After 2016’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer, director Pablo Larraín wraps his Grand Dame trilogy by shining a slightly less engrossing spotlight on legendary opera diva Maria Callas.
Angelina Jolie is outstanding as the American-born Greek soprano “La Callas,” allowing Maria’s indulgence of her own iconic status to land as more realism than caricature. Jolie meets the demands of Larraín’s fondness for lip-synching close ups, and moves through the lushly detailed production design like a queen walking to her throne.
Cinematographer Edward Lachman, who earned one of his three Oscar nominations for last year’sLarraín collaboration, El Conde, elegantly captures the image of a solitary figure traveling an exquisite if lonesome city.
There is much to admire in the film, but this time screenwriter Steven Knight (who also penned Spencer) keeps the biography a bit too much at arm’s length. Anchoring the timeline in the last week of Callas’s life and then flashing back via Maria’s interview with a reporter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Knight never lets us glimpse the full-of-life Maria that calls to us from archival footage over the closing credits.
Both Pierfrancesco Favino and Alba Rohrwacher bring needed warmth to their scenes as Callas’s devoted staff, but the balance of the film feels too tidy and glossy to be telling a life’s story.
As with both Jackie and Spencer, Larraín is able to illustrate the loneliness and isolation of an iconic woman. We see it again in Maria, we just don’t feel the tragic arc quite as deeply.
If you know David Gordon Green from the recent Halloween trilogy or The Exorcist: Believer, you don’t really know David Gordon Green. Who could blame you? He’s a hard guy to know.
He followed up the four magnificent character driven indies that began his career with a trio of raucous comedies before mixing TV directing with low budget dramas. Then he did a couple of high-profile Hollywood dramas before venturing into franchise horror. The guy’s tastes are less eclectic than whiplash.
Well, with Nutcrackers, he’s back in the independent realm, but his dabblings in every format, budget and genre inform the piece.
Ben Stiller plays Michael, a Chicago real estate developer in the final throes of a project he’s been working for six years. He’s called to BFE Ohio (actually, Blanchester, Ohio) to care for his four recently orphaned nephews while the social worker (Linda Cardellini, classing up the joint) looks for a foster family.
He can only stay for the weekend, though.
Sure, sure.
It’s a classic set up—ambitious city slicker loses everything and finds out who he really is in the chaos of family and smalltown life. And at Christmas, no less! Michael is also the type of character Stiller’s played many times. But Green’s approach is strictly indie—no swelling score, no spit takes, no mugging, no reaction shots.
Green also recognizes his real stars: Homer, Arlo, Atlas and Ulysses Janson. The four newcomers deliver sweetly feral performances with an authenticity you don’t find in films like these.
Leland Douglas’s script hits familiar beats that could easily have become cookie-cutter family film fare, but Green’s execution is untidy enough—snot-faced, uncombed and realistic—to breathe new life into a familiar idea.
Stiller’s delightfully understated performance cements the genuine feel of the film. He has an easy chemistry with Cardellini as well as the Janson kids, and he mines the script’s humor for something that seems like real people being funny, rather than movie comedy.
There’s a feeling of improvisation within scenes that allows Nutcrackers plenty of surprises. On the other hand, Green’s indie approach is often a mismatch with the broad comedy hijinks in the story. Certain scripted moments—those that smack of “zany comedy adventure”—are wildly out of place, and the film never fully shakes the obviousness of its premise.
Nutcrackers mainly feels like an experiment. David Gordon Green takes a familiar Christmas family film script and sees if he can make something real out of it. He doesn’t always succeed, but he does deliver a charming mixed bag of nuts.
Eight years ago, Disney took us to ancient Polynesia for a visually stunning journey of self-realization with an adolescent wayfinder and a narcissistic demi-god. Not a lot has changed in nearly a decade.
Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) is called by her ancestors to face a challenge she believes is too big for her. A god put a curse on an island to keep the people of the sea separated. She’ll need Maui (Dwayne Johnson) to help her.
Some of the elements Moana 2 shares in common with the original benefit the film. The animation still looks dazzling, with gorgeous ocean colors, star-bedecked skies and the best hair in any Disney franchise. Songs are fun, and Cravalho’s voice remains as stirring as ever. Johnson’s voice has not improved, but the film makes that work.
“Beyond” is likely to be the song most remembered, but “Get Lost” is a fun one as well. And though the sentiment becomes important to the plot, the character attached to that piece of advice appears and disappears without any real attachment to the film. She’s a needless add on, someone who controls bats in the middle of the ocean.
There’s more goop in the sequel. Lots of slimy, oozy, day-glow goop.
Everything else seems like less. Moana’s high sea adventure involves more help—an actual crew this time—and fewer problems. There are not as many foes, fewer episodes of danger, the quest feels less imperative, stakes seem lower, and characters grow less. It’s like a nice color copy of the original—still pretty, very similar, just not as compelling.
It is good to see some familiar faces, even if those faces are drawn on coconuts, and Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda’s sweet performance and endearing voice bring little sister Simea adorably to life.
Kids’ tales that mine fresh cultural perspectives are always welcome and animated stories aimed at little girls that do not end in marriage are always needed. Moana 2 won’t bore anyone looking for a colorful time waster this holiday season. You’re just not likely to remember it into January.
A Beatles documentary? Do we need another Beatles documentary?
I don’t know, do you really need more than one plate on Thanksgiving? I’d say Beatles ’64 is thrilling enough to be pretty damn necessary for anyone even remotely interested in the history of the Fab Four.
David Tedeshi – who served as Martin Scorsese’s editor on both Rolling Thunder Revue and George Harrison: Living in the Material World – takes the director’s chair this time, with Scorcese backing up as producer. Together they showcase incredible BTS footage originally shot by cinéma verité icons David and Albert Maysles. Though the Maysles brothers debuted much of what they shot in their own 1964 documentary “What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A,” this new Disney + feature includes nearly twenty minutes of never-before-seen clips.
And yes, it is nostalgic gold. Here are John, Paul, George and Ringo, all fresh faced and bursting with humor, energy and naïveté. Caught in the middle of the absolute frenzy that surrounds their first trip to America, they display the boyish charm of enthusiastic tourists eager to experience this long-promised land that’s going wild for their every move.
Well, not everyone is screaming, crying and collecting every piece of Beatle merchandise available (get a load of the guy who still has some unopened Beatle talcum powder!). There are also a few stuffed shirts running kids out of hotel hallways and calling these young pop stars “sick.”
But as enthralling as all these historical snapshots can be, Beatles ’64 finds its own voice in the way it connects past to present with touching context.
“Culture?” We see a young Paul McCartney respond to a reporter. “It’s not culture, it’s a laugh.”
Looking back now six decades later, Sir Paul does acknowledge the cultural shifts that aligned with Beatlemania, not the least of which was a nation mourning JFK’s assassination and utterly desperate for some joy.
Along with the new interviews featuring Paul and Ringo, and some later-in-life comments from John and George, Tedeshi catches up with a few of the teenagers who were there on the front lines of fandom. From writer Jamie Bernstein’s (daughter of Leonard) devotion, to music producer Jack Douglas’s priceless story of his teenage trip to Liverpool, to senior citizens still tearing up about their first Beatles moment so long ago, Beatles ’64 weaves intimate moments from idols and fans alike into a warm and wonderful snapshot of wistful innocence.
Have we examined werewolf movies before? We have, but with at least two brand new, big ticket lycanthrope movies hitting theaters this winter and one badass indie hitting physical this month, we decided to reexamine. Help us welcome The Beast of Walton Streetfilmmaker Dusty Austen to Fright Club to look once again at the best werewolves in cinema.
5. The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
Thunder Road was a pretty fantastic breakout for writer/director/star Jim Cummings. A visionary character study with alternating moments of heart and hilarity, it felt like recognizable pieces molded into something bracingly original.
Now, Cummings feels it’s time to throw in some werewolves.
Cummings is officer John Marshall of the Snow Hollow sheriff’s department. John’s father (Robert Forster, in his final role) is the longtime sheriff of the small ski resort town, but Dad’s reached the age and condition where John feels he’s really the one in charge.
John’s also a recovering alcoholic with a hot temper, a bitter ex-wife and a teen daughter who doesn’t like him much. But when a young ski bunny gets slaughtered near the hot tub under a full moon, suddenly John’s got a much bigger, much bloodier problem.
At its core, The Wold of Snow Hollow is a super deluxe re-write of Thunder Road with werewolves. I call that a bloody good time.
4. The Wolf Man (1941)
For George Waggner’s 1941 classic, Lon Chaney Jr. plays the big, lovable lummox of an American back in his old stomping grounds—some weird amalgamation of European nations.
Sure, the score, the sets, the fog and high drama can feel especially precious. And what self-respecting wolf man goes by the name Larry? But there’s something lovely and tragic about poor, old Larry that helps the film remain compelling after more than sixty years.
In a real sense, this film was the answer to a formula, an alchemy that printed money. The Chaney name, Bela Lugosi co-stars, and we pit a sympathetic beast against some ancient European evil. But it’s much more pointed than it seems. The evil is purely German, gypsies sense it and yet can do nothing but fall victim to it, and it is an evil with the power to turn an otherwise good man—say, your average German man—into a soulless killing machine.
3. Dog Soldiers (2002)
Wry humor, impenetrable accents, a true sense of isolation, and blood by the gallon help separate Neil Marshall’s (The Descent) Dog Soldiers from legions of other wolfmen tales.
Marshall creates a familiarly tense feeling, brilliantly straddling monster movie and war movie. A platoon is dropped into an enormous forest for a military exercise. There’s a surprise attack. The remaining soldiers hunker down in an isolated cabin to mend, figure out WTF, and strategize for survival.
This is like any good genre pic where a battalion is trapped behind enemy lines – just as vivid, bloody and intense. Who’s gone soft? Who will risk what to save a buddy? How to outsmart the enemy? But the enemies this time are giant, hairy, hungry monsters. Woo hoo!
Though the rubber suits – shown fairly minimally and with some flair – do lessen the film’s horrific impact, solid writing, dark humor, and a good deal of ripping and tearing energize this blast of a lycanthropic Alamo.
2. Ginger Snaps (2000)
Sisters Ginger and Bridget, outcasts in the wasteland of Canadian suburbia, cling to each other, and reject/loathe high school (a feeling that high school in general returns).
On the evening of Ginger’s first period, she’s bitten by a werewolf. Writer Karen Walton cares not for subtlety: the curse, get it? It turns out, lycanthropy makes for a pretty vivid metaphor for puberty. This turn of events proves especially provocative and appropriate for a film that upends many mainstay female cliches.
Walton’s wickedly humorous script stays in your face with the metaphors, successfully building an entire film on clever turns of phrase, puns and analogies, stirring up the kind of hysteria that surrounds puberty, sex, reputations, body hair and one’s own helplessness to these very elements. It’s as insightful a high school horror film as you’ll find, peppered equally with dark humor and gore.
1. An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Director John Landis blends horror, humor and a little romance with cutting edge (at the time) special effects to tell the tale of a handsome American tourist David (David Naughton) doomed to turn into a Pepper – I mean a werewolf – at the next full moon.
Two American college kids (Naughton and Griffin Dunne), riding in the back of a pickup full of sheep, backpacking across the moors, talk about girls and look for a place to duck out of the rain.
Aah, a pub – The Slaughtered Lamb – that’ll do!
The scene in the pub is awesome, as is the scene that follows, where the boys are stalked across the foggy moors. Creepy foreboding leading to real terror, this first act grabs you and the stage is set for a sly and scary escapade. The wolf looks cool, the sound design is fantastically horrifying, and Landis’s brightly subversive humor has never had a better showcase.
Two years ago, documentarian and adventurer Alex Harz explored the culture and fascination surrounding Mt. Everest with The Quest: Nepal. Then earlier this year, he detailed his own Everest climb with 360-degree virtual reality treatment via the short film The Quest: Everest VR.
Now, Harz combines the two for The Quest: Everest, his earnest and committed video diary that is full of heart and conviction, if a bit lacking in cinematic pull.
Harz’s intention to honor the Nepalese people is informative and commendable, and much of his footage on the mountain itself is sufficiently majestic. Harz’s voiceover narration and directing choices are not quite as strong, ultimately keeping the film grounded in facts and declarations instead of reaching the rarified air of true tension, awe and wonder.
Ridley Scott knows how to stage an epic. At 87, he’s lost none of his flair with massive battles on land or sea, nor with the brutal intimacy of hand-to-hand combat. And he still knows how to cast a movie.
His narrative skills have taken a step back, but his eye has rarely been sharper.
It’s been 24 years since Scott’s Oscar-bedecked Gladiator cemented its position as the best sword-and-sandal film, but in the age of Caesars, only 14 years have passed. Scott opens Gladiator II with a lovely animated sequence honoring the fallen Maximus, as well as many of the filmmaker’s most iconic images.
And then we land on the film’s present-day African coast, a battle with a Roman navy led by Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a nation subdued, and a grieving widower (Paul Mescal) claimed as prisoner of war.
But we know he’s no ordinary prisoner.
For the next 2+ hours, Scott toys with “echoes through eternity” as he undermines much of the rebellious political nature of his original in favor of a returning king parable. That, a few wobbly accents, a couple of narrative dead spots, and a really poor decision involving sharks weaken the sequel.
But a good gladiator can’t be stopped, and Mescal is a really good gladiator. Russell Crow layered righteous rage with tenderness. Mescal replaces that tenderness with a vulnerability that only makes the rage more unruly. A touch of mischievous good humor humanizes the character and compels attention.
As does Denzel Washington. I dare you to take your eyes off him. Vain but wise, calculating and saucy, Washington’s Macrinus proves a much more complicated foe than the original’s wholly dishonorable, incestuous crybaby Commodus. But the simplicity of good v evil clarified Gladiator’s appeal. Macrinus is harder to hate.
Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger supply the syphilitic excess this go-round as twin Emperors Geta and Caracalla. Connie Nielsen returns, regal as ever, though no more skilled at staging coups. The balance of the cast is uniformly solid if not entirely memorable.
Gladiator II delivers an often exhilarating, mainly gorgeous spectacle populated by enigmatic characters performed admirably. It does not live up to Gladiator. But what could?
Even if you’re only a little familiar with Wicked musical, you might know how part one of the long-awaited film adaptation is going to end. Yes, the closer reaches goosebump level, but director Jon M. Chu and some impeccable casting keeps all 2 hours and 40 minutes flying pretty high.
2021’s In the Heights proved Chu knew his way around a musical sequence, and the first hour of Wicked finds Chu honoring the material’s stage roots while bringing movement, space and cinematic flair to the introductory numbers.
“The Wizard and I” uses a changing color palette to underscore Elphaba Thropp’s (Cynthia Erivo) hopes for what her time at Oz’s Shiz University could bring. “What Is This Feeling?” begins growing the scale of production and choreography as Elphaba’s introverted, studious nature clashes with the humorous, self absorbent style of roommate Galinda Upland (Ariana Grande). And Chu utilizes all the stylized spaces in “Elphie” and “Glinda’s” dorm room to bring soundtrack favorite “Popular” to life with zest and mischief.
Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Baily) arrives to turn Glinda’s head, Shiz’s Dean of Sorcery (Michelle Yeoh, customarily terrific) takes a special interest in Elphaba’s supernatural potential, and an invitation from the Wizard comes just as the threats to Oz’s talking animal population grow more dire.
Grande gives Glinda’s vanity a charm that is somehow inviting and often quite funny, while Erivo brings a level of tortured longing to Elphaba that makes her journey all the more resonate. The two leads – who often sang live during production – have the pipes to bring their own brand of magic, and they share a wonderful on screen chemistry that anchors the film.
Even with the winning moments in Wicked‘s first act, there’s a feeling of unrealized potential, that Chu is holding back. But once we get to the Emerald City, the film – much like the “Wicked Witch” – comes into its own.
“One Short Day” ushers in a grand use of scale and color, and Chu makes sure our time spent at home with the Wizard (a perfectly slippery Jeff Goldblum) is eye-popping at nearly every turn. Stellar production design and CGI effects combine for some fantastic world building, and this change of setting is also when screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox get the payoff from their time spent exploring the social commentary found in Gregory Maquire’s source novel.
Elphaba’s eyes are opened to the Wizard’s plan for her, and the newly urgent themes of gaslighting and misuse of power push her and Glinda to the brink. Chu gives Elphaba’s character-defining choice the showcase both it and Erivo deserve, propelling “Defying Gravity” to become the show-stopping finale you hoped it would be.
In the nearly thirty years since the Wicked novel kick-started our interest in “reimagining villains,’ the device has already grown pretty stale. Part one of the film version reminds us why we were captivated in the first place, and how satisfying a move from stage to screen can be.
You can’t outrun grief. You can’t hide from grief. It lurks and waits for an inopportune time to pounce. In director and co-writer Tyler Chipman’s melancholic psycho-horror feature debut The Shade, grief is physically embodied as a pale creature haunting a family.
Ryan (Chris Galust) witnessed his father’s suicide at a young age. It’s not just his father’s tragic death that haunts him; he also saw a darkness that surrounded his father, portrayed by shadowy, robed figures that were also there to bear witness.
Flash forward to the present and Ryan is a college student who suffers from a severe anxiety disorder. He returns to his depressing hometown to help take care of his younger brother James (Sam Duncan) and help his mom Renee (Laura Benanti). To complicate matters, his trouble-making older brother Jason (Dylan McTee) also returns home and he’s dealing with some serious personal demons. This sounds like typical family drama fare, but Ryan sees a pale monster (credited as the Harpy) lurking around his older brother, portending an unfortunate fate like his father’s.
The Shade wears its metaphors on its sleeves. It is clearly about grief, depression, suicide, and the burden of mental illness in families, and the film mines these themes to varying degrees of success.
“Grief monsters” aren’t new in the genre, we’ve seen them before in The Babadook, The Night House, A Ghost Story, and even 1973’s Don’t Look Now. The Shade seeks to distinguish itself from these other titles through its use of the Harpy—a creepy, feminine figure that it does not hide, and for good reason. The makeup and f/x are excellent. The unsettling creature slinks, stares, and instills dread. There are no real jump scares. The horror comes from this creature and the inevitability that tragedy may only ever be an arm’s length away.
The performances across the board are quite good here. Galust has the heaviest load to lift as Ryan battles anger, guilt, fear, and debilitating anxiety. He manages to share these struggles effectively without going over the top in his performance.
The film is a slow burn—probably too slow a burn for its own good. We get plenty of time with the characters, but the narrative is light on any events or tension that would help hold interest for the two-hour plus runtime. The ending also lacks the emotional punch we have come to expect from a grief monster story and you may be surprised when the credits pop up.
Chipman and his team have crafted an admirable debut with The Shade. The cinematography is quite good throughout, especially with all of the nighttime and low light scenes. I’m definitely interested in whatever they might do next.
