Dudes, Kingdom comes. Black Panther is finally available to play on a loop in your very own living room. Is Michael B. Jordan the greatest villain ever? Is Letitia Wright the greatest Disney Princess? Can Danai Gurira kick all of our asses? (The answer to that last one is a resounding yes, btw.)
So watch it! And just ignore the other one you can get. Trust us.
Click the link for the full review.
Recorded live at the Columbus Podcast Fest, this week’s Screening Room takes a look at Melissa McCarthy’s latest, Life of the Party, as well as Breaking In, Terminal, Revenge and the latest in home entertainment.
Listen to the full podcast HERE.
by Hope Madden
The rape-revenge film is a tough one to pull off. Even in the cases where the victim rips bloody vengeance through the bodies of her betrayers, the films are too often titillating. Almost exclusively written and directed by men for a primarily male audience, the comeuppance angle can be so bent by the male gaze that the film feels more like an additional violation.
Well, friends, writer/director Coralie Fargeat changes all that with Revenge, a breathless, visually fascinating, bloody-as-hell vengeance flick that repays the viewer for her endurance. (His, too.)
Jen (Matilda Lutz—Rings) travels with her wealthy, married boyfriend to a remote desert getaway. She’s very young, bubble-gum sweet and trusting, a sexy charmer who wants far too much to be liked and noticed.
Her lover, Richard (Kevin Janssens) is happy to oblige with that attention. Unfortunately, so are his two sketchy hunting buddies (Vincent Colombe, Guillaume Bouchede), who show up a day early, interrupting the romance and creating an unseemly tension at the house.
Fargeat’s grasp of male entitlement and the elements of a rape culture are as sharp as her instincts for visual storytelling. Wildly off-kilter close-ups sandwich gorgeous vistas to create a dreamlike frame for the utterly brutal mess of a film unfolding.
The filmmaker articulates the gender power struggle throughout the film as sights and sounds reflect and repeat—the echo of the image of a trail of blood from Act 1, for example, wordlessly emphasizes the shifting power.
Symbol-heavy but never pretentious or preachy, the film follows a traditional path—she is betrayed, she is underestimated, she repays her assailants for their toxic masculinity. But between Fargeat’s wild aesthetic, four very solid performances, and thoughtful yet visceral storytelling, the film feels break-neck, terrifying and entirely satisfying.
by Rachel Willis
To give away too much of the plot of Lu Over the Wall would be to steal the joy of experiencing this unique, quirky film. Director Masaaki Yuasa has crafted a sweet fantasy that explores the moving friendship between a boy and a mermaid.
The first half of the film offers an unpredictable journey that follows Kai as he gets to know the buoyant Lu. Along for the ride are Kai’s friends, Yuho and Kunio.
Before Lu, Kai is sullen and morose, having recently moved from Tokyo to a small fishing village with his dad following his parents’ divorce. Yuho and Kunio try their best to engage Kai, even talking him into joining their band. But it isn’t until Lu appears, drawn by Kai’s music, that he begins to open up to the world around him.
Though the first half of the film is unusual, and, at times, downright weird, the second half falls into a more predictable pattern. However, the shift into a more traditional story doesn’t detract from the film. And though the second section is more certain, the quirks and oddities of the story are maintained through the animation. Lu and Kai, along with Yuho and Kunio, face challenges as old prejudices and new curiosities are aroused by the arrival of Lu.
At times, the animation is reminiscent of Hayao Miyazaki’s work, but it also occasionally has the slapstick style of Tex Avery’s old Bugs Bunny cartoons. The blending of styles, along with the film’s own specific elements, merge together to serve the unconventional story well. From the monstrous creatures to the everyday people to the village’s shops and streets, the visuals are the most memorable part of the film.
Music also plays an important role, but the soundtrack is a little stale when paired with the rich animation. Too often, the score and soundtrack fade forgettably into the background when the movie would be better served by sound that enhanced the animation onscreen.
Though often strange and unusual, Lu Over the Wall is a touching tale.
by Hope Madden
Breaking In—the latest in a line of Liam Neeson movies—sees a desperate parent doing whatever it takes to save their tender offspring.
This time around Gabrielle Union plays Liam Neeson. Well, she plays Shaun, a woman who’s brought her two children with her to her recently-deceased father’s wooded property to get the place ready to sell. Problem is, somebody’s already there.
Shaun suddenly finds herself in the situation of trying to save her children from the men who’ve come to rob her late father’s safe.
The film was penned by Ryan Engle, who’s written two of Neeson’s own Liam Neeson movies (Non-Stop, The Commuter). The man likes a formula.
Union convinces as the family’s level-headed, savvy matriarch.
She’s locked out of her dead father’s tech-dense fortress while her kids are locked in with baddies. The clock is ticking until the cut phone cable brings the cops. Shaun’s indeterminate experiences at her shady father’s secluded property have apparently better prepared her for this event than the villains would have expected.
There could be something here.
Though little more than a mishmash of domestic thriller clichés, still, with a bit of style and a little creativity, it could make for a tense and brisk 90 minutes.
If only the bad guys moved quickly, as if they were working against a timer. Show a little urgency, fellas.
Or if all that tech—the cameras, the motion-sensor lights, the door locks—worked consistently rather than conveniently.
Or if director James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) brought any style to the project. Any at all.
Home invasion movies can become pressure cookers of tension and diabolical possibility. Too bad McTeigue has no idea how to exploit any of the tenser elements Engle gives him, nor does he have the skill to draw your attention away from any of the gaping holes littered throughout this plot.
Union’s fighting against more than seedy criminals.
You think your job sucks? Dude, this list of movies will make you thank the lord above for your crappy gig.
Sure, Nicolas Cage is a whore, a has-been, and his wigs embarrass us all. But back before The Rock (the film that turned him), Cage was always willing to behave in a strangely effeminate manner, and perhaps even eat a bug. He made some great movies that way.
Peter Lowe (pronounced with such relish by Cage) believes he’s been bitten by a vampire (Jennifer Beals) during a one night stand. It turns out, he’s actually just insane. The bite becomes his excuse to indulge his self-obsessed, soulless, predatory nature for the balance of the running time.
Cage gives a masterful comic performance in Vampire’s Kiss as a narcissistic literary editor who descends into madness. The actor is hilarious, demented, his physical performance outstanding. The way he uses his gangly mess of limbs and hulking shoulders inspires darkly, campy comic awe. And the plastic teeth are awesome.
Peter may believe he abuses his wholesome editorial assistant Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso) with sinister panache because he’s slowly turning into a demon, but we know better.
You know that nice lady at work who gets bronchitis every time she flies, then she coughs and hacks and spews DNA all over the office?
Let’s say you have issues with that kind of office contamination. And with office politics. And with your boss, her boss, and the way you’ve basically given up everything that makes you feel alive and happy for this stupid job you hate where germs are everywhere…
Wouldn’t it be cathartic to explode, right there, in the middle of everything, righteously and with no repercussions?
The film is an exercise in workplace catharsis, and a pretty fun one. It’s far superior to other recent attempts at office-bound carnage The Belko Experiment and Bloodsucking Bastards, partly because Lynch has a crisp sense of pace and knack for comedy.
Mayhem, the new film from director Joe Lynch, is just that emotional release. It’s fun. Especially if you’ve ever wanted to kill your boss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhTDq2t6UpM
Genuinely funny and exhaustingly brutal, Christopher Smith’s British import Severance offers a mischievous team-building exercise in horror. A handful of would-be execs for global weapons manufacturer Palisade Defense are misled and slaughtered in what they believe to be a mandatory weekend excursion in Hungary to build corporate camaraderie.
Smith and co-writer James Moran’s wickedly insightful script mocks corporate culture as Smith’s direction pays homage to the weirdest assortment of films. The result is an uproarious but no less frightening visit to an area of the world that apparently scares the shit out of us: Eastern Europe. (Think Hostel, The Human Centipede, Borat.)
An epically watchable flick, Severance boasts solid performances, well-placed bear traps and landmines, a flamethrower and an excellent balance of black humor and true horror. To say more would be to give too much away, but rest assured that with every scene Smith and crew generate palpable tension. It erupts with equally entertaining measure in either a good, solid laugh or in a horrible, disfiguring dose of horror. How awesome is that?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ4e1558QY0
Compliance is an unsettling, frustrating and upsetting film about misdirected and misused obedience. It’s also one of the most impeccably made and provocative films of 2012 – a cautionary tale that’s so unnerving it’s easier just to disbelieve. But don’t.
Writer/director Craig Zobel – who began his career as co-creator of the brilliant comic website Homestar Runner (so good!) – takes a decidedly dark turn with this “based-on-true-events” tale. It’s a busy Friday night at a fast food joint and they’re short staffed. Then the police call and say a cashier has stolen some money from a customer’s purse.
A Milgram’s experiment come to life, the film spirals into nightmare as the alleged thief’s colleagues agree to commit increasingly horrific deeds in the name of complying with authority.
Zobel remains unapologetically but respectfully truthful in his self-assured telling. He doesn’t just replay a tragic story, he expertly crafts a tense and terrifying movie. With the help of an anxious score, confident camera work, and a superb cast, Zobel masterfully recreates a scene that’s not as hard to believe as it is to accept.
A giddy hatchet to the head of the abiding culture of the Eighties, American Psycho represents the sleekest, most confident black comedy – perhaps ever. Director Mary Harron trimmed Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, giving it unerring focus. More importantly, the film soars due to Christian Bale’s utterly astonishing performance as narcissist, psychopath, and Huey Lewis fan Patrick Bateman.
There’s an elegant exaggeration to the satire afoot. Bateman is a slick, sleek Wall Street toady, pompous one minute because of his smart business cards and quick entrance into posh NYC eateries, cowed the next when a colleague whips out better cards and shorter wait times. For all his quest for status and perfection, he is a cog indistinguishable from everyone who surrounds him. The more glamour and flash on the outside, the more pronounced the abyss on the inside. What else can he do but turn to bloody, merciless slaughter? It’s a cry for help, really.
Harron’s send-up of the soulless Reagan era is breathtakingly handled, from the set decoration to the soundtrack, but the film works as well as a horror picture as it does a comedy. Whether it’s Chloe Sevigny’s tenderness as Bateman’s smitten secretary or Cara Seymour’s world-wearied vulnerability, the cast draws a real sense of empathy and dread that complicate the levity. We do not want to see these people harmed, and as hammy as it seems, you may almost call out to them: Look behind you!
As solid as this cast is, and top to bottom it is perfect, every performance is eclipsed by the lunatic genius of Bale’s work. Volatile, soulless, misogynistic and insane, yet somehow he also draws some empathy. It is wild, brilliant work that marked a talent preparing for big things.
by Matt Weiner
One of these days we’ll finally get a Melissa McCarthy movie that deserves her talents and doesn’t just desperately depend on them. Even though Life of the Party is written by McCarthy along with husband and frequent collaborator Ben Falcone… well, the wait isn’t over quite yet.
McCarthy stars as Deanna Miles, a woman whose life is upended by a sudden divorce with her husband Dan (Matt Walsh). Realizing that she spent her adult life meekly going along with other people’s wishes, Deanna decides to finish her abandoned senior year of college. It’s a positive message, as far as mid-life crises go.
This brings her into embarrassingly close contact with her daughter Maddie (Molly Gordon), who is also finishing her senior year at school, as well as Maddie’s sorority sisters. (All standard “not actually that weird” movie misfits, except for Gillian Jacobs, who injects some actual off-kilter menace as Helen.)
The idea of a former student getting into classes immediately (apparently without the need to re-take additional core requirements), and paying to live on campus despite living 20 minutes away raises some logistical questions. But McCarthy’s comedic gifts have saved staler setups. She turns Deanna into a woman to root for, not pity, as she completes her degree, relives her youth and gets over her spineless ex-husband.
Not that the film’s cringe comedy with a heart comes without a cost: the gentle nudges toward empowerment and inclusivity make for a welcoming message. But the steady laughs are all a bit defanged, especially for a setup about a woman whose husband has just divorced her after decades of building a life together (and who apparently still controls their finances in a way that makes her life materially difficult).
Given how much the story invests in the contrived college setup, the real missed opportunity feels like the uninhibited adult comedy nipping at the outer edges of what ended up on screen. Maya Rudolph is wickedly good as Christine, the best friend living vicariously through Deanna. And Walsh can tease out more notes than should be possible when given the room to work his sad sack variations.
It doesn’t really seem like the film is trying to connect with a younger audience anyway. The film is more homage to the triumphant ‘80s teen movies that McCarthy and Falcone would have eaten up as teens, with a “Save Deanna” finale and all.
This is a good thing when it comes to the sexual politics. (Have you re-watched Revenge of the Nerds lately?) But the predictable setup makes Life of the Party diverting yet wholly forgettable.
It’s a passing grade, but just barely.
by Hope Madden
Femme fatales. Hitmen. Disjointed timelines. Neon.
Sin City was interesting in 2005.
Vaughn Stein’s debut as a feature film writer/director, after many years assisting, borrows heavily from the Tarantino explosion of the Nineties and early 2000s. He drops us into a metropolitan underworld where danger intersects with madness and borrowed style tries desperately to draw attention away from lack of substance.
He does have Margot Robbie, though, so that’s a start. Robbie plays the aforementioned femme fatale in a hulking underbelly of a soundstage meant to look like a cross between a wee-hours train terminal, an insane asylum and Wonderland—all with that vacant, neon emptiness of a neo-noir.
Robbie’s Annie is a hitman masquerading as a waitress in the terminals all-night diner. There’s a hidden mastermind, a mysterious cripple, a couple of contract killers and a teacher who needs a little nudge before he’s ready to off himself.
Vaughn immediately brings Sin City to mind with his splashy comic book noirisms. It’s hard for that to feel fresh at this stage in filmdom, and his tired hodge-podging of hyper-dramatic tropes doesn’t breathe any new life into the story.
In fact, the story is the problem. It’s an awful lot of nothing, truth be told, with nary a surprise and loads of letdowns.
There is a bit in the diner that’s worth a watch. An excellent Simon Pegg waits for a train and chit chats with a borderline insane waitress (Robbie). Their chemistry is odd and welcome, and Pegg’s delivery is particularly impeccable. In these scenes, Vaughn’s writing suddenly feels engaging and unpredictable.
The core story about two killers Annie is playing against each other peters out blandly, and though the answer to any other surprise has long ago been telegraphed in, still we sit through an intolerable backstory.
Robbie does what she can, though she leans a bit too heavily on her Harley Quinn character to sell Annie’s mental state. She’s mad as a hatter, you see. We know that because she told us so in an opening voiceover narration.
The film isn’t awful, but it isn’t good. Mainly, there is just nothing new to see here.
by Hope Madden
So many superhero movies right now! They put me in a nostalgic mood for that time, somewhat awkwardly and utterly unintentionally, I was a part of my son’s first double date.
I review movies, and Riley always enjoyed seeing the new blockbusters before his friends got to, which is why I knew without asking that he would go with me to screen The Dark Knight.
As I left for work the morning of the screening, I was under the impression that Riley and his buddy Nate, as well as my husband George, would join me at the Rave movie theater in Polaris at 6:30 for the screening. Halfway through the day, though, George decided he couldn’t back out of a softball game, so he’d have Nate’s parents drop the boys off.
But later I learned that I was going to become the fifth wheel of a double date.
This was a first.
It’s not as if things always have gone well when Riley and Nate saw movies with me. Years ago, at the Christmas with the Kranks screening, I left to hit the concession stand, only to return to find that the boys had given away my seat.
At another screening, maybe the second X-Men movie, Nate, Riley and I sat in the old Arena Grand Movie Theatre and tried to answer all the trivia questions during the pre-show entertainment. Because the boys were about 9 years old, I was kicking their butts.
Then came a question about which X-rated films had been nominated for Oscars. I mentioned Last Tango in Paris and Nate asked me about the film.
Ahem.
“Well,” I said, “it’s about a lonely older widower who develops a relationship with a much younger woman.”
I thought I heard Nate say, “That sounds like porn.”
“Oh, no,” I told him. “It’s not porn.”
A perplexed Nate responded, “I said it sounds boring.”
Long, awkward pause.
Then he said, “What’s porn?”
“Who wants popcorn, kids?!”
I’ve made other poor decisions when it comes to bringing youngsters with me to the movies. I once took my son’s entire Little League baseball team to the remake of The Bad News Bears. The problem, of course, was that the kids loved it; many have never forgiven me for my scathing review.
But the point is, I was used to hosting Riley and any number of his little friends. On the car ride home, there was usually some debate over how many stars a film should receive, which X-Man would be the best to have on your team (Mystique, duh!), and how much more grating the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants is when you’re subjected to it for 90 straight minutes.
This screening of The Dark Knight, though, would be different.
This time, Riley and Nate brought girls.
Things went well enough. Mainly because of Riley’s one rule: I may never speak to a girl.
I did have to listen, though, and I noted that Nate’s date does not like mashed potatoes. Maybe that’s not a deal breaker, but come on. What kind of sociopath doesn’t like mashed potatoes?
To be honest, given that the boy was 15-years-old at the time, I was lucky he was willing to be seen in public with me at all—caped crusader or no. And by the time the Christmas blockbusters came out that same year, there would be at least one licensed driver in this foursome who could get them to and from the movies without me.
But they were always late, so luckily they still needed me to save their seats.
Wow, some very different films available for home entertainment this week. On one hand, artist Ai Weiwei’s utterly breathtaking documentary on displacement and refugees. On the other, the last and worst of the Fifty Shades films. Our guess is that either one or the other may interest you, not likely both.
Guess which one we like better. Click the link to read the full review.
