to agree to meet with her old classmate. Not that she and Heather were friends back at school.

Heather has a proposition. You may be able to guess what that is even if you haven’t seen the trailer. You can also guess that there’s more to it than meets the eye. Indeed, there’s a chance you’ll figure out the twists as they come up. Maybe not. Either way, Harris and Dormer will draw you in and leave you marked.

Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s screenplay plays with expectations in a number of ways, obscuring the label of protagonist and antagonist. The ground shifts beneath you as frequently as it does the characters. And it wouldn’t work, you wouldn’t buy it as easily as you do, were it not for these performances.

Harris, and Oscar nominee for 2016’s Moonlight, delivers a nuanced, brittle performance that keeps you off center. Dormer is a revelation. Angry, apathetic, vulnerable, desperate—in her hands, Carla is a survivor more resigned than resilient. She’s less afraid to hope than she is pissed off about it.

Dormer also finds moments of humor to humanize the character, moments Morales uses to let the audience breathe. Whatever its dramatic contrivances, and there are a few, the success of The Wasp boils down to riveting, believable performances that command your attention.

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Underdog Day Afternoon

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You Gotta Believe

by George Wolf

On the heels of last weekend’s Little League World Series championship (congrats, Florida!) comes You Gotta Believe, a generically titled, broadly brushed “based on true events” story of one of the most memorable runs in LLWS history.

It’s 2002, and Texas Dads Jon Kelly (Greg Kinnear) and Bobby Ratliff (Luke Wilson) are coaching the worst Little League team in Fort Worth, when they get an unlikely offer. To keep the local sponsors happy, Kliff Young (Patrick “You’re killin’ me, Smalls!” Renna, the first of a few callbacks to better baseball movies) has to send one team to the LLWS qualifying tournament…so whaddya say?

What could possibly turn these cellar dwellers into the Good News Bears? Thanks to writer Lane Garrison and director Ty Roberts, it’s a mix of some tragically bad news, and one shamelessly bad trope.

Coach Ratliff is diagnosed with aggressive melanoma skin cancer, giving his son Robert (Michael Cash) and the rest of the team what local card shop owner Sam (Martin Roach) says they lack: something to rally behind. Sam, apparently the only African American in town, also quickly turns the team’s pitcher into an ace. And though he doesn’t get a coaching offer, Sam still comes to the games to cheer for the boys while seeming to interact with absolutely no one else.

Magical? No, it’s crap.

As the “Westside All Stars” start winning, Garrison and Roberts keep the film perched on the edges of the faith-based genre. But while the preaching here is minimized, there is that familiar feeling of an audience being taken for granted. There’s little concern for depth or character development (Wilson doesn’t even pretend to go bald during his character’s courageous fight with chemo), an awkward singalong sequence, and a wait for authentic humanity that only ends when the real-life players show up in an epilogue.

Over 20 years ago, these Texas kids had an inspiring run in the face of tragedy, and since then have shown a commitment to cancer research. The story at the heart of You Gotta Believe is worthy. It’s just a shame that the storytelling thinks demanding we believe is all that’s required.

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Feeding Frenzy

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Out Come the Wolves

by Hope Madden

Predator and prey. Alpha and beta. Necessary and expendable. Writer/director Adam MacDonald puts these ideas into perspective with his latest thriller, Out Come the Wolves.

MacDonald returns to the woods, where he’s long wrought havoc (Pyewacket, Backcountry). In this forest, Sophie (MacDonald’s regular collaborator Missy Peregrym) is hoping her childhood best friend Kyle (Joris Jarsky) can teach her big city boyfriend Nolan (Damon Runyan) how to hunt.

Nolan’s a writer planning an article on the experience, but he’s also eager to meet Sophie’s dear friend to get acquainted and maybe gauge the competition.

MacDonald’s cinematic bread and butter has been the small cast, big woods, test of the survival instinct. In Backcountry it was a bear; in Pyewacket, a demon. The title here probably gives away the antagonist this go-round, but MacDonald has more in store for us than just a couple of hungry wolves.

Though small cast plus limited location generally equals low budget, Out Come the Wolves boasts impressive production values. Interiors, though slightly hokey and sometimes obvious, develop tension with claustrophobic close ups. MacDonald also takes this first (mainly interior) act to set up the gender politics at work, something he plays off of well in the coming outdoor adventure.

Jarsky delivers the most believable performance, one fraught with roiling emotions and conflicting goals. Runyan is slightly hamstrung by the underwritten “big city guy” role, but he finds a nice balance between smug and vulnerable, insecure and earnest.

Peregrym’s third act makes her first act easier to stomach. She’s saddled early on with a bad dance scene and unrealistic levels of emotional ignorance. It’s not Peregrym’s fault—the writing team (MacDonal and Jarsky along with Enuka Okuma) unable to craft a realistic character is to blame. And Peregrym does what she can, but it’s not until the final third of the film that she gets any opportunity to shine.

It’s still not a very convincing character, but the performance elevates the script.

Out Come the Wolves has some obvious ideas on its mind. It takes those ideas in tense, often interesting directions buoyed by Jarsky’s performance, in particular.

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Time to Quit Without Notice

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First Shift

by Daniel Baldwin

We all have filmmakers whose works we actively seek out. Even those of us who only watch a few new movies a year. For many it’s Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, or Martin Scorsese. For others, it’s John Carpenter, Jordan Peele, or Sam Raimi. These are names that are marks of quality, style, and substance. They are names that say, “Hey, you’re about to watch something good.”

They’re also names that frequently have (or had) solid financial resources at their disposal. This, of course, is not always the case for filmmakers. Some often have little to work with, but often manage to carve out a noticeable career anyway. Some have excelled at this level, others have not. Cinephiles know such filmmakers in both categories. People like Russ Meyer, Albert Pyun, Andy Sidaris, and Jim Wynorski. And yes, Ed Wood and Uwe Boll too. Since 2003’s House of the Dead, Boll has made a name for himself as king of “tax shelter trash cinema”. He’s even built up a following, much like the others listed above.

Mr. Boll has fans who celebrate his works from Alone in the Dark to BloodRayne to the aforementioned  Dead. They exist and unfortunately even they will derive little enjoyment from his latest endeavor, First Shift. A New York City-set crime drama, First Shift is a mismatched buddy cop thriller that pairs a seasoned NYPD officer (Gino Anthony Pesi) with a super-green rookie from Atlanta (Kristen Renton) on a single hellish 12-hour shift that pits the against, among other things, the mob.

Boll wrote, produced, and directed First Shift, which is very evident as one watches the film unfold, as he is the problem at its core. The assumption now might be that he has conjured up another “trashterpiece” like Seed, Postal, or Rampage. That’s what has fans crossing their fingers whenever he gets behind the camera again. I wish I could tell those fans that he has done just that here, but I cannot. Barely any Boll-isms are on display here. Instead, the viewer is offered a poorly written and poorly directed cop thriller that dishes out little in the way of thrills, chills, or chuckles. The cast try their best to elevate the material – kudos to them for that – but it’s not enough to keep First Shift from being a bland, inept, and authorless affair.

Every movie made is a minor miracle, but not all miracles are good. First Shift is for completists only. All others should perhaps skip this Boll and watch a Meyer, Pyun, or Sidaris cult classic instead.

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Write What You Know

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Sebastian

by Rachel Willis

Sebastian is the alter-ego for Max (Ruaridh Mollica), an up-and-coming young writer in writer/director Mikko Mäkelä’s film, Sebastian.

A journalist and short story writer by day, Max spends his nights as “Sebastian,” working as an escort and researching for a novel in progress. Though writing about sex workers is apparently tired, the aspect of hustling in the digital age perks up the ears of a publisher.

The film does a good job of examining the question of how deeply writers live their own stories. Interviews with writers peppered throughout the film contradict Max’s lived experience: most of the writers insist their fiction is completely separate from their lives.

This makes it interesting when Max receives criticism for his work, especially when he’s told it’s not realistic enough or that the emotions of the character negate what others have heard. To be told his work is repetitive or unbelievable makes the criticism harder for Max to bear.

The film doesn’t always follow its own advice. Some of the scenes become repetitive. This mirrors the progress of Max’s novel, but that doesn’t make it any more interesting to watch. However, this is minor, and the film quickly shifts to widen Max’s experiences. As he delves deeper into sex work, his ability to maintain two lives–that of Max and that of Sebastian–starts to break down.

As interesting as it is to examine the realism and lived experiences of writers and their work, the film leaves several ethical dilemmas unexamined. Since Max is writing about Sebastian’s experiences, he runs the real risk of “outing” his clients, something untouched in the film. While the film has its own story to tell, it would have been interesting to show more of what’s at stake for Max’s “characters.”

On the whole, Sebastian is a well-written and well-acted look at how far a writer will go in pursuit of a good story.

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Moth to a Flame

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Slingshot

by George Wolf

A small group of dedicated souls travel in deep space. Worn down by isolation and boredom, they start to question their commitment to the mission as they fight to keep a firm grip on reality.

Slingshot does not offer a groundbreaking premise. In fact, co-writer Nathan Parker took us on a similar ride in 2009 with Moon, a solid morality tale that pulled some of its punches on the trip home.

But here, it is the third act that rescues the film from the slog of familiarity, with director Mikael Håfström never completely tipping his hand until the last, well-executed reveal.

Casey Affleck stars as John, who is on board the Odyssey 1 with Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne) and fellow crewman Nash (Tomer Capone from The Boys). They are 9 months into an Earth-saving mission to Titan, the largest of Saturn’s moons, but they will need to execute a tricky “slingshot” maneuver around Jupiter to make the trip successfully.

Trouble starts with adverse reactions to deep space hibernation. John sees visions of Zoe (Emily Beecham) – the love he left behind – while Nash becomes convinced the ship has taken on too much damage to complete the mission. Captain Franks is wondering if he can trust either one, and paranoia begins to envelope the Odyssey.

Performances are fine all around and set the stakes convincingly enough, as Håfström (Evil, The Rite) layers the romantic flashbacks with plenty of obligatory shots of Zoe rolling over and staring longingly from underneath the sheets.

Yes, yes, very nice. But what’s the endgame here?

Events get a welcome escalation once violence erupts. Håfström’s atmospherics help aid the tension and Affleck makes his character’s battle with sanity more believable than most. And though the script often invites you to catch on to what’s up, Slingshot finds an identity by seeing its vision through to the very end, a will-they-or-won’t-they moment that almost recalls the genius of Take Shelter.

Almost. But still pretty good.

Fright Club

Fright Club: The Alien Franchise

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We’re making a bit of a departure for this episode. The latest in the Alien franchise had us—like everyone else—doing a bit of ranking.

1. Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)

2. Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)

3. Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997)

4. Alien: Romulus (Fede Alvarez, 2024)

5. Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012)

6. Alien 3 (David Fincher, 1992)

7. Alien: Covenant (Ridley Scott, 2017)

8. Alien vs. Predator (Paul W. S. Anderson, 2004)

9. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (Colin Strause, Greg Strause, 2007)

But we thought it would be fun to catch up with a couple of other big Alien nerds and hash it out. What worked with Alien: Romulus? What didn’t? Where does it fit within the pantheon and why? Is Alien 3 an underrated masterpiece? Is Alien Resurrection actually any good? And why were there so many vaginas in Romulus? So, so many.

We welcome two great friends of the podcast, filmmaker Timothy Troy and MaddWolf contributor and Schlocketeer, Daniel Baldwin. Beware: spoilers ahead! We’re going to pull this apart a bit, so if you haven’t seen Alien: Romulus (or any of the others, for that matter), be warned.

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A Night at the Opera

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The Crow

by George Wolf

The Crow may not be over when the phat lady sings, but the film’s truly galvanizing moments are here and gone, leaving the rebooted super anti-hero story to return to its largely generic nature.

Director Rupert Sanders and a writing team that includes James O’Barr (from the 1994 original) keep the basic narrative intact. After the troubled Eric (Bill Skarsgård)and his equally troubled love Shelly (FKA twigs) are brutally murdered by henchman of the centuries-old Mr. Roag (Danny Huston), Eric travels through the worlds of the living and the dead on a bloody quest for revenge and possible salvation.

Though Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman, Ghost in the Shell) gives more attention to the origins of the love story, the “soul mate” declarations still feel rushed and unearned. The entire narrative embraces more of a nihilistic tone, with just one moment of the angsty self-awareness that buoyed the first film.

The camerawork is often nimble and expressive, but Sanders and cinematographer Steve Annis (Color Out of Space) move away from crafting any unique, comic-inspired landscapes. Instead, the colliding worlds come to resemble a very dark, long-abandoned section of any major midwestern metropolis.

But, man, when we crash that opera, The Crow lands on its feet and kicks ass, as Eric takes on a barrage of goons and gunfire with a stunning, visceral brutality. Well-staged and perfectly flanked by the performance onstage, the extended sequence benefits from impressive choreography and effects work, giving the film its only truly memorable moments.

The rest of The Crow has a difficult time measuring up.