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School of Hart Knocks

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Night School

by Hope Madden

The endlessly likeable Kevin Hart and the undeniably talented Tiffany Haddish join forces, which sounds like a solid plan except that Night School is a Kevin Hart movie, and when was the last time one of those was any good?

Sure, Jumanji had some laughs. In fact, Hart’s films almost always boast a few chuckles, mainly because of the actor’s infectious energy and self-deprecating humor. But they’re not good.

Neither is Night School which, even with Haddish and a handful of other proven comic talents, isn’t funny, either.

Hart plays Ted, a good-hearted hustler, talking big and spending bigger, pretending to be more than he is to compensate for his own insecurities. Of course he is, it’s a Kevin Hart movie.

Haddish is Carol, the overworked, underpaid night school teacher here to believe in Ted and the collection of losers in her class. It’s tough love, though, because Haddish is funnier when she’s mean.

What the film does well could have been packaged into an enjoyable 15-minute short. Hart gets off a few laughs working for a Christian fast food chicken joint, and the camaraderie among his late blooming classmates sometimes draws a giggle.

The actors portraying those night school chums work hard to establish memorable, funny characters with limited screen time and an even more limited script. Still, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Rob Riggle, Al Madrigal, Anne Winters and especially Romany Malco work wonders. Taran Killam amuses on occasion as the uptight principal with a grudge.

But there’s only so much they can do. Director Malcolm D. Lee (Girls Trip) drags every gag out about 8 minutes longer than necessary. The script, penned by Hart and five other writers, does Lee no favors. Even Haddish struggles to be funny with flat dialog and pointless, contrived physical comedy bits.

While you’re not laughing you might notice that Night School does make a few surprising choices. Its comedy is good hearted. This is a film that likes all its characters—the females, the losers, those with success and even the parents whose coddling and/or verbal abuse may or may not be to blame for the whole night school problem.

Those are small successes in a film that squanders a lot of talent and all of our time.

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Hellhound on My Trail

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Blaze

by George Wolf

Outlaw country musician Blaze Foley lived too hard and died too young, a life so steeped in cultish mystery that even the director of his biopic believed an urban legend about what led to Foley’s tragic death.

Ethan Hawke, who also co-wrote the film with Foley’s ex-wife Sybil Rosen, presents Blaze’s story with respectful grace and an observational tone that moves casually but cuts deeply. Seemingly drawing inspiration from frequent collaborator Richard Linklater (who has a cameo role in the film), Hawke’s directing style is unassuming and unhurried, mining resonance from small moments that define his subject.

It seems cosmically right that a virtual unknown singer-songwriter, Ben Dickey, plays Foley, who may be best known to mainstream country fans as the writer behind songs recorded by artists such as Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, and John Prine.

Dickey, who was working as a chef when Hawke offered him the role, is a revelation. Though more physically imposing than the real Foley, Dickey reveals the demons that frequently bested Blaze, pushing him to sabotage his relationship with Sybil (Alia Shawkat-also stellar) as well as his chances at big-time music business success.

With music such a big part of the film, Hawke’s decision to present it in its live, raw glory reaps big dividends.

Dickey mimics Blaze’s phrasing, picking and rambling onstage persona to eerie perfection, getting an impressive assist from Charlie Sexton as fellow troubadour Townes Van Zandt. Sexton (who had an 80s hit with “Beats So Lonely,” has been Bob Dylan’s guitarist for years and appeared alongside Hawke in Boyhood) gives the film solid layers of reference as the drawling Van Zandt charms a radio DJ (Hawke) with stories of Blaze, the little-known legend.

From dreaming of stardom while riding in a truck bed, to antagonizing barroom audiences, to a visit with Blaze’s once-abusive, now senile father (Kris Kristofferson), sequence after sequence rings more organic and true than most found in music biopics.

It’s clear this a passion project for Hawke (and, of course, for Rosen), who is smart enough not to let that passion interfere with authenticity. Blaze gives Foley the re-birth he clearly earned – as a conflicted, damaged soul longing to be heard.

 

 

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Animal Logic

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We the Animals

by Rachel Willis

Imaginative Jonah is the focal point of director Jeremiah Zagar’s family drama, We the Animals. Based on Justin Torres’s novel of the same name, Zagar and co-writer Daniel Kitrosser successfully enter the realm of adolescent boys.

The youngest of three brothers, Jonah is the film’s narrator. His quiet observations allow him to remain nearly invisible to the adults around him. He sees things others might miss, and with an artist’s eye, he renders his observations into illustrations that jump off the page.

With his two older brothers, Manny and Joel, Jonah navigates his parents’ volatile relationship. Though there is love between his Paps and Ma, there are also moments of violence.

While the time period of the film is never explicitly stated, based on a few clues it’s likely the mid-1980’s. It’s a time when kids ran wild outdoors without cell phones or tablets in hand. The cinematography captures the sunny summer days when aimless kids roamed far and wide. It perfectly evokes the innocence and curiosity of young children.

As Joel and Manny enter into adolescence and leave childhood behind, Jonah falls further into his own world. The three brothers, at first inseparable, start to drift apart. While Joel and Manny seek to become men just like their father, Jonah tries to carve out his own identity. It puts him at odds not only with his siblings, but his parents as well.

There’s a dream-like quality to the movie reminiscent of films such as Beasts of the Southern Wild and Pan’s Labyrinth. Though Zagar’s approach is slightly less fantastic than either film, there is still a lovable, magnetic child at the center. As Jonah, Evan Rosado joins the ranks of child actors whose talent belies their age.

Zagar proves his mettle as both writer and director. His previous works include a number of solid documentaries (Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart, In a Dream), but as his first feature film We the Animals is a marvelous addition to his body of work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fghaoNoQcRU

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Blinding Us with Science

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Science Fair

by Rachel Willis

One year back in high school, my school decided participation in the science fair would be compulsory. I resented this since the last thing I wanted to do was “science.”

Watching the teenagers profiled in documentarians Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster’s film Science Fair, I start to understand the appeal of sincere participation in regional, national and international science fairs. If I had seen film the year I participated, I might have taken it more seriously.

What these kids invent, build and research makes my greenhouse in a shoe box look prosaic. From research into ways to prevent Zika transmission to monitoring and testing for arsenic in groundwater, these kids are smart, ambitious, and driven.

The crème de la crème of science fairs is the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). To qualify for participation in ISEF, first these students must win their area science fairs, which can be state-wide or regional competitions. However they make it to ISEF, the teenagers who qualify have already faced stiff challenges from their fellow science enthusiasts.

To help the viewer understand the pressure these kids face, former ISEF winner Jack Andraka sheds light on the stress of presenting to judges. Projects that students have worked on for months, even an entire year, must be broken down into ten minute presentations to a handful of judges who will decide if their project is worth the prestigious Gordon E. Moore Award.

It’s hard to pick a  favorite. All of the teenagers profiled are charming and their desire to win is infectious. You wish they could all win.

Science Fair follows the familiar structure of other films depicting students engaged in fierce competition – First Position, Spellbound, and Make Believe. We’re given time to get to know the students profiled, to watch them hard at work on their craft, and then we follow them through the competitions as they fight their way to the finish line.

Costantini and Foster make a point to profile students from varied backgrounds. Some of the kids attend private schools especially focused on STEM education. Others attend public schools so focused on athletics that science achievements are completely ignored. The directors want to make a point that science is for everyone and anyone can achieve the level of success that these students find.

In a country that frequently devalues science and scientists, this documentary reminds us that these kids are our future.

That future is very bright.

Outtakes, Slider

Nightmares Film Festival: 2018 Lineup Announced

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NIGHTMARES FILM FESTIVAL UNVEILS COMPLETE 2018 PROGRAM

For horror fans, Christmas has come three months early — in the form of the Nightmares Film Festival 2018 program, presenting 24 features and 164 shorts over the four-day event running Oct. 18-21 at Gateway Film Center in Columbus.

True to its “#BetterHorror” motto, the program is jammed top to bottom with a mix of premier genre films from around the globe. Across the 188 films, there are dozens of world and North American premieres, a short accompanied by live in-theater music, projects from genre favorites, a Stephen King block and even a new documentary section.

“We’re on a never-ending, worldwide quest to discover the films that are reshaping the boundaries of horror — bold voices, new visions of terror, films that haunt you,” said co-founder and programmer Jason Tostevin. “That’s how we build every Nightmares, and this may be our best lineup yet.”

The features lineup is stacked with the world premieres of some of horror’s most anticipated new movies, including white-knuckle thriller The Final Interview from Fred Vogel (Toetag Pictures, August Underground); twisted kidnap nightmare The Bad Man from Scott Schirmer (Found, Harvest Lake); ‘80s-style horror anthology Skeletons in the Closet from Tony Wash (The Rake); and paranoia-fueled apocalypse tale Haven’s End from Chris Etheridge (Attack of the Morningside Monster).

North American feature debuts include The Head from the director of ThanksKilling, about a medieval monster hunter; Christmas horror-comedy The Night Sitter; action-horror creature feature Book of Monsters; and mistaken-identity comedy-thriller Kill Ben Lyk.

Horror legend Bill Lustig will open the festival with a brand new 4K restoration of his classic, Maniac. New cult director Jason Trost (The FP) will attend with The FP 2: Beats of Rage.

Nightmares also continues its tradition of presenting one of the top genre shorts programs in the world. This year’s short films include horror, thriller, midnight and horror-comedy blocks playing throughout the festival.

The festival also introduces its Recurring Nightmares section this year, a category that showcases the newest shorts by festival alums.

The fest’s legendary Midnight Mindfuck block also returns. The section, called “one of the most dangerous and challenging programs at any festival” (The Film Coterie), will present Trauma, a harrowing tale grounded in the darkest parts of Chilean history, and La Puta es Ciega (The Whore is Blind), a surreal and violent exploration of the streets of Mexico.

“Every aspect of Nightmares is filtered through the question, what would excite us as fans?,” said co-founder Chris Hamel. “We don’t think there’s a better experience for makers and lovers of horror than the four days of Nightmares Film Festival.”

The 13 finalists in both the Nightmares short and feature screenplay competitions were also announced. The ultimate winner in each competition will be announced at the awards ceremony on Oct. 20.

Nightmares begins Thursday, Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. and runs until Sunday night, Oct. 21. Fans who are ready to make the pilgrimage to Columbus, Ohio will find a limited number of passes still available for the festival at gatewayfilmcenter.org/NFF.

Hope Madden and George Wolf are proud to be among the jury panel for Nightmares Film Festival, one  of the top horror film celebrations in the world. It has been the number-one rated genre film festival on submission platform FilmFreeway for 30 consecutive months.

 

 

SHORT SCREENPLAY FINALISTS

Boo – Rakefet Abergel

Mourning Meal – Jamal Hodge

Hiking Buddies – Megan Morrison

Living Memory – Stephen Graves

#dead – Derek Stewart

The Burning Dress – Sam Kolesnik

For Good Behavior – Ron Riekki

Air – Dalya Guerin

Invidia – Vanessa Wright

Minotaur – Michael Escobedo

Pancake Skank –  Savannah Rodgers

The Callback – Sophie Hood

The Farm – Cate McLennan

FEATURE SCREENPLAY FINALISTS

Patience of Vultures – Greg Sisco

People of Merrit – Adam Pottle

The Shame Game – Greg Sisco

Rise of the Gulon – Matt Wildash

Left Of The Devil – Stephen Anderson

Bartleby Grimm’s Paranormal Elimination Service – Dan Kiely

Kelipot – Seth Nesenholtz

The Coldest Horizon – Jeffrey Howe

Throwback – Rachel Woolley

Resurrection Girl and the Curse of the Wendigo – Nathan Ludwig

The Caul – Sophia Cacciola & Michael J. Epstein

The Devil’s Gun – James Christopher

Residual – Tyler Christensen

HORROR FEATURES

The Bad Man

Skeletons in the Closet

Livescream

The Night Sitter

Book of Monsters

Maniac 4k

Confessions of a Serial Killer

The Head

Never Hike Alone

The Field Guide to Evil

THRILLER FEATURES

The Final Interview

Kill Ben Lyk

Clementina

Be My Cat: A Film For Anne

The LaPlace’s Demon

Alive

Betsy

Haven’s End

Dark Iris

MIDNIGHT FEATURES

Beats of Rage

Camp Death III in 2D!

Trauma

La Puta es Ciega

More Blood!

RECURRING NIGHTMARES A

Killing Giggles

The Unbearing

Let’s Play

Amy’s in the Freezer

One Hundred Thousand

Anniversary

Apartment 402

Enough

E-Bowla

Vampiras Satanicas II: The Death Bunny

42 Counts

RECURRING NIGHTMARES B

Galmi

Syphvania Grove

Rites of Vengeance

The Scarlet Vultures

Music Lesson

Thousand-Legged Terror

BFF Girls

Gut Punched

Basoan

HORROR SHORTS A

Ayuda

Bathroom Troll

Don’t Drink the Water

The After Party

Masks

Here There Be Monsters

Don’t Look Into Their Eyes

Heartless

El Cuco is Hungry

HORROR SHORTS B

Little

Save

Childer

Conductor

All You Can Carry

Made You Look

The Desolation Prize

Doggy See Evil

Spectres

Goodbye Old Friend

There’s a Monster Behind You

Blondie

HORROR SHORTS C

Ding Dong

Oscar’s Bell

Red Mosquito

Goodnight Gracie

Baghead

Wyrmwood

Avulsion

House Guests

The Last Seance

Three

HORROR SHORTS D

The Bloody Ballad of Squirt

The Chains

One Dark Night

Fears

Midnight Delivery

I Beat It

Mama’s Boy

Alien Death Fuck

Hell of a Day

Vonnis

The Dark Ward

Mystery Box

THRILLER SHORTS A

4EVR

Nocturne

The Noise of the Light

Short Leash

Instinct

Where’s Violet

Tutu Grande

THRILLER SHORTS B

Lady Hunters

Smiley’s

Headless Swans

A Death Story Called Girl

Dead Cool

You’ll Only Have Each Other

THRILLER SHORTS C

The Box

Salvatore

Witch’s Milk

Post Mortem Mary

Spurn

Esther

They Eat Your Teeth

They Wait for Us

MIDNIGHT SHORTS A

CLAW

Mayday

The Hex Dungeon

I Am Not a Monster

Gentlewoman’s Guide to Dom.

Blood Highway

Sock Monster

The Monster Within

Viral Blood

No Monkey

MIDNIGHT SHORTS B

Imagine

Fetish

The Jerry Show

Proceeds of Crime

Television

Mother Fucker

Ding-Dong

Night Terrors

The Thang

Rift

Häxan

MIDNIGHT SHORTS C

Tears of Apollo

Nightmare

The Mare

Mother Rabbit

Lipstick

Human Resources

Blood and Moonlight

Suicide Note

Enjoy the View

Freelancer

STEPHEN KING DOLLAR BABIES

The Things We Left Behind

I Am the Doorway

OHIO SHORTS A

The Borrower

Below the Trees

The Sewing Circle

The Choice

What Comes Out

Beyond Repair

Occupied

Hell to Pay

Who’s There

OHIO SHORTS B

Down the Hatchet

The Green Lady

Not From Around Here

Den

The Cat

House of Hell

Dodo

Cry Baby Bridge

SHORTS PAIRED WITH FEATURES

Marta

The Party’s Over

A Thing of Dreams

Mother of a Sacred Lamb

Dual

What Metal Girls are Into

My First Time

Canine

Latched

Offerings

Jingle Hell

Arret Pipi

Entropia

Helminth

Cabin Killer

American Undead

The Thing about Beecher’s Gate

Phototaxis

Best of Me

HORROR COMEDY SHORTS

Amigos

Netflix and Chill

Attack of Potato Clock

Foxwood

Rattle

Bitten

Heavy Flow

Sell Your Body

The Infection

Blood Sisters

Shit … They’re All Vampires

Late

There’s One Inside the House

For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of September 24

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I know you didn’t really dig Solo, but if you’re on the fence (or you skipped it), maybe give it a second look. Definitely no need to see Uncle Drew, but if you missed Izzy as she got the F across town, now is the time to rectify that situation. Here’s the low down on what’s new in home entertainment.

Click the film title to read the full review:

Izzy Gets the F*ck Across Town

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Uncle Drew

The Seagull

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Sons of Witches

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We are back and digging through the wild array of movies out this week: The House with a Clock In Its Walls, Fahrenheit 11/9, Assassination Nation, Lizzie, Pick of the Litter plus all that’s fit to watch in home entertainment.

Listen to the full podcast HERE.

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Tragedy Purge

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Assassination Nation

by Hope Madden

What if a rich white man reclaimed Salem, Mass for ostracized and victimized women by creating an outrageous, violent yarn about our out-of-control, whatever world?

In the case of Sam (son of Barry) Levinson’s latest, a cross between Tragedy Girls and The Purge, the result is the self-conscious, self-righteous and sloppy Assassination Nation.

A cautionary tale about online living, social media saturation, toxic masculinity, mob mentality, rape culture…I’m sorry—where was I? A lot. Levinson’s film is mad about a lot of stuff. And it will empower young women, mainly by filming them braless and wearing shorts that are bound to cause a yeast infection.

Four high school besties (Odessa Young, Hari Nef, Suki Waterhouse, Abra) find themselves unsure if they will survive the night once a hacker shares half the town’s digital secrets with the world. What follows is a vibrant, kinetic spectacle that deserves note if only for its raucous attention to basically anything and everything that might make a teenage girl feel violently self-righteous.

All of it’s empty, of course: lurid and stylish, pseudo-feminist and pretend-woke. Like the opening sequence “trigger warning,” the film promises something it lacks the spine to deliver.

Here’s the point, if there is one: the perils of high school are more horrifying than they were a generation ago. Hell, they’re probably twice as bad as they were two years ago. But high school kids are just as idiotic, self-absorbed, naïve and insecure as they ever were, so things are going badly.

But rather than empathize or provide insight, Assassination Nation offers exploitation and voyeurism. It’s one of those things you can try to get away with by passing it off as culturally relevant, zeitgeist embracing irony. That’s a tactic that might work if you aren’t just cribbing from two more clever and socially aware films where characters wear bras.

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We Call BS

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Fahrenheit 11/9

by George Wolf

Michael Moore may set up his latest film by asking “How the F did we get here?”, but thankfully Fahrenheit 11/9 isn’t just another empty load of hand-wringing on the perils of ignoring the “economic anxiety” of the heartland.

Moore has much more legitimate axes to grind, and not just about Donald Trump.

In fact, after a compelling open that reminds us how sure we were that Trump was never going to win in the first place, Moore shifts his focus entirely.

From the water crisis in Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan, to striking teachers in West Virginia to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida to a history professor at Yale and beyond, the provocateur filmmaker is after the converging forces that made Trump possible, and the dangers of continued complacency.

The film is at turns enraging, funny, chilling and inspirational, a rallying cry for a populace that may still be interested in maintaining any “aspirations of democracy.”

At his worst, Moore can be self-aggrandizing and overly eager to connect certain dots. Here, outside of one needless stunt at the Michigan governor’s mansion, he’s at his most forthright and committed.

Beyond the question of how we got here lies the bigger problem of how we get out. Moore presents a wide-ranging and compelling argument that the answer starts with, in the words of the Parkland student activists, “calling BS.”

He calls it on the myth of “real America,” and unveils his film’s true target is not Trump, but a government that can rule by minority.

Plutocratic cronyism, unabashed appeals to bigotry, and spineless capitulation from the “opposition party” have led to a voter apathy rooted in hopelessness. Amid flashbacks from Roger & Me, Moore’s 1989 debut, we see the counter lies in “mobilizing for freedom, not safety.”

And if we don’t?

History points to some very unsettling answers.

Accuse him of preaching to the choir if you want, but that’s not who Moore is most interested in reaching. Pairing lessons from the past with hope for the future, Fahrenheit 11/9 is his plea to get invested and mobilize.

 

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Clock Management

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The House with a Clock In Its Walls

by Hope Madden

Eli Roth made a family film. That’s weird. Although there is certainly something juvenile about the filmmaker’s work in general.

Yes, the Hostel director (and Cabin Fever, The Green Inferno and any number of other hard-R flicks) indulges a sillier side with his big screen adaptation of John Bellairs’s 1973 novel, The House with a Clock in Its Walls.

Set in a mid-Fifties slice of Americana (New Zebedee, Michigan), the film lazily crosses Spielberg with Tim Burton by way of Nickelodeon.

Orphaned Lewis (Owen Vacarro) finds himself in the charge of weird Uncle Jonathan (Jack Black), who is a warlock. The two items most likely to be found in Uncle Jonathan’s big, weird house are his next door neighbor/best friend/fellow witch Mrs. Zimmerman (the always formidable Cate Blanchett), and clocks. Loads of clocks.

Why so many? Jonathan likes the ruckus they create—keeps his mind off that one ticking sound he can’t quite locate…that ominous harbinger of something terrible.

The house also boasts a number of bewitched items, none of which are given much point or presence as Lewis struggles with the loss of his parents, unpopularity at school, and the sudden realization that he might have just triggered the end of days.

Roth and screenwriter Eric Kripke streamline Bellairs’s charming prose. Some updates are sensible, although neutering the novel’s image of powerful women is not one of the more courageous or welcome choices the filmmakers made.

They entirely miss the novel’s tone, amplified with intermittent illustrations by the great Edward Gorey: subdued, wondrous yet melancholy. These are not adjectives used in conjunction with the work of Eli Roth.

What he substitutes instead is colorful, artificial, sloppy fun.

Black—more or less revisiting his role from 2015’s Goosebumps—charms exactly as he always does. Watching the incandescent Blanchett slyly deliver lines and easily steal scenes from Black—and anybody else who happens to be present—is a joy.

Vacarro isn’t given much opportunity. His is a story about grief and loneliness. Or maybe it’s about embracing your inner weirdo. Roth can’t seem to decide, and he’s far too sidetracked by the demonic jack-o-lanterns, topiary Griffin and inexplicable roomful of carnival freakshow dummies to pay attention to the story.

There is utterly forgettable fun here, mainly thanks to Black and Blanchett, but the intended audience is a little tough to gauge. Things are likely a bit too slow-moving and eventually too wicked for the very young, while teens and adults may be bored by the lack of logic or what passes for humor. Still, if you have a 10-year-old who wants a seasonal scare that’s not too scary, here you go.