A love letter to Baltimore and a beautiful showcase of talent, The Baltimorons is the yes-and of romcoms.
Jay Duplass directs a script co-written with Michael Strassner, who plays Cliff. Lovable, endearing, excruciatingly earnest, Cliff is headed with girlfriend Brittany (Olivia Luccardi) to spend Christmas Eve with her family. He falls on the back step, knocks out a tooth, and has to comb Baltimore for a dentist available to help.
Schlubby and sweet and desperately afraid of needles, Cliff makes quite an impression on the difficult to impress Dr. Didi (Liz Larsen). A series of mishaps, hijinks and opportunities keeps the two together for the balance of Christmas Eve.
This one-thing-leads-to-another cinematic structure can feel tedious and contrived, but Duplass and Strassner ground the narrative in Cliff’s two defining traits. Newly sober, Cliff is still learning who he is without alcohol. There’s a tentative, brave, sad but funny exploratory nature to the narrative that exactly mirrors this.
He’s also a sketch and improv comic, though he hasn’t done comedy since “the incident”—the catalyst for the film, for his sobriety, and for the personal journey that led Cliff to this moment. Cliff’s approach to life is the “yes, and” improv ethic. Whatever comes Cliff’s way, he’s not only up for it, he will meet it with the next most unexpected yet organic step to take.
Strassner couldn’t be better or more authentic in the lead, and his natural chemistry with Larsen compels interest. It’s a master class in opposites attract, two fully realized characters who are who they are, somehow warming to the thing in each other that most surprises them.
The Baltimorons is about fresh steps and reawakenings and taking what comes with humor and bravery. And it’s funny—sometimes slyly, sometimes hilariously. There’s substance to it, and romance, though the late-film reveal feels forced when compared to the balance of the film. Still, I haven’t seen a romantic comedy this romantic or funny since The Big Sick.
You see Willem Dafoe is starring in a film called The Man in My Basement, and you suspect things could get freaky – in ways both hilarious and perverse. But if you’re at all familiar with Walter Mosley’s source novel, you know this basement business will deal in the bonds of history, the questions of philosophy and the responsibility of heritage.
The basement belongs to Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins), an African American man in Sag Harbor whose life is slowly unraveling. With his parents deceased, Charles lives alone in his ancestral home, surrounded by artifacts he only values for possible sale.
Unemployed, Charles spends his days drinking, gambling and aimlessly drifting through life. With no motivation or prospects, Charles has little hope of saving the house from foreclosure, until Anniston Bennet (Dafoe) shows up on his door with an unusual offer.
If Bennet can rent the basement of the house, he’ll pay Charles one thousand dollars a day for 65 days. And he’ll pay in cash. What luck.
But of course, once Bennet moves in, Charles begins to discover the strings attached to the offer, and director Nadia Latif – adapting the screenplay with Mosley – zeroes in on the psychological battle downstairs.
Hawkins is impressive, with an understated approach that lends valuable authenticity to Charles’s gradual awakening. Through conversations with Bennet, and his growing friendship with a local curator (Anna Diop), Charles begins to the see the world – and his place in it – in an important new light.
Bennet’s unusual charm seems effortless for Dafoe. Is he angel or devil? Teacher or student? Prisoner or warden? From the minute Bennet’s offer is accepted, you know there will be consequences, and Dafoe has little problem upping the ante with a persuasive intensity.
Latif’s defiant final shot lands more securely than the attempts to paint the film as more of a danger-filled thriller than it really is. Charles’s nightmares seem more tailored to beefing up the trailer than the narrative, ultimately adding to a frustrating superficiality that dulls the edges of otherwise compelling themes.
The meaningful weight is found in the back and forth between Charles and Bennet. Hawkins and Dafoe flesh out both similarities and differences, and how each man is changed from the encounter. It is in these moments that the film finds its voice, and you end up wanting to push aside the overt symbolism, hoping to find a little more boundary pushing.
How fitting that Stephen King’s capitalist dystopian nightmare The Long Walk has finally been brought to the screen by director Francis Lawrence. Having helmed four Hunger Games films, including the most recent prequel, The Hunger Games: Ballad of Sonbirds & Snakes, he knows his way around these battles for what crumbs the wealthy deign to throw.
Based on King’s 1979 novel, the film follows a group of young men, each of whom signed up for and were chosen to participate in a last man standing competition: one road, one winner, no finish line. Walk until there’s no one else walking. The catch is that you can’t quit. Hell, you can’t even slow down. You walk until you die, either of exhaustion or by bullet spray (should you break the rules).
Lawrence has gathered a talented cast for these characters, beginning with everybody’s nemesis, the condescending voice of support and doom bellowing from the megaphone. Mark Hamill plays The Major with the perfect combination of swagger and benevolence to be contemptible without veering into caricature.
As Ray, our hero, Cooper Hoffman impresses, even when he’s saddled with King’s unfortunately quaint dialog. The camaraderie among the “four musketeers”— Ray, Pete (David Jonsson), Arthur (Tut Nyuot), and Hank (Ben Wang)—feels contrived from the beginning, Still, Cooper and Jonsson (so impressive in Alien: Romulus) share genuine chemistry, each elevating scenes with a glance, a shrug, a change in tone. Hoffman, in particular, plays nimbly with each of the other marchers, always delivering exactly the tone needed to keep someone’s head on straight and feet moving forward. Unsurprisingly, his moments with the invaluable Judy Greer (as Ray’s mother) are tender and heartbreaking.
This is a story most have deemed unfilmable given the utterly straightforward narrative. Cinematically, there’s not a lot you can do besides walk alongside 50 or so actors as they dwindle in number. There’s little opportunity to show rather than tell. Characters are defined by their dialog, and often, they’re narrowly etched.
But JT Mollner (Strange Darling) finds sly opportunities to broaden what is essentially a war metaphor—soldiers walking side by side, friendly enough but each hoping he’s the one who survives. Mollner and Lawrence subtly draw attention to the dystopian capitalist spectacle of boys walking themselves into an early grave, all so the rest of the country can watch and learn to be good, hard workers.
The Long Walk, as is always the case, will upset King purists because of its handful of plot changes. But when it comes to delivering a cinematic experience with an unfilmable novel, the movie’s a winner.
Did Shakespeare start it all with Uncle Claudius? Maybe, but horror movies have really dug in. Yes, there are some excellent uncles, like drunky Uncle Red from Silver Bullet. That guy was the best! But that’s not what we’re after, and author Eric Miller, writer of the new novel Whatever Happened to Uncle Ed? knows a thing or two about uncles and horror, so he’s joined us to count them down!
5. Uncle Maurice, Possum (2018)
Sean Harris is endlessly sympathetic in this tale of childhood trauma. Philip (Harris) has returned to his burned out, desolate childhood home after some unexplained professional humiliation. His profession? Puppeteer. The puppet itself seems to be a part of the overall problem.
I don’t know why the single creepiest puppet in history—a man-sized marionnette with a human face and spider’s body—could cause any trouble. Kids can be so delicate.
Writer/director Matthew Holness spins a smalltown mystery around the sad story of a grown man who is confused about what’s real and what isn’t. As Uncle Maurice, Alun Armstrong cuts as dilapidated and corrosive a figure as Philip’s home and memories themselves. The melancholy story and Harris’s exceptional turn make Possum a tough one to forget.
In 1988, no one realized the Halloween franchise could be saved. Tarnished by the (now unreasonably popular and beloved) Halloween III, The Return of Michael Myers was expected to be a last gasp. it was not. The film, about the adorable little orphan left behind when Laurie Strode and her husband died in a car wreck, Halloween 4 not only saved the franchise with its remarkable popularity, but gave the slumping slasher genre a boost.
Danielle Harris starred, charming her way into our hearts as surely as the child in peril plot line kept us engaged. The film did so surprisingly well that it spawned a quickly slapped together, wildly inferior sequel a year later, also starring Harris. And then, to beat a dead horse and absolutely horrify anyone with fond memories of little Jamie, 1995’s Halloween 6 turns Myers from and uncle to a great uncle/father. Yeesh.
3. Uncle Kouzuki, The Handmaiden (2016)
Director Park Chan-wook had already investigated the influence of a sinister uncle in the woefully underseen Stoker in 2013. In 2016, that not-so-stable branch of the family tree inspires the auteur to mesmerize again with this seductive story of a plot to defraud a Japanese heiress in the 1930s.
Weird is an excellent word to describe this film. Gorgeous and twisty with criss-crossing loyalties and deceptions, all filmed with such stunning elegance. Set in Korea, the film follows a young domestic (Kim TAe-ri) in a sumptuous Japanese household. She’s to look after the beautiful heiress (KimMin-hee), a woman whose uncle (Cho Jin-woong) is as perverse and creepy as he is wealthy.
Smart and wicked, stylish and full of wonderful twists, The Handmaiden is a masterwork of delicious indulgence.
2. Uncle Charlie, Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Alfred Hitchcock did the most damage with his mother/son relationships, but the unnerving bond between Charlie Newton (Teresa Wright) and her favorite Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) picks some festering scabs.
After a series of heiress murders, Charlie heads to smalltown America to lay low with his older sister, who adores him. Loves him so much, she named her oldest after him, even though it was a daughter. And oh, newly teenaged Charlie is a firebrand and just as spunky and smart as her namesake!
The film examines narcissism as unnervingly as any ever has, Uncle Charlie an amiable enough guy, and he might really regret having to murder his niece. All within that weirdly stilted performance style Hitchcock preferred, the cracks and anxieties and almost sexual innuendos play against the wholesome Midwest aesthetic in a way that gnaws at you.
1. Uncle Frank, Hellraiser (1987)
Hellraiser, Clive Barker’s feature directing debut, worked not only as a grisly splatterfest, but also as a welcome shift from the rash of teen slasher movies that followed the success of Halloween. Barker was exploring more adult, decidedly kinkier fare, and Hellraiser is steeped in themes of S&M and the relationship between pleasure and pain.
Hedonist Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) solves an ancient puzzle box, which summons the fearsome Cenobites, who literally tear Frank apart and leave his remains rotting in the floorboards of an old house. Years later, Frank’s brother moves into that house with his teenage daughter Kirsty (Ashley Lawrence), who begins to unravel the freaky shit Uncle Frank and stepmom Julia (an amazing Clare Higgins) get up to.
Smart, weird, transgressive, and most importantly, CENOBITES!
It was so cool to get to host the Columbus premier of the new Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk! We’re grateful to the great crowd at Gateway Film Center for joining us for the screening and for sticking around for a spoiler-free chat about the movie.
Like 2021’s Poser, Noah Dixon and Ori Segev’s thriller of fandom gone feral, writer/director Alex Russell’s Lurker hangs on the cringey relatability of its awestruck lead. Who hasn’t dreamed of being taken into their hero’s inner circle?
Théodore Pellerin is Matthew. Working in a hip LA clothier, Matthew meets rising pop phenom Oliver (Archie Madekwe, Saltburn, Gran Turismo). Quietly, expertly, Matthew manipulates the situation to become the opposite of what he really is: sincere, oblivious to Oliver’s fame, an outsider with taste. Smitten, Oliver invites Matthew to a show.
What follows is a series of steps in Matthew’s budding friendship with the emotionally unfaithful Oliver. Russell never overplays the sleights of hand, the seeds sown, as Matthew the opportunist situates himself within Oliver’s posse.
Russell’s nimble screenplay delivers something sharp, bright, and delightfully morally murky. Though Matthew possesses a dorky, humble charm, we recognize his deception the moment he meets Oliver, so we’re never expected to fully empathize with or root for him.
At the same time, Oliver’s fickle affection makes him hard to pity. The whole entourage swirls with narcissism and insecurity. There’s something a touch Shakespearean about the drama that gives it a timeless quality, while its situation within the “attention as currency” climate lends it immediacy and relevance.
Madekwe is the perfect blend of charm, arrogance, insincerity and vulnerability. His character arc is wild, but the actor never misses a step.
Pellerin delivers a subtly unnerving performance, endearing one moment, volatile the next. The anxiety seething just below Matthew’s smiling surface informs an insecurity that recognizes itself in Oliver. It’s here that Russell’s perceptive screenplay does the most psychological damage, fully separating Lurker from other poisonous fan films.
It’s a quietly effecting study of the way the desire for fame alienates and isolates, whether you’ve achieved some level of fame or you’re happy to siphon it from someone else. Russell’s direction and his cast keep you anxious and keep you guessing.
Hollywood is one big nightmare. That’s essentially the plot of writer/director Rachel Cain’s feature debut, a dreamscape where you’re never certain what Gemma (Chloë Levin) is experiencing and what she’s imagining.
Levine’s cinematic presence, no matter the film, is wholly natural, utterly authentic. There’s nothing uncanny about her. Her humanity and vulnerability inform every moment she’s onscreen. That may be why she’s such a perfect central figure in horror films like The Ranger, The Transfiguration, and The Sacrifice Game. However unnatural the plot or nemesis, Levine is a profoundly human anchor.
In this surreal Hollywood fable—part Neon Demon, part Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, part Inception, part The Substance—Gemma leaves a small town in Georgia to chase her Hollywood dreams. Lonesome, rejected, lost and always one step away from homelessness and failure, she takes a job at an experimental sleep clinic where people dream their way into believing they can achieve their ideal future.
Gamma works nights, studying scripts and babysitting sleeping clients. By day she auditions, faces rejection, daydreams about her old life, and flirts with the possibly creepy, possibly benevolent Hollywood insider, Brooks (Jonathan Schaech).
But the daydreams are leaking into her waking moments, huge chunks of time keep disappearing, and there’s this contorted figure with a twisted spine she keeps catching in her peripheral vision.
Cain’s script lacks a little something in originality—hers is hardly the first cautionary tale about striking it out on your own in Hollywood. Still, in subverting the idea of big dreams, playing with the notion that perception is reality, and mining the vulnerability and predatory nature of those with and without power in Tinsel Town, she hits a nerve.
She leaves too much unresolved, which is frustrating. But scene by scene, Cain casts a spell both horrifying and hopeful. Though the entire ensemble is strong, Levine is her secret weapon. The film falls apart if you don’t feel protective of Gemma, if you don’t long for her to succeed. Characteristically, Levine has you in her corner, even when lurking doom waits behind her in the shadows.
The early 2000s and its attendant malaise were fertile ground for the Judd Apatow manchild, romcom fixtures who enjoyed their blithe aimlessness between 9/11 and the Great Recession. Now as more films grapple with Covid—directly or, more often, by conspicuously dancing around the lacunas left behind in cities—Rachael Abigail Holder’s debut feature Love, Brooklyn points the way toward a new archetype: the mid-life coming of age crisis.
Roger (André Holland) is a writer and New Yorker in vintage Sex and the City mold. That is, he keeps landing the last media jobs on the planet that allow him to live in a nice apartment without a roommate while doing almost no writing (let alone research or reporting).
But no matter. There’s the ticking clock of Roger’s looming deadline for a new piece about the changing city, but that’s just a convenient device for Roger to bounce back and forth between his modern love triangle. Roger is casually dating Nicole (DeWanda Wise), a massage therapist raising a daughter and still processing the death of her husband. But he still maintains an uncomfortably close relationship with his ex-girlfriend Casey (Nicole Beharie), an art gallery owner facing mounting pressure to sell her space to larger developers.
Roger’s casual relationships have served him well, but it becomes clear to everyone else involved (and, at last, to him as well) that it’s time to commit to a solid future rather than hold onto the past—and that goes as much for his notions of the city as it does the people in it.
Holland, who was electric in The Knick, is more subdued as the indecisive Roger. There’s no quiet rage here, only the quiet resignation that comes with looking up one day and realizing everything and everyone else around you has changed. Gentrification is the more visible issue that his social circle grapples with, but it’s the atomization post-Covid that is the unspoken elephant in the room.
But then, so much goes unspoken in this mostly gentle slice of city life. The otherwise complex and emotional love triangle gets overly tidy when it’s time to wrap up the more existential loose ends—complete with classic SATC column voiceover to drive the metaphors home. Screenwriter Paul Zimmerman treats the three leads with such empathy and maturity that it’s a shame there’s so little time given to interrogate the changes and forces that the film alludes to.
What we do get, however, are sumptuous shots of Brooklyn, as seen through the eyes of those who love it. The characters may be conflicted on what the future holds for a city constantly in flux, but Holder and cinematographer Martim Vian make a strong visual case that community, not just love, is what we need to keep the soul of a city intact.
For a young woman growing up in Silicon Valley during Apple’s heyday, the role model for her coming-of-age journey is none other than Steve Jobs.
Writer/director Kayci Lacob has a new take on the perils of growing up in her film, Everything to Me.
The film opens on an adult Claudia (Victoria Pedretti) at a reading for her new book, The Book of Jobs. What starts as a reading turns into voice over narration as we follow Claudia through several life stages.
The most impactful iteration occurs with tween Claudia (Eliza Donaghy), who uses the words of her idol to not only navigate her parents’ tumultuous divorce, but to correctly insert a tampon for the first time. There is a lot of heart and warmth in these moments.
However, the bulk of the film follows teen Claudia (Abigail Donaghy). It’s apparent that Claudia’s hero worship has become off-putting to her best friend (Lola Flanery), reflecting, unfortunately, the way it feels to the audience as well. Claudia’s hero-worship no longer feel like a natural extension of her character, but a script she follows rather than lives.
This is a theme throughout the film: live life as it happens rather than trying to live by someone else’s bucket list. However, our teenage Claudia never quite comes across as someone who truly believes in what she does and how she lives.
But the film comes alive in other ways, mostly in the characters who surround Claudia. Particularly vibrant is way she navigates her relationships—with her mom (a winning Judy Greer), her dad, a favorite teacher, and the boy who likes her.
In these moments, the film excels, making it easier to brush aside less interesting and less believable scenes.
Growing up is never easy, Claudia’s journey toward finding herself delivers a memorable reminder of that..
Five years after Hamilton hit streaming, who ever could have predicted its lesson of resisting a dictator would feel even more urgent?
I know, plenty of people. Still, after all the sold out performances, the Tony awards, the historical debates and a Pulitzer, the worldwide phenomenon that is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton finally comes to theaters.
Number one, if you’re somehow new to Hamilton, you’re going to discover what a fantastic show it is. But then the exhilarating nature of this movie is how well it translates the live theater experience to the big screen. And they are two totally different entertainment experiences, so what director Thomas Kail pulls off here is not easy.
The difference between seeing something live and feeling the energy exchange between cast and audience, as opposed to watching it on a screen where you’re removed from the human element of it, is often hard to overcome. (Remember Cats?) But Kail – who also directed the 2016 Broadway shows that were recorded for this film – has crafted a near perfect mix of spatial movement and character intimacy.
This original Broadway cast, including Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Anthony Ramos, Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Groff, Chris Jackson and even a pre-Oscar Ariana DuBose in the ensemble, is spectacular. Miranda’s sing-through soundtrack is littered with highlights from “My Shot”, “The Schuyler Sisters”, “Say No to This”, and “Helpless”, to “Satisfied”, “The Room Where It Happens”, “Burn” and King George’s delightfully mad trilogy.
The technical craftsmanship here never suffers a misstep. Kail makes sure we get close enough to see the sweat (and sometimes the spittle) on the actors’ faces, before pulling back to showcase choreography, set construction and the artful, hypnotic movement of the entire production. Jonah Moran’s editing is downright masterful, displaying a wonderful instinct for layering intimate moments and energetic flow.
And even more so today than when it first hit Disney+, the film reminds us how hard it was to birth this country. Of course Miranda took creative liberties, but time has only increased the weight of this lesson in the price of democracy, and the importance of fighting for it.
Half a decade later, Hamilton still stands as a high water mark for bringing a stage musical to the screen. It’s hard to imagine it being done any better.
