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Living Deliciously

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Him

by Hope Madden

The goat is an apt image to anchor a sports film. The Greatest Of All Time. Every athlete’s dream. If you’ve ever watched horror, goats are also excellent avatars for evil. In the case of Him, co-writer/director Justin Tipping’s feature from Jordan Peele’s Monkey Paw Productions, it’s a bit of both.

Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) lives deliciously. Is Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) ready for that? Cade is the up-and-comer, the college QB who may be the one man to dethrone legendary Saviors quarterback, White. The 8-time champion came back even after the bone-protruding leg injury Cam’s late father made him watch again and again as a child.

Why would a father make a child watch something like that? To learn what it means to be a man, naturally.

Him is dense with themes and imagery, beginning with the very real frights of traumatic brain injury and its effect on football players. But the larger horror is rooted in performative masculinity, of proving your physical superiority by overpowering an opponent, drawing first blood, drawing last blood, and calling it power when it’s simply entertainment for puny white men with money.

Tipping equates the mechanics of sizing up an athlete with preparation for an auction block in one of the film’s most quietly unnerving sequences. Later references to gladiators obediently entering the pit at the behest of their trainers serve as additional, hardly subtle, illustrations of the power dynamic afoot.

Withers’s overwhelmed acolyte feels more dopey than wide-eyed, but Wayans is slippery, diabolical fun as the primary antagonist. Naomie Grossman steals scenes as White’s biggest fan, and Tim Heidecker’s disingenuous smarm fits perfectly as Cade’s agent.

There’s an intriguing half to this film. It’s the half making points about the way those with a financial stake in the game proselytize brutal sacrifice in search of greatness. The delicious living half, though, feels like a cheat.

The supernatural elements in Him give way to a foggy mythology full of fever dream smash cuts and jump scares. At times—as on a shooting range—details are left delightfully, grotesquely vague. Elsewhere the ambiguity feels like narrative weakness.

Worse still, the supernatural side of the film, to a degree, lets capitalism and white supremacy off the hook, no matter how satisfying the final bloodletting may feel. The set design is evocative and cinematography impresses, but the film can’t quite live up to expectations.   

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My Mind on Mega and Mega on My Mind

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Megadoc

by George Wolf

I saw Megalopolis when it debuted last year. I liked it, didn’t love it. It was a big, messy cinematic swing from Francis Ford Coppola, and even those who hated it – there were plenty – had to admire FFC’s commitment to a project that he started over thirty years prior.

Coppola put up his own fortune to get the film done, including selling a stake in his winery. And that meant Coppola answered only to Coppola, which adds a captivating element to Megadoc, Mike Figgis’s behind-the-scenes documentary on the chaotic production.

Coppola invited the veteran Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) on set, which gave him nearly unlimited access to cast and crew. FFC’s head butts with the difficult Shia LeBeouf are frequently captured, while the more calculated Adam Driver needs some time to feel comfortable with Figgis’s presence.

The first run at filming Megalopolis came in the early 2000s, and footage from those early table reads and green screen shoots with some different cast members are juxtaposed with current footage to hypnotic effect.

But the real attraction of Megadoc lies well beyond any movie star posturing or agent demands. We get an up-close look at Coppola’s broad creative process, and the conflicts that come from the famed director thinking of his passion project as “play, while they want to work at it.”

Half the crew walks out, actors question the director’s choices, while FFC often retreats to the isolation of a trailer where he can call the shots remotely. And Figgis is always there, sometimes abusing his privileges and becoming more of a proud participant than impartial observer.

And ironically, that ends up making Megadoc even more of a necessary bookend to Hearts of Darkness, Eleanor Coppola’s 1991 doc on the making of Apocalypse Now. Decades later, the frenzied director on the verge of losing it all has become a legend more than at peace with risking it all. That’s a fascinating transformation to observe, and any fan of filmmaking should embrace the chance to do it.

Uncategorized

Ain’t Got No Swing

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London Calling

by Rachel Willis

Charming isn’t usually the first word to spring to mind when describing a movie about a down-on-his-luck hitman. However, that’s the word that comes up when thinking about director Allan Ungar’s film, London Calling.

Tommy Ward (Josh Duhamel) flees London for sunny Los Angeles after a hit goes terribly wrong. He finds similar work with a new employer, Benson (Rick Hoffman). Somehow, Ward also finds himself the unlikely caretaker of Benson’s son, Julian (Jeremy Ray Taylor, It). Tasked with turning Julian into a man, Ward takes him along on a series of hits. 

London Calling is suffused with humor, from the opening scenes through several bloody shootouts. Throw in Julian’s interest in LARP-ing and a penchant for Furry porn, and London Calling delivers the right mix for a solidly funny movie. 

Ungar’s script, co-written with Omer Levin Menekse and Quinn Wolfe, is very predictable, but Duhamel and Taylor’s chemistry keeps it fun. Their pairing is delightful. Duhamel plays to his strengths as a hitman who could clearly use a pair of glasses but refuses them. Taylor is believable both as a crime lord’s son (with a certain ambivalence toward violence), as well as a LARP-obsessed kid.

The film falters during its climax. Too many threads come together in unsatisfying ways. Worse still, London Calling loses its sense of humor and veers too close to melodrama. 

Thankfully, it’s a brief misstep, and the overall effect is a solidly funny, enjoyable film about two charismatic outcasts.

Outtakes

The Long Goodbye

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Another End

by Adam Barney

“Grief is the price we pay for love” – Queen Elizabeth II.

It’s probably the cynic in me, but it’s not hard for me to believe that companies will find a way to monetize our grief processing in the near future. It feels like it is practically upon us that an AI program will gobble up e-mails and text messages and then communicate with us as a construct of our deceased loved one. The grieving will get the chance to hang on a little longer to that person or say something that they didn’t get a chance to say during their life. But is this doing any good for the bereaved?

This is the primary issue that writer/director Piero Messina explores in Another End. With a wave-of-the-hand science explanation, a deceased’s memories can be loaded into a volunteer “host”, and they will spend a few sessions with the bereaved. The host transitions back and forth between themselves and the deceased when they go to sleep. This process can’t last forever, so you must be prepared to say goodbye again.

Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries, The Science of Sleep) plays Sal, a widowed husband who blames himself for the car crash that killed his wife. His sister Ebe (Berenice Bejo, The Artist) is worried that Sal won’t fully recover from his grief and she just so happens to work for the company that provides the host experience described above. After convincing Sal to try the program, his wife’s memories are downloaded into Ava (Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World, A Different Man), who begins to visit Sal as his deceased wife Zoe. Sal is curious about the host, so he starts to follow Ava in her real life so that he can get to know her too.

Another End is melancholic. From the score to the performances, there is a sterile iciness that permeates every inch of this film. We don’t get to experience any of the happier times; we just dwell with the characters in the pit of their loss.

Bernal wears haunted well and Reinsve does an excellent job in the dual roles of Ava and Zoe. Black Mirror, for better or worse, has conditioned us to have certain expectations with a story like this. All the expected twists and turns play out as you will have likely guessed from the beginning and nothing profound is offered before the credits roll. An advantage to the Black Mirror stories is that they are handled in about an hour, which makes Another End feel quite bloated with its two-hour runtime.

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One Step Up, Two Steps Back

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Waltzing with Brando

by Hope Madden

Just about one year ago, images surfaced of Billy Zane on set as Marlon Brando for the film Waltzing with Brando. Zane’s an underappreciated talent relegated for decades to mostly B-movie hell. Brando is, naturally, a fascinating topic for a biopic. And Zane looked remarkably like him. Hello, cautious optimism.

Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) plays Bernard Judge, the LA architect who heads to Tahiti to build Zane’s Brando an ecologically pristine hideaway on an uninhabitable island. Director Bill Fishman adapts Judge’s memoir of the years-long relationship—the hijinks, the struggles, the personal journey from square to somewhat rounded but thoroughly tanned.

It’s awful.

Because the arc we follow is Judge’s, Brando—easily and obviously the most interesting presence—is a supporting character. A magical figure, unknowable and wise and often nude, Buddha like, he exists only to enlighten our hero. Fully 35% of the film consists of Brando saying something vague and odd, Judge staring wide-eyed and confused at him, or Judge saying something stupid, Brando laughing amiably at him. The two then eye each other as if some wisdom must be passing, either between the two of them or between them and us. And scene.

It’s awful. I know I’ve said that but it more than bears repeating.

Heder often breaks the 4th wall, giving the viewer a little aside or comment. Judge is asking us to join him on his journey because we could relate. It seems like a sound narrative choice given the undeniable fact that we would all have more in common with this earnest, uptight nobody than we would with Marlon Brando. But the writing is so profoundly cloying, the performances so community-theater superficial, and the scenes so needlessly drawn out and sanitized that the result is unbearable.

To make an audience want to get to know an architect when Marlon Brando is right there is a potentially insurmountable task for a director, and Fishman is by no means up to the task. He surrounds the two men with countless one-dimensional caricatures of beautiful islanders, tricky islanders, benevolent islanders, and the inescapable long-suffering but supportive wife (Alaina Huffman) and precocious daughter (played by Zane’s daughter, Ava).

For his part, Zane delivers an impish and entertaining turn, though he’s never once asked to act, to find anything inside the provocative figure. We learn nothing about Marlon Brando, and honestly, very little about Bernard Judge. Tahiti looks nice, though.

Outtakes

Scrolling in the Deep

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Swiped

by George Wolf

2012, what a time to be young and upwardly mobile. Barack Obama was re-elected, “Gangnam Style” seemed to burst from every speaker, and Facebook’s IPO made social media technology the new capitalist battleground.

But when we first meet a young Whitney Wolfe – the future founder of Bumble – she’s a whip-smart, idealistic young woman looking for a tech startup that would easily connect volunteers to orphanages in need. Hulu’s Swiped presents her shift into dating apps as a dizzying, formulaic ride through ambition, greed, traumatic harassment and well-earned triumph.

Lily James is perfect in the lead. Wolfe’s seduction by the rush of the tech boom, and by her quick rise up the ladder at the firm launching Twitter, seems authentic. Whitney is well aware of how male-dominated the tech industry is, and when she initially puts aside some micro aggressions for a continued belief in CEO Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer), James gives Whitney enough layers to craft a sympathetic internal conflict.

Director and co-writer Rachel Lee Goldenberg (Unpregnant, 2020’s Valley Girl) strikes a tone and pace that can feel rushed among the recognizable time stamp. These online rules “were written by men,” and Twitter’s explosion at the Winter Olympics ushers in the era of toxic behavior and dick pics. Wolfe’s subsequent push for some app safeguards at the same time her relationship with a fellow Tinder founder (Jackson White) is crumbling makes her a target.

The abuse gets intense, and sexual harassment charges follow.

An NDA eventually signed by Wolfe (now Wolfe-Herd) meant she couldn’t directly consult on the film – and Goldenberg makes it clear she did indeed take creative license – but Swiped paints an effective big picture. Could it have dug deeper? Most definitely, but you never get the feeling that it wants to explore any of the larger “social commodity” issues confronted by Celine Song’s Materialists from earlier this year, or the intricate empire building of 2010’s seminal The Social Network.

The aim here is an entertaining streamer, one that will engage with energy and polish while it introduces you to a hero from the tech wars that you may not know. And though you really won’t know her after watching Swiped, you’ll get a version of her story that’s always watchable, just never a match for memorable social commentary.

Outtakes

In and Out

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Just Breathe

by Brooklyn Ewing

Given the chance to see actor Kyle Gallner in a movie, I will always flock to it. Gallner’s ability to make someone fall in and out of love with a character is something special. In Just Breathe, he brings his A game.

Directed by newcomer Paul Pompa III, Just Breathe offers up a game of cat and mouse that keeps you guessing, and yelling at the screen. 

After serving a year in jail for assault, Nick Bianco (Gallner) sets out to reunite with the love of his life, Mel (Amyri Crutchfield). He discovers that she has a new admirer named Chester (Shawn Ashmore), who also happens to be Nick’s parole officer, setting off his anger issues all over again.

Just Breathe sees William Forsythe’s return to the screen as Tony, Nick’s deadbeat dad. Forsythe brings so much life to this rough and tumble character. I loved to hate him. 

Gallner and Crutchfield are great together, and watching them makeup and breakup keeps you praying their relationship can survive Chester’s romantic, and offbeat, advances. 

Fans of traditional Lifetime movies will love this one, and it has the polish to hit the big screen. The acting is the star of this thriller, and I’m excited for folks to see it so we can all talk about how much we hate Chester together. 

Just Breathe is another Kyle Gallner classic to add to the collection. Make sure to give it a watch. 

Fright Club

Fright Club: Feminist High School Horror

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High school can be a tough time. What the youth of today need are role models. Soul eaters. Werewolves. Witches. Girls who know their way around a power drill. There’s so much the teens in these films can teach us!

5. Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

There is a wild juxtaposition at work beneath what could be mistaken as a trope-riddled slasher. Director/co-writer Amy Holden Jones, writing with Rita Mae Brown, deliver over-the-top cliche (teens in a sleepover undressing in full view of a window, one wearing a negligee, etc.), laughably phallic imagery (that power drill!), and the very traditional hack ’em up stuff.

But the behavior of these high school girls at the sleepover, and the one across the street pining to be part of the group, is so wildly masculine it’s hilarious. One hides a Play Girl magazine (the one with Stallone on the cover!) under her pillow, while those undressing together discuss the play of then-Cleveland Browns quarterback Brian Sipe.

The combination of elements subvert expectations even as they wallow in cliche. It’s such a great B-movie that even Tarantino lifted one scene wholesale for his masterpiece, Pulp Fiction.

4. The Craft (1996)

Three Catholic high school outcasts find solace in each other, a coven they create for safety, escape, harmony, and camaraderie. Fairuza Balk is perfection as Nancy, the loose cannon leader of the group. And even though dreamboat asshole Chris (Skeet Ulrich) prefers new girl Sarah (Robin Tunney), Nancy and the coven (Neve Campbell and Rachel True) embrace her.

And that’s what they needed to find real power. With their fourth they learn that power sometimes only amplifies problems. But it’s great while it lasts, and Nancy turns into one of the best badasses in 90s horror.

3. Jennifer’s Body (2009)

If Ginger Snaps owes a lot to Carrie (and it does), then Jennifer’s Body finds itself even more indebted to Ginger Snaps.

The central premise: Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them. Better still, lure them to an isolated area and eat them, leaving their carcasses for the crows. This is the surprisingly catchy idea behind this coal-black horror comedy.

In for another surprise? Megan Fox’s performance is spot-on as the high school hottie turned demon. Director Karyn Kusama’s film showcases the actress’s most famous assets, but also mines for comic timing and talent other directors apparently overlooked.

Amanda Seyfried’s performance as the best friend, replete with homely girl glasses and Jan Brady hairstyle, balances Fox’s smolder, and both performers animate Diablo Cody’s screenplay with authority. They take the Snaps conceit and expand it – adolescence sucks for all girls, not just the outcasts.

2. Knives and Skin (2019)

Falling somewhere between David Lynch and Anna Biller in the under-charted area where the boldly surreal meets the colorfully feminist, writer/director Jennifer Reeder’s Knives and Skin offers a hypnotic look at Midwestern high school life.

Knives and Skin’s pulpy noir package lets Reeder explore what it means to navigate the world as a female. As tempting as it is to pigeonhole the film as Lynchian, Reeder’s metaphors, while fluid and eccentric, are far more pointed than anything you’ll find in Twin Peaks.

And everyone sings impossibly appropriate Eighties alt hits acapella. Even the dead.

1. 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.

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Again Tonight They’re Gonna Rock You Tonight

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Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

by George Wolf

In the 41 years since the iconic This Is Spinal Tap, the “mockumentary” approach has become so prevalent that even Christopher Guest (Best in Show, For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind, etc.) admitted he doesn’t see much point in returning to the form he’s executed so brilliantly over the years.

The point of doing just that for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is clearly nostalgic fun, something the film manages just enough of to please longtime devotees.

Guest (David St. Hubbins) reunites with Michael McKean (Nigel Tufel), Harry Schearer (bassist Derek Smalls), and director Rob Reiner (director Marty DiBergi) to catch up with the Tap as they come together for the first time in 15 years.

It’s a logical catalyst for another mock, and a perfectly organic excuse to reach out to some famous drummers (settling on Valerie Franco as Didi Crockett), welcome some legends (Sir Paul, Sir Elton) and break out the classics. “Big Bottom,” “Bitch School,” “Cups and Cakes,” “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” and more are all still hilarious bangers, and the hit parade gets to the heart of what this movie does best: remind you how much you still love the first one.

This film feels more slight than usual, and the 82 minute running time is littered with brief reunions (Bobbi Fleckman, Artie Fufkin, Jeanine) and flashbacks to scenes from the original. It all seems a bit like the gang didn’t really have enough “A” material for a feature, but gave it a go for old times sake.

And for that sake, it works well enough. The “these go to eleven” and Stonehenge bits get well-played homages, Sir Elton is a gas and a few of the deadpan punchlines hit home. But if you’re expecting the elderly rock star bit to get the same level of inspired skewering the young rockers did four decades ago, forget it.

Tap II just plays the hits.

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Soft Shells in Baltimore

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The Baltimorons

by Hope Madden

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.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?