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Evil Dead Burn

by Hope Madden

Nasty. Relentless. Grim.

Evil Dead Burn saw me coming!

Say what you will about the Deadite franchise, but you’re not likely to use the adjective “boring.” One of the reasons it’s remained relevant over six films and a 3-season TV show is that the team behind the bloodshed is not afraid to switch things up. Sam Raimi’s original, Stooges-inspired trilogy and the Bruce Campbell starring TV series were more grossout comedies than anything.

But the films took on a darker tone with Fede Alvarez’s 2013 reboot, a style that continued with Lee Cronin’s 2023 episode, Evil Dead Rise. For their latest installment, Executive Producer Raimi tapped French filmmaker Sébastian Vanicek.

Vanicek’s 2023 arachnid horror Infested was an impressive exercise in claustrophobic terror. He brings with him the flavor of French Extreme Cinema, so vital and gruesome in the early 2000s. What he abandons is the underlying, though ever darkening, humor that has always marked the franchise.

That or it just doesn’t work this time.

In what is essentially a metaphor for abusive relationships, Evil Dead Burn follows one family in the wake of their eldest son’s ghastly vehicular death. Naturally, the family gathers to mourn in their dead grandpa’s old farmhouse. He used to travel the world collecting creepy stories, kept a journal scribbled with incantations. You know the drill. It stars with “kanda” and ends with serious carnage.

Vanicek writes the script with Raimi and Florent Bernard, who co-wrote Infested. The story is tight enough, and solid performances quickly carve out recognizable characters who still manage not to feel flat or cliché.

Souheila Yacoub is Alice, the deceased’s widow and our central figure. Her tortured past sometimes threatens to weigh down the mayhem, but it never drags anything to a stop. How could it? Vanicek opens hard and never slows down.

The action choreography is fascinating. Cinematographer Philip Lozano (MadS, Cobweb) takes inspiration from the Raimi classic, his camera snaking and stalking its way through scenes. But this camera rolls, dips, and flies, all of it in service of the slaughter.

The film’s humorlessness and its somewhat tortured (ha!) central metaphor keep it from feeling truly at home in the franchise. But for an hour and fifty minutes of unforgiving butchery, you could do worse.

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Mighty, Mighty Neighborly

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The Invite

by George Wolf

For a film set almost entirely inside one apartment, The Invite covers an awful lot of ground. It’s a trip through performative banter and anxious glances to repressed feelings, emotional honesty and possible new beginnings.

And it’s funny, in ways that are often relatable, revealing, and a good bit awkward.

Adapted from Cesc Gay’s The People Upstairs (stage play, then movie), the film finds Angela (Olivia Wilde, who also directs) and Joe (Seth Rogen) finally ready host their upstairs neighbors Pina (Penélope Cruz) and “Hawk” (Edward Norton) for dinner.

Well, Angela is ready, and schoolgirl nervous. Joe insists she didn’t tell him it was tonight, so he didn’t get any wine, and you know what if they come over he just might ask them to please tone down all those wild sex noises.

No! Joe can’t do that. Pina is so pretty, and Hawk is so cool! Angela just has to impress them and at least pretend that she and Joe are as happy as they are. Or at least as they seem to be.

It’s all polite laughter and rug compliments at first, but slowly the adapted script from Will McCormack and Rashida Jones begins probing old wounds, petty grievances and provocative possibilities. The cast wrings emotion from the dialog with the zest you would expect from a veteran foursome such as this. Cruz and Norton are effortlessly suave and sexy, while Rogen is the grumpy fly buzzing around the cheese tray and Wilde is the frazzled host desperate for the night to play out as she planned it.

It won’t. And everyone is better for it.

Wilde’s direction seems equally intent on bringing movement to this static setting, and for the most part she succeeds without showy desperation. Windows, doorframes and mirrors are carefully utilized in several shots, giving a visual boost to the emotional distance – or growing attraction – between characters.

It all works in wonderful unison for this wonderfully adult comedy/drama…okay I’ll say “dramedy.” Funny, biting, poignant, and surprising, The Invite speaks to how easily longtime couples can drift apart, and the hard fought honesty it takes to stick things out.

Plus, some people really like rugs.

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On the Boat Again

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Moana

by Hope Madden

Has there been a reason yet for one of Disney’s live-action remakes? Arguably, no, but some of them have been fun. Jon Favreau’s 2016 The Jungle Book used inspired casting and fun tweaks on the Disney’s 1967 animated classic to craft easily the best of the bunch.

Since then? They range from garbage (Robert Zemeckis’s 2022 abomination Pinocchio) to fine (Bill Condon’s 2017 Beauty and the Beast). Disney’s latest, Moana, falls somewhere in between.

Director Thomas Kail (Hamilton) guides the effort that sees Dwayne Johnson adding flesh to his voice role as demigod shapeshifter Maui. Catherine Laga’aia is Moana, the future leader of her Polynesian village in a long ancient time when islands were still being pulled from the ocean floor by gods.

Moana’s father warns her never to go beyond the reef, but if we know anything about young Disney heroes, we know Moana is destined to roam. Her quest: to find Moana, get him on her boat, cross the ocean, and return the heart of the sea to the goddess he stole it from a thousand years ago.

Laga’aia is in fine voice, and the story is as charming as ever. But even more than most of these remakes, Moana begs the question: why? Favreau used motion capture to bring actor and jungle character together, allowing for an experience the animated original couldn’t offer. The animals didn’t look or move like cartoons. They seemed like panthers and tigers, snakes and orangutans imbued with weirdly human personalities.

But a giant, bedazzled crab (still voiced gloriously by Jemaine Clement) just looks like a big, animated crustacean covered in glitter. Tiny coconut pirates, huge fire gods—every unusual creature Moana and Maui encounter still looks cartoon-like. If not cartoon, why cartoon shaped?

The fact that Kail works from Jared Bush, Dana Ledoux Miller, and Ron Clements’s original screenplay, varying barely an iota, doesn’t help. It’s not that Moana is bad. Were it a standalone, it would be a lovely family film. And in a way, that’s still what it is. It just isn’t necessary.

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There’s Gold in Them There Hills

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The Isolate Thief

by Brandon Thomas

To the casual viewer, the classic Western has its tried and true tropes: the dusty landscape, the haggard hero, and maybe the damsel in distress. However, those days are mostly long gone, and the few Westerns that find their way to the screen tend to offer up something a little more left of center. While not fully embracing the neo-Western moniker, The Isolate Thief still delivers a film a little bit more unique than its classical brethren.

Young Ada (MacKenzie Foy, The Conjuring) is the sole occupant of a remote outpost during the Civil War. After stumbling upon a cache of stolen gold, Ada finds herself up against a violent crew of outlaws led by the cunning Fiddler (Sean Bean, National Treasure). As the gang’s patience wears thin, Ada struggles to navigate their growing frustration as well as keep the gold secret. 

The Isolate Thief has the traditional Western shootouts, but the real excitement comes from the tension director John Suits creates. More akin to a thriller at times, Thief uses the threat of violence to greater effect than violence itself. Still, when all hell breaks loose, Suits doesn’t shy away from the carnage inflicted by gunshots, stabbings, and beatings. This approach is especially effective given the film’s chamber piece approach – essentially taking place only at the outpost and the woods directly surrounding it. 

The aforementioned violence is often directed at Ada and the lone female member of the outlaws, Emily (Odeya Rush, Lady Bird), who isn’t there by choice. There’s an interesting – and purposeful – juxtaposition between these two women. Ada is the younger, more naive of the two, and the one willing to try and outwit these vicious men. Emily’s world-weariness straddles the line between cynical and pragmatic – often within the same scene and conversation. Her tragic backstory comes to light, but the true horror of her ordeal is seen only in the character’s eyes.

Bean is at his most sinister as the revolting Fiddler. Most will think of Bean as the redemptive Boromir from The Lord of the Rings or the gone-too-soon Ned Stark on Game of Thrones. Those of us who have been around long enough can remember when Bean cut his teeth on villain roles in Patriot Games and as a foil for 007 in Goldeneye. As Fiddler, Bean injects his natural charm into a character whose only love language is violence. We know what Fiddler is capable of long before Ada does, and it only ratchets up the tension as the film moves towards its brutal climax. 

The Isolate Thief is a thrilling and well-acted entry in the Western genre. While maybe not the next Hateful Eight, it will still satisfy most die-hard fans of this kind of rootin’, shootin’ film.

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Wizard of Aaahhs

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Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass

by George Wolf

You think Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is just about a small-town Kansas woman in ruby red shoes traveling to Hollywood on a quest to have sex with Jon Hamm?

Get hip to the subtext, man! It’s also a film about a tragic bullfighting fatality, John Slattery pulling out a man’s eyeball while imitating Howard Cosell, a nefarious plot to dismantle the corrupt global financial system, a mailman’s beef with his overcharging roofer and Henry Winkler’s role in the deadly consequences of a briefcase mixup.

But yes, this hilarity is centered around Gail (an irresistible Zoey Deutch), a fresh faced and endlessly upbeat hairdresser excited to soon marry her childhood sweetheart Tom (Michael Cassidy). But when a local book signing leads Tom straight into the legs of his celebrity sex pass, Gail’s best friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) knows there’s only one thing to do.

Gail has to come with him to the big hair show in L.A., and settle the score with her own chosen wizard of aaahhs – Mr. Jon Hamm.

Director/co-writer David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer, Role Models) and co-writer/co-star Ken Marino (veteran comedic support standout) have created a relentless assault of silliness that delivers a consistent string of smiles, yuks, laughs and belly laughs.

Beyond the multiple nods to the yellow brick road adventure, Wain and Marino lampoon celebrity culture, paparazzi, the Hollywood bubble and various movie genres with winks, nods and relish, tossing in several surprise cameos to boot. Deutch proves again that she is a versatile talent with serious comedy chops, and the wide-ranging ensemble (led by Marino, Slattery and a delightfully understated Ben Wang) offers fun from every angle.

Gail Daughtry is an unhinged cult leader in waiting, with a vibe that is set from the opening minutes. Ride it all the way through the credits (and one final Wiz bang) to score the funniest film of the year so far.

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Minion Monster Mash

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Minions & Monsters

by Hope Madden

There are six films now in the Minion-verse. Most of these are Gru movies, but honestly, without the minions, where would the Despicable Me features be?

Still, without a single, clear antagonist, the 2015 standalone film Minions felt adrift. Cute and goofy but pointless. To avoid the same trouble this go-round, Minions & Monsters pins the adventure on one creative little dude: James.

Centuries ago, when an early tribe of Minions searched the earth for a villain to assist, James drew pictures. These pictures told funny stories that entertained exactly one other Minion: Henry. (Henry, James and all other Minions are voiced by co-writer/co-director Pierre Coffin.)

The Minions’ quest to find their villain leads them eventually to 1920s Hollywood. Here is where Coffin unveils a love for classic moviemaking. Sure, every film in this franchise charms with hidden sight gags and funny Easter eggs. But Minions & Monsters drips with them. There’s a classic movie reference in nearly every frame of the film, beginning in the intro, where a tour guide (Allison Janney) explains to bored tourists the very important role James and Henry played in saving Hollywood and, indeed, the world.

Janney is not the only Oscar winner lending her voice, either. Christoph Waltz is Max, the harried director who discovers James, and Jeff Bridges plays twin studio heads Frank and Elwood. Plus, Jesse Eisenberg (no slouch!) voices Dort, an unlikely yet somehow perfect Minion ally.

With James in the hero seat, Minions & Monsters follows a more tightly scripted chaos. James decides to conjure some monsters so he can make a creature feature and conquer Hollywood. (If you think Goomi, the first monster conjured, sounds weirdly like Eric Cartman, there’s a reason for that. South Park co-creator and Cartman vocalist Trey Parker lends his voice to the wee green Cthulu cub.)

Characteristic of the franchise, the film is goofball anarchy. Minions & Monsters is quickly paced, brightly colored, silly, good-natured fun. The sheer amount of story sometimes causes the movie to drag. This is not helped by Janney’s lengthy first act exposition. But as a mash note to filmmaking and a goofy, family-friendly adventure, it’s a delightful reason to sit in the air conditioning this weekend with your kids.

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Dressed to Impress

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Couture

by Hope Madden

Fashion Week in Paris—the only word in that phrase I entirely understand is “in”. Well, I know what a week is, but in Alice Winocour’s drama Couture, Angelina Jolie plays Maxine, an indie horror director with zero interest in fashion who’s tasked with creating a short film to introduce the diva hullabaloo.

They probably called it something different that I should know, but at least there was a character I could grasp.

Maxine is out of her element, under pressure from the event organizers, struggling to communicate with her Stateside 15-year-old, and told by her doctor that she needs to see a specialist immediately.

Meanwhile, Ada (Anyler Anei) is this year’s “new face.” She’ll star in Maxine’s short film and be the first model on the runway. But she’s never modeled before. She’s an 18-year-old South Sudanese refugee living in Kenya and studying pharmacy. Like Maxine, Ada is in over her head.

Winocour, who writes as well as directs, braids these two stories with a third strand. Ella Rumpf is a make-up artist and observer, someone who runs almost undetected in all the Fashion Week circles.

What the three tales have in common, what Winocour explores without exploring, is what each woman keeps to herself. Choosing Fashion Week for this exploration seems fitting. Models are stand-ins, lovely images to hang an idea or a frock on, but not humans. No emotions, no turmoil, no war-torn country to preoccupy them. At least, that’s the role the industry requires them to perform.

Jolie’s gently understated stoicism offers the film an emotional center while Anei’s sweetly awkward vulnerability keeps it tender. Although Winocour’s transitions from one tale to the next are almost magical in their grace, the third storyline with Rumpf feels underdeveloped and a little heavy handed.

Wincour can’t bring the story full circle. The fashion industry still seems superficial and unnecessary by film’s end, which leaves the film feeling less powerful than what the individual heroines deserve.

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Fight the Pain Away

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Supergirl

by George Wolf

Look, Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) isn’t some goody-goody like her cousin Superman, okay? She’s a hard partying rock chick rockin’ a Blondie t-shirt and a wiseass attitude on her 23rd birthday, so F-you! She’s not about go and join young Ruthye’s (Eve Ridley) quest to avenge her parents’ death at the cold-blooded hands of space villain Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts).

But then Krem shoots Krypto full of a slow-acting poison, and suddenly Kara’s got 72 hours to find Krem, get the antidote, and save her beloved dog from back home.

There’s also a sex trafficking ring to bust up, so add Fury Road to John Wick, Star Wars, Alien, multiple Westerns and various other inspirations you may spot. And while at this point, finding an entirely original stylistic angle for your superhero film may be damn near impossible, this familiarity is one of the things keeping a pretty satisfying adventure from reaching the stratosphere.

Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl, The Finest Hours) overcomes some occasionally wonky CGI to craft several winning sequences of action, backstory and world building, but often undercuts the growing momentum by bailing out too soon. The surprising dive into the demise of Krypton adds narrative heft, but dropping it between the grimness of The Dark Knight and the giddy excess of Birds of Prey keeps any distinct tone elusive.

Through all of it, Alcock (House of the Dragon) keeps our titular hero wonderfully grounded. Writer Ana Nogueira’s debut screenplay may be filled with familiar themes of grief, destiny, revenge and female rage, but Kara has specific reasons to be wounded. Alcock makes sure we appreciate the character arc that turns Kara’s defense mechanisms into Supergirl’s defense of truth, justice, and…you know.

Alcock finds a way to make us care about the girl, whether hunting down Krem (Schoenaerts is a wonderful, facially-studded psycho), fighting alongside Lobo (Jason Mamoa, gleefully hamming it up) or feeling sweetly big sisterly to the resourceful Ruthye.

And more importantly, Alcock’s scenes with David Corenswet’s Superman cement the film’s biggest win: giving Kara the agency for her hero to stand as more than just a sidekick. This girl’s truth is separate from her famous cousin. Supergirl makes no apologies for making that clear, with an uneven but ultimately effective introduction.

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I Can’t Live Without My Radio

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Lucky Strike

by George Wolf

The song that plays over the closing credits of Lucky Strike couldn’t be a more appropriate choice. Co-written by Rod Lurie, who also co-wrote and co-directed the movie, the theme is passionate and well meaning. It is also overwrought and heavy handed.

So again, perfect for this film.

By all accounts, Lurie (The Outpost), co-director Todor Kotzev, co-writer Marc Frydman and their fellow producers have gone to great lengths to ensure this film gets the thumbs up from WWII historians. From the jeeps to the artillery, the terrain and beyond, the clear aim of the production was to create an authentic bridge between recorded history and battlefield reality.

And on the note, Lucky Strike hits the mark. An authentic feel for the characters being developed proves a much harder target.

Scott Eastwood takes the lead as Capt. John Castle, who in December 1944 is ordered by his superior (Colin Hanks in a brief cameo) to oversee the blockade of a road in the Ardennes forest often used by German soldiers.

Castle and his team come under heavy fire, eventually leaving John and his invaluable radio “Lassie” – which will become even more valued later on – alone behind enemy lines.

Based on true events from the legendary Battle of the Bulge, the film becomes one man’s journey of commitment and survival, as Castle sets out on the 30km trek to safety in Elsenborn, Belgium.

As correct as all the details may be, the writing and direction never miss the opportunity to overplay a hand. Despite some tense and well orchestrated one-shot action sequences, much of the dialog lacks nuance, the editing and reaction shots continually aim for the back row, a third act twist isn’t hard to see coming, and there’s even the inclusion of an actual pale horse (apparently ridden by subtlety).

Eastwood shoulders a big load but doesn’t show the family gift of understatement, and cannot elevate any of this material. Only the great Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, as a grieving mother in some touching bookend scenes with Eastwood, can give the film a fleeting layer of humanity.

Lucky Strike needed more of that. There’s plenty to respect here on a technical and historical level, but any true emotional connection is lost in the wilderness.

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Coven in the Woods

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Camp

by Hope Madden

A sapphic coming-of-age summer camp horror, those words are not untrue. They are inaccurate. Whatever expectations you may have coming into writer/director Avalon Fast’s Camp, they’re wrong. Which is not necessarily bad.

Prizing atmosphere over genre, Fast’s loose narrative and structure benefit the floating grief that keeps Emily (Zola Grimmer) only partly present in any situation. It’s rooted in an adolescent tragedy and exacerbated by an incident in her early twenties. She’s disconnected, vacant, and her concerned father suggests she take a counselor position at a summer camp for troubled kids.

But Fast clarifies from Camp’s opening sequence that this is not going to be a slasher. Even when Emily falls in with a close-knit group of likewise disaffected young women—her own coven, if you will—the filmmaker shrugs off any comfortable comparison. The Craft? Practical Magic?

No, grief, guilt, shame, and the disconcertingly untethered existence of modern young adulthood don’t fit so neatly into a single box. Fast wanderingly explores ideas connected with nature and female camaraderie, with acceptance and rejection, with the search for peace. But a typical witch film this is not.

In a little attic space above a cabin in a Christian Youth Camp, five damaged young women cling to each other. They bond, drink, hallucinate, cast spells, make sacrifices, and feel comfort. But unlike The Craft, which condemned a dark use of the feminine power of nature, Camp is nonjudgmental.

Instead, Fast is interested in these broken young women and their hazy search for something to make them feel whole. The pace is slow, the imagery hypnotic, occasionally surreal. The film aches. It mourns. It embraces a vivid if ill-defined reality in which there is no clear path to happiness or wholeness.

Self-discovery is the key, and Emily’s is all melancholy magic. Cinematographer Eily Sprugman captures Emily’s heady freedom and earthy nightmare with gorgeous color. Fast’s languid pace, though sometimes tiresome, mainly delivers a groggy magic that feels like a dark dream.

Grimmer’s naturalistic performance grounds the wonder with honesty and heartbreak. There’s a real sadness at the heart of Camp that, along with an intriguingly messy morality, will keep you thinking about it long after it’s over.