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Reviews of what’s out now

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Self Defense

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Saint Omer

by George Wolf

“I am not the responsible party.”

Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda) admits that she deliberately left her 15-month old daughter on the water’s edge to die, alone at the mercy of the tide. But Mlle. Coly tells a court in Saint Omer, France that she is not to blame.

Rama (Kayije Kagame), a literature professor and novelist, has made the trip from Paris to attend Coly’s trial. Rama’s plan is to adapt the case into an updated version of the ancient myth of Medea (calculated revenge against an unfaithful husband). But Rama is now four months pregnant, and like Coly, she is a woman of Senegalese descent in a mixed-race relationship. And the more Coly defends herself, the more Rama feels a deepening kinship.

After a string of documentaries, writer/director Alice Diop moves into narrative features for the first time with her eye for authenticity intact. Coly’s case is based on an actual trial that Diop felt moved to attend in person, and she wrote Rama’s character to reflect her own experience.

Diop’s approach is strictly observational, and mostly anchored in the courtroom where Coly’s story is told, rebutted and debated. And though films with more tell and less show often suffer with emotional connection, Diop mines two impressive lead performances for resonance that comes from the things that are not being said.

Perspectives shift frequently, and an emotionally complex conversation emerges that begs for humanity in the midst of an unthinkable act. But no matter who may be speaking, or what side they may be on, we feel the bond growing between Rama and Coly, which makes Diop’s one overt camera move in the finale all the more worthy.

There is a judge in this French courtroom, but Saint Omer invites us to sit on the jury. It is a thoughtful and sensitive discussion that may surprise you. And it is one worth having.

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Come Upstairs

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Skinamarink

by George Wolf

(Tom Hanks SNL voice) “My name is Kyle Edward Ball…and I’m going to scare the HELL out of YOU!”

And you know what? He just might do it.

Be extra prepared if the title Skinamarink reminds you of those fun singalongs from Sharon, Lois & Bram. Because Ball’s brand of nightmare fuel taps into the very essence of childhood fears, exploiting those exposed nerves with a committed resolve we haven’t seen since Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man.

Is it safe? It is not.

Ball’s premise is brilliant simplicity. It’s 1995, and two young children, Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault) and Kevin (Lucas Paul), wake in the night to find they are alone, with the windows and doors in their house suddenly gone. In an instant, the stakes are familiar – but not because you’ve seen this before.

It’s because there’s probably some version of this nightmare in your past. You were just a kid, separated from your parents and trying in vain to reach them or call out for help, or maybe just escape.

Remember how scared you were? Ball and cinematographer Jamie McRae do, and they twist that knife again and again for 100 slightly bloated minutes of dark, disorienting dread.

Cinematography and sound design are intertwined in an analog, cathode-ray aesthetic that recalls vintage, grainy VHS. The children whisper to each other (“Where do you think Dad is? I don’t know.”) as they wander from room to room, with Ball’s camera never allowing you one second of relief.

All through this fright night, familiar sources of comfort such as toys and cartoons turn eerily sinister, accentuating the feeling that it’s not just these kids that are in peril, it is childhood itself. POV is often at floor level, and then tight into a corner of the ceiling or high above the room and rising. You squint in the direction of the children’s flashlight, trying in vain to decipher anything about the house that will give you some sense of its layout, and you strain to separate the cracks of white noise from that deeper voice speaking to the children.

Come upstairs. Look under the bed. Close your eyes.

Ball started down this harrowing hallway by filming 3-4 minute short films of the actual dreams described by viewers of his YouTube channel. Some two years ago, his 29-minute short Heck emerged as the wonder of primal fear that inspired Skinamarink. And though it is a bit disappointing that the single most bone-chilling (and to be fair, most explanatory) moment of the short didn’t make it in the feature, Ball’s $15,000 budget buys much more killer than filler.

More than just nightmarish, this is a literal nightmare onscreen. And the intimate nature of nightmares means that the film’s patient, psychological assault is likely to bring out the “nothing happens!” barbs from those seeking more universally visceral thrills. But for others, the whispers of Skinamarink will hit like a sonic boom.

And they will be hard to shake.

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Hard Where

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Human Resources

by Tori Hanes

Are you one of those unfortunate movie-goers cursed with the gift of common sense? Do you find yourself balling your fists until your palms bleed, cheeks flushed, screaming at your screen: “why don’t you just LEAVE, dammit!” If so, Human Resources may not be the most enjoyable viewing experience for you.

An important caveat to this conversation is the semi-spectacular circumstances surrounding the film’s creation: first-time director Braden Swope wrote and presumably directed this film at the ripe age of 19. When I – and perhaps you – conjure the hazy memories of those formative years, the image of writing, directing, and editing a feature film doesn’t ring familiar. And the competence with which the feature is shot and edited is reason for praise. Kudos given where kudos are due.

Unfortunately, those may be the only kudos Human Resources receives in this review. Almost all the film’s shortcomings can be boiled to one issue: jagged, uneven exploration of tone. Demonic happenings in a creepy family hardware store headed by a clueless coward (Hugh McCrae Jr. playing protagonist Sam Coleman) – this plot synopsis sounds like a lobbed softball ready to orbit into a campy homerun. Sadly, the film is never able to reach that altitude. Instead, it dances ever so delicately around camp’s sharp edges, cutting itself while attempting entry. 

Without a playful side, the story begins to disintegrate into sickeningly serious – and of course, a tale this absurd requires overarching lightness to remain authentic. When the film loses whatever small touch of camp it had, fluorescent light blasts over its many flaws: a silly-but-not-endearing script, often comically bad acting, and obvious story holes. Without the backbone of camp, Human Resources becomes a flaccid mass. 

Human Resources cashes any moment of audience intrigue as permission to veer the wrong way down the road. As the intricate mystery begins to come together in a semi-satisfying way, the film adds on an additional 30 minutes that suffocates the momentum. An unseen twist is teased, and the reveal launches audiences back into eye-roll territory. When yin swallows yang, all that’s left is an unspectacular circle.

If you’re going to invest almost 2 hours in a modern horror flick, pick up something like Ready Or Not. Human Resources will fill you with all of the dread, none of the camp.

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Aimless Butterflies and Deluded Bees

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My Father Muhammad Ali: The Untold Story

by Daniel Baldwin

What becomes of the child of one of the most famous people in the world? What’s it like to have a father who you never really knew, because he was constantly on the road? What’s it like to have a mother that chose the fortune & glory of her husband’s life on the road over you? These are hard questions that this documentary is asking. Ones with very tough answers.

The title points toward a documentary focused on an untold side of Muhammad Ali’s life, but the actual film itself is almost entirely focused on the current life of one of his children, 50-year-old Muhammad Ali Jr. Junior has lived through decades of drug addiction, harassment, abandonment, financial issues, marital strife, etc. This is about him looking back at the trials, tribulations, and mistakes of his own life, in comparison to those of his iconic father.

Others are interviewed throughout – sometimes about Ali, sometimes about Junior – but Junior himself is the primary storyteller. He is an unreliable narrator; constantly dishing out his version of events and frequently dropping into unprompted impressions of his father as a defensive coping mechanism whenever his own faults are focused on too closely for his liking. It’s rather heartbreaking.

If that sounds compelling, it is, at least on paper. The filmmakers never seem to settle on any sort of thematic throughline for what they are showcasing, leaving the narrative (or lack thereof) being spun before us to just meander along in a highly segmented fashion. Because of this, the finished work feels less like a film and more like a miniseries that has been chopped down to feature-length.

The filmmakers know that Junior is often deceiving them, as well as himself, but outside of a few moments with a therapist, he is never called on it. Nor are enough witnesses to the contrary present to fully illustrate this. The sheer lack of voices from his early life leaves us with an unclear picture of his past. Context is key and this film is sorely lacking it.

There’s also the matter of his best friend/manager, who the filmmakers clearly do not entirely trust, but once again, they never bother to fully interrogate that. If they were intentionally leaving room for interpretation, they left too much. In the end, the final question is less “Are the sins of the father repeated by the son?” and more “Why does this film exist?”

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A Signature Challenge

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The Seven Faces of Jane

by Christie Robb

The Seven Faces of Jane is an experimental film made using the technique of “exquisite corpse,” an approach developed by surrealist artists in which a piece is made by multiple people.  Each artist contributes a part of the whole without knowing what the other artists are doing. 

Here, eight directors collaborated to make a film in which most scenes were created by directors largely ignorant of what the other directors were contributing. Each director knew where their scene would appear in the timeline of the film and was given instructions as to the setting and major event to take place.  Otherwise, they were given total creative freedom.

It’s a bit like the restaurant wars part of Top Chef, where contestants try to create a pop-up restaurant with a cohesive concept but each is responsible for one dish and must use it to articulate their entire cooking philosophy—to attempt to stand out and “put themselves on the plate.” This is usually fun and dramatic and results in some…inconstancies in the diners’ experience.  Stuff happens like three chefs will collaborate to make a soul food restaurant while the fourth serves up an Asian dish with a chiffonade of collard greens on the top as a superficial nod to the overall concept.

The Seven Faces of Jane generally works in the same manner. It’s fun to go if you are in on the concept and like seeing what professionals can do when faced with a novel challenge. But if you were just a hungry person looking for a good meal, you might lack the patience for this sort of thing.

Gillian Jacobs stars as the titular Jane and directs both the opening and closing frames of the story in which Jane drops her daughter off/picks her up at sleepaway camp. The other pieces explore, with varying degrees of success, who Jane is outside of her role as “mom.” Jacobs’s presence does a lot to maintain a generally melancholy throughline.

The outlier, the General Tso amongst the mac and cheese,  is the first scene inside the frame, “Jane2”, by Gia Coppola. This one reads as an homage to Guy Ritchie films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but with more surrealist elements. It’s weird and makes you think that the movie is heading off in a certain direction, which in the next scene, it just…doesn’t.  But, as “Jane2” occurs so early in the film and is so different from the rest, the jarring nature of it helps establish the kind of Frankenstein’s creation that is being brought to life. To place it elsewhere in the movie’s timeline would have been a mistake.

Not that there aren’t other weird scenes. There’s one where Jane is called in by her agent to audition for a role in a mausoleum where the casting directors mostly seem interested in what her uvula looks like and how she bleeds. There’s another scene that features a lengthy modern dance sequence.  It’s just that these scenes kinda flow better.

Ken Jeong makes his directorial debut in “The One Who Got Away.” Here Jacobs stars opposite Joe McHale and they get to reprise the chemistry and sharp banter that made them so fun to watch in Community. Overall, The Seven Faces of Jane is a fun experiment, and a great way for Jacobs to show her range, but something that a very small audience will likely be into. If you are just looking for a cohesive story to take you out of yourself for a couple of hours, you are probably better served elsewhere.

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The Royal Treatment

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Corsage

by Hope Madden

Neither hero worship nor maudlin tale of objectification, Corsage delivers a daring reimagining of the life of Empress Elisabeth of Hungary, played with mischievous relish by Vicky Krieps.

This is hardly the first fanciful reworking of a historical biopic. Director Pablo Larraín has reconsidered two such lives as tragic cinematic poems – 2021’s Spencer and 2016’s Jackie. Just last year, Andrew Dominik turned America’s most recognizable icon into the object of punishment porn (Blonde). While two of those films are lovely and one is unwatchable, it took filmmaker Marie Kreutzer to reimagine one iconic life without simplifying the tale’s heroine to a tragic beauty to pity.

Kreutzer’s year-in-the-life is fictional, though Empress Elisabeth was certainly real. Her presence clearly influences this picture, but Kreutzer’s fantasy – replete with the most gloriously misplaced modern songs – looks askew at the renowned and misunderstood beauty.

As Sofia Coppola did with her empathetic and under-appreciated portrait Marie Antoinette, Kreutzer and Krieps establish the startling aloneness facing a royal woman, particularly a foreign sovereign married into royalty abroad. Krieps excels in particular during scenes where Elisabeth struggles to leverage what power is available to her. The audacity of Elisabeth’s behavior unveils a fiery joy and brittle vulnerability in Krieps’s performance.

Wonderfully refreshing are the vanity and selfishness that are allowed to creep into the portrait. Corsage’s hero is no saint. She’s a free spirit to be admired, as well as a self-centered brat willing to require the sacrifice from others she’s disinterested in making herself.

Here again, Krieps is a superstar. Elisabeth’s flaws are outrageous, her strengths enviable, her oppression great. In Krieps’s hands, the composite is an endlessly compelling conundrum, as frustrating as she is fascinating.    

The film sees power as freedom and acknowledges how little of it there is for women, even women who seem to have it all. In the end, it’s the film’s and Krieps’s humanity ­that make the final moment of freedom feel earned and victorious rather than fraught with compromise.

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Keep On Truckin’

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Candy Land

by Hope Madden

Candy Land is a surprise, and it’s not for everyone. This is grim stuff, but writer/director John Swab’s truck stop horror also delivers an unusual story hiding inside some same old, same old.

Remy (Olivia Luccardi) catches the eye of Sadie (Sam Quartin), one of the “lot lizards” selling their carnal wares at a bible belt truck stop. Remy’s part of a religious group here to help Sadie, Riley (Eden Brolin), Liv (Virginia Rand) and Levi (Owen Campbell) find salvation. Instead, Remy – cast out from the cult – finds Sadie, eventually deciding to learn the trade in exchange for a place to live.

Hard-right evangelicals rarely make a positive impression in a horror movie, and sex workers tend to become either heart-tugging martyrs or naked corpses (often both). To his credit, Swab has something else in mind, and while you would not call it pleasant, it’s almost refreshing.

Candy Land avoids preachiness, finding depth and humanity without condescension, both for the evangelicals and the lot lizards. There’s a sense of camaraderie among those on the job, and the naturalistic, terribly human performances sell that.

Campbell (X, My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To), in particular, shines with a turn so full of tenderness, playfulness and optimism that you hold your breath every time he’s onscreen- lest something awful happens to him.

It does. In fact, at the risk of spoiling anything but in favor of helping viewers avoid triggers, Campbell’s Levi is subjected to an especially brutal and troubling rape sequence that’s part and parcel of a film loaded with graphic sexuality and violence, often side by side. But never once is the victimization filmed to titillate, if that helps.

For its many successes, the film often feels like a rather superficial exercise in brutality if only because none of the characters have real arcs. Things end for each character essentially where they began. A provocative but undercooked B-story involving a perversely paternal police officer (William Baldwin, with his most interesting performance in years) doesn’t help.

Candy Land is a tough film to recommend for a number of reasons, but it’s worthwhile viewing if only because Swab upends every expectation, instead taking us inside a horror grounded in something surprisingly human.

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Daughters Out, Guns Out

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The Old Way

by George Wolf

Nic Cage brings a Brimley-approved mustache and an itchy trigger finger to the The Old Way as Colton Briggs, meanest lowdown killer the Wild West ever saw.

But after an opening standoff that leaves plenty men dead and one young eyewitness without a father, director Brett Donowho jumps ahead twenty years, when the ‘stache is gone and…

…And a good woman has tamed this outlaw into a family man?

That’s right. Colton and his wife Ruth (Kerry Knuppe) run the Briggs Mercantile, while their pensive daughter Brooke (Ryan Kiera Armstrong from American Horror Story and last year’s Firestarter) looks for ways to challenge her smarts and curiosity.

So while Carl W. Lucas’s script scrapes together just enough reason for Colton to take a turn walking Brooke to school…

…Some gunslingers with an old score to settle pay a call to Mrs. Briggs, giving Mr. Briggs a mighty good reason to get out his guns and seek vengeance?

Right again. And though Ruth tells James McAllister (Noah Le Gros) and his crew that “you boys have woke up the devil!”, a face-to-face showdown is just what McAllister is after.

Obviously, nothing here is breaking any ground in the genre, as the real draw is Cage playing a grizzled killer in the Old West. He’s fine, just don’t expect any unhinged Caginess. Briggs is an always-restrained coil of intensity, as Donowho and Lucas instead try to craft some emotional heft from a father teaching his daughter the way of the gun.

Armstrong is clearly a talent, but both she and Cage are up against a script that leans too heavily on stilted, explanatory dialog and cliched exclamations (“You’re bringin’ Hell down on us, Jimmy!”). We’re told too much about who these people are without seeing enough to really care about them.

And by the time that showdown in the middle of a dusty trail finally plays out, what we do see doesn’t make for a memorable payoff.

It’s Nic Cage in a Western, so there are possibilities here. But The Old Way is too content to fall back on the old tropes to blaze anything at all.

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Life Is Better in the Milky Way

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Mars One

by Daniel Baldwin

The latest drama from Brazilian filmmaker Gabriel Martins, Mars One, lays out the story of a family’s trials and tribulations, set against the backdrop of a fascist right-wing leader being elected to power in 2018. The Martins are a lower-middle-class family, struggling to make ends meet. Their wants, needs, and beliefs are all running in separate directions, which is a tense thing to be occurring amidst such political upheaval.

Matriarch Tercia (Rejane Faria) has become overwhelmed by the supernatural fear that she is cursed. Patriarch Wellington (Carlos Francisco) sees that, given their skin color, their only salvation for future financial security can come in the form of son Deivinho’s (Cicero Lucas) soccer skills. After all, raw sports talent often glosses over any issues with social and/or cultural standing. Problem there is that Deivinho isn’t too keen on becoming a professional athlete. His personal dreams lie not in the clouds, but above them: he wants to become an astronaut and help colonize Mars as part of the (then-)planned Mars One mission.

Then there’s daughter Eunice (Camilla Damião), who longs to leave and live elsewhere with her girlfriend, out from under the influences of her parents. All of this makes for a rather tense and chaotic environment for the family, especially when it comes to understanding one another’s differences, but it’s not a situation devoid of love. Because of this, there’s a very tender and emotional undercurrent flowing deeply through the film amidst all of the familial strife on display. The performances are all touching, even those that hail from non-professional actors.

Where Mars One trips up is when it tries to focus on each family member’s arc equally. By serving no master, the film comes up short on delivering the goods as well as it might have had one family member been the primary focus. After all, there’s only so much story that can fit into a two-hour runtime. Still, this is a moving and often relatable family drama. It’s not hard to see why it has garnered such acclaim on the festival circuit. If down-to-earth familial drama is your thing, you’ll want to check this one out.

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My Father’s House

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LandLocked

by Rachel Willis

Writer/director Paul Owens delivers a meditation on past and present with his ambitious, slow-burn debut, LandLocked.

Blending fiction and reality, Owens’s film is a combination of his own family’s home movies and performances of himself, his brothers, and his father portraying fictional versions of themselves. It’s an intriguing set-up, and unlike other family affairs on camera, the Owens family has its share of talent.

Mason (Mason Owens) is the film’s primary focus. Upon returning to his childhood home after the death of his father, he discovers a camcorder that opens a window to the past. In addition, Mason discovers scores of VHS tapes containing all the moments his father chose to record. Watching these videos, as they comprise much of the film’s short runtime, is about as interesting as watching home movies of a family you don’t know. That is to say, not very.

Sure, the family seems happy. There are several scenes that move Mason to laughter. Yet, there is no solid foundation, no reason for the audience to feel connected to the Owens family. Without this connection, anytime a new home movie appears on screen, you can’t help but wish to move forward to the next scene.

LandLocked doesn’t pick up steam until we near its end. When Mason’s grasp on reality starts to blur, as he delves further into his memories, the audience is treated to imagery that provokes confusion as well as suspense. This is when the film truly excels at blurring the line between past and present – when curiosity becomes obsession.

The film is technically competent, and Owens does a great job crafting his low-budget family affair. Mason manages to provide some solid moments of intrigue and interest with minimal dialogue. This is one of the more unique takes on the found-footage genre, so it’s unfortunate the story doesn’t quite carry the weight necessary to create a truly interesting meditation on memory.

The choice to cast his family as his on-screen talent brings naturalism to Owens’s film, though some family members have more talent than others. Choosing Mason to carry the film was a solid decision.  Paul Owens proves he has talent as a director, though his writing chops need a little more polish. However, there’s enough quality material on display in LandLocked that it’ll be worth seeing what Owens comes up with next.