Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Death, Decomposition and the Maiden

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The Shrouds

by Hope Madden

Cronenberg’s gonna Cronenberg. Isn’t that why we love him? Whether it’s 1983’s Videodrome or 2022’sCrimes of the Future, Dead Ringers (1988) or A Dangerous Method (2011), 1996’s Crash, 1986’s The Fly,  or his first feature, Shivers (1976), David Cronenberg is fascinated by the human body, sex, technology, and conspiracies in a way distinctly his own.

Even as you can kind of expect the expected in his latest, The Shrouds, the film is simultaneously more personal and less like a David Cronenberg movie than anything he’s made.

Vincent Cassel is Cronenberg’s stand in, Karsh Relikh, a man who, like Cronenberg, once made industrial videos but now creates opportunities for those who are interested to watch bodies rot. Karsh owns GraveTech, cemeteries with tech built into shrouds that wrap bodies. The shrouds contain micro xray cameras that allow mourners to see their loved ones—on a screen placed in the headstone, or conveniently on their phone.

It was Karsh’s overpowering grief after losing his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) that inspired the technology. But this being a Cronenberg film, the tech can’t be trusted.

Because Cassel is so clearly, right down to his hair style, playing Cronenberg’s avatar, it’s only fitting that Cronenberg plays with that idea. Hunny, an AI personal assistant programmed by Karsh’s former brother-in-law, Maury (Guy Pearce) even looks like Karsh’s late wife (also voiced by Kruger).

But is Hunny friend or foe? And does Maury have anything to do with the recent vandalism of the graves? Or is Becca’s sister (Kruger again) right in thinking it’s all a medical conspiracy?

The intrigue feels vaguely like Scanners or Videodrome, while the chilly sexuality pulls from the same preoccupations that fueled Crash. But Cronenberg leans more on dialogue and Douglas Koch’s precise cinematography to tell this story than any outright horror.

The Shrouds is not the kind of body horror usually associated with Cronenberg, but his corporeal obsession is more pronounced here than maybe any other film. Karsh is fixated on his wife’s body—the pieces lost during her struggle with cancer, its fate under the ground. It all feels like the filmmaker is asking us to accompany him on his own journey, not just through grief but through his reflection on his own preoccupations as a filmmaker.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make for an especially compelling or exciting movie. The pace is slow, the performances stilted to match the dialog, and the resolution is nonexistent. The Shrouds has a grotesquely beautiful dreamlike quality, and it teems with notions both weird and fascinating. It just can’t pull that pull it all together into an entertaining whole.

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Hellhound on My Tail

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Sinners

by Hope Madden

Ryan Coogler can direct the hell out of a movie, can’t he?

For Sinners, he reteams with longtime creative partner Michael B. Jordan to sing a song of a 1932 Mississippi juke joint. The Smokestack twins (Jordan) are back from Chicago, a truckload of ill-gotten liquor and a satchel full of cash along with them. They intend to open a club “for us, by us” and can hardly believe their eyes when three hillbillies come calling.

Jack O’Connell (an amazing actor in everything he’s done since Eden Lake) has a brogue and a banjo. He and his two friends would love to come on in, sing, dance, and spend some money, if only Smoke would invite them.

He does not.

The night becomes a standoff between those inside the club and those outside, but by the time Act 2 sets its fangs, Coogler and his terrific ensemble already have you invested in everyone inside.

The great Delroy Lindo effortlessly charms as bluesman Delta Slim. Wunmi Mosaku (His  House, Lovecraft Country) works with Coogler’s direction to turn the horror trope “supernatural expert” (the one person who can explain to the others what’s going on and how to stop it) into the film’s broken heart.

Newcomer Miles Caton shines as the young blues guitarist whose voice is so sweet it can conjure the devil.

The setting and period suit the film beautifully, giving Coogler room to play with ideas of religion and redemption, music and temptation, and everything else that offers hope to the powerless. Every character carries a rich history that you can feel.

Jordan impresses in dual roles, carving out unique but dependent characters. O’Connell delivers lines and lyrics with a lived-in magic, twisting together Coogler’s insightful ideas about how prayer and song are often tools of the oppressor.

It’s scary. It’s sexy. The action slaps. It’s funny when it needs to be, sad just as often. It looks and sounds incredible. And there’s a cameo from Buddy F. Guy, in case you needed a little authenticity.

When Ryan Coogler writes and directs a vampire movie, he gives you reason to believe there is yet new life for the old monster.

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Beauty and the Beatings

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The Ugly Stepsister

by George Wolf

Are we done clutching our pearls about the recent Snow White update? They’re about to get plenty gooey.

Really, writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt doesn’t care either way, she’s too busy infusing her feature debut with an impossible-to-ignore blast of sharp wit, subdued rage, and grotesque bodily horrors.

Yes, The Ugly Stepsister (Den stygge stesøsteren) the latest new angle to a classic tale, but don’t expect it follow the trend of humanizing misunderstood villains. Blichfeldt makes sure there are plenty of bad guys and girls throughout this Norwegian Cinderella story, punctuated by grisly violence surprisingly close to what’s in the 17th Century French version of the fairy tale penned by Charles Perrault.

As her mother Rebekka (Ane Del Torp) is set to marry the wealthy Otto (Ralph Carlsson), braces-wearing, teenage gawk Elvira (Lea Myren, amazing) dreams of one day marrying handsome Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth). But not long after Mom, Elvira and sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) move into Otto’s manor, he drops dead and new stepsister Agnes (the awesomely named Thea Sofie Loch Næss) drops a bomb.

Otto was the one trying to marry for money. They’re broke.

You know the plan that’s hatched: Elvira has to marry Prince Julian. If she can prove herself to be the most beautiful and charming of the “noble virgins” assembled at the upcoming ball, Elvira can secure the family’s future. Neither physical imperfection nor that slut Agnes is going to get in Elvira’s way.

As Elvira learns that “beauty is pain,” Blichfeldt’s aesthetic recalls both Cronenberg and Fargeat, with wince-inducing procedures, the oozing of bodily fluids, and a proud, unflinching satirical lens. This is Blichfeldt’s reminder that these impossible beauty standards have a long history, as do slut shaming, compromised nobility and the limited options of desperation.

Plenty of ugliness to go around.

Myren carries the film with a transformational performance that parallels the impressive physical changes. Elvira arrives as a shy, impressionable child, but when she begins to resemble the required standard, the toll to keep it – while not quite as garish as in The Substance – is equally destructive.

The Ugly Stepsister is fierce, funny, gross and subversively defiant. But is one feature film enough to immediately put Blichfeldt on the watch list of cinema’s feminist hell raisers?

Yes. The shoe fits.

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I Dos and Don’ts

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The Wedding Banquet

by Hope Madden

Back in 1993, Ang Lee scored his first Academy attention when The Wedding Banquet was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. The marriage of convenience farce reimagined rom-com tropes and landed emotional hits thanks to nuanced direction and generous characterizations.

A generation later, director Andrew Ahn reimagines once again. His sweet film reexamines the same culture clash and romantic comedy tropes, this time with more of an insider’s viewpoint in an allegedly more progressive world.

Min (Han Gi-Chan) is a wealthy Korean man in the US, making art and living with his commitment phobic boyfriend, Chris (Bowen Yang). The couple stays in the guest house behind the home of their friends Lee (Lily Gladstone) and Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), long-committed partners living through the heartbreak, hope, and financial burden of IVF.

Min’s student visa is about to expire, and his grandmother (Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung) has decided Min needs to return to Korea and take his place in the family business.

So, Min decides to marry a sex worker…no, wait. That’s a different movie. No, when Chris refuses Min’s sincere marriage proposal, he proposes something different. He will pay for Lee and Angela’s IVF if Angela will marry him to keep him in the country.

What follows is a dear if too broad comedic fable about found family, acceptance, and forgiveness. There’s no way Ahn—working from a script co-written with Lee’s original writing collaborator, James Schamus—could have foreseen the sinister cloud that hangs over immigrants, IVF patients, gay marriage, indigenous women, the entire LGBTQ+ population, and essentially every human represented by a character in this film.

The Wedding Banquet already feels nostalgic for a time when disapproving grandparents and medical bills were the only things a gay couple had to worry about.

That aside, Gladstone, You-jung, and Ang Lee regular Joan Chen (as Angela’s mother) are true talents. They do what they can to bring depth to their roles.

Yang struggles with the dramatic needs of his character while Tran has trouble with the comedic, but there’s charm in the mess. Ahn conjures a bubbly, romantic confection and maybe that’s needed right now.

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Spies Like Us

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The Amateur

by Hope Madden

A lot had changed in black ops, terrorism and surveillance since 1981, when Robert Littell wrote the novel and film The Amateur. The Cold War gave way to a surveillance state where it’s even easier to believe that a guy from CIA’s encryption team could undermine their entire operation.

Rami Malek plays that guy, Charlie Heller. Malek can be an acquired taste, but he brings a believable fragility and oddball quality to Heller that suits the film. When his wife—a photographer in London for a conference—is killed by terrorists, Heller uses compromising intel he has on his department head to get the training he needs to find the four responsible.

Of course, it’s all a double cross, but maybe Heller’s smart enough to have predicted that?

Director James Hawes (One Life, TV’s Slow Horses) keeps the story one step ahead of the audience, building in just enough layers to satisfy without overwhelming.

Malek’s the key ingredient. He projects a vulnerability that makes the ridiculousness believable. His is an unselfconsciously gawky, awkward performance that never leans toward caricature or mockery.

A solid supporting cast including Julianne Nicholson, Holt McCallany, Jon Bernthal, Rachel Brosnahan and Laurence Fishburn help to elevate scenes of exposition or, worse still, naked sentimentality. The script from Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli boasts a somewhat nuanced view of tech-aided murder. It also contains ham-fisted red herrings and silly moments of audience pandering.

Are there leaps in logic? More than a Bourne, fewer than a Bond. It’s the kind of laid-back spy thriller we used to get in the ‘80s and ‘90s—no gorgeous humans jet setting, no big explosions, no breathless vehicular gimmickry. Just normal looking people trying to outsmart one another and an audience that’s fitting the puzzle together as quickly as we can.

The Amateur is no masterpiece. (You should really see Black Bag.) But it is a nice change of pace.

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Can You Hear Me Now?

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Drop

by Hope Madden

The thing about Drop, Christopher Landon’s new first date thriller, is that we’ve seen it before. Maybe not this exact scenario, but the idea. Go all the way back to 2002’s Phone Booth, when Joel Schumacher and a self-righteous sniper trapped Colin Farrell on a pay phone. Or back to 2014 and Drop co-writer Chris Roach’s extortion-by-text-in-the-sky thriller, Non-Stop.

The point has always been that, via our technology, we’re helplessly surveilled and those watching can pull strings we don’t want pulled. It can be effective because it mines our collective reality. And Landon and a game cast keep the cat-and-mouse antics about as believable as they can be.

Meghann Fahy (The Unbreakable Boy, White Lotus) is Violet, a single mom out on her first date since the death of her abusive husband. She leaves her precocious 5-year-old Toby (bespectacled Irish internet sensation Jacob Robinson) at home with her sister (Violett Beane) and heads to a downtown Chicago high rise for a pricy dinner with too-good-to-be-true Henry (Brandon Sklenar).

But before she can even taste that calamari appetizer, Violet’s phone starts pinging with messages, including a command to check her home security footage. If Violet doesn’t kill Henry, the masked man in her living room will kill Toby.

Landon (Freaky, Happy Death Day, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) has a strong track record with horror comedies, but Drop is not really either. It’s a tidy thriller, and though Landon’s instinct for humor gives the first date banter a charming quality, he can’t quite direct his way out of the script’s physical limitations and storytelling contrivance.

Almost, though. Landon gives the penthouse eatery a dizzying fishbowl quality. Between savvy editing and the cast’s commitment, tensions rise with gamesmanship that usually feels fairly authentic.

But then, a dramatic convenience reminds you that this is a movie, and that no human would react as the character is reacting if, indeed, a gun was pointed at their 5-year-old.

Still, Drop exceeds low expectations mainly on the charisma of the cast and two universal fears: technology and first dates.

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The Talented Monsieur Jérémie

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Misericordia

by Matt Weiner

It’s a familiar story in the sleepy French town of Saint-Martial. Traditional ways of life are being upended, like getting your fresh bread from the village baker instead of a large supermarket chain. Or spending the afternoon on the farm knocking back shots of milky pastis. Or seeking absolution from the local priest and becoming entwined in a psychosexual conspiracy that effortlessly weaves together morality, sex, violence and a laugh-out-loud penis sight gag.

… Make that a familiar noir thriller until Misericordia director and writer Alain Guiraudie puts his own assured stamp on it.

Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) returns home from Toulouse to attend the funeral of his former boss, Jean-Pierre. The widow Martine (Catherine Frot) knows how close the two were, and Jérémie stays with her as he entertains the idea of taking over the local bakery with Jean-Pierre gone.

Martine’s hot-headed son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand) resents how quickly Jérémie insinuates himself back into the village, and especially his apparent closeness with Martine. Jérémie and Vincent have an uneasy familiarity. And as Jérémie overstays his welcome, the menacing play-fighting between the two spills into a vicious confrontation in the woods. Jérémie, overtaken by a burst of passionate violence, murders Vincent and hides the body—but not without being seen by the village priest (Jacques Develay).

All this setup feels like the start of a light noir in the countryside, but Guiraudie delights in blowing up all expectations. What unfolds after the murder is an unnerving philosophical cover-up, where the lonely priest plays both confessor and emotional blackmailer to the unraveling Jérémie. In this stylized version of Saint-Martial, sexual identities run together as fluidly as Jérémie’s collapsing alibis, something the gendarmes have begun investigating with a persistence that is equal parts dogged and inept.

Guiraudie’s existential detours as Jérémie and his perhaps too-forgiving priest are serious, but Misericordia is also unexpectedly funny. From Jérémie’s fickle and deadpan sexual escapades across town to Develay’s arch attitudes toward crime and punishment, there’s more than a little twisted homage not only to the thriller side of Hitchcock but also to the ink-black sense of humor.

Jérémie’s desires, seemingly like those of everyone else in Saint-Martial, are unknowable to all but his conscience and God. It’s just the sort of moral predicament that calls for a good priest… if only Jérémie knew one in town he could trust.

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Boys to Men

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Sacramento

by George Wolf

“You would bail. I see it all over your face.”

First their first meeting on opposite sides of a serene California lake, Tallie (Maya Erskine) sizes up Rickey (Michael Anganaro) pretty well.

Anganaro’s instincts are just as sharp in Sacramento, only his second feature as writer/director after decades of acting gigs. It’s a witty combination of finely-drawn characters, consistently boasting a dry self-awareness that earns the LOLs.

Rickey favors socks with sandals, giving unlicensed psychological counseling, and milking sympathy from the semi-recent death of his father. Dropping in (literally, from a tree) on his buddy Glenn in L.A., Rickey suggests a spur-of-the-moment road trip to Sacramento – for old times sake!

But Glenn is a husband who out kicked his coverage and a neurotic soon-to-be father, trying to assemble cribs and hold on to his job while his pregnant wife Rosie (Kristen Stewart) exhibits the calm, pragmatic demeanor of an actual grownup. She’s patiently understanding of the boys’ self-important tomfoolery, and up the road they go.

Yes, there are some hi-jinx typical of road movies, but Anganaro’s dialog is always crisp and surprising enough to keep you engaged and curious. Both he and Cera delivering affecting performances that ground the characters enough to hilariously elevate what are essentially pretentious bouts of “I know you are but what am I?”

And why would Stewart sign on to just be the understanding wife at home? She wouldn’t, and Rosie is more than that. She and Tallie become nuanced, interesting characters essential to this journey, and the film would crumble without them and the turns from both Stewart and Erskine.

Anganaro also has a good sense of pacing, wisely keeping things moving quickly enough to wrap up before conveniences turn to contrivance.

Sacramento haș plenty of fun with arrested development – Glenn’s desperate phone calls to one of his old buddies are awkwardly hilarious. But the film’s heart comes from those moments when boys (and girls, too) start accepting the responsibilities of adulthood. It’s far from a new story, but these characters make it one worth revisiting.

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Audacity to Burn

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Thank You Very Much

by George Wolf

Watching Thank You Very Much, you can’t help but wonder how this might land for someone who didn’t live through the Andy Kaufman phenomenon. He was such a pop culture anomaly that even the best explanation wouldn’t completely clue in the uninitiated.

That’s a compliment to Kaufman’s fearless approach to comedy. And to director Alex Braverman’s credit, he assumes you’re coming to his film hoping for a better understanding of the maverick you remember.

Braverman, a veteran TV director and cinematographer, is blessed with some great archival footage, and some very personal interviews with Kaufman’s former girlfriend Lynne Marguiles and his partner in performance art hi-jinx, Bob Zmuda.

Kaufman’s greatest hits – from Mighty Mouse to Elvis to ice cream to Taxi to Tony Clifton and wrestling women – are all here, along with an acceptable summation for newbies about Kaufman’s goals as an entertainer.

From his start at the comedy clubs, Kaufman didn’t tell jokes. Instead, he wielded a brazen “audacity to burn stage time,” and gradually turned that into a quest to blur performance lines until his audience had only one reaction.

“Was that for real?”

It’s all a fine reminder of Kaufman’s unique legacy, but the film makes its best mark by deconstructing his motivations with as clear of a lens as we’re likely to get. We see a young boy deeply affected his grandfather’s death, a restless soul embracing transcendental meditation and a wrestling fan influenced by “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers.

Plus, we meet the real life inspiration for Latka Gravas!

Braverman also rolls out a succession of interviews with fellow comics, co-stars and admirers, though many of these are dated by fashion or hairstyle and appear more self-indulgent than essential. What isn’t stale is the sly way Braverman is able to make the obnoxious Clifton and his manufactured outrage seem pretty damn prescient.

Thank You Very Much.

Did you read that with Latka’s voice in you head? Then don’t miss this film.

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A Mother’s Burden

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Eric LaRue

by Hope Madden

The film Eric LaRue pairs two of modern cinema’s most talented and least appreciated actors: Judy Greer and Michael Shannon. Intriguingly, Shannon doesn’t appear onscreen. Instead, he makes his feature directorial debut with this emotionally raw drama about a mother’s spiral after her son murders three of his classmates.

As we meet Janice (Greer), she’s struggling just to make it through a grocery store when she runs into Pastor Steve (Paul Sparks, pitch perfect). The dynamic these two actors and their director develop in this crucial scene sets the tone for a movie unafraid to get messy and stay there.

Pastor Steve wants to help. He sincerely does. He doesn’t want to think about what happened, doesn’t want to blame anybody for anything, doesn’t want to rehash the ugliness of the incident. He wants to help this woman clean her wounds and end the infection, but definitely does not want her ripping off any scabs to get there.

Likewise, across town at the more evangelical Redeemer church, Janice’s husband Ron (Alexander Skarsgård) is being wooed into an even cleaner and more complete erasure of his pain by giving his burden to Jesus.

Janice is just not sure any of this helps. And even if it does, it’s not the help she wants.

Shannon directs a script by Brett Neveu, the screen adaptation of his own stage play. It’s a tough story, and one that’s been covered by some outstanding indie films: Fran Kranz’s 2021 chamber piece Mass, and Lynne Ramsay’s 2011 masterpiece We Need to Talk About Kevin ranking among the best.  

Eric LaRue leans closer to Mass in that it examines the influence of religion on the grief, shame, and anger left after such a crime. But Shannon mines his material for a different outcome. A single moment of surreal absurdism (in a booth at Cracklin’ Jane’s restaurant) underscores the film’s cynicism concerning the good-faith efforts of religion to end suffering.

Skarsgård breaks your heart as an awkward, broken man trying desperately to move past his pain. A supporting cast including Tracy Letts, Lawrence Grimm, Kate Arrington, Nation Sage Henrikson, and especially Annie Parisse, delivers precise and authentic turns. But it’s Greer whose powerful performance—full of anger, shame, regret, longing, disappointment and most of all weariness—plays across her face in ways that seem achingly real.

Not everything works, but every performance is remarkable and there is bravery and power behind the message that life and death are messy things.