Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Bubblegum Noir

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Marmalade

by Christie Robb

Newbie prisoner, Baron (Joe Keery, Stranger Things), needs to be back on the street by three p.m. Luckily, his new cellmate is a veteran at all things illegal, including successful jail breaks. And he’s bored. If Baron can spin a compelling enough yarn about why he needs to make his three o’clock meeting, Otis (Aldis Hodge, Black Adam) will get him there on time.

Veteran character actor Keir O’Donnell takes the helm to write/direct his first feature with Marmalade.  And his casting is pretty great. Keery’s Baron shares a lot of the qualities that made his Steve from Stranger Things so much fun—great hair, the charisma of a golden retriever puppy, and a relentless devotion to his loved ones.

Here, Keery’s the caregiver of a bedridden mamma whose prescription medication just jumped up in price. All seems bleak until Marmalade (Camila Morrone, Daisy Jones and the Six) rolls into town. She’s got the pink hair, tattoos, and unconventional fashion sense of a manic pixie dream girl. But she’s also got a gun and a plan to rob a bank, so more a noir femme fatale who shops at vintage stores.

Marmalade is a little bit Forrest Gump and a little bit Natural Born Killers and a lot bit of another movie that I won’t mention because…spoilers. But you’ll figure it out before the credits roll.

It’s a stylish movie with good chemistry between cast members and some fun twists. However, the script deserved another few drafts before filming. In order to pull off what the film is trying to do, you need a tightly woven script that works the first time without giving away the ending, and that holds up to multiple viewings once you know. Here, there were plot holes as big as those in the hot pink fishnet tights that Marmalade so often wears.  

But if you don’t mind that, Marmalade is pretty sweet.

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King’s Ransom

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The Promised Land

by George Wolf

Just going by its trailer, you might not expect The Promised Land to have much in common with Saltburn, but the similar themes are there. So while there’s no shocking bathwater here – or much bathing at all – there is a sweeping historical epic of one man’s quest for social climbing.

The man is Ludvig von Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen), a longtime captain in the German army who returns home to Denmark in 1755. Desiring both wealth and honor, he visits the court of King Frederik V with a promise to bring the King what no one else has managed to deliver: settlements on the Danish heath.

Ludvig promises to tame the barren land in exchange for a noble title, a manor and some servants. And to seal the deal, Ludvig will finance the farming project with his own military pension.

Battling the elements and the roaming outlaws will be tough enough, but Ludvig also must face the wrath of sadistic county judge De Schinkel (Simon Beenebjerg), who wants to claim the land as his own and make good on his promise to Ludvig that “life is chaos.”

Director and co-writer Nikolaj Arcel adapts Ida Jessen’s historical novel as a harrowing tale that consistently reveals new layers throughout its two compelling hours.

Mikkelsen – teaming again with Arcel after 2020’s terrific Riders of Justice – is perfection as the battle-tested soldier with steely-eyed dreams of nobility. Ludvig’s arc plays out patiently, but as the Captain takes in two runaway peasant farmers (Amanda Collin, Morten Hee Anderson), a well-meaning pastor (Gustav Lindh) and an unwanted child (Melina Hagberg), Mikkelsen ensures the awakened humanity feels well-earned and real.

And Arcel keeps the stakes rising to thrilling effect. Cinematographer Rasmus Videbæk’s majestic frames serve and volley with the twists of the screenplay to mine drama that can be as subtle as a framed patch of dirt or as overt as the triangle that springs from Schinkel’s intended fiancée Edel (Kristine Kujath Thorp) eyeing Ludvig as the man who can save her.

What price ambition? It remains an intriguing question, whether you’re surrounding it with delicious ultra-modern pulp or re-imagining true events from hundreds of years past. The Promised Land takes the road less adorned, forging a rousing tale of savagery, revenge and fulfillment that will not be denied.

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Binary Schminary

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Fitting In

by Christie Robb

It’s hard enough being a typical teenage girl. Then, layer on being the new girl in school. With a single mom who is taking on side hustles to pay for college tuition and breast reconstructive surgery post mastectomy. Then, throw in a cute boy who has cheekbones that could cut granite who wants to go all the way, and a charismatic nonbinary hottie.

And, just when you’ve found a ride-or-die BFF who will accompany you to the gynecologist for a birth control consult, you find out your reproductive organs decided to develop atypically. Instead of a canal you’ve got a dimple.

Fitting everything in just got a whole lot more complicated.

Writer/director Molly McGlynn’s background in TV comedy (she’s directed episodes of Grown-ish and Grace and Frankie) serves her well in this feature. She can find the right balance of pathos and humor inherent in stuff like using a series of medical dildos to DIY a vagina.

The movie is also semi-autobiographical and it always helps to write what you know.

Maddie Ziegler (West Side Story) is perhaps a little bit more comfortable with delivering McGlynn’s one-liners than she is surrendering to the emotional depths. Her mom, played by Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek) is a gem, sparkling with a wider emotional range. But Ziegler does an absolutely fantastic job conveying the body horror of being a newbie in stirrups acting like it’s normal to have a chit chat while some dude you just met with no bedside manner tries to plumb your hidden depths with a chilly metal device.

Fitting In is sex positive and fun and smart and silly. It explores the way that binary notions of sex and gender are limiting. It can actually pull off opening with two quotes—one from Simone de Beauvoir and one from Diablo Cody (writer of 2007s Juno and the upcoming Lisa Frankenstein). And the flick’s  got the absolute best visual metaphors soundtracked to Peaches’ 2000 jam “Fuck the Pain Away”.

Seriously.

New In Theaters, Shudder Premiere

Yellow

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Dario Argento Panico

by Hope Madden

In 2019, documentarian Simone Scafidi turned his attention to Italian horror filmmaker Lucio Fulci for the film Fulci for Fake. It seems only fitting, then, that he shine a spotlight on Italy’s most revered horror maestro – and a bit of an artistic adversary of Fulci’s – Dario Argento.

Panico follows Argento into seclusion in a hotel where he hopes to finish his latest screenplay. From there, Scafidi interviews the director as well as his oldest daughter, Fiore, essentially ruining the whole point of Argento’s stay at the hotel, which makes the setup seem odd from the start.

Argento knows what’s up, though, posing thoughtfully with beautiful architecture and charming Scafidi with the odd reminiscence. These moments pepper a chronological throughline of archival footage and movie segments as well as contemporary interviews with family and other filmmakers.

Few genre fans would argue Argento’s influence or importance in cinema. Gushing tributes from Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn and Gaspar Noé (who cast Argento in the lead for his 2021 drama Vortex) offer delightful glimpses into just what an influence he has been.

Not every opinion is positive – one friend of Argento’s even articulates the plain truth that the maestro’s Nineties output lacked all art.

What Panico lacks are follow-up questions. A number of provocative comments from interviewees seemed like opportunities to hear from Argento on the matter, and yet at no point does Scafidi dig in. This is most confounding during a fairly lengthy interview with Argento’s younger daughter, Asia.

The star of six of her father’s films, beginning with Trauma when she was 16, Asia Argento has been the center of a great deal of speculation and debate concerning her father as a filmmaker and as a parent. And though she spins each unusual parenting or directorial choice as if it’s natural, positive, or wise, most of the time it clearly is not. In fact, an entire (and far more interesting) look at who Dario Argento is and what we should make of his movies could be carved out of just her interview, had Scafidi double checked any of it with her dad.

Nope. Instead, Dario sits across a table from Fiore. She asks him how he managed to be such an amazing dad, always doting on his two daughters. He says that’s just how a person goes about being a father.

I’m not bothered by a superficial doc that just points out why a filmmaker managed to leave such a remarkable legacy in a single genre. But if you’re going to tease us with actual information, choosing not to address any of that information makes for a very frustrating viewing experience.

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Barbarian at the Gates of Hell

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She Is Conann

by Hope Madden

What did I just watch?

It’s called She Is Conann, and it defies simple summarization.

French filmmaking provocateur Bertrand Mandico would like to take you on a strange journey. Conann, played throughout this experimental epic by six different actors (Claire Duburcq, Christa Théret, Sandra Parfait, Agata Buzek, Nathalie Richard and Françoise Brion) is no ordinary barbarian. But is she the most barbaric of all barbarians? At her death, her life is recounted to the Queen of Hell to make that determination.

Who is telling the tale? Rainer, a dog man (played by a woman, Elina Löwensohn) who’d been Conann’s near-constant companion since her earliest days of barbarism. They are, ahem, close.

This weird fever dream is told mostly in black and white with filth and sparkles, which makes the seemingly random pops of giallo-esque color more striking. We meet Conann at 15 in what is closest to the barbarian concept of the Schwarzenegger series that gives Mandico’s film its name. All swords and mud and conquest, the stage is set for vengeance to grip the orphan’s mind and set her on a path to rule all.

But her first real foe turns out to be herself, as she is forever murdered when visited by the version of Conann from one decade hence. This allows Mandico to leapfrog around time, creating bizarre and intoxicatingly staged eras that mix queer iconography with punk and disco, then symbols of conquest from the Roman Empire to Nazi Germany.

Rainer is always there, flashing photos as both witness and artist, one of dozens of ways the film links art with consumerism, artist with consumption. (Indeed, eventually the link is quite literal.)

Easter eggs to Naked Lunch, Blade Runner and many more, while fun, also embellish each era’s aesthetic. The result is morbid and macabre, grotesque and cynical and of course, strangely beautiful.

She Is Conann drags a bit, feeling every second of its 105-minute running time. Some eras grow more tedious than others, but a fresh and entirely bizarre surprise is around every bend. This is not a film you leave thinking, Oh, I saw that coming. The result is more of a bewildering if absolutely entertaining WTF?

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Freeze Frame

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Scrambled

by George Wolf

There’s an old adage about comedians making up jokes to hide real pain. It’s clear that for writer/director/star Leah McKendrick, there’s a very real struggle at the heart of Scrambled, and her film is better for not letting us forget that.

McKendrick plays Nellie, a 34 year-old perennial bridesmaid who clings to the “single bitches 4 life!” mantra, even as more members of her crew (including SNL’s Ego Nwodim and the always welcome June Diane Raphael) start settling down and getting pregnant.

Nellie has to face up to some harsh biological facts. Her mind and body can remain ready to mingle – but her fertility has a shelf life and the clock is ticking. So while she auditions a string of suitors from “The Nice Guy” to “The Prom King” to simply “Nope,” Nellie consults a amusingly deadpan doctor (Feodor Chin) about freezing her eggs.

Or, as Nellie’s Dad (a priceless Clancy Brown) calls it, “millennial feminist voodoo.”

McKendrick scores some big laughs with the family’s reaction to Nellie’s family planning, but this is an an issue that is very real for the first time feature director, and plenty of women like her. And beneath the jokes about Nellie’s dating habits and her parents’ longing for the return of her ex, McKendrick makes sure we see Nellie in fully formed terms.

She’s a grown ass woman choosing when and how she may want to have children. And in doing so, Nellie’s forced to navigate the social, physical, and financial barriers that can leave her feeling punished for embracing her own journey.

But Nellie moves forward – with both smiles and middle fingers. McKendrick’s recipe for Scrambled finds a nice balance of flavors, and we get a full-flavored dish of empowering humor.

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Garden Party

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The Zone of Interest

by Hope Madden

Jonathan Glazer takes his time between features. It’s been a full decade since his magnificent sci-fi thriller Under the Skin, which itself came 9 years after another somber piece of science fiction, 2004’s Birth. That makes the four-year span since his feature debut, the darkly ingenious Sexy Beast, seem insignificant.

But there’s nothing insignificant about Glazer or his remarkable spate of compelling, surprising, thought-provoking films, capped off with his latest, The Zone of Interest.

Told primarily in long shots that dwarf the characters within the larger physical context, Glazer unveils casual evil.

It’s taken a few years, but Hedwig Höss (an astonishing Sandra Hüller) has built a little paradise in the home she and husband Rudolph (Christian Friedel) acquired when he was made commandant of Auschwitz.

Between the house and camp is a large wall. On this side of the wall, lovely, meticulously cared for gardens, a pool, a green house, a dog frolicking here and there, and five healthy blond children. Just beyond the wall but visible in nearly every exterior shot in Glazer’s chilling film, the camp’s incinerator buildings.

Though the Höss family thrives, equally oblivious and complacent concerning the boundless inhumanity that surrounds them, Glazer refuses to let the viewer miss its presence. That disconnect is the icy heart of The Zone of Interest.

By setting the story within a minor family drama – Rudolph is being transferred because of the skill with which he manages Auschwitz and Hedwig is loath to leave the home she’s so painstakingly built – Glazer says more about the insurmountable horror of the Holocaust than most. He dramatizes nothing. Seeing how easily, how thoughtlessly and even eagerly human beings can benefit from incomprehensible inhumanity provides new, highly relevant perspective.

Hüller stuns in a performance that’s never showy yet so deeply vile it’s hard to shake. She’s not alone. Glazer’s full ensemble excels.

He adorns his tale with experimental flourishes that may be intended to cause discord, to provide the audience a moment to pause and reflect on the comfort with which human beings can carry out evil. These moments – except a late film glimpse into modern day Auschwitz – rarely achieve the same impact as the narrative.

It’s a minor misstep in a film so assured and authentic.

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Forget Me Not

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Anselm

by George Wolf

Give a few minutes to Wim Wenders’s Anselm, and you may be inspired to make up some new words to describe the experience.

Like awesommersive. Or historiography.

The film wows you from the outset, as Wenders (Pina, Wings of Desire, Paris Texas) follows German artist Anselm Kiefer around his studio. The use of 3-D (and 6k resolution!) isn’t there to hurl objects from the screen to your eyeholes, but instead to surround you with artistic vision that is often as massive in scale as it is in meaning.

While Wenders does present some layers of biography, it’s clear that the overarching purpose here is to document Kiefer’s work and the mission that continues to drive his “protest against forgetting.” For decades, Kiefer has stood as a provocateur intent on exposing the “open wound of German history,” and Wenders has crafted a mesmerizing ode that delivers an appropriately mixed media aesthetic.

Archival footage permits the older and younger Anselm to become one. We hear his declarations of seeing through the world through a different lens, and then witness the creative process that convinces us it is undoubtedly so.

And even if you don’t know Kiefer from Sutherland, Anselm is a big screen experience that is not to be missed. As much about the art as it is about the artist, Anselm is an unforgettable journey into what makes both so necessary and vital.

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History Lesson

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The Settlers

by Hope Madden

It’s amazing how often the beauty of unconquered land is met with the ugliness of conquest in film, as deceptively tranquil images of vast, open space underscore the heinous brutality of colonialism.

Co-writer/director Felipe Gálvez Haberle (with a massive assist from cinematographer Simone D’Arcangelo) draws you in with the same aesthetic for his gripping and ruggedly gorgeous indictment of Chile’s history in The Settlers.

An artful and unflinching portrait of atrocities inflicted on South America’s Ona people, The Settlers is a historical indictment not unlike Jennifer Kent’s 2018 study in tension and colonial horror, The Nightingale.

Three men set off across a wealthy landowner’s vast property in 1901: one Scottish soldier (Mark Stanley), one Texan gun-for-hire (Benjamin Westfall), and one native tracker (Camilo Arancibia). Their stated mission is to clear a path for the landowner’s sheep to the ocean. Their actual goal, as tracker Segundo would soon realize, is the sweeping slaughter of all indigenous people on the land.

Act one keeps its distance. There’s little dialog and scenes are mostly shot from afar, Chile’s inhospitable vastness on display. Act two brings the camera and us a little closer to the action, and the cinematic vision morphs from art-Western to something closer to horror.

The third act pivot feels more jarring. The austerity of a chamber piece sets the film on its side, but Gálvez Haberle never loses control. Indeed, it is control itself he is depicting, and the effect is chilling.

These bold shifts in structure and tone do less to undermine the tension than to alter it, set it in another direction. The safer Haberle makes the situation feel, the more institutional the horror becomes. When capitalism, politics and religion work together to redirect and rewrite history, the ugliest things are possible.

Arancibia’s performance is mainly silent, the horror of the unprovoked slaughter registering little by little across his guarded expression. Even more stunning is Mishell Guaña as a indigenous woman who becomes part of the expedition. Guaña wears a lifetime of distrust and injustice so wearily, so angrily on her face.

The true story of one nation’s history of genocide, The Settlers is unsettling universal.  What Gálvez Haberle does so effectively is take it to the next step, where a nation’s brutally criminal past becomes its sanctified, sanitized history.

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Wrong Place, Wrong Time

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Bad Hombres

by Brandon Thomas

Darkly funny neo-noirs hit my cinematic sweet spot more often than not. The satisfaction of laughing at outrageous bursts of violence or complex plans that go awry is second to none. And throughout these entertaining narratives are classic aesthetic tropes that give filmmakers the opportunity to lean into equally satisfying visuals.

While the plot of Bad Hombres never enters complex territory, the characters and genre beats are more than enough to make up for it. 

Felix (Diego Tinoco) has just arrived in the U.S. from Ecuador. Looking to send money home to his impoverished family, Felix and his cousin go to the local hardware store in the hopes that they can pick up work as day laborers. After his cousin is picked for a job but he isn’t, Felix is approached by a twitchy Australian (Luke Hemsworth, TV’s Westworld, Next Goal Wins) with an offer for an easy day’s work. Also on the job is gruff handyman Alfonso (Hemky Madera, Satanic Hispanics, Spider-Man: Homecoming).

Felix and Alfonso quickly realize the gig is more than basic labor after arriving to the job site to find several bodies and the Australian’s wounded partner (Paul Johansson, TV’s One Tree Hill).

Early on, Bad Hombres feels like it’s going to be your standard direct-to-streaming action thriller. The title alone doesn’t do much to dispel that initial gut reaction, either. However, once Hemsworth’s borderline lunatic character appears on screen, the dynamic shifts ever so slightly in favor of something a bit more interesting – and dare I say, chaotic. Director John Stalberg Jr. wisely paces himself and lets the crazy of Bad Hombres blossom naturally. 

While it’s fair to say that Bad Hombres is a lower budget film, that never really comes across on screen. Stalberg’s direction is methodical and focused with a strong emphasis on visual storytelling. Despite having moments of explosive action, the film mostly consists of scenes of people having conversations. Even in these more “mundane” moments, the film’s energy never drops.

Along with Stalberg’s direction, the other secret ingredient in Bad Hombres is the cast. Madera is especially notable as the unapproachable Alfonso. As the film progresses and the layers of Alfonso’s backstory is revealed, Madera’s performance becomes so much more nuanced and exciting.

Hemsworth is having a blast playing a murderous madman who likes to portray himself as more politically progressive than he probably is. Even the always reliable Thomas Jane (The Punisher, The Mist), Tyrese Gibson (Fast & the Furious series), and Nick Cassavettes (best known for directing The Notebook) pop up in supporting roles. 

Bad Hombres is a lean and mean bit of modern day neo-noir that manages to deliver well past its budget and defy expectations all at the same time.